The Perfect Curve

It could be the dead wot won it

simon gray — 2017-06-08, 09:02:15 - 393 words

According to the polls - varying widely between an increased majority for the Conservatives down to a hung parliament, with one little-reported poll (done by an ad agency rather than a traditional polling organisation, but with a track record of getting its guesses right) even showing a Labour win, the election is too close to call. The fact of there being such a wide variation in the predictions in the final polls from each organisation is evidence enough it's too close to call, even with some polls predicting a big Conservative win. 

So of course people are hanging their hopes on the poll which shows the result they'd rather see, and hanging their hopes on the demographic which is mostly likely to vote for the result they'd rather see. 'The old could win it', Conservative supporters say, 'The young could win it', Labour supporters say. 

With it this close to call, there's one demographic nobody has thought of who could win it. The dead. 

Eh?

In the olden days it was a pretty tricky process to get a postal vote - you had to satisfy your local elections office, and even prove so, that it would be physically impossible for you to get to [...]

Read the rest of It could be the dead wot won it .

Word clouds

simon gray — 2017-05-31, 21:12:40 - 34 words

Six years after everybody else realised word clouds are a bit rubbish, one of our candidates has cottoned on to word clouds.

Read the rest of Word clouds .

Political campaigning

simon gray — 2017-05-25, 10:06:16 - 217 words

Here's my handy cut out and keep guide to effective political campaigning:

When campaigning one needs to realise who one is campaigning to - you're not campaigning to committed supporters of the other side, you're campaigning to uncommitted supporters, or undecideds. Whilst it's unlikely that party-supporting Facebook groups will contain many undecideds, there's a reasonable chance that they might contain uncommitteds.

What this means is that when campaigning - whether that's going into the lair of the other side or what one posts into one's own timeline - you need to craft your message in such a way that it'll appeal to the uncommitted / undecideds. 

Calling the other side a bunch of nasty loony idiots, or posting pictures of their leader looking ugly next to pictures of your leader looking inspirational, might make you feel good and get you lots of Likes from your side's supports, but as a campaigning method it's probably the worst thing you can do. Insulting the uncommitteds on the other side is only going to turn them into committeds, and make the undecideds more likely to swing away from your side than towards it.

#politics 

Read the rest of Political campaigning .

The modern toaster

simon gray — 2017-04-27, 20:49:18 - 63 words

The Sky At Night 60th anniversary show mentions that the computers which took the Apollo missions to the Moon had the processing power of a modern toaster. 

Which is impressive enough, but it does prompt the question - what does a modern toaster do with enough processing power to send three people to the Moon and back?

Read the rest of The modern toaster .

So which is it, then?

simon gray — 2017-04-24, 17:55:15 - 7 words

Read the rest of So which is it, then? .

Modern Twitter

simon gray — 2017-03-14, 18:25:47 - 28 words

‪The realisation that modern twitter is the modern equivalent of the person on the bus who shouts random abuse at random strangers as they walk past. ‬

Read the rest of Modern Twitter .

Things unnoticed

simon gray — 2017-03-03, 18:12:57 - 37 words

‪I've lived in Birmingham for 29 years and never before noticed this clock on the back of the building next to Rackhams. ‬

#birmingham

Read the rest of Things unnoticed .

Applying for a copy of a Birth, Marriage, or Death Certificate

simon gray — 2017-01-20, 16:08:44 - 1065 words

tl;dr - Applying for a copy of certificates from your council's register office is considerably more painful than it should be. And for online applications, it probably makes more sense to signpost people to the central government General Register Office site.

A couple of years ago it occurred to me that I didn't know where my copy of my birth certificate is, and that it might be a good idea to get another one. When I went to the website of the council where we lived until I was 10, I saw there was no online process to order copy certificates, meaning an order process of sending a cheque or postal order through the post. Since I've not had a chequebook for about 10 years, that meant going to a post office to buy a postal order - and Birmingham city centre only has two post offices, meaning most lunchtimes and near-closing time the queue is out the door and down the street. So since I had no pressing need for a copy of my birth certificate at that point I didn't pursue it.

Time passes and more recently a need for my birth certificate arose - but [...]

Read the rest of Applying for a copy of a Birth, Marriage, or Death Certificate .