Well, this year is a little exceptional- grey november was not so long.

Well, not because the company i am working for is at the rock bottom of this list, i am sick and tired of these ‘intoxicating’ marketing surveys and their publications acquiring more and more resemblance to tabloids headlines.

Link: Welcome to the ****** Consumer Center.

This kind of study can be very easily fabricated by recruitment and tweaking the numbers a bit in the final report. For instance, the report tactfully does not show:

1) The proportion of the currently owned mobile phones’ brands of the respondents (Users tend to think their phone is the best choice, unless they are really pissed off at it and about to change it)
2) History of the ownership of different brands, or how the satisfaction was asked and quantified
3) Method of deriving ’satisfaction index’

It just pisses me off to see the clippings irresponsibly throwing info that are wrapped up like being ’supposed-to-be’ scientific & true. By not providing sufficient info but the fancy headlines, it does not help any users/ industry experts. I’d rather see simple facts such as ‘top 10 sold gadgets in XXX in October 2004′ as more useful.

I biked in the rain to the gym but was late to class by 2 min (by a stubborn novice-ish receptionist). Not so keen on boring cardio machine today, had to choose the next best exercise: taking a walk in/ among shops. Went to a big h&m shop across the street from gym. Karl Largerfelt had his face stuck in many of this brand’s ads recently. Many shacks for goods specifically ‘designed’ by him. All of those items have a tag w his sig & quote “..hope you enjoy this clothes as much as i did designing it..” Could his design be noteworthy/outstanding without chanel logo, or exclusive material/better workmanship? What does this brand expect to gain out of this performance when tons of clothes by this company are copies of other labels anyway? I’d be amused if they simply start putting a tag on each reasonably priced, low quality piece of clothing saying “design copy of xxx, 05 spring collection, made cheaper by h&m”. Oh, perhaps this would make the consumer price go up a bit.

* there was a message left in my voice mail by the gym customer manager when i came home.. ;-)

in the email from the implementation team today regarding defining the error cases:

> It fails if
> a) there is some pathological condition such as platform service failure

i dont know if this is a common term amongst the CS professionals, but found it very amusing to think about the machines having pathological problems :-)

In the ‘old’ days iPod for windows had to rely on music match software. On my sunday to do list was: setup new toy. Was suprised to see iTune for PC- kudos for the power of online shopping. Anyhow, connected the mini, & iTune popped up a window saying smt like ‘cant synch cuz of memory. I made a selection based on your preference’. MY preference? The only declared one was that the folder is in my external hard disc. Well, after a second thought, it doesnt hurt that much since i’d never take time to org my stuff. A thin line between being arrogant and being service-minded: user felt not stupid, but being robbed of her chance to choose.

Pianist has to see the movie screen in order to synchronize his play with the visuals. It was much better than i expected. Very human. Got me thinking why people still love musicals & opera. I went to a musical version in london a couple of years ago, but it never managed to leave an impression on me in terms of the story or the characters. Only thing i admired/appreciated was the human effort, i recall. Which, of course, is important but in many cases not enough.

There was one person (at least). Soon afterwards the pianist came in in his winter coat wearing a backpack.

Came to see Phantom of opera (silence movie) + live piano performance.. According to expert, this was the form of cinema showing for 30 years..

Some reflections: 1) after mid night is the only truly uninterrupted working hour (unless you have colleagues in different time zone). 2) *tv sucks. 3) Intensive/excessive overworking days are better than getting stressed over a stretched period of time. 4) bright light is nice.