Monthly Archives: October 2002

Back in June 1988, several branches of my family went to Summerwest World – a Butlins holiday camp near Ayr in Scotland. The holiday lasted a week, or maybe two, I cant quite remember, but when we got back I remember the scores of photographs which were produced from the many different family cameras.

Some would feature my cousins Jamie, Iain and Emma-Jane. Others would show different aunts in different states of mirth at the cabaret shows. Several of the pictures caught uncles and dads enjoying one beer too many after hours. And a few showed general holiday activities and antics around the appartments.

Out of all of the photographs, only two or three featured me. I’m not sure why – all the other kids were in plenty of the photos, but for some reason I just plain wasn’t there when the images were being captured for reminiscing later on in life.

My mother pointed it out initially, and being the teenager just about to turn sixteen, I shrugged in a semi-rebelious, non-plussed way. What did it matter – the holiday was gone and the weather had been crap anyway.

The lack of photographic evidence that I existed during that holiday seemed to set a kind of trend that covered the next few years. I always seemed to be absent from family photos and would see pictures after the event and be unable to figure out why I hadn’t been caught by some wayward Polariod along with the rest of the family.

During my early twenties I went a bit camera mad – I had a very decent one of my own and I’d snap away so often that the pictures were pretty worthless as memories. One piss up with the lads looks much like another when they’re pulled out of a box of jumbled up pictures a year or two later. Still, it is kind of cool to have these hard copies of memories which will fade over time.

Sadly, over the last year, the days, weeks and months have been made up of trudging through life, doing the day to day tasks of waking, working, eating, amusing myself and then sleeping. Not one event in the past year has been worth recording in any shape or form other than my birthday back in July.

This Bud’s for you, Mr MicroSoft Menu Option Designer.

For it was you who put the Print option next to the Refresh option on the right click menu of Internet Explorer. I toast your lack of understanding of human computer interaction.

When other developers at Netscape, Mozilla, Opera and elsewhere became blinkered with the desire to make their applications more user friendly, you said “Bite my 12 inch Wiener and take my 20meg download!”

When the web browsing public pointed out that printing and refreshing a page were two entirely different actions, you alone dared to be different.

So I drink one Bud and then another in awe of how you’ve made sure several rain forests worth of paper get wasted every single day around the world because people accidentally choose to print when they wanted to refresh.

Take a deep bow, Mr MicroSoft Menu Option Designer – this Bud’s for you!

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Woody Harrelson has a bit of a rant at his own Government in this article. Looks like the anti-establishment feelings are growing outwith the realms of the general public, ‘States side.

As Wil Wheaton pointed out recently, those elected into office don’t seem to be paying much heed to the common people. Maybe if enough high profile american celebrities speak out against George Bush jr’s bombing campaigns then we can end this madness before any more innocents are killed by his macho posturing.