A lot of literary ladies here review books. Well I am going to review podcasts and I may continue to do so intermittently.
Let me declare here and now that the podcasts I like fall into four categories: History, IT, Management and occasionally Science. I’m a geekette, and proud of it.
Carlin describes these as “conversations around the water-cooler”; he picks up an historical event or theme, peers at it from all sides, pokes it a bit to see what gives and puts it back so we can re-consider it from a distance. There are some very pedestrian history podcasts out there at least one of which must owe serious royalties to Wikipedia, but Carlin shows everyone else how it should be done. Very strongly recommended if you like to have thoughts provoked, connections made and paradigms subverted. Carlin’s not made that many of them, so I have started listening to his riffs off American politics and finding them almost as compelling.
A bunch of likable actors from the West Coast of the US shoot a themed breeze each week on some subject relating to their present and past touring shows. A particular favourite was Let it Snow. Gentle and amusing fun. I’m growing rather fond of them, and will of course go and see them next time they are in the Literary Festival in Little-Wittering-on-the-Wold.
These are cheerful interviews between one of the editors of Business Week and whoever wrote the cover story that week. They’ve not made me go out and buy the magazine, but they are interesting, informative and sometimes illuminating.
Running to 5 or 8 minutes or so, one of Wired’s columnists casts a flippant and frequently surreal eye over whatever catches his attention that week. Geeky. Silly. Witty. Worth 8 minutes of anyone’s week.
Informative and interesting British history from real live academic historians. The lecturers are specialists and really know their stuff, working from primary sources. The slides they refer to, which one cannot of course see, show original documents. No wikipedia here. So understated it’s cool.
These are undergraduate lectures from Oxford University which provide background information on the Dark Ages for students studying English Literature. They are detailed, funny and fascinating, and - woo hoo - you and I can listen to them and know we don’t have to write an essay or sit an exam. How bloody jammy is that?
There are several podcasters I am trying out to get a feel for:
Dan Klaas does laid-back essays about whatever strikes his fancy. They are classed as comedy, but I find them thought provoking.
The Cranky Middle Manager seem to have quality interviews on business-related subjects without pretending its aimed at the directors of plcs.
Occasionally the HBR Ideacast has interesting interviews with the authors of academic papers or books, but I overdosed on them early on and now I shake nervously when I hear their theme music.
It’s gotta beat Terry Wogan on the way into work, eh?
I download all my podcasts from i-Tunes. However, it has not escaped my notice that you are going to be looking at this at a PC so the links go to web pages and you can download the podcasts directly and listen to them on your PC. Isn’t that helpful of me?
Teuchter’s post on Bliss has encouraged me to say “Fie!” to all politicos and count my own blessings. I agree with most of what she has posted, but I am adding a few of my own:
The smell of clean, fresh cotton laundry. One of my colleagues smells of freshly washed clothes. I’m not even sure who it is, but it always makes me feel brighter myself. It’s even better when it’s freshly washed bedlinen of course.
A cat, purring. They are such contented little bastards that it’s hard not to be soothed.
The perfect line on a bend. My days of driving expensive German machinery faster than is appropriate are done, but still I like the feeling of taking just the right line on a series of nicely cambered, sweeping down-hill curves.
The distance. As the mother of a friend of mine said, I like to stretch my eyes. I need a horizon to look at and the pleasure goes up in proportion to the number of miles away that it is.
May. Well the last two weeks of April, all of May and the first half of June. Nowhere is lusher or fresher or more teeming than England, then. Every day of May is precious.
Puns. I take deep and devious delight in a neatly turned pun, though most bits of wordplay will do it.
Good second hand bookshops. A good second hand bookshop should not be too large, too damp or to dusty, and it should turn up one or two affordable books by authors who are old friends, but sadly out of print. I am always delighted to find one of the novels of Margery Sharp for example.
Falling asleep in the sun. I do this very rarely because one so rarely gets goldilocks days when it’s not too hot and not too cold. But it is such a treat when one can.
The first mouthful of the first cup of tea of the day. What more can I say?
I think that’ll do for now. I am off to drink tea and read some pre-war detective fiction. More bliss.
I’m going away for the weekend but I don’t see why y’all should rest easy on that account. Here, my dears, is a trailer for a film on limited release, but it is a film that everyone in the UK should see.
This isn’t Eric Blair’s 1984, this is Tony Blair’s 2007. It’s here and now.
From the email update on the Judicial Review from Mums4Medics:
What leaves a particularly nasty taste in the mouth is that the lawyers for the Secretary of State have applied for costs against Remedy, and have made it clear that Ms Hewitt was directly involved in that decision. The judge was very unhappy about this, and suggested in the strongest possible terms that Counsel for the Secretary of State might like to ask his client to reconsider. Counsel indicated that reconsideration was not an option. Reluctantly, the judge awarded costs. To quote the immortal words of Francis Urquart, ‘You might call such an act vindictive, but I couldn’t possibly comment.’
I am so shocked by the bitch’s vindictiveness that I am sending Remedy another donation today - money well spent if you ask me. Click here if you wish to do the same.
PS - the expletives here are all my own unaided work. Mums4Medics are much wiser and politer than I am; only the words in the blue are theirs.
PPS - at least Remedy got under her skin; a thought which gives me a warm glow of satisfaction every time I think it.
I’ve decided that I am not going to go online next week. If that works, then I won’t go online the week after, either. It’ll be weekends only, and see how it goes.
“What are you doing this weekend, Aphra?” a colleague asked me on Friday afternoon.
“Nothing - it’s going to be pure bliss”.
The migraine fairy heard me, so I spent the 36 hours from 10.00am Saturday to 10.00pm Sunday either throwing up, sleeping badly or shouting at god. Not a bad definition of doing nothing, but pure bliss it wasn’t. I’m not entirely convinced it’s over, I could just be in a teasing form of remission.
I have better things to do with my summer than spending it having migraines, and I have better things to do with it than spending it online. Fascinating and enthralling though all of you are, and fond of many of you though I am, I intend to spend my evenings painting my kitchen or weeding the garden or admiring the view or gossiping with my neighbours or reading books or knitting scarves.
Dr Z, bless his scrubs and stethescope, has tagged me to reveal 8 random things about myself.
Humpphtt.
I guess these have to be eight random things not already revealed here.
Double humpptt.
Here goes:
I cannot raise one eyebrow - it’s either both or none. I mind this. My natural sarcasm is hampered by not being able to stare at someone, meet their gaze, and raise one eyebrow.
On the other hand, I cantouch type at a reasonable speed, 60ish words per minute, which means that I can stare at someone, meet their gaze, and continue typing. Most people find this unnerving after about 20 seconds.
I stopped studying any kind of science when I was 12 or 13. Despite this, I got B+ on an online quiz: “how well would you do at 8th grade science” so it seems I haven’t forgotten the little I did learn. I do think my parents were mad to make me specialise in arts / humanities at such an early age though.
I can’t bake sponge cakes but I can make really good shortcrust pastry, though its been a few years since I’ve bothered.
I can only speak one language; yet another flaw in my education, though I was so lazy at school that I was never going to learn to speak another language there.
I like total solar eclipses and have been in the umbral path of two though so, unfortunately, have the clouds.
I like road-trips but don’t do enough of them.
I scare trains; if I buy a ticket, the train will cower shivering further up the line and arrive reluctant and late at the station where I want to catch it.
I’m not tagging anyone else because everyone I was going to tag has already been taken, and I am far too much of a wuss at the moment.
Mr Greenfield states “The decision not to proceed with MTAS for matching candidates to training posts was taken as a result of recent security difficulties and the fact that the Defendant could not be certain that the algorithm necessary to operate the ’single offer system’ would be effective.“
That statement, right there, is worth the cash I put in their fighting fund.
Five out of eight reasons why IT projects fail come down to the the project team failing to understand how the system will be used or what it it should do - MTAS ran depressingly true to form.
I found an MTAS Milestones document on the web some time ago and didn’t know what to make of it. I still don’t. However, MTAS is now officially dead, so I’m going to critique it here before it disappears forever.
The document is a one-page timescale for the MTAS IT Project including the engagement of sub-contractors. There is much here that I am not qualified to comment on, but even so there are a few points that I find interesting.
One month (Oct 05) to scope and set up the project
Fairy nuff. There’s not enough information here to assess whether this is enough time or not.
One month (Nov 05) to initiate the project, set up project board and agree project brief
As above.
One month (Dec 05) to “agree requirements” and that month is December, so in effect you have only two weeks.
This is what has set my alarm bells ringing like klaxons. The Standish Group did a survey, admittedly in 1995, which discovered that five of the eight major reasons for IT project failure are requirements based. In other words if you don’t know what your users need, you won’t be able to build it. I could get rather tedious on this subject.
Let’s just say that I would allocate between 6 and 12 weeks for requirements gathering assuming that I had full access to representatives of those who might use the system. The first thing would be the conceptual stuff including the security of the system, (hah!), the amount and nature of the data, how would it be searched and sorted, how many users in total, how many users at once, and stuff like that. The next thing would be the step-by-step process, and the final stage would be a screen-by-screen storyboard.
You can see that this is not something that can be done in 2 weeks, and that you would need to speak to a very wide range of people including security specialists and sample end users, (sample Junior Doctors, sample Consultants, sample final year students).
This sounds to me like a system designed entirely in theory, with no reality checks or sanity checks from real people.
Four months (Jan-Apr 06) for the procurement cycle.
Four months to choose a supplier, and two weeks to say what they will be delivering? Yes, that is as insane as it sounds.
Five months to deliver (April-Sept 06).
This is the infamous “Miracle occurs here” step. There is nothing about taking the list of requirements and turning them into a design, nothing about building the system, nothing about testing it.
The DoH has kept for itself the luxury of time - a whole third of the time available has been allocated to picking a supplier. The poor supplier has had nothing like that wriggle room: they have had to design, build and test the system in less than half of the total time available.
Now, picking the right supplier is crucial, no doubt about it. But no matter how beautifully built a car is, no matter how gleaming the paintwork, how smooth the leather, how fast it goes from 0-60, it’s no bloody use if what you want is a tractor.
As I said, I am hesitant to rip this document to shreds; I have no idea whether it is a final copy or a draft, I have no idea what other documents supported or contradicted it, I’m not even an IT Project Manager. But I am both competent and qualified to comment on the idea of allocating only two weeks for requirements gathering.
If the rest of the project was as mad as that is, then it is a wonder the bloody thing lasted as long as it did.
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A lot of literary ladies here review books. Well I am going to review podcasts and I may continue to do so intermittently.
