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.

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.

Spring cleaning nuggets

I am spring cleaning at the moment, going through all my old scrap books and files, sorting them out and weeding them.

One of the outcomes of this is that I come across old notes that I cant even remember writing, a bit like the re-discovery of old masters.

So here is just a phrase that was written on a random scrap of paper:

"The path you take may twist and turn, it may lead you back to where you began or somewhere you never thought you could be"

Or a slight rewrite would be:

"The path you take may twist and turn, it may lead you back to where you began or take you somewhere you never expected to be. In the end the destination doesn't matter, what matters is how you spend the journey".

Humanistic design - Part 2

In a previous article I wrote about how we associate different sounds with different objects and even when those sounds are no longer made due to developments in technology we still associate the sound with a quality product. Thus product designers add these sounds back in artificially so that we continue to make the quality connection.

Partly this is due to the human failing of not feeling comfortable with change. The absence of something that has always been there makes us feel slightly uncomfortable even though we may not fully make the connection between what is missing and the feeling. A good example of this is yesterday when I was driving home the car sounded different, the engine noise was different, I started wondering whether there was anything wrong with the engine, was it as responsive as normal, I started to feel uncomfortable.

The answer to this ,which dawned on me eventually, was that I had forgotten to turn the radio on. So I turned it on and everything returned to normal.

Now imagine a day when I get into my first electric car, I turn the engine on and apart from a click, there is no noise, I will feel slightly uncomfortable. I might not even buy the car if I was looking for a new one. This for designers is the ultimate nightmare.

So they are looking at making electric cars sound like traditional cars with engine noises. For two reasons, one is that the driver wont be put off buying them and secondly that a pedestrian can hear the car coming. When you can choose the engine noise or download the latest engine noise from the internet things might feel a bit weird.

For sports car models they are even thinking about creating a throaty engine roar, as after all, everyone knows the best sports cars have the throaty roars.

How engineers create artificial sounds to fool us (BBC)

Anyway I digress, the whole point of this article was to post an interesting follow up to my original article. The BBC have posted up a similar article with a few extra quotes and examples.

The car door example is one I found very interesting as Professor Cox is right, car doors should have a solid clunk to them. There have even been advertising campaigns based around the sound of the closing car door clunk.

I also love the fact that Harley Davidson are quoted as saying they won in the court of public opinion. In other words technically they didn't win according to the law.  Anybody can win a popularity context without being great at what they do, or right, or talented just check out the numerous winners of various reality talent competitions.

A Human Psychology Premise

This is something I was discussing on-line in some high brow chat room. Yes, they do exist if you know where to look.

The discussion was about morality and whether a moral issue was black or white. My argument was that no issue could be purely black or white because of the human factor, in reality every issue was a shade of grey. It could perhaps look black or white but if you looked really closely there would be a hint of white or a hint of black.

There is a test for this premise:

"For a moral issue to be pure black or white every (sane) person on the planet must unanimously agree that it is so."

Now as no moral issue can pass this test moral issues can only be a shade of grey.

Now before anyone says what about this, just think would every single person in the world agree that it was 100% right or wrong.

I am not saying you cant get close I am just saying you will never be spot on. It is a hypothetical thought premise, nothing more nothing less. It really doesn't effect whether a moral issue is inherently good or inherently bad. All the premise really states is that you cant have unanimous verdict only a significant majority verdict.

The maze project

I thought I would cross post an article to show what I am working on over at the maze project.

These are some designs and ideas for an indoor maze.

The first design I came up with was a series of interlinked rooms.



I had the idea that at the exit or entrance to each square (or room) in each doorway there would be a curtain that prevented you seeing what was beyond. So if you stood in each room all you would see in each one is the four curtains. I imagine the room to be plush red Victorian study type rooms all with exactly the same furniture, perhaps a round mahogany table in the centre, a dresser and a bookcase, all in exactly the same location with exactly the same stuff so whatever room you entered it had exactly the same layout. If you wanted to be really difficult you could give the room furniture a 2 or 4 fold symmetry. Of course if you wanted to be devilish you could change one item in each room, perhaps the book title of the third book on the third shelf would always be different, or there would be a silver spoon somewhere different in each room. Each room would not only be part of a larger maze but a sort of Sherlock Holmes esque spot the difference competition.

After this initial design I thought there was still lots of white space and really it could be a lot more of a complex maze.

Iteration 2 of the maze turned into this:



Now this is much more of a maze. Still the same curtains in each room but now when you leave the bright room you enter not just a corridor between rooms but a dark maze of twist and turns lit in shadows as you find your way to the next room. This also has dead ends in the maze so you can get lost, although once you learn the symmetry of the maze it becomes a lot easier.

To add to the darkness visitors to the maze would have torches as the dark areas are barely lit.

There are lots of other variants to the maze, I can imagine actors roaming the maze telling stories to visitors, different lighting effects both in the dark areas and the room. Although I would probably want to stick to the rooms as places of quiet sanctuary and only the dark areas being the scary part. I imagine in the darkness you could have scary footsteps, howls and thunder and lightening, it would be a fantastical yet scary place.

I have also had practical thoughts as well, the entrance would be in the bottom left and the exit in the top right, but an emergency escape route would be a corridor that runs all the way round the outside.

My Creative boost

One of my mini web projects which is very creative but very unpopular is my creative boost. Basically when you press the boost me! button it shows you a picture which inspires you or makes you think. Each picture is a little amuse bouche for the mind.

Here are some of the ones I have added recently:


Image 77 - What is your escape plan?

Image 76 - Naked

Image 75 - Reverse Pschology

Image 74 - Subliminal advertising

Image 73 - UK General Election Result

The True meaning of Christmas

Its at this time of year after the annual watching of a version of "A Christmas Carol" (Patrick Stewart as scrooge and Richard E. Grant living up to what his middle initial may well stand for - Excellent), the odd mince pie and a glass of your favourite tipple that thoughts turn to what is the true spirit of Christmas.

I also feel that I should either be a member of the royal family or a member of the clergy or indeed a well respected member of the fourth estate, passing judgement on what Christmas should be.

It is in a sense what you make of it. What it is not is another day on which to compare ourselves to other people to determine whether our Christmas has been success. Long ago I worked out that it is the lot of most of us that we will never be the best at whatever we do, there will always be someone who can do it better. The consolation prize as it were is that I and you can do whatever it is our way and there is no one in this truly wonderful world who could do it quite the way we could.

That is the little bit of magic inside all of us and we can use that magic to create a Christmas that is magic to us. We may not have the biggest turkey, we may all start fighting by 10 am in the morning and we may not get anything we actually wanted for Christmas but at least it is our Christmas with our family and we all bought the magic.

Christmas will never be perfect however much money or even planning goes into it. Often it is the small inexpensive gestures that we remember in the new year. What presents do you remember from Christmas past?

One thing I love about Christmas is the carols, you cant beat a good sing along and it is one of the many things I look forward to each year. It doesn't matter whether you can sing or just shout, it is a spontaneous expression of joy and certainly clears the cobwebs from the lungs.

Tonight on Christmas Eve everyone is preparing for the big day looking forward to whatever is special for them. Father Christmas is criss crossing the sky delivering presents to the children in time for the dawn of Christmas day.

It is this spirit of giving and the belief of universal love and peace that is central to the more spiritual side of Christmas. On one day a year we think of loved ones and strangers and look to make the world a better place in the coming year.

It is a beautiful place this world of ours.

To all my readers, Merry Christmas to you and your families. The joys of the season to you and yours.

Everything can be found somewhere on the internet where everything means 99%

The all mighty google search these days means that anything no matter how obscure can be typed into its search box and before you know it you are surfing through thousands of pages about some obscure tiny subject.

However, every so often I run a search on google which reminds me that even given the infinite large number of pages of the internet I still cannot find the one page I want.

When I was young probably around 15 years ago I went to the Scilly Islands and at the time I found a print which I just had to buy. Cant remember how much it cost. My parents bought it for me and it has been one of my most prize possessions ever since especially as my parents had it framed for me.

So one evening I am looking at this modern print which is a picture of Bishop's rock lighthouse in the moonlight in oils by J Wilson Hepburn. I think to myself I could use the *awesome* power of the search engine to find out more about this artist and see if there are other prints I would like.

So I pop along to google and type in the words "J Wilson Hepburn".

Google Search for J Wilson Hepburn

All you get is a few hints that there are indeed originals that have been sold at auction for not very large amounts but no sign of any prints.

Lot 33 - J. Wilson Hepburn - oil on board A view of St Mawes.

Lot 40 - J. WILSON-HEPBURN (XX): An oil on artist's board of the Fish Market and harbour of Mevagissey.

Bonham's - J. Wilson Hepburn, Moonlit river scene, oil on canvas, signed, 60 x 90cm. £94.

Just hints of things and the links don't really give you any further information.

Of course in searching it doesn't help that the surname is similar to "Audrey Hepburn"

Here is what I know I think he is a Cornish artist that painted in oils, I suspect in the late 1800's. Other than that I know very little.

If anyone could give me more information I would be very interested. If anyone knows of any prints or originals for sale I would at the very least be interested in hearing more. If anyone has the original of my print which I would guess is somewhere in the Scilly Isles I would be extremely interested.

Until I get this information and can post it on my blog I am afraid we must conclude that as of now the world is still larger and contains more information than the internet.

18 monkeys sitting at a keyboard

I have written a perl script that simulates eighteen monkeys each hitting one key either a letter of the alphabet or space key. They are trying to write the line " To be or not to be".

"Why?" I hear half the world scream, "For goodness sake, why? Think of the children!". Sorry slipped into a Simpson moment there.

Anyway I have written this totally geeky pointless script just because I can. It was a personal challenge to myself, can a mild mannered recruitment officer who knows a bit about perl write a script that will achieve this.

To explain the mechanics, I create a sequence of 18 random numbers between 1 and 27. Convert that all into letters or a space, then compare it to the text I want, calculate the percentage match and repeat until I get a decent match. For the maths bods out there the actual odds of hitting a perfect sequence are 18 to the power 27. In other words a really really really large number.

So anyway tonight I have been running batches of 2000000 iterations and outputting to a file every combination with a match over 7 letters.

Here are the results so far:

The highest ever match is 9 letters off a run of 200000000 iterations which just goes to show hitting the full eighteen letters could be a bit of a miracle. That run took 3 hours to do.

The interesting thing is that 8/9 letter is starting to make almost recognisable word patterns:

6533243 TULBEHXRBGMK EO BE 9
7596871 DO SJOR FOOUHU BO 8
15070898 AOSBH RQMNLT GO AA 8
41948431 TOPKGJCE ROTSTOJSE 8
83387651 TOEBOYXY UKT HP FE 8
131295542 NO BGVIR TPTGTX MB 8
123724196 TOIBXRY BENT TOWTE 8

I should explain the first number is the iteration, then we have the code sequence and finally the number of matching letters.

Ok so most of them still sound like the Russian or Japanese version of "to be or not to be" but bits are beginning to make sense.

Next experiment reduce the number of letters in the phrase to see if we can hit the high matches quicker. Maybe I will try "Out damned spot" but really I need something even shorter.

Intertwined colour lines: a fascination part 2

The spiders web that is Oxfords road network.

Intertwined colour lines: a fascination

I find myself strangely fascinated by coloured lines intertwined together, especially if it is a pattern based on something man made or familiar to me.

This is a hand drawn colour line copy of a 1914 clearing house railway junction diagram of the area around clapham junction (the big confusing area over on the left). If you want to you can compare it to the original over here on wikipedia.

Maybe I have discovered a whole new art form with which you can experiment with on any map or satelitte photgraphy, just drawing designs. Today the web tommorrow Tate Britain.

State of Fear by Michael Crichton

I re-read this book recently, it is a work of fiction which introduces the premise / theory that the environmental lobby is just another method by the establishment to keep us in a perpetual state of fear, following on from the cold war came global warming. This state of fear creates spending and political power but the book using scientific references to support the fictional plot suggests that global warming is at best inconclusive and suggests that we are yet to learn so much about are environment that any theory about global warming is little more than a guess.

However as the character in the book suggests just because you don't agree with global warming doesn't mean that you don't want pollution controls and CO2 reduction. I have to say Michael Crichton creates a compelling argument. One of the best simple comparisons is that despite all the investment and technology we cannot accurately predict the weather beyond 5-10 days so how can we consider a prediction for a 100 years hence to be accurate.

There are loads of other rational arguments in the book but with the alternative view I find it difficult to believe that global warming is a global conspiracy. I suppose one of the problems is that until it happens we wont know whether everyone is right or wrong.

The precautionary principle also mentioned in the book means that if there is the slightest change of the catastrophic scenario occurring then we should not take the action that would cause it. Therefore the precautionary principle would suggest that because scientists have found a potential risk we should do everything to eliminate it. However you could use the precautionary principle to say we should live 50 ft underground all the time because every time you go outside there is a risk of a plane falling on your head.

Then I reach the thought in my head that says "Do I believe in global warming?". Then my second thoughts kicks in and realises the framing of the question suggests there is a belief factor rather than relying on cold, hard, undeniable facts and truths.

"Do I believe in doing something to protect the environment?". No facts required this time but how do you protect an environment, again it raises in the book that you can only manage an environment and we still don't know how to manage land to protect something. The ecosystems around us are ever changing we cant protect and preserve but we can manage it in a direction. In the books it talks about nature not having a balance but oscillating between different factors as species rise and fall.

Finally the book finishes with the premise that they should set up a new environmental group which basically looks for problems and fixes it, so take land management, you accept you do not know how to do it, so you take 8 similar parcels of land, have a different management policy in each one. Try things out get them evaluated by outside consultants and by trial and error find out what land management policies work and don't work.

One character talks about scientific journal authors talking about simulations as if they were real world data and suggest that such articles should be labelled "Warning: Computer Simulation - May be erroneous and unverifiable" and then suggests a label for newspaper articles as well "Warning speculation - may be fact free".

I have long argued about labels for news articles, some kind of evaluation of the source:

How about this the Zephryist- Morton coding
(the highest number would be taken in each code)

8 - Video evidence
7 - Sound evidence
6 - Multiple eye witness accounts
5 - conflicting eye witness accounts with some commonality
4 - Single eye witness account
3 - written evidence
2 - Multiple eye witness conflicting accounts
1 - 2nd hand source no eye witness accounts
0 - opinion only no verifiable witness 1 or second hand

4 - Known as giving previously reliable evidence
3 - No previous record of evidence
2 - Questionable record of giving reliable evidence
1 - interpretation of known facts with own opinion on conclusions or extrapolation
0 - own opinion - few known facts with open interpretation.

3 - Expert / professional in field
2 - Media expert in field
1 - Amateur in field
0 - Unknown knowledge status in field.

So with this you could evaluate any news source such as the BBC news website which would be a 8 by 4 by 2 site, one of the highest rating with video evidence, known to give reliable evidence in the past, and with media experts.

You could also rate a blog, my highest rating would be a 4 by 4 by 1 unless you felt I was merely giving opinion where my blog would be rated 4 by 1 by 1. Of course with a fully functioning system the ratings would be given by peers.

The beauty of the system is that the lower the number the more questionable the source, it would help any reader instantly be able to separate fact from fiction without having to read pages of previous articles and compare them with other sources to determine the reliability, with a peer reviewed system other people have already done the leg work.

You could go further and break down the rating system more by breaking each section into a series of questions almost an acid test of reliability.

I may return to this some day or like many other posts on my blog it may just be a random thought that sits on the shelf collecting dust.

Firefox 3.5

Well firefox 3.5 is finally here and to be fair about time too. i was beginning to loose patience with 3.0 as java never seemed to work well.

Having used firefox for the last couple of days it seems slightly faster. There is a nice feature similar to IE where you can add a tab from the tabs which is nice.

So first impressions are definitely good.

February and the Customer Service Manual

February

It has to be said I cant remember much of February, I have worked two Saturdays out of the last three weeks, my full time day job, two evenings and for the last week I have had a really rotten cold. It amazed me quite how much snot a human can produce, at its peak I could have been selling two pints of snot a day.

Anyway I can now feel myself returning to normal and hopefully march should not be so bad.

The Customer Service Manual

I was in homebase shopping for light bulbs in my ongoing campaign to replace all the light bulbs in my house for energy efficient bulbs. The campaign is going well, all normal bulbs have been replaced and at homebase I secured replacements for the candle bulbs in my art deco lamp which just leaves some GU10 halogens and some R50 spots to be replaced. All can be replaced its just a question of finding a shop that sells the right bulbs.

Hence my trip to homebase which I have to say if you want a 60W replacement bulb which is a standard energy efficient stick then they have enough to refurbish Buckingham Palace. Everywhere you turned there seemed to be a bottomless 1 m square bucket. If that is repeated in every homebase in the UK then homebase must have billions of them, which given they last ten years is a bit pointless. Have I uncovered the great European Lightbulb mountain, are they unable to turn off the machine that makes them and every shop in the UK is having to hide them instore to avoid a national calamity?

If you want any other kind of bulb they had a few bits and pieces but no GU10 replacements or R50 replacements. Eventually I gave up and headed to the till with two candle bulbs, a plant and a pair of oven gloves.

The Checkout assistant had obviously been on the mandatory customer service course and was well briefed on the Customer Service Manual. The Conversation went as follows:

Checkout: Did you find everything you needed today?
Me: No, I was looking for some lightbulbs but your selection is a bit rubbish at the moment.
Checkout: Yes our selection is a bit rubbish at the moment.

Great, so the trick is to agree with the customer. The manual probably states sympathise or affirm the customer's comment to give them validation.

Although in this case they actually achieved less than nothing. Good Customer Service might have been to ask me what I had been looking for and would I like them to order some for me, or hold some when the next order came in. No, they let a slightly peeved customer walk off into the sunset. I will pop back there another time to see if they have the light bulbs back in stock but chances are they wont and so I will just have to order them off the internet.

If you are trying to improve customer service a half hearted by the book attempt is worse than nothing at all.

The Review of 2008

Well what a year 2008 was, a grand total of 94 posts starting with the review of 2007 and ending with the great beaver escape.

With 94 posts I kept a nice solid average of 1.8 articles per week and although I was trying to get to 100 articles I didn't want to push it and I am very happy with the final result.

Snow watch continued through the early part of the year with lots of false starts and only the odd snow flake. However in November / December there were also some false starts making the 2008/09 season look slightly more promising.

In February I was woken from sleep by my first ever earth quake. In April I talked about my little theory of how really only one person is needed to decide a political election. In May one of my only two articles that month was an open letter to Steven Spielberg telling him how he could have done the new Indiana Jones movie Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) properly. In June there was a story about the first beaver dam in the UK.

In July I wrote about the rise of the urban shepherd. In August I wrote perhaps the best joke article of the year where I lampooned research about hearing pictures on the computer screen. In September I approached the entire range of subjects usually covered in my blogging including a playlet entitled "Single for Bicester Town". In October the credit crunch was really hitting hard and I wrote several articles about the capitalist economic model and the folly of chasing continuous growth. In November I wrote about the new tradition of the emergency Christmas box. Then finally in December just before Christmas I reviewed a heart warming best seller about mans best friend.

What a year it has been and what potential 2009 has for so much more.

Happy new year and have a good 2009.

Christmas Box

I am all in favour of starting Christmas traditions and this one is one I am going to start this year.

To give a bit of background this comes out of several discussions about what I might want for Christmas. I like to think of simple presents for Christmas and I have fairly low expectations.

For my Christmas to be complete all I need are three things a good fiction book, a nice pair of socks and a bar of chocolate. As long as I get that I am content.

Christmas Box

This is a modern day version of a stocking.

1. The book must be a novel, no non-fiction allowed.

2. The socks must be nice and warm, no novelty or Christmas socks allowed.

3. The chocolate must be large and suitable for eating with the book.

No other items are allowed in the box. They must all be put in a box and wrapped up, outside decoration is left up to the gift giver.

Project 10 to the 100th

I saw this ages ago on the google home page, Google are running a competition, in their words:

"Project 10¹⁰⁰ is a call for ideas to change the world by helping as many people as possible."

I have entered one entitled:

"Help local people develop local sustainable energy projects through local resident run co-operatives."

You never know, one day it might just change the world.

If you have a world changing idea why not swing by google and submit it.

Playlet: Single for Bicester Town

Audrey Hepburn style girl meets cynic in very southern belle type playlet based in Oxford train station.

Intro: girl rushes across concourse towards the ticket window bumps into man staring up at the departures board.

Dave: Woa there, go steady.
Audrey: sorry more haste less speed, sorry excuse me..
Dave: certainly an interesting first impression.
Dave: I'm Dave and you are?
Audrey: Many things, but today I am Audrey.
Dave:Only today?
Audrey: Maybe.
Dave: I find you intriguing would you like to discuss this over coffee.
Audrey: Why not?
Dave: I will take that as a yes then.
Audrey: might as well, lead on Macduff.
Dave: Macduff?
Audrey: The scottish play.
Dave: Ahhh.

Both sit with coffee.

Dave: What is time?
Audrey: Why it is the tick following tock that shuffles us from birth through to the grave.
Dave: I'm sorry I think you misheard me, What is the time?
Audrey: time is immaterial, I simply don't have any.
Dave: Ermm OK.
[pause while sipping drinks]
Audrey: Are you sure I misheard you.
Dave: I think so.
Audrey: You see... I think you are just afraid of discussing something that reminds you of impending death.
Dave: I'm sorry I did not realise I was going to die this morning.
Audrey: Oh your probably not going to die this morning.
Dave: Only probably, well I can probably relax then, at least in a train station I am unlikely to be run over by a bus.
Audrey: True but only probably, one can not take any chances, one must be vigilant for the metaphorical bus at any time.
Dave: I have enough trouble with avoiding physical buses to be worrying about metaphorical buses.
Audrey: I can see that might be the case.
[Both pause to ponder]
Dave: It is a funny thing fate.
Audrey: I have never seen fate as being much of a comedian.
Dave: Was it fate that I met you today, and fate that you have no time.
Audrey: No, it is something much simpler than fate, it is the vagaries of a train timetable.
Dave: Yes it must be mildly annoying that trains don't leave the station when you want to.
Audrey: Mildly.
Dave: Still the company for coffee is quite good.
Audrey: Mildly.
[Pause while both sip]
Audrey: Are you scared of an impending death?
Dave: No, it is just that impending sounds so immediate.
Audrey: Oh its not, maybe impending was a poor word, maybe ultimate death would be more appropriate.
Dave: Maybe, although it sounds rather grand for what death actually is.
Audrey: Fate and death you are a very curious man.
Dave: You haven't been on a second date with me, then its destiny and Serendipity.
Audrey: My train goes in two minutes and look at that queue, I'll never make it.
Dave: You can buy a ticket at the barrier.
Audrey: I will have to rush..
Dave: wait...tell me if you are single.
[Audrey turns and smiles]
Audrey: Single for Bicester Town please.
Dave: Single...[Audrey turns and nods]... make that two singles.
Audrey: Two singles make a couple.
Dave: Only time, serendipity, fate and destiny will tell.
Audrey: Indeed.

The garlic bread older than me

I had a lovely M & S garlic and parsley baguette last night and while searching for the heating instructions noticed that it was:



Which would make it firstly a very well preserved baguette suitable for decades long space missions and secondly means that the baguette has been around several years longer than me.

Of course it is more likely just to be a product code or factory code and someone did not think through the unintended consequences of the layout of the packaging.