thoughts.williamtp.com

Great design?

I gave a presentation at The Design Council in London a few days ago.

The organisation is dedicated to the concept of great design and communicating its virtues to British business.

In order to stay true to its mission, everything in its headquarters has clearly been thoroughly designed with a great deal of thought and cutting edge design input going into every aspect of its content and layout.

Included in this radical thinking was the gents' toilet which had no urinals - just a row of stalls. I'm sure the architect had a long justification about how this was superior to conventional male facilities but the effect on this user was dramatic: three seconds after setting foot in this facility I was rushing out again in a panic, in the firm belief I'd accidentally walked into the Ladies'

what I've been doing

The company I founded, True Knowledge, has just come out from under the radar.

The old website which said just two sentences about what we are doing is now replaced with a brand new website describing what we are doing in detail and a video demo of our technology in action is now prominently published:

We are also now starting our private beta where people from outside the company can apply for access to an early version of one of our products, try it out and enable us to refine it in the light of their feedback.

I started work on the company's technology almost ten years ago, determined to make an attempt at applying my AI and software development skills to a really important problem which would really make a difference if I could succeed.

Substantial amounts of work were done back then but all the technological and commercial pieces didn't fully come together until 2005 after which I managed to obtain some early finance to take on staff and produce a fully working system. Having proven all the key technical issues we set about raising venture capital and succeeded when Octopus Ventures funded us a little earlier this year. We are now in full growth mode, taking on staff and gearing up to the next stage.

I'm very excited and optimistic about what we are doing but we need a lot of help. If you can join us, partner with us or assist us in any way, we very much want to hear from you.

Punting from Cambridge to Ely

Every now and then it's fun to do something utterly ridiculous just for the sake of it.

In was in this spirit that myself and three friends (Rufus Evison, David Sinclair and Katherine Webster) set out to punt from Cambridge to Ely.

As anyone who has ever visited Cambridge will know, a punt is a boat which is propelled by pushing against the bottom of the river with a long pole. It's a prodigiously slow means of transport but ideal for gracefully navigating the few hundred yards of beautiful scenery along the central Cambridge colleges (the backs). The very ambitious can punt to Grantchester (a place within Cambridge) which can be done there and back fairly easily in an afternoon.

Ely, however, is a completely different city, in a different part of Cambridgeshire and travelling there is a moderately serious trip by motorcar. The idea of travelling there by punt was so insane that it had to be done.

The idea was Rufus Evison's. It was one of his entries on 43things.com - a social website where you list things you want to do before you die. He'd heard it was last done in 1907, thought it ought to be done 100 years later and as he was about to leave Cambridge for London after many years living here, the window of opportunity was short.

David Sinclair owned a punt (and importantly a trailer to avoid having to make the return trip by river) so one Saturday morning we loaded his punt up high with expensive picnic food, champagne and beer and set off, determined to make it to Ely by the end of the weekend.

We set off from the Green Dragon pub in Chesterton - well within Cambridge but saving us having to navigate one fewer locks.

In essence the trip was in three sections: the "boatie" bit of the river familiar to every undergraduate who has rowed for their college, arriving eventually at Baits Bite Lock (the point where the boaties turn around). After that there's another long stretch of the river to Bottisham lock and after that there is miles upon miles upon miles (hours upon hours upon hours) of flat Fenland at which point Ely Cathedral is just in view followed by hours upon hours upon hours more where it grows ever so slightly bigger.

However, we made it; very late on Saturday night having travelled non stop, but we got there.

The trip was notable for the weather. We managed to pick the most spectacular summer day of the year for it. It was also great for the banter between us and the surprised occupants of every leisure boat that motored past us. Some way out of Cambridge we tried the line "can you tell us which one is King's College Chapel?" which reliably got a laugh as it was just conceivable that we were a group of tourists who had got spectacularly lost. However, once many hours had gone by and Cambridge became a dot on the horizon this possibility became so extreme that the joke no longer worked. Towards the end of the trip we were meeting leisure boats that had never been to Cambridge.

So how practical is the trip? I was surprised that we were able to make it. I had imagined that the river would be too deep in places but this turned out not to be the case. We took a six foot punt extension with us but didn't use it once. Having said that some parts of the river bottom (particularly nearer Ely) were particularly unsuitable (soft) and we were forced to punt very close to the reeds at one side in order to get decent traction. We were also lucky to have two really excellent punters (Rufus and David) in the boat who did more than their fair share of the work.

Could it also be the case that we were the first to do it in a hundred years? Quite possibly. The trip was sufficiently insane that few in their right mind would choose to do it. However, it wasn't so insane (like climbing Everest) that people would want to do it for the challenge and prestige. The trip also required a trailer as having got there I can't imagine anyone turning round and punting back again upstream.

Another highlight for me was that it opened my eyes to the whole English waterway scene. The UK has hundreds of miles of interlinked rivers which are navigatable by boat, and there's an entire leisure sub-culture of which I was previously unaware, involving navigating down them, going through locks and stopping off at riverside pubs. On days when the weather was this good I can truly understand the appeal.

Photos from the trip are here

Drama at home

Yesterday evening started so normally yet had a little more drama than usual...

I got home after work around 7pm (pitch dark at this time of year), and found that my cleaner (who had been working in the house during the day) had somehow managed to jam the front door so it wouldn't open. No matter how hard I tried the key, the lock just wouldn't turn the last bit necessary to pull back the bolt.

After trying for about ten minutes I decided that the next step was to try to get in at the rear. I got into my back garden and after creeping through it I tried the back door to discover that I'd forgotten to lock it and all that was holding it shut was a single sliding bolt at the top.

Armed with this bit of information it seemed clear that the easiest and cheapest way to sort out the problem was to break the bolt. This would get me into my home fast (I was getting cold) and would save me the time and expense of calling out an emergency locksmith. I pulled the door back and after grabbing it with both hands attempted to pull it away from the bolt...

Unfortunately it turned out that the bolt was substantially stronger than the door and instead of the bolt breaking away from the door, the door itself decided to give way instead in spectacular fashion as the panels crumbled and the glass fell to the ground. The end result was a huge amount of noise and a large hole where the door used to be (with the bolt still clinging to the frame). At least I could now get in!

Five or ten minutes later, while I was trying to figure out how to organise a joiner to get a new, more secure door fitted at short notice there was a steady knocking at the front.

I opened up to find that the entire area outside my house was crammed full of uniformed police! Neighbours had reported a burglary in progress.

After letting them in, I was told that there was a similar number of police in the graveyard at the rear of my house waiting to grab me should I have decided to run out that way and that they included a dog unit!

Worse still, while I was trying to explain myself I heard the familiar put-put-put sound from the sky and was informed that this was a POLICE HELICOPTER that had been summoned to the scene and was now hovering above us!

Of course, it's completely legal to break into one's own property so after I proved that I lived there and wasn't intent on stealing my own possessions, they all filed out pretty quickly, incident over.

It was a weird experience: slightly embarrassing, deeply disturbing but also very reassuring all at once. Thank you Cambridgeshire Police.

Redividers (and unfortunate domain names)

Anagrams are the art of rearranging the letters of one piece of text to find something else.

However, a certain class of anagram involves no rearranging at all! The letters in the anagram are in exactly the same sequence as they appear in the subject: the only thing that has changed is where the spaces are!

Two great examples are transforming "Psychotherapist" into "Psycho the Rapist" and turning the US tax collection authority "the IRS" into "Theirs!"

The only term I'm aware for this type of trivial anagram is a "redivider" (which has the additional curiosity of being a palindrome).

I've known about these for years but a recent post on the 'Technknowledgy' Blog has made me realise that redividers can be a serious issue when it comes to selecting domain names.

There used to be some debate about whether a multi-word domain name should have the words separated out with hyphens (www.anagram-genius.com) or have the words run together (www.anagramgenius.com).

In recent years the fashion has strongly swung in favour of the latter but the post reveals some hilarious examples of where this can lead to very unfortunate ambiguity. The examples listed in the post are:

www.penisland.net
www.speedofart.com
www.therapistfinder.com
www.molestationnursery.com
www.gotahoe.com.

(Pen Island, Speed of Art, Therapist Finder, Mole Station Nursery and Go Tahoe)

The post also lists the highly embarrassing website of First United Methodist Church of Cumming, Georgia which has the domain www.cummingfirst.com but even hyphens wouldn't save this one...

comfortable and lovable

There is nothing I like more than hearing from people who use my software, especially when the experience is positive. Here's the start of an email I received this morning (with the personally identifiable information removed):

Hi

this is [name removed] here from INDIA.

I've tried your Crossword Maestro solving software demo & felt very "comfortable & lovable".

I request to let me know two things :
...

It isn't often that software evokes those kinds of emotions but when it does I'm very glad to hear about it!

CD published with Anagram Genius track titles

I got an email today from an American composer called Nick Didkovsky (wikipedia page) who tells me that he sometimes uses Anagram Genius to generate titles for his compositions.

He also tells me that a CD containing his music played by a group called the Meridian Arts Ensemble has just been published. Most of the tracks are named from Anagram Genius generated anagrams of the group's name:

8. Steamier Sinner Blamed
9. An Idle Saint Remembers
10. Terrible As Mean Denims
11. Meanie Master Blinders
12. Beastler Madmen Risen
13. Mere Brains Is Lamented
14. Miserable Sinner Mated
15. Denser Mealtime Brains
16. Last Inane Dismemberer
17. Remedial, Eminent Brass
18. Manliest Base Reminder
19. Able, Saner Determinism
20. A Mean, Dim Terribleness
21. Steamier Limb Ensnared
22. Merriest, Blamed, Insane

Further details of the CD and an option to purchase are on CD Baby.

Terrible Business Slogans

One source of occasional amusement during my travels is the wonderful English language slogans many east Asian businesses chose to associate with themselves.

English is spoken natively almost nowhere in this region but it is widely used as a lingua franca. Furthermore, an English slogan perhaps gives the enterprise an international aura that would be difficult with the native language. In such a context, the actual meaning of the slogan isn't that important and as virtually all their customers only know English as a second language the nuances and alternative meanings that a native speaker would pick up on are largely irrelevant.

This must explain the hilariously poor choices (from a natively speaker's perspective) that are so common.

My favourite example is a SE Asian soft goods manufacturer that chose to emphasise the importance they place on their high manufacturing standards by proudly attaching a tiny label to all their products (bags etc.) saying simply:

"The Quality is Basic"

It isn't just small enterprises either. Lion Air an internal airline in Indonesia (on which I've travelled) proudly brands everything they own with their amazing slogan:

"We Make People Fly"

But such a terrible choice of slogan couldn't affect an organisation in the UK could it? I mean, before any slogan here can be adopted it would have to pass through the critical faculties of numerous native speakers. Very large organisations pay consultancy firms literally hundreds of thousands of pounds (or more) to come up with and carefully test the effect of their choices on their target market even before the board sits down and debates the final decision.

This is what I thought until last weekend when I decided to make a quick trip to my local Royal Mail sorting depot to collect a package they hadn't been able to fit through the door the day before.

I arrived a couple of minutes before the closing time shown on the card and was about to step through the door to join the (smallish) queue that had built up of people collecting their mail only to have my way blocked by a disgruntled looking Royal Mail employee who without any form of apology or further explanation other than the words "we're closed" literally slammed the door in my face as I was trying to step through (almost breaking my fingers in the process).

I was joined a few seconds later by two other members of the public who had also turned up to collect their packages. They too were rudely turned away, they too were sure they had arrived before the closing time on the card and they too decided to politely press the matter rather than meekly going back home empty handed. In response to this I had the experience of witnessing the worst behaviour I've seen in any public employee, ever. That useful American phrase "attitude problem" doesn't even begin to do him justice.

It would have cost him just a few seconds to let us in and collect our packages but instead he chose to stand in the doorway while the other members of the public in the queue was still collecting theirs and systematically abuse the three of us including repeated threats to call the police and have us arrested; refusal to bring the manager down to talk to us; refusal to tell us his name or how we could complain; repeated patronising lectures about how the UK ran on GMT and how he was surprised that none of us had heard of it (I chose to ignore the fact we are actually on BST at the moment); refusal to tell us the name of the manager that ran the sorting office; classic "job's worth" speeches about how he had been working since 7am, how he didn't care about us but how he wanted to get home as early as possible etc. etc. etc. etc.

He managed to reduce all three of us to state of cold fury and meant that in addition to having a wasted trip I felt compelled to waste another hour of my time drafting a complaint to Royal Mail in the hope it might do some good. The last I saw of the other two poor Royal Mail customers was them also desperately trying to scrawl down some details from the notices displayed outside the building in the hope it would give them an idea who to complain to.

On going home I took a closer look at the "sorry you were out" notice that the postman had put through my door.

There, right at the top, proudly displayed under the Royal Mail logo was the organisation's latest slogan. Here it is in all its glory (scanned straight from the card):

"With us it's personal"

I can't imagine a better four word summary of that employee's attitude to his job!

Carol Vorderman's laugh (or "no I'm not Des Lynam")

Years ago, when I ran an email-based anagram server, I used to get a lot of misdirected email from people who would reply to the server thinking the reply was going to their friend who made the request (and typed their email address into the form). I would promptly reply with a standard paragraph suggesting they forward the message to the correct recipient. Usually the content was fairly innoccuous. On one occasion (at least) it was profoundly embarrassing to the sender. I also made one extremely good friend this way.

Recently, my diet of misdirected emails is limited to the tiny numbers of people who manage to (1) watch Channel Four's Countdown television show; (2) go to a search engine to find an email address for the show; (3) find and visit crosswordtools.com (4) somehow manage to think that crosswordtools.com is the official Countdown website despite it very obviously not being; (5) miss all the disclaimers explicitly saying that we have nothing to do with the show; (6) find and navigate to the feedback page; (7) somehow miss once again the prominent text on the page saying "We have no affiliation with the Countdown television programme. If your feedback is about the show, please contact countdown@channel4.com" and then (7) Write and submit their message still in the belief that it will find its way to Channel 4.

Needless-to-say, navigating all these tests, requires a particularly "special" kind of person...

Today I received a classic which I'm reproducing here (with all personally identifiable information removed). The message gives a tiny glimpse into the kind of correspondence that Countdown receives (and the abuse that poor Carol Vorderman gets from time to time):

Dear Des, I admire your programme and I think you are doing a great job. But it is a pity that it is spoilt by Carol Vordemans laugh. Aften there are jokes and funny stories told during the programme and they are interrupted by a false hee hee from Carol, if you watch tapes of the programme you will notce, She is there to put up the letters and try and do the numbers which lateley she finds this difficult..

Yours Sincerely.
(name removed) of pershore Worc's

Ouch.

How to get random hilarious anagrams as your Bugzilla quip list

Bugzilla has a feature where you can get it to display a random "quip" or one-liner at the top of each list of bugs.

Follow the instructions below to add an exceptionally large selection of hilarious anagrams of your company name or product name as your list of Bugzilla quips!

(1) Download Anagram Genius and install it. The free trial version is sufficient unless you want to do a great deal of experimentation or particularly care about the precise quality of the anagrams (in which case download the full software).

(2) Start up Anagram Genius and enter your company name into the "text to anagram" box. The variants which work best are reasonably long with a good mix of common letters. Feel free to experiment by adding or removing appendages like "incorporated" or "limited" from the end.

(3) Select the "Business" and "Computer" custom dictionaries. Set the number of anagrams to keep to something appropriate (anything up to a million may work but a thousand or so is probably sufficient).

(4) To avoid embarrassment, possible sexual harassment lawsuits and dismissal from your job, switching off the Vulgar words option is highly recommended.

(5) If you want to do a good job, click the Word button and search for/promote the most relevant subwords for your business and then click Weed. If you want to be lazy, just click Weed

(6) From the Save menu, select "Save raw anagrams..." and save out the text file. (Alternatively, you can produce a much smaller list of better anagrams by meticulously weeding the best ones out and saving out the report.)

(7) Export the list of anagrams into the 'quips' table (in bugzilla's database). The text goes into the "quip" field, approved should be set to 1 (which appears to be the default field value with 2.20.1). As you are using bugzilla I'm assuming you are sufficiently technically proficient to do this step without further guidance. (We managed using phpMyAdmin "insert data from textfile into table" without having to modify the file or even use the mysql command line.)

(8) Ensure that quips are set on in the bugzilla user preferences.

That's it! Forever on, you will now see a random amusing anagram at the top of each bug list.