Status-Q

This dates from back in 1986. But it’s wonderful. Grace was definitely not your average Computer Scientist. Thanks to Jon Crowcroft for the link

Friends and long-term readers will know that I’m a huge fan of my Aeropress coffee maker. I’ve used mine several times per day since the day it arrived.

It isn’t particularly speedy, though, if you need to make more than one cup at a time. If that’s an issue for you, you may need one of these. Or these. Or even one of these.

If, on the other hand, you’re not in a hurry, then (with thanks to Michael Dales for the recommendation), I suggest one of these Porlex grinders. Small, portable, tidy, well-engineered, a good source of exercise, and it makes the coffee taste better, partly because of the quality of the grind, and partly because you really feel you’ve earned it by the end…

I’ve just been through the interesting process of applying for (and failing to get) a TSB Proof of Concept grant for an idea I’m working on.

For those who haven’t tried this, it involves filling in a substantial form where each section has strident word limits – it always seems to have plenty of space for the things that would appear to me to be relatively unimportant at the ‘Proof of Concept’ stage, and not enough space for the things about which one can say quite a bit. It took me a couple of days to fill out the forms. None the less, it’s worth persevering, because the size of the grants on offer can be significant – up to £100K for the Proof of Concept, for example, though that would have to be matched with £67K from elsewhere.

I wasn’t surprised at not getting the grant – there were complaints recently that the board had spent most of the available funds in the first half of the year, meaning that only around 10% of applicants even got past the first stage if, like me, they were unlucky enough to apply after the autumn (as opposed to over 40% beforehand). But I was surprised to get what appeared to be useful feedback from the three assessors – something which had never happened in the days of the Regional Development Agencies.

So I decided to re-apply – you’re allowed a second chance – taking the feedback into account, and in particular addressing the one section where I’d had a very low score due to a slight misunderstanding of what was required. To most of the other sections I only made minimal alterations because the scores were pretty good, but I hope I improved them a bit based on the feedback. Another day of work, and then a six-week wait, before another rejection. Oh well – c’est la vie!

But I am interested in one aspect of this. There were only two assessors on my second attempt, and, almost without exception, the scores were substantially lower. If we leave out the question on which I had concentrated, where the score did go up by a small amount, on average my ‘improved’ version scored 1.6 points less on each section. That’s 1.6 out of 10, which is quite a variation, if you remember that the changes were pretty minimal and always in line with the feedback from the first attempt. But it’s also pretty consistent – on none of the other sections did my score go up, and on most of them it went down between 1.3 and 2.3 points.

All of which makes me think that the assessors for the second attempt may have had rather different scoring habits from the first ones, and I wonder if that is taken into account in the final reckoning of this closely-fought competition?

I make no claims about whether the higher or lower score is a better assessment of my own project’s worth, and my knowledge of statistics is too rusty to work out what reasonable error bars might be here: we’re talking, after all, about very small statistical samples. But it does suggest that applicants should take any scores and feedback with a big pinch of salt. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t re-apply, and in particular if you can spare the time for the paperwork you shouldn’t be put off if you get a low score – the lottery may go in your favour second time around…

Congrats to John on the birth of his new child.

I’m honoured to the be the recipient of an early copy: it’s actually released on the 5th January, which is a pity, because it would be a great Christmas present. But it’s well worth remembering for birthdays in the New Year and spring. And you can always pre-order it for yourself now – you know you deserve some presents too…

It sometimes amazes me that anybody can learn our language who didn’t grow up with it.

English Pronunciation is a pleasing bit of verse by G. Nolst Trenité. It begins:

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse…

And you can read the rest here. Lovely.

Many thanks to Dave Hodgkinson for the link.

There was a time (back when I was at school with Dave) when I could speak a reasonable amount of Esperanto. Don’t remember much now, but I still can’t help thinking it’s a good idea.

I’m not sure if this little story really works, but I had fun writing it.  Don’t worry, I won’t give up my day job. Or wouldn’t, if I had one…
 

Status-Q as it appeared about a decade ago, thanks to the Internet Archive.

I like Clayton Christensen. He oughtn’t to be an interesting speaker, by many of the standard metrics: he speaks slowly and haltingly, he stumbles over words, and he uses unexciting slides with little aesthetic appeal. And yet I think he’s brilliant.

This is partly because what he has to say is very important, and partly because he has a wonderfully dry, understated sense of humour which seeps out throughout the talk and can be exceedingly funny.

His talk last month at the Gartner Symposium is particularly good, and you can watch it here. If you’re in business, I recommend curling up on the sofa with your iPad for an hour.

This is a crash course for those who know the term ‘disruptive technology’ but have never heard its originator explain it. It asks questions about how we measure profits. It suggests we are often mistaken in the way we understand customers, and that our competitors may not be who we think they are. It explains milkshakes.

This could have been three or four very boring business talks, and somehow turns out to be one very compelling one. Recommended.

I’m now most of the way through the Isaacson biography of Steve Jobs, and it’s a great book.

I think it’s entirely fair to compare Steve Jobs to other industrial titans like, say, Henry Ford. Ford, like Jobs, was apparently not a very nice chap much of the time, but what’s unusual about the Isaacson book is to have such a good and frank record, so soon after Jobs’s departure, of the human cost behind his achievements. As Chrisann Brennan, a former girlfriend put it, “He was an enlightened being who was cruel. And that’s a strange combination.”

I can’t help wondering whether Isaacson, in the interest of avoiding hagiography, may have over-emphasized this theme, but it’s hard to tell from outside. (I have a couple of friends who worked with Jobs, but haven’t had a chance to quiz them about it). The book certainly gives the impression, though, of being very well researched, and there’s plenty of it!

If 650-plus pages seems a bit much for you at present, and you don’t feel like plunging, as I did, into 25 hours of audiobook, then I’d recommend Malcolm Gladwell’s article in the New Yorker, which has an interesting spin on the story.

Many thanks to Hap for the link.