This week has been one for me of 'intimations of mortality', to slightly mis-quote Wordsworth. From the news last weekend that a friend and industry colleague has been diagnosed with cancer, through to the death of Steve Jobs, this week there has been too much bad news. Even between those two items came the news of the death of a guitar-playing hero of mine, Bert Jansch, also from cancer.

Jobs was a passionate man whose philosophy was 'carpe diem' (seize the day), to quote the Roman poet, Horace. The BBC played an extended segment of a speech in which Jobs explained that he tried to 'live each day as your last - one day you'll be right', in its main radio news programme.

To quote George Bernard Shaw, 'Reasonable men adjust themselves to their environment. Unreasonable men attempt to change their environment to suit themselves. Therefore, all progress is the work of unreasonable men'. Jobs certainly met that description.

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