Tom lent me a copy of Omori Sogen: The Art of a Zen Master at the Airenjuku Christmas drinks last week (which turned predictably WWE, thanks to a bottle of tequila that James passed my way). A really fantastic read - a book which I'd like to re-read in years to come. Thoroughly recommended if you're interested in this kind of thing.

"We got up at four in the morning, went down the mountain, and bathed in a river. Before breakfast we did the Hojo fifteen times. After that we rested a while then practiced thirty more times. After lunch we rested and did the Hojo fifty-five more times until dusk. We did zazen in the evenings.

On the fourth day a strange thing happened. The same arms that had difficulty in even holding the wooden sword went smoothly up over my head. As my arms went down, I felt a strength that was not physical coming out of both arms. It felt as if this downward cut extended to the other end of the world."

Pete's pointed to this lovely quote: "If you enjoy programming computers, count your blessings: you are in a very fortunate minority of people who can make a great living doing work they enjoy. Most people aren’t so lucky. The very idea that you can “love your job” is a modern concept. Work is supposed to be something unpleasant you do to get money to do the things you actually like doing, when you’re 65 and can finally retire, if you can afford it, and if you’re not too old and infirm to do those things, and if those things don’t require reliable knees, good eyes, and the ability to walk twenty feet without being out of breath, etc."

Personal anecdote: when I was 19 I spent a summer working in the refrigerated cold-store of a dairy, pushing trolleys of milk around from 8am and 6am. It was OK - I got reasonably fit over the course of the summer and it gave me some spending money and something to do.

But there were a couple of old guys there who'd been there 30+ years, doing this every day... and from talking to them, it wasn't something which got them fired up, just a necessary means to support themselves.

Getting paid for doing something you enjoy is a massive privilege.

"The products cited most often in Japan's consumer electronics rebirth ... include digital cameras, high-definition TVs and DVD players, along with the components that go in them. In these devices and others, domestic manufacturers have continued to hone an edge in turning aluminum, plastic and little cartoon characters into art.": The emotional aspect of i-mode design

Sorry to bang on about it, but is Flickr+cameraphone a better blogging tool than most blogging tools?

I've noticed recently that my friends can get a much better view of what I'm up on a day-to-day to by watching my Flickr feed than by reading my weblog (which, let's face it, is quite dull if you're not into the same stuff I am). It's just much easier to me to pop photos up than it is to write a story - pictures being worth a thousand words and all that.

Plus, people who don't know or care about blogs get it.

So, here's my bet: as this stuff gets more popular, blogging tools that are focused around easily getting video and imagery out of our phones and into the eyes of our friends will be where the mass market turn... leaving essayists with the more texty tools that we know and love today.

Bobbie asks what the killer app for 3G is: "video calling hasn't really taken off, so perhaps it will just be about fast download times and interconnectivity".

Hmm, what was the killer app for v32bis? Or for ISDN? Or for ADSL?

IMHO it's not about the networks, it's about getting them plugged into peoples lives. The killer app for the fixed-line internet was web access, because it was so universal and could be applied in so many ways. So err... it's "just" connectivity.

<cough>WAP</cough>