just geoff

Photo faces

2010-11-23T09:00:00.003Z

I was looking through the iPhoto Library package and came across some jpgs with 'face0' appended to the photo filename. According to the manual, "iPhoto detect all the faces in your photos, and then uses face-recognition technology to group likely matches together". I browsed through some of the 'faces' and amongst the real faces I found this! The algorithm obviously needs refining further - for one thing it does not worry if there is a hole in the head! (background shows through)

The difference between cats and dogs

2010-04-10T23:25:00.006+01:00

If you want to compare how two things, such a cat and a dog, in terms of how people submit queries to Google then look no further than Web Seer. The only similarity between cats and dogs is that they both wag their tails! On balance, it looks like cats seem to be less trouble.

and it looks like men and women have health and clothing in common. I am not surprised that women's shoes are highly searched but men's jewelry, fashion and style? Also, surprising how many were interested in the men's olympic ice hockey!

Lyrical software help menu

2010-02-23T23:47:00.005Z

Just come across this help menu on a little application [iSquint] which converts video to iPod format.

The ultimate handyman's apparel?

2009-08-10T00:15:00.003+01:00

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 ....

2009-07-26T22:15:00.005+01:00

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

2009-07-26T20:57:00.008+01:00

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

2009-07-21T21:03:00.004+01:00

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?

2009-07-21T18:11:00.009+01:00

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

2009-06-26T13:48:00.002+01:00

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

2009-06-26T13:37:00.006+01:00

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!

A socket in time saves hours

2009-05-08T22:19:00.003+01:00

Sometimes I wonder about the competence of car designers. There's always some glaringly inept features which seem to have got by the testing process, whether this is in the usability or the fixability (to adjust the fan belt on one car I owned, meant cutting a hole in the inner wing panel). I've just been fitting a towbar to my Renault. Holes were already drilled for the bar to be bolted to the main chassis and apart from having to grind off some extraneous metal (and tapping out a hole which hadn't been threaded properly) it went quite well.
However, reading the fitting instructions for the wiring hinted that this part of the process might not be so straightforward. In the olden days, one just snapped on a scotchblock to each of the wires to the lights (rear, indicators etc) and fed the wire to the towbar socket. A matter of minutes. Now, with the relays, bus systems and ICUs of modern cars, this is not possible. So I purchased the fabricated 'plug in' wiring for my particular make & model and expected to plug it in. The first step was to remove the lining panels in the rear and then, surprisingly the lower panels along the leftside to the front. It turns out that one has to run a wire all the way from the rear to the battery at the front! Huh? Not only is is neigh impossible to get a wire into the engine compartment (I used the bonnet release wire to drag through the wire) but threading it through the sills was a nightmare. Now, come on Renault designers ... you drilled holes in the chassis and even a pushout plate to feed the wires out to the towbar socket, but failed to add a power wire to drive the electronics necessary to install the trailer lighting. I was not impressed!

Location, location, height

2009-05-08T21:47:00.005+01:00

The location of a business is often an important factor in its success, especially in catching the passing trade. But this probably doesn't apply to dentists .... I wonder how many people are walking along the street, see a dentist practice and think "I'd better get that tooth fixed today". Firstly, it's not usually an impulse buy and secondly, the chance of getting seen by a dentist within a month is pretty slim! However, according to a dentist I met the other day, whether the practice is on the ground floor is of great importance. I won't go on about the sheer stupidity of the NHS contract for dentists, but one service that does attract a decent number of 'points' (yes, points means that the dentist gets paid if they amass the required number during the year) are dentures and who tends to have these? .... yes, the elderly ... who often prefer not to climb stairs. The dentist in question assured me that he (on the ground floor) gets nearly all the denture work of the practice, whilst the two dentists upstairs are left "drilling and filling" and missing out on the points!

A courgette by another name

2009-05-05T23:24:00.002+01:00

Whilst buying some vegetables in 'Asia Stores' today, I came across one of the best misspellings for a long time. As English is not the first language for most of the staff in the shop, it's not unusual for the odd letter to be added or missing, such as 'tomatoe', but "corjet"? Does it matter? I certainly knew what it meant, although the sight of the vegetable in the box did give a clue. Perhaps the spelling comes from the SMS dictionary, who knows.

It reminded me of a radio programme a few weeks back, where an academic was arguing that the English language was so full of irregular words that it was hampering the development of children. Apparently research suggests that many children will avoid writing as they are afraid of being mocked when getting the spelling wrong. Although I expect that doesn't apply to txt-ing! The solution, according to the speaker, was to regularise English. (I wonder what happened to Esperanto?). Why stop there, we could puree all the children's food to avoid lumps (no chewing required) and the sight of vegetables, and push them about in buggies (in case of lumps in the pavement)! A true Nanny state.

The mouse in the canoe who went to the zoo

2009-05-05T23:15:00.004+01:00

The mouse in the canoe
Went to the zoo
To see the gnu
Who had flu.
“How do
You
Do”
Said the mouse in the canoe
To the gnu
In the zoo.
“I’ve got flu”
Said the gnu.
“I have too”
Said the kangaroo
On his way to
Join the queue
For the porta-loo.
“I blame the cockatoo
Who
Just flew
In from Peru”
Said the gnu.
“Who
Knew
That the cockatoo
Had been in Peru?”
Said the mouse in the canoe.
“There's a notice on view
In aviary No. 2,
Next to
The new
Shed in blue”
Said the gnu
Blowing in a tissue.
“It’s true”
Coo’d
The parrot in blue
Also going for a poo
In the porta-loo.
“Woo,
See you!”
Said the mouse in the canoe
Remembering that he needed some glue
To
Fix a hole in his Soux
Canoe
Before the strong winds blew.

Geoffrey Ellis
May 2009

I've been carrying around the "mouse in the canoe, went to the zoo, to see a gnu" rhyme for a while, then in light of the recent swine flu panic-demic I completed the story. Look out for more "the mouse in the ..." stories!
Revised 6 May - A couple of changes since posting last night

A trip back in time

2009-02-25T12:03:00.001Z

In the days of iPods with such hi-resolution displays that one can comfortably watch a wide screen movie, as though one was at a IMAX cinema, it is surprising to encounter technology of 30 years ago. But one place where this does exist, outside the Science Museum, is in an Air Mauritius airbus. As shown in the photos of the seatback display, the pixels are quite visible and I couldn't decide whether to wear my glasses and count the dots or to take them off and apply some blurring. The washed out almost false-colour did not add to the enjoyment either.
I started to watch a french film but the sub-titles were unreadable in the 3x2 pixel per character font. I chose another of the six on offer (but not play on demand) but I thought I was in danger of permanent eye damage if I continued and read he ingredient list of the complementary biscuit instead.

The airplane was indeed old (it did have jet engines and a single wing though) but even so, why the video system had not been updated from the original GameBoy version is beyond belief. The chances of this being carried out before the plane is sold on to an emerging airline in third world country is most unlikely now that an Air Mauritius official has taken out a two year fuel contract at a price some three times the current market rate (is this what they call hedging?).

Air hostess or warden?

2009-02-23T11:58:00.001Z

The Air France flight from Manchester to Paris was delightful, especially as both the airports were virtually deserted (Saturday afternoon is a good time to fly said the shop assistant in Boots) and the plane was almost empty. So little'un could stretch out across 2 seats and get some zzzz's whilst we made our way across London and the Channel. Wait was equally relaxed in CDG and even the man in the cafe was happy for me to use his microwave to warm the quiche I'd made the night before.

The flight to Mauritius was delayed for 30 mins and it didn't get off to a good start when they didn't allow parents and children on first, so we had to join the scrum at the gate. Fortunately little'un took it in his stride. Next problem came when the stewardess said that little'un was too big for the cot! Well perhaps a kg over the limit but he wouldn't mind if his legs stuck out. There was plenty of room in front of our seats so perhaps he could sleep on the floor. A definite non, non. Not because of the possibility of his bouncing if we hit severe turbulence but the plastic pipe on the emergency oxygen supply was not long enough to reach the floor! Two things, the probability of those yellow cups descending, as shown in the pre-flight demonstration, is virtually nil (I have met someone who has seen them but that was due to the pilot decompressing on purpose to quell and crazy passenger!). The second, is that there is a good chance that parents, seeing their child gasping for air would pick them up off the floor. Anyway, the hostess recited the length of plastic pipe excuse. In addition to the lack of smiles, no food was offered for the baby and the toy which was promised in the blurb on the website didn't materialise. In the night I went to get some water and met our warden guarding the kitchen. Yes? she remarked, as though I was trying the sneak off the plane, and handed me some water .... lucky I didn't ask for milk, her face would have surely curdled it. The steward on our side of the plane wasn't much happier either, seemed to think that I was in the way whilst I waited for the baby changing room.

We arrived OK, thankful to our Air Mauritius wardens for keeping us safe, but I did miss the smiles that go to make a long flight more bearable.

Boogle maps

2009-02-04T16:25:00.007Z

I was using Google maps to find out how far a relatives house was from Manchester airport as I was thinking of leaving the car there instead of using airport parking. It turns out that it is less than 5 miles away. I then noticed a link to "Public transit" which would be handy if the relatives were not able to give us a lift.

Suggested route:
Walk 51 minutes to the bus stop.
Catch the 540 Colne - London (Victoria bound) coach (National Express)
Get off at Milton Keynes and wait 1hour 40 minutes for the London - Colne (Burnley bound) coach
Get off at Altrincham
Walk 22 minutes.
Total time - 8 hours 38 minutes. See map below.

The only clever bit is getting off the coach at Milton Keynes rather than going all the way to London Victoria. Now that would have made it a long journey!

I've just noticed another option, Walking. Now lets see ..... 4.6 miles - about 1 hour 31 minutes. Beats the public transport option, especially as that involves 1 hour 13 minutes walking anyway!

I also looked for advice from National Express for the same trip and at least they suggested getting a bus to Manchester and catching the tram to Altrincham. Journey time 1 hour 40, including walking from the bus station to the tram stop.

So where is Google maps getting it's data and algorithm (and perhaps we should add programmers!). The least it could do is suggest that you walk for an extra 18 minutes before directing you on a eight and a half hours trip.

RSI - unnecessary Repetitiveness due to Stupid Implementation

2009-01-14T22:32:00.013Z

I'm just half way through adding bookmarks to my thesis and have signs of RSI! I put this down to some incompetent/irresponsible/lazy/shortsighted/unimaginative/nonuser programmer(s). I say programmer(s) as they are more often than not, the lunatics that are running the software development, as described in Alan Cooper's ruminative book[1].

Firstly, Adobe Acrobat Pro doesn't let one paste in a table of contents, even as plain text, so one has to add each bookmark, one at a time, cut and pasting the heading from a text file. (If one uses Word and exports to pdf, then apparently it will build the TOC bookmarks for you but who wants to toil with Word just for this feature?)

I've set up the list of destinations which basically tags pages. The advantage of this over associating a bookmark with a page number is that if pages are added or deleted the destinations are automatically updated to point to the original page. Well it sounded like a good idea at the time!

Question. How many mouse clicks does it take to associate a bookmark with a destination?
Answer: Between nine and twelve!

Sequence: (screen shots of the windows are shown below)

crtl click on bookmark - Bookmark Properties dialogue window pops up
select properties from end of list (yes you have to move down to the end)
click edit button at the bottom of properties window - Go to a page in this document dialogue window pops up
click use named radio button
click to browse button to the right - Choose Destination window pops up with list of destinations
click on the destination from the list (if more than 14 the you have to scroll down to find it)
click the OK button (why can't we double click on the destination to select?)
click the OK button on the Go to a page in this document dialogue window
click the Close button on the Bookmark Properties dialogue window

Multiply this by the number of bookmarks (185) and we have almost 2000 clicks plus the repetitive movements across the screen to find the buttons and you can perhaps see why I'm not so pleased! In fact, it will be well over 2000 clicks as I keep forgetting the destination when I eventually get to the pop up list!

I've been thinking about possible solutions.
1. There is no need for three dialogue windows. The 2nd one (Go to page in this document) only has 2 options, so this could easily be incorporated in the properties window. Also, when clicking on Use named destination why do we then have to click on Browse? The list of destinations could also appear in the properties window, as it is modal and hence has to be closed anyway in order to continue. (same for the 2nd window)

2. What about editing the bookmark in a spreadsheet style manner? We could then easily paste in a list of bookmarks. These could be added to existing ones by adding extra rows. Deletion and rearrangement would also be easy. And, if we had set up a list of destinations, wouldn't it be easy to match these to the bookmark list, if they were sorted in document order (rather than alphabetically as in the current implementation). Other properties of the bookmarks (such as
wrapping or font weight) could also be set, either globally or individually, much as ones does in a spreadsheet. In addition, we could always drag and drop a destination, from a list (thumbnail views of the page perhaps?) on the bookmark.

I've still got nearly 1000 mouse clicks to go, so can't spend any more time thinking up solutions. Not as though it actually took much time to think of quick fixes or the more radical solution. I just wonder how much time the programmers took originally? I guess they never tried to add more than one destination to a bookmark during testing!

[1] Alan Cooper. The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High-Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity

doing, done?

2008-09-18T10:52:00.001+01:00

I may be wrong but across the world a green traffic light means go and a red one stop (although there are some countries where the drivers ignore the last one!). However when it comes to indicators on other equipment there doesn't seem to be any standardisation even though red and green are often used.
For instance, the light on my rechargeable shaver is red when it is charging and then flashes red when charged, but my Bosch cordless drill flashes red when charging and red when charged. The indicator lights on the chargers for Panasonic and Canon cameras are also opposites. The Canon is red when charging and then green when charged (seems sensible), but the Panasonic is green when charging and red when charged. Both companies are Japanese so it can't be a cultural thing, so somewhere in the design of the chargers, a person (or perhaps team of people) made a decision on what colours to indicate the state of charge. It would be interesting to ask why and whether any user testing was carried out.
In the meantime, I just have to leave the charger on until the light changes, then I know it's charged!

The optimistic salesman

2008-09-12T16:52:00.000+01:00

Many things can be bought on the street of Port Louis, the capital of Mauritius. There are plenty of street food sellers with tasty delights such as savoury snacks, coconut cakes, grated ice pulp and pineapple with chilli sauce. Temporary tables are adorned with clothes for all ages and household goods from expired super-glue and batteries to electric fly swats. Sellers wander about with a few nightshirts, a bag of socks or watches of unknown origin and the likelihood of components inside unknown. One wonders how they make much of a living. These were surpassed in their optimism by a chap trying to sell a couple of pairs of ski gloves. Reports last week of never known before snowfalls in the Rift Valley of Africa, might have encouraged this enterprise, however with temperatures in Port Louis at 25degC in the winter I am doubtful of this venture succeeding.

Health Advice on Fainting

2008-09-12T16:50:00.001+01:00

From Mauritian newspaper

Fainting is a temporary loss of consciousness, when the person falls to the floor. A faint occurs when insufficient amount of oxygen is reaching the brain. The most common is a vasovagal attack, where overstimulation of a major nerve slows the heart and lowers blood pressure. This may be caused by intense stress or anything that suddenly increases pressure inside the body, such as blowing a trumpet. Advice for those experiencing a faint: stop playing the trumpet immediately and take a rest and drink of water.

Lack of pixels and other annoying flight details

2008-09-05T14:29:00.007+01:00

The flight was OK apart from three things - noisy child, overcooked food and the lack of pixels. The child decided on a paddy in the middle of the night and screamed so loud that it woke the pilot. I guess the little French lad had lost his favorite lapin! The asian vegetarian special request was lacking any real taste, certainly not Indian asian, and the vegetables tasted like they'd been pressure cooked for at least an hour. Still, the tea was good, having it's own tea bag instead of being poured from the superthermal efficient, made-an-hour-ago-and-still-piping-hot airline teapot. The coffee for breakfast wasn't bad also and for once the cup was full. Why do they nearly always fill your cup so it still wouldn't loose any content even if the plane went into a 45 degree bank?
Now, the pixel problem. I've seen more pixels on a watch than on the personal back of the seat screens. More like a late 80's Gameboy with SuperMario in 8x8 dots. There was a choice of films but they all started at once so after Bob-the-Builder one could switch tracks and spend the next 15 mins trying to work out that happened in the first 15 mins. The french film, Disco was very good, well as much as one can make out in the pixelated view usually given to stop one recognising people in police footage. The subtitles were hopeless though , unless one had inherited the expertise from a Bletchley code breaker.
Arrived in SSR (Sir Seewosagar Ramgoolam) airport on time, cleared immigration in a trice, being a 'resident', and waited for the luggage. And waited. And waited. 30 mins went by and the people from our Paris flight thinned, but still some waiting and still the same luggage going round and round. Then we spotted a bright green suitcase on the other carousel, apparently serving the flight from Melbourne. Yes, our luggage had been doing the rounds of the Melbourne crowd and I guess some of theirs had been doing likewise on the Paris belt. Now, there are only 2 planes and 2 conveyors and they managed to get them mixed up. When I pointed out this fact, the operative said it wasn't her fault - due to Air Mauritius labels on the luggage and the Paris plane said Air France on it's fuselage. Still, it did also say Charles de Gaules, who is unlikely to be an ex-president of Australia! Having established the fact that luggage was separated from their owners by a inter-carousel distance, perhaps some action such as a tanoy announcement to alert the folks patiently watching the same cases for half an hour. No, some more forms to fill in.
Welcome to Mauritius!

valid-date?

2008-06-20T11:35:00.004+01:00

I've just been to my online bank to transfer money to another bank. The website has changed, for the worst, so it took a while to figure out how to transfer money. For one thing I'm now presented with a long list of accounts to pay, many of which I haven't used for years and cancelled some time ago. I select to delete individual accounts but a message tells me that they will remain for another 12 months ... and yes, they still appear in the list, with no indication that they are in fact deleted!

So having selected the account to pay, I enter the amount and select the list option to set the date. But a calendar pops up, so I have to check what today's date is from my desktop (wouldn't it be easier to just fill in today's date by default?), and discover that today is not available. Hmm? So I type in today's date and a message pops up informing me that the date must be between 23/06/2008 and 31/12/9999. Being inquisitive, I enter 21/06/9999 and a message informs me that I must make sure funds are available on that date .... some 7991 years hence!

I am annoyed that I cannot transfer money today, annoyed with the ill conceived website and can only despair at the mindset of the system designer (or more probably the programmer - a reference to Alan's Cooper's book interesting book, The Inmates Are Running the Asylum) for allowing nonsensical dates!

Now, where's the information on how to close this bank account ....

Is this really hard work?

2008-04-15T13:13:00.003+01:00

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!

2008-04-14T12:47:00.003+01:00

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

2008-04-04T18:44:00.000+01:00

“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.

That will be useful one day

2008-02-08T11:18:00.002Z

Just to prove a point that one should hang onto seemingly useless objects ... just in case. The other day my Kyocera laser printer packed up due to a seized rotating mirror motor. This did provide the incentive to take a laser printer apart and the laser scanning mechanism with hexagonal mirror and correcting lens was indeed fascinating, but ridiculously expensive to replace! Anyway, I bought a used printer of the same model for the ridiculously cheap price of £25 (good condition and low page count) so I could transfer the network card, memory and PostScript from the old one. All went OK until I faced extracting the 40 pin PostScript IC from the circuit board. I search around my workshop and in a short time spotted the very tool. Just a bit of filing of the foot and it extracted the IC as well as the professional tool!

Do not fly Volareweb

2008-01-15T14:02:00.000Z

On Sunday we arrived at Milan airport for our Volareweb flight back to Manchester only to be told that there was not a flight. It had been cancelled! Moreover the airline had ceased all flights to and from Manchester from the 7th Jan. The airline claims that they tried to inform us via mobile phone and email but there is no evidence of this. When we departed Manchester on the 6th we were not even told that the return flight had been cancelled!

At Milan airport the Volareweb check-in person was most unhelpful and when we did find out that they had an office in the terminal and went there, the Volareweb official was no where to be found .... I suspect he/she had done a runner in order to avoid us!

So we were stranded .... had to pay for another night's accommodation and struggled to find a way home .... BA was charging £270 each for a flight to Manchester ... so we gave that a miss! We eventually got back flying SAS via Stockholm but it has cost an extra £250.

As it's an italian airline I doubt we will get any compensation. If you are thinking of flying Volareweb then I suggest you think again and take a carrier who is less likely to cancel flights and abandon you!!

On caffeine

2007-12-07T12:02:00.000Z

Whilst waiting for the kettle to boil on Wednesday morning (to make tea) I happened to be listening to Book of the Week on Radio 4 when I was suddenly thrown a life line, or so I thought. Progress with some writing I'm currently engaged in has been painfully slow and I hear the reader recounting that French writer Honore de Balzac ground out novels for 18 hours a day on the back of coffee. (He infact cranked out 5 or more sizeable novels per year for over 20 years). I listened more intently. The reader went on with an extract from Balzac's “The Pleasures and Pains of Coffee.” (translated from the original french) :

"Ideas quick-march into motion like battalions of a grand army ... memories charge in .... the artillery of logic rushes up with clattering wagons ... sharpshooters sight and fire ... the paper is spread with ink".

Perhaps this is the answer. So on with the Italian Hob Espresso Maker. Then more from the radio ...

"I have discovered a horrible, rather brutal method that I recommend only to men of excessive vigor, men with thick black hair and skin covered with liver spots, men with big square hands and legs shaped like bowling pins. It is a question of using finely pulverized, dense coffee, cold and anhydrous, consumed on an empty stomach."

Perhaps that's rather extreme ... I let the coffee maker glug, glug.

It's now Friday and I'm on 3 cups of milky coffee a day and I must say that my literary output has increased ... thanks to Balzac and Radio 4. Hang on ... someone on the radio has just mentioned chocolate ...

Footnote: The French writer Honore de Balzac died of caffeine poisoning in 1850 at the age of 51 -- he was said to have consumed on the order of four dozen cups of coffee a day.

Radio 4 Book of the Week: At Large and at Small: Confessions of a Literary Hedonist By Anne Fadiman, abridged by Kirsteen Cameron, read by Teresa Gallagher.

The Pleasures and Pains of Coffee by Honore de Balzac

Childhood notion shattered by Google maps

2007-11-15T19:32:00.000Z

I remember being told that if we dug a very deep hole in the garden we would get to Australia. This belief now been shattered by the "Dig a hole through the Earth" feature of Google Maps! I positioned the green marker as instructed on where I used to live in Southern England and the hole appeared, not in Australia but over 1000Km southeast of Christchurch, New Zealand. This is almost 3100Km from Melbourne. Good thing my brother and I didn't get too far with our hole as it would have quickly filled up with water when approaching the destination!

Note to see for yourself, go to Google Maps and select My Maps.

Power to the people

2007-08-13T13:38:00.001+01:00

I caught an interesting program on Radio4 the other day about the people who balance the load on the National Grid (electricity supply). There's information on how they adjust the System frequency (about 50Hz) in real time to balance the system demand and total generation. If demand is greater than generation, the frequency falls while if generation is greater than demand, the frequency rises. But of course the demand for electricity varies a great deal throughout the day and night so there's a policy of Firm Frequency response (FFR) which includes Dynamic and Non-Dynamic Responses ... like turning up the output from some power stations or bringing up standby ones .... all facinating stuff!
But a very interesting idea of dealing with fluctuations in electricity demand is through dynamic demand. As we can measure the grid frequency through an ordinary electric socket we can start to switch off appliances (notably fridges & freezers which can be off for a while anyway) when the frequency dips below 50Hz and thus save bringing in expensive 'responses' such as buying some megaWatts from France. Apparently it would only cost a fiver to include this in the manufacture of a fridge and would be cost effective, according to dynamicDemand .
The best bit is that you can sit and watch the grid frequency in real time and see how good these National Grid jugglers are doing!

Trestrigintacentillion

2007-07-31T18:08:00.000+01:00

This is of course the name given to the number 10⁴⁰². But just in case you think this is a BIG number then take a look at big numbers. The Graham's number is reputably the largest number and so big that new notations had to be devised to even write it down! Expressed another way, if all the material in the universe were turned into pen and ink it would not be enough to write the number down. [ref].

it was my dad who ...

2007-06-02T10:30:00.000+01:00

it was my dad who …

when I was little the gearbox broke on our Bedford Dormobile
it was my dad who rigged up a piece of string which I pulled when he wanted to change gear … we got home

when my Primary school football team needed transport
it was my dad who provided the van and packed 12 boys in the back

when the toilet bunged up in the yacht we’d borrowed
it was my dad who got down there to unblock it … and then offered to make the sandwiches

when the main bearings on my bulldozer seized up
it was my dad who travelled up from Kent to lay under the machine in the cold, polishing the bearings

when it was cold and wet during the rugby season at school
it was my dad who came to stand on the touchline …wearing mum’s tights to keep his legs warm

when having a lie in on a Sunday morning
it was my dad who knocked on the front door … “Have you got a piece of wood, metal or stone about this big … I just want to fix … yet another project

it was my dad who

built us a sledge that went exceedingly fast

trusted us to learn quickly, but sometimes not quick enough
given our frequent visits to Sevenoaks A&E

filled the lawnmower with petrol so I could start my first
business … at 10

let us race minis around the electricity board works
… at 13

bought us an old Comer Van so we could travel up and beyond
the Arctic Circle … at 18

my dad was a great fixer of things and I’m proud that some of this has rubbed off on me …. it’s a pity that he couldn’t fix it to be with us for a bit longer

my dad 31 Aug 1925 - 23 May 2007

HIPpo - Home Information Packs - problems of

2007-05-17T12:47:00.000+01:00

With the imminent requirement to provide of Home Information Packs to potential buyers, I wadered off to homeinformationpacks.gov for further details. Apart from the Energy Performance Certificate which suggests that you can add solar photovoltaic cells to 25% of your roof area (but doesn't say that it will probably take over 100 years to see a return on the investment) and formal things link local authority searches and something to say who owns the house, the compulsary content is limited. One optional item is a Home Condition Report which look very much like a formalised building survey and is potentially the most useful item.
The other let off for dodgy properties is given in 'Do I need a Pack' section. It states that you do not need a Home Information Pack for (amongst others) Unsafe properties. Just the ones which need it I would think!
Another finding is that the seller doesn't have to give a pack to a potential buyer if the buyer can't afford the property. An interesting assessment?

Carbon trading standards (or the lack of them)

2007-04-06T20:09:00.000+01:00

Today on the radio, someone was complaining that patio heaters are bad for the planet ... a luxury which was emitting CO2 ... put away the patio heater and put on another jumpers was one piece of advice. But then came a statement from Calor Gas who claimed that a patio heater used 35 times LESS energy than a mobile phone charger. At 15KW for the patio heater that would have to be a mighty mobile phone!
Time for some sums. My phone charger is rated at 4.9V, 450mA which is about 2.2W. The phone only takes a few hours every week to charge, so that's 0.23KWh energy expended (and an overestimate as the battery will not be drawing this for all of the time). Say the heater is used 10 times a year for 2 hours then that's 300KWh. Even if the calculation is based on a charger delivering full charge for every minute of the day for a whole year (which is wildly unreasonable), this still only gives 19.2KWh, which is still 15 times less than the patio heater.
So the comparison is absurd. But I expect folks down the pub will be saying .... I'm getting rid of my mobile phone now and buying a patio heater ... much better for the planet!

Unable to print non-existent pages

2007-03-25T15:15:00.000+01:00

I has problems this morning trying to print a page from my database application. The 'printed' page was blank as shown by the preview function, although on the screen it had plenty of lines and text. I even produced a pdf file (one of the print options) but that was blank as well. Strange, as yesterday I didn't have any problems with printing. What had changed? Did the iTunes update that came earlier cause this? After some head scratching, I noticed the reason. The print from n to m button was selected and happened to be giving the range of page 6 to 6 (I remembered printing the last page of a document last night). As I only had 1 page, it went through the process of printing page 6, which of course was blank! BUT, why did the print dialog box even offer a print range option and more importantly, why did it not warn me that there wasn't a page 6, but instead produce a printout with 1 blank page? I've subsequently tried printing pages 10 to 19 of a single page document and it still gives a blank page, but not 10 blank pages!
I can't remember this occuring to me before, so either there's been a change to the OS or there's been a marked decline in my powers of observation!

My brother was stopped by the police for not being a woman

2007-03-01T22:36:00.000Z

Yes, it's true, my brother was driving through York and he saw the police car following him up the main road. But he didn't expect the aforementioned to pull him over. Apparently they had looked up the vehicle details and found it was registered to a woman (his partner). One might congratulate the police on this credible use of information technology but then again, one might think back to the day when O'Levels meant something!

whilst in Baltimore

2006-11-03T21:00:00.000Z

The InfoVis2006 conference season has just come to an end ... well 6 days seems like a season. Mostly sun and blue skies and temperatures well above the usual for this time of year. In contrast to the dreadful conditions back in the UK! A really good conference, especially as I was very pleased with how my presentation went and was received by the large audience. Pleanty of questions (is that a good thing?) and interest from folks after the talk and even the next day. Just off to the airport so will give a conference report later.

Name Voyager

2006-10-10T23:33:00.000+01:00

Just come across this interesting visualisation of names. Shows the popularity of names from 1880 to 2005. It's a Java thingy you can launch from here - Name Voyager. BTW, the data is from the US census so not many Harry's now but plenty of Britney's a few years ago!
Note: difficulty in finding out exactly which names are the most popular is there is a lot on display, colour coding is obviously note the full solution here! Anyway, it's quite fun and slick.

Whilst with the suits

2006-10-10T20:14:00.000+01:00

Last week I accompanied the Lancaster Team of six 2nd year students to the IBM University Team Challenge (It used to be called the ThinkPad Challenge but this assumes that ThinkPads will be given as prizes rather than an IBM pen). We were well looked after and our boys and girl enjoyed their blindfold table football and steering the worms of death, but unfortunately didn't go home with a ThinkPad or even a pen. (I got a pen!).
During the morning introduction-to-wonderful-things-going-on-at-IBM session a guy played some nice short movies which give an insight into the training of salespeople at IBM ... take alook here on utube :-)

My first blog item

2006-09-25T15:15:00.000+01:00

I wanted to start my blog on Pancake day (last Feb) but just didn't get round to it. But better late than never, here's my first entry.
Of course, if it wasn't for Bill (aka Kiel) and his mention of me in his "Just Kiel" blog (Comedic value, a sure winner.. at just kiel ) I'd probably not even got to this point in blogSpace.
Busy day. Waiting for it to rain outside ....