The fabhappy.com website was fully refreshed and relaunched in early November. This was after months of work by Peter who was striving to ‘make it a more pleasing experience for anybody that visits the site.’
Then, as soon as the more pleasing version of the site was relaunched, Peter learned that some of the underlying technology had been deprecated. His efforts would still work for years but since technical support was being terminated, the site would slowly drift out of phase with other underlying and integrated technologies. And so it seemed like it would be a good time for Peter to learn the latest manifestations of the underlying code and rebuild the website all over again. So he learned, rebuilt and relaunched fabhapy.com last weekend.
‘The good news is that the result is even better than it was before’ wrote Peter. He’s very upbeat about the evolution of technologies since his day job is all about defining and implementing future geoscience technologies. This need for repositioning in the face of change and reconsideration of future outcomes was second nature to him.
I think this website refresh mirrors how global integration demands that we pay a supplementary price to keep things in step. Vigilance requires alternate sets of eyes, an awareness of what’s happening in the peripheries perhaps.
Caveat emptor: my musings may not be complete let alone correct.
I’m thinking about the consequences of Brexit because I’m not British. Having worked in Britain for over twenty years, I voted to remain. Then I left Britain and I can still only agree with one side of the debate. I’m a lumper (in the geological sense) and a compromiser. I think that populism is driven by confrontation at the cost of mediated outcomes. It’s all very well to be partisan at sports games but compromise is the lifeblood of union. Union in British terms seems to be about England being in charge of Welsh, Scots and Irish minorities. With the lack of transparency, imperiously enforced during ‘sensitive’ negotiations, it seems that the cronies, who probably met in very English institutions such as Eton and Sandhurst, continue to hold sway.
No more obviously so than when 100 Bn was allocated for national Covid screening without consultation with the scientists who manage national screening for a living. The spendthrifts called it Moonshot, the term for having a go something that is generally believed to be impossible. Except that it’s the experts who believe it’s impossible (but no one asked). Perhaps the instigators and approvers know that there’s forgiveness for failing at the impossible. And here I am trying to be skeptical rather than cynical.
Am I wrong to think that one of the world’s largest suppliers of armaments has prioritised their industry of death over compromise? In case you don’t know, the UK exported about 14 Bn of defence materiel per month in 2018. Averaged over that year, total monthly exports were worth about 53 Bn. Some might ask if there’s a moral question to answer when military exports make up 25% of your earnings.
As Tolkien wrote there ‘One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them, one ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.’ For ring read cabal and then it becomes easy to see why the binding darkness should worry us.
You might think I’ve digressed into a rant but no, I see a parallel in rebuilding a website because of external changes and the modified positions of the negotiators seeking deals before Brexit. The negotiators need to adapt but they probably can’t because they are indirectly driven by populist political sentiment. The fisheries arguments, for example, are particularly specious given that the reason foreigners hold the licences is that the British fishermen sold them for cash.
Back at the FabHappy website where, as noted earlier the website ‘is even better than it was before … There are a lot of Christmas decorations … and it’s probably the right time to consider Simon’s Scarves.’
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