Dear Joel and Jeff,

You lauched Server Fault for SysAdmins, but you admit to not knowing that crowd as well as you know the programming crowd. That’s fine. But you need to find someone who does understand that crowd — and preferably already has the credibility you two have with programmers. Then you need to get him (or her) to co-host the podcast.

At the moment, your podcast does you no favours in promoting Server Fault: You constantly show little understanding of such things. The entire argument on hosting your own DNS on the most recent podcast is a perfect example.

I’m sure nobody minds if you don’t know everything, but to gain credibility for Server Fault, it needs a ’sponsor’ that can join your team — at least on the podcast.

Cheers!
Rick Measham

There’s a push on to ‘return’ to the idylic times where a man would work the farm chatting to his cows while his lovely wife baked a loaf of bread (probably with a dab of flour on her nose) while a pail of milk (direct from the aforementioned cows) stands on the bench beside her.

There’s a push on to do-it-yourself. To be handy around the garden and home. To plant one’s own vegetables and to bake one’s own bread.

But is that really good for the environment? I doubt it (though I haven’t done the research to prove it)

See, if I run my oven for long enough to bake a loaf of bread it would use N units-of-energy. But the oven has just a single loaf in it! It’s big enough for four such loaves, and while it will take more than N units-of-energy to bake four loaves, it wont take as much as 4N units-of-energy.

But at the evil factory down town, you can be absolutely certain that they maximise the number of loaves in each oven to reduce (dollar) cost to the lowest possible value. Reducing dollar cost means saving energy where you can, and that’s good for the environment.

Factories are really good at saving costs. The milk factory that takes the raw milk from all today’s cows pastuerises the milk in enourmous vats, again carefully calibrated to steralise the milk at the lowest possible cost. If every farmer was to do their own pastuerisation, the cost would go up. Not to mention the cost if everyone had their own cow and had to do their own pasteurisation, homogenisation, skimming, churning, curdling and every other process milk goes through before we consume it.

Let’s think back to our idylic couple. Was it really that good? Of course not. The guy out in the fields is using a hand-plough behind a couple of flea-bitten old horses that don’t want to work at all, let alone go in straight lines. He’s blistered and tired. He doesn’t come in at the end of the day all pleased with himeself for his “hard day’s work”. He comes in expecting a meal then goes to bed, just to wake up before dawn the next morning just to do it all over again. Day after day.

She’s in the kitchen making bread with one hand while keeping an eye on the boiling kettle full of clothes and nursing the new baby on the other hand.

So where should our environmental desires be focussed if not at the factories?

I’d suggest the farm. While there’s been incredible change on the farm in the past century and even the past hand-full of decades, there’s still a long way to go. Imagine if we brought the full impact of modern technology to the farm rather than praising it for it’s rustic past.

Let me design just a couple of machines that could be used on every farm. Maybe they exist, but somehow I don’t think they do. Or at least they haven’t been taken up yet by farmers. Their sons or their grandsons will be the ones ready for the next major shift in farming.

First invention is the automatic weeder. Think of it as a Rhoomba for the farm. The “Weeda” hangs above a crop, is powered by solar panels and travels up and down the crop day-and-night doing the weeding: removing weeds increases yeilds. However the device doesn’t spray chemicals onto weeds (though it would have the precision to do so) instead it carefully plucks the sprouting weed before it gets a hold. We have this technology. A camera and pincer would travel up and down, back and forth, scouring the ground for weeds. The camera would know what was a sprouting weed and what was a crop. We have this technology already — we use it to stop terrists at airports and known-to-be-felonius-teenagers at shopping centers. So we’ve removed all the weeds, and done so using the power of the sun.

Next invention could even be mounted on the same boom arm, but it does the totally opposite job. This device finds the crop and waters it. At the moment, we water crops using massive irrigation sprinklers that spray water in unmeasured, uncontrolled relatively random patterns. But why not use our recognition systems to identify plants we do care about and use sensors to determine the exact amount of water each-and-every stalk of wheat needs? We can measure the stalk density to determine if the plant is too dry, and check the ground to see what water the plant has available. Now we stop wasting any water whatsoever. Every drop is used to make sure each individual plant is the healthiest it can be. And we stop watering weeds.

One last thought comes to mind:what if we pluck the weeds and put them in a special hopper. As the sun hits the hopper, it bakes the weeds. We then capture the escaping moisture and feed it back to the plants. (OK, I’ll admit that the cost of this reclamation scheme would probably well outweigh the reclaimed moisture, but we do need to kill those weeds somehow, right?)

That’s my two-and-a-half inventions. Have I sparked any in your head? Do you agree that farm life wasn’t to idylic and that baking bread at home isn’t as environmentally responsible as it feels?

Forgive me reader, for I have sinned. It’s been some time since I last posted to this site.

I haven’t stopped writing, but instead have been trying to ’seed’ my new site with content. There’s only so many words in my head at any one time! Anyway, it’s now ready to be revealed to the world.

A year and a half ago I was promoted into management at the company I work for. And then I was left to work it out for myself. Thrown in the deep end.

I’m a resourceful kind of guy so I managed to find many resources to help me become the best manager I could. The more I studied the topic, the more I wanted to have my say on it too. I wanted especially to talk about people management (leadership) from the ‘vertical’ slice of Software Development. That’s what I’ve done as a career for many years, and it’s who I’m now leading. So, without further ado, I present http://geek-herding.com

While this blog will continue, I’m going to be restricting it to thinks that aren’t work related as I want to really push Geek Herding.

I’m interested in your feedback, though if you’re not in the software development industry, or interested in leadership and people management, it might be a little bit boring.

On the other hand, if you’re interested in either topic, I’d love it if you:

• Read the articles
• Commented on the articles
• Promoted the articles (if you’re tweeting, please use #geekherding so I find the tweet!)

Even better, I’m going to be looking for Guest Bloggers soon, so have a think if you have anything you might have to say on the topic.

Marketing: I have an idea for a new product, how long will it take to build?

Developer: We’d need a more complete spec.

Marketing: OK, but just putting your finger in the air ..

Developer: Maybe two weeks, so call it four.

January 23, in the customer newsletter:

Marketing: Our new product will be released on Feb 28th! Huzzah!

Sound familiar? I’m sure this happens again and again in software development companies the world over. I’ve certainly experienced it many times.

The problem, of course, is made up of many issues. Here’s three obvious issues:

1. Marketing just have an idea for a product. There’s no detailed spec. There’s no screens, no functional spec. yet they expect an estimate.
2. The developer provided an estimate without qualification
3. Despite a long history of ‘bad’ estimates from developers, marketing believed the estimate and passed it on to customers.

And here’s two more not-so-obvious, but very real issues:

1. The estimate give by the developer is given in isolation. Even if accurate, it totally ignores existing workload.
2. A new product (or feature or enhancement) isn’t just about writing code.

Fixing the problem

Let’s break the problem down into the listed issues and explore each of them.

No detailed spec.

When there’s an idea mooted, a lot needs to be considered before going to market. But if you were to write a detailed spec for everything  –  including mockups for every screen and functional detail for every action — without discussing the basic concept with every stake holder, you’d often waste a lot of time.

So the normal practice is to discuss the idea with each stake-holder to get a basic understanding of the project.

Imagine you rang someone to build you a pergola and you had not measured the size you wanted or considered any of the details like materials. Before you go ahead and research all that detail, you need to know if the project is even feasible. So you ring a random builder. What’s the best way to get an estimate without tying each other down to price? I like to call it the zeroes method. ie, “how many zeroes”?  Will it cost two-zeroes? $0 to $99? Or three? $100 to $999? Four? Five?

For development, I think the best question (at this stage) is what time-unit are we looking at? Is it days? Weeks? Months or Years?

The developer gave an estimate without qualification

OK, so it’s what was asked of him. And we do like to please. At first the developer doesn’t want to give an estimate. After all, he hasn’t seen the full scope. But then he figures that marketing aren’t dumb, they know that without a full scope there’s no way the estimate can be anywhere near accurate. So he caves in and thinks about the product.

The developer’s initial thought is ‘2 weeks’. But he’s aware that things never go as planned and so ups that to a month. (Note that he’s switched units .. when you hear that happen, it’s a good sign that the estimate is just a guestimate)

At this point the developer should have said: I cannot give you any reasonable estimate that will assist with product planning without a full spec.. But I understand that you don’t want to spend the time writing a full spec if the development time isn’t feasible. From what you’ve told me *thus far*, we would be looking at weeks rather than months. That said, I’d be happy to give you a proper estimate once the full spec is clarified.

Marketing believed the estimate

This is probably the biggest mistake in this scenario. Marketing always want estimates. Developers give estimates. Development always takes longer.

There’s a two-fold problem here:

First, marketing treated the estimate as an actual estimate rather than as a finger-in-the-air estimate based on a totally inadequate solution description.

Second, they compound this mistake by believing the number. The developer knows that estimates are always wildly optimistic, so he says “Maybe two weeks, so make it four”. But marketing should, by now, also know that anything the developer says is wildly optimistic and say to themselves “It’s always under, so let’s make it 8″.

Once both parties have over-estimated, we now have enough information to write a full spec but not enough to to to market.

* * *

Now, let’s consider those other two issues that compound the problem. These two issues exist even when the developer is making an educated estimate based on a fully delivered spec.

The estimate is given in isolation

When a developer is asked how long something will take to write, even if he has every bit of information he needs, the answer will be given in man-time, not clock-time. This means that a four-week development job will take four man-weeks. Or 20 developer-days if you prefer.

An estimate of four weeks only means “in four weeks time” when:

• he is sitting around waiting for the next project to start
• the previous project has no outstanding bugs that will need fixing
• he doesn’t need to provide assistance to customer service
• he doesn’t have meetings with his manager or team or company
• he doesn’t need to help the boss set up his new laptop
• his brain isn’t also worrying over the global financial crisis
• there are no public holidays and he has no annual leave booked
• he doesn’t get sick
• … and probably another thousand or so caveats.

When marketing is given an estimate from a developer, they need to consider scheduling as well as the actual estimate. They need to consider that the estimate is in man-days rather than calendar days.

A new product isn’t just code

This issue has nothing to do with the developer, but has everything to do with communication between marketing and the product owner (or whatever your company calls the person who manages the entire product).

If a developer estimates (once given a full spec) four weeks and the scheduler says it will start in two weeks and the developer will have around 80% of his time to give to the project, then the estimated date for completion of development is in 7 weeks time.

But that isn’t a go-to-market date. That is the date at which the documentation team can start to prepare the new user manuals. It’s the date that customer service can begin to learn how to support the product. It’s the date that user acceptance testing can begin. It’s the date from which the accounts team can get their billing systems ready. It’s certainly not the date that the product is going live.

In order to estimate the go-to-market date, every one of these (and many other) tasks need to be similarly spec’d and estimated. Will user-acceptance testing take two weeks? What if there’s serious usability problems? Does the acconts department need the developers to do some extra coding in order to be able to properly bill the service? If there’s any changes to the service after UAT, what does that mean for documentation.

So, given all that, why is only the development team expected to estimate the time to build before there’s any sort of spec? And even after there’s a spec, why isn’t anyone else expected to talk about time estimates?

Wrapping it all up

Before there’s a complete spec, any estimates are finger-in-the-air. This should never be assumed, both parties need to agree on this every time:

“I’ll give you a finger-in-the-air estimate, but I need you to understand that it is no way binding or anywhere near accurate”

Give finger-in-the-air estimates as a time unit:

“Weeks rather than months”

If there must be a number, over estimate until you have every bit of detail — on both ends:

“I think two weeks, so I’ll say four”

“He said four, so I’ll think eight”

Agree that once there is a full spec, a tighter estimate will be given, but that it is given in isolation:

“Now I have the full spec, I’ve mapped it out to take about 12 weeks to write the code. However this is 12 weeks in isolation. Experience shows that between everything else that happens, I get the equivilent of 60% of my time I can dedicate to a single project, therefore you should expect the project to go to UAT in 20 weeks.”

Acknowledge over and over again that development isn’t the only part of the project:

“While I’m happy to give you this estimate based on the full spec, we need to agree that after I’ve finished writing it there will be an undefined amount of time required to do user acceptance testing as well as sales, support and accounts product training and anything else that needs to happen before the product goes to market.”

If I haven’t made it clear already: Never assume the other party is thinking about things in a complete and rational manner. Even if you’re “just a developer”, make a list of things that need to happen after you’ve finished, before the product is released, and ask how preparation is going for each of them. You’ll earn a lot of kudos for knowing to think about these external things as well as possibly saving yourself (and the company) a lot of grief.

Time has passed and now high-fiving is the norm. It’s a great way of saying “well done” or “I agree”.

There’s also developed a guerrilla version where someone says “High Five!” and just as you’re about to make contact they yell something like “Telstra rules!”  It’s too late. You’re committed. You find yourself ‘agreeing’ to the absurd statement.

I now think that there’s not enough high-fiving in the world. High-fives cheer you up and make you feel good.

Obviously Improv Everywhere felt the same so they headed down to the escalators at a New York subway station to hand out high-fives to everyone.

You can read and see more of their high-five campaign over at the improv everywhere blog.

I hereby promise not to rant. Much.

Hey all you zealots .. give up and use tables.

If you have to have a meaningless <div>, you’re no longer semantic .. give up and use tables.

If you have to use Microsoft’s conditional comments just to get it to work in Internet explorer .. give up and use tables.

If you have to ask a chat room or forum how to get your three-column layout to work .. give up and use tables.

If you need to vertically center one piece of content against another .. give up and use tables.

If you spend more time arguing with someone than you can save by avoiding tables .. give up and use tables.

If you care so much about avoiding tables that you don’t have any time left to help people with their actual problem .. give up and use tables.

If you end up with classes in your CSS that are designed to give you the benefits of tables without using a table tag .. give up and use tables.

Seriously folks, you’re spending too much time avoiding them and proselytizing about your avoidance of them and not enough time creating useful content that the semantic nature of that content is worthless.

Update:

Woohoo! I just got banned from #html on freenode because I argued for using tables. There was no argument and no discussion. (OK, so I was mocking his inability to justify his contention, but seriously? banned?) BTW: I’m ‘Woosta’, ‘[wito'] is the zealot in question.

[22:53] <to_> which tag would you use to wrap <label> + <input> tags in a form?
[22:53] <[wito]> to_: I’m a fan of <fieldset><label><span>Text:</span> <input/></label></fieldset>
[22:54] <Woosta> I think it would be best defined by the design
[22:55] <to_> [wito]: but if you want to make input floating to the right of label in a 2 columns presentation layout, don’t you use a wrapping tag to clear float ?
[22:56] <[wito]> to_: actually, I use a display:table hierarchy
[22:58] <Woosta> just use a table
[22:59] <[wito]> Woosta: WRONG
[22:59] <Woosta> no: it works and it’s fast
[22:59] <Woosta> piss farting around with CSS is a poor use of your time
[23:00] <[wito]> Woosta: protip: you don’t argue with me.
[23:00] <Woosta> Bwahahahahha
[23:00] <[wito]> Especially not when I tell you to stop offering destructive, counterproductive advice as you are now
[23:01] <Woosta> Zealots make me laugh
[23:01] <[wito]> How about you spend some time in the quiet corner?
[23:02] <Woosta> Why me? I have plenty of time up my sleeve. I think you need the time out so you can get some work done as your stupid-ass CSS crap takes you 20 times longer than a simple table would.
[23:03] [Notice] -ChanServ- You have been quieted on #html by [wito] (wito)
[23:03] *** ChanServ sets a ban on __________.
[23:03] <[wito]> Let’s have some quiet time for Woosta

Update 2:

Found this funny mug on Zazzle

It’s a nice neat truism, that strangely bears itself out in the real world. Approximately 20% of the population pay 80% of the tax in most economies — 80% of the reward coming from 20% of the populace. Microsoft say that if they can fix 20% of the bugs, 80% of people would be happy — 20% of the effort resulting in 80% of the reward.

It even works with the most mundane of matters. Think about your wardrobe and compare it to what you wear. If you’re like most people, you wear 20% of your clothes 80% of the time and the other 80% of your clothes you wear just 20% of the time.

But I digress. Read more about the Pareto Principle over at Wikipedia.

Here’s the thing: When you’re working on some sort of project that has a finite scope, at the time you have done 80% of the work, there is only 20% of the final result in any tangible form. It’s discouraging if you only look at the result obtained, but hugely encouraging if you focus on the work left to do.

Consider all the effort that goes into planning a wedding: there’s nothing to show for it other than a pile of tick-boxes on a todo list until the Big Day when all that effort suddenly bears its fruit.

Think about installing blinds: 80% of the effort is to get the fixings in place. At this time, there’s no shade being provided by the blind, and all you can see is a pile of brackets screwed to the wall.

Be encouraged: This moment in time, when you have completed 80% of the work, is huge. Before now, every percentage of effort resulted in just 0.25% of result. From now on, every percentage of effort will result in an average of 4% of result. So it’s worth celebrating.

And if it’s worth celebrating, it’s worth naming. Therefore, let me present the story of a software development team, making a game. The story goes (you can read it at Tales of the Rampant Coyote) that the development team spent much effort (80%) just to get to the point where a triangle was rendered on a monitor. Those not on the team just saw a black triangle. They couldn’t understand how the many months of development resulted in something so simple. Even more, they couldn’t understand why the development team were so happy. But we know, right? 80% of the effort. That triangle was the 20% of result. After finally getting the triangle to render, the rest of the development was easy. As they say “It’s all downhill from here”.

So I propose that we take this story as a great example of the 80/20 rule in action and use the Black Triangle as the name for that point at which you have ‘broken the camel’s back’.

What Black Triangles can you celebrate this week? When you find one, savor it and celebrate it. Even if nobody else understands.

It’s been said* that “Lotteries are a tax on the stupid”. The premise being that anyone who spends money on a lottery ticket is just wasting their money are, therefore, stupid.

I’d like to refute that.

Here in Australia, our Tattslotto lottery requires the player to select 6 numbers from 45 to win division one. That gives you one chance in 8.1 million¹. This is approximately the same odds as tossing a coin and getting ‘heads’ 23 times in a row².

So what other forms of gambling can we think of to compare it to? Roulette has one chance in 38 (or 37) of winning ‘the big one’³. Blackjack has approximately one chance in 41 of getting a ‘natural’ blackjack⁴. The chance of getting a royal flush in poker is approximately one in 650,000⁵.

But not all forms of gambling are equal. In some, the house pays you: In roulette, everyone who bet on that single number wins 35 times their wager no matter how many people are playing. On the other hand in poker, everyone who gets a royal-flush has to split the pot between them. Tattslotto is like poker in this sense. If 20 people all pick the correct 6 numbers, then you each get one-twentieth of the first division prize.

And of course, not all forms of gambling have the same payout. Roulette pays 35:1, but the other examples all vary. Poker varies depending on the number of players and how much they’re all betting. Tattslotto varies depending on how much the promoter wishes to pay out.

So if lotteries are truly a tax on the stupid, then surely the return on investment must be so truly microscopic that any sane person would laugh and walk away.

Next Saturday, Tattslotto has a $30 million ‘megadraw’. This means that first division is $8.4 million⁶. Each ‘game’ costs $0.60 and as we said earlier, each game has a 1 in 8.1 million chance of winning. To be ‘certain’ of winning would thus require 8.1 million games at a cost of $0.60 each. An investment of $4.86 million.

Now, if I took that same $4.86 million down to the casino and spread it among the 38 ‘number’ squares I’d also be ‘certain’ of winning. But I’d just win $4.47 million.

Now, let’s flip it around. What if we put our money on a single square in roulette? Our chance of winning is one in 38. It pays 35:1, so to win $8.4 million we’d need to bet $249K on the single square. In Tattslotto, to get a one-in-38 chance of winning, we’d need to play about 213,000 games, which would cost us $128K — about half the investment for the same risk and for the same reward in roulette!

Of course, I’m ignoring that ‘difference’: In roulette, it wouldn’t matter how many other people bet on the same winning number, I’d still get my $8.4 million. In Tattslotto, we all have to share the $8.4 million. It’s impossible to calculate the number of people that will pick the winning combination, so I’m going to ignore it for now except to say that if you shared it with one other person, your $4.86 million investment would get you a $4.2 million return — which is only slightly less than you get for the same investment in roulette. Can you truly call that a ‘tax on the stupid’? Depends on the individual’s definition of ’stupid’.

However, given all this, there’s one more argument against the ‘tax on the stupid’ theory. And it’s one that can’t be refuted by anyone: What are the odds of winning if you don’t play at all? By playing a single game, your odds of winning decrease from infinite to finite.

* NOTE: The best attribution I can find for this quote is a chapter title in James Walsh’s True Odds : How Risk Affects Your Everyday Life published in 1996. It the quote really that recent? If you have an older reference, please let me know.

Footnotes

1. Odds of winning at Tattslotto are calculated by the number of balls that you’re happy to get divided by the number of balls available. For the first ball, you’re happy with any of 6 balls from a pool of 45. For the second ball, you’re happy with any of 5 balls (you already have one of your picks) from a pool of 44 (the ball that was drawn first isn’t re-entered, so you only have 44 left in the pool).This means that the chance of winning is one in (6 ÷ 45) × (5 ÷ 44) × (4 ÷ 43) × (3 ÷ 42) × (2 ÷ 41) × (1 ÷ 40) = 0.0000001228 = 1 ÷ 8145060.
2. The odds of throwing a ‘head’ when tossing a coin is 1 in 2. So as above, we divide the results we’re ‘happy’ with (heads) by the results possible (heads or tails). That is 1 ÷ 2 = 0.5. If we flip twice then we have (1 ÷ 2) × (1 ÷ 2) = 0.25. If we flip 23 times we get 0.0000001192.
3. There are two roulette wheels in common use: The European wheel has the numbers 1 to 36 and a ‘zero’ and the American wheel has 1 to 36, a zero and a ‘double zero’ (and recently, in some casinos in Australia). Despite the lengthened odds of the American wheel, the payout remains the same. So if you really have enough money to be putting $249K on a single square, fly to Europe first.
4. To get a ‘natural 21′ in blackjack you need to draw an Ace and a 10 or picture card. As the order of drawing them doesn’t matter, there’s a 4 ÷ 52 chance of drawing an ace on the first card and a 16 ÷ 51 chance of drawing a ‘ten’ card on the second. The other way around and there’s a 16 ÷ 52 chance of drawing a ‘ten’ card on the first and a 4 ÷ 51 of drawing an ace on the second. No matter which way around that is, it’s the same (remember BODMAS, PEDMAS, BOMDAS or whatever your school called it?). Of course, if you’re actually playing Blackjack then there’s at least a dealer and that changes the odds.(4 ÷ 52) x (16 ÷ 51) = 0.0241327300 = 1 ÷ 41.44
5. A royal flush is 10, J, Q, K, A of a single suit (hearts, diamonds, spades, clubs). The suit has no relevance other than it has to be the same. So for the first card, there are 5 happy cards in each suit. Each suit has 13 cards, so a successful first card is 5 ÷ 13. However after that first card, we do care about the suit: it has to be the same as the first card. So the second card can be one of the other four cards we need out of the 51 cards left in the deck: 4 ÷ 51.This means the chance of a royal flush is (5 ÷ 13) × (4 ÷ 51) × (3 ÷ 50) × (2 ÷ 49) × (1 ÷ 48) = 0.0000015391 or 1 ÷ 649740.

   Now, at this stage some of your are going to get itchy commenting fingers and want to point out that in poker, there’s at least one other person playing. This means there’s (4 ÷ 51) chance that he or she would get the second card you want and so the chance of getting your second card is (1 – (4 ÷ 51)) × (4 ÷ 50). What does this mean for the chance of you getting a royal flush? Bupkis. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. You might find out that you failed earlier, but they don’t change the odds of you getting a royal flush. Don’t believe me? Here’s a google-doc to show that while the distribution of the odds changes, the final result doesn’t. He takes a card, which might be yours, thus decreasing the chance of your flush. But he also takes a card that might not be yours, which increases the chance of your flush. (I’ll admit that I was surprised by the result, so I checked with the boffins in #math on the freenode IRC network and they agreed with me).

6. This may surprise some of the folks who have seen the advertisements for the “$30 million megadraw” but they’re not talking about first division. They’re talking about the total prize pool. First division is 28% of the total prize pool.

At first I just couldn’t understand how they made it so damned hard. Then I saw a ballot paper. For my non-US readers, each November there is (non-compulsory) elections held. It isn’t every four years, it’s every year. So how come we don’t hear about it every year? Because along with voting for the President and VP they vote all the way through many many many public officials. Can you imagine voting for the president of the schools board? Or what about voting someone onto the roads commission? That’s how it works. Don’t believe me? Check this. At the top of this particular ballot you can vote a “single party ticket”. This means you just pick “Democrat” or “Republican” rather than voting Brian L. Denman onto the Drains Commission. No wonder everyone calls themselves a “Republican” or “Democrat”. It’s too hard to be anything else!

OK so the first thing: get rid of all that rubbish. Seriously. If I don’t care who’s on the Drains Commission, why should it appear on the same piece of paper as the President of the USA?

Here in Australia, you get one piece of paper for the Lower House and one for the Upper House. For the lower house you order your candidates (about 5 or 6 normally — see above) in the order of your preference. For the upper house you can number every candidate (there’s about 120 of them!) or just pick a single party “above the line”. Sure that 120 is ludicrous, but at least there’s just two things I’ve voting for, and they are on separate pages. You then take these two pieces of paper and put the white one in the box marked “White ballot papers” and the green on in the box marked “Green ballot papers”. There’s even an official there to make sure you know your green from your white.

Once you vote for someone to hold public office, you entrust things like drains and roads to them. It’s their job to make sure the best qualified person manages the drainage. I don’t want a Liberal or Labor shill making sure my sewerage works, I want someone who has a doctorate in poo.

Next thing: Don’t do it all on one day. Sure it feels like it’s easier, but it isn’t. You’re just confusing everyone. Every 4 years vote for national politicians, the year after vote for state, the year after that for city and the left over year you can have a holiday or, if you must, vote for the drain guy.

But my biggest piece of advice is the main purpose of writing this post. Everything else is just padding because this is so blindingly stupidly simple that writing it by itself would be a waste of pixels.

Electronic voting is useful for one big reason: fast results. It doesn’t make things more transparent, but rather the opposite. Once you cast your (electronic) vote, you just have to hope that the computer doesn’t have any bugs. But at the end of the day, some dude (who you probably voted for) clicks some buttons and declares the results. And then it’s all over bar the shouting (about being removed from the electoral roll).

So get some damned transparency back into the system: voting electronically is a great idea. We should all be doing it. Fast results are good. But those results should be non-binding. They are the unofficial results.

When I click to confirm that I really do want to vote for Brian the Drain Dude (rather than Joe the Plumber?) the computer records it as an unofficial vote (for speed counting) but it prints out a slip of paper confirming my vote for Mr Denman. I’d expect this slip to have (a) the election I’m voting in: “2004 Drains Board”  (b) the candidate I’m voting for “Brian L Denman” and (c) a barcode that maps to my computer-registered vote.

Now if the piece of paper that popped out isn’t who I wanted to vote for, I go to an official and complain. They then use that barcode to void the computer vote and I get to vote again. When I’m happy that my piece of paper reflects my decision, I put it in the box marked “Drains Dude” and go on my merry way.

At the end of the day, they press the magic button on the computer and get the unofficial result. This gets reported and we know almost immediately who the winner is. But the official vote comes later. The box marked “Drains Dude” is then opened up and the votes are counted by humans. If this count disagrees with the computer vote by a given percentage, it’s recounted. If it’s still out and is independently verified, then the PAPER votes are the official vote and that result is the official result.

I’d heard of American Chopper, but I wasn’t really into the whole “Chopper” scene. I love a big-block Harley, but the ludicrous stretches, rises and rakes of these choppers just wasn’t for me. But then I ran out of American Hot Rods. I can’t remember the first bike I saw, but it could have been the first ‘web’ bike (aka the Black Widow bike). From then I was hooked. This family was seriously talented .. and just a little dysfunctional.

Five seasons later they’ve moved from a small room under the old iron works to a massive “world headquarters” via several, ever larger, other sites. You can buy their merchandise all over the world. The barista at my local cafe wears an OCC t-shirt. They count Russel Crowe amongst their friends.

Unfortunately, towards the end of S04 and the start of S05, they started to get a bit too commercial. Building bikes for corporations where the main reason the corporations was involved was to get the exposure on the TV series rather than to own a bike. I felt that corporate style-guides were dampening their creativity and talent.

I’m guessing they smelt the coffee though, because they are back. I just watched S03E26 and it was totally mad. Sure, the customer was a corporation (Schussler Creative who create concepts for tacky theme restaurants) but the bike wasn’t covered in logos. It was a fantastic interpretation of a 57 Chevvy convertible as a Chopper. This beats their web-bikes for creativity by far. This bike is truly amazing.