I’ve just been beta-testing the soon-to-be-released version 7 of this product.

The feature I was looking for was the ability to be able to run all my images through it, changing nothing except the dpi weight.

Doing this I managed to take images in a variety of formats from various sources (including a hi-res camera) and create a stream of Jpegs all at 105 dots per inch, and sharpened up a bit too.

The end result was an Images folder that came down from 30MB to 6MB, and an appreciable uptick in image rendering speeds.

Hexagon Global includes this step as standard in its rollout process.

TangoTools, in Seattle, WA is a small ISV that produces useful tools, (JpegSizer does much more than this).  They offer good value, and have a human face.

Look out for JpegSizer v.7.0 when it is released.

Hexagon Global Corporate Enterprises has this week rolled out the Q209 release of their flagship product ‘Dolphin.’  This is a Beta release, which was scheduled for Q2 (April, May June).   To-date all releases have been on-time and under budget.

This release features:

1. A strong AJAX presence in the UI.
2. A new jobs-site sampler website, which shows off the Ajax partial-postback feature.
3. A complete re-design of all pages.
4. Enhancements to the RSS Feed Concentrator.

Screenshots are displayed in the photo gallery of this blog.

The caveats with this release are:

1. It is best viewed in IE7.  Cross-browser compatibility is slated for later in 2009.
2. A lot of the functionality requires users  to create themselves a free username on the site and log in using it.  Anonymous users only have access to a small subset of features.  There is another class of paid-for site membership with access to value-added services like the upcoming sharemarket tipster product.
3. Currently a lot of the content on the site is pro-forma content not intended to be taken seriously.  The site is intended to showcase our capabilities.  This is only the second quarterly release of the product.  We have big plans for it.

In line with our product road-map, the Q309 release (July) will feature:

• a sharemarket tipster system (for our members only).
• a sample e-commerce site for the hospitality industry.
• to-do list functionality.

Development of these features has already started.

Check it out here.  All feedback gratefully received.

Manchester United are seeking a replacement for the embattled US banking firm AIG, which has confirmed it will not be renewing its sponsorship contract when it expires next year.

Current front-runners for the contract are said to be Air Asia, Sahara, and Saudi Telecom.

Hexagon Global Corporate Enterprises briefly considered the opportunity:

However four considerations decided us against it. 

• We at Hexagon are perfectly happy with our corporate sponsorship of the Hector’s dolphin, and other endangered sea mammals.  This campaign is far more in line with our corporate values.
• The name is too long to fit comfortably on the shirts.
• Endangered dolphins have never been accused of being overpaid rock-stars who fall over in the penalty box far too often. 
• Hexagon Corporation’s business proposition is around offering good products cheaply; being unassuming; and doing business completely without guile.  In this context association with Manchester United would be ‘off message’ for us.

The rarest dolphin in the world

 

"The Zimbabwean acting finance minister Patrick Chinamasa has allowed Zimbabweans to conduct business in other currencies, as the local currency continues to inflate at an alarming rate..." -- BBC

Got your attention?  This is the subject that everyone has been interested in for some time now, as Web 2.0-based changes to the way that we all work, become reality and drastically change the landscape of certain industries.

At a recent Mensa lunch I found myself sitting around a table with a property developer, a graphic artist, a childcare entrepreneur, various IT-type people, and a web marketer.  And one heck of an interesting conversation developed!

1. Graphic Design

I suggested to the graphic artist that his industry was ‘Balkanising,’ and he agreed that it had already become a cottage industry.  Changes in desktop computing power and bandwidth speeds meant that there was no longer any compelling reason for a graphic artist to go to work, when he or she could pretty much do everything from home, direct to the client. 

There even is now, in that industry, the development of suburban hubs, with leased office space, a large colour printer, scanners, cleaners and support infrastructure, for 10 different independent business entities to use on a shared, hourly-rate basis. 

This seemed to me to be a sign that the industry had spun out to the limit that it possibly could, and was coming back to some slight form of agglomeration for practical reasons.

2. Software Development

It seems to me that the Software development industry is now following the same trend, where, thanks to changes in technology, skilled individuals have access to all of the information and tools to do a better and more productive job from home than they would from work.  There is a similar analogy to the hubs above, where a number of practioners might join together to bid on a big job and deliver scale, much in the same way that two firms of bricklayers might join forces to bid on a big bricklaying job.  In SD there is some minimum infrastructure required, but especially for web-based development, a lot of it is free these days.

Of course low barriers to entry mean commoditisation, international competition, and a ‘race to the bottom’ as Harvard Business Review describes it.  If I can lie on my couch with a laptop writing software, and with instant access to the best technical documentation from the vendors and from Amazon, then so can gifted young (English speaking) entrepreneurs from much lower-cost countries than this one.

Fortunately I think that there is a competitive advantage for those of us who have already received a high-quality education and many years of commercial experience, and who don’t have personal or financial liabilities, and who happen to live close to a ready market.  But to what extent does this mitigate the ‘off-shoring’ phenomenon?

 3. Web Marketing

I guess that points 1. and 2. above are just so much motherhood-and-apple-pie to most of my readers, and I could also mention bookselling, real-estate, recruitment, dating and other industries that have been changed forever by the coming of concentrator websites.

But the leading edge of this change-wave and the promise of this post, is in Web Marketing.  Simply stated, the problem is, “If a google search for my services in my city returns in excess of two thousand hits, how is any given customer going to find me on the web?” 

Obviously the old-fashioned values of quality, customer service, good word-of-mouth, repeat business, and good value for money are crucial differentiators in such a market.

But as Jeff was explaining it to me, there are a number of things that a skilled web marketer can do for you:

Firstly, an insightful use of google analytics will be able to show you where in the decision-making process that people are, when surfing to your site and then on somewhere else.  You can also see if highlighting different concepts or themes on your website will cause differences in buyer behaviour.

The you can build buzz by answering questions on Yahoo answers, or other industry-specific forums.

These days it is not just about raw hits, but about the value of each hit, and the focus of the web ‘reach.’  At what stage in their buying decision-making process are consumers when they arrive at your site?  Ready to click <Buy>?  Or just surfing?

In this respect Facebook ads, seem to me to be particularly interesting. I never click on a banner ad or a pop-up, but I am quite interested in the facebook ads, because they seem to know a lot about me, There are ads for triathlon training clinics, web design services, and rooms for 50th birthday celebrations.  All are relevant to me.  A chap in Canberra was recently served with a summons via facebook, which raises the concept of being ‘poked’ to a whole new level!

On social networking sites you can join a group, or become a fan of something or someone, and this is all good marketing information.  Even occupations, and those of your friends.  And the interests in your ‘Crowd Cloud.’  This is all crowdsourcing to web-based market-researchers. 

I don’t find it intrusive or invasive, I find it useful to know what my purchasing options are; certainly they change rapidly.  In fact the entire field of web marketing is changing so rapidly that only the dedicated professionals can keep up with it.  One emerging trend now are the so-called ‘velvet rope’ networks, with defined membership criteria and a defined networking purpose.

Here is a shout-out to Jeff at http://theonlinecircle.com there are lots of more good ideas on their web-site, and for the real good ideas there is a price, as you would expect.  Though I am surprised about how much is available for free download in their web-marketing toolkit.  Like all good marketing it is still a stage-gate process of objectives—research—strategy—execution.

There is much more: viral marketing, competitor analysis, thought leadership, SEO, twitter…  What a fascinating, rapidly-evolving and vitally important new field.  One well-worth understanding and using.

…The Recruitment Interview

… Thoughts on Joel Spolsky’s book “Smart and Gets things Done.”

In the appendix of this book, Joel Spolsky lists twelve questions that he advocates technical staff should ask of the hiring company, as an acid test of whether they are any good or not/ whether you want to work there or not.

His questions are:

1. Do you use source control?
2. Can you make a build in one step?
3. Do you do daily builds?
4. Do you have a bug database?
5. Do you fix bugs before writing new code?
6. Do you have an up-to-date schedule?
7. Do you have a spec?
8. Do programmers have quiet working conditions?
9. do you use the best tools that money can buy?
10. Do you have testers?
11. Do new candidates write code during the interview?
12. Do you do hallway usability testing?

I would suggest that the questions are just as valid for a software project manager, or a development manager, to decide which processes are missing/ need to be added, and why?

Having seen a couple of companies recently that prioritised new feature development ahead of defect resolution (ie, violating number 5 above), I am well aware of how the defect rate can shoot up, and how much time and effort stabilisation can take when done later, if at all.  It has a direct impact on the morale of the team if the product is flaky, or if there is a ‘throw it over the wall’ culture.  I once heard an emotional Russian engineer in the testing lab shouting that this practice was akin to 'stepping over dead bodies on the way to my desk!'  Of course there are always good business reasons, like the feature has already been sold to customers, or whatever.  But still, standing back and taking a long view, it seems to me that rule 5 is very important and it is good to see it written down.

This is a good list, and it is surprising, especially on the Web side of software development, how often they are not done.  Thirty years of experience in the industry seems to have been ignored by the new breed of startup, because they can.  New, young developers are graduating every year with new hands-on skills.  And the venture capital is there for new webby startups.  There just may not be anyone around who has been through the pain of not using source-code management, of not doing daily builds, of having a spec that is something more than some UML-ish-looking drawings on napkins/ whiteboards and a list of bullet-points.

A developer who does his own proactive hallway usability testing is a rare and thoughtful individual with high personal standards.  I have met one or two. 

But I wonder if you can really ask these questions in J.I.’s if you really want to get the job?

• A candidate once asked us if he could taste the coffee and check out the comfort of the chairs before committing to come on-board.  We just said, “Don’t bother.  If those are your main concerns then your concerns are at the wrong level.”
• I heard of another candidate for a PM role who said something like, “Before I can finally commit, I will need to open your company’s books and see for myself the viability and profit expectations…”  The interviewer marked him down for this, writing on his resume something like, “Who the hell does this guy think he is?”
• An accountant who had refused to sign off on the company report at his previous company, because of his integrity, fiduciary ethics and refusal to mislead the shareholders.  He also didn’t get the job because the hiring manager said to me, “I thought to myself, ‘Well how’s he going to go around here then?’”
• I once asked the owner of a small software company (having been recently burned in this regard), whether he was making fair and reasonable profits, or if he was in business to gouge his customers and then flip the company for a large sum in a few years time? 

He seemed to get quite annoyed and told me that it was damn hard work being an entrepreneur in this market, and he wasn’t doing it for love. 

I think the subtext was that he wanted a project manager, not some smart-alec who was going to critique his business model, cost-structure and terms of trade.  Needless to say, he found someone ‘better.’

Lots of the best small, innovative, creative software companies are run by entrepreneurs who are hugely leveraged, ‘operators,’  with little knowledge about best practice in SD and little patience for it if they can’t understand it, or if there isn’t a direct link to NOPAT (nett operating profit after tax).  As the saying goes, “It’s my business, so it’s my business!”

So, I am loath to appear like a pernickety, ‘problem’ person when I am meeting new people, especially ones who might like to enter into a business relationship with me.  But at the same time, it is of vital importance to be able to tell what one is getting oneself into, and it would be naive to expect that the people on the other side of the table are just going to tell you.

Joel Spolsky has his own software company, so I imagine that he isn’t going for many interviews these days.  Even when he was, he was known as a former Microsoft go-to-guy, so he probably could go into interviews and say “What are you prepared to offer me?” or the like.

For the rest of us, it’s a bit of a unstructured problem, that we can only attempt to mitigate with experience, the informal network, and a lifetime of trying to get on the high-power rather than the low-power side of the table in these situations.

An old grocer once said to me, “You’ve got to prove that you can deliver the bread before you start asking for jam.”  Assume nothing and deliver results, then (maybe) things may get better. Or they may not, and you may wind up rueing the day that you didn’t ask the question…

If any of my readers has any experience of using the  above list and asking the questions, please comment and let me know how it worked out.

The nations of France, Spain and Portugal have as many immigration officials intercepting them and sending them to processing centres, as the US has on the Mexican border.

Today, the European Union has opened its first Africa-based jobs centre, in Bamako, Mali.

The South-North drift, aka: the war for talent, has been going on for about a decade now (I mean in appreciable numbers, not just taxi drivers).  It has thrown up some surprising  epi-phenomena, for example Malawi has had to import non-English-speaking doctors from surrounding countries, because all of the Malawi-born (English-speaking) ones are now practicing in the UK.  So many Swahili-speaking doctors are now being drained out of East Africa to go work in Malawi...

The EU was, last year, widened to include Ukraine, Estonia and Lithuania.  If nothing else, this helped with the human trafficking of young blondes from Moldova into the sex industry of Western Europe, and further extension of smuggling and organised crime out of the East.

In the UK, attendance at Catholic Mass has spiked up in recent years due to the large numbers of young Polish tradesmen now living and working there.  As opposed to other waves of immigrants, these young Poles are there to make a lot of money for a few years, and then to go home and get on with their lives. 

Europe especially, used to be the stock example of what economists call 'labour market rigidities,' often because of language difficulties, but it has been nearly 20 years now since the Maastricht Treaty and the Erasmus Project, so the new generation are way more mobile, more multi-lingual, and less hamstrung by the nationalisms of their parents.

Another epiphenomenon would have to be the third-generation muslims in Paris and the cities of Northern England (Bradford, Oldham, Burnley), rioting because they can't get a job, protesting that they are as European as the next man.

In the Benelux countries, a Belgian friend recently told me,  illegal immigration has proceeded to the extent as to almost push a small country over.  In the Netherlands the number of citizens under the age of 20 who were born there, is now less than the number of citizens under the age of twenty who were born elsewhere.  The older, voting, dutchman can see the future now, and he doesn't like it.  This is why issues around Pym Fontein and Ayaan Hirsi Ali have become so heated.  Also there are discussions now in the Netherlands about whether the values of North African Islam are compatible with the values of a liberal, 'Enlightenment,' welfare state.  At the back of these debates is the question of national identity for small European countries in the 21st century.

In 2006, a group of illegan Chinese were drowned, cockle picking in a strong rip in Morecombe Bay, Lancashire.  They were being press-ganged by a so-called 'snake-head.'  None of them could swim.  The Economist Magazine made a strong case at the time that the law should be changed to legitimize foreign workers.  Not paying them benefits, but ensuring that they could attract the minimum wage, pay Income Tax, generate VAT, be covered by OSH regulations.

I will be interested to see how the Malian Jobs Centre pans out, and whether it manages to legitimize the clandestine human traffic that is currently costing everyone a lot of money to no good effect. 

New Zealand, some years ago, introduced a scheme to allow seasonal fruit pickers in from the Islands.  This pretty-much follows the suggestions of The Economist above, and appears to have been quite successful.  No overstayers, no accidents, hard work, all fruit exported, and a seasonal labour shortage averted.

Australia is now in discussions about a similar scheme.  The PM opened discussions on the subject at APEC recently.

Historically, these sorts of schemes have not worked so well.  I am thinking of NZ bringing in large numbers of Islanders in the 70's.  And I am thinking of the UK doing the same thing with West Indians in the '60s.  On both of those occasions, disorientation, bitterness and illegality on both sides.

I would like to think that we are in a new generation these days, and that these sorts of programmes to help with labour market flexibility (not to mention giving everyone a fair go, no matter where they happen to have been born), will work well and productively. 

The other possibility is that they will turn into a new, 21st Century, legal serfdom.   

I also accept that integration needs to be managed at a governmental level with muscular regulation.  Just opening the front door and the back door, and saying "Let the market decide," is a recipe for disaster.

It will be interesting to see how the EU Jobs Centre in Bamako pans out.  And if the world can solve the issue of the South-North Divide creatively.

   ...Askin the big questions, here on the new Salon.com...

It is a time in world affairs where there is very little to inspire, to believe in, or to get behind.  The news politically, economically, socially and even environmentally seems so much of the same-old, same-old.  It is a time of uncertainty, worry, miasma and disaffection.  Or so it seems to this commentator.

This column makes a point to look for and to congratulate good men as it runs across them.  See last year’s post "Well Done, That Man!"  Every now and then we espy some small signs of hope, progress and downright goodness that should not go un-recognised.

 Mal Brough is a good man. 

It was Mal who prevailed upon John Howard to do something about the state of aboriginal people in NT and QLD.  He was at the time the Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs and the Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs.  Though there may be different positions on whether the intervention was too heavy handed or not, Mal should be praised for realistically taking the bull by the horns and trying to clean up what was a shameful situation up there in the top end.  Doing some significant good for the country and the aboriginal people.

The Queensland Liberal Party is known as the Pineapple Party, and Mal fell afoul of the factional infighting that went on in that party recently, prompting Aussie sub-editors to write headlines stating that he had gotten “The (B)rough End of the Pineapple.”

What really inspires is that, now out of politics altogether, Mal continues on full-time, working for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders for free, because he believes in it.  Always has.  It was never about political capital for him.

‘Twiggy’ Forrest is a good man. 

Twiggy has no sooner managed to get the first boatload of Fortescue Metal’s iron ore onto the high seas (by building his own railway line to Port Hedland, breaking the Rio Tinto/ BHP duopoly in the Pilbara), than he forges an alliance amongst the mining companies in WA to deliver 50,000 jobs to young aboriginals in the area.  Thereby effectively breaking the welfare dependence cycle that is at the heart of many of the problems.

There is a development theory that states that the effective change agent will be a persuader, a mobiliser, an influencer and an entrepreneur, and probably an national of the host country.  Well cometh the time, cometh the man.  So impressed!

These two guys would make me proud to be an Australian (if I was one).

Somewhat less impressed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and their recent sponsorship of “Banking Services for the World’s Poor.”  This seems to be a spin-off of the Muhammad Yunis, micro-credit initiative which won him the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006. 

There may be some issues with Bill and Melinda’s latest billion-dollar sponsorship:

• The telecommunications infrastructure in most developing nations is not sufficient to support efficient banking services.
• Countries with exchange controls and non-convertible currencies tend to route all foreign aid disbursements though the Treasury, where a lot of it seems to get lost/ muddled/ re-routed.
• Due to corruption and insufficient audit, even local banks seem to wind up as money-making schemes for the branch manager.  When you notice that the clerk at the Forex desk owns a tourist company with ten Land Rovers in his spare time, then you have to wonder.
• If the difference between the official rate and the black market rate is sizeable, then you just know that a lot of poor-but-bright people are going to go into black-economy arbitrage in the back streets and cafes.
• In an environment of raging (20%-plus) inflation and frequent devaluations, anyone coming into a bit of money is better off spending it immediately on something that will hold its value.  Building products are often favoured: concrete blocks and roofing iron seem to be one of the best hedges against inflation.  No-one would leave their money in the bank.
• People’s behaviour is based on expectations and it takes a long time to change expectations.

Bill seems to have a Western rich-man’s view of it all.  Surprising, he has always seemed more canny than that at the helm of Microsoft.

I recently attended this great course in Sydney.  Rob Posener of PMComplete Pty Ltd. runs this one-day course, a couple of times a year, under the auspices of the Sydney chapter of PMI.  It is about the management of customers, vendors, and subcontractors.  I recommend it most highly.  It is well worth the money.

Learning #1 – Is there such a thing as truly fixed-price?

My first learning came from a PM sitting next to me.  He was customer of software vendors, and he made the statement that, in his experience  there is no such thing as a fixed-price contract. 

He has come to expect either a flood of rather-more-expensive change requests in the fourth quarter of the project, or else some approach along the lines of, “mate, you have to give us something to keep us going…” or worse a threat, “you stop paying, we stop work!”

The wise PM in this position, when accepting a fixed-price quote, knows that, although theoretically he now has a handle on his risk, in actual fact he does not, and provisions for additional contingency budget accordingly.

Learning #2 – SCAMPI Assessments for CMMi

For some reason I had thought that you could only publish your number, and that it was only a formal evaluation, if you paid lots of money for the full A-class assessment.  This is not so.  Self-assessments are free, and just as useful.  I intend to be carrying some of these out in the future, as a driver for focussing the organisation on organisational maturity.  I just found out this hugely useful fact over lunch!

Learning #3 – Games Customers Play

This excerpt from the course material was a joy to read.  It reminded me so much of a certain Sydney-based CTO of recent acquaintance.  The excerpt is copyrighted to PMComplete.

“Some of the games that clients play include:

1. I’m the client.
2. Cheap shots and barbs:

• You lack a sense of urgency.
• You do not take end-to-end ownership.
• You are not putting your best people on the project.
• You are being negative.
• You are not acting like one team.
• You are creating a “them” and “us” situation.
• You are acting unprofessionally.
• You system is counterintuitive.
• You should be using RAD.
• Your credibility will suffer.
• You are acting inflexibly.
• You are very hard to do business with.
• You are a roadblock.

3. Wanting to micro-manage the subcontractor’s, vendor’s and supplier’s aspects of the project.

     Time

• Wanting to eliminate all contingency from the work plan.
• Wanting to see the subcontractor’s vendor’s and supplier’s detailed schedule in softcopy.

     Cost

• Wanting you to eliminate all contingency from the financial management plan.

     Resources

• Wanting to control who is assigned to work on which tasks.
• Deciding if the vendor can use subcontractors.
• Wanting to review detailed timesheets.
• Wanting to interview subcontractor’s, vendor’s and supplier’s staff before they can be assigned to the project.

     Technical Performance

• Wanting you to eliminate all contingency from the requirements.

4. Screwing estimates, prices and fees down.

5. Approving and paying invoices late.

6. Always blaming the subcontractors, vendors and suppliers.

7. Taking the approach that, ‘supplier baiting is one of life’s few remaining pleasures.’

8. Not trusting the other party (and telling them so).

9. Not meeting their responsibilities:

• Requirements specification not available on time.
• Asking to do work in parallel (eg, requirements not complete, but asking that  you start design/ coding anyway).

10. Remember, the client may ask you to do them a favour, but when the project gets into trouble they will forget that you did this for them.  Most projects get into trouble this way: The project manager being a nice guy, and then the project goes off the rails.”

(end quote)

I swear, some of the people I’ve had to deal with must have had that list pinned up next to their desks while they were making the conference-calls.  And why do they do it?  Because it works. 

What’s wrong with working hard and telling the truth?  Isn’t that a good way to run a project?  Sigh!

The great value of this was to see written down all the things that I always suspected.  There are lots of differing views out there as to what good project management is.  If the customer is being like this, then is bending over backwards for the customer the best response?  I think not.  You need to find customers that have a compatible way of doing business with your company.  And nice if you are in the financial position to be able to do so.  Otherwise it can be really hard yakka…

PMComplete also runs some form of career mentoring for project managers.  I think that I might take advantage of that in the future. I think that I am nearly ready…

‘The Medium is the Message’ – Marshall McLuhan

Here’s a screenshot of my laptop running PressReader, reading today’s Weekend Australian.  I could download the whole paper for free, in fact I think I have subscribed to the Weekend Australian now, so it may well keep downloading them every weekend for me, tivo-like.

Just the thing for commuting, especially by plane.  Nothing worse that getting on a plane in the early morning, and not being able to get a decent paper off the cabin staff, because they are only for business-class.  Plus it would be downright restful to read it en-lappy rather than trying to fold a full copy of a broadsheet newspaper up like origami, as you do.  The interface is really quite nice and natural, there is a pop-up toolbar at the bottom, optional thumbnails down one side, and it pops-up partially-trimmed headings in little blue bubbles so that you don’t have to use the touchpad too much.

Kindle, as you are no doubt aware, is only available in the US at this time.  People say it’s pretty good.  But it’s also pretty expensive, and I've no idea what a broadsheet newspaper would look like on such a small screen.

Enough about the medium.  I stumbled over PressReader because I was looking for this picture of an espaliered-apple walk that I think I will build.  It will be Mike’s little folie until the apple trees grow big enough to cover the frame and deliver the profusion of apple-blossom and scent. 

But imagine walking through a well-tended apple-walk.  Almost ancient-Roman in terms of the garden being planned to delight the occupier.  They also say that figs respond well to the espaliering treatment.  If guests or passing schoolchildren were to souvenir the odd piece of fruit, then that would be a wonderful gesture at community, as well. 

In Melbourne (provided I can find the water), then walking through an apple-and-fig walk, or even having a quiet beer with friends on a Summer's afternoon, in my scented, shady, ordered back yard, would be a good thing, no?

That would make me feel rich, even if I can’t get a Kindle.

One of the tipster sheets that I keep up with has recently put me onto Invocare.  His arguments are compelling.  One could almost say they are life-and-death arguments.

1. In times of high volatility  (like now) the prudent investor flies to defensive stocks.
2. As a defensive industry, nothing beats death!
3. There is an inelasticity of demand in that industry, which, translated out of economist-speak means that  people don’t buy more funerals in boom times, and fewer funerals in times of recession (unlike, say BMWs or luxury yachts).
4. Funeral operators tend to hold their value, being an un-trendy investment at the best of times.
5. Management confirms healthy performance (if not healthy customers, I suppose).
6. Other mid-cap stocks are facing rising costs of raw materials in times of inflation like now.  This is not necessarily the case in the funeral industry.  Presumably the cost of their raw materials is fixed!
7. Growth by acquisition, for example the recent hostile takeover of the Singapore Casket Company.
8. Invocare has latent pricing power, given it’s dominant market position.  Presumably it’s a sellers market when you have a dead body on your hands.
9. The pre-needs operation, where people pay for funerals before they die, is a higher margin business, as the money is invested in a fund with higher returns that the expected growth in earnings from the core business.

I’d like to thank this equities analyst, he is delivering on his fiduciary obligations to put his readers onto the best opportunities in the market, without fear or favour.  He played a straight bat, and accurately reported what the numbers were telling him.  For some reason I found the whole concept hilarious.  My sense of humour always was in questionable taste.

Wapenzi wa jinsia moja kukatwa vichwa

Rais Jammeh awapa masaa 24 wapenzi wa jinsia moja kutokomea

Rais Jammeh alitoa onyo hilo wakati akiendelea na msururu wa mikutano ya kisiasa nchini humo.

Aliapa "sheria zitakuwa kali zaidi kuliko Iran" kwa wapenzi wa jinsia moja na akasema kuwa atakata kichwa cha mtu yeyote mwenye kufanya mapenzi na mwenziwe wa jinsia moja.

Carey Johnson kutoka baraza la kimataifa la wapenzi wa jinsia moja alisema kuwa matamshi hayo ni ya "kufedhehesha".

"Jambo ambalo Rais Jammeh anashindwa kutambua ni kwamba asilimia kubwa ya Wagambia wanajihusisha na mapenzi ya jinsia moja na hivyo hana haki yoyote ya kuwafukuza nchini."

I was there. Made me want to run home and download Expressions Blend and get on with it.  

Saw one very good demo that one of our customers will love, and they are going to send me an email when it has been loaded up onto codeplex, so we can get it, customise it, and demo it.  So certainly not wasted time.

Also made me focus, being surrounded by a bunch of creative, goal-oriented professionals.  Always more to learn.  Made me realise that I need to use these winter nights and weekends productively to acquire skills and certifications.  

When I lived in Britain, I was a regular visitor at Hatchards on Picadilly.  Once a month I would go in there and stock up on Conrads and Gordimers and Le Carres, and that would see me through the British winter.  Now that's what I call a bookshop!

I picked up an amusing little book entitled 'How to be a Brit' by the Hungarian emigre George Mikes (pronounced Mikesh).  He has many funny jokes about the English personality, and little tags like, "Many continentals think that life is a game. The English think that cricket is a game..."  He has a whole chapter on talking about the weather.

One piece of advice that I recall was, 'If you (a foreigner) attempt to imitate the English, but don't quite carry it off, then you will wind up looking faintly ridiculous.  If you manage it perfectly then you will wind up looking completely ridiculous!'

Unlike we antipodeans, who usually will agree with a foreigner who is laughing at our quaint ways (cultural cringe, politeness, indulgence, confidence at a deeper level, or whatever it is that makes us do that), do not expect the same response from the larger economies of the world. They like foreigners criticising their country about as much as the Americans, the French, or the Germans.  Understandable I suppose.

George Mikes has a whole chapter on British sex life.  He describes a conversation about where he had written that, "On the continent people have sex-lives, the British have hot-water bottles."  Someone asked him if he thought that things had moved on since he wrote that, and he replied, "Yes, now you have electric blankets."

At the time John Major was the Prime Minister.  He would appear on the news frequently, banging on about how the Tories were "The party of family values."  But his efforts were invariably undercut by the almost weekly incidence of Tory MPs found dead in their Pimlico flat, wearing nothing but fish-net stockings and a plastic bag over their head.  Or a ballet tutu and an apple in their mouth.  David Mellor (the minister of sport and recreation, ironically) was alleged to make love to his Spanish actress mistress in his Chelsea football shirt.  And Tim Yeo (still an MP, I think), was essentially practicing bigamy, and took his wife and mistress out to lunch together on The Strand so that the paparazzi could photograph them all together like one big happy family!

And my hat went off to the English Upper-class wife. They invariably stood by their man.  Hurt, humiliated, but staring down their detractors with quiet dignity!  I didn't understand it, but I admired it.

In my team was a girl who lived in Chelsea.  Over mid-summer they discovered that the basement flat (below street level), had been let to some women who were running it as a brothel.  She did not mind, except on hot days when they opened the windows, and one could hear the men moaning as the were whipped! I was younger then, but it did seem odd to me that masochism should be so widespread.

And so I come to the Max Mosley caption competition currently running on YouTube.  The conservative press don't really know what to make of it all.  There's a strong theme of 'There's nothing wrong with that,' coming from the British papers:

• In The Daily Mail, Richard Littlejohn says that Mosley is "Just one of many to enjoy a good thrashing.  A certain type of public schoolboy has always been partial to a bit of thrashing by a female authority figure." 

• Matthew Syed in The Times declared his solidarity with Mosley, saying, "It might be argued that a bit of light-hearted bondage is very different to a Nazi-style sado-masochistic romp with five prostitutes, but who's doing the maths?"

• The Independent praised him for his refusal to bow to pressure, and asked why should deviancy disbar him from serving at the helm of Formula One?

Of course there are a lot of ex-public schoolboys working in the press too...

Is it just the weather?  Or is there something really rather odd about that country?

And my picks for the caption competition:

1. Schumacher and Mosely: Both 'Dominating' Formula One for a Decade

  2. Achtung Baby!

  3. The English Patient

  4. Mercy Mistress, Merci!

It was important to me that I pick my favourite sport back up, and that changing countries did not cause it to fall by the wayside. It has been almost two years where my total focus has been on work, tax, accommodation etc, and I'm not getting any younger.  So I needed to knock off this last race for the season, rather than wait until September for the next opportunity.

I was hugely impressed.  Compared to triathlon in NZ, there are no hills, there are no waves, the water temperature is at least six degrees warmer even on cold days.  Because of the bigger numbers it is much more organised, and there are rules around when you are allowed in the transition area  and when you are not.  There is a sticker with your number on the bike racks so that you have your own pre-allocated spot to rack your bike.  There is coffee on-course.  There is a row of portaloos rather than everyone overloading the local municipal facilities.  And a 9am start!  Luxury after all those Sunday mornings diving into freezing water at 7am.  I could see that on a hot day it might be a bit more like running through the lava fields at Kona, but gee it was pleasant.  And lots of camaraderie, lots of "Good effort big fella, we're almost there," kind of stuff.  No elite-athlete snootiness that I observed.  And in my wave, a very civilised swim. No-one swimming over the top of anyone else.  Lots of space around the first buoy.   They are all going to be fast and flat, practise your sprints!

You know that you're in Melbourne when the race briefing starts with "Does anyone know how the Hawks finished up last night?"