Linux

I first experienced Linux when I was in university (probably some time in 1999).  Back then, I was using Mandrake (at first) and then Red Hat.

The operating system clearly had potential and I used it exclusively during my Diploma in Computer Science year.

However, my interest waned when I started working as I had no ongoing need for it and it was far from being a productive desktop operating system at the time. Things changed last week.

When I was away in Ludlow, my brother called me to tell me his computer would no longer boot up. I suspect his hard disk is dead. He'd obviously been listening to me as he had backed up a lot of his work prior to the failure - but not all. In any case, restoring everything to a new disk (if that is, indeed, the problem) will be a pain for him.

It reminded me that I really do need to get smarter about backups for myself. My work laptop is configured to backup its data to TSM but, for convenience, I keep personal stuff on there, too, and I explicitly ensure that data is not backed up to the central server (it may be acceptable to keep legally acquired music on the laptop, for example, but it wouldn't be reasonable to expect the company to pay for storage to back it up!)

So, during my week off, I have been investigating options.  I considered true network-attached storage devices (e.g. see this PCPro review). I also considered a cheap and cheerful solution from Maplin. Unfortunately, the Maplin device doesn't seem to take modern SATA drives, which is all I seem to be able to find in local shops and the devices in PCPro are very expensive.

I then remembered there is an old desktop PC sitting in the cupboard.

A ha!

A few hours later, Ubuntu Linux is installed, I've installed and configured Samba and all the laptops in the flat now have a Z: drive mapped to a user account on the Linux box.  We can now just use Windows XP's backup software to do what we need.  Result!

(Not quite... SMB is flaky and a single 15Gb backup was never going to work... so I had to break the initial images into smaller chunks). That done, however, the incrementals should be relatively painless.

Who'd have thought it... I do have room for Linux in my life.

Ludlow

I blogged at the end of last year about the miracle of the UK train ticketing system and how I snapped up first class tickets for little more than standard. The reason for buying them was so a group of us could go away for New Year.

It was a very relaxing, enjoyable weekend - even including a long walk in the country in driving rain.  I avoided getting into any arguments about politics (which is always a good thing.... I think most of my friends know where I stand now and have stopped trying to bait me :-)   ).

Several of the party came down with a nasty stomach bug, including the chef for our meal on New Year's Eve.  To his credit, he completed the preparation of the entire meal and only let the (rather unpleasant) symptoms overwhelm him once the meal was ready.

Even more impressively, he didn't infect anybody else.  Phew :-)

Bow Creek Ecology Park

I visited Bow Creek Ecology Park yesterday. I had been meaning to go for agest (after hearing about it from Diamond Geezer).

It was pleasantly laid out and lines of the DLR Beckton extension snaking through (and over) made for an eerie experience but I was surprised at its size. I suppose I shouldn't have been. I mean: I could have just looked at a map beforehand! But still...

I think it would probably make for a nice afternoon out in the summer.

ADSL Update

Attentive readers will know I've been suffering ongoing woes with my ADSL connection: slow downloads, intermittent disconnections, highly variable speeds.

On the day I left London to travel up north to visit my family, my connection was totally broken. It appeared that BT had just disconnected me. They weren't being malicious; it was part of the "fix", apparently.

According to my ISP, they had finally accepted there was a fault and were in the progress of performing a "lift and shift" on me. This isn't quite as unpleasant a procedure as it sounds and is, I understand, the process of disconnecting my line from one connection into their systems and moving it somewhere else.

If my ISP is to be believed, the reason for my multiple-day lack of connection was that they had "lifted" me before a suitable place to "shift" me to was available.

Anyhow, I was away at the time so didn't really care.

Upon my return last night, imagine my delight when my router was in Sync and thinkbroadband was reporting a download rate of over 5Mbps. Joy of joys!

I'm going to give it another day and, if it's still working, will call my ISP, thank them and tell them they can close the ticket.

Christmas

I am in Liverpool (visiting my parents and siblings) and have deliberately not brought my laptop home with me. Therefore, I am cut off both from my work email and from my feed reader. I thought it would be more painful than it is. Logging onto the computer without having a list of articles pre-downloaded for reading is a strange experience, though.

We bought my father a laptop for his birthday (which is tomorrow) and I have set up a wireless network for them so he can print and surf the web from downstairs.

So far, I have also avoided getting into any heated political arguments. I thought I was going to explode today when I read one of the most hypocritical passages ever seen in an article (in The Independent - where else). I managed to contain myself, however, and took my mother's advice. I've sent them a letter. That'll sort them out...

Virgin Trains

I have unexpected news to relate: I travelled on Virgin Trains on Friday 22 December and they didn't suck. Indeed, the journey was swift, comfortable, pleasant and punctual. Given the number of passengers wanting to travel before Christmas and the extra load thanks to problems at the airport, I think they deserve a round of applause.... well done Virgin!

Jingle Cats

Yes... I know.... linking to YouTube videos is soooo last year. But sometimes one just can't help oneself...

 

http://timworstall.typepad.com/timworstall/2006/12/jingle_cats.html

Tipping Etiquette

Readers, your help with a dilemma, please.

The development I live in has staff (building manager, three regular porters, groundsman, two cleaners). They're friendly, have been very welcoming and are very helpful.

What is the etiquette for tipping at Christmas? (Not whether but how much and in what form?)

Any rules-of-thumb?

Wireless USB

Please can somebody implement this idea for me?

I do most of my work and web surfing and blog reading from my laptop. Plugging in USB devices (memory sticks, printers, iPod) is a pain in the neck.

I want to have a device with several USB ports and with ethernet or wireless connectivity. I want it to work such that when I attach a USB device, it communicates with my laptop and provides the illusion that the device has been inserted directly into the laptop.

Let's call this imaginary device a Wireless USB hub.

Typical use-cases would be:

• iPod docking station permanently plugged into this Wireless USB hub. When the iPod is plugged into the docking station, the Wireless USB hub would communicate with my computer, which would believe the iPod was plugged directly in, and iTunes would kick into action and synchronise my music
• My printer would be permanently plugged into the Wireless USB hub. My computer therefore thinks the printer is directly attached. I can therefore print wirelessly.  (Note that Apple's AirPort Express offers this limited use case and does it quite well).

At a conceptual level, this shouldn't be too hard to implement...  Let's imagine a naive implementation of USB Plug'n'Play functionality in the operating system.  You insert a USB device and, after some magic, a function (in reality, probably lots of functions) are called on the operating system by the appropriate driver(s). The operating system may return results or perhaps invoke some callbacks or do some asynchronous magic.  The usual. A similar thing will happen once the device is fully recognised and is in use. 

The trick is to intercept these calls and fire them over the network to software performing the "mirror-image" functionality on the other side. And vice-versa, of course.

Now, I can envisage problems with latency, throughput and perhaps even mangement of state. But nothing that isn't insurmountable.

The reason I'm confident is that it appears somebody has already done it:

http://www.digi.com/products/usb/anywhereusb.jsp

But it seems this solution is focussed very much at the corporate market and costs more than I want to pay. I've emailed to ask if they have a consumer version. If not, they should do!

ADSL progress

It appears that this is the week of ADSL positivity. First, Andrew reports that PlusNet are sucking less than they once did. And now, I can exclusively reveal that there is progress on my broadband, too.

After taking 54 hours to update a "flag" on my record to allow my ISP to book an appointment, BT finally decided that sending an engineer round might be a reasonable way to determine where the error on my line was located.

There is, of course, a problem when a problem is intermittent... what do you do if it isn't actually happening when the engineer comes to visit?

This is the dilemma I faced yesterday: my connection had been rock-solid for hours by the time the engineer arrived and was performing pretty well.

Typical...

He plugged in his equipment and got on his mobile to the exchange. The opening conversation wasn't promising... general comments about the lack of any visible problem.  Just as I thought I would be hit with a £50 charge for claiming a fault when none existed, the noise on the line kicked in and the engineer saw what I have been seeing for weeks: the signal to noise ratio collapsed, the router lost its sync and he agreed that something was wrong.

He called me up a few hours later to say that he had gone to the exchange and run the same test there - and had seen the same problem so he believes the problem is with a piece of equipment in the exchange (a "line card"). He has opened a ticket to get it replaced, he says.

So, who knows... perhaps I'll get a stable broadband connection soon...

How exam papers are really marked

Via the ASI blog, an explanation of how exam papers are marked.

http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/2006/12/a_guide_to_grad.html#more

I haven't lost it...

Ben (a regular commenter on this blog) observed when we went round to his for lunch at the weekend that the shortest day of the year (21 December?) is not the same as the day with the latest dawn or earliest sunset (which was a few days ago, apparently).

At work today, somebody linked to an explanation. I didn't get to read it because it started off with an analogy about clocks that made me realise I hadn't done any mathematics for ages.

The example invited the reader to consider a regular analogue clock - one with a big hand and a small hand. The question was: assuming it starts at 12noon, at what time will the hands next line up exactly?

It's clear from inspection that it'll be somewhere shortly after five past one... but when, precisely?

I decided to find out.

After a bit of fiddling about, here is the solution I came up with. What I'm interested in knowing is: is there an easier way?

• Let t be the time since noon in seconds
• Let b(t) be how far the big hand has rotated at time t
• Let s(t) be how far the small hand has rotated at time t

We can see the following:

b(t)=2.pi.t/3600

s(t)= 2.pi.t/(3600*12)

So, when the hands are aligned, they must be at precisely the same angle.

Thus, at alignment, s(b)=b(t)+2.pi.n, where n is an integer.

To see why we need the 2.pi.n term, consider that the big hand may perform several full circles before it aligns with the small hand. Therefore, we have to consider the case where the alignment occurs without any "extra" loops, when the big hand has looped once, when it has looped twice, and so on.

Thus, cancelling where possible, we get

t/3600 = t/(3600*12) + n

Rearranging, we get

t = 12*3600*n/11

For n=0 we get the trivial result.

For n=1 we get t = 3927 3/11, which means the answer to our question is: five past 1, 27 and 3/11 seconds.

So there we have it.

(Actually, now I come to think about it, there are eleven alignments in any given hour 12-hour period, so an appeal to symmetry would yield the same result... i.e. an alignment every 12*3600/11 = 3927 3/11 seconds. Sigh...)

[UPDATE 2006-12-15 15:58. Thanks to Lee for spotting the error... there are not 11 alignments per hour; there are 11 alignments per 12-hour period.]

[UPDATE 2006-12-15 16:01. Talk about pedantic... apparently it is necessary to multiple the numbers by 12 as well as make it clear in the text. Good grief!]

London's Toytown Train Station is suddenly all grown-up

It appears that Marylebone has sprouted two new platforms.

I was there last week and I can't say I noticed them. Where have they hidden them?!

Wireless Router Configuration Misery

The ongoing ADSL saga took a new twist yesterday evening. In addition to the ADSL side of things continuing its flakiness, the router decided to start playing up: it started freezing spontaneously.

The last time it did this, I traced it back to MSN Messenger - the D-Link 604+ firmware couldn't deal with it.

This time, however, I could find nothing to correlate the router's hangs with. The problem became worse and worse as the evening progressed (last night was a night in, after a late night on Friday).  I turned the router off before going to bed in case the problem was caused by overheating. No such luck: it froze within five minutes of turning it back on.

And so, this afternoon, after lunch with friends in Soho (at The Endurance... the best roast pork I've ever had in a pub... highly recommended), I popped over to PC World on Tottenham Court Road to pick up a new router. I had pre-ordered it this morning and, thanks for the "collect at store" system was able to get a 20% discount on the in-store price (meaning I paid less than most other online retailers were showing once you took into account delivery), was able to get it home today (no waiting for deliveries) and was ushered to the front of the (ten-long) queue to pay for it. Result!

Or so I thought...

I have just spent two hours of my life that I will never get back trying to set it up :-(

It all went so well to start with... it took less than sixty seconds to get it connected to the internet and to surf the web via ethernet. Getting the wireless set up, however, was a whole different proposition.

My first mistake was trying silently to "swap it out" so that the systems that relied on the old router (two laptops and my Apple Airport Express) wouldn't even spot the difference.

This meant enabling 128-bit WEP encryption.

One of the laptops connected just fine - which gave me confidence that I had configured it correctly. Sadly, laptop #2 and the Airport refused to connect. 

Laptop #2 could see the router and was able to try to connect. Sadly, it never got past the "obtaining IP address" phase... the router would just not serve an IP address.

Utterly maddening.

I'll spare you the details of the various things I tried to get it to work.

In the end, I gave up on my clever-clever attempt to switch the routers seamlessly and reverted to the more reliable approach of getting the basics working before trying to get clever.

It goes without saying that turning off the WEP security on the router and all the clients fixed the problems immediately.

Once this was done, I went back and turned security back on - but opted for the superior WPA (which my previous router didn't support). Updating the clients one-by-one resulted in a gratifyingly positive result.

An initial review of the evidence led me to believe that the router (a Belkin F5D7633uk4A) had a defect in its WEP support. Sadly, I think the problem is more subtle than that: the algorithm it (and the software on the first laptop) used to convert a text-string to a hex-string for the WEP password was different to the algorithm the Airport and Windows uses. How utterly stupid :-(

Is this really true?

Via Tim Worstall, I learn of a company (which employs tens of staff) that will shortly be put out of business as a result of a chain of events stemming from an inspector "misinterpreting" a form.

The article really does reward reading.

I'm not sure what's more scary: the prospect of having to fight such a faceless, intransigent bureaucracy or the thought that one's government would ever stoop so low as to pass a law designed solely to put a law-abiding, compliant employer out of business.

Chilling.

Important Magnet Update

Attentive readers will remember that I dropped my keys down the lift shaft last week.

This is the offending gap:

Since the day of disaster, I have made some progress.

On Wednesday, my friend Ben lent me a magnet that he had extracted from an old hard drive (don't ask). Thanks to how it was packaged, it had the valuable property of providing a strong magnetic pull along one plane, with far less magnetism in other directions. This gave me confidence I would be able to lower it down the lift shaft without it sticking to the sides.

This is the magnet:

The magnet is hidden between the two triangular-shaped pieces of shiny metal.

Full of confidence, I tried to use the magnet on Thursday evening. Unfortunately, even given its casing, it still had too much of a tendency to stick to the sides of the lift shaft and I didn't want to get it jammed.

I was ready to give up.

On Friday, I joined a conference call where I was due to talk a client through a project plan for a piece of work I am hoping they will engage us to assist them with.  I was somewhat surprised when the first question I was asked was "have you got your keys back yet?"!

A useful conversation ensued and the questioner, Martin, pointed out the rather obvious (in retrospect) fact that I could stick the magnet on a rigid pole to give myself far more control. Perhaps all was not lost after all!

I couldn't try this out last night as we had friends over for drinks.  Upon arriving back at home after lunch at a friend's today, however, we stopped to say hello to the porter. By chance, it was the same one that was on duty when I first lost my keys last week.

He amazed us by going into one of the back rooms and bringing out a three-metre long piece of wood, with a screw sticking out of the end that he had obtained for us. Fantastic!

We now had all the pieces we needed... a sufficiently long stick, a magnet and time.

A couple of minutes - and several layers of parcel tape - later, the magnet was adhered to the stick and I was poking it through the gap.

The keys were back in my possession almost immediately.

Success!!!

Upon returning the stick to the porter, he told me he had called Otis during the week and they told him their standard charge for retrieving keys is £150.  Ouch...

So, does anybody have any suggestions on what would be an appropriate way to show my gratitude?

Yoghurt Update

I observed in November last year that excess hygiene in hospitals was probably just as bad as insufficient hygiene.  The problem is that washing hands religiously and removing most bacteria just leaves a huge space for those left behind to multiply.  Given that the ones left behind are likely to be the nasty, hardy, scary ones, this is a problem.

The recommendation, only half humorously, I gave then was for doctors to wash their hands in yoghurt.

Regardless of the solution, whatever we're currently doing still isn't working:  Iain Dale has a story of another patient killed by MRSA, courtesy of the NHS.

Sending letters to the Isle of Man

I asked on one of the internal forums at work and nobody knew the answer to this. Or, rather, nobody answered within 15 minutes of my asking...

So here goes: if I want to send a letter to the Isle of Man (from London), what stamp should I put on it? Is a regular first-class stamp OK?

[UPDATE 2006-12-06 10:31] I was too impatient. A colleague points me here - it seems a first class stamp should do just fine.

Steve Forbes

I had a busy day on Monday. As well as a client meeting in Preston and my nightmare train journeys, I had to be back in London to a deadline in order to make another business meeting.

Following that particular piece of stress (the return train was also delayed), I just had time to whizz across to London's Clubland (that's St James's, not Vauxhall...) to attend a talk being given by Steve Forbes, the Editor-in-Chief of Forbes magazine and two-time candidate for the Republican nominee for president. I went along with Andrew, who has also blogged about it.

Although my primary reason for going was the topic (his argument for the introduction of a flat tax), I must also admit that the chance to hear someone who got pretty close to running for president speak is not something that happens every day.

My mind is not made up on the flat tax and I'm not sure he advanced any arguments I hadn't already heard. However, the evening was still a big success and this was down to his mind-bogglingly large knowledge of economics and politics around the world.

The depth of his knowledge was astounding. He out-argued knowledgeable Brits on subtleties of early-eighties British politics and was able to give wide-ranging answers to questions that compared and contrasted the situations in multiple countries in multiple continents without sounding like he was showing off or trying to make cheap points.

The event itself had an interesting format. The host (from The London Junto) clearly knew a lot of people in the audience (e.g. Eamonn Butler from the ASI) and brought them in from time to time to add their perspective. I didn't warm to that approach at first but, with hindsight, I could see that it added a dimension to the discussion that is lacking when the audience is entirely anonymous.

All in all, an interesting evening.

[EDITED 2006-12-08 09:16. I spelled Eamonn Butler's name incorrectly - now fixed. He has blogged about the event here.

IP addresses by capita

Via the Adam Smith Institute blog, a fantastic diagram showing the distribution of IP addresses around the world, adjusted for population.

http://www.modernlifeisrubbish.co.uk/article/ips-assigned-per-capita

ADSL

I'm sure my readers are more knowledgeable about ADSL than I am so let's see if you can help me out.

In short, the connection is slow and highly variable. Here is a graph of upload and download speeds over the last week:

You will observe that both upstream and downstream speeds are ultra-variable.

I have one telephone socket, which is of the type where the front faceplate can be removed to reveal another, hidden socket behind it.  The back of the faceplate has a plug in it such that when the faceplate is attached, the faceplate is "plugged in" to the "secret" socket.   I believe this socket is known as an "NTE5" socket. Look at "Part III" of this document to see what I'm talking about. (There are no wires attached to the back of my faceplate, which I assume means there are no extension sockets in the flat)

A sample screenshot from my router's "Line Condition" screen shows the following:

You will observe the following:

• The downstream attenuation is high
• The number of errors ("FEC", "CRC", "HEC") that are being dealt with per second is horrific
• The router claims that it is getting a downstream rate of 5120 Kbps. That may well be the speed it has negotiated but the errors are ensuring I get nothing like that.

Here is what I have done so far in an attempt to improve the situation:

• Moved the router from the kitchen into the living room in case there was electrical interference in the kitchen
• Stopped using the dimmer switch in the living room as I read this can cause interference
• Re-routed the power to the router so that it is as far away from the phone line as possible
• Tried disconnecting and powering-off the cordless phone
• Bought a new micro-filter
• Plugged the micro-filter directly into the "secret" phone socket
• Upgraded the router's firmware
• Spoken to the building manager to understand how the phone cable gets into the flat. He says that it is taken from a "distribution point" in the fire escape.

 

I have also spoken to my ISP several times and they have asked BT to check the line several times. BT reports no fault but the ISP agrees that there is a lot of "noise" on the line and that the number of errors is abnormally high.

So, given all this, what do you suggest I do?

My inclination is to request that a BT engineer comes out to do some tests (downside: I'll be charged £50 if they find no fault). 

Can anybody suggest anything else apart from that?

I was wrong... there really *are* excuses I haven't heard before

I should have known my trip to Preston today would be problematic when I heard that the Waterloo and City line was closed due to "excess dust on the platforms".

Yes, really:

Luckily, my route didn't require me to use it but it was clearly a warning sign.

My long distance trip, on Virgin Trains, started out well: by booking ahead I managed to get a first class ticket for less than half the price of a walk-up standard class ticket (and, crucially for expense purposes, for less than all other advance purchases).

However, as soon as we left Crewe, things went very wrong.  Network Rail had decided that having four tracks was excessive and that one was more than sufficient.   So we spent ninety three minutes stationary whilst trains in front of us and trains coming the other way took turns to use the single piece of track.

By the time I arrived at my client, it was time to go home!  I changed my plans to take a later train (I got the ticket office staff to allow it even though my ticket was inflexible) and booked a cab for as late as possible from the client to the station. Even so, this meant that I had far less time with the client than I would have liked.

I'm really not sure if there's a lesson in any of this but excuse of "dust on the platforms" is one I'll always remember.  I'm sure there's a poem about this.....  "For the want of a vacuum cleaner...."

We need more magnet shops

No... not kitchen designers but shops that sell magnets.

I popped over to see the porters this afternoon because a micro-filter I ordered on Wednesday evening hadn't arrived and I was wondering if they had signed for it but forgotten to tell me (they hadn't; it just hasn't arrived yet).

As I stepped out of the lift on the way back to the flat, my keys fell out of my hands, slipped through the gap and landed in the pit at the bottom of the lift shaft.  ARGHHH!!!! 

This is not an immediate problem (I'm using the spare access fob and keys now) but it's a pain in the neck.  I returned to the porters and asked if they had access to the lift shaft. Unsurprisingly, only the lift maintenance company do and Otis - get this - did their annual inspection yesterday. So only 364 days to go until they return :-(

Now I am not the kind of person to give in and if Otis can't help me then I'll help myself.

So, let's consider the facts:

• The keys are at the bottom of the lift shaft, which is about two metres lower than the ground floor.
• The gap through which they fell is about three centimetres wide
• I have no access to the pit
• An analysis of the spare set of keys suggests that neither they nor the entry fob are magnetic.
• The key ring may be magnetic (the spare set's key ring is but I changed the key ring on the stranded set which means I don't know for sure)
• If I shine a torch through the gap, I can see the keys directly below. Apart from the keys, all I can see is some dust and lots of red elastic bands.... Tsk, tsk Royal Mail.

So, what are my options?

• Lower a long, thin stick with a hook on the end through the gap and attempt to capture the keys.
• Problem: I may push the keys further out of reach
• Lower a long, thin stick with glue on the end and attempt to get the keys to stick to it
• Problem: knowing my luck, I'll end up gluing the stick to the side of the lift and or sealing the doors shut or something
• Lower a long, thin stick with molten wax on the end and touch it to the keys. Wait for the wax to set before lifting them out
• Problem: actually, this may not be as foolish as it sounds...
• The wax idea but with jelly
• Problem: I don't have any jelly, silly
• Lower a long, thin stick with double-sided sticky tape on the end. Attempt to capture the keys.
• I'll probaby capture the dust long before I capture any keys.
• Lower a magnet on a string. Capture the keys. Reel them in

Given the options, it strikes me that the magnet approach is best.

And this is where I am tearing my hair out... I can't find one for love or money!!!

I started by searching the flat:

• There is one in each of my nice speakers. I don't want to ruin my nice speakers.
• There is one in my guitar's practise amp (aside: what role is "practise" playing in that sentence? Is it a verb? An adjective? I do hope I shouldn't have spelled it with a 'c'). I don't want to break my amplifier.
• There are three magnets in the bathroom cabinet. I tried prising one out with a knife. I almost cut off my finger :-(  
• I thought about wrapping some metal-cored garden twine around a screwdriver and plugging it into the mains as a make-shift electromagnet before deciding against and realising that I couldn't remember whether an electromagnet needed AC or DC.

Realising that there were no useable magnets at home, I walked to Canary Wharf. The staff at Robert Dyas couldn't help. Waitrose had none. Neither did Tesco or Marks and Spencer or Boots or anyone else. Arghhh!

So, readers, I implore the entrepreneurial amongst you: open a magnet shop. For the love of all that is decent in this world, we need more magnet shops! 

New British Airways tail-fin design

Guido reveals all.

"Signal Systems Failure"

I'm sure there must be an industry for producing new excuses for poor service.

The Central Line was messed up last week because of a fun problem:

"the loading of new computer software containing London Underground's revised timetabling information caused a total breakdown of the systems at the start of service"

Rather than describe this as a "signalling problem" or "signal failure" (the usual excuses when signalling is implicated in train delays), London Underground used the phrase: "Signalling Systems Failure".

As I'm sure you will agree, this sounds far more serious and special than a routine signalling "problem".

So special, in fact, that like a highly contagious virus, the concept has spread far and wide.  It started to afflict the Circle and District line earlier this week (I heard delays on those lines attributed to it on my way home from work on Monday).  The excuse has now evolved further and has infected those who explain delays on our main lines.

According to the BBC,

"Thousands of rail passengers were stranded in London because of a signalling problem.

Services from St Pancras to the East Midlands were cancelled on Wednesday evening because of a systems failure in the Luton area."

They've tried to be clever and have separated the phrase "systems failure" from the word "signal" but we know what game they're playing...

Quite astonishing.   I'm quite sure we'll see statistics in a few months showing how routine "signalling problems" showed a sharp decline in the autumn, with a footnote in the report commenting on how some extraordinary "systems failures" occurred but shouldn't be counted as they were so special.

Watch this space...

What would you do?

Via Tim Worstall, Jackie Danicki is seeking help identifying somebody she claims assaulted her last week.

As I read her post, I couldn't help wondering what I would have done had I been on the same carriage as her.

I would like to think I'd have intervened to help. However, I suspect I'd have hesitated.  I'd be interested to know what my readers would have done had they been in that carriage....

Money for old phones

Chris will be so proud of me.

I'm blogging about recycling and the environment and stuff.

You see.... if you dig out all the old mobile phones in your cupboards and drawers and go to this website, they'll send you a jiffy-bag. You stick your phones in the bag, send the bag to them and then they give you free money.

That's the kind of recycling I can put up with :-)

www.envirofone.com

ADSL Pain

I live less than 0.7miles from my local telephone exchange. I pay my ISP for an "ADSL Max" service. This service promises "up to" 8Mbps connectivity. I understand that "up to" does not mean "at least" and it does not mean "close to" and it does not mean "around". But, surely, it doesn't mean "1.5Mbps on a good day and 300Kbps on a bad day?"

I'm currently on hold to my ISP.... I wonder what they will say.....

[Update 2006-11-28 10:12. After 15 minutes on hold, my ISP took one look at my line configuration and the stats I quoted at them and agreed there was a big problem. Either my filter is bad, there's something extraordinarily noisy in the flat (from an electrical point of view) or there's horrific contention at the exchange. They've raised a ticket with BT to investigate further. Progress, of a sort]

Small Changes, Big Pain

I commented last week that the forthcoming changes to Daylight Savings Time in the US is likely to cause big pain for lots of people.

It turns out that one of the biggest problems around (the updating of the multiple JVMs that everybody has) isn't as bad as I feared.

This article on IBM developerWorks introduces a new tool that can search a machine for IBM JVMs and offer to update them.

Nice.

(Note: the version currently published is a version for early adopters. The best advice is probably to apply patches to existing applications and supported JVMs and then run this tool later on in order to catch any JVMs that were misssed)

Blackfriars Knitting Woman

Do any of my readers walk through the underpass beneath Blackfriars station during the week?

Quite often I see a fairly old woman who sells The Big Issue. She always stands in the same place, has a large collection of soft toys sitting on the ground next to her and always has a knitting project on the go.

She works longer hours than I do (she is there when I go to work and still there, still knitting, when I go home) and she is by far the most meticulous Big Issue retailer I've ever seen.

To my shame, I have never spoken to her (I will). In the meantime, does anybody know her or know her story?

Don't turn out the lights

It appears that some organisation called "Global Action Plan" are conspiring to ruin my view and it's just not on.

At night, the view of the towers at Canary Wharf from the flat is beautiful. It just wouldn't be the same if they turned off the lights.  Carbon emissions be darned!! :-)

Code Injection

When I first head about "Code Injection" I had one of those 'Doh!' moments... why didn't *I* think of that? It's so simple and yet potentially so dangerous.

This site explains that code injection isn't restricted to SQL and UNIX scripts, etc... there's a whole other world of pain waiting to be discovered. Be careful out there....

http://www.site-reference.com/articles/Website-Development/Malicious-Code-Injection-It-s-Not-Just-for-SQL-Anymore.html

[EDIT: 2006-11-22 Minor change to make content reflect wikipedia description]
[EDIT: 2006-11-22 Simon - if you read this, I just looked at the teamroom... I really did blog this before I saw your link!... I'm not trying to pull a "Bruce"]

Casino Royale and Jazz

A very lazy day today.... loads of us headed over to the Princess of Wales in Chalk Farm for lunch and jazz before heading down to the Odeon in Camden to watch the new Bond movie.

I was pleasantly surprised by it.  It was slightly long and I thought they could have done a better job of reinforcing the end-to-end narrative (it felt more like a collection of smaller stories) but these are minor points. It was by far the best Bond film I've seen in ages.

Free Money!

For the last few years I've been very good at being one of those annoying people in shops who gives exact change or who hands over £10.19 when purchasing something for £2.19 (it never fails to confuse the cashiers). This means that low-value coins (1p, 2p, 5p) don't build up in my pocket.

However, I've only started doing this recently and I have a big back of coins from years ago.

Yesterday, I solved this problem. I remembered seeing a machine in a supermarket some months ago that promised to convert loose change into "real" money (for a fee) and decided to make us of it. A quick google search turned up a company called Coinstar (www.coinstar.com) and it turned out that my nearest machine was at the Whitechapel Sainsbury's.

I hopped over there (on the tube.... walking from Limehouse to Whitechapel is far too scary a proposition; I'm a wimp).

The market stalls by Whitechapel station were interesting: some good value fruit and veg stalls and lots of people forcefully trying to sell DVDs of the movie "Borat". Given that it is still showing in the cinema, I have to assume these copies were somewhat less than 100% legal.

Regardless, I made my way to Sainsbury's and located the machine.  It was like being a child at the fair again.... so much fun!  I poured my bag of coins onto the mesh container and then used my hands to feed it into the narrow slot.  The sound of clanking and clinking coins filled the store and attracted the attention of pretty much every shopper in the fresh flowers and fruit and veg section.

After further clunking, a voucher popped out and, after the fee, I had turned my dead bag of coins into just over ten pounds. Result!

Milton Friedman is dead

I came late to the Milton Friedman party. A friend recommended I read "Free To Choose" earlier this year and it changed the way I think about a whole array of issues.

I first heard him speak only a few months ago - on one of Russ Roberts' EconTalk PodCasts. It was clear then that he was very frail.

CNN has a piece and Andrew and Tim have also written something.

The Guardian can usually be relied on to produce a mean-spirited take on things and Richard Adams obliges.

Project Definition Workshops

I've been in Warwick today to attend the first portion of a PDW we're running for a client.  I wish I could have stayed longer; the project is fascinating and I enjoy working with their people. It's always good to work with smart, technically astute people who also have a grip on the business side of things.

Health Tip

When intending to catch a train, don't delay leaving a client meeting too late or you'll have to run most of the way. Running from IBM Warwick to Warwick Parkway Station with a heavy laptop bag and a winter coat is not recommeded.

I feel dizzy and the train wasn't on time anyway :-(

The cost of "small" changes

I just received an email to remind me that the United States government made some changes to when Daylight Saving Time begins next year (Link to Californian State page but the principle is the same)

The stated reason is to reduce energy consumption.

However, I wonder if those implementing this change have any idea what a massive cost has been imposed on the world economy?

Just look at a list of the affected IBM software products.

Or the adjustments required by users of Microsoft products.

Or Sun...

The same search for Oracle (changes to dst 2007 site:oracle.com) yields nothing official-looking.  Boy are their customers in for a shock!

And that's just some major software vendors (and Sun... ho ho). We can add in the impact on the countless independent software vendors and businesses around the world with home-grown software. 

Add in the costs of missed meetings, VCRs recording the wrong shows and the effects on cell-phones and car radios and more and you quickly see quite how much work is involved in dealing with this change.

It's good to see that organisations are getting on top of this (well, some of them are...) But I think the true cost will prove to be far higher than anyone would have predicted when passing this change to the law.

[Usual disclaimer: I'm speaking for myself and not my employer. My opinions are my own. I have no idea whether my employer regards this change to DST positively or negatively]

State of the internet...

... and of investment banking regulation.

A colleague on their internal IBM blog linked to a Morgan Stanley report on Web 2.0. It caught my attention because it has Mary Meeker's name on the front of it. My readers may remember her from the first internet bubble...

Anyhow, the slide deck is as interesting as reports of this nature usually are (that is: not particularly) but what caught my eye was the final four pages.

In ultra-small print, there are more disclaimers, disclosures and regulatorily-inspired data points than in the main body of the document itself. I knew the fallout of the dot.com bust had resulted in big impacts but it's only when you see a report like this that you realise quite how many resources are now spent on compliance. Scary stuff.

IBM to buy a bank?

It would appear from the Associated Press that IBM are teaming up with Citigroup to buy a bank!

Quite clearly, I have no inside knowledge of this deal but, if true, it sounds like it could be a great idea. Guangdong Development Bank, it is reported, is financially weak and I it may be the case that its IT systems would benefit from work. Assuming this is so, IBM and a large bank could, together, engineer quite a transformation.

This will be one to watch.