This simple rule should be known by everyone who ever intends to sit in front of a computer keyboard:

If you find you are doing something tedious or repetitive on a computer, you are doing it wrong.

Such a simple rule and yet so many people fail to grasp it – sadly, many of these are self-proclaimed “IT Professionals(tm)”.

Computers are machines that were designed to do repetitive and tedious tasks faster, more efficiently, and with no wear – thus saving the human race from the misery of menial tasks.

How would Charles Babbage feel if he were given some brief glimpses into the 21st century workplace and could observe these all too common scenarios:

1. Printing out email and then carrying it over to someone, who reads it, writes notes on the paper and then sends it back for the original person to retype and respond.
2. Entering data into a spreadsheet/database by hand from a print-out that originated from someone else’s database.
3. Writing out address labels for addresses that are kept on computer.
4. Using Powerpoint for anything whatsoever.
5. Printing out a spreadsheet and adding-up the column totals using a calculator.

The list of these dreadful abuses of technology is endless, and there are entire websites devoted to it.

So what do you do if you are instructed to do one of these tedious and pointless things? Having recognised the golden rule is being broken, you should start asking some questions. Firstly, in any admin department there should be at least one tech-savvy admin person who can do a mail-merge, import, or whatever simple thing is required to simplify the task. If not, ask an IT person – they should be able to provide a simple method of doing the task more efficiently. If not, then you are clearly surrounded by idiots – look for a new job. If you really like your job, then go to the Library, get a Dummies guide, and read it. Once you start displaying wizard-like skills and helping people save time, you will suddenly become more valuable.

But what if you are an IT person and you find yourself in the position of having to perform a routine and tedious task? Move up the ladder and ask an SA or a developer if there’s any way the job “can be scripted”. Uncooperative or surly SA’s and devs usually have profoundly large egos and so you may need a little social engineering. If one refuses to help, tell him the other guy said he’d do it, and in a very short time instead. They’ll usually bend.

Whatever you do, don’t abuse these amazing and powerful machines by using them as expensive typewriters.

Here I am, brain the size of a planet, and they ask me to take you to the bridge. Call that job satisfaction, ’cause I don’t.
— Marvin the paranoid android

Peter Serafinowicz is much too talented, handsome and funny to be a geek – especially not such an articulate geek. Stop being so cool you git.

Why I Steal Movies... Even Ones I\’m In</a>

Mick Jagger on Technology and Music:

I am quite relaxed about it. But, you know, it is a massive change and it does alter the fact that people don’t make as much money out of records. But I have a take on that – people only made money out of records for a very, very small time. When The Rolling Stones started out, we didn’t make any money out of records because record companies wouldn’t pay you! They didn’t pay anyone!

Then, there was a small period from 1970 to 1997, where people did get paid, and they got paid very handsomely and everyone made money. But now that period has gone. So if you look at the history of recorded music from 1900 to now, there was a 25 year period where artists did very well, but the rest of the time they didn’t.

Lots of stuff has happened (as stuff is wont to do) since I last wrote a proper blog: both my sister and I had a birthday for a start. That’s not as important to us 30 something (big) people as it used to be, especially now that my sister and her partner have made a lovely niece for me…thanks guys 😉

I got exactly what I wanted for my birthday: a night of just being home with Michele, the birds, good telly, Carlo’s cheapest, and a quality pizza. Really, that’s all I want out of life these days; it’s nice to regularly achieve it.
The night after that there was an informal gathering of people in a near-workplace bar that helped us all get drunk in a friendly, relaxed, atmosphere. Not quite the Hob/Marquis/Walpole/Amersham, but not far off it. Seriously, some of these American chaps are really rather sound. And the chapesses. Who are also chaps.

Today we went to Michele’s Mum’s as an early Mothers’ Day thing (Michele can’t attend tomorrow because she is working a million hour day at the clinic). This turned out to be extremely enjoyable and involved good food, drink, good family, diatonic accordions, and Sesame Street. Diatonic accordions are extremely good fun by the way, especially if you know your way around a diatonic harmonica. In fact I’m going to try to find one in some flea-market somewhere.

It has been a busy few weeks, both in work and outside. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. In fact the ambient mood in our house hovers around the mellow. That can’t be bad.

For the first time in my life, a UK election has had a vaguely good result. Firstly, it’s a hung parliament; no one party in control. That pisses off all three of the smarmy parties and may result in something resembling democracy.
Secondly, the BNP got a severe slapping in Essex!
Cheers!

Apropos nothing, here is a simple and brilliant description of why NDAs should be treated like used-bog-roll.

In 1964 Harold Wilson challenged then Prime Minister Alec Douglas Home to a televised debate. Home’s response was surprisingly prophetic:

You’ll get a sort of Top of the Pops contest. You’ll then get the best actor as leader of the country and the actor will be prompted by a scriptwriter.

Tonight was a historic landmark in British Political Democracy (may it rest in peace).
The first televised debate between the three leaders (…hmm…why three? what about the Monster Raving Loonies?) went out tonight and was evidence that Britain has now achieved the same level of Democracy as the USA. Of course, Britain is far ahead of America in becoming a Fascist country. America is only proto-fascist, whist Britain has already sold the population to private companies.
I watched 5 minutes of tonight’s “Britain’s Got Dictators” before turning it off.
OK Britain, you have three choices:

1. A smug, white, insincere, power-hungry, psychopath who’s had some dreadful training on how to be a “motivational speaker”. He was also Prime-minister without being elected and comes from a dodgy bunch of Presbyterians and probably sleeps on a bed of nails. He also gave the crooks who ruined the economy an amount of money that is so huge, we can’t picture it.
2. A smug, white, insincere, power-hungry, psychopath who’s had some dreadful training on how to be a “motivational speaker”. He also came from an unfeasibly privileged background, has never actually enjoyed the company of anyone who ever cared about how much things cost, and almost certainly pleasures himself whilst thinking about raping slaves (gender unimportant).
3. A smug, white, insincere, power-hungry, psychopath who’s had some dreadful training on how to be a “motivational speaker”. Who fucking cares at all? If anyone could watch his performance and afterwards think anything more than “does he think we’re that stupid?” then he may have a chance.

This is pure democracy.

Of course, at the end of the day, Simon Cowell is the only one who really decides.

Another thing the Internet has destroyed is the great tradition of “pub bullshit” and the traditional “pub bullshitters” who trade in it. Obviously we’re still in the early days of the Internet, but it’s now so easy to pull out a phone and check the facts that these people have shifted further into the darker corners; near the gents.
So many interesting facts have been passed on to me, and then passed on again by me to others [yes, I too was a pub bullshitter], that it’s quite upsetting to discover they were complete bullshit, even though they were only rendered credible because they seemed so unlikely. Pub soothsayers used to be able to bemuse the punters with assertions like:

“You know ducks quack, well have you ever heard a quack echo? No. You know why? Quacks are the only sound that doesn’t echo and no-one knows why”

“Do you know why sirloin steak is called sirloin? It’s because Henry VIII liked it so much that he knighted it. And that’s true that is.”

“You know that Marc Almond…etc”

“My brother’s just bought a swimming pool, and put that stuff in that goes purple when someone pisses in it”

As much as I loved this urban tradition as a historical artifact, it’s good to wave it goodbye. No longer will anyone accept an assertion as true if the only citation is “a bloke down the pub”.
That’s progress that is. A bloke down the pub told me about it.

It’s heartening to see that Lord Mandelmort’s evil plan to destroy the Earth (AKA The Digital Economy Bill) is getting some mainstream press attention in the UK. So far, my favourite analysis comes from Nick Doody on The Now Show. If you don’t have access to iPlayer, then here’s an excerpt.

For years I’ve tried to articulate how ridiculous the entertainment industry is in desperately trying to hang on to their shriveling market, using brute force and bullying. Nick Doody sums up the whole issue in one, brilliant, sentence:

“It’s just another example of people who make money from the way the world used to be, refusing to accept that their model doesn’t apply to the way the world is now; it’s like trying to protect blacksmiths and farriers by forcing motorists to put horseshoes on their cars.