• Home
  • Posts tagged 'GBP'

Posts Tagged ‘GBP’

over-engineering disappointment

Fool’s Gold

As a child in Colorado, I have a distant memory of finding a nugget of pure gold, bigger than the tip of my thumb. I instantly became the richest kid in America! I thought I could buy a husky (with a sled) and a Tama Starclassic Birch studio set with a full range of Paiste cymbals, and maybe a house or three. I could move out on my own, I could—so many expectations; so many promises.

My dad took a quick look and said something like: “Wow, you’ve found iron pyrite. Fools Gold.”

The disappointment! All those things to which I was looking forward disappeared, and the lump of cold angles suddenly seemed a reminder of what could have been.

I have recently had a similar experience with some fools coffee.

Coffee Suppositories?

I was asked by Miele to trial a high-end coffee machine for three weeks, and give an honest account of what I found. I was thrilled, since the last time I got to play with a 5-figure espresso machine was during uni working as a barista. I built up a few images in my mind; imagining pulling perfect shots of central-american Cup of Excellence blends, practising my crema, and tasting half a dozen different coffees to see which worked best with the £1,000 set up. My interest was only piqued further when a colleague at work described Miele as “the Rolls Royce of appliances”.

About three weeks ago, a courier arrived as I sat working from my home office. He delivered a box big enough for a springer spaniel to sleep in, and heavy enough to make the manly nonchalance I affected while carrying it away from the door quite difficult indeed. Nonetheless, I left the box packaged and wrapped up in the hall until the evening, looking forward to the reward of an espresso or six after work.

As I worked my way through the layers of packaging, I gradually unveiled a stainless-steel, microwave-like appliance that dwarfed anything else my kitchen held, except—just—the oven. I scanned the quick-start guide and with a single word, my expectations instantly disappeared: “nespresso”. I lost the will even to unpack and set up this monstrously-large contraption.

Nonetheless, I did set it up, removing all of a counter-top from usable space. My disappointment, if anything, grew as I laboriously set up the menu through an achingly-complicated process involving the use of arrow buttons and “OK” to calibrate a dizzying array of possible settings. Throughout the next two hours, I played with settings, opened all the openable compartments and tried several of the coffee suppositories. My thoughts follow:

The Miele CVA3650 is a giant appliance which costs £1,000 (c. $1400). It looks impressive, with a stainless-steel finish and various accoutrements, including backlighting, obviously included as talking features. It would not feel out of place in a posh flat in Kensington—fitting in like an addition to a designed suite of expensive appliances. Indeed, the lasting impression is of a lifestyle rather than coffee. Browsing the Miele site, I found many photos of kitchens, appliances, and artfully-arranged mugs sometimes held by comfortable, rich-looking models. The only thing missing from these photos?

Coffee.

Nespresso tastes worse than I thought it actually could. I’m not saying that to be snobbish about my coffee, and I was genuinely curious to know what the little, coloured “pods” could produce. The result of every single “brew” was a flat, metallic, suspension of frankly disgusting, tepid liquid. Some aspect of the extraction produces an interestingly-contrived crema every single time, so the drink (I can’t call it coffee) certainly looks impressive. My wife recoiled after the first sip, and I left more than one completely untouched. The terrible “flavia” machine in my office makes better-tasting coffee than this!

The Miele machine is touch-button automation at it’s most falsely economic (time-wise). Sure, it’s convenient to press a button and have an espresso (ahem!) within 30 seconds, but that does not account for the half-hour (no joke) of programming every time the machine is re-plugged back in. I’m afraid I’m green-conscious enough to flip the switch at the wall after every brew, so this makes it ridiculous to use. The menuing system is cumbersome enough to make my eyes water. Two arrows, and “OK” to make every selection. It takes a huge amount of patience, and its… just… aweful! So many features, so few necessary or even useful. You can, for example, programme 9 different “user profiles”. Why? It’s a pod of shite coffee, which will taste EXACTLY the same, no matter which button you push. Why go through dozens and dozens of beeps in order to have a user-specific nescafe?

The only part of this machine which is convenient, is the actual making of a drink. For that, it is fast! It produces a coffee of your choice (out of 5 different capsules) very rapidly (provided it’s been programmed and has already been switched on, obviously.) It will then automatically rinse itself, and let you make another soil infusion very rapidly. You only have to remove the spent capsules periodically from a tub within the machine, and fill up a water reservoir whenever it’s low (though, this is fairly frequently, thanks to the rinsing).

Final Words

Before writing this post, I sent Miele’s representatives a quick heads’ up, with a brief summary which I think works well.
I understand its premise of being a super-convenient means of having a sophisticated-looking hot beverage, but I much prefer my coffee to be tasty, regardless of time. And the amount of time spent scrolling endlessly through menus isn’t really conducive to suiting busy people like myself as a domestic coffee machine. [in reply to the statement that it might prove to be] I’d be much more likely to advise people invest in a cafetiere, grinder and decent beans. For the £1,000 they could have spent on this, they could have many scores of kilos of excellent, locally-roasted, hand-sourced beans, and enough left over to send a thank-you bottle of single malt to the coffee roaster.

 

Outsourcing Lunch

There are many things I want to do to improve the way I live. My little plot of the world should be made greener through fantastic gardening skills. My waistline should be happily withering while my biceps should be steadily broadening—despite the physical reality that I’d entirely lose my middle that way. Dinner parties should be thrown matching an excruciatingly-chosen bottle of wine with exquisitely-prepared, locally-sourced, organic food followed by exciting coffee preferably prepared using some seldom-seen flavour-extracting gadget.

The reality is that I tend not to have much time to get the very basics of social-acceptability complete before forcing myself to sleep. Much of this is by choice, no doubt.

Facts: I’d rather read than sleep; I’d rather train the dog to retrieve three different dummies than wash up; and I’d rather cook an exciting dinner than pack a mundane yet healthy lunch.

Much of the time I have, however, is spent working and travelling to work, and trying to get done the things I (and my wife) feel need to be done. A bit of gardening to keep the neighbours from tutting, a bit of washing up so dinner can be made, and walking/training the pup so he doesn’t go mental and eat the cat, our house and the whole world…

I have realised, over the past few weeks, that much of my lifestyle is dependent on a web-connected world. That last sentence reads a bit like an obvious reality from a blogger and someone employed in web innovation; but I mean more than just “My job is dependent on the web”. I work from home half the week rather than commuting the 60+ miles to the office every day; and this requires web access, a vpn connection to work, and various communication services. But I also live in rural Shropshire, and tend to do most of my shopping online. I phone my family back in the states via Skype and keep in touch with friends, colleagues and acquaintances on Twitter. I even plan meetings, arranging transport and buy any travel tickets online. It would be impossible for me to live here and work as I do without a web-enabled life.

The web is part of this lifestyle, though, and there is actually more to this “connected” living than just the links on the web. You see, there is something more about organisation involved. It’s not just that I have a connection to a retail site, but that they’ve innovated their organisation to the point that I can buy most of what I need and want, have it delivered to my door the next day, and still save money and a HUGE amount of time. These connected companies (more in another blog post, probably) are taking advantage of scale to bring a service to web-enabled shoppers.

But its only recently that more interesting services have begun to spring out of this connected cloud of companies. I’ve talked about kiva.org, which organises charitable micro-finance loans through the medium of web-connection and building upon the shoulders of giants like PayPal, who were early innovators in organising payments online. But what about little things? Sure, we can change the world, but can we make a difference to, for example, how we eat tomorrow?

Enter: graze.com. Rob at the office jokingly calls them SaaS (Snacking as a Service). Graze sends a box of healthy and tasty snacks through the post to arrive on subscribed days of the week (i.e. I have mine delivered to the office on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays). Graze mixes fresh and dried fruit with nuts and other healthy snacks, for £2.99/box including postage. This is great, healthy food delivered regularly to my desk in time for lunch for less than £3/day!

Graze mixes a few recent innovations to produce this service. Rob’s comment surfaces the “as a Service” ethic, which essentially fills a particular need on a subscription business model via the web. It’s also reminiscent of jukeboxes or music subscriptions applications like Spotify or even iTunes, in that you can choose the level of detail you want to use in organising your snacking, or you can simply “shuffle” them, being surprised but putting no effort into planning.

The long/short? I’ve actually saved money, because I no longer pop out to a petrol station to spend £4 on a barely edible sandwich and snack. I feel better, because this food is actually, truly great for me and It feels nice to eat something light but sustaining when sitting at a desk for hours. I don’t skip lunch, so I’m less inclined to trough when I get home, and all by simply outsourcing my lunch!

What else needs organising in life? Tidying as a service? No? Clothing? Wardrobe as a Service? Ooh, if anyone wants a startup, I’ve got a great idea for a service that delivers clothes perhaps monthly to keep your wardrobe refreshed, or allows for special days (weddings, balls etc… too). What would you outsource, and what service would you provide?

 

Hook me up

my mac is cool kkkkk by yaraaa

'my mac is cool "kkkkk"' by yaraaa

I’ve been blogging a bit over on Nodalities about “stuff being connected”. The idea being basically: everyone is constantly creating data—all the bits of information that can be used in abstract.  These tiny bits of information are constantly being generated by every process we undertake, from the obvious like online banking to the more obscure like driving to work (your odometer tells you how many miles you’ve gone, your on-board computer may store info about your car’s status, your satnav knows where you’re going and been, your mobile phone may know this too, the garage knows when your last service was… this list can go on and on). These data are more powerful when automated by software, and they become exponentially more useful when they are connected with other data. For example, the knowledge that £50 pounds left your account isn’t particularly helpful without a connection to that little bit of data which tells you the date of the transaction.

But why are some data more obscure—why don’t we even think about using some of them?

It may be simply because they’re not immediately useful to us, yet. We can, right now, log in to our banks and have a look at our accounts. We can shuffle and access and compare and analyse because this information is being presented to us in an easily-managed and understandable way. We have access to the raw data, and most of us have some basic understanding of why these data are important. I wouldn’t be surprised if readers of this blog have a spreadsheet or two with financial calculations on it, or use quicken with their balance info. We all know how important calendar events, emails, address book contacts, and bank balances are, and we have various systems to deal with them.

But, what do we DO with all the data we don’t currently access routinely? Well, this is where those connections come in. We can connect data together using some sort of framework, or abstract construct like a database. However, this database will need to be connected to another database (or exported to an existing one) in order for these new bits and pieces to be considered in terms of others.

More simply, the tools and formats we use all the time (spreadsheets, calendars, notepads, computers, odometers etc…) already exist but they don’t currently take into account the further levels of data we create. We don’t have a tool to see our car’s mileage at a certain date, so we’d need to walk out to the car, look at the odometer, and guess. The bit that’s missing is the connection—the link between information we have and a tool or another bit of data. In the previous example, we need a database to collect mileage, a connection between that and date data, and a calendar to view it—tools and data.

There are two sides to these software tools, though. There’s the side presented to the user, and the side that is accessed by processors and memory and software. I’ll blog more on the human-side later, but the “stuff” happens at the edge of these two coming together.

The “Semantic Web” works on a framework which enables any data to be easily connected to other data. Instead of sitting in a traditional relational database, which makes its connections based on a set of specific instructions (schemas), all the data are encoded with a bit of information identifying them to the web. In essence, each piece of data has an address, and can be pointed to much like a web site points to another. This works at various levels of granularity, so individual records can be linked very easily, allowing for applications to be written on top of these linked data. These applications can then let us analyse, manipulate, swap, and USE anything, literally, that we can link.

Alongside this linked data infrastructure (call it the Semantic Web, or Data Web or just the Web) is the proliferation of computing hardware. Processors and memory are being manufactured into just about anything we can buy. Thiese are all working  to take the stuff we do and “translate” it into data. Phones, cars, fridges, credit cards, clocks, scales, watches… we’re surrounded by little processors or bits of memory recording and crunching what we do. What makes this situation currently frustrating/exciting is that they currently don’t share their information, and aren’t “aware” of the potential of other computing.

So, what am I getting at? Well, like we’re saying over on Nodalities, hook it up! We’re getting data, that’s happening. We have the framework(s) and the distributed network (the Web), and we have decades of experience automating data-comparisons (which is all Software ever does, if you boil it down).

The next step is to connect it.

Enhanced by Zemanta

 

Pheasant Normandy/Hereford

Elliot's Pheasant Syrmaticus ellioti

Image via Wikipedia

So, I’ve been “tagged” by Rob Styles to post a recipe and pass on the goodness. I really enjoy cooking, but trying to write down a recipe that I like making is trickey. I tend to cook like recipes my Nanny (great-grandmother) handed down: “pinch of salt, splash of oil (pronounced roughly “all”), dash of nutmeg”. I’m also aware that there are many dishes I cook which tend to vary considerably, depending on what I happen to have.

So, since I live in the countryside, wear tweeds and wellies on occasion and own a flat-cap, I’ll have to post a recipe with pheasant!

Now, this isn’t too hard, cause pheasant’s taste wonderful! The only thing to remember when cooking them, is that they’re drier and more flavourful than chicken, so cooking them in ways which drain out juices is generally a poor way to proceed.

The following recipe is less a list of ingredients and well-laid-out cookbook instructions, but more of a narrative. The ingredients you can use vary very widely, and you can even cook it differently if you fancy. The basic idea, tho, is to combine apples and pheasants in a lovely, creamy dish!

So, to start, get some or all of the following (serves 2-3):

1 pheasant (which you can get “in the feather” for less than £2 per brace—that’s two birds—or cleaned for a couple quid) 3-5 shallots Thyme (fresh is best) 1 good-sized cooking apple Garlic Butter Calvados or brandy Butter Quality, dry cider (or white wine, if you Normandy to Hereford) Single Cream

You can proceed in several ways, right from the start. If you want a caserole-style dish, joint your bird first, and prepare all the ingredients in a caserole dish to bake in the oven. You can also cook it in a heavy, lidded pan on the stove, or in the slow cooker. I tend to leave the bird whole until it falls apart on the plates!

Heat some butter in a heavy, largish pan. Brown your well-seasoned bird, either the jointed chunks or manoeuvring the whole bird so it’s nice and golden. Just before it goes crispy (you’re trying to give it texture and colour, not fry it through) add finely-chopped shallots and garlic. As the onions get soft, slightly lower the heat and add a measure of brandy to flame. The best way is to pour it into a ladle, and warm it as you pour a bit of the brandy over the pheasant then light the liquor—pouring a little more at a time, without letting the flame follow into the ladle. Finally, once the flame goes out, chuck in some freshly-torn thyme and allow that to pop and fry for a minute or so.

Put the meat and onions into your caserole dish or slow-cooker,and de-glaze the pan with a little bit more brandy, pouring all the cooking juices back over the pheasant. Add the chunkily-sliced apple to the dish, and pour in some cider or white wine. I don’t give measures here, because it’s entirely up to you. If you want it to be a bit more stew-like, use more liquids, even adding some good poultry stock. Likewise, you can reduce it a bit more for a richer flavour.

Now cover and let it cook slowly. If you’re caseroling, it should take about an hour in a medium-hot oven. If you’re slow-cooking, it can take as long as you want beyond about 2 hours. Make sure, if you’ve gone for the slightly drier method, to baste the bird now and then, or add a knob of butter to the top to keep it nice and juicy.

When it’s all cooked, remove the whole bird (if you’re using it jointed, ignore that) to rest.  Stir in your single cream, and let it warm through. Now, I depart with tradition here even further by not reducing everything down and blending all the apple/onions to a pureed oblivion. I simply halve the bird and serve with some roasted potatoes and seasonal veggies (also great on champ or mash!) and splash the juice and onions/apples alll over.

Drink: although this is a poultry dish, it will always be served in autumn or winter (pheasant season runs from September to February), so I tend to shy away from white wine. Also, pheasant is game, and has a richer flavour than most poultry people tend to eat, so I like this with a warming winter wine… maybe pinot noir? I’ve had it with pinotage and cabernet sauvignon (not mixed, but on two separate occasions) and it was rather nice.

The idea is to get all the flavour out of the pheasant without letting it dry out. This dish can be changed to be more like a stew with the addition of a flour roux and a bit more stock, or it can be reduced down to a lovely rich drizzle for a more fine-dining approach.

Enhanced by Zemanta

 

Future of Web Apps

I’m planning to attend this year’s Future of Web Apps conference in London. Their list of speakers sounds fantastic, and I’m really looking forward to meeting some folks in real life.

I’m particularly interested in this conference for its stated focus on the web community. Just have a look at the Agenda:

  • How to grow and nurture your community
  • Work/life balance or Blood, sweat and tears: Which is the startup way?
  • Colliding Worlds: Using Jabber to make awesome web sites
  • Startups live – An interview with three new European startups
  • How to survive outside of Silicon Valley
Sounds good, doesn’t it?
There are also “Networking Opportunities” there. These sound brilliant despite the rather corporatese description.
They’ve apparently got seats left, and if you book before 4th August, you save £100.
If you’re going, let me know—we can meet up. I can tell you a bit about myself and Talis.

 

Jacqui Smith’s New Immigration Measures are a pointless Gesture…

Blogging about politics can be a bit of a mixed bag, so we’ll see how it goes. I want to avoid polarising talk, tabloid tactics, and FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt). Instead, I’d like to discuss the latest raft of changes which seek to make immigrants ‘more British’ before offering them citizenship.

Personal Perspective

First, and as a matter of context: I am an immigrant. I was born and raised in Colorado, USA, and have lived in the UK for the last 5 years or so. My national identity, however, is a more complicated matter. I resonate politically better with Britain than the United States. I admire more British personages than American (probably due to the fact that the only great Americans I can think to name are either dead or long dead…). I laugh at British comedians, and listen to Radio 4. I queue. I share the occasional withering glance  with my fellow public transport passengers whenever a tourist declares loudly that something is cute or quaint. I even say: "Oh, excuse me, sorry" when someone else runs into me at Sainsburys, and I say "Cheers" or "Ta" even when someone should be thanking me.

This has put me in an interesting position at times. I have been part of conversations when the other party doesn’t actually know, or momentarily forgets, that I grew up singing The Star-Spangled Banner before watching baseball.

"Well, I think Americans are rude and ignorant".

"Oh?" I say.

"Yes, they’re always going on about how small everything is and they don’t know where Somerset is."

"I know where Somerset is, and I have been asked where Shropshire is by Londoners," I reply.

"Oh, but you’re different. You’re not really American. You don’t have an accent… and you’re don’t think I’m cute.

"Quite"

Immigration in the UK

I get the feeling that many mainstream British ideas are fairly far removed from immigrants as people. There is a distinct themness about immigrants, and I think this notion is exploited by politicians and commentators who have to justify their cynical existences. Over the past five years, I have learned that immigration is ranked among education and health in the national psyche, and politicians who want need to be seen doing something can easily turn to immigration policy for support. This national concern for immigration is baffling.  According to the National Statistics Office, less than 10% of the UK population were foreign born in 2006. (In the US, for the same year the number was nearly 14%). So, less than one in ten people in the UK are foreign born, and even fewer of those have recourse to public funds, yet this ranks among Education and Health?

I can see that there is cause for thought, cause for discussion, but not cause for concern. A study for the OECD stated: “the ratio of immigrants (no matter how defined) has grown steadily in all Western European countries considered, except Belgium.”1 So, immigration is definitely on the rise, and I don’t debate that. However, most of them have the sense not to move to Belgium so they can’t be all bad. The flip side of this is that immigration has actually increased the UK economic growth rate, according to the TUC. There is, I feel, cause for concern in that the general public does not understand immigration all that well as outlined by a brilliant article from the sometimes-inflammatory Independent: "Lies, Damned Lies and Immigration".

Now, what has really got me angry is the new scheme from Jacqui Smith, Home Secretary, that immigrants will have to work harder to "earn their right to become UK citizens".  (Press Coverage: Telegraph, Guardian, Times and BBC) and it includes increasing the time before a migrant can be naturalised and an increased fee. Gordon Brown has also mentioned, according to Radio 4 reports and the Times (see link above) that immigrants should have to undertake community service to be introduced to the British Way of Life.

Let me explore that a bit:

Money

It costs a fortune to immigrate to the UK. I am American, and chose to move to the UK for love –my wife is British. I like it here, but it is an expensive place to live. Tax is high, services are expensive, and it is required of an Immigrant to pay large sums of money every few years. I should mention that I have been paying UK income tax  and national insurance despite being unable to access public funds for some of my immigration journey and that I attended a UK university after marrying and immigrating, and paid full fees (during the time, around £9k/year) so none of my education was subsidised by any taxes I have paid.

The cost of visas and fees is high, indeed. There is a cost for the initial visiting Visa to get married (currently £500) which lets you stay here for 6 months, without recourse to public funds. You then must apply for temporary residency (£395) which lasts for a couple years. Then, if you want indefinite leave to remain (and if you don’t, you’ll need to sort out alternative accommodation fast) it will cost you £750. I’ve paid each of them, one after the other every few  months or years. The total: £1645, and I’m still not a citizen. If I want to become one, I still have to pay £9.99 for a book on what it means to be British (Ha!), £34 to take a citizenship test (which most UK citizens can’t actually pass) and a massive £655 for the application. Then I’d be invited to attend a citizenship ceremony at which I will be required to pledge an oath, and I haven’t found out if that costs me more yet… new total? £2343.99, and Jacqui Smith wants more. I see this as a combination of four distinct ideas, blended in a dangerous cocktail:

  • A genuine need for money to run immigration services
  • A cash-cow for a cash-greedy government
  • A political scapegoat for opportunistic political figures
  • A Protection Racket, where people who are legally seeking residence are exploited with the threat of having their life plans crushed

British Way of Life

What, exactly did Gordon Brown mean when he said he was thinking of having immigrants doing more in the community? I am assuming he did not mean most of the plumbing, or supplementing the taxes for an aging population. For clarity, let me say that these proposed changes will have no effect on the most discussed group of migrants: Eastern Europeans. They already have access to the country through the EU and do not need to pay all the clearance fees. So, making all the non EU migrants do community service will help them to understand what it means to be British? I would have thought a crash-course in happy slapping or under-aged drinking would have been more apt. How many British people do you know who do community service?The most illuminating illustration I heard about the preposterousness of this was a commentator on Radio 4 who pointed out that Abu Hamza (hook-handed, one-eyed favourite of the Sun headlines and controversial fundamentalist cleric of Finsbury Park mosque) could have been said to have been active in his community, and undertook volunteer work. Gordon Brown’s government has already implemented a Britishness test (see link in previous paragraph) which is so patronising and oblique I don’t know what it is for. Some of the facts you are expected to know (Taken directly off the test site):

  • Where have migrants come from in the past and why? What sort of work have they done?
  • Do women have equal rights in voting, education and work, and has this always been the case? (What does this have to do with Britishness? Do we need to know that we were tardy giving women the vote, that there is still a disgraceful gender pay gap or that women are under-represented in all aspects of public society? Surely we don’t want Migrants thinking about that too much?)
  • When do children take tests at school? How many go on to higher education? (This changes every couple years, drastically.)
  • Do many children live in single parent families or step-families? (Any ideas? Have a guess…2,672,000 dependent children in single parent families, according to the National Statistics Office. Bet you didn’t know that.)
  • How many people belong to an ethnic minority and which are the largest minority groups? Where are there large ethnic communities?
  • And finally, my favourite: Where are Geordie, Cockney and Scouse dialects spoken? (I’d have said North London, where you can hear quite a few more than that, just on one street!)

Finally, Timing

Is one extra year without citizenship going to make any difference to society? The people who want to become citizens have already been inundated with extortionate fees, made to feel unwelcome, and made to wait for more than 5 years for a passport and the right to vote. These people are already here, and cannot have broken any residence laws anyway. It will not effect illegal immigrants, assylum seekers, EU Immigrants, Non-doms (stupid name that sounds like condom every time a news-reader says it!) or terrorists. They will have been working and paying tax, and are likely to work in jobs not filled by Britain’s workforce anyway (According to TUC report). One more year without representation or a passport  is an easy way for Jacqui Smith to appear tougher on immigration without changing the numbers at all. It is a meaningless gesture, which only benefits a small number of wealthy politicians seeking to look tough and adds months of difficulty for normal people.

1: "Labour market outcomes of natives and immigrants: Evidence from the European Community Household Panel", Franco Peracchi and Domenico Depalo, OECD, 2006, p1, Quoted from TUC paper on Immigration, see hyperlink within text.

 
© 2010 Zach Beauvais
some rights reserved