Olympic thoughts

I’ve been pondering the Olympics opening ceremony since I watched it. To be fair it was about a billion times better than I had been expecting which wouldn’t have been too difficult mind. What I was expecting was basically Boris on a zip wire with some cheap union flags. 

Cripes!

Which was a lovely bonus to get yesterday admittedly.

Forgive, forget or just honest reportage?

Your real digital future, don't kid yourself.

"I am who I am today because of the choices i made yesterday" - Eleanor Roosevelt

Should one’s past  be held against you for the rest of your life, and beyond, or should you be allowed to retreat into obscurity? This debate is a fascinating example of how far removed most commentators, legislators and regulators are from the technology which is driving the question in the first place. From the usual points of view this is being driven by people who don’t want youthful and trivial discretions to be held against people thirty years later. This is partially a red herring, there will always be finger prints of past actions available, in the decades and centuries before the internet it was called a reputation and no one was taken seriously without one, for good or bad. What this particular legislative demand is about isn’t the right to be forgotten, it’s about wanting to edit your past, to edit your online reputation to remove the sleazy bits. Now various people will champ at the bit and state that the right to correct errors is vital. But who chooses what is an error and who chooses to edit it? the moment you open that particular Pandora’s box a world of nasties can explode from political figures editing their pasts to criminals attempting to slide away from the consequences of their actions.

He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe

make sure you don't press that button....

Sometimes I read things which are so utterly amazing that they cut through all of the day to day grind, the happenstance and seemingly mundane nature of existence to reawaken my youthful wonder and amazement at the universe. Sometimes the same article can confirm that we as a species are bless with the ability to be really fucking clever on occasion.

Invisibility, intangibility and invulnerability

wise words

I’ve been following the development of meta-materials for a few years now, basically a meta-material is a compound material which has a negative refractive index. You can read a LOT more about them here Meta-material wiki. In summary that means, and I quote “Negative refractive index materials appear to permit the creation of super-lenses which can have a spatial resolution below that of the wavelength”. In summary-summary for those less blessed with a deep understanding of optical or wave physics it means that waves are refracted at an interface in the reverse sense to that normally expected. i.e. instead of bending one way they bend the other way. If you could build lenses out of a meta-material, convex lenses would scatter and concave lenses would focus.

New taxi rank @ Paddington

How exciting, well in a small way, a new cab rank at Padders. Alas my vague hopes for a return to the elegance and utility of the old platform nine "through"rank are quickly dashed after the new-bridge-hidden-street moment. It's badly designed, windy and miles away from the main platforms. God knows how it will cope with any significant usage. What a damn shame.

Da-da, Da, Da, Da-de-dit-de-da, da, dum, de, Da!

My sources inside NASA-JPL secured this for me today.

There is some great news out there for sci-fi and space fans today. On the one hand something fantastical and unrealistic yet tinged with hope that we will triumph even though the whole scenario is utterly implausible, impractical and as far away from reality as possible. And on the other hand a remake of Space 1999.

Under Pressure

Whoops....

As worthy engineering projects go, stabilising a lethal natural booby trap and providing power to an under-developed part of the world rank pretty highly. Solving lethal problems and providing infrastructure to people are high in the civil engineers motive drivers, well that and “oh waay cool” and “blow it up again” of course and as lethal problems go, this one is a corker.

Digital Marketing Services- something old, something new etc

it's like a graphic designer has done this, only a talentless dozy one.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the business of delivering the right sort of solutions to clients. In the space I work that boils down to a mixture of consultancy, technology, project management and delivery teams wrapped in a lovely risk and assurance blanket and sold to clients on a project by project basis. The problem is when the technology change which is underpinning the business shift with marketing is moving so fast that behaving in a project by project basis runs the risk of being far too reactive and slowly reactive to boot. There’s a risk that the traditional approach also risks missing the whole bundle of things which need to be delivered to make full advantage of the forthcoming technology inflexion. It’s not just about deploying a WCM package and getting the pretty-pretty bits sorted out. There are loads of people who can do that bit, they’re called digital agencies and the can do pretty-pretty just fine and can nearly deploy a working WCM system without making too much of a mess of it, during the pilot phase at least anyway.

Am I boring you?

its like engineering meets art... and misses completely.

I'm in engineering geek mode today, screw IT, let’s move a mega-tonne of silt and slap concrete all over it. That’s a real job. Back in the day, when I actually knew how to do things, I was going to be a civil engineer. It turned out that it doesn’t pay very well and standing waist deep in mud and shouting at people whilst wearing a hard hat didn’t appeal very much so I drifted into IT and information theory but part of me is always going to love civils and tunnelling in particular.

When no is the kindest thing to say

And Simon doesn't even have PRINCE2 certification!

I haven’t blogged for a few days, my creative and analytical talents have been fully employed with matters of work and upon finding a few minutes away from work, I’ve been in “time for a sit down and a cup of tea” mode rather than wordsmith. One of the reasons for this level of business and focus has been an explosion of project-management-itus at one of the projects I look after. In essence we’re now reporting at a microscopic level of detail on every action we take. Seriously if it gets much more we’ll be filling in thirty page reports every time we grab a toilet break.

The art of risk management, Cthulhu and aeon long death

The secret thoughts of every SharePoint architect

"The nethermost caverns are not for the fathoming of eyes that see; for their marvels are strange and terrific.”– The Festival – H.P. Lovecraft

It’s reported today in the Washington Post and the ever fascinating IO9.com that the latest attempt to explore Lake Vostok is a mere 40ft or so from breaching the ice cap which has sealed the lake off from the rest of the world for the last twenty million years, you can read about it here exploration of lake Vostok and here Russian scientists prepare to enter sub glacial lake. Lake Vostok is the largest Antarctic sub glacial lake, it’s the size of Kuwait and it’s been buried under four kilometres of ice for between fifteen and twenty mega-years. This is a pristine and potentially utterly alien environment. The ice cover keeps it dark yet heavily oxygenated and the pressure and insulating qualities of the sheer volume of ice above it keep it liquid even though the average temperature of the water is below freezing point.

Frankensteins Agency

Our new head of Digital Engagement will see you now Mr Fowler...

It’s been a busy few days here at Chez Fowler. Too busy for me to find the mental energy to slap a thousand or so words together in a cogent form for this blog. I’d offer my humble apologies dear reader but I can’t be arsed with that arslikan nonsense.

Zen and the art of Zombie special operations.

A PhD in Operation Market Garden? That'll do nicely

My name is Ed Fowler; I am a long term computer game addict. There I’ve said it. Not exactly controversial to those that know me but it’s still a strong statement of position. It’s not a harmless vice, It’s not without real world effects as well. For example during a blissful three months “gardening leave” when the dot-com bubble collapsed I had an extended period of doing bugger all at home. I could have used the time to up-skill, learn a language, get fit or actually do some gardening.  I spent it getting Zen-good at Return to Castle Wolfenstein. An admirable investment in total pointlessness I'm sure you’ll agree.

Cereal, Obol, cartoons and Fortean times in Bournemouth

Hello, is that the BBC? it's Aliens I tells you, Aliens!

It’s a bit of a portmanteau posting today, frankly I'm mildly hungover and still a bit confused over the depth of thought my daughter has put into her view of the perfect milk-to-cereal ratio.

I want it all, I want it all and I want it now!

Here's one I made earlier and yes the shape is damn near impossible.

“Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small parts”-- Henry Ford

I admit it, beneath the suave, urbane façade I present to the world, I'm a bit of a geek. Probably a lot of other things as well, but certainly a geek about certain things. I love culinary technology, I love sci-fi, I think games are what computers are made for and I when I want a gadget I want it now.

the dark side of marketing and analytics

too perfect for words..

“Data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding.” Neuromancer: William Gibson

As I’ve mentioned before, once you get enough data in one place you can throw processor cycles at and reach some interesting conclusions pretty fast. What’s stopped us from doing this in the past was two simple factors, not enough accessible data and the price of processor cycles.

Twit, tweet and edgy marketing

I’m enjoying the cautionary tale of the latest ham fisted twitter marketing campaign as reported by the Telegraph here: Twitter users angered by Rio Ferdinand's Snickers 'adverts'. I’ve always found it amusing how quickly common sense goes out of the window for marketers and celebrities when that locus of time and money gets tight enough.

cake, process and efficiency

are you sure this is the expenses process?

There is a creative process I go through to write each day. It might not look like a process, involving numerous cups of tea, bottles of diet coke, the odd cream bun and the occasional cake, but it’s a process trust me on that.

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand

Hellooooooo?

“I have this vision of hoards of shadowy numbers lurking out there in the dark, beyond the small sphere of light cast by the candle of reason. They are whispering to each other; plotting who knows what. Perhaps they don't like us very much for capturing their smaller brethren with our minds. Or perhaps they just live uniquely numberish lifestyles, out there beyond our ken.” Douglas Reay

Today I’m thinking about infinity as compared with the limitations of human understanding, specifically the limitations of my own understanding.

Why a systems architect needs cufflinks

There are some days when I'm glad I'm so lazy that I can’t even get up from the sofa where I'm typing this whilst watching Mythbusters blow something up for the three millionth time to find my wallet. Otherwise, if I were more go getting and active, I might have got up, found my wallet and dropped £200 on this pile of geek-crack.

Pay attention 007, just in case your presentation is too big to email...

I want it now

As a society I think we have rather got used to things happening quickly. We’ve all this automation, all this IT, all this production line manufacturing and with the rapid maturation of technologies like 3D printing this is only to get worse. Just about the only area we expect things to take more than days or weeks is construction and even then there are exceptions to that:

15 days? Strewth!

In memoriam for the documents I knew before...

What did I do with that report?

I overheard a comment today from a colleague who was referring to an article from IBM, I don’t get all of it, just the memorable phrase “SharePoint; that document coffin…” which started me thinking. Is SharePoint where we send business content to die?

Innovation, this time it's personal

ooooh curvey!

I’ve been thinking about innovation today. It’s a hot potato for some people and a “tick-in-the-box-next!” question for others. Most of the procurements I see still have some demand for you to illustrate and even enumerate your approach to innovation and what they can expect for their innovation dollars. But what do we mean when se say innovation? How does it help us and our clients?

Peace and quiet

Is your data really as complete as you think it is?

Today is one of those quieter days, which generates rather mixed feelings, on one hand I can get on with a tonne of stuff and finish off this nightmarish proposal but on the other hand the reason the place is quieter is that my daughter has gone back home to her mother’s and the place feels a little too quiet.

A quiet pint

and which one are you?

A day off, well part of a day off anyway. Proposal documents don’t abide by the usual tempo of the working week. Anyway a few hours to read, relax and tune out the mind. In short I could go to the pub. Hopefully to avoid the pillock from a local council with his insane ideas to inadvertently humiliate or enslave humanity in the name of road maintenance.

Marketing in the digital age

I'm a taking a break from completing a proposal. Frankly I’ve been looking at this response template for so long, I'm vaguely afraid I’ll get the bends if I look at something else but it’s time to come up for air. I'm still looking in awe at IBM’s* marketing content from the sixties and seventies. Look at this slice of pure awesomeness.

It really shows that IBM had a distinctive and futuristic in house style but it begs the question, who was this marketing aimed at? In fact it begs the question who is all enterprise marketing aimed at?

The paperwork explosion

In 1967 IBM's office products division commissioned Jim Henson and composer Raymond Scott to create "The Paperwork Explosion," a four-minute advertisement for the MT/ST word-processing machine. It’s frankly NUTS. With jarring dystopian settings, unsettling cast of serious corporate heads, strange music and a bonkers old coot for context. This is how technology should be sold. A four minute mini movie with contemporary orchestral score for a word processor? Brilliant!

Initial post

I suppose it's time to start a blog, a sensible blog, one I can attach my real name to rather than the incoherent drivel I've been writing under various pseudonyms over the years. I can't promise much in the way of insight, quality or indeed legibility but it might occasionally be amusing. Anyway, here it is, enjoy.