Organic Data

I work in a corner of the software industry where business management applications have evolved from their rudimentary 1980's origins and where at the same time, the principles of how people should use those applications, particularly in the area of data disciplines, have also evolved.

For example, we learned quite early on that the pre-school data principle of preceeding zeroes was important because a record coding sequence of 1, 2, 3, 4 - 99999 doesn't sort well compared with a sequence like 0000001, 00000002, 00000003 and so on. And also early on, we devised methods for combining different coding analyses into single codes, like AS012003UK is really AS-01-2003-UK.

Things have moved on considerably since then, of course, but increasingly data appears to be playing a more important and prominent role in our everyday non-working lives. Like our mobile phone address books, do you use forename/ forename, surname / surname, forename or just non-intelligible anarchy? (fyi I'm 100% surname,forename apart from family members.)

What about our MP3 collections or the thousands of digital photgraphs that occupy our hard disks? - again fyi I use a 2003-10-20 format for photo subfolder names.

Being vaguely of a data persuasion, I've studiously codified my most of my personal digital stuff - but not all of it - to be accessible in as sensible a way as possible to me, to aid searching or just better organised archiving.

This is something that's not inherently easy to do in Windows as there's no inbuilt data management or indexing at an operating or filesystem level, so you have to devise your own coding structures if you want them, relying mostly upon sorting by filename and date to get you by. A future version of Windows is supposed to have a proper indexing filing system built in and that may help a little, but it's 3-4 years away it'll be a chargeable upgrade so this won't do anything to help us organise our digital stuff in the short term.

Is random, badly structured data actually a good thing in an organic, gritty sort of way or is the inexorable slide into immaculate uniformity an inevitable and necessary consequence of achieving a truly connected and digital life?

But in one sense, perfect and structured uniformity seems to be somewhat at odds with the organic like forms that can appear when you graphically represent things like interconnected FOAF profiles, for example but having said that, I suppose that the uniformity found in phenomena like the Fibonacci Sequence and the Mandelbrot Set can take on a lifelike form too.

RDF 2 - Refreshment Definition Framework UBC Universal Beverage Code

Our company has a two hot drinks vending machines, one downstairs and one upstairs. Until recently both machines were of different makes and model to each other and the menus of three-digit codes that you required to key in to select your drink preference were entirely different. This meant that an extra strong cappuccinno without sugar downstairs was a 742 and upstairs it was 324 or something (guess which floor I happen to work on?). But recently the machine downstairs was replaced by one of the same model as we have upstairs and now, although we have vending machine menu harmonization, it's forcing me to relearn a new set of menu codes.

And it got me to thinking that, really, a strong cappuccinno or a black decaf with extra sugar coffee should be the same menu number across all drink vending machines, not just on like machines.

Therefore I propose a regulatory and standards body that, first of all, and after a detailed consultation process, should agree a definition and numbering system that universally denotes each variation of vending machine drink preference and then ensures that all drinks vending machine manufacturers recode their menus in accordance with the new definitions.

Eventually, an extra milky, extra sugar decaf latte will always be number 283 regardless of which make and model of vending machine and therefore you'll never have to undertake this whole 'thick' description nonsense every time someone asks you if you'd like a coffee and, if so, how you take it. Regardless of where you were in the world you'd just have to ask for 'a 283' and your colleague or host would know exactly what you want, no complex explanations and no menu code transposition required.

I've done some quick sums in my head and on the basis of average volumes of coffee drunk in a day and rough global workforce populations I reckon that about 3,304,993 man days p.a. could be saved by adopting a set of global vending machine standards. I rest my case.

Time for an 831.

Wireless In Seattle

I got power! Sitting in a WIFI Starbucks having breakfast and catching up. So, I've decided that we Euros now do the American thing better than the Americans do it. There are so many things we have in the UK now that previously were USA only, that I think we do better. Like?

Salted AND sweet popcorn at the movie concessions, the little sauce tubs in McDonalds here are paper serve-yourself versions, in the UK you get the hygienically plastic sealed variety, we got Starbucks, we got Baby Gap, cheap good DVD's, great cellphone directory services, dare I say it better TV (quantity, content, fidelity and aesthetic) judging on what I've seen in the hotels here, our SUV's are better e.g. Land Rover, Merc, BMW & Porsche, having said that I WANT a Dodge RAM - is that the ultimate symbol of repressed manhood or what?, no turning on a stop signal - too dangerous and confusing, from what I can gather at least as cheap if not quite as far-spread and fast yet broadband. And US audiences laugh much more openly in cinemas, e.g. watched Matrix Reloaded last night and where UK audiences may have chirped or quietly chuckled at explicit humour in the movie, the US audience laughed at virtually everything that wasn't dead-pan serious, a phenomenon that was particularly disconcerting and eventually annoying, for me a least.

I really do think that I wouldn't have been saying this 10 years ago. I think us Euro's have actually nailed it, a fine blend of American culture with our own disparate cultures mixed in. Y'all be sure'n have a nice day, y'all.