| Trialling the Virgin kerbside checkin by taxi |
[Nov. 7th, 2009|11:07 am] |
Virgin has a private wing at Heathrow: normally you can only use it if your Upper Class ticket includes the chauffeured car but that means in-advance upgrades and doglegs and sale tickets don't qualify. For this flight we were asked to trial arriving at the wing by private car/taxi. comments: it's much more convenient - I hope they adopt this full-time. with being a trial there are a couple of things that will need to become part of the process: a form to say you're coming rather than phoning will be easy. and perhaps as they know the make, model and registration of the car for security they could use that to recognise you when you arrive at the barrier. but it's hugely more convenient and very welcome and nicely stylish. now all we need is a back way to get from security to the lounge :)
also - bacon sandwiches and massage for the win! |
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| Bye Bye Browser? |
[Nov. 6th, 2009|07:42 pm] |
We've been ferreting through Microsoft's job adverts, looking for hints about just what might be behind the viel of secrecy that has risen over Redmond since they started work on the Windows 8 series of operating systems. One came up with something very interesting, that fitted in with conversations we've been having with other IT journalists for some time:
What’s the future of the web?
On one side there’s Flash and Silverlight and the rich internet applications world, which is working on ways of taking the web outside the browser and onto the desktop, where it “lights up” applications and plugs them into a connected world of APIs and services. On the other is the HTML5 working group, and their vision of a browser that can do, well, pretty much anything. With HTML 5 there won’t be any need for applications – it’ll all be web pages running on super-speedy JavaScript engines and with CSS for look and feel.
Here comes the difficult bit.
They’re both right. There are things a well written RIA can do that a web page can’t, and there are things that web page can do that are impossible for a traditional application. With traditional code you need to push new applications to every desktop every time there’s a change. Even .NET’s click-once and AIR’s self updaters don’t make much of a difference – you still need the latest version of the code to get the latest features, and that (with a flagship RIA like Morgan Stanley’s Matrix) can be a hefty chunk to download. At least with a web page, one change and then everyone who uses it can get access to the latest version.
It’s all a trade off. Not every web site suits every user, nor does every RIA have a fully engaged audience. That’s why so much work is going into getting those experiences right, whether its online design tools like Mozilla’s Bespin, or Sketchflow in Microsoft’s Expression or the designer developer workflow between Flash Catalyst and Flash Builder. But a web page and an application are outside the operating system, and if web-centric OSes ever become common, they need to have some way of supporting and interacting with the web. That’s why there’s so much interest in Google’s ChromeOS and Microsoft’s Windows 8. They’re going to be the first real operating systems of the modern web. Read more at 500 Words Into The Future on ZDnet... |
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| Offensive article? Freedom of speech |
[Nov. 6th, 2009|03:22 pm] |
Like most cat lovers, I know our beasts can be an inconvenience to the neighbours; they go out, they sit in gardens, and some cats do other things in gardens. It's the nature of cats and the fact that the owner can't be held responsible for what a cat does may reflect that, or it may be the other side of the coin that say you have no legal rights - if someone steals your dog it's theft, if someone steals your cat it's not (usual caveat: I don't even play a lawyer on the Intertron). If someone poisons your cat, it is a crime (as well as a horrible, hateful thing, whatever the provocation). If a columnist in the Sunday Times congratulates the poisoner and commiserates with them on being fined, that's free speech. Specifically, it's not against the Press Complaints Commission code.
I though the article was a bad one and I asked if the PCC covered offensive articles; the answer was pretty much, no.
"Thank you for your complaint about the Rod Liddle article. We have received several complaints about this matter. I do understand your concerns. However, I must make two points about the role and function of the PCC:
1. The PCC can only consider complaints framed within the attached Code of Practice: http://www.pcc.org.uk. This does not cover issues of offensiveness. The PCC will not be able to intervene in a columnist's right to free expression on the grounds that his comments are offensive. This does not make your concerns invalid; rather it means that the PCC is likely not to be the appropriate forum to consider them.
2. It is not for the PCC to determine whether or not a criminal act has been undertaken or incited. Issues of alleged illegality must be for the police and the courts.
If you feel that your complaint falls within the remit of the PCC, and the Code of Practice, do let me know. Otherwise, we will not be able to take this further."
The PCC says basically you can't harass people, or do insider trading, or pursue children, and you should try to be accurate and give a right of reply. Tasteless photos (unless they're intrusive) and tasteless comments aren't covered. And I suppose that's about right. If we framed a clause that said 'you can't say it's a good idea to poison someone's cat because it pees on your vegetable bed', it would be hard to word it in such a way that it didn't stop people writing about the BNP or issues of racism generally - and as I believe that information rather than censorship is the way to deal with propaganda I'm in favour of it. I could write to the Sunday Times and complain to them, but I'm loathe to let them know I bothered to click a link to read the column in the first place. So I'll use my freedom of speech to say that while the columnist does a fine job of amusing people who like spite and bile, this was offensive and I'll actively try to avoid his writing in future. Free speech is a fine line to walk and being gratuitously offensive does no-one any favours. |
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| Just what I need ;-( |
[Nov. 6th, 2009|01:06 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  grumpy | ] |
Flying to the US tomorrow, tons of work to do, still not even packed and now I have Simon's damn cold ;-( |
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| Fraught |
[Nov. 4th, 2009|10:06 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  determined | ] |
I was expecting to have lunch yesterday with a very old friend, who had to ask for a rain cheque - on account of his wife had to go to see a surgeon for the results of a CT scan.
He just rang, and chatted to Mary for about 15 minutes, because she's got advanced colorectal cancer with secondaries not only in the liver, but the lungs as well.
The problem is that he can't tell anybody, because she's the figurehead of a public company which would collapse if her condition were known to their customers. So he's got to go into the office and be Casual and Reassuring for the workers there about where she will be over the next three months and then he's got to go home and be Strong and Positive for the kids and then he's got to go to his wife and be Supportive and Optimistic for her.
And really, he just needs to sit in a corner and cry - so he's doing that on the drive to work and back.
I've been very lucky. I have so many good friends (and Friends!) who have been able to just sit and listen and offer sympathy... and have kept in touch, without histrionics. And most of my business acquaintances know about it, thanks to Wavey Davey's decision to go public in cix:hacks ! and of course this blog; no I don't think it's fooling anybody at all. But that's not the point; the point is that if you google for me by name, this won't come up, and so only people who know it's me will plug in. I don't want to be a celebrity cancer patient like my old friend John Diamond became. I don't know how Terry is coping with his Alz but I'm betting it's hard having to do it in the public eye.
In local news, the effects of the flu jab seems to be much less pronounced, and although I'm still getting "uncomfortable" around 7 pm and having trouble eating supper, and then having to spend an uncomfy couple of hours getting the food settled in, the sense of dread and panic caused by a perpetual gut tangle all last week is now mostly history. Hope it doesn't come back!
Chemo restarts 14th, or thereabouts. Have installed bucket by side of bed... sense of humour will be stored somewhere nearby, in case of breakage. But it was given a big, big boost by the arrival - entirely unexpected! of Amy and Lily and their mother, Lucy, Monday. Has shagged my productivity to heck, of course! but it was great fun, and cheered me up tremendously. "Come on, Grandad, hide under this curtain with me!" and then "I need a story, Grandad, actually, I need five stories, here you are..." and then "I'm going to sit next to Grandad for lunch" followed by a game of "buried treasure" where the bits of sausage were concealed in holes in the mash and then "discovered" and disinterred and consumed with gusto...
Now, all I need is a working airgun so that I can stop that wretched squirrel from pillaging all the bird-seed from our garden bird-table... and the week will be moving in the right direction.
But not for my old friend. I hope I can help a bit. |
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| That Google ghost town? I grew up there |
[Nov. 3rd, 2009|03:20 pm] |
According to the Telegraph, the town appears on Google Maps in the middle of fields close to the M58 motorway, just south of Ormskirk. Actually, it appears about where the bottom of our garden was; we lived on Bold Lane and we had a long garden, a huge wood pile, a greenhouse with a shed built onto the side and behind that - you actually had to squeeze between the shed and the hedge, was a small summerhouse bower that I discovered when I was 11. Those green fields were the cow fields with the shortcut from the church to the station and the shop (Aughton was a hamlet, because although it had a church and a school it had no shop - and the school is now an old peoples home). Aughton Park is the new estate that dwarfs the original place... So, my childhood was spent in an imaginary place? Pretty much - though I got there through books. |
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| Privacy part 2 |
[Nov. 3rd, 2009|02:53 pm] |
Last week I linked to a US judge's ruling that the fourth amendment doesn't protect your privacy on a cloud service; now here's a reminder that RIPAA in the UK is just as unhelpful. Maybe this will give some impetus to the change in the law @Robert Neuschul was hoping to see (although with file sharing changes (I refuse to call it legislation when it's a diktat MPs don't get to vote on) set to scour our ever packet, I don't feel hopeful.
BBC: EU criticises UK government for not stopping BT using Phorm
Brussels said this showed that UK laws, particularly The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, did not do enough to protect data about the e-mails and web browsing habits of citizens. |
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| The Claw Is My Master! |
[Nov. 2nd, 2009|07:28 pm] |
Las Vegas is the strangest place on this weird old planet. It's a prime example of the peculiarities of humanity, the highs and the lows.
Deep in the bowels of Bally's, on the way to monorail, we saw an old fashioned arcade claw machine. Oooh, we thought, a touch of old school deep in the heart of the Strip. Then we realised what the claw was picking up. That machine suddenly became one of the lows. But in a weirdly cool way...
It was picking up lobsters.
Live lobsters.
Straight out of the tank. Pay $4 and if you manage to grab a squirming crustacean, your dinner is free.
It was really quite disturbing, imagining the lobsters scurrying away from the descending claw, in some obscene parody of a scene from Toy Story.
Las Vegas, Nevada
October 2009 |
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| Fall Coloured |
[Nov. 2nd, 2009|06:31 pm] |
Boston was, in more ways than one, a bit of a washout.
Not only did I have a dose of the man flu, but the weather had taken a distinctly wintry tone, and the rain was coming done solidly for most of the time we were there. Then, on the last morning, the skies cleared and the sun came out.
It was crisp and clear when we walked across from our hotel to Boston Common, wandering around the pond where the Swan Boats paddle in summer. The trees were well into their fall colours, bright reds and yellows amongst the faded greens.
It's something we really don't get here...
Boston, Massachusetts
October 2009 |
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| And that's why email encryption is such a no brainer |
[Oct. 31st, 2009|03:06 am] |
You don't send hugely personal information on postcards; you put it in an envelope. Sure your email is that personal - and that protected? Surely the ISP doesn't read your email and won't just hand it over to someone without telling you? No, no, maybe, yes. In the UK RIPA and other orders say the police can get your email when they want and you'll never know (it's possible but unclear that it might even be an offence for your ISP to tell you they've handed it over). And in the US, an Oregon judge quoted in the WSJ Law blog http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2009/10/29/on-gmail-and-the-constitution/) says no, the Fourth Amendment doesn't keep your email private. The Fourth protects the privacy of your home, but the Internet is not your home and the inbox on your computer is - especially for Webmail like Gmail - actually the server at some other company. By putting email there, you have given up your reasonable expectation of privacy. Obviously, most people don't know this and would probably disagree with it - but it's the law.
Money quote; "Most of the reluctance to apply traditional notions of third party disclosure to the e-mail context seems to stem from a fundamental misunderstanding of the lack of privacy we all have in our e-mails. Some people seem to think that they are as private as letters, phone calls, or journal entries. The blunt fact is, they are not."
So - could we all start encrypting our emails please? It's legal, it's not expensive, it's probably not even that difficult any more - but for some reason we just all can't be bothered. I guess if we're going to flaunt it all on Facebook, email privacy is so 1990s... |
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| Dear Mr Bus Driver |
[Oct. 31st, 2009|02:01 am] |
FYI? Not every traffic light is an emergency stop. KTHXBYE |
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| Pain in the solar plexus...? |
[Oct. 30th, 2009|10:20 am] |
I'm being rather racalcitrant. My doctors think I'm suffering from "pressure on the liver capsule caused by enlargement of the organ, due to tumour growth"
I don't.
Of course, in such cases of disagreement, the medical experts are almost always right, and I know that. But I'm having trouble accepting it, all the same.
First, the symptom isn't new. I first experienced it the week of my final chemo treatment back in June (or thereabouts) when, as we know, the liver tumours were all inactive, and shrinking rapidly. It was extremely painful, then, to the point that I had to sit up in bed to get any sleep; and the symptoms are identical, now. Specifically, a combination of slow, reluctant motions (but not hard, dry ones) and this very centralised discomfort right at the point of the breastbone.
As I understand it, the liver capsule is sensitive to enlargement of the liver, and it does hurt when that happens. But everything I've managed to read suggests that the capsule is more to the right hand side, and that when it is stretched, it expands down below the ribs on the right.
Next: this symptom only appeared after my flu jab, last week (Thursday). It lasted over the weekend, and was very painful indeed. Then it eased, gradually, during this week.
Not a lot I can do about it, is there? - apart from what the doctor says, and taking painkillers. And hope it wears off, or that the next chemo course stops it.
But that's no treat. One of the most predicted side-effects of irinotecan is diarrhoea, and it's one of my most-feared illnesses. I get migraines very easily. And experiments show me that if I stay properly hydrated, I don't get them. By contrast, I can have disastrous migraines if I dry out, and this particular poison has that effect.
And it isn't just a question of "I dread the next chemo..." though that comes into it, naturally! It's a problem of appropriate diet.
Here's the problem; all the stuff you can read says "don't eat high fibre food" as a way of avoiding the runs. Now, I do understand the role of high fibre diet in maintaining loose stools! - but the effect doesn't indicate a similar cause. When you're poisoned, the runs are caused by an attempt by the bowel to flush the toxin. High fibre diets don't have that effect, and I'm dubious about equating the two, frankly. It looks, to me, as if someone has just said: "What can cause the runs? High fibre? avoid!" and I think this is faulty logic.
Oh, yeah... I'm scared. |
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