simoncoles.org   Simon Coles Personal Blog

I’ll have more to say on the iPad in time – it’s clearly important, I’ll get one and if the US price point translates, we’ll probably get them for most of our employees (well, if they are good! ).

Anyway, I loved this video:

It’s a good example of what happens when people can remix existing creative work.

We employ a lot of women – it wasn’t deliberate, although if I am allowed to generalise a bit I suspect the work we do means that qualities associated with the female of the species are particularly useful in our line of work. In addition, through sensible and pragmatic employment policies (e.g. treating people like adults) we’ve tripped over a huge untapped pool of talent who can’t seem to get decent, rewarding jobs which fit around their domestic circumstances. (as an aside – why is it almost always mothers who are expected to sacrifice their working life for childcare??).

Anyway, Clay Shirky posted this rant on how women rarely put themselves forward. He ends with:

What I do know is this: it would be good if more women see interesting opportunities that they might not be qualified for, opportunities which they might in fact fuck up if they try to take them on, and then try to take them on. It would be good if more women got in the habit of raising their hands and saying “I can do that. Sign me up. My work is awesome,” no matter how many people that behavior upsets.

Very much so!

I find it interesting how men can often over-exagerate their abilities and contributions (and need a dose of unwelcome reality), where as most women actually need to be told explicitly that they really are quite capable and even good at what they do.

There are few things that I view as being crucial to Amphora’s competitive advantage, which are blindingly obvious to us but seem to be totally uncopyable by so many other companies:

• Hire the right people, and treat them like adults. Don’t employ people you have to treat like children.
• Most “Working Mums” would jump at a fulfilling responsible job, as long as you take the relatively easy steps to make sure they can work around their childcare responsibilities.
• Apple Macs are really so much better and cheaper to own than Windows machines – and people enjoy using them more too.

The only problem we consistently get is that a lot of working Mums won’t apply for jobs because they don’t think any employer would be able to accommodate them. So they search Monster for tedious part-time admin jobs and never even see our jobs even though they’ve got “Mum friendly” pasted all over them. Which is similar to Clay’s underlying point.

So we have AppleTVs on all the TVs in the house. Works great, we have a server which runs iTunes and has all the Music/Video on.

The boys are getting older, and there’s now an element of self-service going on. After a few near misses, parental controls are in order.

Turns out the AppleTV has parental controls, which is great. But… you type in the PIN in a way which means it is displayed on the TV, so if you’re looking at the TV they’re going to see it. And of course, because it’s a secret there’s lots of child effort being put into finding out what it is, and great delight in remembering it.

I’ve probably only got a few months before the whole “Close your eyes, Daddy’s typing in a secret” will continue to work…

Ideally Apple will come up with a better way….? Because the current one sucks.

Alternatively I’ll need to setup a separate “Mum & Dad” iTunes install and stream anything rated stronger than PG off that.

The Telegraph has an article about how the “Professions” have been told to cut down on the number of Private school people they take – apparently this is discriminatory against people from State funded schools.

This makes me cross.

Let me get this straight:

• My parents paid tax, and part of this is meant to pay for education
• They decide they want the best for their children
• So they pay for a better education for their children (Mum was a teacher herself- this was an informed decision)
• Their children don’t take up the state-provided place (thus presumably saving the state money)

And because of this, I should be discriminated against!

There’s a whole bunch of people popping out of private schools, who’ve had a better education than that can be provided by the State, and we don’t want to utilise all that human capital – all that potential – for the good of the country – just because their parents paid extra for their education????

If that’s the case, we’re all screwed. Because we’ve created a country where the parents who invest in their child’s future causes their child to be punished, and the parent who pisses away their money is given a helping hand.

I’m really sorry – my parents sacrificed a huge amount to make sure their children got a good education. Apparently that’s something to be apologised for, and I shouldn’t do for my children?

Surely the solution is to figure out what makes Private Schools better, and replicate that in the State sector??

Surely there’s a big hint that parents are more willing to invest in their childrens’ future – if they feel they are getting something back??

Why can’t we all do better, rather than dragging everyone down to a level of mediocrity??

We should judge people on their merits, not on where they came from. Discriminating against applicants just on the basis who paid for their education is just as idiotic as judging them by gender or age.

Ludicrous, absolutely ludicrous.

Yes, this sucks. No fun whatever now, and we’ve got a few more days to go it seems.

I read something about the big freeze in 1962/63  - it didn’t thaw until March! Here’s some more info:

• Wikipedia Page
• A film on YouTube
• A page on the BBC

Of course, in those days they didn’t have:

• Cars with funky electronics to stop us sliding around so much
• The Internet (imagine how isolated you’d feel now without it?)
• Multi-channel TV to keep us sane
• The Wii, to keep us fit

And now I shall go back to work, counting my lucky stars…