Jamie Oliver - Books for Christmas 2013

Three years at the top of the book charts for Jamie Oliver's recipe books. Two years with Jamie Oliver's 30 minute meals and in 2012 top of the chart's with Jamie's Oliver's 15 minute meals.

According to his publishers Jamie is really pushing the limits of cooking with his next title for Christmas 2012. It is Jamie Oliver's 3 minute meals.

One of the receipe's has been released as a teaser:

Step 1
Visit Sainsbury's

Step 2
Buy Jamie Oliver's Italian meat balls spaghetti ready meal.

Step 3
Take home

Step 4
Put in microwave, set for three minutes and wait.

Step 5
Enjoy another spectacularly quick Jamie meal.

***Sorry Jamie could not resist - zephyrist***

Project Colourscape

I am not sure why I have named this project colourscape other than it relates to colours. I think the scape part come from my considering the variations of colours as a landscape or surface of colour.

Anyway this project is about looking at colours and creating colour palettes. I am going to create a series of pages looking at RGB colours in different ways. The practical application is that you will be able to create and experiment with various colours to create a colour palette either for a web page or for some other practical applications.

ColourScape 1

This lets you choose colours from a randomly generate selection. You can select a background colour and a text colour to create a pallet of five colours.The hex codes appear in the relevant boxes for you to cut and paste.

The only problem with it is that each time the page loads you refresh the random selection, so you cant choose two colours from the same random page, although you could hover over the colour to get the hex value and then type it directly into a box.

Similarly you can type any hex value into any box to display that colour, which is useful if you  are looking for a colour to match some colours you already have.

Add-on possibilities: box to give you the palette html and CSS code.

Possible other Colourscapes

SQL version of Colourscape 1 to store and sort the random colours

slot machine version where the colours are in 3 columns, red, green, blue with the chosen colour in the bottom and then colours with each graduation flowing out like a slot machine. Difficult one to explain, easier to write the perl script.

If anyone has any other suggestions I am always open.

Predictive Market V2.0

Experimental Predictive Market 

Version 1 was a flop that had some very obvious flaws, mainly that the uplifitng mechanism over £10 would encourage people to buy all the stock and hold onto it for ever or I would have to intervene with an upper price limit. Plus why should a price change just because the day has changed.

Experimental Predictive Market The Rules V2.0

Main rules

• Each stock is a question i.e. "Workers in the UK should be given 1 extra bank holiday?".
• Each stock initially lists at a price of £10 with 1000 shares for sale (Numbers would change if it ever became really popular).
• Down Escalator - If no one buys the stock, the price will drop at a rate of 0.04p per day (the stock and therefore idea is unpopular). The idea is that the price of stock will drop until it finds the level at which people are willing to buy
• If someone buys stock the price rises at a rate of: 'Number of shares bought * 0.04p'.
• If someone sells stock the price falls at a rate of: 'Number of shares sold * 0.04p'.
• Trading limit of 100 shares per transaction.
• If price above £10.00 stock rises at a rate of 0.04p per day (Idea is popular and will keep rising until investors tempted to sell - Price will hopefully stabilise at the value of the idea) 
• If all shares are available for sale, the price gets on the "down escalator" again until the new "willing to buy" level is found
• If the stock reaches zero it is archived.

Liquidity Rules

•  Stock can only be held for 180 days - at the 180 day limit all stock is hold at list price
• At close of an event e.g. general election all stock is sold at list price

Futures Market

• As well as buying and selling shares you can make a futures bet on whether a certain price will be reached within the next seven days.
• You can only have one bet per stock per 7 day period
• If the price is reached you win the small amount.
• This gives an indication of whether people want to buy or sell. The more buyers in the market the higher the price will go, the more sellers in the market the lower the price will go.

I am sure there will be a new version along shortly when I find some flaws with this one.

The Wisdom of Crowds

I have read a fascinating article, in of all places People Management (September 2012) about predictive markets. Basically the article wasn't exactly well written but the concept was strong. The article may not have been well written because it was extracted from a book, Oracles: How Prediction Markets turn employees into Visionaries, by Donald Thompson (published by Harvard Business School Publishing).

The basic concept is that a few technology and finance companies have been running internal stock markets where any employee can use fictional dollars to invest in ideas. Anyone can post an idea which is good for a couple of reasons. Firstly, there is no hierarchy in ideas, it doesn't matter at what level in the organisation you are, you can post an idea and hopefully people will listen. Secondly, because the buying and selling is anonymous just because an idea is from a senior manager doesn't mean you have to support it, unlike in most meeting where if you want to get ahead you need to support the boss (however dumb their ideas are - after all your next promotion might depend on them).

Essentially good ideas are valued commodities and bad ideas are junk stock. This approach frees up innovation and allows companies to see what ideas might work best. There is also a fun element in that if you invest wisely you will become a market leader especially if your ideas work in practice. Another part of life that has now been gameified.

Anyway as is my was I thought about this and decided I could create one of those. So I have created my own model and will build a small website for people to play with. If the model is any good it may become the next big thing or as is more usual it will be become another vaguely interesting project on mycreativeboost.co.uk the repository for all my mini projects.

Experimental Predictive Market The Rules V1.0

• Each stock is a question i.e. "Workers in the UK should be given 1 extra bank holiday?".
• Each stock initially lists at a price of £10 with 1000 shares for sale (Numbers would change if it ever became really popular).
• If no one buys the stock, the price will drop at a rate of 0.04p per day (the stock and therefore idea is unpopular).
• If someone buys stock the price rises at a rate of: 'Number of shares bought * 0.04p'.
• If someone sells stock the price falls at a rate of: 'Number of shares sold * 0.04p'.
• Trading limit of 100 shares per transaction.
• If price above £10.00 stock rises at a rate of 0.04p per day (Idea is popular and will keep rising until investors tempted to sell - Price will hopefully stabilise at the value of the idea)

I will admit the above rules are a bit rough and ready and may need refining over time. Think of it as a bit of a starter for ten.

Of course I accept no responsibility if I never finish this project, I have a habit of getting distracted by real life sometimes.

A new venture

Well I am off on another cunning plan to make some extra cash. This time it is a business selling friendship balls. I am trading as The Waterfall Glass company and have secured the valuable internet real estate of friendship-balls.co.uk.

It is all good fun, the products are interesting and I am enjoying creating the website as one of my many projects. Some day soon I might even make some money out of it.

Today Oxfordshire, tomorrow the world.

Signs that bother me

There are often hand written  or hand typed signs that just on a really basic level just bother me in some way.

The current one is in the toilets at work. It says:

"Please leave these toilets in the state that you expect to find them"

Firstly, I do understand that at a basic level it is saying don't make a mess and leave it tidy.

On a whole other level I am afraid that I cant possibly comply with the notice. If I did I would be forced to redecorate the toilet in order to create a brand new toilet that I would expect to find.

To illustrate my point, this is a typical toilet:

From howstuffworks.com

Now if I was to leave the toilet in the state I expect to find it, I might redecorate to give a more tropical feel to the throne room.

http://www.oneprojectcloser.com/tropical-bathroom-design/

Or perhaps improve the entertainment possibilities to add entertainment that I would expect to find.

http://www.lolgallery.com/best-toilet-ever/

Perhaps you get the general idea.