Tangential Ramblings

I just read that:

Blogs (web logs) can be used to share a running log of events and personal or team insights with online audiences.

I'd like to think the insight bit is optional.

Recently, I've started asking for people's confidence levels (from 0% to 100%) of project-related events happening. And although in its early stages, I've been disappointed by the results thus far, confidence generally being way higher than the reality.

Richard Feynman beautifully exposed the flawed methodology behind risk assessment at Nasa in his role on the commission to investigate the 1986 Challenger disaster. Nasa failed to realise (admit?) that if there are lots of uncorrelated bits of the Shuttle each with a near 100% probability of surviving the mission, each of which is critical to avoid disaster, then the probability of the Shuttle returning safely to Earth can fall unacceptably short of 100%.

The realisation of risks in projects I manage has a lesser impact. But an impact nonetheless. So I intend to keep a log of all the confidence estimates I receive (column B), together with the person whose confidence is being shared (column A) and the binary outcome of the event in which they have confidence (column C, 1 meaning the predicted event happened, 0 meaning it didn't). I figure that if people's confidence levels are true reflections of reality, then the sum of column B will equal the sum of column C. And sumifs based on people's names will identify the optimists, realists and pessimists.

=SUMIF(A:A,"John Smith",B:B)/SUMIF(A:A,"John Smith",C:C) will give me an optimism quotient for John. I can then divide any confidence percentage I receive from him by the quotient to get a more realistic view of whether the event will happen.

I've mentioned before the existence of a 3G coldspot around Vauxhall. Here's an update, with further data now available.

The coldspot begins midway across Vauxhall Bridge. By midway, I mean midway. Literally. The rising half of the bridge brings with it a successful interface with the internet. As soon as the bus tips to descend down the gentle slope of the western half of the bridge, the connection disappears. Entirely. I know exactly when my last Google Reader article download can be made, and I have to choose it carefully, to maximise my coldspot reading pleasure. The coldspot continues up the full length of Millbank and St. Margaret Street, round the perimeter of Parliament Square, ending at the turn on to Parliament Street, at which point, the 3G warmth returns. Bloody annoying, I tell you. And here is the 3G coldspot map.

View Larger Map

Following Icann's decision to allow a free-for-all of TLDs, my plan is to register http://intranet and make my millions through advertising aimed at users looking for their colleagues. Don't tell anyone though; it'll be our little secret.

My friend Rob is stepping into the world of psychology. It's a bold move that he took a couple of years ago, leaving behind the world of management consulting in favour of mental stuff (stuff about the mind, that is), having spent the intervening years learning stuff at university.

Anyway, my friend Rob would like your help, and I too would like it if you would help him. It's a survey. It's for his dissertation. And your reward for 20 minutes' effort is knowing that you've helped him. What more could you ask for?

Please click on this link to take the survey. I thank you, as indeed will Rob.

The controversy should not be over Jay-Z headlining Glastonbury. The controversy should be over the fact that Westwood is there to represent him from a reporting perspective.

Not sure why, but the strapline for the '80s TV advert for Weetabix has entered my head recently and not found its way out. I'm quite enjoying it.

If you know what's good for you, you do, OK! Weetabix!

Thinking about it, the Ribbons in Excel 2007 are not that revolutionary. They're horizontal, visual representations of what were the dropdowns that appeared from the menu bars; re-organised allegedly to be more logically grouped. For some reason, I felt that they were marketed as something more than that in the run-up to the launch of Vista and Office 2007.

It's the re-organisation that troubles me, possibly because the grouping is still not fully logical, possibly because it's different from the File | Edit | View | Insert | Format | Tools | Data | Window grouping of its predecessor. I read a very short article on Daily Dose of Excel recently that said nothing more than if you can't find what you're looking for in Excel 2007, you'll find it on the Insert menu.

Apologies: I'm rambling, but I'm allowed given the title of the blog. (I've never really considered after naming the blog whether it lives up to its name. Another segue.) Basically, I still don't quite know where to look for stuff in Excel 2007. My preconceptions are obviously still there, formed by 20 years in Lotus 1–2–3 and pre-2007 versions of Excel. But when I can't immediately find something now, I try to ask myself "where would it logically be" and often fail to come up trumps. The Home menu doesn't seem right to me, combining lots of formatting stuff with content movement (Copy/Cut, Paste and its various offspring, insertion and deletion of columns and rows), and sorting and filtering.

To me, it would make more sense to have a Format menu item and an Operate item, the latter to cover the likes of insertion and deletion, clearing, filling, finding, selecting. (Shit! I've just realised that almost nothing in the Edit sub-menu within Home has anything to do with editing. Sort, Filter, Find, Select, Sum, Fill have nothing to do with editing!) All of your filtering and sorting should be firmly in the Data menu item.

And why the fuck PivotTable/PivotChart button is under the Insert menu and not the Data menu beggars belief. (If everything inserted goes in the Insert menu, then why don't Insert Function and Insert Row/Column join the party?)

I like the concept. However I believe there was a set of workshops held by Microsoft (some of the most important workshops in Excel's history) in which Post-Its containing all of Excel's functions were arranged into areas on a whiteboard. But the wrong people turned up. (I didn't get an invite.) So the result is OK, but it's not quite right.

As an aside, I'm wondering whether things should ever appear in more than one location. Or should everything have one and only one home?

BTW, I've held off on writing such a post until a month after starting to use Office 2007, to allow my opinion to mature.

The contents of my pockets are reaching mammoth proportions, and that's not me boasting!

As I posted some time ago, summer exacerbates the issue surrounding pocket contents, as there are more things to carry with you (sunglasses) with fewer pockets across which to distribute the contents (owing to the lack of coats and the like). Of late, my pockets are asked (at various parts of the day) to support some or all of: iPod, wallet, BlackBerry, phone (a chunky MDA Vario 3), keys, loose change, sunglasses.

Having done a benefits analysis, a pocket rationalisation programme has been commissioned which aims to significantly reduce the volume of artefacts that will be supported by my pockets. The programme will include a stream to assess the number of necessary objects, one to understand the most appropriate transportation device for the objects (pocket or other), and one to assess the volume of each—there is thought to be scope for reducing the volume of both the wallet and sunglasses case. There will be an underlying change management piece aimed at instilling new ways of working in myself to avoid future Costanza-esque wallet proportions.

My daughter rarely sees the dishwasher being loaded, as most of this activity is conducted after she's fast asleep. So she only ever sees it being emptied, something I often do with her 'help' at 6.30am while her breakfast is warming. Given that she only ever sees clean dishes being taken out of the machine and loaded into the relevant cupboards, maybe she thinks it's a kitchenware delivery machine, new crockery and cutlery being delivered to the house every morning. How cool would that be?

About a week ago, I unsubscribed from the digg feed in Google Reader. The move has added immeasurable value to my life, saving me from navigating through pages and pages of tat in search of that mediocre gem of a story on my morning bus journey to work. I can instead spend the very time saved writing similarly tatty posts to contribute to the wealth of information and drivel that is the internet. Everyone's a winner.

As far as I'm aware, there are few songs whose titles are a non-finite clause including a gerund. (Surprised no one else has writen about this very subject.) The only two I can think of are Squeeze's Pulling Mussels from a Shell and Shed Seven's Chasing Rainbows. The only such band is Counting Crows, although not sure whether this is acting as a present participle.

That is all.

Google is great. Probably not the opening sentence you'd expect given the post's title. Let me explain.

If I had a multitude of email accounts, I could get all of my mails consolidated into a single place, all with a lovely Google-esque front-end. My calendar is similarly lovely in its Google look-and-feel. And with Google Reader, all textual content I could ever wish to read is also presented in a comforting, consistent interface, all of the titles appearing underlined in blue (to indicate their clickability), content in Arial black, mimicking the interface of its other offerings, Search included. Hell, even Google's adverts are comfortingly consistent.

But has this consistency and predictability ripped the very heart and soul out of the internet? I no longer visit my friends' blogs; nor more business-related ones. Instead I access them via Google Reader. When I shared the concept of this post with a colleague today, he relayed a recent story of someone asking him whether he liked his blog's re-design. "What re-design?" came my friend's reply, as like me he'd been accessing all of the guy's content via Google Reader. Before and after the re-design, all content had been available in 12-point Arial black, with bold, blue, underlined headings and blue, underlined links.

Information has been commoditised, in a similar way to how Apple has commoditised music with iTunes. We as users have gained hugely through consistency, immediacy and ease of access. But we have lost out too. No longer are we delighted by the beauty of someone's site design, nor do we appreciate the painstaking effort that has gone into the stylesheets that underpin it. Instead, we scroll through our content through a consistent front-end, hungry for the content itself over and above the beauty of its presentation. With iTunes, content of the musical variety is accessible literally at the click of a button, without the opportunity to experience the joys of the physical products that accompany the music, the record sleeve, the vinyl itself, or the CD artwork and the booklet's contents.

Maybe it's time to take a step back, to appreciate the frame within which the content sits, or to appreciate the artwork accompanying a music purchase.

"We're not going to give up our country for a mere X on a ballot. How can a ballpoint pen fight with a gun?"
Robert Mugabe, 16 June 2008

Now that R. Kelly has been acquitted, is it OK to listen to his music again? (I completely understand that an embargo of the music of Gary Glitter is a given.)

I used to estimate that the average shirt took five minutes to iron. Tonight, I added some science and accuracy to this. Below are the results.

Dress-down Fridays meant that tonight's quota of creased-up shirts totalled four. And tonight I decided to iron to music (iPod and earphones), something I rarely do but something which brings with it a mechanism for time-based accuracy.

Shirt two was a cerise, difficult-to-iron item, the ironing of which took exactly the same length of time as the first: the first 3m 27s of 4Hero/Minnie Riperton's Les Fleur. Third up was a very simple purple-check number, complete in a lightning 2m 44s, accompanied by Dolly Parton's 9 to 5. And the blue shirt that used to have a twin came last, reverting to the three and a half minute standard, this time to The Human League's Together In Electric Dreams.

I think the 2m 44s shirt was a freak, and I'll probably find out in the week that one of its sleeves remains unironed. So the verdict is 3m 30s for a shirt, 30% quicker than the original estimate.

The nights are drawing in.

That was my favourite saying that my Dad used to say during my childhood, usually within a couple of days of 21 June.

For the last hour or so before leaving work yesterday, I was longing to leave the building, plug in my new in-ear earphones (in-earphones?) and blast The Libertines' Can't Stand Me Now into my head while walking along sun-drenched Whitehall. I have no idea why. But I was. And I did. And I loved it.

Yesterday evening marked a first. I got into a Streetcar that I'd hired and adjusted the seat so that it was further away from the steering wheel than when I got in. Bring it on!

A story's strapline in tonight's London Lite reads Little Brit Matt in first gay celebrity divorce. I question the order of the adjectives, believing the article to be about a gay divorce that happens to involve celebrities, as opposed to a celebrity divorce that happens to involve gay people. Thoughts?