I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For

I remember when my hometown library first replaced the trusty old card catalogue with a computer version. I looked up - fittingly enough - books on computers, and I discovered that the system had three related categories: One was just "computers," another was "electronic computers," and then there was "digital computers." Of course, "electronic computers" only rules out the abacus and Charles Babbage's difference engine. But "digital" includes all modern computers, save for some curiosities. So essentially the three categories are the same, and if you're looking up a book on computers, it could be in any of them, you have no idea which.

I bring up this tale from the library of the nineties because I'm amazed at how often the same sort of problems come up. No, not in libraries, but in stores.

You'd think that a modern e-tail store would be able to do better than my nineties small town library. After all, they have decades more technology, millions more in their budget, and they only have to categorize a limited selection of products, not all of humanity's knowledge.

But still, they have the same inability to clarify things. Similar to that nineties librarian, whose classification system was technically correct, but worse than useless, they have difficulty classifying their wares in a way that helps people find things.

Again, I'm having difficulty shopping for an external hard drive. Hard drives can be internal or external. They can also be solid state or, um, the spinny kind. So you'd think I'd just have to make my choice on those two dimensions and look at what fits the category. But often there are weird, imaginary dichotomies, like they have categories for solid-state drives or external drives. So if I want a solid-state, internal drive, I don't know where to look.

(And this is fun: when I typed, "spinny" into my phone, it interpreted it as "spiny" and suggested the hedgehog emoji.)

Another weird aspect of that early computer catalogue were the dates. See, on a lot of old manual typewriters, there were keys for digits "2" through "9," but no "1" key, since that was identical to the lower-case "L" in the old Courrier-like font they used, and apparently keys were incredibly expensive. So I would occasionally see that a book was published in "l985," because it was typed by someone who was still used to those old typewriters. Those entries must have been fun for anyone who had to search for a book by year.

But even today, we're at the mercy of whoever types in the information, just hoping they get it right, and are consistent. When I was looking for the game controller previously, I found Walmart had only four Xbox controllers. Actually, they have hundreds, but there were only four where the underpaid stock boy who enters the info had bothered to add the Xbox tag.

And when I went looking for earbuds, I found that when filtering the brands, there was an entry for "Sony" and another for "SONY" from someone who must have thought it was an acronym. Or I suppose the problem could have been they just didn't know their caps-lock was on, but that just adds to the 90's computer system ambiance.

I'd like to think that we will eventually build up a better understanding of how to organize things. Like maybe once databases are as old and commonplace as that card catalogue was to the librarians in the l990's. Maybe then the understanding will be so innate that people will just naturally organize things in a nice efficient way, and when I'm shopping for my nanobot farm, I'll only have to think "indoor nanobot farms" into my neural interface, and not worry that it will exclude the new transquantum nanites just because the warehouse cyborg entered them separately.

It Can't Possibly Be Da Shoes

I remember a time in my teens when I was at a friend's house, and his mother arrived home from shopping and announced she had bought him new running shoes. I was amazed: when I bought new shoes, I needed to try on at least six pairs to find one that fit comfortably. The idea of just buying shoes based on nothing but the size and then assuming that's it, the transaction is done? That was mind-blowing.

The point is, there are two types of people when it comes to shoes: picky, and not picky. Okay, I guess "picky" then subdivides into picky for fit and picky for style, so, um, that wasn't as neat as I'd hoped.

Our current retail world is really not good for people like me. For most people and most products, ordering things online is great. Essentially, the plus is that you have incredible choice because the whole world is available to you. But the disadvantage is that you can't inspect anything before buying. Oh, there's the whole lack of human interaction too, if you're into that sort of thing. For most products, that's a reasonable trade off: you don't really need to feel a new iPad before buying. But for me, it's trying on the shoes that I miss.

If you find comfortable shoes easily, this world is great for you: type your size into Amazon and you're done. If you're in that choosy-about-styles subgroup,  it's not perfect, but you might trade the ability to try on shoes for the increased selection. But for me, it really sucks. When it comes to casual shoes, there's just Wal-Mart, Foot Locker, and a few locally-owned stores. Previously, I would have gone to Zellers, Target, Sears, Payless for the sweet spot of cheap but with some quality. But they're all gone in Canada. So I'm stuck with super cheap or super expensive. It's the first time I've come up against this problem. I've bemoaned the lack of bricks and mortar options in modern retail before, but this is the first time I've had the experience where I need to buy something, but I'm not really sure where to get it.

Branding New Cadillac

General Motors has been awarded a formula one team. Michael Andretti had been campaigning for an American F1 team, but now he's stepped aside and the team will be more GM than Andretti. And it's going to be called the Cadillac team, as part of GM's eternal effort to associate the brand with something other than your rich uncle Wally's land yacht.

I'm wondering if anyone is taking bets on how long this team will last — or at least, how long it will have the Cadillac name. I'm thinking the over-under should be about 5 years. In recent history, there have been several examples of companies slapping their name on an F1 team, then changing their mind a few years later. Toyota lasted eight seasons, and Honda only three, and I don't see GM being more patient than them. It won't take long for the suits to ask why they're spending tens of millions to finish fourteenth.

The fact is that Formula One isn't a real great investment. It's not just expensive, but it's also hard to get to the top even if you're willing to spend with the big boys: You also need people with specific skills that aren't always available. Worse, there isn't much of a consolation prize: If you don't make it to the top, the whole world hears your name applied to the irrelevant car getting lapped by the champion.

So Formula One is a weird kind of never-ending investment bubble, where new people buy a team expecting great things, then realize there's not much reward in glory or publicity, and give up. But somehow, there's always more investors ready to take any team off the owner's hands and begin the cycle again.

Having said all this, Formula One has been more competitive this season, with four different teams winning races, so maybe this was the best time to buy into the series. But having said that, the other six teams had a combined total of two podiums in the 24 races, so there's still a big gap between haves and have-nots, even if there are more haves than there used to be. That will be the big challenge: those years in the wilderness without success before any chance at a publicity payoff.

Taking Back Thursday

Like a lot of wannabe intellectuals, I’ve tried reading Ulysses by James Joyce. And like a lot of those wannabe intellectuals - particularly where the accent is on the 'wannabe' - I didn’t get very far. It’s not hard to read, it’s just that there is a lot of it, and it feels like being in a room where someone is telling jokes, and you’re the only one who isn’t getting them.

I know some people today still find it enjoyable and funny, so it can be understood. It was just going over my head. So I searched the web to try get what I was missing. I wanted to at least know if it was worth continuing, or hopefully find a Rosetta Stone for deciphering the humour in it. I found notes on the first chapter, and it went on endlessly about Catholic references. That surprised me — not that it was Catholic; I know many can laugh at themselves — but rather that it was so specific. Ulysses has more than a cult following; I’ve seen it top lists of the greatest books ever written. Surely its entire audience is more than just the Venn Diagram overlap of “Highly-Observant Catholics,” and, “Looking for Catholicism Humour.” That doesn't seem like enough people to propel a book to classic status.

So I’ve continued searching for ideas on how to enjoy the book. Most say it’s not about those religious references or about the parallels to the Odyssey, but about the manipulation of language and the celebration of common people surviving their daily struggles. There are many readers who will attest to how personally enjoyable they found the book, but there’s no real consensus on how to get something out of it: Some say it’s best as part of a class, some say you should just sit back and enjoy it without worrying about symbolism, some say you need a companion book to appreciate it. But the things people do agree about it are that it’s not really necessary to read the whole thing in order, and the first three chapters are kind of a drag. So I may yet try again.

In other old book news, I recently came across an odd title of a book: The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton. Given that it was written in 1908 — and thus even older than Ulysses — the title stood out as kind of avant garde. Also, I’m a fan of the “Thursday Next” books by Jasper Fforde, so perhaps I have a weird fascination with Thursday-related literature. I also noticed that, by coincidence, it had just passed into the public domain last year, so I downloaded it and gave early twentieth-century literature another chance.

To my surprise, I really enjoyed it. It’s the comic story of police efforts to infiltrate an anarchist organization. It has various flavours of satire, farce and surrealism, and delivers humour that feels relevant. It goes a bit off the rails at the end, as it tries to be more profound than it really should be. But I liked the rest enough to forgive it.

What made me think back to my aborted attempt at Ulysses is that it seems the difference is all in the subject matter of political and sociological philosophy. That’s more in my area of interest and background knowledge. So in contrast to Ulysses, I felt like I was in on the joke. It also has a lasting relevance: While the book’s big organization of nefarious rebels are termed, “anarchists,” really, you can insert your favourite ideology of revolutionaries who are too intellectual for their own good. And arguably, the book's age makes it more palatable: we’re insulated from the hot-button issues of the day, so it’s easier to view the concepts in the abstract. And, weird fact I discovered: Apparently there are references to The Man Who Was Thursday in the video game, Deus Ex. I must have missed those. But that weird juxtaposition helps prove the continued relevance.

(Yes, I just argued for the relevance of a 116-year-old book by mentioning its place in a 24-year-old video game. Yeah, that's the world we live in.)

Conversely, I can definitely imagine someone reading The Man Who Was Thursday and reacting the way I did to Ulysses. In the opening chapters, as the characters whip proclamations on the nature of art and human society back and forth, I can see many readers zoning out. But the point is, you may have to search to find something relevant to you, but you may yet find it in an unexpected place. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to hunt down a copy of Frederick Pohl’s Turn Left at Thursday.

Vexing Vexillology

I recently mentioned Canadian media mogul Moses Znaimer, and by coincidence, I recently came across a mention of a Polish man with the similar name Alfred Znamierowski. He was known as a great vexillological artist. That is, a great flag designer. That was of interest to me, because, like many nerdy people, I've always found flags fun. 

But I also have to ask, how does a person become known as a great flag designer? Okay, let's start with, how does a person become a flag designer? I mean, it's not like that's a big industry with a lot of work to do. You can't get a job at Flag Inc.

For instance, Canada's flag was designed by George Stanley, a historian. Note that he was a historian who once designed a flag, which doesn't make him a flag designer, because he designed that one flag, and that was pretty much all there was to do in that area. 

I can understand how you become, say, an architect, because there are always countless new buildings that need designing. But flags? Even if you count the flags of regions, cities, and organizations — that most people never see — that's still not a lot of work.

And it's not like flag design is that complex a concept. Just look at some of the flags in the world and you can see that not much effort gets put into them. (I'm looking your way, Netherlands.) Even the aforementioned Mr. Stanley just slapped a maple leaf on the Royal Military College flag. You can't really be better at that than anyone else. Or at least, you can't be so much better that you end up getting all the big flag contracts from around the world. Oh yes, we must get Znamierowski to design our flag, we couldn't possibly trust some guy off the street to slap three brightly-colored stripes together.

This brings back bad memories of when I was in university and looking for a career. I found that job search books had weird ideas of what occupations existed. I think the weirdest was a book that listed "programming language designer" as a job. Again, interesting thing to do, but really it's something a handful of people do once in their lives and that's it. Calling it a potential career is like recommending you pursue a career designing new sports. And yet, Mr. Znamierowski somehow did that.

So: 

• Job type that lots of geeks would love 
• Requires skills that a lot of people have
• Very few openings in the world 
• Somehow, one guy gets most of the plum assignments. 

It's just like how JJ Abrams got to run the Star Trek and Star Wars movie franchises at the same time. 

Anyway, the point is, this is a great tragedy of our time: there are many fun and interesting things to do in this world, yet those jobs aren't well distributed, and they so often just go to the last guy who did a similar job, even if he was mediocre at it. The rest of us are stuck doing it in our imaginations only.

Anyway, here’s my proposed new Ontario flag

All The Moves That Fit To Sprint

There’s an intersection I frequently drive through where the line of cars stopped at a red light often stretches past the exit to a busy gas station. That means that I sometimes find myself stopped near the gas station’s exit, and have to make the decision of whether to let someone out in front of me. Generally, I try to be nice, and let someone out, but sometimes I’m stopped across the exit, and it’s not clear if there’s enough room, so I just move ahead and let the driver behind me decide whether or not to be a Good Samaritan.

Yesterday, I was in just such a position. I had come to a stop at the light with my car pretty much blocking the exit, so I couldn’t have let anyone out. Except, the driver coming out of the gas station was on a motorbike. And he didn’t even wait for my permission, he just drove out into the space I’d left in front of me, which was enough for the bike.

At first, I was kind of annoyed. How dare you take this space, which I think sort of symbolically belongs to me. But at the same time, I had to admire the audacity. And I have to admit, it didn’t cause me any inconvenience at all: He was just taking up room that would have been left empty anyway. Okay, the reason I leave a car length between me and the car ahead is in case I have to move forward to avoid being rear-ended. But as long as he’s okay with getting pancaked between us in that unlikely event, then I guess he’s welcome to the space.

Years ago, I noted that motorbikes have the potential to be what sports cars wish they were, but usually aren’t: a way of going faster on modern roads. Usually, that just manifests itself as going way over the speed limit, but I was envisioning someone going at the speed limit, in spite of traffic, by taking advantage of your ability to fit into the smaller spaces other vehicles can’t get into. And that’s kind of what he was doing, albeit in a mundane manner. I wonder if you can take this even further, with a vehicle that gives up some of a motorbike's straight-line speed for even more maneuverability. A motor-unicycle would do it, but wouldn't be worth the dorkiness. I mean, you have to keep in mind the real possibility that this device will be mentioned in your obituary. 

Maybe a higher powered motorized skateboard. Or - I hate to suggest this - those things they call hoverboards. Okay, I see the etymologists have struck back, and are insisting on calling them self-balancing scooters. with the Oxford English Dictionary saying that "hoverboard" refers to "boards that Marty McFly would recognize." I love those guys!

Now that we have that out of the way, I feel less guilty about suggesting them as the extreme vehicle of the future. Well, less guilty linguistically; I guess the inevitable casualties are still bad. Anyway, I'm thinking: give one of them, say fifty horsepower, and you could just fly around traffic. Around, past, and — with a bit of practice — over. I look forward to cursing maniacs on self-balancing scooters.

Back With Another One Of Those Blog-Rockin’ Beats

I've complained more than once about the song "It's Your Thing" by the Isley Brothers being used in commercials. Specifically, that it's been used in commercials for a variety of different products, with each company seemingly oblivious to the fact that it's already been associated with a different brand.

So, imagine if I'd been asked, "What do you think will be the next song to get overused in commercials for multiple brands at the same time? Hint: it's from another group with 'Brothers' in the name."

I would have said, oh, no, not "Unchained Melody!" That's such a classic song that so many people love. It would be such a shame if it became associated with dog food and denture cleaners

But no, it's "Galvanize," by the Chemical Brothers.

It started with a series of Michelin ads, which used the song for its distinctive "dun dun dun" part. That got it recognized enough that stadium DJs started playing it at sporting events. I thought that was a weird enough path for a song to go through pop culture: being revived by a commercial almost twenty years after it was released and getting attention beyond what it originally got. So I thought about remarking on it, but never got around to it.

But then, I hear it again on a Hummer ad. They're using the "Push the button" part to advertise their four-wheel steering. That's a different part of the song, so people may not even realise it's the same song. I suppose that's a way around the problem of over-using songs in ads: each company uses a different part of the song. Maybe that will even have a positive effect on music: You’ll put more effort into the complexity of your songs if you know you can sell different parts to different companies.

Oddly, we still haven’t seen the most obvious use; the song is, after all, named after an industrial process. It just seems natural that eventually we'll hear, "Ziebart reminds you..." (start music) "The time has come to…Galvanize!" (cut music quickly, because Michelin owns the dun dun dun part.)

But I'm also thinking about the demographic implications of this. It was all fun and games when it was another generation's songs getting overused. I could feel cheapened, but I'm trying to look on the bright side: We won the demographic competition (where "we" refers to late Gen-X, early Millennials, or in my case, Mid-Xer who stayed in university too long and thinks he's a borderline Xer-Millennial.) And now our music is being used to sell expensive stuff like high-end tires and SUVs. Yes, I realize it's a fleeting title, since it's only a matter of time before the next music takes over. But we could get a bit of an extension while advertisers struggle to make ads out of emo.