Geoff Coupe's Blog

Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…

  • Thank You, Iain Menzies Banks

    There’s been a slight disturbance in the Force (otherwise known as the internet) the past couple of days.

    A Scottish author, beloved by many – and me – has recently died. Far too soon, and with too many stories yet untold.

    I’ve been reading the many tributes left to him by fans and fellow-writers alike.

    I find it strange and intriguing how much his death has affected me. I never knew the man, never met him, and yet somehow his death has caused tears to spring unbidden to my eyes. God forbid that I’m having a Princess Di moment. I would like to think that my sorrow is caused simply by the fact that he was, by all accounts, a good man, and his voice has been stilled far too early.

    He wrote in both major and minor keys. For the snobs, the major keys were his “mainstream” literary works; such as The Wasp Factory and Complicity.

    But, great though they were, for the rest of us, his so-called “minor”works – his SF novels – were the real thing. He wove an entire civilisation – The Culture – spanning multiple worlds and thousands of years. And he made it real. As Ken MacLeod wrote:

    He likened writing literary fiction to playing a piano, and writing SF to playing a vast church organ. Squandering the “unlimited effects budget” of his imagination on the vast scale of SF was always, by a small edge, the greater joy.

    It’s difficult to choose one passage from all his work that stands for him and what he said to me. But I think it has to be this, from Against A Dark Background:

    Sorrow be damned and all your plans. Fuck the faithful, fuck the committed, the dedicated, the true believers; fuck all the sure and certain people prepared to maim and kill whoever got in their way; fuck every cause that ended in murder and a child screaming.

    Amen.

    3 responses to “Thank You, Iain Menzies Banks”

    1. David Broster Avatar
      David Broster

      I couldn’t agree more. I also shed a tear and decided to load ebooks for my upcoming holiday and will re-read the banksy stuff

      Reply
      1. Geoff Coupe Avatar
        Geoff Coupe

        I’ll be packing a few paperbacks, and leaving the hardcovers at home…

        Reply
    2. RIP Margi | Geoff Coupe's Blog

      […] another connection with my past or present has gone. Most of the time they are of somebody famous, a well-known author perhaps, whose work has influenced me, but with whom I have had no personal […]

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  • Damn

    Another inspiration is stilled.

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  • 18 Arguments Against Gay Marriage

    The New Statesman’s Caroline Crampton lists 18 arguments voiced today in the UK’s House of Lords against same-sex marriage.

    All the usual suspects are there, including the new Archbishop of Canterbury. I can’t say that I’m surprised by his stance. Religion poisons pretty much everything.

    I suspect that very similar arguments were once made against the abolition of slavery.

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  • The Swapper

    That’s the title of a new game for Windows. It’s a series of puzzles woven around the story of an astronaut who comes into possession of a cloning device.

    It has beautiful visuals, literally hand-crafted from clay and everyday objects, and an intriguing storyline. The idea of cloning, and transference of consciousness between clones, has a long and deep philosophical history. Derek Parfit’s Reasons and Persons, with Daniel Dennett’s and Douglas Hofstadter’s The Mind’s I are excellent places to continue the exploration of self and consciousness.

    Forget first person shooter games, this is the sort of thing that I can engage with. Highly recommended.

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  • Photo Metadata

    The BBC’s News web site has a video report on photo metadata. It’s a fairly good introduction to the topic, and worth five minutes of your time.

    The reporter, Ian Hardy, makes the point that your grandfather’s photos often had some explanatory text written on the back of them – and that’s the metadata. In today’s digital world, the vast majority of images are being created with technical metadata (camera type, shutter speed, etc.) but often without any information on who is in the picture. The situation is not being helped by the new generation of social media web sites or mobile Apps for smartphones, Tablets or iPads that do not support management of metadata, or even worse, strip it out.

    I’m a firm believer in the value of metadata. Unfortunately, at the moment, it’s a minefield, with competing and conflicting standards and poor, faulty, or non-existent support in applications and online services. Things can only get better, but there’s no guarantee that they will.

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  • You Say Tomayto…

    …and I say tomahto…

    The Beeb has a new series of historical programmes being broadcast under the portmanteau title of Life and Death in the Tudor Court.

    Last Thursday saw the broadcast of The Last Days of Anne Boleyn, and what a rich plum pudding of a programme it was. It had a collection of historians and novelists – big guns, such as David Starkey and Hilary Mantel – battling it out over whose interpretation of the facts – as far as they are known – were the real McCoy. I thought it was absolutely riveting. The programme makers interviewed the experts individually, and then cut between them so that it was very apparent that history is fluid, and the truth is never as clear-cut as some would like to profess. The cut-and-thrust between the experts was excellently done, and pointed up the fact that history is never cut-and-dried.

    The following night, we had professor Diarmaid MacCulloch covering much the same ground with his examination of the rise and fall of Thomas Cromwell.

    Unfortunately for the good professor, having seen how interpretations of the players in the Tudor Court were presented and interpreted by a gallery of experts on the previous night, I was far less ready to go along with his thesis. I kept wondering how his fellow historians might have wanted to present a somewhat different picture.

    And then there was his pronunciation of the name of Anne Boleyn. The previous night, all the assembled experts had said Anne Bowlin, just as I’ve always thought of it. And now here was the good professor calling her Anne Bollin. I’m sorry, but something is not right in the state of Denmark…

    You say potahto, and he says potayto – let’s call the whole thing orff.

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  • Photo Editor Apps

    My needs are fairly simple when it comes to a tool to edit digital photos. I don’t need all the bells and whistles of an Adobe Photoshop, just something that I can use to crop, resize, or adjust the contrast or colour balance of an image. Very occasionally, I need to to be able to make a cut-out mask of part of an image and paste it into another. For example, in this blog’s header image (which changes with the seasons), you can see our two dogs sitting in front of the house. They are always there, whatever the season, and that’s because their image has been pasted in to each of the seasons’ images.

    The features of Microsoft’s Windows Photo Gallery are the sort of thing that I have in mind (although it doesn’t handle masks), but I found out a long time ago that it corrupts image metadata. In particular, it destroys Canon’s Makernotes, which are stored in the Exif metadata of images made using my Canon cameras. Despite reporting this to Microsoft over two years ago, and Microsoft acknowledging that there is a bug, this still hasn’t been fixed. In fact, the same bug is present in Microsoft’s Photos App, built for Windows 8.

    For this reason, I only use Windows Photo Gallery to stitch together panoramas – it is very good at that – and don’t use any other of its editing tools. I also don’t use it to modify image metadata, because whenever Photo Gallery writes back metadata into the image file, it will corrupt the Makernotes. For editing and metadata work, I use Photo Supreme. It is excellent for metadata, and the image editor is good enough for my simple tasks. When I need to use masking, then I fire up the ancient, and long since withdrawn, Microsoft Digital Image Pro 10. As an aside, I often wonder why on earth Microsoft dropped this product. It certainly outshines any of their current digital imaging products…

    Anyway, I was curious to see whether there was an easy to use photo editor available for the Windows 8 environment. At the moment, there are over 700 Apps listed in the Windows Store under the Photo category.

    Photo Apps 02

    Admittedly, some of those listed are Desktop Apps, designed to run in the Windows 7 Desktop environment, but the vast majority are built as Modern UI Apps for Windows 8.

    Last month, there was a post on Microsoft’s Windows Experience Blog that listed, and recommended, four Modern UI photo editor Apps. These were:

    I took a quick look at three of the suggestions (Fotor, Fhotoroom and Perfect365), and they all seem to strip out all metadata from a saved image, Exif and XMP. This is not useful, and completely contrary to the guidance from the Metadata Working Group, of which Microsoft is one of the founding members. As far as I’m concerned, that rules out any of these applications for me.

    Today, I saw that Adobe has made their Photoshop Express available as a Modern UI App for Windows 8, so I’ve taken a quick look.

    Photo Apps 01

    Well, on the positive side, it preserves metadata, and doesn’t corrupt it, so that’s a step forward from Microsoft’s efforts. However, it is still very limited in what it can do, and it has at least one irritating quirk all of its own. In this list of capabilities, unless otherwise stated, you can take it that Windows Photo Gallery (WPG) and Photo Supreme (PSU) can match the features listed.

    • It can crop and resize the image, with or without ratio guides.
    • It can rotate the image in fixed 90 degree increments (PSU can also handle free rotation, with or without cropping).
    • It can flip the image (WPG cannot).
    • It cannot resize the image resolution (WPG and PSU both can).
    • It can adjust (both manually and auto-fix) contrast, exposure and white balance, and apply preset filters.
    • It can remove Red Eye (PSU cannot).
    • It can heal images (WPG cannot).
    • It cannot handle masks and image layers (neither can WPG or PSU).
    • It cannot handle RAW images (PSU can, while WPG can only display them)

    Interestingly, it looks as though the App is extensible. You can add paid-for filters. So it’s possible that some of the limitations may be overcome in the future.

    And what of the irritation?

    Well, I don’t know whether the App is saving images at full quality, or whether it is applying compression. As a test, I took an original JPEG image that was 6.82 MB in size, and used the App to save a copy (no changes were made). The resulting copy was 4.08 MB in size. I suspect that some compression has been applied, but I have no way of telling how much, or more importantly, be able to save with no compression. That I do not like in an application.

    I also get slightly irritated by the fact that I can only save to one online Cloud storage service: Adobe’s own Revel. Fine, but I want to use my existing (and free) SkyDrive storage, rather than have yet another service to deal with.

    So in summary, all I can say is that Adobe’s Photoshop Express has promise, but it is not yet at a stage where I will drop my other digital image editor tools in its favour. Ask me again in a year.

    Addendum: I asked on an Adobe forum whether I could stop Photoshop Express from compressing my images. The answer is no, and that’s apparently by design.

    Also, I raised the issue of metadata being stripped out by Fotor with their support people. I had a response in which their programmer confirmed that Fotor does not save all of the Exif metadata in edited images. Unfortunately, he also seemed to be completely unaware that there are other types of image metadata besides Exif – and these are equally important to photographers.

    This link http://www.photometadata.org/META-101-metadata-types has an easy to understand introduction to image metadata.

    As it stands, Fotor is not a suitable tool for any photographer who cares about preservation of image metadata. The same seems to be true for many of the photo Apps currently available.

    10 responses to “Photo Editor Apps”

    1. Mark Avatar
      Mark

      Very interesting post. I’m at the point where I need a new free/low cost editor. My Photoshop CS3 will not run under Win8 (thanks Microsoft) and Adobe says there is no upgrade path from CS3 to 6 (thanks Adobe) except to simply purchase a new copy at full price and I just can’t justify it.

      I don’t really care if its a Modern UI app or not, but I have yet to find ANY ModernUI apps that have a decent feature set so I’m looking at desktop apps. Paint.NET has been recommended by many, any thoughts on it?

      Reply
      1. Geoff Coupe Avatar
        Geoff Coupe

        Mark, I use Paint.NET frequently; but not as an image editor. I use it to adjust resolutions and crops of screenshots, and to add annotations onto screenshots. I find it very good for that, but I’ve not used it as a photo editor tool.

        Reply
      2. Geoff Coupe Avatar
        Geoff Coupe

        Mark, have you tried this to get CS3 to run under Windows 8?

        How to Solve Photoshop CS3 Compatibility Issues with Windows 8

        Reply
    2. Matt Healy Avatar
      Matt Healy

      For light image editing I still use Microsoft Photo Editor, which came with versions of MS Office through XP (I think they dropped it with Office 2003). Under Windows 7, it crashes whenever I try to open or save a file so I use the kludge of copying from Paint into Photo Editor, editing there, then copying back to Paint and saving there. I suppose it won’t work at all under Windows 8; I shall miss it after two decades of daily use!

      When I need a high powered image editor, I use the Open Source tool Gimp.

      Reply
    3. Photo Metadata | Geoff Coupe's Blog

      […] The reporter, Ian Hardy, makes the point that your grandfather’s photos often had some explanatory text written on the back of them – and that’s the metadata. In today’s digital world, the vast majority of images are being created with technical metadata (camera type, shutter speed, etc.) but often without any information on who is in the picture. The situation is not being helped by the new generation of social media web sites or mobile Apps for smartphones, Tablets or iPads that do not support management of metadata, or even worse, strip it out. […]

      Reply
    4. michaelfanous Avatar
      michaelfanous

      Hi Geoff,

      i am very happy that I came across your blog, I recently started trying to organize my photo albums, which are stored across several external devices. (Trying to organize over 50,000 photos). I am not a professional photography by any means. However, I am the “family/event” historian so to speak, so I love documenting and taking pictures of everything. I wanted to know your thoughts are current software out there? Lightroom 5, Photo Gallery (Windows), ACDSee, Picasa 3.9.

      My main concern is that all these files will eventually be stored in 1 central location, and the family can access them at their own over the network. However, I want to make sure that all the tagging is accessible across platforms. i.e. No matter which hardware device, or which software, when a user looks at the picture, they can see the tags.

      I remember in the earlier years (which is what caused me to stop for a bit) I would tag something in Windows PG or in Picasa, but the tags wouldn’t transfer over appropriately. I am not so much concerned with actually editing the individual pictures (I am sure that will come later once I am organized)

      The other requirement is that the metadata is stored in the actual file, and not in some random database. The last thing I need is for that external database to get corrupted and lose out all the information.

      Suggestions?

      Reply
      1. Geoff Coupe Avatar
        Geoff Coupe

        Michael,
        Hmm, lots of thoughts, but to come down to a simple answer is probably not possible. For starters, what do you mean a network – are you talking about a local area network, or (more likely) a network that spans family members connected over the internet?

        The simpler the situation, the easier it would be to come to a fairly simple solution, but I suspect that if you’re looking to serve the needs of a far-flung family in the fullness of time, you’re going to have to make compromises.

        I think that your starting point of wanting to have metadata stored in the files themselves is key, and we can go from there. The issue is that, as you’ve found, different software packages don’t always work together. For core metadata, such as descriptive tags, the chances are pretty good, but for stuff such as people tags, different manufacturers take different approaches. For example, Picasa and Windows Photo Gallery both offer people tags, but they don’t really work together yet. See this (old) post of mine for some of the issues: https://gcoupe.wordpress.com/2011/12/10/picasa-versus-windows-live-photo-gallery/

        Tell you what, let me think about this for a bit, and I’ll put down some suggestions in a blog post in the next day or two.

        Reply
    5. michaelfanous Avatar
      michaelfanous

      Thanks for the quick response!

      To answer your question concerning the network aspect. The current NAS I have at home is a Synology device. (I am still trying to centralize all my data, very time-consuming) It has an application called Photo Station (still evaluating the tagging abilities). It allows for local area network, and allows for users that I have assigned to access it over the internet. (it allows to control permissions of albums, visibility, etc)

      I look forward to reading your next blog post. Thanks so much!

      Reply
      1. Geoff Coupe Avatar
        Geoff Coupe

        Michael, the post “Sharing Photos” is now up: https://gcoupe.wordpress.com/2013/09/22/sharing-photos/

        Reply
    6. Sharing Photos | Geoff Coupe's Blog

      […] couple of days ago, one of my posts had the following comment and question from […]

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  • IDAHo

    Since 2004, May 17 has been marked as the International Day Against Homophobia. The Dutch Government is hosting a three day international conference in The Hague on the subject of homophobia at the moment.

    Today, the EU Fundamental Rights Agency published a report on the experience of LGBT people across the EU and in Croatia. It doesn’t make for very comfortable reading. The survey (of 93,000 people) found:

    • Some 26% of respondents (and 35% of transgender respondents) said they had been attacked or threatened with violence in the past five years
    • Most of the hate attacks reported took place in public and were perpetrated by more than one person, with the attackers predominantly being male
    • More than half of those who said they had been attacked did not report the incident to the authorities, believing no action would be taken
    • Half of respondents said they had felt personally discriminated against in the year before the survey, although 90% did not report the discrimination
    • Some 20% of gay or bisexual respondents and 29% of transgender respondents said they had suffered discrimination at work or when looking for a job
    • Two-thirds of respondents said they had tried to hide or disguise their sexuality at school.

    Full details of the report and its findings are here.

    Yesterday, the Netherlands Institute for Social Research published its own report on the situation of LGBT people in the Netherlands. It makes slightly more comfortable reading than the EU report, but we are also likely to be the target of homophobia from the usual suspects within Dutch society.

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  • “They Were Not A Family”

    I see that my birthplace, the Isle of Man, is still home to some old and ugly prejudice. Kira Izzard and Laura Cull have been refused a tenancy application because they are a lesbian couple. Their landlord, Keith Price, who is a Methodist Minister, stated:

    “We understood that they were not a family so we said we couldn’t proceed [with the rental agreement].

    “We believe that God has a plan for our lives within the context of marriage, the scripture is quite clear in its teaching on this.”

    In the UK, such a refusal would be illegal; unfortunately, the Isle of Man is a Crown Dependency, and not part of the UK, so it makes its own laws.

    Ms Izzard has started a petition to ask the Manx Parliament to support the UK Equality Act 2010 in the Isle of Man. Naturally, I’ve signed it.

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  • Rewriting 2001

    The Dreams of Space blog has an entry that shows a children’s comic produced in 1968 that ties-in to the release that year of 2001: A Space Odyssey. It depicts two children, Debbie and Robin, being taken to see the premiere of the film by their parents.

    It’s an interesting piece of ephemera, but it does lie about the story. It states that the “repairman” (actually Dr. Frank Poole), sent out to repair the communications unit on the spaceship Discovery, slips and floats away into space. Er, no he didn’t – he was murdered.

    There’s also the obligatory cringeworthy ending in the final panel when Debbie announces that she wants to be a space stewardess when she grows up, while Robin says he wants to be a space pilot. Gah!

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  • Music In The Cathedral

    The ISS is one of science’s cathedrals. Scientists can also be musicians. Space Oddity has always been one of my favourite songs.

    Commander Chris Hadfield brings it all together. The special effects were all provided by nature. Wonderful.

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  • Feynman’s Philosophy

    A good video that nicely summarises the philosophy of Richard Feynman, narrated by Feynman himself.

    A key section:

    “You see, one thing is I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different thing but I’m not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don’t know anything about, but I don’t have to know an answer. I don’t feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is as far as I can tell, possibly. It doesn’t frighten me.

    And so altogether I can’t believe the special stories that have been made up about our relationship to the universe at large, because they seem to be too simple, too connected, too local, too provincial…”

    Amen to that.

    4 responses to “Feynman’s Philosophy”

    1. Al Feersum Avatar
      Al Feersum

      Hi Geoff,

      I think you might appreciate Pratchett, Cohen and Stewart’s new SoD: http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Science-Discworld-Judgement-ebook/dp/B00BFTSZUC/ref=dp_kinw_strp_1

      Gives plenty of ammunition against the requirement for faith and belief in favour of hard facts (i.e. science), and the fact that we know we don’t know stuff, and that we don’t know what we don’t know, but this is cool, because it gives us the impetus to find out….

      Reply
      1. Geoff Coupe Avatar
        Geoff Coupe

        Hi Al, thanks for the tip, I’ll add it to the reading list. I’m an occasional Pratchett reader (I think he’s very good), but I haven’t yet picked up any of the new jointly authored books.

        Reply
        1. Al Feersum Avatar
          Al Feersum

          Hah! You’re missing out. All the SoD books are damned good – if you’ve ever read any of Stewart and Cohen’s work, then this is more of the same – incredibly accessible science. Pratchett’s addition gives useful reference points.

          And if you haven’t read The Long Earth, what the hell have you been doing?

          Reply
          1. Geoff Coupe Avatar
            Geoff Coupe

            Trying to finish the other 2,465 books in my library 🙂

            Reply

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  • Potential Food

    I’ve always had a barrier about eating insects. Sea crustaceans, no problem; but insects in general? Well no, thank you.

    So cricket broth, or wax moth larvae mousse are not exactly what I’ll be sitting down for.

    Unfortunately, it’s probably the future.

    2 responses to “Potential Food”

    1. Matt Healy Avatar
      Matt Healy

      The old song La Cucaracha, which I learned in Spanish class circa 1976, is now running through my head!

      Reply
      1. Geoff Coupe Avatar
        Geoff Coupe

        Mmmm – Crunchy!

        Reply

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  • Romanticising Pain And Suffering

    Giles Fraser has an article in the Guardian, in which he claims “I want to be a burden on my family as I die, and for them to be a burden on me”.

    Well, bully for him. And a bully is what he is proposing to be, with his pernicious nonsense. I reject his argument that the “problem with euthanasia is not that it is a immoral way to die, but that it has its roots in a fearful way to live”.

    Eric MacDonald also demolishes Fraser’s argument completely, and I refer you to him for chapter and verse. A couple of key quotes:

    But it’s not called “looking after each other” if what the person who is suffering is asking for is help to die. It’s called coercion, then — which has a very different resonance — and if someone is being coerced into being a burden, then Fraser has simply has missed the point about what looking after each other is all about. Moreover — and this, coming from a priest, is inexcusable — it simply papers over the cracks with regard to how people die. Sometimes the burden, if Fraser really wants to know, is borne by those who are dying, and if those who are watching someone die in misery doesn’t notice this, then they are simply not watching closely enough!

    And this just shows that Fraser hasn’t the least understanding — but not the slightest understanding! – of what is meant by assisted dying. It’s not the last desperate act of a person who has no inkling of what is happening until the very last moment, when farewells are almost impossible; it is, rather, a conscious act of taking the decision to die upon oneself, instead of leaving it up to the vagaries of the dying process, or to the all but certain stages that the trajectories of some diseases will follow to carry one away either gasping for breath or crying out in pain. Fraser seems to have not the slightest idea of how people die, or, if he does, he deliberately hides it from his readers the less to worry them at the end of life. But it is just as well to know, beforehand, just how terrible death can be, not so that we can be afraid of it — which seems as far as Fraser’s puny imagination will take him — but so that we can be prepared for it, and take our leave before the worst overtakes us.

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  • It’s NOT a Coronation!

    It’s been a momentous day here in the small country of The Netherlands. This morning, at 10:10, Queen Beatrix signed the document that confirmed that she has abdicated in favour of her eldest son, Willem-Alexander, who has now become King. The first Dutch King since the 19th Century.

    This signing took place in the Dam Palace, which started out life as the Amsterdam City Hall in the Dutch Golden Age of the 17th Century.

    Now, I’m no monarchist, but I was moved by the day’s events. Right from the moment that Queen Beatrix announced she welcomed everyone to the ceremony, and the roar of approval from the crowd outside in the Dam Square brought a smile to her face as she realised that the Dutch people were watching and supporting this move.

    Not that Beatrix has been a bad Queen. Far from it. She has become beloved by us in a way that could only have been dreamed of when she became Queen in 1980. Then, there were protests and smoke bombs in the Dam.

    Following the signing of the Abdication document, this afternoon was the inauguration of the new King. I found it almost astonishing.

    I grew up in the United Kingdom, where the British Monarchy is seen as something established by God. There is a Coronation, where the crown is placed on the head of the new monarch by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Religion and Monarchy are completely intertwined.

    In stark contrast, here in The Netherlands, the Monarch is not crowned. Instead, King Willem-Alexander was inaugurated in a ceremony that involved the State – not the Church.

    The King pledged his allegiance to the democratic process, and affirmed his responsibilities to the citizens. He made a good, and thoughtful speech, honouring the service of his mother, and promising that he would do his best for the Dutch citizens and the State. In return, the State, in the form of the members of the Dutch parliament, signalled their assent to his assumption of the role of king. And they did that individually – each standing when their name was called, and either swearing by God, or a simple “I promise”. It was interesting to see how many members did not invoke God. Another indication of how secular the Netherlands is, and how the United Kingdom still is not.

    King Willem-Alexander pledged his allegiance in front of symbols of the State – the books of the Law of the Land – as well as symbols of his own status, the crown, sceptre and orb. He also had five representatives of the Dutch people present to bear witness, and to bear symbols of the importance of the citizen to Dutch society. They were his “Koningwapenen”, or Kings of Arms. One of them was André Kuipers, Dutch physician and astronaut.

    As I say, I was moved. The importance of ritual to humans is unmissable, and touches something deep within us.

    I wish Willem-Alexander, and his very impressive wife, Máxima, all the best in their new roles as King and Queen of the Netherlands. I think that they will both do well.

    2 responses to “It’s NOT a Coronation!”

    1. James Daniel Avatar
      James Daniel

      Sorry, but the British monarchy hasn’t been seen as “something established by God” since the royalists lost the Civil War and Charles I lost his head. The outcome of that war removed the Divine Right from our “constitution”, and it has never been reinstated.

      I am very uncomfortable about the relationship between the Church of England and the state in Britain. I’d much rather all churches in this country were equal in the eyes of the state. It is also true to say that the C of E fawns in front of the state (though perhaps not of the Government of the day) in a way that can only be explained by the fact that it’s the state that created the C of E in the first place. I’d far rather not see that happening either.

      But please – by going too far you’re weakening what you’re saying.

      Reply
      1. Geoff Coupe Avatar
        Geoff Coupe

        James – OK, I accept what you say, but it seems to me that the CofE are hanging on in there, with the coronation and the 26 bishops in the HoL…

        Reply

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  • The Ghost in the House of Wonks

    Adam Curtis makes amazing documentaries. Here’s one he did earlier – The Attic. A cautionary tale.

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  • "Windows 8 sucks because Windows 8 apps suck"

    Not my words, but the words of Michael Cherry, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft, quoted in Computerworld. To be honest, I think he has a point. I’ve long bemoaned the fact that, far from using the opportunity to showcase the capabilities of Windows 8, the quality of most of the Apps supplied by Microsoft is abysmal.

    I still find myself using traditional Desktop applications for the majority of the time, and that’s simply because their Modern UI equivalents just don’t cut the mustard. They are still toys by comparison.

    I’ve found that Microsoft’s Mail, Calendar and People Apps are still far inferior to Windows Live Mail. The Xbox Music App is still lagging traditional music library applications, and the less said about the Photos and Video Apps the better.

    Microsoft is certainly not doing itself any favours with the current state of its Apps.

    11 responses to “"Windows 8 sucks because Windows 8 apps suck"”

    1. red-jos Avatar
      red-jos

      From the earliest days of my foolhardy purchase of windows 8 to put on my new computer which came with windows 7 I have regretted the mistake. I didn’t even bother to acquaint myself with windows 7 before installing the so-called upgrade. Now I can’t get rid of it and have lived to see the error of my ways! Don’t try something brand new until it has proved itself. Vista didn’t last too long and I hope windows 8 goes down the gurgler as soon as possible.
      As I said before, if I could I would install linux and have done with microsoft for ever more!
      Mannie De Saxe

      Reply
      1. Geoff Coupe Avatar
        Geoff Coupe

        Actually, I like Windows 8 a lot. It’s a better platform than Windows 7, and has a lot of improvements over Windows 7. It’s just that Microsoft’s Apps really don’t do it any justice.

        I have no desire to return to Windows 7 – or switch to Linux, Mac or Chrome.

        Reply
        1. Danny Avatar
          Danny

          I have winner8 and it sucks for one it keeps climbing in OS space get real It crashes and it is full of trash up to 55 GB nothing on the drive I know myself it does not take that. would run 5 OS easy

          Reply
          1. Geoff Coupe Avatar
            Geoff Coupe

            My experience is clearly different to yours.

            Reply
      2. dylan Avatar
        dylan

        You can easily make a partition and install windows 7 on that partition, then boot to 7 ( and even reformat your win 8 partition if you wish, leaving you with just windows 7 os). I am finding funny that so many people are complaining about this being a bug or issue, windows has always worked like this. There are literally tens of thousands of instructional posts on this process, a simple Google search will light the way, good luck my friend.

        Also @ Geoff Coupe I enjoy your blog, but have noticed your snow flakes continue over the rest of the screen (including what i am typing right now), you can fix this by wrapping you header in a div and setting that z-index lower than the the rest of the page (which should also be wrapped in a div), make sure you have position set to relative and make sure that you set the slow flake element to a higher z-index than your header image but lower than your body div.

        Reply
        1. Geoff Coupe Avatar
          Geoff Coupe

          Dylan, thanks for the comment, but the snowflakes are provided by the WordPress.com hosting service, not by me. I actually quite like them drifting down over the whole screen… At any rate, WordPress will turn them off on the 4th January.

          Reply
    2. Mark Avatar
      Mark

      I don’t mind Windows 8 (not much of a recommendation I know) – I have diligently (and manually) pruned my start screen until it is useful and my work habits mean that when it pops up it isn’t too much in the way.
      But I basically ignore the Win8Apps (I don’t know what the official name is for them this week.) As you said, I have yet to see one from either Microsoft or a 3rd party that is better than a desktop or even web (good example: netflix)

      I don’t know why… Do the developers think that the Metro side is basically only for trivial casual use and that’s all that is developed for it?

      Is it such a small market (Win8 is currently around 4% of computers (less than Vista) that nobody cares to put much development effort into it?

      Is it much more difficult to program in that Microsoft claims? – “By the time we released the Consumer Preview in February of 2012, we had added almost a thousand new WinRT APIs, and had modified hundreds of other APIs based on developer feedback.” I’m not much of a programmer, but that quote from Steven Sinofsky implies it is a highly complex environment with literally thousands of APIs ( http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/07/03/readying-metro-style-apps-for-launch.aspx )

      Or is it part of a corporate plan to force the software (and customers) to be easier to support by simply removing difficult or non-mainstream features?

      Whatever it is, for now I just use Win8 as an enhanced Win7
      Mark

      Reply
      1. Geoff Coupe Avatar
        Geoff Coupe

        “for now I just use Win8 as an enhanced Win7” – yep, that just about sums up my experience as well. On my desktop PC, I hardly ever use Metro Apps (apart from a couple of weather Apps). On my tablet, though, it’s the other way around. I rarely use the Desktop, apart from when I’m in Office programs.

        The issue that Microsoft has is that they are attempting to persuade developers away from the legacy Desktop APIs to a completely new set, invented from the ground up. There’s two challenges there (1) the enormous inertia of the traditional APIs and (2) the new APIs are not complete. We’re going to be living with the crufty old APIs for many years to come, I suspect.

        Reply
    3. Jack Avatar
      Jack

      I hate Windows 8. Why would Msoft want to complete disorient and confuse the hell out of Windows 7 users? Total failure of understanding customer needs.

      Reply
      1. Geoff Coupe Avatar
        Geoff Coupe

        The same was said when Microsoft introduced Windows 95. And I seem to recall that some said something similar when Windows 1.0 was introduced – saying that MS-DOS was all that they wanted.

        Reply
    4. BW022 Avatar
      BW022

      I’ve had Windows8 for nearly a year. The Metro apps are almost completely useless. The problem with them is that there is always a better desktop application (and often just a web site) better than them. Metro Mail vs. Outlook? Music vs. Media Player or Media Center? Metro IE vs. desktop IE?

      Low information density, need to constantly go to other screens, hidden menu systems, lack of basic controls (tables, trees, popups, etc.), lack of window ability to you lose context when switching apps, etc. I love Metro on my Windows Phone 7. That because I don’t have a 46″ screen and I don’t need to do sort 5,000 images, work for hours on a spreadsheet, or browse through hundreds of web sites doing research. On a desktop… every Metro app is so inferior to a desktop (or web app). Even Netflix limits me to 75 movies listed and won’t show comments?

      Worse, as the author says, Microsoft’s own apps are massive issues. Why isn’t Music as good as Media Player? Why is buying music on it harder than on iTunes or Windows Phone? And of course, after two years, they still don’t have Office running on it. Any sensible developer (and now users) must have determined that you *can’t* make Metro applications on par with the desktop. So why bother?

      Microsoft should have taken WP7, upgraded it to WP8 (with larger screens, multiple processor support, etc.) and released it two years ago — and used it for tablets and ARM-based machines (i.e. RT-like devices). Then it should have taken Windows 7, upgraded it with Win8 backend features, given it the ability to run WP8 apps in a Window, and then released that as Windows 8. Then sold to developers that you can write WP8 apps for phones, tables, and low-end PCs, and they would still run on Windows 8. Desktop (and server) users won’t have been expected to use Metro, desktops/laptops/servers/tablets won’t have had the dual-personality-disorder, WP8 would have been small a efficient, etc. Metro apps only need to be as good as needed on mobile devices, yet many would find their way onto the desktop.

      Reply

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  • Management Speak

    Steven Poole has hit a nerve with his article in the Guardian on 10 of the worst examples of management speak. It’s got over 1,800 comments all of them expressing their loathing of management speak.

    It reminds me of the old joke, which I came across at least ten years ago, of the Accenture consultant’s answer to the question of why did the chicken cross the road. It was a perfect echo of the language that was being used at my place of work:

    “Deregulation of the chicken’s side of the road was threatening its dominant market position. The chicken was faced with significant challenges to create and develop the competencies required for the newly competitive market. Accenture, in a partnering relationship with the client, helped the chicken by rethinking its physical distribution strategy and implementation processes. Using the Poultry Integration Model (PIM) Accenture helped the chicken use its skills, methodologies, knowledge capital and experiences to align the chicken’s people, processes and technology in support of its overall strategy within a Program Management framework. Accenture convened a diverse cross-spectrum of road analysts and best chickens along with Accenture consultants with deep skills in the transportation industry to engage in a two-day itinerary of meetings in order to leverage their personal knowledge capital, both tacit and explicit, and to enable them to synergize with each other in order to achieve the implicit goals of delivering and successfully architecting and implementing an enterprise-wide value framework across the continuum of poultry cross-median processes. The meeting was held in a park like setting enabling and creating an impactful environment which was strategically based, industry-focused, and built upon a consistent, clear, and unified market message and aligned with the chicken’s mission, vision, and core values. This was conducive towards the creation of a total business integration solution. Accenture helped the chicken change to become more successful.”

    One response to “Management Speak”

    1. Matt Healy Avatar
      Matt Healy

      Love the Accenture chicken crossing the road parody, it rings all too true. A former boss of mine said the Acronym Development Operating Committe, known of course as ADOC, always exceeded its metrics at our company.

      Reply

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  • A Talent is Lost

    The sculptor and designer Graeme Gilmour has died far too early at the age of 48. I never had the privilege of seeing any of his outdoor theatre events, but I treasure my evening in the Amsterdam Schouwburg theatre watching Shockheaded Peter. A terrific production in every sense of the word.

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  • A New Dawn

    We’ve just had twenty solar panels installed on the roof.

    20130418-1549-33

    Apparently, we’ve joined a growing trend in the Netherlands. In 2012, there was 260 MW of energy produced via solar panels – a doubling of what was produced in 2011.

    I must admit I get a kick out of watching our electricity meter run backwards – indicating that we are supplying electricity to the national grid (and getting paid for it by the Power Company!), rather than consuming from it.

    This is a long term investment – it will probably take ten years to break even, but I’m glad that we’ve done it.

    2 responses to “A New Dawn”

    1. Ludwig Avatar
      Ludwig

      What provisions are planned for storing energy when in daytime the consumers produce more than is consumed?

      Reply
      1. Geoff Coupe Avatar
        Geoff Coupe

        Our solar panels are connected to an inverter made by Nedap – the Powerrouter. This device can have batteries attached to it, so that it can store excess energy for later local consumption.

        However, here in the Netherlands, that’s not a necessary option. During the day, excess power is fed back into the National Power Grid, and the power company pays me for the electricity that I produce. That’s what we have gone for.

        Reply

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