Category: General

The Perfect G&T

My friend Sally has the recipe for the per­fect gin and tonic.

My friend Sally vis­ited us from Mel­bourne for about 10 days. I’ve known Sally for half my life; we met when I was study­ing at Mel­bourne Uni­ver­sity. Sally received the Gin Award from Rolland House, the hostel where we lived, so she’s been study­ing the sub­ject for some years and has par­layed her know­ledge into a career organ­iz­ing ban­quets and func­tions for the Athen­aeum Club, a private gen­tle­men’s club (think P.G. Wode­house and Jeeves). I talked Sally into writ­ing down how to make the per­fect G&T for pos­ter­ity, and here it is.

At the end of a long hot day on the road every doc­tor should pre­scribe a G&T to restore one’s pos­it­ive out­look on life. The pre­par­a­tion of the per­fect G&T does how­ever take some effort and even more research. Like many things in life it is all a mat­ter of taste but to help in the research phase I will share some of my own per­son­al find­ings gained over some 23 years.

Select a high­ball glass made from a glass that is on the finer side as I think it improves the taste. It is pos­sible to mix a G&T in an old fash­ioned glass but this requires refills more often.

Add ice, which is import­ant to main­tain the tem­per­at­ure, to the bot­tom of the glass (prob­ably more import­ant on the 3rd or 4th glass as these tend to last longer).

Add the Gin. This is the ele­ment that requires extens­ive research. My per­son­al favour­ite is Bom­bay Sap­phire which has an herb­aceous and com­plex fla­vour but I would encour­age you to sample as many types as pos­sible. Just like a good scotch or wine there are many fla­vour com­bin­a­tions. Gor­dons is really light and crisp, it isn’t very com­plex or herb­aceous. Tan­queray is quite lem­ony and a bit sharp­er and more bitter.

The amount required tra­di­tion­ally is 30ml but I have found that it some­times depends on how much pos­it­ive out­look you require. Once again this also takes some research to get it right and will depend on the gin of choice.

The ton­ic is often much under-estim­ated and is worthy of the time and effort of get­ting a bet­ter qual­ity and hav­ing a few bottles in the fridge for those emer­gency situ­ations. I usu­ally sug­gest the small 300ml splits as they are one use and avoid the dis­ap­point­ment of a half-used flat bottle. I prefer Schweppes. Do your­self a favour and don’t get the diet style, after all this is for medi­cin­al pur­poses. Dur­ing my time in Canada I have found the Canada Dry style of ton­ic water is a very good substitute. 

The per­fect G&T should have a half slice of lem­on or lime to fin­ish it off, I prefer lime with my Bom­bay gin but if I can­’t get it then lem­on. I use lem­on with Tan­queray or Gordons. 

Take the per­fect G&T out onto the porch and con­sume till your pos­it­ive out­look on life has been restored.

This has been a life-long pro­ject and I have spent many hours of research to get to this point. I hope this has inspired you to start your own research project.

Dublin Liberty

I was lucky enough to be able to attend the Liberty spon­sor meet­ing in Dub­lin, a couple of weeks ago. I’ve been to Dub­lin before, in October/November 2003, to assist in the Reach PSB Phase 1 pro­cure­ment, and I like the city, so I was glad to get back again, even if it was only three days. Three days is enough time to get to a couple of decent res­taur­ants and a Dub­lin pub (these being upstairs at the Chamele­on Indone­sian res­taur­ant, upstairs again at the Mer­cant­ile pub, and down in the cel­lar at the Thai Papaya res­taur­ant). There was anoth­er res­taur­ant but that was on the first, jet­lagged, night, so I’ve for­got­ten the name. Of course, no vis­it to Dub­lin would be com­plete without the end­less trek through Heath­row Air­port (see Tim’s exeges­is on Heath­row); for­tu­nately this time the escal­at­ors worked and the air­port was mostly empty so the lines for secur­ity and buses were much short­er. My weak knee also decided to be kind to me and not play up so I guess the new Pil­ates exer­cises I have are doing some good!

Back on top­ic… Dub­lin seems to have a lot of old bank build­ings that have been nicely revamped to be pubs (the Mer­cant­ile above) and hotels (the West­in, where the meet­ing was held) but maybe that’s just the way it appears when you first notice the phe­nomen­on. Unlike in many cit­ies where banks were taken over for oth­er uses, the Dub­liners don’t try to hide the her­it­age of the build­ings. I still remem­ber the first McDon­ald’s in Auck­land, New Zea­l­and, which was also in an old bank build­ing. They did a good job there as well (undoubtedly assisted by some loc­al by-laws for­cing the issue), so it is pos­sible to reuse old build­ings and keep the her­it­age aspects con­gru­ent with the new uses.

I’m new to the Liberty meet­ings, so I’m still learn­ing who’s who and how the sys­tem works. Com­pared to W3C and OASIS there appeared to be more Europeans and Japan­ese, and more women. The former makes tim­ing phone calls tricky (Europe, North Amer­ica, Japan pretty much span the globe); the lat­ter enables a cer­tain amount of knit­ting and needle­craft to go on dur­ing the dis­cus­sions (as well, of course, as the typ­ic­al email­ing that always goes on dur­ing meet­ings). The work is done in a slightly dif­fer­ent way to OASIS and W3C. There are a num­ber of dif­fer­ent groups in the Liberty Alli­ance (see Liberty Alli­ance Activ­it­ies) which share the work. So, for example, instead of one tech­nic­al com­mit­tee doing everything from dis­cuss­ing use cases to design­ing the tech­nic­al solu­tion as hap­pens in W3C and OASIS, the Busi­ness & Mar­ket­ing Expert Group comes up with the use cases (the mar­ket require­ments) and the Tech­no­logy Expert Group cre­ates the spe­cific­a­tions to meet those require­ments and sat­is­fy those use cases. This is an inter­est­ing way to split up the work; it seems to work well (syn­chron­iz­a­tion between the two Expert Groups is a neces­sary part of the pro­cess, of course). Over­all, a good crowd of people with lots of tech­nic­al and mar­ket know­ledge about import­ant prob­lems; this is going to be a fun part of my job at Sun.

Keeping America Strong

Betcha did­n’t know that small one-per­son con­sult­ing com­pan­ies in Canada play a vital role in keep­ing the US strong, didja? Makes you won­der why I moved to a big US-based com­pany, but I digress. 

I found out just how vital these small com­pan­ies are when an asso­ci­ate pro­du­cer from a TV pro­duc­tion com­pany cold called a few months ago to see wheth­er I’d be inter­ested in tak­ing part in their series called, yup, Keep­ing Amer­ica Strong. When I poin­ted out that I was in Canada and a one-per­son con­sult­ing com­pany, he respon­ded that keep­ing Canada strong would help the US bor­ders and that small com­pan­ies also play a vital role. And that the series was hos­ted by Wil­li­am Shat­ner, sup­por­ted by tele­vi­sion news anchors and a Navy Admiral.

I must admit, I was intrigued, although I might have been more temp­ted had it been Leonard Nimoy host­ing rather than Wil­li­am Shat­ner. Still, it was worth spend­ing anoth­er few minutes on the phone, explain­ing what XML does and how it is used by vari­ous US gov­ern­ment depart­ments such as Home­land Secur­ity. XML obvi­ously passed the test of being deemed worthy of the next step, which was to meet the field pro­du­cer who would write up the pro­pos­al for each “ente­pren­eur­i­al com­pany” (their words) that wanted to “move for­ward in these times” (their words). At about this stage I star­ted won­der­ing just how much this was going to cost, although I was enjoy­ing the pol­ished deliv­ery of the bene­fits of being on TV with the “Amer­ic­an icons” (their words). Even­tu­ally I got the answer. The major celebrit­ies were donat­ing their time and energy for this import­ant endeav­our, and the only costs were a con­tri­bu­tion to the pro­duc­tion costs of a mere $US 15,000. A tad pricey for a van­ity kick, I thought. So I declined with thanks, got a nice fol­low-up email, and still have the fax with the details of what I missed out on. Maybe I’ll keep that for pos­ter­ity; after all, paper does­n’t degrade the same way web sites do.

Then yes­ter­day I found an Invit­a­tion for Inter­view for “For­bes Radio” on Amer­ic­an Air­lines in my inbox. Yup, anoth­er invit­a­tion to prove I’m one of these “innov­at­ive industry and busi­ness lead­ers, who through effect­ive col­lab­or­a­tion, pro­gress­ive strategies, improved pro­ductiv­ity, and increased agil­ity, provide com­pan­ies and indi­vidu­als a com­pet­it­ive advant­age and bet­ter qual­ity of work and life”. This oppor­tun­ity is to take part in a 3‑minute inter­view to be played on Amer­ic­an Air­lines inf­light pro­gram, which has a “cap­tive audi­ence of 3.4 mil­lion exec­ut­ive trav­el­ers per month”, and offered at the dis­coun­ted rate of only $US 4,995! So make sure you remem­ber your iPod next time you fly on Amer­ic­an Airlines. 

Now at Sun

As of today (Feb­ru­ary 28, 2005), I work for Sun Microsys­tems. And no, it’s not what you think. It’s actu­ally all Eve Maler’s fault. She and I have enjoyed work­ing togeth­er on the XML Con­fer­ence and the CSW XML Sum­mer School for a couple of years, so when an open­ing came up in her group at Sun that she thought I was suited for, it was too good an oppor­tun­ity to pass up. I filled in the applic­a­tion, Eve made sure the right people saw it, and everything worked out! We did try to keep it secret from Tim for a while, but that ended up not being prac­tic­al. After all, he had already figured out the issues with liv­ing in Canada and work­ing for a U.S.-based group and knew the right people to talk to.

My title is Seni­or Tech­nic­al Pro­gram Man­ager; like Eve I will be work­ing on inter­op­er­ab­il­ity and tech­no­logy part­ner­ships. I’m look­ing for­ward to it, although since I’ve nev­er worked for a big com­pany before, I’m not quite sure what to expect in many ways. I do know that blog­ging is encouraged!

And then there are my oth­er activ­ites. Since the W3C Pro­cess Doc­u­ment does not allow two mem­bers of the W3C Advis­ory Board to come from the same com­pany, and Eduardo Gutentag was recently elec­ted, I am resign­ing from the AB after almost three years. I’ve learned a lot from the AB mem­bers and the W3C Team and I thank them. 

I will chair the XML Con­fer­ence again this year, but Eve won’t be on the Plan­ning Com­mit­tee. And I’ll be in Oxford in July for the XML Sum­mer School as well.

Corporate Blogs and Wikis

I’m writ­ing an art­icle for the Gil­bane Report on the uses of blogs and wikis in the cor­por­ate world; if any­one has exper­i­ence with this (apart from for PR) I’d like to hear from you!

I’m writ­ing an art­icle for the March issue of the Gil­bane Report on some of the uses of blogs and wikis in the cor­por­ate world. The Gil­bane report appears monthly and con­cen­trates on enter­prise con­tent man­age­ment and related issues at a man­age­ment level. It used to carry a fairly hefty sub­scrip­tion charge; since Janu­ary 2005 the art­icles are now all avail­able free of charge. I wrote an art­icle for the Gil­bane Report back in Octo­ber 2002; the curi­ous may wish to look at The Role of XML in Con­tent Man­age­ment.

As part of my research for this art­icle, I’d like to hear from any­one who can tell me more about what blogs and wikis really are be used for in the cor­por­ate world. I have enough inform­a­tion about PR aspects or, more gen­er­ally, out­ward-facing aspects of using blogs, but not enough real inform­a­tion about real com­pan­ies using blogs or wikis intern­ally. I asked about Using Blogs for Pro­ject Man­age­ment and got lots of “nice idea but we could­n’t quite get it to work” emails. I can think of lots of uses for blogs but what I’d like to be able to high­light are things that people in com­pan­ies are actu­ally find­ing use­ful, rather than nice ideas that might work. Ditto for wikis — they seem to have lots of poten­tial but is any­one real­ising that potential?

If you are using blogs and/or wikis in the cor­por­ate world (apart from for PR; I have lots of people to talk to about that), please let me know. You can send an email, or use the com­ment form on this site.

Note: when I write an art­icle of this form, I com­bine things that people are say­ing into my own inter­pret­a­tion. If I quote someone dir­ectly, they will be named with the quote. All sources are lis­ted in the acknow­ledge­ments. Once the art­icle is pub­lished, I’ll email all sources with the link to the art­icle, and I’ll blog it as well.

More Scams

My pre­vi­ous post on scams was writ­ten without tak­ing into account a rather more dis­turb­ing devel­op­ment in the spam/scam scene. I recently received spam that claimed to have lots of cred­it card num­bers for sale, prices vary­ing accord­ing to the issu­ing coun­try and how many card num­bers you wanted. I went to the web site and there were lots of cards there (middle digits miss­ing). I checked for my card num­ber, which was­n’t there. There was no list­ing of Cana­dian cred­it card num­bers, so there is some­thing to be said for not liv­ing in the neigh­bour­hood’s biggest country.

This is so blatant, and, unlike the phish­ing scams, is some­thing the cred­it card com­pan­ies should be dir­ectly inter­ested in stop­ping since the money to cov­er fraud­u­lent card use comes out of their profits. Unless… maybe the email was a scam, and some­body is fish­ing to find people who want to buy such num­bers. Lots of scope for con­spir­acy the­or­ies there!