A company that shall stay nameless (because I don’t want to get in trouble) launched a new social network type facility today. The email extolled the virtues of the numerous facilities available. The link took you to a “Closed for Maintenance” page. Brilliant.

To be fair I guess there is always a major scaling issue involved in this kind of thing. The nameless company is a big one and that mail shot will have gone hundreds of thousands of people - maybe the site got a few more hits than it could cope with.

I’m not a web developer but surely there are ways of testing that accurately simulate (is that an oxymoron?) heavy usage? Microsoft Visual Studio used to come with a “Stress” tool which no longer seems to be there. I liked it because the icon was an elephant hopping on a trampoline - a feeling we are all familiar with (as the trampoline not the elephant). This let you consume X amount of resources (memory, CPU, windows handles (yes it was a long time ago), etc) and see how well you app responded when the system was “stressed”.  Thinking about the snail like bloatware that comes as business applications these days you can see that “stress” isn’t used as part of testing anymore.

Anyway, is there not a facility to stress a web site? If not I feel a business opportunity coming on. Buy me www.rentamob.com and knock up some spoofing s/w that generates thousands of random clicks & keys from thousands of random addresses. I know a few people who ought to pay a fortune to use it…

Over at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/news/audience_panel.shtml they are asking you to sign up and are going to database your knowledge area so they can contact you for expert or just informed or maybe even relevant comment. Is this is a step on from blogging in that your views might get national airtime or a step back in that it won’t just be your naked views that are expressed?

I’m not sure about it. One of the things I love about the web is that you can get to talk to opinion formers and decision makers in a way you never could before but would I trust the Beeb with my hobbies or career details? Do I want to be a freebie advisor?

I’ll think about it - if anyone else signs up let me know how it goes!

Ages ago I bemoaned Music Match Jukebox no longer working properly http://www.itpro.co.uk/blogs/davef/2008/06/13/musicmatch-jukebox-cddb/

It appears the problem is yahoo bought it and scrapped the existing database to try and get people to upgrade. MMJB was one of the few bits of shareware I’ve actually paid for - because it was good. It also doesn’t work with ie 7 - but that was just another reason not to use ie7.

How many times do we see a great piece of software bought up by some huge bunch of bozos who *-* it up(1)? Usually it is Microsoft who buy it & *-* it. Auto-route was brilliant. I remember the first time I saw the DOS version (85?) and the whole office clustered round to see this brilliant thing work out routes, display maps and generally wow us. The later versions with full OS map overlays - still brilliant. Microsoft bought it renamed it and totally *-* it. It sits on a 1G PC with a 19″ monitor and people would rather use a Tom-Tom because it is easier and faster. How did they manage to ruin it that much? Staggering.

More than staggering for some of us. For some of us it is worrying. I am now part of huge multinational - what will they do to the software product we have been designing and selling as a small company for the last 20 years?

Answers to http://www.itpro.co.uk/blogs/davef/2008/10/17/never-a-crossword-part-ii/

Not too hard I hope - not with the explantions anyway! 

5 Addict alternatively in honours degree (4) - Hidden word but take alternate letters USER

6 Backing parts to support guitar (5) - Sort of anagram but “back” can imply just reverse the letters! STRAP

7 Less than decadent Neil Young compilation (6) - less than or almost, mostly etc can mean use most of but not all the letters (a bit cheating for an anagram I think so I tend to use it as a hidden word type clue) DECADE

8 Postscript contains example tuners (4) - Letter codes, lots of abbreviations and initials are used in cryptic crosswords - about= re,  sappers=RE (Royal Engineers), artist=RA, hesitation=ER/UM, international body=UN. Contains means the letters go inside the others - look it’s PS with EG in OK? PEGS

9 Irish poet loses heart from your threats (5) - heartless, begins ends, … means take the letters from the start and the end to make the word YEATS

10 Magazine with reinterpretation loses entertainer (5) - Loses, without,… can mean take the letters out, if you are lucky what is left is the word, if you are unlucky it is an anagram of the word! ITPRO - had to get that it really!

On http://www.itpro.co.uk/blogs/davef/2008/10/16/never-a-crossword-2/ I promised the answers and some more clues so here goes.

1 Heavy metal from guitar to amplifier (4)  - Double meaning - so something that is a heavy metal and is spelt the same as something that goes between a guitar and its amplifier.

LEAD

2 Vocalist reigns awkwardly (6) - Anagram of reigns (implied by “awkwardly” or confused, cooked, stewed, upset or a million other code words) and it means “vocalist”

SINGER

3 2 Across seen in chapel visit (5) - Word hidden in “chapel visit” (implied by “seen in” or conceals, contains,….) Linked to 2 ie it’s a vocalist

ELVIS

4 Look at what is reportedly the summit (4)  - Homophone (implied by “reportedly” or we hear, sounds like,…) so it means “Look at” but sounds like another word for summit

PEEK

And some other egs - getting harder!

5 Addict alternatively in honours degree (4) - Hidden word but take alternate letters

6 Backing parts to support guitar (5) - Sort of anagram but “back” can imply just reverse the letters!

7 Less than decadent Neil Young compilation (6) - less than or almost, mostly etc can mean use most of but not all the letters (a bit cheating for an anagram I think so I tend to use it as a hidden word type clue)

8 Postscript contains example tuners (4) - Letter codes, lots of abbreviations and initials are used in cryptic crosswords - about= re,  sappers=RE (Royal Engineers), artist=RA, hesitation=ER/UM, international body=UN. Contains means the letters go inside the others - look it’s PS with EG in OK?

9 Irish poet loses heart from your threats (5) - heartless, begins ends, … means take the letters from the start and the end to make the word

10 Magazine with reinterpretation loses entertainer (5) - Loses, without,… can mean take the letters out, if you are lucky what is left is the word, if you are unlucky it is an anagram of the word!

And I’ll publish the answers to these another day!

The current add on the IT Pro home page gives me an excuse to plug one of my hobbies - cryptic crosswords. I’ve been doing them for years but some time ago I thought “that’s a rubbish clue, I could do better than that” and after a while I gave it a go. 

Only once I had computers and the internet to help did I manage to achieve much - however it is still very difficult and deserves a huge payment ;-) Anyway I regularly write a crossword for a guitar magazine (so it has a guitar theme) and occasionally branch out to other themes.

There are several basic types of cryptic clue - if you don’t know how they are code here’s a couple of clues with hints - I’ll publish the answers tomorrow.

1 Heavy metal from guitar to amplifier (4)  - Double meaning - so something that is a heavy metal and is spelt the same as something that goes between a guitar and its amplifier.

2 Vocalist reigns awkwardly (6) - Anagram of reigns (implied by “awkwardly” or confused, cooked, stewed, upset or a million other code words) and it means “vocalist”

3 2 Across seen in chapel visit (5) - Word hidden in “chapel visit” (implied by “seen in” or conceals, contains,….)Linked to 2 ie it’s a vocalist

4 Look at what is reportedly the summit (4)  - Homophone (implied by “reportedly” or we hear, sounds like,…) so it means “Look at” but sounds like another word for summit

There are other types of clue - I’ll do some more egs another day. And I’m always open to commissions!

I feel bad referring to an MSN blog - call me a snob for decrying the populist but let’s face it most MSN stories are about Britney or X Factor or something else no one should care about - however… http://entertainment.uk.msn.com/music/features/article.aspx?cp-documentid=9617667&ocid=today>1=61501 is just so right. Abba - clever, competent, catchy but not great.

I’m tempted to say not music but that would be unfair. Music doesn’t have to be inspiring, life changing art but it can be  and anything that isn’t just shouldn’t be lauded - it can be enjoyed but not worshiped.

If Miles Davis’s “Kind of Blue” is Manet’s “The Bar at the Follies Bergere” then Mama Mia is the tennis girl scratching her bum - cleverly done and not without a simple (if guilty) pleasure but it ain’t great.
But  maybe I am just a snob  decrying the popullar.

I blogged a while back about the exciting(!) purchase of my new Dyson http://www.itpro.co.uk/blogs/davef/2008/09/09/hoovering-up-engineering/

I’ve just had an email asking me to write a review. Being an opinionated guy and someone who values user reviews I thought I would just type a quick “yes it works” at http://www.comet.co.uk/shopcomet/product/406848/DYSON-DC14-ANIMAL. but what do I get?

“Done, but with errors on the page” and no chance of making an entry.

I’m using ie 6.0.2800 - if it don’t work with that what does it work with? More to the point what did the designers check it with?

The email is from a  no reply address and I’ve got better things to do then spend 20 mins trying to get a contact address from the the website so the world will have to live without my opinion. Anyway it may explain why there are so few user reviews on the Comet site!

Stop press on that - I have tried to track down a contact and on their “contact” page I noticed “we recommend using the Firefox web browser ” I’m cool with OSS but things do need to work with MS stuff if you want to maximised your audience!