microCash

Posted: Fri 5 August, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: Geeky, Thoughts | 4 Comments »

Yesterday I suddenly realised I wasn’t as organised as usual, and didn’t have the change necessary for buying my train ticket. (All due to the bloody carpet fitter insisting on being paid cash rather than cheque, but that’s another story entirely) Anyway, it made me think about technology that would actually be useful – in this instance mPay, or mobile (or in fact micro, depending on who you believe) payments.

The basic idea is that you have an extra chip in your mobile phone that is basically a payment system, and can either be used in a similar way to a Switch/Maestro card, where money comes directly from your bank account, or alternatively you can have these small amounts added to your monthly phone bill. The system is in use in Japan already as part of the DoCoMo network where it’s known as iMode (I wonder if Apple will sue for that brandname?) and seems to be taking off.

I know it would be a nightmare to implement at first, as there’d be one hell of a lot of infrastructure to put in place. Then again, a similar (although slightly more low-tech) method is already being used for car-parking in Edinburgh, so maybe there’s hope for the concept yet?

C4 in trouble

Posted: Thu 4 August, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: Thoughts | 5 Comments »

I wish I could say I was surprised by the news that Big Brother has become even more extreme, and has received complaints today about one participant’s sex antics. Big Brother has always prized the exhibitionists, the people who will happily make cunts of themselves in order to grab hold of their fifteen minutes of fame. And as an extension of that, each series will be more extreme than the last – if the people in it only do the same as last year, it won’t be “newsworthy”, and won’t get their faces/arses/tits/whatever in the papers. It’s always going to get worse. Now that one of the munters has apparently been seen wanking (or at least simulating it – and to be honest, the media won’t care whether it’s true or made-up) it won’t be long until there’s a couple “caught” shagging without cover.

At the same time, Channel 4’s been fined twice in the last two days for naughtiness within advertising – the first one was for having an advert “starring” Davina McCall within a programme presented by her. Apparently this is a breach of the advertising rules, which I didn’t know – and, in honesty didn’t care about either. And then they’ve also been done for Richard and Judy supposedly endorsing Red Bull. Red Bull must be ecstatic about it – not only did they get the freebie plug on air, but then it’s featured as a brand-name in the story about the fine. Talk about free publicity…

Jack

Posted: Thu 4 August, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Geeky, Work-related | Leave a comment »

One thing that’s interesting with my work at Groovy Group (I can’t think of anything better for now, so that’ll do as a name) is that in many ways I don’t really seem to have a defined role at all.

Yes, I’m certainly the person developing all the website stuff and so on, and that’s what I primarily do. But at the same time I also regularly get assigned system administrator stuff, design stuff, (which is a bit of a problem, as I’m emphatically not a designer!) and get asked deeply geeky and technical questions by the rest of the staff, including the CTO – in fact, one could probably say that I’ve got some form of input in most of the company activities. In addition to all that, I seem to be the one who helps out when other people need it, and also the one who does the support-type work. (fixing connections, figuring what’s wrong with the network, that kind of thing) Oh, and in addition I still get to write d4d™, plus figure out a lot of the concepts behind the website stuff.

I’m not complaining – in fact, it suits me really well – but it just seems a bit odd when most people have a fairly well-defined position that I’m the one that seems to cover all the bits not listed in the detailed descriptions. Still, it certainly makes for a varied day!

Belt Up

Posted: Thu 4 August, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: News, Thoughts | 2 Comments »

Apparently, in June 1,800 drivers were stopped in four counties for not wearing seatbelts. The seatbelt law has been in place for more than a decade now, and yet still people don’t wear them – quite honestly, I’m surprised that the figure is as low as it was.

Now it’d be nice if the same could be done for the immense number of fuckwits I see every day still using their mobile phones while driving…

Plod

Posted: Thu 4 August, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: News, Thoughts, Travel | 3 Comments »

A while back I wrote about the useless police presence that had been placed on Bracknell station since the London bombings. At the time I really wasn’t impressed, and my attitutde on that score remains the same still.

Today, precisely four weeks after the bombings on 7th July and two weeks after the abortive ones on July 21st, there’s supposedly a massively increased police and security presence in London in order to prevent any possible attack. (which means, of course, that instead it’ll be tomorrow, or it’ll be in Birmingham or Edinburgh or somewhere – basically anywhere that isn’t London) And today is the first day since those bombings when there’s been absolutely no police presence – nor, in fact, any ticket inspectors – at Bracknell station. The mind boggles sometimes.

Learning Curve

Posted: Wed 3 August, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: Work-related | 7 Comments »

Working with the new company (I’m thinking “Groovy Group” as a company name, but not sure yet) there’s been a lot of discussion about some of the stuff that’s going to go into the site. Everyone seems pretty pleased with the basic mock-ups I’ve done so far, and there’s going to be lots of discussions this week about where it goes now, and what I/we need to do next.

Well, the basic next step is “make it work, or at least the basics”, which is no biggie. But it’s also going to be “Look at using AJAX for a lot of it, which means I have to learn another new bundle of stuff pronto. Not that it’s a problem to do so, but it’s going to make the next month or so kind of interesting. Also, it’s one of the new technologies that is only going to get more popular (I’ll provide proper explanations for it once I’ve got it more sussed, but trust me, it’s fuckin’ ace) over the next few years, so it’ll be good to learn it now and use it, rather than just having the theory.

Other than that, though, they’ve already told me that they’re really pleased with all the stuff I’ve done, and that the three-month trial period/contract is effectively over, as they’ve already decided that they want me to stay. Now it just comes down to discussions with the directors (which’ll be next week, as they’re all away this week in the US) about whether they just stick me on the full-time payroll straight away, or wait for the three month contract to expire before switching me over.

Either way, though, it’s good news.

60 Years On

Posted: Wed 3 August, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: News, Thoughts | 1 Comment »

Sixty years ago, the US used atomic weapons against Japan. The BBC has a set of photos of Hiroshima now and then, some of which are really quite affecting.

Oddly enough I was watching an episode of West Wing from Season Five a couple of nights ago that talked about nuclear weapons. (It was “The Warfare of Genghis Khan, should anyone care) Within it, they said that the US was still the only country to have actually used a nuclear bomb in anger – which is true, of course, but I’d never actually thought of it like that.

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