notes: January 2006

My friend, a Windows user, calls in desperation

(Phone rings)

"Giles, our computer's gone mad. Every time we turn it on we get these pop-ups telling us we're infected with something; then we have all this horrible porn appearing on the internet."

Sounds familiar. I'm sorry - I don't think I'm capable of fixing it. Sure, I could spend a few hours trying to clean it up but previous experience tells me I won't make much of a difference.

"My husband tried turning it back - what do you call it?"

Reverting to a saved state?

"Yes, and we thought that helped, but it all started again soon enough."

I wonder, is this the old Windows Me machine I helped with last time?

"No, we bought a new one. It's Windows XP I think. Could you come and have a look at it? We'd happily pay you for your time."

I wish I could help out, but I don't think it's worth it, for you or for me. I'd spend hours fiddling with Ad-aware and all that other stuff and I still wouldn't get it all cleaned up. You need to take it to a professional. Or buy a Mac.

"It's so frustrating that it's come to this again. We installed all the antivirus stuff, we did everything we could, but the computer is still like this. Is there nothing we can do to prevent it?"

Well, you could use Firefox and Thunderbird, instead of Explorer and Outlook Express -

"Firefox! I remember, you set that up for us on the old one. But we didn't get it set up on the new computer when we switched."

Ah. Oh.

"So what shall we do?"

Well, back up all your important stuff as best you can, and take the machine to a professional. They will almost certainly offer to wipe it clean for you.

"Great. It's going to cost a fortune isn't it?"

Quite possibly. Good luck.

Labels: tech

Wednesday, January 25, 2006
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Exploring London's place names

I've been having lots of fun flicking through the Oxford Dictionary of London Place Names by AD Mills. There's some wonderful things about it that I wanted to note.

The intricate links between place names and people names

Places are named after people; and vast numbers of personal names are a reflection of the place they came from. Many of London's place names are derived from the people who ruled over, or owned, or influenced that land as much as a thousand years ago. What a legacy!

So, Addiscombe and Addington near Croydon were both named after some person called Aeddi. Hackney may have been named after Hacca. Ponders End, where my father grew up, was land associated with the Ponder family. Sadler's Wells was where one Thomas Sadler found a spring in his garden. Duppas Hill, again in Croydon, was named after a family called Dubber or Double. Sydenham was once the "homestead or enclosure of a man named Cippa". Tulse Hill, named after a Tulse family.

Amusing and fascinating stories behind London place names

Isle of Dogs and Canary Wharf turn out to have a possible shared origin. The wharf was named, relatively recently in 1937, after a fruit importing company that traded with the Canary Islands. Oddly, the name Gran Canaria for the largest of the Islands is said to be derived from the Latin Canaria insula, which means, um, "Isle of Dogs". What's most interesting is that no-one really knows why the Isle of Dogs is so named; it might have been because wild dogs used to roam there, or because Royal hunting dogs were kenneled there. So the connection with Gran Canaria makes a more compelling tale.

Dulwich was named after "a marshy meadow where dill grows".

Anerley, where I lived a few years ago, was so named because the landowner at the time of the rail network construction was a Scot called William Sanderson; he spoke with a thick Scottish accent, and allowed the rail company to build a station on his land; it was to be the "only" one, though; now try saying "only" with a broad Highland twang ... it sounds like "anerley"...

Names whose origins are surprisingly obvious

Shooter's Hill - "hill of the shooter/archer"
Plumstead - "place where plum trees grow"
Smithfield - "smooth or level field"
Deptford - "deep ford" (the 't' was added much later)

Some other favourites from the book

Tottenham Court Road - leading to the ancient manor of Thottanheale, or "nook of land belonging to a man called Totta"
Wembley - "woodland clearing of a man called Wemba"
Wormwood Scrubs - "snake-infested thicket of stunted trees"
Aldgate - originally the Roman City's East Gate, it was known as "ale gate" presumably because travellers from Essex often stopped for a beer on their arrival; the 'd' is relatively new
Seven Sisters - seven elm trees, legendarily planted by seven sisters before setting off on their travels
Soho - named after a hunter's cry; this area was once wooded and used as a hunting ground by the local nobility
Burnt Oak - named after a dead oak tree used as a boundary marker

Labels: writing

Monday, January 23, 2006
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Stonehenge bypass latest

There's a bloody great road that roars past our most famous historical site, Stonehenge, and for some years now there have been plans afoot to try and do something about it.

It's a thorny issue, because there's not many options that don't do just as much harm as they do good. Stonehenge is by no means a lonely monument; the landscape in that area is riddled with archaeology, some of it of as much interest to professionals as Stonehenge itself. Almost any plan for re-routing the A303 is going to involve destruction or damage to something historical.

There have been various ideas floating about. One was a dig a huge tunnel, hiding the road for miles in either direction. This would, of course, cost an absolute fortune and would be by no means easy; if you read the details at the Highways Agency site, you find that to dig any kind of tunnel they'd have to modify the water table itself, and build huge retaining walls to keep the sludgy Wiltshire clay from cascading down on to the road. There's a reasonably informative PDF you can download, from which the map above was snipped.

The government has issued a press release about it, mentioning some options. But perhaps more useful are the dates and times for a public consultation, to be held in Salisbury and London during February. If you care about Stonehenge or its surrounding landscape, you might like to try and make it along to either the White Hart Hotel in Salisbury, between the 9th and 11th of February; or to The Society of Antiquaries, Burlington House, Piccadilly, on the 17th and 18th.

Monday, January 23, 2006
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Whatever happened to Rising Slowly?

If you've wondered what happened to Rising Slowly, the UK weather weblog, I'm now able to tell you the story.

When RS was launched, it generated quite a bit of interest online. Much linkage, a reasonable amount of media coverage, some encouraging comments. There was also quite a bit of interest in Mink Media, Rising Slowly's official backers. Some commentators went as far as calling Mink "the British Gawker".

Mink was initiated by Azeem Azhar. He brought in Sabrina Dent to do some of the management work - under what sort of contract, I don't know; I didn't ask about it. All I knew was that Azeem was ultimately the owner of Mink, but for day-to-day business, I dealt directly with Sabrina.

Things went well for a while. Mink (ie, Sabrina) found an initial advertiser for RS. Traffic was good, and I got an encouraging influx of tips and photos from readers.

Mink announced some new sites, Bleepblog and Closet Spy. A mailing list was set up for Mink writers to stay in touch with one another. I was sent some money for my contribution; not much money, but enough to make the work I'd done seem worthwhile. So far, so good.

Shortly after this brief bright spell, things started to change. Posts dried up on Sabrina's own travel weblog, Wanda Lust. Ditto Closet Spy. Fewer posts appeared on Bleep, Hon Fiend (which was always Mink's best publication and most promising asset, I thought), and yes, on Rising Slowly too. I started to lose steam; my post rate plummeted.

And of Mink itself there was no sign. Sabrina moved house, and I got no replies to the emails I sent her. I began to wonder if there was any life left in Mink as an organisation. That was the point at which I ceased posting on Rising Slowly. Traffic had dwindled; few people noticed.

Since there was no response from Sabrina, I emailed Azeem directly, asking him if he knew what had happened to Sabrina, and what the likely future was for Mink. It turned out he hadn't been in touch with her for a while; and it was pretty clear that Mink, along with its publications, had fallen by the wayside.

I'm not writing this in anger, nor bitterness or frustration; this is really just intended to be an explanation to the handful (literally, less than a dozen) of people who'd been in touch to ask what was going on.

Yes, it is a pity that the big experiment failed, but I still think it was worth trying. Should Azeem, Sabrina or any of the other Mink contributors ever decide to revive things, I wish them all the best of luck.

And it's a pity because I still think a weather weblog is a good idea, appealing to many people beyond webloggery, and rather well suited to the medium.

As for Rising Slowly: Azeem has said he will be happy to grant me ownership of the domain, to do with as I see fit. Once that's happened, and once I have some idea of what I could do with it, I'll let you know.

Thanks for reading this far. Hope the weather's nice where you are. It's grim and grey here.

Thursday, January 19, 2006
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Are you sitting comfortably?

When I was a kid, I watched a BBC TV show called Jackanory. Each week, a celebrity would sit in a comfy chair and read a story aloud. That was it; cheap, entertaining kids TV.

Storynory is Jackanory for the iPod generation. The British team behind the web site have posted loads of children's stories, many of them old classics like the Three Little Pigs and Little Red Riding Hood. Each is available in plain old MP3 format, so you can listen direct in your browser, download for later, or (and this is the point of the site) download and stick on an iPod for the little ones to enjoy.

What I love about Storynory is the way they're putting established web tools to use. Many of the stories have been recorded using Odeo. Stories can be grabbed, podcast-stylee, with an RSS feed.

My three-year-old has not yet developed an understanding, nor a care in the world, about what format audio arrives in. He is just as happy choosing a tape from our ancient cassette collection (yes we still have them, and we still use them) as he is browsing though iTunes (with Daddy's help, I should point out) and picking out a song.

But as he gets older he's going to be one of the digital generation, and I'd be surprised if he ever buys a CD in his life. For him, sites like Storynory are going to be the norm; especially if I introduce him to them now.

Labels: writing

Monday, January 16, 2006
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Nice look, shame about the content

Last week's relaunched Observer was a welcome change in many respects, but I was disappointed by the colour magazine (imaginatively called "The Observer Magazine"). Everything in it was the same old Sunday magazine crap. I want something different.

You'd have thought that an upmarket Sunday newspaper with a largely intelligent, educated audience would have the guts to create a magazine that takes some risks, but sadly this mag was a dull repetition of most of its rivals on Fleet Street.

Sunday newspapers have got trapped in a net of perceived expectations. The editorial team think that readers expect so-and-so, and they dish the same old stuff up again and again, in the belief that they are meeting this perceived need.

So the colour mag in the all-new, all-smaller Observer contains the same old guff you'll find in the Sunday mags from the Independent, the Times, even the Mail. No-one can imagine a mag that doesn't have a food column (recipes), a restaurant review, a booze column, an agony aunt (even if she's someone trendy like Mariella Frostrup, she's still an agony aunt), a gardening column, a fashion photo shoot over four or five pages, a review of a car.

We've been reading exactly the same kind of stuff in Sunday colour supplements for decades now, and it's getting boring.

The Observer, in particular, has shown some innovation with its monthly specialist magazines about sport, music, and food. It should turn its attention to the colour mag and re-invent it with the same spirit of innovation. Why not ditch the (rather thin) newsprint Travel section, perhaps the newsprint Review section as well, and combine them with some new material into a larger, fatter, more interesting weekly magazine? Why not ditch all the existing magazine content (or just move it to other parts of the paper, if it deserves to survive) and start with a completely blank slate, a full colour magazine ready for new ideas?

If I had my way, I'd commission things like:

a regular feature publishing wonderful photos from Flickr
original fiction, including screenplays and stage scripts
Economist-style informed (but informal) reporting from obscure places
exploratory reportage from every corner of Britain, interviewing interesting people about their communities
whatever they want to write, from people like Ashley Pomeroy, Merlin Mann, David Chess, a dozen or more others whose writing I admire

But most of all, I'd commission something different, something radically different, every single week. I'd want editorial that didn't try to comfort the reader with the same kind of stuff every week, but instead tried to surprise them with something unexpected.

Unexpected, but readable. Another problem I have with Sunday newspapers is that there's a tradition of writing longer articles. Frankly, too many of the ones I try reading are simply good, short articles that have been padding out with guff and bullshit. I've nothing against a long piece when all of it is worth reading, but I also see no need for all features to necessarily be "feature-length". I'd tell contributors to write what the story was worth.

I rarely buy a Sunday paper these days. I look at them lined up on the shelf in the newsagent, grunt my frustration, and walk away.

Sunday, January 15, 2006
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Hunting for wifi in Notting Hill Gate

I have a deep dislike of chain coffee shops, especially Starbucks, because of their outrageous prices, copy-and-paste interiors, and habit of killing off smaller competitors on the same street.

But while in London yesterday to cover the Apple keynote, I found myself in Notting Hill gate with just half an hour to spare and needing to file some copy. Reluctantly, I stepped into Starbucks, bought a cup of tea, and fired up the PowerBook.

I was automatically connected to the T-Mobile hotspot and fished out my wallet to pay for an hour's connectivity. Then disaster struck - I only had my Switch/Maestro card, no Visa or Mastercard. Guess what? You can't use Switch to pay for T-Mobile's service. Dammit.

Frustrated (not just that I couldn't do the work I'd planned, but also because I'd paid bloody Starbucks for a cup of tea just to find this out), I went to switch off the Airport card in order to save battery life (top tip, Mac laptop owners: when you're out and about and don't need to be online, switch off Airport in the Menu Bar and you'll get significantly more time from your batteries) and noticed another wireless network listed.

It turned out to be The Gate, a low-cost network run independently for people in the Notting Hill Gate area. And you can pay for it using your Paypal account.

Delighted at (a) sticking one up to T-Mobile, and (b) sticking one up to Starbucks, and (c) saving myself a few pennies, and (d) actually being able to do the work I needed to do, I grinned and started tapping away.

I've no doubt there's plenty of free wifi in decent cafes in London, if you have the time to look for it, or are organised enough to seek it out in advance. But this chance discovery made me feel good about supporting a local outfit, despite having to do so in bloody Starbucks.

Incidentally, Bristol's public wireless zone remains the most impressive I've used. Widespread and free to use from dozens of nice cafes, pubs and homes, it ought to be a model for other cities to copy. London local authorities, take note.

Labels: writing

Wednesday, January 11, 2006
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Haircuts and lollipops

Mark the barber is adamant. Only the good kids get lollipops.

"The good ones," he says as he snips "are the ones who sit still and let me cut."

He's quite happy to give them a lollipop after their haircut.

"But I'm not giving lollipops to all of them, not to the naughty ones who sit here and scream, or climb off the chair and try to run out the shop; that wouldn't be fair on the good ones, would it?"

He's got a point. Barney, who was very good for his haircut and has been sucking happily on his lollipop while my hair is cut, climbs down from his chair. Not to misbehave, but to dance joyfully to the song playing on the radio. Even the grumpy old fella waiting his turn in the chair is forced to smile.

Barney dances like a wild thing, kicking up clouds of hair from the floor as he whirls around.

Mark completes my short back and sides.

"How's that sir?" he asks.

Wednesday, January 04, 2006
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How to get dirt-cheap insulation for your home

I'm pretty dismissive of most of this government's environmental policies, but there are one or two schemes in place that are very impressive indeed.

The government has initiated various funds for subsidising environmentally-positive things for homeowners; these funds appear to be distributed to local councils and other organisations. The customers (you and me) end up having to pay a very small fee for something that would otherwise be hugely expensive.

Last year I got a large compost bin for the garden, delivered to my front door, for £5. The same bin in the garden centre would have cost £50, and I'd have had to go and fetch it myself. This was possible because my local council has been given some money from Gordon Brown, and uses it to subsidise the cost (to the manufacturer) of supplying the bins.

Over the Christmas holidays, my father-in-law mentioned a scheme whereby he got his home comprehensively insulated for less than £200. This included cavity wall insulation and thick loft insulation. Again, this is possible because the government is subsidising the energy companies.

You get a better deal if your home has no insulation already, or if you're over 60 or on benefits - in these cases, you get your insulation for free.

Even if you're not in that position, you can still get a huge discount. Typically, a three-bedroom detached house (like mine) will cost me about £150-200 each for loft insulation and cavity wall insulation. That's all labour and materials for a bunch of professionals, with all the professional kit, to come and do the job. Cavity wall filling needs professionals anyway; loft insulation is a straightforward DIY job but is time-consuming and messy; I'd rather pay someone else to do it.

What irks me is that knowledge of discounts like this is not widespread. You have to go and hunt for it.

So, for anyone who finds this page after a Google search: go to the Energy Saving Trust site and click the big "Search for a grant" button. You'll be asked for your postcode, and some unintrusive personal questions, then given a list of companies that can do your insulation on the cheap. By all means ring around a few of them for a quote, but remember that because the funding is coming from central government, the prices from the different suppliers are broadly similar, and you'll only find differences of a few pounds here and there. If you live in Wiltshire, call the county energy efficiency advice line on 0800 512012, where a friendly person can guide you through the details, and get a surveyor round to inspect your property (the survey is free and there's no obligation to buy anything).

Labels: writing

Wednesday, January 04, 2006
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Welcome, harassed journalists

I'm the first to admit I have a big ego, but the latest head-inflating mention of my name online has even my sense of self-importance spinning.

It turns out there's a book called The Newspapers Handbook by someone called Richard Keeble; I gather it's a resources-for-journalists sort of book, filled with useful advice on how not to libel people, and how to write words good.

What's really weird, though, is this mention of me on page 57.

Welcome, harassed journalists
Originally uploaded by gilest.

I've grabbed that image from the Google Books view of the page in question; you'll need to log in with a Google ID if you want to follow the link and see it for yourself.

If my name had been listed under a heading saying "Journalists who also have web sites," I wouldn't have been terribly surprised. I am a journalist. I have a web site. Figures.

But no, my name (and this domain) are listed under "Some useful sites for harassed hacks", right alongside considerably more important online resources such as The British Library catalogue, The Poynter Institute, and Willings Press Guide. My humble site is listed between The University of Tampere's ethics guide and, um, Roget's Thesaurus.

I'm flattered that Richard Keeble holds me and this site in such high esteem (and dying to know what made him include me in his list); I only hope that any harassed young journalists who come here looking for wisdom and advice aren't too disappointed when they find only pictures of children's parties and rants about foons.

Labels: writing

Tuesday, January 03, 2006
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