Somebody suggest a new wordpress theme for me. I can’t stand this one.

I’m pulling out of NaNoWriMo. I had no time yesterday to write anything, no time today to write anything, will have no time tomorrow to write anything, and no time on Tuesday to write anything.

It’s just bloody ridiculous.

Sam neatened the paperwork in his hands by dropping it through his fingers onto the desk.

“We want you to connect all the computers together, and make a database of all the customers, quotes, and orders so everybody can get at stuff quickly while they are on the phone”

He grinned.

“How does that sound?”

I wanted to say “Bloody impossible”. How best might I explain that the closest I had come to a network was the mysterious metal connectors on the back of the computers at college?

I knew the wires left t-shaped fittings, and dissappeared into plastic trunking around the perimeter of the room. Beyond that I had no clue. There could have been a room of telephony operators hidden somewhere in the college campus for all I know - beeping and screeching at each other in the same manner modems do.

A bizarre scene formed in my head of two telegraph receptionists sitting across from one another, both wearing thick glasses, and plaid skirts.

“eeeeeeee A”

“sssshhhhhhhhhhhhhh”

“bong bong bong bong”

“eeee A”

Only those who remember the era of modems and sub 56K connections to the internet will remember the tones made by V32bis while handshaking. Some will have blanked it from their memory.

“Okay - I’ll get started with ordering the kit to connect the computers”

“Yep - while you’re at it, we could probably do with an audit of exactly what we have around the place”

Great. You wear new clothes to work, and within days of starting you find yourself scrabbling around on the floor under people’s desks.

While the voyeuristic side of the more adventurous mind would find a world of possibility in peering underneath desks, I can assure you that the reality is in fact very, very different from any fantasy. For one, any girl with even two brain cells devotes one and a half of them to keeping anything that shouldn’t be seen away from prying eyes. For two, you’re far more likely to find yourself knee deep in encrusted pizza debris under 20 stone “fat Alan’s” desk while he attempts to bend down to watch - which of course he cannot without firing several buttons across the office like bullets.

So. What do they have around the office besides my new screaming machine? I set off on my mini adventure.

“Hi Sian”

“Oh hi John - how can I help you?”

“I just need to take a look at your computer - find out what it is.”

“Why?”

“Because we’re going to connect all the computers together”

“Does that mean you’ll be able to see my screen?” (a look of horror spread across her face)

“No. It means they computers will form their own intelligence and run the company while we are all electrocuted and used as biological batteries”

(I didn’t really say that, but I might have thought it)

“No. It’s so you’ll be able to get quick access to what other people have done - and make your job easier”

“Oh. Okay then. I’ll go and make a cup of tea. Hang on - I need to save this Doc… oh bugger!”

Somehow Sian had hit close instead of save. Goodbye document.

“Can you get it back?”

“Did you save it?”

“No”

A few moments later there were angry banging-about noises in the kitchen.

She had a 386. Oh dear. Just a few years previously this would have been a very fine computer to have. Something to be proud of. Now it was akin to comparing a roller skate with a Ford Mustang (not a bad analogy - the average PC of 1995 was built not unlike a Ford Mustang - i.e. it weighed about the same as an ocean liner).

So - if Sian was going to run Windows for Workgroups, she would probably need a new computer.

On to George - man about town Will Carling lookalike. When I arrived at his desk, he was miraculously not on the phone. My arrival seemed to spark a show of manlyness between George and Darren - for both mine and Anita’s benefit no doubt.

“Got a girlfriend then Jon?”

“No…”

George grinned and rolled away from his desk, leaning back with his hands behind his head.

“Don’t blame you - nothing but trouble, women”

“You would say that, if Sharon caught you with that barmaid from the Three Pigs”

I worked out Sharon must be his wife - the stunning woman stood with arms around great looking kids in a photo on his desk.

“Oh christ - you should have seen her on Friday night. She kept bending over in front of me to get peanuts for people in the bar”

“You’d have a heart attack if she said anything to you”

“Who says she hasn’t ?”

“Yeah right”

You could see that Darren was now searching for some impressive annecdote from his inflated past to impress me with in turn - something to outdo George.

Mr Lions arrived on cue

“You young lads haven’t got a clue. When I was a test pilot in Bankcok, I would have been straight in there”

Anita had had enough.

“Oy! You lot. You’re embarassing Jon. Pack it in.”

George and Dave grinned at me. Anita continued;

“mind you, it’s the quiet one’s you’ve got to watch, isn’t it - I bet our new boy’s a right dirty so and so”

Mr Lions had heard enough too;

“That’s enough! Come on, get on with your work”

“Whoo hooOOP” (the closest in writing you can get to Anita’s submarine dive claxon laugh when anything vaguely naughty was suggested)

It turned out the rest of the office had half-passable computers - a mixture of 486SX and DX machines. Given the arrival of the Pentium, they were now yesterday’s news, but quite capable of running Windows.

Hand written list in hand, I went back to my desk and set about typing it up. Of course we didn’t have Microsoft Office, because - well - frankly this was before it became ubiquitous in offices across the land, and everybody had a favourite application for a particilar job.

Part of the reason everybody had a favourite application was of course because Windows of the 1995 era was spectacularly shite at running more than one application at the same time. One or two blue screen of death (BSOD) lockups per day was considered quite lucky.

The spreadsheet of choice in the office - installed on every computer - was SuperCalc 3. Apparently the height of DOS spreadsheet cleverness (which I was advised of by Sam, despite my knowledge to the contrary), Supercalc was the application on which the production side of the business was run.

Programming Supercalc could perhaps best be described in terms of having only two commands in a hypothetical programming language - “PRINT” and “GOTO”.

So what might I use to write up my audit? Microsoft Write. The predecessor of Wordpad. After a couple of minutes of typing at a speed that raised eyebrows around the office (their first experience of anybody that could type), I had my audit written up. One problem. I had no printer - and with no network in existence yet, not way to connect a printer short of wiring one to my computer.

So the next problem to solve was networking.

It turned out (after some furious book buying and reading) that the mysterious metal connectors at college were for “10-Base T” ethernet, using BNC connectors. They looked very similar to the coaxial cables used for cable television - because they were the same damn thing.

Looking through a trade catalogue containing all manner of rocket scientist toys and gadgets to do with networking that I had no idea about, I determined there were two ways we could go - “Cat 45″, or “BNC”. The first option was the future, but the network cards and cables cost a couple of pounds more than BNC. Sam told me to buy BNC.

Of course it’s only with hindsight that you slap your forehead and call yourself a complete f*cking idiot. It would be three years until we audited the network, and found the run between our network terminators was over twice as long as the advised limit. Another story for another time.

The order form for the various computer hardware read like a wordsearch puzzle. Of course no spelling checkers complained, because Microsoft Write didn’t have one.

My final task, and the one that would consume me for perhaps the next year - was the invention and development of a database to run the company. A system to end all systems - to perform everything the company needed to, and to empower staff, create efficiencies, and reduce paperwork.

The system would be built upon the recently released Microsoft Access 2. Microsoft SQL Server existed, but was priced firmly in the realm of the enterprise - not the 30 employee small business with a geek in charge of IT.

Microsoft Access was fine - very impressive even. The trouble with things that seem impressive is that you tend to try and use them far beyond their intended application. A good analogy would be trying to use a clockwork cine camera to record everything made by the BBC.

Little would I know on this first day that the database would eventually become known throughout the comany as “Damon” - after Damon Hill. Apparently because it was slow and and crashed a lot (which Damon did that year. A lot).

Next on my commuting reading list while taking a break from fiction is “The Cathedral and the Bazaar”.

If you’ve not heard of it before, it’s perhaps the most famous account of the origins of open source development, and a look at the reasons it has swept like a wildfire across the software development landscape.

Amazon has the following to say about it;

The Cathedral and the Bazaar takes its title from an essay of the same name which Raymond read at the 1997 Linux Congress and that was previously available only online. The essay documents Raymond’s acquisition, re-creation and numerous revisions of an email utility known as fetchmail. Raymond engagingly narrates the fetchmail development process while at the same time elaborating upon the on- going bazaar development method he employs with the assistance of numerous volunteer programmers who participate in the writing and debugging of the code. The essay smartly spares the reader from the technical morass that could easily detract from the text’s goal of demonstrating the efficacy of the Open Source, or bazaar, method in creating robust, usable software.

I’ve known about this book for years, but have never got around to reading it - now I’m going to, and am actually looking forward to it.

Yep. You read it right. Apple are threatening to close iTunes.

The copyright board of the recording industry in the US is due to meet to decide on the royalty rate that will stand over the next five years - and they want a 66% rise over the current rate.

The recording companies themselves - rather than absorb the cost (and make less of the 70% of the sale price they already make) - want to pass it directly on to consumers. Apple have chosen to stand in their way, and it’s not the first time.

Remember NBC pulling all their TV shows from the iTunes store? That was because Apple wouldn’t let them charge what they wanted (more than anybody else).

This time, Apple have publicly stated that if the cost of music goes up, they will have to consider closing iTunes - and with it the recording industry will lose 1/7th of ALL media sales worldwide.

I have been playing with Tumblr on the internet for the last few days, and it’s been liberating.

I think perhaps the secret to Tumblr is that it doesn’t support comments by default. Sure, you can add them (via Disqus, for example), but the lack of feedback turns out to be important. Or at least, it’s important if you see blogging in the same light that I do.

I publish on the internet to share - I am not here to draw attention to myself. I am not here necessarily to pass judgment either. I might make observations from time to time, but they are my observations and not intended with any malice.

In many ways the blogging community has changed since the early days. The masses have brought with them the “me me” mentality - “look at me - look at what I have written - look at my photos - look at my blog!”. It’s a shame. Blogging (at least for me) used to be about sharing your experiences and thoughts with an unknown audience.

In recent years many employers have begun to trace both potential and existing staff’s blogs, social network accounts and blog posts. Having any kind of public voice is starting to be seen as a threat. It would appear the cyclical nature of the world is returning to the 1950s. Towing the line is becoming increasingly important. Saying the right thing. Keeping in line with expectations.

Expectations are not the sole preserve of the professional world either. The concept of “ownership of information” is becoming more important to individuals too. I have noticed a lot of blog authors relate their family disputes online. It’s incredibly stupid and dangerous. Everybody from Great Aunt Maud to Cousin Billy Bob has access to the internet, and they WILL find you. Especially if they are involved… they WILL read the entire history of everything you have written too.

Perhaps the web, blogging, and social networks as we have known them are growing up - experiencing a “loss of innocence”. The frontier spirit that encompassed the earliest settlers is slowly being eroded by the self important masses, who bring with them all the problems of real society and relationships.

Those of us who arrived early have an itch to scratch. We will journey on - finding new forms of communication - sharing - forming community - trying again. We will be followed eventually, and all that we have begun will be slowly destroyed. And so the story will continue.

Amazon’s website is suggesting that I should buy “Farenheit 451″. They know me too well.

Ray Bradbury is one of my favourite authors - many years ago I got started on his books by reading “Golden Apples of the Sun” - a collection of short stories, one of which described the “Butterfly Effect”, and indeed is where the phrase is coined from.

For those who have no idea what I’m talking about, the “Butterfly Effect” describes the basis of chaos theory - that tiny changes amplify over time and cause entirely unpredicted outcomes. In the book a time travel “experience” goes wrong when the traveller steps from the predetermined path in prehistory, and accidentally steps on a butterfly. When the party return to the present, the world is more or less the same, but strange things are very different - some letters backwards in the alphabet - that kind of thing.

Quite how the time travel company managed to build the path without effecting the future is anybody’s guess, but hey - who’s going to argue with a good story. Heisenberg will be spinning in his grave (yet more explanation - the “uncertainty principal” states that in observing something, you change it).

Ladies and Gentlemen - I bring you quite possibly the most excellent web application ever invented - the R2D2 translator…

http://www.r2d2translator.com

Have fun :)

I discovered something rather nice recently - a web based word processor called “BuzzWord”. It’s based on Flash, and was bought by Adobe to help combat Google. Want to know a secret? - it’s much, much nicer to use than Google Docs.

BuzzWord provides the kind of rich experience that Word Processors just don’t. It has scaleable fonts, wonderful anti-aliasing, and a minimal interface to die for. The spartan feature set forces you to concentrate on the words, and the available fonts are nice. We’re talking about the premium fonts that Adobe will normally force you to take out a second mortgage for.

Instead of listening to me, head on over to buzzword.acrobat.com and take a look for yourself!

Wendy’s Uncle Peter got married on Saturday to a wonderful lady called Janet. The horrendous weather miraculously stayed clear throughout the day, and provided our girls their first opportunity to meet more of Wendy’s family. We realised during the day just how well behaved our girls are - and while it’s not an accident (we have to moderate everything we do and say to encourage it), it makes days out very much easier than they might be otherwise. There appears to be a huge difference in the behaviour of little boys and girls too - that we had not seen illustrated so starkly before. The boys seemed so much more independent, spirited and mischeivous than the girls.

The only slight slip-up of the day occurred when a waitress dropped a drink - and the most fragile of our children was stood directly under it. She got covered in wine, and glass exploded around her feet. In true Dad style, I arrived at the sound of the first scream over the shoulders of the waitress and our little one experienced vertical liftoff. I got soaked to the skin too while hugging her, but all was well a few minutes later. Thankfully Wendy had a supply of emergency clothes at the ready.

Today is filled with a week’s worth of washing, tidying up, buying of groceries, and other mundane activities before returning to work tomorrow. I’m hoping to find time to sit down and watch the Formula One and the Moto GP races later.