Category Archives: News

Newsworthy

TFL Updates to your email

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Work in London, Use public transport to get there?

If yes, then you probably want to keep uptodate with signal failures, suspensions and traffic problems. The best way to do this is on twitter using @TfLtravelalerts
 and while you’re at work you don’t want to be checking it and some work places block twitter meaning you’d be on your phone.

There’s also this thing called the Olympics starting soon – the opening ceremony is on Friday and the main events begin on Monday (though it looks like there’s been some Women’s football on today to kick the first events off).

Everyone who’s used it knows London public transport is challenging at the best of times and can be a right pain when things go wrong. There have already been more people travelling, problems today, and its expected to get worse with over 1 million extra people travelling every day.

Anyway, got this working yesterday and it seems to work really well.

Step 1: Create a new twitter account for this purpose
Step 2: Login to the new account and Follow @Tfltravelalerts
Step 3: Link your twitter account to a tweetymail.com account (free to sign up and you get full access for the first month). You will need to sign up by giving it your twitter details, then add the email address you want the notifications to go to.
Step 4: Add a timeline alert – default is to email you after every 10 alerts in 1 email. Unless you put a filter on this is the minimum you can have per email. It works quite well as tfl tends to post alerts quite regularly including many not related to your journey.

The Big Society

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Just over 2 years ago in May 2010, the election in the UK ended with a coalition between the Conservative and Liberal parties. One of the flagship policies of the (majority of the coallition) conservative party was what they called The Big Society. For a while this phrase was used over and over again with the assumption that everyone knew exactly what it was about. And to a certain degree it is still being bandied around.

Below you can see the coalition leader and Prime Minister, David Cameron, next to one of their Big Society signs.

David Cameron. Image taken from http://www.hackneycitizen.co.uk

Several times i’ve read articles or listened to interviews about what the Big Society is about and also heard people sound confused not knowing what it is.

What the Government want us to believe it is:
Bringing Society together by giving more power to the communities that make them up (or something like that)

But to me it is simply a means of not paying into public sector employment and making the everyday person volunteer to do a job for free so that they can pass their austerity measures to make cutbacks right to the bone.
Read the wikipedia page for more info.

And the other day I think I read an article in the evening standard that sums it up perfectly and I can’t find it online so here’s a post from the Jewish Chronicle about the same thing instead:

Hampstead Garden Suburb to be taken over by Volunteers – opened by Jonathan Ross

The Government wants to save money on libraries by selling them off, along with everything in them and getting rid of the staff who work in them.
The locals protest about the loss of the library to the society and find the volunteers to work the library for free.

Big Society sure it’s good for the community coming together.
But to me the truth is all about the Big Money Saver?
I’ll let you make up your own mind

Europe, European Council, EU, Eurozone

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Norway is 1 of 3 countries that are in the European Economic Area but not part of the European Union is something I didn’t realise until today.

The terms Europe, the Eurozone and EU are not interchangeable and it is important to appreciate the different memberships within “Europe”:

Council of Europe – the council of Europe has 47 members (almost all European states), cannot make laws but among many other functions all members of the council are party to the European Convention on Human Rights.
European Union (EU) – 27 members not all are in the Eurozone
The Eurozone – States that have the Euro as the sole currency and hence the currency is controlled by the European Central Bank
European Economic Area (EEA) – 30 states – the EU is a subset of the EEA
European Free Trade Association (EFTA) – 4 states and represents countries who are members of the EEA but not the EU plus switzerland.
Schengen – 26 states – members of Schengen are allowed to cross borders to other Schengen states without the need for border control. Being within the EEA is not a requirement to be within the Schengen Area.
EU Customs Union – 4 states – effectively means that when travelling from another EU customs union state passage can be made through the EU channel rather than the Nothing to declare channel.
Agreement with EU to mint Euros – 3 states – these are states which are not members of the eurozone but are permitted to mint Euro coins because the currency of the state is one of a state that is now part of the eurozone and hence not attached to a monetary system.

This gives rise to a Euler diagram showing which countries are members of what:

So, there are:

17 States in the Eurozone
7 States in the EU without the Euro but within Schengen
3 States in the EU not in Schengen and without the Euro (includes the UK)

This is the 27 EU States

Beyond this are the European non EU nations:

Vatican City can mint Euros but is not Schengen nor EU Customs Union and is also not part of the Council of Europe. All other States mentioned are members of the Council of Europe.
San Marino and Monaco can mint Euros, is part of Eu Customs Union with Monaco also being part of Schengen
Andorra and Turkey can’t mint Euros but are part of EU customs Union
Switzerland is part of EFTA and Schengen
Iceland Lichenstein and Norway are part of EFTA, EEA and Schengen
12 countries: Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia & Herzogovina, Croatia, Georgia, Moldova, Montenegro, Macedonia, Russia, Serbia and Ukraine are part of the Council of Europe

This totals 47 countries that are on the council of europe (48 if we add the vatican in to give the total countries)

“But I knew that” I hear you say… but did you know that there is also a list of special member state territories of the EU many of which aren’t in Europe and some of them have the Euro as currency?

There are about 50 territories which are covered by Article 52 of the Treaty on European Union and Article 355 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union

So I hope that now makes the definition of the EU and the Eurozone clear yet seem not totally European. Even part of the members of the Council of Europe are not in Europe… French Guyana which is an overseas region of France (hence one of the 10 founding members) is in South America!

The Oldest Living Janus Cat

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Janus Cat Youtube Video

Probably the most unsettling animal photo and video i’ve seen I thought it wasn’t a real photo.
But it turns out that the Janus cat (janus being the name of the roman god who had 2 faces with the ability to look into the future and the past) is a cat who suffers from Disprosopus or craniofacial duplication.
It gets a little more interesting after finding out that the congenital disorder is caused by a protein called Sonic Hedgehog Homolog and is where the Sega character Sonic the Hedgehog gets his name from.

But back to the cat in the video called “Frank and Louie” is 12 years old and has become the oldest of his kind. They don’t generally live very long and “Frank and Louie” themselves were to be put down before being rescued by their current owner. Is it one cat is it two?

Phone Hacking

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The news of the moment in the UK is the News of the World Phone Hacking Scandal. With rumours that there are lists of 1000’s of celebrities, Government officials, criminals and victims who have had their phones hacked by journalists of the news of the world hysteria has hit the british press and the newspaper buckled under pressure and shut down.
Baffled by the reaction, I thought about the story, and suspect there is a fair amount of misunderstanding amongst the public. Especially when it comes to the question “What is Phone Hacking”. And the first thing to remember it is nothing like the underworld of computer hacking, virus writing, web page hijacking, or even phreaking to make free phone calls. No, what it is is simply playing off human lazyness and taking advantage of a functionality mobile phone networks introduced many years ago.
Almost every phone operator gives the option to check your mobile phone messages “remotely” ie from another phone when you do not have it with you. This is also the case for most modern answerphones for landlines.

For those who have not been following the stories, have a look on google news

For mobile phones it is simple:
1) You phone your mobile phone
2) Wait for the voicemail divert
3) Press the * key
4) Enter your PIN code

And your messages are read out as if you were accessing it from your own mobile phone.
The vast majority of users are (or until now) were unaware of this as they had no use for it and therefore would never go into their settings to change the PIN code.
Therefore, for most people the default will work – and this includes celebrities.
Clearly, you can’t initiate this plan if the person you are trying to get hold of answers the phone, so the ususal plan is to work in pairs where one person phones and if the person picks up the 2nd person immediately phones from another line and will immediately get through to voicemail. Meanwhile the original person phoning who got through to the person will give some excuse such as claim to be a sales person offering products that will be refused or that they have dialed an incorrect number opening the way for the other person who has got into the voicemail to listen through the messages saved, find out any numbers left by people who have left messages or even delete messages.

This BBC news site story has more info.
The guardian has a whole section of their website dedicated to it.

Out of curiosity I decided to try and hack my own phone having done a bit of googling to find the default pin codes.
The first problem i found was that I had actually disabled my voicemail which would explain why I hadn’t had any messages recently – not that i use it much. Next, having enabled it after 10 seconds of ringing I got through, followed the process only to find the default pins did not work, suggesting i had in fact changed the pin code at some point and have no idea what it is so good luck phone hackers getting into my voicemail!!

Government Coalition NHS U-turn

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Finally, it sounds like the news is out on what the coalition is going to do with NHS Commissioning.
Following the post election promises that the NHS was safe from radical reform the government unleashed a white paper that had more change than had been seen in 20 years. The big change being that Primary Care Trusts (PCTs), the guardians of the funding used to treat patients would be abolished following a period where many were in heavy debt (millions of UK£’s), and would be replaced by General Practitioner (GP) Consortia. These consortia would be set up from scratch and represent several GP Practices, predicted to total more than the number of PCTs.

The problem with this is that many GP practices did not want the responsibility of holding the purse strings, whereas others were keen. On top of this, the coallition government are very keen that the patient’s best interests are represented. The new U turn has yet another radical change to the commissioning of health care. Meanwhile, the PCTs are consolidating their debt by merging – something the former labour government recommended as part of their proposals. And while they do so more money is being spent on organisations which appear to have a limited shelf life.

We await to see what the full proposals will be and what they will yield.

The Domesday Project

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It’s been nearly 2 years since I last did any blogging – this has been largely due to a lack of time.
However, I’ve missed it and decided to get back into it.
So, I’ll begin with The Domesday Project:

This was begun between 1984 and 1986 to celebrate the 900th anniversary of the Domesday Book which for those not familiar was a book commissioned in 1086 by the then King of England, William I (More commonly known as William the Conqueror) in order to determine what land and property existed in the United Kingdom and who owned it. This was for the purposes of tax collection, but also served a useful piece of information from a social history perspective. While it is not fully clear how long the collection process took it is suggested that it took the best part of a year to collate this information into the book.
To celebrate the 900th anniversary the BBC asked schools across the country to create their own version and a snapshot in time named The Domesday Project. Being done by children and teachers they gave themselves 2 years to record the information. Created in association with Acorn Computers, all the data was entered electronically onto a purpose built computer system. Cutting edge for its time it was able to collect text, photos and videos but also would become the google street view of its time.
It’s biggest flaw was it was too cutting edge and the times weren’t ready for the technology.
The data was catalogued on a new storage medium – Laser Disc. Using a scsi controller, the player could be attached to a BBC Master Computer and when combined with a tracker ball (precursor to the modern trackball or trackpad). All in it cost the best part of £5000 which at the time was the price of a small family car. Therefore, sales were low and the project went into obscurity.

This week, The project hit the news as word came through that a part of the BBC had, 25 years on, managed to convert the data into a format that would be accessible to all for free on the web. The concern had come that not enough of the laser disc players existed and that the discs themselves had become corrupted because of a flaw in their design.
Several previous attempts had been made – firstly using emulation of the original BBC Master software on windows PC’s, then a version which did not require the emulation as the software had been re-written for windows PC’s. But finally, the ultimate which does not require any software be installed on the end user’s computer other than a web browser. The domesday1986 blog documents this while the Beebmaster Website shows the technology used to create/play the original discs.

The link for the successfully restored data can be found here:
Domesday reloaded

International Talk Like A Pirate Day

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talk like a pirate jack sparrow

Today is possibly one of the most stupid but funny international days of the year:-
Talk like a Pirate day
talk like a pirate day date

The Official Website offers advice and discussion on how to make the most of the event.

The UK version yarr.org.uk has similar offering catering specifically for the UK population.

Not sure if i’ll be doing anything specific but may try and slip the odd “yarr me hearty” at the end of sentences.

Floods in Venice

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floods in st marks square, venice
This picture really says it all – this is St Mark’s square and the flood water is up to the hips
The worst flood for 20 years

The Venetians call it “Acqua Alta” or High Water as it literally translates. It comes in 2 forms really.
There is the mild flooding that comes with the tidal lagoon.
This affects a few areas more than others as the water flows up through the drains into the streets. Warning signs for tourists show which areas are most likely to be affected. It’s not a huge problem at this stage, and life goes on.
It looks like this in St Mark’s square:
Aqua Alta in St Mark's Square

What you see in the first photo though is the more dramatic where the water comes into the squares from the open water
This can only happen when the tide is high and the water level has been raised significantly either by rain or low air pressure. This leads to the dramatic flooding we see now when the water mark around St Mark’s Square hits 1.5 Metres (over 5 foot). 90% of the city is flooded. Tables have to be erected & raised to enable people to get around. Many homes (especially those on the ground floor) are flooded.

There are some plus points to acqua alta, especially if you’re a wakeboarder:

Youtube link to Wakeboarding in St Marks Square
And some pictures of the Wakeboarding

Dizzee Rascal on Barack Obama’s Victory

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As we all know now Barack Obama is going to be the first black US president, but I’m not going to talk about the in’s and out’s of the election or the merits of his victory.
Instead I give you
Dizzee Rascal
Dizzee Rascal on newsnight interviewed by Jeremy Paxman – the result is rather comical

Link for those who want to view it on youtube.com

(in the next section i’ve completely copied the transcript of the interview into chunks in case the link isn’t available in the future and to highlight certain parts. DR is Dizzee Rascal, JP is Jeremy Paxman)

The highlights of the interview are:

• When asked if the UK could have a black president it went as follows:

JP: … could you see this happening in Britain?
DR: Yeah. In time.
JP: You’re rather positive!
DR: Yeah, man. Why not, man? There’s a first time for everything, isn’t there? …
if you believe you can achieve, innit?

Radio One have been mocking this final line but at the same time it almost is something the “yoof” of today could take to heart.

• When asked on political parties he acknowledged they existed but little else:

JP: Dizzee Rascal, do you believe in political parties in Britain?
DR: Yeah, they exist. I believe in ’em … I don’t know if it makes a difference. But you know what I mean. It is what it is. Politicians … say what they say – you might get every now and again a genuine one, innit? But I think people, like, as a whole make the difference …

• When asked if he considered himself British, Paxman calls him “Mr Rascal”. Dizzee then comes out with a classic on who could run the country:

JP: Dizzee Rascal, Mr Rascal, do you feel yourself to be British?
DR: Of course I’m British, man! You know me! … what’s good. I think it don’t matter what colour you are, it matters what colour your heart is and your intentions. I think a black man, purple man, Martian man can run the country … as long as he does right by the people.

• And finally, Dizzee reckons he could run for PM and that Obama’s victory couldn’t of happened if he hadn’t embraced hip hop:

JP: Well why don’t you run for office?
DR: See, that’s a very good idea. I might have to do that one day. Dizzee Rascal for prime minister, yeah! Wassappenin’! Barack Obama embraced hip-hop, man. That’s the way he got through to kids. There was a more young vote ever. And it was through hip-hop!