Boring Fireball

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

For the last year I have been a subscriber to John Gruber's blog, Daring Fireball - basically an Apple fanzine. I've decided not to renew. Gruber is a good writer, but his tone is really getting irritating. Describing everybody who takes a different view to his as a "jackass" is just childish. And although he does display a higher level of intelligence than most, he is display more and more signs of Cult Of Mac zealotry and fanaticism. Daring Fireball is an interesting example of blog as income model, but however good the writing, Gruber's world view is too narrow and too predictable to be worth reading very often, let alone paying for.

Fawlty Towers

Monday, June 25, 2007

Faded, scruffy, self-satisfied, overpriced, depressing... I wonder if these are the adjectives that the Thistle Hotel Brighton, where I have the misfortune to be sitting typing this, would expect to associate itself with ? Not by the look of their website, or of the self-congratulatory leaflets that litter the room, proclaiming all of the varied wonders which one can benefit from, all at a (large) price of course. Three highlights: no minibar in room, hence no water. The drinks dispenser by the elevator has, of course, run out of water (a bargain at £1.50, anyway). Aircon "working", in the sense that is blasting out hot air, but not adjustable (at least the reception tried to help by giving me a different room, but it was exactly the same). And then, possibly not entirely Thistle's fault, but why should I be feeling generous, we have: Oh, but at a price. And what a price. Here's an example: Yes, 20p per minute. Compare and contrast with the last two hotels I stayed in, in Copenhagen, Denmark, and Tallinn, Estonia, which both had free Wifi. I would suggest that the Thistle charges extra for hot water, puts a meter on the lights, offers rental TV (or sorry, they've already done that) and rents out towels. At least that would achieve a level of consistency. There will always be something of the Fawlty Towers about English hotels, it seems. And England.

Facebook. Welcome to the Hall of Shame.

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

(warning: bad hair day) Trying to ramp up my use of Facebook this morning, so I've gone into my profile. The contact panel is total rubbish. It fails to save data I enter (it has lost all my IM screen names twice, I had to enter my URL twice, etc). It doesn't recognise MSIDSN format for cell phone numbers, so "+417987565432" becomes "417987565432", and "41(0)7987565432" becomes "4107987565432". It has a mind of its own as far as privacy setting are concerned. I guess it works fine in California. Whatever. Do they still do testing in California, or is that soooooo Web 1.0 ?

Reboot 8: (Not) getting the basics right…

Monday, December 18, 2006

Reboot 8 sounds like a very interesting meeting. In fact, so interesting that I'd love to register. Only, so far, since the site has been offering the opportunity to register, all it delivers is a blank page. It also offers to help "If you need to sell reboot to your boss(but really don't believe what they say, come and be it yourself)" Yeah. Whatever. My boss is extremely sold by the idea that a leading edge web conference can't even get a registration page working. I wonder when they'll notice ? BELATED POSTSCRIPT (8 July 2007) - seems that I was actually looking for reboot9. Somehow the reboot7 site was still up, and this pointed me to "next year", i.e. reboot8, which was actually last year. reboot9 didn't go on line until much later. Nevertheless, the signup should have said something like "sorry, registrations are closed" or something. So anyway, I missed reboot9, although I met some great people at the post-conference party. Hopefully I'll get to reboot10, and actually have something interesting to say.

EuroCVs

Friday, December 01, 2006

I've noticed that in the recent flood of job applications I've been reviewing, I'm starting to see quite a few that start off like so: Yes, the European Commission has managed to invent a EuroStandard CV format. It probably took an army of 200 researchers from 16 countries to do it, and a management and review panel of 30 eurocrats and associated assistants to, er, co-ordinate and steer the project. And then candidates are strongly recommended to use it. And they send it to me. And I file it in the bin. Why ? Well, because I'm looking for evidence of independent thought, creativity and some spark of intelligence in a CV. The CV is the first contact with the employer, and it gives the first impression - and potentially the last - of the candidate. So what impression do I get from this ? Well, if I was a data entry operative, I'd love it. Easy to insert into a megacorporation's HR database, because it is totally standardised and formulaic. For me, it is easy too - if a candidate cannot tell that filling in a pro-forma CV is an extremely bad news - even one that actually proudly declares itself as such - well, that is a clear sign that the individual in question has no place in our company. I'm actually a strong supporter of the EU, in general. But in this case, they're getting into areas which they just should not be meddling in. Advice to candidates - unless life as a soulless bureaucrat in a huge impersonal corporation appeals to you, avoid this like the plague.