• When is a pencil and paper better than a computer? – And here’s another piece about technology and voting in the States. This time (blatant self-promotion alert) it’s one that I wrote last year…
• Follow the Money – Daringfireball links to this “forgotten” Cringely article about the US voting system. He’s right: low technology can be the answer!
• Pointui, the definitive user interface for mobile devices. – Been playing around with this on my HTC P4350. First impressions: great. I love the fact that I am less reliant on the stylus — one of my main problems with Windows Mobile.
• Make the defence of Human Rights your New Year?s Resolution – “We must all try very much harder to support Human Rights from attack, whether that is from religious or cultural forces.”

Whenever you see Petra in the media you see a picture of the Treasury. I just did a web search and the top three links with pictures all used such an image, often with a camel sat in front.

Let’s not beat around the bush here: Al Khazneh, the “proper” name of the Treasury, is spectacular. It’s a two thousand year old, forty metre high carving straight into the sandstone rock face.

The surprising thing, given that it’s about the only image of the place you’ve seen beforehand, is that there is so much more to Petra than just the Treasury.

Leaving Jerash around lunchtime, I head south towards Kerak, known variously as Karak and Al Karak, stopping briefly for a float in the Dead Sea and a distant view of Israel.

It’s already dark when I arrive making it difficult to see much of anything. I am assured that the building in front of me is the castle but it just looks like another hotel at this time of evening. I take dinner in a restaurant right next to the (alleged) castle. They are filming for something and there are eerie bright lights shining through the windows — slightly disconcerting when you know it’s dark out.

I remember when I was at school doing history I loved the Romans. They were so advanced and yet had these brutal elements, a combination that I found fascinating. Even now I continue to be amazed by Roman ruins. Nothing we build now seems to last more than a few decades yet this massive, two thousand year old empire still has buildings standing.

As is necessary when you travel to the US, I hired a car. It’s always tricky to hire a small car in America — only in the US could an SUV fit in a “small car” parking space — but I dismissed all their attempts to get me to upgrade. Maybe it was some form of revenge, but I ended up with a Chrysler P.T. Cruiser. Not terribly small. But actually terrible.

It’s not all the books that purport to tell you all you need to know about Microsoft Excel or the Missing Manual for the iPod, although I do question the utility of a thousand page tome about an MP3 player. No, the thing that annoys me are those friendly looking yellow and black books that are marketed at Dummies.

Why would I object to a series of books that tries to make a complex subject clear and approachable?

I like Joel. Well, I’ve never actually met him, of course. I mean I like his writing. I’ve read much of his website, I subscribe to his RSS feed so that I can see his new pieces as soon as they’re “published” and I’ve bought his other books even though they’re just rehashes of stuff that’s already on the net. That may seem a little crazy, as though I have more money than sense, but some things are much easier to read on paper than on LCD. And his writing is easy, humorous and engaging, making it worth dipping into occasionally.

Microsoft have been getting lots of press recently because of their new Zune music player. One of its major features is its wireless interface that lets you share music; even most of the advertising talks about the social implications¹. But let’s have a quick look at that functionality in more detail.

If I decide that I want to expend an hour of battery life in order to see other Zunes in the area, what can I do? Most famously you can transfer songs. As I’m sure you’ve heard by now, there are limits. When I receive a song, I can play it three times or hang onto it for three days² but after that all I get is an electronic post-it note reminding me about it. Clearly a lot of thought and a lot of engineering effort has gone into these limitations.

In this article in MacUser Howard Oakley notes that a number of schools have recently banned the use of wireless networks due to the unknown effects of the radio waves used. He then connects this with the declining number of people taking science subjects at those same schools and their ability to understand the likely risks of said networks.

It’s an interesting piece, but what I find interesting is that as the general populations understanding of how the world works dwindles, so our reliance on high technology increases¹.

The company where I (currently) work is always trying to get people to transfer over to the New York office. There are a number of personal reasons why I didn’t want to do that, however the main reason was always that it — basically — just didn’t appeal. It really didn’t seem to be very much different from London, where I currently live, but, well, more. So when I visited New York in April I was not expecting to like it very much.