Paul Smith's '2002 stuff' for Indie Magazine

January 2002.

Paul Smith... On the subtle Art of Management.
Alternative title: 'Barely Managing'.

It's a chilling fact that half of all people are below average intelligence. Worse, one in twenty is in the bottom 5%. Most chilling of all, it seems many of them end up as management.

At this point I'm at pains to stress I'm not including my current superiors in this sweeping statement. They're all well-balanced individuals with I.Q.s well into triple figures. However, in the past I've faced remarks like, "We need you to be giving 110%". I felt like asking, "How?" By the very nature of the thing the maximum I can give is 100%. That's all it's possible to give. Perhaps they meant they wanted us to work through our lunch-hours? Again, I half wanted to say, "I tell you what, I'll give you 200% and put myself in an early grave, how'd that be?" But my self-preservation gene stopped me. I've learnt tongue biting is an invaluable office-politics tool when someone whose solitary skill is speaking in the loudest voice is saying something dumb to you. Previously witnessed examples of how-not-to-manage have included:

"Where do you think you're going?"
"I need some Post-its(tm)"
"Sit yourself down. Get them in your own time, you're here to work."

I've even been asked, "You're not still going on about that stupid report, are you?" while chasing for a vital list of potential customers to call. To my way of thinking that's sloppy management at best, and at worse, something involving lots of rude words and name-calling. I don't think anyone finds that sort of attitude helps motivation or improves their ability to do their job. Take the e-mail I received, asking if I felt I was receiving too many irrelevant e-mails. Ironically, up-until that point, I didn't think I was. Once I was interrupted on the phone to be told I shouldn't allow myself to be distracted whilst on the phone, and I've been criticised for taking on additional responsibilities, even though I used my personal time (damn, I did end up working through my lunch-hour after-all) to do them. None of this gives one the rosy glow of appreciation. Never forget that to some people the feeling of being valued by a firm is as much an incentive to stay there as the money.

If you manage people, bare in mind that it's not always necessary to beat them with a stick until they squeak to get the best out of them. A happy employee is a productive employee, and if helpful suggestions, support and a little care make them happy, then try that. Perhaps you don't need to stare them out, use 'the long silence technique' in meetings or otherwise intimidate them to get the performance results you're both looking for. That style of management is bullying by another name. The only difference is the threat's not that you'll pinch their dinner money, it's that you'll sack them. You don't need to be a genius to know Respect and the Desire to Succeed are far better to install in your subordinates than Fear.

507 dummy spitting words Dale, but lots of them are quite short. Thank God I'm no longer being treated like this, eh? Ha ha aha…

Paul

Note: I took quite a lot of flack at work over this article. The darling puppets of the HR department even got involved. Although I did say in it that I wasn't referring to my then management, HR felt it could bring the firm into disrepute. I've always maintained that the column isn't about any individual, and it's true, it isn't. However I can now exclusively reveal that much of it was inspired by a woman called Nichola. If she made the subject of bad management all about her, that's something she needed to look at fixing for herself. But she preferred to spend her time intimidating her 'inferiors' with threats and assorted head-games. I've worked with some obnoxious people in my time, but she was remarkable... I could go on. Actually. I think I will: If you ever reads this Nic, I'd like to point out you can spell 'They're' as There and Their too. You don't have to rely on just the one version. Oh, and just out of interest, do you put your makeup on in the dark? For more tales of fun and games with this lady, take a look at the Paul in the Media Page.

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February 2002.

Paul Smith
A rose by any other name…

I like shop names. Hairdressers seem to have the best ones, with titles like 'A Cut Above', 'Curl Up And Dye' and 'The Cutting Room'. I wish our industry embraced puns so warmly. 'The Chip Shop' is a good one I suppose, but there are far too many combinations of 'The Computer/PC/Micro Shop/Centre/Store' for my liking. If your retail business has any of these names, then please don't think I'm accusing you of a lack of imagination. These are all good names. They tell the potential shopper what to expect. It's the 'It does exactly what it says on the tin' effect, and it's very reassuring for the casual punter. However, since your businesses name is often the first thing that registers with other people, I reckon a little more creativity should be applied to it.

Naming a shop is like naming a child. You want to create an impression with the tag. Hardly anyone names his or her offspring Cyril or Gertrude anymore because times and tastes have changed. Only the daughter of a rock star could get away with being called Moon-unit, and Jocasta Smith isn't going to fool anyone that she's a member of the landed gentry. This is why people usually play it safe, and there are so many Claires and Johns in the world. (Again, no disrespect to any Claires or Johns reading this. They're both great names with much to recommend them.) So, where can you gather memorable shop name ideas?

You could take a look at how Plumbers and Builders get to the front of the Yellow Pages, and rename your shop 'Aardvark PCs' or 'A1 Systems'. You could go for irony, with a title like 'Ye Olde Computer Shoppe' or 'Bodge I.T.' In an industry based on acronyms, it seems appropriate to use any old string of letters to name your business. It didn't hurt IBM to lose the 'nternational usiness achines' bit of their name. Sadly, the same cannot be said of my mate Colin Underwood and his abortive business venture, which was called Network Technology. He made headlines in our local paper with his shop front, even though they needed to blank out much of the picture…

As noted above, the risk of getting the name wrong is a serious one. Imagine poor Fifi Trixabell trying to get a job at a top London law firm in a few years time. And calling your PC building business 'Hair by Alan' would be financial suicide. It probably wouldn't be much better if it was actually a hairdressers, but there you go.

To summarise: Any businesses name is more than the first line of an address; it's an advert in itself. Picking something memorable is vital, but there are clear risks in trying to be too clever because not everyone has a detectable sense of humour.

As a footnote, my hat comes off to the shop I heard of in Lincolnshire that goes by the exquisite moniker of 'PC WOLD'. Pure genius.

Paul Oberon Smith is an ex retailer and now works in distribution.

500 carefully selected words Dale.
I hope you're well and that this is funny, relevant(ish) and suitable. If it's not, let me know and I'll do something funnier and/or more relevant.

Paul

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March 2002.

Paul Smith
Plug in, turn on, DV out.

There's a whole new reason to own a PC! How exciting is that! People used to put up with them to write letters of complaint to the BBC on (why else did the original MS Word come with a 'why-oh-why-oh-why' template?) and then Doom came out and people bought a 486 to play games on. After a while someone noticed the Internet and folk began wanting a thousand pound Pentium PC to save money on stamps and shoe leather. Now you can use one to remake Citizen Kane, The Shawshank Redemption or Dude, Where's My Car? That last sentence reads as a question, but actually it's a statement. To do this amazing feat, just add one digital camcorder.

A few seemingly short years ago you would have a VHS-C camera and edit onto a VHS video with it. A slow and nasty business that, after audio dubbing, produced a second-generation copy of something that wasn't crystal-clear to start with. Analogue video (i.e. [S-]VHS[-C], 8mm and Hi8) is rapidly on it's way out. Like music and mobile phones before it, video has gone all one-and-noughty. This is because you can now buy a good 500-line resolution digicam for under £400, and even the cheapest, nastiest 240-line analogue unit is £200 plus. You can still pay over a grand for a DV camera, but for that you get a gizmo so neat it comes with added 'lifestyle'. Great.

I'm not suggesting you stock a broad range of camcorders, tripods and fancy vests with eighty pockets. I'm sure specialist shops don't make big money from these up against the likes of- I need name no High Street names. I am saying you need to push Firewire(tm) (a.k.a. IEEE-1394 or i-link) cards and DV editing software, such as MGIs excellent VideoWave. This is a very lucrative enthusiasts market and as people migrate from older formats, or buy their first camcorder, they're looking to be able to edit their art. They could buy a dedicated DV editing box, but when a PC with all the gear (big, fast hard drive, CDRW or DVD-Burner maybe, plus the obligatory Firewire(tm) port) is a quarter of the price and capable of so much more, how many takers for the professional solution will there be? A woman in a wimple mate, that's how many.

This market is only going to grow as Internet bandwidths widen. Video streaming isn't going to be limited to fuzzy little boxes for much longer. Proper 24-frame-per-second full-screen presentations will become the norm. 18 minutes of DVD quality video equates to a CD-ROMs worth of data. At the moment that's one hell of a download, but in 3 years time, who knows?

That spotty bespectacled lad loitering in your shop could be the next Ridley Scott. That balding, bearded reclusive eccentric (and I know you have one) could be about to follow in Stanley Kubricks' enigmatic footsteps. Give them the tools. The P4 shouldn't be the centre of their digital world. It should be you, damn it.

Paul Smith is an ex retailer and now works (for want of a better word) in distribution.

502 more words Dale.
Guess who's just bought a camcorder? Please feel free to use this one if the Names column was a bit too like your own feature.

Bori-Dah (with apologies)

Paul

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April 2002. Unused.

Paul Smith
Words are a cage we make for ourselves.

It always unnerves me when I discover people actually read my column. At a show once a stranger strode up to me saying, "You write for Indie, don't you?" Suddenly I was wondering if this person was a stalker. What else did they know about me? Had they been going through my bins? For a moment I had the feeling the ghost of John Lennon and something ancient in my glands were both telling me to kick this man in the goolies and run like buggery.
"Er, yes", I replied uncertainly. "How did you know?"
He pointed at the attractive picture of me (as above) in the copy he held, and then at the Indie t-shirt I was wearing. I grinned like the moron I so clearly was, made my excuses and left.

I was in a local retailers place recently when he waved me over. "You know that rant you had in the mag a few months ago?" he said.
Naturally I wondered which rant he meant.
"The one about a crap local retailer", he continued as I nodded with fake recollection. He fixed me with a look. "It wasn't about me, was it?" He asked.
Well, as it happens, it wasn't. I've always thought of his busy shop as a cool little outlet full of activity and atmosphere. Then he pointed-out a badly written price on a neon-pink star and I remembered the rant he meant.
"I've also been known to call 'thanks' sarcastically when someone leaves without buying something", he confided.
Again, this was something that has happened to me elsewhere in the past. I shook my head and assured him the piece wasn't about him. I added that I hoped he'd stop doing it in the light of my damning article about such things. His reaction was a tad vague, but I like to think he's taken my thoughts onboard.

Yes, my articles (records tell me this is my 48th, since first appearing as 'Tammy' in the November '97 edition- Aaagh) are supposed to make you smile, and even giggle if they catch you in a light-hearted mood. But they also carry a serious message. Well, most of them anyway. Some of them. 'To amuse and inform' has always been my intention; a hit and miss affair, I admit. My hidden agenda has also been to make you, the reader, question what it is that you do. I hope I've been successful once in a while.

And now the industry bit: Hard-drives have always been controlled by three factors; performance, capacity and price. Needless to say when the price-point for two different models gets too close, the lesser-spec'd one vanishes. We're seeing 20Gb drives go now 40Gb ones are only a bob or two dearer, and soon the same will be happening with performance. 7,200rpm drives are nearly the same price as their slower brethren, so expect lower-capacity 5,400rpm drives to evaporate soon. This information is freely given. What you do with it is up to you.

Paul Smith is to PC component distribution what Lenin was to furry hats.

501 words-o-wisdom Dale.

Paul

P.S. A statement I overheard the other day: "Windows XP isn't' all that user-friendly. It's like a cartoon travesty of everything we know and love". Which sounded kinda cool to me.

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April 2002.

Paul Smith
The low-down on what's up.

With the recent roller-coaster ride that's been RAM pricing, it's worth thinking outside of the square to get more for your Pound. Pushing the oomph envelope. Giving the performance package a shove. Remember this was written a few weeks before publication, but currently DDR RAM is cheaper than good ol' standard SD-RAM. Which is odd because DDR is the better stuff. Marry it with a nice P4 board, such as Intel's Billings model, and you have a cost effective, high-performance solution for those not wishing to go the whole hog and buy an 800MHz RD-RAM set-up. The motherboard may cost you a little more than an SD-RAM one, but 266MHz memory is always going to be a lot quicker than 133MHz, as well as being more pocket-friendly at the moment.

More so than RAM, arguably the hard drive is the most mission-critical (I love jargon, me) element of a system. Processors and PSUs may come and go, but when a HDD pops, especially if it's not been backed up, you're, in the words of Bernard Matthews, "stuffed". As well as being a mechanical device that WILL wear out and break, they're also a slow bit of PC architecture. UltraATA-133 drives have a theoretical maximum read or write of 133Mb per second and, working from cache memory, can momentarily peak near this. However, no drive can sustain these very high-speed data transfers. But there are ways around this bottleneck if you want to go looking for them. A nice fast drive is a good starting point, and 7,200rpm spinners are getting more popular all the time. Before Christmas I sold perhaps six slower (5,400rpm) ones for every quick one. This is now more like a 3:1 ratio, which is getting smaller as the price differentials between the two standards closes. Worth thinking about if you're not unhealthily obsessed with building cheap systems, which I hardly need to add is a world apart from building systems cheaply.

Another way to squirt BBQ fluid onto your hard drive performance without burning money is to add a second drive and an ATA RAID controller. Set the card to RAID-0 (striping without parity checking) and as it writes it'll put data as quickly as it can onto both drives. Similarly, when it reads, it reads two disks simultaneously, straight into the PCI bus. Wallop, instant red-hot performance enhancement! The downside is that there's no fault redundancy (as there's no parity checking with RAID-0) plus the cost of the card. On the upside, you still get the full capacity of both drives with this set-up because there's no loss of storage space with this sort of RAID. I'm sure it's not the right approach for most applications, but for a kick-botty demo machine, or for the customer with a love of high-performance consumer electronics and a chequebook up to the task, it's worth a look. Plus, two 60Gb drives are cheaper than one 120Gb one, and the RAID controller shouldn't be any more than, oh, £60-ish.

Paul Smith is 'big in the parts department' and works in component distribution.

500 technical words for April, Dale. Feel free to move them about a bit.

Paul

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May 2002.

Paul Smith
It's a mad mad mad mad mad mad W-W-World

We British are an obsessive bunch. A trip to my local newsagent proved this beyond any reasonable doubt. Whilst looking for my regular copy of Ferret Breeders Gazette I found all of the following genuine publications on prominent display: Steam Railway, Today's Railways, The Railway Magazine, Rail, Steam World, Trains, Locomotives Illustrated, Modern Railways, Rail Express Magazine, Heritage Railway, Steam Days, British Railways Illustrated, Railway Bylines and the ever controversial Narrow Gauge World. And it isn't a specialist anorak-wearers newsagent. It's a W.H.Smith. It's curious then that a recent study shows that our use of the Web is actually now falling. Fewer people are spending less time online looking for cheap DVDs/flights/train-tickets/shags. Given that we're a nation with more than our fair share of loonies, why is our obsession with the Internet on the wane?

I think people have noticed Web pages are essentially dull. There are words in a selection of:

fonts, colours and sizes, sure, and some of them are underlined.

You even get the occasional picture if you're lucky. But for the MTV generation it's all a bit static. Even the multimedia feast that is Flash struggles to deliver material quick enough to keep someone with a 56k connection and a 5.6 second attention span interested.

Even for the more content-driven user the surfing novelty is wearing off. You may visit a site once out of curiosity but what will draw you back? Only the prospect of something new and interesting to see or do there. And the reality is that 99% of the Internet still seems to have 'Copyright 1999' at the bottom of it. So if you have a Web site, give it a spring spruce. You don't need to go crazy. Just add a splash of colour and some extra interaction, even if it's only a handy java PC-build-quote-generator.

Then there's the constant risk of not getting what you think you're getting on the Web. I'm not only thinking about Internet dating. Who could resist a Birmingham to New York return flight for $150? Not a midlands lady I'll call 'Kate'. It wasn't until her card had been charged and the tickets dispatched that she discovered the Birmingham she was flying from was the one incontinently in Alabama rather than next to the M6. The US site's defence was that the Birmingham International Airport in question was clearly shown to have the code BHM rather than the UK's BHX. Even Watchdog didn't want to get involved, and when it comes to the complexities of international consumer law, who can blame them?

It could be a reaction to our increasingly insular society. Often all I want from a site is the 'phone number of the company in question, and in turn the reassurance of a human voice. Perhaps our sudden disinterest is the Why Don't You? effect. People have 'just turned off their PC's and gone out and done something less boring instead'. Like standing in the rain listing the numbers of passing trains in a small book.

Paul Smith is known as The King of PC component distribution.

503 words about this Internet thing everyone seems so interested in, Dale. I hope you approve.

Paul

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I'm lucky enough to receive semi-regular money for my bits for Indie, but once in a while I push a little too hard for payment. I understand now that the horse's head was a step too far... Roll your cursor over the cheque below to discover (after a moment or two's downloading) what I mean.