In The Guardian today!

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maxuk.net gets a good mention in this article in the UK's Guardian newspaper today.

Credit where due/satellite mobile TV to flop?

Has the BBC bought a new map? In the last few days there have been some informed references to the Korean peninsula.

On Friday, they highlighted Korea ("where broadband is commonplace") in this non-regional story about downloading films. And today there's this balanced article about mobile TV, with the line:

Korea and Japan are way ahead of the game and have been testing several methods of reception for a couple of years.

I'm quite curious about SK Telecom's upcoming satellite DMB service. The satellite signals obviously won't reach underground trains, or indoors, or as far as I know even inside a vehicle. Sure, it'll be fine when you're walking down the street, but am I not right in thinking that you can't watch TV while walking down the street? On the face of it, it sounds like the only place you could use it would be while waiting for a bus. Anyone who's been in Korea for ten minutes knows that people want to use their mobiles on the move, particularly while underground.

I asked a Korean research manager about this over the weekend and he said that a lot of "gap fillers" would be needed -- I assume that's what I'd call a leaky feeder or a repeater. He admitted though, that he wasn't actually aware of such a thing working in practice at satellite transmission frequencies. Does anyone know if this has been tried?

Unless I'm mistaken about the basics here, which is quite possible, then I predict that S-DMB is going to be a flop in Korea's consumer-led technology market. T-DMB, on the other hand, works indoors and the technology to repeat the signal underground is tried and tested. I know which one this consumer is going to buy.

Anosmia article

A journalist sent me these questions for an article that should appear in the Guardian newspaper in the UK, I think on Wednesday. Anosmia is the complete lack of a sense of smell.

Have you ever been officially diagnosed congenitally anosmic (anosmiac?) or have you just done what I've done and worked it out via the internet and common sense? Have you ever investigated whether you can be 'fixed'?

Yes, like many people I "presented" in my early twenties, as the medical profession refers to the act of actually bothering to go to a doctor. My GP seemed doubtful, but noting that I hadn't troubled him for some years offered to refer me to an ENT specialist at Wexham Park Hospital in Slough.

Even the ENT specialist was hard to convince at first. He explained to his trainee that this wasn't his usual hospital and hunted around the consulting room for a smell test kit. He found one in a desk drawer with some surprise and blew the dust off it -- I'm not exaggerating. It consisted of vials of what I gathered were progressively stronger smelling chemicals. The first one I held at arms length and cautiously brought towards my nose, half expecting to be revealed as a fake. The second and third I confidently breathed in deeply, warming to my audience's interest. The last was handed to me with a warning that it must only be sniffed. A quick snort of it -- still nothing -- and the consultation had turned into a circus act. "Wow, there really is nothing, is there?"

They checked for polyps and did some kind of brain scan but it didn't show anything. At the final appointment he pointed out that one of my eyes has an orange patch and suggested that I might have some kind of genetic problem.

How did you / do you convince people you are telling the truth when you say you can't smell? Why do you think people are so inclined to disbelieve you when you say it?

Well, I've never really needed to convince anyone (not yet had to apply for that job in sewer maintenance). You're right though, people don't believe me unless I really rub it in. I think it's just because it's something that people have never thought about, and because it's not externally visible.

Do you have any particular memories (probably from childhood) when you were particularly confused or confusing about your lack of sense of smell?

Only really the curiosity of trying to work out what a smell was. Blind kids are told that they can't do something that other people can; it would take them ages to work it out otherwise. Anosmic kids have to work it out for themselves, at the same time as they're busy working through all the other mysteries of life. It took me about fifteen years to be sure that other people were talking about a sense that I didn't have.

What's the daftest/most dangerous moment you've had or heard about as a result of not being able to smell?

My first girlfriend's parents were industrial chemists. They didn't believe me either so they gave me a bottle of concentrated hydrochloric acid, just to be sure. I wasn't about to inhale deeply, but what they hadn't realised is that I would hold it right under my nose before trying to smell it. Apparently that isn't something people who can smell the stuff would actually be capable of. Before anyone could stop me I'd inhaled enough fumes to keep all past, present and future members of the Grateful Dead happy for a week.

Some of the contributors to your page seem to want a sense of smell very much. I subscribe to the 'what you've never had, you never miss' school of thought, although if someone offered me a trouble-free cure I'd certainly take it. Where do you stand in the spectrum?

I plan to live in Korea in my later years, land of fermented vegetables, so a sense of smell is the last thing I need. My wife would probably appreciate a fix though -- she gets fed up of being asked to do "smell tests" for me, especially shirts I've only worn for half a day and am trying to avoid washing.

But I wouldn't take a cure in case it had psychological effects. The medical profession has done comparatively little research on smell, but it's known that the sense is deeply related to memory -- loss of smell is often precedes Alzheimer's. Having never been able to smell, it's something I'd rather just let lie.