Month: November 2009

The Internet is a bit like an elephant..

Posted by Martyn Drake – November 29, 2009

.. in that it never forgets.

All this talk about Twibbles has brought home a good point about search engines and Internet archiving.  For those of us in our thirties, our parents used to embarrass us in numerous harmless ways – like your mum waving to you when you came out of school, or your dad dancing at the school disco.  Or your parents enthusiastically showing your girlfriend a video of your own birth, followed by all the baby and toddler pictures – usually the ones in which you’re nappy is being changed.

The Internet now amplifies this embarrassment by a factor of a thousand.

Young people (namely students and twentysomethings) who regularly blog, tweet or video themselves vomiting at parties will find that all of their activities are likely to be archived away by the likes of Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft so that if these same people eventually reproduce or adopt, their children can then be embarrassed by their parents in a whole new way when they do a Google search on them fifteen years later.

It’s not just blog or Tweets that can come back to haunt your children and grandchildren (and many more generations to come), but as video is now being archived on the Internet at a phenomenal rate, your children can groan at watching their parents do all manner of embarrassing things as they did as youngsters.  The difference between home videos of the past is that the rest of the world has probably already seen your parents embarrass themselves hundreds of times before you have.

I think some of the children of more infamous celebrities are going to have to go into therapy for decades as a consequence of this..

(Yes, I do realise the irony of this blog post)

The Trouble with Twibbles

Posted by Martyn Drake – November 27, 2009

Twibbles can be defined as an online Twitter quibble.

I’ve started following on Twitter movie director extraordinaire, Kevin Smith.  Recently he re-tweeted a post he received from somebody who told him that he was being unfollowed.  Kevin then posted in big unfriendly letters BLOCKED!  Fair enough, although why everybody has to know this I just don’t know.  If you’re going to unfollow somebody – JUST DO IT.  Don’t explain to them or to anybody else.  Just do it and walk away.

Twitter is an extraordinary social media system that allows plebs like us to see what the more famous/important folk are up to.  But bloody hell, can it get catty.  I recall following Dragons’ Den entrepreneur Duncan Bannaytyne, whom I’ve always thought of as a honest and fair man.  I was a bit shocked when he started to talk about one of his followers without mentioning much of the context as to why this particular person was being mentioned.  Looking through both sets of tweets, I was astonished to see that Duncan Bannatyne had, rather than blocked and ignore the user in question, started a pissing contest as to who donated the most amount of money to charity.  It was at this point I unfollowed Bannatyne (and no, I didn’t tell him!) as I completely disagree with that sort of thing.  He is in a fortunate position to donate as much as he does.  The person he was referring to may well do a lot of work for charity too – but clearly does not have the same kind of funds that Bannatyne has at his disposal.  It was if he was saying that he was a better human being than the other person because he could donate all this money.  And that should never be the case.  And besides which, charity can extend to offering one’s services and not just financial assistance.

I note that “celebrities” get rather riled when people tell them that they’re being unfollowed.  That, or if somebody really gets up a celebs nose, they use their legions of fans to fight their battles.  Maybe they deserve it, maybe not.  But it’s almost akin to the old pitchfork and torches brigade that was all the fashion back in darker times.

I myself managed to do something utterly stupid on Twitter in that I was following Noel Clarke, actor, writer and director.  And a talented one at that.  He posted a series of jokes involving his kids which I thought a little harsh as he came across as being a little unappreciative as to having kids.  So I unwittingly performed the first rule of Twitter faux pas – I told him that I was unfollowing him for this reason.  He went ballistic and tried to direct message me (althoughly clearly thought the better of it and posted publicly) before announcing to his followers that “this idiot” didn’t understand the joke and went on to belittle me in a few more tweets than than I did with my single post criticising him.  His followers dug into me as well.  And he never gave me a chance to explain or apologise (as I would have done).  As such I haven’t apologised to him as he  subsequently acted in a similarly unprofessional manner – he chose to pounce on me  in public rather than simply ignore and block me.

Still, I got what I deserved.  And was a great lesson to think about what you type (just as you wouldn’t say to somebody’s face – God, I HATE that hat you’re wearing – without at least knowing them well enough that you could get away with saying something like that).   I still like Noel Clarke’s work, but I’m not so sure I would like him as a fellow human being if I were to ever meet him.  I just don’t know.   Humour is very subjective and personal, and what one person finds funny another may find offense (which what happened in this case).  After all, these were merely words typed away on a computer.   A souless machine without a face.  As it is most Twitters don’t know each other from Adam.

And this proves that if you’re not careful, the consequences can turn around and bite you on the bum.  And Twitter is one of those social networks which rely on spontaneity.  The war on twibbles will always continue, as much as trying to converse with 140 characters and complete strangers will allow.

Forget SkyNet, the future of humanity’s sanity will be destroyed by Self-Service Checkouts

Posted by Martyn Drake – November 26, 2009

They’ve now opened the self-service checkouts at Sainsburys in Brookwood (Knaphill).  I decided to brave it and try one.  I walked away after 2 minutes having had my sanity tested to the extreme.

The first test of my patience was trying to persuade the machine I was using my own bag (my backpack).  You have two options – press START or USE YOUR OWN BAGS.  I had to keep tapping the screen a dozen times before the thing recognised my choice.  I wouldn’t mind, but these were big big buttons in the middle of the screen.

The second test was getting the machine to recognise my bag.  You’re prompted to put your bags in the bagging area and then you can begin scanning.  But no!  That would be too EASY.  No, after I had put my bag in the bagging area, the machine told me that I needed an assistant to verify the bag.  Verify the bag?  After lifting and putting down the backpack a few times I gave up and flagged down one of the three assistances hovering by.  Once he scanned his ID badge, the machine allowed me to scan.  Hallelujah!

Alas!  Things went down hill after scanning the third item.  Having scanned it and put it into my backpack, the machine decided to accuse me of having an additional item it didn’t recognise.  How?  It was at this point I gave up in fear of steam blowing out my ears and fire snorting from my nose.  I put everything back in the basket and went around to the nearest manned checkout and completed the entire transaction in far less time than it would have if I had persevered with the machine.

The self-service checkout machines appear to use the same operating system as that of the machines at Tescos (but obviously branded and customised to the store they’re sitting in).  Until some other manufacturer steps up to bat and devises a machine that actually bloody works, there is no chance in hell I will ever consider using one of these things again.

iPhone, Blackberry Bold 9700 or Sony Ericsson Satio?

Posted by Martyn Drake – November 26, 2009

My T-Mobile contract is up for renewal (we still cannot exactly agree as to WHEN – all I know it’s somewhere between December and February) and as such, I want a new phone.

I MAY still stick with T-Mobile providing they promise to brush up their act (the most recent frustration was that their web site wouldn’t allow me to disable the Flex-T alerts, the last one was sent out around 4am and when you’re on-call, being woken up at 4am to be told I have X number of minutes left in my allowance does not strike me as being terribly competent!).  But I may go with O2 (despite the iPhone being offered by multiple vendors now – with O2 I’d have the confidence that they’ve had the phone on their network for some time and therefore now what they’re doing).

Depending on how O2′s contract and the iPhone selection pans out, I may just stick with T-Mobile and go with either a Blackberry Bold 9700 or a Sony Ericsson touch-screen Satio.  The Blackberry would be good as Jennifer already has one, and MDaemon will (when it comes out of beta) support BIS and thus I can directly push my mail to the phone.  On the other hand, my last few phones have all come from Sony Ericsson and SE have proven themselves to be an excellent phone manufacturer.  The Satio is a touchscreen model and boasts a 12.1 megapixel camera.  The downside is that I hear quite a few reports about the responsiveness of the touchscreen – and my experiences with LG’s Viewty makes me somewhat nervous.

So I’m in a conundrum.  Let’s see what O2 say to me having a contract phone with them and take it from there.  I will say that I will NOT be buying a pay-as-you-go iPhone.  In fact, pay-as-you-go is right out the window regardless.

I’m a celebrity.. let’s eat Ants (& Dec)

Posted by Martyn Drake – November 26, 2009

Us Brits are apparently a nation of animal lovers.

Yeah, right.

Why, then, do we enjoy watching “celebrities” eating kangaroo bottoms and various other disgusting parts of animals that, let’s face it, are NOT necessary to eat?  How many animals died in making I’m a Celebrity – Get Me Out of Here over the numerous series that it’s been on air?  Don’t get me wrong – I’m not an animal liberation person, a vegetarian, a vegan or anything that would imply that I don’t eat meat.  Far from it, I love my pork, bacon, chicken, fish, etc.  But what I don’t understand is how animal parts from creatures we would not normally find on a typical menu at a Harvester pub restaurant chain are on the menu for a TV show.  There’s no point in it.  If you really wanted to gross people out, you might as well make the celebrities eat raw cabbage and drink sewage water.  Or alternatively they let the celebrities eat human flesh.

Then there are the games in which insects, arachnids, snakes, furry animals of all descriptions are groped, prodded and disturbed for the sake of entertainment.  Do spiders really like being subjected to some of those “celebrities”?  I think they’re rather eat their young.  Oh, some of them do.

And of course, if that weren’t enough, there is the carbon footprint of flying everybody over to Australia, building and maintaining the sets, cameras and other equipment.  All of it not cheap in terms of cost, and certainly not cheap in terms of the environment.

Then again, it wouldn’t be the show it is today if it were shot in Croydon on a backstage, using glove puppets as replacements for the animals, or marzipan kangaroos doodahs for the bushtucker trial.

Are you being served? Sainsburys in Brookwood (Knaphill) to get self-service machines..

Posted by Martyn Drake – November 25, 2009

.. and as such, you’ll probably hear me mutter under my breath how much I hate the blasted things when they go wrong, as experience has shown whenever I’ve used them at Tescos in Guildford.

Sainsburys in Brookwood is undergoing a major refit, much to my annoyance.   The fact everything has moved around is taking ages having to remember where things are and even when things have stopped moving around, other areas are out of bound or being re-jigged which inconveniences shoppers even more – and most of these moves are done during opening hours and results in Sainsburys staff and packing containers getting under the feet of  shoppers.  As part of that refit, Sainsburys are installed self-service checkouts.

These new machines take up two regular staffed check-outs and they’re currently training up staff on how to use them.  They look identical to the machines used by Tesco (hence I’m reluctant to give them a go) in that one scans their items and has to stick them in a special bagging area (which, to me, is pointless as I usually have my backpack and would prefer to stick the goods directly into that than have to stick them in the bagging area first.  Do these machines really need to check that you’ve scanned and put the items away properly?

If the touchscreens on these new machines are anything like Tescos, you’d have hard time getting the machine to recognise any touch input without mashing the screen with your fist (I exaggerate, of course, but a fair amount of pressure IS required).  And payment takes forever and a day.  Whether card or cash is used, the machine has to think about things before printing a reciept.

Then there are the issues of the machine not recognising items that have been scanned, or if you miss a cue, or any billion things in-between that can go wrong.  Countless times I’ve had to wait for an operator to come over, tap in their security details into the machine, just so that I can continue scanning items, or continue to pay.

In theory these self-service machines should be quick and easy, but experience has told me that they’re too much hassle and take up more time than simply waiting in a queue and having everything being processed by a member of staff.  That said, I’ve never seen all the checkouts used at Sainsburys in Brookwood – even in the busy periods.  Lack of staff, perhaps?

And shoppers who come to Sainsburys in cars are still taking far too many plastic bags for their shopping.  This is very naughty!  Why not buy a few hardy cloth bags and keep them in the car.  When you go shopping (planned or otherwise), you’ll have the bags at hand to use.