Hubble Trouble

After all my waxing lyrical about the Space Shuttle things had to go a bit wobbly.

In this case the neat mission with 2 shuttles on the pad has been scrubbed due to yet another problem developing on Hubble. Ah well, at least the problem showed up before they went. Is still going to be interesting. Perhaps I might go and see that one taking off ... maybe

Paranoid Android

The first mobile phone based on Google's Android has just been announced.

The T-Mobile G1, made by HTC has gained a lot of attention in the press with all sorts of journalists clammering to fiddle with the thing and pass verdict.

But does it live up to the hype - well, in short, no. That's not surprising though. The hardware is pretty much a standard smartphone - that they've been conservative is no surprise - it's pretty standard in the computer industry to take what’s there and fiddle with it, not to reinvent. One must remember that the software is designed to run on lots of platforms, so the first ones will be very standard. That the software looks very much like other handhelds is a bit more of a disappointment, but one has to remember that the UI is just a small part of the whole - the actual functionality is much more important. The simple truth is that its going to take time before we see if Android is really going to live up to all its been hailed as.

I think the phone would have fared better before the advent of the iPhone and all the lookalikes. That really has changed the map for handheld communications devices. The touchscreen interface looks clunky, the keyboard looks old fashioned and the UI just looks too much like Vista.

But it will be what the developers do with the platform that will be important in the months to come. Can it really carve out a niche in the smartphone market (a market which is ever-expanding) and can the right products be envisaged and realised using this open-source base. That will be the real test for Android - and if it fails, it will be quietly discarded as yet another high hope that didn't quite reach the bar.

Big Business

It's been a strange week at MG Towers where I work (pictured).

I was going to do a story so far opening, but decided it would probably depress me too much so that I wouldn't finish the post, so you'll just have to go and look here and here.

We finally have some movement on our next batch of hardware (due end August) and it looks like it's about ready to ship. This has now been held up by a number of commercial issues mostly centred around a senior figure in the company doing b'all for the last 4 months and holding up all the financial transactions above about £1.37 in value. This has somewhat annoyed me (as you can probably tell) because I've been pestering and chasing our supplier to sort themselves out at get our order sorted out for about 2 months now. Nasty words have been exchanged - via me because there is never any response from aforementioned senior figure.

So that is pretty much buisness as usual for us.

The strange thing is that not only do we seem to be close to getting a partner to handle calls for us, but we also have another project which has suddenly revived itself (although, the rumblings are that it will all fall apart again), 2 out-of-the-blue enquiries which actually sound quite interesting and two forthcoming demos, one of which is to a major high street retailer considering a retail version of the system.

We've been here before, of course, when everything looked rosy and then nothing happened, but at least it's something. It's been so damned quiet (both in terms of the office itself and the buisness) for the past 6 months, it makes the Marie Celeste look like Spearmint Rhino on a Friday night. Also strange when everyone else appears just about ready to board up the doors and call it a day.

We also seem to have somehow managed to get ourselves back on some kind of moderately stable financial footing, at least for a while (also a bit of a mystery). I keep asking myself if it's really going to make a difference or just prolong the inevitable. I think I probably know the answer.

Seeing double

I think this is such a great view.

I'm a bit of a sucker for the Space Shuttle because even though it's 70s technology that should have been superceded ages ago, it's still a really great achievement to be able to fling those things up into space.

Although I was alive for the Moon landings and growing up when Skylab was around, the Shuttle is really the spacecraft I grew up with and I've always had an interest in it and it still gives me a thrill. I tried to see a launch one, but it was delayed (incidently it turned out to be Columbia's fatal mission) so I missed it, but got to see lots of other space-stuff at the Space Centre - which in no way made up for it at all.

So now we have a very rare sight of two Shuttles (Atlantis and Endeavour) ready for launch at once. I really wanted to go and see this in person too, but it wasn't meant to be. The end of the Shuttle era is drawing close and I'd still like to see a real launch - perhaps just to prove to myself that it's really real. Strange that it is still so evocative after all these years, but despite every effort it still is a noteworthy and difficult task to get people into space, costing huge amounts of money and carrying not insignificant risk. It's inspiring that this kind of venture still goes on when everyone is so concerned about the balance sheet.

I, for one, will be sad when the Shuttle era passes.

Incomplete Galaxy

It serves me right for looking at game sites on the web.

I was just idling checking through some game sites whilst I drank my coffee this morning and decided to have a look for Mario Galaxy cheat codes. To my dismay, I discovered that I hadn't finished the game - as I'd previously thought.

As I'd heard before there ARE 121 stars, not 120. What I hadn't waited for, when I finished the game before, was for all the video footage to play through. If you do that, a new video comes up at the end and then the system unlocks Luigi - so you can play as him. Apparently you now have to go through and get all the power stars again before it finally unlocks the Finale Galaxy.

So I'm back to the very begining, but this time playing Luigi. He's a bit different than Mario - he slides a lot more but he can jump a little higher. So far I've managed to get 2 stars. I'm hoping that it will be a little easier this time because I've done it all before, but I'm not convinced I'll be able to remember it all - oh well, we shall see.

I have to take back my words about a disappointing ending - at least until I've worked my way through another 188 stars as Luigi - phew!

Merchant bankers

(what a complete bunch of)

Banks are not my favourite institutions at the best of times. I object to the fact they can make vast sums just by holding other peoples money. I also object to the way they can make money out of thin air (most of the trading doesn't have anything to do with reality). So, as you can imagine, I'm not particularly impressed when the tax payer has to bail these institutions out when they go horribly wrong.

However, I also don't like that way that rules can be bent or broken to allow one big bank to buy another big bank and thus become a massively dominant player in the high street banking market. You can tell these are desperate times and Lloyds have played a blinder by picking the perfect moment to snap up HBOS. The government, of course, is all behind it because they're desperate to avoid another Northern Rock fiasco. But is it right? I think it's something Gordon Brown may live to regret - although probably not as Prime Minister.

As a shareholder (very, very small shareholder) in HBOS, I should probably be jumping for joy, but I never like monopolies because they go against the whole way things are supposed to work in the west (not that capitalism actually works, hence why we need so many watchdogs and laws and ministries to prop the whole thing up).

So well done to Lloyds for picking their moment, but shame on the Government for rolling over and positively promoting this because they're so afraid. Fear is what precipitated the whole mess in the first place and more of it doesn't do anyone any good.

Holidays

The pics and info from our recent holiday are now up.

This is somewhat experimental but will hopefully work reasonably well.

http://dive.olgaandandy.com

Autumn comes to us all

We had occasion to visit a sheltered housing development at the weekend.

I won't go into the detail because it's rather personal, but a number of things struck me, especially when speaking to some of the residents.

I was profoundly impressed with the strength and courage exhibited. It can't be easy to accept that, as time goes on, you can become less able to cope on your own and sometimes need help from others, and yet these people had. The development itself was rather good and saw itself as a safety net rather than an integral part of the residents lives - this allowed them to go on living their lives in the fullest way possible for as long as possible and there is a certain dignity in that. But the services are there if and when needed and there is a warden on duty for emergencies.

Perhaps the only slightly disquieting thing was that the housing development was situated behind a nursing home, which did rather give a stark reminder of how things could end up for the residents, but it also enabled them to be very flexible in the levels of support provided.

But to concentrate on the services provided by the care organisation would be to miss a big part of what these things are supposed to be about. Community is a key concept which came up time and again. The residents could and did organise their own clubs, went around to each others houses for coffee or even just waved to each other from the door, but it transforms an otherwise isolating existance into one where sharing and involvement play a valuable part. They have the best of both worlds, the privacy of their own homes and the community of the communal gardens and proximity to others. Not unlike the rest of us.

As someone who works for a company which provides technology for just such developments, it struck me how simple some of the needs were and how technology should never be the focus of the solution, but can sometimes be assistive in its delivery. Simple needs and simple solutions.

The elderly aren't another species or foreigners or a different generation. We don't wake up one day elderly. We edge up to it whilst looking in the other direction and suddenly are faced with the reality of being there.

Close call

This time last week I was on holiday.

We were just about to do our last couple of dives, spend a day on shore and then fly back to old blighty on - guess which airline? Yes, Excel.

And today, they went into administration.

We had a rather close call since if our holiday was a week later, we'd be waiting to here about what replacement airline they'd lined up to ferry us home (I understand Iraq Air aren't too busy at the moment) and if we were two weeks later we'd be wondering how we were going to get there at all.

It was fairly obvious that Excel were struggling. They repeatedly reduced their service, by removing free food, putting in-flight prices us, charging stupid amounts of money for exit row seats and so on. But the budget airline model is quite a well trodden route and Excel did is so badly.

Their seating poilicy sucked - not only could you not pre-book seats, you couldn't even guarantee your party would sit next to each other - only "in proximity". Their baggage restrictions were rather draconian and set to get even worse, their seat pitch was dreadful, such that even I (with short, stumpy legs) found it difficult to get comfortable. The flight we were on also ran out of food - for which they were charging (a princely sum) thus immediately depriving them of one of their most lucrative revenue streams.

All in all, they just ran the business badly. They obviously felt they had to compete on cost and to hell with everything else. I don't quite understand this, as they were a tour operator themselves, not just a budget airline. They seemed to lack the basic marketing nouse that would tell them it's about the customer proposition, not just the cost. Poeple are very aware of their choices these days and, frankly, there are a lot of other people out there doing a far better job than Excel.

I'm sorry for those that are being inconvienenced by lack of return flights and those who stand to have their holiday plans ruined, but I won't be shedding many tears over the demise of this company.

The World ends. Again.

Perhaps I've been a little unfair.

I was rather scathing of the media in my last post (which they deserved), but having been through the coverage of the LHC on the BBC website, it's actually rather good. I'm very heartened by the sheer amount of media coverage this project has attracted. Of course, it's huge, it's expensive and it's strange, but it is in fact, one of the most important projects undertaken for a generation (or maybe two or three).

People have taken to likening it to the Moon landings, but in fact, scientifically, they were a white elephant. The Moon was a political target, not a scientific one. What we see at CERN is real, meaningful and cutting edge science, unfolding before our eyes. We may not understand how it all works, but we can be inspired by the purity of the quest for knowledge and the incredible level of international cooperation.

There are so many aspects of the project which push the boundaries, from the large scale use of super-conductors and the associated cooling required, to the massive computing power needed to make sense of the vast swathes of data being produced. In a time where everything is made to a price and cost engineered it's fantastic to see something which brings together so much innovation on such a grand scale.

... and just to lighten up, my juvenile sense of humor rather liked this.

The end of the World

I have just been watching the grand switch-on of the Large Hadron Collider.

For the uninitiated, this is a rather large particle accelerator situated 100m underground on the Swiss-French border. For the even less initiated - it's a physics thing.

Particle accelerators whizz microscopic streams of particles around and around a big loop getting faster and faster until they are going as fast as you can make them go and then force the two streams to collide. Why? Well, because when all that energy comes together, interesting things happen.

I must admit, it does sound a little like schoolboy physics - "Lets bash these things together really hard and see what happens" - but, then, that's what physics is all about anyway.

Anyway, the reason I'm posting this is because of the preoccupation of the media on the story that this accelerator is going to form a giant black hole and destroy the Earth. I don't mind opinions being voiced, but every time you hear them mention it they have to say about it destroying the World. Talk about journalistic integrity, it's more like the medieval chruch shouting "Heresy" whenever anyone came up with a slightly new idea.

Science is all about trying new things, pushing frontiers, doing things when you're not quite sure what the results will be. I find it worrying that those who preport to disseminate information throughout our society adopt such a negative attitude with little or no basis in fact when faced with something that cannot, or do not want to, understand.

Sensasionalism in journalism may sell more papers, but it also affects pubic opinion and even possibly the future direction of society and culture. Once again, the popular media show themselves ill-equipped to simply report the news - which, after all, is their function. Yes, we have ourselves to blame - for buying the papers with the sensational headlines - but the media also have a responsibility to report the truth and the facts, not some distorted or misrepresented version which better fits their idea of a good story.

Having said all that, I do have to say that the actual activation of the LHC was possibly the most disappointing media event. Ever.

Interview - or not

This morning, I had an interview scheduled for Thursday. Now I do not.

Some scummy contractor has decided to do the job instead. Well good luck to them.

I don't normally get too bothered about people cancelling interviews on me at the last minute, but this is now the third time in a row I've had an interview set up (after lots of chasing and badgering and trying to find out what the hell's going on) only to have them cancel at the last minute. I'm begining to sense a conspiracy.

In the meantime my current company is ploughing forward and, I believe, about to make some serious mistakes that I want nothing to do with.

Don't know why I'm so hacked off about it, but I am.

Movie: Dark Knight

It was always going to be tough for this film to live up to the hype.

Much has been said and written about it and many claims made. I tried to ignore everything I’d heard and just watch the movie – the results were surprising and a little confusing.

Firstly, there are some excellent performances. Of course, Heath Ledger as the Joker is just wonderful - very quirky and jumpy and always feels very dangerous. Christian Bale is good, especially as Wayne where his understatedness combines wonderfully with his flamboyance - a real feeling of a man playing the part rather than being it. His Batman is not quite as convincing for me, but is certainly gritty and oh so dark. Gary Oldman did a wonderful job with Gordon – again, underplayed the part but with an underlying strength. Morgan Freeman wasn’t given much to work with, but is a safe pair of hands in any movie.

Then we come to Aaron Eckhart. I very much enjoyed his characterisation of Two-Face – and loved the visuals – but never could quite warm to him as Dent. Perhaps this is where the film fell down for me. He looked the part, did the right things, but I could never connect with the character and I think I needed to in order to be taken on the journey that the screenplay intended. I feel perhaps there was too much Two-Face in him from the start. In a movie with so many carefully considered and subtle performances (much to it’s credit), his was too obvious and clumsy. Not that it’s easy to play the good guy when there are so many wonderful characters with dark sides to them.

The feel and visualisation of the film was excellent. Very dark and brooding, lots of interplay between the dark and good sides of the characters. There was a pithy sense of reality throughout – in that dead people actually mattered and doing the right thing wasn’t straightforward or easy.

All in all I loved lots of this film, I loved many of the performances and I enjoyed both the action and developmental scenes. I appreciated the understated performances, the thoughtful and three-dimensional character development and the edgy, dark tones. But in the end, this isn’t enough to make a great film. The whole thing just didn’t hang together as it should, didn’t carry me along with it. I always felt I was watching a series of half-hour adventures, one after the other, instead of a single, fully realised work. I hate having to say this because I feel this film is a real return to form for the franchise (after a number of poor, shallow offerings) and I really wanted to love it, but there we are.

You can go and watch it, you can enjoy it and get a lot out of it, but it just doesn’t have that magic factor of really personally meaning something.

7/10

The Big Blue

The Red Sea is an ever receding memory as we return from our holiday to the normal world.

I have to say that all-in-all our diving exploits were a total success. I don’t know what it is about lobbing a big metal tank on your back, bunging a hosepipe in your mouth and jumping into large, fish-filled expanses of water, but I do seem to enjoy it enormously.

Of course, we were a little concerned about the other people we’d be sharing a boat with, since I’ve seen a number of instances where compressed air seems to have had very detrimental effects on the personality and social skills of divers, but we needn’t have feared since they were a great bunch, even if one had a penchant for diving in a dressing gown and there seemed to be an ongoing competition to dive in each other’s clothing – I kid you not.

The flight over was even more dreadful that I was expecting – what sort of airline charges you for food and then runs out of it? – and of course we were late. They also managed to tell us the wrong local time, so we spent the first day rather confused as everything seemed to be happening at the wrong times. But the boat was great, the diving was great and the food was great.

I had the usual technology hassles – my GPS crashed and wouldn’t turn off until the battery went flat, but luckily the dive sites are all on a map, so I should be able to plot our sites – which was the whole idea. My dive gear had a few hiccups and I broke a bit off at one point – although it actually seems to work better without it. The new underwater camera worked a treat, however.

Herself enjoyed it far more than she (or I) thought she would and we’re even talking about doing another one next year.

I shall be assembling the photos and writing some text in more detail, for those that are interested.

I also came back to find I have an interview on Thursday. Neat.