Phriday Photo XXII

The holidays are a great time for the family pets. The under-exercside hairy one loves having the mini-somnambulists and all the other humans around, as well as rooting around in the wrapping paper and getting his nose into all the interesting new smells.

When unwrapping presents, remember not to leave anything dangerous lying around

To view previous Phriday Photos, click here!

Miracle Or Magic?

Today, in certain parts of the world, we are encouraged to marvel at the magic of Father Christmas and in the miracle of a virgin birth, although of course we are only supposed to really believe in one of them. I don't like this contradiction.

On the other hand, if you happen to have been born in certain other parts of the world, belief in either of these (admittedly far-fetched) beliefs apparently authorises believers of contradictory belief systems to usher you towards a brutal death. I care even less for such cowardly shirking of human responsibility. I digress...

Magic and miracles. I am enchanted by these concepts but struggle to believe in their truth without evidence (the real, tangible kind). What I do know, though, is that there are some very special people in the world, capable of some extraordinary things. One of those people, "T", is referred to by the mini-Somnambulists as "Magic T" - is this because of the things he can do or his personal charisma? You'd have to ask the mini-Somns, but below I present some evidence for the former. I've heard tell that he can also enchant you with music, and heal with the power of art alone... Seeing is believing.

I wish you all Merry Christmas today, whatever that may mean to you personally, and urge you to celebrate and treasure humanity whether you consider it miraculous, magical or just plain marvellous.

Believe it or not, this is real untampered footage of Magic T* actually walking on water...

*clue: No, it is NOT Tiger Woods. Or Trywalker.

Out Of Office Notice

The Somnambulists are up an alp, with limited access to electricity. I am therefore out of the office and will return in January.

Oh, wait... No I won't.

The Black Maggot

On our spot monkey night out last week we were honing fvj's spoof-playing skills (believe me, they need honing) and then introduced him to par-100, which he was actually quite good at.

These games of course need forfeits for the losers of each round, and as a particularly stiff deterrent for losing on purpose we often play for shots of the local stomach-cleanser, Killepitsch. Noticing that the generous shot glasses were a little under-filled, and since it's the last time I'll be playing such ridiculous drinking games for a very long time, I ordered something else from the top shelf to add a little twist to proceedings.

I feel fairly confident that the resulting "shocktail", being a shot of Killepitsch plus a dash of Creme de Menthe plus a splash of Strongbow cider, is unique. Or at the very least, not widely partaken of. Therefore, being Christmas and all, I have decided to christen this little beauty "The Black Maggot." This is a nod to the dark hue, the revulsion felt when considering putting one near one's mouth, and the unsettling, wriggly sensation that something is trying to crawl out of one's bowels for 24 hours after consumption. I would advise approaching with caution...

Advent Dennis

Today's post is a brief update on Project Dennis for those who are interested. If reading about systems analysis wants to make you put pins in your eyes, I suggest you surf on to one of the very amusing blogs listed on the left...


At the beginning of this month we contracted Simplicity IT (read why, here) to build the Project Dennis public alpha site. What's a "public alpha site" you may ask (as I did)?


This will be a phase of the application that, while open to use by internet users at large, will not be marketed, will have restricted functionality and content, and will be branded differently from the beta/full site. It will contain, and allow us to test, the fundamental, innovative components that will drive the site. In particular we will be looking to refine the three areas where we feel that we are at the edge of, and perhaps pushing, the envelope: Social-networking, opinion collation & evaluation, and collaborative data structuring.


(note: no actual envelopes will be harmed during the making of this site).


During the recent workshops that we have undertaken with Simplicity we have sharpened up some of the less-well defined aspects of the project concept. These were areas that we had deliberately intended to work through with our selected developers, to draw on their expertise, and it has been exciting to bring these into focus.


We now have very exhaustive descriptions for system actors and use-cases, and Simplicity are working on the technical documentation for subsystems, entity-relationships and functional specifications. We are all looking forward to the next stage of rapid-prototyping in January, when we actually get to start mucking about with pages and buttons and stuff....


If you got through this post without dozing off, you might be interested to know that we will be looking for a number of volunteer testers in the new year to help us with user feedback during the alpha phase. If that sounds like something you would like to be involved with, drop us a line on the ATIA contacts page and we will keep you up to date with developments. The password is Ni!

The Great Escape

Doo doo. Doo doooo d-doo doo...

Farewell sausage-gobblers

Phriday Photo XXI

Last night was the Medium-Sized International Bank's colleagues holiday celebration drinks (in lieu of the politically incorrect Christmas party that was cancelled).

It was also my last chance for a farewell tipple with all my chums who I know wanted to let me know how much they have so enjoyed working with me over all these years......

If you don't get any response by midday, please send out a Somnambulistic search party

To view previous Phriday Photos, click here!

Passing The Baton

After more than 17 years in the banking industry it's time to take a break.

As someone said to me last week, in this game we count them in dog years, which makes around 122, and means I have actually been doing this for nearly 1,500 (doggy) months. And boy does it feel like it.

As the last few hours drift by there's a pleasant end-of-term feeling while I tie up loose ends. My inbox has been literally inundated with an email from a well-wisher - someone who I actually got along with in the workplace. Like a satisfied Fawlty Towers customer, I'm thinking of having them stuffed. I assume the general joviality amongst everyone else is down to the approaching holidays and the tremendous year it's been in the world of finance, rather than anything to do with my departure.

It's a real privilege handing over the reins to the eminently capable UberDevisenHandler Boy. Good luck as Global Monkey-Herder, old chap. Try to ignore the babbling, bickering baboons and draw strength from the solid stalwarts.

I'll know when you've done your time when you start a personal weblog and alliterate to alleviate the alienation and afflictions.

Number Puzzle II

I've had a couple of requests for another number puzzle, so here we go.

Answer to dan (at) atigerinafrica (dot) com, brainboxes will appear below in order of correct received responses...

What's the next number in the series?

13, 35, 57, 79, 911, ...

List of Brainboxes
-------------------
lazy - well done! (are you nocturnal?!)
70s - nice to see you on the leader board ;-)
UDH Boy - I suspect he got some help at kindergarten
trywalker - with the most complicated explanation to a simple puzzle I have ever seen... :-D
orangepeel & headteach - in a dead heat. Or so they say...
bambambam - the next one will be harder. I promise!
papersurfer - I knew what you meant... you must be distracted by something ;-)
Jay - better late than never :-))

To see previous number puzzles, click here!

Big Issues?

The Somnambulists are homeless.

Before anyone calls the RSPCA that doesn't include the mini-somnambulists, who are oop Naarth, or the under-exercised hairy one, who is staying with his best mate...

All worldly possessions are on a brace of big lorries at their first stop-over in Naughty Oberhausen, preparing to break for the border under the cover of darkness, en route to Blighty. Sparkly Aph is already camouflaged underneath a snowdrift on neutral territory, while I am in hiding in the safest place this side of the Maginot Line: Trywalker's bedroom.

The plan is to split up, leaving multiple trails, and then rendezvous just South of Lac Leman on Friday, moving quickly to another secret hideaway in Chamonix. I'll be sending delirious messages to everyone I know, the moment I have crossed enemy lines. We'll lie low (or high) there for a couple of weeks, while the minis and various other 'nambulists come and go with supplies. We may try to throw any surveillance off the scent through an elaborate ploy of repeatedly jumping on random ski-lifts.

Once safely into 2009, we'll zig-zag our way back to the escape tunnel, pausing only to thank our friends in La Resistance by spending our remaining Euros on as much of their wine as we can stuff into the Somnambulist Mothership. Then, Dionysus-willing, we'll pop our heads up on the other side, not far from the farmhouse that is to be the new Somnambulist-residence-come-ATIA-HQ...

Big Issue? Pas de problem, mes amis!

Phriday Photo XX

In any walk of life, boasting about your achievements before you have actually completed the task at hand is a recipe for disaster. When you are a high profile politician the risks are amplified many times over. George Bush declaring "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq a few years back springs to mind. I'm not sure his credibility, such as it was, really ever recovered from that moment on...

Mr Gordon Brown gave us all a laugh when he gaffed in the House of Commons this week by opening with "We have not only saved the world..." When he managed to get a word in between the delirious cackling, he explained that what he had meant to say was that "We have saved the banking world..."

Well, I am not sure whether or not the jury has returned on that one SuperG, but history will take a long, hard look at the obvious question: "At what cost?"

The smugger the pride, the harder the fall...

To view previous Phriday Photos, click here!

In And Out With The Boxes

While I'm tempted to hang around and watch the inevitable boxing match that is brewing between UDH Boy and the chap who spends all day watching the box, the time has come to depart the land of the boxheads. The movers are coming in this week to pack everything into boxes while we make sure we've got all our boxes ticked.

I'm very much looking forward to returning to Blighty, spending some time with old friends (especially my good buddy from yesterday's post, who's nowhere near as scary as I made him out to be), and doing a little thinking outside the box.

Speaking of boxes, I wonder if anyone else knows quite how good THIS feels...

Somnambulist's Inbox

Spot Monkey Mentality

A while back I spoke to a spot monkey at a large American. (I toyed with the idea of replacing the word "at" with a comma in the last sentence but decided against it). As we chatted about Yen and Yang I mentioned that I was working on a startup, and suggested that if he could take his eyes off Bloomberg for more than two seconds he could take a look at the ATIA website.

He muttered something dismissive like "yeah, maybe later. Gotta go seeya." but I know that he took a look because the next time I spoke to him he said,

"Hey, have you heard?"

"I don't know, heard what?" I replied, expecting to hear a sliver of important currency information, or some juicy market gossip...

"The internet. It's going to change our lives."

Dressed up as humour, this is typical spot monkey incisiveness, gunning for your core assumptions, probing for weakness. It's usually best completely ignored if you don't have an instant witty riposte prepared earlier. I ignored him.

A few days ago, I called again to invite my friend for a beer.

"So you're going ahead with this internet thing then?"

"Sure, I'm very excited. Hey, I may be looking for a few investors down the road. Any interest?"

"What? Are you kidding? Isn't that like 3 or 4 bubbles ago? Look, forget that, why don't you go back to painting instead. Do a picture of Greenspan, he's hot as hell at the moment. In fact, you could go for the 'bubble' theme and paint him with his pants down and a huuuuge zit on his butt that's ready to pop. Five years time you'll be at the top of the art game."

"Well, in five years I ..."

"Can't make the beer, sorry, gotta go, bye."

My American friend is a gifted spot monkey at the top of his game, and he epitomises the character and mentality of the breed. It's all about a furious obsession with the moment, coupled with an unshakeable conviction of opinion, wrapped up in the hide of a rhinocerous. The fact that said opinion can shift 180 degrees in a few minutes is absolutely irrelevant.

To most of us the Dollar, the Yen, the Pound, gold, oil, stocks, bonds and everything else are in a perpetual state of uncertain flux. They may go up or they may go down, or they may trade sideways, and we do our best to hedge our bets. To my friend, however, there is no uncertainty. The Dollar is either going up or down at any one time, and it's going to do so at an incredible rate of knots and not stop until it's worth infinity or zero, and any delay in decision-making will cost you millions at least and probably your job if you really are that useless that you cannot see the urgency of the situation, loser.

If I ever pause to wonder why I stopped being a spot monkey, I will return to this post and remind myself...

Pro Spot Monkey: Attitude included.

"Don't have an opinion? No problem, have one of mine..."

Gourd Blimey!

It's quite extraordinary what some people will do to impress their friends at dinner parties. Last night our fine hosts opened some quite spectacular wines (and made us blind taste them to prove how useless we all are at identifying them) to go with our delicious Desperate Dan sized plates of rare beef. One in particular, a 1982 St. Julien, is probably too posh to even consider gracing the pages of my fledgling wine blog.

Headteach regaled us with hilarious accounts of terrorizing bizarrely named French school children.

Orangepeel had us entranced with his poet laureatian ability to rhyme the word Chianti.

One guest brought a gourd...

An enigmatic curiousity* picked up at Borough Market

*I am, of course, referring to the peculiarly shaped specimen of the Cucurbitaceae family. The enigmatic curiousity holiding it came from Yorkshire.

Phriday Photo XIX

All is doom and gloom out there and there are a lot of people who have that sinking feeling at the moment. Remember, the old saying goes: "When the ship's going down, follow the rats."

When the rats are going down, follow the one carrying the surfboard.

To vew previous Phriday Photos, click here!

Dennissimo!

After our first workshop on Monday I was asked a question: "Is it ready yet?"

Now to be fair, the person asking the question has very little idea about Dennis, or systems analysis, or web development. Or the Internet. Or, in fact, the 21st Century. But the interest was genuine and the sentiment wholly benign, so I tried to explain with an analogy:

It's a bit like writing a book, I said. For the last nine and a bit years we have had an idea for a book and have spent a lot of time thinking about it. In the last nine months we have spent a lot of time planning the book, and today we eventually started writing. It'll take a few months to finish it and get it published.

The analogy proved effective for the circumstances, but later I thought about it and while it might illustrate the process, it really doesn't encapsulate the moment. It's much more like having stood in the queue of the biggest ever rollercoaster for nine-odd years. On Monday, with some trepidation, nerves tingling, senses buzzing, we finally, at last, took our places in the front car, lowered the safety bar and edged forward onto the first ratchet of the long climb up the steep, opening gradient....

(updates may be a little sporadic in the next few weeks as I am goin for my record score on multiball)