I've grown bored of the Internet. This blog is now closed. Enjoy the archives, folks!

(infovority? infovoritude? infovorism?)

So here I am, 11.15 on a Friday night, after a busy day of emergency dental treatment*, sunshine, conversation and excellent dinner**, relentlessly refreshing CNN and BBC News, waiting for news that a man whom I know almost nothing about and whose existence barely affects me has either kicked the bucket or lived through the night. It's an odd sensation: I don't care about the content of the news -- the announcement itself is already written, and has been written for years, and the fact is obvious. I don't care about the timing of the news, either: whether he dies now or twelve hours from now is irrelevant to me. I care about the existence of the news: the information does not yet exist, but soon it will, and I desperately want to have it as soon as humanly possible.

This sort of aimless, insatiable desire for information for its own sake has been a developing characteristic of mine for a while. It's usually useful -- the majority of the skills I use in my job are self-taught -- but sometimes self defeating, as I would much rather gather new information than apply what I have already learned.

I once read (but can no longer locate the article) that email can reduce productivity at work because people check their email too often, instead of doing real work. The reason for this was that receiving new information produces a chemical response in the brain, rewarding us with a good feeling for no effort. Like the good monkeys we are, we know the button makes us feel good, so we click it mindlessly, endlessly, hoping to get the free pleasure as fast as possible.

Is this what I'm doing when I endlessly look for news I don't care about? It certainly seems that way. Maybe I need to be more selective about what I read, or possibly just more efficient in receiving it: Planet Seldo certainly helps a lot -- I read it instead of those 25 sites, which is a signficant time saver. But even then, I refresh it constantly and check it several times an hour.

Maybe I should just go to bed :-)

* I may not like all welfare, but I'm quite fond of the NHS, or possibly just first-world medicine. It still seems sort of magical to me that you can book an appointment for a dentist and be seen the same day.

** If I go to Bistro 1 any more often they are going to start reserving my table.

John-Paul is dead, bring on the election coverage of the new Pope!

Also: happy birthday M!

Have I mentioned how much I love Buttoned Down Disco, scene of M's birthday party? Much thanks to Housemate T for telling me all about it.

You scored as Tongue Piercing. You're a naughty person aren't you? Being with you is probably lots and lots of fun. You're probably totally pimpin' too. Good for you, good for you. Tongue Piercing 100% Dirty Piercings 100% Cartilage Piercing 90% Nipples 80% Earlobe Piercing 70% Belly Button Piercing 70% Nose Piercing 70% Labret Piercing 70% Lip Piercing 60% What Piercing Are You? created with QuizFarm.com

(As usual, cheesy quizzes are courtesy Dom)

Recently, I went shopping for a birthday present for my brother's girlfriend. This is a pretty rare thing. I get my music from friends, from allofmp3 ("now slightly less illegal!"), and when I'm really stuck the big guns of invite-only hubs on DC++ (god bless Sweden). I get my music online, and this is pretty much the only way I've ever got my music: growing up in Trinidad, CDs cost close to six weeks' worth of pocket money assuming I didn't buy any food in that time, so they were out of the question, and even after I started earning money independently I had better things to blow it on than over-priced music when I could -- after lots of tedious waiting -- get it for free via my dialup connection. So having done it only about a dozen times, buying physical music is still a bit of a novelty for me. And I was very disappointed at the experience.

I knew what CDs I wanted: I'd downloaded them weeks ago, and have been listening to them solidly, so I knew I could recommend them. So I went to the Virgin store in Camden: it's big, it's mainstream, it'll have what I want, right? We're talking Annie* and Kelly Clarkson** here, stuff you've heard of, not Gabi and the Whoremoans***. So I got there, through tedious crowds, and painstakingly walked up and down crowded aisles looking for my discs. Annie could only be under A, but Kelly was under Clarkson, which was actually a surprise to me, though I guess it should have been obvious. But no luck: they had no Annie, and Clarkson's second album was apparently never released in the UK.

And then I was... stuck. I could find another store -- wasting yet more hours of travel -- or I could try buying something else. But what else to buy? There were no reviews posted anywhere, there were no "customers who bought this also liked..." recommendations. My only guide to buying music was a bewildering assortment of printed CD cases, as if something visual could give a realistic impression of the audio contained. There was a listening station -- but only one in the whole store, and I would have had to sample at random until I found something that seemed good.

All in all, I have to say that offline shopping for audio totally sucks in every way I can think of. How did people do it before? I'm sure I remember anecdotal evidence of people who went into record stores at random and "browsed"... how were they doing this? Were they really basing their decisions on album art, which is at best ambiguous and at worst deliberately misleading?

I'm so glad I live now, and not 20 years ago. Quite apart from having no career, I would also have no music to listen to.

* Thoroughly excellent pop, can't recommend it enough. Once again thanks to the ubiquitous Housemate T.

** My guilty pleasure (though I was pleased to discover that Kottke likes it too. As ever, I aspire to sit at the grown-ups table, blog-wise). The songs aren't amazing, but she has one hell of a voice.

*** Although they are only not famous yet because the rest of you are fools.

That is all.

Update: Specifically, boys suck.

Ooops, it's been another week without blogs. See, this is quite tricky. Tuesday night is cooking night at M's house (loving her recent entries, incidentally), so that's out, but I managed Monday and Wednesday. Thursday I don't know what happened, and Friday I was in Swindon for former-housemate and general fabulairenne* K's birthday. But oh well, some catching-up will be done with a double-entry this evening...

Much is said and much has been written, and at length, about the beauty of the unspoilt English countryside by people who, apparently, have never left England, nor seen countryside that is truly unspoilt. Having passed through and walked through, with various members of my extended family, large tracts of the English countryside, I would like to make my views on this clear. It is irrelevant whether there is any point in my doing so; apparently you lot continue reading no matter what rubbish I post so I may as well please myself.

English countryside is an endless patchwork of fields and hedges, with the occasional break for a tiny little wood, hemmed in on all sides by farmland. Of course, there are also expanses of wild, uncultivated land, and it says something about the English landscape that these are generally marshes, bogs or windswept moors unsuitable for any sort of cultivation.

The English have swarmed over their land and consumed it many times over. It has a certain stark and blasted beauty, to be sure, but hardly to rival the great deserts of other lands. And while it is certainly a lush and productive land, there can be no way that the gigantic bowling-green that is the English countryside could ever be described as unspoilt.

So all those people constantly complaining that new housing developments will ruin their green and pleasant land should wonder why it is there are no trees on aforementioned pleasant land, and realise it's because somebody came by and ruined a perfectly good forest before hand, and the land in question is merely being further spoiled.

* A word that should exist, and that I've just made up. The masculine form will be fabulaire. If this happens to match French grammar, then all the better.

Being a programmer with an interest in web design in 2005 is an amazing feeling. Everywhere I look, I see the technologies that I live and breathe being put to use. Hastily, yes, inexpertly, yes, and all too often by people who were the lowest bidder rather than the people who knew what they were doing. But the fact that the clueless person who hired someone to (say) design a train ticket ordering kiosk in ASP on Windows* was aware enough of the value of the Internet to even decide to hire anyone for that job is one that thrills and excites me.

It's hard to explain, to anyone else, why the sight of a touch-screen web kiosk on Argyll street should make me giggle with glee. I mean, I'm the web developer, right? The endless utility of web technologies should surprise me less than anyone else, right? But there are three main reasons why the ubiquity of web technologies makes me giddy.

The first and most obvious reason is a smug sense of satisfaction: I know how this stuff works, and you sheep don't. Ha ha! For I have all the mental maturity of a five year old who's had too much sugar. The sight of yet another (usually poorly designed and/or broken) web kiosk is just so much more job security for me. The ones who, back in 1996, said that e-commerce was a buzzword that wouldn't change anything, and that the grandiose visions of the Internet being available on every street corner were just pipe dreams really are being proven wrong every day, and much sooner than I expected they would: though I have to remind myself that it is 2005, fully a decade after I jumped onto the already-moving Internet bandwagon.

The second is a sense of incredulity that comes from the really intimate relationship I have with web technologies. Unlike most programmers who occasionally spit out web stuff, or web developers who learn the language without questioning its precepts, I have approached the web and Internet technology in general from both directions, and as much as I love these technologies, I know that they are, at best, an ad-hoc solution to the problem at hand, and more frequently an ad-hoc solution to a completely different problem. In the same way that tool use and language have produced the bulk of the human brain, but the whole edifice is still a grossly oversized lobe sticking out of the top of a confused and angry lizard brain, the modern web has been repeatedly stretched, twisted and mutated to support the ever-expanding range of uses to which it is being put. I am amazed that people trust this technology to do anything, far less the business-critical functions to which it is increasingly applied.

And finally it is a just pure joy that the web really is living up to my expectations. My dreams, and the dreams of the hundreds and thousands who sweated to build the technologies I use, are being constantly realized. In 1997 web developers announced to the world that the day of the middleman was over, and that travel agents and electronics stores would die as everyone shopped online in the perfect market and found the best deals for themselves online. Today, there are still travel agents and electronics stores, and the market is far from perfect, but hardly anyone now would just walk into a shop and choosing an item without researching models, prices and reviews online first. The web is no longer an amazing new technology, it is a mundane, everyday technology. That is a triumph.

Do not, however, think I am taking any credit for all of this. In the evolution of the Internet, I have been nothing more than an early and enthusiastic cheerleader so far. I understand the technologies that power the web, but I didn't shape them. The companies I have worked for have not pushed the envelope, technology-wise. And I am sure there are other people in other industries who have experienced the rush of possibilities. In the past, they might have been builders of railroads and electricity grids, and today I am sure microchip designers, and possibly nanotech and biotech specialists know the joy of riding this wave. I know that even in relation to web technology my position is far from unique, though I will contend that it is rarer than you'd think.

But there is a temptation to call the game too early, to say "the web is here now, it's everyday, the exciting times are over". I believe nothing is further from the truth. The exciting times have only just got started after a decade. Consider when electricity, a new type of network, was new and exciting. Networks were flung up across the world and soon electric light was an everyday experience, just as web browsers have blossomed everywhere. But with information networks spreading ever further and growing ever more capacious, the browser is the simplest, most trivial thing you could think of to plug into the network. The technology is barely out of its infancy; it has a long childhood to go and a painful adolescence yet to face, but eventually it will be a revolution as deep and fundamental as even the wildest pipe dreams of the mid-90s.

And yes, I have a humble proposal, currently eating up every moment of my waking life, about how that childhood will go. It may fail, but there is no reason to believe that it cannot succeed. Embracing the Internet and learning about every facet of it that I can has been my career and most of my life to date, and it was undoubtedly the smartest thing I have ever done. But if my big dreams come true -- and I admit that they are huge and ridiculous dreams, but so was the Internet, and it happened -- then the smartest thing I will ever do is yet to come.

* A decision roughly along the lines of a little pig choosing straw as a load-bearing structural material.

Went with S to see Beautiful Boxer at the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival tonight. He was ugly as a boy, and ugly as a girl. But during the period of transition, when he had the body of a pretty boy but the face of a handsome girl, was when he was absolutely gorgeous to me, although I'm not sure if I wanted him or just wanted to be him :-)

An excellent movie, but I'm not likely to start changing sex or kickboxing anytime soon.

The Tory campaign poster generator, via darling Artemis. Unnecessarily involved grammatical examinations of the above slogan will not be accepted in the comments as long as Labour are still getting away with "Forward, not back".

Apologies to those whose RSS readers will ignore the formatting information in this post, because it will just look like hundreds of lines of garbage. But I received a really quite clever piece of spam today, and I thought I'd share:

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The text is innocuous, the message is contained in the whitespace. Let's see you filter that out.

Labour -14
Conservative -18
	Liberal Democrat 30
	UK Independence Party 3
	Green 18

You should vote: Liberal Democrat

The LibDems take a strong stand against tax cuts and a strong one in favour of public services: they would make long-term residential care for the elderly free across the UK, and scrap university tuition fees. They are in favour of a ban on smoking in public places, but would relax laws on cannabis. They propose to change vehicle taxation to be based on usage rather than ownership.

Quiz at Who Should You Vote For, via Dom, as usual.

The test I did in the post prior to this one was something of a cheat, given that I'd already decided who I was going to vote for using the BBC's handy policies at a glance election guide. The below is paraphrased from the email in which I decided, on a category by category basis.

Asylum/immigration

I like Lib Dems. Labour are a bit draconian, Conservatives are plain evil.

Health

All three parties have expensive and impractical plans. The Lib Dem would ban smoking in all public places, so despite having the most expensive plans of the three, they get my vote here.

Crime

Labour are wussy, Conservatives are tough (but like drug rehab, which is nice), and Lib Dems are uber-wussy. Surprisingly enough, I'd go conservative on this one.

Education

Both opposition parties are promising way more spending than they can deliver, so I don't take them seriously here. Labour are practical if not terribly visionary.

War on terror

Lib Dems want immediate pullout, so scratch them. Conservatives want to waste money on regiments but Labour have stupid plans for detaining terror suspects (they also like ID cards). Conservatives are the least of three stupidities here.

Pensions

I don't care; the system will doubtless go bust long before I retire. Not a voting issue for me.

Tax/economy

Labour are definitely planning tax rises but won't admit it, Tories are promising tax cuts but also planning rises, Lib Dems are saying they will raise taxes outright and are planning to shift from flat council tax to local income tax, which would save me money, so Lib Dems.

Europe

Tories are anti-Europe, Lib Dems are pro-Europe, Labour are pragmatic about it. So Labour, mainly because Gordon is in charge of deciding when would be the right time to join, and we trust him.

Families

Another non-voting issue for me. We already allow gay adoption. (But see gay marrige, below)

Environment

Everybody has surprisingly good plans, but Tories are signalling they don't like Kyoto. Lib dems are the greenest (well, other than the Greens obviously, but we're not considering them), so Lib Dems win, all other things being equal.

Transport

Conservatives are pandering, Lib-dems are impractical, so Labour, who are merely incompetent.

Rural affairs

Lib Dems and Tories are both anti-GM, Tories are also anti-travellers (aka racist). All want to reform the CAP. Labour.

Constitutional reform

Lib dems have good ideas, Conservatives okay ones, Labour are deliberately dragging their feet and promising nothing. Lib Dems.

Equality/rights

Labour made gay marriage legal. Yay Labour!

Based on the above, I support:

• Conservatives on crime and war (surprisingly)
• Labour on education, Europe, transport, "rural affairs" and equality
• Lib Dems on immigration, health, tax, environment, and constitutional reform

So technically Lib dems are tied with labour, but their positions are similar on Europe, so on balance I think I should vote Lib Dem (unless, of course, it looks like the Tories might win).

And the test this morning just backed that up, essentially by asking questions about all the same issues. I wouldn't be surprised if whoever made the test did it based on that BBC thing too.

Late-posted blog, adapted from a post to the gay geek site. I didn't blog about it at the time because I was still a little shell-shocked.

I saw Downfall last week with a friend. It's a very powerful, disturbing movie. Like any other historical movie, everybody knows the facts of the events, but seeing the way it plays out, and the little details, is where the fascination lies. Especially the fact that you know that many of the smallest details were personally witnessed by Traudl Junge, on whose accounts the movie is largely based. The shock of the movie often lies in the banalities, the practicalities of how things played out.

The movie has been accused of "humanising" Hitler, but neither of us thought it did. If anything, I thought Hitler was so demonic as to be unbelievable -- but then, much of what the third Reich did is unbelievable, yet is nevertheless historical fact.

My one criticism is that since the movie is based on the experiences of Traudl Junge and Ernst Gunther Schenck, a Professor-Doctor who was working in Berlin in the final hours, it tends to portray them in a quite positive light -- in fact, as many reviewers have pointed out, they are practically war-movie stereotypes: the courageous doctor and the secretary caught up in it all. But both were Nazis, and Schenck was a member of the SS, and has been implicated in war crimes including human experimentation in concentration camps.

However, had you not made an emotional connection with any of the characters, it would have been impossible to get into the story: it would just have been a documentary of evil people doing evil things. I think the director took a difficult decision to sacrifice some reality in favour of telling a compelling story, and given the value of the reality he did manage to convey about all the other events in the movie, and the much wider exposure it has received as a compelling movie than a dry documentary, the trade-off was worth it. The more people who know history, the less we are likely to repeat it. And the dead silence from the cinema audience at the end of the movie emphasized just how hard that message had been hit home.

Metacritic has scored this movie 82 out of 100, which makes it one of the top 200 movies of all time.

I am exiting, stage left even, for a two-week vacation in Trinidad, Tobago, St. Vincent and the Grenadines (a series of even tinier tiny islands between St. Vincent and Grenada) that I have been looking forward to for absolutely ages now. I will probably be out of Internet-range for a significant portion of the time. For the reference of stalkers who crave my gorgeous body, and friends who want to see me, here's where I'll be, and when:

• Sat. 16th: Tobago, for 2 hours
• Sat. 16th - Sun. 18th: Trinidad
• Mon. 18th - Fri. 22nd: On a boat, somewhere near St. Vincent
• Fri. 22nd: Trinidad, for one evening only, book now
• Sat. 23rd - Wed. 27th: Trinidad
• Thu. 28th - Fri. 29th: On a boat, somewhere near Trinidad
• Sat. 30th: Trinidad, morning only
• Sun. 1st May: return to UK

So feel free to invite me to things from the 1st onwards :-)

Our flight has been delayed by nearly two hours, so I'm hanging around the airport more than slightly bored. But boredom shared is boredom halved, or something, so here's a boring blog entry about me being bored in an airport.

Why are there so many chavs at Gatwick?

This is being experimentally moblogged from the deck of a moving yacht on the caribbean sea. Isn't technology fabulous? GSM is everywhere. Incidentally, it's great here :-)

One night only, then back to Tobago. Grenadines were amazing, full report later. I have only one other thing to say, which is that the new Pope looks really evil, like Emperor Palpatine levels of evil. He's going to find people who use condoms and electrocute them with lightning bolts from his fingers.

Election coverage is even more petty and banal when seen from 6,000 miles away.

I have been trying to get comments working again. Despite a range of new plugins, I still can't get comments to be spam-proof. The comment-script is however once again functional, so we will get comments and you can approve them if you like, but they won't appear by default. This will last until the spammers notice that my comment script is up again and start overloading the server again, at which point the entire site will go belly-up (like it did the last 3 times).

But hey, I'm trying, right?

It has been a tradition in my family for as long as I can remember that, on Old Years' Night (known as New Year's Eve outside of Trinidad), my father would sing a calypso. This was done in the extempo style, to the tune of Santimanitay, aka Sans D'Humanité, an ancient calypso and traditional tune for any extempo calypsonian. This calypso would cover the events of the year, celebrating and parodying as appropriate, and was much loved by all.

A few years ago our traditional old year's night party disbanded, and so dad wasn't called upon to sing a song. The tradition lay dormant for a while. Then one old year's night in Tobago, after dinner, my brother D stood up unexpectedly and burst into song. He did it excellently and faithfully to the tradition (not hard, since he is so similar to my father as to be his clone).

So on the occasion of my father's sixtieth birthday party, which was last night, it was pretty much expected that D would sing a calypso. What they didn't know was that at the second verse my other brother, T, would also jump in, and then halfway through that verse so would I. This happened last night -- thankfully there is no video or audio evidence -- and was a huge success. So, for posterity, and for all the people who asked for copies of the lyrics, they are below. D's lyrics are in black, T's are in blue and my own are in red. The final verse we all sang together.

Unless you are Trinidadian you probably will find the slang a bit difficult to read. (It's also probably the only time you might have heard me doing a successful Trinidadian accent.) And unless you know my family quite well (say, for the last 30 years or so) you'll probably miss a lot of the jokes. But so what? I also considered stripping names, but since dad's name is pretty intrinsically part of the lyrics, I decided not to.

Sixty Years Birthday

Right here in Trini many years ago
I heard my first home-made calypso
It was ole year’s night singer head was bad
But the lyrics were sweet the man was my Dad!
The tune I remember was Jamaica Farewell
I was full of emotion I’m sure you can tell
Since that day as the middle son
I decide to carry on the tradition

But D not alone I remember it too
I was there that night, so were many of you
I am the first some say the talles’
I must join in before he digress
But don’t forget bout son number three
I missed the first but witnessed plenty
And now that I am also singin’
You know this song can finally begin

Well he’s 60 now so where can we start
Hard to believe he’s now an old fart
A perfect time I’m sure you’ll agree
To share some stories of Prince Gary
The tales are familiar and certainly numerous
Some of them may even be humourous
And what better place to begin this rhyme
Than with Rainbow Cove and Sweet Lime

All of his life he had one real wish
That he could finally catch some fish
Off the jetty or on the north coast
He never had no reason to boast
Now lack of investment was not to blame
With expensive gear result was the same
Sun and rain bus’ our ass till we bawl
But we eh catch no fish at all...

I was never a big fan of fishing
Cornbeef and onion was never my thing
For me Rainbow Cove was just bout the lime
Especially around story time
Ga-ry Gary tell us a story
Was the cry - almost nightly
For plenty of us the memory lingers
Of haunted houses and bony fingers

One thing of which he is sure to gloat
His favourite thing, the man love a boat
In Sweet Lime so many memories made
Although the hull has had an upgrade
Now Gary Voss was a pirogue man
Since he get old no longer a fan
He decide the upgrade might change his luck
But the fish don’t really give a fuck damn...

Now Dad was always a businessman
From hedges to chairs he tried his hand
But small business was not always the deal
First was Cariri then Iron and Steel
It was in Champs Fleurs he made his name
Soap or ice cream its all the same
Now he spends of his time relaxin’
Two meetings a week doh seem that taxin’

Now you know the man has always liked sport
To Tobes and Dan football and cricket he taught
He got us Riptide and meh brothers went sailing
When it was my turn I just start up wailin’
Football on TV and now golf channel too
Nights at the tennis club there were a few
But when I look back and I start thinking
It seems the sport was always de drinkin’

Over the years yuh boy has changed
You might be forgiven for calling him vain
In the early days his hair was so slick
Then later a perm but now hair not so thick
Now it seems there’s a little grey in the locks
In fact now some people call him silver fox
Seems a long time since Express named he
Top ten sexy men in de country

Gary always like a nice set of wheels
From MG, to Sprite and Mercedes
There was a time when he was a scrunter
In those days he drove a Hillman Hunter
When he got a bad drive he used to cuss
Got more mellow later in the Lexus
But I think he start to get confuse
Now is only – BMWs

The garden was always this man's place to be
From lime and grapefruit to frangipani
The breadfruit tree always gettin' higher
And the boys got involved when there was a fire
The sweet lime hedge never really bore fruit
But the boat took the name and story is cute
A yard full of dogs and fruit trees to climb
Ragbir street was de real place to lime

Last week was a time of some happy scenes
As de family went sailin’ up de Grenadines
But is not always a boat roun’ de bay
Now dad an’ mom retire dey always away
New York Paris London they go at a thought
Is long cry from Barbados and Banyan Court
But when de teacher ask me if I went far
I say my favourite beach was Mullins Beach Bar

At the end of his teens he went to England
Education, fortune, plenty things was planned
He spent his 21st digging a ditch
Never realised cold could be such a bitch
Birmingham Uni was the next stop
Checking the talent at ev-e-ry hop
After Uni his good fortune was plenty,
He managed to export Princess Wendy

We all know this man real have de lyrics
Some call it bull shit but dey is cynics
To Princess Anne he showed a thigh or two
Baked beans are from Bradford, I'm telling you
But it's not only English he can converse
He also learned Spanish from Miss Universe
He doh have to prepare, he can just wing it
From him comes our talent, and we can sing it

At heart Gary is still an engineer
From teak furniture to Laurie breakfast chair
He built Rainbow Cove up like he had a fever
Everywhere you turn it was more cantilever
In iron and plastic, cyp woods and teaks
Though he never could get de roof to stop leaks
At the work of invention his skill never wavers
Now he lives in a house wid de first cable papers

Now something take over his life
This infatuation is totally rife
I’m talking ‘bout golf any chance he get
Still he eh manage no handicap yet
He puts in his life and even his soul
To the fairways and the 19th hole
Anytime you can’t find him in town
He’s down at Moka … play-in a round

Technology hasn't always been dad's thing
It took him 3 years to change his phone ring
Doh talk DVD and all dat progress
After 30 years still no VHS
He can e-mail and he browses de net
Typing with one finger, he'll be a while yet
But now dey have two PC in de house
Gary only downstairs playin wid he mouse

You think now at sixty the man is mature
But if you ask Wendy she’ll say she ent sure
But let us tell you now that our father is wise
And he won’t hesitate to give good advice
So I hear you say what is all of dis truth
That Gary imparts to all of de youth?
When life seemin’ rough and de world seemin’ evil
Go brave - stay cool... and live good wit people.

The lyrics are a collaboration. Seven of the verses are mainly by me (including the obvious technology one), but I didn't sing all of what I wrote. "Go brave, stay cool, and live good with people" is my father's motto in life -- it's written in a plaque on the wall of our house. It roughly translates as "have courage", "stay calm under pressure", and "do unto others as you would have them do unto you", although that last doesn't really adequately describe the pseudo-karmic philosophy that underlies it.