20 Oct 2008
The streets around our house are often really noisy in the hours around midnight at weekends. We live directly opposite a pub, and people tend to pile out -- drunk and belligerent -- to bellow at their friends or enemies1 for hours on end. If it's not drunkards disturbing the peace, it's youngsters on mopeds opening the throttle right up and letting the street hear all 50 cc of raw, wasp-in-a-bottle power squeezed out by their irritating machines. So when we were woken at 4 am this morning by someone yelling in the street and beeping their car horn repeatedly, we just sighed in resignation. As usual, we looked out the window to check that no-one was in danger of injury or death, and that our property and that of our neighbours was relatively safe from accidental or deliberate vandalism. We couldn't quite work out what the bloke in the street was yelling, but he seemed OK (if angry), so we went back to bed.
When we got up in the morning, there were a couple of Police cars parked in the street. Almost as soon as we'd turned our lights on, an officer knocked on our door and asked permission for him and his large Alsatian dog to search our garden. We're generally law-abiding people, so it isn't every day that we watch the Police rummaging around in our herbaceous borders while we have breakfast.
It seems that the shouting-at-4am man had been robbed of his phone and iPod2 by a thief, who had then disappeared in the general direction of our back gardens. So he was shouting at the thief to try to flush him out. Needless to say, the search didn't turn up any evidence, but I doubt that they would have found him even if they'd arrived earlier, because there are so many places to hide and then sneak away. Assuming that a mobile and iPod was all that was stolen, I'm also surprised that the Police turned up in such force. I would have thought that stolen phones/iPods are two a penny, and would elicit nothing more than a resigned face and the offer of a form to fill in from the local constabulary. But perhaps I'm cynical.
1 It's often hard for the casual listener to determine whether the bellowees are indeed friends or enemies. ↑
2 And perhaps more, but that was all we heard about. ↑
15 May 2008
Perhaps it's because it is Bike to Work day today in San Francisco, but there seems to have been a lot of controversy stirred up on the web this week by the gentle art of cycling.
First, there was the ridiculous assertion that cycling is less efficient in terms of energy consumption than driving, as if we -- in developed countries -- need to consume any extra food to fuel our cycle rides or as if drivers fast to compensate for the energy not used when driving their cars. I could go on...
And then a post by jwz, offering his own advice for people wanting to start cycling in San Francisco, attracted an enormous pile of enraged comments, many from other cyclists upset by his recommendation to "Never take bike advice from anyone who owns bike shorts, clip shoes, a messenger bag, or a fixie." I don't necessarily agree with all his advice either (though he did make it clear that it was specific to the cycling situation in San Francisco), but I wouldn't get upset about it. People cycle for all kinds of different reasons, and have their own preferences, requirements and constraints. There really is more than one way to do it.
I suppose that I don't understand why cycling inspires such ire in people. If you're not being harassed by drivers (or anyone else who seems to take it as a personal rebuke that you are using a eco-friendly mode of transportation), or or pedestrians, or being taunted by gangs of school children, or having your tyres shredded by the glassy remains of outdoor binge-drinking sessions that seem a permanent fixture next to every park bench in Birmingham, other cyclists also seem to want to join in.
Of course, some cyclists act like idiots, just like some drivers and some pedestrians, but does that have to mean that the rest of us who just want to potter quietly to work have to take the rap? In that context, watching this video of a school run in the Netherlands (via Velorution) made me want to cry -- it's like glimpsing Utopia. All those comfortable, sensible, load-bearing bikes! The broad, glass-free, well-maintained cycle paths! The people cycling calmly along in their ordinary clothes, and not wearing helmets! The hordes of children cycling with their parents! Sigh.
05 Apr 2008
Shop doors usually come in three basic flavours when it comes to opening them. You have your basic manually-operated doors, which can be difficult for people with physical disabilities, especially if the doors are large and heavy. Then you have fully-automatic doors, which usually slide or swing open when you trigger an infra-red proximity sensor or pressure pad, or press a button. More rarely, you come across a hybrid door which can be opened manually, but which also offers automatic opening via a button. All such doors I've come across before don't offer any extra resistance if you open them manually.
Our small local branch of Boots has just been fitted with this type of hybrid doors. However, if you try opening them manually, they are incredibly heavy, even if you are not disabled and reasonably fit. It feels as if the motor is actually acting against your muscles as you pull. Even worse, the button to open the door automatically is small and not easy to find quickly. I'm all in favour of making access to buildings easier for people with disabilities, but this system seems to disadvantage everybody. As you ineffectually haul on the door, you look like an idiotic weakling, but I don't think I've seen anyone who can find the opening button without searching for it for 10 minutes. You get the feeling that Boots doesn't actually want any customers in their shop, making their displays messy and inconveniencing their staff by wanting to buy things.
22 Nov 2007
Back when I lived in Oxford, I used Mailbox as my broadband provider. They weren't the cheapest around, but they were really reliable, and had the best customer support I've ever come across. It seems incredible (not to mention quaint) to say so now, but when you phoned them for support, a real human would answer the phone immediately. No pressing 4 divided by the number you first thought of to report a fault, or being robotically reassured ad infinitum that my business was very important to them. Shocking isn't it? It got better though, because once your call was answered by a real human, they would quickly and efficiently solve your problem, without being patronising. I once had a problem with connecting to their broadband service (which turned out to be a BT-produced problem rather than Mailbox's fault). I called them in the evening, and the guy on the other end explained very clearly what I needed to do to fix it. I followed the instructions, which worked perfectly, and settled down to surf and email. About half an hour later, the phone rang, and to my utter amazement, it was the engineer guy -- wait for it -- calling to check that the instructions worked correctly. It doesn't get much better than that, in my opinion.
When we moved to Birmingham, the house we rented already had a Telewest broadband account, so we used that, shifting to Zen when we bought our house, because Mailbox had become rather un-competitive, price-wise, with other providers. In retrospect, I'm glad I made that decision.
In 2005, Mailbox was acquired by 186k.com. I know this because even though I had stopped my broadband account with them, I kept them as registrar for the two domains I had registered with them when I had an account. Gradually, all my interactions with them became inefficient and impersonal, not to mention more expensive. But inertia is a powerful force, and I stuck with them in the name of minimising hassle and disruption. I feel like an idiot for doing that now, because it has cost me a lot of money and more hassle than transferring my domain earlier would have done.
A couple of weeks ago, a Tracks user alerted me to the fact that the DNS for rousette.org.uk was pointing to de-comissioned DNS servers at TextDrive (thanks, Sean!). I'm fairly sure, thinking back, that I asked Mailbox to change the DNS entries a long time ago, but to be sure, I asked them again, only to be told that they were already pointing at the new servers. However, whois still showed the old records. Caching of DNS records can complicate matters so I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, but I still suspect that they didn't do the update properly, leaving the old server references along side the new ones.
That was the last straw, and after doing a search for reliable registrars, I settled on Gandi. They have been really efficient, and I now have a nice web control panel for administering my domains. The first thing I did, of course, was the set the DNS records straight, and wasn't overly surprised to find that the whois record updated to reflect correct DNS information almost immediately. I realise that domain registrations are probably something of a loss-leader for companies like Mailbox, and that it doesn't make financial sense for them to continue to act as the registrar for customers who no longer have a broadband account with them. But even so, I was paying for the nose for not very good service. They were charging more than seven times what I am paying with Gandi now, and they charged me an arm and a leg to allow me to transfer the domain too. Even Nominet charges half the price of Mailbox for domain transfers. I wish I'd done it sooner, but my domain renewals and management should be a lot easier and cheaper from now on.
25 Oct 2007
In our house, we have our bedroom at the front. Generally, this is fine, because we both prefer the rooms we spend more time in (the kitchen, Mr. Bsag's studio, my office) to be at the back of the house, with a nicer view. However, there are two drawbacks to the location of the bedroom. One is that there is a pub opposite, so we sometimes get disturbed late at night by drunk people reeling away from a night spent imbibing as many lagers and/or alcopops as is humanly possible. The second is that there is a street lamp just outside our house. While it's handy as a free security light for the front of our house, it does make our bedroom rather light.
I can sleep through noise once I'm asleep -- I'm infamous in my family for sleeping through the Great Storm of 1987, while chaos raged all around -- but light invariably wakes me up. Over the year that we've lived here, I've more or less got used to the light levels in the room at night, but last night the wretched light decided to start randomly turning itself on and off as frequently as once every 20 seconds. It woke me up at 1am, and it was like being in a really tragic disco, with one white light randomly flashing away to the deafening sound of silence. I could see the change in light levels even with my eyes shut, so I was lying awake, waiting for it to turn on or off again, which nearly drove me crazy.
I think that it's about time we actually got our act together and got some light-proof material to line the curtains with. Otherwise I'm going to have to tie a bandanna around my eyes and blindfold myself before I go to bed.
22 May 2007
I caught the end of a really dreadful Panorama programme on the supposed 'dangers of Wi-Fi' yesterday, and was glad that I hadn't seen the rest, because I might have put my own health in danger by lobbing a heavy object through the screen of my TV. After a bit of calmer reflection later on, I wondered if I'd got an unbalanced view of the show by only watching the end. Perhaps they had presented the scientific evidence in a thorough and balanced way at the beginning, and it only degenerated into doom-laden narration and sinister, pulsing Wi-Fi router graphics at the end?
Judging by the write-up on The Register, the whole thing was uniformly bad. They managed to compare the radiation level tens of centimetres from a laptop with that hundreds of metres from a mobile phone mast, all without mentioning the inverse-square power law. 'Evidence' was talked about without giving any details of the methodology used, whether the studies were performed double-blind, or whether the levels of exposure used in animal studies were in any way comparable to normal exposure levels in humans.
People are bad enough at understanding and making decisions about risk and probability without presenting a one-sided account like this, unsupported by evidence. How many of those who protest that Wi-Fi in schools is harming their children drive their kids around in cars or let them play in the sun without sunscreen?
I'm tempted to use a recording of the programme as a teaching aid for my students. Their task would be to identify every instance they can find of scientific inaccuracies, distortions or subtle manipulations of the viewer, perhaps with a small prize for the person finding the most errors. At least then this Panorama programme would have some educational merit.
09 May 2007
Sometimes it's better not to think unworthy thoughts.
As I was leaving work today and loading my bike up, I heard the tell-tale bing-bong-bing announcement tone from the University station, which always presages cancellations, delays and other associated rail-commuting hell. "Haha, Suckerz!!" I thought. "I'm about to breeze home on the bike, no delays." That was my first mistake.
It was raining hard, but of the cyclist's nemeses, rain is the weakest. It's uncomfortable and unpleasant, but it's just water. You get wet, then you get dry again. I had a schedule to keep too, because I'd arranged to give some unwanted kitchen equipment to someone via Freecycle, and they were coming to the house in about an hour and a quarter. That shouldn't have been any problem, because I'd left plenty of time to get home, shower and get myself sorted out.
Then it happened, about 2 miles into the journey: a bang and the dragging, flapping feeling of a completely deflated rear tyre. Suddenly, I recalled the "Suckerz!!" thought and kicked myself metaphorically but soundly in the shins for being such a numpty. I got off and pulled my pump out of my pannier to see what I could do, but the sad little trail of bubbles in the puddle under the tyre and the gentle hiss of escaping air told me all I needed to know. The culprit was a dagger-shaped shard of glass a couple of centimetres long which had embedded itself deep into the tyre. Of course, I had no tools or puncture repair kit on me.
As I crouched in the pouring rain, pumping the tyre more in hope than expectation, and couple of ducks wandered over with one of those "you wouldn't happen to have any bread about your person at all, would you?" looks in their eyes. I told them I'd give them a whole loaf if they could fix my puncture, but lacking opposable anythings or -- for that matter -- an understanding of English, they just carried on looking at the funny, wet human.
There was nothing else for it -- I had a 5 mile fast trudge, or rather squelch, to try to get home in time to meet the Freecyclers. Nice.
Amazingly, I just about made it. I was 5 minutes late, but the woman waited and went away with the stuff. But I've got really tired legs, wrecked feet and a giant puncture to fix.
10 Nov 2006
Wound healing is a pretty amazing thing. I'm a biologist, so I know how it works1, but I still find it fascinating. Four weeks ago, I had a relatively large (but very neat) cut through my body wall, something that ought to be fairly catastrophic -- there's a reason we have all those layers of skin, after all. But now I just have a red scar, and the skin has knitted itself together nicely. That part of the procedure was more or less the handiwork of my body's own processes, without much modern medical intervention. All that is needed is some way of temporarily keeping the edges of the wound together (modern surgical clips, stitches, thorns, soldier ant mandibles, or whatever), and your body does the rest.
I was thinking about this yesterday while watching a couple of plumbers trying to fix my leaking radiator pipe. Why can't we design domestic pipework to heal itself of leaks, like a scab forming over a wound? We could provide the equivalent of a temporary plaster over the hole to slow the flow, then the pipe could gradually seal itself. In this case, the plumbers who originally installed the pipes couldn't even get basic plumbing right, let alone advanced self-healing. The guys yesterday had to open up the wall a bit to find a sound bit of pipe to form the new joint with, and discovered that a) the plastic piping that's supposed to protect the copper pipes from corrosion caused by the plaster stopped half way down the wall, and b) they hadn't actually bothered to solder the upper joint -- it was just slotted together, which goes some way to explaining why it was leaking.
1 ...she writes, desperately trying to recall the details of that lecture many years ago in which the process was explained. It would be more accurate to say that I know roughly how it works. ↑
31 Aug 2006
More.
I'm beginning to think that 'more' might be the most insidious word in the English language.
More beautiful. 50% more! Do more. Earn more. Buy more. Be more. More than ever before! More minutes, more texts. More speed. More channels. More bandwidth. More downloads. More time. More money. Get more. Get more. Get more.
What's wrong with 'enough'? Why do we have to be accelerating, accumulating? Why can't we stand still, or even stop? Why can't we enjoy and savour, rather than consume?
26 Aug 2006
I haven't been having a lot of luck with stuff recently. My car packed up (in a potentially expensive way1), and yesterday I discovered that the battery in my PowerBook is one of the ones Apple is recalling. Brilliant.
I've filled in the form to get a replacement, so now I just have to wait 4-6 weeks for it to show up. In the meantime, I'm advised to remove the old battery and power the PowerBook from the mains. It's weird though; I've had the laptop and battery for two years without incident (and it shows none of the telltale signs of overheating now), but now that I actually know that there's a tiny chance it might burst into flames, I feel that I should take precautions. However, the probability of something happening hasn't changed, just my knowledge of it.
So I'm going to compromise. I usually just put the PowerBook to sleep for the journey between work and home, but that's obviously not possible with the battery removed. I'm using it without the battery at home and work, but reinserting the battery for the journey, and monitoring the Crumpler bag in which it lurks slightly nervously for signs of smoke or undue warmth.
1 Though _expensive_ seems to be the only possible outcome when cars break down. ↑
07 Mar 2006
There are few things more irritating than everyday objects that are badly designed. In our building at work, we have stainless steel sinks in the toilets, which are circular in outline, and more or less hemispherical in shape. They look lovely but are hugely irritating to use. You know what happens when you turn on the tap in your kitchen sink without realising that there's a upturned teaspoon in the bottom of the sink? Well, imagine that effect but with a teaspoon the size of the entire sink. Water striking the sink with moderate force bounces straight off and conveniently soaks your groin area, rather than dampening your hands, which would have been much more useful.
The whole thing is made much worse by the taps, which are the 'push to operate' kind. It's true that they save water because people can't accidentally leave them running. However, these appear to have only a binary mode of operation, and are either off, or gush water at full force---no intermediate flow rates seem to be possible. So you can only wash one hand at a time, while using the other to push the tap down, but somehow most other areas of your body get a thorough soaking.
I hate those sinks.
28 Feb 2006
Our landlord wants to sell the house we're renting, so it looks like we're going to be moving again before long. It's not totally unexpected, but my heart still sinks at the prospect of going through the whole house-hunting thing again.
This time, we're tentatively looking in to the prospect of buying a house, mostly because we desperately want to put down some semi-permanent roots. Initial enquiries about mortgages have not been encouraging. I've promised myself that I'm not going to become a crashing 'house prices' bore, so I'll restrict myself to saying this: I find it a bit concerning that someone earning well over the national average salary can't get anywhere close to getting a mortgage for a house selling at the national average house price. Is it just me, or does that not add up?
26 Jan 2006
If you'll indulge me for a moment, I want to vent a little spleen over a particular kind of vicious plastic packaging. I'm sure you've also seen the type I mean; they are rigid, flat-ish boxes made of clear plastic, designed to allow you to see the goodies within, but also to allow the package to be hung on a metal rail or stood on a shelf. Several years ago, similar packaging tended to be designed in two distinct halves like a clam shell, which were held together by plastic 'blisters'. When you gently pulled the two halves apart, the 'blisters' would separate and you would get access to whatever was inside. Easy.
Easy is not a word I could ever bring myself to apply to the new kind of packaging. This breed requires some kind of bolt cutter (or other fearsomely sharp tool which can exert tremendous force), heavy leather gloves and a safety net or mattress. They look deceptively like the old kind, but are welded shut with a rigid plastic seam close to the edge. Because this narrow seam forms a right angle with the rest of the pack, it makes it fiendishly difficult to cut with even a stout pair of scissors. As you cut further, the thin strip of excess plastic gouges great gashes in your hand, unless you keep stopping to cut the excess strip off every time it gets long enough to damage your hands. That's what the leather gloves are for, though they make a fiddly job even harder.
The really tedious thing is that you need to remove at least three seams from the pack before you can safely get the goods out. However, I suspect that I'm not the only person who howls with rage, frustration and pain on nearing the second corner, and---maddened by blood loss---attempts to tear the two halves apart with their bare hands, thus catapulting the delicate gadget within across the room to smash against the opposite wall. That's when you need the safety net.
I'm tired of waiting for manufacturers to regain their sanity and just put the damn stuff in a cardboard box with a bit of sellotape sealing it shut, so if anyone has any great plastic-package-opening tips or tools, I'm all ears (and shredded hands).
27 Nov 2005
I'm afraid that this is going to be something of a rant. I get increasingly annoyed by the way in which we seem to be imitating the US in designing our urban spaces around cars, with little regard for people who might prefer to (or have to) walk. I know that some cities in the US are quite pedestrian-friendly, but others just assume that you have a car and use it for even the shortest of trips. I'm used to walking around unfamiliar towns, and remember the bizarre looks I got in San Diego when I asked for directions for walking from one place to another.
05 May 2005
Well, for what it's worth, I've executed my democratic rights. I can't say that trying to find the least worst party (if you'll forgive my contorted syntax) feels very good. Mr. Bsag on the other hand didn't even get that opportunity. We submitted a form to get ourselves on the electoral register when we moved, but when my polling card had arrived and his hadn't, he called the Council. After a long delay, they got back to him and said that they did have a record of our application, but because of a 'clerical error' he hadn't been entered on the register. Oh, and it was too late to do anything about it. Great. So much for democracy in action.