I'm in love with Lightroom

Adobe Lightroom. I remember trying it many many years ago in pre-version 1 form. It was disappointing. My overworked PC ground to a halt. I didn't really see the point of it - it seemed liked a bloated photo organiser. 

Half a decade or more on, my photo collection of some 30,000 images was languishing, unloved and closeted on a humming server in the corner of my underworked recording studio. The mere thought of sifting and organising my photo portfolio had become an insurmountable brick wall - too much to handle in one go; too much, even, to divide and conquer by hand. 

So, in summer 2011 invested in Lightroom version 3 - if for no other reason than all my photographer friends and acquaintances use or mention it, or its Mac "equivalent" Aperture. Lightroom has moved on hugely - now a superbly powerful workflow and editing tool, not just a photo organiser. I didn't even realise quite how powerful when I invested in it, but day by day I'm discovering more and getting increasing value and utility from it. Now I'm kicking myself: how did I manage so long without it? 

In the first instance, the major achievement Lightroom delivered for me was access to my photos again. That sounds like a bizarre thing to say, but the ability to browse, sort, filter, move, organise images with trivial ease and barely a click has made discovering what was in my collection a pretty straightforward task. This had previously become impossible - despite the superior abilities of Windows 7 to search and display files, I could still not easily get the 30,000 ft view, the 10,000ft, 1000ft and move with ease between them. In this respect, Lightroom totally delivers - working my way round 30,000 images is trivial. Identifiying those I like, those I hate and those I will decide on later is simply done. 

One of the other stresses I faced in the pre-LR era was the organisation and naming of my files. Was my folder hierarchy right? Should I have source and production images together? If not, how do I track forwards and backwards between them? How do I keep multiple exposures (e.g. for HDR photography) together? How do I know which are published and which are not? Keep them in a special folder? Move them? Copy them?

So, file organisation, naming and proliferation had become a total headache. That worry has gone now. And I mean totally gone. I let lightroom do pretty much what it wants. I know that I can move files around if I want to organise them physically, but by tagging them appropriately I can collate any group of pictures according to any criteria I want. Collections of images can be pulled together dynamically based on almost any criteria you can imagine. So, forget where they are on disk, they are always just one click away from you in Lightroom anyway.

These two benefits delivered what I wanted, but Lightroom had/has more to give: Publishing. 

This incredibly powerful feature allows you to set up connections between your photo library and online photo publishing on sites such as facebook, flickr, 500px, zenfolio. The king of this feature is a wonderful gent called Jeffrey Freidl, who has written a large number of plugins that enhance existing and add new functionality for a raft of photo hosting locations; including in some cases the ability to two-way sync between your online pics and your local library. Wow. 

At first I ignored this feature, thinking I wouldn't use it; that was until I started tagging my photos more effectively. I quickly realised that I could develop a tagging system and a set of smart collections that pull photos together and automatically publish them to multiple sites effortlessly. And keep everything in step. So, you want 5 star rated pictures, that are a final production version, containing buildings, taken at sunset, outdoors, not indoors, and you want them dropped into a collection on facebook? No problem - totally automated with one click in fact. Oh, and you want those same images dropped onto 500px and Flickr too? Yep, that's one click. Oh, and you want those Flickr photos cross posted out to 10 or 50 or 100 buildings and architecture groups? Well, that's no clicks - the plugin will do it all for you.  Of course if you need some resizing, watermarking, renaming and so on while you go about it, that just all happens for you to. 

For me, this has truly become one of the most powerful and time saving aspects of Lightroom. I've encoded my workflow using tags; I've classified my pictures by topic. Lightroom now decides if they should be published and where. I just push the button to say yes, make it happen.  I honestly cannot tell you how something that took hours to do (and thus rarely got done) now takes seconds, and I really mean seconds. It's almost insane. 

I've not even talked about editing lightroom - which is not only powerful, but non-destructive (i.e. applied virtually, totally reversible and modifiable at any time). It took me a while for the penny to drop how powerful this was; perhaps because my first experience of this many years ago was Google Picasa, which is lame in comparison. It was some sort of unhappy hybrid between destructive and non-destructive editing and limited in functionality. In contrast, Lightroom has wonderful and precision editing capability and hooks into external applications. I don't even have photoshop installed. 

There are a couple of features I really love. 1) Stacking - which allows you to virtually group images together like a stack of cards. Perfect if you are an HDR shooter and want to keep your bracketed RAWs together. Or if you want to produce a few versions of an image with different looks. Talking of which, number 2) Virtual Copies - without making a copy on disk, you can simply make a virtual copy of an image, and then edit that, leaving the original untouched. It's a wonderful way to play with and compare mutliple different looks for an image. I love this feature.

Which actually brings me back to the start - I love the whole thing. Lightroom as a tool has totally transformed my workflow, brought life back to a neglected photo collection and provided a platform to take my photography to the next level, without having to worry about underlying administrative issues about file systems and folder hierarchies, about multiple copies for multiple purposes and trying to keep track of every single picture and where it has been used.

This baby is awesome and I know it has even more to give. It's worth every penny and I love it. 

TOGAF 9 Exam Pointers

Having been the first of a bunch to take the TOGAF 9 Combined level 1 & 2 exam (and pass, I might add ☺) I thought I would share my general tips about the exam as I've been asked by loads of my colleagues who are about to take it.

Please note, there are strict disclaimers to sign about keeping exam material confidential, so I will not be sharing any of that here - however, some of my own study observations are mine and mine alone, and also some basic mechanics of the test are helpful for first-timers. I don't see why they couldn't tell you this upfront to reduce anxiety.   

Study Tips

1) I put everything in a mindmap in order to visualise the whole structure and relate concepts. I took everything our tutor had highlighted and put it here, along with keywords to remember and his other useful tips for passing. By doing this, in one whole view you can see everything you need to know and remember to pass level 1.

I HAVE HAD MANY REQUESTS FOR THE MINDMAP, in fact it has become a bit unmanageable - so you can now access a small pack of documents for a small donation, which also includes some example exam questions too.. The document pack contains mindmaps in the following format:

.mm = freemind
.mmap = mindjet
.xmind = xmind

The TOGAF mindmap is large - this is just a small section

My personal tips for Scenario questions (part 2 of the exam)

Please note, these are my personal tips based on my experience of one exam. They are therefore not scientifically/statistically valid, so be prepared to junk them if they don't apply. That said, maybe they will:

1) when looking at an answer, don't just consider the things they have covered in the answer to gauge its correctness, but consider the things that are missing in the others. If you read the rationale given on the example answers, you'll see why.
 
2) USE THE BOOK. Do not guess, even if you think you know it. In particular, remember there is stuff that may not have been taught. So, for example, in the BOOK there are recommendations about additions to process or other little snippets we never covered. You can't learn it in all in advance, but if you use the book during the exam (and know your way around it) you'll find the missing stuff.
 
3) Be careful with scenarios, not to over complicate them and distract yourself. But, consider reading at least the last 30% of the scenario (after you've read the question) - in most cases I found this was necessary to give the right context to the question. This helps avoid situations where there may be deliberate confusion going on with "fully correct" answers, but for different ADM phases. I get the sense that the examiner wants you to figure the phase(s) you are entering, in or exiting - and the answers alone may not establish that. 

For those that think having access to the book makes everything trivial - be careful. As you know, some concepts are not grouped as individual parts of the book. One particular scenario question took me almost 25 minutes to try and complete, much of it scanning backwards and forwards - and in the end, I gave up on the book and used instinct, because it was not helping me. (There are usability issues with the book too, see below).

Exam Mechanics Tips

First things First: you might have been allocated a 4 hour slot, but this is not the time you get to take the exam. This slot includes registration, signing everything, tutorial time, wrap up etc. For the exams you get:

• 60 minutes max  for Level 1 = 40 multiple choice questions
• 90 minutes max for Level 2 = 8 scenario questions
• You cannot use time from level 1 to carry over to level 2
• The exams run straight from one to the other  - there is no pause in between
• You can end early if you so wish - e.g. end level 1 after 40 minutes and go straight into level 2.

So - it's a straight 2.5 hour session plus registration etc. So, as with any exam, my advice is don't eat and drink beforehand!

I had to hand over all belongings, including keys and watch and of course, smartphone. So, you might as well take as little as possible with you to the exam centre.

The exam is conducted on a PC equipped with keyboard & mouse. You barely have to use the keyboard.

Writing materials are provided in the form of a marker pen and 2 laminated sheets of paper, a rather baffling solution. I had to ask for an eraser, concerned I might use all the sheets. I found this a generally unsatisfactory solution - felt tip too blunt, eraser ineffective. But that's it, that's what you have to deal with.

There is a tutorial to watch on the PC first about how the exam system works. I strongly recommend watching this as it explains how you can mark your answers for review and go back to them later if you have time.

The open book part of the exam allows reference to the TOGAF 9 book in PDF form. I found this system very clunky. The exam runs full screen (kiosk mode) on the PC and you cannot change this. The PDF opens up in front. You can move this and resize it to help see the content side by side, but it is a poor user experience. You could not maximise it. My screem was at most a 15 inch monitor running at, what I suspect was 1280x800 resolution. It was appalling, and barely possible to read the PDF, especially the diagrams. The whole thing opened with the contents window on the left of the PDF reader way too small and even if resized, it kept resetting back to this.

I'm not sure if the PDF reader was an old version or something customised - but searching was a poor exerience: slow; and the FIND button, while helpfully on screen, took up a load of really valuable screen estate. I was unimpressed with the setup in terms of usability.

There is only one cure for this (unless you get a better PC system): know the book as much as you can in advance.

The system allows you to leave questions unanswered if you wish and also "mark" (i.e. flag) them for review. After the last question you then have a summary page which shows a list of all your questions and which are unanswered and "marked". You can go back to any question at this stage to continue working on it. I finished early, but used all the time available via this review screen to go back and check all my uncertainties. The exam system itself is easy to use and navigate - I had no complaints with this.

Your time remaining is shown at the top right of the screen in minutes and seconds at all times. I had no access to any other clocks/watches other than looking at the sun.   

And if you are taking your exam soon: Good Luck!

Think Different

Of course, as everyone raced to type their reviews of the iPhone 4S on Tuesday 4th October (myself included), little did they know that Steve Jobs was on his deathbed. And that Tim Cook, the new CEO, was having to deliver his annoucements almost certainly knowing that was the case.

I feel a great sense of loss of such a wonderful role model; many would say in the field of business, marketing, user experience - and clearly Jobs had so many talents in so many areas. But for me, all that rolls up into a genius for insight, innovation, simplicity and change.

It is absolutely immeasureable the influence Steve Jobs had on so many lives in the digital age. He may not have solved World hunger, but you can bet your bottom dollar that his legacy in bringing digital information to the masses marks a turning point in history.

So much has been said about Steve Jobs over the 48 hours following (over 4000 tweets per second) and will no doubt continue to do so, that it's hard to add a fitting tribute.

So, I'm going to play back some of Apple's own words, words that have Steve Jobs' DNA all over them. Words that, to me, are poetry.

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

Rest In Peace Steve

"Cleverbot" is still Stupid Bot...

Seen cleverbot.com ?

It's the latest in a line of Artifical Intelligence systems designed to hold human conversations. Being able to fool a human with such chatter was originally proposed by Alan Turning in the 1960's as some kind of test of "intelligence" and subsequently became known as the Turing test.

Latest results from Cleverbot are being hailed as (possibly) having passed the test, given that in a controlled experiment it convinced 59% of people it was human (although alongside it as a control, a human convinced only 63% of humans they were speaking to a human!)

It's available as an App and online - but I don't rate it much. I have some standard "tests" of my own that, to date, have never failed to identify a machine almost immediately.

Here's a transcript of our conversation - draw your own conclusions:

User: Hello.

Cleverbot: Hello?

User: What colour is marmalade?

Cleverbot: What part of mars?

User: No, not Mars, Marmalade?

Cleverbot: It doesn't make much sense to pass the Marmaduke.

Cleverbot (To myself): Nope.

User: Let's start again.

Cleverbot: What?

User: You seem to be quite stupid actually..

Cleverbot: What makes you think that?

User: You don't know what marmalade is.

Cleverbot: No I don't. I'm here to find out.

User: So, why not ask me 'what is marmalade'?

Cleverbot: Do you have wood for sheep?

[Click - I "hang up" on this pointless exercise!]

Thanks to touch, 9 Billion websites need changing; is yours one of them?

Does your website make a basic error in its user interface?

Out of curiosity I decided to see how many sites on the internet used the word "click" (according to Google).

Why?

Because ever since the emergence of the web, the standards bodies, user experience experts and design specialists have always said "don't use the word 'click' for links". They did that because using the word "click" pre-supposes the type of device that the viewer is using - namely a mouse of near equivalent.

But it has always been recognised that users have alternative access devices available to them. For the first decade of the web it was always felt that speech input would be the #nextBigThing. (It hasn't really happened yet, although google voice search on your smartphone is pretty cool these days and works really well in my experience).

Futhermore, "accessible" versions of browsers (e.g. text browsers) typically used alternative input methods, such as numbers on the keyboard to choose links.

"Clicking" therefore is not relevant to everyone. And never has that been truer, with the explosion of touch devices: smartphones and tablets. Apple's share of that alone is over 100 million and 15 million devices respectively at the time of writing (Summer 2011).

"Touch", "Press", "Swipe" and so on is now a predominant action for many users. "Click" is old hat.

So, what did I find?

searching Google just for the word "click" returns 9.12 Billion sites.

The phrase "Click Here" occurs on 2.97 Billion sites. Delightfully, the very first result returned by Google's automcomplete is the W3C's advice page saying "Don't use "click here" as link text".

Too bad - that's between 3 billion and 9 billion sites that need changing. (Some of mine included).

Should've listened to that advice after all.

You have no guts, man. The fingerprint of a scam.

I got a call  from 020 0982 3420 this evening from someone "authorised by Microsoft" offering to scan my PC for all manner of unnamed things that apparently make it run badly. I kept "Paul McKenzie" (with an Indian Accent) talking for about 25 minutes with the lure of 6 or 7 PC's to fix, knowing full well this was a scam.

I know it's a scam because a family member fell prey to it in 2010. And by how my call ended.

It is a well executed scam, very well executed actually; these folks have all the answers and play out a very convincing story. But, in the final analysis, when you consider that someone is prepared to stay on the phone for 25 minutes to make a sale of "PC healthcheck", something smells fishy - around about the 3 minute mark actually.

I stuck it out with this guy for a couple of reasons. One - just to save someone else being caught - my 25 minutes on the phone might have used up time scamming 3 or 4 other people, so it was part community service. Two - I also wanted to get a full sense of how they operate. I certainly got that.

Here are the tell-tale signs I noticed:

• A call from a London number; when answered 3 or 4 seconds of silence before speaking = classic power-dialling = wanting to sell something
• The chap then started referring generically to my PC. Rather than ask how he knew I had one (he, doesn't by the way, he's guessing; and if you ask the question he'll say it's the error reports you get from crashed programs), I asked which one. Pause.
• The one with windows on. Yeah, doesn't really narrow it down does it? Which windows?
• Err.. either windows XP or Vista. So immediately I know he's fishing, I own neither. This is almost like getting a psychic reading.
• He proceeds to ramble on about windows auto updates and how it downloads junk and my computer is full of it and do I want a healthcheck. I play along.
• I say I am recording the call. He says he doesn't mind, which proves he is reputable - a scammer would hang up, he says.
• I say I know what's going to happen - he'll get me to download something and access my PC. Evasion.
• I question his identity - he says he is a partner of microsoft, sort of implies doing it on their behalf.
• I push the whole identity thing and he takes me to microsoft's website and claims to be SB3 INC. Would microsoft allow a disreputable company on their website?
• When I question that I have no proof he is SB3 INC he says surely I trust microsoft. That an intelligent person would realise that a company associated with microsoft would not be disreptuable. I don't disagree, but my question is about proof he is SB3. And he insulted my intelligence; that raised the stakes.
• He says he is my system admin and he is just trying to help. I say what? Do you access my PC without my permission? No, he just wants to help. Just a check, like going to the doctor, then you buy the medicine. (Good of him to spell that out for me).
• He just wants to check my PC for bad things, what would a reputable company do that's bad? I say, you could install a keylogger and get my bank details. He repeats, why would a reputable company associated with microsoft do that?
• I push the "prove you are SB3" line and he suggests I look at the SB3 INC website. I say this is not proof. I say I could tell him I'm from HP and show him an HP webpage - what does it prove?
• Backed into a corner he asks what proof I want? I say it can't be given - what I'll do is call the SB3 number. He says Ok, he'll give me the number so I can call back and speak to him. I say no, I'll call the number on the microsoft site that I DO trust. He insults my intelligence again and asks why I don't trust microsoft. Calmy, I again explain to him that I do, but I don't trust him.
• In the end I force this point and he says "you have no guts, man; you have no guts" and disconnects. 
• I guess mr unintelligent here outsmarted him. 

Let me tell you - his persistence was wearing and convincing. I can see how it would be ever-so-easy for someone to be socially engineered into following his instructions. When you step back and analyse it, however, the whole scam revolves around the association with microsoft as a claim to be reputable (I hear all the Apple fanboi's - and a few others - sneer in the background!). The point is, at no time is there any proof of his identity, no proof of that association. This is where they trick people - they labour that point, state it as if it is fact. That's what convinced my family member.

How do you protect yourself?

Well, if you know nothing about technology, it doesn't matter; just follow this simple rule:

NEVER, EVER, EVER buy something if you are approached by someone you cannot verify - this applies as much to the doorstep as it does to the phone. If you get an incoming sales call, leave the decision to later. Make it your policy. Tell doorstep sellers "I never buy on the doorstep; leave me your details and I'll get back in touch". NEVER! NEVER! NEVER!

The second thing is to realise something about microsoft: this is not how they operate or authorise anyone else to operate using their brand. Furthermore, this is not the market that microsoft partners are in. MS partners are business solutions partners - they create systems and integrations for business, using email, instant messaging, sharepoint, communications, and all sorts of stuff that if you haven't worked in a big IT department will probably have never heard of. Microsoft retails through the usual channels to consumers, but it does not sit behind this kind of consumer support.  

Finally, make sure your computers are up-tp-date with virus checkers, windows/operating system updates, and run regular scans for malware. This is just as good as what these scammers can do - and the truth is, they don't even do that properly - it's a subterfuge to get you to pay for their services. It's all about impression. Be warned. 

Why Apple integrated iOS5 with Twitter, not Facebook

If you look around the blogs there's lots of speculation about complexity of integration, history of sour  negotiations over things like Ping.

I don't think it's anything like that - here's my really simple list of reasons:

Raison D'Etre

Facebook is essentially an "Application" - it collects content, stores it, aggregates it, distributes it. It allows users to have "space" on the web - a virtual home, so to speak, albeit connected with their circle of interests. 

This is nothing like what Apple/iOS needs. As a device and operating system, iPhone/iOS needs connectivity; it needs conduits for information - channels if you like. That's what email is, that's what SMS is, that's what instant messaging is.

That's also what twitter is - twitter is not an application as in the sense above; it is a transport hub, a conduit for realtime data to flow between relevant users. It might be described generically as "social media", but its modus operandi and purpose are entirely different to facebook. Twitter is a way for information, of almost any type, to flow between users. Facebook on the other hand is designed as a place to land to consume content.

That's not to say that Twitter doesn't intend to move up the "value chain" to become a place of higher value consumption - indeed, its acquisitions of the likes of tweetdeck and the long overdue enhancements to its online experience, such as the tie in with photobucket, clearly signal this intent. 

But quite simply, the DNA of twitter is more akin to the phone line as Facebook's is to the phone. 

Culture Clash

There is a complete cultural mismatch between Facebook and Apple. Apple lead the way on user experience and strive for total customer satisfaction. Apple's mantra is to put users first. Apple is slick and consistently good. (Yes, they've had their hiccups, but they deal with them sensibly.)

Little could seem to be further from the truth for facebook. Facebook acts first in its own interests, then retracts if the backlash is sufficient. Their mantra is clearly "It's easier to ask forgiveness than permission". Facebook is clumsy and self-centred. 

Shoddy user experience and scant regard for user privacy have been demonstrated by Facebook time and time again. These two brands do not make good bedfellows. 

And that's it - these two reasons alone, in my opinion, have killed for the forseeable future any likelihood of Apple and Facebook joining forces. Personally I see it as no great loss. 

Zoomable Pixels

Here's an idea for improved ability to zoom and crop photos from a smartphone or digital camera. I don't know if anyone has had this idea or patented it; but if they haven't then I'm giving it to the world for free :-) 

Let me start by describing the problem.

Your average smart-phone has something in the region of a 5 Megapixel to 12 Megapixel camera. Of course, this is increasing all the time, but at the price of greater memory usage and greater trouble at sending pictures over email and mobile networks. This type of resoluiton is actually quite good - when you consider one of the first DSLR (Digital SLR) cameras, such as the Canon 10D, was a 6 Megapixel camera, you can see that pocket cameras and smartphones have really begun to compete on resolution. 

However, what a smartphone lacks that a DSLR doesn't, is optics. You don't have the option of high precision, interchangeable and zoom lenses for a smartphone. This makes it difficult to get "close to the action" unless you literally are close to the action! The only way to zoom-in on most smartphones is to "digitally zoom", which is basically the same as cropping the picture and increasing its size.

Unlike a zoom lens, this process doesn't add any new information to the picture, it simply scales up the data that is there. So, if you zoom in on the centre of a 5 megapixel picture by a factor of 5, you basically end up with a 1 Megapixel picture. And consequently the quality pretty much sucks.

So, is there a way round this?

Well, a couple of things occurred to me:

• if you want to digitally zoom into a picture and retain good quality, you need a good resolution (i.e. lot of megapixels) to start with in the area you are zooming into
• Most of time I just want to zoom into the middle of my picture, that's usually where the interesting action is

Traditional digital pictures are all captured using sensors with a linear arrangement of pixels; i.e. the density of the pixels on the sensor is evenly spaced across the whole area. But does this need to be the case?

So, my idea is a camera sensor which has non-linear density of pixels. It would have a greater density of pixels towards the middle. So, for example, around the centre of the sensor the density could be equivalent to that of, say, a 30Megapixel camera. Towards the edges the density might be more akin to a 5MP camera. 

The advantage of this system is that in the most important part of the picture you would have 30Megapixel resolution to work with but you wouldn't be storing the whole picture at 30Megapixel resolution - it might average out at, say, 10Megapixels.

The image would have to be taken in some kind of custom "raw" format and converted to a linear version to view on normal screen and computers, but this is easily achievable - there are examples of various formats already that have special properties (such as the panoramic images generated by photosynth). If the pixel density variation is essentially rectilinear, rather than radial, then the conversion algorithm would actually be fairly simple to implement and quick to execute. 

Once you have the raw image, you could use it as taken. Or, for example, you could crop out the centre section to zoom in. The centre section might, for example, contain 8 Megapixels of data and so still provide a high quality digital picture.

So, when can I have it?

Dangling the Apple Ipad2 of Temptation

So, the iPad 2 has arrived amid the usual Apple back-slapping and re-use of the "magical" rhetoric.

And this time round I'm actually tempted. 

This is not so much about the iPad 2 device and specifications per se - indeed, I would dearly love a better screen resolution and screen shape. So what is it? 

Well, when Jobs launched the iPad in 2010 he called it "game changing" and I chortled somewhat dismissivley under my breath; after all, the tablet concept had been tried before and not really taken on. The big bets were on netbooks which were gaining ground on laptops and well, to some critics, it seemed to be more a triumph of form over function. 

But, you know, Jobs was right. You can't ship 16 million devices (where others have failed) and not consider it some kind of success. And what that whole process has done has shift expectations. It's perfectly natural now to see tablets in use in all manner of environments from the corporate world, to healthcare, to teaching to starbucks.

So, setting aside arguments over whether iOS beats Android or a 7 inch screen is better than a 9 inch screen, the bottom line is the translation of the iPhone interface onto the iPad has introduced a new form of interaction that has created a compelling user experience. (And, after all, that's what Apple trades on).

So while I've been spending the year hacking away on my Netbook, the whole process of getting to grips with my iPhone 4 and Kindle has been teaching me that there is a user experience out there waiting for me, that is not simply a miniature re-incarnation of a legacy PC experience.

And that experience is not just about the user interface on the device, but also the whole lifestyle experience that surrounds it. It incorporates the ability to "pick up and go" in an instant; extended battery life; to travel with the device easily; to hook into a content and applications eco-system. These are factors that make simply owning the device easier, before you even consider the joy of its usability. 

My weekly routine of commuting to a travelodge and back, often late at night, is certainly a drag. And it's that dragworthiness that often saps me of the energy to even contemplate unpacking, unfolding and plugging in a laptop or netbook. Yet I've never had that problem with my iPhone. Always there, always on, quick and simple to use in bitesize chunks: that's just how my life is structured, if only I had a bigger screen. Enter the tablet. 

So, despite my utmost scepticim initially, I'm now at the point to embrace an iPad or tablet device (though most likely an iPad, because I'm sucking into the Apple eco-system. Clever Apple.) It's form, its performance, its behaviour, its slickly beautiful intuitive user experience all serve to address my emerging needs. Needs I didn't realise I had, because there was nothing to satisfy them in a neatly integrated way. But I can now see a perfect fit for this device in my nomadic life.

How to suck a mattress down to size

AN UPDATED NOTE: quite a few readers have contacted via the comments with questions about their own situation - will it work with this mattress so-and-so? Am I doing it right?  Why can't I get my back to shrink?  etc. etc. PLEASE NOTE - if you want to ask a question, please contact me via the contact form rather than post a comment, as these go unseen, and there is no way for me to reply to them. 

This article was written for memory foam mattresses. If you are trying it with a sprung mattress, I suspect it won't work. (But it does work with a futon! ) If you want to buy the items used, just try eBay. I did!

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I recently had the challenge of transporting a king size memory foam mattress. The choices seemed to be hire a van (or removal company) or somehow ram it into the Skoda Octavia in the hope it would bend and fit. I wasn’t over-keen on that option as it would mean leaving little room for anything else in the car.

Rewind and little, and the mattress originally came rolled up in a vacuum packed bag and box (which expanded with great amusement when sliced open). Could I therefore repeat this feat of wizardy and reverse the great unfolding? Well, I do like a challenge, especially when science is on my side.

I was inspired by those “vac pac” bags you can get that: you suck the air from a sealed polythene bag with your favourite dysonomatic and compress the contents down to an n-th their size. Seemed like a perfect solution but it didn’t take long scouring the internet to discover vac-pacs don’t come in that size (and if they did, they would cost a pretty penny).

So I figured I could make one. I ordered a king size mattress polythene bag, as used by removal companies for protection. That only cost a couple of pounds. Then I ordered a small vac-pac bag off eBay, which also costs under 2 pounds.

I wrapped the mattress in the large bag and sealed with gaffer & parcel tape. I cut out the valve from the vac pac and taped it to the inside of the large bag and sliced a hole to bring the valve through; and again, taped it up as airtight as I could. (see picture)

Then, with the help of my able assistant, we attached a vacuum cleaner and began sucking the air from the mattress bag. It compressed beautifully. We kept going (somewhat startled by how effective it was) until the mattress was thin enough to start rolling; stopping every once in a while to listen for leaks (very obvious hissing!) and sealing them with parcel tape. Then I rolled the mattress and stood it on end. The bag was still a bit leaky so we continued vacuuming while I wrapped it in tape to keep the roll shape intact.

It worked a treat, you can see the mattress loaded in the car and also 24 hours later when it was unpacked, still pretty much roll shaped! Gotta be one of the best 4 quid I have spent!