The odds were too great
The 36.7% probability came true. Kansas City and the New York Jets won, and Denver just lost in overtime to San Francisco.
The Broncos’ season ends with 2006.
Ho hum.
As probability tends to 1
Last night, the New York Giants hailed in Washington in their last game of the regular season. After losing six of their previous seven games, a win was far from certain. It seems that Tiki Barber did quite a bit of damage with 234 rushing yards, more than either he or indeed any Giant in history has ever rushed for previously.
The Giants are now guaranteed a wildcard playoff berth if all of the following nine teams win: Green Bay, Arizona, Detroit, Miami, Minnesota, San Francisco, Cleveland, New Orleans, Seattle.
If you ignore the teams’ respective opponents and simply use their season’s winning record to date as their probability of winning today, then the probability of all of the above teams winning is 0.0126%. Or 1 in 7,945. In the above scenario, Green Bay would snatch the NFC’s sixth playoff berth.
So I guess the Giants will be playing in January. I’m quite confident that they won’t be playing in February, though.
With all division titles sealed in the AFC, the race is on between six teams for the two wildcards. Denver is leading the charge, with the New York Jets on the same winning record (9–6). Four further teams are hot on their heels on 8–7: Cincinnati, Jacksonville, Tennessee and Kansas City.
With Jacksonville playing at Kansas City, one of them is almost certain to end the season with a 9–7 record, so the pressure is on for Denver to beat San Francisco (6–9) and for the Jets to beat Oakland (2–13). Both are at home, although Denver’s home record (4–3) is far from convincing. It’s gonna be a big day.
Focusing on Denver, only Kansas City, Tennessee and the New York Jets can finish above them. If Jacksonville win and Denver lose, then they have no head-to-heads, their division records would be identical, as would be their record against teams that they have both played. Which means it would go down to their conference record, which would favour Denver. As for Cincinnati, Denver’s 24–23 win over them on Christmas Eve would put them in the driving seat.
If you apply the same "record to date" logic as was applied to the Giants above, there’s a 36.7% chance of Denver losing and at least two of these three winning. Those odds are a little too high for my liking.
Can Google teach government a thing or two?
In Matt Cutts’ latest post, among other things he talks about his passion for Google, including this excerpt.
"Words can’t express how much I respect my colleagues at Google, but I’ll try. Googlers are smart, rational, and polite. They execute well on projects and listen to objections with an open mind. When they run up against an obstacle, they get creative and look for a new approach to solve the problem. Among the hundreds of Googlers I know, there’s also a strong streak of wanting to change the world for the better."
And in his thoughts on keeping his organisation on the "Google is good" side of the scales, he suggests:
- "Each project at Google should monitor the blogosphere for issues. Reduce the disconnect to reduce the danger.
- "Get more Googlers talking online. There will be some mistakes, but the conversations will be worth it."
The government could learn a thing or two from these thoughts. To me, the particularly important and relevant elements from Matt’s musings are that "[t]hey execute well on projects and listen to objections with an open mind", and that they should "[r]educe the disconnect to reduce the danger".
All too often, I’ve experienced projects that are too tied to the scope and not sufficiently well tied to the business requirements or what is right. It’s all about hitting the deadline (which isn’t achieved as regularly as it might), often at the expense of doing the right thing.
And in many respects, government has become too far removed from its users. I like the way that Matt refers to this disconnect as danger: the further removed you are from interacting with your customers (in whatever context these customers exist), the more dangerous it is for your organisation.
Government needs to get closer to its customers, both in the isolation of a single interaction (e.g. HMRC getting closer to its tax payers) and holistically (government understanding more about a citizen’s overall interaction with government). And it needs to be more focused on solving problems instead of delivering fixed items of scope.
Tab optimisation in Firefox
There are a couple of Firefox extensions I’ve recently stumbled upon which, when used together, are quite beautiful. They’re both to do with the tabs at the top of the browser.
The first is called PermaTabs. Basically, it makes any tab(s) that you choose permanent. So you can’t close the tabs by accident, and new pages can’t load in their place.
The second is called FaviconizeTab. This allows you to reduce the width of any tabs to the width of the favicon.
Combined, the two extensions are neat. They allow you to keep all of your "always open" pages safely on the left-hand side of the tab bar, while ensuring that they don’t waste unnecessary page width.
Like so! Now my email, meebo and calendar are always there and handy.
Firefox slow to react: can anyone help?
Let me describe my symptoms, and hopefully a 21st century doctor out there can diagnose the problem.
I think the behaviour is limited to Firefox. In short, it has recently become very slow to react to keystrokes and mouse clicks.
If I click a field in my blog’s rich-text editor and start typing, the cursor doesn’t appear, nor do the words that I type appear in the box. On occasions, it ignores the preceding mouse-click, and when it eventually wakes up it throws the words into the box lucky enough to have previously been the focus of both my attention and my cursor. Sometimes, it obeys the mouse-click but misses the first few keystrokes. Other times still, when it eventually kicks in, it picks up all previous actions.
If I click in the search bar or address bar, I get a similar lag, the words appearing a number of seconds after I have typed them. (As an example of the delay I’m talking about, after I’d typed the word "after" in the previous sentence, I had already typed the words "I have typed them" before they started appearing letter by letter.)
If I CTRL+TAB between tabs, it’s similarly slow. And if I have an application open in the foreground and ALT-TAB back to Firefox, it takes a few seconds to appear.
I was recently upgraded (without being given a choice) to Firefox 2.0.0.1, and the only other change I can think might have made a difference is my virginal use of the newly installed IE7 (again installed without my active consent) recently.
It’s killing me. Can anyone help?
Free laptops: publicity or bribery?
There’s a little hubbub right now in the blogging community about Microsoft’s recent publicity stunt. They sent Vista pre-loaded laptops to a bunch of high -profile bloggers (I was not included, judging by my naked doormat) to generate some publicty and momentum in the tech. world.
My friend Francis mentioned it yesterday; Robert Scoble (Microsoft) thinks it’s an awesome idea; and Joel Spolsky thinks it’s indistinguishable from bribery. (Interesting how the latter’s integrity wasn’t an issue when he received a Google App.)
I’m not particularly bothered about the ethical issues surrounding the gift, but Joel’s brief review of Vista, along with a link to a more in depth review, is probably about right:
- Do not, under any circumstances, consider upgrading an XP system to Vista… even if it’s fairly new and even if it’s Vista Supremo Premium Ultra-Capable
- When you get a new computer, if it comes with Vista pre-installed, that’s when you’ll upgrade
- Don’t buy a new computer now just to get Vista. If your current system meets your needs, stick with it until you really need a new system. Vista is not reason enough for a new PC
- Need more details? Read Paul Thurrott’s review.
Nielsen takes my advice on usability
Back in February, I suggested that Jakon Nielsen should focus on his own site’s usability as well as commenting on that of others.
It seems he’s taken my advice, reducing the width of his site to 800 pixels, where before it spanned the full window, irrespective of its width.
Here is his updated top ten mistakes in web design. In the main I score quite highly. My policy on new browser windows (point 9) is that anything outside of this site will spawn a new window/tab, while anything within will stay within the confines of the window/tab. This is mainly because I have leaky text (diverting people to other content mid-post), and even if people jump off mid-flow, I’d still like to give them the opportunity to read the end of the post. Meanwhile, I’m sufficiently modest to believe that my site never warrants more than one window. (Many would argue that one is too many.)
On Nielsen’s point 3, I will commit to making visited links red to highlight this to the user. Maybe at the weekend.
Update: visited links are now grey. Hover over visited links and you get white text on a grey background. The red didn’t seem right. The grey is more subtle, and the reverse colours on hover are in keeping with the theme elsewhere in the site. Hope this helps.
New year’s resolution
On the first day of this year, I set myself some objectives for 2006. With three days of the year remaining, here are the completion stats:
- Professional: 1 out of 2 (50%)
- Financial: 3 out of 4 (75%)
- Personal: 4.5 out of 7 (64%)
- Overall: 8.5 out of 13 (65%)
There was one big one that has been realised, which I’m delighted about.
I will likely set myself some goals for 2007. One small one that I am keen to focus on is to improve the quality of this blog. Make it more interesting, relevant and amusing.
I’ll start that in the new year. In the meantime, same old bilge.
Staying close to home
As a child, I used to puzzle over a self-made conundrum, which is similar to the taxi problem I set a while ago. Here it is.
Imagine the eight lines that connect the 16 primary points of the compass (N, NNE, NE, ENE, E, ESE, SE, SSE, S, SSW, SW, WSW, W, WNW, NW and NNW). Each line connects two of these sixteen points. So, for instance, the line from N to S constitutes a single line, as does that connecting SSE and NNW.
Each line has the same length: one kilometre, let’s say.
You walk each of the lines in succession, but for each line, you can choose which direction to take. So, for the N/S line, you can either walk north or south for one kilometre. After doing so, you take the NNE/SSW line from your previous end point, again in either direction. Etc.
Here’s the conundrum: is it possible to end up where you started. And if not, how close to the start can you end up and how do you do this?
I’ve just worked out the answer, which I’ll post as a comment.
Einstein’s logic problem
I stumbled upon Albert Einstein’s apparently famous logic problem today. Here’s how it goes.
In a street there are five houses, each painted a different colour. In each house lives a person of a different nationality. These five homeowners each drink a different kind of beverage, smoke a different brand of cigar and keep a different pet.
The question: who owns the fish?
Here are the hints that will help you solve it.
- The Brit lives in a red house
- The Swede keeps dogs as pets
- The Dane drinks tea
- The green house is next to, and on the left of the white house
- The owner of the green house drinks coffee
- The person who smokes Pall Mall rears birds
- The owner of the yellow house smokes Dunhill
- The man living in the centre house drinks milk
- The Norwegian lives in the first house
- The man who smokes Blends lives next to the one who keeps cats
- The man who keeps horses lives next to the man who smokes Dunhill
- The man who smokes Blue Master drinks beer
- The German smokes Prince
- The Norwegian lives next to the blue house
- The man who smokes Blends has a neighbour who drinks water
I used Excel. Purely to organise my thoughts; not for any calculation logic. I reckon you can answer the question (who owns the fish?) without hint 15, but that particular hint gives you a full picture of what everyone drinks.
Let me know how you get on. For those who want to check their answer (against mine at least), go through the following clues, which are hopefully a bit easier.
- Take the letters at the beginning of each of the five one-word answers to the following clues
- Popular Japanese number puzzle
- Keeps the rain off you without the need for a coat
- French for I
- A reflected sound
- Your presents might be put in one of these by Santa
- Re-arrange these to reveal the name of a historic figure
- What did he sleep in as a baby?
- Re-arrange the letters of that word
Best sites: as defined by The Guardian and me
The Guardian has given us a categorised list of the 100 most useful websites. Twenty categories, each containing five sites. Here’s my list, only giving one (usually) per category.
- Applications: Microsoft’s Office 12 demo. Not sure if that counts as an application, but it’s sweet. Only works in IE, btw. Oh, and Google Calendar is a piece of poetry too
- Blogs (reading): Google Reader. No question
- Blogs (writing): I’ve just put up a new site for my friend Robin using Wordpress. It’s rather neat
- Email: Google Mail. I now love it
- Gaming: not interested. Sorry
- Maps: Google Maps is the only choice, as long as you’re not on dial-up. If you are, then use Streetmap for UK maps
- News (mainstream): BBC News. Again, no question
- News (recommendations): Digg. A fantastic source of useful information and interesting tat, with a slightly geeky bent
- Offbeat: not that into this category, I have to say. The Onion used to be good, but has become somewhat passé. (I was amused in a doctor’s clinic in Alphabet City earlier this year when a guy picked up a newspaper version of The Onion and took a little longer than you might expect to figure out that it wasn’t real news.)
- Politics: They Work For You seems to be the big one, but nothing really floats my boat. I’m rather apolitical
- Public action: this category is flagged as one the web can "make a difference", so I’d plump for justgiving
- Radio: I’ve not ventured into this area of the web
- Recommendation (music): I used Pandora quite a bit earlier in the year. Very neat and a lovely interface
- Reference: Wikipedia. Is there a need to ask?
- Science: I’ve not embraced this area of the web, so have no comment
- Search: Google. There are better interfaces out there, but no better relevancy
- Social software: don’t use it. I suppose I’m a passive user of Linked In
- Video: You Tube, although Google Video allows downloads to iPod
- Virtual Worlds: I’ll let Mark answer that one. I have no idea
- Zeitgeist: Technorati maybe?
Best moments in songs: new entry
The drum break between nine and ten seconds into Squeeze’s Up The Junction needs to be added to my original list of best moments in songs.
Grammatical disappointment
2006 has been a year of grammatical disappointment. On both sides of the Atlantic, I’ve been stunned at the lack of grammatical awareness among colleagues and clients.
There are two types: grammatical clumsiness and unquestionable errors. The former is almost expected; the latter is becoming similarly commonplace. I’ve seen numerous documents allegedly in a state ready for distribution which have been littered with mistakes.
While Microsoft Office will correct your spelling and make sure your sums are correct, it hasn’t yet mastered perfecting the grammar of the ill-educated.
The root of the problem has to be schooling. The trend is generally more prevalent among younger workers (although it’s surprising how often the older generation can get it wrong), indeed suggesting that educational standards have dropped over time. I also think the trend is exacerbated through laziness. People sometimes know the rule that they’ve broken (its/it’s being a prime example) once their copy has been corrected.
While I would be the first to give myself the pedant label (well, maybe not the first), I’m confident that my issue here goes beyond pedantry.
For the record, while both countries fall short of the mark, my experience suggests that grammatical standards in the American workplace are higher than those here in the UK.
Here’s a little test to keep you on your toes.
Songs that don’t quite make the cut
I have a couple of playlists that I tend to wear out on my iPod: 4+ stars and 5 stars. These contain the best (483 and 83 tracks respectively) of my 3,415 tracks.
However it’s often nice to resort to my 3+ playlist, which contains those tracks that didn’t quite make the cut, but which are worthwhile nonetheless. I did this today, and was grinning my way through Covent Garden this lunchtime. Macy Gray’s I Try succeeded in upping my step (complete with my mis-heard lyric of "I wore goggles when you were not here") as did Kylie’s Keith Washington duet If You Were With Me Now.
Apostrophe makes grammatically incorrect comeback
The Metro newspaper today tried to make up for its double apostrophe omission last Friday. In its offline article about the despicable Connor family from Brooklands, Manchester, it reported that "Natalie [Connor] faces 11 years’ in prison for manslaughter."
Maybe the apostrophe is making a comeback, in a grammatically incorrect way.
Meanwhile, I enjoyed the "MILF not pictured" caption for the picture in this article. Not sure what sort of traffic that will drive to my tangential ramblings.
Christmas vs. Holidays
In the UK, our late-December festivities are completely focused around the word Christmas. In the US, it’s simply The Holiday Season, which is way more inclusive, given that Christmas is, well, Christian, and given the diversity of cultures and religions that exist within the US. This despite the US deeming itself a very Christian country. I like this inclusive attitude.
In this morning’s Metro, I read of a group of parents in the UK who are going to complain to their local education authority because their school changed their children’s Christmas Party into a Winter Party. The school (Hill View Primary School in Bournmouth) doesn’t appear to be denominational, so I’m bemused by the parents’ issue.
In the UK, little is actively done to embrace the mutli-culturalism that our immigration policies have brought us, and such stories only serve to highlight this failure.
One parent, Penny Turner, defended her stance. "I’m not prepared to bring my child up in a school that regards political correctness as that important." Meanwhile local councillor Claire Smith waded in. "It’s very easy to offend people’s sensibilities but, as far as I’m concerned, this is a Christian country and most of us are still happy to celebrate the birth of Christ."
It shows ignorance on the part of the parents, and a lack of understanding of the wider issues by the local councillor.
As an aside, the main menu (turn your sound down if you follow the link) shows further evidence of the dying apostrophe, with its "Childrens Area".
iTunes: New Music Wednesday?
I just received my New Music Tuesday email from iTunes, at 11.39am GMT today (Wednesday). So Wednesday is the new Tuesday, which I assume means that Tuesday is the new Monday.
In light of this, Christmas has been moved to Tuesday 26 December, and New Year’s Day will be celebrated on Tuesday 2 January, 2007. Please update your diaries accordingly.
Georgia
I’ve recently been introduced to the beautiful font that is Georgia. I’ve used it for my date headers (see above), along with the titles of my right-hand modules.
It’s a serif font, but it looks good and reads well on screen. I’ve decided to use it as my font of choice on the workstream I’m now leading.
The difference a number makes
There are two shortcuts in Firefox that are too close for comfort:
- CTRL+F4: close tab
- CTRL+F5: hard refresh of the page
I use the latter more often than the former. However, I’ve missed the F5 key on a number of occasions, finding that the tab has disappeared rather than seeing it refreshed.
The two F-ing keys are frustratingly close to one another.
Y-O-U-R means your; Y-O-U-’-R-E means you are!
Marks and Spencer has some grammatically incorrect slippers on sale at the moment. They contain a red card that you can pull out, which reads: Your Off.
Reminds me of the Friends episode where Ross teaches Rachel the meaning of your and you’re.