Graham Chastney (oak-grove)

3 Years of Blogging

I bit of reflection for a Friday evening.

When I first started writing this blog I was still in my thirties - three years later I am into my forties and still writing.

I know lots of people who have started blogging and stalled, or crashed altogether, but something keeps me going. I've often wondered what that "something" is, actually I think that it's "somethings".

Probably the single biggest reason is that I enjoy it. Sometimes the reason doesn't need to be any more complicated than that, but there is more. I regard it as a privileged that people actually read what I write. I get very little interaction directly on my blog, what I do get are people commenting to me when I meet them and sideline conversations that have been prompted by something I've written. That feedback cycle is quite edifying and gives me an encouraging lift.

This is post number 631, which isn't the thousands that I see other write, but it is roughly 1 every working day which is actually amazing.

Writing about things helps to develop the thoughts around a subject, I've particularly found this in the My Brain series of posts, where a little reading got me thinking about something which then urged me on to read some more. Reading a bit, writing a bit, cemented the thinking. I started with a couple of big questions; while pondering them I asked and answered other questions. It's growth and growth is good. Those with agile brains will be the ones of value in years to come, not to mention the ones who have a happy and fulfilling retirement.

I've recently been really enjoying thinking about the tools that I use and why I use them. I have a friend whose garage is immaculate, the tools all have their place and only depart from it when they are being used. I have a few boxes in my garage where my assortment of tools lurk in wonderful randomness. My IT tools are similar, I collect them, use them, leave them lying around. They wait, lurking on hard disks all over the place. Writing about why I use the ones that I use is actually helping me to sort them out a bit.

There is another theme that I think about quite a bit, it's kind of links the brain theme with the tools theme. I am concerned that the tools and working environment that we are currently exposing ourselves too might actually be as dangerous as the ones that other heavier industry exposed our fathers too. I don't mean that there is a disease like asbestosis lying undiscovered out there, what concerns me is what we are doing to our brains. I'm think of conditions like ADT, and Deindividuation, we don't really know that much about the long term impact of high IT use. My son has finished school (already) after completing his GCSE's. Some of his friends are really proud of the amount of time that they have been spending on WoW. One of them is playing so late into the night that he is almost nocturnal. He's in danger of working his body clock all the way around until he's back on the right time. These are brains that are going through rapid development and very susceptable. Are we really sure that this is not doing them irreparable harm?

On a lighter note, I also really enjoyed the company of Jimmy and Grandad. It started as a bit of fun, and has continued that way. Emily (who take many of the pictures) and I have had some strange looks from people as we have exposed them to the delights of these two fellows and the rest of the family.

It's now Friday evening and time for me to go into the garden and remove some weeds. Gardens are definitely good for the brain.

Friday Fun: Waiting for the conference call to start

Microsoft clearly have funkier music on their conference call lines than we do. There's no way that we could dance like this, I have to admit to considering it though.

But like so many people approaching their 40's I don't move like I used to .

Enjoy.

Link: Microsoft Conference Call

The Lone Server

Someone recently spoke to me about a plan to turn off the first server I ever installed, it's an old NT 4.0 server and has been doing a sterling job as a PDC for more years than I am going to let on.

I'm starting to get worried that they might be planning to turn me off at the same time.

I thought about my old friend  server as I watched this video:

Video: The Lone Server - extended version

I particularly liked the reference to Windows ME.

Follow along at the Windows Server Blog.

So "where do you want to go today?"

Technorati tags: Windows, Server, Lone Server, Microsoft

Quota Warnings - Percentages

This is just a little gripe that bugs me from time to time but I fancied getting it off my chest.

The organisation I work for, along with many others, operates a e-mail mailbox quota. I'm Ok with that, as a service provider I think it's a great idea.

My gripe is that I get warned about the size of my mailbox based on the percentage of the quota I have used. I have a large quota (one of the privileged) I get told when my mailbox is 80% full, the same as I did when I had a 100MB mailbox. This doesn't make sense to me, the issue is how much space I have left to work in, and 20% doesn't seem like a sensible way to measure that especially as mailboxes get larger:

• 20% of 100MB is 20MB - which might cause me a problem during a particularly busy day. So I might like to see a warning.
• 20% of 200MB is 40MB - I suppose it's interesting
• 20% of 300MB is 60MB - that would be an exceptionally busy day.
• 20% of 400MB is 80MB- I'm not sure how busy I would have to be, it's more likely that someone has sent me the same 10MB file a few times.
• 20% of 500MB is 100MB - right is as much as I had when I had 100MB.

Warning me that I have 100MB left isn't really telling me anything, I'm highly unlikely to do anything about it.

I'd much rather have a quota warning that told me how many days I had until I needed to do something about it. Even one that warned me at 20MB free would be better.

Time to stop the grumpy posts now.

More Data Lost - But What's The Impact?

Data loss seems to have become the latest cheap news story here in the UK. Back in November the UK Government admitted the loss of some really important data from the Child Benefit department of Her Majesties Revenue and Customs. There is no doubting that this was a significant data with potentially massive consequences for the people who's data was lost (me included). This data set included bank account details and National Insurance Numbers, things that would be very useful to anyone with criminal intent as well as children's names which would make password hacking a lot easier.

There was lots of information and lots of analysis telling people what the impact of this could be.

Since then though, the stories have come thick and fast, but the information hasn't.

Yesterday was another announcement from another government minister - Transport Secretary Ruth Kelly. This time the data lost consists of name, address, phone number, fee paid, test centre, payment code, e-mail where provided.

So what is the impact of that data getting out?

In this instance nearly all of the analysis has been on the political impact of the loss. You have to look very hard for any information on how risky this is. About the best I could find on the BBC was this:

The information commission had judged the risks presented by the loss were not "substantial" and there was no need to notify each person individually.

This poses a real difficult challenge to the IT industry, how do we communicate what the risks are and why this loss is "not "substantial"". More broadly, how do we communicate the things that people should protect at all cost, and the things that are already in the public domain. I know, for instance, that my name, address and phone number are all out in the public domain and that there's no point in worrying that someone has misplaced it, likewise with my e-mail address. I'm not sure what use "fee paid, test centre, payment code" would be other than some form of targeted fraud. I also have a graduated password scheme, my bank password is nothing like the password I give to a site that requires me to register but doesn't do any financial transactions. I don't really care about the latter password, but the first one is used in one place only.

My issue here is that we aren't doing a good job of communicating and that all data loss incidents are receiving a very similar reaction. The problem with that is that people become immune to the message, it's a bit like the boy who cried wolf, only in reverse. The first data loss from HMRC was a really big issue, subsequent minor ones just blind people to the impact of the first one. If we have another significant loss announced people won't realise it because they have become deaf to the messages.

Guardian: UK's social network obsessives are European leaders

I find this statistic really interesting, apparently:

One in four UK adults do it 23 times a month. And Britons do it more often than anyone else in world, except for Canadians.

The Guardian

Social networking - that is (We are British, we don't do anything else 23 times a month).

Why Britons? Why Canadians?

• Are we more technology savvy?
• Do we struggle with real life?
• Are we bored of the TV (because we watch less of it than others)?
• Is the weather really that bad?

Technorati tags: Facebook, Social Networking, The Guardian

IT worse than aviation for carbon emissions - nearly

According to a new report from an organisation called Global Action Plan the ICT sector is about to overtake the aviation industry when it comes to CO2 emissions (I hadn't heard of them before now so I'm not vouching for their pedigree, but they look genuine).

There are more than one billion computers on the
planet, and the worldwide ICT sector is responsible
for around 2% of man made CO2 each year – a similar
figure to the global airline industry. In the UK, there are
an estimated 10 million office PCs; and ICT equipment
accounts for roughly 10% of the UK’s total electricity
consumption.

The ICT sector is growing at a faster rate than the
aviation industry. In 2006, 48% more data storage
capacity was sold than in the previous year, compared
to a 3% increase in UK air travel passengers in the same
period. The impact of the sector is starkly illustrated
through the following statistics.

• A medium-sized server has a similar carbon footprint
  to an SUV achieving 15 miles to the gallon.
  Servers also require as much energy to cool them
  as they directly consume.
• 1,000 PCs left on 24/7 without any power save
  settings activated will consume up to £70,000 of
  electricity per year and for every unit of electricity
  consumed, around another half unit is required to
  dissipate the heat generated.
• If 20% of European business travel was replaced by
  teleconferencing, around 25 million tonnes of CO2
  could be saved each year.
• In 1980 before the introduction of the PC, world office
  paper consumption averaged 70 million tonnes a year
  – by 1997 it had more than doubled to almost 150
  million tonnes.
• In the UK, 120 billion pieces of paper are printed
  every year, the manufacture of which emits 1.5
  million tonnes of CO2 before taking into account the
  impact of the manufacture of printing equipment and
  ink and the energy consumed by printers.
• Each year 125 million computers are taken out of
  circulation worldwide and most of these end up in
  landfill sites (a problem addressed by the introduction
  of the European WEEE directive in 2007).
• Manufacturing one PC requires 1.7 tonnes of raw
  materials and water and consumes over 10 times its
  own weight in fossil fuels.

Some interesting headline numbers there. headline numbers tend to make me skeptical though, I'm not entirely convinced by the growth parallel in the above extract - 48% more disk storage doesn't need 48% more power. I've not had chance to read the whole report though, so it may be that the headlines mask the real detail.

I'm not saying that the problem isn't real though. Today I am looking at a solution for a customer which will have huge amounts of redundancy because the service levels are very high. All of this redundancy will be consuming power all of the time, but delivering no value other than to be ready to take the load of the active servers. It could all be in some kind of "stand-by" mode, but the technology isn't there to allow us to do it. It's this kind of thing that we need to start resolving. There are a lot of things we could do, but there seems to be little urgency to get it done, even though initiatives like Energy Star have been running for a very long time.

What with this, the Child Benefit CD fiasco, and other major IT project problems we need to start getting our act together before we become completely demonised in the eyes of the British public. I also think that there is a growing  problem with people of my age experiencing work related health issues from 20+ years sat in front of a screen and keyboard. It reminds me a bit of the problems we have experienced with asbestos workers and could be just as expensive to fix.

Technorati tags: Green IT, CO2

Concept of the day: Deindividuation

Anyone who has used email or any other form of electronic communication has seen (and probably sent) written content that shocked you. You were amazed that the person, that you know, could say such a thing in such an aggressive way. The New Scientist has an interesting article that suggests that some of the reason for this is deindividuation:

Social psychologists have known for decades that, if we reduce our sense of our own identity – a process called deindividuation – we are less likely to stick to social norms. For example, in the 1960s Leon Mann studied a nasty phenomenon called "suicide baiting" – when someone threatening to jump from a high building is encouraged to do so by bystanders. Mann found that people were more likely to do this if they were part of a large crowd, if the jumper was above the 7th floor, and if it was dark. These are all factors that allowed the observers to lose their own individuality.

Social psychologist Nicholas Epley argues that much the same thing happens with online communication such as email. Psychologically, we are "distant" from the person we're talking to and less focused on our own identity. As a result we're more prone to aggressive behaviour, he says.

The most recent place where I have seen this personally has been in the occasional reply-to-all storms that we have in our email system. Someone will send out an email to whole set of people. Someone else will reply-to-all that they don't know why they received the first email, or similar. This will then set of a storm of activity from people replying to the reply-to-all. Each of these replies will get more and more aggressive in their language.

If only these people sat back and analysed what they were doing they would stop doing it. It's unlikely any of them have read though the recipient list to see who is on it, in their minds they are just replying to some random person. What they are actually doing is replying to all sorts of senior people who could have a great influence on their career, what's more they are abusing a fellow colleague. If they only thought about how they would feel to receive such an email they wouldn't do it.

A wise person once said: "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."

via TechCrunch

Technorati tags: brain, deindividuation, comments, email

Facebook + Twitter + Flickr + LinkedIn + Blog + RSS + Email + IM = Interesting, but a messy user experience

I use a whole set of services these days: Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, LinkedIn, blog, email, instant messaging. I have multiple blogs, I also have multiple email accounts and multiple instant messaging accounts and I make extensive use of an RSS reader to gather information together. I really enjoy them all, that's my personality.

There are multiple integration points between some of them, there are multiple ways that I express myself (Flickr, Facebook, blog, Twitter). There are also multiple ways that I can make and receive comment (Facebook, blog, Twitter) without including direct communications on email and IM. There are multiple ways of me being notified about these communications (email, IM, RSS).

As a technologist this is all very exciting, but as a usable system of tools for anyone else, it's a bit of a messy user experience.

Let me give you some examples:

• If I want to write a message to someone I can use my email, IM or Facebook.
• I get comments on my twitterings in Twitter and on Facebook.
• I get comments on my pictures in Flickr and on my blog and also in Facebook.
• I get comments on my blog posts on my blog and via email and IM.
• I can post a picture to Flickr or to Facebook, or even both. I'll then receive comments in both.
• If I get a comment I will be informed by email or by my RSS reader, or both depending on the system.
• My LinkedIn contact list is different to my Facebook contact list, and my email or IM ones. I actually want the lists to have different people in them, but I don't want to have to maintain the same information for some people in three or four different places.
• I know a lot about which of my blog posts get read, I know a little about which of my pictures are popular on Flickr, but I  know nothing about the number of profile reads that my Facebook has receive.

I regularly want to say "don't comment there, comment here instead".

I have developed a way of working that allows me to push out a whole set of information and to receive a whole load more back in return. Others have developed a their own way of working, differently. Many people only see a small subset of my working, others see a more holistic view. People react in the way that is massively influenced by their viewpoint and context. If they see a picture in my blog, why shouldn't they comment in my blog, it seems like a perfectly sensible thing to do from that viewpoint. They have no idea that I would rather they comment on my pictures in Flickr. They may well have no idea that the picture is hosted in Flickr anyway.

Having these different systems gives me lots of flexibility. This flexibility means that I will put up with the niggles. But I do think that I am getting to the point where I can't actually add anything else in, unless I take something out.

I can't imagine proposing this working practice to a corporate customer. I think that over time we will start to consolidate some of these different capabilities into more generic services.

Technorati tags: flickr, facebook, linkedIn, RSS Reader, blogs

Windows Live Writer Dictionary Hack - Obsolete

Along with a load of other Live announcements Microsoft announced that Windows Live Writer was now out of beta and has three English dictionaries. This makes my kludge of a dictionary hack wonderfully obsolete, it's better that way. The installation even picked up the correct dictionary for me. So I can now be English (United Kingdom) without any issue.

I'm sure that the debate about the use of "ize" will continue for some time to come though, but I'm adamant that "colour" needs it's "u".

Everything seems to work great, although for some reason I find it strange to be writing about Windows Live Writer while using it.

If you are struggling to get the correct dictionary you can change it in Tools-Option-Spelling.

Technorati tags: Windows Live Writer, Live, Microsoft, English Dictionary