Geoff Coupe's Blog

Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…

Year: 2005

  • Another Recruit to the Ranks

    It was just over a month ago that I was writing about the retirement of an ex-colleague of mine. Last night I was back at the Shell offices in The Hague to join the farewell celebrations of yet another well-liked and respected colleague. David was always quiet and unassuming, but he kept his head clear and got on with the job. He came into computing later in his career, but it seems to me that he has been intimately involved with most of the major developments in IT within Shell. He was a great colleague to work with.
     
    It really does feel as though the old guard are fast disappearing. As the culture of an organisation is shaped by its people (and in turn the people are shaped by the culture), I do wonder how it will feel in a few years time when the next generation have entirely taken over the reins.

  • Amazing Ad

    I’ve just come across this amazing advert for Honda cars, which I hadn’t seen before. Heath Robinson would have been proud. According to this, there is no computer graphic trickery involved – it is all real. It did, however, take 606 takes before the perfect sequence was captured. The filmcrew’s patience must have far exceeded that of Job.

  • Recognising Faces

    We humans do it easily – at least with people we are familiar with. But it’s a bit more tricky for computers to do it. At least, it used to be.
     
    I’ve just upgraded my copy of Adobe’s Photoshop Elements to the latest version, version 4.0. While some aspects of that software irritate me beyond belief, there are some interesting features. A new feature with version 4.0 is the ability to pick out faces in your photographs. It’s surprisingly effective, even if not always 100% accurate. It also picks out the faces of cats…
     
    But there’s a difference between picking out an area in a photograph and saying that "this is a face" and actually identifying the face, e.g. "this is your uncle John".
     
    However, that day may not be far off. TechCrunch has news of a new software application – Riya – that promises to do just that.

  • Spray It Loud

    I came across a photograph reproduced on the Feministe blog here. I know this photograph. It was taken by Jill Posener (apparently in 1979) and collected, along with other photographs of graffiti, in her book Spray It Loud, published in 1982 (ISBN 0-7100-9458-2). She captured brilliant graffiti – mostly around the streets of London. I’ve got two copies of the book in my library – one is signed by Jill, dated November 1982 – I think it was bought at a CHE Winter Fair in London. She followed it up with a second book of graffiti photographs: Louder Than Words  in 1986 (ISBN 0-86358-086-6).
    When I came across the Feministe entry, I didn’t know what had happened to Jill. A quick Google reveals that she’s very much alive and kicking, and now living in Berkeley, California. From starting out in the theatre company Gay Sweatshop, she became a professional photographer, and has published lots of stuff since then. I hadn’t realised it until now, but she was also the photographer who worked on another book in my collection: Out In America (ISBN 0-67085-850-1). More on her life and work at her website.

  • What Lies Beneath

    As part of the process of selling our house, the buyers have commissioned a technical report on the construction and state of the house. So yesterday they turned up with a building engineer in tow whose task it was to examine it from top to bottom.
     
    This being Gouda, our house is built on piles, and the way it is constructed means that there is a hollow space underneath the house – totally inaccessible, apart from via a hatch in the garage floor. As part of the inspection, the building engineer raised the hatch and peered down into the pool of water that collects under every house built in this way. He suddenly called us over to take a look. I peered down and saw at first what I thought was a silhouette of two crayfish painted on the concrete base under the water. Just as I was thinking why would anyone bother to paint crayfish on the floor, I suddenly realised that one of the crayfish was moving…
     
    Yep, we have freshwater crayfish living under our house. Dunno how they got there, or what they live on, but they seem happy enough. So the next time I need to make Sauce Nantua, I’ll know where to go to get my fresh crayfish…
     

    051026-1345-37

     

  • Elephants and Their Dead

    Fascinating story in New Scientist this week about research that seems to show that elephants are one of the few other species besides our own that pay homage to their dead.

  • But Is It Art? – #3

    Kader Attia’s Flying Rats. Not for the squeamish or those with a hyper-active imagination – even though no animals or children were harmed during the making of this.

  • Perceptual Illusions

    Here’s a fascinating perceptual illusion: Dr. Angry and Mr. Smiles (scroll down on the linked page). Perhaps even more terrifying is the illusion that follows: Thatcher/Blair. Art imitates Life?

  • Good Design

    I mentioned Hillel Cooperman yesterday in connection with his presentation on good interface design in software. It turns out he has a blog, and I came across this entry on good design of physical objects – in this case a sink in a French railway station. He likes this design, on multiple levels, and so do I. Kudos to the original designer.
     
    BTW, this sort of stuff – good ergonomic design – is explored in at least two of Donald A. Norman’s books: The Psychology of Everyday Things, and Turn Signals Are The Facial Expressions of Automobiles. Worth reading. Ooh, I see he’s got a new book out: Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things. I must get a copy – particularly since it has a picture of one of my bête noirs on the front cover – the beautiful looking, but completely impractical Alessi juicer.

  • The Softer Side of Software

    The material from Microsoft’s Professional Developers’ Conference for 2005 are now up online as video streams as well as downloadable presentations. 
     
    One aspect of software development that has always interested me is that of user interface design and usability. There’s a fascinating, opinionated presentation on user interface design given by Hillel Cooperman. Well worth watching. In addition, he uses as an example the photo-sharing application Max developed in Microsoft to show off some of the features of Vista. It’s interesting (well, to me at least) that the sharing aspect is a P2P experience like Groove – i.e. it’s really simple and transparent to use.

  • East of Eden

    I don’t know if you’ve been following the Operation Eden blog, but if not, please go and read Clayton James Cubitt’s entry for today. It’s a story that shows how simple acts of kindness can do good. It makes a pleasant change when at times it seems that the only stories I hear are of man’s inhumanity to man.

  • RIP Rosa

    Rosa Parks died yesterday at the age of 92. Her refusal to give up her seat on a bus was the spark that led to the civil rights movement taking off in the US 50 years ago. RIP, Rosa.

  • Honesty in Advertising

    … a novel concept, I think you’ll agree. However, it clearly worked for the ex-owner of these leather pants, advertised on eBay. His reasons for selling them strike me as being painfully true.
     
    Oh, and the Q&A section is worth reading as well…
     
    (hat tip to Sadly, No! )

  • Detainee Reporting

    Orwellian Newspeak rears its ugly head again – this time by the head of MI5, Eliza Manningham-Buller. She said:
    "Experience proves that detainee reporting can be accurate and may enable lives to be saved."
    "Detainee reporting" strikes me as a particularly slimy phrase. As Justin, over at Chicken Yoghurt points out:
    "You know what it means. I know what it means. She knows what it means. But she can pretend it doesn’t mean what she knows it means and so can the rest of us if we like".
    Read the rest of Justin’s piece. It’s worth it. And I know that if I was being tortured, I’d say whatever it was I thought the torturers wanted to hear in a vain attempt to get them to stop, just stop, please stop. So the phrase "can be accurate" has very little real meaning as far as I can see.

  • Nature’s Wonders

    I’ve noticed before how biologists seem to adore some of the most bizarre examples of Mother Nature’s work, so I particularly like this quote from Dan Nilsson on the Box Jellyfish: "These are fantastic creatures with 24 eyes, four parallel brains and 60 arseholes".
     
    Indeed.

  • Is there a Plan B?

    Back in May, I revealed my plan for getting a Wollemi Pine, since my better half won’t countenance having its close relative – the Monkey Puzzle Tree – anywhere near any garden of his.
     
    Alas, the plan has come to a screeching halt – and simple economics is to blame. The Guardian reports today on an auction of Wollemi Pines that has just been held in Sydney and the prices are way beyond what I can justify to myself (and more importantly, to my dear husband). There were 292 saplings that came up for auction, and it raised a total of £487,000. One batch of saplings went for a cool £4,200 per tree.
     
    Oh well, back to the conifers, I suppose.

  • Never Let Me Go…

    … is the title of a novel by Kasuo Ishiguro. I referred to it a little while back in connection with the Man Booker prize (it was the runner-up).
     
    I was sufficiently intrigued by the storyline that I bought a copy and read it while we were on holiday last week. It is a remarkable novel. While ineffably sad and elegaic, it makes you, the reader, want to scream out to a pitiless universe that "I’m alive, damn you!!".
     
    Highly recommended.

  • ManyBooks.Net

    Oooh – lots of eBooks for free – and legal! I’ll just wait for another generation of the Tablet PC and I’ll be all set.
     
    (hat tip to Mike over at Coffee Corner)

  • Mumbai: MegaCity

    Interesting item about Mumbai over at the WorldChanging blog. As Suketu Mehta writes in his book: "Bombay is the future of urban civilization on the planet. God help us."

  • Return of the 17-Year Cicadas

    There’s a fascinating film that has been made, documenting the 17 year life-cycle of cicadas. It’s called Return of the 17-Year Cicadas. Go and watch it here.
     
    Clearly made by people who love the cicadas – "In 2004, the residents of Bloomington, Indiana had the good fortune to be visited by one of the largest and most spectacular biological events on earth, the return of the 17-year periodical cicadas know(n) as Brood X." I’m not sure that the phrase "good fortune" is quite what I would have used – particularly when looking at the nymphs swarming over the ground, or the adults in their final frenzied mating flight. And Enya warbling on the soundtrack while trillions of the little buggers scurry about just didn’t resonate with me. Give me fluffy kittens, every time.
     
    Nonetheless, it’s a terrific little film about an interesting example of evolution. If you like it, and you want more, then check out Microcosmos – a full feature-length film on the lives of insects.
     
    (hat tip to PZ Myers over at Pharyngula)