planet.uknot.org

Our broadband network usage hit a new high yesterday as Andy Murray wallopped Juan Carlos Ferrero in straight sets at Wimbledon.  The peak remained at a constant high between 4 and 5pm at which point presumably everyone left the office and watched it at home because the network traffic dropped right off.

My understanding is that whilst an ISP’s network might well have been able to cope with the added traffic levels some problems were caused at  local exchange level where virtual paths were seeing congestion. The virtual path is the backhaul from exchange into the BT network and on to the internet, and in this case to the BBC website. 

BT’s new 21CN network should be better placed to withstand this sort of traffic burst.

Expect another peak when “our Andy” plays in the semi final.  I feel as if I have known him all my life :-).

OK, the title's misleading ;)

Chris Sharp and myself were caught on film for a segment on our local news 'Look North' on overcrowded trains. View the clip here, complete with me mopping my brow in the heat!

(Actually, the train wasn't that overcrowded - there were odd seats everywhere, the most distracting bit was the lass holding the camera who kept shoving her arse in my face.)

Local press: http://www.guardian-series.co.uk/news/wfnews/wfnewsinbrief/4467319.LEYTONSTONE__Art_trail_begins/

Warning: Contains photo of me, and I'm even looking happy.

Spring-cleaning 2009--shush, I know it's summer--and it's time to dispose of more tat. Today's unwanted item is a Sherwood DD-1030 double tape deck, and fifty-odd tapes. Relive the era before MP3s with wow, flutter and dr-pou-s.

The binmen come on Monday, so it'll need claming before then.

I woke this morning to find that National Express have lost the ECML franchise.

I can't say I'm surprised - GNER did a reasonably good job of it and the moment the NXEC franchise took over the service went downhill with more delays (it seemed), fewer trains, less carriages, reduced buffet, no restaurant, and pretty much the entire train subject to phantom 'reserved' tickets meaning if you bought walk-on tickets you ended up standing in a vestibule (or pinching someone else's seat). The last train out of London to Wakefield was at 2030, or if you really pushed it the 2130 might not have been cancelled - useless.

(I took the GNER almost weekly when I worked for CentralNic, more recently I've taken the NXEC when seeing clients and have been shocked how bad it's turned.)

Semantics: apparently this is a 'voluntary move' by National Express - it's not having the franchise 'taken away'. Robert Peston (speaking on Radio 4 right now) seems to agree.

Regardless, from pretty much immediately it's back to British Rail - I bet Bob Crow is in orgasmic throes of ecstasy at the thought.

I would appreciate it if you could pick the nearest option to your preference.

Also if you have any comments regarding frequency, format, or anything else, please leave them!

A week and a half since the last blog entry and I'm still feeling run-down and a bit all-over-the-place. I can't really blame this on 'needing a holiday' now since last week's shenanigans either!

Last week, indeed: a trip to Magaluf for Lee's stag 'do' (pics here). We were pretty well-behaved, got reasonable suntans and worked out by the second day that if we just sat drinking beer wearing false moustaches and Hawaiian shirts we were chick-magnets. I'd rather be a novelty than be totally left alone to be honest but given how young the Magaluf totty was I think we doubled the average age of the place.

While we were over there I went to see DJ Sash! (he of 'Encore Une Fois' fame) playing a set, and got told to "fuck off Dad" by some young lass. Grand - I'm now officially a dad-dancer. Still, Sash seemed like a nice chap and it's given me a bit more of an interest in acquiring a Pioneer CDJ deck.

We travelled Easyjet - the first time I've done a budget airline since the abysmal experience I had with Ryanair in 2003-ish. In spite of initial fears I was pretty impressed with the flight itself; that said we were told nothing of the delay departing from Luton, and the stewards in Palma airport were pretty clueless about how to arrange the passengers for boarding - it looked like he was trying to herd cats. The flights were smooth, with customer-focussed on-board stewards and although the return flight didn't have all the refreshments the cuppa was reasonable. Treat it like a bog-standard bus and it'll be fine.

Back in the UK, my Roland drum pads and Alesis DM5 arrived and we spent some time last night practicing for our next Obvious Pseudonym session on 20th July. We finalised the set-list - there are three new songs of which one needs some radical re-arranging, and the other two probably need a bit of a looking-at so I'll be spending tonight and Wednesday night doing that sort of thing. It's likely we'll still do Disco Sauce and Cheggers on 20th if enough folks ask.

On Thursday we're off seeing Blur in Hyde Park (typically it's at the peak of the current heatwave, something of a pattern since we saw U2 at Twickenham); if they perform anything like their Glastonbury set it'll be fantastic. Meetings in London on Friday (and hopefully time for some photography together with a late afternoon/early evening beer or two with friends, if anyone's about).

I'm really looking forward to Saturday, which will be at least partially spent in the photography pit at London's Pride festival just in front of the stage - hurrah for press passes and Anthony's persistence! Paleday are playing with The Pink Singers, no doubt that'll be a stonking set which you really should catch if you're anywhere nearby. Still not sure who the headliner is but I know Jimmy Somerville, Kele Le Roc and Heather Small are all making an appearance.

Over on the work side, I'm slightly relieved one of the potential projects I was going to be (re)involved with has 'gone away' again (before rumours start, I'm not referring to Fotopic.net as explained in this post). This leaves me enough time to get my teeth into a couple of other new things as well as helping a few friends out. I may be back on the market in October and will probably fancy a change if anyone's hiring for then.

I mentioned in my last post that I'd stuck a 40GB 1.8" Toshiba HDD in my eeePC 901 (it being one of the early models still fitted with the ZIF socket). It's working fine although it does get a bit warm occasionally. Interesting that both the Eeebuntu and Easy Peasy variants of the Ubuntu distribution failed to install correctly (mucking up the grub install), yet the desktop edition of Ubuntu Jaunty has been absolutely flawless. Very pleased with that and gives me the bits of non-free software by default where I'd have to jump over barrels if I'd installed Debian (y'know, unimportant stuff like wireless and LAN drivers!).

Thanks to the presence of the extra codecs, I can also pop Gaydar Radio on while at work - streams just dandy over my Vodafone 3G dongle for all the cheesy dance remixes you can eat! Just plop mplayer http://mp3.gaydarradio.com/high on your command line and Robert's your mother's brother. Huzzah!

So that's it for the moment. Braindump over.

Vodafone has 25% of the UK market, T-Mobile only has 15% but a combined company would have 40% of the market which is way ahead of O2 the current leader with 27%.

This would still require regulatory approval and the other networks would no doubt cry foul play, though Vodafone would be unlikely be considered a monopoly unless their market share rose considerably.

Though this could be seen as a bad thing for the market as competition would be reduced, it would give Vodafone economies of scale as they could improve coverage by merging physical networks and removing duplicate coverage while increasing coverage in areas that are poorly covered now. They could also increase capacity within the network allowing for high speed data services.

T-Mobile (Germany) may not wish to part with the UK arm at the moment as the valuation will be low in the current market conditions.

Apple has followed on Intel's heals and taken a 9.5% stake in UK graphics chip designer Imagination (Intel have a 14% stake).

Intel are keen on leading the Mobile Internet Device (MID) market and have recently made public announcements with Nokia. Apple meanwhile are utilising Imagination's PowerVR chips on the new i{Phone 3GS (they used their older chips in the iPhone 3G and iTouch models). This with their purchase of PA Semi means they could well be developing low power ARM chips and PowerVR cores for new ranges of iPhones/iTouch's coming out next year. They could also utilise the chips in their rumoured tablet which is also expected next year.

If Apple do release a tablet, it looks like they'll ignore the notebook market.

• Watching Hantuchova v Robson, blissfully free from shrieks and grunts #wimbledon #
• A very promising seniors debut from Laura Robson, hopefully she'll have more confidence next year #wimbledon #
• RT @stephenfry: One of my all time heroes Alan Turing was born today 1912! Find out more here: http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk #bpark #
• Tonight there's gonna be a(n iPhone) jailbreak, somewhere in this (unlocked) town! #redsn0w #ultrasn0w #
• iPhone now says "T-Mobile" at top left of screen … ah, sim unlocking is fun! #ultrasn0w #
• Jeff Goldblum death reports sourced from fake news site; if you're at mediafetcher.com change name at start of the URL! #
• BBC News just trotted out their old hackneyed "give us a sense of … " question, can we get some real journalism on the go please? #
• BBC News: "[Michael Jackson's] 50-date tour, which will now of course not happen", really?! #
• RT @demonbaby: If you have any doubt left that Perez Hilton is a worthless shitbag, let me fix that for you: http://twitpic.com/8et2f #
• RT @demonbaby: Show the world you value culture, taste, and intelligence, not mindless hateful garbage: #unfollowperezhilton – RT this! #
• shops on a friday, mental – Photo: http://bkite.com/08VFk #
• BBC on Andy Murray: "An hour and thirty minutes of controlled brilliance" #wimbledon #
• Requesting an invite for Tweetboard Alpha (http://tweetboard.com) by @140ware, for my site: http://neuro.me.uk #

On Friday 26th of June 2009 there was a Michael Jackson Flashmob moonwalk.

It all started on Twitter when Milo Yiannopoulos picked up on a tweet where Rob Manuel of b3ta mentioned that a Michael Jackson flashmob should happen. Milo took it upon himself to make it so.

The flashmob was meant to start at 6, but myself and the lovely Gail Porter arrived at just after 5 to see if we could help out. Gail had retweeted the event to her 14,358 followers.

Though City of London Police weren't too bother, British Transport Police didn't seem to pleased at the thought of hundreds or thousands descending on Liverpool St station. They started taping off the top section of the station and speaking to Milo downstairs it soon became apparent that if any kind of crowd started to gather, they'd start arresting people.

Quick re-arrangements meant relocating outside to Liverpool St and the City of London Police being extremely co-operative (and so unlike earlier G20 events), it was a hot sunny day and many seemed to be "up for it". The sounds system was moved from outside MacDonald's (where a crowd of a couple of hundred people had started to gather) to the opposite side of the street in-front of a tanning salon.

It took a while getting all the kit across (Liverpool St was by now filling up, the Police had blocked access to cars) and suddenly it dawned on everyone that it was actually happening.

Though it's difficult to say how many people were there, it seemed like several thousand (Liverpool St was rammed from the Broadgate end to beyond the station). Milo introduced the event and managed to get 3 Jacko songs in before the Police called it a day. Though the event was meant to be a mass moonwalk, it was a bit packed for much to actually take place.

Everyone seemed to have a great time and special thanks must go to London Speaker Hire for getting the sound system there.

The Europas: Best European / Real World Gadget (EMEA)

Please vote for En-Twyn in the TechCrunch Europas. En-Twyn have designed a mains socket combined with Powerline electronics that is in the process of going to manufacture.

The initial version is based on a UK double gang socket with 2 Ethernet (switched) ports and an LCD display which is used to show the status of the system (i.e. sync, Ethernet activity, link state etc).

More information is available from their TechCrunch entry".

Future versions will carry multiple media types (audio, video, etc) and have an embedded Linux controller allowing Quality of Service and a remotely controllable architechture (including being able to monitor socket power usage and being able to turn off power to the sockets).

Do please vote.

Can I have some sympathy please? On Friday I somehow injured my shin and it really hurts! The lump has gone down now, though.



E2A: nou agrees it looks much worse in the flesh than in the photo. Ow!

• Ladies and Gentlemen, [jwz has] ported Dali Clock to the Palm Pre.
• Phil Hands explains how to do passphrase-less ssh properly.

I am fairly seriously pissed off at the moment.

Every organisation has its own internal politics – it’s just how life is. Some play power games, some want money, some build empires, and some just want to get on with the job. Politics in voluntary organisations can be particularly bad – it’s not that surprising when you get a bunch of people together who all believe passionately enough in a cause to donate that amount of time and effort. It’s the main reason I stopped my work with the First Responders – between the voluntary side and the involvement with the ambulance service, there was just too much politics. Mountain Rescue in this area has traditionally had some interesting politics, but never let it get in the way of the job.

So when Mountain Rescue politics did kick up last week, it caught me by surprise and annoyed me. More than that, it blindsided Sean. As a result he’s now announced that he’s no longer interested in joining the team, which is a shame – I was really looking forward to working with him on jobs and seeing him do well on the team.

Thing is, it’s got me thinking and has got me pretty angry right now. Do I really want to be part of a wider organisation who can treat people like that? I love the job that we do, I love getting in there and doing the job, and I know that 99% of the people in the organisation are there to do the same as I am – get on with rescuing people. But I find myself questioning my membership over the event. I’m sat here at the moment while there’s a rescue going on a few valleys away thinking about my membership and my commitment and other things – my hayfever, my contribution. Hayfever’s stopped me halway out the door today because I realised that if I wandered up a hill with the pollen this thick, I’d be collapsing in a heap of mucus, sneezes and wheezes before I reached the casualty. No drugs can stop that amount of pollen from affecting me.

So my head’s in a mess with a million different thoughts going through it right now. I’m damn well sure however, that I’m not going to let politics or the team come between Sean and I.

Postscript: I toyed with the thought of posting this for a while. I’m aware that several people will read it and feel like I’m airing the organisations dirty laundry in public. However, I feel strongly that since I started this blog that I would comment on the things that I came across that mattered to me, whether positive or not.

More annoying that companies who don’t believe ‘+’ in an email address is valid, are ones that did until their site got redesigned, leaving you unable to log in and having to explain the problem to people that can only read scripts. I’m looking at you, MBNA.

Update:

  CustomerService@MBNA.co.uk
    SMTP error from remote mail server after RCPT TO:
    <CustomerService@MBNA.co.uk>:
    host mbna.co.uk.s7a1.psmtp.com [64.18.6.14]: 554 No
    relaying allowed - psmtp

Update:

From: autoreply@customerservice.mbna.co.uk
Subject: Customer Service Reply

Thank you for replying to this email.

Any emails sent to this inbox are not
responded to. If you have a query about
your account please check your account
details online.

Art exhibition private view went very well! Happy.

Mike was a rock (again! as ever! I am so lucky!)

After our show closed we went to Leytonstone Arts Trail opening party at the Pick 'n' Mix show, which was in the Independent today.

My only regret is that I wasn't able to spend much time with my friends who came - even at Pick 'n' Mix I was talking to local artists / musicians / councillors etc. which meant I didn't chat long with those who had come specially to see me and my work.

More at some point soon - tired and need my bed.

MJ is still dead.

No sign of the second coming.

It has been confirmed he will not be appearing at the O2 Arena for the scheduled dates.

Apparently there is a chippy in Burnley which is holding a job open in the event this is not true, the burger place next door does not have any jobs going, though their chef is getting on a bit now.

(Oh.. other random thought... "A good day to bury bad news"???)

For his friends and family it is a personal tragedy. I can only hope they can come to terms with their loss without excessive pain. For everyone else he was a performer, his works will live on, there will be some who believe the courts got it wrong, but guys deal with it. He was not convicted therefore in the eyes of the law he is innocent, that's it. You can argue that there is a loss in the creative output of the world but there will be other composers and performers who will follow on.

To all the screaming fans, those who just can't help "bursting into tears", feel that their world has ended etc etc.

Get over yourselves.

Please just f*ck off back where you came from and stop clogging up my commute.

No love...

I’m off on rugby tour to South Africa tomorrow so no blog posts until Thursday 2nd April at the very earliest. Not only would I not trust myself with a laptop on tour but I won’t actually have much time to write as we have a very busy schedule.

That isn’t to say though that the blog will be inactive.  On in the sidebar to the right of this post you will see a stream of tweets that will keep people posted re my progress.  Provided there is mobile phone coverage, and I can’t always be sure of that out in the wild, I will keep the updates coming including how I get on in the two matches we are playing.

You might also, if you are going to be watching the Lions v South Africa second test at Loftus Veersfeld on Saturday, keep your eyes open for me in the crowd.  Thanks to all those who have wished me well on this trip and I look forward to telling you all about it in person at some stage this summer.

I’ll post some pics on Facebook when I get back.

Ofcom has decided to withdraw it's intent to auction the 2.6GHz band (part of the IMT-2000 spectrum). Various mobile operators had disputed Ofcom's right to auction the spectrum and had taken them to court (mainly as part of the 900MHz refarming arguments).

Ofcom changed made this decision based on the Government's Digital Britain report, which accepted the recommendations of the independent spectrum broker (ISB) which tied the 2.6GHz auction to the 800MHz auction (which becomes available after the digital switch-over).

This will delay the auction until after 2010.

I appear to have accidentally signed myself up to do a 10km run. Oops. I blame lack of coffee...

I've known I was going for a while, but only finally booked the holiday off work and had it approved last week (unfortunately they're not giving me the time for free like last year. :( ). I'll be there for DebConf proper (ie 23rd until 31st). In the unlikely event anyone else is flying DUB<>MAD my flights are:

2009-07-23 06:00 (DUB) -> 09:30 (MAD) FR 7158
2009-07-31 20:15 (MAD) -> 21:50 (DUB) EI 595

I'm on the 16:25 Talgo from Madrid and then the 09:25 back on the 31st. Looks like I'll have company from the train booking page.

Also I've been doing the first draft of the room allocation. If you're expecting to stay at DebConf organised accommodation you should check your name is on this list with the expected dates, and email rooms@debconf.org if it's not.

T-Mobile are going to launch their second Android phone the HTC MyTouch which to everyone else is the HTC Magic (as sold by Vodafone).

In the US it will cost $199 with a 2 year contract.

Not too exciting really.

Notification under Section 107(6) of the Communications Act 2003 - Airwave Solutions Limited | Ofcom

Airwave Solutions Ltd run the digital mobile network for the emergency services (and other organisations with a public safety remit. Anyone wishing to use Airwave's network must go through Ofcom and demonstrate their public safety element.

Ofcom now wish to amend this so that The London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralmypic Games can utilise the network for the 2012 Olympics.



The consultation closes on 20th July 2009.

Done:
Desk sourced
Flyers arrived
Wine bought and glasses hired
Photos arrived, a few reprints ordered (expected tomorrow am)
Private view invites out
Posters for show and A boards ordered (expected Wednesday)
Received keys to gallery, got them copied

To do:
Mount photos (tomorrow)
Buy padlock for front desk (tomorrow)
Make catalogue for sales (tonight?)
Find somewhere that sells white-tack and test it for strength (asap! everywhere's out!)
Edit videos to make a time lapse film (tomorrow)
Create "flags" for map of the route from cocktail sticks and labels (tomorrow)
Start taking everything to gallery and setting up (Wed onwards)

Then on Friday - chill drinks, wash hired glasses and take along to party.

We WILL be ready... somehow!

Here we go again.  Wimbledon.  I never used to be a Wimbledon watcher but since taking my tennis playing son to see the tournament last year (Centre Court, Murray, Nadal, Venus Williams) I have changed my attitude.

This year I’m watching it from the office.  The web traffic that is.  At 13.00 hrs our network usage shot up and looking at it it is a mix of video streams that is making it happen. The same happened during Obama’s inaugural speech, this year’s budget speech (why?!) and last summer’s Olympics.

The effect is a bit like half time at an FA Cup Final when half the country gets up to make a cup of tea.  The other half of course gets up to go to the fridge to get another beer. Those kettles all going on at the same time ramps up the demand on the electricity network just like Roger Federer does for the internet.

I’m not really a football fan myself.  Come on Andy Murray!

Following my post on our fibre installation earlier in June The build of our new datacentre module in Newark continues.

Datacentres, whilst giving the appearance of being high tech,  are all about wiring and plumbing.  So I’m getting in the cable monkeys and plumbers.

Couple of photos below give you a feel for part of the process. Underfloor power connections to each rack space and a coil of fibre that might look innocuous but will carry the lifeblood of the datacentre, ie the data itself.

It makes me think of the pony express, or the old stage post mail system and how things have changed. I’m getting romantic in my old age.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Of course it will be tidied up a bit before we open for business.

• catching up with The Apprentice, managed to not watch any after wk 4, and have also managed to avoid the result! no spoilers! #apprentice #
• downloading iPhone OS 3.0 and updating now … one of these days apple will release at 00:00 PDT rather than waiting til 10-11am #iphone #
• Just listened to Sleeper, "Smart" for the first time in ages. Took a minute reminiscing about buying it on tape from Byres Road Fopp in 1995 #
• Rapidly coming to the conclusion that the world doesn't want me to succeed in life. Hopefully some Crystal Method will assuage that feeling. #
• Barr's Limeade helping. #
• Corona cerveza para la ganar #
• You never quite twig how fast your network is until you have to rely on a secondary local nameserver while your primary is down … #
• iTunes DJ is now playing Röyksopp for me. All is well with the world again. And, melt. *sigh* #
• RT @capn_b: LOL: "Apple is kind of like scientology but with gadgets." #
• Talkin' sweet about nothin'. Cookie, I think you're TAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAME! TAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAME! #pixies #
• Some say he knows Megan Fox's mobile number, and that he eats polystyrene and superglue for lunch. All we know is, he's called #thestig #
• The Guardian is using crowdsourcing to rattle through over 262000 pages of MPs expenses and make them readable/searchable http://is.gd/15sQl #
• finally getting round to listening to the new ISIHAC http://is.gd/16fj4 … liking stephen fry so far, but missing humph terribly #
• RT @jenny_ricks: Worst Daily Mail poll ever. Vote yes to skew the results and pass it on http://bit.ly/16uEaD #
• We're up to 93% YES 7% NO on the Daily Mail gipsies NHS poll http://bit.ly/w4b6Q … go on, VOTE YES to wind up Mail readers #voteyes #
• It's 10 to 5. I want beer. #
• Gipsie poll dead but: RT @Glinner: Vote NO and tell the Daily Mail we love our wheelie bins, even if we actually don't! http://bit.ly/1kFYK #
• Setanta loses Premiership TV rights http://is.gd/16FYT Setanta can't have much life left in them now; I wonder where the SPL rights will go? #
• Some say when his identity is almost revealed, he morphs into another human form to avoid detection. All we know is, he's called #thestig #
• Nom nom – Photo: http://bkite.com/08Iqn #
• Settling in to watch Lethal Weapon on itv1 … ooh, it's the director's cut! #
• Hmm, just realised, not the director's cut of Lethal Weapon. At least it's not cut, eg "let's get the funsters", "this is a real firing gun" #
• my nana just told me to shave my beard off because it's going grey … #
• Jeremy Clarkson has just given us a hint of what's to come this series on #topgear and holy crap it looks all kinds of awesome! #
• OUT OF MY WAY, FRENCHIST! #topgear #
• It's a shame Jalopnik outed the apparent identity of #thestig on #topgear instead of just shutting up for a few days #
• Over at my folks, using iplayer to watch top gear cos they're watching some guff on bbc 1 – Photo: http://bkite.com/08KVv #
• Saw that ending coming … roll on next week's show at any rate! Top stuff! #thestig #topgear #

This game should have been the one that made me forget about the likes of the early Splinter Cells and Thief III. This game was born in the era of the expectation of hideously overpowered graphics cards, tons of memory, multiple cores and physics processing units.

Graphically, it is quite good. And what is used to distract you from merely "quite good" graphics is piss-poor linear game play, poor controls, sterile environments and, in fairness, excellent voice acting.

This game has everything wrong with it that you would expect when a moderately successful console games is crammed onto the PC platform by people who've never played any of the sneak'em'up greats. Such developers should be forced to complete Metal Gear Solid, all of the Splinter Cells and all of the Thief series before getting their hands on what should have been the best stealth FPS ever to grace a personal computer.

"Execute over 50 different brutal maneuvers to deliver a quick and silent death to enemy soldiers" the marketing says. What that says to me is I have 50 different brutal maneuvers at my fingertips, choice mine to dispatch an enemy. Bollocks. What in practice happens is you sneak up behind your unsuspecting target and click the left mouse button. That's it.

At this point it can go two ways. 1) You take out the enemy and have time to drag to corpse into the shadows. Jolly good. However what happens depressingly frequently is option 2. Our heroine turns into Miss Stabby and goes to town. Definitely killing the target kraut but taking so long about it that you get caught by the next chap walking along. Repeat.

Then you get moments of sheer comedy:

Kraut #1) Deary me, look at this puddle with the electric cable running through it!
Kraut #2) Mein Fuhrer! Someone could electrocute themselves!
Kraut #1) Ja! Let us hope no-one throws that big switch over there while we are walking through it.
Kraut #2) Nein! That would be awful!

Krauts 1 & 2 proceed to splash about in the water.

Don't buy this game, I did, and it's rubbish.

Have a poster!



Actually, we will be open on Saturdays until 6pm.

Recently BitFolk has been accused of overcharging for disk space.

In general I don’t try to defend BitFolk’s price-point - the unmanaged VPS hosting market is flooded and it is very easy to find stuff hosted out of the US or continental Europe for just a couple of pounds per month. Clearly I am not going to try to compete on price alone, yet BitFolk does sit firmly towards the cheap end which I feel is fair given that there isn’t a 24-hour team of support persons in nice business premises.

This particular complaint however seems to stem from the perception that “disk is cheap.” Well, yes, it is fairly cheap. That’s why we sell it at the “fairly cheap” price of £6/5GiB/year (10p/GiB/month), with no VAT added on top. Just because you can buy a 1.5T consumer hard drive for about 9p a gigabyte doesn’t mean that you should expect to find 1GiB of usable disk space on a server in a decent datacentre for anywhere close to that figure!

I try to keep costs down by using a configuration based around 4×7.2kRPM 3.5″ SATA disks with hardware RAID. I would dearly love to have a nice shared storage solution with 10 or 15kRPM 2.5″ SAS disks, or even to use them as local storage. Lack of disk I/O is the limiting factor for how many customers I can put on one machine. The problem is that the storage costs would be around 10 times as much and the target market (mostly people looking for cheap personal hosting) will not pay for it. They don’t understand why it would be desirable; for many of them it may not even be necessary since if they do only a little I/O they get the same performance either way.

So okay, if we resign ourselves to 4×7.2kRPM SATA disks and a RAID card as local storage, the next way to keep the price down would be to buy the disks with the sweet spot for price per gigabyte. At the moment that would be 1T. The problem now is that I’d end up with roughly twice as much disk space as I could ever sell on each server. I don’t get to keep adding customers until the disk space runs out — the I/O operations per second run out first. At the moment I can sell around 700GiB per server.

I thought I would not need to explain that 2×500G in a stripe with no redundancy would be insane, but apparently not, because I am told that some people “don’t need RAID.” I have to disagree, and I feel the ~49 or so other people on the server would also disagree when the first disk failure sees their service down and all their data lost (apart from the ones who have a backup strategy, right? No, really, why are you laughing?). Let’s not go there.

If you recall, I/O is what runs out first. So any sort of RAID-5 configuration is a bad idea because of the read-modify-write problem. The minimum number of disks and the most sensible RAID level then is a 4-disk RAID-10. Four 500G Western Digital Green Power drives will set me back around £165+VAT. You’re looking at around a further £225+VAT for a 3ware 9650 RAID controller. After the manufacturer lies are accounted for and an operating system is installed, there’s going to be about 930GiB of usable space left. We’re now at £390 for the lot, or 41p/GiB of usable space. Excluding VAT.

By the way, I am repeatedly told that Linux software RAID is good enough and I needn’t bother with hardware RAID (even a cheapy one like 3ware). I started off using Linux software RAID and still have one server using it, but that’s due for decommissioning next month. In general it does perform well enough. Unfortunately, hard drives accumulate errors and the only way to find them is to read the disks looking for them. The code for doing so on software RAID needs to be in the main operating system and the Linux mdadm package in Debian (and presumably elsewhere) handles it by means of a cron job that runs once a month to verify all the disks. Because it’s running on the host all the data has to go through the OS and while the machines are under moderate write load I have found that this verify process will take several days to complete and will impact I/O performance. In short it’s actually more cost effective to spend more on a RAID controller and put more customers on one machine.

Now consider the power usage. More than 60% of BitFolk’s recurring hosting costs are directly related to power. Disks aren’t huge power draws when compared to the CPU or chipset, but it’s not an inconsiderable extra cost and it’s often overlooked.

We’re already up to 41p/GiB cost price, but you may be thinking that this is no problem since at 10p/GiB/month, 700GiB sold brings in £70 a month, paying for all the disks and RAID controller after about 6 months. The reality is nothing like this. The full price has to be paid up front to get the hardware into service, but it’s going to be months before the server is full of paying customers. And if those customers don’t happen to want any extra disk space, then still around 50% of this capacity will remain unsold. The remaining capacity is not usable when the IOP/s have run out, but it has to be there from the start just in case there is demand. Does 10p/GiB/month start to look more reasonable yet?

If not, maybe you would be better off going to a really big cloud computing vendor who can take advantage of massive economies of scale to really drive the price down for you. Like say, Amazon S3 who will charge you $0.18/GiB/month for storing stuff in Europe. Plus $0.10/GiB/month more to write it and $0.14/GiB/month to read it.

Finally, the entire point of paying for a virtual server is that you don’t need to worry about the hardware. If it breaks, it’s BitFolk that replaces it, hopefully without you even noticing. If you are sitting there thinking “I could buy a 1.5T hard disk for 9p a GB, screw this!” then you just don’t get it. If from the outset you are prepared to manage your own hardware, and your needs justify purchasing an entire machine, then guess what? Don’t buy a virtual server on someone else’s hardware! Buy your own hardware that is set up exactly how you want (and please feel free to have no RAID and host it under your bed). With this mindset, pretty much every “* as a Service” product is going to look expensive to you because you have missed the point.

When given a choice I'd prefer to be dealing with BT support than Demon's...

This past week I restored another classic piece of technology from the 1960s: a Primus No. 5 camping stove that I picked up for £10.



See this article for the full story, with lots of pictures and a link to a video that will probably make for extremely dull viewing if you're not interested in old stoves! ;)

Being on a budget, I ordered my prints for the show from Photobox this time, not Fotopic.

I like the fact that Photobox generally have them with you 48 hours from ordering, and that it's reliable in that sense; I don't need the worry about when the photos will turn up.

On the other hand, some of them are far too dark. A few photos were meant to be dark - some grungy underpasses - and that's fine. But one turned up today that is meant to show an orange gasometer with a green field in front of it - and it was all very dark, no vibrant colours at all.

So I will complain.

Now I am a bit concerned - do I risk letting them try again, or just go for a refund and go elsewhere for certain pictures?

I need to get them all mounted and into the gallery by Friday lunchtime.

Advice welcome - who do you recommend for being fast AND good?

And so last night we went to see the Pet Shop Boys in Manchester, at the Apollo theatre. This was one of two gigs planned in the UK on the Pandemonium tour celebrating their Brits Lifetime Achievement award together with the release of their latest album Yes.

I don't mind the Apollo as a venue. The sound is usually pretty good (I've seen a few acts there including Kraftwerk and The B-52s), there's a reasonable pub next to where everyone queues, there's designated areas for aisles, and the loos are kept clean. We were standing down near the stage, probably about 3 or 4 rows back (principally thanks to Mel pushing her way through - an expert in this I think, I'm probably just too polite to try that).

The support act was Frankmusik: I'd never even heard of this guy but wasn't impressed. The sound production was horrendous, too bass-heavy and you couldn't really hear any of the keyboard. I suspect it would have been OK-ish if it'd been produced properly yet when I nipped to the loo halfway through the act the gents was full of blokes saying 'this is rotten, wish I'd stayed in the pub'.

The stage itself was, er, minimal. Or at least it looked so - two stacks of white carton boxes, and a little kitchenette-style place for Chris Lowe to stand with his synthesisers. Over the top peeked an Apple studio display, a Moog Voyager and a couple of drum-pad triggers. At the other end of the stage could be glimpsed another keyboard and a trumpet; roadies dressed in white lab coats and white hard-hats milled around occasionally.

And so onto the Pet Shop Boys. The lights dim, two dancers appear, Neil and Chris come out from behind the white cartons wearing coloured boxes on their heads and we're into a bass-heavy remix of What Have I Done To Deserve This?. So far, so typically PSB!

The set list featured the entire range of hits, medleys of soundbites (sometimes odd little bits which were only noticeable by the hardcore fans), some surprises (Two Divided By Zero from the Please album, Do I Have To? which was the B-side of the original Always On My Mind 7" single). An interesting addition was the introduction to ...Zero which directly sampled Kraftwerk's remix track Numbers (latterly from The Mix). In any case, it was a haphazard mix of elements of almost everything they've done, a luxury of having a massive back catalogue - and it worked brilliantly.

The minimal staging didn't last long. During the course of Building A Wall the cartons cascaded down ad-hoc to reveal an even larger back wall, and cartons all over the stage giving the impression of a huge rubble stack. Wow. Chris Lowe's 'kitchenette' lit up in something akin to an up-ended disco dancefloor (or perhaps a massive Rubik's Cube).

One common element of PSB gigs is the dancers, and these didn't disappoint: muscular supple accompaniments to each song, with Jealousy and Go West in particular standing out. The white cartons were used for building, throwing, climbing... everything really, all while projections cast video over the scenes. Costume changes every few songs, silver heart-balloons, and two huge glitter-cannons showering the audience towards the end of It's A Sin (we were picking glitter-strips out of each other's hair and clothes all the way back to the car).

So what didn't happen? Notable by their absence were Where The Streets Have No Name and Paninaro (although the introductory timpani was used to introduce Go West - Chris playing drum pads to trigger all sorts of samples as opposed to just having the keyboard and screen as on past tours). Neil's flambuoyant outfits complemented the scenes (how the heck he switches so fast is a mystery to me), and although Chris came out to join the dancers for a short time, he didn't sing or say anything - not even miked up this time. So no Paninaro.

It was truly an excellent gig, one of the most enjoyable. The only downside was the badly produced bass which spoiled Being Boring for me, although really that hasn't stopped me booking tickets already for the gig at the MEN Arena on 20th December. See you there.

And so last night we went to see the Pet Shop Boys at Manchester Apollo. I'll blog about that in a bit but this is a little more of a grouch, so deserves its own blog entry. Actually no, it's a full-on rant.

PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD PUT YOUR FUCKING CAMERA PHONE DOWN AND WATCH THE GIG YOU PAID A FORTUNE TO COME AND SEE.

I am absolutely sick to the back teeth of paying a fortune for concert tickets to go and watch a band, purely to have some retard in front of me holding his camera phone sky high so I can either watch his arms or see it all through the back of his LCD display. This applies especially to large concert venues with stalls, gigs with lots of visuals, or places where we're all crammed together and dancing.

So, tips for aspiring photographers at gigs, please:

• Remember people are standing behind you - they don't want to see you fiddling with your camera all the way through. They paid just as much as you for a ticket (and may be shorter in stature as well).
• If you do want to take a few photos (which is fine, I do it myself with the Canon G9 occasionally), don't do it throughout the entire gig. At some gigs I get asked to photograph, I'm restricted to a couple of songs where I can take pics then I have to sod off (or at least not get the camera out again) - take the lead from that, the rule's there for a reason.
• Feel free to stand in the aisles, in front of a stairwell, next to a wall, somewhere like that and hold it high if you want - at least you're not pissing anyone off behind you.
• If you're not backed by a wall, aisle, etc. then hold the camera at head height, not a foot and a half above.
• If all else fails and you do want photos, take your pics in the cheering, applause, etc. when there's no major performance going on - folks can't really object to that when they've got their hands in the air cheering!
• Turn the flash off! You will get shit photos with the flash on, probably of the backs of the heads of the two rows in front of you and unless you're an aspiring hairdresser this will not be what you want.
• Likewise they don't want to smell your armpits. It's hot in here, don't make the experience worse.
• Avoid taking video - the sound will be terrible (loud, distorted), the quality will be awful, and the bloke standing behind you will miss an entire song.
• Hey, you might be on a hide into nothing anyway: unless you have brought a reasonable point-n-click your phone photos will be rubbish - blurry, lots of movement.
• The gig photographers will do a better job than you, why not look on Flickr for the event tomorrow morning instead (I found some pics of last night's gig which are lovely)?
• Remember YOU PAID HARD EARNED DOSH TO SEE THE BAND, NOT HOLD YOUR CAMERAPHONE UP.

So, last night I finally said something to the guy in front of me: "'Scuse me feller," says I. "Are we all going to have to watch the gig through your phone screen?" "Er, no. Sorry." he stammered. At least he did shift it, and was suitably embarrassed. It's just thoughtless.

This may strike you as hypocritical considering I profess to be a reasonably competent gig photographer (and get frequent requests from bands to take photos for them). Fair one. However, I try and be careful not to get in the way and I think I do that pretty well (doing stupid things like crouching next to million-decibel speaker stacks, and less stupid things like turning off the LCD) - OK there's been one transgression (knocking a mike stand, thankfully in an almost deserted pub) which I duly beat myself up over for days afterwards but by and large I'm there to get in the way as little as possible.

Ergo, I'm not saying "don't take photos" - I'm saying "don't let it get in the way of other paying customers' enjoyment of the gig."

In other words, just be considerate eh?

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/AM-FM-Radio/

This is of course after they regularly stated there were no plans to turn off analog radio in the same way they're turning off analog TV.

Thus proving again... as if we needed more proof... that politicians are all lying scum.

It’s worth looking at the heroes and villains finalists for this year’s ISPA Awards. The spiel that goes with each is an adequate summary of why they are in the list and needs no further comment from me. The heroes all deserve to win and the villains all deserve to lose.

On balance my vote goes to Stephen Carter for Hero. Whether he will have left a worthwhile legacy with the Digital Britain Report remains to be seen but at least he tried.

As far as Villains go I think they should all be locked up in the big brother house and the winner is the winner, if you know what I mean. Otherwise if I had to vote I’d go for Sarkozy because of the port blockades, air traffic controller strikes etc

Internet Hero

• Billy Bragg and the Featured Artists Coalition - “For recognising publicly that the focus of music companies should be the development of new business models for distributing content online rather than attempting to pass responsibility to ISPs to take action against users”

• Community Broadband Network - “For their relentless pursuit and support for next generation access at grass roots level”

• European Parliament - “For rejecting by a significant majority an amendment to the Telecom Package designed to allow disconnection of users’ Internet connections for alleged copyright infringement without direct judicial oversight”

• Lord Carter - “For his attempt to bring a holistic view to government policy across the communications spectrum”

• Thomas Gensemer - “For showcasing the enormous power of the Internet in leading Barack Obama’s online presidential campaign”

Internet Villain

• Baroness Vadera - “For excluding a number of ISPs and Rights Holders in agreeing a Memorandum of Understanding that was exclusive and ineffective in progressing relations between the two industries”

• European Parliament - “For supporting an amendment to the Telecom Package on cookies which could yet bring the Internet to a standstill”

• President Nicolas Sarkozy - “For his continued commitment to the HADOPI law, which advocates a system of graduated response, despite repeated arguments suggesting the law is disproportionate from a number of important groups including the European Parliament”

• Stephen Conroy and the Australian Government - “For continuing to promote network-level blocking despite significant national and international opposition”

Following the publication of the Digital Britain Report there was a late entry suggestion that Lord Carter might also appear as a Villain with his 50 pence tax on phone lines. This missed the deadline so he stays as just a goodie on the list.

Timico has a table at the ISPAs. Look me up if you are there.

Who's the best ISP for a business DSL line (suitable for accountant). One of the guys in the office has a friend who's narked with Demon over their recent "poor" performance.

This time next week I'll be on a beach in Majorca, a 'stag-do' in honour of my good friend Lee and his upcoming nuptials. I must admit I'm a little nervous - I can't say I've been on many stag nights, and of those I have there's only been two really blotto events and one of those was my own! It's also the first time I've flown Easyjet and reading the media reports of these budget airlines I'm expecting to be stung financially for everything going. I shall treat it as a voyage of adventure, and a much-needed space to have a good solid think about a few things. Lee reckons the wireless might stretch to the beach so there'll probably be updates on the twat-o-tron. S'pose I'd better buy a little suitcase.

So, with a week away I'll need to take the eeePC just in case I need to be 'available' for any work stuff. What's the least sensible thing to do with 4 days to go before we fly out? Ah yes, do a major hardware upgrade on it and reinstall the OS! I've finally got pissed off with the slow speed of the internal SSD and purchased a 40GB 1.8" ZIF disk (since my eeePC 901 is an early model with the ZIF connector still on the motherboard) - all I'm waiting on now is the ZIF cable and then I can do the surgery. Adding to that, Nicky attacked the keyboard with a splash of mustard at the weekend so F10/F11/F12 don't work, preventing me from running Firefox in full-screen mode: a replacement keyboard arrived the other day but I thought I'd do the entire lot at once. Expect swearing from Spain.

We're off to see the Pet Shop Boys in Manchester tonight with Mel (Dan's missus and one of our OP groupies)! I've got high hopes Johnny Marr will turn up, he features quite heavily on the new album; another friend just suggested Bernard Sumner may put in an appearance. Eeeeeeeeeeeeee! (<- Girly squealing)

Work-wise, I've had my contract extended at Saltaire which has given me peace of mind regarding work on my return from holiday; I'm also back in the thick of estate agency online services (more specific details when it's launched), and fettling my own accounts and CRM software. My new Nominet tag got approved meaning I can abstract my domain names from previous business relationships (it must be 10 years since I last had a 'personal' Nominet tag although strictly speaking this is for my own consultancy clients): Nominet do seem to have streamlined the process although their 'registrar exam' thingy was a bit confusing to drive through.

Anyway, beaches and beers next week - it'll be a nice change (even if it's raucous) and of course I'm excited about it, yet I can't see myself getting away without making notes on a few projects and turning things over in my head. I'll guess I'll have to save the real rest and few unbillable days off for France in August.

Stop hitting F5, iPhone OS 3.0 release still hours away?

Apple may release the iPhone OS v3 at 6pm today UK time, the update should also be available as a chargable item for the iPod Touch.

v3 (on the iPhone) should allow MMS, cut and paste, tethering and the background push notification service as well as many new API calls.

Time will tell if Apple have got it right and if sales will match previous iPhone hype and store rushes.

Yesterday afternoon was spent in a state of expectancy waiting for Lord Carters 'Digital Britain' report to be delivered after months of talking, meetings that were cancelled and hundreds of letters from people wanting to feed into what was billed as the first proper review of the UKs digital future. Its a shame it was such a damp squib...

Two funding streams have been identified for the 2Mbps Universal Service Obligation and the longer term Next Generation Access  broadband. The 50 pence per analogue line will raise about £180m a year and the diversion of funds from the unused digital TV switchover fund will account for £200m.

I guess my point is that in last year’s Caio Report the NGA network was estimated to cost £29Bn and a large proportion of this would have been spent in areas that currently can’t get broadband and would be in the USO area.. The per line cost of providing 2Mbps is probably not much less than the 40 or 50Mbps talked about in NGA.

So the funding identified for USO can only be a start and there is a scenario where they might just as well go straight for the fast stuff.  It is good that the Government has recognised that the Digital Divide exists but they do need to do more.

2Mbps Universal Service Obligation by 2012.
This is the minimum that people need to get into the game. In the report the government recognizes that whilst much of the country will shortly be getting access to faster broadband (aka BT 40Mbps Fibre To The Cabinet or 50Mbps Virgin cable) a significant chunk won’t, which will exacerbate the Digital Divide.

The Government is therefore looking to promote/fund the extension of this Next Generation Access network into these “excluded” areas. I have been saying that 2Mbps is not enough and it is good that the Government clearly recognizes this.

The funding for the rural Next Gen access is likely to come from a complex variety of sources. It includes a new tax levied of 50 pence on every copper phone line. I assume it includes Virgin cable connections to keep the playing field level. This will have to be passed on to customers so the immediate effect is a rise in the cost of broadband. It will also add to the overheads of the ISP which has to collect it.

The funding collected will be available on a competitive tender basis. I would expect the Government to somehow identify specific projects for funding and make the moneys available for competitive bids. Otherwise someone with BT with the massive resources available to put specific projects together would cream all the cash.

Music Piracy
Two things to say here. The Government recognizes that access to legal means of downloading music needs to improve which reinforces what the ISP industry has been saying (note the many blog posts on this subject).

Secondly the Government also wants a more graduated approach to punishing illegal downloaders. The three strikes and you are out approach has been replaced much to everyone’s relief.

We now appear to be looking at a scenario whereby the ISP would send a letter to the end user informing them that they have been identified as offenders. The next step would be to throttle the bandwidth available to users indulging in this activity or block P2P. The final resort would be legal action.

A cautionary note here. Most ISPs cannot easily block P2P. Only those big consumer players typically have the kit that can do it. Are we looking at the same scenario as the Data Retention Act where the Government only expects an ISP to follow the law only if specifically asked. In this case the ISP would have to be funded to do it.

There is also a fairly significant onus on Ofcom to make all this happen which is going to be an interesting play. I imagine it will take no small level of resource which probably doesn’t currently exist.

All in all I think this is a good report.  There were always going to be difficulties with putting together a document with such a wide remit and I’m sure that as we get time to digest it other questions will arise.  However Lord Carter should be able to move on to his fresh challenges with a reasonable sense of satisfaction.

Bit of a long post title but this is the feedback from research conducted in June on consumer behaviour and preferences in respect of music downloading.  The research was commissioned by music site We7 and conducted on 2012 consumers aged 16 to 60 over 7 days in June 2009.

Its key findings make very interesting reading:

• 46% of UK music fans do not understand how to legally consume music online
• 64% do not know how to stream and share music legally
• 85% of consumers are happy to listen to a short ad in exchange for unlimited access to free music that they can share with others
• 94% say they would choose a legal music site over a pirate one if it had the same range of music and was easy to use
• Women and those over 55 are least likely to stream - 85% say they don’t know how and are unlikely to try
  64% of 16-24 year olds share music with friends online and 71% know what streaming is but only 48% have ever tried it
• Londoners and Bristolians are the biggest sharers of music online but only 39% and 46% respectively have ever streamed music. 
• The majority of music buyers (78%) would buy the same or more music if they could listen to streamed music too, showing that the We7 model compliments the industry rather than cannibalises it

All this reinforces the ISP industry’s position that what we need is more legal ways for consumers to easily access music online.  7  million consumers can’t be criminals.  We7 is doing a great job pioneering this so thanks goes to Steve Purdham, and his team. 

Tonight I’m going to go home and listen to some free and legal music streaming online. Frank Sinatra methinks.

I'm known for being an early adopter of new Internet fads. You can now stalk me on Twitter, mart_brooks.

Greetings from Philadelphia!  I am presenting as part of the IPv6 at NANOG46 (click here for info of how to watch) at 9:30PM UK time today, or download the IPv6 for Enterprises presentation here, or see information about the other speakers here..

The messages are clear and simple.  Working now to get ready for the IPv6 transition will be less expensive and lower risk than waiting for IPv4 starvation to hurt.  I interviewed some key enterprises about their specific grumbles but the great news is that most are transitional and already people are working on fixing them.

Virgin has announced a deal with record label Universal that will provide unlimited access to the company’s music catalogue for a fixed monthly fee.  The level of this fee is as yet unnanounced but is reckoned to be the equivalent to the cost of two albums. The service will be available by Christmas 09.

The biggest aspect of this news is that Virgin has also undertaken to attempt to tackle the problem of online music piracy with the ulitmate disconnection a potential penalty for persistent offenders.  This appears to be a big step forward and is likely timed in advance of the Digital Britain report, delayed now until later this week.

This deal is likely to bring pressure to bear on other large consumer ISPs.  It does remain to be seen how the removal of broadband service from persistent pirates (to put it poetically) is handled.  This has been the one aspect of the debate that has had ISPs up in arms. They don’t want to be seen to be doing the police’s job.

The Virgin paid for model is of course different to the We7 advertising funded service discussed last week. The whole area is of a great deal of interest to many people.  My We7 posts get more hits than any other published item on this blog.  Helped no doubt by the fact that I have been giving away free We7 promotional codes :-).

If you want one let me know. I got a fresh batch in recently.

BERR on Friday issued a statement to say that the Digital Britain Final Report will not now be released on Tuesday as planned. Instead it is being presented to the Cabinet tomorrow and will be released later in the week.

There is also a meeting between Lord Carter and a few industry representatives tomorrow afternoon.  ISPA is being represented at that meeting so I will report back later.

There is a huge amount of expectation surrounding the publication of the Digital Britain report.  We think we know what is going to be in it but can’t be sure. However it turns out I’m sure it is going to spark a huge amount of debate.  Let’s enjoy the last few days of peace before it hits the street

Note the BERR statement isn’t actually a BERR statement. It is a Joint statement from Departments for Business, Innovation and Skills and Culture Media and Sport. I’m not politicaslly motivated but this does seem ridiculous. BISCMS ?!!! I could only just get my tongue around BERRRRRR.

Hot off the press - apparently the report will now be available on the DCMS website at 3.30 pm tomorrow.

My mother and her partner Alan came down to London on Friday afternoon to see a show (Oliver!) I’d bought them tickets for. We let them do their own thing on the Friday, though I was pleased to hear that their tickets were front row seats which they very much enjoyed. Despite me going through the details of how travel works in London in painful detail, they somehow still managed to end up buying two travel cards at £12.something each on Friday afternoon and then not needing them anyway, as their hotel was off Bloomsbury Square and the theatre was only at the end of Drury Lane. Tsk, tourists eh?

Jenny and I met up with them at their hotel on Saturday morning and after some tea we set off for Greenwich. Journeyplanner suggested the 188 bus from just around the corner on Southampton Row so that’s what we went for, but I should really have known better — the traffic was pretty bad and it took over an hour to get there. Still, it was a lovely sunny day for a picnic in Greenwich Park, some Frisbee and then a quick look around the National Maritime Museum.

On the way back Jenny suggested we use the Thames Clipper from Greenwich Pier to get back to Central London. It was another £5 each but I really didn’t fancy getting onto crowded public transport in that heat so was happy to give it a try. I’m really glad we did because it was great; surprisingly quick, comfortable and good for seeing the sights. We got off at Embankment Pier, walked up to Lancaster Gate, a short bus journey back to their hotel followed by a rather rushed change of clothes then off for a meal at the Oxo Tower Restaurant.

I’d hoped we’d get a table out on the patio but we had to settle for one next to the window. Still the view was superb looking across at St. Paul’s Cathedral. I could really get used to the excellent service but perhaps not the steep prices! Worth it for special occasions though.

The night was finished up with a slow walk back along the South Bank to Waterloo where we went our separate ways.

On Sunday we met up again for a lazy afternoon lunch and rest in Russell Square Gardens people- (and squirrel-) watching.

Tonight we’re off to Windsor for a meal to celebrate Jenny’s brother’s birthday so I suppose I better get on with some work.

A bit of an odd weekend really, I know I did lots but I've got this feeling that I've actually accomplished nothing. Friends will no doubt disagree but it's just a vague feeling of not being able to see the wood for the trees.

This could be because a couple of potentially disastrous things happened last week although they were largely sorted by the time Friday evening came around. I'm certainly trying to eat properly and keep reasonably in shape, so I'm not blaming this vagueness on blood sugar issues. Strange really. Maybe it's just because I'm not really getting my teeth into anything and firefighting everyone else's projects.

So, as for accomplishing things: the extremely heavy dancefloor is back in the garage (thanks for the help there Dan); the new cat flap is fitted (rfid tagged kitties, they're really annoyed now they wear collars but it's pretty cool having a display which tells us which cats are in and which are out); I'm all up to date on uploading photos; two new projects have staging areas and framework sorted; I've cleared a load of crap out of the garage; I've finally managed to get my grandparents' old B&O Beomaster 1200 stereo hooked up in the office (mmm, FM does sound nice through it although the base needs new indicator bulbs); worked out that the Beogram 1202 needs the motor stripping and rebuilding at the very least, but more about that later...

I also picked up four tickets each for Party In The Park 2009 at Temple Newsome (where pop youngster Little Boots will be headlining), and also for Opera In The Park 2009 where Nicky will be performing as part of Leeds Festival Chorus. If you were in the queue in Millennium Square during the morning I may have inadvertently taken photos of you.

I spent a lot of yesterday plugged into my headphones in front of Logic, so we now have almost complete backing tracks for two of the songs we'll be performing at the forthcoming Obvious Pseudonym Do Open Mic Monday gig. 6 weeks to go, we're more relaxed but still not exactly sure which songs we'll be performing (and probably won't until a few days before) but I'm quite optimistic of a November release for the album, probably launched at our first full gig.

Realistically the feeling of ennui and bollocks should go away by the end of the week when I head to Spain for a week with friends (missing half of the British GP, gah). I can't really afford to do 'no work' all week but I do intend to sort my head out somewhat.

More anon. Hopefully less emo next time ;)

• Listening to #pantera Vulgar Display of Power, I feel instantly angry, but in a good way. #
• RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH, FUCKING HOSTILE! #pantera #
• shit, forgot #download festival was streaming live at http://is.gd/1135s … watchin slipknot tear up the stage, hopefully cheesy rock tomoz #

Managed to grab some tickets to see this show which I have heard several people raving about. Looks like I just managed to get the tickets in time, as they were pretty good seats, same level as the stage pretty much and to the side. Looking at the floor-plan of the Liverpool Echo I honestly thought we would be sat right at the side of it, thankfully we were not, and had a great view of the whole stage.

Never having been to this kind of show before, I was expecting something more along the lines of a play, rather than a band and singers. So was a little unsure at 1st. However that soon changed once it kicked in. It was very impressive and awe inspiring, didn’t find myself bored at all. Pretty much whistled by!

Really impressed with the stamina of the musicians, and the quality. Superbe! Told the story really well, and although the CGI was cheesy as hell, I can let it pass, not sure if its intentionally bad or not, but it worked. (PS3 or X-box 360 could have produced better in real time tbh).

Very enjoyable night out it was. Added to the awe of the show was also the pure hilarity of idiots and completely un-courteous fools in a full carpark. One women who we spotted on arrival taking 6+ attempts to reverse into a parking space (no car in either space to her sides), subsequently stalled the lift not once, not twice but 3 times! Later on leaving she was cursing every car that didn’t give HER sole right of way and nearly crashed into 2 or 3 others. I just sat and actually laughed (as Diane can attest) at the ballet/dodgems of people battling to get out NOWNOWNOWNOW!!!!!

But that aside (I expected parking drama tbh.. in their credit Liverpool Echo parking staff I think did a top notch job of keeping it going as smoothly as they could) top night out, go and see it if you can.

Freedom4 application for licence variation | Ofcom

Freedom4 are a WiMAX operator in the UK who offer wireless broadband (they are owned by the Hong Kong giant PCCW).

Freedom4 operate in the bands 3.6 - 4.2 GHz and currently can only offer fixed services, they have applied to Ofcom to a) increase the power limits of their basestations (i.e. main transmitter hubs) and also allow mobile access (which removes the obligation to register end-user / low-power terminals).

Ofcom's view is that the in-band power level can increase from +14dBW/MHz to +23dBW/MHz (+53dBm/MHz) for central stations and to remove the absolute limit of 22dBW/MHz (EIRP).

For terminal stations coordination should not be necessary for those with a spectral density not exceeding 25dBm/MHz and total EIRP not exceeding 30dBm unless a proposed central station is within 100MHz and 2km of a point-to-point link.

These changes should be made as soon is possible.

Ofcom is holding a consultation for interested stakeholders which closes on 20|07|2009.

I tend to assume that I've lost contact with most of my ex-coworkers - particularly those from 8+ years ago. I'm always surprised to find that I may have lost contact with them but they haven't with me - every time someone pops up from the past, they know exactly who I am! I suppose it's obvious to anyone with enough clue to use google!

Not sure if I blogged about this, but I probably should have done!

I've been exceptionally busy lately, because I'm on the organising committee for Leytonstone Arts Trail. I know I mentioned my own photography show[1] but I'm actually part of something much bigger.

Today, we received the keys to a large disused Woolworths store, which is going to host a huge group show for the three weeks of the trail. We think this is the first such use of a disused Woolies in the UK; it's certainly quite a coup, achieved with the assistance of Waltham Forest council. Fantastic to see a closed eyesore start to turn into a real focus for arts. The show is called Pick 'n' Mix. It includes something of everything, including some site-specific installations that are responses to the building.

In total there are more than 120 artists exhibiting in 31 events at 21 locations across the Trail - and most of them are wheelchair accessible which is rather good. So if you fancy a day of culture between 27 June and 19 July, come to Leytonstone. From 4 July the Leytonstone Festival will also be running (this is for performing arts, mostly music, whereas the Trail is visual arts) so there is plenty to see and do especially over weekends. On Sat 11 July there is music on Wanstead Park and on Sat 18 July the Arts Trail and Festival are both celebrating Leytonstone Day.The whole thing culminates in the What's Cookin' picnic on 19 July where there is plenty of free music and a craft fair as well.

I know E11 isn't somewhere you'd normally see as a venue nor an arts hub but there will be a lot going on, we have good transport connections, and there are some nice little places to eat [3]. Come for a day out here, and reset your expectations! There is also a lot of green space as we are on the edge of Epping Forest. If it's too far for a single day there are loads of places to stay in nearby Stratford[2], which is less than half an hour from the West End and central London.

Leytonstone Arts Trail Programme (27 June - 19 July)
Leytonstone Festival Programme (4-19 July)

Come along if you can (and drop in to see my show!) and tell your friends. It's rare that a community comes together to create something in this way - and this is why I love the area in which I live.


[1] click for flyer - and if you think you might be around Leytonstone on the early evening of 26 June let me know and I'll see if I can get you into the Private View party.

[2] Ibis, Holiday Inn, and there's a Hilton in Docklands.

[3] I can recommend the Golden Orient (just past the railway bridge) for good Bangladeshi food, or Meze (Church Lane) and Horizon (High Road near Woolies) cafés for lighter meals during the day.

Managing the spectrum above 275 GHz | Ofcom: "275-3000 GHz"

Ofcom is going to make spectrum in the 275-3000 GHz band license exempt, however not all the band is being released as there are already a few licensed users there such as user in the scientific community (radio-astronomy, space research and earth exploration satellite services). The band is also used for short range anti-collision radar devices and detection of skin cancer.

The band is highly attenuated in air (oxygen and water molecules) and usually highly directional aerials are used, so risk of interference is very low.

The band will not be released until after the 2011 World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-11) where international policy is made and it would be premature for Ofcom to release the spectrum before the conference.

This band can be used for low power short range high bandwidth services (i.e. for in-building wireless connectivity).

Variation to BT’s Undertakings under the Enterprise Act 2002 related to Fibre-to-the-Cabinet | Ofcom

BT has been granted a variation to its undertakings allowing Openreach to control and operate electronic equipment in the street cabinet.

This means that BT will install Fibre to the Street Cabinet (FTTC) and then place DSL Multiplexors in the cabinets. Since the cabinets are usually close to the premises they are serving (in urban environments at least) this will allow BT to offer VDSL2 (and variants) to end users offering 100Mb/s type download speeds.

This will still require major investment from BT and they will also have to provide equal access to other operators but if it all goes ahead will allow high speed Internet to homes providing IPTV (Internet TV), Video on demand and other services. BT Vision might stand a chance of success, though BSkyB will be watching this very carefully (and they'll also likely offer an IPTV service).

Unfortunately this again increases the digital divide as rural areas will still suffer as services such as VDSL2 only work at high speed with sub 100m connections and street cabinets in rural areas may be miles away from premises. This is one reason BT is looking towards wireless and potentially the 2.6GHz spectrum that will be up for auction later this year or next year.