Disappearing world

Morse has gone (both the eponymous Inspector and the code) along with telegrams but people are curiously unwilling to banish that archaic device the Fax machine to the techno junkyard just yet. Grate blacking is something they do in the fireplaces at Beamish Museum and similar places because open coal fires fell victim to smokeless zones. String is seldom used for tying around packets and parcels, long ditched in favour of more convenient adhesive tape. If green string and twine clings to life in an agricultural setting, no such second innings has been enjoyed by sealing wax. As a youngster, the rationale behind sealing wax totally escaped me – why would anyone want to wax their ceiling?

Remembrance of times past runs the risk of forgetting negative aspects of life but in grid-locked Sunderland, I’m not going to hark back to the days of the trams, nor even the single decker buses (remember tokens?) but to the 1990’s. One complete anachronism was the Vaux Breweries horse drawn dray. Motorists (at the time) probably were less than enthusiastic but today I very much doubt that I’m the only one who would love to see them holding up the traffic once more.

Back to basics

Growing simple things like lettuce isn’t that hard and not only is it cost effective but enormously satisfying to wash and eat something fresh from the garden. Of course, it isn’t always that simple and gardening often involves a battle of wits with birds that see fruit nets as a challenge and snails and slugs that feast on our crops.

Perhaps the best thing about growing a small amount of fruit and veg is the certain knowledge that none of it has been sprayed with pesticide or preserved artificially. Looking at apples in the supermarket yesterday scared me: the incredible waxy shine would put the paint finish on my car to shame.

And another thing – when I was a teenager, I used to enjoy picking fruit (strawberries & raspberries) at a PYO near my grandmother’s house in Maidstone, Kent. The succulent berries were rather more flavoursome than any variety I’ve seen recently BUT they had to be eaten the same day or else they’d go mouldy. This prompts me to wonder then how come strawberries/raspberries that I buy today (from supermarkets)can last much longer without visible sign of deterioration.

Logic spot

Why on earth are some doors that can only be pushed fitted with handles?

Microsoft Vista - delays can be good news

I hear that the much-vaunted Vista (previously known as Longhorn) is unlikley to ship before next year, at least in a retail form that ordinary folk can buy. While those who derive enjoyment from criticising the Redmond giant will express disappointment, the plain fact is that expectations for this new 0/s are very high indeed and it makes sense to release a retail version only when it is sufficiently stable and properly tested.

As a sofware developer and tester, I 'm bound to point out to members of the public that testing requires a change of approach on the part of the tester. There's never a time when you can be complacent or look smug because testing hasn't revealed flaws in the code - it just means you aren't looking hard enough or digging deep enough. The unpalatable truth is that as an application grows the number of possible routes through it (cyclomatic complexity) increases exponentially to the point where testing every possible route becomes unfeasible.

When designing and implementing new systems (applications) for clients there is usually a specification to conform to and a fairly tight set of requirements to satisfy. Hardware that the new system will use may well be specified by the client or developer BUT when dealing with anything like an operating system, the goalposts are changed because the end-users could be running an array of hardware that presents an almost infinitisimal number of possible permutations.

Another problem inherent with Vista is that it has to be so much more than a 'traditional' operating system. The futuristic vision I had as a kid that would see the a thin TV screen hung on the wall like a picture is here! Microsoft (and others) have sufficient vision to see that consumers will take to integrated entertainment systems (TV, stereo, DVD recorder, PC etc) in a big way. Great! Yet experience with MS Windows XP Media Centre Edition led me to conclude that there was work to do - getting the best hardware together wasn't so important as getting a kit of hardware together that would work .

Vista is much bigger -in both scale and ability- than previous incarnations of Windows. Critics seize upon this size and start muttering about 'bloatware' but this overlooks major changes in computer architecture that have occurred since the last release of Windows. The advent of 64 bit processors, PCI-Express graphics (and SLi/Crossfire configurations) SATA hard drives and most recently, mass availablity of dual core processors.

Love it or hate it, Microsoft is here to stay. Windows will remain the operating system of choice for the vast majority of users. Windows XP (at least in Professional guise) has been vastly supeior to previous operating systems from Microsoft. This fact was brought home to me last week when a site visit to a client's premises reminded me that legacy systems (Windows 98SE platform) were lacking some of the useful facilities I've come to expect and indeed, depend upon. One of my colleagues actually asked me 'Remind me, was it always this tough?'

Vista may be a long time coming but I reckon the wait will be more than justified. Meanwhile, to all those users out there running the Beta 2 version of Vista, do remember you are running an experimental operating system and if you do entrust any valuable data (accounts, photos, your family tree, music etc)to it, please ensure it is backed up properly. Professional software testers regard a succesful test as one that exposes a fault - ordinary users who just have to have the latest and greatest may not be amused.

Global Cooling - overview

Global Cooling is a BLOG that takes a light hearted (and hopefully rational) look at more or less anything. That means local issues, national and international issues are part of my remit but not religion. I don’t do religion like I don’t do ironing (can anyone ever remember seeing Clint Eastwood, Mel Gibson or John Wayne ironing anything?).

The author is a former angry young man who was going to change the world, make his mark and be ‘everyone’s favourite good guy’. It never happened because all the while the angry young man was yelling ‘This is ridiculous!’ or ‘I’m going down there right now to tell that bunch of mindless jerks exactly what I think about them’ the meter was running and he was getting older (and fatter).

It’s a fact: angry young men drive too fast and are likely to kill themselves at the wheel (think James Dean) and middle aged blokes who see them are likely to kill themselves by shouting at them and getting generally stressed out (One coronary, coming up! Now was that with or without fries?)

Remember how your aged relations always seemed to love quoting proverbs? What used to get me was when my grandfather used to say ‘a rolling stone gathers no moss’. It took me years to figure that he wasn’t making some reference to Mick Jagger and that moss wasn’t an illegal substance (like grass). One swallow doesn’t make a Summer BUT here in sunny Sunderland, it is the first year that I’ve actually seen a swallow! And it HAS been quite a good Summer.

Thought for the day: is there some sort of secret sofa fetish about which I know nothing? All the ads on the TV seem to be for sofas! Am I missing something? So, artex your X box and pickle your iPod – get a sofa instead!