A long time ago, in a galaxy that bore a distinct resemblance to the Milky Way, I co-authored a book on business creativity called Imagination Engineering . It did quite well and it still sells today. This was when my colleague Paul Birch and I were first setting up giving training in creativity, and the main purpose of the book was to be the guide to our method. It described our approach to stimulating ideas and solving problems. Something we thought that might be useful was to give some sort of simile or metaphor that would help us to describe and encourage the process of producing an enhancing ideas. We wanted it to be something that was all about pioneering, about boldly going and all that kind of thing. So we hit on the simile of civil engineering, saying our approach to creativity was like being the first to build roads and railways and structures out in a new and unexplored land. To be honest, we don't use the simile anymore, as it got in the way more than it helped....

The way most of use computer programs makes sledgehammers and nuts a minor infringement on the 'getting the scale right' tally. Our requirements are orders of magnitude simpler than the programs' ability.  Take Audacity, the impressively free audio editing program I use. It can do all sorts of exciting things. Just look at that huge menu of effects of which I use... one. The program comes in hugely useful when I edit the tracks recorded for my company's increasingly vast emporium of organ pieces and hymn accompaniments , but my routine is always the same. Read in a track, make sure the lead in and out are consistent times, wipe any audio before the playing, fade out the audio at the end. And save. Touching a tiny part of the application's capabilities. Though it's not so extreme most of us also have a limited repertoire in more familiar programs, whether it's an office suite like Word, Excel and Powerpoint, or image manipulation. Just like Audacity...

In my project to scan all my old photos I have just come across this little number from circa 1917.  Before anyone adds a sarcastic comment I should add that I was not around in 1917, but the picture is of great interest to me as the young lady reclining at the front in her exotic harem pants (but jolly sensible shoes) is my grandmother, Annie Clegg (though at the time Annie Pickersgill, as my grandad was still just her sweetheart, fighting in the First World War). This is some sort of pageant organized by the local vicar, the Reverend Oakley, best known probably for his rather entertaining book of local legends In Old Days, which features the story of the Clegg Hall boggart that I replicate in my article on Clegg Hall . I don't have any great observations or wise words about this photo - but I find it fascinating, not just in terms of my seeing my grandma in a whole new light, but those others. What became of them? Are their families still in the area? What kind of li...

One of the best bits of The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy (and there are, indeed, many best bits) involves the development plans that result in the demolition of Arthur Dent's house. When he complains, he is told the plans have been on display for the last nine months. Yes, points out Arthur, they were in the cellar, which had no lights or stairs, in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'. I felt something of this coming back to me when I decided to follow up just what was going on with the form I was kindly sent by the 'World Trade Register' for my company to be listed on their website. The form kindly tells me that 'Updating is free of charge', and I should only sign if I want to place an insertion. Okay, what does that actually mean? There is no mention on the form of any charges incurred if I do sign, but in the small print it tells me that signing the document...

The Thursday before last I went to see a play that was being performed that evening in a London theatre. I was in Swindon. This was the NT Live presentation of The Audience . The play itself was on in London, but we were watching it beamed into our local cinema. I have to say, the experience was excellent. The play was very good and the visuals were excellent. They even had programmes, not to mention wine and beer for sale in the interval. And the staff were unusually attentive as we went out more like... well, a theatre than the local multiplex. So many thanks to Joe and Sarah for organizing it, as we would have never have got round to it. It got me to thinking about the nature of seeing something live. With some kind of events, there is definitely something special about seeing it live, even if it is via a video link. It was interesting that someone I know online saw the same production from a cinema on the Isle of Man - and I had a real sense of shared experience, far more th...

The Supermoon will not look like this. Unless you have a telescope. In which case, any full moon could look like this. Yes, the BBC's science correspondents are lunatics - and it's not only the BBC that I accuse (in the original sense of the word 'lunatic' - driven bonkers by the influence of the moon). For once again we are bombarded with 'news' about the Supermoon tomorrow when, yes, it will be a teensy bit brighter than it was last night. The night sky is set to be illuminated later by what will appear to be a much bigger and brighter Moon , screams the BBC tagline. Well, no, it won't. This is misuse of statistics, but those stats just happen to be hidden beneath weasel terms like 'much bigger' and 'much brighter'. First of all, we have to ask 'much bigger' and 'much brighter' than what? The obvious comparison is with the night before, and I can confidently predict that the difference will be unnoticeable. But le...

My trusty Oyster card I haven't used contactless payment cards much. This isn't an aversion to using new technology - I love it - or worries about the security, it's just that the only contactless bank card I've got at the moment is a credit card and I pay for most things with a debit card. But seeing it in action the other day made me think that those rolling out the technology have (perhaps because of a vested interest) missed a big trick. Like many others, even though I don't live in London, I have an Oyster card, the contactless payment method that is the most convenient way to use London Transport. It's a card you load up, then use - so effectively an electronic cash wallet. And it struck me, why don't contactless payment devices accept Oyster cards? It's the same technology, and with a bit of inter-connection on the back end so it could access your Oyster account, the card would become a cashless payment wallet. Great, for instance, to give t...

The shrine of the literary trainspotter I gather Sunday, apart from being Father's Day, was also 'Bloomsday' the day when James Joyce fans with nothing better to do celebrate their master's work. You might suspect that I am not among their number - and you would be right. I have had a couple of attempts at reading Joyce and failed miserably. In part it is because I absolutely hate stream of consciousness. I have never, ever seen it work acceptably. It is just boring . But also because, while I am prepared to put some effort into reading a book - I don't expect it all to be effortless page-turning - I do expect the author to have some expertise in putting information across, and, frankly, I think Joyce is terrible at it. This is rather similar to my beef with the kind of artists where it is impossible to appreciate their work without an instruction book. Art should communicate. If you need help to understand it, it is bad art. It might take time for the langu...

 A while ago I reviewed a book of UFO photos , commenting that I had severe doubts about the images, partly because a fair number of them were very similar to the fakes I used to do in my youth (just for fun). I commented 'One of the problems with the hubcap technique is that it tended to fly, and so to be photographed, at an unnatural angle – yet time after time these “unexplained and inexplicable” shots in the book are of fuzzy, out of focus hubcap-like objects at the same kind of angle as I found so irritating when I tried to fake my pictures.' I am gradually scanning in my old photos and have just found a couple of these hubcap style photos (this was actually a metal camping plate). They were taken over Aviemore in Scotland in a very high wind that meant if you threw the plate against the wind it would hover extremely impressively.   This is clearly a real saucer because it is hovering in the same position in two separate photos, just at a slightly di...

I am not agnostic about this. It is a horse with a narwhal tusk as a rather showy bit of bling Every now and then the hoary business of religion and science rears its head. I am generally quite happy with Stephen Jay Gould's concept of non-overlapping magisteria, and if we stuck to that we'd have a lot less bickering (and hopefully hear a lot less from Richard Dawkins), but I made the mistake of commenting on a Facebook post after someone was promoting atheism as the best scientific viewpoint. I retorted that I thought the only true scientific viewpoint was agnosticism. (This doesn't mean, by that way, that scientists can't be believers or atheists - merely that when they do so, they are not being scientific. NOMa.) I got a kick-back moaning that you couldn't be agnostic about god, and if you did, you might as well be agnostic about unicorns. This irritated me and I made a rather snippy remark, asking if they knew what 'agnosticism' means. The diction...

This is a book I would never have read if I hadn't met the author in a writers' forum, but I am very glad I did. It is way outside the classifications I generally read. In fact it is probably outside classification altogether. It is a sort of social issues/nature memoir. Realistically, the author's life experience is way outside mine. Leaving aside the two main topics of the book, in the intermission, as it were, he is riding an ancient motorbike around the far North of the UK with his Swedish girlfriend. In a rough Scottish town he is told to keep his voice down as it's a rough place and if he were noticed it would be provocative. He comments he had often been told this - in Belfast, Harlem and Bogotà. How unlike the home life of our own dear Queen. Or for that matter, most of us dear readers. If, like me, you find flowery descriptions of nature off-putting, don't be thrown by the introduction - like the  Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy which famousl...

Now look, I am all in favour of this science thing. I spend my time telling people how good it is, and writing about its wonders. So you would think that in return it could at least behave itself. But no. It has to go and show itself up for the spoiled brat of an intellectual field that it is. It's all a matter of carnations. Go red, you horrors! In my role of occasional domestic lab assistant I was asked to prepare a classic 'carnations with food dye to demonstrate osmosis' jobby. No worries. I did it all by the book. Fresh flowers? Check. Newly cut diagonally under water to prevent air bubbles? Check. Warm but not hot water? Check. Ten to twenty drops of food colouring? Check. And three days the later the little horrors have not taken on a hint of colour. My suspicion is that they are now treating flowers to make them last longer out of water without wilting with something that prevents or at least reduces their ability to take in water. But that's not the ...

I am currently scanning in some old photos from my university days and I feel I have to share the Winter 1976 British Lecture Attendance "Record Breaking" Expedition that took place in Cambridge on 20 February 1976. The aim was to attend as many lectures as a possible in a single morning, raising funds for RAG '76. Those present above are Dave Izod, Rod Hill, Me, Helmut Jakubowicz, Dick Lacey, Neil Thomas and Andy Brookes and (taking the photo but on the right below) Mark Saville. We stormed into the lectures, held up the lecturer and demanded money with menaces. I do appear to be wearing a skirt. This is because a couple of those present designed a 'British Board of Lecture Censors' certificate to post up at each lecture. In the corner of the certificate was a picture of their sponsor, 'Mrs Ethel Trappit.' For some reason they used a picture of me with a Newcastle Brown bottle. (I was not amused initially.) So I had to, really. Thos...

We have a difficult dilemma. Our daughter has had an iPod (and now an iPhone) for a number of years. When she started using it she was a child, so of course we set her up on our account. Over the years she has bought a fair amount of music. Now, this is fun for me, because my iTunes has access to all these trendy songs, some of which I rather like. But here's the thing. Now she is an adult she wants to do her own thing. She doesn't want to be on our iTunes account any more. But if she starts a new account, she starts from scratch. She loses her hundreds of tracks. And there is no way to transfer them across. Take a look online and you will find lots of people asking how to split an iTunes account, sadly in many cases because a couple has split up. It's almost a cliché, a couple deciding who gets which CDs from their collection when they break up and go their separate ways, but on iTunes they are scuppered. It is all or nothing. Now it is possible that the indivisible ...

It varies a lot, so Mr Starmer couldn't average it Listening to the Today programme on Radio 4 a few days ago (5 June), I couldn't help wonder if the Director of Public Prosecutions, the exotically named Keir Starmer, struggles with numbers and particularly with statistics. There were two issues with Mr Starmer's answers. The interviewer was trying to get Starmer to put a percentage on the point at which the prosecution service would take a case forward. What was the probability of success required before prosecuting? Starmer couldn't reply. There just, he said, had to be a reasonable chance of success. The actual percentage could vary from case to case. That's really not good enough. What does 'a reasonable chance' mean? There is an implied number in there - but he's not admitting what it is. And if it does vary from case to case, fine. But what are the criteria? It's fair enough to say there isn't a consistent percentage of likelihood acr...

One of my sales We hear a lot about how evil Amazon is, the way they ruin things for friendly local bookshops. And there is a degree of truth in this. But it isn't an entirely balanced view. After all, with Amazon I can be shopping in the afternoon and have a book delivered next day, far easier than ordering a book from my local shop. But that isn't the advantage I want to discuss here. I get sent a lot of books to review, and when I have finished with them I sell them most of them. I don't feel guilty about this - I'm mostly not paid for doing the reviews so a fiver or whatever I get for selling the book on is not exactly an unreasonable compensation. And I am always reminded of science fiction author Brian Aldiss's excellent memoir  Bury My Heart at W. H. Smith's in which he remembers working in a bookshop in Oxford which had frequent visits from poet laureate John Betjeman, turning up with boxes full of books he had been sent to review and wanted to ...

As I left the supermarket the other day I had to run the gauntlet of someone collecting for an obscure charity. I pointedly looked the other way and hurried past. This sounds heartless, but I genuinely believe that we have too many little charities, which result in dilution of the results that the money provided could bring. Don't get me wrong - I am not talking about all small charities. I used to be a trustee of a local charity called the Zaslowya Project (ZP), and I am still a supporter. This was one of a good number of charities, usually with 'Chernobyl' in their name, that were set up in response to the Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster, usually targeting children in neighbouring Belarus, which bore the brunt of the fallout. Like most of these charities, ZP was set up to bring children to the UK on extend stays - usually about a  month - because it has been put about that by doing so, the level of radiation in the children's bodies dropped significantly and th...

The soundbar looking just right under an iMac  I like to think I'm very rational when it comes to choosing my IT equipment. Those of you who aren't Mac users may be sniggering and rolling around on the ground at this point because you know perfectly well that us Mac users pay far over the odds for what is basically just a prettier PC. Well, you are wrong. I am now into my second year on a Mac and it's still the case that every day I use it I get far more enjoyment out of interacting with it than I did with my old PC. If you are on the computer most of the day like me, that is well worth paying a bit extra for. And that's without all the added slickness in interworking with my iPad and iPhone. However... ... I must admit that there is a mindset that goes with being an Apple lover that says 'if it looks sexy and shiny it's worth paying extra for.' And I have just had a classic example of why this isn't always true. Although the iMac's screen ...

Anyone who knows anything about the battle to preserve rationality in supporting the theory of evolution against marauding creationism will know of the 1925 Scopes trial - or 'the infamous Scopes monkey trial' as it is often known. What I didn't realize until reading John Grant's excellent rallying cry for embattled reason, Denying Science , was that the whole Scopes trial was a publicity stunt. It's not that there wasn't a serious issue to be fought. The trigger was the signing of an act prohibiting the teaching of evolution in universities and schools in Tennessee. But the Scopes trial was apparently one of those good ideas that civic leaders have when they've had a drink or three down the local saloon. Apparently the dignitaries of Dayton, where the trial took place, spotted that any such trial would bring a lot of cash into town. So they got together both the prosecution and the defence, and looked for a likely candidate as defendant. Scopes, a gen...

I am fed up with the way that every time farmers get ripped off by the supermarkets, or a tragedy occurs while manufacturing cheap garments, the customer gets blamed. Frankly, it is a load of reproductive oblate spheroids, and not of the canine variety. What we hear, both from the stores and on ill-thought out TV documentaries and news reports is that it is the consumers' fault because we demand cheap milk and cheap clothing (say). That is ludicrous. When did anyone ever stand outside a supermarket yelling 'What do we want? Cheap milk! When do we want it? Now!'? When did anyone email Primark saying 'It is disgusting that your tops cost £6! I want them for £4!'? It just doesn't happen. Of course customers will buy things cheap if they are made available cheap. They would be stupid not to do so. I would rush out tomorrow to buy a Jaguar XK if they were £10,000 instead of £70,000, but strangely Jaguar has no intention of selling them at that price. So yes, ...

This is definitely in colour. Sort of. Human memory is a strange and wonderful thing. We can't help but think of what we remember as fact - but in reality we need to, erm, remember that memory is a totally artificial construct of the brain, not a video recording of the world. And it is often wrong. I had a wonderful of example of this at the weekend. I was doing one of my regular appearances on the Saturday show of the excellent local radio presenter Mark O'Donnell. On my way in to BBC Wiltshire, I was listening to the show, as I like to be able to fit in with any discussion that has been taking place. Mark was asking listeners to recall when they first saw colour TV. Two separate listeners said the first thing they saw in colour was the 1966 World Cup final - always remembered in the UK as England won. Even I, not exactly a sports fan, watched it, though in black and white as we didn't get a colour set until around 1970. However, a niggling doubt set in. 1966 seeme...