16May2009
Posted by Brent under: Nothing Special.
A few years ago I picked up one of Alexander McCall Smith’s books in the “No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency” series as I was passing through the airport. These are gentle, very human stories of Precious Ramotswe as she runs her detective agency in Botswana. They feature almost no murder or mayhem. The mysteries aren’t convoluted. HBO and the BBC have recently produced a movie and series about them. One day this past week I realized where I’d seen all these characters before: in Mayberry.
Ma Ramotswe is the central figure, solving crimes with common sense and a keen understanding of human nature. She’s very much like sheriff Andrew Jackson Taylor in Mayberry in the old Andy Griffith show. Her secretary and assistant detective is a skinny, wired helper with an inflated sense of self-importance: Grace Makutsi. She sometimes even acts like Barney. Ma Ramotswe’s love interest is the stable, kind Mr. JLB Matekoni, the analog of Helen Crump. Next door to the agency’s office is a hairdresser, the counterpart to Floyd the barber. Mr. JLB Matekoni runs a garage and employs two worthless apprentices. Let’s see, in Mayberry were there idiots who worked on cars? Yes, the apprentices fill the roles of Goober and Gomer. Ma Ramotswe occasionally has to go out into the bush, just as sheriff Taylor has to go into the backwoods. I’m expecting to see Otis and Howard Sprague show up at any time.
Did Mr. Smith lift the forumla from Andy Griffith? I don’t think so, but he stumbled onto a timeless forumla that still works well.
5May2009
Posted by Brent under: Nothing Special.
Today’s the day we commemorate the Mexican Nationals sinking of the French colonial cargo vessel Puebla carrying mayonnaise to the old world. Happy Cinco de Mayo.
1May2009
Posted by Brent under: Nothing Special.
The Christian Science Monitor has an excellent article on the Coming Collapse of Evanglical Christianity. I don’t think the end-game is quite what he says. I think he’s missed the home church movement which will have an impact. We’ll see.
21April2009
Posted by Brent under: Nothing Special.
I recently came across this example of terrific design. Why can’t we do the same thing in this digital age?
14April2009
Posted by Brent under: Nothing Special.
There’s been a rising chorus lately about how Google should dump YouTube. Such as this article at TG Daily. What people are missing here is the big picture, like Google’s relationship to the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the world. The largest expenditure for any ISP is their bandwidth charges: getting bits from the outside world. The more bits they get from the outside world, the more they have to pay. This may be per-gigabyte or peak-metered usage from their upstream bandwidth provider. What type of content consumes the most bandwidth, thus costing ISPs the most money? Video. Nothing else even comes close. One of the things Google is doing with YouTube is running up the monthly bandwidth bills of ISPs. Now Google can come along with their new datacenter in a shipping container that’s been rumored for years. Google can put these adjacent to an ISPs server room and cache all of YouTube videos there. Thus the bits for YouTube videos will flow from the ISPs server room to the customer. No outside bandwidth will be needed, thus saving the ISP major dollars. What’s in it for Google? Essentially taking over the ISPs network operations, which Google can do better and cheaper than the ISP due to pure scale. The ISP will outsource more and more operations to Google and their magic datacenter in a box. At that point Google makes a major profit. Google won’t own any ISP proper, thus won’t run afoul of the Federal Trade Commission. All they’ll be is an outsourcer, running video and content caching, email, web hosting, etc. for the ISP.
In short: Google is using YouTube to drive up the ISPs monthly bandwidth bill so then Google can ride in as the White Knight and save the ISPs a lot of money. All an ISP has to do is give Google a little money for services instead of giving the ISP’s bandwidth provider a lot of money for bandwidth.
29March2009
Posted by Brent under: Nothing Special.
Great post at Gizmodo. Robots that truly look like they’re science fiction!!