Geoff Coupe's Blog

Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…

  • Which Country Should You Be Living In?

    According to this quiz, I should be in:
     
    Which country should you REALLY be living in?

    Russia

    A vast terrain filled with beautiful scenery and interesting characters. You don’t trust the world. You feel they are always up to no good. Which is why you’d make a great Russian. You want life to be simple and have no desire for riches, fame or wealth – and thats the only way your government would have it.

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    Not quite the answer I was expecting… 🙂 And in view of Russia’s attitudes to gay people, somehow I don’t think I’ll be applying to move there anytime soon…

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  • Stripping the Enamel

    I know that poking fun at Disneyworld is a soft target, but it gives me enormous satisfaction – particularly when it is done so satisfyingly as in Tim Adams’ column in The Observer today. There’s something about the place that I found creepy, while at the same time I confess that I did enjoy some of the rides. I think it’s the constant artificial cheeriness of the place that made me feel as though the enamel was being stripped from my teeth.

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  • And Lo, It Shall Come To Pass…

    Sam Harris points out why the bible is a product of its time, and not a very good one at that. There were clearly no mathematicians involved…

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  • Cosmic View

    I think I’ve mentioned Cosmic View by Kees Boeke before. There was a copy in my local library when I was growing up that I came across and was immediately intrigued by. The online version of the book is here.
     
    In similar vein – but with seemingly an infinite capacity to zoom in – here is the 10 ways interpretation of the same idea. Stunning.
     
    (hat tip to Neatorama)

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  • Who Is This Stanley Kurtz?

    As he admits himself, he appears to have a bee in his bonnet about gay marriage. Frankly, he should just keep taking the tablets, because he appears not to be talking any sense whatsoever. I’ve categorised this post under "Society", but perhaps I should just define a new category: Wingnuttery.

    2 responses to “Who Is This Stanley Kurtz?”

    1. Gelert Avatar
      Gelert

      Hi Geoff. I’ve commented on this post on the links! Not on here, and I’m too tired to repeat them. That’s what happens when you have relatives to entertain and the only way to get through it is to drink wine. Always makes me sleepy.

      Reply
    2. Geoff Avatar
      Geoff

      Hi Gelert. Thanks for the comment both here and at Hollandaise. Hope the wine was a good one…

      Reply

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  • Windows Photo Gallery on Vista Beta 2

    When the build 5308 of Windows Vista came out I took a look at the bundled Windows Photo Gallery application and was not too impressed. Now that beta 2 of Vista is out, I thought I’d look again to see what has changed in Windows Photo Gallery. As far as I can see, from my standpoint of wanting an application to manage image metadata, the answer appears to be: nothing.

    Windows Photo Gallery does appear to expose the Keywords metadata of the legacy IPTC/IIM specification in image files. These are exposed as “Tags” in the Photo Gallery application. But nothing of the rest of the legacy specification appears to be supported, and nothing of IPTC Core seems to be supported. Well, OK, it’s still only beta, but it would have been nice to have seen a step or two forward being taken.

    And while I’m being a grumpy old man, I might as well rant on about the way in which Microsoft have implemented searching by tags in Windows Photo Gallery. To my way of thinking, searching through a collection using multiple tags is an “AND” function. That is, if I search on a collection using the tags: “restaurant” and “London”, I would think that the result would be a set of images that contains only pictures of restaurants in London. Nope, not according to the good people in Microsoft. What I get is a huge set containing all pictures having the “London” tag and all pictures having the “restaurant” tag. This is, not to put too fine a point on it, <grumpy old man> bloody useless, you bunch of idiots </grumpy old man>. Lord knows, I’ve ranted on about Adobe developers in the past, but at least they managed to implement tag search as an “AND” function in the Organizer of PhotoShop Elements, as well as giving an effective “OR” function into the bargain.

    Microsoft developers also seem to have a totally different brain pattern to me when it comes to selecting images by using the Rating criterion in Windows Photo Gallery. I would have thought that if I select the “three-star” rating, I would see all photos that have a “three-star” rating… Er, no, what I see is all photos that have a “three-star”, a “four-star” or a “five-star” rating. If I want to see just “three-star” photos, I have to explicity CNTRL-Click on the “four-star” and “five-star” rating. Now maybe it’s just me, but this seems totally counter-intuitive. I’ve spent 20 years with Windows saying that CNTRL-Click is used to first add additional objects to a selection. Now, Windows Photo Gallery is trying to tell me that it’s used to first subtract additional objects from a selection… I think I’m getting too old for this.

    2 responses to “Windows Photo Gallery on Vista Beta 2”

    1. Managing Photo Libraries – Part 5 | Geoff Coupe's Blog

      […] Windows Photo Gallery on Vista Beta 2 […]

      Reply
    2. Managing Photo Libraries – Part 6 | Geoff Coupe's Blog

      […] Windows Photo Gallery on Vista Beta 2 […]

      Reply

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  • What If…

    … during World War II, the US military had decided to continue investing in Project X-Ray, instead of the Manhattan Project? Would the world have ended up any differently?

    What was Project X-Ray? Here’s the entry in Wikipedia…

    (hat tip to the always fascinating Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society for this)

    One response to “What If…”

    1. evencastles Avatar
      evencastles

      Poor MSN Spaces and Hotmail. 

      Reply

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  • El Chaltén

    Maciej Ceglowski, over at Idle Words, offers a fascinating slice of history about borders, Bailey’s and ice, illustrated with some glorious photographs.

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  • The End of the Hunt for HIV?

    News comes today that scientists believe they have tracked down the original source of the HIV pandemic – two colonies of chimpanzees in Cameroon. Striking to think that a virus that originated there now infects over 40 million people worldwide. One hopes that the search for the cure will also produce results.
     
    Meanwhile, in related news, the power of delusion remains strong in some – but the sad fact is that it kills needlessly.

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  • The Joys of Software Support

    This week’s Technobile column in the Guardian has Kieren McCarthy delivering a few well-aimed barbs at the so-called "support" offered by computer companies. He also takes some hefty swipes at the "support" forums inhabited by geeks who either dismiss queries with irrelevant opinion ("using Windows? What a loser, you should get a Mac") or who reply with technobabble that confuses the poor questioner even more.
     
    I have to say that sometimes I have found a workable reply to one of my questions in these forums, but often searches are fruitless. Part of that is down to the fact that I’m often to be found trying out beta software. And despite what some commenters have said here recently, I do understand that beta usually means bug-ridden. But when the bugs are so obvious, one sometimes wonders why the software isn’t called an alpha release…
     
    I’ll leave you with an example of a bug I came across yesterday when I decided to try out the RSS capabilities in the beta 2 release of Internet Explorer 7. I imported my list of RSS feeds from my trusty news aggregator (RSS Bandit) into IE7, and sure enough, all the feeds were present and correct. Well, my hierarchy of categories was lost and I just had an alphabetical list of 300 feeds – not very useful (hint to the IE7 developers). But when I tried to access any of the feeds, I got a file download security warning, so in effect, the RSS capability is useless. I see I’m not the only one who has this problem, but so far I haven’t found a solution to this. Oh well, time to delete the feeds (which I have to do one by one, on 300 feeds – another hint to the IE7 developers: batch is your friend). Back to RSS Bandit…
     
     

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  • Microsoft: Open Mouth – Change Feet

    Sometimes I think that Microsoft is its own worst enemy.
     
    Today, Microsoft has announced the availability of Beta 2 of Office 2007. So off I go to the web site to register and download the beta. First of all I get presented with a new file download manager- SmartSource – yet another one in a long line of download managers from Microsoft. This one uses the .NET version 1.1 framework. Er, excuse me, but Windows Vista comes with .NET version 2.0. So immediately, there is a problem.
     
    OK, so I finally get the software downloaded. And I manage to install Office 2007 Beta 2.
     
    But then the fun starts. The Beta insists on having a new (beta) version of Windows Desktop Search installed. OK, but after installation, I discover that my MSN Search Toolbar in Internet Explorer has been hosed. Sigh – did I really expect Microsoft product groups to talk to one another?
     
    OK, I then want to install the next beta from the Office 2007 suite. So I start up the SmartSource application again. What’s this? "The email address specified is invalid! Please contact customer support or try again."
     
    Er, no, my email address is perfectly valid – it’s your software that is a pile of fucking crap. Oh, and what’s that about "contact customer support"? You provide no bloody means of contacting your bloody customer support. Try again? I don’t think so. Linux is starting to look awfully attractive right now.

    12 responses to “Microsoft: Open Mouth – Change Feet”

    1. Brian Avatar
      Brian

      You do understand what "beta" means, right?

      Reply
    2. Bill Avatar
      Bill

      Welcome to it man. You wouldn’t believe the stuff we see in support; it’s frightening at times.

      Reply
    3. Matthew Avatar
      Matthew

      i believe they have disabled the smart download software, now when going to the download site, all you get is the direct file links, you just need to go back and go in again and download normally

      Reply
    4. Unknown Avatar
      Unknown

      As Brian has mentioned, I’m not sure you quite grasp the concept of beta software.
       
      Beta software has bugs, beta software is not the final, polished, tested, QA’d product. This is not just applicable to the product itself but often the installation/uninstallation process, documentation, support and all the other things that you expect from a proper release.
       
      If you install something like a beta of office on your own machine and expect to be able to use it with no pain/frustration you might be in for a bit of a shock.
       
      I generally don’t install betas of significant products (OS, office, developer tools) on real hardware that I rely on day-to-day to do my job. If I do then I make sure I test them out on a disposable virtual machine first or speak to people who have.

      Reply
    5. Geoff Avatar
      Geoff

      Yes – I do understand what beta means. I’m complaining about a) the SmartSource application – not the Office Beta and b) about the fact that different product groups in Microsoft have a tendency to trample over each other – introducing new features that break other product software.

      Reply
    6. Gerry Avatar
      Gerry

      The SmartSource software was the LEAST of my problems, (although problems there are!), I can’t get an of the products to activate.
       
      Keeps asking me to check my internet connection, well that’s working fine otherwise I wouldn’t be typing this would I?!!

      Reply
    7. Geoff Avatar
      Geoff

      Gerry, I sympathise. Although I have to say that so far the Office Beta is behaving well for me. That’s more than I can say for the Vista Beta 2. After two attempts I got it installed on one system, but get BSOD on start up if I try and install the soundcard drivers. On another system it fails to even install – it claims that Winload.exe is corrupt (but it isn’t of course. I suspect that a SCSI card may be to blame, which is confusing the setup process…

      Reply
    8. Geoff Avatar
      Geoff

      Humph. It wasn’t the SCSI card causing the install process to fail with Vista. I have no idea what it is. System recovery fails as well. So far then, two machines – both of which therefore do not have a working version of Vista that I can play with. So Beta 2 does not impress.

      Reply
    9. Sue Hill Avatar
      Sue Hill

      Folks – update on status re: the Office Beta effort.  Apologies on the issues with SmartSource – it has been sidelined and was obviously not tested for typical scenario. (ug).  Vendor being used is working to address and upgrade it.  For now, please use the direct download links (click directly on the product link) – they work great and assuming you have a solid high bandwidth connection should serve you well.  Volume was forecast for 5000 concurrent sessions and we peaked at 10K concurrent yesterday when the servers hosting bits began to tip.  Capacity was doubled quickly  (thanks ms.com!) and we’re no longer seeing problems in that regard.  Now, the next link the chain is beginning to feel the impact of Europe and Asian users coming online to get the bits. Activation servers for Office are seeing 30 hits per second, which is higher than we’d expect.  Still working to investigate but fear not – folks are on it.  Please be patient and all will get worked out soon.  In addition we’re hearing reports of the French and German copies of Office Professional being corrupted on the download servers.  Those are being updated and should be cleaned up soon as well. 
       
      Why don’t we have all this well scoped, pre-planned and "Katrina-proofed"?  Because this is beta, because there is huge pent up demand that we might not see simultaneously in a real world scenario, because we’re purposely setting this up to test a few areas in the bits distribution and deployment chain to ensure we’re going to be ready for prime-time, and because we’re hugely focused on making the products great so we can get them out to you in a timely fashion.  The beta experience is to be expected to have bumps along the way, and we thank you for working with us and your patience as the kinks get worked out.  We’ve already gained some good data in simply the issues we’ve seen with the downloads.  
       
      Are there lessons we can learn from the stupid mistakes? Yes, of course.  We’re noting them and will hopefully do better next time around.  Our major investment is in making great products and thus, we don’t optimize for the greatest, smoothest beta experience, but we know we can do better than this, and we will.
       
      thanks again for your patience.
      Sue Hill
      Office Customer and Partner Programs
       

      Reply
    10. Gerry Avatar
      Gerry

      Well at least I know now there is a problem with activation, and I guess I’m uninstalling SmartSource too now by the looks of it.
       
      To say I was pissed off with it was putting it mildly.  I’ve been happily using the previous beta versions happily for ages now with no problems, so the fact that having spent all morning uninstalling, downloading, and installing for absolutely fuck-all benefit was, to say a little irritating?!
       
      I’ll give it another go in the morning and see what happens!

      Reply
    11. Geoff Avatar
      Geoff

      Sue, I appreciate the time you’ve taken to respond to the issues we’ve all been having. Nonetheless I have this feeling that you (Microsoft) are being a trifle disingenous when you claim that you misjudged the pent-up demand. The way I see it, the left hand (Microsoft marketing) has been stoking the fires of demand furiously, so the right hand (online services) should hardly be surprised when everyone duly delivers a Pavlovian reaction to marketing folks and their strokes…

      Reply
    12. Gerry Avatar
      Gerry

      Well it’s taken almost 23 hours but I’ve finally got Office + Sharepoint Designer installed AND activated!!  Can I go to bed now?
       
      Just for a laugh I installed Expression Web Designer… can anyone point out the difference to Sharepoint Designer because I can’t see the slightest one?!

      Reply

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  • Information Management in the Oil Industry

    So, here I am, sitting at my PC and watching the Bill Gates keynote at this year’s WinHEC (yep, I know that I’m a sad case). And here’s Alan Nunns of Chevron, talking about information management in the oil industry. That brought back memories. One of the challenges the oil industry has is dealing with the torrent of information – for example, an oil refinery can generate up to a terabyte of data per day. Nunns was touting what Chevron and Microsoft had done together in information management and introducing a standardised desktop infrastructure for Chevron’s decision makers. Hmm, that reminds me of the sterling work done by folks such as David and Johan in my old company…

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  • Sita Sings the Blues

    I’ve mentioned this charming animated series made by Nina Paley before. I’ve just found that she has released a fourth episode in the series – the Battle of Lanka. Highly stylised cartoon violence set to a jaunty tune – but don’ let that put you off. Take a look.

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  • “God Made The World…

    … But the Dutch made The Netherlands". So runs a saying here in The Netherlands. For 500 years the Dutch have been engaged in reclaiming land from the sea. But now there is a sea-change, as it were. In the light of global warming and rising sea levels, the Dutch water engineers are preparing to give back land to the sea.
     
    There’s an article by Elizabeth Kolbert in today’s Observer that gives the background. Well worth reading.

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  • Hirsi Ali and the Crabs

    My father used to tell a story – a Manx parable. He used to say that if you went to a fishing harbour in England, you’d see creels (fishermen’s baskets) full of crabs. Crabs would be sorted, with crabs of the same size put into each creel. Occasionally, you’d see a small crab laboriously struggle out of its creel, and try its best to get into a creel containing larger crabs. Nothing unusual in that, my father would say. However, he would continue, if you go to the harbour in Douglas, and look at the creels of Manx crabs, you’d notice something different. There would be the creel of little crabs, and yes, there would be a crab trying to pull itself out. The difference was that all the other little crabs would be doing their damndest to pull it back…
     
    I am reminded of that story when I look at the Hirsi Ali affair. The nastier side of the Dutch character is currently on display in many people and it is not a pleasant sight. This article by Okke Ornstein – the Stoning of Hirsi Ali  describes the situation well. And Hirsi Ali’s own press release from yesterday is a dignified response to the recent sorry events.
     
    It seems to me that some people in Dutch society are confusing the letter of the law with the spirit of the law. They do not have the wisdom of Solomon, and would be all too willing to split a baby in two to follow the letter of the law.

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  • Fungal Madness

    A recurring nightmare of mine is to realise that, bit by bit, the society around me is changing to become something that is dangerous to my very survival. Fortunately for me (at least so far), that scenario is thankfully relegated to my paranoid subconscious. When I wake in the morning, the sunlight can drive it away and I can relax.
     
    Unfortunately for many, it can literally be how daily life is to be experienced. Take, for example, Salam Pax’s latest post. I would find it terrifying to live in today’s Iraq.

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  • The Line of Beauty

    Tomorrow night, the BBC screens the first episode of a three-part adaptation of Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty, the Booker Prize-winning novel that evokes the spirit of fast living in London in the years of Thatcher.
     
    It promises to be riveting television. There’s even a leader in The Guardian today praising the adaptation (but, he said pedantically, haven’t they got the hyphen in the wrong place in the phrase "Booker Prize-winning"?).

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  • From Frying Pan To Fire?

    A row has broken out around the Dutch MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali. She is accused of being economical with the truth when she arrived in The Netherlands seeking asylum in 1992.
     
    The result has been that she has decided not just to step down from the Dutch parliament, but also to move to the US where she will take up a position in the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative thinktank based in Washington.
     
    I confess to having mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I can see why the conservative elements in US politics would want to embrace Hirsi Ali as someone who stands against "islamic facism", and I can see why she might want to leave all the shit she’s been getting in the Netherlands behind. But I can’t help feeling that, if she really is true to her views on women’s and homosexuals’ rights that these will ultimately jar with her new paymasters, and I predict a divorce in the not too distant future.
     
    It’s either that, or she’s just another typical politician, willing to change her views for her own survival. Time will tell.
     
    Update: reactions from various people in Dutch politics. Wiegel’s reaction is a typical smug Dutch pronouncement. I find that sort of attitude irritating beyond belief. He is clearly in the "I’m alright Jack" mode of thinking whilst rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. Peter van Ham, however, points in the same direction as my feelings – Hirsi Ali will find strange bedfellows in the AEI.
     
    Update 2: the story is now emerging in the UK press, e.g. The Guardian and The Telegraph. The latter does point out that apparently the fact that Hirsi Ali lied about her background in order to get asylum status "has been common knowledge since September 2002". Still, that’s not going to sav her. Today, the Dutch papers are reporting that the lovely Rita Verdonk, the hard-line Dutch Immigration Minister, is now saying that Hirsi Ali should never have been granted Dutch citizenship in 1997, and therefore it is possible that she will be stripped of her citizenship.

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  • Recycling Is Good Business

    As a result of the house move and buying some new stuff, we’d accumulated a lot of rubbish that needed to be got rid of. It was time to look at the recycling options. When we were in Gouda, we’d just load the car up with the junk and take it down to the Cyclus plant and offload it for free. Here in the Achterhoek, I discovered that there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.
     
    There is a recycling location, Ter Horst in Varsseveld, but as a privatised concern (no longer under the control of the council), you have to pay to get rid of your rubbish. This has had two effects. One, the good burgers of Varsseveld and the surrounding environs tend to just dump their rubbish anywhere rather than actually taking it to Ter Horst and paying someone to get rid of it. The Dutch have a reputation second only to the Scots for being careful with their money. And two, I noticed that a privatised recycling business which not only charges its customers, but which also makes money through recycling the stuff they bring in is clearly doing well. I note this from the fact that the line of cars owned by the employees and the owner of the concern were, without exception, rather expensive BMWs.
     
    Ah well, such is life, I thought as I offloaded the junk and received a chit that I had to take to the cash desk. And it was there that I had the experience for which it was all worthwhile. The cash desk was in the kitchen of the business owner’s house, and it was presided over by Gypsy Rose Lee. She was every inch the part, and guarded by two fearsome dogs of some kind of (very large) bulldog breed. The house was doing its best to masquerade as a gypsy caravan, complete with chandeliers, oil stoves, knicknacks and tapestries. Glorious to see that sub-cultures are alive and well in the Netherlands… 

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  • Look Out, Eurovision’s Coming…

    This weekend sees this year’s extravaganza of kitsch, otherwise known as Eurovision. We’ll be glued to the TV, watching the BBC simply because of Terry Wogan’s post-ironic commentary. Eurovision really is the biggest pile of tosh, and for that reason is irresistible. Some of the performers and their entourage are probably a few sandwiches short of a full lunch as well. For example, in the report of the press conference from the 12th May, we read:
    Before Silvia arrived to meet the press, her boyfriend instructed the journalists not to look the Icelandic star Silvia Night in the eye or else they would be removed. “I welcome you all to enjoy my stay in Athens,” said Silvia when she did arrive. “I am an international superstar and you are all my children.”
    Yes, dear, just keep taking the tablets.
     

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