Classic joke...

Old Scottish Jokes Home:

A man walks into a Glasgow library and says
to the librarian, "Excuse me Miss, do ye huv
any books on suicide?"

The librarian looks up and says,
"Fuck off! Ye'll no bring it back!"

More updates to alibullock.com

Been a busy week here in Hong Kong. Finally the story over naked canto pop stars is dying down, my presentation on web 2.0 is almost finished for Cathay and I have even managed to sneak in some time on my web site.

(1) So you can see the site with all the improvements here and here for the non-flash

(2) My FB account is updated here

(3) and finally my FLICKR account has finally been given the attention it deserves which you can see here.

Next week presentations on web 2.0 and hopefully a nice relaxing week-end after that...

ali bullock

You know when you have to much spare time when...

{update} Mrs B asked me, "How do you drive an F1 car when its made of match sticks?"

Comments welcome.

... When you have 956,000 (yes you read that correctly) spare match sticks to go round, what do you do? Well, if you are German (and who doesn't love the Germans! Jens, you know who you are), of course you build an F1 car.

And there was me thinking there was nothing obsessive about the Germans....

I quote,

"What do you do when you can't afford a million quid to buy a real McLaren 4/14 Formula 1 car? You spend almost £4,500 building one out of matchsticks, of course.

Wacky German, Michael Arndt spent 6 years building this immaculate replica in his kitchen. And all it took was 956,000 matchsticks and 1,686 tubes of glue. Of course, there’s not much room left for socialising.

Thankfully, it can be broken down – very carefully – into 45 pieces for transport to various matchstick building conventions. Yes, it is insane but you have to admire the single-minded dedication/obsession."

Link

You can't right yesterdays mistakes - But Australia humbles us all

Australia has taken a brave step and apologized for its dreadful mistreatment of the Aboriginal children. Nothing can make up for the pain, suffering and frankly inhuman blot on a country - But you can take the bold step and try to make amends.

The mistakes of the past are there and you can't back away from your responsibilities, nor can you live in the past. It should now be time to move on. But I give a lot of credit to the Australian government for their humanity.

A lesson many countries and its people could do with learning.

http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,23202622-5001021,00.html

Only in China...

Only in China:

A sudden spike in the demand for pet rodents, inspired by the start of the "Year of the Rat", has forced the price of hamsters up by as many as six times in China, state media reported Wednesday.

Prior to the Lunar New Year, hamsters went for as little as five yuan (70 US cents) each, but now they cost as much as 30 yuan, the People's Daily said in a report posted on its website.

"More people want rat-like pets," Yi Xiaoran, an online hamster trader, told AFP. "I've got at least twice as many customers looking for hamsters now than before Lunar New Year."

Kung Hei fat choi! 恭喜发财 - Wishing you a prosperous year of the Rat.

Chinese New Year has come and gone and its been a great holiday here in HK - Quiet streets (other than Won Tia Sin) for us to show Mum and Peter around.

There is so much to see here and I will be updating my web site with more photos, bit for now I have included a few from the last 4 days.

Tomorrow its back to work at Cathay, and I'm sure there will be plenty to do (no bad thing at all!)

So all it remains for me to say is Kung Hei fat choi! 恭喜发财

You can see the photos here

Photos from CNY: 2008

Had a great Chinese New Year with Caz and the fokes (more photos from them later).

So here are the photos from CNY: Click here

When you are bored on the train try this

Very cool site where a Japanese guys folds bank notes into different shapes - Featured here is our very own queen.

Click here to view the notes (note, site in Japanese)

Big idea - Small city

Photography is amazing. And as it falls to me to bring you the best in photography/web sites here is a new one:

http://www.cityshrinker.com/

The images that you see right and indeed on the site above is real. The photographer shrinks down though photoshop (and magic devil juice) - The images are very cool.

Talking about the US

As we are in the middle of the American elections I thought this might be on topic. While having ad dinner with some friends on Saturday night (fellow republicans, not damn cowards, I mean democrats.. No names!) and I was reminded of how great Texas is. (They are from Memphis, but everyone thinks Randi is from Texas due to her accent - A compliment in my opinion.)

Anyway, I am reminded of a story that my old boss Kim Ort's husband told me about the Texas Rangers.

The governor of New Orleans in the middle of the chaos and rioting after Katrina asked the Governor of Texas to send Rangers to help. The governor sent one to the main street.

The New Orleans Governor calls the Texan Governor and said, you only sent one man?"

The Texas Governor replied: What, you got more than one riot?"

Texas rules. Disagree and you might well get shot. Take that Clinton.

UNhappy MOTO

Normally I would not blog about my company or a previous employer. My feeling is, that just like talking about old girlfriends, the mud sticks and you don't look good no matter what.

However, this story about Motorola is one that I feel I can though as an ex-employee who left the company for the primary reason that I knew this would happen to Moto.

What a sad state of affairs Motorola finds itself in. I have to say they have no-one to blame but themselves and of course the corporate American team who didn't get the obvious fact - RAZR was getting old fast.

In fact, its even worse that they are not even going to try and fight back, just spin the division off into the deadpool. That is the only place the handset division has to go. Perhaps if they stopped funding "corporate heads" and actually concentrated on the business of selling phones they might have a chance, but this isn't going to happen.

Motorola reminds me of the Titanic and the corporate team are too busy re-arranging the deck chairs to launch the lifeboats and save the division.

I can remember the quote from my old boss Simon Thompson who said, "RAZR is old, done, and we need consumers to love Motorola the brand, not RAZR the phone." While he had the marketing knowledge, no one in Shamburg wanted to stick their head out of the sand and admit that he was right.

Hense he left the company. And now so will any remaining employees with any shred of talent or corporate dignity. Sad but true the talent has left the building along with market share and our old friend share price.

So can Motorola be saved, would I go back? The answer is no to both. The company is to US focused and it has lost the people that could make it work. Competition is to strong now for them to make a comeback. My play - Shut Moto's handset division down? Probably the only thing you can do. There is no savior that I can see.

What apple and Nokia do so well is not only the design, but the software - And this is where Motorola really struggles. It has never invested in this area and if it did, it might have had a chance.

Again, too late now. RIP.

Quote from Endgadet:
Rumor no longer, Motorola is taking a hard look at its Mobile Devices unit and might very well give those slackers the ol' Freescale treatment and spin off the division as a separate company. This sort of love 'em and leave 'em tactic is oddly a bit of a habit with Motorola when times are bad, and times certainly have been better -- Motorola's phone unit lost $388 million this quarter, compared to $341 million in earnings a year ago. Motorola may sell the unit or spin it into its own company, which would leave Motorola with precious few intersections with the RAZR-saturated consumer, and as more of a government and enterprise business. Says Greg Brown, current president and CEO: "We are exploring ways in which our Mobile Devices Business can accelerate its recovery and retain and attract talent while enabling our shareholders to realize the value of this great franchise." It's a pretty odd statement for any company to make, and considerations may be further along than they sound, but either way we'll be keeping an eye out for any developments.