Saturday, January 24, 2004

More on ears and prints

Judge frees man convicted of murder by earprint. This is a story from Ananova (have to love this source of news - quirkie and otherwise!). A man convicted of murder, by his earprint, was freed by a judge after spending nearly seven years in jail for a crime he did not commit. In 1998, he was found guilty of smothering a woman. Evidence included that he had allegedly left a unique earprint as he listened at a window before breaking in. The retrial found him "not guilty".


A job well done

It is a while since I have felt this excited about work. It is Friday afternoon and I have just put the finishing touches on, and emailed, a quite complex document. It outlines the scope, and seeks to clarify particulars, of a web project I am assisting with. While I have worked on many projects, and written many documents, they have not come together like this before. I feel as if it's "a job well done"!

Sunday, January 18, 2004

Finger prints

Finger printing. Who cleans up afterwards? A car turned up on the street outside our house at one point. I didn't take much notice of it; cars come and go. And there was nothing remarkable about it except it looked a little grubby. I was out in the front yard not long after and someone asked if it was mine, and did I want to sell it since it had been stolen. I puzzled over that for days. How did he know it had been stolen? I finally worked it out - the dark areas on the bonnet and above the doors were grubby because they hadn't been cleaned since the car was stolen, returned and dusted for prints. Why do they call it "dusting" for prints ... the stuff sticks like glue and doesn't dust off.
The whole concept of identifying people by their fingerprints is amazing. Did anyone laugh at the person who came up with the idea of taking impressions of people's fingers - because they were all unique. Did they know that eventually computer programs would be used to compare hundreds in the blink of an eye. The concept of a unique identifier was first applied to ears. These also leave a unique impression - quite apart from any other impression ears may otherwise make eg which sometimes cause people to be called "wingnut". They used to call ears "lugs", hence lugsholes, back in the 19th Century (which seems a very long time ago now).
But back to how difficult fingerprint powder residue is to remove. The supermarket doesn't sell a special product for this - although a commercial version could be available for those companies specialising in crime scene clean-up. That must be a gruesome undertaking.

Blogging

I read an article in the New York Times earlier this week on blogging. It referred to a site - www.livejournal.com - among others and I went along for a look. It was stunning. It allows you to see the site's most recent posts - an easy window into other people's lives, psyches and opinions - and there is no shortage of those. Some of the posts had photos/images and fickle person that I am, I considered changing my blog provider - just for a moment! I've yet to visit the other sites mentioned in the article. Perhaps on the weekend.

Thursday, January 08, 2004

New Year's Resolutions (NYR)

What hope do most of us have in keeping our NYRs, especially if we do not appreciate that it takes 21 days (although some say it's six weeks) to make or break a habit.
Others suggest a more organised and systematic approach to NYR goal setting. Write it down; make it bite-sized; make it achievable; set a date; and put a rewards system in place.
A friend of mine wrote "Have you made any new years resolutions? I forgot to - oh well - I'll just try to live a good life instead of a significantly improved one!" Okay to that.

Hmmm. Christmas.

We had an interesting time this year - which I have relegated to yesterday already. On the upside, my partner and I were once again able to exchange "the Xmas letter". This is not the "boast-it note" which some families broadcast to all an sundry but rather a concrete memory of our year and our hopes, plans and aspirations for ourselves, each other and our partnership for the coming year. It is a tradition we've had in place for most of our almost 14 years together - and while other rituals have come and gone, we are pleased this one remains, and grows.