Out of the Window(s)

On Tuesday (30th August 2016) the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 is released to those who pre-ordered.

That was me.

I set my alarm to wake me up at 6am so I could pre-order. After significant issues (more on this later) I have eventually pre-ordered in the signature Coral Blue.

And so ends the experiment - the Windows Experiment.

So, you may remember that I tried to rely on a stand-alone wristwatch phone. Whilst this had a number of other failings, one of the critical failings was the camera - having to cope with a 1.3mp camera with a VERY glitchy app and a logistically difficult positioning/focusing "functionality" - was a really bad experience.

Now, I'm a photographer. Let me clarify this for the Millennials - I know a lot about photography and love (LOVE) taking photographs. I do not do this on Instagram. I do not do this on Snapchat. I do not use filters. I do not take selfies. To me, photographs are not disposable or temporary. If they are to you, cool, fine - you've found your thing, enjoy it. I'm not a snob about this, and if Insta and Snap are getting you to understand things like lighting, positioning, framing and the like; if they are encouraging you to take photos of things you perhaps might not take a photo of purely because you can share it with a vignette filter, I am happy - perhaps delighted. You are looking at the world because you either enjoy that beauty or you want people to see/acknowledge/appreciate/like/share what you have achieved.

And yes, I love "true" photography, but I'm not a professional photographer though. Unfortunately I am stuck behind a desk reviewing and redrafting very boring, complicated documents most days. But I do have professional and semi-professional kit, including a Pentax K30 and a Nikon D810. So I love photography. Maybe I picked the wrong calling in life.

But, if I can't have my big cameras with me - if they are too bulky or I see stuff on a random wander - then I need a good camera. This is where the wristwatchphone failed. So, when I went out to buy the replacement I specifically sought out the best camera phone, but also with the largest format screen: I am fortunate in having big hands and I travel a lot, so having a big screen allows me to watch stuff conveniently. This was particularly a concern at the time - I was about to travel to Japan. I needed a damned good secondary camera, I needed to watch video, and I needed a GPS signal (which had failed on my wristwatchphone).

Enter the (then) Nokia Lumia 1520. After a year and a slight incident on a New Year night and - being locked into the Windows system without any easy means of transfer - I bought a Microsoft Lumia 950XL. Basically, both the absolute top of the range in large format, best camera phones that you could get at the time.

But, I'm going back to Android?

Yes. And, seriously, it can't happen soon enough. And I do mean this from the perspective of someone who tried to embrace Windows Phone as an OS.

So, are there any real design problems?

Well, yes.

I actually really liked the 1520 except for how the camera stuck out the back. Yes, they were plastic, they didn't have the 'premium' feel of these new metal or glass phones; but they were gripable. One of the issues with the 1520 which was resolved by the time of the 950XL was the angularity of the corners. If used for any amount of time, the 1520 would leave noticeable, sharp corner imprints in your palm which - after a while - became uncomfortable or even painful. The 950XL eradicated these but - very stupidly - put the power button between the up-down rocker of the volume. It's such a really stupid place to put it, one can only think they did so only "to be different" to Android and Apple. Don't.

With the 950XL you can pop-off and change the cover. Remember when that was a thing with original Nokias? Obviously you can't buy a cheap cover from the modding-shop on the corner because the cover contains the aerial and the NFC loop. And - as you soon find with a low-take-up-phone - no-one's going to bother making them.

Anyhow... to get to the point, the Windows Phone experience.

This is bad.

Really, really bad.

Like, really REALLY fucking bad.

Now, some of this is down to Microsoft being late to market; to being reluctant to licence like Alphabet's Android;  to buying Nokia and essentially excluding other hardware manufacturer's from the OS (yes, Google bought Motorola but was careful to keep it at arm's length and golly wasn't that such a good purchase for them).

But we smiled, Windows Phone users. We regarded ourselves as "The One Percent". We were to be the early adopters - this would ultimately challenge Android. Wouldn't it - because, let's face it, desktop is still MASSIVE and this partnering would be so valuable?

Hmmm

The UWP

For those of us who bought phones and upgraded laptops to Windows 8 before Windows 10 existed; the Windows 10 UWP was supposed to be the saviour.

UWP stands for Universal Windows Platform. You could design a program - an App as they are now - using UWP and it would work on a Windows 10 desktop computer; it would work on a Windows laptop, on a Windows tablet and a Windows mobile. Simple. One app for all - irregardless of form or factor.

Only no.

UWP has massive restrictions, hold-backs and problems for desktops. After all, UWP is designed to be usable on a 5" touchscreen device. There are huge differences between that and a computer with a standalone 15" screen and two independent inputs. UWP was SO simple, it couldn't be used by Enterprise. So Enterprise carried on creating stuff using the Windows 10 desktop API with minor fudges if people needed to use a Surface (still the only major "tablet" to take up the Windows interface, although a LOT of laptops/transformables use it). Indeed, Windows allowed this - they allowed Windows10 and WindowsUWP APIs to exist side-by-side. The fact remains - you cannot simply design one app for a device that has so much functionality as a desktop or laptop and expect it to be useable or adopted on devices with a tiny screen with no independent keyboard or mouse.

The Bridges

The Bridges were supposed to be the other saviour.

As I said, Microsoft was hugely late to the smartphone market. Apple and Android had a huge command; even Blackberry was still giving off some very vigorous of its last dying throws... Microsoft wasn't there.

Also bear in mind that, until apps get huge, they are tiny. They are often created by one-two-maybe-three-man-band units. Apps were something the WebDev teams could "pick up" - very, very often they were not business-critical. Still, to this day, there are a hell of a lot of "apps" which are basic shell-interfaces to the company's standard website. But when you have such a small team of developers or - more often than not - you are outsourcing to an AppDev team, you need to prioritize.

This iss business - it's cash. If it costs you A to develop an app, it costs you 2xA to develop two apps for competing systems; and 3xA for three OSs.

Microsoft was third - sometimes even fourth - behind Android, iOS, and sometimes BB9/10.

Hence the really, really tiny commissioning of apps. BBC didn't commission WP apps for News or for Weather; nor did the Met Office; nor Grindr; nor Tinder; nor the Guardian nor SO MANY sites/applications.

What was supposed to happen was two bridges. These would allow companies to use their already-created iOS or Android app, and easily port them into WindowsPhoneOS.

18 months later, we are still waiting on our bridges, we are still waiting on any significant apps. We remain the 1%, with 1% of the apps, 1% of the content.

The Actual OS

Ok, so lets actually focus on the actual OS for a moment.

Wifi

The Wifi system is fucking appalling. It regularly connects to my home WiFi, but can't connect to the internet. It shows as "connected to WiFi, No Signal". This is despite every other device being able to do so. What you have to do is manually turn off the WPOS WiFi and then turn it back on again. Every. Fucking. Day.

Bluetooth

The bluetooth system is fucking appalling. It regularly drops for no apparent reason. I often go out with wireless headphones on and the phone in my trousers and it struggles - very often dropping entirely, leading to my headphones telling me they are "not connected" and then blasting the locale with whatever I have been listening to through the phone speaker. It seems to do this particularly just after it has connected to a random open WiFi hotspot - it seems the OS cannot handle the two different connections at any one time.

Oh, another issue - transferring files. Despite both my laptop and my phone running Windows 10, the phone failed on every occasion to connect to transfer. This is the laptop which used to happily connect, way back when, to my old Android phone (and even the wristwatchphone). It is able to see it, but unable to transfer anything to it, meaning you end up relying on cables for data transfer for a phone that has wireless charging.
 
 Apps

Other than the above, I am going to try to concentrate on only those apps which you have/can only use because Windows.

Edge
Throughout I will refer to WindowsPhoneEdge as "Edge" - it should be distinguished from desktop Edge.

Edge is the most fucking awful of browsers. This isn't a little bit terrible, this is full-on-fucking-terrible.

Maybe it is [ahem] ahead of it's time... but a LOT of stuff doesn't load. Or doesn't load well. There are still huge formatting issues which lead to a lot of content - pictures, videos, basically anything embedded - loading with a [x]. Or not loading at all. HUGE bugbares with Edge include the 'loading' bar scooting along to 95% loaded, only to sit there forever and ... eventually ... display the "this page can't be displayed" page. Get used to that page - you see it almost 50% of the time you try to load a page, even when you are on strong internet signal. Other bugbares include the loading bar scooting all the way along and disappearing, presenting you with an entirely white page which purports to have loaded your page ... only after a five minute wait to give you a "this page can't be displayed" page. Yeah, we hate Java, but a lot - A LOT - of non-Java sites were inaccesible.

Oh, and don't click the 'reload' button - it (apparently) does nothing. I've done it and the lying-loading-bar doesn't move at all. VERY regularly you can be hitting it and it does nothing.

Oh, and the worst - it loads a page and you start reading it ... only for it then to disappear and be replaced with a "this page can't be displayed" message because some third-party ad didn't load in.

Since the most recent update, it often doesn't take me to the link I have clicked on, just the most recently visited. And using the Back button doesn't take you back to your previous app, just back through the randomly selected number of pages until Edge decides to send you back to the homescreen.

When I tried to buy my Samsung Note (see above) it obviously used a plug-in which was incompatible with WindowsPhoneOS - payment worked when I was using Edge (still the worst rebranding in history) on my laptop; but simply showed failure-to-load boxes in WPEdge.

Groove

You have to use Groove because - as pointed out above - there are no competitiors. Groove is fucking terrible.

I have loaded up my SD card with around 2000 songs; and I have set Groove to Random. Groove plays around 50 of these. I can go in and select some of the other songs and Groove will happily play them; but not in its Random sequence (hence why I capitalise Random). Also, Groove does random stuff (aside from not actually playing music randomly). Once, I found Groove had 'slipped' into only Randomly playing certain songs that began with the letter T. I wish this had only happened once.

One of the "best" functions of Groove is when you connect your wireless headphones, press play, and it doesn't play ... for whatever reason. You have to drag your phone out of your pocket, open the apparently-already-open-and-functionining Groove app, and press Play. Because that is what wireless headphones are about (and yes, I have tried on other devices with those wireless headphones, all which worked - to be fair to Groove, whilst being Microsoft-owned, they are not contributors to WPOS).

Oh, and I permanently have Adele staring at me, no matter what song is playing. The image selection thing is terrifying.

Email

 The email app is fucking appalling. Firstly, it can't distinguish between my Outlook and my GMail accounts, so clicking on a notification could send me to either. That's if I get a notification - I don't, since the most recent OS update (and worse - I don't get a notification when I get a WhatsApp message).

Sometimes it will decide that stuff that has been filed to a Spam folder is actually real mail, sometimes not.

Always - even when you are on a stable, secure WiFi network - it will ask you if you want to download the rest of the message. Why is that not automatic? Oh, and when you click the link, any one of three things could happen:
1) it might appear to refresh but actually do sweet fuck all and simply show you the same link again;
2) it might appear to refresh but actually do sweet fuck all and jump back to the top of the screen making you scroll down again to select the link;
3) around 1% of the time, it might actually download. But don't click a fucking link in the email, because they won't work. And pictures won't download.

Oh, and you can't look at anything older than 7  days. Regardless that you filed it or any such stuff. It'll show you the folders, but nothing in the folders if it is older than 7 days. You'll have to log in to your web account (using that beautifully lovely WP Edge) to try to find anything older that a week.

Also, if you have multiple addresses registerered to your account, don't bother. Despite using the Outlook app with Outlook addresses, it automatically set my reply address as my main Outlook Account address, despite the fact that I use one of my other addresses much more siginicantly. And you can't change this - this is fixed.

Calendar

Don't.

Look.

Back.

Honestly, if you're trying to find out what you were doing a month ago, it's probably gone.

The calendar app also has this lovely, honestly wonderful, feature where sometimes it will let you click on a day; and other times it will randomly shuffle you forward to the next upcoming event to that date. So, when you touch a date to add an event, you'll sometimes find yourself in October because Microsoft thinks you need to be busier in October where as you were actually trying to add an appointment for August.

It can be really difficult to see events.

And certain basic defaults are not available - you can't automatically set events as Private for example - I found this out after a phonecall with my mother where she knew all of my plans for the week. This is - at best - annoying; at worst - fucking disgracful. The "Remind me" options are fucking awful and uncustomisable.

Camera

Ok,so I flagged up at the start how imperative the camera is - why I bought the phone. The camera app is terrible. So terrible that it has been my primary reason for moving on.

The camera - when it takes the photo that I want it to take - is good.: colours, lighting and stuff. Sometimes.

However the software behind it is fucking appalling.

On so, so, so many occasions it taken well over 3 seconds to focus on something and take the photo, that the photo has been unuseable. It takes it well over a second (and normally a shake) to tell it that you are taking a portrait photo rather than landscape. Every time the OS updates this gets worse. The focus really is that fucking terrible that I don't try to take "live" photos any more, only posed/landscape.

It really is the fucking worst.


OS Updates

The WPOS updates suggest to me that actually Microsoft really aren't committed to WindowsPhone as an OS.

What happens is this:
Major Update
Fix
Further fix
Fix to fix those further niggles
Major Update
Immediate fix
Further fix

Now, we know that nothing is perfect; we know that fixes and updates are needed - it's how life happens.

But, what Microsoft's policy suggests (which isn't confirmed by any means) is that they don't seem to be committed to Windows Phone. They certainly don't seem to Alpha or Beta test the Windows Phone 10 OS any where near as catagorically as they do the Windows 10 update releases. For example, this week, they seemed to be quite happy updating my phone with an OS that wouldn't take photos or connect to an WiFi signal for a good two days before they updated and 'fixed' that element.

I disclose - I bought a Samsung Note 1 way back in the day. I previously owned a Dell Streak (get that!) and I do massively dislike the amount of bloatware that Samsungs come with. But I've gone with it on this occasion because of the camera and form-factor.

Everything Changes But You (only you do)

So, as you are aware, my life is changing significantly.

My house is up for sale.

Was.

You will possibly remember that getting the house up for sale was part of the "London By Thirty Five" scheme. Well, things accelerated. I got made redundant. Again.

And again, me being me, I got myself something sorted quickly.

In London.

It made sense - the house was up for sale; I had plans to move to London, why not get the London job and then move.

I started work for my new London business last Monday. I agreed the sale of my house yesterday and I get the keys to my new flat in Clapham early December. It's all slotting into place, albeit at a phenomenally hyperspeed pace - though not an impossible one. Just a lot quicker than I expected - that said, to fully meet the timescale of being in London by 35. I feel, had I not been pushed, it may have been early in the new year that I ended up moving. As I say, I've had to put a move on, but in an achieveably tight timescale.

And it hasn't been helped by having shoulder surgery on Friday which meant that I had to be much more organised than otherwise as I now have very limited capability with my left arm in a sling.

But anyhow, I've eulogised my own time here more than enough. Now is to discuss the changes.

I'm not going to talk about the interior of the house - that has been done. I'm talking much more generally over the nine years I've lived here.

Obviously the gardens and outside have changed. No more is there a wooden porch out the front; nor the "sunroom" on the North aspect of the house. The top patio has been replaced with a veg patch; there are a couple of new fruit trees, new fruit bushes but otherwise the back hasn't changed significantly. Around the front the old rotten cherry tree has been replaced with a couple of new ones, the border of the path lined with lavendar bushes, and new fuschias around the drainage covers. I've moved the path closer to the the hedge to remove a border and grassed the remaining patch, and generally made it nice.

I started at my place with a Vauxhall Corsa, that got broken into a written off, leading to five or six years without a car, resorting to a Honda Jazz when I started my last job. That got sold today. Where the cars park there were three really big trees, there is now only one. They replaced the street lamps and, in the last week, resurfaced the only bit of road they've ever resurfaced whilst I've lived here.

I found the little snick-through of the steps which transformed my journey to the station. Otherwise I went past the Hindu Temple. That grows annually. They knocked down the little out-house that was the caretakers house when it was a school.

Of the three pubs on that corner, two have gone. Indeed, that is a story long told - many of the pubs have gone. However, one of the wasteland/grass areas has been redeveloped into a new housing estate. The high-rise flats at Burrows Court which have had planning permission after planning permission haven't been developed. The old spaceship Co-Op that was supposed to become an Asda hasn't.

Nottingham Contempory is in existence now - that wasn't. I remember going to the opening night for that. And further down the road, they have "started" on work on the Broadmarsh centre. Well, if you can call "starting" vacating the units to leave the centre half-empty to force the council into accepting virtually any plans for development. They've started "developing" the Victoria centre too. When I say "developing", it's basically a new lick of paint, a few new light bulbs and a slight redesign of one area into a food court. Nothing anywhere as significant as the "House of Fraser" expansion of the ninties.

The train station has been given a good clean to allow for the expanded tram network - not quite as integrated as you'd like, but good enough. And it has seven platforms now not six. And the developers FINALLY built what is now known as Nottingham One - even though half the retail units are empty.

The arena isn't within the 10 year timescale - I remember going to the arena for the first time on my 21st birthday to see Steps with my mum and sister. Good times. However, the new Victoria leisure centre with pool opposite has been done within my time here. I remember first moving in and still using the old pool (actually quite nice architechturally). And whilst I think the tram arrived whilst I was up in Newcastle at university, lines two and three (involving the new bridge over the station) have only opened in the last few months.

I won't really comment on the roads because the council seems to change the road system as often as possible to confuse drivers, other than to comment that the A46 was single carriageway when I first worked out that way - it's dualled now; and ditto the A453 expansion alongside the tram - I never use that route though.

I've gone from frequenting almost exclusively gay bars to now mostly straight bars. I love the Jam Cafe - somewhere that I found around three or four years ago - and the Malt Cross, somewhere that I got taken on a date around six years ago. That shut for a refurb and re-opened a year ago. I haven't been to Cookie Club in many years, and the last time I went to NG1 was a good 18 months ago when James and I went on our last night out in Nottingham together. Obviously I've already discussed the change and decline of the gay bars - the latest is that the Lord Roberts, one of the few mainstays over the last couple of decades and certainly for my residence, has been bought out although as yet there doesn't seem a desperation from the new owners to change the clientelle.

There have been many little changes of ownerships. That shop on the corner opposite the Vic Centre was a Disney shop, was something else, is currently a Nationwide Building Society. We have a Five Guys on the market square where there was a Pizza Express. The Tesco Express and Sainsburys' Locals have expanded - one Tesco taking some of the space of the now defunct Tales of Robin Hood that I took some people to in the first year I lived in my house. My fish and chip shop has changed hands three times; the Chinese not at all. There is a new development going up opposite all the garages where the old car-wash station used to be.

Anyhow, I'm sure there are many changes I've forgotten or not noticed; and there will be many more to come in my absence. Nowhere stays still

Wristwatch Mobile Phone

Yesterday I bought a new mobile phone.

This is hardly ground-breaking news, you may think, but if you do you don’t know me.

I’m not one of those people who updates their phone annually. I buy mine outright (rather than on a contract) so I get to upgrade it as and when I choose. And that is usually only when it is absolutely necessary.

For example, the last three phones I had have all lasted me well in excess of two years each. The phone I had previous to my current device was a Samsung Galaxy Note (as in a Note 1 – the first of the series which is now up to 4) which I had for two and a half years and I only changed it because it stopped working because they stopped providing updates.

And that was when the major change happened.

I went to a wristwatch mobile phone.

Now, this is a standalone mobile wristwatch, not a companion. You put the SIM in the watch. You don’t have a ‘buddy brick’ in your pocket and use the watch device simply to read notifications, the watch is the entire phone. It is an Omate Truesmart.

The future is here.

Now, a lot of people questioned me about this. How do you take calls? How do you message? Is the screen not too small?

Well, the answer was that it was all surprisingly easy.

I’ll start off by saying that I never intended it to be my sole device. I ordered it (well, Kickstarted it) well in advance of giving up on my Note, however by the time it arrived, the Note was on its way out and it proved so difficult inserting the SIM into the wristwatch that swapping between them was not an option.

But the watch proved functional enough. Yes, the screen was small, but workable. The predictive text was so sensible that mis-typing on such a small screen actually wasn’t an issue. Phone calls were not a big problem either – I could sit with my arm on my desk and talk at the watch, the microphone and internal speaker both powerful enough. The problem with phone calls only really occurred when I was at Alton Towers and didn’t have my Bluetooth headset (which you can use if you need privacy on your call) to cut out background noise. Then I looked a prat, talking into my watch then pressing it to my ear to hear what was actually difficult to hear.

But other stuff was very useable, more so than expected – apps, whilst not being optimised, were mostly usable. The Youtube app lost its volume control which was annoying, but otherwise fine. Whatsapp disappeared off the homescreen and had to be launched separately through a rather convoluted process.

So, why am I giving up on it? What are the problems?

Well, firstly, because of how much they have tried to cram into the device, some bits have spilled out. The antenna for wifi and mobile connectivity are embedded in the strap, on one side, with the GPS antenna on the other. At some stage, either through flex or sweat ingression, my GPS stopped working actually very early on – obviously just a couple of days before I had to take a detour round the back roads to avoid a massive traffic jam.

Then, there’s the battery. It’s obviously not going to be big, but even light usage of the internet during the day means that it needs charging immediately after lunch (from an overnight charge). The size of the screen means that it can’t be used to watch video on a commute, but the lack of battery means that you have to be very, very careful when travelling around in case you need that last 10%. And because of how they tried to waterproof the phone, you need a bespoke ‘cradle’ to charge the battery up with.

But it was also let down on some technical specs. For a mobile device that was only released earlier this year, it is almost inexcusable that it doesn’t have 4g.

The camera, though, was a real let-down. It wasn’t 3mp as had been expected – it was 1.3mp ‘upscaled’ to 3mp. It was actually quite poor. Frustratingly so. And the camera app was really glitchy. Three quarters of the time it wouldn’t actually take the picture; when it did it had no ability to select focus. It was the Tesco Value of camera apps. When you think how often these days you use your mobile to snap a picture, this is not good.

But I persevered with it, and it has been usable if not a glowing experience. Ultimately though I am going travelling in December, and therefore absolutely need working GPS and a good camera, and a sizeable screen for video will be a distinct advantage.

Aside from the specifically mentioned  issues though, the "wristwatch-ability" of the device was a benefit, just not in its current format

Further Facebook frustrations

Have you noticed toe Facebook latest?

I know moan about Facebook quite a lot.

I also know that I use it too much anyway.

But they do seem to be forcing unnecessary and inconvenient changes upon people without even researching if it is going to be any use to people.

It has a history of rolling things out with little market research, little business-impact-analysis, or little profit-maximisation suggestion.

So, previously (click 'moan' above) I showed how "most recent" on the mobile apps actually wasn't the most recent.

Now, the "most recent" default on the main website is no sticky. It isn't a default at all. It has to be actively selected.

It's frustrating.

Really frustrating.

"Top stories" - the new default - has never taken off. People haven't gone to the lengths of going through their massive (or in my case, modestly 450) list of friends, to select which of them pops up as a top story. People are actually getting really annoyed at stories 'disappearing' or not even showing up in their news feed, because they have either checked their mobile feed, and gotten not the "most recent" as it claims, but the "most recently liked or commented upon", (if they even have selected that rather than the mobile default of "Top Stories") or because they haven't realised that the 'sort' facility auto-defaults to "Top Stories".

So, where's the business reason for this?

Is a Top Story more likely to feature promoted or sponsored posts? Is that why - because they are more active about you spending money?

If not, then really what is the business case for the change? I am struggling to find one - the reason that a highly underused, confusing, disliked and ultimately off-putting feature should be implemented seems to shriek short-term gain at the expense of a long-term relationship. I know, this is the story of my life.

But, we all know that Facebook market-capitalised. And that means that Facebook needs to business-justify things to the market, otherwise the market becomes dissatisfied loses interest, shares decrease and Facebook devalues. Facebook has to be profitable or it loses investors, interest and value, essentially. Just ask Apple whose shares this week lost over 10% of their value simply on the basis that, although they sold more phones and stuff than they've ever sold, they still didn't sell enough to meet the expectations of their investors. Facebook, though, seems to justify its (substantially diminished since float, but still) exceptionally high market valuation on the basis of a huge, sticky client base (sticky because they come back regularly or stay for a long time). It justifies changes on the basis that they are either 'what people want'; 'what they need' (to make it even more sticky) or 'what they will get used to' for a decision which will rankle the users, but be profitable otherwise. Afterall, ask the users if they want to see adverts and they will say no; but it needs to make money - it isn't an altruistic gesture.


But it over-relies and over-exaggerates this sitting customer base and is seriously at risk of disenfranchising them altogether. Yes, there are some changes that users may not initially like but they get used to - take Timeline. Everyone pretty much loves Timeline now, though they didn't at the start. But the changes that are purely commercial need to be as little intrusive as possible - the more they irritate that user-base, the less sticky those users are.

And it shows. At the recent launch of the "social graph search" - the ability to search Facebook fare more intuitively than recently (Facebook search has, for me, always been poor and a massive weakness for the service) all the talk on Twitter was "who actually uses Facebook anymore anyway?".

Just ask Myspace how secure Facebook's position actually is. Can it impose these changes without fear of reprisal? Maybe it thinks it is just too big to lose it's users. Many a corporation has made that mistake.

Reasons for reversing

New year, new you?

I've already discussed previously that I don't really do New Year Resolutions. Indeed this year I didn't even start a new toothbrush and razor.

But everyone else has probably started out with their resolutions. A lot of my friends on Facebook are already very piously NOT DRINKING, quite a few are carb-cutting or otherwise exercising.

I'm not.

For a number of reasons.

Firstly, it's just a tokenistic change of day. It's no different to any other day. There is no reason why this year is going to be anything different to any other year. Do excuse me if I have just urinated on your self-righteous smugness.

But, aside from natural expiry (I really should change my toothbrush as I've been using it since the clocks went back) there is nothing about the New Year which is good. Christmas is over, massive anti-climax, the worst two months of weather are expected with little to look forward to until the Easter holiday when the weather finally starts improving. Unless, of course, Valentine's day is a remarkably lovely and stress-free occasion for you.

If you are using the tokenistic change-of-day as a real opportunity for self improvement then good for you. If you are using it to change job or improve your health then good on you. But why now? Why not in November when you realised you were doing nothing else with your night times over winter? Why not in September when the college course actually started? Why not three years ago when your wife actually left you for the chap who owns the cornershop just down the road from where she works?

In previous years I have done the whole big new year, new toothbrush, new razor, new tomato ketchup, house cleaned and tidied etc. But I have never attached any particular emphasis to the 'new year' thing, other than it being a specific date to work to. So with toothbrushes, it sits conveniently half-way between the other new-tooth-brush days of Clocks Forward and Clocks Backward. I generally start a new razor at the beginning of the month anyway, simply because it makes it easy to keep track. And I use the opportunity of a few days off work to clean and tidy the house - I like a clean and tidy house anyway, but the extra time means looking at the extra jobs of tidying out certain cupboards, the things at the back of the fridge that I never normally look at. To that extent, these things haven't really become New Year New Me routines, but purely a coincidence that the bank holidays mean time off work to do the things.

But this year I didn't. I didn't make any effort to clean the house. I still have to change the bedsheets, clean the bathroom and only last night (5th January at the time of writing) did I clear the ironing pile that had been there since the end of November. And, as I say, I still have to dig out the new toothbrush and razor from under the bath. I am not giving up drink, nor am I going swimming for a while. I am in absolute reverse of everyone else. I know I don't need resolutions: I am not unhealthy, unfit, or overweight, so it isn't as though I require them for self-improvement.

I have almost reactionned against the New Year New Me philosophy. But there are many reasons behind it.

Firstly, on review, last year was not a terrible year but it was not especially fantastical. I did not get the new job that I wanted, I did not achieve any particular self-fulfillment, get my book published or anything. I got the bathroom and bedroom absolutely finished, but paid for it with a poor performance in the garden. So it is clear that the tidy house and new bottle of ketchup at the start of the year was hardly setting myself up for a year of wonderous amazement. I'm not saying that doing the opposite will, but it is tokenistic. Why do we sit and navel gaze back over a year at the end? Well because it is numerical. But we do it at other times of the year with less pomp, circumstance or introspection. We often get to September and analyze what a rubbish summer we have had, the end of a holiday to review and regret the return to work.

I also didn't have time to do the tidy house new year. I only got home at lunchtime on the 30th December, after spending just over two weeks in London and the Seychelles (more later). This meant that I hadn't had the limbo week between Christmas and new year to sort all my various jobs out - I barely had one day.

I'm not exercising for two reasons. Firstly, the swimming pool will be hell. People will be doing the Brand New Me January. People who haven't been swimming in around 11 months will be back there for the three or maybe four weeks before they give it up again. I can't stand those people, and it makes it very difficult for those of us more committed the rest of the time. But also, I have other intentions.

Despite not having resolutions, I do have 'Aims'. These aren't specific to new year though. One of my Aims, for example, is to try to get the lounge decorated in time for Easter. This is a project which has been ongoing since September or October, and Easter is a perfect time for it to end: I will be able to concentrate my evenings thereafter on gardening; and I will be able to furnish the lounge in the Easter sales hopefully. But - despite the previous comments - Easter really isn't that far away, so I have my work cut out to achieve the target. And that means putting aside swimming or such like until I have time (or the weather improves that I can jog to work again).

And I'm not giving up drinking either. Many people do this in January, so much so that a charity has taken up the cause to get people to achieve something for the charity as well as themselves. Don't just give up drink, raise money for a good cause at the same time. Become a Dryathlete.

I'm not saying I don't applaud this. If you are having a break from booze, good. I did. And if you are raising money for a good cause, all the better. Just don't be pious about it. One of my friends gives up at midnight on the 31st, thereby making the night awkward - he either really goes for it on the 31st and gets ridiculously drunk so he doesn't need to drink after midnight (or can't), or he makes a big thing at midnight about not drinking any more. He might as well just go home. Another of my friends makes very clear to any event invite in January that he is not drinking so it is not worth him going. Either go, don't drink and don't make an occasion of it; or don't go and don't make mention of it. Just don't rub it in my face. Do it to make yourself feel better, not to make everyone else feel worse.

I have my own reasons for not not-drinking.

I will cut-down on booze, purely out of natural reasons - fewer people go out in January, so I won't get invited out so frequently. And I'm trying to do the lounge project, so my money and time will be diverted onto that.

But I'm not making a January gesture of it. I'm cutting back, not cutting out.

In the middle of the month one of my very good friends has her birthday. I feel sorry for her for this. I have a December birthday and I know how rubbish a December birthday is.

December birthdays are bad because people are always poor or busy. My birthday is actually exactly a week before Christmas and the excuses or reasons I get for people not coming to my celebration are:

• they are doing some sort of family occasion that they can't do at Christmas because of partner/family arrangments
• they have a work/uni/club/other Christmas celebration already arranged for that night
• they have so much going on that they need a night off organising/wrapping/detoxing/saving money.

 A January birthday alleviates some of these, but exaggerates the money-saving or the not-drinking ones. She also has the weather to contend with: over the last few years her birthday has been hit by snowstorm after snowstorm. For these reasons I have every sympathy with her for a winter birthday, and therefore make every effort that I can to attend and properly celebrate her birthday.

And so it is that I have my few Aims: the lounge, the job, the lottery. I have no resolutions, and in the meantime I have a temporary suspension of a few of my normal routines. But until then...

Happy New Year!

Nearly most recent

I know - I haven't had a Facebook rant for, well, almost a year and even then it wasn't a proper 'rant'.

But Facebook have recently released a new update to their Android app.

Fortunately this solves for me one of my main bug-bears - the widget refresh rate. Previously the widget would be telling me things that happened hours ago... at best. Usually it was "Yesterday a 9:00am" or something daft. This made the widget realistically useless. Now it isn't - now it updates with your most recent.

Which brings me to the question:

When is your most recent not your Most Recent?

When it's Facebook's Most Recent.

Confused? I'm not surprised.

Back in September 2011 Facebook unleashed Top Stories upon us.

No-one really knew what a Top Story was.

You could tell Facebook who or what was likely to be a Top Story, but it took an absolute arse-load of effort at that stage to go through your hundreds of friends and select which of them were top friends. And if - like me - you check your Facebook every few hours anyway, this was the most unhelpful of features in a long while.

Annoyingly, all searches and your newsfeed defaulted to Top Stories, and each time you had to manually select Most Recent. That eventually changed on the website and your own choice became 'reasonably sticky' - that being that Facebook would forget your choice as and when it felt like it so you still had to check the tiny little writing at the top.

But with its app, you had no way of knowing whether you were viewing Most Recent or Top Stories. With the updated release there is a tick indicator. And again, it has - thankfully - become reasonably sticky. You do have to check it every time as it does occasionally forget your preference, which defeats the object of it being sticky in the first place, but at least it half-makes-the-effort.

The only problem is the different meanings of Most Recent.

You see, if you log in via the web platform, Most Recent means the most recently posted status.

On the app that isn't the case. Most Recent is the most recently posted, liked or commented upon status. So, if your friend posted his status (or photo or whatever) four months ago, but someone liked it two minutes ago; on the web it would be nicely buried into their Timeline, but on the app it shows up as more recent than your friend's much more recent status update from just three minutes ago.

Irritating?

Don't even start!

It almost seems to be part of Facebook's policy to disenfranchise its established users. Facebook is starting to become a perfect example of a "Bad Corporation" that establishes a client-base, and then simply exhausts that client-base, milking it for all it is worth until - eventually - they realise better and move on.

It did it with Top Stories - foisting it upon us without actually asking whether or not we wanted it, whether it was actually a benefit to anyone.

They did it with the Facebook.com email addresses - your visible email address on there automatically defaulted away from whatever you had registered and wanted people to see in case they needed to contact you urgently, to a Facebook email address. If you didn't know, you wouldn't know: they didn't email you to tell you, or highlight the change the next time you logged in. It was silent.

I'm not sure I have convinced myself by my own argument that they are doing this to actively exploit the client-base for a number of reasons.

Firstly, we are not the client-base. We are free users. We are the resource. We are the data, we are the audience, it is the advertisers who are the clients. If they institute policies which actually make people less likely to use Facebook, then it affects their ability to sell adverting and therefore their revenue stream.

Secondly, if they are actively going out there to exploit on the basis that their users are too 'stuck' to Facebook to move, don't count on it. Just ask Myspace or Digg what ignoring your users when undertaking fundamental redesigns or functional adjustments can do to your 'sitting' userbase.

Now, I am fully aware that there does need to be forced migration in some circumstances. People don't like change, and often cannot see the benefit of change. I discussed it in the previous post about Timelines. But does anyone see a benefit from these changes?

Let's face it, this is a massive, multi-national company. Decisions as fundamental as these can't be imposed without substantial focus group analysis and testing to see whether it would harm the business. They can't be imposed without there being a proper cost-risk analysis and a business case proposal.

Surely?

Brand new year, Brand new me

I know I don't make new year resolutions, but as I said, this year I've been inspired for a new start. Daft things like I said. So here they are:
New toothbrush
New toothpaste
New soap
New hairgel
New razor (since replaced, obviously)
New bedsheets
New pyjamas
New matress topper (though this was a Christmas present)
New washing up liquid
New sponge
New dish drainer
New layout it the kitchen (well, changed as much as I am able to until I can move fridge, sink and oven; the 'Holy Trinity' as they are known.)
New pegs
No washing or ironing (though obviously some has since accumulated)
New mayonnaise
New tartar sauce,
New jam,
New pickle. In fact whole new policy with regard to the fridge to ensure it isn't cluttered with jars of things never used.
Changed electric and gas supplier
Changed telephone and broadband provider (currently leaving me without broadband and at the mercies of the mobile app)
Changed bank
Changed credit card provider
New way to walk to the train station
New way to walk back from the train station
New way to walk into town
No new job yet, but apllications submitted and continuing.
New weekly routine, including nights to concentrate on job applications, DIY, projects and house-jobs (the notion of washing up daily soon lapsed).
A new nightly routine ensuring jobs are finished by 10:30pm then bathing (showering is reserved - despite the magnificence of the powershower and cubicle - to occasions where I don't have time to bath, either because of the lateness or the ensuing rush), to then do some work on one of my projects for an hour to then go to bed, read and hopefullly turn out the light before midnight.
Booze reduced.
Exercise though not specifically included in the BNY-BNM ethos, and aside from the suspension due to the operation, is still going well, and will go better once the brand new swimming pool opens in a few weeks.
And this is all the 'actual' changes, regardless of my any change of mental figurmentation

Fantastic February

And so we have reached February.

Well, we reached February on Wednesday for those of you that haven't been paying attention.

But this is the turnaround month. This is the month that the days start getting lighter. Already of an evening it is almost still light as I leave the office. It's amazing. It makes so much of a difference. By the end of the month we'll not be far off the greatest rate of change of daylight hours, where the sun sets almost three minutes later each day.

And people are starting to feel happier financially. They've had their hermit January where they haven't seen anyone or spent money they don't have after Christmas. If anything, having been cooped up so long - and quite possibly abstaining from the booze as well - they are so cabin-feverish they are actually quite desperate to get out of the house.

And with February being the shortest month as well (though this year is a leap year so we have an extra day to deal with), the money is even easier. It does make me wonder why the abstainers (who all moan about it on Facebook not so much as you can feel their pain, but more because they want to feel rather pious about it) don't abstain for February in substitution as it is only ordinarily 4 weeks (and therefore four weekends) long. Presumably they have Valentines to wine and dine.

And then there's the weather. Whilst historically February is the coldest month of the year - and this weekend we are expecting the first really heavy snow of the season - by the end of the month you can feel the change, particularly with the change in daylight. It'll not be that long before I can start sorting the greenhouse out and starting sewing my seed. I can't wait!

And finally, for me at least there are now fewer than 10 weeks before my great adventure. I'm off down South. Down VERY South: New Zealand via Honk Kong and back via San Fransisco to bring a friend home. At the beginning of January, though only a few weeks ago, it still felt like the quarter of the year that it was. Now it feels like the only-just-over two months that it is. Semantics are beautiful

Happy February

Just a quick flash

So, yesterday I discussed about the films that I watched to keep myself entertained. I have also made passing references to my 'non-physical' projects. At any one time I have many projects on the go, mostly to do with house, home or garden, but some other administrative tasks - sorting and tidying various things, writing things, and other such occupations to prevent me getting into trouble.One of the new projects which I embarked upon over my time off was a bit of a sort out of my digital photo collections; and printing out quite a number of them. in doing this I found that I have take around 22,000 photos since getting my first digital camera around 10 years ago.

That's correct.

TWENTY TWO THOUSAND.

Do you remember when you used to go on holiday and get given a single roll of film? You had 24 photos (probably actually 27 because you used to be able to squeeze some extras out at the end) to last you for two weeks. And to make matters worse you had actually no idea if the photos had come out properly until you had waited the agonising five days that it took to get developed (my dad wasn't going to pay the couple of quid extra to get them done within a day let alone an hour). And what then? Well, if there was a smudge on the lens, or a finger in front, you didn't have a picture (or you got one with an advisory label saying 'there appears to be something between the lens and the picture - try moving your finger in future') and would either just have slowly dimming memories of the holiday, else having to return to the same spot at some other time to take that magical moment. Again.

When digital cameras were invented there were shrieks from artists and photographers. This was putting into the hands of ordinary people valuable technology. It was making their livelihood redundant and they were getting protectionist about it. Anybody but anybody would be able to take photos. Hundreds of photos would exist - thousands - maybe even, say, twenty two thousand. With so many photos proliferating and circulating, how would they ever stand out? Worse still, the medium was disposable. People would be taking all of these photos, and yet never printing them out, never sharing them, never doing anything with them to enjoy them.

Indeed this was the argument used by Kodak when, in 1975, their employee Steven Sasson designed the first digital camera. They were worried about film and paper and that no-one would want their products. Ironically they propelled the Brownie box camera into the hands of the public with the counter-intuition to their digital decision: the ability to get the product, the camera, into the hands of as many people as possible was absolutely necessary. The hardware v. consumables argument has been one that has abounded since patents first were issued, essentially protecting the hardware inventions; whilst limiting the ability of the developers to extort their customers for replacement consumables that 'must match' or 'must fit' whereas obviously the economics for developer are to recoup their research and development either through higher initial prices, or discounting (perhaps even subsidising) the hardware and recouping through consumables.

But the professional photographers were being elitist, stuffy and - for creatives - surprisingly uninventive. Quite, these thousands and thousands of photographs may be taken by the untrained amateur; but there would still be a world for the professional photographer. They just needed to find their niche - tell people what it was about their photos that was unique.

The main worries were, essentially, that they would struggle to find a market to sell - people would simply take their own photos and not need a professional portrait; or at the other extreme that the market would actually become flooded with amateurs, churning out all sorts of photographs and artworks, swamping out anything of true class, or devaluing everything to stock photo images that the professional will struggle to get paid a decent amount for because an amateur has already licensed a similar image to Ikea for a tenner to adorn the walls of every living room around.

So, has it devalued the medium? I say not. I say, actually, quite the opposite.

Rather than devalue the photos I have, any of the seventeen thousand, it has made photography more of my life. And that isn't to say that the number of rubbish photos hasn't increased: it has, dramatically. But so has the number of better photos. What was once the preserve of the professionals, where they could take a couple of dozen photos and select the correct one for the publication, so I am now the same. And I am the same in very many ways... I take the time to take the photo, I check it on the screen, analyse what I can do to improve it, shuffle myself, adjust the angle etc to get the proper framing, depth, exposure, aperture.

Only that's another thing: the camera does all that for you, doesn't it? It has autofocus, auto-flash, auto-aperture, auto-white-balance etc.? Well, I say that people that actually give a damn about the photos, those that might actually have diminished or demolished the livelihood of the professional actually understand these all the more now, actually appreciate the time, effort and expertise of the photographer, and can tell the subtle differences between a simple, quick snap, and one which has taken the time and effort to properly compose, They appreciate all the more the sublimities behind a professionally produced image. Those that don't care, don't have the ability to distinguish these things, but then they wouldn't have instructed a professional in any event.

If anything the mass-proliferation of digital photography has only accentuated photography amongst the public, enhanced it as an art-form. Yes it may have introduced new appreciators, but moreover it has opened opportunities into what was previously an elitist and exclusionary arena for true artists. We may very well be taking more photos ourselves, but we are enjoying even more. I don't think the dispensibility argument holds too true, although I speak from the point of view of someone with an anally organised photo collection where if someone were to request to see a photo or series of photos it could be done instantaneously.

We may not print them out in the old analogue format, but we share them widely over our various websites. See the group when they go out all huddle around the digital screen, cackling away at the comedy pose Brian has taken, see the flood on a Monday morning when you log onto your social site and see the pictures from the party the night before. Whereas once these photographs were a moment, a misty-eyed reminiscence to take place a week after the holiday or on a rainy day with nothing better to do; now they are immediately there. You can see the photos that your friends have taken without having to go around and rummage through their bedroom drawers.

And human nature has bred within us a photographic competitiveness. Everyone is competing against everyone else to show that they have the funniest album, the biggest collection, the best technical eye or simply had the most picturesque holiday. And it is this competitiveness as much as anything that is improving us all as photographers, more than attempting to emulate some stuffy, stuck-up professional who simply 'knows' that they are better than everyone else.

What it does do, is sort the wheat from the chaff - in many ways. Yes, I may have twenty two thousand photos; but whereas before I kept every photo that I took because each one of those prints probably cost around 25p when you consider the cost of the film and printing; and because each one of those photos represents an opportunity supplanted: that because I only had 24 frames, I had to let some snapshots go; these days I am far more selective. Whilst I may have seventeen thousand photos, I can only guess at the number I have deleted: multiples not quite right, blurry shots, fingers in the frame and photos of the inside of my pockets. So the proportion of 'good' photos in those that I have retained has increased.

But it also sorts the wheat from the chaff professionally. Whereas some people previously muddled by, creating stock photos for agencies; they are now having to demark themselves from the competition: the public. And so they have to do things that 'normal' people can't do. Like pay actors or models, buy studios and lighting, or create their own proprietary technique or 'look'.

As with all things, the technology has democratized what was essentially an elitist subject; but moreover it has opened it up to that discussion that I have briefly touched upon before: is it art?

Of hacking, tracking and back-tracking

So, the Leveson Inquiry is rattling on with its various commentators as to the morals, ethics and legality (or lack thereof) of methods used by the UK media to investigate what may or may not be legitimate intrusions into the private lives of public figures.

I have covered a lot of the discussions as to what is a public figure, a private life, and a legitimate intrusion when I considered Super Injunctions here and I'm not going over them again, or the behaviour of the journalists. My discussion is over language.

Take 'hacking'. Essentially, what the journalists have done is not 'hacking' in the technical term. A hack is an invasive or destructive intervention into a system. You access the bits of the hardware, firmware or software that you are not supposed to get access to, and use that in order to access data or perform functions by circumventing security measures. That isn't what was done.

The journalists have used a perfectly legitimate passcode to access voicemails, using the standard voicemail retrieval system in exactly the way in which the system was designed. There is no illegal tampering with the software, there is no subjugation of the system or even stealing of passwords. All they did was try the default passcode for the system and were successful where the true owner of the account had not changed it.

Now, the mere fact that it is not a technical hack does not make it a legal interception. There are a number of pieces of legislation which stipulate that accessing information left on a voicemail which is not your account and which is not intended for you is illegal. As an analogy, take a cashcard with PIN. The fact that the account owner may have left a slip of paper with the PIN on it with the card does not suddenly entitle you to the money in the account - it is still a theft of somethine which does not belong to and was not intended for you; but what it does is absolve the bank of any liability for the account access because a legitimate card with legitimate PIN has been used. Now, a hack would involve a clone of the card; or intereference with the bank software or hardware that means that the proper PIN does not need to be used or could be changed to one of the criminal's desire.

But 'hack' has been adopted by the very devil what did it. Why? Well, it's an easy phrase. It's short, abrupt, it sounds as evil and nasty as the actual act, and is something simple that the public can relate to. And it's a fudge - it's not quite the right description; but it's pretty damned close enough and nothing else really comes any closer unless you're going to use a paragraph to discuss and explain it. And so, having been uncomfortably melded into a hole that wasn't really correct for it, it has now adopted its new persona.

And this is the flexibility, fluidity of language. Go back hundreds of years and you will see that we use language for far different meanings from those that they used to be used for. And we should never consider an 'original' use of any word, because it is so impossible to identify and single source of a word. The Oxford English Dictionary has a database where it records all uses of words, first appearances - but it does so crucially in a particular 'form'.

What we are seeing is the escalation of adaptability, fudgeness, and plain abuse of definition and intention. The internet has ensured that what once took decades to occur because of the time-lapse in publishing and distribution of texts can happen instantly, and isn't edited by someone who thinks they know better than the author. Just as flashmobs evolve from a genesis, a mere thought, to half a community turning out within hours; so language can adapt instantanously. And you see it very quickly with the 'kids on the street' for whom - at the time of writing - "sick" is falling out of fashion. But whereas to my parents sick was something of revulsion or disgust, these days "sick" has been adopted in a full about-turn to express impress, desire or enthusiasm; almost as a perverse desire of the new users to directly confuse other users, but more to adopt language as their own - it isn't about damaging or denegrating language, it is about taking ownership and using creativity over it.

One of the reasons that people hate 'kidspeak' and this 'abuse' of language, is the lack of control that they have had over it; and the rapidity with which it has occurred. If it is a slow, insipid adjustment people don't even realise that it is happening; they just come to accept that it has happened - but then I have discussed the human condition regarding change on many, many occasions. But the main thing is the lack of control. The people who complain are people who regard themselves as better educated, and therefore more able, responsible to act in a position to act as controller, editor-in-chief of the language than these unqualified whipper-snappers who have no knowledge of the history of the word. But is there a need for a knowledge of the history? If they like the word then surely the mere fact that they are experimenting and using words should be encouraged? And, in due course, as well as giving the language new meaning they will learn any history associated with the word - learning by insipid osmosis.

People may see reflections of the recent Waterstones decision to abandon its apostrophe; but really it is quite different - that is about an entity deciding what it wants to be called. What would be different is if other people decided what it was to be called, or known for, or used as. Yes, it may have made the decision to drop the apostrophe as it is trying to 'move with the times' and that its apostrophe was 'no longer practical in modern times' - well, it may think so, but that only extends as far as its own apostrophe. It doesn't spell a wide change in punctuation use, not the death of the apostrophe as we know it; all it is is a slight branding trend in pretty much the same way as the most recent branding trends have included the use of entirely lower-case letters, often in a sans serif, very simplified font with a minimalised palette.

I have a rather fascinating book on the subject called The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll Through the Hidden Connections of the English Language by Mark Forsyth which I cannot wait to read to give me a history of the meanings of the language; if not necessarily the reasonings behind the adoption of such meanings.

New Year, new...

So, it's the day after New Year's Day.

New Year, new start, new life, new routine, new toothbrush etc.

And it is as daft as that.

Everyone seems to make New Year resolutions. I don't. But I do seem to have developed a new year routine of sorts. I think it started after I moved into my house. Since then I have had control over everything within my castle and have exercised that control. And that, for some reason, means that at New Year I enter into extreme nesting mood.

Now, this year was an odd year. With tI have already made mention muchly of my lack of festivity. I won't say festive spirit of itself was entirely devoid - I did listen to the music, wrap the presnets, watch the movies etc. but I had barely a tree. And I know I have covered the reasons behind this already so I will not start the new year by retreading old ground.

But, the lack of tree and - finally - absolutely completing the bathroom, enabled me to be tidy for the first time in months. The scaffolding for the roof was gone, the mess was gone, the bathroom was finally all tiled and tidied and could therefore be given a final clean and tidy; along with the entire house.

And so it is that it started - the entire house had to be cleaned, the bathroom given the deepest scrub it could be given, even weeding had to be done. It even extended to me clearing out my lists, checking everything off, uploading everything that I could into albums, and all before the clocks struck midnight on New Year's Eve. Despite resolutely never making new year resolutions I seem to have fallen into a new year tradition. Or, more particularly, a pre-new year tradition.

For some reason.

Why do we attach such ridiculous emotive attachement and expectation to what is, in reality, just another day in the calendar? Yes, it may be the first day in the calendar, but why should that make it all the more special? We do the same with Christmas. Ignore any religious sentiment behind Christmas - it was long a celebration of mid-winter before religion hijacked it; and as religion loses its social significance it is returning to a celebration of that which we have: though these days it is money rather than mere sustenence.

Yet we spend all that money on celebrating a nothingness. The day has no significance for us than that which we give it ourselves. I watched a particularly rubbish 'festive' one-off comedy, where one of the characters was obsessed by her 'family traditions'. But these were merely gathered routines with associations - she attached nothing of significance to any of the other activities which she did on a regular basis but were so fripperous to attach any significance to - they simply did not become 'traditions'.

And it is the same with New Year. I spent a dreadful amount of time on New Year's Eve cleaning, tidying, even throwing things out that I will never use to ensure that as the clock struck twelve my bathroom needed not a touch, my lounge was spotless, even all the washing had been done and put away.

New year, new start.

And yes, new toothbrush. New razor (though that happens at the first of every month anyway). New mayonnaise, new soap, new deodorant, new toothpaste, new all sorts of everything. And I thought that each and every time. And routines as well as things. New year, new routine. So I'm washing up every night rather than a couple of times a week; and a number of other such things.

So I myself have started attaching significance to the day other than simply the bank holiday which it should have become.

But it is good. Because otherwise we shall drift through life attaching significance to nothing. If we can't attach significance to insignificance - the mere change of a calendar - what can we attach significance to? The only other things are very personal to ourselves, like birthdays, to which others attach practically nothing. We just plod along from day to day to day for nothing. The only plans we would make would be mundane or in extremis. The New Year is just the jolt that most of us need to restart our lives. If it wasn't for that, then when would we make the plans to change jobs, move house, decorate the kitchen, start a diet, be more healthy, stop smoking, learn a new language or such like?

I realise that I am the ultimate dichotomy for a number of reasons, but mostly because my love of the regular, of the routine, doesn't affect my adoption of change. And for exemple of new year new start, and my love of the routine, one of the bars I used to go to on a regular basis has closed. On various nights I used to go to one, few, many or all of some four pubs: Central, Jaceys, the Mill, and AD2. And last night the last of those closed. They are gone. And I don't know if it is a good thing or a bad thing. At one stage each of them were the life of the party; and yet, by the end they were each scraping their arses on the ground to find a penny. And yet, just down the road is the Trip to Jerusalem, a pub which has existed since 1189. There is a stage at which a bar can make an income purely from its tradition, but until then it needs to innovate to compete.

But, if it means that things get done, that life progresses, then why not?

The story of my life

Holiday time, hence the absence (more on this another time) and the short post...

A couple of weeks ago Facebook unleashed its latest change - the Timeline. It was announced many months ago with big fanfare and such. It was lauded as an enormous change.

So, what has actually changed?

Well, not a lot really. Your wall was always in chronological order, with most recent activity at the top and it still is. It still tells you everything that you have been doing, when you made friends with people and such like. But - critically - the Timeline has neatened everything up, given it a fresh, simplified look and made things more searchable.

It is a good change.

Yes, there has been a tiny bit of tinkering: you now get a 'cover' picture as well as just a profile picture, and your info has been moved around; but the main thing is the simplicity. It is almost as if they have been listening to my grumbling. In the past the changes have tended to clutter things up, move things around unnecessarily or introduce 'new' features which simply don't work within Facebook. What they have managed to do with Timeline is strip this back to the features that people actually want and use.

Good work, Facebook.

Not in my blog...

Apologies if this is a little short - bladdy work keeps getting in the way.

I went round to my parents at the weekend for a family meal. One of the things this enables me to do is to read the local freesheet. This is a curious thing. It is a free newspaper that costs very little to create and contains very little of concern. It is curated from articles which have been in the 'proper' pay-for local evening paper over the preceding week.

What it does do though is give a little insight into what actually troubles local people which comes down to one thing:

Change.

People hate it; but if they can attach localism to it, then they believe it will carry even more weight. For some reason if something affects a locality it threatens a community. It is very rare that 'change' is seen as an enhancement, which is why any development - whether physical, social or technological - should be insipidly gradual with people hardly even aware that it is occurring.

One of the pieces which jumped out at me as ridiculously irrational was a piece on the opposition for a wind turbine.

A single wind turbine.

Not a wind farm. Just one turbine.

Now, I am currently preparing a much more substantial essay on the benefits of renewable energy so I will not go into that now. But I was so annoyed at this piece on the local opposition. The ONLY ground for opposition was that it would spoil the view.

There was nothing about any increase in noise pollution - in any event they would be well advised to steer clear of that as the wind whistling through trees creates as much noice as a turbine.

There was nothing about the increase of traffic due to the construction, though they probably realised such an argument was very temporary as it would only last a matter of weeks.

There was nothing about any interference to wildlife, though obviously this would distract from any 'local' viewpoint as wildlife is nationwide.

There was nothing about any disruption caused by construction and digging and hauling huge lumps of earth out, scarring the immediate landscape for a period of time. That did surprise me actually because the argument that it will take nature 2 or 3 years to return the cut-and-covered cable channels to their natural state (if at all) is certainly more arguable than the argument that, for a couple of weeks, there are going to be a couple more lorries on the road.

No, the only argument against it is that it would be a blot on the landscape. The arguers rather shot themselves in the foot though. They pointed out that there was already one turbine locally which could be seen from x many miles away and interferred with the view one got of the minster as one approached the town.

So there are two problems with that argument. Firstly there is already a turbine. How much more 'distracting' is a second actually going to be. And secondly they were not arguing that it would interfere with the view of the landscape, the rolling hills and meadows; but with the view of another (albeit much older) man-made object.

It really annoys me because for those that find them ugly there are as many who find them pretty, and a substantial amount in the middle who find them neither but who agree that they are necessary.

And it's pure NIMBYism. They wouldn't bat an eyelid if the turbine were going up fifty miles away. Or twenty miles away. Or even five miles away. In fact they would probably be postiviely arguing for them as necessary to decrease our reliance on diminshing, non-renewable resources. If they were reasonable about it - even residual in just accepting that it would happen - rather than reacting to it, then they would adopt it a lot quicker. If you are the rough surface, then of course something will grate on you.

How often do villages build themselves around - or simply differentiate themselves by - a windmill. "Turn left just after the old water-mill". In one viillage in Nottinghamshire one of the 'star' attractions is the old, industrial, entirely unaesthetic when contructed pumping station. It just takes a couple of years to get used to it being there. Think about your trip home - you possibly love seeing a particular petrol station or even power station because you know that you are practically on the home straight.

I would love to live close to a turbine. Not just because I would be 'doing my bit' but because I think they are a thing of phenomenal beauty, would enhance (or at least unaffect) the value of my property, and give me something a little bit distinctive.

I have a brilliant house on top of a hill with a view over a lot of Nottingham. At the very distant horizon I can see the eight cooling towers of the power station and it is a view which is very definitely mine. I own that view. And that view changes - some of the buildings get knocked down and rebuilt, some of the houses have their roofs replaced; even temporal things like the trees growing or the cars on the roads changing. Every time I look it is different; but most definitely mine. And just because someone erects a turbine in that view, that addition doesn't make a detraction from the beauty.

Take the arguments against High Speed 2, the new proposed rail link. I have already clearly stated my position: I am very much in favour of the project and I have very little time for those campaigning against it. I will hear their argument, but I will see through their argument. Rather than simply put the other side I can see a fully established and reasonable rebuttable.

There are four main arguments: financial, ecological, environmental and social.

The financial can only be assessed by looking at the cold, hard facts but most of the argument relies on spiralling coats, overruns and the initial costs and ignores the long-term financial benefits.

The ecological considers the pollution in the construction and continued operation and ignores the fact of necessity and that this is probably the most ecologically sustainable way to cope with increases in population and travel requirements rather than some ridiculous utopian suggestion that we will just learn to adapt to our existing network and that we should simply reduce the amount we travel rather than improve how we do it.

The environment concerns relate to 'carving up' 'vast swaths' of 'green-belt' land and ignore that this has already been undertaken with the sprawling rail and road connections already covering our green and pleasant land. Yes, my 'just-one-more' argument ignores any 'creep-concerns', but seriously, we have a lot of countryside as it is.

Which brings me finally to the main argument I was trying to get to: the 'social' argument that this will 'devastate' the villages it cuts past. It won't. They will still exist. People simply cannot afford to abandon the houses in these villages purely because a train zips past every hour. The 'devastation' of the 'constant interruption' will be something short-lived, and shorter than simply 'once they all die they will be quiet.' If they really are that desperate to get away from the noise, they can move. And their house won't have lost any value: people will see the close transport links as a positive benefit. And this is where their arguments, as well as being NIMBYist, are short-sighted and very selective in the benefit/damage analysis.

If we were just to listen to personal, NIMBYistic arguments, the projects would never get done. The change is not bad, it is just different. And we should embrace it, as to resist it is just making a rod for our own backs, no-one else's. And if we resisted all change then we would never progress.

Facebook follies for further analysis

So, following on from my previous assessment of Facebook I have had a further rumination.

I think really, with a lot of the 'new features' that have been rolled out; Facebook really has made two errors. Firstly it does not understand its users; and secondly it does not understand its competition. And in business each of these is a huge flaw in itself.

It seems to think that Twitter is a competitor with the new 'ticker' and subscribe options. Really it isn't.

Twitter has three main types of Tweeters; and then it has readers - people who don't themselves tweet (much) but who just go on for the gossip. The three types are:

Slebs usually very minor celebrities who use it purely for cheap PR. They either spout their own agenda; or they say things purely to attract attention; or they repetitively plug their own show (or whatever) until people are so bored they no longer pay attention.

Anons may have reason for being anonymous or may not. Some use it to put across their own, potentially controvertial point of view with little direct, personal retribution. Because of work or social groupings they want to get their view out there, but not necessarily be attached to the view. Or they may be hoaxers, fakers, impersonators or jokers for either humourous or malicious intent.

Chatterers who use it as a public form of Messenger. It's almost like having a dialogue (or in many cases a monologue) across a pub with almost the world in the middle (whether or not any of them are listening or paying attention is another matter). Most of the posts are either messages to people, or relatively innocuous and innane - perhaps even vapid - background noise about life. Absolutely nothing controversial. Literally 'just putting it out there'.

And Facebook isn't that. Facebook allows you to give a more involved, slightly less frequent, insight into your life to people who may actually give a damn. Facebook allows you to literally build up a profile rather than just excerpts of nonsence. Facebook allows you to share your relevant photo albums and chat and things. Twitter doesn't; and nor does Flickr or any of the other photo sharing sites because those are about getting the image out there, they are not about social iteraction.

So yes, Facebook doesn't understand Twitter. But it also doesn't understand its users either. Facebook has three main types of users:

Integrated - they live their life on Facebook. Or some of it at least. They are on almost daily, keep their status updated and upload photos and videos. They will share links of things they have seen or read and probably get involved with applications and games as well. Some are more involved than others - some cannot seem to leave it alone and berate you with status updates and comment on every photo uploaded; some have a more sensible approach.

Passive - these are curious creatures. They will usually go on daily and have a look around, just keeping up to date with people. They don't let people know what they are doing, they just read. But they do so on a very regular basis - some are on as much as integrated users, just very quietly so. They are certainly more involved than...

Occasional - they kinda got convinced to join, probably because they wanted to look at someone's holiday photos, or because they were getting event invites. They are very reluctant users; popping on only when they absolutely have to.

What Facebook doesn't understand is that of the 1 billion or so people who have a profile on; the majority of them fall into either the passive or occasional category. And it is these people who get frustrated with the rafts of changes that are thrown into the mix. Since the last major change I have noticed how many of my passive friends have been even more passive; simply not using the site. And quite a few of those who had limited integration have dropped down to passive at best, but probably down to occasional users. It is just too much. The site itself now looks a mess: you have Favourites; Apps; Games; Groups; Lists; Tickers and Chat, and people don't want it. They just want the status feed. And even that has been messed up into Hot Topics, Recent Stories and Older News.

Have you seen the Google home page? It is simple. It is clean. It is dominated purely by the search box. Twitter also is very simple - it has a box for you to tweet, and then it has your tweet feed. If you want to appeal to the public at large you have to keep it simple, stupid. And Facebook is really risking becoming a niche site for those committed integrationists.

Facebook seems to be trying to do everything from one site - be Web 3.0 all on its own. And it can't. It is simply diversifying too far from what was its core asset. And when you do that you confuse your users and for confused users it is so much easier to stop being users than it is to stop being confused.

I see the internet developing into a series of monopolies or oligopolies of companies who know what they are doing, such as:
Search - Google, Bing
Video - Youtube
Pictures - Flickr
Entertainment distribution - Amazon (whether physical delivery or streamed)
Auctions - Ebay
Encylopaedia - Wikipedia
and such like. There will be other, smaller websites offering niche services, or favoured by the anti-capitalists; but ultimately once a site reaches critical mass it simply becomes the biggest, most viable site to use for the particular transaction. The key will be establishing the site in that primary position; or in capitalising where a competitor makes undesirable or unpopular changes to the dissatisfaction of their users.

And, were there a realistic competitor, the Facebook blunders would be the idea opportunity.


And this is where Facebook is confused

When I was that age...

10 days.

10 days without a post.

An awful lot can happen in 10 days.

It hasn't, but it could have.

There has been some excitement involving drinking with 'clebs; but I am loathe to name-drop so I won't go into that.

Anyhow, I have been ridiculously busy at work, and - moreover - have been working with even less privacy than usual, hence the lack of posts.

But let me waffle on about Break-Me-Up-Boy.

B-Mub is absolutely gorgeous. (I won't call him B-Mub again: it doesn't work). I have mentioned before; how he ticks every single box that I need ticking, even down to being a non-smoker. He is, [however/also] young. He is twenty. Just. And I am thirty.

Lets put this into context:

When he was age 10 and still at Primary school, I was twenty and finishing off my university degree.

Now, I know people go on about how age differences don't matter, and that age is just a number. Those are usually the people for whom age is just a rather large number. But the difference is really one of perspective. Ten years at age twenty when you are going through a hell of a lot of changes both physically, emotionally and socially - leaving school, leaving home, adapting to looking after yourself and learning in a whole new manner - is a vastly different ten years to that in your later life when the most massive change you may be experiencing is how and when to retire. The thoughts between people aged between, say, fifty and sixty are considerably closer than those between people aged between twenty and thirty.

Now, I am a young thirty. I still go out drinking and clubbing, enjoying gigs and festivals and sex and such like. Aside from the receding hairline (thanks mum's side of the family for that) and a few creases (which sounds better than wrinkles) I would fit in very well with a group aged twenty.

But I have to admit that my stage of life does pose different considerations.

So, for example, whilst he languishes in bed of a morning, I am already off on the morning commute. This doesn't just affect the morning routine, but I also have to consider this at night when he is probably off to all the student bars getting drunk and kebabed; and I am having the last cup of tea before bed.

Whilst he is debating whether to start writing the essay that needs to be in the following day; I am having to make a decision as to whether to apply for a different job or stay with the one I am already doing.

He has to decide whether to spend the last of his student loan on a book or a beer. I have a rigid monthly financial budget which has to ensure that my pension, mortgage, tax and bills get paid and yet still leaves me with enough money to live on.

And it's not just the sensible side of things either. It is the maturity too.

Whilst I may very well be looking for a relationship, looking to settle down, he probably just wants to go around bonking everything cute in sight. I know that at his age that was certainly the plan. Well, it wasn't really 'the plan' but it is what I ended up doing. And he probably needs to do that to realise eventually that I am the one that he wants to settle down with. Hopefully.

I recall back when I started university (way back when, before Facebook even existed) that on of my friends in freshers' week had a girlfriend. He had been dating her since A-Levels and continued to do so for the entire first year. They broke up the first summer he returned back because the distance was just too much. But his attitude was that being in a relationship during that first year was the worst thing he could have done. He felt so restricted, unable to fully enjoy himself, even to the extent that he felt 'tied' to back home and didn't really accept that he was in a new city to live - that he was only there temporarily. He didn't really settle into university life until the second year, by which time it was too late - everyone else had already made formative friendships and whilst he wanted to go out, drink and bonk; they all wanted to do reading researching and writing.

I have had the opportunity to enjoy myself and it would be wrong of me to deny that to him. And so I wasn't too disappointed when I suggested a date to be turned down. Well, I was actually - I was really quite gutted, but I took a step back and looked at things sensibly.

Obviously it will be difficult. I won't just be a bystander; waiting for the moment he wants a relationship with me. Because of the nature of the scene around town I will be there watching whilst he engages on 'entertaining' with other people. And I know full well that I will get annoyed by that. But I will have to man-up, be sensible about it (even though I will have been drinking) and tell myself that it is nothing personal to me, he's just having his fun and that is exactly what I was like when I was that age.

And now I really do feel old.

The follies of Facebook

So, last week Facebook unveiled a number of changes, tweaks and introductions. Reaction has generally gone one of two ways: "I don't like it" or "I don't like the people who don't like it."

The human condition is such that people are more likely to voice distain, dissent or dissatsifaction than they are to compliment or rave; and that is very much what I expected when Facebook launched its new release. What did surprise me was the number of people who were moaning not about the changes but simply about the people moaning. One of the captions to an image that wormed its way around the internet was:

I'm appalled that the free service that I am in no way obligated to use keeps making changes that mildly inconvenience me.

Anyway, Facebook certainly could have handled things better:

Forced migration

In the past Facebook has introduced changes gradually by encouragement and volunteer. It has made them available, suggested people use them, and early adopters then encourage others to use them by peer pressure. Once a tipping point is achieved where substantially more people use the new format than the old, the old users are forced over. This inconveniences far fewer people, and the vocal dissent is substantially less. It is a method very greatly employed - see how Microsoft do not immediately force all users of a Windows system onto the most recent release (currently Windows 7). Instead they issue the new release and then start withdrawing support for the old systems, encouraging developers to only develop new programs for the newest system, and eventually people move over.

There are a couple of issues with drip-migration though. It does mean that you have to support a range of systems for a while, rather than one. And, of course, there is the cost - by offering an updated product you get to charge again; whereas if you forced this charge onto people they would immediately seek an alternative who did not operate such draconian and blatantly profiteering practices. And Facebook isn't an operating system which people install and have to update; it is in 'the cloud', and you direct to it. Whilst it would be possible to operate a number of different interfaces, it would be incredibly costly and complicated. So I do understand; I just think they could have better explained why it was that it was done. Human nature is such that people accept change much more readily when they are offered it, and react resistively when it is enforced.

The actual changes

Most of the changes are seen - certainly by techies - simply as a direct assault on rivals Google+ and Twitter. Take the new 'feed' in the top right-hand corner. Twitter by any other name. The 'friend list' has Google+ written all over it. And I would be very surprised if they actually succeed in providing anything valuable to people. Yes, one of the benefits of Google+ is that you can share your status only amongst those friends in any particular circle; but does Facebook (nay should Facebook) seek to do the same? There has long been the ability to hide statuses from certain individuals, or to customise who you share it with. And people are so established on Facebook that the friend list will require people to scour through hundreds of friends to ensure they are in the correct friend lists to fully facitilitate the functionality. It simply requires too much involvement. Yes, Facebook has tried to make it easier by automatically assigning lists and putting people in lists; but after seeing what it did with the facial recognition in photographs, I'm really not sure I would trust it.

But, aside from the tech-side; again - people don't like changes that are seen purely as an attempt to stiffle competition. Google+ and Twitter had different, innovative developments: let the strongest survive. And, moreover, they were not simply attacking Facebook - they were offering things differently. Twitter, for example, was a public forum where people regularly, briefly, aired their thoughts to the entire world, anonymously if they so sought. Facebook - with the new 'subscribe' option - seeks to do the same; but it risks alienating the people on their (the vast majority) who want to see occasional, specific statuses clearly witten for the benefit of their defined group of friends. Simply mashing together different components does not necessarily make a good fit - ask the chef who has thrown together a dozen or so ingredients from different recipes whether the meal was any better for it; or whether, in fact, the skeptical public saw a very scheming and calculated attempt to "do a Ramsey...with a bit of Blumenthal." One of the very keys to the success of Facebook is its simplicity and ease of use: you don't need a degree in software engineering to understand what is going on, and you don't need to sift through a clutter of applications to see what your brother thinks about X-Factor.

The presentation - the surprise

"Could do better."

There were a number of problems with the presentation of the changes; other than them simply being imposed upon people.

Firstly, Facebook has to realise that not all of their users are techies; and the majority of people will not have been aware of the F8 conference at all. Now, whilst this is practically the only method Facebook has to get the news of the changes into the media; it has to realise it already has a captive audience who are the direct subject of the changes anyway. They need to do more to flag up the changes to users before they impose them. With most of the recent raft, the only way you found out was by logging on and screeching "who the hell vomitted on my news feed?" At which point little annoying bubbles started popping up all over the place at once, flagging up the changes which if - like me - you were just popping on very very briefly, you did the best to dismiss as rapidly as possible and get back to finding out how your next-door-neighbour's cat's operation went; or whether your work colleague across the desk from you had enjoyed the egg-and-cress sandwich they uploaded a photo of. Now, they can do this properly and better - like I say, on previous occasions they have offered you to try out the new interface and switch between the two for a few weeks. And take the announcement of the Timeline - they haven't imposed this yet; they have announced it and given a look around, and if you go on the Facebook profile page there is a lovely little video explaining it. So people can find out about the change before it happens and then they have a few days or weeks to prepare their "I don't like these changes" statuses.

The presentation - the lie

It was presented as if the changes were an entire sea-change in the way Facebook operates. They aren't. Take Timeline for example - and this was supposed to be the 'major' announcement of the conference. Your profile already shows things in a timeline. All you need to do is scroll back far enough, or click-through enough pages of photos to get there. Timeline doesn't actually change what is out there at all, it just makes it easier/harder to find what you want to - depending on your point of view. I don't know what it will do - at the moment someone's info is really easy to find in a tab: you can find out pretty much their entire employment history if they are willing to tell you. If it gets mangled into a timeline you may only be able to find out who their previous employer was by knowing what date they started there. But, people like drip-change; imperceptible, unnoticeable change. Presenting it as an entirely new perspective is wrong, and is simply inflamatory. But then maybe that is a way to get the presentation out further than just tech media.

The presentation - the shock

Again, it may simply have been a way to try to get front-page headlines to get the message to as many people as possible; but telling people that their entire life is going to be online pressed the panic button in any normal human. We are inherently private by nature; so exposing our nude avatars like this is bound to get many people scrabbling round for any respect, decency and those damned privacy settings. The thing is; it isn't going to be any more of your life than you are already putting online. Facebook has been incredibly successful in insipidly infecting our lives, breaking down that desire for privacy and quietly encouraging us to share everything from our lunch to the death of someone close. It hasn't done this by massive announcements and conferences and  front-page shock tactics: it has done it without even telling you. And this is the best way. Obviously not when they are changing anything to do with privacy - some clever dick will find out what has happened and before you know it you have a PR storm on your hands as you have to explain why your privacy policy is longer that US constitution.

But, to a great degree Facebook is damned if it does and damned if it doesn't. It has to continue to develop and innovate, and therefore it does have to change; and some of this is going to be a major release rather than the simple insipid, imperceptible drip-feed of changes and tweaks. Otherwise it risks getting left behind as a dinosaur of internet 2.0.

The old adage really is correct: you can't please all of the people, all of the time. Particularly when there are 600million of them.