Elton John

The first I heard of Elton John having a child was when I read that the BBC had sought the opinion of the despicable Stephen Green on the news. Stephen Green is, in my unqualified opinion, delusional bordering on insane.

It's not (just) because I'm an atheist and he's religious. Some of my best acquaintances are religious. It's because he's a hateful biblical literalist, a Leviticus believing religious nutjob.

My opinion on gay sex, gay marriage, gay adoption, gay surrogacy, gay parents and gay elderly parents is that it's not really any of my business.

It's worth remembering, before judging these new parents, that children are born to terrible parents, to elderly fathers, to cuckolded husbands, into loveless marriages etc, all the time. No licence is required, no exam needs to be passed. The same applies here.

The objections are simply about homophobia, about man-on-man action, not about parenting. Usually, when sex is discussed, I'd say it's OK as long as it's consensual. The ambivalent and those supporting Elton don't see it as being about sex though, and so it's not about consent. Children do not give consent to their parents. Children do not choose their parents.

I'm not a fan, incidentally. If anything will make me turn the radio off, it's Elton bloody John.

Budgeting

I've been looking at my bank statements for the last 6 months to try to figure out where all the money's gone. I seem to spend a lot, but I don't actually buy much. Or at least I don't have much to show for it, except an expanding waistline.

My plan for 2011 is to have a budget. Unavoidable things will still go out as direct debits, petrol will go on the debit card. Food and drink will come out of a weekly cash allowance, and when it's gone, it's gone. If I want something, I'm going to save for it. I hope to find that by the time I've saved enough to make the purchase, I'll no longer really want it. I also hope that by using real cash, I'll become more aware of what I'm spending.

Level scores on Angry Birds

Game Centre doesn't give scores or ranking per level. This makes it difficult to target levels that are potentially going to yield more points. Below are my scores. I'm particularly interested in any scores you have that beat mine.

Angry Birds…

1. Poached Eggs.

1 - 1 34240

1 - 2 61200

1 - 3 42820

1 - 4 31120

1 - 5 64930

1 - 6 36570

1 - 7 45610

1 - 8 56410

1 - 9 55440

1 - 10 68560

1 - 11 59960

1 - 12 53560

1 - 13 53010

1 - 14 78180

1 - 15 52590

1 - 16 65760 [66300]

1 - 17 56620

1 - 18 50400 [56080]

1 - 19 39130

1 - 20 60590

1 - 21 83440

2 - 1 68350

2 - 2 73710

2 - 3 117740

2 - 4 56480

2 - 5 92550

2 - 6 74130

2 - 7 55300

2 - 8 55390

2 - 9 29420

2 - 10 43840

2 - 11 95430

2 - 12 63920

2 - 13 89760

2 - 14 52310 [56050]

2 - 15 67510

2 - 16 68490 [73150]

2 - 17 43690

2 - 18 64450 [70730]

2 - 19 54780

2 - 20 56490

2 - 21 82640

3 - 1 64560 [65420]

3 - 2 54920

3 - 3 76550

3 - 4 39650

3 - 5 105590

3 - 6 63030

3 - 7 56620

3 - 8 82290

3 - 9 66740

3 - 10 55090

3 - 11 50940 [56550]

3 - 12 50010

3 - 13 48680

3 - 14 52100 [55260]

3 - 15 63530

3 - 16 75460 [76490]

3 - 17 74160

3 - 18 91200

3 - 19 68260 [69500]

3 - 20 121630

3 - 21 130400

2. Mighty Hoax

4 - 1 67130

4 - 2 58250

4 - 3 62540

4 - 4 63880

4 - 5 93380

4 - 6 60040

4 - 7 71120

4 - 8 52880

4 - 9 42370 [46920]

4 - 10 46990 [54510]

4 - 11 95890

4 - 12 99200

4 - 13 77360

4 - 14 87000

4 - 15 88260

4 - 16 83180

4 - 17 30460

4 - 18 89400

4 - 19 52110

4 - 20 108660

4 - 21 90800 [94100]

5 - 1 58810

5 - 2 52900

5 - 3 89430

5 - 4 72990

5 - 5 84560

5 - 6 93830

5 - 7 87250

5 - 8 83650

5 - 9 72830 [79120]

5 - 10 52340

5 - 11 69260

5 - 12 73520

5 - 13 62190

5 - 14 58400

5 - 15 60790 [ 64950]

5 - 16 116840 [117770]

5 - 17 103620

5 - 18 112190 [116910]

5 - 19 115250

5 - 20 103620 [104780]

5 - 21 175600

3. Danger Above

6 - 1 69180

6 - 2 87140

6 - 3 76220

6 - 4 93430

6 - 5 70170

6 - 6 79000

6 - 7 125970 [124830]

6 - 8 101150

6 - 9 109640 (Don't think this will yield much more)

6 - 10 103590 [103820]

6 - 11 105670

6 - 12 111720

6 - 13 88930 [93520]

6 - 14 95850

6 - 15 139720

7 - 1 131030

7 - 2 143230

7 - 3 68410

7 - 4 86680 [86740]

7 - 5 83190 84840

7 - 6 80140

7 - 7 103750 [104070]

7 - 8 90290 [96080]

7 - 9 136720

7 - 10 107110 [115680]

7 - 11 113320

7 - 12 90110 [91290]

7 - 13 67270

7 - 14 65460 [69750]

7 - 15 158350 158650

8 - 1 107430

8 - 2 71330 [73020]

8 - 3 128600 [135380]

8 - 4 117670

8 - 5 97400

8 - 6 115610

8 - 7 167140

8 - 8 113640 [125310]

8 - 9 143550 [143560]

8 - 10 124500

8 - 11 108260 [110810]

8 - 12 106900 115020

8 - 13 152690 [153610]

8 - 14 90410

8 - 15 150290 [152750]

4.The Big Setup

9 - 1 24150

9 - 2 38830

9 - 3 44660

9 - 4 55890 [58440]

9 - 5 40090

9 - 6 53330

9 - 7 82830

9 - 8 58320 [61950]

9 - 9 47240

9 - 10 80970

9 - 11 57610 [58380]

9 - 12 66980 [71530]

9 - 13 78050 [83880]

9 - 14 71150 [73650]

9 - 15 86210 [88980]

10 - 1 71370

10 - 2 96290 [96960]

10 - 3 77060 [80880]

10 - 4 101850

10 - 5 93870

10 - 6 112100

10 - 7 89290 [97300]

10 - 8 75770

10 - 9 67620

10 - 10 73530

10 - 11 135470

10 - 12 85460

10 - 13 80270 [82020]

10 - 14 107700

10 - 15 105880 [109140]

11 - 1 117850 [121610]

11 - 2 112110 [115190]

11 - 3 131750 [153290]

11 - 4 89130 [95150]

11 - 5 125980 [137640]

11 - 6 100680 [104850]

11 - 7 124440

11 - 8 126010 [130760]

11 - 9 106430 [108810]

11 - 10 77020 [82090]

11 - 11 92120 [95520]

11 - 12 84390 [87010]

11 - 13 100000 [113450]

11 - 14 91400 [95860]

11 - 15 95690 [101340]

5.Ham 'Em High

12 - 1 76200

12 - 2 83020 [83740]

12 - 3 60280

12 - 4 83780 [88590]

12 - 5 79980

12 - 6 62150 [62170]

12 - 7 70140 [71240]

12 - 8 60260

12 - 9 101640

12 - 10 85520 [96250]

12 - 11 75650 [79370]

12 - 12 78350 [80880]

12 - 13 77370

12 - 14 91680

12 - 15 150510

13 - 1 79340

13 - 2 82470

13 - 3 78610

13 - 4 93700

13 - 5 100480

13 - 6 97160

13 - 7 147700

13 - 8 60280

13 - 9 78630

13 - 10 65240

13 - 11 88460

13 - 12 90670

13 - 13 54300

13 - 14 82650

13 - 15 129810

14 - 1 120950

14 - 2 110460

14 - 3 63670

14 - 4 122830

14 - 5 68450

14 - 6 104710

14 - 7 58080

14 - 8 70670

14 - 9 102260

14 - 10 108310

14 - 11 94580

14 - 12 104520

14 - 13 87240

14 - 14 81990

14 - 15 129920

f - 1 114070

f - 2 67940

f - 3 92000

Angry Birds Seasons…

Easter Eggs

1 - 1 - 79640

1 - 2 - 121940

1 - 3 - 116990

1 - 4 - 121610

1 - 5 - 127710

1 - 6 - 90400

1 - 7 - 95190

1 - 8 - 96570

1 - 9 - 98600

1 - 10 - 100280

1 - 11 - 130110

1 - 12 - 94780

1 - 13 - 92640

1 - 14 - 109350

1 - 15 - 120770

1 - 16 - 106820

1 - 17 - 106120

1 - 18 - 121000

Hogs and Kisses

1 - 1 - 56830

1 - 2 - 118640

1 - 3 - 60230

1 - 4 - 168680

1 - 5 - 102940

1 - 6 - 67270

1 - 7 - 95650

1 - 8 - 65200

1 - 9 - 56150

1 - 10 - 58370

1 - 11 - 70400

1 - 12 - 66120

1 - 13 - 102070

1 - 14 - 110130

1 - 15 - 151560

1 - 16 - 113470

1 - 17 - 94940

1 - 18 - 78850

Season's Greedings

1 - 1 71140

1 - 2 82190

1 - 3 60730

1 - 4 95700

1 - 5 116820

1 - 6 63960

1 - 7 73570

1 - 8 91330

1 - 9 102050

1 - 10 60370

1 - 11 70480

1 - 12 85280

1 - 13 122200

1 - 14 102830

1 - 15 58880

1 - 16 100060

1 - 17 64230

1 - 18 113210

1 - 19 48820

1 - 20 50430

1 - 21 73900

1 - 22 100480

1 - 23 77360

1 - 24 59000

1 - 25 158630

Trick or Treat

1 - 1 48400

1 - 2 79150

1 - 3 75410

1 - 4 66090

1 - 5 71940

1 - 6 69530

1 - 7 84250

1 - 8 110310

1 - 9 102070

1 - 10 102090

1 - 11 110600

1 - 12 75350

1 - 13 103850

1 - 14 88710

1 - 15 85010

2 - 1 101650

2 - 2 98910

2 - 3 88090

2 - 4 93520

2 - 5 105290

2 - 6 91550

2 - 7 106390

2 - 8 91600

2 - 9 54120

2 - 10 83339

2 - 11 103270

2 - 12 101820

2 - 13 75250

2 - 14 100970

2 - 15 107520

3 - 1 120980

3 - 2 92040

3 - 3 110200

3 - 4 48840

3 - 5 73630

3 - 6 112110

3 - 7 96550

3 - 8 101080

3 - 9 77040

3 - 10 118620

3 - 11 112170

3 - 12 79940

3 - 13 113850

3 - 14 102620

3 - 15 102490

Angry Birds Rio…

Smuggler's Den

1 - 1 63060

1 - 2 48100

1 - 3 59320

1 - 4 60730

1 - 5 59360

1 - 6 74100

1 - 7 59240

1 - 8 121680

1 - 9 78690

1 - 10 84150

1 - 11 89430

1 - 12 85890

1 - 13 94500

1 - 14 84690

1 - 15 71410

2 - 1 96490

2 - 2 84290

2 - 3 95900

2 - 4 72980

2 - 5 52400

2 - 6 96920

2 - 7 63500

2 - 8 117340

2 - 9 84060

2 - 10 79780

2 - 11 61700

2 - 12 65440

2 - 13 108420

2 - 14 65880

2 - 15 92460

Jungle Escape

3 - 1 84420

3 - 2 76160

3 - 3 52150

3 - 4 106150

3 - 5 90960

3 - 6 70320

3 - 7 93350

3 - 8 147110

3 - 9 105480

3 - 10 94390

3 - 11 57040

3 - 12 98950

3 - 13 105100

3 - 14 84390

3 - 15 118020

4 - 1 63850

4 - 2 98760

4 - 3 68910

4 - 4 108210

4 - 5 75870

4 - 6 79910

4 - 7 94160

4 - 8 121320

4 - 9 56630

4 - 10 78340

4 - 11 88500

4 - 12 73040

4 - 13 63220

4 - 14 97740

4 - 15 72420

Note: Updated with new high scores.

The scores in square brackets are the highest known scores from other people.

My son is appalled by this. "Oh My God!", he said, "You're an Angry Birds nerd!"

20110429: Updated with Ham 'Em High, Rio and Easter Seasons scores.

A problem with headphones.

I'm pleased to read this from Marco Arment. I've had the same problem with all in-ear-with-grommets headphones that I've tried. I'm pleased simply because I've never heard anyone else echo my complaint.

I hadn't considered that other designs that also make a seal would have the same problem. It's something I'll consider when I buy replacements.

Link Bomb

Janelle Monae - Tightrope

Mr Deity and the Woman

Lucky Louie - Ass (Audio NSFW)

Louis CK learns about the Catholic Church (Audio NSFW)

Tim Minchin - Storm (Audio NSFW)

Tim Minchin - Pope Song (NSFW. May offend you if you're Catholic)

Old Spice | The Man Your Man Could Smell Like
Sesame Street: Smell Like A Monster


The Western Nostril

Яolcats

http://devour.com

The Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players - Mountain Trip

Charlie and the Swiss Chocolate Factory

XKCD Sys Admin

Writing UTF-8 files from Python

As always, there may be better ways to do this (using XML libraries, for example), but it took far too long to figure this out, given that there's so little to do to fix the problem. I found a lot of the examples found on Google didn't answer this specifically, but just added to the confusion.

The problem:

a = 'âêîôŷ'
print a

gives this error:

UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii', '\xc3\xa2\xc3\xaa\xc3\xae\xc3\xb4\xc5\xb7', 0, 1, 'ordinal not in range(128)'

The proper way to define a unicode string is this:

a = u'âêîôŷ'
print a

which yields:

âêîôŷ'

In my search, though, there was lots of talk of how to convert strings to UTF-8, and this is *not* what you do if you want to write to a UTF-8 file. If you convert to UTF-8 before writing, you'll probably get errors becasue it'll contain values >=127.
This is how you do it...

ascii='abcdef'
uni = u'⢸ðêƒ'
file=codecs.open('utf-8.xml', mode='w', encoding='utf-8')
file.write(ascii)
file.write(uni)
file.close()

The only difference here is that you must use 'u' when defining literals, and you need to used codecs.open, with the encoding specified, when opening the file.

If, when you read the file, it appears to have 2 strange characters rather than the one unicode character you expect, the file is probably OK, it's the viewer that isn't reading UTF-8 properly.

More fun with Python

I'd recently written a little Python app to create a load of test data. The test data is XML, and should be UTF-8. I'd not really considered this properly, and for my original purposes, it's irrelevant. For a bit of fun/experimentation/learning, I put a tk front end on it, and email ed the project team to let them know, just in case it was useful.

Coincidentally, the vendor of the external product that would be producing these XML files in the real world was going to be late by several months, meaning that the XML files would need to be hand-crafted, the test data generator turned into a deliverable, and I briefly turned from tester into nightCoder.

There were a number of feature requests. My testing colleague started testing and raising defects against my code. Testing revealed areas in which i could be improved. I added a log file, properties files, some exception handling and error reporting dialogs. I had a real developer moment when it was deployed, went wrong and said (with a tester's smile on my face), "well that doesn't happen on my machine!".

While trying to figure out that problem, using a Swiss keyboard, typing garbage into some mandatory field, committing yielded another error as a result of non ASCII characters. As the client is Swiss, and these fields will probably included non ASCII, a fix was definitely required. Had this been just a learning exercise, I may not have been too worried, As I was now delivering this software, I had no option other than to figure it out. This highlights my main problem with self-teaching: I really struggle to find projects, and often abandon them in an unfinished state because nobody is relying on the solution.

The Henry Spink Foundation

I'd never heard of The Henry Spink Foundation, but John L Dixon retweeted this from Alan Henness, and now I have:

NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!! NOT FELICITY KENDALL!!!! http://bit.ly/9X9rJW #dreamsshattered

I set off to find out a little more. I read a little. I came across a list of therapies*. I ticked off Homeopathy, Chiropractic, and one of my favourites, Craniosacral Osteopathy from a mental list of quackery. I haven't and don't intend to read all of it. There may be some good and useful information about some good and useful therapies in amongst the bullshit. The trouble is that I already know from just five minutes perusing, that I can't trust it.

I picked something I'd never heard of from the list that they call the 'information centre'. I chose The Tomatis Method. In the second paragraph. I read:

According to Dr Tomatis this happens when muscles are not working properly and through auditory stimulation it is possible to retrain the muscles of the inner ear so that it can function without distortion.

Hang on, I thought. Muscles of the inner ear ? My anatomical knowledge comes from what I've picked up from watching Your Life In Their Hands, going to Body Worlds, playing Bones Lite, being slightly in love with Dr Alice Roberts and doing a 60 point level 2 Technology of Music unit with the Open University.

The OU course had a bit about the ear, but I didn't recall anything about muscles of the inner ear. It seemed a bit unlikely. I can wiggle my pinnae a bit, so I know we have vestigial muscles associated with the outer ear. I know we can attenuate our hearing by manipulating the ossicles, which sounds as though muscles are involved. Muscles in the cochlear seem a bit unlikely though.

So I googled. I found this kind of thing : EAR. Intra-inner-ear-musculature was conspicuous by its absence.

Next step, look up The Tomatis Method. The Official site says something different:

…listening will be disturbed when there is a dysfunction of the two muscles located in the middle ear whose role is to enable the precise and harmonious integration of acoustic information into the inner ear, and from there to the brain…

I don't want to go into the Tomatis Method in any detail. The rest of the information given by The Henry Spink Foundation suggests that it's nonsense. The point I'm trying to make is that if someone like me, a half-arsed lay anatomist with really quite rudimentary knowledge can spot a mistake like this in about 5 minutes, proper smart qualified people should be able to rip it to shreds. More worrying though is that gullible, desperate, less inquisitive people might buy into this kind of nonsense and line the pockets of these charlatans.

[Note: if there's actual evidence of the efficacy of the Tomatis Method, that would pass the scrutiny of a proper professional, like Ben Goldacre, say, I'll happily write another post singing its praises]

[* John has since called the lista real "Woo's Woo" of AltMed treatments". Genius!]

Wireless Audio done right.

With an open mind, I introduced the Sony wireless speakers to my wife. I explained that they were a complete bargain, and that if we didn't want them, I could probably re-sell them to someone at work. She was quite keen to get some music back into the living room. Our DVD player, which was used to play CDs, has migrated to another room, and music on a MacBook's speakers is obviously compromised.

After a quick demo, while she was out of the house earlier, I started to set them up properly. As I was setting them up, I discovered that our Airport Express, which I'd bought to augment a dead spot right where my wife sits on the couch, was now very close to our AV cupboard. My son had moved it a little while back.

Rather than plug in the Sony kit, I figured I might be able to hook up the Airport Express. We've a bit of an unconventional setup. Virgin V+ and Sky boxes hooked up to an old Phillips video sender, which is routed to Aego-M 2.1 speakers (fantastic) and an NEC projector (feeling its age now), which projects straight onto the living room wall, giving us a 70" picture. If the video sender is transmitting, it kills WiFi, so it's just used to switch sources. it has 4 in and 1 out, so here were 2 spare inputs.

A quick nose through my boxes of cables and connectors yielded a SCART to Phono converter (the kind you get with a PS2 or a Wii) and a 3.5mm jack to Phono cable. Perfect. I hooked it up, fired up iTunes on my MacBook Pro, the Remote App on my iPod Touch, paired them, and had audio out of the Aegos straight away.

I did briefly have a problem with Remote losing the ability to connect to iTunes. The settings were correct. The interwebs suggested a firewall problem. My firewall settings were fine, but something was screwing up with it. I switched the firewall off, reconnected, and turned the firewall on again, and it's been fine ever since.

The Remote app is brilliant. Fantastic. It can switch between multiple libraries, and it can re-route audio to either the Mac's speakers or the Airport connected speakers (or both). It's also far faster than I'd expect. I have a fairly large library (12,000+ songs), and it takes seconds to connect, seearch etc. It's as though the library is on the iPod.

This is how it's meant to be. The Sony system goes back on Monday. Turns out an 83% discount doesn't matter if the product is fundamentally flawed. Docking an iPod touch or an iPhone takes it out of your hand, and that's just wrong.

People accuse me of fanboyism, but it's only partly true. Apple generally make stuff that's better than everyone else, but often it's just because it sucks less than everyone else rather than being phenomenally good. iTunes + Airport Express + Remote is an example of phenomenally good.
but they absolutely nailed this.

With Airplay coming to third party devices, this is only going to get better.

A disappointing bargain

Yesterday I bought a Sony AIR-SA20PK Multi-Room Wireless speaker system. I got it back to my mid-week digs, unboxed it, and gave it a quick trial. Maybe 10 minutes. It has such significant flaws that I'm currently considering the purchase a mistake.

When you buy a £300 gadget for £50, and it still disappoints, it's no surprise to discover that it's discontinued product.

Brief explanation of the system. There are three boxes. Two are remote speakers, the other is a base unit, which is a combined iPod Dock, FM Radio and Digital Audio Transmitter. Each speaker can play they audio of the iPod or radio independently. The base unit can also be connected to an amplifier or TV with phono connectors for L/R audio and composite video. Think of it as Sonos Lite.

Before I explain what's wrong with it, reasons to be cheerful:

I'd been looking for a simple iPod Dock that would connect to my amp and would charge the iPod from the mains. The Apple Universal Dock is £39. It needs USB power, so is dead to me, but it gives me a reference price. The Dock/Transmitter part of the Sony Air system plugs into the mains (with a ludicrously big tethered wall wart) and has phono connectors for some iPod-to-amp goodness.

I probably wouldn't have paid £50 just for something that only did this, but nevertheless, it solves my problem.

In a quick test, in one room, with one receiver about 3 foot from the dock and the other about 20ft from the dock, everything paired quickly and sounded good. Not enough bass said fellow lodger, but I'm middle aged and urbane and he's young and urban. It sounded well rounded considering the size of the units. They're about the size of a kitchen radio, but twice as deep.

And now the bad…

The FM radio audio cannot be routed to the L/R phono output of the base unit. There's no switch, those outputs are hard-wired for the iPod only. The radio can only play through the bundled speakers.

I've tested briefly with an iPhone. It doesn't work. My hypothesis is that the base unit's wireless signal and the 3G of an iPhone interfere with each other, or perhaps getting approval for connectivity with an iPhone is harder and more expensive than for a mere iPod.

I've also read that the new retina display iPods aren't compatible for some reason, but can't confirm.

Setting up was really easy, but actually putting the iPod into the dock and picking up the Sony remote was an "Oh Noes!" moment. It just immediately felt all wrong. "What have I done?", I thought, as a superb visual interface was replaced with a play/pause/prev/next remote. The fact that the iPod needs to be in the dock while it's in use is a bit of a disaster. While charging overnight is fair enough, (REMINDER:Check that the iPod charges while the base unit is in standby mode), but not using the iPod's interface for navigation is simply an epic fail.

I've yet to test the range or whether WiFi suffers while the base unit is on. Experience with an analogue video sender was that it totally screwed with our WiFi, no matter what channels were in use. The Sony may turn out to be fine in this respect, but the proper solution is to use Wifi or Bluetooth. Proprietary wireless is really just asking for trouble.

There are no auxiliary inputs on the base unit. This is madness. It means that no audio, other than from a supported iPod, can be used with the system. If the 4th generation iPod Touch incompatibility is true, it means that this system became obsolete inside about 2 years. Break/Lose your iPod and your multi-room audio just broke forever.

There are no auxiliary inputs on the remote speakers. This is also madness. There should be a line in on both of the remote speakers so that any other source can be used with them. Currently, if the transmitter breaks, the remote speakers die with it.

Note: A colleague has pointed out that other S-Air transmitters are available, even if this one is discontinued. He also suggested that the reason for not having aux inputs is that it obviates the need for A/D converters, making the units cheaper to produce.

It's really doesn't feel like a £300 product. Amp plus speakers plus Apple Remote on the iPod plus iTunes plus Airport Express. That's a better solution. I'd still need that dock though, and all of that would be a lot more than £50.

Obama's religion

I can't remember what I was discussing with a friend of mine last night, but it led me to say "Obama probably isn't a Christian".

My friend looked at me as though I was mad. As though I'd said something deeply offensive.

"What do you mean ?", he demanded.

I looked puzzled at his reaction, and replied, "Well, he's an intelligent man. He's more likely to be a closet atheist. He'd be unelectable if he didn't do the whole Christian thing"

He relaxed.

"Oh. Thank fuck for that! For a moment I thought you'd gone mad and that you thought he was a Muslim!"

Oh how we laughed. For quite a long time.

Interestingly, I read this today. I may have to revise my opinion, but my experience suggests that most Christians are either non-practising believers, or practising-non-believers.

'Bland Recognition'

I hereby lay claim to the term 'Bland Recognition', first used on Twitter, in relation to the erosion of variety and creativity in advertising, architecture, society, products.

It's what you feel when you find yourself in clone town.

The iPod Nano (the crap one)

I've not tried one, but initial impressions aren't good. It looks ugly. A touch interface feels inappropriate with such a small screen.

All of the 'but for a little bit more, you can get an iPod Touch' harping, though, just reminds me of when the iPod mini was introduced, and people all said it was stupid to save a few quid when a full sized iPod has way more storage.

I think if this nano fails, it won't have anything to do with price/features, it'll be because it's a bit ugly, and difficult to use.

The new iPod nano is a fifth of the weight of the new iPod Touch. (≃20g vs ≃100g)

The new iPod Touch is almost five times the volume of the new iPod Nano. (2.8 cubic inches versus 0.6 cubic inches)

I guess the iPod Nano is the gym iPod. It's small and light and has a clip. As such it's certainly more niche. I'd expect far fewer sales of iPod Nanos versus iPod Touch, but that doesn't mean it's failed, it just indicates how the market has segmented.

Hywel's Law

The grammatical correctness of an email request for tech support is inversely proportional to the stupidity of the question therein.

That is all.

Tefal Quick Cup

A year or two ago, our kettle broke. We got a Tefal Quick Cup to replace it. Just the right amount of water is heated as it passes through an element, meaning you only heat the water you need. It also dispenses cool filtered water. What's not to like ?

What's not to like:

1. The 'cool' water is room temperature, which is hardly cool on a hot day. If you want cool filtered water, get a water filter jug and keep it in the fridge. If you want cool water, get it from the tap.

2. 'Cool' water remains in the pipe/element until the next time you use it. This means that you get a small amount of cold water in your cup. The workaround is to start the hot water for a second, stop it, empty the tepid water into the sink and then start making a drink. If you forget to do this it makes instant black coffee even more disgusting than it normally is, and white coffee undrinkable. Tea is a disaster. Coffee in a cafetière is just about OK, except ours doesn't fit under the Quick Cup's spout easily.

3. Tea is a disaster. Boiling water plus teabag in a mug may be against the law, but it's how most people make tea these days. While it's not as nice as making it in a warmed pot with a little patience, it'll make a fairly decent cuppa. WARNING! DO NOT MAKE TEA WITH A TEFAL QUICK CUP! No. Seriously. Don't do it. It'll be like American tea, where you get cup of warm water and a teabag on the side.

4. You'll need a kettle anyway. Being impatient, we ended up buying a cheap kettle anyway, for boiling water to make pasta etc. Turns out it's good for tea as well.

5. It feels more inconvenient. If you're making one cup or two, it's probably better. Making four or six or eight makes you feel like a galley slave. Worse though, is that it engenders an entitlement to instant gratification. Whereas with a kettle, it's automatic to fill it to a desired level as you put it on, with the TQC, it's automatic just to hit the button. Fine if the reservoir is full, but SO UNFAIR if, mid cup, it starts spitting out steam and coughing.

6. It dispenses a set amount of water. This is mostly a convenience. Press once, get a mug full of water. Not all of our mugs are the same capacity, so some get dangerously full and others pique the pessimist in me and seem half empty.

7. It dispenses a set amount of water, but with no intelligence, and it encourages a lack of attention from the user. Press the button a second time, and it stops. Press it again and it'll yield a whole mug's worth again. Usually not a problem, but if the reservoir runs dry, and you're forced ALL THE WAY across the kitchen to fill it up, when you poke that button, you get a full cup's worth. If you're not paying attention, that could be half a cup's worth of dilute coffee all over the work surface.

8. It dispenses a set amount of water. See 4 and 5.


In summary, this is what it's good at:

1. Instant black coffee, as long as you remember to purge the spout.

This is what it's bad at:

2. Everything else.

Buy a kettle instead.

Postcode Search Usability Fail

[RANT]
When searching online for goods in stock in nearby stores, I get really wound up by having to put in a full postcode. This is normally mildly annoying, in that I know my own full postcode, but there are some places for which I only know a partial postcode.

Example: I live in Kent, but work in Hampshire. The local Argos doesn't have stock of the printer ink I need, but it is listed, and is available for home delivery. PC World, Comet, Curries, Tescos, etc, no longer stock the ink.

I attempt to search the Basingstoke store. I enter "RG21", which I know is the town centre. It's rejected because it's not a full postcode, even though an area postcode should be sufficiently accurate in this instance. Grrrr!
[/RANT]

Functional Testing Tools.

This week, I've spent a fair amount of time reading about functional test tools. Both for automated testing, and for manual testing, for two different projects.

I don't know what it is about tools for testers, but they feel terribly prescriptive and constraining. We tried Seapine's TCM tool a couple of years ago. The idea was to replace our slightly flaky Excel based scripts. It was chosen because we use Seapine's defect management tool, Test Track Pro, and it made for an integrated solution.

Test Track Pro is fine. I don't think we get much out of it that couldn't be achieved with Bugzilla or a hundred other defect management tools. It's not perfect, it's not simple enough for my tastes, but it's reliable and does what it needs to do.

What happened was that I spent a couple of months writing macros to convert our Excel scripts into a form that Seapine could handle, and using their SOAP/WSDL API to write a Java utility to inject the scripts as new test cases. I also spent some time writing another utility to generate a project status summary using the fundamental metric we measure against, which is number of test steps. It's not a particularly good metric, with tens of thousands of steps, we have a good feeling for how long scripts take to execute.

We also tend to write very long scripts, some with many hundreds of steps. It's probably bad practice, but it works for us, and historically, with no TCM, it was easier to manage a few long scripts rather than many short ones. I've written some fairly extensive VBA macros to make the scripts manageable. It used to be a manual task to clear results prior to a new test run, for example, but that's now one click away. Other macros allow steps to be included or excluded from a test run quickly based on context (e.g. enable different steps for hardware keyboard and touchscreen, or disable steps for deprecated devices). These macros were written, fundamentally, to save us time. They're written by the testers for the testers.

Trying to use a COTS TCM solution after being used to this kind of freedom was a nightmare. A few of the testers never even got started. I was quite enthusiastic, but other than a trial project, to prove the feasibility, it never got adopted.

Developers don't put up with these kinds of tools, and neither should testers. I think a lot of the test tools are designed by process nutjobs. Managers writing requirements for they way they think things should work and implemented blindly by developers, but the users, the real world testers, don't get enough say. It's a shame.

On the automated test side, things look a little better. I think it's because there's more developer influence. A lot of developers will want to use the tools themselves and their ideas get incorporated. In terms of web testing, there's plenty to choose from. Selenium and Watir seem to be top. Selenium's IDE for recording scripts is nice and simple, and the ability to convert these to Java or Ruby or Perl of Python means reusable modular tests are nice and easy to write. The problem I have is that I need to test Java. Specifically in-browser applets. Selenium can apparently do that through FEST, but on reading the instructions, I really can't be arsed, I'm not convinced that I'd actually get it to work at all.

The two front runners in this contest are HP's Quick Test Pro and Froglogic's Squish. Squish would let me use Python, which is a massive win, it's Eclipse based and the object lookup appears to be astonishingly good (from the demos). Froglogic have loads of information available on their website, including the user guide, so I can really find out about how it works. HP's on the other hand seems impenetrable. Quick Test Pro really is the industry standard, it'll look great on the CV, but it'll mean a VB-like language, which is a real shame. Head says QTP. Heart says Squish.

Inception (no proper spoilers)

When I say no spoilers, if you read on, you may read something that makes the film less enjoyable, but there are no plot giveaways.

I don't get to the cinema often these days. I'd not heard of Inception until last week, when it was decided that I should take my twelve year old son to the cinema. He wanted to see it, it looked above average and so we went.

I think it was the first film we've seen together at the cinema that wasn't a kids film. We enjoyed it, we talked about it on the drive home. I thought the end of the final scene, just before the credits, was great.It made for a nice few hours of quality father-son time.

Two things distracted me. A phone rang. I was drawn out of the film, back to the theatre, frowning in the direction of the offending sound. But it was in the film, not in the audience. I've no idea how film-makers are going to deal with that problem.

The second distraction was Marion Cotillard, who plays DiCaprio's wife. She's simply ridiculously, compellingly, extraordinarily beautiful in this film. Whenever she was on screen, I simply forgot about the film.

So, decent enough film. Gets the brain working a bit, but it's not difficult to follow if you take Kermode's advice and don't go to the loo. My son loved it. It looked stunning.

This week, I've had the luxury of being able to read some of the criticism of it. I could argue that they should get off their high horses and enjoy it for what it is, but they all seem to have a point: There's way, way too much exposition. I can't see how they'd strip out all of it, but it's a film that explains itself far too well and leaves the viewer with (almost) no questions.

I've not thought about the film this week beyond just one niggling technical question (to which I think I know the answer). If it had been made without explaining itself as it went along, I'd have been begging friends to see it so that we could talk it through and try to figure it out, argue theories.

It's not going to stand the test of time.

Please say what I'm thinking.

Was just reading Matt Gallagher's Is a virtual machine for Cocoa programming inevitable? on Cocoa With Love. I subscribe, but often don't read a lot of the posts. They're too technical for my current ability and level of interest. I want to be more interested, but I just don't have the time/inclination at the moment. I'll be reading every word of this one because I kind of hate C.

I read the introduction wanting Matt to say what I was thinking, which is essentially that C pointers suck. There are other things I dislike about the language, the curly braces and the misuse of '=' for assignment and '==' for equality, for example, but much of this is cosmetic. The pointers are a deeper issue, although there is a element of cosmetic unpleasantness about them too.

What was I thinking ? Well, in Matt's words (Yay!) :

More relevant in the long term is the one feature that Objective-C can't remove or fix: complaints about C itself, in particular C pointers.

Even though this isn't the point Matt is making, I'm reminded of Robert B. K. Dewar's lectures on Ada. I've embedded part 3 below (will remove if requested to do so)…

The key thing to take from this is the rigour of the Ada compiler compared to C, the cost of finding defect at compile time versus runtime and the amount of time spent in debugging in Ada compared to C. I'm not saying Ada should be used instead (it shouldn't), but C in particular lets things through to runtime that are going to be a bugger to find and resolve. The nature of Cocoa, object based and dynamic is a much better fit to Python. If a virtual machine is proposed, a language like Python would be much more suitable.

Certifications

I attended a course recently, took and passed an exam to qualify as an ISTQB Advanced Technical Test Analyst (ATTA) . It's probably the last certification course I'll ever do. I have ISEB's Foundation Certification, which basically confirms I'm not brain-dead, I have ISEB's Intermediate Certification, in which I learned nothing except how to pass the exam. ATTA is an improvement, but the certification demonstrates more about my understanding of the expectations of a the examination board than my testing abilities.

The reasons for doing these courses are to enhance the CV. I'm no longer convinced that they do this. Foundation is fine, but the others are pretty much worthless. In a fight between experience and certification, experience wins.

I'm just starting a new project at work. It's completely outside my comfort zone. It appears to be process intensive. There are high expectations. The lazy, comfortable part of me is dreading this. Having talked to the test manager, I suspect the pain will be worth it. It's genuinely going to be a 'valuable learning experience'. I mean that most sincerely, folks. I think I'll learn more about testing in the next few months than I have in three certifications and 4 years as a full time tester.

There may be a trip to Switzerland in it next year too, which will be nice.

Setting Up for Productive Procrastination

There's only so much time, and much of it is wasted. I'm going to try to waste less of it by means of this cunning plan:

I'm unsubscribing from some RSS feeds and subscribing to some others.

I threw out the MacDailyNews feed a while ago, and it felt quite liberating. Today I've gone further. MacWorld, MacUser, TUAW, AppleMatters etc, in fact, the whole folder called 'Apple News' has been chucked.

I'm thinking of chucking 'Tech News' too (The Register, Wired, Ars Technica), but haven't plucked up the courage yet.

The feeds I'm subscribing to are all blogs. They're blogs by professionals software testers. It's what I do, but I don't think much about it, I don't read much about it, and I'm not really getting any better at it. I want to. Pretty much all the books I've read on testing cover the same old stuff and are, frankly, uninspiring.

So I'm looking to real people for inspiration instead. Wish me luck.

I'm starting with Adam Goucher's Quality through Innovation and Eric Jacobson's Test This Blog. I'm going to use them to learn from and I'm going to use them as experienced content filters.

Cognitive dissonance holds no fears for him.

Charles Arthur calls Paul Thurrott an idiot very politely.

Blog Comments

I'm not a tech blogger. I'm a Software Tester and I occasionally post, occasionally about tech, because it's good indulgent creative fun and, as pretty much nobody reads this, it's not going to hurt anyone.

This post was going to be a comment on Ian Betteridge's blog entry on the whole should-Gruber-allow-comments-on-Daring Fireball thing.

As Ian wants to encourage everyone who really wants to comment on what I write to get their own blog fired up, and write. You never know, you might enjoy it, that's what I'm doing.

It's not, though, the first time I've written here as a response to another blog. I do use comments on sites, but not really very much these days. It seems like a waste of time and effort. There's an awful lot of stupid out there and I'm trying not to participate.

I'd tend to use Twitter to contact @ianbetteridge, who I kind of know, via Twitter, and I'd use email to contact comments@daringfireball.net. @gruber doesn't know who the fuck I am, and as emailing is more effort, I'm only likely to do so if I have something to say that I think he'd want to hear. I honestly don't want to waste his time.

I'd probably email John if I thought he'd got something factually wrong. He'd want to correct it, (which he does). I might also drop him en email if I thought he'd missed something (say he was writing about drawing graphs, but seemed not to know about omnigraphsketcher, and I thought that was a great tool he should know about).

The first post on this blog linking to an external source linked to Daring Fireball. That's no coincidence. Had there been comments, I'd have left one alongside dozens of others that would be ignored and forgotten.

So thanks, John and Ian for indirectly and directly getting me to post stuff here that at least I'll be able to read again sometime.

Ten reasons why you should still avoid Android

1. The back of the case is still plastic, so it's going to get scratched to buggery and the battery cover will keep falling off.

2. Hardware designed to meet a features checklist with no regard to usability.

3. The camera will have a tiny sensor with a huge megapixel count, which will yield awful noisy images.

4. You can't upgrade the OS to the latest version because the carrier doesn't let you. You have to buy a whole new phone and get locked in to another lengthy contract, probably getting a lower 'unlimited' data cap in the process.

5. New Android devices will be out practically every week, rendering your Android device out of date, forcing you to sell it at a loss in order to upgrade to the latest and greatest and get locked in to another lengthy contract, probably getting a lower 'unlimited' data cap in the process.

6. Locked in to Google for map data, which means directions will probably tell you to walk across a busy road and probably die. Add the cost of good health insurance to that mobile contract.

7. Voice-to-text that you'll have to correct manually, which will take more time, so you won't bother after a while. Even if it does work, which it won't, which I can say with complete certainty, even though I've never used it on a phone, you won't use it becasue it'll make you look like a dick in public*

8. Doesn't have a gyroscope, so gaming is impossible. It'll still be impossible when a gyroscope is introduced, because it didn't have one to start with, and no games will support it. Ever.

9. Due to uncontrolled multi-tasking, your battery will only last for 30 minutes, and you'll have to use a clunky task manager to take control, but the battery will be dead by the time you notice anyway.

10. See the web grind to a halt with all that Flash crap.


Yes. That was mostly bullshit. Want Android ? Get an Android device. Want an iPhone ? Get an iPhone. Happy with your crappy PAYG 4 year old mobile and can't justify the contracts on any smartphone ? Stick with that phone. Honestly, it's fine.

* If you use a BT headset, you don't seem to mind looking like a dick in public, so this may not apply to you, except it will, because voice recognition doesn't work. I know this for certain because I bought some in 2000, for a desktop, and it was shit. It didn't work then, and itll never work. That's crazy Star Trek tech. Science *Fiction*.

Why I think Apple products are light on features…

Something occurred to me the other week regarding the paucity of box-ticking features on Apple products. I'd forgotten about that thought until reading a comment on Adam Banks' blog (Ten reasons to doubt the Telegraph’s linkbait). 1st draft of this entry was about 1,000 words. I've trimmed it a little:

Apple doesn't add any feature that introduces more problems that it solves.

#twitterjoketrial

The #twitterjoketrial reminded me a little of a story Mrs Daycoder told me recently. It's a case of procedures gone mad and common sense thrown out of the window.

Mrs Daycoder is a primary school teacher. She's trained in first aid. The school has an incident book, in which, according to procedures, all accidents and injuries must be recorded. The staff mostly have a reasonable amount of common sense, so below a certain threshold, very minor accidents and injuries simply aren't recorded. Once they make it into the book, then staff have no choice but to follow procedures to the letter.

One of the teaching assistants (TA) doesn't have quite as much common sense. She's a stickler for the rules. A child came in from the playground with a splinter in his finger. The TA immediately wrote it into the incident book, and procedures then had to be followed. The procedures forbid any medical treatment by staff, the child's legal guardian must be called in to deal with the incident, and this is what happened. The school secretary had to explain and apologise to the dumbfounded mother of this child that the staff weren't allowed to remove the splinter from her son's finger, and requested that she come to the school to deal with the incident. After convincing the mum that it wasn't a joke, she reluctantly came in. Had any of the other staff dealt with the issue at the start, they'd have done so without fuss and without the incident being logged.

The #twitterjoketrail is the same thing. At each stage, it came to the attention of someone who wouldn't or couldn't defy procedure for some reason. Perhaps through a legitimate fear of taking responsibility, a lack of common sense or pig-headedness.

That someone should have a criminal record, and have had his chosen career halted because of this should appall all of us.

We Don't Need No Stinkin' Task Manager

I was in the pub last night. Sadly this doesn't happen enough these days, but there was a free meal in the offing, it wasn't £5.99 "chicken ding!", and it got me out of Fat Fighters this week. The conversation inevitably landed, at one point, on the iPad, and then meandered to the iPhone, then iPhone OS 4.0, and multitasking.

I pointed out that we don't know anything yet. All we know is that we have a date where 4.0 will be announced. That's announced, not released. New features, perhaps APIs and perhaps a new version of Xcode, but the OS itself will be released later.

What my colleagues actually want from multi-tasking, it seems, is not very much. Generally one additional thing, like Spotify/Pandora, or GPS tracking while running/cycling.

There was, thankfully, an acknowledgement that other devices that had no restraints on multi tasking were, frankly, shit, would grind to a halt, and require task managers to get things moving again.

This morning, I read no-multitasking-in-iphone-4-0, which sums things up quite nicely. This response "There may be some new audio API to allow Spotify in b/g, etc." makes a lot of sense. That would probably address 90% of complaints.

I was thinking that permitting a single background app would be OK, not just music. Suitable apps would have a low use background mode that would not exceed, say 5% of system resources, or however much the Music app currently uses when playing music in the background. Apps would qualify for background apps status during the approval process.

As useful as this might be, there needs to be a simply UI for managing this. The good news is that we already have it: start a task (like play some music), and quit the app. The app switches to background mode, and the foreground app quits, returning the user to the home screen. While the background app is running, a double-click opens a control to stop/pause/switch etc.

The bad news is that this isn't quite enough. I could have my GPS-tracking and Spotify running at the same time, but what happens when I quit the second qualified-to-run-as-a-background-app app ? How do I indicate to the user what just happened ? The options seem to be:

• 1st background app continues to run, 2nd app just quits, user receives no indication.


• 1st background app quits, 2st app switches to background mode,user receives no indication.


• User gets a popup asking which one to run in the background

Finger-in-the-air, that probably covers 99% of case. Bump the limit to 2 running background apps, and this whole UI is broken. The extra 1% simply isn't worth the UI pain. We don't need no stinkin' task manager

iPad has the Attention of Consumers

I was in the supermarket this afternoon. I went in to buy milk, bread, ham and pasta. I came out with milk, bread, ham, pasta, a small pork pie and copy of Mac Format magazine.

Mac Format, which I haven't bought for years, lured me with its actual-size iPad cover. I had a brief conversation with the young woman at the checkout…

YWATC: "Ooh! Are you going to get one ?"
ME: "I think so, as long as I can afford it"
YWATC: "How much are they ?"
ME: "They're probably going to be about £400"
YWATC:"Oh, That's not too bad"

A few weeks ago, my sister-in-law was talking about the iPad. Her techspertise, as far as I know, extends to buying stuff from eBay, using facebook and sending NSFW emails.

Ordinary people really want this thing. And before they've even seen one, too. They get simple in way that the average spec-blinded tech pundit never will.

The less said about the pork pie, the better.

Persistence Is Futile

The rubber thing holding my car exhaust in place has perished to the point that it's no longer holding my exhaust in place. I don't remember the last time I had to replace an exhaust, but it could be as long ago as 1993, back when I drove a 1978 vintage 1275GT Mini called Fudge. Things have changed since them.

I fired up google, looking for "tyre and exhaust" centres nearby. I found plenty of places selling tyres, but virtually none selling exhausts. I was puzzled. I wondered what had changed to make the replacement exhaust a thing of the past. My hypothesis is that as car manufacturers were obliged by law to add expensive catalytic converters to their cars, the exhaust ceased to be a regular maintenance part, and needed to last as long as the car. The costs appeared so high a few years ago, that a perfectly serviceable banger would be uneconomical to repair if the cat was knackered. Prices have dropped, but the quality of exhausts hasn't.

No doubt this caused a number of businesses to downsize, go bust to diversify. Instead of exhausts, they'll push servicing, they'll have become MoT centres etc. I don't recall a particular outcry against car manufacturers or environmental legislators lamenting the passing of these businesses.

When new technology emerges, be it durable car exhaust or broadband internet, it'll kill some business models. Businesses based on dead models will also perish. Businesses that make new models to exploit the technology have a pretty good chance, whether they're start-ups or not.

Media businesses seem to want the status quo to persist. It seems to me that media businesses are just middle men. The least imaginative, the least creative, the least entitled to the status quo.

Hadley Freeman: Grrrrrr!

I've just been reading this Grauniad article: Facebook groups are the new lynch mob, by Hadley Freeman. I was skimming through most of it. It didn't tell me anything new. People have deeply disturbing, nasty, dangerous opinions and prejudices and they're not afraid to tell you about them in comment threads on the web. Fine. Yawn. Yet another social media is bad article to annoy the Linehans and Brookers and Morans.

But then I read this :

The much-publicised Save 6 Music Facebook group was obviously well-intended, but perhaps if half the people who joined it had ever listened to the station before the threat of its closure there wouldn't have been the need for the group in the first place.

It's lazy. It's disappointing. It's an appalling use of hyperbole. Most of all it's wrong. I write as a 6 Music listener who had not joined the Save BBC 6Music group.

The only other campaigning facebook group I seem to have joined is For Simon Singh and Free Speech - Against the BCA Libel Claim. That one's more important even than a radio station, so please consider joining, if you agree that is.

Back to the hyperbole. The implication is that Save BBC 6Music has considerably more members than there are actual 6 music listeners. At the time of writing, the facebook group membership was 154,893. The 6 Music audience for February 2010 was 695,000.

Let's take the ratio Hadley suggests : 'half'. That's 77,447 (rounding up) people who don't listen to 6Music, but who think it's a good use of the licence fee. That would increase the 6Music audience to 772,447, or, if you like, a hike of a shade over 11%.

Sorry to say, Hadley, but bumping the listener count by half the facebook support, would make fuck all difference.

Advertising that I don't mind

Ads are annoying, but they don't have to be. Take Tweetie, for example. I use the free, ad sponsored version. I may get the paid, ad-free version, but that would be because I want to send some money Loren Brichter's way for a job well done. (Find Tweetie here:http://www.atebits.com/). It would not be because the ads annoy me.

This is what ads look like in Tweetie:

They're not very frequent. They're usually well designed. Some are even pretty. They're not intrusive. They sit in a little well so they don't sneakily look like tweets. They just slip between the tweets, and I can scroll past them just as I'd scan and scroll past some tweets I don't think I'm interested in today - e.g. I'm in the mood for some Amanda Palmer, sometimes not, so I just skip past those tweets next to her pic without reading.

I have clicked on the ones in Tweetie. I may even have bought stuff that was advertised there. So I'd be concerned about the paid, ad-free Tweetie, because …gulp… I like the ads, and I think I'd miss 'em. They seem well targeted to me as a long-term Mac user.

Other ads I don't mind much at the moment are those in streaming TV, on 4OD, for example. I appreciate that they're a small price to pay for the content I'm getting. If the ads start to take over the content, then it'll be a different story. Right now there are fewer ads in streaming catch-up TV than in broadcast TV, which is nice. Easy to get, legal, with some ads beats torrenting. TV networks are looking more and more like middlemen. I look forward to shows that exist online in this way without having to be bought by a network and broadcast, that become popular by word of mouth and where episodes are released simultaneously across the globe.

Bosses buy bad UX

User Experience matters to users. In Enterprise, users usually have no say in the software they use. Those decisions are made by bosses, bean counters or 'IT'. UX may not even be on their checklist.

Most bosses won't be using the software. Not even email in many cases. They have a secretary/PA for that. This is not a criticism. It's an observation. It's just the nature of their jobs.

Accountants should look at the bigger picture, the TCO, but they'll have a hard time seeing beyond tangible, measurable costs.

In organisations where IT call the shots, I don't think they have the best interests of the user at heart. Or rather the UI that they use is the admin end. How easy it is to configure and maintain users on the system. End user UX may not be of great concern. If it's really bad, they'll get swamped with support calls, but most likely, they'll get no calls from disgruntled users who can work software that they hate and bitch about it to their colleagues.

I can think of only one case where universal hatred of a product caused change in a large organisation. Said organisation moved from an ancient but functional email system, Teamworks, to Lotus Notes. Initially most people were quite excited to get a modern client. There were some initial problems. There was some initial dislike. This is normal. People don't like change. They'll grumble. They'll pine for the old, unless you give them a chance to try the old again: then they'll run from it screaming.

What's not normal is for universal long term hatred of a new product. It took about two or three years of mass user complaint, but eventually, thankfully, it was dropped in favour of Outlook. The product became known as 'FLN' ("F*cking Lotus Notes"). The only person I've ever heard defend FLN worked at basement level IT, made his own Roman clothing for re-enactments and knew his way around a twelve-sided die. He also derided users for not being able to use the unusable FLN. (He's a really nice bloke, but he's more Moss than Roy. )

Outlook is far from perfect, of course, but the UX improvement, compared to FLN, was astonishing.

I've worked on products that have appalling UX. Old fashioned, like some Windows 3.1 app. I worked for one company for a short time that took pride in its applications looking shit. They drew attention to it in the brochure. They didn't call it 'shit' directly, they called it something like 'focused on utility, not on eye candy'. Anyone trying to make it look better to work better would probably get a formal warning.

The terrible thing ? They were right. Looking shit was a genuine advantage for them. Some kind of negative reinforcement. The message was 'Hah! Look at the eye candy in [rival product]. We didn't waste time on that nonsense, we made our product work'. This marketing was successful because the people buying the product were amenable to the message, and they were not the ones who would have to use it day in, day out for hours and hours.

When function and form are treated as mutually exclusive, it's often the user that suffers, not the bloke signing the cheques.

The iPad isn't enough simple*

The iPad will be a revolution in computing. It'll be your Nan's computer. It'll be the exercise book and textbook and exam paper in classrooms. It's the future of computing, blah, bah, etc, as others have said.

I already use my iPod touch for 90% of my leisure computing needs. I'd still need a laptop, but that could change, particularly if I admit to myself that no, I'm not actually ever going to get around to doing any proper development. I may never need a new laptop. For my father, who got his first laptop last year at age 69, an iPad would not only be perfectly adequate, it'd be simpler. It would be better. I'd considered getting a little Linux netbook for him, but decided supporting a MacBook would be a lot easier on both of us.

The iPad isn't a standalone device. It still needs iTunes running on a Mac or a PC. This is a considerable expense and complication. Like a HiFi, where the sound is only as good as the weakest component, so the iPad will only be as simple as the most complex component. People/n00bs may not be scared of the iPad, but they'll continue to be scared of their computers.

If you've ever seen the episode of Gavin & Stacey in which Bryn explains the web to Gavin, I'm like Bryn, but the patronising assumptions of the ignorance of my father's Gavin are correct. That's how I have to explain computing tasks to my father, an intelligent, curious man. Remote support, on even the simplest of tasks can be frustrating. I can't say 'just drag it to the preview icon on the dock', I have to email him step-by-step instructions, with clearly labelled screen grabs (thank you www.skitch.com, for making this easy).

The iPad comes close to fixing this, but the iTunes on a complex computer problem remains. It needs to be made simpler, and ideally cheaper too. Simpler is in everybody's interest. Cheaper is too, even for Apple. As Pogue said a few years ago : "Simple sells". I'd have had a hard time getting my father to accept buying a Mac mini and an iPad rather than just a MacBook. The MacBook was already twice the cost of the windows laptops he'd seen advertised. A standalone iPad, or an iPad + iTunes magic box that was as cheap as a MacBook would have been another story.

There's room here for Apple to make a bunch more money by reducing mandatory complexity.

Time Capsule runs an embedded version of OS-X (AFAIK). I think Apple can take iTunes off the computer, make it client-server and have the server run on a Time Capsule. A Time Capsule is technically a computer, but it's abstracted. Nobody thinks of Time Capsule as a computer. Adding an iTunes Server to it won't change that. Apple TV boxes could use this server too. Hell, Apple TV boxes could be the server.

Backup and sync via WiFi would be nice. It would be a new thing for iPhones/iPods/iPads, but Time Machine does wireless syncing from Mac to Time Capsule and Apple TV syncs wirelessly to iTunes too, so it's certainly possible. I don't think wireless backup/sync is necessary right now, just that a hypothetical Time Capsule/Apple TV + iTunes server, with iPads no longer requiring Macs or PCs, will seem clunky without it.

Perhaps I'm thinking too small here. Accustomed to keeping data local. Perhaps Apple's facility in North Carolina is gearing up to be a massive cloud store for our entire media libraries. Who needs more than 16GB on an iPad when all your media is in the cloud ?

* 'Simple' is a noun here. Apologies if that is irritating.

The iPad

Well, everyone else is talking about it, I may as well add to the noise.

Q: Do I need one ?
A: No.

Q: Do I want one ?
A: I'm not sure.

Q: Would I use one ?
A: Yes.

Q: Will I get one ?
A: Probably.

A lot of people are puzzled by the iPad. They don't know what it's for. Although it sits in between an iPod/iPhone and a laptop, it also invades the iPod/laptop space. It's portable, more convenient than a laptop, but not pocketable. I see it living on the coffee table. The iWork apps aside, it's really a device for consuming rather than creating. I'm sure we'll see creative apps in time, but it'll be best for the kind that