Author: Trefor Davies

Liver of life, father of four, CTO of trefor.net, writer, poet, philosopherontap.com

Batten down them hatches

Took the Docklands Light Railway from Bank to London City Airport. Used the DLR many times before to go to Telecity but this may have been my first time on the Woolwich Arsenal branch.

It’s also the first time I’ve ever given any thought to the area. Boy is it bleak. We are talking New York tenement type scenes. I may be exaggerating a little but I don’t think so. That’s how it felt. Blocks and blocks of flats with long external corridors open to the elements. Limehouse basin with its expensive yachts seemed to be a little haven amongst all the red brick and concrete.

Taking off on a grey day from London City Airport the view seemed to highlight the wasteland nature of the area. Large industrial plots with expanses of nothingness. Sewage works. Scrapyards. Dumps. Weeds.

I could visualise conditions on the ground. Not a place for strangers. You need to be streetwise. The police don’t get out of their squad cars. Psst wanna buy

End User travel

Easy like Friday morning – London City Airport

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Friday, 14 February, 2014
No Comments on Easy like Friday morning – London City Airport

Remarkably relaxed sat in the bar after security at London City Airport. It’s curling on the telly, cmon girls, a cup of tea in front of me (ye-es) and a stress free experience getting here. The weather hasn’t yet hit and it looks as if all the planes are running to time. I have 3 bars of EE4G on the MiFi giving me a perfectly usable 9 megs down and 14 megs up. I checked in for BA3284 dep 11.20 to the Isle of Man using my BA Android app yesterday. The barcode on the phone just worked. That’s easily. No problem. No messing about. The only paperwork I have is a book – I’m not an e-reader, and a birthday card for me dear old dad who reaches yet another milestone next week. I also have a few beer vouchers to spend at the Whitehouse pub in Peel over the weekend.

Ah I see we are boarding. Good timing. Just finished my cuppa.

C ya later.

End User fun stuff

Schnooky hubbyband loves ickle bunny

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Friday, 14 February, 2014
3 Comments on Schnooky hubbyband loves ickle bunny

It’s Friday, it’s Valentine’s Day and I’m on the way to the Isle of Man for the weekend before landing back for the LINX meeting on Monday.

There is no chef on this train so breakfast is a mere croissant and a bacon bap – the staff have striven valiantly to make up for the absence of the temperamental cook. I have visions of him flinging knives across the train galley and storming off complaining about how can an artiste be expected to create magnificent dishes in such conditions. All I wanted was a Full English but hey… I expect he will be happier back at the Savoy.

Because the weekend is coming up hard on the rails I have permitted myself the luxury of

Engineer media

Snowflakes, snowdrops and YouTube streaming formats – signs of spring in deepest winter

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Wednesday, 12 February, 2014
No Comments on Snowflakes, snowdrops and YouTube streaming formats – signs of spring in deepest winter

Worked from home yesterday. Weather was pants. Didn’t really matter. I lit a nice coal fire and sat in the front room doing stuff.

Here’s a vid of the snow falling in my back garden. It didn’t stick. The noise is water falling off the tree above the conservatory roof.

This morning I went for a swim and then walked down to the office. I vary my route and today’s took me past the old graveyard in Park Street. It was bitterly cold though that didn’t matter moving along at a briskish pace.

The graveyard was covered in snowdrops. Most of the gravestones have lain flat for years and are covered in moss or lichen. The prominent exception is the one in the photo which is more of a tomb-like structure.

Very poignant I thought. A symbol of death in the depths of winter surrounded by new growth and optimism.

That is all.

PS Good word, briskish.

PPS YouTube was playing up a bit this morning – had to load the video twice. Also the video was taken using an Android phone (SGS4) but YouTube told me processing would be quicker if the file format used (mp4) was compatible with their recommended streaming codecs (mp4!).

I know someone is going to come along now and tell me it was a specific flavour of mp4 with green spots and chilli spice topping.

Tags Lincoln, snow, snowdrops, spring, winter

Business phones

Contact databases – dontchalovem?

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Wednesday, 12 February, 2014
No Comments on Contact databases – dontchalovem?

You may know that trefor.net is a Google Apps account. The business is going to run on the Google ecosystem. It’s a no brainer for me.

All my contacts, and there would appear to be 3,103 of them, are in my personal Gmail account. Don’t ask me where they all came from. I can’t remember who ~~some~~ many of them are – not you of course – I know who you are¹.

As part of the process of getting up and running in business I have the website development ongoing . The structure needs changing. I also need to know who my core stakeholders are. Contributors, prospective advertisers, people who might want to come to events such as the trefor.net Xmas bash (that’s everyone then inc all my old rugby playing pals 🙂 ).

So last night was usefully spent

End User online safety piracy

Indian call centre scammers need to up voice quality

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Tuesday, 11 February, 2014
1 Comment on Indian call centre scammers need to up voice quality

You see before you a partially disappointed man. Not very disappointed. Just partially so.

I’m waiting in this morning so that there is someone in the house when two parcels get redelivered. The phone rang. It was an Indian call centre scammer.

I was only recently pontificating on the fact that I didn’t seem to have had many scam calls of late. This in particular is disappointing because the post about the 08000641087 scam number is amongst the most popular on this blog. Lots of annoyed folk out there.

So the phone rang and I was instantly excited.

End User social networking

Snapchat – get down wiv da kids

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Monday, 10 February, 2014
No Comments on Snapchat – get down wiv da kids

Kid 2 introduced me to Snapchat. Must have been two summers ago when she was about to set off for uni. Other than very occasionally looking at her chats I ignored it.

For one thing it doesn’t keep the photos/videos once sent. I like to keep the photos/vids. I’m a nostalgic.

Recently I saw an article somewhere, BBC maybe, that said the yoof were moving away from Facebook to Snapchat. One of the side benefits, if not the prime motive, was that the media wasn’t stored. More private.

Now my wife uses Snapchat to talk to Kid 4. From her iPhone. Believe you me this is massive progress. Anne doesn’t do Facebook. But she does do Snapchat, now. She also sends texts and occasionally calls people.

I used to think the whole short video/pic thing wasn’t going to take off. I’ve changed my mind.

I also wonder whether the fact that no data is kept (or so we are told) is the way ahead – short termism in extremis. Makes sense considering the way our society is evolving elsewhere. The throwaway society taken to its ultimate conclusion.

Now I think about it how often do I look at any of the photos and videos I store – there are hundreds of Gigabytes of them. Not very often. I’m not going to get rid of them though. It’s a mind set.

When I depart this planet nothing will matter. Photos. Memories. Great deeds. In the meantime I’ve just started using Snapchat. Even though I’ve been “on” the system for 18 months.

One of the surprises having explored what it can’t do is to find that zillions of my contacts are also on Snapchat and there are many chats (snaps?) waiting for me to see. Amazing. Who’d a thought!

Interestingly I was totally ok with allowing Snapchat access to my contacts list whereas I still haven’t upgraded my Facebook App because it was asking for access to my text messages. It’s about trust, innit.

Don’t betray that trust Snapchat, I am about to start using you.

To finish off with an internet technology angle, Snapchat is of course going to be another bandwidth driver. It will use a lot more bandwidth than a Facebook IM or wall post which I imagine is what it replaces.

Onwards and upwards.

PS just sent Anne a Snapchat praising the ham sandwiches in my packup – they were delicious:)

Business fun stuff

Monday morning February form-filling frolicks

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Monday, 10 February, 2014
No Comments on Monday morning February form-filling frolicks

It’s a Monday morning. This morning before driving to the pool I had to scrape the frost off the windscreen. It’s only the second time this winter I’ve had to do it.

Yesterday the birds were to be heard singing cheerfully in our back garden. I told them it was too soon. Winter hasn’t really started yet. It’s minus 1 this morning. Next time I see the birds I’ll tell them I told them so.

When I am rich ~~and famous~~ (I don’t want the famous bit) I will spend my Januaries and Februaries writing the occasional blog post from my villa. The palm trees will sway in the gentle offshore breeze that nudges in through my open window.

Every now and again I’ll take a break from my literary efforts and jump into the pool. Lunch will be taken barefoot on the veranda followed by a nap in the hammock set up under the shade of a square of canvas sail out the back.

I may or may not write some more that day. As the afternoon cools I’ll walk into town – it isn’t far – maybe buy some provisions, or nip into a bar for a cool drink.

You get the drift. January and February in the UK are tedious months. All that villa stuff will only work if there is internet access. I’ll need to check visitor numbers, sales levels, keep in touch with contributors, social media etc etc etc.

Hope it will be ok.

In the meantime it’s a Monday morning in February and there is stuff to be done. This week will be largely spent working on website evolution & editorial programmes for the next few months.

Oh and a bit of form filling for the local council – timely considering my post last week on automation and change.

atb

End User olympics Weekend

Jenny Jones wins bronze – drives up internet bandwidth

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Sunday, 9 February, 2014
5 Comments on Jenny Jones wins bronze – drives up internet bandwidth

Jenny Jones drove up internet bandwidth use as people watched her take bronze online.

I thought the London 2012 Olympics were great. I’ve not given any real thought to the winter Olympics other than to note the run up in which the media hit us with “terrorist” stories and then tales of unfinished hotel accommodation, presumably for journos. I didn’t even watch the opening ceremony. I think I was down the pub.

Now the games are in full flow I’m getting into the swing of it, especially with programmes like the one about Torvill and Dean being shown last night. Yesterday I followed @jamienichollsuk and @billymorgan89. I don’t normally do that sort of thing but they both seemed like such nice guys.

This morning we watched the women’s freestyle snowboard competition and cheered Jenny Jones to her bronze, also cheering loudly, though of course sympathetically, every time someone who might have knocked her off her podium spot fell or made a mistake.

Eventually we, the kids

broadband Business ofcom Regs

Should Ofcom compel BT to publish broadband maps?

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Saturday, 8 February, 2014
5 Comments on Should Ofcom compel BT to publish broadband maps?

Should BT have to publish broadband availability map?

We keep hearing complaints from many quarters about the lack of transparency related to the Government subsidised Superfast Broadband rollout into the “final third”. Should BT be compelled to publish broadband availability map?

County Councils are apparently seen to hide behind “non disclosure agreements” signed with BT that prevent them from disclosing details of broadband plans.

Having sat on the Broadband Panel for Nottinghamshire the input from BT was that it whilst they had an outline plan for target broadband rollout areas this would be very much subject to change when detailed site surveys were made of conditions on the ground.

For example

datacentre dns Engineer internet servers

Diagnosing very slow website loading problem

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Thursday, 6 February, 2014
5 Comments on Diagnosing very slow website loading problem

Been having intermittent problems with trefor.net since moving the site to a new virtual platform at Christmas. It’s all sorted now. Thanks to the lads at the Timico Datacentre.

I asked Ian Christian to describe the issue and how it was resolved:

Well… explaining it is a little hard…. The key to figuring it out was this:

At the bottom of every page it shows when the page was generated, and how long it took. I suspect in wordpress somewhere it might have told you this too – but I’m not sure.

What we were seeing was

Engineer obsolescence

Now gather round people wherever you roam

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Tuesday, 4 February, 2014
No Comments on Now gather round people wherever you roam

This morning as I walked to work I passed the Lincoln City Council offices. My thoughts were “Lots of people work in those offices. I bet many of them could be replaced by software.”

It’s an interesting point. In one sense a City Council is very much a social business. Historically someone who was getting too old to work to work in private industry, a builder’s labourer for example, might have got a job on a council road gang once his fitness levels and usefulness on a building site waned. I’m sure there must be many other examples of this.

Also what would someone who has spent most of their life working for the council in the rigid structure of public service do if they weren’t doing that job? Is that my problem? I’d be quite happy if

Engineer storage backup & dr

Got any holiday snaps, wink wink #ReadyNAS

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Tuesday, 4 February, 2014
No Comments on Got any holiday snaps, wink wink #ReadyNAS

Shortly after I’d arrived back from Lisbon and hooked up to WiFi not only had a hundred and seventy photos and vids already been uploaded to Google+ but also to my own ReadyNAS box at home. V reassuring.

Everyone should have one. My sisters, with who (m?) I went away for the weekend, don’t. One has been carrying photos around on her camera since last summer, meaning to “download” them. She has a huge SD Card which can store seemingly an infinite number of pics but that is bye the bye.

The other sister has no strategy whatsoever. The pics remain on her iPhone and she occasionally sticks one on Facebook. There must be millions of people out there in this situation. The second sister has a Virgin email address and her own domain wot I got her. The notion of using a third account, eg Gmail/Google+ that would provide her with at least the basic backup she needs just hurt her brain, and she is a highly intelligent (natch) individual.

I suspect her kids have it sorted. Half the problem is that she, as a busy mother/taxi/etc doesn’t have the time to look at the issue.

Anyway, as I said, my pics are now backed up. Good oh.

Read more – photo backups to NAS box sorted

Galaxy S4 to NAS Backup.

End User fun stuff

Strategies for surviving boring flights

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Monday, 3 February, 2014
3 Comments on Strategies for surviving boring flights

Slept for much of the flight back from the weekend in Lisboa. Certainly for most of Welcome to the Pleasuredome. Not a reflection on Frankie Goes To Hollywood of whom I am enough of a fan to carry their music around on my dog and bone.

Lisbon to London is only 3 hours or so – not a bad length of flight. I do know many in the networking game who regularly do long haul, in their pursuit of tier points and status. For such trips – SFO/LHR etc – a survival strategy is required.

Mine was always to get a skinfull in before boarding and I would then sleep the whole flight. On one occasion whilst travelling with someone who had been upgraded to First Class coming back from Seattle he and I settled in to the First Class Lounge before the flight. I polished off a bottle of posh champagne but he drank only mineral water, saving himself for the on-board treats to come.

End User fun stuff

Lisbon farewell or Portugese Tarts – dontcha just love em

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Monday, 3 February, 2014
No Comments on Lisbon farewell or Portugese Tarts – dontcha just love em

Lisbon farewell. It was great to see you. Very hospitable were you if somewhat cold but it being February I offer no complaints.

The brandy and the port kept me warm. Your generous portions were gratefully received. The tapas was good. The historic sights of the city were enjoyable, I climbed the castle ramparts and pictured Magellan, Vasgo de Gama and other intrepid Portugese of earlier times setting out on their voyages into the unknown.

As I leave the city, I thad my first experience of the splendid Portugese tart. A delicious custard concoction which made me wonder why on earth I had left it until the BA business class lounge to try one.

This was my first trip to Portugal but do have a Portugese story from my younger days.

When I was 19 I hitchhiked to Greece. It was a great adventure. Not in the league of Vasco de Gama but exciting nevertheless. There came a time, as I was sat in a bar on the beach one night, that I needed

End User online safety social networking

eTagged.me – you are a pest & @LinkedIn should know better

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Friday, 31 January, 2014
1 Comment on eTagged.me – you are a pest & @LinkedIn should know better

I got an email from LinkedIn saying ‘ “xxxxx” (name withheld) has requested to provide them with some feedback based on their personality using the short link below’.

Apparently eTagged.me, according to them, is “a new way to identify yourself to the world including ratings & reviews from your peers that shows how awesome you are”.

They look dodgy to me. A link was very handily provided for me to unsubscribe from further emails. This link seemed to be from eTagged me but I had to insert my LinkedIn password to unsubscribe. !!!!!

This is totally outrageous. I never asked them for the email in the first place and they want me to give them my LinkedIn credentials to stop them sending me any more junk.

I’ve reported them to LinkedIn. I also looked at their website. There is an email address but I’m blowed if I’m going to send them an email to complain. There needs to be a way within LinkedIn of blocking this stuff but I can’t immediately see it.

Beware of eTagged.me. We don’t need any new social media platforms thanks a lot. At the very least they need to change the way they work so that people can block them without having to enter secure credentials that are none of their business. I realise that access to the large databases that are LinkedIn et al is an attractive proposition but on this occasion they didn’t get it right.

Rant over. I must be going through an angry phase – just stay away from me for a while – okaaay 🙂

ttfn

Wasn’t so long ago that someone stole 6.5 millions LinkedIn passwords – here.

Tags LinkedIn

End User piracy

LBM Direct Marketing up to their antics again – 08000641087

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Friday, 31 January, 2014
4 Comments on LBM Direct Marketing up to their antics again – 08000641087

Funny what data you can gather from search results. Google, GCHQ et al know everything. I can only tell you that LBM Direct Marketing must have a campaign going again.

I know this because visitor numbers to the blog post what I wrote on their pesky telemarketing activities have shot up. 883 visits in the last few days. My own little efforts at big data eh? (or words to that effect). The number of people searching for that term (08000641087) must be a small fraction of those who have been called.

I wonder who they are working for this time. Pests.

End User wearable

Eyes in the back of my head – Google Glass mk2

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Wednesday, 29 January, 2014
2 Comments on Eyes in the back of my head – Google Glass mk2

Google Glass mk2 to have rear facing camera?

I went to a jazz gig last night, in a church. One of the kids plays in an award winning big band and it was the first show of the 2014 season.

Being in a church we were all sat in rows on pews and it being a community event we knew a few people there.

The problem with this is that if you want to turn around to chat to the person sat on the row behind you it is quite awkward to turn around to face them, when you are sat on a pew. This is an evolutionary opportunity.

Clearly, over tens of thousands of years, we humans will evolve to grow eyes in the back our heads. It must be so because there is already a popular saying about having “eyes in the back of my head”, largely associated with parents of families with small children.

However in this modern fast moving technology dominated world we aren’t going to be happy to wait thousands of years for this evolution to happen. There must be a tech alternative.

The answer is

End User piracy

Pirate Bay blocking order lifted in Netherlands

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Wednesday, 29 January, 2014
3 Comments on Pirate Bay blocking order lifted in Netherlands

An appeal court in the Netherlands has lifted the court order instructing ISPs to block access to the Pirate Bay website. Apparently the level of filesharing traffic has risen since the ban which was seen to be totally ineffective.

This should come as no surprise. In fact on this occasion I don’t mind telling you I told you it wouldn’t work. It would be quite interesting to see how the Pirate Bay usage has changed since our own court orders were put in place here in the UK.

If anyone has the data let us have a link.

ciao.

End User peering

Football Association founded here @LONAP AGM

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Tuesday, 28 January, 2014
1 Comment on Football Association founded here @LONAP AGM

This morning I walked from Kings Cross Station to The Freemasons’ Hall in Great Queen’s Street. I was early, it took half an hour, saved money on a taxi/tube and was good exercise.

When you walk somewhere you see a lot more than when taking public transport. The Freemasons’ Hall stands on the site of the Freemasons Tavern. There is plaque to that effect. Actually the plaque tells us the Football Association was founded there on 26th October 1863.

Bet they had a good old night of it. It’s not often anyone founds anything as big as the Football Association. Wouldn’t mind doing it myself. Not the Football Association obvs. Some other equally exciting (!) Association.

Note it looks as if the season started quite late in those days – assuming they got on with it after founding the Association. Gets earlier every year.

I understand that the 2015 season will shortly be getting under way, allegedly, so I’ve heard. An all.

I’m not a Freemason btw. The LONAP AGM is being held at the Freemasons’ Hall – read more about LONAP here.

Read more about regional Peering Exchanges and specifically IX-Manchester here.

Lots of posts regarding LINX here.

Euro-IX meetings posts here.

Tags IXP

End User peering

Alarm clocks, body clocks and LONAP AGMs #IXP

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Tuesday, 28 January, 2014
1 Comment on Alarm clocks, body clocks and LONAP AGMs #IXP

On the 07.20 from Lincoln Central Station headed to the LONAP AGM (sung to the tune of Homeward Bound by Paul Simon).

Piece of trivia for you. Traditionally when I catch the 07.20 I get a cab to pick me up from the house at 06.50. We are only 5 minutes from the station, especially at that time of day, and I like to make sure I have plenty of time to get there, just in case of a problem en route.

At that time of day there is never a problem. I always get there far too early and end up spending 10 – 15 minutes in the waiting room. Time that would have been better spent in bed.

In order to get showered and ready for a cab at 06.50 I set the alarm 10 minutes earlier than normal at 06.20. This means I wake up at odd times during the night to check to see if it’s nearly time for the alarm, in case it didn’t go off. Result: terrible night’s sleep.

After years of doing this, and I don’t know why it’s taken me so long, I have come to the realisation that

End User gadgets

Book royalties starting to flood in

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Monday, 27 January, 2014
No Comments on Book royalties starting to flood in

In other news royalties from book sales have started to flood in. You may recall that last year I published a book – “The Abandoned Sandy Shoe and Other Chinks in the Curtains of Life“. The first print run sold out in a shot and now online sales have started to kick in.

This morning I was informed by my bank that a total of £11.22 had been credited to my account. This is thrilling news because it it brings forward the break even date but a fairly significant percentage. 1% of infinity is a long time.

The power of the world wide web and ecommerce eh? I don’t have a breakdown of where the sales come from. I’m sure it wasn’t my mum because I gave her a free copy – as you do. Made my sisters pay though. Business is business.

Thanks to everyone for your support and if you know a friend who reads poetry send them my way.

More get rich quick online links stuff here.

Engineer security servers

Lloyds Bank – 2 out of 7 servers “down”

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Monday, 27 January, 2014
3 Comments on Lloyds Bank – 2 out of 7 servers “down”

Problems with Lloyds Bank & TSB cashpounts attributed to failiure of 2 out of 7 servers by BBC.

Interesting article on BBC Radio 4 Today Prog this morning. Apparently last night some Lloyds & TSB customers were unable to use their debit cards for a couple of hours or so. Not me. I was at home.

The point is that apparently two servers were down. It’s a bit of an eyebrow raiser that this could happen with just two servers going down. Doesn’t sound like good capacity planning. I’d have thought they’d be load balanced with plenty of headroom on each server that would allow for such an eventuality.

Can’t be right unless there’s something specific re security for such systems that doesn’t allow them to do that.

One wonders what would have caused two servers to go down at the same time. Rack outage maybe? No generator bup? Suspect we won’t find out and I’m only mildly interested.

The other observation relates to that comment by the reporter re people at petrol stations whose cards were rejected. Unless they had alternative means of payment they had to wait at the petrol station until someone came along and paid for them.

Petrol stations in my experience can fail over to a manual card swipe using old fashioned slips of paper. Maybe not all of them. Or maybe because the card processing system was not “down” generally the specific Lloyds customers weren’t trusted.

That’s all.

PS no such thing as 100% uptime – see this post on Vodafone outage

Business mobile apps

Boring TV & better things to do – @CamCardIntSig

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Saturday, 25 January, 2014
4 Comments on Boring TV & better things to do – @CamCardIntSig

What’s the most boring TV programme you have ever watched? It was probably on a Saturday night. Seems to be traditional to have boring TV on a Saturday night. I’d say it was pretty boring most other nights too but don’t let me put ideas in your head; thoughts.

You do have to ask yourself if the your most boring TV programme was that boring why did you watch it? You could have switched off and done something useful. I’ve just scanned in a hundred or so business cards using an App called CamCard. I bought the paid version for £1.90. It’s useful.

I’m gradually working my way through a thousand or so business cards I had tossed into a desk drawer over the years. Lots of them will now be out of date, especially those of sales people. I discard the obviously incorrect ones but scan everything else in. You never know when they will come in handy. Google contacts will probably provide me with updated data on people anyway. If you suddenly start getting emails from me you will now know why. Don’t worry there will be a fully functional unsubscribe button.

I’m checking out CRM and accounting packages this coming week. I want them all to hook up with Google Contacts. They also need APIs for interfacing with other platforms – MailChimp for example and WordPress, obvs. Not that I’m expecting to be doing many mass mailers though I can envisage a weekly digest of blog posts plus a bit of unique mail only content – for the busy executive who hasn’t got the few seconds to spare in the week to scan through a short blog post.

Ve shall see.

PS there is a TV in the breakout area down the corridor from my office. During the day people sit there watching daytime TV. Some people really need a life.

More TV related stuff:

Sony 4K Ultra HD TV

TV detector vans – the truth

BBC piles pressure on ISPS with Internet TV

Engineer peering

LONAP AGM & my first Banksy

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Friday, 24 January, 2014
2 Comments on LONAP AGM & my first Banksy

Got together with the LONAP board yesterday to go through arrangements for next week’s AGM. It’s been another year of growth. Better not tell you any more at this stage or I’ll be spoiling it for Tuesday.

As a not for profit we try to keep overheads down and yesterday we borrowed a meeting room off Vision IPTV in the shadow of the BT tower. On the end wall of the building was a Banksy. My first one! I was thrilled.

Apparently when the council leased the building to it’s current occupiers they wanted to charge them extra because of the Banksy. That angle didn’t work. Then some time later someone else in the council decided the mural was getting a bit worn and wanted to paint over the whole lot!

That’s when Vision IPTV decided to place a clear protective screen over it.

There’s not much else to report other than the meeting was held upstairs in what appeared to be a building right out of a 60s cold war movie. I could imagine Michael Caine striding up to me, leather shoes echoing along the corridor, saying “My name is Harry Palmer”.

We all sat in the meeting room jointly editing the slide decks for the AGM in the LONAP Google Apps Drive space. Internet connectivity was provided my my EE 4G MiFi dongle. I was getting 16Mbps – perfectly adequate for 4 laptops hanging off it.

London is a bleak place in January. We finished our work and retired to a warm pub, an old favourite, The Lamb (Conference Room L) in Lambs Conduit Street, for a cheery pint and a chat about life, the universe and internet connectivity.

All work and no play makes Tref a dull boy. As you know:)

Tags Banksy

Engineer mobile apps

Use of memory on phone by Applications #connectedlife

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Thursday, 23 January, 2014
No Comments on Use of memory on phone by Applications #connectedlife

Was flicking through the apps on my droid this morning in bed, as you do, and I noticed that I was running low on available RAM, again as you do. I was down to something like 16%. Blimey I thought. Wonder what’s using all that memory up?

So I looked and saw that I had 11 Applications running even though I wasn’t using most of them. Now I didn’t notice that this slowed my phone down but taking it to the extreme it could have done.

I took some screenshots to illustrate how using Apps uses memory. The Apps screenshot is an approximate simulation as I already killed the ones when I originally looked.

Stopping the Apps releases a load of memory. You can see the available memory grow from 16% to 43%.

All obvious stuff but interesting to see in action nevertheless.

Just for interest I uploaded these screenshots from my droid to Google Drive when I was at home.

In the railway station waiting room I used my Chromebook to access pixlr.com via my EE 4G MiFi to size them and convert to jpg for use in the blog. They were still in Drive at this time.

As the train moved out of the station and with diminishing cellular signal I moved the pics from Drive to the media folder on trefor.net.

This process wasn’t heavy on cellular bandwidth as I was moving stuff from one cloud to another (more on the “other” cloud in due course).

It was all a bit of a race against time knowing that the precious resource of connectivity was going to dwindle and vanish.

Now as I head through the wilderness of Lincolnshire towards Nottinghamshire, London and notional civilisation I am forced to continue editing this post locally.

I’ll only need a tiny bit of bandwidth to finally publish it, in theory, because the heavy shifting has been done.

The only other thing to note is that I’m stretching this post out a bit because the photos are fairly tall and therefore use a fair bit of real estate.

I could have shrunk them a bit but then I find it difficult to read the text don’t you? 🙂

That’s all folks. Stay safe but make your life an exciting one.

#connectedlife 🙂

agricultural End User

Should badgers get the vote and other jolly wheezes #banthecull

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Thursday, 23 January, 2014
7 Comments on Should badgers get the vote and other jolly wheezes #banthecull

Should badgers get the vote? This blog post explores the motion…

When I were a lad with no cares other than the distant dark clouds of impending A Level examinations our form classroom was situated above an arch through which pupils passed at break times. Despite being supposedly the most mature class in school we used to escape the pressure of said impending exams by letting off a bit of steam (I’m sticking to that line).

Our class had a sink and we would have hours fun by filling up cups of water and pouring it on unsuspecting passers by below. This was a fairly inaccurate process because we had to guess when someone would be coming out from underneath the arch – F=mg and all that – it took time for the water to reach pupil height and more often than not we would miss.

Being a highly intelligent class we devised a process that would improve our accuracy. Someone would look out of the classroom window at the other side of the arch and start walking when a victim disappeared from view underneath. When our paceman reached the a few feet from the sink we would drop the water. We did score a few direct hits but never seemed to get into trouble for this.

Fast forwarding to the modern era

4g Engineer engineering mobile connectivity

EE 4G mobile broadband roadmap in UK #LTE-A #mobilebroadband

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Tuesday, 21 January, 2014
7 Comments on EE 4G mobile broadband roadmap in UK #LTE-A #mobilebroadband

4G speeds continue to grow in the UK as EE trial LTE-A 300Mbps.

Sat in an interesting talk at UKNOF27 given by Bob Sleigh of EE. You will know that EE were the first of the mobile operators to sell 4G services in the UK. Bob told us that by the end of 2013 EE 4G services have reached 66% of the UK population with 98% potentially covered by the end of 2014. This represents the fastest rollout of 4G services in any country anywhere and EE now claim that the UK has moved from a mobile backwater to one of the world’s leading implementers.

This claim of world leadership is likely to be on the back of EE’s Techcity LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) trials (November 2013) which saw maximum 4G speeds of 296Mbps. EE expect to roll out LTE-A services in 2014.