As Adrian did recently, I’ve gone completely caffeine free at work, and have been so for about a month (except on the odd occasion that I’ve forgotten and lapsed). The only things I’ll allow myself are herbal tea, normally camomile, or from time-to-time a green one. I did this primarily for health reasons - I am finding that my ability to concentrate is much better now, as well as suffering from fewer headaches and other unpleasant side-effects.

Marchitecture. I shamelessly stole this from a presentation I attended the other day (names withheld to protect the innocent). If it resonates with you, it probably doesn’t need explaining, but marchitecture is IT architecture that is used for marketing reasons rather than technical ones. Sometimes the marchitecture looks the same as the ‘real’ architecture, sometimes not. Wikipedia’s definition seems a bit narrow (I’m not sure what electronic architecture is anyway), but hey.

James has just given me a brief tour of Second Life. Once again I had problems - cracking graphics and a crashing client - but I was a bit more impressed than last time - having a guide to show me the good stuff and get the hang of the controls helped. I also met one or two of the other IBMers using Second Life. It’s clear that there’s still a lot more to explore.

Perhaps it’s because I rent DVDs online, but I often seem to watch films with similar themes close together in time (Christiane F and Trainspotting, for example). I’ve just watched My Architect for the second time; and spent the entire film realising that it’s everything Tarnation could have been. Nathaniel Kahn goes looking for the spirit of his architect father, Louis Kahn, by travelling the world and finding the buildings (and people) that he touched.

It seems that pingbacks and trackbacks (which are pingbacks’ more awkward, older cousin) are a bit flaky on Wordpress 2.0.x (for more information on how both are supposed to work, see this excellent tutorial). I’ve long suspected that’s the case, because blog entries I’ve linked to haven’t had pingbacks appear, and it seems I’m not the only one with such problems. However, I’ve tested pingbacks with this blog in both directions against TestTrack, which enables you to test ping- and trackbacks, and it does seem to work.

When I was at Imperial not so many years ago, there was a story in Felix, the college newspaper, about local ruffians selling knocked-off speakers from the backs of white vans in the South Ken area. At the time, students were advised not to approach them and to inform the police. I thought not much more of it, apart from it being a slightly bizarre way of fencing. However, I recently read a story in Seth Godin’s book, All Marketers are Liars, which cast a new light on this.

I find it entertaining when people state ‘Walmart wants…’, ‘Ford thinks…’, or ‘BT needs…’. It’s quite painfully obvious that corporations don’t have feelings or thoughts. What is true is that people within them do. I’ve thought for some time that one of greatest contributors to a corporation’s success is when the thoughts of its people are aligned. Unaligned thoughts are unlikely to be useful. Aligned thoughts can happen by accident (less likely) or because of good quality leadership (more likely), but in either case it’s important to recognise that they are still individual thoughts.

For those who live in or visit the area, you might be interested in a funky little tea shop that’s just opened in Winchester called Char. I was introduced to this tea shop by plv, who’s also written about it. The shop is run by a very nice gentleman who seems to know far more about tea than is good for one person. The prices aren’t cheap (let’s be blunt, they are expensive), but you could spend all day smelling the samples and deciding.

What to say about Pulp Fiction that hasn’t been said before? Here’s what it gets right: Non-chronological editing: Blocks of story slapped together to make sense rather than mark time. A novel-ish concept when it first was released, and still fairly novel today. A perfect name: It really is pulp fiction: lurid and action-packed. The burger Jules eats at one point is pure Americana. The comically poor rear projection used as Butch is escaping in the taxi is another joke about the cheap nature of the story.

I’ve finally given in and taken my first tentative steps into Second Life (it’s legit once it has an Economist article; or something…). My first impressions are so-so; it’s obvious that there’s a lot to explore and do that I’ve only just scratched the surface of (see Andy Piper’s blog for a lot more posts on Second Life; including how IBM are getting involved). But the system obviously needs some work - the client crashed twice within the space of two hours, once bringing down Windows.