No skill required…

Posted on 30 November 2009 by SJPONeill

…just a little luck and a charged up camera handy…

If you’re on Facebook (like, who isn’t?), here’s a fan page you might want to keep an eye on if you’re into things like the Information Militia, social Networking, just just trying to keep up with the chaos that surrounds us (our contemporary environment is not described as ‘complex’ for nothing…). It’s Kendall Langston Social Media and Management Consultancy and has some great and very topical advice and links to articles etc…Yesterday or today – who can understand the Facebook clock system? – Kendall linked to this NY Times piece Buying, Selling and Twittering All the Way – it’s pretty light but an example of the information militia at work: only loosely organised at best but too much organisation would probably stifle the flow of information…thousands of people all adding their little bit to the picture…getting the information THEY need, when THEY need it and (hopefully) knowing what to do with it when it arrives…

That last section is one we added to the popular definition of knowledge management: it’s all very well getting the right information to the right people at the right time, as the KMers would have us do, but there didn’t seem to be much point if the recipients lack the skills or knowledge to employ it. We added ‘…and ensuring that they (the right people) know what to do with it – in this way we join the dots between lessons, doctrine and training.

In reading the NYT article, I was reminded of the picture painted by John Batelle in The Search ( a well-recommend read if you have any interest at all in information management and manipulation – it is fascinating look at Google from its early days and makes you wonder what ‘do no harm’ really means) of being able to shop and by using a bar scanner built into your phone, compare prices, create wish lists, check items against stock on the shelf at home (assuming you run an online domestic goods database, I guess). It’s all happening now and is being driven by ‘the people’, the information militia…

PS. I got my copy of The Search from Audible.com – worth a look if you do a lot of driving or gym work and need something to occupy your mind…

The mist and rain…

Posted on 29 November 2009 by SJPONeill

…disappeared this morning and it has been that glorious day the Mountain is famous for. Last week I cleared away a lot of the self-seeded bush that was shading the vege garden and got all that mulched up today so that it can further contribute to future vege gardens. It’s been a while since I’ve mowed the lawns, leading to Carmen’s comment last weekend “Growing hay again, are we?” so that was the other project this afternoon, although I did use the scrub bar instead of the mower so as to do exactly that: make some hay for the chicken run and the coop for the chickens when they hatch. I was just about done and just finishing off around the water tank when I bumped the storm water pipe and cracked the damn thing – to add insult to injury, the forecast for tomorrow afternoon is crappy so it really needs to get fixed first thing tomorrow…just goes to show that nothing is simple…

Those two brave little sparrows from the other day have decided that they are in luff with any and all shiny things inside the house and will exploit any door, window or other opening left unguarded to get inside and rattattatat against the stainless kettle, rubbish bin, and benchtop, mirrors and windows. It might be OK except they aren’t really house trained and, of course, my two big helpers get all angsty and excited when there are birds inside…

It’s been interesting listening to all the squawking from the Brits about how poorly the Americans treated them in Iraq. Of course, when you are making stunning statements like ‘..the top British commander in the country, Major General Andrew Stewart, told how he spent “a significant amount of my time” “evading” and “refusing” orders from his US superiors...’, and you cut and run from the theatre of war before the job is done, you can hardly wonder that your national credibility is questioned…Yes, the American military are different; yes, they are less than receptive sometimes to other ways of doing things; yes, they do tend to focus on their way of doing things BUT…BUT maybe that is because they are so damn good at what they do in the application of combat power. What other nation in Iraq not only admitted that it had got it wrong in the post-transition phase of OIF, but implemented a complete cultural shift to address the issues, restructuring its development and acquisitions programmes (killing some sacred cows along the way), AND aligning its doctrine for the complex environment not just across the DoD, but also across and into the rest of government too. What other nation sat on its moral high horse, resting on its withered old laurels and former glories, and sniped at those who were doing the business?

Masterchef – the Aussie Way

Posted on 28 November 2009 by SJPONeill

It was quite sad really, the final crescendo of Aussie Masterchef last night…we’ve been fans of the UK original since we got a home where we could get to from work by 5-30…at first we hated the Aussie version but it really grows on you. UK Masterchef is very traditional and (Fulda) Gapist – all about the food – we could never keep track let alone identify with the people, although the food was our initial attraction – and a direct linear progression to the finals.

The Aussie version, on the other hand, is all about ‘the people’, although at first it did kinda come across like Julia Childs (well, it did have its own Julia and Julie!)meets Big Brother…the finale only screened here last night – onya Julie for taking out the First Aussie Masterchef!! I think she deserved every bit of it last night and managed to delivered a cliffhanger that hung onto the the last dish in the competition…I missed the previous couple of eliminations in the final week and was amazed to find Julie in the finals – nothing about her skills but I thought that the pressure would have been too much for her over Chris and Poh.

The Aussies took a simple linear concept and turned it upside down, shook it all about, introduced uncertainty and complexity, mixed with a good measure of apparent chaos – sound familiar? And all about the ‘the people’ too – not just those in the MasterChef house, but also all those out there supporting it – and they were: apparently the finale episode was the third most watched TV event in Australia this decade. That the focus was on the people was all too clear when Justine was eliminated and tough guy judge Greg Mehigan had to turn away and wipe his eyes – and who didn’t have a little lump in their throat when top chef, Matt Moran, turned up on Justine’s doorstep the night she was eliminated and offered her a mentorship…

Well done, Aussies – now we’ll have to see how the Kiwi version plates up…

Under the wide and starry sky

Posted on 26 November 2009 by SJPONeill

Under the wide and starry sky

Dig the grave and let me lie

Gladly did I live and gladly die

And I lay me down with a will

This be the verse you grave for me

Here he lies where he longed to be

Home is the sailor, home from the sea

And the hunter, home from the hill

This is Robert Louis Stevenson’s epitaph, his own words, and engraved on his tombstone in Samoa.

The closing lines are also the last lines in Leon Uris’ Battle Cry, a semi-autobiographical novel that tells the tale of a group of signallers from the Second Marine Division in WW2. I don’t think that I was aged even ten when I first finished this book and I reread that copy so many times that it eventually fell apart. It was this novel that taught me what being a Marine was all about, that and the sections on the Marine pilots in Miracle at Midway (Reader’s Digest version) that I also read many times at the same time.

Of course, we don’t have Marines here and if we did, I probably wouldn’t have been a very good one, but those words remain with me today – the power of a legend…

I’ve categorised this under The Thursday/Friday War because it is becoming so apparent that ethos and values are the key enablers for operation in the complex environment. If we can’t get this right, we can never hope to even attract let alone win the hearts and the minds of ‘the people‘…

And now I see with eye serene

Posted on 25 November 2009 by SJPONeill

While fossicking around in the library last night, I found an old notebook in which a much younger me had recorded quotes of note (to me anyway). I’m away the next couple of nights so I thought that I would schedule blog updates for my away days to keep things ticking over. So here goes…

And now I see with eye serene

The very pulse of the machine;

A being breathing thoughtful breath,

A traveller between life and death;

The reason firm, the temperate will,

Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill…

A perfect thing, nobly planned,
To warm, to comfort, and command;
And yet a Spirit still, and bright…

– William Wordsworth; ‘She was a Phantom of delight‘, l.21^8 (published 1807)

On googling this today I found that the long-forgotten source from which I drew this quote has in fact shifted the focus from a woman to a machine; possibly this has been drawn from one of the Bolo series’ that illustrate how an artificial intelligence can become in time truly aware.

I was quite fascinated with this series when I first discovered it – I was only 9 or 10 when I got my first exposure to the Bolo story…I had invested my pocket money in the Tales of Time and Space anthology…and there it was, Keith Laumer’s The Last Command and the Mark 28 Bolo LNE (Lenny)…many years later, I discovered the Bolo anthologies and theme enduring theme that ethos and values are more important warrior attributes than flesh or metal.

Rattatattatat…

Posted on 24 November 2009 by SJPONeill

The thud of my fingers (all both of them) on the keyboard is accompanied by the staccato of two sparrows tapping away at their reflections in the stainless rubbish bin in the kitchen. Both the big bi-folds are open so these two have quite happily hopped into the house, oblivious of the two very large dogs stretched on the floor following their every move…obviously the two little sparrows are keener on challenging their reflections in the stainless steel than the potential consequences of their action – quite brave really…

Courage is something I have been thinking about recently; not so much the Victoria Cross/Medal of Honor kind of courage but the simple courage to stand by your beliefs when the going gets tough and to do the right thing. In Lucifer’s Hammer, Jerry Pournelle says “…it was the right thing to do – in any ethical situation, the thing you want least to do is probably the right action…” What brought this on was a post on The Strategist quoting another blog proposing that COIN techniques could be successfully employed to counter urban crime…I tend to agree because the bottom line in COIN is still to address, one way or another, the core issues behind the problem. What really caught my eye in this post was the quote from the Naval Postgraduate School study regarding the mindset of the local law enforcement “..But Fetherolf, who took office this year, also blamed a tradition of police officers who “love the chase. They get into this business to kick ass and take names, by and large. We’re at odds with ourselves because of the people we hire...”

Police officers operate as individuals and are a great example of the Strategic Private, that one individual who by a single callous or careless word or action can inflame an environment, who in the space of seconds, can undo years of relationship building. Michael Scheiern’s shift from platform-based tracking to tracking individuals works both ways; in the good old days of the Fulda Gap, we were interested in creating effect with mass: brigades, battalions, squadrons and fleets. In these massed forces, one or two bad eggs would really do little or no damage in the big scheme of this. In today’s complex conflict, amongst ‘the people’, just ONE individual who fails to uphold generally accepted ethos and values can lose the war…and the only way to ensure that those ethos and values will be there on the day, is to live by and apply them EVERY day…

“If a Marine fails to uphold our standards and dishonours oneself or the Corps in peacetime, by failing to do his or her best to accomplish the task at hand, or by failing to follow ethical standards in daily life, how can we expect that same Marine to uphold these critical foundations of our Corps in the searing cauldron of combat?” – FMFM 1-0

Credit where credit’s due

Posted on 23 November 2009 by SJPONeill

The Strategist has really made a job of his rethink of that chap Lind’s 4GW idea and come up with a really robust and supportable model that he has called ‘cohorts of war‘. Not to steal any of Peter’s well-deserved thunder, but for purposes of enlightenment a cohort is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as:

an ancient Roman military unit

a band of warriors

persons banded or grouped together, esp. in a common cause

Works for me…I’m not so sure about the links to the Rand papers on swarming that are referred to in some of the comments but will, of course, withhold judgement until I have had a chance to read them…

I do feel though that the Fifth Cohort does need a little more polishing as I think that the key binding relationship is one of profession, guild almost; and that, depending on their structure and motivation, insurgent groups can be fitted comfortably into one of the other cohorts. Still, well done that man, and I hope to see many references back to this model in the next months and years…

Well that’s that then…

Posted on 22 November 2009 by SJPONeill

The accounts are finally done and safely dispatched. I’m buggered, my (two) typing fingers are sore as, my head hurts from all the tables and the sun has finally come out in all its glory. We spent the morning loading up everything Carmen needs for her work week flat for her new job – it’s too far from here to comfortably commute on a daily basis – and now she has headed off back up the road, it’s chill time…

So it’s a timeout day today and back into the fray tomorrow; drafting CVs, rewriting my COIN Review paper and gearing up for a visit to Wellington Wednesday/Thursday…I will leave you to contemplate this uber-cool never-quite-happened 1930s Russian bomber, posted on Paper Modelers today:

See you on the morrow….

Still accounting…

Posted on 21 November 2009 by SJPONeill

…the novelty has well worn off and I am so glad that I decided to do anything BUT accounting when I left school. However the last few days have offered an interesting insight into the world of finance and how a maze of deception and confusion can be laid to conceal transactions and divert attention – and here it’s just by accident, not design!!!

Today’s thought on the generations of war discussion, is that generations of war is the wrong concept: we should be thinking in terms of generations of war fighters (not warriors, because not all war fighter may be warriors). If we accept this shift, then it becomes quite a simple thing for various generations of war fighters to co-exist in the same temporal or geographic plane.

If/when I get the accounts completed this weekend, I may expand some more on this idea…in the meantime, the cloud has been below house level all morning so my motivation has not been particularly high but now it’s off to feed animals and then back to the Cursed Accounts…

Taking a break

Posted on 20 November 2009 by SJPONeill

Today anyway and only from the generations of war thing – not because I have lost interest at all but because I am doing the accounts this week and it’s not much fun and any distractions are welcomed but dangerous.

John Birmingham has two blogs at the Brisbane Times and The Geek is by far the most fun. His recent item on Dr Who is worthy of posting in it’s entirety:

Who’s the master of cool sci-fi (not a question)
November 13, 2009

Have you ever noticed that when a bunch of geeks gather around the campfire to nut out once and for all the important question of what was the coolest science fiction TV series ever, that the actual coolest science fiction TV series ever almost never gets a look in. Why is there no lovin’ for Dr. Who?

Stargate SG1 is always pushing to the front of the line blowing everybody out of the way, goosing Star Trek, snorting in derision at the original BSG and Space 1999 (with good reason, admittedly). But where does it get off calling itself the longest-running sci-fi series on TV. That would be the Doctor you’re gazzumping there Jack. He first appeared on our screens back in 1963… and he’s still here. Not just in syndication and repeats either.

Sure the effects were crap in the early days. Okay, they were crap right up until cheap CGI and more generous production budgets meant the most recent series didn’t have to build their aliens out of old garbage bins and lengths of rubber hose. But go back and look at some of those original Star Trek episodes and hang your head in shame American sci-fi TV producers. I mean, tribbles, come on, really?

So great is the show’s longevity of course that eleven actors have cycled through the lead role, and God knows how many supporting cast have been there with the Doc, twisting their ankles, getting captured, occasionally getting killed, and generally raising the question of why he bothers with traveling companions anyway since they just get in the way or cause cliffhangers every 22 minutes. But putting that aside, which other serious, sci-fi or mainstream, can claim to have survived a change in lead actor so regularly, or even once.

Much as I liked Ben Browder’s character on Farscape for instance, he was really just Jack O’Neill lite in the later SG1 series.

And where most TV shows get weaker as they get older, Dr. Who has arguably grown stronger with the years. Partly this is a function of great writers and producers coming to the latest series of in a spirit of paying homage to a much loved show from their childhood, partly it’s to do with increased production values, and partly the Doc has hung around for so long he couldn’t help but benefit from the improved aesthetics of the medium as it matured. Bottom line however, it has improved while other series, particularly some big-budget American shows (yes Lost, I’m looking at you, and your mate Heroes) have all but sputtered out creatively after a couple of good early years.

So let the word go forth from this time and this place that I have settled this debate once and for all. Dr. Who is the coolest TV sci-fi series ever made.

While Stingray is my first memory of ANY TV series, it is also my first memory of a science-fiction show, followed closely by Forbidden Planet: both had me squinting at the screen through my fingers from an early age…three perhaps…? But it was Dr Who that sits still at the top of the heap: I was terrified by the Abominable Snowmen, Cybermen and Daleks (the Big 3 – all the rest, including the over-rated Master are Tier Two scaries) but refused to miss my weekly doses of terror. I still recall almost crapping myself when I was 7 or 8: running around the shadowy passages of Dad’s squash club, I turned a corner and ran smack into an oversized badminton shuttle. Obviously it must have been some sort of promo item but it was as tall as me and it definitely looked like a Dalek. I was adios amigo and refused to go back there for weeks.

I lost interest during the latter part of the Tom Baker years – possibly because the Beeb was starting to chew through the Doctors and some of them were pretty silly; or equally possibly because teenage boys develop other interests. I had a brief resurgence of interest when the US-made movie came out in the 90s (had Eric Roberts in it?) and then that was it until 2005. The new series had come out but I’d dissed it believing that it would just be a shoddy rip-off of the 60s and 70s classics. On my return from CLAW 1 in Salisbury, we were spending the weekend with friends in Rotorua; Dr Who just happened to be on during dinner (Bad Wolf, I think the episode was) and I became interested very quickly.

Although I have lapped up Season 2-4, I have still to see most of Season 1 (too cheap to pay full price and waiting for the box set price to drop). JB is correct: Dr Who IS the most enduring science fiction show around; yes, there are those that are older but NONE that have been develped and evolved so consistently over four decades and into a fifth. Thunderbirds is as enduring but is a year younger and has not evolved from the original series – still a bit hit with young kids today though.

While I was a big fan of all the other Gerry Anderson series, nowadays there have more of a cult fascination appeal (apart from Thunderbirds) than serious interest. UFO was the centre of my known universe when I was 10 and 11 but now it seems vaguely pretentious and overdone -still very cools toys though – and, yes, I too was going to build my own Moonbase (on the Moon, of course) and use my secret organisation defend the world from the Aliens. Still might but if so I really do need to pull my finger out…

If I was to have my Top Five science fiction series they would be:

Thunderbirds. Everything EXCEPT Jonathan Frakes’ miserable 2004 movie.

Bablylon 5. Up until the end of Series 4 – after the two big storylines were dealt to, Series 5 seemed a bit anticlimatic.

Dr Who. Everything from the very first episode to the Series 5 teaser episodes.

New Captain Scarlet. Please, please do more with this: the animation is great, and it builds upon the gritty dark side of the original series.

Firefly. The whole series + Serenity. A great concept that just didn’t quite get the support it needed although Serenity did really tie-off the original storyline so they would have needed a new one for further series.

I enjoy Star Trek in chunks but actually prefer the books, especially William Shatner’s first trilogy. Voyager and TNG were great once they figured out that violence was OK; Deep Space Nine was like Star Trek does Mallrats and just boring; but I do have a bit of a soft spot for Enterprise possibly because they can not use the transporter or time travel to get themselves out of narly situations. I do have the Star Trek Borg and Animated Series sets though and and do rate them quite highly.

I’m also a big BSG (both series) fan but in terms of a top five, the original is a bit campy now, and the rethink version is just a little too complex and intertwined to be enduring for me.

Farscape, Andromeda, Stargate? Whatever…just light relief.