Laura's Blog

mystery shopping

2009-05-29T09:06:00.002+01:00

We get our groceries from the internet. This is a magic system which means we in theory never need to visit a supermarket.

Usually, we get our stuff from Ocado. It's great; bags of food arrive, and it's almost always exactly what we ordered. Sometimes, alas, like last week, there's something missing - in this case, frozen croissants. Argh!

So yesterday I tried Waitrose Deliver instead. Like Ocado, groceries arrive on your doorstep; unlike Ocado, there were a few substitutions and again a missing item. But the delivery guy wasn't just a driver - he was a comedian! He had a bunch of items in his van which didn't belong in any of the orders he was delivering. Did we want 5 bags of rice? Had we ordered them? We had not. Nor had we requested two loaves of sliced wholemeal. Or the box of cocoa puffs (although perhaps I should have claimed them for M). We were thrilled to have the chance to opt in to random items.

When we went through our order after he had left, we found we had done particularly well, scoring 4 boxes of jelly when we had only ordered two. Surprise!

We would recommend Ocado if you want your groceries, and Waitrose Deliver if you want a magical mystery tour of other people's mislaid goods. We'd also recommend buying your croissants from somewhere else, because Waitrose didn't bring any either. (The delivery guy kindly said he'd quit tomorrow, and go set up a croissant delivery service via bikes around Cambridgeshire.)

thoughts on a new phone

2009-05-13T22:02:00.004+01:00

It's been a long time since I got a new phone. My Nokia N73 served me well, but it's been time for a proper smart phone (on an unlimited data contract rather than pay as you go) for some time. I thought about an iPhone, which would seem a logical choice given I have Macs everywhere; but Michael beat me to it, and I felt I should have something different, partly so that we'd be on different networks (increasing the chance of getting a signal in remote areas) and partly so we could compare and contrast two devices. So he's been on the iPhone 3G for a while, and I've been lagging behind with occasional use of the (actually quite usable) Opera browser on my N73 and of course a quality camera that takes good pictures (unlike the iPhone's).

When the Android G1 came out, I was optimistic that this might be the smart phone I'd been waiting for, but I was hugely disappointed when I played with one in a T-mobile store. I like physical keyboards, but this one, although OK to type on, was an awkward slide-across mechanism, and I realised I wouldn't be able to create a quick text message one-handed, which seemed like a requirement. The rest of the experience was OK, though, and I keenly anticipated the G2 (whilst preparing to be disappointed, that something on the surface so iPhone-like would be a let down). So shortly after the G2's release, I could be found in Cambridge's Vodafone store, annoying the (horrifyingly young) salesmen, and now I have my very own G2 on the desk beside me.

There's no point in my listing features - this is a smartphone, it does smartphone stuff, and I can't be bothered with comparing the detailed figures of hardware specifications. But I think it's worth reviewing, because I've been surprised by the G2 in a number of ways, and as a long-time iPhone user (albeit not my own) the comparison is interesting.

Physically, the G2 is a nice, solid bit of kit, actually looking pretty good with clear design effort having gone into it, and quite a reasonable size. The screen is large enough for most things, and the scroll-ball is a great alternative to greasy finger prints on the screen (and also means you can scroll without obscuring the screen if you want, which is a nifty feature in my view - I find iPhone reading frustrating as I must always block the screen to move the text on).

I'm fussy about user interfaces these days, and I was expecting to be annoyed by the G2 after the iPhone - partly because I expected it to be "worse" in some ways, and partly because I felt I was too used to the iPhone paradigms to be able to adapt to a whole new way of doing things. This has not been the case at all. The buttons on the G2 have been well chosen, offering consistent and useful behaviour across all apps ("home" screen, "back", search, and "menu" which brings up a menu appropriate to what you are doing).

Typing works well; you can have a portrait (narrow/small) QWERTY keyboard, or a landscape one, which has bigger buttons - the phone figures out which way up it is. I like being offered 4-5 different words as I type, rather than the iPhone's one (which was rarely what I wanted). The punctuation, numbers and so on are fine and there are some nice shortcuts, not too hidden away. I'm already able to type quite quickly and accurately, and I don't get annoyed by the autocorrection stuff as I do on the iPhone. My one complaint is that the letters at the very edge of the screen (L and P) seem harder to "hit" for me; bit odd.

All the applications you would want are there - maps, Gmail and other email, camera, twitter, etc. My google calendars are there all the time; I can make it buzz when I get email - or not. Google Sky Map is the most amazing so far - it uses the GPS and compass to show you what stars are around in the part of the sky you are pointing the phone at! You can wave the phone and it updates as you move it. Wow. Most apps seems to be free, but some are not, which is fine. Although there is not such a profusion of apps as the iPhone AppStore, there are enough for the things I actually want to do, plus a few nice games (such as Abduction, where you bounce cows around - a compelling casual game and bettering FlightControl on the iPhone in my view).

A whole lot of things just work, which is excellent. I can take a picture, using some image stabilisation (!), and then twitter it or send it as an MMS within a click or two. A USB cable will charge the G2. I've not needed to think about how to set things up, so far everything pretty much works as I would like. There's a notification LED which lights up when things have happened, and a useful notification bar on screen gives me an instant view of events, and I can open that and dive straight into the application for an event with one swipe and click - very fast and just what I need. I also enjoyed entering a "swipe pattern" as my security protection, rather than ending up with another PIN to remember.

The biggest true annoyance for me is not having the Apple pinch/zoom interface in maps. I also feel I'm going to be frustrated by battery life (which I haven't measured in detail, but I suspect it will be not enough for a weekend away, putting it on a par with similar phones, but a long way behind my old Nokia). I know I'm going to fret about the screen getting scratched, but this is something which would have bothered me about any similar phone though.

Overall, although I haven't been using it for long, I feel this is an iPhone-beater for me. The open source nature of Android goes some way towards cancelling my innate fear of getting trapped in a Google ecosystem, but Google knows everything about me already, so I am also somewhat resigned to this. All smartphones seem likely to tether users to one ecosystem or another. Ah well.

Arcadia seminar

2009-04-25T20:25:00.005+01:00

I spoke at the Arcadia seminar this week on Scholarly Networking. The talk seemed to go down well, and you can download an mp3 of it here. Many thanks to John Naughton for the invitation to speak, and Michelle Heydon for the logistics.

The Arcadia programme at Cambridge is an exciting one, exploring the place of libraries in the digital age, and considering their impact on teaching and research in the future. I'm helping on the Fellowship support group this term, and very much looking forward to following the activities of the programme as a whole.

Finding Ada

2009-03-24T18:00:00.003Z

Today is Ada Lovelace Day. I should be blogging about a woman I admire in technology to support and publicise the efforts of innovative and amazing women in computing worldwide, but I'm not going to.

I've always struggled with the idea of role models; sure, there are people I admire (mostly those I've worked with myself, not far-off celebrity figures) and whom I might wish to emulate. But mostly they are deeply personal to me, and the reasons I respect them are not necessarily helpful to others with different career ideas to me, or who don't know them personally. And my role models are both men and women; I cannot in all honesty say the women outnumber or outrank the men, although I have known some incredible women in technology, including Karen Sparck-Jones (already written about by others today). The women are just, sadly, few and far between compared to the number of men I have worked with, and some of the men have been damn good.

I don't feel able to single out one, as each has played a different part in helping, guiding, inspiring and coaching me. I don't know that I can even recall to mind the whole list of brilliant engineers and computer scientists I would want to cite, amidst a busy day in my life as an engineer and leader.

So instead of an insight into one particular outstanding woman, you get a short blog post, encouraging you to go out and find all the other people who are posting more erudite articles and recollections today, for they are a source of inspiration and hope.

This Ada Lovelace Day, there are far too few women in technology; far too few women in leadership in business and in academia; and far too few women governing in the political sphere. Karen Sparck-Jones once said - accurately - that computing was far too important to be left to men. Industry, teaching, research and the future of our nation and world are also far too important to be left to men.

1100100000

2009-01-14T21:24:00.003Z

I nearly crashed my bike into a bollard when I spotted this light show.

I assume it's because of "the 800", as it's called in the University. I'm looking forward to more fun and unexpected events to celebrate, although I am also a little sad that I (thus far) have not received a lovely 800 fleece, unlike my colleagues in the Communications Office.

But what does it all mean?

We are 800

2009-01-14T21:06:00.003Z

The University of Cambridge is 800 years old this year.

There are many things happening to commemorate the occasion.

For example, today I have been upgraded to a brand new shiny phone! This replaces the old ways of doing things in Cambridge (paper). Although I suspect that in reality there is still a great deal of paper in my future. Luckily my desk has space for both.

The famous University messengers are also being upgraded, from their old royal blue bicycles, to - err - new ones.

Good to have the right blue on them at last, I guess.

Attack of the giant space octopuses!

2009-01-08T14:05:00.002Z

This morning I heard about a terrifying incident in Lincolnshire, on the Today programme (just before a piece about ghosts - really!). Apparently a large wind turbine has been severely damaged (one blade removed, one severely bent) by some sort of large object. Glowing lights were seen in the area, and also glowing tentacles. I think there can be no doubt that this was perpetrated by a giant space octopus.

For some time now, pictures of a tiny piglet squid (deemed particularly cute for his smiley face) have been all over the internet. We can only assume that these are a small relation of the giant space octopus, which has arrived to defend the squid from the embarrassment of having naked pictures broadcast to all and sundry. The octopus has begun the destruction of our electricity generation system, without which the internet cannot operate.

We must defend our lands against this glowing tentacular menace.

Not 2008 any more

2009-01-04T12:06:00.003Z

It's been quiet here of late, but I've been keeping busy otherwhere.

CARET has a splendid new website, and if you are reading this within a fortnight of me posting it, we are currently hiring.

SeriousChange also has a revised website, and I'm looking forward to working on a much richer and more informative version in the coming weeks.

I still pine on occasion for electronics, and setting up our Nabaztag at home (along with some RFID bits and bobs, including a Mir:ror and adorable Nano:ztags) was fun. I'm looking forward to controlling our home energy consumption more in 2009, although I still have doubts as to whether purchasing gadgetry is a helpful solution to this for most people. Our reliable and simple central heating and hot water timer, for which we had been gradually calibrating the timings to give adequate heat without excessive boiler operation, at some point in the autumn suffered a power cut. We didn't realise this for a while, until we realised that the heating was running late into the night, under the factory default settings. We reprogrammed it with what we could remember of the timings, but it was frustrating that it had gone wrong for some time, and that we had no way to recall the lost settings. Luckily we have a room thermostat too.

At work, I'm involved with the future of virtual learning and research environments at Cambridge, and beyond, with the project to reinvent Sakai, the community source project on which our current VRE is based. Sakai3 (proposal PDF) will be in many ways a whole new product, with a more social and flexible user experience, and a new powerful and scalable back end.

At one level, this seems fairly easy; web-based collaboration tools have been around for quite a while now, and surely such things are well understood and richly developed? But they don't seem to be; most such tools generate huge amounts of complaint and grumbling from their users (although people will, as ever, tolerate a lot of inconvenience in IT). The use cases for education also have a tendency to be complex; there are many kinds of users, and they overlap (a student in one arena may be a tutor in another); there's a vast array of content types and activities you might undertake; you can have thousands of users at one time, all looking at the same or different content in various ways; and all those users will expect a consumer "web 2.0" quality product, with near-instantaneous bug fixing on demand :) As one of my colleagues says, it's not rocket science, but it's not as simple as you might think, either; good to have a challenge. Sakai3 is going to be worth following, as it might yet turn into an advanced platform for data services plus a flexible user interface, which could well be useful beyond education...

Words of wisdom

2008-10-09T11:42:00.002+01:00

It's a little over 3 years since I submitted my PhD thesis. It seems so long ago!

This beautiful summary is provided by Wordle.

Ah, those were the days.

and another thing...

2008-10-09T09:28:00.002+01:00

I realised this week that I am juggling multiple projects more than ever before. At work at CARET, I am managing a range of nascent (and production!) software and strategic projects, from CamTools and Talks.cam, to newer JISC projects on curriculum design, technology to support teaching administration, and more.

I'm also working on a business plan for a possible startup company; why stop just because the global economy is falling apart? If you have contacts in health or social care in the UK public sector, or have money you would like to remove from a bank and put to work growing a company, get in touch!

I'm also helping out with Serious Change - a campaign to lobby for rational government responses to climate change. Sign up! We're going to try to save the world. You should also read David MacKay's book, Sustainable energy without the hot air, which is now out, and downloadable (and free) here: a very pragmatic analysis of where energy comes from and where it goes.

I am also still somewhat active on a variety of longer term projects, mostly to do with promoting engineering to children, women, and parliamentarians. This must be multitasking :)

autumn vacation

2008-09-30T22:30:00.001+01:00

Holidays are great. I recently returned from this one.

When screens go wrong

2008-09-16T14:28:00.003+01:00

One often spots display screens, particularly in railway stations, which have suffered from peculiar Microsoft faults and are displaying error windows on top of the information one is trying to read, or which have abandoned informing altogether and are showing just a blue screen of error codes.

I was, therefore, perversely satisfied to spot this giant iPhone model with a "which WiFi network would you like?" popup window, illustrating that even OS X can fall prey to this kind of thing.

Good thin clients must be the right solution here...

Sleepy

2008-09-05T12:27:00.002+01:00

Our office coffee machine has had a bad week. It broke; wanting always to be rinsed, not being any happier after rinsing, and never making coffee.

The repairman visited and told us off for abusing the machine. He fixed it up and left, and the coffee machine worked for about 40 minutes.

Then the machine got taken away for repairs. In its place was our warning sign for when the machine is busy with other things and cannot make coffee; gradually, people added magnetic poetry.

This morning the machine was back, complete with shiny new pump, and an admission from the workshop that they do not know what was wrong with it. It is still working. For now.

weekend on the Wirral

2008-09-02T21:46:00.003+01:00

We spent last weekend relaxing on the Wirral and catching up with my parents. The Klimt exhibition at Tate Liverpool was impressive, although the high tech audio guides (iPod Touches) suffered a variety of failure modes on our visit, at the end of the penultimate day of the exhibition, so we had to make do without.

Michael has put some pics up, of a walk at West Kirby Marine Lake and beach, attempts to find superlambananas (not as successful as we had hoped), a rather wet walk up Caldy Hill, and a tricycle we spotted at the M6 toll road services en route back to Cambridge.

construct

2008-08-21T14:42:00.004+01:00

This was on Botolph Lane this lunchtime.

I've spotted a few similar things around the area; earlier this week there were boards near the Pitt Building on Trumpington Street with cryptic phrases and some maths concepts.

It's coming...

2008-08-15T13:29:00.005+01:00

This, in Corpus Christi College on the corner of Kings Parade and Bene't Street, will soon be the home of the new Clock, part of the Library Court project. This clock will be incredible in a number of ways, but mostly stands out at the moment as a monument to the pre-web age, because I can't find any reference to it online. I remember that I read an article about it on paper some time ago, talking about the traditional mechanism and amazing art that will surround it, and now I can see where it's going to be, I'm really excited.

before the storm

2008-08-08T16:55:00.003+01:00

Before the intense rain and thunder last night, Dominic and I sat
outside at the Pickerel in the sunshine. He was sporting the new
AlertMe customer support team fleece - very smart! We managed to stay
outside under the nice green umbrella through most of the storm, and I
didn't get too wet cycling home afterwards.

It sounds as if Dominic, and James (who joined us later) and everyone
else are doing a great job. Thanks to all for the (rather belated)
leaving present, too!

BarCamb2

2008-08-05T14:19:00.002+01:00

Last Friday, it was BarCamb time again, with BarCamb2 being held at the Sanger Centre. Michael has put some photos up, and I blogged the event for work.

Highlights included being one of a select handful of presenters who have given talks at both BarCambs to date; Simon Ford's mbed update "embedded can do the internet too", including mention of their terrific Mashed08 demo of Packet Network; and a programme with a mix of biotech, community, software, and technology talks. The afternoon's panel session confirmed my view that git is the latest&greatest thing (either that, or it just happens to make people terribly evangelical) and that at work we should probably have a review of whether it's worth migrating from SVN, and maybe a tutorial session.

Once more, thanks to Matt Wood for doing a sterling job organising a barcamp!

Cory's Cambridge talk

2008-08-04T10:39:00.003+01:00

Video of Cory's recent talk - the first of the Cambridge Business Lectures - here. I enjoyed his lively presentation, although I felt the audience was more techies/hackers (a traditional Cory audience) than the business types I might expect for this talks series in general. The business-minded section of the Cambridge entrepreneurial community would probably have benefited from Cory's ideas.

An appetite for APPEITG lunches

2008-07-31T13:48:00.004+01:00

It's not the best abbreviation, but the APPEITG (All Party Parliamentary Engineering and IT Group) do host a pleasant meal. The group exists to promote the role of engineering and the future of engineering in the UK, and I've been happy to see that they are keen to involve younger engineers (like me!) as well as the usual grey-haired examples. I look forward to being more involved, and perhaps to more delicious lunches on the beautiful House of Lords terrace.

At the lunch in mid-July, Sir David King spoke about the challenges of climate change and how engineers should be stepping up to tackle these. His key points were not particularly novel but bear repeating, in the context of a call to arms for engineers (and others).

The "City big bang" should be a drive for the UK science, engineering and technology sector to deliver new solutions for climate change
It should be possible to hit the carbon reduction targets set for mid-century, and still grow GDP
Engineering skills are desperately needed to deliver new nuclear power stations, zero carbon homes, and (very important for the UK) the technology to retrofit homes and other buildings to reduce carbon output. This means technicians and apprentices, as well as Chartered-level professionals. We need more engineers of all types
Don't forget that reducing emissions can save money
We need new, novel solutions. The Prius, for example, is great, but this is an example of a transitional technology - we need fully electric vehicles and a decarbonised grid
There is still a need for real cultural change. The media are happy pushing Tesla roadsters, because it's a bit like a Ferrari; but instead we should look to a future where a flash car isn't a status/sex symbol

I was also encouraged by Baroness Platt of Writtle to look into joining the Worshipful Company of Engineers. (I fear that I'm not quite senior enough for the Company yet, and couldn't really afford the membership fees, but I've bookmarked it for the future.) The APPEITG lunches always remind me that although women are scarce in engineering, they are present at all professional levels and represent all generations. A little bit of a boost for those of us who are starting out in our careers - or feel as if we are!

live music Tuesday

2008-07-29T18:33:00.001+01:00

Cambridge was full of buskers today, in unusual places (outside the
Chop House on Kings Parade, or here, outside Carluccio's by the Grand
Arcade / Lion Yard). These guys were pretty good.

Proper engineer

2008-07-25T19:31:00.004+01:00

From our fascinating tour of Tate Modern's oil tanks.

Polite notice

2008-07-25T19:26:00.001+01:00

In the bathroom of my room at Keele University, where I was for the
JISC Innovation Forum.

Other people's toys

2008-07-19T14:50:00.002+01:00

If this worked, this photo is tagged with a location on flickr.com :) I couldn't resist playing.

Sent from Michael's iPhone

non-words

2008-07-09T19:56:00.002+01:00

The Local Government Association says that the following are "non-words." I find this very encouraging, and look forward to seeing some clear communications from local public service organisations in the future, as this list is adopted. Although at a first look, words such as "welcome" seem quite innocuous, when I recall how they are used in some official documents, I can see why the LGA picked them out.

Ambassador; Agencies; Beacon; Best practice; Bottom-up; CAAs; Can do culture; Capacity; Capacity building; Cascading; Cautiously welcome; Champion; Citizen empowerment; Community engagement; Conditionality; Consensual; Contestability; Core Message; Core value; Coterminosity; Coterminous; Cross-cutting; Customer; Democratic mandate/legitimacy; Distorts spending priorities; Early Win; Empowerment; Engagement; Engaging users; Enhance; Evidence base; External challenge; Facilitate; Fast-track; Flexibilities and freedoms; Framework; Fulcrum; Good practice; Governance; Guidelines; Holistic; Holistic governance; Improvement levers; Incentivising; Income/funding streams; Initiative; Joined up; Joint working; LAAs; Service users; Level Playing Field; Localities; Meaningful consultation/dialogue; MAAs; Menu of options; Multi-agency; Multidisciplinary; Outcomes; Output; Participatory; Partnerships; Pathfinder; Peer challenge; Performance Network; Place shaping; Predictors of beaconicity; Preventative services; Priority; Process driven; Quick hit; Quick win; Resource allocation; Revenue streams; Risk based; Scaled-back; Scoping; Seedbed; Shared priority; Signpost; Single point of contact; Slippage; Social contracts; Stakeholder; Step change; Strategic/overarching; Streamlined; Subsidiarity; Sustainable; Sustainable communities; Symposium; Synergies; Tested for soundness; Third sector; Top-Down; Transparency; Transformational; Value-added; Vision; Visionary; Welcome; Wellbeing

(Thanks to Denis Payne for the link!)