Dominic Tristram

Blog moved to Jekyll

2011-03-12T00:00:00+00:00

Blog moved to Jekyll

12 March 2011

I have moved my blog to Jeykll, a Ruby static site generator. I’ve been hosting a blog at home using Wordpress for a while, but I decided that running Wordpress (and a database behind it) was a bit heavy for what I needed. Static pages are fine, and Jekyll makes it all easy.

I will now start the rather labourious task of porting old blog entries over. Joy!

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Recycling and Charging

2010-06-08T00:00:00+01:00

Recycling and Charging

08 March 2010

The government has announced that it has ruled out plans (made under Labour) to look into charging households for the amount of non-recyled domestic waste. The plan is instead to ‘reward’ people based on the weight of the waste they leave on the kerbside for recycling. The first scheme, which is no longer being considered, was to charge people based on the weight of non-recycled waste over a certain threshold, thus encouraging them to recycle more. The Tories were keen to label this as a ‘bin tax’ and have campaigned against it. As far as I’m aware, no local authority has used such a scheme.

There are a number of issues surrounding both schemes that have raised comment. One is the fact that bins in such schemes need an RFID chip or other marker, and there are concerns about some sort of ‘Big Brother’ monitoring of rubbish. While there are many reasons to be concerned about surveillance and monitoring by the state, this is not one of them. There is a level of paranoia here that can easily be ignored. After all, if the council really wanted to it could weigh your rubbish right now – people who use wheelie-bins have an easily-indentifiable container without having to use any chip. Privacy concerns are a non-issue in this case.

The real concern is the effect that these schemes this will have on the overall goal of the policy, which is reducing the amount of waste going to landfill. Consider the old ‘weigh your non-recyclable rubbish’ scheme. This would encourage you to reduce waste by: (a) recycling more, (b) making an effort not to purchase non-recyable items in the first place, and © consider more re-use. A charge on the weight of non-recylables directly encourages all of these points:

Point (a) is clearly desirable since a charge applies to disposing of non-recyclables. Everything that goes into the landfill waste rather than the recycling may cost you more money, so people will make an effort to sort their recycling.

Point (b) is desirable because it will actually cost money to dispose of non-recyclable goods. I’m mostly thinking of excessive packaging and throw-away goods here. If you’re looking at two comparable items, one in a massive amount of plastic and one in easily-recyclable cardboard, it starts making actual monetary sense to choose the one in the sensible packaging. A result of this may well be the reduction in the ridiculous amount of packaging used by supermarkets, since the cost-consious shoppers (as well as the existing environment-consious ones) will stop buying items with excessive packaging.

Point © is more indirect but will be encouraged by waste charging. For example, people may be more ready to put serviceable items onto FreeCycle or give them to friends or charity shops rather than simply throwing them away. People will also be rewarded for home composting or feeding chickens food waste, etc. This will all help to reduce landfill.

Finally, charging for excessive waste is fair. Where there is no charging, people who make an effort to reduce their waste are subsidising those who don’t through their council tax. The wasteful are, in effect, being paid by the rest of us to continue their wasteful ways, and the environment still loses out.

So what about the scheme being discussed by Eric Pickles, where people receive rewards based on the weight of their recycling box? Let is consider our three waste reduction incentives discussed previously:

Point (a) – recycling more. This will be something that will undeniably be encouraged. People will have a financial incentive to sort their waste and put recyclable things in their recycling bin.

Point (b) – not buying non-recyclables in the first place. Here’s the big problem with the scheme. People will actually have an incentive to buy products with more packaging. True, this will only apply to packaging that can be recycled, but it’s more packaging none-the-less. As a direct result of this, retailers and manufacturers will face considerably less pressure to reduce their packaging. People will also directly financially lose-out by home composting, or otherwise processing their own waste. What would have been dealt with at source will now become the council’s (and therefore the tax payer’s) problem. This is also true of reducing food waste – people may end-up actually being paid to waste food by throwing it away. Let me be quite clear on this – paying people by weight for recycling is directly rewarding waste with taxpayers money.

Point © – the incentive to re-use items that would otherwise be thrown away is reduced. Things like composting at home have already been mentioned, but items that may otherwise be appreciated by the community may find themselves being thrown away rather than used. Imagine living in an area where electronic goods can be recycled, as happens in some authorities. People may put a perfectly good but old TV into the recycling rather than advertising it on FreeCycle as they’d receive a healthy payment (by weight) on a TV. The TV costs the council money to process, and the potential recipient still has no TV. This might be an extreme example, but there’s often a way to reuse a lot of waste. As we know, re-use is better than recycling.

So it seems fairly clear that charging for waste is a better system than rewarding recycling. So given that, why does the ‘carrot’ approach seem to be the one that the government is favouring? It’s probably down to political philosophy and a general Conservative aversion to taxes. In the much-publicised example authority using this approach, Windsor and Maidenhead, the American company RecycleBank also does rather well out of it.

The company receives a flat-rate payment from the council to administer the service but receives further revenue based on the savings in Landfill Tax it makes the council by diverting material from landfill. Councillor Liam Maxwell, lead cabinet member for sustainability at the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead has said that the costs of the scheme were “commercially sensitive”. Should we be paying foreign companies for such services? Would our own councils be able to do it for less? The fact that the Conservatives are not willing to let us know the figures makes me rather suspicious that the sums don’t add-up, and yet again, money is flowing out of the UK for things that we should be doing ourselves.

In any case, whether you believe that the private sector should be taking a slice of the pie or not, it seems reasonably clear that charging for not recycling is the more efficient and effective policy for reducing waste. If we really want to make our society more efficient and cleaner it’s really what we should be trying to do. If you would like to see your Council Tax being put to a more effective use, and most probably paying less of it, I would encourage you to let your council know your views.

Glasto 2008

2008-07-09T00:00:00+01:00

It may have been a couple of months since I got back, but here's my post-Glasto roundup.

I think I arrived earlier than I have before. First weren't running the bus from Bath this year (boo!), so I got a train to Temple Meads and the shuttle bus from there. It all went pretty smoothly, and even though it started pouring with rain just after I got on the bus, it was sunny by the time we arrived on-site about 40 minutes later. They've sorted-out the traffic this year, so only buses could go through Pilton. I don't know where the cars were sent, but it made the bus a lot quicker not having to sit in all the plebby car traffic. Hurrah!

I'd sent my tent up and had a cup of tea by about 1:30pm, so I headed off to find some music. I spent a lot of time at the Small World Solar Stage where I caught Crystal Masters (sort of bluesy/country stuff), Celeste Lovick (who I thought was excellent - I bought one of the CDs she was selling), and Cornelius. I spent the rest of my Wednesday poking around the Green Fields and enjoying the site in its pre-mud state. Shrek III was inexplicably cancelled in the evening, but hey ho.

On Thursday there was a big fire at a scrap-yard outside the site, but the huge amounts of black smoke that hung around in the sky all day provoked some debate. I had discussions with random people about everything from 'terrorist attacks on music' to 'Street is on fire', but thankfully all were false. I spent most of the day catching the bands playing on the Bandstand, including The Doubtful Guest, who were as good as ever.

Friday kicked-off with breakfast at Henry's Beard, then Kate Nash on the Pyramid stage. I don't really know much about her, but she was ok. I stuck around for The Subways (who were unimpressive) and Get Cape, Wear Cape, Fly, who were ok. I then trundled off to the Other stage to catch Vampire Weekend, mainly thanks to people going on about how good they are. They were ok, but I think they suffered from the immediate downer that my brain adds to any Other Stage performance. I wandered-off to the Green Futures field to watch Caroline Lucas wipe the floor with some Tory in a debate entitled 'Can the Tories Deliver A Green Agenda?', one of a number of interesting events in that tent. I then strolled over to the Avalon stage to catch Hazel O'Conner, which was suprisingly good. I then caught a strange act called 'Dancing On Your Grave' by 'The Cholmondleys and the Featherstonehaughs', followed by a cute singer/songwriter called Hera from Iceland/New Zealand (another set I liked enough to buy the CD afterwards). There then followed a few hours of managing not to meet-up with some friends, but I did catch the surprise Franz Ferdinand set on The Park stage.

Saturday morning saw the site beginning to dry-up a bit after the rain on Friday, with the Pyramid Stage not looking too bad. First up was Shakin' Stevens, who was pretty poor actually. For some reason he now refuses to sing 'Green Door', which leaves 'This Old House' as the only song anyone cares about. Martha Wainwright was up next, and she was suitably barmy. I didn't catch her whole set though as I had to be at the Leftfield for 12:30 to catch Seize The Day, who were as excellent as ever. Immediately after them came the mighty Flipron, who I've probably seen almost as many times now as I've seen anyone. Then it was back to the Pyramid to see the ever excellent Crowded House, followed by a bit of James Blunt (who really isn't that objectionable - I don't know why he gets so much stick). It was then time for a comedy break, so I went to the Cabaret tent to see Simon Munnery, Jeremy Hardy and Mitch Benn - all excellent as usual. Jeremy Hardy just doesn't do enough stand-up. Then it was off to the Jazz World stage to see Imagined Village, who had Billy Bragg on for a bit. I can't really remember the rest of the evening thanks to cider overload, but I think I saw Massive Attack. I definitely ignored Jay-Z.

Sunday morning brought another very pleasant breakfast at Henry's Beard in the Green Fields, then on to the Pyramid stage to see Marina Topley-Bird. I also caught Scouting For Girls on the Other Stage, before heading to the Pyramid Stage to get a spot for Leonard Cohen. I caught the end of the unimpressive Neil Diamond and the better than expected Goldfrapp, before the highlight of the festival, Leonard Cohen. He was blinding, as expected... and I've managed to see him live! I never thought I would. All is well with the world.

Monday was lovely and sunny. I spent a good few hours strolling around and poking at the (now much quieter) markets. It really was a lovely, sunny day. After the nightmare of last year's departure (thanks to See Tickets awful bus planning, the weather, early starts, and other rubbish), this year was about a million times better. Just look at the lovely, sunny and mud-free bus station!. The mud came over the top of my boots there last year, and we were all close to being hypothermic. Good times.

GM crops

2008-04-14T00:00:00+01:00

There have been some worrying noises coming from the government about GM crops recently, and the pro-GM case is being made more loudly every day. One might think that we don't have to worry about this since public opinion is so strongly against GM, but such opinion is easily swayed by only hearing one side of the argument, or worse, invalid argument. This has been demonstrated recently by the shift of opinion towards nuclear power that has taken place in a relatively short timescale, thanks mainly to piggy-backing a genuine concern (CO2 emissions). The government presented a false dichotomy - it's either nuclear power or more fossil fuels - rather than anything valid. Will the same thing happen with GM?

The news has recently been full of reports of food riots in developing countries due to the increasing costs of grain. The 'obvious' solution to this, as trotted-out by sections of the press, ministers, and those with vested interests, is the use of GM crops. However, what would these crops actually achieve, and are they in fact our only choice?

The main selling-point of GM crops is their resilience to herbicides. Companies such as Monsanto don't try to hide this fact, and yet it's a commonly held belief that using GM crops would allow us to use less chemicals on the fields. This is a myth. Many GM crops make the plants more tolerant of them, allowing the farmers to use far more. This does its job and kills the weeds, but also causes far more pollution. Funnily enough some crops, such as Monsanto's ''Roundup Ready' varieties, are specifically engineered to be resistant to their 'Roundup' herbicides. It's not unusual for GM crop producers to modify plants to further their other products.

Monsanto is a particularly shady company, of course. They have a history of suing farmers who happen to have had their crops wind-pollinated by GM crops in neighbouring farmers fields. It's actually amazing that Monsanto win in such cases - what are farmers meant to do? Pollen can travel for several miles and can remain active for up to ten years, and if it happens to fall onto non-GM fields it can pollenate plants there, making it very difficult to prevent contamination. If your crop is contaminated with GM pollen like this then you lose the ability to say GM-free, through no fault of your own. However, it gets worse - if you decide to keep some grain to replant next year, and unknown to you it has been contaminated, you can be sued by Monsanto, as this farmer in Canada can testify. Of course, some countries wouldn't want to allow this sort of thing, but it's useful for Monsanto when the US mandates GM crops as part of an aid package. GM crops or starvation? It's not a tough choice, but once GM is there it's there for good.

The pro-GM groups usually trot-out the line that GM crops will save poor countries. Let's assume that an African farmer decides to make use of GM - what should he grow? He'd probably want to grow crops suited to the climate, such as yams. However, he's unlikely to find that the GM companies are willing to help him here. The biotech companies are like the drugs companies in that they invest in the areas most likely to make them money, hence lots of research into cancer (which hits the rich, western world) and little into malaria (which doesn't). So we end-up with plenty of GM wheat that will make lots of money from western farmers, but little that will grow in Africa and actually help the poor.

The power of GM food producers and the rest of the biotech food industry is immense. For instance, a bill currently being considered in the US prohibits organic milk producers from being able to label their product as free from Bovine Growth Hormone, but it fails to force any milk produced from hormone-treated cows from being labelled as such. This bill is being pushed-through by Monsanto and other GM lobbyists and is almost certain to succeed, and it shows immense contempt for the consumer. Whether consumers want GM food or not, they should be given the choice.

In the end, it is wrong that a corporation can 'own' any species, whether they created it or not. Now that the possibility of doing so is legal, where will it end. As scientists develop more complex 'artificial' animals, as will happen with the human-hybrid work recently in the news, what is the point at which a life should no longer be owned? How can a corporation decide what forms of life can breed, and which must die without doing so? Isn't a fundamental purpose of any living thing to reproduce?

If you have time, be sure to watch The World According To Monsanto", which was shown on French TV. It's excellent and contains many important facts to help you make up your own mind on the issue.

Glasto

2008-04-08T00:00:00+01:00

It has been an exciting old weekend. On Saturday Ally celebrated her 30th birthday. It was an excellent party, and photos will be appearing on Facebook very soon, I'm sure. I'm ashamed to say that I was the only person there not in fancy dress. I have an excuse though - before the party I went to see the always funny Stewart Lee doing his show '41st Best Stand Up Ever' at the Ustiniv. Support came from the also brilliant Kevin Eldon in the form of some amusing poetry. Stewart Lee's set was great as always - perhaps a little less confrontational than previous ones, but very entertaining none the less. Hopefully he will be at Glastonbury again this year... not that I'm sure that the naked man and Jesus with crucifix 'heckles' could ever be beaten. They were proper Glasto moments indeed.

Ah yes, Glastonbury! I was up for 9am on Sunday morning, ready for the annual madness that is clicking on refresh and redialing the phone for three hours until I get through. Sure enough, with three of us doing that constantly I finally got through and bought tickets at about half eleven. It's always a joyous moment, and I didn't even have to get the inconvenient coach tickets this time (although I'll still go by bus, of course). As the day went on though the tickets still didn't sell out, and they were still there by the end of the day. It was most bizarre, and obviously in hindsight I wouldn't have got up early and gone through the pain of watching timeout messages for hours. Tickets are, in fact, still there now. It's funny - last year I was hoping that the rain would put off some of the fair-weather fans (see what I did there?) this year, and it turns out that may have happened. However awful Jay-Z is, there are always so many artists for every taste that the lineup really doesn't make much difference, so I don't buy that line of reasoning. I really don't think that the weather and mud could be any worse, and even if it is, it will still all be brilliant. Can't wait.

2008

2008-03-31T00:00:00+01:00

Of course it has been 2008 for some time... in fact, we're now in 'Q2' as sales types like to say in an effort to sound important. It has been a while since my last entry, and for that I apologise. Life has been busy, etc etc. However, I will fill you in on what has been going on as best I can.

My last entry was about mince pies if I recall correctly. You may be pleased to know that they were very nice. I have decided that the single most dull part of pie making is pastry, and lack of pastry is something that cakes have over the whole pie world. Actually, not just cakes - any sort of non-pastry topped dessert or sweet. Is a crumble a pie that just has a crust made of something other than pastry though? Hmm... I'll have to think about that.

So anyway, after the pies, Christmas and so on I went to France for a spot of skiing. There was a big group of us and we headed down in three cars to the alps for a week of snowy fun. French roads eh? Driving on them loses its novelty value after about ten hours, but we get there without incident. The chalet itself was very nice, and only a mile or so from the lift. We were also blessed with excellent weather for the time of year and fresh snow for most of the time. It was my first time skiing and although I showed all the aptitude of a blind bull on crack, I really enjoyed it. The downside was breaking a couple of ribs just over halfway through the holiday, which put me in too much pain to actually move much. Sport eh? Dangerous business if you ask me.

I've started a philosophy course with the OU. It has been very interesting so far, and despite going straight into my usual last-minute essay writing mode I seem to be doing ok at it. The tutorials are probably the most interesting ones of any course I've done for some time, and the reading is the sort of thing I like reading anyway. I may feel differently come exam time, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

A few weeks ago I went to Minehead and found it to be much nicer than I remembered it to be. I suppose that being off-season adds a lot to it, but I was most pleasantly surprised. I'm not sure why tourism usually does horrible things to towns, but Minehead has a good selection of independent shops and a bustling high street, as well as decently priced housing, and the sea of course. It was one of those places I could see myself living in... just not quite yet. Good place to bring-up a family though.

This year will feature several 30th birthdays for friends, plus a couple of weddings. Big events, and as we all know, big events involve lots of tomfoolery and tipsy shenanigans. I'm sure there will be a few amusing photos posted to various Facebook profiles as a result. I'm looking forward to it all.

The Glastonbury Festival will feature none other than Leonard Cohen this year! I can't wait. Well, I may not get a ticket of course - I've been lucky so far. I've pre-registered for the usual rush (which will happen on the 8th), so fingers crossed. The lineup is excellent (not sure about JayZ or whoever he is.. one for the kids I suppose), and the weather can't actually be any worse, right? I'm also off to the Two Thousand Trees festival (featuring the brilliant Flipron), plus a few others I'm sure. Oh, and Billy Bragg later this month. In fact he's just released a new album (Mr Love and Justice) which you should obviously go and buy.

Life is generally pretty much the same as it was 2007 in most ways though. Kate Winslet still hasn't come to her senses and married me, and to be honest she'd better get her skates on before I tire of her coyness. 2007 did seem to feature some big swings from high to low with that sort of thing actually - hopefully this year will be more stable. Generally the last few months have been pretty cool but they sort of fade into a blur when trying to remember them in bed at gone midnight, as I am now. I will try to keep the blog postings a bit more regular from now on... there's a lot to spout off about generally, and it sort of loses its appeal after months have passed. One of the reasons I have forgotten stuff is because I haven't blogged it - you know you're old when you keep a blog as a memory aid.

Festive Food

2007-12-16T00:00:00+00:00

Christmas is rapidly approaching and mince pies take a minimum of a week to make properly, so yesterday I made this year's mincemeat. Some people seem to think that this is harder than it is, so I thought I'd stick the recipe down here to prove that it's probably as easy as buying the stuff in jars.

You will need the following things:

Now quantities are always vague, but I work on a ratio system. I think that a lot of recipes care a bit too much about exactly how much to use, and I usually go on this sort of vague 'one of these for two of those' system. It seems to work! Anyway, going through the photo from top left we have:

2 x good quality minced beef.

Small pot of mixed glace peel.. about 'half' in our ratios

1 x (by weight) rum, brandy or a mixture of both

Ginger in syrup, about the same weight as the peel

1 x beef suet. Your local butcher will have this

4 x single eating apple

1.5 x ground almonds

1 x single grated nutmeg

Mixed spice, about twice as much as the grated nutmeg

2 x dried fruit. I've used half currants and half raisins here.

1 x single lemon

1 x single orange

1 x soft brown sugar

Making the mincemeat is easy - just chop everything that needs chopping into small pieces and mix together! You'll probably want to peel and core the apples, and the skin of the lemon and orange needs to be grated into the mixture and the remaining fruit squeezed.

You should end-up with something like this:

Whack it into some old jars and keep it for at least a week. It will then be ready to fill some pies. Yum!

Green Christmas

2007-12-04T00:00:00+00:00

So December is upon us... so soon! Winter is a challenging time to stay green, and I'm finding it increasingly difficult to make it through all of 2007 while remaining carbon neutral. With this in mind I've started thinking about Christmas, and how I can green it up a bit.

Firstly, trees. A few years back I read a vaguely convincing article about how the greenest choice of tree is an artificial one. This is based an several assumptions, the most important being that the tree is reused for several years and recycled at the end of its life. If this is done then the benefits supposedly outweigh the fact that it is made of petrochemicals in China. However, is this true? Having looking into it a bit it seems that artificial trees are very hard to recycle since they are mostly made of steel and PVC. PVC can't easily be burned due to the emissions given off, while it's difficult to remove the steel without doing this since most trees are made by twisting the steel and PVC strands very tightly. One must also be realistic about how long trees are kept. My parents are probably reasonably unusual in that we had the same (aluminium) tree for about twenty years and it never seemed to get more scrappy, but how many people lose bits, buy a different size, or whatever? The sheer amount of artificial trees sold before Christmas at DIY centres suggests that people don't keep them forever.

So what about real trees? Some of the bad press they have received about their green credentials has been based on historical figures of imports. There was a time when the majority of trees were imported, but most are now British-grown, thus reducing the fuel used in transport. However, fuel is still used - there are the carbon costs of preparing the fields, planting the trees, the pesticides/herbicides used for growing, then transporting the trees afterwards. If the trees are grown in place of an older wood then there's also the impact of destroying the existing trees, which as a worst case could be an ancient oak forest. Plantations of Christmas trees do not lend themselves well to biodiversity, although of course they provide more cover for animals than bare ground.

So the best choice for a new tree is still not clear. I think that in the worst case for the real tree, such as one that is imported, grown on cleared deciduous woodland, heavily sprayed, and so on, an artificial tree may still be the best option. This is even more true if you can find a PVC-free, easy to recycle tree that is made locally. That is if those exist, of course.

It goes without saying that the greenest option is not to get a new tree at all. Use a living tree, or just buy a second-hand artificial tree (an easy way to recycle them!). You could also consider one of the cute 'grow your own' kits. These are all zero-carbon options, and you end-up with a tree that's just as fine. It's also a little reduction on the mad consumerism of the season of course, which is something we should all take some time to think about.

Now as for when to put the tree up... well, that's another kettle of fish!

The Future of Genomics

2007-11-30T00:00:00+00:00

On Thursday evening I was in Bristol for a public debate on The Future of Genomics at Expore@Bristol. It was a special event to mark the opening of the new 'Inside DNA' exhibition they have there, and since I've always been interested in genetics I thought I'd go along.

Sir John Sulston kicked-off with a half hour or so talk about the state of play in genetics research, then the floor was opened. The lovely Alice Roberts (yes, her from off the telly) handled the session. The audience was filled with several experts on genetics and the ethics behind it, and some of the questions were quite good considering that it was a public event. Given current events there was some interest in biometrics and ID cards (which are all pointless as well as scary) and databases, plus genuinely interesting tidbits.

Interesting tidbit example - they think they now know why we're seeing a rise in peanut allergies, something that concerns me as I have one. It's possibly because creams containing peanut oil were used to treat eczema in the 70's and 80's, and the proteins being absorbed through the broken skin provoked the intolerance. This explains a lot - I had eczema as a child, so it all fits. They discovered this through the 'child of the 90's' study which is taking place in Bristol. It's the most detailed study of its kind in the world and has provided a lot of information so far, so yay for Bristol.

The exhibition is well worth checking out, as it all of @Bristol, of course. It's a shame that they closed the iMax though - hopefully it will reopen one day.

SQL Server - argh!

2007-11-14T00:00:00+00:00

I'm currently having to get 'into' SQL server at work. I come from an Oracle background, but hey, how different can they be, right? Well... you'd be surprised.

One of the nice things about Oracle is PL/SQL. In my last job I wrote a lot of PL/SQL... it's easy, quick to do, well documented, and allows good software engineering. SQL Server uses something called 't-SQL' and compared to PL/SQL, it's appalling. The best way of demonstrating this is with an example. In stored procedures I can do this in PL/SQL:


PROCEDURE MyProcedure
    errorCode        OUT NUMBER,
    errorText        OUT VARCHAR2,
    someItemID    IN     ITEM.ITEMID%TYPE,
    someNumber    IN     ITEM.ITEMNUMBER%TYPE,
    somethingElse IN OUT NUMBER,
    result           OUT RESULTTABLE.RESULT%TYPE) IS

This can be part of a package defined as two files - a spec and a body. All good software engineering.

With MS SQL Server I simply can't so this. As far as I know, there are no packages with specs and bodies, for one thing. There are weird, implicit returns for selects, variables defined within the procedure, and other strange and wacky stuff that really works against every good software engineering principle. Also, a roughly equivalent header might look like this:


CREATE PROCEDURE [dbo].[MyProcedure]
    @errorCode     INT OUT,
    @errorText     VARCHAR(1024) OUT,
    @someItemID    INT,
    @someNumber    INT,
    @somethingElse INT OUT,
    @result        INT OUT AS

The biggest problem is that you can't get the type from the columns of a table, so if the table changed you have to change all of your code. This is insane! Large applications may have thousands of stored procedures, all of which would have to be changed. The lack of packages (although as I say, I might be wrong there) mean that you can't logically group procedures either, and you lose some context that you get in Oracle just from the package name.

As I mentioned, the way stored procedures seem to work in SQL Server is by implicit returns. For example, say we have this line:


  declare @intReturnCode int

We can then add a 'return @intReturnCode' later and return a value not even defined in the header. Worse, you can do something like this:


  set @someValue = (select fieldValue from someTable where name = 'this')

So looking at the parameters you'd have no idea that you were going to get 'someValue' back, or what type it is. Madness, absolute madness.

I must admit I was wary of SQL Server, but the more I look at it the more I'm amazed that anyone actually uses it. I mean, they only added exception handling in 2005! It's like some sort of toy database, but with a fairly hefty price tag.

Anyway, feel free to correct me. In the meantime I will continue to think poorly of it..

Routemasters and Shibboleth

2007-11-04T00:00:00+00:00

I was in London over the weekend for a birthday party. A friend was 30 and hired a Routemaster bus to take us (along with a large amount of champagne) to watch the fireworks at Blackheath, then back to Victoria again for a slap-up feed at a Mexican restaurant. Much fun was had, and I don't think I've had quite so much champagne for some time!

Thankfully champagne doesn't seem to give me much of a hangover, so I didn't feel too bad on Sunday. I took the opportunity to catch-up with some friends while at the same time check out Shibboleth by Doris Salcedo at the Tate Modern. I must say that we were slightly underwhelmed - I expected something a bit wider and deeper I suppose, and while it was certainly long and looked strange in such a large space, it was less impressive than I thought it might be. Still, it was pretty busy so lots of people were obviously interested. In fact the whole place was probably about the busiest I've seen it.

After looking around at a few other things that were new since I was last there we headed off for lunch at Tas at The Cut. It's the second time that we've tried to get in to The Anchor And Hope (which is meant to be one of the best gastropubs in London) but had to go to Tas instead, but hopefully I'll get to try it one day...

Bath Film Festival

2007-11-01T00:00:00+00:00

Today is the start of the 2007 Bath Film Festival, and for the next eleven days there are some quality films. Some caught my eye.

Beautiful Young Minds, an interesting looking documentary about a maths competition (well, I think it sounds interesting!) on Saturday. Rescue Dawn is another film about Vietnam, but most importantly it has Christian Bale in it. Has he ever been in a bad film? I don't think so. The Yacoubian Building is a film about life in central Cairo that looks good and is being shown on Sunday. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Monday) is the story of a man who suffers a stroke - sad, but it looks quite inspiring. Taxidermia appeals to my surreal side (just look at plot outline!) and is on Monday. The Killing Of John Lennon looks interesting, as do The Band's Visit and The Aura. I'd also like to catch Hearts and Minds, an Oscar-winning documentary about the Vietnam war which is still pretty relevant. There's also an evening of locally made short films on the 11th which looks good.

So, lots of films to see, or potentially see anyway. There are some others that I wanted to list but I don't want to just reel-off films as much as bring attention to the festival. It's all good!

Running madness

2007-10-29T00:00:00+00:00

So I might well have gone a bit mad, but I have entered the next Bath Half Marathon. Considering that I haven't really run around much since school (where, let's face it, I was forced to.. usually by a rather insistent Brother James) this might seem like a slightly foolhardy step. However, I do have until the 16th of March next year to get ready for it, so it's not insurmountable.

Where there's a difficult looking task, there's a gadget to help. In my case I plumped for a GPS watch that I can plug into the computer to see my route and stats on Google Maps. This is sufficiently geeky to inspire me to actually do some exercise, so while some may say it's a bit pointless, if the end result is that I run 13 miles I reckon it's pretty good value for money.

So why run the race anyway? Well, I guess everyone has their reasons. I could certainly do with being fitter, and I could certainly be slimmer. In the end though, I think running a vaguely serious distance is something that I've always felt I should do at some point. Now seems a good time, and charity will even benefit a bit with sponsorship and so on. However, I am weak! I know this, so I need all the incentive I can get to see this through. Registering for the race was a start, but I intend to put my progress up on my web site. This way, any improvement (or lack of it) will be visible for all to see, which will in turn spur me on a bit. Hopefully.

Inheritance Tax

2007-10-10T00:00:00+01:00

Inheritance tax seems to be making the news at the moment, with both the Tories and Labour trying to outdo each other in reducing it. This only goes to show just how similar the two big parties have become. Inheritance tax should, if anything, be increased.

One thing that seems bizarre to me is quite why so many people worry about inheritance tax in the first place. In reality it simply isn't an issue for the vast majority of us. Last year 40,000 estates in England and Wales were liable to inheritance tax, while the same year there were 502,599 deaths. As a very rough guide that suggests that considerably fewer than ten percent of people who die have to worry about the tax at all. The reason that people worry about it is because they have an irrational optimism of their own financial future. Let's face it, most of us don't get rich. It's the sort of thinking that makes the public hostile to policies like 50% income tax on earnings over 100,000 - there's no way that's going to be a problem for most people, yet you hear people saying things like 'why tax success?' and other nonsense.

So what about the level at which the tax is payable? Well, until today it was 300,000 pounds. It has now (or will shortly) go up to 600,000 - a level which a tiny percentage of estates will reach. I think that this is a terrible decision, and if anything it should be reduced. The level at which tax starts to be paid all rather depends on what you want the tax to achieve, and inheritance tax is basically performing a redistribution function. It is one of the methods the state uses to make sure that too much money does not stay in the hands of too few people. If anything, this is becoming more of a problem, not less, so why on Earth are we reducing the effectiveness of one of the tools that we can use against it?

It's worth tackling the 'I've paid tax on it once, why should I pay again?' argument too. The reason that people are suddenly concerned about the tax in the first place is because property prices have increased so much. Houses have gone up in value far faster than inflation recently, which means that an initially modest investment is now worth hundreds of thousands. What people seem to forget is that the sum where 'tax has already been paid' is usually a small percentage of today's value, so in fact for most estates only a small percentage of the value has had tax paid on it anyway. It's only right that tax is paid, and paying once you've died seems like the most convenient time to me.

In the end we have to tax people on death precisely because property prices are high. By placing a tax on inherited properties people will be forced to sell them, placing the house back into the market. More houses on the market will help to bring prices down to a reasonable level, benefiting everyone. If the tax is reduced then the government will still need that money so they'll just tax something else, and that's going to be something that we all have to pay when we're alive, and probably something that has to be paid by far more people. Inheritance tax has so many logical advantages to such a majority of the population, so why has reducing it become so popular with voters? In the end we can probably put it down to selfishness and misplaced optimism, yet again. And so the wheel of capitalism turns...

Bibcursed bug fixes

2007-09-28T00:00:00+01:00

My tiny 8 year old curses-based application Bibcursed has some reasonably dedicated users. One of them sent me a bug report recently, so I've just put together the first new release for five years or so. You can grab it from SourceForge.

I think I'll Mac-ize it next... put a GUI on there and see what happens, although I'll keep the curses version too. Terminal-based apps are usually all you need for useful tasks, and the ability to run them over SSH in a terminal is useful. It sounds daft, but one thing that attracted me to OSX is the fact that BASH and vi and there by default. Windows just doesn't have that functionality and probably never will, which is why it will never displace UNIX when it comes to serious usage in critical applications.

Green Taxes 'Making Billions'. Or not.

2007-09-03T00:00:00+01:00

It was hard to avoid the item on the news this morning about a group claiming that 'green taxes' are 'making billions'... far more, it is claimed, than the cost of pollution itself. Stating that fines and taxes are 'revenue generation' as if this is a bad thing is an old argument of course, and one that is often used against speed cameras. However, in this case the target is a much more serious one than speed cameras as it's an issue that is of vital importance to the whole world.

First let us look at the claims. Apparently 'green taxes' brought in 21.9 billion last year, while the emissions had done 11.7 billion worth of 'damage'. 'Green taxes' here include things like fuel duty - hardly a green tax.. more like something that the government has always charged. It also includes landfill tax and other taxes that could be considered green of course, but the scope is rather wide. What they actually mean therefore is a collection of taxes that is levied against things that may harm the environment, rather than green taxes in particular.

What I really have a problem with is the 'cost' of emissions they have come up with. Just how have they calculated this, exactly? Is the 'cost' of a landfill the amount it would be to dig it all up? No - it's the cost of burning-off the methane. I don't think that their idea of costs and mine, or any normal person, are quite the same. Also, how do you put a cost on the effect of a ton of CO2 going into the atmosphere and having some part in flooding yet more of Bangladesh? No, the whole 'cost' is a nonsense. 'Green' taxes aren't there to level some sort of account we have with the environment, they're there to stop people polluting in the first place. The only thing that will make some people stop is to hit them in the wallet, since appealing to their morals seems to fail. People must be priced out of their cars and flights, and motivated into recycling by the cost of not doing it. Society isn't profiteering from this, just making people pay something closer to the real cost of their selfish ways.

Finally, just who are The Tax Payers Alliance? Well, take a look. Surprise surprise, they are the usual right-wing nutjobs. Just who let a story by these people make the headlines? The chairman Andrew Allum left the Tories 'having lost faith that it represented his brand of free market, individualist and compassionate politics', that is to say that they probably weren't quite right-wing enough for him. The chief executive, Matthew Elliot, is a young chap who has worked for 'Britain’s leading Eurorealist think-tank', so he's clearly going to look at European issues objectively, right? Finally, Florence Heath works... and this is a good one... for an oil company. Brilliant. She's bound to be fully committed to the environment then.

Honestly though, what the hell is the BBC doing even giving these people the time of day? Three people who make the UKIP look sensible manage to get headlines on the Today programme?! Maybe I'll start my own 'think tank', since I seem to be just as qualified to do so. The trouble is, when you take the 'green' side you probably find that industry is slightly less willing to grease your palm. Perhaps the BBC should just ignore press releases from organisations that can't be bothered to get their own domain for their Web site? It doesn't show a lot of commitment to their cause does it? Either that or they're technically inept, but neither of these possibilities inspire a huge amount of confidence...

Festivals Ahoy

2007-08-15T00:00:00+01:00

On Saturday I was in London for the Field Day Festival. The weather was perfect, and after a slightly delayed train journey I was still in London in good time. We met up and made our way to Bethnal Green, the nearest tube for Victoria Park.

None of us had been to Victoria Park before. It's actually quite nice and seems to be divided into two by a road. One part has a nice lake with plenty of birdlife hanging around on it, and is quite nicely landscaped. Over the road is the part of the park where the festival was being held, which was a much more straightforward green space with a few trees, along with some big monument thing. The festival was close to this, enclosed in a 7 foot fence.

The queue to get in was minimal, although for some reason that was never quite clear they divided people into male and female queues. I assumed that this was something to do with searches, but nobody was being searched anyway. Weird. All that it meant was that there was a lot of people hanging around just in the site waiting for their opposite-sexed friends. The rather overly-keen security staff were also taking food and drink, including water, away from people. This seemed a bit mean on such a hot day.

The site itself was quite small - apparently the capacity was 10,000, although I don't think that it got close to that while we were there. We grabbed some food (no queues for that) and had a wander around. This was fairly on in the day and the queues for beer were quite large, so we thought we'd wait and go later. That was our main mistake! As the day went on, beer queues grew and grew. There were only two bars for all 10,000 people, and it was taking literally hours to get served! Needless to say, we didn't bother. We stick with the rather strange cider-based 'Sungria', which we manged to get without much queuing early on. That was about the only alcohol we got all day though, thanks to the mad queues (which were nothing, compared to the toilets!). The lack of thought that had gone into bars and toilets was fairly amazing, and there were many disgruntled people. The music was pretty cool though, if hampered by a weedy sound system, so the day was still good overall. I just hope that next time the organisers try to decide how many toilets 10,000 people need when drinking they come-up with a number greater than 30.

After the festival we went to the pub for a few drinks, then onto a new sushi place in (I think) Kensington High Street, that was pretty good. After another few pints in the pub we called it a day.

On Sunday we went to see The Walker, which was actually very good. Woody Harrelson is a great actor - has he ever been in a bad film? Anyway, he was very good in this as a gay 'society walker' in Washington. I must admit that it's a career I have never really thought about, but it makes for an interesting film, and it's interesting how his 'society ladies' react to the events. Worth a go anyway. Now I just need to catch The Simpsons!

V Festival this weekend - I hope it stops raining! I've had enough of muddy festivals this year!

Less privacy, more work

2007-08-13T00:00:00+01:00

An interesting policy from the Tories emerged today. They'd quite like to scrap our data protection laws. These are the laws that put restrictions on what businesses can do with your personal data, such as not selling it to people who send junk mail. Apparently this 'red tape' is annoying for businesses. Another annoying bit of 'red tape' is the Working Time Directive, which they also plan to scrap.

Much as I don't want the Tories to win, some of their moves are beyond belief. How are either of these changes meant to be vote winners? Sure, they make sense if you are a CEO, or perhaps just a bit evil.. but the man on the street? How can be gain from a change which means he can be forced to work even longer hours than he does now? And when he gets home from his longer day, he can expect to find tons more junk mail thanks to the fact that companies he has dealt with have sold his personal information (potentially to people who want to steal his identity). Note that they also want redundancy regulations to be 'relaxed' so that we can all lose our jobs more easily too.

Some would say that these moves are 'liberal' in a 'libertarian' sort of way, but I'm afraid that they are many facets of libertarianism that lead to corporations ruling the world, and we can see some examples right here. We need state control when it comes to not exploiting workers. 'Red tape' is sometimes useful, but for some reason it is one of those phrases that have stuck into the public mindset as a 'bad thing'. In reality, here are the Conservatives showing their true colours. They don't care about anyone except the 'boss class' and making their lives easier. Quite why anyone who is a decent human being would support things like this is beyond me. Having said that, this will of course be overlooked at the next election and we'll all be concentrating on some non-issue. You have to love the British press.

Trains, transport and money

2007-07-24T00:00:00+01:00

So the government has said that they will give a whole load of money towards improving the rail network. This can only be a good thing, but it does seem to be a case of too little too late in a lot of respects. For all of the governments talk of green and sustainable transport policies, we're seeing a lot of funding for roads and aviation, but not a lot else. Road and air travel are cheaper in real terms now than they have ever been, yet since privatisation rail travel has become quite a lot more expensive. This is despite the fact that more people are travelling by rail all of the time.

The ESRC have some interesting statistics on travel, such as the cost to the UK of road accidents being 16 billion pounds per year. Road travel is not cheap, but the government doesn't worry about paying for roads and road improvement with public money. Why should the railways be any different? It goes without saying that I think they should be renationalised, but what else could be done to improve them?

I think that a big improvement could be achieved by putting a much higher tax on road transport of goods that could be transported by train, for one thing. We need new train lines to new depots in each town and city where goods can be unloaded and only the last part of the journey done by road. It is madness that we drive lorries with containers on them down motorways when rail is so much more efficient.

The railway network needs to be expanded. Where old lines closed in the 60's remain clear, they should be either reopened or protected from any development until such a time as they are economically viable. These lines were viable once, and the population was smaller then. If the costs of road transport start reflecting the true environmental costs, then these rail links will undoubtedly become useful again.

Fares need to become cheaper. Renationalisation is necessary for this, since I think it is fundamentally wrong to pay a public subsidy to a private company that makes a profit for its shareholders. If the railways were nationalised we could put an extra tax on petrol for road transport.. a couple of pence per litre say, and use that as a direct rail subsidy. Taxes on larger cars could also go to public transport, since taxing luxury cars takes the burden from the poor, who may still need to drive.

Finally, we need to think very hard about the way we build our towns and cities. As long as people feel that they need their cars then they will probably keep them, so we should do as much as we can to remove that need. This is already true in most of London and other big cities, where cars are a luxury. All new housing developments should include local shops and pubs etc within half a mile of any house to prevent people from having to travel just to buy food. This isn't some pipe-dream since this always used to be the case! Rail and buses should link residential areas so that people can get to work, and there should be tax incentives to live in the town or city you work in, to reduce the need to travel. We can do this if we try. If we don't tackle it and just bury our heads in the sand, things are only going to get worse... especially when the oil starts to run out.

Convicted Traitor? No jail for you!

2007-07-03T00:00:00+01:00

My complete despair when it comes to American politics continues to deepen. The widely publicised news of the day is that Bush has 'spared' Libby from 2.5 years in jail. His reason? It seems that he thought it was an 'excessive' punishment, so obviously 'no jail at all' is the correct amount for lying to a grand jury and exposing a CIA agent, potentially threatening their life, because their husband had criticised the invasion of Iraq.

At a fundamental level the leader of any democratic country should not have the power to overrule the courts anyway. What sort of example is this to countries we accuse of corruption? The message is that you can do anything you like as long as you are chums with those in power. Hardly inspiring. However, just because previous presidents have done it isn't an excuse for its continuation! It's fairly telling that the Republican defence of pretty much anything stupid, immoral or just plain illegal that Bush and his cronies do is that 'Clinton lied about having an affair!'. Yes he did, and of course he shouldn't have done it. He was also no saint in many other areas of course, but let's face it, Bush has done more to make the world a worse, more dangerous, divisive, polluted, greedy and generally bad place than almost anyone else in the last decade... apart from Cheney, perhaps.

Closer to home we are right to worry about the BAe bribery scandal, and the corruption and very dubious morals in the Labour government that stopped the investigation into it. However, it's pretty galling to hear that the US DoJ want to investigate that deal while their president is letting his friends out of prison for serious crimes. The Murdoch press wonder why there is what they consider to be anti-Americanism in this country. The answer is obvious - how can you have any respect for the American government with the current idiots in charge? They even make our lot look good. Like it or not, other countries judge you by the actions of your government, and if they carry on the way they're going then driving Jeeps into Glasgow airport will be the least of our worries.

Religious Exemptions

2007-07-01T00:00:00+01:00

A magistrate in Manchester has walked out of a court because a defendant refused to remove a full-face veil, and this seems to have caused some controversy. Admittedly the magistrate could have handled it better than just walking out, but his point remains valid. You can't turn-up in court with your face covered - you could be anyone. Whose word do we have to take that this is actually the person who it should be?

I don't know how the law stands on this. Could anyone turn up in court with their face covered and expect everyone else to go along with it? Somehow I doubt it, and if it's true for one person it should be true for all people. We can't give special permission for people to be exempt from laws and conventions because of some belief they hold. Where would it stop? If it is indeed the case, then hey, my brand new and convenient religion forbids me to appear in court unless I'm provided with beer and strippers! I'm being silly of course, but how is that any more silly than the demands of any faith? They are all essentially made-up to fit some possibly questionable historical anyway.

It's time for the government to put its foot down and state that no religious 'rules' are valid for any exemptions or special treatments in any walk of life. It doesn't matter what your magic book or man with super powers from the past says - we are all equal, and we all have exactly the same rights, along with the same responsibilities. The overriding motivation behind any of our actions should be for society, not because we're scared of some mythical punishment that might befall us when we die. A life that is lived well purely because we fear a supernatural punishment is not worthy of admiration at all. It is to be pitied.

Glastonbury Roundup

2007-06-25T00:00:00+01:00

Well, I'm back from Glastonbury in one piece! You may have heard that it was a bit wet this year, and it was. Wetter than 2005 I'd say, but the new drainage stopped the flooding. It didn't stop the mud though! Anyway, more on that in a bit.

Our bus was due to go at 8:45 on Wednesday morning, but I got a text on Tuesday evening saying that it had been changed to 2pm. Slightly irritating, but that would mean getting on-site by 3pm or so, which isn't bad. We got to Bath coach station around 1:20 and settled in to the short wait, only to discover that the buses were rather disorganised. Our bus got gradually later, as did everyone else's. There was one guy from See Tickets (who were running everything, supposedly) and he was being mobbed by the 200 or so people waiting, but didn't know what was going on. He did have all of the tickets in a carrier bag though, and the first few people who asked got their tickets and made their own way. This got the guy a telling-off from his bosses though, so he soon stopped that. Time ticked on and the police turned-up as they didn't like 200 increasingly-annoyed people hanging around the coach station. There wasn't much they could do though (apart from telling people off for drinking), so everyone sat around getting frustrated for a few hours. Some reporters from the local paper turned up, but the only real story was See Tickets being inept.

Anyway, our coach finally left at around 6pm, and we were on-site by 7. Despite my earlier lofty plans to head for Dragons Field, we set-up in Woodsies as usual - it's a good spot, especially when rain is expected as it doesn't get too muddy. Even better, it's right next to gate A where we came in. Having set-up the tents we headed into the markets to look about. Foolishly we thought that the solstice was on Thursday night, not Thursday morning, so we missed all of the celebrations at the stone circle. Bah! Still, we grabbed some food from the excellent Garlic Kitchen (this guy is also a fan), then after a bit of wandering around went up to the cinema tent to watch Serenity. After that it was back down into the markets for a bimble about, then back to the tent for a relatively early one. Little did we know that it was the last time we'd see much on the ground other than mud.

It rained on Thursday, quite a lot. However, when it finished the ground didn't seem too bad. We did some things, but also drank quite a lot so I don't remember much about it. We spent some time in Chai Wallahs drinking their rather excellent chai, doing some wheatgrass shots, and listening to some of the guys from One Taste, including the really, really good Jamie Woon. Not only is he a great singer/guitarist, but he does a very impressive local loop one man band thing. You really have to see it. I can't remember anything else we did, but we were in the Leftfield drinking quite a lot.

On Friday the ground had got pretty muddy, but it was still just about ok in the morning. The bands had started of course, and we all had timetables in mind. First on my list were Flipron on the Avalon stage. I'd convinced Nicole that they were worth seeing, and I think she was convinced. They're always great and it's just a shame that the set wasn't longer. It was getting muddier all the time though, and after Flipron it was getting to the point where moving between stages had to be carefully considered as it took so flippin' long. More beer seemed to help my balance though. I caught Rory Motion and '4 in a Field' in the cabaret tent, although I only really laughed at a couple of the comedians (Sean Hughes was good, and Ed Byrne was a good compere). We caught Rufus Wainwright and Arcade Fire on the Other stage. I didn't bother with the Arctic Monkeys, but I probably heard most of Bjork as I was stuck in the human traffic jam heading towards the Pyramid stage.

Saturday was even wetter. The rain not stopping had got less funny, but it wasn't going to stop us! The mud gave it a good go though. We poked around the Green Fields, then spent a very enjoyable (and dry) afternoon in the cabaret tent watching Nina Conti, Simon Munnery, Paul Nathan, Murray Lachlan-Young, Jeremy Hardy, Rhythm Wave, Marcus Brigstocke, Phil Kay and Mitch Benn. The highlights were Jeremy Hardy and Marcus Brigstocke, but it was pretty much all good. I'm not sure what it says about me that the main thing I wanted to see on the day was comedy though! Anyway, after that it was off to the John Peel stage to catch 'Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly', then back to the cinema tent to catch Hot Fuzz, although we gave up before the end (it was cold, and I've seen it before... it's good though!). Oh, and we got into the Guardian photo montage thing, around about the 1:20 remaining mark. That's us, in yellow ponchos!

My main objective for Sunday was the Leftfield. We saw George Monbiot talk about his environmental ideas which are always very insightful. Eric Faulkner (yes him, from the Bay City Rollers) then played two guitars at once, which was very impressive. Then there was a debate called 'Another World is Possible' with Tony Benn, George Monbiot, and some union people. George Monbiot got very angry about the Iraq war and made some very good points again. The next act was Marcus Brigstocke again, with a reduced (but slightly different) version of his set from the day before. Still funny. Then Ed Byrne did a really funny set, Tony Benn talked about nuclear weapons and Trident, Shazia Mirza did her 'angry feminist Muslim' thing, then Mark Thomas did his funny (yet alarming) mass lone protest thing, ending with the good news that Gordon Brown has suggested that he'll scrap the restrictions on protesting near parliament. After that we hoofed-it up to the Avalon stage to catch Billy Bragg, in great form as ever. Sadly, far too many other people wanted to see him too, so we were stood some way outside the tent. Still a good gig though - he's always great to watch. After that we went back to the Pyramid stage and caught a bit of the Manics, but then gave up and went to Chai Wallah's again instead to drink chai and catch more Jamie Woon.

And today.... dear God, the organisation! Or lack of it. Our bus was due to go at 8am, so we were up early putting our tents away in the rain (it had rained all night), and trudged over to the site bus station. Of course, none of the buses were working and nobody knew what was going on. The mud was the deepest at the festival, and it actually came over the top of my boots for the first time all weekend. We gave-up waiting where we were meant to as it clearly wasn't going anyway, and went and stood near where the buses were coming in. It was very wet and windy, and some people were clearly very cold, despite the foil heat blanket things that were handed out. A bus for Bath eventually turned up at around 10, and about five coach loads of people tried to get on. We were lucky and made it in, but a lot of people didn't. I dread to think how long they had to wait. Urgh. So I got home just before midday, cold and wet, but overall happy.

It has easily been the wettest and coldest Glasto so far - even the floods of last time went away by Sunday, and it was sunny then too. This time the rain was just relentless, and the mud. I won't forget that in hurry. As for my highlight... Jeremy Hardy? Not very rock'n'roll, but there you go. And Billy Bragg from a musical perspective I suppose, but then I know all of his songs and agree with his views, so I probably got more out of it than the other guys. Jaime Woon was good too, and I intend to check him out...

Honours and Dodgy Peers

2007-06-19T00:00:00+01:00

So the honours have been announced, and they include a knighthood for Salman Rushdie. This is fine, after all, his novel Midnight's Children won the 'Booker of Bookers' as the best book in 25 years - quite an achievement really. It's a prize that is definitely deserved.

However, it was bound to upset some religious fundamentalists, who are still a bit upset that Rushdie wrote a book that they believe mocked their religion, or Mohammed, or something (most of them haven't read it so it doesn't matter anyway). This was to be expected, and ignored. However, when Labour peer Lord Ahmed waded-in and started saying he was "appalled to hear Salman Rushdie had been given a knighthood ... honouring the man who has blood on his hands, sort of, because of what he did, I think is going a bit too far". So then, Lord Ahmed, what did Rushdie do, exactly? In what way has he got blood on his hands? Is he the one suggesting that someone should become a suicide bomber and kill Rushdie, much like the oh-so-innocent Pakistan parliament? No, he was simply writing a piece of fiction, something that we have a right to do in this country. Why are you siding with religious nutjobs rather than someone you're actually meant to represent?

Lord Ahmed has no right to be representing Britain and should be sacked immediately. No, we don't cave-in to the lunatic demands of religions in this country. In fact we pander far too much to them as it is, and I'm not just talking about Muslims. No religion has any right to infringe on our basic liberties. They should all be ridiculed and mocked far more often for the backward, illogical, dangerous things that they are. Just because you believe in a big man in the sky who tells you to avoid pork, not use condoms, stone women to death or whatever, it doesn't make it a valid viewpoint. Why should we listen to you? Why should we even tolerate you when you start using your religion to reduce our liberties? By all accounts you can let your fairy tales and superstitions tell you what you can do with your own life, but as soon as you start affecting anyone else - including your own children... by God, you'd better to be ready to be ridiculed and mocked. Ignoring you hasn't worked after all, so it's time we told you exactly where you can stick your bigotry and intolerance.

Embracing Facebook

2007-06-15T00:00:00+01:00

So, Facebook is still growing to encompass almost the entire world. This can't be ignored when you're a dynamic and hip Internet music outfit like we are here at The Filter, so today we released the MyFilter Facebook app.

Please give it a go. While you're at it, you can install the client (from our Web site) to get you personal charts and recommendations. You can get the client for Windows and OSX, of course. And Nokia phones.

So, that might all sound like a bit of an advert, and I suppose it is. However, we've got some genuinely exciting plans and it's all free, so what have you got to lose? It's time for us all to rediscover our music collections!

Hot Vegans, Almost

2007-06-11T00:00:00+01:00

This weekend was really hot. I was in Bristol on Saturday, and when I left my house in the morning it was a bit overcast so I put some jeans on. Big mistake - by the time the train got to Bristol the sun was out and I was already overheating. Still, you have to make the most of these things, so buy combining the powers of ice cream and beer, I got through the day.

We went to the Glass Arcade in St Nicholas Markets for lunch where I tried some Caribbean 'Ackee and Salt Fish'. Tasty, although the women running the stall did her best to warn me that I wouldn't like it (nobody there, including her, liked it). I thought it was pretty good though - it sort of melts in your mouth. In a nice way.

We checked-out 'Encounters', a Manuel Vason exhibition at the Arnolfini. Despite the clever walk-activated lighting stuff, it rather suffered from a lack of context, but hey, it was suitably disturbing in parts to tick the right 'art' boxes! The Arnolfini do struggle to run their bar very efficiently when it's busy though, and it does get pretty busy on summer days.

During the afternoon we went to Brandon Hill and Cabot Tower. I don't know why I haven't been up it before, but I did this time. A great view is to be had from the top of it, and we had fun squeezing past the fat people on the thin spiral staircase. The tower is nice and cool when it's hot and sunny outside, so it was a bit of a welcome respite.

There was an intention to catch Puressence at the Vegan Fayre (the worlds biggest, no less), but a few drinks in the sun sort of messed-up our schedule. Still, we sort of heard the end of the set from the other side of the fence!

As I type this I'm watching Mick Jagger prancing about on stage singing Sympathy for the Devil at the Isle of Wight festival. He's not doing too badly for a pensioner! A few of my friends were there, and with the great weather and lineup, I'm sure they had an excellent time. My own festival excitement is for Glastonbury of course, but it has been ever so slightly tempered by the awkward Wednesday morning coach we are forced to get. Not so much a problem for me as a couple of the guys I'm going with, so hopefully it will turn out for the best.

Girls, Geeks, Google

2007-06-06T00:00:00+01:00

Yesterday evening I went to the Google offices by Victoria Station in London for the thirteenth Girl Geek Dinner. This was the first one I've attended at a different venue, and I was interested to see the Google offices. They're in Belgrave House on Buckingham Palace Road - an impressively large building which also houses American Express (I think). The event itself was held in the staff canteen, and Google had laid-on food, booze and so on, as well as some cute promotional stuff. Top marks for all of that.

The first talk was given by Shivauna Raff, who talked about the future of search. She touched on some interesting stuff about vertical searching, and how she thinks the search market will go generally. The next talk was by the Google team behind the mobile version of Google Checkout. They had some interesting tales of the rather painful-sounding world of getting applications to run on phone... not an inconsiderable challenge when you consider the different phones that exist, and the fact that the same phone models can differ when used on different networks!

The way that products are developed within Google provoked some discussion. For the size of the company and number of users, Google use quite small development teams. This surprised some of the audience, but I think Google must have something right! I'll argue about the best way of doing things with them once I've made my own billions...

Sarah recorded the talks - you can find them on Viddler. You can also see Jane Dallaway's photos on Flickr.

Developers Developers Developers!

2007-06-05T00:00:00+01:00

...so goes the familiar Microsoft rant, as expressed by Steve Ballmer. What he should have added, of course, is "They had better not be too clever if they want to work with us!". A guy called Jamie Cansdale has found this out to his cost by developing his Testdriven.NET plugin for Visual Studio. Basically, Microsoft are going to sue him for using APIs they encouraged people to use, mainly because something he's giving away for free might compete with one of their products. It's worth reading this article on it, including the increasingly threatening emails they are sending him.

Every day I'm glad that I don't have to develop on Windows. Not only would it mean actually using Windows (something that I can avoid completely now, thankfully), but Windows developers have such an overpriced monoculture to deal with when it comes to development, that it pretty much stifles innovation... unless you have piles of cash, of course. There's a pretty good reason why all the best new ideas are coming from non-Windows platforms, and by acting like they are in this story, Microsoft are only going to make the problem worse for themselves.

Isn't The Internet Brilliant?

2007-05-31T00:00:00+01:00

Google continue to chuck-out things that impress me, and even better, they're free. Take the recent addition of 'Street Views' on Google Maps, for example. You can now become a virtual tourist of several cities in the US, and it is done really well. I'm not sure how they've done it, but the objects (people, cars and so on) all look normal and not stretched and stitched, as you'd imagine. I spent a few minutes looking at exactly the same views I had poking around San Francisco and Las Vegas last year - it's almost spooky.

Also on the Google front, Checkout is brilliant. I buy quite a lot of stuff from eBuyer as they're very cheap for computery bits and pieces, and for orders over thirty quid you get ten pounds off simply buy paying with Google Checkout! Can't argue with that - I've saved quite a lot already. Well... 'saved' in a sense, since I probably didn't exactly need some of the things I bought, but you know what I mean.

We're now into June, so I'm looking forward to the WWDC on the 11th. Not that I'm going myself of course, but we'll finally learn the 'super top secret' Leopard features, plus I'm sure there will be some product announcements. I'm hoping for a boost in Mac Mini specs, but there is a rumour it is being dropped! I guess I'll find out soon enough, but if it is dropped then I'll just have to pick-up one of the remaining ones. The current Core2Duo would do the job, but hopefully I'll be able to pay the same for a better machine.

There's iPhone promotion going on at the 'All Things Digital' conference at the moment, but that's far enough from its UK release that I'm not really thinking about it. At the same conference, Microsoft showed-off a whizzy table that is a bit like a giant iPhone. I guess it was kind of cool, but they're talking about around ten thousand quid for it, so it's not exactly a consumer device. Looking at the demo video, it's pretty similar to the iPhone Multitouch interface too, so not that innovative.

Facebook continues to gather steam. Every day it seems more people I know join it... I think it has reached that critical mass now where a social networking site actually becomes useful. The new applications that can be added to your profile page are also pretty cool, and as long as they don't allow people to change their page layout/fonts/colours then it's all good. If people start being able to mess with their pages then it will just become another MySpace, with people getting 'creative' and making horrendous, unreadable pages. Urgh.

Spiderman, Goya and Leaves of Glass

2007-05-17T00:00:00+01:00

It has been a busy few weeks since my last post. Sadly my trusty Mazda 323 badly failed its MOT and had to be scrapped. It was a good old workhorse, so it's a bit sad. Still, everything dies in the end, so we should not mourn!

Over the Bank Holiday weekend we went to Dizzy's birthday party. It was nice to catch-up with people again, and we couldn't have asked for better weather. There were lots of familiar faces, and it's always nice to meet new unfamiliar ones. Photos on Flickr, as usual.

Last week we went to see Spider-Man 3. It was... ok. Much too long, and not nearly as good as the last two. In retrospect I'm not sure it's worth seeing, although it did have its moments.

Last weekend I was in London to visit Dave, and we managed to fit quite a lot in despite the Circle and District lines rather irritatingly taking the weekend off. On Saturday afternoon we caught 28 Weeks Later at the Odeon on Tottenham Court Road. It was pretty good, although not as great as the first one. We had a few pints in random Soho pubs, then met-up with Helen for dinner at an 'smokehouse' place called Bodean's on Poland Street, Soho. They do some great barbecue-style food, including 'pulled pork', which is a bit like how you get duck when you order duck and pancakes at the Chinese. It's really good, and the prices are pretty good too. After that we went to see Leaves of Glass at the Soho Theatre. Not really an uplifting play, but it was well done. To cheer ourselves up we headed off to Sloane Square for Gerry's sister's 21st, which was good fun - lots of drinking and dancing, and everyone had a great time.

On Sunday the rain was appalling, so we sat it out and had a leisurely start watching DVDs and recovering from hangovers. After that we headed to the Science Museum, and we actually got to see quite a lot of it! In fact I don't think I've managed to see quite so much of the place in one day before - I usually get there only to find it's about to close! We met Frances for some cake in the cafe and then wandered around looking at science-y things. When we'd had enough of that we walked back through Hyde Park and grabbed a bit of food at Gourmet Burger in Bayswater before I headed home on the train. A rather busy weekend, all in!

On Monday I was hosting a CouchSurfer called Chris from California. We met in the pub after work and went for some food at The Salamander before heading back to mine for some geeky gaming on the PS3. On Tuesday I was hosting again, this time a student from Indiana called Emma. She 'enjoyed' a rather random evening of helping to push-start cars and going on a random trip to the cinema to see Goya's Ghosts, which was pretty good. The cinema was almost empty, but then it was a late showing and a bit of an 'arthouse' film. It was well done, but don't expect a happy story!

Slackademic

2007-04-29T00:00:00+01:00

It has been a busy week. Foolishly I have been doing two modules of my OU course at once (hey, they were 'short courses' and looked easy!) and the two main pieces of coursework were both due in on midday Thursday. This meant that, thanks to having to work and earn a living, they had to be in by Wednesday night. After a weekend and every evening I got them in. They could have been better, but hey, in the end I was just happy to submit them. I don't think it matters how old I get - when it comes to academic coursework I will always leave it until the last minute. When I'm sat there typing drivel in the small hours it brings back memories of undergrad days... all of us sat in the computer science labs, hacking away all night for a 10am deadline. Happy days! We always got it done though, and that makes you feel a bit invincible.

Anyway, the course has taken all of my free time for ages, but I did manage to get into London on Thursday to record the Girl Geek Dinner. More about that here on my 'tech' blog.

I've just been in the cinema to see The Painted Veil, based on the Somerset Maugham novel, at the Little Theatre. It was really good... slightly sad, but then aren't all the best dramas? I can't think of a bad film with Edward Norton in it, and this doesn't disappoint. Check it out.

Geeking Out

2007-04-29T00:00:00+01:00

On Thursday I was in the City at the eleventh London Girl Geek Dinner. This was the third one I've been to, and this time I offered my video services. There were a couple of issues with the camera and the new wireless mic I have, but with a bit of crafty editing it hasn't come-out too badly. You can check it out via this link to Viddler. Be patient with the crazy camera swinging - it calms down after a minute or two! I was fiddling around and slightly boozed-up.

The event itself was interesting. First-up was David Terrar from Wiki Wednesdays, which is another geeky networking London event. Then there was Angela Beesley from Wikia, which is a bit like a commercial Wiki site, although Angela talks about her work with Wikipedia too. Finally there's the Wiki team from Astraware who talk about using Wikis in their company. All quite interesting, although I was quite boozed-up by the end. Hopefully that doesn't show too badly in the video! Sarah says more about the evening in her post (the first link here), so check that out if you're interested. Oh, and Radio 4 were there recording the event for Woman's Hour, so I guess it may crop-up on there too. You never know.

New Job

2007-04-18T00:00:00+01:00

On Monday I started a new job. It's still programming - I haven't decided to become a stuntman or something - but it's in quite a different area. No more telco stuff for me, at least for a while, as I'm now in the exciting world of Internet startups and fun things. I'm also programming on a Mac so I don't have to suffer Windows on a regular basis again. Huzzah! I've now got a shiny quad-core Mac Pro under my desk, which is pretty darn nippy.

So all is good on the work front. The weather has also been exceptional recently of course, so that has been nice. My new job is a bit further from home (about 45 minutes walk rather than 30) so I've decided to cycle in. Since there is nowhere to put a bike in my new office I decided to get a folding one. Not only can this be left under my desk and out of the way, but I can sling it into the back of the car for weekends away and so on. After looking at various makes and models I went for a Dahon Speed TR. This was a tough choice as I really wanted to buy a British bike (support local industry and all that), but although the Brompton folds much smaller it just doesn't have the gear range I need for Bath. The new bike arrived quickly and I've been cycling into work fine on it. The smaller wheels make it look slightly girly I suppose, but that's something I have to live with if I want the folding! The rolling resistance of smaller wheels also make it slightly harder to move - I feel that on the hill on the way home! Good exercise though, I suppose.

I bought a PS3 - much nicer to look at than the XBox 360, and nicer firmware too. It also doesn't sound like a aeroplane taking off! I've just got 'Resistance' for it at the moment, but there are some more games on my list from ScreenSelect, so I'll get those at some point. The rental system works really well for games actually as I don't have to shell-out 50 quid for something I lose interest in pretty quickly. If only they carried Wii games they would be perfect. Anyway, if you want to 'friend' me then my handle is 'DominicUK'.

One final thing that I've been appreciating is the new Nine Inch Nails album, Year Zero. It's really good, but you don't have to take my word for it since you can listen to it on the NIN web site. The CD itself is pretty funky as it is heat sensitive. When you put it in the CD player it's black, but when it comes out it's white (with 'hidden' text). Cool! It goes black again when it cools down. It's a nice touch, and it makes me happier that I still buy CDs rather than downloading dodgy copies like skanky cheapskate pirates.

Eyejot

2007-04-10T00:00:00+01:00

I've been playing around a bit with Eyejot, a Web site that allows you to send video messages to anyone else with an email address. Now this may not sound particularly revolutionary, but it's all Flash-based with nothing to install, and should work on pretty much any machine. It worked very easily with the built-in iSight camera on my iMac, for example. You can watch your video before you send it, and it's all quick and painless.

So why would you want to send a video instead of text email? Well, it's quicker, and I can see occasions where it's more efficient to blither-on for a few seconds than to send an email. It's all free anyway, so why not give it a go and see what you think? It's one of those ideas that might just take off...

Lunch With Simon Hughes

2007-04-04T00:00:00+01:00

I've just got back from a buffet lunch where the guest speaker was Simon Hughes. It was good to finally hear him speak and see him face to face, as during the leadership election I got to meet the other candidates, but not Simon who was my favourite and who I voted for! Still, it was good to feel vindicated by my choice - he comes across as a genuine guy who cares about the issues that matter, such as social inequality.

It's nice to meet a politician who has genuinely been responsible for saving lives (he introduced legislation requiring landlords to have annual gas safety checks) - perhaps that's the biggest 'difference' any of us can make? I guess he just 'gets it', like most left-leaning politicians. The state is there to help society, not make the rich richer. It seems easy for people to forget that.

The death of DRM.. and WMA?

2007-04-02T00:00:00+01:00

Today at 1pm the world of online music buying was changed in a big way when Steve Jobs announced that DRM-free music will be available from the iTunes store. The DRM-free music will be 99p per track (instead of 79p for DRM) but will be at twice the bitrate, which is 256Kbps AAC. The per-album price will be the same as for DRM-restricted albums, and users will be able to upgrade their existing DRM-restricted tracks.

So why is this big news? Well for one thing DRM-free music is what everyone wants. You will now be able to buy music from the iTunes store and play it on any device, whether portable player or computer, etc. The higher bitrate is an added bonus of course as music will now sound even better. The objects that some people had about buying music on iTunes were largely about 'lock-in', but now all of those objections no longer apply. If people really object to the higher price and don't care about DRM then they can still buy the DRM-restricted files. Everyone is a winner!

The best thing about this move is of course that it will kill the WMA format. EVerything can play unprotected AAC files (yes, even the Zune), and the iTunes store easily has the largest selection of music available of all of the online music sites. The Zune wasn't an attempt at a competitive music player, it was an attempt to lock people into WMA, and therefore Windows. The multiplatform AAC and iTunes now stomps all over it as you'd be daft to buy your music anywhere else. WMA is dead as a commercial digital music format.

The consumer will benefit. Other music stores that only offer DRM-limited files will have to remove the DRM to compete, and at that point all online music stores will be competing on 'real' terms - price, available selection, and so on. It is a good day for everyone, even those who don't care for the iTunes store. Freedom of the user, and value for money, has been substantially increased.

Only EMI have signed-up so far, but that's about 20% of the music. The other labels will sign-up if they see that the EMI move is sucessful, so let's make that success happen! At least one of your favourite artists will be on EMI - buy a DRM-free track of theirs when you can and lets show that we consumers want the freedom to play our music on whatever device we want to.

Budget

2007-03-22T00:00:00+00:00

Yesterday's budget was a bit of a surprise really. With the current (and very welcome!) competition between the parties on who can be the most 'green' I expected more green taxes for one thing, yet the only real difference is a slight increase in fuel duty and a higher road tax for the most polluting vehicles, although the threshold for this is so high that it doesn't even cover most 4x4.

The move that surprised almost everyone was the 2p cut in the basic rate of income tax, although this came with the scrapping of the 10p band, so those on the lowest wages will actually pay more. Now I'm probably in the minority in thinking that we don't pay enough tax as it is, so I didn't want to see cuts to income tax. At least it wasn't to the higher rate payers I suppose. What was worse was the cut in corporation tax, although small companies now have to pay more. I hate these blatant bribes to big industry, so this move was pretty appalling. There were the predictable small increases to beer etc too of course (but spirits escape for some reason).

So anyway, where were the progressive moves? Where was the scrapping of car tax and big hike in petrol prices? Where was the duty on aircraft fuel? Where was some sort of sensible tax system on food miles? Or non-degradable packaging? Or incandescent light bulbs? What a wasted opportunity, and what's worse, this budget looked more Conservative than I would have expected from the Tories. I used to console myself that while we may have a Labour government it's probably better than a Tory one when it comes to wealth redistribution and the environment (we'll forget Iraq for a moment), but now I'm not so sure. What's the world coming to when you start wondering that if there can't be a liberal government, a Conservative one is the next best choice?

Crowded House

2007-03-20T00:00:00+00:00

Last night we went to the first Crowded House gig for years at the Thekla in Bristol. It was really very good. They played some stuff of their new album that is being released in June, but there were enough old favourites there to keep everyone more than happy, and they played for 2.5 hours so it was a good long set. The tickets sold out pretty quickly and the 15 quid original price went up to about 400 quid on eBay, which was a bit mad.

Crowded House are one of those bands that are a bit like the Beautiful South - I know I like them but I don't realise how many songs I know until I'm at a gig! I guess I've got three Crowded House albums and I listen to them reasonably often, so that might explain it. It was a pleasant surprise to find myself able to sing along to most of the tracks though. The band themselves seemed to enjoy it although there were some rough edges, but that isn't completely surprising seeing as it has been so long since they've played together in public, and this is a new line-up. Anyway, top stuff - catch them on their new tour if you can...

Back

2007-03-14T00:00:00+00:00

Well I got back from Tokyo in one piece, despite a slightly unnerving landing at Heathrow where we pulled away sharply after almost touching down - it turned out that an Emirates 'plane was rather unexpectedly on the runway we wanted to land on. What fun. Still, once more around London and we landed 15 minutes later.

My final week in Tokyo wasn't bad. On Thursday evening we went to a sushi place in the big shopping centre by Kawasaki station and shared big sashimi and sushi platters. The sashimi was very fresh - the fish was caught and prepared in front of us, and most of it was still quite intact when it arrived on the plate. That wasn't a problem, but a few minutes after we started eating it started to move around in a rather energetic way. I'm pretty sure that they were post-mortem twitches, but it was vaguely unsettling (and went on for about 20 minutes!). Still, it sure was fresh fish!

My plane on the way back was fairly empty so I had a chance to stretch-out a bit for the 12 hours. I also caught 'The Departed' which was pretty good, as well as another couple of films that I was clearly too tired to remember. I remember them being good though. After the efficiency of Tokyo's Narita airport I was expecting the worst from Heathrow, but my baggage was out quickly and the trip back to Bath was really painless. Mind you, travel makes you appreciate things more - I don't think any airport baggage handling can be quite as inefficient as San Francisco when we flew there from Vegas. That involved more than half an hour of waiting by the conveyor belt and was pretty painful. Airports eh? You would have thought that they could have got them right by now...

It Is Considered Disgusting To Blow Your Nose In Public

2007-03-06T00:00:00+00:00

I had a weekend of poking around slightly less cultural sights. On Saturday I went and had a poke around Akihabara to see the shops etc. It certainly has a good range of electronics and manga porn. Being unable to appreciate Manga porn I stuck to the electronics shops though. There are some great gadgets and the Japanese seem to have a large number of options for really lightweight laptops which I liked the look of, but they're not cheap. I also looked at buying a camera since they are a bit cheaper here, but the Japan-only warranty didn't sound like a good idea, plus the possible duty to pay if I keep hold of the box. VAT in Japan is only 5% so even being a tourist doesn't save you much money.

Akihabara is of course teeming with thousands of people looking for a bargain. They also have large numbers of women hanging around outside the station in strange French maid outfits handing out stuff. Not sure what they're advertising, but the Japanese don't bat an eyelid at such things. Most odd. Other than that, and the strange placing of sex shops between computer shops, it's all quite tame really. For shopping it's great as you don't get pushy salesmen grabbing you as soon as you stop to look at something. They do stand around and shout stuff, but it's to no-one in particular.

After Akihabara I had a quick kip before heading out to Roppongi, an area known for its nightlife. I went there early evening as I wanted to just have a look around before it got too crowded. There's certainly lots to do though, even at that time of day - a lot of the bars seem to optimistically open all day. I went for a drink in some 'British pub' to check out the local take on what British pubs are like, and from all of the St Patricks Day flags it felt a bit more Irish than British, but never mind! I then had a drink at the Gaspanic Cafe, which was empty, then a burger at the New Zealand Centre (oddly), which promised many NZ beers but only had one. After that I headed to Geronimo's which was highly recommended in my Lonely Planet. There I met a bunch of expats and went for a Chinese with them, which was all highly random and entertaining, but I was back in time for the last train home!

On Sunday I went for a drink and a bite to eat with someone from CouchSurfing not far from Roppongi again. We chatted and watched the water from the pier and had a most pleasant evening. I caught the last train back to the hotel and arrived there to find all of the electricity off. The hotel had decided to rewire something, so I had an entertaining time preparing for bed and generally getting around the hotel. It's easy to forget how much you depend on electricity. It's not so bad at home, but believe me, it has its uses when you're staying on the 22nd floor of a hotel!

Woo - another weekend!

2007-03-02T00:00:00+00:00

Made it through another week of working in Japan and negotiating the transport system! Actually, until today it wasn't too bad - we've been heading out of Ikebukuro away from town so the metro is really quiet. However, my colleague from the UK left today and I started on a week of a new journey to an office in Kawasaki. This new route on the train (rather than the Metro) takes me right around Tokyo so I've now experienced crowded trains! To be honest they're not that bad though - they go every few minutes, so if the current one is a bit of a crush you can just wait for the next one. This doesn't seem to occur to the locals though who are clearly in a rush to get everywhere, and they happily cram on until the train is about to burst. Madness. Mind you, they give me odd looks while I just stand aside to let them on.

The train I get takes me on the Yamanote line, and I don't know if this is unique, but all of the stations have their own little tune when you arrive. It's quite cute and I guess pretty useful when you get to know your tune, but some of the choices are a bit odd. One of them plays the tune from Goodfellas (or some other gangster film - I can't remember which)... you know, the guitar-y
Italian sounding one. Anyway, the trains are pretty smart and there are screens showing where
you are going, where you are, and so on. Also, Japanese railway stations seem to be much less
confusing than their Metro stations! All of the lines are clearly marked along with their
destinations, unlike places like our previous local Metro station Negatacho, where you know that there's a connection to the Ginza line, but the signs don't tell you that
you have to head for the Yurakucho line, walk all the way along the platform and up stairs
the other end, and then along corridors for another 10 minutes. They're huge.

The Japanese themselves are almost model users of public transport. Most people (bar the odd rebellious teenager) queue for the trains on the handy painted lines on the platform, wait for people to get off when the train arrives, and then get on (although they never stop doing this, of course!). People tend to either sleep or stare at their feet, but if you do make eye contact they seem friendly. I have to say though, the women seem to be much chirpier. I'm not deluded enough to think this is because they all fancy me... rather, there seems to be a bit of a macho thing with the men where they're not allowed to have facial expressions or something. The women, in comparison, giggle away at pretty much anything. The difference is quite noticeable... much more so than the UK. I can't begin to guess why this is. Perhaps it has something to do with a lot of the men openly reading porno comics on the way to work? It's an odd thing to see men in suits doing at 8 in the morning. You can't tell what most people are reading though since they tend to put their books into little covers so you can't see the title. Perhaps they're all reading porn?! Can't see why they would want to cover the book otherwise, but then there are many bits of Japanese culture that I haven't got to grips with yet.

Anyway, work went ok today and I'm now trying to plan what to do this weekend. It might be
my last weekend in Japan for a while, so I have to make it count!

First Weekend in Tokyo

2007-02-25T00:00:00+00:00

It's Sunday evening here now, almost a whole week since I arrived. Since my last post I've mostly been working. Days here are long and it doesn't leave much time for anything else, but we've been eating well! Food and drink is possibly more expensive here than anywhere else. It doesn't help that we get back from work too late to eat in most of the restaurants, so we have to resort to the bar at the top of the hotel (where a couple of beers and some fried chicken each is 60 quid - urgh).

Anyway, on Saturday we had a chance to see some sights. We went to the temple at Senso-Ji as we'd heard it was one of the best, and indeed it was. There are many tourist-tat shops that line the street (Nakamise-dori) between Asakusa Metro station and the temple compound and are interesting to poke about in. The temple itself is interesting but we were unlucky that when we visited there was some restoration going on, but there was still plenty to see.

After the temple we decided to take the Sumida-Gawa river cruise to see the city from a different aspect. Unfortunately the boat was completely enclosed with no deck to walk about on, so it was hard to see much! What we did see was mostly bridges and skyscrapers, so it was a lot less interesting than something like a cruise on the Thames. I wouldn't recommend it unless you manage to get an open boat anyway.

The boat took us to a commercial district near the Tokyo Tower. Everything was closed and nobody was around - it was a bit bizarre really. There was a McDonalds in the bottom of one of the office buildings where we reluctantly bought lunch before heading into whatever bit of Tokyo we were in, in an attempt to find a Metro station to get home. We walked under a monorail, which is an excitingly futuristic thing to have, and we saw a bullet train too. Very Japanese! Eventually we randomly found Mita station and got the metro back to the hotel.

On Sunday we had to move hotels. We're now in the Crowne Plaza Metropolitan, and I have another decent view from my room. The hotel is in a much busier area than the Akasaka Prince, so it looks like there will be more to do. We're right by Ikebukuro station which, like many Japanese stations, is absolutely massive. Still, it's a bit closer to the office so we'll shave half an hour off each leg of the commute from tomorrow.

In the afternoon we went to the Meiji-Jingu shrine. To get there you have to walk through an interesting bit of Japanese culture - Cos-play-zoku, or the 'costume play gang'. These are teenagers who dress up in goth and punk dress and then hang around every weekend, while tourists come and pose with them for photos. It's very bizarre. We had to walk though them to get to the shrine so it was an interesting diversion, although I didn't take any photos as it felt a bit 'wrong' to take photos of scantily-clad 14 year olds. Anyway, the shrine itself is in a massive (by Tokyo standards) site full of trees and 'countryside', which is very pleasant. I think I saw more tourists there than anywhere else in Tokyo. Most days you don't see any Westerners, but the shrine was crawling with them. It was an impressive site, and we saw a couple of traditional Japanese weddings taking place. It must have been a bit weird for the people getting married as they had loads of tourists taking photos, but I suppose they wouldn't have done it there if they had minded. Odd though.

After the shrine we went back to the area of the hotel and poked around BIC Camera, which is a bit like Richer Sounds. I don't think things are really that much cheaper in Japan though so I haven't succumbed to any impulse purchases yet. From BIC it was a short stroll back to the hotel where we had a rather nice meal. Hurrah! Bizarrely, an English sixth form college and a ballet company are staying at the hotel at the moment, so there's an interesting mix of people. It's a lively hotel so I'm happier about staying two weeks here than I would have been in the Akasaka Prince...

Big In Japan

2007-02-21T00:00:00+00:00

So here I am again in yet another country with difficult to read signs. I don't know what it is about countries that use different alphabets that makes my company send me there, but I'm not complaining. Actually Tokyo isn't too bad as most signs have the English on them as well, which is rather more user-friendly than China was.

The flight over here was ok. I caught Babel (not great), Flags Of Our Fathers (better than I thought it would be), and The Illusionist (really good), which took my mind off my increasingly cramped legs during the 12 hours. Tokyo airport is a model of efficiency and we were out of there literally 20 minutes after landing, and straight onto a bus that stopped at our hotel. The hotel itself (the Akasaka Prince) is nice enough - I've got a great view and a large amount of sofa space. The many restaurants in the hotel do seem to close bizarrely early though, which is inconvenient when we get back late from work. For example, on Monday night we went to the office after checking into the hotel around 2pm and ended-up getting back at 11. No food being available when you've not slept for 36 hours just makes you feel annoyed!

Getting around Tokyo is pretty easy using their rather good underground system. It's not particularly cheap but it runs on time and is very clean. The famously crowded trains certainly exist but are very directional, so our train (heading out of the centre in the morning) is going against the main flow and is practically empty, while trains going on the same line the other way are absolutely rammed. A fair number of people (about 10% I'd guess) seem to wear surgical masks for some reason best known to themselves. There are also 'women only' carriages for the trains at busy times thanks (I assume) to groping men. On the outside everyone looks like they wouldn't step out of line at all, so the idea of this seems odd. I don't doubt it happens though.

Japanese people seem very friendly and quite genuine about it. On the way back to the tube station today a girl bumped into me and apologised far more than she needed to. A few minutes later at the tube station she came up and apologised again before starting a conversation about where I'm from, her plans to visit Britain to improve her English, and so on. It says something about Britain that when she started talking to me I assumed she was after something or trying to con me or wind me up in some way. It's little things like that which give you a good impression of a place.

The work is hard and the hours long, but I'm looking forward to the weekend when I should be able to actually go out and see something. Even at this early stage I can forsee it being difficult not to automatically bow to people on returning to the UK. Not a bad thing though - I think all of this mutual respect thing is pretty great.

Wind Farms Don't Kill (many) Birds. Fact.

2007-02-13T00:00:00+00:00

...well, not many anyway. A while ago now, David Bellamy accused wind farms of killing thousands of birds. Notwithstanding the fact that Bellamy, a childhood hero, has now gone mad and is gibbering on about things like global warming being made up, some people who are against wind farms noticed and starting using his support like it was some sort of argument winner.

Now it was clearly untrue (I've lived near windfarms and never noticed piles of dead birds), but without any peer-reviewed proof I was stuck. After all, buildings, cars, cats and so on kill far more birds and only an idiot would claim otherwise. I was therefore quite happy to see this study which shows that wind farms don't in fact kill any noticeable number of birds after all. Yay! I guess the NIMBYs, Neocons and other assorted idiots will now have to try to find another reason not to build wind farms other than the pretty selfish 'I don't like looking at them' argument.

The BNP lie - there's a surprise.

2007-02-13T00:00:00+00:00

On my walk in to work this morning I was surprised to see the headline of the local paper. Apparently the BNP are running 'patrols' here in Bath, and the story was about the police saying it was a bad thing. Curious, I went to the paper's Web site where you can comment on stories and saw this.

At the time of writing nearly all of the comments are obviously from BNP members who have rallied to their 'cause' to put a positive spin on it. There are a couple of comments from normal people, including one who points out that some comments are from members who aren't local and have been told to lie about it. These are still in the minority though.

I obviously posted a comment myself but it was taken down within minutes. I thought it was reasonable, but perhaps the paper thought I was being too 'harsh' on the BNP. I don't know, but I think I've blown my chance. So here is a request - would anyone who reads this and realises that the BNP are in fact racist thugs (which is all of you, I suspect) please take two minutes to post a comment on the paper's site saying.. well, anything you like - it's your comment. I think we just need a better proportion of comments that aren't pro-BNP.

Billie is a Treat

2007-02-13T00:00:00+00:00

Last Thursday we went to the theatre to see Christopher Hampton’s Treats, starring the lovely Billie Piper, that guy from 'My Family' and the BT adverts (Kris Marshall), and Laurence Fox. It was an odd play really - you know the film 'Closer' with Clive Owen? Well, it was a bit like that in that you didn't really feel for any of the characters. It was well acted and produced, but at the end there was a general feeling of 'ah right, so is that it?' in the theatre. Some random bloke said "Well that was a load of old rubbish wasn't it?" to me on the way out, which I've never had before! I didn't think it was rubbish, but then it wasn't brilliant either. After the performance there was a brief (and well attended) Q&A session with the actors. They all seemed quite nice and their answers were pretty interesting, but I can't remember any of them well enough to repeat here.

We were a bit peckish when we left the theatre so we nipped into the Garrick's Head for a bite to eat. I had the excellent Devilled Kidneys, but everyone else's food looked great too, plus the beer was good. A top end to the evening!

Hot Fuzz

2007-02-06T00:00:00+00:00

Last night I was at a preview showing of Hot Fuzz, the new comedy from Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright. Yes, that's right, the guys behind the brilliant Spaced and Shaun of the Dead. So, apart from the excitement of seeing a film a week or two before general release and getting a bag full of goodies, what can I say? Basically it's very good - starts off a bit slowly and you wonder where they are going with it, but it soon turns into the highly amusing nonsense that you expect. It's vaguely interesting from a local perspective for me as well since it's filmed in Wells, just down the road. While I enjoyed the film, I did think that the cinema had the volume cranked-up a bit too much. Perhaps I'm getting old but some of the load bits hurt my ears... I thought age was meant to make you deaf!

The Most Fantastic Alarm Clock Ever

2007-02-02T00:00:00+00:00

This has to be the most fantastic thing I've seen all week. Completely brilliant! The story behind its creation is also very interesting, especially for budding entrepreneurs.

Vista Will Steal Your Rights, Then Destroy The World

2007-01-31T00:00:00+00:00

Windows Vista is unlikely to destroy the world all by itself of course, but as this interesting article points out, it will certainly help fill landfill sites, increase global warming, and result in mountains of perfectly good hardware being thrown away. Something to think about. As well as all of that it also takes away your right to do what you want with your own computer. I think this is going to hit creative people first, but will there be a backlash when people realise they can't watch their BlueRay or HD-DVD films because Microsoft doesn't approve of their monitor? We'll see.

Ha! Nice One, Bill...

2007-01-30T00:00:00+00:00

Today sees the general retail launch of Microsoft Windows Vista. This isn't a cheap thing to buy in the UK, being about twice as much as it is in the US, but let's leave that aside for the minute. For now I feel I have to draw attention to the ridiculous things that Bill Gates is claiming, specifically that Vista is "dramatically more secure than any other operating system released". Let's just think about that statement for a minute as it's a ridiculous claim on a couple of levels.

Firstly, you never claim that sort of thing on the day of release. Let's just imagine that someone releases a worm that breaks Vista in the next few months. It's almost certain to happen. It's going to make Bill (and Microsoft, by extension) look silly, and a bit cocky, while just saying "it's better than XP" wouldn't. Second, it's simply not true. I'm willing to accept that it's the most secure version of Windows ever, but any IT professional knows that Windows is a bit of a joke when it comes to security compared with any UNIX-based OS. There's a good reason why you just don't get viruses on Sun boxes and Macs - they're inherently more secure from the bottom-up than Windows is. UNIX has been around in one form or another since the 70's, and with software the older something is, the more time people have had to find bugs in it. Developing a modern OS from scratch is always going to result in more bugs than anything UNIX based. Developing something from current Windows code is going to be even worse.

Let's hope that people don't fall for Bill's PR line. Where is the innovation? Were is WinFS? Where is, oh, anything that's not pretty-much ripped off OSX? Buy Vista if you have to use Windows, but don't claim it's more secure than anything else. I'm not knocking it - I'll install it where I would have had XP before, but it's not Gods gift to computing and I'd bet Windows users will still have to suffer virus checkers, spyware detectors, and all of the other stuff you have to currently run if you want to use Windows on the Internet.

Labyrinthine Pleasures

2007-01-25T00:00:00+00:00

At the weekend we were at an engagement party in Wimbledon. Now Wimbledon is a part of London that I don't think about much since it is south of the river, and I have memories of trying to get a night bus back from there after a party once. Urgh. However, this time I saw a nicer side of it. Not only can you get to it without changing lines from Paddington, but you can also drive back from there to Bath in less than two hours when the traffic is good. That's pretty cool. I was already slightly impressed then when we went for lunch at The Fire Stables, a gastropub near 'Wimbledon Village' that is pretty good (it won Time Out's best gastropub award in 2001). We only had a light lunch, but the food was good. The beer front was slightly disappointing though, since it's a Youngs pub. They only had one bitter on tap (Youngs, funnily enough), but it was nice enough. Certainly worth popping-in if you're after a bite to eat anyway.

On Tuesday we went to see Pan's Labyrinth, which is really, really good. Catch it while you can at the cinema - you won't regret it. I'd say it's possibly the best film of 2006. It's pretty freaky though - the white thing with the food?? My God. You'll know what I mean if you've seen it.

Who would tell us what to hate if it wasn't for the Daily Mail?

2007-01-23T00:00:00+00:00

Whereas I could possibly accept that Daily Mail readers are simply misguided, most of the people who actually create it are clearly a waste of DNA. How the country can react so angrily to Jade Goody being a not-particularly-racist bully yet ignore the actually-racist and deeply, deeply vile Daily Mail is completely bizarre. I would include the Daily Express too, but their paranoid Diana fixation has relegated them from the world of 'newspapers'.

Anyway, I was reminded just how morally corrupt The Mail was today by two stories. Firstly the current investigation by the Commons Joint Committee on Human Rights into the incitement to hatred by the Mail and Express. The last few paragraphs in the BBC article just about sum the newspapers up really. However, what can the committee do anyway? I doubt they'll pass a law allowing you to slap anyone you see reading the Daily Mail and taking it seriously, even though that's probably exactly what we need.

In an unrelated and yet equally stupid move, Paul Dacre, the editor of the Daily Mail, ranted about politicians all loving the BBC. This is the BBC that has just been told it can't have enough money by the government of course... the BBC that was smacked-down by the Hutton report for telling the truth... the BBC that every Tory and most of Labour would like to scrap. What world is he living in? Well, that was a slightly rhetorical question of course since we all know he's living in a world full of scary immigrants who want to steal his job and kill his children. Of course he hates the BBC - it balances the world of the UK media a bit and counteracts some of the racist, homophobic, vomit-inducing output of his 'newspaper'. Paul Dacre, you are a loathsome man - don't you dare infect the minds of people who ignore your paper with your lunatic hate-filled jabberings.

BBC On Demand

2007-01-23T00:00:00+00:00

Technological progress has been slowed today by Ofcom after they ruled that the BBCs plans to provide content on demand are too good and might hurt commercial competitors. Don't Ofcom realise that this ruling is completely stupid? The 'commercial competitors' won't be showing BBC programmes anyway, and the BBC service will only show BBC programmes. Where is the cross-over? As for 'damage to DVD sales', they are DVD sales that the BBC will lose! The whole thing is utterly stupid, and thanks to some stupid old men with weird ideas, having all of the BBC content I have already paid for (through my licence fee) available on demand looks like being that bit further away.

Vista and DRM

2007-01-22T00:00:00+00:00

The fact that Vista is locked-down and slightly crippled thanks to DRM is relatively well known in techno-geek circles, but do consumers know what they are facing if they shell out for it? There's an article on the BBC today that mentions the forced degradation of video quality if you play your (legally purchased) content on equipment that the film studios don't want you to use. What's worse is that even if you have the right equipment, playing the content is going to cost you CPU cycles just to remove all of the DRM that has been added anyway. Extra CPU cycles means a slower computer and more electricity used, along with more global warming of course. And for what? Those who want to rip the films and distribute them on the P2P networks are going to get around this anyway, so the only people who lose-out are legitimate users.

I predict that some people will defend Microsoft and claim that it's not their fault if the film studios insist on this DRM. Well, guess again. Do you really think that the studios would release films that couldn't play on PCs and 'media centres'? It's an increasingly large segment of the market, and essential if high definition discs are going to take-off. Microsoft had a choice, but they decided to play along at a real, monetary cost to all of their users. Now of course I'm picking on Microsoft here and other software vendors might do the same, but let's face it, we're talking about the Mac and Linux as far as competitors go. Linux won't have DRM, and Apple have a good track record compared to Microsoft. There's no tax to Universal on an iPod, unlike the Zune - there's no limitation to 96kbps MP3 encoding in iTunes, unlike Windows Media. Time will tell, but it looks like Windows users will find their ability to actually use their own machines being increasingly crippled. It's time they made a stand.

PFI Deals and the NHS

2007-01-22T00:00:00+00:00

'Private Finance Initiatives' are one of those scandalous realities that nobody except Private Eye seems to care about. With any luck more stories about it will appear in the mainstream media and people will notice. Take today's story on the BBC about how PFI firms will make a 23 billion pound profit from the NHS over the next 30 years. Think how many hospitals, operations and drugs could be bought for that much money... money which has come from the taxpayer to help the NHS, yet finds its way into the pockets of shareholders and CEOs.

While it is true that the current Labour government have increased NHS funding, most of the increase has been absorbed by private companies doing things much more expensively than they could have been done under a completely public NHS. PFI deals are great if you want to use figures from one particular year to impress voters, but they are much less impressive in the long term. If only the bigger picture was shown to the public then perhaps the madness would come to an end? The figures speak for themselves and are useful ammunition in the argument against involving the private sector in healthcare. While I am one of those absolutely opposed to it on moral grounds, it's always useful to have financial grounds to convince people who think with their wallets (or taxes).

I took the opportunity to sign-up as a member of Keep Our NHS Public. Let's hope this group gains some momentum and saves our public NHS before it's too late. Once it's all sold off then we face a greater struggle to get it back - just look at the railways...

The Joys of Heathrow, and the lack of them in Uganda

2007-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Last week I was at the Radisson Edwardian in Heathrow for a week of training with my company. It was interesting and worthwhile, but it's a bit odd not going outside for almost a whole week. The trouble is, there isn't much to go outside for when you're in an industrial estate next to Heathrow airport. Actually, 'industrial estate' is unfair - it's more of a strip of hotels, much like the Strip in Las Vegas, only without the gambling, strippers, and so on.

Come the weekend I was going a bit crazy so it was time to kick back a bit. Apart from generally chilling out I somehow knackered my knee, which still hurts. I blame this 'going to the gym' nonsense that I've managed to maintain since the New Year. We also managed to catch The Last King of Scotland, which is very good. It starts off fairly light-heartedly, but make sure that you don't have anyone too squeamish with you near the end. It's pretty gripping the whole way through though and really well done.

I hate to go on, but my knee is giving me jip. I'm going to have to drive to work tomorrow I think - I couldn't make the walk today and caught the bus after the first ten minutes. I don't think I could even do that tomorrow. I'm rubbish at pain, and I'm not afraid to admit it!

Slingbox

2007-01-12T00:00:00+00:00

So anyway, a couple of weeks ago I got around to setting-up my Slingbox. Here it is still in its box and ready to join its friends under the telly:

It's pretty small. For comparison, here it is alongside a bottle of beer and a Wii remote:

Cool. Anyway, as you can see from the first photo I need it to 'play nice' with my Tivo and cable TV box. In theory the cable should be ok if it can live with the Tivo, and indeed it can. Although there are no spare SCART or composite outputs on the Tivo, the Slingbox comes with an adapter that sits between the SCART socket and cable and sneaks some composite video out. This goes into the Slingbox. Out of the Slingbox come two IR LEDs that you position in front of the Tivo so that it receives their signals, as if they were the remote. The Slingbox then plugs into the gigabit Ethernet switch that I have at that end of the room.

So does it work well? The answer is yes, it most definitely does! I downloaded the latest Mac Slingplayer software from Slingmedia site and gave it a go. Video quality is excellent, and alongside the video feed is a 'virtual' version of the Tivo remote that behaves exactly as the real one does. The software determines how much bandwidth you have and adjusts the video feeds accordingly, so with gigabit Ethernet in the house it does pretty well. I also tried the Windows client on my work laptop and it's not bad from the office - certainly watchable.

All in all a pretty good gadget then. While I could just get a USB TV tuner, I have to say that it's very nice to be able to watch my own Tivo from anywhere. I can also set it to record stuff if I'm out too, and watch pre-recorded TV, so it's much more useful that just watching what's on at the moment. Top stuff. Coincidentally, Dixons are selling it for 40 quid off from their Web site if you enter 'NOW35' at the checkout. Top tip from Google sponsored links there.

Macworld

2007-01-09T00:00:00+00:00

Just a quick post - I'm away with work and grabbing two minutes. So, Macworld happened. The AppleTV (aka iTV) is pretty sweet, but check out the iPhone! It's super sexy. Sign me up for one... just as soon as they reach the UK. Looks like that might be at the 'end of the year' though.. bah!

Good old Apple. When they do something they do it right.

On OSX and Vista

2007-01-07T00:00:00+00:00

In my 'tech predictions for 2007' I remarked on how Vista is a poor copy of OSX. This irked several people and I received the expected accusations of being a fanboy. Well, it's not just me - this bias-free article from InformationWeekcompares OSX with Vista. Have a look. Most IT professionals won't argue that OSX isn't technically superior, and it's nice to have an article to point people to.

Wind farms

2007-01-05T00:00:00+00:00

Polly Toynbee's article in today's Guardian about wind farms makes interesting reading. NIMBYs are usually more of a bother than a benefit, since bad things (out of town supermarkets, nuclear power stations, airport expansions, etc) get pushed through anyway while good things get blocked. Wind farms are a case in point.

Being anti-wind farm is the default Tory position, whatever David Cameron may say. I've seen this effect myself with my parents. While naturally quite green, being paid-up Conservative members and reading the Telegraph and Spectator have taken their toll. They now have the strange flat-Earth style faith in bad science that Polly describes in the article. I guess it's inevitable if you just believe the right-wing press, but it bothers me that the Conservatives pretty much brainwash their members. 'Group think' and all that. Of course, the power of the right does come from ignorance and fear, but allowing this to help destroy the planet is going too far.

So, what are we to do? As the article says, a firm hand from Westminster is a good idea. It saddens me to see that some LibDem councils are just as bad and block wind farms too - they should be slapped-down for it. However, discipline from parties themselves doesn't go far enough. I think that wind farms and green energy in general should be made almost impossible for local councils to block. This sounds quite draconian, but let's face it, most people won't want one on their doorstep. It doesn't matter that they wouldn't want a nuclear power station either - those are so universally unpopular that they get forced through anyway. No, I'm afraid to say that where politicians depend on rural votes then there is a risk that they will block wind farms whatever they think of the environmental benefits. If they are forced through by the government then the council won't lose votes since they can't block them anyway. Problem solved.

While people are dithering about with tiny numbers of wind farms we're still killing the planet. It's time to get serious about building them on a massive scale. In the end, who cares what they look like if it means we are getting clean energy? Better that than global warming or a legacy of nuclear waste left for the next thousand generations.

Win

2007-01-05T00:00:00+00:00

Water

2007-01-04T00:00:00+00:00

Bottled water is pretty stupid. Everyone knows this deep down, even if they insist on buying it. I must admit that if I'm out of the house and have to choose a soft drink, I do tend to pick water over Coke or something. However, there's no hiding the fact that drinking it in the home is pretty idiotic. If any of your acquaintances can't see this, then the fact that it is not particularly safe either might help to convince them. If that fails, you really should find the Marcus Brigstoke rant on the last series of the Now Show - the Podcast is still available!

This Life

2007-01-03T00:00:00+00:00

A happy New Year to you all!

This year I spent New Year's Eve at a party in Bristol. There were drinks and snacks, champagne at midnight, then an hour or two of playing music 'intro' identification board games. We made the most of the fireworks other people let off around midnight, and all in all it was a splendid evening. This is how I know I'm in my thirties.

I'm back at work now of course, and it still has a certain novelty value to it. I have made a positive start to this year too - I joined a gym. This sounds like the sort of thing that lots of people do as one of their 'resolutions', and while I'm generally not a 'New Year resolutions' person (if something is worth doing, do it immediately!) this seemed like a good time. I walk past the gym every day on my way to work and back, so it makes sense to pop in there every morning and at least use their shower instead of mine. Might get some exercise in too!

Last night I watched the one-off This Life +10. Retro memories abound! It was pretty good... always interesting to see characters as they are a few years after the end of a story. They're still messed-up of course, which is reassuring in some ways. (Potential spoiler coming up) I don't know why they killed-off Ferdy. The actor is still alive and well and they don't really mention why he's dead, unless I missed something. I guess his funeral served to get them back together, but that's a bit harsh for him...

2007 Tech Predictions

2007-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

Predicting what may happen in the coming year is one of those entertaining traditions that lots of people like to maintain, so I felt I would join in! The danger of predicting technology trends is obvious of course, but I should be relatively safe with a 12 month timeframe! So, here goes...

On its UK launch the PS3 will sell fairly well, but by the end of the year the Nintendo Wii will have the most units shipped. XBox360 will be in second place.

The Zune won't sell well and will quietly be dropped. I mean... who owns one? The only one I've ever actually seen 'in the flesh' was owned by a Microsoft employee.

Vista will finally ship (what is it... 3 years late?) to generally underwhelmed consumers. The only people who will bother with it are those who will get it bundled with their new PCs, but of course it will become the dominant OS by default. Meanwhile, Apple will release Leopard so that MS will have something new to copy (badly) for their next version of Windows. To be fair, Vista looks better than XP and will probably make my life at work (where I have no choice but to use Windows) easier, but it's very little very late, and hardly 'innovative'

Consumer broadband connectivity will be high enough to really start eating into TV viewing. Channel 4 have their on-demand service already of course, and once the BBC service is running I predict that people will start to drop cable and satellite subscriptions. After all, these are mostly held for the convenience of 'something good being on' when you sit down to watch, rather than the number of channels.

The fullscreen video iPod will launch, with moderate success. Technogeeks will love it, but most people don't want to watch video on small devices. Much more successful will be the video downloads from the iTunes store though - people can use this and still watch video on their monitors (and TVs, thanks to things like the iTV), and that's what they want. The new video iPod will simply be a channel to enable this.

Hardware sales of desktops and laptops will rise, but more slowly than the last few years. Most people who want a computer already own one that is powerful enough for their needs. More gaming will take place on consoles, so the major driver for more powerful computers will be lessened. The MacOS will see a modest increase its overall percentage of OSs in use, as will Linux. Mac hardware will see a good boost since people can now run Windows on it, if they must. If Leopard really does run Windows apps seamlessly then that will help too since people won't have to install Parallels, or any other third-party software.

OK, there are my predictions. Let's see what the year brings!

Saddam Hussein

2006-12-31T00:00:00+00:00

So Saddam Hussein was executed yesterday. I have my reservations about the trial itself and the fairness of it, although I wouldn't expect him to be found innocent of course. Whatever the outcome of the trial though, no society that wishes to consider itself civilised has any business condemning people to death. We are responsible for this really - the government hasn't been very vocal in its criticism of course, but apart from that, we generally have a policy of not turning prisoners over to countries where they may face execution. I believe that he was being held by the Americans, but in an ideal world we may have at least tried to influence them.

Objections to the death penalty aside, no good can come from this. A life in prison would have been a 'worse' punishment for him and wouldn't have turned him into a martyr. Also, there's bound to be knowledge that he had which has gone with him to his grave that we've lost - locations of graves, who helped him in certain crimes, and so on. Killing him is an act of vengeance rather than justice, just like every other execution.

Christmas

2006-12-25T00:00:00+00:00

A Happy Christmas/Yuletide/Winterval/etc to you all. I hope that Father Christmas brings you everything you asked for tonight, and that you enjoy stuffing your face tomorrow!

Wii Greatness

2006-12-23T00:00:00+00:00

Hello. Sorry about the break - back again now. Hope you missed me.

I've bought a new toy since my last post - a Nintendo Wii. From the day that Nintendo announced what was initially the 'Revolution', I knew they were onto a winner. Yes, the XBox 360 is pretty good, and I'm sure that the PS3 will be - I have a 360 and I'll probably get a PS3 too, but the Wii is the most exciting from a gameplay level.

Initial impressions are very favourable indeed. I was 'lucky' enough (as anyone who is paying over the odds on eBay would be now, if they had any planning skills and reserved one) to get a Wii on the day of release. Currently I have 'Wii Sports' (bundled with the console), 'Wii Play' (bundled with the extra controller), and 'Zelda: Twilight Princess'. Wii Sports and Play are basically short, multi-player orientated games that show-off the Wii Remote. It all works exceptionally well - the controller is excellent and the games are based on 'real' sports which you replicate with the Wii Remote. This means that pretty much anyone can pick-up the remote and play. For example, you hold the remote just like a tennis racket for the tennis game, and golf club for the golf, and so on. The remote is very sensitive and you can chip, spin and hit the ball with an amazing degree of control. You really have to try it for yourself.

I think the next couple of years will be a good time for Nintendo. The DS seems to be doing very well, and they have judged the market very well. I've been wrong before of course (I still think that the GameCube was the best of the last generation of consoles, but sadly sales show that most people didn't agree), but they seem to be doing very well so far. 2007 will be an interesting year for gaming.

Church and State

2006-12-23T00:00:00+00:00

Hello, and sorry for the lack of posts recently. Normal service has been resumed.

The separation of church and state should be one of the fundamental objectives of anyone who supports democracy, so we should all take note when something happens that works against this goal. I noticed this story today about a couple of Christians campaining against homosexuals who have just received an out of court settlement from the police after getting into trouble for calling 'homosexual practice' morally wrong.

The article does not give a few key details, such as where the couple wanted the leaflets displayed. We can assume that it was a council property though, hence them asking Wyre Borough Council permission. It is therefore completely correct that the council refused, since it is not their place to help any church distribute its propaganda. The leaflets that the couples were objecting to were simply informing gay people of their rights, and were therefore exactly the sort of thing that the council should be distributing.

Let's leave aside for a moment the fact that the views of these people is bigoted, unpleasant, and down to some deeply objectionable beliefs. What we should be concerned with is the fact that they felt that they had to 'counter' a leaflet explaining someones rights with one containing their bigotry, which doesn't help anyone at all. Even worse, they expected facilities run by the council (and therefore at the tax payers expense) to aid them and their religion. This is fundamentally wrong, and the council were correct to refuse. I would argue that the police involvement went too far since free speech is important, and this ended-up being counter-productive. However unfair this may have been though, the state has no business distributing religious propaganda. I would encourage anyone living in Fleetwood to remind the council of this.

Walnut Walnut

2006-10-16T00:00:00+01:00

I experienced more new bits of London over the weekend, which is always nice. On Saturday we were in Beckenham (which likes to call itself Kent, but is London really). It's a suburb of SE London, about 20 minutes out from Victoria. In the evening we set out to Walnut Walnut, a restaurant in West Hampstead, for dinner. It was very good - the food was excellent, and I liked the exposed kitchen. The dining area itself was pretty cramped though! We finished quite late and got a minicab back across town at about 100mph, which added a high-adrenaline aspect to the evening.

The next day we went for a walk around Blackheath and poked around the shops and farmer's market there before heading down to Greenwich for a spot of lunch. We tried the Cutty Sark Tavern, but missed last food orders by about a minute. Still, we had a pint and the pub was pleasant enough. Afterwards we headed back to Paddington via the DLR. It was the first time I've used that - it's sort of like the tube but you can see out of the front. Also, I'm pretty sure it's automated, but there seemed to be a DLR worker sat at the front. Not sure what he does...

National Blog

2006-10-07T00:00:00+01:00

It has been all over the news this morning but in case you haven't seen it, you're encouraged to blog today for a national archive. You don't have to be doing anything special as they simply want a snapshot of what life in Britain is like. It seems like an interesting and socially useful thing to take part in, so why not give it a go?

Google great - again!

2006-10-05T00:00:00+01:00

I'm a programmer, for my sins. Those of you who have a similar bent will probably be all too familiar with those times where you know that the code you're trying to write must exist! It happens all the time.... in fact most programming is an implementation of the 'cut and paste wizard'. So with that in mind, check this out. Can Google do no wrong?!

Nabaztag

2006-09-27T00:00:00+01:00

My Nabaztag wifi cyber bunny continues to impress. It is perhaps the most useful gadget I've bought in some time. The default functionality is very useful, and having had a quick look at the API there it seems easy to write your own services too. Several ideas have already popped into my head. It's a good excuse for my more serious foray into Objective-C on the Mac I think. Programming is much more enjoyable when you actually have a goal that's useful to you (which is where day jobs fall down, in my experience!). Anyway, that all sounds rather techie, but Nabaztag isn't by default. Buy one - I promise that you'll find it useful. Well, as long as you have a wireless network at home. Without that he's just a doorstop (although one with some designer chic). You can send messages to me via bunny from the widget on my web page. Give it a go!

Lost?

2006-09-27T00:00:00+01:00

So, series 2 of 'Lost' ended last night and I got that strange feeling of being satisfied, yet at the same time quite annoyed that it was all left in the air! I only watch about 3 things on TV at the moment, Lost being one of them, so in some ways it's good that the series is over as it frees-up another hour a week. At the same time though, I do like it. It's wacky and daft, but fairly compulsive none the less. Just right for telly really.

America

2006-09-22T00:00:00+01:00

I got back from the States on Sunday night. Still haven't quite recovered. It was great to have three weeks away and see such amazing stuff. The Grand Canyon is very big, and sequoia trees are too. Lots of big things. However, I'm not going to run through my holiday here as that is dull for 99% of you, so instead, here are my observations of America:

There is lots of good seafood to be had along the California coast. However, all restaurant owners seem compelled to call themselves Italian or Irish or something.

Driving is generally ok, although everyone speeds. On the highways and interstates the speed limits seem to only apply to tourists. In fact people get a bit angry if you stick to it, or 10mph above. Also, the signs are rubbish. No warning for motorway turnoffs, and as for the cities? Urgh.

Talking of the roads, they are long, straight, and pretty boring. A lot of them are in a sorry state of repair, even the big highways. Not as bad as the ones in Moscow, but pretty poor. It's quite bizarre though, being the only car on a fairly main highway in the middle of the day.

There are far, far more poor people than I imagined. Lots of homeless in the cities (especially San Francisco), and loads of little towns along the highways where people are living in crappy corrugated iron houses with smashed-up cars in the garden. This seemed to be the norm in the more desert areas of California, and pretty much everywhere in Nevada and Arizona. The level of poverty in some people seems much worse than in the UK. Utah, on the other hand, seems really quite nice. No evidence of poor housing there, although I'm sure there is some, somewhere.

They still use lots of polystyrene (or 'styrofoam', as they call it). Coffee cups, takeaway containers... loads of it. It's like the 80's

Everyone is very friendly, or at least the 'real' people you meet are. The people in shops and restaurants seem the same as here, or perhaps a little worse, when it comes to being friendly. The US customs people have a real problem though. Jeez, it's like you're the scum of the Earth when you walk though there

American TV is insane. There are adverts every two seconds. And the news? I knew Fox News was pretty bad, but even CNN had items called things like 'Know Your Enemy' about the meeting of non-aligned nations in Cuba. People like Hugo Chávez were presented as 'hating America'. Man, no wonder a lot of Americans have mad ideas about the world! I thought CNN was meant to be a serious news source. I think they tone it down for the UK and the rest of the world and make it more sensible.

It's almost impossible to eat healthily if you depend on diners etc. for breakfast. It's pancake with syrup, or bacon, or anything else that's fried

Vegas is mad, in a great way. You really have to see it.

Petrol is really, really cheap. However, beer isn't really

I'm sure there's more. I had a great time. Some of the sights were pretty amazing. I've got lots of photos that I will put on Flickr soon, that way I can show you the amazingness rather than having to describe it.

Christmas in New Zealand, birthday in the US - makes me feel quite the international traveller! I've been feeling a bit odd since I got back though - not really had a chance to get over the jet lag, I think. I've found myself having strange emotional bursts, like being bothered a bit too much that some people hadn't remembered my birthday, which is unlike me. I need some sleep...

We're all going on a summer holiday

2006-08-25T00:00:00+01:00

I'm off to the States for three weeks. This will be my first trip there, so I'm going with an open mind. Obviously I will post my impressions here when I get back. First though, I must brace myself for the combined madness of bank holiday airports and paranoid travellers...

Summer school

2006-08-08T00:00:00+01:00

I've just had a fantastic week away in Durham for the summer school for my OU course. Fantastic stuff. We flew to Newcastle from Bristol, got the Metro to the station then the train to Durham, so it was only a couple of hours door to door (although that's more money to Future Forests to offset that evil CO2!). It was an early flight, and thanks to my objection to buying anything other than beer at airports we had a particularly early 7am pint. Still, start as you mean to go on eh?

We got to Durham pretty early so we got a chance to look around too. Durham is quite similar to Bath in that it's a pretty small city with lots of old bits, and there are several nice pubs to sit in and while away the time. As we discovered. Soon enough it was time to go back to the university to register. We were based in Hatfield College for A214, which is right next to the cathedral in the nice old bit. Some other courses had summer schools going on further out, but we didn't really have anything to do with them. We were lucky as all of the buildings we used had great locations, and were close together. Can't fault it.

The hall we were staying in was... basic. I've seen and lived in some halls in my time, but these were pretty ropey. It was no problem for a week of course, but I might have got slightly depressed if I was in there for a year. Still, there were some great people in there with me. There were so many great people on the course that it just didn't seem long enough to meet them all - I was still meeting fascinating people on the last night. Does this all sound a bit gushing? Well, it really was that good and some of the people really that great. To top it all off, the work itself was great too. Hard in places, but great. It was so good to be with loads of people doing a subject they love - just like university again really, and actually in a university obviously added to that.

If you ever do an OU course with a summer school, make sure you go! You won't regret it. If I had to come up with a regret, I'm just sorry that I won't be able to do it again.

Hot

2006-07-20T00:00:00+01:00

It's flipping hot isn't it? Can't complain about the sunshine, but the heat does knacker me out a bit. My 2 mile or so walk home is all up a reasonably steep hill, and in this heat I'm pretty much soaked in sweat when I get home. Yum.. there's a mental image you could do without eh? Needless to say, I just want to chill out a bit with a gin and tonic when I get here so I'm not getting as much done as I'd like.

Anyway, the weekend was good. On Sunday we went on what is now almost a traditional yearly trip to Longleat. I took a camera this time and managed to get some photos of animals (which you'll find on on my Flickr page) before the battery inconveniently ran out. It was a lovely day but the downside of that was that pretty much everyone else seemed to have decided to go to Longleat on the same day, so it was very busy.

Rather excitingly the company I work for got bought by another much bigger company yesterday. This has caused much idle gossip and speculation at work, which is always fun in itself. Time will tell how it all pans out I suppose - it doesn't make much of an immediate difference to me but our directors and senior management can probably retire early. Not that they will, the mugs. If I had enough money to retire then I would! Unfortunately my shares in the company aren't exactly going to go far towards paying off a months credit card bill, let alone the mortgage!

Random Elephants

2006-07-01T00:00:00+01:00

It just so happened that my pal and ex-housemate Luke was in Moscow on Friday night, so he gave me a call and I ventured out into the city to meet him and his pals for a bite to eat. The original plan was to eat at a place called Gogol near the Marriott Aurora, but that turned out to have some gig or possibly football going on, so we wandered off to find somewhere else.

Wandering around Moscow is strange. It's quite chaotic of course, and I'm getting used to that, but we came across some weirdness. There was an elephant in the street at one point, with lots of balloons. There was obviously a reason for it but there didn't seem to be a crowd or anything. Strange. Anyway, we went to a bar that was a favourite of Luke's friend Esther. I can't remember the name, but they served very sweet Russian 'champagne' and tasty food (although in rather small and randomly delivered portions). My suspicions about Russian customer service was confirmed throughout the meal. The waiter was a bit abrupt (stopping just short of being rude), and he warned us that his shift was finishing so we'd better pay up now (or words to that effect). Can't be missing his tip can he? It was an enjoyable evening though, and on the way back I had my first experience of a car home the way most Russians do it, i.e. sticking a thumb out and hopping in one of about 5 cars that instantly stop. For 500 rubles we took a very fast trip through Moscow in a knackered old Lada with a smashed windscreen and no seatbelts. The gearbox was also making alarming noises on every gear change - apparently it failed completely soon after I got dropped off at my hotel. Fantastic.

Today I met the others near the same spot and we had tea in a cafe before heading to the bus station on the Metro to see Luke off. Luke had forgotten to bring any rubles so I performed a handy currency exchange (I knew that carrying cash and not depending on my card had to be useful one day). They were lucky to get a relatively modern bus rather than one of the many Soviet-era black-smoke-spewing ones. It actually looked like it would make the six hour journey in one piece. We then wandered back to the Metro and I did a short tour of the grander stations... you know, the ones with the mosaics and chandeliers. They are indeed very grand, but it's not quite like all of the Metro stations are like that, as I had heard. Worth seeing though.

Now it is nearly 8pm, or 5pm GMT, so the England-whoever game must be on. People care less here now that the Ukraine are out, but it's actually quite nice to be away from all of the football hysteria. A quick check of the BBC website reveals that it is half time and 0-0. Good to keep up with these things in case I bump into another expat in the hotel who can't really talk about anything else!

Moscow again

2006-06-28T00:00:00+01:00

Here I am in Moscow again! Going by my blog I guess it doesn't look like I ever left, but I did the day after my last entry. I've done some stuff back in the UK of course but have mostly been busy with my OU course. I did attend the Bath Storytelling Circle in The Raven, which was rather good. We also went to see The Fountainhead in the Little Theatre, which was a one-off showing done by the Bath Film Festival. Very weird but good. The World Cup has been going on of course, and I've seen one game. It's about as interesting as football gets, I suppose.

So anyway, here I am in Moscow again, and for slightly longer this time. It's hot and sunny which bodes well. There's some inconvenience with the hotel being quite full so I have to move rooms three times while I'm here, but that's last minute travel for you! At least I don't have to change hotels completely like I had to in China. I also get a weekend here too this time, so assuming work doesn't go all pear-shaped I might even get to see the parts of Moscow that aren't on the road to the airport or the office!

Moscow observations

2006-06-15T00:00:00+01:00

Some observations:

nobody wears seat-belts, even though speeds in the city are about 60mph and zero, but nowhere in between.

Speaking of cars, everyone has either a bashed-up old Lada or a very expensive Merc, etc. Nobody seems to bother with something in the middle

very, very few people in the street are smiling, even when it's sunny. They seem happy enough when you actually talk to them though

There seems to be a trend with women of dying their hair (or some of it) red. Also, tight jeans that stop halfway down the calf seem very popular. On the other hand there are lots of very stylish people in expensive clothes

Everyone eats more soup than you'd think, especially rather thin, watery soup with vague bits of fish in it

The cotton-wool-like seeds from the trees that make it look like it's snowing are rather pretty, and you really have to see them. It's funny that everyone here are so used to it that they wondered what I was talking about at first. There are huge piles of seeds everywhere, and the rain has only thinned them from the air a little bit. Bizarre.

The good weather finally departed today and it rained in the afternoon. Still, this is the first rain I've seen for weeks so I can't complain! At least I've now seen the city in bad weather too. It doesn't quite stop people driving like lunatics of course, but that adds to the 'fun'.

I'm flying back tomorrow. When I was booking the car to the airport the lady laughed at my 3.5 hours of allowed time and said I'd never make it in that on a Friday. Bear in mind that I'm in Moscow and this is Moscow airport we're talking about! See what I mean about the mad traffic? Having said that, I dread to think how long it would take to get from, say, Leicester Square to Heathrow in the rush hour, and that's roughly what I'll be doing...

Moscow

2006-06-14T00:00:00+01:00

The food at my hotel continues to impress with the 'Russian-themed' restaurant in the hotel providing yet another excellent classic Russian meal. It was quite flashy, and lunch in the canteen of the company I am visiting today was a marked contrast. This consisted of a large boiled tongue on a plate of pasta, along with some horseradish. It turns out that ox tongue with horseradish is a traditional dish, but it was challenging in its tongue-ness. Tasty though.

The weather remains rather magnificent and the golden roofs on the Kremlin looked particularly sparkly today. The traffic was really heavy so I had a good chance to appreciate the views. It turns out that the huge queues of people (and police with guns) that I saw outside the Christ The Saviour cathedral yesterday weren't as normal as I'd assumed. They have the 'right hand of John the Baptist' on loan from Montenegro. It's 'believed' to have healing powers and is in Moscow for the first time since being smuggled out of Russia after the revolution. This seems to be enough to bring out the crowds (it was a particularly impressive queue), so the locals must be quite a cultured lot. It's a shame that you don't see so many locals when staying in hotels, but I was too knackered to venture out too far today. I hope that work doesn't end up going to the wire and I get some time to look around a bit more...

From Russia, With Love

2006-06-13T00:00:00+01:00

..or if not 'love', at least some sort of warm and fuzzy feeling. Here I am in Moscow, and you know what? It has made a good impression on me so far.

The day didn't start off brilliantly. I got to work to park the car while I'm in Russia only to find myself trapped in the car park for 20 minutes. We have a cunning key-card entry system for our work car park you see, and I managed to drive in when someone else was leaving. Once parked I found that my card didn't work, so I couldn't get out. It's just as well it wasn't a weekend or I could have died of thirst, or hypothermia or something. Madness. Anyway, eventually someone came in to the car park so I could get out and walk to the station, where conveniently I hadn't quite missed my train.

I experienced another of life's firsts at Heathrow when I was paged over the PA. It was all quite exciting. I left to queue for checking-in and went to find out what it was all about. About half an hour later I had discovered that it was just a request from some of our guys in Russia to pick up some mains adapters which, while not massively exciting, was at least one of the few things it is possible to do at Heathrow airport. Plus I now know how it feels to be all important by getting paged - the reality is that the airport staff don't really know who to phone or what's going on. This is an interesting insight into the way airports operate in itself.

The flight to Moscow was uneventful. Some Russian girl has sat in my seat but it was a good excuse to strike-up conversation. She was clearly reckless as she continued to use her mp3 player during takeoff/landing despite being told off several times. This would have made her sexy and exciting if she was good looking, but since she wasn't it just made her appear a bit lippy. Still, there are worse people to sit next to. The film on the plane was 'Firewall', which was actually quite good. I have decided that Chloe from '24' (who co-stars in it) can actually be attractive. I'm not sure what they do to her in '24' to stop this, because in that she's just annoying.

Moscow airport is like many in the east. As soon as you're through passport control your ears are assaulted by a thousand minicab drivers all asking you if you want a taxi. Thankfully mine was all ordered in advance so it was just a case of finding my name on a sign. This done, it was an hour's cruise into Moscow. First impressions of Moscow are good - it's nice and green with lots of parks and trees, the traffic doesn't seem to be insane, and we drove right past the Kremlin and other landmarks, which is nice. It feels a bit like London in some ways, what with the bridges over the river and the seat of government right on the river bank. It looks clean and they seem to have made a real effort with interesting public art, nice flags on the bridges, and so on. Hopefully I will be able to get a few photos to illustrate these points.

My hotel is ok. The room is nothing special, but there is a good selection of restaurants and very posh shops downstairs. I went to the 'Russian' restaurant for dinner and it was very good, although very quiet. Afterwards I met up with a colleague for a drink in the bar and we talked about work. Hopefully it will all go ok tomorrow...

More Googliness

2006-06-06T00:00:00+01:00

Google continues to take over the world, but in a good, non-evil way. With the coming of Google Spreadsheets you can now do pretty much everything an Office package lets you do, but for free via the Web. There's Writely for your word processing, Google Spreadsheets for your.. er.. spreadsheets, Google Calendar for your diary and project planning, and GMail for your email. There are also lots of other Google services of course, including free voice calls over GTalk and Notebook, and fantastically useful bookmarking thing. Lots more at Google Labs.

I'm no fan of corporations but this can only be a good thing for us all. Thanks to Google there will be no need to ever 'upgrade' Windows again, or even use Windows. You can use anything with a web browser to do all of this stuff, be it a PC, Mac, TV or whatever. There will be no more having to buy Microsoft Office or having to get annoyed, as I do, when someone sends you a Word document assuming 'everyone must have Word'. It's the beginning of the end of a period of monopolies in computing. Once people get their heads around working with Web applications no single company can monopolise your 'office' requirements again. Don't like Google's offerings? There will be dozens other other Web-based apps to choose from since they can't lock you in. It's good news indeed.

Another night of music theory

2006-05-30T00:00:00+01:00

...or to be more accurate, another night where I should be doing some music work, but I've managed to faff about until 8pm so far. My first minor panic involved not being able to find my MOT etc. to get my tax disc tomorrow. I eventually decided that it must have gone into the recycling and resigned myself to an 80 quid fine and a load of hassle. However, it turned out that it was in my work bag all along, so I had a beer to calm myself down. Time has somehow slipped away further since then. Once I get this blog entry done though... yes.. that's when I'll start on cramming four weeks of work into the remaining 4 days before my assignment is due in. I work (best) under pressure.

Anyway, what has been happening? Mostly work. Last week I was in London for a work training thing. I went down on Saturday for drinking and fun at the Seymour Place Salon and a good time was had by all. There was some competitive 'Taboo!' and I met my first right-wing Australians. Afterwards we retired to the pub and watched Finland win the Eurovision Song Contest, much as I'd hoped they would (but in one of the way that you hope for something that you know is impossible). Fantastic. After the pub we went back and talked nonsense until the early hours.

On Sunday morning it was raining a lot, but that didn't stop us visiting almost every eatery in the area trying to decide where to have breakfast. Eventually we ended-up in the planned choice, Providores, on Marylebone High Street. The Turkish poached eggs were excellent. A casual day of lounging around followed, but we managed to get some geekiness in there with a trip to Maplins on Edgeware Road.

On Monday I get to the Radisson Edwardian hotel in Heathrow nice and early for my week long training course. It was interesting and actually useful, plus the hotel had top food. We got the level of drinking down to a level I could cope with this time too - it was quite hardcore on the last training course! The hotel itself was massive and seemed to be a corporate favourite. Our merry band was small compared to the large group from an 'ethical pharmaceutical company' who seemed to employ mainly attractive women in their twenties. Top stuff. Their fancy dress party on Monday night was most amusing.

On Friday the course finished at midday so I went into town with a colleague to see X-Men III at the Odeon in Whiteleys. It was ok, although I felt it could have been a bit longer as it was all rather rushed. He then headed off and I met Dave and we went for some food at The Shish on Queensway where I accidentally had some nuts and felt all allergic for a bit. Afterwards we went to the The Old Duke and sat out on the balcony where we talked to two random Oxbridge escorts. It was all quite bizarre but they were friendly enough and invited us to a strange non-drinking lock-in. At one point I thought they may have been trying it on but one of them had this weird bloke hanging around. London eh? I don't know what the hell is going on there most of the time.

Oxbrige people are funny. Usually I'm with the 'they're just like us' brigade. After all, I did go to a private school so I can relate to being called 'posh' and having kids from other schools randomly abuse me, so I'm usually the first to defend those who seem to attract such treatment. Sometimes it does begin to grate though, as was the case on Friday night. We fell into the whole university thing and it ended-up with the 'of course we're better because we went to Oxford' thing. Of course it's probably true that academically Oxbridge types have to be better qualified to get in, but it does result in some badly adjusted people coming out the other end who seem incapable of dealing with non-Oxbridge people. I guess people stick to what they know but I have to bite my tongue when I hear someone saying they could never marry someone who didn't go to Oxford. It's very weird, and in a way it makes me feel like I'm being judged, if indirectly. Maybe I'm just oversensitive. Anyway, you can pay to go out with both of the girls I met on Friday (and plenty more like them) if that sort of thing floats your boat. Look under the 'elite' section. Says it all really. Thankfully the vast majority of Oxbridge graduates I know are lovely people, but I'm sure they know people who suffer from the whole elitism thing. Mind you, perhaps I'm guilty of the same thing (although in my case it would be graduates, rather than Oxbridge graduates)? I don't think so though.

Project Red

2006-05-16T00:00:00+01:00

Bono is guest editor of The Independent today, and half of today's revenue will go to fight AIDS. Why not help fights AIDS while getting your news fix today and buy a copy of arguably the best national paper?

Last night we went to see Luke (and some other people, obviously) in My Head Was A Sledgehammer at the Bristol Old Vic. Very avant-garde and abstract but great fun. You can catch it again tonight.

After the glory of coming first in the 'Best Cake Baked By A Man' category in Matt's 'Birthday Spring Fete And Agricultural Show' last year, this years cake could only make second place over the weekend. Still, a good time was had by all and we had some happy hours sampling the various categories and voting. I will have to make cakes more often and get some practice in to ensure future first places.

China and Hong Kong

2006-05-03T00:00:00+01:00

This morning I got back from my trip to China and Hong Kong. I've had a little sleep and I don't feel too bad actually, but I'm down quite a few hours (I can never sleep on planes) so I'm sure it will hit me again in an hour or so. So, let's soldier on!

As I mentioned previously, my trip in to China was uneventful. I met the limo driver at Hong Kong airport with no trouble and followed him out of the airport where the heat really hit me - it was over 30 degrees and very humid, and I'd just been at more or less a constant 15 for hours. It was fairly oppressive and I feared that I was going to sweat to death in a shirt and tie over the week, but it turned out that the day was particularly hot. Anyway, no problem for the limo with its aircon. I traveled in style through the Hong Kong / China border without leaving my seat and before long I was at the Four Points by Sheraton hotel in Shenzhen.

The hotel is relatively new and the entrance/lobby is very grand. My room was very nice and the view pretty good. No complaints at all really, the main downside being that I only had a room until Tuesday as it was booked up after that. Annoyingly there was a huge trade show going on all week (the guy sat next to me on the plane was going to it so I knew a bit about it) and lots of hotels were full. I didn't worry as I thought we'd find something. Anyway, that evening my colleague and his wife arrived and we had a nice dinner and caught-up (he's based in Japan these days).

For five days we were based at a customer site in the city, so we'd catch a cab from the hotel in the morning and another back in the evening (the evening being much more difficult, both finding a cab and with the traffic). The journey was about 40 - 50 minutes, and.. well... if you've not seen Chinese driving then you wouldn't quite believe it. Maybe it's not all of China and is just Shenzhen, or maybe it's an asian thing? I don't know. What I do know is that it scared me silly. The roads are massively busy and nobody pays much attention to lanes, signs and so on. You progress through traffic by barging in and hoping for the best, beeping your horn a lot and flashing your lights. It's all very aggressive, although in some way everyone seems very calm. In the huge number of very closely missed collisions that we had nobody seemed to shout or get out of their cars to have a go at someone else. It's was bizarre. I'm amazed hundreds of people aren't killed every day, especially pedestrians, who seem to weave in and out of the traffic without looking like they are too bothered. They don't even particularly hurry.

As well as the mad drivers there is the whole scary communist thing going on. One day on the way back from work the army stopped us and asked to see our passports. I didn't have mine of course (don't they always tell you to leave it in the hotel safe?!) and I sat there with images of dodgy Chinese prisons and visits from diplomats going through my mind. Thankfully it was rush hour and the soldier didn't seem to want the fuss, so he waved us on. I carried my passport after that. It was scary, and if anything it reinforced my view that a British ID card would be bad. Not only would I not like to go through that feeling again, but I don't think it gives a very good impression of the country to tourists and the like. Anyway, it was all ok in the end.

The hotel had a couple of reasonable restaurants in it and on Monday we went to the 'Chinese' one (they were all Chinese of course, this just happened to do Chinese food). It was very good, if slightly bizarre. We ordered a number of dishes including a roasted duck. With some fanfare the chef brought it out and sliced it for us before showing us how to do the pancake bit (much like a Chinese in the UK). The strange bit was that he started with a whole duck and sliced off the skin before wheeling the trolley away. We sort of assumed that he was off to do the boring meat slicing elsewhere but he never came back, so from the whole duck we just got the skin. Very odd. The next day we quizzed one of the people in the Chinese firm if that was normal and she looked at us as if we were crazy, so God only knows what was going on there. For dessert we were offered ice cream or something but we thought we'd try something authentic so we asked for a 'Chinese dessert'. With some trepidation the waitress brought us some pots with a very dark jelly and a pot of honey, the idea being that the jelly was a bit bitter and the honey is for sweetening it. We ate it and it was ok (with the honey), but I wasn't a massive fan. The waitress seemed vaguely impressed that we'd eaten it anyway. Later we pondered what it was over drinks and couldn't decide. I didn't think about it again until we found out that it was probably made from the inside of a turtle shell (which is scraped to get the black stuff). Yum.

Luckily someone at the Chinese company we were working at found us a hotel for the rest of our stay so on Tuesday we checked in to the Landmark Hotel, much nearer the centre. I was impressed - it certainly looked nicer in the rooms than the Sheraton, the food was pretty good, and the service was impressive. There was rosewood everywhere and you even get a 'butler' who leaves you cute little notes. He's just one of about a million staff who seem to be employed just to say good morning to you as you leave, but hey, I'm shallow and I really liked that. The location is more central as I mentioned but seems to be a bit of a seedy district at night. That might be your thing of course, but if it isn't then the hotel food is good.

On Friday we got our work done (on time and more than was asked for, of course!) and checked out of the hotel and got the limo back to Hong Kong. The way back was less smooth - the queue at the border took ages and customs went through my bag (I must look dodgy to the Chinese army) but in the end we were through. My colleague and his wife flew back to Japan but I couldn't get a flight until Tuesday, so I went to a hotel in Hong Kong. I got a room at the Grand Stanford. It was ok but I felt rather unimpressed after the Shenzhen hotels. It was more money (everything in HK is more) and the service was far worse. I also had a really rubbish view of a wall from my room! It's true that the hotel itself does have an excellent view of Victoria Harbour but don't expect that in all the rooms! Anyway, there's more to life than views so I didn't worry too much about it.

The hotel is in the Kowloon district which is known for its shops, and boy are there shops! However, a lot of these seem to be hairdressers (bizarrely) and Indian guys who make made-to-measure suits. These guys almost ruin any stroll around town as they are good at spotting Europeans and chasing you around trying to convince you to get measured-up. You have to be pretty forceful to get them to go away and... well.. it's just not British to shout at strangers is it? I did feel like telling them that I might have been interested in a fitted suit if they'd just shut up and let me look at their posters (which is true), but starting any conversation with them is daft.

Hong Kong was generally very hot and I restricted my strolls to relatively short bursts. Sadly, as I was in China on business my suitcase was full of suits, shirts and so on rather than summer wear so I had to improvise a bit around what I had on me, and it wasn't massively suitable. Still, I did get a good poke around the place. I'd really recommend it for a holiday - there's lots to do and there's enough English spoken for it not to be a problem (much more than Shenzhen). It's got quite familiar touches too thanks to being British until so recently so you sort of feel at home. Be prepared to spend quite a lot of money if you like a drink though (a pint often costs more than your main course). If you were there for a holiday rather than killing a couple of days then it wouldn't be cheap.

I'm a bit of a newbie to business travel and one thing really hit me on this trip. My hotel has its fair share of 'business men' and they were easy to spot since they were like me, sat at the bar reading a paper or something rather than chatting to obvious wives/girlfriends. There was a purpose to this though as most of them seemed to come to the hotel bar to pick up hookers. It was a real eye-opener - you sit at the bar on your own and within about two minutes a girl will come and talk to you. Now these aren't trashy-looking women and some were beautiful, but it was a bit odd. Thankfully they weren't pushy at all and it all seemed to operate on a bit of an 'understanding' - the men would say very little to them before wondering off to their rooms. Somehow the whole thing wasn't at all seedy though and you only noticed it if you watched what was going on. Most of the bar was filled with couples and groups. It did serve to give me a pretty negative impression of men traveling on their own though. I don't doubt that some of those men have wives or girlfriends, yet a lot of them probably 'relax' with hookers quite often. It's sort of depressing really.

Anyway, here I am back at home. China and Hong Kong were great and it was a fascinating trip. China is the 'most foreign' place I've been and it was a bit of an eye-opener in many ways. Still, every new country I go to reinforces the idea that people are all the same pretty much anywhere you go. The Chinese may live in a dodgy state that does questionable things, but most of them seem to be happy and are just getting on with life. Of course I didn't go to any poor or rural areas where it's completely different, so I'm not blind to the fact that it is completely different. One thing I do know though - there's a lot of money there and a lot of big companies with big ideas. I'm sure we'll all see more Chinese influence in the world at an rapidly increasing level.

See some pictures including the fascinating view from my hotel room in Hong Kong on Flickr.

Trips away

2006-04-23T00:00:00+01:00

Last weekend we had a lovely few days in Mousehole in Cornwall. It's a small harbour just along the coast from Penzance and it very cute in that typically Cornish harbour way. I'm not sure why I haven't been before since I've been to pretty much everywhere in Cornwall before. Having said that we also popped in to Land's End, another place I haven't been before (and less tacky than I thought it might be, mainly because you can ignore the tacky bits). Anyway, Mousehole was great. If you ever find yourself there then I really recommend The Old Coastguard - it's a very good bar/restaurant with great views. The Ship Inn is also a good pub with great pub food. I was surprised that there weren't more places to eat/drink on the seafront actually - the old Lobster Pot restaurant is now flats, and with so many tourists clogging the place up you'd have thought that there was money to be made. Ho hum.

Anyway, I'm starting a small phase of visiting places beginning with 'C' and I'm now in China. I'm in a rather nice hotel in Shenzhen having arrived via Hong Kong a few hours ago. The flight was as ok as flights can be - the extra legroom I had this time (last time I flew to Hong Kong in Economy my legs didn't really fit) made it much more comfortable. Funnily enough I sat next to a guy from Cornwall on the plane and we talked about last weekend. There's some massive trade conference going on here and he's over to sell his wares. The hotel staff were slightly surprised when I said that I wasn't here for the conference and perhaps it is bad timing since a lot of flights were booked-up and I have to move hotels on Tuesday as this one is full. Not too bad for a trip mostly booked on Friday though.

More on China as I experience it. In the meantime I have to adjust to the whole jetleg thing and chill out a bit...

Drinking

2000-06-15T00:00:00+01:00

Drinking

15 June 2000

11:07 am

Wooo.. last day at work before the stag weekend… it’s going to be cool! Didn’t do much last night – too tired. I heard the football though – Italy beat Belgium 2-0. Not that I care too much (although I would have liked Italy to lose ;)

Got my K&N filters in the post. I might even be able to get them to the mechanics soon enough to fit them with the service.. you never know.

04:10 pm

Tom went home early, so he could take my new filters to the mechanics (near his house). Horah! Less fiddling about for me!

05:13 pm

There are over 300 needles for SU carbs, apprently. I really should get some different ones to cope with the new air filters… I can’t think where would sell me the right ones though. I need a fuel/air measuring device thing really… don’t think anyone has one of those ready to borrow though!

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Drinking

2000-06-14T00:00:00+01:00

Drinking

14 June 2000

02:15 pm

Last night I went drinking for the first time in ages. I didn’t get too drunk (do I ever!), but it’s a bit weird going out when its so quiet (all the students have gone home for the summer you see). I managed to get about two hours sleep, so I really fancy just going to bed! A bit of a shame, because it’s the dept. games evening tonight and I really enjoy it. Oh well…

04:57 pm

Almost time to go home. I think a trip to Lidl on the way back is in order – they sell some brilliant ice cream, and I feel like a coding session tonight, sadly ;)

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Football

2000-06-13T00:00:00+01:00

Football

13 June 2000

12:31 am

This evening I watched the football with Andreas… England v Portugal. We lost 3-2! Unbelievable. I don’t really care about football, but I like international games. Well, I do when we win anyway! Still, could have been worse….

12:35 pm

I ordered two new K&N air filters for my Spitfire on Thusday. They promised me they’d be here in two days, but they’re still not here and the car has to go for a service today! Bah! I guess it’s easy enough to fit them myself, but it would have been handy to get them done at the same time…

02:37 pm

Just got back from taking my car to the mechanics. Andreas )who was following me to take me back here) noticed that the exhaust looked a bit white. This probably isn’t a very good sign!

04:30 pm

I’ve downloaded KDevelop and it is currently compiling. I think a nice development envirnoment might be a good idea if I’m going to start writing ‘serious’ C programs.. perhaps gvim just won’t cut it? It’s worth a play anyway. While it’s compiling, I’ve also found a biliography util simillar to my ‘bibtool’. I’m going to have a look at it and see if there’s any code I can use (horah for the GPL!) to give bibtool some more functionality. I’m also downloading Opera to see how good it is. It’s certainly smaller than Netscape, which is a good sign…

06:52 pm

Nealy 7 o’clock and I’m still in the office! This KDevelop thing is quite good. I played with it for a bit, and now I’m recompiling, having installed a few bits and bobs that will give it a bit more functionality. Shame it takes ages to compile really…

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Stag

2000-06-12T00:00:00+01:00

Stag

12 June 2000

Well, another Monday. I had another appointment with the estate agent today to talk about finance. It’s all a bit scary, talking about terminal illness insurance and stuff. Needs to be thought about though, I guess.

More sorting-out done about the stag weekend on Friday. The train tickets arrived in the post today so it’s all nearly sorted. We just need picking up from the station the other end. It’s going to rock!

Anyway, Iv’e got to play badminton at 4… should be humiliating ;)

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Petrol

2000-06-11T00:00:00+01:00

Petrol

11 June 2000

My car is still leaking petrol. It’s almost too expensive to burn, let alone just leak all over the place. I’ll bet it will be up to a quid a litre next year. Bastards. Might just have to buy an electric car.

In a moment I’m going to move my bed into the barn. It’s much more comfy sleeping on the flloor, and the sole purpose of the bed seems to be to hide dust underneath it…

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Chilled

2000-06-10T00:00:00+01:00

Chilled

10 June 2000

09:28 pm

Well, I’ve installed a LiveJournal client at home now, so there’s no excuse to miss out at weekends. Marge went home today so I helped her pack and everything, then I came back home and chilled for a bit. I’ve got plenty of sleep to catch up on!

11:19 pm

Well, that’s Saturday over with. Sorted out computery things and stuff… stuff that needed doing. Off to bed now to get some much neeeded sleep! Or.. maybe kill some people on Unreal Tournament first ;)

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Keynsham

2000-06-09T00:00:00+01:00

Keynsham

09 June 2000

It seems like living in Keynsham might be a good idea. It’s a smallish town near Bristol, but it has a station and I could get the train to work. There is a house there that has a large garden and looks really nice (3 bedrooms!), but no garage. I think living in Bath might be nicer socially too. Hmmm…

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Gladiator

2000-06-08T00:00:00+01:00

Gladiator

08 June 2000

03:03 pm

Well, another day, another dollar. At least it’s sunny today. If I get enough work done we might go out for a meal tonight. In Aber, this means Indian food really, but that’s ok. Gladiator is on at the cinema too – could go and see that I suppose…

03:39 pm

Just made an appointment to go and look at a house in Bath! It’s a fairly big step, this house-buying malarky. Lots of debt for the next 25 years… oh well, I hope its all worth it!

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LiveJournal

2000-06-07T00:00:00+01:00

LiveJournal

07 June 2000

04:48 pm

Well, I’ve created this LiveJournal thing. Time will tell how useful it will be. I’m going to try to get my picture on next.

LoserJabber (the GTK client) doesn’t seem to like using a Web proxy, so I have to update this via the Web. It might prove to be too much hassle. We’ll see…

05:27 pm

Seems I’ve got the journal embedded in my Web pages ok. Doesn’t look as good as the actual LiveJournal ones, but it will do. Time to go home, I think.

06:27 pm

just testing LoserJabber. It does actually seem to work!

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