Who says Scoble isn't interesting any more?

He did link to this, after all. I can only begin to imagine the chaos something similar to this would cause in London...

New Multimap

When did this happen? Multimap's gone all Ajax-ey!

Nice.

I'm Back!

It's been some time since I last posted.

Here are some of the things I've been pondering recently:

Thought One:

• Do (completely) blind people have higher or lower lighting bills than the partially- and fully-sighted?
• On one hand, they have no need to turn lights on.
• On the other hand, they would not know if the light was on and so would not know to turn it off. This could be a particular problem if visitors have been
• The question may sound flippant but there must be scores of problems that those with sight or hearing problems must face (running taps, alarms, etc)
• This line of thought is probably driven from my realisation that I'm less than six months away from being thirty and, hence, officially "old"

Thought Two:

• Is it reasonable to pursue a complaint about being supplied with the incorrect service if it turns out the substitution worked out better?
• A group of us went away to Devon last weekend and we hired a car. Nothing special - just a 1.6 Ford Focus
• Upon collection, we signed all the paperwork and then, in what I considered to be a "bait and switch" they casually informed me the car was a diesel.
• I protested (I don't spend good money hiring a car so that I can feel like I'm in a tractor!) but they maintained that it was all they had and that, in any case, it was "better"
• Their assurance that the engine was the "same size" just made me more upset.
• I asked if it was a turbodiesel and they said no.
• However, pleasure upon pleasure, it turned out that it was a turbodiesel and that it was more than satisfactory.
• (In other news, driving through central London on a Friday morning is hell. Driving through central London on a Monday afternon is just fine. Go figure)

Thought Three:

• What is the difference between "Business Process Management" and "Case Management"?
• I rather like Bruce Silver's thoughts but I'm still not entirely settled

Thought Four:

• They changed everybody's badges at work recently (to enable a groovy new salary-sacrifice tax-efficient payment system). Problem: they printed my old "fat Richard" picture on the card.
• They also messed up my card so that I couldn't spend my tax-free cash on it for the first two weeks
• Question: I can calculate my losses from having to buy my lunches from post-tax income and the lost interest on the money I spent that would otherwise have been saved but what is the cost to me of having to wear a sevel-year old photo?

Gendal's Law

When internet political discussions get out of hand, it is not uncommon for one party to label their opponent a "nazi". Of course, those who can only understand their opponents' positions by assigning them malign intent are clearly unworthy of participating further and it is sufficient to accuse such people of violating Godwin's Law before declining to debate with them any further.

I believe we need to institute a similar system for those who claim to have "had the flu" when it is clear they have had nothing more than a bit of a cold.  I will call it Gendal's Law.

Influenza will consign you to bed for weeks. It will make you question your desire to continue living. It will make walking from the bed to the bathroom harder than one could possibly imagine.

A bad cold, by contrast, may lay you low for a few days. You may feel wretched. You may shiver. You may lose your appetite. You may cough. You may have a blocked nose. You may have a runny nose. You may, like me, have felt that your body has somehow forgotten how to regulate its own temperature.

But here's a clue: if you're up and running again after a few days, it wasn't flu.

I suffered from such a cold last week and, at one point, did begin to wonder if I had influenza.  A cursory search of the web for flu symptoms convinced me that I didn't have it but it did cross my mind.

However, there was no excuse for my thinking it was flu. If one needs to ask: "is it flu?" then it probably isn't.

We need to get firm on those who say they've had flu when they haven't. We need to start enforcing Gendal's law!

In the future, when such people do violate my law, I urge you to call them on it.

And yes... Dennis... that means you are the first violator of Gendal's Law!

Is this space weekend or something?

Although I'm feeling somewhat better than I was, I thought I had better stay in last night. Flicking through the channels, I stumbled upon a re-run of "Apollo 13".

This afternoon, I somehow caught the end of "Capricorn One".

And now, checking my RSS feeds, I notice that Slashdot has a piece on a Slashdot has a piece on a space junkyard.

What is going on?

Whatever.... it made for an unexpectedly interesting few hours spent in front of the TV. I've had a vague feeling for some time that the Apollo programme must have been a rather large undertaking but it was only when I typed things into Wikipedia as I watched the movie last night that I realised quite what an achievement it was.

I was particularly interested in the character of Gene Kranz. He was the flight controller featured in the movie and, it turns out, was instrumental in a lot of other places, too.

Some new things I realised this weekend:

* As a potential contractor, if the Apollo requirements had been brought to me, I'd have probably said "no bid"!  The risk those guys were happy to work with was mind-blowing.

* IBM's IMS came out of a need to track the bill of materials for the various parts of the programme.  Who knew?  I certainly didn't until now.

Yes, yes....  Surely space exploration is the kind of stuff you're supposed to read about when you're a teenager, never to think about it again.  I did go through a phase where I was interested in space but I don't think I ever reflected on what, with 1960s technology, was achieved back then.

Letters to the editor

Part 2 of an occasional series.

I read an article in the Guardian's "Money" section last week that I thought was little more than a hatchet job on concert ticket resellers. So I told them.

My letter (reproduced below) was published today.

Why ticket touts offer a valuable service

Although I can understand the frustration of those who cannot buy concert tickets at "face value" thanks to touts (New move to put the touts out of business, March 17), their anger is misdirected. The touts are performing the valuable service of ensuring tickets are allocated to those who value them most. By underpricing the tickets, the promoters have failed in this duty.

Indeed, the only part I don't understand is, if touts really are profiteering egregiously, why do promoters leave so much money on the table by underpricing their tickets? Any vendor that deliberately underpriced a service and chose, instead, to ration it by demanding displays of devotion from its customers - such as becoming a member of the fan club - is a vendor I would rather not do business with. Therefore, I buy my concert tickets from touts through eBay - at times of my choosing, in comfort and with thanks.

Richard Brown
London

The article about tickets touts is here

The letters page is here

Part 1 of this series, where I write to the Independent to complain about Johann Hari, ocurred earlier this year.

It has always been thus

Bobby Woolf (courtesy of Keys Botzum) shared this excellent sketch.

Think today's technology is complicated? Try to imagine how hard it was for the first users of the "book", accustomed as they were to the "scroll".

As Bobby says, bear with it; it gets funnier and funnier...

[EDIT 2007-03-27 17:20 Typo in title]

Be careful out there!

I have been using some of my downtime as an opportunity to catch up on the wider world of BPM. It's easy to get very focussed on one's own products and one's own clients and lose track of what's happening in the wider world.

So, I spent some time this morning browsing Sandy Kemsley's recent posts in my feed reader.

One post caught my attention. It wasn't actually about BPM; it was about blogging. She accused somebody of stealing her blog posts.

What I think was going on was that the guy was aggregating the RSS feeds of lots of relevant bloggers and republishing them on his site. Because Sandy publishes a full feed (which means I don't have to go to ebiqz to read her posts - they're in my reader in their entirety), her full posts were appearing on his blog.

She was upset - and said so.

The guy apologised and took down the posts. Although his blog was done in his own time, his role as a Sales VP for a vendor clearly made him visible: he has resigned from his job.

A reminder to us all of the need to be careful.

And if that were not enough, Dennis brings news of dastardly deeds in the enterprise applications world. Oracle are claiming that a unit of SAP have been engaged in "corporate theft on a grand scale". The alleged behaviour includes the logging on to Oracle's support site and downloading large numbers of documents.  Without expressing an opinion on this matter, it's a timely reminder to the rest of us that even seemingly innocuous acts (like bulk-downloading all information you may conceivably need about a problem) may, in retrospect, look suspicious.

Monkey man is dead

Feeling sorry for myself on my sick bed today, I was flicking through the paper when the face of the guy from "Monkey Business" appeared. The weird thing was that the page was the obituary page.

What a shame :-(  I used to love watching that show and he seemed like a genuinely nice person.

More information here.

I am ill :-(

I have been struck down by a really nasty cold.  Yes... I know; it sounds wimpish (and, believe me, I have tried, in vain to fit my symptoms to Pneumonia or Bronchitis or something more respectable).

I started to suffer on Monday evening: I barely slept that night - waking up every thirty minutes or so and, by the time I got up on Tuesday morning, I was coughing prodigiously and my brain was doing that weird thing where it was occasionally pretending to turn off for a second. At one point I thought: "Wow... if this doesn't get better soon, I'm going to have to quit my job - my health clearly isn't up to it!"

I had a hectic schedule planned for the next three days and decided, perhaps foolishly, to make good on the commitments I made.

So, I made my way to King's Cross (taking a taxi rather than the DLR and the tube was my nod towards the illness) and sat on a train for two hours to get to York (after stocking up on drugs at Boots).  That evening I travelled on two other trains for about four hours to get from York to a hotel in Norwich. That was an utterly miserable journey. (Although, to be fair, I suspect its misery is probably little different even if you're feeling on top form)

I had a three hour presentation and demonstration to give to some senior architects at one of my clients on Wednesday. My plan was to finish my preparation that night.

Sadly, on the walk from Norwich Station to the car park (my colleague gave me a lift to the hotel), I thought I was going to break my back due to the frequency and severity of my shivering (assuming my chattering teeth hadn't sliced off my tongue first).

By the time I made it to my hotel room, I was so cold I spent thirty minutes standing next to the radiator (turned up to full) in my suit and outdoor coat.  I was *still* feeling cold by the end of this. My room-service dinner was left pretty much untouched :-(   I can't remember the last time I lost my appetite.

I decided there was no point in trying to do further preparation and went straight to bed.

And that's when things began to get really weird.

I managed to get to sleep very quickly (which was a welcome relief, considering the difficulty I had the night before).

But, three hours later, I woke up feeling like I was being boiled alive. With hindsight, I should, perhaps, have anticipated this: the radiator was still turned up to maximum, after all (yes... I am an idiot).

However, my brain was clearly somewhat muddled.

No matter how I tried to rearrange the cover I either found myself too warm or too cold.  Even after turning down the heating, I could not find a comfortable temperature. I swung from feeling too hot to shivering.

Eventually I figured out what was going wrong: the duvet was not a normal duvet. It was a cynical corrupt duvet. Yes: the explanation for my discomfort was that the duvet was not uniform in its construction: some parts of it provided more insulation than others. The answer was to rotate it by about forty five degrees to ensure an even insulation.

However, I had reckoned without one thing. It turned out that the duvet wasn't just non-uniform, it was under the control of the hotel reception staff. I deduced this active conspiracy because, even when I rotated the duvet to compensate for its non-uniform design, I still couldn't find an acceptable temperature: the hotel staff must be actively fighting me!

I spent several minutes trying to figure out why the hotel was doing this to me and what it would take to make them stop. Do they want my money?

Fortunately (for my ongoing freedom, at least), I chose not to call them and demand they stop interfering with my duvet and decided to take it up with reception when I checked out in the morning.

In the meantime, I went to the bathroom, had a glass of water, went back to bed and promptly fell asleep.

I thought it would probably be better not to mention my discoveries to reception when I checked out...

As for my illness.... well my cough got steadily worse throughout Wednesday and my presentation went reasonably well (but far from brilliantly).

I was most grateful to discover that a colleague had been found to stand in for me at another meeting today.

This was good because I felt even worse this morning. I have spent all the day sat on the sofa, barely moving.  My one piece of activity has been to shuffle to the local shop and back for some lunch. I was coughing so hard (and my nose running so freely) when I returned that I thought I was going to die.

However, I am beginning to feel a little better now and am hoping that, if I take it easy tomorrow too, I should be ready to return to form at work on Monday.

Not a moment too soon. I hate being ill. I hate reneging on commitments I have made. And, even more, I hate sneaky amorphous, conspiratorial duvets. People, beware: are you sure your duvet isn't trying to attack you?!

Utair and Surgut

It appears that a Utair Tupolev-134 has crash landed on a return flight from Surgut in Siberia, killing five.

The story caught my attention because Utair (flying Tu-134s) are the airline I used when I visited Surgut in 2004 and 2005.

I remember joking at the time about the wisdom of flying an internal Russian airline - but being pleasantly surprised by the experience

• Domodedovo airport was surprisingly well run: they had the best security-check arrangements of any airport I have ever visited: before the scanners, there was a large open space with plenty of seats and baskets. Passengers could sit down, take off their shoes, empty their pockets and extract their laptops before approaching the machines. This meant that a single slow person didn't cause the queue to freeze-up: people were only processed when they were ready. Utter Genius!
• Surgut airport was also relatively efficient. On the airside, the de-icing machines were amazing: shortly before the plane was due to depart, a machine would appear out of nowhere and spray a gunky liquid over both wings of the plane. The entire operation took less than thirty seconds.  I could imagine the same scenario at Heathrow (it would involve a lengthy delay and an apology from the pilot about unavailability of equipment, no doubt).
• The in-flight catering on the flights was outstanding. The airline had rejected the idea of trying to do "fancy" meals or to replicate familiar meals from home. Instead, they had figured out what actually worked at 30,000 feet and served that instead. The pictures don't do it justice, but the rating (8/10) is about right: in-flight catering on Utair flight

However, for all that, I was a little disquieted when I saw that Utair had recently been banned from operating in the EU due to safety concerns.

Either way, it is sad to hear that people have died and have been injured - I hope those injured make a speedy recovery.

Public Service Broadcasting courtesy of XFM

Three quarters of the adverts are government propaganda ("drive slowly!".... "wear a seatbelt!".... "insurance companies are scum but you can trust the FSA".... "private landlords are also scum".... "use the job centre!"... and on it goes).

Who knew...? you can't trust statistics!

Don Boudreaux has a nice piece showing how two of the most widely quoted economic "statistics" of late are actually highly misleading.  Good stuff.

The difference between an abstract and an introduction

I think I knew this but I've not seen it spelled out so explicitly before.

Is JFK always that awful?

Having just had the privilege of leaving the US via the delightful Delta terminal at JFK (terminal three), I'm still unsure if I was the victim of a hidden camera stunt or if the operators of the airport truly do believe that their tin-pot, third-world sh*t-hole of an airport terminal is in some way acceptable.

Either way, a walking route from the "Air Train" that takes you past three separate piles of accumulated pigeon dirt, dead ends, across two car park entrance ramps, along a pavement narrower than the baggage trolley and along a traffic island should probably have been warning of what the inside would be like.

I did learn one useful piece of information, however: don't bother getting to JFK on time if you have an international flight: a charming man will conveniently call out destinations to those in the check-in queue and invite people (who claim to be) going to that destination to jump to the front, overtaking those who bothered to turn up early. Nice. 

To be fair to them, if I were running the airport, I'd do something similar when a flight was due to close. My technique would be to call the latecomers, request their tickets and say "next time, get here on time" before tearing up the tickets and suggesting they rebook themselves on a different airline (at their expense, naturally).

Still, the flight back wasn't too bad and the horror of the airport served to remind me how good the rest of the trip had been.

Local on the eights

The Weather Channel.

New York. (Which is absolutely Jaw-droppingly freezing, btw)

"Local On the Eights"

What on earth does that phrase mean?!

PowerQuest ImageCenter

I've had a run of bad luck with my laptop recently (failing motherboard, dodgy screen, etc ,etc) so I've been paying extra attention to backups.

My main backup solution is the Tivoli Storage Manager service provided at work.  This runs automatically each night and backs up my work files.

However, it doesn't pick up things like my iTunes library and it wouldn't really help get me back up and running if my disk were to fail.

Therefore, I also run an intermittent full-disk copy.   This means that, were my hard disk to fail, I could swap in the image and then only have a week or so of material to reapply from TSM.

I use ImageCenter for this task. I love it. It just works.

(Except for the small problem that the disk I copy to is not SATA, but my main disk is.... in other words, I have no hope of booting from the image....  I'll fix that problem next time :-)  )

Important Scientific News

We painted the bedroom yesterday.

By the time I fell asleep, I could no longer smell paint.

When I woke up, I could.

I'm pretty sure that nobody broke in and did some extra painting while I slept.

Therefore, the bit of the brain that grows bored of odours must reset itself when one sleeps.

Who knew?!

Why my flickering lights mean the Olymics might not be *entirely* malign

I was overjoyed when I heard that London would be hosting the 2012 Olympic Games. I remember that I was working from home that day and that I deliberately walked to the shops for lunch a little earlier than normal so that I could be home in time for the announcement. Given that I have absolutely no interest in sport and will probably not watch any of the coverage when it finally happens, this is probably somewhat inconsistent.  Nevertheless, I did watch the broadcast and I was mildly excited when I heard we had won.

Since the announcement, however, I have been watching the costs grow with mounting horror. The guys at "Burning Our Money" have been doing a sterling job of keeping track of the ballooning costs and idiocies that are going on.

However, they've missed a piece of goodness: currently, a large amount of East London's power is delivered via overhead lines that travel through Stratford. These will be buried as part of the Olympic development work.

It is currently very windy in East London and my lights are flickering. I do not like it when my lights flicker. If they bury the lines, perhaps my lights will flicker less.

Students of logic will observe that this does not imply that the Olympics are a good thing.  But they will make my lights flicker a little less....

My theory is proved

I don't claim originality when I assert that restaurants in prominent locations are uniformly awful. However, it's not often I get to experience such stunning confirmation of the corollary.

My colleague studied her guidebook between breaks in our training class and liked the sound of a restaurant in Christiania. I booked a table and we entered the address into the SatNav.

The soothing sounds of the TomTom took us to a very dark road with a dead-end. There were no obvious signs of life and certainly no signs of a restaurant. After some driving round for parking, we gave up so I called them and they tried to direct us in.

We eventually found Spiseloppen by walking along a dirt track behind a derelict building and walking up a grafitti-covered flight of stairs.

The chances of a lost tourist stumbling upon this place were zero. Accordingly, the food, service and drink were outstanding. It was not cheap - but was worth every kroner.

I had a smoked swordfish, crayfish, salmon-in-a-crepe, asparagus and caviar for starter and medium-rare reindeer for main and enjoyed every bite.

The young couple preparing a monstrous spliff on the stairs leading to the toilets completed the contrast between the restaurant and its surroundings.

If that were not excitement enough, I made two other discoveries today:

Firstly, WebSphere Process Server's support for direct connections to WebSphere MQ (or "MQSeries", as James insists on calling it) is actually rather good (see... I did learn something this week!)

Secondly, my hotel has the cleverest lift, ever. It has doors on three sides and two buttons for each floor. Depending on which button you press, a different door opens upon arrival at your level. However, and here's the clever bit, the lift will climb to a different altitude depending on which door is to open. For example, the left hand door's level is about half a metre lower than the middle door's level. 

A clever solution to the problem of providing step- and ramp-free access to every room in the hotel when it was plainly formed from knocking two separate buildings together.

(I have yet to discover what one must do to make the third door open on any given floor....)

Interesting Financial Fact of the Day

I was listening to one of Sun's excellent Mifid PodCasts on the plane to Copenhagen. (Wow... I never thought I'd compliment Sun!)

They were interviewing Andrew Allwright from Reuters.

The conversation turned to how Reuters plan to support Mifid's requirement for post-trade transparency. He described how, today, Reuters provide information on prices by using a concatenation of an equity's symbol (e.g. "VOD" for Vodafone) and the trading venue at which the trade was made (eg. "L" for London"). Hence: VOD.L.

He explained that, when trades from other venues (e.g. those internalised by large institutions or on other trading facilities) are published, he anticipates that Reuters will make those streams available by assigning new suffices to each of the venues.  (Implicit in the conversation was that they already do that for some of the existing exchanges)

He then made a very interesting point: Reuters also provide an aggregated feed, with the "X" suffix: So "VOD.X" carries information on trades from all venues that Reuters receive feeds from.

This interested me because, when I want to check the price of William Morrison stock, I use the MRW.L symbol in Yahoo Finance.  Perhaps this means I'm not seeing a full picture?

I just tried MRW.X on Yahoo, to see if I could get figures that included all other venues where Morrison shares trade. Yahoo didn't want to play ball.

Oh well.... maybe I should try again on November 1.

"Economy Flex"

I'd forgotten how miserable it is flying in Economy. I am writing this on a flight to Copenhagen to attend some product training. SAS have a curious three-class cabin on this route: "Business", "Economy Flex" and "Economy". Given that the plane only seats about seven people (I'm flying from London City Airport), this does seem excessive.

I think Economy Flex is for passengers who have paid top dollar for full economy and "regular" Economy is for those of us who travel on dirt-cheap non-changeable, non-refundable tickets.

Either way, it means I have to pay for my food and drink.

Not impressed.

Cow Maturity Model

It appears the Capability Maturity Model has been renamed...

(I'm not sure I get the red-polka-dots reference though...)

Not enough sockets!

Diamond Geezer makes a very good point: why are there never enough sockets where you need them?

We're currently designing a new kitchen and I've specified five double sockets in addition to the ones the built-in appliances need, plus an extra double socket in the breakfast-bar/island-unit so that I can plug my laptop in.

I hope that will be enough sockets.

I've even specified that a socket is to be put inside a cupboard so that I can put my wireless router in there without any cables showing (I'm having a phone point moved to a point immediately behind the cupboard)

The problem isn't isolated to homes, though. A common complaint from conference goers is that venues have insufficient power-points... and don't get me started on airports.

Until wireless power distribution is perfected (my idea of powerful lasers in the ceiling and photovoltaic cells on the tops of devices fell flat when a friend pointed out what might happen if you put your hand in the way...), I think the answer might be for office floors to be built entirely out of power sockets. Forget tiles or carpet. Just blanket the floor in sockets.

"Side-fumbling was effectively eliminated"

I do hope this isn't what I sound like when I'm pitching my products....

HT: Vinnie

How to crash an in-flight entertainment system

I'm sure there are laws against this sort of thing. I'd have been too scared of the immigration police even to have tried this experiment.

Via Naquada

Interesting People

Andy invited me along to drinks that James and Dennis had organised in Spitalfields this evening.

I was a little apprehensive about going along because my blogging has been a little light of late and I'm not closely involved in the cool stuff that is going on in parts of IBM at present.

However, knowing that Roo would be there, I figured the sheer embarrassment of IBMers (that's the collective noun, right?) present would be sufficient to give me cover.

I needn't have worried: I met several people I didn't already know, had some very interesting conversations... and the wine was stunningly good.

Now, I should admit that I usually restrict my attention to bottles in the £5 - £10 range when shopping but the atmosphere of Bedales (combined with the very reasonable corkage) encouraged me to try a £20 bottle I would not normally have considered.  Well worth trying.

So, thanks for inviting me along, Andy; I had a great time.

Private Sector vs Public Sector

My wallet was stolen when I was out on Friday.

It contained the following:

• Barclaycard
• American Express Credit Card
• LloydsTSB Mastercard
• Barclays Connect Card
• Oyster Card (+ gold record card and photocard)
• Driving Licence (photo card)
• Book of first class stamps
• £60 cash

I noticed the loss very quickly and called many of the card issuers on the way home. 

Once I arrived home, I cancelled my Oyster Card and filed a crime report (both online).

On Saturday morning, I called the DVLA to request a new driving licence. They were the only people to charge me. £19. (I was robbed twice!)

Interestingly, however, when I arrived home this evening, my new driving licence and my new Oyster card were waiting for me.

There is no sign, as yet, of my new credit or debit cards.

Poor show, private sector!

(Luckily, I deliberately don't carry all my cards around with me and so I have been surviving with my Intelligent Finance Debit Card; having only one card is curiously scary... what do I do if a machine swallows it?!)

Silicone Sealant

I knew replacing the sealant around the bath in an attempt to freshen up the bathroom would be a bad idea....

I think I've more or less made good the damage I inflicted.

Not sure it looks any better than it did before I started though.

Profiting from those who apply rules blindly

A headline in my Telegraph news feed caught my attention this evening:

Two investors in Reed Elsevier have sold their shares as a protest that the publishing giant runs arms fairs

It appears that Reed's activities fall foul of the Joseph Rowntree Trust's "ethical" rules.

Naive implementations of index trackers are susceptible when the make-up of the fund changes: everybody knows the managers will be selling the stocks that have been dropped and will be buying the stocks that have entered the index.

I wonder if anybody routinely profits from anticipating the behaviour of funds, such as this Rowntree one, that are constrained in some other way? It probably wouldn't be too hard to keep tabs on companies assumed to be "ethical" or "green" or whatever and track any news stories about them for signs that their right to claim such a designation has been forfeited.  On the assumption that some holders of such companies may be forced to sell, there has to be an opportunity in there somewhere!

Careers, critsits and kitchens

I've had a rather hectic start to the new year.

Firstly, I've started a new role in IBM. I am now a Technical Sales Specialist for IBM WebSphere, with a focus on Financial Services companies in the UK.

I had been looking for an opportunity to reduce my international travel, build longer-term relationships with clients (my previous role saw me seeing lots of clients typically for short periods of time) and specialise in an industry area.  The FSS Tech Sales role looked like a good fit. So I've now made the jump from consultancy and am furiously trying to get my head around what it is I'm supposed to be doing and how to do it :-)

One of my short term objectives upon joining the new team was to get to know as many of them as possible (both my direct colleagues and my sales counterparts). I needn't have worried: within days of starting the role, I was asked to assist with a problem a client was having.

After an unbroken stretch of about ten days, consisting of three calls a day with the client and even more with IBMers in between the client ones, I think I succeeded in my aim of getting to know a lot of people... 

I'm still keeping an eye on the situation but, so far, things appear to be moving in the right direction.

And if that's not enough excuses for failing to update my blog, there has been the extra-curricular activity of getting a kitchen designed and scheduled. Between calls with plumbers, letters to building control, requests to the management company and legal discussions to confirm paying for some of it on credit card will mean Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act* will give us some protection if the kitchen provider screws us around, I'm surprised I've had time to sleep...

* It's a fantastic piece of legislation (when viewed in isolation and when you don't worry about the chilling effect it must have overall!): if the supplier breaches the contract, the credit card company shares liability for the full purchase price even if you only paid for part of it on the credit card. The economist in me worries that the scope of this law may well be why things cost so much in Britain - the law is almost like an insurance policy... and insurance costs money - but I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth: I hope I will not need to rely on it but, when spending so much money on a new kitchen, knowing that this protection is there is comforting.

Game Theory

Apologies for the infrequent posts of late.

I've had some late nights at work, which have left a little less time for writing letters to misguided journalists or commenting on my favourite tube lines.

In the interim, here's an interesting article (courtesy of one of my regular readers) on how IBM, allegedly, used Game Theory to plan its approach to Linux in 2001.

It should not be necessary to remind my readers that I am linking to this article in my personal capacity and I have no idea whether it is an accurate representation of IBM's strategies or opinions....

Anyway, here it is

Letter to Polly Toynbee

I've just returned from a lecture given by Polly Toynbee on "The Art of the Column". It was the Economist's 2007 Bagehot Lecture and was delivered at Queen Mary, University of London.

No discussion of how to write an opinionated article could have stayed entirely clear of politics so this was, of course, why I went along. I wasn't disappointed: she was disarmingly frank at times and, as one might expect of an influential columnist, articulate.

I failed to think of any good questions to ask during the Q+A period, which is annoying because I came up with several as soon as I left. So I sent her an email instead.

Dear Polly,

I have just returned home after attending your Economist Bagehot lecture this evening. I found it interesting, enjoyed it immensely and I am grateful to you for taking the time to prepare your talk.

Forgive me for not asking a question during the event or raising these points in person but I hope you will not object to receiving them via email.

* You implied that you believed you were preaching to the converted when writing in The Guardian. You shouldn't worry. I deliberately buy The Guardian because I disagree with most of what I read (and almost all of what you write, I should admit). I find it can become rather tiresome perpetually to read the opinions of those with whom you agree. Therefore, I make a point of reading your columns to keep me on my toes: if I can't immediately see the fault in your logic, it tells me I need to do more reading or thinking! I don't think I'm the only one who does this. So, don't worry... people who disagree with you do pay good money to read what you're saying.

* I think you were a little unfair to the "anonymous" bloggers who seem to hate you so viscerally. Some of the blogs I read link to your articles from time to time and, whilst you are right that some of the bile you attract is extremely unpleasant and entirely unacceptable, there are some regulars commenters on your articles ( e.g. Tim Worstall) who make reasoned arguments and who do not hide their identities. In other words, those who disagree with you online are not all nuts.

* I was surprised by your frank claim that the facts you use in your articles "are nothing of the sort" and that they are chosen precisely to support the case you're trying to make. This was good advice for an audience of aspiring columnists but I think it also goes a long way to explaining some of the attacks you receive from those on "the right". Some of the more reasoned critiques I've seen of your work have tended to get closest to fury when dissecting what they see as your misleading use of statistics. I remember a particularly memorable article you wrote that appeared to suggest that because the large amount of money spent on SureStart had failed to show any effect in a large study, that was a reason for spending even more! Of course, you didn't present the argument in that way but it was an example of how your conclusions can appear to have no relation to the "facts" you are relying on. The combination of advocacy for state-intervention and selective use of data is just too much for classical liberals to bear!

In any case, I enjoyed your lecture and, despite reading them through gritted teeth, enjoy your articles :-)

Best regards,

Richard Brown

p.s. I intend to post this letter on my blog. Of course, I will not make any reply you should send public unless you explicitly make it clear you are happy for me to do so.

--
Richard G Brown
http://gendal.blogspot.com


[EDIT 2007-01-24 11:27 Edited to remove errors introduced when copying and pasting]

United States Visa Waiver Scheme

I had a drink with a few colleagues on Friday night after work and the topic of travelling to the US came up. I was reminded of this when I was reading of the arrest of one of Tony Blair's "top aides" in this weekend's papers.

As I understand it, Ruth Turner was arrested on suspicion of two offences, one carrying a maximum two year prison sentence and one carrying up to life (Perversion of the Course of Justice).

The declaration one must sign when travelling to the US without a visa says:

"Have you ever been arrested or convicted for an offense or crime involving moral turpitude or a violation related to a controlled substance; or have been arrested or convicted for two or more offenses for which the aggregate sentance to confinement was five years or more; or have been a controlled substance trafficker; or are you seeking entry to engage in criminal or immoral activities ?"

Oops...


[EDIT: 2007-01-21 19:42. Corrected Ruth Turner's name. Perhaps I should apologise to Ruth Kelly :-) ]

The transformation of Docklands as recorded in "Eastenders" credits

I flicked through some channels on TV just now and caught the end of Eastenders. I noticed that, had I been quick enough, I might have been able to see an aerial shot of the flat (yes, I know... Google Earth can do it... but it's always nice to see "yourself" on TV).

So, I wondered... can YouTube help me?

I needn't have worried.

So, here for your viewing pleasure is a history of Docklands, as told by Eastenders.

First, I give you 1996:



You will observe that Canary Wharf is nowhere to be seen, the docks system at the north of the Isle of Dogs is present and, going Eastwards, London City Airport is still rather watery.

Let's now fast-forward to 1993:



You will, I trust, enjoy the 1993-version of the theme tune. Very funky. Canary Wharf has encroached on the Isle of Dogs but there's still not a huge amount there.

By 2001, we have this:



The Millennium Dome is now present, in all its glory and Canary Wharf is well and truly taking shape.

Annoyingly, I can't see the flat in any of the movies because the resolution is too low. Darn!

Politics and Economics

When I started this blog, I took a decision not to discuss my political or economic beliefs too aggressively. I am robustly liberal in my economic and social outlook and this means that I tend to upset statists, paternalists and those that believe they know how to spend other people's money better than those other people know themselves.

My thinking has been influenced by the likes of Milton Friedman, Russ Roberts, Don Boudreaux, Tim Worstall and, on matters to do with the welfare state, James Bartholomew. (I'd like to say I was influenced by Adam Smith and Hayek but I failed to complete reading either of their key books, so I'm afraid it's probably fair to say I've only been influenced by them through the influence they've had on the other people listed here)

Several years ago, I was far more lefty but, after spending considerable time trying to understand economics, I began to realise that a lot of the outcomes I regard as desirable (e.g. helping the poor, ensuring nobody goes without food, looking after the old, ensuring all get a good education, etc, etc, etc) were not the outcomes that resulted from the policies I supported. In other words, the noble intents of the policies I supported did not lead to good outcomes. That was the trigger that started my journey.

One of the books that influenced my thinking on the role of the welfare state was James Bartholomew's. I blogged about it shortly after reading it and RedMonk's James Governor commented.

I lent him my copy of the book shortly thereafter. It was surprising, and gratifying, to see him label the book today as one that had the most influence over him last year.

It also reminded me that I need to get the book back! James - we need to have that drink. You can give me some advice on tech sales :-)

When to buy...

James Bartholomew makes a good point today.

If everybody is saying a stock is a dog, it's probably a good time to buy. Similarly, if everybody is saying how great a stock is, it's probably time to sell (or short, if you're feeling sophisticated).

The argument is relatively simple: if everybody thinks something is rotten, the chances are the bad news is already captured in the price. Similarly, if everybody thinks something is good, the chances are that good news is also in the price (remember that the counterparty to any transaction probably has access to similar information as you... they're reading all the same articles saying how good it is!)

I know "anecdote" does not equal "evidence" but I have been very heartened by my success with this approach to date: I bought shares in William Morrison about eighteen months ago when there was bad news appearing in the press every day of the week. I'm currently over 50% up.

James also runs an interesting blog here. (Although it appears to be down right now)

How well is the UK housing market doing?

I heard an advert for Foxtons on the radio over the weekend. I have now just seen one for Haart. My suspicion: they're now fighting amongst themselves for market share in a flat or declining market....

Jarvis is Back

I must confess that I've been under the influence of too many pop- and dance-loving friends of late and so have neglected the indie side of my musical taste.

However, I saw Jarvis Cocker perform live at the end of last year and it reminded me of how much great music I listened to in the nineties.

I've just found the video to his new single.... It's probably a little early to class it as the best single of 2007 (it's only the 5th of January!) but it is very funny indeed.

http://www.londonist.com/archives/2006/12/the_greatest_mu.php

That Letter to the Independent

A commenter asked me which article so incensed me that it motivated me to send a letter to the Independent.

The article, by Johann Hari, is here.

It's mostly harmless but "reason number five" about the massive reductions in poverty in India and China annoyed me.

The letter I wrote (which was not published) was:

 

Sir,

Johann Hari ("Six good reasons for feeling cheerful", Tuesday 26 December) correctly delights in the breathtaking number of poor Chinese and Indians being lifted from poverty. Has he ever paused, between his tiresome attacks on globalisation, free trade and capitalism, to inquire as to how poverty alleviation on such scale has been achieved?

Yours,

Richard G Brown
London, E1W

 

To his credit, Mr Hari replied to my email and we had a brief discussion.  I think I was probably unfair to him in my letter (in that his position is, indeed, more nuanced than I suggested). However, I believe the general thrust holds: those who claim to seek increased wealth for the poor of the world and who simultaneously fight against globlalisation and free trade and, at best, misguidedly inconsistent.