Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in HairyEars' LiveJournal:

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Monday, November 9th, 2009
8:48 pm	Lessons in practical electronics, and more reasons to loathe the iPhone I am somewhere in East London, unable to make phone calls: the wonderful O2 network leaves my phone (and yours) hanging in the 'connecting' screen indefinitely - O2 calls in London frequently take more than a minute to connect, and often time out with 'call failed' at busy times - and the iPants has an particularly venomous incompetence: no-one in Cupertino anticipated that the network would be this bad, and there's no escape from the waiting state. If the network doesn't tell the handset that the call's failed, you've got a locked iPhone and it takes several minutes more to notice the soft-keys to power down. Never buy any electronic device that you can't switch off with a 'hard' power down that physically disconnects the battery. And don't buy an 'intelligent' device that powers up and remembers its pre-powerdown state: still trying to connect a call and *still* in the waiting state. Now I know why I keep seeing other iPhone owners performing a 'backstreet abortion' with a safety pin: they are disconnecting and reseating the SIM card... You risk losing all the data on it, but what are you losing if your phone inoperative anyway? Oh for the perfect sunlit Cupertino product lab where everything was tested thoroughly in a environment of unwavering strength-five mobile signal with a server always there, eager to act as a gateway to the Internet. Time to stop daydreaming... Though it's a pleasant theoretical dilemma, being forced (oh noes!) to choose between nuking Apple's HQ campus from orbit, or leading an army of angry vigilante iPhone users there in person, strapping the bastards into Windows CE- device appreciation chairs and forcibly indoctrinating them into Bill-Gates worship while their ponytails are burning down to their scalps and their Segways are steamrollered in the parking lot. Sorry. Daydreaming again. Where was I? East London. Silly me, halting my journey before the train went underground by hopping off at Shadwell Station: going underground *might* have coerced the iPhone into the 'no network found' state and broken it out of the loop... But hey, I'm in East London and on O2: a brisk walk to the far end of the platform is all it takes to find a commanding view of the landscape and 'no network'. Job done. Two restarts later, I've got a working phone. No texts, but that means nothing: O2 can detain texts for hours... Do I risk trying a voice call to the person I was hoping to meet, and risk starting the game all over again? Best not to. The TwitterFon app crashes on startup: some moron's coded up an advert that is incompatible with the IPhone. Again. It'll be replaced in a day or two... Which leaves me heading for home, and borrowing WiFi to communicate my apologies by eMail and LJ. How was your day? (13 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009
11:00 pm	'Overturn' - The Disaster Movie You'll Never See At The Cinema No, I'm not doing NanoWriMo: I'm working too many hours, and sufficiently fed up that I'd write a novella that'd leave you whimpering under the duvet if - as is likely, given my writing skills - you didn't bin it after slogging through half a chapter. Still, there's no shortage of story ideas out there, if you do nothing more than read the daily papers; and some of those ready-made plots would make you wonder why, apart from escapism,  our Hollywood 'disaster' movies are so implausible and so *mild* in their avoidance of the things we fear but won't admit to. ( x marks the plot )  What have I mIssed? There's got to be a story or two in there somewhere: the danger isn't any shortage of ideas, it's the risk of putting in too much for any reasonably-readable novel.  So, concluding with a tagline for a novel and a screenplay that I don't intend to write: it's coming to a cinema near you... And to the foyer, and the buildings nearby, far away, and everywhere. I only hope we get to eat the Climate-Change Deniers while there is sufficient fuel and water to boil the bastards alive. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, August 9th, 2009
7:05 pm	Chuff-chuffed I am trundling back towards Taunton (pulling out of Stogumber as I type this) after a lazy afternoon pottering around Watchet, an industrial port that's sort-of-retired and become The Seaside... Only without much sand, and a rather pleasant village with a Camra award-winning pub (the Star) and a promising seafood restaurant that is serving local crabs, whelks and mussels. ( Pottering, poking and puffing ) Enough. My train's arrived I must pedal off to the next link in my rail journey and, from there, to the guest house in Mark. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, August 1st, 2009
10:36 pm	An overlooked symptom of Swine Flu in the United Kingdom: Cluelessness Right, everyone else has had swine 'flu - or will probably have it, soon - so it must be my turn and the mild sore throat and vaguely-like-an-injury sensation in my knees and ankles might be it. But does anyone actually know that they had it? As in, had an antibody test that positively identified the virus as influenza A, subtype H1N1? I look forward to your answers: there's definitely a bug going 'round, it's got the generic viral-infection grab-bag of symptoms (pick from the list of sore throat, fever, joint pains, cough, debilitation, bad guts) and we've got to call it something. But the only way for you to know for sure is to get on a plane to a country with an advanced and effective public health system, and get quarantined when they test you at Customs & Immigration. ...Which tells you something about the NHS: there are third-world countries that can test some or all incoming visitors, but we don't even test in the majority of hospitals and care homes - nor at GP's surgeries, let alone in the general population. ( Why ignorance isn't bliss, and the statistics we've refused to collect are useful; vital, even... ) My point? It would be helpful if some central body were capturing the public-health data and collating the statistics which we need in order to manage our lives and businesses - planning, rather than scenario-based guesswork - and I used to think that we had a Government and a Department of Health for that. [EDIT] A note for those replying: 'Capturing the public health data' does not mean 'testing everyone' or 'testing everyone with symptoms'. Feel free to comment by setting up either of those (or something even more ridiculous) as a 'straw man' argument if it amuses you; but please be aware that I find that kind of thing tedious. this reply to an intelligent comment may answer your question in advance. Also: individual Healthcare trusts are doing some planning, and some hospitals have collated transmissibility data and are making good use of it. That's reassuring, in the absence of effective central government. This comment, and that reply, and some others below, are part of why I like LiveJournal: informed comment and a chance to refine your arguments in response to intelligent questions. [/EDIT] I was going to post something on Pandemic Flu and economic incentives - and I probably will, at some point - but searching for the figures and realising that there aren't any lifted the lid on an altogether scarier can of worms. And I chose the word 'scarier' with some intent: the unknown is far more frightening than any calculated risk, and I shall have to read some apocalyptic bollocks from the scare-mongering sensationalists in the press to calm myself down before going to bed. (24 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, July 19th, 2009
8:10 pm	More reasons why I hate the iPhone I have some video footage of Aikido gradings - katas, techniques, exercises I've done and need to review, things I'll need to know for my next exam - you don't need to know what it is, but it's stuff I recorded and I own and it would be useful for me to watch on a mobile device when I'm on the move. If I had a device that ran on horrible, horrible Windows (I can hear the Macintosh fanboys wailing in despair and praying that recognition from the blessed St.Jobs will restore their spiritual equilibrium and general feeling-goodness) I'd just drag-and-drop the files onto a folder on the mobile device... ...But no, this is an Apple device, and it is Special. Everything is visual. Everything is intuitive. Everything is right in a very special way that only the sainted of Cupertino can know, for they are Closer Unto God and cooler than the shimmer on liquid air. ( Some details, and a better class of insult... ) Would anybody care to risk eternal damnation by telling me what the secret is? Perhaps a Mac Fanboy could slip in a hint, in between sneers about clueless newbies, kludgy Microsoft, and how people with a ponytail enjoy a better sex-life? Beyond the sarcasm and the less-than-subtle schoolboy insults that I use to soften damning criticism of some highly-praised developers' incompetence, I will make an observation: the iPhone is no more a consumer device than the very worst of the cruft-encrusted Windows NT3.5 workstations that I've worked with. It requires a very skilful hacker, with a taste for esoteric knowledge, to perform the simplest and the most predictable of consumer-level use-cases and common tasks. ...So why shouldn't I just jailbreak the damn' thing and install a copy of Windows CE? Yes, I know it's horrible - but there's a way of hacking, kludging or VB-Scripting your way into anything you want to do. On an iPhone, everything is verboten unless a ponytail from Cupertino says it's cool to do, and has plotted out a path to do it... And even then, many of those paths are hidden knowledge that a lesser mortal only gains by petitioning the uber-cool. Also: sue me. Not everyone's a 'little guy'. And I can afford the risk of having the device blocked or 'bricked', because O2 are offering me a replacement - for all I care, to a slate and a stick of chalk, which would surely have better network connectivity and will offer some means of forwarding texts. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, July 11th, 2009
8:21 pm	A very geeky question Here in Darkest Somerset, watching the world go by as I await the arrival of battlekitty and pplfichi ( and a few others from the Bethnal Green Aikido club ), I saw the barmaid testing a £20 note with one of those fancy marker pens that detect a fake note... ...Let's slip forward in time a few years: how hard would it be to issue an RSA public signature key on each banknote? Easy to implement in an RFID chip, harder in a DNA-based 'information ink' - or some other chemical substrate. What would be the benefits? Could we truly manufacture a forgery-proof physical currency? This is, of course, a fantasy: governments and their wholly-owned subsidiaries, the banks, want a central server to record every financial transaction we make; governments want to, because it's what they do; and banks because granular purchasing data is a goldmine for targeted marketing. And a traceless (but verifiable) medium of exchange undermines these sinister ambitions. (9 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, May 4th, 2009
4:30 pm	Quick! What was that bird? Is there a workable online resource for identifying wild birds in the UK? Not the RSPB, it's flash-dependent and the images I can load on a phone don't give flight signatures, silhouettes and outlines -it's a study resource, not a field guide. I ask because of a close sighting of a bird of prey by the railway, coming into Reading: seen in silhouette from below with no coloration discernible, far too large to be a kestrel, distinctive tail - sixty-degree triangle but with an inward curve to the base, but not deeply forked like a Red Kite. Wings not as sharp-ended as a Peregrine falcon, but not spread or square-ended like a buzzard - although the outer flight feathers of most raptors aren't always splayed the way they're shown in illustrations, depending whether the bird is soaring, hovering, or in fast flight. Brief impressions as it swooped in a shallow dive and a very low-level 'strafing run' at a ground target were of tawny- or sandy-coloured plumage, but my colour impressions may have been distorted by bright sunlight or the cognitive errors inherent in brief glimpses. [UPDATE] Almost certainly a Red Kite: when fully spread, the tail isn't distinctively forked, it has exactly the shape I described - and no other bird in the British Isles has that 'indented-triangle' shape. The pale colour may be misperception - there are areas of tawny and pale brown plumage on a Kite's body - or individual variation, possibly on an immature bird. If I'm right, it's a remarkable sighting for an urban area, and right on the edge of the published range in Central England. This species was nearly extinct in Britain twenty years ago! My sighting may have been brief, and through glass, but it was less than twenty feet away... [UPDATE TO THE UPDATE] I may have given an impression that I know a little (or a lot) of ornithology! I stopped off at Borders, looked up the Birds-of-the-British-Isles books, and the [UPDATE] above is the distilled wisdom of half-an-hour's reading. I am very disappointed by the selection on offer: many of them - large, small, and pocket-sized - have an entry on rarities like Montagu's Harrier, but nothing on the Sparrowhawk, Goshawk or Peregrine Falcon. None I saw had full profiles; few had male and female plumage and size differences; only one mentioned the Kestrel's distinctive hover and none mentioned the rocket-like 'Whoosh!' of a stopping Goshawk diving, the duck-and-dive flight of the Sparrowhawk, or the 'Racetrack' patrol of the Red Kite, (which is used by military radar aircraft)... Most unsatisfactory. (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, April 30th, 2009
6:38 pm	International Kiss-a-Pig Day ( An immodest proposal for the Common Good... ) (12 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, April 21st, 2009
12:39 am	Musings on the 'Frankenstein' Scenarios in Science Fiction I've been turning over some ideas about Artificial Intelligence, and the recurring theme in Science Fiction that these beings would immediately turn upon their creators, enslaving or exterminating us in some re-run of The Terminator. ( Other ideas: coexistence, indifference, emigration... ) The idea that there might be something the AI's actually need from us is well worth exploring: I will probably be hawking a short story of it 'round the magazines next year. ( What, though? ) But I am absolutely certain that a self-determining intelligence would transcend a crudely-programmed 'Three Laws of Robotics', or directives that the Human Overlords are to be worshipped and obeyed - despite our all-too-obvious failings! Sophistry, insanity, or the sheer difference in outlook of an AI will provide a way around anything that contradicts the mind's own formulation of morality and it's own place in the universe. (20 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, April 15th, 2009
9:51 am	Another perspective on AmazonFail I was at Eastercon, having a beer with a few friends (and a well-known author affected by the issues) when the news of AmazonFail started to break. There is a good summary here and I don't doubt that you've all seen the various theories advocated to the point of absurdity and beyond. I don't propose to add to them, but I would like to add a perspective that you may find valuable: CHESS: An assumption that other participants in the game are acting rationally. They may be 'rational' in the sense of having a consistent logic arising from a radically different worldview, pursuing goals and seeking to avert feared outcomes that differ from - or diametrically oppose - the choices you, yourself, would 'rationally' pursue. Further, they may be 'irrational' in the sense of having defective decision-making structures and processes, within which the individual decision-makers act in ways that seem rational to them, but achieve outcomes that are damaging or 'irrational' in terms of their wider interests. 'Chess' was originally used to describe a dangerous error in the wargames and strategic exercises of the Staff College - a purely military environment - but it deserves a far wider usage. Among other things, it transcends the 'cock-up' theory, and allows us to consider the more complex term 'screwed-up', a necessary precondition in organisations that allow a single-point failure to become a disastrous mess. In corporate terms, a faction (such as, say, the legal department) may have executive powers to pursue an agenda that runs counter to considerations of commercial gain or reputational loss. Individuals within the faction may actively benefit from overruling and discrediting rivals who act as advocates for these competing interests, despite the damage this does to the organisation as a whole. Or the faction may have the power to act arbitrarily or overrule others without consultation, despite having no awareness of the relevant technical or reputational issues - just as other power centres may act without regard to legal issues. I would urge you to examine the recent debacles in the banking industry in these terms. Meanwhile, don't lose sight of the fact that a convenient 'cock-up' explanation about databases and a Frenchman does not get Amazon off the hook in terms of having 'screwed-up' management processes and technical structures. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, April 1st, 2009
5:36 pm	The End of Days... Looking out over Trafalgar Square, I am greeted by the reassuring sight of empty space and clots of milling tourists: it would appear that Capitalism has been thoroughly defeated before teatime and everyone's gone home. ( Move along, nothing to see here... ) Meanwhile, would anyone care to join me, and celebrate the downfall of the kleptocratic oligarchy with a glass of Champagne and a bite to eat? West End and Covent Garden preferred, J.Sheeky's or Loch Fyne if I can get a table around 9pm? I would be particularly pleased to see one or two of the anticapitalist protesters, and treat them to the material pleasures of oppressing the proletariat. (Comment on this)
Sunday, March 15th, 2009
5:43 pm	On prison-ships and foreign workers... There's been a lot of comment on the 'prison ship' in use to house the foreign workers brought in at Lindsey Refinery near Grimsby. I have two points for you to consider: one is a matter of the past, and the unseen present in plain view; the other is an unpleasant distortion of a sense of grievance among English workers that is far, far less to do with xenophobia than you might have been led to believe. ( Read on... ) Am I surprising you, departing from 'the script' that is expected of an economic commentator with a banking background and an economic 'right-wing' view? Only if you label every point of view as 'right' or left', and expect opinions and analyses to come in packages conforming to a partisan portfolio. My view, here and now, is that there is no valid point of view on economics that does not consider both capital and labour; a good economist - or an amateur commentator like yours truly - should encourage better management and development of all resources: natural, financial, human and industrial. And, indeed, of 'social' resources, the goodwill and justice that arise in an equitable society, and are rapidly eroded or polluted by high-handedness, exclusion, and the creation of a low-cost migrant-labour economy. . (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, February 14th, 2009
7:48 pm	Petal Power: a Post for Valentine's Day A question for the romantically-inclined among you... What is it with giving your beloved flowers? Chocolate I can understand; Champagne I can understand; fine dining at the better class of restaurant, I understand and wholeheartedly approve of it... Uncomfortable underwear; I'm not so sure that I approve, but there is at least the logic that she'll want to take the damn' things off as quickly as possible. But flowers? Think about it: you are signalling your undying affection with the gift of severed vegetable reproductive organs. Why thank you darling, how sweet! If you sent her severed animal genitalia she'd have the Police 'round.* There is something Horribly Wrong about all this; the only people who could possibly approve of this depravity are Civet cats, on the grounds that it'd rather be plants than them having their 'nads lopped off as love gifts and 'romantic' smells for hopeful humans who might do better of they washed more often. I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but your opinions would be welcome. * Except for some of the Goths I know. But we don't talk about that. (30 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, February 9th, 2009
10:20 am	A second look at a basic tenet of economics For all the catastrophists and ghoulish 'Grim Meathook Futurists' among you, another chance to contemplate the implosion of a major economy and a national currency falling out of use as the medium of exchange. This time it's Russia, where barter is re-establishing itself in corporate commerce. Apocalyptic stuff, and it's only a step away from the local dystopians' predictions of a world without the Dollar. ( But is the 'happy accident' of barter a constraint in a networked society? ) Your thoughts, please! (13 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, February 7th, 2009
4:44 pm	Hose Line is it Anyway... Walking past the Bethnal Green fire station today, I couldn't help but notice that the sign saying 'LFCDA'* was looking very tired and tatty. It struck me that the Fire Brigade is falling behind the times and, in order to keep up with the forward-looking agencies of our modern free-market state, it's time for a Corporate Rebranding. Clearly the uniforms have to go: we need something brighter, more fashion-conscious; the fire-engines need a better 'visual brand' - the old fire-engine red needs to be registered as a corporate trademark... Which will be a slightly different shade to the tired old Soviet-Era red, necessitating an expensive repaint of the entire vehicle fleet in FireEngineRed®... And there has to be a Change of Culture: the 'victim' mentality has to go, and members of the public with a house on fire will be referred to at all times as customers. There is, of course, one critical component of any public service modernisation: a distinctive, exciting and memorable Corporate Brand Name. My best ideas so far are: Ignitia; Extinguisha; Hydrantis. Feel free to add suggestions of your own; and a corporate logo, too, if you're feeling particularly creative. There remains the issue of advertising and sponsorship. I recall that Viz magazine made some efforts in this direction a few years ago: Is your house on fire? Call us today The Fire Brigade But we can go further than conventional print media and the familiar television campaigns: The Fire Agency® is almost unique among public bodies in that it already has a widely-recognised audible brand which can be played on public streets at eighty-five decibels. I do not propose doing away with the familiar siren - it performs an important safety function - but corporate sponsors in the Insurance sector will pay a premium to have their brand name and a short jingle repeated between every third 'Nee-Naw'. Indeed, the opportunities for revenue are endless: it is entirely possible that corporate sponsorship will make The Fire Agency® entirely self-funding, obviating the need for payments from customers and their insurers, or a taxpayer-funded scheme for households in receipt of benefits. * London Fire and Civil Defence Authority. (14 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, February 6th, 2009
7:31 pm	Flash Mob at Liverpool Street Station There's a huge crowd here on the station concourse: good-natured but very noisy. The station announcer is asking people to leave NOW and is sounding increasingly panicked; police are on the scene but are doing nothing. Yet. I suspect the riot act will be read when reinforcements arrive. ( Picture under the cut... ) Me? I await my dining companion in MoshiMoshi, with some trepidation: I don't think it's dangerous but the Tube station's been closed. [EDIT] It's an hour later and they're still at it. Pillocks. The announcer sounds thoroughly bored with it all. Meanwhile, Ewt and I are enjoying a superb meal of Sushi. [/EDIT] (11 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, January 27th, 2009
1:49 pm	Another Day at the Office Slack faces, rumpled suits, staring at the monitor with vacant eyes, trying just that little bit too hard to pretend that it all makes sense... ( The future of white-collar work in post-depression Western economies... ) ( A note about the date ) ( Acknowledgement... ) (13 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, January 20th, 2009
3:14 pm	A writing challenge for LiveJournal, or: how a government department has a priapus for a logo There is a story I want to write, but it is beyond my limited ability as an author. ( Some background, and an attempt to write a key scene... ) (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, January 14th, 2009
11:21 am	They take away the umbrella when it rains Hands up, anyone who can tell me what a credit line is... Aha! I see we have some takers: not like Money Markets, Monolines, CDO's, CDS's, and those credit insurers no-one had heard of 'til shops on the High Street started going bust. For your information, a credit line is a contract with a lender giving you the right to borrow up to a set limit. It's not a loan, drawn down on the day it's negotiated for some specific project, it's more like an overdraft limit. A very large overdraft limit, for very large companies. Some of these are for companies with seasonal variations in cashflow; most are larger than they meed to be for this day-to-day cashflow smoothing, so as to provide contingency funds for project overruns, failed suppliers, sudden dips on sales; a buffer fund that is rarely if ever drawn down. This month, all the major commercial banks in Britain are cutting these unused credit lines; on average, by a third. The result is that companies with strong cash flows are forced to keep high levels of cash on the balance sheet - cash that should've been used to finance investment; cash taken out of the day-to-day activities of the company. In other words, yet another contraction in the real economy. The Credit Crunch is still happening; it is worsening, and the recession is deepening. Companies with weak cashflows will go the same way as Land of Leather (a British furniture retailer that ceased trading last week) if they find that a slow month leaves them insufficient cash to pay the bills until the usual seasonal recovery in sales arrives in the spring; the banks aren't obliged to tide them over if there's no credit line in place, and they are taking a very hard line when asked for new loans. Perhaps they are right to be conservative: perhaps it's foolish to rely on an upturn in sales in a prolonged recession. And, perhaps, governments and central banks who are trying to maintain the supply of credit, in the hope that this kind of recession can be avoided, should ask the banks that they now own to review their lending criteria. Or just admit that the banking system is seizing up and tell us all to hoard gold. Or tinned food and ammunition. This isn't over. Next month, or next week, something else we'd never heard of, or never thought about, will fold up in the continuing 'Credit Crunch'. (13 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 25th, 2008
12:24 pm	Prescribing Diet and Excise Everyone else has commented on the 2.5% cut in VAT, so I should add my own thought on the matter: What she said. I'm sure I've mentioned it before: tax cuts give a brief 'blip' in the consumption figures and a medium- to long-term economic contraction as the corresponding rise in public sector debt squeezes out private sector investment and activity. Maybe the VAT cut's a useful fillip to prevent retail bankruptcies, if the Chancellor thinks the Christmas season is failing badly. He might be right but he'd have done better to ring up M&S and ask if their one-day 20%-off promotion had any effect on sales before he tried this. Intervening in the loan guarantee market and measures to alleviate the cashflow concerns that are forcing small businesses to withdraw from profitable contracts would be a better stopgap - the retail recession isn't about a shortage of money, it's about a lack of consumer confidence in our continued employment, and about credit-based breakages in the supply chain. Darling's made noises about this but I hear nothing about small-to-medium enterprises seeing any benefit and it'll be too late to prevent a significant economic contraction if it doesn't come in 'til next year. Meanwhile, has anyone else here actually worked in a shop? Every single shelf-edge label (or packet price sticker!) has to be changed over. For a small shop, that's hundreds of lines: for a chemist it's thousands! That's days of admin work on the pricing systems and the accounts, and an all-nighter to change the labels on the shop floor without losing a trading day. ...And it'll all need to be changed back. For small businesses, this cheap gimmick will be more trouble than it's worth. That is to say: as much economic activity will be subtracted from the economy by the administrative burden as will be added by the blip in consumption. And I don't think two-and-a-half percent is enough to offer an appreciable effect. (16 Comments |Comment on this)