Wordle

I've always been a sucker for things new and shiny, and I've just been introduced to Wordle - www.wordle.net - a web-based tool which you can use to generate your own word clouds from random text or any blog/RSS feed.

It's a great way of pictorially giving a sense of what a blog, document or other piece of text is about. For instance, here's one for this blog which gives you an immediate impression of what's been on my mind recently:

Is it me being a geek, or is this not extremely cool? I'm just saying ...

Shopaholic?

There is definitely something of a role reversal in our household insofar that it is only me (as opposed to Heather) who truly believes in the restorative powers of retail therapy.

Many has been the time that Heather has thrown open her wardrobe and declared despairingly that she has nothing to wear. (When she does it, she's not being melodramatic - she really means it.) I have toddled dutifully off with her to Oxford or London or some other high-density retail location for the day, during which time she will only find one item of clothing she wants - and I will buy ten on a whim. Such expeditions typically end up with one of us grumpy and the other feeling not a shred of guilt. (I'll leave you to work out who's who.)

We have fundamentally very different approaches to shopping, she and I. Heather tends to only buy things she needs. It's not that she pursues a spartan lifestyle by any means - and it isn't as if I'm not forever encouraging her to treat herself to some new clothes or a book or some other trinket - but she lacks the basic impulse to go out and splurge.

Me? I'm actually reasonably conservative in the sense that I don't spend beyond my means. However, I do earn more than enough for me to enjoy a sizeable disposable income - and my philosophy has always been that I work hard enough for what I earn, so I might as well spend some of it on stuff that makes me happy.

I freely admit that my expenditure has probably increased at a near-exponential rate over the past ten years or so as my spending power has increased. We average at least two Amazon deliveries every month. I have more clothes than I need, but at least I have something to wear for every occasion. And our house contains more than its fair share of gadgets and other consumer technology: some of it 'essentials' (my definition) such as TVs, Sky+ and computers; others more discretionary, such as my iPhone, iPod, PS3, SLR, video camera and other assorted gadgets.

This has been a particularly good week in terms of acquisitions, with a new lens for my camera, a new Playstation game and Heather's new car being delivered. (It's not mine, but surely it's reasonable to get excited over the arrival of any purchase of this magnitude, no matter whose it is?)

Being able to order pretty much anything you want 24/7 online is manna from heaven for someone who buys as often and as impulsively as I do. Amazon is probably the most regular beneficiary of my attempts to help the UK spend its way out of recession - particularly now I can place orders on the go with a couple of prods of my iPhone touchscreen - but I have also used the internet to buy everything from fridges and TVs to ISAs and car insurance, and even cars. (We have bought our last three new cars via an online broker, saving ourselves a very tidy sum in the process. See, it's not just about spending.)

Is my spending out of control? No. I know Heather would prefer it if I spent a bit less, but our credit cards are paid off in full every month, we go on our family holidays and there is still enough left to put some aside in savings. I'm sure as Zac and Toby grow older we will need to spend more on them and less on us (okay, okay, me), but for the meantime I'm enjoying myself while I still can.

I know I can dial the spending back when I need to. I can give up the spending splurges any time. Honest. Now if you'll just excuse me, I'm off to see what I need to do to pre-order an iPad ...

Blogging: good for the soul?

I've been busier than normal at work recently, which means I've updated my blogs (the other, sports-based one is here) much less frequently over the past few weeks. There's nothing particularly unusual about that; there are always periods when I go into blog silence for a while, either because of workload or simply because I don't have anything in particular to say.

The thing is - and I'm feeling this more than usual right now - when I'm not blogging, I really miss it. I mean, I don't crave it in an I'm-addicted-and-I-need-my-fix sort of way; it's more of a nagging itch, a desire to put fingers to keyboard and put some tangible and permanent form to whatever is foremost in my thoughts at that moment in time.

And, let's put this into context, it's not an activity which takes up an overwhelming portion of my time - as of yesterday, I had posted 119 times across my two blogs in 2009 - slightly more than once every three days - which is hardly a prolific rate of output. In an average week I spend no more than a couple of hours - that's about one episode of X Factor or Strictly Come Dancing - blogging, which doesn't seem excessive, does it?

I've previously written my thoughts about why I blog, and the reasons I gave there are still valid: it's more about the self-satisfaction I get from writing a piece than it is about how widely it is read and appreciated, and it's a productive way to blow off steam for a classic introvert like myself, who naturally prefers writing to something more extroverted like (as my colleague A does) performing on stage.

The real point is: blogging makes me happy; it's good for my soul. A bit like chicken soup. And like that hearty dish, I'm sure many people will consider what I write to be relatively bland, but that's fine because the only thing it needs to do is make me feel good. And that it does.

See it through a boy's eyes

I was watching last year's Christmas episode of the excellent 30 Rock last night - just the right side of diabetes-inducing levels of schmaltz - and it's got me thinking about how having a child has completely changed my attitudes towards the holiday season.

(As an aside, isn't it funny how easily conditioned we have become in the UK to watching watching seasonal episodes of US programmes out of sync? It doesn't feel at all odd to be watching a Halloween, Thanksgiving or Christmas episode in the middle of summer.)

Anyway, Christmas. 

It's not that I've become all bah-humbug about the most wonderful time of the year (as the old Andy Williams song goes), but it would be fair to say that, for me, the magic had gone out of it some time ago. I think it happened at the point I realised that I was earning enough money that, if I wanted something, I could simply go out and buy it. And that's usually exactly what I would do.

To avoid present-giving disappointment, we now have an embargo in place where I am not supposed to buy myself anything after the beginning of November; instead it is added to my Christmas wish list. Which is fine, and I do understand the need for it - after all, it saves a lot of fiddling around with receipts and returning unwanted gifts - but it also means that I end up having to wait up to eight weeks for something I could easily have bought myself today. And then consequently leads to me rushing out to buy all the things on my list that weren't given as presents.

Honestly, I'd really rather have cash or some small token gift to unwrap on Christmas morning. It's the thought that counts. Really.

However, Christmas is a bit different when you see it through a boy's eyes (that's Jamelia, for those of you who have spotted that I'm inserting song titles at every possible opportunity). Last weekend I took Isaac to our local garden centre to burn off a bit of excess energy - boy, does he have plenty of that! - and discovered that they had just put out all their Christmas stuff, ranging from illuminated snowmen for the front garden to cuddly toys (that's Roachford, for eagle-eyed 80s pop spotters) to £250 artificial trees with built-in blinking lights.

Ordinarily, I'd have turned up a snobbish nose and walked straight out again, but to see Zac's reaction when confronted with a veritable forest of colourfully-lit trees - he stood there for fully five minutes rapt with attention and repeatedly exclaiming "Wow!" - made my day. And it was the same when he discovered the baubles, and the model Christmas villages, and the animatronic polar bears. (I'm not joking - see below.)

He lapped it all up; in the end, I had to physically drag him out after an hour so we could go home for lunch.

This year will be the first time - he's two in early December - he will have any real understanding of the concept of Christmas, so it's his first experience of all things shiny and garish. (He already gets the idea of presents, although he hasn't yet realised that not all wrapped-up boxes are meant for him; I spent a lot of time trying to stop him from unwrapping all the decorative presents placed under the trees!)

Already I'm busy picking out various odds and sods he might like - I bought a couple of small baubles he took a fancy to at the garden centre - and accumulating a variety of stocking-fillers for him to tear into on Christmas morning. Military campaigns have been less precisely planned.

So now, for the first time in years, I'm really looking forward to Christmas, as opposed to dreading fighting the screaming hordes for the last Nok Tok talking doll in an overcrowded shop playing incessant seasonal muzak. (We've already ordered all his presents online, anyway.) Not because anything has changed with me; I know I will - gratefully - receive the usual array of books, CDs, DVDs etc (and then buy everything else later) on the day, but because I know Zac is going to love all the seasonal rituals, from the opening of wrapped presents to the excesses of Christmas lunch (he loves a good roast; he takes after his father).

The pleasure may be an entirely vicarious one, but I'm still more excited about this Christmas than any other in years. That has to be a good thing. (Fine Young Cannibals, incidentally.)

Why social networking is a good thing

It’s partly the geek in me, but there’s something about the social networking phenomenon which intrinsically suits my nature as someone who has always been a writer rather than a talker.

Until recently, the term ‘networking’ generally had a more business and career-related connotation: it was about having the right conversations with the right people at conferences and trade shows, or handing out business cards while collecting those of others who might prove useful contacts in the future.

Not any more.

‘Social networking’, as the name suggests, is much more about maintaining and expanding your network of friends, keeping you in touch on a more regular basis, and enabling new connections to be made with other people who share a common interest, whether it be pregnant mums-to-be, fans of the same TV programme, or fellow gamers. (You’ll probably be aware of many of the names and buzzwords already: Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Bebo, LinkedIn, Club Penguin, the blogosphere, and so on.)

But whereas in the ‘real’ world one would collect business cards, addresses and phone numbers, now one accumulates ‘friends’ (as you do on, say, Facebook and MySpace) or ‘followers’ (Twitter’s measure of personal currency).

As an example, this is me. I’m not particularly exceptional: ordinary 30-something guy, office job, a few deep interests, with a slight tendency to be a relatively early adopter of new technologies (i.e. mildly, but not World of Warcraft-level, geeky).

I have my ‘real world’ networks, of course. Family. Friends from university nearly 20 years ago (sadly, I’ve lost practically all touch with my old school friends). Current and former work colleagues. Friends I’ve made through sports. Friends of friends, that sort of thing.

But then I also have my ‘virtual’ networks. Some of my real world friends are here: social networking becomes a way of keeping up to date with people I see infrequently or who are now living on the other side of the world. (For instance, I have a good friend who now lives in New Zealand, who I have seen three times in the last six years, but with whom - thanks to Facebook - I am able to maintain some level of communication at least weekly.) But they are also places where I interact with people I have never met (and probably never will), but where friendships have formed because they are, say, fellow Arsenal fans. In many ways, these can be as close as - if not closer than - my ‘real’ relationships: I have a couple of online friends who I communicate with on an almost daily basis.

So, anyway, at the risk of looking like a bandwagon-jumper, here are the various social networking tools I have signed up to (most used first):

- Twitter, which I use in part to keep up with a handful of friends and to let them know what I’m doing, but mostly as a means of virally picking up and sharing relevant news

- Facebook, which is more about communicating and sharing photos with a wider circle of friends

- Blogger, where I have both this, my personal blog, and a ‘Sporting Reflections’ blog where I indulge my twin passions of sports and writing

- At work, I have recently started using Yammer (like Twitter, but with private company networks) and an intranet-based blogging tool to share ideas

- LinkedIn, for professional networking

- Audioboo, which is the voice-recording equivalent of Blogger

- I am also registered on MySpace, Friends Reunited and a couple of football-related forums, but I no longer use these actively (there are only so many hours in the day …)

Of course, online networking will never be a substitute for genuine human interaction, but in a world where our personal contact list of friends, acquaintances and business associates is flung further and wider than ever before, social networking allows us to maintain at least a basic level of interaction with large numbers of people in a way that has never been previously possible. That can only be a good thing.

Why do I write?

Personal motivations are not always easy to explain.

We were at a barbecue on Sunday afternoon when, unprompted and completely independent of one another, two friends (R & A) went out of their way to compliment me on my other, sports-related blog. A even went so far as to ask if I had ever considered trying to get myself published.

A little well-meaning flattery never did anyone any harm, and I went home that evening with my chest metaphorically puffed out, grateful for the fact that two busy, well-educated and highly literate friends (R works in the City; A is a doctor-in-training) not only took a few minutes of their time to read my occasionally coherent ramblings, but thought enough of them to spontaneously praise them.

When asked why I choose to write, my typically inarticulate response was to shrug and say, “I just like to write, that’s all.”

Equally pertinent was the follow-up question: where do I find the time? After all, with a young toddler who is somewhat high maintenance when it comes to (not) sleeping, a reasonably busy job, and a constant lack of time which is a source of permanent frustration and complaint, it’s a question I often ask myself.

I suppose the simple (and obvious) answer is that it is something I am motivated enough to do that I prioritise it over other activities: I watch less TV than I used to; I spend less time conquering virtual worlds on the Playstation; I read less. (I also spend less time doing household chores than I ought to, as Heather is constantly reminding me, but then who doesn’t?)

And the fact is that writing a blog post takes less time than many people imagine, particularly when it is something that comes from either the heart or a deep interest rather than a sense of obligation. (That’s my excuse for why it takes me so long to produce stuff at work, anyway!)

On average, I will post once a week to each of my two blogs; sometimes more, often less. A typical post will be between 800 and 1,000 words and take on average 45 minutes to write, rarely more than an hour (unless the topic requires some heavy research). That’s a similar length to your average newspaper article, which I daresay journalists rattle off more quickly than I do and with the added pressure of print deadlines to meet.

(As an example, I’ll do a word count and time-check at the end of this blog.)

So, in reality, I spend a couple of hours – the duration of a football match – blogging in an average week. Not so much, really.

I’ve found that the simple act of putting finger to keyboard on a regular basis keeps the writing ’muscle’ well-practised and in good nick. I’m still not someone who can bash out a piece from start to finish in one seamless motion – I’d be rubbish if I had to write on a typewriter – but I’ve definitely learned how to crank out readable output more quickly than when I first started blogging. My style is somewhat, er, ‘organic’ (for which, read ‘chaotic and disorganised’): my modus operandi is that the absolute maximum I will start with is a theme, a couple of key discussion points, and a picture of what I want the final paragraph to be, but other than that I allow the structure and flow to evolve on its own. Start with an idea and the words will follow would be my motto. I know it’s not how all the manuals advise aspiring writers to approach their art, but it works for me. With experience, I’ve learned to trust my own voice and ability, and just enjoy the process of watching a blank page fill with a narrative which gives me a huge sense of satisfaction when I finally hit the ‘publish’ button.

And that in itself is perhaps the best way I can answer the question of my personal motivation for writing. Some people write to share or show off their expertise on a particular topic as a way of enhancing their reputation; others chase ‘hits’ on a blog or website as a means of validating some kind of personal currency. I do it because I find it is a good way to blow off steam, because it is a way for me to express myself creatively, and because I find it personally satisfying. Everything else – readers, comments, praise - is a nice bonus, but it is not a primary motivation. Many people write for others; I write for me.

So there you have it. I just like to write, that’s all.

(Word count: 790. Time: 41 minutes. See, it doesn’t take that long, really.)

One giant leap

Today is the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. Although a total of 12 men have walked on the moon to date, it is the first, Neil Armstrong, who still captures the imagination the most.

Through the wonders of the internet, it is possible to relive the experience in real time thanks to a website called We Choose The Moon. This fascinating site combines NASA video and radio footage, and also videos shot by the lunar astronauts themselves, to provide an enthralling minute-by-minute account of one of mankind's most remarkable moments. I've had it open on my PC today - as someone who wasn't born until the year after the event, it's the next best thing to actually having been there.

The story of the first manned Moon landing has been well chronicled over the years, but one particular fact caught my eye today, which is that the two computers on the Apollo 11 craft - one in the command module, the other in the Eagle moon lander - each had a total memory capacity of about 160 kilobytes. That was huge back in 1969, but by comparison today I routinely carry a 16 GB memory stick less than half the size of a packet of chewing gum which is equivalent to more than 100,000 Apollo 11 computers. I also use a small portable hard drive (to backup my photos and videos), about the size of a pack of playing cards, with a capacity of 250 GB - that's 1.6 million times what the Eagle had. That's quite a lot!

Even if you halve the comparative time period from 40 to 20 years, I can remember buying a 1 MB memory expansion card - almost as large as a paperback book - for my old Commodore Amiga computer in 1989. I would have needed 250,000 of those to give me the same storage capability I currently have.

Times change, and the numbers associated with technological progress continue to change at an astronomical rate. But still the thought of a man walking on the moon continues to amaze, even 40 years later.

iPhone and I

My iPhone is the one item I can't leave the house without. Not because I'm worried that I'll miss ten calls if I leave it behind - hardly anyone calls me on my mobile - but because it's so much more than a phone to me.

In fact, pretty much the last thing it is to me is a phone - what an antiquated, 20th century notion!

So if I don't use my phone primarily to speak to other people, then why is it so important to me?

Well, it's certainly a communications device, just not one I use much for spoken conversation. My phone is the primary device I use for accessing both Twitter (I use a popular client app called Tweetie) and Facebook (the Facebook app has very limited functionality, but it's better than nothing).

It also allows me, via mobile internet, to access most of the information I would normally rely on a PC for. I use Google Reader to consolidate RSS feeds and deliver me news on topics of interest. I run apps which provide up-to-the-minute weather forecasts, currency exchange rates and stock prices with a single button-press. YouTube, Wikipedia, Google, live sport scores etc are all available directly online or via apps which re-present complex content into a more useable format for a four-inch screen. I can even remotely set my Sky box to record a programme from hundreds of miles away. Now that's useful!

The phone's built-in GPS also comes into its own for providing local maps and directions - obviously, it's not as good as a dedicated sat nav, but it's surprisingly effective and has stopped me from getting horribly lost on a number of occasions - or to obtain traffic information relevant to my current location.

The camera isn't much cop, but because it can easily interface with Twitter (via, say, TwitPic) and Facebook, it's still a great way to share quick snaps.

And for less serious moments, the phone's accelerometer and touch screen interface allow it to be used as a variety of musical instruments - I have downloaded piano, drums and guitar apps, for instance - and for games - my current favourites being iShoot (tank artillery shoot-'em-up), Scrabble and Toobz (build a network of interconnecting pipes to allow water to flow without leakage). And I've recently noticed that the new Sims 3 game is also available in an iPhone version, so that's next on my list.


The phone is even sometimes used as a substitute for my iPod when I'm out and about, as its stripped down but perfectly adequate functionality means there's one less gadget to carry, and I can still listen to a decent selection of music and podcasts, as well as watch downloaded music videos and TV programmes.

It's all pretty amazing when you think about it. As recently as ten years ago, to get even close to doing all the things I can do today with a pocket-sized device that weighs less than half a pound, I would have needed the following:

• Mobile phone
• Laptop (and a phone socket to plug into)
• Combination of sat nav and physical maps
• Camera (the iPhone has a 2 megapixel camera, which is sub-par even for a mobile but would have been leading edge ten years ago)
• Nintendo DS for game-playing
• Sony Discman for music (and a case to cart a load of CDs around in)
• Portable TV and video player

And a chiropractor to sort out my back after having to heft that lot around!

Even then, armed with several thousand pounds' worth of gear, I wouldn't have been able to communicate with others via Twiter and Facebook; finding news on a laptop would have required much manual searching, as news aggregators and RSS didn't exist; and most people would have thought that YouTube was something to do with plumbing.

Now do you see why my iPhone is the most important and useful gadget I own? It's not just a phone; it's what I use to manage my life and to interact with the entire world around me. What could be more useful than that?

Say hello, wave goodbye

It's the nature of television that shows come and go as surely as the sun rises in the morning and sets in the evening, but it does seem that an awful lot of the programmes I watch are either gone, going or on the bubble this year.

Battlestar Galactica was a rarity, sailing off into the distance on its own terms after four seasons of, at times, breathtaking television. And while the three-hour finale left many questions unanswered (some deliberately so), the closing image of Bill Adama sitting on a hilltop talking to Laura Roslin's grave had an epic, cinematic feel to it which simply resonated with a melange of emotions. Never let anyone try to tell you that this version of BSG was just people and robots in spaceships.

Pushing Daisies, sadly, is gone after two shortened seasons; it appears that Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles will meet the same fate, although Fox remains tight-lipped. The former was, perhaps, a victim of its own left-of-centredness in a universe which demands that TV shows fit a convenient label; the latter stumbled a few times before finding its feet in the second half of this (second) season, but ultimately lost viewers by delivering a neat, introspective show rather than the crash-bang-wallop expectations of a mainstream audience which associates the Terminator franchise with ground-breaking special effects and bank-breaking action sequences.

Even Heroes - the darling of American TV two years ago - is looking distinctly wobbly. Still frequently brilliant, it has had a few too many missteps in a season which has continued to haemorrhage viewers, delivering a 'big bad' (Arthur Petrelli) in its first half who turned out to be a damp squib, killing off the new but much-loved character of Daphne Millbrook, sidelining Sylar by sending him off on yet another road trip, and too often changing tack every five minutes in a constant attempt to surprise and misdirect the audience. Don't get me wrong, it's still a great show, but it increasingly gives the impression that the genie has escaped from the bottle. Jumped the shark? Not yet, but a distinct fear. One more season before cancellation, I suspect.

On the other hand, Lost, now midway through its fifth and penultimate season, has rediscovered its mojo. After a year or two of seemingly aimless meandering, it now feels like we are heading somewhere definite, and every week it feels like the writers are picking up a dangling thread and tying it off. Kudos to executive producers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindleof; Lost is once again event television. More than that, it is rewarding loyal, attentive viewers by resolving the loose ends and making the audience think.

Elsewhere, the American Idol juggernaut rolls on; this season has been worth it for Adam Lambert's performances alone. And as for the reality TV heavy hitters on this side of the pond, The Apprentice remains compulsive viewing, if only for the opportunity it affords to shout "No! You muppets!" at the screen at least three times per episode. (Incidentally, if Idol's Danny Gokey looks like the love child of Robert Downey Jr and JJ Abrams, then The Apprentice's Phillip Taylor is surely related to Chelsea's John Terry.)

What else? Law & Order UK promised more than it delivered; I'm not fussed either way whether it returns or not. Desperate Housewives is still a not-so-guilty pleasure, balancing genuine human drama and farcical comedy better than any show currently on television. And both My Name Is Earl and 30 Rock continue - successfully - to be played purely for laughs, a rarity in an environment where even comedies frequently need a serious side.

And, despite the frequently unfair battering it endured for not being Life On Mars (well, duh), next week sees the return of Ashes To Ashes for a second run. Fire up the Quattro ...

Living in the past

As someone who was a teenager during the 80s, I was tickled to read that the original Now That's What I Call Music compilation has been recently rereleased on CD for the first time, to coincide with the 25th anniversary of its initial release.

Here’s the full track listing:

Disc 1
1. Phil Collins - You Can't Hurry Love
2. Duran Duran - Is There Something I Should Know
3. UB40 - Red Red Wine
4. Limahl - Only For Love
5. Heaven 17 - Temptation
6. K.C. & The Sunshine Band - Give It Up
7. Malcolm McClaren - Double Dutch
8. Bonnie Tyler - Total Eclipse Of The Heart
9. Culture Club - Karma Chameleon
10. Men Without Hats - The Safety Dance
11. Kajagoogoo - Too Shy
12. Mike Oldfield - Moonlight Shadow
13. Men At Work - Down Under
14. Rock Steady Crew - Hey You (Rock Steady Crew)
15. Rod Stewart - Baby Jane
16. Paul Young - Wherever I Lay My Hat

Disc 2
1. New Edition - Candy Girl
2. Kajagoogoo - Big Apple
3. Tina Turner - Let's Stay Together
4. Human League - Fascination
5. Howard Jones - New Song
6. UB40 - Please Don't Make Me Cry
7. Peabo Bryson & Roberta Flack - Tonight I Celebrate My Love
8. Tracey Ullman - They Don't Know
9. Will Powers - Kissing With Confidence
10. Genesis - That's All
11. The Cure - The Love Cats
12. Simple Minds - Waterfront
13. Madness - The Sun And The Rain
14. Culture Club - Victims

Now That’s What I Call A Trip Down Memory Lane. Somewhat worryingly, I’ve seen four of the above artists perform live. You can work out for yourselves which ones they are, though. To paraphrase the old Fun Boy Three song: my lips are sealed.

I guess it all makes sense. In recent years, while the parent series has successfully continued, repackaged Now compilations have tapped into a generation’s nostalgia for the decade which gave us New Romanticism, Dallas, Joan Collins’ shoulder pads and, er, David van Day (even the best of times has its darker moments).

I’ve previously commented on the current penchant for TV and film remakes, which has given us everything from the sublime Battlestar Galactica to the ridiculous Knight Rider. Elsewhere, we’ve had 80s reunion tours aplenty (it’s a bit disturbing to realise that the pop idols of yesterday age in exactly the same way you do), and comebacks from the likes of Take That and the Spice Girls. The Pet Shop Boys were given the Outstanding Contribution to Music Award at last week’s Brits. ('West End Girls' is – gulp! – 24 years old this year.) And I noticed a well-known high street fashion retailer has launched a range of T-shirts based on classic properties such as Danger Mouse (yes, of course I bought one).

Is nostalgia a healthy thing, allowing us to relive the happy times of our childhood? Or is it something we use as an excuse to ignore the growing feeling that, as we get inexorably older - and schoolkids and university students appear seemingly younger – we become increasingly out of step with contemporary culture? For while I still listen to modern pop music, am up to speed with Facebook, MySpace, Bebo and Twitter, and generally make an effort to keep up to date with popular culture, that’s just the point: it’s an effort.

Deep down, there are some aspects of today’s culture that I just don’t get, and I occasionally catch myself thinking that things were so much better when I was a kid. I'll resist it for as long as I can, but I fear the end result is inevitable: as the father of a small boy, one day he will come to realise his dad is just plain uncool.

That will be a sad day. Still, at least I’ll have all my old Now albums to listen to in my dotage …

Tweet

It's early days yet, but I'm loving the growing social networking phenomenon that is Twitter.

If you're not familiar with it, Twitter is essentially like a cross between a blog and Facebook's status update. Entries - commonly known as 'tweets' - are restricted to a maximum of 140 characters, but within that constraint you can let people know what you're doing, share news, pictures and links to interesting web pages (utilising web address shrinkers such as TinyURL), or whatever else you feel like sharing with the rest of the world.

Twitter has fast become a hub for spreading news virally at a pace which traditional media cannot possibly match. For instance, on-the-ground reports and images of last November's terrorist attacks in Mumbai were circulating online via Twitter and Flickr long before the major news outlets had even mobilised - at its peak, eyewitnesses were posting 1,000 tweets every minute. And on a social level, it facilitates the proliferation of information about friends, favourite topics and even celebrities: from my Twitter feed, I follow the activities and recommendations of various cast members from Heroes, Jonathan Ross and the cyclist Lance Armstrong.

Like so many of the best ideas, Twitter is incredibly simple. It makes communication easier and quicker in a way that is accessisble - I can read and write tweets from my mobile - without being intrusive in the way that, say, instant messaging can be.

Anyway, you can find me on Twitter here. Join the club: it's growing fast.

Remakes

I was more excited than I probably should have been when I read today that the BBC are producing a remake of Day of the Triffids, scheduled to air later this year.

Remakes, 're-imaginings' or 'reboots' are nothing new. Indeed, over the past few years they have become something of a staple of TV and box office schedules. The small screen has given us Doctor Who, Survivors, Gladiators, Battlestar Galactica, Knight Rider and 90210, to name but a handful. And in our cinemas we have the revived Batman franchise, Ocean's Eleven, War of the Worlds (more on that in a bit) and the upcoming Star Trek.

But Day of the Triffids - perhaps more than any other - sends a tingle down my spine, half of excitement, half of fear. For while I, like many others of my generation, regularly watched Tom Baker's Doctor Who from behind the sofa, DotT sticks in my mind just as much as any Dalek or Cyberman yarn.

I remember well the original 1981 BBC TV adaptation of the John Wyndham novel - and the subsequent nightmares it gave me. With much of humanity blinded by a freak meteor shower, the triffids - giant, carnivorous and apparently sentient plants - roam Britain freely, killing with their poisonous stings.

It was years before I could look a daffodil in the face again without flinching.

Both the original book and the TV version are widely regarded as seminal science-fiction drama, and I was gutted when I missed a re-run of the serial on BBC Four a few years back. But now I will get the chance to see an updated version later this year, which will no doubt have me hunting down the original on DVD ...

I know I shouldn't be this excited. But I really am.

Much less exciting was the two hours we spent watching the Steven Spielberg/Tom Cruise version of War of the Worlds over the weekend.

I can't deny that it is a visually stunning film; really and truly, it is hard to imagine how it could have been fully visualised without 21st century CGI. It was also generally well received by critics and generated significant box office takings (close to $600m worldwide).

However, as a story I found it somewhat vacuous and more than a little confusing. Understandably, many of the original story elements needed to be updated - H G Wells' original book deals in Victorian science and technology - but I was still disappointed by how far the film deviates from the original, and also at Hollywood-ised it had become. You see, WotW is a slightly unusual tale in that, in the book, the unnamed narrator is just that: he is more of an observer - the reader's eyes, ears and enquiring mind - than a traditional hero. The filmed version, however, is replete with set-pieces which are seemingly tacked on to meet audience expectations of the spectacular and Tom-Cruise-as-action-hero, just in case the basic story isn't enough to carry their interest.

One sequence in particular - and if you have seen both films you will know exactly what I mean - had me pinching myself to check I wasn't watching the velociraptors-in-the-lab sequence from Jurassic Park.

To top it all off, the ending of the film is pure Hollywood saccharine: Cruise's character and his daughter (who was so annoying I spent the entire final hour rooting for the alien invaders) are reunited with his ex-wife in Boston, to discover his son - who he thought had perished earlier - had in fact survived and preceded them there.

Oh, puh-lease.

What a terrible, terrible waste. A great book - albeit one which, on reflection, doesn't actually translate particularly easily to the big screen - and two of Hollywood's biggest box office names, but a distinctly mediocre film. And that's putting it kindly.

Still, in the interests of balance, I should say that Morgan Freeman's voiceover narration, which bookends the film, is, as ever, wonderful. That's about it, though.

Six degrees of separation

You’ve probably heard of this theory before: the premise that anyone can be connected to any other person in the world via a chain of no more than six acquaintances. It’s also the basis of a play and subsequent film of the same name. (The latter starred Stockard Channing, who more recently played the First Lady, Dr Abigail Bartlet, in The West Wing. Sorry, I just couldn’t resist making what is becoming a customary TWW reference.)

The maths is pretty straightforward. If we conservatively say the average person knows 100 people – and I’m willing to bet the contents of your mobile and email address books easily exceeds that – and each of those 100 people knows another 100 people, then by the time you’ve reached the acquaintances of the acquaintances of the acquaintances of the acquaintances of your acquaintances (that’s five degrees of separation, if you’re counting), then you have access to potentially ten billion people; according to US Census Bureau estimates, that’s equivalent to 1.5 times the total global population. Okay, it wouldn’t actually be ten billion because there would be lots of duplication between people, but the calculation is good enough to demonstrate that the premise isn’t at all far-fetched.

And in our modern world of social networking – email, Facebook, MySpace, message boards, chat rooms, even actually meeting people – the boundaries are collapsing ever faster, to the point where I’m willing to bet there is no one in the UK who I can’t reach within four steps. I’ve just tried to estimate the number of people I know – friends, current and former work colleagues, people I knew at school or university, friends of friends I have been introduced to, and so on – and come up with a number in excess of 1,000, of which I have had some sort of contact (face-to-face, a phone call, an email or other online message) with at least 400 in the past twelve months.

To put it another way: it’s a small world. And it’s getting smaller all the time.

Some examples. At work, there are around 60 people in my immediate department. I’ve only worked here for 3 years, and I live at least 20 miles away from the vast majority of my colleagues; most frequent Reading or London, I go to Oxford. Within this small group alone, here are some of my non work-related connections which require only one degree of separation:

A did the same MBA course as me, albeit several years apart. Naturally, we share many acquaintances through the faculty at the business school.

K was one year above me at university, at a different college but studying the same subject. Though our paths never crossed at the time, through a (very) minority sport we both played (start from football, straight on past hockey, keep going past dwarf tossing, and you’re still not there yet), we have at least a dozen common friends and acquaintances.

A (a different A) has acted in amateur productions opposite the husband of a friend of mine from my MBA.

C is the account manager for a major customer who I worked for several years ago. She deals with a number of people there who I worked with or for back then, and several others have moved to other businesses in the same industry, and consequently deal with other account managers within in my department.

And no doubt there are many other connections I’m unaware of which require one or at most two degrees of separation.

Scary, huh?

I guess all this is an inevitable consequence not just of technology and the connectivity with other people this gives us, but also of an increasingly mobile population, both in terms of where we live and where we work. Gone are the days when you were born in a town, grew up, went to school and worked in that same town, married a local boy/girl, rarely ventured beyond the town borders (except maybe occasional trips to the nearest city), and eventually were buried in the town cemetery. Anyone who has traced their genealogy back more than a hundred years or so will probably recognise this pattern.

Nowadays it’s not uncommon to go to university hundreds of miles away from home, to work for several different companies in several different places (I’m currently on my fifth company in my fifth town), have friends and family all over the world, and even have good friends you have never actually met. (If you think that last one is odd, it’s really not so different from the old concept of pen friends.)

Is this a good thing or a bad thing? A bit of both, I suppose. A lot of people feel disconnected – when many of your friends are no longer just round the corner, it’s inevitable you don’t see them as often as you’d like – which is why sites like Friends Reunited and Facebook have flourished, and it’s probably why so many of us reach out via the online universe, seeking other people with common interests.

I guess ultimately that’s what it’s all about. We all want to belong, and to know that we are not alone in this small and yet ever-so-big world.