I contacted Netgear because my router was playing up. I wrote full details of the issue and what I had tried to fix the issue. A day later I received a message to reset my router etc. in fact, I was run through exactly what I had said I had done over about 7 messages before they misdiagnosed the issue and blamed it on my homeplug adaptors which the router wasn’t finding. In this case, they didn’t even try to read my initial message, but took me through the script they had and came up with an issue so wrong, as a normal user, I would have ended up with the router still faulty and sending back a second set of homeplug adaptors. I ended up having to suggest it was the router and they replaced it, as it was still under warranty (the adaptors were not) I received a new one, and it’s all good now.

Fast forward to this weekend. My broadband went down. A rare issue for my provider Be. I had forgotten I’d requested a change in my service requiring a different setup on my router. I called, waited a short time, then I got a chirpy Czech (I think) man who had read my message that my router wouldn’t get an IP address. I confessed that I did not have the original Be router, but one made by Netgear. He replied “we don’t support that router, but I know it well, so I can guide you”. See the difference? He went off piste! He actually surfs the internet and uses the products! In about 2 minutes I was back up and running. No ignoring my email and asking me whether my router was on, he’d done his homework before he diagnosed and fixed the issue. And they are consistently like this!

There are a lot of people out there who know how to use a product, and it’s this which makes the difference, not the quality of the script, because that 5% of the time when there really is an issue, you may need to actually know what you are talking about.

Now, I do it mainly for the feeling. I miss a couple of ales mid-week, a couple over the weekend, I like getting the appreciation back though. By the end of January last year, I was back to appreciating a decent beer. I went to a pub and ordered after carefully choosing rather than a generic crap beer. This year I’ve even decided if there is the general crap lager I’ll probably even do without, there’s no excuse for serving only generic crap lager when we are brilliant at making very good ales (though that’s a whole other post).

I’m now on the 3rd week when everything changes and everything feels fresher. This is the good bit. Waking up is a little easier and things are a bit brighter. I won’t lie, it isn’t easy to get out of bed in this weather, your head just feels clearer. It’s lovely! I look forward to a good BrewDog ale at the end of it, lovely!

1) Beg, borrow, steal, buy, fabricate or otherwise obtain a rubber duck (bathtub variety)
2) Place rubber duck on desk and inform it you are just going to go over some code with it, if that’s all right.
3) Explain to the duck what you code is supposed to do, and then go into detail and explain things line by line
4) At some point you will tell the duck what you are doing next and then realise that that is not in fact what you are actually doing. The duck will sit there serenely, happy in the knowledge that it has helped you on your way.

Interestingly, I have been doing this for some time unknowingly. I do have a rubber duck that was given to me a few years back. His name is Baxter. Baxter sits on my desk and ponders life. He rarely leaves that spot, and sometimes gets lost in paper and thought. Until I get some work that requires some brain power, at which point he becomes my sound board.

I actually think this is a fantastic thing. So many of us internalise our thoughts, which is fine. But sometimes saying them aloud just helps. I’d recommend anyone to do this with anything that requires thought. I think Baxter might become my therapist now. Here’s to Baxter.

Anyway, read these articles to get the general idea:
Coding Horror: The World’s Largest MMORPG: You’re Playing it Right Now
9 reasons Japanese interactive work is awesome (you only need to read point 3)

Ratings, reviews, reputation make one want to contribute. If you look at my current favourite geek site Stack Overflow it is based on making people want to contribute because they get a reputation mark if they get the answer right for the person asking. Some sites even allow you to unlock certain sections once they have enough points.

Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube do something similar in their own different way. Youtube, for example, has number of views your video has got and a scoring panel. Flickr allows favourites, adding photos to groups. The general concept is there. And the best sites? The BEST ones? They are simple to just pick up and play.

Fantastic. It makes one want to use and contribute to the site with a very simple premise which is generally free and built into a lot of our psyches.

Anyway, the main point of this post is small changes. I bought a book called “Change the world for a fiver” by the lovely people at We are what we do and have been trying to get it for anyone who might be interested. It’s a book which, in a creative way, makes people think of ways they can improve the world we live in. Not major things, just stuff like “plant a tree” (and the seeds are attached to the page). You pick and choose and feel better about yourself.

Community is a good thing. A great thing, and more than ever, humans are involved in online communities or activities, usually without even knowing.

So I discovered a site called The Nag. I just received my weekly email about an hour ago. It is made up of things that are bad (nags), and ways we can change them. Minor things. You don’t have to do anything, but you get tremendous self worth as you complete something. For example, someone wrote in upset that Dorset cereals have a large amount of sugar in its kids range. I recently worked on the Change4Life website for the NHS which has got me thinking about the subject of those little fatties getting out and walking. So I decided to do what it said, and write in to Dorset cereals. Job done. I feel good, kids might get less sugar and we’re happier. It might not have any effect at all, but maybe the next time it will. That’s the beauty.

The main nag this week was actually about bringing food in to work for sharing, just buy something, anything and write “Feel free“. A nice little idea which I might try
in the near future.

Go make it better, go on!

Let it be said now. I hate the news. I’ve reverted back to childhood where watching the news was considered not cartoons and hence boring. Actually, it isn’t boring, it’s just annoying. They report what is going on, how the world is ending etc. etc. then, just because we might not be scared enough, they ham it up.

Let’s go back to the 7th July 2005. A horrible day! Yet the news were happy, so happy because they had a story, hell yes! Something they could legitimately report on the same old crap for the next week at least (hell, they had 11th September 2001 going for at least a month). No more news was really coming out about the event, just the same old crap. Then, a reporter decided to add a little bit. He stood proudly outside Kings Cross Station and said “King’s Cross has become synonymous with disaster, 20 years ago there was a massive fire here”. Erm… 20 years ago? That’s not synonymous, every time I hear Kings Cross I, and most people don’t immediately think “fire” some might, but most don’t. It is unfortunate though.

Forward to last night, 16th January 2009. The plane landing in the Hudson river (well done the pilots by the way, I think that is the first time a commercial airplane has landed on water without breaking up, I need to check my facts though). The reporter gleefully stood and said “New York is known for its plane crashes” and launched into the other 1 story almost 8 years previous. That isn’t known! That’s coincidence!

Bad news! Bad! We’re all scared already. I don’t seem to be alone as The Register got an ex-bomb disposal expert to report on the last potential disaster in London. It was hugely different to what the news had been reporting. It’s still scary, no doubt, but not hammed up.

I’d like to know what you think though (apart from you spam comment man selling vi@gra, I keep buying from you and you send paracetamol, damn you!).

It got me thinking. I love my Blu-ray player, but how much more satisfying is it compared to my first DVD player? My Apple laptop is great, but my first laptop was really what set it off. The answer to both is, I love the latest thing I have, brilliant, but the first DVD player I had, my first laptop, first desktop and first mobile were really the things that gave me huge satisfaction, after that they were upgrades, better, yes, but not quite as satisfying on that marginal level.

Anyway, just a thought. Tell me in the comments if you have anything.

But, before I stay up all night to see if our friends in the US of A have come good, I feel like posting to say to those in the States: http://getyourassoutofthehouseandvote.com/

For the rest of you who can’t vote, you can stay and watch this if you want, a mesh of sampling by the people of LA (Miles, is that you at 2:43 in? You got the move down finally!):

And now to resume normal programming.

Anyway, I thought about these last night as I discussed some (mainly drunken) ideas with our creative director here. So, I introduce to you some of my first work.

The Syphilis Tank (1997)
A batch of stories and stuff usually written while drunk (and sometimes incoherent). The first landing page was intentionally meant to be harsh on the eyes showing you are about to enter a hellish realm, which isn’t so hellish. Nick’s story “the coffee machine” was written while we remained in a 7-Eleven in Stockholm at 4am after having tried to sleep in a park by a graveyard. Heady times indeed!

The Biggins McMunch Corporate Experience (2000)
A take on the corporate sites of old, this little puppy started winning awards. Mr Biggins McMunch himself was even quoted on Lovemarks.