Category Archives: Personal Stuff

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-05-16

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  • Doing some Python Bioinformatics today – finally making a wee bit of use of my degree after a couple of decades… #fb #
  • Off to church! #
  • I'm getting all Wagnerian for Saturday evening – the overture for Tannhauser is brilliant! #fb #
  • By heck – either I'm on a roll or I've missed something – I'm about 6 hours ahead of where I expected to be!! #
  • Nope – too much like cutting nose off to spite face. RT @mashable: Facebook Exodus Planned for May 31: Will You Quit? – http://bit.ly/bsdeCq #
  • Hopefully today will see another system ready for go-live! #
  • Why wouldn't I be surprised – RT @newscientist: Will UK civil service scupper civil liberties reform? http://bit.ly/cObDuQ #
  • A productive day – looking forward to next week when I'll have more time to Blog and Tweet! #
  • RT @johncusack: RT @extroversion: War in Afghanistan: $6.7 billion/month. War in Iraq: $5.5 billion/month. http://bit.ly/c8LHmx #
  • http://open.spotify.com/user/joepritchard/playlist/2VCXNnqdsMkbzvE4jMsAPj Spotify playlist: System 7 – System 7 #fb #
  • Scary – Blackberry lost network for 30 mins here in Sheffield. I was all cut off! Alone! Alone, I tells you! #
  • Managing to get lots of meetings conducted 'en passant' at funding fair! #
  • Very busy and useful funding fair at Sheffield town hall. #
  • Absolutely not – 7-00hrs is the best time… RT @ashleymoran: Dear housemate. 7.30am is not an appropriate time to have a bath. That is all. #
  • Hope they get it going!! RT @Samibouni: Diaspora: An Open Source Facebook http://ht.ly/1KtcA [article[[forum] #web #socialmedia #
  • Yesterday cleared all known bugs from a system set to go live…today working on another application due to go live at end of month #
  • Anyone explain why there is hysteria about the proposed 55% rule? We've had Govts before protected from confidence votes by their maj. #
  • Excellent AGM / ctte meeting for SYAR #
  • http://open.spotify.com/user/joepritchard/playlist/5bKIEEwsAglBBpAOjv8UQW Spotify playlist: Steve Hackett – Voyage of the Acolyte #
  • The last 2 bugs before going live! We shall prevail, oh yes! #
  • Good Lord….I'm sliding in to AORage singing along to Jackson Browne…. #
  • http://open.spotify.com/user/joepritchard/playlist/3jeQaKbBfaHTsjTmC8Km4D Spotify playlist: Jackson Browne – The Next Voice You Hear #
  • No news to us in UK…now Skull and Bones… RT @MyEbisu: PM Cameron Oxford brats club destroyed restaurants for fun http://ow.ly/17lrKI #
  • Pound on the up….LibCon is go? #
  • On every Downing Street interview at the moment you can hear the music from 'The Godfather'….making Gordon an offer he can't refuse? #
  • RT @guardiantech: Top 50 Twitter climate accounts to follow http://bit.ly/a5qweq #
  • RT @britmic: RT @hughmacd: If the BBC have fixed it, here's a screenshot of what that last tweet pointed at. http://twitpic.com/1mwwd3 #
  • RT @guidofawkes: Ed Balls said to have been "belligerent" in negotiations with LibDems. What a surprise. Not like him at all. My, my, my. #
  • When politicians refer in respectful tones to 'The Electorate' (note capitalisation) you KNOW that we're SO screwed…. #
  • Will Adam Boulton soon turn up in a news story that ends with 'before turning the gun on himself?' Let the poor bugger rest! 🙂 #
  • Today we are at a crossroads. One road leads to hopelessness and despair; the other, to abject penury. Let us pray we choose wisely. 🙂 #
  • Re. Labour / Liberal talks…have the big knobs pulled it off? #
  • RT @AbiNielsen: "If you have a garden and a library, you have all you need." Cicero #
  • RT @iaindale: Blogpost: Labour's Potential 'Homophobic' Ally http://tinyurl.com/34zyemz #
  • 3 people understand STV…one is dead, one is in an insane asylum in Guatemala, and I'd be awfully grateful if the third can contact me..#fb #
  • However the political marriage works out – we still want a REFERENDUM on electoral reform details – not just have it foisted on us. #fb #
  • Another bug fixing day – hope it's as effective as yesterday! #
  • RT @tonycarroll: Just heard the bad news the Kraft is looking to cut jobs at Bassets in Sheffield. Cadbury takeover not so sweet. #
  • RT @safety: For an update on today's follower/following weirdness, please see: http://status.twitter.com/post/587210796 #
  • Gordon is a true economist…he's redefined 'I Quit' to mean exactly what HE wants it to mean!! #fb #
  • I like it!! RT @douglasi: L: Hurry, unfollow those coworkers and family members you never really liked, and blame it on the bug!! #
  • RT @mashable: Twitter says "follow/unfollow is temporarily offline while we fix a bug." – http://bit.ly/9dRK6z #
  • Will Brown's power play piss off the LibDems and drive them to the Tories? #
  • Anyone used Ext / JQuery with Firefox and had issues around mouseclicks? #
  • Aye Caramba…does SCC really need a 'Parental Engagement Officer'? #
  • Busy day of dealing with Firefox / IE click handling inconsistencies…joy…IE works, FF doesn't. 🙂 #
  • Very strange dreams last night…need to lay off "The merciless peppers of Quetzalacatenango… grown deep in the jungle primeval"… #fb #
  • After 4 days of strangeness, one of my two primary email accounts is back…now just need to check 4 days or mail! 🙂 #
  • Nick and the Lib Dems are finding out the joys of Big Boy's Games played by Big Boy's Rules…..whatever happens they'll get the blame! #

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-05-09

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  • Pouring petrol…. RT @StarSparkle_UK: We're waiting now for some smoke to appear above no.10… – does anyone know where Gordon is? 😀 #
  • You've had 13 years – don't come crawling now you've lost. RT @UKLabourParty: Please retweet if you want Proportional Representation #
  • RT @iaindale: If Norman Tebbit can't say anything helpful why can't he just shut the f***ety-f**k up. This is not the 1980s. #
  • RT @rachelolgeirsso: Electoral Commission asking 4 emails frm anyone who cdn't vote yestdy info@electoralcommission.org.uk #ge2010 #
  • This Election MUST mark the start of a total revision of election process in the UK – from voting system to logistics. #ge2010 #
  • Hazel Blears survives – classic example of stick a red rosette on a dog and folks will vote for them….. #
  • RT @StarSparkle_UK: I bet the "Guardian" is feeling a bit foolish right now… 😀 #
  • One thing – no way can we carry on with this amateurish Election Process in the UK – truly pathetic! #
  • This Election has made me too excited to sleep! 🙂 #
  • RT @tonycarroll: Dep returning officer in Sheffield tells me legal advice will be taken on whether re-run is needed following Ranmoor #
  • RT @SheffieldPDC: RT @seismicshed: Breaking news: Robert Mugabe has offered to send electoral monitors to cover future uk elections. #ge2010 #
  • RT @guidofawkes: Swing from Labour to Tories Averaging 8% So Far: http://bit.ly/c4gIyQ #
  • Rumours coming out that Caroline Lucas of the Greens MAY have won Brighton Pavillion…. #
  • RT @bettakultcha: RT @OneRedSock: In Botswana people queued from 5am waiting to make sure they could cast their vote. #ge2010 #
  • NuLab clearly learned a few things from ZanuPF about running elections…. 😉 #
  • Support a good cause and have some fun!! RT @fubart76: right, just a small matter of shifting Life's a Beach tickets. #
  • Nigel farage has a 'Johnny Cyclops' moment – last desperate attempt to get some media coverage! #ge2010 #
  • I have determined by empirical observation that today is leave brain at home day. Hope folks remember brain when they vote! #fb #
  • RT @StarSparkle_UK: Quick reminder on the eve of the Election – Dave does "Common People" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKFTtYx2OHc #
  • Sorry guys…more Gordon / Golden stuff… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmI4BNA6vsg&feature=related #
  • Gordon Brown / Golden Brown Bigot Mix…. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gaJB3qDJCo #
  • http://open.spotify.com/user/joepritchard/playlist/5bKIEEwsAglBBpAOjv8UQW Spotify playlist: Steve Hackett – Voyage of the Acolyte #
  • Depends how badly I need the penny… 😉 RT @dasgrafik: What would you do for a penny? A shiny new penny? #
  • Awesome people. RT @louiebaur: 6 People You've Never Heard of Who Probably Saved Your Life http://bit.ly/9G6BY3 #
  • RT @davidtheprguy: 9 Social Media Topics that Need To Die http://bit.ly/bSw2Lj #
  • Back to debugging – a long weekend off work does wonders! #
  • I may not agree with NuLab but I feel for Gordon Brown as a man right now – surrounded by incompetence and disloyalty. #fb #
  • Strong the Fourth is with this one! RT @bettakultcha: May the 4th be with you #starwarsgags #
  • D'OH!! RT @guidofawkes: This isn’t exactly the headline Labour would want forty-five hours before the polls open… http://bit.ly/bU7oes #
  • With bets to make it interesting….RT @marcjohnson: OH: "open gladiatorial combat is the only answer to our political system" #whmj2 #
  • Working on my first Twitter application…should be fun! #
  • RT @timoreilly: RT @mattBernius: @doctorow at #fooeast "People pathologically undervalue the future worth of their privacy" #

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The farce of the 2010 General Election

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Less than 2 hours after the closing of the Polls in the UK’s General Election, it’s clear that there have been some cock-ups in the logistical management of the election that makes most developing world elections look like the Acme of organisation.  Let’s face it – this is THE most important election for probably probably 20 years – and one might have expected that such an election would be run in the most professional, efficient and effective way possible.

Unfortunately, it appears to have been organised by people who make Fred Karno’s Army look like the SAS.  Let’s just take a look at what seems to have been happening in the last few hours of polling.

  • People turning up to find massive queues at their polling station, going away, coming back repeatedly, then finding themselves being turned away when the Polling Station closes at 10pm.  Although in some places, people queueing when the Polling Station has closed have been taken in to the Polling Station and allowed to vote.
  • Other people turning up to vote to find that there aren’t enough Ballot Papers and so they can’t vote.
  • People in some places have been turned away an hour BEFORE the Polls closed, and have been told that they Polling Station can’t handle the queues. 

In other words – some Polling Stations have been under-resourced, badly staffed and inadequately supplied.  How can the Local Authorities and the Electoral Commission have allowed such a sorry and anti-democratic situation to arise?  After all, it should not have been a surprise that there would be a higher turnout in this election than previous ones – people have been excited by this election in such a way that I’ve not seen for some years.  We might therefore have expected the Returning Officers and Electoral Commission to take this on board and plan accordingly.

In my own polling Station I saw no more staff than usual, but did witness a higher throughput of people than I’ve seen for some time.  It was the first time I’ve actually queued to vote for as long as I can remember, despite the fact that the turnout is only a few percentage points higher than previous elections, going by the current returns.

So what’s happened?  For what it’s worth, here’s my twopence-halfpenny.

  • Perhaps in some places people left it too late to vote; there were stories about people going to vote at 6pm, finding a queue, then coming back an hour later, finding another queue, then going away again and then finally getting in the queue at 9pm…..why not stay in the queue at 6pm?  Polling Stations are open for over 12 hours – perhaps folks could get their arses in to gear a little earlier if they are determined to vote?
  • Returning Officers clearly have lacked guidance and possibly understanding of the Law in the way in which they have reacted to the queues – some have kept the station open after 10pm, others effectively closed it before that time, etc.
  • Has there been additional time taken in distributing the ballot papers and handling enquiries about Council elections as well as the General Election?
  • Has there been enough staff at Polling Stations, and has the staff been used effectively – when I voted it appeared that 3 members of staff were only capable of processing one voter at a time.  Why weren’t additional staff deployed to reduce the queues earlier in the day?
  • Have some Local Authorities tried to save money by cutting staff?
  • Have attempts been made to save money by printing Ballot Papers to suit the projected turn out rather than printing one paper per voter and a few hundred extras ‘just in case’.  It’s not friggin’ rocket science!

So….if any of the seats where this nonsense has happened generate narrow results then we could see challenges and possibly re-runs.  It looks like the rules have been ignored, and there’s been clear incompetence at a local level.  Let’s hope that lessons are learned and at least a few heads role where needed.

Don’t Panic! A Very British Coup or a Terribly British Compromise?

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 Over the last few days there’s been some very strange stories emerging and then submerging again in the UK Media – the General Election has made the silly season come early this years.  One story about a prospective Tory candidate has been apparently blocked with a gagging order, and another story about a possible car bomb in the Aldgate area of London fell off the radar.  Combine that with military ‘Chinook’ helicopters being seen operating in the vicinity of 7 or 8 towns and cities in Britain (whether the helicopters were black or not I’m not sure) and we have a very panicky media right now.

A story that seems to be pretty popular right now is that on Friday morning, whether or not he wins an outright majority or not, David Cameron will go to the palace, tell the Queen he’s forming a Government and basically trot back to Downing Street and demand Gordon Brown vacates the premises.  The various posts / Tweets / etc. are best seen here.  Whether Downing Street will be emptied with the aid of a team of crack chinless wonders from Conservative Central Office, or whether Brown would tell Cameron to bugger off is debatable.

Just how likely is this to happen – to be honest, I very much doubt it’s likely to happen at all.  To me it sounds like a good ol’ bit of Labour FUD – Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.  If you don’t vote us in, the Tories will take over by the back door, so give us your votes.  This from the Government who have:

  • Remove Habeus Corpus from the statute books for certain crimes.
  • Gone to war on some very dodgy legal grounds.
  • Introduced a series of laws that have repeatedly eroded our civil liberties.

Of course, something like this would put the Queen in a rather bad position – were she to be asked to allow Clegg or Cameron to form a Government before Gordon Brown admitted defeat – even if he were leading a minority party – it would put her in the insidious position of being asked to support the new boy against Labour or Labour against the new boy – not at all a good place to be.

It’s times like this that I wish we had a written Constitution in this country and a Head of State of some sort to apply it.  As it is, we’re going to be relying on common sense on Friday morning to see us through the next few days, as I believe a hung Parliament is almost inevitable.

Earth calling Tim Cook…

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There’s a scene in Monty Python’s ‘The Life of Brian’ in which a character asks ‘What have the Romans ever done for us?’  This is then followed by a host of other characters giving many useful things that the Romans HAVE provided for the people of Palestine.

I was reminded of this sketch when I encountered this article about Apple’s Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook in which he comments that there isn’t a single thing that a Netbook does well.  Time, I have some bad news for you, sunshine; there are lots of things that Netbooks do well – however, they’re probably things that Tim Cook doesn’t do.  In the last week or so:

  • I used the Netbook to test an ADSL connection at the point of entry of the phone-line to the house.
  • When out and about I used it to write a blog article whilst waiting for an appointment.
  • Hooked it up to my amateur radio gear to decode some weather fax images.
  • Downloaded some code from an SVN repository, made a quick fix and uploaded it again.

In other words, stuff I couldn’t use my Blackberry for, and stuff that I needed a real keyboard for – whilst the Crackberry is great, I don’t fancy writing 500 words of blog post or trying to debug code on it.

But it’s real, genuine work being done, and not stuff I could do on a keyboard-less, USBless iPad.  Sorry Tim – here on Planet reality we’re not all managers and critics and reviewers and surfers.  Some of us actually do real work on the move, which at the moment (and probably will do for some time to come) requires a real keyboard and a piece of kit that I can actually install software on – not a closed garden that looks good but is at the same time too big to put in my pocket and too small to act as a sensible paperweight.

I love teh concept of the Pad – but this sort of arrogance from Apple – following on from their recent attacks on development toolkits and the serious limitations in connectivity of the iPad – really makes me wonder whether the bods at Cupertino ever spend time in the real world watching how people use technology.

When slogans are not enough

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I was 18 years old in 1979; people of a certain age will remember that year as being the start of the ‘Thatcher Years’ – the start of 11 years of Tory Government that was characterised by radical right wing policies, many originating from the Chicago School of Monetarism, jingoistic manipulation of the electorate in a popular war (The Falklands).  The economic policies ensured a destruction of large swathes of British manufacturing industry, steel and coal, and it might be argued that it was a ‘mild’ form (relatively speaking) of the shock and awe school of political change that alumni of the Chicago School had already inflicted on Chile and other countries in the 1970s.

I entered the workforce in the middle of all this, working in Education for 18 months or so before becoming self-employed in IT, and witnessed the destruction of the communities in which I’d grown up and the politicisation and vilification in the media of family and friends in the  mining villages and towns of Derbyshire, Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire.  I witnessed troops used as policemen and experienced roadblocks that prevented free travel within the UK.  It’s safe to say that those years coloured the political views of a whole generation – and still do today.

Which is why I could initially understand the surge of groups on Facebook and other online communities with names like ‘National Don’t Vote Tory Day’.

And after a while I began to think that this is rather a dumb and negative way to decide who to vote for.  To start with, it’s 13 years since a Tory Government – twenty years since Thatcher lost power when the great and the good of the Tory establishment decided that she was a liability and threw her out in a coup.  You need to be at least 31 years old to have actually been an adult under a Tory government, but it seems to be within the under 30 age group that this sort of group is popular.

As will be known to anyone who reads this blog or follows my tweets, I have little time for New Labour.  I have little time for the Tories or the Liberal Democrats either.  Which, I appreciate, means I have some serious thinking to do before the General Election.  I believe in small Government, subsidiarity and local, sustainable communities.  I believe in freedom of speech and expression, reduction in the intrusive powers of the state and controlled and managed immigration to the UK based on a points system for economic migrants and proof of oppression in the last country they were in for political asylum seekers. I believe in strong defence, continued possession of a tactical nuclear weapons capability, healthcare free at point of delivery, and a benefits system as a last ditch support for folks who genuinely need it.  I’m interested in seeing whether a flat rate of taxation would work, along with reduced red-tape for business, closer scrutiny of banking institutions, no further formal integration with Europe, repeal of the majority of Human Rights legislation and replacement with a written constitution.  And on a more personal basis, reform of copyright, patent and libel legislation to take on board the fact that the world’s changed.

In other words, a rag-bag, hodge-podge of policies which no party will offer.  But at least I’ve thought about what I believe in, and can make most of it join up.  Which is where the ‘Don’t vote Tory’ sloganising is ridiculously naive.  Wheeling out any party as a bogey man – especially one out of power for 15 years – is daft.  I demonise New Labour when, in my eyes and against the principles and policies I personally believe in, they deserve it – I’d like to feel that folks who’re signing up to the ‘Don’t Vote Tory’ sites have at least thought through their own political views and aren’t just signing up to the latest ‘slogan of the month’ based on what happened before many of them were actually old enough to directly experience it.

Slogans aren’t enough; I’d say one thing – if you disagree with a party’s politics, know WHY you disagree with them.  Think about it.  If you don’t like any of them, vote for the one that you disagree with least.  There’s an assumption of trust and competence here, which I’m not sure we can give or expect from any of the major parties this time around. 

I’m still to make my mind up.  I have significant issues with New Labour and the Tories; I was sort of leaning towards Liberal Democrat until I looked at their policies on Europe and Immigration policy, and I’m not convinced that their finances add up.  And I’m still not capable of trusting them on civil liberties and issues of Government intrusion in to the lives of citizens. 

But for crying out loud – please, please, think about it.

Normal Service will hopefully be resumed…soon!

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Regular readers will have noticed that the last few weeks on Joe’s Jottings have been a bit patchy in terms of the frequency of posts.  It’s been a perfect example of ‘life happening when you’re making other plans’ and I hope soon to be getting back to the ‘one post a day’ regime that I aim for on this site.

The reason?  I’m afraid that Mammon has had influence on me – basically a great deal of work to be done (which is good in the current economic conditions) as well as other commitments.  As  a trustee / committee member on a couple of charities, and Treasurer on one, this time of year is always a bit busy with year-ends, AGMs, etc. And then there’s the real world activities as well!!

I’ve actually missed blogging – it’s pretty easy to slip the habit of doing a daily blog post and I’m pretty sure that I’ll have my work cut out for a few days next week when I think I’ll be able to get back in to having enough time available to do the regular post each day, but it’s been a useful reminder to me that blogging isn’t part of my job, it’s a hobby, and therefore should occupy that part of my life also occupied by watching ‘Fringe’ on TV, playing amateur radio and avoiding gardening.

Some months ago I commented that I’d managed to build up a little stockpile of articles for use when the pressure was on – unfortunately I worked through those and now need to build that pile up again as well, so it looks like I’ll be having a busy blogging Bank Holiday at the end of April.

So, there you have it.  Normal service WILL be resumed…soon….ish….

Tethering a Blackberry to a PC

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This is one of those ‘good to try, might be useful’ sort of things that I’ve been intending to try for some time.  First of all, a couple of caveats – some service providers don’t like you doing this, and almost all of them charge you extra for the privilege.  So, regard this as an emergency measure for use when all other connection methods aren’t available.

Or, like me, you decided to do it because ‘it might one day be useful’!

So, what’s tethering? It’s the ability to use the modem facility that the phone uses to communicate with the Internet to allow the computer to connect to the Internet via the phone.  In this post I’ll go through the steps I went through to connect my Vista laptop to the Internet via my Blackberry, using BT’s network.  As always – it worked for me, but don’t blame me if it all goes horribly wrong – proceed at your own risk!  You will need:

  • A Blackberry with up to date software.
  • A laptop running up to date Blackberry Desktop software. 
  • A PC to Blackberry USB cable.

First of all, disconnect whatever network connection you currently have running on your PC.  This is most easily done by disconnecting teh network cable or turning off (or disconnecting) your WiFi connection.

Now, connect your Blackberry to the PC using the USB cable.  On your PC, run the ‘Blackberry Desktop’ program.  This bit is essential, and you can’t make use of the Blackberry’s modem unless the Desktop Manager program is running.

On the computer, open up Control Panel->Phone & Modem Options.  On the Modem tab you should see a new ‘Standard Modem’ added – on my PC it was listed as attaching to COM6, although COM11 is occasionally to be found.  Now go to Properties->Diagnostics->Query Modem and press the Query button – you should see a list of responses from the Blackberry.  The contents are not too important – the most important thing here is that you get something and it doesn’t pop up with ‘No Response’ or just leave a blank dialogue.

Now click Properties->Advanced and enter the following in to the initialisation command box:

+cgdcont=1,”IP”,”btmobile.bt.com”

The Blackberry Modem is now configured.  The next stage is to set up a Connection to the Internet.

Create a new Internet connection by Start->Connect To->Show all connections->Create a new connection.  Select ‘Connect to the Internet’ and then the ‘Set up my connection manually’ option, then next.  Then, select ‘Connect using a dial-up modem’ and Next, then give the connection a name such as “Blackberry Modem”, then Next.  Now, enter the following:

  • Number :  *99#
  • User name : bt
  • Password : bt

And that’s that!  Save the connection and to test it just connect to the Internet using your newly created connection.  There are two things to note – in most circumstances it won’t be as fast as your normal WiFi / Broadband connection, and you almost certainly be charged by the volume of data that you transfer.  For example, BT’s rates are here.

If you want to try this on another network, this page may be useful.

Crystal Reports…where did you go wrong?

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Many moons ago, when you could write useful software on a computer with less processing power than my last cellphone, there was a reporting tool called Crystal Reports that was incredibly useful for those of us who spent our working lives using tools such as Visual BASIC 3 to write windows applications.  It had a few gremlins, but they tended to be the sort of thing that you wrote in your notebook and turned to when you deployed an application that used CR…sort of:

“All report files verified against database…check.  All report files in distribtion package….check.  All CR runtimes in distribution package….check. ”

And that was it – the whole thing fitted on a couple of floppy discs (remember those?  If not, the contents of 400 of them will fit on a CDROM) and after I got my checklist sorted I was good to go and was happy to use Crystal Reports whenever I needed a quick and straightforward reporting solution.

The years passed and I found myself working on various projects which either used different reporting technologies or that didn’t involve me with reporting systems, and I gradually lost track of Crystal Reports until a couple of years ago when I found myself having to use the package again.  And most of the time it’s fine – but when used with Visual Studio to develop and deploy Internet Web sites and applications….oh dear.

As always you tend to blame yourself for being stupid with these sorts of things.  You are, after all, dealing with a couple of packages that could easily have knocked you back over £600 if you buy the full packages.  So, you kind of think that by following the instructions, you’ll get a working system without any real problems.  And, if it all goes pear-shaped, you assume that somewhere along the way you’ve dropped a clanger, so you repeat stuff, reinstall stuff, restart machines, uninstall stuff, sacrifice chickens…the usual persistent efforts to solve problems adopted by software developers.

Of course, we’re now aided by Google (how did we manage to resolve these issues before the Web?  I really can’t remember, but software seemed to go wrong less frequently back in the early 1990s) and so I did a quick Google of:

  1. Why Crystal Reports viewers failed to run properly when added to a web page, even if you used the exact code on Microsoft’s and Business Objects’s web sites?  Which led to….
  2. Why a particular folder called aspnet_client wasn’t being created when I created a new website.  Which led to….
  3. Why, when I manually added the folder (again, as per the instructions) , things still failed. 

6 hours of my life disappeared down the maw of this problem – 6 hours that I could happily have spent doing other things.  Eventually, rather than spend my life going round and round in ever decreasing circles (or re-installing EVERYTHING – not something I wanted to do on someone else’s server) I came up with what I ended up describing on Twitter as a ‘wanky bodge’ to work around the problem. 

What was incredibly scary was the number of times the issue turned up on Google with the comments ‘Don’t know how to fix, it sorted itself out after re-installing, Couldn’t fix it and so didn’t use Crystal Reports’.  It’s not just me – looks like the combination of Crystal Reports XI and some instances of Visual Studio (but not all) and some Web sites on the same server (but not all) can give rise to the situation where it’s impossible to view a report without bodging things. 

Guys…it shouldn’t be  like this.  There’s an old joke that says that if we built bridges the way we built  software we’d never dare to drive across them.  I think that there’s a little too much truth in that joke.

The obligatory General Election Post

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Some years ago, a joke did the rounds about the first Albanian astronaut.  The main thing you need to know is that at the time the joke was told Albania was a head-bangingly totalitarian Marxist state with total media control.    Anyway….

Albania manages to launch an astronaut in to orbit, and Radio Tirana announces the fact with great pomp and circumstance.   The country goes wild, and there is much celebration.  Which goes on for days.  Anyway, after a few days Nico turns up at the office looking a bit of a mess, and his boss hauls him in for a telling off, particularly about his wrinkled shirt and tie.

“It’s not my fault, boss, i’s the fault of that damn astronaut…”

“How come,” says his boss.

” Well, the only thing on the radio for the last few weeks has been about the astronaut, so I turned on the TV. There was nothing on there except for stories about the astronaut and his family.  So I went to buy a newspaper – again, full of stuff about this guy.  Same with magazines and books – nothing but stuff about this guy.  I bought some records and tapes – all full of songs about the bloody astronaut…all the muzak in the market from the loudspeakers, even the hold signal on the telephone…all this bugger!”

“OK, but how does this explain your shirt and tie?”

“Well, I didn’t dare turn the iron on to iron anything because I was scared that news of the astronaut might come out of it….”

And that’s sort of how I’m starting to feel only a little over a week in to the campaign.  The news media are doing their best to make the event in to a super-duper, highly exciting news event, but it’s hard going.  And I think there are a few reasons for this. 

We’ve lost faith in politicians and the political process.  They’ve proved themselves singularly unfit to govern in the last year or so through their attitude towards expenses and the like, and it increasingly appears that politicians of all parties the world over have been unable to manage national economies when confronted by global interests such as the banks.

There is a higher level of distrust of politicians than at any time in my memory.  The current government claimed they wouldn’t increase income tax in the Parliament – they lied.  They lied about the circumstances around the invasion of Iraq. They’ve introduces law after law that erodes our basic civil liberties.  From the opposition parties we have heard very few loud protesting voices.  The Liberal Democrats are so keen to achieve some element of power that they won’t even give a straight answer as to how they would determine which party to support in the event of a hung Parliament.  I’d like to think that this is because they’ll play each vote on it’s merits, but given the fact that it was Liberal Democrat peers who tightened up the Digital Economy Bill, I don’t particularly trust them either.  And the Tories – those of us with long memories know that the Tories were just as bad liars when they were in power.

I have no idea how I’m voting yet.  The best I’ve got so far is a few precepts, in order of application:

  • I will vote for whichever party will not introduce more laws that stifle our civil liberties – even better the party that will revoke some of the more outrageous laws bought in over the last 13 years.
  • I will vote for whichever party undertakes to keep the hand of State out of my day to day life – i.e. that will impose a smaller Government on me and that at least does something to decrease the red tape I encounter trying to run a business.
  • I will vote for whichever party promises to give me an effective and streamlined public sector and health service – not the bloated monstrosity we seem to have today.

All bets are off for me; I won’t be voting for a minority party – it will be either one of the ‘Big Three’ in England or a spoilt ballot paper.  I’m old enough to remember the impact of the unions under Callaghan in the late 1970s, and the economic devastation wreaked on the economy by Thatcher in the early 1980s.  Oddly enough, on a personal basis I’ve always been better off under the Tories and suffered under Labour, but would never consider voting Tory because it went agaisnt my attitudes about society.  How ironic that NuLab, therefore, have introduced policies that attack our liberties in ways that the Tories would never have dared.

I have no idea how I’ll be voting.  Watch this space and if I work out what I’m doing I’ll tell you.