I was using NaNoWriMo as an excuse really, I’d got a half-written story that I really wanted to finish. November proved a little busier than I’d expected which didn’t help, but what really put pay to my authorial good intentions was the corpse. I wanted to put the body of one character into the drain of another, but credibly getting a body into a domestic sewer system is pretty difficult. In the end I’ll probably have to make do with a piece of a body rather than a whole one, but then I have the difficulty of explaining the disconnection of one piece of corpse from the rest. I’m hoping I can use the force of water to explain the separation, but I doubt this will be feasible without some degree of decomposition which my timeline doesn’t allow.

So my latest potential best seller is sadly stalled until I can resolve my cadaver complexities and quite frankly I’m wholly disinclined to Google my way out because the search history that would entail just feels like one that’ll end up being read out in court. Perhaps Mythbusters will finally do the “Realistically using corpses in fiction” episode we’re all hoping for.

Today was “Relative Tech Support Day”. Now I’d like to be able to tell a story of amusing geriatric IT incompetence, but on this occasion it was mostly the vendor that was at fault. The website of a notable high-street catalogue emporium has a perfectly serviceable online reservation service but, somewhat absurdly, no way to alter that reservation online. Now granted there was a user error which caused the wrong item to be reserved, but without the ability to resolve the issue online rectifying it took a phone call to customer services only to be told that the problem should be addressed when the goods were picked up. So the company are actually creating work for themselves by not providing functionality for the customer to fix their own errors. They also run the risk that incorrect reservations mean stock is unavailable to other customers so sales could be lost as a result of product being “locked” for hours, whereas if errors could be immediately reversed that scenario is much less likely to occur.

Personally I’d have solved the whole problem by not shopping there in the first place.

While doodling today, I found myself designing a door knocker. The door bell currently works perfectly well, so this wasn’t from the point of necessity. I suppose I’m really just trying to find something interesting enough that it prompts me to produce a pattern and actually cast the damn thing. So far I’ve only cast ingots and random puddles in sand. But on reflection I’m not sure percussive door hardware is the direction to take because at present the front door has a glazed panel when you’d normally put a knocker. So what I’m really designing is less a door knocker, and more a glass breaking device that would not so much prompt the door to be opened as it would smash an opening for you. What I really need then is a new door, but I’m not seriously going to try casting than from aluminium am I? Even if like many of my ideas this is hypothetical, I’m pretty sure the hypothetic me isn’t completely mad.

I’m not sure I like my television imploring me to tweet. More and more programmes are displaying hash tags and it all feels a little needy. Used to create some sort of dialogue with the audience it makes sense, but without that it’s just a rather unvarnished attempt to generate interest.

The BBC do at least seem to be engaging with twitter insofar as at least some of their output have twitter accounts that do interact with other users and even retweet some of those using hash tags. Other channels would do well to take note of this, but I think that televisions engagement with twitter which at the moment is very much the social media frontrunner in this context is still very far from finding its feet. It strikes me that it’s being used because someone somewhere thinks it is what they should be doing, but haven’t yet worked out how it is useful.

Does a dilution of the one-to-many relationship we’ve had with television over the years bring any benefit to the viewer or the broadcaster? It is certainly true to say there is a communal viewing experience produced by twitter as though we’re all stood around the water cooler while the programme is actually airing. I suppose for most media outlets that rely on advertising revenue anything which makes “live” viewing a more compelling option means there will be more eyeballs for their advertisers.

I wonder how much analysis of tweets are done by programme producers? Though I like the idea that I could in theory provide feedback, I dread to think of the programme that would be produced as an amalgam of the twitter hive-mind. Democracy in life is great, but in the arts and media democracy is a route to mediocrity, compromise, and blandness.

So perhaps the current level of twitter engagement is just right; we users are implored by the programme makers to talk about them and they discretely ignore us.

It was announced today that the government was looking to open up NHS medical data to make it available to the private sector. An awful lot of people will recoil at the idea because it brings up the issues of privacy and the intermixing of the NHS and private companies.

I don’t yet have enough information to conclude which side of the fence I sit on this idea, although it’s very easy to see how this could go horribly wrong. In theory properly anonymised data being used in medical research seems a good idea, but fully anonymising data is difficult. Given the breadth of information and processing power available today, it is all too possible to locate individuals in supposedly anonymous data. The AOL incident ought to be the template on how not to do this sort of disclosure.

It concerns me somewhat the pharmaceutical industries response was “robust safeguards were already in place and it was impossible to trace back anonymised data to individuals”. It feels a bit like a “the best form of defence is attack” style PR response. Surely the reality is that “impossible” may be overstating the case? They at least ought to recognise a legitimate concern and lay out more of their method for ensuring anonymous data is as true to the literal definition of anonymous as possible.

If the NHS are offering private pharmaceutical companies valuable data, how does the NHS benefit? Will the drugs developed by offered at a cheaper price because of the nationally funded data? Frankly I doubt it. Sure they’ll try to claim that they are able to make the product cheaper, but how can we audit that claim? Not that I think we need to make a profit from this data, but we should definitely break-even on the deal. I realise that the “profit” we make is more effective drugs and treatments and that certainly is a good thing but given that will end up buying them via the NHS we should ensure we don’t pad these companies coffers at both ends.

Ultimately I don’t think I’m philosophically opposed to this idea, but I want to see a lot more detail. It would be a shame to see a good idea diluted or derailed because of the innate information hoarding that the civil service so often likes to engage in.

If there was a Gulfstream dealership on my local high street, I wouldn’t visit it. It’s not that they don’t produce excellent aircraft, it’s just that I can’t afford one. Even the baby of their range the G150 runs around $15.5 million which at current exchange rates is more or less £10 million depending on the specification of course. I don’t have £10 million or sufficiently good collateral to be able to borrow £10 million. Having not actually tried to borrow that much money, or indeed any money for quite some time, I’m working on a presumption here but one I’m pretty happy is concrete. So I wouldn’t bother to venture inside because it would be a waste of my time and theirs. I would be expecting them to be supercilious and dismissive of me because clearly I shouldn’t be there.

I’m quite sure the dishevelled wealthy jet purchaser exists as much as the impeccably dressed pauper does and what’s more I know I lie somewhere in between those two extremes. So there are plenty of retail establishments in which I ought to feel quite comfortable and yet I really don’t. So as I was shopping for a little designer accessory as a Christmas gift, I decided I’d take the cowards way out this evening avoiding the doormen and haughty shop assistants and instead purchase the gift online.

Intellectually the whole situation really annoys me. The shops I’m thinking of carry stock all of which falls within my financial capability; admittedly in some instances only just but still I could purchase any one of the items on display. Why then do I feel uncomfortably out of place? Am I being intimidated by the monochrome shop staff? Possibly, but surely their buying power is likely less than mine – if belonging equals being able to afford to belong then that makes no sense. Probably I’m just projecting my neuroses onto other people, and they’re not judging me at all.

I was chatting to a yacht broker once about how he judged if a potential customer was serious or not, as I presumed any old chancer could walk in and try to blag a free ride on a multi-million pound motor boat. According to him watches and shoes were the best indicators. Watches were apparently a little unreliable because of the quality of fakes, while he was confident he’d have no problems spotting a dud if he was holding it, but getting a good read off a customer’s wrist was problematic. However shoes were more reliable and rarely faked and boy did this guy know his shoes. He reeled off a whole list: Paul Smith, Church’s, Hugo Boss. Certain ranges of which bought you some degree of credibility. Then continued with brands I’d never heard of including snake-skin loafers from some Italian outfit and listing for several thousand pounds which apparently bought you a seriously attentive salesman.

So I guess what I need is some really expensive shoes and doors everywhere will glide open upon my arrival, though that probably still won’t silence the squawking of socially awkward penguin.

There was a certain crispness in the air tonight, which I hope means snow is on the way. It doesn’t mean any such thing of course, it just means it was cold tonight. Perhaps it was the temperature that ensured the streets were so quiet, even in town there was barely a soul about.

The ducks seemed to be enjoying the weather. They apparently felt much as I did about the architectural changes to their locale. I know you think ducks are all about bread and quacking, but their intellectual insights range far beyond evaluating the merits of crusty versus wholemeal. I explained my thoughts on the unsightly residential development nearby, and was pleased to discover they’d already begun a “dirty protest” against it. I applauded their straightforward and pithy critique.

As I left they were taunting a newly arrived goose for his portly appearance, because according to them a fat goose at this time of the year is beyond obvious to the point of démodé.

Despite their occasional cruelty ducks are, I find, very good listeners. Tonight was no exception.