NatWest have recently introduced a one-time pad device on their on-line banking system, which I’ve just got my hands on. As someone who travels a lot, it’s going to be an inconvenience to carry around, so I phoned up NatWest to see if I could have it disabled. The chap I spoke to implied it was being introduced by all UK banks in one form or another and wasn’t going to be optional. Does anyone know if this is true? I wonder if they have really thought through the implications for their customers. Online banking is often of the most use when you are away from home, and carrying a physical device seems like a very stone-age method of providing security. Why can’t I choose not to have it?

… find good food in Madrid? I’m obviously doing something wrong.

I’ve been in Madrid for just over a week now. My first mistake was to assume that restaurants would be open when I wanted them. Unfortunately, it appears that the local convention dictates that you don’t eat till about 9pm, so most don’t even open till 8.30pm. It took me a few days to give in and toe the line. The places I was forced into when I ignored this convention were not pretty (a cheap and nasty buffet being one of them). Although I’m now resigned to it, the habit of eating so late really disrupts my sleep (please, no comments about siestas. It’s close to freezing here some nights, and most people work 8am-6pm - with lunch at 3pm).

Even once I’d got the time right, both the quality and variety seem to be surprisingly low for such a major city. Yesterday’s meal, in an unassuming but smart Italian restaurant, was looking promising when I ordered the lasagna. It turned out to be less so when I realised it was microwave-heated: and not all the way through. My Spanish being not up to par, I couldn’t be bothered to complain, but skipped dessert without a second thought.

Tonight’s experience was almost worse. Getting fed up with Italian-based food (it’s easy to find when you’re travelling, but you get bored of pizza and pasta), I wandered into a place with a bit more variety. I fancied rice, but not the risottos available, so went for a chicken curry. I wasn’t expecting much, but I got even less - this time it was stone cold. I had a chat with the waitress and then the chef, and in between their broken English and my attempts at half-sentences containing the word ‘caliente’, I got it heated. I think the implication was that it was meant to be that way. Once hot, it was acceptable, but not much more than coronation chicken.

The best meal I’ve had here so far has been in a cheap down-and-out tapas bar with two Spanish colleagues at lunchtime. The second best was a pizza, but was marred by an embarrassing wine-glass-smashing incident. I think I’ve resolved that I must put aside my fear of speaking Spanish, bring with me a phrase book, and try tapas again for dinner. I’m fed up with everything else.

Amazon have obviously got just as sick of Royal Mail as I have. They now seem to be using the Home Delivery Network instead for large parcels. I’ve just had some network kit delivered - on a Sunday! What’s even more impressive, I picked the cheapest delivery option available.  There’s also online tracking available.

Roll on postal competition.

Sometimes travel produces the strangest combinations of experience. I was upgraded to Club Europe by BA on my flight to Oslo (probably something to do with the AA Gold Card that I was mysteriously sent after returning from San Jose earlier in the year). So as I write this inflight, I’ve just finished an impressively delicious chicken curry, polished off a bottle of red wine (no, not THAT size), and a decent bit of Stilton (which, I might add, goes particularly well with left-over curry sauce - yes, really). I’m listening to Kellie Pickler on my phone-cum-MP3-player with an operating system that barely manages to go a day without rebooting (but it’s OK, I’m gonna upgrade to an E61 soon, which Dave assures me is the bee’s knees). Kellie Pickler, incidentally, is pretty much the equivalent of Gareth Gates - as an American Idol almost-made-it - but the novelty of country music means that the unadventurous style is lost on me, and it evokes pleasant feelings of my trip to California anyway (yes, even California has country music).

All this is an unusual combination, to say the least. I’m checking into the Radisson SAS Plaza downtown later tonight, which Chris assures me (from a trip to Oslo earlier this year) is pretty decent, although sadly the team has to move after tonight as it seems that the whole world has checked into Oslo for this week and all the hotels are full. We have to move 50km away, so maybe I’ll be brave and hire a left-hand-drive MANUAL car. God help me.

Now all I have to do is make the week worth it by helping to impress the IBM customer I’ve come to see with our products. I’m nervous, but excited.

Later update: Hotel is OK, team is very friendly and seems very capable. I’m feeling quite positive about this week. I have discovered that we’re only at the customer till Thursday (rather than the Friday I thought), so I’ll have to find something to do on Friday. Maybe locate the local IBM office, or maybe take the day off. We’ll see.

Oh, and it’s 11:30pm and it’s still almost light outside.

It appears that Starbucks is finally coming to Winchester. No doubt many will lament over this further Americanisation and homogenisation of our high street, but I’m kinda curious.

For a long time, Winchester’s most obvious and best option for coffee (in my humble opinion) has been the equally sterile and characterless Caffè Nero chain. There are a few other chains and independents around, but they’re all weaker for one reason or another (low ceilings, no air-conditioning, dirty tables, etc.). Starbucks will become its most obvious competitor, located only a few doors down, and will hopefully shake things up. It’s interesting how Caffè Nero’s dominant position has allowed it to get away with some things - the lines are always far too long, and the staff slow and inefficient. I see this as a practical example to observe how change in markets works, that wouldn’t be possible in a larger city with less incumbency and more turnover of residents. It’s going to be curious to see what happens, and I’ll be one of the first in Starbucks’ door.

I am now the proud owner of a Sony Cybershot DSCW-55, which I’ll use for the remainder of my trip around the Bay Area to take some photos, after my Canon Powershot failed. I got it from Best Buy for the bargain price of $240 including a 1GB memory card. Not bad for a 7.1MP camera, especially given that current exchange rates almost halve that price when converting to pounds.

Advantages:

• Easy-to-use Sony design - the build quality seems pretty good too. Normally I avoid Sony in the same way I avoid Apple - I just don’t understand the fuss (sorry Apple fans). This time, the bargain price swayed it for me.
• Much slimmer and lighter than my Canon.
• Goes all the way up to ISO 1000 (my Canon only does ISO 400). It remains to be seen how much noise there is at this level, but it’s still nice to know it can do it. I shoot in low light a lot, and hate compact-camera flash almost on principle.

Disadvantages:

• Not quite as many features as my Canon. It won’t do aperture-priority, shutter-priority, etc. I can do without these for the time being.
• No gravity sensor. It remains to be seen how annoying this will become, but Picasa makes rotating easy so hopefully it won’t be a big problem.
• Only a 3x optical zoom. Not sure what this translates to in old numbers, but it ain’t much.
• US charger - of course I didn’t expect anything different, but will have to solve this in the UK somehow.
• US-only warranty - didn’t expect anything different either, but just decided to take the risk - that’s an easier decision to make with $240 than the ~$1000 the 400D would have cost.

I’m really not sure what I’ll do when I return to the UK. It probably depends on how many the Canon will cost to fix. I might sell it on Ebay once fixed and part-buy an SLR with the proceeds (I really should have followed Adrian’s advice originally and bought the 400D in the UK). I don’t really want to keep it; I’m most unimpressed with Canon now, and I get the impression the Sony will probably do everything I want from a compact. We’ll see.

It appears that my problems with my Powershot may not be the result of mishandling after all; I’m a victim of the dreaded E18 error. This appears to be a design flaw in Canon compact cameras that they refuse to acknowledge the existence of (the fact that there’s an extensive Wikipedia page for the problem says it all). Numerous solutions have been suggested; I’ve tried taking the camera apart a little to clean out around the lens but got nervous and screwed it back together again. My last attempt will be to buy some compressed air in a can and try that. By the sounds of things, if Canon try to charge for repairs, I may just have to pay up. But this, combined with the fact that it appears they won’t honour their warranties worldwide (which means I cannot really buy a 400D here) means that my opinion of Canon has plummeted from their previous record with me.

I’m still stuck with the problem of how to take pictures; I’ve looked into hiring a camera, but the only ones seemingly available are high-end SLRs at around $75/day - far more than I want to spend. I may just end up buying a cheap compact so I have some photos to take home.

Following up from yesterday’s sad tale, Canon US have told me by email that if I buy a 400D from Amazon here, I’d need to return it to the US for warranty service, via a US address. This makes me considerably more nervous about purchasing a camera here.

Unsurprisingly, Canon’s UK website provides much worse service - I can’t even find an email address to check with them whether they’d fix a camera under a US warranty. I still find it amazing that companies think it’s reasonable to leave their customers without an email address to contact. I’ll probably call them on Monday to confirm, but I’m not happy with this level of pre-sales support. I’ll be taking a look at Nikon.

Which unfortunately leaves me without a way of taking pictures whilst I’m here. And that makes me a sad Andy. Anyone see a way out of this?

The political arguments around government and business are well understood. At one extreme are people who despise profit-making businesses, considering them a necessary evil at best, and who’d prefer to see governments take more action to protect their and society’s interests. At the other are those who’d prefer to see governments scaled down significantly and businesses given more freedom.

People with my political opinions often make arguments for the latter based on either practical or moral arguments. Richard and I had a online discussion about this recently. But maybe there’s another, more silly, question that’s missing: which is sexier: business or government? A quick look at the primary US government portal compared to Wal-Mart’s homepage leaves me in no doubt who hired the better web designer, at any rate (and Wal-Mart is hardly an example of glamour). Which corporate body makes you want to interact with them? Anybody who’s spent any time at a UK local council, with their cuppa-and-rich-tea-biscuit image, will know what I mean (that’s an example of non-sexiness, if it’s not clear: not that I have anything against rich tea).

I’m semi-serious, actually - this does matter - it’s an issue of marketing. Clearly a company cannot actually be sexy - only people can be that. But the Virgin family of companies gets pretty close - and not just because of the suggestive naming. It’s an image that has been carefully cultivated by the folk at Virgin. Virgin is a company that you want to like (well, I do, anyway), irrespective of the fact that their trains don’t run on time.

I think the reasoning behind this is simple. Companies have to be sexy - or at least, they have to project an image which is aligned with values their customers want them to have. Sometimes this is sexiness - and Virgin is a prime example of a brand that’s attacked several markets with that technique and won some new custom. Sometimes, to be fair, there’s another image to be conveyed (UPS brown vans and brown uniforms are not alluring; but they do project an image of reliability). Conversely, government has no such motivation to project an image of anything - or at least the vast majority of unelected officials don’t. There’s no requirement to improve, no motivation to act like a marketer, because there’s no competition. Thus, government will always continue to project an image of dull and incompetent, whether that be the case or not. As Seth says, ‘[people] lose their jobs because of boring marketing’ - except in government they don’t, because they rarely lose them at all.

It’s probably not the most pressing problem the world faces right now, but wouldn’t it be nice to stop worrying about global warming for five minutes and think about how to make the institutions we deal with on a daily basis more appealing?

Two recent visits to Wagamama (outstanding noodle bars - give them a try if you haven’t already) have uncovered a strange habit: when asking for the bill, it’s brought immediately to your table, with a slip asking for the tip and a signature. Once this is filled in, your credit card is taken away briefly - presumably to be swiped. But no further signature is required, and even more surprisingly no PIN number is requested. That’s the end of the transaction.

Is this legal? Is it within the terms of the merchant agreement? Is it sensible? Is it secure?

I don’t know, but it’s sure weird. I haven’t seen any other merchant do this.