Your emails 5000 years later

Present day Iraq is littered with 5000 year old memos, invoices, account ledgers, personal letters, business correspondence, payrolls, legal documents and the bureaucratic “paperwork” kings. All of which were originally written on slabs of wet clay commonly referred to as Cuneiform (indopedia.org has a brief overview for the impatient). When dry, these “documents” become rock hard and survive the centuries. Along with the fingerprints of their authors.

They provide an insightful view of daily life in ancient times. Fundamentally nothing much has changed. People still send bills, write checks, and keep accounts. Relatives write letters to youngsters telling them to study and become accountants, while kids ask their parents for more money to keep up with the day’s fashions. Frightening how superficially we mutate.

I doubt our digital documents will last that long. Even if there is anyone interested to read them, it is unlikely that our blogs, emails, and other digital debris will exist in a readable form. Open file formats offer a flicker of hope but not much. Digital documents require a digital environment just to be read. Babylon cuneiform tablets only need sunlight. Perhaps our writing will as ephemeral as the vanished oral cultures of extinct tribes.

Yes, I am being a bit cynical after spending too much time wrestling with ancient 20th century file formats. Thankfully the last two centuries have been quite will documented than most. There is a greater chance that the words of insignificants like us will be read. Not that it matters in the wider scheme of things. Our peers amongst the ancients we not concerned with a far away future. They just wanted the season’s sheep counted, get a spot on the next caravan and ultimately get paid. How pragmatically human.

The closest I can get to being similarly pragmatic with this post is to ask: have you backed up your blog lately? Ever thought of printing the whole thing on archival paper?

Aero-matic rice truck art

Sri Lanka’s traditional wooden chase trucks have an interesting mix of traditional and modern motifs. This example (a rice truck I suppose) seems to emphasis the modern. Despite the otherwise familiar landscape vignettes , the collision course airplanes give a the design an unusual sense of movement. Air traffic control people will find this slightly uneasy though.

High time for a truck art post indeed. Here’s the picture:

First 1000 days of blogging

1000 days have passed since I posted my first blog post – thanks to the day counter for the data. I know there’s been a slew of “anniversary” posts lately and I sound like a pathetic blogger boasting for affirmation.

I don’t mind if this comes across as boasting. I don’t see yet another chronological number “anniversary” as an achievement. Just an public acknowledgement of the passing of time in the course of an activity. An activity that is one of the few “creative” things I have been able to maintain consistently.

I blame this charade of persistence on the ideas that sprout somewhere amongst my nuttier neurones. Writing blog posts is simply a way of emptying the head. It has reached the regularity of a satisfying bodily function. Now a thousand days have passed since it began. That is all.

Sri Lankan blogger’s 1000th rhythmic post

My spies (they ARE everywhere) inform me that a well known Sri Lankan blogger on a cold wet island off Europe will/has hit the 1000 post mark after a mere 3+ years of blogging (having pumped out a prolific 200+ posts annually). According to my analysts, he beats the drums at a similarly frantic pace. They have had to replace the hidden mikes in the drum kit repeatedly. It is a pace most of use lesser blogger can dream of acquiring.

I have been getting a generous amount of traffic off the guy’s blogroll. This little public service announcement is the least I can do.

I’ll avoid a sycophantic ramble about how his rhythmicness has made a mark on the Sri Lankan blogosphere (Lankonsphere) . The scope, the variety, and the history are a sprawl of Siberian proportions. Covering it all is harder than playing the collected works of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky (in reverse) on a Rabana. You are better off reading it all on the man’s own blog.

PS:
My spies will be carrying out a global upgrade of hidden cameras (HD with stereo sound) and wish to apologise in advance for the imminent intrusions.

First 200000 hits

According to the stats, my blog passed the 200000 visitor mark some time yesterday. I guess I can safely bet that all the hits can’t all be from me. Interestingly its just over a year ago since I made the six digit mark. Far cry from timid days of my first blog post. This sort of mulling around over numbers understandably comes off as gloating. Perhaps it is. I’m surprised how I’ve kept it up. The voices in my header aren’t

If the numbers mean anything it is that there are people out there who feel that my keyboard pecks – despite my endless typos and jerky style are worth their time. THAT a very humbling thought.

Thank you – for reading and your insightful comments