I finally got my replacement laptop on Friday, after a false start on Tuesday when I got to the door of Comet at exactly 6 o'clock and it was already locked. The new one is an Asus X53E, same as the old one, but a Core i7 rather than an i5 as the i5 is now £900! (The trackpad button failed on the old one after less than a month - bizarre. Hope it's a one-off).
I managed to restore all my data, reinstalled Vegas (the on-line registration worked fine, so the rumours that Sony allow you to install Vegas 5 times must be true). The first time I re-rendered scene one I was a bit disappointed - it took longer than the i5. Turns out it was AVG doing its initial virus scan that was slowing it down. The next one I tried was very fast - A fairly complex scene with multiple levels of colour correction, and a scene that I had reversed, takes about 130% of the running time to render. How long would it have taken on my old pc? 10 hours?
Anyeay, Lifehacking consists of 7 scenes that I edited as separate Vegas projects so yesterday I put the finishing touches in to each scene (mainly adding the sound of the mobile phone ring tone) and produced a first cut of the whole thing. It's longer than I thought, nearly 15 minutes. Watching it through (which I promised myself I wouldn't do) it seems very slow to me, but then I've seen every second of it dozens of times.
I'm going to give a copy of it to my brother, Matt, to see if he can come up with any music for the intervals between the scenes and then I'm going to leave it for at least 2 weeks with the hope that coming to it with fresh eyes will help me spot the errors and have a clearer view of the overall flow.
I've learned masses from doing this, which I hope to make the subject of a future post.
Sunday, 29 January 2012
Saturday, 1 October 2011
Finished with the Premiership
I have been unfortunate enough to see Everton play twice in the last two weeks. I thought last week was bad enough but this week has convinced me that something must be done. And for me, that something is to stop watching Premiership football.
But why, I hear you cry? (Oh, suit yourselves). Well, I'll tell you: Last week Everton played against Man City plus the estimable Howard Webb. Webb seemed to think that the mere fact of an Everton player successfully challenging for the ball was evidence of a foul on his part. Man City are obviously so superior in every way that it is inconceivable to Mr Webb that any player from the lower ranks can dispossess one of the Etihad anointed without stepping over the line between fair play and foul. This week was the icing on the cake, with the cherry on top. Jack Rodwell sees the ball, Rodwell gets the ball, Suarez falls over Rodwell and referee Martin Atkinson sends Rodwell off! Apparently in today's Premier league it is a red card offence to get the ball if your opponent wants it at the same time (if your opponent plays for one of the top 5 clubs, that is). I presume that players from the other 15 clubs are now supposed to stand around like particularly expensive bollards, while the Galacticos amaze us with their artistry. It makes football about as meaningful as a competition as a Nike ad.
This might all seem like sour grapes but it's more than that. I freely admit that both Man City and Liverpool were better than Everton (although not that much better - it may be a partisan view but of the expensively assembled talent available to Liverpool only Suarez and Kuyt would walk into the Everton side, at least on Saturday's showing. I didn't even know Downing was on the pitch until he got substituted). It would be a funny old world if they weren't - Liverpool have spent over £100m since Dalglish returned while Moyes has spent a big fat zero. No, my central point is that if you interpret the rules of the game in a way that only the most prodigiously gifted are allowed to succeed then you snuff out any possibility of an upset, of the underdog succeeding through hard work, or better organisation, tactics or teamwork. You might as well play top trumps before the start of the match: Liverpool - £114m, Everton nowt. Liverpool win!
Although Webb and Atkinson were culpable in these two cases, they're not the ones to blame. The real culprits are the Premiership and most particularly Sky. They've turned the game I and millions of others love into a product. And d'you know? It's a product I'm no longer prepared to buy.
So farewell beloved Everton, I wish you all the best. There will always be a part of my heart that belongs to you and I'm sure I'll sneak a look at the results every now and then. From now on though, the only team I'll be watching is the mighty Carlisle United of Division One. Come on you Foxes!
But why, I hear you cry? (Oh, suit yourselves). Well, I'll tell you: Last week Everton played against Man City plus the estimable Howard Webb. Webb seemed to think that the mere fact of an Everton player successfully challenging for the ball was evidence of a foul on his part. Man City are obviously so superior in every way that it is inconceivable to Mr Webb that any player from the lower ranks can dispossess one of the Etihad anointed without stepping over the line between fair play and foul. This week was the icing on the cake, with the cherry on top. Jack Rodwell sees the ball, Rodwell gets the ball, Suarez falls over Rodwell and referee Martin Atkinson sends Rodwell off! Apparently in today's Premier league it is a red card offence to get the ball if your opponent wants it at the same time (if your opponent plays for one of the top 5 clubs, that is). I presume that players from the other 15 clubs are now supposed to stand around like particularly expensive bollards, while the Galacticos amaze us with their artistry. It makes football about as meaningful as a competition as a Nike ad.
This might all seem like sour grapes but it's more than that. I freely admit that both Man City and Liverpool were better than Everton (although not that much better - it may be a partisan view but of the expensively assembled talent available to Liverpool only Suarez and Kuyt would walk into the Everton side, at least on Saturday's showing. I didn't even know Downing was on the pitch until he got substituted). It would be a funny old world if they weren't - Liverpool have spent over £100m since Dalglish returned while Moyes has spent a big fat zero. No, my central point is that if you interpret the rules of the game in a way that only the most prodigiously gifted are allowed to succeed then you snuff out any possibility of an upset, of the underdog succeeding through hard work, or better organisation, tactics or teamwork. You might as well play top trumps before the start of the match: Liverpool - £114m, Everton nowt. Liverpool win!
Although Webb and Atkinson were culpable in these two cases, they're not the ones to blame. The real culprits are the Premiership and most particularly Sky. They've turned the game I and millions of others love into a product. And d'you know? It's a product I'm no longer prepared to buy.
So farewell beloved Everton, I wish you all the best. There will always be a part of my heart that belongs to you and I'm sure I'll sneak a look at the results every now and then. From now on though, the only team I'll be watching is the mighty Carlisle United of Division One. Come on you Foxes!
Thursday, 23 June 2011
Lessons learned from making Buses with Bowties
Buses with Bowties was the first proper go I had at making a film using my new sound recording equipment. I learned a few lessons along the way that I want to share here:
- Make a list of your kit. Print out the list, laminated and put it in the kit bag on the top. Before you go out on location, check the kit against the list. That way you avoid forgetting something really important (like your sound recorder!)
- The lavalliere microphone doesn't work very well plugged straight in to the camera. I think this is because of the lack of ambient noise from the mic. The camera turns its auto-gain right up and the speech is distorted because it can't react fast enough when you start talking.
- Get enough wild-track at each location to cover the entire shooting duration. Otherwise you will spend ages piecing together bits of sound to try and make a decent wildtrack in the edit
- Record all the bits that are supposed to sound the same with the same mic. So if you are doing something to camera with a lavalliere in one shot, use the lavalliere for all pieces to camera (unless you have an obvious mic in shot, as I did for one piece.
- The auto-focus in live view mode is rubbish for close-ups. It's better to switch to a picture mode, focus and then switch back
- Have a big pause at the start of each scene (at least 2 seconds) and hold for a similar time at the end of the scene. Makes editing a lot easier.
- Consider getting a clapper board and saying "Scene 3, Take 4" at the start of each scene. This will make matching the audio and video a lot easier. If the clapper board is in view at the start of the shot, it will show up in the preview mode when you edit
- Before each shot check the microphone is on, then the sound recorder, then hit record on the camera.
- At the end of each shot turn off the microphone! Sounds like a pain but otherwise you will forget to do it and will run the battery down on the mic (as I am typing this at work I am wondering whether I turned my lavalliere off!)
Buses with Bowties from Steve Green on Vimeo.
Sunday, 20 March 2011
Everton 2 Fulham 1
I made my way up to the pub more in hope than expectation for yesterday afternoon's fixture. Everton have consistently failed to beat clubs that are lower in the league than them and the two teams have drawn 27 times between them this season. This one had nil-nil written all over it.
From a tactical point of view I was interested to see how Moyes would react to the latest injury crisis, that is, the loss of Arteta. In the past few games he has employed Mikel wide on the left in order to counter their increasingly predictable (and therefore easy to counter) reliance on Leighton Baines galloping up the left. The answer this time was to play Leon Osman inside him in a similar role to that played by Steven Pienaar before his departure to Spurs in the January transfer window.
The rest of the team lined up like this: A back four of Hibbert (a welcome return in my view as he is a good honest defender of the kind you don't see that much nowadays), Jagielka, Distin and Baines. In midfield, Neville sat in front of the defence, Coleman had an attacking role down the right, Rodwell played through the centre (generally tending to drift left), Osman played down the left as I mentioned above, and Cahill, returning from injury, played in the hole behind Saha, the lone striker up front.
When in possession Everton played their usual mix of slow out of defence and long balls to the front men. Fulham when defending, used the tactic which has been so successful against Everton this season, namely pressing when the ball is in the Everton half, then quickly dropping back to 2 banks of 5 when the ball crosses the half-way line..
The long ball tactic worked better than usual for Everton, not because they got decent possession straight from it, but because the Fulham defenders tended to hack the ball into touch.
What Fulham seemed to be trying to do was hit Everton on the break, but this tactic wasn't very successful, mainly because Hibbert did a fine job of shepherding Andy Johnson out wide and into the left corner. I don't think Johnson got a single cross in all match and he certainly didn't have a shot at goal.
The interesting tactical battle was the way that Fulham tried to deal with Everton's wide men, Baines and Osman on the left and Coleman and Hibbert on the right. What they did was, whenever Everton got into the danger zone, around the edge of the penalty area, two defenders and two midfielders would form a very tight box to try to deny the attackers space and options. In the end, this proved to be Fulham's undoing as Baines very cleverly feinted to cross but cut the ball back to Osman, who was stood on the corner of the penalty area. He then beat one man and gained enough space to float the ball over to Coleman. Coleman was un-marked since the whole Fulham defence had been pulled over to the left to deal with the threat from Osman.
The second goal was much simpler tactically. A driving run from Rodwell saw him fouled on the edge of the penalty area and the resulting free kick saw Saha combine power and accuracy to thread the ball through a gap in the wall and into the back of the net.
The consolation goal for Fulham came from that usual source, an attack down the right into the space left by Baines. To be fair, it was a very well worked move that required a pin-point finish from Fulham's American striker. However, once again, Everton were undone by a fast break and what seems to be an over-reliance on Distin to cover too much of the left-hand side.
From a tactical point of view I was interested to see how Moyes would react to the latest injury crisis, that is, the loss of Arteta. In the past few games he has employed Mikel wide on the left in order to counter their increasingly predictable (and therefore easy to counter) reliance on Leighton Baines galloping up the left. The answer this time was to play Leon Osman inside him in a similar role to that played by Steven Pienaar before his departure to Spurs in the January transfer window.
The rest of the team lined up like this: A back four of Hibbert (a welcome return in my view as he is a good honest defender of the kind you don't see that much nowadays), Jagielka, Distin and Baines. In midfield, Neville sat in front of the defence, Coleman had an attacking role down the right, Rodwell played through the centre (generally tending to drift left), Osman played down the left as I mentioned above, and Cahill, returning from injury, played in the hole behind Saha, the lone striker up front.
When in possession Everton played their usual mix of slow out of defence and long balls to the front men. Fulham when defending, used the tactic which has been so successful against Everton this season, namely pressing when the ball is in the Everton half, then quickly dropping back to 2 banks of 5 when the ball crosses the half-way line..
The long ball tactic worked better than usual for Everton, not because they got decent possession straight from it, but because the Fulham defenders tended to hack the ball into touch.
What Fulham seemed to be trying to do was hit Everton on the break, but this tactic wasn't very successful, mainly because Hibbert did a fine job of shepherding Andy Johnson out wide and into the left corner. I don't think Johnson got a single cross in all match and he certainly didn't have a shot at goal.
The interesting tactical battle was the way that Fulham tried to deal with Everton's wide men, Baines and Osman on the left and Coleman and Hibbert on the right. What they did was, whenever Everton got into the danger zone, around the edge of the penalty area, two defenders and two midfielders would form a very tight box to try to deny the attackers space and options. In the end, this proved to be Fulham's undoing as Baines very cleverly feinted to cross but cut the ball back to Osman, who was stood on the corner of the penalty area. He then beat one man and gained enough space to float the ball over to Coleman. Coleman was un-marked since the whole Fulham defence had been pulled over to the left to deal with the threat from Osman.
The second goal was much simpler tactically. A driving run from Rodwell saw him fouled on the edge of the penalty area and the resulting free kick saw Saha combine power and accuracy to thread the ball through a gap in the wall and into the back of the net.
The consolation goal for Fulham came from that usual source, an attack down the right into the space left by Baines. To be fair, it was a very well worked move that required a pin-point finish from Fulham's American striker. However, once again, Everton were undone by a fast break and what seems to be an over-reliance on Distin to cover too much of the left-hand side.
Wednesday, 16 March 2011
Management Patterns: High cohesion - low coupling
In their seminal book, Structured Design Larry Constantine said that high cohesion (the degree to which the internal contents of a module are related) and loose coupling (the degree to which a module depends upon other modules) were desirable aspects of a well designed programme. I think that these tenets can be taken and applied to the design of organisations and teams.
In an organisation, the equivalent of a module (for my purposes at least) is a team. A team exhibits high cohesion when all of its members are focused on the same business goal, when the communication between team members is fast, accurate and relevant to achieving the goal and when all the resources it needs are either under control of the team or can easily be acquired and accessed by the team.
In an organisational context, coupling is a measure of how teams interact. Team are loosely coupled if the responsibilities of teams are clearly defined and when, on the occasion that a team needs something from another team to achieve its ends, the mechanisms for doing this are clear and well known.
In order for teams to be highly cohesive and loosely coupled they have to be exist in order to achieve a business goal. They have to be made up of people with different skills that when they come together they can achieve something that they could not possibly do separately. A great example of this is a film crew. This consists of a lot of people with specific skills (including technical and organisational skills) that are brought together for a specific task.
The alternative to this is teams that are based on functions rather than business goals. This is the great anti-pattern of matrix management, to which I will return in a future blog.
In an organisation, the equivalent of a module (for my purposes at least) is a team. A team exhibits high cohesion when all of its members are focused on the same business goal, when the communication between team members is fast, accurate and relevant to achieving the goal and when all the resources it needs are either under control of the team or can easily be acquired and accessed by the team.
In an organisational context, coupling is a measure of how teams interact. Team are loosely coupled if the responsibilities of teams are clearly defined and when, on the occasion that a team needs something from another team to achieve its ends, the mechanisms for doing this are clear and well known.
In order for teams to be highly cohesive and loosely coupled they have to be exist in order to achieve a business goal. They have to be made up of people with different skills that when they come together they can achieve something that they could not possibly do separately. A great example of this is a film crew. This consists of a lot of people with specific skills (including technical and organisational skills) that are brought together for a specific task.
The alternative to this is teams that are based on functions rather than business goals. This is the great anti-pattern of matrix management, to which I will return in a future blog.
Monday, 28 February 2011
Defence outsourcing
After hearing about the problems the MOD has with controlling defence spending I was musing on the problems that Government has with high-profile procurement projects that go wrong.
In terms of IT, the Government's record on this is no better or worse than private industry. About 30% of IT software projects fail completely (i.e. get canned). This is true for private and public IT projects. People think that the private sector is more efficient - that's not strictly true.
What happens in the private sector is that the inefficiency is spread across the entire industry. Let's take Search as an example. In order to have Google we also had to have Yahoo, Altavista, Lycos and any number of other false starts that I haven't heard of. As consumers we don't have to pay for the failures (at least not directly). In constrast, if you undertake a big public project that has a large element of R&D then all the chance of failure falls on that one project. Taking the example above, the chance of a publicly-funded internet search solution being successful was at best 25% and probably a lot lower than that.
The solution? Dont't outsource the hard stuff. Outsourcing is fine for things that are commodities or where all the R&D has already been done - no-one, apart from a printer manufacturer would develop their own printer, whether in-house or outsourced, for example. For the more complicated stuff (e.g. fighter planes) we have to ask whether we should bother getting cutting edge stuff developed. I'm sure the Generals, Air Vice Marshalls and Admirals will say that we need cutting edge equipment but there's not much point if it doesn't work
Imagine how well resourced the armed forces would be if everything was bought off the shelf...
In terms of IT, the Government's record on this is no better or worse than private industry. About 30% of IT software projects fail completely (i.e. get canned). This is true for private and public IT projects. People think that the private sector is more efficient - that's not strictly true.
What happens in the private sector is that the inefficiency is spread across the entire industry. Let's take Search as an example. In order to have Google we also had to have Yahoo, Altavista, Lycos and any number of other false starts that I haven't heard of. As consumers we don't have to pay for the failures (at least not directly). In constrast, if you undertake a big public project that has a large element of R&D then all the chance of failure falls on that one project. Taking the example above, the chance of a publicly-funded internet search solution being successful was at best 25% and probably a lot lower than that.
The solution? Dont't outsource the hard stuff. Outsourcing is fine for things that are commodities or where all the R&D has already been done - no-one, apart from a printer manufacturer would develop their own printer, whether in-house or outsourced, for example. For the more complicated stuff (e.g. fighter planes) we have to ask whether we should bother getting cutting edge stuff developed. I'm sure the Generals, Air Vice Marshalls and Admirals will say that we need cutting edge equipment but there's not much point if it doesn't work
Imagine how well resourced the armed forces would be if everything was bought off the shelf...
Monday, 21 February 2011
Getting business from public sector procurements
All public sector organisations in the UK (apart from the NHS - though this may change under the Government's proposals) have to use an EU-compliant procurement process if they want to do any business over a certain threshold. This can be seen by both the customer and supplier as an imposition and a bureacratic overhead but the process can be turned to your advantage. This blog is for potential suppliers of public sector organisations and gives a number of hints and tips to help you get the business.
Firstly, most public sector organisations have an institutional bias towards being seen to be fair and all are terrified of challenge. Think of it this way - if you are bidding for a private sector contract you may never get to know what are the selection criteria, or even if they have any. The contract may go to the company owned by the golf partner of the MD and you would never know or be able to cry foul. In contrast a public sector organisation will have written decision making criteria and a scoring system. Many of them will publish it with the ITT, but if they don't you can ask for it. You should.
Next, put yourself in the shoes of the poor civil servant who will be assessing your bid, along with all the other responses. They will have a day job, which probably takes up more than 100% of their time. Their priorities are:
You can make it easy for them. Copy their scoring criteria and paste it into your tender response. Put it as close to the front as possible. Put in a paragraph about what a fantastic company you are if you must (everyone expects it, to an extent) but remember that everyone else will do the same, probably in more detail and the assessor will skip past this to the meat of the bid.
Just as an aside, whenever I see a statement about a company or person I ask myself, if you make the inverse staement, does it make any sense. For example, a company says, "Our offering provides a best-in-class solution tailored to fit your needs", do you think anyone would claim the contrary, that, "Our offering is a mediocre solution with limited scope for customisation", even though it might be true?
Now fill in each of the boxes with your response. You can even leave the box for the score in as this will allow the assessor to print the response off and fill it in at night over a glass of whisky (not that this ever happens).
Put all of the other crap about the details of your solution, quality processes etc in Appendices at the end. It will add credibility to your bid but don't expect anyone to sift through it trying to figure out whether your score for "Capability to build relationships with third age organisations" should be a 6 or a 7 cos they won't
Happy bidding
Firstly, most public sector organisations have an institutional bias towards being seen to be fair and all are terrified of challenge. Think of it this way - if you are bidding for a private sector contract you may never get to know what are the selection criteria, or even if they have any. The contract may go to the company owned by the golf partner of the MD and you would never know or be able to cry foul. In contrast a public sector organisation will have written decision making criteria and a scoring system. Many of them will publish it with the ITT, but if they don't you can ask for it. You should.
Next, put yourself in the shoes of the poor civil servant who will be assessing your bid, along with all the other responses. They will have a day job, which probably takes up more than 100% of their time. Their priorities are:
- Get the evaluation over with as quickly as possible so that they can get back to their real work
- Reach a decision that can't be successfully challenged by the losers
- Pick the best bid
You can make it easy for them. Copy their scoring criteria and paste it into your tender response. Put it as close to the front as possible. Put in a paragraph about what a fantastic company you are if you must (everyone expects it, to an extent) but remember that everyone else will do the same, probably in more detail and the assessor will skip past this to the meat of the bid.
Just as an aside, whenever I see a statement about a company or person I ask myself, if you make the inverse staement, does it make any sense. For example, a company says, "Our offering provides a best-in-class solution tailored to fit your needs", do you think anyone would claim the contrary, that, "Our offering is a mediocre solution with limited scope for customisation", even though it might be true?
Now fill in each of the boxes with your response. You can even leave the box for the score in as this will allow the assessor to print the response off and fill it in at night over a glass of whisky (not that this ever happens).
Put all of the other crap about the details of your solution, quality processes etc in Appendices at the end. It will add credibility to your bid but don't expect anyone to sift through it trying to figure out whether your score for "Capability to build relationships with third age organisations" should be a 6 or a 7 cos they won't
Happy bidding
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