nik newark

More Gordon Dioxide

I've written about Gordon Dioxide before, together with his range of wonderful bedtime stories. His stories are now available as a proper book, and one has been adapted for YouTube. Enjoy!

How to win an election in Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe is not a great place to be right now. Just about everyone aside from Robert Mugabe and his henchman believe that the upcoming elections have been compromised for two reasons:-
(a) Morgan Tsvangirai was unable to do any proper campaigning, as Robert Mugabe would kill him, and
(b) Morgan Tsvangirai's supporters were unable to express their support for him, again, as Robert Mugabe would kill them. This has led Morgan Tsvangirai to withdraw from the election campaign, exposing it for the mockery that it is.

However, it needn't have played out that way. Here are three easy ways that Robert Mugabe could have called a legitimate election and won, without threatening anyone.

1/ Rather than asking people to tick boxes next to names, ask them instead to write the name of the candidate they want to vote for. Morgan Tsvangirai is very difficult to spell, and most people won't manage it. Robert Mugabe is far easier, and let's face it, most people are more likely to write something that they can spell, rather than experiencing the social humiliation of spelling someone's name wrongly (even if that means you end up voting for a corrupt dictator who wants to kill you).

2/ Robert Mugabe could get all of his henchmen to stand in the elections, but using names very similar to Morgan Tsvangirai. So, we could have Morgan Tsvangarai, Morgan Tsvengirai, Morgan Svengali, Morgan Spurlock, and Kenneth Tsvangirai. The resulting confusion would see Morgan Tsvangirai's vote split 6 ways, leading to a surefire Mugabe victory.

3/ Robert Mugabe could change his name to Morgan Tsvangirai, so the voting form would contain two identically named candidates, and no-one would know who was the real Morgan Tsvangirai, and which one was the imposter. OK, Mugabe would only have a 50/50 chance of winning here, but I think it still significantly increases his chances (without using threatening ASBO behaviour).

I wonder how much I could earn as campaign adviser to Mr Mugabe?

Toys that make worlds

I first heard of Will Wright's Spore project around a year ago on a TED talk , where he presented a multi phase evolutionary world simulator, starting from a single celled creature, through evolution, establishment of tribes, culture, and ultimately expanding into space. The vision was very compelling, and the demo was very impressive - the software, even in its unfinished form, seemed to make something as complex as building your own creature very intuitive and simple.
Fast forward to mid 2008, and there is currently a lot of buzz about Spore, due to be released in September. In order to drum up excitement, EA have done two very clever things:-
(1) The creature creator part of Spore has been released early for £5 (which is redeemable against the full product when it arrives). For those of us to tight to pay even this sum can download a cut down creature creator (still very capable, but with a smaller selection of eyes, legs etc to choose from).
(2) Once you've designed your creature, the creature creator allows you to create your own movies, and automatically upload to YouTube. So, YouTube has become swamped with Spore creatures. As all of these uploaded creatures look very cool indeed, this is the best free marketing you could hope for. In the not too distant future, I suspect that many other software companies might start to do something similar.

Needless to say, I've created my own creature, Sandra Pl'tangue. Hope you like her.

Drummer Boy

When Digi was first born, I figured that I wouldn't be playing with my drum kit too often due to the extreme noise, so I dismantled it, and stashed it away in the garage (and transferred my affections to an electric kit instead). Obviously, this wasn't a very acceptable state of affairs, so we put it back up at the weekend, and the three year old Digi has rather taken to it.

I'm quite proud!

You know its time to get out when...

…Richard Branson moves in.

It is one of those odd mysteries of the modern world how the Virgin empire actually manages to turn a profit, given that it has a talent for starting new business in industries which shortly afterwards dive into a sudden and terminal decline.

It's really quite spooky how Richard B manages to identify industries which are about to have all life squeezed out of them. Or, maybe, just maybe, it is Virgin moving into a new market which causes the collapse, like a bloodsucking vampiric leech slurping on highly competitive markets until they turn inside out?

Let's take a closer look!
Record Labels - not doing so well at the moment are they? Richard entered the record label business in the early 1970s, when recorded music was quite a healthy and profitable industry to be in (albeit a corrupt and nasty one). Within 15 years, the record industry was in trouble, and had to start inventing a stream of new formats (CD, DAT, DCC, MiniDisc, HDCD, DVD-Audio, SACD) and endless reissued / remastered deluxe editions in order to stay afloat. To be fair to Branson, he got out of the business in 1992, selling Virgin Records to Thorn EMI. But then came Britpop, and the industry looked healthy for about three nanoseconds, and Branson insanely started a new label “V2”. He's since sold that too.
Record Shops Where have they all gone, eh? Branson has eaten them all, that's what.
Airlines and Other Transport Squeezed by the budget carriers on one side, increasing oil prices on another, concerns about environmental damage, concerns over terrorist attack, and concerns about the entire world becoming increasingly homogenized, virtualized, globalizationified (new word there, borrowed from GWB, prob'ly), you'd have to be mad to get into the airline business. Now, trains are another matter, but given that the track record (oops, a pun) of British railway operators over the past 50 years has been pretty shoddy, it is statistically unlikely that Branson can do any better. Especially as his heart isn't really in it - he far prefers balloons, and
Spaceships Obviously a real money spinner this one. Virgin Galactic plan to take people to the edge of space. And then back. Assuming that he can foot the enormous insurance bill he will be faced with, and he can get hold of some inexpensive tax-free rocket fuel, and assuming that when it all actually works enough people still think it is cool enough to do, Branson might break even on this one. But the only way he is likely to make a profit is if he opens a Little Shop in the Exosphere selling overpriced postcards, T-shirts and trinkets. Mind you, I did quite enjoy the Virgle thing.
Broadband operators So, they've had it OK for a while haven't they? Leasing stuff from BT, owning a switch or two in some dusty building in Canary Wharf, making up their own fictional connection speeds, billing people as they see fit, and spinning off their helpdesk function into a profitable business in its own right. But they've been wingeing of late about iplayer and other easy-to-use video streaming services which turn their revenue model upside down a bit (all those pesky customers, unreasonably actually using the bandwidth they've bought…). So diminished profits and enormous competition here too I think.
Mobile operators See broadband operators, only more so. Historically have wanted to make their money by trying to be the sole provider of content to their users, rather than letting their users download stuff from anywhere. Now only seem to make money from ringtones, whose sole market seems to be made up of 7-14 year olds with too much pocket money. They'll all grow up shortly, and the new young generation will have wised up, and think that ringtones are like “totally rinsed”.

The only thing I know is that when Branson enters the market, it is time for everyone else to get out. So, given that Branson now runs the VFestival, it is probably time for Michael and Emily Eavis to close up Glastonbury and go home.

Actually, I read somewhere (Wikipedia maybe) that Richard Branson's sole income comes from being a successful knitwear model, and all proceeds are used to prop up the rest of the Virgin empire.

With that in mind, a musical tribute to the great man himself, an offcut from the latest Chrysanthemum Fiends Long Player (forthcoming, probably) entitled Richard Branson.

Salvaged Wood Guitar

Found on Etsy.com (a site for buyers and sellers of all things handmade), an eco-friendly guitar made out of salvaged wood.
The ascendancy of chain store culture and global manufacturing has left us dressing, furnishing, and decorating alike. We are encouraged to be consumers, not producers, of our own culture. Our ties to the local and human sources of our goods have been lost. Buying handmade helps us reconnect.

I challenge you not to spend a happy hour browsing Etsy. You can even search for sellers local to you. Clearly this is the future!

Posted by nikn on June 07, 2008 | Comments (1)

Keynote for the web

If you're a Mac user, you may have seen Apple's Keynote application, essentially an elegant alternative to Powerpoint. If you haven't seen it, and would like to, you have several options to fill this gaping void in your life, namely:-
a) buy it
b) steal it
c) hover around Mac users in crowded coffee bars, especially if it looks like they are writing a presentation
d) search a popular YouTube style site on the Interweb
e) smoke illegal herbs, and have vivid dreams about it (possibly not very accurate ones)

These are likely to meet varying degrees of failure. But! You now have a viable alternative, as some crazy fools at 280 North have developed a language called Objective-J (a mapping of Objective-C to JavaScript) which makes use of a variety of browser rendering engines (e.g. Flash) to provide a rich user experience. They've then used this to produce a very Keynote-esque presentation app for the web.

Have a play at http://280north.com/Editor/

Earthquake!

It's just gone 1.00am, and the floor and walls have stopped shaking. Various birds outside have stopped squawking, I've just returned to bed, after running around to see whether an enormous tree had fallen on or near the house. All seems good. Kids are OK. Mrs Kittenhead is still asleep. Cats are a bit freaked out. Think we've just had an earthquake.
Nothing about it on the BBC news as yet. However, I note that the 1st and 3rd most read articles are http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6602677.stm and http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/6940546.stm, both about earthquakes that occurred in Kent and Manchester in 2007, so it looks as other people have had a sudden spontaneous desire to read BBC articles about earthquakes. (So, the way to find out really breaking news appears to be to look at what other people have been searching for!)
I guess it was real. Let's see what the News says tomorrow.

Update : 1:18 - it's just been confirmed on the news; tremors have been felt in Darlington, London and Nottingham. This is my first earthquake. It rocked!

MacBook Air, Bob the Builder and the new Leica M8

A few days ago, a work colleague who will remain anonymous (partly due to my good manners, and partly due to his security-conscious/paranoid nature being a security architect and things, but you know who you are Chris) approached me over lunch and asked me whether I had put in my order for Apple's new MacBook Air. I responded in the negative, as (a) I didn't need a new laptop as my old iBook G4 is still going quite well, (b) if I was going to buy a new laptop, it would probably be something that could happily be trod on by small children, and (c) you can't replace the batteries on the MacBook Air. This got my anonymous friend on a roll, telling me that Apple's entire product strategy (and most other purveyors of consumer products) was based around built in obsolescence, i.e. when something goes wrong with your product, you'll probably bin it, and buy a new vastly improved one.*

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

I pointed out that the new MacBook Air was designed with recyclability in mind, using reclaimable materials, and no nasty stuff (e.g. no Mercury in the LCD panel). Once you are done with your machine, you can return it to Apple, and they will reclaim all of the materials, and make new stuff out of 'em. Greenpeace have applauded Apple's efforts. "Ahh", says my friend, "Recycling is the last resort. You should Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. In that order". And this is what he does : he adopts the old, and the unwanted. This isn't a money-saving venture - no, it is a principled effort to prevent stuff from being needlessly discarded. His recently acquired new PC is 5 years old. His old PC is 9 years old. His cellphone is at least 4 years old. So, I reckon that he'd like the new Leica M8. Not only does it look like something from the middle of last century, but it is designed to be upgradable - not just the software, but the hardware too. So, when Leica release a new shutter mechanism, you send your camera off to Germany, and they take your camera apart, pop the new shutter on, and send it back to you. Over time, you may find that none of your original Leica M8 remains - it has all been upgraded over time. But, here's the brilliant bit. As you live with your camera, organically modifying and improving it over time, accepting some modifications and rejecting others, your camera slowly becomes customised to be yours and yours alone. The small scuff on the shutter release button, the bit of paint that your toddler managed to get on the bottom of the case - all of these things make it unique and comfortable, like an old worn jumper. It may not be the latest groovy thing, but no-one else has one the same. Which means, you'll hold on to it, cherish it, live with it, and not feel obliged to throw it away. Plus, it is a bit of a looker. Continue reading "MacBook Air, Bob the Builder and the new Leica M8"

Attributable to....?

From a page heading in Wikipedia:-

You can help Wikipedia change the world! » Donate now!
From the fundraising blog – Wikibooks and the Future of Free Education
“My college students depend on Wikipedia” — Anon.

Rather ironic that that Wikipedia should sing its praises with a unattributed quote…