Aging Workforce

Ha, ha, yes there are often points of friction between older and younger members of the workforce.

 

Memory Lane

There are many moments in one's life that are memorable, sometimes for good reasons and sometimes for bad. It's often the case that we recall a precise date and time, or a specific place and associate it with a major life event or major news, for example where we proposed, where we were when we heard about 9/11 or when Elvis died etc. Such a place for me is the entrance arch pictured above. It was back in 2004 and I was working 100 hours a week building a little software company, this meant I was pretty much doing everything, and often working late into the night. 

This particular evening we had a big presentation to deliver to RBS (Royal Bank of Scotland) it was a deal clincher and it was critical that the presentation (mainly delivered by me) was absolutely perfect. Anyway, the meeting was scheduled for 6pm in the evening and the location was an office behind this archway in Holborn (the old Prudential building). We met our hosts and set things up; I started to present and about half an hour in my mobile phone (in my jacket pocket) rang, not wanting to interrupt the flow I took it out and handed it to my colleague and said "could you take that for me" he retired to the corridor and took the call, I carried on. Upon his return to the room 5 minutes later, he simply gave me a thumbs up and motioned that a message had been taken and I should continue. Eventually the meeting concluded at around 7pm, I retrieved my phone and checked the messages. 

There was only one message, from my wife, she said, "I don't want to alarm you or spoil your big presentation, but, I've just gone into labour", my wife being 8+ months pregnant at the time! I made my excuses, rushed out of the room and down the stairs, across the courtyard and up to the big metal gates (that you can see in the photo) they were closed and locked! In my haste and adrenaline flowing I simply scaled the gates and vaulted over the top onto the pavement beyond (how I didn't bust my ankles I don't know) I rushed out onto High Holborn and hailed a cab. I said to the cab driver, "you're probably not going to believe this but I need to get to the Royal Berkshire Hospital (40 miles away), as quick as you can!" Luckily he was really up for it and only charged me fifty quid, we sped through Central London and onto the M4, doing 90 mph most of the way! I got to the hospital and (amazingly) found the right ward/room fairly quickly, fortunately (for me) I was just in time, my Daughter was born about 20 minutes later. 

I'll never forget that evening, nor my somewhat devious colleague, nor that bloody gate!

UI/UX

 

One for the geeks, the evolution of mainstream software application interfaces over time..

• Assembly
• OK, C is acceptable
• C++ is bloated but fine
• Java UI on Windows is laggy
• WPF is wasteful and the text isn’t sharp
• Nah, screw it. We’ll just use use the browser.

Next stop: each app is a VM on some arbitrary OS, interpreted in WASM.

Modern Life

Amusing commentary on the degradation of our modern lives..

 

History, in a glass

I had the fortune to try this beauty the other day. It's a traditional bitter brewed from an 1880 recipe by The Kernel brewery in Bermondsey. The recipe is from the Simond's brewery who used to be based in Reading, Berkshire next to the county lock on the river Kennet. Simond's pioneered pale ales and India Pale Ales, and sold much of their beer to the British army, eventually they were absorbed into the Courage brand and their hop leaf logo (see below) disappeared in around 1960.

This recipe predates the use of crystal malt in bitter and has a much simpler grist of Maris Otter and some Amber malt, it's flavoured with traditional Goldings hops from Kent. It's a lovely beer, great body, slightly sweet with a lingering flowery and earthy finish it's quite strong for a bitter at 6.5% ABV, apparently that was quite normal for the time, I guess there were empires to build and all that!

 

Friday beer & curry

Popped into Reading yesterday (Friday) afternoon to pick up some bits and pieces and since the sun was well over the yardarm I took a detour up the Oxford road to the Nags Head for a cheeky pint. Fortunately for me they had some Verdant beers on and I tried this cask pale ale called "Penpol" (after the village in Cornwall with the same name) it's their take on a classic traditional hop bitter pale and it was a banger. Citrus back notes, bitter finish and long, great depth of flavour for a 3.8% beer. This was the first Verdant beer on cask I've ever tried and could have drunk it all night, but unfortunately, I had to get the train home and put a curry on, still, there are worse things on a Friday evening.

 

Brexit Dividend

 

Welcome to 1940's Britain, isolated and anxious..

Friday Smirk

Of course, these cartoons are actually a secular plot, hatched by deviant Atheists to eventually overthrow theocracy around the world, but for now, we just want a level playing field (and to outlaw Songs of Praise)

Brexit veg.

No problems with veg in this supermarket (today), unfortunately it's in Kherson a city in Ukraine smack bang on the front line of the war with Russia. Lucky for them they didn't have Brexit over there because our local supermarkets have bugger all!

 

Sunday Romans

Here's a rather splendid map; it shows (Underground style) all the old Roman roads in the UK. Interestingly (and what sparked my interest) we were walking along the "Devil's Highway" (track number II on the map in Orange) only last weekend as it's just up the road from our house. The route comes out of London, crosses the Thames at Staines and travels through Berkshire (Windsor, Bracknell, Crowthorne, Finchampstead etc.) to the site of Silchester (or Calleva Atrebatum as it was known) an important Roman settlement in what's now Hampshire. 

You can clearly see the route of the old road in a photo of the track that runs through Swinley Forest near Bracknell below, the road is in really good nick at this point as this land has never really been developed that much, belonging to the Crown Estate as it does.

It's amazing to think that we can still tread in the footsteps of Romans only a couple of miles from our hometown, it's a pretty decent Sunday walk too!

 

The Wall

Not many modern cities where you can wander back to the station from your meeting in a swish modern office block past the old Roman wall that used to surround and protect the same city over 2,000 years ago! Can't help but imagine what the poor buggers standing guard on these ramparts thought about being here, moaned about the weather like the rest of us I expect.. London.

 

Tuesday Titter

Saw this on the interwebs the other day, made me smile on a grey and cloudy Tuesday..

 

Hanlon's Razor

Is someone on the Times editorial team trying to be a smart arse here, or is this just Hanlon's Razor?

 

Hoppy

(an ode to hops, sung to the tune of Mambo #5)

 

Cask DEYA

While walking back to the station in London yesterday I popped into the Craft Beer Co bar on Endell street, they usually have some interesting beers on and true to form they had this beauty! "My Brain is Full of Salsa" is a pale ale made by Cheltenham guru's DEYA and was (unusually) available from cask (rather than keg) This is the more traditional serving format in the UK, i.e. allowing the beer to naturally ferment in the cask for a few days prior to serving at slightly under room temperature. The result is more best bitter like, i.e. soft, no spikey carbonation (flatter) and very easy to drink. All the flavours were there though and this example used one of my favourite hops, Simcoe, it was lush! Dank and fruity with a really lingering finish, I could have stayed for a couple of these easily but unfortunately had a train to catch, ah well, there's always next time.

 

Heady pubs

So here's a boozer with a rather interesting history. I was in Holborn yesterday walking back from a meeting in the city and passed this famous pub. It's known for being the place where the disinterred body of Oliver Cromwell was housed prior to being posthumously hung at Tyburn. Cromwell died in 1658 of Malaria spurning the only available treatment at the time which was Quinine (because it had been discovered by a Catholic monk so, not so smart then..) and buried in Westminster Abbey. However, when the monarchy was re-established in 1660 the new king (in an act of ultimate spite) decided to dig his remains up and hang them, not only that, but also to chop the head off and stick it on a spike on Westminster hall! Bad loser I guess? Anyway, the body was taken on a cart to this pub and held overnight before being taken down what is now Oxford Street to Tyburn and hung.

Legend has it however that during that overnight stay in the pub cellar the bodies were switched and the next day it wasn't Cromwell's corpse that was hung but someone else! The story goes on to claim that the actual body was buried behind the pub in fields (fields did indeed exist behind the pub at the time, and are the site of modern day Red Lion Square) Is it true? Well, there's no evidence to support this story, and people did claim to recognise Cromwell's body and features during the gibbeting, so who knows?  But, what a great tale to tell over a pint or two on the way back to Holborn station!

 

Friday Smirk

Jesus and Mo helping to confirm the circularity or their beliefs

 

Western Man

Lot of debate going on at the moment about Men, more specifically the state of their minds (generally) as it pertains to our modern, permanently wired, reality TV world. Suicide rates among men has risen alarmingly in recent years and in our own country (UK) males are roughly 3 times more likely to commit suicide than females, suffice to say, there appears to be a problem with our men. 

The media often present this issue as a choice between two extremes (see photo above) either you're a frothing misogynist or a limp gender-neutral that's in-touch with his inner Woman, men are invited to take their pick, toxic masculinity or gender-bender. Clearly this is a false choice, there are as many "types" of men as there are men and as with most things the extremes of the bell-curve are to be avoided. 

It does seem like there's something going on, youngsters, and especially young men, do seem to be struggling more than they have in the past, there is lot's of data to back this view up although I suspect many people have plenty of personal experience too. Even in the relatively small group of peers that my son and daughter know there have been an alarming number of "issues", particularly within the boys group, and the problems have mostly stemmed from a shortage of confidence and lack of positive self-image leading to depression and withdrawal, and in a couple of examples suicide attempts at age 16!

Social media doesn't help of course and young people (and some old ones!) are completely hooked on the stuff, the fish-bowl/echo chamber nature of some of the platforms can be problematic and magnifies problems that otherwise may simply pass with maturity. There does seem to be a need for kids to present a totally false picture of their lives to the outside world. I guess it's natural, the teenage years are mainly about finding out who you are and attracting potential mates, bragging and showing off (particularly on the male side) is all part of that, but the gap between reality and perception (as projected by TV & social media) seems to be magnified by the various platforms to the point where chasing the perception becomes stressful and leads to depression, as inevitably it's hardly ever fully achieved.

Is there a solution? Well, I don't think there's an overnight fix, but I do think that allowing boys to be boys (cliched as that sounds) helps, encouraging face to face interaction between peers (mates) and encouraging boys to take responsibility for things as early and often as possible, competence and showing it off is the anecdote to bedroom-bound social media obsession, in other words, the good old fashioned "hobby" needs a come-back!

Introvert File

If you’re an introvert, every party is an escape room.

Nicola, no more..

Like the famous chorus from the Proclaimers song "Letter from America", rather than singing along with "Lochaber no more, Sutherland no more", her detractors will be humming "Nicola no more". If true and she does resign because she's "had enough" I can certainly understand why, politics these days, at least in the higher echelons, must be a complete nightmare! I feel a certain sadness for her and while I don't agree with the break up of the Union I did think she represented a "grown-up" voice in a sea of childish babble during the pandemic and her stance on independence was at least solid and principled. I think the whole culture war, trans thing finally did her in. You could sense something in the air a couple of weeks ago when she had a disastrous TV interview on the whole "define what a Woman is" thing, and then had to reverse some rather stupid decisions about putting a convicted rapist into a Woman's prison (duh!) Anyway, I'm sure that on balance people will thank her for her long service and wish her well, she was no Angela Merkel but on the other hand she was no Liz Truss either!

 

Tuesday Titter

An old formula but still good to see current political controversy combined with ancient Hammers - Millwall rivalry, oh and I never realised Michael Jackson wrote that song..

 

Trick or Treat?

 

Released on this day in 1976, I was a teenager and loved this album to pieces. I remember the hot Summer that year and I also remember a lot of snow although maybe that was 1977? Anyway, I was living in Warminster, Wiltshire at the time and I recall the whole town getting "snowed in" for at least a couple of hours one weekend. All the kids at my school headed up to the downs and the golf course above the town and dug ourselves snow caves to sit in, not sure why, but it seemed like a great adventure at the time, maybe we were influenced by the lyrics of the title track, who knows.

And so we set out with the beast and his horns

And his crazy description of home.

After many days journey we came to a peak

Where the beast gazed abroad and cried out.

We followed his gaze and we thought that maybe we saw

A spire of gold - no, a trick of the eye that's all,

But the beast was gone and a voice was heard:

They've got no horns and they've got no tail

They don't even know of our existence

Am I wrong to believe in a city of gold

That lies in the deep distance

Hello friend, welcome home.

Scramble

 

The yanks seem to be shooting down a lot of UFO's lately, there's even talk of space ships and extra-terrestrials in some quarters! I must say that I'm slightly skeptical that an alien species could be intelligent enough to figure out near light speed travel to cross the vast void between our planet and theirs but then allow themselves to be caught and shot down by a fighter jet burning fossil fuel and crawling along at a mere 700 mph.

Still, we shouldn't be too complacent, I'm put in mind of this little passage..

“And yet, across the gulf of space

Minds immeasurably superior to ours

Regarded this Earth with envious eyes

And slowly and surely, they drew their plans against us.”

Chariots of drizzle

 

My Daughter spent the weekend in Scotland with some of her friends and she dropped into St. Andrews to see her Brother (who's studying there). Apparently she went for the obligatory "run" along the beach, which was made famous by the film "Chariots of Fire" (the bit where the runners are training on the beach with the stirring Vangelis music in the background etc.) The aforementioned strand can be seen in the photo above, it's a stunning place and a great walk/run, but a little hostile in February!

Maple

Had a new Siren beer last night, a rich chocolaty nitro-porter that's been spun on bourbon soaked maple wood, smooth, sweet and very tasty, and a great body for only 4% ABV, good effort!

 

Lyrical Brian

Saw this on the interwebs today, made me chuckle, nice work Brian!

 

Saturday Smile

Everyone getting in the mood for Valentine's day?

 

Other realities

Looks like the Islamic version of Romeo and Juliet ends rather abruptly?

 

Children

Read this the other day, made me think about my own children (or not)..

“Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
Which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.”

Kahlil Gibran - The Prophet, 1923

Friday Smirk

Another fine J&M cartoon today, confirmation bias has to be one of the greatest of Human failings.

 

Government policy

I see that MP Lee Anderson (30p Lee) proposes scrapping the Crown Prosecution Service in favour of a much cheaper and quicker method of determining innocence or guilt..

 

Thoughts and Prayers

You'd have thought that with the catastrophic loss of life and devastation occurring in Turkey and Syria right now that the Catholic News Agency might be headlining the suffering of the people there, but wait, this is the headline they chose to run with..

"Statue of Mary untouched in earthquake that demolished cathedral in Turkey"

Presumably the intimation here is that their God cares more for plaster of Paris statues of Jewish virgins than living, breathing men, women and children, really? No doubt they'll be sending "thoughts and prayers" next, and we all know what that really means..

 

Hitting the trail..

I had on of these at the weekend. It's a can from local brewer Elusive and is their best selling beer (by a long chalk) Called "Oregon Trail" it's a West Coast IPA that's nice and malty, fruity, dank and bitter, just as a good Westy should be! It features Simcoe hops, which are one of my favs. as well as the classics Chinook and Columbus, the result is itself a classic. I've tried this from keg before when visiting a craft beer bar in Windsor back in 2020 and it was lush then, I can confirm that it's just as good from can and considerably more convenient!

True strategy

Yep, so true, sums up UK politics ATM..

 

Two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl..

 

There's trouble brewing over at the ex-Pink Floyd camp! A recent public spat between Roger Waters and the wife of David Gilmour has got the twitteratti all in a lather, the acrid thread between the two ended in the following "no holds barred" tweet from Polly Samson, 

There's a lot of name calling going on here, I guess highly creative, rich and passionate people can be like that, although there's a long back-history of friction between the ying and yang of Gilmour and Waters. I suppose this tension has, to some extent, defined the later years and music of these rock deities. Without these two men continually suing the crap out of each other we wouldn't have had some of the great Floyd albums and concerts of the 90s or the thoughtful solo lyrics and albums of Waters, which are mostly still unsurpassed in my humble opinion, but then again, would we have had something different but equally as good or better? 

We'll never know, and judging by the venom in this latest exchange, sadly, we probably never will.

Local Cinema

Over the last year or so this vast new building has sprung up on the same office estate that my own company's HQ is located on. It looks pretty non-descript from the outside but (apparently) it's a film studio! I can only imagine what's going on inside and I'm intrigued to find out! When out walking at lunchtime I'm always on the lookout for an open door to peer through, so far no luck just darkness. Hopefully they'll do a "tour" for their (nice quiet) neighbours one of these fine days?

 

Early purple blooms

 

While out for my walk recently I noticed a lot of (Crocus) growth going on at a particular bit of scrap land under some trees on my regular route,  I commented on this particular spot last year except that post was made on Feb 17th this picture was taken on January 31st and the ambient temperature was around 10 degrees centigrade, amazing how these little flowers are hardy enough to weather frosty mornings and yet still push upwards with their purple blooms.

Beer Paradox

 

I treated myself to a couple of new beers yesterday evening while making dinner for everyone, both beers from Siren, the first called "Unstoppable Force" (6% ABV) and its alter-ego called (obvs!) "Immovable Object". 

The two beers have exactly the same malt profile and yeast etc. they just headline different hops. The first one (LHS) features Simcoe (the star) and Mosaic (supporting) and the other one Citra (the star) and Mosaic (supporting). I love Simcoe, possibly even to the extent that it's my favourite hop, but in any case I love both of these headliners. Unstoppable Force is dank, meaning "cannabis-like", piney and resinous, with a background of tropical fruits and grapefruit pith, an addictive and compelling combo, Immovable object on the other hand is much more fruit forward, mangos and lemons with a powerful hop aroma and smooth mouthfeel, a great brace of beers.

Blending in

I had a box of beer to pick up from my local brewery (Siren) yesterday so I popped over in my lunch hour to their tap room to get it. I expected things to be nice and quiet, being the middle of the day, but the bar was absolutely rammed! I hadn't realised but today is the day that the team at Siren blend this year's version of their flag-ship barrel aged beer called "Maiden". It's made from a base beer that's been aged in a variety of barrels over many years. Some of these vessels used to contain things like whiskey others things like red wine so the task is to sample the different sources of beer over time and to create a flavoursome blend of different beers and different years. I've tried Maiden many times and it's amazing, it has a complexity to it much like a fine wine, lots of layers of flavour and usually quite strong, I usually only have a 330ml bottle and savour it over a meal or with cheese etc. The photo above is the Siren tap room full of Siren employees working their way through the various candidates for blending and voting on the final mix. Good luck guys (make it a good one!).

 

School Woes

I feel for kids in schools and universities at the moment, having spent the last couple of years shut away from their mates, not taking proper exams and having to do lessons and lectures via video-links and not being able to socialise properly it was rough. The current round of teacher strikes are the cherry on the icing on the cake! My own daughter for example has no lectures at all this week, book work only. I must admit, I do feel slightly cheated that our money still flows into the coffers of the University but no one is there! (and don't get me started on wasted accommodation fees in central London!). 

It's an impossible situation, workers who haven't been give a raise in the last couple of years generally have a good case! Inflation is running riot at the moment and those people at the lower end of the salary scales will be struggling with ridiculous energy and food price rises. The only people that can ultimately be held responsible are the Government, who seem to be asleep at the wheel or perhaps are in some post-Thatcherite comma thinking that they have some holy mission to crush the unions. I don't know what the answer is, the only thing I know is that it's the consumers of these services, i.e. joe public, are the ones who ultimately pay the price, regardless of how these disputes turn out.

 

Friday Smirk

Jesus and Mo, on the money as usual, if the creator of the universe is so smart the how come he needs so much help from his followers to implement his will among a bunch of evolved apes? It looks suspiciously like he doesn't exist at all, and the monkeys with shoes made the whole thing up..

 

Clam team alpha..

Interesting fact. 

Water quality in Warsaw, Poland is monitored by a team of eight clams, yes clams! These honourable members of the mollusc family have a remarkable ability to detect toxins in their water so those smart (and cheap!) people in Poland have a group of them wired up to trip switches that trigger in the event that the clam detects poison in the water and closes, the circuit then closes and switches off the mains supply until the incident has been investigated. Amazing nature, init..

 

Smutty old streets

While walking around Farringdon/Smithfield last weekend we walked past a narrow winding street called "Cock Lane" (see historical photo above) we have a similarly named street in my local town and I'd always thought that it was associated with the medieval obsession with cock fighting, i.e. getting male chickens to scrap with each other while wearing sharp silver spurs, a horrible thought, but then again, who am I to judge the morals of my ancestors? (a fine subject for another post) Anyway, upon doing a bit of research I discovered that Cock Lane in London, back in the 14th century, was by designation of the authorities at that time the only place that prostitution could occur legally, anywhere else and you could be arrested. 

Back in the day it was common for street names to carry the label of the profession of the people that resided there, for example, Fish Street, Silver Street, Pudding Lane etc. This has lead some to speculate that the term "cock" in this context didn't mean male chicken but the colloquial version, i.e. in modern parlance, "dick". The problem with this hypothesis is that that particular slang term for your "old man (insert whatever familiar term you have here!)" didn't originate until the 1600's. It would be a shame for such a smutty and frankly interesting story not to be true, so on a bit more digging you find that the slang term for penis in the 1300's was "pillicock" so it's still possible for the story to bear some veracity if the designation was in fact a shortening of this word. 

In any case, it's fascinating that even street names in London are dripping with history, and wonderous to think about how many thousands of school children (and a few adults!) over the centuries have giggled about them as they passed by.

Wealth distribution

Interesting data here, showing the percentage of total wealth accumulated into the top 1% of a country, it's noticeable that the more despotic the regime the more of that countries wealth is concentrated into fewer individuals. The UK looks suspiciously sane, I would have thought the percentage would be higher but then we are, generally speaking, a rich nation and so it's probably reasonable. There's a few surprises here, for example Norway whose socialist Government has been funnelling the huge oil and gas revenues into publicly owned funds for years, I would have thought that would have made a big difference and also Austria that always strikes me as a fairly liberal and fair society (good health care etc.) these days but according to this have nearly a third of their wealth owned by just one percent of the population. 

Of course there is no law of physics that says wealth concentration is a bad thing per se, you could make an argument that the top 1% of the population are the only ones qualified to handle the lion's share of the wealth of a nation, i.e. they're the ones that are usually the most able and motivated to a) create it in the first place and then b) invest it wisely in order to grow it over time. However, these things are far above my pay grade to speculate on, like our weather systems, our economies are far too complex for any single hypothesis to be able to model them perfectly, or even get close to modelling them accurately, especially over the medium to long term.

 

IPA

Taxonomy of the modern IPA, I've sampled an example of every style on this chart except the "cold IPA" which was a disturbance in the force at the end of last year, most breweries did one, but only one, I passed.