Category: End User

End User

Everything Looks Worse in Black and White

Post author By Kory Kessel
Post date Tuesday, 3 June, 2014
2 Comments on Everything Looks Worse in Black and White

Photographer-wise I have long aspired to ‘avid’, seeing photos in my mind’s eye everywhere I look, composition, line, contrast, patterns, snippets of structured vision that I ached to capture and share. And like so many of us these days I am reveling in the sheer liberation afforded (key word, that) by digital technology’s heist (takeover? coup? overthrow?) of the picture taking discipline.

My first camera was a Kodak Disc 6000, which is sure to cause at least a cringe from anyone out there who remembers the disc camera wave-fad of the early 80s. I don’t remember what I paid for that camera, but as I was 17 and sacking groceries for pocket money at the time I know it couldn’t have been much. I do remember quite vividly, though, realizing that the cost of film and its development was going to shackle the intense photography enthusiasm generated by my camera purchase…even with the Eckerd Pharmacy down the street offering free double prints! In retrospect, it is probably good that I didn’t have the resources to go mad snap-snap-snapping my disc camera, considering the extremely poor quality of the film and the pasturing of the technology by Kodak before decade’s end. Bad habits avoided (mostly), the path taken not long enough to require a painful walk-back, and not too many memories relegated to a grey-and-forever-moving-to-black hole.

My second camera (I probably should state here that I am not — promise! — going to anecdote every camera I have ever owned…really, I’m not) was a Pentax SF-10, a “real” camera (35mm SLR) with a 28mm-80mm zoom lens. My answer to the 1988 iteration of that omnipresent end-of-year question “What do you want for Chanukah?”, this aspirational “finally getting photography serious” device came to me by way of a parents-grandparents-aunt/uncle coalition. The entire kit came to a little under $600, which I could never have swung myself seeing as how at the time I was working just-up-from-entry-level for Grey Advertising for $16,125 annual (not a typo). And, as with my previous camera, my ardor for my new photo friend once again took a shot to the gut when the cost realities applied their wink and slap. Still, I was moving forward, this time brandishing a camera that was immune to the whimsies of trend, a device that once I could actually afford to operate would provide literally decades of picture taking pleasure and thousands of terrific photos…a camera I could use to teach photography to my children¹.

Of course, I did eventually reach a point where I could afford to keep my Pentax SF-10 on a regular film diet, though my photography ambitions were never enough to overcome the ever-active cost calculator in my head from going to work every time I pressed her shutter. Snap. $0.20. Snap. Another $0.20. Snap. $0.20…and a third of my roll is gone. I was really only able to clear this lodged-but-good budgetary impediment when traveling, accomplishing this by buying film in bulk and rationalizing the making-memories aspect of it all (a little victory that resulted in roughly 2000 photos taken throughout Europe, Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and Russia between 1994-1998²). As for using that camera, though, to better learn photography principles, science, and technique (let alone experiment with such gleaned knowledge)? No. The CODB defeated me every time…well, that and the distinct lack of quick-if-not-instant gratification (taking multiple shots of the same subject at different aperture and shutter speed and focal length, jotting down notes on each shot at shutter press, waiting until the roll is finished, the rigamarole of processing, analyzing the prints).

Then along came digital photography. Not all in a rush, mind you, the way new end-user tech seems to appear these days, sprouting up from the Boolean muck with a built-in early-adopter audience already poised, prepared, and ready to purchase. No, more of a Rollout for the Rich. The first digital camera I saw was in the hands of friend of mine at Dell sometime in 1996, a man keen to the latest cool thing and with enough bangable bucks to chase down some of the same. I don’t recall the brand or model specifics, but I do remember the device looking enough like a compact camera, but having a distinctly non-camera color (an off-white casing, leaning towards beige). Mostly, though, what I remember was the one-inch screen on the back of the device that displayed the photos taken. I could actually see the photo that was just taken! And I could see other photos too! No film? How are the photos developed? Can you only see them on the computer If so, fat lotta good that will do you! How much did you say that thing set you back? My SLR costs less than that!

Early days. Digital photography soon became a hot topic of discussion, and before too long a few more digital cameras started to find their ways into the hands of people I knew. Prints could be had, and though they usually didn’t look like anything special, the fact that the film cost had been taken out of the snapper equation really was a mind-opener. Battery power was something of an issue, but not really so much so in comparison to film when taken at a shot-to-charge ratio. And though the memory chips at the time were infinitesimally small in comparison to what we know today, so were the photo file sizes, and thus a decent number of exposures could be rendered to a chip. And those chips could be removed from the camera at any time and taken for processing!

Being typically a third-generation adopter — let the Can’t-Waits, Fanboys, and Posers pay off the R&D costs, I always say — I opted to monitor the dawn of digital photography from the cheap seats, waiting for the tech to mature and a reasonable Cost of Entry. I continued to hold my Pentax SF-10 close, stroking its heavy, well-chiseled chassis, but using it only sparingly because — goshdarnit — film was expensive! As always, I was seeing photographs wherever I set my gaze, photos I wanted to take, to own — to STEAL — and to share with whoever could or might be bothered to try to see what I had seen and captured. A new Millenium was beckoning…would I be able to capture the Y2K chaos at just 36 exposures per roll?

Ah, the moment. But no. As much as I’d like to be able to conclude by saying that I made the leap of faith to digital in time to capture the Eiffel Tower’s twinkling in of 2000, the truth is it would be another 11 months before I found my way to my first camera sans film, the Kodak EasyShare DX3600.

¹ While I was blue-skying early on over the long, rosy, heirloom future of my Pentax SF-10, the Dycam Model 1 — generally accepted to be the first commercial digital camera — was being prepared for market.

²Roughly the same number of photos I took over the past month with Leyna, my trusty Leica D-Lux 5.

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End User travel

Wall on walk to work in Lincoln

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Thursday, 29 May, 2014
No Comments on Wall on walk to work in Lincoln

Because I try and vary my route in to work each day I get to notice lots of different sights. I will have seen most of them before but it is only when you have the time to your own thoughts that you really take the sights on board.

This week I was merrily heading officeward when someone who had been hanging around the traffic lights in front of me looking a little shifty asked me for directions to the station. He was clearly not from ’round here and I set him straight. I was heading in that approximate direction myself.

Now I am a slow walker and this guy soon went on ahead but at the next junction stopped to adjust his hair in his reflection in a car window. He was obviously unsure of his way. I pointed in the same direction I had pointed a hundred yards back and off he went again. At that time I branched off and took a different route. He was almost certainly ok but it was a bit odd that he kept hanging back with me and played safe. Was he going to try and rob me? In my bag I had a container of pea and ham soup for my lunch. Would have been a nuisance had he pinched that:)

Lincoln is generally safe anyway. I assume he got to the station. Probably never see him again.

My branched off route took me past St Mary’s Prep School whereupon I paused to take these photos. Hidden Lincoln. This wall is perhaps 700 – 800 years old and has clearly had one or two modifications done to it in its time. It looks as if it forms part of the wall to the grounds of Lincoln Cathedral but I could be wrong.

In one sense the wall represents power. The power of the church. On the inside you were safe, part of the gang. The wall kept the riff raff out. In some respects it performed the same job as my change of route. I wasn’t sure about that guy so I avoided him.

Now I’m safe in the office behind a door that requires a walk past the receptionist and a passkey to get through. The only riff raff are the other start ups in the same corridor. They probably think that of me:)

Today it took me about ten more minutes than is usual to get in to work. How so I hear you say. It was all down to the traffic. Pedestrian traffic. I bumped into five people I knew on the way down and stopped to chat to three of them. The only reason I didn’t chat to the other two was that I was already deep in conversation, sharing some witticism or anecdote, or in one case sympathising because she was on her way back from the dentist. You get it all when you walk to work.

Gotta go. Business to do, moves to make, trees to shake.

I leave you with a second pic cos I know you like that sort of thing.

Connected Like a Peasant

On a recent trip to France, I spent a day and a half in Chartres. I toured the cathedral there. I think there are strong similarities between the way we relate to technology today and the way people once related to technology in medieval Europe. This applies to emerging technologies, such as augmented reality and issues of net neutrality.

While in Chartres I learned that the latin word cathdra means seat. Thus, in medieval times the religious centers were the seat of power, which is how those domed buildings that housed the centers of power came to be known as cathedrals. We retain the same sense of the word when we refer to a seat of government, or a county seat – other places where domed buildings house the centers of power. These seats are the places where decisions are made on the behalf of other — is that enough foreshadowing on the net neutrality issue?

I picked up this etymology lesson from an old codger…er, scholar named Malcolm Miller. Or, rather, Sir Malcolm, as the gentleman has been knighted. Twice. Sir Malcolm is a British tour guide — a living legend, really — who has been working at the Chartres cathedral for 57 years. I didn’t know he was a living legend before I arrived in Chartres, however after spending 90 minutes listening to him talk I can see why he is so revered.

The nature of Sir Malcolm’s tour is to tell stories and he did just that, telling us about the meaning of the pictures in the stained glass. He explained that we can approach the elaborate stained glass like we would approach a modern day library. (Remember that the guy is 80 years old. He still thinks libraries serve a vital function. We let it slide. Library…Internet…same thing.)

Sir Malcolm began the tour by asking, “Would you go into a library and say, ‘Let’s meet for an hour and read all the books?’ No, of course not,” he continued, “and so to read all the history just in this church would likewise take a lifetime.”

He was explaining that the church was both a seat of power and a center of learning. That is, in a time when most people did not read or write, in a time when paper did not exist, the sculptures and stained glass of the church were the historical record of society. And who interprets the historical record? Of course, those who hold the money to sponsor the building of that historical record.

By the end of 2014, according to Cisco research, the number of connected devices will exceed the world’s population — more than seven billion. Imagine that, a world in which digital devices on The Network outnumber humans. And how about this tidbit…by end of this year, 864 million phones and 103 million cars will support augmented reality (AR).

We are becoming more connected to information through our devices. Well, duh.

But is this new? I mean, sure, the mechanics of the digital devices are new, but I mean is it new to have society so interconnected through a mainstream channel of information?

Consider this: Today I can slip Google Glass on my head, hold up a can of creamed corn to read its bar code, and…voila! Google Glass will tell me the story of that can of corn (well, some unnamed database will tell the story). Calories, ingredients, nutritional value, etc., all that metadata tells me a modern story regarding that little piece of the external world. It’s metadata on the real world; the same as a stained glass window was, once upon a time.

I know it is one serious leap, comparing a web site or an Internet-enabled app to a stained glass window in a cathedral, but isn’t it the same relationship? Do we not look at all this metadata and information as stories of the “real” world? Isn’t that what modern technology is trying to provide us now – a way to better understand the world? That, and a means of connecting and communicating with people? That’s the modern version of stained glass in a cathedral.

On the tour, I also learned something about how that stained glass got into those cathedrals. Sir Malcolm pointed out a couple of important features, such as the marks in the stone below each 30-foot high piece of colored glass — marks similar to logos — that identified who paid for that particular piece. Furthermore, our trusty guide said that the story told in each glass was the story that the sponsor wanted to have told. For example, the cobblers of the region paid to put in a stained glass that told the story of the Good Samaritan as well as the story of Adam and Eve’s fall from the Garden of Eden. The cobblers, for some reason, were trying to make a link between those two stories. Sir Malcolm explained that the story in the glass was a commentary on the Bible stories, providing material with which the clergy could instruct society. The commentaries were a way of informing society of two important things: (1) What was in the Bible, and (2) How people should behave, based on what was in the Bible.

So we see that it was not solely the church that interpreted reality. The merchants who worked with and built the church also had a say in the stories being told. These sponsors included guilds of cobblers, water bearers (think municipal water system), bakers, wine makers (think of all that wine purchased for the sacrament), cheese makers (blessed are the cheese makers), etc.

The church of medieval Europe was big business. He who told the story in those seats of power, called cathedrals, controlled the social structure.

Augmented reality? Net neutrality? Some big issues are on the horizon, matters that will change the basic structure of human society. Perhaps we can learn something from the history of the medieval church. Maybe, just maybe, we can take the time to recall the importance of the Golden Rule. You remember the Golden Rule, right? Go look it up — at the library.

Saturday Snapshot (24-May-2014)

Post author By Kory Kessel
Post date Monday, 26 May, 2014
4 Comments on Saturday Snapshot (24-May-2014)

Another Normandy weekend found La Famille Kessel welcoming a newbie to our oh-so-humble abode in Blangy-le-Château, which of course meant hitting the road. Though perhaps ‘hitting’ is too strong a term, as the rental car we have this time around is a Suzuki Celerio, a strange tiny beast of a vehicle that huffs-and-puffs at the slightest incline. Maybe ‘patting the road’ is more accurate. Also, it offers the strangest version of an automatic transmission I have yet encountered, with a three-stop gearshift that one pushes forward (into ‘R’) to go backwards and backward (into ‘D’) to go forwards. Neutral (‘N’), I am glad to say, is rationally located in the middle, which is just as it should be.

Also, if the driver prefers they can manually shift the gears by tapping the gearshift slightly to the left from A, and then tapping it up (into ‘M+’) to move to the next highest gear and down (into ‘M-‘) to downshift.

An automatic Standard? A non-standard Automatic? I have no idea what to call this new breed of auto (though a quick spin around the Internet just now seems to indicate it is “automated manual transmission”), but regardless of drive type moniker it is one awful ride. Setting that aside, the Celerio did perform its function, though with no élan whatsoever.

But enough about the car already.

On Saturday afternoon following lunch and a rainstorm (or two rainstorms…three?…this time of year the weather shifts so fast in Normandy it is a fool’s errand to try to delineate such) our band of four piled into the Celerio and headed for Honfleur, the remarkably picturesque port town that bumps up along where the Seine meets La Manche (that’s “English Channel” to all of you good mother-tongue English speakers out there). A regular visit we make with first-time visitors, I have to say that My Missus and The Boy and I really do enjoy making the 25-minute drive from Blangy to Honfleur a few times each year. Honfleur is beautiful, quaint and extremely charming and as expected this serves to make the place a little too touristy. Still, it is the perfect size for an afternoon walkabout and offers plenty of high-end shopping for the well-heeled, including a good amount of art galleries whose wares (and probably owners) are in some form of constant shift as well as some be-careful-what-you-touch antique shops. There are a number of interesting churches to walk through, a museum dedicated to the life and artwork of Honfleur favorite son Eugène Boudin (who had much to do with Monet becoming…well, Monet), and all manner of historical this-n-that surrounding the oh-so-postcardy harbor. Finally, Honfleur offers some truly marvelous grub to be had…great seafood restaurants, a few very nice creperies, and — of course — Alexandre Bourdas’s matchless Sa.Qa.Na).

I parked the Celerio — pushing the gearshift forward to back into my spot in front of Saint-Leonard — and shoehorned my group out of the car and onto the sidewalk. Recompressed, we began easing into Honfleur, and as always the town didn’t disappoint. Boats in the harbor, crushes of people packed into the cafés and restaurants lining the northern end of the port (all tourist traps that should be avoided at all costs, but which aren’t), and a truly awful rock group playing badly under a tent at the port’s southeastern corner next to the ubiquitous carrousel. All good.

We wandered over the drawbridge at the mouth of the harbor and walked up into the north end of town. Honfleur is one of those places where you just can’t help but repeatedly snap your shutter, even if you have a comprehensive souvenir album and have also already taken every picture there is to take (and many times over, at that).

“The way the clouds layer the blue sky over such-n-such church…wow.” “What a remarkable boat! And the flags!” “Isn’t that cute?”

At one point My Missus headed into the Musée Eugène Boudin with my visiting friend, and The Boy and I shot over to La Belle-Iloise to grab up some quality canned mackerel products. Soon we would all reconnect at the Celerio, and…well, just in case we got stuck inside the darn thing I wanted to be prepared!

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eleanor cross End User

Lincoln Eleanor Cross – the story continues

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Friday, 23 May, 2014
No Comments on Lincoln Eleanor Cross – the story continues

Work on the carving of the new Eleanor Cross for Lincoln continues with artist and sculptor Alan Ward making good progress this week. When looking at the work being done by Alan you begin to understand why in historical times it might take years to carve a statue. By using power tools Al has been able to reduce it to a couple of months. There is an awful lot of stone to hack away at.

The following photos show some progress during the week. The first one to appear was taken a few days before the second. The third image is a close up of the wing, The others are videos with a short chat with Alan regarding this week’s work and a look at him in action smoothing out some of the wing

Previous Eleanor Cross for Lincoln posts include:

Eleanor Cross begins to emerge
Eleanor Cross – the carving starts
Eleanor Cross – choosing the stone
New Eleanor Cross for Lincoln – a project of national significance

End User mobile connectivity travel

Gone Down to London to be the King

Post author By Kory Kessel
Post date Friday, 23 May, 2014
2 Comments on Gone Down to London to be the King

A visiting friend and I were slated for two days in London beginning Tuesday morning, however the night before My Missus came down with a painful malady I won’t describe here, so instead I put my friend on the Eurostar at the literal crack of dawn and returned home. Quite disappointed — I had been looking forward to hanging in London with my friend for over a month, and to catching up with other friends while in town, too (apologies once again, Tref, for not being able to connect for that beer) — I started pondering whether there was some way I could chase my friend up once my honey bunny recovered. Eurostar one-way ticket? Lessee. No. The price of that seat would be nearly double what I had paid for the original return ticket! Short hopper flight? The cost made that option a non-starter as well. Hitchhike? Really…come on. Then I remembered that back in my own personal Paleozoic Era (read: 2000) I had once taken a bus from Paris to London.

Not remembering the name of the bus company that offered service to London from Paris, I went all Bing on the problem and was soon staring nostalgically at the Eurolines website. Riiiiight. That was it. At the station at the end of the M3 train, whatevertheheck, at Galieni. I first came across an ad banner on the site that offered one-way Paris-London service for €18, shook my head in disbelief, and then very quickly came to disbelieve it when I saw the fine print (45 day advance purchase…my own, if it happened, would likely be closer to 45 minutes advance). C’est la vie. Regardless, the price was bound to still be quite good in comparison to the other options, so I punched my Departing From and Going To into the handy-dandy widget on the page and clicked Search.

€43. I was in business.

Eurolines typically runs seven buses from Paris to London, four of which I consider to be reasonable at my creaky 49 years of age (no overnight buses for me, outside of dire circumstance), and seeing as My Missus was seemingly coming around from her epically bad night-before and recovery morning I began focusing on the 15h00 bus (arrival at London Victoria at 21h30). At some point in the mix I thought I saw the word “wifi” in association with the Eurolines bus trips, and while that wasn’t a decision-maker I did find myself lightening to the prospect of a 6+ hour bus ride knowing I would be able to extend myself beyond the confines of the coach.

As morning morphed into afternoon My Missus remained asleep, sloughing off the awfulness and catching up on lost winks. Just as I began shifting my bus plans to Wednesday morning, though, she popped up not-quite bright as a penny but somewhat shiny nonetheless. Before long my girl was breakfasted (at 13h30) and talking about going into work for the afternoon. I made a few noises about hopping on the bus to catch up with my friend, quickly received a sincere and truthful “Oh, you should definitely do that!”, and began once again to look forward to two days of London-style this-that-whatever.

13h54.

To AppleKory I went, fingers a-flyin’. I bought a ticket online for the 15h00 bus, printed the ticket out, threw a few essentials into my computer bag (like I had time to put a proper bag together…yeah, right), confirmed that my camera would be along for the ride (you want to know my camera’s name, inquisitive reader, I just know you do…information not forthcoming today), threw on a jacket I probably wouldn’t need and bolted.

14h05

Marcadet Poissonniers station, the M4. Change to the M3 at Réaumur–Sébastopol, direction Galieni. Short delays at many stations along the way, the tick-tocking clock in my head growing louder as said clock’s hands move ever-closer to 15h00. Pulling my ticket out of pocket to ensure Galieni is my target and discovering the small print that says — translated from the French — “Arrive at the station no later than 30 minutes before departure.” (it is 14h41 at this point, 19 minutes before departure and still two stops from the station). Uttering profanities, mental image of pounding the Metro train doors to hurry things along. Galieni. Dashing for the Eurolines station.

14h52. I am stepping on the proverbial skin-of-my-teeth, which has dribbled out of my mouth and under my shoes.

Check-in accomplished, I board the bus and find my seat. Sweat glands working? Check. Respiration at full capacity? Check. Skin temperature at maximum tolerance? Check. And then I start to relax. The on-board wifi can wait. I just want to feel the road moving under the bus wheels and exhale until Morpheus drags me off for a short doze. And soon enough that is exactly what happened.

Roughly an hour later I am awake. I am also hungry, having not eaten a thing since breakfast and not being able to grab any kind of a nibble at the bus station in my haste to make sure I was on the right side of the vehicle’s doors at departure. “Swallow it, Kory.”, I say to myself and I do. All I need is a little distraction, and if the Internet isn’t good for that it isn’t good for anything. I pull AppleKory out of her warm cozy place, fire her new self up (she is a whole other creature since I replaced her 1TB hard drive with a 2TB over the weekend), and start looking for trouble…er, the Eurolines wifi.

No dice. No joy. No wifi. On my bus “wifi” may as well have stood for “wishful fantasizing”, as there was no such service (the Eurolines website does say “free wifi**” with the ** indicating “**Available on most of our lines”…wishful, indeed). Thus I found myself relegated to whatever entertainment media I could find on the aforementioned 2TB hard drive. Another “C’est la vie.”

Compared to the Eurostar at just a little over two hours, even with wifi the six-and-a-half-hour Eurolines trip to London promised to be quite the slog. In truth, though, even without the wifi I would have to dig hard to slag it with anything approaching conviction. Comfortable seats, the consistent steady motion, travel companions without evident psychoses or hygiene challenges, a clean and usable waste management facility; for the price the Eurolines bus service has to be tossed onto the far too small “High Value” heap.

Following a very curious journey through the Eurotunnel — the driver drove the bus INTO a huge enclosed train (parking it right up behind another bus, with a truck then driven in and parked right behind us), which itself soon began to move — we were in the UK, barreling our way to London. Before long, Lewisham…passing by the Kia Oval (lights on, cricket match in progress!)…arriving at Victoria Coach Station.

I alighted with iPhoneKory in hand (still my not-so-smartphone, for now), knowing there had to be a Nando’s somewhere nearby.

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broken gear End User

Breaking news – I bought a Microsoft PC – 5 broken laptops in our house

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Wednesday, 21 May, 2014
8 Comments on Breaking news – I bought a Microsoft PC – 5 broken laptops in our house

I bought a new Microsoft PC. It isn’t really breaking news because I mentioned it in a post last week. Ordinarily I’d keep quiet about such an acquisition because it is an embarrassment to have to resort to such retro technology. I only bought it because I have a single application that needs to run on Windows.

However I am prompted to discuss it because in our house 4 out of 5 Microsoft laptops have gone wrong in one way or another over the last few weeks.

Kid4’s screen went – he has now inherited my old work Dell laptop which being a Dell i5 he is happy about. Has to use an external sound card though because the internal one is broken.

Kid3’s screen is getting decidedly dodgy. Not the screen itself but the hinges are coming apart. Kid3 is starting to think the unthinkable and is looking at Macbooks (urggglergnffs££££).

Kid2’s screen broke a few weeks ago. This follows a repair job we had to have done to get her fan to work. She has seen the light and purchased a Chromebook. The Microsoft laptop now acts as a lampstand or some other similarly useful function.

Last week we have had a flurry of communications from Kid1, the heir, who needs his laptop for work but which now doesn’t work. Something has gone wrong with Windows 8 that prevents it from properly booting. His only recourse has been to spend £110 tvm on installing a new hard drive and a new instance of Windows 8.

My wife Anne’s laptop picked up the Chatzum adware crap and is looking pretty terminal. From previous experience with similar problems it isn’t worth trying to fix. It is either going to be totally rebuilt using a copy of XP sourced from an as yet undetermined location or like as not consigned to the great electrical scrapyard in the sky. The new laptop, used largely for that single application has been designated as hers for the purpose of performing occasional tasks that aren’t so easy on her iPad. Uploading stuff to eBay mostly.

The problems with Kids 2 – 4 laptops are down to build quality. They were all reasonably cheap purchases. This is no excuse in a mass production world where quality should improve not deteriorate with time. You might say “what do you expect with cheapo laptops” but who is going pay top dollar for a teenager’s computer? And when I say cheap I mean £350 to £400 cheap. These low cost laptops were still almost twice the price of a Chromebook.

The Chatzum problem is in my mind a legacy of an old order, a decaying Microsoft bug ridden world which will eventually disappear from our communal consciousness. Ditto Windows8.

In the meantime life goes on, broken hinge or no broken hinge. I haven’t had the Chromebooks long enough to make comparisons but they are lighter, have solid state hard drives and just feel better and if one does break it isn’t going to break the bank to get a new one.

The age of the Windows PC is coming slowly but inexorably to an end. In a previous post I forecast that the death date to be sometime in 2022. Gut feel is that it is still on track although as the end approaches things tends to accelerate, like falling off the edge of a cliff.

What is interesting about that new PC-less world is that all applications will have moved online. The only reason Kid4 needs a PC is to run games. The day surely can’t be far off where all his games are available as a service online. Many of them already are. Another argument for having hardware is for video processing. I already use pixlr.com for my photo editing. Why shouldn’t there be an equivalent service available for videos. Probably already is.

Having everything in the cloud makes so much more sense from many aspects – reliability, cost and convenience. All I have to do is make sure that there is adequate connectivity. I realise that this will immediately raise the hackles of the rural broadband activists amongst you but that is a completely different discussion.

The PC is dying. Long live the cloud.

Other really good reads but totally unassociated with this subject:

Spot the difference – Brandon Butterworth
A day at the races

Tags Microsoft, Windows8

End User travel

Art Techo

Marcadet-Poissonniers (both the M4 and the M12 make stops at the station, and I am on the former) is my hopping on point today, as it is the vast majority of times I make use of the Paris Metro, seeing as how the entrance is less than 50 meters from the Chez Kessel doorstep. Yet another stunning blue-sky spring day this mid-May Monday (ay-ay-ay), Paris really has been peacocking over the past week, splaying every one of her luminous feathers to maximum extension and effect. Not why we are here, though, to expound on the picturesque, so I’ll put the wanna-be poet back in his box and instead get wet with tech.

As people moving technology goes, RATP (Régie Autonome des Transports Parisiens) is at something of a crossroads. Still so much an analogue experience, the digital has been oozing in around the edges of Paris mass transit for some time, and recently it seems to have somewhat stepped up its game. For instance, whereas for literally decades the best a bus commuter could hope for regarding information on when the next bus might arrive at a particular stop was a posted published schedule, today Paris’s bus stops all offer updated electronic signs that indicate not only when the next bus will be stopping by but the next one after as well. And though this has been the norm in parts of the Metro for some time, the proliferation of such signage down there has markedly increased in recent years to now include every station (Kory Coming Clean: I did not travel to all of Paris’s 303 Metro stations to confirm ‘all’, but I do not recall the last time I stood waiting on a train platform lacking for the needed info). Still better than that, though, are the very new signs seen at Metro exits that indicate not only the bus lines that stop on the surface nearby, but also the number of minutes until the next bus on each of those lines will be arriving!

It’s all about synergy, baby! Well, that, and computers, databases, sensors, reporting software, and other such technological schrecktose that dates post-1975. That said, in spite of the obvious expenditures RATP HAS made in bringing their equipment up-to-near-date, It is hard not to shake one’s head in astonishment at their inability to configure the Paris transit system to issue individual tickets that can be used for hybrid journeys involving both train and bus. I think these days that ability is even available with the London Underground!^*

End User fun stuff

Breaking news – the shed is finished

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Sunday, 18 May, 2014
1 Comment on Breaking news – the shed is finished

Breaking news – the shed is finished, or as finished as its going to get. Still a few bits of side panel need patching but it ain’t gonna happen.

The two images below represent the state of the shed first thing this morning, covered by a tarpaulin because it had no felt on it followed by the finished job.

Note Joseph who is sat on on top of the shed is modelling a LINX tshirt. Very appropriate for the job especially seeing as the next LINX meeting is this coming Monday/Tuesday. Big thanks to Joe whose B in GCSE woodwork is really starting to pay dividends. Made a lot more sense for me to send Joe up to do the dangerous bits. After all had I done it and fallen off I might have been badly hurt.

Joe’s hammering technique is top notch and worthy of an A grade. Examiner must have had a bad hair day or something.

In the interest of continuing with the mundane aspect of this “breaking news” I am pleased to announce that I didn’t need that second roll of felt after all and will be taking it back to Wickes straight after lunch. Hey £21 is £21. Jobs for this afternoon include taking Kid4 to the cricket nets followed by lighting the barbecue.

If you liked this shed post you will definitely want to read our other terrific shed related content:

Partial shed
The shed disassembly
The online garden shed – the answer to privacy issues

End User fun stuff

eye – the inside story

Visit to the opticians last week and this picture caught my eye, so to speak. It does have a partner but I thought one image would be enough. I was just sat there having satisfactorily read GHUTDF¹ in very small font when Annabelle the optician popped this up on the screen giving me a clean bill of health.

“Oo can I have a copy of that please”. One click (per pic/eye) and it was on its way to me. Pretty amazing what is “connected” these days.

It’s a good job my prescription hasn’t changed. My eye sight is so bad the lenses cost a fortune for them to be not the thickness of jam jar bases, especially since I had to have varifocals!!! I had always thought that my short sightedness would begin to correct itself as I got older and my near vision deteriorated as it inevitably seems to do with age. I was wrong.

Never mind. Worse things happen at sea. For example ships can be enveloped in the tentacles of a giant octopus and dragged down to the inky depths. Alternatively the ship² could be lost inside the Bermuda triangle, disappearing without trace leaving no clue as to its fate. Both those are a lot worse than wearing varifocals. You have to agree. Bit random mind you.

Also a bit random is that today looks like being a good day to put the roofing felt on the shed. Many of you will have followed the progress of the shed in previous posts. Well today it should get finished and be ready to accept the garden furniture, its designated fate. Fotos will inevitably phollow.

Ciao Amigos…

¹ I don’t remember the actual letters. These are random examples of what the letters might have been. It was an eye test not a memory test, which I would have failed 🙂
² Highly unlikely to be the same ship. Would have been very lucky to have been rescued from that octopus, unless the octopus happened to be the cause of the disappearance within the Bermuda triangle which is possible, I suppose.

End User food and drink fun stuff gadgets H/W piracy

(Part of) A Day in the Life

Post author By Kory Kessel
Post date Friday, 16 May, 2014
1 Comment on (Part of) A Day in the Life

	08h14	Woke up (to a sweet small kiss from My Missus…thanks, honey). Got out of bed.
	08h19	Open Chrome tab to eztv.it. Locate torrent for and click its Magnet link.
	08h19	Confirm torrent download on Transmission.
	08h15	Check Notifications on iPhoneKory (within arm’s reach at bedside, of course), to get up-to-speed with what happened during sleep time. Emails, text messages, instant messages, downloads completed, Facebook notifications, Twitter notifications, whether the Cubs beat the Cards.
	08h18	Drag self from bed to desk chair and lay hands on keyboard and mouse.

When I took keys in hand this morning I thought I would capture a typical day from wake up to lie down. Not only did I think I could do that, but I thought I could make it compelling reading too, something able to easily transport my legion of readers (crowd? pack? coven?) to that special place where the words flow like wine. Belly-button gazing of the highest order and noblest cause, right?

	08h20	Go back to eztv.it. Locate torrent for and click its Magnet link.
	08h20	Confirm torrent download on Transmission.
	08h21	Leave chair.
	08h22	08h22 Get dressed, put on shoes, help make bed.

No. It just cannot be done. If getting a typical day down is already boring me into submission there can be little doubt that anyone who is not me is by this point scrambling madly for their own mouse and keyboard in a desperate attempt to avoid subtle but sure brain death. Or they are reaching for a noose or sharp razor.

Multi-tasking. All of us who these days spend any significant amount of time in front of a computer or tablet speak of it. In fact, nowadays the term rolls off our tongues so easily, one has to wonder just how many of the children born today are working on first-wording it for the delight and/or horror of their parents. I can do this while I am doing that and at the same time I have this going on and that will finish at right about the time this is just getting started and by the end of the day I will have done enough work (and played enough) for three people.

Alt+Tab, Alt+Tab, Alt+Tab, Alt+Tab, Alt+Tab (OSX users, substitute ⌘ for Alt)

So later that same morning I found myself working on this post for trefor.net, checking Facebook, finishing up an article edit and pushing it back across to the client, checking Facebook, writing a bit more into my post, integrating Kat Edmonson’s “Way Down Low” into my music library, direct messaging a friend on Twitter to set plans for meeting up in London next week, using Lightroom to touch up a few photos I took last weekend in my wife’s fantastic Normandy garden, configuring my just-arrived Ricoh Theta (more on that soon enough), slicing-and-dicing my way around airbnb.com in search of a one-night stay in Chartres for a visiting friend, tweaking my post a little more, tagging myself in a Facebook photo, chasing a an alert for a Rolleiflex 2.8F that recently came up for sale on eBay, and googling (via Bing.com) reviews on a new Egyptian restaurant in the neighborhood (a boy’s gotta eat).

Anyone out there want to hear about my afternoon?

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eleanor cross End User

Eleanor Cross for Lincoln – latest update

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Thursday, 15 May, 2014
No Comments on Eleanor Cross for Lincoln – latest update

At this stage of the game pictures speak louder than words. Just after I was there the bishop of Lincoln swung by for a gander. Happy with progress apparently.

A few pics for you. Links to previous Eleanor Cross posts at the end of this one so that you can track progress with the sculpture. Much of the work is painstaking chipping away of large parts of the stone block that aren’t needed for the stature itself. You can see from the close up the striata where Alan Ward has been chiselling away.

Previous Eleanor Cross for Lincoln posts include:

Eleanor Cross begins to emerge
Eleanor Cross – the carving starts
Eleanor Cross – choosing the stone
New Eleanor Cross for Lincoln – a project of national significance

agricultural End User

Wednesday night gardening on trefor.net – the weed patch

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Wednesday, 14 May, 2014
No Comments on Wednesday night gardening on trefor.net – the weed patch

Arguably the finest patch of weeds I have ever seen. This plot of land is fenced off from the road by a metal fence. I had to manoeuvre the camera so that the lens looked between two bits of metal thus ensuring a totally natural feel to the image. No enhancements have been applied. The shot was taken at approximately 8pm on Wednesday 14th May. It was lovely spring evening with a slight edge to it. I was walking home from the AGM of the 18th Bailgate Scout Group which had been a suitably short affair. There was no one I knew in the Morning Star which was en route home so I didn’t stop and carried on whereupon I came across the weed patch. Fair play.

Apps Bad Stuff business applications Cloud End User Mobile mobile apps

RER B to CDG Terminal 2

For some time I have been thinking of writing a post while on the move, to see what that might bring to the page. Hardly original, the idea is somewhat out of my wheelhouse, if for no other reason than the fact that I truly loathe typing anything longer than a text message on a virtual keyboard. Not that I have some kind of a hoity-toity “They aren’t true keyboards” attitude (though I do, and they aren’t), but as a touch typist who has been clocked at 120 wpm (words-per-minute, for the acronym challenged) I find it wickedly frustrating to have to look at the keys to form the words that are in my head…not to mention slow down said head to capture the whatnot those words form. Still, being a staunch proponent of digital progress (mostly), for you, friend reader, I will endure. And perhaps even have a little fun, too.

I first thought to try my hand at mobile writing with the no-longer-so-recent (February) announcement that Microsoft was offering an iOS7 version of their Office 365 applications for free. As the Guv’nor of two iOS7-cursed devices (the iPhone 4 I whinge here about replacing on a somewhat regular basis, and an iPad Mini pass-me-down), this news pricked my eyes, and I quickly grabbed up the apps for both Word and Excel. I didn’t fire ’em up for use right away — AppleKory and my keyboard hadn’t left the building, so why bother? — but I was content knowing I had the apps, for…well, whenever.

One day shortly thereafter, it was whenever. I was at Cafè Lomi, just sitting there watching the wheels go ’round and ’round (I really love to watch them roll), when I thought I’d go all mobile-writer-guy on the good visitors of trefor.net. I pulled iPadKory from my bag, coded it, and punched the icon for Word. Nice looking app. Opens straight to a New Document page, serving up all kinds of document templates, such as Brochure, Invoice, Proposal…School Newsletter. Colorful. Friendly. Microsofty.

I punch New Blank Document. I get a Word-looking page with a orange bar near the top that reads Read-Only. To create and edit, activate with an eligible Office 365 subscription.

Hmm. That doesn’t sound very free. Or friendly. I do happen to have an Outlook.com account, though, so maybe it wants that (though I was already thinking how lost the casual first-time user without such an account would react on seeing the top-screen note). I punch Activate, which leads immediately to a Subscription dialogue. All of a sudden I am no longer having fun. In for a penny, though, right? I follow the path of dialogue windows, employing my Outlook.com credentials as needed, until I am finally staring at Buy a Subscription. I only need to shell out $99.99 a year to use my sweet new free Office 365 iOS7 application!

Disillusioned, discouraged, and feeling just plain ‘dissed, I slapped iPadKory shut, threw it in my bag, and left for home. “I didn’t really want to write a post on a tablet using a virtual keyboard anyway. Phooey.” And the Word app? Deleted, with prejudice (except, that is, for my reinstalling it today to check my memory for this post and to grab screenshots).

And that is where it all would have stayed — at “Phooey.” — had Google not made their own announcement of a free Google Docs app a couple of weeks back. Of course, I immediately DL’ed the app, and this time I launched it forthwith to make sure it could actually be put to some use.

Voila, enablement. And as for writing on the run and virtual keyboards? Well, I made it this far…

Related posts:

End User mobile apps

Would you trust Samsung with your health data?

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Tuesday, 13 May, 2014
No Comments on Would you trust Samsung with your health data?

Still in the process of moving icons around since regaining my SGS4 and clicked on the Walking Mate App – “keep track of how many steps you take each day with S Health”.

OK I’m interested I thought and clicked. The App took me through a process and got to the page shown in the screen print on the right.

They seriously need their brains examining if they think I am going to trust Samsung with that kind of data. One wonders how many active users the S Health app really has. Health certainly seems to be an application, if you can call health an application, that the vendors of wearable devices seem to have latched on to. Partly I suspect out of desperation to find some functionality they can add to their gadgets.

My SGS4 isn’t wearable, yet, unless I strapped it to my wrist 🙂 but I do use some health apps, if you can call Runkeeper a health app.

I’m about to join a gym btw, talking about health applications. There is one near the office at the University. The plan is 30 mins in the pool first thing, 30 mins walk to work 5 days a week (when I’m in Lincoln) and then perhaps 1 hour in the gym three days a week in the afternoon before I walk 30 mins home. Assuming I’m not too knackered for the walk. In such an eventuality I will have to resort to Plan B which as yet has not been defined.

When joining a gym one does have to consider the cost. This in my case isn’t the cost of using the gym. It’s the cost of replacing all my clothes when I lose a load of weight and get trim. And all that lycra I will need! It’s gonna happen:) What price health eh?

The Samsung app was free but what price privacy, eh?

End User food and drink

On yer bike – the big cheese

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Tuesday, 13 May, 2014
2 Comments on On yer bike – the big cheese

Say cheese for the camera. On yer bike! Cheesy jokes? Don’t know any. Gromit. I like a nice tangy cheddar. None of this mild rubbish although ironically I also like the processed cheese slices they put on top of burgers – a hangover from my youth. Quite like roquefort too. Happen to have some of that in the fridgidaire. The kids don’t get roquefort which is good – more for me innit. They sell truckles of Dambusters cheddar on the bar at the Dambusters pub in Scampton. V good. Both the pub and the cheese. They don’t make the cheese at the pub. It’s a pub not a dairy. They do make beer there. It’s also a v good microbrewery. Worth a try. Cheese and pub. Brie is best served at room temperature. Needs to be almost dripping. Goes well with bacon in a crusty baguette. For fondues you need emmental and gruyere together with white wine, garlic and a drop of kirsch. Yum. Used to love Bel Paese Italian soft cheese but you never seem to see it in the shops anymore. The most popular bits of an Austrian smoked processed cheese are the ends although all of it is good. Not sure I totally get this cheese with bits of fruit in it. Apricots for example. Have tried cheese with chillies but you can take it or leave it tbh. Normandy camaembert soaked in calvados is definitely worth a try. Give it a go, if you can find some. As I recall they sell it in the Cheese Society – advertised in the photo and free of charge here. Cheese – rhymes with please. Louise.

Reduce data usage with Chrome

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Monday, 12 May, 2014
No Comments on Reduce data usage with Chrome

Came across this by accident but I think it is pretty cool.

I’m not particularly bothered about my data usage. I don’t come close to my limits either on my broadband connection or my SIM.

Still think it’s good that Chrome does this though.

PS this post had 6 LinkedIn shares in the space of 30 mins after going live – good eh?

End User fun stuff

The passport photo is here – all nationalities

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Monday, 12 May, 2014
1 Comment on The passport photo is here – all nationalities

Roll up, roll up. Come and see the passport photo. It has arrived. It is well and truly here. The day you thought would never come. Disbelievers every man jack of you.

What is more, all nationalities are welcome. No parochial “you’re not from round here” short sighted UKIP voting bigotry in our gaff. No siree (Bob). Everybody is welcome.

Bring the kids. Bring your mother in law. Bring a bottle and bring one along for me.

Passport Photo’s Here! All Nationalities.

End User fun stuff voip

When You Look Behind You There’s No Open Door

Post author By Marcos Campos
Post date Monday, 12 May, 2014
No Comments on When You Look Behind You There’s No Open Door

Someone asked me, “What is the future of VoIP?”

I can’t even predict my future living situation, let alone the fate of the Internet.

I went to dinner last night with an out-of-town friend. We met some other friends down in a part of south Austin that not long ago was a dinky mostly-Hispanic neighborhood, complete with dinky houses and dinky Mexican restaurants. On this occasion, though – and I understand this is pretty much the norm now – we waited over an hour for a table at a restaurant called El Chile. On a Monday night.

Once again: ATX WTF?

What’s going on? Is there some festival in town nobody told me about? All of us are baffled. And more than merely baffled we all lament our missed opportunities, having not bought more real estate in Austin in the 90s.

Back in 1992 I lived in a little cabin off of West Mary Street in south Austin, close enough to the railroad tracks to high-five train engineers as they passed by my window. And when I say “little”, I mean that place was small, with a ceiling low enough that any person of average height could extend their arms overhead and press against it. I was reading a lot of existential literature back then. The guys who lived in the other half of the cabin dropped a lot of acid, and I had a standing invitation.

I realized one day that I had to make a life change, when while reading one of Henry Miller’s diatribes on the value of excrement I found myself saying, “This guy makes a lot of sense.” That was too much. I couldn’t go down that path. I laid down the Miller, and the Sartre, and the Nietzsche. I cleaned up. I sobered up. I resurrected my forsaken programming skills, and I went to work, launching a career in software development.

Computer science was not a profession on the radar when I was a kid. Instead, it was called Data Processing. A bunch of guys huddled in the basements of tall buildings who wore pocket protectors, button-down white shirts, and who carried slide rules. And I am not talking caricature. I met these guys, being friends with various adults who worked near the data processing department, and that is how it truly was. The image from the 70s of the stereotypical weakling engineer getting corporate sand kicked in his face? Based on fact. Those programmers were not among society’s movers and shakers.

Things change.

Nowadays, it’s like those old E.F. Hutton commercials. (I know, you’re too young. Google it.) These days in a post-9/11 world, where the dot-com bust has faded in memory, the guy who launches the latest greatest IPO has the ear of the tech world. When programmer geek-nerd talks, people listen.

And who is that? Who has everyone’s ear these days? Is there anyone who can really track where technology is going to be in 5 years? In 2 years? Next year?

I’m sitting at dinner with my friends – instead of waiting an hour behind a line of hipsters we walk across the street to another restaurant called Bouldin Creek Coffeehouse that offers a Slacker Buffet: rice and beans. Perfect – and we start talking about missed opportunities. I tell my out-of-town friend that the little cabin I occupied in 1992 is probably selling for $500k these days, and he — correctly — winces in disbelief.

Another friend at the table worked at Microsoft for a time, and he tells us of one project manager who got in early and cashed out with $20 million. This person then created a startup with that money and sold a grand total of 13 units of her product, 5 of which she bought herself. $19.8 million burned through. Riches to rags.

Some people who end up in the right place at the right time come to the (wrong) conclusion that they are geniuses. Others realize the nature of luck and don’t ascribe their success to their personal abilities. And still others have to fail and succeed several times before their true abilities shine through. Time reveals the truth.

People who work hard and who are smart tend to do well in a meritocracy, which often leads to the incorrect assumption that someone who is in a position of power or success must have greater abilities than someone who is not. This is one of the pitfalls of living in a meritocracy.

Who came out on the winning side of last year’s technology? Is that going to be the winning horse in the next race?

I worked with a woman who left PCs Limited in 1988, just before that company changed its name to Dell Computer Corporation. She kicks herself to this day. How could she have known? I kick myself sometimes for not re-investing in Apple in 2008. I kick myself sometimes for not investing in Netflix. I try not to dwell in regrets or on those blind spots of the past, though, opting instead to derive what lessons there are to learn from it all.

The fact is that there may yet be some value in the words of Henry Miller, who wrote:

“This is the greatest damn thing about the universe. That we can know so much, recognize so much, dissect, do everything, and we can’t grasp it.”

Over this past week I spent time trying to grasp the future of data and voice over the Internet. It’s just an area of focus. There is no end point. There will never be a point where it’s all understood.

I am reminded of something the wise old Tallulah Bankhead said:

“If I had to live my life again, I’d make the same mistakes, only sooner.”

So I guess this is it. It is the time. Get on with it.

eleanor cross End User

Eleanor Cross for Lincoln – Eleanor begins to emerge

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Saturday, 10 May, 2014
No Comments on Eleanor Cross for Lincoln – Eleanor begins to emerge

The new Lincoln Eleanor Cross begins to emerge from it’s stone home. It’s pretty astounding that a solid lump or rock can contain a thing of such beauty and you already begin to get a sense for the character.

These two videos chart progress over a few days last week. A lot of time is spent just hacking out stone as opposed to making the shape of the statue itself. Better you watch the vids than me transcribing them here. It’s outdoors and there is a lot of wind around but it gives you a good feel for the working conditions of a jobbing sculptor 🙂

Previous Eleanor Cross for Lincoln posts include:

Eleanor Cross – the carving starts
Eleanor Cross – choosing the stone
New Eleanor Cross for Lincoln – a project of national significance

Business End User ofcom Regs voip

A VoIP Spring

A regular trefor.net contributor, Peter Farmer is the Commercial and Regulatory Manager at Gamma, as well as an ITSPA Council member and Chair of ITSPA Regulatory Committee. We are pleased to present his “VoIP Week” post.

So, Trefor asked me to approach an article for “VoIP Week” from a commercial perspective as opposed to regulatory…. took me a while, but sunstroked approaching Havant cycling from Esher to Portsmouth, it dawned on me.

We’ve had our VoIP Spring. We just don’t realise it yet.

Last year, there was much furore around Ofcom’s decision (enacting an EC Recommendation) to reduce geographic termination rates to the Long Run Incremental Cost (“LRIC”). These rates were previously calculated using Fully Allocated Cost (“FAC”). Very roughly, FAC is 5x LRIC in this market, so 0.3 became 0.06 pence per minute.

All the views espoused on that subject were valid, especially as we have a diverse industry with many niche interests and many unbalanced portfolios of net termination and origination. In the same market review, however, Ofcom transferred — for BT at least — the foregone common cost (the difference between LRIC and FAC, attributable to costs such as your CEO and Finance and HR teams, etc., and not directly to each incremental unit of what you are selling) in the termination market to the origination market. Granted, this had the perverse effect of reducing the cost (through the Significant Market Power Condition that governs non-geographic out-payments), but what it did to was virtually double the per-minute cost of the origination leg of Carrier Pre-Select and Indirect Access. Granted, again, this nets off against calls to UK geographic and non BT terminating non-geographic (why BT itself is exempt is a very long story that I will tell another day), but means that calls on legacy ISDN30 estates to mobiles and international numbers increased. Markedly. We are now in a situation where the direct cost of getting a call from the Network Terminating Equipment (“NTE”) over the Local Loop to the Digital Local Exchange (“DLE”) is five times that of getting it from the DLE to a mobile in the US of A. Seriously.

If you’re an over-the-top provider, your cost base just went down. You don’t have to worry about that leg from the NTE to the DLE. Your voice traffic is ones and zeroes encoded in packets of data over broadband frequencies, not analogue on narrowband frequencies. The per minute cost of providing the service to any caller has plummeted, relative to an ISDN2 or 30 or even a single WLR line.

And that right there, Ladies and Gentlemen, was our VoIP Spring. Let’s make the most of it.

Google+ Peter Farmer

VoIP Week Posts:

Tags ISDN, Ofcom, voip

Bad Stuff broadband End User fun stuff internet Net UC voip

Vastly Objectionable Ignominious Phrase

Post author By Kory Kessel
Post date Wednesday, 7 May, 2014
3 Comments on Vastly Objectionable Ignominious Phrase

What the lone acronym in “VoIP Week” does NOT represent.

As a longtime fan of Marvel’s super hero comic books — 40 years and happily counting — I find myself quite satisfied with the persisting Hollywood trend of putting these Fantastic! Incredible! Amazing! Uncanny! Mighty! characters on the Silver Surfer…er, silver screen. And almost as much fun as seeing these wonders brought to life is the narrative means used to tie them all together, that being the oh-so-shadowy government agency S.H.I.E.L.D., which as acronyms go is one heckuva Marvel-ous mouthful (originally “Supreme Headquarters, International Espionage, Law-Enforcement Division”, then changed in 1991 to “Strategic Hazard Intervention Espionage Logistics Directorate”…both way-cool).

S.H.I.E.L.D.

So what does all of this have to do with VoIP? Well, as great acronyms go absolutely nothing, as S.H.I.E.L.D. is way-cool while V-o-I-P is decidedly not. In fact, though the meaning behind V-o-I-P — Voice over Internet Protocol — is a cause célèbre, worthy of consideration, contemplation, conjecture, and cockeyed optimism, the “word” verbalized evokes images of a thick liquid dripping onto a badly-tuned piece of tin poised alongside a carnival microphone.

Say it with me. Or better yet, don’t.

As awful an acronym as V-o-I-P is, one has to wonder how it came to stick as the most common reference term for the technology it represents. Could it be that as bad as it is, V-o-I-P is actually the best of a really bad bunch? Let’s see…

		IPT (IP Telephony)? Difficult double-consonant at the end, and perhaps too easy to rhyme with “gypped”…
		IT (Internet Telephony)? Taken.
		VoBB (Voice over Broadband? Again, like IPT, too easy to set a negative rhyme to.
		BT (Broadband Telephony)? Taken.
		BPS (Broadband Phone Service)? Proves that an ugly-sounding acronym is better than one with absolutely nothing going for it.

OK, so maybe I am no longer wondering how V-o-I-P took hold in the tech-y lexicon. After all, nature abhors a vacuum and all that (Horror vacui!). Also, sadly, nothing better was in the ether (evidenced above), and it isn’t as if the average man-on-the-street is going to say “Voice over Internet Protocol” every time they need to refer to the concept (of course, there is no way said average man-on-the-street is ever going to comfortably use the acronymic word “VoIP” either, but let’s not get bogged down in reality’s messy details). Still, it sure would be nice to be able to lay blame for V-o-I-P at someone’s keyboard, but unlike the massive majority of Internet-based whatever-and-whatsis there is absolutely nobody out there laying claim to originating — starting? envisioning? founding? — the term. Even if we could force somebody to take responsibility for this *four-letter-word* of a four-letter acronym, though, a proper punishment could never be levied as any attempt to do so would likely raise the ire of the Kids from C.A.P.E.R.^*

At this point the Marvel-literate among you might be gasping (Gasp!) for me to return to espousing on and praising the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe, for those of you not in-the-know who have hung on this far). It is “VoIP Week” at trefor.net, however, and other than their diametrically opposed acronym quality no other useful correlation can be made between S.H.I.E.L.D. and V-o-I-P (other than the fact, that is, that S.H.I.E.L.D. agents likely make extensive and heretofore unknown — and way-cool — use of VoIP technology). Still, you can’t beat a good opening.

^*The Civilian Authority for the Protection of Everybody, Regardless

VoIP Week Posts:

End User fun stuff

I bought a drill – Makita #shed #disassembly

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Monday, 5 May, 2014
1 Comment on I bought a drill – Makita #shed #disassembly

I bought a drill. No it’s not it’s a screwdriver. Actually it’s both. It’s a Makita cordless job. My old Black & Decker cordless screwdriver I’ve had for years won’t charge and therefore won’t drive screws. I only used the B&D a few times. Ah well.

I needed it because the playhouse is being moved, if it is the will of a superior being, from it’s current position astride the basketball court to the compost heap which is now no longer a compost heap.

The basketball court isn’t currently a basketball court. It’s a patio base for the playhouse but it will be perfectly good as a basketball court. It has been pointed out to me that some branches from the pear tree in the corner overhang the “court” and “can we chop them off?” We shall have to wait and see. You don’t go lopping branches off a pear tree just like that, though it’s never been much good as a pear tree and every year the leaves develop brown spots. There is a fix for this involving some sort of insect repelling bands around the trunk but I’ve never bothered implementing it. The pears were never any good anyway and there’s a Tesco just down the road.

In fact Tesco are opening a new whizz bang all singing all dancing superstore in a couple of weeks and I’ve been invited to the preview night. It’s supposed to be packed with the latest retail tech which I’m hoping will make for some good blog content.

I’m drifting off the subject here which is meant to be my new cordless drill/screwdriver.

Kid3, who with a B at GCSE in Resistant Materials (woodwork) came with me to B&Q as my qualified advisor. He was supposed to be revising for his AS levels but the lure of the tool over rode the exam pressure. A bloke called Reg helped me out. He wasn’t called Reg really but I can’t remember his real name and Reg sounds appropriate for a highly experienced assistant in the tools section. Good job he was there really because he was able to explain the different types of screwdriver bits available. I didn’t realise that there was such a thing as a posidrive. It’s similar to the phillips cross head but different. Good job he was there because it turns out that all the screws in our playhouse are posidrive and not just simple cross heads. It would have taken me hours to get the job done.

We chose the best tool in stock or so I was advised by Reg. The Makita. It has to be said that the Makita does feel good in your hand. Chunky. Blokey. Solid stuff. It has a 1.5Ah Li-Ion Battery (gives me around 1 ½ hours of constant use says Reg), 2-Speed Variable & Reverse drive and employs a 13mm Keyless Chuck.

The Makita is something that every bloke should have. Even if screwing¹ is something you don’t do that often. It just feels good in the hand.

On this occasion the playhouse would have zero chance of a new life as the garden furniture store were it not for the power of the cordless screwdriver. There must have been forty screws to remove, many of which were long, deeply inserted and difficult to extract.

My mind drifts back to the silent movie~~s of my childhood~~² era where Buster Keaton would be dismantling a barn (for some reason) only to find it collapses around him whilst the Keystone Cops drive chaotically around the wreckage.

I had to abandon the dismantling yesterday in favour of a family trip to Pizza Express (good old Tesco vouchers). Progress had very much slowed as whoever assembled the darn playhouse in the first place had used heavy nails at the base and I’m worried about wrecking the wood which is quite soft cheap rubbish really.

Anyway the roof is off and one of the side walls removed. The job will get finished today. At least the dismantling will. We will have to see how the reassembly goes not least because I probably need to do some more leveling work on the base. Don’t want to rush these things.

Photos are courtesy of Anne’s iPhone because I haven’t got my SGS4 back from the menders yet.

The Weekend section of this blog feels as if it could do with a DIY section. Only prob is I don’t want to do anything that encourages me to do more DIY, even though I do now have a spanking new cordless screwdriver 🙂

Other posts relating to the bottom of the garden:

See the site that the shed is moving to here with video coverage of the wood store
Playhouse viewed from upstairs landing window
Fire fire – woodstore the sequel

Also if I were to check buy a new drill again I would probably check out some guides like the ones from Healthy Handyman first. Definitely gives some insight into the drill buying world.

¹ fnaa fnaa

² I’m not that old

End User gadgets H/W Mobile phones

Zee — Double Oh — Em!

Regular readers — at last count there were five of you out there — are no doubt on pins and needles waiting for me to once again pick up the narrative of the search for my next phone, and today is the day I scratch the associated itch. Not that I have made a decision and followed through on it yet, mind you. No, in fact a new contender entered the mix this week, one that could very well draw out the process into early summer (though hopefully not beyond)…the Samsung Galaxy K Zoom!

In my previous posts on this subject that has all of you talking, I rhapsodize on the camera being the all-important feature for me in selecting a smartphone, and just from that standpoint the Samsung Galaxy K Zoom is an obvious entrant. The fact of that matter, though, is that I was underwhelmed and even disappointed by Samsung’s previous It’s-a-Camera-No-It’s-A-Phone (last year’s Galaxy S4 Zoom) and never figured it’s second incarnation would do anything to change my mind. Clunky, boxy, heavy, ugly, and weird (not in a good way), the Galaxy S4 Zoom is a regular Frankenstein device, one that looks like it was cobbled together from leftover state-of-the-art gadget components and made to look synergistic through the careful application of molded white plastic and polished chrome. Of course, it isn’t all about form factor (or in simpler terms, its “looks”), but the device’s technical specs and the photos that flowed from it onto the Internet were far from money enough to make the repugnant attractive.

At best, as phones go the Galaxy S4 Zoom made a marginal camera; and as cameras go, a marginal phone.

Thus, as intriguing as I continue to find the idea of a smartphone-camera hybrid — and as inexplicably pleased as I was to find a ‘K’ in its name — I approached the announcement this past Tuesday of the the Samsung Galaxy K Zoom with strong reservation. Sure, considering technology’s incessant march I figured that the concept’s second iteration would be more pocketworthy than the first (not much effort required). Also, there was little doubt that the GKZ’s extensible lens would supplant the one unfortunate hardware “Huh?” feature of it’s Galaxy S5 older brother, that being the heart rate sensor on the back just under the camera lens. Still, even the most nimble companies typically play Generation Leap-Frog in responding to critical/customer feedback (the secondary reason, I am sure, that Apple changes their iPhone numbering only after running an interim ‘S’ generation^*), so though I thought “better” was highly likely I had no expectations that the Galaxy K Zoom would begin to approach “good” prior to Gen-3.

Surprise, surprise.

Until I have had an opportunity to actually see and touch the Samsung Galaxy K Zoom, of course, the value of my take on this fingers-tingling-BIG-time gadget is akin to that of the pixels on your computer monitor. That said, the device presents as the first true realization of a smartphone-camera hybrid. It it contoured like a cell phone (and only a cell phone…no mistaking this hot number for a badly-designed compact camera…or a cheap 1970s walkie-talkie), yet has a true glass lens that delivers 10x optical zoom. And unlike its predecessor, which required that the zoom lens be extended manually, the GKZ extends automatically a la a compact camera (and wicked fast, too). Also, this very-cool-and-seeming-even-cooler-the-more-I-read-about-it smartphone offers a 4.8 inch HD display, comprised of a Super AMOLED panel protected with Corning Gorilla Glass. And the primary camera has a 20.7-megapixel BSI CMOS sensor, too!

So the Galaxy K Zoom has form and it has function. Though to make a usable value assessment — and perhaps a purchase decision — I still need some idea of the carrier-subsidized price, and at this point the number of rutabagas that will be required in exchange for the new shiny has yet to be revealed. Oh, and then there is whether the GKZ will even be available in France (as of this writing it is only set to launch in Asia). Hence, while the picture presented is quite fine, it is not quite yet in full focus. Still, this new character in the Quest for Kory’s Next Smartphone adventure — drama? thriller? comedy? — has considerably shaken up the narrative and perhaps necessitated a rewrite of the ending (gotta punch those metaphors until they cannot punch back, I always say).

^* The primary reason Apple runs an interim ‘S’ iPhone generation? Come on. So they can pluck maximum cash from the pockets of the legions of lemmings who are unable to bear life without the very latest iteration of the device in their possession, of course.

Related posts:

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Day 8 without the SGS4 – all callers are anonymous and Spitfire-less posts

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Sunday, 4 May, 2014
1 Comment on Day 8 without the SGS4 – all callers are anonymous and Spitfire-less posts

There is light at the end of the dark tunnel of phonelessness. Emails have been received:

(from the insurance people) Good news, Your mobile phone has been repaired and is on its way back to you by our courier DPD.
Kind Regards,The Repair Team.

(from the courier) Your Lifestyle Services Group order is due to be delivered on Tuesday 6th May by DPD. Please ensure that someone is available to sign for your delivery. Lifestyle Services Group

(from the insurance people) Good Evening,Your handset has been repaired and will be despatched within three working days by courier and will need to be signed for.Kind Regards,The Mobile Phone Insurance Claims Team

This is indeed good news although the third email also mentioned that I “should receive a text or email from DPD confirming your one hour delivery window”. The text didn’t provide me with that window and I have a meeting in town that morning so I could miss them. Will have to look into that one.

In my Day 5 without a phone post I mentioned that screen size and response time were the two main factors going against the Galaxy Mini. A few more days and I now realise that the fact that I don’t have my address book in the phone is a real nuisance. I don’t know who is calling or anyone’s number when I want to call them. Now I could stick my Google credentials in and get all that but it will confuse the phone as it already has Kid4’s info in and I don’t want to mess it about. To all intents and purposes I’m treating it as a good old fashioned mobile phone (a GOFMP – the POT of the mobile world).

Perhaps more significantly is the lack of a camera. Yesterday I spent the day at the Lincoln RFC grand opening with former club captain and TV sports anchorman John Inverdale cutting the tape. There were loads of photo opportunities. Blokes struggling to play rugby again having hung up their boots years ago for example. It was a hot day!

We also had the best Spitfire flypast it has ever been my privilege to see. We get these a fair bit in Lincolnshire as the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight is based here. I often find mysef running out of the hause to look up to the sky when a Spit or the Lanc flies past. Yesterday we knew exactly when the plane was due and it duly arrived to order. It flew in low as if on an attack run. Did this three times then after the last waggled its wings and off it went. The Spitfire was low enough to very easily read the wing markings and would have been a perffect photo or video opportunity for sharing with (avid) readers of the trefor.net weekend section.

Alas this was not to be as I will not get my SGS4 back until Tuesday. As you know.

It has to be said I miss my phone. I realise that there was once a time when we walked the earth without such appendages. People will say it didn’t seem to harm us but consider this. Average life expectancy has gradually increased during my own lifetime. This will be down to a combination of many factors and some of these factors will involve the mobile phone.

I’m not talking about a device I can use to make phone calls on the go. I’m taking about the all singing all dancing computer I use to track my walk times to work, send highly relevant and often amusing tweets and Instant Messages to friends around the globe, monitor the movement of shipping across the maritime world, post interesting blog articles from wherever I am, read the papers, send and receive emails, mark emails as spam (:)), translate menus into a recognisable language, check my finances, help me find a destination when I’m on my way somewhere for the first time, find train times, book train tickets, plan holidays, serve as a timer for the perfect poached egg, find bbq recipes, watch TV, get involved in video hangouts, research business opportunities and contacts, take photos and make videos. I’d better stop. The list is endless. I do it all from my mobile phone. Making phone calls is a very minor part of its functionality.

I have missed my phone. The one thing I haven’t missed is checking the damn thing every other minute to see if there has been an update! Nevertheless I am very much looking forward to getting it back which will, I’m told, be sometime on Tuesday. Hooray

Yours

Seriously mixed up of Lincoln

Follow the broken SGS4 screen saga and other related posts:

Day 5 without the broken SGS4 – big screen/little screen/responsive screen
Day 3 without a phone
First night without a phone
Mobile phone insurance claims
This iPhone is dead

End User events fun stuff gadgets google H/W internet mobile connectivity UC wearable

Band Camp Coincidences

Google Glass. Telephony. Synchronicity

At my age, you would think that I would be long past adolescent self-consciousness; that I wouldn’t feel awkward with the geeky way of thinking. A girl that I had a crush on back in the 2nd Grade said to me, “You talk funny. You talk like a scientist.”, referring to my vocabulary. At that age this wasn’t a compliment, nor was it really a criticism. It did not, though, bode well for any potential romantic entanglements.

On the way to the conference I find myself sitting next to two attractive, well dressed middle-age women, three abreast in the aisle seat. We start the long first leg of the flight with a little small talk. We are flying together from Dallas to Albuquerque, where they will leave the plane prior to its flying on to Seattle (my destination).

“What’s in Seattle?” they both ask.

I feel like I’m on my way to band camp. What do I say to them? I tell the truth.

“I’m going to speak at a conference on Content Management – a technology conference.”, I say.

“Oh. Technology stuff.”, from which they return to conversing among themselves for the remainder of the flight. It’s fine. I wanted time to think, anyway, to be quiet on the plane so that I could figure out what I am going to talk about at the conference. I booked the conference before deciding to leave my last corporate job. I opted to keep my commitment, though, and now I need to put my presentation in my own voice.

The plane is landing in Albuquerque. The small talk starts again, and it turns out that the two women also live in Austin. I hear them say something about two local radio hosts known as JB and Sandy. I ask a question regarding Sandy. They fill me in. It’s friendly, partly because we’re parting way in five minutes.

Nobody sits next to me on the Seattle leg of my flight, and I have time and space to think, to figure out a theme for my talk. I’m basically speaking on the lessons learned over the last year as a software team trying to buy the next generation of the solution instead of building the next generation of solution.

“Choosing a system is like a plane trip…”

“Choosing a system is like traveling through Mexico…”

Ugh.

ecommerce End User travel

Is there a travel agent left in town? Internet upsides and downsides

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Friday, 2 May, 2014
No Comments on Is there a travel agent left in town? Internet upsides and downsides

Travel agents seem to have disappeared off the face of the earth. I’m not surprised. Everything like that is done online these days.

I’ve been researching the destination for a family holiday. For various reasons we can’t push the button until much nearer the end of school summer term. Doesn’t stop me looking to see what is out there though.

You can source ~~hundreds~~ thousands of holidays online. You can see the reviews, check out what’s on offer, look at average temperatures for that time of year, even see how much a pint of lager costs (we are talking overseas here).

My problem is that with of us in the family with a range of ages between 14 and 52 trying to identify a single location that will satisfy everyone is proving very difficult. Few of us like sitting on the beach but we all like nice weather though not too hot. We want to be able to mix doing stuff with lazing around, sightseeing with snorkelling, pool bars at the hotel with dinners out at great local restaurants (no doubt with a low key violinist or simlar playing away in the corner).

We don’t want something pitched at a lowest common denominator but we do want a combination of independence and hotel pampered luxury, without paying through the nose for it:). Somewhere everyone speaks English is a nono but the availability of discretely translating waiters when my own limited language skills prove inadequate is desirable. Pictures of food on the menu don’t cut it ~~j’ai peur~~ I’m afraid (pretentious moi?).

What I really need is to be able to go into a travel agent, tell her what I’ve just told you, and wait for a description of the perfect spot based on a fact finding trip made last summer where all of the above was showcased.

I don’t think I’m going to get it. I walked through Lincoln to where I knew there were a couple of travel agent shops but they are there no longer. The downside of the internet. One of them is now a Joules shop. What use is that? Probably end up camping in South Wales again! Where did I put the hammock!?

Early morning meanderings of an insomniac – for the other insomniacs amongst us

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Friday, 2 May, 2014
1 Comment on Early morning meanderings of an insomniac – for the other insomniacs amongst us

In the wee small hours of the morning when the whole wide world is fast asleep I get up and go and sit downstairs and listen to the cars go racing by (sung to the tune of “Wee small hours of the morning”). Who is about at 4.50am? Where are they off to? It’s a bit early for a shift to start or finish. They can’t all be bakers or milkmen – folk known to keep anti social hours.

It is Friday, one of the days the milkman comes but I’m not sure I’ve heard him yet. When he arrives you hear footsteps in on the drive and the sound of a milk crate being plonked down in the porch. You don’t usually hear his float because it is electric. Perhaps the soft whoosh of his tyres as he pulls up and then moves on.

When I was at University I knew a baker called Ray. He made great wholemeal bread. Really tasty, solid loaves. One or two slices were the equivalent of a meal. After finishing the baking, at around 11am, he would nip round to the nearby Globe pub for a couple of swift ones, before going to bed. Who’d be a baker?

The birds have just woken up. Must be starting to get light out. I can’t see because the curtains are closed. I am surrounded by books and the noise of the birds. It’s almost as if the books are reading out loud the words written on the spines of the books.

At this time of the night, or morning, there is the company of the internet to while away the hours. On my Twitter or Facebook timelines most of the posts in the night are from people in the USA. I get the odd British insomniac. One just now reads “Starting your day at 4.45am cos you’re bloody bat shit crAAAzy.#NightShiftProblems #WhyAmIAwake #SaveTheSquirrels “.

Looks like some people must schedule tweets for overnight posting. Who reads them? Twitter is a fleeting¹ medium at the best of times. You might catch a tweet but probably not. There are some events (eg #trefbash) that I promote like crazy in Twitter and other social media destinations and after weeks of doing so have still had people asking me when it’s on this year and why haven’t they been invited? Huh!

On Facebook a friend who has moved to India says “8.30 in the morning, driving to work and it’s 98 degrees outside and sunny. (36.6). Some days don’t you just wish it would be cold, wet and windy…………Nah. I love India.”

98degrees doesn’t do it for me. All I’d be able to do would be to sit in the shade in a pool, perhaps at the wet bar, drinking cool ones. I used to travel to the USA a lot and I recall sitting around a pool in Arizona in July. The water was like tepid tea and the pool surround was constantly sprayed with water mist which was supposed to keep the temperature 10 degrees lower. July is tourist low season in Arizona. The same is true for popular destinations such as Florida where Brits migrate in masses during UK summer holidays. The natives avoid the place in the summer.

I’ve been writing for just over half an hour. Not fast for me. It’s another hour before it will be time to take the tea up. The working day has started. Today must be an “early” which is good because as it happens I am playing golf this afternoon. Good timing that, insomnia.

The clock ticks away on the wall, the only noise when the road outside is quiet. That and the unseen touch-tapping of my Chromebook keyboard. The TV is switched off at the wall, powerless to communicate. All the actors have gone home or are sat in an all night bar somewhere in a place where only actors and insomniacs go.

We have had a few posts in overnight from guests contributing to next week’s VoIP themed week. Some of them need a bit of an edit, the wave of the magic wordprocessing wand. That’s ok. One or two guest posts look like blatant sales pitches. There will be changes. People should realise that a professional, authoritative post is a far better sales pitch than something that just says “buy my stuff”.

As I get older I notice that I seem to need less sleep. This is good although I do tend to go to bed earlier than most – 10 – 10.30pm. It’s a hangover from years of having small kids around the house. They aren’t small any more and the early morning antisocial demands for attention are things of the past. Even on Christmas Day, a time when kids have historically stretched the definition of “time to get up ” to a point where the parents haven’t even gone to bed yet, they now have a lie in which is a real result.

The getting up early to make a cup of tea has real advantages. Going back upstairs with the tea tray makes the lie in to a normal getting up time feel longer and more luxurious.

I’ve drawn the curtains and it is definitely light now. Time to do other things. ~~See you in the morning~~ Catch you later…

¹ I’m even tempted to say fly by night 🙂

competitions End User fun stuff

School cricket match

I’m just off to watch a school cricket match. The weather is looking a bit dodgy but at the moment it isn’t raining so play should definitely happen.

The school cricket match is the epitome of low technology. Aside from all the expensive gear they have these days (pads, helmet, designer pants in which to fit box etc) there is absolutely no tech involved. There isn’t even a decent mobile signal at school thus rendering impotent any attempted use by spectators of imported tech (ie phones).

So all a parent can do is stand on the touchline and focus on the match. I say stand because it is too cold to sit with any degree of comfort.

A school cricket match is a nervous time for a parent. Will the kid get a chance to bat. Or bowl. Will he be out in the first over or will he settle in and provide as fluent a display of batting that ever graced the sports field thus allowing me to casually mention to the stranger stood nearby, “that’s my boy”.

Don’t worry. All will be well, as long as the rain keeps off. You’ll have to wait to hear the result, if I decide to mention it, because as you know there is no signal at school.

I wonder if they will provide cups of tea. I doubt it.

Play…

…………white noise representing no signal…………

video of rain on car>