The Guilt of Consumption

Since my schooldays I've felt environmental guilt at the way we treat the planet, although until recently I'd managed to hold the guilt at bay by keeping myself busy and mind occupied on other things.

Perhaps it's the recession, or maybe the crazy Engligh springtime, but for some reason the guilt is no longer being held in check. Since my school days I've worshipped devoutly at the temple of consumption, and as such I'm now feeling quite lost about how a reasonable human being should behave when faced with the pincers of climate change and peak oil?

As the UK government, like the rest of the world's governments, are leading from the rear on environmental issues, I got some comfort at being directed to the Transition Movement, a paragon of environmental action within the local community. While the concept of Transition Towns has been steadily infiltrating the zeitgeist, I can't help predict it's going to grow massive within the next 5 years.

While it's yet to be seen whether the Transition Movement helps mitigate the threats of climate change and peak oil, by jove it's a great remedy for the guilt of consumption.

A Good Economy to Hide Bad News

With every day bringing news of yet another company making layoffs, today's shock announcement was Microsoft's announcement they'll layoff 5% of their workforce over the next 18 months.

Of course it's entirely logical that in lean times even the giants feel the pinch, but what's particularly telling about Microsoft's announcement is it's their first significant round of layoffs since the company was founded in 1975. Given the troublesome 2 years Vista has given them, and couple it with the ever encroaching advance of free software, and Microsoft's unassailable hold on the software market is looking decidely wobbly.

Sure, it might be a barely perceptable wobble but it's a wobble nonetheless, and given the company's business model is founded on the frequent selling of the operating system and application suite upgrades, might the global recession be the last nail in their business model's coffin?

The fast shifting nature of the computer industry is never an easy one for any company, but unless Microsoft can reinvigorate their product and services while tightening their belt, they'll certainly have a lot more slimming to do to stay in the fight.

The Eco Font

Ever since the enviromental movement started flirting with the IT industry, it was perhaps only a matter of time before someone invented an environmentally friendly font.

What will they think of next? Environmentally friendly bombs?

Registrant of My Own Domain!

Having some inchoate plans for my blog, I decided it was time to breakaway from my reliance on a Blogger URL and go ang get the oddityandcircumstance.com domain.

Although it'll probably take any number of weeks to tidy up the loose ends associated with changing URLs I am now coming at yer from http://www.oddityandcircumstance.com. 

Hoorah!

Tweeting Technology

As someone that spends an obscene portion of their life keeping up with technology, I often have to leave the latest Internet fads until they've proved their worth in the zeitgeist, and demonstrated at least some long term future.

This week was therefore my first foray into Twitter, the microblogging phenomenon that I've tried desperately to avoid for the last year or so.

Only time will tell if I'll take to tweeting in the long term, but my first thoughts are best described as reserved optimism, and if you want to see how I'm going with it then visit http://twitter.com/ubiguchi.

stackoverflow

As befits a discipline that requires a healthy degree of autodidactism, it's not unusual for software developers to spend their lunches in front of the screen searching for a solution to a particularly pernicious technical problem.

Without doubt a valuable new tool to aid in those lunchtime searches, is Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky's stackoverflow. At a basic level stackoverflow is no more than a free question and answer forum for software develpers. However, it's the focus on user experience that really makes it stand out from the hordes of newsgroups and forums that it competes with. With a simple reputation system, a well crafted award system and an extremely clean UI, it all serves to make the asking or answering of a question a most enjoyable experience.

Although there are a number of small issues to be addressed, with the site still in beta there's every chance that on launch stackoverflow will become a developer's posterchild for that most elusive of beasts, the free lunch.