Geoff Coupe's Blog

Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…

Year: 2015

  • Hung Out To Dry – Or Hoist By His Own Petard?

    There’s been a disturbance in the Force recently over remarks made by Sir Tim Hunt at a luncheon organised by the Korea Federation of Women’s Science and Technology Associations. He stood up and said:

    “Let me tell you about my trouble with girls … three things happen when they are in the lab … You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you and when you criticise them, they cry.”

    Adding that he was in favour of single-sex labs, but allowing that he didn’t want to “stand in the way of women”.

    Hunt was clearly unprepared for the wave of negative reactions that followed, saying that while what he said was wrong, the price he and his wife have had to pay for his mistakes has been extreme and unfair. “I have been hung out to dry,” says Hunt. He has resigned from his position as Honorary Professor with the UCL Faculty of Life Sciences.

    And just as night follows day, the wave of negative reactions has been followed by a wave of support from fellow scientists such as Richard Dawkins and Brian Cox. However, I can’t help but feel that Dawkins, in particular, is certainly not helping with statements such as

    “ the baying witch-hunt that it unleashed among our academic thought police: nothing less than a feeding frenzy of mob-rule self-righteousness.”

    There’s none so blind as those who will not see, professor Dawkins. At least Sir Tim has recognised the enormity of his gaffe. As his hosts pointed out in a letter:

    “As women scientists we were deeply shocked and saddened by these remarks, but we are comforted by the widespread angered response from international social and news media: we are not alone in seeing these comments as sexist and damaging to science. Although Dr. Hunt is a senior and highly accomplished scientist in his field who has closely collaborated with Korean scientists in the past, his comments have caused great concern and regret in Korea.”

    They also noted that although Hunt belatedly called his remarks an attempt at humour, he had earlier defended them as “trying to be honest.” His remarks, the letter said, 

    “show that old prejudices are still well embedded in science cultures. On behalf of Korean female scientists, and all Koreans, we wish to express our great disappointment that these remarks were made at the event hosted by KOFWST. This unfortunate incident must not be portrayed as a private story told as a joke”.

    Sir Tim has written to them regretting his “stupid and ill-judged remarks.” He added:

    “I am mortified to have upset my hosts, which was the very last thing I intended. I also fully accept that the sentiments as interpreted have no place in modern science and deeply apologize to all those good friends who fear I have undermined their efforts to put these stereotypes behind us.”

    As is said in the article in which this exchange of letters is quoted:

    The real point is our failure, so far, to make science a truly inclusive profession. The real point is that that telling a roomful of female scientists that they aren’t really welcome in a male-run laboratory is the sound of a slamming door. The real point is that to pry that door open means change. And change is hard, uncomfortable, and necessary.

    What we certainly don’t need is other old, white, male scientists telling us that this is a “baying witch-hunt”.

  • Showing Their True Colours

    It would appear that the Catholic Church is not happy, not happy at all, about the result of the Irish referendum supporting same-sex marriage.

    First we had the Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin saying that the church needed to take “a reality check” and “not move into denial”. The church, he said, had lost its connection with young people, and needed to work to reconnect with them. Now while some liberal Catholics have seen this as an outbreak of common sense, it was very clear to me that this was a brilliant piece of equivocation on the Archbishop’s part. While to liberal Catholics it could be interpreted as recognising that the Church has to change, for the rest of us it was perfectly clear that his message was: “our attempt to indoctrinate Irish youth has failed, and we must redouble our efforts – marriage can only be between a man and a woman for the sole purpose of procreation”.

    Luckily, we now have the Vatican’s number two, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, making it crystal-clear for us all.  He is quite clear that Ireland’s vote was “a defeat for humanity”, adding that he was “deeply saddened” by it, and that the answer for the church is to “strengthen its commitment to evangelisation”.

    Let’s just ponder that for a moment: a vote for equality and recognising that love can exist between two people of the same sex is seen by the Catholic Church as “a defeat for humanity”.

    I truly wonder what goes on in the minds of the leaders of the Catholic Church. And for all the posturing of Pope Francis, I really do not expect him to correct Cardinal Parolin. He may equivocate, but he is unlikely to contradict the cardinal. Let’s wait and see; a miracle might yet happen.

    Addendum: Grania Spingies has an excellent commentary on the Catholic Church’s position over at the Why Evolution Is True web site. In summary:

    • First, yes, they really believe this stuff.
    • Second, they are so out of touch with people that they have no idea how unintentionally funny and simultaneously insulting they are.
    • Third, they fear the Internet
    • Fourth, they have no intention of changing the Church’s position

  • Reading Between The Lines

    Microsoft’s Joe Belfiore has published a blog post today that has caused a slight disturbance amongst the company’s fans: Your Windows 10 PC will love all the devices you own.

    The reason for their discomfiture is that Microsoft is intent on bringing features, which hitherto have been unique to Windows, to rival smartphone operating systems. Personally, I think it’s an understandable strategy, and one that Microsoft has already shown that it wants to pursue.

    However, the post also caused me some discomfort, but not for the above reasons. My hackles went up with Belfiore’s opening sentence:

    Whether it’s a 3-year-old printer or projecting to your brand new TV with Miracast, we’re building Windows 10 to be terrific at connecting all your devices.

    Mr. Belfiore seems to be implying that a 3-year-old device is pretty well obsolete, and at the limits of supportability. I have an HP Laserjet 5MP printer that is still going strong, 20 years after I bought it. It almost sounds as though it will be more by luck than judgement that such devices will continue to work in Microsoft’s brave new world of Windows 10.

    The other part of the post that caused a slight intake of breath was where he wrote:

    Join the Windows Insider Program to try out the Phone Companion app on a new Windows 10 Insider Preview build we’ll flight out in a few weeks.

    “…flight out”? That’s a new verb to me, and a particularly ugly one to boot. What’s wrong with simply saying “we’ll release in a few weeks”? I realise that language constantly evolves, but does it have to do so in such awkward ways? However, I’m probably fighting a lost cause for British English here. I remember, with a shudder, the first time I heard an American airline stewardess announce on arrival in America that we should deplane. That was years ago, and I still haven’t got used to it.

  • Ireland Has Voted

    And it’s a vote for sanity, equality, and same-sex marriage… I’m delighted, and not a little surprised – I had thought that reactionary forces, e.g. the Catholic Church, would have been able to make a greater dent in the majority view. It is clear, from the results, that rural areas are further behind, but hopefully, with this result, attitudes will begin to change in the country as a whole.

    Well done to all the “Yes” campaigners, and thanks to all those who voted Yes.

  • Banning the Burqa

    Back in 2010, I wrote about my misgivings about the fact that the Netherlands was considering banning the burqa. Fast forward to now, and the government has indeed now proposed a ban on wearing the burqa in certain places, including in courts, schools, townhalls, and on public transport.

    I remain unconvinced that this ban is going to help our samenleving (literally: living together, but usually translated as society). Kenan Malik’s words at the time about the ban remain as true today as they were back then:

    The burqa is a symbol of the oppression of women, not its cause. If legislators really want to help Muslim women, they could begin not by banning the burqa, but by challenging the policies and processes that marginalize migrant communities: on the one hand, the racism, social discrimination and police harassment that all too often disfigure migrant lives, and, on the other, the multicultural policies that treat minorities as members of ethnic groups rather than as citizens. Both help sideline migrant communities, aid the standing of conservative ‘community leaders’ and make life more difficult for women and other disadvantaged groups within those communities.

    As I wrote at the time:

    While I have qualms about why women should choose to wear the burqa, the answer is not to ban it. The answer is to make it as ludicrous as a codpiece, and that must emerge from the women themselves.

  • How Not to Delight a Customer

    According to an article in Forbes, delighting the customer is not just profitable, but hugely profitable. It’s a win-win situation, both for the companies who pursue ways to delight the customer, and for the customers themselves.

    I’ve just been on the receiving end of the opposite experience: disappointing the customer; and the company who provided this experience was Microsoft.

    When the Surface 3 was announced, I wrote that it promised to be a good machine. It would suit me very well indeed. As a result, I pre-ordered a Surface 3, and it duly arrived on the release date of the 7th May.

    It is indeed a very nice machine, so where’s my disappointment? Well, Microsoft advertise the machine as including a one year subscription to Office 365 Personal. The fine print advises that the subscription is:

    Available on Surface 3 with Windows 8.1 purchased prior to December 31, 2015. While supplies last. Office activation required within 6 months of Windows activation date.

    As it happens, I had already purchased a one year subscription to Office 365 Personal back in February. The subscription allows Office to be installed on two machines, a PC and a Tablet (which can also be a Windows Tablet, such as the Surface 3).

    On the Office site, there’s a section where you can enter a product code key to renew/extend your Office 365 Subscription. So I tried that, and entered the Office product key that the Surface 3 told me it had. Nothing happened once I clicked the “Continue” button. The expiry date of my subscription remains as February 2016.

    I had a chat with Office Support, and was told that the Surface 3 Office 365 Personal subscription cannot be used to extend a current subscription; it can only be used by creating a new Microsoft Account specifically for my Surface 3.

    That seems particularly pointless – I don’t want to create a new Microsoft Account for my Surface 3 – I want to use my existing Microsoft Account on all my devices, and access all my documents in my OneDrive space. The subscription offer is thus worthless to me, and seems to me to skirt close to false advertising on Microsoft’s part. 

    And what is really annoying is that apparently the other way round works without problems. That is, had I first set up my Office 365 Personal account using a Surface 3 product key, and then purchased a year’s subscription, the purchase would have extended my subscription by a year.

    Thanks a bunch, Microsoft. Consider me very disappointed.

  • Ireland Votes

    This coming Friday, Ireland will be voting in a referendum to legalise same-sex marriage. I’d like to think that sanity will prevail, and that the vote will be “Yes”, but I shouldn’t underestimate the continuing power of the Catholic Church, aided by US Christian groups, evangelical Christians and religious societies such as the Iona Institute to poison the well.

    Take, for example, Breda O’Brien’s opinion piece in the Irish Times: Think about intolerance of thought police before you vote. I confess, my irony meter all but exploded on reading that headline. O’Brien is a patron of the Iona Institute, thus she can quite blithely state:

    Think about the dogmatism and intolerance of the new thought police, the contempt for the conscientious objections of others, as you decide which way to vote.

    I would hope rather that the Irish voters will dwell more upon the dogmatism and the intolerance of the old thought police as they decide which way to vote. O’Brien’s piece fulminates:

    Nothing wrong with that, until you realise from the INTO LGBT group that they intend to normalise same-sex marriage in the teaching of children as young as four, using poster displays in classrooms and picture books.

    They suggest using King and King, described by Amazon as presenting “same-sex marriage as a viable, acceptable way of life within an immediately recognizable narrative form, the fairy tale”. The prince is only happy when he meets and marries another prince.

    Ah, yes, King and King – otherwise known as Koning & Koning in the original Dutch, published back in 2000. A charming little book for children – I have a copy in my library – whose message is nothing more than not everyone is the same, and love comes in different forms. Also in my library is a copy of Jenny lives with Eric and Martin, published way back in 1983, and which caused a similar furore in the UK at the time. The message here is that not all families are the same.

    These seem to be messages that worry and concern Ms. O’Brien. I fail to see why. Her implicit cry is “won’t somebody please think of the children!”. We do, Ms. O’Brien. we do. Your way of thinking is to continue to lock children up, and make some of them continue to feel wrong. Your way of thinking leads to a lifetime of suffering. Ask Ursula Halligan.

  • Nine Billion Flies Can’t Be Wrong…

    A couple of months ago I wrote a post “Metro – Murdered By Microsoft?” in which I expressed my concern that it appeared as though Microsoft was dropping many of the elements of the Metro design language. As I said:

    Frankly, if I’d wanted an Android phone, I would have bought one. One of the key reasons why I went with a Windows Phone was the UI design. I like it a lot, and I am at ease with it. To have a key Microsoft team turn their back on it and introduce Android elements is a shock, to say the least.

    A few days ago, we got confirmation that Microsoft has indeed stuck a dagger in the back of Metro. The confirmation came in the form of an AMA (Ask Me Anything) discussion on Reddit by an ex-Microsoft Windows Phone designer, Jon Bell. It’s clear that he doesn’t care for the Pivot design element that is a key part of the design language:

    Swiping sucks. It hides content. Let’s say you’re in Format and you want to get to something 5 tabs away. Five swipes is an unacceptable series of interactions. The carousel model has been disproven repeatedly, every single decade, for several decades. We have the data. It’s a dumb interaction model, full stop.

    It clearly doesn’t matter that I (and presumably many others) happen to like the Pivot and its swiping action very much indeed. Microsoft has the data that “proves” it’s a dumb interaction model. And as an ex-Microsoft designer explains:

    So on the day of the Meeting, the PM [Project Manager] will go on and on about how the Decision benefits the User. They come up with facts that support the Decision. We don’t want to confuse the User with too many options. Only 3% of people used it that way, so clearly it’s okay to remove. Consistency is good for Microsoft, so it must be good for the User. Everybody smiles and nods and agrees this is the best way. The newest to the team, because it just makes so much sense. The veterans, possibly because they secretly know it’s about the engineers and not about the User, but more likely because engineers are inherently lazy. The meeting ends and the Feature has a new direction. It’s a little bit farther from the vision, and maybe little bit worse user experience, but writing software is about compromise. This was a good compromise. It’s not that bad, anyway. It was the best option available. If only the User was there to see it, they’d understand that.

    Probably more to the point, the Metro design language is radically different to those of iOS and Android, and Microsoft wants to attract those users across to Windows Phone if it can. Having a distinct design language acts as a barrier, so Microsoft appears to have made the decision that nine billion flies can’t be wrong, and moved to a similar design language. I think that’s a pity, I like Metro, but at the end of the day, Microsoft wants to make money.

  • Filling A Reservoir With A Teaspoon

    I’ve been using Microsoft’s OneDrive since it was launched as Windows Live SkyDrive, back in 2007. By the time it got renamed as OneDrive in 2014, I had 40 GB of free storage available in the Cloud to use for storing documents and photos.

    I’ve noticed a change in my computing habits over the years. When I had just my Desktop PC, my primary location for storing both documents and photos was local storage on my PC. Backups were taken daily and stored on our Windows Home Server system, with secondary backups of the most important data taken from that server and stored off-site.

    With the arrival of the Cloud, I first started storing copies of selected photos and documents in Microsoft’s SkyDrive/OneDrive, primarily as a means of sharing them with friends and family.

    With the arrival of my first “proper”tablet, the ThinkPad Tablet 2, back in January 2013, I started to make more use of OneDrive as the primary location for my OneNote documents. It was simple to create a OneNote document (usually on the Tablet), and then continue to work on it on my PC. That has grown to the point where my primary storage location for OneNote documents is no longer a local device (the desktop PC or the Tablet), but the Documents folder in OneDrive, which is synchronised transparently across all my devices (now a desktop PC, a Windows tablet, a Lumia Smartphone and a laptop).

    When I bought a license for Office Home & Student 2013 for my ThinkPad Tablet, I began storing all my Office documents (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) in OneDrive by default. That way, they would be immediately accessible from my other machines and synchronised with them.

    With my 40 GB of free online storage available in OneDrive, this would probably suffice for my documents and selected photos.

    But then, last month, Microsoft announced that music media could be stored in OneDrive, and be available to my devices. In truth, it’s not really necessary for me, I already use the Windows Home Server as my music media storage; but the thought of having extra backup options appealed to me. With a music collection that is currently 215 GB in size, I would not be able to hold a duplicate, backup copy, on OneDrive as it stood.

    I decided to bite the bullet, and take out a yearly subscription to Office 365 Personal (70 euros annually). That way I would kill several birds with one stone:

    • Upgrade my license of Office 2010 on my Desktop PC to Office 2013,
    • Be able to install Office 2013 on a further Windows tablet
    • Get 1TB of OneDrive storage, and
    • Get 60 minutes of Skype calls to landline telephone numbers (useful for overseas calls).

    So I’ve subscribed, and also signed up for the “unlimited storage” option of OneDrive that Microsoft announced last year. Today, I received an email from Microsoft telling me that my Office 365 account now has unlimited storage and they’ve added an initial 10TB of storage. I’m only scratching the surface of what is available:

    OneDrive 14

    And now I’m discovering that I’m trying to fill a reservoir with a teaspoon. My connection to the internet is via ADSL, and with 4 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload speeds, it is not blazingly fast. I reckon that it’s going to take several weeks to upload my music collection to OneDrive, and a couple of weeks for my photos. An added complication is that the Smart files feature of Windows 8.1 is being removed by Microsoft in Windows 10, while they work out how to re-engineer it. This means that the user experience of using OneDrive storage will take a step backwards until at least mid 2016.

    Still, I’ve now moved across to using OneDrive as my primary storage for documents, and given time, it will also become the primary storage for my photos, and possibly for my music. I’ll still be using our Windows Home Server for local storage and backup as an additional safety measure.

  • Game On: Microsoft’s Surface 3

    If you’ve been following my search for the ideal Tablet device, you’ll know that a number of them have passed through my hands, whilst I’ve passed up on others. To date, I’ve had an HP TX2000 convertible, a Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet 2, and currently I have a Lenovo ThinkPad 10 and a Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro convertible.

    I’ve long ruled out Apple’s iPads and the myriad of Android tablets, since I use the Windows ecosystem, and up until now, Microsoft’s Surface range of products has never ticked enough of my boxes. Whilst I had initially high hopes for the Surface Pro 3, it came with a poor fixed-focus rear camera, no GNSS capability, and a fan (I really want a fanless tablet). For more detail, see my “trying to nail it” post.

    This might all be about to change, as Microsoft has now introduced the Surface 3. This, like the Lenovo ThinkPad 10 (TP10), has an Intel Atom processor, but whereas the TP10 has the last generation of the Atom (codenamed Bay Trail), the S3 has the newest iteration of Atom chips. These are apparently slightly faster than Bay Trail, but not a major advance. Here’s a comparison of the basic specifications of the TP10 and the S3:

      ThinkPad 10 Surface 3
    Processor Intel Atom Z3795 processor (4 cores,2MB Cache, 1.6GHz with Intel Burst technology up to 2.4GHz) Intel Atom x7-Z8700 processor (4 cores, 2MB Cache, 1.6GHz with Intel Burst technology up to 2.4GHz)
    Display 1920 x 1200 (16:10) 1920 x 1280 (3:2)
    Memory 4GB / 1067MHz LPDDR3 4GB / 1600MHz LPDDR3
    Storage 128 GB eMMC + MicroSD up to 64GB 128 GB eMMC + MicroSD up to 128GB
    O.S. Windows 8.1 Pro 64bit Windows 8.1 64bit*
    Front camera 2 MP fixed-focus 3.5 MP fixed-focus
    Rear camera 8 MP auto-focus + LED flash 8 MP auto-focus, no flash
    Digitizer Pen Wacom N-Trig (optional)
    WLAN 11a/b/g/n 11a/c
    WWAN optional optional
    Bluetooth 4.0 4.0
    GNSS yes optional **
    NFC optional no
    Keyboard optional optional
    Base unit price €699.99 €729.00

    * Apparently, Windows 8.1 Pro 64bits will be available as an option. However, the non-Pro version is perfectly adequate for me.

    ** If you buy the WWAN (LTE) version of the Surface 3, that will also include GNSS, but you can’t have GNSS without WWAN (unlike the TP10, where all models have GNSS included).

    You’ll notice that the prices of these two tablets, while definitely in the “Premium” bracket, are close to each other. However I would definitely want the N-Trig pen, which adds another €49.99 to the price of the Surface 3. Then again, my ThinkPad 10 has a Quickshot Cover, which to my mind is an essential accessory, and that cost me €49. The Quickshot cover is thin, and only covers the screen (it can be completely folded back under the TP10 in use). It can also act as a stand, but it is less stable, and with less angles to choose from, than the kickout stand built into the Surface 3.

    Unfortunately, Microsoft do not produce an equivalent cover for their Surface range. Instead they have the Type Cover – a cover and keyboard combined. Nice idea, but it weighs in at an eye-watering €149,99. Since I don’t need a keyboard, I can’t see myself shelling out for this. So I’d probably go for just a slipcase to protect a Surface 3. Not as convenient as a flip-over cover, but a good deal cheaper. I just wish that Microsoft, or a third party would produce something like the Quickshot Cover for the Surface range.

    So let’s say that I find a decent case for €30, then my total outlay for a Surface 3 setup would be €808.99 versus €748.99 for the TP10. Still within shouting distance of each other, but the gap is widening, and not in the right direction. Physically, the two tablets are close in size, and smaller than the Surface Pro 3. Here’s a diagram to illustrate the differences:

    Tablet Size Comparison

    The Surface 3 has a larger display than the TP10, and I like the 3:2 aspect ratio of the S3 even more than the 16:10 ratio of the TP10. It would be even better for reading books and documents:

    Tablet Display Size Comparison

    This, to my mind, is where the S3 scores over the TP10. For me, its display has a nicer ratio, and a nice physical size. The Surface Pro 3, although it has the same aspect ratio, is bigger (almost the size of an A4 pad). It also has a much higher resolution, which causes scaling issues with some programs.

    I think the S3 is the Goldilocks model of the three (TP10, S3 and SP3). By way of comparison, the Yoga 3 Pro that I have is a bit bigger than an A4 pad, at 33cm x 22.8 cm, and when in tablet mode is simply too unwieldy for my liking. So the plus points of the S3 are:

    • it’s fanless (like the TP10)
    • screen ratio of 3:2 (better than the TP10)
    • bigger screen than a TP10, and smaller than a SP3.

    The drawbacks are

    • premium price
    • no reasonably-priced flip-over cover available
    • no GNSS

    I think, for my requirements, it measures up very well against the TP10, and might well be the tablet to go for once Lenovo ask for their loan TP10 back. Of course, waiting in the wings will be the Surface Pro 4. The question arises, would I consider this. Frankly, I don’t think it will be a good fit for my requirements. I suspect it will be at least as big, if not bigger, than the SP3, with power to match.

    I don’t need a poweruser’s laptab; the S3 is a much better match with what I’m looking for. As usual with Microsoft, the third time’s the charm. The Surface 3 promises to be a good machine. It would suit me, and I suspect many others, very well indeed.

  • Windows 10 Technical Previews

    Over the past few months, I’ve been playing with Microsoft’s technical previews of their forthcoming Windows 10 operating system. It’s the version of Windows that is supposed to marry the best features of Windows 7 (which was designed for traditional PCs with a mouse and keyboard) and Windows 8.1 (which is designed for both traditional PCs and devices such as Tablets that use touch for input).

    It’s safe to say that Windows 8.1, and Windows 8 before it, has had a poor reception in the market. Acres of newsprint have been spread with the cries of pain, and vitriol, from many users of traditional PCs. Personally speaking, I singularly fail to see what all the fuss is about. I use Windows 8.1 on both my PCs and Tablets, and am perfectly comfortable in both environments. I took to the new operating system like a duck to water, and could not countenance ever going back to Windows 7.

    Nonetheless, perception is reality, and Microsoft have realised that their challenge is to introduce a new version of Windows that keeps as many users as possible happy, no matter which camp (PC or Tablet) they are in.

    So, as I say, I’ve been playing with the previews of Windows 10, and I’m coming to the dismaying conclusion that, as a user of a Windows 8.1 Tablet, I just don’t like it…

    While the Desktop side of things has improvements, from my perspective as a Windows Tablet user (Lenovo ThinkPad 2 and Lenovo ThinkPad 10), the UI experience in Windows 10 is significantly worse than that delivered by Windows 8.1.

    From what I’ve seen so far, Microsoft is bending over backwards to pander to traditional desktop PC users. They are removing valuable UI features (the Charms bar has gone) from the Tablet experience, or poking desktop features into the Tablet UI (I do not want the Desktop Taskbar to be present in the Tablet UI, but there it is, whether I want it or not).

    Now I know that it’s a Technical Preview, but if Microsoft are going to deliver the final version in summer 2015 as promised, then it’s more than likely that the major features are now locked down, and all that remains are bug fixes and minor tweaks (e.g. improving the Toytown icons in File Explorer).

    It seems to me, on current evidence, that Microsoft are throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I am not impressed, and I’m not the only one.

  • Mist Eclipse

    Today was an opportunity to see a partial eclipse here in the Netherlands. Unfortunately the weather gods were not smiling. Much of the country had cloudy skies.

    Here in the Achterhoek, there were not only cloudy skies but heavy mist. So in a sense, we had not only a missed eclipse, but a mist eclipse. When I took the dogs out for their morning walk, we were surrounded by mist; not a chance of even a glimpse of the sun. We went for a walk in the woods at around the time of the eclipse. It was very noticeable how it became much darker during the maximum coverage of the sun by the moon, and then the day returned to normal brightness as we returned home.

    Therefore, even though I was not able to observe the eclipse directly, I certainly had indirect evidence that something was afoot. In addition, one of our outside motion sensors (part of our Home Automation installation) has a light sensor. The readings from that today clearly show how the light from the sun was obscured during the moon’s transit:

    Domoticz 25

  • Home Automation Revisited

    Back in January, I wrote about putting my toe into the waters of Home Automation. As I said at the time, there’s a bewildering array of products and standards out there. Over the past couple of months, I’ve been taking a look at some of the HA solutions out there, and I think I’ve landed on one that seems to fulfil my requirements pretty well.

    I had decided back in January that my solution would be one that used Z-Wave, and that’s still the case. I’ve been able to purchase Z-Wave HA devices from several different manufacturers, and they interoperate as promised. I’m satisfied that the choice of Z-Wave is a good one for me.

    As I said in January, there is a wide range of possibilities in the choice of the controller for a HA system. I could buy an off-the-shelf unit such as the Fibaro Home Center 2, the Zipato ZipaBox, a VeraEdge controller, or a HomeSeer controller. Or I could buy just the controller software, such as HomeSeer, and install it on a PC or a Rasberry Pi box.

    In the end, I decided not to purchase an off-the-shelf unit. Fibaro still seem to be struggling to deliver a stable version of their latest software for the Home Center 2, and not being able to trial the other hardware products meant that purchasing one would be a gamble. It seemed to me that a better approach would be to trial a software solution, using an existing computer.

    I ended up taking a look at the following software solutions:

    The first two are commercial products, the rest are open source projects, funded by donations.

    For my testing, I purchased a variety of devices:

    With the devices installed, and included in the ZWave network (registered in the ZStick controller), I connected the ZStick to a variety of software controllers in turn…

    HomeSeer has been around for a while. That means it’s comprehensive (it can control a wide range of devices using a variety of standards), and it has a wide range of third-party add-ons. However, it still strikes me as being expensive: $249.95 for the basic version of the controller software and $199.95 for the UI designer software. If I were to go with HomeSeer, it would probably make more sense for me to buy the basic (linux-based) HomeTroller Zee controller at $199.95. I installed the trial software of HomeSeer version 3, and used it for a week or two. It worked, and the diagnostic information was copious. However, the interface struck me simultaneously as being rather basic, and yet somewhat complex in places. I decided not to proceed further with HomeSeer.

    I admit I only took a cursory look at both Charmed Quark and OpenHAB. I found both difficult to set up, and got the impression that I would spend more time fiddling with them than using them. OpenHAB, in particular, seemed aimed at programmers and developers, rather than end-users at this stage. As a result, I moved on.

    HomeGenie is also something that will delight programmers and developers at the moment. Nonetheless, I was able to get it up and running very easily on Windows, and it works well. Here’s the “dashboard” that I see for the devices I currently have in my HA network:

    HomeGenie 06

    It’s primarily the result of the efforts of one developer, and he’s done a very good job. It’s still at a fairly early stage, so, for example, if you want to develop automated control of your devices, you will find yourself very rapidly at the limit of what the built-in “Wizards” are capable of, and have to turn to grown-up programming to get the job done. That’s all very well, if that’s your thing, but it’s really not what I want to do any more. I made a donation to the project, because I appreciate what has been achieved, and I hope it continues to develop. There’s a small (around 350 members) community forum where ideas are exchanged and bugs highlighted for solving. I could certainly make use of HomeGenie, if there were not other, and for my purposes, better solutions available.

    Domoticz is another open-source project, and while it is primarily led by one developer, there are others actively involved, and the community forum is large (around 3,270 members) and active. Domoticz and HomeGenie are similar in many ways, but there are a few differences, which can be both strengths and weaknesses, depending on where you stand. Here’s the Domoticz dashboard:

    Domoticz 18

    The strength of Domoticz is its maturity; it already has solutions and support for a lot of hardware. In particular, it supports the reading and display of data supplied by our “Smart Meter” for our gas and electricity consumption. With the simple purchase of a cable, I was able to connect our smart meter to the Domoticz system and get real-time graphs of our energy consumption. Here’s what I see for our electricity usage:

    Domoticz 16

    It not only records our consumption (blue), but also the electricity generated by our solar panels (green) that is returned to the electricity grid. Gas consumption can also be tracked:

    Domoticz 17

    HomeGenie, at the moment, does not have this connection to Smart Meters built-in. The programmatic interfaces are there, and such an interface could be built, but I’m not the one to do it.

    For me, the strength of HomeGenie is that it is a complete solution, in that the developer has written software to control Z-Wave devices directly. Domoticz, on the other hand, hands off the control of Z-Wave devices to another piece of software, developed by a separate open source project: Open-ZWave. That means that there is the chance of issues arising out of effects caused by the fact that there are two different software components developed by two different groups. I’ve already come across an issue with my Z-Wave sensors, which may be caused by a bug in Domoticz, a bug in Open-ZWave, or some combination of the two.

    Nonetheless, I can live with that issue, and the quirk that the Fibaro wall plugs don’t always show the correct status in Domoticz. There are two reasons for this:

    • The fact that I can track our energy consumption directly in Domoticz (as shown above), and
    • the fact that Domoticz supports Blockly for building automation programs.

    Think of Blockly as Lego for programming. It’s wonderfully easy to use, and I’ve already programmed the motion sensors on the driveway and by the front door to turn on the outside lights if someone comes along during the hours of darkness (which have been defined, using Blockly and a “virtual device” in Domoticz that I defined: IsDark):

    Domoticz 19

    Domoticz 20

    So for the moment, I’m going to stick with Domoticz for our Home Automation system, with HomeGenie held in reserve as my fallback position.

    And while I tested both on Windows, both Domoticz and HomeGenie are available for the Raspberry Pi. I’ve also stuck my toe into the waters of using a Raspberry Pi, and Domoticz is currently running very happily on it. But that’s the subject of another post, I think…

  • Goodbye, Facebook, and Good Riddance

    Let me put my cards on the table; I’ve never been a fan of Facebook. However, it seems that most of our neighbours are avid Facebook fans, so after holding out for years, I decided that I’d open up a Facebook account in November last year, primarily as a means of being kept up to date with what was happening in my neighbourhood.

    Even after I signed up, I rarely accessed my Facebook page, and contented myself with batting away the many, many Facebook notifications that appeared in my email inbox or on my Windows Phone. My prime channel for revealing my thoughts to the (largely indifferent) world has remained this blog.

    Then today, out of the blue, I got a notification from Facebook that I’m restricted from seeing the profiles of people that I don’t know for one week:

    Facebook 01

    Er, excuse me? I don’t make a habit of trying to see the profiles of people that I don’t know (I have tried looking up two old friends since I joined), so why the restriction?

    Well, sod this for a game of conkers. I don’t need Facebook, so I’ve deleted my account. Goodbye and good riddance.

    Addendum 15 October 2016: It is with great regret that I have to confess that I’ve been forced to reopen a Facebook account. There’s a group of us lobbying for internet services via optical fibre in our area, and it has been decided that a closed Facebook group is the best way of keeping the group organised. Sigh. I still loathe and detest Facebook, but needs must, I suppose…

    Addendum 23 June 2019: I should point out that once the lobbying action was (successfully) completed, I deleted my Facebook account – and have been Facebook-free for over a year. Don’t miss it in the slightest.

  • Damn

    Terry Pratchett has left.

  • Visits to Dystopian Realms

    My bedside table has a small pile of the books that I’m currently reading. I tend to switch between fiction and non-fiction books, but I noticed yesterday that I seem to have been on a run of fictional dystopias.

    9780340921609It kicked off a few months back with David Mitchell’s The Bone Clocks, which I enjoyed, but which I thought was less impressive than his Cloud Atlas, or The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. The Bone Clocks uses the device of having different characters tell their story in the first person, and the main character’s voice and wisdom develops from that of a teenager to being an old woman over the course of the novel. I liked hearing the different voices (Crispin Hershey, the English novelist, is not a million miles from a caricature of Martin Amis), and Holly Sykes as the central protagonist is beautifully portrayed. There are explicit references to characters from other Mitchell books (I recall that he said, in an interview, something along the lines of that he’s writing one meta-book). If there’s a weakness (for me) in The Bone Clocks, it was the “An Horologist’s Labyrinth” section, which rather came across to me as in the style of Denis Wheatley’s “The Devil Rides Out” – a rattling yarn, but with rather over-wrought language.

    The final section, “Sheep’s Head” stepped back from the pyrotechnics of “An Horologist’s Labyrinth” and redeemed the book for me. This is where the dystopian society is portrayed – the Endarkenment – as it is named in the book. We return to Holly as a woman in her seventies, living in 2043 in a world where the chickens of energy-guzzling, resource-stripping and climate change have come home to roost. Darkness descends, but there is a glimmer of light as well.

    beteNext up was Adam Roberts’ Bête. This was dystopia all the way down, but at times very funny with it. It opens with something that is almost straight from Monty Python – a farmer is about to kill his cow, but the animal insists on discussing his right to do so with him. The tale is set in a time not too distant from our own, where artificial intelligence computer chips have been embedded in some livestock by animal activists. The story is once again told in the first person, by Graham Penhaligon, the farmer. He’s irascible, unsympathetic, a Victor Meldrew sort, yet I couldn’t help but warm to him. Roberts has some amazing, and outrageous ideas (wait until you meet the lamb!), but the novel remains very believable. And the ending is a whole new beginning…

    9781408819708I followed that up with Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam. This is the third in her trilogy of dystopian novels that began with Oryx and Crake, and continued with Year of the Flood. I read Oryx and Crake a few years back and enjoyed it, but I haven’t read Year of the Flood. However, I came across MaddAddam at the Deventer Book Fair last August, so I picked it up for a song and added it to the pile of books to read.

    I have to say that I don’t think it’s one of Atwood’s best works. Where Oryx and Crake resonated, MaddAddam fell flat for me. Yes, there’s a sense (right at the end) of how books and writing will be an important driver to the future post-human society of the Crakers, but most of the book is taken up with providing the backstory of a few characters that I assume were introduced in Year of the Flood, and waving the bogeymen of the Painballers in the reader’s face.

    9780553418842Now I’m on to Michel Faber’s The Book of Strange New Things. You might think that this is a strange choice, given that I’m an atheist, and the book’s protagonist is an evangelical Christian minister recruited to do missionary work. It’s true that I view all religions with the utmost suspicion, and I simply couldn’t finish Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead (an elderly Congregational minister writes to his 7-year old son). However, Faber also wrote Under The Skin, which engrossed me with its strange atmosphere and other-worldliness.

    I’m still reading The Book of Strange New Things (I’m at the point where Peter has just met with a member of his new flock), and the book of the title is, of course, the Bible. Already there is no doubt in my mind that this is a book that I will finish and find just as thought-provoking as Under The Skin. I don’t know yet whether the society of Peter’s new flock is a dystopia or a utopia, but it’s already clear that the society that Peter has left is painted in dystopian hues.

    Next up, a change of pace and subject matter; Kenan Malik’s The Quest for a Moral Compass; an exploration of the history of moral thought as it has developed over three millenia, across the world’s cultures…

  • Wolf Hall

    The BBC’s six-part adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s novels (Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies) drew to a close last night. What a wonderful six hours that was! Mesmeric, with acting of the highest order from all concerned.

    If I have one small carp (a tiny goldfish, really), it was that the director’s insistence on shooting night scenes lit only by torchlight and candles, whilst artistically correct, was not well served by the lenses that they used. It’s a pity that they couldn’t have got hold of the lenses used by Kubrick for Barry Lyndon, that might have helped a bit with the gloom.

  • The World’s Most Important Operating System

    I was saddened to learn today that Bill Hill died of a heart attack back in October 2012. Bill was a Scotsman who started out life as a newspaperman and became a typographer, but ended up working for Microsoft.

    In this short video clip Bill explains why the world’s most important operating system is not Windows or OSX or Linux or Android. It’s Homo sapiens 1.0. It’s an operating system that first booted up about 100,000 years ago, and has never yet had an upgrade.

    There’s more videos of Bill available here. A memorial, of sorts. RIP, Bill.

  • Metro – Murdered By Microsoft?

    When Microsoft introduced Windows Phone, precisely five years ago, the major differentiator from Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android was the user experience. Microsoft called the design language: Metro; that is until Metro AG threatened Microsoft with legal action for using that name. Now Microsoft no longer use the term Metro, and indeed it would appear that they no longer want to use many of the elements that made Metro the innovation that it was.

    One of the design innovations was lateral scrolling within apps to reveal different functions (the so-called “Pivot” control). The use of large fonts in the app title cued the user that more was available by scrolling laterally, e.g. as here in the Photos app:

    WP8 04

    Along with Metro came concepts such as the “hub” – single points of entry where similar items from different sources would be consolidated. So, for example, the Photos app consolidated your photos from cloud sources such as Facebook, Flickr and OneDrive with the photos that were on the phone itself. You no longer had to worry about where the photos were held, and open up a Facebook app or a Flickr app; they were all available in one place.

    Unfortunately, I suspect that companies such as Facebook and Flickr didn’t like the hub concept, because they saw it as threatening the power of their brand. Microsoft has responded by either removing the consolidation feature completely (e.g. the integration with Facebook and Flickr that existed in the Photos app in Windows 8 was ripped out for the Photos app in Windows 8.1), or watered down.

    Now it seems that Microsoft is turning its back on other design aspects of Metro, and is busily introducing design concepts copied from Android (e.g. the infamous “Hamburger” button). We first saw this in the new version of the OneDrive app, introduced in October 2014:

    WP8 05

    You’ll notice that not only is the “Hamburger” button present (it’s the three horizontal lines at the top left), but the Pivot design element has also gone. This redesign was met with howls of protest. As I said at the time:

    Frankly, if I’d wanted an Android phone, I would have bought one. One of the key reasons why I went with a Windows Phone was the UI design. I like it a lot, and I am at ease with it. To have a key Microsoft team turn their back on it and introduce Android elements is a shock, to say the least.

    One might almost wonder if the team had actually read the “Review questions for prototype” section on the “Design the best app you can” page of the UI guidelines, in particular:

    • Are you coming from another mobile platform? Windows Phone users will expect fewer taps, clearer views, large typography, and the use of contrast and color.
    • Are you using both axes of scrolling (the X and Y axes) and orientation (Portrait and Landscape)? Depending on the purpose of your app, users may expect both.
    • Do you use Pivot and Hub controls effectively and correctly?

    Even simple things, such as a transparent Tile for the app have been forgotten about (or ignored) in this bastardised design. I hope that the howls of protest that have greeted this version result in a swift redesign to make it a proper Windows Phone app.

    Good design and adhering to UI guidelines are important, and help to build a brand. This horror does just the opposite.

    Looking at what is coming out in the Windows 10 previews, Microsoft is simply steaming ahead with the Androidification of Windows. Metro has been dragged behind the arras, with a dagger in its back.

  • Dear God…

    …will someone please take the new Guardian web site and its designers far, far away? It’s not an improvement on the old, staid, “newspaper on the web” approach.

    Here’s a case in point: an article about the great Irish actor Michael Gambon having to call it a day because he can’t remember his lines any more:

    http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/feb/08/sir-michael-gambon-ends-theatre-career-memory

    And what does the Guardian show us as “related content”? Fucking obituaries! Er, hello, Guardian web people, Gambon is not dead yet.

    I despair…