Gendal World

HMS Illustrious

2009-05-10T11:15:00.001+01:00

Thanks to a very generous invitation from Ian, I enjoyed a tour of HMS Illustrious yesterday afternoon.

I will be the first to confess that I know almost nothing about the military so I had little idea what to expect.

I was pleasantly surprised by how welcoming the crew were and how keen to show us around and explain how things worked.

The first thing that struck me was quite how large it was:

The second most surprising thing was how much access they gave us. This is the "steering wheel":

And this is the ski-jump, which we were allowed to walk to the top of. I was pleased to see they had installed a small net to catch anybody who happened to fall off...

However, this was the only piece of pandering to the health-and-safety mafia. The James Bond-esque sinking floor was, gloriously, left entirely unprotected with fences or warning signs when it dropped away and left a gaping hole in the deck. Hurrah!

Even more impressive was the machinery that underpinned this little piece of magic:

So, thank you to Ian for the invitation and to the Royal Navy for opening themselves up to ignorant people like me.

Blackbirds

2009-05-09T11:14:00.001+01:00

A couple of blackbirds are hanging around by the flat and I'm convinced they must be servicing a nest somewhere but I just can't figure out where it is.

It would be quite nice to watch the young birds as they fledge but, knowing my luck, I'll probably miss it.

The world's most unfortunate book cover?

2009-04-29T20:51:00.001+01:00

http://www.amazon.com/Mexico-Country-Guide-John-Noble/dp/1741048044/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_a#reader

Grand Central

2009-03-10T19:23:00.001Z

I took the train to York yesterday for a customer meeting. The timing wasn't locked down until quite late so I wasn't able to book my ticket until Saturday evening.

So I was probably naive to be shocked by the prices quoted for the journey.

However, I played around with the "single tickets" option to get the price as low as possible and managed to get a reasonable fare by taking a hit on the (peak) outbound and getting a great deal on an off-peak "any train" ticket for the return journey.

However, it was only when I picked up the tickets from the machine at King's Cross on Monday morning that I realised that my off-peak return ticket was actually with "Grand Central" rather than with National Express East Coast.

Now this could have been a big problem: they only run three trains a day in each direction so it drastically reduced my options. However, their 14:10 departure from York fitted with my plans so I wasn't too upset.

It proved to be a good mistake to have made... the journey was smooth, with no station stops at all and it arrived on time.

Nice to see competition on the railways in action!

Can it be true...?

2009-03-02T09:34:00.001Z

... that Tower Gateway DLR has reopened?!

I'm working from home today as I find it impossible to prepare and practise presentations in the office. I was planning to walk into Canary Wharf to pick up some lunch later. I might, however, go into the City instead.

The Talisman

2009-02-07T17:55:00.001Z

Like Ian and countless others, I headed over to King's Cross this afternoon to watch the arrival of the first steam engine built in the UK for fifty years.

By the time I arrived, the crowds on the concourse and platforms were massive so I wandered down York Way to watch it before it entered the station.

I didn't take any photos, as usual, so here is a picture of where I stood:

View this aerial image on Multimap.com
Bird's Eye view on Multimap.com
Get directions on Multimap.com

Now, as we have already established, I am not a train-spotter. Nor do I fraternise with them. So I was careful not to appear too eager or to appear to be anything other than an inquisitive passer-by who had happened upon a crowd of people.

I fooled nobody.

A friendly middle-aged woman and her eighty-nine year-old mother asked me when the train was due. And a genuine passerby asked me what everybody was looking at.

Oh well...

They didn't teach this at my school

2009-02-04T18:55:00.001Z

I remember my GCSE physics teacher telling us a story about the last time he bought a house. It was the middle of winter and had been snowing heavily.

He was worried about how much it would cost to heat so walked to the bottom of the garden and looked at the roof.

Unlike the houses either side, it had no snow on its roof. He concluded that the insulation was inadequate and answered his own question.

He was clearly just being naive. For there is another perfectly reasonable explanation for why the snow may have melted...

Snow, snow, snow

2009-02-02T14:51:00.001Z

Everybody else seems to be at it.

So here are some pictures of snow.

The view from the flat this morning....

Some kids made the most of the school closures....

I took this photo of Canary Wharf this morning. Scarily, it's completely invisible now... the weather isn't getting any better....

They're at it again

2009-01-19T11:39:00.001Z

Our elected representatives are at it again. Apparently collecting receipts for everything they buy on expenses is just too much effort. Strange... everybody else seems to manage it.

Nevertheless, they appear to want to limit scrutiny of how they spend the money that they take from us to fund themselves.

It seems some of the grass-roots organisations are also angry about this.

Here's the email I just sent to my MP:

Dear Mr Fitzpatrick,

You may recall that we corresponded some time ago on the subject of
MPs' attempts to limit scrutiny of their expenses by amending the
Freedom of Information Act.

It would appear that Parliament is returning to this subject on
Thursday in another attempt to relieve MPs of the burdens they impose
on everybody else.

Could you let me know if you are in favour of the proposed changes
and, if not, whether you plan to sign Jo Swinson's Early Day Motion on
the topic please?

The full text of the Early Day Motion is below.

Yours sincerely,

Richard Brown

Freedom of Information (Parliament) Order 2009

That this House notes with concern the provisions in the Freedom of
Information (Parliament) Order 2009 to exempt remove [sic] the
expenses of Members of Parliament and Peers from the scope of the
Freedom of Information Act'; notes that this order will single out MPs
and Peers in a special category as the only paid public officials who
will note [sic] have to disclose full details of their expenses; notes
with concern the regressive effect of this Order on Parliamentary
transparency and the detrimental impact it will have on Parliament in
the eyes of the public; calls on Ministers to block or repeal the
Order in the interest of MPs' and Peers' accountability to members of
the public.

Cure for Condensation

2009-01-11T11:16:00.001Z

The recent cold weather has resulted in an unpleasant build-up of condensation in the flat.

I can cope with slightly steamed up windows but when small pools of water started building up on window-ledges, it was time to do something about it.

Leaving windows open for long periods of time helps with the problem but it's not really a solution when the weather is as cold as now.

The cause is quite simple: too much moisture being produced (breathing, cooking, showering, etc) and too little air exchange with the outside (because it's COLD and the windows are CLOSED!)

I did some research and decided that the solution would be do invest in a dehumidifier. Sadly, it seems that everybody else has had the same idea and everywhere is out of stock.

I decided that the Delonghi DEM10 would be the best choice as it seems to get good feedback and it is priced keenly. Unfortunately, it seems to be out of stock everywhere. I stumbled upon one in the basement of John Lewis on Oxford Street last week and almost wept with joy. I stood guard over it while I furiously tried to get the attention of an assistant. When somebody finally came over, I was distraught to learn that it was the only one he had and that he was not prepared to sell it to me! Apparently it had been on display for six months and had undergone so much abuse that there was no chance it would work. I even offered to take it off his hands for £20 with a promise not to return it if it proved to be faulty. No joy: he wanted to keep hold of it as a demonstration model.

He did give me one piece of useful information, however. Apparently a container full of DEM10s was supposed to arrive in the UK before Christmas but didn't turn up. I suppose a missing container of a popular model, combined with a cold snap, might be enough to result in a nationwide shortage of pretty much all similarly-priced products.

So I returned to the web and stumbled upon a company that appears to specialise in nothing but Dehumidifers. Ebac appear to live and breathe dehumidifiers. Indeed, it looks like they make their own and have been doing so for some time. I suspect the £100 price point was not one they addressed until recently and so I had to hunt quite hard on their website until I found the "Amazon", which appears to be their entry-level model for price conscious people like me.

Now, I have to admit that I was initially somewhat suspicious. "Ebac" does look quite like "Ebay" so any company that names one of their best-selling products "Amazon" is either stunningly naive or trying just a little too hard to game the search engines.

Anyway, I thought I'd give them a go.

And I have to say that I'm impressed. The machine isn't pulling gallons of water out of the air but it is slowly but surely filling up the water container. More importantly, the condensation has almost completely gone. The bathroom mirror clears far more quickly after a shower and there are no unpleasant pools of water under the windows. So, I'm somewhat impressed so far.

Woolwich Arsenal Station

2009-01-10T16:03:00.001Z

Yes, OK. I admit it. The DLR Woolwich Arsenal extension opened today so I went for a ride.

The train was full of train-spotter types with notepads and cameras. At least one of them was muttering things under his breath for most of the journey and there was near ecstasy amongst others when the train lost power in the tunnel and started rolling backwards.

It made me wonder at what point one makes the transition from being an "interested observer" to a trainspotter. My self image is strongly aligned with the former. But I can't stop worrying that I may have crossed the line and just not noticed...

Free 0870 and 0845 calls on BT

2009-01-08T21:59:00.001Z

BT plan to make calls to 0870 and 0845 numbers free to most of their customers.

Now, I believe the operators and owners of these numbers receive fees from the caller (or their phone company) when calls to these numbers are made. BT say they'll absorb these costs.

So, what's to stop me signing up for hundreds of these numbers and then getting millions of people to call me? More likely, what's to stop a bad guy setting up hundreds of these numbers and then infecting those milions of computers in the country that still have modems and are connected to the phone line?

I assume BT have this covered. But I'd love to know how.

The wrong kind of terrorist

2009-01-04T18:01:00.001Z

Ian discovered last night that the Met Police were buying ads encouraging the public to report suspected terrorism.

Unfortunately, he discovered this when he noticed that the ads were being placed on his own site. The working assumption is that the police may, scandalously, be buying keywords as broad as "right wing".

I guess a Freedom of Information request might answer that particular question.

However, a more worrying observation was made by a commentator on Iain Dale's site: they seem to have a very specific idea about the kinds of terrorists they're looking for.

I typed the following four searches into Google. Try to guess which ones triggered the ad...

Right wing extremist

Left wing extremist

Muslim extremist

Animal extremist

Here are the results:

Right Wing Extremist

Ad appears in line with the search results and is highly visible:

Left Wing Extremist

No ad:

Muslim Extremist

Ad appears - but is way over to the right. I almost missed it

Animal Extremist

No ad

So I guess the implication is clear:

If you're worried about right-wing or religious extremists next door, the Met wants to hear from you.

If you live next door to a mad animal-rights lunatic, don't worry about it.

As for the last case, I guess it's rational for the Met not to waste money advertising on Google. I mean, if he lives next door to a crazed loon intent on wrecking the economy, Darling only has to step outside and tell the bobby guarding the entrance to No. 10 about it...

"Rat to Ox"

2009-01-03T16:50:00.001Z

Leaving aside the question of whether throwing away a trusted brand name is a good idea, can anybody explain Aviva's latest poster ad to me, please?

The ad reads something like this:

"The Quarrymen to The Beatles

Rat to Ox

Norwich Union to Aviva"

I get the first line and I understand the third line but the middle line just confuses me.

Is this a reference to something to do with horoscopes? Chinese mythology, perhaps? Something else entirely? I genuinely don't get it.

Anyone know?

Windows Password Strangeness

2008-12-14T21:17:00.001Z

I just changed my Windows password and discovered something really, really odd.

I can lock the screen and then unlock it using the new password without problem.

I can also reboot the computer and log on successfully.

But... if I put the computer into standby and then wake it up again, I can't log in.

I began to question my sanity... did I change the password to what I thought I had? Perhaps I didn't change it at all?!

Having to do a hard reboot to get back into my computer whenever it goes into Standby is not a particularly useful characteristic of a portable computer.

What was going on?!

And then a possibility dawned on me... I had included a punctuation mark in my new password (the double-speech-mark symbol, ").

Hmmm.... what if something really weird was going on with keyboard mapping?

In the UK, the " symbol is accessed by pressing Shift-2 on the keyboard. But on US keyboards, you have to press Shift and one of the buttons near the Enter key (the key marked @ on UK keyboards).

So I gave it a try... and guess what...? It worked!

So, I have to use Shift-2 when logging on from cold and after locking the screen but need to use Shift-@ if I've returned from standby.

How mind-bogglingly odd.

(And yes... I have changed my password to something new now)

"The Politics Slot"

2008-12-02T20:28:00.002Z

My blood pressure had the misfortune of catching Channel 4's "The Politics Slot" this evening. A Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Labour, Toby Perkins, attempted to show how good the government had been for his local area, Chesterfield.

I could only bring my anger levels back under control by writing him a stern email:

Dear Toby,

I happened to catch your broadcast on Channel 4 just now. I wanted
you to know how profoundly depressing I found it. In the space of
barely two minutes you managed to highlight so much that is wrong with
our current government.

Examples:

* Somehow you think it is admirable to state that unemployment is
never a price worth paying. You would have more credibility if you
accepted that there are tradeoffs in public policy. If the
alternatives are worse, as they tragically sometimes can be, then even
something as unpalatable as increasing unemployment can be the lesser
of two evils. You patronise your audience by pretending otherwise.

* Your claim that the Labour government paid for the community project
you showed was deeply unpleasant. The Labour government did not pay
for it; the current and future taxpayers of this country paid for it.
If you're going to claim credit for this project, at least be honest:
the government's primary act was to take money away from individuals
who would have been free to spend it as they chose so that you could
spend it as you chose. There is nothing particularly admirable about
this.

I respect those who seek to make a positive impact on their
communities and I wish you good luck in your efforts to make a
difference to Chesterfield. But I'm sure you'll understand that, on
the basis of your broadcast, I can't yet wish you success in your
Parliamentary ambitions.

Yours sincerely,

Richard Brown.

London, E1W.

I feel better now. But I can't help thinking I should have written it in green ink.

[UPDATE 2008-12-04 Toby was good enough to respond to this email, and with some humour. See the comments section]

Something for Phil, Tel and Stu to think about

2008-12-01T21:44:00.001Z

In the UK, it is illegal for large shops to trade for more than six hours on Sundays.

Clearly, those who don't want to shop or work on Sundays should be free not to. But, equally, it is wrong to prevent those who want to from doing so.

It occurred to me over lunch yesterday that now is the perfect time for the large retailers to force a change to the law.

Imagine the situation:

If Phil, Tel and Stu were to open their stores for a full day on Sunday, what would happen?

Would we really have the spectacle of the state prosecuting companies who were doing what they could to increase employment, offer additional opportunities for their staff to earn money in these DifficultTimes* and provide additional opportunities for consumers to help keep the economy Moving Forward**?

The only face-saving way out of it for the government would be to accept the economic argument and repeal the ban.

So, go on, guys.... do it!

* Trademark of HM Government.

** What does it mean for an economy to "move", never mind move forward?

Credit where it's due...

2008-11-26T21:38:00.001Z

I am proud to announce that my council, Tower Hamlets has come out bottom of a recycling league table.

Good for them. I hope they don't succumb to pressure and increase their spending in this area.

I've never understood why we should spend effort processing waste into products that have a lower value than the resources consumed performing the recycling.

For all their faults, I'm glad that Tower Hamlets appear to share my reasoning.

Psychopaths take over the tube

2008-11-17T20:56:00.001Z

And no, I'm not talking about the RMT.

What on earth have the morons at London Underground done with Bank/Monument?

Until this morning, my trip to and from work was completely unaffected by the escalator works at Bank.

On the way there, I would take the DLR to Bank and then take two escalators up to the Waterloo and City Line. On the way back, I would avoid the W&C as there was no easy way back down to the DLR. Instead, I would take the District line from Blackfriars to Monument, take the escalators down to the Northern Line and then follow the handily placed stairs straight down to the DLR. Completely painless.

Imagine my outrage when I alighted at Monument this evening. I was prevented - by Tube staff, backed up by a menacing police presence in the background - from taking the short stroll from the District platforms to the Northern Line.

Instead, I was forced to leave Monument, walk to Bank and then re-enter the system. I thought the queues to enter Bank were bad until I reached the Northern Line platform, where I had to queue to get on to the platform.

Of course, I was at the wrong end now so had to walk two-thirds of the full length to reach the DLR stairs.

What an utter farce.

Arbitrage Opportunities

2008-11-13T14:07:00.001Z

So, interest rates may soon drop to 0%.

This creates an interesting opportunity.

Let's imagine two people:

Person A: Has a mortgage at a fixed rate of interest (say 6%)

Person B: Has some money to save.

If the savings rates on offer are low - say 2% - it would benefit person B to lend the money to person A instead.

Person A could offset this money against their mortgage and avoid paying the 6% interest charge on that money. They could, therefore, afford to pay person B a competitive rate of interest - perhaps 4% - and still come out ahead. One might imagine that there could be lots of people like Person "A" out there (mentioning no names...). I'm sure they'd be interested in such a scheme.

There are three problems, all of them solvable:

1) Person B is likely to be liable for tax on this income so interest rates may have to fall quite far for it to be an attractive deal

2) Person B will worry about the possibility of default by Person A

3) Persons A and B have to find each other.

Problems 2) and 3) could be solved by the introduction of some sort of intermediary. Let's call it a bank.

The bank will wrap up the default risk with their fee for providing the matching service and other administration and capture it as a spread between the rate they'd pay to person B and the rate they'd expect from person A.

So this idea would actually only work if rates fell so far that unsecured bank *lending* rates fell below 6%.

Does anybody see that happening any time soon?

Please return item to the bagging area, revisited

2008-10-24T09:24:00.001+01:00

Dan broke the bad news last week that these satanic machines have spread around the world.

If you recall, my voyage into hell began when I tried to use a supermarket self-checkout machine and couldn't get the thing to stop shouting at me.

After my most recent battle, I decided to do something very unusual: make eye contact with and speak to another person in a busy shop in London.

No. I hadn't gone out of my mind... this person worked there. But still.

I asked why the machine was so demonstrably rubbish and he made a useful observation: the machine takes some time to register that an item has been placed in the bagging area.

This means that if you want to remove a bag, you have to wait for the item to be registered and then remove the bag.

I tried his idea and, sure enough, if I waited a second or so, the item would be registered. Then, if I lifted off the bag, it would still shout at me but one of the options was to tell it that I had lifted off the bag.

Phew!

I think I also understand why the machines work in this way. The question is... is there a better way?

Consider the design meeting.

Requirement: "All our customers are thieves so we need to be able to detect if somebody places an item in the bagging area if they haven't scanned."

Now... an "obvious" solution to this is to put in a sensor that reacts when an item is placed in the bagging area. If an item is registered without a preceding scan operation then something dodgy is going on.

So far, so good.

But there's a problem: different customers will scan in different ways.

Sure... some of them will "scan, bag, scan, bag, ..." and this detection mechanism will work.

But some of them will pick up three items, scan all three and then put two of them in the bagging area and hold on to the other one because they know it's fragile and they want to put it in last... and then they'll scan two items and put both in together at the same time.... (you get the idea).

This means that it would be impossible to tell whether somebody had placed an unscanned item into one of these batches and the requirement could not be met.

Now, the solution they chose to employ was simple and cheap. They simply enforced the "scan, bag, scan, bag, ..." approach in the most clunky way possible.

However, it's interesting to think about what else they could have done.

One user-friendly idea could have been to add a set of scales to the side of the machine where the unscanned items are kept prior to scanning.

If the total weight of the "to be scanned" items equals the total weight of the "scanned" items at the end of the process then they would know there had been no skulduggery. (I can immediately think of a few problems with this approach, however...)

Either way, I still hate those machines.

My faith in the Economist is restored!

2008-10-10T14:05:00.001+01:00

I wrote last week that the Economist had cancelled my subscription without warning.

Well, they're back in my good books now. Their PR people saw my posting and somebody from The Economist has just been in touch to sort it out.

An economic illiteracy crisis in East London has just been averted!

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

The Economist May have lost a subscriber

2008-10-03T17:13:00.001+01:00

I switched bank a few months ago. The new bank (First Direct) contacted all the companies that I have a Direct Debit with and told them to move the mandate from my old bank to the new one.

They all did it.

Apart from one:

The Economist.

They seem to have cancelled the old Direct Debit but not bothered to set up the new one.

Worse, rather than contacting me immediately when the last payment failed to go through, they cancelled my subscription and sent me a letter instead.

Which means this week's copy hasn't been delivered.

:-(

Balance on Channel 4 News

2008-08-29T19:13:00.001+01:00

So, McCain announces his running mate.

Channel 4 News leads with the Democrats' line on the announcement ("inexperienced candidate a heartbeat from power...") and Obama's attack on McCain in his speech last night.

They later introduced the Governor of Alaska as a former beauty queen.

We know how much Channel 4 News (and the BBC, of course) want Obama to win but can't they at least pretend to be balanced?

Is the economy even worse than it looks?

2008-08-24T15:23:00.001+01:00

Passing through Bank yesterday evening, I would guess that over 80% of the advert slots in the corridors between the DLR and Central platforms contained TfL adverts, rather than paid-for ones.

Surely the advertising market can't have gone so bad, so quickly? I've only been out of the country for a week!

Faster Payments

2008-08-08T14:10:00.001+01:00

Wow...

I'm in the process of moving my money resting in various accounts to First Direct in preparation for switching to an offset mortgage.

I transferred a chunk of money just now from Barclays. I then switched to my First Direct account and the money was already in it.

It took less than a second.

Seriously impressive.

I think they're trying to tell me something

2008-08-05T11:22:00.001+01:00

First they closed off the Wapping-> East London Line -> Jubilee -> Waterloo route to work.

Then they forced me to use Bank rather than Tower Hill/Gateway to get from the DLR to the District Line.

And now they're closing Blackfriars too!

So, as of March next year, my only viable route to the office will be Limehouse -> DLR -> Bank -> W&C -> Waterloo.

Wonderful.

"Please return item to the bagging area"

2008-08-03T19:49:00.001+01:00

Arghhh! Who designed the self-check-out machines that have proliferated of late?

Regardless of the store, the self-checkout machines have exactly the same design so somebody, somewhere, is making a lot of money selling them.

I can only assume the manufacturer has a rock-solid patent that is keeping rivals from competing and protects their sordid little monopoly. How else could they get away with failing to fix gaping defects in the user interface that have persisted since they first appeared several years ago?

"Item removed from bagging area"

... yes. I know. The bag was full.

"Please return item to the bagging area"

... WHY?!!! WHY SHOULD I?????

"Unexpected item in the bagging area"

... YOU JUST TOLD ME TO!!!!! I want to cry now :-(

Useless, useless, stupid, stupid machines.

I see I'm not the only one who hates them... (the date on that post also shows that the user interface stupidity has persisted for at least a year.)

New Nightbuses...

2008-07-29T19:44:00.001+01:00

I was in Norwich today visiting a customer and thought I'd take a different route home from Liverpool Street this evening.

I walked down some back streets and picked up a 15 bus from Aldgate.

When I alighted on Commercial Road, I noticed that the bus stop was reporting a bus route I hadn't heard of before, the N550.

For those who don't live in London, the "N" is important: it implies a night bus and is therefore a useful backup if you stay out too late to get the tube and can't (or won't, in my case) get a cab.

Imagine my surprise, therefore, when I walked down Butcher Row and noticed a bus stop advertising a second night bus, the N551!

Two new routes in one day? What gives?

There was nothing obvious on TfL's website but I did find something in Google. It appears that the N50 (an unreliable but useful) service is being split into the two routes above and that, wonder of wonders, one of them (the N551) will travel down the Highway, meaning it will stop outside the flat. Hurrah!

Click here and search forward for "New night route"

Lessons Learned in the startup world.

2008-07-20T19:26:00.001+01:00

Interesting reflections on what not to do when running a startup.

"What America needs right now... is a concrete way to create more imaginary wealth"

2008-07-14T20:58:00.001+01:00

Recession-Plagued Nation Demands New Bubble To Invest In

What is this?

2008-07-08T18:29:00.001+01:00

Resting between Blackfriars road and rail bridges...

The Curse of The Economist

2008-07-08T18:18:00.001+01:00

July 3: Full-page profile in the Economist.

July 8: Fired.

Oops....

Kitchen

2008-07-07T16:26:00.001+01:00

I was speaking to a colleague in Germany last week and he pointed out that I had blogged about the nightmare of getting a new kitchen put in... and showed lots of the "before" pictures.

But I never showed the "after" pictures.

So here they are! (only a year late)... and before decoration.

Foreign Exchange Market

2008-07-06T14:43:00.001+01:00

I did quite a bit of work last year on a solution for a client who had an ever-increasing number of foreign-exchange orders that were threatening to swamp an infrastructure that was built for a world where the volumes were smaller and each order was larger.

The basic idea (there was more to it than this...) was to utilise CEP (Complex Event Processing) techniques to monitor the order flow and look for opportunities to aggregate similar, small orders into smaller numbers of large ones.

When I was producing the explanatory materials and sales decks, I included a worked example of how the foreign exchange market works. I had to piece it together and validate it by speaking to colleagues who specialise in this area and by getting a couple of clients to give me their comments.

Interestingly, I stumbled upon a rather detailed US government web site today. It describes the market in great detail. Knowing about this material last year would have saved me a lot of time...

US Government Primer on the FX market

Words with two opposites

2008-06-11T22:53:00.001+01:00

I'm sure this is the sort of thing that most people do when they first learn to speak, rather than decades later. But I realised yesterday that I couldn't think of any words that had more than one opposite meaning.

That is: "good" has one opposite. Namely, "bad".

Likewise, the one opposite of "on" is "off".

Therefore, I was delighted this evening to realise that "lost" has two opposites: "won" and "found".

Hurrah.

Now I think about it, I'm sure there are thousands of others. Presumably all one has to do is analyse every heteronym in the language.

Still... I enjoyed my victory.

(Now I think about it, it's not obvious that "on" only has one opposite. Presumably "under" is also valid. I suppose I should be pleased to have found another. But I'm actually a little irritated that it's so easy to find them)

I invest with Wormwood Bayne

2008-06-10T09:04:00.001+01:00

Genius

via

Airline Cashflow Crisis

2008-05-30T16:34:00.001+01:00

I've been waiting almost ten weeks for a refund from an airline, which had originally promised to do it in six weeks (which I thought was bad enough).

So what do we think the reason is? Cashflow crisis, incompetence or cynicism bordering on banditry?

I hesitate to name them as I'm sure there are probably laws against accusing companies of being insolvent but one really does wonder how difficult it is to process a refund.

Passport Control

2008-05-30T16:27:00.001+01:00

I flew back to London City Airport from Dublin yesterday.

I didn't have to go through passport control.

Is that normal?

Narrow Platforms

2008-05-27T22:08:00.001+01:00

The platforms at Limehouse DLR Station were narrowed rather severely a few weeks ago by having scaffolding and wooden planks positioned along the length. I would say that the depth has been reduced by at least 50cm - possibly more.

The work appears to be temporary and, as both platforms have been similarly mutilated, I'm guessing it's something to do with the three-car project rather than the bridge to the c2c station but the narrowing is noticeable and borders on dangerous at peak periods.

Surely this isn't just being done to create storage space? Anybody know?

I knew it

2008-05-27T07:30:00.001+01:00

Walking back from the cinema at West India Quay last night, I looked up at the DLR viaduct and something didn't seem right. There were huge numbers of workers in high-visibility vests scurrying around, pulling ropes and driving machinery.

There was still about ten hours left until the system had to be open again but something didn't seem right... I said something like: "looks like we'll be walking tomorrow".

And so it has turned out...

http://londonconnections.blogspot.com/2008/05/engineers-break-dlr.html

I thought they would over-run because of the weather (it was pouring down) but, if the first comment above is to be believed, the problem was actually with one of the bridges.

If so, why didn't they bother to email those on their mailing list once they realised so we could make alternative plans?

This is a big deal

2008-05-21T20:05:00.001+01:00

If I understand this correctly, one of the major ratings agencies incorrectly rated some instruments in 2006. This is surely an open goal for anybody wanting to blame any subsequent losses on someone else.

I really wouldn't want to be Moody's or their insurers right now...

(Question: who can say they knew what a CPDO was before they heard about this story?)

Radio 4's Today Programme... still embarrassingly ill-informed

2008-05-19T08:08:00.001+01:00

I don't know why I insist on listening to the Today programme. It's not healthy to get so stressed so early in the morning by their one-sided reports, determination to follow their own agenda and insistence on persisting with the "socialist homily of the day" slot at 7:45.

This morning's show was a classic, though.

Evan Davies's failure to understand the difference between "volume" and "mass" during a discussion on alcohol (8mg vs 10ml in a unit) was minor enough but still amusing.

But the best part was James Naughtie's embarrassment of an invterview with the boss of Glaxo SmithKline.

He was determined to throw some mud about Seroxat, seemingly thinking that vague questions, unsupported assertions and sheer aggression could substitute actually having a clue about the topic or having been briefed.

I thought Jean-Pierre Garnier humoured him more than was necessary before tearing him apart. You could sense Naughtie floundering at the end and it made for a most satisfying experience.

Being reminded that even the most "respected" members of the press are really just a bunch of cowboys is still somewhat disconcerting, however.

Old Street

2008-05-18T19:02:00.001+01:00

My brother was down this weekend (primarily to attend a party being held by a theatre company who had recently performed a play he wrote).

Rather than go into town or stay local, as usual, I thought his arrival would be a good excuse to go somewhere different for a change.

So we went to Old Street. Now, I know this area has passed through "scary", "fashionable" and "mainstream" on its journey to "unremarkable" but I have managed to avoid going out there until now so it was new to me.

We went to an enjoyably idiosyncratic bar and had a great night. Perhaps we'll go there again sometime. Probably in 2011 or something, knowing how long it takes me to change my habits.

Spoke too soon :-(

2008-04-06T21:03:00.001+01:00

I was too trusting.

Virgin decided that a seven hour delay was insufficient. So they ~~cancelled~~... sorry, "renamed" VS15 to VS115 and "rescheduled" it to tomorrow afternoon. Nice.

There's a minor problem. I am only supposed to be there until Wednesday lunchtime.

When I looked ahead to another day in transit, I realised it made no sense to continue.... I just wouldn't get any value from the conference now. I'd be a zombie all day on Tuesday and then it would be time to go home again on Wednesday.

What a complete waste of time (and money) and a big disappointment.... the conference I'm missing out on is one of IBM's best.

I am not happy.

Gatwick Misery

2008-04-06T16:30:00.001+01:00

I think this extract from Virgin's "Flight Tracker" page says it all:

FLIGHT INFORMATION

Flight number: VS 015

Departure date: 06 Apr 2008

Route: London (LGW) to Orlando (MCO)

Scheduled departure time: 06 Apr 12:45

Estimated departure time: 06 Apr 19:45

Scheduled arrival time: 06 Apr 16:55

Estimated arrival time: 06 Apr 23:37

Were it not for the fact that I am committed to present at this conference, I think I'd probably cancel my reservation and go home.

[UPDATE 17:09.... A small crumb of comfort. I queued up at the information desk and begged to be upgraded. 10,000 miles lighter, I'm now in one of the best seats in Premium Economy (75H). Not Upper Class but better than nothing!]

DLR Goody Bag

2008-04-04T20:51:00.001+01:00

I returned home from Vienna this evening and amongst my mail was a bag with a TfL roundel on the franking strip. What could it be?!

Imagine my delight when I opened it to find:

Three DLR wristwatches
Two DLR "new look" carriage cardboard models with jelly beans inside!
Three copies of "Celebrating 20 years" [of the DLR]
Three copies of the "Introducing the new DLR Langdon Park station" CD Rom.

Fantastic!

Many thanks to David Sanders at DLR and The Londonist for tipping me off.

Getting from the DLR to the District Line at Bank

2008-04-02T18:52:00.001+01:00

So, those wacky pranksters at TfL have decided that getting from the DLR to the District Line at Bank is an unnecessary luxury in these times of austerity. Which is, presumably, why they've decided to ban such things for a year.

The proposed alternatives are laughable:

Travel from Limehouse to Canning Town to pick up the Jubilee? Go to Mile End to get the District? Quite apart from how far I'd have to go out of my way, are they really suggesting I pay to enter zone 3 in order to get from zone 2 to zone 1?

The most obvious route for me would be simply to leave Bank and walk down to Cannon Street.

Except... that would be two journeys.

So I wrote to them.

It turns out that they're going to make an exception and charge people who leave at Bank and re-enter at Cannon Street within thirty minutes as if they'd only done one journey.

I'm almost tempted deliberately walk really slowly and get a coffee to make the most of my hard-fought-for new rights.

Here's the answer they sent:

Dear Mr Brown

Thanks for your email about pay as you go charges during the current interchange arrangements at Bank.

I'm sorry for the inconvenience these arrangements will cause.

I can confirm that you will be able to touch out at Bank and touch in at Cannon Street without being charged for two journeys. This will be considered as a continuous journey providing you do so within a period of 30 minutes.

I hope this clarifies the position for you and please contact me again if I can be of any help in the future.

Kind regards

[Name removed]

Customer Service Advisor
Central Line

Of course, "London Connections" have a nice diagram that suggests some routes might be open.... (don;t tell anyone though...)

Flying from Heathrow...

2008-03-30T18:08:00.001+01:00

I'm on my way to Vienna for training. I had really wanted to fly from London City Airport but there were no flights that worked.

So, instead, I'm flying out from Heathrow :-(

I considered flying BA but, because Austrian Airlines can at least bring me back to City Airport, I decided to fly out with them as well.

An unintentionally inspired decision!

I am in Terminal 2. No queues at check-in and minimal queue at security. And at least the possibility that my bags will arrive.

It wasn't all good, however. I've just had the most strange "fish pie" from the air-side Wetherspoon's. I'm not sure why I went there as I didn't have a drink.

Either way, I'd love to know if anybody could identify the fish I ate. There were two main fish-like elements to the pie: red cubes and orange cubes.

I'm guessing the red pieces were Salmon but I have absolutely no idea what the orange pieces were. They didn't taste smoked (well, they didn't taste of anything, really) so what on earth could they have been?

Big Bridge News

2008-03-28T17:01:00.001Z

For those who like bridges and cranes and railways, tomorrow is your lucky day!

North Woolwich Satellite Dish Breeding Farm

2008-03-26T21:02:00.001Z

I thought I'd visit scary South East London on Tuesday so took the DLR to King George IV so I could take the Woolwich Ferry over the river... I'd never done it before.

Before I got on the ferry, I had a walk around the riverfront.

I stumbled upon what I can only describe as a factory farm where they grow satellite dishes.

There were big ones, small ones, baby ones, portable ones, oddly shaped freakish ones. Most bizarre.

The name of the site was particularly funny. Apparently it's a "Teleport". One shudders to think what goes on there.

There's a small glimpse of it in this photo... but the real thing is much scarier....

New London Architecture

2008-03-01T16:19:00.001Z

Ian linked to the website of "New London Architecture" the other week.

I was in the area the afternoon so popped around.

What a fantastic place!

The centrepiece of the venue is a massive map of Central London with 3-D models of the buildings. There is a small photograph of it here. One could spend hours looking at it.

I spent some time in the book shop and stumbled upon the reference section. They have a collection of periodicals from organisations such as the Institution of Civil Engineers.

One of the magazines I flipped through was a special edition about the building of the high-speed link between St. Pancras and the Channel Tunnel. More technical detail than you could ever wish for (if that sort of thing rocks your boat...). They're not available to purchase, sadly.

Naturally, the first thing I did when I arrived home was try to find the issue on the web instead.

And here it is!

The individual articles are provided as separate PDFs but it's well worth browsing through.

If you've ever wanted to know about ventilation shafts, the building of the new Thameslink Station under St. Pancras or the cost of the project then look no further!

"You are not, nor have ever been, on record as a criminal suspect"

2008-02-19T17:51:00.001Z

It's official! The US Department of Homeland Security doesn't think I'm a criminal.

My last two trips to the United States have been marred by delays when passing through Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

On both occasions, the agent spent a long time studying his computer screen and my passport before calling for an "escort" and having me taken to a room for further screening.

This screening consisted of my being forced to wait for nearly an hour until my name was called and I was told I was free to go - with no explanation for why I was kept.

Speaking to some colleagues on a discussion forum at work, it transpired I was not the only person this had happened to. There were various theories on why it happened and how to stop it from happening again. The most obvious approach - stop going to America - had simplicity on its side but was likely to be somewhat career limiting for somebody who works in the IT industry.

The next best alternative was to try reasoning with the system. But how?

After much digging, I stumbled upon the "Traveler Redress Inquiry Program" (TRIP).

I filled out an online form, printed it out, attached photocopies of the documents they asked for and sent it off. And promptly forgot all about it.

I don't even recall when I sent it - it was many months ago, though.

I returned home from work today to find a letter from the Department of Homeland Security. It appears that they have investigated my case and, although they cannot guarantee I'll never be stopped again (the stopping appears to be a result of their matching algorithms), I will be permitted to show this letter to the agent and ask that they read it. No guarantees, of course... but at least it's something.

I'll be in Orlando with work at the start of April so I guess I'll soon get a chance to try it out!

Explaining CDOs and the subprime mess

2008-02-17T19:23:00.001Z

The ongoing Northern Rock disaster and a note from a colleague reminded me that very few people have any idea what is behind a lot of this mess.

One of the best descriptions I've seen was on a mathematics blog (one with an enjoyably low opinion of engineers who opine on matters economic).

However, my colleague has gone one better. He discovered a presentation that explains it all. Well, not quite everything. And it's not quite accurate in all respects. Or, indeed, in many. Still quite fun though.

Exploding Crème brûlée with Bubblegum Ice-cream

2008-02-14T19:06:00.001Z

I can't decide if the dessert I enjoyed last night was the best in ages or a candidate for "Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares"

I was staying at the De Vere St. David's Park near Chester with colleagues and had the strangest dessert I've had in ages.

The crème brûlée had the customary caramelised sugar on top. On top of that, however, was an extra coating: crystals of the exploding candy that used to be so popular when I was a kid (imagine a sensation of your teeth exploding).

On the side was a lump of purple ice-cream that tasted exactly like Hubba Bubba - sitting on a sticky brown square of goo that had almost exactly the consistency of a chunk of chewing gum.

The whole dessert was monumentally childish and I can't decide if it was horrific or a work of utter genius.

I'm inclined to think the latter...!

How do we help the wilfully ignorant to understand?

2008-02-14T18:59:00.001Z

Tim Worstall makes an interesting point today about Caroline Lucas's failure to understand that the whole purpose of tradeable emissions permits is that it allows those who find it difficult to reduce their emissions to pay those who find it easier to do it on their behalf.

That is: if it's going to cost me £100 to reduce my emissions by some amount but somebody else can do it for a tenner (and they wouldn't otherwise have done it), then surely it's better for me to pay them instead? We get the same reduction and I'm left with some money to invest back into my business or whatever!

The problem is that the environmentalists just see this as me shirking my responsibility and getting away without paying the "full cost" of my evil behaviour.

This is, of course, ludicrous nonsense but the argument seems to appeal to some people.

So why not turn the argument around to help them understand?

Rather than focus on the cost of a unit emission reduction, why not focus on how far emissions can be reduced for a unit cost?

Going back to my example: for £100, I could reduce my emissions by some amount if I do it myself. Or, I could pay my cleverer friend £100 and they could reduce their emissions by ten times as much - for the same price!

Now, I'm clearly not suggesting people should be forced to buy permits for emissions they're not making (which would be the consequence of forcing me to actually pay that £100 to my friend) but surely it's obvious that the system that allows more to be done with less is the preferable one.

"Listen to the music then turn it off..."

2008-02-01T21:34:00.001Z

... hmmm.... I don't know what they mean.

Surely I can't have been the only person who thought the only part of "Grandstand" worth enduring was the theme tune?

It would seem not :-)

(courtesy of b3ta, of course).

IBM Acquires AptSoft

2008-01-24T10:03:00.001Z

I have been increasingly interested in the topic of Complex Event Processing of late so was delighted to see the news that we have just bought AptSoft.

Opher also seems pleased.

Can't wait to get my hands on it and to have a play.

Temple

2008-01-21T08:53:00.001Z

Like half the world, I popped over to the Inns of Court and the Royal Courts of Justice on Saturday afternoon to see what all of the fuss was about.

I can't believe I hadn't been there before. If I'd known I could continue an Oxbridge-esque existence, in London, as a grown-up, I'd have forgotten about messing arount in IT and become a lawyer. What wonderfully pleasant places the Inner and Middle Temples are.

I actually spent most of the afternoon in the Royal Courts of Justice. I've long said that I'd like to watch a trial one day (but never got round to doing it) so sitting through a mock assault trial in one of the real courtrooms sounded like a good idea.

Sitting at the back of court four for two hours made me realise several things

The noise of people moving in their chairs (or on their benches) makes for an extraordinarily annoying experience. The courtroom was never quiet, with constant creaking and banging and scraping.
You can't really hear very much from the back, anyway
Witnesses seem to delight in being inarticulate and incoherent
Court cases seem to be rather dull :-(

I enjoyed the experience, however, and thought the event was excellent.

One observation jumped out at me: cross-examination is actually rather difficult. Formulating a list of questions designed to draw useful details out of a potentially unwilling witness, in front of an audience, whilst never being completely sure where the conversation will lead is not an easy skill to master.

In many ways, it is rather similar to the skills required of a successful salesperson when meeting a new prospect for the first time. Questioning models designed to draw information out of clients, assimilate the learned information, use this information to influence future questioning, whilst avoiding going round in circles is really hard and I had missed the parallels until now.

Drinks in the City

2008-01-18T20:45:00.001Z

I met up with a friend for drinks after work this evening.

We managed to stumble upon a remarkably pleasant street a short stroll from Bank Station; a most unexpected event. Nice places near Bank? Impossible!

I think I'll be wandering along Watling Street and drinking at Williamson's Tavern again. Most pleasant.

So that's how they work

2007-12-13T10:30:00.001Z

Have you ever wondered how they make Liquid Crystal Displays? How they manage to control each pixel separately? How they do this without the millions of separate circuits somehow being visible and ruining the image?

Wonder no more.

It turns out that Indium-Tin Oxide is both electrically conductive and transparent - and so ideal for making LCD screens.

Who knew?!

(Well, not me, obviously).

Why does it always happen on the coldest days?

2007-12-13T10:24:00.001Z

I arrived home last night to a cold flat. Which was odd, because the super-timer-thermostat (official name) is remote-controlled, battery-powered and rather wonderful... power cuts are not a reason for it to mess up. And I'm not sure there had been a power cut anyway.

So I opened the wardrobe (for this is where the boiler is - don't ask). A red light was flashing. This is not usually a good sign.

The display was also blinking: "0.6".

Now, I happen to know that, when the boiler is idle, the display reports the pressure in the heating circuit. I know this because I am boring and read the manual when the boiler (Glow Worm 30CXi) was installed earlier this year.

Normally, it reads about 1.5 - and the instructions on the front say it should be at least 1.0 in normal operation.

I suspected a leak but could see nothing obvious (in other words, the floor wasn't wet and there was nothing oozing out of any of the radiator valves).

So, I used the blue plastic knob to top up the heating circuit and the pressure rapidly rose to 1.1.

The boiler worked for the rest of the night and the flat was warm. At bed time, the pressure had dropped to 0.9, which I thought odd. The water in the heating circuit was now warm, so I would have expected the pressure to be higher than 1.1, since the 1.1 reading was taken when cold.

I didn't top it up but fell asleep with a sense of foreboding.

Sure enough, I woke up feeling cold this morning. I jumped out of bed (something I never do unless I have an important problem to solve!) and checked the boiler.

Back to 0.6 and a flashing red light. Arghhhh.

There must be a leak. But where? Under the bathroom tiles? Under the new stone floor in the kitchen? I hope not. Under the laminate floor? None would be particularly desirable.

Regardless, I topped it up again and called the plumber at 9. He shared my suspicion of a leak and is coming out later.

In the meantime, I pulled some boxes out of the airing cupboard and noticed that carpet was damp.

Hurrah!

The leak is in the airing cupboard.

I'm not sure where in the airing cupboard. But in there somewhere. So it's not as bad as it could have been.

Goodbye, Eurostar

2007-11-13T20:59:00.001Z

I left work a little early today as I had some calls to make, which could be done from home.

I knew that today was the last day of Eurostar at Waterloo so I changed my route so that I could cross the main concourse before heading down to the drain.

None of the press reports have picked up on it yet but I could swear that the singer on their make-shift stage (with at least five TV cameras trained on it) was Lily Allen, attempting to sing "Waterloo Sunset".

Most odd.

When did that happen?

2007-11-12T19:48:00.001Z

IBM snaps up Cognos. No, not IBM buying Cognos... I know when that happened.

Look at the first line of the report:

"IBM, the software and consulting giant..."

Now, I must admit I don't make a habit of reading news reports about my employer but that is the first time I can recall anybody describing IBM as a "software and consulting" company. Perhaps the message is starting to get through :-)

Speed limits and the enviroment

2007-11-11T12:08:00.001Z

John Redwood (yes, him) blogged today about the A13. This is the main road from the East End to the M25 and is one that, whenever I hire a StreetCar, I seem to use more than any other.

As he says, it has the potential to be a very useful road but the planners have decided that, for large stretches of this modern dual carriageway, the speed limit should be 40mph.

As I am paranoid about getting points on my licence, I tend to obey speed limits in urban areas and so have tried various techniques to regulate my speed, which is harder than one would expect - primarily due to the fact that the road could clearly safely support speeds much higher.

The technique that works best is simply to drive in a far lower gear than necessary. The increasing engine noise works very well as an alert if one's speed begins to creep up.

As Mr Redwood pointed out in his article, this has the perverse effect of causing more fuel to be burned than is necessary, and probably results in lower air quality for nearby residents I imagine.

There is definitely scope here for the creation of a truly unholy alliance between motorists and environmentalists to campaign for a rule change of mutual benefit. Bring it on!

I am Alan Partridge

2007-11-10T15:10:00.001Z

Apparently, I use "normative" language to promote a "positive" agenda.

The country's best talk show host, Alan Partridge, once suffered from a similar problem:

"Philip Parsons in the Times called the show moribund. Well I looked up moribund in my dictionary..."

In these more modern times, I asked google to help me understand what "normative" and "positive" meant...

And Richard Murphy, my accuser, was completely correct.

Taking the second definition, we get a sense of what he was driving at:

"Refers to value judgments as to 'what ought to be,' in contrast to positive which is about "what is."

He believes that positive language is the preserve of economists and those "on the right who buy the conventional economic model"

Again, he may well be right.

So, the question is: how are those who believe that economics does have valid points to make on political matters - and who believe that outcomes matter more than intentions - to communicate effectively with those who don't?

If the "normative" folk aren't going to switch into "positive" language, the only option is for the "positives" to move in the other direction.

So, readers, what would a sane economic argument look like if it were presented in a normative manner? Anybody know? Anybody want to take a stab?!

Richard writes to his MEPs*

2007-11-10T14:43:00.001Z

All nine of them. The mind boggles. How on earth can I have nine of them?!

FOR THE ATTENTION OF:
Claude Moraes MEP
Charles Tannock MEP [REPLIED]
Robert Evans MEP
John Bowis OBE MEP [REPLIED]
Gerard Batten MEP [REPLIED]
Baroness Sarah Ludford MEP
Syed Kamall MEP
Mary Honeyball MEP
Jean Lambert MEP

London

Saturday 10 November 2007

Dear Syed Kamall, Robert Evans, Baroness Sarah Ludford, Charles Tannock, Mary Honeyball, Jean Lambert, Gerard Batten, John Bowis OBE and Claude Moraes,

I read with astonishment today that the EU's accounts have not been signed off by its auditor for the last twelve years - and look likely to suffer the same fate again this year. This is a disgrace, and borders on the corrupt.

Please can you let me know what you are doing to ensure the EU sorts out its accounts?

Furthermore, please can you confirm that you have supported, and will continue to support, those EU workers, such as Marta Andreasen, who speak out on these matters, at great risk to their livelihood?

Yours sincerely,

Richard G Brown

Thanks to "Write To Them" for the technology and "Burning our Money" for the idea.

[UPDATE 2007-11-11 12:38: I've already had three replies! Will update the names as more replies come in. Have also updated affiliations. Labour, Conservative, Lib Dem, Green, UKIP]

optimizin ur it environment

2007-11-10T12:29:00.001Z

Oh dear.

The lolcats have an alternative take on my employer's homepage...

[via b3ta - where else?]

A million messages per second

2007-11-08T15:35:00.001Z

So, we've announced WebSphere MQ Low Latency Messaging...

I've been following the development of this product inside IBM with interest. Many of my clients are in the financial markets and, hard as it may be to believe, data volumes of this magnitude are not in the world of fantasy for them.

I'm looking forward to talking to them about it!

Scratchcard players can't compare negative numbers

2007-11-06T19:07:00.001Z

Good grief.

The scary thing is that this story is completely plausible:

"A LOTTERY scratchcard has been withdrawn from sale by Camelot - because players couldn't understand it.
The Cool Cash game - launched on Monday - was taken out of shops yesterday after some players failed to grasp whether or not they had won.

To qualify for a prize, users had to scratch away a window to reveal a temperature lower than the figure displayed on each card. As the game had a winter theme, the temperature was usually below freezing.

But the concept of comparing negative numbers proved too difficult for some Camelot received dozens of complaints on the first day from players who could not understand how, for example, -5 is higher than -6."

If some people are so numerically challenged that even a scratchcard proves beyond them, then that has to be an opportunity here... I just don't know what it is.

via Chicken Yoghurt

Is this true?

2007-11-06T15:53:00.001Z

The BBC's Newsnight had a lighthearted piece on "Stella Artois" last night.

I stopped drinking Stella several years ago as it would reliably leave me with the most terrible headaches the next morning. They felt different to the muzziness one might ordinarily suffer from after drinking too much and I didn't like it.

However, that wasn't really the point of this posting...

One of the interviewees in the piece was an anthropologist and she made a remarkable claim. She suggested that, when offered a drink that somebody thinks contains alcohol, they will subsequently act as if it did, even if it didn't. That doesn't sound credible. Is it?

Runaway Trains

2007-11-01T07:30:00.001Z

Apparently a Docklands Light Railway train escaped from a station without a "Passenger Service Agent" onboard.

The Londonist asked what Serco could do to stop it happening again and so remove the possibility of a stranded trainload of passengers on a viaduct somewhere if a train broke down.

They needn't worry. Serco should launch a "Citizen Reserve Driver" programme and sign up thousands of Docklanders.... just think of the sheer number of geeky train passengers who would pay to be allowed to drive a DLR from time to time :-p

Don't jump to a solution!

2007-10-31T22:17:00.001Z

The fantastic "Overcoming Bias" blog has a piece on how we really shouldn't try to solve a problem until we've done as much as we can to understand the problem.

It is astonishing how difficult it is to follow this advice, even when one tries to.

I consciously try to spend most of my initial meetings with clients asking questions, developing my model of their problem and establishing what properties any solution should have. However, it's really hard... one cannot help mentally considering solutions (or solution fragments) and using them to drive the questioning.

Part of this is healthy: many clients have multiple problems or multiple priorities and so driving questioning in a direction where you have a chance of being helpful is clearly useful. However, considering potential solutions gets in the way of developing a deeper understanding of the client's problems because, as the article suggests, the human brain has a very strong tendency to hold onto a solution once it has been conceived.

I found a language to articulate this on a course a few months ago. It was based on Huthwaite's "SPIN Selling" methodology. The course was one of the most useful (and challenging) ones I've been on and was focussed pretty much exclusively on addressing the problem identified in the Overcoming Bias piece. Specifically, a structured model for questioning that allowed one to arrive naturally at the fullest possible statement of the client's problem and needs prior to moving on to solutioning.

This article was timely; it has reminded me I need to make a renewed effort to implement it!

Emotional Blackmail

2007-10-30T08:57:00.001Z

I am on training at our Staines location. It is second only to Bedfont in its difficulty to visit if you live in East London. As the education was a two-day affair, I elected to stay in a hotel overnight.

It was quite an entertaining experience:

The internet connection didn't work. I had to be "escalated" to a "second-level" specialist before the wired connection would allow me to get online
Hot water came out of the tap when in the cold position. Apart from when it was lukewarm. The handyman couldn't fix it so they delivered me jugs of iced water instead. Had no other guest discovered the problem before or do they just hope nobody will complain?
As is common these days, the bill was slipped under my door overnight and contained a list of exciting ways to checkout on the back. Regular readers will know that I don't do queues so I thought I'd try one of them:

"Checkout by video". Apparently one can use the interactive feature on the TV to view the bill, enter one's address and checkout. I could view the bill, but there was no option to check out. Wonderful.
"Checkout by phone" (available to members of their loyalty programme only). Luckily I was a member and miracle-of-miracles my number was printed on the bill. So I logged on to spg.com (oops... I've identified the chain!). I defy anyone to figure out which link you must click on to check that the address they hold for you is correct. An utterly shocking website.
So I was left with no option but to queue up.

Fortunately, the queue wasn't too long and it gave me time to peruse the bill. It seems that Sheraton believe it is acceptable to add items to your bill that you haven't agreed to. This is called attempted theft anywhere else, isn't it? They had added a £1 charge for "UNICEF". As charities go, I suspect UNICEF are one of the good ones. They're almost certainly less corrupt and do more good for the world than the average UN organisation.

However, I prefer to choose where to donate my money and I like to ensure they can claim back the tax on my contribution.

Sadly, asking for a charity donation to be removed from one's bill - especially one for a quid - makes you look mean. Well, I hate being emotionally blackmailed more than I hate being frowned upon so I asked the receptionist if UNICEF would be able to claim back tax (knowing that the answer would be no). She didn't know so I asked for it to be taken off.

So, yes... I'm a coward. I couldn't bring myself to complain about the principle so I let her believe I upset that they wouldn't get enough money from this little act of involuntary altruism. Not my finest hour... but then outcomes do, after all, matter more than intentions.

However, I'm not an ogre and I've been meaning to reassess my charitable giving for some time now (I keep meaning to cancel my Amnesty membership). So does anybody have any ideas of a charity that I should divert my Amnesty donations to (with an uplift to account for my miserly behaviour this morning...)?

[EDIT 2007-10-30 13:56 - mino typos corrected]

Books

2007-10-28T22:10:00.001Z

Roo (many, many weeks ago) asked what I thought of Tim Harford's "The Undercover Economist".

Short answer: I loved it.

I first heard about it on a "Radio Economics" PodCast, where he read the introduction and the first chapter

The rest of the book was equally enjoyable.

The introduction sticks in my mind, however, because it was really a modern reworking of "I, Pencil". That is: not one person in the world knows how to start with raw materials and end up with pencil.

Milton Friedman explained it well:

Maps of London

2007-10-28T21:44:00.000Z

You can never have enough.

via Diamond Geezer (probably... this sort of stuff usually originates on his blog.... ah yes.... here)

Underground Waterways and unexpected tunnels

Overground Waterways

The underground map is interesting.... it suggests the Northern Low-level sewer heads inland east of Tower Hill to meet the mid-level sewer at Stratford via Bow.

So where does the effluent of Docklands go? (And no... the answer is not that the effluent of Docklands is recycled here; that would be too extreme. They merely recycle the effluent of Westminster)

The Economics of Ant Colonies

2007-10-27T21:37:00.001+01:00

Attentive readers (all three of them...) may have noticed my blogging has been intermittent to non-existent of late. I've been busy.

Busy learning about ants.

Well, busy working and decorating and stuff. But I did also happen to listen to a fascinating PodCast about ants. And I suppose I could have blogged during that hour had I not been listening to the recording. The pOdcASt (how do you capitalise it?) was about ant colonies and how order emerges even though there is no leader to direct things. It made me think back to my holiday in Provence in July. On holiday, I spent many, many hours on the sun lounger (under the umbrella) reading and watching the ants carry away the various crumbs we had dropped. My ant fascination was such that no fewer than two friends who were on that holiday bought me ant-related products for my recent birthday.

Anyway, the podcast was very interesting and I recommend it.

I need some investing help

2007-10-27T21:10:00.001+01:00

Readers, I am ashamed to admit that, having failed to find a suitable investment target in August (see here), I have still not invested the money sitting in my selftrade account. Worse, I have since opened a trading account in the US and have failed to invest that money either.

Arghhh....

I know one should not be afraid to hold cash in uncertain times but this is getting ridiculous.

If I believe that stock markets in general (in the UK and US, at least) are probably over-valued, I'm torn between spending some considerable time identifying individual stocks I regard as under-priced (like I did, by accident, with Morrison's - although not immediately...) or investing in a different asset class or using a different approach. Which? I'm not keen on anything that requires active management... so no short term shorting strategies, etc.

Perhaps I should just put it all under the bed.

Just too easy

2007-10-27T21:02:00.001+01:00

I make a point of reading The Guardian on Saturdays as I believe it is important to read opinions with which one disagrees. Its economic illiteracy and the sheer lunacy of some of their letter writers makes my Saturday mornings highly amusing, if somewhat infuriating.

I swear they include articles whose sole intention is to push me over the edge and vow never to buy the paper again.

They went one better today and included a whole supplement. Labelled "The Green Guide", it was an uncritical, sanctimonious bucket of propaganda masquerading as journalism.

At least, that's what I thought it would be before I opened it.

Against my better judgement, however, I retrieved it from the bin (landfill-destined, naturally). It turns out my prejudices were unfounded. It was actually just a large advertising supplement, littered with adverts targetted at the credulous fools who actually believe the lies we're being fed about the environment at present.

It was gratifying to realise quite how many companies have figured out that there's good money to be made from these people. Good for them!

(And the best thing is, I get to put it in the trash for the second time!)

The housing market is doomed!

2007-10-22T17:09:00.001+01:00

Seen from the DLR: six liveried Volkswagen Beetles parked outside Atkinson Mcleod's Leman Street Office. Why aren't they showing buyers around and chasing after sellers? The end is nigh!

(Alternative explanation 1: the estate agents were having a meeting

Alternative explanation 2: Monday early afternoon is always slow and I only noticed the cars because I normally leave work somewhat later in the day)

Alternative Routes to Work

2007-09-04T21:59:00.001+01:00

My regular readers would find any comment on the current tube strike tiresomely predictable so I'm going to talk about something else instead.

Being unable to get the Waterloo and City line from Bank, I went to Tower Gateway this morning and caught the RV1 bus to the South Bank instead.

I had a seat for both legs of the journey (the Tower Gateway services are always less congested than the DLR's Bank services) and being above ground for the whole journey made a refreshing change.

It took twenty minutes longer than ordinary but I think I got off lightly compared to some.

Tax "Justice", revisited

2007-09-04T21:27:00.001+01:00

Richard Murphy was good enough to respond to my observations on the Tax "Justice" phenomenon. He addressed the three points in order and I will do the same here. As in my original post, I try to concentrate on the argument and not the person. I ask any commenters to do the same.

"Perspective on whose money it is"

As Tim Worstall has commented, the rebuttal to my first point was eye-opening. Murphy chose to mount a rousing defence of the concept of a state as part of his answer. I'm not sure why he did this because my point was about the mindset of those who propagate notions of "Tax Justice" but the argument was interesting, nevertheless.

The key passage is this: (my formatting)

This system also corrects the very obvious failings of the market system. That system could not ever provide a socially optimal outcome in any society in reality because so many of the pre-conditions of it doing so do not exist. Those that do not exist include:

Perfect knowledge of the future;

Perfect knowledge of all products and services available in the market now, and their prices; ...

I could add many more, all of which are required[1] to make markets produce successful outcomes and the absence of any one of which will result in an imperfect result. The degree of imperfection cannot be predicted, but will tend towards monopoly exploitation[2]. This is why the State must intervene to protect those whom the market would otherwise both fail and exploit.[3]

Taking the highlighted points in turn, (1) is probably the most problematic. Murphy confuses sufficient conditions with necessary conditions and so has set up a straw-man (seemingly unwittingly). Unlike Murphy, I am not a trained economist. But I am a trained mathematician; the difference between "necessary" and "sufficient" tends to be quite important.

He then makes an unsupported claim (2) about what bad things might happen in the absence of one of the sufficient conditions and then, inexplicably, claims (3) that the solution to imperfect knowledge is to create an institution which cannot hope to accumulate the missing information.

"Is poverty created - or escaped from?"

Apart from reiterating his flawed understanding of economic theory, Murphy doesn't really address the substance of my core argument (that poverty isn't created; wealth is) and so there's not much more I can write on this one

"Anyone who disagrees is greedy"

Murphy's response to this is to assert:

The first is that the whole basis of mainstream economic thinking is that greed is both acceptable and desirable. This is what the maximisation of self interest that it promotes means, at least to many who seem to simplistically buy into this economic vision.

This is, of course, a very cleverly-constructed straw-man. He chooses a narrow definition of "self-interest" and then suggests that it is my definition.

Quite apart from the fact that it isn't my opinion, it doesn't really address the point.

When it comes to taxes, there are three cases:

You are unambiguously liable to a particular tax
You are unambiguously not liable
There is doubt about whether you are liable or there is a divergence between the law-as-written and the supposed intent of those who wrote it

Clearly, most (all, I hope!) of us agree that we should pay demands that fall into the first category and I'm sure not even Murphy pays demands that fall into the second. So the only point of disagreement is the third.

Now, if you do not believe government does a good job of spending money, it is illogical voluntarily to pay more than is required (and let's be clear, that's what is being asked of us; if it wasn't voluntary, there would be no debate as it would fall into the first category!) This does not make one greedy.

So, I am grateful for Murphy's response (truly - even faulty arguments can force one to clarify one's thinking) but I'm not convinced he's supported his assertions.

Political Compass Cheat Sheet

2007-09-03T17:06:00.001+01:00

The discussions on Roo's post about the Political Compass made me think. Some of the questions are clearly ones of opinion. But others, to my mind, have a right or wrong answer.

Here are some examples:

'Controlling inflation is more important than controlling unemployment.'

I thought the lesson of the 1970s had been well and truly learned. Perhaps not.

' "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" is a fundamentally good idea. '

It might be a fundamentally nice idea. That doesn't make it a good idea. If you truly believe that it is a good idea, you cannot simultaneously believe in the power of incentives, the tragedy of the commons, the free-rider problem or any of the other insights of economics. In other words, it is possible, strictly, to agree with the statement but to do so logically places you far outside the mainstream. "Intent" is not the same as "outcome" and it is logically inconsistent to agree with statements you believe to have good intent if you know the outcome will be bad.

'Land shouldn't be a commodity to be bought and sold.'

Again, one may not like the idea of property or of property rights. However, to agree with this statement is to call for a complete abandonment of our economic system. That's fine; some people really do believe they know better and think the miracle of the last 500 years (humanity's discovery of how to escape from poverty) could have been achieved better in another manner. But glibly to agree with such a statement without acknowledging its implications is of questionable rigor.

And just in case anybody thinks I'm merely defining my opinion as the truth, here's an example where I do believe opinion comes into it:

'No broadcasting institution, however independent its content, should receive public funding.'

I have strong opinions on this one but I accept that some people genuinely do believe applying a regressive tax on the poor (as happens in the UK) to fund a broadcaster is acceptable. I find such people are immune to (my) argument and have, reluctantly, concluded that this one truly does seem to be a matter of opinion!

Should we do anything about climate change?

2007-09-02T19:40:00.001+01:00

John Llewellyn, Senior Economic Policy Advisor at Lehman Brothers, wrote an article in today's Observer discussing whether we should act on climate change.

He seemed to conflate the question of whether it is happening with whether we should do anything about it. I don't think this is helpful.

Dear Dr Llewellyn,

I read your article on climate change in today's Observer with interest.

Your categorisation of people with an opinion on the topic was probably fair (although I didn't recognise myself in any of them!) but I can't help thinking you missed a key point: the question of whether human-caused climate change is occurring is different to the question of what, if anything, we should do about it. Crucially, the first question is one for scientists whereas the second question is one, primarily, for economists.

If we grant that climate change is occurring, it does not follow that we should do anything about it. 1% of GDP, spent every year for a hundred years is a great deal of money and the power of compounding is such that world GDP in 100 years would be materially lower than it otherwise would have been. Therefore, it is necessary to show that the negative effects of climate change are sufficient to outweigh this massive reduction in the living standards of the people of the future (compared to what they would have been). In other words, arguments based on the idea of doing something "just in case" only work if the negative consequences of doing something are also considered.

Yours sincerely,

Richard Brown

At the risk of my blogging today turning into a link fest to the Portuguese scandium monopolist, I must confess that this argument was stolen shamelessly from him.

[EDIT: Do read kyb's post in the comments. As he points out, even if climate change isn't man-caused, there may still be a case for doing something about it. I may not agree with that but it makes the need to separate the two issues crystal clear]

Tax "Justice"

2007-09-02T19:03:00.001+01:00

A week or so ago, I commented on AccManPro that I disagreed with pretty much everything that appears on the taxresearch.org.uk blog. One of the commenters there asked me to expand on this and to explain why I thought the ideas being discussed were wrong. I sense that I was being baited but what the heck....

I was going to write a long piece on the ideas behind "tax justice" and the silliness intrinsic in it. However, I found it getting unnecessarily wordy so I thought I'd highlight examples instead:

1) The primary fallacy seems to be the tendency to start from the perspective that your money is the state's - and that you should be allowed to keep what is left after the state has taken what it wants. This perspective is then used to argue that arranging one's affairs to reduce tax liabilities is somehow "taking" money from others. To see why they can think this, you must put yourself in their heads. They start with the assumption that the £100 you just earned is the state's. If you pay 41% tax on it, you're allowed to keep £59 of it - they'll give you the £59, in other words. However, if you find a way to make the tax liability 40%, say, then the state would have to give you £60 back. You've just been given an extra £1. And here's where it gets screwy... they seem to be claiming that this £1 has been funded by somebody else. Yes. That truly does seem to be the thought process. The idea that the original £100 was yours to start with seems completely to escape them. Bizarre.

2) The headline on this piece on a different website related to tax justice shows the "interesting" level of economic literacy prevalent in this field. There seems to be a belief that poverty is "caused" and that, naturally, it is somebody's fault. Sorry, folks. Poverty is not "caused". It is the natural state of humanity. The story of the last five hundred years has been our discovery of how to escape it by creating wealth for ourselves and for others. It is clearly true that many, many people are doing a lot less well than we would like. However, any analysis that starts with the assertion that this is somebody else's fault is not going to lead to anything sensible.

3) Anybody who disagrees with the tax justice crowd is "greedy". See this comment to somebody upset by the impact of inheritance tax. One can argue about the merits of inheritance tax or explain why one believes a tax paid only by the stupid and the unlucky is morally justifiable but note that this isn't what happens. Instead, the ad hominem is deployed. Lovely.

I should point out that I am sure the tax justice crowd are well-meaning, pleasant people. Indeed, I am sure I could spend an enjoyable evening in the company of such people (and I am sufficiently polite in person that I'm sure they could tolerate me!). However, I don't think they would manage to persuade me that this movement is one to which I should subscribe.

I notice that Tim Worstall also sometimes links to taxresearch to take issue with them. Well worth reading.

[EDIT 2007-09-02 19:08 Corrected typo and added link to Tim Worstall]

[UPDATE 2007-09-03 17:23 Richard Murphy has responded. http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2007/09/03/tax-justice-2/ ]

I'm surrounded by woolly liberals.

2007-09-02T18:11:00.001+01:00

Gah. What's wrong with some people?!

Roo admits to being a greeny 1972 Labour-type (sort of)

And kyb is almost as bad.

I need to start tracking some different bloggers :-p

This is more like it:

I can only conclude that my mission to educate the world in the correct way of economic thinking (i.e. mine!) is not yet complete.

[UPDATE: Roo is tracking people's results in one place. Seems Uncle Milt and I would have been soul-mates - http://rooreynolds.com/2007/09/02/political-compass/]

We should ban the sun to protect lightbulb manufacturers

2007-09-02T14:20:00.001+01:00

The EU's ridiculous attempt to make us all poor by banning cheap, safe incandescent lightbulbs and forcing us all to buy mercury-filled, harsh fluorescent lamps was bad enough. That they then placed import tariffs on the energy-saving bulbs is beyond farce.

A commenter on "Devil's Kitchen" suggested that the reason might be because the EU's trade commissioner is an economic illiterate and suggested sending him some pointers.

So I did.

Commissioner Mandelson
DG Trade
European Commission
200 Rue de la Loi
B-1049 Brussels
Belgium
Dear Commissioner,
I was bemused by recent press reports that the EU is simultaneously banning incandescent lightbulbs and placing import tariffs on low-energy replacements being sent from China.
If the Chinese wish to send us cheap goods, we should open our arms and accept the gifts with gratitude. I resent your efforts to keep the people of Europe poorer than we otherwise would be.
I am enclosing a copy of an essay, written in 1845, by French economist Frédéric Bastiat. It is as relevant today as it was then and I hope it proves illuminating.
Yours sincerely,
Richard G Brown
http://bastiat.org/en/petition.html

This could be my last ever visit to the US :-(

2007-08-28T12:16:00.001+01:00

I'm in New York this week on training for work. Sadly, the venue is about twenty miles outside New York City and it's looking unlikely that I'll get the opportunity for a trip into town but the venue itself is pretty good.

However, when I arrived at Newark, I queued for about half an hour to go through the passport check and was then somewhat perturbed when the agent declined to stamp my passport and, instead, called "Escort!" and had me shipped into a separate room, where I had to wait for another half an hour until another agent entered my details on to a computer and spent five minutes typing away.

Eventually, I was told I could enter the country.

It appears that somebody with my name - or something similar to it - is on a list of baddies. I find this somewhat hard to believe... I mean do you know anybody else with "Gendal" for a middle name?!

This also happened to me when I was here in March.

I asked the agent this time what I needed to do to ensure this doesn't happen again. Apparently, there is nothing I can do and this will happen every time I visit in the future.

I think I'd rather just not come again.

Dance, Monkey. DANCE!

2007-08-24T21:31:00.001+01:00

Alex Tabarrok has a great idea: make those who seek to exercise power over us participate in a game show so they can prove themselves before we're saddled with them.

It's interesting to speculate on how the UK's leaders and would-be-leaders would perform in the games Alex suggests.

Coase it Out: Presidential candidates have 12 hours to get a bitterly divorcing couple to divide their assets in a mutually agreeable manner. (Bonus points are awarded if the candidate convinces the couple to stay together.)

I suspect David Cameron would do better at this than Gordon Brown. As one of Alex's commenters points out, however, giving bonus points for convincing a couple who hate each other to stay together may not be optimal. However, it would be precisely the skillset needed to bring a treaty negotiation to a close

Spot the Fraud: Presidential candidates are provided with an economic scenario (mortgage defaults are up, hedge funds are crashing, liquidity is tight). Three experts propose plans. The candidate must choose one of the plans. After the candidate chooses, the true identities of the "experts" are revealed. One is a trucker, another a scuba diver instructor and the last a distinguished economist. Which did the candidate choose?

My take on this is that Gordon Brown would know the right answer and David Cameron wouldn't. However, and this is the problem with Alex's scheme, that doesn't mean he would do what he knew to be the correct thing!

Something interesting in the hardware space? Whatever next!

2007-08-13T22:35:00.001+01:00

I struggle to get excited about computer hardware. I work in middleware; the rest is mere detail. UNIX? Windows? RISC? Partitioning? BORING!!!

But, then, every so often something comes along that seems genuinely interesting.

If Mark is for real (and he doesn't have a track record of just making stuff up), it would seem that it is now possible to migrate running workloads from one physcial machine to another.

I have to admit that such a thing would, indeed, be rather worthy of comment. I may even allow myself to emit a little "wow" sound.

So there. I did it. A post about hardware.

Some investment recommendations, please

2007-08-12T14:10:00.001+01:00

Readers, it may have noticed that there is some volatility in world markets at present. Stock markets have tumbled, credit markets have seized up and many people seem to be worried.

Excellent.

Things have got a little cheaper and there are probably some good buying opportunities.

I will probably restrict myself to purchasing shares but could be talked into investing in a fund or buying a different asset class if it could be done easily through www.selftrade.co.uk as I don't want to have to open up an account somewhere else.

Given that I'm employed in the IT sector and sell primarily to companies in the Financial Services Sector, my preference is to avoid increasing my exposure to them. Any other area would be considered, however.

Any ideas?

It turns out I asked a good question!

2007-08-08T12:38:00.001+01:00

Well, well, well.

My question about optimal locations to hold a party turns out to have been harder than I expected. As always, my super-intelligent commenters made some good observations (read the comments on the other thread).

Taking the biscuit, however, was my colleague Lee Hollingdale. He decided that, whilst theory is nice, nothing beats a good bit of empiricism: he knocked up a program so that I could experiment for real. Wow.

Here are the results of Lee's program.

Firstly, let's look at the "two friend" case. The brighter dots represent points of minimum "total distance travelled". As we see, our prediction that it would be the entire line between the two friends was correct:

Now, if we add an extra point - along the same line, something interesting happens. The optimal position is now just that single new point:

If, instead, we move the third friend to somewhere not on the line, but still close, it seems that their house is the best place to hold the party:

But if they move out into zone 6, it rapidly becomes clear that their house is not appropriate (quite right, too).

And now, if we pretend to have loads of friends, the optimal point (and there is just one point) can be seen:

So, it does appear that two friends is the special case but the "hold the party at the third friend's house" result is not one I was expecting

Thanks Lee!

A mathematics challenge

2007-08-06T15:14:00.001+01:00

Six of us were having dinner in a restaurant in on Friday evening. We had travelled from different parts of London and had travelled different decisions. I started thinking about where we could have met to minimise the total distance we travelled.

In other words, given a set of friends and their starting points and assuming we measure straight-line distances - ignore roads and hills - there must be at least one point that requires the least total distance to be travelled in order for everybody to meet. Furthermore, there may be more than one such point. As an example, consider just two friends: any point on a straight line between them would be a meeting point that satisfied my requirement that the total distance travelled is miminised.

My question is: given an arbitrary number of friends and their starting points, what can we say about the set of points representing minimum total distances travelled? In particular, will its points necessarily be connected to each other or could they be dispersed?

Intelligent Finance "Systems Update". Yeah, right.

2007-07-30T20:41:00.001+01:00

Oh dear.

Intelligent Finance is offline (try logging on or accessing your account via phone).

They've no doubt encountered a nasty problem (who knows what it is; it could happen to anybody. The core failure probably isn't even their fault and I feel for the technicians who are, no doubt, running around at high speed desperately trying to get the site back on line).

However, it's not acceptable to describe an unexpected failure as a "systems update".

Face it, guys: you're offline and you didn't plan to be. Don't treat your customers like idiots. Tell us that there's a problem (and that you're working on it) and we'll understand. These things happen.

Persist with the "update" charade for much longer, however, and I'll be taking my business elsewhere. I don't expect my bank to mislead me.

Some honesty, please.

(I'm not the only one to notice that they're down).

Olympic Park

2007-07-01T18:04:00.001+01:00

We learned, via Diamond Geezer, that the site of the London Olympics in 2012 will be closed for five years from tomorrow.

This meant that today was a perfect day for a walk in the "country"! (if you ignore the weather)

So, eight of us met at Bromley-by-Bow tube at noon and walked along the various waterways that mark the rough perimeter of the southern-half of the site.

We then headed back to the real river down the Limehouse Cut and had lunch in Wapping.

Traffic Jam on the Thames

2007-06-20T21:42:00.001+01:00

The Thames was busier than I had ever seen it before on Saturday.

Tens upon tens of boats all manoeuvring in and around Limehouse reach, including massive barges being rowed.

Rather exciting to watch, but very odd. You can just about make out one of these strange rowing boars in the centre-left of the picture.

The reason my blogging has been light...

2007-06-20T21:37:00.001+01:00

A fridge and wine cooler in the bedroom...

... a hole where the kitchen used to be...

Yes... it can mean only one thing: the builders are in!

At least things are moving forward, though.... the tiling and flooring is beginning to get going now:

Not long now (allegedly).

How to be a manager when you have no power

2007-06-11T17:21:00.001+01:00

Like many companies, the one I work for is heavily matrix-managed: somebody is responsible for worrying about a particular software product line's sales to all customers in the UK... somebody else is worried about sales of all software to financial services customers... somebody else is worried about how much revenue - across all the things we sell - we get from a single set of named customers. And so on.

In such a world, it clearly isn't possible for each of those people to own all the dedicated resources they need in order to meet their objectives; they have to rely on team-work, cooperation and in helping others see how their interests - and those of our clients - can be aligned.

I was therefore interested to read this post about being on the management board for a residential development by David Lorenzo.

I emailed him to suggest that his experiences of having responsibility without total power were not unique and he posted a response here.

Clearly, the problem of running a condo management board is different to that of running a sales organisation but, it's a nice reminder that the difficulties of running a complicated large company are sometimes similar to the problems faced by much smaller organisations.

Stress!

2007-06-11T14:56:00.001+01:00

Work starts on the new kitchen today...

Dust.... capped gas pipes.... demolished walls.... exposed wiring.... the ever-present fear that they'll ignore what I've told them and just build whatever they feel like.

I can't wait to be back in work tomorrow.

IBM Technical Leadership Exchange

2007-05-24T13:29:00.001+01:00

I'm on my way home from The 2007 European "Technical Leadership Exchange".

Luis was there.... As was Andrew. And so was Roo.

Being my usual useless self, I failed to find or say hello to any of them.

Typical.

Regardless, I had a (mostly) excellent time. Some useful technical sessions, some excellent "soft" sessions, good networking opportunities (even if there's something deeply wrong about drinking Champagne inside the Disney park while the children are locked outside) and some very good keynote speakers (Bruno Di Leo in particular).

I say "mostly", however, thanks to my ability to injure myself in unexpectedly exciting ways.

I'm not sure how I did it but I have managed to mess up my neck: I can barely move it and, whenever I do, I am in agony.

I've dosed myself up with paracetamol and ibuprofen, left the conference early, moved my flight forward and booked an appointment with my doctor for tomorrow. Most annoying: there were some sessions today that I really wanted to see but there was no way I would have been able to sit through them. Pity :-(

Apart from that though, an excellent event.

Gendal World

HMS Illustrious

Blackbirds

The world's most unfortunate book cover?

Grand Central

Can it be true...?

The Talisman

They didn't teach this at *my* school

Snow, snow, snow

They're at it again

Cure for Condensation

Woolwich Arsenal Station

Free 0870 and 0845 calls on BT

The wrong kind of terrorist

"Rat to Ox"

Windows Password Strangeness

"The Politics Slot"

Something for Phil, Tel and Stu to think about

Credit where it's due...

Psychopaths take over the tube

Arbitrage Opportunities

Please return item to the bagging area, revisited

My faith in the Economist is restored!

The Economist May have lost a subscriber

Balance on Channel 4 News

Is the economy even *worse* than it looks?

Faster Payments

I think they're trying to tell me something

"Please return item to the bagging area"

New Nightbuses...

Lessons Learned in the startup world.

"What America needs right now... is a concrete way to create more imaginary wealth"

Recession-Plagued Nation Demands New Bubble To Invest In

What is this?

The Curse of The Economist

Kitchen

Foreign Exchange Market

Words with two opposites

I invest with Wormwood Bayne

Airline Cashflow Crisis

Passport Control

Narrow Platforms

I knew it

This is a big deal

Radio 4's Today Programme... still embarrassingly ill-informed

Old Street

Spoke too soon :-(

Gatwick Misery

FLIGHT INFORMATION

DLR Goody Bag

Getting from the DLR to the District Line at Bank

Flying from Heathrow...

Big Bridge News

North Woolwich Satellite Dish Breeding Farm

New London Architecture

"You are not, nor have ever been, on record as a criminal suspect"

Explaining CDOs and the subprime mess

Exploding Crème brûlée with Bubblegum Ice-cream

How do we help the wilfully ignorant to understand?

"Listen to the music then turn it off..."

IBM Acquires AptSoft

Temple

Drinks in the City

So *that's* how they work

Why does it always happen on the coldest days?

Goodbye, Eurostar

When did that happen?

Speed limits and the enviroment

I am Alan Partridge

Richard writes to his MEPs*

optimizin ur it environment

A million messages per second

Scratchcard players can't compare negative numbers

Is this true?

Runaway Trains

Don't jump to a solution!

Emotional Blackmail

Books

Maps of London

The Economics of Ant Colonies

They didn't teach this at my school

Is the economy even worse than it looks?

So that's how they work

Something interesting in the hardware space? Whatever next!