Is this really hard work?

Sainbury's have recently changed the packaging on their Bran Flakes breakfast cereal with plenty of information on how the carton is made from 85% recycled material and encouraging the consumer to recycle the box and the inner plastic bag. All good stuff. A fair amount of space is also given over to telling the consumer how hard they have been working on other aspects of the breakfast cereal. In particular is says "We have been working hard to reduce the salt content". Huh? How hard is it to reduce the salt content? The factory either has an electronic salt dispenser (which I'm sure can be turned down) or a person with a scoop who could be given a smaller scoop. Perhaps they ought to try understanding a paper concerning a population-based stochastic optimization approach called particle swarm analysis, which I've been asked to review ... now that's what I call hard work!

It is all tried, tested and ready to go ... ho, ho!

In case one forgets .... a few weeks before the opening of world's most technologically advanced airport .. Terminal 5

“Our main goal was to minimise any negative impact caused by the change of systems,” said Tom Garside, head of T5 systems and integration at BAA. “We wanted to reach a period of stability and have achieved that successfully. It is all tried, tested and ready to go.”

"The T5 technology is focused on self-service systems and the pre-flight experience" said BA chief information officer Paul Coby. “It is about responding to customers’ needs. The use of IT will speed people through check-in and security so they can spend more time airside working, relaxing, eating or shopping.”

"T5 was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to address Heathrow’s IT needs and is a positive example of how two companies can work together to deliver a complex infrastructure" said BAA IT director Richard Rundle

"BAA claims T5 will host one of the world’s most sophisticated baggage handling systems, with more than 18km of conveyor belt. More than 400,000 hours of software engineering has gone into developing the complex baggage handling system, which can process up to 12,000 bags per hour".  But if a plane is delayed, it won't send the luggage to be loaded as it 'thinks' the plane has departed. Perhaps a few more hours of thought rather than software engineering required! 

Today, BA said Gareth Kirkwood, director of operations, and David Noyes, director of customer services, would be leaving. What about Tom, Paul and Richard? Or are they busy sorting through the luggage!

Case note:  Apparently, folks are eagerly awaiting an influx of unclaimed luggage at Greasby's auction house in Tooting, London. You can bid for unopened suitcases and take pot luck on what's inside. Makes one think about what to pack doesn't it.  And if I'd lost my case coming back from Italy some years ago, pity the person who found the cheese!

Some extracts based on an article in Computing, 13 Mar 2008 by Angelica Mari.

Smart, happy cameras

“We’re aiming to make cameras smarter,” said Phil Lubell, director of marketing for digital cameras at Sony Electronics.

The T300 includes a host of technologically sounding features. No longer does a camera have a LCD screen, we apparently need a 'Clear Photo LCD Plus' version. Similarly for image stabilisation we need 'Super SteadyShot' technology. And then how can we even start to take a few snaps unless there's a powerful Bionz™ processing engine.

However it's one of the 'more intelligent features' which really caught my eye. The "smile shutter". Not only does the camera detect faces but it detects smiling faces and will wait until there are sufficient smiles to warrant taking a photo. How useful is that at Uncle Bob's funeral? But this 'helpful' functionality doesn't stop there as the user can select 'child priority' or 'adult priority'. So presumably one can delay taking the photo until the majority of the adults are smiling broadly, even though the children have been grinning ear to ear since the mention of ice-cream. My old Pentax SLR had the option of aperture or speed priority which I could cope with but having to decide on the relative importance of child or adult smiles is not so clear cut. What if there are no children in the frame and it's been left on child priority by mistake? Do we have to wait for a beaming child to walk into the shot? I wonder how it copes with an unhappy circus clown.

Another innovation is the 'never mind how much time you spend adjusting the camera settings, I'll take a better picture than you' feature. Yes, if "it", presumeably Bionz, decides that you haven't made a good enough job, it quickly snaps another and then (I'm guessing) superimposes a sticker over your attempt saying "poor exposure" or "camera shake", as occasionally happens when getting poor prints back from Boots. That would put off all but the most determined amateurs - the rest would definitely stick to 'auto' mode to avoid embarrassment.

The T300 can be connected to a High Definition TV and will even add background music to the slideshow. (It doesn't say whether it automatically skips the inferior d-i-y photos though). A range of accessories, can be purchased online at sonystyle.com. I just wonder if this includes a squeaky toy or perhaps Ken Dodd's tickling stick ... without which the slideshow might be fairly short.