planet.uknot.org

Up on the roof

2010-09-03T15:01:43+00:00

wibble_puppy and I went up on the roof yesterday to have a look at the chimney, but it was much too hot to work up there (the black slate tiles were burning any body parts in contact with them), so I just removed the redundant TV aerial and came back down. Today was cooler so I went back up and managed to clear the bricks, concrete and twigs out the top of the small bedroom chimney. The bricks and concrete were part of the remains of an old chimney cap that had fallen to bits (I carted what was left of it down in a rucksack over the course of several trips). The twigs had presumably been put there by nesting Jackdaws.

After clearing the top of the chimney out, I discovered why I had been unable to dislodge the bricks from below: when the top bit of the chimney was rebuilt using horrible modern bricks, the builders (presumably the same ones who backfilled the lower part of the flue with rubble) put in a weird constricted bit between the lower section of flue and the new upper one. The flue is larger both above and below the constriction. I'm really not sure what the point of it is, and it will need to be removed if the flue is to be made usable again (either for the Rayburn flue or to reinstate the open fire in the bedroom).

This photo was taken looking down into the top of the small-bedroom half of the chimney:

The gardening hoe is there because I was using it as a tool to push assorted detritus down the flue from the top. It should also give you an idea of the size of the constriction.

While I was up on the chimney with a camera I took the opportunity to record a rather poor quality wobbly video showing the view around the house (not recommended for viewers with vertigo or motion sickness! ;)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqXEFk8PYjQ

Gmail Priority Inbox – why wouldn’t you use it?

2010-09-03T12:41:14+00:00

My email experience is a divided one. I use Microsoft Outlook for work stuff and I use gmail for play. Actually that isn’t entirely true as trefor.net uses gmail but that is a kind of hybrid work/play site.

New in at Google is the Gmail Priority Inbox which prioritises your mails for you. Google’s anti spam service is probably the best in the business and I never get spam on trefor.net (in all fairness the service used by Timico is also pretty good but I never get spam using gmail).

This is because Google has such a fantastic antispam engine and because it carries so many mails on a daily basis that it learns very quickly what is and isn’t a spam mail.

This same learning process is applied to the new Priority mailbox service. When I signed up for the service Google ran a test on existing emails in my inbox and to my amazement it was spot on. It deprioritised mails from Facebook, for example, and marked blog comments awaiting moderation as important.

As I use it I know it will also get better.

Google ad over.

mobile spam

2010-09-03T12:12:40+00:00

I was spammed on my mobile yesterday. That is to say I had a cold call from a computer trying to sell legal services for those involved in motoring accidents.

This was extremely irritating – I can’t imagine anyone likes being suckered like this. I have checked and there doesn’t seem to be a telephone preference type service for mobile numbers.

The originating number was 08452860706 which is operated by DXI Easycall, a hosted contact centre business. You can call the number and take your mobile number off their database but you have to listen to the whole ad first.

Ofcom should add mobile numbers to the TPS service.

I periodically get called on my mobile by real people trying to sell me stuff. I don’t mind this so much as I sometimes take the opportunity to try and sell our own services to them which confuses the heck out of some sales people.

It does amuse me when I am cold called by people trying to sell me a mobile upgrade which happens a couple of times a year. I can almost see their eyes light up when I tell them I am almost certainly long since out of contract and then they get confused when I tell them I don’t care about getting a new phone and reducing my bills. If they had proper records they would know that I am a mobile service provider myself, or my company is.

PS I do really care about having lower phone bills – I just tell them that for effect

PPS I have actually been thinking about getting a new phone – an Android one probably. I’m just waiting for the right one to come along.

developer wanted Linux Perl Bash Ruby Python PHP5 SVN symfony Doctrine OOP

2010-09-02T14:56:53+00:00

developer wanted Linux Perl Bash Ruby Python PHP5 SVN symfony Doctrine OOP.

Junior position with great career potential in fast growing market leader. Suit someone with a couple of years experience or a grad with nouse. Must be a geek.

More on website here, give me a call, send email or leave comment on this post – it will not get published.

The size of the internet & the curse of deaggregation

2010-09-02T13:19:11+00:00

There has recently been quite a bit of interest in the IPv4 exhaustion date. Understandable. It is coming up fast and sounds game changing. What perhaps isn’t obvious to the casual watcher of the Gadget Show or reader of newspaper technology sections is the underlying complexity that surrounds the approach to the end of this IPv4 world.

In reading this blog your ISP will have directed your http request across the internet from its own network to the Timico network and to the server hosting the website.

This server has a public facing IP address, part of a contiguous block that is advertised to the whole internet. The internet knows where the server is because every single ISP router in the world carries a record of it in what is known as the internet routing table.

Of course the depletion of the IPv4 address pool means that more of these blocks of IP addresses are being used up and therefore more routes are having to be carried in memory by routers. What’s more as the address space diminishes the size of block being handed out by the regional registries (RIRs) is going to get smaller.

As addresses run out it is also expected that individual ISPs will subdivide the blocks they have in order to sell on (a process known as deaggregation and not allowed really). The problem with all this is that the number of routes being carried is going to increase at a much faster rate than has historically been the case.

If you check out the chart below (courtesy of an excellent resource called the cidr-report) you can see how the number of routes has grown since the inception of the technology in 1989.

growth of the internet routing table (courtesy of cidr-report)

Note the glitch in 2001 – can anyone guess what happened there? This all amounts to the periodic need to upgrade routers being used so that they can cope with the additional number of routes carried – it all takes memory and processing power.

On a personal note of interest Timico got into the ISP game in 2005. The number of routes has more than doubled in the intervening 5 years. You can draw your own conclusions as to the resultant effect on the complexity of the internet but I’m sure it wont be a linear model.

What's she gonna look like with a chimney on her?

2010-09-02T07:50:25+00:00

The local farmer (who was born in wibble_puppy's house) told us he thought there used to be a small fireplace in the bedroom that I've been sleeping in. We couldn't work out how because the wall of the bedroom is about five feet in from the outer wall of the house, and there didn't look to be enough space for a second flue in the massive weirdly-shaped block of stone and brick masonry above the big inglenook fireplace in the living room. It remained a mystery until a builder went up on the roof yesterday and peered down the top of the chimney. There is a second flue (albeit filled with rubble), he said.

This is significant, not because it would be particularly nice or useful to have an open fire in that bedroom, but because there is a possibility he might be able to feed the Rayburn flue (in the form of a flexible stainless steel tube) into that fireplace's flue through a hole that he would knock through the other side of the house wall inside the loft space of the lean-to kitchen. The current Rayburn flue setup is a temporary bodge just to get it working until something better could be installed: it's a rigid pipe through the wall into the living room inglenook fireplace, then a flexible flue up that fireplace's masonry flue. It's not good because both the open fire and the Rayburn are sharing the same flue, and it's been badly bodged together in a way that means neither can be swept properly. The plan thus far has been to run a straight rigid stainless flue from the Rayburn up through the roof of the kitchen and strap it to the outside of the masonry chimney (it has to exit at the same height I believe), which would be neither visually appealing nor cheap.

So we peered closely at the wall in the kitchen loft, the inside of the living room chimney, the top of the chimney in the main loft, and the wall of the small bedroom. We wondered briefly what to do while searching for a big hammer and chisels. See the curious rectangular stain on the bedroom wall:

A bit later it looked like this:

And then like this:

Unfortunately it appears to have been deliberately back-filled with rubble (including full bricks) and many buckets of sooty crap.

Here's what it currently looks like inside:

It slopes steeply up and back for quite a distance before it reaches the straight-up part. I haven't actually reached sky yet - there seems to be more rubble jammed further up that I can't dislodge from the bottom. Later this morning I want to go up on the roof and see if I can clear the rest of it from the top down.

I had been sleeping in a cosy little room with a comfy bed, which I had vacuumed again only yesterday morning (to get rid of the rubble from when the window opening was repaired). Last night the bed looked like this:

So after turning the bath water black, I moved down to the sofa bed in the living room, which is currently slightly better-ventilated than usual:

(no, there are no glass windows in that wall! ;) Incidentally, the structure on the left of that picture with the cast iron door is an old bread oven set into one side of the inglenook (which would at one time have contained a range cooker). Apparently you built a hot fire of thin sticks in it, then raked the embers out and baked bread in it using the residual heat of the masonry.

“Illegal” file sharing?

2010-09-01T16:50:40+00:00

Something interesting landed in my E-Mail today: a complaint about illegal file sharing via Bittorrent. In itself, that’s hardly remarkable. We get over a hundred most months and because we go so many, most are just automatically forwarded on to the customer without any comment or action. Most are one-offs but I’ve previously estimated about 34,000 people could be affected by the Digital Economy Act because of repeated allegations. This one wasn’t well formatted though, so needed a human to look at it.

It’s regarding, from what I can tell, some sort of specialist computer aided design package. I’m really not clear because the complainant clearly didn’t think that the name of the product that’s allegedly being copied illegally was useful information. As a result, I’m left to guess what it might be from the filename and a quick Google. The fact it couldn’t be automatically processed and that key information is missing gives a clue as to the kind of care they’re bothering to take with the complaints.

Of more interest is the size of the file: There’s a handful of files with slightly different names. One is merely a few kilobytes and the others are only a few hundred kilobytes. Two possibilities spring to mind. The first is that their computer aided design package is really so compact that it will fit on a floppy disk from the 1980s. The other is that they just saw the file name and assumed it was their software without bothering to check.

Who thinks things would get any better under the Digital Economy Act? I don’t.

Originally posted at Zoe's Wordpress Blog

Orange HD voice – when will the whole world go HD?

2010-09-01T08:52:45+00:00

Mobile operator Orange has hit the headlines today with the launch of its HD voice service. Trials for this service, which uses the Adaptive Multi-Rate Wideband codec (AMR-WB – otherwise known as G722.2), began in June this year in the south of England.

The service is initially only for Orange HD handset to Orange HD handset. This is quite easy to do as “on-net” HD calls using the same codec don’t require transcoding and also do not therefore enter into the black art world of interoperability.

HD voice has been the subject of discussion amongst the VoIP community in the UK this year. A fair few vendors (Cisco, Broadsoft, SNOM, Polycom, YeaLink to name some) already support the codec and it is perfectly feasible to operate a simple enterprise HD voice network. I am not aware of any businesses actually using HD Voice though I’m sure that there must be a few case studies around.

The problems arise whan you want to talk to handsets that do not support HD voice. To do this a network must provide support across many more elements other than just the handsets. This includes gateways to the PSTN, media servers and conference bridges.

There is a whole new cost dynamic involved with this. Each of these elements will have codec licensing costs and due to the likely additional processing power requirements of this codec will probably support a reduced number of simultaneous voice channels driving up the cost per channel.

On the plus side HD Voice does apparently keep people talking longer so revenues should increase – though obviously not if all calls are free “on-net” as is often the case with both mobile and voip.

Don’t get me wrong. I am a HD voice fan and I think the technology has much to offer but it will be some time before it becomes truly mainstream. Fair play to Orange though for taking the initiative. Read their press bumpf here.

If you want to know more about the codec there some stuff on Wikipedia. Peering house and network operator X-Connect is driving industry adoption – you can find them here or drop me a line and I’ll put you in touch.

PS when I got in this morning I couldn’t find the announcement on the Orange news website so I looked at Everything Everywhere but I couldn’t find anything anywhere:).

A quickstart guide to Systems Management

2010-08-31T23:28:24+00:00

Systems management is very easy.

Start with a blank slate.
Write on the slate.
Demonstrate that, in the event of the slate being wiped clean, you can reproduce the contents of the slate in full.
Wipe the slate clean.
See 3.

Sticky Toffee Sauce recipe

2010-08-31T16:46:47+00:00

When I was up in the Lakes recently, I bought a jar of Cartmel Sticky Toffee Sauce. Delicious stuff, particularly on hot golden syrup cake. When it ran out I looked into buying some more, but it's pretty expensive and after finding out how much it would cost to post I decided to have a go at making my own instead. After studying the list of ingredients on the jar and a bunch of recipes I found on the net, I came up with the following recipe:

Ingredients
150ml fresh double cream.
150g butter (I used salted because it's what I had to hand).
150g dark brown soft sugar.
1 teaspoon vanilla extract.

Method
Melt the butter in a heavy-bottom saucepan.
Add the sugar.
Heat the mixture slowly, stirring to avoid the sugar sticking to the bottom.
When it reaches the 'soft ball'[1] stage, take it off the heat.
Stir in the cream.
Stir in the vanilla extract.
Pour it into a suitable jar.

[1] Soft Ball Stage
This means that if you drop a small amount of the molten toffee into a bowl of cold water and then pick it out and roll it between your fingers, it forms a soft squidgy ball. If it's still semi-liquid and sticky you need to heat it some more. If it forms a hard ball that you can't shape with your fingers, you've heated it too much. I'm not quite sure what will happen if you try to make the sauce using hard toffee - let me know if you try it! ;)

The recipe makes a couple of portions more than will fit into a 340g Cartmel jar. I keep it in the fridge because of the cream content. It's a slightly different shade to the Cartmel stuff but I reckon it tastes pretty much identical. Perfect! :)

What I Did On My Holidays

2010-08-31T11:08:57+00:00

It's just occurred to me that I've not blogged for over a month - lots of things have happened (although none of them involving a holiday, for reasons I'll expand on in a tic - which makes the title of this post a little meaningless). So, hum, er, 20th July onwards, let me try and remember what's happened since then...

First on the list was taking the kids to see Pet Shop Boys at Newcastle Arena. Both Ben and Ellie have loved the live DVD and the showmanship, so didn't really see a problem with taking them to their first stadium gig. With my first ever stadium gig in mind (Bob Dylan at Birmingham NEC supported by Tom Petty, can't remember the year but they were rubbish seats) I booked seats where we were unlikely to have a problem with the view - stage left, about 18ft from the front. Brilliant, the kids could see everything and once Ellie had got used to the harshness of the support act (Sophie Ellis-Bextor, badly mixed) they had a fantastic time. Proper family outing!

During July we got involved with Wakefield Music Collective, the body which organises the annual Clarence Park Music Festival in Wakefield among other events. It sorta started with being asked to do a poster design, then both myself and Nicky volunteered to do stewarding duties and had a whale of a time walking around in hi-viz jackets. I'd also not anticipated the steepness of that hill in front of Clarence bandstand, although I sneakily managed to avoid walking up and down it too much clearing litter (thank you for taking your litter home!). A lot of good acts on but the highlights for me were Ruby Macintosh Retrospective and Jiezuberband who bill themselves as 'Scottish prog-rock' (they brought their own Hammond and a proper hardware Leslie unit, woo!). Ben particularly enjoyed rockers The Jokers, getting a CD with his pocket money and even managing to blag a signed poster of the band which once we decorate his bedroom will occupy pride of place on the wall! Photos from Clarence here and here.

In the midst of preparing for Clarence I took a little bit of time to help the Fotopic.net chaps close the Wakefield office down. It's been a long time coming and with the move to a virtual headquarters there was really no need for the overheads involved. Still a bit of a sad day but we got it all cleared out, and the furniture went to a local children's charity. I ended up with a pile of Agfa d.Lab-2 paper cassettes which I listed on eBay... if anyone wants an 8" or 12" paper cassette then drop me a line and make me an offer! In clearing the place out I found plenty of memories of times past, but I'm not looking at it as a closure - more of a 'new stuff around the corner, watch this space'... :)

After Clarence, the next thing that happened was Ben being a mascot at Sheffield Wednesday in the first game of the season versus Dagenham & Redbridge. My brother Tim took him (after all, he's a bigger Wednesday fan than all of us lot put together) and they met all the players, Ben got changed in the official changing rooms, then came out and played football followed by high-fiving all the players and generally being ace. There's an official pic of him on the SWFC website over here, but for the proper experience you need to watch the video. He really was a superstar, Tim took quite a few pics which are here, and after all that Owls won 2-0. Hurrah!

Then came Pride Wakefield, and a few days of total carnage involving Jaegerbombs and stuff. A small affair, the local Pride march was ridiculously short and I'm not sure organising it on Sunday evening was such a good idea - those who could walk the circuit from the Rainbow round past The New Union and the Harewood Arms were few and far between. I took some photos of course but certainly nothing on the scale of the London event. It got a bit debauched and apparently (!) I was dancing with Hx in Zeus Bar to Kylie and Scissor Sisters remixes... probably should mumble something regarding XX chromosomes here.

In the middle of all of this I had to do some work - I'd finished at Pace Networks at the end of July which left me without a contract for August (this also contributed to our holiday cancellation - I can't really be on-hand for contract interviews and pitches if I'm miles away) and through a bizarre series of circumstances ended up doing bits and bobs for Ripe Design in Leeds again. The place has changed quite substantially but there's no shortage of work and I'm hoping it'll be quite a long and flexible contract this time. I'm still doing stuff for the Met which is gearing up for launch, plus there's a few other private projects I'm working on including something called Pikfu... but more about that in the future.

Then there's the back bathroom. Folks who follow what I do on Facebook and Twitter will have noticed that there's been a near-constant stream of DIY-related whinges, photographs and invective over the past week or so, but the story is this: on 22nd August I had a rush of blood to the head and decided to rip out the back bathroom. We've been in this house for 8 years now and that back bathroom has been used once, instead being used as a dumping ground for anything and everything from spare lightbulbs to wine (visitors to the house will know it as 'the wine storeroom'). So anyway, I was sick of it stinking of piss and generally being icky so pulled out the bath which took down half the plaster on the wall. Then I realised the skirting wasn't done behind the bath, the tiles had torn away more plaster, and there was a big hole in the floorboards where the bath water-trap had been installed. Great. To compound the felony I decided to move the washbasin. End result is that I've spent last week plastering, doing the skirting, replacing the light, filling the floorboard holes, plumbing, removing waste pipes, tiling, carpeting, and finally putting up the new mirror. Nicky for her part has wallpapered and painted, and it looks completely different now (see photos here, plus a pic of what it looked like when we first moved in). Just need a dresser in there for more storage and jobsagoodun.

I think that's it. True to form I'll probably post this and find a zillion more things I've forgotten to mention...

(You might have noticed I haven't mentioned Obvious Pseudonym - well, that's undergoing a bit of a change and we have to wait for a band meeting before we can make any announcements. Keep an eye on the website, it'll all be public soon enough.)

Published originally at http://blog.joel.co.uk/index.php?itemid=941

The Great bathroom debate, part two: in defense of Jack of Kent

2010-08-30T13:33:43+00:00

I’m sure I’ll get accused by some of being an apologist for a cisgendered world view for this post so I should state the following, mostly for my own benefit and not because I think it will alter others opinions of this piece: I believe I’m far more of the “we won’t put up with playing nice” world view of the stonewall rioters, rather than the more common trans mainstream “mustn’t upset the community or politicians” view of the early half of the last decade. Following this post some may view me otherwise. To some extent I’m playing devils advocate here, but I believe in the underlying message: I think Jack had a rough ride.

Firstly, let’s look at a recent concept I’m very keen on, Labour on Demand which whilst not initially that relevant does get turned on it’s head a little. I would say this unfortunately does apply when most people end up having the toilet debate as one just wants to carry on with ones employment or go to the toilet while out in public doing the shopping. But here Jack was engaged in a conversation with a member of the trans community before posting his entry and it’s not being forced down people’s throats for comment. Unlike the more mainstream LGB community, the language and identity politics of the trans community has not (yet?) entered the mainstream and twice in the last month I’ve found myself having to explain words and ideas we as activists now all take for granted like “transition”, “passing” and the more recent post-Whipping Girl concepts such as “cisgendered”. Once with a BBC reporter and once, to a lesser extent, to an LGB activist within a political party wanting to know more so that the party concerned can do the right thing when it comes to framing and debating policy. The key point here is I put myself up for it. I spent a year or so after the Toiletgate and S’onewall protests not doing much trans activism for various reasons and would not have needed to engage with this now, but I choose to do so and in that I hold some power, rather than having a demand made of me. Much of the followup debate has happened outside of Jack of Kent’s blog too, so there is reduced power in terms of “home turf” too.

For an outsider, getting involved in trans politics must often seem like walking into a minefield without realising it. As far as you’re concerned, you’re walking a nice safe path when boom – there’s a loud noise in you find, Blackadderesque, your credibility with the community being blown 200 feet into the air and scattered over a wide area. I gave the warning to the political activist I met with that no matter how careful you are, you’re likely to step on one of these landmines. Jack hit one of those landmines and I find it difficult to criticise his decision to back out of the minefield.

So, lets look at the specific critiques made of the question. Firstly, we have Sarah’s initial response, which can roughly be summarised as “This question is framed within a cisgendered world view”. That’s quite valid to my mind as it’s predominantly not an attack on the one asking the question but upon the society which creates the question – there are whole chapters in Social Science 101 texts devoted to the interaction between language and society. I for one am uncomfortable with the term “transsexual”, containing the word “sex” as it does and I’m far more likely to just write “trans”. Similarly, the community as a whole has now rejected the previously acceptable terms “genetic girl” and similar as being inaccurate and inherently transphobic.

But then we come to the word “choice”. This is a touchy word within the trans community because it’s often use to level the accusation that we chose to transition, in the same way people “choose” to be gay or of some ethnic minority, and thus should have to live with the consequences. However touchy that word may be, I do not believe it was used in a transphobic context. I’m not arguing intent here, but context – the specific phrase was “…use the toliet of their choice…” in the context of legal regulation. To my mind, that’s an entirely relevant debate to have because there may be situations where one might not want to use the “obvious” toilet but to choose the alternate one for some reason even if just because the obvious one is full. I don’t think the state has any business regulating that as we already have laws against rape, sexual assault and generally being a nuisance. Another example that springs to mind is the often overlooked group of neutrois folk who reject identifying with either gender. In an imperfect and inherently gendered world, they must make a choice about which bathrooms to use. That does not in any way imply in any way that their situation is a choice, merely that in the world we live in they will have to make choices about what they do.

The way the discussion on that point was put may not, at first reading, come across as a debate about the question but a rather more fundamentalist “using this word at all, in this debate, reveals you as at least partially transphobic”. Jack apologised – possibly mistakenly given the audience invoking the “intent” argument – but it was not the substance of his apology and unlike those who are our true enemies he took the time to apologise and said “look, I realise I had the wording wrong but I’m not comfortable with the implication of transphobia and worried I may not get it right in future so I’ll leave the topic alone, OK?”

He then basically gets told that by backing off, he’s being even more transphobic. Is the community not now guilty of the same thing we accuse others of, namely Labour on Demand? “Because you dared mention us, we demand that you stay here, engage with us while we pick apart your arguments and if you don’t you’re as bad as *insert bad person of the month here*”? Maybe he’s just having a bad day on this topic and doesn’t want to engage further, again something we struggle with ourselves. (Just because I explained some trans point to you yesterday, don’t expect me to spend time on it today when I’m tired or just been given a bunch of abuse, etc) I can see one might claim that there is an attempt to stifle debate here but looking at actions elsewhere that hardly seems to be the case – he’s taken the time to link to the debate from both twitter and his own blog, not the actions of someone with something to hide.

Another angle of attack is the (ironically named, given Jack’s avatar) white knight syndrome – that the majority knows best what’s good for the minority. Now, I hate it when this happens with a passion because the trans community is often excluded from gay debate, such as on marriage equality, on the basis that what’s good for them is good for us so we shouldn’t worry our pretty little heads over it and they’ll sort it out for us. I don’t see much white knighting going on here but an opportunity for those who choose to do so to be given a platform to engage in some productive discussion in a largely friendly environment.

People then act surprised that he’s backing off even faster. “But I haven’t been that nasty, really!” No, individually it’s not been an issue but the sum of the whole is greater than the parts and having come in to the debate on the post late in the game and reading it all in one go, I think I get a different impression from those engaged in the debate blow-by-blow.

So what has happened is that a relatively liberal and influential blogger isn’t going to write about trans issues again, when he could well have been an important ally. I really can’t see that’s a victory for anyone except the more isolationist and pro-stealth elements of the trans community and I certainly don’t count myself amongst their ranks.

Originally posted at Zoe's Wordpress Blog

London Hackspace’s “Arduino For Beginners” Workshop

2010-08-30T07:14:34+00:00

This weekend I attended London Hackspace’s Arduino For Beginners workshop.

Background

I’ve been a member of Hackspace for quite some time, though I have very little hands on experience with electronics or making things or anything like that, and have up until now tended to only use the Hackspace occasionally for somewhere to work from. When the Arduino workshop was announced I thought it sounded not only very good value for money at £80 for a two day instructor-led course, but also would be a great way to broaden my skills.

In the interest of full disclosure, as a minor fanboy of the Hackspace I am prone to want to portray it and all its endeavours in a good light. However I am trying to write this from the point of view of a paying customer of the workshop (which I was), and will try to be fair and objective.

What we got

Included in the £80 (£100 for non-members) workshop fee was an Earthshine Electronics Arduino compatible starter kit worth about £40, containing a DFRduino Duemilanove and over 150 components for use in the various tutorials.

Day one

I arrived early on the first day expecting to touch in with my Oyster card (Hackspace’s members can access the space 24/7 using any compatible RFID card), but the door was already open and the place was a hive of activity. Inside I found Andy “Bob” Brockhurst, Charles, Neil, Mike from Earthshine, Adrian and several others busy tidying the place up making it usable for a workshop. This included attaching a shelf to one wall for the projector to sit on!

Presentation

Eventually the projector was sorted out, a rather makeshift but legible screen put up for it and things began with a presentation from Bob. Bob’s presentation explained what an Arduino is, the sorts of things they might be used for, the concepts behind “open source hardware”, the available software and some resources for getting more information and hardware. Bob’s presentation is available on his github.

Arduino IDE

Once the presentation was concluded, Bob, Mike, Adrian et al went around ensuring we all had the Arduino IDE installed. This is a piece of Java software comprising a basic editor for the C-like language Arduino is programmed with, together with facilities to compile and upload the code to the board, and a few other features.

There was also a brief diversion into Fritzing, which is another piece of open source software used for producing layouts and prototypes of circuits for sharing with others, ease of manufacturing, etc. Fritzing is not necessary to use the Arduino, but was used to display the board layouts for the examples.

Amongst the delegates there was a mix of Windows, Mac and Linux laptops but we were all eventually able to download and install the IDE. The supplied USB cable once connected to an Arduino board appears as a serial port on the computer, and the IDE just has to be told which board model you have and which serial port to use.

I had a bit of a false start with installing the IDE on Linux, owing to me not reading the documentation. It is necessary on Ubuntu to already have installed gcc-avr and avr-libc otherwise the IDE will be unable to compile your sketch to object code. I think I was in the minority using Linux; it seems Windows is preferred amongst AVR coders. The usual Java blah is needed to run the IDE, but I already had that.

Refreshments

I’m not sure who prepared the refreshments; I know that Clare, Charles’s other half had some hand in it but I don’t know if she was solely responsible. In any case, tea, coffee, cordial, biscuits and flapjacks were provided throughout both days, with sandwiches (two different cheeses, tuna, egg, bacon), crisps and fruit for lunch.

Walk-through of examples

Once everyone had their IDE up and running and had confirmed that the IDE could talk to their Arduino, Bob went through some simple example circuits. While Bob put the circuits up on the projector and explained how they worked, both electronically and software-wise, Mike, Neil and other knowledgeable Arduino hackers moved around the room helping people out where necessary.

Bob’s examples built on each other progressively, and included:

Making an LED blink
Simulating a traffic light sequence with 3 LEDs
Adding a button to simulate a pedestrian crossing feature
Adding a buzzer which sounds when safe to cross

There was also a final example which used a motor as a spinner to simulate an accessible pedestrian crossing, but most people did not attempt this due to the risks of damaging the Arduino board.

Sample code and Fritzing files available on Bob’s github.

Experimentation

The last few hours of the day were taken at our own individual speeds, practising with the examples and seeing what we could get working. Some people surged ahead, completing all examples and then moving on to their own ideas, whereas others took longer or needed some assistance. As far as I could see everyone made their way through the first four examples.

One person’s Arduino was damaged towards the end of day one and was replaced by Mike.

Wrap up of day one

Some time between 4 and 5pm most people started to pack up and we were reminded to try to think of a personal project to work on the next day if we had not done so already.

Day two

Door debacle

I arrived just before 10am the next day owing to general Sunday public transport fail, Jubilee line closure etc., again expecting to swipe my Oyster and again being confounded. This time however it was by a group of people standing outside the Hackspace.

It transpired that we had perhaps tried to be too clever for our own good and the door computer had crashed some time in the night, preventing all of us from getting in. After about 30 minutes, some IRCing, unsuccessful nmapping and leaving of voicemails, Mark popped up on IRC and kindly rushed over to let us in with a real metal key.

Projects

For the rest of this day we all worked on our own individual ideas, with Bob, Neil, Adrian and others milling around dispensing masses of assistance.

I couldn’t really think of anything practically useful to work on so decided I just wanted to push the limits of what I’d already learned. I’d spied the 8×8 matrix display in the kit box and wanted to play with that, but this first would involve learning how to drive a shift register.

The 8×8 matrix has 64 LEDs (actually 128 since each one is either red or green), and connecting up 64 outputs would not only be extremely tedious, the Arduino doesn’t have that many outputs anyway. The component actually has only 16 pins but even so, 16 outputs is too many. A shift register helps solve this by allowing the control of 8 outputs using only 3 pins.

The basic idea is that you use one pin to tell the shift register when you’re ready to start or finish feeding it data, one pin to tell it there is a new piece of data to read, and a third pin for the data itself. After you’ve indicated that you’re finished, all the data you’ve fed in will be output. The 74HC595 shift registers in the kit box have 8 outputs each.

In order to get a working knowledge of the shift register I decided to first try using one to drive 8 LEDs, first to make them count in binary and then to display various patterns. After that I would go on to try the shift registers with the matrix display.

I put a circuit together by following the commentary in one of the examples in Earthshine’s Complete Beginners Guide to the Arduino. Unfortunately I couldn’t get it to produce sensible results. At times it seemed like I almost had it, with it counting up in binary correctly except for a couple of values. Other times it was just completely messed up with the LEDs cycling through all kinds of patterns.

I found debugging this to be very difficult. ~~Dammit Jim,~~ I’m a sysadmin, not a hardware hacker; when I write awful sysadmin Perl I at least have some idea how to debug it! After a couple of hours of frustration I had to ask Bob for help, and after a good while of him checking everything I’d done several times, he was stumped too.

Neil then wandered over and measured the frequencies the Arduino was producing, confirming that my code and the Arduino were working correctly, narrowing the breakage down to my circuit. He got his magnifying glass out, we got the datasheet for the shift register, and after a short while he noticed that I was trying to use the shift register’s latch pin as a clock and vice versa.

It turned out that while the pinout of the shift register was correct in the Earthshine guide, the commentary in the guide had switched around the purpose of the shift register clock input pin and the storage register clock input pin, which accounted for the bizarre behaviour I was seeing. It worked! A similar example on the Arduino site has things the correct way around.

I went ahead and wrote the code to do binary counting and then to put some simple patterns on the LEDs, but after all that I felt a bit too burnt out to go on to the matrix display and decided to quit while I was ahead. I definitely feel confident enough to tackle this on my own now though.

I think two more people’s Arduinos were damaged on the second day.

Conclusion

Wins

This workshop was indeed incredible value for money. I think the components, presentation and walk through of examples alone were easily worth £80 and could have been done in one day. What was worth so much more was having knowledgeable people in the same room as you for two days, personally guiding you through the examples and discussing your own ideas. I’ve paid 5 times as much for one day courses that were nowhere near as good.

This could and probably should have justified a doubling or more of price, but I can understand that this was the first workshop put on in the Hackspace and there was a desire to sell it out and gain some experience from the host side.

I hope the workshop is repeated. If it is, and you’re interested in this sort of thing, you should book it quickly.

Suggestions for improvement

~~Many Bothans died~~Two or three Arduinos died during the course of the workshop. As far as I could tell through overhearing conversation, every case was related to running them from the power supply instead of the USB power. I think someone put a multimeter on one and found it was supplying over voltage. I understand better PSUs will be sought in future.
We struggled to fit everyone in. The last two late-comers had less than ideal seating during the presentation because Bob needed to stand in one of the seating places in order to do the presentation. This could probably be easily remedied by tidying up the Hackspace a bit before the day of the workshop. I don’t think there’s any need to reduce the number of participants.
The screen for the projector was rather tatty and ramshackle. It didn’t matter much for Bob’s presentation because his slides were very simple and just about fitted on the screen, but anything more demanding than that would have real problems.
The door episode was extremely unfortunate timing. A suggestion was made that at least two of the people running any workshop should have keys in case of similar emergencies. Sounds reasonable.

It looks like the Hackspace are conducting a debrief and some of these issues have already been raised, so it should be easy to improve for next time.

cheezy grins all round at the Timico cheesecake competition

2010-08-24T12:41:33+00:00

My cake making competitions have become very popular. The strange thing is that I get people I’ve never met before coming up to me saying that the posts I write about these competitions are amongst their favourites. Well one person did last week at the LINX meeting anyway.

I’m not sure what that says about my other posts but in answer to this huge demand I am happy to report the winner of the August competition – this time for the best cheesecake – is Paula Davies (no relation afaik).

This was probably the hardest one to judge so far so well done to Paula and commiserations to Wayne Mills Kidals, Andrew Massing and Fiona Sage whose creditable entries are being sold off for 50 pence a slice – all monies to local charity.

judging the Timico cheesecake competition

and the winner is Paula Davies

Crackerjack! (CRACKERJACK!)

2010-08-23T19:36:25+00:00

Every day I let hubby know the options for dinner, running through a little list. This always ends with "...and there's the emergency pizza!" which is optionally followed by a sarcastic cheer. There's actually nothing wrong with the pizza - it's usually a frozen Italian style one, to which I will add more cheese and tomato, but it's rather a cop out.

Oh dear. On Saturday, hubby noticed that our salad was too cold. So he turned the fridge freezer down... well actually, he turned it off. Stuff in the fridge came up to room temperature, something I only spotted this lunchtime when my potato salad was sloppy. And my rocket lollies were just a bag of coloured water, with a stick. There was nothing for it, I had to clear out and clean up the freezer. Two binbags were filled, and there was lots of backaching cleaning with jif and j-cloths.

So guess what's for dinner, since I would only have had to chuck it otherwise? I'll garnish with some rocket and cucumber, but otherwise, yep, it's something flat and round. Asda's finest. Hardly a "nom" in sight this evening.

As for the subject title? The obligatory cheer which follows a mention of emergency pizza reminded me of a programme from my youth. However, the pizza seems to have taken the place of cabbages...

[This entry was meant for happy_eaters but I might as well leave it now it's here. And any foodies reading, do join Happy Eaters and let us know what you are eating today!]

Ofcom proposes wireless cameras to use 2.6GHz band for the London Olympics

2010-08-23T19:04:57+00:00

Ofcom the super regulator is holding a consultation on utilising the 2.6GHz band for use by wireless cameras for the 2012 London Olympics. The full consultation may be seen here.

The band (actually 2500 - 2690 MHz) which offers 190MHz of prime spectrum has been the centre of various legal disputes between Ofcom and the various mobile network operators. Originally reserved for IMT-2000 use (which is the technical name for 3G) Ofcom planned to auction the band in 2007 which would have pu the UK in the lead for putting the spectrum to good use. Unfortunately due to the legal issues the spectrum auction was delayed and the band is not expected to be avilable until 2012 at the earliest. The 190MHz of specrtrum is more than all of the current 3G operators have currently and would be useful for 3G/4G data services
or wireless broadband.

Now Ofcom are proposing to reserve the whole band for use by wireless cameras for use during the London Olympic games which take place between 27th of July and 9th of September 2012.

Ofcom also completely underestimated the bandwith requirement for new services such as 3D TV which will be made available during the Olympics and as such require extra bandwith which is outside Ofcom's original spectrum allocation plans.

Though the auction of this band is expected to generate significant revenues, as well as legal challenges there are physical constraints to a national auction including military radars which are using adjacent spectrum at 2.7GHz which are being upgraded but the program will not finish by 2012.

Ofcom have tried to be a leader in spectrum auctions, with the UK going to be the first country to auction the 2.6GHz band, it now looks like the UK will be at the tail end of European countries to auction it.

Anyone wishing to respond may do so here

Net Neutrality

2010-08-23T16:00:32+00:00

A week is a long time in politics but politicians seem happy to take most of the summer off. I have just had a 2 week break where I avoided anything to do with work and even kept away from blogging. The latter involved a huge effort because there is so much going on internet-wise.

This emotional pull was made more stressful by the fact that news is disseminated and commented on so quickly these days that to write about something that is more than a day old is to be seen to be writing about a historical event and not a current hot topic.

Fortunately last week’s Google news has spilled over into this week and I am back in action. This news concerns Google and its supposed pact with Verizon regarding Net Neutrality – both companies support the idea of an open net for fixed line services but with loopholes for mobile traffic and for some specialized content.

This has prompted widespread protest including the delivery to Google’s offices last week of a 300,000 signature petition “upholding the values of net neutrality, a founding principle of the net that states that all web data is treated equally no matter where it comes from”.

Coincidentally (or perhaps not) last week’s quarterly meeting of the London Internet Exchange (LINX) saw a debate concerning the subject of Net Neutrality. LINX meetings are gatherings of the techies who actually run the internet and should therefore have the best appreciation of the issues surrounding this contentious subject.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that engineers overwhelmingly support the idea of a free internet. The issue comes down to how do we go about defining net neutrality. It certainly is not possible to run the internet without some kind of network intervention, at least not in any way that makes economic sense.

Take for example the sporting events of this summer. Most ISPs’ networks hit capacity during the Football World Cup and Wimbledon Tennis. In an unmanaged network this would have resulted in traffic congestion and a degradation of the customer experience. Fortunately by and large the customer experience was not affected this summer because the vast majority of consumers internet connections were being managed. This means prioritising time sensitive applications such as VOIP, video and gaming ahead of less time critical ones such as the oft vaunted Bit Torrent file sharing.

To provide a network that can cope with unlimited traffic is something that consumers are unlikely to want to pay for. Based on the traffic levels this summer this would potentially add 50% to the cost of the average broadband connection (back of a beermat guestimate – a big proportion of the cost of broadband delivery is the backhaul bandwidth). Is this something that concerns the proponents of Net Neutrality?

There is more. To save costs frequently accessed web content is delivered from caches provided by Content Delivery Networks. When you are watching a programme on say the BBC you are probably watching something delivered not by the broadcaster itself but by such a CDN even though it looks to your browser as if you are accessing the BBC website.

To do this the network has to intervene to redirect the traffic and must therefore be inspecting the traffic for the content type. Does this contravene the principles of Net Neutrality?

There is lots more. The internet is filled with bad guys after your money or wanting to hurt you. Some of these operate spamming techniques to get at you. A good ISP will prevent these spam attacks from reaching your PC. You can sit at a Network Operations Centre and see the attacks coming in waves – literally. This SPAM is discarded before it reaches you or filtered so that you can chose whether to receive it or not. This is a direct involvement in manipulating your traffic. How does this stand in respect of Net Neutrality?

Internet users are daily subjected to Denial Of Service Attacks (DOS). DOS Attacks are used to maliciously bring down the internet connection/server/business of an individual or organisation. Often they are means of cracking the defences of a business to gain access to their network. ISPs prevent these attacks by black listing the originating IP addresses and thereby stopping access of the bad guys to their customer. This is intervention in the network but how does it stand in respect of Net Neutrality?

The whole debate, which has been going on in the USA for some time has now reached Europe. I am not sure what the answer is because it is a hugely complex subject. Regulators such as Ofcom are now getting interested but I am pretty positive that neither the regulator nor their political masters will have a good enough handle on the wide issues involved to make sensible decisions (witness the Digital Economy Act).

Having said that I am also not sure that leaving it to the market is the right answer as players with significant market power will flex their muscles when they feel they can get away with it – it is human nature.

Lets discuss.

Los Trios Timicos featuring CMC Partnership

2010-08-20T12:55:32+00:00

Los Trios Timicos - Trefor Davies of Timico with Ann Hallett and Lee James of CMC Partnership

Had a visit from CMC Partnership today. They are a fast growing provider of project management and consultancy services based in South Wales. They are also a customer – it is great to meet customers and in particular as they work in such a diverse range of industries – one of the nice things about being a Communications Provider.

Ann Hallett and Lee James from CMC proved to be a very talented duo and great sports by joining me in a rendition of La Bamba by Los Trios Paraguayos. Readers will also remember the B side of the 1966 hit : Llama En El Cuerpo. We didn’t play the B side.

The photo above is us (Los Trios Timicos) doing the reprise.

Superfast IP Networks, 21CN and MPLS mixing and matching

2010-08-20T12:10:45+00:00

Superfast all IP networks are not just around the corner they are here already, at least if you are a business. The big growth area in business networking is in Ethernet data circuits that are rapidly replacing ADSL as the business connectivity of choice.

In fact businesses are keeping their old ADSL connections as a backup to their new Ethernet circuit so whilst the market for broadband is relatively flat the general business of internet connectivity is seeing a boom.

At Timico we will see almost twice as many Ethernet circuits installed in 2010 as we did in the first five years of our existence. Next year we expect the number to at least double again.

This is happening because cost of Ethernet has come down dramatically over the last 18 months and is happening at a time when the use of IP networks for serious business applications (offsite backup, DR, Citrix, hosted voip, sip trunks, video conferencing etc etc) is seeing a big growth in demand.

This is fine and exciting but the other big change is the advent of broadband connectivity over the BT 21st Century Network (which incidentally is also the carrier for the Ethernet services). BT saw quite a slow start to their ADSL2+ service but this year has seen connections ramp up and go through the 1 million subscriber mark. At the same time BT Wholesale is getting its act together in starting to productise some of the advanced features available for broadband on 21CN.

These include Annex M services already launched by BT. Annex M allows ADSL2+ subscribers to trade some of their downstream bandwidth for more upstream. Users can get up to 2.3Mbps according to the spec though the usual caveats regarding quality of the line etc apply.

BT has also added an Elevated Best Efforts tier to its standard Best Efforts ADSL2+ service. This allows for higher minimum levels of performance for individual circuits at the busiest times of the day.

The final improvement is going to be Real Time QoS, currently in trials and due for release at the end of March 2011. The addition of Real Time QoS to the portfolio will finally make a real 21st Century Network of 21CN.

Currently best practice for rolling out VoIP over broadband to businesses is to provide a separate line for the VoIP traffic. With Real Time QoS this has the prospect of changing so that very small businesses can run both voice and data over the same ADSL line.

Although businesses are starting to use their internet connectivity more and more suggesting that more than one ADSL might be appropriate in any case this is being catered for by the introduction of Fibre to the Cabinet FTTC (see many posts and pages on this blog) and Fibre to the Premises which should satisfy the bandwidth needs of many businesses for the immediate future.

The beauty of this newly connected IP world is that the ADSL network will nicely complement the Ethernet network. Whereas ISPs have been able to offer QoS over Ethernet their QoS offerings over ADSL have never really matched Ethernet for the levels of control. Although running an uncongested core network will go 95% of the way to assuring a quality experience the lack of control at the BT Exchange has always taken a little of the edge off the story (or shine off the ball seeing as this is still the cricket season).

In 2011 businesses will be able to run MPLS Wide Area Networks, mixing and matching connection types with uniform levels of QoS. The caveat here is that BT is not planning on rolling out multilevel Class of Service over ADSL (or FTTX) but having Real Time QoS for critical applications such as VoIP is going to be a huge step up from where we are today.

Stonewall, Trans marriage rights and the Equality Act

2010-08-19T13:06:03+00:00

It seems at least in the circles I move in that it’s quite the in thing to attack S’onewall and Ben Summerskill in particular. Well, just for the record I’m not jumping on the bandwagon because we helped give it a push start in 2008.

It may be that S’onewall haven’t forgiven the Trans community for upsetting their nice awards though. I noticed earlier this year that their mention of IDAHO, the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia strangely missed out the Transphobia. More recently I ran across their statement about their membership of the Equality and Diversity Forum which fails to mention Gender Identity, even though it’s present on the EDFs own website.

It concerns me that S’onewall are very good at publicity and education and thus are often consulted by public organisations when promoting and running equality campaigns, such as this example of an anti-Homophobia campaign by Gwent Police. Gwent Police’s portion of the press release fails to mention transphobia, although Gwent Crown Prosecution Service do manage to be more inclusive. Gwent Police no doubt think they’re doing the right thing and are to be applauded for that but I’ll hazard a guess that the beer mats being distributed, if S’onewall had anything to do with them, don’t cover transphobia at all. I’d encourage any organisation running any sort of LGBT equality event to also talk to GIRES who do excellent work on education. (As an aside, I’m still working on a Trans Action Group idea but I have some groundwork to do – GIRES don’t cover the same ground as they’re not political)

More bizarrely, Stonewall “declined” to take part in a Pink News article on Marriage Equality. All the other groups invited did submit their responses, although I’m concerned that only three of the eight organisations that replied thought it would be appropriate to mention, when replying to a request from probably the most Trans-friendly news service in the UK, the state-mandated divorce inflicted on transitioners. Of the three, two were unlikely champions – the Tories and the Christians.

And finally, I move on to one final Pink News story – Trans woman claims she lost her job after wearing women’s clothes. (Original Linconshire Echo story here – health warning, the comments include the usual kind of drivel you’d expect) Assuming the facts given are true, what’s the betting that a case like this would be defended in future using the provisions in the Equality Act 2010 because it made the clients she was working with “uncomfortable”? Luckily that can’t happen in this case as even if it doesn’t end up at tribunal for a while, the EA2010 isn’t yet in force.

Originally posted at Zoe's Wordpress Blog

Dead Letter Office Mk.2

2010-08-18T14:32:29+00:00

I’m thinking this might be the beginnings of a series…

Dear Hiten,

Many thanks for the expenses remittance advice. I am assuming the '37.00' figure is given in UK pounds sterling? I do hope so. We've had some incidents before where the figure given hasn't always been in the local currency, and - let me tell you - Zimbabwean dollars are pretty hard to shift these days.

It is very kind for you to gift me this money, as, in these financially turbulent times, things are very tight indeed for a great many people, and your offer to furnish me with thirty seven shiny gold coins with the Queen's knapper on them is most unexpected and highly appreciated. I will be sure to raise a glass to you, the next time I'm at the bar.

I am, however, left wondering how you plan to transmit this payment to me - as I've never had any dealings with your esteemed University. Yes - University! A proper one too (not that anyone realises, eh? What with Loughborough being the armpit of Leicestershire), not one of these fly-by-night newfangled former polytechnics that blossomed into Universities for the financially (and somewhat less academically) challenged. Yes, like DeMontfort! Rar!

Anyway, I would suggest that if you really do wish to pay me the sum of £37.00 for an expense which I couldn't possibly ever have accrued during undertaking of workings for a University I've never even had cause or concern to ever visit, contact or otherwise, then may I suggest that you instead donate the £37.00 to charity. I think UNICEF is probably a good candidate.

Yours,

James Sheridan.

EDIT: Hiten replies:
Dear James,

Many thanks of your email, but please see attached confirmation why we have paid you £37.00 for your out of pocket expenses.

Regards,
Hiten Patel
Senior Insurance Officer & Payment Section Supervisor
Finance Office
Sir Arnold Hall Building
Loughborough University
Ashby Road
Loughborough
LEICS, LE11 3TU
www.lboro.ac.uk
Tel: +44 (0)1509 222026
Fax : +44 (0)1509 223916

Loughborough University - 100 years of education and innovation. University of the year 2008-09

I’ve no words, honestly.

New Laptop Frustration

2010-08-17T22:00:32+00:00

I've been talking about replacing my laptop since November. Now I've somewhat forced the issue by giving away my R200, leaving myself with just the EEE 901. I'm not planning to bring a desktop with me to California (well, I might ship bits for a media box, but probably not even a complete machine), so I've been looking more seriously at what my options are.

I like smaller laptops; the R200 is 12", I had a Compaq N200 previous which was 10". There seem to be a number of 13" options that are light, so I'm prepared to look at those.

This is going to be my main machine, so I need something with some grunt. A decent amount of RAM with a reasonable processor. I'm probably prepared to take the price hit in order to get SSD. Also a decent resolution screen along with built in wifi (does anything not have this these days?) + 3G would be nice too.

Of course, it turns out I can't have all of this. In particular the US market seems pretty dire for 3G support (no, something locked or that can't take a GSM SIM doesn't count. I expect to travel.) The UK market is a bit better, but there are still no perfect answers.

Lenovo X201s

(It's really hard for me to think of this as a Lenovo rather than an IBM Thinkpad.)

This comes in a 1440x900 resolution variant, which is nice for 12". I can have a touchpad too. What I can't have is 3G; with the 1440x900 screen there's apparently no space for the 3G antenna. Doh! Also Thinkpads are *ugly*.

Sony Vaio VPCZ12Z9E/X

I want this. Core i7, 1920x1080 screen, SSD, 3G (Gobi), sub 1.5Kg.

But. Sony. Ridiculously expensive. If it was half the price and made by Lenovo or Toshiba I'd have bought one by now. As it is there's no way I can reasonably expect it to last 3 years (and really I'd want 5 given the cost).

Toshiba R700-155

I've been extremely happy with my R200 and spent a long time eying the R500/R600. The -155 is a Core i7, 1366x768 screen, 13", 3G, sub 1.5Kg.

2 problems. One, I'd like a better resolution if I'm going to 13" - both the Lenovo and the Sony manage that. Secondly, and more of an issue, nowhere seems to have them in stock.

HP Elitebook 2540p

This has potential. Seems to be a little heavier than the other options, and it's only a 1280x800 screen (but in 12"). Available with Core i7, SSD & 3G. Oh, except once again stock is a problem.

Have I missed anything else out there? I can probably buy from the UK or US with equal ease.

Is black market for IPv4 blocks imminent?

2010-08-17T11:02:28+00:00

Whilst I was on holiday the IPv4 Exhaustion counter ticked down another digit to 5% or 14 /8 blocks .

Nov 16 2009 10% – dropped through 400,000,000 mark
Jan 20th 9%
Feb 25th 8%
May 10th 7%
June 2nd 6%
August 5%

Currently we seem to be using a /8 block every three weeks. With 9 blocks left before we are down to the last 5 (at which point IANA will distribute these simultaneously to the 5 Regional Internet Registries) it looks like we have 27 weeks to go to IPv4 Exhaustion.

In my book this is February 2011 and not the June date reported by the Exhaustion Counter on this blog.

Anecdotally there is already a “private” market for IPv4 addresses and at last night’s LINX meeting people already mentioned that availability of free IPv4 addresses was one of the criteria they used in looking at potential company acquisitions. Someone has even already put a block up for sale on eBay as an experiment (now withdrawn).

Whilst the world is not fully up and running yet with IPv6 the situation is not as bad as it may seem. The map below, produced in early 2010 by Timico’s number one peering partner Hurricane Electric, shows that most countries (in grey) have some kind of IPv6 POP.

map of IPv6 penetration globally - grey is good

HE have a novel method of getting their partners to test IPv6 interoperability with them – by offering them T shirts. Note the sharp increase in test activity when the TShirt offer was made.

effect of Hurricane Electric T SHirt offer on IPv6 testing

Thanks to HE Director of IPv6 Strategy, Martin Levy for the pics

You can track the actual number of IPv4 blocks available at the IANA website here.

Ed Vaizey wants help re VOA fibre rates – please comment here

2010-08-15T20:10:06+00:00

Last week the Valuation Office Agency put out revised guidelines for assessing rateable values for fibre connections.

There is no change at the high end so the likes of Virgin and BT will remain unaffected. However at the smaller network end of the scale there has been a massive price hike.

In 2005 if you were running a pair of fibres over 1km you would be stung with a rateable value of £280. In 2010 this has now shot up to £2000. This will not of course affect BT because they have a negotiated total rateable value for their network.

The upshot of this is that at a time when industry has been crying out for a level “rates” playing field the VOA has made it an even more unequal commercial battle in favour of the large incumbent operators.

I realise that running a country is a complex job but this complexity means that we need to have people doing it that understand the issues. You can’t on the one hand say that you are trying to promote Digital Inclusion with “Big Society” projects and flag waving and on the other hand make it harder for the people who you are trying to help to help themselves.

The VOA has no interest in the Big Society. The government does. The government should be providing the VOA with better direction here.

Minister for Communications, Culture and the Creative Industries, Ed Vaizey has made a statement to accompany the VOA announcement:

“I welcome the work that VOA has been doing with industry. These new guidelines will offer much greater clarity for businesses that invest in broadband networks and give them the opportunity to feed their views to the VOA.

VOA has made it clear that they welcome evidence from the industry to enable the Agency to maintain a fair and accurate rating for this important market, which is a priority for the coalition Government.

I hope that industry will take the opportunity to study this new guidance and to engage constructively with VOA for the benefit of consumers and businesses throughout the country.”

What Ed Vaizey is saying is this is his stake in the ground. I hereby invite readers to comment here to build up a body of material that shows this rating system is not going to work. Vtesse Networks and others have already been trying to hammer home the message. Lets see if we can make it a bigger hammer.

Not my usual sort of keys

2010-08-13T08:36:34+00:00

In a week I'll be in California. I'm not packed, though I've been spending a lot of time trying to figure how exactly what I need to take, what I want to take, and what I really shouldn't take.

One item I've been uncertain about are keyboards. When Simon went to France for a year he took a UK keyboard with him, but then they have AZERTY which is substantially different. There are a number of US keyboards lying around the office so a few weeks ago I switched to one for work to see how it went. I think I'm bringing a stash of UK keyboards with me. Annoyances with the US keyboard:

Enter is too small. I have this problem on my EEE 901 as well. Usually this manifests as me typing lots of half written lines on IRC.
The " moving location is actually much more irritating than I expected. Likewise ~
And, the decider, PERSON RAISING BOTH HANDS IN CELEBRATION simply doesn't flow as easily. On a UK keyboard it's left, middle, right. On a US keyboard it's right, left, right.

Identity and Passport Service on Gender Markers

2010-08-12T11:30:09+00:00

And the second of my two FoI requests has also come back, this time from the IPS. Highlights – they don’t use the X unspecified gender marker and never have done and have consulted with the Trans community on this. I don’t know when that was, however – they say “recently” but that could be 10 years ago. They also confirmed only one pair of ID cards were ever issued under the transgender provisions. Text is below minus the usual stuff, I’ve also trimmed my questions down to make it more readable (Yuo can see the full list on my earlier post) but the responses are in full. Their reference for this request was FOICR 15540/10.

Passports
These questions relate to ICAO Doc 9303, Part I, Volume I.1 Can you confirm:
1. Does the Identity & Passport Service follow Doc 9303 (Or a standard that refers to it, such as ISO/IEC 7501-1:2008) for passports.

I can confirm that UK passports do meet the specifications for passports set out in
Document 9303.

2. Section IV permits use of “X” to mean unspecified as a sex on Machine Readable Passports(MRP) within the Visual Inspection Zone (Page IV-11, field 11) and similarly “<” within the Machine Readable Zone. (Page IV-16, line 2, character position 21). Has the IPS ever issued an MRP with X/< specified as
sex… (Remainder of question 2 and questions 3 and 4 omitted)

ICAO standards do not mandate that the use of “X” as a gender identifier must be made available by passport issuing authorities. Currently, IPS does not use this identifier and has never done so in the past. The passport issuing system is not currently designed to include “X” as a gender identifier. Thus, no passports have been issued with the “X” gender identifier. This policy was recently reviewed and transgender community groups such as Press for Change were involved in consultation on this topic. However, as with all passport policy, we are happy to obtain feedback from members of the public which will be used to input to any future policy reviews.

Identity Cards
1. During discussion on the Identity Documents Bill, Lynne Featherstone, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, implied that only one individual had has two identity cards issued under the provisions of The Identity Cards Act 2006 (Application and Issue of ID Card and Notification of Changes) Regulations 2009, section 7(2)(b). Can you confirm this figure is correct?

I can confirm that under the provisions of The Identity Cards Act 2006 (Application and Issue of ID Card and Notification of Changes) Regulations 2009, section 7(2)(b) only one set of ID cards have been issued under the Transgendered scheme.

Originally posted at Zoe's Wordpress Blog

DVLA reply to FoI request on driving licence titles

2010-08-11T12:31:08+00:00

I’ve received a reply to my Freedom of Information request to the DVLA – I’ve reproduced it minus the usual pre and postamble on such letters. Some quick highlights – I think they missed the point in that they talk about “recording” titles rather than their inclusion on the licence so I’ll probably resubmit the FoI request again, rewording the question to make it clearer. I’ve not received the attachment they mentioned, so perhaps that clarifies things somewhat. Secondly, one good point for many is you can basically put whatever title you want on the form or leave it blank if you don’t want one, regardless of gender. (Although I would guess for a change of name/title you may need to explicitly ask for the title to be removed or there’s a risk they’ll just re-include the old one)

If anyone is wanting to follow up on this on their own and reference this request, their reference number is FOIR2039.

1. It would appear that at least for the last 30 years, driving licences include title (Mrs, Miss) etc only where the holder is male or has an honorific title such as Dr., Lord etc. Can you confirm this is indeed current policy? Please supply a copy of the policy or guidelines issued to staff, if they exist.

Where a female applicant does not specify a title, then this field is left blank. Titles such as Doctor, Reverend, Lord and Lady are also included on driving licences. I can confirm that policy or guidance in this regard is not held. It is the responsibility of DVLA to accurately record information that has been provided to them by applicants for or holders of a driving licence. Where a female driver provides a title such as Miss or Mrs, DVLA will include the title on the individual’s driving licence.

However, guidance is available that instructs staff about the field codes to use when keying the information to be input on the driver’s record and I attach a copy for your information.

2. What is the reason for this policy, if it is not merely historical?

The Policy is historical and evolves over time in reaction to developing trends.

3. Has this policy been reviewed historically and if so, what were the results of that review, including minutes of meetings.

This information is not held. There have been no formal reviews of DVLA’s policy on recording titles. Of course where titles not previously identified are submitted by applicants then the matter will be reviewed as and when necessary.

4. Are there any current plans to review this policy?

Please see the answer to 3 above.

5. Would the DVLA issue a driving licence on request
a) without the title (to a woman)
b) with an alternative title such as “Ms”, (not indicating marital status) “Mx.” or “Mre.” (Gender-neutral form of Mr/Ms

The answer to both a) and b) is Yes.

6. If a licence would only be issued under one of the above only under certain conditions, what are those conditions (e.g. deed poll with the new title)

A deed poll would not be required for either title Ms, Mx or Mre.

7. In cases where the gender of the applicant is not obvious, how is this handled in terms of encoding the “gender marker” within the 7th character of the licence number? (For example, supporting documentation does not include it, the name and appearance of the applicant in the photograph is ambiguous and they have a non-gender specific title, such as Dr.)

DVLA would contact the applicant in circumstances where there was any uncertainty over their gender.

Update: I’ve now received the missing document on entering and handling title codes, which includes some rules on when you might need a Deed Poll. (If you want to call yourself something that implies a title, “Lord so-and-so” for example.)

Originally posted at Zoe's Wordpress Blog

Dead Letter Office

2010-08-10T23:01:26+00:00

I regularly receive someone else’s email. Someone else with the same name as me. This irks me no end. Today, I finally found the real intended recipient’s email address. I sent him – well – forwarded him, an email:

Hi there James,

My name is also James. James Sheridan. Hey, yeah - that's your name
too, right? Small world.

As you'll have no-doubt noticed from the subject and attachment to
this mail, this is your boarding pass for your BA flight tomorrow from
Heathrow to Glasgow. I imagine you'll probably need it. Are you
surprised that a stranger, albeit one with the same name, has your
boarding pass? Don't worry, I'm not a hacker, and I'm not emptying
your bank account as we speak - no, really, I'm not, sadly. What I am,
is someone who's getting rather bored of receiving someone else's
email.

This mail is the latest in a series I've had, all purporting to be for
a person with the same name as me. I've had them for all kinds of
things - confirmation of car hires, mailing list subscriptions,
sign-ups to... *those* websites, very risque! When it first happened,
I thought _I'd_ had my identity cloned! Now, I'm a bit wiser, and have
realised that someone, well - _you_ - keeps serially mis-typing their
email address when signing up for stuff all over the web.

It's only today, that I've actually managed to locate your *real*
email address - by logging into your BA booking (as BA kindly sent me
the boarding pass, with your booking reference on it) and seeing your
email address (and mobile phone number) on the 'Manage My Booking'
part of the site. So, here you are - here's your boarding pass.

Now, a quick lesson:

YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS: jamesmsheridan@<redacted>

MY EMAIL ADDRESS: jamessheridan@<redacted> (also
james.sheridan@<redacted> - don't ask, Google make it 'easier' by
ignoring .'s in email addresses, I think it's daft too).

The omission of that little 'm' - that's the distance between us,
James. If you forget that 'm', *I* will receive the mail. It's that
simple. Please don't forget the 'm' - I've only endeavoured to look
into this tonight because of the nature of the mail - others might
just have ignored it completely, or - worse - used the information
I've had mailed to me in the past to steal your identity.

Be careful out there.

Cheers.

James Sheridan. No M.

An odd perspective on friendship

2010-08-10T02:36:13+00:00

Benjamin wrote:

“I have learnt to minimize the amount of friends I have who are vegetarian, religious or have extreme views about something. If I didn’t, I’d probably be so depressed from being lectured and told off all the time.”

Benjamin,

If you have “friends” who are lecturing or preaching to you, I don’t think they’re really your friends. Even if they’re right and you’re very wrong. If someone continually brings a subject up even when they know you aren’t interested in talking about it, then I think they’re doing so more for their own purposes than yours.

I think it’s the case that almost everyone holds “extreme” views about some topic or other, but most don’t feel the need to bring them up. You singled out vegetarianism and religion, but anything can be a hot topic for someone.

Friends might need to do some sort of reality check or intervention on each other from time to time, and of course debate is good too. But there really is no need for frequent lecturing when amongst friends, I believe. It would have been much better if you had instead said, “I have learnt to disassociate myself from people who lecture me” rather than explicitly mentioning vegetarians, people who have faith, free software zealots, … by calling out these groups you unfortunately make yourself look like a troll who is lecturing.

You probably have more friends than you think who are religious or vegetarian, and you didn’t even know.

More inequality in the Equalities Act 2010

2010-08-09T21:07:01+00:00

I had assumed it was just the provision of services bit of the Equalities Act 2010 that was the Trans-gotcha. A quick search of the act for the phrase transsexual reveals far worse. Sport is the first hit – section 195, or page 122 if you’re reading the PDF version.

A person does not contravene section 29, 33, 34 or 35, so far as relating to gender reassignment, only by doing anything in relation to the participation of a transsexual person as a competitor in a gender-affected activity if it is necessary to do so to secure in relation to the activity—
(a) fair competition, or
(b) the safety of competitors.

Fair competition? You’d think they’d at clear this one up in the explanatory notes but no:

It also makes it lawful to restrict participation of transsexual people in such competitions if this is necessary to uphold fair or safe competition, but not otherwise.

Nothing about having certain well established rules (Such as the International Olympic Committee ones) relating to transsexual people. Just “restrict participation”. As for safety… are we a threat to people? Really? Can anyone actually back that one up in the slightest without descending into the worst transphobic stereotypes possible?

Next up is schedule 9 on page 170. I wasn’t clear in my last post if you could be discriminated against because you might be trans even if you’re not. Well, it seems being a butch dyke or having a spot of facial hair due to Polycystic Ovary Syndrome is now something you can be discriminated against for when applying for jobs:

…the person to whom A applies the requirement does not meet it (or A has reasonable grounds for not being satisfied that the person meets it).

I can’t quite wrap my head around that one so I may have the interpretation wrong as it’s giving me a headache just trying. I’d appreciate someone with a legal background trying to unravel it. The same page also has a whole host of exclusions relating to sex, sexuality and gender identity if it’s a religious organisation that’s the employer, I think we all know about those ones already.

This one really annoys me as I thought the excellent work GIRES did put this one to bed:

A person does not contravene section 39(1)(a) or (c) or (2)(b) by applying in relation to service in the armed forces a relevant requirement if the person shows that the application is a proportionate means of ensuring the combat effectiveness of the armed forces. (2) A relevant requirement is… (b) a requirement not to be a transsexual person.

Right. Get this: I can’t speak for the other branches, but in order to get into and stay in the Army, you have to pass physical tests. Running up hills in the carrying insanely heavy backpacks with someone yelling at you telling you it’s “character building”. The physical fitness standards are (Outside of the infantry) Army-wide and laid down in stone so there’s no messing about if the Physical Training staff don’t like you. You’re either in, or you’re not. If someone is Trans and can pass the physical tests, why on earth would anyone give a rats arse if you’re Trans or not?

Now on to page 224, Communal Accommodation.

A person does not contravene this Act, so far as relating to sex discrimination or gender reassignment discrimination, only because of anything done in relation to… (a) the admission of persons to communal accommodation; (b) the provision of a benefit, facility or service linked to the accommodation.

So next time anyone suspect of looking a bit tranny turns up at a Youth Hostel they can expect to be turned away? Perhaps the NHS will have a new funding crisis due to the need to build special tranny wards. And you can forget sheltered accommodation. Been abused by a partner? Doesn’t matter, you’re a transsexual person now. No councilling, no sheltered accommodation.

So, let us turn to the explanatory notes to see if they clarify things at all. Here’s what’s quoted for section 16:

Example
A female to male transsexual person takes time off work to receive hormone treatment as part of his gender reassignment. His employer cannot discriminate against him because of his absence from work for this purpose.

Ah! Now we’re getting some clarity – whoever wrote this really hasn’t got a clue. I’m not sure how many transmen have needed to take time off work to go an inject themselves with T or change a patch but I’ll hazard a guess it’s not high up the list of worries of the average trans person. I can only guess they might mean going to see a doctor to get a repeat prescription but that’s no different from anyone else on HRT. Why not use the obvious example – surgery?

Further on there’s this gem:

733. A person with a full Gender Recognition Certificate acquired under the Gender Recognition Act 2004 is able to marry someone of the opposite gender to his or her acquired gender. The Marriage Act 1949 imposes an obligation on clergyman in the Church of England or a clerk in Holy Orders of the Church in Wales to marry anyone residing in their parish, or who fits other stated connection criteria. However section 5B of that Act contains an exception where the clergyman or clerk reasonably believes one of the parties’ gender is acquired under the Gender Recognition Act.

There we go, another case of “it’s not good to look a bit trans”. I perhaps have some of this wrong as I don’t have much legal knowledge outside of IT and the Internet and this stuff is hard to read, but the explanatory notes seem to make it clear: Being out just might not be the smart thing any more. I honestly have no idea how this stuff got through parliament without someone noticing how bad it is. End of parliament wash up? More like a whitewash and a chance to push through some quite unwelcome legislation.

Originally posted at Zoe's Wordpress Blog

How to get less junk email

2010-08-09T18:45:27+00:00

I am fairly frequently asked for tips on getting less junk email. There’s quite a few things you can do that will cut the amount of junk you get, or at least let you get an idea of where it came from.

Don’t have a catchall account, only ever accept mail for real mailboxes.

Use as few generic or role addresses as you can. sales@, info@, help@ etc will all draw in unwanted junk.

Delete or disable legacy mailboxes, don’t alias them to another user’s mailbox.

Use different email aliases for different sites. So I might have martin-slashdot@ for Slashdot, martin-elreg@ for The Register, martin-dominos@ for Dominos etc etc. If mails arrives to these addresses, and it’s not from that specific organisation, then something has leaked when it shouldn’t have.

Once you’ve finished with a particular site, remove the alias.

Don’t be afraid to pick up the phone. If you get email you didn’t want from a company, call them to get yourself removed. Where you’ve had no contact with a company before, tell them politely that they are breaking the law by sending you unsolicited email.

Understand the difference between spam and UCE. With spam it is rarely worth your time tracking down the sender, UCE may well be.

Don’t click on unsubscribe links in spam messages. Do click on unsubscribe links in UCE messages. With the latter, if the unsubscribe isn’t instant (“It may take up to 10 days….”) then blacklist the sender.

And, of course, if junk mail really is a big problem for you, consider using a commercial anti-spam and anti-virus filtering service to get rid of it. Obviously I would recommend antibodyMX, but there are plenty of other providers out there.

Loopholes in the Equality Act 2010 – more reasons to be stealth

2010-08-09T14:11:10+00:00

Anyone reading this will by now surely have read Zoe Brain’s post about the UK Equality Act 2010. I may have missed this but what I haven’t seen discussed yet is how this would would in practice. Bills pushed through in a hurry without proper scrutiny tend to make bad laws and this one may be no exception.

Lets have a look at the two examples given alongside the act:

A group counselling session is provided for female victims of sexual assault. The organisers do not allow transsexual people to attend as they judge that the clients who attend the group session are unlikely to do so if a male-to-female transsexual person was also there. This would be lawful.

So, someone looking a bit less than feminine – and there’s nothing like abuse to give you very unfeminine body language, can’t even begin to imagine what serious sexual assault would do – walks in to a counselling session in their stereotypical combat boots and ripped jeans and is told “Sorry, you can’t be here, you’re clearly transsexual”. What if they’re not? It’s impossible to prove one is cisgendered, so by doing this you’re basically discriminating not based on gender reassignment status but on appearance. In the case of someone who is a butch lesbian, it could be argued that you’re discriminating based on sexuality so you’ve broken the law.

The second example reads:

A counsellor working with victims of rape might have to be a woman and not a transsexual person, even if she has a gender recognition certificate, in order to avoid causing them further distress.

Same problem occurs here. If you don’t know someone is or isn’t trans, can you discriminate before you employ them? Not without discriminating against a significant portion of the LGB population, I suspect. After employing them, if you know but only because you saw a copy of their Gender Recognition Certificate, the Gender Recognition Act says you can’t out that person so you can’t say or do anything that would imply they’re trans. (No matter how obvious it might be)

Unless I’ve missed something, this may be an issue that will impact more LGB people than T people, so perhaps something we can enlist help campaigning on?

Originally posted at Zoe's Wordpress Blog

DIY Trailer

2010-08-08T17:13:52+00:00

For the past week wibble_puppy and I have been driving far and wide, scouring salvage yards for old reclaimed bricks that match those her house is built from. At two different places we bought a hundred and brought them back in her Honda Jazz (I worked out it was just about safe to carry that much weight, but the rear suspension was riding pretty low). At a third place we bought a palette of 150. There were already 100 bricks in the back of the car so we couldn't bring the 150 back with us that day.

Not wanting to risk breaking the Jazz by bringing them all back in one trip, we discussed a number of different options to retrieve them. Among the options were to make two trips in the Jazz (about three-four hours per round trip, including loading and unloading); bring them back in Wibble's Minor van (unsure if it would be a safe load because we think it has the rear springs from a car instead of a van); get me insured to drive G's big business van (expensive); or rent a suitably hefty trailer (very expensive). In the end I decided on the most illogical option: build a trailer and tow it with Lintilla!

Starting with the trailer tent chassis that I'm going to build my caravan on and a pile of scrap timber, we spent five and a half hours yesterday afternoon/evening (much of it in the rain) putting the brakes back together and then building a box on top of the chassis.

After grabbing a bite to eat, we headed over to the brick yard, picked up the 150 bricks, and brought them back. I had been a little concerned beforehand about how well Lintilla would cope with pulling that much weight - I estimate the gross weight of trailer and load probably came to about 500Kg. I could certainly feel her handling differently, and hill climbs were a bit slower, but she coped remarkably well overall. Overrun brakes on the trailer are certainly a good thing and I'm very glad the chassis I bought has them - they make braking with a heavy load not much harder than with a light empty trailer.

I'm pretty happy with it, particularly since it's nearly all made from stuff we already had lying around. I want to make a few small modifications (turn the back into a hinged tailgate, lower the height of the front, bolt the spare wheel on, maybe fit mudguards) and give it a lick of paint. We've discussed putting a wanted ad on the local Freegle for unwanted tins of exterior paint and using whatever colours we end up with! It's a bit of a shame that it will have to be dismantled in a few months to use the chassis for the caravan, but in the meantime we have a useful resource for moving building materials around (including caravan-building materials).

Light and love and the world above mean nothing to the mole

2010-08-08T03:37:14+00:00

On this Friday (13th) I am going to spend an hour in a Death Row prison cell for Reprieve, in order to draw attention to the plight of the British grandmother Linda Carty, who the USA wants to execute any day now. (For more info on her case please see Reprieve's information.)

The cell will be set up at St Martin in the Fields, Trafalgar Square. I will be in the cell on Friday 13 from 2-3pm.

I intend to spend the time writing a letter to my penfriend Melvin Hodges, who is in Death Row in Alabama.

I understand that the cell will be streamed to the internet, so you will be able to watch my antics, but I don't yet know a URL.

If anyone is able to come down and support me in person I would really appreciate it; also, I will be staying in town from 3pm until 6pm when Mike finishes work, so if anyone is around on Friday between 3 and 6pm it would be lovely to see you for coffee - or I know a great mexican cocktail bar near Trafalgar. Or we could go to the National Portrait Gallery if you fancy something cultural and sober - at the moment they are showing a Glastonbury exhibition that I'd lile to see.

Just let me know if you can keep me company!

Light and love and the world above...

Nuff said

2010-08-07T07:35:36+00:00

News and screen shots will appear as normal, elsewhere

A UK Trans(sexual) Action Group?

2010-08-04T12:57:43+00:00

It’s become obvious that something is needed. That something is a successor to the older organisations that no longer seem active or have lost grass roots support over the last 2 or 3 years. There is a seed of doubt here, if it’s so obvious and so needed why hasn’t someone done it already?

But someone has to be first. Why not here, why not now?

Here’s the idea. A group of Trans folk and perhaps people who we might invite in to help, that can respond to consultations for parliament and other bodies, by going out there to the transsexual community and saying “hey, what do you think?”, putting all those responses into one place and giving them to the lawmakers. We saw it happen on a small scale with Dr. Julian Huppert’s piece on ID cards, but we can’t always expect politicians to come asking. The easier we make it for them, the more chance we have of being heard. There was nobody from the T community present at the recent Home Office chat about Civil Partnerships and I can’t help but suspect it’s because we’re just not loud enough right now. Plus, if you wanted in invite someone to represent the community right now, who would you ask? I can’t think of any good, willing candidates whom one can say have a grass roots mandate to do this work.

A group to put out press releases and publicise grass roots activism and protests, as happened with the S’onewall protests in 2008.

A group to nominate spokespeople to go to posh media events and help eat all those troublesome but sadly inevitable canapés.

A group to do all the usual publicity tricks that the establishment LGB has learnt to do over the past couple of decades. Don’t like a nomination for some 2011 award? Well, let’s have our own and nominate UK Trans Ally and Trans Villians of the year in 2011. We may not get the funding for a pink carpet and be able to hire out halls, but we can at least generate some press coverage.

In honesty, I don’t know how to get these things started, except one way – sheer momentum. Start it, get enough people interested and make enough noise in the right places and we’ll generate enough political awareness that issues will start to find us, rather than the other way round.

I already have a couple of things in the pipeline that will need some backing and discussion. So, if anyone wants to be involved or even just be kept informed, comment here and publicise this on Twitter, Facebook and in real life. Even if people don’t like this set of goals or think I’m not the right person to coordinate this, it will at least get interested people in one place with the will to do something and to do something now.

Originally posted at Zoe's Wordpress Blog

Not an easy link to make

2010-08-02T17:46:07+00:00

As part of my occasional series on organisations which think they can tell you where and where not to link to them, I found a classic of the genre at easyJet’s website. Not only are they under the entirely mistaken impression that they can insist you only link to their front page, but they devote an entire page to utterly spurious conditions under which you are permitted to make that link.

Incidentally, the reason I discovered this page is because of a discussion in uk.legal.moderated about easyJet’s telephone number. On one of their websites, they present it as +44 871 244 2377, which, while technically the correct full international format, is somewhat confusing to UK-based customers who aren’t familiar with that format and try dialling it as presented, without the leading 0 necessary for national calls. As a result, many calls are going to a residential telephone line that happens to consist of the first six digits of easyJet’s number.

Obviously, that’s primarily the fault of the numpties who can’t understand a telephone number in international format, but, given that easyJet seem to want to make it hard to find (it doesn’t seem to be visible anywhere from a link on their main website, which may possibly be a reason why they don’t want people linking to it directly from the outside!), I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they’ve deliberately used that format alone in the hope that it will deter their less-intelligent customers from calling them. After all, it’s not as if they don’t have the space on the website to display the number in both national and international formats.

Incidentally, the number above is, of course, for easyJet Holidays, not the airline. The number for the airline is 0871 244 2366 – and please don’t forget that leading 0!.

Mark

I'm all lost in the supermarket

2010-08-02T13:52:59+00:00

It has been One Of Those Days.

Woke up to the alarm, really didn't want to get out of bed but I had a builder coming so I dragged myself up, and took the dog for a walk. At this point I remembered knackering my "good" leg yesterday, and ended up trying to hurry while keeping it straight... painful and probably looked very silly. Made it home a little late (forgetting how slowly I walk) but luckily the builder was arriving as I got back. Or maybe he just looked out for me - he lives across the road.

After a bit of unscrewing the builder said he would take one of our doors to his house to work on. I saw my chance to dash out and buy a few essentials that we ran out of over the weekend (actually we ran out of lots of things, and I no longer had any drinks left). He said he'd be 20 minutes. I decided I could make it to Tesco and back in this time (somewhat optimistically!), grabbed my keys and jumped in the car.

Traffic. Roadworks. But they don't start until August! You mean it's August already? And the new roadworks have backed up the traffic down as far as our house, around half a mile? Bother. So after a bit of rat-running I arrived at Tesco after 15 minutes, leaving myself 5 minutes to shop, pay, pack and drive home again. I had a bad feeling about this, however there was no point in turning round because the traffic out of Tesco was also being controlled by temporary lights (double bother!) and cars were queueing around the car park just to get out.

I dashed around as fast as I could limp, repeating my 5 item shopping list like a mantra, until a neighbour stopped me and said "hi! you were miles away!" Hmm. Yes, I always talk to myself with a glazed expression in supermarkets, you should know that! I just said "Sorry! Very busy! Got to go!" and carried on.

In record time I made it to the check outs, pushed my way in front of someone slow who was obviously aiming for the same free self-service till as me, and got scanning. Everything scanned first time, hooray! And now... I realised that I'd forgotten my wallet. Triple bother! Hang on a minute - didn't I just see my neighbour? It would be very cheeky but...

I rang their house, and her work-from-home husband picked up. I explained (loudly, for the benefit of the queue, so they'd stop muttering and might even feel sorry for me) and a few minutes later he rang back to say "She's at the till, and she'll come and find you when she's finished." Hooray for kind neighbour!

So at last we made it home - I gave her and her shopping a lift back, so we had a chance to chat after all - and I dashed to the corner shop to get some money out and repay her. And thank her.

And then I remembered - the builder! Luckily he saw me coming home for the second time today...

Caravan thoughts part 4: rough sketch

2010-07-31T20:10:03+00:00

Here's a sketch I did a while ago to get across the kind of style I have in mind for my self-build caravan.

It's a quick and dirty freehand drawing; the proportions and many of the details are wrong (ignore the wheels and the joints).

The upper half will lower down over the bottom half (using a hand-winch and cables - not detailed in this sketch) to reduce the towing height. Both halves will have an externally-visible timber frame (probably made from seasoned european oak with proper woodworking joints). The frame infill panels will probably be made from western red cedar T&G or shiplap. Some of the upper panels will contain fixed Perspex windows instead. My current thinking on the roof covering is that a sheet of polythene DPM (for waterproofing), then aluminium foil (for insulation), then vinyl flooring (a single sheet over the whole roof), and finally a coat or two of bituminous roof paint might work well.

I've since done a drawing that has the correct proportions, but I want to redraw it before I post it up because I've changed several important details.

Networking made easy – cricket lovely cricket

2010-07-31T13:37:36+00:00

Another great day out at the cricket at Trent Bridge. The second day of the Engand v Pakistan yielded some entertaining sport with some very good company.

The picture below is of me (centre) with guests Jeremy Dawkins of Next Event (left) and Mark Jaggers of Soll Leisure (right). You don’t do business with companies, you do business with people.

I think that’s the summer networking series coming to an end now and I’m signing off for two weeks R&R. I’ll be taking the kayaks and the snorkelling gear for a good old British summer holiday, whatever the weather. See you when I get back…

Jeremy Dawkins, Trefor Davies and Mark Jaggers at the Pakistan test match at Trent Bridge

Caravan thoughts part 3: The dummy caravan

2010-07-31T09:34:21+00:00

Here are some photos of a 'dummy caravan' I built to check that the dimensions used in the design will be practical.

It's set up the correct distance from the back of Lintilla. The top of the breeze blocks is roughly the height of the caravan roof when towing. The planks at the sides are the distance between the outside of the wheels; the actual walls of the caravan will be a bit closer in. The black plank at the back is roughly where the back of the caravan will come to.

The internal layout; as you can see most of it will be taken up by the bed. The door will be in the middle of the back wall, and the kitchen units will be at the sides of the kitchen area.

The rear-view mirror from the drivers seat, confirming that you will indeed be able to see over it when towing (though it does partially obscure the view).

Caravan thoughts part 2: Design aims

2010-07-30T20:30:21+00:00

Here's part two of my self-build caravan thoughts:

Design aims. The first three are the only really essential items - if I can tow it and use it to sleep comfortably in the dry then everything else is a bonus! :)

Light enough to tow behind a Morris Minor (ie. < about 650Kg gross weight).
Water tight.
Comfortable bed (preferably a good sprung mattress).
Based on the trailer-tent chassis I bought the other week.
Roof low enough when towing to see over it through the back window (ie. no higher than about 4 feet).
As narrow as possible both for ease of towing and storage.
Not excessively long (though length is less of a problem than width when towing).
"Interesting" design - should look different from other caravans. "Cute."
Fun to design and make.
Built to last and able to be maintained/repaired (life measured in decades rather than years).
Good quality materials and fittings - not the usual tacky fibreglass, melamine coated chipboard, weak plastic clips, etc. you find in commercially-built caravans.
Window 'glass' made from Perspex or similar due to weight considerations (though that doesn't mean using ugly plastic caravan double glazing units).
Not very expensive to build (less than a good second-hand commercially-built compact caravan).
Traditional construction methods where appropriate (eg. mortice and tenon joints in preference to metal angle brackets and screws).
As quick and easy as possible to pitch and strike.
Able to leave the bed in its 'made' state while travelling.
Able to pitch and strike in the rain without the contents getting wet.
Preferably all rigid walls - no canvas/nylon fabric components to make, seal and keep from rotting when they get wet.
Good, controllable ventilation.
Good natural light.
Good, low power consumption artificial lighting, including reading light(s) over the bed. Comfortable light temperature and no flickering.
Internal 12V battery to power lights, phone chargers, etc.
Battery able to be charged from the car (while engine is running).
Lock on the door for security.
Able to sit up and read in bed (ie. at least 3 feet headroom above bed).
Shelf next to bed for alarm clock, water, etc.
Ideally somewhere to hang wet outer clothes when you come in from the rain (including muddy boots) where they won't get the floor wet and muddy.
Decent amount of storage, ideally accessible from inside, but external cupboards are acceptable for things that aren't needed constantly.
Some insulation (though it doesn't have to be up to modern commercial caravan standards).
Possibly secondary-glazing on some or all of the windows.
Small kitchen area, preferably indoors.
Able to stand upright in kitchen area (ie. at least 6 feet headroom).
Kitchen should contain:
- Sink with cold running water and ideally a draining board.
- Places to store my Primus No. 5 paraffin stove, meths, matches, a small fire extinguisher, cutlery, utensils, pans, kettle, crockery, and at least some food.
- Somewhere to hang towels.
- Somewhere to hang a small bin bag.
- Somewhere to put soap next to sink.
- A heat-shielded cooking area with a metal tray to catch accidental fuel spillages.
- At least one food-preparation work surface.
Flooring in kitchen area (if indoors) made from something comfortable to bare feet but which is cleanable if it gets muddy.
Ideally somewhere to stand up while getting dressed (this can be the kitchen area if it's indoors).
Internal water tanks to minimise pitch and strike time, removable and small enough to carry so they can be filled/emptied easily.
Preferably levelling accomplished by something quicker than conventional caravan corner steadies.
Definitely no awning due to the time and hassle involved!
Ideally a table that you can sit at while eating (probably sitting on the bed rather than dedicated chairs).
Reasonable ground clearance while towing.
Steps to get in and out easily if door threshold is high enough to make them necessary.
Possible to move it and set it up single-handed.
Would be nice if it had a decent resale value if I decided in the future to sell it on.
Mains electricity hookup is not necessary.
Preferably no big Calor gas bottle to carry around and keep filled.
Somewhere to store spare wheel (doesn't have to be easily accessible).
Would be good if the kitchen had some kind of fridge/cool box, ideally self-cooling rather than needing to beg campsite wardens to keep freezing ice packs for it.
Would be nice to have windows over/next to the kitchen sink and stove area.
Some kind of ventilation near the stove, designed in such a way to remove fumes without blowing the stove flame around.
Some clothes storage space inside the caravan (doesn't need to be an entire wardrobe).
Storage space inside caravan for toiletries and towel(s).
Some misc storage space in the caravan (for books, medicines etc.).
A heater would be nice for cold-weather trips.
Possibly some kind of lift-up upper tailgate to provide shelter outside door from rain/sun.
Integrated driving lights and number plate (ie. not a trailer board).
Would be nice if there was enough room inside to entertain a couple of guests.

The subject of my next post or two will be the design I'm working on. I've managed to come up with something that fulfils nearly all of the above aims. Internal storage space is still a bit of an issue, and the heater and self-cooling fridge are probably not practical without either mains electricity or a Calor gas bottle to power them (even if I found room inside the caravan for them). It will certainly look interesting and be fun to build!

Caravan thoughts part 1: Pros and cons of owning a caravan

2010-07-30T12:28:54+00:00

I've been doing a lot of thinking about my crazy plan to build a compact caravan. Over the next day or two I want to post some of my thoughts. Here's part 1: Pros and cons of having a caravan. These are relative to my two usual forms of holiday accommodation: youth hostels and camping in a small tent.

Pros

Campsites are usually cheaper per-night than hostels, particularly for two people.
Always get a private room at no extra cost - no sharing a dorm with snorers and people who arrive/leave at unsociable times.
Guaranteed to get a comfortable bed (hostel beds vary a lot).
Don't need to share the kitchen with other guests.
Don't need to share the lounge (sometimes with a TV) with other guests.
Don't need to unpack and move a lot of stuff from the car into the accommodation on arrival and back again (plus the hassle of re-stowing the luggage) when you leave.
Have your own personal space to relax in without feeling self-conscious and worrying about breaking rules or getting things dirty etc.
You know where everything is [apart from shower blocks and other campsite facilities], so less feeling of dislocation when you arrive tired after a long day's driving and sightseeing.
Campsites are more common than hostels, so probably less difficulty finding one near where you want to stay.
Possible to camp in a layby or service station etc. at a push (eg. if you can't get to the intended destination for some reason).
More comfortable to sleep in than a tent.
Quicker and less hassle to put up and take down than a tent.
Less unpleasant in wet weather than a tent.
Plenty of storage space in the caravan, so the car doesn't need to be packed to the roof with food, clothes, sleeping bags and airbeds, etc.

Cons

High initial cost.
Makes driving between accommodation a bit more difficult.
Somewhat increased fuel consumption.
Ferry fares more expensive.
Some (very steep/narrow) roads are impractical to tow a caravan on.
Need to drive a bit slower, particularly on hilly terrain.
Need somewhere to store it between holidays.
Some ongoing maintenance will be required (not much).
Limited and cramped cooking facilities.
Because it won't be a full size caravan, there won't be room for a toilet or shower so would need to use the camp site facilities.
Might not have room for a heater, and if so could be too cold to use in winter.
Might not have a proper fridge.

Today Friday 30th July is System Administrator Appreciation Day

2010-07-30T06:00:37+00:00

Sys Admins all around the world will this morning come in to their office to be greeted with a standing ovation by the rest of the business – all of whom will have got in early especially to make some nice fresh coffee, bake some croissants and place their tokens of appreciation in a heap on the desk of the said Sys Admin.

You can picture the scene of joy. The broad grin on the face. The feeling of deepest satisfaction knowing that despite the fact that most of the year all he gets is people grumbling at him, really they all love and appreciate what he does.

If you haven’t got him (or her) a present yet just nip round to his desk and ask if there is anything you can do for him.

A typical sysadmin shows off his presents on National Systems Administrator Appreciation Day

Note that our sys admin in the photo is clearly very happy with his new screwdriver and tin of tuna. Some of them have been known to like beer, McDonalds, pizzas, KFC etc etc. I leave it to you. You know your own sys admin best.

Today is System Administrator Appreciation Day. Find out more here.

It's all go for 2.6GHz spectrum auctions (next year)

2010-07-29T19:49:34+00:00

At least the UK Government and Ofcom have made up their minds (and fought of legal battles) and announced that the 2.6GHz chunk of spectrum (all 190MHz of it) will be auctioned at the end of 2011.

At the same time they'll auction off the old 800MHz spectrum which comes from the digital dividend. It's all prime spectrum as it has extremely good propagation characteristics i.e. it goes through walls well.

Ofcom at the same time will allow refarming of the 900MHz and 1800MHz GSM/PCN spectrum so that it can be used for 3G (or 4G/LTE) services, which is currently not allowed under the GSM laws. The existing 3G licenses (which expire in 2021) will be made indefinite with the licensees paying a yearly fee post 2021 to Ofcom.

BT was expected to bid for the 2.6GHz spectrum when it was originally meant to become available (late 2007/2008) but now it's likely they'll just expand their WiFi and MVNO offerings as the cost of the spectrum is expected to be extremely high and they're already spending a fortune expanding their fibre roll-out to most of the UK.

It's likely the spectrum will be snapped up by the existing Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) who will use it for high speed data services using LTE, though an outsider could come in and use it to offer wireless broadband or even 3G services of their own.

There's still a decision to be made on how the 900MHz spectrum (currently owned by O2/Telefonica and Vodafone) should be re-allocated and also the 1800MHz and 2.1GHz spectrum that Orange and T-Mobile own as they're now a single entity (in regulatory terms anyway) which means they own too much spectrum for a single network as per the 3G license.

So though it's a good move by the Government there's still a few issues to iron out, including the big issue of Ofcom itself as the Government is also trying to reduce spending on the Quangos that are currently in operation, Ofcom being a major one. Though licensing spectrum could be a big earner (especially the 2.6GHz and 800MHz chunks) which could pay for Ofcom for a few years.

Gay community now think they can represent trans people?

2010-07-29T11:30:19+00:00

An interesting news article popped up in my twitter feed yesterday, from the “Lesbian & Gay Foundation”. The item was “Talks with @lfeatherstone ‘positive’ as LGF table the views of the LGB&T community on the future of civil partnerships“, linking to this news story. It’s odd that the LGF might include “LGBT” in the news item when their name implies clearly that they represent Lesbian and Gay people and trans people only incidentally where we happen to be Gay or Lesbian as well. Is this just another L&G organisation trying to be inclusive in their press releases and attract more funding by saying “LGBT” and not just “Lesbian and Gay”? I thought I’d do some digging and the truth turned out to be somewhat worse.

The linked-to story states that there were “representatives from lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans organisations” present at an informal meeting with the Minister for Equalities and the Home Office on Wednesday to discuss Civil Partnerships. I hadn’t seen anything from the usual T sources, so I asked them specifically via Twitter: “Who was at yesterday’s CP meeting from the T community?” The answer can roughly be summarised as nobody: “We tabled comments from T people who got in touch, for list of people who were there see Pink News“. Uh, so there wasn’t any trans representation there after all? It’s likely the Trans people who got in touch happened to identify as Lesbian/Gay too, so it’s unlikely to be a balanced view. I checked directly with Lynne Featherstone: “No – this was only LGB“.

It looks like we’re being “represented” by the Lesbian and Gay community now, but really we’re being silenced. The Home Office could now table a Bill that ignores the problem of state-mandated divorce for married transitioners and claim “But we consulted with the trans community on this!” because a random L&G organisation claimed they were acting on our behalf. It is entirely possible that the LGF put forward quite a reasonable argument, but they should not have done so as the trans community could end up being denied the chance to make contacts within the Home Office and not be consulted on some future issue. We need a replacement for the Gender Trust and Press for Change, as those organisations seem to have died out, but that is not going to happen if we’re shut out of conversations with the decision makers.

As a community, we’ve been quite loud voicing our opinion to the Equalities Minister – Perhaps too loud. As a result I would hope that we will not be ignored when it comes to new legislation, but that’s no thanks to the Lesbian and Gay community.

Please – if you want to help, don’t try to represent us or claim in press releases that you did. You know where we are, just point people in our direction and we’ll speak for ourselves.

Originally posted at Zoe's Wordpress Blog

Thumbs up for the Cisco SPA525G VoIP phone

2010-07-29T09:13:28+00:00

The SPA525G is the flagship model in Cisco’s small business range of IP phones. trefor.net takes it on a road test, kicks the tyres and gives an opinion.

Look & Feel

Cisco SPA525G phone with colour display

If you think the SPA525G looks familiar it’s because this phone and the other models in the range are the direct replacements for the popular SPA900 series, inherited by Cisco as part of the Linksys acquisition in 2003.

There is, however, a considerable uplift in the quality of plastics used throughout and the receiver itself appears to be lifted directly from Cisco’s higher priced 7900 range.

The general impression is of a very solid device that will survive the rigours of office life for many years to come.

Once you power the unit up you can admire the full colour screen which you only get on the 525G. The other models in the range make do with a monochrome display. You can set the background image from a number of pre-loaded files or import one of your own by using the integrated USB host port and effectively use is as a digital photo frame. This is quite a nice touch by Cisco allowing users to personalise the device in the same way they like to personalise their PC and mobile phone.

Features

All the SPA500 devices support both SIP and the proprietary SPCP used by Cisco in their UC500 IP PBX range. I was only able to test the 525G in SIP mode but am happy to report that all the basic telephony features are present and correct. There are also some more advanced options like Busy Lamp Field (BLF) and Shared Line Appearance which unfortunately I wasn’t able to get working on Timico’s Genband based platform but should be supported on Asterisk or Broadsoft based systems.

Like all the models in the range this phone supports Power over Ethernet (PoE) and features a 10/100 switch so you only need one network port at your desk. It also offers a hands-free speaker phone which provided excellent call quality and could easily serve as a conference phone in a small office. This is a big improvement on the old SPA900 series where the speaker phone was always rather a disappointment.

In fact this excellent audio quality is also delivered when using the receiver and generally points to a significant improvement in the quality of components used by Cisco. It also comes with the G.722 wide band audio codec so is ready to offer HD voice quality once support for this becomes more widespread.

It’s in the area of connectivity though that this model really stands out from the crowd featuring both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth built in as standard. As a rule I’m generally not one to recommend using Wi-Fi for voice but I can see how useful this would be if you have an area that is impractical or costly to cable.

I was able to detect our office wireless network straight away once I switched on the option via the phone menu and after entering the security key I was up and running. During my limited test of the Wi-Fi I had no problems but would still probably stick to a cable connection wherever possible which is likely to be better quality.

The other wireless technology on offer is Bluetooth which is used exclusively for connecting a headset. I wasn’t able to lay my hands on a headset for testing in time for this review so cannot comment on how well this is implemented. You can search for devices and pair them with the phone all through the on screen menu with no need to do any complex configuration. This is an excellent feature that isn’t found in many other VoIP phones and will really suit those who like to pace around or type whilst they talk.

The phone offers a small selection of XML applications offering weather and news with the potential for customers to develop their own apps providing information relevant to their end users (e.g. stocks and shares).

A nice final touch is MP3 support which allows you to import your own audio files using the USB host port and use them as ringtones for different contacts in your directory. Just like the customizable background image mentioned earlier, users really like this type of personalisation and it really starts to blur the line between a desk and mobile phone.

Configuration

Just like the SPA900 series before it these phones offer a number of configuration options via TFTP, HTTP and XML files. A number of SIP PBX’s have already implemented auto configuration for the whole SPA500 range. This includes the VoIPCortex sold by Timico. There is also a browser based user interface for manual configuration which I used for this evaluation. The web UI will be instantly familiar to anyone who has used the earlier range of phones although there does appear have been some work done to enhance the look and feel.

There are a number of different views available on the UI depending on whether you are an end user or a system administrator but click on the full advanced admin view and you are given a bewildering array of configuration options to tinker with, many of which were completely unfamiliar to me. The good news is that I didn’t really need to adjust any of these advanced settings and quickly had the phone registered on Timico’s hosted VoIP platform.

This phones has five line keys each of which can be used for a different SIP account or extension or they can be used to add a speed dial or monitor another extension using the BLF feature (if supported). Configuring some of these options manually does require you to enter a command string into the web UI and for that you need to understand the syntax that Cisco use to tell the phone what to do. This is one area where rivals like Snom have done a better job by providing a much more ‘point and click’ experience which hides all the technical stuff behind the scenes.

Ease of use

In general day-to-day use the phone is controlled via the usual mixture of dedicated hard keys and context sensitive soft keys. So far I have found it to be easy to use and intuitive with only an occasional need to consult the manual. Anyone familiar with the old SPA900 phones will be up to speed with the basics of this phone almost immediately.

One minor quibble relates to the directory where I am only given the option to manually add entries one at a time. If I was connecting it to something like the VoIPCortex PBX or a UC500 which can auto populate the phone from its own directory then this wouldn’t be an issue. Seeing as I am setting things up manually, however, I could do with the option to import a simple comma separated text file which I could extract from my Outlook contact folder.

I believe it may be possible to access a company LDAP directory from the phone but it isn’t apparent to me from reading the manual how this could be done (sounds like a job for one of our VoIP engineers).

Price

You can expect to pay around £250 for 525G which, in the highly competitive SIP phone market, places it in the same premium category as the Snom 821. This is essentially an executive handset which has some great extra features but it would be hard to justify it as the standard office phone. The only exception might be where the integrated wireless connectivity is essential for deploying the phone to a particular location. Adding wireless to a Snom 821 would put an additional £30-40 on the cost.

It’s worth noting that there is no power supply provided in the box; Cisco assumes that you are going to be using PoE and has chosen to keep the cost of the phone as low as possible. So if you’re planning to deploy any of the SPA500 phones and not use PoE you will need to add roughly £10 to the cost of each one to cover the PA100 power supply.

Final Verdict

Based on my experience of the 525G this new range of SPA phones is an improvement in every way from the previous handsets whilst retaining the same SIP stack and UI that has become so broadly supported across the VoIP industry.

This is a great example of how open standards has driven innovation in the business phone market. These devices are now starting to be comparable to the feature set enjoyed in mobile devices for many years.

After all if you were looking for a new smart phone today you would want a colour screen, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth plus the ability to upload your photos and mp3’s – all of which the 525G delivers in a desk phone form factor. Most importantly it also excels at the basics by being simple to use and delivering crystal clear audio.

If the price is too rich for you and you can live without extras like Bluetooth and colour screens, have a look at the SPA502G & 504G which offer the same high quality audio but will have a purchase price closer to £100-120.

Just as you’re getting used to all of these new features it would seem that an upgraded version of the phone, SPA525G2, is waiting in the wings for launch in a few months time. This will enhance the Bluetooth capability by allowing you to pair it with your mobile phone.

So you can now answer calls on your office phone using your mobile and use the excellent speaker phone to make mobile call hands free just as you would in the car. It will even allow you to synchronise the phone book in your mobile with the directory in your desk phone (which would overcome the slight grumble I had earlier in this review).

All I can say is if there is anyone from Cisco reading this then you know what you need to bring with you to our next meeting!

PS This review, written by Timico’s Andrew Massing, is the first of many. We get a lot of devices coming our way and will be sharing our experiences as we go along.

twitter reaches the parts…

2010-07-28T16:19:03+00:00

I joined twitter 802 days ago on 17th May 2008. Since then I have sent 2,623 tweets, an average of just over three a day. Not too bad for anyone who thinks I spend too long on the site.

In June, according to twitter COO Dick Costolo the micro-blogging site had 190 million users, growing by 300 thousand a day. These users were generating 65million tweets a day – that’s enough for twitter to be building its own brand new datacentre to handle all the traffic.

That’s less than a tweet each a day which points to many people signing up for the novelty value without taking it further. In fact although twitter is termed as a “social networking” site, which it is, there is far more to be gained out of it if you have a specific business objective, mostly currently related to marketing and PR.

I’m not a marketing person, though trefor.net does turn out to be a marketing vehicle which was never really my objective in starting the blog. I joined twitter just to see what it was all about. That and because a friend of mine, Jeff Pulver (joined 2 February 2007), is an early stage investor in the site.

My overall stats however hide a more recent behavioural change and by June I was tweeting an average of over 15 times a day – see chart below.

It may be seen I began to get more active in February because I was involved in the debate surrounding the Digital Economy Bill (Act) and twitter was a way of communicating with like minded individuals and getting my message across.

Twitter has now become the third biggest referrer to trefor.net which has, since the beginning of the year, been linked to by 412 different sites.

I do see people styling themselves as Social Networking “gurus” which raises a smile. I find it difficult to understand how someone can be a guru at a technology that is still relatively young – I have been in the VoIP industry for 12 years now for example and VoIP is still considered to be just past the emerging market stage

You can’t blame people for seeing an opportunity to make a buck or two though. What the experience with trefor.net does tell me is that twitter is a serious tool that belies the frivolity of its name.

I believe that twitter has the potential to be far more powerful than other social networking sites such as Facebook (look me up – I’m trefordavies) simply because anyone can follow anyone else. I can, for example engage with Members of Parliament without their having to follow me, or even know me. I just follow them and sometimes reply to their tweets – assuming I have something worth saying.

I know most of my Facebook friends but have met hardly any of my 906 twitter followers. it doesn’t matter because there is very little personal data to expose on twitter and I can happily tweet away in semi anonymity without worrying about the bad guys out there.

Anonymity isn’t the name of the game though. It’s all about reach and twitter reaches the parts other social networking sites don’t go.

New 116 Numbers go live in the UK

2010-07-28T16:21:39+00:00

Ofcom has announced that it is making two numbers in the 116 range live which are pan-European numbers.

116 006 which is a freephone number for victims of crime. The number will be free unless there is a pre-announcement stating that the number isn't free (which could happen from mobile networks).

116 117 is a freephone number for non-emergency medical help which is always free from any network.

More information can be found from Ofcom though this is another confusing number range where sometimes calls are free and sometimes they're not.

Bandwidth explosions

2010-07-27T16:21:52+00:00

We are currently seeing an explosive growth in the distribution and delivery of digital video content across both fixed and mobile networks. Four years ago 100 million videos were watched on YouTube every day. It is two billion today. The BBC’s iPlayer launched in December 2007. It now delivers over 120 million requests every day which adds up to 7 petabytes of data a month.

As a result of this, the volume of data carried by mobile operators has risen twentyfold over the last two years (thanks iPhone), and is forecast to grow almost as much again in the next two years. The figures for fixed operators are less dramatic but still very significant.

Cloud computing is finally coming of age. Gartner forecast that by 2012 20% of all businesses will own no IT assets. That will not only further increase bandwidth demand but will also make high levels of service reliability ever more essential.

Now is the time for network operators to ensure they have their investments in place to service this rising market. As the CTO of an acquisitive company I see a lot of small ISPs struggling to find the cash to make these investments which very much points towards further market consolidation. The game is getting bigger.

PS thanks to Sally Davis, CEO of BT Wholesale for some of the statistics above.

Ofcom – increased broadband speeds and ISP Voluntary Code of Practice

2010-07-27T06:37:43+00:00

Big headliner from Ofcom this morning is that average broadband speeds in the UK have increased by over 25% in the past year. Research, conducted in partnership with broadband monitoring specialists SamKnows, has found that speeds have increased from 4.1Mbit/s to 5.2Mbit/s.

This is no surprise really as ISPs move their base from ADSLMax (“up to 8Meg”) over to ADSL2+ (“up to 24Meg”). It’s a shame that the average is not higher but that’s copper for you. The research showed that cable customers fare significantly better than ADSL.

The Ofcom data also reveals some very interesting stats about performance during peak times that don’t do some ISPs any favours. BT for example appears to be on average the worst performer when it comes to ADSL2+.

Interesting for me as a B2B ISP to note that the peak traffic times for consumer ISPs is 8-10pm compared with 1 – 5 pm for Timico. Our network is relatively empty after folk leave the office.

This is all good stuff, more of which can be found here.

The meat of today’s announcement really concerns the fact that consumers still aren’t getting the speeds they were expecting when they were sold the service.

In March of this year Ofcom published the results of some mystery shopping it commissioned to evaluate how ISPs were complying with the Voluntary Code of Practice on Broadband Speeds.

This code, implemented in December 2008, sets out how ISPs should inform consumers as to the speed they are likely to get out of a broadband connection before being sold that broadband connection. The Code was designed to prevent the all too prevalent situation of expectations regarding broadband speeds not being met.

The research shows that although ISPs now provide more information on broadband speeds that information is often not sufficient to allow consumers to have clear expectations about the service they sign-up to.

Of the total, 15% of the telephone mystery shoppers were not given an estimate of their access line speed (the maximum speed a consumer will be able to get), and 42% were only given one after prompting the sales agent near the end of the sales process.

In addition, consumers are not always being given a consistent and accurate estimate of their access line speed. In some cases, ISPs gave an access line speed double that of another ISP for the same broadband line and technology. The majority of access line speed estimates given to mystery shoppers did not match (within +/-1Mbit/s) the speeds given by the BT Wholesale line checker.

Moreover whilst under the Code consumers are notionally offered a lower speed package if their broadband line comes below their speed expectations, ISPs are increasingly reducing the number of packages they offer and the move to a lower speed offering is now often not possible.

Ofcom’s answer is to revise the Code and this revised Code of Practice is published today. There are a couple of comments worth making regarding this revised Code.

Firstly according to Ofcom it has been produced in conjunction with its existing signatories (mainly the large household names ISPs as the Code is not seen as relevant to business users). Okay.

Secondly this revised Code is more complicated than the original which makes me wonder about its usability and therefore effectiveness and indeed why the existing signatories agreed to it.

For example ISPs are now expected to offer their prospective customers a range (20th%ile to 80th%ile) of speeds that they might expect to see out their line. If the speed subsequently comes in below expectations ISPs have to be able to tell the customer how their worst 10% lines perform.

This adds to the complexity of the systems that ISPs will have to develop to support this Code. This is on top of the complexity created in the system by the Digital Economy Act!

Businesses need to spend their time making their lives simpler not more complex!!!

The reality is that for a given technology there is not going to be a massive difference between ISPs. Your choice is really copper or cable and copper has a much bigger footprint than cable.

The way forward I believe is for Ofcom to stop ISPs promoting the absolute max speeds they can (occasionally) provide and to concentrate on a simple “typical” range. Marketing departments won’t like this of course.

There will I’m sure be plenty of comparison sites publishing actual speeds obtained by customers of particular ISPs. The public will be able to make its choice based on these comparisons and any other related parameter such as bundles of other services, quality of tech support, price etc.

I understand that some ISPs using O2/Be are also concerned that the Code suggests that customers unhappy with their line speed should be able to leave anytime within three months whilst the ISP’s own contract with Be has a minimum 3 month term. This would clearly leave an ISP out of pocket if customers were to exercise this right to leave. Be will have to change their Terms.

Ofcom still has the old version of the Code on its website – I’ll provide a link when the new one is available.

Don't try and recycle that stolen phone anymore!

2010-07-27T00:53:16+00:00

In the UK each of the mobile operators maintain a list of stolen phones and that's shared between all the operators and is disseminated within 48 hours of the phone being reported stolen.

That has worked pretty well within the UK and has stopped a lot of stolen phones being reused and caused difficulties for a few people who've had their IMEI blocked by mistake as the only recourse is to complain to their operator as users have no direct access to the block list. However there's been a massive loophole and that's selling phones to a recycling company as they tend to sell them on to operators abroad and up until now, there's been no checks to see whether the phone is on any stolen phone list. It's believed that this has led to around 100,000 stolen phones going abroad a year.

That's now changing and Crime Prevention Minister James Brokenshire has stated "By joining forces with the police, the mobile phone industry is closing a multi-million pound loophole that has been exploited by criminals and the industry should be congratulated. Alongside the impressive work on blocking stolen phones, this code will make mobile phone theft an even less profitable crime."

The Telecommunications Fraud Forum known as TUFF has drawn up a code of practice alongside the Government and Police and TUFF will administer it. So far 20 mobile phone recyclers have joined the scheme which represent 90% of the industry and the others are expected to follow suit.

Now if anyone tries to sell a stolen phone, the phone will will not be accepted and they will be reported to the Police.

Now the Government just needs a way to somehow track gold items and regulate the on-line/postal gold services who will also buy pretty much any gold item and immediately melt it down before anyone can complain.

There’s a hole in my door, dear Renault – part 2

2010-07-26T21:47:52+00:00

So I arranged to take my car in Saturday to have the bit-of-plastic-on-the-driver’s-door fitted. I turn up, chap at the desk expected me and was very helpful.

Him> Ahh yes, part’s right here, shouldn’t take a mo to fit, I’ll just get some tools.

Me> Super thanks.

<fx>fiddling with the door happens</fx>

Him> Just going to make a phonecall, this isn’t looking how I expected

Me> It doesn’t look like a door with a well understood piece of plastic missing, I didn’t say.

Me> Uhh, sure.

<fx>phone call happens</fx>

Him> Sorry, but it looks like I can’t fit this part.

Me> You can’t fit this part.

Him> No, I think the inside door panel needs to be removed.

Me> The inside door panel needs to be removed, you think.

Him> Yes, and I’m not qualified.

Me> You’re not qualified. Super. Thanks.

I still have a hole in my door.

Meanwhile, 75cm toward the rear of my car….

You may recall that Renault Romford mistakenly did work I didn’t ask them to do, then insisted I pay for said work or I couldn’t have my car back. I decided to take them up on their offer to simply undo the work and put back the faulty door mechanism and then give me a full refund.

Me> I’ve decided to take you up on your offer to simply undo the work and put back the faulty door mechanism and then give me a full refund.

Renault Romford> We can’t, we’ve thrown the old parts away.

Me> You’ve thrown the old parts away. Can I have a refund?

Renault Romford> I’ll need to call customer services for you….

I’ve had no call from Renault UK Customer services today, I left messages, Yvonne’s been a bit busy.

Still, nice to know I’m dealing with a reputable professional company, and not some east-end railway-arch crook.

Networking made easy – part 2

2010-07-26T09:47:19+00:00

Regular readers may have noticed the distinct lack of blog posts last week. At least there were none relating to ip networking, the internet, communications or any other subject I normally spout on about.

That’s because I was out of the office most of the week in an exhausting series of meetings and dinners culminating in a couple of days in Lymington on the south coast. I spent the entire time talking about MPLS, Unified Communications, “the cloud” and current regulatory hot topics in the ISP industry.

The picture below shows me coming up on deck with the team for fresh air before moving on to talk about data centres and the future of mobile data / handheld devices.

In case anyone worries we did make sure that we were well fed and watered during the meetings. A supply of premier cru chablis and bordeaux accompanies the smoked salmon/crab/lobster/duck/caviar/aged aberdeen angus fillet steak (delete according to taste).

Trefor Davies (centre) surrounded by some hardworking Timico customers taking a break from talking networks

PS I have a backlog of jobs to get on with this week including some more serious blog posts. Watch this space.

BT rejects GPRS for meter reading

2010-07-22T15:08:43+00:00

BT has plans to build a system that will allow companies to wirelessly read meters in tune with government recommendations.

BT is teaming up with Arqiva and consultancy Detica and plans to use US-based Sensus' FlexNet long range wireless solution that operates in the 400MHz band (which has good building penetration characteristics).

Unsurprisingly the UK mobile network operators aren't too pleased as the original plans were to use GPRS connectivity which would have meant at least 26m GPRS systems installed by 2020 which would be a massive boost to one or more of the networks.

BT may not be successful and another consortium may still win the contract.

Networking made easy

2010-07-22T13:31:45+00:00

Its tough at the top and it takes a special breed of individual to stay the pace. In this case the pace was being set by Timico Business Partner UES who had sponsored a horse race at the UK’s newest track, Ffos Las near Llanelli.

I have to admire the marketing nouse of UES whose sponsored race was entitled the “Reduce your utility bills with UES Maiden Handicap Stakes”. This message will have been carried in every newspaper in the UK on Tuesday -” The Watchtower” excepted if it is still going.

You may have noticed that the weather was a little damp. It’s what makes God’s Country so green and pleasant.

Rows of unhappy bookmakers brave the elements at Ffos Las racecourse

From left to right Andrew Diplock, Commercial Director, UES, Gerallt Jones, Partner Corporate, Hugh James, Christian Pegrum, EON, me, Kate Williams, Marketing Manager, UES

There’s a hole in my door, dear Renault

2010-07-21T08:50:02+00:00

My nearly-four-years-old Renault Clio was due a bit of tender loving care. The rear door lock had stopped being able to lock the doors, a small piece of plastic fell off the front driver’s side door and, the one that tipped it, the driver side wing mirror was shattered; someone hit it in a car park – thanks!

I booked my car in to Renault Romford, dropped it in before work, and waited for a call back letting me know what everything was going to cost. The call arrived and the suggested shopping list was a little longer than I expected.

Rear engine mount starting to split – £103.00
Front disks and pads should be replaced – £245.60
Coolant and brake fluid drain and refill – £49.99
Air conditioning service – £79.99
Replacing the bit of plastic that fell off – £7.76
Replacing the mirror – £27.87
Replacing the rear door handle – £365.68 – wait, what?

I totally accept that most of the stuff in that list falls under the categories of “normal wear and tear” and “you broke it”, but things like a door handle should reasonably last the lifetime of the car. It’s not like it’s even the most commonly used door. Had this been the driver’s door, I might have grumbled a bit but understood.

I asked Renault Romford to replace the glass, replace the bit of plastic and service the aircon, explaining that I would sort out the brakes etc next month and would call Renault UK Customer services to talk to them about the rear door handle.

Renault UK customers service have still not contacted me, despite Tweets, emails and a telephone message asking them to do so.

I got a call yesterday saying my car was ready to be picked up, and that I owed them some £450.00. I was confused. They’d changed the rear door lock, despite me very explicitly saying that I was going to talk to Renault customer services about it. Opinions were exchanged, we agreed this was most likely a misunderstanding.

I went to pick up my car this morning. The car would not be released to me unless I paid in full. In other words, I have paid hundreds of pounds for parts and work I didn’t ask to be done.

Insult to injury? Hell, yes. The didn’t replace the tiny piece of plastic that fell off the front door, one of the three things I did very specifically ask them to fix.

THERE’S A HOLE IN MY DOOR, DEAR RENAULT. And I’m hundreds of pounds out of pocket.

The Art of communications

2010-07-20T09:55:20+00:00

A prize for anyone who can guess what I’m playing.

Prize if you can guess what I'm playing

Keith Chegwin For A Day

2010-07-20T09:09:06+00:00

You've probably not noticed, but Keith Chegwin has been embroiled in scandal for the past 24 hours, accused of nicking jokes from other (working) comedians such as Milton Jones.

If you're wanting to be up on the whole thing, you can search Twitter.

Anyway, to celebrate the whole Cheggersgate scandal Obvious Pseudonym have released the Six Noises EP version of 'Keith Chegwin For A Day' as a free MP3 download for one day only.

You can get it here on our official website - it's excellent for annoying your coworkers.

(Not everything we do is that irritating - most of our stuff is really very good, and you can get it from iTunes Music Store or on CD by post).

Published originally at http://blog.joel.co.uk/index.php?itemid=940

Scouting equality fail – why it’s best to be stealth even when you’re out

2010-07-19T18:55:05+00:00

A while ago, I submitted a CRB form for the Scouts as I occasionally (Well, once so far) go to parent and child camp with my daughter, who is a Scout, and in this day and age that sort of thing is required if you’re going to hang around kids at all. I didn’t follow the “transgender application process” as they certainly already knew my relationship to the kids, so I wasn’t exactly “stealth” and to be honest, it’s a bit of a hassle. Because of this, I needed to put my old name on the form as well as my current one but all my other details had my correct name, title (Miss) and so on.

Today, the CRB form turned up. It says “Gender: Male”.

Ahem, excuse me? I know full well my supporting documentation doesn’t say that, because I’ve not had anything I could use to identify myself as male even if I’d wanted to for years. Offensive, yes, but also perhaps problematic in terms of being able to supervise kids of the appropriate gender in certain environments, should it come to that.

So I ring the CRB, who are extremely helpful and tell me the scouting association (Most likely someone in head office in London, I suspect) copied the paper form I’d filled out into an email and put me down as “Mr”. CRB are going to correct it, send out a new certificate and also let the scouting association know, all of which they offered to do without any prompting on my part whatsoever.

I’ll see if the CRB will be helpful enough to send me a copy of the email they received so I can figure out exactly how wrong they went and whose heads needed banging together, but if I have to do one again I’m certainly using the special process!

Originally posted at Zoe's Wordpress Blog

planet.uknot.org

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mobile spam

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London Hackspace’s “Arduino For Beginners” Workshop

Background

What we got

Day one

Presentation

Arduino IDE

Refreshments

Walk-through of examples

Experimentation

Wrap up of day one

Day two

Door debacle

Projects

Conclusion

Wins

Suggestions for improvement

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Crackerjack! (CRACKERJACK!)

Ofcom proposes wireless cameras to use 2.6GHz band for the London Olympics

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HP Elitebook 2540p

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Identity and Passport Service on Gender Markers

DVLA reply to FoI request on driving licence titles

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An odd perspective on friendship

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Caravan thoughts part 3: The dummy caravan

Caravan thoughts part 2: Design aims

Caravan thoughts part 1: Pros and cons of owning a caravan

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It's all go for 2.6GHz spectrum auctions (next year)

Gay community now think they can represent trans people?

Thumbs up for the Cisco SPA525G VoIP phone

twitter reaches the parts…

New 116 Numbers go live in the UK

Bandwidth explosions

Ofcom – increased broadband speeds and ISP Voluntary Code of Practice

Don't try and recycle that stolen phone anymore!

There’s a hole in my door, dear Renault – part 2

Networking made easy – part 2

BT rejects GPRS for meter reading

Networking made easy

There’s a hole in my door, dear Renault

The Art of communications

Keith Chegwin For A Day

Scouting equality fail &#8211; why it&#8217;s best to be stealth even when you&#8217;re out

“Illegal” file sharing?

Loopholes in the Equality Act 2010 – more reasons to be stealth

Scouting equality fail – why it’s best to be stealth even when you’re out