Hot. And then again, hot. Everyone was arriving at work damp, the Central Line in the afternoon from Liverpool St to Oxford Circus was hot like they had turned the heating on. Most evenings I had an inner voice saying “I wanna go home. Don’t wanna go the gym”. I spent the weekends hiding from the heat.
I started the month on a week off work. Not the most relaxing or refreshing holiday I’d had. I resolved to walk to Holborn from Waterloo each morning while the weather was good, that’s what I did, and very pleasant it’s turning out, except when the humidity hits Calcutta levels. I finally wrote down how much I was spending on food every day and took steps to cut that back. Breakfast biscuits instead of a pastry; a yoghurt with fruit instead of a sandwich. If only the machines at work made even drinkable coffee, but alas. Gym attendance was erratic, not helped by being locked in a basement room one Wednesday on the pretext of an “Away Day”: I get tired sitting in rooms with no daylight. It over-ran, I missed the planned workout and went to meet Sis for supper at Saltyard. Never has food tasted so good and felt so reviving. We spent one Saturday looking for a replacement camera for Sis, and she chose and Olympus from a shop by the British Museum (how do second-hand camera shops make any money at all? Low rent?) After which we went to the exhibition of British comics at the British Library, partly because neither of us have ever been there. There were lots of kids looking at the older comics and saying “cool”. I had moments of nostalgia on seeing the Eagle, Dandy and a couple of others.
I read Anatomies, Categories and Computer Science, Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit, a biography of Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible, Lost Stolen or Shredded about missing works of art, Warren Ellis’ Global Frequency, finished Peter Robb’s A Street Fight in Naples, and The Monuments Men, the book of the film.
I saw Weekend of a Champion, Le Mans, Game of Thromes series 1 on DVD, Begin Again and Chef at Cineworld, Accidental Death of a Cyclist at the ICA, Cold in July at the Curzon Soho, and The Cars That Ate Paris, Berbarian Sound Studio, and Glass: A Portrait of Philip in 12 Parts on Curzon Home Cinema.
I bought the Fitbit, a pulse oximeter, and a Panasonic Lumix T40. Which doesn’t play as nice with iPhoto as it should. And I discovered that iOS 7 sucks at linking by Bluetooth with Macs, which is odd, because, you know, Apple. There was also some fairly serious progress on finalising the never-ending Riemann-Roch essay.
Oh. And I got promoted. Or rather, my role was upgraded. Two months after I passed retirement age. This is a very different world from the one I started out in. In the Bad Old Days, you passed retirement age and they kicked you out the door carriage-clock in hand. Not now. Now they need the skills.
Thursday, 7 August 2014
Monday, 4 August 2014
Take the Advice, Not the Advisor
So someone asked this on Danger and Play,
I had a question. When did millennials and other young men stop asking for wisdom and advice from their elders? And why? Was it suddenly too dangerous to talk to strangers? Did the millennials become too cool for it and started to think that technology would solve our problems? Did it get dropped out of the value system where people were not told to ask for advice from older more experienced guys? Did we become too lazy and entitled? How often do you see successful guys in modern media telling stories about their experiences and what they learned? Almost never.
My inner Feyerabend awake at this one. So I replied along these lines...
I get two senses from the OP’s question. First, why don’t these dumb kids ask me before they go ahead and do that dumb thing they do that gets us all into the weeds? Second, why don’t successful people offer more good advice?
Answer to question one. Either they didn’t know you had an informed opinion, in which case you need more self-publicity, or they did know but didn’t ask you, in which case you need to work on your public image, or they asked you and didn’t do what you recommended. If they asked and went ahead anyway, it was because your reasons for not doing the dumb thing didn’t seem more important than their reasons for doing the dumb thing. Happens a lot of the time where I work, and thank God for it, as the resulting fall-out makes work for the working man to do. Do you know how many otherwise unemployed graduates across the world are employed by the UK PPI repayments industry, and have been for the last four years?
Answer to question two. Successful business people offer advice all the time. Usually for a fee. Success in sports, creativity and problems-solving? Guitar-soloing? Cooking? There are books and books on this stuff and almost all the advice is the same, because there’s only one way to get good. Practice. Discipline. Reading / Listening / Looking / Competing . Stealing ideas. Making mistakes and abandoning them quickly. Experimenting. Focussing on marginal improvement on a daily basis. Having a good support team. Locking yourself away in a loft for three years - if you’re Andrew Wiles - can work, as can writing your novel in a cafe - if you’re J K Rowling. Mostly it helps to socialise in your chosen industry.
Success in life? Like GS Elevator says: "Work hard. Exercise. Eat right. Don’t drink too much. And only buy things you can afford. It’s not rocket science.” And yet how few people do it. Maybe because they look at the lives of those of us who do do it, and shudder in horror.
The advice is out there. What aren’t out there are advisors. There are no gurus, Yodas and even Gramma-and-Gramps are now 40% divorced and 100% in debt. It’s the advice that matters, not the advisor. Doesn’t matter who comes up with a good idea, what matters is that it’s a good idea. This can be hard to take when you need to believe there is someone who can help you sort out your pain and confusion. You have to start making those decision about what advice to use yourself, in all that pain and confusion.
You have to ask for help and advice. Nobody tells you that: you’re expected to know. You have to choose your advisor depending on the problem and the context. Even if you are getting it from a book. No-one is going to tell you something straight unless you ask. (Okay. I have done that a couple of times to people who were in danger of getting the wrong reputation at work. And I have a standard bunch of things I tell any new analyst who works for me about time, project and client management.)
If I need advice on something, I find out who seems to know about it and check their interests and purposes are close to mine, and I ask (or read) them. I’m not going to ask Jamie Lewis at Chaos and Pain for advice on training because he’s a total lunatic and has different objectives from me. When I changed my working hours from 9-5, I asked a guy who was working 8-4 how he liked it and how it worked for him. That he was half my age made no difference. Age ain’t nothing but a number: it’s the relevance and quality of someone’s experience that matters, and their ability to draw lessons from it. There’s nothing that says “elders” are any good at that at all. All their age may have given them is the same year for forty years, from which they learned not much.
I get the feeling the OP meets a lot of bratty kids. Bratty kids don’t ask for advice, and frankly I could give a damn that they don’t. Less competition for me. But then don’t meet many brats at work. I work for a huge, conservative, blue-chip company and I may be seeing a careful selection of high-quality, conservative young people. Maybe the brats are all in Soho and Shoreditch start-ups and media companies. The kids at work know what I’m good at and they ask me about that. They don’t ask me about Life, The Universe and Everything because they know I don’t live the way they want to. And sometimes they ask me about something, and I tell them why it’s dumb, and they go ahead and do it because it makes their CV look good. Which was where we came in.
I had a question. When did millennials and other young men stop asking for wisdom and advice from their elders? And why? Was it suddenly too dangerous to talk to strangers? Did the millennials become too cool for it and started to think that technology would solve our problems? Did it get dropped out of the value system where people were not told to ask for advice from older more experienced guys? Did we become too lazy and entitled? How often do you see successful guys in modern media telling stories about their experiences and what they learned? Almost never.
My inner Feyerabend awake at this one. So I replied along these lines...
I get two senses from the OP’s question. First, why don’t these dumb kids ask me before they go ahead and do that dumb thing they do that gets us all into the weeds? Second, why don’t successful people offer more good advice?
Answer to question one. Either they didn’t know you had an informed opinion, in which case you need more self-publicity, or they did know but didn’t ask you, in which case you need to work on your public image, or they asked you and didn’t do what you recommended. If they asked and went ahead anyway, it was because your reasons for not doing the dumb thing didn’t seem more important than their reasons for doing the dumb thing. Happens a lot of the time where I work, and thank God for it, as the resulting fall-out makes work for the working man to do. Do you know how many otherwise unemployed graduates across the world are employed by the UK PPI repayments industry, and have been for the last four years?
Answer to question two. Successful business people offer advice all the time. Usually for a fee. Success in sports, creativity and problems-solving? Guitar-soloing? Cooking? There are books and books on this stuff and almost all the advice is the same, because there’s only one way to get good. Practice. Discipline. Reading / Listening / Looking / Competing . Stealing ideas. Making mistakes and abandoning them quickly. Experimenting. Focussing on marginal improvement on a daily basis. Having a good support team. Locking yourself away in a loft for three years - if you’re Andrew Wiles - can work, as can writing your novel in a cafe - if you’re J K Rowling. Mostly it helps to socialise in your chosen industry.
Success in life? Like GS Elevator says: "Work hard. Exercise. Eat right. Don’t drink too much. And only buy things you can afford. It’s not rocket science.” And yet how few people do it. Maybe because they look at the lives of those of us who do do it, and shudder in horror.
The advice is out there. What aren’t out there are advisors. There are no gurus, Yodas and even Gramma-and-Gramps are now 40% divorced and 100% in debt. It’s the advice that matters, not the advisor. Doesn’t matter who comes up with a good idea, what matters is that it’s a good idea. This can be hard to take when you need to believe there is someone who can help you sort out your pain and confusion. You have to start making those decision about what advice to use yourself, in all that pain and confusion.
You have to ask for help and advice. Nobody tells you that: you’re expected to know. You have to choose your advisor depending on the problem and the context. Even if you are getting it from a book. No-one is going to tell you something straight unless you ask. (Okay. I have done that a couple of times to people who were in danger of getting the wrong reputation at work. And I have a standard bunch of things I tell any new analyst who works for me about time, project and client management.)
If I need advice on something, I find out who seems to know about it and check their interests and purposes are close to mine, and I ask (or read) them. I’m not going to ask Jamie Lewis at Chaos and Pain for advice on training because he’s a total lunatic and has different objectives from me. When I changed my working hours from 9-5, I asked a guy who was working 8-4 how he liked it and how it worked for him. That he was half my age made no difference. Age ain’t nothing but a number: it’s the relevance and quality of someone’s experience that matters, and their ability to draw lessons from it. There’s nothing that says “elders” are any good at that at all. All their age may have given them is the same year for forty years, from which they learned not much.
I get the feeling the OP meets a lot of bratty kids. Bratty kids don’t ask for advice, and frankly I could give a damn that they don’t. Less competition for me. But then don’t meet many brats at work. I work for a huge, conservative, blue-chip company and I may be seeing a careful selection of high-quality, conservative young people. Maybe the brats are all in Soho and Shoreditch start-ups and media companies. The kids at work know what I’m good at and they ask me about that. They don’t ask me about Life, The Universe and Everything because they know I don’t live the way they want to. And sometimes they ask me about something, and I tell them why it’s dumb, and they go ahead and do it because it makes their CV look good. Which was where we came in.
Thursday, 31 July 2014
Tegan and Sara's Shock To Your System
You seem like you’re so restless, young at heart / Who gave you reason?
You should be out driving people wild / Who gave you a reason?
You got a shock to your system / Knocked your heart right out of sync
You’re only meant to hurt once in a while / Who gave you reason?
You’re only meant to cry once in a while / Who gave you a reason?
You got a shock to your system / Pull yourself out of it
I know that shock to your system / Knocked your heart right out of sync
What you are is lonely
You must rely on love once in a while / To give you reason
You must rely on me once in a while / To give you a reason
You got a shock to your system / Pull yourself out of it
I know that shock to your system / Knocked your heart right out of sync
What you are is lonely
What you are is lonely
I've played that song over and over. And recently I finally understood why.
“Who gave you reason?” I never took that question seriously. I thought it was a neat chant. But it’s the whole darn point. Who gave me reason to retreat, instead of being “driving people wild”? Who gave me reason to hurt, and to cry? Who did? And the answer is, as it always is, I did. Other people did their bit, but I let them do it to me.
I wound up in my mid-50’s in a sexless LTR just like any other chump. It started just fine and sexy, and then we settled down and got comfortable and a little heavier, and then I had periods of not earning, and she had months of mysterious ailments, and a slightly botched operation on her lady-parts. She started to et body-image issues, and I lost confidence in myself. I stopped leading the relationship and kept asking her what she wanted to do. Because of course by then, there wasn’t anything I wanted to do. I turned horribly beta and she reacted straight out of the textbook. Who gave me reason? She did, because that’s how she behaved. I did, because women react the way they do when their men turn beta just like men react they do when their women get fat, and her behaviour was just the effect of my cause.
I got a shock to my system indeed. I’d never been in an LTR before: my idea of a long-term relationship had been to stay for breakfast, or maybe a second date. I exaggerate by not much. The girls I grew up with were looking for marriage like a cruise missile looks for its target, and as soon as they found out I was not marrying (aka “this isn’t going anywhere”), they were gone. So when I experienced exactly what the Red Pill said I would experience - the withdrawing of sex, the withering of affection, the growing perfunctoriness of what we did and her slowly growing impatience with my beta-ness - it was a shock. Women in sustained relationships are supposed to be supportive and caring, and they are supposed to be self-aware and in control of what they do. Oh how the gods laughed. That was the shock to my system. One from which many men never recover and seek to avoid for the rest of their natural lives: that’s what all the busy-work of gym / travel / reading / hunting / girl-chasing / working is all about.
Who gave me reason? The same person who got me drunk. Me. I could list reasons for both, but that wouldn’t be to this point. This point is that I can’t trust myself to behave in an attractive and assertive manner. How the frack would I know how? (Step Six: Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character; Step Seven: Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings. Some things are internal changes and can’t be done by following a to-do list.)
And there is an issue about whether all the work needed to keep an L/M-TR going flat is actually worth it. The larger question is whether I can trust myself not to turn beta again. To behave like a freaking man again. Or actually, not so much “again” but “at all”, because I’m not sure I ever did. I was pretty: my idea of game was walking into a room and waiting for a girl to approach me. And you don’t know you’ve got that ‘till it’s gone.
Yes, my heart did get knocked out of sync.
And yes, I must rely on love once in a while to give me reason. Love as in tingles, arousal, anticipation and satisfaction. Once in a while that’s reason enough, and it’s been a long time since I’ve felt any of it. There is something special about feeling like that, which is its own reason. And there’s something specially horrible about having those anticipations disappointed. But the feeling while I have them is its own reason:
You should be out driving people wild / Who gave you a reason?
You got a shock to your system / Knocked your heart right out of sync
You’re only meant to hurt once in a while / Who gave you reason?
You’re only meant to cry once in a while / Who gave you a reason?
You got a shock to your system / Pull yourself out of it
I know that shock to your system / Knocked your heart right out of sync
What you are is lonely
You must rely on love once in a while / To give you reason
You must rely on me once in a while / To give you a reason
You got a shock to your system / Pull yourself out of it
I know that shock to your system / Knocked your heart right out of sync
What you are is lonely
What you are is lonely
I've played that song over and over. And recently I finally understood why.
“Who gave you reason?” I never took that question seriously. I thought it was a neat chant. But it’s the whole darn point. Who gave me reason to retreat, instead of being “driving people wild”? Who gave me reason to hurt, and to cry? Who did? And the answer is, as it always is, I did. Other people did their bit, but I let them do it to me.
I wound up in my mid-50’s in a sexless LTR just like any other chump. It started just fine and sexy, and then we settled down and got comfortable and a little heavier, and then I had periods of not earning, and she had months of mysterious ailments, and a slightly botched operation on her lady-parts. She started to et body-image issues, and I lost confidence in myself. I stopped leading the relationship and kept asking her what she wanted to do. Because of course by then, there wasn’t anything I wanted to do. I turned horribly beta and she reacted straight out of the textbook. Who gave me reason? She did, because that’s how she behaved. I did, because women react the way they do when their men turn beta just like men react they do when their women get fat, and her behaviour was just the effect of my cause.
I got a shock to my system indeed. I’d never been in an LTR before: my idea of a long-term relationship had been to stay for breakfast, or maybe a second date. I exaggerate by not much. The girls I grew up with were looking for marriage like a cruise missile looks for its target, and as soon as they found out I was not marrying (aka “this isn’t going anywhere”), they were gone. So when I experienced exactly what the Red Pill said I would experience - the withdrawing of sex, the withering of affection, the growing perfunctoriness of what we did and her slowly growing impatience with my beta-ness - it was a shock. Women in sustained relationships are supposed to be supportive and caring, and they are supposed to be self-aware and in control of what they do. Oh how the gods laughed. That was the shock to my system. One from which many men never recover and seek to avoid for the rest of their natural lives: that’s what all the busy-work of gym / travel / reading / hunting / girl-chasing / working is all about.
Who gave me reason? The same person who got me drunk. Me. I could list reasons for both, but that wouldn’t be to this point. This point is that I can’t trust myself to behave in an attractive and assertive manner. How the frack would I know how? (Step Six: Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character; Step Seven: Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings. Some things are internal changes and can’t be done by following a to-do list.)
And there is an issue about whether all the work needed to keep an L/M-TR going flat is actually worth it. The larger question is whether I can trust myself not to turn beta again. To behave like a freaking man again. Or actually, not so much “again” but “at all”, because I’m not sure I ever did. I was pretty: my idea of game was walking into a room and waiting for a girl to approach me. And you don’t know you’ve got that ‘till it’s gone.
Yes, my heart did get knocked out of sync.
And yes, I must rely on love once in a while to give me reason. Love as in tingles, arousal, anticipation and satisfaction. Once in a while that’s reason enough, and it’s been a long time since I’ve felt any of it. There is something special about feeling like that, which is its own reason. And there’s something specially horrible about having those anticipations disappointed. But the feeling while I have them is its own reason:
Monday, 28 July 2014
This Post Intentionally Left Blank
Because it's been too darn hot. And I've been thinking about lots of Important Stuff.
Thursday, 24 July 2014
Weight Training For Office Workers
Weight training is an essential part of any exercise regime - except for distance runners, who need as little body mass as possible. I have been hefting iron for about twenty-five years, with a disastrous period of four years off, which I will never repeat again. I do weights because: a) I prefer the way I and my body feels, b) it gives me some upper-body shape, c) it takes me off the radar of any 160lb muggers who may be wandering around, d) it gives me a decent muscle tone. Also, anyone who accidentally-on-purpose bumps into me in a crowd because they are feeling ornery? Hurts them way more than it hurts me. And sometimes having the extra strength is useful. I sleep better, look better, and feel better, physically and mentally.
Ignore the bros with their 350lb bench-presses and 500lb dead-lifts. These are the equivalent of running 100m in 11 seconds, or a marathon in under three hours. It’s an elite achievement for a small number of genetically-gifted people who make it the main thing they do with their lives after the day job. I can’t do it, you can’t do it, and there’s no shame in that. Furthermore, but don’t ever say this to them, anyone doing weights at that level has most likely to have used, or still be using, steroids (aka “juicing”).
In a normal gym, the man/woman distinction is at 132 lbs (60kgs) for the bench-press. The only women you will see doing more than that are trainers, body-builders and medal-winning sports competitors. Sally at the office will never get close. But neither will most of the men in the office either, no matter how hefty they look. If you can bench 3x10x60kgs regularly, you will not be mistaken for a girl by anyone who knows what they are doing.
These reasons work for women as well. In fact, women could benefit a lot from weight-training. Chicken wings will vanish, or never appear, after making tricep curls a feature of their routine. That soft (actually flaccid) waistline will firm up a treat with some sit-ups, leg-raises and side-bends on a ball. All that crap about exercise and firm tone not being feminine is just rationalising laziness. They don’t want to look like Marika Johansson at full competition cut, and they never will. However, neither do they want to look like someone let the air out of them ten years ago. Toned is sexy.
The aim isn’t to lift a lot of weight. It’s to lift enough weight, often enough, to challenge your body. Your body will respond by making more muscle and more bone - and it will do that if you are twenty-one or seventy-one, male or female. Weight training will give you a heap of respect for the human body: it adapts and responds faster and more effectively that your thoughts and emotions. Show it you need some strength or flexibility by going just slightly and carefully out of its comfort zone each time, and it will respond by getting stronger and looser. Every time. Every body. This means you.
All those good health reasons aside, I’ll tell you why you should add weight training to your routine.
You will feel better about your body. You will feel better about yourself, because your body is a huge part of your self.
Ignore the bros with their 350lb bench-presses and 500lb dead-lifts. These are the equivalent of running 100m in 11 seconds, or a marathon in under three hours. It’s an elite achievement for a small number of genetically-gifted people who make it the main thing they do with their lives after the day job. I can’t do it, you can’t do it, and there’s no shame in that. Furthermore, but don’t ever say this to them, anyone doing weights at that level has most likely to have used, or still be using, steroids (aka “juicing”).
In a normal gym, the man/woman distinction is at 132 lbs (60kgs) for the bench-press. The only women you will see doing more than that are trainers, body-builders and medal-winning sports competitors. Sally at the office will never get close. But neither will most of the men in the office either, no matter how hefty they look. If you can bench 3x10x60kgs regularly, you will not be mistaken for a girl by anyone who knows what they are doing.
These reasons work for women as well. In fact, women could benefit a lot from weight-training. Chicken wings will vanish, or never appear, after making tricep curls a feature of their routine. That soft (actually flaccid) waistline will firm up a treat with some sit-ups, leg-raises and side-bends on a ball. All that crap about exercise and firm tone not being feminine is just rationalising laziness. They don’t want to look like Marika Johansson at full competition cut, and they never will. However, neither do they want to look like someone let the air out of them ten years ago. Toned is sexy.
The aim isn’t to lift a lot of weight. It’s to lift enough weight, often enough, to challenge your body. Your body will respond by making more muscle and more bone - and it will do that if you are twenty-one or seventy-one, male or female. Weight training will give you a heap of respect for the human body: it adapts and responds faster and more effectively that your thoughts and emotions. Show it you need some strength or flexibility by going just slightly and carefully out of its comfort zone each time, and it will respond by getting stronger and looser. Every time. Every body. This means you.
All those good health reasons aside, I’ll tell you why you should add weight training to your routine.
You will feel better about your body. You will feel better about yourself, because your body is a huge part of your self.
Monday, 21 July 2014
Looking at the Weights Rack and Starting Over
I’m having some kind of emotion. Or a reaction to pollen - Mother Nature’s annual fourn-month chemical warfare campaign on mankind. Or I don’t like this muggy heat. It doesn’t really matter what the heck is going on. I’m off my stride for exercising, specifically weight-training, missing sessions and having problems with the weights. It’s all hurting and too much effort.
I am, of course, trying to get back to where I was before The Accident. The one I had attempting a second rep of 200lbs on the bench press. (Bros will giggle at that and say “Do You Even Lift?". Which is why you shouldn’t listen to them.) It seems to have squished the tendons that keep my left pinkie straight and level. I can grip without any pain (now) and I can stop guitar strings (you need to play guitar to understand what size of deal that is) but the pinkie droops and it lacks firmness. (Stop sniggering at the back there.) Of course I’m upset and depressed and think I am a frakking idiot and just want to run away and hide. And that’s before I consider how klutzy my SQL coding has been recently. Thank God no-one needs anything important urgently.
This kind of behaviour requires that I beat myself up and make it worse by suspecting that perhaps retiring from the world would be better. Giving up everything and doing… I have no idea what.
So Sunday 20th, I looked at the weights rack and said: start over. Just do 110lbs for the bench press, don’t try for the 132. Do 3x10 reps. Ease back on the dumbbell presses, shoulder presses and military presses. Two sets, not three. have the symbolism of getting through a proper session. Add in the extra numbers later. Get back into the habit and pick up some confidence.
I am after all doing weights so I stay in shape. I do not need to heft bro-sized weights to achieve that end. I just need to keep it all tight and in shape.
Admit what’s true. Start over, from somewhere within the Comfort Zone. Work towards the edge over a couple of weeks. I like how I feel when I do weights, and one of the things I’ve been missing is that feeling.
I am, of course, trying to get back to where I was before The Accident. The one I had attempting a second rep of 200lbs on the bench press. (Bros will giggle at that and say “Do You Even Lift?". Which is why you shouldn’t listen to them.) It seems to have squished the tendons that keep my left pinkie straight and level. I can grip without any pain (now) and I can stop guitar strings (you need to play guitar to understand what size of deal that is) but the pinkie droops and it lacks firmness. (Stop sniggering at the back there.) Of course I’m upset and depressed and think I am a frakking idiot and just want to run away and hide. And that’s before I consider how klutzy my SQL coding has been recently. Thank God no-one needs anything important urgently.
This kind of behaviour requires that I beat myself up and make it worse by suspecting that perhaps retiring from the world would be better. Giving up everything and doing… I have no idea what.
So Sunday 20th, I looked at the weights rack and said: start over. Just do 110lbs for the bench press, don’t try for the 132. Do 3x10 reps. Ease back on the dumbbell presses, shoulder presses and military presses. Two sets, not three. have the symbolism of getting through a proper session. Add in the extra numbers later. Get back into the habit and pick up some confidence.
I am after all doing weights so I stay in shape. I do not need to heft bro-sized weights to achieve that end. I just need to keep it all tight and in shape.
Admit what’s true. Start over, from somewhere within the Comfort Zone. Work towards the edge over a couple of weeks. I like how I feel when I do weights, and one of the things I’ve been missing is that feeling.
Thursday, 17 July 2014
How I Know Curzon Cinemas Can't Develop Computer Systems
Some background first. The Curzon Cinema chain has a streaming product called Curzon Home Cinema. It was introduced about three years ago, I think, and re-vamped about three-four months ago. I know one thing about the Curzon management, and one about the developers they used. The Curzon management has nobody in it who knows the first thing about commissioning, specifying and testing software. The developers are pretty much, well, missing some tricks.
How do I know this? Read this…
"Are you referring to the Curzon Home Cinema website? Your membership number on our system was actually preceded by a number of zeroes, so your 'true' number was 000000XXXXX. I've removed these zeroes now and the Home Cinema website should recognise XXXXX."
I know. You don’t understand why the programmer next to you is a) rolling on the floor laughing, b) rolling his eyes with an unbelieving expression. He’s thinking what I did.
They stored the membership number with leading zeros? For real? Leading freaking zeros?
"Leading zeros” is what you do when you add 0’s to the front of a number - like a membership number - so that it is the right “length”. Like all bank accounts must be eight digits long, so some of the older ones look like 00123456. The real account number, as stored in the computer as often as not will be 123456, but what gets printed is the ’00’ version. There are reasons why people do this on manual forms. There is no reason why you do it on a computer.
It takes more to store ‘00123456’ than ‘123456’. The first is a string, the second can be stored as a long integer. Strings take longer to process (such as compare to each other) than integers. And furthermore, the number on the back of my membership card is written as a number, not with leading zeros. Nobody who followed the usual development practices would store the membership number with leading zeros, anymore than you would drive on the right in the UK. Seriously.
Anybody who tested the system would ask “Why do I have to enter all the zeros at the front? My customers don’t want to do that. Half the time, they’re going to be drunk and won’t count the right number of noughts. Change it so it’s just the number.” That’s how I know nobody at Curzon knows how to specify and test a computer application.
Anybody who wrote the system would say much the same thing, unless they were user-insensitive dolts. Even then, they will not have worked on any major system that insisted on leading zeros for at least, oh, ten years. Maybe twenty. They must have thought it up all by themselves. Which is why I say they are missing a few tricks.
The entire world moved to the Web a few years ago now. The standards are set by Amazon, who now tell me my orders are ready to collect from my post room sometimes before my post room does, by You Tube, Google, Netflix, iTunes Store and so on. These sites have deep-pocketed parents and set a standard for performance and usability that very few organisations can come close to matching. Organisations like Curzon need to think very carefully before trying to do You Tube for money, because the users are going to have very high expectations for it. Many of which can be met right at the start by having a decent spec ready for the developers. Which is the management’s job.
How do I know this? Read this…
"Are you referring to the Curzon Home Cinema website? Your membership number on our system was actually preceded by a number of zeroes, so your 'true' number was 000000XXXXX. I've removed these zeroes now and the Home Cinema website should recognise XXXXX."
I know. You don’t understand why the programmer next to you is a) rolling on the floor laughing, b) rolling his eyes with an unbelieving expression. He’s thinking what I did.
They stored the membership number with leading zeros? For real? Leading freaking zeros?
"Leading zeros” is what you do when you add 0’s to the front of a number - like a membership number - so that it is the right “length”. Like all bank accounts must be eight digits long, so some of the older ones look like 00123456. The real account number, as stored in the computer as often as not will be 123456, but what gets printed is the ’00’ version. There are reasons why people do this on manual forms. There is no reason why you do it on a computer.
It takes more to store ‘00123456’ than ‘123456’. The first is a string, the second can be stored as a long integer. Strings take longer to process (such as compare to each other) than integers. And furthermore, the number on the back of my membership card is written as a number, not with leading zeros. Nobody who followed the usual development practices would store the membership number with leading zeros, anymore than you would drive on the right in the UK. Seriously.
Anybody who tested the system would ask “Why do I have to enter all the zeros at the front? My customers don’t want to do that. Half the time, they’re going to be drunk and won’t count the right number of noughts. Change it so it’s just the number.” That’s how I know nobody at Curzon knows how to specify and test a computer application.
Anybody who wrote the system would say much the same thing, unless they were user-insensitive dolts. Even then, they will not have worked on any major system that insisted on leading zeros for at least, oh, ten years. Maybe twenty. They must have thought it up all by themselves. Which is why I say they are missing a few tricks.
The entire world moved to the Web a few years ago now. The standards are set by Amazon, who now tell me my orders are ready to collect from my post room sometimes before my post room does, by You Tube, Google, Netflix, iTunes Store and so on. These sites have deep-pocketed parents and set a standard for performance and usability that very few organisations can come close to matching. Organisations like Curzon need to think very carefully before trying to do You Tube for money, because the users are going to have very high expectations for it. Many of which can be met right at the start by having a decent spec ready for the developers. Which is the management’s job.
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