Over at Lib Dem voice there is currently a competition running to source a poster to promote the Alternative Vote campaign, for next years referendum.
Here is my offering:
Tuesday, 27 July 2010
AV campaign poster
looking for work
I'm not sure any semi-regular experience comes close in the horrible stakes to job-hunting. It's so ridiculously soul destroying and demoralising that it leaves you unconvinced as to your ability to do any job at all. And I say this as someone who has only received one rejection letter to date.
Let me start from the top:
I found out last week that the company I work for is in severe dire straits. This was confirmed for me on Wednesday when it was suggested that instead of my usual work, it may be best to prepare a CV.
This was duly completed and the job hunt began, if not hastily, earnestly. The problem was (and indeed remains) that not only am I not particularly clear what I want to do, but my career to date has not really been targeted enough to give me a proper fall back.
The obvious contender for a holding role is to do some design work, admittedly that's far from obvious looking at this blog, but it has been the key thread through my career to date. Thing is, these days everyone wants to see a portfolio. I'm not organised enough to keep a portfolio. I had trouble enough remembering where the my work was on the server. Finding work I did 3 or more years and 2 computers ago is like looking for a needle in a haystack. When someone forgot to provide the needle.
I can do other things of course. I mean I can write, or at least I hope I can. If you've made it this far then at least I can write a bit anyway. But once again employers want to see a strong portfolio of work. That tends not to mean a hideously untargetted blog and the occasional note on rwdmag.com. Besides, the few jobs I have seen that do exist have balls and all to do with what i know.
'Do you have a passion for luxury hubcaps?' Does anyone?
To save repeating myself down the list of skills that I have in some measure, it's essentially the same story. I can do the job but either don't have a portfolio handy, or haven't been doing it professionally for anything like long enough.
Luckily I do have a way of amusing myself even in these irritating times. On seeing one job that I considered I had a chance for, I replied, 'are you looking for the ultimate all-rounder? Well look no further!'
Yes I know what you're thinking, that's either breathtakingly arrogant, mind numbingly stupid, or both. Frankly I'm not sure I care, after another day in our rotting corpse of an office, I needed some entertainment, I was tired of typing up the same empty platitudes and maybe, just maybe someone arrogant and stupid is just what they were looking for.
Let me start from the top:
I found out last week that the company I work for is in severe dire straits. This was confirmed for me on Wednesday when it was suggested that instead of my usual work, it may be best to prepare a CV.
This was duly completed and the job hunt began, if not hastily, earnestly. The problem was (and indeed remains) that not only am I not particularly clear what I want to do, but my career to date has not really been targeted enough to give me a proper fall back.
The obvious contender for a holding role is to do some design work, admittedly that's far from obvious looking at this blog, but it has been the key thread through my career to date. Thing is, these days everyone wants to see a portfolio. I'm not organised enough to keep a portfolio. I had trouble enough remembering where the my work was on the server. Finding work I did 3 or more years and 2 computers ago is like looking for a needle in a haystack. When someone forgot to provide the needle.
I can do other things of course. I mean I can write, or at least I hope I can. If you've made it this far then at least I can write a bit anyway. But once again employers want to see a strong portfolio of work. That tends not to mean a hideously untargetted blog and the occasional note on rwdmag.com. Besides, the few jobs I have seen that do exist have balls and all to do with what i know.
'Do you have a passion for luxury hubcaps?' Does anyone?
To save repeating myself down the list of skills that I have in some measure, it's essentially the same story. I can do the job but either don't have a portfolio handy, or haven't been doing it professionally for anything like long enough.
Luckily I do have a way of amusing myself even in these irritating times. On seeing one job that I considered I had a chance for, I replied, 'are you looking for the ultimate all-rounder? Well look no further!'
Yes I know what you're thinking, that's either breathtakingly arrogant, mind numbingly stupid, or both. Frankly I'm not sure I care, after another day in our rotting corpse of an office, I needed some entertainment, I was tired of typing up the same empty platitudes and maybe, just maybe someone arrogant and stupid is just what they were looking for.
Friday, 16 July 2010
More re-hashing: Raoul Moat and Facebook
Posted on a forum of which I am a member, about the RIP Moat facebook pages. In reply to a call for them to be banned.
As far as I can tell the page that was removed was done so because it breached the T&Cs of facebook (I believe there were comments inciting violence). The problem with banning this sort of group as you seem to suggest, is that you won't actually be stopping people from thinking these things. You just won't be able to search for them. I actually think it's quite a good thing these pages exist, because then you know who the nutters are!
The far more pertinent question is surely what drives people to want to join this sort of group? If you take the group away, those people that are publically sympathising with Moat will instead do so in private. What makes tham sympathise? A few of the crazies that joined his group may be dangerous, they will continue to be so regardless of whether they can announce it on facebook.
I still blame it on the media. I think the prolonged coverage made him an obvious 'anti-hero'. People want to be famous, and if they can't sing / act / kick a ball then suddenly this new route to stardom has emerged. Terrifying really.
While I don't agree with the banning of internet pages of this ilk, I have no problem with what Cameron seems to have said (not heard his words directly). This is a case of someone with influence offering an opinion, I'd rather the PM (of any party, except the obvious) use this influence than the papers that try and do it on a daily basis*.
*This bit refers to something that the PM said in PMQ's expressing his distaste for the facebook groups.
As far as I can tell the page that was removed was done so because it breached the T&Cs of facebook (I believe there were comments inciting violence). The problem with banning this sort of group as you seem to suggest, is that you won't actually be stopping people from thinking these things. You just won't be able to search for them. I actually think it's quite a good thing these pages exist, because then you know who the nutters are!
The far more pertinent question is surely what drives people to want to join this sort of group? If you take the group away, those people that are publically sympathising with Moat will instead do so in private. What makes tham sympathise? A few of the crazies that joined his group may be dangerous, they will continue to be so regardless of whether they can announce it on facebook.
I still blame it on the media. I think the prolonged coverage made him an obvious 'anti-hero'. People want to be famous, and if they can't sing / act / kick a ball then suddenly this new route to stardom has emerged. Terrifying really.
While I don't agree with the banning of internet pages of this ilk, I have no problem with what Cameron seems to have said (not heard his words directly). This is a case of someone with influence offering an opinion, I'd rather the PM (of any party, except the obvious) use this influence than the papers that try and do it on a daily basis*.
*This bit refers to something that the PM said in PMQ's expressing his distaste for the facebook groups.
Thursday, 15 July 2010
Guitar hero: On tour review
It has (once again) been quite a while since I blogged. So to remind myself what it's like to use the blogger software and to help achieve my goal aiding potential employers by having all of my writings in one place; here is a review I wrote for the TVUSU magazine about 2 years ago. Enjoy.
You know something is awry with guitar hero – on tour almost as soon as you first switch on the power. A rather colourful warning is displayed espousing the necessity of regular rests, followed by a further warning suggesting how best to hold your DS while playing. If you hadn’t already worked it out, Activision are letting you know that for all that the guitar hero franchise is, one thing it isn’t is ergonomic!
To put it in plain text, the ingenious attachment that Red Octane have devised for use with their portable incarnation of a multi million selling game is supremely uncomfortable. This isn’t out of bad design either, the strap around your hand has to sit so tightly so save you smashing £100 worth of DS lite all over the train platform and the buttons sit almost as well as could be expected (though to make the angle between the buttons and the users fingers a little less than right would have been pleasant). The problem is quite simply that the format does not transfer as well to a handheld format as one might expect.
Of course, the tardy and dedicated reviewer that I am, I persevered on through the RSI (which in the days of the Wii is little more than an occupational hazard anyway) to find out how valid an addition to the series ‘on tour’ is.
Due to the limited amount of space on a DS cartridge, the career song list is limited to 5 venues which between them house 25 songs spread over the 4 difficulties now familiar to guitar hero veterans. This in itself is no bad thing and completely excusable. What however (to me at least) was completely inexcusable was recycling songs from guitar hero 3, especially as (despite the missing button) the charts for the songs felt so similar. This would all be well and good if only newcomers to the series were expected to play, the problem with this approach is that isolates those fans of the series that don’t want to be playing the same songs again.
The game play itself should be very familiar fare, even to many who don’t themselves own a video games console. Notes move along the screen in time with the music and as the notes reach a marker, the player ‘strums’ (using a special plectrum shaped stylus) while holding the button whose colour corresponds with that of the note.
Guitar Hero-On Tour offers three single player modes; I will spend little time discussing the obligatory career and quick play settings, as they are fairly simple and indeed quite self explanatory. What does deserve some column inches though, is the new battle mode. Not quite a new thing in itself (Guitar Hero 3 had three ‘boss’ battles against guitar legends and… Satan) what is different here is the fact that you can play any unlocked song against a CPU controlled adversary. In this you can gain the upper hand by launching power-ups at your opponent to temporarily disadvantage them. Unfortunately, like every other good idea in this game, it just doesn’t work well enough. To activate the power ups, or in some cases to recover from those that your enemy has hindered you with, you need to perform actions on the touch screen, while the song continues running on the other side! This makes using or recovering from power-ups nigh on impossible. While disappointing, it’s hard to see exactly what Red Octane could have done better.
So, to conclude, I wouldn’t really recommend this game to fans of the series, as it’s just not in depth enough to really offer value for money. That said I wouldn’t recommend it do newcomers either. The awkward design of the controller may well put you off learning and the track-list just isn’t inspiring enough to draw you through the game. A shame as nothing has really been done badly, it just probably would have been better off not being done at all.
4/10
You know something is awry with guitar hero – on tour almost as soon as you first switch on the power. A rather colourful warning is displayed espousing the necessity of regular rests, followed by a further warning suggesting how best to hold your DS while playing. If you hadn’t already worked it out, Activision are letting you know that for all that the guitar hero franchise is, one thing it isn’t is ergonomic!
To put it in plain text, the ingenious attachment that Red Octane have devised for use with their portable incarnation of a multi million selling game is supremely uncomfortable. This isn’t out of bad design either, the strap around your hand has to sit so tightly so save you smashing £100 worth of DS lite all over the train platform and the buttons sit almost as well as could be expected (though to make the angle between the buttons and the users fingers a little less than right would have been pleasant). The problem is quite simply that the format does not transfer as well to a handheld format as one might expect.
Of course, the tardy and dedicated reviewer that I am, I persevered on through the RSI (which in the days of the Wii is little more than an occupational hazard anyway) to find out how valid an addition to the series ‘on tour’ is.
Due to the limited amount of space on a DS cartridge, the career song list is limited to 5 venues which between them house 25 songs spread over the 4 difficulties now familiar to guitar hero veterans. This in itself is no bad thing and completely excusable. What however (to me at least) was completely inexcusable was recycling songs from guitar hero 3, especially as (despite the missing button) the charts for the songs felt so similar. This would all be well and good if only newcomers to the series were expected to play, the problem with this approach is that isolates those fans of the series that don’t want to be playing the same songs again.
The game play itself should be very familiar fare, even to many who don’t themselves own a video games console. Notes move along the screen in time with the music and as the notes reach a marker, the player ‘strums’ (using a special plectrum shaped stylus) while holding the button whose colour corresponds with that of the note.
Guitar Hero-On Tour offers three single player modes; I will spend little time discussing the obligatory career and quick play settings, as they are fairly simple and indeed quite self explanatory. What does deserve some column inches though, is the new battle mode. Not quite a new thing in itself (Guitar Hero 3 had three ‘boss’ battles against guitar legends and… Satan) what is different here is the fact that you can play any unlocked song against a CPU controlled adversary. In this you can gain the upper hand by launching power-ups at your opponent to temporarily disadvantage them. Unfortunately, like every other good idea in this game, it just doesn’t work well enough. To activate the power ups, or in some cases to recover from those that your enemy has hindered you with, you need to perform actions on the touch screen, while the song continues running on the other side! This makes using or recovering from power-ups nigh on impossible. While disappointing, it’s hard to see exactly what Red Octane could have done better.
So, to conclude, I wouldn’t really recommend this game to fans of the series, as it’s just not in depth enough to really offer value for money. That said I wouldn’t recommend it do newcomers either. The awkward design of the controller may well put you off learning and the track-list just isn’t inspiring enough to draw you through the game. A shame as nothing has really been done badly, it just probably would have been better off not being done at all.
4/10
Thursday, 13 May 2010
The ConDem pact
We have a new government. It's not what many people wanted, but the vagaries of First past the post mean that is not irregular. I for one am cautiously optimistic. Yes we effectively have a tory government, and I can't say I trust them as far as I can throw Mount Everest, but that's beside the point. This coalition deal was one of only two realistic options on the table, the progressive 'rainbow alliance' was never an option. I'll explain more on that in a minute, first I'm going to pick out one or two things from the text fleshed out during the 5 days of negotiations. In doing so I hope I can explain my tentative positivity.
Political Reform
It isn't the first item on the list, but for many people that voted Lib Dem this election it is their number one priority. The coalition agreement is generous on Reform, with Fixed term parliaments coming into power immediately (A no-confidence dissolution vote will now require 55% of the house to vote in favour). Also in the mix is a referendum on the Alternative Vote (AV) system for Parliamentary elections, and a proposal to see a proportionally elected upper house.
Taxation
This was one of the cornerstones of the Lib Dem campaign, and it is surprising how closely the coalition document matches their manifesto. The personal allowance will increase in real terms each year, with an aim to reaching the £10k target by the end of this parliamentary term. This will become the priority tax cut, moving ahead of the inheritance tax cut in the cue. A rise in non-business capital gains tax will help pay for it.
Civil liberties
Based on the Lib Dem freedom pledge in their manifesto a 'great repeal bill' has been touted. Henry Porter makes the case for this far more eloquently than me. Also of note (though included in the immigration section) is the ending of detention of children for immigration purposes.
Those are my highlights. The full outline is available to view here.
So yes, the government is going to be tory lead. There is also a glaring problem with the deficit that makes spending cuts likely. Unfortunately Cameron's party is likely to do this with more relish, but at least with The Lib Dems looking over their shoulder hopefully thier priorities will more echo my own.
So for my mind this was probably the best result that could have occurred from a really dodgy situation. As a Lib Dem voter I'm aware that the party could be associated with a very unpopular government which could lead to their eventual downfall. So why the acceptance? It's probably best to look at the alternatves.
1) Confidence and supply -
There was the option for the Lib Dems to enter into a confidence and supply agreement with the the Conservatives. I explored this option in a previous post. However in hindsight, this would not have provided a government that lasted very long. Further, though they would have the power to veto elements of Conservative policy, they would have far less chance of getting their own policies enacted. The benefits listed above would have been vanishingly unlikely.
2) Progressive coalition
Well this was the holy grail to many a left-leaning voter, lock out those bastard Tories and get some good done. All wonderful in principle, however the Lib-Dems and Labour together did not hold enough seats to form a majority. That meant that other parties would have needed to jump on board, mainly the Welsh and Scottish Nationalists.
Fair play to them for effort, but the SNP and Plaid Cymru were campaigning on the back of spending increases for their respective countries. This would have been very hard to accept during budgets in which public spending had to be cut. Agreements on budgets were unlikely. Also, when negotiations began between the Lib Dems and Labour, Labour MPs made public their opposition to a coalition. When considering such a slender majority in parliament, any dissent would make the government untenable. For all our hopes and dreams, Labour and the Lib Dems combined just didn't get enough seats.
So there we go, agree? disagree? Let me know below the line.
Monday, 10 May 2010
No Women? Unfair or representative?
So today @hannahnicklin @davecoveny and others have been discussing the lack of female representation during the coalition negotiations. My argument in short was that if the Parties in question had no strong female negotiators, why should there be Women involved?
Let me make something very clear, I am not in anyway suggesting that women cannot be good negotiators or that female negotiators do not exist, I am saying very specifically that there may have been no women suitable for the role in the parties questioned. I am talking about the benefits of a meritocracy versus tokenism here. I firmly believe that in any situation people should be hired/selected/advanced on the basis of their ability alone. That means that Men, Women and so called ethnic minorities (I fucking hate that term by the way*) should all be judged on their talent in a scenario, not just flung in to make up the numbers. It's surely not fair on those people that may have been able to do a better job.
If I remember my numbers correctly there are 7 female Lib Dem MPs and 52 female Conservative MPs. The obvious question to ask at this juncture is why the ratios are so low? There are 362 MPs between these two parties but only 16% of women. Is that not unrepresentative given that roughly 50% of the UK population is female?
That all depends. As with the world of work, a better measure of what would be representative surely needs to look at the level of applicants for a role. When the ratio between number of applicants and number of successful applicants across all groups is balanced, then you can call the successful applicants representative. It would be easy to argue that there are talented women that are put off of entering politics for various reasons. For that reason I commend documents like this, which highlight those reasons, and try to help us break down the barriers.
What I don't like to see though is any bias built into a system, that may penalise a man via so called 'positive action' as much as I dislike to see unconscious bias (or even directed bias), rule out talented 'minorities' because they come from the wrong backgrounds. My answer as always in cases like this is that equality of opportunity is vital but selection must be fair. If that were to mean that 90% of MP's were women, I for one wouldn't complain.
*and I apparently am one.
Let me make something very clear, I am not in anyway suggesting that women cannot be good negotiators or that female negotiators do not exist, I am saying very specifically that there may have been no women suitable for the role in the parties questioned. I am talking about the benefits of a meritocracy versus tokenism here. I firmly believe that in any situation people should be hired/selected/advanced on the basis of their ability alone. That means that Men, Women and so called ethnic minorities (I fucking hate that term by the way*) should all be judged on their talent in a scenario, not just flung in to make up the numbers. It's surely not fair on those people that may have been able to do a better job.
If I remember my numbers correctly there are 7 female Lib Dem MPs and 52 female Conservative MPs. The obvious question to ask at this juncture is why the ratios are so low? There are 362 MPs between these two parties but only 16% of women. Is that not unrepresentative given that roughly 50% of the UK population is female?
That all depends. As with the world of work, a better measure of what would be representative surely needs to look at the level of applicants for a role. When the ratio between number of applicants and number of successful applicants across all groups is balanced, then you can call the successful applicants representative. It would be easy to argue that there are talented women that are put off of entering politics for various reasons. For that reason I commend documents like this, which highlight those reasons, and try to help us break down the barriers.
What I don't like to see though is any bias built into a system, that may penalise a man via so called 'positive action' as much as I dislike to see unconscious bias (or even directed bias), rule out talented 'minorities' because they come from the wrong backgrounds. My answer as always in cases like this is that equality of opportunity is vital but selection must be fair. If that were to mean that 90% of MP's were women, I for one wouldn't complain.
*and I apparently am one.
The markets are jittery!
Don't under any circumstances expect this to be coherent or sensible, I just wanted to get something committed to 'paper' about the uncertainty of the markets, whether that be stream of consciousness or not.
I don't remember us electing a bunch of suited everything-phobes to run the country*. Why is it we are being held to ransom by the markets? The thinking behind this seems to be something like:
There is a running school of argument, that we are only in this position due to the level of debt we hold. That makes no sense to me. Even if we followed that argument to its (market driven) conclusion surely the cost of the debt should rise? Why would the state of the government effect the well being of the top private companies in the UK? 3 days after an election?
I could go on, so I will.
Only one trading day has passed between the election and now. Is that really too long to be making a decision? If I was a party leader, I probably would have slept the whole weekend anyway, what with all that campaigning. The impatience bugs me something chronic.
And what is with the news trying to make this a self-fulfilling prophecy? The BBC spent all morning, telling us how the markets were jittery. If I worked in the stock market, that would make ME jittery. Apparently the FTSE opened 100 points up this morning. Then started to descend, apparently in response to all the news stations saying that it should.
Or in short, this shit pisses me off.
*then again the Daily Express quoting Conservatives did get the highest share of the vote.
I don't remember us electing a bunch of suited everything-phobes to run the country*. Why is it we are being held to ransom by the markets? The thinking behind this seems to be something like:
- A couple of people think 'ooh-er, not sure I like that government, I might just pull out some of my investment there.'
- Other people go 'Shit! look at that! some people are pulling out their investment! I might just go and try and make money out of this by taking up short positions against UK holdings'
- Further people go 'Oh, look at all those short positions in the UK! Market must be about to tank... Should probably reduce my exposure there'
- UK stock market tanks.
There is a running school of argument, that we are only in this position due to the level of debt we hold. That makes no sense to me. Even if we followed that argument to its (market driven) conclusion surely the cost of the debt should rise? Why would the state of the government effect the well being of the top private companies in the UK? 3 days after an election?
I could go on, so I will.
Only one trading day has passed between the election and now. Is that really too long to be making a decision? If I was a party leader, I probably would have slept the whole weekend anyway, what with all that campaigning. The impatience bugs me something chronic.
And what is with the news trying to make this a self-fulfilling prophecy? The BBC spent all morning, telling us how the markets were jittery. If I worked in the stock market, that would make ME jittery. Apparently the FTSE opened 100 points up this morning. Then started to descend, apparently in response to all the news stations saying that it should.
Or in short, this shit pisses me off.
*then again the Daily Express quoting Conservatives did get the highest share of the vote.
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