While us $SPORRANCORP peons were still reeling from the Great Rightsizing, management moved in with an uppercut - a Pep Rally delivered by $BUNGIE_BOSS_5.  He's been here since (checks our 'media' page) 22-Jan-2008.  And he's barely comprehensible, being from Puerto Rico or Dominica or some other ex Italian colony.

From what I can make out, we have better technology than $THAT_PHONE_YOU_LATTE_CHUGGERS_ALL_USE, we're just not packaging it attractively enough, or making it easy enough for customers to use.  So on top of our Flash UI, that replaced a C-based UI, we'll offer, wait for it... a C wrapper.  And Java.  And .NET CF.  Because as far as our customers are concerned, we are the platform.

Right, because instead of tying themselves to the OS, they'll rush to tie themselves to a company that's up for sale to their competitors, and which might withdraw its products tomorrow.  Riiiiight.

Eh, it could happen.  In the meantime, our jobs are all secure (NOBODY LAUGH), and we should concentrate on having fun.  Message received: I'll push on with Portal: Flash immediately.

Reading: The Dreaming Void, the Peter F. Hamilton Writing Collective's latest.  He must be rivalling Saint Barbara Cartland for output.

Cunningly, he hasn't bothered making up new characters for this one, just set it A 1000 Years in the future-future, after the Starflyer War duology.  Amazing what you can get away with when you've posited immortality.

I do get a 'borg chubby from his vision of the future.  Star Trek technology, but with the important observation that people would quite like to be eternally young, fit and healthy, thanks very much, oh, and we'll have this season's hot wetwiring and genetic retro-modification while we're at it.  Also, sex in weird combinations would be fine.  Imagine a society composed entirely of Mac users and you're pretty much there.

He ignores the Holodeck Problem though. Once you've got flawless VR environments, why would anyone bother with the real world, instead of playing the timid stable boy to Alyson Hannigan's strict riding mistress from now until the heat death of the universe?

Any ideas?  I mean, ideas where I can get a VR simulation of Alyson Hannigan?

Tedious offspring update: Miss Borglet's lexicon.

• "Ada": Daddy and/or Master Borglet. Or anyone else, really, except for mama, who Shall Not Be Named.
• "Up": Any change in altitude.
• "Aaw gaw": Any change in a quantity of food.
• "Cat": Any animal.
• "Joos": Any liquid.
• "Shoos": Any clothes.
• "Off": Stop... playin... interwebz.

Re-watching: Babylon 5 seasons 1 - 2, Deep Space 9, seasons 1 - 4.

B5 is a big pile of Hawk the Slayer.  Really, truly, it is.  Just awful on every level.  It's like a shoddy humourless parody of itself, made by someone who had never seen it.  Meta-paradox! I can see the appeal to fanbois though, since it plays like it was written by one.  Such is the power of fanwankery that I'd been tricked into remembering it as far better than it was.  It's a shock to rediscover the truth.

DS9 is the opposite.  On re-watching, I have to concede that it gives even the Historical Documents a run for their money.  Merely competent for the first 3 seasons as it beds in, but then it just lets rip in season 4.  When hot alien lesbos isn't even your season highlight, you must be doing something right.

Do you have nothing better to do than argue to the contrary?  Well, I'd like to see you try.

Update [2008-3-11 14:45:26 by Rogerborg]:

Hot alien lesbos. There's that's the Edit function and YouTube embedding validated in one fell swoop.