Pockets of resistance.
Who decided resistance always, always, always comes in pockets?
Now that hostilities have dimished and entire news bulletins can go by without blurry 'videophone' images from war correspondents, I am greatly relieved that the phrase 'Pockets of resistance' is rarely heard.
It got so that you could tell that a reporter, military type or newsreader was going to say it a couple of sentences before they did - you could see them building up to it as though it was some kind of incantation that would keep them safe from harm like their redundant rubber suits and masks.
I would like to write that I was shocked by and in awe of this stupid phrase, but I wasn't. It just irritated me.
Further proof, if proof be needed, that in leafy Buckinghamshire there are too many people with too much money (excluding this author).
I cam across some more input to my profiling activities to define 'Beaconsfield Woman' and 'Beaconsfield Man' when I visited the local tip.
Time was, the tip was where people took absolute rubbish, things that no-one could possibly extract any further use from except to recycle the materials. This seems not to be the case round our way. I was dumping some garden refuse in the skip earmarked for stuff to be composted, 'Beaconsfield Man' turned up (in a Merc estate, natch) and unloaded an old vacuum cleaner. Thing was, there was a place to put metal electrical items but he was a bit puzzled about what to do with this one, cos it was a Dyson! The bloke running the tip couldnt believe his luck - I expect its already on its way to a second hand shop in Slough.
Looking around I counted 19 bicycles, all complete, working and in good used condition. 19! Why do people take this stuff to a tip? In my day they would have gone to someone who had a child of the right size for them, or at worst into the "Five pounds and under" free ads in the local paper. But not here. The town is full of charity shops (outside which people seem happy to dump piles of useless shit when they are closed).
I spose I shouldn't be surprised, but I am.
This reporters expectations were not exceeded by this weeks gathering of the great and the good of the XML industrah!
Having already failed to spot a German public holiday a couple of years ago (when the place was full of puzzled looking Americans wondering where everybody was) one might have thought that the business process improvement team at Idealliance might have checked their dates before organising a conference in London on a UK public holiday.
Whether they did or they didn't, the pointy-bracket brigade stayed away in their droves. No doubt attendance will be misrepresented as usual, but the scene at the reception desk - 3 little boxes of name badges for those who had pre-registered - revelaed the truth.
Simon Nicholsons prophecy is coming true! There is as much need for an XML show as there is for an ASCII show (or an EBCDIC one).
A massive 26 exhibitors packed the Monarch Suite at the Hilton Metropole on Edgeware Road (well, a small corner of it). The corridors and coffee shops (£7 for 2 glasses of water and a small coke) hummed with talk of all things XML. As a subscriber to the Nicholson Prophecy, I was disappointed to realise how many faces I recognised, and how very few customers with budget there appeared to be.
But it was pleasing to chat with some familiar faces and share a bit of gossip, and to be able to go home at the end of the evening.
I had high hopes of spotting some classic SGML/XML Cardigans, and spent as much time as I dared loitering at the XML club stand, but none were in evidence, and I didn't want to get too close - Pam Genusa was hugging people (obviously I wouldn't have been a candidate huggee, but it was nonetheless unsettling and disturbing sight).
I briefly entertained the idea that something new and exciting might appear, but other than some nice looking SVG stuff that Corel now have the song remained pretty much the same (as did most of the singers, come to that).
I narrowly avoided a collision with someone who I assumed had just escaped from presenting a 1970's Open University Maths lecture, but who actually turned out to be someone from a company supplying a rather mediocre XML Differencing toolkit. That was a narrow escape.
I'm certain that many exciting discussions were had, technological differences aired, and visionary prognostications challenged, but for me I just missed those little old ladies with their cardigans and questions about subdoc.
Roll on the 6502 Assembler Show!