Test Post

Is the world ready for another test post? I think it might be.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Happy Christmas Everybody

Tree Snapshot

I would like to send all my readers the complements of the season. I hope that Santa brings you what you asked for. And remember, if all you get is a lump of coal this something that can only appreciate in value.....

Christmas Power

Had a great day today. Actually set up my blog controlled christmas lights and got them going behind the telly. There is nothing quite like being able to download program updates to your light controller from your PC over the network. We are working out ways to convert them into a clock and weather station at the moment. Wonderful stuff.

Ubiquitous Software

I was having my hair cut yesterday (I was picking up number one daughter and I thought it might be good if she was actually able to recognise me) and the girl doing the cutting asked me what I did. I told her and she said that she had no real idea what computer programming was. A few years ago I would have had a problem at this point, because it used to be kind of hard to explain what computers were actually used for. Nowadays it is much easier. I just had to mention the Xbox 360 and PS3 and say that we produce students who write the games that go into them.

Afterwards I had a think about this and the way I see it, computer programmers now write the stuff that makes pretty much everything work. Just about any device that you buy with a mains plug will have a computer processor in it, as do all cars and so on.

When I started in this business we had one computer at the university, nowadays I don't think anybody knows how many there are on campus. I had no idea when I started in this business, but I'm very glad that I did, because it really is the stuff that makes the future go.

Of course, we also produce the stuff that makes it hard to print out things, but I'll let that pass for now. (Actually, and this is a  tip for all Photoshop Elements users, if you want to make a book of pictures you don't actually want to make a Picture Book, you want to make a Collage. A Picture Book is pre-formatted for an on-line printing service, whereas a collage is just a themed collection of pictures which can span several pages).

Useless Software

Imagine you were thinking about buying a car. It had a satnav, heated seats, electric windows, a hundred and one extras that you will probably never use. It is attractively coloured and pleasing to the eye. You can almost afford it.

But it won't turn right.

Would you buy it? Me neither. And yet people are happy to buy and use software that fails just as spectacularly. I mentioned some time back my torment at the hands of some software by HP which purported to let me create albums but actually just messed me around until I removed it from my disk.

Today I've been playing with Adobe Photoshop Elements. This lets you create similar albums and, after a while, I've managed to get the images I want.

But I can't print them. That is, I can get them onto paper but the size is always wrong. I've wasted a couple of pounds worth of paper and ink. As I type this program is randomly resizing the images behind Windows Live Writer in a way that does not inspire confidence. I've tried numerous combinations of printer and paper configuration, screen preview and all manner of settings to try and get what I want, which is pictures on paper the same size and shape as the ones on the screen.

This is insane. I'm supposed to be good at this stuff. How someone less well versed in printer configuration would get by I have no idea. What you really want is a big red button that says "put these on the paper how they look on the screen". What I have got is several buckets full of confusion. I hate this. I would never let software go out of the door with this mix of complexity and uselessness.

I've had this before with various printers and programs. I M Wright has some things to say about the way that programmers always want to work on the advanced features and leave out the boring stuff like making the program actually do what it is supposed to do. How right he is.