All this and "D" too

One lone voice in the background.

2011-11-13T11:16:00.001Z

I've just listened to the 2-minute silence from Whitehall. As it began troy couples hear a small child crying. As the sound supervisor changed the mix on the effects mics to reduce the level of the child's sound another, clear, loud and strong adult voice became very noticeable.

All it said was three words repeated slowly and clearly:

"No more war!"

One person with the courage to sum up simply the sentiments of every person attending that service.

Am I missing something?

2011-11-05T12:08:00.001Z

I spotted a newspaper board outside a newsagent on trip back from Watford this morning: "Britain's first sex-change Rabbi". With a headline like that I just had to hit Google.

http://yourjewishnews.com/11160.aspx

Awesome Water!

2011-11-02T14:14:00.001Z

You have GOT to watch this. Better yet, watch it in HD with headphones on loud I know I have this thing for the sea, but this is fantastic. There's a sequence near the beginning of a gigantic breaker and only after a second or so you realise: My God There's a guy on a board coming out of that. The tubes are just awesome

PHANTOM WATER EDIT from Chris Bryan on Vimeo.

Product Placement - Not

2011-08-11T16:11:00.001+01:00

I do wish the people who plan store layouts would think before they stock the shelves.

Serious Headaches

2011-07-31T20:37:00.001+01:00

I have not had a good weekend. In between arguments with both my sons I've had to un-install four different anti virus programs from my youngest son's PC which he installed in the belief that more is better. It took about five hours to get back to just the one - most of the time being taken up with waiting for one av program to let go of the other long enough to un-install it.

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Sayings from my son.

2011-07-23T12:07:00.001+01:00

My eldest son is acquiring an amazing turn of phrase these days. Two of his latest:
"As useful a reset switch on a landmine" when referring to gaming site.
"A worse noise than a jet engine full of squirrels!" when referring to his nine-year old brother's guitar playing.

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Goldfish not included.

2011-07-14T22:08:00.002+01:00

What happens when you don't seal the bag properly in a typical British summer.

This isn't just someone putting up an ad for a missing pet, this is a legally required planning notice put up by the local council - who whould know what they're doing considering the number of these they have to put up in year.

You can just about read the top three paragraphs and that's it. It relates to a temporary road closure that happened 18 months ago!

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A wet Friday in London

2011-06-17T18:32:00.001+01:00

The boss has brought us out for drink tonight, basically so we can drown our sorrowsas we're being sold again.

This is the third place we've been in and the first we can actually hear each other.

It seems TUPE is the modern spelling of slavery these days.

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We may have a problem here....

2011-03-09T12:47:00.000Z

There's currently a radio ad running over here in the UK for a company that replaces windscreens (wind shieds, what-have-you) and they keep going on about chips developing into cracks, and how much it would cost you to have the glass replaced rather than having the chip filled.

Very laudable. Keep the punter happy and they'll come back to you next time they have a problem,.

I'm not worried about the company going on about this, after all they have a business to run, what does worry me is the fact that a chip can develop into a crack in the first place by just going over a bump in the road. To me, this points out what could possibly be a flaw in the way modern motor vehicles are constructed, especially in the way the glass is fitted.

The old way of doing this was to insert a rubber gasket into the frame of the vehicle and fix the glass into the gasket, using a sealant that lubricates the glass for insertion and then sets with time.

The current way to do this is with a polymer-based glue which sets rigid in a fairly short period after application. I know production costs are everything, but couldn't a different adhesive be used to give some flexibility in the installation? Surely that way people wouldn't be left with fairly hefty bills when the screen has to be replaced.

Just what we always thought!

2011-02-06T10:09:00.000Z

I've just found a picture that sums up what I think of a certain well known fast food ~~pusher'~~s retailer's products.

Obviously I can't be the only one who thinks that McDiabetes fries and burgers aren't good for you.

The doctor is in.......

2011-01-22T21:53:00.002Z

Happy New Year all!

It's almost two months since I wrote anything, mostly due to lack of time: if I haven't been working, I've been sleeping.

This weekend I've been holding a "laptop clinic" for the family. The result is one repaired and working keyboard, one cleaned and working DVD drive and one completely trashed BIOS - not caused by me I might add.

The keyboard - fairly simple. A liquid induced burn out fixed by an eBay purchase.
The BIOS - no solution really.The laptop is a geriatric Acer TravelMate with a seriously screwed chip. Randomly set BIOS passwords and nothing past the time and date shown on the Basic Settings screen. It was to the point where it wouldn't even recognise any of the hardware properly. This will be cured again by eBay I suspect. I was able to salvage everything of importance of the hard disk so no real loss.

Now the DVD drive. If you have a family who like to grow their hair long, and you start getting problems with their computer and home entertainment kit, don't go looking for you nearest repair man first, go looking for the large hair ball (or similar) wrapped around the central spindle of the drive. It'll save you money!

Go careful out there people - it's a rough world.

The punter strikes back.

2010-11-05T23:29:00.001Z

Working where I do at the moment - at the site of a major broadcaster - I occasionally have to visit offices occupied by some of the creative departments. One of them creates small props for TV shows.

Sometimes you really wish you were there when the person lit the first and only one of the stolen cigarettes!

Disable your Adblock!

2010-10-07T13:14:00.001+01:00

Has anyone seen this page appear recently?
http://www.cpalead.com/adblock.php

Surely the idea of pop-up and adblockers is to stop all of this happening.

CPA Lead is a web advertising agency and to be honest, I think they've missed the point - as have some of their customers. I suspect that this is going to make matters worse for those customers who have taken this script and it will actually decrease the amount of traffic through their sites, rather than boost their customer's - and therefore CPAlead's own income.

Just as an experiment I disabled adblock on a page that presented this message, just to check out the ads on the page. Practically every ad on the page was for a company or a product that I'd not use because I can't get them where I live on this side of the planet. The only ads I did find that were remotely relevant were from Google - those at least were from companies in my own country.

Not sure this is a good company either. Looking through their blogs and the comments that people have left I get the distinct impression that as far as they're concerned there isn't a world outside of North America(possibly even outside the USA). They are also very good a dodging the question.

I wonder what the writer of Adblock/Adblock Plus has to say about this?

Oh, by the way, you can get around it with AdBlockPlus.

As the page loads, go to the adblockPlus icon and select:"Disable on this page only".
Wait for the page to finish loading
de-select: "Disable on this page only".

You get to read the page AND not have to worry about pop-ups getting in the way or get that stupid message!

"Greening" IT

2010-09-08T13:03:00.000+01:00

I've just been browsing through the latest crop of IT trade mags that drop onto my desk around this time of the month, and it never ceases to amaze me when I see headlines "Most efficient data centre to date".

Without exception every single story I have seen of late that has a picture attached, either an external shot of the building or an internal shot of one of the data halls, shows the damn thing has been built in a converted factory unit!

Whilst I will admit that there are a growing number of these that have some form of environmental containment, surely it's about time that people began to look at the buildings themselves and what can be included in the design and construction stage to lessen the need for the more expensive solutions.

And yes, I agree. If there's no option because your data hall has to be built inside an exisiting building with no hope of re-designing the structure, then containment is your only option.

U-turn, or just a new set of paints.

2010-09-02T13:46:00.000+01:00

So Channel 5 are back in with Canvas, Hmmm. did someone over in Murdockville not put up a very good case for staying out? Is the Sky not the limit any more?

I used to find it strange that anything the BBC did was immediately poo-poo'd or lambasted by RM and his crowd no matter what it was. These days, I just find it sad and predictable.

Newsbytes

2010-07-12T16:10:00.001+01:00

Canvassing Support.

Bertelsmann who own the UK's Channel 5 have pulled them out of the Project Canvas consortium, just when broadband was looking to be a serious competitor to DTT and DSAT for streaming output to the punter.

For those of you who want to know the consortium had the idea of another set-top box, this one dedicated to picking up streamed content on the web and letting you watch it on your TV. Considering that the only serious web-based competitor to this is Windows Media Edition, I thought this would be a winner.

One caveat on that though..... there's still over 10 million people who either don't have or don't want broadband, which may put a crimp on what the consortium are doing if it were delivered tomorrow, but as they are taking their timer and developing this slowly, I think Bertelmann are leaving the party too early.

via El-Reg

Crossed eyes forever!.

UBIsoft's UK marketing mogul Murray Pannell has gone out on a bit of a limb recently and said that there'll be a 3Dtv in every home by 2013.

Yeah,.... right,......

OK, I think he might seriously look at the current sales figures for HDtv - they still aren't great for either the sets or the set-top boxes. I honestly think he needs to rethink himself. I wouldn't even know where to find what the figures for those who still don't even have DTT, not a show-stopper, but still a significant number I would have thought.

via The Independent

Out-foxed.

I'd never heard of Martha Lane Fox until all the quango-culling happened when the Con-Lab coalition came to power after the last election. She was head of what was called the "Digital Public Service Unit": one of Gordo's last few inceptions before he and the Labour party lost their remit to govern. She's put herself forward as a sort of digital champion.

She's published a document which is both a masterpiece and a travesty of publishing. Her "Manifesto for a Networked Nation" is - if you can bear to read through it before your eyes give out with the ludicrous colour scheme and almost infinite changes in font - is a laudable aim. She has done her homework reasonably well, even if she is colour-blind. And don't think her website raceonline2012.org is any better: it fries the eyes as well.

via Digital Spy - which is far easier to read than her manifesto

Health News?

2010-07-05T12:02:00.000+01:00

Oh dear, Here we go again.

Fat Police
When does political correctness become political stupidity? I think a recent case in Barnsley (U.K) is a good indication of this. The parents of an eleven year old boy who is 3 lbs (count them) over the guide weight for children his age and height have been sent a letter from their local PCT (Primary Care Trust) saying that he is obese! The child is fitter and more active than most children his age since he swims, cycles, and even dances on a very regular basis.

And what do these brain doners say in their defence? "We are following national guidelines." Yes you are aren't you. Blindly and without the use of your God-given intelligence.

Via The BBC

Solve the problem, not the symptoms.
Why are modern management graduates so good at missing the point? Another story picked by several different news agencies was that figures released recently show that the A&E departments of a number of hospitals are getting busier and busier. This is causing over-crowding because of the fact that the A&E staff are keeping people in for observation for between 12 and 24 hours - just in case.

What do we have? Some idiot saying that if these people are not being kept in hospital for less than a day they shouldn't be there at all.

How does that saying go again? Oh yes "Lies, damn lies and statistics."

Via The BBC

Data Centre Headaches.

2010-06-11T11:58:00.000+01:00

It's a bit of a pipe dream I know as I don't have any budget for this at all, but surely I'm not asking for the impossible or indeed the only person looking for something like this?

I'm looking after a few data centres and machin rooms at the moment and actually managing the power systems and environment needs automating badly! I have no remote monitoring of the power and I have some geriatric environmental monitoring systems that are seriously on their last legs.

What I need is a PDU to install in the racks that can give me:

2 inputs
Static Switch between them.
8 - 12 outputs
Sequential start on each port
Remote operation of each output
Remote monitoring of each port
Environmental monitoring of Teperature and humidity.
Central management of the lot: e.g. stats gathering etc..

I keep looking but I never seem to find one that does everything, just a subset of what I've listed.

We don't care, we don't have to - we're the phone company!

2010-05-28T13:57:00.000+01:00

Now I don't often slag off the bandwidth providers as I have to work with them so often, but this news story caught my eye this morning and I could only think of a hot, brown, semi-solid organic waste product. This was unfortunately also accompanied by a case of Deja Moo.

The village is rural, not remote. The nearest town is less than 7 miles away. There's no way you can make me believe that no-one in the town has broadband!!

£130,000 ($190,000) for a domestic broadband install? No, that's just a confidence trick.

Plenty to discuss..

2010-05-17T22:36:00.000+01:00

Is it me or do these two look very alike - possibly even the same person?

Even journalists are human!

2010-05-14T15:57:00.000+01:00

I got this one pointed out to me recently - It shows just how your average newsreader stays sane having to pass on the gloom, doom and despondency that news agencies make their living with. From personal experience - having worked in such an organisation this is mild and fairly good natured. I have seen an anchor who, the moment the transmission lights went off ran screaming from the studio and punched a hople in a partition wall in the make-up room.

I know an anchor that took advantage of not being seen below the waist and read a very sombre news item in black tie and jacket... and the filthiest pair of jeans you've seen in your life! Just a pity pocket video cameras didn't exist back then.

Visible Protests?

2010-05-14T15:39:00.000+01:00

What ever you do, try not to work for a media or news company (or even their service cmpanies) if you want a quiet life. Working for one of our customers means occasionally having to walk past or - at worse - through a demonstration outside their offices. In the many, many years I've been going to this particular company's buildings only once has the protest I've encountered actually been aimed at the company itself. More often the only reason the protest is there is so the protestors give themselves a chance of getting their point aired to the general public.
The most recent one was a human rights issue with the current Iranian government. Having scanned all the media sources following the event, it appears the only people who noticed this group were the people actually trying to get passed them.

Collision Detection!

2010-05-14T15:33:00.001+01:00

Why is everyone worried about CERN's monster accelertor? Don't they realise that there's enough antimatter being produced around the globe already? They're doing it State-side all the time. Quarks, strangeness and I remeber a third one - charm. Whatever happened to that? Maybe it only exists at budget time!

Oh what a circus, oh what a show....

2010-05-07T14:27:00.001+01:00

.... paraphrasing Andrew Lloyd Webber.
As if the world hasn't realised, the U.K is going through the torture of it's General Election and is heading for what's called a "hung parliament": baiscally with none of the major parties having an overall majority.

I'm not a political; person as such, I leave that up to my wife who is outspoken to say the least: her beliefs being described as slightly to the right of Ghengis Khan. I make no comment myself. I will admit of being an avid watcher of the whole process of the Election due to the wonderful Circus is becomes over those weeks that lead up to the point where one or other of the party leaders heads off to Buckingham Palace to get the "Royal Assent".

The coverage from the national TV companies can be hilarious especially when life catches them on the hop and the headless chicken syndrome descends on the production team. Another humerous thing is the graphics and gymnastics some of the commentators come up with when trying to expalin the "current situation".

Leaving the jokes about "... having enough rope for all those necks!" in the first analysis this is not a good situation for the country, it doesn't make for a stable political situation. On further analysis it may be good for the Liberal Democrat party for a short length of time as they have enough members to acctually sway any vote in the House of Commons either for or against which ever of the larger parties becomes the Government.

In short I will be glued to the coverage for some time.

Discredited systems causing discrimination.

2010-03-18T12:08:00.001Z

I suspect that this is the beginning of a new topic series here, as this is not the first of these I've come across, and I doubt seriously whether it will be the last! Not only that, but this is not the first time rank stupidity from the county of Shropshire has made it to the national media.

A boy of five has been labelled ".....clinically obese as his body mass index put him in the 99th percentile [for his age group]." The child is 3'10" (1.17m) tall and weighs 4st 2lbs (26.3kg), and if you look at the picture of him from the Daily Telegraph, I find it hard to believe anyone with a gramme of common sense would call this boy obese.

Well, as usual it appears that "common sense" is a mis-noma these days as they have used the modern version of the height/weight chart: the BMI Index, which doesn't take account of the body's density in any way therefore even most super-fit athletes come out as clinically obese!

Even the NHS give the guidance to their own nursing staff that: ".............the [BMI] system is to be taken as a guide only and should not be used for children or the severely overwieght."

For those of you who are wondering how it's done, the formula is simple, take the person's weight in kilos and divide this by the person's height in metres squared. If you work in Imperial measures, then its pounds x 703 divided by height in inches squared: height versus weight. quid pro quo!

Small minded people

2010-03-15T15:32:00.002Z

Whilst waiting at the checkouts........
Woman: "How dare you go around drunk with your family!"
Me: "At least if I was drunk - which I'm not, I'd be sober tomorrow... you'd still be ignorant!"
Woman: ".............."
Me: "I have MS. Deal with it!"
Applause from those around me.

Conspiracy Theorists forward!

2010-02-09T16:49:00.003Z

I wasn't sure - as this is diabetes related - as to whether to post it here or on Diabetes Daily. I decided to post it here and link from DD as being the easiest option.

Someone posted - in jest - that Diabetes was unheard of before 1947. Actually there is documentary evidence that the early Egyptian civilisation had recognised the symptoms; they just didn't know what it was and what caused it.

That aside, the gist of the thread was whether members believed there was a conspiracy going on that was preventing a cure for the disease. The concensus was that there was no knowledgeable one, which goes to prove one thing that I maintain: there's no such thing as a conspiracy, just blatant stupidity. I'd like to invent a word here to sum it up:

Stupiracy: Stupidity that appears to be a conspiracy, but borne out of ignorance.

Yes, there is a blatant stupiracy going on here and it's all down to that wonderful ideal:- profit. Obviously a lot of this comes from pure greed, but some of it - as I've intimated - is just pure ignorance.

The nub of the matter is that the governments of the world have a serious healthcare problem building due to the increase in the incidence of diabetes, especially what they term "type 2". They are all seriously worried as to how they are going to pay for this. My simple suggestion is:

tax the convenience food manufacturer's additives, especially high fructose corn syrup

Now here's why I say this.

Let's start with the root of the problem. The actual incidence of what is erroneously called by a lot of clinicians "type 2" has escalated quite alarmingly since WWII, and it cannot be put down purely to the improvement in diagnosis of the disease: the statistics far out way this as being the only factor. So what has changed since the late 1940's?

DIET!

Now some of this rise can be blamed on the lifestyle changes that our modern world has given us: we are more sedentary, the degree of manual labour has decreased, cheap powered personal travel is extensively avbailable. But you cannot put it all down to this. The price of food has dropped overall, but not in terms of the healthier alternative, and don't get me wrong, I'm not going to go all the way out the other side and blame it all on what we call "fast food". What I'm blaming is the content of fast food / junk food / convenience food call it what you will, it comes preprepared and you just stick in the microwave for five minutes..

I cannot prove this personally: I'm not a research chemist, but it cannot be coincidental that instances of diabetes have increased with the increases of cheaper additives and ingredients being put into pre-prepared food. How do I come to this unscientific conclusion? My wife has been allergic to apples since she was a child: they give her severe abdominal discomfort and at first it was thought that it was the high level of fructose within them that caused this. We could live with this, just buy pears and other hard fruit and we'll be OK. Then I did some more research. Pears and bananas actually have (weight for weight) more fructose in them so this obviously couldn't be the entire story.

Now comes the scary part. We started to notice that certain favourite "packet" and pre- prepared foods were starting to produce the same problem as apples and at first we couldn't work it out: we read the ingredients list looking for things like apples and cider and they just weren't there. Then we noticed that one particular item (a favourite biscuit) started to produce the problem that hadn't the week before and by chance we hadn't thrown away the old empty packaging. Comparing the ingredients list we instantly noticed the difference:

"high fructose-glucose syrup".

The older version of the product contained just "glucose syrup". We checked other products: they were the same.

More digging around the inter-web revealed what might be the problem: the ratio between fructose and glucose within the food! There are three main "versions" in common use within the food industry, all different "strengths" of the same thing: They are called HFCS42, HFCS55 and HFCS90. Now the name should give you a clue.

HFCS42 has actually got more glucose than fructose in it. a ration of about 1:1.1
HFCS55 is 55% fructose and 45% glucose: a ratio of about 1.2:1
Pears are about 66% fructose and 34% glucose: a ratio of about 1.5:1
Apples are about 70% fructose and about 30% glucose: a ratio of about 2:1
HFCS90 - the most common is 90% fructose to 10% glucose : an enormous ratio of 9:1!!!

Why do they use HFCS90? Well it's a simple calculation, the sweeter something is the less you have to put in, so the less you have to spend.

How this "ratio" causes the problem is someone else's research grant - I don't have the training. All I know is that as the number of products containing HFCS has increased so the number of these products in our shopping basket has decreased!

Deja Vu or Deja Moo?

2010-02-04T13:52:00.001Z

In the news today, Toyota are having engine management problems: the car's brakes don't seem to want to work sometimes. It seems I've heard this all before somewhere... way back around 1998 with the Ford Explorer and Ranger models here in the UK having cruise controls that suddenly set themselves to some ridiculously high speed and wouldn't let go of the throttle.

This is not the most worrying aspect of this "occurrence" as far as I'm concerned. What I find more worrying is the initial response from both manufacturers was exactly the same when the problems first became apparent:

"Problem? What problem? There's no problem!"

In the case of Ford, it had to take a couple of severe accidents that couldn't be attributed to either mechanical defect or "pilot error" for them to even begin to admit there was a problem, and to show how widespread that problem actually was, the recall is well over 4.5 million vehicles worldwide as of the end of 2009.

At least Toyota were willing to entertain the possibility of a problem existing or though why the customer facing parts of Toyota in both the US and UK say they knew nothing until very recently says a lot about the "never admit blame, even if it's true" culture in both countries. Come on guys, what's better; admit that you may have got it wrong or have the stigma of at least one very large lawsuit hanging over the company's profit forecast for a number of years.

As my wife often says to Customer Service departments: "Better safe than sued!"

Oh, the definition of Deja Moo: "having heard that bullshit somewhere before."

Breaking the life timer.

2010-02-01T13:24:00.000Z

In the same week that one woman is cleared of murdering her daugher and another sentenced to nine years for helping to end her son's life, Sir Terry Pratchett has entered the debate over Euthanasia. For those of you who aren't familiar with Pterry's situation, he has a rare form of early-onset Alzheimer's disease which affects his communications skills: not something a talented author like him would wish for. He has called for the creation of tribunals to hear the pro's and con's for each case so that the relatives are not put in the same situation as the two women who are subjects of the news items linked to above. I will agree that there were slightly differing situations, but I cannot agree that Frances Inglis' case was wildly different from Kay Gilderdale's.

This is not the first time I have blogged on this subject: I made mention of it in September. when the case of Debbie Purdy a sufferer of MS (very similar to my own condition) came into the news.

What ever your own views, I say this: I am in agreement with the majority of people who think that this situation where someone has made the concious choice to end their lives risks putting their relatives in jail for helping them do it. In Frances Inglis' trial, the prosecution appears to have made her actions to appear malicious. I disagree the only malice shown here is by the system wishing to legally prolong the agony of a terminally ill person's life for no other reason than out-dated laws and the institutionalised mistrust of people's motives!

We do not permit the suffering of a seriously ill animal to be prolonged, why should we permit this cruelty to be exacted on our fellow humans?

Being in a somewhat similar position as Sir Terry; it may not be Alzheimer's, but it is still an incurable, degenerative disease which will eventually cripple me, I offer him, Frances, Kay and their families my wholehearted emotional support.

Have we sealed our own fate?

2010-01-27T14:20:00.000Z

A thought has occured to me recently, considering all the health problems I'm currently suffering. It is simply this:

Would I actually be alive if all the anomalies in my genetic code had been eliminated by the process of natural selection?

Think on this. The morbidities currently uppermost in the psyche of Man are exceptionally rare in any life form not having been messed around with by us: i.e. those that we haven't tried to manipulate in some way by breeding etc.. Those that do suffer from them get them by - for want of a better phrase - "secondary transfer", in other words because they can't escape our detritus.

I know there are evolutionary dead-ends out there: flora and fauna that have not changed in millions of years such as the Ginkgo biloba plant, crocs, caymen, gators and the like or everyone's favourite insect - the 'roach'. But the reason they haven't changed is that their family trees have hit the buffers, their adaptation is perfect for their little niche in what's left of this planet's eco-system.

I will not get into the "creationism" debate, it just isn't worth it. Suffice to say that if there is any indication of intelligent design, it certainly isn't homo-sapiens: we have just too many physical problems.

My point is this: I do not believe we have reached the pinnacle of our existence in terms of what we could become. By prolonging the life of people with genetically caused problems for so many centuries now, have we actually caused ourselves to stop evolving? If so, what could we have become?

Random Thoughts No. 3

2010-01-07T17:25:00.001Z

Why is it that dry cells come in packs of four yet most toys and gadgets use them in two’s three’s or fives!

Product marketers forward please – WE KNOW IT’S YOU!

Tribute to an Ordinary Man

2010-01-03T17:45:00.003Z

In Memoriam

Donald Daniel Simmonds

7th May 1931 - 13th December 2009

My father died on the 13th of December 2009: he finally succumbed to cancer at about 6.00am that morning. It was expected, just not this soon. If anything can be considered good about someone’s passing it is this: he never got to the point where either the cancer or the drugs could cause him any pain – physical or psychological.

Born 7th May 1931 in Fulham, South East London, he spent most of his childhood dodging the best the German Air force could throw at them. First a cub scout, then a scout, he and his contemporaries acted as the communications for the emergency services of the day, and as extra man-power for the LDVF and ARP, erecting table shelters in people’s houses. This was on top of a full day at school remember. He first met Mum in the scouts and guides (Her first name was Marion actually, but she preferred her middle name, June), who would later become his wife.

After school, came an apprenticeship with the North Thames Gas Company (Bad Smell and Smoke Company to the employees), and the re-acquaintance June.

WWII not having been over for that long, most if not all young men in the UK were still subject to National Service: Dad served in Klagenfurt; Austria, near the border with what was Yugoslavia. He fell in love with the country and the people and vowed he’d come and visit the place again. After National Service, it was back to work, and a change of direction, becoming an instrument maker for St. Thomas’ Hospital in Central London.
On 30th April 1955, Mum and Dad tied the knot at St. Mary-le-Park Church in Battersea, literally a stone’s throw from the Park, and three years later they were safely delivered of a son: yours truly.

By this time, Dad had taken on a new job as a service engineer for the fledgling service division of the BOC’s medical equipment division. Based at Brentford, his “patch” was most of South London, Kent, Surrey and Sussex: I remember the days when he would take me as company on the long trips to the furthest calls, including a nursing home in Brighton run by a group of Nuns. I always seem to make an impression on them as Dad told me of the frequent trips up and down the long corridors on a trolley pushed by a giggling group of novices!

While I was still young, Grand-dad Simmonds died of diabetic complications causing gangrene, and Dad inherited the four-story Victorian terraced house in Clapham where I spent most of my young life. The top two floors were given over to flats and two Tongan’s lived there. Daniel worked at John Lewis’ In Oxford Street and David worked at the Ritz. Tongans are an outgoing race and many times we were invited to “do’s” around London. Invariably we would end up back home with 20 or 30 of the community back at the house in Clapham with the food, drink and music flowing into the night.

Eventually, we had to move as the house was costing just too much to maintain as flats. We said a heart-felt goodbye to the Tongans and moved on. We settled in Surrey and stayed there until Dad became an instructor at the company’s training department in Harlow. We moved as a family to St. Margaret’s, near Stanstead Abbotts and immediately became actively involved with both the church and the Scouts and Guides in the area. It is amazing how quickly news travels in the Scout Association…. within two weeks of moving in, the District Commissioner for the area was on the door step welcoming us to the area.

Both Mum and Dad threw themselves into the life of the community and fund raising for various restoration jobs that the beautiful little Church in the village, becoming church wardens, and Dad becoming Crucifer and server at the Church.

Shortly after Dad retired, they decided to move on and settled in Hickling, a small village right on the Broads in Norfolk, again becoming actively involved with the community and St. Mary’s – the parish Church in Stalham – the nearest town, but as Dad put it ”….having a rest from the Scouts.”

In 1996 he became very ill very quickly, losing somewhere in the region of 70lbs in less than a few months. Diabetes had finally caught up with him. As usual, his attitude was, “OK, how do we cope with this and get back to normality?” It didn’t take long before Dad was Dad again.

We lost Mum in 2005, again to cancer – this time it was an un-diagnosed problem, not the cancer that eventually took her. Dad in his usual way outwardly took it in his stride, but you could see the pain of loss: suddenly being without someone you have been with for 50 years is not easy.

Even at this time last year the cancer still had not shown itself. Only at Easter was it noticeable that something was wrong, so wrong that he actually went to the doctors. His weight had started to drop again, losing his appetite and he was constantly tired. Initially the diagnosis was anaemia and he was sent for tests to try and find bleeding in his intestines: the classic way it hits someone of Dad’s age. After several sets of tests – including colonoscopy – they couldn’t find any bleeding, but he was still losing red blood cells. Regular transfusions kept him going and a CT scan was conducted. The results were clearly visible to see and the reason why he was anaemic was there for all to see.

The cancer had started out at the base of the oesophagus, where it splits into two for the lungs. It had finally spread to the lymph system and carried to the adrenal glands, and it was this that was causing the anaemia. It had been slowly spreading for quite some time: it was only Dad’s lifestyle and constitution that had hidden it for so long. It was now just a case of not IF but WHEN.

On the 2nd December, he had a fall at home as his legs were getting weak and was admitted to Norfolk & Norwich University Hospital. As he’d been preparing a meal when he fell, we as a family went up to try and get the house tidied up for when he came home. As I had to come back home for work, the last time I saw my father was the Sunday before he died.

My father wasn’t famous, he wasn’t one of these people that does something heroic, he was an ordinary man who could never turn away if someone needed help.

He had time for everyone.

He was slow to make friends, but he made them for life.

He was always ready to “muck in” and get his hands dirty. If you were stuck, he’d be there to help.

To the best of my knowledge he never held a grudge to any soul, living or dead, no matter what he thought of their character.

The one thing I will say about him is what he once said to me:- “Father by Birth, Friend by choice.”

The Worst of Times. The Best of Times

2009-12-13T19:14:00.003Z

I got the phone call I was dreading at 6.25am this morning.
My father left this world peacefully around 6.00am. He felt no pain and was still compos mentis. From what the staff at the Norwich & Norfolk Hospital have told me, it was more that he ran out of energy trying to fight the cancer, rather than the cancer causing anything to fail.
If there can be anything to take solace in it is the fact that he has died now before the cancers started to cause any pain, and before he suffered the discomfort and frustrations of the chemo-therapy that they were planning to start.
Via this blog, I offer my heartfelt thanks to the staff at the hospital that looked after him in these past final days, and to all the wonderful, generous and helpful people in both Stalham and Hickling who have offered their help and support to both Dad and myself over the past six months or so.
May God go with you all and may his Peace be with you for ever.

In memoriam:

Donald Daniel Simmonds

May 1931 – December 2009

Got Bored

2009-12-07T13:54:00.001Z

Thought it was about time I changed the layout. I was getting bored with the old one. I think this is reasonably gentle on the eye.

Dad went Ouch!

2009-12-07T13:23:00.005Z

As you may have gathered, Dad is suffering from "The Big C". Between it and the treatment, it's left things like his legs very weak.

He had two falls last week on the same day. The first just ended up with a short visit to the A&E (ER) to be checked out, the second led to him actually being admitted because of the large gash and bruise he sustained to his left eyebrow. Although it doesn't show physically his ego also sustained a fairly major bruise and he's feeling a little silly to say the least.

A good friend and neighbour has also taught him how true it is that the human race is excellent at stating the obvious, to whit:

"Oh, you've fallen over and cut your head. Are you alright?"

In his estimation he held nothing back and the reply was Anglo Saxon/expletive-rich/profane (take your choice!) to say the least.

He's also now realised he has to swallow his pride and let people help him where he needs it. There are a lot of people who will gladly do this for him because of what he and Mum did for them when she was alive.

Thankfully because of this it's now apparent to him that people like the physiotherapist, District Nurse, Doctors, GP, and Social Services Visitors are not actually having a go at him, but are also actually trying to help him.

We went down at the weekend to clear the debris for him and install a few bits and pieces to make life a little easier when they finally release him. I think between ourselves and his GP we can get him organised.

The Joy of Stillness.

2009-12-07T13:12:00.003Z

There are times where my body will not stop jerking about - literally. If the inflamation in the nerve tissue in my neck gets really bad, then muscles all over my body begin to twitch. They don't do this violently, and if my arms or my legs begin to do this and I concentrate hard, I can stop it in the limb in question. That said, I can't concentrate on more than one area of my body at any one time, so the rest of the body is still twitching away. It makes writing, typing or any job that requires manual dexterity very difficult.

The joy comes at that point some seconds after the last spasm, twitch or jerk has actually finished and my body is finally at rest. It is almost a divine pleasure to not be moving any more.

Random Thoughts 2

2009-11-06T11:56:00.004Z

Health, wealth and happiness.
I haven't felt up to communicating in any form lately. I'm trying to fight off depression again, but it's not easy especially when Dad got diagnosed with cancer the week before last. From what the medical profession are saying it's been there some time - possibly two years - slowly eating it's way out from the centre of his chest. Part of the reason it's taken so long to find is that he only started feeling ill at around Easter time this year - the point they reckon it may have spread to the lymph system. What hasn't helped in his diagnosis has been the number of different consultants and doctors who have seen him in the past nine months. I can personally testify that this story in the Times is no exaggeration. It's now affecting the top of his lungs, his adrenal glands, and it looks like it might be attacking the pancreas now. My father being the character he is, takes it all in his stride and is determined to go down fighting.

Jane suffers from a problem some you other ladies out there may know about - fibroids. However, our GP finally got her an appointment with a specialist and in the new year they'll actually do something about them

My own health problems pale into insignificance beside this, I'm still walking around as if I'm drunk and occasionally scaring colleagues and by-standers by falling over for no apparent reason. I make the excuse that I'm tripping over my own big feet and leave it at that. I sometimes get that look from them that they'd like to know more, but I can normally avoid going into all the details. I'm also still a sweet person - clinially

The insanity of Life.
The news last night (UK time) about a shooting on a US army base was saddening to say the least.
Despite the knee-jerk reaction from the majority "red-neck" populace of the USA the man wasn't a terrorist. I will say to anyone like them:-

If there isn't anything to read between the lines, don't invent it!

Maj. Hasan was just someone who eventually snapped after incessantly hearing about all the horrors that the troops from all over the world face on a daily basis in that troubled part of our planet. It seems even those who have to heal the head are just as prone to losing theirs.

This is the legacy that extremism forces upon us. At the moment Islam is in the spotlight: the Taliban being the current major force in this. But there is no major religion on this planet that at sometime in the history of Man has not been guilty of the same thing. It seems that the saying: "Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it" is a truism.

and on that tack....
Carbon Trading or Confidence Trick?
Well, there's a question. The initial idea behind Carbon Trading was for companies to build new, greener industry that had a smaller carbon footprint as a trade-off for having to upgrade existing installations/factories/power plants/etc. What actually seems to be happening though is that it's being treated like another commodity like mortgages and small trade-offs are being bundles into corporate packages and sold off in the same way. I think we've got another "sub-prime" situation building here.

But for the Grace of God.......
I've been there! I know this is true!
A study by NICE has said that the loss to industry in the UK because of stress-related illness is approaching £28bn (GBP)and bad management is mostly to blame.

How to arrange your pseudopodia!

2009-10-12T16:06:00.007+01:00

This Is Daniel

These are Daniel's new rugby boots.

This is the box they came in.

This is how many you get in a box!!!!!!!!!!

Freeview Tuning problems

2009-10-04T09:37:00.002+01:00

"It's not our fault!" That's what Freeview are screaming. Well, I'm sorry but you are not entirely blameless in this fiasco, neither are the manufacturers. I am ready to accept that a small amount of the problems can be laid fairly and squarely at the consumers door, but only a small amount. The UK Govenrment must also take a very minor part of the blame here too, and I don't mean Westminster, I mean Whitehall - were the power really resides.

Tee biggest problem? No-one really thought seriously about one thing that bugs a lot of the and independent industry experts and support operations: backwards compatibility. Over the past few years it's become a "dirty word" for the decision makers, it's messy, it means they can't force people to buy our new shiny box with more bells-n-whistles (which no-one will really ever use!).

Yes, I know, I'm old and cynical, but I've been around the media industry too long not to be.

Many Hard Scars

2009-09-23T16:25:00.003+01:00

In the UK, and I suspect other parts of the world, there has been a debate on legalising, or at least giving people immunity from prosecution if they help someone to commit suicide. Pressure to actually come out and say something definitive has been increasing because of this debate and legal actions from a sufferer of MS from Bradford in the UK.

Debbie Purdy won a ruling by the Law Lords that she had a right to know what action her husband would face if he helped her to end her life. This has finally forced the Director of Public Prosecutions to say something, and the current incumbent of that role: Keir Starmer QC, has finally published a guidance paper. BBC News has a story on this.

As with anything like this there are the "PRO" and "ANTI" camps, and I think I have at least one foot in the "PRO" one for the simple reason that I think that the attitude of prolonging the life of someone with a terminal illness who has no quality of life for what ever reason is somewhat selfish.

God Forbid that I should ever end up in this situation. I doubt seriously whether I could cope with living in a state of complete immobility and pain. That said I wonder whether I could actually have the courage to take that enormous transition between worlds.

Random Thoughts 1

2009-09-02T14:49:00.004+01:00

NHS Trusts trying to save money
Ah, the mind set of the accountant. So, to save money in the NHS, CFO's from the various trusts are going to again cut the staff they most need, i.e. nurses, in favour of those they don't, i.e. themselves! Have they never heard the saying "Better safe than sued" ? How long will it be after these job cuts that the family of someone who dies in a UK hospital sues the Trust responsible for negligence? And you can bet it won't be the people who caused the situation that will end up in jail, just the poor over-worked nursing staff again.

Biting the bullet.
Powerpoint is 25 years old apparently. From the number of PPT presentations I've had to sit through, it feels longer. Originally written for the MAC, Microsoft bought the company who wrote it in 1987. I think the person who created the slideshow on the BBC News site may be taking the **** with some of the slides.

I remember when........
Now I think I've heard everything - Glitch-hop. Seriously, being an engineer the word "glitch" means a problem. Maybe I'm getting old. :-(

Mechanical Trees yet!

2009-08-27T13:10:00.004+01:00

I know I've said this before elsewhere, but either Douglas Adams was a visionary or he could see into the future. In the second radio series of the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, there is a character called The Wise Old Bird who mentions that all the imprisoned robots from Brontitall's first plague are working to build "continent toupees" for planets that have used up all their forests.
Now today, we get an article hitting the news stands about more ideas to reduce the CO2 in the atmosphere using mechanical trees!

I must admit, the idea of artificially reducing the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere has its merit, but it has to be practical with no long-term side effects of it's own. The two main contenders are to reduce it by filtering it out and storing it in empty oil wells or by converting it with algae using photo-synthesis.

Not too keen on the first idea. this could just be saving up more trouble for future generations, who have enough to worry about already with global warming and another nasty man-made product of excessive energy consumption.... nuclear waste.

Big Brother gone? I doubt it.

2009-08-27T12:42:00.003+01:00

Initially, anyone of the same opinion as myself would say "At last! Some relief!" as today's London Times announces: "Channel 4 finally evicts Big Brother". This sentiment would be echoed by fellow residents of Borehamwood in Hertfordshire where the programme originates in the UK who have to endure the fireworks at 11pm every time there's a major eviction. (The Google maps image is the front of Elstree Studios.) However, I can't see that Endemol - the producers - would let a good thing go and I can quite see the programme itself dragging on hosted on a different channel for a good few years yet.

There's no doubt that it's still popular with certain audiences: the queues for the Friday night evictions at the studios testify to this, but after ten years, the format is a little tired and the production team are deliberately looking for more outlandish contestants to keep the ratings up in the UK. How the other 41 places around the globe are faring is anyone's guess!

Endemol's site states:

Big Brother is all-seeing, all powerful and getting even bigger across the globe. There is no limit to the Big Brother phenomenon.

Well, maybe there is a limit, we'll just have to wait and see.

Don't tell me you've got it bad!

2009-07-21T12:52:00.004+01:00

I'm a regular reader of Oddee.com and they've posted an item called "8 of the World's Most inspirational People" today. Each of the people who are featured on this page are truly inspiring. Ben Underwood who could "see" with his ears, Patrick Henry Hughes who is a virtuoso musician who cannot see, Sean Swarner who has repeatedly beaten the odds to survive several bouts of cancer and Jessica Cox who was born without limbs,but gained her pilot's licence, Nando Parrado who along with 16 others survived 72 days in freezing conditions in the high Andes and Randy Pausch who suffering from pancreatic cancer made an impact on so many people with his talk on how he accomplished the thing in life he wanted to do.

One however stands out for me and that is Australian Nic Vujicic. He to my mind deserves pride of place at the top of the page because of his attitude to life. With all the so-called problems I have, they pale into insignificance against any of these people and Nic in particular. He was born without limbs and had to learn to live without them. I will eventually lose the use of mine and have to do the same.

Please watch this video and then visit his website at

http://lifewithoutlimbs.org/

We don't care! We're Google! We're the Web!

2009-07-17T10:26:00.003+01:00

Actually, no you're not.
What you are is a company that seem to want to emulate Microsoft's sales division.

To what am I referring?

iGoogle.

Someone somewhere within the corporate nightmare that the company has become has decided "Hey we can give everyone Google Chat - whether they want it or not!" And before anyone responds, "but you can disable it!" yes, you can... but you can't hide it!

I suppose what's worse than this is that person - in their infinite wisdom/stupidy (delete as appropriate) has decided to move the tabs from the top to the side of the page, thus making the layout awkward - to say the least.

A point here people! Not everyone out here in Webbyland has super splondicious 16 x 9 widescreen monitors yet and have to put up with old-fashioned fuddy-duddy 4 x 3 instead!

PLEASE! - give people a choice or you are going to find a lot of people no longer using iGoogle!

How I hate the night.

2009-07-15T15:19:00.006+01:00

Have you any idea what's it like to walk around as if you're drunk all the time?

I am now suffering from yet another auto-immune problem (those of you who have seen my diabetes blog may be up to date with this) which means that my spinal cord is losing it's insulation - known as myelin. This is turn results in some inflamation around where the problem exists.

So how does this relate to the title of this post? .... Marvin the Paranoid Android.

Marvin constantly complains of having a terrible pain in all the diodes down his left side. I now constantly have what I can only describe as an "un-pain" down my right side.

The title of the post comes from a song that Marvin composes at one point where his life is particularly sour:

"Now the world has gone to bed,
Darkness won't engulf my head,
I can see by infrared,
How I hate the night."

"Now I lay me down to sleep,
Try to count electric sheep,
Sweet dream wishes you can keep,
How I hate the night.

Douglas Adams: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Marvin the Paranoid Android's "dolorous ditty", composed after being attached to the Krikkit War Computer.

Whether his pain is similar to mine, I cannot say.

I describe it as an "un-pain" because it isn't really like any other feeling I've experienced. It is essentially an absence of sensation, but it has all the mental overtones that pain would normally give - there is discomfort, there is the inability to find anywhere comfortable to alleviate the feeling. What is worse is that pain killers do not relieve it.

Because the inflammation results in anything from minor numbness to having my foot stop working at any one time. It is startling to say the least to be walking along perfectly normally then suddenly lurch sideways as your right leg either doesn't go where you were expecting it to go, or just not support your weight correctly.

I've taken to carrying a walking stick at the moment. How much of it's aide is physical and how much is psychological is debatable, but it does seem to help.

Your targeting is Off!

2009-07-06T15:31:00.007+01:00

"The farce is strong in this one."

So Phorm could be getting the push - businesswise - with British Telecom's decision to ditch their part in Phorm's Webwise product. I would suggest that since they were the major partner in the entire project - if not holding Phorm's purse strings, at least holding their wrists - pulling out at this stage means it's unlikely that either Virgin or TalkTalk will take up the baton in the UK.

As being the type of person who considers web advertising as a necessary evil, actually having my browser awash with badly targeted ads as it is (Google ads anyone?) is enough already!

The "personal privacy" brigade have got it slightly wrong - these people are interested in your browsing habits, not you in particular. What they're really interested in is the big advertiser's budgets and how much they can screw out of these people.

Think on this, how can these companies prove that it's Phorm's software actually boosting their sales as against any other fluctuations in the market? They can't. All that can be proved is that a certain group of people visit these particular sites at anyone time. However, having something sitting in the back-office part of your ISP's system, trying to second-guess what you are looking for is not a good idea, for several good reasons.

One, if your are as mercenary a browser as I am, I'm not interested in the same old thing, day after day. I want my browsing experience to be fresh every time: all that Webwise will do is make my experience stale and uninteresting.

Two, how are the ISPs and Phorm going to ensure that the data they collect/intercept is secure? Let's be honest, there's a lot of hackers out there that would find it very easy to put hooks in this software to harvest the personal details of the ISP's customers, especially when these people are making on-line transactions of any sort, encrypted or otherwise. When you register with a site of anything, it's your browser that holds the passwords. Unless the site uses Secure Server authentication, that password is sent in plain text.

Phorm? No thank you. It'll just turn into a phisher's paradise.

Washington: it could have been worse.

2009-06-23T16:41:00.005+01:00

My condolences to the families of the seven people who have lost their lives in the metro crash, and my sympathies to the injured and their families. I have been reading the reports of what happened and know from the major Tube accidents in London at King's Cross and Moorgate that it can have far reaching consequences on all those involved.

Now the NTSB have to work out why it happened and one thing that I have noticed in various reports is the mention of the state in which a lot of the infrastructure of the system is in, it seems to vary from "clean and reliable" to "crumbling" and "in a state of dis-repair". I suspect that - as in most cases - this point of view is coloured by which part of the system the persons making these comments actually use.

My biggest worry is not that this happened by why it happened. Not knowing how the metro system in DC is run, I can only speculate that the problem behind this accident could be one of lack of investment and I'm hoping that we are not looking at yet another case of "Damn the customers, we need to keep the share-holders happy".

Maybe some of the financial people of the world should realise they are not exempt from life and that one day they may very well have to face the same change in life that the families of those seven people are now having to come to terms with themselves.

A plea to all the governments of the world: make sure that your health and safety laws make it prohibitively expensive so that it is always cheaper for companies and their directors to carry out safety work, rather than take the hit with the fines and law suits.

Some good news for once.

2009-06-22T11:55:00.004+01:00

At long last the British educational system is actually investing some money in respect of specialist support for dyslexic children(BBC News 22/06/09). Ed Balls, the Children's Secretary has announced 10m(GBP) to help train teachers in coping with dyslexic children and how to spot the signs. One of the biggest dyslexia charities in the UK, Dyslexia Action, has welcomed it.

Classic Dyslexia - word blindness as it used to be called - is only one manifestation of the condition: being married to one and having both son's suffer from it, I can vouch for this. It is evident throughout my wife's family, stemming from my father-in-law who, along with my sister-in-law are "classic" sufferers.

My wife and eldest son suffer from a curious form in that they cannot tell which way round any writing they are viewing is actually written or printed: my eldest son has also been described as having "eccentric spelling".

The condition is no barrier thanks to the dedication of carers, enlightened teachers and parents and I suspect a lot of people wouldn't realise just how many house-hold names are sufferers. Look here for just a sample.

My youngest son has what has been described by one specialist as "dyslexia in extremis". It manifested itself at the age of two, when most children are starting to communicate: he didn't. One of the unusual symptoms was that he seemed to find it strange that the group of sounds that made up words never changed, the concept was totally alien to him. Slowly but surely, with the expert tuition and help from our local primary school, he is coming to terms with it.

One point that rarely seems to get mentioned in any article, conversation or discussion on the condition is that of the frustration that comes with it. Not just for the parents and carers of the sufferer but of the sufferer themselves. My son has been tested for ADHD more than once because of his extreme frustration at not being understood, and I can understand why being the subject of his rage more than once.

It is nice to know that in these cases, the best medicine is not some form of oral medication but just being there to hug and cuddle this poor, confused, frustrated child until his anger and rage passes.

And to answer those of you out there who would pose the question, would you have it any different?.... yes and no I would love for him not to have to suffer this extreme version of the condition, but would he be the same loving, forthright, outgoing person that it has made him into?

Most importantly, he is my son, and I love him dearly.

Oh No! Not again!

2009-06-13T09:29:00.004+01:00

I think the Universe has actually been replaced!
In Douglas Adam's masterpiece the Cirius Cybernetics Corporation purely made robots and automation.... Have they branched out into the food industry????

Seen on the back of a 230g bag of Maltesers:

"Share" and "Enjoy"

Design over Function

2009-06-08T13:39:00.000+01:00

There have been, what can only be called, "glitches" in the statistics relating to road traffic accidents here in the UK and in Europe for some time now. There seems to be a tenuous connection to weather conditions but not in the way most people would expect. These mainly occur when the conditions are bright and dry and most frequently at roundabouts (insert American term here!), especially where the "priority" and first joining junctions are at 90° or sharper angles to each other. What seems to happen is that two vehicles " T-bone" with the vehicle entering from the priority junction invariably being the size of your average family and rarely anything larger than an MPV.

I think I've come up with a possible reason why it happens. It may very well be the placement of the indicators on the front of the vehicle. Some manufacturers currently have models where they are well back down the side of the vehicle.

Let's face it, I am paranoid so I immediately assume the other driver is not concentrating as they approach. So if I don't see a near-side indicator, I brake and give way. OK, this behavior normally leads to me pissing off those behind me as the other car has then turned into the road I've been joining from, but the number of times a car has joined and I have seen the rear indicators actually on is at least equal to those where they aren't.

There can only be two conclusions: one, the front lamp is broken: two, the design of the lighting cluster means that the indicator isn't visible unless the angle between the two vehicles is less than a certain amount.

Number one does happen, but you can tell this from the rate of the flash: practically all the electronics to operate them are designed to run at a far faster rate if a lamp blows or falls out(!).

Conclusions. There is no substitute for concentrating on what you are doing, especially if you are behind the wheel. But the automotive designers need to examine where the line between style and safely comes and do a little re-designing.

I spoke too soon......

2009-06-02T13:35:00.005+01:00

Actually it's not the boss this time... it's the trolls from the Finance Department. It seems that for the third year running someone has forgotten to budget for a set of software licences that the customer is paying us to renew...

Now I wonder whose office got re-decorated this year with that money!

Or is it a case of.... "Due to budgetary restraints, the light at the end of the tunnel has had to be turned off."
[deep sigh, wanders off to the coffee machine for a refill.]

Relax! It's a new week!

2009-06-02T13:02:00.004+01:00

It's been a few weeks since I posted: the wonderful Dual D's of diabetes and depression kept me off the web for a week, and then a week of enforced leave with no internet connection for another.

Enforced? - Yes. My GP said that if I didn't take some time off I'd end up a gibbering wreck huddled in a corner somewhere.

Last week was "half-term" week in the UK so I took advantage of this and took the family out to Norfolk to see my Father: the boys thoroughly enjoy visiting him. As usual there were the odd one-or-two jobs that needed assistance, this time clearing my father's attic out so that some new insulation could be put in. It was hot and dirty work, but it's incredible how a week of doing something completely different like this can be so relaxing, even if it's even a mundane task.

So re-vitalised I return to work. Even aggravation from our own pointy-haired boss doesn't get through to me to start with. Now, that has to be some kind of success!

The Turtle Moves!

2009-05-20T08:09:00.002+01:00

Oh dear, Life is doing it to me again!

They always say similar events come in three's don't they? Well I think it's true, especially as I have three "Pratchett-related" events over the past 24 hours.

First was last night's CSI on channel 5 (we're only just starting with Laurence Fishbourne in the UK) where a monk dies when a tortoise gets dropped on his head by an eagle,

Second was my wife finding various pictures of people getting their own back on Death - the best being him slipping over a banana skin,

And finally, this morning we have "Duckman"

Well, the wizards do say million to one shots happen 99% of the time!

Language - a changeable constant.

2009-05-19T13:42:00.002+01:00

You could quite easily sub-title this "Evolution or Perversion".

As my knowledge of others is quite limited I don't know if this happens outside the English speaking world much, but with my native tongue words acquire other or alternate meanings. For example, I am working in a group that is charged with maintaining and supervising those parts of our customer's IT installations that aren't the actual server, network or communications hardware, the power and cooling, the cabling, the security, etc.: classically, the environment of the rooms and the infrastructure that connects and supports it.

However over the past few years someone, somewhere in the IT industry decided that the term "infrastructure" should include everything that doesn't sit on someone's desk or in their office.

This has made my life a little difficult as I'm the only one in the team who has any inkling into how the active part (servers, switches etc..) of the system actually works, so guess who ends up fielding the questions our technicians can't answer and re-directing them to our NOC or SOC!

I'm sure we in the IT world cannot be the only group to suffer this.

Change for the better or just meaningless change?

2009-05-19T12:55:00.009+01:00

As Ford Prefect noted, "Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so." I'm actually wondering when I can get to eat at the moment.... you can crunch only so many glucose tabs before your tongue revolts!

This morning we had one of those occasional tortures that they inflict on you: the "Management Meeting" This morning's effort was all about "Lean Management" and "eliminating waste in the procedures". This all stems from the experiment Toyota tried back in the 70's which they employed the principles that became "Kaizen". IT seems to work well in the manufacturing industry, but seems to fall short in most other sectors.

Kaizen is a Japanese term formed from the words Kai meaning change and zen which means good. In Korea, this translates as ge sun and in Chinese gai shan both meaning improvement change for the better. However, modern management has perverted it to stand for one of it's supposed foundations: continual inmprovement. From what I can see this is just another case of "smoke and mirrors"

While I agree waste, in terms of time and effort should be got rid of with all possible speed, I'm not sure how we in particular can do this as most of the waste is generated by the procedures thrust upon us by the management itself.

As a team, once our own pointy-haired boss had left (20 minutes into a scheduled 90!) we sat down and worked out some ways we could use to measure how much time we are actually spending on fulfilling the reporting tasks he demands from us as against how much time we are spending actually servicing our customers; we intrinsically know we are spending less on the latter, we just can't prove it yet.

This afternoon I'm going over to see the union rep. with one of the team (I'm acting supervisor as he's resigned!) as the guy has issues with the pointy-haired one

Ah, the irony!

2009-05-08T14:18:00.002+01:00

One for the motorists, especially Jeremy Clarkson.

The boss of the company in the UK responsible for installing Gatso cameras everywhere has just had his licence revoked having been caught by one doing 103mph(166kph) in a 70mph(112kph) zone!

There is a God!

Big is not beautiful.

2009-05-08T13:46:00.003+01:00

Michael Douglas' character Gordon Gekko, in the movie "Wall Street" famously said to his audience of stakeholders: "Greed is - for lack of a better word - good". I've never agreed with that philosophy as most, if not all the people who subscribe to it, end up in a worse state than when they bought into it. Unfortunately, there's a lot of innocents that unwittingly subscribe to it as well and get burned even worse. The movie reflected the time at which it was made, where banking and stock markets were the place to be. and the premise that "big is beautiful" seems to have persisted to a large degree even through the current economic crisis: some may even say that it in fact started it, but this is not my point here.

My point is that sadly one area of industry where this philosophy does still persist is IT. This is understandable considering that the financial world was one of it's biggest founders, and even after 20+ years of non-financial use some companies IT is still run by the Finance Department.

So, what's the problem? In a word, inertia.

Talk to any physicist or engineer with any mechanical background and they will tell you that the larger an object is, the more force you need to get it to start. However, once it is moving it will keep moving without much force at all - that roughly is inertia.

You can apply this analogy very well to corporate bodies - you can say they're like a super tanker: once they're moving it's easy to keep them moving, but they take a long time to do anything once they are unless you use a lot of energy.

What's worse is if it loses all power, no matter what the command crew does, it will just keep going on the same course until it hits something hard, and the results will not be pretty - as the real Wall St. found out with Lehmann Bros.

In the IT world the alarm bells should start ringing sooner but, as above, it's a case of whether the right people hear them. I've now heard two with my current employer: a global IT support company. The first was when we started to have to jump through hoops to get even the smallest travel claims approved, the second made me and others where I'm based do an enormous mental double-take. It is that the upper management are considering the option of off-shoring our own IT.

Scott Addams once drew a Dilbert cartoon about this - I thought he was joking!

Best job in the world

2009-05-06T13:25:00.003+01:00

Congratulations to Ben Southall from Hampshire for finally winning through against the other 35,000 or so people to get every one's dream job - only having to work 12 hours a week as caretaker of a semi tropical island.

If I was younger I think I'd have applied for it!

UK ID card scheme.

2009-05-06T13:08:00.004+01:00

The pig-headedness of politicians never ceases to amaze me.

10 Downing St. and the Home Office are still pushing to get this running even after having all the problems the chosen implementation will suffer from made pellucidly clear.

I personally have no objection to a national ID card system that would make my daily life easier - I'd welcome it in a minute if it would combine all the goverment/tax/health/social services data that currently exists about yours truly.

BUT.........................

Unfortunately these are still science fiction due to the stupidity inherent in the human race.

So what are my objections to the current scheme? Well, it has nothing to do with human rights or anything to do with the so-called "surveillance society". They can be summed up simply as:

Fraud: No matter what the underlying card system is, Chip'n'Pin or contact-less, it is still open to abuse. Note how quickly the criminal fraternity caught up with the technology after it was introduced.
Physical reliability: The physical environment and cleanliness of the card can and does cause significant problems. With Chip'n'Pin it's the build up of crud on the contacts that causes the problem. It then builds up in the reader and it's not going to be long before
the reader needs servicing, if not disinfecting!
Cost: the current government estimate is about £5bn ($7.4bn). In the past, an overspend of not less than 50% of the original estimate is a good bet for HM Gov. projects, so the independent experts saying £10bn to £20bn is quite feasible.
Oh, and you the holder of the card are going to have to pay £50 just for the privilege of having the card produced.
Logistics: yes.... well the way the UK's vehicle licensing system works seems to be OK, but it's only dealing with one un-related item of data at a time, this system is eventually going to have so many hooks and tie-ins it's bound to collapse eventually.

Give it up for now Jacqui, wait until the technology is a little more reliable and can cope with these problems.

Queen's Day Attack

2009-05-01T12:47:00.004+01:00

I feel a deep sadness at the news that came from Appledoorn yesterday. That someone should feel so depressed as to take their own life and the lives of innocent people around them is as horrific as the scene he created.

In what must have been an attempt - in his mind - to embarrass his former employers for dismissing him, he ended the lives of six people (himself included) and irrevocably altered the lives of their families and the lives of the dozen or so survivors and their families. I do not believe any situation like this can warrant the actions this man took and it should be condemned for the heartless act it was.

That said, we must not forget his family and how they must be feeling. They are most likely as shocked and stunned as those of the others directly affected by this horrible event.

My thoughts, prayers and sympathies go out to all those directly affected by this: the victims and their families, and those indirectly affected: the Dutch Royal family, the other spectators and most especially the emergency services and the police who have the unenviable task of clearing up afterwards.

I too, am Dilbert!

2009-04-30T14:03:00.004+01:00

As Arthur Dent was noted to say:-

"This must be Thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursdays"

On his particular Thursday, his planet gets blown up, On my planet, I'm just suffering from a procedure-driven manager.

I have just spent three days researching and writing a report on something that needs doing on a corporate scale - three days that could have otherwise been more productively used solving the problem itself.

It runs to 9 sides of A4 in 10pt type, I mailed it off to him and got a reply within minutes flinging back in my lap saying "run with it" So what exactly was the point of me writing the report in the first place if he's not going to read it properly and just give me the job straight back???

BTW, three days at my charge-out rate is about 1,200 quid (about $1,700) This isn't a large sum in the corporate scheme of things, but someone still has to pay for that, and knowing him, he'll charge the customer for it!

There's no point in discussing anything with him - he doesn't listen properly. Up until recently we (as in my team) all thought it was just us he did this to. Over the past few days we've been in meetings with some of our colleagues from the Projects side of the company - and worse, some of our older colleagues still working for our main customer - who have said exactly the same thing.

Oh Scott, why, oh why didn't I listen! The pointy haired bosses are taking over!

Do you want apple sauce with this panic?

2009-04-28T16:24:00.000+01:00

Swine 'flu! Get your pandemic and pigs ear!(sic)

I am of the opinion that certain people thrive on this sort situation. I've just hit Google News for the UK, and it's reporting something like 32,000 stories just on this subject. The Daily Telegraph, one of the UK's national broadsheets, along with some others around the globe have introduced RSS feeds just for the Swine 'flu outbreak.

Yes, we should be worried about the spread of it, yes we should take precautions against catching it, but these are so simple and logical, I cannot see why people should panic. If we just stick to the top two simple day-to-day hygiene tips there shouldn't be a problem:

Use tissues when you cough or sneeze, or at least cover your nose and mouth with your hand and then clean your hand with a tissue. And don't stick it in your pocket for later - get rid of it in the nearest bin.
Basic hygiene - washing your hands with soap and water - will prevent spread of virii in general between your face and hands and therefore other people.
Keep your household work surfaces clean, and in these situations how about door handles as well (couldn't hurt at least!)

These are difficult concepts?

My cynical side has the final say. Two things will be certain at this point,

There's going to be a lot of mis-informed people going everso slightly crazy about catching this "dread disease"
There's going to be a lot of manufacturer's and retailers rubbing their hands with glee as the sales of disposable face masks goes beyond the dreams of accountants and the Revenue services of most of the planet!

Be lucky and stay safe out there people.

Almost a prayer meeting

2009-04-24T11:13:00.000+01:00

I was riding home on a bus last night when something happened in front of me that just made me smile. It really did give me a good feeling.

When I got on the bus, an elderly African Gent got on with me and sat in front of me. A young woman sat next to him. He began talking to her and although I couldn't hear much of what was being said, there were broad smiles on both faces, especially when the gent produced a copy of "Awake", one of the pamphlets that the Jehovah's Witnesses hand out over here in the UK. The broad smile on the woman's face was something to be hold, and I saw her say the words "Thank you, but I'm Jewish".

She got off a stop or two later and an elderly African woman got on and sat next to him. I saw the copy of Awake re-appear as he began to start the conversation again. However, this time he was presented by this woman with titles I knew where normally published by one of the Baptist churches in the UK.

The interaction between these two people was a joy to behold, even if I couldn't hear everything that was said. When the woman got off just before I did, the smiles on these two people's faces said it all. They may have had slightly differing faiths, but their shared belief was indomitable!

"Fat Taxes" raise their head again!

2009-04-24T10:54:00.000+01:00

So, RyanAir are trying to introduce another one of these so-called "taxes". It's really just a surcharge, but hey, why quibble?

From what I hear they are going to try and charge either by the kilo, by the inch or by BMI points.

Now, if they're going to do this, when are they going to start in on other people who are naturally outside the "norm" in terms of shape or size. As someone who has longer than average legs, I get a bit fed up with having to request seats near the exits - these being the only ones where my legs actually fit! Are they going to charge me extra for this? My wife is not a small person, although her waist size is below the quoted 40 inches, her hips aren't. Will this count?

What I'd like to know is if they'd also considering discounts for passengers who are smaller than average - like a certain Mr. Michael O'Leary.

How green is Silicon Valley?

2009-04-22T22:16:00.000+01:00

Well, what do we think?

Being closely involved in the world that encompasses these almighty cathedrals to technology that we call "data centres", I wonder seriously how green we can actually get them. It may be unfair to single out this particular part of the world as there's nowhere that's any less guilty at wasting energy.

The prime problem is how inefficient the actual equipment is at using the power that we put into it. There are very few "conventional" server/network chassis that can boast better than a 20% efficiency rating, and as you've most likely guessed the rest simply comes out of the box as heat.

Thus we have a situation where the problem has to be solved in the long term by the manufacturers. Moves are being made in this direction: more efficient ways of distributing the power to the servers, more use of blade servers, far more intelligent power and performace management software in the servers themselves, and so on.

Meanwhile in the short term, we just have to make the environment that it lives in far more efficient at dealing with the problem the equipment is causing us. Here are some ideas from my addled brain.

How much heat in the data centre is coming from outside the building? In certain climates, I suspect quite a lot at certain times of the year, yet I have visited places where the insulation in the area of the DC's suites has been non-existent. Conversely, how much cooling can we achieve from the outside of the building by just allowing the outside atmosphere to get in? Some method of controlled heat transfer when the outside air is cool enough cannot be beyond the whit of Man.

Can the excess heat be converted back to useable electrical power, or indeed be condensed enough to help in powering the air conditioning systems - a Combined heat/power system maybe.

How do we cool the equipment itself? The current method in an awful lot of DC's - even brand new ones - is to cool the suite itself rather than the equipment itself. This is a hangover from mainframe days when this was really the only viable way of doing it. I come from a broadcast engineering background where it has always been the norm to use contained cooling within an area, so this way has never made sense to me.

This has got to change.

CFO's have got to realise that saving money in the capital stage of a project and just throw air handling units around a large open area is only going to increase the costs to the company when it reaches the stage of going into operation, especially when a large number of governments are introducing carbon taxes in some form or another.

Bite the bullet guys and consider doing this now: there are options out there already, some of which can be easily (and relatively cheaply) retro-fitted to your existing installation.

Finally, an idea for the manufacturers out there: the Dell's HP's Cisco's of this world. Broadcasting, especially national broadcasting uses a fair number of high-power transmitters to reach it's audience. To keep these enormous beasts going they are cooled directly. The coolant pipes are plumbed directly into the output stage and the liquid pumped through these rather than having an intermediate "air stage" in the process.

It's already being done on larger scale computers... think Kray and the like. Is it really so mad an idea to do this to even small machines like say a C7000?

Be lucky and stay safe out there people!

Why blog?

2009-04-22T22:05:00.000+01:00

A rhetorical question really.
In my case, it's really just an exercise in trying to put my feelings down in words, and if it provokes comment or discussion so be it.

A lot of the time I suspect this will be some form of reaction to a news item or somethingthat's caused me to think about something that would normally be trivial in my daily life.

There's been many people giving reasons not to blog, some citing that there's no point in subjecting the rest of the world to your own drivel. Drivel or not, being able to have your say is something some people do not have the opportunity to do even in this day-and-age.

So I will re-iterate something that Arthur Wellesley (once the Duke of Wellington) is attributed with... "Publish and be damned!"

The obligatory introduction

2009-04-22T14:19:00.000+01:00

Well, Here I am, hair and all!

I've been meaning to start a non-"D" blog for sometime, and here it is.

What is it I refer to as "D"? ........................... Read on.

So what have I got to say.....

I tend to be classed as a bit of "Mr. Angry" sometimes as I can be a bit small-minded, but only about small-minded people (huh?)

I work in the IT industry - one of the "back-room boys", the geeks, the experts (ugh! hate that phrase!) - that look after the telecommunications and security for the IT operation in a fairly large media operation.

I am diabetic - classified as Type 2 (ooh, is that the bad one?) Err, all diabetes is bad, it's just that some is more insidious than others.

Type 1, is what used to be referred to as "juvenile diabetes", but it can happen at any age. If you're over 30 then it's normally called LADA (Latent Auto-immune Diabetes in Adults) or Type 1.5 Whatever the case, it's when the pancreas just stops producing insulin period and is caused by the body's own immune system mistaking the part of the pancreas that produces insulin as invading cells.

Why it does this is still being researched, but from this point on, insulin has to come from external sources.

Type 2 classically is when your pancreas starts having trouble producing insulin anymore due to age - that's me as far as they can tell at the moment.... my symptoms weren't exactly classical.

The definition covers a lot more than this, but a better reference for that would be somewhere like Diabetes Daily, where a fellow contributor, Lloyd, has posted an explanation in layman's terms as to the differences between types of diabetes.

Now the sad bit.

Type 2 is getting to mean anyone whose body can't produce enough insulin to cope with what they're eating. Unfortunately this type of diabetes is becoming more and more common with our slow descent into a sedentary lifestyle. My personal belief is it's not just down to that or the quantities of food involved, but what's actually in the food. I'll not enter into a deep discussion on the whys and wherefores involved with this because there are so many contributory factors, not least profit, that I'll exceed my storage quota on Blogger in a single post.

At this point I think I'd better add this...
WARNING! What ever you do, never say to a diabetic, "But you're not fat enough to be diabetic!" As being diabetic forces you to have a far healthier lifestyle than anyone else, you may find that person has far greater "stopping power" than you have and they will quite happily stop your nose permanently!

There!
It's done!
My first personal blog post!

Be lucky and stay safe out there people!