John Allsopp

Professionally engineered Internet solutions for humans

The Post Office: 28 October 2007: The Post Office in the UK appears to be on a suicide mission. Having priced letters by weight for most of its history, it recently decided to price by size as well, and not just by the length of the two sides, but by thickness too.; How do you tell how thick your letter is? I don't think many households or businesses have a convenient pair of calipers. The Post Office provides a sheet of paper with cut-out bits to form 'letterboxes' through which you can post your prospective letter as a dry run. I asked at the Post Office counter how I might actually use these without them ripping and wearing and the postmaster suggested I mount it on cardboard. Which actually wasn't too bad an idea but requires some accuracy with a scalpel, some suitable cardboard, and is still subject to wear. And why should I?; If you get this wrong, the person you are sending to is charged £1 plus the amount by which you underpaid. They are obliged to post a card back to the Post Office with the value in stamps stuck to it, or to turn up to collect it in person, adding at least a day's delay and substantial inconvenience.; I wonder about the legal basis for this. If I make reasonable efforts to pay the correct amount and post my letter, do I not enter into a contract with the Post Office that they will deliver my letter? And on what basis does The Post Office charge the receiver of the errant letter for the mistake of the sender? I know it's optional, but the content of that letter might be important. If the receiver doesn't pay, it will sit in the Post Office for three weeks before being returned to the sender, effectively our property is taken from us for almost a month. The Post Office may have special privilege to do that for short periods, but I bet the legislation wasn't written with this in mind.; It's not just us users of the service who are confused, either.; I used to send two flat chocolates with my invoices to my clients as a thank-you. Cute, I know. If those chocolates happened to rest beside each other, my letter would go through as a normal letter. If they happened to stack on top of each other, it wouldn't. So what's the price to post this? What about a bag of sand, where overall it might be thick, but it could be poured through the gap? Mind you, my efforts to post small things in large bags filled with helium in order to get the Post Office to pay me went awry after my parcels were eventually found by Norwegian forestry workers.; I took a letter to the Post Office for grading and the lady behind the counter got it through the letter slot in her rugged plastic size checker, and then looked at me and said "it only just went through". My goodness, it either goes through or it doesn't, the system's confusing enough without rubbing our chins about whether it goes through sufficiently easily. I'll bring some WD40 next time. It went through. I'll pay the lower rate.; A family member sent us a package on two occasions that were underpaid, but she had it weighed at her local Post Office. The culprit? It was a close call. These systems aren't absolute, despite the laudable activities of the weights and measures people, different scales weigh slightly differently (probably even differently when it's warm to when it's cold), and the display isn't digital, it's a marker on a scale. Make your judgment call at your peril.; Now, when we post something, we are anxious about whether we will cause the receiver this inconvenience, particularly if it's someone we wish to impress. The system is too complex to administer at home where previously a set of weighing scales would have sufficed. Nowadays I don't post anything more than a simple letter without going to the Post Office to have it weighed. That's counterproductive for the Post Office and it's a huge waste of time for everyone. They want to cut the number of Post Offices to save money, now they have thousands of counter staff all weighing and measuring everything we post.; What about e-commerce? All e-commerce businesses are now obliged to store all three dimensions of their packed items in order for postage to be calculated. It was complicated enough already.; All this for what? For a closer relationship between the resources required to transport a letter from one place to another and the amount the purchaser pays. Well, I'm not running the Post Office, but I don't think that matters. What matters more is having a system that's easy to use. This isn't. The Post Office should be moving to simplify their offerings.; I'm really not convinced, either, that the consequences of their decision in increased resourcing at the counters, loss of goodwill and loss in business, were taken sufficiently into account. In fact, if they are to be believed that this change did not mask a price rise, it's all been loss. It just feels like incompetence (but perhaps there's a lot about this that I don't know, perhaps there's a political directive to run the Post Office down and the Communication Workers Union are defending our service).; While the Post Office is behaving like this, I'm impervious to their cries as the private sector moves in. They have to deserve our support, and right now, they don't.; The whole thing needs a rethink. De Bono suggested delivering personal post to the workplace. It would save a whole lot of postie round walks every morning, but then what happens when you change jobs? Maybe there should be a box of PO Boxes at the end of each street.
DTS video: 28 October 2007: I had my first play with uploading a video to YouTube from iMovie on Mac. YouTube has a 100Mb limit. Following the instructions for best quality gave me a 150Mb file so I started to run out of time and just did iMovie's Web Streaming choice which gave me a 16Mb file so it's very heavily compressed, but it's better than nothing.; Take a look: The DTs at The New Tavern, Scarborough, October 2007.; I have to say, again, that I really don't find Mac intuitive to use. S'there.
Keyphrases: 26 October 2007: I love some of the phrases people use successfully to find what we provide online. For Blue Tree Services, who make a GPS tracking device and panic alarm suitable for Alzheimer's patients (gotta get those links in where you can), it's amazing how many people can't spell Alzheimer's. There's alzeihmer, alzheimer, alzhiemers, alzeimers, and alzheimers. My favourite phrase though, made me laugh out loud (you've got to take your pleasures where you can when doing keyword analysis). They found us for "blue dementie alarmering". I think it's cute.
Blue Tree Services: 19 October 2007: I've been deep in a product launch, for Blue Tree Services' new GPS tracker product called KoolTrax, which is software that will turn your mobile into a GPS tracker, which is pretty cool.; It means if, say, I installed the software on my phone and then went on a business trip, my partner could see exactly where I am and where I've been. She might even have my dinner ready for when I get home, and she wouldn't be worried about where I'd got to. If I was an hour late, she'd know as soon as I did, and she'd be able to make use of that hour. In our increasingly busy lives, that's useful I think.; It works pretty much worldwide. OK, you have to have a decent phone to put it on, but it's still cheaper than buying a dedicated GPS tracker.; I've been trying out the mobile location services recently and they are comedy. Search for Andrew in this page and you'll see why mobile phone location doesn't work.; That new front page is mine, proudly put together with geometric and golden mean precision.; Last night as I did my Internet marketing thing we got up to about fifty concurrent visitors; We've doubled the number of visitors to the site in two months.; There's a lot more to come from this company, all triffically exciting.
Control: 16 October 2007: Sorry, I've been quiet of late. I didn't realise for how long. I've loads to blog about, but I'm stuck between a product launch, organising a party and a gig or two. Hopefully next week I'll be able to get back to normal.; It's not often I issue an imperative, but here's one. If you have any interest in things visual (with the possible exception perhaps, if you have a special interest in colour), make the effort this week to go and see Control in a decent cinema.; I've blogged about the film before, and those reasons still stand. I expected to be blown away by memories of Joy Division, of their music, of the poignancy of their story. But that's not the big deal. Joy Division is only the backdrop, the environment, of this film.; What I wasn't quite prepared for is what this film looks like.; I very much enjoy art film. As a young man I used to go as frequently as I could to the Midland Group Arts Centre in Nottingham, and Broadway, to see good films.; I'm also very interested in what photographers call composition and graphic designers call, what? Layout, the grid? But basically, how to skillfully arrange visual elements on a page or screen. I'm a web developer, I do that sort of thing for a living.; I don't think I've ever seen a film look so beautiful as Control does.; (I do remember being similarly stunned by La Reine Margot, though, so it would be interesting to compare the two).; Corbijn comes to film as a photographer. Incidentally, I don't think I've ever seen what he looks like, maybe this is him.; Me and my partner said the same thing at the end of the film. I said "you could take just one, random frame from this film and study it for a lifetime and it would tell you everything you need to know about photography and visual design". She said "You could take a PhD just in this film and still not get it all".; It doesn't quite hit home in the trailer. This is one film worth having a large screen HDTV for. That's it. An HDTV and Control. No other films necessary. Just hang the tv on the wall and have Control moving at a frame a minute with no sound. Put a canister of oxygen nearby because every time you walk in the room it would take your breath away.; Back to composition: this is a masterclass. I've been struggling to find a book on composition that goes much beyond the thirds rule and framing shots with tree branches and I think that's because it's not about books, it's about looking at work, so in true Allsopp style I set up a routine (that, due to shortness of time, I've never yet run) that has me find a good photograph and work out its composition. Well here's all I need. Take a look.; And the thing is: it's not that one shot takes your breath away and then another a bit later on. It's like every single frame is better than anything you've seen before.; There is a time imperative though. This is film. Proper film, on reels, coated in silver. It needs to be seen in a proper cinema, with light shone through it onto a widescreen. Don't wait for it to be digitised and thrown about the stratosphere to arrive mashed on your tv screen. It won't work. It won't do the same thing. There's nothing more important to do this week. It's a perfect flower. See it now at a cinema before it wilts into time past.; Say thank-you to your eyes and give them something to drink.
Red hair: 6 October 2007: Red hair need a serious PR exercise. I don't remember red hair being a bad thing when I was younger (although a friend with red hair remembers it so, but the tale he told could possibly have happened because of other outstanding physical characteristics, I was bullied because I'm tall).; Now it seems to be acceptable to put red haired people down. I remember the time when women were judged according to their hair colour, and gentlemen were required to prejudge their potential beaux according to whether they were blonde (dippy but attractive), red haired (fiery, obviously) or brunette (*shrug* dunno). Nothing bad about red haired women there.; I believe it to be racism, although I note the Commission for Racial Equality doesn't agree. I once had a conversation with someone from there in which it became plain that, in their view, I couldn't ever be discriminated against on racial grounds because the race to which I belong is the one that is on top doing the discriminating. Perhaps they think the same about red haired people.; I don't think the fabulous Caterine Tate character helped. I'm sure she conceived it as a comment on the absurdity and extent of the prejudice but you have to think about it to get that. I think it's made it worse.; It's a Celtic gene. Weirdly, we tend to like the Celts, but I just don't think the link's been made. There's so much good imagery in those links a PR chap would love it, and that's before finding great red haired role models.; So, be nice to red haired people. While you're at it, be nice to everyone. Just be nice!
Your first Paul Merton: 6 October 2007: When did you first become aware of Paul Merton? We tried to think this one through the other day. Normally people become famous with something or a particular role. I thought he was in the first Men Behaving Badly, but that was Harry Enfield. He seems to have just seeped onto our telly.; I'm still not clear having read Wikipedia, maybe you remember.
It's life, but artificial: 6 October 2007: The morning paper's headline story is the pre-announcement of the creation of artificial life. Wow. Somehow that doesn't feel as bad as GM food, why is that?
Pub: 5 October 2007: This is what going down the pub with people who smoke is like nowadays.; Part of me is very sympathetic. I am, I think, quite easily addicted. I'm a workaholic, for a start. When at university the first time around I spent most of my time playing Asteroids. I could last all day on one 10p, woohoo. I only don't play games now because I won't allow them on my computer because if they were there, I'd play them all day. Perhaps I knew that when I didn't do any drugs in my youth. But actually the main thing that stopped me smoking early on was I was into being healthy. I couldn't quite work out why walking around was such a drag and I stuffed myself with vitamins trying to fill myself with energy. Now I think it's probably just what adolescence is like.; When we met the friends who aren't in this picture, we really liked them. We like to say we fell in love with them over that summer, and we still love them hugely. But right at the start of that relationship I remember us making a conscious decision whether to step into the relationship, because they smoked, and we'd have to go to the pub and live through the smoke and the smell afterwards on our clothes and in our hair. We made the right decision and lived with that. Acceptance is the thing.; They may think "ha! y'see, smokers are more interesting people, you came to us because we are smokers, not despite it". Nowadays though, it feels like a defensive stance.; I spoke with someone who I think is a 2-a-day smoker who gave me an argument about how the English pub is dying because old men can no longer sit with a pint, a cigarette, their mates and a box of dominos.; Personally, I think the smoking ban is absolutely fabulous. I'm going down the pub more, and enjoying it a lot more.; Incidentally. The Hole in the Wall, which was the centre of Scarborough's culture for a while when we first arrived here but has gone through a number of temporary landlords over the last almost decade, now has a lovely new landlady. She wants to do music and make it the cultural hub again. I spoke to a friend, quite by chance, about it and we agreed: we think, at last for that pub, she'll succeed. This pic was the bar on her second night. Obviously the previous landlord had cleared out the spirits, and she just had one beer on. So give it another go and let's get the Hole in the Wall back.
Meet the natives: 4 October 2007: Pretty much the only must-see tv programme atm is Meet The Natives on Channel 4. I think it's sold badly in that I really didn't think it would be interesting, but actually it's lovely.; It's basically about bringing a small group of people who live a traditional tribal life on Tanna to Britain to see how we live, reversing the roles, for fun, of the white explorer.; It's great to look at ourselves with fresh eyes. Is beer hot? Why do we eat around a table? If I had a pig that big, I wouldn't need any others. If you artificially inseminate your pig, how does the female pig get satisfied?; Well, quite. Stop reading. Go watch.; This week: why do you care so much about animals yet you have empty buildings in your cities, and homeless people, and no-one helps? On Tanna, there's no money, if someone needs a house we all get together and build one for them. You can wander the island and you're always welcome, there's always somewhere for you to sleep.; I love their style of conversation too. It's not challenging. Often it's like "I would like to say something" .. err, yes ... "when you were talking then" .. oh do spit it out man .. "I felt a heaviness in my heart, it make me sad that x, y, z, and I can't say any more". a) there must be lots of time on Tanna for talk, my irritation highlights how much pressure I put on myself to achieve things, and b) oftentimes they just say how they feel. Well that's quite something. I might try that. I just wonder if sharing your feelings so often is what helps them gel together. There's a very strong impression that they feel a warmth and togetherness that we've replaced with irritation, jealousy, anger, dislike, distrust, and so on.; Last week, one chap had darts explained to him, was given a dart, threw it at the board, and hit the bullseye .. no trouble. This week it was KFC, transvestites and washing the car with a spraywash. It's on now! (if you're reading this at 9pm on a Thursday, or 10pm if you can get 4+1).
The Space Race: 4 October 2007: I just watched the BBC's lunchtime news and the start of the second sentence in their report on the 50th anniversary of Russia launching Sputnik was "Of course, America won the space race .... ". What?; Having failed to be the first to launch a satellite, America defined its own goal and achieved it. Maybe. That's not really playing fair.; So, if we believe Wikipedia, Russia had the first satellite, the first man in space, if you ignore America sending fruit flies into space using captured German wartime rockets .. the first animal in space (Laika the dog), the first woman in space, the first craft to land on the moon and the first probes to Venus and Mars.; There was no need for that sentence in the BBC report, and little justification for it. We are being fed nationalistic propaganda by an agency that is funded by taxation: you and me. I expected, and want, more.
Gebrselassie: 4 October 2007: Loving this. He just broke the marathon record. That list's interesting. It won't be long before we're under 2 hours. And I came in 'only' 90 minutes slower than the first recorded best time in 1896. It seems women weren't deemed capable (maybe) of it until the sixties. Now there's only 11 minutes between women's and men's best.; Also, someone mentioned that black people led the Nottingham half marathon, which leads to the stereotypical view of black men who can run well and have an intrinsic sense of rhythm. Looking at the history of the sport, though, that doesn't seem to be borne out. Unless it's true and African training facilities have only recently improved enough to enable Africans to compete internationally.; Here's a little bit of Paula, beautiful, take a look (note the beat at the end, drumming's very cool nowadays). She's back and in the New York marathon in a month or so.
Menezes crab Burma: 3 October 2007: I'm deeply troubled by a few things at the moment.; The shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes resulted, it appears, from a series of actions and circumstances that were all questionable (compounded by the Independent's inability to serve the article I want, as I write). What I mean is, I read the summary of what happened and can't see they did anything right at all. I understand the police were jittery that day and the forces involved employ people whose life work it is to defend Queen and country, but they ended up shooting one of us dead. Coulda been you or me.; On The Deadliest Catch, the sight of crabs arriving at the cannery having been crammed as tight as possible into the hold of the fishing boat, being strapped live onto a conveyor belt and taken, Batman style, towards revolving blades that cut off all their limbs. They are a delicacy, apparently.; And Burma. Not what's going on now, but what hasn't been happening for the last forty five years. We knew the Burmese military had no regard for its people in 1988. In the alternative world, there's no place on earth worse than Burma, so this is not news. I don't think there's a huge lot we can do about it. Basically, our powers are to not invest in, or purchase from, Burma, and to moan at them through the UN. Big deal. It looks like their income would just be replaced by income from countries closer to home, so our boycott would have no effect. Maybe we could exert boycot pressure on those secondary contributors. I'd kinda like a politician to just say that our options are limited, and that there's not a fat lot we can do. Having said that, it looks like the UK really hasn't done enough.; What's irritating me is that politics is reacting to what's happened in the last few days. Given our self righteous attitude to the world, we should have done everything we could well before now.; I'm also thinking: a 10 minute warning to get off the street? Fabulous, what a polite military. That's more than we gave Irish protestors on Bloody Sunday.; How terrible that Burma is resource rich, governed by the military, and all the monies go to them not to the people. Is not the Iraqi oil money going to US companies? In part to provide electricity for Iraqis, sure, but they'll have to buy that. I know the big difference is stated intention though.; If people took to the streets in our democracies, in their thousands, with the stated aim of overthrowing the government, they would be put down too. Perhaps not as brutally, but still. I'm not sure a similar protest here in the UK would be legal either, and if it isn't legal, it would require a police response.; I can't quite reach the nub of this. I think my problem is with the dressing, not the meal. Of course we should object to a military regime that controls its people using violence. That should have been done ages ago. I'm irritated by a political system that largely bans or restricts protest, yet encourages it by only acting when people protest. But at the same time, we should recognise that our system is very imperfect too, that the Brits have done bad things too, and, as always, we should work on the thing that we can do something about: ourselves.; Good, that's all off my chest. Maybe I just need a food fight.
The death of social networking: 2 October 2007: I was having a conversation with a fellow web developer in the pub the other day, whose partner was at home preferring to track down music online, so we talked about that.; Back in the seventies when computers didn't have mice or graphics (I'm sure I've blogged this before) I invented (in my head, I'll admit) a computer system for record shops (they are shops, not stores) where one could type in ones favourite band and it would suggest a bunch of related stuff for you to investigate.; I had a friend I admired at the time who used to follow particular musicians, and co-incidentally both this person and the one who wasn't in the pub, are both into Recommended Records. I imagine it's probably the best way to navigate around their catalogue: if Dagmar's here and I like what she does, and she's there too, perhaps I'll like that. Peter Blegvad, Fred Frith, Chris Cutler too. Perhaps the same thing works in Jazz. But also I imagine it might work the same in dance music too. I'm trying to navigate modern Asian music. Then there's Cuban music. Reggae too.; Anyway, my system did that. If Jah Wobble played with this band and you like them, and he played with that band too and you don't know what they sound like, perhaps it's worth a punt.; One problem is: if you liked The Jam that doesn't mean you'll like The Style Council.; My imaginary system also stored what people bought so if you had an album they had, you could see what else they'd purchased. I do think things were simpler then. I seem to remember musical genres were very rigid, and I remember feeling resistance to the first sneaky sounds where cultures were being mixed up: Althea and Donna perhaps (not sure).; Social networking's solution is 'people who like that also liked these'. That doesn't seem to work. My most memorable attempt was a heavy link showing that people who like The Chemical Brothers also liked Moby. I blogged negatively about that experience here.; With the advent of social networking, I'm discovering all sorts of things about my friends that I don't like. We have a different sense of what's funny. We use our time differently. Our tastes in music are different. Actually, I'm no longer sure why we became friends in the first place.; If we share some time in the pub or at an event, we present to those present a particular side of our nature. I may be one character when out with one group, and different in another group.; Belbin's team roles explains how I might be the most creative person in a team of IT people, but my strength is administrative when I'm in bands.; Anyway, back to Moby. It turns out that what most people liked about The Chemical Brothers is the fact they used electronic instruments. Perhaps. I can't see any other similarity. What I liked about them is their energy and their strong, inventive rhythms and sounds, none of which seem to be present in Moby's limp offerings. So much for social networking.; There's another problem with social networking. I suspect there's an intrinsic force taking everyone to the centre. Clearly popular things will get more 'votes', and popular is centre. I like to be off centre. All very nice for Madonna, but no good at all for Manfat Voodoo.; I'm not sure anyone's thinking, either. Chemical Brothers -> Moby. No, I don't think people are thinking. The system's too unsophisticated too.; I used to read the music papers, but now I feel I've read it all before. So how do you discover new music? I'll come back to that.; As for social networking, I'm enjoying again hearing the views of experts.; For years I've wanted to buy a forest and leave it alone. I didn't believe in woodland management. After all, the forests existed very happily before we came along. I'm currently reading the results of the millennium survey of British butterflies, more on that later I'm sure, and I'm starting to see why people want to maintain forests. So my strongly held view of thirty or more years turns out to be based on ignorance.; So I've kinda had it with ignorance, and with lay-people's views. I want to hear expert opinion. So I think social networking will eat itself. Through the interconnectedness of people we will realise that we don't all think alike, and some of us don't think at all.; Meeting up in reality will become fashionable again, because we only show what we want to show in that situation, and everyone can drink their pint in social harmony. And expertise will be back in fashion. Stroll on.; Through all that I think I have an answer to the music problem (although it's probably been fired in ignorance). Laters, people.