I am torn, so torn.

Matisyahu, the Jewish Rapper is playing a gig at the Scala on November 28th, and it's my writing class.

Checkout that wimp.com clip above: it's crazy. Remember in the Big Lebowski, the guy who was shomer shabbes? There's that disconnect: the TV interviewer asking Matisyahu how much it'll cost for him to play a gig on a friday night, and asking him if there's a lot of East Coast/West Coast rivalry in Hasidic Regge.

Priceless.

Choices, choices, for me.

Forget West Side Story - I saw this short, West Bank Story at the Jewish Film Festival on Tuesday, and it was great. Sadly, it's the kind of thing that's hard to get to see, so you'll just have to keep your eyes peeled, but it's an entertaining, insightful, witty, humous-laden romp through Middle East politics. No, really.

You know how it is... a series of random conversations, and then I needed to check out exactly who Typhoid Mary was. So now you know. If the wikipedians know, that is.

I think I may be in technical melt down...

So I hired a laptop while my Vaio goes on a not-so-well earned vacation to Brussels. Except my hire machine came with the wrong power cable.

Then, something weird happened to Adobe Acrobat reader. A client sent me a contract via fax, and I use a fax to mail service so I always have copies and don't need a fax machine.

But Acrobat is weird, so I think I'll uninstall and reinstall, so I had loads of Acrobat stuff, removed it all in add/remove programmes, but now can't remove 6.0.2, and can't load 7.0.5 - both just hang my machine. I have googled, but all I can find is other people with the same problem, so it's a pooling of ignorance.

Do you think if I just delete the programme files I'll leave other trails of Acrobat which will upset other things?

I think it will. I have tried renaming the Adobe folders, but it won't let me ,and when I change the attributes from Read-Only, it won't remember it.

Also, I borrowed a digital camera from a friend, to take some photos of my parents seventies furniture that I'm supposed to be doing something with, and to a very strict deadline. But it's a Sony with a weird Sony Memory Stick that only works with a Sony machine. Which is now abroad.

Any ideas?

If you've got money, you can travel...

(I think that quote is from the You Don't Have To Be Jewish record, but the whole internet doesn't seem to know, and my memory's not what it was...)

So I decided to hire a laptop for two weeks. My vaio is going to Brussels on holiday, and even though it's kinda expensive, it makes my life easier, and I'd like that right now. And it means the couple of client projects that require me to go to someone's office with a laptop can happen. And if I've learned one thing in the last two years, it's that drama is very energy draining, and what I basically want is a quiet, nice life. One that probably includes a Succah.

So that's one less thing to worry about, even if I did give short shrift to Mr Trogwell from the Sony Vaio Escalation Department (can't help thinking I can't be the only customer with this problem, then) and tell him he'd lost a customer.

Because, as we all know, technical hitches are just that. Nothing to sweat about.

Apparently.

I'm kinda into eBay (even if it is capitalised like a bad nineties software package) and I like the karma of clearing out the stuff I don't need.

This one, however, takes the biscuit: Lot 328: a pair of embarrassing trousers.

£58? Priceless.

I am pretty high up on google for The Google Generation, which lead me to this very entertaining snippet on Gawker about how people talk like ad-agencies nowadays.

So my cable modem was slightly tempermental this morning, and then I did a speed test and realised that Telewest Broadband have upgraded me to the "elite" product, from 4Mb to 10Mb.

Know what? Uploads have gone up to 384bps, but I still can't tell the difference. I mean, it might be slightly, imperceptibly faster. Sure I won't be the only person to go back to the "complete" product which at 4Mb, is still faster than my original 1Mb.

Dead Parrot

I wish to register a complaint. And to tell you NEVER to buy a Sony Vaio - for the second time in a year or so, my Vaio is resting. Stunned. Dead as a proverbial.... parrot.

I used it yesterday, and it was well, fine and dandy, and we were both happy. Get home last night, turn it on, dead-dead-dead. No power, nothing.

I did all the things I vaguely remember from last time - removing the battery, etc, and even totally powered it down all night, but it's still more than unwell. AKA dead.

Luckily/unluckily, Sony service was so beyond par last time that the Head of UK Customer Relations extended my warranty till January 2007. However, I think, due to a combination of inefficiency and a distributed service offering, it's possible they will keep my laptop till then, and I won't be able to do any work.

Like I'd planned to go into some friends' office this week - I' having a bit of a hard time concentrating - but I can't if I haven't got a laptop.

Bugger.

I have a spare laptop, but it's a 1999 ThinkPad running Windows98 and it won't read my USB keys, can't do the internet, and weighs the same as a small Scottish island.

I know shit happens (brief moment of victimhood, which will be over before it's even begun, I promise), but why does shit always happen to me?

The view from my window.

Mostly, I work from home, my spare room turned into an office-sofabed space, with lots of books and geekery.

My window looks out over the garden, and for a London garden, it's pretty big. What I like about it is that it's moderately unkempt: my downstairs neighbour mows the lawn and looks after it, but it's not manicured or chichi, it's just outsideness.

I derive a lot of pleasure - sustenance - from looking at my garden. And my neighbour just planted some pink flowers under my window, and they make me happy.

The last couple of weeks, I've noticed that the sky is a bluer-than-blue colour. The blue of the Windows 98 screensaver, with perfect white clouds, and the greens and browns and reds and oranges of almost-autumn starting to happen (global warming permitting).

But there's this one thing: for the last two weeks, there's this one, perfect, grey cloud sitting atop the roof of the people at the end of the garden.

And I think what it's saying to me, this cloud, is that everything will be ok, there might just always be this one grey cloud on a sunny day. Life isn't perfect.

I think I may have lost my mojo.

Y'know, I'm never really comfortable with call waiting.

I don't have it any more on my home phone, because I was constantly not-really-having attention on the person I was talking to because someone else was calling, or playing phone call arbitrage in trying to keep everyone happy.

Now, I have one voicemail if I'm on the phone, and my answerphone if I'm not home. I know, I don't get that many calls, it's not really worth it.

But when I call someone who's got call waiting, I don't feel good. I feel like I'm interrupting them - they're talking to someone else, and invariably they'll pick up, say a hurried hi and juggle calls for a minute and then either ditch you and call you back, or ditch the other person.

Either way, it's not a good scenario.

So usually, when I get call waiting, I spend a couple of seconds wondering if they'll pick up, and then give up, and then they call back and say "I got your call waiting, but you'd gone".

The whole thing is not exactly what you'd call quality communication, and as I get older, I'm more thoughtful and careful about how and when I talk to people.

Seems to me, the only people who win out of this situation are the phone companies: two calls at one time, you can't make more money than that.

I think they should invent a new thing: a special tone that when you call, and someone's on the phone, you hear it, and you know they're busy, and you hang up, and if it's really important, call them again.

I know, they could call it the engaged tone.

Image(649)

Image(649)
Originally uploaded by sashinka-uk.

Sometimes, only a picture can speak.

Did you know the UK is the worst place in Europe for asthma?

Hidden History

Hidden History
Originally uploaded by sashinka-uk.

Last week, I had a meeting in Farringdon, and found myself walking past the Guardian's offices, and the Newsroom centre across the road.

I spent half an hour or so at this micro-exhibition about the history of the Guardian and the Scott Trust, which is quite fascinating: all sorts of ephemera, including a signed table plan from the Guardian-hosted Israel/Arab talks in 2002 - quite something.

Not entirely sure why I'm mentioning this now, as you'd need to get down there before 5pm today, and I guess most people are at work.

edvard munch

edvard munch
Originally uploaded by sashinka-uk.

Remember The Scream? The image on the front of nearly every personal development book you've ever read?

I think I'm quite up for this Edvard Munch exhibition at the Royal Academy.

That incident with Rebekah Wade and Ross Kemp?

I know this isn't the most important thing, but they'd just returned to their South London home from a birthday party at 4am. Let's say they returned at 3am, as the police were called at 4am.

How could she possibly expect to get to work in good enough shape on a daily newspaper if she'd had such a late night? Or perhaps she thinks that special celebrity rules apply to her, too.

You know me, always a little late to the party.

So I just discovered Ruth Gledhill's Religion Blog at the Times, and there's a fascinating post about her views on a story intially reported in Manchester's very own Jewish Telegraph (a newspaper whose headline once ran "Average Age in Heathlands (old age home) 73") (scroll down on the Times site to her entry for 21 October, permalinks shaky).

It's about a boy who wrote a poem effectively praising the Holocaust, that has been included in a collection to be used in schools. The editor states:

"This poem shows a good use of technical writing and he has written his poem from the perspective of Adolf Hitler. Key Stage 3 history requires people to show knowledge and understanding of events and places, to show historical interpretation and to explain the significance of events, people and places, all of which World War II and the Holocaust is part of. The poem clearly states, I am Adolf Hitler and is not a reflection of the child's view, the editor's or the publisher's. The poem recounts a historical fact, something which Young Writers and Foreward Press are not willing to censor.'

I'm slightly at a loss for what to say, and am disinclined to say "PC gone mad" because people always say that.

Let's just say that I'm a little worried about the world I live in. Today, anyway. Oh, and yesterday (Blunketgate II).

Today is - apparently - World Usability Day.

Although it sounds like a website usability thing, which I guess it is to some degree, it's more about geek stuff and stuff in general. For anyone who's ever asked “why doesn’t this work right? What am I supposed to do with this now?" (and as someone who rarely reads the instructions, that's happened to me quite a lot), it seems like a great idea that some people have got into, but there's a lot of noise out there on the web, and how do you fight for attention?

Maybe today's the today I get over my skype-inertia. Although Yoz tells me I should go open source. Skip? Obviously.

I'm kinda excited about the UK Jewish Film Festival - bigger, better and with more stylish graphics and a new logo. Starts Saturday, with a couple of must-see films (for me, anyhow: Ushpizin, Divan, Bee Season). Check it out.

Let's face it, we're all pretty relieved that David Blunkett's had the guts to resign.

I'm not disputing the fact that people lead complicated lives, and seemingly more so if they're under the public gaze, but I want politicians with integrity.

Do I think every politician has to be lilly-white and angelic? No. Do I think that they have to be perfect? No. Do I think they have to get everything 100% right? No.

So while I'm prepared to give the benefit of the doubt, and forgive to a degree, David Blunkett has broken my trust. And the more he does, the worse it gets.

So he had an affair. I think maybe a lot of people do, and it may not be a hanging offence. But then there was that power-crazed stuff with Kimberly's nanny's visa, and that estate agent woman, the personal letter on government headed paper and now DNA Biotech, and I read a brief mention of some other thing he hadn't checked out with the committee.

I think that sometimes people in the public eye (and I think I bundle politicians with celebrities on this one) forget that they're not in a first class carriage where different rules apply and it's OK to jump the queue or whatever. My grandpa was a JP (magistrate) and he used to say "justice does not only have to be done, it has to seem to be done" and maybe those are words that David will reflect on in the time he will doubtless now be spending "with his family."

Here's a few things I'd like to say to people in public office who take the piss, (and celebrities who think the world owes them a living): no special rules apply. You're just a person elected to enact the people's will, (or a prat who thinks being on Celebrity Big Bonker gives you a licence to bore), and that comes before anything else.

I come from a long line of people who've done some kind of public service, and believe that making your contribution to your community, whatever it may be, might be one of the most important things we are here for. I remember as a kid, a friend of my Dad's who was a part-time chair of an NHS Trust describing himself as having an "outmoded sense of public duty", but I don't think it's outmoded. In the language of New Labour, you have rights and responsibilites, and you don't get one without the other. Public life is a delicate balance of the two. You can't just take, especially when there are very clear rules. I don't even care about the "letter of the law" stuff (he put the shares in his sons' names to replace the inheritance he spent on his younger son's custody battle).

Sometimes, the right thing to do is just very obvious, and no amount of weaseling and squirming can replace that.

Oh, and Steve Bell's said everything I want to say in one image.