John Allsopp

Professionally engineered Internet solutions for humans

Boots: 29 September 2006: I'm not a regular shopper at Boots, but the last two times I've bought something (actually it may have been the same product) it's been priced differently at the till than on the shelf. Todays was £2.99 on the shelf, and £3.56 or similar on the checkout. Both times I raised the issue with the checkout person. Today I said what I've just said to you. She seemed embarrassed. She didn't say "I'll see to it that that gets sorted", or "I'll let the manager know", or "it must be wrong on the system, I'll let them know", she just had that look that said "this bloke's spotted our cunning plan". My feeling is, she wasn't going to do anything about it. So, what to do next time it happens? If they haven't got a system in place to feed back from the checkout to management, then, well, what? Management know nothing, no problems are solved. With more bad news stories than good knocking around, mostly about supermarket pressure, it feels like the vultures are circling. That's only right. You get to grow like Tesco by knowing what it's like to be a customer.
Suddenly, widescreen: 29 September 2006: I went out yesterday by bus to Pickering to see a potential lovely new client. My car is currently elsewhere. It's quite interesting getting around without. Scarborough's good for that, everything's in walking distance. Except taking the cat to the vet by taxi took two hours. But I did met an interesting taxi driver who played Patti Smith to me at 8:45am on a Monday morning. Refreshing.; The views from the top deck of the bus of English country villages were breathtaking. This pic might be Hutton Buscel.; Oh yes, my point. That client, who two months prior had never used a computer, brought out an HP Pavilion DV8000 widescreen laptop. It felt like the widest screen I'd ever seen, and raised all sorts of questions about fixed versus flexible web page layout. The idea has always been that it's probably better to produce a 'liquid' layout that fills the screen because then you're not dictating to the user how wide their screen should be. That's just polite.; If you fix the size of a web page, what size will you choose? Set it at 640x480 and it looks ridiculous to users with much larger screens, and if you set it at 1024x768 users with 640x480 screens have to left-scroll to see all of it, and users really don't like doing that. But text, once the line length gets over about 66 characters, becomes much less readable, so my flexible websites would be unusable on a widescreen unless, and this is what's supposed to happen, the user knows how to resize their windows. That can be assumed, since the point of having a large screen is usually to have lots of applications open at once side by side. But you can't assume that knowledge for this user, a mere 8 weeks into computing.; You can sense the screen size before providing the page, so you could build different versions, but that slows down the page load and breaks all sorts of principles that the standards people are trying to work through and would probably fail anyway for the same percentage of people, they'd just be different people.; The most interesting thing about it is that these screens are widescreen format, so they break that 4:3 relationship that we tend to expect screens to have. In control panel it said the screen was 1440 x 900 which is 1.6:1.; Then later I saw a friend, he opened his new Mac laptop, et viola, another widescreen.
Nokia: 27 September 2006: Huge glorious company, Nokia. All about communication. Beacon of European industry. Great phones. From the same part of the world as Linux. Fantastically successful .. surely more money than they know what to do with.; So when I go to nokia.com using my Linux machine, it loads up some Macromedia nonsense which, OK, is fast and lovely, and it asks me my 'region' and I choose Europe. I then get a list from Austria to Latvia. Great. But nothing I do makes that list scroll down. Not the arrow keys. Not the mousewheel. No clicking and dragging. Nothing. So here I am, trying to recommend something to a client, and I'm stuffed. (But see update below, it wasn't a Linux thing); I mean, it makes me want to tear my skin off with my fingernails. It's so outrageously basic. Test your site for usability. Adhere to web standards. Make your sites accessible. Either that or look, not like you don't care, but like you would really prefer it if the people of the world were a homogeneous bunch of cool, young, Windows using, lifestyle conscious climbers and people with disabilities, those who do things a little differently or have their brain switched on don't exist.; The fundamental tenet of the world wide web is that people may access it using whatever method and device suits them. It's our job, as web developers, to provide sites everyone can use. A Linux computer isn't that crazy for chrissakes, it's still a normal computer with a mouse, a normal sized screen, and Firefox browser. What about mobile devices, or the sort of setup a blind person uses or an antique computer somewhere on the demographic edge?; I'm not saying I'm perfect, but I do everything I can within the client's budget.; OK, I won't go further. Nokia gets points for translating their site into Latvian. Actually, that's wonderful. That's accessibility too. More sites should translate.; And the .co.uk site overcomes the problem. They don't yet deserve a link for that tho.; Ohhhhh, but then they fall down on printing. The page for the product I'm looking at, the E61, when you print it, because the product picture on the page is an unnecessary smartypants Flash animation, it doesn't print out. Sorry Nokia, I'd love to recommend this product to my client, but I was unable to print the page out. Ohhhhh, and when you click to get a big image of the product in the shop, all the browser options have been removed so you can't print that. Where's their head at?; Update: A chap from Accenture just wrote and said, besides lots of lovely things like he's a regular reader and keep up the interesting writing (awwww, proper filled me up, I like Accenture too (they were on a shortlist of one of potential employers when I was at uni) :-) ), the little blue arrow to the right of Austria in the offending country-selection page provides for the horizontal scroll of that country list. Quite so. Amazing. I'm lost for words.; It's OK, the words have come back. Where to start? Well I thought that little blue arrow (so little, someone with a sight impairment wouldn't notice it) was to select Austria, normally you'd expect it to move about as the mouse rolled over the options, so I assumed that part was broken too. The idea of a horizontal scroll is just so completely mental. One of the usability tests shows people a mock up of a proposed screen and asks them something like "what would you do to find UK", or "what would happen if you clicked that little blue triangle". I'll bet not more than 1 in 100 would think that clicking the blue triangle would scroll the country list, because we're not expecting a horizontal scroll.; And OK, there's a case to be made for discovery, for thinking that people will click that blue triangle just to see what it would do, and then smile to themselves in delight at how it scrolled horizontally, not vertically. Wow. They'd call over their colleagues "hey, Bill, come see this, it's fantastic". I mean, really, get a grip. The problem is it's out of context. It's like a funeral director that tells jokes, or a really depressed flower seller ("here I am, brain the size of a lily"). On an art site, sure you'd expect that sort of thing, super smashing lovely, lots of new ideas, wonderful, inspiration, all the joys of life. But I want to buy a Nokia phone. End of. I don't want the coolest anything. If I want tickets to a gig I'll buy them from where I normally buy them from. I want a phone. I need an efficient website to help me do that, or I'll go somewhere else. One click's all it takes.; Update: Then, in a burst of vindication, a friend emailed to say he uses the Nokia site a lot and always went to Ireland as he couldn't find the UK. He thought the Austria triangle was so Austrians could choose their counties. See. I told you. Didn't I tell you? I did, just then, I told you. And you thought this was all just so much bollocks.; Update: Then my Accenture reader had another thought. The list of languages is in English. Would you know what 'English' is if presented in Finnish, or Russian?
Scarborough webcam: 24 September 2006: My g/f is a fan of MetCheck and suggested I add a webcam to their weathercam page as a means of marketing myself. I don't think it's really that, although all publicity is good publicity, but I thought it was an interesting project anyway.; I didn't want to provide access to the camera directly as I thought that would increase the chance of a security breach, so I've constructed a chain of events that accepts the image from the camera and pushes it out to my website. That happens every minute, at least until I switch this machine off.; You want to see don't you? OK, here it is.; I'm using a Neu Fusion NCS-330W from network-camera.co.uk. It's very nice from a network engineer's point of view, but I have to say I'm disappointed at the image quality. What you're seeing is the highest resolution, lowest compression option. OK, I bought a video camera not a stills one, if such a thing exists, but still. And there's no zoom or other possibility (eg. a variety of lenses), things I didn't realise I wanted until I hadn't got them, so it's probably best suited for security work. But then, I keep seeing crime reports on the news containing security camera footage and they show the enhanced shot of some unrecognisably blurred face and ask if you've seen that person around and I can't help feeling that there's really no excuse any more for the poor quality of security cameras. At night, too, there are really a lot of artifacts in the image. Perhaps the point is that if the camera were high quality and included in its vista, for instance, a bedroom window, the camera owner could be sued for invasion of privacy. But for the price I certainly can't complain. Just, maybe next time I'll know more about what I actually want.; I must say, I'm rather chuffed with myself. For once, that's a Linux project that was green lights all the way, even though it involved lots of steps and lots of things you'd only know if you knew what you were doing.; In fact, I win, because MetCheck's camera adding asp nonsense isn't working; so, mine's working, but their's is broken. Ha!
Semester plan: 24 September 2006: I've a pearl of wisdom from someone who got a first to anyone about to start uni. Here's how I see the semester:; From left to right is time, the first week starts as the curve starts to rise on the left hand side, and ends as it falls through the solid blue line on the right hand side. The vertical axis is workload, the higher the curve, the more workload there is. The solid blue line represents your average workload.; I'm saying that the start of a semester seems easy enough, but as you are taught things, so you must be assessed. I once challenged a lecturer on an essay she gave us that I thought we could have written on week one, thinking that what she was assessing was our critical thinking skills perhaps, or our ability to find stuff out. No, she said, she hadn't taught us anything yet. So the assessment (exam, project, essay) is about testing whether you've internalised what you've been taught. Inevitably, then, assessments come later in the semester when you have been taught something.; But lectures don't stop, they carry on throughout, and whatever system you have in place for learning (I recommend Buzan's Use Your Head) has to press on to the end of term, especially if there's an exam at the end.; So, a module is, what, 10 hours per credit and maybe 20 credits so 200 hours of study over however many weeks. OK, let's get detailed. Taking a typical semester for me in 2002, it started 23 Sept 2002 and teaching stopped on the 13 December. Then we had exams from the 6th Jan to 24th. So, 12 weeks of lectures, 3 weeks 'off' over Christmas, and 3 weeks of possible exams. We had three modules per term.; We were given an hours plan, for example: for a 20 credit module I was given: 30 hours in lectures, 15 hours in labs, 15 hours preparing for labs, 48 hours reading course texts, 40 hours on assessment project, 50 hours revising for exam, 2 hours sitting the exam, total 200 hours.; Now. The point about my diagram is that the workload increases a lot towards the end of term and that has a tendency to surprise you because you've gotten used to a certain amount of work, and then you find you've got three time-consuming assessment projects to complete and exams to take. If you're not prepared for that, it's more than the hours in the week. The green dashed line (are you proud of me for handling colour blind readers by making that line a different style too?) represents the most work you can muster in a week, given the catshit you have to clean up, the shopping you must do, the hours you spend non-productively yacking with your mates in the hour-slot between lectures, and the drinks you must consume in the bar of an evening.; It's almost a law: The workload at the end of any university semester is more than can be humanly done. The Health and Safety Executive would condemn it if it were a workplace. But you bought it, and here's where you lose marks. Here's where you have to give twenty hours to a thirty hour project because you run out of time, and for that, the most you can expect, even if everything you did was right, is 67%.; You might think you'd be dead chuffed to get 67%. That's a 2:1 after all. But that's your upper limit. And don't believe those who say, and they do, that having a first class degree marks you as somehow maladjusted or socially inept. That's bullshit jealousy, frankly. The people who got firsts on my course all have a sense of power and control about them. They are suns around whom planets orbit. You may think a first isn't worth getting. But take the long view. If you're twenty years old now, you've maybe another sixty years to live. Do you think you'll regret getting a first when you're forty or fifty? I'm saying you'll still be proud of it. So do your older self a favour and prove yourself now. When you feel the burn for a digital camera or a new CD and realise you can't quite afford it, think of that for the rest of your life. A first will give you more earning power. It will help to get you the things you want. You'll feel fantastic putting it on your CV. So don't carp about your student loan, take the positive view and make the most of what you're buying. A degree is only three years, it's not a lifetime, so get stuck in. It's not about your ability, it's just application and organisation, and anyone can do that.; Remember too that what looks like a well resourced department now will be hell when the peak time comes. The computer labs are full, all the books have been taken out of the library, there's nowhere to sit, and everyone's ragged. So get the books out early so it's done.; So, and here really is the whole point, you have to find a way of taking that peak of workload in the second half of the semester, and putting it into that slack time at the start of the semester.; There are two key rules. The first is to only give a task its allotted hours. No more. If you fail it, that's a badly designed module, assuming you've applied yourself intelligently and are capable. If you give a bad module more than its fair share of hours, you're stealing from the modules you are good at, and from the ones the lecturers have properly designed. There's an underlying (business) rule supporting this which is "do what you're good at (and buy in the skills you are not good at)", by which I don't mean pay a graduate to write your essays, I just mean if you're going to make a difference, you have to concentrate on your strengths, which means don't give time to what you're not good at. Obviously you have to pass the course though, so if you find yourself with a module you're struggling with, try hard, do your best, get help from your tutor and colleagues, don't give up .. all that. But cut it off after the hours are done, and if you fail it, so be it. It's a very calming thought, this. When others are losing their rag, if you've done your hours, you're done, you can sleep soundly.; The second key rule, and perhaps the overriding one, is to do things early. Never ever leave anything to the last minute. So when a lecturer gives you a project for assessment, or an essay to write, start work on it. Spread the time over the weeks to hand-in. Don't, however, do it all up front because often you are yet to learn things you need, and the lecturers will often give you clues along the way, but don't leave it either. Do what you can. If you don't, you'll think "there's plenty of time" and then as hand-in draws closer you'll realise that not only is there that to hand-in but a couple of other major projects too.; So. The plan. Our 20 credit module required 200 hours over a maximum of 18 weeks. That last 3-week exam period's difficult to plan for because all your exams could come in the first week, so I used to plan for them all to come in the middle, so might as well plan for 16 weeks of study. 200/16 = 12.5 hours per week.; 1.5 of those hours is spent in lectures, and most of the time 2 hours on preparing for and being in the labs, so that leaves 9 hours of discretionary time in the week. Later, those will be taken up with assessment projects and exam revision, so the only thing you can do in the first weeks in those 9 hours is reading course texts. So that's my advice. Just make sure you're reading what you need to read (talk to your lecturer). A spreadsheet's good for working all this out. If you can't afford Microsoft Office, download Open Office, it's free.; So reading the texts, at 9 hours a week, would probably take you through the first five weeks if that's all you did, but you still need to be doing that after the lectures of the last week, so, yes, in week 1 and maybe 2 you'd read for 9 hours, but after that it starts to drop off and give way to other things you have to do .. someone may give you an early project for instance. If that happens, and in all sorts of other instances, you don't (obviously) have to stick with your 12.5 hours per week for every module. If one module needs all the time one week, then just trade hours across the week boundaries. It's all flexible, just so long as you've done the right hours at the end, and so long as you remember that you're trying to balance your workload across the weeks.; For me, however, I worked long-term on getting things into my head. Revising, in other words. Once you've had a lecture and taken notes and worked out, in conjunction with the books, what it all means and written up your notes, I then worked on getting them into my head. Slowly at first, but more as the exams neared. So reading gives way slowly to that and towards the end of teaching, almost completely to assessment work.; Oh, and when they say there are two assessment projects, one worth 40% and the other 60%, allocate that percentage of the 40 hours for assessment projects and no more. They are telling you where the points are, so put your time in the same places.; I'd add a final rule. I thought going to university and taking a degree course was about exploring a subject in your own way, bringing your own views to bear, being adult. That's a mistake. The lecturers teach, you learn, they test you, you tell them what they told you. Now matter how much they tell you it isn't, it's school.; And finally finally, when they give you an assessment criterion for a project, eg. 20% of the marks are for planning, 20% for presentation, or whatever, make sure you allocate that time properly and write it up.; So, yes, it's a lot of planning, you have to keep control of all that. But that is how I got my first, not because I'm particularly clever, but because I worked hard and I managed myself well. Anyone can do it. Good luck.
Catshit: 24 September 2006: First the video starting up woke me. I'd decided to tape a film thinking I'd sleep through the startup. Then the smell of catshit. Then the cat rubbing past me that smelled of catshit. But the final straw was when she sat on my arm and I felt wetness on her bum. That woke me. It's 03:52 and I've just cleaned her bum for her (and my elbow for me). So now I'm awake. I'm wondering if worms might cause this, because it's happening a lot recently. I sense a trip to the vets.; Update: It was Campylobacter.; I'd been out to see Snatch (apparently from Morpeth) at the Lancaster. They do 'covers in a punk style'. They got a hen night party dancing to a punk version of Tainted Love. Sorry about the quality of these pics.; I checked out a few other places en-route. There was a lot of live music, I saw two covers bands through the windows and both seemed pretty dire. Both pubs seemed to contain larger audiences though, the Lancaster contained about forty people. My friend, who knows about such things, reckoned that because it's the last pub along the seafront, the pubs before it tend to soak up the majority of the revellers.
Happy birthday blog: 22 September 2006: It's my blog's 3rd birthday today. In September 2003 I'd graduated earlier that year and was deep into the excitement of implementing what I new. Reading those blogs I feel a little embarrassed at my fervour. I was wholly aware that that's how new graduates behave, but I felt, and still feel, that I'd been set up with the right tools and all that was needed was a life of implementation.; So what were those tools? I've been thinking about this because I know people who are starting university and I'm thinking in their shoes about preparatory reading. The problem with that is, well, it's good, but I bought Macromedia Dreamweaver before uni thinking it would help, and before that in my early days, for my first website I wanted Windows hosting because I thought I'd be more familiar with it because I used Windows on my own machine (received with a resounding "uh" by the hosting sales chap at the other end of the phone), and I spoke with The Learning Tree about a whole raft of Microsoft training. I know someone locally who calls himself a web designer but really he's just farting around with Flash .. and it's all so very, very wrong. All of that. All those paths lead in the wrong direction.; So when, on my first day at uni (as I'm sure I've mentioned before), the lecturer said "you'll be writing websites in a text editor, now boot up Linux", I knew something was up.; The Internet, and the World Wide Web, come from the same culture. Well, OK, not the structure of the Internet which came out of the American military, but pretty much everything else that runs on it comes from an open source culture that's wholly and materially different from the world that we've become accustomed to.; Take a look at this ad.; I spent ages looking at it. I couldn't work out whose ad it was. The first notable word is 'Marks'. Is this a Marks and Spencer ad? It's certainly along their lines in principle, emphasising the quality of their food, but didn't seem to have the design hallmarks. Is it Sainsbury's, that orange seems like the Sainsbury orange. I wasn't really sure it was an ad. But the thing that frustrated me most was that the question "where can I buy this" seemed to be left unanswered. I felt unsatisfied. Annoyed, even, that I'd spent time on the ad and now had a frustrated desire for my pains. That's how all-embracing the commercial world has become. (It's Waitrose, it's buried in the text. Deliberately? Or is there a printing error, should something have gone in that space below?); Update: The fact that the first letters of each paragraph spell WAITROSE in big letters might have been a clue. My partner spotted it on the follow-up ad where the background was darker so I think the letters stood out more. So not a printing error. It's obvious now I've spotted it, but I think on a bigger page it's less obvious.; I'm not saying I'm against business, far from it. I run one. I do honestly believe that business and the free market is more likely to solve society's problems than pretty much anything else, including charities, governments, the NHS and the UN. And I'm not upset by, nor begrudging of, profit. It's just, I'm scared that the rest of life, the free stuff, telling funny stories, going for walks, doing things for yourself, will be lost or made insignificant. That we will, by default, expect to buy whatever we need and only be satisfied with that.; The culture of the Internet is a free and open source one. It's built on giving things away, on sharing what you know, on working together. And there's a whole parallel universe out there. It's like finding a girlfriend: suddenly you get a whole load of new friends, and new and enjoyable things to do.; My university degree course gave me an appreciation of the culture of the Internet, the value system that drives it. That underpins everything. It means, when I talk to other Internet professionals we start on the same page. It means when I learn something I learn the right thing .. and that's very important considering how little time we spend on this earth. It means I can do things without having to go to PC World to find a box of software to help.; I don't think my preparation for university helped much, because I didn't yet know the value system against which things would be judged, so I made the wrong choices. Yes I learned stuff at uni, but the two enduring things I've retained are that I've internalised the right value system, and I know how to learn.; Incidentally, for different reasons, I didn't have much luck with preparatory reading midway through the course either, after, you'd have thought, I'd learned the value system. That's because lecturers often leave things to the last minute, so the course you start next week is planned this, and the lectures are written the night before they are given. I bought (and they are not cheap) and started reading the set book for a module about a week before starting, only to find that the lecturer had not only changed the book, but changed the entire content of the module so rather than the technology my book covered, we were now covering a completely different technology. Burned by that, the next time I checked with a lecturer before doing the same, and while he didn't change the book, the things he emphasised the previous year had become almost irrelevant this. I didn't find a way to beat all that, so relax, you can't get ahead.; There was an article in the same paper about how to grow old gracefully and the author said to forget the idea of going back to uni. She said, more or less "if you can't learn what you want by reading up on the subject yourself, that's a poor show". I did think I might go back one day, maybe when I retired (if I ever do) and study something completely different, botany keeps coming up, but maybe she's right. Maybe I know how to study, so, particularly at that age, it would just be ego wanting the extra certificate and to be able to say what I'd done at parties. Oh well, that sort of thing makes the world go around, doesn't it?
Richard Hammond: 21 September 2006: Oh shit, Richard Hammond's seriously injured after a crash. Not just any crash of course, a crash in a rocket car attempting to break the land speed record. Jeez. Dunno why I feel like blogging that over other news items, maybe I just like the guy .. well, his on-screen persona anyway.; Just one thing about the car he was in. 0-272mph in 6 seconds.; Update: more details.
Fif Robinson Wikipedia entry: 21 September 2006: I think my Fif Robinson Wikipedia entry has been rejected. They say you can't just put up pages about your mates, people have to have some level of importance, and also pages can be rejected because they don't contain enough information. Well Fif seems to have been 'important' enough, so I'd like to try again but I'll need more information this time. Since I never actually knew the chap, I'll need some help. So if anyone has a brief life summary for me, I'll be happy to write it up and try again.
Seagull kite: 21 September 2006: I was driving along on Tuesday evening, listening to a Christmas CD really loud and singing along, working out which tunes would suit which band, and on the pavement were two young girls, maybe 13 years old or so. One was on a bike, cycling along, the other running behind. The cycling girl was holding the string of a seagull kite, and the girl behind was running trying to launch it but each time they got up speed and she let go, the kite just fell to the ground. They were absolutely helpless with laughter.; It was just a beautiful moment I thought I'd share.
My dentist: 20 September 2006: I found my dentist by recommendation. I emailed everyone I knew who lived locally and asked, and got many different answers but one chap, Mr Rudland, was recommended twice so I went with him. Nice chap. That worked. I started to think I was getting a bit of a relationship with him, that I'd say hello on the street and so on.; So I was a bit perturbed to discover, on my last visit, that the practice had changed hands and my Mr Rudland had retired to Spain. Firstly, because I didn't think he was much older than me, so what's with the retirement thing in the first place?; The new logo is SpaDental, and my new dentist is Ruudi (not his real name) from the Czech Republic. Ruudi has quite scary curly hair. So my head turns to various thoughts. How good are Czech dentists? If the place was communist until 1989, doesn't our free market provide continuing improvement versus the dead hand of communism, therefore, wouldn't a Czech dentist be less skilled? My neighbour had tales of his dentist going the same way, except his was Polish and couldn't speak a word of English, he just went "nice teeth" at the end, leaving the nurse with nothing to write, was I in for that? And how much is this chap being paid? Given that I'm paying the same as ever, that would make SpaDental the beneficiary and turn them into some predatory bunch of financial investors taking advantage of this country's lack of skilled dentists. So much for how nice our free market system is.; But the staff behind the counter were the same staff and seemed relatively happy, and Ruudi himself could speak English. He said he'd been in England for three months. His inspection of my teeth was the most thorough I've ever had. And surely he'd have to practice to UK standards. In one comedy moment, he's doing the "right molar occlusal" nonsense and the dental nurse says something like "is that the bingly or bingly type" and he says in a thick accent "I dohn't know". With about six of his fingers in my mouth, I could only say "hat u ean you ohn know?"; In the end the SpaDental website's done very well. There's nothing I can pick up on, it all seems perfectly sensible. Why would a dentist want to get involved in all the administration of a practice? If they could find a partner who specialises in financial management and business efficiency, and if they partner with a software company, then that's the way it's supposed to be isn't it? And if that results in efficiencies, dentists retiring early, and so on, am I not just jealous? Anyway, I think my practice is now run by, from memory, Linda Williams, so at least there's someone English knocking around the place. And jealousy has no place, firstly as I've blogged before, I've zero desire to retire to Spain and sit around pickling myself. Secondly, if I want to be a dentist, I can retrain. So bully for him.; We are left with only a vague sense that our callback today for a scale and polish might be superfluous, a way to get more money out of each customer. After all, I only had my first ever last year, and now they seem to be expected annually. There are gaps, too, in their appointment book. That was never true of Mr East in Long Eaton, the standard against which all other dentists must be judged. Oh, and a vague sense that my thoughts have been racist.; Oh no, there's more. Dentistry isn't a free market. It's a closed shop, run by a professional body. It's probably closer to communism than free market. After all, I can't just call myself a dentist and start hacking away at your incisors. That professional body works to further the cause of its members. So my practice is now taking an x-ray of my teeth every eighteen months, and wants me checked every six months whereas I was previously being checked every year. Presumably some guidance was issued by the professional body to cause that. My point, though, is that the prices dentists charge are set centrally, so the free market doesn't work here. There's no downward pressure on prices and upward pressure on efficiency. Just a professional body creeping forever forward, doing things we don't necessarily want. Do I want an x-ray? No. A scale and polish? No. A checkup? Not even that really, at my age with my history I think once every five years should be enough. But we gradually come to accept these things as normal, which is what they want.; Check out Disabling Professions. It's as life-changing as The Corporation.
American rice: 18 September 2006: It appears American rice is mostly contaminated with a GM strain that was never meant to get out and so hasn't been safety tested. The EU is refusing to let the stuff in, but since the Americans didn't tell us until too late, there's some in the system. I certainly won't be buying or eating any American rice for a long time.; So then it hit me. How could I have been so stupid? When I was campaigning against GM food I argued that this scenario was pollution, that it violated our right to unadulterated food, that accidental releases like this would benefit GM companies by getting us used to GM in the environment, that we don't know the consequences. All that's water off a duck's back to the GM companies.; Now I've read The Corporation, I know my argument should have been this. GM is too hard to control, and the public don't want it. So, if a GM company accidentally releases just a tiny amount of GM pollen, it may well contaminate the normal crop and there's no way to get rid of it. If it does that, people will reject it. The value of the crop will decrease, causing economic hardship to the producers and investors, causing political difficulties, and hurting their goodwill. Polluting normal crops with GM will cost GM companies money, and they can't guarantee it won't happen.
Fif Robinson: 18 September 2006: It's not my place to do this, but I just started a Wikipedia page for Fif Robinson who died recently (that link doesn't work right now, could be an addition delay, maybe new pages are human-policed, and/or it's possible it may never get through such a process). He started and ran Whitby On Fire, a mailing list of events, mostly musical. It's through that that I met the members of the second band I'm in. The thing is, the tales I'm hearing are so fantastic that he really did seem to be a very noteworthy person, campaigning on green issues, returning the old gasworks to a more natural state, working for local music, and .. well the thing that's stuck with me is he built a hovercraft, apparently. The funeral seems to have been something those attending will never forget. I want to know more about this man. I feel his loss because so many people around me knew him, and I never will. So if you knew him, edit the Wikipedia page. You do know you can edit Wikipedia pages don't you? And if someone writes a book, let me know when it comes out.
Mister Marvels: 18 September 2006: The smell of acrid smoke woke me up. It's 02:54 and I've just wandered out to find the source. As I was pulling on my trousers a fire engine crept down the street. Someone had set alight someone's binbag near the bottom of Tollergate. A couple of kids maybe 15 years old called me over and tried to score or sell some weed or smack or borrow a tenner or were joking. I said I never have, and they looked at me like "yeah, right". I think I look like I have. They reckon they saw who did it but didn't know their name.; So now I'm awake with a Celestial Seasonings Sleepytime tea and may as well blog as it'll take a couple of hours before I feel tired again.; I took some photographs of the old Mister Marvels Leisure Park. It's been dismantled ready for the new development, but some of the old structures are there. It's a photographer's dream. My partner said I'm a good photographer, which made me proper chuffed because she was studying photography when I met her so she knows a thing or two. A couple of other friends have said similar things in the past day or so too.; I rather like these two TellyTubbyesque leftovers from the dinosaur feature. Someone's graffitied on them. One says "fuck off", the other "cunt". I just got to thinking whether the perpetrator has in mind the message first and wanders out thinking "where shall I write 'fuck off cunt' today?", or whether the site came first and the message inspiration later. I didn't notice whether there was a comma. What a smart arse I am. Actually, it would be nice to meet the person who did it. Interesting.; As an aside, the other night I did meet a bloke who looked much older than I think I look (probably I'm misguided actually in that regard) but turned out to be younger than me, tattooed, just got out of prison. He showed me his papers .. theft and assault. Nice bloke, but a bit difficult to understand. Perhaps some things I didn't want to hear. Someone else he spoke with said he'd been abused as a kid. One tattoo contained a mark for every day he'd spent in prison. He wanted to get his life together and asked if I could help. My friend was drawing his face so I tried to engage him in conversation and give my friend a subject .. I asked him when was the best time of his life and he said when he was twelve years old and his dad took him to Morecambe.; I've no caterpillar pics for you caterpillar fans, but this decrepit Mr Marvels is a wonderful haven for wildlife.; All that was on the way to the Acoustic Gathering.; If you haven't been to an event at Peasholm Park, the stage is on the boating lake.; Now I'm not really an acoustic typa guy, not in this sense anyway. One man and a guitar doesn't often do it for me. I guess Patrick Fitzgerald was pleasant enough, and you can't deny Billy Bragg. I'm probably missing a whole world of revolutionary music. I think I am. There's the blues for a start. There was talk of an acoustic movement. I'm usually late realising these things. In principle it should work because it appeals to my sense of minimalism. But generally there are a lot of people who think they are good enough to cut it, but aren't and they rest on the audience's good nature. After all, it's easy to play guitar. It's a lifetimes work to do it well (Allsopp's law: every field of endeavour is as complicated and difficult as humans can stand. In other words, there's no simple way, just a combination of hard work, perseverence, and luck).; We saw some of the artists around three till maybe five o'clock and, pleasant enough, but I couldn't help feeling what they needed was someone with a bloody big drum kit behind them. Beautiful atmosphere though and most people seemed to be treating it like backing music for a party with their friends.; Blodwyn something or other, the Welsh drugs and crochet poetess (I'm working on a link), was pretty fabulous though once she'd untangled her poncho from the music stand. I sat next to her friend who talked about going to rock festivals in the sixties.; My partner and I wandered home, ate a banana, watched the news, got a jacket and came back for Jon Gomm. Now he was good. Very skilled. Possibly alienated half his audience by joking about his groupies being dogs, but hey.; But for me it was a bit like one of those school projects where the teacher takes a grapefruit to represent the sun and a pea to represent Mercury and gives it to Jeremy in the front row, and proceeds through the planets until he reaches Pluto, (prior to its demotion, this is), which is so far away he represents it by placing a lentil in Uttoxeter.; Nick Harper was that lentil. But in a different sense. Actually, like this:; Nick Harper is all you need to know. Someone in the audience had travelled from Devon, 400 miles, to see him. He's the sun and the earth and the universe. He's love and freedom and joy. He's rock and roll. One man and a guitar. He filled the place with everything there is. He was like the centre of a black hole, so dense with talent. He has a party trick. He replaced a string and tuned up so seamlessly while improvising a strong vocal line with his fabulous singing voice .. a minute or so of acapella to beat anything we've heard. Just think about trying that: you've got to sing fabulously expressive vocals while finding the right string, threading it up, and then while keeping the vocal not just going, but keeping it fantastic, listen for the off notes from the new string while minimally disrupting the song, and tune it up. He did it so well, anyone who couldn't see the stage would have thought it was just how the song was. He got a massive round of applause each of the two times he did that.; We gave him a standing ovation (and I think the last time I did that was The Undertones in Liverpool in about 1979), and when a friend said, more or less "I beg to differ" afterwards, we couldn't allow him to speak. No. You don't intellectualise this. You feel it, and if you didn't then so be it. It's heart and soul.; If you missed him, I think he said he's playing York Fibbers in a month or so. Oh yes, I see on mySpace, lots of dates. Make the effort .. it's what life's for.; I've run out of breakfast cereal, no idea what I'm going to do in the morning.
Kinks: 16 September 2006: I'm am blind, and blinded. How have I missed The Kinks? They are everything I want in music. Actually that's quite a small set of requirements, mostly centreing on being English and energetic although there must be some rule that eliminates Bucks Fizz. Oh yes, mustn't be offensively sexist, that'll be it. On iTunes, the snippet of "You really got me" is live and sounds just like a punk record, fresh, exciting, but the song was released in August 1964.; Paul from one of the bands I'm in seems to have been a fan for a while. And I spoke to a friend who said "you don't know Waterloo Sunset! Only one of the best songs ever". Yeah yeah. Well I'm sorry, but I missed it. And if they were so great, why didn't you mention it before? And did he know anything about Richard Stallman? No. So touch-bleeding-é. Plus, it's not on iTunes so it doesn't exist. Apple rewriting history: thought police, 1984 style. There are covers on there, so I recognise the tune.; Actually I think the reason I've not connected with them is there are lots of Kinks tunes I probably don't like that much. Lola is obviously great, but I know it from The Raincoats. All the quirky humorous tunes .. Sunny Afternoon, Dedicated Follower of Fashion, Apeman all leave me cold. What's got me is the fresh, early rock and roll work. As always, it's the early work that really has it.; However, Ray Davies is still touring .. you can see him in York on the 5th November, and tonight at the Liquid bar in Scarborough (formerly Murrays), there's a Kinks cover band. The Kynks? The Clinks? The Chinks. Who knows. Might even go see.; Update: A friend wrote to say that he did try to tell me back in 1977 there was other good music other than punk but I wouldn't listen. Plus, I didn't get to the Liquid bar.
Minge: 15 September 2006: I was sat with my parents-in-law yesterday evening when Keith Chegwin said "if God had wanted us to stick our cocks up people's arses, he wouldn't have given us minge". Classic.
eMute: 14 September 2006: I want to create a new word. If you know the bloke who runs the Oxford English Dictionary can you let him know? It's eMute. An eMute is someone who reads emails but never replies to them. It's as if they haven't a keyboard, they can click around their email client with their mouse, read their messages, and they'll say things to your face when you meet them, but not a sausage online. I've a few friends and acquaintences like that. They just never reply at all .. not an acknowledgment, nothing. eMutes all.; Also, I've a rule for communication in the muttlymedia age. Reply using the method you were contacted by. I sent a text message to a digitally aware friend to organise something in the day. I did that because I wasn't at my desk. He responded by email. Well, that's no use. Respond using the method you were contacted by because the sender knows more about their plans than you do.
Buff Ermine: 14 September 2006: More Buff Ermine shenanigans in our back garden. This year they're eating a fern.; Last year.
Solved, the New Year's Day tide: 12 September 2006: Ok, here you can get tide predictions for Whitby for a wide range of dates. If you bring up new year's day 1995 you'll see there was a high tide of 5.58m at 15:39 local time, which correlates with the sun setting in my pictures. No other year around it works. So it was 1995.; But that tide height of 5.58m is 62cm lower than the 6.20m high tide that happened last Sunday morning. So that's the difference the weather makes. Now I vaguely remember people talking about a low pressure system over us at the time, maybe that would either suck more water towards us or/and make wind blow it towards us. No idea, but something made a difference.
New Year's Day high tide: 11 September 2006: I couldn't claim to have pics of that New Year's Day high tide and not back it up.; This was the view from the car as we drove in. You can see the sun's setting so we'd set off quite late.; When we came back we could see the red car had been floated or battered off its parking spot and lifted onto the central reservation.; The sea really did reach the back wall and the amusements
The weekend: 11 September 2006: Sunday morning was the highest tide for a decade or more, at 6:30am, so we upped and went. It was a beautiful morning, but calm as anything.; On a new year's day perhaps twelve years ago we drove from Derby to Scarborough just out of interest and turned the corner under valley bridge to see the foreshore road flooded. The police closed the road behind us and we had to drive through it. Excited, we parked on Eastborough and walked down to watch. The tide was high enough and strong enough it was moving cars into the central reservation. Coney Island had sandbags in front, but was still getting seawater stretch into their premises, soaking the carpet. We stood above it where the railings are (and now the landscaped walk up to the council offices) and watched as people attempted to wave dodge underneath us and come out soaked to the waist. I've pictures to prove all this (see above). We thought, 'if life in Scarborough is this exciting, we want to live here'. It is, but we've never seen anything like that day since. In all of the recent high tides, the water's hardly wet the road. I must track that back someday and see what height the tide was on that day. Sundays was supposed to be 6.17m. But obviously weather conditions also affect what happens on the day. Reading this perhaps the easiest thing, in the absence of old tide tables, would be to use astronomical software to work out which new years day around that time had the sun and moon and earth in some sort of line.; On Saturday the news said there was free entry to a range of heritage sites across Britain, so we had a wander around Scarborough Castle. Again we'd done this maybe ten years ago and thought "there's nothing here", but .. there is. A small museum of archaeological finds including a bronze sword, jewellery and pottery. Great views. A shop and coffee place. A large expanse of grass. It's all very civilised and nice.; In this view from Scarborough Castle, you can see where we live (I've put in a white arrow) but also if you look on the horizon there are two aerials and two discs. Those are the ones I ran towards (from behind) on this run, so I was almost home when I reached those. Oh, and on Saturday early evening I ran my longest training run yet and possibly longest ever .. ten miles. I ran the adaptation of that route, heading north from the furthest point and coming back along the sea cut, then heading directly to the coast and running the last part of the Cleveland Way and ending on North Bay. That was much, much better. The cut itself is a canal shaped hole with a bit of water in the bottom, but its banks were populated with pretty blue flowers (best guess Sheepsbit Scabious) and the whole route takes in Peasholm Park, the beautiful old cemetary, a bit of town, woodland, a lake, the sea cut, more woodland, Scalby village (which has a beautiful and very traditional English village feeling), open countryside, and stunning sea cliffs. Can't complain about that.; This shows South Bay. Those aerials are at Oliver's Mount. That's a fifty minute run .. twenty minutes to the top, ten minutes around, twenty minutes back.; Oh well, I may we well complete the set and give you a view of North Bay too.; To be honest though, I was most impressed with the diversity of the field. They'd let it grow and flower a little, and just look at the amazing things growing together here. It was spongy and beautiful to walk on. Absolutely wonderful to see. It makes a neat lawn seem an abomination, like factory farming.; Kanba, our cat, has just wandered in covered in burrs. Of course when she tries to clean them out of her fur they stick around her mouth too, so I suppose we'll have to help her.; On Saturday I was getting off on the dog roses on North Bay. I think that's what they are anyway.; The surf was perfect (I don't know if you can tell from this poor quality image) so we took some sandwiches out to watch.; Saturday night was the first Acquiescence night: an evening of chilled out grooves and blissful images in the Spa's Suncourt. Cap'n Antz tells me he'll be putting up some images of the night .. it looked beautiful. It captured the town's mood perfectly. This, the first week when the kids are back, is when Scarborians come out of their holes and look around again after the marauders have left. They see how beautiful the place is. The sun's still here but it's a bit cooler and less sweaty. And the town, built for hoards of tourists who have now left, feels spacious and free. It's the very best time of year to be here. Pensioners turn up in buses and reminisce about their good times here. Acquiescence seemed to capture that mood. Friends got together, having not done over the summer, in a really positive atmosphere. Very nice. Well done all (Godzilla, Pete Massey, Kista, and Antz I think).; I took an enquiry during the week and met them on Saturday. It's a very interesting and long term project .. right up my alley. It might even allow me to tick off one of my business ideas .. that's fine, they can certainly have that. But their tales of other web designers were incredible. Now, that's a danger sign. I was busted by a company who wanted me to do some brochures and started by showing me ones they'd had done (that looked perfectly good to me) and saying how they weren't really that impressed. Then I did the same .. designed and built some really stunning brochures which they weren't that impressed with and then they didn't pay. Great. But, with a little caution, this seemed something else. "That'll be £8,000." "What about updates." "Well, that's my price love, take it or leave it." and having listened to the client's brief saying something like "Well, what you want to do is ... ". Err, no, I just told you what I wanted to do. Just amazing tales of unprofessional conduct.; We went to Nottingham too, arriving just as the runners were arriving to do the Robin Hood Marathon, which was nice to see as I've decided that will be my first marathon run next year.; We were there to finish off that broadband installation. Very weird. The installation CD requires Flash and wants you to turn up your sound. Is it OK to assume people have sound installed? Particularly someone just coming on to broadband? There didn't seem to be an option for deaf people.; The instructions about plugging in the ethernet cable were just weird. All the engineering standards are in place. The cable is colour coded, the connectors are all different, you can't go wrong. Just connect the router to power, the telephone line, and your computer. But you get an animation showing you how to plug the cable in at both ends .. so lots of detail, but because it's an animation, all at once. It's a lot to remember when you're laying under the desk with a torch in your mouth. And that's the other thing. I may be wrong, perhaps this is a hangover from the olden dayes, but I don't think you should move a working computer. Power it down first. Otherwise, the hard disc drive heads, which fly microscopically close to the disc platter, may well crash into your data, causing data loss if you're lucky, or a mangled drive if not. Granted, I've never managed to do this, but that's the idea. I imagine everyone installing broadband according to the BT installation disc instructions would simply pull out their computer in order to access the rear.; All that simplicity is followed by a message "We will now set your computer Network Connection to 'obtain an IP address automatically', and remove any 'proxy' settings." So now we know the person who put this together is illiterate, so we can't really trust anything we are seeing. And what if we wanted our proxy settings left alone? And what on earth would grandma make of such a message?; Did I want the BT Yahoo portal page to be my default? No. No matter, it did it anyway.; They give you a desktop icon for Broadband Desktop Help. I clicked it. Whirr. Churn. Clickety clickety. "To experience the world of BT Broadband Desktop Help, click the icon". That'll be the icon I just clicked in order to get that message. "the world of BT Broadband Desktop Help"? Clearly the first time you click it the software sets itself up, but it breaks a usability rule, which is that when you click on an icon something predictable happens. In this case, we expected help, not setup. And the next time we click the icon it's going to do something different. Nothing predictable there.; Despite me specifically purchasing a wireless router, so obviously wanting to set up wireless, the helpful setup disc makes no mention of that whatsoever. For that, I need to turn to the proper manual.; I was a bit vague when this client considered whether to go with the normal BT router or my recommendation which would probably have cost about £50 more. But I've more ammunition now. I think the way to efficiency in my world is buying proper equipment with good support. We know about BT's support from previously (incidentally, I've not received a response yet to my complaint, although someone did call the client to ask about their experiences). As expected, the BT router has far fewer options. I'm used to being able to allow wireless access only to machines with specific MAC addresses for instance, to being able to reset my wireless password, and to switch wireless off if I wish, to determine my own IP address, among many other things. These don't seem possible. So a 'proper' modem gives you security and control.; One other thing. When you sign up for BT Broadband you get led, agreement staircase-wise but also by the lack of choice in the process (no cancel button) into signing up for BT Broadband Talk which I thought meant that you automatically get free sub-one-hour local and national calls 6pm to 6am weekdays and all weekend, but you don't. You get those if you dial out using a phone (that you supply) that plugs into the back of their router using a Heath Robinson style adapter. If you use your normal phone plugged into your existing line, you still get charged the normal rate. So you, the client, must change your behaviour and habits in order to access those prices.; So we are buying a BT Diverse 6110 cordless phone so the client can make calls without having to sit in the 'office'. That's on a different line with a different number, though, so they'll still have to answer calls on their ordinary line. So now there are two phones to think about. And they've got to remember the hour rule (if you want to talk for more than an hour, disconnect and redial), and the timings when the prices apply. What kind of service is that? The day will come when we can't move for remote controls and ridiculously confusing bits of electronic kit.; I don't know what it is, but Scott Adams' confusopoly doesn't seem to apply here, there's something else afoot. They (O2) do it with free calltime too .. you get a text saying to get free calltime just dial this number. Why not just give me the free calltime, if it's really free? I think it's that the more you can get the customer to engage with you, the more your brand sticks in their mind and you get better scores on brand recall indices. That's just management by numbers though, because the reason you remember the brand is it's so bloody annoying, so there's a strong motivation not to buy from them. Peter Sutcliffe's got good brand recognition but you wouldn't want to spend any time with him. I don't think brand management is that unsophisticated, so I'm pondering the real reason. Maybe it says more about my personality that I think it's some sophisticated psychological trick rather than just jacket-on-inside-out incompetence. Maybe I just expect too much. And, as much as is possible, I don't play. My mind is mine and I like it unpolluted thank you. I'm not about to give O2 access in return for £2 of free calls.; Anyway, back to the weekend, it was even a special day for this 'client' as both of them were in separate bowls finals so we were able to celebrate one win and commiserate the other. That felt special.; Finally, on the drive back, since I was passenger, I managed to transfer all my favourite Christmas songs from Peels and Lamarrs past stored on minidisc into iTunes so I can burn a cd for the bands and we can choose some tunes to do for Christmas gigs.; So overall, a pretty boring weekend. Thanks for reading :-)
Geek cartoons: 6 September 2006: Geeks are funny too. A fellow geek passed on this link of geeky cartoons
Yorkshire Sculpture Park: 3 September 2006: We spent Saturday at Yorkshire Sculpture Park. It's near Wakefield just off the M1 and free to get in (but just a little bit to park the car). We loved the main building, it was a bit Corbusier-ish and a bit like living a CAD walkthrough. They could have done with having some decent books in the bookshop though.; I rather liked this by Kenny Hunter .. partly because I liked the flower bunch salute but also the large pendant or brooch she's wearing .. although I might be misunderstanding that.; The James Turrell work is both moving and rather mindbending, and his exhibition seems to have been extended until December (I think) although the website doesn't seem to reflect that as I write. He's a Quaker, apparently. Another notch in favour of that religion .. there have been a lot of those recently.; The Deer Shelter, also by Turrell but a permanent feature at YSP I think, is a skyspace where people sit around on polished concrete seats looking at the sky through a hole in the roof. At first, we couldn't make out what we were seeing because the sky, having rained most of the morning, was a featureless white so there was nothing to focus on, but as it cleared the whole thing really worked. You could spend all day in there. Shocking events happen .. a bird might fly past or a twig blow past on the wind, and you can't help yourself but gasp and grin. One bird flapped happily past, very high, singing for all the world. A leaf blew into the shelter. No really, it's fantastic.; The Art Fund might be worth an investigate too.; I was very moved by Alec Finlay's Propagator, a greenhouse containing .. as I remember it .. pots with plants labelled with a mesostic .. oh hang on, I'll let him explain it. The one that got me was Olive:; My favourite and most moving piece was Gerry Loose's Seed Catalogue .. again I'll let him explain:; Besides the interesting stuff there were lots of traditional sculptures knocking around in the fields by, for instance, Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, and Antony Gormley.; I found some textures I liked:; The landscape can be effortlessly stunning:; Some practical reporting for you: Knaresborough doesn't have a lot of accommodation and it's reasonably expensive so we really struggled to find anything at all .. apparently our date clashed with a carpet exhibition in Harrogate. We got a cancellation at The Yorkshire Lass, a pub opposite the entrance to Mother Shipton's Cave and on the bank of the river Nidd. The pub's probably famous for its home cooking as that's what it was, and the visitors book contained lots of good comments. We found it a bit meaty, but the vegetable casserole in yorkshire pud was wholesome.; We found it almost dead in the bar on a Saturday night and wandered over the road to The World's End which operated a bit like the Cheese Shop Sketch where it displayed lots of lovely real ales, Ruddles County, Black Sheep, Deuchars IPA, but none were available. As a sign of the times, the barmaid was, I think, Polish, and the following night was a Polish night.; Quite by chance on our night, The Slim-Line Papas were playing. Pete O'Brien's the wild main man with real skill on double bass, Egly Lucas makes all his own guitars, while the skill of Sam Saunders was evidenced by someone who got up in the interval (at the band's invitation, they are well up for jamming, teaching people how to play the instruments and so on) to play the kit who just bashed away without any of the subtlety Saunders was clearly employing. Plus, he introduced me to a spring drum. I want one. If they come to a venue near you and you feel like you need perking up, go see.; Another thing tied the day together. One of my big interests is colour. I feel like I could spend the rest of my days investigating colour spaces. This follows a lecture at uni in which it became clear that both RGB, the colour space used in web design, and CMYK (printing) leave perhaps 50% of all perceivable colours unrepresented. In other words, what we see on screen is a very poor representation of real life. The same problems must beset artists .. purple is a recent colour for paint which is why it's associated with royalty because it was expensive to produce at first and only they could afford it. James Turrell's Deer Shelter cuts through all of that by framing the real thing. It's the ultimate HDTV. Similarly, listening hard to the Slim-Line Papas, the drum sound was really gorgeous, and the rest was too but you could tell everything else had been amplified. That whole process of collecting the sound with a mic, amplifying it, and throwing it out again through a speaker stack distorts and changes the sound, and it loses its subtlety. The drum sound was the real sound of the kit, with nothing inbetween. Part of the pleasure and draw of skiffle, for me, is its acoustic nature, as an antidote to highly produced dance and pop music. Acoustic is real.; Of course, I found lots of natural things to be inspired by. The berries are full-on this year and it reminds me of my twelve year old (or so) self laying in bed reading what were old books then, so maybe they were published in the forties or fifties, about the natural history of Britain, and the illustrations, watercolours probably, on plates, of the different plants and animals. I remember one book had a textured cover, and inside were tales of kids having a secret friend in the woods, a man who lived there and who had a doormouse living in his jacket pocket. Yes, I know what it sounds like, that's another sign of the times. He'd take them on adventures to see badger cubs and so on, stumbling upon all sorts of interesting bits of plant and animal life along the way. I spent a good few weeks trying to find a doormouse so it could live in the pocket of my school blazer. I rather like gathering these emblematic images, I imagine perhaps some ex-pat Brit would enjoy them or a Japanese or Russian person. Maybe they are as British as London buses, Beefeaters, and invading countries populated by swarthy people. Anyway, I enjoy documenting the norm because before long it ain't norm any more.; This, particularly, took me back. I remember the drawing of the Robin's Pincushion gall in that book. I don't know whether this, in Knaresborough, is exactly that, but it's the same sort of thing:; There were quite a few of these around which I don't see in Scarborough, both in Knaresborough and at Yorkshire Sculpture Park. My best guess is a Speckled Wood.; Finally, I have to mention the YSP map. It's a real lesson in how not to do it.; Would it not be reasonable to assume, given that the lakes are blue and the convention for representing water in blue, that there were some water features about the bottom right of the map, encircling A and B particularly? And there's that yellow path that goes through the trees just to the west of there. From B, too, we could see buildings close by, looking North (Update: upwards, another problem with this map is they've defied convention and turned the map around so North is at around 5 oclock: altogether now: reasons to be confused, 1, 2, 3). In fact, all that striped area where you're not supposed to go is a completely built-up university campus. Some indication that that area contains buildings would be nice. So we got lost walking through that until we exited the other side to look back and see a small sign partly hidden by bushes that said it wasn't part of the park and we weren't allowed in. Still lost, we tried to find that yellow path leading to the lower lake. Four of us, two very good mapreaders, couldn't work it out until it hit us. Those yellow and red paths aren't paths and the blue 'moat' isn't water. They mark the edges of zones. The paths are those insignificant looking thin brown lines. So you'd think the zones would be significant, given their prominence on the map. We couldn't see how. We couldn't work this out either:; What are those markings? What do they relate to? The colour of the disc might relate to a zone, but it's a different colour to the one on the map. The blue arrow? The yellow B? Haven't the foggiest. It's a discipline of its own, representing information in a clear way. The London Underground map is an obvious success, the YSP map isn't.