Tag: time

Thinking Digital University (2011)

So, here I am again at Thinking Digital.  Only this time I’m no longer driving the seemingly doomed Golf TDI I had last year that did one of it’s self destruction tricks en-route.  Consequently I’m not missing out on the workshops here.

In fact, I’m doing better than that – an additional workshop was added for the Monday by Jer Thorp of Wired fame.  A workshop on Processing.  That, I must say, was a wonderful find.  Processing, in case you’ve never heard of it, is a data visualisation tool or sketchbook.  It’s a bit old-school, but this is a good thing, generally, because this has the advantage of being relatively accessible.  In fact it reminded me of the fun early days of BASIC on small computers.

Simply put, you can easily draw things, and you can analyse data with it.  Some was stuff I could do on a Dragon 32 nearly thirty years ago, but with many thousands of times the power – and that means you can do cool stuff in real time.  I recommend you look up some of the online Processing materials.  You can even try it out without installing anything by using my colleague Robert O’Rourke‘s website, hascanvas.com

During Nancy Duarte’s Workshop

That Resonates With Me!

Then on day two it was a half day ‘off’ which, for me, meant a series of telephone calls with clients while I ensure that work continues as it should.  The afternoon, however, brought along Nancy Duarte‘s “That Resonates With Me!” workshop.

Funnily enough, her resonate analogy was the one bit that didn’t work for me.  She used the peculiar patterns of salt as it’s vibrated on a plate as a way of showing how different people can resonate with your message in different ways.  It’s interesting, but I feel that people don’t work that way.  People can, however, be like salt – you know, small, hard, square and bad for your health.  So perhaps she had a point.

BUT – I’m picking.  Because truth be told it was a fascinating workshop that helped me to see through the clutter of my presentations and to find ways to understand my audience and find ways to connect with them.  The simple exercise she gave will help me improve my presentations – of that I’m sure.  I just have to make sure I put them into practice.

The Rest

The rest of the conference is more classically organised, with the usual talks, networking and information overload.  In the evenings there’ll be the usual entertainment.  Already I’ve been better at avoiding alcohol than last year – I’m remarkably sober tonight.  This is a Good Thing.

Highlights, I suspect, will be Jer’s talk (always visually amazing – check out his Vimeo feed) but the rest I’ll have to report on later.

Freedom of Information is Abused

In 2000 in the UK, the Freedom of Information Act gave us all the ‘right to know’ what our public bodies were up to.  We can ask for information about a huge range of items, and it’s a great idea.  Information should, in my view, be as open and transparent as possible.

But there’s a problem.

It’s become easier and easier to make FOI requests, for example using sites like the excellent http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/

I like this.  I like efficiency.  I like speedy, easy to use systems.

But what I don’t particularly like are some people.

Let me explain.  People, in general, tend to be quite nice, harmless, and socially aware.  But a significant proportion, perhaps 20%, are best described as spoiled, selfish, mean… you know what I mean.  And that’s an awful lot of people.  In our population of 60 million or so that means there are 12 million not especially nice folk around.  A smaller proportion, perhaps a million, will be genuinely unpleasant*.

So, what happens when a large number of people can easily make requests to the FOI that are, to all intents and purposes, selfish?

This is what happens, each set from just one user:

In each case the requests pertained to commercial information.  The diesel misfuelling question is by Nick Panchaud, who a quick bit of googling for the term “Nick Panchaud diesel” reveals him to be commenting around the place promoting the Diesel Key, a device to prevent petrol hoses being inserted into diesel vehicles.

Natalie Davis and Keith Griffiths are harder to track down conclusively due to their more common names, but the requests they make would only really be of interest to commercial organisations, so I’m rolling with it.

What’s happening is that at least some people are making multiple FOI requests for commercial gain.  Yet there’s a massive cost behind all this.  I decided to do a little bit of FOI requesting myself.  My question?  How much did Nick Panchaud’s requests cost you to service?

I only asked three public bodies (let’s not build up the costs here!) and two responded ( http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/user/david_coveney ) giving costs of £87.63 and £50.  Not much of a sample size, but let’s roll with it – it may be representative.  Given that, you can see that to fulfil Mr Panchaud’s research it has cost public bodies as much as £41,900.  Money that has come out of tax payer’s pockets.

If we assume similar costs for those other requests I’ve listed above (it may be quite a bit more: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/News/Releases/2010/11/12143737) , we’re looking at potentially another £87,700.  So three people with commercial interests have sucked over £100k from our economy.

A Possible Solution

FOI requests are costing the country millions.  People like our Nick Panchaud above are not using the FOI system in the spirit in which it was meant to be used.  Consequently they are costing us a fortune and we need to find a way, in these difficult times, to slash those costs.

I propose a change to the FOI system that makes all requesters pay a small fee.  It doesn’t have to be a lot – perhaps £10 each.  That would stop the scurrilous and wasteful requests, whilst still keeping the system open for those with a real purpose for the information they seek.  Even commercial researchers.  Obviously it should be reviewed in time – it may need to go up, or down, but usually people are economically quite selfish and they’ll consider more carefully the requirement.

I know this post is likely to disappear in the noise and won’t get much traction, but this has been bugging me for a while now and I had to say something!

* On the upside, there’s 600,000+ geniuses (depending how you measure it) floating around, so maybe they balance out.  Then again, perhaps 20% of those geniuses are evil geniuses.  In which case that’s 120,000 evil geniuses in the country.  That’s a lot.

Border Crossings and Empty Airports

I’m sitting in the emptiest airport I’ve ever experienced. I suspect they only operate a couple of flights a day from Tacna.  Consequently my only company appears to be a bored check-in attendant for a different airline and a barman who’s mopping the floor.

And I’ve finished all my books. I have little else to do except get the phone out, take advantage of the free Wi-Fi in Peruvian airports and get blogging.

So, let me tell you about how to get from Arica in Chile to Tacna in Peru.

The two cities are only some 40km apart, but transport between them isn’t what you might expect.

The simplest way is to get your hotel to order a taxi to your destination on the other side. They will deal with the crossing, but from Chile this can be expensive, running at around £35.  Similarly, in the opposite direction it’s perfectly possible to get ripped off, as I did last week when I arrived here.

You need two things…your passport and some local currency. In Arica you can take a taxi for £2 to the “Terminal Internacional” where you’ll expect buses but will actually see a huge number of USAnian cars.  You find a driver going to the border pay the station fee (200 pesos, 40p) and then go to an office to do some paperwork.  You then get shown to your collectivo.

These are always US cars of various vintage. I got a really seventies Crown Victoria driven by a brassy old lady whose hair waved in the wind out of the window.  The car contained 5 passengers…a handy one extra than a European or Eastern equivalent, hence more profit.  For her troubles you pay just 2000 pesos, about £3.

She took us to the border, made sure we were OK and left.  There, waiting, were other collectivos heading to Tacna. They all pass the airport, so no problem. You go through Chilean customs and then get driven the short distance to Peruvian customs, again in a USAnian car, albeit this time I got a more modern but nondescript GM thingy.  Cost here was 2500 pesos (they take Chilean money cheerfully.)

That’s it. For less than a tenner you can cross the border.  Don’t do like I did the other way last time and get ripped off by a driver taking you to the airport…you should spend more than about £5 to reach the border from the airport even by taxi as it isn’t far.  Ask first for the price.  Also check whether it’s all the way to Arica, or just to the border (say ‘aduana.’)

Extreme Landscapes

I’m now back in Arica following my trip to San Pedro de Atacama and Bolivia.  I have a couple of things to deal with here before heading back to Lima for my flight home.

I’ve been foiled by this computer in the hotel from getting a decent image gallery up from the last eight days or so.  That means that until I return home you’ll have to take my word for it that the landscape we saw in South West Bolivia was some of the most extreme that I’ve come across in my life.

It’s well known that when a space scientists wants conditions similar to Mars for some experiments they tend to come to this part of the world.  It really is that way out.  That flamingoes, vicuñas and a fair other range of animals manage to live here is remarkable.

Bitterly cold at night and with burning sunshine in the day, it was hard to be properly prepared at all times.  You’d go from being wrapped in five layers to trying to get as much off as possible.  All whilst trying to avoid getting badly sunburned.  Even our more latin members of the group were looking red.  Me?  Well I’d bought this Chilean waterproof sun cream which Pablo tried at one point and which he described as being like paint.  If you didn’t rub it in enthusiastically it left you looking white like a ghost.

Still, it worked, mostly.  My lips are chapped like crazy, and my hands look like an old man’s – super dry air, cold and salt took their toll.

So until I return home to fast computers I’ll just leave you with the one picture I managed to get off the big camera.  It’s a whirlwind that we watched crossing the Laguna Blanca.  The dust is borax, believe it or not…

bolivia borax whirlwind
A whirlwind in the Bolivian Altiplano

Laguna Colorada, Bolivia

We’re about 120km from the nearest town, so zero connectivity here. This will be posted on my return.

We’re at around 4900m up in a small hostel near Laguna Colorada. By Bolivian standards it’s comfortable but the altitude is really hard work and I’ve learned to be careful not to stand up too quickly.

It’s been a day of extreme scenery, sometimes feeling positively martian (in fact, scientists studying mars use the Atacama as the nearest option available on our planet). At Laguna Verde we took advantage of the hot spring there, but I quickly regretted it when getting out. Heat + cold + altitude made many of us dizzy and I never recovered all afternoon.

But that didn’t diminish the joy of seeing thousands of flamingoes here at Laguna Colorada. An amazing sight along with clouds of borax blown up by the winds.

The group I’m riding with is pretty cosmopolitan, Alex a Swedish/French guy, Diana a Spanish girl, Karim, with German, French and Arabic backgrounds and Pablo from Chile with Russian ancestry.  And they’re a great bunch to travel with…a lot of jokes and ribaldry.

My hope now is that I acclimatise quickly, but the diet isn’t really full of iron so I’m not optimistic.

Tonight we’re sleeping in the coldest room I ever sat in. It’s -8 and there’s no freaking heating. With all that geothermal energy just beneath us this is irritating to say the least. And it makes me wonder how Andean peoples ever reproduce.

On the upside going outside reveals an amazing starscape. So much is visible it takes your breath away (as does the cold and altitude, but hey, I had some left!)  I’ve taken photos which will be added to the gallery on my return.  Just wait and see.

San Pedro de Atacama revisited.

I remember San Pedro as being quite sleepy, with little accommodation available, but also with plenty of tourists and bars. It was sunny, warm, and pleasant.

This time around it’s somewhat less sleepy, a lot bigger (perhaps 2x? 3x?)…however, it’s the off-season and that means few tourists compared to the number of restaurants, so dining alone isn’t unusual and it somehow feels less social. It’s also relatively cool and very windy which means it’s as dusty as a building site.

I met some Americans in today’s restaurant of choice (Etnica, recommended) and I knew they’d just arrived because, simply put, they didn’t look dusty enough yet.  Seriously, it gets everywhere,  your hair takes on a thick appearance, and your clothes go orange.

Still, it’s not a bad place.  I’ve booked a four day trip to Bolivia’s Salar de Uyuni. I’m also going shopping for clothes suitable for the very cold temperatures…it will be at least -15C. I’ve already shelled out too much for very nice thermals, complete with odour absorbing charcoal, important when you’re only going to have a chance to wash every two days! I’ll almost certainly be incommunicado for much of this also.  Consequently you’ll only get a splurge of info in four days or so.

I’m not even sure I’ll get to post this today…electricity has been off here for a few hours now.

F%@*!?g Hell

image

I’ve done Arica > San Pedro before, albeit with a change at Calama. Thing is, I just remembered one of the more annoying bits…

Chile has concerns over various food pests and as a consequence you not only get checked for fruit, cheese etc on boarding the bus, there are also occassional checkpoints. So at 3.30 in the freakin’ morning the lights all come on it’s time to step into the cold.

So here I am, wide awake, irritable, and in full realisation that this bus was designed for a country where the average height is a good two inches (5cm) less than back home.  So I’ve got my music on, popped my fleece on and hoping for some sleep.  Soon.

Off to San Pedro

Just about to start packing for San Pedro de Atacama.

I’ve been there before, so it’s a relatively familiar spot, though I didn’t spend long in the town.  So this time I’m going to explore the locality a little more.  I’m even thinking of sticking with it for a week or so and treating as a relaxing holiday, with a trip planned to Salar de Uyuni for a few days (if I can find one) as well as other shorter jollies.

I had been thinking of heading to La Paz, but I’ve been warned that Bolivia’s a bit of an unstable place right now and, just two weeks ago, a group of travellers were stranded in Uyuni for 19 days due to a blockade by local protesters.

As a consequence, I feel that I may be better off not spending more time than strictly necessary in the country.  Although I’ll miss out on La Paz and some other sights I’d rather make sure I can get home in a timely manner and without stress or hassles.

Anyway, one highlight is that because this is an El Niño winter it has rained in parts of the desert and that means the chance of seeing a so-called ‘blooming desert’ when all the flowers come out.

If that’s the case I could be returning for a day or so to Arica.  This isn’t a bad thing as one piece in my father’s puzzle still needs to be researched, and I will be able to attend to that on my return.  It’s not a big thing, but something I’d like to do if possible.

Then it will be on to Lima for a night or two depending on flights, and home.  Can’t wait to get back to the family, to be honest, and it’s just 12 days away now!

So, tonight, after another little spell at the English Institute giving students some practice, I’ll hop on a bus for a twelve hour ride to San Pedro.  Of course, this brings up people saying that I’m a hard core traveller.  But really, this is what you probably think I’m riding on http://www.contemporarynomad.com/2008/09/ whereas the reality is that I’ll have a semi-cama seat as shown here: http://www.turbus.cl/servicios.html and riding in a modern, well maintained coach.  It’s not so bad!

Itinerary Options

I’m still trying to decide what to do next, but I think I’m forming a plan.

I did debate staying here for all the time I have, teaching some web stuff maybe, for free.  But nobody seemed that interested when I mentioned it, so I think it’s worth heading off.

I’ve already been to San Pedro de Atacama, but heck, it’s a nice spot on the planet and is on the way to Bolivia’s Salar de Uyuni the world’s largest salt flat.  I love extremes, and that’s as far as it can get, I reckon.

My only worry is that it’ll probably be bloody cold up in the mountains, so I’ll go and buy another fleece and a hat, methinks.  Maybe a pair of gloves to?

After that, La Paz and a bit of exploring there, then take the boat across Lake Titicaca to Puno, then to Cuzco.  If I have time there and feel up to it I can do the Machu Picchu trail as it’s the right season to do it and the weather’s pleasant there right now.  Puno to Machu Picchu are already known to me, but the trail would be new, as would be crossing the lake.  I also know it’s quite easy to get flights from Cuzco to Lima or from La Paz to Lima, should my itinerary slip a little.

So what do you think?  Sounds like a plan?