"Confetti" by mr_gonzales

I have talked a lot about metaphor, both here and, perhaps sadly, to my friends and family. Metaphor and the abstract are true passions of mine, and I can’t help but see them everywhere. I suppose, it’s the nature of metaphor to be everywhere, really.

So, seeing (or, “experiencing”, since “seeing” is really a metaphor) one idea or concept in terms of another is a kind of abstraction. You’re essentially changing your perspective on something by bringing in another concept. Metaphor, generally, is about comparison and noting the similarity, but I suppose there can be an element of the dissimilarity which makes them work. So, if I use a literary metaphor (comparing two things without the use of a similating word like “like” or “as”) and say: “this computer is rubbish”; I’m fundamentally making a comparison between the two notions—”this computer” and “rubbish”. It is the similarity which I am stressing; and, on the surface, using “rubbish” as a sort of modifier of the computer.

However, there is a whole plethora of meaning in this statement, if you pull yourself back from it a bit. What’s rubbish? Rubbish is stuff we throw away; it can smell bad; it’s collected from our houses and fills holes in the ground; we don’t want rubbish; we don’t like rubbish; it’s a generic term for things we don’t like or are unhappy with. With this simple statement, I’m ever-so-casually bashing together large quantities of information and notion, and letting the meanings fall where they will. Inside this somewhere is the idea of “propositionality”, meaning that I’m letting the hearer of this statement draw their own conclusions to what I’m saying (he’s not happy with his computer, his computer may not be very good, he wouldn’t recommend it, he’s having a bad day…) some of which is intended, some of it not (at, least, not consciously). There are also cultural considerations in that there is a sort of social consensus that this metaphor “works” and that we must not literally interpret this statement as an intention to physically dispose of an object (which is good when you consider any time you’ve ever heard a person “understood or experienced in terms of” rubbish This leads me to think that there are also elements of disassociation between the two concepts, so that some of the meaning is actually in the difference between “rubbish” and “this computer”. I’m probably not going to throw it away (at least, not immediately); It’s probably something I’ve bought and have no intention of burying in the ground; I expect to be happy or satisfied with it (whereas, you wouldn’t about a used tea-bag). So, the two concepts modify each other, they’re like points in a perspective, making it possible to glean added meaning from the situation which is greater than just the two ideas themselves.

(if you’re still reading by here, email me, and we’ll have a pint!)

I mentioned in my previous post that data are used in abstraction. What I mean by this, is that a bit of data is “used” in a process when it’s a point of reference for something. This number + that number = another number, the two numbers are reference points for the sum. When I say: “I’m busy on the 2nd” it means that I’ve referred to a bit of data (a number on a calendar application, an email, or whatever) that I’ve used as a point of comparison. I’ve essentially understood the projected state of my schedule in terms of what i’ve already planned to occur. And, these bits of data are more and more powerful when the perspective you gain from them is more accurate.

When we get more reference points, and more interactions, our perspective becomes more flexible. We can abstract ourselves right out, and look at a very broad picture. Google’s Pagerank does this by mining clickstream information from a very, very large dataset using very simple reference points: the number of links to an item increases its position in the rank. Conversely, we can focus right in on a single notion or dataset using as many different references as possible to understand a limited set of transactions. Amazon’s book results page is full of this kind of perspective with user-ratings, purchase histories, browsing behaviour, and mathematical algorithms to give a very full picture (and options to accomplish a task) of a single notion.

So, I think that data are very similar to metaphor in that they are used to understand one thing (or set of things) in terms of another (or others).

The upshot of this is that we can refer to this abstract concept of “data” in terms that help us to understand both their significance and their utility to us. When I say: “I want my data to do this”, it’s not that helpful unless you understand that I’m trying to get all my reference points to produce a perspective to help me accomplish something. Which leads me to my main point: the whole point of metaphor is to help—or possibly enable—our understanding. Data should do the same. Collecting all the bits and pieces of information you incur by being a person and doing things should bring you some form of understanding leading to a benefit.

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• Semantic Metaphors

'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.

Image via Wikipedia

“Hi, Fred. Nice Jumper.”

“Gee, thanks…”

My old music instructor used to have a saying: “It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.” It became a bit of a mantra. Our high-school band benefited from this saying whenever he pointed out that while our notes might have been right, and our rhythm more or less on time, the pieces still sounded “damp”, “flat”, “wishy-washy” or a host of other qualifiers. He’d say, “Think about two people: one says to the other: ‘Nice shirt…’ in a tone which makes you think his next thought is: ‘I didn’t know the charity shop did give-aways?’ He didn’t really mean it’s a nice shirt, right?”

I think this mantra applies to any creative situation, and It’s something from which everyone from artists to executive managers can benefit. However, I’d go a bit further than Mr. Smith did. I’d say: “It’s not what you say, it’s that you say it well!” For me, it’s a balance between getting the notes right, and making sure the tune’s lively. Or, to break out of this moderately over-extended metaphor, making sure your processes, data, procedures, and the rest are done right, but also that they’re put to their best use.

It’s all very well having high-quality data, dutifully collected over the course of a project, stored well, and properly curated. If, at the end of the project, the only thing you have to report is that you have such data, it seems to me the project was a bit damp, wishy-washy or flat. Or, maybe your data are put to use, but they’re presented in a plain, non-innovative way, they’re never going to reach their full potential. It’s the balance between high-quality data, and a well-developed application. It’s at this interplay between planning and execution, I think, that projects live or die.

Nor is this just about software development. Governmental projects, street-parties, departmental mergers, and buying Christmas presents would all seem to me to need this balance to succeed. The interplay is the hard part, and it’s a balance of resource allocation, strategy, timing and creativity. It’s also the most unpredictable point, and it’s reflected everywhere:

That moment you throw the ingredients into a heated pan, or begin plating up your party meal

That bit between re-reading and publishing a blog post

That split-second before saying a comforting phrase to a hurting friend

The seconds between shelf and shopping basket

The hours between announcement and “go live”

It’s exciting, it’s nerve-racking, it’s crucial. All of these will fail, or fail to impress, if the execution and assessment are not aligned. Cooking rubbish steak well will be hard work for little reward. A well-written article without a good understanding or decent research will fall flat; or, likewise, a stack of well-thought-out ideas or conclusions thrown into a document without care or skill wrecks weeks of hard graft. And the list goes on.

So, what am I saying?

Make sure your projects, whether at work or at home, are well-planned. But, don’t waste this effort with a poor execution or an epic fail at the last hurdle. It’s the best stuff born from the energy of this balance that you’ll remember and will provide stepping stones for future work. And, frankly, you owe it to yourself, your customers, and society to stop ticking along.

Plan in some innovation at the beginning of a project. A dinner party with a bit of “je ne sais quoi” doesn’t just happen, and it’ll need some time to get the tweks and “I’d never have thought of that” moments. Your non-profit will let your cause down if you continue to do what’s always been done or over-use an idea that worked so well in 1995.

Tune your instruments, ladies and gentlemen, but make sure you’re in tune yourselves.

Or, as Mr. Smith used to say: “It needs to sound so good, it’ll turn goats piss into gasoline!” And no one could ever think of any reply…

Image via Wikipedia

(Update: Youtube clip added at bottom of post)

This morning, after switching on the kettle, I set my laptop on the kitchen counter and shuffled through the BBC iPlayer’s “Factual” category—looking for something interesting to keep me company as I made my porridge and coffee. I stumbled across Question Time, and noticed that this special edition was being broadcast from the United States—something to do with an election? I was more thrilled that the entire panel was American, with the notable exception of a personal hero of mine, British professor of history at Columbia University Simon Schama.

Things, however, did not go according to plan, and I was very soon restraining myself from damaging my employers’ Macbook with the wooden spoon I’d shortly before been using to stir my porridge. After realising that unless I switched off the iPlayer in short order, I’d either have to remove the spoon from the screen or my clenched teeth.

I took a minute to reflect at my reaction.

I had lasted through only a few answers to the first question.

As a quick introduction to Question Time, for my American readers—clearly something the audience at this recording had been denied—the format of the programme is straightforward and effective. David Dimbleby chairs a panel of note-worthies, and selects from a series of questions submitted by the audience for the panel to answer one by one. It is a political programme which has featured many of the most important British figures including Tony Blair—while still Prime Minister. The panel usually consists of a politician or two, a political theorist or commentator (often an academic) and, often, a slightly more off-beat character such as Ian Hislop.

“Which candidate does the panel believe could and would restore America’s battered image abroad?”

Simon Schama: “Barak Obama”

Appreciative applause.

The historian then outlined his reasoning that the Democratic candidate’s heterogeneous past and perspective of global citizenship could only help America’s “perhaps undeserved” tarnished foreign reputation. Specifically, Schama noted, the rhetoric of war as a last resort rather than an elective option could play an important role in diplomatic relationships.

One of the other panelists, this time from a more Republican-friendly platform, stated that he believed John McCain would fulfill this role more effectively.

Cheering, whooping, and a few boos.

The panelist then went on to outline why he thought the reputation of the US is not tarnished in some places abroad, and that many African nations actually admire American foreign policy. He also stated that Iraq could turn out to be a dramatic success… each of the rest of the panelists listing their preferences and reasoning.

Several audience members were then asked their views, and this is when my breakfast  began to take a less supportive role in my morning. One particular man was asked who he’d like to see in the White House, and his response of “John McCain” brought whoops and cheers before he could speak more of his mind.

Unfortunately, however, he did speak more.

With a notably impressive display of condescending superiority, the gentleman in an expensive suit addressed Simon Schama, beginning with: “You’re a typical professor. You are it. With all respect, our country is not hated overseas, I’ve been to fifty-five countries…” continuing that the US “brings hope to people” and that it is not hated overseas. “We’re the most charitable nation on earth, as evidenced by George Bush, and all the work he did…”

His tone then took on a challenging note: “with all respect, don’t talk about our country being villafied overseas, when we are respected and loved by millions of people BECAUSE OF WHAT WE DO FOR THEM.” [emphasis his, as he shouted over the cascade of applause and the chairman's attempts to direct the discussion.] “AND WE DIE FOR THEM, AND WE DIE FOR THEM.”

I was already impressed by this increasingly visceral outburst, when he capped his performance with a patronisingly disgusted gesture allowing the typical professor his reply. As Schama began his response, the suited gentleman continued his statement, raising his voice over the top of audience and Schama… and it all continued to escelate until eventually, Shcama was able to say “if I’m a typical professor, you’re a typical blowhard; let me finish.”

The spoon, by now, was nowhere near the pan, and I found myself gawping at the screen in irrational hope that the man would shut up.

The problem, from my perspective, is not about which candidate wins this election, nor from which side of an all-but-imaginary political fence one happens to stare through. The problem is the offensive-defence of American rhetoric. It’s pre-emptive, visceral, and primitive. It makes respectable-looking people speak without thought. It damages credibility, and makes the speaker look like a bafoon. And I know it well.

Having been raised in the States, I know the blood-pounding-in-the-ears nature of political discussion. The goal is to be right, absolutely; and to make sure anyone watching—and, if possible the opponent himself—knows you’re the right one. The problem with this is that facts are tactical, discussion conduit, and people incedental. It’s all a vehicle for your personal perspective (the right one) to be broadcast with as little ambiguity as possible. And it might even lead to interesting dichotomies and contrasts if it wasn’t all done  under the influence of adrenaline.

You see, from an outsiders’ perspective, this suited businessman illustrated America. “We’re right!” “We’re the most charitable!” “We fought for you!” “We freed Iraq, goddammit!” and: “We’re not hated abroad! Don’t tell me we’re hated, don’t YOU talk about OUR country…” The logical, conscious part of any discussion is abandoned, and it’s down to bare-knuckles. “I can’t understand your words, man, cause my ears are throbbing, so I’m gunna SHOUT at you so I can hear my OWN damn voice!”

My response surprised me: I tsked, and muttered: “typical American, can’t see he’s trying to tell the world what it thinks.” I appreciated the irony of this hateful person insisting we’re not hated. I found the fact that a professor’s extraordinary career and the phrase “with all due respect” could be used as conduits for hatred exquisitely funny. I would have laughed and enjoyed a British moment of personal, quiet exultation in the foolishness of the speaker if it hadn’t been for one thing.

The audience.

The audience rose to this diatribe with a fervency of whooping, cheering, clapping and shouting. The whole place suddenly became a bowl of people shouting down the suited man, the panel, Dimbleby and each other. I stood gobsmacked in my kitchen, spoon dripping oats onto the cat and begged God not to let any of my friends watch this.

Until Americans are willing to put emotional defensiveness and denial aside from their rhetoric, there will be a continued decline in their perception overseas, regardless of their political opinions, good deeds or noble willingness of sacarifice. America, as an entity, is hated by some people overseas. We need to deal with it, not shout them down or question their right to not like us very much (and, by God, they have such rights).

And, the question came again to me: “Where are all the considerate, contempletative Americans I knew growing up? Where are the people who give more generously than any other nation? Where are the peace-makers and volunteers? Where are the AIDs workers, teachers, and nurses?” I only pray that when the hubris of the TV-talkers dies, the dignity I know lives on in the US is left standing.

Update:

The incident I spoke of has obviously stricken a chord with others, because it’s appeared on Youtube:

The problem with all that is that you didn’t instantly recognise all the good things in that very brief narrative sentence. The web is an interconnected bunch of arbitrarily-related pages, like a catalogue of (often good) stuff, without an index. It’s arbitrary, because the pages only exist when it’s linked to; and the stuff can be anything from a purchasable item to an innovative idea. This network is mind-numbingly huge and even the most versatile of polymaths can’t be interested in all of it. So, what we want is all the good stuff, and we want it with all the flexibility an arbitrary system can offer (I like this, this and this… are they related in any way?)

Well, when I look at them, I can see that they’re related; and not just because I happen to have chosen three things I like. I have had the tremendous privilege of testing a gadget which lets me capture these things, and lets me peek at how they connect with my own little perspective on the web. The gadget’s called Glue, and it’s the latest offering from AdaptiveBlue. I’ve blogged about AdaptiveBlue’s Smartlinks in the past, and they’re responsible for the little icons next to the linked things above (if you have a decent browser). What they’ve been doing is allowing you to contextualise the stuff on the web, and Glue goes a step further by letting you also interact with other folks’ contexts.

Firstly, Glue is a browser plugin for Firefox (remember, I said to get a decent browser?). Glue creates a  bookmark in your bar, but the real magic occurs when you navigate to some stuff. As you seek out or stumble across interesting things online, the Glue menu glides down, giving you instant options to “like” the item, find out more about it, and see who else has “liked” it too. They have an excellent walk-through on their site, so I won’t duplicate their efforts by explaining how it works here, but it does recognise many kinds of “stuff” from a myriad of very important sites.

The interesting part, for me, is that it brings a context to all the arbitrary links we follow all the time. We can see where we fit in with this, and what our mates think too. Best of all, these things are treated just like that: as the things in which we’re interested. I want to talk about this book, not this page about the book. I want to rate this book, and if a friend sees it on another site, he’ll still see that I liked it!

Best of all, it’s a social network without the need for a social-networking space. It’s the first thing I’ve seen which successfully breaks out of the need to be inside a specific place in order to interact and contextualise—we don’t need MyFace’s training wheels! Glue shifts its focus from trying to hem in, or reduce the web, to elegantly augmenting it.

As you can tell, I really like this gadget, and I thank @fraser and @alexiskold for building it, and letting me have a play of the Beta.

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.

On the short cab-ride to my hotel following FOWA (more to follow), the cab driver was explaining the extension of the conference venue. This is not usually the preamble to a conversation that changes your perspectives, except maybe on the architectural uses of steel spider’s legs and concrete. However, he was saying that the folks that bought Manchester United (actually, he should have said City), bought the Excel centre for a $1billion.

“Apparently,” said the cabby, “they do a lot of, you know, ‘God conferences’, evangelical like, yeah?”

“Oh?” I enquired—shocked because I’d been greeted by some charismatics in red teeshirts on my first visit to FOWA, and they’d been there every morning, greeting folks entering the conference and—strangely—leaving the toilets.

“Yeah, there’s a lot of money in it over in the States. Folks that run ‘em want to come to England, and get some British God-money, I guess. Problem for them is: there aren’t any places big enough! So, they buy it, and are building a bigger place. Lots of dosh!”

What?

I had cynically been thinking to myself that the red-tee-shirted cohort of pentecostals greeting me by name (no, nothing spiritual—we all wear name-tags!) had been selected for their good looks and ethnic diversity. But I thought I was being cynical.

But here’s the thing: I overheard maybe ten conversations between geeks (It was a web conference, after all) about the “religious people/ god-folk/ Christian nutters”, and my heart sank. One or two said that a cheery greeting first thing in the morning is quite nice. Most, however, thought they were over-bearing, weird, or strangely sexy.

The thing that gets me here, is that the public image of Jesus’ followers is horribly maimed here. Wasn’t it Jesus who through money-changers out of the temple? Wasn’t it Jesus who went to societies low-lifes and changed their worlds? You think he would have scored well with a PR agency? Think he had a Marketing team or cheer-leaders?

“The only thing spiritual they [Arab investors in the venue] get is this:” and the cabby rubbed his fingers in the international symbol of money.

What should I say to this? I’m lost for words…

I’ve recently become something of a coffee guru at work. If this is a life goal for anyone, I have some very simple advice: buy some good coffee, and get some evangelical people addicted. The latest convert to the creative coffee cult is a designer called Chris (@cwaring). Coffee has brought a lot of joy to our office environment, and even made some of the Marketing banter reasonably bearable. It’s also apparently increased the design team’s productivity by 40%—though, since he was shaking noticeably when using the spreadsheet, I’m not sure that statistic can be completely trusted.

There is quite a strange relationship with coffee in Britain. On one hand, there is an overwhelming love of hot beverages. I remember helping out a mate with his garden on a  30º+ muggy summer afternoon, only to be offered a cuppa during a break. Setting aside bleach or glyphosate, I couldn’t think of anything less appropriate to drink on such an occasion. This love of hot drinks extends to family visits, dinner parties, breaks and any time when it is not virtually impossible to hold a mug. All in all, I think this is fantastic, and happily gather round the kettle whenever it’s possible (and less than torrid outside).

The other side of coffee is the British Imported Coffee Culture (BICC, henceforth). BICC exhibits itself in high-street chain-shops which all have a ever-so-slightly different angle on Seattle/Italian café chic. Strangely, most of the actual beverages from these shops seem to come from the same bean and machine combination. The atmosphere is identical, with a dominant shade of maroon, brown, blue or green making the atmospheric colour-branding the only discernable characteristic. To the consternation of conservative Brits the country over, each also has its own opaque size-referencing system designed to confuse and belittle the shop patron who inevitably ends up asking: “But, which is the Small one?”

It’s as if the BICC cartel (Bi3C, maybe?), gathered at some point in the early 2000’s and set down some industry guidelines. Firstly, because the British palette has been evolved around the flavours of milky tea and biscuits, the BICC beverages must avoid shocking customers by being essentially flavourless. Any foreign smart-arses asking for espresso will be greeted with a small glass of burnt tea leaves suspended in hot dishwater. Secondly, all baked goods (which are mandatory at a proper café) shall be supplied from a limited BICC-approved list of bakeries, and shall consist of huge, greasy muffins and strangely-contrived cake combinations like apricot and prune biscotti brownies—the more creative and unlikely combinations to be considered for annual prizes. Third: wherever possible, a smattering of faux-italiano shall be displayed and worked into the patois of serving staff (e.g. baristas), to cover any coffee blunders with an embarrassing cultural ambiguity. And, finally, because this is all imported and frightfully expensive-sounding, we shall be setting the prices for beverages, baked goods, and sandwiches at just below the cost of the weekly shopping. The business logic for this last point, as you can see from the PowerPoint presentation, is that people aspiring to the middle and upper classes will gladly pay extortionate cultural tariffs to appear coffee-literate.

Thus it was that the executive classes of Britain were won over to incredibly expensive milk, with a small addition of highly-addictive coffee made with impressive-looking but fully-automatic espresso machine monsters served by smiling, aproned baristas. (Incidentally, the term went down a storm at the cafe I worked at during University, since it was very near the Royal Courts of Justice, and many of the customers were barristers.)

Not happy with their strangle-hold on Britain’s purchasers of pin-stripes, however, BICC soon began infiltrating more reputable establishments. I know that the transformation of Imported Coffee Culture is more or less complete, now, since I was recently offered a “mochacino-latte” at a seaside chip shop. (After seeing the BICC-branded instant beverage machine behind the counter littered with polystyrene cups and a suspicious powder, I declined). These shops and places of amusement have opted for a lighter touch, however, and have begun simply calling it “froffy coffee”. The Froffee Coffee is a uniquely British indulgence consisting mainly of powdered milk sprayed through a plastic nozzle into a brown concentrate. The resulting chemical reactions produce a strangely petroleum-flavoured foam atop an instant-coffee. If you’d like to make it a “somethingcino”, the logic goes, you simply add a few tablespoons of drinking chocolate powder to the foam, cup, napkin and surrounding customers.

As far as I have been able to work out, most Brits are still impressed by a cafetiere, or anything which can be labelled “Proper Coffee”. Proper Coffee, like the Froffee Coffee, is a British sobriquet which applies to any coffee not made by adding boiling water to brown granules. I suspect that in some households, the granules placed in a coffee pot rather than directly into a mug might actually qualify.

I have decided, as a public service, to challenge the BICC, the Froffee Coffee and the Proper Coffee by outlining a few simple ways to experience the bliss of proper coffee (note lack of capitalisation).

• Beans
• Grinder
• Cafetiere/coffee press

It’s dead simple, really. Buy some beans, and don’t cry when you pay for them. A bag of Union Hand Roasted beans (more on them in another blog post, no doubt) will set you back for about the same cost as a single higher-priced drink at your local BICC establishment. I’ve heard that they can be found in Sainsbury or in Waitrose, though I order mine from their site.

Buy a coffee grinder. I’ve encountered the myth that grinders are incredibly expensive. I think the only power behind this is that no one seems to own one, making them seem rare and exclusive: here’s one for just over a tenner. You don’t need anything fancy, though if you want one that matches your Chi, you’re probably reading the wrong blog anyway.

Finally, a cafetiere, or coffee-press. As my family in the US calls them: French Press—possibly now the “Freedom Press, but I can’t be sure because I don’t watch Fox News.

That’s it. Now, grind the fresh beans (don’t keep them more than about a fortnight) until they’re “coursly ground”. It should look like sand, but not flour. I find in my grinder that between 6 and 10 seconds seems to work nicely. Boil the kettle, and pour a bit into the cafetiere in order to warm it up… pour this out and add the grounds. You’ll want 4-6 good-sized tablespoonfulls of grounds for a four-cup press. Add the slightly off-boil water and stir it so all the beans are nicely wet. Put the lid on, and wait about 4 minutes, then plunge and serve immediately.

That’s it. Proper coffee that tastes wonderful. A few additional things: clean your cafetiere thoroughly, and don’t fall for the myth that washing-up liquid is bad for them. You need to clean the oils off the mesh, or it’ll go rancid. Dont keep beans for more than a fortnigh: but for that short period, keep them in an air-tight container in a cool, dry place.

I’m hoping that’s helpful, and that you try it. If you want any more advice on roast, tastes, or what to look for in a nice bean, just drop me a line. If this post sounds slightly bitter, it’s because I just ran out of my Brazilian Bourbon from Union Hand Roast, and I’m less than happy about it.

Image via Wikipedia

I have begun to see that we may be entering a new age of polymaths, and I’m happy to be involved in a part of the business world which seems to sustain some of the best brains on the planet.

I remember reading about the beginners of industry—the pioneers of technology and science. I remember reading how Robert Fulton came up against problems in life, and simply invented new ways of doing things, leading eventually to the development of steam-powered paddle-wheel-boats. I remember, vaguely, from my propagandistically pro-industrial schooling that as a child, Fulton had invented or improved on the lead pencil, because the one he was using in school wasn’t up to scratch. The same story is reflected through many of the West’s inventors of what we’ve retrospectively come to call the Industrial Revolution: when opportunity or difficulty forced their hands, they changed the situation.

Now, aside from natural romanticism, I like to look to the past with neither rose-tinted glasses nor “isn’t-everything-better-now” short-sightedness. I’m sure that for every changer, there were crowds of followers in every age, and I’m sure many of you could point easily to both an earth-changer and a follower without too much effort. Besides, history pays scant attention to followers.

No, what I’m talking about is the seeming ease with which many of my colleagues in the web industry switch between impressively diverse tasks. Some I know make impressive presenters, and happen to hold PhD’s in fields more or less unrelated to what they do now… and can code Java and know a bit of CSS on the side. I fear to challenge any to play chess (since I haven’t played in over 5 years, and have the patience of a twelve-year-old), and several are rumoured to be better-than-average musicians. This diversified excellence, alongside the startups, ideas, enthusiastic organisations and programmes i’ve seen recently, remind me of the society-changers of a century and more ago. Not since then, I think, has such an importance been placed on ambition within social responsibilities.

One of the things I’ve seen most recently has been the Google 10^100 (apparently pronounced: ten to the one-hundredth with a typically geeky need to explain the pun) which aims to “help as many people as we can” by contributing $10million to fund earth-changing ideas. Their site is, in classic Google fashion, very straightforward, so I won’t repeat their blurb…just go have a read. But, while you are doing it, I dare you to set aside any cynicism you may harbour either toward a big business, or to any notion of “changing the world”. Think about what has and is being done, and then think how you could change the world.

They have done one thing in the past month which has really, really impressed me. They’ve got a plugin which lets you upgrade to the latest version of their software (which you install on your webserver yourself) without any complicated, difficult-to-remember steps. This is why I lost Drupal: upgrading, and it killing itself in the transfer. Now, I have the latest WordPress, and I’m very impressed.

Its WYSIWYG editor works better, and the media manager is fantastic. As you probably know, I stopped using a local blogging client because ecto is rubbish, and Vista is worse. So I now blog from WordPress itself through Firefox on my Mac. Three things that make me happy: Wordpress on Firefox running on a Mac… ah!

Another thing which is brilliant is the flickr sidebar plugin I have had for ages. I completely forgot to check out its “view more photos” link. It automatically finds images from the sets I’ve told it about, and uses them to create a page on my site populated with my flickr stream images!

On a down side, I’ve just noticed that it’s impossible to see the bottom of the sidebar if Twitter is down, because I have my tweets (micro-blog messages) being pulled into a widget above it, so if it’s down, it doesn’t load the rest of the sidebar. I think that’s something Wordpress should sort out. Oh, well. I’m just going to switch my images tab over to flickr.

CC: flickr, "Lightning and Stars" By Bill Liao http://flickr.com/photos/liao/

I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with sleep. I can remember being so upset I couldn’t sleep because I had to go to bed. Maybe this has bled into the present.

The funny part of it all, is I’d much rather not be asleep most of the time. My wife has always confused me with her desire, pretty continuously, to be unconscious. There is so much to think about, to read, to play, to discuss—why sleep?

So, now, it’s 2:15. I know that tomorrow I will feel wretched, and that can’t help. It started by me so very nearly falling asleep around 11:00. It’s been boiling, and I don’t really get on well with hot weather—especially when it’s so humid. I thought I had it tonight, though, with a nice cool bath, then In bed at a reasonable time to watch My Family with Wendy on iPlayer. That ended, so I switched on “Just a Minute” and turned down the screen until it was dark. I dozed off towards the end, only to be woken by something beeping somewhere. It stopped, but the damage had been done.

Next I switched on “Quote, Unquote” and walked downstairs for a glass of water, and had a bottle of lager instead, hoping the little alcohol might help a bit. It’s so much cooler down stairs, so I decided to remove myself to the sofa, still with “Quote, Unquote”. I had just settled when my phone dinged. It had finally delivered a message to Wendy, I’d sent before dinner. Then, after settling in again, Wendy’s phone received the text message. Her phone, a new one, now beeps every few minutes until the message’s been read… another trip across the room.

That’s when it started raining: by now I’m 15-minutes deep in Gardener’s Question Time. At last, it’s cooling off. Then it starts with the Thunder—which I have always hated. This rain literally poured down, and the thunder went through the house with a shuddering thud.

Gardeners’ Question Time gave way to “Word of Mouth”, which I can’t remember. By then I was feeling anxious, about literally nothing.

It’s the oddest feeling: beginning like discomfort, then a physical sensation in my arms. Finally, I can’t be horizontal any longer, and it’s another walk across to the smaller settee. I can’t actually put a thought to this ridiculous anxiety. I’m not scared about anything, really. My job’s brilliant, my mates are fantastic, and my Wife’s amazing. Sure, not everything’s perfect, but I’m not even thinking about my painful back or where I’m at with God or any of the other possible panic producers.

I decided to share, and it seems to help. The thunder’s past, my arms don’t feel funny, and I’m not worried at nothing. It’s just this strange, almost twilight of the night: 2:32. I ache a bit, which isn’t good, and I feel like moaning online is a bit sad.

I’d hate to meet me in the morning.

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

Well, the brains behind the new BBC iPlayer layout have failed, miserably! The new design is cluttered and lacks the wonderful functionality of the older sidebar. Its ease of use is completely gone in favour of… something? I have no idea what benefit the new layout brings. There is no additional feature set. It doesn’t DO anything different.

I have two major concerns with it:

1. It’s cluttered.

The benefit of the original iPlayer was an ease of use and elegant design. It was simple to find a programme, easy to play it, and easy to find related content. They have now juxtaposed radio and television programming, littered the screen with unfathomable boxes, and made the filtering by category bloody difficult. Its main content doesn’t fit above the fold, making its screen real-estate poorly-used even though there is much more content on display at one time. The wonderfully-simple method of sidebar filtering is gone in favour of some myspace-esque scatter-box setup. It’s complicated, un-elegant, and supremely difficult to use.

Poor effort, badly done.

2. It’s ugly. I know this is subjective, but the actual player doesn’t fit well in its space. For all the seeming effort to splash content across the screen, the player itself doesn’t use enough of the screen when it’s in viewing mode:

You wouldn’t guess that the better-looking part of this screen is below the window scroll line, would you? Instead you get terminal-esque white text below a plain box which doesnt fit.

When I went to the forum to see if anyone else had noticed, I was pleased to see the top-most comments were all complaints about the bad layout. The boards were closed (I can only hope because of overwhelming viscerole being poured out!) but I did note another poor design feature: the background gradient repeats both horizontally and verticaly. What this means is that on a wide-screen layout, you see a tiled gradient instead of a smooth black-to grey.

I hope the BBC Design team heeds the forums, this plea, and countless others waiting to occur. Please fix the great iPlayer. This revamp’s rubbish and it feels like something pushed out to tick boxes rather than satisfy user needs.

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• Owen Gibson on how the BBC iPlayer is to be revamped

I have a quite deep, wooden desk with drawers which tend to fill with clutter. I’ve decided to feed a powerstrip through the back of one of the drawers so I can plug in two usb hubs and my MacBook power cable there, out of the way. I’ve also managed to organise a system for filing my papers (I hate paper, it should always be on screen and searchable!) loosely based on the GTD (Getting Things Done) meme.

One thing I’ve done is to mount a powerstrip to the back of the desk, so I lose some of the trailing cables. It still amazes me, though, how many wires a single office space can generate! There’s still a cluttered feeling to the desk, and there’s nothing on it aside from computing paraphanelia.

I’m planning to put some shelves behind the monitor—the desk is very deep—on which to place external hard-drive and other necessities. I’d like to hide the cables behind it somehow, so they aren’t trailing in any way. I’ve bundled all the cabling with wire ties, and fed most leads through the monitor back, creating a funnel. The overall appearance, though, is still a bit too ad-hoc or rustic or… I don’t know.

What do you think? What would you do with this desk space?