December 28, 2004
December 24, 2004
Online shopping
The Daily Mail, bastion of the borgeois and staunch supporter of moral standards, is today reporting about the scandal that is the great internet gifts shambles. They are picking up on a story at least two years late according to my terrible amazon.com experiences, but hey, it must be a slow news week.
Anyway, their incisive investigations lead them to estimate up to 500,000 presents will not be delivered in time for Christmas this year. This figure is arrived at by taking the possible up to 1% of late deliveries estimated by Amazon, and applying it to the estimated 55m items Royal Mail say they will deliver from online retailers. Not the most scientific method, and they fail to mention their margin of error. They also provide details of precisely four distressed customers missing their presents. I wonder if they ordered 125,000 gifts each?
Either way, I did all my Christmas shopping in the high street this year, due to a lack of organisation and being away most of the last few weeks, which makes it difficult for the postman to deliver.
December 23, 2004
Tis the season to be running around like a madman
So .... been kinda quiet around here.
Quietness usually indicates a serious lack of time to blog, and that couldn't be more accurate for this week.
On Sunday, it was back to Zurich for a couple of days on-site at ETH Zurich, helping out on the analysis phase of a project we've just begun for the Functional Genomics Centre. Some seriously cool stuff we'll be involved in there, bringing together many of the different threads of research and development we've been following for the last four years. More on that later.
One of the cool things (literally!) about this trip to Zurich was that they'd had snow on the afternoon I arrived. Great for skiers, not so much fun for pilots, as our pilot said after a fairly bumpy landing. Crosswinds and ice do not a comfortable journey make. Anyway, it was a beautiful winter wonderland, and I even got to have a late night walk and snowball fight. Excellent.
Three things dragged me kicking and screaming into a more festive mood: The Muppet Christmas Carol on Saturday, some 'interesting' christmas decorations on a house in Zurich, and this home-made Christmas card from one of Massimo's daughters. Not to mention the disgraceful number of Christmas cookies I ate ;-)
Finally, I arrived back in the UK yesterday afternoon just in time for the Luminas humbug dinner:
All the UK folk associated with Luminas went out for a non-traditional Christmas meal in an excellent Lebanese restaurant in London. The food was great, the wine was, if anything, too drinkable, and it was a pleasure to see our virtual team all in the same place for an evening. It was the high point of what's been an enjoyable year. More photos of the festivities can be found on flickr.
Today I spent racing round town doing my Christmas shopping, and in a moment I'll dash across country to start preparing for Christmas. So, season's greetings to one and all, I'm off. Bye for now!
December 20, 2004
December 17, 2004
Localisation
I was in conversation today with someone who does business over the internet. They were grumbling that Americans keep entering dates in their web forms the wrong way round, so an event that's supposed to be recorded as 11/12/04 gets recorded as 12/11/04 ... and it's impossible to tell when the month and the day has been transposed. Oftentimes, they receive irate emails complaining about missed reminders, and have to go into their database and manually swap the day and month over.
As I heard this, I was thinking what terrible user interface design... shouldn't the months be represented as a drop-down (e.g. Jan Feb Mar, or January February March, or as a last resort 1-12)? Or shouldn't there be some text on the page illustrating the correct format for dates?
And then it occurred to me why it seemed like such a strange issue to be having. ... it's not so much a user interface design problem as a web application framework problem. This sort of thing should be taken for granted in this day and age: the platform should silently provide a best-practice widget for capturing date information. The programmer or the person specifying the site really shouldn't be bothering with this sort of detail.
This sort of thing provides a simple metric for evaluating your web frameworks. Do you have to think about the simple stuff, or does it come with sensible defaults, allowing you to tackle the real challenges such as business logic and integration?
December 16, 2004
Dark Materials
Finally got my hands on the Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman. I've been meaning to read them for quite some time following recommendations from a whole range of people, but never found the time.
So far, they are pretty gripping reading. I've already finished Northern Lights and I'm ploughing through The Subtle Knife rapidly. I'm hoping I'll get it finished by Sunday morning, so I can take The Amber Spyglass on my next set of travels - it's a chunky book, so I reckon it should be good for a couple of flights.
Here's a weird thing. It seems Northen Lights is called The Golden Compass elsewhere. Why do people feel the need to "dumb down" titles?
Anyway, back to the book ....
Dear Vodafone ....
Dear Vodafone,
Get the fsck out of my face.
So far I have received four MMS spams from you: all identical, all incredibly dull and badly-formatted. My GPRS connection is permanently on trying to receive more, and my battery is failing rapidly.
If you must abuse your customers like this, how about sending just one message, and making sure it plays well on the mobile device you know I own?
Just as soon as I'm out of the contract period binding me to you, I will be off to pastures less goddam nauseatingly irritating.
December 15, 2004
December 13, 2004
Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime
Whilst at my sister's this weekend, we all watched The Incredibles on pirate DVD. The DVD was bought by my sister from a friend of a friend, for £5. Two stories in my aggregator today happily coincide with something I've been thinking about for a while: the cinematic experience, and how the entertainment industry is its own worst enemy.
Firstly, film-makers demand action over £1bn DVD black market. Apparently "the value of the DVD black market, now worth up to £500 million, is expected to exceed £1 billion by 2007." In the second story, we hear that 'BitTorrent' gives Hollywood a headache, because "BitTorrent has proven to be resistant to some of the countermeasures the entertainment industry has taken to sabotage file-sharing".
So here's my take on the situation: the industry should fix the cause of the problem, and not try to sue and otherwise attack their customers.
There are many reasons why people legitimately want to watch films like The Incredibles before the official DVD is released.
The modern-day cinema experience sucks. For a 2 hour film like The Incredibles, in a mainstream cinema you are subjected to 15 minutes of adverts and 15 minutes of trailers. Most kids get extremely impatient waiting 30 minutes for the film to start. When I took my oldest nephew, I was unable to take my younger nephew too because of this long delay. Then, factor in the cost - for one adult and one child, the cost of the cinema visit is £10.50, not including drinks and popcorn. It's expensive. If the average British family of 2 adults and 2.4 children wanted to go, they'd be looking at the equivalent cost of a night in with DVDs and pizzas. It's not difficult to see which would be preferable.
Release schedules are daft. Van Helsing is only just coming out on DVD, but was out at the cinemas months ago. If you really want to see the latest releases but are unable to go to the cinema, you have to wait too long. I rarely go to the cinema these days, primarily due to lack of significant other, lack of time, and lack of money. Many others are unable to go for a wide variety of reasons - too young to sit through a film at the cinema, ill health, lack of transport to the cinema, etc. Should they wait for the DVD release, despite everyone else talking about the films, and the plot being thoroughly given away in advance? Not to mention the fact that kids are obsessive little buggers, and having seen something at the cinema, want to watch it over and over again.
Add in things like region encoding (no, you can't buy films on holiday, sorry), and pricing (the average price for a DVD seems to be between £12-£14). Suddenly £5 for a cheap black market copy that you can play anywhere seems reasonable.
I don't believe it's right to make a profit from selling illegal copies of DVDs (or anything else). But I can understand that there is a market, online and offline, for accessing films before the studios want us to. Maybe the studios should accept that they cannot kill the demand, and that they therefore need to offer what the customers want. A bit of hype and anticipation is fine, locking things down and overcharging is not. The consumers are routing around the barriers.
House work
I took the opportunity of driving a van this weekend (picking up some furniture from relatives) to take a pile of stuff to the city dump. I now have much clearer cupboards, ready for a bit of reorganisation and tidying up I have planned.
Things I will buy as soon as finances permit:
- a new bed
- new floor for the lounge (a few sheets of oak and underlay)
- a decent dining table and chairs
- carpet or tiles for the hall
- new bathroom suite
It's going to be a busy few months.
Currently listening to Finished Symphony from the album "Live Angle: Sydney" by Hybrid
December 10, 2004
Digital bloater
The beeb writes about how Britons are growing 'digitally obese', carting round virtual truckloads of data with us since the advent of hard drive-based gadgets like the iPod. They say "if digital hoarding habits continue on this scale, people could be carrying around a "digitally obese" 20 gigabytes by next year."
It's been a long time since I've gone anywhere without my constant digital companion, the laptop. Sure it's bulkier than an iPod (I will get one eventually, oh yes), but it's invaluable to have my office desk with me wherever I am.
Last time I spent the weekend away without the laptop, my train back to Norwich on Monday morning was delayed by several hours. Whenever that's happened since then, it's had little impact on my working day.
As for the beeb's estimate of 20gb by next year ... hah! I'm already a real bloater in comparison - my home directory currently weighs in at 57gb. Time for a diet?
December 7, 2004
The playlist meme
1. Open up the music player on your computer.
2. Set it to play your entire music collection.
3. Hit the "shuffle" command.
4. Tell us the title of the next ten songs that show up (with their musicians), no matter how embarrassing. That's right, no skipping that Carpenters tune that will totally destroy your hip credibility. It's time for total musical honesty. Write it up in your blog or journal and link back to at least a couple of the other sites where you saw this.
5. If you get the same artist twice, you may skip the second (or third, or etc.) occurances. You don't have to, but since randomness could mean you end up with a list of ten song with five artists, you can if you'd like.
Phew... this could have been a whole lot more embarrassing. Here's the first 10:
- Menswear - Sleeping In
- Counting Crows - I'm Not Sleeping
- Suede - Animal Nitrate
- Primal Scream - Loaded
- OMD - Genetic Engineering
- Sheryl Crow - Oh Marie
- Presence - Future Love
- 4Hero - Golden Age Of Life
- Gustavo Santaolalla - De Ushuaia A La Quiaca
- Metro Area - Caught Up
Via Jim.
December 6, 2004
December 4, 2004
Misty morning
I finally got to stop the train and take a photo I wanted. Or rather, the train happened to stop at an opportune moment. Here's a snap of the tracks at Peterborough on a particularly misty morning, just as the sun was starting to burn through. The picture's in colour (notice the slightly blue bridge and the red light on the right), but it could just as easily be greyscale. I like it.
December 3, 2004
One year on
I knew it was sometime around now, but haven't tried too hard to remember exactly when.
About one year ago I joined the ranks of the newly-single.
Not an awful lot has changed since then. My personal life sucks, my business life is finding its legs. I still have a fantastic group of friends. I understand the world a hell of a lot more. I've seen new places, new things, learnt more.
Who knows where I go from here?
Up, damnit, up.
Miaow
The meme du jour seems to suggest posting pictures of cats on your blog on a Friday. Who am I to resist? So here's a picture of one of my parents' cats, taken a couple of Christmases ago. The kitten in the picture has grown to be an almost-complete cat ... over-enthusiasm with the local roads means he's missing one of his front legs now. He makes up for it in excessive purring and beating up all the other cats in the neighbourhood.
Shopping
Funny the way the internet changes your life.
I had the opportunity to go to Tescos this week since I was driving a rental car. I don't own a car - it makes little financial sense given most of my journeys are either by bike, train or plane. So for the last few years I've got my shopping delivered via tesco.com or sainsburys.com depending on my mood.
Anyway, on those rare occasions when I have ventured into supermarkets, it's usually been at inhospitable times (around 10 or 11pm), when the store is quiet and I can take my time. This week, I went in during the day, and it was akin to a descent into hell. I've discovered I'm totally intolerant of the modern supermarket experience. The stores are crowded, the shelves are crowded, it's impossible to find the things you want.
A little background. Supermarkets are in theory a second home to me. I used to do the weekly shop with my mum for years, and then I worked in the local supermarket while I was at school. I know how they work as a customer and an employee.
But now, I can't tolerate them. The internet is faster, less hassle. I can do an online shop in about half an hour, and I don't have to fight through crowds. I don't have to search the aisles, I can search the database. I don't have to remember what I buy each time I shop - the computer does that for me. I don't queue at checkouts. I don't have to load the bags into a car, and unload them this end. This week as I walked round the store, it struck me as a curiously archaic way of buying food.
Looking forward, I can see the need for some optimisation. I don't want to have to carry my laptop to the kitchen. I should be able to scan barcodes of things I've used as I throw the packaging in the bin, and the computer should add it to the list for next time. I should be able to select a recipe for next week right from my kitchen, and have things ordered automatically. It needs to be an easy, transparent process. The latest version of the tesco store is a significant leap forward in usability, but I'm not sure I'm interested in the store metaphor. Let me just do stock control of my own kitchen, with a few extras based on recipe books from time to time.
December 1, 2004
Object at rest
After a whirlwind couple of weeks - Rome, Zurich, Warwick - I'm back in Norwich for a couple of days of catching up before it all starts again.
The last year or so has given me a deeper understanding of David's attitude towards life when travelling. What I'd initially mistaken for impatience now makes a lot of sense.
When you see the inside of hotel rooms more than your own home, perceptions shift quite dramatically. I already have the whole airport thing polished to an art - traveling fast and light, with my magic expanding backpack which means no checked-in baggage, I can be through passport control and in a cab before you can say "anything to declare?".
Now I'm beginning to understand the hotel process. Establishing the critical path for checking in, dumping bags and finding the bar become a finely-honed routine. The conversation at the front-desk is suddenly short and to the point; it's not rudeness, it's simply about working through the procedure that both you and the receptionist have to follow, getting it out of the way so both people can move on. After all, if it takes 5 minutes instead of 2 minutes to check in, and you're going to do this 100 times a year, that's already 5 hours of your life you've lost.
It's about efficiency.
Next time you travel, try this. At airports with shuttle busses to the planes, look for the people sitting down rather than queueing to board. They know it's going to make no difference to your place on the plane whether you queue or not - when you get on the bus last, you'll get off the bus and on the plane first. Watch for the people that hand over their passports already open at the photo page. Critical path.