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.

The sketchy initial sentence flowed on to the screen in  front of me, followed by another one and another. By the time I had reached the end of 20 minutes I had written a touch over 500 words with out really thinking about what I was writing. It might all be complete nonsense for all I know, I haven’t even gone back and read anything I wrote yet and don’t plan to until January. That’s not the point of NaNoWriMo though, the point is to just write and get the whole story on the page in one pass as best you can. Don’t edit, don’t censor just write. So that’s what I did for the next few weeks.

I averaged over 2000 words a night in the end and reached in excess of 50,000 words on the 22nd of November. I decided to wrap the story up at that point even though deep down I felt that the thing had reached a pre-mature end in a contrived manner. I resolved to fix these things later when I make some time to edit and polish my masterpiece.  The satisfaction of having completed such a task was immense, even accepting that the first draft was probably going to be dire and need almost completely re-writing. The point was that the first draft of something that had been bubbling away under the surface of my mind was out there now and could be edited polished and might end up being read by someone else.

This leads me on to the three important things that I think I have learnt from doing NaNoWriMo this year.

1. Just write, it gets the ideas out of your head and then you can sort the rest out later. Trying to write while editing yourself and going back and tweaking sentences becomes very hard work after a very short time. In my case it has lead to some very tortured and impenetrable texts which then don’t lend themselves to being edited or fixed.
2. There is a lot of stuff in my head that I wasn’t really aware of from a creative viewpoint.  Having no idea of a plot up front and just writing and seeing where the story went was exhilarating, new twists and turns emerged, characters resisted being pushed in directions that they didn’t want to go in, it was like I was just writing what I was seeing played out before me and some times I struggled to keep pace with the action.
3. You don’t need a lot of time to actually write if you can get something to motivate you. Previously I had tried to set aside chunks of time to write, half days where I could be alone with some nice music and write. Not easy with a full time job, two kids and everything else going on. With NaNo I fitted 500 words in here and there, over lunch breaks, while dinner was cooking, any time I could. I was surprised at how easily I could get the thread of what I was doing and then write the next little bit. I had  longer chunks in the evening for about an hour where I just stopped watching the usual stream of Family Guy repeats and wrote instead. There’s no such thing as not having the time to write we just normally fill it up with other things which are less rewarding.

I am still trying to work out what I will do with my novel now I have written it but that’s a decision I will sort out after all this Christmas stuff is dealt with. I am not sure if I will do NaNo again next year. I feel like all the ideas have been drained out of my head now and I won’t be able to do it again but I might feel differently as the end of October 2011 rolls round.

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.

This is almost the same reason that systems are labelled as unsupportable. The system has aged, the people who understood the architecture have moved on and the artefacts that remain are buried in impenetrable volumes of documentation.

In both cases failing to understand the architecture and functionality of the existing system dooms any new   system which intends to replace it. The failures can be manifold but most commonly include.

1. Failing to understand the data model of the system thus causing no-end of issues migrating data from the old system in to the new system.
2. Failing to understand all functions of the old system and thus not subsuming them in to the new system. This issue then compounds issue 1 by often requiring both systems to run in parallel with data synchronisation.
3. Failing to understand all the places where a system needs to be accessed from, which result in  hacks around the edges to allow users to access it, possibly compromising security as they weren’t designed in from the beginning.
4. Failing to understand the roles and responsibilities and work that key users need to undertake with the system resulting in a cottage industry in spreadsheets and other swivel chair interfaces to the new system. Other examples of this are that users just can’t do the job they need without inflated user access rights or other database scripts being run under the covers to perform functions that should have been provided to users.
5. Under performing systems which don’t deal with things in a timely manner because non-functional requirements such as how long a job will take are just not considered until the terminal stages of any new system implementation.
6. Poor justification for the new system in the first place with over inflated rational for the new requirements. Most often this boils down to some speculative cost savings which are seldom if ever realised.

All of these reasons for failure can be addressed with proper architecture of your existing systems. I am not saying don’t ever implement a new IT system, sometimes it is required, but unless you know your current architecture, you don’t know for sure, and you won’t get it right.

Each of the causes of failure above corresponds to one column of the Zachman Framework and can be directly attributed to no-one having even looked at that column of the Enterprise Architecture. Working on these columns will help make better decisions about when to implement new systems, when to extend existing ones, when to just not bother because non-IT processes are efficient enough. More importantly they will ensure that when you do need to implement a new system that you know all  the data you need to migrate, all the functions you need to implement, all the locations you need to access the system from, the people and the roles and responsibilities they will have, the times things need to be done in, and above all why  you need to do it.

Some projects do manage to look at these various aspects of the architecture they are implementing but the artefacts all end up buried in a mire of word documents. Blueprints for a house are just that. You don’t have to dig through hundreds of pages of interpretation and boiler plate to find the information about which walls are load bearing.  When this information is buried in many documents covering multiple project phases and multiple projects the architecture of the whole enterprise is just not easily accessible to new projects wanting to find out what is ripe for re-use.

Architecture is not documentation. The current obsession with documenting things endlessly in an ever increasing volume of word documents is not Architecture. The knee jerk reaction when something is missing or not located in  a document is to request another document or gap analysis, further compounding the issue.

In order to be able to move on and make effective decisions Architecture practice must be stripped back to what is needed. Simple primitive models of the systems, both as is and to-be, their inter-dependencies and their interfaces. Where documents need to exist they should be light weight, easy to read functional descriptions of the interfaces and how to use them. Much as you would have a blueprint for a house which referrers to instructions for correctly fitting the boiler.  Nothing new should be implemented without doing a full impact analysis on the existing models to make sure you won’t break anything and you are not duplicating effort. An impact analysis in this case should not involve more documentation as you should be able to take an existing model of the environment, apply changes to create a to-be model and see if the systems all hang together.

Models and diagrams should be the entry point to any Enterprise architecture and not be Buried and distributed through many documents where it takes days if not weeks to garner a full view of the enterprise. If it takes time to get the right information together then the chances are it won’t get done or at the very best it will be done hastily and incompletely.

Something needs to be done now to fill these models and the only way to justify it is on the vague promise that we might be able to save some money later on down the line. The saving grace is that, with money being tight now and fewer projects being implemented, there is a window in which we can try to play catch up on our architectural models.

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.”

This basic problem underlies a significant number of issues in large organisations which are further compounded by an ever increasing trend to recruit people in to middle management positions who have not done the job of the people they are managing. The net result of this is that when issues are initially reported up stream to these managers a large portion of the importance of these issues is lost.

This issue combined with the previously mentioned issue of trying to put a positive shine on reports up-stream, which is a necessary survival tactic in middle management due to the replaceable nature of the roles, results in each up stream report being a slightly diluted version of the information which was presented to them.

Attempting to quantify this dilution is potentially quite difficult as there is quite a large deviation between managers. Some will be scrupulous and always try to be truthful, honest and strive to fully understand the issues which are raised to them. Unfortunately these are in the minority. Some others know full well they are out of their depth and will not ask for clarification on issues they don’t understand, for fear of showing how little they know, and will therefore deliberately gloss over huge sections of information and distort information to make themselves appear better or pass the blame to others. These too are probably in the minority (although on some days I think otherwise). The majority simply try to explain things the best they can and not put their own necks too far on the line because they have kids to feed. The omissions they make, whilst not out of malice or overt self interest, still reduce the flow of correct information to the tiers where the big decisions are made.

By way of an illustration imagine the truth of a situation being numerically quantifiable and the truth dilution factor being applied sequentially to the value of the truth for each management tier the information is passed up through.

For a reasonable good manager we might expect them to capably communicate 95% of the truth upstream. The truth dilution factor in this case would be 0.95. If this was then applied through 5 tiers of management (about normal for the size of organisations in which I work). The end quantity of  truth would be 1 * 0.95 ^ 5 = 0.77 or approximately 77%.

Now lets try it for an average manager who we might expect to achieve 80% accuracy which would be a dilution factor of 0.8. The end quantity of truth would be 1 * 0.8 ^5 = 0.32 or about 30% truth.

Now what about a hierarchy of particularly bad managers where the reduction of truth is approximately 50% or a truth dilution factor of 0.5. The end quality of truth would be 1 * 0.5^5 = 0.031 or just  over 3% truth.

These examples assume all managers in an organisational hierarchy are equal which is more often the case that you might imagine as people tend to recruit people who are more like themselves or worse so as to be less of a threat.  The equation is simple and you can try it with other numbers and fewer tiers of management but the results can be quite alarming.

The issues in this case are compounded exponentially with each tier of dilution which means even when you have a good team beneath you you won’t have a 100% accurate picture to work from. The real problem is just how bad the information quality gets when the truth dilution factor increases and just how quickly it tends towards zero.

The question is what can be done about it.

1) Recruit good managers.

It should go without saying really but this should include some experience in having done the job of the people they are managing at some point. This is really the only way (unless they are a very quick learner) that they will understand the detail and import of any issues escalated to them from their staff.

2) Destroy the culture of Fear.

If there is a culture of fear amongst managers and threats of redundancy for the reporting of bad news this will increase the likelihood of even good managers to distort the truth.

3) Delegate Decision Making downwards.

This doesn’t reduce the truth dilution factor but it reduces it’s effects. By allowing important decisions to be made with autonomy nearer the front line the exponential effects of the truth dilution factors have less overall impact. This also increases the levels of motivation and ownership any manager feels when they have to be responsible for larger decisions. For this to work however it is essential that the previous steps have been taken as bad managers can’t make good decisions and in places where a culture of fear is rife people will be paralysed by that fear, unable to make a decision quickly and effectively.

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.

All of these people that I am envious of can’t be that lucky though. Some quite clearly have other jobs and families and still manage to find the time and the energy to pursue their dreams. This gives me some hope that there is a way to find a way of properly aligning the times when I can make space for some of my pet projects and the times when I have good energy levels.

I thought some late evening work would be good but I am not the night owl I used to be any more and there are too many distractions available until the small hours of the morning (TV on or off there are others in the house and the nagging feeling that I should go to bed cos I need to be up in the morning just conspires against me). The next thing to try is to get up in the morning before any one else, before I need to get to work and try and get at least half an hour on one project while I have my morning coffee. Not sure if it is going to work at all as I am notoriously bad at getting up in the morning unless I have to (mainly due to staying up all night watching crap on the telly half asleep) but I think it is worth a try.

I think the flaw is in our understanding of how we work, how our general intelligence solves problems. In Prolog all axioms needed to be specified, it is a closed world reasoning system. If it doesn’t know something then the answer is false. The human mind on the other hand is a generalising intelligence, as opposed to a generalised reasoning system. We can only reason about a limited set of things so we generalise our experiences and knowledge to fit those limited set of things and then reason about them. This is not a fool proof mechanism for interacting with the world but it is computationally efficient. Thinking back to the initial dreams of perhaps implementing HAL the key is in the name, HAL (Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic Computer) heuristics being simple rules of thumb that will get you an answer, not necessarily the right one but an answer and quickly.

Perhaps this is one of those projects which will make if off my “Someday Maybe” list eventually.

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).

It wasn’t until the last concert, where I had significantly better seats on the floor, that I had the opportunity to study the phenomenon a little more closely. This time the visual feast of Jean Michel Jarres laser light show was far more impressive, filling the field of view and the music immersing you in the experience and sure enough there were hoards of people with their phones trained on the stage attempting to preserve the spectacle on solid state memory. I took a few pictures of particularly amazing sights and my partner took a few pictures and a couple of short video shots but some people seemed to be consuming the concert entirely through their three inch LCD screens. Eyes barely wavering from the screen to ensure it remained focused on the action but somehow to me almost entirely missing the point of actually being there to experience the event.

As a general rule the people that exhibited this behaviour were the much younger section of the audience. Is this a trend that is indicative of a wider malaise, people so wrapped up in digitising their life and interacting with reality though technology that they are no longer content to simply be there in the moment. I can’t really comment on whether the youtube generation I witnessed actually enjoyed the concert as much as I had despite their concentration on the small screen but my gut feeling is that they can’t have done.

Perhaps, now that they have recorded it a more persistent form than my neurons, their memories will last longer as they can re-ignite them at will by re-playing the video on the phone or PC. I still feel that there is an emotional connection from being in the present, with the whole of your self, that is being missed continually by an ever increasing proportion of our population.

This is where the moral dilemma comes in, I own the tape, I could probably find it in about half an hour digging in the garage but I can’t really make good use of it any more (hence why they are all in the garage). As such it it actually a violation of copyright to own a copied version of the MP3s. I could feasibly create the MP3 copies for personal use with the right equipment (I think I own a 3.5mm connector to play the tape into the computer and hack it up into tracks and MP3 encode them). I don’t really see why I should pay to own it again on CD ( I think I paid about ten quid for it first time round which felt like a lot of money back then), but then if I had lost the tape I wouldn’t be entitled to a free replacement. It is making use of a freely distributed copy of the CD with no royalties being paid to the artist and in some cases I have bought CDs of things I have on tape because I have found them in discount bins at HMV in order to have a proper digital copy.

I don’t really mind paying for music on the right medium, but not at extortionate cost. I think it would be a great idea to have a trade-in option where you could take your old tapes and get CD versions for something like three pound perhaps up to a fiver which is about what I have been happy to pay in the bargain bins to upgrade some albums.

As this option does not exist though the dilemma still stands is is morally (if not legally) acceptable to download an MP3 file of music you have already paid for legitimately in one form or another?

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.

Two points really stuck out as things that I could try and do. The first was to go off-line to try and get things done (Know When You Should Unplug from the Internet) and the second was that sometimes simple pen and paper lists can be more effective than electronic PDAs which I have tried and failed with for years. (Hipster PDA Articles)

I have now started to carry a small selection of 3×5 cards with some selected templates from DIYPlanner.com in an index card based leather note jotter from Staples. I also picked up an index box and some dividers while I was there to try and keep things in some form of order once I have written them down. The always available nature of pen and paper/card has already lent it’s self well to noting down ideas and thoughts I have had and things that I would probably have just forgotten have found their way onto a to-do list. Progressing through hand written to-do lists seems to be much more satisfying than just doing a job, so much so that if I find I have completed something that wasn’t on the list then I add it and immediately tick it off.

I am maintaining about three lists at the moment which are, work tasks, house tasks and incubation ideas. This is all loosely based on what I have gleaned about David Allens Getting Things Done which I will confess now to not knowing enough about (it is on my incubation list to find out more and re-read 7 Habits of Highly Effective People while I am at it).

So far though the system is light weight enough for me to manage but effective enough to be noticeable so I am a little wary of complicating things too much until I am into the routine a bit more. There are a few more templates I think I need to try to keep track of some of the larger projects when I finally get them started such as the Project Task/Objectives template. Overall I like the compact nature of the solution as I can carry around what I need in my coat pocket and the speed at which I can just jot things down or refer back to things seems much faster then the other PDAs I have tried.

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.

There is one problem now for my digital life style now. The one place where digital radio has yet to make an impact and the one place where digital radio can make serious big wins. I spend a long time in my car when I am working and that is the one place I am still at the mercy of FM. Yes I can listen to CDs or I can re-play podcasts via my MP3 player but I can’t listen to my favorite radio stations unless I happen to be in their FM coverage areas. I like Virgin and Smooth FM and have them both on my various devices as internet streams but if I am working in the wrong areas then I am stuck.

I want to have my radio and listen to it where ever I am and that means the 10 or 12 hours a week I am in the car (sometimes more if I have a busy week). I have a phone with data and a data calling plan. I can get a Sat Nav that downloads up to the minute traffic announcements from the Web. I have a hands free kit in the car to make calls that will come out of the car stereo speakers. Why can’t I play my internet radio this way?

3g coverage and higher speed mobile data connections are getting better as the technology finally catches up with the spectrum allocation so expensively purchased by mobile networks. There are still some problems with more rural areas where broadband/3g coverage is still poor but I guess these areas are probably poorly served by DAB too so if we are going to invest money into any form of digital coverage for these areas it makes sense to me to ensure it is IP based coverage in one form or another to provide both digital broadcast and twenty first century network access. The growth of Multicast channels (as mentioned in the above article) should alleviate some of the additional bandwidth costs required by this switch and allow even the most rural of stretches of phone line to get reasonable sound quality.

Even the big radio makers are seeing the market trend with Roberts producing a WiFi Radio player and similar offerings can be seen from other major manufacturers. If I have the right phone then I can get a number of players from Sydus I just need to get an unlimited data plan that will not cost me an arm and a leg.