The Dork Knob

Dinner with the CIX veggies last night, instead of Skeptics in the Pub. Saw an old friend I've not seen since about 2000, as she emigrated to New Zealand. She was very surprised by the changes in my appearance. Around the same time, another friend commented that she liked me with a ponytail.

Well, it had to go. You see, there's a point in a man's life, somewhere in his mid to late 30s for most, when even the best-cared-for ponytail miraculously and silently transforms itself from cool, vaguely-alternative hairstyle into a Dork Knob™.

The canonical Dork Knob is a short, thin, stubby grey ponytail, often worn either high on the back of the head -- to gather in the not-really-long-enough-for-this-but-it's-all-I-can-grow hair -- but variants include the flat lifeless greasy thing lying on the back of the neck like some parasite of the spinal cord and any ponytail growing out of the back of a head which is bald on top or significantly thinning.

Ponytails emerging from hats or caps which are a permanent fixture should be regarded with deep suspicion as possible manifestations of this latter evil. (I could Name Names from this very flist here, but I'm sure you know who you are.)

All these should be ruthlessly exterminated. There is only one way to wear thinning or receding hair with dignity and that is very shortly cropped.

There are two possible exceptions, however, to this rule on middle-aged long male hair. One is very rare and the other is much rarer than that.

The rare variant is a long thick clean well-maintained ponytail in steel-grey hair. Some guys are lucky enough to keep a full thick head of hair even when it all goes grey. If one has kept true to the cause all this time and has long (it should approach waist-length) hair and it's well-maintained, then this is exception number one. For best results, the wearer should be whipcord-thin, wirily muscular and ideally tanned and lined from long exposure to the skies. If possible, arrange to be descended from Native American bloodlines. (I can think of a single exception to the thinness rule here and he's on this flist, too.)

The really rare variant is God's Ponytail. I have only seen this once in real life. It generally can only be sported by men of a Certain Age, where that is late fifties to sixties. This is again a thick ponytail growing from a full head of hair, but the hair should be somewhat curly and pure white. This is that rare category of ponytail which can and possibly should be accompanied by a full beard. The hair should look like it is being forcibly restrained into the tie or band and the wearer should look comfortable and in-place if he was, say, striding powerfully down a burning mountain.

Other than that, male ponytails more than twenty years old should be culled without mercy. The age requirement can be waived if the ponytail in question is not well-maintained: kept clean, brushed more than once a day and so on. (Trimming is a bonus but some can get away without it.) Whether the hair is always gathered into a ponytail, only occasionally or never is irrelevant; those who have long hair because they can't be bothered to look after it should be forcibly taught the error of their ways with the clippers, at any age. This also applies to wearer of headbands, alice bands, pigtails or plaits -- you cannot hide your crime by disguising it.

Assymmetrical ponytails or those emerging from hair that is not all long enough to be pulled back into the ponytail must also be extirpated. I am sure you are all aware of the perils of The Mullet.

[Blog] Computers and depression

Funny how those things are so often linked. Could there be a causal relationship, I wonder?

Anyhoo. There's this great interview that you really should read, with Will Shipley, creator of Delicious Library, a nifty app that only runs on Mac OS X. He has a lovely comment on people reluctant to even contemplate switching over to Macs:

Mac users love their machines; Windows users put up with their machines because they don't believe there's anything really better.

It's depressing, really, because it's like dealing with victims of abuse: "Seriously, there's a better world out there, and you deserve it! You don't have to put up with this! You can leave! Mac will treat you right!" And their response is right out of the textbooks: "Why would I trust Mac? I don't think anything can be good after this."

I wish I were joking above, but these are almost exact quotes from like a dozen conversations I've had.

I love the Mac user base because they tend to be people who are into trying out new software and recommending it to each other and giving the little guy a chance. Windows users have demonstrated, ipso facto, that they do not believe in the little guy.

The two types of Windows users I've identified at my café are:

  1. I use Windows to run Word and Excel and browse the web (and read e-mail in my web browser), and
  2. I'm a programmer and I spend all my time in a Windows IDE or hacking around with my system.

The problem is that market (a) already has all the software they think they'll ever need, and clearly isn't into looking beyond what they already have or they'd have noticed they could do all that they currently do, and more, but much easier, on a Mac. And market (b) is too small for me to aim any software at it.

What can you do? You tell people there's a better way, that they don't have to put up with this, you even show them, but they just won't. Sad and terribly frustrating. Sure, there are reasons for Windows, and Linux too, and people for whom these are just right, but unless you have some of those special needs or actually actively enjoy fixing broken computers, then the Mac is a better answer.

I don't know. Maybe folk will look when Macs have an "Intel Inside" sticker and have as many megahurts as "real computers", 'cos, like, everyone knows that more megs make it faster, right? (Technical readers would be surprised how many intelligent, educated people ask me if adding a bigger hard disk to their computer will make it faster, or if filling up the old one makes it slower, or who cannot tell the difference between memory and disk space. People don't know and don't want to know.)

If you just want to do things with your pooter and don't care how it works, YOU, yes you, ought to be using a Mac. Seriously. They're less than £500 and 2nd-hand ones from years ago work fine today. Yes, you can keep your printer and screen and stuff. And your mouse. Yes, you get a right mouse button. And the little wheel. Yes, you can bring your files across. No, you don't need to buy loads of new software; almost everything you need comes with it or is free. No, you won't struggle to relearn. No, it does NOT help you to be running the same thing as at work. All right, no, I admit, they don't have loads of great games. Buy a sodding Playstation.

He also has things to say about why OS X is such a great thing for programmers. This is relevant to non-programmers trying to understand why Mac users think Macs rock.

But Wil, interestingly, has also fought a lifelong battle against depression and OCD, and in his own normally-very-techy blog, he has some good points to make about that, too.