The ultimate handyman's apparel?

I was browsing an online tools catalogue the other day and came across a 'technicians tool vest'. With provision for 10 pens, 8 drill bits (which could also be used for pens), a couple of zipped pockets (deep enough for even more pens), a velco fastened pocket (yes, could take more pens here), a couple of open pockets (would certainly take a few dozen ikea pencils), a zipped bag attached with carabina (useful for pen refills and erasers), 4 triangular eyes (hook extra bags of pens here) and a large holder (my 'ice axe' pen would fit nicely in this). In addition, there may be an extra pocket or two on the back (useful for a few tools).

I was just browsing the NHS Data Model ....

I was having a look through the NHS Data Model today and
came across the PERSON class. Some expected attributes like person identifier, national insurance number and person birth date but was surprised to discover that the NHS has provision to store your DVLA driver number, passport number, pupil number, Inland revenue tax reference number and perhaps best of all Customs & Excise value added tax number. Why does the NHS need all this data? It reads more like an identity record than a hospital patient.

And looking at relationships for PERSON we discover that "a Person must be the owner of one or more PERSON ORGAN". Hmmm, if it's only one then which one?

The model appears to be very hard wired with a maximum number of relations stated. For instance it seems that multiple births can only have one location. So what happens when the first child was delivered in the taxi to the hospital! Obviously, the designers didn't take my database course. :-)

I also came across a classic case of inflexibility/source of error with some of the coding schemes, such as
COMMISSIONING SERIAL NUMBER "From 01/04/2005 an '=' (equals) as the last significant character in this six character field will indicate an episode that should be excluded from the Payment by Results tariff. The position of the last character depends on any preceding characters eg 1st character if field is otherwise blank, 4th character if following 'OAT', up to a maximum of 6th position."
I thought this practice went out with Cobol 66!

A "nice and simple" increase from Virgin Media with a smile

A recent email from Virgin Media (formally Virgin Mobile) started "A nice and simple monthly mobile deal" and went on explain the changes to my PAYG account.

Firstly some apparently good news - "Calls to other mobile networks in the UK will cost 35p a minute (instead of 40p a minute). That’s 5p cheaper!" Still 35p a minute though when most landline calls are free or just a nominal call charge!!

"And if you’re calling a UK landline or another Virgin mobile, it’ll cost one simple flat rate of 20p a minute, instead of 15p for the first 5 minutes each day and 5p a minute after that." Or to put this another way, the first 10 minute call of the day will now cost £2 instead of £1 and the second 10 minute call will now cost £2 instead of 50p. Hmmm, 'nice and simple'

Freephone? "calls to freephone numbers will cost no more than 15p per minute in the UK." Thanks!

"Making calls that last less than a minute.... if your call lasts less than one minute, you’ll still pay for one full minute." More good news eh?

And then Virgin Media have the cheek to finish the message with: "The great news for you is that our standard costs are now even simpler and better value than before." when the only thing that's marginally cheaper is the still exorbitant 35p per minute calls to other mobile networks!

I'd like to send this message to Virgin Media: "You're Having A Laugh" courtesy of Andy Millman (Extras Ricky Gervais)

In search of a light bulb

My mums light bulb in a bathroom mirror blew the other day so I have been searching for a replacement. As you can see in the photo it's a strange 2-pin thing about 30mm long including the pins and with no markings, so I couldn't even search for part number MV127-NPG. I decided to look through online electrical distributors but not knowing what the lightbulb/lamp was called was a problem. I briefly tried Google Images, but after 20 pages of light bulbs (mostly incandescent and energy saving) I reverted back to electrical distributors - although I'm sure it was there amongst the 4,100,000 images! I was almost reaching my limit of illumination devices when I reached the Shangri-La of online light bulbs, lamps and tubes. BLT Direct has not only a terrific BulbFinder but has pictures. (screen shot below).

The BulbFinder has 13 parameters (eg. shape, wattage, voltage) with drop down lists for each. So from cap/base type I could select 2 pin (or in fact 2 prongs) and then restrict the wattage to 20W and hey presto a picture of the type of bulb I wanted was in the search result of 11. The other option is to select a group of items (eg. control gear, halogen lamps, compact fluorescent) and then refine the search on the subgroup pictures. For me, one click on halogen lamps and I knew it was a G4 halogen capsule!
My only criticism of the BulbFinder is that there is no way of filtering the results based on a range. For instance, filtering on the length of bulb means selecting one from all the possibilities (about 400) and they are sorted alphabetically (eg. 209mm, 20mm, 20 Inch, 210mm and so on).
If only they sold fridges!

BusinessObjects - an example of Business Intelligence?

According to BusinessObjects[1]

With SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence intuitive information analysis is available – helping your users turn business insights into effective decisions. With a few mouse clicks, users create a query from scratch, format the retrieved information, and easily analyze it to understand underlying trends

This graph was produced in the promotion of the 2009 SAP BusinessObjects User Conference and one would assume it was produced to both inform and impress the potential delegates with the capabilities of the software.

Apart from the mistake of using a pie chart when a sorted list would be much better and the nonsense of colouring the 25 small slices (can you match the slice with the legend?), the "percentages" on the chart add up to 477%! It's depressing to think that many of the stated 42000 users of BO software would think this graph is "really good".

Thanks to Perceptual Edge - The Global BusinessObjects Network Has Pie On Its Face for bringing this to light.

[1] SAP BusinessObjects

In search of a fridge

Recently, our fridge packed up and so I went online to find a replacement. Understandably as if was the second Bosch larder fridge to fail in just 8 years (more on this later perhaps) I wanted another make. The most important feature of the new fridge was its height ... it had to fit in the existing hole! But I soon discovered that one cannot search on this parameter. In fact many online domestic appliance sites do not even give the height up front but you have to get 'further detail'. It seems that cubic capacity, auto-defrost or whether or not it has a bottle shelf are more important. It took literally hours of searching, to come up with a small set of possibilities.
So, web site designers - please think of the user. Don't assume you know what the user wants to search for. And appliance manufacturers - please make the data available in machine readable form (where has the semantic web gone?)

Dramatic rescue in the canal lock

Local resident, Geoffrey successfully completed a dramatic rescue this week after a big gust of wind swept his son's hat into the canal lock in Slaithwaite centre. Nath, 20 months, was balancing on a bollard by the lock (securely tethered to his dad) and his favourite hat was whisked off his head and landed some 16ft down in the lock. They both watched intently as the blue cotton hat was slowly blown along by the lock wall and were disappointed when it eventually sank beneath the water.
Undaunted he, went home and returned with a set of chimney sweep poles, a length of stiff wire, some rope and sticky tape. He cunningly fashioned a three pronged 'hat catcher' on the end of the pole and patiently swept the canal bottom in the vicinity of the last sighting of the childs hat. On the fifth pass, the headgear was brought to the surface on the end of the 20ft stick and after a wash and dry, was reunited with it gleeful owner. The only disappointment, according to Geoffrey, was that there was no one on the lockside to photograph the event!