Who will it inconvenience?

This notice is currently up next to the piece of Public Art that is now in front of Sheffield Station. I am really struggling to work out whose day is being made difficult by this pointless fountain being off. Are there people who faced with a lack of water and electricity being wasted by the moment really can't get through the day and need an apology from the "city centre management team" this much? Are Sheffield Council at risk from floods of lawsuits from these people and feel that a nice notice might just soothe the affected or give a defence that they made reasonable efforts to protect the sensitive?
It get me thinking, is it all part of a new culture, that is probably stemming from the compensation culture of apologising for anything and everything?
Now in this particular case it was just a fatuous notice there because people feel it is the done thing, but it is happening more and more because people feel aggrieved more often. Is it just perception? Or are there actually more mistakes? Do we need to say stop why not think a little first, and do it right first time? In some recent cases of public apologies this is the case: LJ for their suspension of accounts that were entirely to do with the opposite of what the kneejurkers accused them of, Channel four for the small minded bigotry of people on one of the most pathetic television shows yet devised, but mostly it isn't what is needed.
If organisations spent a bit more of their customer service budget on meeting rather than managing expectations, on greeting customers promptly and politely rather than saying sorry we took so long, on training their employees on how to talk to people then a lot less "sorry" would be needed.
Not that it is totally a bad word, I would have far preferred "I'm sorry you can't our toaster is broken" to the strait and very confusing "no" I got when asking for my sandwich toasted the other day.

Food, in this case truffles

Ok yes it is "yet another introduction," this time for the fact that I am starting a food section to this blog; people have previously asked for my recipes and whatnot so here they will be.
The big problem has always been that I am not a bloke that is big on recipes.
Obviously some things need strict adherence to the ingredients ratio so that the (bio)chemistry works and for this we have great written works of Hugh, Nigella, and the Good Housekeeping institute. All the rest of my tens of recipe books are there as inspiration and "food porn," stimulation of my taste buds. So I read what other people put in a dish and add/remove things depending on what I think would go well and what I happen to have in the cupboard or can get in the shops.
Those of you that know me well and the even smaller group that have actually seen me cook, will probably not be surprised to hear that I rarely take detailed notes when I am in full flow. However I am going to try and do much better at this than in the past. Here then is one that I did have notes for as I had to work out the quantities for it, having never done anything like this before:

White chocolate truffles

• 175g good quality white chocolate, broken into small pieces
• 25g unsalted butter
• 200ml whipping cream
• 50g sugar
• pepper
• chilli flakes
• vanilla pod

Split the vanilla pod and roughly scrape at it to release as much of the lovely goo as possible.
Put the split pod, goo and cream in a heavy base saucepan and heat gently and leave to infuse.
Over a pan of water melt the chocolate in a pyrex or similar bowl.
As the chocolate melts completely bring the heat under the cream up so that it just reaches boiling point, fishing out the vanilla pod just before it gets there.
Pour the cream into the chocolate and whisk until the whisk leaves trails as you pull it out.
Put the whipped mixture in the fridge to cool for a couple of hours.
Meanwhile put the sugar and a small amount of ground pepper and chilli flake into a blender/herb chopper/pestle and mortar and crush (it should be fine but not as fine as icing sugar) then decant into a bowl.
With two teaspoons pull balls out of the mix and drop them into the bowl of sugar, roll them around until fully coated then drop them in a paper case.

Meta

As stated in the first posting I made here, one of the reasons I started this blog was for things I didn't feel fitted the tone of my LJ. Well it wasn't the only reason, another consideration was my innate belief that my writing isn't of sufficient quality. I waffle, I evade the point, the narrative zig zags more than a fat bloke trying to outrun a crocodile. Oh and I love overusing cute little similes, metaphors and highfalutin long words that if I am honest are only there to make me smile to myself as I read it back.
One of the big critisms of the "blogosphere" (apart from horrible constructions like "blogosphere") from old(er) media is the lack of an editorial process. Mostly I think that the lack of proprietorial control, corporate style guides and being "on message" is the best thing about blogging and citizen journalism. I for one however, would appreciate the other half of being edited: feedback on quality of writing, help hitting the appropriate tone, an objective point of view about whether it is worth writing about the subject in the first place etc.
As this blog slowly gains a readership I am hoping that some of you will free to comment on the style and approach of the posts as well as just the subject and content. While I really wanted to avoid committing myself to every day or n times a week, I am enjoying the challenge of producing more "real" content as opposed to the kind of thing I was happy posting to LJ, it is making me think that the next project, when things are happily settled in the new house is to have another look at the idea of trying to run a comment and opinion magazine site.

Not as good as the real thing

My housemate today received the latest album from a fantastic Goth band that shall remain nameless, for no other reason that this isn't a review of the album, but of the way I listen to music. As I was pootling round Sheffield this evening, picking up copious quantities of boxes for the move, I listened to this CD and enjoyed it but (and at this point I need to reiterate that this is not about the music or the band, I really do like both) there was something missing.
The problem is that having seen this band live lots, not as often as say TWOAF or Otway perhaps but still lots, the recorded version just really isn't the same. I started thinking about how I perceive music and the difference between "live" and "recorded" and how I am the odd one out from most of my friends in that I own very few CDs. Even great songs, performed by great bands, recorded, mixed etc. with great skill are but a homeopathic tincture of the real deal: in your face, feel the vibrations in your gut and smell the sweat of the groupies, live music.
So where does this leave me and recorded music? It is either a reminder of great gigs, or in the case of the cheesy anthems, dodgy club nights, past. Or in this case a trailer for great gigs in the future, given by the fantastic Goth band in question where I hear the songs on the CD that started all this questioning.

Access to information

I thought long and hard about whether it was appropriate for me to comment on web application issues given my job, but I'm sure everyone will understand that this is just my personal opinion and not sales pitch.

Somewhere in Sheffield City council there has been a process failure that means you cannot make full use of the planning portal on a Windows XP machine without IE or in most browsers on the other operating systems.^[1].
The fact that they have bothered to ensure they are at least W3C-WAI AA compliant and have gone and got the Bobby badge, suggests that they take the concept of access to data by as many people as possible at least a little seriously and it is a QA issue rather than a conscious decision to exclude people.

So what is the issue?

If you view Sheffield City Council's Planning Applications online, search through until you find the application you are interested in and pull up the details page, you get a page with a series of tabs. These tabs are produced by some javascript that rolls up the different sections of the page and this appears to work in a wide range of browsers, if you have javascript disabled, you just get the page unrolled, nothing wrong so far. The problem is the "View associated documents" button, which fires a javascript powered pop-up to give you the list of documents attached to the application (all the actual interesting bits, that if you are looking for a planning application you probably want to read).

I am failing to resist the temptation to type "why oh, why oh, why" at this point; why is it a pop-up, why is it javascript and why haven't they got it working in other browsers, apart from as previously mentioned the KHTML set. What possible reason is there for it not being a simple link to the list of files (mostly PDFs) which, pretty much by definition, will work in every web browser on the planet.



^[1] I couldn't be bothered to go and try it on Vista, interestingly there is specific code to fix this specific problem for KHTML browsers like Konqueror and Safari

Political Animal

Some of you will have heard this one already in real life, but even if you have I think it is import enough to be heard again.

How do you define your peer group, look round at them, are they all tall people, do they share an accent, a political affiliation, is it simply due to socio-economic status? I find it difficult to answer that question, the best i can say is that the various groups I hang around with tend, as a general rule, to consist of intelligent people more than capable of thinking for themselves. Not necessarily highly educated, but a number of them are, not always working in highly skilled occupations, however there are those whose mums are rightly proud. All in all if this country was a meritocracy we would at least be being listened too, maybe even represented at the top table.^[1]
But, and this is a huge but, this country isn't even close to being a meritocracy, what it is closer to approximating is a democracy (I'll leave for another day the merits and pitfalls of the implementation of democracy in this country). This entry is about my surprise, and on occasion anger, about the appallingly low level of knowledge and engagement that my peer group, these thinking women and men, have with the electoral procedures that they are expected to deal with every year. This viewpoint came about, or at least was reinforced, during the council elections and some could argue that people feel it is less important than politics on the national stage. I am going to dismiss that argument out of hand as horse-shit, local issues are important, ask anyone whose children go to Myers Grove or Wisewood School, who works or runs a business in Shalesmoor, or has seen the field near their house turned into a housing estate.^[2]
So why was I having to explain the concepts of 'election by thirds' and cabinet run councils, feeling dirty when confronted with people that had refused to vote because they hadn't been canvassed or couldn't see the point of voting in the council elections because their parliamentary constituency was a safe seat? The only problem is all the solutions I can see for this are a bit nannystateish, including forcing councils to provide more information on elections, including the candidate list when the polling cards go out, publicly funded hustings and even compulsory voting. If that last one ever came to referendum, I would support it in a heartbeat. Mind you that would probably annoy the large sections of my peer group that tend towards libertarianism and I shudder to think what the neo-plutocracists would say...

^[1]Ok this may be a bit of a flight of fancy, but I'm trying to make a point.
^[2]Apologies for being a bit Sheffield-centric

Right of way

I really don't know if this really is just a Sheffield phenomenon or not, but I am going to talk as if it is as I haven't seen anything like it anywhere else (including all the other light rail or underground systems in the UK except the Croydon Tram, plus the Metros in Paris and Rome, and the NY Subway). I really don't know why it exists either, given that is isn't just down right rude it is utterly inefficient, which is I am pretty sure, the sole reason it doesn't exist in [X] city explicitly or implicitly mentioned above due to [Y] national or regional stereotype.

What is it? Simply it is the failure to grasp the concept that it isn't just polite, or dignified to give people room to let people get off the tram before getting on, but it is the efficient way of doing it. Whereas crowding forward round the doors of a packed tram and indeed actively resisting other people's attempts to alight makes the whole process longer for everyone. I really don't get it, even if all these people believe they have a divine right to be on the tram right this second, none of them actually seem to be divine enough to walk though those comming off the tram. Also if they were omnicognisant they would realise that at the very least some kind of interleaving rather than moving forward as a Spartan phalanx (admittedly with tuting rather than point spear death) then the whole thing would work so much better.

If it was just an extension of the "mall" induced arrogance of the modern pedestrian and their belief that they can set a strait line course and not have to deviate for anyone then wouldn't it be the same everywhere? Is Meadowhall so much more a nexus of evil than other similar places that Sheffield suffers more than other places? Will it evolve so that as well as tram door blocking and the use of pushchairs containing infants to stop traffic the citizenry will start to violently remonstrate with street furniture for getting in the way (above and beyond the special brew chugging types that are already doing so, but being an underclass, they aren't allowed to count).

This urgently needs someone to put together a research package to find a cause and a cure, before I give into my temptations to start taking a battle axe to work.