Dec 18 2012

A year in blogging

Nations: A Simulation Game in International Po...

Nations: A Simulation Game in International Politics (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I am an eternal optimist. Depending on whether you share my outlook, you will either think this is a blessing of a curse. I always tend to look on the bright side and I always think that the next 12 months will be better than the last. Even in the face of a few knocks, I tend to dust myself off, take a deep breath and carry on.

This is the year I started this blog. I already had a blog on finextra.com and an internal blog with my employer, but I set this up as a playground to write what I wanted and hopefully improve my writing skills. After 8 months, 123 blog posts, an estimated 60,000 words, 100 comments and 300 likes has it been a success?

The fact that I still love blogging is a good sign. In general, my interests tend to have a short, intensive life before they burn out in a fit of apathy. The only exception up until now was playing games which has lasted for decades. I am glad to have doubled my hobbies. In general, I spend about 6 hours a week writing blogs (and probably the same again thinking about what I’m going to write).

Although I’m probably not the best judge, I feel that my writing has improved. The style checker used to have a field day underlining my initial efforts. These days, there are fewer suggestions for improvement. Whereas I used to struggle with the dreaded passive voice, these days I now understand what it is, instinctively avoid it and I’m comfortable with where I use it – something I never thought I’d get the hang of.

WordPress is an amazing platform. The way they use game mechanics to encourage bloggers to keep going is a brilliant piece of design. I still get excited when I receive notifications. It is also an unbeatable way of finding other interesting blogs to read on a diverse set of subjects.

Everything I read about being a good writer tells me that I should read more. I’ve read more books this year than ever and it does help with both style and imagination. I’ve been careful to challenge myself with what i read as well – avoiding the usual tropes and going for books I would not have chosen before.

So what next? I would like to have a go at something a little more substantial – a novella perhaps rather than a short story. Hopefully that will be the stepping stone up to a book of some description. I would also like to have a go at getting something professionally published. Although I have dabbled this year, I will make a more concerted effort in the next 12 months.

I would like to thank all those who take the time to read my posts. To those who go further and make comments, click on the like button or share my posts with a wider audience – I appreciate it.

Have a great Christmas and here’s to a great next 12 months.

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Dec 16 2012

The wired world in 2013

Image representing Wired Magazine as depicted ...

Image via CrunchBase

Just finished reading a fascinating end of year publication from the “Wired” stable about what to expect in 2013. Although this publication is sometimes annoying in style and somewhat fixated on start-ups, much of the editorial is top-notch. In this special issue, there are contributions from James Dyson and Richard Branson among other innovation luminaries.

Mr Dyson is somewhat disparaging about some of the innovations under the banner of green engineering. As he rightly points out, an invention that shaves a percentage point or two off the fuel consumption of a widely used aircraft dwarfs the effect of eliminating plastic carrier bags. He predicts that more information about the origin and impact of goods and services will become available in the year to come.

As I have previously written, I remain unimpressed with individual robots at the current level of technology. As James McLurkin (a renowned roboticist) points out – they are best at tasks which are dangerous, dirty or dull. When you get a large number of robots together though, they become a lot more interesting. The technology for “swarming robots” is already there and searching for an application and maybe 2013 is their year.

Optical networking (or li-fi) will come to the fore for short-range communication. Nanotechnology will reach the point of self replication. An unbelievable 200 million people will use the internet for the very first time and radar will become much more widespread. The technology will be used for everything from measuring blood pressure to providing images of internal organs without harmful radiation.

Need Wired Magazine 13.07

Need Wired Magazine 13.07 (Photo credit: Browserd (Pedro Rebelo))

Innovation has typically radiated from richer economies outwards, but Ravi Ramamurti (a distinguished professor of international business) believes that we are reaching the point where innovations are starting to flow the other way. Poorer economies through necessity have much more of an idea of efficiency. Third world countries are teaching their richer counterparts (who by far have a greater need) how to perform low-cost medical procedures for example.

Education will become free, lab grown organs may become a reality and the world will start to recover from its economic malaise. Will we finally see the much vaunted Apple TV? – who knows, but they certainly need a big success. A huge amount of their net value comes from products invented in the last 5 years and many people are starting to lose faith due to the mishaps since Jobs left this mortal coil.

All in all – a fascinating publication and if only 10% of their predictions come true, it’s going to be an exciting year!

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Dec 16 2012

Don’t worry, it will be better in the morning (hopefully).

English: toilet wc

English: toilet wc (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Is there anything worse than a child who is ill? It has to be among the most heartbreaking things in the world. It’s bad enough when you suffer yourself. It’s doubly bad when you have to watch someone else suffering. When it’s a small child, it pulls at your heartstrings.

There are, of course, degrees of suffering and poor baby Maisie only had a tummy bug last night. Even so, it was a fraught and traumatic 24 hours. Because she was feeling under the weather and looking for comfort food, everything she craved was a bad idea; chocolate, sweets and barbecue beef hoola-hoops are not really the order of the day. Calpol is a wonder drug and it took the edge off for a while but after a while it returned with a vengeance.

She was absolutely shattered and unfortunately, her body decided at regular intervals that everything inside her needed to come out somehow. It doesn’t take too much of that process for the body to become completely dehydrated. The best way to remedy this is to drink rehydration salts, but they are an acquired taste and she had absolutely no inclination for acquisition last night.

When your body purges like that, certain parts of your anatomy become sore through overuse and she started to cry every time she went. There is a certain helplessness when you look on with a burning desire to make everything better (which is normally within your power) but this time, there is simply nothing you can do. Maisie alternated between wanting you to cuddle her and pushing you away saying she wanted to be left alone.

She is back with Mummy now and hopefully on the road to recovery.

On the plus side – I taught her to say bum gravy.

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Dec 13 2012

A snarling trail of traffic that stops every now and then for a spot of tetris

Air pollution is high in Indian cities.

Air pollution is high in Indian cities. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Out in Chennai this week visiting the troops. The thing that always amazes me about this place is the traffic. It is quite unlike anywhere in the Western world. The first time your car pulls out into moving traffic (and seemingly certain death), somehow it all happens without collision.

At some point, the driver will probably perform a U-turn to face the opposite direction. You look on in abject terror at the oncoming traffic first from one direction and then the other, but somehow, it just nonchalantly happens.

At first the cacophony of car horns, some melodious, some are so loud they sound like ships coming out of harbor and some so tinny that they wouldn’t sound out-of-place on a 1976 Ford Anglia. But there seems to be a system, one beep for coming through and two beeps for thanks.

Occasionally, the huge, monstrous trail of traffic comes to an obstruction such as a set of traffic lights at which point they jockey for position like some bizarre life-size game of tetris. Then they come to a complete halt and fall blissfully silent as they wait for the traffic lights to kickstart the mayhem all over again.

Motorcyclists with absolutely no regard for their own personal safety lunge for perilously narrowing gaps between a dirty great lorry and a bus and they swoop through appearing completely unruffled on the other side. Sometimes the motorcycles will have pillion passengers, sometimes one of them will be carrying a baby.

They nominally drive on the left, but it seems to be optional as tuk-tuks, bicycles, pedestrians, buses, cows and lorries sometimes choose to go against the flow and make their merry way against the traffic.

Every fibre of your being tells you that all this shouldn’t work. In the West, we have rules and 99% of people follow them and yet we still have crashes. Somehow, the chaos seems to work and I’ve yet to see a collision. I saw the aftermath of one a few years ago, but considering the sheer amount of vehicles – it’s amazing that there aren’t more.

I don’t think I could ever drive in this environment. Being driven is stressful enough, but I do hold a sneaky admiration for those that do. One day, all these roads will end up as sanitized as those in the Western world and a big part of what makes India different will be lost.

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Dec 12 2012

Daisywheels, golfballs, thermals and lasers

From wikipedia commons.

From wikipedia commons. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

If anyone ever had a Sinclair Spectrum, they probably remember the little ZX printer designed to be plugged into the back. Designed like an electric toilet roll dispenser, it used a roll of silver thermal paper. Inside, little pins literally burned into the thermal paper to leave behind (sort of) recognisable print. The poor thing used to get tired and slow down towards the end of a large print job and you almost ended up feeling sorry for it.

If the print was difficult to read when first produced, the fading over time meant that it was totally unreadable after a few days. Those in the know used to spray their printouts with hairspray to extend their longevity.

When I started work, there was one printer to rule them all. A dirty great big behemoth of a printer connected to the mainframe. Almost all processing happened overnight because it cost less and any output from that processing went not to a screen, but onto paper; tons of it. I don’t know how these printers used to work, but they were lightning fast and the paper was warm with a distinctive smell. All the screens in the building were dumb terminals so there was no concept of local printers.

As and when PCs started to appear, people wanted to print things which meant they needed a printer. The first such devices were dot matrix printers. Brutally mechanical affairs, they used a print head made up of a matrix of hammers which formed the print by bashing through an ink soaked ribbon onto the paper. If that sounds noisy and slow, they were. Each agonising line of print sounded like a mini machine gun.

The print quality was awful and if your printer happened to be more than 12 months old, the pins had a nasty habit of getting misaligned which made the text barely readable.

Daisywheel printers had a radial print head with characters on the end of spokes. When these struck the paper through the ribbon, a whole character came out. Golf ball printers worked the same way, only the characters were all stuck onto a small ball. These cut down on the noise and the print quality improved enormously, but they were limited to a single font.

Nowadays with inkjet and laser printers coupled with ever more sophisticated software, there is almost no limit to what can be printed at low cost, but they are restricted to two dimensional paper.

With 3D printing, which is widely used in industry, layers of material are laid down according to a digital blueprint in order to construct a physical object. Suddenly, almost anything can be manufactured one piece at a time if you have the right kit. The printers are tumbling in price, so it won’t be long before there are no limits on what you can create in your own home.

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Dec 9 2012

In the navy

Age of Sail

Age of Sail (Photo credit: Mark Faviell Photos)

Have you ever been taken aback? Do you know where the phrase comes from? Has anyone ever told you to get cracking? Have you ever struggled to make head nor tail of something?

English is one of the most pervasively spoken languages in the world. As a dialect developed in an island nation, it’s no great surprise that much of the phraseology comes from a life on the ocean waves. I managed to pick up a lexicon of nautical slang during our recent visit to Portsmouth and I’ve chuckled ever since!

The phrase “taken aback” comes from the age of sail where the wind fills your sails in completely the wrong direction. The phrase “get cracking” refers to the noise made when a sailing ship hoists more sails and the wind fills them making that characteristic “crack”. Naval signallers would typically respond with “can’t make head nor tail of it” when they received a garbled transmission.

The origin of some phrases is fairly obvious when you think about it. If something “takes the wind out of your sails”, you’re not going to make much progress. If you are expecting trouble, it makes sense to “batten down the hatches”. It certainly did if you were on a sailing ship heading into a storm.

Sometimes it takes a while to “get up to speed” on something – again, an expression from the age of sail. Often it takes a while until you “know the ropes”. Once you do, you can “fathom” things out. A fathom is a nautical measure of 6 feet of depth which quite literally referred to the amount a man could grasp.

In nautical terms, everything above decks is commonly referred to as “all above board”. This has come to mean that everything’s open and nothing’s hidden. If it weren’t, you could be forgiven for not “touching it with a bargepole”. But if it had a “clean bill of health”, you would be happy. A bill of health was the report filed by the medical officer on the physical condition of a sailor.

You might think this is a load of “codswallop”. Wallop was a name for beer. In 1875, Hiram Codd came up with a process for bottling carbonated water. Before long, sailors came up for the derogatory term of codswallop as a description of this very poor substitute for the beer they were used to.

I think my favourite nautical term has to be to “get your own back” which refers to the lavatory arrangements on submarines. Essentially, there is a tank into which whatever a sailor produces is deposited. Once the sailor has finished, the contents are flushed out to sea with air pressure.

Unfortunately, there is a top valve on the tank which can, either through incompetence of the sailor or through sabotage, can result in the tank contents coming inboard onto the poor sailor – hence the expression!

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Dec 4 2012

A Victorian Christmas

HMS Victory, Portsmouth Naval Dockyard

HMS Victory, Portsmouth Naval Dockyard (Photo credit: EEPaul)

I have a certain reputation for being Mr “bah humbug” when it comes to Christmas, and yet my wife and I spent last weekend down in Portsmouth specifically to visit the Victorian Christmas fair in the historic Naval Dockyards. It is a magnificent setting combining an old Naval base, some magnificent old ships and all the Victorian trimmings of Christmas.

Trawling through a busy marketplace is not normally my idea of fun and yet the Christmas stalls at the fair were varied enough to be interesting, and I tucked into mulled wine like the best of them. As we walked around, there were loads of people dressed up in Victorian costume. From the bawdy wenches who gave me a hard time as I walked past to the guards and their convicts in manacles who marched around the place shouting “make way for innocent men.”

We paid a visit to Fagin’s tavern where various old-time music acts played. We were treated to Brian, the charming but slightly crap piano player taking us through his repertoire of Christmas tunes. After Brian, on came a Bavarian oompah band, who wanted far too much audience participation for our comfort, especially seeing as we were sat in the front row.

Everywhere we went, someone was either bursting into song or dancing or both. A bunch of orphans with their thumbs tucked into their armpits gave a he artful rendition of “Consider yourself” as artificial snow cascaded down on their heads. There was an excellent band of pipers marching up and down belting out some cracking tunes whilst everyone tried desperately to dive out of their way.

There was an antique shop on site which was packed to the rafters with amazing stuff. They had a magnificent array of weaponry including a surface to air missile and an AK47. There was a German MG34 dating from Word War 2 with my name on it, but my wife didn’t agree. I suppose it was a tad expensive at the best part of £7,000.

She did buy me my Christmas present though. A truly magnificent, atmospheric three-part painting by Rob Huxley which will look awesome in my newly decorated games room.

All in all, it was over far too quickly, and I might have felt the first stirrings of Christmas welling up inside me. I’ll have to learn more self-control.

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Dec 4 2012

Finding my demons

Madness

Madness (Photo credit: Dark Botxy)

I don’t know how I lost my memories, but I know I want them back. I pull against my restraints once more, testing them for no good reason other than nervousness. The man in the white coat is approaching once more, no doubt with yet another dour warning. I know that whatever made my mind shut down may be horrific, but I have to know otherwise what am I? Just an empty shell.

I find myself nodding in response to his questions, but if you asked me what those questions were, I would struggle to repeat them. I just want it over with. Give me my memories.

He fills a syringe, squirts out the excess, taps to eliminate any bubbles and bends over my supine form. I feel the sharp pain as the needle pierces my skin and everything goes black.

I start to hear voices at first, then I can smell the clinical smell of the treatment room. I eventually open my eyes – they feel sticky, my vision blurred. I can just make out a man in a white coat. He is asking me a question. It takes me a while to focus, to tune into his words.

“When you think of a flag burning, what do you remember?”

My head spins. Suddenly, I am no longer in the treatment room. I am in my student digs, looking out the window at a teeming mob below. A peaceful protest march suddenly is peaceful no more as violence breaks out. My eyes fixate on a flag which is now burning. As I watch, I become aware of my girlfriend’s arms around me. I can remember her name, Karen. She pulls me back to the bed and starts to delicately undress me. I cry out as I feel the pleasant memory drifting away from me as once I again I lapse into unconsciousness.

I slowly come round. Again, the man in the white coat is speaking to me.

“When you think of a Christmas tree, what do you remember?”

The disorientation sets in once more and I find myself in the lounge of a house, my house, no – our house. Mine and Karen’s. She’s now my wife. I slowly scan the room before resting my gaze on the charred Christmas tree in the corner. There is a letter addressed to me on the mantlepiece. I recognise Karen’s handwriting. Inside, she tells me of her love for another and I can hear screaming. It is me screaming. I beg the man in the white coat to put me under again and after an eternity, I drift away once more.

I awaken. The man in the white coat is still there.

“When you think of a butterfly brooch, what do you remember?”

Nausea kicks in as my stomach lurches. I feel my physical self vomit. I’m at a church. It’s my daughter’s wedding, but I’m not invited. I’m carrying something, a bottle. In horror, I realise that I intend to use the bottle to harm my daughter. I try to drop it, but I am a passenger of my memories. I can change nothing.

As she emerges from the church, I open the bottle and run towards her. Suited men rush to block me, but not before I launch the contents of the bottle at my daughter. She screams and so do I – at least my physical self does. The men in suits set about me. I feel physical pain, but it is nothing compared with the mental pain. Just before I mercifully slip into a coma, I notice my daughter’s butterfly brooch on the floor. It is badly damaged by the acid.

Gradually I come round. I feel exhausted and horrific memories fight for my attention. The man in the white coat is saying something to me.

“Congratulations Mr. Tomkins. Your treatment is now complete and you will in time regain all your memories. I have to ask you if you wish to keep them – if you would rather they were erased once more – it is a simple procedure.”

The more I remember, the more pain I feel. But is it worse than the emptiness of having no memories? I slowly make my decision. In a shaky voice, I make my request. For one last time, I feel the sharp pain of a needle and I drift off to sleep.

***

The man in the white coat walks over to his desk and picks up the phone.

“Would you please come and pick up Mr. Tomkins.”

The disembodied voice responds.

“Did he choose to keep his memories this time.”

The man in the white coat slowly shakes his head before answering.

“No, I’m afraid not. Maybe next time.”

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Dec 3 2012

Why be a leader?

Why

Why (Photo credit: banoootah_qtr)

Close to a battlefield over 200 years ago, a man in civilian clothes rode past a small group of exhausted battle-weary soldiers digging an obviously important defensive position. The section leader, making no effort to help, was shouting orders, threatening punishment if the work was not completed within the hour.

“Why are you are not helping?” asked the stranger on horseback.

“I am in charge. The men do as I tell them,” said the section leader, adding, “Help them yourself if you feel strongly about it.”

To the section leader’s surprise the stranger dismounted and helped the men until the job was finished. Before leaving the stranger congratulated the men for their work, and approached the puzzled section leader.

“You should notify top command next time your rank prevents you from supporting your men – and I will provide a more permanent solution,” said the stranger. Up close, the section leader now recognised General Washington, and also the lesson he’d just been taught.

Why would anyone want to be a leader? For close on a dozen years, I have led teams of people in Temenos. When I speak to people about leadership, there are people who say that they could never take on the responsibility. There is a lot of responsibility, but I don’t think it’s where people think it is.

Many people think that the main responsibility you take on is to get stuff done. I would argue that this is indeed important, but I think it is a side effect of the real responsibility of leadership. The true responsibility of leaders is to create an environment in which your people are happy and productive, which is not always easy.

If you are a leader for any length of time, you will go through ups and downs. In my 12 years, I have faced a lot of downs. The most reliable people in the world will occasionally let you down. Often it will be at the worst possible moment and after you have backed that person to the hilt. That’s pretty tough to deal with.

Sometimes, you will have someone who simply stops performing. Maybe their attendance goes down the tubes or they are not pulling their weight. Then it’s the slow painful treadmill of performance management. You hope against hope that the person steps off the treadmill, but all too often, the treadmill leads out the door. That’s pretty depressing.

There are even harder things still. Sometimes tragedy or serious illness will strike. Sometimes you have to tell your team that the cupboard is bare. Sometimes you have to let some of them go. I don’t have any children, but the experience is as close as I can imagine to choosing which of them to lose. It is something I will never, ever get used to.

So why would anyone want to be a leader ? I can tell you, it’s not the financial reward. The answer is that there is nothing like the feeling of watching your team succeed. When your team make you proud, you want everyone to know. When you see a member of your team grow as a person, it makes all the downs pale in comparison.

So my advice – if you want to get things done – stop focussing on the things and start focussing on the team and the things will take care of themselves.

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Dec 2 2012

Read the small print

Read the fine print!

Read the fine print! (Photo credit: snacktime2007)

Would you ever sign anything if you hadn’t read the small print? Would you ever click a button to indicate your agreement with something if you hadn’t read the small print? What about if there were reams and reams of small print? What if you started reading it, but after a couple of paragraphs, you couldn’t make head nor tail of it – would you still go on to sign in blood?

Pretty much every time you install a new piece of software, there will invariably be a huge agreement in unintelligible legalese. In order to go ahead and reap the benefits of whichever piece of software you are installing, you will be faced with a choice. Here’s a ton of legal gobbledegook, click here to go ahead and agree or hard cheese, you can’t have your software.

I’m no lawyer, but if you actually take the time to read some of this small print, it will typically indemnify the software publisher against pretty much anything. They won’t guarantee that the software is fit for purpose – which seems bizarre to me. They’re not so candid in their marketing. Come and buy our latest office software – it can do anything you want* (small print: we’re not guaranteeing it will do anything at all).

Typically, the small print will indemnify the publisher against any kind of defect. Having worked in software all my life, I do understand why this is in place. I doubt that there is any software in existence today that doesn’t have a bug in it somewhere, but to abandon all responsibility for the quality of your product seems outrageous.

There will also be something in there that limits the company’s liability. If there is a remedy, which is by no means guaranteed, it will usually be restricted to the purchase price of the software. Forget any consequential losses – worth bearing in mind next time you use a piece of software to produce your invoices or calculate your tax return.

Would any other vendor get away with it? You don’t get all that small print when you buy a car. How would you feel if at purchase time you get presented with a big contract with statements like; this car may not do everything you expect. We don’t offer any warranty and if, because the brakes fail, you run into something or someone expensive, the best you can expect is a refund.

How do they get away with it?

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