Early on, users and the press discovered that if you hold your iPhone4 in a kind of ‘death grip’ the signal meter dropped alarmingly. People were up in arms about poor design and whether or not it’s true, the alleged response form someone at Apple of “…well, don’t hold it that way then!” was an IT support engineer’s dream reply. Apple acknowledged they made a mistake in the algorithm that calculates the signal strength and this was updated in the next code release. Apple also showed a number of other smart phones that did exactly the same thing and to me this showed more than anything that much of the criticism was just sour grapes and Apple bashing. Apple went further and guaranteed that every customer (worldwide) who boutgh an iPhone4 before a given date would be eligible for a free silicone case that eliminated the death grip signal loss scenario.

All went quiet and people went on their way.

But… I’ve discovered another flaw in the iPhone4 and it kills me to report it as I love the product and design. While the front glass is made from highly scratch resistant materials and the back case is also quite resilient, the lens cover on the primary camera is in fact quite delicate and easily scratched. To make things worse, the lens protrudes from the back slightly which only increases its chances of getting scratched. Somehow one day I must have placed my phone down on something rough or it shared a pocket with something rough but all I know is that suddenly and without warning the primary camera showed everything in soft focus. Checking the lens showed it covered in small scratches and no amount of cleaning would remedy the situation. Over the next few weeks the scratches got worse until the camera lost the ability to focus and so was rendered useless.

I decided to call Apple support for their advice and to see if the lens cover could be replaced but since the phone was intact and scratch free when I received it Apple support informed me that any scratches would fall under the category of ‘accidental damage’ and therefore not covered under any warranty. I suggested to Apple that perhaps this was a design flaw but that was immediately pooh poohed. (surfing the net I see a number of customers with the same issue). The cost to repair the damage or replace the parts was estimated at well over £150 which to me seemed excessive so I decided to take matter into my own hands. If you can remove scratches from a CD then you ought to be able to remove them from a lens cover also right? Wrong  after many attempts there was no improvement in either the surface of the lens cover nor the quality of the pictures it produced. With no real alternatives other than opening my wallet and letting engineers help themselves to my money I dug out my trusty screwdriver set..
The iPhone4 is much easier to open up than the iPhone3 and just two screws gets the back cover off exposing the inner workings. One of my worries was that the lens and its cover were a single unit and that it was non-replaceable. To my joy, I found that the lens cover is an insert in the phones back cover that you can just pop out. One little push later and my pictures are pin sharp again although I now have no protection for the recessed lens at the back. But then.. I couldn’t use the camera anyway so it won’t get any worse will it?

It’s been a while since I dismantled anything and probably daft of me to do it on a £500 bit of kit but I’m glad I did.

While I’ve never really thought about the lyrics this morning something struck me as odd during the ‘bridge’. That line “Now all Beyonce’s and Lucy Liu’s and baby dolls get on the floor” got me thinking that there’s something not quite right, an imbalance if you will. Beyonce is singled out to represent all that is desirable in a ‘woman of colour’ (God I hate being PC!), Lucy Liu is likewise selected to represent all oriental women however, white women are collectively referred to as ‘Baby Dolls’. Forgetting the fact that there are about a billion women left unrepresented (Hispanic, Indian, middle Arabic, etc) the implications are that there is no one white woman that can adequately represent all that is desirable for her demographic. Why is this? From one perspective it could be seen that the song stereotypes “Beyonce’s” and “Lucy Liu’s” and while both women are a good role model for all women in terms of their success and (if it floats your boat) their looks. There could be an implication that these two women represent the ideal and that all other women are inferior. An entire ‘race’ however is generalised, why is this? Is it because there’s no one stereotype that defines a successful, sassy white woman? Is it because there are no young white role models for the kids to look up to as there is in Beyonce and Lucy Liu? Who can tell what went through the minds of the writer when those lyrics were born.

Perhaps its something else? is it that Beyonce and Lucy Liu represent a particular kind of woman that is carefree, adventurous and a little more thrilling? The line concludes..”Get on the floor, you know what to do” is it a representation that in general, white women have looser morals than other women? Certainly the media reports back this up with another knickerless Britney or Lohan splashed across the covers falling out of another bar. Other than Rianna’s ‘personal’ pictures to her (ex)boyfriend when was the last time you saw a scandal about an Oriental or Afro Caribbean star? Makes you wonder where the morals are doesn’t it?

Of course, all this is a side thought to a great song that gets the floor pumping….

Hmm maybe I read too much into these things?

Goldman prides itself on it’s reputation. As employees this was drummed into us repeatedly that ‘reputation is everything’. Goldman had to be whiter than white, cleaner than clean to maintain it’s reputation and it’s standing in the industry. When the global economy was hit in 2008 Goldman was quick to distance itself from the problem. Goldman had no exposure to the volatile sub-prime market and was better positioned to ride the storm ahead. It was comforting to know that there was at least one institution that saw sense and had not indulged in the housing bubble. While there was an air of smugness in Goldman’s statements once could feel it was justified in an environment where some of the largest pillars of the financial world had crumbled due to their folly. The subsequent investigation by the SEC came as a surprise and while Goldman have not admitted any intended wrong doing, their agreement to settle the case (without admitting or denying the allegations) http://www2.goldmansachs.com/our-firm/on-the-issues/sec-settlement.html smacks of agreeing to cough up to shut the SEC up and I can only speculate this is for one of two reasons (or a combination of both). The cost of going through a (years) long investigation would ultimately hit their share price while uncertainty over their innocence prevailed. By agreeing to settle, Goldman has in many ways protected their shareholder value and saved their own employees from considerable work. The other possibility is that Goldman knew it would be found guilty of purposely misleading or hiding key information from investors. If this had gone to completion and Goldman found in breach then the damage to it’s reputation would be incalculable and the $550m fine would have paled into insignificance.

I have no doubt that Goldman was not alone in this kind of (in their own words) “mistake” and for me this only reinforces the need for governments to pay closer attention to firms and industries with sufficient reach and influence to damage an economy.

But are we right in that belief?

Sadly, most of the British population will never truly realise just how much censorship takes place around us on a daily basis, how much propaganda is peddled in a sadly effective plan to preserve our sense of superiority.

During war time it is understandable that key information is kept from the public domain (and therefore the enemy also) and stories such as the loss of the Lancastria in 1940 is a prime example where the news of thousands of Allied troops being lost would have bolstered the efforts of the enemy and demoralised the Allied nations.

Even during the years of the Cold War the moral, military and technological perspectives were managed and maintained by a carefully planned and orchestrated propaganda campaign. Just think how many Hollywood movies from the 60′s, 70′s and early 80′s portray the soviets as barbaric, warmongering, cruel and otherwise unpleasant people. Communist states no doubt did the same thing and will have emphasised all that was wrong with capitalism and consumerism. All these are understandable and in some respects acceptable. Consider the demonization of Islam by many western cultures and the resulting Jihad.

In the 1980′s Derek Jamieson presented a show titled “Do they mean us?” which was a compilation of news reports about the UK from around the world. Some were Bizarre, some ridiculous and it was a very one sided viewpoint of how ‘potty’ the rest of the world was and what little understanding of the British there actually was in the world. The show was presented from a standpoint of disbelief and surprise and always ended with the phrase “Do they mean us? They surely do!”

For a decade, that show was an almost forgotten memory at the back of my mind. Then in the mid/late 90′s I moved to live in Japan (itself a very narrow minded country) and for the first time was able to regularly watch news reports from around the world. My morning routine involved eating my breakfast and then ironing my shirt of the day while watching the news. ZDF (Germany), TVE (Spain), CNN (US) and finally BBC (UK) news bulletins were broadcast between 7 and 8 am and while my German and Spanish aren’t brilliant I could follow the reports.

What I saw troubled me. Reports on ZDF and TVE concerning things that had happened in the UK, serious things, were not being broadcast on the BBC. At first I though this was simply due to the broadcasts being only slightly longer than a list of headlines however talking with friends back in the UK it was clear that things were taking place that the BBC (and other channels) weren’t showing. Over time I started to pay more attention to what was on the news, or more specifically what was NOT on the news and could draw only one conclusion. The British media must have been under pressure from government bodies to either suppress news stories or apply sufficient ‘spin’ as to obfuscate the true meaning.

In the 13 years since I came to this conclusion I have made it a point ot try and see/read the news from around the world. The pace of change in internet technology and more recently blogging has greatly enhanced the understanding of what is going on around us but even so, I’d not be at all surprised to discover stories exist that we don’t get to hear about.

A friend pointed something out to me a few years ago. There’s a great imbalance between the amount of ‘bad’ news broadcast in comparison to the amount of ‘good’ news broadcast. Why is this? The world isn’t a bad and cruel place so why the negative angle? His theory was that the world needs to be kept in a state of mild fear and panic in order to support the economy. the feeling of wellbeing that retail therapy brings buoys us up but that need must be constantly fed and so we’re kept in a state of insecurity. If you think back over the last decade it was one bad aspect after another, Al-Qaida, Bird Flu, Global economy, swine flu, more terrorism, doom and gloom. Now try and think how many good and positive stories of a global (or even national) perspective were broadcast… hard isn’t it? Even Live 8 and the campaign to end global poverty was drowned out.

So maybe he is right, maybe there is a policy of negative propaganda being spread through the developed nations to keep the population insecure and needy. If only they knew that that’s not how you ‘heal a world’

When I lived in Japan in the second half of the 1990′s I know one household of foreign ex-pats whose every possession (almost) was found in a skip, bin or just discarded by the side of the road. Most, if not all, of these products was in perfect working order and the only reason they had been thrown out was that there was a newer model on the market. The push of Shinhatsubai has in many respects played a significant role in the sustained growth, and more recently survival, of the Japanese economy. Every day advertisers are pushing the latest TV, the latest Rain coat, the latest gadget, the latest rice planter in the knowledge that the desire for the ‘new and improved’ will drive a purchase. Strangely this has worked for a long time and is now so ingrained in daily life that nobody stops to think twice about spending their hard earned yen on something shiny and new. What is more surprising is that there hasn’t been a flourishing industry in trading second hand goods and generally people discard their existing item when they get the new one.

This phenomenon has slowly been expanding to cover the rest of the world and Advertisers and marketeers spend millions on finding our sweet spot and new clever ways of selling things to us. The most recent examples of this are with Apple’s two newest products; the iPad and the iPhone 4. In so many ways it’s very hard to justify the £700 cost of an iPad, as a media consumption device it’s very snazzy but as a media production device it falls far short from something easily usable. The iPhone4 is a lovely bit of kit but at twice the cost of a Samsung Galaxy S is it value for money? But customers will still queue all day to get their hands on a device. There are a hard core of early adopters who will always go for the newest bit of kit and its this group that marketeers are trying to stimulate. What follows after that is ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ and conformity.

Good old ShinHatsubai, coming to a store near you real soon.

Late last year while driving to work my little car was sounding increasingly like a tank as the hole in the exhaust got bigger and bigger and bigger. At some point around the M25 something catastrophic happened to it and although the car was working perfectly I lost almost all the power leading to me having to take hills in first gear and no doubt frustrating the drivers stuck behind me on the narrow roads leading to Henley.

Pulling in to the Kwik Fit forecourt I parked, took my iPhone out of its cradle and into my shirt pocket and got out of the car to inspect the scale of the problem. with the tip of my shoe I pushed against the end of the tail pipe and the whole end section of the exhaust swung freely. To get a better look at the damage I bent down and immediately regretted my decision as my iPhone slid quietly out of my pocket and straight onto the tarmac with a sickening crunch. Arse!!!

I looked and saw it lying face down on the ground and preparing myself for the worst (keep in mind it was only 5 months old and not insured) picked it up to inspect just how bad the fall was. I could see a spider web of cracks in the top left of the screen and took a breath before pressing the power button. With a flicker the screen came to life and two minutes of testing proved there seemed to be no permanent damage (other than the cracked glass) and breathing a sigh of relief I put the phone in my trouser pocket and set about getting my car fixed.

Over the next few months I began to see increasingly unpredictable behaviour from my iPhone; I missed numerous calls because mysteriously my phone was switched off, the volume would change all on its own either reverting to min or max regardless of what I set it to, the phone would switch itself back on when I tried to power it down or would take an hour to start up then immediately power itself down. In short the phone started doing what it wanted to do not what I wanted it to do, just like a cat. However, with the knowledge that I had at least another 8 months on my contract before I could upgrade or change the handset I learned to live with its quirks and did my best to get on with things.

Recently though my iPhone/iTunes set up has behaved more and more cat like for another reason altogether. While not obscenely large I have quite a CD and music collection, most of which has been transferred into iTunes for easy access. My collection covers just about every genre with artists from across the globe in a strange eclectic mix. My iTunes/iPhone sync has always been set to specific playlists and there was a certain degree of predictability to what I would hear when I put my headphones on or plugged the iPhone into its cradle in the car. Over the last few weeks though this sync seems to have a mind of its own and all sorts of stuff is unexpectedly coming out of speakers. I’m not sure how or why playlists have been changed or are being ignored in the sync but there is a startling similarity to the little surprises cats give us. Cats are bi stable devices with an clear cut appreciation only for good and bad with no in-between. Cats either curl up on your lap keeping you company and showing you their affection or they are shredding your arm and leaving dead rodents on your pillow. I now open the metaphorical back door that is my iPhone playlist and take a breath before being uplifted by some cool tunes or repulsed by some heinous B-side or album filler.

“So why is this categorised under Nostalgia?” you may ask.. Well, through the random song selections there have been some real memory joggers from my past, some songs that got me remembering the ‘old days’, some making me grin and even one making me laugh out loud (much to the intrigue of everyone else in the train carriage).

“Runaway Boys” by the Stray Cats which accompanied my first hangover New years 1981/82 at the tender age of 12 where I discovered my first morning after cure of warm triffle and flat Special Brew (or maybe I was just trying to ‘man it up’ at my friends house – Thanks Sean!)

My elder sister tought me to dance in 1984 in preparation to my first School disco. David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance” is the soundtrack to my jerky movements. At the time my friends thought I was mad as all they wanted to do was run around and mess with the stage curtain to see who was snogging behind it. Of course, the later realised that my funky moves were to lead to me being one of those hiding behind the curtain.

From 1987 “So Emotional” by Whitney Houston, “Trapped” by Colonel Abrams and Frinkie’s “Relax” remind me of my first stint at DJ-ing at the school disco where I (semi)successfully managed to mix all three tracks without looking a fool

So many tracks carrying so many memories, maybe I should have broken my iPhone sooner?

My first job when graduating from college was possibly one of the worst commutes of my career. Living in south west London my new job was in Staines at the far west of London a straight line distance of about 12 miles. In those days I had to rely on public transport to get me to work which involved travelling almost into the centre of London before heading back out on the slow train to Staines with a journey time of 90min. Eventually I bought a motorcycle and even then the commute was at least 45 min however was fraught with danger as the car drivers sitting in jams would often pull out unexpectedly and 7 accidents later the angels looking over my shoulder saw fit to protect me and someone stole my motorcycle.

later in my career when working in Tokyo my daily commute was a 15 min cycle ride into the heart of the city where the greatest challenge was negotiating the police officers. Much to my surprise, most cyclists in Japan ride on the pavements rather than the roads and given the high population density the pavements are congested and slow moving whereas the roads are relatively traffic free due tot he cheap and reliable public transport system. As an enthusiastic and experienced cyclist it made much more sense to me to cycle on the roads where I could make good headway. The only problem was that regularly the police would stop me and ask me to ride on the pavement as it was “safer”. This eventually turned in to a cat and mouse where I would try and avoid the police in order not to have to go through the process. The upshot of this was that I got to see much more of the city than I would have expected to, finding wonderful eateries and things to see. The downside was that over time my journey got longer and longer and all in the name of “safety”.

Of all the commutes I have done however the most unpleasant have involved the London underground and specifically the Northern Line (or Misery line as it is often referred to). Not only are the trains crowded and small, they are old, noisy, unreliable and lacking any air conditioning turn into ovens during the summer months. Years of under investment have left the system antiquated and unreliable when frequently lines are suspended for hours due to signal failures. Bu far the most frustrating aspect of travelling on the Northern line is that the line branches into two separate routes through central London. Starting at the Morden terminus (not the nicest place in the world) the line branches via Bank (the financial side of the city) or Charring Cross (the entertainment side). My office is on the Bank side and so every morning the commuters bunch up at the ticket barriers at Morden seeing which platform they should choose to get a train going down the branch they want. Following a mad dash for a seat we settle down to read the paper/read a book/sleep and listen out for the station announcements. This morning was a perfect example of the problems we face. Not only were the announcements made in the thickest of foreign accents they were also inaudible above the noise of the train itself. The train was so crowded that it was almost impossible to see the station names on the platforms and so the commuter relies on their memory and counting the stations until thy get to the one they want. Today was no exception and while finishing the SuDoKu puzzle in the morning paper I counted stations in my head. At the 13th station the doors opened and for the briefest of seconds we heard the announcement of “mumble mumble mumble .. loo”.
“Loo?” Odd, station 13 should be “Elephant and Castle”. And with a panic and dash half the carriage realised the controllers had decided en-route to change the branch the train was travelling on and now we were all on the wrong train. Can you imagine the crush of hundreds of people clambering over bags and feet to get to the exit before the door closed and then the next crush as they all try and cram onto a train that is heading in the direction they want but is already full? If this was a rare or occasional blunder then it could be forgiven but something like this happens almost every day where a train is re-routed without telling the passengers. The upshot of this is that I was 30 min late for work even though I should have been 30 min early.

Still, I only have to suffer that 3 days a week, the other 2 I face a 50 mile drive through some of the most congested roads in Europe and oddly enough that’s a lot less unpleasant so come on London Underground, sort it out will you?

The balance of power has shifted over the centuries where once the world was manipulated and owned by Spain, China, the Vatican and Britain. Of these original superpowers only China remains (although centuries of introspection and stagnation has left China playing catch up). While the Vatican still keeps a hold on many parts of the world that grip is slipping in the face of modern times and progress and increasingly Catholics are looking to the Vatican with serious questions in their eyes and the seeds of doubt towards the strict Dogma.

Looking at the state of things today it’s hard sometimes to believe that Britain was once the most powerful nation on earth. There was a “we rule it” view and a smug air of superiority. When the empire gave way to the commonwealth the era of cooperation and mutual growth led to Britain adopting an elder statesman like approach to world governance and with a mature eye the moral high ground was kept. Britain’s last brush with ‘greatness’ came at the time of Cool Britannia in the late 1990′s. Britain’s music, movies and culture was on the menu worldwide. Too long squashed into a powerful neighbours breast pocket however have reduced us somewhat two dimensional and with diminished respect. These days one often hears people being almost apologetic for being English.

Still, that doesn’t stop people chanting “Two World Wars and One World Cup Dooh Daah, Dooh Dahh!” when packed in a stadium. Every year England fans build their hopes up that maybe this is the year, maybe this time the right combination of team and manager are together to hoist the World Cup once again. I hear people investing so much of their own emotional well being on the shoulders of eleven players only to be left disappointed championship after championship. I hear people wonder how it can be that Brazil, Italy, Argentina, Germany can win time after time. England has players talented and experienced enough to win so why don’t they?

I don’t know much about football. Hell, I don’t even like the game but even I can see what’s wrong with English football. Years of high sponsorship and corporate endorsements have forced clubs in to ensuring at all costs that they have the best chance to win and this they achieve by fielding foreign players on all premiership teams. Not just one or two though, in some cases there are only 2 or 3 English players in a premiership team with the rest of the places going to international talent. There’s only one way to ensure England’s best chance of winning a world cup and that’s through investing the millions in youth football rather than another high ticket international star. With £200-£300 million invested each year in international players just imagine what impact that could have if even only a quarter of it was invested in domestic youth football. We have the next generation that are the equal of the very best the world has to offer however we’re not investing in them as that doesn’t bring in advertisers.

I do hope the FA brings in a ruling where teams cannot field more than a certain number of international players in their squad. That’s the only way the money will flow where it’s needed if England are to be winners again.

Today that struggle ended, Jimmy Dean passed away at home in Virginia, (news article
Here.) As a child I lived in an environment where the radio was on all through the day, I grew up to the sounds of Sir Terry Wogan, Jimmy Young and Pete Murray. Mum kept the radio on for company and being stuck in the back of beyond, living miles from the nearest civilization, the radio was a window on the world, an opportunity to escape and allow ourselves to drift along with the music. Big Bad John and Sixteen Tons were a staple of Wogan’s breakfast show and are songs I guess are subconsciously associated with those golden years of my infancy and youth. In some ways the songs were an echo of our own existence. My father worked very long hours to support the family and when not working he would be in the garden tending our vegetable patches ensuring we would have something to eat. Sixteen Tons summed up his life completely, working his fingers to the bone to make ends meet. Big Bad John told the take of a man set apart from his neighbours by a troubled past, my father was a very honest man with no shady past, he was kept apart due to his nationality. Living in an ‘ultra nationalist’ area of North Wales being Irish (which my parents were) was not popular and my father was excluded from so many facets of life.

It got me thinking about what songs define people’s lives and for what reasons. What will today’s small children remember in 40 years time from the current music industry? Sadly very little I presume which is all the more reason to champion ‘real’ music.

I confess that series 1 had me gripped also. Now hindsight has me cringing at the recollection that watching someone feed their chickens was ‘entertainment’. But series one set the tone, there was intrigue (nasty Nick), there was nudity (Nicola) there was romance (well, only if you count Tom getting very visibly aroused while giving Melanie a massage) and there was the deserving winner (Craig, who live on TV immediately gave all his winnings to a friend with Downs to help pay for an organ transplant). By the time series 2 was to begin the viewing public was filled with a “what next?” hunger which was never satisfied.

Ten series have come and gone, each less memorable than its predecessor. Why is that? Is it a jaded audience bored with the same old same old? Is it a disappointed audience hoping for sex and scandal and having to settle for a blurred fumbling under a blanket? I think what has turned the audience off is a combination of two things.

1. There are too many reality shows on TV now (I’m a celebrity, x-factor, Britain’s got talent, etc)
2. Celebrity Big Brother was a house full of egos and posturing, all for very high fees and little return

I’m sure that Endemol never thought their cash cow would run out of milk but it has and the last few years have demonstrated that. No doubt every last drop will be squeezed out for this final outing, so much so that by the end only the nasty sour bits will be left for us all to gag on.

Whatever happens though there will be a dedicated hard core audience clinging to every second of broadcast material and hoping beyond hope that the show returns on a smaller channel.

In 2001 Ben Elton wrote a parody of the Big Brother phenomenon called Dead Famous, the plot of which follows the investigation of a murder committed in the house in full view of the cameras and yet fiendishly difficult to solve. I’m not suggesting that Endemol should have done the same but at least they could have come up with something worth watching all those years.