February 2008 Archives

I have been writing this blog for almost a month and have signed up for various tools, including Google Web Analytics. I originally signed up to learn how they work for my startup idea (more about that soon, I promise), but now I think they are just cool.

For instance, thanks to analytics I know that 3 people regularly visit my blog and two of them are me! I also know that on the 26th of February, someone at Ricks College in Rexburg, Idaho, typed "weird in sign language" into google and came to my blog post about the sign language for being bitten by an alligator. Obviously it wasn't quite what they were expecting so they left after a few seconds. For some reason that little bit of knowledge puts a smile on my face.

FYI, the American Sign Language for "weird" is here, and that's cool too.

I don't have a home phone line, so until recently I used open wifi points to access the internet. Seeing a large number of ads for mobile broadband modems (modems that connect to the mobile phone network) I thought I could improve my connection's reliability and expense.

I bought a Pay As You Go Huawei E220 USB modem from 3, advertised as very simple to use, and plugged it in. It didn't work. At this point my biggest mistake was calling the 3 support line - what a dismal experience! The support people kept me waiting for ages and suggested clearly stupid solutions. They refused to listen to my reasons why their obviously wrong suggestions wouldn't work and seemed eager to end the call. I made them wait for me to try their solution, and when it didn't work, the cycle repeated (starting with the wait while on hold). After about half an hour I gave up on them. The next morning I was angry and determined to return the modem for a refund. However, I tried a quick google search at work first and found the answer - it seems these modems do not play nicely with others. I disabled my laptop's internal modem and the Huawei modem has worked fine since.

Overall, I'm happy with my purchase, but very unhappy with 3. Internal modems are common and to have conflicts with them would, in my mind, preclude claiming something as plug and play. I will never call the 3 support line again - I found them hopeless (why not just have them search google?). Since my dealings with 3 I have found others with similar problems. YMMV.

Logically bad arguments are annoying. It is almost as annoying when people argue that a premise is clear when it is not. Often people make assumptions about their argument's starting points, perhaps to avoid examining the implications of their premise. Sometimes this is done for rhetorical reasons (they just want to win an argument - politicians seem particularly guilty of this). Other times it appears to be due to a lack of thought.

That small rant was prompted by a segment on breakfast TV about performance-enhancing drugs. The premise was that performance-enhancing drugs were unfair and how hard they were to detect. Why it was unfair was never examined. The situation may well be unfair, and being a fan of cycling I mourn the damage drugs have done to that sport. However, what caught my attention was the background of the presenter. He was a UK Olympic gold medallist in rowing. Many people would consider such a person eminently qualified to talk about fairness in sport. I would not be so sure.

One of my earliest memories of the Olympics was watching the cycling team time trial, a 100km 4-member team race against the clock. The competitive teams were on the latest expensive bicycles costing thousands and had been in intensive high-tech training camps to ensure their best performance. Then the Ethiopian team was shown. Their bikes were clearly of a much older and cheaper design - lacking all the aerodynamic finery necessary in modern cycling. They had no chance in the race. Is it unfair that the Ethiopians were not as competitive as others because they had worse technology? Is it unfair that having more money spent on an athlete (in support, training, a high-tech bike or better boat) makes them more likely to win?

It may be possible to say that the best athlete at the start of the competition has the best chance of winning. However, drugs and money give a distinct and often insurmountable advantage before the competition begins. Drugs and money distort the playing field from the very start and always have. The breakfast TV presenter benefitted greatly from this situation. While people suggest a complete ban on performance-enhancing drugs for the sake of fairness (at least on this breakfast TV show), there is no similar call for fairness in money. It could be argued that money fairness is impractical and could not be enforced, but that's not the point (incidentally HGH use can't be detected and thus its ban can't be enforced at present).

If fairness is defined as all have the same chance of winning at the start, then competitive sport is inherently unfair. I'm not sure that is a bad thing - I certainly don't have a problem with it. The best have advantages (I haven't even touched on the concept of genetic unfairness) and that should just be accepted, it is the nature of the competition.
I would prefer to see a different argument against performance-enhancing drugs.

I'm a lapsed fan of sci-fi novels. It has been a while since I last read one which caused as much thought as Neuromancer or The Foundation series or the early Culture books. The last sci-fi book I read, the Algebraist, just didn't cut it. I've also found myself outside circles where recommendations are readily available, so reading Marc Andreessen's modern top 10 sci-fi authors blog post piqued my interest and I think I may be trying a few of them out soon.

The description of some of the books as post-Singularity caught my attention. It is a very interesting idea and reminded my of the first time I heard of the concept while reading Diaspora by Greg Egan (from my home town of Perth). The book was lent to me by a workmate, Dale (I can't remember his surname). At the time it made little impression on me at all - I think I told Dale I found it cold. However, memories of the story have stayed with me for many years now and I often think about the ideas I first encountered reading it.

Sorry Dale, you are right, Diaspora is a good book.

I have nearly always coded for myself - that is, not for money or grades or anything other than my own amusement. In my early teens I learnt to program by writing a Risk-like game in Basic. During university, I taught myself C by writing a program to create imaginary worlds because I felt I didn't learn enough during the "official" C course. Since then there have been many little games, libraries, ID3 taggers, etc. My "current" one I have called YAFAL - Yet Another Financial Analytics Library. I might write more about it later, but at the moment it is suffering the same fate as all the others. There has been no work on it since the new year, it has been superseded in my thoughts by company ideas (I don't think YAFAL could make it as a business).

Basically, I tend to get to the point of solving the problem which initially interested me, and then my attention strays. This has not been a source of concern. I was doing it for myself, so I can happily define the finish point in any manner I wish. When working for other people, I always finish the job. Now I need to go further for myself. If I am to found a company then I can't stop after the interesting stuff is done. I must keep going to release and then continue to support it. Hopefully this blog will help. By merely stating my intentions online and letting people read them, I feel a little more commitment to get them done. Or, at least that is the plan.

So the current situation is I have a side-project, YAFAL, and the startup idea. Actually, I have a couple of startup ideas. One is an original twist on an old idea and as far as I know no one is doing something similar. However, it will be a big project to complete. The other is fairly small, easy to implement, useful to many people and has a dauntingly huge number of competitors. Normally I would desperately avoid competitors. Now I think the small idea is the one to try first. It will be best just to get something up and running, learning the tricks of the trade along the way. As for the competition, I like to think of that joke about escaping from bears - you don't need to run incredibly fast, only a bit faster than the guy next to you. If worst comes to worst it should fail-fast at little expense beyond my personal time and I may think of something better during the experience.

One weekend afternoon I was wasting some time and had the TV on in the background. Some sort of animal bothering show was on and caught my attention. The show's image was overlaid with a sign language interpreter signing the dialogue. So I turned off the sound and tried to work out what was going on from the sign language. At first the host was just annoying alligators, but then he interviewed a young girl who had her arm in bandages. At one point the girl repeatedly pinched her bandaged arm with her whole hand in a detached manner. I guessed she must have been talking about being bitten by an alligator at the time and waited for the sign language version. Apparently, the sign language for being bitten in the arm by an alligator is furiously pinching your arm with the whole hand while alternating between a furious face and a scared face!

Since being at uni and becoming properly aware of the working world, I have wanted to start a company. It has often seemed to me that the cutting edge interesting paid work in my field is happening in startups (by stating paid work I'm excluding open source and academia). Perhaps that is a naïve view and all jobs involve shovelling large amounts of crap, still I believe shovelling your own is preferable to someone else's. I've tried the more traditional career route. For a few years I even considered climbing the corporate ladder. I got an MBA and poked my head into the bottom level of middle management at a large firm and quickly scurried back down again - it is definitely not for me.

I've come close'ish to a few startups. During the MBA I talked about starting a company with another student, but our investigation suggested it would never be more than a hobby company (I still believe correctly). Later, while working at a small consultancy I tried to persuade the directors to become a product company, but they considered the risk too great for the returns compared to their current business. Before coming to London I actually pitched an idea to a few friends who had talked about starting and they pitched an idea back. It went nowhere, they said my idea was too big (an open platform for online worlds) and I thought their idea too small (casual games for ebook readers). Also, it was just after the dotcom crash was beginning to bite and everyone was extremely aware of that risk/reward payoff. Two of the people who pitched those casual games actually started a company, dogMelon, although I don't believe they ever quit their day jobs.

Since moving to London the startup goal has receded. I haven't met anyone here who is seriously interested despite exploring a few ideas over beers. I used to be of the belief that if you could not convince at least one other person your idea was good enough to join you, then the idea probably wasn't very good. Now, I'm not sure I care. After many years contracting in London I've built up a bit of a financial cushion, I'm comfortable and have no dependents. I still want to try creating something and this is about as good as its going to get. I feel its worth starting by myself (perhaps something small) and just seeing what happens. I should at least learn more about what it involves and whether I want to continue.

Recently I had someone suggest not all was fine with my credit. A little concerned, I decided to check my credit report (for reference, I currently live in the UK and all the details I mention should be assumed to be UK specific). UK law states that the credit agencies have to provide you with a copy of your personal credit report for £2. However, it looks like the agencies would much rather sell you far more expensive deals with subscriptions, online access, regular updates, commentary/interpretation, etc. I'm sure these packages are useful for many people, but I just wanted the statutory credit report and finding the details about this took some effort amongst all the other marketing. It was nearly an hour of digging across the three credit agencies before I obtained the required forms. I'm guessing the law states there must be at least one link from the agency's home page to the forms, but no more than that. So to help other people, here are some quick links direct to the info and forms:

• Experian: http://www.experian.co.uk/consumer/orderPaperReport.html
• Equifax: https://www.econsumer.equifax.co.uk/consumer/uk/sitepage.ehtml?forward=gb_elearning_credit14
• Callcredit: http://www.callcredit.co.uk/consumer/order-your-report

UPDATE: Experian promptly sent back my credit report; the other two cashed my cheques but sent back requests for proof of residency. I will send them the requested documents.

UPDATE: I now have all three credit reports. It was fairly painless process, albeit a slow one (although snail mail and proof of residency are fine by me to ensure the reports aren't sent out to anyone).

I have decided to write a blog, again. Previous attempts to document aspects of my life rapidly lost momentum due to procrastination and the fuzzy aim of trying to preserve memories. I hope this time will be different. The aim of this blog is to detail my attempts to create a business that exists on more just selling my time as a consultant; other programming projects I undertake; and any other nonsense I think about. That list is in decreasing order of importance, yet I have a premonition it will be in increasing order of posting frequency. Let's go!