Alice - A Journey - a new auto-biographical narative by Chrissy Merton

You can buy Chrissy Merton's new book, Alice - A Journey, from the following site (click link below), £3.50 cheaper than from Amazon!

Alice - A Journey - a new auto-biographical account by Chrissy Merton based on a true story

Chrissy speaks about her experiences and the process of writing the book on video. Click the link below:

Video Interviews with the author.

Wikipedia

More exploration of the delights of wikipedia.

wikipedia

wicked wicked problems

Yesterday the 2 sides of "the project" (the 2 sides being "NotReallyRelevant" and "EcstaticUnion" were brought together rather wonderfully for me by being introduced by a potential software development client to the concept of "Wicked Problems".

The following is reproduced from the Innovation Works web site.

• You don't (fully?) understand the problem until you've developed a solution


• There is no stopping rule (there's always a better solution if you have unlimited resources)


• There is no right or wrong answer


• Wicked problems are unique and novel (they may appear the same but small changes make everything different, like every project)


• Solutions to wicked problems are one-shot; the solution redefines the problem


• There are no given alternatives; solution A does not automatically define the alternative solution B.

Questions Only Blog

As google, wikipedia etc. seem to have real downer about my "Questions Only blog", I thought I would mention it here... Also known as the "Is this a blog" blog, you can get to it by clicking the link above or via Wikipedia (click the little [1] in square brackets on this Wikipedia page Questions Only discussion on WikiPedia). Cheers.

Self belief

Thought for the day:
Self belief in the wrong hands is a very dangerous thing.

Heather Cairncross is on MySpace!

Here's some exciting news! The serene vision of loveliness that is Heather Cairncross, whose voice has been interenationally celebrated and used on sound tracks of hollywood blockbusters like lord of the rings, now has a page on MySpace. Last time I checked there were at least 4 of her mellow recordings to listen to there - silky smooth. To me, Heather is like the Madonna of Jazz and Classical singers, packing enough sex appeal to make strong men drool. Certainly I have personally drooled.

Looking on the bright side

Looking on the bright side, the world has an increasing army of heroic people who want to make it a better place, and only a finite number of problems. In fact in some areas groups of people trying to solve a particular problem are very much in competition with each other, to see who can save the world first. Before very long I predict that global problems will start to seem like a scare resource, and groups of rival do-gooders will find themselves in conflict with each other. Instead of fighting over middle-east oil wealth, we will instead be fighting over who gets to save the planet, and international emissaries will have to be sent in to stop greenpeace suicide bombers blowing themselves up in crowds of oxfam volunteers.

Possibility of an Elected Royal Family For the UK

Here's an idea, not a very good one I'll grant you - or well you can decide for yourself - but it appeals to me so I thought I'd throw it out there.

There has been much discussion of the last 15 years about the continuation of monarchy in the UK. On the one side we have the monarchists who say that the historic significance of the monarchy is too good a thing to lose. In rather the same way as we preserve our old country houses in an attempt to preserve our historic record and heritage, these people argue that we should keep our monarchy as part of Brand UK, its boost to tourism, its role as ambassadors for our national interests, and its provision of figureheads who stand for the embodiment of our national pride.

Against them stand the new republicans who don't like things like our national anthem being so queen centric. Why when we give three cheers for ourselves do we even need to mention her? Do we really want to hold, even in a figurative role, an institution which is the embodiment of anti-democratic ideas - an institution that drags along with it endless structures of power which favour the status quo and endorse the rights of rich and powerful people to use their wealth and power for the soul purpose of staying that way - ensuring that they and their friends and family keep hold of as much wealth and power as possible.

A possibility that I have never heard being entered into this 2-sided debate is a MIDDLE WAY. A third possibility that stands between the absolute fall of the monarchy, and the absolute continuation of it... namely an ELECTED ROYAL FAMILY. The suggestion is that we should keep all the current institutions of monarchy, all the existing property and land, all the existing jobs like opening fetes and hospitals, and international tours and so on, but have the people filling each of these roles be elected. This surely has the capacity to satisfy both sides of the argument. We keep all the institutions of monarchy, but have the people filling the roles be electable and accountable to the voting public.

One possible way to vote in the people to fill each of the jobs would be to do it on a family-wide basis. It could be done on a job by job basis, but I think there would be something good about voting for a whole family to take up the whole set of roles. The family could then serve a term of say 5 years, and then another family could be voted in to replace them. During their time as the Royal Family, each of these voted for families would take up residence in the various palaces, have use of the crown jewels, and be assigned with the various jobs like opening parliament that the current royal family do.

One possible way of choosing which family should be voted in would be a Big Brother style scrutiny of the families who are standing for election... I'm sure the nation would enjoy following that for 10 or 15 weeks... mega buck television for a broadcasting company that wants to get behind the project...

Don't forget, you heard it here FIRST... NotReallyRelevant

A question of what is really relevant?

I was prompted by my friend, Carl, to explore the merits of Wikipedia - which is of course wonderful and terrible - the very antithesis of the Not Really Relevant ehtos. However. Fight fire with fire? Infiltrate? Transform from the inside out? Lets see what we can do... ;-) ... Here is my user page: Not really relevant on Wikipedia

Positive Discrimination for the Socially Inept

Sometimes it seems to me, with all the various new disability legislation (and all power to it), that there ought to be positive discrimination for people who are socially inept. I mean I look around for a category of disability that covers me, and I think there ought to be one. People have all kinds of disabilities, and if society is going to go about re-dressing the balance regarding the lucky or unlucky, why stop at obvious physical disability. Some of us have just been born with a foot in our mouths, and didn't we ought to get some extra help with that? In many ways it is just as disabling as these other things.

This week David Cameron has been talking about giving tax breaks to married couples. How about some tax breaks for balding lonely losers? I'm not claiming to be grotesquely ugly, but I've been dull enough looking to make certain aspects of my life considerably harder work than they would have otherwise been. Perhaps some sort of sliding scale could be made, whereby the uglier you are, the more benefit you get.

I mean all joking apart, if society does consider it right to rebalance our various personal inequities, being so obnoxious that people at cocktail parties turn and run when they see me coming - doesn't that count for something?

I'm not saying I necessarily want a parking space outside the door at tescos, but how about some help paying people to pretend to be my friends?

Lynne's Site gets a new look

Lynne Hazelden's project, "PEACE in OUR lifetime" is here: Peace in our lifetime

Lynne Hazelden's site has just had a bit of a design tweak done to it. You can read Lynne's vision of a possible future for communication.

Dorchester Nursery / Preschool

Last week I was helping my sister with search engine optimisation. She has created a really cute site for the Dorchester Preschool where she works, with information about prechool term dates and all sorts of other useful stuff for pre-school parents with young children in Dorchester.

Third day

Third day
Originally uploaded by notreallyrelevant.

The various strands of my life are bound together by chocolate pudding... ;-)

My small ads online dating

My latest money making scheme... online dating. Would you like to go out with me? I had this idea that rather than paying online dating services like "Match.com" $10 a month for their kind generosity of letting me post my dating profile on their web site, bolster their brand and their traffic, and on top of that giving them my cash... THEY COULD PAY ME... My small ads online dating.

PDA camera wrapper opennetcf

Can I link the web cam on my 3G PDA so I can respond to people visiting my web sites... May this will help... Camera program wrapper technologies in opennetcf

Whatford Wazzangers and Search Engine Optimisation

Whatford Wazzanger? I hear you ask ?

I've never heard of a "Whatford Wazzanger".

What an earth is a "Whatford Wazzanger"?

Well, I'm just having a bit of fun with my old friends at Joshordan software. If you visit their site here: Joshordan Software you will understand... at least a little, what a "Whatford Wazzanger" is. At least you might do, as long as they don't change their site.