Living in a new world, living in the past

Microsoft are finally fully switching Hotmail over to Outlook.com. I still have a hotmail address but I haven’t been moved yet.

I do want to keep my hotmail address. I only use it as a spam repository these days, having moved all my professional functions over to Google. But I’m horribly attached to the name. I’ve had it since I was a teenager, obsessed with Queen and entirely unaware that whatever handle I chose would still be chasing me around the web 15 years later.

In those days of the internet I chose all my usernames and handles based on my inner identity rather than my external name. Fun and anonymity were encouraged and expected. It’s why in the Manics fan world I’m still known as Terminal Young Thing – a handle I picked because I was young, forgetting that one day I may be older, may be wiser. At one point I considered selected a new handle but I realised that the full lyric I’m gonna stay a terminal young thing from Methadone Pretty forbade such a change. So it stuck, and little TYT is still a large part of my online and inner identity.

But that came later. This email address predates even manicsfandom. I picked it because I wanted a Queen-based identity, but one that was female. There aren’t many. Lady Mercy would have been an obvious candidate but I didn’t like it, and anyway, I think it was taken. For a while I used brian_may39 until I realised that it was one thing to use a moniker for an ID, but another thing entirely to use someone else’s name.

In the end I picked a line from The Fairy-Feller’s Master Stroke. I didn’t like the song that much, I didn’t get any of the mythology references, or care for the art that inspired it. I just wanted a girl’s name. So I became The Nymph In Yellow. It formed the basis of my email address and several other online IDs. It was cumbersome to write and embarrassing to spell out but by the time it had outrun its cuteness, it was attached to too much of the internet to easily move.


The painting that inspired and song that inspired an online life

A couple of years ago, I gave it the slip and created an ‘grown up’ email address. Again I considered closing my antiquated hotmail name, but this I kept it for the past, and for the future. I little knew, aged 13, what a teenager and adult I would become or what my tastes would be in music, books, films and people. Which is why, when I hear the full lyric I can’t help but smile:

Fairy dandy tickling the fancy
Of his lady friend
The nymph in yellow

Fairy dandy. Bowie, Brett, Bernard, Wire, Wilde, Wodehouse, Waugh, all the other Ws on the www dot.

Seems I did know myself after all, half a life time ago.

This week, Stockholm!

In praise of Norwegian, a budget airline company who flew me to Stockholm and back this weekend.

The whole experience was great compared with other budgets carriers, in the general sense that they didn’t actively obstruct every part of my journey with overzealous process, demands for money, or both. They were just, you know, nice and pleasant. Respectful rather than implying things would be a whole lot smoother if I wasn’t there at all. You all know who I mean – and there is more than one of the them – and have enjoyed many hours in their capable hands, I am sure.

Anyway, Norwegian, as well as being decent people also had on-board WiFi. Maybe this is a thing on proper long-distance international flights but I’d not come across it before. So I took great pleasure in telling Twitter and Tumblr that I was 10,000 metres high and IN THE FUTURE.

And not only was there WiFi, but it worked. And by worked I mean it didn’t do any of the following:
- require me to register, or fill in any personal details, at all;
- take minutes to load a single page;
- cap me in any meaningful sense.

All of which are common features of free WiFi on the ground.

OK, there were a couple of issues. It struggled a bit with some https sites because the authentication process got disrupted. Email worked, twitter website struggled but the app worked. And, naturally, it blocks streaming sites like iPlayer but I expect that on a volatile signal. It also blocked Victoria Coren’s website – was it the gambling or the pr0n that triggered it, I wonder? – but let’s be honest, that’s hardly crucial mid-flight viewing, even for me.

On the way home I wanted to see if it kept the same standards. It did. The signal was a little flaky. It probably worked about 75% of the time, but I can’t begrudge them that, being in the clouds and all. (I wonder if it was connecting via the cloud, ho ho ho shut up.)

I also spent more time on their web portal and that’s when it went from a pretty good experience to impressive. It’s the little things. In some situations having a machine follow you across the north sea might be considered a touch intrusive. But when you’re in a metal cupboard in the sky (that description © John Finnemore) and ultimately desiring little more than to be back on the ground, then it’s rather sweet.

Here’s where I am on my journey:

And here’s my specific flight status. 45 minutes to go before we arrive in a rainy London. Although, that weather report could just be static text. Either way, the tiny considerations like that were what made it.

Like I said at the beginning, it’s not just that they had working WiFi, it’s that the whole experience was thoughtful. They could have really hashed this up and I would have still used it, in a grump, bemoaning the fact I was supposed to be on holiday but even though I’m 10,000 metres in the air I still can’t stop swearing at computers. But it wasn’t like that. The whole experience was so gentle and intuitive, it made me want to tell everyone about it.

One final point. See the bottom half of that second screenshot? That’s a video on demand service. It’s early days; there are very few programmes and it’s just on a trial basis, but – it is the future, isn’t it?

Hanging on

A conversation in the work kitchen this morning:

Colleague: What did you do this weekend?
Me: I un-hung a door.
C: Why?
Me: It was in the way.
C: Isn’t that sort of the point of a door? To be in the way? Between you and the other room?

And well, yes. It is. But it’s also the point of a door to open more than 45 degrees without being hindered by a bed. Strictly I suppose the bed was in the way, but the bed is less movable. And I need a bed. I don’t need a door in front of a closet. Especially as the closet will soon be a micro library.

I was going to put the door under above obstructive bed but the handles are not the detachable sort, so it wouldn’t fit. Instead it’s behind my desk doubling as an impromptu notice board and a ‘unique bijou feature’. I think that’s the term. It was a bit of a struggle to move the unhinged door but I managed it without injury. Just. Doors, you will be shocked to hear, are heavy.

I have such DIY plans for my tiny tiny bedroom.

I assembled the desk last week, without any of the necessary equipment. It turns out that although an instruction manual claims you will need a screwdriver, a second person and a hammer, in fact all you need is a pair of scissors, a stack of books and sheer bloody will. Incidentally, this is not the first time I have used books as a substitute for a person, and I doubt it will be the last.

*assumes some kind of Keatsian pose, exits stage left*

I’m sorry, I’ll read that again.

So, nearly three months after I carelessly clicked ‘upgrade’ from my hosting console rather than WordPress itself, causing the CMS to go up in flames, I return!

It didn’t take long to fix in the end, once I’d located the problem.

Thing is, I’m a little bit sad it didn’t die. I didn’t want to leave a website hanging, but properly whacking in the HTML googlies would have been a relief.

I want, need and should start from scratch. I want to re-think, re-architect and reconsider what I put here. I’ve got all my content backed up so a dead website would have been just the trigger.

On the other hand, the last thing I need right now is yet another project.

I’m already building two websites for others, and desperately, desperately trying to write a book, and the workload is sucking all the love out of it.

In the last three months I’ve also moved house three times, across three cities, so y’know, forgive me if I’m not full of whimsical anecdotes right now.

Baby steps. I will not be tested beyond my ability. That’s the promise. Don’t forget to look up.

*klaxon* New hero *klaxon*

Excited, poorly edit post below.

Tommy Flowers was an engineer who worked for Bletchley Park during World War II. Along with people like Alan Turing he was instrumental in developing machines which could decipher German messages.

Previously message deciphering had been done largely by hand, but by WWII the ciphering techniques had become to complicated. Machines were needed, and Flowers invented Colossus, a valve-based semi-programmable computer which was the size of a small room.

His work lead to modern computer science techniques and the very computer you’re reading this on now. He should be famous but because of war time secrecy he was instructed to keep silent. Credit instead goes to post-war developments from America.

After the war Flowers sought a bank loan to redevelop Colossus but was refused because bank mangers didn’t believe that the system could work.

The most bitter-sweet part of the tale comes towards the end of his life. Long-forgotten by computer history, Flowers bought a home PC. He struggled to used it and so enrolled on a college course to learn more. The picture shows his course certificate, proudly displaying that Flowers was now proficient in DBase 3+, Excel and Paint.

Paint.

Proper hero, Tommy, I love you. And thanks, from the bottom of my laptop.

More info: http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/content/museum/tour24.rhtm

The centre cannot hold

I am seriously wondering about this site.

What’s it for? I mean, I have to have a website, right? I design for the web. My livelihood depends on me understanding, persuing and changing this very environment, as it leaks into mobile, TV, device indepedent, responsively designed what next areas?

So it would be remiss of me as a practioner not to be here. And also, I like the internet. Of course I’m here. But here, this domain, this URL doesn’t really matter anymore.

Here’s two statements I regularly make to clients.
1. People won’t come to your site just because it’s there.
2. Good content travels.

Now, I know that most of the hits this blog gets are from Facebook. I also know that most of the people I have on facebook don’t really care about the nitty gritty of UX. Which means, in all honesty, that my semi-regular ‘professional’ posts don’t serve much purpose except to be marginally reassuring should I need to apply for a job and someone bothers to do a background check.

I used to post a lot more about the books, music and films I was in to, but I moved all that to Tumblr, because (a) it has readership and (b)it makes this place look more professional in its absense.

And of course, I’m on twitter. In fact, I’m anywhere but here.

So if I’m not here, why will people come? And even if I write the best blog post ever, no one will see it so there’s no chance of it travelling and hits arriving from secondary sources. That’s happened to me once, with my dodgy illustrations of Brett Anderson lyrics.

A new plan then: to write not for this website, but for two seperate Tumblrs. One will be UX focused, the other my existing fangirl one. I might set up a third one for more thoughtful/faith-based posts, but not yet. I’ll aim for one post a week, then two. Discipline, then frequency. I’ll copy stuff here, because the one thing it does have is permanence.

But the strategy has changed. This site is an archive. It is not where I live.

I am an artist now

Common perceptions of life in a creative agency.


Click for needlessly huge version.

(disclaimer: I am not an artist, and not as harsh on my colleagues as that picture makes out.)

What is it you do again?

Over the last couple of months, for a variety of reasons, I have been asked to state and explain exactly quite what it is I claim I do for a living. I have, therefore, in the last couple of months realised just how hard it is for me to s and e exactly what I d for an l.

After all, I’ve only been doing this job, if you can call it that, for six years. It’s simply unreasonable to expect me to know already.

No, OK, it isn’t. And I know I’m not doing myself any favours by setting myself up as a moron who can’t even give a name to the source of her income, never mind one of those elevator pitches I was taught to rehearse on my very first day of consultancy training.

But the thing is, I’ve been forced into it. It seems I’ve spend these last six years standing twixt a turbulent ravine (or more realistically, tumbling into it) as I try to bridge the gap between happily doing my job with colleagues who understand, respect and complement my discipline, and explaining it to those who don’t know UX from OXO.

It feels a bit like this:

Buns are hurled on both sides and neither actually knows what the other does, beyond a few stocks phrases and TLAs that are never explained. (Really, what is a GANNT chart? I’m still not sure I know. And doesn’t it have an H in it somewhere?)

In repsonse to this, I’ve been on the defensive. I’ll tell someone flippantly that I sit in the corner with crayons, or that my real job title is Solutions Magician, or if I’m feeling really generous, go on a rant about how nothing in the WORLD would EVER WORK if it wasn’t for us MATRYS playing attention to the poor users oh won’t somebody think of the children, as if we were the first tribe on earth to equate simplicity with happiness.

It sucks, basically and we should all stop it. Let’s actually believe that most people in an organisation are there for a reason (most), and recognise that just because we might not personally understand the precise machinations of their daily tasks, that doesn’t mean it’s worthless. Or, more commonly, let’s stop pretending that just because you only have a simplistic view of my role DOES NOT mean it is so simple you could do it your-bloody-self. (Sorry, sore spot.)

So, to kick things off, here’s a nice, neat summary of the role of a UX Architect (yes, I have finally reconciled myself to that title. Boo.):

Ah, well, yes. Like I said, I don’t actually know. I only realised this in the last few weeks when, due to a mixture of career development and a freelance role involving selling my skills, I’ve had the ear of people who (a) know what it is I do, and can probably articulate it better than I can; and (b) aren’t easily impressed by a self-depreciating joke, which is always my fallback in these situations. People want to know, not because they don’t understand, but to check that I do.

And I do, but I’ve never had to say it. Get on with it, yes. Produce results, yes. Write documentation, yes. Change the world, nearly. But never, ever, have I had to tell someone who is positive, knowledgeable and sympathetic about my role how I perceive and practice it.

Turns out, it’s rather hard. I fluff my lines, forget terminology, ramble on failing to make any point at all. Put me in front of a client who needs a reduced version, or a testing candidate who needs reassuring, I’m fine. But with someone who knows my role inside out, I end up sounding like the feeble graduate I think deep down I still believe I am.

So next time an uninitiated bod asks me what it is I do, I’m going to practice on him. Try and explain, properly, kindly and clearly. And probably bore him to death, but never mind. I need to practice and he needs to stop calling me crayon kid. Although I do quite like that. It puts me in my place.

Bringing it all back home

Hello.

I’m in the UK. I’ve been here two weeks and haven’t properly unpacked yet. I’ve already been on holiday twice since. And -gasp- working. And catching up with people and proper beer.

Basically: sorry for the silence. I will write some proper soon, promise.

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