Not Getting It

Posted: Tue 6 February, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: Cynicism, Geeky | 2 Comments »

Sometimes you just have to laugh at the way the government just doesn’t get the entire internet and chatroom thing. In this instance, the story about registered sex offenders having to provide details of their email addresses and ‘chatroom identities’ (no, I’m not making this up)

Anyone who’s actually used Internet Chat (whether it be MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, whatever) will know how easy it is to set up email addresses, profiles, IDs, the lot. God, if I think back a couple of years to when I haunted Yahoo chat, I had a couple of hundred IDs.

So it amuses me when they’re talking about registering ‘paedophile IDs’ – it’s so easy to set up another one, this really is either a) an attempt to say ‘look how on top of things we are’ or b) a proper display of knowing chuff-all about anything technological and/or internet based.

Or c) both. Which I guess is the most likely…

Health and Safety Signs

Posted: Mon 5 February, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: Cynicism, Work-related | 4 Comments »

As I’ve written before, my current workplace has an unhealthy (and frankly ridiculous) obsession with health and safety, and particularly with regard to warning signs. They haven’t yet put ‘danger of electric shock’ on all the plug sockets, but it wouldn’t surprise me.

We’re not even allowed to use light switches. Instead, the office has automatic sensors, and if nothing’s moving near those sensors, the light goes out. So far, so green, and all well and good. It can be weird if you’re the only person in a section of the office, and the lights start going out all round you, but there we go, that’s the way it is.

However, the lights in the toilets also work like this. Which again isn’t so bad in general. It means the energy doesn’t get wasted, blah blah. But the sensors are quite a way inside the toilet room, by five or six paces. So you go in, the door closes, you walk forwards, and then the light goes on.

Perceptive readers may have seen the flaw here.

Today, the toilet floor had been mopped, and was slippy. So the cleaners put up a little sign to warn people the floor was wet – as per Health and Safety.

Only, because the light was off when I went in, and walked forwards, rather than slipping on a wet floor (which had dried off in the meantime) instead I tripped over the fucking warning sign, which I didn’t see before the light went on.

I haven’t yet decided whether to report this as a problem…

Mac vs PC

Posted: Mon 5 February, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: Cynicism, Geeky | 1 Comment »

Charlie Brooker in blinding form (you may need to do a dumb free registration thing, I don’t knowCheers, Jann, for the reg-free link!) about Macs…

I hate Macs. I have always hated Macs. I hate people who use Macs. I even hate people who don’t use Macs but sometimes wish they did. Macs are glorified Fisher-Price activity centres for adults; computers for scaredy cats too nervous to learn how proper computers work; computers for people who earnestly believe in feng shui.

It’s all in regard to the new set of ads from Apple about PCs versus Macs starring Mitchell and Webb.

I like the ads, although I have to say, personally I’m not a fan of Macs. Maybe I should be, but I’m just not. My personal opinion is that they’re expensive, over-branded, over-iconified (it’s not a word, but bloody well should be) and a nightmare to upgrade.

Sorry, but I’ll stick with PCs for the moment, regardless of whether or not I supposedly should want a Mac.

Making Things Simple

Posted: Sat 3 February, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: Cynicism, Thinking About..., Web Development, Work-related | Leave a comment »

Over the last three weeks, I’ve been doing a lot of work on a new site. The basic premise is that it needs to be very user-friendly, easy to use, quick, smooth, and useable. I’ve got my own ideas about a lot of this, and on the initial development work, I’ve been applying quite a few of them to what I’m doing.

One particular thing that drives me crackers when I’m using a website is – to use the example of on-line banking – when I have to go through a seperate page to ‘select an account’ when I’ve only got one account. To me, if that’s the case, I’d far rather that the system had some logic, and effectively figured out for itself (OK, was programmed to ‘realise’) that if I’ve only got one account, I don’t need to select that account, it’s fine to go straight through to the account details page.

Anyway, I’ve been working to a similar kind of idea on the site, and while in theory it’s simple, it actually turned out to be (in some ways) a real pain. Yes, the logic is also simple, it’s just that it does take a couple of extra steps in order to get it to work.

But when it does work, it’s really nice, and makes life a lot easier.

Why is it, though, that making things simple to use can be incredibly complex in the back-end, whereas making things really complex and obstructive is actually dead easy?

Handwritten – an Update

Posted: Thu 1 February, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Security, Technology | 1 Comment »

About a week ago, I wrote about the cashpoint (ATM) machine with the handwritten notice on it – which (to my surprise) garnered no comments at all.

Anyway, walking past the same pair of machines today, I noticed that this time the same one was out of order, but had up the machine’s default “Out of service – please use another machine” message on the display. No handwritten sign was in evidence at all.

I wonder if anyone’s noticed yet that they lost money last week?

Homeless

Posted: Thu 1 February, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, Thoughts | 1 Comment »

Most people won’t be surprised by this, but on occasion I can be very uncharitable. Not just when watching things like Relocation Relocation (and Dear GOD, Relocation2 brings out the uncharitable bastard in me) but also when faced with – in particular – Big Issue sellers.

I don’t know why – I think that the Big Issue is a fantastic idea- but I just never give money to the people selling it. I’ve done work with a charity for the homeless, and I do a fair amount of work with other charities, with more coming up over the duration of this year. But when it comes to actually giving money to people who are homeless, I just don’t.

A lot of it is that I really don’t like the idea of paying people to remain homeless – of giving money to someone because they’re homeless, and perhaps of contributing to a tax-free income. At least with the charities I deal with, I know that the people who benefit truly are homeless. When someone is just on the street, well, you don’t know. I’ve seen a couple of “homeless” people, even in Cambridge, who pack up their begging gear, stick it in a car, and (I assume) then go home. It’s a tax-free income based on peoples guilt.

So I don’t know. In some ways I feel like I’m really cynical and uncharitable (and OK, I am) but not all the time. And at least I try to balance that out by doing some good stuff with places where the money and work will go to the truly deserving people.

Gotcha

Posted: Mon 29 January, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: Cynicism, Green | Leave a comment »

Ah, the joys of seeing someone hoist on their own petard – in this case, a former environmental advisor to President Blair, who now commutes 500 miles weekly by plane, going from Gloucestershire to Edinburgh.

To coin a phrase from the Government’s rulebook

Do as I say, not as I do

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