Three more walks on my website.

I have put three new walks on my website:

871	West Bexington to Charmouth	13.5	30/10/2010
870	A circular walk between Salisbury and Middle Winterslow	17.3	25/10/2010
869	Winchester to Pitton	24.2	18/10/2010

... of which the biggest common factor is myself being ill. Lovely.

The first two of these walks detail the Clarendon Way (I attempted to walk this 27-mile walk in a day with full camping kit; unfortunately the lack of daylight kyboshed the attempt).  The third was a spectacular stroll along the South West Coast Path.

 I have set myself a couple of tasks for the rest of the year: Sencan and Iwant to complete the South West Coast Path as far as Exmouth, and also to start walking the Stour Valley Way in Wiltshire and Dorset.

Crying

I am a man, and I cry. Yes, you read right. I am a man, and I cry.

The prevalent perception in the media is that, because I cry, I have to be somewhat less of a man; that my tears remove me from that half of the Human race and place me a netherworld of not-men.

Well, I've got news for them. It makes me more of a man.

I cry for hope, I cry for pain, I cry sometimes... Well, sometimes I just cry. When I'm out walking something weird occasionally happens. I can be having a really good day, things are going well with no unusual stresses or strains, yet for some reason I will spontaneously start crying. This is not because I am particularly upset, or am finding things hard; it just happens. I look at my wedding photos and cry (out of joy, I must add).

In the minds of many people the tears are a sign of weakness. They could not be more wrong.

Often the crying actually makes me feel much better afterwards, as if it purges my system of any negative emotions. Yet still, tears are seen as a sign of weakness in men.

It is not. It is a sign of strength. It is a sign that you can release your emotions slowly instead of letting them build up. It is a sign that you are not a Neanderthal.

Visual 6502

Sometimes I stumble across something on the Internet that is just so utterly cool that I have to run around the room cackling manically. Yes, really.

Yesterday, thanks to Bunnie's Blog, I came across the Visual 6502 simulator.

The MOS 6502 computer chip was used in both the Apple Mac II and the initial Acorn BBC range of computers. As such, I cut my programming teeth on it; firstly with BBC Basic, and later 6502 Assembler.

These were in the days when a jump from 32Kb to 128Kb of memory opened new worlds (nowadays it is common to create temporary buffers of more than that); and 2MHz felt like undreamed-of speed. The 6502 was first made in 1975, and was far simpler (and cheaper) than the competing products from Intel and Motorola. As such, it was accessible to hobbyists, and was used in many early computers and computer kits.

The simulator simulates the operation of a 6502 chip using Javascript. It creates an image of the chip, allowing you to see how the signals are traced. It is a fantastically interesting piece of work, and an indication of how much computer technology has improved over the years. It should be noted that the simulator only works in very modern browsers that are HTML-5 compatible - you will also needs lots of memory and a fast computer. If your computer is not suitable, then goggle in amazement at the beautiful picture.

The writers have taken photographs of a 6502 chip, and designed the blocks from scratch; (i.e. reverse-engineered it). The simulator is complete enough to play games (albeit at a slow speed).

It is an amazing piece of work.

Survey

A telephone survey company phoned me up this morning. The situation and questions were so absurd that it throws doubt on all such telephone surveys. I'm not even sure it was not a hoax. I am not mentioning the name of the (famous) firm or product to deny them the oxygen of publicity. It went something like this:

"Good afternoon, sir. I'm performing a survey for Company X (A well-known cosmetics firm). Would you like to take part in the survey?"
"I'm male."
"Do you have a girlfriend or wife?"
"Yes, but-"
"Has she heard about Company X's new product Y, the best anti-ageing product on the market?"
"How am I meant to know if she has heard of something?."
"Have you seen any Product Y in the bathroom?"
"Look, I doubt I'm the right person to ask-"
"That's fine, sir. Do you know if she uses any inferior products by other firms?"

At which point I hung up. Firstly, it should have been clear to her that, because I am male, it is unlikely that I know everything about my wife's grooming habits. Secondly, it seems to be little more than an advertisement hiding as a survey.

The questions are exceptionally leading. Take "Has she heard about Company X's new product Y, the best anti-ageing product on the market?". If you answer yes or no to this question, then you are also accepting the second clause of the question, that it is the best anti-ageing product on the market. Multiple-clause questions like this are to be avoided in surveys.

I am just waiting for an advertisement that claims: "85% of people surveyed say that Product Y is the best anti-ageing product on the market."

It has to be a hoax. Can a survey firm really be this clueless? Or is the public clueless for going along with it?

Faster, Better, Cheaper

A decade ago, NASA had some well-noted disasters with unmanned spacecraft. The Mars Polar Lander, the Lewis earth-observing satellite, and the Mars Climate Orbiter. Fortunately none cost any lives, but they all proved embarrassing to NASA, which is supposed to be the pinnacle of American scientific and engineering achievement.

What is perverse is that many of the problems could be put down to one phrase: "Faster, Better, Cheaper". This phrase was dreamt up by NASA Administrator Dan Goldin, who took up the post in the early 90's. It is now widely seen as having been a disaster, even in official reports.

So what was the problem? The problem was, in my opinion, simple. Engineers need to be able to measure things. You can measure time, speed, money, weight, distance, and any other number of metrics. In the phrase "Faster, Better, Cheaper", it is easy to measure 'faster'. Has a project been delivered faster than would have been the case under the old system? Cheaper is also easy: has the project cost less than it would under the old system?

Of course the actual metrics used will be more complex that that, but with both 'faster' and 'cheaper' the measurement is possible and obvious.

The devil is in the word 'better'. How do you measure betterness? Could a project that didn't work fully still be called better because of some arbitrary other metric? "Gee, the craft crashed into the moon instead of orbiting, but it was better because we all got more publicity!"

Perversely, 'better' allows you to mask failures, and it does not give engineers direction.

Many engineers say that it is possible only to have two out of the three; you can have faster and cheaper, but you won't get better. Or you can have faster and better, but you can't have cheaper. Then there is another viewpoint, where you can have all three. There is the following quote from that link:

No, it’s not a fact of life. It is possible. There are two cultures. The second culture is the culture that dominates the new information-age industries -- like Microsoft -- which is, you can simultaneously improve cost, schedule and performance.

And hereby lies the problem. The writer talks about cost, schedule and performance. Cost is related to 'cheaper', and schedule to 'faster'. However, performance is just one part of 'better'. A measure of 'better' might be something different from performance, depending on the mission. A 'better' on the Space Shuttle might be measured on the safety rating for the crew, whilst performance might be the maximum payload lifted, or the thrust of the engine, or any other such metric. He has altered 'Faster, Better, Cheaper' to be 'Faster, Better, Performance'.

Additionally, it is a fallacy to say that the high-tech industries such as Microsoft have any relation to the space industry. They do not. A company like Microsoft can afford to take limited risks, whereas in space they cannot. Put simply, if software goes wrong, most of the time it can be updated and fixed (there are exceptions to this; such as firmware updates, but these are relatively rare). A rocket launch or a space mission is a one-off shot; if it fails, it can cost hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars.

By all means, keep faster and cheaper. Space access needs faster and cheaper. But instead of 'better', pick another, narrower metric. For manned systems, perhaps they should use 'faster, cheaper, safer'.

BBC weather, part 3

In my earlier posts, I discussed a problem where the BBC Online weather system gave inconsistent results between the summary and detail forecasts. Note that this is *within* the forecast service provided by BBC Online.

I submitted a complaint to them through their complaints system; not necessarily as a disgusted-of-Tunbridge-Wells type thing, more to inform them that there was a problem.

Yesterday afternoon I received a reply. It consists of a few paragraphs, of which most are boilerplate. The ones that actually contain pertinent information are as follows:

I understand that you're unhappy with the weather forecast as you it was inconsistent between bbc.co.uk and elsewhere on the BBC.

The nature of our climate is such that there are times when the weather doesn’t behave as forecast. We are confident that we are using the best source of forecast data, which we obtain from the Met Office - who have an extremely good record globally. We do feed back to them concerns about forecast inaccuracy and also put pressure on them to improve their accuracy.

Well, they really did not get the point I was making. I was not concerned about inconsistencies between bbc.co.uk and elsewhere on the BBC (e.g. broadcast forecasts); it was about glaring inconsistencies *within* the web service.

My flabber is well and truly ghasted. My original complaint to them included a link to the original blog post, which contained screenshots detailing the problem. Not only did they not bother to understand the reported problem, I doubt they even bothered to read the information given.

It should also be noted that they have essentially closed the issue, and have not provided a means within the email by which to continue the correspondence.

Another comment about their complaints system: after you submit a complaint, you get no acknowledgement from the system. Many other such systems email the sender immediately with a copy of the message and a reference number; this way you can check the message has been received and that your email address is correct. I had nothing from the BBC until this reply. Part of me wondered if I had entered the correct email address.

The question is, what do I do next? Do I just forget about it, or do I try and get them to understand the problem? Is it possible for me to reopen the issue that they appear to have closed? Am I going to get trapped in an endless loop of bureaucracy?

Although I may be annoyed at one part of the BBC, I was thoroughly entertained by their output last night on BBC Four: the excellent 'Atom' program was followed by the lovely Victoria Coren in 'Only Connect'.

Truly a feast for both mind and eyes.

Maps

I love maps. I can stare at them for hours, visualising the twisting contours as hills and valleys. Each footpath advertises an adventure, and the dotted strings of diamonds that denote trails call me like sirens.

The best way of interacting with a map is simply to go out and walk around the landscape it represents. To see the rivers and stroll through the woodland and forests. Yet do this for any period and it becomes clear that what is shown on the map is only a loose facsimile of reality. The world changes, yet maps only get updated irregularly. Woodland gets cleared or planted; roads and houses get built. Footpaths that are clear on the map end abruptly in a bottomless quagmire.

There is nothing stranger than discovering a road or railway line that is not marked on the map - it causes a very strange sense of locational paralysis, of having gone through the looking glass. The maps says that the feature should not be there, and you trust your maps: yet here, right in front of your eyes, is the feature. Your cosy, safe reality has been altered. It is easy to accept that hedges move and new housing encroaches onto what were once green fields. Yet come across a motorway that is not marked on the map and you start to feel that you have gone seriously wrong somewhere. It can be an almost frightening experience.

This is, of course, because paper maps only get updated every few years; it is cheaper to print them in batches. For this reason, changes on the ground take some time to appear on the maps available for purchase. Electronic maps, of course, need not have that problem.

One thing is clear: the printed map is dying. Handeld devices such as Satmap are getting to the stage where they can feasibly replace paper maps for walking. Batteries can run out, and electronic devices are always prone to the perils of cold, water and damage. Against this, however, are the problems of lugging the many maps that are needed for long-distance walks.

I love the raw physicality of having a paper map in my hands. Electronic maps are so much more useful in many ways: the data displayed can be filtered, enhanced and scaled, but they lack a certain physical presence. If I want to mentally explore an area then I spread out a 1:50,000 OS map on a table rather then look at the 1:25,000 maps on my computer. The area that can be viewed at once is so much bigger, giving you context for the central area you are viewing. There is always something to see.

That is not to bash electronic maps. Google maps (and the Microsoft equivalent, Bing Maps) are excellent products, and the ability to add user-derived data (i.e. mashup) to the maps brings a new dimension to cartography. However, the data shown in the UK is several orders of magnitude worse than those on OS maps. The OS do allow electronic maps to be loaded from their website to create mashups, but the licensing restrictions are such that the service is not really suitable for my purposes. For one thing they restrict the amount of data that can be downloaded; as my website gets thousands of readers it would soon exceed that figure. The system is also less seamless than those from Microsoft and Google. The ideal would be for the larger companies to have access to the OS data for their implementations, but that could potentially endanger the existence of the OS.

My website already includes a mashup depicting my walks over Google maps; perhaps in the future the data will be much more open: I will be able to show pubs in the area of the map, filtering out ones that are closed at a certain time of day; the same with cafes, slipways for launching a boat, cycle paths, museums, campsites, petrol stations and train times.

We are very nearly there, the main problem being the diverse locations of the data sets. You need to go to one website to find some pubs; another for petrol station, and another for museums. Even then the data sets tend to be incomplete. But how long will it be before a device like the Satmap could connect to the Internet, download pubs nearest to your present location and display which ones are open? Will you even be able to order some food so that it is ready when you walk in through the door? This is all technically feasible.

Yet I hope that we do not lose the skills of map reading and navigation. To do so would be to lose a truly great joy in life.