via Charlie Brooker | Want to read this article? Then enter your password | Comment is free | The Guardian.

Forgotten your password? That’ll be the 58th one you’ve not remembered this year, then.

In days of yore, we’re told, people had less leisure time because ­everything – everything – was a protracted pain in the fundament. Want to clean that smock? Then you’ll have to walk six miles carrying a pail of water back from the village well. And that’s before you’ve tackled the laundering process itself, which consists of three hours laboriously scrubbing your soiled garment against a washboard and wringing it through a mangle. By the time you’ve finished, it’s bedtime. Did you remember to clean your pyjamas? No. Back to the village well for you, then.

No wonder the people in medieval woodcuts look so miserable, even when they aren’t being cleft in twain by knights or dropping dead in a flurry of popping buboes. And oh how we modernites love to chortle at their unsophisticated lives. DARK AGE LOSERS PROBLY USED TURNIPS FOR IPHONES LOL!!!!

But in many ways, the rustic serf of yesteryear had a better quality of life than the skinbag-about-town of space year 2010. Computers have freed us from hours of drudgery with one hand, but introduced an equal amount of slightly different drudgery with the other. No matter how ­advanced civilisation becomes, there’s an unyielding quota of drudgery lurking at the core that can never be completely eradicated.

These days it’s commonplace to do everything online, from designing the layout of your kitchen to locating a stranger prepared to kill and eat you for mutual sexual gratification. Tasks that would have taken years to organise and achieve can now be accomplished in the blink of an icon. Or would be, if you could remember your password. But you can’t remember your password. You can’t remember it because you chose it so very long, long ago – maybe three days afore. In the intervening period you’ve had to dream up another six passwords for another six websites, programs or email addresses.

In this age of rampant identity theft, where it’s just a matter of time before someone works out a way to steal your reflection in the mirror and use it to commit serial bigamy in an alternate dimension, we’re told only a maniac would use the same password for everything. But passwords used to be for speakeasy owners or spies. Once upon a time, you weren’t the sort of person who had to commit hundreds of passwords to memory. Now you are. Part of your identity’s been stolen anyway.

In the meantime: you need a new password. One as individual as a snowflake. And as beautiful, too. Having demanded a brand new password from you for the 28th time this month, His Lordship Your Computer proceeds to snootily critique your efforts. Certain attempts he will disqualify immediately, without even passing judgment. Less than six letters? No numbers? Access denied. This is a complex parlour game, OK? There are rules. So start again. And this time: no recognisable words. No punctuation marks. No hesitation, deviation or repetition. Go.

Pass the qualifying round and it gets worse. Most modern password entrance exams grade each entry as you type, presenting you with an instant one-word review of your efforts. Suppose you glance around your desk and pick the first thing you set eyes on, such as a blue pen. You begrudgingly shove a number on the end, creating the password “bluepen1″. You submit this offering to the Digital Emperor, and he derides it as “Weak”.

You can use it if you want. It’s valid. But still; it’s “weak”. So you try again. This time you replace some of the letters with numbers and jumble the capitalisation a bit, like a chef with limited ingredients trying to jazz up an omelette to impress a restaurant critic. The Computerlord pulls a vaguely respectful face. You’ve jumped a grade, to “OK”. You tingle within.

But you can do better. Admit it: you want HRH Computer to actively admire you. You want him to give you a rosette for creating the most carefully constructed password in history, a password that isn’t merely secure, but is beautiful. A password that sings. A password to make angels weep. You will present His Majesty the Mainframe with a masterpiece of encryption, an ornate lexicographic sonata – a creation whose breathtakingly impressive elegance is magnified by the heartbreaking know ledge that no human other than yourself will ever set eyes upon it. This is your private cryptographic poem, your encoded love letter to the machine. Better be good.

So you take bold made-up words, weave them with numbers, stud the souffle with spicy CaPiTaLs and garnish it with a random string of characters carefully chosen for their memorable unmemorableness. You’ve performed reverse cryptanalysis; been a one-man Enigma machine. And your offering pleases God. He deems it “Very Strong”: his highest accolade.

Still glowing, you try out your hand-crafted key for the first time, typing it into the lock. With a soft click, the mechanism turns. Access granted. You are now part of the smocklaundry.com community. How many of your smocks need laundering? When would you like them returned? No problem. Thanks for your custom. Farewell.

Three weeks later your smocks are returned, late and still plastered with hideous stains. You revisit smocklaundry. com to protest. But you can’t remember your password. You can’t remember it because you chose it so very long, long ago – maybe three weeks afore. And in the intervening period you’ve had to dream up another 42 passwords for ­another 42 websites, programs or email addresses.

Your beautiful password is dead. It was simply too complex and too damned exquisite to live in your humdrum world, your humdrum mind. Now you must face the ignominy of clicking the password reset button for the 58th time this year. And as you trudge dolefully toward your inbox, waiting for the help letter to arrive, the cruel laughter of His Computerised Majesty rings in your ears. You have failed, human. You have failed.

Schwarzenegger’s ebook plans are not a greener option

California’s plans to drop traditional textbooks in favour of online material will no doubt spare a few trees – but Arnie should be choosing the greenest option by rolling out dedicated e-reader devices at the same time, says Duncan Graham-Rowe

via Schwarzenegger’s ebook plans are not a greener option | Duncan Graham-Rowe | Environment | guardian.co.uk .

…plus a conversation with colleagues at coffee this morning has me thinking. If the Guardian article’s references are to be believed, I can deliver you a whole range of statistical snippets. Did you know that:

• the pulping industry is the third largest consumer of fossil fuels;
• it takes 10 litres of water to make one A4 piece of paper;
• in the US alone, half a million trees are felled every week just for Sunday newspapers; 
• reading an online newspaper for 30 minutes a day produces more emissions than reading a paper version;
• the reverse is true if you read them for just 10 minutes;
• Amazon’s Kindle DX uses electronic-paper displays which use hardly any energy to maintain an image (or text) on a screen.

I’d like to know how my team can quantify it’s output. We work hard, and produce, hopefully, some good web developments.

But the team uses energy to do the development work, and then the developed systems sit on servers consuming energy, and are delivered (over a network which consumes electricity) to users on PCs which also consume energy.  

Again, I wonder, can we work in IT in a Hannover Principles (PDF) kind of way? Anyone doing this? 

For those not in the know, The Hannover Principles (Design for Sustainability) are:

1. Insist on rights of humanity and nature to co-exist
2. Recognize interdependence.
3. Respect relationships between spirit and matter.
4. Accept responsibility for the consequences of design.
5. Create safe objects of long-term value.
6. Eliminate the concept of waste.
7. Rely on natural energy flows.
8. Understand the limitations of design.
9. Seek constant improvement by the sharing of knowledge. 

Some sound airy-fairy, but check the detail. Can you argue with number 6, or 4, or 9?

We had a nice lunch (with pop), a photo op, and two podcasts were recorded: one of me, John Sotillo and Keith Mander, and the other was the team, namely Ben Charlton, Matt Spence , Matthew Bull and Matthew Slowe. 

Best bit was the opportunity to chat about what we do with external people. It turns out that what we do is good. We knew this (I think), but having it underlined feels good.

I’ll add links to podcast etc when it’s live.

(As usual) I’m no expert, but I think the HPs are focussed on buildings and objects. We build web digital applications. Each time we create new systems we’re creating requirements for more and more servers, more storage, and more use of energy.

Is this sustainable? Should we be trying to work out how to produce more information services but with less resource requirements?

Thoughts on a recycled postcard please…

Their profile tool includes data for the UK from 2008, and provides the following slices organised by age group.

Data from Forrester Research Technographics^® surveys, 2008. 

I was interviewed by Sun/MySQL for some info on how we use MySQL. I (nearly) said: “Sun’s MySQL database is the de facto standard of databases. Our staff knows it, and developers with MySQL skills are very easy to find. As developers, we’re very happy with the environment. I’d have to have a very good reason not to use it.”

http://www.sun.com/customers/software/kent.xml

the #1 most overlooked secret of marketing

It turns out to be two things: show up on time (as an individual and in the things you are responsible for delivering); and cherish my time (show you care about me and help me save time).

The second idea is illustrated by a spam example:

automate the process so three minutes of your time wastes three minutes of the 1,000 or one million people on your list

and this reminds me of a comment I read recently about meetings…

How long does a one hour meeting take? The answer is to multiply the hour by the number of people in the room. So for a meeting of a dozen people you are using 12 hours. Add in some preparation time (for reading papers) and some post-meeting activity and it quickly becomes a very time consuming event.

Google Calendar: How to Sync Any Desktop Calendar with Google Calendar

Exciting stuff I know, but it’s crazy how much time we have to spend each evening coordinating our lives.

I’ll update this post with progress. As I type, the first sync from my Outlook to Google is happening…

10.09 – the outlook-to-google sync has done 99% of it’s job with 910 out of 913 events synchronised. But the last few are taking a long time. I wonder what type of event is causing it to slow down?

10.13 – 911 out of 913

10.46 – I’m back. The icon tells me it completed at 10.26. I don’t think it’s worked entirely. Ah, hang on – just a refresh needed (I clicked Agenda and there it all was).

Win a MacBook Pro
Win this 15″ MacBook Pro

Refer a friend and it’s yours!

A new MacBook Pro costs £1300 – possibly the same as a single job advert in traditional print. But this way, SitePoint use a viral campaign technique which is well-targetted. I would imagine their job ad will reach far more suitable candidates this way.

What they don’t say is what the person who actually gets the job gets, but I guess it won’t be a PC

Oh, and if you get the job… remember who told you and let them know!

]]> http://michael.wilcox.net/2007/06/08/cost-effective-job-advertising/feed/ 0 mikeywil Win a MacBook Pro http://michael.wilcox.net/2006/04/21/dukes-homepage-content-is-not-king/ http://michael.wilcox.net/2006/04/21/dukes-homepage-content-is-not-king/#comments Fri, 21 Apr 2006 10:18:17 +0000 Michael http://michael.wilcox.net/2006/04/21/dukes-homepage-content-is-not-king/ ]]> CMS Watch points to a Duke University homepage redesign – see before (left) and after (right) snapshots:

This is a change from content-focused design to search-focused design. As a user you might find the new search version quicker, but CMS Watch points out: only if the search engine works.

The content that was there hasn’t been removed. Instead it has been transferred to a Duke Today site. This looks and feels much more like a traditional university homepage.
Judging from their redesign blog this change was made with consideration and consultation. The blog previewed two homepage designs – the comments show an overwhelming preference for design mockup 2 over design mockup 1. So why did they decide to go live with design 1? This (from the blog) goes some way towards explaining the position…

Our approach to minimialist design isn’t to say “Less is more” but rather, as the designer Milton Glaser once said, “Just enough is more.” Through exhaustive research we determined that the current approach of posting news and services on one site was trying to do too many things for too many people and as a result not effective. We’re not getting rid of the content with this new design, we’re simply shifting much of it to DukeToday where it can be more effectively managed. Recent usability test results were quite favorable.

I’m not sure they’ve made the right choice. A university homepage has many competing claims on it’s supposedly valuable space. But by choosing to move the up-to-date information to a secondary page Duke are hiding the content that is alive and breathes. I think they’re left with a homepage that may score well in usability tests but doesn’t project the image of a vibrant and busy place.

]]> http://michael.wilcox.net/2006/04/21/dukes-homepage-content-is-not-king/feed/ 0 mikeywil Duke University in 2005 Duke University in 2006