velcro suit moment

Other folk have been doing the travelling this week whereas I found myself static with an unexpected WAH day today.

The only thing was, that in addition to my meeting in Scotland (this morning) and my meeting in London (lunch time) I had a Big Meeting with New York (late this afternoon). Of course, these meetings were electronic rather that F2F.

I say the Big Meeting was New York, but it was also Sweden, Holland and a few other places. This is where the WAH factor crept in. I should remind that WAH = Working At Home.

That's been me, all day. Online, on the phone, doing stuff. Non client facing. Relaxed dress code.

It was all going well up to the point where I clicked the link for the Big Meeting.

Up booted a nice screen on my PC. And a little video square, which then toggled through Los Angeles, New York, Stockholm, Brussels, Amsterdam and so forth. Everyone was wearing suits. Proper business attire. Looking very business-like.

I was WAH-casual.

I could hear a sort of stabbing dance chord playing in my head. Psycho meets electro trance.

I checked that the little green light hadn't come on above my PC screen. No, the camera was off. I flipped to the edge of the screen.

Clicked the menu.

There were about 20 people on the call and the number was still rising. Only 30 percent had the little video symbol.

I thought to myself, maybe these other voice only people are also WAH today.

I may need one of those standby velcro suits.

And some gaffer tape.

chocolate buttons (or dancing with the moonlit knight)

I was going to write this post about chocolate.

Continuing my occasional obsession with Cadburys.

I wanted to write about the strange economics of leveraged buy-outs. I even started to draw a diagram on a sheet of paper. One with banks gambling with savings.

I wanted to illustrate that if they gained money, then they got a commission. But also that if they lost money they still got a commission.

If they lost lots of money, then the government asked the tax payers to top up the bank again.

I'd even found a roulette wheel graphic.

And then I wanted to show that the same bank could start gambling again. In a no limits way it could lend whatever and wherever it liked.

And get some more commission.

So it could lend to another country. Maybe to an organisation that wanted to buy part of the bank's own country.

Maybe to cheese company to buy, say, a chocolate firm. So the cheese company buying the chocolate company doesn't need to use so much of its own money.

The bank doesn't mind; it gets its commission on its overseas loan and if the deal is risky then the government is a safety net.

My diagram might have got a bit complicated by now. Because if the chocolate company gets bought and rationalised, then there's a few less taxpayers to top things up.

Luckily this won't happen. The politicians have said so.

Mr Brown said yesterday that "We will do everything we can to make sure that jobs and investment are maintained in Britain."

So I've decided to eat some chocolate instead of drawing my diagram.

Nothing to worry about.

door

I'd walked past a number of times and never even noticed the door.

This time we entered and took the steps that led down.

Our little gang took a corner table and the maître d' settled us returning later to explain the menu. He recognised the others and was suitably pleasant as if he also knew me. They'd been working in this area for a while and already determined this as a favourite venue, whereas this would be my first experience.

We selected from the small menu and a choice of wine, suitably decanted then bursting with a richness and fruit.

We'd been working in a hotel room across town prior to this excursion and had prepared the usual charts and diagrams of commerce. Now was a chance to chatter before tomorrow's Big Meeting.

The food was perfectly cooked. The wine sublime. Our small group enjoyed a special magic in this tiny location, which for an off-peak day was still busy at each of its small number of tables.

Much later we climbed the stairs back to what was now a rainy street, with a few taxis waiting across the road to ferry us back to our waiting files and presentations.

ipad is itray

The secret is out.

The new slate computers can also be used as tea trays and will keep the cups warm.

How better to drink chai, than on a slate downloading the latest edition of National Geographic?

Don't tell anyone.

Cadbury's Flake

So Cadburys is to be taken over by the Krafty cheese people - 'chocs away' as I expect it will say in tomorrow's headlines.

I've always admired the Cadbury history, with the Bournville village set up next to the factories in the late 1800s to provide good accommodation and facilities for the workforce. Quaker George Cadbury also pioneered pension schemes as well as joint works committees and medical facilities for the workers.

It's too early to tell what will happen now that the company is to move to American ownership, but I hope that the better principles are upheld.

I can remember a school project involving Cadburys as well as a rather interesting tour of their factory. There have also been a succession of inventive television commercial across the years, with my favourites including Creme Egg.

For various reasons the original Cadbury Flake adverts seem to have disappeared from the schedules.

atavistic avatar assessment

We were standing by the bar chatting.

For the third time in a few days, the subject of Avatar came up in general conversation. Slightly surprising, but each time different people have raised it. First time it was a ‘not sure’ and a criticism about whether the plot was derivative, followed by bemused remarks about the Pope’s criticism and whether it was neopagan.

A few days ago it was someone who has booked to see it at IMAX but has to wait until February because of the demand. I still had only the haziest idea what it was about. Blue creatures in a sci-fi setting defending mineral rights from humans.

The two people I was with at the bar had seen it; another was on their way that very evening.

“Its good”, said the two. “And it's not very violent”.

“Did you see it in 3D?” I innocently asked.

“Yes - there are some amazing scenes like where the gun cartridges eject. It looks as if they will hit you in the eye.”

“Don’t spoil it.” said the other one, “Mind you, those fighter plane Head Up Displays are pretty amazing.”

I remembered that the two non-violent reviewers in front of me both had military backgrounds. In previous lives, one had worked in Afghanistan, and the other had driven Nimrods around.

It's on my list.

Tchaikowsky Piano Concerto and cellphone

Really a belated new year moment, this clip from Amanda Palmer and the Boston Pops, with Amanda playing Tchaikowsky's First Piano Concerto.

Until its interrupted after around 3 minutes by an audience member's cell-phone.

Pure punk cabaret.

There's further insight (and around 200 comments) over at Amanda's blog. Amanda's experimenting with some video blogging too.

And congratulations to Amanda and Neil Gaiman on their recent engagement.

stuck in the middle with you

It looks as if the politicians are about moving into the fight for the middle ground ahead of the next election. I haven't seen any of the photographs of weasels holding children yet, but it can only be a matter of time.

The Labour party has been quick to move towards the centre and to claim to be friends of the middle classes. This break between the Old Labour of Trade Unions and Workers and the New Labour of Ends, not Means was a Blair argument during his reign.

One key element was the removal of the public ownership parts of Labour’s philosophy, but Gordon Brown’s short succession reversed that by dragging all the robber banks into massive taxpayer funding.

What’s upsetting is the cynicism with which much of this is being played. Pump any old pulp fiction to the electorate to stage manage them to vote the right way.

It looks as if we’re going to get months of manipulation whilst a club of spinners scrabble for front seats in the house.

software slew slakes slated iSlate speculation

A slew of new Apple updates hit my computer this week. The Bonjour update is the intriguing one, if it includes something to support a new Apple iSlate/iPad communing with Macs and iPhone screens.

We'll have to wait a week or two to see whether a maximised iPhone emerges and whether 3D gesture support gets included, although some of the Apple patents are rather recent.

If the guys that designed the Newton had a finger in the works of a new design, then anyone looking for hints or gestures could start with the chordic manipulation of a multi touch surface.

Conspiratorially, someone has just shut down the gesture guide site for the pre-Apple technology. If you didn't know, it would be difficult to spot that it had ever existed, were it not for the power of cache. It could make magazines look quite different.

Maybe there's a new 'go large' iPhone with iReader software. Maybe it has 3D gesture support. And something to stop it from getting scratched when its in a bag.

So, keep taking the tablets and maybe reading the new style magazines...

Link the tablet technology and the gesture interfaces together to start to see the bubble of uncertainty for the traditional media world.

Colour, mixed media, interactive, gesture based, customisable wireless distribution, channel linked. An iTunes style distribution of content. IS-Interactive Slate. iPad to differentiate from Windows?

Then I found the little song to the tune of American Pie, which summarises the media 2010 turmoil in a ten minute slide show.

I'll need to get a bigger battery charger. Oh, and more bandwidth.

a sweet for the landing

A couple of flights this week. Unsurprisingly, yesterday's wasn't quite to plan. In fact, it was cancelled. I spotted the cancellation early in the day though, and managed to get onto another airline. A few delays, but I arrived at my destination.

So this evening, whilst sitting at 37,000 feet and whizzing along at 500mph, I was thinking about my route through the terminal when I got back. I'd stop at M&S on the way to the car to pick up some essential groceries.

Then the kind lady with the interesting hat came along to offer me a sweet for the landing.

I realised I was on a different airline, coming into a different terminal. Instead, I'd have to stop at the filling station on the motorway and settle for picking up some milk.

new snow now

Heathrow today, for a flight, through last night's new snow.

Not much traffic about.

no snow now

The snow's all gone. Official. Depending upon where you live. London yesterday had little hints compared with surrounding areas. 

My attire yesterday featured snow boots, ski-jacket, toned down non alpine jumper (* no reindeer or elephants), gloves and back-pack, as I walked in the darkness to where I'd parked my car, complete with a shovel in it's boot. After one sideways car on the way to the main roads, the rest of the journey was like a slow Monday.  

By the time I returned, I'd forgotten about the need for snow-proofing, until I started walking around in my office shoes, which sank immediately under several inches of whiteness. By today, the tractor has been along the road and we can, once again, see tarmac.