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Posts on this blog are suspended today as a mark of respect to those who fell attempting to keep pace at #trefbash last night.
Normal service will be resumed on Monday including early reports and examples of incriminating photographic evidence.
Thanks to all who made it through the night.
Tonight is #trefbash night. Details here. If you couldn’t make it follow the action, if there is any ( 🙂 ) on the #trefbash hashtag.
Ciao
Broadband for working from home avoids long commute.Took me an hour and ten minutes to get in to work this morning. That’s twice as long as usual – broken down tanker on the A46. Walking in to the office I felt a bit like the Reggie Perrin of old – “20 minutes late, frozen points at Clapham Junction”.
I went on a very long diversion through the Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire countryside. The stark winter beauty reminded me of the Thomas Hardy poem “The Darkling Thush” :
I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter’s dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
It’s one of my all time favourites. Anyway driving in on this extended albeit pleasant detour made me think about the whole subject of commuting and broadband for working from home. The number of times I have the radio on driving home on a Friday night to hear the UK wide traffic reports – quite often its gridlock on all the major routes around the country.
Makes you wonder how much time and money we really waste travelling to work. Granted there are some jobs where the person absolutely needs to be in the office but equally there are many where a little bit of mix and match (home versus office) would be perfectly acceptable. Phone system vendors often try to model the financial benefits of homeworking as part of their pitch to customers. I don’t think you really need to work out the payback in terms of pounds shillings and pence. It’s bloomin’ obvious.
Quite a number of our customers see this. We have a portal that some of them use to manage estates of hundreds, if not thousands of home worker broadband connections. The portal is integrated with the customer’s HR system and when an employee moves house and change their address the portal automatically informs us to migrate their broadband to another location. For some large organisations this can save a considerable workload on the IT department – managing what is really a tedious and time consuming process that really benefits from automation. Bung in a VoIP account and hey presto, you have a home office just like in the office.
To conclude, my other favourite Thomas Hardy work is “Under The Greenwood Tree”. I don’t get on with most of his novels, they are depressing, but this one is a nice novel and signals the end of an era in a similar way to the Darkling Thrush. It is also very seasonal and I am now most definitely feeling Christmassy.
That’s all folks…
The Report of the Joint Select Committee on the Draft communications Data Bill was issued this morning at one minute past midnight. It’s been in the news this morning with the deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg calling on ministers to rip up their plans and go to “back to the drawing board“.
The 105 page Report concludes that “there is a case for legislation which will provide the law enforcement authorities with some further access to communications data, but that the current draft Bill is too sweeping, and goes further than it need or should.”
I have always said that the right balance between our personal security and our personal privacy needs to be maintained when considering this subject area and this is the tenet of the Joint Select Committee’s recommendations.
Unfortunately some of the basic conclusions of the report do not put the Home Office in a good light. There would appear to be a widespread failure to consult with many of the stakeholders involved, notably on the costs of the project and what might reasonably be achievable in terms of Communications Data capture and storage. In particular it is recommended that the HO will have to carry out a careful cost/benefit analysis and obtain advice and assurances from a wider body of experts than the companies that stand to earn money from devising secure storage solutions.
The committee recommends that the scope of the Bill be significantly reduced to cover only the retention of IP address data and “web logs” although regarding the latter they also “acknowledge that storing web log data, however securely, carries the possible risk that it may be hacked into or may fall accidentally into the wrong hands, and that, if this were to happen, potentially damaging inferences about people’s interests or activities could be drawn. Parliament will have to decide where the balance between these opposing considerations should be struck.”
There is also a concern that web log data also contains content, which due to privacy concerns was specifically excluded from the Draft Bill. The committee has asked the Home Office to review whether it is operationally and technically feasible to only retain web logs of certain types of service where those services enable communications between individuals.
Regarding the storage of third party data traversing a CSP’s network it is recommended that the requirement to store such data only after attempts to retrieve the data from the third party be given statutory force. The effectiveness of this considering the overall objective must be questionable historical data is unlikely to be available in a timely manner for specific crime stopping targets.
The recommendations continue with the suggestion that the Home secretary should not have the power to extend the scope of “permitted purposes” of the bill and that indeed this list of purposes should be examined with a view to shortening it.
It is also recommended that the definitions for communications data under RIPA should be reviewed following consultation with industry with a particular focus on what is subscriber data (ie info on me and you) and what is traffic data.
A specialised SPoC (Single Point of Contact) team should be established that provides a central expertise for the approval of RIPA requests. This in theory should prevent misuse of the system – although Local Authorities are not specifically mentioned amongst the authorities that should be able to access the data under discussion here the committee recommends that bodies over and above the six in the Draft Bill should be considered for inclusion based on their case – notably the Financial Services Authority and the UK Border Agency. Local Authorities, although representing a fairly small proportion of the nearly half a million RIPA requests each year and 20 times more likely to put in a non-compliant request.
Coming back to costs the committee is being polite when it says “that the Home Office’s cost estimates are not robust. They were prepared without consultation with the telecommunications industry on which they largely depend, and they project forward 10 years to a time where the communications landscape may be very different. Given successive governments’ poor records of bringing IT projects in on budget, and the general lack of detail about how the powers under the Bill will be used, there is a reasonable fear that this legislation will cost considerably more than the current estimates.”
It was nice to get a mention myself in para 276 regarding the effect on small CSPs of having to meet the requirements of this Bill.
The commitment to reimburse CPs the necessary cost of complying with the requirements of legislation should also be written into law and not left in any doubt.
Finally “the figure for estimated benefits is even less reliable than that for costs, and the estimated net benefit figure is fanciful and misleading. It ought not to be used to influence Parliament in deciding on the relative advantages and disadvantages of this legislation. Whatever the benefits of the Bill, they are unlikely to be financial.”
The cost aspects of the recommendations are pretty damning. It would be nice to think that as much effort is put into all legislation as this committee has put into the Draft Communications Data Bill. I’m thinking specifically of the Digital Economy Act but I’m sure there must be others.
I’m not totally comfortable that any safeguards built into the Bill will really work, especially when it is noted that nobody can 100% guarantee the security of the storage of the data. At least on this occasion the Government is being sent away and told to get their homework right and the subject of security versus proportionality is highlighted as being central to the debate.
That’s all for now. You can read the whole report here. I’m sure I will have missed something. You can also read my other stuff on this subject – use the search box at the top right hand corner of this page. There is a lot of material.
Accidentally left my phone on mute and noticed I had missed a call from 0161 662 6518. Hmm I thought. Who do I know that lives in Manchester. Might have been someone calling to discuss the Draft Comms Data Bill Report that I am in the middle of reading and digesting.
I googled the number and found that others had had the same missed call. Seems to come from some outfit styling themselves as “Claims Professionals”. Lowest of the low in my view. Glad I missed the call.
Wonder what this blog is about?
Details on whereto complain can be found here.
More info on dodgy phone number stuff here.
ciao…
It’s Tuesday morning and you find me full of beans, enthusiasm and a thirst for life. Outside it is a nice minus two degrees Centigrade and there is a hard frost but the sun has risen above the horizon and is doing its utmost to drive the low lying mist from the Lincolnshire fields. V pictureskew.
Driving in, work continues on the Lincoln bypass and there seem to be more men in high viz jackets than usual, all staring down holes and contemplating their fate. They are clearly trying to make progress before the Christmas break and it made me glad for once that I had the comfort of my office (panoramic windows & sweeping vistas over the car park etc) to get to.
As I walked in the the office I called in on the marketing department and happened to be carrying a new box of Weetabix for the purpose of breaking my fast. Suzie, who is our highly intelligent Head of Marketing with, as I recall, a degree in French posed a question that with hindsight made me think.
“How many Weetabixes do I have for breakfast?” She also asked a supplementary which was “do I eat my Weetabix when it is still firm or when it has gone soft” .
These are seriously good questions and I easily answered that I have two biscuits, thank you very much, accompanied by a banana (sliced) and upon reflection I tend to eat my Weetabix at the inflection point. ie the point at which it is about to turn from firm to soggy. I’m not sure I could eat it fast enough to have finished the lot before it went soggy but that is by the by.
The notion that some people might eat more (or less) than two biscuits had never occurred to me but is certainly food for thought1.
My question to you, dear reader and before I move on to weightier matters such as the Draft Communications Data Bill Report that was released this morning, is how do you like your Weetabix or do you have an alternative preference for breakfast?
1 sorry – couldn’t resist that one
I have a friend called Ervin Nagy who is a Hungarian concert pianist. I also have 3 sons who all like playing online games. Ervin has branched out into composing music for online games. It’s interesting how trades that have been around for centuries are now being applied in the era or the world wide web.
Ervin comes from Budapest and has a story to tell about how he got into the business. This is a longer than usual blog post but I thought the story worth telling. You can scroll down quickly if you just want to hear the music development mp3s.
Tomorrow I’m off to the Varsity match at Twickers with some lads and, I believe, a lass. Megamug Prize Competition number 3 is simple. What will the combined total of the scores of Oxford and Cambridge be at the end of the game.
In keeping with the rules laid down by my drinking buddies in the Tower in Lincoln when we watch internationals the nearest guess wins but not if the score is higher than your guess. In other words if you guess 33 points and the total is 34 then a person picking 40 points would be the winner. Also if the number has already been used you can’t have it. Entries close at kick-off. My game, my rules.
Good luck.
Mankind is evolving. We are getting taller (and fatter) and our right hands are changing to the shape of our mobile phones. The mobile phone is becoming physically a part of us. We are glued to it.
It is only a matter of time before the bio engineered phone is invented and this will eventually become part of our genetic make up with every new born child having a built in device capable of sending messages and allowing you to talk to people over long distances.
It’s going to be a strange world. One where it will be quite normal to see people holding their empty hand to their faces and taking into it – perhaps in the same way that you or I might hold our hand up to shout to someone in the distance.
Before long we will communicate in instant messages by dictating the note into the palm of your hand and saying “send” (or “go” – whatever you like 🙂 ).
Near Field Communications built into our “hands” will meant that entire brain memory sets could be transferred simply by touching palms with another person. We will have to be careful when shaking hands or giving high fives not to accidentally take on a virus or transfer stuff out that we didn’t want others to see. A mental firewall will be required.
Educating children will be easy, a simple download. Education will evolve to focus on physical and social skills because the academic side of it will all be automated. This will in time solve the obesity problem that developed over the millennia.
Particularly bright kids will get involved in research projects that will solve all conflict, create enduring world peace and finally explore the galaxy spreading the word to far away civilizations that today only exist in the first thousand Star Wars movies.
I expect you’re all wondering what on earth I’m going on about. Me too. I went to the Newark 1 Business Awards last night, and forgot to take my intergalactic communicator. At first I was annoyed with myself. That feeling turned to resignation and then liberation and without twitter/email/facebook/sms I proceeded to spend a very enjoyable evening being witty2 and engaging and attentive and contributing to the overall convivial atmosphere of our table.
My world did not stop. Who needs a mobile phone?
1 in Newark 🙂
2 well I thought I was!
It has been said that when drinking tea from a Timico Megamug you don’t need to add sugar. The drink always comes out perfectly to your taste. These mugs are ideal for having in the house in case you have builders around. Save you a fortune on Tate and Lyle. I don’t know if the same applies for coffee because I don’t drink the instant muck and I like a smaller cup with the percolated stuff.
It is also true that tea never goes cold when served in a Megamug. It’s a magical property that defies the Third Law of the Internet1 and is therefore invaluable for geeks, tweeters and general surfers who spend far too much of their time glued to one connected device or another.
Considering this, today’s competition is simple. To what magical use would you put a Timico Megamug? I refer you to comment #55 from yesterday’s competition for some other ideas. My decision is final though I am happy that people can praise others’ suggestions and so improve someone’s chances of winning.
There could be more than one prize here. If stocks run out we’ll get some more. Simples.
This competition is open to Timico staff and their families, subcontractors, occasional acquaintances, rear admirals, readers of this blog and anyone else that cares to enter including inhabitants of former British colonial territiories and Martians though I might struggle to deliver the mug if won by the latter. It would have to be “winner collects”.
Another great chance to win a Timico Megamug for Christmas. You know it makes sense…
1 The Third Law of the Internet states that a hot drink always goes cold before you have finished it when you are surfing the web
It’s December. The radio is playing Christmassy music. I don’t mind. I quite like Christmassy music as long as it isn’t before December. It’s ok to start thinking about Christmas now. I used to leave it until Christmas Eve until the year when my wife wanted the “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire” board game as a present. Pretty simple really.
Only problem is I left it until 24th December. Could I find it in the shops? Not a chance. I must have tried 10 different shops and ended up buying Who Wants To Be A Millionaire Junior with a book of questions from the grown up game plus a ton of other stuff to try and compensate.
It didn’t work. She was disappointed. I was totally devastated but by then there was nothing I could do other than learn the lesson which was to make sure I didn’t leave the buying of presents until the last moment. Oh boy.
Anyway I was down in the finance department in Newark only to find an amazing Nativity scene. A wonderful array of characters, crafted by the ingenious folk in accounts.
They had held a competition to see who could make the best character. The winner was Diane Davies with her donkey. There were some interesting entries, presented here for your delight, including a Joseph that looked remarkably like a white haired Freddy Mercury plus a baby Jesus who would appear to be into hard core rock. Hey, who knows?
So now we come to the competition of the day. I know I don’t have a competition every day – that just sounded good so I thought I’d say it. The competition is guess the name of the donkey. No Timico staff because they might have already heard it. Answers via comment.
The usual Timico mega-mug as a prize which I guarantee for delivery by Christmas. You could even give it to your nearest and dearest as a present. Or a customer you want to impress. I leave it to you. They would be thrilled.
Yuletide greetings…
On my way in this morning I had to stop off to take this photo. It was a misty morning and the sun was barely visible. V atmospheric.
We are coming up to the winter solstice and despite the short days I actually like this time of year, far more so than January and February. I guess because we are all so busy it takes our mind off the weather1.
Our inbound sales teams have been working their socks off. They take leads from web chats, inbound calls and emails all originating from the Timico website. These are for both existing and new customers. Businesses are trying to dot their “t”s and cross their “i”s2 and get their January communications infrastructure needs in place before Christmas.
The marketing department has also been busy and with the addition of Mitel and Avaya support we now have a pretty full portfolio of Unified Communications products that complement our own hosted service and the IPCortex. As a council member of the Internet Telephony Service Providers Association (ITSPA) I get the odd raised eyebrow from industry colleagues who are by and large purely hosted players. There is an element of snobbery amongst the purist ITSPs. However the needs of the market are diverse and with 20,000 or so business customers we now have something to suit everyone.
“What do you want for Christmas little boy?”
“Oo can I have an IP Office phone system with SIP trunks please Santa?”
“Ho ho ho I’ll get the elves onto it right away”
I wonder how it would go down with our engineers if we asked them to wear elf outfits when visiting customers in the run up to Christmas. We could stick big red noses on all our vans. Probably better not. At this point I should shut up.
In case you’re interested I have asked Santa for a vice for Christmas. At home we have a lot of tent pegs that need straightening and I thought it would come in handy for that. I think I’ve been a good boy so should be ok.
That’s all for now. C ya.
1 It was sub zero in Lincoln over the weekend which was very convenient because we needed to defrost one of our freezers. The freezing cold outside meant that we could do it without worrying about the food defrosting.
2 I know I know 🙂
I dont really know how to put this one across. Part of me wants to talk with a Mehican accent and go around saying things like I keel you Gringo.
But then again part of me thinks I should be talking in a rather suave voice, perhaps with a couple of marbles in my mouth for effect.
Whatever you may think yourselves there is one thing for sure I’m not sure I’d want to kiss any of them. Those moustaches must tickle1 big time.
Anyway well done to James Andrade, Richard Wright, Guy Beales and Simon Brown from Timico for making the effort. They have been raising cash for Prostate Cancer and other men’s health charities. You can donate here. Also well done to our creative genius Scott Wroe for the poster.
1 I should at this point establish the fact that I don’t go around kissing people with moustaches anyway, blokes or otherwise. It’s not my bag though if it is yours that is ok 🙂
It’s a killer out there this afternoon. Minus two. Not a place to find yourself without serious levels of heavy duty protection from the cold. What happened to global warming?
I can’t believe it is the last day of November. the year has flown by once again. Anyway no time to dwell. We are busy here at Timico. Orders need entering if they are to be provisioned before we all go off on our Christmas break.
Stay warm.
A data centre’s a data centre isn’t it? Power, aircon, security and diverse connections in and out of the building? Pick a location and a Tier level – 1,2,3,4 to determine the resiliency and cost. Throw in some green credentials and your uncle’s name is Bob!
Well you could put it like that. You wouldn’t be looking at the whole picture. Before building our Newark data centre we at Timico did a fair bit of market research. We looked at the needs of our customer base and what was available in terms of infrastructure technology that fitted the bill. The latter ranged from getting all the electromechanical bits right and ensuring that the cloud story was absolutely up there. When talking cloud we are talking the connectivity, storage processing and virtualisation infrastructure.
There was one piece of the story that we found compelling. This was how to make sure
I realise that this is of little interest to most of you but I’m having a play with ChromeOS. I have it running on a virtual machine on my Dell laptop. It’s a bit slow but that is going to be because of the VM rather than the OS itself and certainly not due to the lack of bandwidth. Also every now and again it crashes, notionally due to lack of memory.
Initial impressions are good though it’s not perfect. For example in order to try out the online music app it asks you for your credit card info even though the app is free. Apple does this which I hate. I have subsequently found that you can bypass the Apple credit card capture page by not filling any of the fields and clicking “next”. Google won’t let you get away with this which I don’t like.
I have to fill out this form in order for Google to tell me whether the music streaming is “available in my country”. A simple “googling” tells me it is only available in the good ole US of A so it is a bit of a waste of my time and certainly irritating that a global organisation such as Google would have a product that was restricted to that country.
Next I tried the image editor and was a little disappointed to see it had pretty limited editing tools – crop, autofix, contrast and brightness. I need to be able to resize for the web as well as crop. Still it was easy to find a photo to edit. I just stuck one in Google Drive and hey presto it was there online. I use IRFanview on the laptop which doesn’t seem to be available for ChromeOS. There do seem to be lots of photo editing apps in the chrome Web Store though so that is probably ok.
I have a good feeling about ChromeOS. At £229 a Chromebook is not expensive to try out though I do have an issue with having too many gadgets at any one time. I want to play with ChromeOS, Windows8 and Windows8 running on a Nokia Lumia 920 over 4G. It isn’t manageable though to have so many gadgets, especially as you have to sign up for a 24 month 4G contract with EE to lay your hands on the Lumia. My friend Kory raves about the Samsung Chromebook though doesn’t recommend it as a primary system yet.
The general Google ecosystem really is heading in the right direction. I’m building up to a bit of a post about the Google versus Microsoft battle for the desktop with a specific slant on Unified Communications. It will have to wait for another day though. It needs more time.
So long…
We often hear people complaining when it rains – great weather – if you’re a duck. Well it’s stopped raining here in Newark although I understand the river Trent is still running high and I see from Facebook that trains are delayed due to flooding.
It’s bloomin’ cold out though. Staff arriving for work are wrapped up well, scarves around their faces, hands thrust firmly in pockets. It may come as a surprise to many of you that in this freezing cold weather the old “duck” saying has a modern day equivalent which is “great weather – if you’re a data centre”.
Uh? 🙂
All you anglers out there will appreciate this little phishing effort from “Lloyds Bank”. I picked it up from our spam filter – pleasing to see that it works. I do wonder what percentage of recipients of this kind of email actually fall for it.
This one isn’t a bad attempt though as is the nature of these things they have speled departament wrong & the use of grammar isn’t quite how I like it. Should have worked harder for their English GCSE. They might have got a proper job instead of having to resort to crime. The italics are mine.
The inset photo is of me with a phishing rod on the pier at Whitby, Summer 2008 (fwiw – it’s the nearest I could find that had anything to do with the subject).
Dear Customer,
This is an important Lloyds TSB Bank Security Message. We reviewed your account and we suspect that it may have been compromised. Assuring the security of your account and of Lloyds TSB Bank’s Network is our primary concern. Therefore, as a preventive measure, we have temporarily limited your account. Please take the following steps in order to restore your account access and ensure that your account has not been compromised:
1. Please Download the Login Form attached to your e-mail.
2. Login to your Lloyds TSB Bank account and fill in all required information.
3. We will review your activity to confirm that you are the account holder and we will remove any restrictions placed on your online banking account.
If you choose to ignore our request you leave us no choice but to suspend your online account indefinitely.
IMPORTANT NOTICE: You are strictly advised to match your information rightly to avoid service suspension.
Kind regards,
Lloyds TSB Bank Online Security Departament.
Please send us any scam/phishing emails you have received. Please do not reply to this e-mail. Mail sent to this address cannot be answered. For assistance, log in to your Lloyds TSB Online Bank account and choose the “Help” link on any page.
Copyright Lloyds TSB Bank Plc. 2012 – All rights reserved. Email ID # 705
Just browsing through some bits of video left on the cutting room floor after we finished the FTTC case study. Thought a couple or three might be of interest.
The first one was taken with a GoPro camera positioned inside the cabinet filming the door opening and the Openreach engineer coming in to do some work. In this one you can see one of the cameramen filming the cab from the outside.
Bit like the David Attenborough nature stuff where at the end of the programme they show you how they did the filming. Nothing particularly dramatic such as a close encounter with a shark or a yeti. We were however filming outside a school and a very concerned headmaster did come out so see what was going on. He went away though I sensed that he would have been happier if he had shooed us away.
The second film is a short one taken from the outside with the open cabinet so that you can see the workings. No GoPro camera inside this time – obv we had to do multiple takes to get all the different angles in.
The third is one I took of the BT crowd in my conservatory. Of course you only see me in the case study but in actual fact there was a huge support team including the outside catering van, make up artists, continuity, clapperboy, director, producer, personal masseuse etc – you get the drift. I couldn’t fit them all in the conservatory so you get four.
Some of them will be at my Xmas bash so if you are coming to that you will be able to chat with them in person. Not often you get the chance to meet the people behind the movie eh?
Some of you have asked for a video showing the process of the installation. I didn’t get any of that off the production team but I will ask. Bear with…
I’d like you to hold out an arm at full stretch 
with your little finger sticking out. Left or right arm – it doesn’t matter which. In the mid 80s I went to see Bruce Springsteen at Roundhay Park in Leeds. There was an enormous queue of cars coming off the M1 to get there and we eventually had to abandon ours in a side street and walk the rest of the way. When we got to the park it was packed and we were so far from the stage that Bruce was half the height of the fingernail that you see before you, assuming you followed instructions 🙂
Last night at the Rolling Stones concert at the O2 was a different story. Thanks to the 
generosity of O2 we had great tickets – maybe two cricket pitch lengths from the front of the catwalk. Mick Jagger was two or three times the size of that fingernail.
You’ll all have read or heard the reviews already so there’s no need for me to go in to detail. I will say that Mick’s voice was incredible showing no signs of age. Although most of the band looked pretty shrivelled the quality of the entertainment was top notch and we got to see Bill Wyman, Mick Turner and Jeff Beck join them at various stages of the
evening.
The O2 as a venue has to be the best place I’ve been to see a concert. The sound quality is great and it is really easy to pop to the bar to bring drinks back to your seats. We had access to the O2 lounge which meant we could check our coats in and grab a couple of cocktails before the band came on stage. The lounge also has a lift that takes you up to just behind where your seats are. Life is made easy.
The only disappointment of the night was that they didn’t play “Satisfaction”. Apparently
they were running late and hit the hard stop time of 23.00hrs. They were on stage for nigh on 2hours and 30 mins which is good going at the age of seventy.
After the gig we hit the O2 lounge again and just managed to catch the last westbound tube at 23.45. Would have been a bit of a problem had we missed that. There is no way we could have caught a cab with that many people there.
The short tube ride into town was a story in itself. We were crammed in like vacuum packed sardines – not the ordinary tinned variety swimming in tomato sauce. I wanted to take a photo but my phone had run out of juice so a friendly Dutchman named Robert Jan Pabon did the honours and then emailed it to me. The power of communication. Robert was there with his wife Katja. Lovely couple. We got very close, on the tube – there was no choice :). Thanks for the pic Robert. Have a safe trip back to Holland.
The guy in the photo is Dan Cunliffe from O2. Top bloke. You have to hand it to O2. They know how to do business.
It strikes me as I write that the world has changed massively since the Stones started their careers. At the time there would have been no Personal Computers – we are talking almost back to the days of Colossus at Bletchley Park. No mobile phones, no internet. Even the TV probably had only two or three channels (all you need) and was in black and white. All they really had was sex and drugs and rock and roll. Ahh the good old days…
I’ll leave you with the observation that it’s been a weekend of gigs – the Rolling Stones last night preceded by Bellowhead at the Engine Shed in Lincoln on Friday. Bellowhead were fantastic and I urge you to go and see them. I bought their LP – my first vinyl purchase for perhaps 25 years. Apparently it’s coming back into fashion. Get with it you lot.
Thanks again to O2 for a terrific Sunday evening out. Quality.
PS check out the crowd video here.
PPS you can put your arm down now!
Cisco, as you may know, has introduced a new set of professional technical certifications based around the data centre. This is a natural move. Cisco already has Voice, Security, Routing and Switching and Design certification streams and the Data Centre is a big part of its future.
At Timico we use a Cisco data centre fabric with UCS blades running on top of EMC storage. On that infrastructure we run VMware. We also run Microsoft applications, use Cisco at the Edge of the network and Juniper in the core. Most of our ISP server estate is Linux based.
That’s an exciting technology mix. It’s also a lot of areas of specialisation and not only are our engineers often doing training courses but we are always on the lookout for specific talent, especially in the virtualisation world.
Where is this conversation leading. I guess I’m concluding that it will be increasingly the case that our customers will not have the right mix of skills in these technology areas to be able to effectively develop solutions for their own business. The role of an IT department, apart from servicing their own stakeholders, will be more and more strategic focusing on the selection management of their supplier partners.
I’ve just unsubscribed from the UK Trade and Industry mailing list. I think I must have got on it from being at the Global Business Summit at Lancaster House during the Olympics. They need to improve their data base. I’ve just been spammed with an invitation to “Business Hindi for Beginners”.
Previously it was “Meet the Sports and Infrastructure Expert: Russia, Brazil and Israel” and before that it was “Business Japanese for Beginners”. Then it was “Financial, Professional and Business Services Roadshows for the ASEAN region (Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, Philippines and Indonesia)”.
Maybe I’m being ungrateful because I did have a good day at Lancaster House. I guess it underlines the importance of accurate mailing list demographic data. Never mind. They’re gone now.
The scam business continues. Just got what I think was another PPI mis-selling call via automated call to my mobile. The originating number was 07588034908. I was expecting a call and was just trying to figure out if this was it at the same time as answering the phone so I missed the first half sentence. I just caught the words “to claim your compensation press 5” so I hit the cancel button.
This is the first time I have had an automated phone call. I stayed with some friends in the USA once and they never used to take a call at home until the person had started to leave a voice mail so they knew who it was. They got so many automated calls it had become a real nuisance.
It started to get like that here to the point that the ICO has begun to address the problem. It may be that the ICO makes headway but I’d like to bet not. The law is complex with many areas where it is not easy to prove guilt. It is also difficult to know whether you have given permission for your number to be called by accidentally not unchecking a box at some stage of an online registration process. The Telephone Preference Service (TPS) certainly doesn’t seem to be effective.
There is more info on this subject on the ICO website here. It covers unwanted marketing calls, texts and faxes and tells you what is and isn’t allowed and what you should do if you get these unwanted communications.
I just registered the above phone number as the source though often these are pre-pay sims where the operator doesn’t know who the owner is. I rang it back but it is obviously just a machine making outbound calls. If we all register incidents as they happen we may at least make some progress.
The PPI mis-selling compensation industry may not be outside the law but the methods used to drum up leads must surely be pretty borderline.
You find me in a playful mood. This is despite the fact that my rear driver side tyre picked up a nail this morning and I had to divert via Tanvic Tyres in Newark to get the puncture fixed. Tanvic are a customer of ours and did a great job.
They made my wait easy. There was a convenient coffee machine in reception, a PC offering me free access to the internet and the whole job was done for the really good value of £17. Use them.
The only downside was that I had to sit through the Jeremy Kyle Show. You have to like that kind of thing to want to watch it & I felt sorry for the bloke manning the desk, exposed to it day in day out. He didn’t seem to mind. A happy place to work 🙂
Anyway I digress. It feels a little like the Two Ronnies show where Ronnie Corbett told a joke from his chair and continuously got sidetracked. Look it up on YouTube if you are below a certain age. They were funny stories. Classic show. They don’t make them like they used to.
The other great show (while we are digressing) was Morecambe and Wise. They were unmissable. My kids still like to watch them today. A couple of years ago a new friend came to our house for the first time. His name is Ervin Nagy. He is a famous Hungarian Concert pianist believe it or not and he now lives in Lincoln. We showed him the Andre Preview sketch where Eric tries to play Grieg’s Piano Concerto by Grieg. Ervin was in stitches. Their comedy transcended language and culture.
So how does any of this have anything to do with mugs and colo. It doesn’t really. It’s just the preamble to my latest and greatest mug giveaway offer. No competition this time. Just straight talking business.
I am offering a free Timico mug (the photo inset shows the mug with a branded Timico pen which I am also willing to throw in – just ask) to anyone buying colo from us between now and the end of 2012. It doesn’t matter how much colo you buy but it has to be new business. As an added extra I will chuck in a free blog post on a subject of your choice for the first five orders.
The colo will be in our spanking new data centre in Newark. If you want to come and see it let me know and I’ll organise a visit. Maybe you need some DR space or have run out of room in your existing rack or are exploring colocation for the first time. 24×7 manned Network Operation Centre? Look no further. We are the colo kids.
That landing page link includes a phone number to call or a button to press for a chat. Let me know when you have placed an order. I’ll send you the mug and pen and we can chat about the subject of the blog post. It can be on any subject, within reason and decency though you will have to trust me with the final copy. There’s also a mug for anyone referring a customer to us. Again, let me know you have done it.
Just a bit of fun. You know it makes sense 🙂
The great thing about mobile phone cameras is that they give you the opportunity to take spur of the moment photos when you see something nice or fun or interesting. Often I am not quick enough “on the draw”. Yesterday I saw a shop called Clerkenwell Screws Ltd. What a great name I thought. I envisaged a tweet saying “need a screw in Clerkenwell?” with the photo attached. I was on a bus en route to a customer meeting but couldn’t get through my phone security quickly enough (ie tap in my pin number) before we had moved on.
Probably a good job I didn’t get the camera out in time really.
So this afternoon my office filled with a marvelous light and I stood up to look at the sky. What a wonderful sky. I got the camera out and captured the moment – the sun didn’t move as quickly as the bus (though there wasn’t much in it!) The camera technology doesn’t really do the sight justice but I leave you to decide for yourself. The photo is entitled “Clouds over Newark at dusk in November” by Trefor Davies.
Btw you can check out Clerkenwell Screws here. I don’t think they have a website.
Red sky at night shepherd’s delight. That’s all folks…
I’m going to the ITSPA Christmas Dinner on 5th December (2012). Are you? This year it is at Roux at Parliament Square c/o Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, Parliament Square in London.
It’s a great opportunity to network with people in the VoIP/Internet Telephony space and we have Peter Dawe, founder of Pipex1 coming along to do a bit of a talk – amusing anecdotes, incisive views etc.
My one concern with Christmas dinners is that I find turkey to be such a boring meat that it should be reserved for Christmas Day itself, assuming we have to have turkey, and not produced on any other occasion just because Christmas is “just around the corner”. I don’t mind Christmas pud though. I quite like Christmas pud with a bit of brandy butter.
That is all. If you want to come along email [email protected] or call 020 3397 3312.
1 many of you won’t be old enough to remember Pipex 🙂
You will no doubt remember the case of evil villain ACS Law where consumers were bullied into stumping up cash with the threat of being taken to court for online copyright infringement. Victims often had no idea of the legality of what ACS Law was doing or where the burden of proof lay and often found it easier to just pay up rather than fight their case in court.
The spectre of ACS Law has been released from its high security bottle, has morphed into a new disguise and is once more on the prowl for hapless victims. The name of this new ghoul is Golden Eye. Just hearing that name should make you shudder.
Golden Eye are trying, through the courts, to compel Telefonica UK to release personal information about O2 customers so that they can spam them with speculative claims about copyright infringement and perhaps grab a quick settlement fee. Golden Eye are not the copyright owners, but rather hold an ‘enforcement-only’ license with no specific mandate from the 12 other porn studios who they act for.
The Open Rights Group is trying to intervene on behalf of O2 customers. This isn’t about stopping copyright owners pursuing their legal rights although in my mind it is not easy to provide a high enough standard of evidence to prove guilt here. It’s about privacy. The case is currently at the appeal stage because the judge initially did not sanction the handing over of some of the data saying:
“that would be tantamount to the court sanctioning the sale of the intended Defendants’ privacy and data protection rights to the highest bidder. Accordingly, in my judgment, to make such an order would not proportionately and fairly balance the interests of the Other Claimants with the Intended Defendents’ interests.”
Golden Eye apparently takes around 75% of the revenues collected.
There is more detail on the ORG website. I guess the real point of this post is to encourage you you help ORG with their legal costs in pursuing this case by making a donation. In particular if you are an ISP it is in your interest to stop this kind of company coming along and worrying your customers on a speculative basis.
I have made a donation on behalf of Timico and encourage you to follow suit. There is a “donate” button on the ORG site and I repeat the link here.
Today is the quarterly LINX meeting. LINX79. It’s been going for a few years now – you can work out how long yourselves.
These are great meetings. You can learn more in two days here than in the rest of the quarter in between. LINX continues to grow. It in part reflects the growth of the internet but also the fact that LINX some time ago hit a critical mass and is a great place to peer if you provide connectivity to the internet.
LINX has 443 members. Last year the membership grew by 49. So far in 2012 they have had 86 new applications – that’s double the run rate of 2011! Since LINX78 only 3 months ago the peak traffic has grown from 1.431Tbps to 1.538Tbps and connected capacity has grown from 5.958Tb to 6.14Tb. What that is saying that the traffic is continuing to grow over and above the huge peaks we were seeing during the Olympics which themselves drove a significant rise.
For the sake of comparison if your broadband connection gives you 10Mbps (as I recall the UK average is now around 12Mbps) then the 6.14Tb capacity at LINX is about six hundred thousand times faster.
Now to the “funny” bit. I bumped into a neighbour of mine on the platform at Newark Northgate station. Colin McFarlane is an actOr1. He lives round the corner from me. Colin is working on a very interesting project that should hit the streets next year. It has a technical slant that I will talk about sometime in 2013.
You might know Colin as the Police Commissioner in one of the Batman movies or working with Rowan Atkinson in The Thin Blue Line. I’m sure he’s been in other things but not being much of a TV watcher I don’t know them.
Colin was on his way to Paris to record a cartoon voiceover and on his way was stopping off in London to audition for a stage show. He had a wodge of scripts in his hand and asked if I would help him to remember his lines.
Bear in mind we were in the quiet coach. So there I was reading a classic black American script in an American accent whilst Colin performed in the seat in front of me. I could almost hear the audience, breathless in anticipation of what was to come. Being in the quiet coach we could hear a pin drop. Very dramatic!
We finished the script, the rest of the coach applauded (very quietly) 2, the train pulled into Kings Cross and we went our separate ways – he to his audition and me to the TUC centre for LINX79. Colin did tell me the name of the play but I won’t share it in case he decides not to take the part. He is bound to be offered it, natch.
1 I left the capital O there to make sure you got the pronunciation right 🙂
2 Only joking there, they didn’t – I’m sure it was my fault not Colin’s, or maybe we were being suitably quiet
It’s that time of year again – Children in need time. I guess there are always children in need but at least we get our minds focused every now and again and empty our pockets out for the cause.
This time we have cookies. Fabulous cookies baked by the wonderful people that are Kirsty Watt and Leslie Young. The good folk that are the Timico staff responded appropriately.
I offer here before and after scenarios.
The before is what the cookies looked like before they were eaten. The after is what they turned into – a jar of cash.
So this is the deal. Whoever can guess the amount of cash in the pot gets a prize. To give you a clue I asked for a minimum donation of a pound for each cookie.
As usual its a fantastic Timico mug on offer for the nearest right guess. If you get it exactly right I’ll throw in a quality Timico pen 
complete with the Timico Connect Host Manage branding.
Hey, you can’t ask for more than that.
No staff entries allowed for this one as some of them already have a good idea how much we raised.
I’ll give you until close of play Monday to enter.
That’s all…
It’s been a surreal week (starting last Saturday). Monday I chaired a couple of sessions at the annual ISPA conference. Monday night I went to the Albert Hall for the first time.
I am very proud of all my kids. On this occasion it was the turn of number three. I know he reads this blog and I don’t mind if I embarrass him a little by telling him that on Monday night I was massively proud of him.
I was at the Albert Hall for the Schools Prom in which he was performing in local Lincoln youth jazz big band Jazz Vehicle. They are run by an inspirational guy called John Crouch (Mr Crouch) who weaves magic with his musical baton (wand) and has turned them into a national award winning ensemble.
You really need to hear this band to appreciate the quality of their playing. They are fantastic. I sat in the Albert Hall welling up with pride. For my boy it was a life enhancing experience. I am thrilled for him. He is a good boy and deserves his success.
Tuesday morning I had a meeting cancelled but tagged along with my pal Sue Black @Dr_Black to the Grauniad offices because she was recording the Tech Weekly Podcast with Aleks Krotoski. Sue has been instrumental in saving Bletchley Park and importantly the Turing Papers for the nation. Google it.
At the Guardian we bumped in to tech editor @CharlesArthur who mentioned that one 0f the subjects they were covering was 4G and I was invited to stay and participate.
That night I went to dinner with Dario Talmesio, Principal Analyst at Informa covering the European mobile operator market. Very interesting and knowledgeable guy. We ended up at the Phoenix Artist Club where I’m holding my Xmas bash. It was open mic night and the place had been taken over by a crowd of gay dentists! You couldn’t make it up!!
Wednesday morning I was at the RAC Club with Dave Hamer to hear former British Ambassador to Washington Sir Michael Sheinwald discuss the US Presidential Elections. The RAC Club is a class act. 30m swimming pool, classy Turkish baths and only £800 a year membership. The problem is the four and a half grand joining fee. Ah well.
Lunch followed with some great company. It finished at 5pm!
Today I’ve been back in the smoke for an ISPA Council meeting. I’m looking forward to a quiet weekend…
Tomorrow is Children In Need Day. Look out for my cookie competition post 🙂
PS if you don’t understand the Hitler reference I’m not going to explain. Sorry!