John Allsopp

Professionally engineered Internet solutions for humans

No GM maize in Britain: 31 March 2004: Fantastic news: Biotech firm ditches GM maize plans.
Multicurrency: 30 March 2004: Wow, I just made the multicurrency part of the Tin Shop live, so now visitors in the US, UK and Euroland get to shop in their own currency. The prices are all changed, the postage changes, even the +44 and the United Kingdom comes off the address if you're in the UK, and the legal page insurance limit changes currency too. Neat, I'm right chuffed with it :-)
Crappy, low quality websites: 30 March 2004: Crappy websites can be very wearing. Take www.crucial.com, it looks great, and the concept .. answer three questions and we'll tell you what memory upgrade you need, is beyond wonderful. But it just doesn't work. Firstly, the concept is flawed .. step one is to pick the manufacturer of your computer. Well, mine was built by a local computer guy in Derby, so that was that. So I got online help, fine, and ran their analysis software which couldn't work it out, but which crashed the Compaq. On my machine, I followed a link to another tool which did work out what I've got. So now I know I've a hokeyKokey2000 motherboard .. is there a place on the Crucial site to search by motherboard? It says there is, but I couldn't find it.; Then there's Quick Books which I'm recommending to a client because I use Quicken from the same company and really love it. But I can't see how anyone can buy from the Quick Books site. We tried. There's no try before you buy, no screenshots, no details of the product's capabilities. No sense of the beauty of its usability. There's a 60 day money back guarantee mentioned somewhere, but seemingly no terms to abide by that I could find. We did finally manage to find the minumum requirements. I've just looked again for more details on the 60 day guarantee but can't find it, and tried to contact them and there's no email address .. you've got to phone. Now, the only reason this client was going to buy this software was on my recommendation, and I really struggled in the face of this website to persuade her that the software really is easy, and actually a joy, to use. It's not hugely cheap at about £150. The site rejected our credit cards twice. We were buying despite the website, not because of it. Oh yes, I remember, we weren't even sure whether, once we've paid, we are able to download the product or we have to wait for a CD to be delivered. I think they may have lost this sale because we failed to buy yesterday and the initiative may have been lost.; Update: It turns out that the reason this site rejected our cards was because of a system fault at their end. Imagine. They sell software that allows you to make payments online. And it turns out, you buy the software online and then they post it to you in three days. Ain't life just grand?
Do androids dream of electric sheep?: 30 March 2004: Who knows, but if you'd like to contribute to global warming here's a way to do it, thanks to Bob for the link :-). Hmm, except when I came back from lunch the screensaver refused to go away, and when I finally killed it, it had messed up my system clock.
What cats do: 3: 30 March 2004: They jump onto your lap while you're trying to work, stretch their paw up on your chest, and then fall backwards across your chest so you have to catch them in your arms and hold them like a baby while they purr and snooze. previous
What cats do: 2: 27 March 2004: They ask for food, eat it, come in the living room, and throw it back up again on your carpet. While you're eating breakfast. previous
Switch them off: 27 March 2004: I was quite a fan of leaving computers on all the time back in the eighties, but I've changed to switching them off now, and David Fearon in PC Pro's given another reason why. Using a digital power meter that plugs into the wall and tells you how much power each appliance is using, he's worked out that his computer uses more electricity when it's working hard than when it's idle. So, leaving something like SETI @ home running all night instead of leaving the unit on and idle, meant he was using an additional 12W. He didn't calculate the cost, but I think at 6.7p per unit, assuming SETI ran for 18 hours a day, that would mean an additional £5.28 a year in cost. Not a huge problem.; But apparently, and he doesn't quote his sources, for every kilowatt-hour of electricity generated and put on the national grid in this country, about 620g of carbon dioxide is pumped into the atmosphere. So that's an additional 48Kg of CO₂ per year, which sounds rather more significant.; More to the point though, is the difference between running SETI@home for him, and switching the computer off when he's done, which he says would use an additional 170W for each of the extra 18 hours, or by my calculations an additional £74.83 and by his, almost a tonne of CO₂ emissions per year. Probably by the time we discover extra-terrestrial life, global warming will have taken us all.
What cats do: 1: 27 March 2004: At 6am they use the litter tray and create a smell that at first is like a gas leak, causing you to wake up and run downstairs to check the oven.
myKitchen.uk.com: 26 March 2004: Finally, www.myKitchen.uk.com has gone live. Just a few minutes ago. Wow. I wrote a case study on it too. Wish it luck in the big world. Sleep is what I need now I think. Nite nite.
Friends?: 26 March 2004: Wow, has it been that long since I've posted here? I've been working hard, is all. Anyway, I just wanted to come on here and moan about Friends. I can understand it having its slot on a Friday evening, but every time I switch the television on, Friends seems to be on. There are double-Friends in the evening, and then I discovered it's on in the daytime too, and my routine's changed a little cus my g/f's away at her parents this week so I've watched a little morning telly and .. 7:30am .. whaddyaknow, Friends.; Why's that bad? Well, Friends is just a waste of time isn't it? I mean, it passes the time inoffensively but it's not particularly funny (maybe that's a Brit/American sense of humour difference) .. it just doesn't get you anywhere. I can hear people sighing and saying "chill out John, it's relaxing", but I don't think it's a particularly efficient way of doing that either. I don't hate it, but I don't understand why it's there all the time.; The other morning I watched a whole episode of Noddy in preference .. to assess the standard of the computer graphics of course. I think it was the one called "where Noddy tried to help too many of his friends and ended up being too busy to help any of them".; Boothby Graffoe on the other hand, is a great way to relax, I find Thursdays at about 6:30 works well for me.
Sting hauntation: 20 March 2004: So there I was, sorting out this network and the client goes .. can you get my speakers to work, and I say "sure". He says "do you want something to play through them, look over there on the shelf, there's a Sting CD".
A sales lesson: 19 March 2004: We've just trawled through three companies looking to remortgage to pay for home repairs, and it was really interesting to see the differences in approaches. We wanted to move from The Halifax, and we can't quite remember why, something to do with them offering a better rate to new mortgage signups than they were offering to existing and loyal customers. Also they de-mutualised (changed from a company owned by its savers, which is at root what a building society is, to a normal company with shareholders), which we didn't think was particularly great because of a vague notion that it might mean the 'deals' wouldn't be as good. Anyway, we knew we wanted to move, we just couldn't remember why. Buyers are not always logical. The interview with them was good if a little complex, and at least process would be simple. So simple we could walk out of the door with the money in our account that day.; Then I met someone at the Alliance and Leicester which was quite an experience. I decided to talk to them because of an Internet table showing they offered a very low rate. Curiously, in the end, the rate they offered me wasn't as low as that on the table. They wanted to sell a mortgage deal lasting just two years on the basis that things move very quickly and they could keep the deal good by reviewing it regularly. But she was quite keen to talk to us about life insurance and all sorts of other things, and to get the low interest rate we had to open a current account and fund it with £500 pcm. What this screamed to me was "we want all your business", and "our regular reviews give us a bi-annual opportunity to check for sales opportunities and to sell you new products". The mortgage came with a £395 setup fee. Well, if they sell you something for £395 every two years, that rather offsets the benefit of the low rate. There was also something, a bitterness, that meant I just didn't warm to the sales person. Also, she sat me down in my cubicle a few minutes late for the interview (she was, I wasn't), and then spent five minutes in the next cubicle talking to her colleague about something on screen. Hmm. So that was a no.; Then I wanted to try a local building society, so we went to the Scarborough Building Society. The woman I spoke to on the phone was the one we saw. She was really excellent, friendly, open, laughed at my jokes, all that. The product was so clear, completely flexible, no penalties, we can pay it off early, take holidays, move away completely if we want. Easy to explain, no problem. Fantastic, and maybe that's partly because they are still mutual, they don't have to make sales each month to satisfy the shareholders. Not that shareholders are baddies, hey, anyone can buy shares. Oh, and she just used an Excel spreadsheet to explain it, nothing fancy that's difficult for the operator to understand. Mind-you, when we did get down to serious business the software was a nightmare. How's about this for an error message .. "There was an error, I can't post the form. Posting the form." And then, after twenty pages of questions and answers "data missing from field". Fantastic, no indication which field then? More to the point, no rescue for the poor sales person sitting in front of their prospects. Anyway, the point is, despite the protestations from the Alliance and Leicester that she was there to give me what I wanted, the 30 tonne impression was that she was there to sell what she could for the rest of my natural life. The Scarborough offered complete freedom. And that's what us consumers want .. the tools to run our own lives. Fantastic (am I starting to sound like 'brilliant' off of The Fast Show?).; I just wonder whether sales people really know how insightful normal people are about these things. Also, the Alliance and Leicester woman was very good about asking if I had any problem with what she was saying. And I did raise some objections and she tried to overcome them. But if I were to say "I don't like the 2-year plan because I think it's all about you wanting to sell to me, and I don't want to put myself in that position", what I'd really be saying is "I don't have the power here, I feel like you can sell me anything, and I feel out of control, what's more, I don't trust you one bit" .. that sounds rather harsh and what would be the point? Their whole sales system was geared this way, I wasn't going to change her there and then. So despite asking for my objections, she didn't get the real ones so failed to sell to me. Anyway, Scarborough won through humanity, personality, warmth, flexibility and honesty, and long may that be true.
Every day's a special day: 19 March 2004: Here's a curious thing, software freedom day, when 'they' intend to give away fliers. Who are 'they'? Who's paying for that and why? Anyway, I like open source software, so once I've got it clear in my head maybe I'll come out in support.
Fantastic :-): 18 March 2004: Wonderful stuff: Councillor plans to halt GM maize
Ex-lecturer: 18 March 2004: Hey, this is one of my old lecturers: Bard theatre stages real wedding. Fantastic. He did seem to get much happier around October 2002 :-) (thanks Olly for the link).
Skilled sofa salesman: 18 March 2004: My partner and I almost impulse-bought a new sofa on Tuesday .. we still might. The salesman did something really clever. We were comparing two sofas and he said something like "of course, the other one's £200 more expensive, and for that all you get is deeper seats, a higher quality fabric and [something else]", and while he's saying that I'm automatically pulling a face that says "£200, and you get all that? Bring it on" and after I said "£200 sounds like a good deal to me". Silly me, clever him. He just found out about our price flexibility and our quality/cost value system while appearing to be on our side trying to persuade us to buy the cheaper one, yet saying basically the cheaper sofa's inferior and challenging us so very subtly to prove how cheapskate we are by going for the lower priced model. Very good.; He did almost lose it, though, by doing the classic car sales-person trick of implying that I'd be writing the cheque. Nope. I've lived off Ali for at least four years and probably a lot longer than that.
Technical support: 18 March 2004: I installed that network I've been talking about yesterday and had reason to call both Tiscali and Linksys' technical support. I was dreading calling Tiscali, there seems to be a bit of a feeling that their technical support wasn't up to much, and previously I'd called their number and having gotten through (press 1 for x, press 2 for y) to the right desk had been unceremoniously cut off with "all our operators are busy, please try again later. Click, whirrrrrrr". Anyway, I called, they answered, they answered my question, and I got up and running. And yes, from the accent I'd say the call centre was in India, but it worked for me.; The Linksys one worked too .. it was online chat. It must be less costly for Linksys too .. because I can spend my time succinctly phrasing my question, then it gets allocated to someone who says, essentially "your network card's broken", and the only place where it's inefficient for Linksys is in the last part where you feel the need to sign off politely. Not only that, every message can be monitored more easily. It made me wonder how long it would be before online help will be replaced by a chatterbot. Turing devised a test for artificial intelligence which would require such a bot to be indistinguishable from a human operator. If you play with some of the bots on that site, you soon realise there's quite a long way to go.; Artificial intelligence seems to progress in fits and starts .. I did some research into this when I developed my share price predictor using a neural network. Perhaps an area seems promising and lots of excitement is generated, lots of research done and in the end the limits are found. Then a few decades pass by and interest is generated elsewhere and then someone comes up with another idea in the first area and it goes off again. Fuzzy logic seems to have been picked up by the Japanese and hence found its way into lots of appliances. While the Japanese were working on that, the Americans were clearly looking elsewhere. Anyway, it feels like chatterbot development's in a lull, because the latest chatterbot on the above site feels no better than the first, Eliza.
Shopping carts: 16 March 2004: I've just been looking at shopping cart software, and I got irritated. It must be my time of the month. Anyway, there seems to be a universal law of software that goes something like this. Bloke writes software to solve his problem (in this case, a shopping cart). Bloke thinks "Here! I could sell this". Bloke makes first sale, discovers software doesn't solve client's problem. Bloke writes additional bits and makes sale. These steps continue until bloke has software that does everything, but is a pig to configure. Software is no longer quicker for a website manager who knows what (s)he's doing to implement than writing the functions directly. As a buyer, then, I get to choose either software that's all things to all users, or software that solves a problem I don't have. And the time it takes to sort all that out is wasted, but chargeable time.; Should you make the mistake of actually buying into one of these packages, it's the same as buying into something like Dreamweaver. They want to keep the software updated, so you're always playing catchup trying to learn the new features. In the end, they drive you.; A huge no-thanks to the lot of it. I'll stick with writing my own.
Skiffle desires: 15 March 2004: While watching the South Bank Show last night on John Lennon's jukebox I was reminded of a couple of things.; Firstly, how irritating Sting is. He just has to breath and he irritates me. I don't know whether it's the teacher in him, he seems to whine, or maybe it's a feeling of his self importance, but I've been irritated by Sting for years now.; Secondly, I do think there's room for a comeback of skiffle bands .. bands that make real music with real, acoustic, instruments. (Umm, by that I mean, to emphasise the physicality of playing a real instrument live as opposed to the artificial feeling from synthesised music, although I love that too.) The tunes in John Lennon's jukebox were very special and had energy it's difficult to find nowadays. I wanna do that. I want to be the drummer in a skiffle band. Any takers for the other positions? Maybe we can get a whole Scarborough scene going :-)
A quarter of: 15 March 2004: According to Guy Clapperton in the Observer this weekend, aquarterof.co.uk turns over £250,000 per year in this, its second year of trading. Hmm, on the face of it I found that very difficult to believe, and looking at the site, it's not particularly smooth or nice or anything. But it works, it's to the point (so functionality is winning over design) and maybe the idea is a great one .. there are a lot of 'older' people about with money to spend. Another possible way that this might be possible is the part of the site that says "most people find out about us by their friends telling them", with the 'recommend a friend' function. I heard about it through the press, and it's quite a nice story for editorial so I guess that might work well too. I also like their decision to use a cartoonist from Whizzer and Chips. I think there's evidence of a real focus here, so maybe, just maybe, they really are turning over so much.
Aznar falls: 15 March 2004: The whole Madrid thing has caused me mixed feelings. On the one hand, Aznar is the first to fall as a result of the Iraq war, Bush could be next, Blair after that. I wonder what that would do to future politician's willingness to go ahead without UN approval in the future.; But then, on the other hand, I've started to come around to the idea that, hell, they might be right. Maybe there is a different problem brewing here. Maybe terrorism does need to be tackled pro-actively. It's not like we can erect sandbags around our borders like in the olden days. Madrid is proof, if any more were needed, that there is no limit to what they'll do, and yes, if they had more powerful weapons I guess I'd have to accept they'd use them.; The problem is, though, what creates a terrorist and how to stop that happening? I still can't help feeling that with behaviour like this from our American friends, you've got to see how resentment can breed. Maybe if we stopped being such bastards to the non-western world they wouldn't want to blow us up. If we are bastards by denial, and active warfaring bastards too, their only way out will be terrorism .. and there are a lot more of 'them' than there are of us.
BroadBandBuyer eats Amazon for breakfast: 13 March 2004: I ordered some network bits from www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk on Friday at about lunchtime after a few days of working out what exactly I wanted, expertly aided by their pre-sales team. Now I can see on their site that my order arrived at 12:00, was checked at 14:34 and passed to packing, it was packed at 15:01 and scheduled for dispatch, and dispatched at 16:30. Then there's a link to CityLink who say they received it and weighed it at 19:07 and right now it's at the delivery branch and is scheduled for delivery on Monday. Considering it's Saturday now, that means I can go out today without missing a delivery. Now, that's exemplary. (Update: it was delivered at about 8:45am on Monday morning, wow :-) ); By contrast, I'm still waiting for half my order from Amazon which says the bit I have received was dispatched on the 6 March but still shows an expected delivery date of 2-4 March (that's a three day span, not the single definite intention from CityLink. The delayed book that is usually dispatched within 2-3 days is now scheduled for delivery somewhere between 11 and 18 March, while the other book, well, they've taken the order but they're basically saying they haven't a clue when it'll be delivered. This is the e-business equivalent of an assistant simply shrugging "I dunno" when asked when my order will be delivered.
A quarter of Spanish: 13 March 2004: 11 million Spanish out on the city streets is over a quarter of the population. Given how rural Spain is, I guess that pretty much represents everyone who can walk .. they marched in their millions. Incredible.
My skills chart updated: 13 March 2004: I've just updated my skills chart. I update it each quarter, but the data relates to the past year. It's interesting to see my core skills, HTML, CSS, writing, and PHP sticking around the top. The high e-business score relates to the fact that I was studying hard for an e-business module at university last year, so it relates to e-business theory and will probably drop quite low next time.; Networking is the fastest riser due partly because again it was a university module this time last year, but also I've been working on email systems, DNS, ADSL, firewalls, and I've a network installation to implement next week which I've been working towards. C programming was part of this module too, as was parallel processing.; Formulation is a term taken from the Boehm's Spiral development process and means that stage before project management and estimation in which the project is defined .. what is it, what is it not, what capabilities, what look/feel, what target market, when for, budget, people involved, and so on. It's very important and often overlooked.; I think I've made an error in separating out Java and J2EE, they should really just be lumped together. But frankly, I'll do that next time :-) I have separated Information Architecture out from the general systems analysis category, because I've separated it out myself as a separate process.; The highest new entry is Flash, something I was forced into by a particular client and have not used since. I'm hoping to do SVG instead shortly for another client. I'm not sure why databases didn't get listed last time, they are pretty central to most things I do.; Oh well, I think I've even bored myself now .. time for a coffee.; Seriously though, if you are considering asking me to work on a project for you, I am pleased with the way I've presented my current skills .. you can see what I spend most of my time doing. And it turns out the pop chart idea with the non-movers and new entries and all that is a very concise way to present that information.
Interesting election: 12 March 2004: Well, it's going to be an interesting election in Spain on Sunday.
Hmmph: 12 March 2004: Hmmm, I reckon I might be starting to design websites that look like each other. I know the technology does that to you, but maybe I need to fight it. I've been looking at Meat Collective and, of course, they're a graphic design company (and I'm not), but if you look at their portfolio there's no discernible 'house style', everything's been designed to meet the client's objectives, target market and so on. I guess though, my 'default' style happens when a site wants something quick and/or cheap. So maybe it's not that I'm not capable of breaking out, just that I haven't given it enough priority when talking with clients. Let's see what happens. I like getting wake up calls :-)
How loud do we have to get?: 12 March 2004: It seems rather like we have to get busy again with the anti-GM stuff. If you're bothered, first thing, go get your sunglasses. You'll need them when you go to the bite back site.
How very irritating: 9 March 2004: Today, the UK Government announced its intention in principle to proceed with GM crop growing.
International Women's Day: 8 March 2004: Apparently today is International Women's Day. You can't argue with that. The powagirrrls site is, err, more fun tho.
Top 3 film dilemma: 8 March 2004: And another thing. When I was eulogising about my top three films before, I forgot LA Story, I love it. So, what? Number three? Two? Not one, no. Hmmm, maybe three. So Titanic, Moulin Rouge, LA Story, and Eraserhead. Yeah, that'll do for today.
More brewer's yeast & a strange tap effect: 8 March 2004: Eeeh, blogging's like poppin', once you've started you just can't stop. I just wanted to follow up on my brewer's yeast story by saying that one of the ways I could check how well the energy-giving vitamin B was working was by checking how I felt when I went to the gym. Despite being tired, I felt all my weights were well within my means, whereas normally there are a few that I struggle with. However, when I increase one of the weights by a little I can usually see the difference in that muscle group afterwards, I didn't see any difference overall after taking brewer's yeast. So I think the vitamin B gave me more strength or endurance or energy or something, but I'm not sure the protein in it made much difference in terms of muscle size. Not that I'm obsessing about either, I was just curious about the effects of the brewers yeast.; One other effect brewer's yeast seems to have had is that I turn the bathroom tap off with more zip :-) Normally you'd turn a tap off in a series of turns, whereas recently I've developed the knack of turning it off in one snappy turn. The problem is, that seems to cause a knock further back along the system, so I decided that was probably a bad thing, and I should stop doing it in case my pressure surges caused a pipework leak some years in the future. But the point is, besides happily attempting to develop the idea that I'm a tap obsessive, that it was an outward sign of my increased zippiness. That turning the tap in that way meant I felt good about myself, confident, energetic even. Perhaps if I were more expressive I'd have a skip in my step or something, but us Brits have to keep that kinda thing securely under wraps in case we get beaten up.
Further Amazon moans: 8 March 2004: Two Amazon moans, further to my other Amazon moans. Firstly, when looking for a link for Silent Spring below, it appears Amazon now do allow you to link to a particular book. How do you do this? Well, you need the ASIN for the book? What's an ASIN? Well, for a book, it's the same as an ISBN. So I went off on a rant about how corporate, and political America for that matter, seems unable to accept any kind of international standard. They always seem to want to invent their own and then use muscle to make everyone else toe the line. Then I realised that maybe other products don't have the same kind of coding system. But every one of them will be bar coded surely .. why not just use the international bar code?; Then I heard a tune from Moby's Play and it reminded me about how I ended up buying it. I was a huge fan of the Chemical Brothers <table border='0' cellpadding='0' cellspacing='0' width='120' height='213'><tr><td><A HREF='http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/redirect-home/johnallsopp-21' target=_blank><img src="http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/G/02/associates/recommends/default_120x213.gif" width=120 height=213 border="0" access=regular></a></td></tr></table> (and yes, I am playing with the Amazon links), for a time, but really the first two albums are the only ones that matter to me. In my desperation to find other bands that sounded like them at the time, I used Amazon's "Customers who bought this item also bought ... " facility. It's a great thing, Information Architects call it social navigation and I'm really up for it. The only other band I've ever found that sounds like the Chemical Brothers was the Crystal Method. <table border='0' cellpadding='0' cellspacing='0' width='468' height='82'><tr><td><A HREF='http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/redirect-home/johnallsopp-21' target=_blank><img src="http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/G/02/associates/recommends/default_468x82.gif" width=468 height=82 border="0" access=regular></a></td></tr></table> Anyway, I ended up buying Moby's Play because lots of people who bought the Chemical Brothers also bought Moby. Can anyone spot the similarity? No, nor could I. The Chemical Brothers are erect, Moby is limp. There's a big difference.
More GM stuff: 8 March 2004: This gives a good roundup (ha ha) of the current state of the GM debate. "Ha ha" because Roundup is the name of a weedkiller an early GM crop was developed to be resistant to. This would allow the grower to spray a whole field with weedkiller without killing the crop. Such monoculture destroys wildlife, is an unstable way of growing food, and clearly involves spraying lethal chemicals over many acres of land, over our food, and ultimately leaking into our watercourses. What's more, the gene that gives the crop immunity to the weedkiller finds its way into the weeds within just a few generations, meaning the advantage is lost unless another GM crop with resistance to another weedkiller is introduced. This is a fast change cycle that can't be monitored effectively by those interested in keeping a handle on environmental changes and plays into the hands of the GM industry by providing a 'need' for new developments from the farmers.; Granted, it's a little old now, but the scariest book in the world .. so scary I've never managed to get more than halfway through it .. is Silent Spring by Rachel Carson which relates story after story of the errors of spraying chemicals on the land. I must summon up my courage and have another read of it.
Prince Edward Island considers voting GM off the island: 7 March 2004: Suddenly Prince Edward Island seems like a great place to visit. I want the UK to follow suit. Want to know more about Prince Edward Island? Actually, this latter link doesn't seem to answer the key question .. where is Prince Edward Island? Ah, finally, this tells you where, and interestingly it's near Nova Scotia which is another place I fancy exploring.
myKitchen.uk.com: 5 March 2004: The site's not quite live yet, but here's the case study for the kitchen site I've been working on.
All clear: 5 March 2004: I like the new Cancer Research UK ad campaign "all clear". When I was a full time marketing consultant I read that fear was more motivating than the promise of pleasure. So campaigns focusing on what would go wrong if you didn't buy the product were more effective than those promising nirvana if you did.; If that's true, maybe that exposes a way that marketing and advertising can be damaging to society. If they concentrate on negativity and things that could go wrong, the cumulative effect can't be good for society. Having said that, from a global political point of view it seems to be quite useful for governments to have their populations live in a little bit of fear, so maybe nothing will ever be done about this.; I've said before how I dislike charity ads that focus on pictures of hurting children, experimented-on animals and so on. Personally, I prefer a positive approach if it can be made to work. So the "all clear" campaign which shows people telling their loved ones that their doctor just gave them the 'all clear' is really very positive indeed.; Interestingly, and completely unscientifically, Channel 4's The Carrot or the Stick plays with this idea. It pitches two teams together, one motivated by rewards, the other by punishment. So I betted the washing-up on the 'stick' team winning throughout, and they lost the first challenge. Damn!
Amazon's delivery estimates: 5 March 2004: If Amazon is a shining example of how to do business on the Internet, then we're all in trouble. I'm exaggerating, Amazon's wonderful in so many ways, but its delivery reporting needs a serious overhall.; I ordered three books the other week, and chose free postage, so I accepted that the whole order would be delivered as one (so waiting for the slowest book to arrive).; I'd forgotten a fourth book, so went back, and couldn't add that to my existing order. A minor problem, but if I wanted to minimise deliveries, for example, I might be at work and want to minimise disruption to my neighbours who might have to keep accepting our deliveries, then that's imperfect. This is important though, we stopped using Next directory because of just that issue.; Then there's the "why am I waiting, anyway" issue. All this talk about Internet time being n times faster than real time .. and sometimes it is. I've ordered stuff from Amazon one day and received it the next morning, it was faster than me trying to get into a bookshop. Surely with all the intelligence they have they can work out a just-in-time system, or make 95% of their sales in-stock. Particularly since, unlike a bookshop, the whole operation is centralised so averaging demand should work quite well.; But it's the delivery reporting that's a problem. So, my 3-book order's now been divided into two deliveries because of a delay on one of the books. OK. The two books they do have in stock are now "dispatching soon". But they have a delivery estimate of 2-4 March. Well, considering it's the fifth today they could at least update that date.; If this order follows the pattern of a similar previous experience, I'll get the books delivered today, I'll go to Amazon and it'll still say "dispatching soon".; On the 6th March, it said "Dispatched on 6 March" .. "Delivery estimate: Mar 2, 2004 - Mar 4, 2004".
Meditative train: 4 March 2004: I went to Huddersfield yesterday on the train and on the way back something changed the usual 'bustling train journey' feeling. As I sat and read I became aware of some sort of music. Nothing with much structure, but regularly changing tones. As my brain separated it from the background noise, I think it was a recording of chimes or tubular bells or something. Once I'd 'locked on' to the sound it started to make the journey seem dreamlike. I think it affected the whole carriage for a couple of stops actually. Whereas other people's music is usually irritating, this seemed to lift everyone along and make them contemplative. Yet it was so quiet as to be almost subliminal.; One of my pet moans is about household appliances that don't sound nice. Why must vacuum cleaners sound so awful? Can't they be tuned somehow so that the sound they create is more pleasing? I don't think the designers spend any time on the sound of products .. well they can't otherwise they'd sound better. I'd buy a better sounding cleaner.; I'd love to 'sound-engineer' a supermarket. So all the beeps and whirrs the tills make get tuned and timed, and the 'ding dong' of the announcements too, even the sound of the trolleys clashing. So the whole sound of the supermarket turns into an aural adventure, a musical work created by people shopping. Live 24 hour sonic art :-)
House prices: 1 March 2004: My partner Ali bought the house I'm living in when she was a basic grade (the lowest pay in her field, she works in the health service) eight years ago. We just went to the bank to talk about remortgaging and discovered that, were she in the same position now, wanting to buy the house on her own salary, she couldn't afford it, despite her being promoted to senior 1 (the highest pay in her field). So houses really are much less affordable than they were. That must be a real problem for people just starting work .. while I bought a house when I was about 22 or so, I don't imagine that would be possible for most people nowadays until they approach their thirties maybe. Unless they're a couple and both are working. Boy, what a way to start your working life.