springing out of the pub

"Do you mind if we stand outside?"

We'd been in a pub after the last meeting of the day. It was still early and I'd had a couple of small drinks with colleagues, before we split up for the rest of the afternoon.

A month or so ago everyone would still be huddled inside unless in need of a cigarette. Now we're in the early stages of people preferring to be outside.

"Is that your coat?" I was asked as we sauntered into the sunlight.

"No coat today."

I'd packed an umbrella but my suit was sufficient for the meetings around town. Worst case would be the need for a taxi, although walking and the tube worked just fine.

bottom gear

I've been watching the situation around that alleged fracas caused by the television presenter who reportedly used extensive vitriolic language and blows with his producer over no steaks in the hotel restaurant at 9.30pm.

Hundreds of thousands seem to be rallying around the presenter, although I disagree.

Like others who get a certain leverage from their position, he is now living on the power he has been gifted on behalf of the rest of us. He enjoys a privileged role as clown entertainer and has used it to make comments that in most organisational settings would be considered inappropriate.

There's plenty of lower level cheap shots too about slowing down to 70 mph on a motorway to pick up a bus wifi signal, of aiming vehicles at cyclists as well as the oft-quoted examples about lorry drivers, Mexicans and other nationalities.

I don't see it as clever, more as bullying. An apparently untouchable and disagreeable dinosaur who happens to be able to drive fast cars around a track and make their tyres smoke.

Apparently he doesn't work directly on the BBC payroll, having his own sage special arrangement which also includes profit sharing of the syndication rights. Nice work if you can get it although I assume he's found an advantage to moving elsewhere in any case.

There's a couple of other presenters in the show who emulate the behaviour in a toned-down sort of manner, so long as they kowtow to their leader. It's all very smug and elitist in a blokey sort of way. "Shall we race the Ferrari against the McLaren and the Porsche?"/"Let's do something stupid with normal cars to show how pathetic they are compared to a Bugatti Veyron". Even the one who makes other television programmes about toys has owned a plane with a cockily personalised registration, so they are all doing okay, thank you very much.

The whole programme is shot in lovely supersaturated colours with cracking soundtracks. The production values make all of it look like a scene from Hollywood, rather than a rainy airstrip. Maybe the bullied producer has something to do with making it look good as well as fetching the sandwiches?

Some people are saying that the lead presenter has made the show what it is. That's a great reason to ask him and perhaps the rest of the presentation team to step aside. Let some different folk take over and reboot what has become a tired and repetitive format.

inventing Southminster to become a new site for Parliament?

Commons Speaker John Bercow said that it will cost around £3bn to renovate The Houses of Parliament.

Cameron recently commented in a TV show about his liking for the current format and not wanting to change it. Of course. It plays to his strengths having an adversarial boys' playground layout for the Commons.

There's much that can be improved. Here's a few easy starter thoughts:

- enough space for everyone to be seated;
- a more circular format, focused towards the speaker/chair;
- enough rooms for all MPs to have a similarly configured private office space;
- sensible modern meeting facilities including flexible configurations;
- modern electronic communications including social and video systems;
- electronic voting instead of the time wasting Aye and No lobbies;
- a more well-structured layout than the current rabbit warren of 1,100 rooms;

I'm sure there's more, but that will do for now.

So then what?

How about moving it to something more suitable?

Keep the current building with its towers and clock and have it progressively turned into something else. They did it with County Hall on the South Bank, which is now a fancy hotel.

Whoever takes it over could keep the shell and be required to keep some sections for State occasions. The rest could be reconfigured into a mix of museum, hotel, apartments or similar.

Why do this?

Value for money. Keep the heritage. Move the function to something more appropriate.

Ten minutes away on the tube, The Shard on the South Bank is 74 stories high, with a huge hotel part way up. It was built in about 4 years (2010-2014) and is completely modern including even the latest American aircraft proofing measures. All in, The Shard cost £1.2bn to build - which is less than half the cost of the renovation of The Palace of Westminster.

A site close to Westminster could be found. There's still plenty of brownfield along the South Bank, which could become known as Southminster and is only a few minutes from the current location. The Americans are already building their new embassy there.

It seems odd to me that we'd spend all that money on reconstructing a building which recreates a Parliamentary system stuck with practices from 1847.

Of course, my suggestion has already been quietly ruled out.

ducking and diving before heading to the dark blue squares

A couple of days of meetings around town, ducking through short cut alleyways between venues.

I'd arranged to meet one small group ahead of a session with a financial institution.

"That'll be around the City somewhere?" I asked.

"Er no. It's a fund manager. Forget the City, think Mayfair."

So next I'll be heading further west, to the most expensive Monopoly board squares.

okay, i've finally posted a cat...

charging past the daily limit but not on my watch

That new watch is about to hit the shelves although I can't help wondering how long this version will be around?

I assume it will be on a quick refresh cycle to be faster, slimmer and with lower power use?

Maybe in a year there will be a 24 hour version after the consumer feedback from the first one?

The apparent need for an 18 hour recharge may just be a wind-up?. A watch that lasts less than a day? It goes to sleep instead of monitoring it? Or maybe the answer is to have two watches so that one can be on the charger whilst the other is in use?

I'm wondering what battery technology is being used?

If lithium polymer, we might expect that effect where the battery starts to lose capacity after 200 to 300 charge cycles. The battery university test of eleven such batteries from smartphones shows a 15%-25% battery capacity reduction after 250 charges - that's about nine months and would show a duration reduction to about 15 hours. Now if the watch (my suggested next version) started at, say, 30 hours then it's less of a problem. I suppose, as they say, time will tell.

The next thing I'll want to see is inductive charging, where the various devices like iPhones, watches similar products can be dropped onto a pad, rather than plugged in to be recharged. Presumably all the iOS products will be getting this soon, although I suppose it might require some plastic/ceramics/glass for the case?

i see that even movies get the dress treatment

Some movie video trivia today - sparked by that colourful dress meme that flickered around the internet.

Whilst uploading a bunch of DVDs to iTunes, I accidentally re-encoded an original DVD of The Matrix, from 1999. I noticed that the colour on it was quite different from the one I'd previously loaded - which has a green wash across it.

The newer studio encode kind of misses the point that the original green hue was supposed to be visible only on the bits inside the Matrix as if it was being viewed through a Cathode Ray Tube. And blue for Zion and red for inside the machine. RGB, eh?

Time for a quick Google. It turns out that the studio recut the master to make it look more like the second and third Matrix movies by adding a green hue across the whole movie. To make the box set consistent.

It raises a wider point about the re-mastering that occurs nowadays. It's already obvious that some so-called HD shows on Sky look like upscaled SD and that seems to apply to some of the Blu-rays too, which don't seem to have been cut from particularly high quality source. Equally, some SD DVDs have that extra layering of detail suggesting a very high quality source. I even saw an arabic subtitled Casablanca in colour once, when I was staying in a hotel in Egypt. All that noir lighting gets squandered in the remix. I suppose it illustrates the tinkering that is now possible and the ways that an old movie can be dramatically re-purposed. No wonder there's so many Special Editions/ Extra Footage/ Director's Cuts around.

I usually encode DVDs at their original resolution and keep my limited number of BluRays as discs. The DVDs work out around 1.5Gb, whereas a BluRay might be about 10+Gb, for sometimes a marginal improvement in viewing at normal television distances.

The video extracts of the Matrix above was uploaded by sdude1871 who'd already spotted the weird discrepancies, and decided to do an interesting comparison.

Like that dress thing, I suppose it's in the eye of the beholder.

OM-D EM1 and EM5 MkII - two smokin' barrels?

I've a cupboard full of big Nikon camera equipment, but have progressively become a fan of the smaller mirrorless micro 4/3 system. Although it uses a smaller sensor and less pixels, it still takes attractive pictures with the added advantage of not needing its own rucksack to cart around a decent amount of equipment.

I'm also keen to use a viewfinder rather than just a back screen, so the Olympus cameras have been my favourite ever since the original OM-D EM-5, which was styled to look like an old film Olympus OM System camera.

My diminutive OM-D EM-5 is still great fun to use some years after its original release, and although I have all the gubbins to add handgrips and battery grips (they were a 'free gift' when I bought the camera), I still prefer to use it in its most basic form, which actually feels quite like the 35mm film camera experience.

Since then, there's been various additions to the range, like the EM-1, which is slightly more bulky and has a more grippy body, an economically priced EM-10 similar to the EM-5 but which which annoyingly uses a different type of battery. Now the revised EM-5 Mk II, which is more than a simple swap of parts, it is effectively a complete replacement with a modified form factor and different control layout.

I've been using the Mk II for a while now and aside from the current lack of RAW support in Adobe and Photo (temporary problem), it provides improvements to handling, added stealth and a bunch of new functions. I can see my EM-1 and EM-5 Mk II becoming the main combination when I am specifically out to take photographs because I can take a decent variety of kit without it becoming a weightlifting exercise.

An understated point with both of these cameras is the 5-way image stabilisation, which, in my experience, adds to picture clarity compared with bigger bodied mirror-based cameras. I also find that the electronic viewfinder of the two most recent models is very good, and it's easy to forget that it's a digital screen rather than a mirror being viewed through the camera viewfinder.

I'll have to go walkabout sometime soon to get some comparative pictures.

For now, here's somewhere I frequently pass. It's just along from Bridget Jones' flat and the alleyway used in Harry Potter's Prisoner of Azkaban. It's the lock, stock and two smoking barrels gang hideout, snapped on my original EM5.

gifted replacement for the cockerel...

I see the slyly humorous blue cockerel has gone, replaced with an equally sly gift horse.

The ravages of the financial sector appear to have left the skeletal horse with just a ribbon displaying ticker prices, instead of a proper mouth and all.

William IV would have a job balancing on this Hans Haacke artwork, which temporarily occupies the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square.

...but I'm just not there when, when it's coming to a fight

There seems to be a certain contempt for the UK electorate in the way that the Prime Minister is ducking the idea of a televised debate. He doesn't see it like that, of course, and is already spinning the blame to the broadcasters for not getting their act together.

The other parties are saying it's because he's scared, but I reckon it's all part of the stealthy strategy his back office is using in the election run up.

The idea of any form of scrutiny of policy in a format where the bulk of voters might actually pay attention needs to be avoided at all costs.

A televised series of debates could have topics like Health, Education, UK's place in the world (inc EU and immigration), Economy and cost of living, Welfare (inc housing and pensions), UK homeland defence (inc crime and defence), Workforce (inc tax and inequality).

Of course, my made-up working titles could be snazzed up for viewer appeal, and the whole thing has the makings of an interesting series. Seven Big topics. Seven shows? Or even three shows and a finale?

It's completely at odds with the seven or eight people standing format that Cameron would feel more comfortable with, in a two hour show. With 10 minutes of tops and tails, it would give each person maybe 10-12 minutes of main speaking time. Using a modest six topics, that's about two minutes per topic. Just enough to scratch a surface sound bite.

Fascinating that in these days of increased social media and accessibility, that the party in charge appears to want to hide behind a wall.

Cameron's advisors suspect that the party in charge doesn't do well from these shows and so its easier to torpedo them than to build something meaningful.

Instead, predictably this week we are getting news clips of politicians adjacent to babies after last week wearing hard hats.

Using current projections, the Tories could secretly expect 275 seats, with Labour around 271. That leaves both parties somewhat short of the needed 326 seats for a majority. If the others go 51 SNP & related, 27 Lib Dem and 26 others (inc Greens and UKIP), then it creates a quandary for a divided Parliament with the true balance of power held by the smaller blocks.

For Cameron, an early play of a seven or eight way way debate would illustrate the complexity of managing a non-majority House of Commons. The strategists can rub hands together as this gives more earnest sound bites.

Cameron also knowns he can probably side-step a group debate and still be assured of a personal prime spot where he can say what he likes.

Adding the two events together; confusion from a seven or eight way and then a clear line of earnestly delivered strategist-manufactured crowd-pleasing waffle.

The Tory campaign plan run by Lynton Crosby probably sees it as improving Cameron's chances. As most people become hacked off with the whole system, it could well become the battle of the cartoonish five word sound bites.

That'd be with Cameron in customary truth massage mode. Miliband still learning how to say five words without an Uh or forgetting one. The Greens need to up their horsepower for a broad agenda. UKIP is playing around with self-adapting phrases to suit locale. The Scots have a new Scottish cause-based coherence and Lib Dems have thrown away huge chunks of their supporters.

Cameron's puppeteers don't want to accidentally awaken a new class of voters. They could tip his crowd off to the side.

Popular television broadcasts, electronic voting and things that might disrupt the comfortable seats are all getting the silent treatment.

serious fraud? Just say 'No'

So now the Serious Fraud Office is apparently having a peek into the Bank of England to see what happened when extra liquidity was needed after Northern Rock's demise.

Prior to Quantitative Easing, which electronically printed huge sums of money, there was another scheme which electronically printed huge sums of money. The Special Liquidity Scheme was when the Bank auctioned a mere £185bn to some banks and building societies, in return for non-liquid unshiftable collateral of £287bn.

This cheap liquidity was supposed to be a rescue scheme, but there's hints that the money may have been loaned via some possibly skewed auction processes and cut price fees. At least one bank appears to have already paid a fine based on their SLS fee reductions. By paying the fine early, they managed to get a 30% discount from the FCA.

Naturally, any rigging would be frowned upon although LIBOR rate tweaks and banging the close on the forex fix are both topical examples where this has happened.

I suppose it's all about finding the choke points and, if so minded in a chatty place like the City, knowing how to manipulate them.

For LIBOR, it's about the way that money gets loaned to building societies and certain sized companies. For the forex fix, it's about setting global exchange rates once or twice a day before they all start to wander. For maintaining UK economic confidence its about the liquidity afforded to big banks.

Then it becomes about leverage. As something massive shifts slightly, how do vested interests pick up a piece?

Small shift in LIBOR = large bonus prospect.
Small discrepancy in forex fix = large daily profits and commissions.
Tweaked access to discounted money = vintage wine all round.

Chancellor Osborne is reported as saying he'll give a blank cheque to the SFO for their investigation. It'll be curious to know where the money used to pay it gets printed?

why are spies so heavy on the secret acronyms?

It's a few days until the next round of Apple launches, which will probably include more information about their watch (ask about the battery life), some existing things made slimmer and presumably something news related to their home and television offerings.

They may have some catchup on home offerings. I was mildly intrigued a few days ago when our home central heating published an update to its software licensing agreement (which is via Google). I guess it's the shape of things to come as we all go telemetric.

Around 1/3 of the world now carries smartphones popularly considered akin to the supercomputers of ten years ago. Big business is keen to access all of that interaction and related usage statistics and the trend will only continue as greater access to health and home information becomes possible.

The challenge is to figure out how to use it all for good things rather than bad things.

The Edward Snowdon story (discussed again yesterday in a Guardian briefing) illustrates how movies like Enemy of the State become ever closer to reality. In the recent Kingsman movie the evil overlord manufactures free SIMM cards to get mind control. It's a similar path to the NSA allegedly getting access to phone cryptographic keys to intercept our call meta data.

There's a supposition that the IMP*-ish agencies can tap 1EF* fibre optic cables from tin sheds and then use MVR* with xkeyscore* trigger words to secretly sift through vast content and metadata.

Here's one such architecture award-winning tin shed on the B3315 at what used to be Skewjack Surf Shack: "Web Surf's Up, Dude!"

Theres an awful lot of this 'on the fly' MTI* data for the Nigella* link to cook, so perhaps the content can only be stored for a few days and the metadata for maybe a month?

For regular folk it becomes a question of working out how to live with these fairly unstoppable forces. We'll all have iPhone 8s and their equivalents soon enough. For the politicians, state and big business there's an increasing need to stay in the good space rather than to slither stealthily into a manipulative darkness.

I'm not sure that keeping an old Nokia and some Baco foil close at hand would really provide an alternative.


* MVR = Massive Volume Reduction
* IMP = Interception Modernisation Programme
* MTI = Mastering The Internet
* 1EF = One End Foreign (non USA)
* Nigella = fibre optic wiretap name, operated by FLAG*
* FLAG = Fibre-optic Link Around the Globe, owned by Reliance Communications of Navi Mumbai, India.
* XKeyscore = user friendly, plug-in enabled massive volume search mechanism