The View From Here

If you want me, I'll be in the Caribbean, working and kicking back for a week...

Birmingham's very own and only Europe's second AppleStore opened last Friday April 29th @ 6pm coinciding with the release of Tiger, OS X 10.4. Emily queued for almost 3 hours to enter the store and get one of the limited edition T-shirts. Me and Matthew waited until after 9pm and queued for just a few minutes. This picture is of Matt's T-shirt. I've kept mine unopened in the box it came in. Who knows, may be worth something on e-bay one day! Click the photo to see more of my pics of the opening.

Well whadya know, Apple's second European AppleStore opens in my home town at 6pm on April 29th, timed to coincide with the release of Tiger. Thanks to another new release in the UK, Google maps, here's how to find the new Apple store. Just so that you'll recognise the Bullring when you get to Birmingham, here's the Flickr Bullring picture gallery.

Ok, so only a few more hours when I can say I'm still in my 30's. Tomorrow I hit the big 40. How do I feel? Fine. Why shouldn't I be, it's only another birthday :)

Today is the first day of Spring for all Northern hemisphere dwellers (first day of Autumn in the Southern hemisphere).

Robert J. Vanderbei has done a really nice piece of work to visualize the US election results county by county rather than state by state. Robert's map shows that America is not as geographically polarized in its support for Kerry or Bush as the state by state results (or indeed the media reports) would have us belive. There clearly are strong geographic preferences for Republican or Democratic politics but isn't not as black or white, or indeed red or blue, as appears at first. In order to understand the true picture you have to look closer to see sufficient detail. The county by country election results are available via the USA Today election results web site if you want to check or look up the results for an individual county.

Lilia Effimova has also spotted this map and has written a typically thoughtful piece on the dangers of binary thinking as a result of over generalization.

You can only see the picture clearly when you have sufficient detail

So, after one of the biggest turn-outs in US election history, the majority of voting Americans want George W Bush to be their president for 4 more years. In fact more people wanted him to be president this time than last. Sure, a lot of people are unhappy about that, but you can't argue with democracy, and the people have spoken. If you are fortunate to live in a country where every citizen has the right to vote, remembering many people in the world aren't quite so fortunate, and where every vote is worth the same as the next, then sometimes it's hard to accept when not everyone in your country feels the same as you if your guy doesn't win but theirs does. At least you were able to cast your vote.