John Allsopp

Professionally engineered Internet solutions for humans

Prince Ivor: 27 March 2006: I didn't realise Ivor Cutler has died. I mean, it's been a long time coming, but it's definitely sad.; I saw him a couple of times. Early in our courtship I took my partner to see him at the Midland Group Arts Theatre in Hockley, Nottingham (where I also saw French And Saunders before they got on the telly). She didn't know what to expect, but came out a lifelong fan. The other time I seem to think we saw him in a much larger church hall in Derby. Both times he took us to that state where you're laughing so much you're no longer in control of your functions.; I remember him saying something like, in his quivvering Glaswegian accent "I may look old and miserable, but inside I'm jumping for joy". Of course, he phrased it better.; I took an Ivor Cutler book to a poetry reading event at the Hole in the Wall one time, and I read Ivor Cutler poems occasionally to people at college who seemed to need a lift.; I don't think of myself as enjoying poetry, but Ivor Cutler seems to be an exception to all rules.; There's no replacement for Prince Ivor.
Twoccing: 24 March 2006: A friend had her car broken into, the rear window smashed. It started the night on double yellow lines, but by the morning had been returned and parked in a parking bay. When asked why, a policeman said "it's a lesser offence". And that's how I came to learn about twoccing.
Viruses: 24 March 2006: I was looking back at what I was blogging a year ago, and it was bird flu. So there you have it. Management by fear. Bird flu hasn't happened, but we've been scared about it for a year. I did buy a book on viruses, but I've got to get through Eats, Shoots and Leaves, three Tracey Emin booklets, Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth, Tolley's Tax Guide, DIY: the rise of lo-fi culture, Buzan's Water Logic, and PHP Architect's guide to PHP design patterns before I reach it, so maybe another year or two.
Being old: 23 March 2006: I don't suppose I'm looking forward to being infirm, but I do look forward to being older and wiser. I reasoned in my youth that if I were to experiment with hard drugs, or even smoking pot, it would be better to do it just before I die, as it would probably alleviate any aches and pains for the moment, I wouldn't have any responsibilities to fail to meet, and any question of long term health problems would be negated.; Similarly, any experiments with astral projection can wait until then too. If I'm going to be getting out of my body, best wait until my body's no longer that useful. I read somewhere that once you've done it you can't stop. I decided I'd rather have that "can't stop" period be a relatively small part of my life rather than something I triggered off during adolescence.; A little bit before I'm confined to bed with soup for tea and a room smelling of Dettol, I want to be in a punk band. The idea of seventy or eighty year olds playing punk, trying to pogo, spitting at their audience and telling everyone to fuck off, in a musical style that was supposed to change everything, that sounds like a great deal of fun to me (in theory, maybe not the spitting part though in reality).; There are inklings today of others doing similarly. Perhaps Norman Kember decided he'd seen his kids grow up, didn't have many responsibilities and so could do what he damn well wanted to.; Luigi Cascioli seems finally to have had enough and decided to sue The Rev. Enrico Righi for asserting that Jesus existed. According to this Cascioli says that for 2,000 years the Roman Catholic Church has been deceiving people by furthering the fable that Christ existed, and says the church has been gaining financially by impersonating as Christ someone by the name of John of Gamala, the son of Judas from Gamala. The article also quotes Cascioli as saying "I was born against Christ and God, I'm doing it (the complaint) now because I should do it before I die." Fantastic. I don't mean that just to wind you up, I mean, truly .. fantastic. I'm thrilled.; This getting old lark could be a great deal of fun. By the time I get there the baby boom generation will have led the way.; Oh wait. That could explain a lot. Me and everyone of my age is preceeded by a population peak of people who want things their way, people who grew up in the sixties. Right now as they start to retire, getting old is becoming empowering. It's starting to look like a time to do a Kember or a Cascioli. However, in twenty years when I reach retirement age, that idea will be well worn. There'll be a well trodden path. It'll be boring to do what those people did (are yet to do). I'll be looking for alternatives .. and there's that word and that movement .. alternative. Maybe my permanent desire always to be off centre, on the edge, is at least encouraged by the year I was born. I don't think I've seen it that clearly before.
Body Shop: 23 March 2006: While I'm at it, I may as well point out this article which said, in the bit you'd have to pay for, that L'Oreal is about 1/4 owned by Nestle, the company that won a global internet poll for the world's 'least responsible company'. So every time you shop at The Body Shop, 25% of your money goes to Nestle. So, err, not wanting to be too blunt .. don't.
Cheese: 23 March 2006: I kinda love cheese. I used to work on the cheese counter at the co-op in Long Eaton where I grew up. I can't resist it, I think I'm addicted. Not that I eat a lot, but I do tend to turn to it when it's snacktime.; I'm not into the fancy stuff, a decent cheddar is heavenly. Which is the point of this blog. Marks and Spencer's Cornish Cruncher, Extra Mature Cheddar, made at Davidstow Creamery .. the best cheddar I've tasted in years.; Davidstow Creamery sounds rather quaint doesn't it, but of course it's not. Then again, I expected this to show a huge factory, which it really doesn't.
Fart: 23 March 2006: I prefer public transport. I think you get to see life, you get to meet people occasionally, and it's obviously greener, usually about the same price as travelling by car and often quicker. From the client's point of view, it's much much cheaper for me to arrive on public transport. However, on the Huddersfield to Scarborough train I've become gradually more aware of a downside.; I'm thinking maybe 10% of the air I'm breathing in these 5pm trains has been fermented in some office working bloke's colon. It's becoming a problem because yesterday I had a seat (put the flags out) but the farting guy with his fart factory at my face level had not. There seems to be no fresh air in these carriages, it's a wonder on long journeys they don't start to bulge. I'm expecting a station announcement "Bing Bong, we are sorry to announce the late arrival of the 16:26 to Scarborough as it's now too big to fit through the tunnels due to excessive man-fart."; This morning, despite showering when I got home and changing my clothes, I still feel horribly contaminated, dirty.; We need the air equivalent of that dye that reveals the urinators in a swimming pool, and a rubber clad matron who takes the offenders off to a colonic irrigation room. I guess some would enjoy that. Hmm, maybe that would encourage train travel among fetishists. Perhaps we just need a flame thrower behind a glass panel .. for use in case of a fart emergency. But then, risk of explosion. Introduce a farting carriage?
Green Wing: 21 March 2006: I know I should be working, but I just have to make sure everyone knows, the best comedy programme is back. Green Wing. It seems they are showing an episode from the last series every night on Channel 4, and the new series starts on the 31 March 2006. It makes me so happy.
Installing Linux: 21 March 2006: I attempted to install Linux for a friend last night. What a heroine she is. No geek, she just wants to do things a little differently so she bought a PC without an operating system and called me in to install Linux. Fantastic.; I tried a few distributions. Ubuntu was my first choice but it couldn't see her hard drive. Basic, but true. I sometimes wonder what others in the Scarborough Linux User Group think of me. I've had one member really question whether I like Linux. Yes, I like Linux, but I also want it to work. Not recognising the hard drive is .. regardless of whatever complexities are involved (maybe it was the SATA connection or the age of the Ubuntu (Hoary Hedgehog)) and from a user's point of view .. just utter failure and in an instant everything Linux stands for falls over and the user installs Windows. It's simply not good enough. Maybe I'm the Victor Meldrew of SLUG.; Take my Fedora installation. If I want to play MP3s I have to go through an arcane installation routine. Yes, I want to play MP3s, doesn't (almost) everyone? Yes, MP3 isn't an open format, but give it as an installation option for chrissakes.; Knoppix obviously booted (it runs off CD) but my friend was fazed by the number of menu options, not many of which meant anything much, even to me. I couldn't see how to install it to the hard drive. I'm not even sure if you can.; Suse is what we've ended up with although it does say "Nice computer, but this is 32 bit software and your computer is 64 bit, are you sure you want to carry on". Between me and a knowledgeable friend (Hi Steve) we had no real idea, so I carried on.; Working through with my friend what you get with Linux, it really struck home. You have a fully functioning Office suite that reads and writes Microsoft format files and comes with extras such as a flow chart drawer, and a presentation tool that isn't Powerpoint. There's an equivalent to Photoshop (the Gimp) and Illustrator (Inkscape). Internet tools such as a browser (Firefox), email client (Evolution), chat (Gaim I assume), and RSS reader. All free in all senses. And then, bold as brass, there was Kino, the video editor.; I've been trying to install Kino on Fedora 4 and it just isn't easy. It's not in the Yum installer database, so you get into dependency hell, and at least one of the dependency requirements only seems to be available from two sites, both of which weren't working the last three times I tried.; Furthermore, my Fedora 4 installation won't complete a file download. It downloads OK, but it just doesn't complete writing the file to disc. Fedora: you wouldn't wish it on your worst enemy.; So anyway, my friend has shiny new Suse but no sound and (because she'd lost her Internet provider details) no Internet connection. I'll be back.; She says "I adore Linux, sooooo cute and simple =)", which is really nice because it feels like Suse Linux has passed some sort of attractiveness test, which flies in the face of those who still think Linux just has a text interface.; Incidentally, I've also installed Debian onto an old client machine in the hope of creating a backup system that will regularly poll for file updates and then push them onto some media or other. Debian in that mode just gives you a shell prompt. Wish me luck.; Something else came out of this too. It appears to be standard practice for broadband suppliers to keep you on the service you've bought. That's fine, except that speeds keep improving and prices keep dropping, so in the end, you're not being looked after, they're charging over the odds for an out of date service. So check your broadband deal every so often. It's probably not worth getting hot under the collar about with your provider, it seems they all do it, but just keep on top of it to make sure you're getting good value.; Linux: prev - next
Animal testing: 17 March 2006: I can't decide whether the clinical drug trial that's gone horribly wrong is going to help the Animal Rights Movement or not.; Will this bolster their argument that this proves animal testing to be nonsense because of our different biology? Clearly this trial, despite the drug being tested previously on primates, dramatically demonstrates that a test on even an animal that's biologically very close to us does not completely predict the drugs effect on humans. The movement has a very strong argument that, despite animal testing, drugs very often exhibit unexpected side effects and quite often are removed from sale some time after launch. Thalidomide is, I think, sometimes mentioned but as the Wikipedia entry shows, that's very out of date now. There are more recent and better examples but I'm not close enough to the movement to know which they are.; Or will the testing lobby come up with something along the lines of "we need more comprehensive tests in order to reduce the chance of this happening again", or more probably that if animal testing weren't done this would happen more often?
Online chat: 14 March 2006: I have a client who wants to set up online chat with me using a Mac laptop. Chat allows two or more people to have live text 'conversations' across the Internet, regardless of distance, free of charge. Some chat facilities allow phone and even video too. Neither of us have chat set up, but I've experience with ICQ in the early days, until the software fell over and refused to get up again, and more recently some other chat facility I can't remember the name of.; I started here, which gave a list of popular services as Qnext, MSN Messenger, AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, Skype, Google Talk, .NET Messenger Service, Jabber, QQ, iChat and ICQ. There are some services I'd prefer not to use in there.; Actually, the whole chat area is persistently in a VHS/Betamax scenario with AOL, MSN and Yahoo all running their own protocols and refusing to talk to each other. Imagine if the phone system worked that way. That's not in my interests, so I don't want to support any of that nonsense.; MSN, well the further I can get away from corporate plunderer and control freak Microsoft the better, so that's MSN and .Net out of the way.; AOL. Actually, I was laying in bed thinking about this blog and giggling to myself. AOL in the UK has marketed itself to the mass market of people who actually haven't a clue about the Internet. AFAIK, AOL packages-up the Internet and brands it all AOL. It's a bit like trying to experience the world from a blow-up rubber suit. You can't really see it, smell it, touch it, there are lots of things you can't do and quite a few doorways you can't get through, but you're relatively safe so long as they keep pumping you air. That gives the lie to the current ad campaign which is actually really good until you realise it's AOL. The "what do you think" ad. "Some people think the Internet's full of perverts .. la de da ... What do you think? AOL chat". The comedy of that is, because of AOL's marketing here in the UK, the discussion would be between people who haven't the foggiest. There's AOL's purchase and destruction of Compuserve, and their ill fated merge with Time Warner. Finally. America On Line. Why would I want to buy an American branded product? I'm not saying I don't and won't, but isn't it a little arrogant to thing that us Brits will buy a product branded as American over one with our own identity on it? Isn't it a little bit "America is the best and everyone wants to be like us"?; ICQ, I had good feelings for, but then discovered they are owned now by AOL and have a patent for the phrase "instant messaging", so we're not allowed to use that phrase any more. Excuse me, but fuck that.; I'm resistant to Skype. Although it's probably the best example of free business in action, developing a new and innovative product that is wrecking the old telecomms models and providing the customer with a better service, it's not an open source product, the protocol is proprietary which means the company is currently in a customer acquisition phase wherein it looks all very nice and cuddly, but we don't know how that will pan out once we are all tied in to using their system. An open source protocol would be the gold prize.; Jabber is open source and is on track to becoming an Internet standard. That means anyone can use it. That's the space I live in, so on the face of that and given that my customer colleague doesn't have any other requirements, Jabber it is. Thanks to Dave for his hinting in this direction.; Jabber works like this. I fire up my Jabber client (software on my machine) and log in to my Jabber server (software running elsewhere, accessible over the network or Internet). I choose who I want to chat with, write a note, and send it. The message goes from my software client on my computer to my chosen server, from that server across the Internet to my friend's server, and from there if my friend is logged in, to my friend's computer where they see my message. If they are not logged in, they'll see it later. It doesn't matter whether we use different Jabber servers, and it's possible to converse between different chat systems too.; So then I started to work through this getting started guide. On Linux, we tend to use Gaim for online chat, and that was already installed under Fedora Core 4 which I'm using, so no problem. Gaim will also interface with all the other major chat systems so I can use it with other customers on request. On the Mac Laptop, iChat will use Jabber, so we both have Jabber clients.; Next is setting up accounts. My Internet host doesn't provide a Jabber server, so I needed a public server, there's a list here. I went to Amber and at the bottom of the page it says to email for an account, so I did. Don't do this. If you read the FAQ, which I was politely asked to do, it says you can just set up an account yourself using your client software.; With Gaim it's not obvious how to do that, but this tells you how. I set up myself with Amber and then accidentally set up my colleague with Jabber.org (Gaim's default) which took a bit more work because there are many more users there and I kept getting a 409 error which was, obvious really, that the username was already taken. No matter, we can use different servers.; Then it was just a case of logging in on each machine, adding each other to our buddy lists, and we could chat. Yowser. So you can chat with me at JohnA@amber.org.uk (update: changed 5 Dec 2006). That's not an email address, Jabber chat addresses use a similar format.; Isn't it interesting that I clearly feel that Wikipedia usually provides more useful information than the main website of the company concerned? Apparently originally Tim Berners-Lee conceived the web as a collaborative medium, so a Wiki is probably more like the original web concept than the web itself. The idea obviously works, and if people can work collaboratively like this to create the best sites on the web, that really backs up usability testing within web design. WebDav appears to be providing possibilities along these lines too.; Last night my partner and I lay in bed trying to work out which, out of latitude and longitude, was pole to pole and which was parallel with the equator. We resolved to check Wikipedia. I've just created a mnemonic .. lOngitude is pOle to pOle, whereas lAtitude is parallel with the equAtor.; Linux: prev - next
Work stress: 13 March 2006: Everyone I talk to seems to be off work with stress caused by how they are being treated at work. I have four good friends who are in the process of leaving their jobs as a result. I suppose I'm lucky sitting here working for myself. The last time I worked as an employee was in about 1989 and I ended up not being able to sleep at night.; What I'm wondering is whether the effect the Thatcher years had on poor people in our society, detailed in Dark Heart had a longer term effect on the workplace.; If the plan was to make the difference between rich and poor larger to increase the pressure to work hard and stay on track, and at the same time reduce the power of the unions, then it's clear companies would, as a result, be able to get away with treating their people less well.; What I'm hearing is no-one takes responsibility for connecting anything. Directives filter down through different cascades of management and don't seem to meet or connect until they reach the front line worker who has to try to make sense of disparate or contradictory requirements. Surely making sense of these is what management's for.; The net result is that wherever the employee turns they'll be breaking some rule or other, and it's their head on the block. It's an impossible situation.; The support doesn't seem to be there if you actually do raise an issue. Everyone's busy, tired, irritable, and the only way forward is to march on together, because togetherness in adversity is the only good feeling you're going to get. Every one of the people I'm talking about have fallen back on their doctor and taken sick leave. It comes to something if your job makes you ill. Doesn't an employer have a responsibility to provide a safe environment in which to work? Which part of your employment contract allows employers to rape and pillage through your home life, sleep time, health, and leisure time?; These people need help. This can't go on.; I do like the free market though. What should happen is that one company should realise its best people are leaving and make changes so that it becomes known as the best employer. As a result, it gets the best people and keeps them, its costs are lower, its skills base much improved and it's more competitive.; I don't see any signs of that happening.; I don't know how this is going to end, but continuing to treat employees this way as a matter of course is intolerable. I suppose, watch out for this issue to become more of an 'issue' during the next few years. That and a free market boom in anti-stress remedies.
Portrait: 11 March 2006: My partner's just finished sitting for a portrait by Andrew Cheetham whose style we like very much. Last year when we toured the local artists as part of the open studio weeks we liked his work more than anything else we saw. We think Andrew Cheetham has soul.; I learned a lot from the last week or so. I had in my head this idea of an artist being somehow gifted and therefore perhaps finding it easy to draw or paint. Andrew is certainly gifted, but that's not all he brings to bear.; My partner sat for four days, during which Andrew did four portraits, each one better than the last. He treated the first three as exercises, as a way to get to know her face, to understand the characteristics that make her who she is. There's real stamina here and a serious determination to get it right. Andrew sets a high standard for himself and won't let it go until it's right. I feel the same way in my work, so I like that quality.; What surprised me, though, was the technical tricks he used throughout to get things right. It may seem obvious, but it isn't obvious to a lay person such as myself, but he spent most of his time holding his charcoal at arm's length towards my partner and then moving it to the page. We asked him to explain because we couldn't work out how he could measure like that because the portrait is larger than life size, but he was measuring angles and transferring them to the page.; He also used a mirror to get a fresh look at the portrait and subject.; We are well chuffed with the portrait. I've been banned from publishing it here by my partner but any friend or family member is bound to see it the next time they pop round.; We've got to know Andrew well and hopefully we can count him as a friend.
iTunes: 9 March 2006: Further to my previous rant, I've joined another band and I'm trying to research some songs to play using iTunes and .. well it hasn't got the original of Funky Town (that's an amazing website though isn't it? (I don't mean from a web developer's point of view, I just mean .. click Lipps Inc and look at the 'time', captured, in that photograph)). Amazingly, can you believe this, it hasn't got The Undertones as an artist. So just watch out .. iTunes really doesn't allow free exploration of music. It's a limited selection.
Iran: 9 March 2006: On October 12, 1999, Pervez Musharraf took control of Pakistan in a military coup. He was forced to hold elections which were generally held to be rigged, and he exiled key figures including editors and judges who were against him. Pakistan tested nuclear weapons in 1998. Musharraf and Pakistan are allies of the US in the war on terror.; Iran, on the other hand, has a democratically elected and popular leader in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who appears to be facing up to his country's finite oil supply by building civilian nuclear reactors. OK, I'd have thought solar would have worked pretty well in that part of the world, and yes, he's said a few uncomfortable things but if it's democracy we're fighting for, how come Musharraf is a goodie, and Ahmadinejad is a baddie?; Update 9 March 2006: Err, no John. Iran isn't a free democracy Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Channel 4 News. But then I'm about to sit down and watch a documentary about the British prisoners released from Guantanamo so human rights abuses happen in the West too.; I remember the CND protests, I was in Trafalgar Square in 1980/1 (whenever it was), but I don't remember the bit where we agreed to draw a line such that those countries who have nuclear weapons can keep them, and those who didn't manage to develop them by our arbitrarily chosen date can't. Surely a democratically elected government has a right to develop nuclear weapons if it wishes. I don't remember the moment when we agreed to the existing nuclear powers becoming world police, using their nuclear power to control which countries get to join the club.; If there is such a line, how come long term antagonists Pakistan and India got to join the club afterwards without all the fuss that Iran (with its declaration of peaceful intent) is now getting? Isn't this all just anti-islam prejudice, pure and simple? Doesn't the Islamic world look to the lessons of history, the holocaust among countless other atrocities based on religion, and think it's probably best to be able to defend themselves? America invaded Iran's neighbour, after all.; I'm against nuclear power (past musings 1, 2, 3), and against nuclear weapons. But I suppose the latter can't be uninvented, and it's not for me to tell Iran what to do. I'll continue to campaign here, where I hold 1/60,000,000th of the decision, for alternative energy.; Finally, how come America doesn't just invade or bomb Iran? Could it be they would be a powerful enemy? So America just bullies the weak. I know I'm stating the obvious, what everyone knows, but surely that just makes countries even more determined to be strong, to grow their military capabilities. What I don't understand is how that effect doesn't seem to be perceived by America.
Drumming: 8 March 2006: Jeez. You think you can drum, then a 12 year old comes along and does this.
Alan Sugar: 4 March 2006: Alan Sugar's a tosspot isn't he? Who would put themselves through his school of constant belittlement where nothing's ever good enough. What a depressing life it must be working for Amstrad.; When was the last time you bought an Amstrad product? Granted, I started business on their PC1640s but then they made that hi-fi with the sliding turntable which always stuck and have been known (at least in our family) for shoddy, low quality products ever since.; I suppose it's the money, but where's the soul?; Who would aspire to work like that? Not me.
Paul Elsam: 2 March 2006: I got clearance for the case study for my site for Paul Elsam.
Life model: 2 March 2006: This very nice chap is intending to run a series of life drawing classes starting in a couple of weeks time. You can turn up to one or more at, from memory, £18 per (5 hour) session, or £90 for all of them. We'd love to do it this time around but need to save our pennies.; However, he's also looking for a life model or two, so if you fancy doing a Jack Duckworth, do get in touch with him.; Contrary to what you might think after my Spencer Tunick experience, being a life model isn't something I fancy doing.