sevitzdotcom

I had the Apple Game Center scoop last December

2010-04-12T13:40:39Z

I just want to point out, I called Game Centre, a year and half ago.

Mashable - 3 Reasons to Get Excited About the Apple Game Center
ReadWriteWeb - More Opportunities for Social Games Developers

and of course

Sevitz - The next wave of iPhone riches

The Killer iPad App (for me)

2010-04-06T18:33:56Z

I got to play with my friend Nigel�s iPad last night.

Whilst I was impressed by the iPad in general, it was the iPhotos app that blew me away. The pinch an album, inspect, open fully, pinch closed, move on paradigm was brilliantly developed. As you played with it you could see this was how digital photos were meant to be shown almost, and along with how Sky+ changed how I watch TV and the iPod changed how I listened to music this would change how I interact with my photos.

I�ve now figured out what the killer iPad app is for me. I have 30k pictures sitting on my hard drive waiting to be sorted. And they get bigger and bigger every trip, because filtering 1000 ski pictures down to an album of the 30 good ones takes time. I keep planning to get Aperture and sit down to develop a work flow to sort out my photo archive. It�s time consuming though so the archive builds and my photos languish in darkness.

What I wan�t is an Aperture Lite for the iPad.

How I see this working would be as more or less like this * It syncs with a copy of Aperture on my main machine * Aperture then copies a reduced size but highish quality size to the iPad * I then sort, rate, tag and categorise the photo�s into albums * I then sync back with Apeture and all my categorisations are available on the full size pics

Then I can export to iPhoto/Flickr/Smugmug/Facebook etc and actually let people see the photos.

The iPad may almost be the perfect device for this, for me. If a copy of all my pics are sitting on the iPad, I can filter them on my sofa, in bed, in the coffee shop or on the train. I would actually get through the my photos rather than just buying bigger hard drives to store them on. Playing with iPhoto on it showed what a good interface and interaction you can build on the iPad and I can see how this could be done pretty well. Or if Apple does it, incredibly well. When they sweat the small stuff, Apple makes great shit.

That�s it. That�s my killer app.

I�m sure some people would have other killer apps and others would have none. But for me, this would make the iPad a must have.

Although I�ll probably get one anyway. [For probably read absolutely]

8pm is Adult Time

2010-03-22T00:04:18Z

I like kids movies. I�ve seen Ice Age 1 & 2. Kids movies can be fun. Sometimes I go during the afternoon on a weekend when I have some time to kill. I can�t complain when an afternoon kids movie is filled with screaming kids.

Tonight I went to see Alice in Wonderland. 8pm showing on a sunday night. I really enjoyed the movie (how does Helena Bonham Carter get those roles?). Except for one thing.

A crying, noisy baby.

Now I know I have a reputation for “kids should not bee seen or heard” but I did feel that 8pm was really “adult time”.

Equally I understand that parents shouldn�t bee trapped in the house for the first 16 years of parenthood. But their are (parent and baby)[http://www.odeon.co.uk/fanatic/newbies/] screenings these days.

But perhaps your baby is a quiet one that sleeps through most stuff? Sure no problem. But if after a minute of crying the baby hasn�t settled down, I really think you should get up and take the kid outside till it does. The person at the cinema eventually did, but this was after 15 mins of disrupting the movie for the whole cinema.

I understand it�s not the baby�s fault. But I do blame the parent. My basic rule is, if I was making the same amount of noise (say talking on my phone) I would be considered inconsiderate (and most likely asked to leave). So why is ok for a parent to disrupt my evening relaxing time with my girlfriend?

The cinema to their credit, comped us when we complained after the movie, but I still found it really distracting, and inconsiderate of the parent.

I have friends with kids now. I do look forward to take A&S�s little one V, to the cinema in a year or two when she is older, giving me an excuse to see more kids films. Just at 3pm not at 8pm.

Wot I dids on my weekend

2010-03-15T13:20:54Z

I�m useless at DIY, so my friend Andrew graciously came round to help. (By help I mean he did all the hard work and I stood around a lot looking useless).

This is what happened ...

eBook experiment or how I came to buy two books I got for free

2010-03-07T22:42:19Z

I love reading. I read a lot. I read every night before bed. I probably read 20-30 books a year.

I love books. I love the smell of a new book. I love being the first one to read the physical copy of a book. I like being the person who cracks the spine.

So I�ve mostly dismissed e-readers. The Kindle looks interesting and the linking with the Amazon book is a smart feature and I did muse about the value of buying one. But it wasn�t available in the UK and then the iPad was announced �.

So I started wondering could I read books really on an electronic device? Could I give up all those things I like about books. The quality of CDs is way higher than MP3s but I pretty much listen exclusivity to MP3s now. My CD play isn�t even connected to my amp anymore. Convenience beat out the smallish loss of quality and that was that for music requiring actual media. And it was the iPod and iTunes where that convenience came in. I remember the days of loading songs on my 512 MB iRiver for the gym. I still listened to CDs in those days.

So I know if something becomes easier to use you soon forget about the reasons for not shifting. You just shift your behaviour without realising it.

But books are different right?

Well I thought I would try an experiment. I would read a book on my iPhone and if that was ok, I would consider buying the iPad. I�ve seen several comments on the web about people reading books on the iPhone�s and that the experience wasn�t that bad.

Roughly around this time @Reynolds wrote a interesting piece on the Amazon vs MacMillan spat, where he linked to his two books, in digital format for free. So I made a deal with myself. I would download and Blood, Sweat and Tea (and the sequel) and if I liked them I would buy the books and give them away to friends. I�ve met Tom at a blog meet two years ago, and follow him on Twitter, and he�s a nice bloke, so if I liked the books, I felt I owed him at least the cover price. Although sending him a tenner would net him more cash, most authors would rather be read.

I did enjoy the books. Immensely. They are really fascinating, well written and human. I highly recommend them. I bought two copies of Blood, Sweat & Tea off Amazon and gave them to my friends Ross and Andrew. With a deal. When done they to pass them onto someone else. Hopefully by spreading the book around ,Tom will get more people recommending it, and more sales in the end.

So what was it like reading a book on my iPhone?

Surprisingly after about 5 pages I forgot about the fact I was reading it on my iPhone and was just reading. I used the excellent Stanza App which made it really easy, and even with no iBookStore or KindleStore it was all pretty simple to get set up. I actually found the "tap to page turn" mechanism much easier than reading a paper book. Also reading in the dark while other people are trying to sleep in the same room an unexpected benefit. I also tend to flip from side to side with big books as I read on my side, and one half of a book is normally heavier than the other. With an iPhone this wasn�t an issue.

So what was a problem?

Well the formatting was off. I�m not sure if this was the ePub format or something else but having glanced through the properly formatted printed edition this was definitely a loss. The other issue was the amount of text easily visible on an iPhone is a bit less than on a normal printed page. However this I expect to not be an issue on an iPad or Kindle.

The "digital" aspect vs paper was never noticed once. In face some unexpected easy ways to bookmark pages, look things up in a dictionary and cut and paste text all where great additions that easily outweighed it not being paper.

I unrelatedly played with a Sony eBook reader in Waterstones yesterday. The flash black/white when turning a page would drive me super batty (I think). Looks like the Kindle has this effect too, so I�m way more likely to get something like an iPad than an Kindle. Of course I would need to play with an iPad first to know if it�s worth getting but based on my iPhone experience there�s a higher chance of it now.

I�ll probably blog more on eBooks at some other time, but for them to take off I really think they need to learn the lessons the music and film industry seem to have failed to make. Including

No DRM. Seriously, All it does is annoy paying customers.
Formatting. Seriously how hard can it be to format something that has to start digitally to begin with.
Easy easy easy easy. Make it easy to buy. Easy to load. Easy to read.
Available everywhere. On your own store. On Amazon. On iTunes. Don�t make me need 4 apps depending on where I buy a title from.
Make it cheaper. Don�t knock $3 off the cover price and bemoan the cannibalisation of hard covers. I also can�t resell or lend an ebook, and you also don�t have to chop a whole fucking tree down and truck it around.

Sadly so far, the book/publishing industry seems content to make the same mistakes all the other media industries have made.

The best way to beat piracy is with connivence. Well that and a decent price. Man up and be innovative for a change.

My girlfriend is an airport mule

2009-12-19T10:26:04Z

An email I got by my girlfriend on the way home for Christmas �.

…

Oh my God. You have to be here to understand how bad this airport experience is.

I arrived in Gatwick at 5am looking for check-in section B. Turns out it’s a side exit to the basement and there’s a single file queue to get to the lovely basement.
No problem. Cos my flight leaves at 6.55. I have plenty of time (for a change). I can handle this. There is a desperately loud Aer Lingus lady shouting “Faro, Faro anybody for Faro”? Of the 600 people queueing some shuffle and squash their way past into the basement to get to Faro where nothing else moves in the queue. Faro at some point gets turned into Malaga, which evetually turns into Munich. An hour later the lady’s not hoars, and I am really looking forward to make it to the basement check-in. Not long now, surely. How many destinations does Aer Lingus fly..?
Yay. Finally my turn. All this waiting has paid off. I can now see the 6 check-in desks. I observe how even though we’ve been treated like cattle (eager to be hearded but going nowhere) people are being told off for the extra bag, oversize bags and heavy bags. I’m told I’ve got 10kg too much. Marco’s records get transferred from the suitcase to the rucksack. Is there a point to shifting it from one bag to the other, other than avoiding paying 27 pounds? Doesn’t it all go on the same plane? Hopefully. Maybe not though… Oh hold on. My bag’s not going anywhere because the Aer Lingus conveyor belt is not moving. Oof. Could we be facing a Suitcase Disaster in the Basement? An engineer gets called by the loud Aer Lingus lady. Poor her. She has a lot of responsibilities. They try to proceed with check in by shouting asking if there are any passengers with no luggage. I watch with interest. No. Not a single one. Guess nobody wants to show up at Christmas with no gifts. Good stuff. Ahhhh…it’s moving. Good good. Because according to my boarding pass the Gate closes in 30 minutes.
So quick quick out of the basement and into another queue for the xray machine. Oooh, it’s all going well so am sure there may even be time for some airport shopping? Hmmm maybe not. Don’t want the plane to take off without me. How come I’m worried about missing a 6.55 flight even though I got here at 5am? Hmmm…Christmas and Aer Lingus seem inefficient. Xray guys make me take off my boots. Oh, you guys were so close to flawless. Never mind. You’re pretty damn amazing in comparison to your other airport buddies today.
Bummer. My flight has been delayed. By one and a half hours. Oh well time for shopping. Yay, yay, yay. Am spending money and doing shopping which I didn’t have time for in London but the experience seems hollow despite what I try to make of it. These 10kg records that I am carrying on my back have now transformed me airport cattle experience to airport mule. This thing is heavy.
I think I’m allowed to sit down now to bend my back back into its natural shape, cos I’ve spent quite a bit of money on I’m not sure what as I’m feeling pretty tired and disinterested now. I think I’ve paced it all well though as I now only have 40 minutes left before my new Gate opens. Ok. Shoot. Setback. I’m sitting next to a big plastic bubble. The man who just started talking into the mic in front of the bubble is trying to get people to volunteer to sing. He calls is Gatwick Factor, like X Factor at Gatwick. That’s ok. Nobody in their right mind would sing at this time of day in Gatwick airport. No…not even the flights to see the Northern Lights that you are offering Gatwick Factor man. Nobody…good. I sense solidarity in this empty airport to combat stupidity.
Oh. One person climbs into the plastic bubble and starts to sing. No, that’s normal. Because she’s a teen and maybe this is ‘her moment’ for her. She’s making me feel more perky anyway cos the song is a crazy teeny bop song. It doesn’t disprove my theory or break the solidarity against stupidity.
Oh f. Despite it taking Gatwick Factor man a good 10 minutes to find another volunteer it looks like this out of tune singing has a steady stream of equally unable singers. I hear Grease Lightning (seriously, why do you eant to sing Grease Lightning- it’s an embarassing song), I hear Umbrella. You really sound shit. And I’m getting really f@@ed off having to listen to this sh!t. I woke up at 3am and this is harassment.
Oh my God. Why are you telling me to go to the main information desk for refreshments. Aren’t we only slightly delayed boarding for the new time? Surprise! There’s a queue for refreshments! God it’s long. How come everybody’s so keen to queue for three pounds? Not me. Oh interesting. The white board says I’m delayed by another hour and half. I didn’t realise there was a while board at the airport. Isn’t this why we have so many monitors? Maybe not because the monitors still say that I’m supposed to take off at 8.30 and the white board says I’m supposed to take off at 9.50. But no guarantees I suspect, hey? And why are only the Aer Lingus flights this heavily delayed? Or maybe it’s chaos for everybody and you just can’t trust what the monitors are suggesting.
Write to Adrian. He’ll worry a little but sharing is good. Oh. His text reads “Welcome to Vienna”. Ok, here goes. Another Gatwick Factor singer sings “I hope you don’t mind, I hope you don’t mind”. Honestly?
Oh my God was that “Last remaining passengers to Vienna…” have I been ranting so long already? Run mule, run, run, run. You can do it. Run away from Gatwick Factor and the cramped basement and the not working conveyor belt, the not working screens, the insanity. Run! Happy Chrismas everybody. I’m getting out of this jungle!

then some time �..

then �

Who owns the blue bag the stewardess is holding up? Confess! Get off the f@@ing plane. You and your blue bag! Show yourself! I need to get out here! I need to get out of here! Why what? There’s a problem with the computer system? Oh you found the error. We haven’t missed our slot. Good. What was that thing with the blue bag? I no longer have to find the owner of the blue bag?

I am laughing hysteric nervously all by myself in seat 18C. Nothing funny really. Never mind me.

I solved the next financial crisis at a Yeah Yeah Yeahs gig

2009-05-07T13:29:33Z

There’s been a few interesting posts recently (see bottom of post) about how one of the issues we have currently is we have companies that are considered “too big to fail”. That we have to bail out banks, because if they fail, the economy breaks down totally, and it’s not a far jump from that to rats gnawing on your cold lifeless body in the street.

I was at a Yeah Yeah Yeahs gig last week, and between the support act and my second favourite half Korean coming onto stage, the solution dawned on me, as blindingly obvious.

Every time (not this year but the last 10) a company (Oil/Banking/etc) makes ludicrous profits (Billion dollars a second yadda yadda) everyone’s up in arms, as it’s immoral and wrong and we should impose a windfall tax.

I’m against windfall taxes. They sound like a good idea, but I think they’re mostly desired out of misplaced moral outrage (under the false assumption no one should make that much money) and not any decent economic reasons. If companies are making money be being anti-competitive, then competition authorities should come down on them. If it’s just a result of running a successful business then well done to them and we should move on.

I do however have a massive issue with bailing out these companies after they spent year after year declaring ludicrous profits. Yo banks, I’m looking in your direction.

The solution of course is not a ‘windfall tax’ but a bailout tax. When companies reach a certain size such that their failure would have impacts beyond their market and into the general populace, they have a choice. They can spin off sections of themselves into independent companies and slim down such that the failure of any single part would not have severe economic consequences.

Or they have to pay a bailout tax. This tax money would go into a government reserve (some fiscally stable system) and not general taxation. And when companies fail this money is drawn on to bail them out. This saves us printing new money (cough sorry quantitative easing) or borrowing such that my friends’ children will grow up in debt having to bail the lot of us out.

Now of course if a business doesn’t fail, the money goes to bail out businesses that do. That’s how insurance companies work and well let’s be honest, we need a few more insurances. And businesses don’t have to pay the tax. They can avoid the tax, by avoiding being too big to fail; otherwise when you’re declaring �10 billion a quarter in profit, you can pay a hefty chunk of that to make sure it’s not frigging me that’s bailing you out.

I want my tax money to go to something useful. And bailouts are not useful, but needed when things have gone too far wrong. I shouldn’t be the one paying for your mistakes.

If you’re interested two good articles on why we shouldn’t allow companies to be too big to fail:

Resilience in the Face of Crisis: Why the Future Will Be Flexible

The recognition that failure happens is the other intrinsic part of a  resilience approach. Mistakes, malice, pure coincidence—there’s no way to rule out all possible ways in which a given system can stumble.  The goal, therefore, should be to make failures easy to spot through  widespread adoption of transparency through a “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow” embrace of openness, and to give the system enough redundancy and slack that it’s  possible to absorb the failures that get through
Ten principles for a Black Swan-proof world

What is fragile should break early while it is still small. Nothing should ever become too big to fail. Evolution in economic life helps those with the maximum amount of hidden risks � and hence the most fragile � become the biggest.

Twitter should do their own url shortning service and buy TwitPic

2009-05-04T22:21:20Z

I'm sure twitter has a list a thousand items long called "Stuff to do". We have at vzaar and it always grows quicker than it shrinks, so I'm sure Twitter has more important things to do.

However, I think their is a certain time sensitivity to these things, and they are roughly related and I think it would be a good thing for both Twitter and the ecosystem if they did.

URL shorteners (if you didn't know, I know you know) take a long messy url and ... um ... shorten it it a small tight nifty url. There's a good explanation here: The Benefits And Pitfalls of URL Shortener.

With Twitters recent rise to rule-the-worldom, URL shortners are both back (it used to just be TinyURL that did then, now everyone and their spambot has one). Of course this has brought a whole host of problems and highlighted all the issues with URL shortners.

A lot of this is Twitters fault in a way. It's the 140 character limit that requires the use of URL Shorteners. However the same reason means Twitter has a great opportunity to control and win the space, and control means you can extract the most value out of it.

Not only should Twitter create their own independent service, they should incorporate this into their API. This gets the app developers on board and it makes their life easier by just working with one API. I would imagine if the twitter website and most clients are using their url shortener, they'll quickly dominate the market on Twitter, and not far behind it too.

Controlling this market is useful. Because you know what's inside those urls. You also know what kind of click through they are getting (useful data to both Twitter and the users). You can also flag spam more easily (and we know this is going to be an bigger issue than it already is), and if you are flagging spam more easily, you can build up trust that Twitter URLS are safer, which they should be.

Many people are saying the value in Twitter is less in premier user services and more in the fact it's become a "real time search engine". If that's the case they need to know what's in those URLS and the best way to do it is bake it right in.

This also allows Twitter to expand the URLs in mediums where the 140 chars is less of an issue (at least on the web and in the API returns). This makes it more valuable to developers, and should have quick take up.

The use experience could be vastly improved. Just say we know any URL size is 25 chars long (the size of the Twitter web default of TinyURL. Then anytime someone enters a URL, you can just carry on typing to 115 chars. No need to worry about size limit. You can add on a feature that automatically shows all your Twitter URLs, and their click throughs on the twitter website (or via the API). I suspect this alone would kill all the competition.

So in summary

There's knowledge in the URL
Twitter could know the knowledge
Knowledge has value
Twitter is uniquely position to dominate this space

Twitpic is really just an extension of this. It's a specialised URL shortner for pictures. In fairness there is less knowledge in this that's of direct value, but I still think Twitter should bring this in house. Unlike a URL shortner I think Twitter should buy twitpic, rather than do their own.

AFAIK Noah Everett is running twitpic.com as a one man operation and has done a great job. He's built up his own little community and I think the goodwill would do a lot for Twitter buying this. He also has 1000000 pics plus on the service and is the biggest player in this space.

However the space is fracturing, and everyones trying to get in on it. Again Twitter can do interesting things here by controlling and dominating the space (especially with the API). Whilst I don't think they should expand the 140 character limit, they should realise people are posting pictures and a lot of them. Control the space before someone controls it for you.

An interesting thing here would be building in an automatic licensing system for the press or other people who want to use public pictures. Put all pictures on a creative common license and allow the press to use them if they pay a fee. Percentage of the free goes to the user and percentage to Twitter. Users can turn this off if they want.

Think of some of the great consolidated image feeds one could build of live events, from social (gigs, sports) to news (protests, planes landing in the Hudson).

In short:

Twitter, you should do your own url shortener and buy twitpic. Really you should. I'm smart and right, and it would make your service even more awesome.

Always happy to help.

[UPDATE: 2009.05.06]

Looks Like I'm not far off. Prediction: Twitter to acquire bit.ly within the year

TechCrunch - URL Shortening Wars: Twitter Ditches TinyURL For bit.ly

This is actually not that much of a surprise. Betaworks, the startup accelerator behind Twitter related companies such as Summize (acquired by Twitter in July 2008), is also behind bit.ly, and it just happens to also count early Twitter investors and advisors Chris Sacca and Ron Conway as their own backers.

Which obviously prompts this inevatible question: does the move signal Twitter paving the way for an outright acquisition of the URL shortening service provider?

ReadWriteWeb - Twitter Crowns Bit.ly As The King of Short Links; Here's What It Means

Once Bit.ly has been put to enough use, and today's news will likely be a big part of that happening, you'll be able to ask it questions like: within the last hour, what are the five hottest web pages about President Obama's budget? What social networks are sharing links to my web page the most today? What are ornithologists on Twitter most interested in this week?

The columns and rows here are semantic key terms on pages shared, method of sharing used (Facebook, Twitter, email, etc.), number of click-throughs, time and person who created the original shortcut. There's a whole lot you can do when you have that kind of information about a link. Bit.ly says its API isn't quite there yet, but it's close.

"Open Mindedness" not the same as "Believing Shit"

2009-04-12T16:04:17Z

I love this video.

I wish I could argue this well.

It would make these blog posts much better written. * The last maybe one day discussion ever. I wish * The god in the coincidence

Stage Managed Rioting / Protesting

2009-04-02T12:42:59Z

This image is doing the rounds of most major newspapers today, I assume because it has the makings of an 'iconic image'.

Capitalism has failed, the people rise up, yadda yadda yadda.

Except it seems rather stage managed to me.

I don't mean that it's set up deliberately, but I do think it's engineered by a collective group think that wanted it to happen.

Look their are more press in the picture than protesters.

When you take a balaclava to protest, clearly you are not thinking about singing John Lennon songs.

Clearly there is no sane person in this picture standing up and saying, "Um like guys, this isn't a political statement, this is just vandalism, why don't we go plant some trees instead".

Everyone wanted this picture to happen. The Press (clearly), the protesters, possibly even the police, although I suspect they'd rather everyone sang John Lennon songs. And hence the situation unfolded where a group in balaclavas lands up holding a monitor outside the RBS, and the press are all ready for the iconic picture.

It's stage managed by some sort of group think.

I have no issue with protesting, although generally I would like it to have a point. I have no idea what they protesters were protesting. You can't protest an concept (like capitalism). Sure the banks all fucked up, but are are they protesting that the G20 trying to stabilise the economy? And how is throwing shit though windows helping?

The May Day (riots), the G20 protests ... it all seems to me that protesting is no longer showing peaceful political decent between elections, but an event to be part of, something to ay you were there, and an excuse to cause violence and vandalism.

Sure the police are going to fuck up. When people take balaclavas with to hide and goad the police, it's going to descend into chaos.

Take John Lennon songs, not balaclavas.

Sevitz's Death Jump

2009-03-25T00:16:56Z

Alternatively titled "Why I am hurty"

I almost hit a woman tonight

2009-03-23T00:03:32Z

I've never hit a women, but today I got close.

I was shaking when I sat down, with the effort to control my anger.

Those who know me, know I might grumble and get annoyed easily, but I don't have a temper, and few people have see me 'lose it'.

There are a group (5) of women who arrived late on Thursday night and woke me up by having a loud inconsiderate conversation in the passage outside out room. They woke me up at 7am this morning and I can hear one of their high whiney voices through the wall now.

I call them 'The Primark Women' due to their ski outfits which they think look expensive and classy but aren't. The other day during the ski hosting, one spent the whole morning on the phone yelling at her manicurist because her nails had chipped and how was she meant to go out. I kid you not. They've also complained loudly that this is the first time they have had to carry their own skis.

They are not my favourite people.

They had a minor strop this morning with us, on the ski busses. We were already all in the chalet bus when 5 of them appeared. Late. However the bus only had 4 seats. The chalet guy doing the driving asked if I minded sitting on the floor in the back, which I didn't as I am pretty easy going. Maria on the other hand is rather safety conscious, and objected (politely) as they all clambered in.

They then all got quite stroppy and clambered out, and the last we heard was one of them calling Maria "poker face over there". Still they were late, didn't say thanks when I moved to sit on the floor in the back, nor offered to sit their themselves when Maria objected, so we didn't care that much as we drove off.

I suspect this was part of the build up for the fight later on.

After a rather pleasant Sunday meal (roast) followed by an explanation of the 16 cheese on offer we all got up to sample the fromage on offer. A friend of mine was in front of me, Maria behind me and the Primark Women pushed in front of two other friends of mine behind Maria. Since there was more than enough cheese for everyone thrice over they didn't care and let them go.

we get to the front of the line, and a few cheese selections in there is a pause as one of the guests asks to take a picture of the chef and his wife serving the cheese. Barely a minute passes when the Primark Women get fustrated with having to wait. I guess those who seem to model themselves after Paris and Posh don't like waiting.

Maria gets pushed twice in the back as a 'hurry up'. Bare in mind we're in a chalet, there's enough cheese for everyone, and their is no reasons to rush at all. Maria being slightly less patient than me, leans back a bit in annoyance.

And then it starts to go a bit down hill.

I have no recollection of some of finer details as due to my subsequent anger, some of the exact words that were said are lost to me.

The Primark Women at the head of the queue starts to have a go at Maria. For leaning back, for not moving forward fast enough, but I think mostly for not wanting me to sit in a dangerous position on chalet bus in the morning.

I, sensing this, turn around, step back, position Maria in front of me, and say to her, somethign along the lines of "why don't you go in front". Again I can't rememberer the finer nuances of the words said next but the women says, "I would have done that too" to me, along with some insult to Maria.

I turn around and say (more or less) "Leave it alone, we're all trying to have a good time here, just relax". I was entirely non confrontational, calm and polite.

The women then launches into it, and starts really having a go. Again I say something along the lines of just leave it alone, we're all trying to enjoy our holidays here, this isn't anything worth the stress.

The women then starts waving her fork inches from my face and and insulting Maria repeatedly.

The red mist descends. Waving a fork in face doesn't help either.

It takes every ounce of my self control not to lose it. And I'm not someone who has a temper.

I raise my hand.

I put it on the fork and push the fork away from my face and lower it.

I say, "Stop insulting my girlfriend and leave it alone. We're on holiday and just trying to have a good time. Please stop this"

She threatens to punch me and then walks off.

I breath in, turn around select some cheeses and walk to sit down.

I count to 20. I look at my hands which are shaking. It's a reaction to anger.

I take a bite of cheese. I force my self not to cry. It's also a reaction to anger. I don't know why.

I joke with my friends and get over it.

I do not understand some people.

The world revolves around non of us.

It's air, is what it is.

2009-03-19T18:27:29Z

Yes, you can't prove it's me. But it is.

And yes I am attached the board I haven't just taken a picture of me throwing it over the jump.

Coffee breaks better than in the office

2009-03-17T21:30:17Z

Adrian http://sevitz.com

Ski La Clusaz Day 1 - Departures and Arrivals

2009-03-16T22:13:02Z

Adrian http://sevitz.com