dave2002: pitas page

world book day
Thursday, March 6, 2003 -- 10:34 p.m.

Looks like I missed world book day. See dave2002.alt for details!

songs and facade
Wednesday, March 5, 2003 -- 07:16 a.m.

There is a longer entry about last night's Mayfair concert at dave2002.alt.

operatunity update
Sunday, March 2, 2003 -- 10:50 p.m.

See dave2002.alt for an update on operatunity, with details of the finalists. The final event was a performance of Verdi's Rigoletto at the Coliseum by the ENO. I will look out for a review.

100 best firms in the uk
Sunday, March 2, 2003 -- 12:08 p.m.

See the entry on dave2002.alt for info.

cross links time
Sunday, March 2, 2003 -- 09:14 a.m.

As it's archiving time again, you may find that some entries are written over at dave2002.alt - hopefully for a few days only. The calendar should indicate whether there are entries.

digital broadcasting
Friday, February 28, 2003 -- 10:27 p.m.

Digital radio and tv are pretty good technologies. It's just a pity that the radio and tv broadcasts are not really commensurate. Digital radio can give better sound quality than FM - although not everyone will agree. It does depend on several factors, such as how good the aerials are, both for digital radio and for FM. Terrestrial digital tv is surprisingly good - just follow the instructions, plug all the cables in appropriately, and in a few minutes even channel 5 looks good. Much of the hype is unjustified, however. bbc four - a place to think they say - but when? and what about? bbc 3 was clearly never designed with this concept in mind, so at least it can't be accused of failing to achieve its objectives. itv2 seems to be where all the itv and channel4 programs go a day a two later, and the uk history channel seems to be a way of bundling all the serious history programs together, and yet allowing adverts in between programs.

bbc parliament is slow moving, though can be grimly fascinating, as for example, last wednesday. This channel can also be obtained via streaming media, so viewers outside the uk can still see it.

We always knew that the new tv channels which can be obtained with a freeview box might not really improve our viewing choices much, though we did not anticipate that the broadcasters would apparently make such strong efforts to avoid putting out anything that we might want to watch on the channels since we bought our new nokia box. There's been hardly any music on bbc four, virtually no drama, though there have been a couple of really good films (one per week) on bbc three. Next week even this achievement will not be matched.

Digital radio is similarly blighted. Firstly, there is only one channel which has a reasonable chance of giving decent audio quality - that's bbc radio 3, which is generally put out at 192 kbps stereo - the only uk channel currently in relatively high bit rate format, and in pure stereo. All of the other channels are in joint stereo or mono, and at lower bit rates. However, the raw capability does not tell all. It would help if the recordings broadcast could actually show off the benefits of the digital transmission. If the recordings are not good to start with, then it hardly makes much difference whether the transmission is digital or not - or at least, this is how I felt tonight when there was a broadcast of richard strauss' alpine symphony. It just sounded dull, and very undynamic, though there appeared to be obvious audio compression on fm - so I opened the window to hang my piece of wire which serves as an aerial out, in order to listen on dab. Apart from the compression on fm, there wasn't much real improvement in quality on digital - pity!

Digital radio is also on offer via tv digital boxes, though quality definitely suffers if the audio signal passes through the tv. There are possibly fewer reception problems with digital tv and audio via digital tv, since the boxes can work well with existing aerials, so there is little or no chopping of the signal. As a quick introduction to the output of digital radio stations, a digital tv box, such as the nokia 221t can provide a very reasonable quality. It is not up to providing the high quality which digital radio can achieve, unless perhaps additional equipment is used to bypass the tv audio circuits, or an external D-A converter fed into a hi-fi is used, but it does allow users to monitor the exciting output of the new stations.

People who have never heard of the goon show, or of tony hancock now have a chance to sample some of the classic programs, and some not so classic ones too, no doubt.

So, is it actually worth buying a digital tv box, or a digital radio?
TV box - Yes!
There will eventually be enough programs to justify the expense, and the quality on some channels is very much better than analogue tv. Digital radio is justifiable if you cannot achieve a good signal on fm, though in order to make good use of digital radio you need a good aerial. The cost of this may well be a significant part of the price of a cheap digital radio or tuner. It is possibly a good idea to use a digital tv box for radio, unless you are keen on very good sound. In that case a tv box may still be the preferred solution, if coupled with appropriate auxiliary equipment, though a purpose built digital radio or tuner should give very much better results than a tv box played through a tv. Note that freeview does not include classic fm though it does have jazz fm. If you want to listen to stations such as planet rock or ministry of sound then you do need a dab radio. Just keep your eyes peeled on all these digital outputs to see if there are any programs actually worth listening to!

musical rarity
Thursday, February 27, 2003 -- 10:53 p.m.

Last year was the centenary of William Walton's birth, yet I managed to get through it without hearing any of his major works. Some of these deserve an outing from time to time, though Façade is perhaps less of a major work than a significant one - significant because it brought Walton to the attention of a wider public. Next week the second concert by Mayfair Concerts will contain a performance of Façade, which is somewhat of a rarity these days. The work is curious, based on the poems of edith sitwell, who was the performer in many of the early presentations of the work. She used to sit on a chair behind a curtain, and bellow the words through a large megaphone while the orchestra played.

The concert will take place on Tuesday 4th March at 7:00pm at the Grosvenor Chapel, South Audley Street, Mayfair, London W1K 2PA. [see here or previous entry Feb 5 for directions]

Bass baritone Thomas Barnard will sing English songs by Gerald Finzi and Arthur Somervell, accompanied by Christopher Gould.

Rebecca Miller will conduct the new professionals and soprano Susan Gilmour Bailey in a performance of Façade by Sir William Walton.

The tickets are £5 if you book in advance - telephone 01737 768127 or email to mark@mayfairconcerts.com to make a reservation, or ask for further information.

reality and truth
Wednesday, February 26, 2003 -- 09:25 a.m.

How much of what you hear or see on the radio or TV do you believe to be real or true? We live in a world in which we watch TV and read newspapers, and now we can also read web pages or blogs. The distortions on TV can be small or large - but the chances are that most programmes are distorting "the truth".

I have attended both radio and TV recording sessions. The TV session was for a food and drink programme, which normally lasted about 30 minutes on TV. The recording session took about three hours. Even allowing for time spent setting up, and discussing what is going to happen, there is very clearly an elemement of time compression in the broadcast versions. We tend to get bored if we watch things in real time, so by the miracle of TV editing time is speeded up for viewers. Some things surprised me by actually being real - such as the flames which flared up when one of the TV chefs made a certain recipe. I always thought that they would either be enhanced, or done in some other location - but no - they actually happened in the studio. Another surprising thing was the set for the show, which was not made from painted carboard or wood, but actually contained bright coloured fluorescent lights. This was not at all obvious in the broadcasts, so presumably this is done in order to "improve" the dull background which might result if painted surfaces are lit from the front and then caught on camera. Perhaps also this approach avoids problems with glare which can arise with painted surfaces and reflected light.

There is quite a lot of audience manipulation in a TV recording. What makes you think that the expert wine taster really does work out the year, type, name of the vineyard, and the location and orientation of the grape vine used for an unseen tipple? Firstly, the audience may well be given the answer in advance, so can make more or less enthusiastic noises if the expert deviates from the wanted response, and secondly - what is to stop the programme planners from actually telling the expert the answer in advance? Lying - you will say. But why not? It's not serious stuff - just entertainment - and who will ever know that the expert did not actually solve the problem set? This does not mean that the wine tasting expert can't do wonders, but TV distorts the process -it's all showmanship and circus.

The radio programme recording was similar in some ways. Actually they recorded two programmes one after the other - one for almost immediate broadcast, and one for broadcasting months later. This caused a few glitches, as participants had to try to remember whether events could be topical or not. If they were "doing" the second programme, then references to topical events had to be reworked. Recording two half hour programmes probably took about two hours, and there were a number of retakes where there were either technical problems, or the participants made some errors. Oh, and if I remember correctly, the participants also had notes, or perhaps even a script to work from. Interesting - if this was supposed to be an exercise in spontaneity!

I heard the broadcasts later, and they did sound very smooth - the panel members all sounded very competent, with quick and well timed responses - just what we would expect from a radio or TV programme. Of course it is possible for some people to produce very polished performances in live situations - actors, musicians etc. do it all the time - but radio and TV can capture a level of competence which did not really exist in the original.

Besides sorting out presentational and technical problems, media can also be biased. When I lived in the USA we used to watch a short programme about the british parliament. This always showed the "best bits" of mrs thatcher's debating, and thus gave the impression that she completely outclassed everyone else. I understand that similar programmes are now doing the same thing for tony blair. In thatcher's era it would have been hard for an american to understand that not everyone liked her, since the TV clearly showed a very able and capable politician. The media is often biased simply by changing the balance of what is shown.

As we approach a possible war with Iraq, other aspects of reality will change. Hard facts will change without warning - the number of people killed by Saddam will increase every day (he has killed 1 million, 1.2 million etc ). It is often said that the first casualty of war is truth, though this applies in the period beforehand too. If conflict arises information about casualties will be modified to suit what people would like to hear (only a few civilian casualities, military losses light or negligible on the US side ...). Afterwards the figures will all be readjusted. This almost certainly happened in Kosovo - and the places and events relating to it. It will happen again with Iraq.

bad taste!
Saturday, February 22, 2003 -- 11:28 p.m.

Some things are just gross, and whilst I have previously expressed my admiration for channel4, tonight's jackass was just over the top. I only saw the end of the programme, but that was enough for me. The idea of a "poo dive" into a tank of sewage is just gross - though one suspects that it might not actually have been real!

Whether it was or not, it looked real enough, and the sounds of my retching - or at least attempting to - travelled far. Maybe I should watch the follow up - which shows how it was made - really!!??

advert music
Saturday, February 22, 2003 -- 10:02 p.m.

If you've ever wanted to find the music to a tv or cinema advert, then songofthesalesman is the site for you. Unfortunately it only works for uk tv/ cinema - sorry!

the art of complaining
Saturday, February 22, 2003 -- 10:11 a.m.

British people do not complain enough. They moan, they groan, they whine, but they do not complain. Mostly they do not understand this. They often seem to be complaining, but maybe they're just whingeing, which to people elsewhere is not the same thing. To give an example - suppose you go to a hotel, and the TV doesn't work in your hotel room. What do you do about it? If you come from the USA the likelihood is that you'll phone the reception desk, and get the TV fixed. If it doesn't happen in a short while, or the fix doesn't work, you'll phone the hotel manager, and within probably only a few calls you'll have the TV working again. This is real complaining - making a statement to the person or persons who have the power to fix something, and ensuring that they do it. Not a typically British behaviour.

Sometimes, if the problem is big enough, or doesn't get fixed quickly enough, by smiling, cajoling or otherwise you can get a free bottle of champagne, box of chocolates, future upgrade, something off the bill, to compensate for the inconvenience.

What does a typical Brit do in the same situation. Step one - think about it. Step two - think about it a bit more. Step three - moan/whinge to partner about whether to ring up reception, or to complain ("but they won't do anything anyway ...."). Step four - actually ring up reception - ah progress. Now comes the 50/50 bit - it might work in which case we have "Great - the people round here are so responsive, and they fixed our problem. How kind and efficient they are - And they gave us a free box of chocolates and an upgrade for when we're next in the area"! This assumes a normally good level of responsiveness to complaints, which is typical of many USA hotels, and some European ones, and - in fairness - some British ones too.

The trouble is that not all problems are fixed first time, so in this case we get (said with British pride or smugness) "Told you so - they can't fix things here either!"
Where satisfaction is not obtained at the first (and last) attempt the rest of the stay is likely to be taken up with meeting British friends for dinners and drinks, and actually mentioning "they didn't get our TV fixed here - just like at home"!

Have you heard the joke about the British Airways plane full of British tourists which landed at LA airport? The whining went on and on minutes after the engines had been turned off.

How to complain
There are no hard and fast rules about how to complain. Generally it's best to be methodical and polite, and simply play broken record until you get the service you feel you deserve. The trouble is that some firms are (a) either completely resistant to this or (b) so stupidly incompetent that they make life really difficult for the complainer. Sometimes getting angry (or pretending to) can work, though it's important to back off if it seems to be getting nowhere, as it is possible to find yourself had up for a charge of abuse - this can now have legal force in the UK. Asking to speak to a supervisor often pushes things a bit further. Putting things in writing, and threatening to (or actually doing it) write to the newspapers, or one's member of parliament etc. can also work quite well - particularly if doing things by talking does not work. Talking is undoubtedly the best, if progress can be made, but if obstructions are put in one's path, then written follow up is essential. Otherwise you can spend months to be told that "but you didn't complain at the time" - how can you prove it?

People in the UK often receive poor service, and assume it is normal. People from the US find it amazing that anyone would put up with such levels of performance. Despite this, there are actually countries where the service is worse than the UK - much - though I'm not going to name and shame them here - not this time, anyway.

One useful technique for complaining about a problem is to use a search engine, such as google, and try typing in keywords such as "complain", "complaint", "complaining", "complain NAME OF PRODUCT", "complain NAME OF COMPANY". This could lead you to sites such as clik2complaints. By typing in "how to complain" you can discover sites such as howtocomplain. We had a complaint against a furniture store, and discovered this one - using the name of the company in the search. We did eventually come to a mutual agreement.

A similar technique also revealed the existance of thescream for complaints against an ISP. This last one is interesting, as you can realise quite quickly that there are other people with problems concerning a company, but not only can they help you to complain to and against the company, they can also help you to fix the problem.

I am sure that a true complainer will have more tricks, tips and techniques up his or her sleeve. I have heard of assertiveness courses where people are encouraged to complain. Sometimes this can involve training such as the following: (1) Go into a pub or restaurant with the other students (2) one of the students is asked to order drinks by the tutor (3) when the drinks are fetched, the tutor says to a student - "now complain about the beer/wine etc". At this point the student might say - "I've not tried it yet", or "But it's actually OK!" The tutor then says "Maybe - but do it anyway" Apparently it is usually possible to get the drink replaced possibly with extra goodies, or money back etc. - though I never found out whether maybe the tutor had fixed a deal with the pub (or restaurant etc) ahead of time. The idea is to get students (who may often be relatively old people - say 40-60) to be assertive, and to stand up for themselves. There are certainly some pubs where I wouldn't try this.

The dynamics of the complaining situation can also vary. Complaints in a busy shop can be effective, as they hold up business, and can give a bad impression to other customers. Sometimes the other customers can be supportive too - "stand up for your rights luv..." etc. Try the same thing at a quiet time, and shopkeepers can stonewall for ever - they've got time, and they can try your patience. They might also come up with lines like "we can't process your order till next week - we only have deliveries on Tuesdays".

This can be fine if you've not placed an order, but if the order was actually placed a month ago, and the sequence of interaction went (1) - "Oh - you placed an order did you. Sorry - it didn't come in this week" - this is cryptic for "blast - we forgot to order it - now stonewall until next week ..." (2) "Oh - your order came in this morning, but another customer bought it - accidentally!" - respond "but why didn't you put it on one side or telephone me?" (3) ... (4) ... (5) ... and so on, then you might have a good reason to say "I expect this order to be fulfilled in 2 days from now. Ring up the supplier and get it delivered, and telephone me when it comes". You'll probably get more excuses "Our supplier doesn't work like that" (of course he does ...), "I'll have to pay extra to get the delivery" (so ... that's your problem!), "I'll have to charge you extra for the special delivery" (no you won't - it was your incompetence which led to the non-delivery three weeks ago). If all else fails, remind them that they are running a business, not John Cleese's cheese shop [script].

Don't forget - there is another side to this - the service providers - they know a few tricks too! We were once in a garage (service shop) waiting for our car to be returned after maintenance. We actually heard and saw the following kind of interaction: "Bert: John - blast it - Mr Jones brought his car in this morning for a service, and we've just discovered it on the forecourt" (at 5.45pm as the place is closing). John: "Ah, that's a shame. OK - I'll fix it". John picks up telephone and dials .... "Mr Jones ..." ... "It's John from XYZ Garage here. We've been servicing your car, and our staff found a problem which needs a part. Unfortunately we're not going to be able to get it to you tonight ...." .... "We tried to telephone you, but we couldn't get through" .... "OK - we expect to have it fixed tomorrow by ..." This took place in front of the other waiting customers, so we all got a pretty good idea of how we could be fobbed off in simular situations.

Lastly, I once was in a store, and saw and heard (it was hard not to) a customer being incredibly abusive to members of the staff (she really did step over the line as far as I'm concerned) - "F*** this, you're no f****** good, your'all a load of .... etc". After some while of getting nowhere where she eventually stormed out. Surprisingly, about five minutes later she returned, and was then engaged in what looked like quite a sensible discussion to get her complaint fixed. People have short memories - apparently - or maybe they were worried that she would repeat the performance and put even more customers in the shop off buying there.

Technique? Maybe!

less traffic
Friday, February 21, 2003 -- 09:49 p.m.

I was late this morning, so I feared that I would hit traffic on the way, and have at least a 45 minute journey. Instead I had one of the fastest journeys ever - with no hold ups at all on the A3. The question is, is this due to everyone giving up driving into London due to Ken's charges, or is it just due to the half term school holidays? Next week could be different, though I suspect that it may be at least another week before the real effects start to show through, as some of the outer areas have their half terms next week.

By the end of next week some people may have figured out that it's actually cheaper to drive than to use public transport - this is true for people who live further out from the centre, and if it becomes feasible once more to drive because of lower traffic densities, then the traffic patterns could oscillate until people work out a pattern which suits them.

Other by products of the charges appear to be that some parts of London are now less pedestrian friendly, as traffic actually moves (at some speed), so crossing the road is now quite hard. This wasn't a great problem in the weeks before Ken's changes. Maybe longer term a solution would be to sink some of the roads, as has been done in Paris, to allow pedestrianised areas over the top, though this would take quite a while to implement, and there could be some technical difficulties. There may be other, better solutions, but I can't think of them right now.

There must be some ways of using the revenue from the exercise to improve the situation, though recent complaints (one upheld) to the advertising standards authority suggest that a significant part of the revenue will be taken up with administration and set up costs. However the asa appeared to take the view that improvements would arise due to the charging, and did not uphold the second of the complaints against transport for london.

traffic monitoring
Thursday, February 20, 2003 -- 10:04 p.m.

traffic meters are useful tools for estimating how many people visit your web site, and tellertest can provide information about a number of such tracking tools [note: it can be read in several different languages - clever stuff!]

Most provide similar facilities, though some stand out because of special features. The gheos counter is interesting because it can provide the geographical locations of site visitors, displayed on a map. Others, such as extreme can give details of the most likely keyword combinations used in search engines to reach a site. In fact there are quite a range of features which a tracker or counter can provide, and there is a significant variety in the features provided by each one.

Installing a tracker can be informative, though installing more than one may make your site slightly less reliable - if there are problems with a tracker this may affect download times, and with more trackers this increases the possibility for such problems. Some trackers also present privacy and/or security hazards, though I will not spell out how exactly. It may be best to make the reports of all the counters which you might use on a web site private or hidden.

The usual information which a weblog writer obtains from a counter is that perhaps 10-20 people access a site each day. Some weblogs are more popular, and may receive hundreds of visits, while just a few have an enormous number of visits each day.

instapundit receives around 80,000 visits each day, often with over 4000 visits each hour. This does not mean that I agree with the views expressed there, but it does show that the pages by some writers are visited much more often. Another popular site is the volokh conspiracy, with over 4000 visits per day.

Site popularity can be measured by using search engines to find the referrers to a web site (e.g "link: URL" in google), and this shows that weblogs such as caterina have over 2000 referrers. This technique is useful when a web site does not have a visible tracker. Applying this method to the instapundit site gives over 7000 referrers.

Other ways of estimating a site's popularity are to use a meter such as site pop meter, or to examine the ranking of a site using the Google ranking (mine is currently 4/10), or to look at the most popular site details available via some of the trackers.

Note also that it is often possible to find out about sites other than your own. The usual way is to click on the counter, and if the site owner has not set this to be hidden, the statistics for the site may be available. Sometimes these make interesting reading.

OK - so now we can mostly see how popular or unpopular our sites are. At a few pence per click as the potential revenue for page views, most of us had better stick with the day job!

art education!
Thursday, February 20, 2003 -- 09:43 a.m.

google blogs
Wednesday, February 19, 2003 -- 10:51 p.m.

google has bought pyra, the company behind one of the original blog sites - blogger. To see what others have been saying about this development, see the press releases.

six apart/six log is not alone in speculating about the reasons behind this acquisition, and also makes the point that google has already acquired archive material with google groups from deja vu.

Meanwhile others are archiving both new and old material. brewster kahle has set up the wayback machine to archive as much of the web as possible. If you want to find out what the web was like a few years back, and there are pages that you know used to exist, you may be able to find them using the wayback machine web site. If you simply want to have a picture of what the web used to look like, then you could try the other deja vu.

tube safety
Tuesday, February 18, 2003 -- 10:41 p.m.

The news from Korea today is dreadful. While North Korea has been in the news recently because of its nuclear power programme, and American opposition to it, surely no-one expected that such a terrible loss of life as has occurred in South Korea due to a fire in an underground tunnel would happen, apparently as the result of an arson attack by a disturbed person.

The Swedish papers have raised the question - "could something similar happen elsewhere?", and it appears that there are already plans in place to improve the safety in four underground stations in Stockholm

What is the situation for London, or other cities with underground railway systems I wonder? Whilst there is always a possibility of a major incident in an underground tunnel, some stations are likely to be much more hazardous than others. Where there is only a single entry/exit tunnel, or where there is the danger that smoke will rise through the exit tunnels, there is the possibility of severe problems. The Swedes have identified the need to have separate channels to allow smoke to exit, and also the need for firewalls to separate platforms and different parts of the system. There are also access problems for emergency teams who might be called to attend any fire in undergound tunnels.

With the possibility of greater overcrowding on tube trains in London now that congestion charging appears to be having some of the desired effects, should we not be given assurances that all the tube stations are being evaluated for safety?

superb playing
Monday, February 17, 2003 -- 08:34 a.m.

Michael Collins is one of the worlds finest clarinettists, and Saturday's concert in Claygate's Trinity Church in which he played with Isabelle van Keulen and Kathryn Stott was a stunning demonstration of their individual talents, and also their combined musicianship.

The opening piece was Mozart's Kegelstatt trio for clarinet, viola and piano, followed by Brahms' first violin sonata. Both these pieces were played very musically and competently by all involved, and the tone of the viola in the trio was very expressive.

Things really caught fire in the second half with Poulenc's clarinet sonata, in which Michael played with extreme confidence throughout. The trio then played four pieces by Bruch which had lovely sonority, and finished with another tour de force - Bartok's Contrasts written for Benny Goodman and Joseph Szigeti. In the Poulenc and the Bartok the playing was of extremely high virtuosity, and by then the ensemble had warmed up and were thoroughly working together.

This must surely have been one of the few concerts which I will remember this year. These musicians are very well worth hearing in this music - and if they come to a place near you, then go along if there's any chance at all that you might like classical music.

The programme notes did not mention that Isabelle and Michael are married - to each other of course!

congestion charging
Sunday, February 16, 2003 -- 10:39 p.m.

London starts congestion charging tomorrow. I hope it works, though I suspect that there could be some initial teething troubles. Doubtless the conservatives will try to stir up trouble - and indeed it looks as though Steve Norris has already jumped on this bandwagon. Just because they don't agree with Ken Livingstone, and just because they naturally don't want to support any Labour policies, that's no reason to try to make things fail by provoking feeling against the charges. They should give congestion charging a reasonable chance to succeed - perhaps six months at least, before condemning it. Of course, if it's an obvious failure and can't be fixed, well, that's a different situation, but let's try it first.

Things in London are not ideal, and they are in a considerably worse state right now because of the problems with the central line - so if people switch to public transport things will get worse in the short term. Some people might decide that they have better things to do than to commute every day, and that could make a big improvement. After all, how many people really have to go to an office every day in order to do their work? Most go to see their mates, and keep up with the gossip.

Of course this does not apply to serious workers, such as hospital workers or the police, but many people could do useful work without having to travel in and out every day. They could work on paperwork at home, or make telephone calls, or do imaginative or creative thinking - perhaps this will give them an incentive. If going by public transport is a problem, they could do an hour or two's work at home, then drive to a local station, by which time the daily car park charges are usually quite reasonable, and the trains are usually much less crowded. Similar considerations apply to bus travel. What is required is a change in attitudes to work, and working practices.

It would be easy to make a 20% cut in traffic if people thought a bit more about what they need to do each day, and if their employers could be encouraged to be a bit more flexible about how people spend their time. After all, for a lot of people, spending more than an hour a day on travel is just dead time - though some do work, and some read for pleasure on public transport. This is also something which is hard to do in cars, unless you are rich enough to have a chauffeur, in which case you will probably continue driving anyway and just pay the charges.

As I said, I hope it works!

bah, humbug!
Friday, February 14, 2003 -- 10:59 p.m.

Esther Howland was the culprit - she hyped up the commercialisation and sentimentality associated with valentine's day. I always wondered what st. valentine, if he existed, was famous for? What did he do? Was he "in to" love and sex - a randy priest perhaps - hardly something which the catholic church would want to publicize?

It seems there were actually at least three - all of them martyrs. The most likely candidate for the naming of the 14th February appears to be a roman priest who married christians at a time when the emperor claudius II was trying to prevent people from marrying, dallying and all that kind of thing, because he was having problems with recruiting for his armies. Valentinus was sentenced to death, and publicly clubbed and beheaded, but before he died he is said to have written a note with the words "from your valentine" to his friend, the daughter of his jailer.

Some people obviously take valentine's day quite seriously [check 14th Feb], and "go" with the sentimentality. Others seem less convinced.

Valentine's day was not a sentimental occasion for bugs moran, and although al capone was eventually jailed, it was not for his execution of the massacre, as there was not enough reliable evidence to pursue this through the courts. It is probable that the real mastermind behind the event was john mcgurn - but whoever was responsible, it seems that chicago was not a great place to be in the 1920s. Teachers might find this account [resource page] of the event suitable for their kids.

More recent news about st. valentine - hot off the press - it has been announced that a bone fragment, which is claimed to be from st. valentine, has been returned to a basilica in terni.

lifestyle winners
Wednesday, February 12, 2003 -- 08:40 p.m.

Lifestyle programmes can get a bit much - you know, some of those makeover programmes like changing rooms, the main purpose of which seems to keep designers in a job - though at least laurence llewelyn-bowen can be entertaining and apparently knowledgeable - as in a recent appearance in the kumars!
linda can be decorative as well as helping to decorate other peoples' houses. Just think - what power these people have - helping to design rooms which some of us would never want to be seen dead in, and then inflicting them on poor unsuspecting houses. Sometimes the owners appear to cry when they see the results - 'nuff said!

channel 4 seems to scoop in a number of areas - a place in the sun has just featured houses in Romania - incredibly cheap. A decent house in the country was available for around £33,000 and a good house in the town was under £50k. Amazing! property ladder is a programme about people who think they'd prefer to give up their day jobs - wouldn't we all? Maybe. However, when you work out how much effort is required in order to earn perhaps £30,000 each, in maybe, the best part of a year, working for a salary doesn't seem such a terrible idea after all.

Lastly, grand designs has had some amazing ventures - and it also has a pretty good web site, so even if you can't see the programmes, you can do a virtual tour of some of the properties. As a general rule, this is the best of these programmes at the present time, so "the winner is .... channel 4!"

channel 4 has a mixed bag of a web site - the history and science sections are good, but the forums - dreadful - don't go there - they could do with a makeover!

operatunity
Tuesday, February 11, 2003 -- 10:47 p.m.

If you enjoyed the programme about the eno on channel 4 tonight, you might even like to go to the final performance. Now how do they manage to get a year's work into just under 3 weeks I wonder - the magic of TV!

The theme is similar to faking it, but the participants have up to a year to practice, and they all have to be willing to sing and act in an opera. Hundreds started by taking part in auditions, and these have now (i.e after tonight's program !!!) been pruned down to 22. Quite an amazing programme - so I recommend it for next week to see how these people get on. Many of the people participating did a great job, even if they didn't get to the final 20 or so - so maybe there's more enthusiasm for opera and singing in this country than we all thought!

The performance of Rigoletto on Saturday March 1st will feature the winner, and the opera will be broadcast on Sunday 2nd March.

digits
Monday, February 10, 2003 -- 10:51 p.m.

digital technology continues to infiltrate our lives, and digital photography continues to improve, and to become cheaper. Digital cameras are still not as good as the best film cameras, but they're getting there slowly, and most people will find it hard to tell the difference between a good digital photo and one taken on film. Of course it's possible to digitally enhance photos, however they are taken, though sometimes there's not much which can be done.

stupidly happy/blogging a dead horse (9th Feb) has been taking photos on a cheapie, and the results are about what you might expect for £20. Slight improvements can be obtained by increasing the contrast, and modifying the brightness, but the lack of resolution does not do justice to the subject. Still, it's amazing that it works at all - maybe next year's cameras will be better. In five years time the quality will probably be up to Nikon standards, and we'll be getting the cheapie ones in cornflakes packets. Whatever - looks like they had a good day out - good luck to them.

You can make some comparisons from these pages, but it really is quite hard to make strong distinctions between some digital photos, and some ones taken on film. Quality is, for the most part, improving steadily each year, and decent to good quality cameras can now be obtained for a couple of hundred pounds/dollars.

I'll revisit this subject in time, but that should be enough to whet people's appetites. Of course, I may cheat, and come back and edit this again later!

controversial pay
Sunday, February 9, 2003 -- 10:32 a.m.

Now that Lord Irvine has decided not to take his £22,000 p.a. pay rise, perhaps it's time that people tried to understand mathematics rather more than they do. I'm never sure whether some people try deliberately to misunderstand, in order to make a profit, or whether there are just far too many people who don't understand some basic principles - in particular ratios and percentages.

Of course the government probably couldn't afford to give all the teachers in the country a 5% pay rise, let alone a 10% one, but giving a few individuals greater rises is perfectly feasible, though often unreasonable. I see nothing wrong with Lord Irvine (or other similarly well paid people) getting increases which are about the same in percentage terms as everyone else. Some people may disagree, but overall, if people are thought to be doing a good job, then pay increases should rise proportionately. If they are not doing a good job, then other mechanisms should be enforced.

Where the confusion seems to come for most people is that if there is to be a ranking of salaries, then this needs to be done on the salaries themselves, not on a ranking of pay rise ratios, or other similar completely erroneous notions. Ranking can be maintained if everyone gets the same ratio increase. Conversely, ranking may be modified if people get different ratio increases - and this can be used to reward one group of people (or a single person) selectively over other groups or persons.

For an example, suppose Johnny Smith gets £20,000 a year, and his richer brother Freddy gets £60,000. The ratio in their salaries (Freddy's:Johnny's) is 3:1. If they both get a 3% pay rise one year, then Johnny gets £20,600 and Freddy gets £61,800, and the ratio in their salaries is still 3:1.

Not fair, some foolish people say. Freddy is doing more, so should be rewarded more. Let's give him 10% more. This raises his salary up to £66,000 at a stroke.

Now, suppose that over a period of years (let's say 5), Freddy continues to receive 10% increases, and Johnny gets his paltry 3% p.a. In the sixth year, after 5 increases, Johnny gets £23185.48p while Freddy gets £96630.60p, and the ratio between their salaries is now about 4.16:1. Of course we should feel sorry for Freddy, because he lives in a bigger house, and has to pay more tax, and needs to support more family etc., but there does seem something wrong with this, doesn't there. Oh, in case you were wondering, after ten years of changes Johnny gets £26878.33p and Freddy gets £155624.55p - a ratio of 5.79:1.

This is starting to look unreasonable, isn't it? Maybe we should all get more or less the average rise in salaries each year - is there any reason why things should be different? At least it would probably be fairer, though talent and diligence in a job should be rewarded. Some incentives are needed in order to keep people motivated.

Most people understand the apparent unfairness when specific examples are discussed, but sadly, with our deteriorating education in areas such as mathematics and the sciences, relatively few understand the mathematical principles which could be used to maintain some sort of fairness.

There are other current examples of the principle discussed here, though the situation in the MOD seems to buck the trend, with senior officers receiving a lower percentage rise than junior staff.

Oh, and yes, Lord Irvine does seem to be a good sort of bloke, and rather a bright one too!

shaving
Sunday, February 9, 2003 -- 08:56 a.m.

Shaving has now been added to the list of do good things for men, to add to drinking. Apparently men who shave often (at least once a day) are less likely to die of strokes and heart attacks. We've also got to drink more often though we should be careful not to have too much of a binge. Looks like we need to keep up with the monkeys and eat more bananas, while drinking more apple juice too!

Of course we should all exercise, probably taking a walk or running most days. There are tables which show which exercises are most effective, you know 5 minutes playing squash = 25 minutes walking etc. I always wanted to know where sex came in the tables, but I've never seen a table with that information. There are some useful articles (and also), and it looks like there are a lot of myths about exercise, but somehow sex and exercise are never coupled together. I wonder why not? In a world in which some sexual activities are being associated with peace, and the "information" is available, why won't people just come clean and give us the facts about how many times a day/week we should have sex in order to keep healthy? Come on guys, put the information in the tables!

more on labels
Saturday, February 8, 2003 -- 01:45 p.m.

Actually, if you look at the previous post, you'll notice that it doesn't start with a different colour. The fix I used was simply to have a normal "a name=" tag surrounding an   combination. I figured that this would be ignored, and should provide the appropriate labelling, though I've not checked that it functions as a jump target yet.

I tried some of the other methods suggested in the last post [you knew I would...], and while I still don't approve of using h7 for a non-standard purpose, the thing does work.

ps: it occurs to me that having a completely empty combination <a name="xx"></a>might even work, and it could avoid any suspicion of character repositioning in the displayed text.

pps: as suspected <a name="xx"></a> works fine, and does improve the appearance slightly as there was a very slight misalignment with the non-breaking space. This form also has been checked to see whether it actually functions as a jump target, and it works in ie, opera and netscape (recent versions) so this entry has been reformatted using it instead!

ppps: The previous entries have all been modified, so now you might be puzzled by references to a green first word. They were green, promise!

another hiccup
Saturday, February 8, 2003 -- 01:15 p.m.

There's always a snag, isn't there! As you will see if you are looking at this around jan 8th, all the links have gone green. However, some text which is not a link has also gone green. This is because there does not seem to be an obvious way to distinguish between a href and a name components using stylesheets. I use labels at the start of each text entry to allow rapid navigation. That doesnt' mean that it can't be done - just that I don't know how to do it given the documentation which I have accessed.

One possibility is to use some other markup tag, perhaps one which is not otherwise used - say h7, and completely reconfigure it so it just looks like ordinary text. Such a tag could then be use with an id= label, and that should still function as a label, but without the modified colouring due to the stylesheet. Oh, of course I could just assign a class to each link and restrict the behaviour of the stylesheet only to entries of that class - you really think I'm going to go back and do this? Both of these solutions are horrible!

I did expect some confusion where I'd already used the "teal" colour for text - but I am prepared to edit the entries to fix that. Life's never simple, is it?

css revisited
Saturday, February 8, 2003 -- 01:05 p.m.

I thought I'd try to find out a bit more about css (cascading style sheets), so I eventually found dave raggett's pages, which are quite a bit easier to read than most. I still quite like the pages at htmlgoodies, but raggett's have useful extra tips.

Showing that I don't take the advice which others provide, I am about to turn off the underlining on hypertext links - I find that all that bold black is just too overpowering, so from now on, for a while, all links will be in a shade of green (otherwise known as "teal").

even microsoft ....
Saturday, February 8, 2003 -- 10:33 a.m.

opera has quickly fixed the shortcomings in its browser, pointed out in more opera, and also by yetanotherblog.

Note that microsoft is probably keeping fairly quiet about this, but they have very recently issued an update for ie which fixes all the known security problems - what problems could there possibly be with ie, I wonder?

I have no idea what the status of netscape 7.xx is

shifting sands
Saturday, February 8, 2003 -- 09:42 a.m.

Have you ever edited a page, then come back to it later and found it had changed? OK - so your memory's not good, and you probably created it badly anyway. However, you think you'll try to fix the problem, and edit it again. Displays OK. Somewhile later you come back, and ... you guessed ... it's changed again - or maybe you went back in there to correct something else on another occasion!

Some web based tools, such as wikis (examples see wiktionary, wikipedia, seedwiki (wiki farm) or swiki (wiki farm)), or web based blogging tools (pitas, blogger ...) use editing tools which use markup languages to generate web pages. Often these markup languages also allow you to embed html. The problem is, what happens if you then embed html tags within the text? Sometimes this happens accidentally - you type something which happens to use a special symbol (e.g <) and the software interprets what you have written as an html tag. Other times you really want the tag to appear as written - in a program example perhaps. OK - if you're smart you'll know to use the special characters, so you'll start writing something like &lt; tag &gt; and if you're lucky it'll work fine. The problem is that in doing this the software you've used may convert your specially formed character back into the usual html tag characters, so next time you edit (you forgot a comma, or something), the text gets formatted as an html tag - and probably disappears!

Note also that if you use different tools to edit the text (which is possible for blogger blogs, using w.bloggar or blogbuddy) that these may have different behaviour from the web based text entry/edit tools. Also previewing, or posting without publishing may have the same effect (for example in blogger) of modifying your text, so beware. This is just one form of problem which can arise with these web based editing tools. There's not a great deal you can do about these, as most developers aren't clued up enough to be able to fix this, so just remember to check whenever you make an edit of a piece of text which might use any html special symbols - even inadvertently. Try to get it right first time - so as not to have to edit again!

You'll learn more about html from this, but sadly, not much about writing!

OK - so here goes - following my own words - I don't want to have to edit this one again! If in doubt, save the text somewhere else before you hit the button - just doing that!

residual problems
Saturday, February 8, 2003 -- 08:01 a.m.

Murphy's law doesn't always kick in, but it does usually! I was so preoccupied with trying to sort out the links to/from the page just archived that I forgot to edit the little page which Pitas provide to index archives.

Wonderful thing is that it seems that I can't get back in there to fix this, since I don't have direct access to the web site, and I'm guessing that I'd have to go back in there and do another archive, which I don't really want to do.

Of course, I could just host that little web page on another site, and providing we don't get hit by another of those worms which screw up server performance, that could be worthwhile. On the other hand, how many people are really going to use the archive link for the next month? They can get to last month's material anyway via the explicit link. So - it may get moved, or it may just do it's own thing (not a lot...) for the next 20 days.

It'd be good to try out some of the other blogging systems, such as Movable Type - I'm sure it would be better. However, I have a suspicion that there would still be some significant problems. I'm coming round to the view that what's really needed is some form of (I'm sorry to say this, but ...) "relatively complex" content management system. The overheads of trying to maintain a simple blog on a hosted web site, such as pitas or even blogspot seem just too much.

After all, I thought it was all supposed to be about writing :-)

Fixed!
Saturday, February 8, 2003 -- 07:21 a.m.

Well, I did the archive anyway! This was not without some problems, and I'll probably have some more fixing to do later on. The calendar will not work at the moment on entries for January, since they have now been archived, and the relative URLs will not refer to the correct page. I'll figure out a fix - probably just delete january's calendar, and all the previous entries from the template!

Why, oh why, doesn't HTML have a proper way of aliasing base pages? OK - it does have a BASE directive, but it's pretty limited. Sometimes I just despair of HTML (and xhtml, and xml and ... indeed anything to do with computers and programming ....) - have people learned nothing in over 30 years of programming development? In the current example, effectively I wanted to have a set of labels within the archived page, but I also may want to be able to use the labels within the current template. OK - I could do this in Javascript - but, hey, I'm trying to keep things simple here.

What I wanted to do was:

IN THE ARCHIVE PAGE: label_page_ref = this_page
IN THE TEMPLATE: label_page_ref = " ... URL of archived page"

Still, there's not a lot I can do about this, so I'm just going to post this and see if the archive has worked. Note that I never did fix the width problem with the material from January, so it'll probably never get done. I also gave up worrying about why some of the days managed to get themselves out of order - hardly anyone will read that again anyway!