John Allsopp

Professionally engineered Internet solutions for humans

Push the Button: 27 January 2005: In May 1999 I saw The Chemical Brothers in Sheffield and it was a revelation.; As I've said before, I tend to come to things late. I'd bought Dig Your Own Hole before and really started to love it. Quite by chance, a day or so beforehand, I saw they were playing quite close to where I was living.; Something happened that night. I think the venue was the Octagon. The sound engineers had placed a speaker stack in every angle of the room (which is Octagonal). The Chemical Brothers take control of every part of the audible range, and it felt like the sound engineers had perfectly adjusted the sound system so that no part of the range, and no part of the venue was too loud, but it was beautifully loud enough. It felt like the place filled with bass, like when they opened the doors at the end, the bass poured like warm water out into the clear night.; There was simply so much rhythm to absorb, I just stood there gaping, never wanting it to stop. I fell in love. I mean, really. This was what I wanted. I almost bought a ticket to the next gig .. in Brazil. (We journeyed to a Blackpool gig shortly after and it just wasn't the same, the venue was harsh, square and huge, and all the sound bounced off the rear wall and came right back at you to join the new stuff in an uncoordinated jumble).; Interestingly, there's very little to see at a Chemical Brothers gig. Sure, they play the videos, but that's because they hide inside a circle of electronics. I got the sense that they'd arrived, pressed the 'on' button, and then sat with their legs up on the desk eating ham sandwiches out of tupperware. Occasionally you'd see a whisp of steam which I presumed was them opening their flask of coffee. That suits me. People, apparently, are either primarily driven by vision, sound, or touch. Sound comes first for me, and this was sound that had the physical presence of a thirty foot bear. So I spent most of the gig with my eyes closed, wanting every part of it.; After Sheffield, for more than a year afterwards, I couldn't listen to anything else. I wondered if this was what it must be like to take drugs, to know pure extrasensory happiness in a moment, to know that much of the rest of your life wasn't going to live up to that, that this moment was a never to be repeated peak. I felt childish for that, but also young. After all, in 1999 I was 38. I should have grown out of this nonsense. Yet that made it all the stronger. I've been to some good gigs. I've seen The Clash, The Undertones, Joy Division, U2, Wire, Public Image Limited, Kraftwerk ... this really was better.; It's no accident that I talk about the Chemical Brothers in religious terms. They are rhythm masters, and in the end, we are all rhythm. Rhythm unites us. It is how they make me feel too. Somehow touched by something greater. Sparked with energy and possibility. Beyond description. Firewire connected to the pure essence.; There was only one way for this to go. With the release of Surrender, they seemed to take a different route. No longer hard beatmasters, the songs just didn't have that spark, more irritating than inspiring. Come With Us was even worse. I bought it, probably played it once, and that was that. Disappointing, yes, but occasionally Fatboy would come up with something that tickled some of the same bones, and The Crystal Method did pretty well too (although they've gone off a little recently, and they never seemed to care for the UK). While The Prodigy may make some serious grooves, they are violent at root. The Chemical Brothers and Fatboy prefer unity.; Now (last Monday), The Chemical Brothers have released Push The Button, and the magic is back. I was doubtful, but this is a skilled work. They no longer seem to be trying to prove they can do things other than Dig Your Own Hole. Now they seem to accept their past glories and include them in the weave. Now the big beat is one of many skills they can draw on. They even use sounds, instrument settings, from those days. They've also moved away a little from the celebrity vocal, which I always felt was a bit of a cheap marketing trick.; The album seems to acknowledge what we've been feeling, because I'm sure I'm not the only one. It breaks us in gently. The first tracks hint at a harder style and gradually builds you up until by track five, Come Inside, with its breathtaking beat and invitation to you to just give in, to lose it, you know. The Chemical Brothers are back.; One of the curiosities about the Chemical Brothers for me is their political neutrality. The scant lyrics were always suitably meaningless, as were interviews. Fine, maybe, for the e-generation. Maybe meaning, words, are divisive. Maybe life is more than just words. Perhaps the Chemical Brothers are the Monsieur Hulot of music, equally accessible by anyone on earth. Maybe we need something more elemental in order for us all to come together. The Chemical Brothers are detox. They simplify.; In Push The Button, however, we have an inkling of a new voice. "What's the difference between Bush and Saddam?" isn't your everyday lyric. There's more rap, not an artform known for holding back on opinions. The title itself, Push The Button, creates the feeling that enough is enough. Maybe that ties in with the moment ... Make Poverty History (which could do with an improved website imho) has that same sense, that a big change is possible if we would only hold hands, leave our fears behind and just jump.; Towards the end we have tracks like Marvo Ging and Surface to Air (with its echoes of Won't Get Fooled Again) that are worthy of comparison with the ultimate ... Where Do I Begin. It's a complete journey. This album takes you from cynic to believer in fifty five minutes. It's sex. It's warm darkness and clear light. It's the full taste of a freshly picked organic peach. Oh gosh I'm sliding. Chemical Brothers! Come to me.; (Tour dates)
It's logCabinTastic: 27 January 2005: Wow. Premier Norwegian Log Cabins' select page that allows people to select a log cabin by real-world attributes has ... and I've not really started marketing it yet ... provided 10,000 selections in the past six months. Ten thousand! By my calculations that's a selection every ten minutes, 24/7. Wow.; Imagine what 10,000 brochures would cost to print and post, and that would only satisfy the requirement up to today.; I think this illustrates a couple of points. The first thing is that websites should provide, no, they should lead with their functionality. Most log cabin websites provide a list of their products. To choose between them, a potential client must click on each one and probably write down which ones suit. That's not only inefficient, it's insulting. "So you think I've got the time to mess around do you?"; More importantly, I was insistent and had to stand my ground on this point, the selection criteria .. how many floors, how many bedrooms, a price range .. should be rooted in real-world requirements.; Without thinking, most sites, if they offer such functionality, would provide the means to select from their ranges. With Premier Norwegian Log Cabins I had the opportunity to offer people the choice of mini-cabins, log cabins, and log homes. For me, that requires that the user has in their head the concept of a log home as distinct from a log cabin. For my clients, it's as clear as the nose on their face, but that's because that's the industry they work in. Most competitors' log cabins are not much more than a garden shed. So a visitor to our site would probably think our mini-cabins are equivalent to others' log cabins. A log cabin, then, would be more like a home. A log home, more like a proper American-sized home. The concepts don't match.; Anyway, wouldn't the largest log cabin offer facilities similar to the smallest log home? What if the client wants something with, say, three bedrooms and two floors. There are probably Premier products in the log cabin and in the log home ranges that provide three bedrooms over two floors. The client doesn't care what arbitrary label we put on our products for marketing purposes, and doesn't want to have to look through all our ranges to work out what matches. A client wants to put in real-world criteria and to discover all the products that match. Et voila, 10,000 satisfied customers.; Incidentally, if you go searching that site, there are only log cabins in the database at the moment. Later there'll be some log homes.
Nuts: 27 January 2005: According to the Observer last weekend, Nuts magazine has found success (300,000 weekly circulation) by plugging into what blokes want.; Apparently the formula is in the strapline: 'Nuts about women! Nuts about motors! Nuts about sport!'; Actually, their main success seems to be in their copywriting style .. enthusiastic and inclusive. It's a good thing, because women, motors and sport don't feature highly in my world. Women, sure, but I'll bet not in the way Nuts thinks. Motors .. pain in the arse money holes, I prefer public transport. I mean, yes, I can appreciate a nice car. Yes, I'll admit if one day I've money to burn (extremely unlikely given my current trajectory) I'd love a garage with some decent cars, a Jaguar E Type, a Citroen DS, maybe even a Jaguar XK runabout. Sport? No.; Actually, that car thing. I can just imagine that conversation down the pub. "Those are your top three cars? You've got to be kidding, you've missed off the Dodge Swirley, The Dr. Finlay 300 valve 800S, the Ford Tippex, the Nissan Angina" Maybe that's the point. Those subjects are easy for blokes to talk endlessly about in a non-threatening way. They join us. Imagine if the subjects were music, politics and religion.
The dandruff diaries: 26 January 2005: Today I'm going to bare all with you. I'm embarrassed, you'll be embarrassed, but if it serves to illustrate something about my personality, then it has a place in my blog, so here goes.; I keep a dandruff diary. Yup, little white shoulder flakes have never been so examined. Actually that bit's an overstatement, it's been over six months since I last made an entry, but that's what makes my point for today.; I've always had it. Sometime before November 2003 I decided to see what nutrition could do to improve it.; The first thing I needed, therefore, was a system of measurement, a way to be able to tell if my affliction had improved. I used what I learned from a biology field trip at school, together with the conviction of Tom Peters that 'anything can be measured' and cut a 2x1cm square hole from a piece of paper. I wrote on it that every Wednesday I'd brush my hair forwards twenty times onto a black surface in my office, place the paper over it, count how many flakes were in the hole, and note them down.; Many incredible scientific discoveries have been made using such basic methods.; Then I bought a book .. 500 of the Most Important Health Tips.... It kept winking at me when I went into the health shop every week. The problem is, Adelle Davis has fallen out of favour.; OK, here's the root of it. The things you discover when you adolesce stay with you. One of those, for me, was Adelle Davis. Her beliefs in nutrition were founded, not on todays faddy superfoods, antioxidents and all that nonsense, but on the core vitamins and minerals. She communicated science in a motivating way. I was hooked, I spent all my early wages in the new health food shops that appeared in every town.; Your first reaction might be, "what, a healthy young lad like you going to health food shops, why?" Well, I didn't feel very motivated at the time. I don't know whether that's how everyone feels at that age and that's why teenagers are notorious for not managing to get out of bed, but I felt lacklustre, I lacked energy. In retrospect, there was something in that, but what I really lacked was a calling, a purpose, something to get up for.; Nowadays if you do a search for Adelle Davis, you'll find more that criticises her than takes her seriously. That's a pity. I may have to accept that she may not be as scientifically rooted as I'd hoped.; It's possible, however, that it's vested interests (drug companies) that are causing a fuss because there's nothing Davis says that they can patent. According to Chomsky in Manufacturing Consent one of the ways newspapers can become biased is as a result of the fuss caused by people and organisations with money. If, for instance, you wanted to criticise Disney or Coca Cola, you'd better be sure of your ground because they will certainly nail you for anything you do wrong. Criticising Danni Minogue probably won't get you the same amount of flack, so true to Pavlov, journalists learn to write about the subjects that will give them an easier tomorrow.; I have the utmost respect for journalists and their profession. They stand between us and full state control. But they are human too.; It's quite possible then, that Davis was right most of the time, her solutions, based on basic vitamins and minerals worked, it's just that they irritated Big Pharma by diverting customers away from their products.; One long-term belief that I got from this period is that I should tackle the small things that go wrong for two reasons. Firstly, people have quite wildly different requirements for different nutrients, and wildly different intakes. The government guidelines for what we should eat are unreliable and minimal. The only knowledge we have about whether we are getting enough of anything is to watch for minor symptoms. Secondly, a minor complaint that indicates a slight deficiency in something should be addressed because if it isn't, the problem can only get worse. Also, there's the thing you can see that's going wrong, and maybe there are a whole host of other things you can't, yet.; So I thought I'd put nutritional therapy to the test. Actually, I didn't put Davis to the test in the end, maybe that's where I should go next with this.; The 500 tips book that I did buy provides a list of things to try. I went, I'm afraid, straight for the supplements. They're easiest to implement after all. So here I am taking maybe four or five supplements a day (a multivitamin with 30mg zinc, brewers yeast, 300iu Vit E, an Omega oils supplement, and a vitamin A top up to 10,000iu), and I've been doing that since November 2003.; The result? No change. Well, not in my dandruff anyway. I do feel good though. Better than I ever have. Except maybe one day. Maybe I'll blog that another time.; It's possible that dandruff isn't actually what I've got. What is it, after all? We know our skin sloughs off all over, isn't that what causes most dust? So if you have fairly long hair, surely that will catch the normal sloughing. So what level of sloughing is normal, and what is abnormal? Are we really going to take our answer from the Head and Shoulders ads?; That raises an interesting question. Why didn't I just buy Head and Shoulders and have done with it. The reason is I've had a couple of hairdressers with very strong opinions against it, citing bad reactions. However I've just done a quick google and found nothing but good reports. Maybe I'm being stupid, but I'd still prefer to exhaust all the additive healthy options before I start rubbing chemicals into my scalp.; So, do you think my dandruff diaries will give Bridget Jones a run for her money?; This has been a test for you, my lovely shiny potential new clients. I think there's humour here. Perhaps more importantly, an engineer is supposed to apply science to solve problems. Here, I think I demonstrate independence of thought and a scientific approach. There's also a great deal of curiosity here, and the ability to draw information from all kinds of sources and disciplines. If you found yourself reading this with interest and a smile on your face, we have a match. If, on the other hand, you have found yourself resistant .. I can think of acquaintances who would read this and be thinking "how bloody stupid, just buy Head and Shoulders" .. then perhaps you wouldn't be open to the difference, the advantage, I can provide in your Internet life. Perhaps what you really want is a website that's the same as everyone elses. Perhaps then, you're not quite the kind of client I'm looking for.
Made with real lemons: 22 January 2005: When Schweppes lemonade says it's "made with real lemons", do they mean their staff? Oh no, that would be 'by real lemons'. It doesn't taste like lemons are really in it, what does 'with' really mean?; What a claim to fame anyway. We should be storming the Bastille that there is food out there with a lemony taste that isn't made with real lemons .. what twisted, warped world are we living in where food can become a soul-free chemical cocktail and be sold to us as if, because it contains no calories and probably won't kill us straight away, it's a good thing?; By contrast, the lemon melts from The Island Bakery are just divine (thanks to whoever bought them for us for Christmas). They do have real lemon in them, and the website copywriting is glorious, like Lush was in its heyday, before they did weird things with their website.; I know it's not the same thing, but Jaffa cakes used to be a real pleasure. I reckon at some point the accountants got in there and said "if we put a little less of that in, will the customers notice? No. Let's do it then. Hmmmm, tappity tappity tap tap tap, that's an extra 10p I've just made for every minute of Jaffa cake production. What else is in there? Oh yes, there's that. What if we put a little less of that in. Will anyone notice? No? Oh goodie. Tappity tappity tap tap tap, that's another 10p I've just made for every minute of Jaffa cake production. That's 20p so far. Look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves. What a good morning I'm having. I may celebrate by opening that packet of crisps. No, I'll save it until eleven o'clock, let's not get too carried away. Now. What else is in a Jaffa cake ....... "; Eventually, there's nothing else to take out, and now Jaffa cakes taste of cardboard and old jam. The inventor of the Jaffa cake recipe is probably now retired, slowly stewing in his or her own resentment. Boasters went the same way. I'm sure they were bigger and better when they started. The marketing people implanted "Boasters = big luxury chocolatey treat" into our heads and then gradually, imperceptibly slowly, they took out one chocolate lump. Then another. Then just tweaked down a few ingredients. Then made them oh so slightly smaller. Same price though, obviously. In the end, we're being taken for mugs.; I've a feeling the same thing is happening with pesticides and chemicals in the environment. A little extra here, a little drop there, no-one will notice, this won't make a difference, we'll get away with this. The overall buildup is significant, but we'll never attribute it to any one person, any one product, any one time. So when we die of cancer, it'll be because of everything .. the fact that Schweppes thinks its drink is so great, because all the sandwich shop can think of to sell us is a prawn sandwich from a farming method that poisons great swathes of coastline, because we buy apples from literally the furthest away we can, because we have to factory farm salmon (of all the beautiful creatures to put into a cage) because there aren't any wild ones left because we poisoned their water when we sprayed the forests, because the council sprays to stop weeds growing between the paving slabs, and because we don't use wood anymore, but a messed up glued together mass of chippings off the sawroom floor. No-one's to blame. We're all to blame. Arse.; Maybe that's why I buy on issues and values, not on price. Why I don't like the easy route (because I know there's always a better one). Why I make such a fuss about purchasing decisions (because going with the first option means you've been had, and because you have to create demand for the good stuff or all you'll be left with is McDonalds). Maybe buying really, really is the key. If there's no demand for Schweppes lemonade made with real lemons, it won't be made. You choose your world when you pay for it.
Schnews and the NHS: 22 January 2005: This is disturbing. It's disturbing because it's something I know about. I'm an IT guy, and my g/f is an Occupational Therapist in the NHS. I'm all for improving IT in the NHS.; The article, far from being a fantastically well researched piece from George Monbiot, is a pure sarcastic and smallminded rant from someone who hasn't the conviction to put their name at the end.; What is outrageous is that the NHS doesn't have a central database of patient records, accessible by everyone who works with you, that you can't make an informed choice about when and where to have your treatment, that every time I went to my previous doctor they'd got the wrong John Allsopp's notes out.; I know the budget for this is just crazy, but no business would operate without an equivalent system.; All the example problems the article comes out with seem to be evidence of the system working. A pilot scheme is bound to come up with problems, that's the whole point. The BMA's job is to stand up for its people and point out the faults. While they're there doing that, the system as a whole is working.; My gut feeling about what's really wrong with it, from what I'm hearing, is that the computer people haven't talked to the users enough. No-one will use a system that's slower than the manual system it is meant to replace, delivers less than the manual system did, and that is more difficult to use than the manual system was. The system designers have to spend more time with the users if this is going to work.
Boring sandwiches: 22 January 2005: There's an Italian deli on Victoria Road in Scarborough, well, that's what it was, then it was a coffee shop, and now it's turning into a sandwich bar. It's irritating me already, and it hasn't even opened yet. We know what it'll be. At best, it'll offer a chalkboard of fairly boring, fairly tasteless, fairly samey sandwiches that you can buy every day of the week from almost any sandwich shop. How many prawn mayonnaise sandwiches can you eat in one lifetime for chrissakes?; What I'd do is, first of all, everything would be organic, and everything vegetarian. I wouldn't shout that, though, that should just be the norm. It amazes me it isn't.; I wouldn't do ordinary sandwiches. If you want those, there are plenty of places to get them.; I'd offer some fantastic sandwiches instead. Who could resist avocado and toasted pine nuts in onion bread. Brie and grape in crusty french bread. Cheddar and british apple. Toasted halloumi with salad, tomato and lime juice. Hot pittas with falafel and garlic and mint yoghurt dressing. People would queue for that. They'd bang on the doors to get me to open.; I'd use bean sprouts a lot, and sell vegetable and fruit juices to go with it all. Maybe I'd bake things, maybe cakes but more likely fruit tarts, apple pies, and sell them with a dollop of thick organic cream or soya cream.; I'd employ someone to deliver by bicycle, and obviously we'd have a website people could order through, and maybe even a way for them to track where the bike is at any one time so they know, if it's a business, when to come down to reception.; I'd befriend some local organic gardeners and take their surpluses, turning them into ad-hoc creations credited to the people who grew them.; Every month I'd remove the slowest selling recipe from the list and I'd add a new one. I'd ask people to bring ideas from all over the world for us to try.; Is it too much to ask for people to broaden their horizons? It costs nothing to think a little. I see no value whatsoever in being the same. Difference is everything.
Early worms: 21 January 2005: Why isn't it "The early worm gets eaten by the bird"? If that were the proverb we could all stay in bed, at least till the sun came up.; Maybe that's a great example of how spin works. We could have a whole raft of New Labour versions of old proverbs.; Jeez, is it Friday already?
Hair Saloon: 20 January 2005: When my grandma used to say she'd gone to the hair saloon, we all used to suppress a smile and then joke about it in the car on the way home. I, for one, imagined a place with swing doors and gun totin' cowboys, Big Slim McClain there for his short back and sides to make sure he looked good in the posse. Obviously the hairdressers would slide hairdryers to each other along the long worksurface, and conversation would stop when Smiling Boy Williams walked in, stood legs apart in the doorway and looked everyone in the eyes while grass rolled past in the wind outside. I know, enough already.; Anyway, it turns out they were called saloons after all. Maybe they were called saloons first and then they got sick of the jokes and changed it to salon.; Maybe that's why we pay money to industry bodies, so they can make those kinds of decisions.
Huygens software error: 18 January 2005: I find it pretty hard to believe that "Cassini never listened to channel A because of a software commanding error" and "the receiver on the orbiter was never commanded to turn on" (from Space Flight Now). I mean, I'm not saying it's untrue, I mean, I thought these things would undergo the best software testing we can devise. Does this mean that software inescapably has errors in it?; It's not as if it's a small, esoteric little thing. It sounds rather like it's the command that turns on the listening device. That's quite something to forget about and to miss in testing.; Maybe it's another argument for open source computing. Now that would be something. I'm sure if the software used were open source that command wouldn't have been missed.
Strip mining on steroids: 18 January 2005: This struck me from Sundays paper. Through the Appalachain mountains from Pennsylvania to Georgia there are mining operations that take the tops off mountains, and dump the rubble into the valleys to get at the coal, turning a beautiful landscape of mountains and valley streams into a flat, barren moonscape.; What surprised me most was the low cost of paying off the politicians to allow it to happen. In the past six years mining firms (multiple) have given $9m (£4.85m) to Republican candidates. If there are, say, ten mining firms, that's just £6,736 a month each. To a mining company, that's chickenfeed. Get a few of us together and we could raise that ourselves. It must be much less to influence Labour .. well, if it's in proportion to population it would be £1,368, a pathetically small amount.; "James 'Buck' Harless, West Virginia's main coal baron, raised $100,000 for Bush in 2000. In 2004 he at least doubled that sum, earning the Bush Ranger title given to top fundraisers." Just £108,000 means you're a top fundraiser and you get the Bush Ranger title. Are we at school?; That reminds me. The Labour party's launch of their latest poster campaign where they were joined by dudes dressed in iconic sixties gear. What does Labour's PR company do all day? I presume they use one of the best PR companies in the UK, yet that was something I or any local PR company could have dreamt up. Pah!
Johns Band: 17 January 2005: I love this. I may even get a t-shirt made with just the drummer bit on it. Wow :-) I don't think I've even spoken to him about it never mind played to him. I'm not inflicting my kids drawings on you, I'm inflicting other kids' drawings. Thanks Robin, aged 36 and three quarters. Just kidding, 9 or thereabouts I think.
Germaine Greer: 15 January 2005: There was much talk about why the glorious Germaine Greer went into Celebrity Big Brother. I suppose it was stirred up by the shows effective publicity machine. For me, it made sense. From that vantage point, she could get out of academia and show us how feminism works in the day to day. I looked forward to her picking apart the vehemently antisocial, professional no-mates arsehole and titman John McCririck, navigating the desert that is Caprice and to an awesome battle between Stallone and Greer.; I almost started watching it when I saw Jackie Stallone. Amazing, just amazing. Germaine Greer, John McCririck, Caprice, and Jackie Stallone in one room. That should be fantastic.; But for some reason, I'm not sure she knows herself yet, Germaine cracked and left. So there you have it. It was the worst of both worlds. We saw Germaine as awkward and stubborn, now we know what she looks like in the morning, and that's pretty much it. I wish she'd stayed.; Oh, and the person I expected to be coldest, Brigitte Nielsen turns out to be warm and charming. She's my tip to win.; All that, and I haven't even been watching the show.
Bust: 15 January 2005: Busted gone! That's bad news. I used to like them, they reminded me of my punk-ish youth. I liked that they were a guitar band and a pop band. It seems weird that it felt somehow new and different, how homogeneous had boy bands become? And after them, there's at least McFly and probably more to come, not that I know anything much about them, or indeed about Busted.; My partner thinks Busted were sexist and I can certainly see her point, but I think that correctly reflects the times. Nowadays I'm sure if you talked to a young woman about sexism you'd get pretty blank looks, yet I remember probably only 40 years ago or so, as a kid, holding my mums hand as we went shopping, pointing out the occasional woman driver because it was so unusual. Now it's taken as read that we all have a more or less equal opportunity to make what we want of life. All that bra burning appears to have worked (that's not necessarily born out by the evidence, but that's another story).; Nowadays lusting after an air hostess isn't an expression of male power because air stewards are just as likely nowadays to be male, because the steward may well lust right back at you, because flying is something we all do, not just the wealthy, and because lusting has been separated from its expression of male control. Add to that the desire to express without bounds, to break out, to appear recklessly exciting, and you have Busted. I like spirit and energy.; Oh well. Back to the constant drip of American r&b and rap (now we're talking sexism).
First Huygens pictures: 15 January 2005: A shoreline! It's out of this world
Huygens has landed: 14 January 2005: Amazing, Huygens has landed. How truly awesome is that? We're going to get pictures and sounds from another world. OMG
I'm feeling good today: 14 January 2005: I'm feeling good today. I just added three positive comments to my random positive comments database. Premier Norwegian Log Cabins "has the 'wow' factor" and is "the best in its market". The people at myKitchen think "this might be the best thing they've ever done".; I have a new enquirer to handle, and there's impending movement in my queue of work which would add some variety.; I'm also coming out of what, in retrospect, was a horrendous, dark and long software design tunnel for myKitchen in which I set out to create the very best software design I could muster, using J2EE (Java (a programming language), but for the enterprise (a distributed organisation)), UML (a way of selecting and concentrating on various aspects of the design and visualising it) and the rational unified process (a standard software design process), and patterns (ways of organising your software that have worked well for others in the past). Along the way my computer died and I changed operating system (from Windows to Linux).; I thought I was up for all the diagrams. I thought I loved to do my very best each time I come to work. I thought I preferred the theory to the practical. Learning all that, sat here on my own, and keeping up my motivation to come in and look at the same project from yet another angle was hard though, particularly with no-one else around who could mentor me.; Now though, I feel like the benefits are coming through. I realised yesterday that just one design pattern is proving itself really well. I'll try to explain.; Java is an object oriented language. In theory that means you can model the real world really well. If you are an architect, you might create a software 'bridge' object with properties you can ask about .. you could ask the bridge how high it is, how long it is, and when it was built. You could also ask it to do things, to transport a car from one side of a valley to the other, for instance. This is meant to make software more understandable and easier to debug.; I'm not sure it works that way in reality. Humans being human, we tend to work at the edge of our capabilities. So it's not enough to model concrete things, software designers start imagining all kinds of made-up objects that do made-up things that help the software design. Each of those objects is just as difficult to imagine as were the methods and functions of the previous softare generation.; Anyway previously, for instance, with the tinshop, I've used PHP that way, so there's a shopping basket object, a tin object, a currency object and so on.; With the myKitchen project and with J2EE, software is designed in layers. They call them tiers (tears in my case, but that's another story). There's the software that runs on your computer. There's the software it talks to that runs on the server that you connect to over the Internet when you type in www.myKitchen.uk.com. That provides the pages you see, so its task is to run the interface, to provide the pages you look at. In turn it talks to another layer that provides the information it requires, perhaps a list of available products, and determines whether you have permission to see that list or not. Underneath that layer is the final infrastructure layer, the part that talks to the underlying services provided by the system, for instance, a database, an email service, a printer, and so on.; By specialising in this way, we can make software that is more portable across hardware, and more easily maintained. Someone somewhere decided that software maintenance is the biggest cost of a system, so this is an attempt at addressing that issue. I think that's all about what language label you put on it, but anyway, I'm sure it enables the big boys to sell more computer systems.; Now, it's less clear that you'll have a 'bridge' object and call it, because there are all those layers inbetween. Yes, there'll be a bridge object somewhere in one of the lower layers, but inbetween, and here's my point, there's a use case handler.; Use cases are all the things you want the software to do. Before you start programming, before even you quote for the system, you define use cases. Written in straightforward language, these form an agreement between you the client and me the programmer about what the software will do. Not how it will look, but how it will function. A use case for logging in, for instance, will say that the user will click the [login] button, and describe what they will see next. It will run through the steps the user should take and detail the systems' reaction. At the end, it will also detail all the things that will happen if the user isn't ideal and does things wrong, clicks the wrong place, cancels the operation, and so on. Only when we've agreed a set of use cases do we know what we want the system to do, and only then can we make a guess as how long it will take and how much it might cost.; The set of use cases then descends through analysis and design and engineering and turns into a software program which you then take back to the client. Together you can run through the agreed use cases and tick off all the functionality you agreed to provide and the client agreed to pay for. So, as an aside, that's a good way of managing the program from the clients point of view.; The crux of all this is, then, that beyond object oriented design, and even beyond multi-tiered development, are patterns and good design practices. They have led me to create, in software, for each use case, a use case interface (in the interface layer), and a use case controller (in the business layer). It's the controller that creates and interrogates all the objects in the system and determines whether the user can do what they are asking. The interface presents the answers back to the user.; The Tin Shop site is getting quite difficult to maintain. There are many objects all designed according to a straightforward understanding of object oriented programming, but it's difficult to know where to find any code that needs changing. One particular action that keeps requiring maintenance uses four or five layered objects and I have to track through the layers each time to work out where to make my changes.; With multi-tiered design combined with the use-case structure, I can put my mouse straight on the code because I know which use case is involved, and I know at what level the error is occurring. I think it will be easier to maintain. Well halleluyah.
Bush donates his own money to the tsunami: 8 January 2005: It appears George Bush reads my blog because after I suggested we'd follow his lead and donate an equivalent to the amount he donates personally to the Tsunami fund, he announced he'd give $10,000 of his own money.; OK, so let's do the percentages. Apparently he's worth somewhere between $9-26m, whereas I'm worth about £40,000. If we take the middle of that rather large range, $17.5m, then 10,000/17,500,000 = 0.057% of his wealth. 0.057% of my wealth is £22.86, considerably more than I've donated so far. OK Georgy, you win, I'll get my coat.; Would that mean I could go out and spend nearly £600 on a gun?
Windy ideas: 8 January 2005: It turns out that actually my work queue is nowhere near as robust as I thought it was, and I'm starting to realise I might have to market myself. We'll see. Something usually turns up.; Anyway, the original idea of working from home was to work fewer hours. I'm a bit of a workaholic. I enjoy it. So here I am working from 7:30 in the morning till 6 at night, then back for 2.5 hours in the evening, and Saturdays too. Right now, to try to deliver this kitchen project that's been hanging around for so long, I'm working Sundays too.; It's not really true though, because work hours like that give me licence to spend the afternoon cleaning the house for visitors, or practicing with the band, or to take two hours wandering around the shops or having coffee with friends. I deserve it, after all.; The original plan was to work more normal hours and enjoy some other pursuits. In my heart, I'm not sure it's possible. This area changes so much and there's so much to know that it requires at least full time work or great specialisation, and I don't fancy the latter.; Anyway, both the kitchen and the log cabin projects are nearing some sort of change and I don't know yet whether they'll carry on or not. If both go (it's unlikely the kitchen one will tbh), then I'm left with a fairly big space. I thought I had a big queue of potential projects, but when I look through them, most have melted away.; I have a system to handle this. I was a marketing consultant after all. The idea is simply that the less work I have, the more I will market myself.; There's more than that though. Originally, the idea was that developing websites was only one of three possible income streams. There was also the idea of me being some sort of technology director for small companies, taking a wider look at everything from a company's network infrastructure to their telecommunications. That would be a laugh, considering how long it's taken me to decide on my new phone .. there were different reasons for that though, and secretly I enjoy carrying around my antique phone.; Anyway, the third stream was to build a web-based business. I have several ideas for that which I won't share at this time, but last night, awake in bed in the roofspace listening to the 90mph winds testing our roof, I developed a really good idea. It's to do with the band, and I think it could really work. So I'm excited. But I can't share the idea.; All that build up, then no release. What a tease.
Aren't foxes great?: 7 January 2005: One of the recurring themes in Silent Spring is the application of a chemical insecticide to remove a single insect or grub, with the almost inevitable result that it kills all the insects regardless of whether they help or hinder the crop.; In the examples in the book, as a result of the magnification effect of poisons like DDT, the birds and fish that eat the insects gain a higher concentration in their body fat. The carnivores that eat those die first, being the first to get really high concentrations. Then the birds, fish and mammals die along with the target insects. The field becomes nightmarishly monocultural. No longer a symphony, just a constant radio-silence white noise.; I think the same effect would be felt regardless of the DDT multiplication effect. If the food is gone, the animals can only move or starve.; The crux, though, is that the insects are the first to come back. With no predators, no birds, to keep them in check, their numbers are soon vastly higher than their natural former balance. Cue more spraying, more poison, more death.; This business about predators keeping the number of pests manageable is my point. Carson mentions in passing how foxes keep down the rabbit population. That was like a bolt from the blue. All that us townies hear about is how bad foxes are, and how farmers hate them. If the result of having no foxes would be a rise in the rabbit population, surely, they'd hate that even more. Why do we never hear about the good things foxes do? Sounds like a classic PR problem to me.; It turns out the more manageable, and more selective way to keep pests at bay is by introducing a disease or a predator.
Glorious Monbiot: 7 January 2005: I thought I was being outspoken, but I'm a mouse compared to George Monbiot. What a guy! I can't put into words how beautiful I find his work.
Alarmingly bad: 6 January 2005: My lovely g/f also bought me, for Christmas this time, and after much lobbying by me, a rise and shine alarm clock from Eco-Zone.; The idea is that before bleeping you awake, it slowly lights up to simulate dawn. That way, you are supposed to wake up refreshed rather than shocked and awed.; It is, without reservation, crap. It's the worst designed product I've seen for ages.; It looks nice, but it just doesn't work. In that respect, it's rather like a web site designed in Flash. It's also like a website that hasn't been through user testing. This product has not been user tested, it's just been manufactured and sold, and the kind of problems I'm getting are exactly the kind of problems user testing discovers.; Firstly, it takes three batteries and, while it has a mains socket it doesn't come with a mains adapter. How green is that?; The light just isn't bright enough. Like dawn? More like a candle in a coal mine. Anyway, I forgot, I sleep with my hand over my eyes to save me from cat-claw-induced blindness (we have a very 'handy' cat who sleeps on my pillow). The other night one of the cats was being sick in the bedroom so I hit the top of the alarm clock to get, supposedly, 8 seconds of light. It was so dim I couldn't see which cat it was; If it's meant to simulate dawn (in order to get those subliminal effects the marketing chirps on about), you'd have thought they'd use a daylight simulating bulb. Nope.; If you wake up in the middle of the night and want to know the time, the clock part isn't lit. Hit the top to get the light, and you still can't see the time. I can't work out whether that's because of glare from the light, or whether the power all goes to the light, making the clock display fade.; When the alarm goes off, if you hit the top you get 8 minutes of snooze. That feels too long, it's just long enough to fall back to sleep again. And the light doesn't slowly glow again, it just turns on when the alarm starts clanging.; Finally, when it is time to switch it off and get up, you have to fiddling underneath with a switch. The clock is symmetrical, so you can't feel which way around it is in your hands, but push the switch the wrong way and you'll have to reset the time again when you come to bed.; At least it gave us a laugh. While the packaging is in perfect English, the instructions aren't. Here's a snippet: "5 minutes before the alarm time, the light will be turned on a little, and the light will be getting brighter gradually until arrive the alarm time to be full bright and with bi-bi alarm sound. When Alarm on, press the Snooze button on the top of the clock, to turn off the light and sound, the "Z" symbol is blinking. After 8 minutes the light turn on and with bi-bi alarm sound again."; We also ordered some lint balls from Eco-Zone. They don't work either. The idea is that you put them in your washing machine and they collect lint, but we'd be hoping for cat hairs, from your washing.; Great idea. With our washing machine (a Bosch) it's like the national lottery. The balls gradually collect between the rubber seal and the window until all twelve are sitting there, dancing in their green and redness, grinning and taunting you with your purchasing stupidity.; When the wash is over, the balls come out lovely and clean.; So let's see now. We've bought three things from eco-zone. There were the eco-balls which didn't work. Now there's the happy snoozer which doesn't work, and the taunting, dancing lint balls, which don't work.; If I were doing investment research, I'd say eco-zone is doomed.
Marathon: 5 January 2005: My lovely g/f bought me a book for my birthday, Marathon Running for Mortals. I read it over the following two days, it's very understandable for the novice, motivating, and yes, I made a resolution.; The thing is, a marathon's a big thing, and I'm 43 and don't run regularly. So I'm taking their advice. This year, a 10K. 2006, a half marathon. 2007, a marathon. You heard it here first.
Oxfam: 5 January 2005: This kinda brings it home, for me at least. Maybe I relate to it because my g/f's brother did exactly that kind of thing for a while.
US aid: 5 January 2005: It's taken just 24 hours for the US to work out why they're giving aid to the tsunami hit countries. It's because they want muslims to like them and preferably, to stop shooting at them and bombing them.; Do they have no subtlety at all? Yep, that might have worked a little if it hadn't been headlined in dayglo, if it looked for more than a second like you were actually giving not just doing it for the PR. Now you've spoiled it.; I thought Powell had resigned anyway.
Morecambe: 5 January 2005: The longest lasting laugh from the Christmas period, it's still making me laugh now, is a clip from Eric and Ernie. Ernie's in bed, Eric's wandering around in his dressing gown and a police car drives past the road outside, lights flashing, siren going. Eric looks out of the curtains, turns to Ernie and says "he won't sell many ice creams going at that speed".
SexyKnickerShop.com: 5 January 2005: One of the first shops I come to when I walk into town is the recently opened SexyKnickerShop.com and today the windows are covered with "reduced to clear" banners. I'm wondering, if you reduce a thong, what are you left with? Maybe it's not the size they've reduced. Maybe it's the quality.; Anyway, I shouldn't mock. It looks like, and I assumed it is, a franchise, but one look at their website tells me they're not, it's a one-off. In which case, respect and good luck to them. I hardly ever see anyone in there when I'm walking past, but if they're selling online it might actually work, and the website's by no means perfect but it's a decent start.; One good thing about the website is that, when I'm walking back from the gym, more often than not there's a bloke looking in the window. A different bloke each time, I mean, not the same sad & desperate bloke. It would seem the shop's too embarrassing for men to go in, but they can order online, so that's OK. Certainly, I wouldn't be seen dead in the place.
Tsunami: 4 January 2005: I'm having some problems with the Tsunami. Not, it should be said, as many problems as the presumably millions affected in Asia and the 150,000 people who died.; It started when the UK pledged £15m in aid, and I think the US pledged about the same. That made me feel like we were being played. Obviously it's a big catastrophe. Then again, so is Africa, it's just slower. With 6,000 people dying there every day, it'll be just 25 days before their death toll reaches that of the Tsunami. Then another 25 days before it does it again. And again. And again. A monthly tsunami. And isn't it just terrifying that the most powerfully put message on that subject came from, can you believe it, the Vicar of Dibley's new year programme?; Anyway, I felt that the governments were thinking they didn't need to give much because the people would give. The problem with that is that nice people give, while horrid people don't. That's not fair. I know someone who was saving for a new fridge and when she got enough she saw something on the telly about Africa (I think) and just gave it all to that instead. This is someone who has to save to buy a fridge. That's a nice person.; Hang on, I'm not sure I made that clear enough. Person who gives fridge money to Africa, fragrant, heavenly, please let me deep into your life. Person who drives a Porsche, self centred ignorant bastard, please drive away as fast as your silly overcompensating buzzy little car will take you. Yeah, that's clearer. I don't actually know anyone who drives a Porsche btw so don't get the impression I'm secretly pointing at one person, no, I mean everyone who drives a Porsche :-) Why is a Porsche bad but my dream of owning an Aston Martin good? Who knows, I'll work that out when I can afford one.; Also, people give to cute and cuddly causes and not to other perhaps more deserving cases. £15m is about 25p each. I put a pound in a collection box and quintupled my contribution.; And what was going on with the US? $30m of aid was, what, 10c (5p) each. From the richest country on earth. That is truly outrageous.; Now it feels like the governments have been shamed into raising their figures. They didn't, and still aren't, coming out looking like the good guys.; How is it possible for George Bush to ask every American to give what they can in the light of the US government's own, still paltry, $350m. Still just $1.18 per person.; Contrast that with the US spending on the military. They want $400bn this coming year for their military, which is $1,355 per year each. I got that calculation wrong earlier because when I put 4,000,000,000 into my Linux calculator it doesn't accept the final zero. No error. No beep. No notice. Nothing to tell you (there's plenty more room in the field). Usability.; So anyway. Here's $53 of aid, and $1,355 to keep you in your place. $53 is the equivalent per US citizen of government aid given in 2003 (from Global Issues) (Brits gave $102).; This type of disaster does seem to highlight a role that the military can increasingly take that would incur almost universal support. Probably the US would see the Iraq excursion as aid. We helped them go democratic after all.; The UK is pretty hot on that kind of thing too. $34.8bn (£18.3bn) of military spending in 2001 is $583 (£307) per person, and despite vestiges of adolescent dislike for anything forceful ("awww, leave me in my bed, man, it's not afternoon yet") I can't help having huge respect for the British forces. Far from being cannon fodder thugs, all the military people I've met are effective, 'let's get stuff done' people who are a breath of fresh air in an overcomplex, committee meeting, tv world.; So, it boils down to simply this. Mister President, how about we match what you personally will give. Percentage-wise. And shouldn't there be an internationally co-ordinated, fair system for this kind of thing? At least that way the money in the fund would have come from taxes (richer paying more than poorer, etc) and the allocation system would be transparent. Where is the insurance industry in all this?; Oh yes. If this happened to the UK, we'd have the resources to cope. The only reason they haven't is that the west regularly shafts the majority world in trade agreements. Maybe if we'd treated those countries fairly in the first place, they wouldn't have to rely so much on aid. So, we get to buy sweatshop goods and then get shamed into giving money in aid. Why not just buy stuff for a fair price in the first place?; I'm also wondering, with the US going over there to provide their expertise in rebuilding and redevelopment, whether the idyllic bamboo beach huts will be replaced by all-you-can-eat burger enclaves. I'm exaggerating, but, there's no way in the world the US will provide anything without also having influence over the result, without bending things to the American way.; Finally, yes, finally. I'm wondering about what this tells us about ancient lost civilisations. When you see the aerial shots of whole towns wiped cleanly away, you can easily see how it might have happened. I don't know what I'm talking about. Was Atlantis real? It appears maybe.