John Allsopp

Professionally engineered Internet solutions for humans

More Five News: 30 July 2004: And another thing about Five News. The chap that reads it, he wears a lot of makeup doesn't he?; I've always thought so, but, hey, you have to when you present the news. Jon Snow does, and although he can look a little orange, it doesn't do him any harm. Apparently the prime minister does too for question time.; I've even forgiven it on this guy because I thought he was perhaps pasty faced, small featured, maybe he needed it. But the other day there was blusher, pink lipstick, mascara, and I swear he looked down and there was eyeshadow.; Now. If Five News employed a cross dressing news reader, I'd watch, I'd cheer, and I'd be very happy. In fact, I think I'm going to start a campaign to get them to do so. But, under these circumstances, I just can't concentrate on the news anymore.
Five News: 30 July 2004: I watched a little bit of Five News this lunchtime, Channel 4 News had been replaced by cricket for some reason. Anyway, they had their regular (they said) film review spot wherein the reviewer covered King Arthur in some detail.; The newsreader said "So, would you recommend people going to see King Arthur this weekend", to which our plucky reviewer said "Nah, not really, maybe go on Monday day when the seats are cheap".; He then had about 30 seconds to review another film, and that was that. Well, wtf was that all about? Spend the time telling us about a film that's really good that we can go and see. Don't waste our time telling us about a film that's only worth seeing on a Monday. What spacewasters see films on a Monday daytime anyway?; OK OK, shiftworkers, teachers on summer holiday, all that. I'm just teasing.
More Jung: 29 July 2004: Thanks Steve for pointing out there are some explanations of the Jung Typology Test here .. near the bottom of that page under the title "The Temperaments". I'm a counsellor which all sounds perfectly fine except I'm older so I've learned how to express myself, and I've never had any paranormal experiences.
Planning for emergencies: 29 July 2004: I'm not usually one for passing around Internet funnies, but this kept me amused for several minutes so I thought I'd post it. I believe it's been requested that it be removed, so you might end up with nothing. Thanks to Dave for that one.; The real one is here. You'd have thought they might have bought the .co.uk domain too wouldn't you?
More Sandicliffe Motor Group: 29 July 2004: A repairman just arrived and I noticed his car was from Sandicliffe Motor Group who I blogged about earlier.; He said "they're right bastards" because "they add £15 administration charge to any fines you get." He'd recently been caught speeding in Easingwold (just off the A19 north of York), 34 and 35 mph in a 30 mph zone, and both times the fine was £60 but when it came through from Sandicliffe it was £75.; So I shared my story with him. Bad news sticks.
VNC: 28 July 2004: I've had a spate of customer issues with things like email setup, nothing caused by me but people tend to call me with such problems, so I thought I'd ask around for a way of taking control of their desktop for a while.; I was recommended VNC, I just tried it, and it works. It's quite spooky being able to sit at my desk and work on a client's machine hundreds of miles away. But it worked, I fixed his problem, and all's well.; I particularly liked the lack of delay .. I could waggle my mouse over something, and say "is here where you mean" over the phone, and he'd say "yeah". All good real time stuff.; I doubt it would work through a firewall, and if I've had anything to do with it they'd have one, but it's still a pretty groovy toy.
Stop list: 28 July 2004: It's a small thing, but I'm quite chuffed that I just added a stop word list to Tinshop's alert system. Basically, until now, if someone had entered "the queen" into the alert box they'd have seen an alert for pretty much every tin The Tin Shop entered because 'the' would match.; Now I've implemented a stop word list, so all that nonsense is removed and only proper matches ensue. Time to knead my focaccia I think.
I feel Jung again: 28 July 2004: According to the Jung Typology Test, I'm an INFJ with Introverted 56%, Intuitive 89%, Feeling 22%, and Judging 11%. What did you get?
Caches: 28 July 2004: I'm getting to like caches. For the non-technical, a cache is a small, temporary store in a place that's quicker to reach than the main store. What's in the cache is determined usually either by popularity or recency.; I use a cache system for the books I'm working with, but now I've introduced a stationery cache. Right in front of me, under my screen, was a dead area containing a few fluorescent pens I used in the past but no longer, yet I kept leaning over to my stationery drawer to pull out the same items time after time, and nothing's in the same place twice in my overfull drawer.; So now, four of the most popular stationery items get special treatment and live underneath my screen. If I pull anything out of the drawer, something in the cache has to go. It's working a treat :-)
Calorie restriction: 26 July 2004: Are these people mad? I feel like a smoker .. I don't want to eat less to live longer, I'd rather enjoy my time while I'm here. Am I mad?; Regarding that site, it didn't seem to do much for Roy Walford, although this very scary site says he died "of complications of ALS, a rare muscle wasting disease with no well-established modifiable risk factors".; This little exercise had solved a riddle that had bugged me for years. I used to put great store by Adelle Davis' nutrition books but was puzzled by how she died, at 70 years old, and why the cause wasn't mentioned on the book jackets. Now I know how .. cancer.
RSS: 26 July 2004: I think I may convert my blog to RSS format. That would allow you to read blog entries in an RSS reader, similar to your email client. The advantage, apparently, is that you can see what's new from a number of different websites without visiting them. Of course, you can also read the news that way.; Let me know if you use RSS already, then I'll let you know when it goes live .. which won't be for a while yet. I only spend three quarters of an hour a week on development for this site.
Aurora watch: 25 July 2004: I've always wanted to see the Aurora Borealis, this site offers an email alert service, and today, right now, it seems there's a really good chance to see it. Thanks to Dave for that one.
Naked: 25 July 2004: Following on from the blog below, I've always found women who don't wear make-up more attractive than those who do .. assuming that I'm always able to spot it, and given that that rule was made when I and my fellows were younger, so the women looked perfectly fine without make up. I accept that we all need more help as we get older, so that rule may be changing.; Anyway, I liked the honesty of a natural face. Make-up seemed dishonest. I used to employ a young woman who wore so much makeup I honestly had no idea what she really looked like.; What I'm leading up to is that my business partner and I many years ago had the cheeky idea that companies and politicians ought to be made to have their meetings naked. That way, everyone could see how well they kept themselves. We wondered just how much power we should give to those who, by the look of their fat and unhealthy bodies, clearly couldn't even look after themselves.
Smell: 25 July 2004: There was a point a little while back, probably after my fortieth birthday, when I decided I'd like to try to find an everyday perfume to wear.; I think it's one thing to smell 'natural' when you're young when you want to be as manly and rugged as possible, but no-one wants to smell an older man .. that has connotations of being unwashed. Likewise, it's OK to be unkempt as a young man, that gives the impression that you're going places, that you've more important things to do than concern yourself with how good you look, but an older man must be tidier if he's not to appear unable to take care of himself. I'm probably out of date with those thoughts, but there ya go.; To date, I've always sought out unperfumed products. I use Simple soap and I can hugely recommend PitRok (but I use the stone rather than those bottles of liquid shown on that site). I always thought that left me a blank canvas on which to add a perfume if I wanted, and if I did, there'd be the pure scent, not a clashing jamboree of different products.; Then I noticed that some people when they walk past me at the gym leave a pleasant smell, while others don't. I wanted to be sure I was in the former group. I also started to read a little bit of a book about personal grooming, and that talked about aroma. Finally I really like The Sensual Home. So, all in all, I decided to do something about it.; I tried a few in airport lounges and didn't really click with anything. Then someone bought me a Body Shop one which kinda works, so I used that for a while.; We loved B - Never too busy to be beautiful in Poole, a spinoff from Lush (hopefully they'll get a better website), and bought a perfume from there too (despite their names .. Dirty, LadyBoy).; Anyway, then I started to get concerned. If you rub garlic into your skin, after a short while your breath smells of garlic (so I'm told anyway). So what chemicals are you ingesting from your perfume?; This led me to the Women's Environmental Network's reports Getting Lippy, and Pretty Nasty. The latter talks about phthalates, a group of chemicals linked with decreased fertility and birth defects which are often present in cosmetics. At the time of the report, two recently banned (by the EU) phthalates were still present in 40% of the cosmetic products tested and available on UK shelves, including one from The Body Shop.; Getting Lippy says "There is growing evidence that we are all victims of a great big con: the very products the glossy ads suggest will make us look younger, healthier and fitter, and be sexually and socially more successful, may contain ingredients that impair fertility, increase the effects of ageing, disrupt hormones and are linked to cancer, allergies, or other health problems." They also found hairdye in a user's urine 30 minutes after normal use.; So I started spraying onto my clothes, rather than onto my body, and then only when I'm getting 'dressed up'. That rather messed up the idea of having a signature, everyday fragrance. I'll put this to my hummingbrain chemist friend and see what he says.; I mentioned this to my partner and she said confidently "oh yes" and went on to say "phthalates" unprompted. Well, I'd never heard of them.
Queen Mary II.2: 24 July 2004: Following on from my Queen Mary II story, it appears that it came closer after I went back to work. Damn. I don't like the favouritism here, that those people who read the local newspaper and listen to local radio knew about it, and I didn't :-); Now what I want is a photograph of Scarborough from someone on that cruise. That would be a real test of the Internet, and maybe of the six degrees of separation theory .. so if you know anyone who might know someone who was on the cruise, please send them a message and ask them to get in touch.; This, btw, was someone else's suggestion, I wouldn't like to pinch their idea without acknowledgment, so hello Clive.; I was also wondering who Queen Mary was, and I've no idea whether the ship's named after Mary v1.0 or v2.0. If anyone wants to clue me in I'd be delighted to hear. Is the 2 a clue? I thought there was another QM ship, so I don't think so. I started to investigate and then hunger took over and I made tea instead :-)
More on anti-oxidants: 24 July 2004: Further to my questions about Green and Blacks I put my concerns to a friend who's an enormous egghead food chemist, and here's what he said (edited, and with permission):; "Oxidative mechanisms have become strongly associated with, as you say, ageing but also many mechanisms associated with or leading to tumour formation, growth and proliferation.; Particularly, free radicals - very reactive, very short lived species that can be created by (eg) uv, ionising radiation, n-nitrosamines (BBQed meat), a host of industrial chemicals etc. The most "famous" of these radicals is the superoxide radical (.OH) ie half of a molecule of hydrogen peroxide.; What anti-oxidants do (and I'm generalising here) is trap radicals by reacting with them preferentially over them hitting (say) your DNA and causing irreversible mutations. Many of them are similarly structured and all they do is form stable radicals by giving the aggressive radical an electron and making it able to be metabolised by standard pathways or quenched by water.; Vitamins A, (several) B, C, E are incredibly important anti-oxidants.; It is usually anti-oxidants (that plants create as secondary metabolites for their own health but are used by us when eaten) that lend colour to fruits and vegetables - citrus fruits are an exception.; Examples - grapes, blueberries, tomatoes, peppers - it's no surprise that these are good for you - they all have similar molecules that are isolatable, assayable etc. so it's real and measurable.; In tomatoes it's lycopene - a Vit. A precursor that is particularly good against Prostate Specific Antigen - so add another dollop of ketchup.; Japanese/Chinese Green tea is another example - the fermentation process that makes tea black damages some antioxidants.; Arteriosclerosis and cholesterol metabolism are also entwined with oxidative mechanisms - cigarette smoke is thick with radicals that are taken diirectly to the bloodstream via the lungs.; It's really a catch-all phrase to avoid the detail but is now fraught with difficulty as people lose sight of what makes them effective, bio-availability etc.; Yes, cocoa does have anti-oxidants but, without getting clinical, I suspect you would be healthier if you forewent the chocolate all together and avoided the sugar and fat and base calorie intake.; If you want to know, read on - the Top 10 Foods for a Healthy life:; In no particular order:; Many antioxidants are acidic and therefore change (pick up or lose charge) depending on whats around them. They can also bind with protein and other things that complicate their availability but it's too black and green to say that milk neutralises them."
The Flixborough disaster: 24 July 2004: The Flixborough disaster's been brought to my attention, I don't remember it myself, I would have been thirteen. The site is about halfway between where I am now, and where I grew up, and about seventy miles away or thereabouts. Here's another link.
Paul Bratt: 24 July 2004: Supporting The Ukrainians was Sara Lawton who I struggled with purely because she looked rather like how French and Saunders would look if they were poking fun at a folk singer.; My attention was stolen by Paul Bratt's incredible tabla playing, and I found a way into the music through him. The other two members of the band were absent, sadly, that would have been better.; So now I half fancy learning more about tablas. Actually that's been a long standing thing, when I studied in Leeds I kept thinking it was the perfect opportunity to learn something Indian and I actually bought a sitar but I couldn't even tune my guitar properly never mind the twenty strings of the sitar .. you'll get the idea here, particularly since the strings are held in place with simple wooden pegs.
Ooh, I just found something: 24 July 2004: NEW FOREST: I'm just working through the accounts for the holiday, and I found a Vivienne Westwood quote I wrote on a napkin. She said she's "appalled by the mundane". Wonderful, and fully agreed. previous
Oops: 24 July 2004: A friend was telling me about an accident he had. He was 19, on a motorbike, behind a van, on an A road. The road curved around to the left, and he could see past the inside of the van there was nothing on the road, so he pulled out. Straight into the path of an oncoming BMW. He spent an hour in agony on the side of the road waiting for the ambulance, and a year in hospital after that. A year in hospital. Our lives hang forever by a single thread.
The Ukrainians: 24 July 2004: Well that was fun. I saw The Ukrainians last night in Whitby, excellent stuff.; I'd missed them completely, so this was the first I knew of them. I think their appeal comes partly from their good humour. The original idea of doing a Peel session in Ukrainian is funny and the whole magic carpet ride they've gone through, including covering Big Mouth Strikes Again by the Smiths, and Anarchy in the UK, both in Ukrainian and with additional Ukrainian styling makes the whole thing a smilefest. It's probably what music should be, something to lift your spirits.; The only dance you can do to this is the one where you imagine you're on hot coals. I ended up feeling like I'd been to a really good wedding reception. I'm listening to their 'best of' CD Istoriya right now, it's seriously good.; And yet, through all that, there's also a bigger message. That there are cultures out there to discover, celebrate and respect. Suddenly the Ukraine seems like an interesting place to go. What a fantastic way to use your degree in Slavonic languages. Gosh, that's interesting. When I studied at Leeds, I knew someone studying Russian in that department .. I'd forgotten all about him, nice guy. I always thought how interesting that would be, to really study a place like that.; That's been my first experience of Whitby Musicport. Maybe Scarborough might have something as good if the Stephen Joseph Theatre didn't blot up the bulk of the arts funding, allegedly.
I've a problem with goals: 23 July 2004: I've a problem with managing large organisations using goals, and it ties in with my feelings about the American Way, and about the differences between how women and men approach things, so I'll try to put it into words .. here goes.; The government just announced its thoughts on the near future of policing and it wants to concentrate on public order offences, particularly drunkenness and the kind of thing discontented youths get up to on housing estates, allegedly.; I seem to remember the priority a few years back was targeting organised crime. They skipped over the drug users in order to reach the drug barons.; There's the problem. If you set a target for an organisation, and you're effective about it .. you set up ways of measuring your progress, you assess regularly, there are rewards and so on .. then clearly everyone in the organisation will aim towards that target. It's a little like kids playing football .. they all run after the ball, leaving the rest of the pitch empty.; This seems to be a masculine way to do things .. it's goal oriented. Single focus. It also seems to be the American Way. We will put a man on the moon. It's heroic, one leader can set a laudable goal and everyone works to achieve it.; My problem is that while everyone's working on achieving that goal, they drop the ball in so many other places. Setting a goal means people will prioritise their day differently. Things that were working but don't reach the goal become lower priority and get dropped. Systems that were working fine break down. Over time, problems that were solved re-appear.; How can the person setting the targets know what the cost will be of achieving those targets, including the effect of all the things that will be dropped to achieve them? How can they know what will be dropped in order to achieve their goal. My guess is, they can't. So making a heroic decision to set a target for an organisation is a risky business.; My guess is that in seven years time we might have safer streets, but organised crime will be back on the agenda.; What's my alternative? Well, I just wonder what a female perspective would bring. An acknowledgment of the complexity of organisations, an appreciation that one goal won't fix everything, an understanding of how to manage myriad small projects, the ability to listen to those on the front line and to customers who can see as clear as day the consequences of management decisions, the ability to be supportive of diversity. I wonder what that might be like. I dream of what that might be like.
The health giving properties of Green and Blacks: 22 July 2004: I saw a vegan friend (hi Chris) in the healthfood shop the other day, and she looked at the bars of Green and Black's I had in my hand and said "did you know that when you add milk to chocolate it neutralises the anti-oxidant effect of the cocoa".; Afterwards, I thought, with my marketing head on, that's actually incredibly far from being pursuasive.; For a start, what's an anti-oxidant? I've no idea. At best it's a word relating to a number of chemicals all of which will have different real uses in the body, which will have innumerable knock-on effects. Can we ever really understand those effects in anything other than the most simplistic terms. At worst, it's a marketing phrase. Like Billy Connolly once said "Jojoba .. wtf's that? I wash my hair with Jojoba and it stays looking old. I wash my pubes in soap and water, and they're all springy and shiny".; That prefix 'anti' suggests there's something in the body, an oxidant, that's bad. I've read a little of the press on this stuff or maybe I've seen the ads and I have it linked to 'aging'. This is pure marketing. Is there any basis for it? Even if I were to delve into the science, I couldn't be sure that the science wasn't funded by the people wanting to sell us anti-oxidants. Anti-oxidants are not necessary vitamins or minerals, so what exactly would happen if I never ate another anti-oxidant? Are those minor consequences or major ones .. do I care about them?; If I accept that adding milk to my chocolate negates its anti-oxidant properties, that's not why I buy chocolate. Even if I accepted that anti-oxidants were necessary or useful to me, how much of my supply of those is going to come from Green and Blacks? And by how much does the milk counteract the anti-oxidant properties? Does it depend how milky and how cocoaeyey-ey the chocolate is?; If we get this far, what else does that affect? Does that mean I can't have a cup of tea with milk in it while eating my chocolate? Should I be looking for better sources of anti-oxidants and then just carry on with the chocolate I like? Should I start looking more deeply into food combining.; Guess what? I'll just carry on with the Green and Blacks because it's all too much for me to understand. Except, as I've said before, she's the most energetic person I know. next
HP: 22 July 2004: Pah! to HP's site. I just needed some printer support and found that wonderfully, thank-you very much. But the bit I needed was in white text on a white background. I needed to drag across it to read it. I thought I'd let them know. I found the bit about feedback on the site, which was within the Deskjet 5150 product part of the site. Instead of saying "OK, so what type of thing do you want to say about the 5150", it started from the top, asking a series of questions, getting ever more specific about what I wanted to talk about. In the end, my printer model (a common printer) wasn't listed, so I fell off the tree. Bad boy HP! Get it sorted!
University of Hull Scarborough Campus (H72) Internet Computing degree (G430): 20 July 2004: I went to the graduation ceremony last Friday (to meet those who had taken a year out and graduated a year later than I did), and got to speak with the lecturers again and that raised a few thoughts for me.; Firstly, if you're thinking of doing the course, I can't recommend it highly enough. By all means get in touch, I'll answer any questions on it.; There were a few things that characterised the course for me, and a job advertisement, yet another that wanted experience in Dreamweaver, Photoshop and their ilk reminded me. I remember in almost the first lecture which was for a module called "web design", the lecturer started by saying "We won't be using Dreamweaver, you'll be writing HTML in a text editor. Now log into Linux". That shook us awake.; The other thing to say is that out of maybe 22 modules overall, only 1 is about web design and html. The rest cover, well, when I did it, programming (they use Java), networking, professionalism, e-business, databases, Internet architecture, and so on.
Fire-eaters: 20 July 2004: I was watching some fire-eaters at Scarborough's Beached festival this weekend and I started to wonder how bright a light you would have to swallow before you glowed, and whether you'd be able to see your internal organs. Wouldn't that be a great trick to do?
Queer eye: 19 July 2004: It's commonly held here in the UK that Americans show no sense of style in how they dress. This seems born out by Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, so why is it on our telly? I watched one episode last week, and the guy ended up looking, well, OK, but hardly dashing. Yet he was a good looking guy. The clothes just didn't do it. "Vertical stripes are slimming". Really? Bejeezus! I didn't know that. And everything seemed to be geared towards getting his girlfriend into bed after the date. I almost expected one of the presenters to start coaching him on running his girlfriend through an agreement staircase. She seemed a little too wise, though, to be taken in by having her pudding melted by a blowtorch (hands up those who thought that was sophisticated).; I am however pleased with the hidden message I'm hearing from it, which is that it's safe for straight guys to be in the same room as gay ones.
Cresswell Crags: 19 July 2004: Radio 4's Today program did a piece on Cresswell Crags the other day, which I'd not heard of, but is close ish to where I grew up. Apparently they've discovered a huge amount of cave paintings, possibly more than anywhere else. I seem to remember they've dubbed the place "the sistine chapel of the prehistoric world" .. something like that.; They couldn't show us what they were talking about on the radio, so I went to the website and was sufficiently disappointed to moan at them about it. So you've discovered something enormously significant, newsworthy, and exciting, and the website talks about .. well, what does it talk about? Who knows? I can't quite work out the navigation.; Anyway I got a reply: "Images of a selection of the art can be seen at http://www.uned.es/dpto-pha/creswell/fotos.htm." Now that's more like it.
At last: 16 July 2004: Ah, at last, the ads being served are linking to something more interesting, currently drumming. Google must have taken another look at this page when I blogged my drumming-in-a-band experience the other day. It does suggest that Google adds a strong weighting to the early words in a page.
Gynaecologist: 16 July 2004: There was a time when I wanted to be a gynaecologist. I was choosing my O'levels at Long Eaton school and they insisted I should take a language, whereas I wanted to specialise in sciences. I suppose they were right, but I resented greatly the limits to my choices.; I was about fourteen I suppose. I was a late developer anyway (I doubt I even knew what a ladies front bottom looked like) so you could say it was nascent sexual awareness coming through, but I think I also knew I didn't have the same "use them and abuse them" attitude of many men towards women .. I saw women as equals and I empathised well with women even then. I thought I'd have an aptitude for it. I only wish we'd had one of those classroom "what do you want to be when you grow up" sessions .. fireman miss, astronaut miss ... gynaecologist miss :-); So, I had a big heart. But I also have huge hands, so I suppose I've spared many a woman's wince by going into computing. I know I have big hands because the Daily Mirror once printed Gordon Banks' hands life size in their centre spread under headlines emphasising their size .. mine were as big even at that age.; Back to the school issue which is intended to be the subject of this blog. The school told me, well, more specifically I think Mrs Jepson our biology teacher told me, ridiculously, that German was the International Language of Gynaecology. Strangely I've only just found that incredibly funny. Can you imagine?; Anyway, I found a gynaecologist in some book or other (praise the Lord for Long Eaton Library .. I took all sorts of books out of there), wrote to him, and he had sufficient wonderfulness to write back to me and say, in good humour, that the international language of gynaecology, if there was such a thing, was English, thank goodness.; By the time I received this news, I had made my choices and I ended up in O'level German. As a result, I felt duped, and this normally well behaved and responsible grade A pupil and soon to be prefect, took it upon himself to disrupt the German class whenever he could. No-one ever asked me why I did that, and I do think a moment of understanding and of being treated like an adult would have made me knuckle down in that class. I got downgraded to a CSE and got grade B. I probably lowered everyone elses mark too .. sorry about that. Funnily enough I can still remember a fair bit of Deutsche.
Drummer John: 15 July 2004: Last night it happened, I played drums in a band. Well, not quite drums, pads that triggered drum samples .. but I used sticks and there was nothing tentative about it, in fact I kinda broke it. But whereas Keith Moon smashed the kit after he'd finished with it, I did it halfway through. And, err, not quite a band either, two guys who covered guitar, bass and vocals together. Anyway, it went very well I think. They seemed pleased, I appear to fill a gap. At one point I was "the human metronome" which is a compliment because the first role of a drummer is to keep a consistent beat. There were various comments along the way about how adding drums either helped the song make sense, or how it made things easier because the other musicians weren't having to play so much rhythm. It ended with "So, are you in?" "If you'll have me I'd love to" "Great, we'll have you". So I'm in a band again (I used to play guitar for Splat!). Dunno what we're called :-) I think it's just for our own entertainment atm so we don't need a name.
SLUG: 14 July 2004: I went to the Scarborough Linux User Group meeting last night for the first time with a friend (Dave), I'm really glad I did. The guys were very friendly, so hopefully I'll carry on for a bit and see what happens.
Missing: 14 July 2004: What do you miss? Isn't that a good question for speed-dating? I'm missing my old Jaguar (1984 XJ6 Sovereign) (but not the cost of its repairs), Captain Beefheart, individuality, fitting into a size 34" waist, and All Quiet on the Preston Front.
Simon Amstell: 13 July 2004: It appears opinion on Simon Amstell is divided. I took my earphones out last night at the gym to listen to PopWorld because I've always thought he seemed born to be on television, but I'd never really had the chance to watch him at any length. It just confirmed what I thought. Simon Amstell is a God.
Queen Mary: 12 July 2004: The Queen Mary 2 just sailed past my window. I waved but no-one waved back. Thanks to JP for alerting me. Queen Mary 2 is the largest ocean liner ever built.
I'm loving sex: 12 July 2004: Couldn't resist the headline, sorry to disappoint :-) I'm loving this Sex : Too Fast To Live Too Young To Die, the CD containing twenty tunes from the King's Road (Chelsea, London) shop called SEX from which Malcolm Maclaren and Vivienne Westwood appear to have masterminded the punk rock phenomenon.; There's no punk on the CD ... well, not that I've found anyway. I play everything on random, so I'm not actually sure I've heard everything on it yet. But it's a blast of clear air. A real rescue tonic. I can hear many punk roots among the old blues and rock tunes. For example, Roadrunner by The Modern Lovers, seems simple, catchy, fun, and the lyrics embrace the new ("I'm in love with the modern world"). It's a song that's do-able, it's simple, the singing requires no special skill, so crucially, anyone can do this. Yep, I've been grooving around the kitchen to this the last few days :-)
Advertising: 12 July 2004: I thought I'd have a go at adding some ads to my blog page. I'm curious what we'll get links to, considering the wide range of topics I bang on about, and I also need to work out how 'channels' work in Google adsense. I'm not liking the results atm, all I'm seeing is crappy ads for pay per click advertisement management. I'm wondering if I have to wait until Google works out what my page is about (do tell), or if that's it. If that's it, I'm taking it off again in case anyone might think I actually endorse such shenanigans.
The red tops: 8 July 2004: The tabloids, what are they like? I was just reading a story about Saddam Hussein, in which they referred to him as "the toppled tyrant". It makes him sound like a character from a Noddy story.; Mind-you, it was a tabloid that referred to Robin Cook as the gnome-like, red haired foreign secretary, so their style has its good points. Funnily enough, I couldn't remember his name, so I typed "gnome like foreign secretary" into Google and loads of articles about him came up :-)
Three hares: 8 July 2004: I came across the three hares project, somehow it's really interesting.
A funky new feature on the Tinshop site: 8 July 2004: I've just added a feature to the Tin Shop site. Basically, we've been brainstorming about how to increase our traffic to the site and we started to think about the brands on the site and how collectors often focus on them .. for instance there are many Rowntrees or Oxo collectors. They would want to enter Rowntrees into a search engine and find our site, but we don't have a major Rowntrees page and can't really hope to have since there are so many brands. Users can enter Rowntrees into our text search field, but search engines can't do that, so would never find a page full of Rowntrees items. I did list some of the top brands on the about us page, but that's a finite list and I wanted a more generic solution.; I solved this by adding a "click to see more" type message after an item description. It doesn't happen every time, but if the item has been coded on entry with either a manufacturer or a brand name, for instance oxo, the message "click to see more oxo items" will appear. One click, and the user is taken to a page showing all our oxo stock. (ha ha, I made a funny).; That's all well and good, but the really great thing is that now, search engines can find pages containing all one brand or manufacturer, and those pages will get a good rank with people searching for those brands because the brand name is mentioned so many times on the page. Try it.
More good anti-GM news: 6 July 2004: Syngenta quits UK.
Deeply upsetting: 6 July 2004: I don't want to make this worse than it actually is, which is monumentally tragic, but what I got most from this story is the appearance of a lethal lack of management in the team supporting her. It all seems to hinge on a canister of gas which was vital for bringing her to the surface. There was no single person responsible for filling that canister (a single person would be held accountable, so would actually do the job, multiple people can all blame one another). There was no audit (gas was here, and was passed there at this time by x), and no checking. There may be technical reasons, but there was no visual means of checking the gas amount, no backup in case it did go wrong, and seemingly no communication system between the divers.; And what of the guy halfway down who made up his own rules once something went wrong? There was clearly no procedure for him to follow, it doesn't even sound like it had been discussed.; The previous female record was 130 metres which she set a year earlier, on this dive they were aiming at 175 metres. Obviously suicidal. Anyone could see that.; The other thing about it is that there would never be a near miss, no warning. It's binary. One mistake, and you're dead. All or nothing. So confidence in the team has to be methodically managed because the fact that nothing had gone wrong so far would help the team to think they were good enough, but all the time they are simply one mistake from unspeakable tragedy.; I feel deep sorrow for everyone concerned, but from this article and what it says about the way the team was managed, what happened was almost inevitable.
Vivienne Westwood: 6 July 2004: NEW FOREST: We went to see the Vivienne Westwood exhibition at the V&A on Sunday. What a heartstopping thrill that was. Where shall I start?; First of all, for me part of the thrill was from a 'can do' feeling. Straight from punk where bands were releasing their own records, in the brief biog of her it appears she didn't do formal training, she learned as she went along and got where she is today with pure spirit and I'm sure, dedication and hard work. If you ignore her extraordinary talent, anyone can do that. It makes me want to get back to printing my own T-shirts and ties with slogans and designs of my own.; Contrast this with someone like Linda McCartney. What was the point of her? She took a decent photograph, but she had money and privilege, and was in the right place at the right time to document a powerful movement. You can't be Linda McCartney. But you CAN aspire to be like Westwood. You can be like her today, right now, because Westwood is about unbridled individuality. You just have to let yourself loose and be true.; This individuality is there in her business too. She says she doesn't care if the business folds (but it's run for thirty years). It's independent, and she has the final say. It sounds like there are no committees in Vivienne Westwood Ltd.; The exhibition says Westwood has a mentor in Gary Ness who has determined which books she's read for the last thirty years. Google isn't showing up much information on him, any clues anyone?; I've blogged before about Vivienne Westwood's logo, it turns out to have a very long history in the tartan industry and is referred to as the orb.; In a videoed interview playing at the exhibition, she answers the criticism that the press have often portrayed her clothes as unwearable by saying that (from memory) those journalists tend to choose the most outrageous item from a show and probably were never at the show. Then she said anyway, 90% of what you see in the shops is unwearable, she would never let it touch her skin. It's a fantastic example of setting your standards so much higher than others, and how empowering and motivating and wonderful that can be.; I love her spirit, her vitality, her impishness. There's a story of when made some skin coloured, tight mens tights and placed a fig leaf design on them, she ran around the studio screaming. I loved seeing her cartwheel at the end of a catwalk show too. Such joy.; There's also a huge link between Vivienne Westwood and the V&A and when we walked around we could see definite places where ideas came from, and we started doing it too, considering wild 15th century hat designs in the tapestry room to be absolutely Vivienne Westwood in style. previous
South West Trains: 6 July 2004: NEW FOREST: I felt some sympathy for London commuters who regularly complain about dirty trains. I've not experienced the real thing, obviously, until we took a South West train into London last Sunday. It was like travelling in a £50 car, but without the benefit of having your own space and choice of music. The state of the carriage was disgraceful, and this was possibly the first journey the train was making that day. The return train was better, to be fair.; In preparation, I went to Ashurst station to find out about my future journey and found a notice saying the service, at the time we wanted to travel, would be replaced by a bus service. I pressed the information button, which incidentally looks like this from my eye level, being 6'6" tall. Notice the label at the bottom of the grill that says "speak here"? That was about at the level of my navel. I'd have had to bend over John Cleese style to speak into there, or get on my knees, neither of which I was prepared to do. While I'm at it, I'm sick of the gradual lowering of washroom furniture. I have to do the same with mirrors nowadays. I understand I have the option of bending down while a short person or someone in a wheelchair or a child hasn't, but why, why, why, when there's a row of maybe ten mirrors, can't we have at least one at my height? If I knew a motorway service station that had mirrors at a variety of heights, I'd go there on principle.; Anyway, so I pressed the button and spoke to the chap at the other end about the replacement bus. "There's no bus from Ashurst tomorrow". "But it says there is on the poster". "The first service is at 10:28" (from memory). "The poster definitely says there's a bus". "Look, there's a poor enough service from Ashurst at the best of times, no-one uses it, we're hardly going to run a bus service". OK, I got the message. previous
Same bloke: 6 July 2004: NEW FOREST: On Sunday, late at night, I was asked by a bloke stood at the urinal with me whether I knew who'd won the Euro 2004 final. I said I didn't, and (despite travelling back on the train with people who'd been to Wimbledon), I didn't know who had won the tennis either. He said he did, it was "the same bloke as last year". I said "well that doesn't help, I don't know who won last year either". "Neither do I" he replied. previous
Tent: 6 July 2004: NEW FOREST: Our Jamet Mykonos tent stood the test of a torrential overnight thunderstorm and some wind with no leakage. At one point, I could feel the bottom of the bed part of the tent was floating on a puddle of about an inch and half of water, but none came through to us. previous
Dianetics: 6 July 2004: NEW FOREST: While wandering through Poole I got asked whether I had the time to do a questionnaire with only four questions in it. The guy put his arm around me as I walked. I'm very cynical about this stuff. Either a questionnaire is a useless (to anyone) 300 question half-hour epic attempting to extract your deepest thoughts about the imagery in an ad you barely paid any attention to three weeks ago, or it's a four question easy survey that rapidly unfolds into a heavy sales pitch.; This time, the chap was wearing a Dianetics top. Wow, cult religion on the street.; It's interesting though that they chose Poole to do their work .. it's a very wealthy area. So the people there will have reached near the top of Maslow's hierarchy of needs and will be searching for self actualisation. Perfect, and more than a little bit scary. previous
Ashurst food review: 6 July 2004: NEW FOREST: I should do my blogging duty and review the food in Ashurst. The campsite is at the west end of the village, with the nearest pub being the New Forest Hotel. We didn't find much on the menu there to tempt us. After that, the Happy Cheese pub was pretty good for me, but neither of two people I was with were triffically impressed, one said her meat was tough, the other her scampi not particularly nice. In a group of shops was the Herb Pot, a small perhaps 40 seater restaurant, I think it's a husband and wife team, full on a Saturday night but otherwise we were able to just walk in and get a seat. Very nice, quite subtle tastes, so yes, recommended for proper food. Weirdly, they displayed just one certificate on the wall, for winning the Radio Solent hanging basket competition 2003. Hanging baskets on the radio?; After that there's the Asha Indian and Bangladeshi restaurant which really was excellent, one of the best Indian meals I've ever had (I had Veg Sag Balti). Further along the Lyndhurst road was the Forest Inn which was kinda OK but nothing much to shout about. previous
Sunseeker: 6 July 2004: NEW FOREST: On a trip to Poole, we spotted Sunseeker manufacturing incredible luxury yachts on the other side of the water. They have a magazine which oozes a world I'm sure I'll never get any closer to experiencing, the world of those with unlimited money. So I was curious how their website attempted to reach those people. previous
Ashurst recommendation: 6 July 2004: NEW FOREST: I want to recommend the Ashurst Forestry Commission campsite. It's a beautiful place, for a start. It's clean (I let them know of a blocked toilet one day, and as soon as the guy had finished with me he went straight off to fix it). It can be a tad noisy, particularly on a Saturday night, but also because it's on a road, train line, and flightpath. But generally the noise wasn't a problem.; It's quite bug free, which was nice. Very little tree sap, no slugs or snails, just one little spider. No ants, no rats or anything unsavoury. Yet some fairly groovy butterflies - a fritillary I'd not seen before (sorry I can't be more specific, my pics didn't focus properly), a skipper, a cinnabar moth (see www.britishbutterflies.co.uk).; The woodland paths were clear and well kept .. you do need a compass though.; We learned a few things. Squirrels come into your tent at 5am every morning to pinch your food (sorry about the quality, I took it through the bug mesh from the bed part of the tent). Hedgehogs too. Actually horses as well, but mainly squirrels. I formed a theory about them .. that they wake up at first light and hunt for food. When they have enough, they go back to bed. We never really saw squirrels much after late afternoon. At one point, one pinched half a malt loaf from under our noses.; Another thing I learned was obvious really, those dips in the grass where no grass grows .. well, they fill with water when it rains. Also, my partner had the good sense to pitch the tent facing south, so we could sit out the front and get sun. All basic stuff to hardy campers, but to leisure campers like us those were things worth remembering. previous
8:30am horn: 6 July 2004: NEW FOREST: A car horn woke us up. Randomly used, for ages. I got up and wandered to the loos. On my way back I went to investigate (in case someone actually needed help). No, it was a dad, part of a large group, letting his baby son play with the car controls. I guess none of them thought there was anything wrong with that. previous
When there's no music: 6 July 2004: When you have no music, it's weird what pops into your head. I had "Something in the way she moves" at one point, while my partner had "The Cuckaburra sings in the old gum tree" .. no idea if I've spelled that right. Then I got "Leader of the pack" because, I think, some sitar in an Indian restaurant had made me think of the guitar part. Then I got "Hey Jude", and she got something about "angel of the morning".
Chris Morris and Charlie Brooker: 6 July 2004: I've spent the last four years not knowing whether Charlie Brooker is male or female, but this site makes clear he's actually a very unattractive woman.; He writes a page in the Guardian on Saturday just before the tv listings which never fails to either shock or make me laugh out loud.; In a similar vein, if you don't already know, Chris Morris is the comedy god behind Blue Jam, Brass Eye, and The Day Today among other things.; So, the best news possible is they're working together on a new series. Wonderful.; How did I miss TV Go Home? Probably because I don't normally read newspaper website reviews - what was the last one I read? Oh yes, someone who saw the outline of an elephant in the London Underground map, made a website about it, and many likeminded others joined in with their animal outlines discoveries. Can you see why I don't usually bother?
A budget figure: 6 July 2004: So, dear potential new client. When you want to know how much your new website will cost, do bear in mind the amount BBC Online spent this year on theirs .. £67m (just teasing :-), but blimey that's a lot)
Type and layout: 6 July 2004: I read a fantastic book while away, Type and Layout: How typography and design can get your message across, or get in the way by Colin Wheildon. It only took a day to read. Expect changes to this site and others based on it.; The book covers the results of research into comprehension of written text. This makes it different from other studies on legibility. According to his findings, minor design decisions can make vast differences to whether your reader comprehends what you are saying.; For instance, whereas a serif body font allows for good comprehension by 67% of readers, a sans serif font allows good comprehension by only 12% of readers. In other words, you can lose the great majority of your readers with that one choice alone.; I have only a couple of questions. He doesn't research online reading, and I've heard people say that sans serif fonts are better for on-screen reading. Secondly, because Times New Roman is the default Internet Explorer body font, a site using it looks perhaps unfinished, maybe old fashioned. I wonder what the effect of that is on the online reader.
Aids issues: 6 July 2004: I'm aware that this blog has an anti American tinge atm, but I'm sure it's a political thing, it's the Bush administration that's the problem, rather than individual Americans. Those I've met, and I've been there, were generally great people. Anyway, here's another reason to be miserable.
Car problems: 6 July 2004: NEW FOREST: OK, I admit it, we've been on holiday. We camped in the New Forest for ten days and enjoyed every second of it. I've a few blogs from that, and I want to do my blogging duty and praise the good service we've received along the way (and maybe tickle some companies that were less than perfect). I'll preface these blogs over the next few days with NEW FOREST.; The first thing that happened was that our Chrysler Neon started leaking oil on the way down. We were always going to stop over at my parents-in-law's, but when we arrived, we were starting to get an oil indicator light when cornering. The car had just been serviced. We'd been smelling burning oil as we drove.; We decided to use a garage Ali's dad uses in West Bridgford called Wilson Brothers Garage to diagnose the problem. It turned out to be a leaking oil pressure switch (which had been replaced just a few months ago).; It turned out that the policy of Chrysler UK seems to be that a) there's no-where you can buy such parts except through an authorised dealership, and b) the dealerships don't keep stock, they order for delivery next day. I called every dealer in a 100 mile radius and found nothing, except that our local dealer (Speeds) did have one in stock but their normal parts manager was on holiday, the stand-in had to leave because his wife went into hospital, and so there was pretty much no answer from there for several hours. We needed the part, and to get it fitted, before we set off to drive on holiday.; Eventually we got through to them, confirmed the part was in stock, drove to pick it up, took it to Wilson's and they fitted it for us. We were able to leave about three o'clock, and arrived easily in time to pitch our tent.; I feel hugely in debt to Petrer & Derek at Wilson Brothers Garage .. they fitted us in regardless that we'd probably never use them again (we don't live in that area), they were friendly and helpful, they charged reasonably, and they called us back when they said they would. Fantastic.; As for Chrysler, their parts policy is just another reason to be disappointed. I'll definitely run this check next time we decide which car to buy (pretend I need an oil pressure switch today and see how easily I can get one). I've learned a few things from my Chrysler experience, and one is to buy from a dealership that's close to where I live. Just to put you in the picture, I'm currently deciding along with Trading Standards whether to take Peter Stockill Ltd to court, but more on that later.; Update: I told my garage about the Chrysler parts problem and they said it's the same with Japanese cars. Damn, that's the direction I was headed in. I might excuse them though, because for them it may be that they engineer to such quality that they don't trust anyone else to do it.