John Allsopp

Professionally engineered Internet solutions for humans

OceanReady.com: 30 April 2004: I've written an OceanReady.com case study.
Search engine behaviour: 30 April 2004: Sobering research about search engine behaviour.
More about taps: 30 April 2004: SPAIN: Further to my previous tap moan, here's one in our room in Spain that confused me every time I used it. Here's the pic. This is probably going to show me to be highly unsophisticated, but what do you do with this tap to get hot water? I never remembered through the whole of our 14 day stay. Notice the two little dots, one red, one blue? They obviously are meant to tell us which way to turn the top part of the tap. But which way? I still can't remember so I'm sorry, I can't answer the question.; The thing is, if this was a website, most good web developers would throw it out. The user has to understand, first of all, that red = hot and blue = cold. Now, I know that feels universal to us, but is it really universal? Do Japanese or Venezuelan people have the same link? Isn't red a religious colour for some? So before we start, the user has to have that basic knowledge, and in a hotel that caters all the time to foreign visitors that should be considered. According to the W3C WCAG 2.0 initiative 1.3.2 we would have to also provide that information in another way, ie. not solely via colours.; Then there's the business about turning the tap. Not only have you got to turn it, but lift it too (lifting it controls the water flow). If that were a web navigation tool and people had to work out how to use it, it would go immediately into the bin, no questions asked. If you're going to confuse your users you've no place in web design. So how come 30 seconds of my life can be stolen to make me work out how to use this tap without spraying myself with water?; What was wrong with a turning hot and cold tap? How is this design an improvement? I guess it's easier to clean, so saving on cleaning bills in a hotel. If you argue that smooth taps would also save cleaning time, I'd argue back that people with arthritic hands would have a problem turning them. The Spanish tap works well for people with motor problems I'd say, except that it doesn't give very fine control. It could also be argued it's an aesthetic improvement and that I'm a misery guts. Fair enough. The cult of the new and all that. I still don't want to be confused by taps though.
Are you OceanReady?: 29 April 2004: I just made OceanReady.com public. Boy that was a good afternoon's programming. It's another tight budget, tight deadline thing but it works so I'm pretty happy. Time for tea I reckon.
Random happy quotes: 28 April 2004: I've just added a 'random quotes' function to my home page .. it's just before the main text at the moment, but I might move and reformat it next week when I get another chance to work with it. I've got the names of the people to add too. It's very satisfying to read through so many comments from happy clients. <mode type="luvvy">"Thank-you, I love you all"</mode> (sorry, those <> bits are an in joke).
Ghosts: 26 April 2004: This is the most convincing story of the possibility of talking to the dead that I've ever read, I think. It's sent shivers down my spine. Damn, they've taken it offline!
J2EE: 25 April 2004: OK, the J2EE thing is starting to happen for real. I'm starting to develop in it. It's exciting and daunting and wow and blimey.
Here's something I couldn't do on the Internet: 25 April 2004: I tried and failed to find out on the Internet how much it would cost for an approximately 1m² piece of replacement window glass. I thought for a moment I'd been guilty of creating the kind of website that wouldn't answer that question (you know the kinda thing, "we're the best glass company in Swansea, contact us for a price") .. but looking at the Granite Worktops (UK) Ltd website I see we did provide an example cost for granite .. so I didn't (or did). Hurrah anyway.
Random thought snippets: 25 April 2004: Macy Gray is sexy, but Björk is many times more so. Their products/images are anyway.; Anything with Christopher Eccleston in it is good. We just watched Jude which contains a scene as unexpected as the one in The Crying Game (you know the one), but .. completely different. It was good to see Rachel Griffiths again after the wonderful Muriel's Wedding, although I couldn't have told you her name, and probably won't remember after .. ummm .... what was I talking about?
RAM upgrade: 23 April 2004: I'm working on a 333 MHz Pentium II with 128Mb of ram and it struggled a bit to load up some large images so I thought I'd upgrade the RAM. I put another 128Mb in (thanks for your help Crucial) and whereas a 75Mb graphics file was taking 1 minute 27 seconds to load, it now takes 50 seconds. Still a long time, but it's an improvement.; I recently did the same thing with more dramatic results for a client. They bought some new accounts software that simply crawled so slowly it was unusable. We put in 256Mb of RAM for about £80 and it works like a dream now. Fantastic.
The worst site of the month: 22 April 2004: I don't think I've seen a site quite as bad as this for some time. But then, I found it listed 5th highest in Google under "collectables" which is quite an in-demand keyword, so wierdly they must be doing something right. Though quite what that is I can't fathom.; Then again, I can't quite believe this.
Tunes in my head: 22 April 2004: For some reason, I've got Hey Good Lookin' what you got cookin'? on the brain. It's just there, I'm sure I've not heard it recently so I don't know where it's come from. Blimey, you'd never get away with lyrics like that nowadays.; In a way it backs up the kind of thing I've been reading in Adbusters about mental pollution. They liken our head to common land. They outlined what they called the "tragedy of the commons" which is that use of common land is unsustainable because, say if people are grazing sheep, each person can keep adding sheep without taking on board any extra cost. The land is razed to nothing, and everyone, in the end, loses the grazing land.; Our head, our brain, our memories, our thoughts are like the common land. There is no cost to an advertiser to put a message into our heads, and they do .. thousands of messages every day. The Adbusters' idea is that this will lead to the impoverishment of our mental space, our heads will be worn out, full of messages that prevent real thought taking place. And anyway, our heads are ours, not theirs.; It's certainly an interesting idea, but the analogy isn't perfect. For one, our bodies work better the harder they are worked .. to a point, I accept. But secondly, there is a cost to all the advertising, and it's expensive.; They'd like two minutes per hour on all broadcast media to be free and available to anyone who wants it. That doesn't seem to hang together either. But, they definitely have a point. When I want to buy something, I feel I really don't stand a chance against the armies of marketing people, merchandisers, financial experts, and the collected knowledge from those companies' experiences all of which are used against me to get me to buy.; That's one reason I like the Internet as a means to buy things, because it's a pull medium. If you want something, you go searching for it, and you buy it. No-one needs to set up a need in your head. If you want a dog coat because you just got soaked on a dog walk, you can go on the net and buy one. You are in control.
Sean of the Dead: 21 April 2004: Just a quick note to say we saw Sean of the Dead last night. Very funny indeed, but I think it helps if you're seriously into Spaced ... which we certainly are. It's incredibly well written too, very tight.; It being all-British and containing many British comedy actors it might sound a bit comic strip but where The Comic Strip Presents was slightly funny but sometimes a bit of a waste of your time, Sean of the Dead succeeds.
Crystal Method: 21 April 2004: Ignoring usability for a moment, The Crystal Method's new website looks rather nice.
Dog coats: 19 April 2004: I've been asked to quote for developing a dog coat website, and I've only just realised that dog coats are like the opposite of human clothes. Whereas we cover up our naughty bits first, dog coats are coats, but with the naughty bits exposed. Witness the yellow coated dog here, and the peekaboo dog underneath. Go on, laugh, you know you want to.; What about the face on this one (top left). He's planning weeks of revenge.
Scary lard: 19 April 2004: Good grief, this is perhaps the scariest tin of lard I've ever seen in my life.
Is modern art dying?: 19 April 2004: On the 16 April I talked more about the art book I'm reading, and raised the author's question "is modern art dying?" Upon closer inspection, the book was written in 1967. So. Did modern art die?
If I were single: 19 April 2004: If I were single, I'd do speed dating. It sounds perfect. So why did I hear a rumour of a local one where there were 30 women and no men?; I'd have to say something weird too. "I'm a software engineer, if I get a chance to play music I do, I'm starting to enjoy DIY, and I know someone who knows someone who claims to have been the first to create lego porn". No link for that one I'm afraid. I hope that would sort the wheat from the chaff, but it would probably just add me to everyone's 'no' list. What would be your introductory line?
Fish sleeping & the victorians.: 19 April 2004: I didn't really realise fish slept. But I had the task of looking after next door's goldfish while they were away and I turned up after dark to feed them and they were just quiet, hardly swimming, and one was resting on the gravel. I put out the food, and they were not interested.; Which makes me remember a tale from a new fish keeper recently where they went to a pet shop, bought some fish for their new aquarium, put them in, and some just died. Upon enquiring, it turns out some were tropical, and some weren't, and theirs was a cold water tank.; Now, we should probably leave aside issues of responsibility. Instead, I want to link it to the rise in usability. I wasn't alive in Victorian times, obviously, but I imagine if someone had a hobby then, they'd know all about it. They'd read up on it. Knowledge would have been important. If they wanted to keep bees, for instance, they'd find out, join a club, work with a local beekeeper, that sort of thing.; We now have such a turn-on, turn-off society where anyone can have anything, that someone can buy tropical fish for their cold water tank and my first reaction is "what is wrong with that pet shop that they didn't query the purchase?" If people can make that basic an error when dealing with something they are supposed to care about, what chance does a website stand? The moral is, if a user can do something wrong on your site, they will. That's why usability testing is so important.
To finish off the floor: 19 April 2004: Just to finish on the flooring stuff, I noted a couple of musical high spots over the weekend, particularly Macy Gray turning up on some Ibiza chillout thing. I decided to play some of my unfiled CDs, the low spot was the gloomy cloud of The Cure.; Then I wanted to mention that I managed to get some wood shavings I can use for a pot pourri of "get it sorted!" aromatherapy smells for my office. More on that later no doubt, tho I'm sure I've mentioned my intentions before.
Browser splutter: 19 April 2004: For a belly laugh, try Powergen's website using Mozilla Firefox. Oh wow, it gets better. I might want to move to them (my dad used to work for them so I've some allegiance). So off I go to the 'new customer' part of the site, attempt to calculate my saving and get "We're sorry but the customer service section of our website is currently unavailable. We're working hard to make essential improvements to your online service, to ensure your experience with Powergen.co.uk is as good as we can make it. Please visit us again on Monday 19th April after 9am, when you will be able to sign up and manage your account online. Our apologies again for any inconvenience caused." I may just do that.; You knew what was coming didn't you? At 9:30 I re-checked it and the message now reads "Please visit us again on Monday 19th April after 1pm". Also, a friend just let me know his completely negative opinion of them and their website. Maybe I should check out something much more interesting, like Unite.
What cats do: 4: 19 April 2004: They go "yeah, nice floor, now when can I go out?" previous
Marathon: 18 April 2004: It's around this time of year that my mind wanders momentarily around the idea of maybe running a marathon. I'd like to. This year my mind wandered more than before. I had a poke around the Internet for training regimes. Hmmm. I'd take it slowly, maybe thinking of something in 2006 .. the gym has worked so well for me because I've taken it very, very slowly, over perhaps four or five years.
Art again: 16 April 2004: I'm still reading this book on the psychological basis of art and here's a sky-high view of part of it. All of the art movements, from Picasso to Bridget Riley were about attempting to break the way we habitually think.; Why is that important? Because our conscious mind is always organising us. What art attempts to do is to talk to the inner mind, the soul perhaps. To get through, it needs to distract the conscious mind. One way to do that is to give it something it's never seen or heard before. While it's worrying over whether it likes it or not, the art can reach the soul.; Apparently Corbusier developed a small basic unit proportioned according to the golden mean from which he designed one or more buildings. His original idea was to break out from designing a building as a whole, and start to design from the middle outwards.; The problem is, once we get used to a new thing, the conscious mind controls your perception once again. It's impossible to experience new art again the way you experienced it the first time. Corbusier found that, far from the block being a way to break out of designing ordinary buildings, it soon became just another way of doing so.; This gives a possible reason for artistic progress.; Apparently Monet's large brushstrokes were revolutionary and shocking at the time, but now we think of them as the ultimate relaxing living room poster.; Also, apparently, many great musical compositions were written rather different to how they are often played. Whereas visual art and architecture can be experienced first hand, music must be played, interpreted through the musicians, and they like to smooth the rough edges. Apparently many classical compositions have more interesting rhythms and discordant events than we think in their original form.; The author of the book where I'm getting all this from The Hidden Order of Art, Anton Ehrenzweig, thinks that we are becoming less shockable and have come to expect the new. It no longer bypasses our conscious brain. So new art is dying. What is to replace it? (But see note on 17/04/2004).
Kill Bill 2: 15 April 2004: Oh, excellent, Kill Bill Vol 2 opens tomorrow.
Say it with flowers: 15 April 2004: When I first saw these flowers in Huddersfield Railway Station I thought it looked like they'd tried to model the beginning of the universe in flowers. I imagined a corporate presentation: "At first there was nothing, then a big bang, matter, energy beyond comprehension. Time began. To give you an idea of what it was like, our gardener, Tim, has developed this impression of what it must have been like a few nanoseconds into the life of the new universe."
More floor: 15 April 2004: This floor replacement thing's been such an event, I thought I'd share the pics:
The face: 15 April 2004: Wow, the face of the man who started it all. Oh well, it was a link to a picture of Tim Berners Lee. Here's a compensatory link.
The most important John Allsopp in the world: 15 April 2004: Oh joy of joys I'm back to being the most important John Allsopp in the world (at the top of a Google search for John Allsopp), if you click the link. Sorry to the Bondi Beach John Allsopp who was deservedly the best for a while. Thanks to Stevio for pointing this out.; What that means, to be serious for a moment, is that this grand blogging experiment has worked. If you look back to the original idea, it was to see if I could get a better search engine ranking by regularly changing the content of my site. So here it is. Pudding proof.
Sliced cheese: 15 April 2004: I want chunky hunky brown bread, proper butter and a lump of cheese. Not slices. Slices are for girls.; And while I'm at it, I want uneven buttering and jam with real strawberries in it. The unevenness is important, I like to take my chances. A dry, crusty bit increases your pleasure when you reach a buttery strawberry bit. I love difference, who wants blandy sameness? Who needs twenty samey mouthfuls when you can have a joyous variety experience? The elemental crust, the sublime jam, butter, bread mixture in ever different proportions. As Girls at our best once said, 'anticipation is so much better'.; I once got the bread, honey, butter proportions so completely right. Once. In 42 years.; Nope, I'm wrong, maybe it was the Delta 5.
Tools: 13 April 2004: The more tools you have, the more you need. Certainly that seems to be true in DIY, if you've a countersink bit you suddenly start thinking how much better it would be if that were countersunk. And a router, wow, how often have I used that?; So I wonder if it's the same in programming? Since learning about session variables I keep finding uses for them. I've avoided regular expressions so far. Once I learn them, I guess I'll find all sorts of uses for them.
Whole milk: 13 April 2004: I had whole milk on my cornflakes the other day and it took me right back to my childhood. So what kinda messed up world is it where I've not had full fat milk since childhood?
Shower controls: 13 April 2004: Showers. Every one that I've used has a temperature dial, say from 0-10. 0-6 is completely freezing. 6.5 - 10 is scalding. So you're forced to mess around in the range 6.1 - 6.4 to try to get a decent temperature, where the smallest change you can manage to the dial is about 0.3. Is it not slightly possible that the range 6.1 - 6.4 be expanded so that what was 0 is now 6.1, what was 10 is now 6.4, and we have a full and beautiful range of reasonable temperatures inbetween? Then you could put in a thermostat too so when the washing machine starts the shower doesn't melt your skin. What do shower designers do all day?; Maybe the answer is, they build decent showers with proper temperature controls and thermostats, but sell them as aspirational items for people who have sufficient money. I'll bet Posh Spice has got one.
Traditional floorboards versus new fangled click together flooring: 13 April 2004: Having now fitted normal floorboards and the click-together stuff too I'm in a position to compare them. I was hoping to be able to report that normal floorboards required the same amount of work as click-together, so negating the reasoning for buying click-together and adding evidence to my software stance that it's better to build from the ground up using basic tools.; We fitted the clicky stuff to our top floor, but I'll just consider the times and costs for one room, the bedroom, which had an existing floor which we layed the clicky stuff on top of. I'm reliably informed (by my partner) that it took us a day to fit. We had an efficient production line going, and I think it took pretty much eleven hours of both of us and cost £300 for the room.; The floorboards we fitted in our dining room, and cost just £120. Removing the old floorboards which were woodworm infested took a day, spraying and treating the joists took a day, and laying the floor took a day. I prissied around measuring screwholes and countersinking each because I wanted the floor to be removable if it was necessary to access services underneath without wrecking the look of it, because we're not covering it in carpet or anything, so I made it a longer process than if I'd just nailed them down with proper floor brads.; Now we still have to sand it, stain it, and varnish it and I have some doubts about how durable it will be. It's very soft wood, so any heels or chairs are going to mark it, unless the varnish really does what it says. One of the good things about the click floor we bought is we found it almost impossible to mark.; Getting underneath a click-together floor is going to be interesting, you've got to unclick what's there in quantity enough to remove the underlay and then get to the floorboards underneath. Not pretty.; I did use a lot of tools to lay the floorboards .. a drill with screwdriver option, a countersink bit, a belt sander, a jigsaw to cut out around the radiator pipes, a router to cut underneath so it rested over some existing tiles, circular saw, plane (to lessen the tongue on one of the last boards so I could 'snap' it into place), chisel to tidy up the edge of remaining boards where they went under cupboards, oh and a floorboard clamp of course to pull them tightly together, and obviously an ordinary saw, workbench, measure, right angle thingy and all the protective stuff, gloves, mask, goggles and knee pads. Some of those you'd use for the click stuff, but I've a feeling not so many.; When I started this, I thought I'd reach a conclusion, but I'm undecided. Imagine someone who has just bought their first house, and it's an old-ish property. Money's going to be an issue, but they won't have the tools. But if they buy the tools now they'll get more use out of them over their lifetime. Having tools saves you money, not to mention grief. I hate, possibly more than anything, doing a job without the right tool. But you'll need somewhere to store them. Plain floor is cheap, we paid several hundred pounds for carpet in our living room. I think it comes down to the existing boards, if they're good and solid, not rotting, few holes, don't creak, and especially if they are original, I'd make an effort to keep them. You need to hire a sander (about £50) and accept that the dust will get everywhere. Stain, varnish, done.; If the boards are knackered, then are they knackered because of something progressive like rot or woodworm? If so, that all needs treating and you can't tell how far it's got into the joists without taking them up, and you can't take them up without wrecking them. So that points to a replacement floor.; If the floor's pretty good or not boards but it's solid, and you want something hardwearing, easy to clean, that looks good, you'll never have to get to the services under the floor, and the extra cost isn't too much to bear, then the clicky stuff's probably a good bet.; (re-written at reader's request :-) )
Breadmaker on backing vocals: 13 April 2004: It often happens that when I listen to a familiar tune on an unfamiliar music system or at a different volume I hear different parts of the tune. So there I was, listening to the Chemical Brothers while fitting floorboards, and thinking "hey, I kinda like that bit of groovy machine-noise syncopation, I haven't heard that before" when it dawned on me that the new part was being contributed by the breadmaker as it kneaded the dough. It worked well I thought.; Later, a pigeon started cooing along with The Prodigy. While it started well, it lost the plot after a few bars and frankly it was never going to be a success. That pigeon should have realised natural sounds had no place in a Prodigy track. The breadmaker with its mechanical contribution clearly got it right.
Beckhams: 13 April 2004: I hope the Beckhams sort things out, I kinda like them, they're cute. What I don't like is the all-too-easy way the press jumped on Victoria's desire to keep her career going as the reason why David strayed .. if that's what happened. To many it's "obvious" that he'd stray if she continued with her efforts to maintain her own career. Right then. But I did notice something kinda irritating when I watched that telly program about them moving (or not) to Madrid .. was it called "At home with the Beckhams"? It's stayed with me. She joked about sleeping with David "you know, when I have to". Now, it could easily have been a joke, but what's that saying about much truth spoken in jest? You'd think if you're married to the world's most desirable chap you might be a bit more, err, interested. So maybe that's at the heart of it. Maybe she is a little .. cool. Anyway, like I say, I'd be very sad if they split .. who knows why, LOL.
Bend to my will!: 13 April 2004: Sorry about the gap, I spent Easter replacing the floor in the dining room. The old floor had woodworm, and we'd tried taking up some of the boards and treating them and putting them back but the worms returned. So this time we wanted to do a proper job. So I've not been on my computer for four days, and I'm more muscular for it.; Curiously, when laying the new boards I found myself employing a "you will bend to my will" attitude to those that were being difficult. I even tried sinister laughter when I thought no-one was in hearing distance. Maybe I'm a power-crazed dictator at heart.
Art and the deep psyche: 6 April 2004: I'm no artist, so here I am talking about something I know nothing about, but I am reading an interesting book about the psychological basis of art. What it seems to be saying, in essence, is that our conscious mind likes to complete patterns, enjoys perfect forms. So that's the whole Gestalt theory where you'll call a ring with a break in it a circle because that's how you see it.; The conscious mind will follow a melody and wants music based on scales. Visually, it seeks balance, order, major shapes. It sees what it's focussing on, and everything else falls away to the background.; Underneath all that is an entirely different type of mind. It can see the whole picture and deal with it all at once. It can hear the whole symphony as one. There's no focus, there's entirity.; Apparently artists frequently 'go blank', and then come back to their work. During that 'blank' time they have set aside their conscious mind to let the other mind work without judgment or filtering. Apparently the unconsious mind can see the whole and find the part that seems out of place, which is where the artist works next.; This has a bearing on creativity. I'm a big de Bono fan, and some of the things in the book seem to tie together. For instance, to solve a problem one chap invented a symbol that got him to the next stage of problem solving. Only after the problem was solved could he define the symbol. He didn't solve the current stage, he solved the stages out of order. One de Bono technique is to solve problems by inventing, for instance, something to stick a to b. If we had something to stick a to b, we could solve the much bigger problem. So we carry on and solve the problem, and come back later to find a solution to the sticking a to b thing.; This all means a couple of things to me. Firstly it shows how soulless computing can be. If you want to draw a circle on a computer, you draw a circle. It's perfect. Fine for the conscious mind, but barren for the unconscious. I wonder if the unconscious mind knows the difference between digital music and analogue.; Secondly, I wonder if this shows something about how animals 'think'. If they have less consciousness, and their unconscious mind is much more prevalent, maybe they see the whole all the time, reacting to one thing in the whole scene or soundscape that seems out of place - it could be food or a hunter.
Lakeland: 6 April 2004: Similar problems from Lakeland Plastics. I've ordered, things have gone speedily and well. Except, when I logged in it took me a while to work out where the 'order tracking' page was (usability testing and proper information architecture would have sorted that out), and when I find it it just says "dispatched". So I can't tell which courier they're using, nor where it is in the courier's system. My products are in no-man's land. Somewhere on earth.; Interestingly, they used exactly the same courier as BroadBandBuyer, so they could link to the same rich information CityLink provides. They just didn't.
Further Amazon shenanigans: 5 April 2004: Regular readers will remember I've been moaning about an order from Amazon. I did finally find a contact email and what's more, I got a response. The issue I raised is that the book I ordered on the 28 February was still showing an unknown estimated delivery date, and yet the same book is shown on the main site as being deliverable in 24 hours, 5 in stock.; The reply came back like this: We looked at your order and found that it contains a special order item. This title is displayed on our website with the availability estimate "Usually dispatched within 4 to 6 weeks. Please note that titles occasionally go out of print or publishers run out of stock". However, we still expect to dispatch your order (ref) by the date listed in Your Account: May 17, 2004.; That date is new. That's the first thing. So, when I ordered the book on the 28 February and the estimated date was 4-6 weeks hence, that's now-ish, not in another five weeks.; Secondly, doesn't this sound just a little condescending to you? We looked at your order and here's what we saw. Yeah, but you're missing my point.; My favourite bit was this tho: However, if you do need to contact us in the future, you may send us an e-mail via this online form: http://www.amazon.co.uk/contact-us. That's the page I can't escape from. Where, exactly, is the email contact on that page? OK, if you're eagle-eyed you'll spot it on the next page. Then you get a form, and guess what? To send in an enquiry, you have to have your reference number. Where's that? About twenty clicks back. Is this usable? I think not. The problem is in my opinion they're clearly using obfuscation and delay to get us to go away. Let's just ponder on that a moment. Amazon wants us to go away. Well hey, maybe I'll get to feeling the same way about Amazon. I'm certainly most of the way there atm.; OK, I think I got to the bottom of it now. The book I've ordered is 1100 pages printed in July 2003, the one that's available and in stock is 1105 pages printed in 18 April 2002. So, with all its cleverness Amazon doesn't have a "you ordered this, big delay, why don't you take this instead" function. It's not promising is it?
The au pair: 5 April 2004: According to an article I just read, it's quite common for housekeepers, au pairs and the like to come from destitute countries. Their best way forward, it seems, is to work in a wealthy country, and send money back to their families. OK, except, again according to the article, many of those women are mothers leaving their children behind. They see this as their only way forward. But what is the cost to their own family? No-one in that situation seems to be doing the macroeconomic sum .. what damage will that do to her children who will take that damage through their lives and potentially pass it on to their children and so on down the generations. Not that I know anything about families of course. It feels like we're raping and pillaging again, causing permanent damage to a poor nation because we'd like our ironing done at the lowest possible cost. (Cue lots of comments from ppl whose mothers went out to work and they've come out alright .. I don't claim to be right about everything, I'm just sharing my thoughts :-) )
MP Retail.com: 3 April 2004: M P Retail.com has gone live, hurrah :-) I found a few minutes and wrote a case study. The concept is quite large so I'm looking forward to it doing well. Also, the client is into online advertising so I'll find out more about whether that works from him.
Amazon woes: 3 April 2004: Amazon still haven't listed a delivery date for the book I ordered on the 28 February. Yet the book is still in the catalogue with the comment "usually delivered in 24 hours". The help area doesn't even acknowledge that this might happen .. how could Amazon possibly be less than perfect? Dammit their 'contact us' link just seems to take me around the 'help' pages I've already seen, and I can't find their email address. This just makes me feel bad, and bad towards Amazon. I need someone human to look into this dammit! Ah, found the link, but you just know they're trying to make it hard so it costs them less to service customers. That's surely not good business, surely looking after customers is good business. I think they're storing up bad feeling, and making themselves vulnerable to competition.
What the web thinks of Sting: 3 April 2004: Googlism attempts to extract people on the web's opinions on anything you like. Try Sting for example. You'll find he's 'a big dork', 'a pain', and 'stupid'. Ha! Vindicated. OK, maybe the middle one is a cheat, maybe it relates to something like a bee sting. Oh, and you saw the "sting is a horny beast of a man", and "sting is the real thing", and "sting is the perfect man because he is fiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnneeeeee" stuff. Damn. So, hang on a minute, where's my Sting comment? Maybe it needs to be more specific. OK, let's try this, see if I can get mentioned in Googlism .. Sting is a self-obsessed, irritating pain in the arse. Hey, you can but try.
More Archers: 2 April 2004: I should say, that my comments below about the Archers are not based on anything so rational as having come to a decision after listened to the program for a while. I've never listened to it. It's purely my completely biased opinion based on the introductory line and some vague notions about radio 4 and my reaction against the verve with which Archers fans attend to their pastime. You never know, it might be really good. I can appreciate the skill that goes into making Coronation Street, and you can't say that's not middle of the road. But sometimes, it's funny. What can I say?; I have, however, heard Bryan Adams, and that's unreservedly garbage. Garbage, on the other hand, are rather good. I'll stop mumbling now.
The Archers: 1 April 2004: When I used to play football at school, being 6'6" tall I was always put in goal. The problem was, I could never dive for the ball, certainly not on the hard baked mud around the goalmouth anyway. So I was pretty poor at the role. Nowadays though, there are two things which make me dive like a goalkeeper. The first is a dive for the off switch if anything by Bryan Adams comes on the radio. I do the same hopefully before the first hint of The Archers. Both seem just so detestably middle of the road to me. The problem also with Bryan Adams is he's like a virus. Once you hear a couple of bars of one of his songs, it's in your head for days. Try this .. "everything I do .... ". There. I've infected you.; The Archers .. maybe the programme's fine, but it always starts off so irritatingly inconsequential .. "And now for the Archers, and Derek's been admiring his sheep". I did catch one episode by accident, with two characters talking in a field of sheep, and the sound effects man doing his best with sheep noises in the background.; I think the root of this fear of MOR time-wasting is that I want to be doing something with my time .. if I'm relaxing, then I'm relaxing, if I'm working, I want to work, if I'm sitting in a waiting room or travelling, I'll have something to read. Every moment needs to be used. Every moment listening to the Archers or Bryan Adams gets you a moment closer to death but gives you nothing back. Listening to Bryan Adams is like dying early.