For once, I’ve got a situation where my memory is failing me. I wasn’t even aware of it ’til today, but now it’s driving me mad.

On Radio One this morning, Chris Moyles mentioned having been in Hanley, near Stoke-on-Trent. And I know I went for an interview there many moons ago. It’s just that I can’t remember the name of the place-  which is odd, because I normally can remember these stupid useless details.

I know it was some kind of jazz bar/restaurant, but that’s it. I can’t remember much about it – something about the location, but not much.

It’s really bugging me. What’s worse is that I know it shouldn’t annoy me – it was something for half a day, back in what must’ve been 1993/94. I shouldn’t really even recall that I’d been there, so little does it matter.

But up there in my head, for whatever reason, it does matter. I’ll figure it out, I’m sure.

This week at work, I’ve broken the chair I’ve been using since October. Completely, categorically broken it. The central piston (for raising/lowering the seat) has cracked through the plastic baseplate, and now hits the floor. This has resulted in a chair that is politely known as “broken”. Or in my terminology, it’s “totally fucked”.

Thankfully the directors are OK about it – it’s wear and tear (and me being a weighty bastard) rather than that I’ve wilfully abused/broken the chair.

But because I know that at least some of the blame is due to being rather bulkier than most people, I had a look at the specs for some new office chairs as a replacement. And I know Argos isn’t exactly the centre of the office-furniture world, but it’s a useful reference point.

So looking through the chairs they’ve got listed, and all of them seem to have a ‘recommended max weight’ of 110kg – 17ish stone. You can see what I mean by looking at this one. And don’t just think it’s the cheap-ass ones – even this one for £150 has the same limitaton.

I know I’m not an average size – I’d need to lose four stone just to get down to that ‘max recommended weight’ – but equally I’m not massively obese. Fairly solid, I think it’s fair to say, but not supersized or owt. So why is it that chairs just aren’t available (in Argos, I know, I know) that are designed to support – or at least not fuck up and break – for someone my size?

I love the story on the BBC this week about a council who’ve used the word “shit”  in their adverts about dog-fouling. (even though it’s starred out to “S**T”) Supposedly a number of people have complained about the word “S**T” appearing in print. Which strikes me as pretty Mary Whitehouse at the best of times.

Way back when I was working with the council in Oldham, this was something that we discussed heavily. One of my projects there was working on a lexicon of expressions that people actually used, and then translating them into council-ese. For example “roadworks” becomes “Highways maintenance”, “bins” becomes “refuse collection” and the like. I always said – and could prove with the search logs (pardon the pun) – that “dog shit” was the most common search-term when people were looking for information about dog-fouling, reporting issues with dog-shit etc. But the powers-that-be in the council at the time were very sure – despite all the evidence to the contrary – that having “shit” in the lexicon was A Bad Thing, and would lead to Bad Press – another Very Bad Thing.  Considering that most people at the time used the word “Shit” as pretty much synonymous with that council in general anyway, I always figured they were on a hiding to nothing on that one.

Personally I could never figure out why people thought – and obviously still do think – that councils can’t use words like shit, when they’re the ones that most (if not all) of their constituents/inhabitants use.

*sigh* People are strange.

Over the next few days at work, we again have potential investors visiting the office, and so the word has gone round to be as smart as possible.

While I don’t have any real problem with this, and generally look vaguely presentable, my main argument is that these visitors – Americans – aren’t expecting the techies to be suited and booted.

I wasn’t hired for this role because of how I look in a suit, or because I’ll be dealing with customers. I was (to blow my own trumpet briefly) hired for my brains and my skills in writing websites, databases and the like. Suited and booted is – for the most part, and unless I’m in an interview – irrelevant to my skill-set or reason for being employed.

Personally, I wouldn’t ever trust a techie in a suit. Sure, they/we can wear suits for other stuff – interviews, smart events, weddings, social stuff etc. – but in the office? A techie in a suit isn’t a techie.

What do you think? Would you trust a techie in a suit?

In today’s news there’s been a big thing about Barack Obama defending the right to build a mosque near the Ground Zero site in New York.

The best bit of it all though was the quoted parts of the speech…

We must all recognise and respect the sensitivities surrounding the development of lower Manhattan, Ground Zero is, indeed, hallowed ground. But let me be clear, as a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practise their religion as anyone else in this country.”That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community centre on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances. This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable. The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country, and will not be treated differently by their government, is essential to who we are.”

He told the group of US Congressmen, government officials and foreign dignitaries that America’s tradition of religious tolerance distinguishes it from “our enemies”.

“Al-Qaeda’s cause is not Islam,” he said, “it is a gross distortion of Islam”.

And that’s the primary point for me – Al-Qaeda is not an Islamic cause, the current phase of “islamic terrorism” isn’t about islam at all, it’s just about terror. Anyone who thinks that these terrorist episodes are about religion really is a bloody moron – religion is (as always) the convenient talking-point to support the ’cause’.

Another work(ish)-related post, but a subject close to my heart, and usually good for some thoughts and rants.

In this case, we’re currently considering buying one of the most-pirated pieces of software in Christendom, Adobe’s Creative Suite. The reason it’s massively pirated is simple – the fucking ridiculous cost of it.

If we look at getting one licenced copy of the full bells-and-whistles CS5 Master Suite, it costs no less than £2,700. For a piece of software that’ll be updated/outdated within a year. What small company (or even medium-sized company) is going to pay nearly three grand for CS5 ? Let alone what little one-man-band web design company.  And yes, you can get a smaller/cheaper CS5 Web Premium for web design. That’s a mere £1,680.

Even more insane, that’s the prices if they send the software in a box. For download purposes, CS5 Master Suite is – um – £2,780. Yep – it costs you more to download the fucking thing than for them to box it up and stick it in the post. What?

Adobe are forever bitching that their software is the most pirated. There’s a reason for that – it’s priced itself out of the “reasonably affordable” market.

I’m pretty sure that if Adobe charged (for argument’s sake) £270 for the CS5 Master – 10% of the current price – the piracy figures for it would drop like a stone. £270 is reasonable for the software – perhaps even a bit more, but 10% was a nice example. Piracy wouldn’t stop completely – there will always be those for who even a pound is “too much” – but it would reduce epically. More people would buy the software – my own suspicion is that they’d actually sell more and make more by having the software at the cheaper price.

Sure, the price has been cut by 90%. But if you get 100 people buying it at £270 instead of one or two at £2,700, you’ve made a shitload more money on your bottom line than you have at £2,700 per copy. Even on the upgrades, people would be more likely to pay again for an upgrade, rather than pirating it.

And that’s the logic that seems to escape these companies. Reduce the price to a sensible/affordable level, more people will buy, less people will evade. Seems logical to me, anyway.