Logic Synthesis

Who the hell reads all this shit?

2009-10-08T01:34:00.000+01:00

Oh my God?! Seriously: Will there ever come a time when the over supply of useless, un-structured, mindless drivel that pollutes the internet will stop?

There was a time when entering a search subject into Google supplied you with meaningful results that were worth looking at. Today the majority of results consist of corporate marketing, generic price comparison sites for insurance or shopping, or people's worthless opinion of this and that.

What is it about people that makes them think that if they write something down, it will be read by people who give a shit? Lets face it, blogging is just an excuse for people who believe they have something to say, to say it to people who really don't want to listen. The only thing worse than this, are corporations who think it adds value to their brand - I mean really; which stupid prick sits down to read the latest views of said corporation's media hack?

Then there are the myriad of video, images and so called news content sites where I can watch some twat's kid doing the funniest thing, or read the same news item regurgitated 50 times over. And for fuck's sake; Twitter was not designed to peddle porn, push spam, or provide a mechanism for needy celebrities to feel wanted.

Go on - just fuck off; the lot of you!

although, my opinion counts...

My God; I'm brilliant!

2009-07-22T17:04:00.006+01:00

Now far be it from me to blow my own trumpet; but sometimes I amaze myself at how brilliant I can be. Now I am not talking about the brilliance that exudes from inventors, physicists, and the like: I am talking about the jammy brilliance that means you are very rarely wrong on a particular subject - to the point that you amaze yourself by just how brilliant you are.

My subject is computing; and this does not restrict itself to categories that I profess to be good at, but my sheer "lucky bastard" nature encompasses most things in this technology area. Throughout my life I have completely lucked out on most of the things that I get dragged into with computers, and have a Midas touch that seems to come into its own when the proverbial shit is about to hit the fan.

I am sure you are sat here now, reading this, thinking - "I also have brilliance streak", (either that, or you are thinking what a cocky shit this guy is), and this is my point: If we all look at ourselves we can find something that is truly brilliant in our character - either that, or you really are a worthless piece of shit.

Let's hope it is the former!

Why do we all fall for this?

2009-07-03T08:21:00.002+01:00

It seems that in this world there is a proliferation of recycling the same old ideas and branding these as new thinking. As consumers we are bombarded with streams of marketing telling us what the next big thing is and how much our lives will be incomplete without said items. Everyday I am told which bands to like, what new product I cannot live without and what clothes I should wear.

So what's new about this? As far back as the 50's when marketing was in its early days we were being told which brands made our white's whiter, and those which helped me work, rest and play: It is just that it was more obvious back then. In the world today, brands are everywhere: hidden amongst the media programming; awards ceremonies; and placed without thinking in conversation. We have become whores to brand image to the point that should you dare go against the common view, you will be spurned for even considering that the masses are, indeed, wrong.

Brand hysteria is everywhere - wake up people, and open your eyes!

Old Shit and Modern Wank

2009-04-30T07:15:00.000+01:00

The other day my partner's laptop decide to finally give up the ghost. The machine she had was a Dell X300 which she treated like shit. All to often the machine was projected across the living room, as in a rush the power lead became tangled around her leg. It also wasn't unusual for me to find the odd piece of discarded crisp or a sticky keyboard.

"Fix it!", she said.

But, unfortunately, despite my technical skills, soldering and the use of a multi-meter are not in my repertoire. It then fell to me to find alternative ways for her to buy old shit off Ebay, and her new found love of playing Facebook games.

I remembered that deep in the bowels of my wardrobe I had an old Compaq Armada E500 with a Pentium 3 (500Mhz) and 192MB RAM. Now by today's standards this computer is a very limp wristed example, but in its day it was a workhorse that ran Windows quite happily and at one point was migrated over to Linux.

Recovering the machine from the depths: I blew off the dust and turned it on. Windows 98 burst into life and slowly, but surely, the dulcet tones of the start-up wav played, and I was presented with an operating system of the bygone days: Wireless USB key installed and browsing commenced. It is at this point I realised that regardless of its performance, (which is unusually poor), that nothing will run: Flash 10; Firefox; Chrome; IE; all require Windows XP. I suppose I should not be surprised given that the clue for its age is in it name! But what also took me by surprise was the speed at which everything ran - this machine was designed to run Windows 98, so why was it soooo slow?

Okay, I thought, it needs a modern OS that will run all the software, so lets put on Linux - the holy grail for old machines. How wrong could I be? Using Kubuntu, KDE4 was always going to be a silly idea but by how much it slowed the machine down really took me by surprise. Even running XFCE4 the machine was practically unusable.

I then set off down the route of trying to find a lightweight Linux distro that could do the job. The ones I found included VectorLinux Lite and Knoppix, but all of these did little for me, other than take up my valuable time. The problem is that in this day and age I have come to expect a basic level of eye candy that means the operating system has a level of professionalism. I never thought I would say this, but all the lightweight Linux implementations have just a little too much of a home grown feel about them.

I have resorted to installing Xubuntu to see how this works, as it is apparently a lighter version of Ubuntu, but all of this got me thinking...

There is a adage that states a machine is only as old as the software it runs. If this machine is incapable of running a Linux distribution or Windows 98, does this dis-spell this myth? Although software has become bloated the real truth is that we have all become accustom to the speed that modern computers give us. If this is the case, no longer can I blame sloppy programming but the impatience that is inherent in society today.

Bloody typical - I will have to spend some cash on a new machine!

You get what you pay for?

2009-03-29T17:24:00.000+01:00

So there is a common misconception that you get what you pay for. Although I subscribe to this belief, I do now have a level of scepticism brought about by the amount of items in my house that have fallen apart recently.

In the last week the washing machine has broken down, the tumble dryer condenser has failed, my thermostat for the central heating decided that wireless communications was not for it, and to top it all, at the point where I start to iron my shirts for the new week, the iron decides to burn out. All of this wouldn't be so bad if I had bought cheap items, but all of these were of significant quality and highly rated by the likes of Which? magazine. The first three were Bosch and the iron cost me £60 - (alright, not the most expensive iron; but more than I have paid for before).

"Hang on Luke," I hear you ask. "How old were these items?" Well the iron and the tumble dryer hadn't quiet clocked a year and the thermostat and washing machine made it to three. Pretty rubbish, all things considered.

So this leads me to believe that: "You get what you pay for; but even the most expensive items are still shit!"

Why I hate the Apple iPhone

2009-03-07T07:07:00.001Z

Okay, so why would someone look at the Apple iPhone and state that they detest it? It seems to buck the ideas of popular opinion, what with the population either owning one, or enviously wanting to own one. Well, the truth of the matter is that the iPhone, in my opinion, has some basic flaws being a mobile device. I believe that it is a case of form over function; Apple have concentrated on the UI design, not as one particular functioning piece of technology, but as an exercise in making UI gimmicks.

Apples interaction interface is completely dependent on fingers. Why should the main feature of the iPhone also be it's Achilles heel? Well, whilst on the face of it, the interface, application selection, typing, and dragging objects all seems fine, you have to ask yourself why we don't all have computers that have touch screens? Perhaps it is the fact that we would find interacting using touch fundamentally limiting: The basics of a keyboard are so simple that to transfer this to use the screen is an easy task, but it removes the very essence of what makes typing so responsive? There are no sensory tactile and audible clicks. Why do we all still use a mouse? It is not without reason: the accuracy of moving a pointer is difficult to manage with fingers, and even the thinest of these will have problems.

Lets be honest, touch screens are not new, or expensive to create, yet their only real use in everyday society is in retail point-of-sale applications. Where nice big buttons are provided to interact with simple process flows. I suppose Apple's view would have been, that a phone operates on simple process flows, but unfortunately, to be somewhere near usable the phone is now twice as big as its competitors!

The ability to to view and move between pictures also shows the limitations of its design. To move between photo's, Apple has created the wonderfully impressive swiping the screen with your fingers. This is fine for the first few shots, but after a while it does tend to become tiresome and leaves me wanting a button to do this job.

So am I being too harsh on Apple's pride and joy? It is fair to say that before the iPhone, phone companies did not consider the ways in which their handsets could be made more affective: Internet browsing was pointless on a mobile, whereas today it is only almost so. Camera and pictures have always been good on many of the handsets available, as has the ability to play MP3s. The iPhone doesn't offer anything revolutionary in this area. And then there is small message service, probably the most influential technology the mobile phone has provided. The best interface that I have seen so far for sending texts is most definitely the Blackberry, with its predictive text working superbly well and even trumps the Nokia (who set the original benchmark). So, no then. The iPhone remains a gimmick in my eyes, and if you feel the need to own one because you think it makes you look cool, then you are mistaken – you look like a twat. Each time you pull out the greasy screen with a myriad of finger prints on it, and swipe your finger about the place; remember: You look like Delboy with his Filofax!

Is twitter for sycophants?

2009-02-25T14:54:00.000Z

Okay, so I have been on Twitter for approximately three weeks and have managed 200+posts so far; but what is it really all about? When this technical phenomenon(!) was first introduced to me six months ago, I dismissed it as merely Facebook status updates for people who detested Facebook. This I can understand as Facebook consumes your time with meaningless drivel about what people are up to and awful invites to pointless quizzes.
People who know me will now be thinking - "if there is one person who updates his status with more meaningless drivel than anyone else I know; it's Luke"

So what about Twitter? Well, I believe that it is blogging for the lazy - something that two weeks ago, I considered myself to be. Use Twitter to comment on the world without the need to spend endless hours writing blog entries - what could be sweeter? Unfortunately, I think that I am one of the few that believe this, and from what I can gather, it has become a place for people to follow celebrities or aim marketing information at. Since I have been on, I have been followed by numerous marketing firms in the hope that I will return the follow so they can advertise to me.

And the celebrity gazing? It seems that our entire culture is obsessed with celebrity, and Twitter has just become another victim of this. What makes this worse, is it seems that some of the "famous people" using Twitter require this form of attention. I know that this is a generalisation, and won't apply to all, but there does seem to be a base need that is fulfilled by having fan(atic)s showering their enthusiasm for the celebrity via this new medium. Now I get the feeling as I type this that it sounds like I am portraying the fans as neurotic idolatry stalkers, but even the most basic of compliments seems to be sycophantic.

I say; "Let's keep Twitter free from marketing, enjoy the ability to lay down one's thoughts at a moments notice, and ignore the current trend for hero worship, (or just plain nosiness)"

Trevorrow's 1st Law

2009-02-09T22:47:00.000Z

There is an unwritten law that states "the length of time to prepare for a task is exponentially more than the time taken to complete the task"

What do I mean by this?

In basic terms it is that the thought and actions of doing a job takes significantly less time that the amount of effort required to prove, prepare and generally procrastinate about the job. In choosing an example that most people can relate too, the act of home improvement will suffice.

"We need a new bathroom", says one partner,

"Why, what is wrong with the old one", says the other

"It is old and decrepit, the taps leak and the toilet no longer flushes",

"I have no problem with this," they say, "I can get along fine with these minor inconsistencies in bathroom functionality"

"You are talking nonsense", says the first and thinks to themselves that they will now endeavor to persist the notion that new bathroom furniture is needed until the opposing side agrees.

Agreement is reached and then the process commences of choosing the required suite/tiles/flooring, acquiring the necessary funds, and ensuring that suitable workmanship can be attained through the big yellow phone directory: The last stage can take an obscene amount of time and, depending on the economic climate, could mean waiting even longer for said work to commence.

It is fair to say that the act of doing the job will only take a small time in comparison to the upfront process mentioned above, and it is this on which my theory is based.

Lets take a more suitable scenario, and one that brought about my thinking of the law above. If we take the example of computer systems implementation it is possible to see that the task in hand is relatively simple. The company bosses say: "I would like to replace my system X and put in this new and shiny system Y".

Why should that simple act of replacing system X with system Y turn out to be the most complicated process devised by mankind? Partly this is due to the fact that as human beings we have a desire to improve our lot, and if swanky sales guy states that system Y will indeed improve the lot of all concerned, who are we to argue, (although I have another theory about this which I will come to in another blog post).

It is also fair to say that details of removing system X is subject to the greatest piece of "slight of hand" ever seen: Quick! Look at the shiny system Y and ignore all the pain over here in the land of system X.

"But what about the fact that computer systems are complicated and greatly misunderstood", I hear you say. A good point badly made however, as the act of understanding computer systems goes to show that in all cases these are simple methods of communication, data flows and business processing. Let us not forget that these machines are made by men, and by their very nature are shrouded in mystery only to be revealed to be a simple mechanism that we basic creatures can understand.

So what is it that turns the simple act of turning off X and turning on Y into the equivalent of walking on water? Three things: the opportunistic nature of organization; the (modern) political need of the individual; and, lastly, the industries desire to re-invent technological innovation(!)

Taking each in turn: The opportunistic nature of the organization is the ability to turn the newly acquired system Y into system Z, with a number of additional requirements that have been waiting in the wings for such time when people are distracted by the new shiny thing that has been bought and won't notice all the extra crap that nobody asked for, or even desired.

The (modern) political need of the individual is a more sinister and of greater danger than the first, as it is the desire to ensure that no matter what the goal of the task is, that this will only occur if some personal gain is made by those concerned. This is, by its very nature, the act of feathering ones nest, ensuring "oneupmanship", and general making a nuisance until personal gain is attained. This is not to say that all individuals concerned are operating in this way, but it only takes a few to have a major impact.

The industries desire to re-invent technological innovation is the final device that can turn the relatively simple task into a feat of technological engineering. System X uses a simple communications mechanism that, when it was implemented, provided a robust process for handling the companies data flows. Now this is deemed by the industry to have become obsolete and a newer, more significant, advancement in technology supersedes this old hat. It now becomes irrelevant whether the technology originally employed will do the job, as all concerned have a desire to implement this new wave. Look at how great my sales figures/CV/respect will look now that I have taken steps to modernize system X? The problem, however, is that the cost of support, maintenance, training, staffing of this innovation is never considered, (probably due to political need of the individual), and what is left is a complex implementation that offers very little over the original technology, but gives people a feeling of achieving great things!