Live from Austin!

The UK recently held an election for Mayor of London. Boris Johnson, a Tory crackpot, got elected. Or did he?

The election was counted electronically. It turns out that monitoring screens mostly showed meaningless data, most observers were unable to observe the votes being counted, the company set up to run the election says the machines were probably counting blank ballots, and nobody has been allowed to audit the software.

But hey, it only cost £4.5 million to get a bunch of numbers that might as well have been made up by some guy in a room somewhere.

Human beings have different kinds of memory; they remember things in different ways. Three common classes of memory are spatial memory, visual memory and verbal memory. (There’s also chronological memory, but that’s not relevant to my point here.)

I have excellent spatial memory. It’s what I rely on most. For example, if I start to think about how to get to a given place in town, I literally find 3D visualizations of my route flashing into my consciousness. I also have pretty good visual memory; when I make the journey, I verify that I’m going the right way by comparing the visual appearance of buildings and landscape that I pass with the scenes I remember.

My linguistic memory is terrible. If you asked me to name the actual streets on the route, I’d have a hard time remembering them. My mental map of London, for example, only has 6 street names. This makes me a really bad person to get directions from. “You take the narrow road that heads off at a thirty degree angle, right at the place with the green copper roof, over the light colored bridge…”

There’s an upside to my condition. If you rely on verbal memory to navigate, as soon as you step outside your known area you are pretty much lost until you can find a familiar street name. In contrast, I have a pretty good chance of navigating between two known points, even if the area in between is totally new to me.

This hierarchy of types of memory also applies in my interaction with computers. When I want to find my password manager, I don’t remember its name. Instead, I remember that it’s in the bottom hierarchical menu of my KDE menu, positioned near the top, and has a green icon.

I know this experimentally, incidentally: back in the System 6 days there was a joke Mac INIT that removed all the text from the menus. I tried it, and was quite startled to discover that I could still use most of my favorite applications.

With that background out of the way, I would like to talk about why for me, the new KDE 4 application launcher is a user interface disaster of epic proportions.

Continue reading »

It wasn’t too bad when the wind stopped–only about -3 to -6 Celsius. When we arrived in Minneapolis, it was actually slightly above freezing.

I managed to screw up my back somehow en route. I’m not sure how. I think it was a combination of nasty airplane seats, improvised pillows, five hours of journey, and cold gray weather.

We managed to rent a Prius. The logic was that although it isn’t 4 wheel drive, on icy roads it’s better to know exactly how the car will handle and how effective the brakes are.

I can’t help wishing that the in-laws lived in one of the pretty parts of Minnesota, like the north east. Down in the south east it’s basically flat and empty.

There are quite a few Mexican businesses. What must it be like to move from Mexico to Minnesota?

On Christmas Day I was laying on the sofa at sara’s grandmother’s house. In my head was “Nation” by Colourbox. I remembered buying the CD in London, sitting on the train at Baker Street and unwrapping it. It must have been 20 years ago. Why remember it now? I have no idea.

While we were in England, we got the train from Bournemouth to visit London.

London was an important part of my life as soon as I was old enough to be allowed to travel there without adult supervision. Some people are naturally country folk, some people are city people; even though I grew up in small villages and quaint towns, that was never where I really wanted to be.

I was curious to see how London had changed since I last saw it, nearly 10 years ago. We arranged to stay overnight with Shimrit in Stoke Newington, which Sara amusingly misheard as “Stoat Newington”.

Memories fade, and my main reason for going to London was to take my new video camera and visit a bunch of familiar places and record them; the streets, the buildings, the traffic, the crowds.

We arrived at Waterloo Station, so we started off by wandering towards the Thames and taking a look at the London Eye. The Eye had been built some time after I left the country. I’d seen it on Doctor Who, but not in real life. We didn’t actually go up in it; there was a long queue, and the ride itself would have taken another half hour or so out of our busy schedule. There were more important places to see.

We crossed over to the Houses of Parliament. They were protest-free, thanks to the new “Serious Organized Crime and Police Act”, which bans such serious crimes as holding up a banner outside Parliament. We continued on to Parliament Square, where some Iraq war protesters were quietly camped out along the fence facing Parliament. Across the street, heavily armed police kept everyone away from their elected representatives.

We turned right and headed along Whitehall, past the Treasury and Cabinet Office. Some tourists were gawping at guardsmen outside Horse Guards; it’s good to see that the Queen is doing her duty and keeping the Colour regularly Trooped. We passed the old War Office; and defra, who were probably busy panicking over the latest outbreak of foot and mouth.

Trafalgar Square was disappointingly blemished by scaffolding, tarpaulins and wooden hoardings. It was also full of sky rats, of course, but they’re expected, so you can’t really call them a disappointment. We stopped at a small Italian restaurant nearby for a spot of lunch, then continued towards Leicester Square.

As we walked past the Odeon towards Piccadilly Circus, everything started to get very familiar, and I started to get tearful. The Swiss Centre is still as it was, and the Trocadero hasn’t changed much. Apparently the former is due to be modernized a bit, so I was probably lucky to get to experience it in its retro cuckoo clock glory.

We visited tate modern, of course. One thing we always missed in Boston was a decent modern art gallery, and Austin isn’t much better, though the Blanton does try.

By the evening, we were exhausted. We had some vegetarian curry at a restaurant near Shimrit’s pad, then crashed on the futon.

The next day we tried to take things a little easier, and started off at Oxford Circus for a day of shopping.

Now, I could be misremembering, but it seemed to me that the crowds were far worse than ten years ago. It was a rainy English summer day, but the herds of people reminded me more of the run-up to Christmas. We struggled towards Tottenham Court Road, ducking into stores here and there.

Given the current exchange rate, we tried to buy as little as possible; but inevitably, there were books, CDs and DVDs unavailable in the US which we were unable to resist. We went in to HMV, but tried to limit ourselves to stuff with a single digit price.

We had lunch at The Plaza, which had mysteriously moved the food court up to the second floor and made the basement vanish entirely. Baked potatoes. They’re not nearly as popular in the US. I used to buy one most Saturdays, from a guy with a cart in the Market Square in Cambridge.

Tottenham Court Road is still just like it used to be. I even recognized several of the gadget stores. The infamous Centre Point is still there, and still unnavigable by foot. The Telecom Tower is still visible from Oxford Street, but sadly sanity has prevailed and its existence is no longer an official secret.

The biggest change to London is that there are now coffee shops everywhere. Back in the 90s I had to bring an espresso machine back with me from Italy; now, you can’t walk for more than a minute or two without finding somewhere offering Illy or some other variety of “Genuine Italian espresso”. And tasty snacks, too. I definitely approve.

One good English food item I had forgotten about until I saw them at Waterloo Station was the pasty. I wonder if there’s somewhere in Austin that will sell me a good pasty?

Anyhow, we finished up our day with a little book shopping at Foyle’s and Borders, then got the train back to Bournemouth.

Tower Records holds a special place in my heart. The store in Piccadilly Circus was one of the places I would try to visit every time I traveled to London. Back in the early 80s the Virgin Megastore on Oxford Street was the place for obscure music, but by 1990 they had jacked up the prices and cleared out the unpopular stuff. Tower kept the prices reasonable and had an unrivaled selection of imports and obscurities. It was there that I discovered DEVO, and later completed my collection. It was there that I found Holger Hiller.

When I visited the US, Tower in Boston was second only to Newbury Comics. But another ten years went by, and Tower started to go downhill. Prices rose to HMV-like levels, and some idiot decided it was a good idea to file every disc by genre, a decision made worse by splitting electronica into ambient, house, techno, acid, dub, trance, and so on. Quick, where’s the Aphex Twin? Err…

So I wasn’t surprised when the company filed for bankruptcy in 2004. And I’m not surprised that they’re filing for bankruptcy again now, this time for good. A quick browse reveals only 2 Tangerine Dream albums, both priced at $38 (yeah right). There are practically no CDs priced below $18. Thom Yorke’s solo album isn’t listed (who he?), and if I didn’t already have Hail to the Thief I wouldn’t buy it from Tower for $34.

So it goes. Music sales is an unforgiving business. Stores seem to go through a golden age of awesomeness, but at some point the prices get too high or the selection gets too poor and they slide into irrelevance. Newbury Comics was heading that way when we left Massachusetts, sad to say.

So where do I get CDs now? Mostly from half.com and Amazon marketplace; stores typically break the $12 limit.

I feel like I ought to explain the whole Wii thing. Yes, it’s puerile, but that’s incidental. Anusol and Flatulex aren’t particularly funny because the brands reflect what the product is really about; but when you name a video game system after something from the bathroom, then it’s funny. Context. That’s what makes Mike Meyers’ jokes about Preparation-H funny; it’s in an inappropriate context.

I love mocking stupid corporate branding. I found it funny when we were sitting in a bagel shop in Cambridge and saw an Internet terminal branded “NetPecker“; the company went bust, surprise surprise. Otis Spunkmeyer describe their name as “fun and memorable”. Well, yes, sniggering at Spunkmeyer iced brownies is fun, I guess.

Branding disasters don’t have to be bathroom-related to be funny, though. It was stupid for the UK Post Office to rename themselves Consignia; they renamed themselves back a year later. Dumber was the UK railway company that had the stupid idea of naming themselves “One”. Station announcements for the 9:30 One train to London caused confusion, and they had to rename themselves again. Both companies were mocked, deservedly. Childish?

I’m pretty sure renaming PriceWaterhouseCoopers Consulting wasn’t a bad idea, but picking “Monday” as the new name was. The only thing that saved them from professional ridicule was being bought by IBM, who immediately killed the whole “Monday” thing.

Would you believe that a company is trying to sell dog and cat food under the brand name BARF? (Do they sell Kitten BARF and Puppy BARF?) Who at Coca-Cola thought that naming their new drink “Zero” was a good idea? “BlaK” was bad enough, especially at the start when they put a line over the ‘a’ suggesting that it was pronounced “Blake”. (They’ve now changed it to a Coke swoosh.)

Internet branding is full of stupidity. Remember when Palm renamed themselves pa1mOne? (Hint: any brand that’s 1337sp34k is stupid.) I can’t see Samsung’s WiBro taking off, fo’shizzle. And on a more trivial note, what possessed C|net to make all their URLs look like alt.cnet.swedish-chef.bork.bork.bork? And the less said about Oui Oui Bebe the better.

Of course, it wasn’t Yeslam Bin Ladin’s fault that his plans for Bin Ladin branded perfume and clothing were ruined, but would you buy a Studebaker Dictator? I guess dictators were all the rage a hundred years ago, and you can still buy Autocrat coffee, though the Aryan supermarket chain Purity Supreme is no longer with us, having been bought by the shrewd but dull brand Stop’n'Shop.

Would you rub Nad’s on your body? Even with the apostrophe, it’s still a terrible brand name. Every time I see Nasalcrom I think of Conan the Barbarian; what do you think Zim’s Crack Creme is for? Worse still is POOLIFE®. Terrible. I can’t believe they went as far as registering it, let alone writing it in all caps.

Magazines pick silly names too. Self, the magazine about the person you love the most. Heeb, the magazine for Jews, current issue “The money issue”. Back in the 80s, Douglas Adams and Steve Meretzky joked about a magazine for conspiracy theorists called Popular Paranoia, and now it exists. And at least Crochet Fantasy didn’t decide to call themselves Crochet Rocket.

So is it childish to laugh at such things? Perhaps, but people do it all the time. Childish jokes about sucking on a Fisherman’s Friend have been around for decades. Foreign Engrish remains a source of amusement to thousands. Yes, English isn’t their first language; but even if you’re Japanese or Spanish, you ought to check what your company name might mean in English.

Unfortunately, Nintendo fanboys get all bent out of shape and puritanical when you start mocking their favorite video game company’s products. Perhaps it has something to do with the way the GameCube has been dismissed as a “kiddy game” console for years?

Anyhow, the Nintendo Wiinies are now theorizing that it’s all a cunning publicity stunt, and that the real name for Wii will be revealed next week. Maybe Wii is intentionally awful, like Dogfish Head Golden Shower beer.

I’m doubtful; Japanese companies have a knack for bad product names. Even video game companies—consider Irritating Stick and Radiata Stories. (”I was bleeding the valve one time when scalding water shot out over the carpet…”)

I hope for Nintendo’s sake that that the publicity stunt theory is true. I mean, really, I have nothing against Nintendo—I own a GameCube—and the last thing they need is to attach a childishly silly name to their new console.

And if you want to flame me or call me childish, first tell me you didn’t laugh at any of the above. I’ll tell you that you need a sense of humor.

I’ve beem thinking about how one can actually spot shady businesses. It’s not as easy as it initially seems—there are plenty of dodgy retailers that manage to look totally legitimate, and there are plenty of good companies that you might assume to be crooks because (for instance) they don’t list any kind of address online.

For example, if you’ve ever shopped online for camera equipment, or browsed the ads in magazines, you’ve probably seen lots of stores in New York selling photo equipment at way below MSRP.

Don Wiss decided to start a project to photograph the actual storefronts of all the discount camera businesses in NY and NJ. He has put the photo gallery on his web site.

For instance, I’ve seen legit-looking ads from Cambridge Camera in magazines, so it’s interesting (ahem) to see their actual business premises.

In the UK we call these places “box shifters”. They all used to collect along Tottenham Court Road in London, though that may have changed.

The problem is that not every obscure online store in Brooklyn offering amazingly low prices is run by crooks. I bought our new TV from Best Buy Plasma in Brooklyn. It arrived promptly, in perfect condition, and has made me very happy; so Best Buy Plasma are clearly not to be confused with PC And Plasma.

Similarly, HKFlix are legit and knowledgeable (in my experience), even though it seems to be almost impossible to find out where they’re actually located. (No address on the site, domain hosting points to Hawaii, stuff ships from California.)

Generally speaking, I’ve been able to shop online and save a ton of money and not get ripped off. But I don’t think I could write down a set of objective criteria for working out if a vendor is honest; it’s usually an intuitive decision for me. I do a bunch of research, but ultimately there’s some kind of non-logical synthesis of the available information.

I was just listening to The Sunday Format on Radio 4 when I heard a name I recognized in the credits: DA Barham.

I used to chat to Debbie Barham via IRC. She’d moved to London and gotten a regular gig writing for the Rory Bremner show, and would often while away time on IRC at odd hours as she came down from a writing binge. I think we got chatting because there was a discussion of Bond movies, and we both thought On Her Majesty’s Secret Service would have been the best Bond movie ever, if it wasn’t for George Lazenby. We’d mostly chat about radio and comedy, and try to make each other laugh, though she was also interested in geekier topics. I particularly remember her telling me how incredibly thrilled she was when they had The Stranglers guest on the Bremner show, and she got to meet them. I always felt bad that I didn’t get to meet her in person before I left for the US. Another time we got the whole channel swapping ideas for ridiculous phobias after she’d just finished an article on the subject.

Since I consider The Sunday Format to be the best radio comedy I’ve heard in years, I thought I’d see if I could find Dabs’ current e-mail address and send her a note of congratulation. As I recall, the last time I wrote to her was to compliment her on her BBC radio show celebrating The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, in which she showed her amazing skill by nailing Douglas Adams’ writing style precisely.

A quick search on Google revealed the horrific truth: she’s dead. She died a little over a year ago, aged 26.

Worse, she died of heart failure, from literally starving herself to death through anorexia. The Guardian has an obituary and a feature article about her. The obituary has a photo of her, in which she looks fragile, yet with a somehow piercing gaze. There’s an Evening Standard article with a color photo. Again, the same penetrating gaze. It’s not how I’d imagined she might look, but in retrospect it makes perfect sense.

She could be sharp, yes. To be funny, you often have to be. But at the same time, she was a good person, and always friendly to me. She seemed to need to write the way other people need to breathe; she wrote for everyone on every subject, yet never wanted to be in the spotlight, in spite of how much she deserved it. I’ll be seeing her name in unexpected places for years. I just wish I could hope to see it more and more.

So, that memo which mentioned that Al Qaeda was in America, planning a terrorist action, probably involving hijacking a plane, probably like the attack on the World Trade Center… Remember how we were told there was no reason to take it seriously?

Well, in early 2000 a Muslim spent a ton of money in Atlantic City, then turned himself in to the FBI. He told them that he had been in training, learning to fly a passenger jet. He said that Al Qaeda was planning to hijack a plane, fly it somewhere, and blow it up.

So obviously, they gave him polygraph tests, established he seemed to be telling the truth… and then they let him go back to London, and they forgot about it.

I know it’s churlish of me to keep harping on about this, but:

…investigators have found no support for the two main fears expressed in London and Washington before the war: that Iraq had a hidden arsenal of old weapons and built advanced programs for new ones. In public statements and unauthorized interviews, investigators said they have discovered no work on former germ-warfare agents such as anthrax bacteria, and no work on a new designer pathogen—combining pox virus and snake venom—that led U.S. scientists on a highly classified hunt for several months. The investigators assess that Iraq did not, as charged in London and Washington, resume production of its most lethal nerve agent, VX, or learn to make it last longer in storage. And they have found the former nuclear weapons program, described as a “grave and gathering danger” by President Bush and a “mortal threat” by Vice President Cheney, in much the same shattered state left by U.N. inspectors in the 1990s.

[…]

The defection of Hussein Kamel was a turning point in the U.N.-imposed disarmament of Iraq in the 1990s. Kamel, who had married one of Saddam Hussein’s daughters, Raghad, and controlled Baghdad’s Military Industrial Commission, told his Western debriefers about major programs in biological and nuclear weaponry that had gone undetected or unconfirmed. Iraq was forced to acknowledge what he exposed, but neither inspectors nor U.S. officials were sure Kamel had told all there was to tell.

A handwritten Iraqi damage report, composed five days after the defection, now suggests that Kamel left little or nothing out.

[…]

The most significant point in [Hossam] Amin’s letter, U.S. and European experts said, is his unambiguous report that Iraq destroyed its entire inventory of biological weapons.

—Washington Post

So Saddam’s brother-in-law, #1 in charge of weapons programs, personally defects and sings like a canary. The story says he told us about “major programs”; what it doesn’t mention is that he told us they were all shut down. However, the government didn’t want to believe him, and we went ahead with the war anyway. Now we discover from the reports of Iraq’s #1 guy in charge of intelligence, that Saddam’s brother-in-law was telling the truth. Well, duh.