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Archive: 2009 February

The Red Bull RB5 launch

10 February 2009 15:32

Categories: History, Opinion

Among the final cars to launch was the Red Bull Racing RB5, which was launched yesterday. We can safely assume that the Toro Rosso will be very similar, while we are led to believe that the Force India will be in large part a McLaren customer car. Everything has gone all quiet on the Honda front in recent days, so who knows if that car will ever break cover.

So this is it then. And good things come to those who wait. The RB5 is a real beauty, though you wouldn’t expect anything else from the pencil of Adrian Newey.

Of course, we are now used to the strange new wings so the RB5 doesn’t have that shock factor to it. But the RB5 has all the sleek style you would expect from a Newey design. The pointy, narrow front nose has become something of a Newey trademark over the past five years or so. It’s very interesting to see that he has stuck to this principle, while other teams appear to be adopting wider, chunkier nose designs.

F1 Technical describes the front wing as “the most advanced out there”. You can’t fail to be struck by the detail in the front wing which doesn’t seem present in most of the other teams’ designs.

History shows that Adrian Newey adapts well to radical regulation changes, as James Allen recently noted. The 1996 Williams was about as dominant as a car gets. I have strong memories of that season. It was my first full year of watching F1, and the Williams car was awesome. I still remember to this day that they had the Constructors’ Championship wrapped up in Hungary. Amazing when you consider that their two drivers were hardly the greatest ever to grace a race track.

By the time the regulations radically changed again in 1998, Newey had moved to McLaren and he nailed it right away again. The McLarens were utterly dominant in Australia, and they clinched both Championships that season, ending a seven year long drought.

But beware Adrian Newey’s Achilles’ heel. The RB5 is among the last cars to be unveiled because Red Bull have made the decision to forego track time in order to give Newey more time to perfect his design. This may result in the RB5 being a fast car with possibly the best aerodynamics. But you have to hope that it works.

It’s the opposite approach to Ferrari’s. Ferrari launched their car a month ago, deciding that they would like plenty of time to “debug” the car. But if something is wrong with the RB5, they won’t have long to debug it. That is even more of a worry this year when in-season testing is banned.

You get the sense that Adrian Newey likes things to be “just right” from his perspective, even if that is at the expense of other things — even things as basic as fitting the driver into the car (hello, Alex Wurz and Juan Pablo Montoya!). It is not a pragmatic approach. Newey’s cars look the best on paper, but he has developed a reputation for being involved with unreliable cars.

In 2008 Red Bull had a fairly solid year reliability-wise. But the fact that the RB5 had to be stopped with gearbox issues just 14 laps into its first run does not bode well. Red Bull’s 2007 season was notorious for gearbox problems. Let us hope for Red Bull’s sake that they will not make a return.

1 comment

Social ladder

10 February 2009 00:07

Categories: Fife, General, Internet, Personal, Scotland, Technology, University, Work

One of the problems with social networking sites is that not everyone is on the same one. Thankfully I don’t find myself having to login to MySpace any more. But I would drop Bebo at a moment’s notice if I could get away with it. Unfortunately, a lot of my friends — particularly those from Fife, and perhaps those thatare younger in general than Facebookers — are on Bebo only. So I have to keep that account going.

I have a friend who refuses to join Facebook, partly because he is worried that it is just another website to sign up to, only to be replaced by the new flavour of the month as soon as he’s done it. I can sympathise with that. We’ve all been there with MySpace and now Bebo, and I probably have dozens of dormant web 2.0 accounts.

There is also the hassle involved with getting your head around a fancy new social network. So many people tell me they find Facebook too complicated. Meanwhile, Twitter is so disarmingly simple that it confuses and spooks many first-time users.

Another of my friend’s objections to Facebook involves the perception that it is too posh. It’s a bit of an elephant in the room, but when you think about it it’s difficult to avoid the fact that there is a class division in the way different types of people use different social networks. Danah Boyd wrote about the case of MySpace and Facebook in the USA two years ago. Today in the UK you could say a similar thing about Bebo and Facebook.

I guess that was inevitable given the exclusivity of Facebook in the early days. At first you had to be at Harvard to use it, then one of the Ivy League universities. Then you had to be at any University (this is when I joined). Then when it was a few years old it opened up to everyone — to howls of protest from many of the people who were already in the exclusive Facebook loop, as I recall. It’s probably fair to say that Facebookers think of themselves as being a cut above their chavvier Bebo-using counterparts — though functionally the sites are very similar.

When someone says to you, “you really should be on [social network x],” it is almost like being invited to a new (slightly posher) pub or restaurant. You’re used to eating out at Wetherspoons (well, that’s all they’ve got in Kirkcaldy — even Burger King upped sticks a few years ago). Now someone has invited you to Di Chez El Nom Nom, or something.

You wouldn’t have countenanced going in by yourself. But it would be rude to turn down the invitation. When you go in it’s a bit unfamiliar. What is the etiquette? What is the third spoon for? Why is my napkin folded into the vague shape of a cockerel? Am I allowed to poke you now, or is that just for special occasions? What is this exotic feature? What is that strange item on the menu and how do I pronounce it? It seems too complicated!

It feels awkward. You will make mistakes at first. But soon enough you will get a taste for it, and you won’t ever consider setting foot in Burger King again (I still like Wetherspoons though).

I got that experience when I signed up to LinkedIn, on the advice of Chris Applegate in the comments here. I’d passed LinkedIn on the street a number of times and peered in, but it didn’t look like the sort of place where I’d be welcome. It describes itself as being for “professionals”. Pah!

Well now Chris has given me the green light to enter, though I still don’t quite feel welcome. Anyone who thinks Facebook is complicated needs to check out LinkedIn. It took me quite a while to work out that really no-one there is interested in my favourite music or my drunken photos. It really is just a glorified (and inflexible) CV.

Even after I have filled in all my details and added a few connections, there is still a little power meter on my page telling me that my profile is only 70% complete! And moreover, I am less likely to appear in searches until I reach 100%. How rude!

But I can’t help thinking already that LinkedIn is the way to go. I mean, if I meet someone in a professional capacity, I might well want to connect with them online in some way. And with its complete candidness, with my personality presented warts and all, Facebook is probably not the way to do that.

So my friend is kind of right. If he signs up to Facebook, he will probably find it’s only a matter of time before he finds himself being asked by his peers to join LinkedIn. I myself wonder what even smarter social network I will end up having to sign up to next.

It seems like a pain at first. But I guess it’s just like dressing smartly for a job interview then lounging around in Pot Noodle-stained boxers in your house.

All of this is quite a long-winded way of saying that I have recently joined LinkedIn. If I know you, you are welcome to connect with me on it. I will probably go on my own adding spree soon. If you’re a veteran, please excuse my only 70% complete profile…

3 comments

Why the drivers are right to kick up a fuss

9 February 2009 06:00

Categories: Opinion

In the past couple of weeks the Super License row has blown up again. After this year’s bill landed on the drivers’ doormat, there were more rumblings of a possible drivers’ strike. This was said to be a prospect at the 2008 British Grand Prix, but in the end nothing came of it and the drivers coughed up.

This year’s increase is a relatively modest increase to take account of inflation. But it seems that the drivers were expecting the Super License fees to go back down having made their views very clear about it last year. No such luck. The GPDA issued a press release, the first time they have done such a thing according to Brad Spurgeon.

Grandprix.com called the press release an unwise move. Certainly, the decision to release it on Friday evening — when the rest of the world is off to the pub for the next 60 hours — displays an incredible lack of media savvy, even for a club of simple racing drivers.

But I can’t agree with the overall sentiment of the article. It may be difficult to feel much sympathy for some of the most highly-paid sports stars in the world. But questions need to be asked about quite what the FIA is playing at.

The 2008 increase took the basic fee up from €1,690 to €10,000. On top of that, the extra fee for each driver increased from €447 per point to €2,000 per point. Such an increase will come as a shock no matter how rich you are.

All in all, this allowed the FIA to increase their takings through the Super License by 454%. This increase has still neither been explained nor justified by the FIA, except something vague to do with safety (as though all the safety measures only came in during 2008). Safety is a nice get-out for the FIA. As often argued by Grace on the Formula 1 Blog.com podcast, the FIA know that no-one will be able to argue against “safety”, so they use that to explain anything without having to actually justify it.

The GPDA’s statement notes that this year the World Drivers’ Champion (i.e. Lewis Hamilton) will have to pay $270,000 simply for the right to compete. (It is worth noting that Lewis Hamilton is not a member of the GPDA, so this issue is not simply about Lewis Hamilton.) Outside of F1, the highest license fee is $4,000 which a Nascar driver has to pay. That is minuscule compared with the FIA’s Super License fee.

Formula 1 drivers may be rich. But they earn their money. That is because they are among the very most supremely talented individuals in the world — which is a lot more than can be said for certain presidents of certain governing bodies. It looks suspiciously like the FIA has calculated that F1 drivers will receive little sympathy over this issue, and so have decided to exploit them to extract as much money as possible.

As has been noted by others many times, for the past few years the FIA has appeared to be on a complete money grab. It is not just the drivers that have faced a fee hike in recent years.

The FIA proposed to increase a team’s entry fee to the 2009 Formula 1 World Championship from €300,000 to €740,000. Again, safety was used as the excuse. Alianora La Canta noted.

Then there is the ONE HUNDRED MEELION DOLLARS fine handed out to McLaren in 2007. The FIA have still not revealed what on earth they have spent that money on.

Despite these handy new sources of income, the FIA has somehow contrived to increase its budget shortfall for 2009. Keith Collantine looked into this and you have to wonder just what is going on at the FIA.

The shortfall of €1.7 million in 2008 was bad enough. Somehow this has almost doubled to €3 million for 2009. The FIA’s sheer incompetence never ceases to amaze me. Maybe it is because Max Mosley thinks nothing of disposing of upwards of £1 million for his own personal gain when it would have been much easier, cost-effective and dignified to just do the honourable thing and step down.

Max Mosley may have scoffed at the notion of Fred Goodwin replacing him as FIA President. But it seems to me that the FIA could do with the help of someone who has a bit of experience in managing money. (Then again, maybe I only say that because I am Scottish and I have no understanding of how F1 or the FIA work. Though I don’t think I am unusually stupid.)

So even though the drivers’ plight may engender little sympathy among the general public as a whole, they are still right to make a stand. Someone needs to ask some serious questions about why the FIA is taking in ever more money, yet ending up with ever higher shortfalls. It’s time that Max Mosley and the FIA were held to account for this, because to me it just stinks to high heaven of something fishy.

3 comments

Music of 2008: Top ten

7 February 2009 02:03

Categories: Entertainment, Music, Reviews

Music of 2008

A series of posts

Music of 2008: #25–#11
Music of 2008: Top ten

10. Stereolab — Chemical Chords

This is more or less what you would expect from Stereolab. Fantastically jaunty and slightly idiosyncratic pop songs. This is hardly Stereolab’s best album (and I say that as someone who has only heard three of them), but it is a joy nonetheless.

9. David Byrne and Brian Eno — Everything That Happens Will Happen Today

This pair produced one of the most important and experimental albums of recent decades. But My Life in the Bush of Ghosts was over 25 years ago, and this was the first time they had worked together since. There was no point in expecting the same again, and what we have here is an album of fairly conventional — though diverse — pop songs. It seems as though Brian Eno’s mission in life just now is to make good songs (which have good lyrics). There are some great songs here (I particularly like ‘I Feel My Stuff’), but it ain’t a world changer.

8. Neon Neon — Stainless Style

Boom Bip and Gruff Rhys built on their earlier collaborations to create this most unlikely of concept albums. It is based on the life of John DeLorean, creator of the DeLorean car which was clad in stainless steel. The music revels in the 1980s concept, and the slightly off-the-wall idea behind the album belies a clear genuine love of indulgent 1980s synth-pop. A great listen.

7. Various artists — BBC Radiophonic Workshop: A Retrospective

A great look back at the legacy of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, the hugely influential electronic music department. This 2CD set compiles music from the entire 40 year life of the Workshop. The first CD is absolutely charming, and my jaw drops thinking about how much effort was put into these early electronic masterpieces. The later music is not so special — ironically as the technology got better it only opened up a world of identikit sounds. This is not enough to spoil the CD as a whole though.

In-depth review of BBC Radiophonic Workshop: A Restrospective

6. The Advisory Circle — Other Channels

I just adore this album, which faithfully recreates vintage electronic music of the sort we were all exposed to in our youth. Be transported to two or three decades back. Television idents, programmes for schools, public information films, library music… dare I say the Radiophonic Workshop? But all with more than a smidgen of creepiness and uneasiness built in. It’s Boards of Canada+. If that’s your sort of thing this really is an essential purchase. Don’t listen to it at night though.

5. John Baker — The John Baker Tapes Volume 1 and 2

John Baker was one of the most important members of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. This pair of CDs unearthed a load of hidden gems from his career that may otherwise have ended up in a skip. Volume 1 documents his work at the BBC, with lots of great bits and pieces like news jingles, theme tunes and little bits for educational programmes (I love the song about not being taken in by slick salesmen). Volume 2 focuses on his commercial work and private recordings of his jazz piano playing. There are notes on each of the tracks, an in-depth biography written by his brother, Richard Anthony Baker, and a recording of the Radio 5 Live obituary broadcast also by Richard Anthony Baker.

The CDs serve not only as an important document of John Baker’s work, or even a collection of important electronic music — but almost as a time capsule of 1960s and 1970s life in Britain. Tracks titles like ‘Decimal Currency’, ‘Building the Bomb’ and ‘Giro Advert’ serve to make the collection an important document of social history too.

In-depth review of The John Baker Tapes Volumes 1 and 2

4. Squarepusher — Just A Souvenir

Tom Jenkinson expanded on the more live sound he has developed since Ultravisitor by producing this concept album inspired by a fantasy futuristic band from his daydreams. It’s a good device that allows him to become quite indulgent with his use of experimental electronic techniques, while also exhibiting his über bass and drumming skills. At the same time there are gloriously poppy songs like the irresistible ‘A Real Woman’.

In-depth review of Just A Souvenir

3. The Fiery Furnaces — Remember

The Fiery Furnaces don’t know how to do anything the conventional way, and they even found a way to completely change the way you can think of a live album. The recordings are pieced together from a variety of different concerts. And it’s not just different songs from different recordings. Different recordings of the same song are spliced together, mercilessly interrupting itself in the middle, complete with jarring changes in sound quality. It is not as annoying as you might think. Along with the fact that the live versions of songs are often radically different to the original studio recording, this is sure not to be a wasted purchase.

In-depth review of Remember

2. Autechre — Quaristice and Quaristice (Versions)

Autechre seldom fail to surprise. The often imitated but never bettered duo specialise in altering your perception of what music can be. With Quaristice they pushed on with their particular brand of pathbreaking electronic music. But it lacks the coherence of previous albums, jumping about in style and mood from track to track while previous albums had a well defined sound of their own. Instead of the eight or nine long tracks, Quaristice has 20 tracks more typically three or four minutes long. I originally felt that it was a weak album, but now whenever I listen to it I find myself completely loving it. Even a disappointing Autechre album is head and shoulders above what anyone else produces.

Quaristice (Versions), the extra CD that came with the limited edition version, is shaped more like a traditional Autechre album, but the music itself is more of the same — literally. Longer cuts give these tracks more room to breathe, making it a perfectly pleasurable listen, even if it did begin to feel like you were paying for the same music several times over (especially if you bought Quaristice.Quadrange.ep.ae, which I reviewed in the earlier post).

In-depth review of Quaristice

1. Portishead — Third

Hands up who expected this album to be crap? An 11 year gestation period did not bode well. But the end result is in fact excellent. Actually, I could hardly believe what a good job Portishead had done. Clearly having made a conscious decision to avoid the Portishead trademarks which turned into trip hop clichés, the band have set themselves a subtly new direction and have pulled it off magnificently. There is still that slightly dark and black-and-white sound. But now there is a rather more live feel to the music, albeit with more of an emphasis on jaggy and sometimes slightly unsettling electronic sounds. And the songs are absolutely top-notch. I hope it isn’t 11 years until the next Portishead album.

« Previous in series — »

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Charlie Gordon’s expensive website attracted just 18 visits per day

3 February 2009 15:58

Categories: Current affairs, Internet, Media, Newspapers, Politics, Scotland, Technology

While perusing the stats for my blogs, I noticed that one of the referrers was this URL: http://www.charlesgordonmsp.com/stats/usage_200902.html. I clicked through to see what it was all about. To my astonishment, I was taken directly to the Webalizer stats for Charlie Gordon’s website.

This seems quite unusual to me. To access these stats for my websites, I need to log in with a password. Surely most other people do for their websites as well. But for the most expensive website for an MSP, such basic security measures do not seem to be in place. When you consider the possibility that search logs may contain constituents’ sensitive information, it seems to be quite an oversight.

There is one upside though. This free access to Charlie Gordon’s stats does give us the ability to calculate just how much value for money the taxpayer is getting out of his website.

For those who missed it, last month the Scottish Parliament released MSPs’ expense claims. The Scottish Parliament website allows you to search for expense claims by category. One of the categories is ‘Website Costs’, giving us the ability to see just what MSPs are spending on their websites.

It made the news that Charlie Gordon’s website was the most expensive of all the MSPs — by a very long way. Duncan Cumming conducted a full analysis. Charlie Gordon claimed £12,822.62 in website costs for the financial year 2007–2008. The next largest claim was by John Wilson, who claimed £2,291.25 — less than a fifth of what Charlie Gordon claimed.

For what it’s worth, Charlie Gordon released a statement on his website. There is no permalink for it, so you will have to scroll down — it’s (erroneously) dated 23 January 2008. It says: “My website costs for 2007/08 were around £1,700; not £12,900 as stated erroneously on the Scottish Parliament’s website!”

The MSP claims that only 20% of the costs outlined by the Scottish Parliament went on the website itself, the rest being paid for “call handling”. It is worth pointing out that even if we take Charlie Gordon’s claims at face value, a £1,700 claim would still make his website the second most expensive MSP’s website.

Here are the full details of the expense claims as laid out by the Scottish Parliament:

Claim Month: November 2007
Payee: GMG SOLUTIONS
Amount: £1,709.38
Additional Info: ADMINISTRATION AND WEBSITE MAINTENANCE

Claim Month: October 2007
Payee: GMG SOLUTIONS
Amount: £1,441.61
Additional Info: ADMINISTRATION AND WEBSITE MAINTENANCE

Claim Month: November 2007
Payee: QUEENS PARK FC
Amount: £11.80

Claim Month: September 2007
Payee: GMG SOLUTIONS
Amount: £1,200.00
Additional Info: ADMINISTRATION AND WEBSITE MAINTENANCE

Claim Month: August 2007
Payee: GMG SOLUTIONS
Amount: £1,932.00

Claim Month: July 2007
Payee: QUEENS PARK FC
Amount: £11.80

Claim Month: June 2007
Payee: GMG SOLUTIONS
Amount: £1,152.00

Claim Month: July 2007
Payee: GMG SOLUTIONS
Amount: £1,032.00

Claim Month: April 2007
Payee: QUEENS PARK FC
Amount: £11.80

Claim Month: April 2007
Payee: GMG SOLUTIONS
Amount: £804.00

Claim Month: May 2007
Payee: GMG SOLUTIONS
Amount: £708.00

Claim Month: March 2008
Payee: GMG SOLUTIONS
Amount: £144.00

Claim Month: January 2008
Payee: GMG SOLUTIONS
Amount: £1,464.00

Claim Month: December 2007
Payee: GMG SOLUTIONS
Amount: £1,044.43

Claim Month: September 2007
Payee: QUEENS PARK FC
Amount: £11.80

The pongy whiff intensifies when you read the press reports which noted that GMG Solutions is in fact run by Charlie Gordon’s son, Gavin. As Heather from Idea15 noted, GMG Solutions “does not have a web site, a portfolio, or any basic contact information, and from that we can infer that they do not exist.”

Heather was none too impressed by the website:

It’s done in table layout, its base colour is flamingo pink, it uses Flash for basic navigation buttons, and it has 45 basic coding errors. Worryingly, there are no analytics counters or codes, which means the MSP neither knows nor cares why people might be reading his site.

Moreover, the poor design of the website means that it actually may be in breach of the Disability Discrimination Act.

As Heather pointed out, the navigation buttons are Flash files. This is totally unnecessary, limits web accessibility and makes it more difficult for Google and other search engines to find pages.

Indeed, Charlie Gordon’s stats show that in January 2009, while the home page accounted for 1,792 hits, the eight navigation buttons (which appear on every page of the website, not just the home page) accounted for an average of just 1,324 hits. This is a clear indication that many users are unable to properly navigate through the site. This could be easily diagnosed by a quick look at the statistics (as I have just done), yet no action has been taken to remedy it.

In fairness, there are plain text links at the bottom of the page. But why should users be made to scroll all the way to the bottom of each page just to navigate through the website? The plain text links should instead be at the top of the page, where the Flash buttons currently are.

Guess when people became interested in Charlie Gordon’s website?

January’s stats for Charlie Gordon’s website show a huge spike on 23 January, the day the expense claims were released. Traffic did not return to normal levels until the very end of the month, so I will look at the period 1 January 2009–22 January 2009.

Between those dates, Charlie Gordon’s website received an average of just 54.8 visits per day. The maximum was 80 visits on 5 January. The minimum was 0 visits, achieved on both 17 and 18 January. These are outliers, so I assume that the website was down on these days. So even with Charlie Gordon spending ~~£13,000~~ £1,700 per year, he can not arrange a vaguely reliable service. Considering the website is supposed to be a valuable resource to his constituents, this is a poor show.

The statistics for the whole of December 2008 are not much better. The website received just 63.7 visits per day that month.

We don’t yet know what Charlie Gordon claimed in website expenses for January 2009 or December 2008. But we do know that his largest claim in one month for the 2007–2008 financial year was £1,932.00 in August 2007. The public also has access to his web stats for that month, allowing us to calculate just how much value for money his constituents are getting out of his website.

Charlie Gordon’s website received 561 visits throughout the month of August 2007. This translates to just 18.1 visits per day. It is worth remembering that all Webalizer stats include robots (i.e. non-human visitors) such as Googlebot. As such, all of these visitor statistics are generous estimates!

Making the calculation, we can see that Charlie Gordon spent £3.44 per visit on his website that month. Even if we accept Charlie Gordon’s assertion that the website costs were in fact 20% of what the Scottish Parliament lists, this is still 69p per visit to the website (including robots). This is quite simply extortionate.

For comparison, I will use the same methodology to analyse the costs of my websites. I actually make more money on my websites than I spend on them, but I understand that advertising may not be an option on a publicly funded MSP’s website. So I will look solely at the costs of running my websites. This, too, is slightly flawed because I don’t pay anyone any wages to maintain my websites. This is purely my blood, sweat and tears, and maybe MSPs are too busy to do that. It is, nonetheless, an interesting exercise that will bring Charlie Gordon’s figures into perspective.

For the month of December 2008 I paid £7.67 (and £1.50 of this was a charge for using my debit card) for webhosting to last me for that month. I ran six websites during that month. During that time, these websites received 75,849 visits in total according to the same Webalizer package. This translates to a cost of £0.0001 (one hundredth of a penny) per visit. This is infinitesimal compared to Charlie Gordon’s figure of ~~£3.44~~ 69p per visit.

Incidentally, figures provided by Webalizer are much larger than any figures provided by any other stats package which excludes robots. Google Analytics, for instance, counts only human visits. It says that my sites collectively received 11,184 visits during the month of December 2008. This is just 14.7% of the figure given to me by Webalizer.

Assuming Charlie Gordon receives the same ratio of robot visitors to human visitors as I do, this would give him just 2.7 visitors per day for August 2007. As Heather pointed out, there appear to be no analytics codes installed on Charlie Gordon’s website, so we’ll never know just how many visitors Charlie Gordon gets or got. But it really could be as few as three per day or less.

I am not an MSP who is providing a potentially vital public service to his constituents. Nor am I a professional web designer. Yet I manage to get many more visitors, and spend much less money. £1,700 per year for a website is, quite frankly, a rip off. Taxpayers would have every right to be furious — especially since the taxpayer seems to be less than attracted to his website.

I previously covered Charlie Gordon’s website on the Scotweb2 blog.

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