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Ceçi n’est pas un Ginger

Ceçi n'est pas un GingerRumours say that Dean Kamen’s famous Segway Human Transporter actually isn’t the same as his much-hyped, mysterious invention code-named Ginger.

I have to admit, I was hooked when I first heard about this mysterious Ginger invention that Steve Jobs raved about. I swallowed the hype whole without chewing when I heard people raving that the top-secret invention would revolutionize the world. Such things spark the imagination until it’s fairly burning with excitment over… whatever-it-is.

And then… nothing. Just as Ginger was dropping completely out of the public’s consciousness, Kamen reveals the Segway scooter. It’s a nifty gadget, alright. I’d love to take one out for a spin, but it’s hardly going to revolutionize anything.

So now there are murmurs that Ginger is not the Segway scooter after all. Sorry, Kamen. Don’t care.

I suspect that Ginger is actually a new technique to piss off a lot of people over nothing.

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Go green… or brown

I want to go green, I really do. But why does the transit company make it so bloody difficult? Honestly, I used to take the bus to work every day, but when I discovered the two-dollar-a-day parkade near my office, the choice was made for me. It’s cheaper for me to drive the three miles to work than to take the bus.

Even if the cost were the same, I would still drive — taking the bus can be such an ordeal, take three times as long, and you’ll never know exactly when (or if) you’ll get where you’re going.

Let me tell you about my commute yesterday. Early morning, I shuffle out to my trusty little Honda Civic. As I unlock the door, R2 bleeps at me; the alarm is on, and my keychain thing has fallen off. Not a problem — I have a spare inside.

Moments later, I’m back at my car and the alarm shuts off with that little bloop-bloop sound. This time, however, I notice that my left rear tire is flat. Since I bought the car, there’s been a slow leak around the valve stem that I simply haven’t had the inclination to fix. I don’t have time to deal with it, so I headed to the bus stop and hopped the ol’ Number 15.

Inside, it’s hot, humid, and we’re packed like sardines. Two seconds into the trip, we hit the traffic and slow to a crawl. The lanes on the left are moving freely, but of course the driver wouldn’t want to do anything sensible like change lanes.

It’s getting hotter. I want out. But of course on a bridge, the driver can’t let anyone off. Sweat is running down my back and there’s no air coming in the window because we’re not moving. Oddly, no one else seems inclined to open a window.

Twenty minutes later, we finally pass the construction that caused the slowdown, which is only a quarter mile from where I got on. I could have walked here faster! Out of frustration I leap off at the next stop and revel in the fresh, cool air. Since I’m still over two miles from work, I start walking. Eventually I showed up… irritated and tired.

In comparison, today I fixed the flat and drove to work in fifteen minutes.

OK, I know it’s immoral to drive to work, but what are my choices? The bus is a daily ordeal and costs too much. Scooters are notorious polluters (most have dirty, two-stroke engines). I don’t want to risk cycling in downtown rush-hour traffic. It’s too far to walk.

Somebody buy me a Segway Human Transporter!

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Welcome to blog stadium

At 3:46 AM on July 17, I gave birth to the Cubicle Dweller weblog in a messy splash of HTML. That was only a few weeks ago, which pretty much makes me a blog-newbie, so bear with me if I’m still trying to get a grip on this blogging phenomenon.

It seems like every day a million new weblogs find their way into existence. According to Blogger, during the month of July, new Blogger weblogs were created at an average rate of 1.5 per minute. That’s a mind bloggling rate!

All these millions of weblogs now compete for attention. It’s as if, at first, there was a room full people, and a handful were taking turns on stage, saying interesting and occasionally insightful things. But then someone in the back started talking too. Then others started, until a murmer from the back became a general “rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb”, which then became a hubub, which then completely drowned out the people on the stage.

Now we’re in a stadium full of people, shouting at the top of our lungs, and Blogger is handing out free megaphones.

The chances of a new blogger actually being heard are now pretty slim, it seems. Have a look at Weblogs.com, for example. On their home page, they list only some of the weblogs updated within the last three hours. Among the hundreds on this list are some excellent weblogs — well-written, thoughtful, witty, and entertaining. But many more are about more mundane subjects — about what their dog did, or what they had for breakfast (um…oops).

Way back when the World Wide Web was new (oh… long about ’94… or was it ’95?) and I was putting my first web pages online, I wasn’t quite sure why I was doing what I was doing, and less certain why anyone would visit my site. I still don’t know why. But I do know that shouting in a stadium and being heard by only a few passers-by is far better than not being heard at all.

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