I’ve also just shifted this blog onto the hosting server, so it’s no longer running on our rubbish ADSL. That’s probably enough nerding for one day.

But I’m realising that just isn’t the case. I’ve just had a long conversation with my younger brother, who, admittedly is smarter than me and has a maths degree from a good university, but, is fundamentally lazy. He is proud of this, so it’s not an insult to recognise it. He acknowledges that he doesn’t have to work particularly hard, and when he goes home, work ends.

Okay, so he does a job I probably wouldn’t do, working for a company I probably wouldn’t work for, on principle. But he is appreciated and paid handsomely for his contribution, such as it is. He doesn’t work in IT.

I’m doing something wrong somewhere, and I’m not sure I like the suspicion that is dawning on me. IT is complicated, right? Thats why you have to be quite smart to do it, right? Except not. Because those that manage IT mostly have a fear of it, just like the users. In fact, at my previous employer, the IT manager is probably much less IT-literate that the majority of the users. It made me sad.

When you don’t have the ability to measure the worth of the tasks that you are asking someone to perform, how do you know what to pay them for doing it? And how do you know when they’ve done it right? It’s a difficult position to be in.

I’ve lumbered myself with a project that would be, in the words of a contractor reviewing my initial design, ‘a job for a team of 20 with a budget of £1 million’. And that was only the first draft; each iteration gets more detailed and more complex as more problems are brought to me. The husband keeps asking me why I took it on. Because I could see they needed it. Because it’s my job. And because I want to make things better. Because I believe there’s a better way. Because I’ll never have an opportunity to do so much good again. If I can only make it to the end, it will make so many things possible.

There’s so much code to write that I’ve got my husband helping me three days a week, and still it’s daunting.

But when I look at what other people do for a similar salary, I can’t helping wondering if I’m just a bit crazy. If money per difficulty of job is a way of keeping score, I lose big-time. And to my baby brother! Damn, that smarts.

Mac Mini and TV,
originally uploaded by Purplekitten.

My Optio T20 went sadly blind (camera functional but all it could see was black) so after an attempt to use my Optio s4 again, I wanted something with a bigger LCD. Spoilt? Moi? So I bought a Panasonic DMC-TZ3. The first picture I took was of our television setup (just because I find it amusing).
The television is an aging Sony Trinitron thing that belonged to my late grandmother. The Mac Mini is shiny and new. The magic is the EyeTV DTT stick thing which allows the Mac Mini to do wondrous things and record all the TV I never remember to watch.

Thinking about it, I guess it dates from my time as a home carer. I used to look after a variety of elderly and confused people, as well as a blind lady with cerebral palsy. I instinctively updated her every few moments about what I was doing and where I was, so she would feel involved in her care and not be worrying about where I was. It wasn’t something I consciously thought about doing, it just seemed appropriate.

Now, I have a twitter account, and my updates are merely vanity, as no-one really has a need to know what I’m doing, but I find it as natural and instinctive as my carer techniques. Sorry, world.

Excessive Detail,
originally uploaded by Purplekitten.

I do realise that there aren’t hordes of gnomes lovingly hand-carving these cat treats, but at the same time I have to wonder about why the detail is there at all.

Smart as the Mog is, she’s not going to a. know what an actual fish looks like or b. appreciate that the cat treat attempts to resemble a fish.

Actually, she licked it and turned her splotchy nose up at it anyway. So much for marketing..

It’s a lemon on a ladle.,
originally uploaded by synx508.

For some time now /dev/husband has been wanting a ladle. So we finally purchased one. It is hanging on the wall in the kitchen with a lemon in it. I kid ye not. It is now on its second lemon, as the first grew elderly and had to be put to sleep.

Duty of person responsible for animal to ensure welfare
(1) A person commits an offence if he does not take such steps as are reasonable in
all the circumstances to ensure that the needs of an animal for which he is
responsible are met to the extent required by good practice.
(2) For the purposes of this Act, an animal’s needs shall be taken to include—
(a) its need for a suitable environment,
(b) its need for a suitable diet,
(c) its need to be able to exhibit normal behaviour patterns,
(d) any need it has to be housed with, or apart from, other animals, and
(e) its need to be protected from pain, suffering, injury and disease.

This concerns me, not because I want to mistreat my cats (although that’s not what *they* say when the Wrong Food has been provided..), but because I’m concerned about part C.

Does this mean that you can no longer keep a cat totally indoors, as that’s hardly normal behaviour for a cat, and what about the fact I put a Liberator collar on her to stop her eating every single baby blackbird she can find? That’s cramping her style somewhat.

While most of the provisions of the Act are long overdue, and much needed, I’m a bit concerned that this puts a little too much power in the paws of my cat. There is insufficient detail as to what constitutes ‘normal’ behaviour. I’ve been careful not to leave the information up on screen in case she sees it and there will be no discussion about it in this house, but I’m worried a neighbour might let slip and then she will be unstoppable. “Yes it’s normal for me to be driving your car, get out of my way puny human.”

Not because of the quality of the code (hey, mine isn’t perfect either) but because it’s the ubiquitous operating system and therefore the target of choice.

I’ve always maintained that there is a certain level of stupidity beyond which you should not be allowed near a computer. In the past, the skill level required to do anything useful on a computer made this self-regulating. Now dear old Windows, with its lowest-common-denominator approach and attempt to garner as much market share as possible, has lowered the bar so far it’s now nothing but a trip hazard.

The problem is, you can generally either have something that is easy to use, or you can have something that is secure. Compromises need to be made if you want to tip the balance in either direction. Having the same password for every login prompt is easy, but it’s not secure. Having different passwords made up of random letters, numbers and punctuation is secure, but it is not easy. Unless you’re a robot. Phil?

Making a computer so easy to use that anyone and their cat can get on ‘this internet thing’ has made life a lot less secure for the rest of us, as suddenly there’s a whole world full of people with computers, with big ‘kick me’ signs painted on their backs. So it’s tempting to search for exploits, and write malicious code, because there’s such a herd to aim at. Even blindfolded, you’re sure to hit someone..

I don’t blame Microsoft for spotting a crack in the door and wedging an elephant in it, it does make good business sense to do what they’ve done. Or does it? Suddenly they have a planet full of customers who are waking up and realising that they have a bullseye painted on them and are getting paranoid. Not paranoid enough to learn how to browse safely, but paranoid enough that Microsoft realise they need to do something to make people feel securer. Hence Vista. (I’ve not tried it, and won’t until it works.)

The trouble with Windows is that Bill’s plan worked too well. Software houses have written software that runs only on Windows, and by getting businesses dependent on this software have ensured tie-in to Windows almost as a by-product. I’m a case in point – I develop things using MS SQL server, and MS Access (and other bits of Office). I can’t not have Windows installed. I use those tools to develop with because that is what my employer requires. Because they run Windows. It’s all very clever, and all very dangerous.

The computer systems of the world are dangerously inbred and I’m not really sure what we can do about it.

Having found the particular entry I wanted in a census, I was idly flicking through the other pages and it occurred to me that it would be really fabulous to have a map of London, with a layer for every point in time that there is data for, and be able to virtually wander round the map and visit each dwelling and see the layers of people that lived there over time. I don’t even want to begin to think about how challenging that would be to do, but I’d like someone to do it.