microtrends

Microtrends

I do enjoy the microtrends column that appears in the Times on Saturday, I have also just bought Microtrends by Mark J Penn and E. Kinney Zalesne, which seems to be unrelated. Not only that, there is an article of microtrends predictions in yesterday's Times Magazine.

However not to be deterred, I would like to add my own tuppence worth.

I think that the advent of most people having decent - always on - broadband is creating a huge change in the way that the world works. I would hesitate to make any radical predictions, but these days, simply managing to discern what is actually happening out there at the moment requires a lot of insight.

Software can now do its own updating, virtually on the fly, checking for updates, and asking for permission to download them. These can be huge files. There is minimal distribution cost attached. So software can shift as a beta, and update to alpha without any huge downside.

Obviously we can all browse and download music, and all the physical record shops are on the way out. Other media are easily digitised, perhaps books less so than some others.

Broadcast media can now be downloaded or stored, and you can timeshift to avoid tiresome adverts. I would not want to be in the TV business trying to fund broadcasting through an ever shrinking part of the advertising cake.

Always on - also means that cloudware, having your applications on some remote server, makes sense, more sense than running them off your hard drive.

Similarly off site storage is possible, why back up to a hard drive, when you can put all your photos on Flickr, back up your calendar, and contacts to .mac.

We will increasingly be able to, and take for granted the ability to transfer and download vast amounts of data, and one effect of this will be that we become less aware of whether we are uploading or downloading, just as we are unaware how our computer is working, we will become unaware of where applications are, where bytes are stored, what processes are behind our interaction with IT.

There is increased scope for dumb terminals, these need not be computers, a mobile phone as dumb terminal, point of sale gadgets as dumb terminal. Things that we barely think of as IT as dumb terminals, information at bus stops, smart washing machines that will opportunistically use electricity when it is cheapest, fridges that advertise products based on your previous purchases and offer on line ordering.

As in the Field of Dreams, if you build it, they will come...

new improved habits

A week of two halves.

At work all is a bit weird. I did not take any Christmas leave, so I am one of the forgotten few that is still traveling into work each week, getting a lunch and then traveling back. Well the train company certainly seems to have forgotten about us, this time of year it is still dark when I catch the train, so add in a howling gale, and late trains get to be a major annoyance. Twenty minutes late on Thursday and ten minutes late on Friday, which may not seem long, but when you are huddling there stamping your feet to keep warm, you do realise why retirement is just so appealing.

Similarly the office canteen seems to have forgotten that some of us are still in.

In terms of work, it is that odd time of year, when the email stops, the phone stops, and I rather suspect that when you take the stress out of the job, you realise just how dull much of it actually is. Anyway catching up with stuff, and being pretty productive. I've just got Detox Your Desk, hoping that it will teach me how to tame my intray, and bully my emails into submission. Probably not a bad time to think about such things. If it seems sensible I will try and implement when I get back to work, on the basis that things are working okay at the moment, but it is all a bit exhausting, and I suspect that a lot of that is down to my attitude rather than anything else.

I've also started eating a couple of pieces of fruit each day at work, which I'm enjoying.

I'll see how far into the new year I can get with my new improved habits.

At home, a bit of a high tech christmas, as pretty much all the presents I bought seemed to come from the Apple Store. Nonetheless they all seem to have gone down well. I could write a lot here, but often less is more, so I'll just mention one thing.

On Christmas day, I found myself sitting on the sofa, looking round my family, as they read, listened to an iPod, and played on the computer, and thought how lucky I was to share my life with them. Really in terms of the big things I have a great deal to be grateful for, and my family are right at the heart of that.

chaff

I have come to realise that defining much of what I actually do as Chaff is useful.

What is chaff?
Chaff is the stuff that you just sort of end up doing. It is generally not stuff that you really intend to do. You don't generally wake up in the morning wanting to do chaff.

Where does chaff come from?
Chaff in comes via all sorts of ways. It might just be little jobs around the house that need doing, mail that comes through the door, paperwork, or unexpected phone calls. But right now, most of all, chaff seems to come through the email.

Who wants you to spend time on chaff?
Well sometimes you want to do chaff, just to keep things ticking over, you need to get more paper for the printer, or answer the door for the postman. Often chaff is something that someone else wants you to do, it might be part of their grand masterplan, but generally it is not part of yours.

Is chaff unimportant then?
Well not really, it includes routine maintenance sort of stuff that you know needs done, and helping out other folk, and even just being a sociable person. Bump into someone and have a ten minute conversation you were not expecting, then that was chaff.

What is the problem with chaff then?
The problem is that unless you are careful, you easily end up spending all your time on chaff. You are bogged down with chaff before you leave home, commute in, chaff again, spend half the morning on endless emails, get interrupted and lose the plot, attend a meeting that seems pointless, commute home, big pile of spam and TV programmes that you end up watching every week but don't know why. All your day has been caught up with chaff, and then there is no time for what you deep down feel you ought to be doing.

So chaff is evil and we should avoid it?
No one can avoid chaff, it is a fact of life. You might be able to delegate it. If you did not do any chaff, then you would end up a jobless, unthinking robot with no friends.

How do you deal with chaff?
You need to find your own ways of dealing with chaff. For example by devoting fixed amounts of time to chaff, for example only check your email periodically and then only for a set amount of time. Knowing that it is time limited, encourages you to get through them quickly. Tackle a pile of chaff at the same time, rather than letting it interrupt you all the time. Don't be afraid to try different approaches to constraining your time spent on chaff.

One thing that I find works well for me, is when I draw up my task list for the day, I divide it into two columns, chaff, and everything else. So all the stuff that is chaff goes into the chaff column, and the rest goes into the other column. When doing work, I then try and alternate the different columns, so that a chaff task, is followed by something from the 'productive' column, and then back to the chaff. That way nothing completely grinds to a half.

Do you get extra time then?
You probably won't end up with extra time, but you will at least be taking control of the time that you do have. For example if you can ring fence time in your diary for something and are prepared to stick to it, then you can have that half day to read that important report you always meant to.

Why not skip chaff altogether?
You need to work with other people, if you simply ignore anything that does not fit in with your masterplan, you will end up starving and alone. However you can avoid chaff taking over your life. The important thing to realise is that how well you tackle chaff says very little about you, it is how you tackle the big issues that says something about you. Find ways of getting chaff out of the way as quickly as possible to let you devote your time and energy to the big stuff, rather than simply leaving the leftover time and energy to the big stuff, if you are lucky.

So remember chaff is not your friend, chaff makes you feel busy without being productive.

Bully chaff, treat it badly, take back control of your life.

Brian Eno to advise the Liberal Democrats

Those of us who have followed the career of Brian Eno are delighted to hear that he is now a special adviser to the Liberal Democrat party, perhaps we can look forward to a bold move to Party Political broadcasts that are purely ambient, with unfocussed yet very arty photos, for the duration. I enjoyed the slowed down country and western that he used in Apollo, thrilled to the slowed down Pachelbel Canon he used in Discrete Music, surely this man can connect to the youth of today, with the plangent tones of the Smurfs slowed to a glacial pace, revealing their inner beauty and discordant elements. If that does not speak to the youth of today, then I for one, don't know what will.

This is a man with a bold vision, he left Roxy Music just before they got successful, to release a bunch of solo records that no one has heard of, many of them on his own Obscure label. Having built up some success with his solo stuff, he then stopped writing music with words, and ignored endless calls, "please Brian can we have some more songs again, please, please", finally getting round to writing songs again, decades later, by which time, no one was terribly bothered anymore.

Don't we all want our political leaders to be more like Bono and U2, well clearly the Liberal Democrats have found their man, the man who was not content with driving the Talking Heads to new peaks of pretension, knew that that was not enough, and then brought us U2, the very summit of wrap around sunglasses wearing musical pretentiousness.

A man of the people, his diary details how he avoids the general public including his fans, and includes a couple of urine related anecdotes, only one of which I can really bring myself to repeat here. This is a man who has actually peed on a Duchamp urinal!

This is a man who famously burst a lung having sex, his credentials for the post of youth adviser, are self evident.

Perhaps this is what the country needs, we need to articulate our position in the world clearly, and nothing does this like a major Art Statement,

the KLF famously burnt a million pounds, well politicians have been getting away with this for years, without even providing much shock or entertainment.

We need pomp, we need grandeur, we need men who aren't afraid to wear make up and dress up like women, we need more references to modern revolutionary Peking opera, we need Eno.


PS - I should disclose to the reader that I own substantial numbers of aforesaid Eno's records, am not at all peeved that he never replied to my geeky fanboy letter twenty two years ago, felt that the god-like Talking Heads went off the boil with Remain in Light, and find U2 singles moderately catchy.

How to choose a political leader

There are obviously many different ways to choose a political leader, but the current system of choosing one based on how young they look seems to be pretty poor. Merely the fact that someone is youthfull does not recommend them to me as a political leader. My daughters are fine people, as are their friends, but I would not honestly recommend that they start running the country, unless perhaps they had tidied their room first.

Two possible approaches spring to mind ;

we should vote for candidates on the basis on which they resemble a James Bond villain. Now this would guarantee that we had someone who would walk the world stage with grace and stature, someone who was a confident leader, though perhaps cabinet members would be well advised to avoid upsets prior to leaving the room, lest they be tipped into a piranha filled garden pond.

This is an equal opportunities policy, equally open to men and women, and all races, including the purely fictional. You need neither be old or young, and lets face it an evil laugh is not a terribly difficult skill to master. You should of course have a bizarre, and sinister personal trait that is just the other side of unbelievable, such as webbed hands, or a third nipple, but lets face it, with plastic surgery these days, such traits are easily replicated.

The scope for other cabinet members is also tremendous, wouldn't Question Time be more entertaining if burly Koreans, were to throw steel rimmed bowler hats at the opposition, or Grace Jones started jumping from the ceiling. After all what is politics there for, if it is not to entertain us.

Not only is this policy sensible, and practical, but it could easily be introduced almost immediately. Gordon Brown, with the mere addition of a purring white cat, and some sinister backlighting, could easily become the megalomaniac "B" recently escaped from the Chinese Tong with their radioactive gold, the brains behind the former UK Prime Minister, this shadowy Scot from his mountainous lair in North Queensferry, controls the world's money supply to his own sinister ends.

With put down lines like "No Mr Cameron, I don't expect you to talk, I expect you to DIE!!!!!"


Alternatively, we should vote for the Prime Minister on the same basis that we choose to run a student election, that is the vote goes to the Football team mascot, or primate that has garnered most support. Similarly root vegetables would also be encouraged to run. I do however feel that it would be important not to split the primate vote, lest some lesser candidate like a career political managed to benefit, but surely these problems are not insurmountable.

The splendour and gaiety of election day, stuffed toys for mascots, pretty posters, witty slogans.

Then followed by five years of dreadful indecision and sliding into catastrophe and debt. But frankly I don't watch the news much, so the latter seems a small price to pay, if it makes the elections a bit more jolly, which lets admit is something that all right thinking people ought to be concerned about.

consider the future

As one year is on the way out, and another is on the way in, it is worthwhile to pause a moment and consider the future.

One thought that lurks like an elephant in the room, is the impact of globalisation, and world markets, on our lives. Britain is no longer the manufacturer of assorted sundries for all the world. We are no longer the pre-eminent power that we once were.

And yet, too often we think that we exist cosily within a welfare state that will protect and nurture us all, regardless.

But exactly what competitive advantage does Britain have as a country. It is difficult to argue that we are smarter, or work harder, equally although some in Britain own capital, or land, most of us do not, in any substantial way. In fact, Britain is fast becoming a nation of debtors. Dependent on favourable interest rates, merely to stay afloat.

We no longer have the easy benefit of living in a pre-eminent country. Mere location does not carry the benefits that it once did. The fact that we live in Britain does not make us ready workers in factories. Likewise services are increasingly capable of being outsourced, just as manufacturing has been.

At the moment we are all familiar with the outsourcing of call centres, but our lives are increasingly digital. This Christmas the shops seem unusually quiet, as shopping increasingly shifts online. So retail need no longer be on our high street, if we simply order on line, who is employed, where. Orders could be managed and sent automatically, vast sheds could provide goods for delivery. Goods that are increasingly made overseas.

So JK Rowling writes a book, it is published by a UK company, then printed overseas, comes over by the container load, and is distributed by Amazon. Where exactly is the role for the British worker in this scenario. Likewise the entire country cannot make a living providing services to each other. We need to provide exportable goods and services, to balance those we import. But increasingly the exportable goods and services have very little staff component. The staff component is highly skilled/valued, a superstar component. JK Rowling, James Dyson, Whisky brands, top universities, there is a role, but increasingly it is a role for the rich few not the poor many.

And the few are mobile, there is not much that they need to stay for. Society is increasingly becoming divided between the prosperous few, and the unskilled many. The welfare society relied on an implicit contract between the generations, and the classes, that you put in, and you took out, at times you put in, at times you took out. But increasingly there will be people who have virtually opted out of the welfare society, they pay for their children's schooling and university, they never claim benefits, barely access the NHS, would never be eligible for benefits anyway. If these people are superstars, then the world is their market. They need only stay here while the quality of life suits them. Overtax, or under-provide and they are free spirits to move on, as they will. They feel no duty to provide endlessly for a feckless underclass, they spend their lives doing their best to avoid.


Having said all this, I do not think that it is a vision that we need to fall victim to. A superstar economy is not an economy that I want to live in, nose pressed enviously against a window, watching the conspicuous consumption. By and large, the high end, high value work is not individual work. It derives from a group. You might talk about superstar academics, but really academics exist in a campus. I've blogged before on how big companies like Google, and Apple are starting to talk about having a campus. Why not government departments, or R&D facilities. Who does not enjoy spending time at a campus. Fresh young people carrying books, and arguing about things that they believe in. Great people become great, by surrounding themselves with other great people.

If we want to have a superstar economy, then we need to think in terms of campuses. Creating networks of possibility, easy soft quick links between like minds, fast track ideas, and approaches. Hothousing ideas to see what works, testing different models.

In terms of government, a devolved model offers tremendous opportunities, for small agile nations to try out ideas, that would be incapable of implementation in a slower larger country.

All this thinking is of little benefit, if it cannot inform how we out to adapt to thrive, you cannot merely adapt to survive, that is a charter for extinction. You need to adapt to thrive.

There are probably no certainties, but certain things are doubtless safe bets;

networking - you should build and build your networks, your capacity to create, and draw on networks.

information technology - you should be a relentless and determined user of information technology to deliver your goals, though not necessarily as an end in itself.

acceptability - you should be capable of interacting productively with as wide a population as possible. This might mean languages, or simply a welcoming smile, or helpful demeanour. The future belongs to those who can move about easily.

curiosity - you should always be curious, always asking and trying. The curious mind is a nimble mind.

time poor - the libraries of tomorrow are endless, not mere shelves, nor libraries, but warehouses recreating themselves endlessly. We need to become adept at skimming and dipping. Comfortable in our relative ignorance.

balancing between an attention to detail, and being easily bored - willing to put the time into figuring out something, but quick to move onto more interesting pastures.


And I suppose on a personal basis, it is always useful to be fit, healthy, and have some money behind you. If I can manage these things myself, if we can manage these things, if they can manage these things ...


Finally in personal terms there is an interdependence between having qualifications, experience and abilities. You need to balance these, as on their own, each has its limitations, but together they reinforce and support each other. The qualifications reinforce the skills, but it takes experience to actually demonstrate them. Any personal development needs to take account of all three, if it is to succeed.

Addenda - I've just read the attached article, and much of it chimes with what I have said above, however, even beyond this, it is very thoughtful and worthwhile
http://www.scotlandsfuturesforum.org/The%20Goodison%20Group%20in%20Scotland/GGIS%20Final%20Report%202007.pdf

writing Christmas cards

I'm not sure how worthwhile it is doing this blog, I've already done an update on our trip to see the Mountain Goats, and there is not a huge amount to add beyond that.

I've been spending the weekend writing Christmas cards, and wee notes to put in with them. Not that I actually have that many to write, it is just that I'm not terribly quick. Just as well I have a deadline to work to, or I would never get them done. Christmas is certainly a once a year, imperative to drop a note to all sorts of good friends that you don't see often enough.


One thought, amongst many, obviously, I was thinking about my job.

I'm a bit of a perfectionist and I'm always beating myself up that I don't manage to do absolutely everything that I hope to do. I suppose my job, in common with many these days, is largely self defined. I decide what I need to do, or what I ought to do. That's why you get paid smart guy rates, because you have that degree of autonomy.

That means that there will always be a tension between the two extremes -
that old standby of how little do I need to do to avoid being sacked
or
doing everything possibly in my power to sort out all the problems of the world.

And part of my comfort level is to find a balance between these two extremes, a comfortable comfort level, one that I don't feel guilty about.

In order for work to be sustainable, you really need to be comfortable in yourself. Being guilty, angry, worried, all the time, will tire you out.

I should be more accepting of the fact that I cannot do everything under the sun, that I possibly might.

Another balancing factor, is being able to split work into different strands, so that you can spend some time on one strand, some time on another, that way, if you are never getting to the bottom of anything, at least you are keeping things ticking over nicely.

Similarly, you need to be able to split your life into different strands, so that if one strand is not going so great, then at least the others are more satisfying.

Finally coming round to the initial point that I was intending to make, I was wondering about what I could do to make myself better at my job.

I don't think that it is as easy as just working longer, it is more complex than that. It is about skills, and creativity, networks and experience.

I'm not sure that I could bottom it all out in one go, but simply tackling the task with a loose methodology, which is kept under review, usually works.

I guess that important things to do would be to
1 make time for development, for example
2 pick up on opportunities offered at work
3 personal study, social policy and social research for a start
4 network
5 identify useful skills to develop, for example
6 negotiation
7 plan and track, and think innovatively about my development.

I'll think about making a personal project of this for a while, ....

Other jottings, I have just figured out how to send files between my computers by Bluetooth. Boy it is so cool.

Nearly tripped over a young deer this afternoon, out walking the dog, and this little deer shot out from just before me, and hopped off away across the field. Its little white rump bobbing up, as it skimmed over the field like a stone across the water.

Of course my dog was too busy pee-ing on something to spot any of this.

Going to Scotland

Just a quick blog entry. I headed over to Glasgow on Monday, to catch the Mountain Goats, at Oran Mor. They were part of the Pineapple Folk Gathering, along with
Emmy the Great
Alasdair Roberts
and Micah P Hinson.

I'll not pretend that I had heard of anyone else on the bill, but the word on the blogs was that it was a pretty good line up, and lets face it, if the other bands were good it was simply a bonus, a chance to see the Mountain Goats live was just too good to miss.

Anyway, first up was Emmy the Great, who was enchanting, a wonderfully relaxed way with the audience, which was very winning, and the songs were gorgeous too, densely literary, but lightly musical. I've downloaded an EP from iTunes. Certainly one to watch out for in future, if she gets round to actually recording and releasing more stuff. Perhaps not the most ruthlessly ambitious artist out there!

Alasdair Roberts was probably the most 'folk' of the acts, it did rather pass me by I am afraid, musically good, but the lyrics and vocals failed to grab me. He did probably suffer from being the most traditional act, on a rather more lo-fi bill.

Skipping to the last act, Micah P Hinson, ostensibly the headliner, he was slightly shambolic, but engaging, and came across as a sort of drugged up Richard Hawley. The most fabulous of deep Texan drawls, and the sort of Dick Dale/Billy Bragg almost orchestral electric guitar. However after the energy of the Mountain Goats, an hour long set felt a bit long. One to check out on iTunes though, there was some cracking stuff in there.

Finally, the Mountain Goats, clearly the stars for the night, my wife was at the back and she said that a whole bunch of people appeared just for them. I was however in the throng at the front. They came on, John Darneille, slightly goofy/cuddly, tie-less suit, and Peter Hughes long and dapper with a suit, tie and waistcoat. They set up amiably enough, looking exactly as they look in the photos, which is an inane thing to say, but it always disconcerts me.

They kicked off with It Froze Me, which was quite slow, then alternating between belters and quieter songs. However even with the quieter songs the whole room was rapt and quiet.

I think that the power of art is that suddenly you have something that is much more than the sum of its parts, it is no longer a mark on paper, or notes and words, it is something that forcibly grabs you and affects you. Here were two men, with guitars, creating something at once deeper and richer than normal life, something that seemed more real/true and more passionate, than the everyday.

There was a bit of good natured banter with the audience, I particularly liked when John started to introduce a song as being about, when you want to be locked up alone in your house for months, and Peter said that that could be any of them.

John also had a rather endearing way of asking for a beer from the bar. He shredded a guitar string, quickly flicked it up, and carried on with the song. There was more banter while they were offered a guitar from Emmy.

There were quite a few of the songs where we were all singing along, No Children in particular, but there were a good few others, where a lot of us knew all the words.

They finished up, I went back to see my wife, and say how awesome it had been, and they came back for a howling mad version of Houseguest, which is worrying/disturbing, but very funny.

And then they were finally off. The only disappointment was the lack of Mountain Goat merchandise, but I suppose I can always design my own Mountain Goats shirt.

Good to see a few mentions on the blogs, and photos on Flickr. Also from some of the banter from the audience, it seemed clear that many of the people there had been listening the bootleg recordings of previous gigs rather than just the records. This is a group that you cannot find in a record shop, and whose best-selling record is rated

30,286 in Music by Amazon.

And yet, they filled an enthusiastic audience of over a hundred, singing along to a wide variety of their songs, on a Monday night in Glasgow, with virtually no publicity.

I suppose the fact that they are very good must be a factor, but the web is creating opportunities that never existing before for artists with talent to find their audiences.

grinding and crunching of glass

Work -
And another week. It has been an odd sort of week, rather than trying to grab things by the scruff of the neck to sort them out, I have been trying to focus on tidying up my current post, ready for taking on a new post in the New Year. So less meetings and appointments, and plenty of tidying up emails and filing the important ones. Also trying to step aside and let other people lead on things that normally I would have, really not something that comes naturally to me.

Went along to what might well be my last meeting for a favourite project. It is good to be able to tell people in person that I will be moving on, it seems a lot more straightforward than just bouncing their emails later. Someone I had been working with, suggested that maybe I was one of the new breed of civil servants, which is quite flattering. I rather suspect that I tend to do things the way that I think that they should be done, and if that happens to accord with current thinking, then it is just lucky. Anyway it is great project, that I'm delighted to have played a part in, and it should be on a firm footing for the future, which is all you can really hope for.

Friday- a day long presentation of research findings, which was marred by being held in one of the most depressing facilities I've ever seen. It had obviously had a fair bit of money spent on it, all glass, and stainless steel. Which sounds grand, and it certainly did have a certain wow factor, but glass sliding doors always scare the bejeezus out of me, casually close one, and you get a great grinding and crunching of glass, as it closes unpleasantly. The accoustics were also pretty dismal. It was the usual 9.30 for 10.00 but for once it was absolutely packed when I got there at 9.30, and it got busier from then on.

All in all pretty interesting, I liked the social research stuff more than the more quantitative stuff like the economics.

Well? -
Still full of the cold, like death warmed up on Tuesday, though I don't think anyone noticed! Quite a few interesting emails on my personal account, from different pies that I have had my finger in. It is intriguing how a little effort here and there, builds up over the years.

IT Geek -
Now that I have diagnosed that it was a problem with the external hard drive, getting the new laptop set up, and backing it up, is really pretty straightforward. It has been running on Tiger for a week or two, so now I have installed Leopard. I've got a new external hard drive, and put four partitions onto it, one big one, and three small ones. I'll use the big partition for TimeMachine and back up to the others using SuperDuper once it is Leopard compliant. Clearly the learning lesson for me here, is that small baby steps, one thing at a time, making sure everything is working fine before trying anything else, is the way to proceed with IT.

In fairness - now that the moody external hard drive is out of the equation - leopard seems to be running just fine, TimeMachine is trouble free, and I'll need to reacquaint myself with the various new features that Leopard brings.

Also in fairness - the tech support for my hard drive seems fine, they got back to me a couple of times and I'm just waiting for details on how to return the hard drive to get a replacement.

It is tremendous fun doing a real Victor Meldrew routine bemoaning the failings of the modern world, with comic gravity, but I would prefer honesty to comic splendour.

With luck my family tech support role should now diminish. I tend to take the view that IT is a means to an end, though recently it seems to be taking up hours, and I'm not getting much beyond doing family IT geek stuff each weekend.

Writing -
Someone suggested that I should be writing more, currently feeling a bit beseiged, a myriad of small tasks on one side, and on the other a desire to create something of such jaw dropping perfection, that I never seem to get anything done.

There is probably a benefit to just jotting down a blog full of mince, in that it at least gets you writing something.

another blog

Another week, another blog. Strange how things change, like the seasons slowly creeping up on you.

Pretty quiet week, I’ll be moving to a new post in the New Year, so trying to focus on clearing up old tasks, rather than starting on new ones. Letting various folk know that I’ll be moving on, it is good to let people know in person when I can, so although I’ll still be in post for a while yet, it will probably be the last time I see a few of them.

I suppose I am inclined to get a bit sentimental, I’ve been involved in some interesting pieces of work over the past year or two, and some decent projects have come off well. Of course I’m only a contributor to the successes, they all very much team efforts, but nice to have been around and played my part.

I have been rather touched by the reaction of people to hearing that I’ll be moving on, you never really get much impression of what other people actually think of you, but quite a few seem genuinely sorry to see me go, and grateful for all my help over the years. I’m a bit of an Eeyore at heart, I never feel that I manage to get done as much as I intend to. I do my best to get back to people quickly, and do what I promise to, but I’m acutely aware that I never quite manage it all. It is heartening to hear that nonetheless the general impression is one of helpfulness and genuineness, rather than gormless incompetence.


I’m still struggling out of a cold and seem to feel pretty run down much of the time, so I am just trying to take things easily. It does just feel dark all the time, and it can be perishing cold. I have been out to the shops a few time, and the fellow shoppers seem to be demonstrating the seasonal rat-like selfishness, panic behind their eyes, as they rake through consumer goods stacked high, seeking something made in China that satisfies some joyless duty to swap gifts. When did Christmas ever end up so joyless. Joyless is the most depressing of words. Etiquette can make kindness joyless, Christmas seems to make shopping and giving joyless. Basically, I think that whenever something is getting joyless there is something far astray.

I’m probably on schedule with my gift getting, but hopeless on suggesting anything that anyone else might get me. I rather wish that I had just toughed it out, and said, give the money to charity.

Not much else to report, I’ve figured out that all my IT problems with my new MacBook backing up, must be down to the external hard drive I bought being defective in some way. Of course getting a new laptop, external hard drive, and upgrading the OS, and installing all sorts of software, all at the same time, made diagnosis a pain.

My best guess is that there is some intermittant problem in the Hard-drive that crashes backups, and this corrupted the system on my laptop. I reinstalled the original operating system, and it seems to be running okay now. I’ll proceed slowly, and if all is going well in a week or two, maybe run the OSX Leopard upgrade again.

I’ve reported the problem to LaCie, but I seem to be stuck in some tech support hell, where they take days to respond. I don’t really want to be doing basis diagnostic stuff for the next month, when the hard drive is pretty obviously crocked, so I’ll try and push for a quick replacement.

Learning lesson to all this, in things IT, take little baby steps and make sure that you are on sound ground before proceeding to the next stage.

Once I get the External Hard Drive sorted out, I’ll probably get a new desktop, which will let me retire my current one to my daughters room, which will let them play Sims, and ArtRage etc to their heart’s content. That would bring us upto a three computer household, which does not seem unreasonable as there are four of us.

Of course there are actually more computers than that. There is a really old Acorn in the loft, which is less powerful than your average mobile phone these days, and a bondi blue iMac, which went phut, probably a defective power block.

I guess a lot of this IT stuff nowadays, is probably written off totally within three years, so I always get much more use out of them than that. I’ll not feel unduly guilty. Any IT kit here gets a good home, and is well used.

I am intrigued by the speed of the laptop, my impression, confirmed by speedtests in the magazines, is that the laptop is actually slower than the desktop, this is despite them both running the same system, and the laptop having IGB ram, to the half gig of ram on the desktop. I guess that it must be other components making the difference. To be honest, I’m not sure that it actually makes a vast difference, but I’ll maybe look at picking up some more RAM.

Moving to using the laptop, and desktop, means that file synchronisation is now rearing its head. I’ll need to figure out how best to organise things so that they are where I want them to be when I want them to be there, without running a spaghetti bowl of wires all over the house all the time.

Cool software - Rogue Amoeba Radioshift, lets you listen to, and record streaming radio. Not all the possible channels seem to be streamed, but the obvious BBC ones are, and as far as I can tell, you need to be connected to the internet to do the recording, but the quality is impressive, you can edit the stuff, and save to iTunes. I don’t seem to have figured out the editing yet, but I’ve not even read the short instructions, so more a comment on my relative density, than the software. I bought it Friday, upgrading from demo, instantly persuaded by the opportunity to record an episode of the Burkiss Way on radio 7. I have fond memories of radio comedy, including the Burkiss Way, so I’ll maybe need to scour the schedules to build up a little stock of radio comedy for my iPod.

Also recommended, check out MacSanta for deals on Macintosh shareware this month!!!
Yaaaayyyyyyy!!!!!!!!

really cold

Full of the cold, head like sticky glue. Pretty fuzzy for the first couple of days, and hardly rocket powered the last couple of days. I'm starting to get more tolerant of myself not always being one hundred percent. Looking back not entirely sure what I did this week, but although I may not have been the most purposeful, I am sure that I was beavering away. All a bit of a catholic guilt, puritan work ethic sort of thing.

Met up with my old boss for lunch, and had a fine time, she is looking really well, and clearly retirement suits her well. We hardly mentioned work at all, which suited me just fine, and as a parting gift, I gave her some of my wife's fine jams, and preserves, including the new favourite, High Dumpsie Dearie Jam.

I was successful in applying for another post recently, so I will need to put my house in order, either get things done, or hand them over to someone else. It will be after Christmas when I move, so that sounds a long way away at the moment, but I suspect that it will creep up on me mighty fast, if I don't start beavering away on stuff. More puritan work ethic stuff going on.

Still persevering trying to find a way to backup my new laptop. I have deleted a lot of old stuff from my laptop, particularly stuff that came from previous machines, I suspect that there is even stuff that I had on my first System 7.1 laptop there. Also got rid of CyberDuck from my laptop. Following a suggestion on one of the podcasts, I am trying iBackup. I did set it to back up everything last night, but was still stalled when I came down this morning. I gave things a right clear out this morning, it backed up okay onto the desktop, so now I am trying to back it up to the external hard drive.

If that works, and I'll be feeling decidedly cocky if it does, then I'll try and run time machine backing up to another partition.

Other stuff, I really will need to start thinking about Christmas stuff properly, but it just feels so alien these days, when everyone has everything they want, it is a bit like that rather gross Mr Creosote sketch, where we are all being encouraged to have just that little bit more. I have that niggling feeling, that with a bit of lateral thinking, something less consumeristic, and more useful could be arrived at.

Otherwise, not much to report, it is really really cold, actually really really really cold,

The geek as hero, arcana as power, a new alchemy.

quite a lot to report

• how I am getting on with my new computer
• applying for new jobs
• starting to write Losing Definition
• Just like magic

how I am getting on with my new computer
After much effort doing installations (all trouble free, just time consuming) last weekend, my new laptop is now up and running, with the exception of Time Machine. I even ran software update yesterday, and applied a system patch, but still no joy, now TimeMachine. I've checked out SuperDuper and we are still waiting for an upgrade to that to allow it to ran with Leopard. So my backup strategy is now two-fold

• for my desktop computer - continue to run SuperDuper each week to back up the entire system into a partition on an external hard drive.
• for my laptop computer - all newly created documents to be kept in the same desktop folder for ease, and to be backed up from there.

It is now clear that routine maintenance for two computers, which for me, basically consists of doing a weekly backup, and a monthly run of Disk Utility and OnyX will become quite time consuming. However my first two computers both eventually crashed out with corrupt hard drives, which then needed to be reformated and reinstalled, so I am perfectly resigned to doing proper backups.

I also watched the OSX Leopard introductory tour yesterday, and I'm slowly getting my head round the new functionality of Leopard. A lot of it is not gee whizz new, but rather tucked away, and you have to go looking for it. Spaces seems interesting, but I've not quite got my head round it. I guess that I will just have to spend time playing around with the new OS, and browsing through material about it. A lot of it is selling functionality that I did not know I wanted, so there is the task of understanding the functionality, then understanding how to use it.

I ran the laptop, connected upto the internet router via an old ethernet cable, and the Mail worked fine, I don't think that connecting two computers to the same mail account will cause problems actually. Well not with received mail, I might need to be a bit cannier with sent mail though. I'll need to lash out on a longer ethernet cable, but it will be cheaper than buying a wireless router.

At the moment expenditure on IT seems to be a constant item, though in fairness, I am not spending on much else.

It is great being able to run two computers, it also means that I can spend an evening typing away on my laptop, while the rest of the family can use the desktop. Yesterday I was using the laptop, while Hannah was playing away on the Sims, and Sketchfighter.

If I am primarily using the laptop for typing, the screen is plenty big enough, it is light and easy to move around, the power cable with the magsafe link is easy and safe to use. I am persevering using the trackpad, and now quite like using the one finger for moving the cursor and two fingers for scrolling facility. No sure that browsing folders in CoverFlow is particularly quick, but intriguing none the less.

In terms of version control, I'm using the laptop primarily for stuff that does not need the internet connection, while the web-based stuff I do on the desktop. However I might be persuaded to upgrade to a family license for RapidWeaver in due course, just to make life slightly easier. Ditto other applications, probably just as easy buying family licenses for software from now on.

Despite all this positive stuff, with the absence of reliable backups, I am mighty glad that I am not running Leopard on my main computer, and do not intend to upgrade it to Leopard, because it might be a bit of a memory hog, I cannot back it up, and I really want complete no risk/no worry peace of mind on my main computer. Running two internet capable computers does feel a lot more secure than having one, and all the putting your eggs in one basket, that that entailed.

applying for new jobs
Actually quite a worrisome week, doing two workshop presentations on Monday, which was something that I had not exactly done before, though I had done similar stuff. As ever worry worry worry, but when the adrenaline kicks in, you just stick a smile on your face, and become larger than life, breezing through it. Just as well in this case, as some of the audience were really not used to or expecting a presentation from a government official, so there was a fair bit of questions, and issues raised, but between the adrenaline and past experience, I carried it off with reasonable aplomb. You certainly don't do these things for the hearty congratulations for the audience, but I think that we should be out there, being seen, speaking to people, and more importantly listening to people.

Then a quick briefing of the Minister, which I was leading, but I made sure that I was well prepared, and knew the points I wanted to get across, and the Minister was a real pleasure to meet. So after the initial worry that too went well.

Final worry out of three, for the week, was a job interview on the Thursday. Once again made sure that I was well prepared, even setting aside some time in the office to make sure that I was thoroughly prepared. I did apply for one other post recently, but this was the one that I really wanted, even although the other one would have paid better. This one fits in with my career plan, which is to find a post with elements of project management, working with external stakeholders, and negotiation skills. The team also looked to be a really good mix of people, and the actual work area seemed interesting. It rather reminds me of work that I was doing a while back, that was mad busy, but high profile, challenging, but you were learning so much all the time.

The job would offer a mix of building on skills that I already have, but also enhancing areas that I feel that I need to develop.

The interview went okay, not one that I felt that I had aced, but okay nonetheless. My problem being that it is difficult to demonstrate that you can do something that you have not done before, so I was delighted to be asked at the outset why I wanted the job, so I could say, probably in a gushy/enthusiastic sort of way, that I might not have all the experience on paper, but I wanted to get the experience, I thought I could do it, and I wanted the chance to prove that I could.

We use competency based interviews, which means that you have to talk about similar tasks that you have successfully done, which means that you want good high quality work to demonstrate what you can do, getting bogged down with low quality work makes it difficult to move onto a decent job. Just another aspect of the need to focus on work that delivers significant outcomes, and think carefully about what you put your time into. I am constantly amazed at the high quality of some staff, and that they are not better paid for what they have to do. I might be good at what I do, but there are a lot of really excellent people, so although the work suits me well, I won't rise effortlessly to the top.

starting to write Losing Definition
I have made a start on losing definition, writing it on VoodooPad. To date I have taken stuff that I have written in a previous start on RapidWeaver, only a few pages, and notes from my notebooks, and some poetry from the blog. I don't intend to duplicate the blog in Losing Definition, but it might have stuff that I can use. At present there is a lot of stuff there, that is just working notes, and will get edited out in due course, but I'm still not too sure where it is going, so it is not too obvious what is irrelevant yet. I'll push on with writing stuff, and trawling through stuff that I have already written to find suitable material.

I think the real art will be in the editing, rather than the writing, maybe there is an Ezra Pound who could create a Wasteland from my prose?

In any case, it will take a lot of work and iterations to arrive at something that I am happy with, but it will be a pretty dense mix when it is finished, Giorgio DeChiroco wrote a fishy paste of a novel, called Hebdomeron, which I have never read, and only just remember hearing about, but I feel like I am struggling to create some such 'mythical work'.

Context is of course everything, it will take shape, and it is time for me to get writing, rather that waffling on about it.

Just like magic
There is a famous quote from Arthur C Clarke about any sufficiently advanced technology will appear to be magic. I think that the new Apple operating systems are approaching that level. In some sort of Harry Potter way, we can gesture, and make short incantations, to create magical works.

The geek as hero, arcana as power, a new alchemy.

Nowadays it seems like every home needs a geek, to provide technical support, the new BT adverts with Kris Marshall certainly seem to be going down this line, that there is something attractive and useful about geekery.

My first computer, a Powerbook 165c (introduced in 1993 and running System 7.1) was capable of being understood inside out. There seemed a pretty finite limit to the functionality, and the files and folders. Even adding in a works package like Clarisworks, you still had a pretty manageable degree of functionality, useful, without being confusing.

However skipping forward to my new laptop an iBook running OXS 10.5, the number of files and folders is probably over 800,000, beyond what any reasonable person would know or understand. In terms of functionality, there are now numerous perfectly legitimate ways of achieving the same end. You can customise and enhance, there is no single standard user experience. I can learn tricks and shortcuts limited only by my ability to remember them all, I can add on functionality like QuickSilver to create further magical abilities to shortcut through the complexity.

You really would need to be a genius to understand all of this, or even a decent chunk of it. Computing has therefore evolved into an art, where you need to make qualitative judgements, subjective decisions, balance issues, there are no single right answers, merely strategies that are more likely to succeed.

I often wonder who the future belongs to, it may well belong to those who can master these things. In the past work did not place a great premium on brain power, but increasingly you will need brainpower, and will be responsible for keeping your brainpower upto date, relevant and useful.

I have probably written this before, but I don't think we should be talking about information workers, but about understanding workers. It won't be about having the qualifications, or seniority, it will be about being able to do things.

Time Machine - well that's a few hours of my life that I won't get back again

Yesterday I made a start on getting my new laptop all set up.

My plan of attack, and results are as follows

• backed up my desktop computer - still running Tiger, using SuperDuper
• Ran Migration Assistant to move files across, but only copied across the accounts for myself and my wife
• plugged in the usual ethernet cable, and the new laptop was successfully on the net, running via my router
• ran software update, which fixed a glitch where my iTunes was not accessing the iTunes library - created with a different version of iTunes
• ran the EFI firmware update - which came with detailed instructions!
• checked all my key applications, which are listed in the dock, except for Mail which I won't use on the laptop, as my emails will get all out of sync.
• all my applications worked okay, though a few wanted to update keychain, and some had upgrades. The only one which had a problem running on two computers, was RapidWeaver, which seems fair do's and as with Mail, there would be version control issues if I was using it to update the same site from two different unsynchronised computers.

then installed Leopard - which went smoothly, and seemed to launch up okay and everything. By this stage, I was probably coming in at slightly under my half day estimate for the work.

Set up the new 320GB LaCie external hard drive, connected it up with the FireWire 400 cable and set Time Machine running.

Various attempts, various tweaks, it hung overnight. Took off Desktopia, which alters the desktop, amended the settings to the laptop so it did not sleep, or go to screensaver, checked the name in system preferences shared - various tweaks to TimeMachine, checked permissions, and verified disk for the internal hard-drive. Partitioned the external hard drive, as directed by apple support. Still no joy, the first backup via TimeMachine would start off okay, then just hang, and you could not even Force Quit out of it.

As ever various checking of the apple support page, other forums, a check on Technorati, and the blogs. My impression is that TimeMachine users fall into three categories,
1 works perfectly with no issues
2 works after some tweaks
3 won't work

I do have a problem with Time Machine, in that it does not, to my knowledge create a boot-able drive, in case of disk corruption, rather it provides a ready source for stuff you might have deleted in error.

Well, Duuhhhhhhhh

with huge disk capacities nowadays, why delete anything at all, ever???

And - an internal hard drive will always corrupt eventually, in an office setting you would not keep much of anything on your C-drive, all your data would actually be on a remote server, with proper backup routines. In a home setting you rely on the internal drive, and back that up to a single external hard drive. In the case of an office setting, if your C-drive corrupts, then it is a simple reinstall, and nothing personal is lost. In a home setting you have the worry about getting the operating system and all your purchased software up again, and the issue of your personal data. Backing up a useable system along with your data is much the best option.

So having persevered with Time Machine, I got to the point where I figured that I was in the stubborn group three, who was not going to get it working. In any event, it did not do what I wanted it to do anyway, and continuing to try using it, with the machine crashes, was more likely to corrupt my system, than provide anything that was a useable backup.

Therefore, the wheee - fun - of playing with Time Machine has been abandoned, at least until a few patches come out, and I've just partitioned the external hard drive up again, and I'll use SuperDuper to back up to partitions, as I have done before.

Time Machine does look to be a triumph of style over substance, if it could not work with a straight out of the box laptop, and straight out of the box LaCie external hard drive, both bought from Apple within the past month, then it does suggest that the pre-release testing must have been cursory in the extreme.

I'll report more fully on my experience with leopard in due course, initial impressions are that the changes seem pretty subtle, but experience may reveal more.

the dog hates fireworks

Another fairly eventful week,

my new laptop arrived, so I have got it unpacked, charged up, and played around a little. However it runs system 10.4.10 which is the OS I'm familiar with, so nothing new there, I've not yet set it up to connect up to the internet either.

I was surprised to see that it arrived with some extra disks, including the new OS Leopard. I suppose in theory, Apple say that all new computers ship with Leopard, so even although it is a refurb, it ought to have Leopard, but it had never occured to me. Also a demo disk for the new iWork, which I may or may not buy. I currently run Appleworks, which used to be Clarisworks, back when I first bought a computer in nineteen oatcake. Apple stopped supporting it quite a long time ago, and it runs sluggish, but basically does all that I need.

I'll set aside a half day this weekend to

• run migration assistant,
• instal leopard
• instal demo disk,
• transfer over or install a few applications

As laptops are eminently nickable, I would prefer not to fill it with personal information, likewise, I don't want version control running wild, so I will probably use the laptop as a typing machine, where I want to do a lot of typing, and then simply transfer over the finished document. Therefore need to think carefully about exactly what software I will install, and how I will use it. I have already decided not to copy across all the family accounts. I might just set up as myself/administrator, and guest.

Another thing that had not occured to me, I'll need to find a secure spot for it to sit, when not in use, mainly so that it does not suffer from bags of shopping, hot mugs of tea, etc plonked atop it, when no one is looking, it is a busy house.

Another thing that had not occured to me, I'll set it up to run timemachine. I have already bought an extra external hard drive, and I might as well try out timemachine. To be honest, my preference is to just stick with SuperDuper for day to day use, as it backs up the entire system, but figuring out timemachine will really require running it, so running it with non crucial stuff, seems fair enough.

Other stuff this week,
getting awfy dark, and the dog hates fireworks, poor soul.
Monday - Day of lectures on older workers on Monday, really first rate, good lectures, and every conversation I had throughout the day was fascinating. The sort of day that I would have paid money for, rather than having to be paid for.
Tuesday - over in Glasgow for some lectures, also interesting, and catching up with some people. As ever a trip to the AppleStore, and picked up a sleeve for my new laptop. Bedlam at the tills, what an odd shop, but always worth a visit, and always busy.
Wednesday - more meetings, useful catch ups.
Thursday - saw an advertising agency. Always a bit wary of advertising and marketting types, but impressed by this lot. They had done their homework, I'm used to dealing with researchers, and once commissioned, they do their homework, and almost instantly seem to know more about the subject than you do. These advertisers actually employed people from a social research background, and commissioned external social researchers for some of their work. All in all very impressed.
Friday - a couple more quick meetings.

All a bit spaced out with all these meetings, getting a quiet day to lay into the emails is invaluable every now and then.

I'm starting to think about maybe doing some more studying, around the social policy area, I've been dabbling with the subject for quite a while now, and it would be useful to have an academic basis to my understanding. The brighter and more capable people all seem to have a lot of qualifications these days, so there is a degree of running to stay still!

The OU stuff all looks expensive, but I'll have a look round and think about it.

Long rambling blog warning - long rambling blog warning

Long rambling blog warning - long rambling blog warning - please ensure that you do not leave your luggage unattended, and take care when alighting -

Now that I think about it, I'm not actually sure whether alighting, is a-getting on, or a-getting orf a train. You only ever use the word in the context of trains, so it must be particularly helpful advice for foreigners with only limited English.

Various matters afoot.

Finally, finally ordered a laptop, which will bring us back up to a two computer household, the old one went phut a while back, which meant that we have all been queuing up around the single computer, albeit a very fine computer. I'll get another iMac in due course, and the old iMac can go to the girls room, but in the meantime, handy for me to have a laptop. I keep an eye on the refurbished stock on the Apple Store, and was holding out for a decent laptop, for under a thousand. Obviously, if I was looking at a non-Apple computer, it would come in a lot cheaper, and as the new basic mac laptop, is pretty cheap anyway, the savings on the refurbished ones are good compared to what they would have cost new, but less startling when compared to a brand new computer. Plumped for one with 1GB of RAM, which is more than my current desktop, and took out three year AppleCare, as the laptops are more prone to problems than the desktops. All in, not too expensive.

I really don't see the point of having a laptop that is so shiny, new, expensive, that you are afraid to actually use it.

Of course once it arrives, I will need to figure out how Migration Assistant works, and whether I will need to buy Family Packs of software, etc. Oh the life of the family tech support guy, is an exciting one.

It will be one of the white laptops, which I like, though maybe not as manly as brushed aluminium, they seem jolly things. The ones with the really big screens, just don't look like laptops to me. The whole point of a laptop is that it is portable, not carrying about something the size of a easel all day.

Other stuff - been out plenty lately, probably worth a few notes on what I have been upto. Of course the flipside is that I have a vast pile of paperwork for dealing with, today is Sunday, and I'm back at work tomorrow, unalloyed job.

Apple Store - again - another trip to Glasgow, another trip to the Apple Store. Asking about the rumored new chips, but they were all toeing the party line, and saying they knew nothing. A bit of an internet scour, there are new Intel chips coming out, but not clear when they will find their way into Apple computers, and the chip in the MacBooks was updated in early November. Thinking logically, the iMacs are pretty new, so by elimination, wherever they were putting new chips, would not be the desktops.

Bought myself another LaCie hard-drive, which means that I could start backing up immediately, if/when I got a new desktop. My existing external hard drive is partitioned, so could easily back up a laptop on there too.

Police HQ - went to the police HQ a few weeks ago, rather like the school trip to the fire station that I never got. The place was deserted and dark when we got there, strikingly geometric, and squarely lit, we got in by speaking into a speaker at the main door, and were then trapped in a deserted reception, found a door open from there, wandering round locked offices, headed towards a slapping noise, and found a cleaner in the gym, she directed me to a traffic policeman sorting envelopes in the mailroom, and he phoned up to find our host. After a presentation, we saw the large, larger than a basketball court, and tall too, room where all the urgent and routine calls were handled. Relatively tidy desks, but each had two, three or even four flatscreens on them, fixed to metal poles, with different data screens on them. All the time, large monitors at each end, relayed through a series of messages, red tickertape messages too, and a big plasma screen of the News. Whiteboards round the walls with more data. They were constantly logging the number of calls, and longest wait, via big red numbers displayed on the wall, and when pressed, folk would be pulled off tea breaks. Apparently the break during Coronation Street, and after an afternoon of drunken summer barbecues are particular times for high call volumes.

Then went to the CCTV room, eighty or ninety monitors, constantly panning and scanning, all over the county. I suppose you could be appalled at the Big Brother-ish-ness of it all, but there were some drunken folk swaying, one lying down, no-one was calling out the police, and from the images, unless you were wearing your football shirt with your name across it, you would not be too readily identifiable.

Striking features - the whole place was like something out of a movie, empty offices, brightly lit, they could even scan the environs, as if in defence against some attack themselves. The vision of people at desks with multiple monitors, was also striking, perhaps the way of the future. Finally shown round an empty room for running emergencies, all the standard stuff too hand, but impersonal, just a place for getting things done. After all - emergencies are just a job for someone.

Did some facilitation work - keeping my hand in, as I have done a fair bit in the past, so it is good to just volunteer and help people out. On the one hand, enjoyable, but also quite exhausting, with just enough of an adrenaline rush to keep you going. There is nothing quite like a mixed group of people, talking through an issue that they care about. I'll have to make time to do more in future.

A couple of evening meetings, one of local groups, and a presentation for those winning awards for their areas, for floral displays and the like. Some interesting people, and what a wonderful way to regenerate an area, these people are complete heroes. It is the local volunteers that turn round communities, and sustain those that succeed. Unseen, unheard, invaluable.

Local meeting of members,and former members of the Cix bulletin board - kindly got an invite (I'm a former member), to meet up, and have a drink. As any big city evening engagements, are inevitably concluded with the train trip home, trains once per hour, usually leaving five minutes before you reach the station, and drinking and promptly catching trains are incapable of being done in the same evening, I tend to be more anti-social than my general preference would be. I had simply intended dropping in, but had such a good time, the time flew by, looked at my watch, saw it was nearly nine, and had to leave. Around 11.00 by the time I actually got home! However fascinating chatting to people who have been bulletin boarding for so long, IT is surely a means to an end, not an end in itself. I rather like techies. They are trying to Web 2.0 the bulletin board, and it was interesting to look at and discuss functionality and ease of use. In many ways the old bulletin boards, which allow threading of conversations are still vastly better than the rather frustrating comments and forums that abound now.

Finally yesterday at the Scottish Parliament - big meeting, as ever bumped into people I knew, but was not expecting, I don't think I'm a full time meeting junky, and I do think that I get stuff out of it, actually it is a good to catch up with folk that are doing interesting things, and often the mingling is far better than the sitting and being talked at, but it was actually an interesting meeting.

At work on Friday with my boss, started off by discussing what tasks I was to lead on, and what tasks my boss was to lead on, and ended up discussing all that we need to do in the next few months, pretty much agreeing a plan of attack, unexpectedly, and now things seem to be kicking off in a more vigorous fashion. I suspect that I might revert to my old role of project managing the different work strands, which does feel presumptuous when I'm not actually in charge of the work, but has worked well in the past, and is probably necessary again.

welcome to the transmission party, I love your friends they're all so arty

Usual mixed bag of material this week

in trains - a work in progress
some jottings entered as a separate blog entry
these are just random jottings inspired by the time I spend on trains, which is a lot of time. Except for the black train, which is about suffering from migraines, which has the relentlessness of an unwanted train journey.

@work
finally getting on top of what seemed like an endless volume of work, but I need to find fresh challenges, though not sure what they are. Overall getting itchy feet for some new issues to get my teeth into, it all feels a bit too quiet.

apple store
dropped in at the local apple store again. What an odd shop. I really don't think that it is about selling stuff. I cannot imagine that they actually make money. Rather they are about ensuring that Apple products are displayed to their best possible advantage, something that retailers have signally failed to do in the past. There is a long history of retailers stocking apple, then failing to display properly, or have any knowledgeable staff, then wondering why they don't sell any. Even at John Lewis, when buying an iMac, they had to call out a techie in a overcoat to talk to me about it, and even then he did not have one at home himself. Other stores were even worse, with apple computers stuck at some Sad Mac prompt - sitting there unloved.

What sold me on the iPod was when my daughter instantly got how it worked without any instruction, seeing a demo model at the local Currys. If a child can get the clickwheel, and love it, then apple is doing something right.

The perennial downside is that there is not much software, but with the growing role of cloudware, and online purchasing, then it really is not that much of a problem now. And to be honest, the off the shelf iMac now comes with a tremendous suite of software, you don't need that much more, unless you are getting pretty specialised.

I suppose that I am an apple fanboy, but would like to see them doing more to put worth back in the hands of users, some of their activities feel more like revenue streams.

I have just heard that new Apple Chips will come out in mid November, so another reason to postpone buying a new Macintosh. Perfect knowledge just makes life so much more complicated!

Note to self, I would like to get some shares in apple sometime.

mountain goat - going to scotland
from the blogosphere, and forums it sounds like my current favourite band, the Mountain Goats will be Going to Scotland.

They are very impressive live, so I am strongly thinking about getting tickets. Probably a mountain of logistics to worry about, particularly now I have a job, and children, but hey, what is life without a little mid life rebellion.

Stewart Brand supports nuclear power
I heard on an Economist podcast that Stewart Brand, one of the people I list as an inspiration, has now come to the view that nuclear power is sufficiently safe, and climate change sufficiently threatening, that he now supports nuclear power. I'll have to dig up the original quote for myself, but certainly an interesting view. I have been somewhat torn on nuclear power for some time now. I was impressed with the professionalism of the people working in nuclear power when I met them through work, and although my preference would clearly be for everyone to reduce their demand for energy to sustainable levels, I really don't see that happening any time soon. Therefore we will probably need nuclear power in the short term to help transition us to less intensive energy use. I actually see the growth in broadband and computers as a positive thing, if we start living our lives more virtually, then audiobooks replace dead tree books, downloads replace CDs, broadband replaces unwanted journeys. I don't think a world where we are all housebound is desirable, but getting rid on unwanted trips cannot be bad.

I hold a modest shareholding in a nuclear power generator, and have found it difficult to square this with my desire to hug trees, but I am coming round to it not just being a pragmatic move, but an important gesture too.

Nature seems increasingly out of whack these days, if cars were elephants, we would be petrified at the sheer number of these hungry beasts tearing up our environment, but they are not flesh and blood, but iron and oil, and we don't even notice them. My intuition is that a system will struggle, struggle, and fail catastrophically, like collapsing fisheries, we are all on that brink of environmental catastrophe.

writing losing definition - books that inspire me
I have decided to start work on another novel, with a working title of Losing Definition. The title refers to how your sight loses its sharpness as you age, and similarly issues and opinions also become less clear cut. I suppose that the temptation is to withdraw within yourself, or a fantasy world. I'll probably just assemble it as a collection of blog style entries, and then reorder them until I am happy. I'll probably take some stuff from here, but writing as fiction would loosen it up a bit, and make for more fun.

I worry that it should have more of a plot, but I'm really not that bothered with plot, characters, or dialogue, so it will just be what it is, rather than some mainstream genre. If seeking inspiration, or parallels, then I suppose my little shelf of wonderful books would be
Confessions of Zeno - by Italo Svevo
Tristram Shandy - by Laurence Sterne
Jonathan Wild - by Henry Fielding
Way of all Flesh - by Samuel Butler
Dark as the Grave Wherein my Friend is laid - by Malcolm Lowry
m - by John Cage
jPod/Microserf - by Douglas Coupland

also a dash of science fiction, that most liberating of mediums, recent reading of ten best science fiction novels, included,
the following films
the Saragossa Manuscripts
the Falls
Wim Wenders - road movies, especially the State of Things
Art films I saw at University generally

and finally a dash of Burroughs, Ballard and Sladek.

As none of these have hit the mainstream, I will write to suit myself, and aim for self publishing onto the web, rather than anything more lavish. However I have enough to live by, and would prefer to write what I want anyway.

Fonts and Clifford
I remain very confused about all the different versions of the Clifford font that you can get, but have decided to buy a couple of the individual styles for use as my default font. Until now I have used Palatino as my default typeface. Also checking out the various half remembered theory behind fonts, etc, for example how we now use font to mean typeface. It is curious how fonts seem to have gone from calligraphy, to hot metal, to digital printing, to lcd screens, without any big issues, when so many other information mediums have made such heavy weather of the issues of transition. And strange that I am coming back to a typeface based on calligraphy, for displaying on my iMac screen, or printing on an inkjet printer.

One of the words we should all know is skeuomorph

we surround ourselves with comforting skeuomorphs, are we afraid of the new.

in trains - a work in progress

#mist
trees standing out like polluted lungs in the mist

#dusk
harbour full of sand
a ghostly bus
perfect houses round an empty street
paired moons all racing each other
strangers checking timetables
shadow people explode across walls
lit windows, conjure jewellery in the velvetty dark
an amber necklace of distant street lamps
night takes colour from my world
and light creates unseen forms

#leaving the family behind for work
we pass quiet cities in the night

#migraine
riding on the black train
head rotten with pain
mouth full of headstones

Life Game™ Alert

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Click [Restart] to restart game, all saved settings will be lost, click [Resume] to resume game, no discretionary spending will be permitted until existing Life Game™ debts are cleared, and fresh Life Game™ funds have been accumulated. Many attractive features and items of functionality are hereby disabled, including, Life Game™ Impulse Purchase, Life Game™ Social Life, and Life Game™ Fun.

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most fun art supply ever

Quick diary style update - for yesterday

yesterday I had a day off, my wife was working, so I was looking after the girls in the morning, and my wife got back in the afternoon.

Usually looking after the girls goes better when you try and stick some sort of structure on it, balancing out the fun, and the not so fun.

Started off by getting them to do the vacuum cleaning, while I did some other cleaning up round the house. If I get them to vacuum clean the house every week, hopefully the fact that they don't do that good a job, will be balanced off by the fact that it is done reasonably often. Had a quick trip out to dump stuff in the recycling point by the railway station, and pick up a big sack of leaves for my chicken wire leaf mould maker.

Then took a juice/tea break, and got them looking at the FontShop website looking at different fonts, for ideas. Got them to write their names in their own special fonts. Megan did a rather angular font, which I could easily imagine as a professional font. Hannah wrote her name using animals in the shape of the letters. As ever a lot of fun, but frustration along the way, when letters were too big, so a whole name could not fit onto the one page.

That pretty much took us to lunchtime, though I had also bought some broken oil pastels from the local arts shop, for them to experiment with.

In the afternoon, my wife got back, and we settled down to watch Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, which I saw twenty years ago, and thought was very good. Pleased to see that it really was still very good, everyone enjoyed it, though truth be told my wife probably fell asleep during some of it. Big pile of family on the sofas, along with sleepy dog, laughing at some very silly stuff, and arguing over who all the stars were that had been pasted into the film, my wife being far better at recognising them than I was.

Then family tea, of splashy spaghetti bolognese.

Also watched a couple of episodes of Sledgehammer, I bought both series ages ago, and we watch a few episodes every now and a again, whenever the girls nagging gets too much! They do like Sledgehammer, from the classic openning theme, to the completely daft humour. Also watched some old Whose Line is it Anyway, which the girls did not quite understand, but seemed to get into eventually.

Also reading JPod, wrote a quick blog entry in the style of Douglas Coupland and usual playing about on the computer. Delighted to find Pilot Gel Marker Pens for sale on the internet, as they are simply the most fun art supply ever. I'll need to put in an order.

Also launch date for Leopard is now out, so I will be buying a new computer soon!!! Yeee Haaa!!!

Having bought JPod,

Yesterday I bought JPod by Douglas Coupland, not Copland as in the operating sytem (?), composer, and previous entries herein.

This was a bad idea because,...

• I paid cash, when I had some book tokens sitting in an envelope next to my LaCie hard-drive, and therefore could easily have used them.
• It was on three for two, and I only bought the single book, but these three for twos, usually mean that you end up with stuff you don't want anyway.
• I am trying to reject materialism, and so don't feel that I need to treat myself to an impulse purchase each Friday, as a 'reward'.

Of course yesterday was not Friday, it was Thursday, but it was deemed to be a Friday, as I am on annual leave today.

Having bought JPod, which clearly was a bad idea, I now cannot in clear conscience treat myself to another impulse purchase,

if I were to treat myself to an impulse purchase it might be

• Clifford Font by Akira Kobayashi - one of the ones with big caps and little caps, but there are so many, it is confusing me
• the Martial Arts Weekend album by the Extra Glenns, which feature John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats,
• a self designed tee shirt from one of those places which lets you design your own tee shirt
• Macintosh laptop

However buying JPod was a good idea, because I am enjoying reading it, I really enjoyed Microserfs, which it is an obvious successor to, Generation X was okay, but not as geeky as Microserfs. I think I must have thrown out my copy of Microserfs and of Generation X, because I cannot find them, but if I do buy new copies, then they might turn up. I read them when I lived in Aberdeen, and I have a clear memory of walking down a street to buy a chinese takeaway, thinking in the style of Douglas Coupland.

Similarly I remember Paul Auster's writing infecting my imagination.

I was thinking of writing an ongoing blog entry as a detailed parody of JPod, but clearly as my parents have not inadvertantly murdered anyone, and I am not actually a code monkey, it might lose some of the particulars.

I have been listening to a lot of Mountain Goat's music recently, and the particular syntax of those, and JPod, and being tired, rather loops round in your head, and you start feeling like a character in someone else's imagination.

Things that bother me about Douglas Coupland

• I bought copies of Microserfs and Generation X, and now I cannot find them
• he makes lots of references to products etc, which I don't ordinarily like, but it works really well in his books, without seeming tacky
• the lego mini figs on the cover, in isometric projection are drawn wrong, the arms should be further forward, and the heads should be further forward, probably with visible necks
• he always seems really miserable in his interviews, as if he really hates writing, or really hates interviews, but he must be really rich, and could live in shed in the middle of nowhere with a laptop and never need to work again, so why should he bother writing books if he does not want to, or doing interviews if he does not want to,
• he has written way too many books, if he had only written a couple, then we would all think that they were the best thing since sliced bread

Last point, cross refer with Carl Hiaisen, (not spelt like that) and pretty much everyone else who writes nowadays.

I rather like the asceticism

Doing a bit of tidying up today, (wet day)

• surprised by just how many items of each type of clothing I actually owned, once I sorted out all the polo shirts, or shorts into a single pile, it was incredible. And of course while there are some examples that I really like, mostly I'd forgotten I had them, and don't particularly care for them one way or the other.
• I suppose like everyone, I have a few clothes that I basically wear almost all the time, and a few that I also wear, and then there is the vast remainder
• lots of stuff too tatty to be smart, but too smart for the garden.
• got rid of some stuff, though probably not enough, it never is, really
• Also nice getting away from iGTD which has a long list of stuff to do, but rather sucks the fun out of anything.
• struck by the fact that I have a huge pile of surplus shoelaces and bootlaces, and never seem to buy them anymore, BECAUSE nowadays the laces last longer than the shoes. Something wrong there.
• cut up some old stuff for sticking in the composter, taking off the buttons first. In theory, if buttons were infinitely expensive, you could have a finite number of buttons to last a lifetime, and simply take them off your worn out clothes, and put them onto your new buttonless purchases.
• I generally have four shoes, two black, two brown, though in practice it is slightly more, as leather shoes gently fade into soggy footed uselessness

Took the dog out for a rather wet walk, he loved it as ever, sniffing and peeing everywhere, something that not many of us can get away with these days. Up on the hilltop, looking over the town to the distant bridges and slight hints of more distant hills through the mist.

Caught up with some emails, it is always quite nice to bottom out the email intray every week.

Looking over the FontShop website reading about Akira Kobayashi - though to be honest I had to google akira clifford to remind myself of his surname. His most famous creation is the clifford font, which is rather nice. I like Japanese woodwork tools, and they have an interesting approach to making things. Accordingly intriguing to read about how he approached font creation, he spent five years designing clifford. And yet it did not seem to be a pretentious noodling away design process, or endless craft for the sake of it. It is an exceptionally fine font. I rather like the asceticism of spending all that time on something so everyday that most people would never even notice it.

Trying to find a big ceramic bowl, which we must have chucked out years ago, so that I could put all the fruit into one really big bowl, rather than the current array of smaller bowls which means you inevitably forget some musty oranges someone else bought. Anyway. Annoyed that I could not find it, but more importantly I really want all the fruit in the same bowl. Same principle as putting all the shorts into one big pile, how do you know what you have unless you can see it all at the same time.

Been getting a bit annoyed with a few things, where it just seems that no matter how much I do, by and large nothing much happens, however things now vastly improved on various fronts as the work is shared out better and a few of things that have been sitting around unloved, seem to have started to sort themselves out. At root it is not really the amount of work that is annoying, it is feeling that you are doing it all, and no one else is, and the frustration of seeing the same stuff sitting and sitting.

The Old Machines ...

have no visible controls
are made of stone
just whisper now, when once they shouted

are making lost spirits flesh
are some one else's loose ends
once fixed our geography

plenty of good stuff ticking over

A disconcerting week,

currently slightly pre-occupied, as I lost my pass for the office, and it has failed to turn up. Probably not the end of the world, but having mildly obsessive compulsive tendencies, I really dislike mislaying things, dislike to a disproportionate and illogical extent. Basically I like things to be just so, so losing something is the complete - non just so. As far as I can figure out, I must have lost it on the way home by train. However it may turn up amongst the clutter.

Clearly on a roll, I then mislaid my earphones for my iPod, too early to tell yet, whether I simply left them on my desk at the office, and then buried them in paper.

I must have jiggered my back, because for the first half of the week I had a really stiff and sore back. Hence moving in robotic way, and only able to sleep in two positions, and in order to change position I had to wake up, sit up, and then sit down again. So on top of the sore back, add the perils of not actually getting much sleep.

Despite these misadventures, Friday finally happened along.

Things seem to be falling into place at work, a few pet projects are demonstrating encouraging progress, other folk seem to be picking up on them and running. As ever my role is one amongst many, but hopefully by keeping the process going, when it might otherwise have fallen, and bringing new people on board, the process is facilitated and kept going.

I think that I am really getting the benefit of all my efforts in getting out to meet people, and proactively build up networks of people interested in my area of work. It is time consuming, but this networking has delivered results that I could never have delivered on my own. To be honest I would happily do more networking, but the preparation and follow up is essential to make it worthwhile, and there is always a rising tide of stuff at the desk, emails etc, that won't go away.

I have mainly been listening to bootleg downloads of Mountain Goat concerts, which I would recommend. However part of the appeal of the Mountain Goats is that it is an extensive and inter-related oevre, so the more you get into it, the richer it seems. Accordingly, as I am pretty into the Mountain Goats, I really don't know what someone coming new to them would think.

Checking random blogs with references to the Mountain Goats, this almost obsessive interest is certainly not unique. I read a posting where the poster had become obsessed with the Mountain Goats, but had decided to stop short of checking John Darnielle's Flickr photostream, as it was getting to seem unhealthy. Sentiments I can certainly emphasise with. It is so easy to immerse yourself in another person's life. I suspect that we will get a rash of Fatal Attraction style thrillers in a year or two on the theme, or a Douglas Copland novel. One of those issues that is tempting to prod, but difficult to know what to make of it.

Currently feeling a little direction less, nothing much to do in the garden, not terribly motivated to take on any other projects, keen not to just spend money cos I'm bored. I am increasingly getting picky and avoiding making major investments of time and energy in stuff, unless it excites me. No doubt something will happen along, in any event I am hardly idle at the moment, so the lack of some windmill to tilt at, is no great loss. Plenty of good stuff ticking over.

Poets Day

I have been out a fair bit in the past week, going out to a variety of meetings in different places, so it has been a bit erratic when I have had a chance to get something decent to eat. Probably as a side effect of that, I seem to have been getting a lot of headaches, which becomes a little self perpetuating. Once your head is a bit fuzzy, your judgement is a bit fuzzy, and you do tend to lose a bit of perspective.

Slightly weird on Friday, when I could not focus my eyes for about half an hour. Certainly disconcerting at the time. This growing older has little to recommend it.


All told it has been good to get out and see some new people. I think in our nature of work it is incumbent on people to be accessible and get out, though whatever you do, is only the merest scratch of the surface. Some very impressive thinking and practice going on, which I would like to draw on.

Got a chance to visit a new Apple Store - wow/hmmm - wow in the sense that it was very impressive, hmmmm - in the sense that it was very clearly a premium sort of place, no cheap end of lines to be had, big tables with lots of the same model, which you could just play with for a while. Quite a simple idea, but useful, as it allowed me to try out the new aluminium keyboard, which seems okay, but I'd like the keys to have a more positive action, and to look over the laptops, I think that the small white laptops just look more laptop sized, so I would probably just go for one of those. Some software, but not a vast selection. A lot of people around, but it was that sort of place, it needed to have folk milling around, or it would just be a big empty barn. The staff seemed friendly and helpful, which is good, as otherwise it might be a bit daunting.

Not too sure what I did yesterday, nothing too much, but after a long week, I am not going to OD on doing nothing much.

• a bit of reading the papers, I do like the Times on a Saturday - not sure I will ever read it cover to cover, but a good read, with some very good regular columns. One of my daughters is even starting to get into reading it. She also came home from school shocked, telling us about how dreadful the Nazis were to the Jews and did we know about it! Pointed out to her that we did actually know about this, and Stalin and Mao were equally appalling.

• Having bought four Mountain Goats albums and two EPs, I now have enough of their music to just play it on shuffle whenever I am out iPod-ding. But always good to add to it, though less good to be buying it at the rate of an album every week or more. Accordingly delighted to come across various Mountain Goats music available for free download.

I should of course point out that this is all via 'official sources' namely
http://www.themountaingoats.net/wiki/doku.php?id=mp3s:home

I am particularly impressed with the live music recordings, I guess that they will be pretty variable with some being absolutely dreadful in terms of sound quality, but the ones I have listened to so far, are pretty okay for sound quality, and the good natured joshing with the audience more than makes up for that. In fact quite a few of the songs sound lighter and brighter live, with the recorded versions being a little austere. Although the subject matter can be quite dark, there is always a sense of humour at play. These are songs of self-dramatising characters, and always border on the absurd.

So I have downloaded various rarities to my ipod, and a few concerts, which I will add to. It is a little tricksy, getting the stuff into iTunes, but double clicking on the downloaded MP3 seems to work best.

The forum on the official Mountain Goats site also looks to feature less spelling mistakes than most, and more thoughtful/amusing comment.

• Also yesterday, did a trip to get some last brambles. However on checking up, we have now passed Michaelmas, 29 September, so according to tradition, the devil has either spat on, or urinated on the brambles, and they should not be picked.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackberries

Although some were a bit mouldy looking, and there were less with that wonderful sheen of a really good berry, it was a good picking, and the dixie was filled reasonably quickly. Took them home, crushed them up, decanted the juice into a pyrex to sit, and we can add it as a jus to ice cream. I firmly believe that we need to be emulating the diet of a hunter-gatherer, so the more berries the better.

• Also steadily putting more stuff onto iGTD which is one of these task management tools. Not sure that I have quite got the hang of it yet, but starting to get there. Once set up with recurring tasks, it should imply chug away reminding me of what I need to do.

I am slightly in two minds about work, I suspect that we should be more ambitious in what we are attempting, but I am not sure that it is within my means to do this. As ever long walks with the dog are always beneficial in figuring out where you want to go with things.

Finally - poets day on Friday - piss off early tomorrow's saturday. Came up with an opening line for a poem -

its good to be a dog

now to write the rest of it

What makes humans different from animals

I recently have got a copy of Against the Grain by Richard Manning, which covers some of the same questions that I studied at university.

What is it that makes humans so different from other animals?

Obviously we enjoy uniquely adaptable bodies, with skillful hands, a highly mobile head, and the ability to manipulate and focus effectively on objects close to us. Within that body, we are capable of making use of the benefits that derive from a larger brain. However, I think that the ability to pass information across your own generation, and down through other generations is vital. It meant that individuals were no longer limited by their own experience, they could draw upon the collected wisdom of their species. So although we consider ourselves as individuals, our real role, as with ants, is merely as a small component of our generation, collating and passing on our understanding.

Passing on your understanding is much quicker than trying to evolve your way out of a problem. It gives us an edge in unpredictable times. And in a competitive situation, an edge need not be large to be significant, when it comes down to it, the one with edge wins.

It would be interesting to study the proverbs, sayings, beliefs, religions, customs, of different peoples, considering them as cultural adaptations to the environment that they faced. What do these things tell us about peoples that are no longer there, how did they cope with their environment.

What is our cultural toolkit now, and what does it begin to tell us about ourselves?