user testing

I really wish that user testing of computer software or operating systems entirely consisted of giving normal people a short list of everyday tasks to complete, and then timing them to see just how long they took to complete them. 

Give them just what comes in the box, and then time the confused granny as she reads through the European signal compliance guide but throws out the guide to getting started, the clock ticks by as she tries to figure out whether that plastic nubbin is actually a button or not, fat fingers attempt keying in the log in details, was that just a user name, or the whole email address, is it googlemail or gmail, keying a password, repeatedly as the cursor jumps back to obliterate the user name, onward ticks the clock as wifi is negotiated, the granny loops round and round repeatedly failing to configure her email account, the test process switches over to a calendar as the granny tries and fails to update the password, she puts the mobile phone into her handbag and decides to take it back to the shop and ask one of the nice young men there how to do it….

Bento by FileMaker

I was browsing apps on the Mac AppStore and was surprised to find that the database application Bento was not there. On checking, it was withdrawn from sale in September 2013, with support only being promised until July 2014. 

For those unfamiliar with Bento, it was launched in 2008, seems like yesterday, but then I am old and dottled and pretty much everything seems like yesterday. It was presented as a database for normal people, and came out with much hurrah. Initial impressions were favourable, it hooked into your contacts etc, with ease, and was pleasant to look at. However a series of paid upgrades that seemed to offer little additional functionality, and the constraints of using a database as much of anything beyond just a computerised set of file cards, gradually wore away the initial goodwill. Its passing will be lamented by a few who have invested a lot of time and effort into their personal databases, but for most people it won’t be much missed. 

For long time Mac users there has never been a great demand for, or great number of database applications. Way back when, there was HyperCard, which was not really a database, but did stuff, then there were the works packages, AppleWorks and later ClarisWorks (for both 1984-2004) which included a database application. Oddly for modern eyes they also included a terminal programme for communicating via the new fangled inter web! With the demise of Clarisworks, and the shift to the iWorks package, there was no longer a go to database for ordinary Mac users. 

Elsewhere there is much coverage of the decline and fall of the relational database, http://www.itworld.com/storage/86308/the-decline-and-fall-relational-database

To be honest, I often find myself trying to explain to normal people what a database is. They generally look deadly bored, while I attempt to explain why Excel is actually inferior to a database for certain tasks. But for most people, they understand what Excel is, and can get it to do what they want, anything else is either a bespoke application or website and does what it does. So IMDB, the App Store, iTunes, are not a database, they are just part of the landscape. Similarly you would not expect to cobble together something like iTunes yourself, you would look for something that provided the functionality for you.

So good bye then to Bento the personal database, gone the same way as Works packages, and terminal programmes for accessing the inter web. 

 

 

 

in the classical fashion

I have decided to make the switch to classical music. I am fond on grand gestures, and hence from now on I will just listen to classical music. 

I have always had a wide-ranging taste in music, from Beethoven to the Beatles, from Edith Piaf to Neutral Milk Hotel. And while there is some music that I perpetually return to, overall I rather like to progress through the world of music, exploring and trying out new things. 

While you can mix in some different types of music, I cannot really manage my iPod on shuffle, with classical tracks appearing. They are at once too dense and too sparse to play in amongst pop, rock and jazz. So the solution is to just switch wholesale to classical. The benefits of this are that it is easy to build up a vast amount of classical music quite cheaply, you can buy virtually the entire works of some composers quite cheaply and there are plenty of 100 best style compilations, many remarkably inexpensive. My natural inclination is towards the music of the twentieth century, partly because I feel that I ought to take an interest in it, and partly because much of it is actually quite challenging to listen to. On a constant diet of classical music it is nice to have a mix of the more melodic and the more dissonant. 

I have sought to add in to my collections the composers that people I respect really rate, so Schoenberg and Mahler are in there, while I have also discovered a fondness for Vaughan-Williams. By mixing them up, the dramatic sounds more dramatic, the discordant more discordant. I have yet to find a fondness for Stockhausen, but I suppose anything is possible. 

There are a few issues with classical music, it does not entirely lend itself to playing on an iPod, because for many people the most important item of the metadata is who composed it, but classical MP3s seem to have avoided any consistency whatsoever on where the composer data is held. Another challenge with classical music is the the volume can shift dramatically, which is fine in a quiet concert hall, but where you are listening on headphones it can vary between inaudible and deafening. While headphones on a busy train mean that you miss little of the subtlety of a lo fi track, you do miss out on the depth of many classical tracks. 

Perhaps my headlong dive into classical music will prove shortlived, but for the moment, I press on in the classical fashion.

A short story - The sense of trees in the mist

If I could live off of all the white wine and canapes, I would never have to buy food again. Similarly, as a well loved national treasure, if fame and adulation paid the rent, then I would be a rich man indeed. As it is there are always the commissions for articles, or conference appearances, and they pay well enough, but I have never produced a work that is a set text in a million schools, so I bumble on, almost a household name, but too poor to run a car.

And so I found myself, on the train, sitting opposite this adoring student, young enough to be my daughter. My year long stint as a University composer in residence had come to an end. It paid okay, and it raised eyebrows and attracted welcome column inches when I had stayed at student digs to save a bit more of my money. In amongst the students I felt like Methusalah, but we all need to challenge ourselves. 

She wore a woollen hat that looked vaguely peruvian, on someone else it might have looked affected, but to be fair she carried it off well. Her coat was a rough felted material and her eyes glittered with the joy of youth, when there are so many wonderful things still to be found and the idea of a familiar routine seems remarkably far distant. She had a small black rectangle, probably a phone that buzzed and vibrated, but she ignored it lapping up the fact that she was sitting opposite a national treasure. 

I was still trying to make some progress on my latest composition, “A sense of trees in the still of the mist”. 

The University had made quite a fuss over my posting, so at least in that University town I was very nearly a household name. The student opposite was certainly awestruck and gushy. She asked me about what I was doing, as I scribbled my musical notes on the blank manuscript paper with a Staedtler mars lumograph HB. I have a felt wrap of such pencils, all sharpened to a ridiculously long point with my Mitsubishi KH-20 desk sharpener. The tip of the pencil scrapes along the paper with a satisfying friction. Unfortunately the notes in my head falter and repeat themselves, but with far less conviction.

I talked her through how I like to compose, creating fragments on individual sheets, then collating the sheets to form an initial structure, then going back and amending the individual fragments that I had started with. A huge amount of hard work goes into writing something that sounds effortless. 

She asked about the title of the work, and I explained that it was about knowing that something was there when you could not really see it, about how you can be close to something really solid and important but only just be aware of it. Truth be told the title was a bit unwieldy so I was still not firmly wedded to it yet. 

As a National Treasure I am forever meeting people, so I have a store of amusing stories and observations that I can charmingly deploy. But I was getting tired and I don't like travel and travel does not like me. So silently I wished that I could tell her that being a National Treasure is a rotten plinth to be placed on, and anyone sensible would be far happier being an accountant with a pension and children, but instead I told her all my ideas to improve the world,
Mens black shoes with a dark purple metallic sheen
Restaurants where the staff divide up the bill for all the different members of a party
And a myriad of other ideas, 

She wrote them all down diligently in one of her spiral ring university jotters, though if there was any way to make a penny out of any of these ideas then it would take a smarter, or at least more practical man than me. 

She left a couple of stations before me, so I stood up to shake her hand, and she leant forward enthusiastically to give me a hug and a gentle kiss on the cheek. I watched her little knitted bobble hat vanish into distance, and thought that if I had had a daughter, then I would have been very happy with one just like her. 

Two stops later, I gathered up my ancient barbour jacket and various canvas bags and rucksacks, full of my assorted paraphernalia, my moleskin trousers, woollen jumpers, brogues and undergarments. My sister was at the station to greet me, her car was blue last time, but this time it was an unpleasant green colour. I don’t really know much about cars, it looked pretty much like all the others, towards the estate size, though they don’t seem to look quite that boxy nowadays. 

My sister was always the practical one, the sensible oldest child, always keeping a watching eye on me. For all her good sense, she had a dismal choice in men. Her husband was a sullen lump with no sense of humour and a permanent scowl. He always seemed to be heading out to the pub whenever I arrived, and seldom had much to say. I suspect that he resented having anyone else in the house, which although understandable enough is rather petulant in a grown up. From time to time she had black eyes and a tooth had vanished one Christmas, but she never said anything, for good or ill about him. Perhaps he was one of her fixer up projects. She was forever taking on old properties and doing them up, or renovating a beat up arm chair, unlike her choice in men, her taste in material things seemed to be immaculate. She could spot the potential in anything and had the rare knack of turning a profit while remaining true to the spirit of a thing. She could take something covered in pigeon poo and rust, and turn it into something you would quite happily pay a fortune for. I hoped that her husband was out. There was a good chance, he roamed the country doing jobs, I was never sure what, reappearing unexpectedly. 

She drove me up the country roads, grinding the gear stick like a farmer with a Landrover, a green tunnel of hedge piping us through tumbling fields and rambling copses. The road dipped down, as if readying itself for what it knew was to come, and the car reared up, tackling the steep incline to her cottage. For an instant we held our breaths as the car ascended, and then resumed chatting in hushed tones. She was happier than I remembered her being of late. I think that she had hoped that I would make a bit more of myself, although there was clearly considerable kudos to be had being related to a national hero, she knew me well enough to know that it was a precarious existence. 

We dined well, her husband was away, she did not say any more. She untied her hair, flinging back her head laughing at some old stories that we had told each other a hundred times. She seemed more carefree than I remembered of late. It suited her, she deserved to be happy. I nagged her at the lack of foraged foods from her cooking. Living out in the country she could have dined well on what could be gathered from hedgerows and fields. The autumn was upon us and the brambles were bursting on the vine. 

I crawled off to bed with a pleasantly warm feeling and curled up in an enormous feathery duvet that seemed to stretch like an ocean around me. Together, the duvet and me, curled up like two cats in a basket and I dreamt of dark trees shrouded in a still mist. 

The morning is always better in the country, the light is better the air is crisper. I made a pot of coffee and shrugged on my heavy moleskin trousers and a checked shirt. I left the manuscript paper on the kitchen table with a pencil and headed out. I had looked for a trug for gathering mushrooms in but had to settle for an old biscuit tin. I left the lid behind and headed out with it. My feet followed the path that felt most familiar, like the sheep cut a track across the hills, our feet follow each other, even across the different times. The path was metalled with worn smooth pebbles, with low clumps of pineappleweed. They are supposed to give off a delicate fruited scent, and thrive on being trodden on. They seemed to me to be an appropriate emblem for a small country, pervasive and unnoticed. The lowering hedgerows separated out and a small field lay before me. 

A patch of ground looked pretty much like any other, but a rim of redshank flowers, tiny pink towers caught my eye. The redshank appears on broken soil and vanishes the next year. 

There was a cluster of wavering little peaks, difficult to tell but they looked like the scarlet caterpillar fungus, no use to me, a poisonous fungus that can kill. Like the north American hebeloma syriense it would grow where corpses are. Its mycelium stretching like an underground empire gathering up its resources, only being glimpsed as the mushroom raises itself from the ground.

I stood silently, and my eye traced an outline, roughly the height of a man, and slightly wider than a man, some disturbed soil around the periphery as if a turf had been cut and reinstated, surrounding somewhere that a poisonous fungus had chosen to grow. 

The dew on the ground was still heavy, and there were bound to be better mushrooms to be found, sure enough before long I found some chanterelles at the edge of the field, just past a pile of soil, that was slowly being overgrown by grass and weeds. The tump of soil was about the volume that a man would be, a man like my sister’s husband. 

I gathered up the chanterelles in the biscuit tin and headed back up the path to her cottage. As I went I tried to remember the latin names for the trees, shrubs and flowers I saw. For some reason today felt like a good day, of course I was not going to say anything to my sister, but my little wander and forage had done wonders, I rushed back to pick up one of the pencils with the long tapered point to jot down the musical notes, one after another, for my latest piece of music. Music can be so eloquent, while holding it true meaning close. For once the notes seemed to be flowing like they had never flowed before, and I could tell that this would be something very good indeed.  

I felt sure that my sister would not mind using the chanterelles in our meal or if we opened an extra bottle of wine that night with dinner.   

secure email options

Following on from recent leaks and media coverage, there has been a lot of hipster geek interest in encrypted emails and services offering more privacy than Google. Initially Lavabit looked like the answer, Edward Snowden used it, and if anyone knows about secure email it is likely to be him. Well Lavabit closed down, and now no one trusts any of the US or Canadian email providers. 

Looking around there seem to be numerous alternatives, the following seem to have a good few favourable mentions, 

Neomailbox 

http://www.neomailbox.net

$49.95 per annum, based in Switzerland. Looks to offer what you would expect it to, as well as an anonymous surfing service that will mask you IP address for the same amount again.

Countermail 

https://countermail.com

$59 per annum, based in Sweden, has the coolest gizmo of the lot, you can have a USB stick for when you need to access your account. This does look hardcore, for people who are really serious about their encryption. 

Mykolab

https://mykolab.com

$64.92, or thereabouts, the pricing is complex. Based in Switzerland, Mykolab recently offered a lite version to attract those looking for a Lavabit alternative. The main focus seems to be calendar and contacts management for businesses, with the encryption as part of the overall package. Interestingly one of their FAQs, is 

“I heard Swiss internet is routed via the UK. Isn't that worse than the US?”

Swissmail

https://secure.swissmail.org/generalmail/swissmail/info/en/email_service.asp

$35 per annum, unsurprisingly based in Switzerland. The service seems pretty basic, with a website that looks like something from the dawn of the internet. It does not offer anything special for encryption, but is easy enough to get set up. 

Most of these will offer a free trial, to see whether they work for you before you shell out any actual money. 

As far as I can recall, the most expensive Lavabit account was $16 per annum, so none of these would have been plausible contenders while Lavabit was about. 

Also worth keeping an eye on is the Wuala (pronounced like the french voila) by the French firm LaCie, which offers encrypted cloud storage. There is not much point in encrypting all your email if you are just backing up all your data to some US based servers, like Evernote, Dropbox, Apple iCloud, etc. There does seem to be a real opportunity here for canny European firms, or anywhere else that can convincingly claim to protect your privacy. 

geeks experience a disturbance in the force

In geek terms there would appear to be a disturbance in the force.

In the world of RSS feeds, 

I moved from GoogleReader over to the Older Reader, obviously I was not alone, apparently their subscribers went up from around 10,000 in March 2013, to nearly 400,000 in July 2013. Probably a good problem to have if you are charging, but a bit of a nightmare for a free service. Their blog is wonderful reading,

http://blog.theoldreader.com

I would hesitate to guess what proportion of Google Reader subscribers joined The Older Reader, at a complete guess a quarter to one third, which would put the total number of people using RSS at just over a million worldwide. Off the top of my head that is surprisingly low, being in a house where two out of four use RSS. Perhaps RSS is a generational thing, with not much take up amongst the under thirties and the over sixties. 

Anyway, The Older Reader has increasingly been subject to outages, which their site endearingly responds to by having random photos of kittens. There were major outages when they moved material over to a new server rack and solid state drives started failing. Then they announced that they were shutting down altogether to all but original customers and a few limited exceptions. This week it has been announced that they have got support by a bigger player, and all their data has crossed the Atlantic from Europe to somewhere in America. Not sure where in Europe or where in America, it does seem a little cryptic. 

Of course there are alternatives to The Older Reader, inoreader gets a mention, and was  recently added to the possible subscriptions within the iOS app Feeddler. Not sure how any service would cope with an additional 100,000 subscribers within a month though. I am still running NetNewsWire but as it does not offer syncing between my laptop and iPad, it is not getting much use. 

Secure emails services diminish 

The other disturbance in the geek force has been that lavabit the super secure email service, as used by Edward Snowden, has just closed down altogether, presumably following interest from the NSA that lavabit are not allowed to talk about. It might re-open, but the clear implication seems to be that if you do not want the US government to be able to read your emails then do not use an American company for your emails. The similar privacy respecting email service Silent Circle also closed down in advance of a presumed visit by the NSA. 

Various issues arise, 

Should anyone worry about the US government reading their emails ?  

Well as Cardinal Richelieu said 

“If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.”

And seeing as he was an adept Machiavellian figure he ought to know.

On the face of it, if there are appropriate checks and balances, and responsible American officers in law enforcement, after due appropriate judicial process, can eventually obtain access to my emails, then it is not a worry. On the other hand, if just anyone who wanders into any office of the American government, can just browse through anything that anyone anywhere has written, print copies and leave them on a bus for fraudsters and crackheads to read, then it is of concern. Particularly if it is possible to just go on a fishing expedition, doing searches for anyone who has ever mentioned chernobyl, or used pgp. 

What does this mean for the future?

I cannot imagine that businesses or governments outside of America are terribly comfortable with the idea of Americans browsing through all their emails. As above, the best option seems to be to wholly avoid using American companies. There is not a huge choice, but a quick web search suggests the following Swiss providers, 

Mykolab https://mykolab.com

Swissmail http://www.swissmail.org/Swissmail/home/home.asp

Both are commercial services, the Mykolab offers more eyecandy and more functions, but is pricey, Swissmail looks like a throwback to the eighties when we used to code pages by hand, and does not offer too much, but is a lot cheaper.

In the end, you pays your money, and makes your choice, free services with big brother looking over your shoulder or pay for some privacy. 

Rather than worrying about how private your email provider is, you could use something like gpgmail (for mac) so that mail is encrypted when it leaves your laptop, and decrypted by the recipient. There is a certain amount of faff involved, with public and private keys, and you both have to be using pgp so it is not for the casual user, but in fairness, if most of your emails are to a handfull of people, it is fairly easy to set up and once set up, can be fairly seamless. Just how secure it is depends on how paranoid you are. If you want to commit details to memory and enter them every time you read an email then it is so secure that someone could steal your laptop and still not read your emails. In espionage terms, where the effort involved in accessing information is too big, you resort to nicking laptops, installing keylogging software, tricking targets and the like. The sort of measure that you would use for serious targets, but not for a fishing expedition. 

dysfunctional patterns

For some reason we now seem to be rather uncomfortable with patterns. I am reading a book on the Arts and Crafts movement, and it is full of splendid concoctions by William Morris and Charles Voysey. Other art movements seems similarly endowed with a real sense of style and swagger. 

Although the culture of today probably has an air of austerity about it, a slightly joyless feeling that we should all be guilty about our crimes against the environment or about the financial excesses that we are currently paying off, there is much to be grateful for. I am perhaps in a lucky position, luckier than many, but it seems to me, that an awful lot of things that I might have longed for a few years ago have now come to pass. In sports, Britain hosted a much admired Olympics, British athletes compete at Wimbledon and in the Tour de France with real panache. The economy is at least on an even keel, a great many businesses are operating well. Politically Britain is coping well with diverse views, there are no riots in the streets, basically the state is operating reasonably well, the celtic fringes are adopting a slightly more socialist tinge, but rather than creating tensions, things are managed with a good humour and tolerance. 

But perhaps more than ever, we don’t really seem to have a firm national vision of where we have come from or where we are going. Arts and Crafts was mostly about the past, except about when it was about the utopian future, Bauhaus was about the future, as was modernism. Some movements are about an imagined elsewhere, for example the Victorian Japonisme, or the modern minimalist wabi sabi aesthetic. 

But the prevailing taste seems to have no strong vision to it at all. Shopping for clothes, the retailers are differentiated, but no so much so as to be radically different. The surf bum stock from Fat Face is not much different from the outdoors look or the Gap casual, or even terribly far from much of the formal (Charles Tyrwhitt) or country wear. None of it would look terribly out of place in John Lewis, a place which offers a pleasantly bland middle class taste that is unlikely to offend. 

An inoffensive functionalism seems to have taken over from taste, we are happy enough to pull wheeled suitcases, wearing clothes from Gap that could be expensive, or could be cheap, you cannot really tell. 

I don’t think that taste and fashion should change to celebrate luxury or go all punk. But it should regain some strength of feeling. I like things that show that a degree of effort has gone into something. Things that have a degree of authenticity. Things like living in a converted industrial workshop, while retaining the old fittings, the Drew Pritchard / Salvage Hunters aesthetic of found objects, the hipster delight in the odd and distinctive, fonts that are an optical illusion, the timorous beasties patterns that look all very tasteful until you realise that they are scenes of urban decay. 

Perhaps it would be no bad thing if people were to save up for clothes or furniture, designed just for them, rather than buying more and more bland disposable items. 

We should perhaps try to care more about a few possessions, rather than care less for very many, and not be so afraid to stand out from the crowd.

RSS Readers post Google Reader

Well that was easy. After some vexation about what to do after GoogleReader was decommissioned, and about half an hour to fix myself and another half hour to fix things for my wife, blogs continue to be read much as before. 

I used Google Takeout to obtain a copy of all my feeds, and I am now using four RSS readers. 

Perhaps best to start by saying that I am running a Mac and an iPad, so this is probably of no interest to non-Apple-users. 

Firstly I am running the Beta version of NetNewsWire, which I downloaded from their site. It loaded easily enough and just imported all my old feeds. As far as I can tell it either retains the flags for what is read etc on my laptop, or on a NetNewsWire server somewhere. The Beta is free, but I might just stump up and pre-pay for the full commercial version.

Secondly I am running OldReader within my browser for when I want to browse my blog feeds on my laptop. The account is free, and took minutes to set up. 

Thirdly I am using Feeddler Pro on my iPad and this is synced to OldReader.  So to keep in sync, I just use Feedler Pro and OldReader in my browser. 

Finally, I am also accessing my blog feed via FlipBoard on my iPad, which looks lovely, but does tend to crash pretty often, so only really doing this because it was so easy to set up. 

This combination, particularly Old Reader and Feeddler Pro, seems to offer all the features that I want, I am not heavily into sharing or social media, so others might feel that this set up is too limited. Instead of using favourites I now tend to send any blog posts that I particularly like to Evernote, which should offer a degree of robustness whatever happens in future. 

I will just run with these four and see how things pan out, I am not entirely convinced that all the current players in RSS readers will still be about in a few years, so keeping a surplus option or two ticking over is probably sensible.

Good to see that blog postings continue to be posted at pretty much the same volume they were before. Hopefully most everyone else found the transition relatively painless and are still managing to read all the blogs they want to, in a hassle free manner. Blogging is a wonderful thing, and deserves to prosper.

so farewell then google reader

We are steadily counting down the days until google reader is retired by Google. I am not a technical whizz, so my thoughts on what will happen once google reader is retired are worth no more than anyone else’s and are indeed based on the sort of cursory web-search that anyone can do. 

I suppose we should all be intensely grateful that Google were willing to support google reader for so long, it provided a basis for a myriad of RSS readers, allowing countless developers to earn some money, while Google did the heavy lifting running all the servers, and only to find any ads they did try and insert stripped away by the RSS readers. 

At time of writing there is talk of a few possible alternatives to google reader, but as practically all the RSS readers are simply a front end that goes above google reader, and details of any alternatives still seem sketchy, the demise of google reader might even signal the demise of quick easy blog reading. Personally I subscribe to a couple of dozen blogs, some fairly mainstream, some entirely esoteric, and they all have their own little place in my affections. I have edged away from regularly reading magazines or indeed quality newspapers, knowing that much of my casual awareness of what is happening in the world is now far more effectively provided by blogs. 

This does demonstrate one of the fundamental principles of the internet or business, better to buy a poor product that is obviously under development, than a better product that is not being updated. As soon as something starts to sit on the shelf, taking in money, but unchanging, it is a warning sign to the consumer. Don’t put too many eggs in this particular basket, it might not be there before too long. The writing was on the wall for google reader a long time ago.

on upgrading laptop memory

Just a few notes on my recent experience of upgrading the RAM memory on my mac laptop. 

My laptop is getting towards three years old now, and it has started to freeze from time to time. I am not the ideal laptop user, I tend to run with the hard drive almost completely full and tend to run far too many open programmes at the same time. However on checking with the Crucial website, it was apparent that I could upgrade the RAM memory in my laptop for around fifty pounds. My Applecare Warranty was near to expiry anyway so I reckoned that I did not have a huge amount to lose, so I gave it a go. 

By way of full disclosure, I completed an SHNC in Computing many years ago, so I have experience of opening up desktop computers and rearranging components. I have also installed memory in a few of my other computers before, so I am not a novice. 

Should I upgrade the RAM memory ?

Only if you are confident, your machine is sluggish or old and it is not the end of the world if you break it.

What is the RAM memory ?

RAM is the working memory that your computer uses to run open applications, rather than to store your old documents. My first laptop in the eighties had four megabytes of RAM and eighty megabytes of hard drive. My current laptop had four gigabytes of RAM and two hundred and fifty gigabytes of hard drive. 

How do I get more RAM memory ?

Other suppliers are available, but I would recommend Crucial, they provide an app that you can download and run to provide a quote for suitable compatible memory. You may need to go into System Preferences to ensure you can run the app after download if you have set your Systems Preferences to restrict the apps that you can download and run. Go to the Apple Menu, Systems Preferences, Security and Privacy, General tab, and amend to allow you to download apps from anywhere. You should then be able to open up the app and run it. If you like the price, just order online from there. The upside of Crucial is that they are cheap, reliable and well regarded. The downside, they do not install. If you went to Apple for a RAM memory upgrade it would be a lot more expensive. I am not aware of any problems with Crucial memory.

When to do it ?

There are risks, so best to only upgrade memory when you need to, your machine is sluggish, or when you have little to lose. If you are out of warranty then it is worthwhile to extend the useful life of your machine. Having said that, RAM memory is not the ‘be all and end all’ of performance that it used to be, for many users it is pretty irrelevant.

Can I do it ?

If you have some training in IT hardware then you should be okay, there are instructions on line, so if you are willing to be careful, then it is straightforward. It is fiddly and you do need to be methodical, so if this is not you, then give it a miss.

What else could I do ?

Nowadays I would not bother defragmenting my hard drive, but if performance is getting poor, then remove unwanted applications, reduce the amount of stuff on your hard drive, reduce the stuff on your desktop, remove any unwanted applications that run at login, just generally give your machine a springclean. Remember that there are plenty of ways to store material in the cloud and reduce the work that your computer is doing.

What could possibly go wrong ?

You could easily break your computer and invalidate your warranty. Apple might turn a blind eye to successfully installed non-Apple memory, but if you break the slot for the chips then you have a very expensive paperweight.

What could possibly go right ?

You could end up with a machine that runs quicker, and stick a good few extra years of life onto your computer. Having said that, more RAM does not make the screen any bigger or expand your hard drive.

So talk me through it -

1 getting fed up with my laptop freezing

2 went onto Crucial website, downloaded their app, amended Systems Preferences to run it 

3 checked the expiry date for my Applecare

4 ordered online additional RAM from Crucial, along with an anti static wrist strap

5 reset Systems Preferences to only download and run Apps from the App Store and identified developers.

6 waited patiently for the delivery

7 chose a quiet afternoon

8 cleared the table

9 spread out a towel on the table, 

10 printed off the instructions on the Apple website 

11 switched off the laptop and let it cool for ten minutes

11 touched the kitchen taps to earth myself

12 put on wrist strap and taped it to the computer 

13 the laptop was face down on the towel, unscrewed the screws on the back, they are mostly minute, those around the battery were longer. I have freckles that are larger than the small screws. They are absolutely tiny! They seem to be screwed in at a slight angle, so it is tricky returning the back of your laptop to the smooth feel of well aligned screw heads that it had before. 

14 unclipped the RAM memory, eek, the two chips are on top of each other!

15 removed both chips and put them onto the open box with the new chips

16 pushed the first chip into the bottom slot, making sure to line up the side notches and notch in the gold connector at the front

17 pushed in the second chip above it, lining it up too

18 fired up laptop 

19 checked for installed memory under the Apple About this Mac options, showing only four Gigabytes, should be eight, More Info told me that only one four Gig chip was installed, so shut down,

20 left to cool for ten minutes

21 went through the whole process again, giving the chips an even firmer shove in

22 booted up, and all now running

23 breathed considerable sigh of relief. 

Obviously whenever the back is off your computer do not eat, smoke, cough, drink, etc. Do not touch anything you don’t need to. Shoving the RAM in does require a fair bit of force. I preferred when there were two slots beside each other, that way you could take out one chip, and put in the replacement to the same depth as the remaining one. The slots on top of each other are a lot more fiddly and demanding. 

Overall, I would do this again, but I am not rushing to do it, and I would have reservations about doing it for someone else, just in case I broke their machine. 

Rambling, scrivener, stuff and pensions

After a few days of good weather, the weekend has arrived, along with the rain. Accordingly pottering indoors. At work doing lawyer’s hours trying to finish off a major project before taking any decent leave.

I recently bought Scrivener, basically it is a word processor, but it also has a lot of the document management functionality of products like DevonThink or even Voodoopad. I am fond of these meta word processors that allow you to manipulate and organise text. 

The particular angle for Scrivener is that it is designed for writers, mainly fiction writers, but it also has plenty to offer other writers, though they might find other products that are more specifically tailored to their needs. I downloaded the trial, and although the learning curve is pretty steep, it was immediately apparent that if I could master the App then it had a lot a contribute. Although there is a thirty day working trial, I just bought it, and started importing all my various writings into it. 

If you are serious about writing, then Scrivener is as serious as you are, and has plenty to offer. Currently I have got a file for the evolving set of short stories that is Losing Definition, one for my old novel The Garbageman, and importing all my blog postings into another file. There is still a novel lurking in a bundle of reporter’s notebooks that I will have to type out. Not sure whether it is any good, but probably worth typing out just to see what I was writing twenty years ago. 

Now for some other random jottings, intriguing to see the growing coverage of hoarders being rescued from homes choked with stuff that is usually pretty much worthless. I wonder what it actually says about us, the impulse to compulsive hoarding and clutter is common to us all, are we adrift in a sea of information and strangeness and is keeping familiar items close by a means to try and keep the strangeness at bay? 

At the other extreme, for many people material possessions are now being stripped of any sentiment and meaning at all. We do not bother with the dusty shoebox full of photos, the music and dvds are all digital nowadays. The younger generation seem to travel pretty light, they are attached to their technology, but no one would keep an obsolete phone out of sentimental value. There are a few collectors of antique computers and the like, check out the System Folder Blog

http://systemfolder.wordpress.com/2013/05/05/classic-ailments/

I am even considering putting in a bid for an old Braun Calculator. 

But this is just a generalised nostalgia for old technology and design, as with my fondness for old Letterpress items and the like. They have no personal history for me, I just like the look of them. 

I am not sure that people cherish their IKEA furniture and impart it with great sentimental value. I suppose that there are a few things that I have that remind me of my parents, or relatives, that are of sentimental value to me, but I am not sure how much, if any, of this would transfer down to my children. There are a couple of wind up clocks, I suspect that that will be one for each daughter, but I don’t imagine them filling their house with our old IKEA furniture, Habitat lamps, eighties CDs and redundant videos. 

The only people I can think of where there is an intergenerational transfer of material is where father and son are in the same trade, or where it is all attached to a house, some stately pile somewhere. 

Otherwise it is all going digital and disposable. With the safety belt that if you miss something from your childhood, or that you wish your father had given you, you can just fire up eBay and order that pocket watch or set of old fishing rods. 

Rambling on, there does seem to be a constant nip nip nip at pensions these days. After the debacle of all those endowment policies that turned out to be hopelessly incapable of paying off mortgages, are pensions likewise heading towards being a huge mis-selling scandal or at least a colossal waste of money. There is only so much that you can postpone retirement age before people quite rightly start to think that by the time I am ready to collect I will most likely have died, or be so doddery that frankly it would be pointless stinting today just so that my savings can pay for my care home, when the government is hardly likely to have me put down anyway. 

The image for this week is an old ‘footlight’ that I bought on eBay because it is a really funky shape. 

I love modernist architecture

I love modernist architecture, I love modernist writing, at heart I am probably more of a modernist than anything else. Post modernism and semiotics left me cold. 

But why does no one live in a modernist house, and why doesn't anyone much want to. The bulk of architecture books, blogs and magazines focus on houses and buildings that are very much in the modernist vein, more curvy perhaps, more layered, but far more akin to Le Corbusier than to Georgian or vernacular. 

The modernist aesthetic of people like Le Corbusier has formed the baseline for popular taste, we might osciallate round it, but we never venture terribly far. The designs of Dieter Rams, or Apple, they are modernists. There is other stuff about, steampunk, Kai Krause, even Archigram and Future Designs, but we never seem to be able to escape the sleek modernist lines of the early twentieth century design. We don't all wear their glasses, or early twentieth century clothes, or read their books, or listen to their music, but we will aspire to live in their sleek glass walled houses.

Look at the photos of Julius Shulman and you see the perfect modernist dream, the sun is shining, the perspectives are crisp, receding into the stunning horizon, attractive young people drape over angular furniture. There is something ageless about his photographs because the best of them are perfect abstract compositions. They are picture perfect, and we want to be part of that perfect picture. 

But deep down, we know that the sun seldom shines, our perspectives recede into a horizon of blocky housing estates and electricity pylons, we don't want to drape ourselves over uncomfortable angular furniture. Instead we want to be in warm rooms slouched on leather sofas, surrounded by screens and clutter.

We are hard wired to want space that is cozy and defensible, just like the hamster or the caveman. And the great modernist panes of glass feel neither cozy nor defensible. They were not practical to build either, our traditional vernacular architecture was largely a set of tricks and techniques to cover up lines that were not straight and edges that did not meet. Old style pitched roofs kept off the rain, ugly ventilation kept back the damp. 

Modernist architecture can make for fabulous photos, but in our hearts we do not want to live in glass walled rooms. Perhaps we need to find a more functional idea of beauty.

on restarting writing

Maybe it is the new year, or a lack of the usual more urgent pressures on my time, but I feel resolved to make more of an effort with my creative writing.

In the past I have always felt that I ought to be doing more creative writing, but have struggled to get round to doing anything constructive about it. Well I did write a couple of unpublished novels in the eighties, and there is the material on my blog/website and even the Amazon reviews, but it feels like a long time since I have been writing seriously.

Anyway, I have moved up creative writing to closer to the forefront of my noggin, and I am allocating more of my creative and practical thinking to it. Material evidence is probably thin on the ground, but I wrote the story Misericord a few weeks ago, I did some work on a draft cover and graphics, scans of the brochure for an Anchor Blocks leaflet that I own, and some cursory research on on-line publishing. I have also started to trawl through the half finished stuff that is lying about on the my drive, although it falls short of the work of Samuel Johnston, there is some stuff there that is, with a push, useable. There might also be some material sitting in my blogging and reviewing.

I am resigned not to being too precious about things, earlier drafts are not works of staggering genius, so I will feel free to butcher and rearrange.

Something that has had a surprising impact has been doing some work on a draft cover. Now that I have a draft cover, and draft title, it is easier to envisage what the eventual publication will look like. And now that I know what it will look like, it is easier to envisage what would fit into it, and what would not.

Another decision that has helped break the logjam, is my decision now to focus on writing a collection of short stories. I have been working on an idea for a novel, well it is an idea, and I am sure that it is good enough for a novel.

But, although I can write material for it, I really still have no idea how it will work as a novel. Just writing stuff, and hoping that it will take form, as it goes along, is resolutely not working for me at the moment. Maybe, for me, there is just not a novel in the idea for the moment. Anyway, it has gone to one side, and my focus is on my book of short stories.

Currently sitting at around ten thousand words, but they all need a bit of an edit and tidy up, and eight thousand need a lot of an edit and tidy up. Not sure how big a book of short stories ought to be. It might be as much as I can write in a year or two, or until I get bored, or it might find a natural length.

Another thing that seems to have helped break the logjam is telling people what I am doing. That way it is okay to just zone out and do some writing, or editing, without having to be evasive about what I am doing.

Another thing that seems to have helped break the logjam is making sure that I am not always so busy, that any time left over, when I am not working, I am so zonked out, that I am in no position to do anything constructive. It might be old age creeping up on me, but a long week is exhausting, and without taking breaks it does all get to be a bit of a hamster wheel.

A short story - Misericord

The scholar adjusted the anglepoise lamp. There was far too little space on the oak desk, he picked up the pile of books on medieval alabaster work and stained glass, moving them aside to place them on the windsor chair, already well laden with books. 

At last there was nearly enough space, he pushed back the paperwork and artifacts further out towards the edge of the desk, a few toppled precariously, but nothing toppled over. The circle of bright legible light fell on the middle of the desk now. He unpacked the manuscript, the edge was tattered, shreds about to detach forever, now part of the manuscript, the merest touch and they were on their way to being dust. 

The manuscript conformed to the broad description offered by the antiquarian bookseller, it was a handwritten manuscript of the medieval period. Very late, but certainly medieval. It smelt musty and old, foxed and splatted with spots and damage. At first he focussed on the damage, the random pattern that age had inflicted on it. Then he tried to fix his focus on what remained. Looking back in time to see what had been written on this yellowed parchment. The antiquarian bookseller had merely described it as medieval parchment, he had made not further attempt to describe it. With no illustrations or illuminated characters it was not the most prepossessing of items. Nevertheless he looked around his room, in the partial gloom he could see the same reassuring collection of artifacts that he always liked to look across at. Like a miser admiring his horde, his eye flicked between the items, a variety of misericords, the heavily decorated underside of church seats, designed to offer temporary respite during a long church service. They were decorated with mermen, centaurs, greenmen and courting couples. They were roughly rectangular, that was the beauty of the medieval, nothing was ever quite square or straight, it was always contorted in some cartoonish manner. There was a huge ceiling boss, a screaming green man sheaved in leaves. The boss would have covered the part of the ceiling where the stone reinforcing ribs cross. In use it would have been visible, but not legible, yet the detail was incredible. The leaves sprouted forth from his eyes and mouth. There were fragments of rood screen or jube, the wooden tracery that separated the medieval church chancel and nave. Figures being swallowed by reptilian mouths and swathed in looping oak leaves. The medieval wood carvers continued a tradition of working and venerating the living oak that stretched back to at least the druids that the Romans had encountered when they invaded. Back when an older faith pervaded these islands keeping and maintaining the people in a state of fear and awe. 

These wooden carvings were rare, rarer than just their antiquity would suggest, under the Tudor Reformation the state had destroyed the vast bulk of religious carvings, tearing them from their churches and burning them in great bonfires. 

He heard the faint rustling of leaves. He had probably paid too much for this piece of tattered parchment, he usually did. 

He scrunched up the brown wrapping paper and threw it aside. He pulled across the medieval dictionary and started to work through the text. If the text were actually of more than the usual very parochial interest then it might be of some value. 

“My name is John de _____ and this is my story. Although this story is scarcely credible, even to myself, I swear that it is true. As a young man, I was the faithful servant of Henry, to become the greatest king in all Christendom. He was a strong virile man, full of wisdom beyond his years and with the strength of many men. In the winter of 15__ I was dispatched in his service to the furtherest reaches of his kingdom. The kingdom was unruly. Henry had been chosen by God to lead us, but his lords and their serfs were not worthy of him. They were disputatious amongst themselves and unduly troubled by ungodly things. With a troop of soldiers I was to travel the lands of our King and instruct them in their rightful duties and allegiances. A good king will have obedient people and those that will not be obedient must be fearful, in fear for their lives. 

It was a hard winter, the wet ground solid with frost. We were unwelcome everywhere we went. We struggled our horses up endless tracks through oak woods that had never seen a cart. We fought off cur like wolves, and snarling wild pigs. The woods were full of brigands but they knew better than to attack us in the daylight. At night we heard their oaths and footsteps in the dark of ancient woods. The nighttime woods were always full of their noises around us. 

When we found a village we were scarcely more comfortable. The huts were low and mean, crowded round a church or pond, like hunters round a fire. Hungry dogs licked round us we entered each village, dark eyed children looked on. At each gathering I would say my story. I would tell them of their great king and their place in his kingdom. The lords would shift uneasily. They lived in comfort in service of their king, but had done so little so deserve his favour. 

I am pledged to the service of my King. After that I am pledged to the service of my Lord God. The churches were as dark and mean as the people. We were far away from the fashionable papistry and Latin of London. The churches were dark and crowded with their carvings. Dark oak figures of heathen things, mythical figures and conjoined couples, gargoyles pulling at their cheeks, twisting branches and oak leaves. On the Lord’s day we would go to the church. The services were long and stilted. 

It was in the darkest month of the year when we came to the village of F_____ after days of riding through the tightest of forests. As we approached our path was bordered by oaks on either side, huge twisted trees that were too broad for a man to put his arms around. Trees that were so ancient as to be near useless for anything but firewood. The houses were set low in the ground, turf walls and roofs of scattered brash. It was Sunday and there was no one to be seen. The village circled its church. I led my men to the church, stooped low to enter. The church was dark, but full of people. There was the sweaty warmth of many people together. The place smelt of wood and damp, like the woods that we had been marching through. No one turned to face us. We sat at the back of the church, there was empty space and we genuflected before sitting back on the misericords. I took my right hand off the pommel of my sword and placed it on the side of the pew. It was carved with their usual pagan heathenery. The service was unfamiliar, the dialect here too thick to understand. 

The church was a long low building, the row of pillars were like the oak trees that led up to the village. It was entirely covered in carvings. Green men and wild hairy men of the woods, oak leaves and ivy spread across every surface. 

The people of the village stood and knelt, their hands pressed together in prayer. At the front of the church there was an ornate rood screen, atop it a rood, a figure of our Lord Christ, upon the cross. This Christ was entangled in oak and ivy leaves. The people roared as one, their prayer becoming more feverish, in the faltering winter light the endless carvings seemed to fidget and settle, flicking like the tail of a lizard. 

Their chanting grew louder, the Christ rood grew brighter in the dark, the chanting was like shouting, the rood Christ stepped forward, the leaves started to swallow up the Christ until they consumed him, the figure was now a green man, the screaming green man, walking through the air towards us. My men jumped to their feet, their swords and axes at the ready, the wooden leaves were flickering and twisting, grabbing at my men as they chopped to save themselves. I watched as my men were swallowed up and torn apart by this dark wooden undergrowth, I myself felt the pew twist and grasp at my wrist. 

I pray for forgiveness from my King and my Lord. I ran to the horses, climbing atop the strongest of them. The heavy horse galloped as our lives depended on it, the very avenue of oak trees bending and grasping at us. My King is the wisest King in Christendom. He knew my testimony to be true and together we set out to rid the country of its paganry.”

The scholar rocked back in his chair feeling sick. The light was getting dimmer and the sound of rustling leaves was getting louder and louder, but it was winter and there was not a tree for miles.