Monday April 21, 2008

Face to face

We saw this sculpture when on a long weekend in the Stamford area. The sculpture is in the grounds of Burghley a stately home where much filming has been done over the years. It also has a surprise garden with many water features some which if you are not careful will soak you to the skin. On the way to Stamford we did a six mile walk starting at Stilton famous for its cheese although none of it is made there but at several authorised locations nearby. There was a cold Easterly wind blowing and a lot of the countryside in this area comprises of large open fields which do not offer any protection from the wind. We saw lots of spring lambs playing in the fields and also passed by the now deserted village of Washingley which was left after a lot of lots locals died out during the Black Death Plague. Apart from uneven fields where the houses were you would not know a village had been there. We also saw the site of a Motte and Bailey 12th castle all that is left of that was a slight earth mound.

Back to Washingley many of the survivors moved to the village of Folksworth which we then entered having a drink at its pub being the only customers in the pub! No wonder so many pubs are closing. We finally returned to Stilton and had lunch at the Bell an old coaching Inn which would have been on the A1 before the bypass was built. We stopped overnight at the Fox and Hounds at Exton which was nice but we decided to move on and stay overnight at the Crown hotel In Stamford itself.

After a disturbed nights sleep thanks to a rowdy pub next door on the Sunday morning as it was raining we decided to cut our losses and head home. Apart from two nights bad sleep a nice weekend.

Friday April 18, 2008

A letter from B.A.

Lets hope they do something with the feedback they get..

Dear Mr Humphreys,

As part of our ongoing work to improve our customer service and understand our customers' needs, we would be grateful if you could take part in our Internet survey. This survey will help us to measure customer satisfaction with British Airways' performance in resolving complaints made to the Customer Relations department.

This survey should only take 10 to 15 minutes to complete. The information you provide will not be associated with your personal name unless you give us your express permission at the end of the survey.

British Airways Customer Relations has asked Harris Interactive to conduct this online survey. All issues of confidentiality and survey content can be addressed by contacting Harris Interactive directly at the SurveyHelp desk, the link to which is shown at the bottom of this email. In addition....

Your opinions are very important to us and we very much look forward to receiving your feedback.

To participate, please proceed to:

Thursday April 17, 2008

Super Aguri - the end of the road?

The Magma financial group have pulled out of the deal to buy out the Super Aguri team which will lead to their demise I fear. Finances have been tough for this team over the winter and with Honda loosing interest keen to put all their efforts towards improving their team things looked doubtful for their appearance at the opening Grand Prix. The team was initially created to find a place for Sato who was kicked out of the Honda A team and until next year Aguri and Torro Rosso could use hand me downs from their more illustrious principal teams. That changes in 2009. I agree with Frank Williams - Formula one teams are constructors and should design and construct their own cars. But over the years many teams have fallen off the back of the grid as a result of no support from the teams at the front. The shame for this team is the spirit they have showed over their time on the grid and their ability to punch above their lowley status and embarrass better funded teams including Honda's own - especially last year.

Litter bug..

Bill Bryson has launched his own campaign against litter in the UK - a country has made his own. It has been said that he looks a bit like a Womble which is very apt if you remember who they were..Meanwhile in London a pilot scheme to fine drivers who drop litter from their cars is being launched. If it works it will be rolled throughout the UK. The good news evidence can come from a variety of sources like mobile phone cameras etc.

Wednesday April 16, 2008

Sunray Server strategy shift

Chris and myself have described our high regard for the SunRay technology and how we use it in the office and at home. We have a Solaris10 'FCS' server which runs the latest Solaris10 update release. This is for our users who do not want to be on the bleeding edge. This is still a E4900 with two system boards and a total 128GB of memory. We then had another E4900 with the very latest Ultrasparc processors from the lab pool keeping them warm until they are needed for customer support. This platform was divided into two domains. These two domains would be upgraded in turn to new builds of what we call Solaris Nevada. This exposes us to the latest technology and fixes that I believe always go into Nevada first before going back into say the Solaris 10 patch or feature gates. Anyway this was all good until someone said why not have a x86 box? So we put in a well configured V40Z. This extends the time between upgrades of each of the servers (six weeks) and is good as it means the server runs longer hopefully finding memory leak problems or other issues that are only found when systems run for longer periods of time.

What we are not expecting to find was an Xsun bug you would only see on x86 platforms.

When we announced the first Niagara2 machines we felt duty bound to give one a go and within hours of running one we had a really interesting bug Tim looked at that and again you would only see in Nevada and on the Niagara2 platform. Within a few weeks we then had another bug this time you would only see on the latest Ultrasparc IV+ processors again on Nevada. We have also found and logged several application bugs and some relating to the Gnome desktop. The oddest one I logged was BugID 6564048 with the title of Nevada lp prints non-existent files! So given all this tangible benefits of running these platforms we have decided to keep:

Sunfire V890 Server replacing the E4900 - this is a smaller size box - with the latest Ultrasparc IV+ that you can get for this box.

Sunfire T5220 server eight cores, 64GB memory.

And the Sunfire V40Z server.

Should be interesting...

Tuesday April 15, 2008

Titanic - the BBC opens its archives

The BBC has given us all access to the archive material it has on the Titanic disaster. The site also features the spoken word of Commander CH Lightoller the most senior surviving officer of the sinking of the ship. Listening to his voice is quite spooky - he seems so calm about it. The BBC also describes how in 1947 a play to commemorate the sinking was almost not aired as several organisations tried to stop it going on the radio. It seems the great ship has not revealed all its secrets - yet.

Monday April 14, 2008

Bowling going, going gone?

Like the village green and duck pond the village bowling green is very part part of what you expect to find in the UK. Sadly though people are now becoming reluctant to join bowling clubs and without the support of full time members these clubs are at risk. I think this is very much what this country is becoming - we are starting to go home shut the door and stay there instead of going out and meeting people and interacting with them. Henry VIII actually put in place a law where the game was forbidden to be played except at Christmas - that law only repealed in 1845! It seems Henry wanted the population to spend more time doing archery much more useful in his opinion. As usual the Wikipedia site has an excellent item on bowls.

Public Enemy Number One..

It seems in Northumberland conservationists have decided if they are to save the Red Squirrel in their county they have to exterminate large numbers of the North American "imported" grey. The Grey Squirrel is larger than its native cousin which means it can cause the red to leave the area as the greys move in. Also the grey carries a bug that it seems immune too but which is usually fatal to the red if it catches the bug. The canny Northumberland residents don't waste what they cull; the meat of the grey squirrel is fast becoming a popular new game dish.

Waking the dead..

This series - about a cold case squad is back tonight. Trevor "Shoestring" Eve is still in charge but the series is not the same since they killed off Claire Goose .

New CD's P.

Robert Plant and Alison Krauss - Raising Sand. Awsome cd. No wonder it has been so well received. Apart from the fact both are world class vocalists they have a excellent backing band. Although on most tracks they sing together there are also a few tracks they sing on their own. Worth buying.

Pulp - Different Class. Great line in the cd insert Please Understand. We don't want trouble. We just want to be different. That's all. Cocker's talent for writing awsome vocals are clear in this and the other Pulp albums mentioned below. F.E.E.L.I.N.G.C.A.L.L.E.D.L.O.V.E is very good. You know Pencil Skirt is not going to be one of his polically correct track or one you should play for your granny...

Pulp - We Love Life. Weeds and Weeds II good starting tracks. The Night that Minnie Timperley Died is next and is one of my favourite tracks on the CD. A very close second best must be Bad Cover Version, listen to his vocals carefully. Beautifully crafted. "Every time he kisses you , you get the taste of saccarin" and "The latest Tom and Jerry when the both of them could to talk".

Pulp - This is hardcore. Help the Aged I think my favourite on this cd. Perhaps given my ever increasing age - it is a track the makes you realises we should be more sympathetic towards older people and it won't be long before we get old. The title track also excellent. I'm a Man is a track I should pull over off the road when this track comes on.

Pulp - His and hers. Not so keen on this album - the tracks are ok but compared to the other albums not their best.

Friday April 11, 2008

Four good holiday books by Conn Iggulden

After I had suspended this weblog I started to read the story of Caesar by Conn Iggulden . The first book starts with Brutus and Caesar known by their childrens names of Marcus and Gaius in the Gates of Rome. The books are well written and I found them hard to put down and at the end of each is a short narrative explaining how the books relate to the known historical facts. At the end you certainly end up with an admiration of Caesar and what he achieved and I was sort of puzzled why he was assasinated at the end. I have now started reading Conn's new series about Genghis Kahn which will take longer because the second in the series has only just been released in hardback. As Conn says "History is full of great tales."

Thursday April 10, 2008

Insider trading..

The numbers relating to drug abuse in our prisons are quite staggering .

Big Ben is 150 years old today.

Big Ben the bell inside the famous clock tower in London is 150 years old today . It was cast in the Whitechapel Bell foundry one of only two foundries left in the UK today. In fact the bell is the second cast for the tower - the first was found to be defective when shipped from a foundry in the north and was rejected. Whitechapel still have their sales ledger for the period that shows a rebate was given on the sale as the original metal was reused from the first casting. It does not explain why the other bell foundary were not given the chance to make bell number two.

Wednesday April 09, 2008

The Simpsons replaced by Babewatch...

I am not a fan of the Simpsons but this story amused me as in Venezuela it has been dropped to be replaced by BayWatch as the former was deemed unsuitable for children...

Planning permission...

In an attempt to stem the tide of people paving over their front gardens to provide car parking planning permission will be needed soon if you want to do this. The reason for doing this is once paved over or a when a hard surface replaces a garden or grass, more water runs off this surface making flooding more likely in times of heavy rain. I just wonder how the authorities will decide if permission is granted? Will it be related to the number of paved over gardens on the road already?