Andy McKay's blog

I love the headline on a recent press release:

ThoughtWorks Studios releases new Ruby-in-enterprise effort

To me that sounds like:

well we worked on it for a few weekends, its something, a good effort...

Which as my colleague Ian put it:

good effort is what appears on school reports when the pupil has worked hard but is fundamentally thick

Come on guys, work on those press releases.

Wander into Manchester airport terminal 3 one rainy day to catch plane. You'll take a cab, or get dropped off by a shuttle bus at the front doors (if you go by train you will avoid this). And wander through the doors. There you'll find you are on the arrivals floor. Departures is upstairs, so you hop on the escalator. As you do so a recorded voice says "No luggage on this escalator". Twice.

It so happens a week or so ago I spent 30 mintues in this terminal and wanted to rip out that recorded message, since its triggered by movement and being right by the doors triggers every time someone walks by.

Standing there watching this mess I saw that:

• Lots of people ignored it
• The message triggered and was registered in peoples brains by the time they were
• When people where in groups a few people would get on the escalator and be half way up and it would be the last few who then couldn't decide whether to go up.
• A few people looked confused. I pointed them to the lift down the hall.
• Nobody once took anything silly or outrageous on the escalator, have you ever tried taking more than one bag on an escalator?

Some simple solutions:

• The voice message takes too long to register in people's brains, especially in a busy place like and airport where 50% of people have cell phone's glued to their ears. Signs that you see as you approach rather than down on the side (currently they are not obvious).
• There was no clear labelling of the alternative, but a sign saying for arrivals, go up. So what do you do? A sign saying "Arrivals via lift" with an arrow would help.
• It creates indecision. Whats luggage, is my carry on luggage? What no that's ok I can do that. A sign saying "No carts on the escalator" would clearly say to me, no big and stupid stuff.

But in the end it comes down to something like they put the escalator there and some health and safety expert found people taking luggage on it. So they put signs up (which are there). So they put up pillars (so that people can't fit carts through). Then they put up this automated audio recording. And people still take luggage up.

Manchester airport, that mesage is stupid, get rid of it. Or preferably, don't put something useful like an escalator in just the right position, and then tell people not to use it.

Just got back from a one week holiday in Greece. Was absolutely fantastic, a small island called Meganisi with a few very friendly and nice people on it. There was almost nothing to do but relax and have a nice time.

If you change dictionaries in OS X, you'll get this menu. It would seem that the default English isn't the one you might be familiar with, you know the Queen's English or the language of Shakespeare, Byron or Robbie Burns (alright that's pushing it). It is in fact the good old US of A. Choosing proper English is in fact British English. Apple can stick it's colors thru its maximizing whatevers.