Now somebody's decided what day it is, I'll pretend to believe in calendars, wish everyone a Fine Old Time and hope your only hassles in 2005 are ones you need.
Mine began with a dream about being in a "New Age" campsite with the Kid which was so awful I'm very glad the alarm clock rang me out of it and off to work.
If thumps come my way on Monday, it'll be because having dispensed with Resolutions and done some stories, I delivered Diktats to Africa as planned. The Factory's never seen the like before and if people do again, it won't be my doing.
The 'Diktats' weren't orders, but summing up what life's taught me so far about being a journalist and the best books I've read took nearly 1,900 words; I hope they're useful (and entertaining) in suggesting what news people want to read -- and never want. That done, I resolved to keep other resolutions and be done with Diktats too. Better a vast internal note than 'phone calls nobody can afford.
My bank's banned international chit-chat beyond January 1 "hi, how are you?" words to family and friends.
François Joseph de Kermadec has joined those suggesting Mac OS X users scupper the big bills with Skype (MaCDev Center).
His "Hands-On Approach" to using your Mac as a cheap international telephone is as good as any I've read in a French Mac rag, but for now you get to the end of it to find he's not wrapped it up with Part 2 yet. Still, he's explained how it works and how to do it clearly.
In "wringing out the old" to find the best often remains new (Henry Wickham Steed's totally modern 1938 book on 'The Press' got a mention here last August), it dawned on me this remains true of Genesis. The band back in the Peter Gabriel days, not the Book. 'Nursery Cryme' left me so desperate to hear 'Foxtrot' and 'Selling England by the Pound' again that some money forbidden for 'phone calls went instead to the iTunes Music Store.
The way we remember unheard music and lyrics for decades so well your mind sings along when it first listens to them escapes me, but I love this stuff and it sounds superb on an iPod. Someone last year felt like writing the rest of what doesn't need saying about 'The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway' (Ground and Sky), apart from "Listen if you haven't. Chances are you'll like it."
One of my friends analysed its musical complexity so much when it came out, his thesis got him into music college. But nobody needs that unless interested.
If you've yet to see 'Black Hawk Down' (like me last night because now I'll watch almost anything Ridley Scott's done), my mates in Africa who said "You won't learn much about Somalia" are right.
The film tells you no more about the appalling mess that country just may be able to put behind it this year than was known by the US elite troops who tried to sort it out in 1993. They couldn't and found this out pretty much the way the movie tells the story. I doubt Scott had any plans to do much more than make a fine job of this as he does, so won't add my name to the list of those who've accused him of simplifying the issues or being one-sided.
If it's "the news" you want, 'Black Hawn Down' is simply a good movie which says a cinema can be a fine place to start looking, that's all. In the film, a Somali explains what's often wrong with Diktats. When Washington tried that in Somalia, it cost a fortune and left more than 1,000 people dead in the name of trying to get it right. The movie shows many of the people sent to try deserve great respect, so I just hope that now the United States is all over Africa again because of oil, this year those giving the orders get the place less wrong.
8:39:36 PM link 
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