Author: Trefor Davies

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

Categories
End User fun stuff

Amazing story from Hampton Court

panoramic view of Hampton Court Maze taken from the back of the Kings Arms Hotel

Story for you. Years ago I worked on a bid to develop an analogue chip for a company in London. It was a very big contract and we had tried to get the Purchasing Director out for a beer or eight during the process (just to better get to know him-he was a nice guy). He would have none of it but when we were eventually awarded the deal he set up a kick off dinner somewhere in Kingstson.

Our sales guy, Tony Myers, and I stayed at a pub at the entrance to Bushy Park and opposite the gates to Hampton Court. We had a bit of time to kill so we wandered around the wonderful grounds of the Palace and eventually we paid to go into the maze.

That was where we went wrong. After some time we made it into the middle but then found ourselves with only five minutes to go before the taxi was due to pick us up to take us to the restaurant. Uhoh!

Tony, however, had the solution. If you turn left at every opportunity you eventually get out. It took a lot of left turns and we practically had to run through the maze but we made it.

Of course these days I’d just get my trusty Samsung Galaxy S3 out and use Google Maps to get out – amazing detail of the maze here.

I was down for an Exec dinner on the 3rd October and then to visit Convergence Summit South at Sandown Park Racecourse. Photo of the racetrack below.

Sandown Park panorama taken with Samsung Galaxy S3

 

Categories
End User phones

iOS5 versus iOS6

An apple - grown in my back garden at homeOk lads and lasses. My wife has an iPhone4S. Should she upgrade it to iOS6? Pros and cons? Answers on a postcard or in the comment box.

PS she is desperate to have a navigational tool in her car. This should be a consideration in the discussion.

Categories
Business net neutrality voip

Successful @Amdocs press/analyst dinner discussing threat from OTT services at the Gherkin

Trefor Davies at a window on the 38th floor of the Gherkin

I was fortunate enough to be invited by Amdocs to one of their periodic Press/Analyst dinners. These are great evenings where the wine and conversation flows, all on subjects relating to communications and technology.

Last night’s was at the Gherkin, or St Mary Axe as the building is formally known. The views from the top are absolutely terrific and because I’m that kind of guy I’ve posted a video so that you can share the experience.

As for the dinner, we discussed the likely effect of Over The Top services on the incumbent telco base.  This is a fairly large subject. It encompasses net neutrality and ownership of the customer with the truly Damaclean threat of disaster and destruction hanging over the telcos. That’s if they aren’t nimble that is.

I suspect that there will be room for a number of business models and a specific differentiation between services provided for consumers and businesses.

This subject merits a longer post so for the moment I’ll just leave you with the video. Thanks again to Amdocs for a great evening. They are doing a good job.

PS to the security people at the Gherkin – I have just found my pass – sorry. I’ll bring it back the next time I come.

Categories
Cloud Engineer storage backup & dr

Human Face of Big Data launch today #hfobd

screenshot from android version of #hfobd#hfobd "trust"Attended the EMC sponsored launch of The Human Face of Big Data this morning and picked up some data:

Any kid born in 2012 will generate more data than all the information that mankind has ever generated. In his or her first year he will have generated more info than is currently held in Smithsonian Institute and 10% of all photos ever taken were taken in 2011.

At that point I stopped writing. People spout so many facts about data these days that it starts to lose its impact. Some numbers are so big they almost become pointless.

There are plenty of good and bad uses of big data and we as a society need to think how we go about minimising the risk of the latter.

Coincidentally a taxi driver yesterday told me that he had had four laptops left in his cab in seven years. There are apparently over 19,000 registered black cabs in London. If he was representative that suggests that on average 10,857.141  laptops are left in taxis every year.

I wonder how much sensitive data was on those laptops and how many of them were unsecured?

I’ve not really told you anything about the project – check it out here The Human Face of Big Data. I downloaded the app and entered my data. You can look at and filter the (anonymized) global data set and compare results for different demographics.

Apparently the Apple app isn’t ready yet but don’t worry – Apple usually manages to catch up eventually.

As a footnote, I am interested in exploring Big Data over the next few millennia (think big). If anyone wants to discuss projects drop me a line.

1 No arguing, I have total editorial control:)

Categories
Engineer gadgets

Home networked devices

I took a look at my router yesterday, as you do, and counted 14 devices connected over WiFi and 4 over Ethernet.

WiFi included 4PCs/laptops, printer, 4 android phones, iPod, iPhone and iPad. Ethernet included my laptop, a VoIP phone and a couple of homeplug devices that hook up the XBox.

That’s not SoHo. That’s a small business. We certainly have the overheads:)

Categories
End User social networking

And then there were four… quiet house

Calgary Bay Isle of MullHere in the Davies house all is calm. The Sunday roast is ready to go in the oven, the veg prepared and the fireplace cleaned out in anticipation of coal being bought from the garage at the end of Burton Road.

Two kids are now away at their respective Universities with two left at home. It’s strange having a family of four where most of the time it has been six.  The most noticeable difference is the noise, or lack of it. Even though when at home they are rarely all in the same room at the same time the decibel level seems to shoot up when they are all here.

In the summer of 2011 I went camping on Mull with one of the kids.  We visited a place called Calgary Bay. This is a beautiful bay from which settlers left to go to Canada, hence, presumably Calgary. In those days it was a much bigger thing for someone to leave home. That was mostly it. Very little further contact.

Nowadays Facebook makes a huge difference. I still have a bit of banter with my Funkypancake  friend Dave despite the fact that he is now in New Zealand. I often chat with my son Tom at Warwick University online and now Hannah is established in Durham I have my lifeline to her though my plans to provide her with a hotspot for her room have been thwarted by the fact that her internet connection requires a browser login.

In time (a long, long time away in a far-away galaxy) when I become old and even more shrivelled than I am today the internet really will make the family seem close by. It is a shame that there is a community of older people today who have never had access to the web and who are probably too old to make the change. There are lots of people who would benefit from using Facebook to stay in touch with family and friends.

In time the number of internet impoverished people will become fewer and fewer because, being blunt about it, they won’t be around any more. I would be surprised if there was a single person leaving school now who doesn’t have a Facebook account, at least here in the UK. The mix will inevitably change.

It’s quite likely that what is deemed acceptable from a privacy perspective will also change things for the older generation. Many of the information requests made to telcos by the police force are for details of mobile phone location information of missing kids and folk with Alzheimers who have wandered off. I must give my login details for SamsungDive to my wife, if only so she can track which pub to come and get me from when I am no longer able to walk home (due to age and infirmity).

Right, time to put the pork in the oven. I’ve gone on enough.

PS I still don’t trust Facebook though.

Categories
End User fun stuff

A big thank you to Sam

Took the family to Zizzi in Lincoln last night to celebrate daughter’s last night at home before heading to University for the first time. Food was good though they seemed to be a little understaffed.

Anyway in the multi-storey car park next to the restaurant, on the Brayford in Lincoln for those who know the place, I dug out some coins for the pay and display machine. I needed £2.50 and blow me down if I didn’t only have £2.30.

As I was stood there, staring at coins in outstretched hand, (I’m painting a picture here) considering my options along came a chap with his girlfriend off on a night out.

Without my having said anything he asked how much we were short and promptly came up with the twenty pence. “I’ve been in the same situation myself” he said. His name was Sam.

Sam, thanks very much for being a great bloke. If I can ever do anything to help you I hope I can do it before you have to ask.

Categories
Apps End User gaming internet

Electronic Arts infrastructure fails under weight of demand for FIFA2013

I had to pop into town yesterday to buy FIFA 2013 for my 12 year old. It was the price I had to pay for his cooperation with the BT case study filming when he got back from school. It cost an arm and a leg – somewhere in the region of £85 including 5,000 Microsoft points.

There would have been a lot of people getting around town without arms and legs because there must have been hundreds of the games  piled up behind the counter at Game Station, all on pre-order. In fact if you hadn’t pre-ordered it  you would have been out of luck as they were all spoken for.

My lad got home from school and immediately got down to business with the XBox. That’s when things started to go wrong. He traded 3,200 Microsoft points for 5,200 FIFA points. However the FIFA points did not appear. These are expensive virtual tokens (massive gross margin I’d imagine) and whilst I was sure that we would resolve the issue – @EA support has been great in the past – on this occasion the support was totally unobtainable.

I began to tweet my dissatisfaction – that’s usually a good way of getting a response (unless you are @eastcoastuk). Every minute I spent on hold I tweeted the fact with increasing levels of annoyance. Looking at the @EA twitter account I could see they had over 1 million followers. I gave up after 20 minutes.

Later the lad found out online that EA had had to switch off their points system because it had been overwhelmed. This was another Olympic ticketing/Ticketmaster moment. The next morning the system is still down for maintenance.

It surprises me that in this day and age of scalable online computing resources that businesses let themselves down like this. I often hear complaints in our house that the FIFA servers are down or too busy.

As I write the @EA twitter follower count is down to 999,901 – clearly a few disgruntled folks out there.

Categories
Engineer fun stuff

communications protocols for swimming pools

I was having a swim before work this morning, as you do – healthy body, healthy mind etc. I had a whole lane to myself which those of you who indulge in a bit of a splash before work will know is a real luxury.

There are two types of communications scenarios used in the swimming pool, one for serious lane swimming and one for the general melee and out and out chaos when you take the kids.

For the latter you employ more CSMA/CD1  style protocols of the old Ethernet hub world. Lane swimming is different. Lane swimming employs multilevel quality of service. The faster the swimmer the further towards the far side of the pool he or she goes. Slow ones like me go to the lanes nearest the changing rooms.

This basic protocol typically keeps everyone happy though even within lanes there are different “packet speeds”. Although I am a slow swimmer if I encounter an even slower swimmer I either overtake in a bit of “open water” or turn around when I catch the person up and swim back in the other direction. If I am the slower I usually pause at one end to let the faster person overtake.

It all works well. Everyone knows the protocol, the etiquette. We are a happy bunch, us early morning swimmers.

This morning was slightly different. I was ploughing away on my own, “in the zone” when a shadowy figure appeared at the shallow end of the pool. I say shadowy figure because without my specs life is a bit of a blur. I thought to myself, “hope that person isn’t coming in my private lane”. It turned out she was.

Now normally the protocol for newbies to the water is that they wait for the person swimming to go past then get in. I was just coming to the wall when this shadowy figure jumped in and set off directly in front of me momentarily throwing me off my stride/stroke. Huh I thought to myself, just a teeny bit disgruntled.

She was a slightly faster swimmer than me so she soon moved away. Then a couple of laps later she caught up with me just as I was getting to the shallow end and blow me down if she didn’t shove in front and disrupt me again.

Being extremely short sighted (-5) I will never know who she was and she will never know that she breached the unwritten law, the etiquette of the lane swimmer. There was no point in complaining. I finished my 30 minutes (ish) and got out of the water.

Protocols – why we need them and the consequences of a breakdown in order…

1 look it up – this blog is not here to teach the basics. It’s here for my own gratification 🙂

Categories
Apps Engineer virtualisation

Meet John Milner VCP5-DV, MCTS, MCSA+M/S, MCSE+S, MCITP: EMA/SA, A+, S+, eater of cake

John Milner and the VMware monster cake - click for a closer picJohn Milner started with us earlier this year to help with our virtualisation programme. He has a string of great qualifications and has now just passed his VMware Certified Professional – Datacenter Virtualization examination.

We are proud of him and glad that he has come to work at Timico. He has made an instant impact. He’s one of those guys you can chuck a job at knowing it will get done in a totally professional manner. We seem to be very lucky with the quality of our engineering staff all round.

In keeping with the cake making tradition we have here at Timico John has brought one in for everyone to help him celebrate his success. It says much about the character of the man that he admitted that the cake was actually baked by his sister. After all you can’t be good at everything:)

I of course am on a health kick and will not be partaking. It has been made easier by the fact that I’m sat at home waiting for a film crew to turn up but more on that later…

Well done John & keep up the great work :))

Just for the record & any SEO (smiley face) I repeat his qualifications here for your perusal: VCP5-DV, MCTS, MCSA+M/S, MCSE+S, MCITP: EMA/SA, A+, S+, eater of cake

PS John – sorry if this is a somewhat personally embarrassing post having nice things said about you but credit where credit is due 🙂

Categories
Business internet Regs

ISPA conference 12th November

If anyone is interested in attending the annual  ISPA conference registration is now open. I’m chairing an interesting debate on the draft Communications Data Bill. This conference is always jam packed with good subject matter and well worth going.

Full agenda is below:

0915  Registration and Coffee

0940  Introduction by Nicholas Lansman – ISPA Secretary General

0945  Keynote Address: tbc         

1005 Q&A Chair: Nicholas Lansman – ISPA Secretary General

1015  Does the Draft Communications Data Bill get the balance right between the needs of law enforcement, the privacy of users and impact on CSPs?

·   What has changed and how will businesses be effected?
·   Is retaining third party data proportionate and technically possible?
·   Is this an extension of existing powers? Are there enough safeguards in place to protect privacy?

Chair: Trefor Davies – Timico CTO and ISPA Council

Panellists: Conor Ward – Partner, Hogan Lovells; Dr Julian Huppert MP – Joint Committee; Nick Pickles – Director, Big Brother Watch; Professor Anthony Glees – Director, Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies (BUCSIS) at the University of Buckingham; more speakers tbc

1115  Coffee and Networking                                 

1130  How can Britain’s broadband strategy best help SMEs and businesses?

·   Is the current focus too much on speeds and not enough on reach of service?
·   What are the next steps for the broadband strategy?
·  How best can we ensure that investment in broadband reaches businesses and consumers in all parts of the UK?

Chair:  Mark Gracey – Cable&Wireless and ISPA Council

Panellists: Earl of Selborne – Lords Committee; Barry Forde – CEO, Broadband for the Rural North (B4RN); more speakers tbc

1230  NETWORKING LUNCH

1400  Speech & Q&A: tbc

1410  Whose responsibility is it to ensure cyber security?

  • How can ISPs, law enforcement and government work better together to ensure a safer internet experience?
  • What can we learn from the experiences of other countries?
  • What is the responsibility of the user to protect themselves?

Chair: James Blessing – Limelight Networks and ISPA Council member

Panellists: Tony Neate – Chief Executive, Get Safe Online; Alexandra Birtles – PR and Public Affairs Manager, TalkTalk; more speakers tbc

1510  Coffee and Networking                     

1525  Review of the Communications Act

·   Update on what is happening with the White Paper
·   Is there a need for a wholesale review of the communications framework?
·   How is Government going to create a framework to make the UK a digital hub?

Chair: & panellists tbc.

1625  Drinks reception with selected members of the media

1800  Close

 

Categories
Archived Business

Looking for 3rd line VoIP engineer – can you help?

I’m looking for a 3rd line support VoIP engineer based in the Newark NOC. If you know anyone who might be interested or are interested yourself can you please drop me a line?

Ta

Tref

Categories
agricultural End User

Next time you eat a kebab…

I just had a meeting with a local farmer. He told me, and I have no idea how a conversation on Unified Communications got on to this,  that a single ram is expected to serve a hundred ewes. Worra life. It’s a short window of enjoyment because farmers want all the lambs to arrive around the same time so the ram spends the rests of the year away from the ewes, eating grass with the lads.

The downside is that when the ram’s useful life is over it gets shot and sold to the kebab manufacturing industry. Next time you eat a kebab…

Categories
broken gear End User phones

Galaxy S3 mended under warranty – faulty USB socket

Y’all will recall that I had to send my GalaxyS3 back because it wasn’t charging. Well I’ve got it back and they have mended it under warranty. The USB socket was faulty so all is now well. If it had been water damage I would have been cross.It wasn’t water damage.

That’s all…

Categories
End User fun stuff

School governors and giving something back to society

We are extremely fortunate with the school our kids go to. It has served the first two well and the next two are having a great time the youngest having just been elected as vice representative of his class. Starting a bit young I thought but hey…

The school is a user of modern technology. There is a portal that can be used to check on kids progress and letters to parents come via email.

I received one such letter yesterday informing me of the opportunity to become a Governor at the school. I have to admit that this is the one public function for which I shall never put myself forward. This stems from the time when the kids were at primary school and my wife asked if I’d help the school out by being a Governor. This was to me a matter of personal pleasure. Of course I’d be happy to help.

Then one day I found that I had come third and last in the election behind two mums.  Total humiliation. I didn’t even know there was a competition. Whilst I was happy to be a Governor it wasn’t something I “wanted” badly enough to compete for against women in the playground.

So there you go. I won’t be putting my name forward on this occasion. I am too busy:)

Categories
Business charitable social networking

Award winning Burton Road chippy in Lincoln @burtonrdchippy – eat their chips

Burton Road Chippy in Lincoln

charity begins at a chip shopI don’t follow many chip shops on twitter. In fact I think I only follow the one, @burtonrdchippy.

I like the @burtonrdchippy tweets. I like to know that they have offers on although seeing as I am trying to lose a few pounds I don’t typically frequent fish and chip shops.

When I see something good I retweet it and so hopefully in a modest way @burtonrdchippy gets more exposure and more custom. Many of the people I follow and who follow me are local to me so there is a chance they will go and eat there.

@burtonrdchippy has a personality I can engage with. Imagine my delight therefore when driving to drop off a trumpeter at a band practice I heard on BBC Radio Lincolnshire that @burtonrdchippy is now an award winning emporium – one of the best in the East of England in fact.

It wasn’t far to go so I popped round to congratulate them. Tweetmeister (for want of a better word) Lesley wasn’t there though and when I went back later this evening they were busy so I let them be.

So I’m just going to write this short blog post as a small token of my appreciation of the fact that this chippy has embraced the new world, mixed it with the old and is making a success of it.

Eat their chips, sit in their fine restaurant section and enjoy a bottle of wine with your fish. The fish will be freshly prepared and have come from a sustainable source. Check out their website here and follow them on twitter. I sense a tweetup at a chip shop in the offing.

Well done  @burtonrdchippy. Frying tonight:)

Categories
competitions End User

grand TNMOC caption competition – win fantastic 6 month membership of luxury spa worth £300

valves, valves and more valves at TNMOC

Phil Hayes stands in front of Colossus at TMNOCThis week we have a fantastic membership of the Spirit Health Club in Aylesbury to be won. The Spirit Health Club is one of the top fitness destinations in the South East and whether you live in the area or just pass through occasionally on your way to a data centre in Docklands this is the prize for you.

All you need to do is provide a caption for the photo on the right. The picture is of  Phil Hayes (Colossus Rebuild Engineer) stood in front of the Colossus computer at The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park.

commodore calculator on display at TNMOC The photo was taken at the IPCortex 10th birthday fundraiser for TNMOC last week which brought in a couple of grand for the museum.

The prize has been donated by the Spirit Health Club Aylesbury1. Club facilities include fitness suite, swimming pool, a wide variety of studio classes, sauna, steam room, and spa pool. Lifestyle consultants provide a personal touch by giving one to one guidance to help members achieve their fitness goals. Services available on site (but at additional charge) include beauty treatments, personal training, physiotherapy, massages and reflexology.

All sounds great doesn’t it. Good luck with the caption competition – just leave your entry as a comment. You can have until the end of this week to enter.

The second photo is of the Commodore Calculator on display at TNMOC. It was the first and only calculator I ever owned and I used it extensively around the time I was studying for my O’Levels. I still have it in the attic somewhere though it long ago stopped working 🙁

1Please note that the membership is valid for the Aylesbury branch only – Weston Turville, HP22 5QT.

Categories
Business charitable

Newark Castle Rotary Club and Rainbows Children’s Hospice

Newark Castle Rotary club dinnerEarlier this month I was invited to a presentation evening1 by Newark Castle Rotary Club. Timico had made a contribution to a sponsored walk held in aid of the Rainbows Children’s Hospice.

It’s totally humbling when you look at the effort put in by some to help others. In this case there are two groups to mention. Firstly the enthusiasm with which the folk at the Rotary Club put their hands up to volunteer. We would all do well to imitate it.

Secondly is  the work done by the people at Rainbows. The mental strength and sheer goodness needed to work in such an environment is massive. It’s only when you have (four) healthy kids of your own that you begin to appreciate how lucky you are.

Rainbows helps families get through really difficult times and deserve your support. I’ll repeat the link here in case you want to take a look at what they do and maybe even make a small donation.

1I thought it was going to be a finger buffet and knowing how easy it is to eat too much at these gigs and being on a health kick I had dinner before I went. Turns out the buffet was an enormous meal with a traditional British treacle sponge pudding and custard for afters. Of course it would have been rude to sit there not eating.  The things I have to do in the name of charity/work/call it what you like.

Categories
Engineer voip webrtc

That Alexander Graham Bell moment and WebRTC @IPCortex

I gave a talk at IPCortex’s 10th birthday party bash yesterday. Was really impressed with Rob Pickering’s WebRTC demo. He made a call from a Yealink VoIP phone hanging off the IPCortex PBX to a browser based client, also registered with the PBX.

Then I called the browser client’s DDI from my mobile – surely one of the first PSTN to WebRTC calls (ok ok I know someone else will have probably already done this but it did feel like an “Alexander Graham Bell moment”).

WebRTC is an open source (ie free) project that enables web browsers with Real-Time Communications (RTC) capabilities via simple Javascript APIs. It is supported by Google who have been buying companies with key patents so that they can be made available free of charge to the community.

It is the future of communications. IPCortex are at the front edge of this work and the video below is part of Rob’s demo. We are all having a bit of fun and it was only a very rough and ready implementation but it shows what can be done. Although it is still in the early  stages of evolution expect lots of applications to use the  WebRTC API in time.

Other WebRTC posts you might want to read:

Uber cool WebRTC video conferencing service appear.in

ITSPA WebRTC Workshop at Google Campus

Categories
End User phones

Super dooper Blackberry upgrade offer

My oldest boy Tom who is a good lad and is at Warwick University is coming up to contract renewal time on his mobile phone. He currently has an iPhone4 (I know very impressionable these youngsters) and is pondering an iPhone5 but a) it is more than he really wants to pay (good boy) and b) he can’t get 4G where he lives anyway.

His current phone would actually do him were it not for the fact that the connector socket is not working properly and he wants to stream stuff onto his TV.

His mobile phone company just rang to tempt him with a free handset upgrade if he renews his contract. He was offered a BlackBerry! I know not which one. What do readers think he should do? Should he accept the offer as a great deal or should he bide his time?

Suggestions in the usual way…

Categories
Business events

IPCortex 10th birthday bash TNMOC Bletchley Park

I’m off to Milton Keynes this morning. Speaking at IPCortex’s 10th anniversary birthday bash. This evening I’m also being the Auctioneer at their charity fundraiser in aid of The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park.

I have lots of experience with charity auctions, though usually from the perspective of someone sticking their hand in the air to buy something. My wife makes me sit on my hands these days.

The first auction I ever went to was at Thos Mawer & Sons in Lincoln. I had been sent to buy a green settee for the TV room. “Twenty quid should do it” I was told. It came to the bidding and zoom – I lost it to someone else – for twenty quid! I didn’t even get a look in it all happened  so quickly.

Feeling that I shouldn’t go home totally empty handed I bought four wooden chairs for a pound (plus 15 pence buyer’s premium). When I got them home they were clearly rubbish and not suitable for our kitchen so I threw them on the woodpile at the bottom of the garden and they got used for kindling. Turns out this is the cheapest way to buy kindling 🙂

I’ve got loads of other auction stories but you will have to come to Bletchley Park to hear them.

Ciao…

Categories
Apps End User google mobile apps

plot lost with sat nav plotted route?

Timico logo on fleeceI’ve been driving around the country a fair bit recently although by and large it is still easier to catch the train. I’ve even been using the Google Navigation on my Galaxy S3 so I must be visiting places I’ve never been before.

The funny thing is I’ve found that when I’m in the car I have started talking to the sat nav person. When he says “turn left now” I say ok got that thanks!!! I even do it when I’m not on my own in the car!!! Am I losing the plot or is this normal behaviour? My friends need to tell me though I’m not sure there is a cure.

When I’m out and about I also usually wear a Timico polo shirt or fleece. I’ve found that staff at the coffee counter think I’m driving a truck. I quite like this. The romantic notion of the freedom of the road.

When I were a lad I hitchhiked from Greece to London. One lorry gave me a lift the whole way. I was very lucky. He even got me signed on the ferry as a co driver. The guy behind the desk was very suspicious & didn’t believe him. I had a goatee beard, a collarless shirt and wore a leather hat. I still got onboard and even had a free driver’s meal. Happy days.

That’s all folks.

Categories
Apps Business ecommerce

IT problems, printers and online support models

justanswer online IT supportUsually I offload any home IT problems to the kids. Last night though I spotted one of them carrying the (wireless) printer into the living room. Omg wtf I thought (the kids will probably read this).

Turns out the printer is knackered. Print head stays stuck in place. The lad in question was moving it into a brighter room to try and get a better look. He is a good lad. There was of course nothing obvious so we plugged it back in. Still didn’t work & came up with an error code.

I searched online and found that this type of error, if it didn’t fix itself, needed a return to base to fix. Ah well. That’s why I took out the insurance policy – I do this for printers only because they are notoriously unreliable (assuming I can find the bumpf though usually PC World are good at keeping a record).

In one of my searches for the error code I came across “justanswer.com” which seemed to show promise. At first I thought it was a Kodak support site and filled in the online engagement box with the details of the problem. Next think  I know the details of an advisor came up highlighting his technical background and suggesting that the assistance might be worth £21 but giving you the opportunity to suggest another figure.

Very innovative. Being tight I moved off the page. After all I had already determined that the printer would either fix itself or need sending back. It seems like a good model for the total novice though. It is reasonable to pay someone for their expertise.

I rebooted the printer one last time and hey presto, it worked! Deep satisfaction…

Click on the header photo to see more of the page.

Categories
Cloud End User google

Dropbox or Google+

I’ve noticed I keep being given free space extensions in Dropbox. I’ve just realised all my photos are being uploaded there. That means I’m uploading to both Google+ and Dropbox, using wifi only.

I don’t mind this as long as Dropbox keeps extending the space. I’m not aware they provide unlimited storage aka G+ but hey. I did find a real use for Dropbox recently when my S3 battery stopped charging. The USB port was only intermittently visible & I couldn’t move files across the the laptop.  I shifted some “important” stuff into Dropbox before the battery finally went and I now still have those files. I also used Google Drive.

It probably doesn’t make sense to use both but for the moment it’s easy enough to do and I haven’t hit any problems.

That’s all…

Categories
4g End User

iPhone5 availability with 4G LTE & beginning of the end for Orange and TMobile?

Just spoke with an Orange customer service representative. They sent me an email asking if I’d like to sign up for an iPhone5. Here’s the rub. Nobody has a date for availability of LTE yet. Moreover Orange and TMobile won’t be offering it. You will have to go to a brand new company known as EE to get the service.

I’m thinking this is likely to be the beginning of the end for the Orange and TMobile brands. In time all services will be 4G and according to this logic existing Orange and TMobile customers will have mostly migrated to EE. Quite clever.

The Orange person was unable to give me a date for when EE would be up and running or when one would be able to sign up for 4G though anyone buying an iphone5 from them now could be migrated in due course.

Categories
Business voip

WELSH VoIP FIRM IS GLOBAL TRAILBLAZER

The VoIP world is changing out of all recognition. Over The Top services allow VoIP to be used in many applications and environments. These services have traditionally been provided using servers performing specific functions. For example voicemail, music on hold, conferencing are all serviced as “discrete functions” by the carrier’s system.

Carriers want to make sure that they never run out of network capacity. To do so not only means lost revenues but annoys users who get “busy tones” and puts them off using the service in future. The traditional way of ensuring that capacity limits are not reached is by overprovisioning network resources (hardware and licenses) which is expensive.

New technology developed by NS Technologies in Cwmbran, South Wales allows networks to adjust virtual resources on the fly using what is known as a Media Resource Broker (MRB).  The MRB opens up new business opportunities for everyone in the VoIP game. A VoIP provider using MRB might, for example, offer new conferencing services on an exploratory basis knowing that if the services don’t take off they haven’t lost a big chunk of cash that they would traditionally have to had invested in the kit.  The MRB also has other value add features such as conference failover and location based resource routing.

The guys at NS-Technologies are sharp and if you are a telco you would do well to take a look at what they have to offer. You can follow them on Twitter at @NS_Technologies and read their press release here (not for the layman).

I wish them luck.

Categories
broadband End User media

Why We Will All Need 1Gbps FTTP – 20/20 Vision – Conversations with Nat Morris

gigabit broadband conversation with Nat Morris

Nat Morris in conversation with Trefor Davies (pic taken by Umar Bajwa)

Gigabit broadband is the way forward.

Met with Nat Morris (Google him) last week. We discussed life, networks and Ultra High Definition TV. Ultra High Definition TV will dispel any doubts you ever had about why broadband networks need to get faster and faster. Gigabit broadband is the future.

Developed by Japanese national broadcaster NHK in conjunction with the BBC, Super Hi Vision has sixteen times as many pixels as HDTV. Frames have 7680 pixels across by 4320 pixels down – roughly the equivalent of a 32Mpixel photo.

It’s going to be a while before this becomes mainstream. There are only three cameras in the world capable of filming in this format (known as 8k) and the footage has to be shown on a 145-inch (3.7 metre) prototype display co-developed with Panasonic.

TV makers are currently focusing efforts on launching 4K enabled devices offering a quarter of the resolution. This is the format currently used by most digital cinema cameras. LG recently unveiled the biggest 4K television set to date  – an 84 inch screen costing more than $22,000 (I won’t be buying one). Manufacturers are likely to want to offer 8K screens by 2020 when NHK aims to begin its first experimental broadcasts in the standard.

Now this is all very well and good but what will it mean for us men in the street? Well the amount of digital bandwidth needed to stream 8k video is around 350Mbps. If we assume that households will want to have multiple streams so that people can watch Big Brother, Coronation Street, Eastenders and the footy simultaneously in different rooms whilst sharing the experience with their friends via Telepresence it isn’t difficult to imagine a world where several Gigabits per second is required to the home.

Much more info together with pics can be found at the links below. V interesting stuff that is not only going to drive broadband speeds but also memory sizes and processor power.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/researchanddevelopment/2012/08/the-olympics-in-super-hi-visio.shtml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2012/07/super_hi_vision_ultra_hd.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19370582

Follow Nat at @natmorris .

Categories
4g End User mobile connectivity phones

iPhone5 – why would you want to buy it? #4G #LTE

The iPhone5 est arrive. This year has seen a long list of major events come and go. Now it’s the turn of the iPhone5. Ordinarily this would do nothing for me. From what I can see the spec, in the main, is no better than the Samsung GalaxyS3. I’m not a zombie fanboi, activated by keywords in Apple marketing material, programmed to obey unquestioningly, asking only how much money to profer on the altar of the fruit.

The one feature that the iPhone5 has that makes me think about getting it is support for 1,800MHz. This is a massive coup for EE (eh?). We don’t have a real list of LTE alternative handsets yet. All the main manufacturers are on the list. I don’t want two S3s (my current phone is an S3 on O2) and I don’t see a compelling enough reason to go Lumia.

My attitude to Lumia might change when Windows8 is properly launched but for the moment it aint. So it looks like iPhone5 then.

I’m not totally convinced. Do I really want to toss my principles aside for the sake of using a LTE service that won’t work in my home town using a handset that won’t roam on any other network?

Categories
End User olympics

Three cheers for us – Olympics Paralympics

I’ve been in the car on the way to Slough (I must have been a naughty boy when i was a kid) and listening to the Olympic/Paralympic parade. I had to force back the tears. Even the hardest of cynics must surely have been bowled over with the last month’s sport.

This summer has been totally emotionally exhausting.  I didn’t think it could get more inspiring than the Olympics but the Paralympics have taken that inspiration to a new high. If we can aspire to a fraction of the achievement levels of every single competitor we will be doing well.

In the meantime we as a nation deserve to bask in our own success. Drop that traditional British reserve and congratulate ourselves.  Hip Hip Hooray :))

Categories
datacentre Engineer Net ofcom social networking

Power to the portaloo – bog standard networking in a (ElectroMagnetic) Field @emfnoc @emfcamp

EMFCamp network planning diagLast year I dreamt of holding a tweetup over a weekend in a field. I booked a large scout camp but the project didn’t get anywhere because it needed connectivity to make it a success and I couldn’t for one reason and another make it happen.

A couple of weeks ago you may have noticed something called EMF Camp appearing in your Twitter stream. People I knew were going and blow me down if it doesn’t turn out to be the type of event I had been thinking of.  I couldn’t go myself but Nat Morris, who ran the networking for the event, has sent me some notes of the tech setup.

Nat’s notes are a great read and I have left them by and large unadulterated. I have to thank him for sending me a wonderful cornucopia of facts and links – every link is worth clicking on. You especially need to make sure you read the camp_network pdf – it has drawing in it showing how they planned the network even down to the distances between portaloos for the Ethernet cable runs. Some knowledge of data networking would help you understand some of the technical terms here but the first link to Zoe Kleinman’s BBC report gives a great overview.

Nat writes:

Here are some details about the internet setup for EMFCamp which took place last weekend at Pineham Park in Milton Keynes. The BBC turned up on Saturday afternoon and recorded a nice piece about the event, you can see my stomach about halfway through when they film in the NOC tent…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19441861

Some slides from Will and my presentation at the end of the event about the power and internet are here…. (50MB warning)… www.natmorris.co.uk/camp_network.pdf

We were lucky that the site is only 2.8 miles away from the Pulsant DataCentre in Milton Keynes –  what was formerly BlueSquare MK. Brian Ross and Nick Ryce got the wheels in motion inside Pulsant and arranged with Matt Lovell the CTO for them to sponsor us. I cheekily asked for a couple of U of rackspace in MK and some in their Telehouse East rack plus a 1Gb/s layer 2 circuit between the two, I was expecting them to say no, but they were fine with the idea!

So back in June we started our network building placing a Cisco 7200 with NPE G2 in Telehouse and another in MK, we borrowed a /19 of v4 + /48 of v6 and AS number from Chaos Computer Club in Germany, meaning we didn’t have to NAT any campers.

We had a BGP transit feed from Pulsant in MK, plus Goscomb in Telehouse, along with a temporary connection to the LONAP peering network for v4+v6 plus multicast. http://stats.emfcamp.org

The costs for providing internet access to campers came in at around 5.8k, apart from 10 boxes of cat5 all of this was for the last mile between the MK DC and the campsite, everything was provided free or in kind from sponsors. RapidWireless from Liverpool (Richard Porter) loaned us a pair of DragonWave Horizon Compact units – we got a temporary OFCOM license for the 18ghz link which ran at 385mbit/s full duplex. As a backup we bought a pair of Ubiquiti Nanobridge M5’s, these were installed but we never pushed any traffic over them, they were just there in case something happened to the primary link.

Onsite we borrow a tent / marquee from scout group, the tent was made in 1953, made a 25quid to borrow it! Some pics…

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nottinghack/7929611918/

Our onsite rack / data centre, housing dual core routers, wireless controllers, along with various servers:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nottinghack/7929611592/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/andy_d/7902260210/

Around the site we deployed a resilient OSPF ring, switches were stored in portaloos, along with power distro units – we used the German term Datenklo for these, meaning ‘data toilet’:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ne0hack3r/7924490940/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/je4d/7924689482/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/andy_d/7902347402/

Someone even colocated a Raspberry Pi along with a 3tb USB hard disc in one! http://www.flickr.com/photos/andy_d/7902345240/

Campers left their cables outside and then either tweeted or text us and a NOC monkey would come out and connect them up. Wifi AP’s were deployed all over the site http://t.co/rBsQUAn9

We limited tent connections to 100Mbit, so a single user couldn’t saturate our upstream.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/b3cft/7909251802/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/loggedhours/7925212568/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/russss/7909193016/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nottinghack/7929909834/

Had some nice feedback!

https://twitter.com/Ash_Force/status/242067006537474048
https://twitter.com/markphelan/status/241896897290309633
https://twitter.com/je4d/status/242386884276396032
https://twitter.com/markphelan/status/242133609908142080

Our infra team twitter account is @emfnoc, the general camp one is @emfcamp

End of Nat’s stuff

A huge thanks to Nat for sharing this with me. The whole event was clearly a massive joint effot by lots of people and looks to have been a great success  I look forward to attending the next one in person.