technology: safety not critical.

I prefer 'Coming of the Epoch-alypse'

Yesterday I had a discussion about the poor build quality on modern cars, in particular the terrible build on my Renault. But today while driving down half the UK motorway network I began to note all the faults with my 4 month old car. Just imagine what it would be like at 4 years.

Firstly the Carminat (what a stupid name that is, it's a SatNav built into the car why not just call it the Built-in SatNav, I guess somebody was paid a fortune to come up with the name), has a bug that means it reports the speed camera alerts in Kmph and not Mph, so go through a camera with a speed limit on 30Mph and it reports that as 18Mph because it thinks it is actually 30Kmph. It has no problem with speed limits for roads, just bloody cameras. So it flashes at you wildly when you are actually obeying the speed limit and is terribly distracting.

Secondly, the Multi-Function TunePoint (again what's up with the stupid name, it's the cd/radio/mp3 player why does it have to be a TunePoint with Multiple Functions) has started crashing after 35 minutes. Plus, despite understanding ID3Tags it will only play tracks in alphabetical order WTF?

Thirdly, the OneTouch on the drivers window doesn't work so when you try to close the window it starts closing and then re-opens. So I have to open the passenger window instead because it's more convenient and safer than hoping the drivers window shuts rather than just re-opening over and over again.

Fourthly, the cruise control is just bug-tastic. When you press the button to increase or decrease the speed it just chooses an arbitrary number. Most of the time you can go from 68mph to 69mph and then instead of 70mph it jumps to 71mph. And you can go 54Mph and 56Mph but not 55Mph. The most annoying bit of this is that speed limits for roads are 30, 40, 50, 60 and 70, but you can only choose 29, 39, 49, 59 and 69 or 31, 41, 51, 61 or 71. But then sometimes it will let you choose 70 and wont let you choose 69, it will jump from 68 to 70. Why? How? What?

Come on, these are the computer systems for a car, surely these sort of bugs should not be allowed to ship, just imagine what other bugs are lurking in my cars computer system. I could be just one IndexOutOfBoundsException away from a firey death. It's not on, any computer in a car should be a Safety Critical System no matter it's function because a buggy SatNav or stereo is as likely to cause an accident due to distracting the driver as the brakes suddenly failing.

By the way, I haven't spell checked this post because I didn't regard that as 'Safety Critical', so it could be buggy.

mini-moan: la-la-la i'm not listnin'

It's time for another mini-moan.


Do you know what I really hate. No, of course you don't you are a random internet person that I have never met and there is absolutely no way you could have any knowledge of my likes and dislikes. But one thing I really can't stand are songs that randomly in the middle or near the end (or sometimes through their entirety) devolve into a series of lalala, oooooh oooooooh, badadada badadadas, you get the general idea. It's just laziness, somebody couldn't think of any lyrics but felt obligated to make the song a minimum length and so had to pad it out.

I'm not saying having some lalalalas in a song is always bad, but they need to be more than just filler, they need to actually add to the song rather than making up for a lack of lyrical meaning.

mini-moan; interface definition

I've decided to start a new series to cover topics that just aren't complex enough to warrant a full post. A lot of effort goes into producing a post and that sometimes means I forget topics before I commit them to the internetz electric gripz.

So to christen this new series I am going to discuss the terrible interface on my microwave, which like any lonely single man's microwave gets plenty of use.

My microwave has one of those flashy little electronic knobs on the front that you use to set the cooking time, only you can't just turn it, first you have to press a button to put the microwave into cooking mode (what other modes can a microwave have? I haven't worked out what the default mode is because the manual couldn't make less sense if it were written in Lithuanian). So assuming you've done that each half turn of the knob adds 10seconds of cooking, so it takes 3 full turns to do a single minute of cooking. You can imagine how annoying it is to do 5 minutes. But to be slightly less annoying their is a button that when pressed increments the cooking time in 30 seconds steps, but once you get to 2:30 it goes up in 1 minute increments, so you can't do 3 minutes, you have to do 3:30. So if you want 6 minutes you need to use the knob and turn it 18 times. But once you get to 5minutes the knob also goes up in 30 second increments for some reason, perhaps someone realised having to turn the knob so much was too time consuming for a device that's meant to make cooking faster. Plus you can't press the button to get to 2:30 and turn the knob 1.5 times to add another 30 seconds, no that would be too simple. It's one of the other with my microwave, never back down, no compromises.

Who came up with this arbitrary system? My mums microwave has a button for 10 seconds, another for 1minute and a 3rd for 10minutes, so you can do 33:40 seconds with 10 button presses, with my microwave you can't even do 33:40, and if you could you'd be their until Judgement Day turning the little knob that gets a lot more action than mine :(.

Wow, that mini-moan turned into more of a full blown moan. But I'm committed to the series now, I've added a new tag and everything, new tags don't just add themselves.

daily life: contractual obligation.

I bet you've signed many contracts in your life, you have to sign a contract for everything and pretty soon you'll need to sign one just to use the toilet. I'm also willing to be that you think any contract you sign is legally enforceable no matter how ludicrous the terms are. But you'd be wrong.

I'm in the process of moving from my flat to a new rented house and in my tenancy agreement is states I am responsible for cleaning the gutters. This isn't the first time I've seen this ridiculous condition in a tenancy agreement, if you rent you may even find it in yours. Now obviously there is no way I am going to pay somebody to clean my landlords gutters, but the letting agent claim that it is my duty to prevent dilapidation of the landlords property whilst somehow forgetting that the landlord is still responsible for all maintenance of the property even while I live their. The greedy bastards want me to pay them for the privilege of living in their house while also paying to maintain it.

Good luck trying to enforce that contractual condition, for British citizens at least their is the Unfair Contract Terms Act on 1977. In essence it means I can sign a contract which dictates I have to walk about with a turd on my head every 5th Sunday, but no court in the land would force me to actually do it if I refused to participate in the 'Great Turd Hat March of 2012' (actually that would make for the best Olympics opening ceremony ever, excuse me while I phone Seb Coe).

Of course the term 'fair' is highly subjective so don't assume a court will deem a contract unfair just because you think it is insane. But the stupid and arbitrary nature of the British legal system is a completely different debate.

work: meet in the middle.

It's time for a new label as it is the first time I have tackled a topic to do with work.

In my line of work as a professional software developer, although there is nothing professional about the crappy code I develop, it is sometimes necessary to have meetings with other teams. In general this is a good thing as when working across teams, especially across continents, it is necessary to ensure everybody is on the 'same page' (sorry but there is likely to be a lot of management speak in this post). You need to 'run ideas up the flag pole and see if anybody salutes'.

But lately there have been more meetings than normal, lots of meetings, some very important meetings and some very boring, long boring tedious mind numbing meetings that make you just want to stand up and shout 'I don't give a flying <insert rude word here> about anything that is going on and I am now going to jump into the pond'. Indeed there sure have been a fair number of the not important type of meetings. The worst are when a secret cabal have had an important meeting that you weren't invited to and then invite you to a meeting that makes you want to explore the bottom of the nearest pond and keep mentioning things that happened in the important meeting but you have no idea about because you weren't in that important meeting and it just makes the boring meeting even more boring. And breath.

Let's say by some chance there is an interesting topic under discussion and due to it's complex nature it takes some time to 'fully explore every avenue'. An individual will say 'Let's take this offline' (talk about it outside of the meeting). What? Let's not discuss this topic during the meeting and instead discuss it outside of the meeting, why on earth would you do that, it makes no sense, you have specifically arranged a meeting to talk about things and then relegate talking about things to outside of the meeting. It boggles the mind!

Today I just lost it when during a discussion we were told that due to new rules the old way of doing things can't be used any more, but when asked what the new way is we were told 'That hasn't been decided yet'. Better go arrange a meeting to decide it then, because the last meeting where you decided that the old system couldn't be used but not what the new system will be clearly wasn't long enough. Maybe we can 'touch base' and 'work out the details' while I'm in the bog during the 20 seconds between the 10th and 11th meeting of the morning.

The only thing that gets me through the day is passing stupid notes about how bored I am like a 5 year old, I don't know what I would do if that pleasure was taken away from me :(.

technology: Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!

For the last few weeks when trying to post to Facebook I regularly have to fill in some Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. I don't know if this is because I am posting links to my blog or because I am using my phone to post on a regular basis but it is really starting to bug me.

In the past this wouldn't have been a problem because CAPTCHAs where easy to read if you were human (and even for computers, old CAPTCHAs were pretty pathetic) but now they are impossible to complete. The other day after failing 5 and rejecting 6 others because I had absolutely no clue what most of the characters were I resulted to using the audio CAPTCHA which still took me two attempts. Honestly, I was there for 5 minutes just trying to post an update to my Facebook. How is this progress? If we have to make CAPTCHAs this difficult just to foil the computers we might as well give up and let SKYNET win because we don't stand a chance.

Below are some examples of the ludicrous CAPTCHAs that are currently prevalent on the internet. 

I call this 'What's up with my monitor?'

This one is 'My Head Hurts'

And finally 'I don't think I'll bother'

And just for giggles

entertainment: make it stop, for the love of god please make it stop.

Some time ago, in the distant times known as the past I posted about all the television programmes that were unceremoniously cancelled during their prime. But there is another group of television programmes, I like to call them the 'How the feck is this show still going' programmes. Below are a few examples of such shows.

Strictly Come Dancing
X-Factor
Britains Got Talent
Doctor Who
Sanctuary
A Town Called Eurkea/Eureka (Yes I know it is now cancelled but it took 5 years)
Warehouse 13
Doctors (that daytime TV show about a doctors surgery on BBC1 during the daytime)
Hollyoaks
Any soap opera
60 minute makeover
The One Show

And these are just the ones I can remember at the moment.

I propose to any TV executive a new system to use when deciding whether to cancel or renew a TV show. I call this the 'Would tgwmcm bitch about this on his blog?' technique. Basically, if your decision results in me arbitrarily posting nonsense on a blog that nobody reads then your decision is wrong. Perhaps you could first email me a list of all shows you are planning to renew or cancel and I will then return to you a tgwmcm approved list of shows to be renewed and cancelled. My rates are very reasonable and I guarantee that your  output will be liked by 100% of viewers that work for http://www.theguywhomoanscalledmatthew.blogspot.com

anouncement: let it flow

Today a loyal reader of my blog, well let's face it the only reader of my blog, informed me that in order to post a comment you were required to have a Blogger account. Not wanting to hinder fellow citizens of the internet in complimenting me on my eloquence and congratulating me on my witty posts I have loosened the restrictions on posting comments to my blog. By loosen I mean completely remove, Joe Bloggs Anonymous can now comment anything on my posts. I of course maintain the power of veto and will unceremoniously remove any comments I disagree with. Areas of comment that will not be tolerated include;

1. Comments that do not start with the phrase 'Matthew, overlord of all that is great and forever my master I pose to you the following ...'
2. Comments that question my brilliance.
3. Comments that contain the phrases 'I disagree with you', 'I do not agree with your argument' 'You are incorrect/wrong/mistaken on this matter'. I will of course view the context in which the comment was made before deletion.
4. Comments that are wittier and/or more entertaining than the blog article that they relate to.

So baring this in mind, get commenting. I welcome any feedback so long as it is complimentary.

entertainment: haters gonna hate.

'Haters Gonna Hate', it's one of the oldest memes on the internet. What really riles me up is the haters always hating on one of my favourite bands, Muse. They aren't my favouritist (yeah I know it isn't a word) band, but they are certainly up there and conveniently forgetting 'The Resistance' have made some of the most perfect albums in recent history with Absolution containing some of my all time favourite tracks.
Yet utter the phrase 'I really like Muse' or 'Muse are one of my favourite bands' and you'll be swept away by a torrent of 'They're a wanna be Radiohead' or 'All of their songs are the same', yada yada yada.
Often these same people will then say 'The Black-eyed Peas are awesome', well they're not, The Black-eyed Peas are absolutely terrible, they are an abomination and anybody showing even a casual or cursory appreciation of them should be strung up by the dangly bits.
I get the obvious irony of complaining about the haters hating on Muse, but you are ignoring the simple fact, I am always right. If I say The Black-eyed Peas are terrible and Muse are awesome that is a FACT, indisputable, undeniable, FACT. Have The Black-eyed Peas written anything close to Time is Running Out, The Small Print, Knights Of Cydonia, Stockholm Syndrome, Darkshines or Sober. So they have Fergie strutting around provocatively, don't get me wrong I have nothing wrong with scantily clad ladies gyrating in front of me, but that doesn't mean their songs aren't shite.

So all you haters out their, redirect your hate onto a worthy target, The Black-eyed Peas, and leave Muse in peace. At the very least ask for Absolution.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ck6Hcg2cjk&ob=av3e

driving: read between the line.

My the parking spaces in supermarkets are far too small, I only drive a Clio MK III.5 and they are too small for my car. Originally this was going to be a rant about the small size of parking bays in public car parks (especially pay and display car parks) and how this is to maximise profits at the expense of actually being able to park a car.
Breathe.
Then, as I was getting into my car after a fruitful trip to Tesco in which I didn't purchase any fruit I saw a fine example of parking. I took a quick picture of it with my phone for the world to see. If there are any readers of my blog working at the DVLA or for the police could you send me the address of this :censored:? However I then noticed it wasn't just the blue Ford Ka (I really hate the Ford Ka, from it's pathetic name to the stupid egg like shape) but a white van also parked across two bays. So which vehicle originally parked like such a twat? I'm guessing it was probably the white van.

But this is the issue with one person parking across two bays, it causes a domino effect and everybody ends up straddling the lines. It's happened to me, the last bay in the car pack is next to a BMW (and it is nearly always a BMW, I wouldn't be surprised if a BMW was parked straddling the lines before these vehicles pulled up and caused the whole thing) taking up more than one bay and I've had to squeeze in with my wheels in two separate bays because of this, then the person parking next to me does the same. Alternatively just managing to get into a single bay but being unable to exit the vehicle because the door won't open wide enough due to the obstructive BMW.

So if you see a car straddling the lines, feel free to break open the fuel filler cap and throw a burning match into the pertol tank. I've often found that a crowbar is very effective at prying open a filler cap with the minimum of effort. Head over to the tgwmcm official store to pick-up a tgwmcm branded 'line straddler preparedness kit'

technology: taking the easy route.

Shortcuts, in computing a shortcut is a key combination that is designed to make performing a common task quicker and easier. We all know the common ones such as Ctrl+F to bring up the search/find dialog, it makes perfect sense because I want to find something and find starts with an F.

Then you have the less obvious shortcuts Ctrl+X to cut and Ctrl+V for paste. Now Ctrl+X/V are chosen for logical reasons, most of the time you want to copy and not cut so Ctrl+C is copy (copy starts with a C you know), now after copying you want to paste and V is right next to C on a keyboard so just move your finger and everything is jazzy. Now Ctrl-X, well that's because X is the other side of C, so it's just convenient.

Anyway, I'm not here to compliment well chosen shortcuts, oh no, I am here to shame the stupidly chosen shortcuts.

Let's start with Google Chrome because according to the statistics for my blog that is the second most popular browser and also my browser of choice, if you are reading this post in Google Chrome you can sleep safe in the knowledge you have a tgwmcm approved browser and if any companies out there would like to join the 'Approved by tgwmcm' programme please send me a cheque for £1000 and I will officially endorse your product on my blog. But have you ever wondered what the shortcut to open the download history page is, logic would dictate that Ctrl+D would show downloads (download starts with a D obviously). Give it a try, I'll wait. Hah, got you , you just bookmarked my blog because Ctrl+D in Chrome bookmarks the currently opened tab. In what language does the word for bookmark start with a D because in English it doesn't even contain a D? So now you are asking what shortcut does open the download history, maybe their isn't a shortcut for it and they ran out of letters by the time they got to Bookmarks and had to use D. There is actually a shortcut for downloads, Ctrl+J. Ctrl+fecking+J, downloads certainly doesn't contain a J so where'd they get that one from?

So now you ask if Ctrl+J is downloads because Ctrl+D is bookmarks what did they map Ctrl+B to because obviously Ctrl+B was in use so they used Ctrl+D for bookmark instead of downloads. Well Ctrl+B isn't a bloody shortcut in Google Chrome and it just boggles the mind that this ever made it through usability testing.

And it gets worse, if you ever used the Perforce source control client, or more specifically P4Diff the shortcuts are even more bizarre. Atleast Chrome stuck with Ctrl+<letter>, P4Diff decided to eschew (that means to deliberately avoid using for my Lithuanian readers) letters in favour of numbers. If you want to go forward you use Ctrl+2 and backwards is Ctrl+1. WHAT? Why not Ctrl+N(ext) and Ctrl+B(ack), even Ctrl+<Left><Right><Up><Down> would have made more sense although it would have seemed like you were playing Dance Dance Revolution when performing a particularly complex diffing operation.

In summary it's counter intuative to add any shortcut that is harder to remember or use than completing the Kobayashi Maru.

daily life: i went to grammar school you know.

So a discussion at work got me a thunking. As you have noticed from previous postings I utilise a large quantity of 'run-on sentences' with very little punctuation. This is a deliberate act and is often challenging, sometimes I remove punctuation intentionally to give the illusion of ramblings; my posts are actually carefully planned and edited prior to posting. Well I am changing it up for this post so you'll see a lot more punctuation.

Anyway, I realised I am a bit of a 'grammar nazi', always finding fault with others and in particular a certain colleague who isn't a native English speaker. The problem is that I enjoy it so much, despite the fact English is frickin' difficult to learn and I was completely incapable of learning even basic French, German, Spanish or Latin, I find fault with the almost perfect (but not perfect enough) English of my colleague.

Sometimes I've catched caught completely incorrect use of language, but most of the time I'm just being a twat and for that I am sorry. But it still doesn't detract from the fact we need people to enforce good standards of English.
While I studied for my GCSEs and A-Levels only 5 marks were awarded for correct Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar, this even included English exams. The point was obviously not to punish those with dyslexia. The by-product was that correct use of grammar and the ability to spell just wasn't drummed into children in order to pass the test. There is a completely different debate on 'Teaching to the test' that I won't go into now.

But what about the parents? My dad used to be pretty hot on my grammar, mum can barely string a sentence together, but dad was a completely different story and ensured my grammar was top notch. But now we have a generation that can't spell or correctly punctuate a sentence, they certainly aren't going to ensure their children's grammar is impeccable. No more 'thick ears' for saying 'sheeps'.

I have no solution to this problem, that isn't my job, but at least I can continue picking up on my colleagues mistakes, that always gives me a warm feeling.

technology: live for the likes.

I have a confession to make - I have become addicted to 'the likes'.
Something snapped in me one day and now I am completely dependent on the little notification that pops up on Facebook to indicate somebody likes my post, picture or link.
In fact I sit their staring at my computer screen waiting for the notification to reassure me that I am indeed valued by some individual that I really don't know that well. It has reached the point where I will post any random crap in the vein hope that somebody will hit that little thumb icon, most likely out of pity, just to brighten up my sad and pathetic life.

I really need help, for years I was able to let the whole social networking craze pass me by, dismissing it as something stupid people do. But now I am actively participating, but worse than that I don't even have any friends to socialise or network with and that just makes it even more pointless.

I wonder what happens when you like your own post?

daily life: there is no other.

I originally asked for article requests on my Facebook page and the best idea was going to be the first article of 2012. Then I realised I don't have any friends so that idea soon went out the window.

But then I saw a Tesco advert that annoyed me, an attempt to sell tat for Mothers Day. It proudly boasted 'Cards from 50p and gifts from £1'. And it reminded me of how much I dislike mothers day.

Hold on before you leave my site in disgust. I hate mothers day because it perpetuates a belief that you can take your mother for granted, treat her badly for 364 days a year (or 365 if it is a leap year) and as long as you by a cruddy card and a bunch of dead flowers everything is fine.

Maybe for small children mothers day is fine, a day when they can show some appreciation for everything their mum has sacrificed over the years without truly understanding how hard their mum really works, but once you become an adult and  understand how difficult it is to raise children you should know better than to treat your mum as free labour.

Take my mum as an example, she currently lives over 152 miles away, and I speak to her at least twice a day on the phone which if you think about it that isn't very difficult, yet she has friends that haven't spoken to their children in months or seen them in years. This is not acceptable, how difficult is it to pick up the phone and have a chat for 20 minutes? In a way I blame mothers day for this. If everybody gave their mum the level of love and respect they deserved every day of the week we wouldn't need to earmark one Sunday in March to celebrate them, and if you think your mum is only worth a 50p card once a year then you don't deserve to have one.

And to all you fathers out there, it's your responsibility to ensure your children give their mum (your girlfriend, fiancée or wife) the level of respect she deserves. And if you take mum for granted so will your children.

So starting this Sunday (in the UK at least), if you've been taking your mum for granted all these years I want you to change your ways and say 'From now on I'm going to give my mum the level of love and respect she deserves'. And if you continue to be selfish I'll send Mr T to sort you out.

anouncement: reports of my death are greatly exaggerated

It has been a while since I updated this blog, and I have heard rumours that I am no longer alive. Some reports have involved large quantities of bananas and duct tape.
I can assure you that these reports are not true, and this post is being typed by myself, and not via some form of possession from 'The Other Side'.

The truth is that I have been working on my plans for world domination, and if you've ever worked on such plans yourself you will know how time consuming they can be. There are various conditions you must account for, and many contingency plans to ensure 'success criteria' is met. But I guarantee that the planning stage is nearly complete and you will soon see more activity, on May 2nd 2011 an early 'proof of concept' was performed which I can confirm was successful.

I hope that I can count on you to be discrete, I wouldn't want anybody to be forewarned of my plans.