calebbrown.id.au

So while I was carrying out my daily dump-the-junk-mail routine I considered for the umpteenth time buying a 'No Junk Mail' sticker for the mailbox.

Then I wondered: what would happen if 'No Junk Mail' stickers were delivered with the junk mail? What would happen if they were mailed out en masse to every home in Sydney?

It struck me that such a stunt could be very disruptive.

Assuming a majority of people apply the sticker, it could drive the companies that are responsible for distributing the material out of business. It would mean more teenagers hunting employment at the local department store. And they wouldn't be able to employ them due to the drop in income from a smaller distribution of their catalogs.

The upside to this is that families would be less inclined to buy things that don't actually need, but all this would probably result in an increase in prices as retailers try and make ends meet.

The only real winner in the end would probably be the environment.

Pictured here is my 3 month old niece, Imogen, looking inquisitively at the camera in the cute way only babies can. Prior to her birth there was much speculation as to what her name would be. And as usual no one who guessed was right. I didn't compete, but I wouldn't have got it anyway. But I think Deb and Pete made the right choice with Imogen.

Anyhow, all this talk about names got me thinking about how people go about deciding what to call their children. Often a family name may be adopted according to tradition, or one significant to either parent. The sound of the name, how it rolls off the tongue, may be important to some too.

The ways the name can be changed, shortened and distorted should also be considered. Children at high school are ruthless, and adults aren't much better, so it pays to ensure they won't face needless ridicule, torment and possible psychological damage.

Another factor that seems to be socially important is uniqueness. Probably because people think there are already enough Michaels, Andrews and Davids. But it's getting to a ridiculous level now where people will deliberately misspell a name so that it's different to the other people with the same name.

The existence of the Internet seems to exacerbate this problem further. I've heard that people will choose names based on the availability of the internet domain name, or on how many results show up in Google (the fewer the better). Which is amusing since the usefulness of any domain will stay limited until they're a teenager, by which time your carefully chosen name, with only 10 results in Google, will have been swamped by every other parent who thought the same as you.

With this trend in mind, I have devised another criteria for choosing names: how easy the name is to type on a computer keyboard. With the proliferation of computers it would seem pertinent to pick a name that can be typed efficiently. With all the typing your child will have to do, think of all the hours they will save across the course of their lifetime by choosing a good, typable, name.

Good names would avoid anything that slows down your typing. Things such as repeated letters, consecutive letters that require the same finger to press the key or having all the letters on one side of the keyboard. Some examples of bad names to type are Aaron, Lloyd, Edward, Jill, Phillip or Fredrick.

Perhaps it will get to the stage where people's names will be shortened and mangled on the internet just as the English language has. No longer will someone's name be 'Eugene', but 'Ujyn'; and 'Michael' would become 'Mykl'.

Either way I'm sure it's going to get weirder.

With the completely uninspiring state elections, that recently took place in New South Wales, I was confronted with how difficult it is to rank the candidates when it came time to vote.

For me, there were four people on the ballot who I knew I definitely didn't want to win. But I couldn't decide how to order the ones I didn't mind winning.

The NSW voting system demands that we give at least a number one next to person we want to win. The federal system forces us to fill in every preference. But what if I don't care who wins? Why can't there be a way for me to say "I don't care who win's just as long as it isn't these candidates"?

Well following is my proposal for such a system...

I wonder if there is a market for an emergency toilet paper delivery service. An 'at call' service where, if you run out of toilet paper, you can give them a call and at a premium have a packet of toilet paper rushed to your door.

I've come up with a new way to listen to my music. In the past when I've listened to music I've just picked an artist and started playing their music on shuffle. I was kinda getting bored of that and had some inspiration this morning on a new way I could experience my music.

My new technique involves creating a playlist in iTunes where half the songs are from one artist, and the other half a from another artist. The idea is to have the most unlikely artists stuck together to come up with a really strange mix.

So far I've tried Black Eyed Peas with The Blues Brothers, INXS with Infusion and Queen with Ugly Duckling. Hip hop with R&B, Rock with Electronica, and Hip Hop with, well, Queen. So far they've all worked together, and its much better than listening to one artist or all the artists in my collection.