Archive for Musings

Lost Keys

Last night while crossing Tower Bridge on my way home, a cyclist went past Southbound and there was a soft clatter in the roadway as he did so. His keys had fallen out of his pocket. As he was going at quite a pace, by the time I had managed to dart into the road, pick them up and run after him, he was long gone.

Arriving home with the keys, I resolved to try and trace the owner with the information on the keys and then hand them in with as much info as I could to the police station I pass every morning on the way to work. Finding little on the keys to indicate who they belonged to, I settled for e-mailing the company who had cut one of the security keys on the bunch in the hope they maintained an owners registry.

Taking the keys with me the next morning in order that I could act on anything the locksmith company told me or indeed hand them in if they failed to turn up anything, I set off for work.

As I was crossing Tower Bridge I saw a cyclist who had parked on the pavement in order to take a photo of the beautiful hazy sunrise to the East. Passing him I noticed a striking familiarity in the motif and colour of the back of his jacket. “It can’t be!?” I exclaimed to myself! Walking up to the chap I just came out with it, “Sorry to bother you, but you wouldn’t happen to have lost a set of keys cycling over Tower Bridge last night would you?” and lo and behold, it was the same man! To say that incredulity and gratitude all rolled into one was writ upon his countenance would be an understatement – neither of us could quite believe the chance encounter that had so swiftly re-united him with his lost property!

It just goes to show, no matter how hopeless a situation feels or improbable a solution to it may be, never give up hope!

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Welcome 2017

In the past I have written round ups of what has happened throughout the previous year before wishing the compliments of the season to readers, hopes for the future etc. I’ve also gone so far as to neglect to do anything at all with regards the blog in recent years, sporadically posting when the fancy takes me, having very little regard for direction or purpose. But that’s life.

I felt it best to offer category based round-ups this year; this way I can engage in some retrospective commentary about the years events, without feeling the need to go into too much detail, but allowing myself the license to do so for those topics of particular note.

Family – With the tragic death of Shweta’s Mother in late May and the passing of my Grandfather in December, it’s been a rough road at times, particularly for Shweta and her Father. While it’s not something that’s either easy to write about, nor really articulate in terms of emotions or feelings, there is only one way, and that is forward and we’ve never felt alone on this difficult journey either in body or spirit and that has been a great comfort.

Home – So let’s move on with something that has made a very firm positive mark on the year. Shweta and I bought a flat together, managing too, by the end of the year, just, to finish renovating it. It’s located in Shad Thames, a small corner of London that we’ve lived in together for the past few years and have come to love very much. We look forward to many more happy walks along the river, nights out we can walk home from, quiet nights in and perhaps the odd party or two.

Travel – What we’ve lacked in distance flown, we’ve made up for in engagement with our surroundings. We’ve spent a number of holidays and made numerous excursions to different part of the UK. We’ve stayed with friends on Angelsey, hiked in Snowdonia, toured Cornwall, explored Gloucestershire and had many nights out in our fine capital city, taking in music, theatre and art. We’re still behind with the photo log, but I’m working on getting albums up and there’ll be a kind of retrospective written later in the year to point in the direction of these.

Politics – One really couldn’t leave this post without referring to the political events of this past year.

The Brexit vote in June was quite possibly the most politically upsetting event that I’ve ever had the misfortune to experience. While I’ve not always agreed with EU policy and direction, I’ve always felt an affinity with Europe and her peoples. The shame of being a citizen of a country turning it’s back on this great bond of friendship and having to face friends and colleagues in work the following day who are citizens of other European countries, was a most singularly unpleasant experience. We can only look forward now, but I can’t deny that I do so with trepidation about what our future might hold.

As if this wasn’t enough, the election of Donald Trump was another body blow for progressive Western politics. Again, I was not always a fan of some of Obama’s more left wing policies, but his handling of world issues and his general tolerance towards those who might oppose him was a positive beacon for many and one that we will all feel the worse for losing. One cannot predict the future, but isolationist policies perpetrated by a modern world power cannot do anything to help it be a positive one.

Direction – Shweta and I have come to appreciate what, I think, we’ve always known and that is, whatever life serves you, you get the most out of it if you give it your all and expect nothing in return. What you get back will then, almost certainly, not only surprise you, but surpass any and all expectations. To this end we have resolved, perhaps more than ever, to focus on our presence; that is to say, be aware of what is around you, retreat less, engage more. We plan on reducing our engagement with ubiquitous communications, spend more time with friends and family, make more adventurous travel plans and throw plenty of energy into social and cultural engagements around town. We’ll also be starting a scrap book; we’ve already collected some material for it and will continue to do so into the new year. It’s not for public consumption and is very much a slow-burn type task, but I feel sure this will provide much fun and inspiration for us both.

So yes, it really is a warm welcome for 2017 – we have much cause for hope in the future and there really has been far too much despair in 2016, in spite of all the immensely positive things that we and our friends and family have achieved.

Wishing you all then, a very happy, prosperous new year.

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Blackberry Haul

It’ll be a delicious blackberry and apple crumble for pudding make no mistake! 

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Joy of full width

Screens are getting bigger, but specifically they are getting wider. This realisation has, over time, been nagging at me and got me thinking about the idea of a serious overhaul for this site. Despite trying a number of different options over the past month I decided that perhaps it wasn’t the radical that was required, but the more practical.

Behold then, the same fundamental design but sporting wider pages, more flowing text, larger images and more tweaks to come. Those with wide screens or even just plain old rectangular ones should be rather pleased – do let me know your thoughts in comments.

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Slow Web

While combing through my WordPress dashboard this morning I was pointed by Matt in the direction of Jack Cheng’s article on The Slow Web.

The concept really captured my imagination; struggling in the present day and age to keep up with the ever increasing demand both to consume and generate online content I regularly find myself simply desiring escape rather than engagement as the agony of deciding often seems worse then the effort of doing.

By adopting a “batch, refine and consume at leisure” approach it genuinely seems that not only will the pressure to keep up dwindle but that quality and enjoyment will rise at the same time.

Take blogging. I’ve posted in the past about getting my blogging back on track but evidently this hasn’t happened. It’s not for lack of material, or indeed motivation, but the simply overwhelming number of possibilities and equivalent perceived value attached to each prevent suitable desire being channelled into the generation of even one finished item.

Speaking at WordCamp in Manchester three years ago I proposed a solution to this which, in retrospect, I believe was wrong. I stated that as the web sped up, our time available to each task was smaller and thus we should leverage the fast tools available to us (phones, cameras, GPS tracking) and push or pull all of this content automatically into a location (such as a blog) that used to require time, labour and love to maintain, thereby bolstering our web presence and preventing personal burn out.

The sad thing is, this approach is a fraud, a cheap imitation. After all, the nature lover desires not to merely see the sunset and the fact I was there but to catch a glimpse of the poetic thoughts that may have passed through my mind as I gazed upon the vista and compare them to his or her own.

I’m not sure these thoughts and ideas translate easily into a course of action but perhaps that’s the point; given the time and space to merely think, positive and decisive action will surely follow.

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Akismet for Zenphoto Fixed

As a user of Zenphoto for my gallery of photographs I’m pleased to report that I’ve corrected an issue with the long standing Akismet plugin for the platform allowing it to work with the latest version of the application, thus restoring anti-spam functionality to comment forms on both my sites and any others that care to use the plugin.

Rather than re-post all the details here you can follow the discussion and download the fix from the Zenphoto forums.

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On London Driving

These days I’m often in London and despite the generally held opinion that London is the last place in the world you’d want a car, I’m usually behind the wheel on my visits. While my motivations for picking up the car keys are largely financial as well as a dash of convenience – why spend twice the cost of the fuel on a train when doing so would result in a massive hike to the tube as well as a change at Baker Street which is never an enjoyable experience – I’ve found my driving time has allowed me to make some rather amusing and somewhat tongue in cheek observations on what it is to be a London driver.

Firstly, space between cars. In conventional driving it is considered to be rather bad form to be up another drivers boot lid however in London the opposite is true. This is because a driver who leaves too much space is making the queue longer and has, de-facto, prevented a person further behind getting out at the lights, usually resulting in much honking of horns.

Traffic lights, while most certainly to be obeyed at all times (many have cameras to prevent red light jumping) are an opportunity for position posturing. In an effort to reduce traffic jams at junctions, London roads widen from one lane to anywhere between two and four lanes. While this sounds like a good idea, what you don’t realise until being right up at a set is that the road narrows once again almost immediately on the other side of the junction, resulting in a massive bun fight for “head of the queue” in the single file line of traffic that is to follow. Drivers at the white line by the lights (affectionately known as the starting line by initiated city motorists) vehicle occupants glare at each other in defiance through the quarter-light and twiddle with their hi-fi, not for a second however taking their eyes from that red glow up above. Cars are always to be left in gear, clutch point a mere millimetre away from taking the bite, in readiness at a chance to take the leading position in the head of the queue. Even if you’re not at the front, there’s no reason why glory can’t still be yours – you may have a Subaru in front of you and someone with a dodgy clutch to his left – second place is surely in reach. The fact that this whole exercise will release more CO2 than a 20 mile motorway journey and is to be repeated in another 100 yards at the next set of lights is immaterial. Participation became mandatory the moment your car crossed the M25.

Multiple carriageways are surprisingly common and present plenty of opportunity for vehicular shenanigans. Filters to join and exit may be left or right which presents ample opportunity for sat-nav engrossed motorists to swerve violently across 3 lanes to their goal. Speed is also an important factor. While heavily populated with fixed cameras, the road regular will know that average speeds are usually below the legal limit and so seek to maximise their speed by switching lanes (ignoring all pretence of the rule concerning not overtaking on the inside) to increase their average on each 100yd stretch by 1mph or perhaps even more. The switching of lanes in this way is an art, with success usually being measured by how many car lengths you gain on vehicles in your general vicinity. No distance between your own rear bumper and the front of the car behind and to the side is too small to prevent pulling out and zipping past the vehicle in front on either side. Indicating is usually considered only as an after thought and thus is rarely used by regular London drivers. While some motorists may let others get away with such daring over/undertaking manoeuvres this is frowned upon and a good thumping of the horn, a glare and full beam on the headlamps for the next half mile is usually practised, even if many attempts are made at apology.

Traffic jams are a common occurrence and a driver has few options, with the ones that are available being varied in success rate. Simplest is to sit tight, roll the windows down, blare out some music in an anti-social way and pretend like a central London traffic jam is *the* place to be and that you really wouldn’t rather be anywhere else. While not helping your forward progress, this increases your public visibility for those you’ll never see again and there is always the chance that any alternative route will be more snarled than yours. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that if one bridge is clogged, heading up/down river and crossing at another will get you through. In the time it has taken you to think that, over 1000 other motorists have thought the same and the other crossing option is now snarled also. This is not to say that taking an alternative route doesn’t have some appeal. There’s the option of the crazy u-turn in front of a bus followed by a rapid darting down residential streets, snaking your way left and right in an easterly or westerly direction until you hit the next main road and hope that you can somehow bypass the jam you were previously in. Most people have a great time for the first five minutes until they realise they are lost. In fact when parking, the car you’ve just seen drive past for the fifth time is probably just such a motorist. Take no time for pity for you would never do such a thing, at least that’s what you should tell yourself when you next wind up an hour late and on the wrong side of the city because you were “avoiding traffic”.

Cyclists own all roads inside of the M25. This is regularly demonstrated by their passing through red lights, cutting across your path when you have the right of way and damaging your vehicle when you are stationary in traffic without stopping or making any effort at an apology.

Parking, compared with all that moving about, should be easier but that’s rarely the case, especially in areas of free parking. The motorist in search of free parking is akin to a gannet, circling, waiting for the opportunity to get their share. If you’ve been driving round for five minutes looking for a spot, don’t kid yourself that the car in front is just using the road as a means to an end. They’ll surely take the parking space that you’ve just seen free up ahead. Parking space search fatigue is common. This is where you spot something that looks like a space, but actually you’d have to be really rather lucky to park a wheelie bin in the gap. You attempt to park anyway, denting your own bumper and cracking someone else’s number plate in the process. Circling resumes. Serious fatigue is when you try the same “only fit for a wheelie bin” space again later, this time cracking your headlamp and inflicting further damage to the other individual’s vehicle. When you finally do park and walk off on your business, don’t congratulate yourself too much. Even if you’ve parked perfectly you’ll almost certainly have a parking ticket for poor parking or have had someone else dent your car while trying to get into the space in front or behind.

When all is said and done, far be it from me to discourage the budding London driver. Remember all this excitement pales into insignificance when you consider some other cities such as Milan where any attempt to articulate rules is simply replaced by carrying out the desired action anyway and uttering the words Mi Scusi!

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Daily Blogging

Many years ago (and yes I do mean years) I used to find time during the year to write an average of one blog article per day. As is quite self evident from navigating through the blog archive I’ve not been achieving this posting rate for quite some considerable time.

I used to explain away momentary relapses in blogging by stating that I was waiting for something good to say and a poll on my website affirmed that this was the correct thing to do with over half of respondents preferring to wait for a post to appear that they wanted to read rather than wading through mindless drivel. That being said, I can hardly do myself any justice by inferring that I have had little useful to say while posting has been more sparse. As friends and family with whom I’ve dined out over the past few years will confirm, I’ve always had something to say about most things going on in the world!

Two years ago at WordCamp I explained to a packed conference room some tips and tricks for filling your blog by contributing to it’s content via posts made on other social sites thus keeping your personal web space up to date with your life but without having to make a concious effort to blog. While I’ll not stop doing this as the varied content is a nice touch (especially with the photos) I’ve come to realise that something is wrong with relying on this approach to fill the pages – it lacks reason and direction. Essentially, I’d forgotten why I turned to blogging in the first place.

I turned my previously static HTML based website into a dynamic blog back in 2005 shortly after I’d joined the University of Leeds School of Computing. As my life was in a fair state of turmoil at the time it seemed a logical thing to do, to have a place online where updates could be frequent and varied and not limited to a specific structure. Once I’d gotten settled at the SoC however, I found that my blogs settled down too. I found focus and energy in my work and my blogs were both a personal reflection on this fact for myself and a window onto it for the wider world. Essentially blogging was both an affirmation of and a driving force behind my positivity.

OK, so strong stuff then. Well perhaps not. I’ve realised recently that I’ve got into a bit of a habit of dwelling for too long on the things that go wrong and not taking enough positivity out of the the things that go well. While out walking the other day in the evening sunshine I was thinking about ways to better channel that “get up and go” attitude and I remembered my blog – how a tough day in the computer labs would soon be forgotten by passing amused comment on the party from the previous evening or by reflecting on a trip I had planned in a few weeks time.

Who could say no to an opportunity for an outlet for forward thinking? While I can’t promise I’ll manage to get a post up every day in this new concerted effort as the post title suggests, I can offer assurances that I’ll look to be tending towards 30 posts in a month in the not too distant future. Article ideas on a postcard….

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Corporate Facebook Fail

Splashed across a banner on the top of the corporate internet home page yesterday was an announcement that my employer had teamed up with Facebook to raise an impressive amount of money for charitable causes and were encouraging employees to get involved. Clicking on the proffered Facebook link I was greeted with a message “Social Networking. Access to social networking sites is forbidden on the corporate network.”

A better example of shooting yourself in the foot I haven’t seen in some considerable time.

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Block China

With all the articles in the news about various websites being blocked in China continuing to roll in, it got me thinking.

The widely accepted principals of the internet are that each host has equal rights of access and no packet should be given priority over any other. For the tech savvy, this is known as net-neutrality. While I am aware that this is far from reality in many corners of the internet, by and large, these principles are upheld by the major players, indeed when it isn’t there is usually a small media storm in the technical community and swift rectification usually follows.

The question that has been bothering me is what should happen when an organisation or even an entire country doesn’t comply with the principals of net-neutrality, even after pressure from the technical, or even world media? At the moment what tends to happen is there is a whole lot of talking and muttering about the problem, but very little action.

The truth is that China, blocking access to the internet from within as it does, is as dependant on it’s connectivity as anyone else. Commerce, education, recreation, all are provided through the internet to the people of China. If the media won’t bring them into line on free speech and net-neutrality then I perhaps the stick could be made bigger – should *we* block China?

This might seem a far-fetched or even crazy idea and I accept that it is a little extreme, but I can’t be the only person who thinks that how China behave towards the internet is in poor taste at best and at worst darn right sinister.

Those not opposed to the notion of actually implementing such a block might question the technical ability of the world to block China on the internet. That little problem is actually easily solved by the net’s open nature.

Anyone running an end point (web server, chat service, etc.) has control over the groups of IP addresses that do or don’t have access to that particular end point. This suddenly makes the block a lot easier to implement, because all you need to do is persuade those running servers to change a few rules. Due to the number of hacks originating from China, this persuasion is surprisingly easy to do – many organisations are already blocking China for this reason alone.

While I’m sure that we’re not going to suddenly find large areas of the internet going dark for the residents of China (although one could argue they already have due the internal blocking that goes on), this is certainly something you should give some thought to. I don’t feel the likes of China should be able to take a western invention with principled beginnings and twist it to their own ends, leaving all morality at the door. If you don’t like the internet in it’s pure form and attempt to impose those feelings on others then you shouldn’t have a right to access it yourself.

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