One of the things I enjoy doing that isn't web related is illustration, and last week I was asked to create a set of illustrations and a book prop for Patrick's short-film, The Christmas Bunny. The film was shot this weekend past, and is in the editing stages, but I thought I'd share some photos of the prop and illustrations.

See the rest of the shots on flickr.

Making the book

I ended up bracing the illustration and text pages with extra blank sheets on either side, binding the edge with masking tape. Then I used some partially dried glue stick (pritt-like) which I could pinch pieces off and roll into sausage shapes and press into the masking-tape spine, to create a malleable, but strong, join for the pages to move on. No super-glues I had seemed to work as well as this rather Blue Peter-esque technique. The best thing about the glue-stick solution is that it rubs off the paper anywhere that it shows, so the join is seamless.

It was a nice little project and I'm really glad to have been able to contribute to the film in some way. The first two illustrations and title are used as the introduction to the film, with a narrative voice-over and music, and the final illustration is used as the outro. Hopefully I'll get to do some more illustration work in the future.

Barbie has her 125th career - computer engineer! There's been a few comments around about how Mattel are pandering to further stereotypes - sticking her in a pair of pink glasses is enough to insinuate that she's now "intellectual". I don't think that's all that bad. The glasses thing, sure, I'm a bit biased, but I don't see anything wrong with putting Barbie in a pair of specs for her computer engineering job. It's not an entirely false correlation. Many people who work on computers need glasses because they stare into the pixel void for 12 hours a day. So what? I think it's kind of cute - and why not portray a computer engineer as cutesy? The fact is, that's the only wearable "accessory" they felt she needed to portray her new job. That's right, isn't it? What more do you want? Computer engineers should look however they like - there's no uniform. The bluetooth headset is a bit daft, but small details.

Rachel Andrew blogged today about a very sad incident yesterday, where herself and her fellow female speakers were mocked by audience members of Boag World's live podcast event. Essentially, viewers in the backchannel decided to concentrate on their physical attributes rather than their well educated views, with suggestions that they were far too good-looking and well presented to be there for their abilities alone.

Rachel has rightfully pointed out that such behaviour shouldn't be tolerated, but she also writes about how women in technology shouldn't be encouraged to dress down or become more tom-boyish just to feel accepted or to avoid attention.

Barbie has a whole host of more fundamental reasons why she's probably a poor role-model for little girls (her figure is the obvious one), but I don't think having her careers be varied and non-traditional is one of them. I'm actually into the idea of a Barbie that helps to say that it's okay to be as girly-a-girl as you want to be and work in traditionally male dominated industries. And hey, I think glasses look cool.

This year, I thought it might be fun to try taking part in something that would get me writing more. Anton Peck started Project52 with a simple aim to produce a blog post a week for all of 2010.

It's hard. Really hard.

It's week 5 and although I generally suffer various rage related incidents* over the course of a week, nothing has presented itself as particularly bloggable. Likewise, work has been fairly unspectacular and I've not been especially creative so I'm lacking anything of true substance to talk about or teach. Next week should be better, as there's an upcoming event I'll be involved with and I'll have produced some extra-curricular illustrative commisions I'd like to share.

I asked twitter - the natural home for people who don't know what to talk about - and the suggestions came back that I just get this stupid meta-post over and done with and talk about writer's block (cheers Olly and Craig).

I like writing. I don't think I'm particularly good at it, but I can string a few words together into something that vaguely resembles prose. Finding topics that haven't already been talked about excessively in the web world is just an especially difficult challenge.

Only today, a mailing list I frequent has been discussing how difficult it can be to stay motivated and interested in a field that's coming out of it's emergent phase. Finding a cause that doesn't already have more than enough band-wagoners is rare and finding something unique to add is unusual and perhaps it's feeling less ground-breaking. There's less to do for the invidiual as more hands come on deck. Ultimately, this is super for the web but not so good for personal satisfaction, in my opinion. The word "jaded" was used, but I think (and hope) it's a bit early for that.

Finally, a suggestion from Matt:

@phae Ask for suggestions of what to write about. :)

matthewpenell

So, dear readers (probably, mostly, I should just address this to "mum"), anything I've hinted at in the past that you'd like me to elaborate on in the future? I know it's a cop-out, and it's lame to ask, but hey... you never know, it might work.

• OK, here's a little bonus list of things that have made me want to strangle people this week:

• CSS3 being compared directly to Java Applets - please, people. Lets at least let it out of the stalls before we condemn it.
• More pro-homeopathy articles, the Pope, the Daily Mail, the usual.
• Email responses to technical debates that consist of nothing more than off-topic quotations.
• Latest version of Chrome reporting unexpected background-repeat values in JS-land.
• iFrames.
• A guy on the tube who complained about the placement of someone's feet (they were a cm too close to his) and the crowded nature (it wasn't very crowded) of the carriage.

I'm generally completely non-plussed about petitions and marches and all that freedom of speech type gubbins that angry people get involved with all too easily. I think you should pick your battles and save up your bile and wit for when it really counts. But there's something about the 1023 campaign that really strikes a chord with me. There were government reviews in 2009 as to whether the NHS should continue to fund homoeopathy, so I think this could be the year we see it finally get cut and I'm happy to help tip the balance by picking a side.

If you haven't already stumbled across the many manic rants about homeopathy, and why it's such a ludicrous load of rubbish, then here's a selection of posts I could recommend (Update: Here's an excellent one from New Scientist today that covers everything up to now). The videos on the 1023 site alone are good and will help explain things quickly and often hilariously.

This weekend, 1023 has organised an active protest aimed at Boots. Around the country objectors to homeopathy will be necking a whole packet of homoeopathic pillules (sugar pills) to show that there's no actual active ingredients in them, since they won't be keeling over (I shall be amongst them). Homoeopaths are making defensive statements already to suggest that it won't do anything (they know as well as we do that they won't have any affect), because without a trained homoeopath prescribing the correct pills for the correct illness, it won't work (something to do with it being like the likelihood of having an allergy, or you have to have the right illness for the right pill for the magic to work... I don't quite get it). In my mind, that weakens their argument even more, since Boots sell non-prescribed pillules without advice to anyone - so they shouldn't work for those non-protesting people either.

I love the NHS. It's one of the main reasons I'm walking around now having a generally jolly good time of it. I think as a nation we're proud of it and what it provides for us, but as with most things, it's under-funded. Something like four million pounds a year goes into funding homeopathy treatments and hospitals. If you take a look at the research on homeopathy, it's just an elaborate placebo effect, and it seems a lot of homeopathists don't even deny this, and say that it's the act of caring and talking and the long appointments people get to have that help make them feel better - so I'm all for scrapping the lunacy and putting that money into therapies and councillors. Should have a similar sort of result, no?

Anyway - all that aside, and all the obvious nonsense and I'm still left with my biggest issue with the topic. If you want to take a "them" and "us" approach to the argument, my problem is with some of the people on "our" side. You'll see comments on articles and posts all the time that go something along the lines of "Who cares? It's charlatans selling pills to fools". Sounds fair, right? I don't agree. Charlatans: yes, generally. Fools: I don't think so. I think consumers and patients are well within their rights to follow recommendation.

Take Boots for example. Although clearly a commercial entity first, they still have a role in our world as a trusted pharmacy with a brand we recognise. Is it so wrong that people should trust a pharmacy to sell pills that have some efficiacy? Could you honestly say that you understand how the paracetamol or aspirin you take works? What it's chemical structure is? How it's produced? What it does to your body? You take them regardless, because you trust that those tablets have been tested to be safe, work and reliable. We're not expected to be experts on medicine. We don't have to be, because we rely on trained professionals to direct us. When the NHS provides money to a practice that is unproven, who are we as consumers of the NHS to question what appears on the surface to be a funding-based seal of a approval? Call people fools if you like once they've been shown and had to confront the science, but you can't label general man-on-the-street consumers as those people.

Someone asked me once if it meant we should be up in arms over anti-aging face creams with false claims for all the same reasons and my response to that is I'll start caring if they falsely claim to cure your illnesses too. Buying a cream and still having a few wrinkles isn't likely to be fatal, but not taking the prescribed and proven medication, in place of a few sugar pills when you're seriously ill, just might be.

Update: I did email Madison Maclean to complain, with a link to this post on the 19th January, and as of a week later, I still have had no response.

Update 2: Today, 19th October 2010, I received an email from the manager of Andrew Holden. He requested that I remove this blog post. Since these events did happen, I won't be removing the post. I am however adding this comment to say Andrew no longer works at the company (and hasn't for some time), although I have no confirmation if that was the same person who cold-called me, and whether you choose to work with them in the future is entirely up to you. I was not offered an apology.

Original post

So, a little story about yesterday and what not to do if you're contacting me.

Around 4.30pm my office phone rang (I don't publish this number, and I'd have trouble reciting it myself - you can only get it from the outside by calling the reception and being asked to be put through). My phone never rings at work, except for cold-calls from recruitment agents, so I'd already anticipated answering, saying "no thanks" and hanging up. A 30 second call at best.

Instead, I answer and the chap on the end of the line does his usual speil of who he is and where he works and if I'm available to talk at the moment. I answer "No, not really. As you can probably tell I'm at work, and also, you're a recruitment agent and I'm not looking for work at the moment, so I'll save you the time and say "no thank you"".

"But you haven't heard what I want to offer yet..."

Ok, that's true, but I still wasn't interested, thanked him for the call and as an ending question, I enquired as to where he got my number.

"From your linkedin profile".

Now, I'd like to direct everyone to my linkedin profile. Click through to contact me and find the section. What does it say? You have to be a member to take a look, so to save you the time, this is what it says:

Please email me. Calling my company and getting to my desk phone via the switchboard is unappreciated (and this keeps happening, so stop it). *NO* cold-calls from agencies.

To be fair, I added the final line about cold-calls yesterday evening, but the rest was there about not calling my switchboard and to email me.

So, being caught out with a lie, I expected an apology or at least some sort of sign that he had become confused or disorientated, and I point out that I expressly say that I do not want people to phone me. No, instead, he says: "Well, I might have got it from a colleague that you'd previously spoken to, but you're clearly all over the internet. You're inviting people to phone you, and you shouldn't expect people not to. I'm perfectly within my right...". I'm sorry, what? I invite recruitment agents who can't be bothered to read my profiles properly to cold-call me about jobs I'm clearly not interested in? I correct him and said that wasn't the case, and he continued to argue the point, at which time I decided this wasn't worth my time of day, thanked him again for his call and hung up on him mid-sentence. That might have been rude of me, but not half as rude as he was. I quickly vented on twitter, and some of the responses I received were interesting:

Some choice coloquialisms seem warranted. In the King's English, you might remind them that a combative cold call accomplishes nothing

by erickolb

wow. does this mean you need to have a 'no recruitment agencies pls' signature appended to every online post you make?!

by gradualist

there’s something about that argument that strikes me as a bit—for want of a more appropriate adjective—“rapist-y”.

by fatbusinessman

Reading that again, it sounds like a horrible rape defence

by jaffathecake

From what I can tell, part of a recruitment agent's job is building up a relationship and repertoire with potential candidates. Cold-calling people, lying to, and arguing with potential candidates does not seem to be the fastest way to build a lasting bond.

Identifying the company

I had to google the company to remember who it was that called me, as I'd seen red and forgotten exactly who it was. I'm so used to just saying "no thanks", hanging up and that being the end of the story. I knew it was Madison-something, but couldn't recall which. Turns out there's a whole ton of Madison-something recruitment agencies in London alone, each apparently specialising in IT. It strikes me that there's too many companies with names Madison-something, too many agencies and too many that specialise in the same thing. So, I can imagine the area is highly competitive.

He had hinted that he'd got my name from a colleague, so I searched my inbox for "Madison" and bingo, I had an email from Madison Maclean in 2008 from an Andrew Holden. I can't recall if that's the name of the guy that called me, but he's certainly the person I responded to with "I'm not currently seeking employment at this time, and probably not ever in the financial services area." after he emailed me in 2008 with job opportunities in the banking area, so I'm happy to let him take the blame for not taking me off their books (that I never signed up for in the first place).

As a favour to me, could you avoid Madison Maclean if you're job hunting? Thanks.