interloper:weblog

THIS WEBLOG HAS MOVED

2 January 2005

This weblog is now being continued at: http://radio.weblogs.com/0142957/

Please take a look.

Who is this woman?

9 December 2004

Who is she and why is someone emailing me her picture?

Haircut

Sloppy Software

3 December 2004

Having just commented about the frightening reliance on Windows by the UK armed forces we now low learn that the Benefits system has gone tits up because of a Windows 'upgrade'.

Pension and benefit payments face disruption after what is being described as the biggest computer crash in government history left as many as 80,000 civil servants staring at blank screens and reverting to writing out giro cheques by hand in the latest blow to a hi-tech Whitehall revolution. [The Guardian]

Lurking in the background is EDS, an American IT company well-known for several unfortunate mishaps in the UK. There is some talk that they might be let loose on the forthcoming ID card, or Entitlement Card, as I believe we'll have to call it. In fact, if you do a Google search for 'EDS cockups', you can get quite an insight into the fastidiousness of this company when it comes to IT.

A COMPUTER PROGRAM that was intended to speed up royalty payments to over 300,000 American Indians lost details of the payment but the US Interior Department hid facts from a judge presiding over an inquiry, it has emerged. And instead of producing accurate figures from the buggy system, the Interior Department used an alternative set of figures cooked up by giant computer firm EDS. [The Enquirer]

And also keeping their heads down are the good people of Microsoft

Some 80,000 computers at the Department for Work and Pensions went down during 'a routine software upgrade' of its Microsoft machines this week. Staff at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) were unable to use their PCs this week after a routine software upgrade knocked out 80 percent of the PC in the sprawling department, which numbers some 100,000 employees...Microsoft said that the issue has now been fully resolved, but was unable to provide any information on what caused the crash. [ZDnet UK]

If you use Windows and are getting fed up with all of this try an alternative approach to computing.

Open Windows

23 November 2004

In this week's New Scientist there is a short anecdote about the use of Windows in car engine management.

Our colleague agreed to do exactly that, but for peace of mind he asked what to do if the engine stopped again before the car had reached a garage. "Turn off the engine, take out the ignition key to shut down the electronics, and restart", the engineer explained. "That should do it."

This is a rather frightening development. But far more worrying is that the UK armed forces are also using Windows.

Anyone with elementary knowledge of computer science can see that Microsoft Windows, as described here by Gates, is inherently insecure by design.

Just imagine at the height of battle as you're about to launch your missiles you get the helpful message:

"Windows has performed an illegal operation."

ASDA depression

19 November 2004

Today is 19 November and I visited my local ASDA store to be harassed by gnomes, fairies, wicked witches and (for some odd reason) a cowboy. There was even a furious looking young man dressed as snow white. He looked soooo unhappy. Yes, it's the annual consumer sales period, known as Christmas, (actually a whole month away till the day itself). I won't go on, there's enough people moaning about it without me adding to the pain. I don't often shop at ASDA; I hate the brash, bright clumsiness of the stores' layout and more than anything else the sodding blather of ASDA FM urging me to buy more, save more... Later I visited the congenial emptiness of the Co-Op store across town. No pixies or grumpy Snow Whites there. Thank the Lord and pass the tangerine.

Disclaim aclaim

9 November 2004

Nice to see a site that isn't afraid to unbalance the zeitgeist and be contrarian.

Kerb wobble

30 October 2004

So there I was in the foyer of a large grammar school. The entrance door had locked behind me and the door leading into the school proper was similarly secure. In the 10 feet between the two doors was a stack of stainless steel lockers and a teacher giving a cello lesson to an embarrassed ten-year old girl. I smiled sweetly and suddenly found great interest in the patterned wallpaper as the girl scraped out her scales. Obviously space was a little tight this morning. Eventually the man I had come to see rescued me and I no longer had to endure the sweet sounds of cello murder. No. I had the far more impressive task of examining a wobbly kerbstone that had caused £500-worth of damage to the underside of a car.

Whoosh, flash, switch off

16 October 2004

There's this thing that television production companies do in their documentaries. I call it the 'whoosh-flash'. It tends to occur when the director wants to change scenes. It's just so 20th century to just cut from one scene to another, the same effect you get when you just look from one object to another with your own eyes. No, that's just too easy. I mean, you're directing a modern documentary. You've got all these qualifications from art and design colleges. You've got to jazz it up a bit, just show-off a bit, y'know. So what you do between cuts is have someone stick a whoosh sound on the soundtrack and then do a whiteout - just half a second will do. Hey Presto! Instead of a boring cut you have a 'whoosh-flash' cut!

There is a slight problem with this, and I may be being a little picky, but for the viewer the whoosh-flash pretty soon starts to pale. It becomes irritating because it's unnecessary, it adds nothing to the imparting of knowledge and it simply detracts from the programme itself. It looks like a first year design student got hold of the tapes and decided to take the piss.

One of the big culprits is the once renowned now derided Horizon, made by the BBC. It's become infected by the whoosh-flash, unnecessary dramatisations, inappropriate mood music and over-dramatic commentary.

Just go and look at The World At War for the classic documentary and see why that works and the modern 21st century pap doesn't. Horizon and its ilk treat the viewer as a passive moron who needs a constant moving canvas and the occasional jolt for stimulation. The World at War treated the viewer with respect, with an attention span longer than two minutes.

When Newsgroups Attack

11 October 2004

There has recently been an interesting and amusing discussion on the uk.media.tv.misc newsgroup. I couldn't resist taking the best parts of it and publishing them here. The discussion is called "Words the media uses that no-one else does" and is a refreshing romp through the sort of language you only see in tabloid newspapers and on TV news. So, with due deference to those I've quoted, let's take it in the order the messages were posted.

Shaun wrote:

I've noticed a number of words that crop up in the media esp newspapers that no-one else actually uses. For example, 'crimper', 'pooch' and 'moggy'. The other day The Daily Star reported that 1 in 4 under 16's 'romp'. A female singer is called a 'songtress' etc.

John Dean wrote:

People don't criticise things, they slam them. There is no travel disruption, only travel chaos.

Mick wrote:

People don`t ask, they demand.

Nick Cooper wrote:

No, unions "demand," employers "request."

osc wrote:

Devastat(ed)(ing)(ion) | Destruction | Calamitous | Outpouring | Grieving

Thanatos wrote:

People on TV always seem to be described as "entertainers". Ironically, of lot of the people they're talking about aren't in the least bit entertaining, IMO.

Shaun wrote:

Whole roads can be "Sealed Off" by a bit of tape across them.

Richard Brooks wrote:

Critically acclaimed. Must-see.

Gateway wrote:

'Star' used to describe anyone remotely involved in football, acting, music. However good or bad they are.

cheddox-ie wrote:

People never win prizes, they "scoop" them.

JamesUK wrote:

Towns and cities are always 'rocked' by explosions.

Badabing wrote:

People don't criticise, they 'slam', apparently.

Ben wrote:

I learned civil service speak, including the three most important phrases; in due course, at the appropriate juncture, in the fullness of time.

Nick Cooper wrote:

The most overused sub-set of words in the English language. People are no longer "disappointed," "upset" or "unhappy" at the slightest inconvenience to their lives, they are "devastated."

Marcus Holden wrote:

Roads get millions invested in them. Other forms of transport are propped up with subsidies.

Gordon Davie wrote:

People involved in accidents are "fighting for their lives". If they don't survive, their family will be "comforted by relatives".

And one of my own: people who die of cancer have always lost their fight against it.

Go East

11 October 2004

One of the country's biggest insurance firms has announced plans to transfer more than 1,100 jobs to India over the next few years, sparking fears of a "crisis" in the UK. Royal & SunAlliance said it will save over £10 million a year by switching call centre and customer service work to Bangalore. Chief executive Duncan Boyle said: "This move is part of R&SA's existing UK business transformation programme and is expected to deliver annual cost savings in excess of £10 million. We are committed to providing our customers with value for money products and excellent service." [Insurance Jobs Head For India]

It's not the loss of jobs that draws my attention to this story but the use of language. The term 'business transformation programme' is typical of the vacuous, patronising nonsense we get from management and politicians. 'We are committed to providing our customers with value for money and excellent service'. Oh, and the shareholders ofcourse.

So what does 'business transformation programme' mean? Perhaps, we are changing the company. And what about 'we are committed to providing...'? Perhaps, we want you to think we give a competitive service.

R&SA - just another cost cutting exercise. Can't complain, they're just following the competition. But why dress it up in pompous language? This will only stop when they outsource the directors' jobs.

Kicking the cat

10 October 2004

I think I might get myself a cat. Not because I want a pet or something to cuddle but so I can come home and kick it when I have a bad day. That's what I would have done last week after some bruising days at work. We have a part-time manager who insists on altering our reports even if he just adds a comma. Our system for actually getting these reports out of the door takes up to 3 weeks. Three weeks! First we dictate the report, it gets typed in draft, it waits for the part-time manager to approve and amend it, then it goes for re-typing and then it goes out. The typists have a high absenteeism rate and their turnover is 90% a year.

At least this week saw the release of TextMate for Mac OSX so I had something to play with when I felt miserable. Despite the many detractors (see below) I like TextMate and find it very easy to use. There are some howlers, though. Specifically, the lack of a Preference menu and no Print facility. A lot of tweaks are needed to make this competitive with programs like SubEthaEdit but I get the feeling that long term it's going to be a good one. So I registered it and became licence holder number 101, so at least 100 other people thought the same as me. And it hasn't crashed - so the cat's safe for a little while longer.

Blossom Hill

12 September 2004

Sounding like somewhere in north London, this beautiful wine just begs to be guzzled. I know sod all about the science of wine-making and I don't know why this stuff is described as White Zinfandel but I found it amongst the reds in my local supermarket because, well, it's red. What the heck, it's a smooth, sweet, fruity slurp and I've just bought 2 bottles *hic*.

20/20 bores

8 August 2004

After great effort I found myself at Edgbaston watching the Twenty-Twenty semi-finals and final. A long day, this. You arrive at about 10am and finish at 10pm having watched 120 overs of cricket, a couple of mediocre pop groups and a bunch of skinny cheerleaders waving bunches of ribbons. The weather was stinkingly hot; I've never seen so many people lathering themselves with suncream, many of them men in their twenties. With over-priced alcohol and £25 seats you want to get your money's worth. The cricket was good and Leicestershire were worthy winners. What wasn't good was the usual boorish groups in the crowd - overcome on booze and heat they just couldn't help themselves. Sadly, many of the noisy ones near me were fat, over forty and should have known better. One graceless git insisted on shouting obsenities at players he didn't like. The oaf is probably a middle-manager. I can hear him saying "work hard, play hard" to excuse his ladishness.

Get wid de kidz!

14 July 2004

Labour MP Tom Watson wants to get down with the hip and cool. The next generation of voters needs to be caught quickly. So let's talk to them in language they'll understand. Hence, Tom's toe-curling attempt at da yoof speak, ya dig? Let's make politics cool, innit!

The BBC politics for kids/teens site is, like, totally wacked! Ditto for the Parliament education site, which even has a section for younger yoof. Fanta-stick! [Tom Watson]

Having spotted this I realise that I'm not quite as hip as I thought. The Register reported this website over a year ago. I'm so far behind the times it's not true!

M6 hell, chaos, shock, crisis etc

5 July 2004

If you live in or work in Birmingham, UK you'll already know the sheer damn misery of trying to use your car or public transport around the city. It's always been a busy place with just enough road infrastructure to cope. When things go wrong, like even a minor accident on a feeder road, the knock-on effects come quickly and suddenly miles of road and thousands of vehicles are caught-up with nothing to do but sit it out till the obstruction is cleared. The famous Aston Expressway, known to locals as the Distressway, is notorious for its daily hold ups. The Expressway is a conduit between the city and the M6 motoway and has a tidal flow system across 7 or 8 lanes which works most of the time. It's an aging bit of urban motorway and it's wearing out so the Highways Agency have decided to close most of it for 9 weeks and also close the slip roads leading on and off the M6. And they've decided to resurface the M6 nearby as well. And they're also doing a bit of the M6 further north. This work will last until Christmas. And they're still mucking around with the M42 motorway about 10 miles south of the city. Today was the first day when all this work merged. With so many roads effected and thousands of people trying to get in and out of the city the inevitable happened. Everything stopped. The Highways Agency say it's cheaper and quicker to do all this work in one go but local businesses are saying it's costing them £9m a day in delays and they would have preferred the work to be staggered over a longer period.

Meanwhile, for those that want it there is an alternative; assuming you can get to it through the traffic there seems to be no shortage of space.

Dovetailing rather neatly is the next Big Idea to have lanes for car-sharers. I can't help feeling this idea just won't work when our motorways have only 3 lanes. Lane 1 for the car-sharers, lane 2 for the lorries and vans, lane 3 for everybody else. Lane 1 will be under-used, lane 2 will be nose-to-tail with HGVs and lane 3 will have all the poor suckers who couldn't find anyone to share with in a queue 5 miles long. The arguing has just begun.

Tony Bosworth, of Friends of the Earth, said: "We support initiatives that encourage people to use their cars less or car share. But these latest Government plans must not be used as an excuse to justify new road-widening schemes." And the Association of British Drivers criticised the move. Mark McArthur-Christie, the organisation's national spokesman, said: "Road space in the UK is exceptionally scarce because of decades of government underfunding and we need to use it in the most efficient way possible. [Independent]

Vanity Fairy

27 June 2004

According to her BBC 'biography' (or press release) Sybil Ruscoe is "one of the country's most experienced and versatile radio presenters". Incredibly she "was recently named as one of Cosmopolitan's 100 Most Inspirational Women for her work in sports broadcasting." So this is the same Sybil Ruscoe that presents a soporific radio show that's so anodyne drug companies want to patent it as a sleeping aid. I'm sure Sybil is a very nice, caring person but as a broadcaster she speaks mind-numbing drivel, chuckling away to herself as she does. Still, she does have human weaknesses, and lets us know, just so we can get all sympathetic; "... and like Sir Steve Redgrave is a diabetic." Pardon? No mention of Sir Steve anywhere else on the page except in that sentence. Surely they've edited something out! Surely they can't be trying to connect the vacuous inanities of a MOR DJ and one of the best sportsmen ever produced in the UK? Perish the thought.

Over the bar!

26 June 2004

Over the last few weeks the country has been inflicted with mini England flags attached to car windows, plaintively flapping above grubby white vans, and gradually getting duller and duller as traffic grime impregnates the polyester. This was, ofcourse, because of some football championship. As is typical with the England team, they lost, they won, they lost spectacularly. A nation mourns. When the team were beaten out of the competition those little flags disappeared almost overnight. The country must have got up next morning and collectively smote the damn things to one side. To fly them now would be self-mockery, a realisation that England is good but not great. It's easy psychology, I know, but perhaps this is a paradigm for England and the UK; we're good but not great. If only we could accept our modest place in the world, realise that we can be a better nation through co-operation with others, forget the imperialist past, and lose the superpower pretensions, we might become a more progressive country.

Eye full

24 June 2004

I was examining a coach today with a traffic manager. Part of this inspection required us to climb halfway into the lockers that run the length of the vehicle where luggage is stored. We had to crouch down to get inside and I asked questions and made notes. As we struggled to get out of one of the lockers I slipped, raised my arms to balance and the corner of my clipboard caught the traffic manager in the eye. He was polite enough to apologise, such is the English way.

House unsafe

23 June 2004

Found myself digging about in a filthy disintergrating garage today. The owner was trying to show me some damaged property she'd stored for safe-keeping. As we rummaged amongst bags of mouldy clothing part of the roof collapsed and I noticed one of the main support beams was fractured. The owner explained that a recent earthquake, a rarity in the UK, had shifted the whole building a few inches westwards. Then she screamed as a fat spider shot across her wrist. We tip-toed out and as she banged the door shut another beam fell away.

iData Pro

21 June 2004

iData Pro is morphing into iData2 and a new beta version has just become available. According to the site iData 2 is:

A freeform database with optional fields that is superb for keeping all sorts of miscellaneous info. Whether it is scribbles from the back of a napkin, notes, scientific research, or the names and addresses of your clinets, iData will make it easily accessible. [iData 2]

iData comes from the now defunct Casady & Greene stable. It has a long history and this new version brings it up to date with 'Cocoa' features for Apple OSX 10.3 Worth a look.

Double yolk

6 June 2004

Not sure how common this is, but on breaking open an egg today I found I had a double yolk.

Frozen Lips

6 June 2004

Had to inspect some damaged goods today stored in a refrigerated warehouse where the temperature was about -27C. I was given a 'care-in-the-community' furry hat and a quilted coat and gloves. It was so cold my forehead began to feel like it was being burned and my left eye got sore and weepy. My camera steamed up and my ball-point pen wouldn't write.

IT = Incompetent Turkeys

27 May 2004

This week at work we have been treated to the wonderful sight of IT professionals coping when Things Go Wrong. Two of them were trying to get a laptop to connect to the network today. "I told you it went there", says one. "I fucking put it there", the other replies. "So why is it fucking there, then," says the first. There followed a grumpy silence and lots of keyboard tapping and mouse clicks.

All our computers have been 'upgraded' from Windows 95 to Windows 98 SE. One feature of W98 we're all getting used to is its inability to successfully power down. All over the office are screens with blue clouds and the legend "Windows is shutting down." Oh no it isn't. Every morning there are tuts of frustration as users wait for Scandisk to run and are scolded for not shutting down Windows properly. My colleague's PC continually freezes and his fingers are now locked in a Ctrl-Alt-Delete pattern.

Our incompetent IT team managed to wipe dozens of files off several PCs and then blamed the users for not making backups.

I am incompetent: official

20 May 2004

I am incompetent. I'm slow and unhelpful. I know this to be true because a client told me so today. The fact that the client had made a commitment to his client based on something he hoped I would agree, but didn't, probably made him a little more excitable than he would normally be. But I'm at the end of the queue for being kicked and have no-one to kick in turn so I'll just have to take it - and the result of his complaint to my boss. That's the nature of the job - I am at the end of the pecking order and at the bottom of the inverted pyramid of authority. Everyone relies on me and everyone can push their responsibilities down on to me.

Summer smells of death

16 May 2004

One facet of urban life is that as soon as the weather warms and white scudding clouds drift aimlessly across the sky your bloody neighbours start burning dead cows and pigs. At this very moment my freshly washed sheets hang lazily in the spring warmth bouyed occasionally by the fog of grey smoke and the stink of burning flesh from a garden 50 yards away. Because my bedroom window was open the house is also being effected. I have never understood the need to cook and consume food in the open air - all those flies and wasps. Drinking, yes. That's much more civilised and dignified. But getting greasy fingers from badly cooked food and stinking out the local neighbourhood, well that's just anti-social. So there.

WHSmith's decline

7 May 2004

WHSmith are not doing well. They seem to be neither one thing nor the other. They do a bit of stationery, a bit of music, some magazines, some newspapers, some books. In all cases they cater for the mainstream. So only the bestsellers are on sale, only the mainstream magazines. You have to wonder, what is WHS for? They don't seem to do anything well. The basic rule of good software design is to make a program do one thing, and do it well. WHS could learn from that. Anyway, their despair came home to me when I was visiting their Fort Shopping Centre store. The Fort, as it is marketed, is one of those hostile, vacuous and hard faced shopping centres - all car park and traffic. Nothing to please an aesthete. WHS cowers in one corner. As I rambled aimlessly around the store I saw a sign above a display of trashy magazines. It said, "Read all about your favourite soap's". Quite how that sign could have got there without someone noticing the error I don't know.

Now, I know I can't set myself up as a paragon of grammatical virtue since I have discovered a small mistake of my own. "It's own character"? I think not. But I'll be brave and not edit the error. Let it stand as a reminder to me not to become too self-righteous or complacent.

The Sasser Worm

5 May 2004

So, small and medium-sized businesses are screwed, but it's okay that large corporations can waste untold (and for some reason never totalled) amounts of time and money? Foolishness knows no bounds. If you belong to that small subset of Windows users that like to use the Internet, you've been warned. Try to surf less or not at all, okay? If you're finally tired of downloading and installing patches to patch patches that patched patches issued to fix patches that broke while patching a patch that didn't patch the first patch, but broke the last patch you patched, you might want to try a Mac instead. [MacDailyNews]

Pseud's corner

30 April 2004

"Knowing what you like, and why you like it, is important. For years, I used to gravitate toward light blue and blue-grey sweaters even though those colors do not flatter me and the clothes would tend to stay in the closet. I collected about a dozen of these sweaters (along with jeans, t-shirts, and dresses) before I looked in the mirror one day and realized the pewter-colored sweater I was wearing matched -- exactly -- the color of my mother's eyes." [Diane Greco]

You can't park there, mate

28 April 2004

A colleague of mine is fighting the local council after receiving a parket ticket. There were yellow lines running along the kerb but he parked in a marked bay adjacent to a parking meter. Would you believe it - he gets a ticket. He accuses the council of entrapment. Why have a marked bay AND yellow lines? These are conflicting signals. I'll be interested to know whether the appeal works.

Driver wins 'yellow lines' case. A man whose car was moved so yellow lines could be painted underneath in Hull wins his fight against a parking ticket. [BBC News]

Sophie Large

19 April 2004

This pretty poem was written by Sophie Large when she was fifteen. She died in a car accident at nineteen leaving a collection of writing her parents published as a tribute. They set up the Silver Lining Fund in her memory.

Sunglasses
In an attempt to escape reality I put on the sunglasses, Because my eyes were dazzled by life. I grew used to their comforting dimness And it was only when, many years later, I remembered I was wearing them, And found the courage to take them off, That I realised what I had missed.

Another poem of hers is Swans On The Wing which has a lovely lilting rhythm. The first verse is:

Swans On The Wing
There is nothing so simple Or so grave, or so gentle, Or powerful and graceful As swans on the wing.

Corporate Bollix

18 April 2004

My employer has sent me a memo asking me to complete various personnel documents. One of these is 'a pre-populated application form' - which is just a pompous way of saying the form has been partially completed. There, such nicer English, conveys the same thing but so much more elegantly.

Democratic Apathy

18 April 2004

This comment from In These Times is worth quoting in full because it seems to sum up a general disaffection with the US political classes. This disappointment is something that is happening in the UK as well. Reports last weekend said that the governing Labour Party is struggling to recruit new members. All this may have something to do with the way the electorate perceive that politicians will do whatever they want once in power. There is a lot of hand-wringing about falling voter numbers. At local and national elections fewer and fewer people are bothering to vote. In the last US election only 50% bothered to vote at all, this from a population that knows it is being asked to vote for the most important world leader. I don't see this as a problem for politicians. It must suit them to have a reducing audience since they can target the people that matter more easily - the floating voters who will vote. That means they can tailor their messages to that one tiny group. The problem is for the mass electorate. Apathy at the polls lets in unrepresentative governments who might think that if you can't be bothered to vote why should they care what you want.

You say in November the voters will "bring it on?" And I ask: bring who on? John Kerry? Is he not just another Yale, Skull and Bones alumni who is as much a child of priviledge and member of the same elite insatiably greedy class that Bush is enriching through this current presidency? Do you really think the American people are being given any kind of real choice in the coming presidential election? I don't. I see it as a loss either way with business as usual no matter who wins. Sadly, I remember being told as an impressionable youngster that if one worked hard and kept his nose clean one could someday grow up to be president. Not true. Only the children of the wealthy and the elite get to do that. Hell, even if somebody from a modest background somehow got through to run for office, he would have to sell his soul to those same elites just to get there and his own people would no longer recognize him. I ask you, humbly, where is our great democracy? America has sold it's soul and now the rich and greedy rule while the country sinks deeper and deeper into debt while making more and more enemies by abusing its power. I don't like where we are heading. Indeed, it frightens me. [In These Times]

Desk Tangle

13 April 2004

This is the mess under my colleague's desk - a snake's lair of twisty plastic coils. We had to send a volunteer under there last week to trace a line from a computer - we lost her for two days. It's a bit of a health and safety hazard for my colleague who often finds he's resting his feet on the sockets. If he gets up in a hurry he risks dragging this mess with him. Call the Health & Safety Officer!

Tangled Cables

Reith Lectures on mp3

12 April 2004

The BBC are offering this year's Reith lectures as mp3 downloads. The first one is available already but it's a 20mb file, which is huge. An alternative is to copy the lecture as text and then use a text reading program to listen to it on your PC. On the mac I just have to highlight the text press a key and off it goes. Not quite as good as hearing Wole Soyinka himself but a lot quicker to get to.

Welcome the liberators

10 April 2004

Cheney:The read we get on the people of Iraq is there is no question but that they want to get rid of Saddam Hussein and they will welcome as liberators the United States when we come to do that. [...]

Russert: The army's top general said that we would have to have several hundred thousand troops there for several years in order to maintain stability.

Cheney: I disagree. We need, obviously, a large force and we've deployed a large force. To prevail, from a military standpoint, to achieve our objectives, we will need a significant presence there until such time as we can turn things over to the Iraqis themselves. But to suggest that we need several hundred thousand troops there after military operations cease, after the conflict ends, I don't think is accurate. I think that's an overstatement.[The Agonist]

Quicksilver to VoodooPad

6 April 2004

I've spent a few hours this evening copying and pasting the Quicksilver online manual into a VoodooPad pad. It's quite excellent the way VoodooPad creates links between pages and it makes the help file much easier to navigate. It does mean I'll have to keep checking the QS site for changes in the documentation but I have much better access to the information now it sits on my Mac, all nicely indexed. I even made a nice opening page for it. It's pushing 1mb now but the file opens up quite smartish.

VoodooPad is just right for this sort of thing; a self-contained browsing database. Everything, including images, is compressed into one easily editable file. One thing I've noticed is the lack of a Search & Replace option which would have saved me some time.

Quicksilver

5 April 2004

Another launcher for Mac OSX 10.3.3. This one is Quicksilver, in 'pre-release' at present but destined to be a major player. Off the top of my head I'm aware of several similar file launchers for the Mac. Forgive me if I miss your favourite. There's Butler, LaunchBar, My Favorite Things, and Quicksilver. The common feature with these is that they can be called up by a simple key press and can browse quickly to a file or program by typing the name of whatever it is you're looking for. They complete this in slightly different ways but all the ones mentioned work well and quickly. As far as I'm aware LaunchBar is the grand-daddy of this type of application but the rest add features and options so that each has it's own character.

[Links: Butler LaunchBar My Favorite Things Quicksilver]

How to clean your house

4 April 2004

This sounds an interesting idea but how could anyone take a whole hour just to drag a vacuum across a couple of carpets and rearrange the dust on their shelves. I can do this in a time-saving 5 minutes - unless the parents are expected in which case an astonishing 10 minutes is required, for that special professional finish.

New concept - don't clean until your house is clean, instead merely allocate time to the cleaning process and clean until that time is over whether you finish or not. Also if you finish before the time is up (unlikely) then clean something better than you would normally. I started this insane cleaning regimen yesterday with a statement that I would clean in a high-impact fashion for no more and no less than precisely one hour. I created an iTunes playlist full of motivational music with the sole intention of keeping me psyched about the whole horrors of cleaning my flat. It is precisely one hour long and is called Precisely One Hour of House-Cleaning Music. It contains a fair amount of cheese, for the specific reason that it's designed to get the heart-pounding and the mind focused on doing things (rather than being subtle or nuanced in any way) so don't get on my case about how lame it is. The first tune is designed to set the scene and the final one to get the pace back down to useful human-levels. [Plasticbag]

Are you Juan, too?

29 March 2004

Ananova - Mexico sets up gay football league.

Mexico has set up a gay football league for homosexual players. All match officials will also have to be gay, reports Mix Brazil. They will compete for a cup and the chance to represent Mexico at the World Gay Football Championship. [Ananova]

Snot Gobbling

29 March 2004

I'm gagging just thinking about this.

Picking your nose and eating it is one of the best ways to stay healthy, according to a top Austrian doctor....He says society should adopt a new approach to nose-picking and encourage children to take it up. Dr Bischinger said: "With the finger you can get to places you just can't reach with a handkerchief, keeping your nose far cleaner." And eating the dry remains of what you pull out is a great way of strengthening the body's immune system. [Ananova]

There was a clip on one of those candid video TV shows of a young girl sneezing explosively into her cupped hands. She paused, considered what she'd achieved and then began licking her hands with relish until an adult pulled her hands away from her face.

R Sole

23 March 2004

Hurrying back to the office today I saw a fat middle-aged man in a suit bawling at a traffic warden. The man was wearing a suit and his stomach rolled over the top of his trousers. 'Oi, dog breath', he called at the warden. 'Get a proper job'. His voice was slightly slurred and I noticed he was standing in the doorway of a bar. 'Wanker,' he slurred, tottering backwards. He put a foot out to steady himself. The warden ignored him and browsed the windscreens of parked cars. The oaf continued shouting at him - people turned to stare. The traffic warden stopped to write out a ticket. I hope it was the oaf's car.

Killing Truth

21 March 2004

As the US election draws closer there are some interesting conspiracy theories appearing. This one is astounding, if true, but such a risk to the US and UK governments that it's hard to believe they would go through with it. Something like this would easily bring both governments down. When both the president and the prime-minister look like they will win their next elections why should they bother fabricating evidence.

On March 13 the Iranian news agency Mehr reported a story that, if true, is surely the biggest news of this election year: "U.S. forces have unloaded a large cargo of parts for constructing long-range missiles and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the southern ports of Iraq. A reliable source from the Iraqi Governing Council, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Mehr News Agency that U.S. forces, with the help of British forces stationed in southern Iraq, had made extensive efforts to conceal their actions. According to Mehr's source, the parts are old ones, just the kind the U.S. gave to Saddam Hussein in the 1980s. Once they are "discovered," they would be the smoking gun that George W. needs to get re-elected." [Common Dreams]

Face Ache

20 March 2004

A colleague of mine asked me today if I was still in a bad mood because I'd been 'looking daggers all morning.' This shocked me because my mood was good, I was relatively happy in what I was doing. The windows were open and the fresh air was bringing the warmth and promise of Spring. I didn't feel angry at all. Heavens! My face must just sag into some kind of livid sneer without me realising it.

Apple Newton - yes, please!

17 March 2004

Newton 2004: A digital hub in the palm of your hand, Dan Knight, Mac Musings
How Apple could leverage the brilliance of the Newton, popularity of the iPod, and power of the Mac to create the best PDA ever. [Low End Mac]

1997 And All That

15 March 2004

At Rebecca's Pocket Rebecca Blood gives a thorough and interesting account of the brief history of blogs and blogging. Did they only start in 1997?

Eyes wide open

13 March 2004

Had a really strange experience on the drive to work yesterday. I was stopped at traffic lights watching cars crossing in front of me. I saw a police car and watched it pass. I realised a police officer in the back seat was staring at me. Our eyes locked and we looked at each other for a couple of seconds and it felt too long to stare but I couldn't drag my eyes away. There was no malice, just two people whose eyes had locked and wouldn't let go. Then as the distance increased the officer waved his open hand in a gesture that said something like 'sorry'. No idea why. Just odd.

Soiled satisfaction

10 March 2004

In an unknown city I found myself with an hour to spare in front of a huge book shop. Turned out that it sold shop-soiled books at about a third of the usual retail price. I found a damaged copy of the New Penguin Encyclopedia which only yesterday I had been drooling over in another shop. The price there was £30. In the 'seconds' shop it was £10. There were scuff marks on the cover and some pages were creased but for a brand new book the discount made it an easy decision. So now I have a superb 1700-page book to browse through at my leisure. I could just use Google for research, and I will, but I am of that generation that sees books as more than just containers of pages but as objects to bond with and savour; things to caress and love. Google is just a tool but a book is a journey of friendship and discovery.

At random...page 869 ": Laudanum...an addiction to laudanum was socially acceptable until the early 19th century when the invention of the hypodermic syringe and needle made narcotic addiction more serious."

Whilst in this book shop I rummaged around the 'Linguistics' section. There on a shelf heaving under the weight of thesauri was the handwritten notice, "Dictionarys".

My cat's got no tail

7 March 2004

Some unidentified member of my family drove their car over my little cat, Charlie, causing his tail to be amputated. I have offered him advice and he is considering legal action. He was particularly proud of his tail which was as bushy as a fox's and would stand tall and erect when he greeted you. Quite simply, he now feels emasculated.

All things to all men

29 February 2004

"The prime minister once slept rough in a north London park, his wife tells astonished guests at a Number 10 homeless charity reception."

A Conservatives party spokesman said few homeless people would feel they have much in common with Tony Blair. "Rather than pretending to be all things to all people the Prime Minister should be more genuine and focus on coming up with solutions to the problem of homelessness," he said.

"Ok, Cherie, we need the charity vote. We need to associate myself directly with the compassion industry. It'll soften the war-monger image. I know, tell them I slept rough once. They can't disprove it, especially if I say I really believed I slept rough once. Well, its worked before."

Witness Psychology

27 February 2004

A few days ago I took a call from a witness who complained that I had failed to return a call. He was very aggressive and threatened to tell my boss, my boss's boss, the industry watchdog and my professional institute. He was grumpy and pompous. After a while I realised that he just wanted to have his say. I told him I'd be pleased to see him. If he could spare the time I'd take a statement, this would help us greatly. In the blink of an eye he was a lamb, gamboling on a tide of self-righteousness. I couldn't stop him from spilling out all he knew; who said what, when; who did what, where.

We fixed a meeting and I saw him today; a compliant, helpful, verbose witness. Just what I needed for an easy statement. He just wanted someone to listen to him.

Coming back to Tinderbox

26 February 2004

About a year ago I purchased Tinderbox intending to use it as an organisational and blogging tool. I used it for my weblog for several months but got a little frustrated that all the Tinderbox blogs I looked at seemed to have the same 'feel'; they all looked the same. I printed the manual and read up on how I could alter the templates from which the HTML was written. Try as I might I couldn't get my head round the instructions. I gave up, moved on and over the months tried iBlog, Blosxom, VoodooPad, and Freeway. All had their good and bad points.

Part of the problem with storing a blog on a personal computer is the archiving of it so you always have a pristine copy of all your posts. This was a problem with Freeway. But Freeway wasn't really the tool for a blog. As an HTML editor it is very good, especially if you are maintaining pages that don't change often. Organising a blog around it just didn't work.

iBlog shows alot of promise but I felt restricted with what I could do with it. Also, I didn't feel comfortable that my database of blog entries relied on the program and wasn't easily searchable or adaptable.

VoodooPad is one of my favourite programs; it creates a Wiki on your desktop and is great for building mini-websites of research articles. It will also export to HTML using style sheet templates. The disadvantage for me was that it produced non-standard code which failed the HTML validators. I could alter the CSS but not some of the HTML automatically produced by VoodooPad. I'm a bit finicky that way. There's no reason why you couldn't just use the VP-produced pages on the Internet, it's just that I like validated pages.

So, onto Bloxsom. A very good, freeware blog creator. For me it was just too hard to set-up and maintain. Too much Perl, too much fiddling required if I wanted my own style of page design. Again, the problem of storing the archive in a straightforward accessible database. But very good, nevertheless.

Whilst I was pondering all this I updated my mac to OSX 10.3.2 and I did a clean installation. I set about reinstalling all the software I use and came to Tinderbox. To install or not to install? - that was the question. I hadn't really given it a chance, had I? I didn't read the manual thoroughly enough. Guilt took over and I reinstalled it. And forgot it.

Then one day I was considering the database I needed to store my blog entries and it occurred to me that Tinderbox was sitting on the hard drive lonely, forgotten, empty and in need of some TLC. I opened it up, made a few experimental entries, built a blog, uploaded it, and decided I had reached blog-making Nirvana. Oh, pity those souls who don't have macs, for they know not what they are missing (until the Windows version is released anyway). Tinderbox was the one! Everything seemed to click. I was beginning to understand what this software could do. It just required some time learning to use it. Not only could I write the blog with Tinderbox it would create the entire blog site and be a searchable database for all the entries, all in one place, in one file. I was, and still am, staggered at just how easy it is to create blog entries with it; I create a note, write the entry and with a couple of key presses the site is built! It even creates a coloured map of the web site.

I have read the manual and I'm still learning but I figured out the HTML templates and with the help of Taco HTML Edit and CSSEdit I can make the web pages how I want them. I was disappointed that the sample blogs supplied on the Tinderbox site didn't validate but after tinkering with them I did get them to validate. (Frustratingly the only thing I can't validate now is the special code supplied by eXtreme whose counter is on the main page).

Now I'm moving on to use Tinderbox as a Journal, Daybook, and Action Planner. It is much more than a blogging tool. It is often described as a content management system. I would call it a knowledge database. If you need to store information stick it in Tinderbox. It is a hard program to learn but you can use it at a very simple level to just store simple notes of information. But spending time reading the Tinderbox site, the Tinderbox Wiki and the manual will help you uncover the potential within. A very deep and interesting program which its own author says he is still exploring. Worth the $145? Yes.

Under Cover

25 February 2004

I don't like deceiving people but today I was able to do a little research surreptitiously, without having to lie or pretend. It did mean a quick check of a floor layout in the ladies' toilet of a public house but I'd chosen a quiet time of day and no-one saw me. I had been told to take photographs but I'd forgotten how to turn off my camera's flashgun and I didn't want to risk setting it off and having to make awkward excuses. I then sat in the bar and pretended to read a newspaper as I listened out for the names of staff I might be interested in. I get paid for this.

Butler

24 February 2004

Another simple and indispensible program finds a home on my iMac; Butler (formerly Another Launcher). This is a file launcher that sits in the menu bar with a drop-down menu of file or folder links, though this is selling it short. It manages browser bookmarks, creates hotkeys, gives easy access to system preferences, and stores clipboard information. With a simple key press it displays a search window for finding applications or another window for web searches. It is also freeware, though I can't help thinking that something of this quality deserves to be full-blown shareware with a price tag of around $25.

Keep death off the roads

23 February 2004

Got a call this morning to rush to the scene of a fatal road accident involving a double-decker bus. An elderly lady had crossed the road for the last time and the bus's offside wheels had crushed her to death. When we arrived one of her shoes lay in the carriageway. People were clustered nearby just staring. The police were busy sweeping up the mess and I took photographs of the scene and the bus. My colleagues tried to find witnesses so statements could be taken.

It was a very bright sunny day with a clear, sharp sky. Visibility was perfect, except for the lady. When she had turned to look for traffic the sun blinded her and she walked straight into the bus.

Taco HTML Edit

22 February 2004

According to the Taco HTML site:

"Taco HTML Edit is a full-featured freeware HTML editor. It is designed exclusively for Mac OS X and uses many of the core technologies built into Mac OS X including image transparency (in the image map wizard), toolbars, Webkit (for live previewing), and much more."

Taco HTML Edit is a freeware program with a live preview, meaning that when you change the HTML code you can instantly see the affect in a browser window.

VoodooPad

22 February 2004

VoodooPad is an interesting notepad concept. Basically it works like the Internet works with links to other locations within the text. The beauty is that it happens automatically and is probably best experienced on the Wiki site Wiki to fully grasp its potential.

According to the VoodooPad site:

"VoodooPad is a new kind of notepad. It's like having your own personal hypertext library, where you can jot down notes, web addresses, to-do lists... Anything on your mind. VoodooPad automatically links each page together, to form a miniature world wide web, on your desktop! Anybody familiar with the WikiWikiWeb will feel right at home with VoodooPad."

CSS Edit

22 February 2004

I recently been trying out various software products and am once again pleasantly suprised by the high standard of programs for the Apple macos. CSSEdit makes writing style sheets easy. It has an instant preview enabling you to fine tweak settings.

Mats R Us

29 January 2004

During the boring morning grind into the big shitty city I saw a van with the slogan 'mats for every environment' on its side. As my mood was already a little low I saw this as a comment on the futility of modern life. That someone somewhere had actually thought this comment was worthy of painting on a van appalled me. I was on a particularly pretty stretch of motorway at the time and this was an awful distraction from the concrete beauty around me.

Wiki

29 December 2003

Within hours of its servers crashing and a request for donations on Slashdot the Wikipedia site records total donations around $17,000. By 14.45 hrs (UTC) it had received £17499. The site needs $20,000, apparently, to restore itself.

"The solution to this problem is to purchase now sufficient hardware to give us enough excess capacity so that we can be reliable. I estimate that $20,000 in hardware would get us to a point where we have reserves to handle the failure of any one machine. Additionally, we would be well-poised to continue our track record of astounding growth."

An example of how small amounts from thousands of people soon makes a huge difference - which is what the Wikipedia is all about.

Close Down

24 December 2003

I telephoned a client at midday wanting to arrange an appointment. He was just closing his office. "You're 'aving a larf!" he said as I explained I needed to see him. "I'm just shutting everything down." Apparently there's some sort of event tomorrow that's causing a lot of people to divert from their normal routine. I wonder if that explains all the traffic around shopping centres that I've noticed lately.

Arse Wars

28 November 2003

Don't try this at home:

"Tests involve breaking wind on to lab plates from varying distances after having specific foods and drinks."