Experiences of NaNoWriMo

Last month I embarked on NaNoWriMo, the yearly National Novel Writing Month. It was a bit  of a spur of the moment decision, I had thought about doing it for a couple of years now but never really thought I would be able to do it. The target is to write 50,000 words in one month which means averaging 1667 words per day for 30 days.

The beginning of November got closer and I still hadn’t signed up, didn’t have a clue what to write about beyond a sketchy first line and no confidence that I would even make 5000 words (which is the longest piece I have written previously). I signed up on Saturday the 30th of October after some external events conspired induced the need to fill up some time and mental capacity. The following night I was poised, waiting for midnight to tick by and allow me to join in the initial word sprint to get the ball rolling.

Documents versus Architecture

I think I have lost count of the number of times a new IT system has been hailed as a salvation to a whole host of business problems and failed to deliver. Failure to deliver functionality. Failure to deliver on time. Failure to deliver on budget.

The bottom line in may cases has been due to the system not being needed in the first place. In this day and age there are virtually no green field sites for IT systems. As such the primary rational for implementing a new IT system is to provide some functionality which is perceived to be absent from an existing system or to replace some system which has been deemed un-supportable.

In the first instance, where new functionality is required, the real reason for implementing a new system is almost always that the existing system is so poorly understood that the very idea of extending it to cover the new functionality sends shivers down peoples spine. The architecture of the system has never been owned and therefore becomes an unknown quantity as those that implemented it move on to new and more interesting projects.

The Truth Dilution Factor

I have been working on formalising a mathematical model of how major decisions in large organisations quite often seem to be massively wrong. In these austere times this understanding could hold the key to unlocking some massive cost savings.

I found the fundamental assertion for this thesis was found in Eric S Raymond’s Cathedral and the Bazaar which I think he attributes to Kropotkin in the notes of the essay. (link later). This assertion is -

“True communication is possible only between equals, because inferiors are more consistently rewarded for telling their superiors pleasant lies
than for telling the truth.”

Energy Management

I need to find a better way to manage my energy levels. I have managed to organise the random ideas I have into some semblance of order so that I can start making some progress on them and still no progress has been made.

The main problem seems to be that when I have the time, I don’t have the energy. I have many ideas and am deeply envious of the type of people that have the time and the energy to follow up on their ideas. Some annoy me as they seem to make a living with freelance projects and have managed to have sufficient income from this to indulge their creative desires. This annoys me because I don’t think I can do that with all the additional commitments for mortgages and kids and a list of things that drink money faster than I seem to be able to earn it. As such I work earning as much as I can and when I do have the time to sit down in front of the computer to start on one of my many outstanding projects I barely have the energy to reply to a few simple e-mails, never mind work out how to generate complex geometrical compositions from programmatic interactions of basic geometric figures.

Memories of Dreams

A few events recently have sparked memories of dreams I once had. Playing with Wolfram Alpha and seeing its error message “I am sorry Dave i’m afraid I can’t do that” indicating somewhat to its creators inspiration. My own inspirations and aspirations in entering the world of IT were very much the same. From the early attempts at simple conversational programs, programs that could play noughts and crosses and experimentations with Eliza it seemed like a small step to develop general purpose intelligence in computers if we just had a little more power. Prolog was a new hope at one stage. You could define the rules and the intelligence would work out how to solve the problem. Somehow it never seemed to get where we all hoped. We have computers now that will fit in a pocket with orders of magnitude more power than those that ran Eliza yet Wolfram Alpha seems to fall a little short of my inflated expectations.

Mediated Reality.

I have had the good fortune to be able to attend a few good concerts at local arenas over the last month and have thoroughly enjoyed being there and experiencing some great acts live on stage. I have seen them both on the small screen much earlier in my life and the when the chances to see them live came up months ago tickets were hastily bought on-line and the dates were anticipated weeks in advance. For me the time I am there at the concert I like to lose myself in the performance and try to take in as much of the experience as possible.

It was just during a long and indulgent Clapton Guitar solo that I first noticed the strange sea of lights below me. (I happened to have a sub-prime seat at the Echo arena for this one so I could see the floor seating from quite a height). Almost all of the floor seating looked as if the crowd were holding lights above their heads, reminiscent of concerts of an earlier generation where lighters were held aloft and swayed in time to the music. These lights were not moving however but remained fixed on the stage unmoving. The lights were, as you may have guessed, the LCD screens of multitudes of mobile phones, their users attempting to capture the intricacies of the performance before them. At the time I thought it was some how strange but perhaps understandable to preserve the experience to remember later and share with friends (either at the pub or more likely via MMS).

Moral Dilemma

I have a huge back catalogue of tapes of music I used to listen to a lot when I was younger, both at school and at University. My recent attendance of a Jean Michel Jarre concert prompted my to want to listen to the old albums again, some of which I only have on tape. Unfortunately with the 100% digital household the re-playing of analogue tapes is not really possible unless I use one of the kids CD/Radio/Cassette players. It would be incredibly easy to just pop on to Pirate Bay, or whatever has replaced it since the court case the other month, and download a nice MP3 version to listen too anywhere in the house or on my MP3 player.

Experiments in Organisation

I always seem to be coming back to the issue of not having enough time to do the things that I want to do. I used to read books, write more code, generally I felt more creative too. These days I am lucky if I read a book a year and coding outside of work is non-existent despite many small projects which really excite me being queued up on the computer almost ready to go.

So I stopped and looked at what I was doing and found that I was reading but it was mostly on-line and not always that useful or even interesting. I was spending upwards of two hours a day reading little bits of random information from various sites around the net. Fortunately one of those sites was LifeHacker which has some interesting hints and info on being organised. I have been half reading a book on a similar topic (Why am I so disorganised? by Dr Maryliyn Paul) but as mentioned earlier never seem to have the time to read it properly.

The future of Digital Broadcast

On reading the various diatribes on DAB on the register over the last few months of which Fixing the UKs DAB disaster | The Register was the most recent one to get me thinking. DAB as a technology is outdated and really hasn’t achieved the market penetration needed to bring digital broadcasting into the mainstream.

I tried DAB a few years ago and was disappointed then by the quality and reliability of the stations I was receiving and very quickly found myself returning to FM. In the intervening years I purchased a Roku Soundbridge with the primary purpose of listening to my growing MP3 collection over some decent speakers in my lounge when I am reading the odd book. The Soundbridge is also a very capable internet radio with 18 preset stations and more available from Radio Roku which are made available via the Sounbridge as My Favorites. So now I have a huge selection of Digital Radio stations available at home and to some extent on the move via my N800 which also has good internet radio capabilities.

In the begining

In the beginning there was the word and the word was God. (obviously obfuscated so people don’t inadvertently create new universes all over the place by saying it again).