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Oct. 3rd, 2008
Last week, I saw two of my closest friends on two separate evenings.
On Tuesday, needing some definite space after a solid four days in very close proximity to my brother and my aunt, I went around to see A., who I was at university with all of – well, nearly 30 years ago.
She still looks amazing – she has very beautiful, ice-blue eyes.
We only meet up once or twice a year – maybe a little more frequently since I have been down in Oxford more often in the last eighteen months or so. (A.’s rather sweet response to the break up of my marriage was “at least we’ll get to see you more often!”)
Catching up with her was precisely the antidote I needed. There was a very easy familiarity; we didn’t talk about death or emotions; we talked about science, about how we both hated “The Black Swan” by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (some time I might write about why I disliked it so much; but at this point, the fact that a professor of mathematics hated it even more than me was just wonderful: she couldn’t finish it because she kept throwing it across the room in disgust; I couldn’t finish it because it was appallingly written and generally crap) and all sorts of stuff.
We shared a bottle of wine, some comfort food and a really fun couple of hours.
It was a really good evening.
On Thursday night, my old friend G. came up to Oxford and stayed the night. I have known G. for over thirty years. Scary. My brother, his wife (who had flown over from the States that day – what is it about my family and long distance relationships? Incidentally, when she arrived, she gave me a hug and burst into tears; for about five minutes – whilst not letting go of me! I thought I was meant to be the one who was upset…), G. and I went out for a couple of pints at the Eagle & Child (I was going to say that it was cool that a pub had its own entry in Wikipedia; but then I clicked on the “category: public houses in Oxford”, and saw that there are at least six in Oxford alone – including the Turf Tavern, where my brother and I had had a couple of pints a few days earlier; like so many other places in Oxford, it reminded me of furtive sexual encounters…). We then had a long supper at Brown’s, with another couple of bottles of wine.
Again, it was really good to catch up with G.; he was being very supportive as well as challenging and entertaining. Simply another really good evening. Magic.
On Tuesday, needing some definite space after a solid four days in very close proximity to my brother and my aunt, I went around to see A., who I was at university with all of – well, nearly 30 years ago.
She still looks amazing – she has very beautiful, ice-blue eyes.
We only meet up once or twice a year – maybe a little more frequently since I have been down in Oxford more often in the last eighteen months or so. (A.’s rather sweet response to the break up of my marriage was “at least we’ll get to see you more often!”)
Catching up with her was precisely the antidote I needed. There was a very easy familiarity; we didn’t talk about death or emotions; we talked about science, about how we both hated “The Black Swan” by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (some time I might write about why I disliked it so much; but at this point, the fact that a professor of mathematics hated it even more than me was just wonderful: she couldn’t finish it because she kept throwing it across the room in disgust; I couldn’t finish it because it was appallingly written and generally crap) and all sorts of stuff.
We shared a bottle of wine, some comfort food and a really fun couple of hours.
It was a really good evening.
* * *
On Thursday night, my old friend G. came up to Oxford and stayed the night. I have known G. for over thirty years. Scary. My brother, his wife (who had flown over from the States that day – what is it about my family and long distance relationships? Incidentally, when she arrived, she gave me a hug and burst into tears; for about five minutes – whilst not letting go of me! I thought I was meant to be the one who was upset…), G. and I went out for a couple of pints at the Eagle & Child (I was going to say that it was cool that a pub had its own entry in Wikipedia; but then I clicked on the “category: public houses in Oxford”, and saw that there are at least six in Oxford alone – including the Turf Tavern, where my brother and I had had a couple of pints a few days earlier; like so many other places in Oxford, it reminded me of furtive sexual encounters…). We then had a long supper at Brown’s, with another couple of bottles of wine.
Again, it was really good to catch up with G.; he was being very supportive as well as challenging and entertaining. Simply another really good evening. Magic.
Last week, I saw two of my closest friends on two separate evenings.
On Tuesday, needing some definite space after a solid four days in very close proximity to my brother and my aunt, I went around to see A., who I was at university with all of – well, nearly 30 years ago.
She still looks amazing – she has very beautiful, ice-blue eyes.
We only meet up once or twice a year – maybe a little more frequently since I have been down in Oxford more often in the last eighteen months or so. (A.’s rather sweet response to the break up of my marriage was “at least we’ll get to see you more often!”)
Catching up with her was precisely the antidote I needed. There was a very easy familiarity; we didn’t talk about death or emotions; we talked about science, about how we both hated “The Black Swan” by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (some time I might write about why I disliked it so much; but at this point, the fact that a professor of mathematics hated it even more than me was just wonderful: she couldn’t finish it because she kept throwing it across the room in disgust; I couldn’t finish it because it was appallingly written and generally crap) and all sorts of stuff.
We shared a bottle of wine, some comfort food and a really fun couple of hours.
It was a really good evening.
On Thursday night, my old friend G. came up to Oxford and stayed the night. I have known G. for over thirty years. Scary. My brother, his wife (who had flown over from the States that day – what is it about my family and long distance relationships? Incidentally, when she arrived, she gave me a hug and burst into tears; for about five minutes – whilst not letting go of me! I thought I was meant to be the one who was upset…), G. and I went out for a couple of pints at the Eagle & Child (I was going to say that it was cool that a pub had its own entry in Wikipedia; but then I clicked on the “category: public houses in Oxford”, and saw that there are at least six in Oxford alone – including the Turf Tavern, where my brother and I had had a couple of pints a few days earlier; like so many other places in Oxford, it reminded me of furtive sexual encounters…). We then had a long supper at Brown’s, with another couple of bottles of wine.
Again, it was really good to catch up with G.; he was being very supportive as well as challenging and entertaining. Simply another really good evening. Magic.
On Tuesday, needing some definite space after a solid four days in very close proximity to my brother and my aunt, I went around to see A., who I was at university with all of – well, nearly 30 years ago.
She still looks amazing – she has very beautiful, ice-blue eyes.
We only meet up once or twice a year – maybe a little more frequently since I have been down in Oxford more often in the last eighteen months or so. (A.’s rather sweet response to the break up of my marriage was “at least we’ll get to see you more often!”)
Catching up with her was precisely the antidote I needed. There was a very easy familiarity; we didn’t talk about death or emotions; we talked about science, about how we both hated “The Black Swan” by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (some time I might write about why I disliked it so much; but at this point, the fact that a professor of mathematics hated it even more than me was just wonderful: she couldn’t finish it because she kept throwing it across the room in disgust; I couldn’t finish it because it was appallingly written and generally crap) and all sorts of stuff.
We shared a bottle of wine, some comfort food and a really fun couple of hours.
It was a really good evening.
* * *
On Thursday night, my old friend G. came up to Oxford and stayed the night. I have known G. for over thirty years. Scary. My brother, his wife (who had flown over from the States that day – what is it about my family and long distance relationships? Incidentally, when she arrived, she gave me a hug and burst into tears; for about five minutes – whilst not letting go of me! I thought I was meant to be the one who was upset…), G. and I went out for a couple of pints at the Eagle & Child (I was going to say that it was cool that a pub had its own entry in Wikipedia; but then I clicked on the “category: public houses in Oxford”, and saw that there are at least six in Oxford alone – including the Turf Tavern, where my brother and I had had a couple of pints a few days earlier; like so many other places in Oxford, it reminded me of furtive sexual encounters…). We then had a long supper at Brown’s, with another couple of bottles of wine.
Again, it was really good to catch up with G.; he was being very supportive as well as challenging and entertaining. Simply another really good evening. Magic.
A bit more about Online Identity.
Oct. 3rd, 2008 08:04 pmA couple of weeks ago, I was thinking about social networking, trying to work out how I felt about online identity.
When I was visiting some friends a short while after, they had a bit of a shock regarding their daughter’s online identity. A friend of hers had emailed her from school with a link to a website that was picked up by the school’s anti-pornography email filter. The headmaster had forwarded the email to my friend – he couldn’t look at the site (for obvious reasons!), and he wanted my friends to be aware of the email’s content.
It turns out that my friends’ daughter shares her name with a porn star.
(Actually, she shares her first name and her mother’s maiden name with a porn star; but it is the same thing, really.)
The girl’s friends had simply attached a google search of her name to the email; since they had done the search at school, they couldn’t have looked at the site that came top. (Thinking about it though, the school should really have better filters – I think you can set google to ignore porn websites: you’d have thought a school would want to do that!)
The mother was really freaked out by this; her husband and I were a lot less phased, which might simply be that as blokes we are aware of the commercial nature of most of the internet. She was also really disturbed that anyone googling her daughter’s and her names would find material like that, and that this would haunt her daughter through her life.
I can see it is a problem: if she takes her mother’s maiden name, which isn’t wholly unlikely, that is what employers or friends would google to see what was out there. But also, there is more or less nothing that one can do about it.
Except buy all possible web addresses comprised of your names!
When I was visiting some friends a short while after, they had a bit of a shock regarding their daughter’s online identity. A friend of hers had emailed her from school with a link to a website that was picked up by the school’s anti-pornography email filter. The headmaster had forwarded the email to my friend – he couldn’t look at the site (for obvious reasons!), and he wanted my friends to be aware of the email’s content.
It turns out that my friends’ daughter shares her name with a porn star.
(Actually, she shares her first name and her mother’s maiden name with a porn star; but it is the same thing, really.)
The girl’s friends had simply attached a google search of her name to the email; since they had done the search at school, they couldn’t have looked at the site that came top. (Thinking about it though, the school should really have better filters – I think you can set google to ignore porn websites: you’d have thought a school would want to do that!)
The mother was really freaked out by this; her husband and I were a lot less phased, which might simply be that as blokes we are aware of the commercial nature of most of the internet. She was also really disturbed that anyone googling her daughter’s and her names would find material like that, and that this would haunt her daughter through her life.
I can see it is a problem: if she takes her mother’s maiden name, which isn’t wholly unlikely, that is what employers or friends would google to see what was out there. But also, there is more or less nothing that one can do about it.
Except buy all possible web addresses comprised of your names!
A bit more about Online Identity.
Oct. 3rd, 2008 08:04 pmA couple of weeks ago, I was thinking about social networking, trying to work out how I felt about online identity.
When I was visiting some friends a short while after, they had a bit of a shock regarding their daughter’s online identity. A friend of hers had emailed her from school with a link to a website that was picked up by the school’s anti-pornography email filter. The headmaster had forwarded the email to my friend – he couldn’t look at the site (for obvious reasons!), and he wanted my friends to be aware of the email’s content.
It turns out that my friends’ daughter shares her name with a porn star.
(Actually, she shares her first name and her mother’s maiden name with a porn star; but it is the same thing, really.)
The girl’s friends had simply attached a google search of her name to the email; since they had done the search at school, they couldn’t have looked at the site that came top. (Thinking about it though, the school should really have better filters – I think you can set google to ignore porn websites: you’d have thought a school would want to do that!)
The mother was really freaked out by this; her husband and I were a lot less phased, which might simply be that as blokes we are aware of the commercial nature of most of the internet. She was also really disturbed that anyone googling her daughter’s and her names would find material like that, and that this would haunt her daughter through her life.
I can see it is a problem: if she takes her mother’s maiden name, which isn’t wholly unlikely, that is what employers or friends would google to see what was out there. But also, there is more or less nothing that one can do about it.
Except buy all possible web addresses comprised of your names!
When I was visiting some friends a short while after, they had a bit of a shock regarding their daughter’s online identity. A friend of hers had emailed her from school with a link to a website that was picked up by the school’s anti-pornography email filter. The headmaster had forwarded the email to my friend – he couldn’t look at the site (for obvious reasons!), and he wanted my friends to be aware of the email’s content.
It turns out that my friends’ daughter shares her name with a porn star.
(Actually, she shares her first name and her mother’s maiden name with a porn star; but it is the same thing, really.)
The girl’s friends had simply attached a google search of her name to the email; since they had done the search at school, they couldn’t have looked at the site that came top. (Thinking about it though, the school should really have better filters – I think you can set google to ignore porn websites: you’d have thought a school would want to do that!)
The mother was really freaked out by this; her husband and I were a lot less phased, which might simply be that as blokes we are aware of the commercial nature of most of the internet. She was also really disturbed that anyone googling her daughter’s and her names would find material like that, and that this would haunt her daughter through her life.
I can see it is a problem: if she takes her mother’s maiden name, which isn’t wholly unlikely, that is what employers or friends would google to see what was out there. But also, there is more or less nothing that one can do about it.
Except buy all possible web addresses comprised of your names!