Musings

Moving to WordPress

2010-09-29T09:14:00.001+01:00

I'm moving this blog to WordPress. The new link is http://rmschneider.wordpress.com/. No particular reason other than because I can.

Extreme Events

2010-09-24T15:52:00.002+01:00

Roger Pielke Jr has a great posting which comments on the testimony of Michael Oppenheimer from Princeton University and coordinating lead author of the IPCC special report titled Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation, to the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming of the US House of Representatives. He takes issue with Oppenheimer's assertion that "assignment of cause for the damaging outcomes of such extremes" is a relatively new field.

Pielke says:

In suggesting that this is a "new" field he notably avoids discussing a large body of literature such as on tropical cyclones (in the US, Australia, China, India, Latin America, etc.), floods, European storms, Australian bushfires, etc. where peer reviewed work has explained damage trends solely in terms of increasing societal vulnerability. Why is it so hard for IPCC authors to acknowledge any of this literature?

I like that. Good question.

I'm going to dig out my text books to find out when this field of extreme events became "mature", but in the 1970's we learned all about environmental "extreme" events like flooding in my undergraduate and graduate courses in Hydrology. We learned that the probability distribution of many extreme events could be reliably be modelled using the Gumbell Distribution. For homework, we gathered data on "extreme" floods, wave heights, etc. and plotted those events on Gumbell Distribution probability paper (we didn't have Excel in those days). The data usually lined up in a straight line which enabled us to extrapolate to longer periods of time than for which we had data. For example, we could take fifty years of real data on maximum river levels and use that data to extrapolate to the 100, 500, or even 1000 year flood. That would then provide a basis up which to design flood control structures. I learned at my first corporate job that Gumbell distribution also worked well with maximum ocean wave heights.

All that before the IPCC existed to tell us what we don't know.

How to Give a Version of the Truth

2010-09-24T12:18:00.007+01:00

This is a posting I've been thinking I should write for quite some time. I'm prompted as I again saw this graph of CO2 in parts per million, as measured at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii since the 1950's, used this week at the Royal Society of Edinburgh by the Lord Kreps.

The first graph is as published by NASA where they show vertical scale from about 315 to 400 parts per million. The second graph, based on "cherry-picking" the annual numbers, is on a scale from zero to 400 parts per million.

When one is told before seeing this graph that we have a problem with carbon and then we see the first graph, the concern is pretty much "proven" without discussion. If one were shown he second graph would not be more difficult to support the "problem" assertion? Neither graph shows the "ideal" number of carbon molecules we should have in parts per million, probably because nobody knows.

All this reminds me of that great book "How to Lie with Statistics".

Facing Up To Climate Change

2010-09-21T20:41:00.004+01:00

This evening I attended the Royal Society of Edinburgh's lecture on "Facing Up to Climate Change" presented by The Lord Krebs Kt, FRS, FMedSci, Principal, Jesus College, University of Oxford. He's also a member of the House of Lord's Committee on Climate Change.

His message was clear

: the climate is changing--the proof is clear: rise of sea level, flooding, ocean acidity, etc. It's going to get hot, and hot is bad (extreme weather, uninhabitable regions of the world, etc.) And all this is caused by mankind.
: the science proving this "fact" is settled and beyond reproach, discussion, and "denial". (He said CRU was "exonerated", and he frequently used the word "denier" for those who do not agree with this assessment.)
: the key to solving this "problem" is to change mankind's behaviour to stop the climate changing.
: government's role is to ensure people to change their behaviour--probably via non coercive methods, e.g. psychological, because to do otherwise is politically impossible.
: buying "stuff" (consuming) does not lead to happiness and if mankind stops "unethical consumption", the horror of climate change will be prevented.

Sigh.

Electricity Collected from the Air Could Become the Newest Alternative Energy Source

2010-08-26T13:42:00.003+01:00

It's headlines like this from what I thought were reputable science web sites that really p..s me off. As if this is ready for big investment now to fix our energy crisis. Oops. I can see it now. People will be pushing for the government to fund generation plants using this technology soon.

A Great Tool For Writing

2010-08-23T08:34:00.003+01:00

Dana Severance has written a good review of the of the great writing product "Scrivener". I'm doing more than a little writing at the moment on two projects: one is being done in Word and the other in Scrivener. Scrivener wins as a writers tool. Word 2011 comes out soon so we'll see how that compares with Scrivener 2.0 which comes out about the same time. There is no way that I can or will stop using Word as I have built up some valuable experience over the years, but Scrivener is so darn useful. Recommended.

We are so good about finding fault with those who have problems

2010-08-16T17:50:00.003+01:00

This in the August 15th New York times talk about the risks associated with solar storms:

DESPITE warnings that New Orleans was unprepared for a severe hit by a hurricane, America was blindsided by Hurricane Katrina, a once-in-a-lifetime storm that made landfall five years ago this month. We are similarly unready for another potential natural disaster: solar storms, bursts of gas on the sun’s surface that release tremendous energy pulses.

Something in me tells me the world will not prepare/invest for this and when it happens we'll spend all our energy left on blame and court suits.

This is a risk that just feels like we should attempt to "manage" it.

This is terrific

2010-07-29T09:52:00.004+01:00

The Chief Scientist, Professor David MacKay, of the UK's Department of Energy and Climate change has released the "DECC 2050 Calculator."

This tool is an interface to the first version of a calculator to help policymakers, the energy industry and the public understand these choices. This work is not about choosing a pathway out to 2050 today — such a task would not be feasible given the major unknowns and timeframe involved. However, this work enables us to better manage some significant long-term uncertainties and helps us to avoid making long-term decisions that are incompatible with meeting our 2050 emissions target.

The tool is easy to access and easy to use. Within the assumptions and logic of the model, you can draw your own conclusions about the energy policies the UK should take.

They have released the source code for the tool. I'm going to take a look and see how they handled the probabilistic aspects of the modelling.

What Engineering is Really About

2010-07-21T16:35:00.002+01:00

There are so many reasons to remember what engineering is all about. It's not about fixing dishwashers, refrigerators, or computers. Engineering is an art. Engineering is a profession. More people need to learn how to think like an Engineer.

This NY Times article is recommended reading.

And Why Can't Computers Work Better

2010-07-17T10:37:00.002+01:00

In June I was asked via email to renew my membership in PMI (Project Management Institute). I renewed within a day of the that email. I've been happy with the benefits of being a member of PMI.

Since then, they must have sent me at least a dozen reminders ... email and postal mail, to remind me that my membership is soon to expire and that I should renew immediately. Sigh. I have.

I wish they had programmed their computers to work better than this. I wonder if they used PMBOK for their project to implement the renewable process.

This is why computers were invented

2010-07-16T07:48:00.000+01:00

Let's get Steve to England

2010-07-05T14:07:00.002+01:00

I contributed to Steve McIntyre's trip to England to participate in the Guardian's Pearce Inqury. He would be pleased if you did same.

iOS4 intall took about 90 Minutes...

2010-06-22T07:44:00.003+01:00

I don't know why it took so long and I don't know if this normal or not. The install process took about 90 minutes or so. Maybe my sync wire is going bad and the whole time was spent on data communication errors or something. I don't know. Read a book while watching it go, so it was not a complete waste of time.

But boy is this a good upgrade for the iPhone:

Camera now has an electronic zoom. In the spirit of "the best camera is the one you have with you", this is a great feature which makes the camera more useful.
Folders for grouping start up icons. Good for usability
Mail has some upgrades which allows you to read all mail in all accounts from one view. I need to monitor a number of accounts and this is useful. At first glance, though, it's not clear how to tell which account the mail actually resides in. This would be needed to help me understand who I am when I reply.

iOS 4 ... trying to Install it. Seems a slow process.

2010-06-21T19:13:00.002+01:00

My iTunes invited me to download and and install the new operating system to my iPhone, iOS 4. I said "yes, do it" and the computer and the iPhone are working on it as I write this.

It was a pretty big download taking about 10 minutes on the wireless connection to the house's broadband.

Now iTunes reports it's backup the iPhone. It appears to be much slower than a normal backup of the iPhone. In about 20 minutes of backup, it's progressed to what the progress bar suggests is about 5% or so. I suspect it might take all night. I'm glad it's the end of the day and I can just let the two gadgets work on it overnight.

Weather Great. Reading about Climate Change

2010-06-20T17:57:00.003+01:00

The weather has been great this weekend and outside of a bike ride and a walk along the sea front I've enjoyed the time reading a couple of books which I recommend to anyone interested in the debate about climate change and energy for our planet:

"The Great Global Warming Blunder", by Roy Spencer

"Climatism", by Steve Goreham

Both books are superbly written. For where I feel I am informed and understand the current issues and state of play both books are in line with my thinking. This gives them great credibility as they explain so much that is still new or still not understood. They talk of both the science and politics of the issues.

Recommended.

Finally, Some Reasonable Comments about PowerPoint

2010-05-05T23:00:00.001+01:00

I was meaning to write something here about all the articles about PowerPoint--the most prominent being the recent New York Times article about what the Army leadership was saying.

See this article in Slate about how to really communicate. From the masters.

I have an important presentation to make in Kazakhstan soon ... food for thought here.

It's Complicated

2010-05-02T07:31:00.002+01:00

An outstanding article in today's New York Times on complexity. They sum up:

Of course, nobody at Goldman Sachs or any other large financial institution meant to wreck the economy. The United States military didn’t invade Iraq or Afghanistan thinking that one day its efforts would be mounted on a bewildering PowerPoint slide. The engineers who designed the BP oil platform that exploded and sank and produced one of the largest oil spills in history built it with multiple back-up systems.

But complexity has a way of defeating good intentions. As we clean up these messes, there is no point in hoping for a new age of simplicity. The best we can do is hope the solutions are just complicated enough to work.

NASA Movie on Hubble

2010-04-28T17:43:00.001+01:00

What a great video from NASA about the History of Hubble--fantistic summary of a fantastics and earth-changing machine.

Nice Photos on CNN Web Site about Scotland

2010-04-28T17:30:00.000+01:00

Some beautiful pictures of a beautify country.

We Probably Need to Get Used to this Volcano

2010-04-18T09:20:00.002+01:00

From today's Telegraph newspaper, word is that this personal and economic disruption could last some time:

The significance is that andesite has a markedly higher gas content than basalt. This may mean that even after all the ice in the crater has melted, the exploding volcano will continue to throw ash into the air rather than simply produce lava flows.

Blame and the Volcano Dust

2010-04-18T08:13:00.003+01:00

It is refreshing, that so far, despite the world-wide personal and economic disruption, I'm reading and hearing nothing about calls for blaming anyone for this issue. Blame has not entered the conversation. Nor should it ever.

Plans Change due to Volcano

2010-04-15T12:23:00.002+01:00

I happened to be in London for a terrific 2-day conference. The first day exceeded my expectations and I was looking forward to the second. I woke up early this morning to hear the news reports about the volcano in Iceland which erupted over night and its ash cloud caused all airports in Scotland to be shutdown, with the rest of the country expected to shutdown very soon. Within minutes after hearing of that, I received a text message from my airline advising that my flight tonight was cancelled.

I pondered that and decided that this situation would lead to transportation chaos throughout the country. I decided to skip the second day of the conference and head to take the first train home. I end up getting on a train which departed London at 9:00 a.m. and it's fully loaded.

The rest of the day will be difficult for those stuck away from home and having expected to travel. I can't help thinking that this could last a while.

Not in My Backyard

2010-04-11T12:47:00.004+01:00

By accident I came across notice of a plan to install a single wind turbine "in my back yard".

The link to the Edinburgh City Planning Department for this application is here. I can't tell from documents here (yet) who is behind this other than it appears to be by the owners of and on the site of the "secret" nuclear bunker which was situated on Corstorphine Hill. The view from my back yard would be as shown below.

I am going to look into this. Not in my back yard.

P.S. On 13 April have written a letter to the Edinburgh City Planning Department stating our objections on the grounds of blight, noise and visual pollution, safety risks, destroying rare urban natural beauty, lack of adequate planning notification, and "debatable and probably wrong" assertions in the applicants planning documents.

Recordings of "Handling Uncertainty in Science"

2010-04-08T08:54:00.002+01:00

Recordings of the March 22-23, 2010 Royal Society (UK) meeting on "Handling Uncertainty in Science" are now available for listening and downloading. See http://royalsociety.org/2010-Handling-uncertainty-in-science/.

2010-04-01T08:42:00.003+01:00

Ross McKitrick writes on failing to get a paper published that required the "revered" peer-review process.

"This is the story of how I spent 2 years trying to publish a paper that refutes an important claim in the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The claim in question is not just wrong, but based on fabricated evidence. Showing that the claim is fabricated is easy: it suffices merely to quote the section of the report, since no supporting evidence is given. But unsupported guesses may turn out to be true. Showing the IPCC claim is also false took some mundane statistical work, but the results were clear. Once the numbers were crunched and the paper was written up, I began sending it to science journals. That is when the runaround began. Having published several against-the-flow papers in climatology journals I did not expect a smooth ride, but the process eventually became surreal."

Heard about this on Bishop Hill's blog.

Extracting Data from SharePoint

2010-03-20T10:32:00.006Z

When I work with people about using SharePoint "as a management weapon" a frequently asked question is about how to get information out of SharePoint, in particular how to print. When using Sharepoint as a "management weapon" this is a natural need since getting the data into a form for presentation or further munging into insightful representations for other mangers and executives.

Doing this is often a lot easier (and less expensive) than people expect and anticipate. Since many perceive SharePoint as an "application", they sometimes expect SharePoint to provide some sort of bespoke functionality for printing and extract. Or they engage the services of SharePoint application developers (at great initial cost plus follow-on support costs) to do bespoke things.

One of the great things about SharePoint is that is is fairly "restrained" about doing bespoke and special things like this. It's inherent value is that it basically does this in conventional, standard, and recognisable ways.

The purpose of this short article is to outline a few approaches. I do not try here to give a step by step explanation--that can be obtained elsewhere if needed. See the reference list below for some books that are already written and can provide extensive instructions. I see no need to replicate all that at great expense and labour. However, some pointers are often useful. These are listed here in order of simplicity (High to Low) and sophistication and power (Low to High).

Print Using the Browser's Capability

SharePoint is a web-based application. You use a web browser, probably and most usefully Microsoft Internet Explorer, to display the information returned from the SharePoint server. Accordingly, the first option is to simply print the page using the browser. This is quick, fast, and easy. Sometimes people are repelled from making such print-outs for managers and executives--but most managers and executives surely will appreciate how inexpensive in time such a technique is.

Setup the view you wish to display. You can use a view provided by your server, or you can construct your own. Remember that a SharePoint View defines what fields are displayed, in what order, how the rows are grouped, and applies any filtering.
Once you get the information on the screen as you want, in the browser use Menu: File/Page Setup ... to define the paper size and orientation. Often it is most useful to use landscape orientation.
Current versions of IE have an option to "Enable Shrink-to-Fit" to get all the information displayed on the screen onto the paper.
Sometimes you get pleasing results if you print to A3 paper (real or virtual as a PDF) adn then shrink the page down to A4 for presentation
Sometimes you can simply do a partial screen shot of the portion of the screen you wish to show and paste that into your PowerPoint. Hint: avoid the temptation to show the entire screen shote page in PowerPoint. Take only portions of the page. To do this, use the standard Windows techniques of Alt-PrtScn or specialty software like SnagIt! or others.

Copy Data into the Document, Excel, or Other

Sometimes SharePoint's simple standard views (or views you make yourself) are not good enough. After all, one of the grand features of SharePoint is that it only does so much and does it well. So, don't fight SharePoint--use it.

Display the View that shows the information you want.
Press the Actions button to display the View in a Datasheet (this won't work with antique version of IE and Excel, nor will work with browsers other than IE).
If you don't have all the fields you want, then you have to get them on the SharePoint View. If you have too many fields, simply "hide" them. To hide columns (and do other things with columns), as in Excel, right mouse click on the column header and tell SharePoint to "hide" the column.
In the header rows, take note of the little black downward-pointing arrows. Click on that with your mouse pointer and notice that you can sort and filter the rows. Again, this is just like in Excel.
Once you have the information you want displayed, then select all (or some) of the rows and columns. The easiest way to select all is to click the far left column in the header row (again, just like in Excel). Then copy this data into the Windows Clipboard (Menu: Edit/Copy, or press CTRL-C).
Move to where you want to put the data--which could be Excel, Word, PowerPoint, or even email. Click the cursor into the location where the data should go and Paste (via the application's menu or CTRL-V). Depending on how the target application can respond to pasting structured information, the information will go in.
From within the target application, do what you want with the information. With something like Excel or Access, you can do further analysis (summing, statistics, etc.), or in PowerPoint just format to make it as "pretty" as you want.

Get Scalable and Automated Data Reporting

SharePoint does not do "report writing". Some people expect it. I think that one of the grand features of SharePoint is that it does not have built-in reporting writing because most people have (and have had for many years) that capability on their desktop computers in the form of other Microsoft tools: Word, Excel, and Access. There are scores of other commonly-available tools and applications available to do this--some free or low-cost and others not so low-cost.

To do this requires, of course, knowledge and perhaps experience of how these tools work. Surprisingly there are many people who really do not know how to use Word, Excel, and Access in ways other than they have become accustomed to over the years. However, these tools are provided at great expense by the same management and executives who are seeking information/reporting so I see few reasons why not to use these tools.

Under the "Actions" button in Spreadsheet, execute the "Export to Spreadsheet" button. Follow the instructions presented by SharePoint and Excel. In Excel, it is probably best to "unlink" the spreadsheet to SharePoint--else changes you make in Excel will ripple back to SharePoint. Do this vial Menu: Data/List/Unlink List.
Or, under the "Actions" button, executive the "Open with Access" button. Follow the instructions presented by SharePoint and Excel.

More guidance about how Excel and Access work with SharePoint work together is found in the documentation for these products (Help, books, etc.). This guidance is teachable and learnable. Seek out training and/or coaching if you wish to pursue this important topic.

Really Cool and Powerful SharePoint Functionality

Once you do that described above, take a look at the following:

Display the list in a Datasheet (under the Actions button)
When in Datasheet view, see the Actions button again to see a new option to "open the task pane". When you do this it will appear at the right.
From the SharePoint Task Pane, you can find powerful (and easy to use) features to use Excel (querying, printing, charting, and pivot-table reports) and reporting via Access.

Excel or Access

I close this article to briefly comment on the always-debated question of is it better to use Excel or Access for this sort of thing.

SharePoint, after all, is really a database. Access is a tool for handling databases. Excel is a tool for number-crunching. Yes there are many overlaps and cross functionality (hence causing the debates).

My bottom line is that Access should be the target tool for report writing, analysis, querying, etc. I accept that many people have not yet had the opportunity to learn anything about Access. It is easier to deal with data in Access than with Excel because with Access, if built with that goal in mind, has all the fit-for-purpose tools and capability. Excel is a very complex tool--despite the fact that it is in ubiquitous use.

Using Access properly (which can be taught and learned), you can create automated and repeatable reporting and analysis of data held in SharePoint. The outputs can be as sophisticated algorithmically and artistically as you have ability and budget to create. When you automate this capability it will be (if done properly) supportable, maintainable, and scalable. These last features are where companies make their money by keeping capability high and cost low.

Managers and Executives like that.

For More Reading and Learning

Here are a few:

The SharePoint Shepherd's Guide for End Users. Shows you want you can do with SharePoint and exactly how to do it in step-by-step approach. Great book for those who need to be told exactly how to do it.

Seamless Teamwork. This book is for leaders, managers, and executives who have been told by their IT department to "Here is SharePoint. Use it. It's Great." However, the IT department (rarely) explains how to use SharePoint as a business tool to help the business. This books provides that guidance. The book outlines a way of making the best of SharePoint for individuals, teams, and the organisation.

SharePoint for Project Management. Most companies do not understand SharePoint and use it simply to share documents and spreadsheets. This hands-on book demonstrates how SharePoint can also help you organise and manage complex projects. It's the book I wish I had written. It completely matches my experience and understanding of the possibilities.

Learning with Real Data

2010-03-19T11:55:00.003Z

Pajamas Media has posted a short article looking at real data about accidents reported to the US National Highway Transportation Safety Agency (NHTSA) that involved Toyotas. Links to data compiled by the Los Angeles time and the Atlantic magazine are provided.

Looking at the real data, instead of statistics about the data, let's us perhaps draw a completely different conclusion that that reached by the media a few weeks ago (my emphasis)

But given the enormous number of claims made to the NHTSA, the media’s propensity to swarm and exaggerate, and the nature of these 41 accidents — many more plausibly attributable to driver error than to mechanical failure — it is likely that Toyota is receiving a bum deal.

Another Busted Project in Edinburgh

2010-03-15T06:06:00.002Z

The Edinburgh Tram Project is apparently going to be significantly late, reported in yesterday's Scotsman newspaper. It was originally to be complete in Feb 2011, but now appears they really think (but have not told Edinburgh residents who have to put up with the chaos of construction) that it won't be done until late 2013 or even 2014.

I'm still not sure who approved this and who is managing it. I wonder if they have a good cost/schedule model to help in their forecasts?

UK Advertising Board Decides It is Not Legal to Scare Kids with Myths

2010-03-14T17:59:00.004Z

The UK government published advertisements which used nursery rhymes as the backdrop to scare children into believing the worst of the climate change impacts that that same government forecasts and predicts. The ads were awful. Advertising Standards Authority has banned these ads because they exaggerate the harm.

Now if the could just get those scary television adverts off the air.

Ah, is that how imaginary numbers work!

2010-03-09T06:07:00.002Z

Steven Strogatz, a professor of applied mathematics at Cornell, has a terrific column in the New York Times (linked above) which explains imaginary numbers, square roots of negative numbers, with some touching on fractals. All things that I had to struggle through in various stages of my education and career. I find it amazing that the NY Times would publish such a thing. Well done.

Follow the Money?

2010-03-07T08:03:00.001Z

Interestingly, this was the question I asked last spring at a presentation by the Carbon Trust on Carbon Trading. The speaker could not answer the question. Here the question is answered.

The Green Police

2010-02-08T09:31:00.002Z

Hilarious. Companies pull out all the stops for television advertisements for the Super Bowl. This is terrific.

Where's the Risk in "The 10 Ways Hackers Will Bring Wall Street to Its Knees"

2010-02-02T11:24:00.003Z

Interesting and insightful slide show on Business Insider (linked above). They discuss how hackers can impact the financial system.

Those are just some of the ways someone could disrupt financial markets and undermine consumer confidence, separate from more traditional hacking attacks on personal information, like credit card numbers.

Interestingly, they talk of these threats as if they are risks. They just present them as threats--things that are "out there" and surely not something anything can do much about. They don't define a the risk which would something like

"Because of [Threat], [something] might happen, leading to [Impact]". There are suggestions about impact, but not much about what could happen other than broad generalities. There is little about how current controls mitigate these risks. Not much here to help figure out what needs to happen and what are problems, and what are not.

New Yorker on the Financial Crisis

2010-01-26T10:11:00.002Z

Insightful short piece by James Surowieki commenting on discussions at the US Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. Bottom line:

"In a way, the moral-hazard argument ascribes far too much foresight, intelligence, and rationality to the banks. It assumes they were coldly calculating the chances and consequences of failure and forging ahead nonetheless, when the reality seems to be that for the most part they were blissfully ignorant and arrogant about the flaws in their lending and investment strategies. The crisis, in that sense, was caused less by the fact that the banks were too big to fail than it was by the fact that they never seriously considered the possibility that they might fail."

Feels right to me.

The Oil Crunch and its Intersection with the Climate and Financial Crises

2010-01-25T09:42:00.002Z

I've just announced to the members of The Scottish Oil Club our event for Feb 25 where Jeremy Leggett is our guest speaker.

"Growing numbers in industry believe the global oil industry has probably got its collective asset assessment systemically and ruinously wrong, in the manner we now know the banking industry had in the run up to the financial crisis. Leggett examines these fears, the chances of proactive mobilisation to soften the peak-oil landing, prospects for retroactive mobilisation, and what the oil crunch means in the context of the ongoing climate and financial crises."

Thought Provoking Photo

2010-01-24T05:45:00.006Z

Here is an interesting photograph which shows the downstream effect of windfarm on the atmosphere. Saw this from Sustainable Energy blog. What immediately comes to mind are the following:

What is the climate cooling affect of these artificially created white clouds (because more sun energy presumably will be reflected back into space). Is this modelled by the climate change models?
Extrapolating to the limit for when the planet is carpeted with these devices, what will be the actual efficiency we are left with?

(Linked from http://ict-aeolus.eu/images/horns_rev.jpg)

Engineering

2010-01-13T08:52:00.002Z

Found in the Economist's "The World in 2010" magazine:

It’s all very well to recycle, pester your parents about fuel efficiency and aspire to holidays that need no flights. But the best thing a bright young person can do to help rid civilisation of fossil fuels is get an education in engineering.

(Emphasis by me).

You Could be Sued if You Remove Snow from Your Sidewalk

2010-01-10T16:58:00.002Z

We've had a lot of snow in the UK recently. Well, a lot of snow compared to recent memory in the UK. Normally we get no snow in a winter season.

The problem is made worse because many streets and sidewalks (pavements) are not shovelled clear of snow. This makes the the snow turn to ice and chaos prevails. Yes, I know that the TV and newspapers are full of stories about how the government has failed yet again due to shortages of "grit and salt". But, I've often wondered why we don't just remove the snow instead of relying on "grit an salt".

Now I know. Apparently, if you remove snow and someone then falls on the cleared patch of sidewalk (pavement), you could be sued. Sigh.

Modelling of Lake Erie Water Levels (1870-1970)

2010-01-05T07:59:00.004Z

During my university days in Civil Engineering, I was interested in hydrology and modelling. I guess this explains my current interest in the debate and science of climate change. I dug out a paper I wrote in 1973 to analyse the the "extraordinary" high-water levels of Lake Erie. My home was near Lake Erie and it was abundantly clear, because of the severe flooding along the lakeshore, that the "environment" around the late was changing. We did not blame anthropogenic global warming (AGW), of course, but as I was required to a project for my Hydrology course (CE 499P) I decided to attempt to model the historical record with the idea being it would be a basis for predictions about the future.

I'm not sure that the idea was sound; but what in retrospect seems to be sound upon re-reading the paper 37 years later:

We gathered actual environmental data and reviewed the data for relevance
We published the raw data
We modeled the time series using current technology (auto correlation, frequency analysis, statistics, etc.)
It is clear that the environment changes. That's what Nature does.
We worked very hard to validate the model parameters by confirming that we could model "history". Our view was that unless the model "predicted" historical data, then we had no basis to accept that the model was valid.

We confirmed that we could build a model which accurately "predicts" historical data. I'm not sure now, with the passage of time, that I would feel comfortable using this model for future prediction, however. If I get time and energy I may attack the data with tools now available, e.g. Monte Carlo simulation, more hydrologic/climatic science in the model, etc.

However, I offer the original paper to anyone (especially climate change modellers) who wishes to learn from the approach or use the data.

Yemen's Economy

2010-01-05T05:44:00.002Z

Yemen is in the news again. Slate's running a short article "Why is Yemen So Poor?".

Bottom line: corruption, no significant agriculture, declining oil revenues (forecast to end in 10 years) being spent on unproductive and destructive activities.

Apple Magic Mouse

2010-01-05T05:41:00.003Z

I won't normally write here about computer hardware as it's not something I am normally particularly interested in. However, I will make an exception to take note of how terrific the new Apple "Magic Mouse" is. It's wireless and touch sensitive. It's the the best innovation in computer mouse ergometrics since the mouse was invented.

CIA Classified Photos of Environmental Change

2010-01-05T05:15:00.002Z

The NY Times reports today that the CIA is making available to selected scientists information from spy satellites and other classified sensors.

"... the monitoring effort offered an opportunity to gather environmental data that would otherwise be impossible to obtain, and to do so with the kind of regularity that can reveal the dynamics of environmental change."

Wow. This could prove valuable, especially for measurements of change of Arctic ice.

De Vere Cameron House gouges customers

2010-01-04T13:13:00.003Z

Every year my wife and two sons take time out just after New Year to treat ourselves at the close of the holiday season, and to celebrate our wedding anniversary. This year we went to the De Vere Cameron House Hotel in Scotland. It's a beautiful hotel on the shores of Loch Lomand and with this year's snow on the ground and surrounding mountains it's gorgeous.

However the Hotel is over-priced and they gouge customers. Beware.

Our rate included Dinner, Bed, and Breakfast. The inclusive dinner rate was that it included £35 for each person and anything above that was for our own account. The dinner items were not priced. Many (most?) of the entrees for dinner for "extra" (between £4 and £20) and desert cost an additional £6.95 each. With a bottle of Sancerre (expensive at £35/bottle, but it was our anniversary) and all the "extras", we ended up spending more than £120 extra for dinner for four. There was also an obligatory 10% Service Charge added on to the dinner--yet the service was extremely slow. They didn't even set the table properly (we had a pepper shaker, but had to ask for salt). More than once we had to ask them to "can we please order?", "can we please move on to the next course?", etc. The people serving the food even had to ask us who ordered what! Why didn't they just know who ordered what!

To top it all off -- at checkout when I presented my MasterCard for payment, they informed that there was a £2.50 surcharge for credit cards. Gosh. That really annoyed me. I reluctantly agreed that they use the credit card as I did not have sufficient cash nor did my debit card account have enough money to cover the bill). I also asked to speak to the manger.

The manager informed me that it was a recent corporate policy by De Vere to charge for credit cards. This policy was recently put in place because "the banks charge us [De Vere] for credit card transactions." I pointed out that the hotel didn't charge me a line item for electricity, property tax, salaries, heating, etc. and I was more than disappointed that the hotel has audacity to feel it is appropriate to pass on costs like this.

They told me they were going to refund the the £2.50 fee. I told them I would write about this experience on my blog. So here it is.

Scratch De Vere hotels from my future business travel plans.

Y2K Bug a Decade Late?

2010-01-02T10:02:00.003Z

It's taken a decade, but I finally experienced the affect of a bug related to date changes on a computer. I recall with fond memories working in a global coordination role on the so-called Y2K bug which after a few months of work in 1998 we concluded it was pretty much a non-isssue. This forecast was proved right that without doing much nothing really happened in our world-wide corporation that was highly dependant on automated control and information systems.

Well, today my home-based spam detection system failed. Starting yesterday (unknown to me) SpamAssassin, running on our home server, started tagging all incoming mail as "spam". Apparently there is a test in SpamAssassin to check for dates "grossly in the future" and the year 2010 is one of those dates.

As most things are, information on this bug is now available on the internet. My family now happy since the were missing a lot of "happy new year" emails!

Denialism

2009-12-30T13:24:00.002Z

What a great book: "Denialism" by Michael Specter. The subtitle is "How irrational thinking hinders scientific progress, harms the planet, and threatens our lives."

He focuses on the mistrust of science held by many around the world. For centuries, the general view has been that science was neither good nor bad as it just supplied information and understanding. Now science is viewed by many as a special interest group that doesn't always serve our best interest. He covers, as examples the Vioxx incident, vaccines, organic food fetish, and other topics.

Recommended.

A Beautiful Presentation of the AGW Debate

2009-12-23T09:18:00.002Z

Just published at "Information is Beautiful". This is absolutely the clearest, cleanest, and simplest explanation of the debate on anthropogenic global warming I have ever seen. It's also beautiful. Recommended.

Tom Friedman Starting to Shift

2009-12-20T16:57:00.003Z

I enjoy Tom Friedman's articles and books but I don't always agree with his assertions and conclusions. Today, writing in the aftermath of the recent Copenhagen conference, he's starting to re-think reasons why the world needs to move on.

Even if the world never warms another degree, population is projected to rise from 6.7 billion to 9 billion between now and 2050, and more and more of those people will want to live like Americans. In this world, demand for clean power and energy efficient cars and buildings will go through the roof.

We need more, not less, energy.

Scottish Oil Club in the Blogsphere

2009-12-20T11:35:00.002Z

While I would hardly characterise the membership of the Scottish Oil Club (of which I am the Executive Secretary) as "oil men", we do appreciate the mention on Andrew Montford's Bishop Hill Web Site.

"Breaking the Law of Averages"

2009-12-18T10:14:00.002Z

I'm doing some reading to remind myself how probability and statistics works. The last time I did this in earnest was in graduate school where I took an awful course on "Probability" which was full of equations I frankly never got my head around. I barely got through the experience.

Therefore, it was with serendipity that via my readings on climate change number crunching I came across the book "Breaking the Laws of Averages" by Dr. William M. Briggs. The subtitle is "Real-Life Probability and Statistics in Plain English". Indeed it is. Recommended.

"Madness of Crowds"

2009-12-12T11:46:00.003Z

Martin Cohen provides a fascinating perspective (bold marks are mine):

Is belief in global-warming science another example of the "madness of crowds"? That strange but powerful social phenomenon, first described by Charles Mackay in 1841, turns a widely shared prejudice into an irresistible "authority". Could it indeed represent the final triumph of irrationality? After all, how rational is it to pass laws banning one kind of light bulb (and insisting on their replacement by ones filled with poisonous mercury vapour) in order to "save electricity", while ploughing money into schemes to run cars on ... electricity? How rational is it to pay the Russians once for fossil fuels, and a second time for permission (via carbon credits) to burn them (see box page 36)? And how rational is it to suppose that the effects of increased CO2 in the atmosphere take between 200 and 1,000 years to be felt, but that solutions can take effect almost instantaneously?

We live in interesting times with so many non-thinking people.

Hard to Discern the Truth

2009-12-06T14:04:00.004Z

Last evening's BBC News had a long report on the melting glaciers in Bolivia and how people there were going thirsty due to the greedy people, like us, who pump carbon into the air. Their message was clearly that "it is all our fault and unless we make Copenhagen succeed, Bolivians and the world is doomed".

We all know that it takes temperatures in excess of freezing to melt glaciers. So I went Googling for temperature data for the Chacaltaya Glacier in Bolivia--finding http://www.made-in-southamerica.org/ in the blog posting "Chacaltaya Melting". Here temperature data shows that there is no warming--in fact, there is cooling.

The author, Lykee Anderson, concludes that the evidence (receding glaciers, decreasing temperatures) are fully consistent with Svensmark's cosmic ray theory--a theory rejected by the "consensus-orientated scientists" since there is no anthropogenic component to sunspot variation and its affect on our climate.

Typical of the BBC to ignore the evidence, except to spin it for their own purposes.

The Logic Escapes Me

2009-11-29T09:10:00.002Z

The UK Guardian Newspaper reports today in headlines "Climate change: Gulf stream collapse could be like a disaster movie" reports on a study (? or was it just comments ... the Guardian's report does not say) by Bill Patterson of Saskatchewan University.

"The next Ice Age could take only weeks to engulf Britain. Scientists say the last great disruption to the Gulf Stream 12,800 years ago took only a couple of months to trigger a massive plunge in temperatures across Europe."

The "trigger" in this case was:

"Such an event occurred 12,800 years ago when a vast lake – created from melting glaciers at the end of last Ice Age – overflowed and poured into the north Atlantic, blocking the Gulf Stream. Europe froze – almost instantly, said Patterson."

Mr Paterson is reported to have said:

"It was very sudden," added Patterson, "and it could happen again."

I suppose it could happen again. But what is the trigger event that could make it happen? Is there somewhere in the vicinity of the Atlantic or Arctic Oceans a vast lake that could flow into the sea? What are the threats which could cause it to "happen again".

This is a classic demonstration of the idea written here before about how people do not understand (or chose to understand) Risk. Risk is not just a situation. Risk is a threat, which causes something to happen, with results in impact.

The impact here is clear: the severe change in climate to be very cold in Northern Europe which we intuitively conclude would be a "huge" impact and a very "bad thing" indeed, caused by the shutdown of the Gulf Stream. [The Gulf Stream brings heat to Northern Europe from the Caribbean]. The "threat" or the "cause" in this scenario was "vast" freshwater lake that spilled into the sea. This makes sense.

But to "happen again" there has to be some cause that makes it happen. What are the possibilities that we can now imagine that could realistically or even unrealistically cause the Gulf Stream to shutdown? None are mentioned in this article--but we are made to be afraid because it could "happen again"!

Says it all about the Climate

2009-11-28T10:28:00.002Z

I really like Terry Hughes's short article about his "Saturday's with a laptop" working with climate date in and around Phoenix. Rings true to my understandings, some of which started in grad school in the 1970's when we were looking at Chicago's effect on weather in Indiana.

There is more science to discover.

He sums up nicely:

The more I’ve seen, the more convinced I’ve become that the global warming crowd latched onto the parallel rise in temperatures and CO2, and built what has essentially become a religion around it. For 22 years it appeared to have been a solid conclusion that they were indeed tied together. Then the inescapable truth of the matter made itself clear in 1998 that they are not necessarily linked in the fashion that was first thought. Entire professional careers have been built around, and on, the premise that man-caused CO2 raises temperatures, and it’s too late to turn back now for most of them.
It appears that Jones and the CRU folks didn’t simply massage the data. As other pundits have pointed out, they waterboarded it. There are several blatantly obvious conclusions to be drawn here. First, any group receiving public money for research must make their data available to all. Even to guys with laptops on Saturday afternoons. Second, it seems that peer review means next to nothing. In the whole AGW thing, collaborating researchers apparently became co-conspirators. Wink-wink, nudge-nudge has no place in honest scientific endeavors. Third, science in general has taken a huge hit, making the average guy wonder if large grants create large lies and vice-versa. Fourth, where the heck has our media been? Menus at the White House are more important than what is possibly the biggest scam ever perpetrated on the American public? Apparently, only FOX got the memo. Fifth, school children need to be re-educated that CO2 is not the same as phosgene and sarin.

Jerry Pournelle on "Climategate"

2009-11-25T06:29:00.001Z

He thinks and writes so clearly.

Risk and Probability

2009-11-25T06:02:00.003Z

For reasons beyond my understanding, in recent weeks I've been involved with a number of independent conversations with a number of people the the same theme--risk. That four letter word has apparently replaced other four letter words in common use. In almost all instances, I was jarred at the diverse understands of what "risk" actually means. This is a pity since there now is so much talk about risk--in the financial world, in the climate change debate, etc.

Despite the time I've spent reading, talking, and teaching risk and risk management (an oxymoron by the way!) I now realise I haven't written as much here on risk as I had thought. I looked back and found this, and my best article here. But there is so much more from the plethora of PowerPoints in my files and some new ideas in my head. I promise here to start getting this written down and published here over the upcoming time period.

I'm going to start not with an attempt to define "risk", but instead to define how I think it must be described. All risks should be articulated as the following sentence suggests.

Because of [the uncertain event], [an event or events] might happen, which could lead to [impact or result which could be positive or negative].

Risk is not simply an uncertain event. Risk is not a "bad thing". Uncertainty is not always bad. Risk is not an event. A risk is properly articulated with all three of these elements. One must insist when talking with others about risk that these three elements are used to articulate and explain the risk. Without this articulation, the risk is not understood and is not yet ready to be "fixed" (called "mitigation" by professions).

From an understanding of risk as articulated here, we can start to understand or at least brainstorm about those things which we can influence--or not, the kind of things that can happen, and the impact (positive or negative from our own perspective). Further, we start to understand which risks we are going to try to "manage".

There are just preliminary words about a concept that I now feel I understand more clearly. It's time to get it written down.

When Scientists Become Politicians

2009-11-23T11:01:00.000Z

In fact, when scientists become politicians but continue to pretend to be doing science, that is the real crime.

Making Twitter Work For Me

2009-11-04T07:18:00.003Z

I do not really "get" Twitter for my personal use. I guess see it as a world-wide texting system largely independent of mobile phones companies (who make large margins on text services). I do not doubt, though, that people do use it. Accordingly, I setup a Twitter account for The Scottish Oil Club called, funny enough, "scottishoilclub". The purpose is to give greater visibility to the club for members and non members. Perhaps also it could be a way to remind members of upcoming events and club news. All depends on getting "followers" of which as of now there is only one--me.

I gave some thought about how I was going to remember to contribute something to this Twitter feed. There is no point to having Twitter with no tweets! However, that is easier said then done.

Then I remembered that the automation I use for managing the Club is mostly done in Python (with a little Microsoft Access) which interacts with the database (MySQL) and the internet (web site, email, etc.). I wondered if I could use Python to interact with Twitter? "Yes" is the answer.

A Python wrapper around the Twitter API has been created, called Python Twitter. After installing this in Python, three lines of code are required to post a tweet:

import twitter
api=twitter.Api(username='something',password='something')
api.PostUpdate("Hello World!")

I've added this into my little program that manages club information. When I make changes to information (new directory, email to members, etc.) I now have in front of me the option to send a tweet on the same subject. Since this is almost automatic, it is likely to happen.

Managing Priorities vs. Managing

2009-10-29T08:24:00.004Z

David Allen, the "Getting Things Done" Guru, has an article in the UK edition of Wired, published on the internet. If you world is full of things--especially in a corporate world--this is a very insightful and worth reading the whole thing.

Interesting idea:

I think the economic crisis was created because too many smart people focused too much on their priorities.

and:

A vast majority of professionals are in “emergency scanning” mode. Their self-management consists of checking for and acting on the loudest immediacies – in email, in the hallways and on the phone. Everything else is shoved to the side of the desk, and to the back of their mind. Because they’re focused only on “priorities”, and are paying attention only to the most intheir- face stuff, everyone else has to raise the noise level to “emergency” mode to get any audience at all. Sensitivity and responsiveness to input are criteria for the evolution of a species; and many an organisation has a nervous system that keeps them low on the food chain.

Finally:

The addiction to this myopic view of what’s “most important” is not self-correcting – it is self-perpetuating.

and:

Sometimes your highest priority may be to just get some unimportant things done.

Scientific Data Does not Support This BBC Headline

2009-10-15T12:12:00.002+01:00

So this guy takes a hike in the Arctic and concludes a) ice in the Arctic is soon to disappear, and b) opening shipping in the Arctic will be bad for the world. This is getting a lot of attention on the BBC web site, BBC television, and BBC radio.

Yet the science, satellite measurements, etc. that I've read and studied do not support these conclusion. Further, the Arctic has never been closed for shipping and has been in use for years.

Great PR for a point of view, I guess.

Which is puts the world more at risk? New policy based on great PR and bad science, or new policy based on science?

Making Microsoft Project Work

2009-10-15T09:56:00.005+01:00

When asked what I do, I say "help people and teams make great investment and project plans." This is a huge topic and is much more than just scheduling the project.

However, inevitably the conversations turns to how to use Microsoft Project and how "I tried it once but could not make it work", or "my guys tell me Project can't do [this or that]."

While this gap in knowledge will often provide an opportunity for me to help them, I freely give away some simple rules for making Microsoft Project work:

Schedule, plan, and estimate deliverables ... not Tasks. Keep "todo's" out of Project. Let people manage the todo's. Let Project compute the cost/schedule.
Keep the plan in Project as "high level" as possible. There is no "standard" work package size and believe no one who says otherwise. Use judgement and think.
Focus your brain power on you and your team's energy to define the logical sequence of the project. Get the critical path network as right as possible while at the same time keep it "simple enough". Sometimes yet more complexity is a great thing because probably that complexity is indeed in the project you are about to embark upon and there is no reason to avoid it in your project model. Better to let complexity hit you in the model than let it take you by surprise in real life.
Put no start/end dates on any task except for the start. Break this rule when in fact the date is a date that will not ever change, e.g. the date and time of a future solar eclipse ... things like that. Project deadlines are never fixed in Project even though the boss or client insists "it must be done!"
Fix project deadlines in Project in the Deadline field. Let Project alert you when Project forecasts your plan is computing forward as missing future deadlines. [Hint: use the built-in field "Status Indicator".]
A detail but worth a lot: properly manage the mpp files with respect to versions, backup, etc. Avoid relying on manual methods like email, file shares, etc. wherever possible. Create "one version of the truth", and if not true, make it so.

If this topic interests you, contact me.

Discussion Deleted on Apple Mac Discussion Forum

2009-10-13T16:50:00.004+01:00

Gosh, but I received an email today from "Apple Discussions Staff" telling me that my posting on the "Apple Discussions" has been removed. I tried to launch a "discussion" about battery life experienced by others. I posted this "discussion" on the "Apple Discussions" forum dedicated to "Power and Batteries on a MacBook 13-inch Aluminum (Late 2008)". Gosh, but I guess it too controversial as they sent me this. Three people replied before it was deleted (see bottom). Guess they don't like "discussion" on their "discussion" forum.

Dear Robert,

Recently you posted a poll on Apple Discussions. We are including a copy of your message at the end of this email for your reference. We understand the desire to share experiences in your topic "What is Your Battery Life?", but because these posts are not allowed on our forums, we have removed your post.

These forums are intended for technical questions that can be answered by the community. We want everyone to be able to contribute to our forums and have their issues addressed. We feel that we have a very strong community and that it is an excellent resource for users to get assistance. I encourage you to continue using the Apple Discussions while abiding by our terms of use. The Apple Discussions Use Agreement, which also includes helpful information about using Apple Discussions, is located at http://discussions.apple.com/help.jspa

If you would like to share your experiences with Apple directly, you can submit feedback here: http://www.apple.com/feedback
As part of submitting feedback, please read the Unsolicited Idea Submission Policy linked to the feedback page.

Apple Discussions staff

This message is sent from a send-only email account. Any replies sent to this address are deleted automatically by the system.

A copy of your message for reference:

Collecting info about what would be a reasonable expectation of how how much time to get on a battery charge using a MacBook. I get at most 2:25 as shown on the battery indicator (top right of screen), but in clock time about 2 hours max.What about you?

Three people provided me their experience before the posting was deleted:

1. Battery life really depends on how the computer is being used (screen brightness, disk burning, wi-fi, BT, etc.) and can vary considerably. Just sitting here surfing the web about 4 - 5 hours for me.

2. Basic web browsing (low brightness)- 4 hours. Streaming video/Music - 2.5 hours

3. I have similar battery life as the other 2 posters, with optimal energy saving settings, about 4.5 hours. If I'm playing a video game, I can expect about 1.5 hours give or take.

UK Government Abusing Children?

2009-10-10T12:24:00.005+01:00

This is a gross mis-use of taxpayer's money. £6 million to do scary bedtime stories--a father is telling his child how scientists found that global warming “was being caused by too much CO2, and it was the children of the land who’d have to live with the horrible consequences”. I wish we had a much certainty and solutions as this for our other problems in the world.

Google Wave?

2009-10-03T08:50:00.001+01:00

If anyone reading this has a spare Google Wave invitation, I'd greatly appreciate having the honor of taking one from you. I'm keenly interested in collaboration technology and am considering some ideas. At this juncture just want to get a look at it, especially the API.

Water In Huge Quantities Required for Renewable Energy

2009-09-30T15:55:00.002+01:00

Worth a read in today's NY Times ... nothing is for free despite what some folks think.

Here is an inconvenient truth about renewable energy: It can sometimes demand a huge amount of water. Many of the proposed solutions to the nation’s energy problems, from certain types of solar farms to biofuel refineries to cleaner coal plants, could consume billions of gallons of water every year.

We have a lot of water, but we have a growing population who continually need more water, more energy, more food.

Trouble Should Brew with Tree Ring Data at Heart of IPCC's Case

2009-09-28T18:45:00.005+01:00

Steve McIntyre at "Climate Audit" (linked above) last week managed to gain access, via Freedom of Information request, to the raw data used by Briffa et. al. which used tree ring data samples collected from locations in the Arctic to look for evidence of climate change. Briffa's work has been central to the IPCC and their temperature reconstructions which suggest that recent climate change has been unprecedented. Many other investigators have used Briffa's data to support the concept of anthropogenetic climate change.

McIntyre's work since last week, reported on his web site, indicates that Briffa's work only chose tree ring data which supported their hypothesis of unprecedented climate change. They excluded tree ring data that did not tell the story they wanted told. The IPPC's case for anthropogenetic climaate change rests firmly on this hypothesis.

If this were science, the hypothesis would be declared "not proven".

I hope this will cause widespread debate in the world. Trouble should be brewing. I fear it isn't.

Hat-tip to my friend the professor on this!

Update 1 Oct: See the well-written article at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/09/29/yamal_scandal/print.html.

Go Green with China

2009-09-28T09:00:00.004+01:00

It really does not matter if climate change is "our fault" or not. It really does not matter if the climate is or is not going to change. Because the climate has changed for as long as there has been a climate, we can safely say that the climate will change and it's not productive to blame ourselves or others.

Because people exist and want to continue to exist, people need energy. People cannot exist without energy. Energy makes the world go round. We need to create ways to get that energy that do not kill.

China is on getting with this.

As Tom Friedman points out in this article, China's leaders are mostly engineers. Yes, they are politicians, but they area also engineers. Compare that to the West's leaders in government, media, and education. Much of our world has strong forces discouraging science and technology--at just the point we all need more.

The new energy infrastructure requires innovation, invention, design, investment, manufacture, marketing, and sales. Let's get on with it too.

The World is Starting to Get a Little More Understandable

2009-09-26T08:58:00.003+01:00

Michel Totten writes in "Commentary Magazine":

It’s hard for most of us in the West to believe that some people prefer war to peace when they could have either, but they do.

Now beginning to understand; yet I don't.

Viewing a Project on a Mobile Phone

2009-09-21T06:19:00.006+01:00

On a recent posting on the Microsoft Project Newsgroup (microsoft.public.project), Daniel Howden asked about the availability of a Project viewer program for WM6 (Windows Mobile 6). So far nobody on the newsgroup has reported such a best.

Jim Askel replied that it it would be possible to prepare a PDF to display on the mobile phone, or publishing to a SharePoint Site. I contributed that I've satisfied some executives who were using iPhone to view projects this way. I thought I would show here the some screen shots of my demo project published in SharePoint. I like this approach much better than a "project viewer" because it is not raw data. Even better would be a summary of project status to for reading on the SharePoint site.

Unintended Consequences Yet Again

2009-09-20T05:41:00.002+01:00

As reported in today's New York Times, "Egypt Discovers the Flaws in Killing all its Pigs" is a story about unintended consequences happening on managing risk.

"When the government killed all the pigs in Egypt this spring — in what public health experts said was a misguided attempt to combat swine flu — it was warned the city would be overwhelmed with trash.

The pigs used to eat tons of organic waste. Now the pigs are gone and the rotting food piles up on the streets of middle-class neighborhoods like Heliopolis and in the poor streets of communities like Imbaba."

Concern about "swine flu", which despite the name apparently has nothing really to do with swines, is the result of flaw risk and controls management.

"What started out as an impulsive response to the swine flu threat has turned into a social, environmental and political problem for the Arab world’s most populous nation.

It has exposed the failings of a government where the power is concentrated at the top, where decisions are often carried out with little consideration for their consequences and where follow-up is often nonexistent, according to social commentators and government officials."

This article should be required reading for all decision-making executives and managers.

Found a Bug in Snow Leopard which Apple Acknowledges

2009-09-11T08:36:00.003+01:00

I apparently am the first person in the world (!) to report this real bug to Apple regarding their newest version of OS/X (Snow Leopard): cannot drag and drop photo into Address Book.

I noticed it when trying to drag and drop from iPhoto, but it also doesn't work when doing it from the Desktop. Apple didn't promise to fix it, but I suspect they will.

Meantime, the work-around is to drag the photo out of iPhoto (if there) onto the Desktop. Then in Address Book, double click on the space for the photo and go through the buttons presented to "choose" the file from the desktop copy.

Update 11 Nov 2009: Apple's update to OS X Version 10.6.2 fixes this problem.

Strange BBC Headine

2009-09-11T06:48:00.001+01:00

The British Broadcasting Company (BBC)--you know, the one based in the UK--has a headline on their web site "Obama tackles UK PM on Lockerbie".

Why not say:

"US President tackles UK PM on Lockerbie"?

"Obama tackles Brown on Lockerbie"?

"US President Obama tackles UK Prim Minister Brown" on Lockerbie?

Interesting.

Snow Leopard Upgrade

2009-09-06T15:52:00.002+01:00

Reports on the internet were clear: it's ok to upgrade to Snow Leopard. Further, it's a "great" upgrade that really makes a difference, they said.

Upgrade went as expected. The computer asked me a few questions and then took about 40 minutes or so of chugging away. I frankly could not tell if the performance was any better and everything pretty much looked the same to me. I did get back about 7 gb of disk space which I suppose is ok. Despite rumours to contrary, Office works just fine as far as I can tell.

The upgrade did kill my installation of MySQL database server and Django--both of which are required for some work I'm doing with further automation of the things I do to run the Scottish Oil Club. I guess this was caused when the upgrade over-wrote the symbolic links in /usr/local and included an upgrade to Python 2.6. Following easy instructions at the links below got MySQL and Django back in operation.

MySQL: http://cd34.com/blog/programming/python/mysql-python-and-snow-leopard/

Django: http://breakthesystem.org/2009/django-on-snow-leopard

MacBook Battery Life Less than I'm satisfied with

2009-08-26T11:37:00.004+01:00

I am enjoying my new Apple MacBook--a change of technology a choice deliberately made following the crash of my Sony Vaio laptop hard disk crash. However, it is disappointing how short-lived the battery is.

As I write this the machine is just off being powered with a full charge, and it reports 2 hrs 36 minutes of power left. I could get 3-5 hours on the regular Sony battery, and up to about 6-7 using the over-sized one I bought.

I'm pleased this is the "old" MacBook that has replaceable batteries. I've bought 2 extra.

Galileo Recognized

2009-08-17T20:28:00.002+01:00

Originating my my childhood reading (and I read a lot then), I have a number of heros. One was and is Galileo Galilei. It was refreshing to read about him again in The Economist. He used the power of his telescope and his mind to recognize that the "accepted" science--the science that was not under debate, had "been decided", and was no longer is an issue of "debate"--was wrong. He changed the world, and paid a price for his understanding of that world.

Something we should remember in the 21st century.

Healthcare Debate in USA

2009-08-17T08:42:00.002+01:00

I have been following, from afar, the debate in USA about healthcare. This is of great interest to me for a number of reasons--the most significant being that I have experience with both the UK and USA "system". It is disappointing to read in the USA media about what some in USA say is so terrible about other countries including the UK.

I understand the need for politicians to create issues; alas, but what a waste of time to create issues based on false information and lies. And shame on the large number of people who appear to believe these lies.

Paul Krugman writes on this more eloquently than I in today's NY Times in a article entitled "Swiss Menace". Killer point:

But a Swiss-style system of universal coverage would be a vast improvement on what we have now. And we already know that such systems work. So we can do this. At this point, all that stands in the way of universal health care in America are the greed of the medical-industrial complex, the lies of the right-wing propaganda machine, and the gullibility of voters who believe those lies.

James Fallows also nails it today http://jamesfallows.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/08/on_selling_death_panels.php

This illustrates the biggest change in the rhetoric of health care reform over the past year. Last summer, during the campaign, Obama succeeded in focusing attention on the real problems of the patchwork insurance-and-care system as it actually exists: rising costs, bureaucratic inflexibility, perverse incentives, inevitable delays and de facto rationing, implicit decisions about life and death. Now, various opponents of a reform plan have succeeded in shifting attention to the imagined problems of a post-reform system: rising costs, bureaucratic inflexibility, perverse incentives, inevitable delays and de facto rationing, implicit decisions about life and death. It is an achievement to ponder.

SharePoint Explained Simply

2009-08-16T13:53:00.002+01:00

A very creative video which explains what Microsoft SharePoint is all about.

Project Planning

2009-08-13T09:36:00.005+01:00

Been using Microsoft Project for years. It's a great tool. One reason it stays in my repertoire is that I am continually learning new things about it. That being said it's a stagnant product. While Microsoft has grown the market by building and selling Project Server, Project is pretty much the same as it was in the last century. But still with many things to learn about!

I learned recently there are a few competing tools out there that until now I didn't know anything about. Yes, Primavera is out there (too big, expensive, with much legacy) and now that Oracle has bought it who knows where it will go.

Two recent discoveries: OmniPlan by the folks who brought me OmniFocus and OmniGraffle--both of which I use daily. US$150. And a "free" open source project which produces OpenProj which appears to be using Microsoft Project as their design basis.

I also really like and use Risky Project as it changes everything. I consider it "Project Planning 3.0" and has a great future.

I'm going to be experimenting with OmniPlan and OpenProject over the next few weeks in prep for attending the Microsoft Project Conference in September. [I am still a little puzzled why Microsoft, a global player, is limiting the "free" licensed copy of Project Professional 2010 to only those participants at the Conference who are from USA or Canada!.}

Physics for Future Presidents

2009-08-12T09:14:00.002+01:00

I am reading a tremendous book. It was written by Richard A. Muller, a Professor of Physics at the University of California, Berkeley. The book jacket does not mislead when it says "Physics for Future Presidents is a fascinating, lively, and nontechnical primer on precisely those topics that a future president and the electorate must master." And since I can't say it any better than the book jacket already does, "After treating the physics behind terrorist weapons, from airplanes to anthrax, Muller goes on to examine energy, nukes, space, and global warming. He turns many previously held assumptions on their ear, assumptions which, if uncorrected, could lead policy makers to serious mistakes."

I'm about half way through and I'm fascinated with his explanations of what radioactivity is, how it works, how it decays, how it disperses, how it affects human tissue, how human tissue responds, and how it is measured. He is explaining the physics of it. What's even more fascinating is how the physics is complete different that how I believe most people believe. And that leads to the large risk of mistaken political decisions.

Highly recommended.

Upgraded Apple Safari, Killed my Access to my bank

2009-08-12T09:11:00.002+01:00

Apple released a small upgrade to Safari this week and from I read includes security improvements. My bank has decided they don't like that version and report "we do not support this browser". Sigh.

NY Times Notices SharePoint

2009-08-09T06:30:00.002+01:00

The New York Times has an interesting article about Microsoft SharePoint in today's edition. Probably the result of good PR by Microsoft, but the truth as I understand it.

I introduce SharePoint to teams as a way to get a "single version of the truth".

Burma with Nuclear Capability

2009-08-04T08:13:00.001+01:00

Mentioned by Secretary of State Clinton a few weeks back as I recall. Now a newspaper report. The world remains bonkers.

(first noticed at James Fallows's blog).

"Why SharePoint Scares Me"

2009-07-31T09:36:00.002+01:00

Good reflective article by Peter Campbell on why SharePoint scares him. Scares me to but my take is that by keeping it simple, avoiding MOSS, use by teams with leaders (not individuals), it can work. I'm proving that.

Office for Mac vs Windows

2009-07-30T09:50:00.002+01:00

When I bought the new MacBook, I vowed to myself that since I was going to install and run Windows XP via VWware Fusion, I would not need to move to Microsoft's version of Office for OS X (Office 2008) . However as time went on I grew curious about how Word and maybe Excel would be if run natively in the Mac. I downloaded and tried the demo version and was pleasantly surprised to feel that I liked writing in Word 2008 for the Mac than using Word 2007 on Windows. Word 2007 is just "too much" sometimes, but I do appreciate it's richness of functionality.

I discovered that the Office for Mac version was really not that expensive (about £100 here) so I splurged and bought a copy. I find that I'm using for many of my writing projects as I do like it. [It reminds me of Word 2.0c from the early 1990's which I think is still the best writing program ever--alas, that for another posting someday.]

Today I discovered why Office on the Mac is a "deal". The product lacks macros. I cannot do keystroke recording of macros. I cannot create macros. I cannot edit macros. I'm told it "respects" macros in files created by other versions of Office, e.g. Office 2003 and 2007 for Windows. But macro functionality has stripped out. Gosh. There are times that with a small macro I can do a lot to remove the drudgery of something.

What a surprise. No macros in Office 2008 for the Mac.

Time Logging Programs

2009-07-30T08:45:00.004+01:00

I decided to take the plunge with my new MacBook to use one of the time logging programs. I needed to be able to show my customers what time was spent; more importantly I wanted to understand where my time was going. I did my research for the possibilities with the help of Google (as you do). I tried out a few.

Billings. Heard about this from Apple's web site. The good is that's is "pretty" and the reports look great. The bad is that the data is hostage. Can't get it out into a database or a spreadsheet.

TimeCache. From pandaware.com. This appeared interesting. It had a lot of settings and it appeared that the data could be sent from a report to a CSV file that could then be imported. It seemed like it was written by and for accountants as it used a lot of nomenclature that I found non-interesting, e.g. Posting. While it had a lot of settings and it appeared to be the one I wanted. I went ahead and bought a license key. However, after a couple weeks of use I grew less enthralled with its odd user interface (caused maybe by its Mac roots), the complexity of getting data in and out, and all that. I looked around again.

OfficeTime. I can't remember how I found this. At first glance it looked great. Less complexity than TimeCache which could be good or bad. Sometimes with complexity the software can be around for the long term since it can handle most anything. I used it in parallel with TimeCache for a few days and soon discoved that OfficeTime was just better for me. It's now the "standard" around here. They even have a Windows version which could be useful for some business opportunities I see.

Since it had only been a few weeks since I bought a license for TimeCache, I wrote them and asked for refund, explaining why I wasn't going to use it anymore. I got back a snotty email from them about how they had a problem with that since I had full opportunity to test the software before buying it. True. But who would have thought to treat a customer that way. I told them to keep the fee and and I'm glad the relationship is severed.

Meantime, I'm using OfficeTime. I've been in contact with the developers to suggest how they could do some simple integration with SharePoint to make it a more valuable product. Hopefully that happens.

First Advertisement

2009-07-28T17:09:00.004+01:00

I found an opportunity to include a small advertisement in an up-coming supplement in a major UK daily newspaper "Report on Project Management". They plan to focus on why project management is vital to every business strategy as efficiency & effectiveness is key to succeeding in a recession. Here's what will be published. I was going for the "look" that I remember from Mobil Corporation's ad's on the editorial page of the New York Time from the 1980's.

Saturn V Launches

2009-07-28T07:39:00.001+01:00

In honor of the Mercury, Gemni, and ultimately the Apollo missions and people behind them, watch this video of Saturn V rocket launches. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rXtG3vfAlA. The most powerful machine ever built my humanity.

Math on the Television

2009-07-24T07:13:00.002+01:00

Last evening on UK's Channel 4 news there was an alarming report about planned increases in charges by water companies to customers. Gosh, but they propose "9% increase from £345/year now to £375 by 2014".

Isn't that slightly over 1% per year? Isn't that a reasonable plan? (Unless of course deflation occurs, but how can water companies or us know that?)

Example of the Media Not Serving Us

2009-06-29T07:10:00.002+01:00

On a weekend with Iranian authorities arrest employees at the British Embassy in Teheran (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/29/world/middleeast/29iran.html?_r=1&hpw), the media (television news, newspapers, etc.) are leading with stories of the tragic death of a sad and damaged man.

Windows 7 Install Scratched my Laptop Screen!

2009-05-30T12:35:00.002+01:00

Not really. But it sure seemed to.

At the invitation of Microsoft I download the ISO image of the latest Release Candidate for Windows 7. It was about 2.3 gb and amazingly the download worked. I launched the install process inside of VMWare Fusion running on my brand new Macbook.

Once the black screen turned into Windows 7, there was what looked to be a scratch on my beautiful and brand new Macbook screen. Upper left quadrant there was this ugly white streak. I went searching for my screen cleaner cloth and try as might I could not remove it. It was hard to see in the daylight as I was running the laptop in the back garden on one of the first beatiful sunny days this year. But none the less, the "scratch" was there.

After Windows 7 finished loading, I noticed it was not a scratch, but some sort of light flare on the new Windows 7 desktop. Sigh.

In any event. Windows 7 seems to work just great in VMWare Fusion, alongside XP, Ubunt, and OS X (the host operating system).

--rms

Five Disease Outbreaks that Are Worse Than Swine Flu

2009-05-12T06:16:00.002+01:00

Joshua Keating writes in Foreign Policy Magazine about five outbreaks THAT EXIST NOW that are worse than Swine Flu which are not discussed in the media. More support for my view not to worry about risks that talked about in the papers and TV news.

: Cholera
: Spinal Meningitis
: AIDS
: Ebola
: Dengue Fever

Wow. The Reference Still Exists

2009-05-01T14:16:00.001+01:00

I was meeting with someone this week who was heading out to the Offshore Technology Conference in Houston. That conversation made me remember that many years ago I was a co-author of a paper presented at that conference.

Thanks to the internet, found it!

http://www.onepetro.org/mslib/servlet/onepetropreview?id=OTC-3802-MS&soc=OTC&speAppNameCookie=ONEPETRO

NY Times Notices Zoho

2009-04-05T07:31:00.002+01:00

The April 4 edition of the NY Times has an article by Randall Stross about Zoho, and in particular its word processor tool:

The best online word processor, however, may be the one from a tiny company, Zoho, a nimble innovator. Zoho Writer is running close enough to Word to imagine that it and other online word processors will be able to do most everything that Word can do, and more.

I've been experimenting with Zoho for a few months now. I'm impressed at it's capablities for team collaboration. Collaboration requires much more than a word processor, and Zoho has what's required.

Two Articles on "The Other Side"

2009-04-02T08:11:00.002+01:00

In my daily newspaper reads, I have ran across two articles each with the common theme of looking at the "other side" of the convential (politically correct?) view.

In the New York Times, Daniel Hamermesh writes I Fell for Their Data in Freakonomics about

I fell for a stupid article and turned off my home PC last night. The article says that Americans who leave computers on overnight are wasting $2.8 billion on energy costs per year.It ignores the cost of turning computers off — and having to turn them on again the next morning.

And in the Telegraph there is an article The rise of sea levels is 'the great lie ever told' by Christopher Booker who writes about Nils-Axel Mörner, formerly chairman of the INQUA International Commission on Sea Level Change.

Despite fluctuations down as well as up, "the sea is not rising," he says. "It hasn't risen in 50 years." If there is any rise this century it will "not be more than 10cm (four inches), with an uncertainty of plus or minus 10cm". And quite apart from examining the hard evidence, he says, the elementary laws of physics (latent heat needed to melt ice) tell us that the apocalypse conjured up by Al Gore and Co could not possibly come about. The reason why Dr Mörner, formerly a Stockholm professor, is so certain that these claims about sea level rise are 100 per cent wrong is that they are all based on computer model predictions, whereas his findings are based on "going into the field to observe what is actually happening in the real world".

P.S. Why can't Mr. Booker punctuate and capitalise his title correct? When did the apostrophe replace the quotation mark? I frequently see apostrophes when quotation marks should be used.

One Line Project Plans. Makes for Higher Performing Organisations

2009-03-24T14:20:00.005Z

When I talk to people about using Microsoft Project as a great tool which can save managers an awful lot of time and bring valuable MI into the organisation at low cost, some (many/most?) share back with me how their experience with Microsoft Project was not satisfying. Often that experience is based on one or two examples--after which they abandoned the tool. The common themes that emerge:

"When we used it, the project plans ran to scores of pages with hundreds of tasks and we didn't have a clue about what was going on".
"Project gives funny answers. " they say.
Those who don't use Project because of these issues, then report proudly how they keep it "simple" by using Excel and, if they use Project it's only to do a Gant Chart that they paste into PowerPoint.

I respond by saying "Sound like self-inflicted complexity. That's not Project's fault. And "funny" answers is a clue about possible deficiences in the plan. Project, far as I know, has very few--if-any--calculation bugs. In any event, Excel is hardly simple as it's no better than a blank sheet of paper. Programming complex project management algorithms in Excel is always complicated and error-prone. "

"Keep it simple and enjoy complex benefits. Why don't you simply require your organisation to have for each "project" one-line plans in Microsoft Project?"

That floors them. "That can't possibly be enough detail", I hear.

I think that level of detail for most organisations is much better than projects with hundreds of trivial or individually-managed tasks, or projects "planned in PowerPoint". Maybe once 1-line project plans are achieved, you can move on to 5 or 6 line project plans. But no more.

Here is an example.

See the screen shot where we have a project called "Project 6" with one task: "Do Project 6". This project is slated to start on 27th May 2008 and use four resources:

• 2 Geologists
• Half of James Roberts' time
• A small amount of Susie Thomas's time
• A little less than half of Anne West's time

Project computes the total cost, based on the billing rates for the above people, to be £133k.

But this isn't the only project or activity being done by the organisation. There are many more, and nicely each has their own one-line model. The following shows how all these line projects are pulled together into a single view in a master project

They now don't have just a simple one-line project, but they have a much richer understanding of eight activities, all which have time demands on the organisation. Without going into all the details here, you now have all the capabilities of Project go look at deadlines, milestones, resource planning, etc.

So what other benefits do we get by doing this simple project setup in a complex product like Microsoft Project:

Project handles all the complicated time-based computations.
If one resource file is used, we can use the built-in capability of Project to show resource commitments, clash, over/under allocation.
Simple scheduling can start to occur, for example make sequence the 8 projects in some sort of order--not by priority by but by successor/predecessor links.
Let Project do the work of telling you when the projects will get done. If you don't like the answer, then change the plan.

This Brings Back Memories

2009-03-20T08:57:00.002Z

I was a fluid mechanics lab instructure while in graduate school in the '70's. The favorite experiment we did was to demonstrate "Non-Newtonian" liquids by mixing cornstarch with water. The mixture has amazing and fun properties. Always a hit with the students. Sadly, we could never explain how it worked other than to say it was "Non-Newtonian".

Science Friday has video both demontrating and explaining it. I especially like the idea about tryingit out on speakers.

Global Warming News Flash: Global Hurricane Activity Reaches 30 Year Low!

2009-03-16T08:41:00.005Z

Ryan Maue of Florida State University shows how the recent peak of hurricanes in 2005 has receeded to a 30-year low. From their web site see where global hurricane activity has "sunk to levels not seen since the 1970's."

Food for thought when we think of the media message on climate change projections.

The Days of a Document are Numbered

2009-03-16T08:22:00.003Z

SharePoint Joel writes on the future of documents, and concludes their days are numbered.

What is a document? Is it that restrictive format that has a bunch of text in it with all that formatting to make it presentable? Sometimes they get corrupted. Not so much as the late eighties, but really what is a document is it the file? Is it the format? Is it the information inside of the document that is what really defines it? The .Doc and .DOCX today is simply a description of the text and layout of the information in the file.

I especially like his observation--which closely matches my own thinking:

Putting information into a .doc is like throwing something in a closet. The closet might get opened again, now put it in a folder and it's like putting it in a filing cabinet in a closet. Nest those more and more and it's likely to never be read again. SharePoint to the rescue and search might make those stats more likely to be found. Meta data and all that jazz will again increase the likelihood of it being read again.

I've learned that we don't need most documents that are created and emailed in Corporate Land. We don't need them and we don't need to invest to make, publish, read, store, or retain them.

We probably need some of the information, and that information needs to be put into places which work better. Those places are being discovered.

If it's difficult to pronounce, it must be risky

2009-03-16T08:04:00.003Z

Study published on www.pubmed.gov by H. Song and N. Schwarz:

"...food additives were rated as more harmful when their names were difficult to pronounce than when their names were easy to pronounce."

They also studied the relation between the names of amusement park rides and the expectation of excitement.

Yet more proof of the irrationality of risk management by most people.

Proud

2009-03-05T10:24:00.003Z

A few weeks ago a friend of my son invited many of her school friends to a party via an internet site that promised to inform everyone. Indeed, emails were delivered to everyone. The emails contained attachments. Most everyone opened the attachments. Most everyone's computers got infected and commenced delivering mail to everyone in their contact lists in MSN.

Everyone, that is, but my son.

He knew my message of "don't open attachments in email unless you are very sure." That message was drilled into the family the earliest age. He ignored the first email about the party--probably didn't want to go anyway. He ignored the scores of emails from all his "friends" which were generated and propagated by the malware on their machines. He smiled when he told me all this.

He is, however, chagrined to report that the only way his friends and their parents could stop the deluge of outgoing emails was to shutdown the machine. Further, he hears that some of the machines will no longer work. That cuts into their collaborative game playing (Football Manager).

Further Great News About EasyJet - Not

2009-02-24T15:40:00.002Z

My wife has submitted the following email to EasyJet Customer Services:

Never again, Easy Jet. My three hour flight from Alicante to Glasgow was torture thanks to a drunk sitting next to me. He was already hammered getting on the plane but the Stewards served him 3 double vodkas within minutes of take-off. As the abuse and taunts increased I finally hit my call-button. Only to be told they could not possible move him, but that I was free to find another seat. Difficult as the flight was close to full. Giving unlimited alcohol to these louts guarantees trouble, but profit comes first, I guess. Why is alcohol not limited? It is completely irresponsible and dangerous to fuel those already inebriated. Your comments would be welcomed.

Their reply:

We would like our Customers to have a speedy response to their enquiry, with this in mind we have looked at your email and have provided you with some suggestions for an instant answer to your question. We hope you will find these helpful.

If we have not found an immediate answer to your question, we aim to respond to your question within 12 hours.

Yours sincerely
easyJet Customer Experience Team