IEEE Software Expert Conference

I don't claim to be a software expert, but I have dabbled, so it was very nice indeed to be invited to be part of an Expert panel for an hour of questions, answers and banter.

The other 3 panel members were Prof. Les Hatton (he of Kingston University and Safer C fame), Paul Goodman from Shell and Mike Andrews from Microsoft. All had written columns in the Impact section of IEEE software. I was drafted in at a late stage when a potential panel member from Tom-Tom had (for very good reasons) to drop out. The panel was chaired by Michiel van Genuchten who set the stage and asked some very probing questions. It was good fun.

I really enjoyed Diomidis Spinellis talk on Theory Meets Reality: Managing IT Systems at the Greek Ministry of Finance. If you think you have it hard, imaging being drafted into the Greek Treasury in 2009. I spoke to Dimonidis after the event, he was a nice guy, very modest and pragmatic. Not sure how deep his sins were to deserve 2 year of that though.

A couple of talks mentioned or were about technical debt which I think is one of the area's current buzz words.

With a 5am start and getting home at midnight, it was a long day, but well worth it.

Dail's hole and the fence

King family went for a walk in the Dinorwig Slate quarries. I spent many happy days there gibbering my way up route from V.S. to E4 (old money that is) 20 years ago. I have not been there other than running through on a fell race for maybe 10 years now.

The sight of the fence around Dail's hole  filled me with sadness. It had a surreal character all of its own in certain weathers and actually one of the safer bits of the quarry. Seems to have been shut because it was popular, not because it was especially dangerous.. Once of the hardest route I ever did is in the quarry (The Chiselling E4 6B) is in that quarry and no longer accessible. I wonder if the tube is still there?

By the way Jeremy Stocks, I still have your Slate guide book which was published in about 1992. Happy Days.

Advice from politicians : regulate or ignore?

The Cameron and Maude show's advice to fill up tanks/cans with fuel may or may not have been good, but should they have been giving advice at all and should we listen?

As a pension trustee of the Sun Microsystems Pension scheme (nearly wound up now) I could not give advice as I noted here. There are good reasons for this and I feel many of the reasons also extend to politicians, certainly in the public context. Useful advice is nearly always situation and individual dependent, unless it is common sense and there is good reason why a politician, who may or may not have more common sense than the average voter, will suffer from politics and the media conspiring to corrupt the message.

We get the politicians we deserve, the recent fuel fun suggests they are badly placed to offer advice. What they may be well placed to do is to provide information, though will party political objectives and fear of the media corrupting the intent and detail then determine the information they choose to make available and we the public are then making decisions on very partial information.

There is a good case for M.P.'s and A.M.'s to give advice in a 1 to 1 surgery settings. I hear good thing from people who have visited Mark or Elin and the advice they got from both of them. I expect the same may go for local councilors, but my experience suggests the gene pool is somewhat more diverse.

Like the spawn of satan, the Independent Financial Adviser, it is very hard for us to know the quality of advice until it is tested by the passing years and a performance review, but then it is too late. Years of layering additional regulation (a natural selection) have rendered the IFA industry and its gene pool near useless when it comes macro planning of an investment portfolio, but is geared up to advise you on which fund to buy with 5k you have spare. There are exceptions, but it is an industry that needs top to bottom reform.

A subset of the population seems to want politicians to replace a God figure in terms of showing them the way to lead particular aspects  their lives. They really are looking in the wrong place for life guidance if they think Carmeron, Milband, Osborune, Clegg and Balls can guide them through any aspect of their life. Most people would agree, but then why queue at the pumps when you don't need fuel? Politicians should be decision makers, not life coaches.

So making politicians libel for the consequences of advice they give would be a good thing, no matter if the are a P.M. a minister, opposition or in government. Better would be self regulation, meaning ignore what they say, and we have only ourselves to blame if we take advice from a politician in a general context.

Disclosure 1 : I did queue at the pumps last week, but only because there was a queue. The tank of the car was near empty, so will claim my behavior did not change.

Disclosure 2 : I do keep 5 gallons of diesel in the shed. I live a good 80 miles from the nearest 24 hour fuel station and for work or family illness may need to travel at short notice outside opening hours. I have done this for the well over the last 10 years incase the car fuel tank was empty and I had an urgent need to travel. More allowing for my behavior and situation than anything else.

Aberystwyth, last home of the temperance movement ....

I had 90 minute to spend between exiting the dentist and the start of a physio appointment. Have laptop, so a great chance to get some work done. Coffee and wifi, obvious they go together? Well not in Aberystwyth.

I can't say that I surveyed all establishments that sell coffee in Aberystwyth this morning, but probably most of them and none had wifi on offer. As for Aberystwyth being a economic backwater and poorly equipped for 2012, this is one simple indicator, but very telling.

I object to going to a pub in the morning (or during the day, unless for food or it is the 24th of December).
needs must, so I sat in "Spoons" for a bit over an hour working away, being quite productive.

Sadly a mostly fair description of Aberystwyth

I was sitting in Aberystwyth Arts Centre last Saturday morning having a ritual tea and cake post small boy football and during small girl modern dance and flicked through the program of what is on and came across this.

In 2011 Aberystwyth was besieged by news' film crews and journalists all hunting down one story - the day the traffic wardens disappeared. As England was thrown into uproar by
riots the biggest local news was the number of dolphins in Cardigan Bay.
What is it like to live in a town where the tiniest news is distorted out of proportion and where gossip is more prominent than global headlines?

Its not the whole story of Aberystwyth, but it is a fair summary of the scope of news in Aberystwyth.

Why wind farms on Plynlimon don't matter

I went to an interesting, for all sorts of reasons, debate "wind power - benefit or burden" debate organized by Cambrian Mountain Society, so obviously it would have a bias against. My main take away's were

• Wind power as planned will provide around 0.5% of the Welsh target for renewable energy
• If you want a credible debate don't put a militant on your panel
• The panel as a whole lost credibility when one otherwise sensible gentleman suggested the question of "what instead" need not be asked to reject something (windpower in this case).
• Tourism will take a huge hit if these proposed schemes go in and 1000's of jobs will be lost from the mid Wales area for the benefit of a few.
• The subsidy needs to be fixed at a much lower level based on the contribution.
• Panel members need to get their science right i.e. Clean Gas is not neutral in any respect, even if a Q.C. says it.
• Ceredigion Council don't have a clue, like in so many areas[energy, planning, broadband, transport, schools] (they are on the ball in some, provided it is not strategic)
• Tann 8 is a fundamentally flawed strategy which consciously does not consider visual or economic impact and needs review before any further applications are considered.
• The wind power direction won't change from Cardiff because current ministers would loose face.
• Some interesting points of Welsh History came up I need to follow up

There were some accusations of intimidation flying around regarding an other planning application by the coast further south by the land owner.

I am against the proposed wind farm on Plynlimon on visual impact grounds and that Wind Power needs huge scale to deliver much useful energy. I do think micro-generation has a place, but don't really understand it well enough.

What I did come away with was that for reasons of geography, it all does not matter. Most voters in Wales  are in south Wales and will keep the Welsh Labour Party in power in the Assembly Government for many years to come. This has a logical conclusion independence for Wales is a bad idea as the current Welsh Labour Party has proved themselves incapable of effective strategic decision making(examples abound). The party with the balance of power won't change for at least 15 years without a choir boy abuse type scandal. So I  came away thinking that reversing devolution would be in the best interests of Wales and the Welsh people, a view that has been brewing for some time. Sad really, it should have been a great opportunity.

India 9 years on

I visited Bangalore in early 2003. I must admit I can't remember that many specifics from 2003, but here is a list of what struck me on a 10 day work visit

• The traffic. Almost literally. Never have I had such an adventure crossing the road. I managed to unconsciously subdue my regard for personal safety, in order to be able to cross the 3 roads between the hotel and the office, to the extent that on my return to London I nearly got run over by a black cab. London traffic is far faster and less inclined to avoid you.
• Check each water bottle provided by the hotel that the seal is in-tact. I forgot to check only once and 6 hours later, well, the world fell out of my arse. probably only 3 on a scale of 1-10, so can't grumble really. You get the picture and nuff said. 
• I felt no concern for my personal safety, excluding being run over. Walking back from the other hotel some of my co-workers were staying at, even on my own at near midnight I felt no concern for my personal safety.
• There seemed to be less general bureaucracy in the airport, though still was a lot.
• I still have no idea what Indian rules of the road are, but they must involve using the horn a lot and there is a fine of leaving more than a few mm of gap in any direction between stationary cars, mopeds or bikes.
• The level of pollution after a couple of days got me down and Bangalore is meant to be one of the better Indian cities.
• Everyone I meet was friendly, polite and nice.

Glad to be home, but I am sure given a few weeks, I will miss aspects of the place just as happened in 1995 and 2003. 1 aspect of the trip I won't miss though.

Evidance based and Skeptic about NHS reforms

I must admit I had not a paid a huge amount of attention to the proposed (actually already occurring) NHS reforms. I attended a Westminister Skeptics meeting along with Chris (I was in London that evening anyway) and now I am scared. These are not reforms, the NHS will cease to exist.

The Speaker was Prof Colin Leys and he presented an evidence based case against the NHS reforms. My short summary is

• The UK has the best clinical outcomes in the world
• For those outcomes it gives the best value for money
• MONITOR will be unaccountable to anyone
• The scope for corporate fraud will vastly outweigh the savings
• Top up fees will become normal
• EU competition laws mean there is no going back as the cost of compensating companies involved for lost earnings would be prohibitive.
• The NHS will cease to exist as a legal body
• Medical training in the Uk will fall apart
• Where England goes the other devolved parts of the UK will have to follow.

Why? Why is Andrew Lansley bulldozing through  a set of reforms for which there is no electoral mandate, will provide worse patient care and cost more and may make both the Lib-Dems and Tories unelectable in 2015? The 3 of us sitting at a table during the break could only come up with 2 possible underlying reasons

• Ideology
• Someone is getting a back hander

e-books : How publishing is changing .....

Some time ago a comment was left on my other blog asking if I wanted to contribute to a e-book on ultra running, life strategies, emotions and stuff. While keen to keep Life Coaches and other such disseminators of common sense for a fee out of ultra running, there are things you learn about yourself and how to get hard stuff done when touching your limit, which Clive's Bob Graham Round project was.  It seems like a useful project or perspective, so I answered their questions. The Ultra running related e-book will be published in February, but they kindly sent me a copy of their 1st e-book,

The Passionate Life, 16 stories of People Who Dared to Risk. I have not read it yet, but it appears to have nothing to do with Ultra Running and more to do with a range of people the authors find interesting.

I am all for this model of book publishing, but I must admit I am more looking forward to reading the 2nd e-book than reading the 1st one.

What umberellas tell us about the Health and Safety culture

Maybe living in West Wales I treat rain as one of those common events, you put on a coat and get on with it. If you don't have a coat you get wet and accept it.

I am spellbound when I visit London and it is raining. What other regular event  gives an excuse to carry a 10 point sharp weapon at or around head height. They don't even need a license to use one in public. How many people get blinded in one eye each time it rains in London by a lack of due care and attention from the umbrella driver? If the number is zero, I would expect fudging by the Association of Umbrella Manufactures [is there one?].

Maybe I am only at risk because I don't have or use such an irresponsible item. Applying the US right wing argument for guns, if everyone had an umbrella, then no one would get a sharp spike of metal in the eye or ear.

Given the rather obvious 3rd party risk if carrying these offensive weapons, why are they legal?
What don't commuters need training and a certificate before they are allowed to carry one on a drizzly day?

"How to teach Umbrella safety to Children" looks hopeful. Even the moral-less sharks have got wind of it.

Would it be reasonable to walk around London carrying a unguarded  javalin? No, unless you are on your way to javelin training and you have the sharp bits covered. So why are such bloody dangerous items considered acceptable?

Some of it may be "sorry about your eye, but at least I did not get wet".

It says a lot about our collective attitude to risk of injury.