Girls can drive cars much better than men. This post is all that is left of a tortuous train of thought that was taking forever to get into a sensible form, got overtaken by events and ended up in the wrong place.
A week ago I watched a motoring program, something I have slowed down on over the last few years due to a perceived loss in quality. This one, though, was about Ford GT40s, Group 6 sports racing cars that can be used on the roads. Stay with me ladies, this isn't entirely a man thing. These cars were supreme at the Le Mans 24hrs race in the late '60s and I was there to watch and listen. Fond memories etc etc. The TV program had somehow managed to persuade the owner of one of these legendary beasts to allow a presenter to sample its delights. The presenter given the task was one of the now statutary females. At the time it seemed an incredible production decision. With the benefit of hindsight the producer was inspired. The girl was genuinely enthusiastic as she got in and drove off. The in-car camera showed a girl doing something hundreds of thousands of men would seriously consider giving a finger for if not an arm and leg. The commentary described the feel of the machinery and had real enthusiasm oozing out of it. There was no way it was scripted. She was just having an industrial strength good time. Damn, but she was professional about it. She just managed to remain semi-coherent right the way through an extremely long private moment. She kept her clothes on but the expression was unmistakable. The only thing she might have been faking was the commentary. The GT40 was one hell of a car and that commentary or lack of one described the experience to perfection. No mere man could possibly have done a better job.

Today I visited no less than 5 trade exhibitions. I have a love/hate relationship with them. They have their uses in that I can catch up with what's going on but they can be hard work. For the record today's batch were Web Services, Help Desk & IT Support, Info Security, Incentive World and Small Business. Nothing world shattering anywhere. There were the usual amusing errors (why would a manufacturer of mouse mats want to give prominence to a mat they had made for Worldcom?), plenty of young ladies with plastic smiles, a good juggler, a pseudo cowboy, a unicyclist who got out of a straight jacket whilst giving a presentation, an excellent front of house conjuror I have met before (it's always a pleasure to watch somebody doing something very well) and another familiar face at the centre of a small crowd around the Harrier Zeuros stand. 'Were you driving a GT40 for Channel 5 last week?' The face lights up. 'Yes' 'How come you got the drive rather than one of the men?' Slight frown, piercing stare. The small crowd steps back waitng for the explosion. 'Leading to what, exactly?'
'Just that you got the GT40 idea across better than any man would have done. Did you enjoy it as much as you showed on TV?' Huge grin. 'Absolutely.' Apparently the only part of the broadcast she wasn't entirely happy with was that on the 'trails' for the GT40, the shots of the car were overlaid with the least coherent parts of her commentary. She needn't have worried she had perfectly described a fabulous car.

Amanda Stretton who races heavy metal on oval tracks was working her sponsors' stand. After the crowd moved away I sought her permission to blog the above and she didn't have the vaguest idea what blogging was but gave her permission anyway. Well, Amanda if you get to reading this, it was a delightful surprise to meet you, this is blogging and please consider adding your blog to your site.

Cheap shot at a politician from silicon.com's Weekly Round-up email last week.
Before we begin this week's Round-Up, can we take this opportunity to say that we know not all Americans are mad, bad, xenophobic and in hock to big business. Just some of them. Thank you.
Californian Congressman Darrell Issa wrote a letter to US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld last week about the future of post-war Iraq. He's concerned about its mobile phone infrastructure (as you would be...), which is practically non-existent at the moment due to UN sanctions.
As you probably know, there are two main mobile standards in use today, GSM and CDMA. The former was developed in Europe and is by far the most widespread; the latter comes from the good ol' US of A, and isn't really used much outside the Americas and some of Asia-Pacific. GSM originally stood for Groupe Speciale Mobile, even though it wasn't created solely by the French. It's commonly referred to as Global System for Mobile Communications these days, which is fair enough given that it's been deployed by 193 nations throughout the world.
But as a citizen of a country where there have been calls to rename French fries 'freedom fries' because of our European cousin's attitudes to the war in Iraq, Congressman Issa has seized upon the new moniker to score some points for the 'land of the free'. His letter to Rumsfield - in which GSM is described as 'an outdated French standard' - says...
"If US taxpayers are going to be gifting billions of dollars in technology and infrastructure to the Iraqi people, we ought to make sure, to the greatest extent possible, that those expenditures also benefit the American people and the American economy. If we build a system based on European technology, the Europeans will receive the royalties, not US patent holders."
And there we were, thinking America was in Iraq for the altruistic purpose of freeing its people from a dictatorship, not drumming up new sales opportunities for its businesses. How naïve.
The GSM Association responded swiftly. Rob Conway, its CEO, said: "Congressman Issa's intervention that GSM is an 'outdated French standard' is as ill-timed as it is misinformed. At the moment our first priority must be to offer our support and sympathies to the people putting their lives on the line to liberate Iraq. The right time to debate the technology will be when the real conflict is over... I can't believe someone has started this debate at this time, and I certainly can't believe it has been started from such a false position and on such nationalistic terms."
Indeed. You may be interested to know that Congressman Issa represents the 49th District of California, north of San Diego - the home town of mobile phone company Qualcomm. Qualcomm owns most of the patents to CDMA. Qualcomm has made donations to the Republican coffers of one Congressman Issa. Join the dots, see what kind of picture you come up with.

When will I grow up? Things like this still amuse me.

Baker's other syndrome, Foot in mouth. The only people you should ever insult are your friends because your enemies will never forgive you. However being deliberately hurtful is unforgivable. I've been back up and running for just a few hours and I have already had to apologise to Jenben and Charlie. All my future posts and comments should, like cigarette packets, carry a social health warning.

'A little local difficulty' A bad week. Telephone line went down,(all credit to BT who fixed 'a loose wire at the exchange' in less than two hours) Bill Gates finest operating system tied itself in knots for no good reason, still haven't debugged the template to accept comments and I spent three days and two nights absorbing vast quantities of culture, food and drink in the Cotswolds and Evesham(gained 5 pounds weight). The next few posts are definitely out of date but what the hell. On reflection, a better week than some folks have had to put up with.

Being polite and listening to other people's comments is not as easy as it should be. I get loads of Scipt errors but at least I got Back Blogs logo up and running. A small victory but I'll take anything positive these days. Will tinker with the tags. Holding of breath is not a good idea.
Update:- Error 104 on posting the above.

Sometimes I get no satisfaction from being right.
A few weeks ago in someone's comments I light-heartedly postulated the conspiracy theory that SARS had been developed at Porton Down in the UK, 'lent' to the US who 'liberated' it in China, who would suppress the news, so that it would be able to build up in the community. The cure has already been developed by corporations with friends in high places and will be released as soon as the market is in the right state of panic.

So what if I've been rude? I blame my upbringing, the state of world peace, lack of expertise/time and general laziness. After some intercontinental nagging from a soon to be stateless colony of penguins I have just amended my template to accept comments. With any luck I will have screwed it up because I'm not sure I'm ready to do battle on my own territory yet. Cowardice is the safest part of valour.

M.R.S.A. then V.R.S.A. now S.A.R.S. All acronyms for thoroughly nasty self-inflicted injuries on mankind. Is B.U.S.H. any different?

Bad analogy from a shallow thinker. I have been avoiding the temptation to comment too much on the war, there are no easy solutions. However hindsight helps overcome the temptation.
Regimes like Saddam's are a cancer on civilisation. If left alone they spread and kill. Treatment is difficult or impossible. Skilled surgery at an early stage can be successful, you cut out the affected part before it gets a hold. Radiation can kill the cancer, drop a bomb on it. Bombard it with chemicals to shrivel it, sanction it to death. But whatever you do you have to look after the patient. After surgery it is essential to close the wound and avoid infections. Food and water are also required. Incomplete surgery was performed on Iraq in 1991. Diplomatic chemotherapy has achieved nothing over decades and now a well equipped surgeon has started operating. The problem is that the cancer has spread through the population and although the surgeon has cut out some bad bits and is going after the rest with a bearable amount of damage to the surrounding tissue, no forethought seems to have gone into maintaining the patient's life. The wounds have not been stitched, the patient is bleeding, infections are taking hold and food and water aren't going to arrive for a long time. No curfews, no protection for hospitals, power, water and food socks, no interim administrative structure up and running before the troops went in.
The only protection appears to be for the oilfields. I have just heard Rumsfeld blaming the Iraqis for the descent towards anarchy. The situation will require the presence of the US army and corporations for longer than the world thought but about as long as it was planned.
In medical terms 'The operation was a success unfortunately the patient died.' Not so much a live saving operation as an organ donation/robbery.

Terrible news. British Airways and Air France seem to be about to axe Concorde. It may be noisy and unfriendly to the environment but, living within sight of its flightpath into Heathrow, I love seeing it on a regular basis. The only other aircraft that is as attractive is the Spitfire. The difference is that the Spitfire is pretty but Concorde is beautiful.

Why do I read XML newsletters when I can barely cope with HTML. This was item 4 in the latest.


BLOGS AND K-LOGS THE FUTURE OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT


One of the key tricks in applications development, as in many other walks of life, is the ability to have the right information, the right knowledge, to hand as and when you need it. This simple fact led to the growth of knowledge management systems a few years ago. But such tools have largely failed because they have tended to formalise the process of knowledge gathering, and that is not the way people work.


But as Mary Branscombe’s column in the next May/June issue of Application Development Advisor suggests, the Web is now offering developers a new way to collect, collate and distribute the knowledge that can so often be so useful to their work. This is the new technology of Weblogs - often referred to as Blogs. As Branscombe points out, this technology has its roots in the ability of the Web to support 'personal publishing'. But this it takes publishing one step beyond the 'I-write-you-read' model to a point where readers can contribute to the Blog themselves.


This leads directly to the potential for developers (or any other group with a common interest) to build a community around that interest, and if the interest is in sharing their experiences and knowledge about applications development they can then create pools of information – either just within their company or across the world – that can be of significant importance.


It is a capability of Blogs that has been noticed by technology providers, as well, for now they are taking their current products and extending them into Knowledge Logs (k-logs). So, in the same issue of the magazine, we will have a feature from Simon Bisson, which shows how they can be built and exploit k-logs, and reviews some of the technology now coming available to help.


Should I feel smug because I've been blogging for months and the trade press are only going to talk about it next month or should I unsubscribe from an obviously out of touch publication?

Something good has come out of this bad war. I have just watched live pictures as Saddam's statue has been toppled in the centre of Bagdad with the help of US Army engineers but under the auspices of an Iraqi flag.

Mummy doesn't always know best II. End of a nice sunny but chilly day, not many people about. Four year old girl, her parents and one set of grand parents making their leisurely way back from a walk on Wimbledon Common. Sounds of dissent from girl who breaks away from the group and heads off at right angles to direction of the rest who continue. 'Bye. See you later' shouts Daddy and carries on chatting. Girl stomps on with arms around her chest, not folded but clasped around herself in a hug. About 20 yards from the group her direction slowly changes to run parallel with theirs. She's lost the battle for independece. Then Mummy breaks away from the group and with anxious expression hurries after her beloved daughter. Wrong move Mummy, you've snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Your daughter will henceforth know that she can win against you. She will now work on Daddy, who will be a tougher nut to crack but she has the confidence of one victory and the wisdom and energy of youth on her side.

Mummy doesn't always know best. 'Eat up your greens they're good for you' Sound familiar? Well how many mothers will boil their broccoli before forcing it down their offspring? If they do they are destroying the remarkably strong anti-cancer properties of the vegetable. Dr Nathan Matusheski of Illinois may be more right than Mummy but he's going to have a very hard job to get kids to eat their broccoli raw.

'I know two things about a horse, and one of them is rather coarse.' Now I know two reasons not to argue with elephants.
1: They are bigger than me. The smallest one I met may have been a couple of feet shorter than me but he outweighed me by an order of magnitude.
2: They are very sensible. They always keep one foot firmly on the ground even when running.
Thanks to diligent observational research on 42 Thai elephants (anyone who says 42 is an unscientifically small sample deserves to follow them with a shovel) by Dr John Hutchinson of Stanford we now know that although their pattern of footprints does not change and they never completely leave the ground their centre of gravity does 'bounce'. When they want to go faster they adopt the Groucho crouch, usually without the glasses, moustache and eyebrows. Well they wouldn't want to look undignified would they.

Isle of Wight ferry Safety Announcement, almost the same as the one on planes - exit instructions, mustering points, no smoking anywhere except on deck and do not throw lighted materials over the side. There must be many good reasons for this last instruction but I just don't want to know. Please don't spoil the moment.

Peace perfect peace. It's about time somebody designed a computer that didn't make a godawful racket. Good design seldom comes cheap but money spent on quality isn't wasted. This may not be the fastest or most powerful machine on the planet but it is a step in the right direction.