Sep 16 2012

The time has come to say goodnight…

Danger Mouse (TV series)

Danger Mouse (TV series) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Entertainment on an aeroplane has come a long way since the first time I flew, but even so, it’s amazing how many times I find myself flicking through umpteen channels struggling to find something to watch. I try the documentaries first, but they are usually ones I’ve seen before. I then try the movies, but often find nothing I fancy. My secret is that I then turn to the children’s programs.

I was pleasantly surprised to find an episode of “In the Night Garden” on one particular flight. The guy sat next door to me looked at my strangely, so I leaned over and told him “This is the one where Iggle Piggle gets in Upsy Daisy’s bed”. Strangely enough, he didn’t speak to me for the rest of the flight.

When we were growing up, there was a fraction of the children’s TV programs that there are today. There were only a few channels and the schedulers of the day squeezed the entertainment for the young between the chat shows of the afternoon and the news at six. It was formulaic at best, typically starting with something for younger children, followed by a cartoon, then maybe some drama and rounded off by John Craven’s Newsround – a kind of round-up of the news for youngsters.

If you want to make yourself feel really old, change the office wi-fi password to the name of your favourite children’s program from your youth and then despair at how many people are too young to remember it. I couldn’t believe hoe many people in our office hadn’t heard of Grange Hill, a kind of school based soap opera – required viewing for any school child in my younger years.

Despite the limited viewing, there were some classics. Dangermouse was my favourite cartoon – and I loved his faithful sidekick Penfold who was forever coming out with “Crikey!”, “Crumbs!” or something similar. Jackanory was an unlikely formula. A star-studded cast read out children’s stories. If you haven’t heard a scary story narrated by Tom Baker – you haven’t lived.

These days, there are umpteen channels dedicated to children’s TV day and night. Nickelodeon, Nick Junior, Cbeebies, the Disney Channel are just a few of the stations on offer. In case you missed something, most of them have a +1 channel too. Not only that, but children can catch up on iPlayer. And if that weren’t enough, most programs are also available on YouTube. It’s a wonder that kids get any homework done these days.

If I get the opportunity, I like to watch the bedtime hour on Cbeebies with Maisie. It’s worth watching if only for the song that finishes it off;

The time has come to say goodnight,
To say sleep tight, ’til the morning light.
The time has come to say goodnight
at the end of  a lovely day.

We’ve had so much fun today.
Tomorrow’s just a dream away.
The time has come to say goodnight
at the end of a lovely day.

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Sep 15 2012

What will archeologists make of the here and now?

trowel

trowel (Photo credit: turtlemoon)

It has been a while since I visited the dump – sorry, municipal waste processing plant. The last time I was there, all the metal containers were for household waste. You parked up, selected the container closest to the car, and lugged everything you wanted to dispose of up the metal stairs and over the side. Today, things have changed. The first clue is the name. It has changed to the household waste recycling centre. The second clue is the sign outside which explains what goes where.

No longer is every container for household waste. There is but one such container and it has a guardian. Many climbed the steps to the household waste container, but few were deemed worthy by the guardian. They were dismissed with such mystical words as “no mate – electrical” or “sorry mate – that’s timber”.

Sometimes I thought he was being cruel by waiting until the poor soul had struggled up the steps with something particularly heavy or awkward before making his assessment. But no – he took his job very seriously and sometimes he needed a closer look before deciding whether to consider the item worthy of entry into his household waste container.

It was a bit bewildering at first, but the operatives were incredibly patient and when asked (for what must have been the hundredth time that day) where something went, they politely pointed in the right direction. I’m all in favour of anything that makes our meagre resources go further and the less stuff that ends up as landfill, the better.

If we get really good at this though, the future archeologists of the world are going to struggle. I once took a part-time archeology course and they live or die based on what they manage to dig out of the ground. If we become so efficient that we recycle absolutely everything, there will be nothing to dig up. I guess graffiti, the modern equivalent to cave painting might give them a few clues, but otherwise, they will be stumped.

It doesn’t help that so much of what we live and breathe is now digital either. Formats change so often that given enough time, any form of media will prove impossible to read. Books and paper degrade too, so it’s highly unlikely that an archeologist will be digging up a copy of Fifty Shades of Grey in a thousand years, although what they would make of a society who read such literature is hard to say.

The volume of data we produce and the rate at which it grows is unbelievable. We currently measure that data in exabytes, but how long until that becomes zettabytes or yottabytes is anyone’s guess. The ironic thing is that if we recycle everything and all media is left unreadable, a future archeologist might conclude that we were no more advanced that our stone age ancestors.

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Sep 13 2012

The inconvenient science of science fiction

English: A picture of the plaque at Riverside,...

English: A picture of the plaque at Riverside, Iowa, reading “Future Birthplace of Captain James T. Kirk March 22, 2228”. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

150 years ago, Jules Verne wrote about a trip to the moon. 5 years later, he wrote about a powered submarine. Arthur C Clark wrote about GPS long before it ever became a reality. Captain Kirk used communicators to get Scotty to beam him up. Spot the odd one out.

Well, we’ve been to the moon and we have countless submarines creeping around the world packed with missiles waiting to unleash Armageddon. Most people have GPS in their smartphones which they also use as portable wireless communication devices. All of these things that were dreamed up in the realm of science fiction have since become true. Unfortunately, transporter beams have yet to be invented. We’re not even close.

In some Star Trek episodes, they talk about how transporters work. They transfer the subject’s substance or matter into energy, send it to another place and then turn the energy back into matter arranged according to the pattern. When something goes wrong, they “pull back” the subject to their starting point, only sometimes, they don’t make it. It all sounds terrifying and I certainly wouldn’t be keen on trying out early prototypes.

But how likely are they to happen?  I once asked a hulking great Jamaican barman on a cruise ship whether the crew ate the same food as the passengers. With a deep-throated roar of laughter, he told me “same meat, same fish, same vegetables – different chef, different recipe”. In other words, just transferring matter is not enough, the pattern in which that matter is arranged is crucial.

We have a pattern for the human body. Twelve years ago the first draft of the human genome was published. Our DNA is incredibly complicated with 25,000 genes and 3 billion chemical base pairs arranged in a double helix. In a recent update, scientists announced that what they previously thought was junk DNA is actually crucial to the make up of the human body.

A tiny unwanted accidental change in the pattern could be enough to render the subject blind, deaf or worse. It would seem to be a pre-requisite that this work is completely finished before transporter technology could be feasible for transmitting humans. But what about simpler matter? Using something I don’t claim to understand called quantum entanglement, scientists in Copenhagen have transported  matter 18 inches. Physicists in the Canary Islands have used the same trick to transmit small payloads over 89 miles.

Scientists admit that the same trick won’t work for humans, so something fundamentally different will need to be discovered to make transporters viable. Looks like we will be stuck with planes, trains and automobiles for a while yet.

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Sep 11 2012

The romance of travel

"A fanciful view of future airship trave&...

“A fanciful view of future airship trave” (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Whenever I watch an old Indiana Jones film where they sneak their way onto an airship, I always feel a pang of jealousy that they are using a mode of transport that I probably never will. Modern aircraft feel so claustrophobic with their closely packed seats and tiny windows. The only way to stretch your legs is by dodging the trolley dollies and the toilet-goers in the extremely narrow aisles.

Airship gondolas are always depicted in films as luxurious, spacious affairs with uniformed attendants serving dinner at large tables. Because the gondola hangs below the airship, the passengers have an unimpeded view through the large picture windows. Progress is sedate and dependent on the wind direction, but I can’t imagine a more pleasant way to travel.

I really wouldn’t mind if it took me days to get somewhere. Fit wireless internet and you could even work up there, although if the films are anything to go by, you might get interrupted by the odd murder or gun-toting Nazis looking to take over the world.

I’m not sure I’d feel quite so nostalgic for travelling by ship. If I was travelling on business, according to company policy I’d be in steerage. According to Wikipedia, steerage means limited toilet use, no privacy and poor food. Sounds a bit like economy class on most airlines. The only trouble is that ships are slow. Living in cramped conditions with poor sanitation and loads of other people for extended periods of time leads to disease.

Steam trains hold a special place in my heart too. If I could get aftershave that was eau de steam train, I would buy bottles of the stuff. I simply can’t imagine a nicer smell. There is nothing like the drama of a big steam train pulling into a train station amid clouds of sweet-smelling steam and then pulling out again to a gradually increasing clamour of puffing.

I remember when trains had compartments and really comfortable seats. You also had a reasonable chance of sitting on them too. Trains seemed to be much less busy back then.

With the exception of personal transportation, like the motor car and motorbike, it seems that although transport has become much more efficient, it has also become much more cramped and uncomfortable. When are we going to see a new transport development that takes us back to travelling comfortably without breaking the bank?

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Sep 8 2012

How do you get a million miles out of one tyre?

Shiny Oil Tanker

Shiny Oil Tanker (Photo credit: Jawaad Mahmood)

One of the more interesting assignments I was given at BP was a truck maintenance system. We were building it to replace an existing system that ran on a mainframe. Someone had sentenced the mainframe to death so we had to rewrite all the systems on a new fangled distributed computing platform.

I didn’t have high hopes when I heard about the assignment. Truck maintenance sounded a bit boring to me, but that was before I met the project sponsor. I must have done something right because he was a very particular man and had been extremely picky about who was assigned to the project.

The first thing he did was ask me a question. “What do you think the three biggest costs are for BP?” As we were surrounded in a posh new head office which must have cost a fortune, I offered up “premises” as an answer. He nodded. I then said “staff” and he nodded again.

Every guess from then on was met with a shake of the head. After 10 or so guesses, I said “I give up”. At which point, he leaned forward in his chair and said “tyres”. I have to say, his answer stunned me. I never would have thought that tyres would be anywhere near the top 10, let alone the top 3, but there you have it. He went on to say that the company expected to get a million miles out of a tyre.

Private motorists are lucky if they get 30k miles out of a tyre so how do they do it? He showed me a model of a cross-section through a truck tyre. The thickness of rubber between the inside of the tyre and the road was massive – probably 6-8 inches. He explained that when the tread was getting low, the tyre would be sent off for a recut.

Essentially, they would cut further into the thick rubber to make new tread. This operation would be repeated through the tyre’s life until there wasn’t enough rubber. The tyre would then be sent off for reprocessing. Essentially, another band of thick rubber would be grafted onto the tyre and the whole life-cycle would begin anew. Eventually, the skeleton of the tyre would wear out and the tyre would be no more.

This was why it was crucial for the company to monitor each and every tyre to make sure that they wring every last mile out of them. A record was kept for every tyre to monitor how many miles it had travelled. What made things complicated was that the tyres moved around. Sometimes they would be on a trailer, sometimes on a cab and sometimes on an unarticulated truck (called a rigid as opposed to an artic).

Not only that, but trailers moved around too. All this moving around made my job very difficult, because the only instrument measuring mileage was the truck’s tacho. I’d just about got my head around all the permutations, when my project sponsor said “Have I told you about a tacho head change? That’s when things get really complicated!”

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Sep 6 2012

Why I’ll never need a trophy cabinet

Triangle of the 15 reds in snooker. Note: This...

Triangle of the 15 reds in snooker. Note: This is not a full depiction of the setup of a game of snooker, as the colour balls are not shown. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Like many people, I find myself glued to the Paralympics just like the Olympics a few weeks ago. There is something mesmerising about true athletes competing at such a level. I feel proud of Team GB and even when there is a race with no Team GB competitors, I still like to watch in case an athlete sets a new World Record. Unfortunately, I was never blessed in the sports department. I’m sure I could have improved if I’d persisted and practised, but I simply didn’t enjoy taking part in sport.

I don’t think my school years helped. For bizarre reasons known only to the PE teachers, we made sure that all the outdoor activities happened when it was absolutely freezing, raining cats and dogs or both. It also didn’t help that I was required to remove my glasses when taking part in sports. You would be amazed how much of a disincentive that is when trying to catch a rock hard cricket ball that you can barely see.

I always used to enter the 100m during sports day, not because I was any good at it, but more because it was the shortest race possible. In the pool, I just about managed to struggle to 25 yards for my red ribbon, but I was lucky it wasn’t 30 yards – I think I’d have drowned. Some might argue that snooker is not a sport and I suppose it’s not in the physical sense, but it’s the only thing I ever won a trophy at so it counts as a sport in my book.

A charismatic man I used to work with called Dick Wittington (I kid you not) once cornered me and told me that he had taken on two teams to manage in the local snooker league. He went on to tell me that it was all a bit of a strain and that he was struggling to find the time. By the end of the conversation, somehow he’d persuaded me take on and run the worst of the two teams. It must have been a jedi mind trick.

I set about organising the team. My bequest from Mr Wittington consisted of a rag-tag collection of unskilled, unreliable snooker players, but somehow we managed to get a team together most weeks. The first few weeks, we were soundly beaten. After a while though, the most amazing thing happened. We started to improve. We started winning every so often. Then we won every other game. Soon we won more often than we lost. As the league continued, we climbed inexorably up the table.

In the final game of the season, we beat the league leaders and won the league. The snooker club awarded us medals. Because my squad was so unreliable, we had 10 players and there were only 6 medals. Put on the spot, I distributed the medals to the guys that turned up for that crucial last game.

In the office the following day, I displayed my medal proudly on my desk. Just then a fiercely competitive colleague came over for a chat. He was the kind of guy who had two big trophy cabinets and trophies to spare. He had been a member of our squad but he’d been unable to make the last match (and hence had no medal). “Where’s my medal?” he demanded. I mumbled something about there not being enough to go around. He instantly rattled off a bunch of statistics that showed that he was the best member of the team.

I sighed, and handed over the only thing I’d ever won. But for one short moment at least, I was a winner.

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Sep 3 2012

Whatever happened to my treasured possessions?

 

Charles Dickens: A Christmas Carol. In Prose. ...

Charles Dickens: A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas. With Illustrations by John Leech. London: Chapman & Hall, 1843. First edition. Title page. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Owing to a recent rodent induced flood (don’t ask), we have had cause to reassess the value of lots our belongings in the Bailey household. Many items have slid down the treasured possession scale from “don’t throw away under any circumstances” to “discardable tat” with frightening speed. Thanks to the household insurance, almost everything can be replaced. What surprised me was how distinctly unattached I felt to all of my possessions – they’re just easily replaceable things.

It never used to be that way. When I was growing up, everything I owned was almost sacred. I had a massive collection of plastic soldiers which I played with endlessly. Rain, wind or shine, I would be out in the garden digging bunkers and conducting world war across the lawn. I was obsessed by World War II and I had a big boxful of Commando comics which I read over and over.

Whilst these were important to me at the time, they paled into insignificance compared to two hard backed books.

The first was a ladybird book called “In the train with Uncle Mac”. I don’t know where it came from and it was well-worn by the time it came into my possession. It was the story of a journey on a steam train with a kindly uncle. I read the book incessantly. So much so, that it started to fall to bits. As a young boy, I liked all kinds of machines, but especially trains. Time after time, mum had to perform running repairs with Sellotape just to keep it in one piece. By the time she finished, there was more Sellotape than book.

The second was a similarly sized hard backed book with a plain dark red cover. It had no dust cover and at some point in its life, it had been in the wrong place during some decorating and white paint flecked the front of the book. It was presented to me by my uncle Martin. I could tell by the solemnity of the way he gave me the book that he was handing over a precious heirloom. It was a copy of a Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

With gravity, he told me that the book I held in my hands was his favourite story ever. He then read it to me. I can’t say that it converted me to being a Charles Dickens fan, but the moment possessed a certain magic all the same.

I feel guilty that I no longer have either of these books and for the life of me, I have no idea what happened to them. I could buy another copy of both these books to replace the ones that I’ve lost over the years, but somehow it just wouldn’t be the same.

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Sep 2 2012

You’re OK if you want a sandwich or a phone or a loan…

Wimpy (restaurant)

Wimpy (restaurant) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As I was growing up, there was a relative paucity of fast food outlets in our local town. We had not one but two fish and chip shops and a Kentucky Fried Chicken. There was also a Wimpy Bar, but at that time Wimpy was more about table service than it was about grabbing a bite to eat on the move. It was also comparatively expensive to anyone trying to live within a pocket-money budget.

I remember when McDonald’s came to our town it was a very big deal. The fast food giant was almost completely unknown unless you had been to the States. Air travel was much less common back then, so for most of us, we learned about McDonald’s from a story in the local paper. The brand was presented in a very positive light, seen as a much-needed employer and a sign of progress.

Maybe it’s nostalgia, but I seem to remember that the food back then was pretty good too and certainly very keenly priced. On a Saturday, my £1 pocket money would be burning a hole in my pocket and I quite often treated myself to a bus ride into town and a burger. I could even afford chips and a drink if I walked to town and only took the bus back.

Not long afterwards in 1980, Marks and Spencer’s started to sell sandwiches and it’s fair to say that they set the bar very high for take away sandwiches. Many other supermarkets followed suit, but their sandwiches tended to be pale imitations of the legendary Marks and Spencer’s sandwich. My favourite has always been the chicken salad sandwich – absolutely delicious.

Ever since those times, there has been an absolute explosion in the variety of fast food establishments adorning our high streets. I would struggle to walk 50 yards in our local town without coming to a coffee shop. We have two Gregg’s Bakers, two Subways, a Burger King, a Cornish pasty place, umpteen pizza chains and several cafes. Ironically, the fish and chip shops are gone as is the McDonald’s.

If my income was still £1 per week, I would be well catered for in the high street of today. There are a huge number of shops who set the unit price of all of their stock at that magic figure. I rarely go in those shops but when I do, I am amazed at the range and sheer variety on offer and it baffles me as to how it is economical to manufacture all those things in some faraway land, float them over, put them on a truck to get them to the shop and then sell them but it is obviously a thriving sector.

People must buy a lot of phones too. Every single mobile phone network has a shop in town selling shiny new gadgets. Not only that, but there are a couple of independents too and umpteen market stalls toting accessories to wrap your shiny new purchase. It’s hard to believe that 20 years ago, this market didn’t exist and today, 1.5 billion phones are shipped annually.

In fact, if you took away the food & drink outlets, the pound shops, the mobile phone retailers, the charity shops, the pawn shops and the clothes shops, you’d be left with the bookies.

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Sep 1 2012

The girl who crowned her Daddy King.

My Only King

My Only King (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Maddie was out with her Mum at the shop.
She really wanted the shopping to stop.
In and out of the aisles they went,
until Mum’s money was nearly spent

At last Mummy’s shopping came to a halt,
when into the basket she threw the salt
“As you’ve been good, you deserve some treats”
said Mummy as she looked at the sweets

“No Mum”, said Maddie pulling her away.
“I don’t want any sweets for treats today.”
Giving the sweets a disdainful look,
Maddie picked up a big sticker book.

At home Maddie was back with her Daddy.
When he had no treats he threw a paddy.
“Would you like a sticker instead?”
sweet Little Maddie kindly said

“What – a special sticker just for me?”
her father said with joyful glee
Eying her stickers with a careful frown,
Maddie selected a big golden crown.

“Would you please bend right over” young Maddie said,
stickering the big golden crown to his head.
Standing up straight her daddy looked proud.
His voice went from soft to very loud.

“I am King and before me you must bow!
You and Mummy my loyal subjects now”
Mummy and Maddie started to laugh
“You can’t order us like we’re your staff”

“That’s it! I’ll have to chop off Mummy’s head”
The last thing Maddie wanted was Mummy dead
She jumped on a stool and her Daddy squealed
As she reached for the crown and off it was pealed

As Daddy’s voice returned from loud to soft,
“You’re no longer the King” her Mummy scoffed.
“Any more nonsense you’ll sleep in the shed,
and all you’ll have for dinner is bread.”

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Aug 30 2012

The wisdom of crowds

NXNEi - Day 2 - Kickstarter.com

NXNEi – Day 2 – Kickstarter.com (Photo credit: Jason Hargrove)

The idea of a collection of people chipping in to raise enough money to make something happen is not a new one. Charities have relied on the concept for years, as have mutuals or building societies. The earliest documented such endeavour is Ketley’s Building Society which grew out of the inns, taverns and coffeehouses of 18th century Birmingham.

The funds in that case were for building houses, but similar societies cropped up to pay out money in the case of misfortune such as bereavement or loss of limbs at sea. The members paid a small subscription hoping against hope that they would never need of the society’s services. Many famous modern insurance companies can trace their roots back to such humble origins.

Mention crowd funding to most people and they will not think of charities, building societies or insurance companies. They will immediately think of crowd funding websites. Just as Amazon and eBay have revolutionised selling over the internet, so have kickstarter.com and indiegogo.com have taken crowd funding to a whole new level.

By combining the reach of the internet with the viral effect of social media, crowd funding websites are ruthlessly efficient funding models. If your target audience likes your pitch, you will probably get funded. If your target audience looks at your pitch and gives a collective “meh!” then your funding deadline will pass with nary a whimper. Successful projects tend to snowball as stretch goals are reached adding more and more swag to the booty on offer.

I recently took part in funding this kick-starter project which went on to become the third most successful ever. It is fast becoming a poster child for the kind of innovation that crowd funding can unlock for successful pitchers. In this particular case, the pitch was for plastic miniatures (used for war-games or table top games). The original funding target for this project was $30k. They went on to raise about $3.5m

The upfront costs in making tooling for plastic miniatures is ruinously expensive. The ongoing unit costs per miniature are very low. Funded traditionally, it makes for a risky business because you never know how many units you will sell and whether you will cover your initial outlay. Crowd funding is perfect because if there is no interest for your product, you find out without spending a fortune. If you are lucky, you will end up with a runaway success.

I believe that crowd funding could offer a much more efficient mechanism for companies to build the right products. Using the same kind of mechanism, product managers could design pitches for new products. Salesmen (or maybe even customers) could commit to delivering a certain sales target. If the project reaches the profitability target, it gets funded.

There is even scope for the project to work in reverse with the consumers designing the pitch and when enough people say “I’d like one too” – a company takes up the mission of delivering the product.

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