Categories
Engineer fun stuff servers

Stop Looking At My Finger, Silly Dog

My friend manages to piss me off and it’s not yet 8:00 in the morning. A thought flashes across my brain, “Maybe he’s not the root cause.”

This morning, the first text I see: Priority 1 emergency ticket.

Damn. I hope the server isn’t down.

As usual, my alarm went off this morning at 6:00. I look at my phone and see a text message that was sent late last night, an automated message from our Linux server passing along a support ticket. A surge of anxiety rushes through me. “Oh no, I forgot to re-enable the submit button in our application!” A suspicion, though I don’t really know yet for certain. I jump out of bed.

I check the emergency ticket’s timestamp. About 10 hours ago. “Oh please,” I pray-but-do-not-say as I head for my computer, “Please let it be that someone jumped in and handled this last night.”

Last night we performed a software upgrade to the server. The entire team on the phone, dialing in from multiple geographies, talking through headsets and typing commands on the server, a virtual everyone-from-home Mission Control. All talking on the same call, as we’ve done dozens of times before. The launch pad ready, countdown begun, I was walking us through the checklist and then gave the go ahead to deploy. But wait! There’s an error, a build error that is picked up by the programming group doing the deployment. We investigate and discover that the server is offline and end users are waiting. Finally, we call it. Abort.

Continue reading “Stop Looking At My Finger, Silly Dog”
Categories
End User food and drink google

Collaboration using Google Docs “simplifies” ordering of takeaway curry

onion barge geegeeLast night we decided that tonight, Friday night, would be curry night. The only problem is that not everyone here likes Indian. Some prefer Chinese. Actually not a problem. The Chinese and Indian restaurants are next to each other on the street of a thousand three restaurants (the other one is a  greasy spoon). People can order their preferred ethnic takeaway and I’ll pick both lots up near simultaneously. Simples.

What’s more we can mix and match. You’d prefer a Chinese starter and Indian main? Sure, gofrit.

Now then the only problem here is that juggling menu options starts to get complicated. It’s all very well writing it all down on a piece of paper but with so many possible combinations of nosh people keep changing their minds.

The solution? A shared Google Doc. Everyone has a gmail account or so it transpires. Even non google domains were resolved to a gmail address when an invite was sent. After dinner last night everyone sat round with their laptops editing the Google Doc – six persons at the same time (I did mam and dad’s).

This was pretty cool. You can check out the creativity of the end result here. I was going to share the doc publicly but the process of securing permission from 4 offspring was going to be too onerous and almost certainly cost me more than a curry so I haven’t bothered. A little interpretation is necessary as may be seen from the header photo and not a little simplification but it worked and there can be no quibbling over who ordered what.

A couple of links were included in the doc: The Poppadom Song and a hippo showing the after effects (presumably) of eating a curry.

Collaboration using Google Docs – not just for business 🙂

Categories
Business UC

Churn and Drang

Far from the richest of subjects for 500-plus words of clever (one hopes) pondering, Unified Communications (UC) does, though, seem to generate its fair share of pixelated words across the Internet on any given weekday. Breaking “news” on the subject seems to pop quite often, in fact, regarding this award or that award (yesterday, for example, it was reported that 8X8’s Cloud-Based Unified Communications and Contact Center Suite had won the award for “Best Midmarket Solution” at the Midmarket CIO Forum), and there is a constant trickle of hot scoops as to which company has been awarded which UC contract entailing this feature and that. Then, of course, there are the compelling tidbits detailng which executives from which companies are moving to whatever positions in whatever companies.

Thus, like any other industry doing business today, a ton of fill-the-space churn is being kicked into view — into print? — with the primary intent of filling space and selling advertising (and don’t for a second think I am deaf/dumb/blind to the blatant irony threading through and wrapping around that sentence). Still, there has to be some honest-to-goodness need-to-know UC news out there…somewhere. And, by gum, I am going to be the one to find it and bring it into the light, right here…right now?

Down the UC Rabbithole

According to ITWeb, “Unified communications (UC) is becoming a necessity in the South African workplace, yet many organisations are still grappling with why it needs to be adopted as an integral part of business operations.” Not that pointing out contradictions is much of a sport, but…what? A survey declares UC is becoming necessary in business, yet organizations (the U.S. spelling this time) particpating in the survey do not know why this is so? I provided the link, so you are welcome to go read the piece if you haven’t already wasted your time doing so.

My effort up to now at bringing hard UC news into the light? Not really going so well. I’m a gamer, though, so I’ll pound the dust off and try again.

Headline: VoIP increasingly considered thanks to features like flexibility.

Ah, this could have a little juice in it…lessee. According to a survey — so many surveys, so little time — 84% of organizations that “specialize in technology” (can only shake my head in wonder at how entry into that exclusive circle is secured in these “an app that will ping you to empty the dishwasher” days) are thinking seriously about integrating UC to the way they do business, though only 40% of businesses are using such services today. So how does that break down? Assuming the 16% of technology specializers who have no interest in UC are not among the 40% currently using it, the cited statistic means that nearly 50% of the 84% who are considering putting UC to work are already doing so?

Continue reading “Churn and Drang”
Categories
End User google

Adsense logic on trefor.net

Be interested to hear what ads people see in the sidebar adsense box. Since installing it I’ve only ever seen BT infinity except once this morning on my mobile where I say some “ever taken out a bank loan” ad – I assume it was PPI related.

Normally I associate google ads with things I’ve been searching for myself but in this case I’m wondering whether the ads are based on the content of the site. There is a lot of broadband content and quite a number of posts where I slag off PPI phone calls.

What do you guys see?

Categories
broadband End User ofcom

Fit Broadband Policy

rosette

Is broadband fit for purpose, writes Lindsey Annison

Some years ago a few of us touted the notion that broadband could become an election issue on the next hustings. And it sort of did, although not to the extent that many of us at grassroots without a connection would have liked. It triggered some hastily written speeches for Party Conferences, though, and some grandiose promises which of course have never been implemented.

As we run up to the next election (<groan> Have the last lot even achieved anything yet?!), perhaps it is time to bite the bullet and consider some of the aspects of broadband that seriously need to be taken on board by those campaigning on the hustings, and also by those who have desks in Whitehall and Westminster, etc. (Could it be they all work from home these days? Doubtful, but it’d be nice to think that at least a few know the difficulties of teleworking in modern day Britain.)

Philip Virgo’s rather canny A Confucian view of UK broadband, spectrum and cybersecurity can be found on his Computer Weekly blog this week, and as we can but hope that the powers-that-be can actually find a free moment to read I would like to expound a little on the piece’s first section, to start educating our potential candidates for those doorstep meetings they shall soon be starting. Last week at TechQT the three considerations Virgo mentions were covered — transmission, capacity and protection — and Martin Geddes finally nailed it (in his inimitable style) to being a simple question that any person can ask and answer:  Is my broadband fit for purpose?

rosetteEven the most non-techie person can assess whether or not the connection that they are paying for (or are using for free in a hotspot) is FIT FOR PURPOSE. It either works to do what you are endeavoring to, or it doesn’t. Simples.

Waiving wayleaves may seem like a simple solution to one problem, and the arguments given by Philip Virgo’s Confucius contributor covers some of the reasons why this is so. However, it goes beyond wayleaves to my old bugbear, fibre tax. We have made it nearly impossible for new entrants to enter a level playing field should they wish to play the fibre game.  Aidan Pauls’ slide show on the UK VOA fibre tax illustrates just how problematic the issue is, and though it may be from 2010, sadly nothing notable has changed since 2000.

As a regulator, Ofcom is over-populated with ex-Telco employees and is toothless. Well, not so much toothless, but it is as if they are putting their dentures back in after a night’s sleep whenever circumstances require they react to current events of the day/week/month or year in a timely fashion. And that needs to change, and fast, if Britain is to catch up with other nations. Plenty of information is out there regarding developments, lessons learnt, what has been tried and tested, etc., so maybe the Ofcom guys and gals just need to get out more?!

Listen to the voters!  Too often our candidates fail to do enough of this simple and essential task, and thus many of those who will be walking the pavements with their pretty rosettes are not sufficiently well-informed. And because they are not well-informed they assume that the constituents are in a similar boat, which is simply not the case. At the very least, the average householder can answer the Is my broadband fit for purpose? question. Enough “No.” responses, offered hand-in-hand with the odd constituent who pipes up to tell a prospective parliamentary candidate exactly how and why this is causing problems with life/work/play, and the message just might make its way back to the Houses in #thatlondon.

Can but hope.  Toodlepip till next time.

Related posts:

Categories
End User gadgets Mobile mobile connectivity phones

Conscious Uncoupling

In early 2010 I gave up Windows Mobile and my HTC TyTN II and made the leap to an iOS-saddled iPhone 3G. Making the switch was not necessary — the TyTN II still had a good amount of life in it, and I know it kept its next owner happy enough for roughly two years following — but when My Missus’s company upgraded her to an iPhone 3GS I thought I’d take the opportunity to shake myself out of my mobile comfort zone and repurpose her leftover phone.

I can see you drifting, treasured reader, so let me take a moment here to put my fingers in your nose and pull you back towards your screen. I am not going to go down the gorged-so-deep path of the iPhone-converted here. Promise. Stick a needle, man.

Continuing…I enjoyed my early experience with the iPhone, but felt then that it was more a toy than a tool, and that has not changed (yes, four years gone by and I am still wielding an iPhone, though I upgraded that original 3G to a iPhone 4 three years back because at the time it offered what was unequivocally the best phone-based camera on the market).

ChainedNow don’t get me wrong.  Toys are great — anyone reading my stuff for any sustained period of time soon learns just how much I love my toys — and so long as the Internet-connected shiny in my pocket is able to provide pics, phone, text, email, and a wee spot of web browsing it really doesn’t need to be anything more. Thus I should be fat-n-happy with iPhoneKory, right? (If you haven’t caught on yet, yes, I sometimes name inanimate objects.) I shouldn’t be consumed with thoughts of moving into an Android phone, but should be content to remain comfortable and cared, warm and satisfied within iOS’s bright, colorful walls. I shouldn’t be…but I am.

Continue reading “Conscious Uncoupling”
Categories
End User travel

The empty sea

empty seaSaw someone on the beach yesterday. Was a bit of a surprise because it isn’t exactly high season in the Isle of Man. We have grown used to finding signs saying “Opening 12th April”. We are off back to the mainland on 13th so that’s a lot of things we will have to cram in on our last day. School holidays don’t start here until next week.

I took a look online for potential visitor attractions. I note that there are three films on at the cinema in Douglas and Peel has a Pilates class running  on Friday. Seven quid. The local pool is closed this afternoon for schools swimming lessons.

The upshot is there is nobody around except for a few pensioners whiling away their days and one or two kids over from the UK staying with grandparents (ditto us).

There is bingo on Friday night but by popular demand we are off to the Royal India, one of the world’s great curry houses which happens to be just around the corner from where my ma and pa live. Handy that.

We still have fishing to do and a walk up Peel Hill which holds spectacular views for those who have made the effort. We are saving those activities for tomorrow when the weather is supposed to be at its best.

The header photo is a picture of no boats out on the sea. If you want boats you will have to use your imagination because here they are all safely tucked up in harbour. We did see a lone kayak yesterday but it was too far out to photograph. I could only see it through my binoculars. Bit dodgy I thought, being that far out in a kayak on your todd.

This morning we are off to the Sound to see the Calf of Man and thereafter for lunch at the caff at the far end of the beach in Port Erin. It’s a goodun.

Catch ya later.

PS I’m still alive (see previous post)

Categories
End User travel

Signs of Danger or Dangers Signs – latest in holiday series where Tref reports having a good time

danger signFelt a bit of a rebel taking this photo. It’s a sign on Peel breakwater listing dangers, prohibited activities and precautions that must be taken when passing the spot.

I was taking the pic with my Samsung Galaxy S4 and am clearly not wearing a hard hat. Hadn’t noticed that my eyes were shut when the shot  was taken which at a stretch could be interpreted either as me being in denial about the dangers that lay ahead or pretending not to see the sign.

For completeness I should also mention that I wasn’t wearing high visibility clothing (unless the white legs exposed by a pair of shorts counts for high viz) , am not aware of being authorised but can reassure you that I was not smoking.

You will have to wait to see whether I post again after this to find out if I survived. Wish me luck as you wave me goodbye. Fingers crossed…

Other fun filled holiday posts:

Poignant phone box photo
Holiday videos wink wink

Categories
Bad Stuff End User online safety security

Heartbleed – a pain in the proverbial

Big fuss doing the rounds over the Heartbleed bug. Google it. Every man and his dog1 is saying it is really bad and offering advice which basically says change your passwords oh and btw it might not make sense to change it yet because your specific service might not have patched their SSL.

Now this is the problem. I have 75 sets of credentials for accessing online services. Each one has a complex and unique password. It’s going to take hours to change them all.

A few are more important than others, Google and banking for example. I checked Lloyds Bank. There are no notifications on their website. No advice. No words of comfort saying “don’t worry Tref you are ok son”. Now I can’t believe that a bank like Lloyds with presumably a huge security team hasn’t got it covered.

I checked them using LastPass and got the message “A Server header was not reported, you should assume this site could be vulnerable.” Now this may be because the site is vulnerable or it may be that Lloyds has its website nailed down so that services such as LastPass can’t ping it for information. Not being an expert in this field I don’t know.

Maybe I don’t need to worry about it anyway. Lloyds uses 2 factor authentication. Is that affected? Hmm. No idea.

I read about  tech so picked up the Heartbleed story. My dad doesn’t read this stuff. He is 80. He reads the sports pages, the political news and, oh I don’t know, headlines from 1956. Anything really but not news about Heartbleed.  Yeeeeoooooooowwwwnggg – right over his head. He probably doesn’t even know most passwords he has created. Probably a majority of the population will be in the same boat.

A lot of people out there will be oblivious to Heartbleed, oblivious to whether their services are affected and oblivious as to whether they need to do anything about it. What’s to do?

I’d envisage each of the 75 services I have an username and password with will be wanting to send me an email advising me of a course of action. Not received one yet…

lastpass heartbleed check

Other security related posts:

Who sells your contact information?
1 Rover2
2 Could be Bonzo

Categories
broadband Business internet

FTTP – Fibre To The Polar Bear

BT copper connections

Superfast broadband FTTP is said to be uneconomic for rural areas but Telenor thinks otherwise

We hear all the time that rural FTTH (Fibre to the home, or FTTP – Fibre to the premises) is unviable. The reality, though, is that it is only unviable when we view it purely from the deploying Telco point of view AND we understand that infrastructure providers are no longer the holders of patient money (many thanks to Ben Verwaayen for this term). And while this argument has slowed Britain down for a decade (blame the Analysys Mason report that looked at the costs and ROI only from a Telco POV and not from the standpoint of every Brit, council, business, industry, sector, and ROI in social capital, etc., etc.), the lack of such thinking continues to allow other nations to leapfrog the UK in digital development.

A case in point is last week’s news regarding the small, remote, and isolated near-North Pole community of Bjørndalen, where Telenor has helped to bring fibre to 43 early adopters  (even I know Bjorn means ‘bear’, a good indicator of the usual passing traffic). The treatment of this tiny peninsula in the Svalbard Archipelago by Telenor as a miniature version of mainland Norway indicates that they consider it an ideal testbed, giving the Telco an opportunity to “scrap older technologies like copper, coaxial cable and older generation mobile networks”.

Other such testbeds could be rolled out in similar places in other countries, and in particular the UK, though Britain seems to be getting lost in defending the obsolete tech (otherwise known as “sweating the asset”) rather than focusing on resolving the key problem of setting up rural areas for the future. For instance, who could have known that champagne tourism would become a factor in Svalbard, and that even in a global economic crisis access to decent connectivity could have a positive effect on that new and thriving industry?

Continue reading “FTTP – Fibre To The Polar Bear”

Categories
Business voip voip hardware

ip phone competition @harbour_lights

This picture was taken at the @harbour_lights caff on the prom in Peel IoM. It shows a traditional seaside cafe but with a twist. The @harbour_lights, as regular followers of holiday blog posts will know, has free wifi and a Twitter account. It also has an IP phone which impressed me greatly.

There is a prize of a pot of tea for two at the Harbour Lights Cafe for the first person to tell me the brand of the phone and where it is in the picture. Clicking on the image gets you a full size version which should help.

ipphone at the harbour lightsOther posts mentioning @harbour_lights:

Images of Peel
A roaming a roaming it’s always been my ru i in
Happy birthday to me

Categories
Engineer gadgets

Pass me the 230-amp USB charging cable, please…

The BBC has an article about a mobile phone battery that will charge from empty to full in 30 seconds.

The technology behind the brand new battery is of course exciting. Lithium polymer batteries have their drawbacks and I should imagine a battery that can be charged rapidly will be of even more interest to manufacturers of electric cars and renewable generators than mobile phone manufacturers.

But since Israeli start-up StoreDot chose a mobile phone to demonstrate their technology then I have to ask where the 230-amp USB charging cable is going to come from.

The faster a phone charges, the more current it requires. And to provide more current the power source needs to be more robust (typically larger) and the connecting cables need to be larger to carry the current safely without overheating.

Since it has become standard to use a 5-volt supply to charge a mobile phone I thought I’d work out how much current would be required to charge a typical phone battery in 30 seconds.

250-amp cables
250-amp cables

The answer is a whopping 230 amps, based on a 3.7 volt 2,600 mAh battery capacity like the one inside Samsung’s Galaxy S4 mentioned in the article.

In case you’re wondering how fat 230-amp cables are, you’re talking  typical jump lead size.

In practical terms phone chargers would need to seriously increase the voltage to charge a phone that quickly, but they are unlikely to go much above 25 volts due to the increased risk of electric shock.

Even at 25 volts the current required would be over 45 amps.

Categories
End User obsolescence

Poignant phonebox photo

There is something about a photo of a phonebox taken using a mobile phone camera. It’s almost gloating. An icon of the past captured by the technology that rendered it obsolete. There should be an air of dereliction about the picture. Sadness. There isn’t. I’m smiling  though the photo is not helped by the fact that it’s a cloudy day.

I may have asked this one before but it’s worth asking again: when did you last use a phonebox?

phoneboxOther posts containing images of phoneboxes:

HTC Desire HD review
What to do about automated spam calls to mobile
Non internet use > neo-monsaticism

Categories
End User google travel

Allow location use #GoogleNow

google now places nearbyI’ve just allowed Google to use my location. Up until now I’ve always rejected the request. Having mulled it over for a few years (I don’t like to rush these things) I’ve decided I’m ok with it. It will enhance online services for me. I don’t care about whether others know where I am or not. My location is pretty obvious if you read this blog.

Location data is useful to me when I use Google Now. I’m happy that it is able to give me hints about things in my locality. Currently it shows photos of nearby places. V handy I’d say.

Years ago when we were working on the commercialisation of SIP one of the things it was going to bring to the party was presence. Presence wasn’t really just about whether you were online and available or not. It was also about where you were online.

Getting off a plane in a new place was going to be made easy by automatically telling the hotel you had landed and pointing out good bars and restaurants you might want to hit. Only possible with location information.

I think I also like the idea that all my photos will have location information in them. Why not? It’s hard enough finding photos. Why not make it easier by telling you where the photo was taen?

Embrace the future. The future has the presence. The future is here and Google Now.

PS I’ve written about GoogleNow before. Had forgotten when writing this article. I don’t think I’ve had location switched on as standard before though.

PPS Off for a stroll now. There are places to see within 14 minutes walk! 🙂

Categories
End User travel

Holiday videos, wink wink ;) Peel Castle IoM

We present for your entertainment and delight three short holiday videos. The first is an artistic work filmed on the rocks surrounding Peel Castle.  Whilst the video requires no commentary the small element of speech inserted towards the end serves to draw the viewer’s attention to some of the key environmental content.

The second video was taken during a weekend break a few weeks ago. The weather here is very different. The filming was done at Fenella Beach on the other side of Peel Castle during a violent storm.

This final video shows a working fishing boat unloading a sack of crabs at the quayside at Peel breakwater on a bright sunny day. The skipper had called ahead and the lorry arrived at the quay just before the arrival of the boat.

Look out for more evidence of good times being had on trefor.net.

Other Isle of Man posts:

Images of Peel
Fenella Beach far away in time
A twitter story

Categories
Regs surveillance & privacy

European Court Rules European Data Retention Directive Unlawful

STOP PRESS

Judgment was handed down today in a long running campaign brought by Digital Rights Ireland against the European Data Retention Directive* (transposed into domestic law in The Data Retention (EC Directive) Regulations 2009). In short, the European Court of Justice has overturned the Directive, saying “[it] entails a wide-ranging and particularly serious interference with the fundamental rights to respect for private life and to the protection of personal data“.

Broadly, the Directive required telcos to store certain data for a minimum of 6 months and a maximum of 24 months. The UK transposition mandated 12 months which is consistent with other legislation). The natural consequence of this is that our own transposition will need to be repealed, which has obvious consequences — directly, and indirectly as a result of the court’s decision — for law enforcement and the security services, as well as telcos (the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, or RIPA, predates this, as does the Data Protection Act).

Watch this space!

* Strictly known as Directive 2006/24/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 15 March 2006 on the retention of data generated or processed in connection with the provision of publicly available electronic communications services or of public communications networks and amending Directive 2002/58/EC.

Google+

Related posts:

Categories
Business End User Mobile mobile connectivity social networking UC

Air France has Me all A-Twitter

Decided to leave the cave and go mobile to do the writing thing today. And why not? Both of the pieces I hope to crank out are of a mobile ilk, the weather on this early April Paris Monday is Spring Fever inducing, and a new local wifi-enabled coffee house (Le Café Lomi) has opened its doors nearby…a perfect storm!

The battery icon says I have 2:11 before all goes dark, so let’s start clacking.

This past 21-December I packed up My Missus and The Boy for a 5-day trip to visit family in Chicago (far more accurate to say that My Missus packed me and The Boy up, but I don’t see any reason to ruin a good story with facts…except, paradoxically, I do). We left the flat early that morning, all media-delivery devices fully charged and ready for the 12+ hours we would spend in the air travel envelope (bubble?), and headed for the RER B train that would deliver us to Charles de Gaulle (the airport, not the long dead general and president). En route I decided to check our flight status, and having successfully carried that out I then thought, “Let’s see if anyone is awake at the Air France Twitter switch on this fine Saturday.” Not being the most avid Twitterer, this was actually a bit of personal evolution on my part.

First Tweet to AF

Within just moments I received a response, and a somewhat personal one at that (as evidenced by the reference to my day’s destination)! Shocked and delighted, I immediately tweeted back.

Second Tweet to AF

Then my wheels started turning…hmm…yes, I would look for ways to keep my @AirFranceFR friend apprised as we moved through the system.

Continue reading “Air France has Me all A-Twitter”
Categories
Business google

We currently don’t support that webmail service – LinkedIn

I’ve started to use LinkedIn a bit more than I used to. It is looking more and more useful for me in finding handy contacts for my startup business and less and less like just a recruiting ground for head hunters.

I’ve never used it’s “find other people you might know” type function though but this morning I’m up early doing stuff and casually entered my email address and clicked “continue”. Imagine my surprise when it told me LinkedIn didn’t support my webmail service. trefor.net is Google based so Linked in is missing out big time. I didn’t bother continuing.

linkedinRelated posts

Punters rush to sign up to funky new LinkedIn group
LinkedIn should know better
Your password here? Oh Dear. LinkedIn

Categories
broadband End User

ADSL upload speeds – ugh

adsl upload

adsl uploadADSL upload speeds at parents house make me appreciate how good my own superfast broadband is.

At home I get about 7Mbps upload and on a reasonable day 35Mbps down. In the office on the ja.net we can on occasion get 100Mbps symmetrical. Yeeeeooooowwwwnnnggggg. That is good.

At my parents in the Isle of Man the much slower ADSL upload speed is really noticeable. Improved upload speeds are the one game changer that FTTC or superfast broadband has brought. In our media dominated world where ad hoc videos and pictures of interesting sights that we think “oo I’ll take a photo of that” and never look at it again though it is taking up storage space at more than one location, having good upload bandwidth is v important.

I feel somewhat awkward complaining about an ADSL connection where many people don’t even have that. In a world where broadband has become another utility ADSL seems almost like having a gas or electricity supply that only comes on at certain times of the day. Or it’s like having to always cook using a slow cooker. It’s something you have to plan around.

Added 06/07/2014: Now that I have kids living away from home the upload speeds they have for their own broadband connections are very noticeable. Kid3 at Uni in Durham always shows up quite pixelated whereas I’m sure that my own upload stream will result in a good clear image of me

Other related posts:

Well done Rob Evans – ja.net
Video driving home internet use
The importance of broadband

Categories
End User travel

Images of Peel

signs peel iomI like a good sign. This one is a particularly fine example at the end of the promenade in Peel, Isle of Man. It is a very helpful sign especially if you are looking for a tourist attraction.

We have visited each attraction many times. I particularly like the chandlery which has lots of useful supplies for the seagoing type: ropes, pulleys, blocks, sou westers etc. Although the sign mentions “Town Centre” Peel is actually a City because despite only being a small town it has a cathedral.

The panorama is the view towards the beach from the breakwater in Peel. The view has changed very little since Victorian times. The @harbour_lights cafe and the Davidsons ice cream parlour are just right of centre. Clicking on the image brings up the full size 6ish Megs original and you might be able to zoom in.

peelbayLook out for other holiday snaps from the Isle of Man during this week’s vacation:)

Other Isle of Man posts:

Fenella Beach far away in time
A twitter story

Categories
Engineer media servers

BBC website down – Error 500 – Internal Error

bbc error 500 - bbc website down

bbc error 500BBC website down

It ain’t often you can’t reach the BBC. They have 700Gbps of connectivity1 to their servers. As one of the world’s foremost media organisations their website will rank as the most robust going.

It comes as a mild surprise therefore to see the error message on the screen in front of me -“Error 500 – Internal Error”. Is the BBC website down? The little clown icon is quite cool and totally in keeping with the creative nature of the BBC. You can almost hear the clown laugh as if this is some macabre late night feature. The audience is spellbound, silently gripping their seats.

The hiccup was over in a moment. It’s one of those glimpses of an event in life that you think back on and wonder if it really happened except that here I have the screenshot.

It isn’t as big deal but my curiosity is aroused and I think to myself it would be quite nice nice to understand what actually happened. What architecture does the BBC use for its website and what caused the error message? It’s one of those things that in real life is not worth wasting time drilling down to a root cause. Still if anyone can chip in it would be nice:)

Note added 20th July. I’m guessing this happened again yesterday as there was a huge spike of visitors to this site with people reading this post around 11am.

Other great Beeb reads:

Tablets shifting our viewing habits
A visit to Broadcasting house
BBC promo int

1 last time I asked.

Categories
End User fun stuff H/W storage backup & dr

Turn, Turn, Turn, A Time to Every Purpose

19.11 GB of 471.48 GB – About 6 hours

Roughly 8 minutes ago I fired up my brand-spanking-new 3.5” hard drive enclosure (complete with newly-installed and formatted 4TB 3.5” hard drive), navigated via Finder to my bursting-at-the-seams 500GB 3.5” hard drive (also happily enclosed, and for over 5 years now), nimbly hit Ctrl+A to highlight everything, and dragged the highlighted contents over to begin the process of copying the data therein to its new home.

31.41 GB of 471.48 GB – About 6 hours

Speaking only for myself (though I suspect my words will ring true for a great many, if not the majority), I am not at all surprised to find the act of upgrading my external storage to be akin to cleaning out a household “junk drawer”. Generally speaking, I know what I have collected on Compote – the original 500GB drive – over the years, and yet many surprises abound.

55.10 GB of 471.48 GB – About 6 hours

Before I go any further, I should come (somewhat) clean by saying that not all of the flotsam-and-whatnot that resides in my digital universe has come into my possession in a pure and unassailable manner. Without admitting anything that could be used against me in a court of law (somewhat mad I am for “Law & Order” in its various flavors, and it is especially good when viewed in pristine .mkv on such-and-such device at my leisure), I will just say that I am, have been, and always will be a music/film/TV junkie and leave it at that.

Windfall Status

So I am seeing that all kinds of curious things are moving over to the new neighborhood (Windfall be its name, and in case you aren’t paying close enough attention, yes, I do use a certain fruit as the basis for the network drive naming convention at Chez Kessel). To offer just a hint of flavor, these were the last three items I saw go by:

  1. BBC.Pink.Floyd.1of3.The.Story.of.Wish.You.Were.Here.x264.AAC.mkv
  2. Stevie Ray Vaughan And Double Trouble – Texas Flood (1983) [FLAC] (2-CD) {2013 30th Anniversary Legacy Edition}
  3. Marvel chronology disk 11 v2.0

A part of a television documentary, lossless Stevie Ray Vaughan music files, part 11 of a Galactus-sized collection of Marvel comics in .cbr format…any moment now I expect to see a box of old staples, a airline-issued personal sewing kit, and a too-well-thumbed and dog-eared deck of cards!

125.45 GB of 471.48 GB – About 5 hours

Just to fill in some of the backstory here, Compote is actually only one of three long-maintained “junk drives” whose contents will be making their way over to the oh-so-shiny-and-sparkly Windfall today (and from the looks of it, into tomorrow). Decorum restrains me from naming the other two, but suffice it to say they don’t fall very far from the tree, and each one is chock full of the same kind of gotta-have-it-and-someday-I-will-get-around-to-doing-something-with-it digital entertainment media detritus.

161.02 GB of 471.48 GB – About 4 hours

To be clear, I am not what used to be called a “packrat” or what today is more readily referred to by the darker and far less cute-sounding “hoarder”. No, I actually have real purpose in maintaining the nearly 2 TB of this-that-and-the-other that is currently undergoing consolidation onto the honker of a hard drive that is Windfall! You see, the center of my aforementioned digital universe, AppleKory (feel free to take a short break here to point fingers, cover your mouth, and enjoy a giggle at my expense), is sacrosanct, and new content must be scrubbed and polished before being allowed to cross the barrier into the vast media libraries I am forever building there. Thus the external drives? Holding pens of a spinning platter order.

206.26 GB of 471.48 GB – About 3 hours

Insight and useful lessons are no doubt popping off of these pixels, different depending on the individual reader (none of whom, I hope and pray, has the legal standing needed to commit me for observation or my own safety). I do want to share one last piece of information, though, to anyone out there who is finding inspiration in my personal data migration exercise and is now considering moving down their own amalgamation road: make sure the enclosure you have or will buy is capable of handling the new hard drive. SATA is SATA is SATA, right? Well, no. The SATA enclosures I bought years ago for my soon-to-be-pensioned 500GB drives were only able to handle the new 4TB drive up to a maximum of 1.8TB, a key fact I learned only after the shoes and socks were off, the screwdrivers were pulled out, the hard drive was relieved of its antistatic bag and installed into the enclosure, and the whole schmear was connected up and awaiting formatting.

258.14 GB of 471.48 GB – About 3 hours

<sigh>

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fun stuff

Lincoln 10K – Support

After a bit of training, a few blog posts, and a little apprehension, here is my result from yesterday’s Lincoln 10K:

Pos. No. Name Gun Time Chip Time Chip Pos. Gender Gender Pos. Cat. Cat. Pos.
3200 1466 Paul Tyler 1:06:52 1:02:29 3090 Male 2211 M35 292

 

The race itself was remarkably pleasurable. As I’d suspected, the start was tricky, as after lots of waiting around the gun finally went off and I got to watch the people who are better runners than me speed off, knowing they’d be taking the places in the pubs for Sunday lunch long before I would.

I won’t go through the whole race here as that would be about as interesting as listening to a work colleague describe a dream. I will simply say that it took me a good long time to sort my pace out, then there was a bit of a lull in the middle, and I enjoyed a better-than-expected second half.wpid-img_280693493738732_1.jpg

Though it may be something of a cliché to gush on about the support you receive en route, it truly does make the race not only achievable but worthwhile. I’ve been a spectator at many races and I know that for most of the participants it requires a lot more effort than simply walking to the edge of your driveway with a cup of tea to see what all the noise is about. The effort from the supporters is worth every stride taken, and it provides quite an ego boost as well!

I want to offer a huge thanks, too, for all the support I’ve received from trefor.net and from those on social media. You all helped to push me over the line, and I am happy to share the feelings I have of pride and accomplishment with you.

So for the time being, quite simply, thus ends the subject of the Lincoln 10K. THANK YOU.

Paul Tyler presents Lincoln A to Z on Siren FM, and the audio he recorded at the Lincoln 10K will be broadcast soon.

@lincolnatoz

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End User travel

A roaming, a roaming it’s always been my ru i in

leaving of liverpool - view from stern of IOM ferry ManannanOff roaming again. Mobile roaming that is. The Isle of Man. A place which will be all about relaxation, healthy walks, tea and scones in the @harbour_lights cafe, fishing boats, fishing from the breakwater, a stroll along the prom, ruined castles, seals, guillemots, rock pippits, basking sharks,  meals out, meals in, great food and drink, sleep.

I might call in on Manx Telecom for a chat. Check out the latest developments in offshore telecom. I made a call over the Manx 3G network before it was introduced in the UK. Few years ago now. Was quite a cool thing to do. The Isle of Man was a test bed for O2 at the time.

The beauty of our modern world is that we can work from wherever we are. Although this is a holiday I like my job and can spend a couple of profitable hours each day doing stuff. Travel time is also time that can now be usefully spent rather than just staring out of the window wondering how much longer it will be before we sight land – something to break the monotony of the journey.

The hotel had WiFi. There was 4G in Liverpool whilst we queued to get on the ferry, the ferry has free WiFi, at least where I am sat. My mam and dad’s place has WiFi, the Harbour Lights Cafe has WiFi. The Whitehouse pub doesn’t have WiFi but who on earth would want to waste good pub banter time by staring into a screen.

I switch off mobile data roaming because the cost would be ruinous and there is in any case plenty of connectivity. I’ll settle for ruining my waistline.

It is now 11.49 and we would appear to be out of sight of land. The windows in the lounge have steamed up so we wouldn’t be able to see anything anyway:) All is quiet.

Categories
End User travel

Level crossings and the quirks of the taxi fare system

When walking to work I have to cross a railway line. There is of course a set of barriers that come down every now and again when a train comes by. I find myself picking up my walking pace as I get nearer to the crossing so that if the warning the barriers are about to come down starts to sound I can get across before my way is barred. I have sometimes had to wait 4 minutes before a train comes. Not good.

Whilst I normally walk I have had occasion to take a taxi home. If I get the cab to pick me up from the side of the level crossing nearest my house the fare is £4.20. A pick up from the side nearest the office, that’s the side with the Tower Bar in the pic, costs £5.40!!!

I have for your information and education taken photos of the queues caused when the barriers come down. Enjoy:)

level crossing queues in Lincoln

level crossing queue in LincolnRelated posts:

The view from the office

 

Categories
Business travel

The view from the office – Lincoln Cathedral seen from Sparkhouse

view from sparkhouse LincolnGotta tell you Sparkhouse is a great place for an office. It’s attached to the University of Lincoln and is slap bang in the middle of town. A pleasure to walk there every day. This is the view from the front door. The river to the right is the Witham.

Categories
internet mobile connectivity net neutrality ofcom Regs

Net Neutrality update

Regular readers will remember my piece for Trefor.Net last September, where I defined what the average VoIP telco wants from an open internet. I know this article had a readership of at least one, because I saw someone brandishing a print out in Ofcom. Yay me!

Anyway, things have moved on. We had Ed Richards, Ofcom’s CEO, saying they weren’t “waiting for Europe” when Philip Davies MP pressed him on the issue at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee last year (for which Philip earned a nomination as ITSPA’s Members’ Pick at the 2014 Awards) – but Europe aren’t waiting for them earlier.

Last week, the European Parliament voted in favour of the so-called “telecoms package” which includes, amongst proposals regarding a Single Market I have previously slated here and the abolition of roaming fees (which I shall slate below), proposals on Net Neutrality. Before we get too excited, this was only the first reading. The College of Commissioners is about to be disolved, along with the European Parliament for elections and who knows what political landscape will be returned to Brussels in May. It’s not likely to receive much more Parliamentary time until the end of the year now at the earliest, which makes their December 2015 implementation date seem optimistic.

The European Union’s proposals mirror, largely, what ITSPA and the VoIP community would accept (in my view) as a legislative intervention. ISPs cans till offer specialised services to protect business critical applications, or prioritise video on demand, but would not be able to do so to “the detriment of the availability or quality of internet access services” offered to other companies or service suppliers, except for traffic management measures which are “transparent, non-discriminatory and proportionate” and “not maintained longer than needed” to protect the integrity of a network.

This is a good step, but I for one, along with ITSPA colleagues and others aren’t waiting for Europe like Ofcom – watch this space for a progress report soon!

Abolition of Roaming Charges

The European logic is rather federalist; it says you should be able to use your phone for the same rates anywhere in Europe for the same price as at home. Aside from the age old rule (which also applies in next generation telecoms – distance is still a factor in signal regeneration, rateable value of fibre etc) that the further a call is conveyed the more it costs, it is wholly illogical to be able to call next door with your mobile for the same rate as calling it from Lithuania, you cannot ignore the basket effect. 26% of socioeconomic group D and E households are mobile only. The reduction of roaming profits to mobile operators leads, in part or in whole, to a waterbedding…. (I almost wrote waterboarding, as that’s what it feels like to deal with a mobile operator’s customer services sometimes)… other products and services will increase in price to compensate for the foregone margin.

So, in short, one consequence of the EU’s proposal is that those that cannot afford to go on holiday in Europe, or those businesses that don’t trade in person in Europe, shall subsidise those that do. That just doesn’t seem right to me.

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agricultural End User fun stuff Weekend

Saturday Snapshot (5-April-2014)

Yanked to the surface of consciousness on this Normandy morning by the potent combination of bright sky warmth-providing orb, insistent cat, breakfast aromas (coffee, toasting raisin bread), My Missus yelling “À table!”, and the promise of the Saturday farmer’s market in Lisieux (gotta get there before those Orbec mushrooms are gone!).

April in Paris?  Schmapril in Schmaris!

** I do plan to return to the whole “April in Paris” in a positive, musical sense in these pages quite soon, but let’s stay on point, shall we? **

Basket in hand, car keys in other hand, shoes on feet…OK, I’ve got the appendages covered (rest of the body too, as the last thing this American wants to do is throw a fright into scads and scads of provincial Frenchies). A few coins in my pocket, and a rough-but-working-itself-out lunch scheme forming.

Our late arrival at the market had My Missus and I worried we would go Orbec-less this weekend, but I am happy to report (and indicate via photograph) that this was not the case.

Photo Apr 05, 12 13 33     Photo Apr 05, 12 14 37

800 grams of the finest and freshest Normandy-grown Cremini mushrooms secured, our market wander could take on a more relaxed pace and did, leading us to various vegetables and to our lunch plate protein of choice, which today we had decided would be a few nice sole. With no less than five fish mongers hawking their wares at the Lisieux farmer’s market, the selection and pricing is usually in line with expectation and today was no exception (though our score – five good-sized sole for just 10€ — certainly could be described as ‘exceptional’).

Continue reading “Saturday Snapshot (5-April-2014)”
Categories
agricultural End User Weekend

The yellow flower

yellow flowerIt’s a yellow flower at the weekend. The green leaves around it look quite manky but the flower shines through. I’m ashamed to admit that I have no idea what make of flower it is. What brand. Wouldn’t surprise me if companies try to register flower names as brands.

If I saw a rose I could name that. Tulips and daffodils I can also identify. Otherwise I begin to struggle. I’m ok with grass. I quite like grass although our lawn needs some seeing to. It’s not worth the effort as it gets hammered all year round by kids.

I quite like mowing the lawn in the summer followed by lighting the barbecue and cracking open a tin or two. It’s not often the weather is good enough for us to sit out to eat but the conservatory is fine. We have a nice conservatory opening out onto the back garden and the table will seat ten or twelve people if we open out the leaves so it’s a good place for a relaxing Sunday barbecue that lasts all afternoon.

We also have a couple of gazebos that can come in handy both when there is a threat of rain and conversely it is too sunny. Anyway hope you enjoyed the picture of the flower. It’s the weekend. Make it a lazy one 🙂

PS if anyone has a favourite flower do let us know:)

Categories
broken gear End User gadgets H/W phones

SD card unexpectedly removed SGS4

It’s not looking good. Just had notification on Samsung Galaxy S4 that “SD card unexpectedly removed”. This is the same message I was getting before the last SD card was wiped.

If we recall, the SGS4 was launched on 26th April 2013.  This means that my SGS4 is less than 1 year old1 and it looks a if it is about to destroy a second SD card. Notwithstanding the fact that the phone is less than a year old and it is already my second SGS4. My first had a faulty USB socket.

Frankly this is totally unacceptable. These are very expensive devices. The reliability is atrocious. I am going to take this up with Samsung as a point of principle. Stay tuned…

1 in fact I got it on 13th May 2013.