Category Archives: Gripes

Gripes, Technology

Virtually no boundaries

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It has come to light today, that computer games allow you to do some things that would not be nice if carried out in the real world.

As part of a study carried out by human rights organisations, video games producers have allegedly created computer games where you can clearly break the law.
They cite Modern Warfare 2, where you can kill civilians, as an example.

Guilty as charged, really.
Imagine a virtual world where you could do things that would be illegal in the real world.
All games should have real consequences for all actions carried out, and I’d like to see more show the reality behind the situations.

For example, currently in “Trauma Center: Second Opinion“, with very basic training of less than 10 minutes, you can operate on people in the emergency room.
What is the world coming to?!
Impersonating a doctor? I haven’t even been to medical school.
I’d like to see the game come with a tutorial that lasts around 5 years, in which you slowly learn all aspects of medicine, and pay a monthly fee, so that before you can carry out any operations, you are quite a few thousand pounds in debt.

Tony Blair should probably be questioned over whether or not it was right to go to war with zombies in “Resident Evil“.

In “Virtua Cop“, I find it offensively inaccurate that all suspects are immediately killed.
No information is taken, nobody questioned, and it may even be their first offence, if in fact they are actually guilty of any crimes.
At least 80% of the game should really involve paperwork and following up on old cases, and after a suspect is apprehended, it is only right and proper that the next 1-2 years of gameplay involves testimonials, legal proceedings and yet more paperwork.

“Pacman” is an incredibly bad message to send to children.
He clearly has an eating disorder and binges constantly. He is repeatedly bullied, and his only way out is to avenge his attackers and eat them alive. Two wrongs do not make a right in modern society.
Social workers and counseling may help his issues, and the bullying should be reported to the correct authorities.

“Duck Hunt” is clearly an unsustainable farming or pest control method, which will likely lead to extinction for the animal due to lack of proper nesting facilities or further breeding programmes.

In “Theme Park“, rides that are poorly maintained routinely collapse, injuring members of the public. A full investigation must be carried out to discover what has gone wrong, and procedures put in place to prevent future accidents.
The staff in the food areas have received absolutely no food hygiene training whatsoever. An unscheduled visit from the environmental health must be carried out regularly.
Locals have not even been consulted regarding planning permission to build such a large establishment, with only one tiny road as nearby transport links.

“Paperboy” depicts a street scene where a young child has a small income from a part-time job. It is to be praised on this aspect for teaching youngsters about the value of money.
However, vandalizing the houses of non-subscribers to this particular newsagent is tantamount to a protection racket, and should be removed entirely.
He also has no lights, repeatedly cycles on the pavement, and has no respect for the highway code, other road users or pedestrians. The game should be praised for its realism in this area.

And in various games such as “The Need for Speed” and “OutRun“, it is actually possible to indulge in dangerous high-speed driving on public roads, with little-to-no sentencing when caught.
When accidents happen, there is bizarrely little obvious damage, but no insurance information is exchanged between drivers, or blame assessed.
The drivers should be checked by medically trained individuals for non-obvious injuries, and any dangerous drivers responsible dealt with by the police.
I also suggest a points system whereby players receive points for speeding. After several breaches, they are disqualified, and the game becomes unplayable for 2 years while they have a good think about what they have done.
In severe cases, they are forced to take a theory and practical driving test, before being allowed back on the roads, to drive in a hopefully safer manner.

Gripes, Technology

New computer designed for the elderly

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I was surprised to read this morning that a computer for the elderly has been launched.

Now I must admit I was pessimistic to start with.
Reading about a computer especially for the elderly, invokes similar reactions as hearing about the creation of a computer for gay people, or a computer for people of mixed race. I’m just not entirely sure there’s actually a need for it.

There is undoubtedly a lot of people who don’t have a computer at home, and/or don’t use the Internet and/or don’t understand computers at all.
This isn’t restricted to the elderly though.
My grandma is well into her 80s, and she can use a computer well enough to try out email, research some family history, etc.
She went on a free course for that. I’ve taught her nothing.

So what’s wrong with it?

Having read through the article and the website of the product, I’ve got several problems with the idea/scheme.

Firstly, it mixes itself from beginners basic, through to technical jargon and back again.
Looking on the SimplicITy website, there are two models available, called the “Suite 100” and “Suite 200”. I’d have given them names and not model numbers, but that’s just me. (Yes, even I don’t like model numbers. What’s a Samsung e9897-x/uk when it’s at home?)

The basic model says: “simplicity : model 100 – energy efficient, cool and quiet running”, and then tails off into a load of what will be mindless jargon for the novice (presumably for if you’re a geek buying this for your gran).
The better model says: “simplicity : model 200 – smaller and quieter than model 100”
So model 100 is quiet, but 200 is quieter? So clearly the 100 can’t be that quiet?
The computers are so small and basic, they should be fanless/silent anyway. Especially given the price.

Price = HOW MUCH?!

The most basic model (and it really IS basic processor wise, RAM isn’t even mentioned), including a 19″ screen, keyboard, mouse, etc is £435.99.
Delivery is another £10, and there’s no getting away from it, because they’re not available in shops.
The best part of £450 would easily buy you a Dell/HP. The Dell/HP likely wouldn’t have a crappy Sempron processor for that price either.
(£480 today gets you a Dell with an Intel dual core processor, 20″ screen (SimplicITy is 19″ – closest match), and 3gb ram, running Windows7)

SimplicITy then have the audacity to bundle in a plug for another website. They link to a site designed to apparently help the elderly with saving money. Incredible!
Tip 1 is presumably to not buy one of these computers.

You may think that quality costs, and people don’t buy everything to the cheapest price. If that’s true for you, buy a Mac.
If that isn’t true for you, buy a Dell/HP.
Everything about this scheme just seems like a complete rip off.
They’re selling something as designed for the elderly, when all you’ve done is simplified (possibly) it a bit and increased the price. Digusting.

Bespoke = bad.

The SimplicITy system runs a bespoke front-end called “Square One” (if you get stuck you go “back to Square One” – no, really. I haven’t made that up).
It’s a front end which has no resemblance to any other operating system you’ll find Dave next door using.
If we geeks of the world have learnt nothing else from the past, it should be that the biggest problem with AOL was that it didn’t work/look like any other internet provider.
Switching from AOL to another provider became a major chore for the novice, as software, protocols, emails, browsers, were all completely different.

Which brings me onto the biggest issue:

Support? Any?

If you buy yourself a cheap Dell or HP computer, if and/or when you get a problem, you can phone/email/text/visit a friend and ask for their help. Everyone’s grandson will use Windows or a Mac these days.
A simple problem will remain just that – a problem.
Talking someone through a computer problem on the phone “blind”, requires you to have a superb knowledge of the operating system the other person is using.
There is no mention of support anywhere within the BBC article, nor on the SimplicITy website.

In fact, training seems to be entirely left to Valerie Singleton through video tutorials.

Broadband?

And after taking you through the basic functions you can expect from your (somewhat overpriced) computer, on the last page of the SimplicITy website, with the order form, it states at the bottom of the page:
“You will need a broadband connection. If you don’t have one already, make sure you order it as soon as you’ve placed your order for the simplicITy, so when the computer arrives you will be ready to start using your computer immediately (the wait for broadband installation can be up to 10 days).”

Way to go! They’ve taken them through the basic basics, then told people they need Internet access, which they don’t provide any further information on.
They don’t sell it, they just give a phone number for Eclipse.
Eclipse have quite a good reputation as it goes, but I hope they’re prepared for the phone calls they’ll get. People who don’t understand computers generally haven’t a clue how broadband works at all.
They’ve done the right thing at least including a phone number, instead of just a casual web link to Eclipse’s main site.

So is it even necessary?

Having until recently worked in IT support for a number of years, I’d suggest that the skills gap is not all with the elderly anyway.
There are the youngsters of today who all have computers at school, people in their 20s who experienced broadband as it was taking off (and got into BitTorrent, etc), and there are people who have retired who have more free time and can learn to use a computer.

I would suggest the worst age is late 30s through to late 50s. It’s an age-range where computers weren’t available as they’ve grown up, the world has changed to a point where they have got to use “the things” for work, and they commonly retaliate against them and have little time/interest in learning.
The difference here is that those being forced to use them for work, have the support of their IT department or outside IT organisation. If and when they get stuck on something or a problem occurs, there is someone they can phone.
And that someone will be of absolutely no use if you phone them and tell them you’re running Linux Mint edition, because they’re all trained in Macs and Windows.

The only thing that surprises me here is that this scheme is so badly conceived, I’m amazed it isn’t government funded.

Gripes

Jan Moir vs decency on Stephen Gately

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I’m not really familiar with the woman, but I am familiar with the Daily Mail, who write nonsensical stories throughout the day, devoid of facts, heavily biased, and most of them opinion-led, despite claiming overwhelming to the contrary.
Lines like “we’ll never know if” and “who could say what might happen if” are the sort of things you can expect to find.
A good journalist might attempt to find out “what if”, or better still – check if there is any likelihood of that actually happening or having happened. However, non-scandalous fact-based stories don’t seem to sell papers as easily.

The article that has got up most of the Twitter users’ collective noses today, is a questioning piece that suggests that the late Stephen Gately must have died from something other than the norm, and that people don’t just die suddenly for no reason.
It tries to suggest that all people wait til they’re old and grey to leave the earth, unless they get run over, take drugs, or contract cancer (and we all know just being male give you cancer).

This has been debated at length already, and here are the best three opinion pieces on why Jan Moir is a clueless idiot.
1. This is childish but funny, and frankly it’s an article with about as many facts in it.
(http://notsowunderbar.blogspot.com/2009/10/why-there-is-nothing-natural-about-jan.html)

2. This one breaks it down into the points she has got most wrong, including the gay-bashing and linking of unrelated celebrity deaths.
(http://enemiesofreason.blogspot.com/2009/10/why-there-is-nothing-natural-about-life.html)

3. Charlie Brooker in The Guardian. Some points similar/identical to #2 above, but then expanding in some areas.
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/16/stephen-gately-jan-moir)

I’ve commented on The Guardian one, but in the time it took me to type my comment, there had been another 73 comments posted.
Here’s what I wrote:

I don’t know why, but I found myself drawn to the bit where she claims nobody young and apparently healthy ever dies suddenly, or of a medical problem they don’t know they have.
Nobody.
Like Dermot Morgan
or Martin Kelly or Natasha Richardson.
Those people were all old though, yeah? Like 40+!

Nobody under 40 ever dies from an undiagnosed health condition…
Except Christopher Price, or to coin a recent article, this recent example where the DailyMail argued that a young girl was killed by a cancer jab, despite having no proof and the health organisations saying that she clearly wasn’t.
In some reports, they even used wording like “the health trust would give us no further information” to make it sound like they were being denied scandalous information, when the actual fact was that [the trust] had no more information and were still running tests.

Why anyone reads the Daily Mail is beyond me. I’ve seen more factual information written in limericks on toilet walls.

Daily Life, Gripes

Living with people

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I hate living with people.
I currently share a house with three others, but a fourth will be added when a room has been renovated to a standard where you can actually live in there.
When I moved in, I partly fooled myself into thinking I’d like to live with people as it would be more sociable, but if I’m completely honest it was because I had a shitty studio flat where I had to cook in my bedroom, and that got boiling hot in summer, freezing cold in winter, and had no central heating.
I also didn’t have a washing machine (or room for one), and walking to/from the launderette wasted a lot of a weekend day.

Today I’ve had a shit day. I knew that a long time before I got home.
I’m tired, I’ve fucked my sleep pattern up, and feel like I’m wasting a huge percentage of time every week, that I should be spending doing something.

But that can’t be any excuse for other peoples complete lack of ability to wash anything up?
How hard is it to scrape the ketchup off a plate, so it’s clean?
If you ate in a restaurant and there was some old scummy ketchup on the edge of a knife you were eating from, you’d ask for a clean one.
I’ve just had to wash up every plate (two of which I had used), but one was in the cupboard, all caked in some previous meal.

I’ve put that plate back next to the sink to be washed up fucking properly like the hygiene policeman that I am, but it’ll end up being me that washes it up anyway, because nobody else cares.

And the annoyance doesn’t stop there.
When people do wash up, and do it to a mediocre standard that passes my test, they occasionally dry it up, then leave it out on top of the cooker.
We’ve got a cupboard for pans, another for plates, etc. If it’s washed, clean and dry, just put it away.
Otherwise I have to put it away when I come to do some cooking.

I’m not sure who keeps doing it, but there is some sort of pasta sauce or ketchup on the side of my kettle at the moment. (Yes, mine – I bought it!)
I’ve cleaned it recently, and it’s back there again.
How does that even happen?
I must admit I’m no amateur to using a kettle, but I fill it with water, boil it, then add it to the mug/bowl/pan I’m using. At no point do I smear ketchup all down the side of it.
It’s not even on the handle so it isn’t just coming off their hands. I’ve thought through the possibilities, and I can’t fathom it out.

Of the 10 cups we have in the house, 3 of them are currently clean.
There’s a few lying around the living room and a glass half full/empty of water (always – why not just put less in, if you don’t want all of it?)
Between 4 of us, it’d probably be nice to have a few more. But I’ll be fucked if I’m buying any more, as I bought all of them to start with.

There’s an iron still plugged in (thankfully switched off at the wall) that someone hasn’t bothered to put away. My iron, yes.

And one of my housemates just rang the doorbell because he’d lost his keys. Why do people lose keys so easily? I’ve never lost a set of keys in my life, and maybe it’s down to the fact I assume that anyone who has my keys can steal whatever they’re currently keeping locked up.
E.g. It’s not a key – it’s my laptop, TV and everything else I own of value.
Sadly in a shared house, it’s exactly the same if they lose their keys.

Some of them are also really shit with bills.

Yet sadly, thanks to my lousy pay, I’m unable to afford to live alone.
I’m forced to live with other bloody people.
Thanks to the good schools in my area, and other niceties, despite the recession, houses are still valued at over £300,000 in my street.
The knock-on of living in an area which isn’t full of chavs and mostly free of fucktards, means I couldn’t rent a one-bedroom flat here without nearly doubling my salary.
According to RightMove’s iPhone app, I can’t even downsize and down err… people. Switching to a 2 bedroom flat and finding someone who would only wind me up slightly, would still involve me paying another £100 a month in rent alone, plus increased council tax and other bills.

It makes me laugh to hear people who own property moaning about the value dropping by 0.1%. “Oh woe is me. I’ll have to wait another year to retire”.
Arseholes.
If a £300,000 house drops in value by even 20%(and the market shits itself at 1%), then it’s worth £240,000. As long as you don’t sell it, it makes no difference to anyone.
If you’ve cleared the mortgage, then just sit and wait, or sell it if you need the money. If you’re going end up in negative equity by selling, then don’t sell it.
Property is an investment after all. Investments can/should go down as well as up.

Frankly a depreciation of 20% in any other area would be superb. Imagine if a £200 Xbox was worth £160 5 years later on eBay.
To people on a salary of say £20,000 the difference between a £240,000 house and a £300,000 house is absolutely nothing. Even two people on £20,000 each, buying a house together. No difference.

Just who do these price rises benefit anyway?
I once got chatting to someone who owned a large house in the Clifton area, worth an absolute fortune. They told me it was no benefit to them at all. If they sold it, they’d still have to buy another elsewhere, which in the nicer areas, would also have risen a lot. Unless they were planning on living in a shed, whether it was worth £200,000 or £400,000, it was no benefit whatsoever.

Now as I’m grumpy and tired. And tired because grumpy. I’m going to attempt to get an hour’s sleep while my neighbours bang around and randomly shout, before I go back to my badly paid job where stoners can’t decide which fucking cigarettes they want. I hate people.

Gripes, Technology

Outsourcing to India

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A few years back, I had a dream. That dream was web design.
Sadly I can hardly put two colours together without them looking hideous, and I have no sense of visible style whatsoever. Combined with my lack of knowing any programming languages, I was on to a bad start.

This is where I roped in my best mate, who was very good at coding, made some nice looking websites in his spare time, etc.
It was a plan which couldn’t fail.
Except that I couldn’t sell any web design, we had no budget to start up, and my mate went to university and had no time to work on this.
It was then, we dropped the idea.

Not a great deal of money was ever spent, but we had bought a web domain name.
I still have it now, wondering if I might have a use for it one day, for some other purpose.

Every now and then, I get an email from a company asking me if they can help with my outsourcing needs. At a guess, I’d say we’re still listed somewhere on a web designer online directory or something.
Today I received an email which said (names changed):

“Hi..

I am Reginald, Marketing Manager. Somebullshitcompany.

I have been through your site and can see that you are offering Web Development services to your clients. In these tough times, where it is hard to maintain the topline, we can help share the bottom line for you.

We have a large team for both Web Design and Development in INDIA which can execute the campaigns at a much lower cost than what you have in house.

Do let me know if you are interested and I would be happy to send in more details.

I look forward to your mail.

Kind Regards”

Normally I delete these things, but I was slightly amazed by this one.
He says he’s been through my website?
Actually taken the time to look through all the pages?
But all it says on my website is “This domain name is for sale. Email for details”, with an email address that is only used for this potential domain sale.

The lying swine! He’s not looked through my website at all.

To add insult to injury, at the bottom of the email was a grammatically poor signature about how they don’t send unsolicited mail.

I decided to break the habit, and reply.

“Hi Reginald,

Thank you for contacting me.
I’m glad you have looked through my website at www.old-unused-domain.co.uk, and have seen all about my organisation, what kind of work I have offered in the past, etc.

As you have been so completely honest with me, I feel I should be honest with you.
I have read through your email carefully, and have seen that you can outsource my sexual needs to India. This would seem like a lot of work on my part, but as I find the ‘look’ of Indian women attractive, this might work to my advantage.

I would be definitely interested in these services (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) and wonder if you could send me some form of catalogue, so that I might look through and pick my favourite to be my wife.

Thanks a lot.

Dave”

I await their reply eagerly.

Daily Life, Gripes

Teeth

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As a younger geekier person, I played a computer game called Beneath a Steel Sky. A lot.
Near the end of the game, you (the main character) insert a circuit board into a rubbery lifeless thing in a laboratory, and complete its transformation from silicon, to android.
Upon awakening, it near-instantly asks ‘when do I get my accessories? Nails, hair, teeth? etc’ to which you reply something like ‘forget it – they’re more trouble than they’re worth’.

It was this morning that this seemed most true, as I sat in the Orthodontics section of Bristol Dental Hospital, waiting to be seen.
There’s apparently no shame in adult dental work, and there’s a lot more adults having braces than ever before.
That said, they have no ‘adults’ orthodontics section, and I was directed by the receptionist into a room where I was the oldest person there by around 15 years.

I sat there, surrounded by the coloured sofas, random toys, and collections of parents temporarily bereft of their offspring, trying to steady my nerves by browsing the net on my iPhone and checking out what Ariane Sherine was up to on Twitter.

But then, I don’t know if it’s my lack of sleep, or if I’m really that paranoid – but I started to worry that this looked quite bad.
Me, a single childless man, 20-something, in a room full of children holding effectively a camera.
I started waving it around so there’s no way I could focus for a photo if I wanted to, but then it could have been the new 3GS model with the video camera.
I covered the screen but then it seemed like I had something to hide, so I angled it down towards my crotch so there’s no way I could be taking photos of young children. There – THATs fine. Oh no, wait!

My social angst was disturbed by a nurse calling me into a different room, and I’ve never been so glad to go in to a room full of dentist chairs and drills in my life.

I was ushered into an office-type square, and the orthodontist introduced himself while the nurse offered to take my coat. Thinking she wanted to take it away somewhere, I spent an age trying to remove my car keys from the pocket, joking “not that I think anyone’s going to steal them, but it’s the most expensive thing I own”. She then took it and hung it on a hook 2ft from where I was standing.
I reintroduced myself to the orthodontist so I could actually catch his name.

And then we had a bit of a chat. Me not knowing what notes he had, he immediately told me braces were an option.
I thought he was some kind of genius for being able to diagnose me without even looking at my teeth properly. Or maybe he had really good eyesight. I for some reason tried to talk without opening my mouth as far, as if testing his ability.

He got out the tiny mirror on the stick and had a proper look at my teeth, and told me it looked like I had at some point had a tooth removed. I motioned the symbol for “two” with my fingers, inadvertently flipping him the V-sign. I don’t think he noticed/minded.

First, the news I liked hearing. My teeth are fine from a hygiene perspective. A sticker and a lollipop for me (if I were in fact a child).
More good news followed.
If I don’t want braces, that’s fine. He doesn’t think my teeth will all fall out, or realign themselves vertically while I’m asleep.
The tooth fairy will have to look elsewhere to mine their raw materials. (What the hell do they do with all the teeth anyway? They can’t ALL be rounded off and made into Tic Tacs, surely?)

That’s where the good news ended.
I mentioned I had seen a woman in the paper (some wife of..some..celebrity. I don’t follow celebrity news much) who had near-invisible gumshield-type braces (known as “Invisalign“), nobody knew she had them, and now she had lovely teeth.
Sadly, such braces would be no good for me.
They could possibly straighten the top teeth a bit, but they would then be even more out of place with the bottom ones, and more noticeable.

I then commented that you could have them on the inside of teeth, so people couldn’t see them. (Oh yeah – I’ve done my research.)
Sadly, they’re complicated, require a lot more work, and quite commonly have to stay on longer.

So how much work would be involved in the horrible metal, front-hanger-on ones then?
Monthly checkups, rubber band adjustments, and I’d need to keep them on for two and a half years “at least”.
I’d likely need another two teeth extracted, and worse still – that would only straighten them.
It would require x-rays to be sure, but to fix my overbite may involve an operation to realign my jaw. That sounds painful to me.

On the upside, having braces (of the non-“Invisalign” variety) makes no difference to vocals, so it wouldn’t stop me cocking about on radio.
Or harm my successful singing career or 27-octave range.

The real kicker is that it has no health/medical benefit to me whatsoever.
My teeth are perfectly healthy, and if I choose to just keep on brushing, they’ll remain able to chew my food, bite people on full moons, etc.
No. IF I do it – I’ll be doing it entirely for cosmetic purposes.
I commented to him that I had no intention of being a soap star or a male model, as if either would be possible even with slightly straighter teeth.

Essentially we’re back to where I was when I saw other people with braces at 13-14 – worrying a lot.
Who will take a 27-29 year old man seriously, if he has braces?
When I launch my business soon, given I already look younger than I am and I think people like to buy from people who appear experienced/knowledgable, would having braces make me look even younger, and/or scare them off altogether?
Do women prefer a man with teeth that aren’t straight, or a man with a mouth full of scaffolding? I might never have sex again.
If I lived in America, I’m sure I’d have been forced by law to have them done years ago, but in Britain, does anyone really care that much?
Can I really bring myself to go through all of this just for straighter teeth?

The only time I really worry about my teeth is when I visit the dentist, or when I’m really tired or upset about something unrelated.
And even then it’s the last thing down a very long list of moans.
“…and I’ve got no money, no hope, I’m fed up with life, my car needs a service, I’m boring, “My Name is Earl” has been cancelled, I did a shit radio show three weeks ago………. and I’ve got bloody horrible teeth”.
Years ago, I mentioned to someone I was attracted to about my teeth, and they quite openly told me they’d never even noticed.

Bad teeth do run in my family. My dad has terrible teeth.
And my siblings have teeth-related issues, though luckily none of us have any real plans to have children, so I guess the buck stops here. Well, not right this minute – in 50 years or so.

I guess it’s something to ponder on, and likely do nothing about.

The orthodontist gave me some leaflets before I went. I don’t know if it was deliberate or an unconscious act, but THIS one was on the top.

Gripes

Why are we so hung up on ages?

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While that might sound like the legal defence of a secondary school teacher caught with one of his pupils, it’s actually a wondering about the media I’ve had for a while.

Apparently, BBC Radio 2 is no longer serving it’s older listeners properly.
Although reported here by The Guardian, this has been discovered by a not-at-all biased organisation called “The Radio Centre”, the trade body of the commercial radio industry, which doesn’t seem to like something the publicly-funded BBC has done. Surprise, surprise.

The Radio Centre is bickering about what it considers proper “news”. As far as I’m concerned, while “newspaper reviews, a discussion about snoring, a Monopoly championship and discussions about teleshopping” definitely sway towards the “Sun spot” edge of news, they ARE still news. If you want high brow continuing debate about Afghanistan, you can tune into a higher-brow station such as Radio 4.

Traditionally, presenters that remain at Radio 1 for a very long time, then shift to Radio 2. It has been described more than once as a kind of retirement home for Radio 1 presenters.
Keeping that in mind, is it any wonder that Chris Evans, and Mark Radcliffe have ended up working there? They’re both fine broadcasters who were successful on Radio 1, so why not move to Radio 2 afterwards?
This isn’t a new idea. It’s what happened with Steve Wright years ago, and nobody is harking on about him bringing younger listeners to Radio 2 along with a dose of the factoids.

The Guardian article both agrees that the BBC isn’t filling it’s remit for different types of music, while berating them for hiring Mark Lamarr. This is the same Mark Lamarr, who was hired to present specialist music shows on Reggae, and alternative sixties music.
Ignoring his age, and the fact he was once on Shooting Stars (which was presumably only popular with young people?), he’s a well-known broadcaster hired to talk about a specialist subject. Why has his age got anything to do with it?

This is where the real problem lies. The obsession with age.
This isn’t the BBC’s fault, or the Radio Centre’s fault. It’s a bigger problem than that. Every media organisation is obsessed with the ages of viewers, readers or listeners.

At what point did someone decide that 16yr olds like one thing, and 46yr olds like another?
I’m 27, and according to Ofcom, Original 106.5 (an FM station in Bristol) is aimed at “35-59year olds”. My music taste hasn’t changed dramatically in the last few years, and I can tell you that it is much more to my taste, than say, Kiss 101 which is specifically targeted at the “under 30s”.
I occasionally even listen to Radio 4. It’s got some comedy on it, I’ve recently discovered.

Maybe it’s just me? Just me flouting the predetermined age-based entertainment formats?
Well no.
My girlfriend has been listening to Absolute Radio (and previous incarnation as Virgin) for years. Her gran is in her 80s but still reads The Guardian, with all it’s swear words and young writers.

Adam Fawcett (@fawcett94), somebody I follow on Twitter due to our shared interest in radio broadcasting, regularly tweets about his tv viewing habits. He’s 15 years old.
So what should a 15yr old be watching? MTV? BBC Three? E4 perhaps?
The majority of the time it appears to be Gold. Classic comedies from yesteryear.
Mad!

Clearly ages don’t link well to formats. TV critic Charlie Brooker, proved this during an episode of Screenwipe, about “Yoof Tv”, where he put together a young focus group. Here it is:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hR-A_ppO5o&hl=en&fs=1&]
Young people hate what they’re meant to like. Weird!
This is because, as Charlie puts it, “they’re not weird and they’re not young people – they’re just people”, and “they just want decent programmes”.

This is why Radio 2 is successful. It’s got presenters people like, it spends money where it’s needed (undoubtedly a lot on the popular presenters), and it’s got a big pot of gold to spend. It can tweak and alter program types, and styles and doesn’t seem to get told off.
If it wants to play latino music at breakfast, and soul music in drivetime, it seems to be able to.

Meanwhile, commercial radio stations continue complaining about the BBC’s more varied content.
Heart Bristol (previously GWR) were given a good telling off by Ofcom recently, for straying outside their agreed format. That is, they described themselves on the official station paperwork as being a “contemporary and chart music” station, and over the course of several days, played around 50% of songs “over 2 years old”. I can’t help thinking that seems ridiculous.
Ofcom are silly for holding them to it, and GWR/Heart are silly for going along with it in the first place.
While I’m sure the last 24 months have been the high-point of music history to-date, surely even people obsessed with the charts might like to hear Beyonce’s and Shakira’s songs from previous albums.
This might go some way to explain why some stations seem to play the same 20 songs all day, every day, in a different order.

If you ask me, they all need to look to the BBC’s example for inspiration, and maybe lobby Ofcom for less fixed rules, rather than berating them for attracting more listeners, while plugging on with the same 30mins-non-stop r’n’b with adverts in between, long after anyone cares who is number one in the top 40 this week.

Gripes, Technology

Powerpoint celebrates 25 years

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This week, Powerpoint reached a quarter of a century old. I bet that the celebrations for it went down like for my recent birthday – quiet, nobody told, and with all the phones switched off, as they try to forget all about it, lest anyone realise they’ve been flogging the same product for about 20 of those years.

I’m an Apple fan. I’ll get that out of the way right now.
I own an iPhone, and I love using a Mac. They seem somehow simpler, less trouble, and yes – they’re incredibly stylish.
I don’t hate all Windows-based PCs, but being generic combinations of components can cause problems. (Although I’m biased as I worked in IT support almost exclusively for Windows machines, until last year)

Initially Powerpoint was a Mac-only product. If this had remained the case, it would have been axed by now, or substantially rewritten/redesigned.
The software is old, boring, and it’s also misused.
People feel the need to put in random animated effects (they’re all terrible), that haven’t been used in the mainstream media since probably the early 80s.
Anything that gives people cause to use Microsoft Office’s dreadfully-weakly-drawn clip-art is a bad thing, and swooshing sound effects are a mistake in any office situation.

Surely it’s not all bad?

I’ve sat through one enjoyable Powerpoint presentation in my entire life.
It was the first day of a training course, and it was enjoyable because they had used a copyrighted piece of music illegally. It’s the first and only presentation I’ve seen that has used a Fatboy Slim track in the background.
That also gives you some idea how long the presentation was – it was all finished in under 5minutes to give a basic overview of the corporation, before moving onto something else.
The rest of the course only used Powerpoint to show photographs of screenshots. Everything that wasn’t visual, wasn’t included.
Well done.

The last Powerpoint presentation I sat through, had a lot going wrong for it. Aside from the earlier mentioned bad clipart (is it some kind of legal requirement?), here’s the three main reasons it failed in my opinion:

1. The person doing the presentation wasn’t the person who created it.
For that reason, there were sections where she actually said “I’m supposed to do X now, but I think it’s silly so I’m not going to bother”.
That seems bad for a presentation, but it was made worse by the explaining of everything that we would have done, had she not decided we wouldn’t.
As it happened, I agreed with her – it was a stupid idea.
But surely the correct thing to do there is either do the activity, or don’t do it and hide/delete the slide.

2. It was ridiculously generic.
I was being shown the presentation in one office of a multi-site business.
At one point, there was a slide that explained about the Y system, which featured in some sites.
The speaker announced that this wasn’t relevant at the site we were in, but then continued to explain what it was anyway.
On the one hand, you could say they were being helpful – but on the other hand, it’s completely pointless for me to know this information. It will be of no future use to me whatsoever.

3. It wasn’t really needed.
There were maybe two things in the entire presentation that had associating photographs. During some of the health and safety section, there were photographs of what can go wrong. Not gory, but interesting.
Aside from that, every other slide was used to show bullet points that (mostly) linked to what the speaker was saying.
Some of them weren’t obvious as to what they were though, so if you only remember what you see visually, you’ll still be none the wiser.

I should add that it wasn’t entirely the speaker’s fault. The situation wasn’t helped by the fact that I hadn’t slept well, and so had a lot to drink to keep me awake.
This meant when she said “there’s only 10 slides left”, I was mentally calculating whether I could last until the end of the presentation (based on how long it had been since the last slide-count update), or whether I’d have to excuse myself to go to the toilet for the second time so far.

What other option is there?

10 years ago, when I was in college, a module required I do a presentation. Me and the rest of the students worked together, and collectively presented it to department heads and other non-teaching staff.
Part of this was done in Powerpoint, but with a lot of diagrams and things that couldn’t be easily explained verbally.
There were also written handouts (which were NOT just print outs of the entire Powerpoint presentation) given to audience members.

Not to blow my own trumpet, but far and away the thing that stood out as being different was my part.
Essentially we’d been struggling to find me a task for the project, with a lot of bases covered.
For the first two weeks I’d done very little, but a few days before we were due to make the presentation, I’d discovered and downloaded this relatively new piece of software, called Macromedia Flash (now known as Adobe Flash).
I’d learnt some of it, including motion blur animation, and worked out how to let the user move things around on screen, and so this became my section.
Where we had otherwise used photographs, I made a section that was interactive, and invited the audience to have a go with it.
Instead of showing them photographs or bullet points about the internal components, I could actually let them drag off covers, remove screws (it was an engineering course) and unwrap it themselves, albeit it in a basic manner compared to what Flash is used for (and capable of) nowadays.
Despite my fear of public speaking and performance, that was the best module of the entire course.

Powerpoint have any competition?

Sorta.
You can make basic presentations in Google Presentation (part of Google Docs – http://docs.google.com) for free.
Because it’s based online, you can share it with people all over the world too, if you should need to, and they can view it in any browser without installing additional software.

For something portable that doesn’t require an Internet connection, check out Apple Keynotes (http://www.apple.com/iwork/keynote).
It works very similar to Powerpoint, but it’s got considerably better transition effects, basic 3d animation, and fancy mirror reflections.
Just look at this video:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7Advv481lk&hl=en&fs=1&]

There’s different tools for different jobs, but I think if you don’t have anything visual to show (bullet points AREN’T essential), don’t use Powerpoint.
That said, photographs, pie charts, and other visual information needs to be displayed in some way, and Powerpoint is easy for that. Powerpoint can embed audio and video though, and run external software, so you don’t need to limit yourself to crappy Microsoft clip art and 1980’s transition effects, even if you stick with it.

Daily Life, Gripes

OTT on security? Bad management?

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I’ve just been to the Job Centre to sign on, as it’s that time of the fortnight.
There was two queues of people waiting at reception (two members of staff working on it), and I suddenly had a wondering: Why do I have to queue at reception?

I queued regardless, because everyone else was doing it.
When I got to the front, they asked who I was, I said I was there to sign on at my appointment time, and they asked me to take a seat.
This is what they did last time.
They don’t write it down, or make a note of who I was, so what was the point of asking?

I pondered this point some more while I was sat down in reception waiting to be seen.
As I was doing so, a black guy wandered in and had the sheer audacity not to join the queue, and attempted to just walk into reception, where he’d presumably have taken a seat and waited to be seen for his signing-on time.
He was immediately approached by a running security guard complete with uniform, walkie talkie and everything, to ask who he was.
He explained calmly he was there to sign on – and was that alright?
The security guard glanced him up and down, and then checked for invisible backup behind him, before negating to actually tell him whether this was OK or not, and wandering off.

Several questions crossed my mind really.
– Why do they need security (there is 3-4 of them)?
I’m assuming they have some money somewhere in order to pay people in emergencies, but I doubt it’s in reception.

and perhaps more importantly:
– Why do we all have to announce who we are, if we know the prior procedure already, and they don’t do anything with that information anyway?
Not only that, there’s two people at reception. It would be only one if they were just using it for actual general queries, which would free up an additional person to carry out the signing, reducing the wait (and workload of other staff) further.

Business, Gripes

Pringles! Once you pop, you can’t stop..paying VAT

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I’ve been intrigued by this case for a while.

For anyone not following the story, basically the facts are these:
– In the UK, you don’t pay vat on most food, but you do on salted peanuts, crisps, and other “potato sticks, potato puffs and similar products made from the potato, or from potato flour, or from potato starch” (VAT Act 1994 (from Sky News’ article)

– For that reason, last year, the makers of Pringles attempted to get them reclassified to pretty much anything else, so they could get out of paying VAT.
They succeeded legally in proving that Pringles weren’t a crisp, because they have such little potato content (around 42%). They also argued that they had 33% fat and didn’t taste like potato.
That’s just been overturned, so they will now have to pay VAT.

More details from Sky News here.

Now I’ve got several problems with this.
I’m amazed from a PR perspective, that in this day and age where people want to know what’s in their food, with the rise in natural/green products and organic food, that they’ve run a huge legal campaign marketing how little actual natural ingredient is in their own product.
Can you imagine Renault attempting to say their latest car isn’t a car, because it goes half as fast as the competition? Because it’s half as comfortable? Because it got less than half in the NCAP safety tests?

Whether Pringles want to admit it or not, they ARE marketed as crisps.
They’re in the crisps aisle with the crisps, and the biggest single ingredient in them is potato.
They’ve been plasto-moulded and duplicated to look like a crisp would look like if you attempted to draw one.
Nobody has Pringles AND also crisps, at a party.

That is unless they’re planning a party for me, as I hate the things.
I’m no gourmet chef, but they do sum up everything that gives processed food a bad name. They’re high-fat, low-content, overpackaged, uniformly-identical products and almost completely tasteless.
For me, they fall into the same category as Sunny Delight and Cheese Strings. It’s food made to look a certain way, then heavily advertised in attempt to make it cool.
What it tastes like or is made of, is a long way down the list of concerns. The difference between these three products though, is that Pringles’ is still considered somewhat cool.

Maybe that was their plan all along.
As a crisp, a Pringle looks horrible from all angles on paper – it’s high in fat, and low in potato. It’s a very poor man’s crisp.
Essentially it’s a well-marketed Tesco Value crisp. It’s got no potato in it and it doesn’t taste of anything.
Nobody would want sausages with 42% pork, or teabags with 58% “other ingredients”.
However, if you can convince people they’re really not a disgustingly-poor imitation of a REAL crisp, but they’re actually *anything else*, it’s suddenly less of a concern.
Maybe they’ll add 1% oats into the packet lining next and attempt to classify them as flapjacks.

If you want cheap crisps, buy own brand. If you want more expensive crisps, buy Walkers. If you want posher crisps, there’s Kettle Chips/Burts.
If you want something with 33% fat and 42% potato plus a whole load of other crap, Pringles are definitely the way forward.