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The other day I needed a mouse pad. We keep our family computer on a cheap desk with wood *effect* surface on the top and repeated mouse use has starting to leave a mark. So I picked up my phone one evening and had a quick look on Amazon for a basic mouse pad. After 15 minutes I realised that mouse pads were no simple matter and fired up the family desktop to properly assess the market. I eventually opted for a £12 hard gamer mouse pad. I liked the colour, the reviews were almost all good (never trust something with no negative reviews) and I felt the hard surface wouldn't gather dust and dirt like a fabric one would. I could have spent a lot more time and money on it though.

I wouldn't normally have thought anything of the fact that I was obsessive about getting the best sub £15 mouse pad on the market, but then my wife did the exact same thing with buying a hair dryer. She'd looked for a highly recommended one on the mumsnet forums and eventually tracked down a UK retailer who stocked this rare US model. She uses a hair dryer every day and was prepared to spend time and money optimising that particular 5 minutes of her day. That got me thinking, maybe there is a more to this change of purchasing style than my own geekery?

What's different now from a few years ago is that every market sector has an over supply of choice, it used to just happen with clothes (hence the concept of Fashion, to help filter down the choice). Now other industries are developing their own over supply of choice online, and I think people are dealing with it by going deep into the areas that most interest them.

Into coffee? You can get the best beans, the best mug, the best espresso machine, the best milk and the best chocolate sprinkles in the world. It's not just available, it's getting increasingly accessible. Reviews and forums will help you decide on the best choice for you and google + e-commerce will let you order it no matter how far away it is.

In the last few years while the geeks have been inventing web 2.0, the rest of the world has been discovering forums, discussion threads, upvoting, meetups and online reputation. Throw in a bit of facebook groups and ebay and suddenly "normal people" are getting very into whatever it was they were only vaguely into before.

I'm having an increasing number of conversations with non-techies about things like; them explaining the culture from some forum they go to, or them asking me how to SEO their business's website, or them telling me how they tracked down a particular niche item online.

If this continues, eventually everyone will be a nerd in something.

We any crisis, a few days in when the press runs out of interesting things to say there's always the "we told you so" sorry to fall back on. The story goes something like this; "The people in charge of [whatever it was that's gone wrong] were told that stuff might go wrong by [un-connected outside person/group] serval years ago".  The recent problems at Japan's nuclear reactors are no exception.

• Huffington Post
• Daily Mail
• The Telegraph

We've seen the same story before, in numerous forms...

• Volcanic Ash
• Banking Crisis
• 911

Right now, someone, somewhere is organising a meeting or writing a report warning that just about everything that could conceivably go wrong is going to go wrong. If aliens landed on top of the Buckingham Palace tomorrow, by Sunday you'd be reading peices in the press on how assorted think tanks, crackpots or publicity hungry consultants had warned of just such an eventuallity and lampooing the government for not having prepared for it.

In retrospect, the reason for all this neighsaying is obvious: There is almost no downside and lots of upside.

Consider this example, think of project at work that you are aware of but not directly involved in, is there a slight possibility it might fail to deliver or miss its deadline? If so organise a meeting, invite the person who's job it is to ensure the project is a success, plus as many others at you can get to come along. Once at the meeting, express your concern that the project may fail. Be sincere and polite, but if pressed for details be vague and over simplify the issues. Do not, whatever you do, suggest actual solutions or tasks otherwise you open yourself up to being given work to do. The trick is to appear consious and pro-active in raising these issues, get as many of the bystands as possible to agree with you that this is a potential problem while at the same time defering to the "experts" and "those best placed to decide" when it comes to choosing what to do about it. If the project is a success after all, you can claim credit for having helped steer it away from disaster. If it does fail, you can claim to have had foresight and to have warned those in charge that they were heading for trouble. Either way, you look good without having to do any actual work.

It's what I call, the "Concerned Observer Manoeuvre" and it's just such an easy trick to pull off. Little wonder then that so many people are doing it.

Buying stuff from your online store is a truly awful experience. This evening I wanted to buy a light fitting. I knew the one I wanted, I had my debit card ready and I wanted to get the whole thing done ASAP so I can relax and enjoy my evening. Instead, however, I'm sitting here filling out your feedback form long after completing my purchase because I'm just so damn frustrated by the whole experience. Let me explain why:

1. You made me register for an account. Why? You let me buy things from your stores without requiring me to register for an account. We both know the reason is that my address is worth something to you. Your going to send me marketing information, which I don't want.

2. When I tried to register, I was told that my email address is already associated with an account, so I tried to recover my password. Your site then told me I didn't have a password and must sign in using my Customer Number. So I trawled through my emails searching for a Customer Number from you, why make me do that work? I'm trying to give you my money and you're slowing me down! Presumably you have my Customer Number because you have my email address. Why is there no "Send me my Customer Number" option? Despite the fact that I never delete emails, I can't find my Customer Number so I give up and phone your call centre...

3. The person at the call centre is a complete robot. She doesn't ask why I'm calling, she just prompts me for address, name, Account Number. When I explain that I'm not sure if I have an Account Number, the line goes dead for about 15 seconds. She's still there, she just has no idea what to say because I took her off her script. In the end we establish that I do have an account and I am allowed to make an order. Finally she says "that will be added to your statement". Firstly, what does that even mean? What statement? I don't get statements from Next. Secondly, when I figure out that it means I'm getting my light fitting on credit and I explain I would like to pay now, she says "that is not an option on the system". Which leads me to my final point...

4. Why can't I just pay for stuff? I don't buy things all that often, I am fortunate enough to be able buy a simple light fitting without having to borrow the money, and even if I wasn't, I certainly wouldn't borrow the money on store credit which everyone knows is a terrible way to borrow money. Despite my exasperation, the person in the call centre is unable to take payment and tells me to phone up again once my light fitting has been delivered.

I am so frustrated I will now tell everyone I know not to buy things from Next's online store.

The leak of US Diplomatic cables has been heavily critisised by most governments, but I wonder if, for all their noise about how irresponsible and unpatriotic Wikileak's is being, governments doth protest just a little too much. I have two observations:

1. This is embarrassing more than anything
Every government in the world does this. Hell, every body in the world gossips about the people they work with. So what if US diplomats look down their noses at foreign leaders. Does it really cause offsense? If you're David Cameron then you're probably pretty annoyed that a diplomat thinks you "lack depth", but he's probably also philosophical enough to realise that he can make the most of his "offence". It's worth a decent photo op with Obama at Camp David, maybe more. Does this really change anything? No. There are no real shocks in here, just jucy "he said, she said" gossip. Does it endanger lives? I thinnk that's stretching it really, and all the moralising by the US government risks destroying whatever sympathy people may have had for them in this mess. 

2. This will happen more in the future
This is disruptive to diplomacy in the same way napster was disruptive to music labels. Technology makes it easier to copy and distribute this kind of thing. If your organisation relies, even a little bit, on the old difficulties in compiling and distributing information, it's on shaky foundations. Take the business of foreign relations: If it were invented today would it be necessary to have Embassies in the form that we have them today? Would it be necessary to have teams of Ambassadors, each with support staff? Would it be necessary to capture, store and relay information it in ways that thousands of people can potentially see? I doubt it, but the system is the way it is because once upon a time it used to be necessary. Just like it used to be necessary to have shops that sold little plastic discs with music encoded on them.

One way or another governments will have to change the way they work, information will have to go direct to the people who are making decisions and who can be trusted. Things will be more focused, effecient and secure, there will be fewer diplomats and the ones who're left will have moved higher up the value chain, perhaps by offering more in the way of decision making power. This will happen either because governments want it to, or because they're forced to by repeated leaks like this.

In the mean time though, chasing the people who did this or complaining about the distributors of this information is a little like standing on the beach and commanding the sea to retreat. This is  a fact of life now: Anything you write down on a computer can be (and probably will eventually be) published globally, the sooner you accept that fact the sooner you can start adjusting accordingly.

While I agree with the principle, the Government's planned cuts to child benefit for anyone earning over £44,000 has a massive loophole. If I was earning £43,875 and my partner wasn't earning anything, a £1000 pay rise would leave the family drastically poorer. Not only would I only get to keep £600 of that £1000, I would also loose out on over £1,700 in child benefit. It's a massive disincentive to work hard for that pay-rise. Meanwhile, a family where two parents are working can earn up to £87,750 between them without loosing anything.

The argument for having such a simple cut-off is that it saves a lot of money in administration costs, but this really hits families where one parent has a good job and the other doesn't. Why they don't consider joint income is difficult to comprehend. It makes a lot more sense to stop the benefit once you're joint income goes beyond, say, £60,000. 

Tony Compolo once said to me “You know Daniel, you’re gonna die. You might not feel like it now, but one day you’ll die; your family will put you in the ground, go back to your house and eat potato salad!” He's right of course, but I didn’t feel like it was really true at the time and didn't until recently, when I had to watch my Dad slowly loose his battle with cancer. My Dad eventually died at 19:20 on Friday, he was 55.

Our culture does a pretty good job of teaching us what to say and do when somebody is about to die. We rush to be together, everyone hugs and says I love you. Trivial issues are put to one side, we send flowers or cards, and, if you're English, you put the kettle on. It's not easy, but a you're running on auto pilot, you know how to behave because that's what they do every few weeks in East Enders when there's a death to boost the ratings.

But in many ways, our culture hides the reality of death from us. Hollywood lies to us about many things, not least dying. It's not heroic, poignant or bitter-sweet. It's not tinged with hope or melancholy or dignity, it's not tinged with anything really. From what I've seen it's actually horrific and yet also crushingly mundane.

Horrific

I'm sure that image of people lying peacefully in their beds and slowly closing their eyes 'when their time comes' is sanitised nonsense. Your body doesn't just stop peacefully like that. It is programmed to keep on going until it absolutely can't any more.

We're like that spider you tormented as a child. It didn't just give up because you pulled a couple of it's legs off. Even when it only had half of one leg left and was being repeated hit by a stone, it kept on trying to escape. Just like that spider, we fight for every breath, we push on for every last second even when we know the game is up, because, well, because stopping just isn't natural.

When it comes, death seems pretty gruesome too. The body repels fluids and oxygen. Everything gradually stops, and the person you knew evaporates frustratingly, like a document you forgot to save, all those memories and ideas and personality traits, they we're right there in front of you, but now they're lost.

Mundane

People often say about someone who has died “I keep expecting them to walk in the room”. I can relate to that, although it's not as dramatic as it might sound. I doubt anyone imagines their dead relative marching into the room to great fanfare and announcing that their back from the grave. Rather, you just keep forgetting that they're gone.

I used to meet my Dad in a pub every few weeks for a pint and a meal, just the two of us. It was a regular thing. But despite there being many pubs between our two houses, we hadn't found one we were entirely happy with, so we kept trying new ones in the hope of finding the perfect place. Yesterday, as I was driving along I saw a pub and thought “That place looks ok, I'll have to meet Dad there and see what it's like”. A few seconds later, it hit me: “oh, I can't, he's not there any more”.

There is no such thing as a right to life; life is a delicate and transient thing. It's gifted to us for a time, then wrestled back from our grasp. It's sobering to think this will happen to me one day too. It puts a lot of things in perspective. It's too soon and too raw to draw any conclusions about my life yet.

I'll probably still keep looking for the perfect pub though.

I switch my two blogs over from blogger.com and Tumblr, to Posterous. A lot has been written about the ethics of Posterous's switch campaign. While I agree some of their marketing was a little too antagonistic to other companies, I still made use of the migration tool and was happy enough to stick permanently with Posterous afterwards.

Compared to blogger.com, Posterous feels like a hive of innovation and development. I've been wanting to notify Twitter of new posts for sometime but there was no prospect of blogger implementing that. It felt a bit like IE before Firefox came along, with little incentive for Microsoft (or in this case Google) to add features.

I had my frustrations with Tumblr too. Most of the features Tumblr has seem geared towards interacting with other Tumblr users, which is fine, so long as everyone you want to talk to has a Tumblr blog. In my case almost nobody I knew was on Tumblr.

The final clincher was a small "eraser" button on the toolbar of Posterous's text editor, that remove's any formatting on the selected text. I can't begin to describe the frustrations I've had with copying text from Word or Visual Studio and drowning in a see of span and font tags, suffice to say I had developed a ritual of pasting into notepad and manually crafting all my own HTML tags.

Posterous just seem to care about straight forward blogging more than the other platforms, and I want to be on a platform that has someone investing in it.