Gadget Joy and HTML Hate

My third post today: You can see, I'm sure, that the joy of Gadget is still strong in me.

I don't think it's unique to any one group, but it seems that male scientists between 18 and 30 are absolute martyrs to Gadget joy. Eddie Izzard is, of course, the celebrity example. (He discusses it in "Glorious" if you don't believe me.

Tangent: You can get a 4-CD box set of Eddie Izzard recordings, and it works out quite cheap. Here's a link: CD1 and CD2.
I really like these CD's but there seems to be one fatal omission. I do not know what "Cake or Death" is all about.

Tangent on a tangent: I think the word "affect" there is right, but perhaps it's meant to be "effect". We have an odd language.

(/tangent)

Anyone who recognises that little joke (jokoid?) should promptly label themselves "nerd". I mean that in an affectionate way, of course, as should be obvious from the fact that I'm inevitably applying it to myself as well.

I'm not a HTML wizard. If you ever come to my blog site and find the sidebar smeared nicely across the text and a picture of a brown cow forlornly blinking on and off amid the debris, you'll know why.

With that dubious introduction, let me give you a picture-link.

Computer Hope, as they're called, have a very good range of free documents on HTML. I think I'm going to be using them quite a lot, whenever I want to tinker with the template.

Most people will have felt no reaction to that last statement. Many will be going "But why on earth would you want to tinker with the template?" Why? Simple. Because I crave power, and because I get a lot of self-esteem from thinking that I'm clever. But also because of Gadget Joy.

Gadget Joy can add a wide margin of desirability to almost any product. For example, I used to have a torch. The batteries ran down and I didn't replace them. Now, I have a super-bright LED keychain torch. It's small, it's neon green, you can see the PCBs and all. This has a gadget factor in the high 80s, and as such I treasure it. The internet is literally teeming with places where you can buy products where the intrinsic value is virtually nil, but these sites make millions. Why? Because intrinsic value is proportional to usefulness, or rarity, or some other quality, but gadget joy is a constant. Let's take a solid, useful product like (I don't know) a telephone. Quality of sound, range, battery life- these are not important. We're selling on Gadget joy, so it must be

1) Small
2) Colourful
3) Make nice sounds when you press buttons, and preferably
4) light up.

That's why there are digital cameras on phones. They serve no purpose, and the picture quality is appalling, but it's cool. In the future, I predict convergent evolution between mobile phones and firefly.


Me: "I enjoy the comedy stylings of Mr Izzard. He's definitely my favourite transvestite."
Them: "Har, yeah, cake or death"
Me: "Excuse me?"

Song in my head: "Fell in Love With A Girl" by White Stripes