The cloak room, bursting with colour from everybody’s personalised gym bag, and darkened by damp snorkel jackets. Discovering that by the time we’d got to J4, the infants toilets were really titchy and then reminiscing about how little we were when we were young.

Friday morning TV in the hall, with the fold out sun-shield. Queueing at the dinner hatch. The light streaming in and catching dust particles in assembly. The kid who always added an extra “of kings” at the end of “sing hosanna”. When we first learned we had to do a class play for the whole school and really bricking it. Billy Beacon (which scared the smaller kids).

Friday lunchtime, when Mr. Pascoe would retrieve all our balls that we’d kicked onto the roof throughout the week. Rugby on the top field in the winter, frozen to the core and smothered in linament. Mrs. Davies spraying her perfume around the room because the boys smelled so bad when we came back into class. Winning the Div-4 West football league. The Summer Fete. The bloke that mowed the grassy slopes with a flymo on a rope. Walking home down the lane towards Wimmerfield with an ice-cream from Brian, who stopped outside most summer afternoons.

Small glass bottles of milk with blue straws. School Sports day. School attendance being so low that the green team was dissolved. School trips to St. Helens swimming baths; Brynmill Park; Fairwood Lake. The Alton Towers Trip. The Christmas Carol Service in St. Hilarys. Watching a film at the end of term, in the hall, on a reel to reel projector. Helpers. Mr. Smith’s delicate use of “Six of one, half a dozen of the other.” when investigating the cause of a disagreement between 8 year olds. The awful, terrible, fashion mistakes of the early 80′s. The “art” areas. SMP. The installation of the water fountains.

School letters, hand written, and copied on the purple photostat machine. Sitting all day in the quiet room to watch the first shuttle launch.

The school getting it’s first ever computer, which we were allowed to use in breaktime, on a strict rota, with the older kids having priority time. Learning to type CH."" and dutifully responding to the "PRESS PLAY ON TAPE" message.

Most of all, when the sun was shining, it was a good day for a fire drill. We’d evacuate the building quickly and clamly. Then as a reward for our swift and safe exit someone would be sent into the hall for the brown plastic box on wheels that contained the hoops and bats and balls that meant a game of crazy cricket was upon us. I still remember the sound that thing made as it was wheeled out over the paving and tarmac; that’s that sound of summer.

We were recently looking at an application called “Private-I” for the iPhone: it’s designed to look interesting to someone who’s stolen (or found) the phone. When they open the application, it cunningly says it’s “loading” things; but what it’s really doing is transmitting its GPS coordinates to a preconfigured email address. As the inquisitive thief waits in vain for the thing to load, the GPS fix gets better and better, so additional emails are sent, pinpointing the phone so you* can retrieve it.

It’s cute but in most cases it’s somewhat irrelevant because the amateur thief is not going to get through the access control system unless they get lucky (be it a PIN, a password, a biometric lock, or whatever). It makes sense therefore to dispense with the subterfuge of the cute application and just link the access control system of the device with a system for transmitting GPS coordinates.

i.e.

• Each time the correct pin is entered, the phone unlocks.
• Each time an incorrect pin is entered, the phone transmits its location.

This simple change won’t stop a professional thief (they can still break the device up for parts, or reset it to factory defaults), but anyone who finds a phone that’s been dropped or accidentally left somewhere will have a strong deterrent against trying to use it … what’s more all the police have to do is switch it on when it’s kindly handed in and the owner will know where to collect it.

The reason this sighting was particularly noteworthy, was that my colleague followed his observation with a prediction: that the PCSO would throw his cigarette butt to the ground. So we watched for a few seconds; each twitch of the arm studied with mounting intrigue. After about 20 seconds, an arm flick was followed by a deft hip-pivot, as the butt was crushed below the sole of his polished black shoe. What he didn’t do next, was bend down and pick it up, it thus became litter.

At a time when other councils are pushing the £75 fine for smoking litter (no matter how young), when some claim they’ve been incorrectly accused of dropping litter, and when people are being chased by all means because of zero tolerance policies, this just seemed wrong.

To be a fair system, there should be one rule for all citizens. Cigarette litter is a huge problem, and the police are not above the law. We could have run down to the car park, taken his number and reported him, but on this occasion we chose to chicken out and “let him off without a caution”. If it happens again we might be more bold and ask him to caution himself.

The mainstream press attend press conferences and briefings where Apple proclaim that their Perfect Gadget does everything up to, and maybe even including, ordering sliced bread from the online grocer at the precise thickness that it knows you will prefer (a fact derived from a semantic analyses of how you use said gadget).

Socially driven news sites will go utterly berserk.

So how long must we wait until Apple actually makes this announcement? Perhaps we’re only five or ten years away from The Perfect Gadget 1.0.

Converging on Perfection, and Overselling the Dream

In 2007, Apple announced their intent to produce the iPhone. Even before the announcement, the iPhone was hotly debated by potential owners whose excitement was akin to a small child who’s told they could go on the swings and the roundabouts and visit the local shops to buy as much sugar based confectionery as they can carry before going home to watch cartoons, leading some to call it the Jesus Phone. Even I, as a non Apple owner*, was hooked by the hype. Mesmerised by the hope of a perfect gadget.

The iPhone was never going to change the world, but reading back over some of the rhetoric that Apple spun into their press conferences you’d be forgiven if you thought it would. When Apple chief Steve Jobs opened his keynote speech saying “we’re going to make some history together today” it was an archetype of overstatement. Apple are not alone in overselling. The technology industry as a whole is guilty, and the trend is going to increase as gadgets and appliances become less about the technical specifications and more about the design of the hardware and the software – the human factors. Any company that’s marketing something with intangible or immeasurable value, can safely oversell and over-hype their product, because those that buy it want all the hype to be true. They need it to be true to validate their emotional buy-in and to affirm their “lifestyle choice”.

Future Perfect

There will come a time however, when The Perfect Gadget really is released. It will herald a fundamental change in the the world of consumer electronics. A ubiquitous device that people don’t want to part with. Users will not upgrade because they will be perfectly happy with it, so eventually there will be billions of units in circulation.

Past Imperfect

As a seasoned user of seven laptops, seven desktop computers, several hosted severs, eleven different types of mobile phone and three PDAs I’ve probably invested more time and energy than the average punter who uses gadgets. I’ve relied on them for my livelihood, maintained their hardware and software, synchronised their data with the other devices, and failed to part with most of them, so I have a fall-back if the next gadget doesn’t work. So what would be my personal perfect gadget? The gadget that would force me, the moment it’s announced, to call up the person on stage announcing it and say “I don’t care how much, I want the device that’s in your hand, name your price, sir/ma’am, ship it to me now“. When I wrote them all down, my list of requirements became unwieldy, so I thinned them out to a manageable core that can be found later in this article.

Benefiting from the Paradox of Choice

Gadgets with a similar form factor to the iPhone are both blessed and cursed with simplicity. The keyless form factor enables the gadget to be more easily be tailored to the users desire, but such devices are intrinsically harder to differentiate, and their potential can overwhelm.  Often the key benefit that gets marketed is that a product can do more than the competition, which leads consumers into the paradox of choice. With so much potential, how do they avoid selecting the wrong gadget? They have to fall back on the emotional – they choose the gadget that makes them feel good. This is something Apple do really well, they focus on ‘their way’ of doing things and make that it simple and rewarding.  The perfect gadget, above all, will be intuitive and emotionally rewarding to use.  Technological sedimentation and improved software can simplify the multiplicity of capabilities, so a dual focus on the intangible factors of software and hardware design are the critical factors in differentiating gadgets that have identical underlying technological specifications.  Apple’s name change from Apple Computer Inc. to Apple Inc. highlights its bias shift towards non-technical consumer devices. Indeed, Apple are in an enviable position that when they announce something, there is a lot of interest from consumers who tend do not burden themselves with technicalities: they’re just happy to know that it’s new, that it looks nice, and will reassure their ego of its value, whilst being generally useful and (critically) unchallenging to use.

Enjoy the gadgets, but beware the hyperbole.

The Perfect Gadget Specification

The perfect gadget should incorporate:

1. Everything in the iPhone. Because in a world where design differentiates, the iPhone is a great design. Telephones have undergone two critical form factor changes in the last 30 years. The first was moving the keypad onto the handset, which enabled the whole phone to become mobile. The second is the removal of the keypad from the handset, which removes the limitation on the device to be predominantly a phone. It can now just be a device that has communication as one of it’s capabilities. Apple were not the first people to suggest this: cognitive scientists have been saying it for years, but Apple brought it to market very successfully.
2. Screen size vs Portability. Phone screens are too small and a larger screen area is key to making the gadget useful in more circumstances. Something that uses up every available millimetre in the back pocket of a pair of jeans is perfect.
3. Flexibility. The problem of a device that’s sized for the back-pocket is that placing it there will put all kinds of stresses through it (because buttocks are not flat) so some degree of flex would be a bonus.
4. Induction Charging. I never ever want to plug my device in. Instead, I will have a tables and shelves around the house that are rigged up with an inductive charging system. The shelf by the door is a perfect candidate. Anything left on these inductive shelves would be recharged with no need to connect cables. We already have all the phones syncing over Wi-Fi and bluetooth, so it makes total sense to never ever have to plug them in again.
5. GPS/Galileo. I want the unit to know where it is at all times so my whole life can be tracked, then every photo and every calendar event can be correlated. GPS is good, but for Europe, Galileo is likely to be better (because of the control and positioning of the satellites).
6. Compass and spirit level. The device must know which way up it is and where it’s pointing, so that when I take photos using the device both location and viewing frustum can be recorded.
7. Cameras. Equally spec’d cameras and screens front and back (so that front and back become concepts in software only). The camera image sensors should be interspersed with the screen pixels so video chat is more natural and doesn’t appear as if the other person is talking to a point on the wall just behind you. With a screen on both sides, the image could be viewed by the person taking the photo, and by the subjects, bringing to an end all pictures where the subjects are needlessly and awkwardly tilting their heads when they’re already in-frame.
8. Social awareness. The device should be able to associate geographical locations with social conventions. When I visit the library (or the crematorium) the gadget must know this and no matter how loud I have it set it must not interrupt.
9. A Thermometer. If the device is below body temperature, it’s in my bag not in my pocket, so vibrating is less to help – it should know this and be more noisy. If it’s below body temperature and flat on it’s back, and its after 11pm, and it’s dark, then I’m asleep, so don’t ring until after 7am… Intelligence and configurablility of all these capabilities is key.
10. Peer awareness. Sensing the environment can be enhanced if other sensors can be consulted for comparison. If multiple perfect gadgets are near each other they could (and should) share common information. Rather than each one of them running at full power measuring all things, they could take it in turns. One sampling and sharing GPS position, another doing cell negotiation, etc. Sharing the work could mean reduced overhead and increased battery life.
11. Waterproof. Induction charging would make a 100% sealed unit a highloy viabile possibility; and with so9lid state devices operating better than disk drives under increased pressure it could be made waterproof for diving (or mountain climbing if that’s your bag).

… and of course, since the is the perfect gadget …

1. Tactile Feedback. A feedback system that makes the surface smoother and stickier as it is exposed to a varying electrical current. The whole experience of using the iPhone is lacking in tactile feedback and whilst a vibration feedback system would improve things, it’s not enough.
2. Self Repair. An organic surface, that can repair itself of scratches.

What’s probably not necessary…

1. Replaceable or Upgradable Storage. Globally ubiquitous and fast network connections with inexpensive data rates will render on-device storage irrelevant. Users will no longer need to replace their device every eighteen months for the sake of more space.
2. Replaceable Batteries. Opportunities to recharge mobile devices could increase exponentially. An induction device in your car seat would mean you never have to take the phone from your back pocket. A induction device in the train table would mean your phone would charge whilst commuting. Your whole desk at work could charge phones, laptops all at once. Batteries will never run out of charge.

I watched as the machine-juggling-lady turned to one customer (a large, bearded and eminently recognizable rugby player who regularly commutes) and asked if he’d like milk in his coffee; at which point she stopped herself and commented that of course he didn’t: she knew his order. This got the brain cogs moving (I’m always wondering about how processes work and how they might be improved, disrupted or streamlined). Initially I wondered if face recognition software could help the staff – I discounted that idea because of potential unreliability and cost. I then recalled that Barclaycard have just introduced an RFID based debit card that works when the holder places it near a card reader; I already use the similar Oyster system when in London to pay for my tube journeys, so why not take that one step further and use it for ordering the perfect tasty beverage by placing a reader at the door of the café?

Give the RFID machine a small screen which presents the user with their 3 most common orders and just one machine can automate the process of giving the order, paying for it, receiving change and providing the information necessary to tailor the order to perfection, enabling the members of staff to focus on preparing the drinks during the busiest periods.

Of course… if the ordering and paying can be automated, so can the drinks preparation, and there’s many a machine these days that can make a very good cup of tea, so taking the concept to it’s unavoidable conclusion we must consider that the role of the humans in the shop will become more focused on food preparation, cleaning and general stewardship of the customer space…. after all, the whole point of the shop is that it’s not just a lonely machine on a platform, and the convenience of never again having to scrabble for change in the morning cannot be overlooked.

Some commuters always catch the same train, at the same time, so a time based alarm might do the job, but for anyone with more flexible train usage, and for the times when the train is running late, or cancelled, a simple alarm clock doesn’t cut the mustard. So how about an alarm system that you could configure to go off every time you come within a set distance of a specific point? I’m sure it’s something my GPS phone could no doubt do quite successfully, and it would solve the problem of arriving at the same train station at different times.

A proximity alarm is not the kind of application you could leave running on the phone and just forget, because it would fire every time you got near the station. If you happen to live near the station the alarm would be going off at all times. This could be solved if the alarm were based on a series of way-points. i.e. If you pass near points a, b and c in sequence then the alarm should trigger. This solves the problem of the alarm going off when it’s not necessary. The main problem is that the application still cannot be left running and forgotten because of the battery usage – the Nokia N95 for example, has a good battery and during normal phone usage it lasts well, but the circuitry that does the GPS appears to have a far more significant draw on power than the rest of the device, killing the phone in a matter of hours.

There is, however, a suitable alternative to GPS. Rather than base the alarm on GPS locations, it can be based on cellphone mast IDs. As the commuter moves through the country, the phone detects, and negotiates with different telephone masts. If the alarm system were to be configured to work with masts, then it could work quite successfully without the need for any GPS circuitry to be used.

It’s certainly a less accurate positioning solution than GPS, so the multi-stage trigger for the alarm would be a necessity, but this could be a fairly low-power service because the application would merely have to be woken up whenever a new cell is discovered by the phone, checked for relevance (i.e. does this new cell match an alarm? are any alarms satisfied for triggering?). It’s still not perfect though. What’s needed is a minimal battery solution for that we need to remove the application altogether.

The perfect solution, would remove the need for the phone based application altogether. If the phone company could monitor the phone as it travels between cells, and send an SMS to the phone when the the trigger criteria are met. This solution would work for all phones, even old ones which can’t have applications added to them. No commuter need ever miss their stop again.

I wrote a bit about Akismet a few months ago when it was launched. Prior to that I was one of the testers. I am delighed to say that since it left beta the spam stopping efficiency has not deteriorated from the levels that I experienced during the first tests – and the plugin’s interface has improved too. It’s also grown beyond it’s wordpress origins with the API being translated to several languages and CMS’s.

Will 2006 be a completely spam free year? Perhaps.

On Jan 1st 2006 the UK postal market will be opened up to European competition. If that competition has any kind of a clue regarding customer service, then the Royal Mail will be justifiably stuffed.

So belay the handkerchief retrieval and alert the vineyards of the Champagne region instead.

Some exmaples of the Royal Mail’s ineptitude:

1. Yesterday, I watched from the upstairs window as the postman arrived; he took out what looked like a birthday card and a letter from his stack. He folded them both in half, and posted them.

   The the letter box is wide enough for both items to fit through straight, but he folded them anyway. The card had travelled from Australia to the UK without damage, yet the Royal Mail carelessly bent it in half during the last three seconds of it’s journey.

2. Two days ago we missed a parcel delivery. The Royal Mail left a little card saying we could collect the item or arrange for it to be redelivered. Since we’ve already paid for the postage we prefer not to hop in the car, drive to the depot and then pay for parking whilst we queue up to get the parcel; we decide to have it redelivered.

   The note says “We’ll redeliver to your address or any other local address free of charge. Call the number above.”, great!. So I called the number, navigated the tedious phone menu and eventually arrived at what sounded like an engaged tone.

   Obviously it couldn’t be an actual engaged tone because I’d already got through to the menu system. Or could it? Shortly after, the line went dead.

   I re-read the note. Further down from where “the number above” is printed it tells me there is a special number for re-delivery. Why the note doesn’t just say “We’ll redeliver to your address or any other local address free of charge. Call 023 9283 5211.” is anyone’s guess, it could have saved me (and probably countless others) one phonecall.

   So I called the special number, four times, but it was engaged. No problem, technology to the rescue “I can use ringback!”. I pressed 5 to register that I’d like to be alerted when the line becomes free.

   “Sorry, ringback is not available on this number.”

   I waited 30 minutes and called again, it’s ringing! …and ringing, and ringing, and ringing… and after about 5 minutes the line went dead.

   I spent 10 minutes writing this, and tried again, but it was engaged.

   I spent 5 minutes more proof reading, spell checking and tidying this text up, then tried again: still engaged.

   I spent 30 minutes eating lunch, then tried again: still engaged.

This isn’t a service, our parcel is being held hostage! Come on Royal Mail, you should be doing better than this.

The Royal Mail need to learn how to provide a service for their customers and go beyond just delivering things (albeit things that are unnecessarily folded in half). If they don’t, then come January we’ll be waving a happy goodbye to Postman Pat, and poor Postman Hans is going to be overwhelmed by the welcome.

1. It’s firefox with extras.
2. Bookmarks are gone; hello integration with online bookmarks. This is a good thing. It will promote their use to the masses and help foster an online meritocracy. (Or merely lead people sheeplike to the same wastes-of-time, and further perpetuate the sites that are already popular… the name makes sense now).
3. The ability to tag a page quickly and easily is going to be one of those features that I never knew I was missing, like browser tabs.
4. The History viewer is a bit nicer, but – uh oh – where has the ability to search the history gone?
5. Hey, there’s a blog editor too; that’ll keep the press happy.

Aside: If these parts are available as firefox extensions then they’ll most likely see more development than if Flock remains an island project; some of the parts have a lot of potential.

First impression

The del.icio.us bookmark integratation may be useful, but one of the main faults is that it’s still too firefoxy. There’s too much of Netscape’s legacy here: for example, why is there still a “Go” menu, and in fact, why so many other useless menu options still around?

Having an editor for blogs is potentially useful “for the masses” but for anyone who runs their own site with hand-crafted plugins, there are likely to be things that can’t be tweaked, so the usefulness drops off for the power user. So, for the hardcore hackers, the extended tools may be too blunt, but for the rookie, they may be too much to take in.

My 5 Minute Verdict

Flock needs to decide on it’s audience and focus it’s UI accordingly. It needs more usability work in order to make everything simpler, but it has some promising features.

Since records began on 20th September 2004 there have been a total of 51,198 unique machines that have requested pages; of which, 29,045 are neither spammers, nor search engines. So allowing for NAT hiding some IP addresses, its fair to say that there have been well over 30,000 different visitors to this site.

Counting only the page requests of those visitors, the 100,000th page was served this morning.

The majority of these visitors arrive from search engines, so they’ve arrived based on some perception of relevance to a query, so it’s also fair to say that a large proportion of the pages viewed were actually useful or interesting to the requestor; which is really very nice indeed.

What’s eye opening is that referral and comment spam connections originated from a total of 20,044 different machines. The total number of spam related page requests is 42,633, which amounts to approximately 15% of all pages served.

I wonder how many people, machines and spammers will have passed through by this time next year…

11:37

Police advice is that all London Transport has been disabled as a precautionary measure so people should stay put and only call the emergency services if their life is in danger.

All hospitals have put their rapid call-out emergency plans into action. All routine surgery has been cancelled. Non critical beds are cleared and out-patient activity is suspended.

11:46

Police join speculation that it could have been a coordinated attack. Two confirmed fatalities. Many of the walking wounded have laceration injuries. More seriously injured people are only now, three hours later, being removed from Kings Cross Station – i.e those closest to the blast.

11:50

The BBC are broadcasting live images which just included very clear shots of a badly charred bloke getting CPR on an ambulance gurney.

12:02

Police just said there have been 7 blasts, Tony Blair confirms attacks are terrorist led.

15:30

The Met police now believe there were four explosions this morning, and that there are strong similarities with the Madrid train bomb. There were no warnings, and the Police Service has received no claims of responsibility.

• In the first incident, between Liverpool Street and Aldgate underground stations there are 7 confirmed fatalities.
• In the second incident at Kings Cross underground station there are 21 confirmed fatalities
• At Edgeware Road underground station – it appears 3 trains were involved because the incident occurred in the station – there are 5 confirmed fatalities
• At the fourth incident, on a bus in Tavistock Place, the number of fatalities cannot be confirmed, it is likely to be high because reports suggest that the device was carried by a suicide bomber on the upper deck of a packed double-decker bus.

Injuries treated include burns, amputations, chest and blast injuries, fractured limbs, and minor injuries laceration, smoke inhalation, shock, cuts and bruises.
Critical patients were stabilized at the scene. Minor injuries were treated at the scene and where necessary transferred to hospital. 100 ambulance vehicles and 250 ambulance staff attended. 40 fire engines and 200 fire fighters and officers attended, this includes rescue units and special appliances such for cutting and jacking extremely heavy objects.

Members of the public are being asked to only dial 999 if their life is threatened, and also (if possible) to avoid visiting Accident and Emergency services at London hospitals to enable the staff to focus on those injured in the explosions.

London now turns to the journey home; the timing of the attacks means many people were nearing the end of their daily commute, so they are likely to be stranded in the capital.

15:37

More than 33 fatalities are now confirmed.
There is no indication that anything other than conventional explosive was used.

16:28

The Fire Service has confirmed that all rescues that can be carried out have now been completed. Locations are now scenes of crime and handed over the the Police Service. The Royal London hospital has treated more than 200 patients today, of which 6 are still in a critical condition.

16:51

London ambulance service say they know of 45 patients that are still in a critical condition.

July 8 2005 – 10:15 – (+25 hours)
The Chief Superintendent of London Transport Police was just interviewed on the BBC. He confirmed that at 5am today, the Kings Cross main line (national rail) reopened opened, and that underground trains now travelling through Kings Cross, but not stopping. A fingertip search of the crime scene is underway to ensure any evidence that can be gathered to ensure a prosecution is not missed. He also confirmed that bodies are still being recovered from Kings Cross and that the number of fatalities is not expected to rise beyond 21.

News is also filtering through that at least three of the bombs (the ones on the trains) were detonated by Timing Power Units (TPU’s) so it is possible that the bombers are still at large – if they weren’t all killed in the bus bomb.

July 8 2005 – 15:43
Latest confirmed fatality count is 51.

The majority of people who work in London live on the outskirts, or further afield, and commute into the city. Those that can have worked from home or have taken today off. The majority of people however, have returned to work. They’ve been using the overground, the busses, and the underground as normal.

Stories of heroism, determination and compassion are everywhere. This morning the BBC told the story of an old lady who kept her afternoon dance appointment as usual; having survived far worse in the blitz she wasn’t going to let a few selfish terrorists stop her from enjoying her freedom. Marks and Spencer distributed sandwiches, fruit, water, blankets and clothing to the emergency services and victims; you can’t buy that kind of good will.

When I was an undergraduate in Plymouth, back in 1991, the course members were asked to present posters on any aspect of computing that interested them, but which they’d not had a chance to study in detail before that point. It was a rather good first assignment because it got everybody using the university’s research facilities on a personal-interest topic. My three A1 posters were an overview of the maths behind photo-realistic computer graphics, and specifically an introduction to a technique called ray-tracing.

This is where the teapot comes in. The teapot that adorns every page of this site is a photograph of a real teapot that was part of a tea service that was bought from a Utah department store in the mid 70′s. At that time computer generated imaging was in it’s infancy and the majority of pictures demonstrated either simple surfaces or the five platonic solids.

This “Utah Teapot”, as it is most commonly known, was digitally modelled by Martin Newell circa 1974 and was the first model to use bezier curves to form sculptured surfaces rather than being composed of a set of interlocking polygons. In the picture here, the teapot can be seen suspended within it’s bezier control frame.

A curiosity of the teapot is that the digital model is most commonly rendered at two thirds of it’s real height because when it was originally modelled computer monitor pixels were rectangular, not square – so digital versions appear more squat than the original teapot.

The digital model, which is affectionately and humourously considered to be the sixth platonic solid (and often referred to as the Teapotahedron) has become one of the most rendered objects in history. The original teapot now lives in Silicon Valley and is on display in the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, though I question the wisdom of storing such a historical piece of crockery so close to the San Andreas fault.

Rendering the Utah Teapot

If you’d like to render this scene for yourself; here it is.

During the Falklands Conflict of 1982, the survival rate among exsanguinated casualties was higher than average, leading some to suggest that the mild hypothermia induced by the climate had been a significant factor.

Initial research into hypothermia-based suspended animation the late 80′s and 90′s gave partial successes when dogs were subjected to “profound hypothermic circulatory arrest” and then resuscitated. The success was only partial because although the dogs survived, they survived with brain damage.

At a meeting in the Safar Center for Resuscitation Research in late June 2005, it was reported that in the latest experiments, dogs had been successfully revived three hours after clinical death.

The process used involves flushing the blood vessels with a chilled saline solution that is enriched with glucose and oxygen, to help prevent tissue damage. It was conceived by the late Professor Safar who was also the co-inventor of CardioPulmonary Resuscitation (CPR).

In the USA, the death penalty is still used for certain crimes, but there is also the a concept called “the double jeopardy rule” which was introduced in The Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. It states that a person cannot be tried twice for the same offence:

no person shall [. . .] be subject for the same offense [sic] to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb.

So if resuscitation after clinical death is possible, then there is potential for the death penalty to become ineffective, because once a person has been pronounced clinically dead, they could be revived, and having completed their sentence they would, technically, be free.

Countdown’s daytime television time slot gave Whiteley access to an unlikely, diverse and surprisingly loyal audience. When Countdown was first shown (in the days before cable, satellite and freeview) it was broadcast at 4:15 in the afternoon, when the only competition was two channels of children’s television. It provided friendly, unpretentious and yet intelligent viewing at just the right time for a nice cup of tea and a sit down; something that students and the retired are especially fond of mid-afternoon.

Students in Britain have a history of selecting unlikely heroes, and Whiteley, who was suitably unlikely, made an excellent alternative role model. His combination of sensibly smart clothing, garish ties and enthusiastic delivery of optimistic humour were endearing factors, and although apparently at odds with the sartorial style of his many student fans, his individuality was recognized and appreciated because it came in a jolly and friendly package. Whiteley pitched the programme in such a way that it was nice to have a challenge, but didn’t matter in the slightest if you couldn’t finish the puzzles as well as the contestants, because it was a pleasure to have you along for the afternoon.

Richard Whiteley featured in a recent series of identity adverts for Channel 4, in which he confirmed his favourite swear word: “Sloblocks”, a term which stemmed from a class Fry and Laurie comedy sketch about Countdown. When asked how he’d like to be remembered, he said, “as the first face that appeared on Channel 4″.

* International readers may have seen Hugh Grant watching Countdown as one of his 30 minute segments in the movie About a Boy.

Now a fourth. I wonder what they’re doing?

Now 3 military jets – perhaps tornado’s.

And another – I reckon they may be practcing for the big Sea Britain thing in Portsmouth later this month. There was a similar spectacle a few years back where we enjoyed Harriers flying down our road at stupidly low altitudes,

Now two harriers – practicing refuelling under a huge liner I think a VC10, one under each wing, clever boys.

Next up two groups of two, I think tornado’s again, in close formation.

Then another of the first aircraft that came over – they have two engines on each wing both inset into the wing and close to the fusilage. I wonder what they are. Aha, Nimrods.

There’s now a Chinook doing things that appear to deft gravity all around the harbour and making large banked turns over the Rudmore roundabout.

Now 5 helecopters going north performing some kind of a low level stuff, overflown by one of the Nimrods.

Then another refuelling rig with two jets having a drink.

And four tornado’s with their wings swept forward – all doing a fairly slow flypast.

These things are all flying incredibly low and their shadows are passing over my back garden so the effect is quite enveloping.

Looks like one of the helecopters is doing a landing of some sort. I think I can see a Merlin (EH-101) swooping in to use it’s submarine-finding plonker, or it could be a Sea King, where the planes are flying east-west the helicopters are going south-north. Looks like Apache’s in front followed by the more lumbering utility craft.

10 minutes later I can still hear helicopters, but private aircraft are overhead again now so that’s probably the end of today’s noise and excitement.

Checking on the RAF website both Chinook and Merlin are due here this time next week – I do hope this is a practice and they haven’t got their calendar wrong .

Aha – more information – I think it was probably a rehearsal for Operation Swift Strike. Which would make sense because Whale Island is due west of my house

Also due a week today are the Red Arrows, an Avro Lanc., a couple of spitfires … etc….

On Friday night thirteen people, selected from tens of thousands of applicants, gave up their freedom and entered the Big Brother house, submitting to 24 hour surveillance and a variety of pointless weekly and daily tasks that they must complete in order to earn food credits.

Big Brother shows just how awful people really are: how self-centred and inconsiderate it’s possible to be. It’s not just the contestants on screen that are found wanting; the production company and the voting public come off badly too.

On a one-to-one basis the housemates all manage to function, but as members of society they all seem poorly educated. For example, This morning we were treated to watching a housemate attempt to wash up, he’d awoken before everybody else and proceeded to lament upon their poor sanitation as he “nobly” cleaned up after them. This supposedly well educated man who’s written speeches for senior Conservative Party members, struggled for several minutes, unable to make the sink plug work. This in itself is no bad thing, however, the fact that he left the taps on full bore whilst puzzling with the sink for five minutes, is reprehensible, given the current (almost critically low) reservoir levels following what has been the second driest winter in the last 100 years. Several bonus marks for cleanliness but minus several million for ecological ignorance.

The production company don’t seem to realize any social responsibility, and why should they? They’re making a lot of money out of the current format so without external pressure they have no cause to inject a collective conscience. Big Brother is a potential channel for worthwhile educational content in the weekly tasks, but historically these have had no social merit and have enlightened neither the housemates nor the observing public, they’re merely designed to titillate & embarrass, usually through physical & mental ineptitude. The result is that the conversations largely stagnate after a few weeks and the program becomes a shallow popularity contest.

So the housemates are largely left to their own devices, and their eventual success or vilification is decided by the same people that have made a success of the Crazy Frog ringtone, and music single; people with fickle taste, and just enough expendable cash to waste on text voting.

The saving grace of Big Brother is the Psychology Show, where psychologists, psychiatrists, criminologists, anthropologists, counsellors and medical doctors offer insight into the housemates behaviour and tactics, explaining how and why their actions and reactions are as much predicted by their unconscious animal responses as their own free will.

Personally I’d love to see the psychologists publicly analyse the producers and the voters in as much detail, it might give a fascinating alternative view on the program, and provoke a rethink of it’s content and direction.

The Psychology Show is broadcast Sundays at 9pm, catch it if you can. Big Brother is broadcast most other times, catch it if you must.

This is one such thing, the Eglu, by Omlet. Some call it the iMac for chickens.

Some call it really rather expensive (at a shade under £400 for the whole thing, including 2 live animals, but without hard disk). Some, however, factor in the cost of 6 free range eggs and quickly realize that it’s not such a bad deal after all. With the added bonus that chickens aren’t chicken, and will stand up to the local cat population, they make a rather interesting guardian of the garden.

Granted the more practically minded among us could build a chicken coop, but could we build one that looked like an iMac? (At this point I’ve seriously started to consider looking on [goog]ebay for a second hand iMac[/goog] that I could strip the innards out of, but anything I could make wouldn’t have the handy litter tray.)

I want one. I’m not going to get one until I’ve had a good read about chickens to see if I’d actually be a suitable owner; but these seem way more sensible than a puppy because they don’t need walking and their waste makes good compost, oh, and they lay eggs.

A friend of a friend, of a friend, is doing his bit for Tsunami relief by auctioning himself for 24 hours.

He says he’ll do most anything that’s legal.