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week off

postmaster@sposh.demon.co.uk — 2008-08-02T07:17:55+01:00

This week has been my long awaited week off work, though as ever, nothing is quite what it seems, or says on the tin.

I did end up going into work on Wednesday for a job interview, which I suspect I was not successful in, although the interview went okay, there is a lot of tough competition these days.

While most people have moved over to stay-cations, where they don't leave the country, we have barely left the house. It has given us a chance to catch up on things, though the nature of the things you catch up on, is that they still never get entirely finished! There are just too many things, and big things beget small things and perspective means that ever bigger things can hide behind the visible things, so that when you deal with the visible things, other equally big things, though slightly more distant things, hove into view.

So, I have been dealing with things, but having got some of the great looming / depressing things done, it is at least possible to see the landscape of things more clearly, and get a better grasp of the lay of the land, thing-wise

We have -

painted the bathroom
found a skip load of what can only really be described as rubbish, in the loft. I think when you cannot be bothered to get rid of things, you just kind of think, ohh, it might come in handy, lets just stick it up the loft. Still a work in progress, but it is like finding a whole new room up there, now that the big indeterminate piles of stuff have got sorted through and in part, thrown out.
put mdf panels on the back of a couple of cheap shelves, so that they don't wobble about all over the place, and they now hold all my wife's jams, chutneys, and associated paraphanalia.
emptied out one of my composters, and blitzed the garden, trimming hedges, pulling out weeds, and regaining control of some of the bits that were getting totally lost beneath weeds. My fruit trees and bushes and now looking much happier, now they can get some light and air in about them.
We have modestly cropped the garden, using redcurrents for a crumble, volunteer potatoes, as well as dill and parsley. A bumper crop of apples is not far off, I've also foraged for Billberries, as per my last blog.
Number two daughter has been appointed soux chef, to my wife, and has been spending afternoons in the kitchen helping her to prepare some really splendid meals,
we have been buying the odd copy of the Mail for the free DVDs, and the girls have been getting into costume dramas, Pride and Prejudice was a huge hit, they have also seen Emma, and are all now half way through Rebecca.
I've sorted through the bulk of my clothes, getting rid of stuff that I have not worn since University, with all my stuff now sorted into neat piles, weekend tee shirts, polo shirts, smart jerseys, not so smart jerseys, trousers for the garden (the biggest pile), smart casual trousers (ie trousers that I have not yet spilt paint on) and office trousers.
I've made major in roads into a foot tall pile of old newspapers, and recent magazines,
the dog has had plenty of good walks
I have also been setting the girls little projects, to try and get their imaginations working, building robots from Lego, recording music on Garageband, researching how to use crops from the garden, mini projects on a garden plant of their choice,

All in all, it has been very pleasant to have a bit of time together with a modicum of purpose.

Finally I'll include some Chic Murray jokes that were in the Sunday Times found in that big foot high pile, because,

(a) I think that he is just hilarious, and;
(b) they make me smile

Doctor, I've got butterflies in my stomach
Oh, what have you been eating?
Butterflies.

Sergeant, get those screaming women into my tent this minute.
But they're not screaming, sir.
They're not in my tent yet.

Good evening madam, I'm from the environmental health department pest control division,
Aye well, you'd better come in, he's not home from the pub yet.

Colour television, whatever next? I won't believe it till I see it in black and white.

It was so boring six empty seats walked out.

For years, I've admired you from afar.
Mmmm, that's about the right distance.

shoutout for Brad Sucks and Jasper Morello

postmaster@sposh.demon.co.uk — 2008-07-26T08:09:41+01:00

There is some really amazing stuff out there if you have the time to track it down, or are lucky enough to be pointed in the right direction.

Brad Sucks, is a musician who has made the most of the opportunities offered by the web to find an audience without going through the usual record industry A&R men. He has been making his music available on an open source basis, although he does have material available for purchase now, via CD or iTunes, but he does point out that it is freely downloadable, so people can certainly listen without paying. I really like his explanation, he would love to make a living from his music, but if he could not manage that, then he would prefer that people listened to his music and enjoyed it, rather than it being unheard.

I think that is a far better mindset, than commercial artists under contractual obligations to produce an album a year.

Anyway I heard his track Sick as a Dog on the GeekDad podcast, stuck Brad Sucks into google and found his website, downloaded the album, dragged it over onto my iPod, and was listening to it on the way into work the next day. Quite simple, alternative rather than lo-fi, catchy without being trashy, well put together, without any filler material. Recent favourite bands of mine have been the Mountain Goats and Throw me the Statue, and this is in the same sort of ball-park.

But the bottom line is, it is free, try it, you might like it.

The Mysterious Geographical adventures of Jasper Morello, was likewise cited in a Wired listing. It is a short animation, a sort of steam punk Noggin the Nog. Every frame is a work of art, beautiful gothic extravagances of clockwork transports, iron airships, populated with stock Victorian characters. It is all rather Edgar Allan Poe, or Jules Verne, or the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen or Laputa - City in the Sky, depending on your reference points.

There is a fantastic trailer on the website, but the short film itself seemed difficult to track down, a CD for sale in Australia, or part of a US compilation. Finally, almost by accident thought to look on iTunes, and it was there for £1.99, which is a bargain in anyone's money. The first short film is number one in a short sequence, it would be amazing to track down the others somehow, or manage to persuade iTunes to distribute them.

Maybe there have always been amazing people out there, doing amazing things, but now the web lets us find them, rather than the bland homogenised entertainment that commercial channels insist on. The traditional media have lost their way, and it will take more than a website and some phone in competitions to bring the impact of web 2.0 to them.

The broadcast is dead, long live the podcast.

gathering bilberries

postmaster@sposh.demon.co.uk — 2008-07-26T08:09:04+01:00

Yesterday I managed to add another crop to my list of grown and gathered edibles. I was aware of some bushy plants covering some banking in the woods. More recently I spotted some small berries on them, which confirmed that they were bilberries. I think that American Bilberries might produce larger berries, ours produce berries larger than pepper corns, but smaller than grapes. They are the black blue that blueberries are, perhaps blacker than that. It is worth pointing out that gathering a crop is time consuming, I must have been ten fifteen minutes to gather a cup full. If you were to make jam, then you would be looking for about a kilo, so unless there is an army of you, and acres of bilberries, it is probably best to find something else to do with them.

We fell back on that old staple of sprinkling them on ice cream, which was really nice. They did not have any particular flavour, possibly sweet, certainly not sharp, the pleasure was in the crisp crunch of their skins, like little grapes being broken by your teeth. I suppose you could also add them to a plain yoghurt to make you own yoghurt.

We are descended from hunter gatherers, so it seems obvious that we must have evolved to survive on a rich mix of opportunistically gathered wild crops. There is certainly a school of thought that berries are the nutritional super-food. I'm not sure I believe in super-foods, but a really diverse and seasonal diet must be a good thing.

The classic text on wild foods is of course Food for Free by Richard Mabey, which now comes in a rich mix of different editions. He describes Bilberries as

widespread throughout the British Isles, except the south and east of England, and locally abundant on heaths and moors. An erect shrub, growing 9 to 18 inches high, with hairless twigs, and oval, slightly toothed, bright green leaves. Flowers; solitary, drooping, greenish pink globes. Fruits from July to September, small round and black, and covered in bloom.

I suppose that what is distinctive about it is how it forms a shrubby mass, not high, but expanding out, rather like a wild and slightly shaggy cousin of box, or a more erect version of the cranberry, to which it is of course related. As with all the vaccinium, it requires acid soil, so don't even think about trying to grow it if you cannot offer acid soil. I'm not sure how worthwhile it would be for cropping, it is a fairly modest crop that is a lot of work to find, but it does seem to act as a decent ground cover over banking so it might well earn a place in my garden on those grounds.

so what do we want, when we have everything we want?

postmaster@sposh.demon.co.uk — 2008-07-19T07:20:07+01:00

Capitalism is based on wanting things, rather than needing things. Communism presumed that it was based on needing things, and that if the state could just provide for needs, then the people would be happy, but they looked over the proverbial fence and saw people getting what they wanted, and found that they too wanted it.

Consumerism has always been more sophisticated that just supplying needs, then supplying wants. It generates its own demand through means such as built in obsolescence so that goods fail far more quickly than they really ought to. Then there is fashion, which is just a clever way of convincing people to buy replacements for perfectly good clothes. Perhaps it is no surprise that communism had people wearing uniforms, explicitly rejecting fashion. Then there is luxury, a form of conspicous consumption where the consumption becomes an end in itself. And finally there is the whole consumer society, where media shades into advertising and we judge people by what they own, and how they dress. So we aspire to the clothes and accessories, dressing up and pretending to be, just like when we were children.

But we are entering into a post-consumer society. It is now relatively open to people to eat as much of whatever they want to make themselves obese and ill. It is relatively easy to buy more books that you could read in a lifetime, more electronic gadgets than you could ever find time to use.

Our houses are so packed with physical things that now you can pay for people to declutter your house for you. Presumeably giving you the chance to then reclutter it up again, just as you can have the fat sucked out of your belly, ready to gorge yourself afresh.

The consumer society has responded to this by trying to create experiences, bundle them up and sell them. So that now we are paying for intangibles, like mobile contracts, ringtones, and downloads. We pay to go ballooning or race car driving. Going straight past all the tedious learning about something, and working up to it, just diving straight in.

But just as our homes are finite, so is our time and attention. Our lives are full up now.

And what do you do when you life is full up? Do you just liposuction out all that cheap crap, and get ready to gorge yourself again. Do you think of some more expensive way to fill up your life, with basically the same stuff that you had before, the stealth wealth people dressed just like everyone else, but so much more expensively.

If you look at old money, it was never just about stuff. Even a stately home fills up eventually. It was never just about experience, one Grand Tour was enough for most. You stepped back far enough to see things in generations. So that your family name prevailed, so that there was enough money there to not have to worry too much. And looking round now, how many of the best of opportunities seem virtually restricted to the children of first generation meritocrats. Paul McCartney might have went to a comprehensive, but Stella had the opportunities he never had.

For those unfussed with their progeny, there is the wider world, buy into Fair Trade and sponsoring, look at the whole world and try and shove it just that little bit in the direction that you would like to see it move.

The thing about a consumer society is that it is sticky sweet like candy. Designed to tempt and seduce, it fits us likea comfy chair, flattering us and beguiling us. The consumer society has all the best tunes because it pays handsomely for them. But we need to step back, and try to listen to that quiet voice within ourselves, what does it say is that change which we ought to make in the world, what does it say we ought to be doing with our lives. We need to struggle hard to hear that quiet voice, so quiet we might never quite hear it all our lives, until perhaps it is too late.

Fixing a Hole

postmaster@sposh.demon.co.uk — 2008-07-16T18:43:59+01:00

With our current house, we inherited one shed, and I bought another one for the top of the garden. The top quite literally, as you climb all the way from the front to the back. Gardening is pretty much a case of constantly climbing and descending. The shed in the middle of the garden has gradually been losing its felt roof. Initially nailing a couple of battens on held the flappy bits down, but that only works for so long. So off the the DIY shed to buy some roofing felt.

Hey how difficult can this be?

I even reckoned it was do-able in about an hour, having assembled a few modest tools.

An hour later the old roof felt had come down, an hour or two later the new felt was on the roof, but...

At this point it became clear that if you were to build a shed then you would be much better doing it properly like everyone else. This shed is idiosyncratic in the extreme. The main point in its favour is that the bulk of it is made of wood not much thinner than railway sleepers. Less appealing features are the fact that you need to bend down to go through the door. And as became obvious on trying to fit felt to the roof, it, the roof, is basically four oddly shaped pieces of plywood, nailed onto the incredibly robust framework. Being entirely lacking in any of the normal roofly accoutrements like some form of ridge, or any bracing, it is impossible to nail anything to the body of the roof, because if just bounces in and out. Hence fixing the roof felt involved using battens at the edges where there was enough rigidity to nail on battens with which to at least hold the felt on.

That was about as far as I got a couple of weeks ago, so there has been some more flapping about in the wind, before I could spend today trying to finish the job. I was intending to reinforce the roof internally, in order to allow me to nail on the roofing felt, but that would have taken forever. So, a complex sequence of fixing sides, taking off battens, layering on strips, heftily fixed with a thick bitumen glue, from “evo-stick”, rather than the more exciting “evil stick”, that my daughter thought.

The felt is now three layer deep in parts, and there are two litres of evil stick holding it all together, as well as countless galvanised clout nails, and a whole forest of battens.

Will it leak?

Probably, but it should last a year or two, and hopefully I might even be a bit more organised about it all next time.

What have I learnt?

Roofing felt is the most insane material to work with. It is like some giant piece of wet kitchen roll. Sure all is well when it is rolled up, but trying painting it with evil stick and carrying across the garden, then lifting it above your shed, and then straightening it out, all the while not creasing it at all, or it will suddenly go all precious and crack. I suppose if shed roofs were in more convenient places then all would be well, but unfortunately they are usually at the top of a shoogly ladder, and sometimes it might even be windy up there.

The fact that the felt was full of these characterful little wrinkles, that are one step away from roofing felt fragments blowing in the wind, meant that there was a lot of layering of additional felting layers to try and ensure at least some impermeable-ness in the the general roof area.

And what about the shed roof?

Heck, next time, I might just take down the decidedly feeble and lopsided ply wood, and take a day or two, putting a proper framework onto the top of the shed, then fix some decent plywood on as a roof, such that it is even, rather than just reaching the wall on one side, and overhanging it so much at the other, that roof felt snaps getting bent over at that acute angle.

With a fine day, a Workmate, saw, hammer, pencil, square, crow bar for taking of the old, ladder and stool for putting on the new, I could enjoyably enough spent a day or two putting a proper roof onto the shed.

With the time for it, and the tools, there is a certain pleasure to be had fixing something, working out what you can manage, and what seems to be working, what corners to cut, and which to re-inforce. We have our whole lives for tinkering and looking after things, when did we ever get to thinking that we were too busy.

The Burn

postmaster@sposh.demon.co.uk — 2008-07-16T18:41:11+01:00

I normally like to do a blog posting each weekend, but missed one, so instead, a short story, which may be chapter one of something longer, as the characters rather intrigue me, but I’m not sure where they are going.

The Burn

I want to start at the end, that is where I am now. Sitting here in tears about to stick my hand into the fire. I have lost everything, there is nothing left to lose now. I lost her, then lost her again, and now I don't even know who I am.

It all started with the war, as we made the robots smarter, we made them our equals, or even our superiors, instead of our slaves. They did not just want to be static companions, or servants, they wanted to lead lives of their own. By then we had made them almost indistinguishable from ourselves. No one wanted a robotic lover or companion or employee. They were designed to blend in, not stand out. Of course the main problem was one of constraint, making them as feeble as we were, rather than letting them be as strong as they could be.

Things seemed okay for a very long time, there was the odd spat, demonstrations, robots standing for election, but everyone more or less knew where they stood.

The causes of the war were overanalysed, I won't repeat them here, and the idea of a war is an oversimplification, there were robots on both sides. There were humans on both sides. No one wins a war like that. We managed to get away, in the confusion we stole a craft and made it to here. A billion places just like this blinked out in the flames that followed the war. The war and flames swept over them, leaving nothing but ashes. By that time no one cared about sides, or winning, it was just about survival. There were no winners that I know about.

But somehow the two of us survived. Just me and Jenny. This is no paradise. But we could live. We could sustain ourselves. I managed to grow a few things, we could rear animals. We spent more time outdoors, got browner, and leaner, stronger and wiser. I rigged up some power, so we could run some electronics. It was all untidier than it sounds, but when it works, you don't worry about things like that.

I did not know much about Jenny, we had just met in the confusion of the war. But we just kind of clicked, instantly, easily falling into relying on each other. She came back for me, when she could have kept on running. I carried her for days. We got close as those things make you.

And then she died. She just stopped. In the middle of a sentence, her eyes went glassy, she just stopped, and toppled to the ground, falling hard like someone who was dead already. I just knew that there was no way of saving her. It does not work like that. She was dead. I sat and stared for ages, suddenly I was alone, more alone than I had ever been in my life, but that was not the thing. The way that she had fallen, the way she had just stopped...

I touched her body, it was not still warm and lifelike like a human corpse, there was a degree of play but basically it was rigid. Some subroutines must have still been working, but overall she was dead. She had injured a leg recently, keeping it wrapped in greasy bandages, hidden from me. I finally unwrapped it gently, the skin puckered and stopped, grey generic filler tissue burnt and torn, beneath that the rigid metallic frame lined with fibre optics and copper cabling.

She was a robot, I did not really care, I had loved her, and now she was gone. Here, it was all I could do to repair a laptop, there was no way I could repair her. The robots are designed to keep going for as long as they can, cannibalising power, re-routing systems, without maintenance they can survive remarkably long periods but when they fail, they fail completely, they have cannibalised away all their options. Away from civilisation and robot body shops, the cybernetics labs and Androids-r-Us, the robots only ever had a limited time to function. They did not evolve out of barbarism, they could not return to it.

And if she was a robot, what was I?

I stand here beside the fire, my hand stretched out, if it goes into the fire, I will burn,

will it be the familiar stink of burnt flesh, or will the skim of flesh burn back, leaving grey filler with gleaming metal bodywork?

going from filing to finding

postmaster@sposh.demon.co.uk — 2008-07-06T16:44:03+01:00

I am an inveterate filer of things. There is a certain virtue in a world that is ordered and neat. Tidyness is a form of virtue. I could easily have become a librarian, efficiently finding the right place for things, even in my house, I am obsessed with finding sensible places to put things, logically placing like items with like items. Putting the frequently used to the front, the less frequently to the back.

In office terms, you had to file, if you did not file, you lost, and if you lost, you might as well never have had, and you were done for, you might as well never have been.

And so, my email is filled with folders within folders, my hard drives have folders within folders. There is a certain overhead to this, though virtual filing is certainly less onerous than physical filing. But it is a system that serves me well, I can generally place my hand on anything of note pretty briskly.

But computing is all about metaphors, because we do not think in binary, we apply metaphors to make meaning. Folders are a paper based metaphor, because you put things in them, then ordered them neatly. We know folders, we like folders, so we have virtual folders in our virtual lives. But folders exist because processes like duplicating and sorting and finding are all labour intensive in a real world. But when you have four gigabytes of RAM, and a terrabyte of storage, then processes that might seem unimaginable if performed physically suddenly become a mere commonplace that come at no real cost.

So we are moving from filing to finding, you don't need to file something logically, so that you can find it again. You can simply title it and leave it in a big dump of stuff, and search for it if you ever feel that you need it. So what if your search turns up twenty possible documents, it will be there anyway, and it only takes a moment to pick the right one.

But have we just swapped one metaphor for another. By making searching faster we can get rid of filing, but it is still a rather manual mindset that we are thinking in. Surely the point of computing power is not just that it does what we do a little quicker, or a little cheaper. That is like employing servants just to do what you cannot be bothered to do yourself, knowing that basically the servants came with pretty much the same design specification that you did, only their hourly rate is cheaper than yours, so you can get them to do all the stuff that you cannot be bothered to do. Like your family really.

But computers are not just a mini-me, they are something completely different. Why are we trying to get computers to comply with our outdated metaphors, and ways of working. We could instead look to what computers are good at, use them to compliment ourselves, while we have abilities that it would be impossible for computers to equal, they equally exceed us in other areas.
I suppose that this is the sort of hive-mind idea that is floating about, without any particularly clear articulation, because it is all a bit too blue skies to really be able to assimilate. We are uncomfortable about pushing away from the side, losing our metaphors. On the one hand artificial intelligence could offer a potential future, but isn't that just all about trying and failing to make computers think like we do. Like people making two legged robots to climb stairs. We did not design motor cars to duplicate horses, that could eat grass and jump fences. We built them to run on specially built roads and come in attractive colours.

It is about accepting the differences and changing our world a bit to accomodate what computers unfettered could offer.

I'm no smarter than anyone else - I don't know the answers, or even what they would look like, they will be different, that much is for sure.

THINGS THAT WORK NOW

storing incredible amounts of data works well - especially now that computers can search and sort it so easily,
paths - allowing the wisdom of crowds to sort out the most crucial of stuff
living on line lives - minimal barriers to putting stuff on line
communities of interest, rather than geographical communities

ISSUES TO WORRY ABOUT

the internet is still a scarce resource, we are not touching the sides yet, but soon will.
Datafarms already use about 3% of the UK's energy. Factor in how difficult it will be to produce energy in future, with peak oil and the declining acceptability of fossil fuels, and this could be an issue
internet pipes are not infinitely fat pipes, they were designed for stuff like email, as were the protocols. So stuff found its way through, not instantly but efficiently. There was enough capacity for all, you just had to wait a wee while sometimes, or the site you were after might be down.
But now people are using broadband as a means of accessing vast amounts of data, watching TV programmes on iPlayer, phoning each other by skype. These are hungry and need to be pretty quick to be useable, so they have hungry protocols that don't play nice and share so well.
There is an internet infrastructure and new internet infrastructure needs to be paid for. But current charging mechanisms don't really help fund infrastructure.
I would expect the internet infrastructure to start creaking in a serious way in the next few years. I would also expect the electricity grid to start creaking too. In America they are used to brown-outs when the amount of power reduces. Fine if you are running an electric fire, not so great if you are running a data farm. An interesting point about datafarms is that they already select hardware on the basis of power efficiency, it is that crucial a factor for them.
I know that digital inclusion is a very trendy term, and I know the theory that some people are excluded access to the internet and this serves as a barrier to their full participation in society. I don't really disagree, but although there are people with good reasons for being excluded, through disability or infirmity, or inability to cope, most of those who are excluded choose to be excluded. People without a computer either cannot afford one or are not interested. Often enough they can afford games machines, they simply choose not to spend their money on a computer. Even if you were to magically place an easy to use computer in every house - would it really get used in any useful way. Just as children use a dictionary to look up rude words, or prop up a table, there is no guarantee that people will use the internet wisely. If you simply want to passively interact with a medium that entertains you, then that is the medium that you will find on the internet. The challenge is to make people make more use of the potential of the internet, to join these communities of interest, to create the wisdom of crowds. The internet should raise our potential, or what use is it.

POSSIBLE FUTURES

the death of computers - because in future everything will be smart - to an appropriate degree
your boiler will tell you when it was last serviced, who your service contract is with, and supply competitive quotes for fuel, service and insulation services, as well as responding to ambient temperature, preferences and holidays.
your cup will advise on the presence of off-milk and beverage temperature
not just some blade-runner esque nightmare of continuous and cretinous advertising, but useful functionality. Why should we spend so much time shopping, mostly we don't like it.
the death of applications - because in future everything will be smart, why switch on your computer, it switches on so as to be ready for you as you come in, it advises you of your tasks for the day, and any urgent emails, finds reading material for work and leisure, suggests contacts that you might want to follow up. You switch seemlessly from email to browser to word processor, the computer offering appropriate options based on your previous behaviour with appropriate wild card options.
the smart paths - wisdom of crowds model will extend beyond shopping, what about politics with smart crowds, what about meaningful social change!
what about work with all the boring bits taken out, a work that responded to you, rather than fitting you into some strait-jacket of how the office liked to function.

I really will need to do some serious thinking around this. Safe bets would appear to be that human skills like interpersonal skills or creativity will be more valuable than stuff that can more easily be duplicated by a computer. We all want to feel valued and happy, and computers will only ever be able to go so far in making that happen.

still listening to GeekDad

postmaster@sposh.demon.co.uk — 2008-06-29T10:09:12+01:00

Time just seems to be flying by these days. And the more things fly by, the more difficult it is to actually step back and think where you are going. You just get into a default position of reacting to stuff, rather than actually controlling your own agenda.

I suppose marketing plays on that, wrong footing you with buy now, time limited offer, so you allow yourself to be bounced into buying something you don't really need.

I have fallen prey to a couple of marketing efforts recently, the recent MacHeist offer on Parallels for half price, only available until the end of the month, and TalkTalk broadband available free for the next twenty years if you sign up now.

PARALLELS
I'd done a bit of research on Parallels before, so I just bought it, it was not much. However on looking at just how much a Vista/XP license would cost, and just how much of an anorak you would need to be to install and run Linux, I've not got any further. I'll maybe get a Linux install as a cover disc for one of the magazines, and I'll keep my eyes open for cheap Windows OS.

Never actually having been in the business of buying software for a PC, I foolishly assumed that it was all pretty cheap, as PC owners do tend to focus on the inordinate expense of running a Mac. However I was really struggling to find an Instal OS disk for less than £100, there seemed to be a million Amazon pages with slightly different versions, at widely different prices. And of course, you have to remember that however wonderful the OS actually is, it does not actually do very much, you still need to buy the actual software that you might want to run, the price for full set of Microsoft Office is at the kind of level that I would associate with the price of a second hand car.

Bearing in mind the fact that a load of CDs and a box cost virtually nothing, and practically every computer in the world seems to run Windows and Office, the surprise is that Bill Gates is only as rich as he is, he is not just sitting on a goldmine, it is like having won a whole set of licenses to print money, he is probably the one person that could afford to buy his own planet!

Being peevish, it is obvious that money does not buy taste, he certainly does not dress well, his offices look like somewhere that sell bulk office stationery, he has not acquired the aloof snooty sheen of academics or the meritocracy. However, as a Mac user, the script is to hate Bill Gates, but he is actually reasonably likeable, probably mildly autistic, and fiercely competitive, he has taken the intellectual stance of pursuing the game as ruthlessly as he could, and the fact that regulation failed to check him is a failing of legislation rather than him. I suspect that he simply does not look at things in terms of decent fair play, just as I cannot conceive of the meaning that a mathematician would see in numbers. Being different is not being bad.

TALKTALK
Having rambled on about Parallels, the other marketing blandishment that I fell prey to was someone phoning me to try and sell me free broadband for life with TalkTalk. As ever, the person was probably phoning from Dehli, and is probably a really lovely person, who just happens to be annoying me. Of course the offer sounded tempting, but it was difficult to get a word in edge-ways, and they were starting to tell me things that I knew were not true, like that there would be no problem curtailing my current broadband contract. You kind of get a feel for when people know less about something than you do, though they don't always have the sense to talk less simply because the know less.

Anyway having had to politely hang up, family stuff going on, the poor guy still grinding out the sales pitch, I checked out the reviews on that interweb thingy. I suppose that Broadband reviews will always tend towards the extreme, this service sucks so hard, that it is creating an anomaly in the space time continuum, stole my kidneys and had sex with my gerbil. However even by these hyperbolic standards the reviews for TalkTalk seemed ‘mixed’, in fact I do rather wonder if the few good reviews came from Charlie Dunstone and his immediate family.

Getting broadband running is about as much fun as doing open heart surgery on yourself, I think that I can find it in myself to pass up on the chance of free broadband, with some of the worst reviews going.

Anyway, having wibbled on about nothing, time to go find something useful to do.
I'm posting the odd photo to Flickr, and starting to think about what makes a good photo, basically it only has a few things it in, so it is not a distracting mess of detail.
Still listening to Geekdad,
....

PS - lame joke
why did the vicar have a Mars bar on Sunday morning?

because a Mars a day, helps you work, rest and pray.

PPS
I had to explain that to my daughter Megan, still not sure that she got it

the geek shall inherit the earth

postmaster@sposh.demon.co.uk — 2008-06-21T17:37:54+01:00

A week of interesting diversions, been listening to the Geekdad podcasts, because, well, I suppose, I am, a geek dad. Though probably not quite fully signed up to all the cultural reference points. I do not have box sets of all the Buffy series, though I did watch them all, and I only have one copy of BladeRunner, but overall pretty geeky.

Also, pretty obviously, I'm a dad.

I've been listening to the blogs back to back, so I've just caught up to 2008, which is feeling a bit more contemporary.

I've also just bought the latest issue of Monocle, I've been watching the podcast for a while, but the city special is the first actual issue of the magazine that I have bought. It is a good read, though like the Economist, there is just so much of it you feel deterred from buying it because you cannot manage to finish it. An entertaining read, though all rather silly in that all the readers are looking at these pricey architect commissioned houses, while commuting back home to their semi's. But I rather like getting ideas from these magazines, and then trying to recreate them myself, a bit of harmless escapism.

It is intriguing to read about what they reckon makes for a great city, albeit for the rich global nomad, more interested in eating out than getting a weekly shop or something to do with the kids.

Consistent features seem to include bicycles, eating out, diversity of shops, arts, tolerance, genuine mixtures of people, good design/architecture.

Not mentioned explicitly but implicit, would be a welcoming attitude. I do wonder if we are all feeling too emancipated now to work in service professions, seeing them as menial. I think that there is a nobility in any job done well, and we would all do well to increase our civility, manners and tolerance. For the very rich stealthy wealthy, the whole world is open to them, so they can easily enough decant following some bad experience. For those of us who are less mobile, it is civility that makes our cities tolerable.

Why I don't like Doctor Who anymore - nowadays Doctor Who is written as a soap opera that happens to be set in a science fiction setting. However it is the set characters who drive the plots. Note how seldom they ever visit anywhere that is particularly alien, the lack of genuinely different looking aliens, the lack of compelling ideas in the plots, the xenophobia. All in all I'm getting bored of Doctor Who, so will probably give up on it, save for the odd Stephen Moffat episode, as he remains an inventive and amusing writer.

Austerity starts to bite - our old fixed term mortgage has ended, and suddenly we are paying nearly an extra hundred a month for what we are getting. It would be good to be able to invest more in the depressed stock market, but the routine outgoings are as ever non-negotiable. Time to hunker down and weather the recession as best we can.

The Maules

postmaster@sposh.demon.co.uk — 2008-06-16T06:45:05+01:00

Why write this blog entry;-
I have been reading Miracles of Life, an autobiography of sorts, of JG Ballard. I've been reading JG Ballard since secondary school, and even wrote a dissertation on him when I was in sixth year. Needless to say, that was either right at the start of the eighties or even at the end of the seventies, so he was not as well known in those days. Having read so much of his fiction, reading now about his life, is strangely informing.

However, despite these digressions my point is, he has written about the people that he came across and their impact on him. I suppose, looking back on your life, this is an incredibly natural thing to do. But in our hurry we seldom do look back, or think about the people we have come across and the positive impact they have had on us. He describes a family he knew and their relaxed approach to family life, combined with a decency and a love for each other, and others more widely. This family was in part a model for how he chose to bring up his own children later in life.

Of course, I could write at vast lengthy about all the people who have made a positive impact on my life, but thinking of my life as a young child, I was particularly struck by an elderly couple that moved in across from us, the Maules. It was so long ago that I don't remember much, in terms of appearance, I really don't know, they were probably grey or white haired, certainly not broad Scots, in my minds eye just a stereotypical elderly couple who smiled and made people happy. They must have enjoyed the attention of children, I was one of four, and we certainly were not the only young children in the street, but they would make us tablet with peanuts in it. We were too shy to mention that we all disliked peanuts, so we patiently took them out. I must have had some conversation where the word Lauriston came up, for they gave me a postcard and a page torn from a book, with a poem Lock the gate Lauriston. Tearing a page from a book is something that still shocks me now. Where we were, you might find brown red stones on the beach, well worn, but with some sort of whirl of other material across a face. Pretty and unusual. They had collected such stones, and set then in cement, in a little corner.

They struck me as the kindest of neighbours, but it was also their curiosity and creativeness. Here were adults that could be whimsically creative, who took a gentle interest in the buzz of no doubt tiresome children, people with a real interest in things and a love of sharing it.

When it is our very memories that shape our sense of reality, it is disconcerting just how partial and fallible they are. But I'm sitting here now, thinking of the Maules all those years ago, of their contentment and the pleasure they took in the things around them. I suppose that amidst the rather conventional, and aspirational neighbours, who were by and large too busy for us children, they were rather eccentric, but they were kind and gentle. With luck, when we see something we admire, it might sow the seed of something similar in ourselves.

swimming with rabbits

postmaster@sposh.demon.co.uk — 2008-06-08T07:15:09+01:00

Somehow the power was cut to some railway signals at a key junction, so on Wednesday evening all the trains were cancelled.
All a bit galling, as my normal train was the last one to leave on time, but I had already missed it, picking up some watches that I had dropped off at a jewellers for new batteries.
First of all we all got on a train, then we were told to get off, but a replacement train was on the departure board without a platform associated with it. Then that too vanished from the board. Figuring that nothing much was going to happen any time soon, I got a hot pie for dinner, and picked up a complaints leaflet. Someone I worked with appeared, then headed off to catch a bus home. Still nothing much happening, trains appearing for departure but with no associated platform, then when they were due quietly vanishing from the board.
It was a wonderful sunny evening, which always cheers you up, so I just hung about waiting. I suppose I could have got annoyed, and to be honest if the assembled multitude had decided to start a riot, I probably would have been in there somewhere at the back, but I just found somewhere quiet to stand and let the time pass. A young drunken couple came by squabbling so I moved position, and someone asked me where I was going, and as we were both heading in the same direction, he was keen to share a taxi. The conversation quickly attracted a few other interested parties and by the time that we had got the the taxi rank there were five of us, ready to split a taxi fare, taking us in our various directions. Probably not a cheap option, but we were getting dangerously close to when The Apprentice started, and different people had plans afoot to pop the cork on their different bottles of wine and watch it.
So we chatted about the Apprentice, and one of us was a engineer from Canada, and painting when you have children, and swimming with sharks, though I preferred the idea of swimming with rabbits. And all in all a pleasant ride home, with people I had never met before and probably won't again.
Delighted that something so unexpected and enjoyable could be plucked from such circumstances, impressed by the person who had the confidence to gather us altogether, and surprised how much we all had in common, people who would silently commute past each other without a comment, none so different from each other, but all our own humour and stories.
And the lesson of this all, if you can be at all times relaxed and approachable, then opportunities will arise when you least expect them to. A smile can take you further than the stoutest pair of shoes.

in sleeping we surrender ourselves to strong currents

postmaster@sposh.demon.co.uk — 2008-06-01T14:14:53+01:00

A week of this and that. There seems to have been a run of public holidays. So, in theory, I should be catching up with the paperwork and such-like. Fine in theory, but in practice, I can always find vastly more to do, than I can find hours and energy to do it with.

I have also decided to mix up what I'm doing a bit more. So, rather than spend the whole day doing the garden, I'll do the garden upto lunch-time, and then do something else. I'm not sure whether it is more efficient breaking up the time like this, but it does sharpen you up, if you know that you only have a fairly finite amount of time to spend on something. A day seems pretty vast at the start, and it is only towards the end that it becomes clear how little a day's work can achieve with some tasks.
I have been lucky, in that I have recently had some of that weather that is so good, that I feel that it would be a shame to be doing anything else but being out in the garden.
So I have been excavating the fine plants that I am growing, from in amongst the vast and profligate weeds that are often dwarfing them. One part of me thinks that I should be working systematically to a laid down scheme of work. One part of me thinks that I should just dad about doing whatever catches my fancy. I'm currently steering a middle course, perhaps slightly on the dadding about side. There is always something to be said for doing whatever happens to catch my fancy, rather than working to some sensible but uninspiring list.
Some plants have been successfully excavated, and the garden now looks a bit more like a garden again.
Offering a couple of observations
• at this time of year, a good gardener always has vastly more to do, than he has time for
• the perfect garden is one that is just big enough to keep you busy when you want to be out gardening, but not so big that you have to go out when you don't feel like it.
• the only gardener who has does not have weeds in his garden, is the one that does a LOT of weeding.

Otherwise, I've been playing about with my new digital camera. Much impressed. I would love to have more time for just playing about with digital cameras, and websites, and Fontstruct, and reading the Sunday papers, and ...

If I am off during the week, and have to go shopping for something, there are all these really miserable folk there, really really miserable. I can't imagine that I would ever run out of things to do, or end up grumpily wandering round garden centres. There is so far too much to be doing.

Just finished yet another book about the Shakers, this one on the Shaker Garden. I do like the Shakers, doubtless pandering to my obsessive neatness.

all of a sudden I feel like Robert Doisneau

postmaster@sposh.demon.co.uk — 2008-05-26T15:36:06+01:00

I have just bought myself a new digital camera. This is a proper grown up digital camera, the one I had before was the cheapest digital camera you could buy in Argos. I was keen to test out whether I would actually use it, and I certainly did not want to lash out on an expensive model, that would just sit unused on a shelf somewhere. The fact that you could spend anything from £20 to £20,000 on a camera was also pretty scary. What to buy, what is actually the difference between these different models and prices.

Having established that I really, really, did want a digital camera, I used some money I got for my Birthday. A little research on the internet, and I decided to get a Canon Ixus, Argos were doing a deal on the Ixus 950 IS. It was going for half price, though according to the reviews it was certainly well over-priced at full price. I think that Argos are shifting discontinued stock, but it is a good price, for a decent camera. It actually seems to be pretty easy to use, and reasonably intuitive. I hate fiddling about with inscrutable knobs, impenetrable menus, and the like. After only a few days, I am starting to get the hang of this, so it must be pretty easy. It also has a pleasing heft to it. I feels substantial. Less impressed that the battery cover seems unreasonably happy to slide open, particularly as you tend to hold onto the camera there. However that is a minor niggle.

Of course the proof of the worth of the camera is in the photos, and it does seem to take remarkably good photos. I particularly like the zoom option, and the way that it will focus for you. I'll just carry on shooting off a variety of photos, to try and get an idea of how to get the best out of it.

Of course as soon as I got the new digital camera, it was straight onto Flickr to set up an account. There should now be a link on the start page for this site. Nothing much uploaded as yet, and actually nothing yet from my new camera, but I'll get to work with uploading stuff, and taking stuff, and uploading stuff.

All very exciting this photography lark, all of a sudden I feel like Robert Doisneau.

from there to here, and back again

postmaster@sposh.demon.co.uk — 2008-05-17T17:40:41+01:00

A bit of an odd sort of day, following an odd sort of week, I guess. I've been playing around with Fontstruct, which is really quite engaging and restful, tinkering about, a letter at a time. My first font, was straphanger, which was a display font which I wrote about last week. I am working on a softer gentler version - which is more legible. I'll call it Commuter. I am also working on a dingbat font, with little people or whatever. The limitations of the tiles, basically mean that rather than deciding what you will draw, you start experimenting, and gradually proceed towards something that you can actually make some sort of representation of, which generally has no relation to your initial intention. Currently only Straphanger is a public font, but I'll make the others public once I get a bit more work done on them. I would love to actually get a Fontstruct pick recommendation. Something to aim for. Today the weather has been iffy to say the least, so I have been catching up on paperwork, but in a rather halfhearted fashion, as I cannot really be bothered. Attended a few interesting seminars and meetings during the week, always good to get out and meet folk. Next week there are a few holidays so with good weather, I should be able to make a dent in the weeding next week. I managed to put a pretty severe ding in the blade for the Flymo, so had to order a new blade online. I'm so used to ordering things that you can download, actually having to wait for something that arrives by post, just seems, like incredibly, like slow now. However replacement blade now safely here. However still in the annoying - waiting pile, still to get an external La Cie hard drive fixed. They did indicate that I would get a replacement, but still waiting for the proper details on that. This is a long running saga, I suspect that most people would just have given up by now, but I am feeling stubborn. I might think of something more sensible to add tomorrow, but for now, this will have to do.

fontstruct - shoutout

postmaster@sposh.demon.co.uk — 2008-05-11T07:58:18+01:00

After writing about names for imaginary fonts, I have finally had the chance to create one, as per the banner above me. Fontshop, where I indulge my love of fonts, has just released a web-based font creation tool, FONTSTRUCTION. Rather than being vector based, it is tile based, but there is a large and growing selection of tiles available, and after all, constraints are the mother of creativity. Once you have created an account, and logged in, both easy, it is then incredibly easy to play around and create individual letters. There are a variety of character sets available for your font, so it is possible to create something pretty professional. Once finished, you can make your font available to all and sundry, and even download it as a truetype font to your own computer.

HOW COOL IS THAT.

So, I have been distracting myself lately developing my first font, straphanger. Basically, I just started at A, overshot slightly as I was laying it out, but quite liked how it had turned out, so I just carried on with the rest of the alphabet to match. I tried to keep it simple, down to just three tile types. There are a few little flourishes, and some idiosyncracies, so I cannot claim that it is high in legibility. However, hopefully the individual letter shapes are appealing, in particular the upper case ones.

I have taken inspiration from the Operina font, which uses very ornate upper case letters, and high ascenders in the lower case, as well as one of the Rian Hughes fonts, where the upper and lower case are similar, but there is a slight stylistic variation to mark that they are different. One of the appealing things with Operina is that it is nice to look at, but not always very legible, which is not necessarily a bad thing sometimes.

I've published straphanger now so that it is available to all and sundry, though it might well still be a work in progress. There is always a little more tinkering to be done with these things.

Having done one very pixilated font, I should try something a little more mainstream next, or maybe do a dingbats set. Anyway, safe to say, I will be playing with Fontstruct for some time to come.

the burn goes on

postmaster@sposh.demon.co.uk — 2008-05-04T16:23:32+01:00

After last week, with my incendiary impulses in full flow, I am once again burning things. This week the slightly less fragrant, burning of old chipboard offcuts.

When we moved into this house, I floored the loft, no mere bagatelle this, it was the Sistene Chapel of flooring, but I digress. I seem to recall that there was one piece of chipboard that did not need cutting to length, and I have found a use for some of the offcuts, but this left behind a pile of offcuts about my height. I did of course feel that they might come in handy, and was considering constructing furniture out of glued together chipboard offcuts. However I never got round to it, and I figured that if I was to reclaim any useful space in the loft, then I would need to get rid of some of my precious treasures. So I looked the mountain of chipboard in the eye and decided to get rid of it. All ferried out, and my galvanised burning bin, has duly been fired up, a smokey burn yesterday started it going, and today I have returned to the task. Once established it is not too smokey, which is just as well, as the smoke is boggin'. The burn has been going since ten this morning, and it is not even all that clear that much progress is being made on the pile, however I am resolved to just keep burning the little blighters until they are all gone.

As ever, the reason these little tasks never quite get done is generally that they really are not little tasks at all. This burn could still be going in the wee small hours. Nevertheless my stubborness is starting to kick in, having started on this, I really don't want to be returning to it again. In any event the offcuts are now sitting right in the entrance of the shed, so unless I can get rid of them, I'll never get into my beloved the shed again.

The upside of this chipboard offcut flit and firing, has been that with a little bit of careful rearrangement, I once again have some useful floor space in my loft. While the loft is mainly for storage, it is useful to make use of the space in the middle, where you might almost be able to stand up. Initially I thought that this would be for woodwork, but it now looks more likely that I'll end up with overspill IT equipment up there. It is not unattractive looking, with a couple of comfy chairs, outsize clock, and whitepainted walls! I would like to put in some shelving, so that some of the books that live up there, might be stored a little more usefully.

I'm not sure much else useful has happened this weekend. We had a trip to a couple of garden centres yesterday, and I bought some bamboo at one, and more compost at another.

Also printing off papers for my meeting next week. Also, now that I think about it, my new printer arrived, so I have set that up, put the old one up in the girls room, and put in the new USB hub that I bought the other day. The mail order company I buy my ink cartridges from, were offering a free printer, if you bought a stack of ink cartridges, so I opted for a combined colour inkjet, scanner, copier. It seems okay, not the quickest, but for the price, pretty impressive. Also great to get back to having a scanner, for copying those odds and ends that seem too useful to throw away.

As with the loft, I have tried to rearrange purposefully, so that there is useable working space.

Casting my mind even further back, it was good to get out of the office, down to a board meeting on Monday, which strained my feeble ability to travel to breaking point, although the meeting was interesting and the people were great. At the other end of the week, we had an awayday, which was held in my old university halls of residence. Of course the uninspiring halls that I used to stay in, were demolished, to be replaced with something much more swish. Life has clearly gone all coffee shop for students, not bitter brown and hot, from polystyrene beakers, but milky in a big cup. I particularly like the planting, they have a raised walkway, with huge bamboos down below. By having an area of purely bamboo, with big clumps of different species, it really makes you feel like you are somewhere completely different. Not sure that I could achieve the same effect with my garden, but it is always wonderful to visit places that you really find inspiring. Also while I think about it, I was at an all day seminar in the middle of the week too, so it has been a curious week.

Probably more absent minded than normal, as we are currently basking in the glory that is the long weekend, or in our case, being kippered in the fumes of burning chipboard, so not only is my mind on weekend things, but having an extra day, probably attempting to do things that would not fit into the normal horrifically short weekend.

Anyway, out to chuck another offcut on the fire, ...

Spring has sprung

postmaster@sposh.demon.co.uk — 2008-04-27T15:48:11+01:00

This blog is fulfilling a long held ambition of mine, to actually do some work, well it is work in the loosest possible sense, on my laptop, in my garden.

However the dream is not quite as advertised, as with bright sun, it is almost impossible to use a laptop, I am sitting on some steps in the shade, with the screen just legible and no more. Still it is nice to be out, and I won't quibble at the sun.

Spring has finally arrived, it is very warm this weekend. I have been making the best of it, by spending time in the garden. Yesterday I did a burn of old bits of wood that had been lying about, and today I have been doing a mix of weeding, planting stuff that has outgrown pots, and seemingly endless amounts of shifting stuff about. Unfortunately our garden is anything but level,it must rise the height of a two storey house from front to back, with numerous steps, and slopes everywhere. Therefore no need to buy a wheelbarrow, everying is lugged, with attendant grunting. Good old Attendant Grunting, always there when you need him, though he does go on a bit sometimes, we would not be without him.

Anyway the once sodden soil is now starting to crust up, and weeding has metamorphosed into pulling the leaves off things, it is too hot, my hands are all tingly with stings and scrapes, so catching up on my blog now. Over the weekend I have done a fair bit, so not feeling guilty, and it always seems more productive to mix up the tasks.

There is nothing more natural than being out. The real beauty of gardening is that it gives you an excuse to get out when you need one.

when is now

postmaster@sposh.demon.co.uk — 2008-04-20T07:03:27+01:00

If you key in, what is the time, to google, it will actually tell you the time. Whereas if you key in, when is now, it will suggest an album you might buy. It is like the maddening book that Borges wrote about with an infinite number of pages, filled with random text and drawings.

I've got a little bored with the format of recent blog posts, so being a little bored with it, I will throw it out altogether and write about something different.

I find writing therapeutic, not in a bland sense, but in the sense, that it genuinely helps me to record, recognise, reorder, rationalise, and then move forward on, my thoughts. I have doubtless written in this blog, in reference to the Getting Things Done methodology, that for me, any number over three might as well be infinite. In my head, without making a specific effort, I can generally retain three thoughts, like a juggler juggling oranges, but after that, there is no guarantee that oranges won't be hitting the floor.
I suppose, that is why I love writing lists for myself. They rationalise my thoughts, and demonstrate that once you start to write them down, there are not actually that many things to do.
I have also found the suggestion from Get Things Done, about carrying a notebook, and writing down my ideas, a useful devise. I suppose that the blog is another dimension of that process.
I suppose some of writing is just about the craft of trying to capture in evocative words, the essence of something. Some of writing is about making sense of a confusing world. Because in reality, we are insignificant actors in an uncaring world. But when we read, we see ourselves at the heart of meaning. Writing is about meaning, that is what language is, meaning conveyed. Life is not, life is living experienced. There is a tension between the two. Maybe what is written is the world as it ought to be, all neatly seen, processed, ordered and rationalised. Just as Darwin and the geologists saw the neat patterns in what lay chaotically around them. We are are own personal Darwins, applying meaning to the chaos of our lives.
Looking forward we marshall our resources, set out our plans, and set sail into the future.
There is something heroic about this sort of writing, something very human about having that boldness to understand, and then want to make an impact on what we know is an uncaring world.
But too much that is written now, is written by the yard, to fill a quota, to meet a deadline, generic fiction, bland analysis. In writing, like in life, one should be careless at times, show a strategic disregard and jump not knowing what lies out there in the dark.

pedestrians and cyclists

postmaster@sposh.demon.co.uk — 2008-04-13T17:41:54+01:00

Recently, I have been struck by the behaviour of some people. Firstly there was an elderly jogger stubbornly jogging along on the road, despite there being a perfectly decent pavement right beside him. He was jogging in the direction of traffic, but the road was quite quiet, so any traffic just gave him a wide berth. Then there was a woman cyclist who was stubbornly cycling along the road, but cycling into the traffic. I suppose that this had the merit that she was facing the traffic and could therefore take evasive action if required, and because the oncoming traffic was looking her in the face, it might treat her as a person, rather than dehumanising her.

These people made me wonder whether there would be benefits to all cyclists doing the same, cycling into the oncoming traffic. In terms of how much road it takes up, and safety, it might well be an improvement on the existing system.

Of course I did eventually see the drawback to my brilliant idea, junctions. You are going to hit problems every time you reach a junction, if you are on the wrong side of the road. Nonetheless, there might be some merit to rethinking such things. There is thinking around slowing down traffic, and this sort of thing could be part of that process.

Anyway, an idea to park for the time being, but possibly one to come back to.

thinking of spring

postmaster@sposh.demon.co.uk — 2008-04-13T15:50:36+01:00

Nothing much to report, possibly the result of writing this blog late afternoon, rather than the more usual early morning. I suppose some times are just more conducive to long blogs, and others to short ones.

Busy at work, getting through stuff, but nothing that I can think is worth noting here.

At home, the weather is thinking about spring, though still prone to snow and hail. I've set up a couple of outdoor chairs that I leave out all summer, and started to look at what will need done in the garden, but just not quite warm enough yet to tempt me out. When the weather is right, there is nothing better than the excuse of garden to have you pottering about outside.

I've run a 30 meter ethernet cable through the house, so that the girls now have internet access in their room. However it is all a bit curly, so I'm tempted to take it all down and do it all again properly. However it must be just on the cusp of being able to run along skirting boards, rather than nipping across the ceiling. There are a few extra loops left, but whether it is enough for the more aesthetically pleasing long way round is near impossible to estimate. Possibly a job for a 30 meter piece of string and some drafting tape. However that can be a job for another day.

Monthly community meeting yesterday so paperwork from that has swallowed up a fair chunk of the weekend. Also all the usual stuff around the house.

My new favourite font is the operina font, which is based on a sixteenth century book on calligraphy. Being calligraphy based it is splendidly wonky, and eccentric. It is a pure pleasure to use, because you never quite know what to expect, when some gothic embellishment will suddenly appear.

the sky is talcum grey

postmaster@sposh.demon.co.uk — 2008-04-06T07:18:43+01:00

As with the weather, the cold just does not seem to be going away.

We were forecast snow for this weekend, and yesterday was one of those days that looked spectacular when you were indoors, but if you actually did go out side, then the cold wind sucked the fun out of the day.

Accordingly although the garden is shaggy of grass, and those pesky weeds are starting to grow, I still have little inclination to spend a shivery day out there working.

My personal cold, is now manifesting as a scratchy throat, and the usual feeling of being run down and lacking energy. I've taken to buying a bag of oranges on Monday mornings and having one around 10.00, and another around 15.00, and it is something that I would recommend. However this cold does just seem to be a war of attrition.

As a result of the cold and the recent batch of holidays, the weeks have flown by, and various work things are not nearly as far advanced as I would like them to be. I'll really need to knuckle down at work, put in the hours, and push these things forward, full of the cold, or not.

Last week was an interesting week, we had a tour of the vast art deco gormenghast of a building that we work in, from the walnut panelled office at the top, to the old death cell at the bottom. The panelled office was wonderful, although it was pointed out that the dramatic figuration in the panelling looked like a face, repeated and repeated around the room, always staring at you. So maybe not an office for those with a guilty conscience or an overactive imagination. The death cell, was the cell that prisoners would stay in the night before their execution. Of course that was when the building was a prison, or gaol. The top bit of the goal is all gone, but at the bottom some inevitably remains, including the death cell. It was an irregular shaped room, now with concrete floor, and lined with wooden shelves filled with redundant phones. Despite neighbouring rooms being warm with the fuzzy heat from phone exchanges and computer servers, the death cell remained resolutely cold.

A few meetings, hence my impatience to get things moving along. Nothing worse than constantly reporting back that you have only done so much, and really really intend to do more. My Friday meeting entailed a train trip, so that gobbled up quite a lot of the day. Though it was a lovely sunny day, with the late afternoon sun particularly warm and lazy. Coming into town I spotted a fox basking next to the railway line, despite simply being on the railway side of some banking, with a busy piece of ground beloved by dog walkers, just behind him. And coming home, I spotted the five deer that I've seen a few times, all sitting in a hedgerow, warming themselves in the late afternoon sun. As ever on the train, you look and look, then you see some wildlife in only the merest of glimpses as your viewpoint and perspective changes. But it if you know where to look, but they are wonderful glimpses.

At home, I'm switching my emphasis from building up the home IT set up, which is largely done for the moment, to trying to squirrel away money. That said, I've always loved to follow shares, so investing is more akin to a flutter on the horses than some dry putting away money for a rainy day. Although my shares are down overall, I'm currently looking at a thirty percent return on one business, which with my modest holdings translates into a few hundred pounds.

Quite a few of my shares are ones that are regularly subject to takeover bids, and that never does any harm. I also know their average purchase price, so when I buy shares monthly, I try and buy whatever is below its average purchase price. That way I increase my margins when I sell.

I would like to build up a pretty substantial nest egg over the next few years, on the grounds that the mortgage will come due, and like most folk of my vintage, our endowment policies seem to be producing more depression than anything else. Also the girls are getting to the age where money will need to be found for big ticket things like and education, rather than shiny whistles, and boilings. As ever, having built up my nest egg, I don't imagine that I will hang onto it.

And as I close this, the sky is talcum grey, and snow falls lazily, the bubble gum pink of the camelia flowers the brightest colour behind a tissue of snowflakes.

still flu of the cold

postmaster@sposh.demon.co.uk — 2008-03-30T15:09:27+01:00

My cold come flu is still hanging around, like the remnants of some nightmare christmas turkey, that come new year everyone is growing to detest.

What with being flu of the cold, and the recent spate of public holidays, things have not been moving terribly rapidly at work, so I'm keen to knuckle down and shove things on apace. Of course if this cold does ever actually go away, then that would be a start in the right direction.

Clocks went forward last night, so I have adjusted
one watch - the battery on the other one needs replaced
one battery powered alarm clock that is so basic that I can work it
my pendulum clock
my wind up mantlepiece clock

I do also have one of those remote control clocks that has the benefit of coping with the clocks going fore and back, but the disbenefit of completely beyond me, so that if ever I needed to set an alarm clock to wake me up, that I could rely on (usually a good feature) it certainly would not be this one.

I ordered some cables last week, and they arrived during the week.
One ethernet cable, which I'm running upto the girl's bedroom to give them internet in their room, and a midi usb cable.

The ethernet cable works fine, and I'll just have to figure out the least obtrusive route to run it from the living room to the upstairs bedroom. I suppose someone bolder than me would rely on powertools and just drill some holes, but I'm routing it round the skirting instead. Compared to the high cost, and periodic moodiness of wireless, simply running a cable is not that bad an option.

The usb-midi cable seems fine, but there don't seem to be any drivers available for the Bontempi organ, so that is one fine idea, that has not gone far. I'm sure that the cable will come in handy in due course.

Nothing much else doing, I'm still taking it pretty easy, hoping to finally shift this cold, rather than trying to get lots done and then collapse.

Topsy Turvey, Man Flu

postmaster@sposh.demon.co.uk — 2008-03-22T06:09:57+00:00

It is the long awaited Easter Weekend, and in typical fashion, when you wait a long time for something, it never quite turns out the way you expect it to.

Expecting a busy, but not unpleasantly so week, woke up on Tuesday feeling like my ribs had had a good kicking from the inside out. One of those days when you don't so much worry that you might not survive, but worry that you will. When I'm ill, I feel like all the times I have ever been ill are joined up together, so in effect I'm eight, sick and miserable.

Managed to make it back to work for Thursday, though not exactly feeling sparkling. Woke on on Friday feeling as if I had eaten half my tongue!

My wife has been suffering through this bug for the last fortnight, and I have been doing my best to avoid her, so now that it has finally caught up with me, it probably won't be going any time soon. One of my daughters had a friend over for a sleepover, but she too is coming down with the bug, and she too was fading out by the end of what should have been a wonderful time.

The weather too has been similarly afflicted. Our dog had been missing out on the odd walk, so I was keen to take him out for a decent walk yesterday. However the sky was that threatening grey that means it is full of snow. The wind whipped along behind us, and then the snow started up. All of this of no consequence as long as it followed us, but of course you need to come back from your walk, so the second half inevitably meant walking back, into a face-full of skin cutting hail. I was pretty miserable with my hat pulled down over my face, the poor dog, it must have been abject for him.

Now waking up, the ground outside is covered in snow!! Easter and the place is covered in snow.

In view of the whole general not wellness sort of thing, and the miscellaneous feeling sorry for self type issues, I'm not aiming too high at the moment. Satisfied to just plod on, rather than trying to change the world.

Although there are still further enhancements possible to my family IT set up, I think that I will probably more of less wind up the expansion of our IT facility at the moment. I could probably manage to run a thirty metre ethernet cable upto the girls room to provide them with the internet. There are other things that would be nice, wifi, more hard drives, a USB hub, more fonts, but there is always an endless list of such things, and the bulk of my objectives have now been met.

Anyway, with the good weather [note irony mode] I will need to get out into the garden, and there is a housefull of DIY to contend with as well.

Elsewhere, pleased to see that Throw Me The Statue have now appeared on iTunes, I downloaded a handfull of their tracks a while ago, and have been listening to them a lot. So I was keen to get the full Moonbeams album, and it looked like I would need to actually buy a CD from Amazon. It was their track Conquering Kids that first struck me, it sounds like one of those classic tracks that has always been there. The others that I've been listening to are Lolita and Yucatan, which did not grab me so immediately, but have become gradually more compelling. A first listen through to the album did not grab me too much, but it is probably one that grows insidiously on you.

Anyway, the upshot of this is that I would recommend that you simply do a quick google on Throw Me The Statue, and download Conquering Kids, you won't be dissappointed.

Also on the web, John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats has had to cancel his tour of Australia, citing health issues, though not clear whether it is him or close family. On the one hand there is the tabloid urge to hear the dirt, but these are real people with real lives too, and the only humane option is to wish him all the best. My thoughts are with him and his family. Probably worth noting, that if it had not been for the Mountain Goats, I probably would not have written a lot of the poetry that I have been writing recently. Like the very best of art, not only is the work of the Mountain Goats inspiring, it is also empowering.

Also in my browsing of the internet, struck by the short summary of the life of Italo Svevo, the author of Confessions of Zeno. He wrote a couple of self published novels, but never enjoyed much success. His novels are early stream of consciousness works, but like Tristam Shandy or the Sarragossa Manuscripts, it is literary inventiveness put to the service of splendidly entertaining tales.

His most famous work is about a rather unsatisfactory person, who lies to his therapist, and never has the courage to actually give up smoking, forever obsessing on his last cigarette. The author himself smoked all his life, and on his deathbed, joked that he would like a cigaratte, promising that it would be his last, but was refused.

Also looking at the rather haphazard lives of the people that write and draw for 2000AD, which I have been reading since around prog 350. I wrote a short strip for them years ago, and if I had been more conscientious/talented, might have written more. Maybe there is an alternate universe out there, where there is an alternate me, writing comic strips rather than working for the government. The beauty of writing, is that you can live anywhere to do it. So the usual monetary conditions don't apply, as long as you don't starve, you could live well on a relatively modest income.

Finally, very upset to hear that one of the members of the community group I'm on, lost his wife last week. I could not make the funeral, but my thoughts are certainly with him. You always think that the future will be incident free, but the challenges you face are never the ones you are prepared for, we should prize each moment we have together, there is nothing more finite.

Still thawing out

postmaster@sposh.demon.co.uk — 2008-03-16T18:43:50+00:00

Still thawing out.

This weekend has really breezed by. I missed a monthly meeting, of the local group for which I am secretary, so I am currently working through what feels like three months of paperwork. Thanks to a local councillor and the locality manager, we seem to be making some progress on the area regeneration, so it will be good to get our teeth into something substantive.

The reason for my frozen demeanour is that I was helping out with the local Scout Troop replacing a wall to their hut. Of course I was helping out in the sense that I came along, and did what I was told, with no useful skills to speak of. My wife also helped out, doing the teas, coffees, and sandwiches for lunch, which I am sure was vastly more useful than what I managed. Still hopefully with these things it is as much as case of showing willing, as what you actually manage to achieve.

Otherwise, the usual catching up with odds and ends, and playing with my computer. I've done quite a bit of refreshing of my website, with a lot of the old stuff being deleted. With RapidWeaver it is so easy to put up a load of content, that I am constantly knocking against the size limit for what I can upload with my demon account. I suppose I could upgrade my account and get some more webspace, but it does not feel like a major priority at the moment, and I always hate to commit to regular monthly/annual outgoings. While a lot of the subsidiary pages have been deleted from the website, the look and feel has been standardised with the same Kwix bouncy menu being applied to the main pages.

Things are all very turbulent in global matters financial. Reading through the financial stuff in the papers, they seem very gloomy on the future for some of the banks. Accordingly I have changed my mind about buying some more shares in Bradford and Bingley, and will instead start putting money into a European Investment Trust.

On the usual musings,

I wonder if we should be redesigning our housing to get rid of the gardens. Housebuilders are generally pretty canny about what people want, and nowadays the ones round here are giving people a small back garden, a large monoblocked front garden, with what is not monoblocked, covered in membrane, with fancy gravel, and a few exotic shrubs poking through. Net result, you look out your front garden to see an exotic combination between a jungle and a car park. Maybe local authorities should take some initiative in tarting up these sad looking council estates, with the same combination of monoblock and strategically positioned shrubs.

Also on council housing, instead of large estates, break it down into more but smaller units of housing. That would help prevent people being too isolated, lost within big developments. I don't think that poverty is really the problem for many people nowadays, it is more a case of being distanced from the jobs and lifestyle that others take for granted. I suppose that is the thinking behind the terms social exclusion, and social inclusion.

On the subject of project management, I suspect that recently I have been focussing to much on listing and completing individual tasks, such that I am losing sight of the actual project goals that they are contributing towards. I will therefore try and apply the higher level goals to the tasks that I am doing. The famous study of civil servants that talks about the degree of control that they have having a major impact on their health, might be capable of being subverted by applying more focus on the project goals than the individual tasks.

Just a thought.

And tomorrow is Monday.

a curious week

postmaster@sposh.demon.co.uk — 2008-03-08T14:17:59+00:00

A curious week.

I ordered a new re-furbished iMac from the AppleStore last weekend, and sure enough it arrived during the week. It actually arrived on Thursday, I had a day off then anyway. So I had the dining room table set up with three different computers, running migration assistant to transfer over everyone's files to the new iMac.

The new iMac, is one of the twenty inch aluminium jobs.
Impressions ?
• the screen is very glossy - plus point it looks stunning, minus point, it is way too distracting if you have light behind you.
• the aluminium looks okay, but in a tactile way, it is wonderful. Oddly they seem to have used the aluminium on the keyboard to give it more heft. This combined with the shallow keys, make it a wonderful thing to use. Easily my favourite keyboard now.
• the mouse looks out of context, against all this aluminium splendour, a new mouse must be on the way
• the screen is big, but not unpleasantly so. It is getting towards that tennis watching scenario, where you turn your head to see the other side of the screen. I suppose you could simply work in one corner, and use the other for less frequently consulted stuff, as you would with two screens.
• it has that lovely new computer smell,
• it seems a little bit faster than you would expect

And with a new computer, new housekeeping to do. I'll need to order some extra memory, (Dimms?), from Crucial. I'll need to set up a proper backup regime. I currently have three LaCie external hard drives of varying sizes. There is a troublesome one, drive number three, which seems to stall when doing backups using SuperDuper or TimeMachine, and accordingly is not much use. I've brought this up with TechSupport at LaCie, and they asked whether it worked okay connecting up via USB, rather than FireWire, and indeed it does. I'll see what they come back with next.

Anyway, I'll also need to think a bit more about how I am using my dot mac account. I must confess that I have yet to get my head round how it all works. My free trial was just about to expire, so with rather ill grace I upgraded to a paid for dot mac account, but really I do feel that it is very poor value, for what is a rather indifferent product. However I do really need the ability to sync between different computers.

As ever these days, everything seems back to front in money terms. Things that would have made good expensive wedding presents, like a set of cutlery, are now cheap as chips, and all the bills, seem to be on the up escalator.

Computer hardware is all phenominal value and getting cheaper, but you are paying out for the associated services. Broadband, dot mac, software, iTunes downloads, in my case.

My share portfolio is taking a tumble, a big screen full of red for the stockbrokers. I track the average purchase cost of my shares, so when the average price dips below that, I simply view it as a buying opportunity. I'm in it for the long term, and intend to have these shares for years, if not decades. All very Warren Buffet-ish. Currently spoilt for choice on what I could buy, and there is always the possibility that my best bet would be to just sell the lot, and repurchase them all cheaper in a few months.

Pretty quiet at work, currently readying ourselves for the next batch of work. The office is reorganising at the weekend, so we all got kicked out at lunchtime on Friday. IT staff coming in to roll up all our keyboards and phones, wrapping the cables round them. I've moved about every six months for the past year or two, so I'm getting quite used to it. For the first time, I had only a very modest amount to pack and move.

Met up with an old colleague for lunch, something that I really ought to be doing more often, as I really look forward to it, enjoy it, and look back on it as something valuable. Anyway, said colleague, has not been doing so well. No adverse comment on her abilities, thinking back to when I worked with her, she was running the most fun, most worthwhile, most brave, most innovative, place that I have ever worked at. This was not just my impression either, we all of us, felt that there was a real buzz about the place, that it was something different and something special. I think that we were all given the opportunity to try out new things, and develop ourselves enormously. That said, it was not without its frustrations, but with hindsight, these were pretty trivial, and when you care deeply about things, then the disagreements have a bit more bite to them.

Her current unfortunate situation is more a reflection of the vagaries of working in the very very real world of the voluntary sector, where you are at the end of a very long chain, and dependent on the grace and favour of a great many people for funding. Falling out of favour is no reflection on what you have done, or not done, it just seems to be a fact of life sometimes.

Anyway, I hope that she finds something that suits her talents, strangely many of the people that have impressed me most recently, are struggling to find work commensurate to their abilities. However that certainly does not diminish my view of them.

Busy week, all done.

postmaster@sposh.demon.co.uk — 2008-03-02T16:54:56+00:00

Busy week, all done.

After blogging the other week about the potential for home IT support, there was an article this week in the Times about the growing multi billion pound market for such services in the UK. Obviously I am ahead of the curve for journalism, but not far enough ahead for venture capitalism.

I know that Macintosh is marketted as the computer for people that don't want to get bogged down with the technology, just plug in and play, but being honest I don't think that is terribly realistic. If we just wanted a machine that did a few basic things, without any new sexy features, then of course we could buy a rock stable machine, and still be using bakelite phones, but we don't. We want all the sexy new bells and whistles, and things that we don't even understand, but heck we want them anyway. Hence new operating systems, that look zingy, but are hardly rock steady. Leopard, I'm talking about you now, you are one mean kitty.

A related point, if you want to use computers seriously, you are just going to have to knuckle down and learn how stuff runs, how to do backups, partition your drives, and the like. It really is not a serious option to just muddle through, unless you want to lose all your data, or miss out on most of the potential that is on offer. When you live in a world that runs on magic, you need to start learning a few spells.

Something else that occured to me, we tend to rate homely architecture and settings, the village square surrounded by cottages, settings that suggest we are an integral part of a small cozy world. We tend to dislike settings that suggest we are a nearly insignificant and meaningless element of a large impersonal world. No one loves the high rise, and motorways with chronic gigantism. But the latter is the reality, the former an affectation that only the rich can afford to pretend to. Maybe we are struggling for a new set of symbols and understanding that let us feel at home in our own brave new world, rather than just hiding behind the mock tudor facade in the suburbs , while sleeping through the mindless commute with thousands of people just like us.

Interesting conference at the tail end of the week, all went well, and I was impressed by the very solutions focussed approach that a lot of the people there had. I always like pragmatism, but this was not some gloomy pragmatism, to which I am prone, but a very upbeat version. Interesting and inspiring.

Also reading in the papers an article about someone that helps people establish their own personal brand. I suppose that if I was pressed, my core values would be
thoughtfulness
creativity
making a difference

On other topics, there were some refurbished Macintosh computers going cheaply on the Apple Store yesterday, so I have bitten the bullet and ordered one. I've not told my daughters yet, but it will mean that they can get the old iMac running Tiger for their room, and we will get the new 20" iMac for the main computer. I'll look at setting up wifi in due course. However keen to avoid my previous mistake of having far too many new things on the go at once.

And the weekend is about done, back to reality again tomorrow.

Almost Spring

postmaster@sposh.demon.co.uk — 2008-03-01T13:33:14+00:00

I really don't take enough of my annual leave, I carried forward an excess amount, so I have been taking the odd day off here and there to whittle it down.

Unfortunately so full of the cold, that it has generally been a lazy day off rather than a productive one. However it is nice to find the time for pottering, rather than just chasing round doing things all the time.

I devised a spreadsheet for tracking my investment portfolio, which is a rather modest selection of shares supplemented by £100 each month. Clearly I am not about to rival Warren Buffet any time soon, but I suppose that it has the same appeal as horse racing, having some money on one of the runners does increase your interest quite dramatically. Trading with this kind of sum of money is a bit tricky as the risk is that transaction costs will easily exceed any potential earnings. So my aim is to build up around £1000 book value in a small number of shares, and add an extra share occassionally. Now upto five shares, with a total book value nearing £4k, but in the current market, actually having a valuation below that.

However ever the shares optimist I am viewing it as a buyers market, though I am not expecting it to bounce back any time soon.

I'll probably go for an investment trust next, as it would be prudent to diversify beyond these shores, but buying individual foreign shares won't be cost effective at the volumes I am trading at.

Anyway, currently transcribing details to a spreadsheet, so that I can track my portfolio better. All very colourful and scientific!

Also very keen to get an Airport BaseStation which would let me set up a wifi network in my house. I am steadily building up the IT infrastructure in the house, I suppose a computer for each of us eventually!

Other news, I have had the latest Mountain Goats album for the past week. Slowly getting into it. Initially a little disappointed, but with repeated listens I am getting into, and the hooks really do get into you. Worth checking out the reviews and the pages of comic art which supplement the songs, as they are a more thematically disparate selection than usual. Written from a variety of points of view, with no particular theme, though a clear propensity for horror hokum.

Another foible of the modern age is that there were various permutations of bonus tracks. I think there was an option to pre-order and get a couple of bonus tracks. I bought on iTunes, and a few days later an extra track appeared. At present there are two versions of the album on iTunes - both for the same price, one with 13 tracks, one with 14 tracks. I contacted iTunes support and got a credit for the extra track, which was pretty sporting of them. According to the forums there was another bonus track available through Amazon US, as the anoraks all know, Amazon US does do music downloads. Amazon UK does not currently. I suspect that Amazon US would identify my credit card as UK and get iffy about me buying the bonus track from them. I did however manage to track it down on the 4AD website, which let me buy it. I also bought a few other rarities that had appeared on the b-sides of Mountain Goats singles, and were available to download. Had a quick listen, and barring one which did not grab me, they seem a pretty strong bunch.

I have finally gone digital with my bank account, so profitable swapping around of funds awaits me. What could be more exciting than online banking. Well more exciting than standing in a queue to pay in money during my lunch hour anyway.

I would like to point out that my geek credentials are now complete! I actually get a mention on in the credits for the new version of SuperDuper (macintosh back up utility). This follows on from some correspondence with the developer on how I was confused with partitions, and I suppose part of the origin for their decision to create a version of SuperDuper that worked with TimeMachine without the requirement to operate on different partitions. Of course my query is completely inconsequential in comparison to the amount of work required in actually doing the coding and making it work, but it is incredibly gratifying to get some sort of acknowledgement. I have probably mentioned it before, but this is the sort of area where small software developers really score. Their support and customer focus is just incredible, and puts the major developers to shame. You certainly would not get the same sort of service from Microsoft, nor Apple.

One notable exception that I would like to note though it Bento, the new database from Filemaker, which not only is incredible, but comes with enthusiastic support. Someone has clearly learned from the fantastic service that the smaller developers offer.

Final Shoutout for SuperDuper, it remains totally essential, even with TimeMachine, being able to create a bootable backup remains vital. I certainly would not be without SuperDuper, and would recommend it to anyone.

Finally, we are at the tail end of winter, nothing much growing, just marking time till the seasons start up again. The bulbs are popping up, my snowdrops have appeared in the front lawn, and those muddy fields I pass on the train have somehow been carpetted in green. Very windy, angry crows bobbing on the wind like corks in the waves, while stubborn pigeons fly lower, making steady progress. As ever, the birds seem indifferent to us.

Heretic Pride

postmaster@sposh.demon.co.uk — 2008-02-17T19:39:03+00:00

Late posting this blog, nothing terribly much to report.

I've decided to escalate my recent cold to flu status, as it has been sorely afflicting me for the past few days. Flu bug Bob, has outstayed his welcome, joyless nasal precipitation, general facial crustiness on waking, opportunities to practise blowing my nose as a novel wind instrument, a sort of snottery flugelhorn, with fine burbling undertones. My IQ has dropped enormously, and energy levels have gone through the floor. Of course I am not one to feel sorry for myself, or moan on, well I am, but folk just make their excuses and leave.

I've just taken it easy this weekend, not doing terribly much. The weather has been fine and crisp, which for this time of year, is my favourite kind of weather. It is great to get out with the dog, and walk over frosty ground, avoiding the usual slippery muddiness. Even though I've not been out much, feeling the sun come in the windows, has a wonderful effect.

Watched Shoot Em Up last night, which I had got for my wife as a Valentine's present, I think Clive Owen was part of the appeal for her, but we do have a mutual weakness for mindless entertainment. In those terms, it is an absolutely fantastic film. A non stop romp from beginning to end, a live action Bugs Bunny film, with cartoon violence and logic.

Also been struggling again with backing up to one of my hard drives. Problems with backups stalling part way through, and just never finishing. After a lot of fiddling about it seems to be going okay. I think that you just end up getting into a vicious circle with these things, getting impatient, layering problem upon problem, which is something these complex systems really hate. Once things start going wrong the odds seem to be against getting them back on track again if you just start madly tinkering with things.

Anyway not entirely sure that I have got the the bottom of things, but the hard drive is indeed working again, I suspect that a dodgy cable had something to do with it. Keen to get to the bottom of whether the drive is reliable or not, while it is still under warranty, but these technical things are like one of those old style sets of fairy lights, where all the bulbs are in series, and just one dud bulb means the whole thing doesn't work until you have identified and replaced it. Who knows what little bit of technical doo hickery was to blame.

I do wonder at just how complicated all these things are becoming. Maybe we will all be having home IT consultants in future, the way we have plumbers now, popping round to do a bit of tech support for folk. I've got the job here, but I'm interested anyway and have the time and knowledge to do it. I'm not sure it would really be worth most people's time to get that involved in the tech support if all they want is a running system, but as soon as you get at all technical in what you are doing, you will bump up against a not inconsequential number of technical problems.

We probably also need people to come and set up our televisions too, I must confess to being totally lost of all the various options.

Also of note, daughter number two, the noisy one, who I love dearly, has been away elsewhere on a sleepover, so it has been possible to take a breath without her jumping in with something. Which has made the weekend a great deal more relaxing than it might have been. When you are down to your last brain cell, this is much appreciated.

Finally, the latest Mountain Goats album will be out next week, looking forward to it.

gym membership syndrome

postmaster@sposh.demon.co.uk — 2008-02-14T20:27:45+00:00

Someone told me recently that downloaded films were becoming the new Gym Membership Syndrome. Which you can probably just about work out, but just to clarify, you join a gym, pay them money, but never have the time or the inclination to actually go, similarly you download the films, but never find the time to actually watch them.

Which meant that we then got onto talking about how we all used to tape mountains of programmes, creating wobbly piles of videos, indifferently labelled, and simply lost the will to ever watch them. I think I still have some episodes of Star Trek - the Next Generation up the loft that I've not got round to watching yet.

It is the same with those boxes that record tv programmes for you, you back up episode upon episode until the thing fills up with stuff you will never get round to watching.

I suppose that there are two sides to this, there is the feeling of worthiness, that this is something that you really ought to be doing, and the feeling of guilt that you never really want to admit that you aren't going to watch the stuff.

The big pile of unread newspapers, the unfinished books at the bedside, I suspect that gym membership syndrome is taking over the world, or at least taking over my house.

Onto other things, I've just installed additional sim memory to my laptop, seeing as installing to the desktop seemed trouble free. A little less trouble free this time, sims installed, computer failed to start up. Eventually figured out that it was just a case of not shoving the sims in far enough. I should have done them one at a time, and then that way, I could easily enough of shoved the new one in as far as the old one, which would have taken the guess-work out of it. You live and learn.

I'm intrigued at the idea of TimeCapsule, which would provide me with a wifi base station and allow me to back up my laptop without plugging it into anything. Maybe something to investigate in due course.

Otherwise, a busy week, more travelling than I would prefer, interesting stuff, but exhausting. Like a fine wine, I really don't travel well.

bouncy kwix menus

postmaster@sposh.demon.co.uk — 2008-02-02T17:40:31+00:00

A quiet week, getting settled into my new post.

Finally bought myself a new mobile phone, my sister has been teasing me on the current brick for some time. It has started to make odd chirrups for no real reason, so I felt that it was probably about time to upgrade. Also took the opportunity to change from a monthly contract - on which I have been getting a rebate, to a pay as you go phone. I generally use the mobile through clenched teeth, with an austerity that keeps my calls down to half an hour a month.

So the delights of phoning call centres, visiting mobile phone shops and speaking to bored looking assistants, and negotiating PAC codes. I know that me buying a cheap pay as you go phone is hardly going to get them breaking out the champagne, but seeing as the whole high street seems to be full of mobile phone shops these days, you might have thought that a bit of old fashioned service would not have gone amiss. Anyways, I seem to have got it all sorted out after a few phone calls and a couple of visits to shops. For interest I have switched from O2 to Orange, as Orange seemed the perkier of the two.

My new phone is the usual fairly standard model, but does come with a camera and one of those round buttons that let you drill down the menus. Anything that relies on ingenious key combinations generally seems to me to be the invention of the devil, brings on the stupid red mist, and I instantly become completely incapable. I am pretty good with computers, but I must confess to being a complete phone luddite. So I did want one with pretty colours and icons, on the basis that I might be able to figure out how to phone someone from the phone book, which I must confess I never really figured out on my old phone, despite having any number of phone numbers in the phone book. Like many folk, I just relied on replying to people in my call history.

I also got the extra RAM for my desktop that I'd ordered from Crucial, and this morning, spread out a couple of towels, and placed the desktop computer face down, and then opened up the bottom and firmly/gently took out the now redundant ram stick, and put in the new pair of sticks bringing it upto a more respectable two gig of ram. I must say that it does seem a lot quicker and more responsive than before, so that seems to be thirty quid well spent. It should also future proof the computer for a bit longer, making sure that it remains usable for that bit longer, it usually seems to be a lack of Ram that renders my computers redundant eventually.

I've ordered more Ram for the laptop, which promises to be a little more tricky to install.

Nothing much else to report, it is exceeding cold, I've got the bouncy kwix menus fixed on my website, with a little help from Isaiah at YourHead.