The simple piece of software blog

The other night I made my way through seedy Tottenham Court Road to hear Robert Fisk talk about journalism in the warzone that is the Middle East. 600 (or maybe 599) other people came too - a fact everybody seemed very pround of. We all had cricks in our necks from examining each other before things kicked off, but things settled a bit after a while - we probably weren't as interesting as we had hoped.

In the mysterious world of whatever it is that was Fleet Street, Robert Fisk has been abbreviated to plain Fisk and his name has been adjectivised (Fiskian) and adverbalised (Fiskery). So we were told by the editor of The Independent newspaper, Simon Kelner, who chaired the event. In his 19 years with the Indie, Fisk's name has become synonymous with the Middle East, an outspoken voice who is a thorn in many sides.

He's an accomplished and eloquent speaker and he painted a vivid picture of his daily life, ducking and weaving around danger in Iraq to record what's happening - he goes to the morgue in Baghdad to count bodies because nobody else seems to be doing so. He described his work as mouse journalism, darting about, grabbing a quick photo and 30 second interview before fleeing the scene to avoid being snatched or killed or maybe worse. The alternative is to resort to hotel journalism, holed up surrounded by minders, getting all your copy from US and UK government and military spokespeople. This is the nature of most reporting from Iraq these days.

I first noticed Robert Fisk on Eamon Dunphy's Last Word radio show in Ireland - Irish talk radio at its best, late afternoon, title music Stone Roses. He clashed on air with Alan Dershowitz and there was mayhem and uproar. He mentioned the clash the other night - it made a mark on him too.

Throughout his stories he frequently addressed himself as Mr. Robert which seems to be his name in the Arab world. Fisk doesn't seem to enter into it. So, what's this about?

Here at the station, waiting for a train and finding a minute to blog on SkypeZones. I got in with good signal strength so I may have time to catch up on blogging a bit.

In my peripathetic existence, wifi access becomes increasingly important to make use of (even enjoy) those dead hours in train stations and airports. It's good to see the promise of wifi beginning to bear fruit. And with SkypeZones the emphasis seems to have shifted a bit from association with coffee houses with coffee of dubious provenance. In fact, when I searched for MyCloud/SkypeZone hot spots in Plymouth, I got a list of most of the best pubs (and some pretty crummy ones) in town. Haven't tried the wifi pub crawl yet but it's something I must explore.

On the coffee thing - I had an interesting experience on a recent Saturday morning, when I returned from my first Estonian adventure. When in London I camp at my sister's place in Clapham. We sat up late over a bottle of wine on Friday night, talking about travel and culture and rubbish, as you do. Saturday morning I baled out to give her hangover some space, and headed out to Clapham High Street in search of wifi and coffee.

I found a nice space in Caffe Nero, ordered a large americano and signed up for an expensive day's wifi with Ready To Surf (£5 sterling for 24 hours access!!!). Things were cool for a while - caught up with email and a bit of research. Then I pushed the boat out a bit and donned headset to make some Skype calls to family in Ireland. Got some strange looks from some of the folk around me as I spoke to my computer but that adds to the fun.

However, the connection kept dropping and finally died 2 americanos later. After repeated requests to staff, the router was rebooted but no joy - wifi cloud is full of rain. No refunds to be had - the owner of the router, it seems, has no responsiblity for service provision - I won't be using that again. I was surrounded by serious people with lots of paperwork who had also paid for non-existent service. No joy for them either.

Last week I had to dash out in Plymouth to buy a webcam for a vido demo. I trawled techie and consumer shops for Skype certified webcams - nothing to be found. I lowered my sights until I finally found a box which had a Skype support badge. The webcam came packaged in a furry dog critter that wraps himself around the top of a laptop. "Right", says I, "what a cool thing to do in the wifi hotspot - sit with a blue tooth earpiece, speak to my dog and freak the weirdos.

Not to be. The doggy from Genius came with a piece of adware that my antivirus didn't like. So, instead of the pub crawl with the doggy, my computer went into enforced isolation until the IT doctors could assess damage. Opportunity lost but more to come.

It's 7.40am (but really 5.40am my time) and the bus is outside with a Skype logo on the door. Not much sleep had by us late nighters so sleep would help but lots to see on the way to Parnu. Parnu is on the coast - more a summer resort than a place to hang out in January but we'll see.

Dinner was in Hell's Hunt, and the staff wore the T-shirts. Lots of meat and few veggie options but the company was good and, all in all, a bit of a gas. The weather is a great disappointment - my winter woolies really aren't necessary and these guys are obviously not suffering from Russian gas shortages - the buildings are boiling.

Strange contrasts between medieval splendour and soviet blockiness. The local currency is the EEK which is worth less than 5p a pop. My son wants to come and live here cos he'll have loadsa pocket money.

The gang is gathering - some sore heads and tossled hair but we'll keep the prize for worst morning person till the end of our trip on Friday.

More from Parnu.

Last night we braved the elements (a pussy compared to expectations) to take a walk through the old town of Tallinn to get a beer. There seems to be a church on every street corner and lots of impressive spires - but I spose that's the same in any old European city that wasn't flattened by bombs during some war.

We ended up in St Patrick's Bar which was warm and pleasant but not very Irish from what I saw. The stroll back was a bit chilly but no frostbite yet.

Today we took a cab away from the old town through past block after block of Soviet-constructed buildings to the outskirts of the city, where Estonia's silicon valley is at home.

Dashing for dinner now but more anon.

Last night I tracked down one of the first mind-blowing articles I read on the internet - when we were building the now defunct sleeping-giant from our living room in Kilmichael and dreaming nomadic dreams of living on boats with solar-powered and wi-fi driven comm - spreading the word and living the life.

And the article is the clasic Umberte Eco on the religion of PCs. For some time I couldn't find a translated version but it's back in vogue. Before we enshrine it, I'd like to invite the author to revise to reflect on the third force - Linux.

The sleeping-giant domain lapsed but lots of the good stuff is still maintained by Nic Paget Clark, at InMotion Magazine, Essays from Ireland - a multicultural online US publication about democracy. Go Nic, go. Oh, and let's Skype soon.

Back in the office after the christmas break - the holiday seems long ago now, sad how quick the relaxed manana feeling fades. Lenn came back and we nattered about some of the gurus he's met along the way - what a blast. I reckon if we made a list of the gurus we Skypers know it would reach into every important nook and cranny on the internet.

It's good to be back blogging - I'm a stop start blogger when time and passion allow. Kev (my other half) was inspired to return to blogging by my Charles Kennedy post. He reacted with his thoughts on Charles Kennedy.

It's been a hectic week at work with the launch of Skype 2.0 and announcement of lotsa new Skype certified goodies at CES in Las Vegas. The Register ran a summary yesterday which was a feed from the Electric News Network (ENN), based in Dublin and Edinburgh. In web pioneering days in Ireland, I knew the ENN founder and boss, Sheila, when she edited Dot.ie magazine, went on to set up TechTV and then ENN. We caught up a bit today and talked about life and children and the cold (in Edinburgh and Tallinn) and the state of the internet world. We must Skype soon.

As the momentum of free internet telephony builds with an inevitability that is as old as time, people try to stop tides with fingers in dykes - some conservative measures work but most are doomed to failure. I had a mail from my buddy Ian at Boggartblog following his comment on my Full Circle post. He is entirely unconvinced by Skype but doesn't mean it personally - he would say the same stuff if i was working for Google. He says:

The reason the web works is because it is not a telephone network, the reason the international telephone network works is because it is not the web.
Different jobs, different tools.
....
First rule of business, nobody ever made a profit by giving stuff away. Its not rocket science :-)

Ian bases his views on experience as an IT/telecoms consultant before he retired due to ill-health. What Ian overlooks is the inevitable drive of media convergence. He overlooks that Nortel Networks and Cisco have been developing voip products for years and that BT is committed to rolling out a voip network infrastructure within less than 10 years - i.e. PSTN byebye baby and one tool serves all.

Meantime, the telcos will spend zilch on expanding or maintaining PSTN services beyond min SLA requirements. And with new devices appearing on a daily basis to build the voip infrastructure - cordless voip phones, routers, routing management tools, crm software, call center plug-ins, streaming media, things we ain't even dreamed of yet - pstn is now recognised as a dinosaur by its owners. Broadband and voip are the revenue drivers of the future.

If Bell, Marconi and Tim Berners Lee had listened to the cynics I wouldn't be blogging and nor would Ian.

Charles Kennedy is a drunk it seems - following in the noble steps of Churchill and other great statesmen and world leaders afore him. For those not in the know, Charles Kennedy is the leader of the Liberal Democrat party in the UK (libdems for short) - a party with a long and great lib trad but very much third party in a UK political climate where suit-clad labourers run the show and conservative silks are reinventing (again).