Help is 14 clicks away

An organisation whose website I visit frequently runs a helpdesk for computing problems. That's fairly usual in most organisations but what is somewhat surprising about this one is the fact that they keep their contact details such a well kept secret. I know their phone number; I have the page it's on bookmarked, but having heard others were having trouble finding it, I decided to see for myself just how hard it was to locate on the organisation's website.

Here's what I had to do:

1. Read a 1 page introduction.
   
2. Read a 20 page guide. IT Support and Working with Computers is mentioned by page 11 but the helpdesk isn't mentioned until page 14, so a new user might not yet know it exists.
   
3. Click the Getting help and support link mentioned in the guide.
   
4. Click Computing Helpdesk.
   
5. Click Computing Guide.
   
6. Click Home. People new to the site may have trouble finding this. It doesn't explain where to find the ever so small link.
   
7. Click the Support Tab.
   
8. Scroll down; the Your Computer section is off the end of the page.
   
9. Click Computing Guide
   
10. Go back to Step 4 to find out where to go next - it isn't obvious.
    
11. Return to Computing Guide, if I could still remember how.
    
12. Click Getting Started.
    
13. Click Computing Helpdesk.
    
14. Click Contact Details - finally!
    

One of the key usability principles of websites is that navigation through them should be made easy. It shouldn't be this hard to find details for a helpdesk and I would hope that any organisation that recognised itself in this real scenario would take steps to tackle the problem very quickly. Actually, long before step 14, I'd decided Google would have been quicker, but a real new user might well have given up. Do they have to make it so hard?

Lost Networking

Am I the only person who thinks that a day out in London from the home counties using South West Trains has become extortionately expensive? It's not so long ago that a one day off-peak travel card from my area could be bought for around £8 and was usable on any train departing after 10am. Now it costs £14 for the same journey, though admittedly it would be a little cheaper after midday. Gone are the discounts that the Network rail card used to provide midweek as the minimum fare has been set at almost the price of the travelcard.

I wouldn't mind but for the fact that if I lived a short distance up the road I could travel anywhere I liked in Greater London for a day with an Oyster card for around £6 - £7, depending on which zone I started from and there are no silly super off- peak restrictions there. It would be tempting to jump in the car and do just that, but sadly the price of parking at the stations a few miles away is just as daft as my train fare.

You would think that government would impose some sanity on the situation to relieve congestion on local roads. If I spend the day in London shopping I am merely filling up an otherwise half empty train carriage. If I travel to somewhere like Bluewater or Lakeside round the M25 I'm adding to an already heavily congested motorway. In fact I didn't want to go shopping this week, but I might have spent a day being a tourist in central London. If I couldn't arrive until after midday at a sensible price there was little point.

I could of course buy a Network card just to use on Saturdays, but I probably wouldn't use it enough to justify its cost. It’s a pity though that South West Trains doesn't take into consideration the fact that a significant proportion of its customers have days off midweek rather than weekends and also that many are holidaying at home this year. This seems to be an opportunity lost to fill all those empty seats.

Beyond Watford and back

I should have known better than to head North up the M1 on a Saturday in August. The world and his wife had clearly set out several hours before me and I was still trundling at 40mph or worse round the M25 at the point in time when I should have been rounding the corner to my final destination.

By Woburn, coffee was beckoning and I pulled in to the service area for a brief interlude. The car park was a sea of caravans, trailer tents and scout mini buses, bikers in leather and families with small kids eating ice creams, dad in shorts, the office already far away.

On the way back I must have encountered all those returning after last week's rain. I detoured through Watford and promptly joined the queue of cars waiting patiently for the football ground to disgorge its endless stream of fans, purposefully striding along, it seemed, in their yellow supporters' T-shirts. Whole families, kids in tow, teenagers, best mates, they were all there. As I passed on through Northwood and Ruislip, an occasional pair were exquisitely dressed with boutique carriers in hand, back from a day out in the West End perhaps. Others, more nondescriptly attired, were struggling home from the weekly shop and there were teenagers let loose for the holidays, more interested in their friends, maybe, than where they were heading.

I wonder how many of the people crawling round London's outskirts would have gone by train if our transport system were more integrated. I remember travelling to Toronto in the 70s and being amazed that interchange stations for city buses were undercover and warm. You could hop on and off buses as many times as you liked before the expiry time of your ticket. Thirty years later, even central London doesn't match that kind of experience, though the Oyster card has improved life for regular travellers. Anyone with more than a light suitcase to carry is still distinctly unwelcome though, as steep steps sometimes form impenetrable barriers with not a lift or escalator in sight. The M25 carries cars, but why wasn't it built with a railway alongside, linking effectively with frequent bus and train services from en-route stations, along spokes leading in and out of the city and to airports?

I actually enjoyed my return journey yesterday. Its slow pace provided a fascinating diversion as I stopped at countless sets of traffic lights, watching the melée of people making their way home after a Saturday out. As a mere onlooker though, I was all too aware that I added to congestion on streets where I didn't need to be.

Call centre blues

I wonder whether automated switchboards and call centres really save companies money. They certainly don't help the consumer.

Take the last couple of week as an example. I've several times had to start again with an automated switchboard, as the option I needed wasn't there and neither was there an option to speak to an adviser. I've spoken to call centre operators in India. They recited the questions on their crib sheets in perfect English. It's sad that they didn't have enough practice in understanding English accents to distinguish between different digits comprising a phone number, let alone our sometimes unfortunately pronounced place names. On the first two occasions, promised confirmations never appeared. I wasn't confident that the resulting promise of action was going to yield the required result so a confirmation seemed essential. When it finally arrived it was in the form of a somewhat ambiguous email, so I started the whole process over again. I now live in hopes that a final conversation with someone actually in the UK was informed enough that I should stop worrying.

I really don't understand the philosophy of outsourcing jobs to other countries in a time of recession, but it might just work if staff there were given enough training. They know how to do their jobs, but without lengthy stays in England they aren't going to understand British colloquialisms, let alone some of our quirkier regional accents. On automated exchanges I have even less patience. This recent experience has cost me upwards of an hour of my time and has resulted in me tying up the call centre operatives of the company I'm dealing with on multiple occasions, when once should have been enough.

My plea to all companies considering outsourcing would be to remember that a basic grasp of speaking English isn't sufficient and will waste your staff's productivity as well as annoying your customers. As for automated exchanges, you need to test these with a much wider range of scenarios and ensure that the poor customer does not have to wade through half a dozen levels only to fail at the final hurdle.

A Conversation with Martin Bean

The Open University's vice chancellor designate, Martin Bean, doesn't take up his new appointment until October this year but he's reportedly in the UK in August with a busy familiarisation schedule. No doubt Martin will be intent on finding out more of what happens at Walton Hall, the Open University's Buckinghamshire headquarters. I'm sure he is already well versed in the structure of this very unique university and its diverse workforce. He may well have some misconceptions to overcome at first though. Here's how an interview with Martin might go after one of his visits.

So Martin, how are you finding Walton Hall?

Great thanks. There's a terrific buzz here with all these lofty academics everywhere. One thing's puzzling me though.

What's that Martin?

Well I understand there are some 8000 associate lecturers working for the OU but I can't seem to find out where they are. Do you know where the AL wing is?

Oh that's an easy one to answer, Martin. There isn't one. They all work at home!

That explains it then. Lucky them! Perhaps I'd better arrange some tele-conferencing sessions to talk to some of them then. Do you know what sort of equipment the OU buys for them?

Actually the OU doesn't supply them with any equipment Martin. They have to buy their own.

But surely we insist they spend their ICT allowance on standardised equipment and arrange preferred suppliers, that sort of thing?

Actually Martin, the ICT allowance doesn't cover much more than a few ink cartridges and the odd ream of paper let alone a new PC every few years.

You'll be telling me they have to pay tax on the allowance next!

Well actually Martin, yes they do. It's been amalgamated into the pay-rates.

But these are quite generous aren't they? I understood an AL working full time could earn over £31,000? That's not bad if they can swan off to the golf club whenever they choose.

But they don't actually earn anything like that Martin. For a start, they're only allowed to work on the equivalent of 6 30 point courses even if they don't work anywhere else as well, though of course they may not tutor that many.

So if they work on 6 30 point courses we consider them full time and pay them £31,000?

No Martin, it doesn't quite work like that. For example, we say they can do the job for a typical second level course in about 3 hours a week, which works out at 5.75% of their time annually for each course - that's 34% if they tutored 6 courses.

I'm starting to think I'd like to be an AL here! You mean we pay them over £31,000 and they only work for 34% of their time?

No Martin, those hours don't bear any relation to the hours it would actually take to do the job. We've never calculated that - these were just guesses we put together last time they complained. It made it look as if we'd put some thought into the negotiations.

So how long would it take to do the marking ALs do? I heard assignments were supposed to take about 45 minutes to mark . That can't add up to much. Besides they all have detailed mark schemes don't they, so there's no real thought involved is there?

I don't know where you got that idea from Martin. Assignments can take hours to mark. Each one has to have loads of personalised feedback as well as a mark. You'd have to know the course inside out to do it. It's a really difficult job.

But apart from that, ALs only have to run a few tutorials, and we supply all the materials they need for that don't we?

Well no actually. Most of them write all their own tutorial materials.

But that's their choice surely?

No Martin, they have to write them because we don't supply any for many courses.

But they're paid for that!

Well yes and no Martin. I suppose the 3 hours a week we say they need to work might cover some tutorial preparation, but it doesn't cover the time they need to read the course units.

Why are we employing these people if they need to read the course units? Surely they're supposed to be experts?

They are Martin. They can read the units in a fraction of the time it would take a student, but they still need to read them to find out what a student is supposed to know. They can't help them otherwise.

But we pay them a fee to read the materials thoroughly when we first start a new course don't we?

No Martin. I think we used to, but we don't any more.

Well can't they do all this reading between course presentations? After all we pay them for 52 weeks a year don't we?

We certainly assume they work 52 weeks a year when we calculate their pay fractions. That's a bit embarrassing actually. Everyone else in the university gets 30 to 33 days holiday, 3 university closure days and bank holidays. AL pay assumes no holidays and no compensation for unsociable hours working either.

But they get a generous amount of time off for scholarship don't they? I see we have an excellent fee waiver scheme as well as regional staff development days.

We don't charge them for any of this Martin, but it happens in their own time. That's another embarrassing point. Even our regional academics can have 2 months paid study leave in each 2 years worked. That's half what a central academic would get, but in line with the 10% offered by other universities for such staff. Our ALs get none. We don't even pay them to attend any conferences or meetings we want them to be at.

So you're saying the job can't be done in the time we've stated then. Have you any idea what factor we're understating it by?

I 'd estimate about 2.3 Martin, but it could be higher.

You mean if we upped the 3 hours by 2.3% it'd be about right? Phew, that's not much. I thought you were talking about a much larger figure for a moment!

I was Martin. I meant you'd have to multiply the figure by about 2.3 to get a more realistic workload estimate.

You mean we'd have to pay them over £71,000 p.a.?

No Martin, they'd still only be earning about £27,000 if they taught 6 of those 30 point courses.

You mean they're not even earning that now?

No Martin. They'd get paid about £12,000 for that using the calculations we use right now.

That's scandalous. Why don't they all resign?

I think they would Martin, but in this climate…….


[Note that the conversation above is entirely fictitious]

Indian Spice

I was in India last week. I knew Delhi had recently built a metro system. I knew many IT and call centre jobs had been exported to India. I knew that the car manufacturer Tata had its headquarters in Mumbai and now owned Jaguar Land Rover. Delhi, where I was based, is said _[1] to be the 3rd wealthiest town in India, so I expected to find a modern cosmopolitan city centre. The trappings of any large city centre are there: the plush hotels, embassies, hospitals and banks. The malls are there too, though are harder to find, but you won't see huge department stores lining the streets. In Connaught Place, in the centre of New Delhi, there's a huge green space surrounded by businesses, local souvenir shops and stalls, and there's an underground bazaar. It's hard to shop at all without being accosted by locals, often students, eager to practise their English and guide you to where they think you should go, usually to the information office or the government emporium not far away.

What quite took my breath away was the traffic on the streets. Delhi itself is full, not of private cars, but of ancient taxis, many of them the three wheeler variety, as well as mopeds, bicycles, fully laden buses, delivery carts and lorries. I would not like to have driven in India; driving is by accelerator and horn. When three lanes merge into two it's every man for himself. As you travel farther out from the city through small towns and villages, the traffic hardly abates, but is joined by bullock drawn carts and tricycles laden sky high with everything from sacks of produce to building materials. Workers are driven to and from their jobs in lorries and people standing clinging to the rear were not an uncommon sight. The three wheeler taxis, though equipped to carry only two adults in relative comfort, were often filled with a family of six and occasionally people were even sitting on the roof of these canvas topped carriers.

The monsoon had not yet come and the streets were hot and dusty. In the early morning it was not obvious what was behind the dingy pull down shutters on every shop front. Later in the day, the variety of trades and small businesses they hid became apparent, though produce was just as likely to be sold from a handcart in the street. Beggars plied their trade at every crossing and the occasional cow could be seen wandering beside the road, as, of course, they are sacred there. Small shacks with flat roofs lined the approaches. If there was any wealth there it was well hidden. In between villages the fields were parched and water courses virtually empty. There was the occasional cluster of traditional straw huts and when we passed back the same way in the evening, animals could be seen tethered outside.

India is not all poverty though. Fellow travellers on a train, on which I had managed to book e-tickets before leaving England, were Indian businessmen, with their laptops and mobile phones. The Ajmer Shatabdi Express was not particularly fast, but my carriage, though having the appearance of one built many years ago, was well equipped with power sockets, air conditioning, comfy airline type seats and capacious overhead racks. Admittedly this was not the crowded 3rd class carriage of some of the slower trains. The metro too carried a diverse range of people but it was clear that India has a far greater social divide than we experience here in the West.

I cannot but describe this as an amazing week. I set out to visit some of the world's most famous tourist sites. My itinerary included the Taj Mahal at Agra and the pink city of Jaipur and its observatory. I will take away many beautiful images of these, but no one could visit this part of India without being overawed by the rich tapestry that is the bustle of daily life there mingled with the scents of Indian spices, and a people jostling with each other to eke out a living.

[1] http://www.mapsofindia.com/top-ten-cities-of-india/top-ten-wealthiest-towns-india.html

OU 40th Anniversary Open Day

I looked in on the Open University's 40th anniversary open day briefly yesterday. What a wonderful celebration. In the queue for registration I chatted to two graduates who started their studies in 1972. They must have been amongst the earliest students and long since finishing their degrees they are still doing short courses. The day seemed to have attracted people of all ages, from the very young, who were enjoying the pink anniversary balloons and the train round the campus, to current and prospective students, the occasional staff member no doubt and those like the couple I encountered, for whom the Open University still holds very dear memories.

I wished I'd had time to see more, as there was a wonderful array of research projects being demonstrated in a wide range of areas across different faculties. In music technology, for example, a cellist was being taught to emulate the teacher's bowing technique, using sensors which gave a graphical display on a computer screen. In a knowledge media institute project, netbooks and webcams brought the close-up detail of a field trip to geology students who were unable to be physically present. I looked at the OU's Milton Keynes telescope and watched as its Majorcan sister was remotely controlled from a desktop PC. I could have spent all day exploring the many exhibits.

Whatever people's motives for attending the event, the day must surely be viewed as a resounding success for them and hopefully will have attracted some new students in the process.

Vacances

I was in France a few days ago, in the Seine-et-Marne region, a few miles east of Paris. The local town was very sleepy, but it was interesting how different it was to similar sized towns here in England in terms of possibilities to buy fresh food. We were told that essential shops, in this part of France at least, are protected in that if one becomes vacant, then the lease is offered at a reduced rent to a jeune homme (or, I presume, femme) who is prepared to ensure the continuity of such things as the local bakery, patisserie or butchers. In addition there are the weekly markets which sell the most amazing local produce all laid out in mouth watering fashion.

The French expect to be able to buy beautiful fresh cooked loaves twice a day. In the town where I live, there is often very little left apart from cakes after lunch time and certainly no second baking. We still have a butcher but the greengrocer closed his shutters for the last time several years ago. We have a farmers' market one Saturday in four and good supermarkets, but we don't have the vibrant pavement cafés that you find in France that give their small communities so much atmosphere.

So why are matters so different in France? Is it the fact that parking is so much easier? Once you have bought your parking disc, for example, you can enjoy an hour and a half's free parking there, without worrying about the cost, as often as you like. It can't be the weather. Northern France is probably just as wet as Britain. Perhaps it is indeed just the fact that whenever you go to France you feel you are on holiday, even if, like me, sometimes you are combining work with pleasure. The French make it very easy to do that, as broadband seems to be available just about everywhere. Until the same situation exists in England, vivent les vacances en France!

Treasures

It's ironic really, that on a day when the death of the schoolbook was being predicted _[1] I had just spent a good 2 hours searching through a resource online for something I could have found in 2 minutes if I'd only had the book.

Online resources are great for reading about cutting edge technology, up to the minute research, news, weather and opinions. They are cheap, well in fact free, if we have broadband and don't have to worry about the costs per minute of being online. Where they don't score well though, is in providing a familiar friend that we can thumb through over and over again, rereading sections that interest us, bookmarking pages and perhaps tucking away a postcard or other memento inside a particularly special volume. Even an online resource you've read before changes at the whim of the editor, so you might have put a particular page in your favourites list to return to at a later date, but it could have disappeared completely by the time you return to it months later.

All this perhaps goes to explain why my bookshelves are groaning. Some of the volumes are seventy or more years old. I might not look at these very often; they have no pretty pictures, but they are treasures. When I pick up a poetry book and read lines by John Masefield or W.H. Auden, I am truly transported back to another age, not just because of what is on the page, but because I can hear my mother reading out loud to me when I was very young. Will I ever be able to say that about a sheet printed off from the internet?

[1] Harvey, Mike and Woolcock, Nicola (10 June 2009) Schools may copy Arnold Schwarzenegger and junk their textbooks The Times, page 17 [online] http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article6466577.ece

I'm not a PC

The penny suddenly dropped this morning as to why it was that at 11pm last night I had been struggling to complete some work I'm paid to do before a midnight deadline. Before you ask, no, I hadn't been out gallivanting all day and left it till the last minute. I'd been slaving over it diligently. So why hadn't I finished it earlier in the day? The answer's obvious really when you think of it. Cast your mind back to the adverts that have been appearing in a number of different forms on our televisions recently for a well known computer manufacturer and you'll probably spot the problem quicker than I did. Simple! I'm not a PC.

So why am I not a PC? I teach. I wear glasses, sometimes and a ring. All of those things according to the advert are characteristics of people who are PCs. It comes back to logic really. If you are something, then you must display all the characteristics of that something. Just because you have one or more of those characteristics it doesn't necessarily follow that you are that something. So having got that out of the way, haven't I just proved that PCs are not necessarily teachers?

Now that brings me to the next question I'm pondering. If only a PC could do my job in the stated number of hours it should take, but a PC isn't a teacher, can anyone do the job? Discuss! While you think whether there's any logical answer to the question I'd better get back to work. There's another deadline due soon.

Not Much!

I don't begrudge Andrew Altman his £195,000 a year as chief executive of the Olympic Legacy company,_[1] really I don't, though I do wonder where the money to pay any performance related bonuses he might be awarded will come from. Londoners of course will be pleased that every effort is being made to ensure that the park's construction will benefit them all in the years to come and that it doesn't become just another white elephant.

I do wonder though, how the role of the Olympic Legacy Company is defined. In a February article,_[2] London First said "it needs strong leadership too, of the calibre of John Armitt or Seb Coe, so that good intentions turn into reality." Surely such leadership should have been put in place before the final designs for the Olympic park were approved and building work started? There is much work to be done on selling the space to interested parties after the event but I would have thought it was now too late to alter the infrastructure plans in any serious way.

The London mayor's office brought in Bob Kiley to try to sort out the mess which was then London Transport. Kiley famously described the maintenance contracts he inherited_[3] as part of the public private finance initiatives as having been drawn up "on the other side of Venus" . Let's hope that a similar fate doesn't await Mr Altman. At least he can look forward to a generous payoff if the job gets too much though. Mr Kiley was reported to be paid_[4] "£3,200 a day for doing not much" after his resignation in 2005. I wouldn't mind being paid £3,200 a day for doing something, let alone "not much"!

[1] O’Connor, Ashling (28 May 2009) Olympic Park's future to be assured by Andrew Altman, American regeneration expert The Times, Main section Page 20 [online] http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/olympics/london_2012/article6374849.ece

[2]London First (Feb 2009) Olympic Legacy Masterplan Framework - London First welcomes real progress [online] http://www.london-first.co.uk/news/detail.asp?record=100

[3] Clement, Barrie (5 April 2004) Bob Kiley: 'We're still with the sherpas on the lower parts of the mountain, trying to find a way to the top' The Independent [online] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/bob-kiley-were-still-with-the-sherpas-on-the-lower-parts-of-the-mountain-trying-to-find-a-way-to-the-top-558912.html

[4]Muir, Hugh (29 March 2007) Former transport chief describes his new role: £3,200 a day for doing not much [online] http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2007/mar/29/localgovernment.transportintheuk

Sheep

There's never much competition for the various sections of the Sunday paper that flop onto our doormat with a thud. Everyone seems to have their own favourites. There's too much there to read thoroughly in any case without setting aside the entire week. My usual strategy is to skim the stories in every section in an hour at most and mark ones I plan to return to later in the week. Inevitably recycling claims many of those that remain undevoured by Thursday night.

I wonder if high street shops are warned of which gadgets will appear on the pages of supplements such as In Gear and Travel, both Sunday Times offerings, ready for the rush on Sunday afternoon. Today's featured gadgets include a SatNav for walkers_[1]. Now don't get me wrong, SatNavs are great and next time I feel a sudden urge to go on a walk without having made any advance preparations I'll definitely consider downloading one of these OS walkers' maps to my GPS enabled phone. The snag is, for me at least, that it would create more problems than it solves at the present time. For one thing I'm not in the habit of keeping my walking boots in the car. They're still languishing in the garage covered in mud from the last walk. This brings me to the next problem. Will the walks you can download to your phone have any more information about which corners of a field closest to the style nearest to the pub on the way home have not been transformed by a herd of Friesians to a 2 foot deep quagmire, than the out of date walks guide on my bookshelf? No? I thought not. We dropped our map in said quagmire. It survived that, a little muddy perhaps, but the hosepipe outside the pub claimed it later! The SatNav probably wouldn't have survived even the mud.

I'm left thinking that for now at least I'll stick to good old fashioned maps. There's something rather good about being able to see the entire walk the whole time if you fold the sheet carefully enough. Then there's the later argument about which way you actually went as opposed to where you intended to go. Was that photo of you taken at the top of the peak or was it really only the hillock beside you walked up by mistake? It would really spoil the fun over lunch too if you couldn't recall the tale of how you had to climb the barbed wire fence to get back to the path without a 2 mile detour.

Anyhow, happy walking this weekend everyone, and if you see a sheep burping, do take a picture. Lamb may be off the menu soon_[2] if too many farmers have a sudden urge to save the environment.

[1] Matt Rud, (24 May 09) SatNavs for Walkers , Sunday Times Travel Section Page 4 [online] http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/travel/walks/article6342351.ece
[2] Jonathan Leake (24 May 09) Burping of the Lambs Blows Roast off the Menu, Sunday Times Main Section Page 11 [online] http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6350237.ece

Urban Rose

I'm not usually a fan of urban spaces. Perhaps I associate them too much with windy post-war shopping centres and soulless high rise tower blocks. There are exceptions of course. Take the Rose theatre at Kingston upon Thames. We were there for The Winslow Boy._[1] It was superbly acted but the theatre itself caught my imagination too. It has little in common with other theatres in the round, apart from its shape, in terms of construction methods. Its ceiling resembles the spokes of a huge iron cartwheel and one could be forgiven for thinking that someone forgot to apply the final layers of plaster to the foyer areas. I wanted to draw that ceiling, but even more delicious were the geometric shapes of receding triangles that lent perspective to the rooms of the set. Oh for a piece of charcoal!

This wasn't the first time in the last week that I'd found myself wishing I had a sketchpad in hand, not because I think I could necessarily turn out any kind of masterpiece but because art of any kind is somehow rather therapeutic; a pastime that is totally absorbing. The subject doesn't really matter. It could be anything that catches the eye from the odd perspectives in the theatre set to Ascot hats in someone else's painting or the stunning swathes of colour of an Azalea border.

Earlier that day we had been in an outpatients' waiting room. It was kind of them to display such lovely pictures on the walls. They were for sale of course, but my interest was in how they were painted rather than imagining them on my walls. This time I had a pencil at least but it was time to go before I had had a chance to finish. Perhaps I'll continue next time, or perhaps not. I should probably tear up my efforts and start again.

My week began however with a walk in the park; not any old park but one on the edge of a sixties shopping centre in Sussex. The sort where wind whistles round corners on blustery autumn days, leaves huddle in gutters and shopping lists are plucked skywards from your hands by sudden gusts, if you fail to grip them tightly enough. I'd walked around three sides of a square, depressingly, past abandoned shop-fronts on every corner, when I discovered that to reach my starting point the shortest route led through the park. For a few hundred yards I was in another land, of escapism, imagination and beauty. What an unexpected find.

[1] The Winslow Boy by Terrence Rattigan is reviewed at http://www.rosetheatrekingston.org/whats-on/the-winslow-boy

Food for thought

Heinz Wolff is probably best known for the Great Egg Race, a TV series which inspired a generation of young engineers in the late 70s and early 80s. I remember thinking at the time how much I would have loved to be a contestant if I had had the opportunity. Wolff will be forever associated in my mind with technological invention. Last night's lecture_[1] at Ealing Town Hall, organised as part of the OU's 40th anniversary celebrations, showed an altogether different and more reflective side of him, however, that I hadn't hitherto appreciated.

Professor Wolff's lecture wasn't what I expected. It was entitled 'Frugality and Mutuality, Crunch and Care' and publicity said he would 'reflect on what the world will be like when he is 111'. In fact he did talk about exactly that, but not in terms of what inventions we could expect but about the unwillingness of youth to engage in scientific and technological careers in richer western countries and the dangers of a nation becoming over-reliant on other nations for essential products and processes. The mutuality theme was developed further with an example showing how a scheme such as LETS_[2] could be extended to provide voluntary aid for the elderly or infirm, with the volunteers earning rewards in kind when they in turn needed help in the future.

It would have been interesting given a longer question time to have debated with Professor Wolff the economic advantages of a country specialising in its most profitable products, especially in current times where national debts are mounting, however his historical perspectives of a country needing to be able to manufacture essential chemicals in war time added to a compelling argument. As for his caring theme, middle class wives can, for the most part, no longer afford to spend the copious amounts of time in voluntary activities that our grandmothers might have done, so the kind of incentives that Professor Heinz was proposing seemed a novel idea that might just work. There is the contrary argument though that time spent in voluntary work to earn credits redeemable for help at a later date will not be paying for a pension which will fund such help should those credits be insufficient. There was much food for thought in any case.

[1] Open University (2009) Heinz Wolff 40th anniversary lecture http://www.open.ac.uk/platform/campus/events/heinz-wolff-lecture
[2] LETS - Local Exchange Trading Systems http://www.transaction.net/money/lets/

The Art of Processing

I've been involved recently in an Open University project to write a collaborative book on Processing, a Java based computer art API. The project has been driven by the creative energies of Darrel Ince, Professor of Computing at the OU. The original idea being to tempt 85 volunteers into writing a chapter each on the subject, plus a program, aiming to teach Processing as well as illustrating what could be achieved by it.

The project was fuelled by the amazing enthusiasm of its many participants last September and should have reached its conclusion about now. Originally, it was intended that all the participants would put their works in progress in cyberspace using a blog. The sheer awkwardness of doing this without losing any of the formatting proved a real barrier in practice, but a considerable number of the chunks are now there for all to see. Hopefully the book itself will be available in its entirety at some point as I'm looking forward to reading everyone else's efforts. "Processing", according to Holly Willis[1], "is allowing designers to push the boundaries of design". I wouldn't go that far with my simple sketches, but I have to admit they were great fun to do, if a little time consuming. My efforts can be can be found at http://writinginbytes.blogspot.com/


[1] Willis, Holly (2007) The Amazing Visual Language of Processing [online] http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/the-amazing-visual-language-of-processing (accessed 06 May 2009)

Remaining at the forefront of IT

How important is it to be at the forefront of IT, I wonder. This year alone I've probably lost upwards of 10 days productivity in learning the features of a new (to me at least) version of a major release of office software. Was it worth it? Time will tell.

The major plus point is that I'll now be very sympathetic when I see a presentation that is less than perfect as the text overruns the edge of the text boxes. The author probably had no idea of the lack of backwards compatibility of the product.

As for minus points, they're too numerous to state at present as I'm still on my learning curve, but at least I've encountered them in my own time at my convenience, with an academic community only too willing to help to solve problems. The cost to British industry however must be immense and one has to ask what the impact of this will be on future releases. Businesses may not want to invest the time in retraining staff in the future unless productivity increases can be assured in doing so.