My 10 year old son had a mate over for a sleepover this evening and I walked in to be told I was interrupting important conversation about matters I wouldn't understand. Rather than the usual Pokémon, they had been discussing what they wanted to be when they grew up.

On reflection of my life in recent years, I felt the need to remind them even at this early stage in their lives, that you need to always keep in mind that the objective is to work to live - not live to work and that money wasn't everything despite the immediate appeal. I left them with that thought with little hope it would be remembered very long but perhaps at least for a few minutes.

A thing I have learnt about children is that our ability to interact, and therefore convey information, is a series of trial and error bludgening examples observed through a welding mask. For some things they can be easily malleable whilst others are prone to me caving in to the fact of someone more stubborn than myself.

You don't have to love the job you do, but you do have to like it if you intend to use it as your main earner AND/OR consumer of time. You may tolerate a job that gives you nothing beyond remuneration, but it will drain you in the long run and likely affect your social and personal life.

When the first person picked up a stick and used as a tool, everyone wanted one and an industry boomed.

As the market became saturated, producers tried to differentiate their stick by using different colours or new materials for "high end" sticks. Eventually though, everyone has a stick and unless it is a particularly special stick, noone goes "ooh! ah!" when your neighbour comes home with a new stick.

Like a stick, at some point the market became saturated such that a car is no longer innovative or novel, it is simply a commodity and becomes a low margin item. Where the true boundless opportunity arises is where we take a commodity and use it to create a service.

In the case of a car, it becomes a means of transportation of people and goods which is focussed more on the capability that the commodity provides rather than any inherent value the car has in its own right. A car as a transportation device is therefore an enabling technology for the provision of transport related services. 

In the early 90's my parents would proudly tell their friends that I was "in computers" and they would respond with appropriate exclamations at how clever I must be to understand such wondrous technology that was beyond the grasp of mere mortals.

Nowadays pretty much everyone carries more processing power in their mobile phone than the combined computing resources of a major university in the 60's and entirely takes it for granted. Being "in computers" is no longer special, it too has become a simple commodity. Again, computing technology has become an enabler for the provision of a vast range of services.

Many industry pundits are pointing at cloud computing as the next wave of technology to sweep home and industry. I ponder what this pervasive and immersive communication technology will enable and the effect it will have on societal social structures.

The headline above caught my eye today as it proceeded to explain how the church was facing financial hardship in 2009 partly due to an expected decrease in investment return.

Call me naive but somehow it just strikes me as just wrong that a religious institution is taking funds raised for various charitable works and putting it in the stock market. Isn't that gambling, which is viewed most dimly in the bible?

Likewise the Catholic church has suffered due to currency fluctuations. My mind boggles at the concept of an investment advisor listing the Pope as a customer. Of course the church does have significant expenses including the millions of dollars in legal fees and settlements for sex abuse cases.

They truly are church's by the people (and their associated investment interests) for the people. Don't even get me started on religions in name only (and associated tax free status) such as scientology.

Ugh!

For the first time since I established an online presence back in the 80s, my web site was hacked this week via a security issue with Joomla version prior to 1.5.6. I appear to have recovered and content should now be okay.

The Econo-Inn (エコノイン京都) is a low budget hotel in the Rakuchu area of Kyoto.

The next version of my ASCOM driver for the Vixen Star Book is in development. I probably should have posted something sooner but I'll blame conversion of my website from iweb to Joomla for now.

The Umeda OS Hotel (梅田OSホテル) is convenient accommodation a short walk from JR Osaka railway station. The streets behind the hotel are full of eateries as is the underground mall that can be entered back towards JR Osaka.