Sunday October 31, 2004

Two nice walks this weekend...

Hoping to walk off some of the extra weight I have put on after our brief holiday in Barcelona we planned two four mile walks this weekend.

The first starting at Waltham St Lawrence where the local pub the Bell is one of a few pubs owned by the village itself. The landlord rents the pub off the village. The walk was a new one to us but took us on many familiar paths we have been on while doing other walks in the Waltham area. My interest in walking off some of the excess of the holiday was put on hold as we stopped off at the Royal Oak in Shurlock Row to see if we could book ourselves in for evening dinner. In the process of doing so I ordered a rather tasty sausage baguette which I enjoyed very much...

Back to the walk, the leaves are really falling off the trees now and mistletoe is now visible in the trees. I have heard it is making a comeback after being under threat for many years. There is plenty around here that is for sure. During the walk we are taken by a 14th century church at Shottesbrook Manor "St John the Baptist" part of the only manor in Berkshire to remain intact after the Norman conquest. It is said the architect on completion of the church in 1337, climbed the spire to toast his work with a glass of wine and fell to his death and was buried on the spot. As you walk around this area you get two lots of planes overhead. Jumbo jets doing their final approach or having taken off from Heathrow and also light aircraft doing circuits from White Waltham airfield which is nearby to Waltham st Lawrence.

The second walk was a new area to us. The town or village of Sunningdale in Surrey which is near the busy A30. We got there by going through Ascot. The racecourse is being redeveloped and thankfully the ugly old stadium is being pulled down. The walk soon got us away from the busy A30 and into Wentworth where I think some big golf matches are played. Meantime in the grounds of the course is an estate with some pretty impressive houses to see. Of course a walk across a golf course is not always a good idea with golf balls flying over your head..

Later on the walk through another estate again developed with nice housing and grounds that looked like Capability Brown had had a hand in their design. The walk was also good for another reason - despite having rained heavily recently the paths were easy to walk on having a good foundation of gravel bricks etc..

How to make planes leave on time...

While sitting in Barcelona airport after our short holiday in Barcelona I heard a familar line over the PA: " Would MR XYZ please go to gate 123 where he is holding up the flight ABC to destination DEF".

On my boarding pass it says be at the gate thirty minutes before departure. I am thinking the airlines should really get serious about this thirty minute rule. I know if the 'lost' passenger has checked in baggage it has to be removed otherwise that can causes problems. Also people DO get lost in airports but that can be fixed too.

Here is my plan:

Anyone who has not got to the gate thirty minutes before departure is taken off the flight. No announcements beforehand and no appeal. The airlines will know who has not got to the gate as your boarding card is checked in there.

The baggage is put into metal boxes that are loaded into the plane. ( on big planes ). If you keep track of what baggage goes into what box and where that box is loaded into the plane, removing baggage should be easy to do. This should take place at the thirty minute deadline.

If you get lost in an airport you should make your way to special bright red phones which are installed at regular spacing in the terminal buildings. Make the call and the operator will know where you are and assist you in getting to the terminal. This recovery phone system might be open to abuse so this needs to be checked.

This all sounds radical but like banning smoking in public places most people would agree this is the way to go.

What would have happened if Sun had ported Sun unix to the early intel platforms..

I remember well when I had a Sun 2 running Sun Unix 2.0 when an early IBM PC landed on my bosses desk. It had no window system and was pretty basic. Even then the Sun had sunview windowing , networking, NFS, NIS and more.

We all know what happened next the PC nearly grew up and got Windows on it. Even then it was not a truly multi tasking environment. Sun sold a x86 box - the Roadrunner and put Sun Unix 4.x on it.

The question is what would have happened if when PC's came out Sun had done a port of Sun Unix to the x86 platform ?

It is a moot point and the important thing is we sell Opteron desktops and and servers and an operating system with features in it to impress all I reckon. Add to this the JDS productivity enviroment and its game over !

Saturday October 30, 2004

Around the M25 in seven days...

Sometimes when you are on the M25 London Orbital motorway you feel you might spend seven days going round the bit you want to travel on, but on our way there and back to our holiday in Barcelona we did go round the whole thing - in seven days...

First from home we joined the M40 then the M25. This is just north of the roadworks where the M25 is being widened again..

We then continued all the way around to the M11 junction ( where there are even more roadworks) to come off there and head to the excellent pub run by Jamie Oliver's parents The Cricketers at Clavering . We had two nights there with this wonderful meal on the Saturday:

Dinner is 21.50 for two courses (which comes with a nice selection of breads). I had a wonderful boneless quail marinated on stir fried bok choi with a light soy sauce dressing. I then had a stonking great lump of halibut with a shellfish and mussel bisque. Best halibut I have ever had.

My wife had char grilled fillet steak with a cream mushroom sauce and a dessert the details of which escape me! The rooms and breakfast are both excellent.

On our travels once more we rejoined the M11 down to the M25 and then continued over the new Queen Elizabeth bridge This supplements the Dartford tunnel which is used by the anti clockwise traffic.

Finally we came off onto the M23 heading to Gatwick.

On our return from Barcelona we enjoyed the M25 at its best - Friday rush hour. As expected despite the MIDAS (Motorway Incident Detection and Automatic Signalling) system things were pretty jammed up. MIDAS consists of a distributed network of traffic and weather sensors, speed cameras and variable speed signs which control traffic speeds with little human supervision. Going through the widening works it was good to see even at 7pm work still going on. As it happens it must be easier to extend the carriagway on one side of the road so they added all the extra lanes there. The central reservation then needs to be moved and to do this they were using an enormous circular saw to cut through the tarmac and concrete. Following on from this was other machinery breaking up the tarmac/concrete.

Coming from the south we can leave the M25 on the M4 junction and get home as easily as using the M40 and avoid some of the jams. So we did not exactly go round ALL of the M25.

Friday October 29, 2004

Barcelona break

Just got back from a short week in Barcelona . The first thing to say is it is a long time since we have visited a big city as tourists. So it took us a few days to get acclimatised to the city feel, the crowds (although it was not that busy), the traffic, the beggars and tramps and perhaps a bit of claustrophobia thrown in as well.

We landed on our feet by finding an excellent apartment on a square named after George Orwell (prebooked) . The apartment was found by using This apartment company . Our friends have used them several times and stayed in good places. The apartment was nice and central right next to the famous Ramblas.We flew in to the city using Easyjet from Gatwick. I was impressed by the services and efficiency of the airline this being our first use of a budget airline. It was even better as we were flown to Barcelona on one of Easyjet's new Airbus A319 airplanes.

On arrival to Barcelona we took a 30 minute taxi ride to our apartment, but could also have taken the bus or train. The apartment was spacious and well presented. The bedroom being at the back of the building meant most of the noise from the square was muffled. Might be worth asking for such a room if staying in a hotel. Barcelona goes to bed VERY late...

On the first day we got our bearings and walked to the seafront and took the cable car from the Torre de Sant Sebastia, at the foot of Barceloneta, to Montjuic, with a stop in the middle at Torre de Jaume 1, in front of the World Trade Centre on the moll de Barcelona. Even in the rain there were impressive sights of the city. As you walk to the cable car stop you can visit Placa del Portal de La Pau where a tall column with Christopher Columbus on the top looks over the sea . He is rather blackened by pollution and sadly his head is covered with bird mess which is white and looks rather peculiar... A lift takes to to the top if you wish.

We then took a walk up La Rambla. This in our opinion is a bit over hyped. There are some stunning buildings along its streets and the painted human statues are fun to look at, but other than that it is a place where you have overpriced restaurants, people selling useless items and a general seedy feeling to the place. If you do visit it, do pop into the all day market Mercat de la Boqueria. The fish stalls are particularly fascinating.

During our stay we knew our nephew was also in the city with his school Dulwich College . The school was combining a sightseeing tour with several concerts in public places and we went to one of them. It was excellent and was well received by the locals.

During our stay we went to several of Antoni Gaudi's buildings and sites. The most famous must be the part finished cathedral Sagrada Familia . An impressive building due to be finished in 2030. You must do the climb of four hundred steps through four of the towers. It is not as bad as it sounds as there are so many people with you so the steps are taken at a slow pace allowing time to rest. Sadly the inside of the towers have been ruined by graffiti and then to make matters worse, people have filled some of the holes with chewing gum!

We also visited Gaudi's apartment block La Pedrera . One apartment is open for tourists and looks like it did when the block was finished. I liked the curved hall as it gives the apartment a larger feel to it as you cannot see the end of the hall as you walk along it. The attention to detail is also stunning. Finally the visit to the roof is mind boggling - who says chimneys have to be boring...

Finally on the Gaudi tour went to . This park offers stunning views of the city and also gets you away from the traffic. Gaudi was not the only Modernista building architect. There are plenty of others to see in the city too including the Palau De La Musica Catalan . We tried to get in but we were too late.

From Barcelona we went to Montserrat to visit the village clinging to the mountain.In the Basilica is the Black Madonna . The trip gets you out of the city, a fifty minute train ride and then a cable car or shuttle train ride to the village. If the weather is good you will get excellent views around.

Other places to visit are Barcelona Cathedral, do cover your legs and upper body otherwise you will not be let in. A lift takes you up on the roof again giving you excellent views. Sadly the front of the cathedral was undergoing building works and was hidden by scaffolding. The Parc de la Cuitadella and the adjoining Passeig de Lluis Companys are also worth seeing.

I would recommend avoiding eating on the Rambla.We found an excellent pizza place on our George Orwell square. We had tapas at TallerdeTapas which was also popular with the locals. A lot of the popular places to eat really do NOT open until 8.30/9pm ! You will also find you cannot book so have to queue. People were standing outsideS some of these places until after 11.30pm. The Spanish win the award of the queueing nation of the world. We also found a great place that did 'fusion' food; Matsuri Pl. Regomir 1 BCN. For lunch go to a local bakery and enjoy a freshly made baguette etc.

For getting around, your feet should be able to cope but the Metro is excellent to save your legs. It is easy to use and I would recommend buying a travel card.

Personal safety. Having heard several real horror stories from friends about pickpockets, muggings etc we went prepared. We both took money belts with as little as we needed for the day and I had our digital camera in my pocket with my hand permanently clasped around it. We also avoided dark small streets at night. We treated the airport with the same care too. I think perhaps the peak season for pickpockets is when the streets are very busy.

One final thing - it does get very hot in the summer - in late October it was a comfortable twenty degrees centigrade but it had been thirty degrees barely a month before.

Finally we used two guide books Rough guide to Barcelona and Eyewitness Top 10 travel guides to the city.

Thursday October 21, 2004

Jenson stays with BAR who gets the second seat at Williams?

Good to see Jenson is already patching things up with his Boss at BAR. The idiot statements that certain newspapers ( red tops ) made over last weekend saying he would refuse to drive if he had to stay at BAR are thankfully unfounded.

We will never know the real reason he wanted out but hopefully next year he can get that first win. It is also good to see BAR are already testing components for next years season where a lot of downforce etc will be removed to slow things down.

Who gets the second seat at Williams is a good question. They may put 'jungle boy' on a one year deal and get Button in for 2006, it will be a good test for anyone to be alongside Webber who I think has to make a few less mistakes. Patrick Head according to Damon Hill always used to say if drivers did not fall off the track once in a while they were not pushing hard enough.

Test drove the Golf GT TDI 2.0 litre

So on Tuesday I picked up one of these . I managed to persuade the garage to let me have it overnight. First impressions are that it is a good car. Typical VW build quality and it feels nice and solid. The one I drove had a few extras but pretty much the base GT TDI.

Having not driven a Golf since its mark II days it was a shock at how much it has grown in size. Sitting in the back is not so much of a squeeze nowadays. The ride is excellent, the GT TDI has lowered suspension like my Passat sport and I like having the feeling of my seat closer to the ground... I would love the DSG auto box with the paddle controls on the steering column.

The 2.0 diesel is excellent it is not noisy as other diesels and there is no sign of that oil burner smell you can sometimes get on starting from cold. I think VW are a bit mean with the music system - a six disk changer should be standard on this model.

Not wishing to advertise but I get the feeling I'l be able to buy one of these at around 16.500 GBP. Many web pages have prices at around this for NEW cars and not ones registered six months ago and have been parked up in a field... I think the way it works is VW dealers who have not made their quotas, sign up to these web sites and agree a price and therefore make their quota and we get the car cheap.

The only last thing to consider is wether I wait for next years Passat and hang onto my company car till then. I think a tornado red Golf is heading to Twyford.

Wednesday October 20, 2004

Poirot... mon ami and Miss Marple...

For me David Suchet is the perfect Poirot . He does a brilliant job of acting out the mannerisms of the Belgium detective living in London. The series has been going for some time now and sadly the later ones do not feature Hastings played by Hugh Fraser who is also exceptionally good at his role. Japp who is always asking Poirot's help to sort his cases out is played by Philip Jackson.

I suppose my favourites are the two hour long programmes and the" ABC murders" must be one of the best of all them. Do not even consider watching the efforts of Peter Ustinov playing Poirot. Ustinov may have been a good actor but Suchet's Poirot is untouchable.

However without Agatha Christie these programmes and books would not be here and her other famous character Miss Marple is played brilliantly by Joan Hickson . The series of Miss Marple was shown originally on BBC. I don't think I have a favourite of these except maybe the way "Nemesis" and "A Caribbean Mystery" are interlinked by the character Rafael. In the Caribbean Mystery she works with Rafael to solve a series murders while on a holiday. In Nemesis, Rafael leaves Miss Marple instructions in his will to find out the truth about his son's fiancee murder.

In both cases repeats can be seen on various cable/satellite channels.

Monday October 18, 2004

Monarchy - David Starkey

Last night on the less favoured Channel 4 was a new history series by David Starkey. Called Monarchy this mammoth series will be four years of television and forty episodes! Of course there is already a book you can buy. Starkey has done other history programms Elizabeth I was another good one.

Getting back to the current programm this starts during the dark ages where England had to put up with many kings instead of just one monarch. Offa was the first of one of these kings to try and stitch the country into one, he was the first to put his name on the coins of his realm, he setup his son to be his heir. It was all to be in vain but he has left his mark on the country with a barrier he had built to keep the pesky Welsh at bay Offas Dyke .

This is not the place to document the series but to encourage you to watch it. It is on channel 4 Monday evenings at 9pm ( GMT).

For people like me who either did not listen at school and were clearly not enthused by the teachers there have been several other gems on TV to catch up with past history. History of Britain , Simon Schama was another multi series effort and on a smaller scale Battlefields, Richard Holmes both bring history to life.

Cats in the garden...

I have today had the pleasure of clearing up after someone else's cat. The owner will not be aware of it and will at this minute be enjoying the animals company. I would ask the owner to be a bit more careful what they are feeding their cat. Clearly this animal is suffering from some kind of intestinal problems. I have been retrieving the evidence from my soil in my garden but I am now undergoing the pleasure of having to extract the same evidence from my grass and today from a heather plant. If you do not realise it is there it is a unpleasant experience when you find it I can tell you.

The RHS magazine The Garden has said in a recent magazine that certain cats are not fazed by any attempts to remove them from the garden. They also discuss several ways of getting around the problem.

So what have I done about it ? I have tried;

Audio devices that emit sounds that cats do not appreciate. With a reasonable sized garden I would need a lot of these to give me decent coverage but I do not have the evidence these work anyway.

Various smelling substances. I have used various types of powder, gel all that do not have any effect. Of course they do end up need replemishing after any rain. A feature of the UK climate .

Sticks of various sizes including cocktails sticks in the ground.

Netting. This does work and in the winter when there are large amounts of bare soil in my garden I usually end up covering these areas with plastic netting. It looks horrible but does the job..

My wife got lucky one day and managed to spray a cat with a hose and scored a direct hit. I fear many more pot shots at this cat would be needed to put it off for good.

What I have not done...

Physically harmed any cat or owner. Purchased lion dung which is meant to put cats off. Getting your own cat is meant to help. But I am not inflicting what I detest on someone else. I have also not resorted to getting a predator animal like a rottweiller dog.

So any ideas folks ?

Sunday October 17, 2004

Outages, notifications, sunrays, clusters, ups and Generator sets ..

Ok here is a question for you. What do all the above all have in common ? Well it is all about providing a service which is reliable and using whatever technology is available to ensure the service stays up as long as YOU want it to.

While working in Paris last week an annoying thing happened which is a common occurrence in many parts of the world. We had a power cut. Of course Sun has being paying its electric bill so it was an unforeseen outage. The power came back on quite quickly but it was a while before I could use my Sunray again (there were some kind of network problems when power was restored) . It is interesting to consider this event in terms of availability and what you expect and need. Sunrays as it turns out improves availability to users if you do sensible things like having the server on UPS. The whole building can tip over when you have a power blip but as long as you keep power to the sunray server using UPS etc as soon as building power is restored, the network switches and sunrays boot up your session will be restored as it was. The sad people who have PC's or desktops will lose what they were doing and worse still maybe have to coax their machines back into life - if they know how to do so. For sunray users if it fails to survive the power blip you just plug another in its place. Simple as plugging in a kettle.

In Sun's campus where we work they have several sunray servers in a failover group . So if one fails (which does not happen very often) you lose your session but you can soon establish another one. The file servers and mail servers are clustered so if one node fails you move onto the other - stateless. UPS and a diesel generator mean the uptime is improved even more. I could add of course that using Ethernet ipmp and dynamic reconfiguration means you can also protect yourself even more.

However in this world of goodness there is a problem. It has been there since I sent a message on a Prime 850 computer from its console to the users telling them it was on fire to persuade them to log off asap. It had the desired effect for those looking at their vdu's at the time.

The problem is this. If an application is failing or there is a non terminal problem with your computer system or network you can let users know. Using email or on sunrays there is a very clever program called utwall. This allows display messages or sounds to be sent to appliances. A toilet flush would be a good one to indicate impending disaster..,

The problem is when things are really down. Users will have a OCF display on their Sunrays which will tell them the server is not working and if they know the OCF numbers/displays they will have a reasonable idea what is going on. But this is my problem. How can you communicate to users and tell them what is really going on and what you are doing about it - before they start coming to see you or calling you up - when you need time to fix the problem you are dealing with. We always in the Prime days thought of a led panel like a set of traffic lights indicating the health of a machine. Netconnect can tell you when a system is down. But how to get that message to users when their computers that rely on the server are down.. Answers please !

Twford on TV !

When I went into the railway station today to buy tickets for my wife I spotted a lot of vans/lorries in the car park. I walked onto the platform and saw that the "Twyford" station signs were being covered up with "Causton" ones. I went up to the crew and sure enough filming was to take place soon on the platform for a new episode of Midsomer Murders . Being a sad person I wizzed back in the car and told my wife who insisted we went back to watch the filming. By this time the cast was on the platform and I managed to get a few shots with the camera. I even got some info about the epsiode from one of the crew. The filming was to move onto Cookham later on that day.

Who says nothing ever happens in Twyford ?

Midsomer Murders

There is nothing better than sitting in front of the TV on a Sunday night with a glass of wine in the hand and an episode of Midsomer Murders on.

The stories are based on the Inspector Barnaby Books by Caroline Graham which are filmed in beautiful English villages in and around the Berkshire/Buckinghamshire area ( where I live ...).

The main character Barnaby is played by John Nettles . He is also known for the other TV detective series Bergerac. Barnaby's wife Joyce in every programme seems to develop a new hobby or has just joined a new local society etc. Joyce is played by Jane Wymark and they have a daughter Cully who has had more jobs than her mother has had hobbies ! Both always seem to get caught up in Barnaby's cases which usually end up with a large proportion of the local village population being murdered over the period of the two hour long programme (before the case is solved..). Barnaby has had two sidekicks 'Troy' played by Daniel Casey who has now left and is now in a drama series about firemen. Troy's replacement is John Hopkins .

The most enjoyable part of these easy to watch shows is spotting villages and scenery where we have been. The Bull and Butcher is a famous pub in Turville where in one of the bars you will see a picture of the Midsomer cast outside the pub. Up on top of a hill overlooking the village is a windmill used during the filming of the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

Tuesday October 12, 2004

Here I am working in Paris...

As I have a lab here in France - Paris Velizy I am spending a week onsite. Velizy itself is not the nicest part of Paris but its a functional industrial area that suits the requirements we have of it.

There are many reasons for enjoying being here. The first is the language. It is the most wonderful thing to hear it being spoken. Some say Italian is the prettiest language but I think French is. I am a typical anglais, in that my French is pretty non-existent. I can survive over here, make myself understood but that is more of a function of the French being able to understand English than my command of their language.

The other reason is the food. These folks know how to do it well and the whole eating out thing is just perfect. It can be formal but they treat it very seriously and so you should. They eat strange things like escargot (snails) and frogs legs but then we English like jellied eels and cockles pickled eggs....

Last night we met a friend in Paris together we visited the centre of the city and had a meal. We went into the centre via her flat in her car an interesting experience. Parisien drivers are scary - worse than London. We then took the Paris metro into the centre which is a good overground/underground transportation system.

If you walk in Paris you should treat zebra crossings with caution if you are used to the relative sanity in the UK where most drivers stop as soon as you approach the kerb. In Paris this is not so. If the road is busy you have to do a kamikaze act and start crossing and they should stop. It is not always guaranteed to work. The Parisien drivers have numbers of their plates that indicate the car is from Paris. So other parts of France treat these cars very carefully when they are seen outside their main territory...

We then had a whistlestop tour of some of the sites, Hotel de Ville, Notre Dame and we also walked up close to the Eifel Tower . The Eiffel tower on the hour twinkles with fairy lights for seven minutes. I prefer the static light show myself , but I am old fashioned. These webcams thankfully do not show this fairy light show...

The French tea is something else out of the drinks machine. It tastes like warm milk which is frothy. The coffee here would stop you sleeping for a week. Water seems the best option.

It all bring backs happy memories of my honeymoon in Paris fourteen years ago.. Must come back soon as a tourist.

Monday October 11, 2004

Students in a workplace

I thought it would be interesting to work out how many years we have had students in our workplace. We started with one ( who is now back with us as a full time employee) and we then moved onto three and last year I inherited another lab with two more students. So I reckon we are in our sixth year. I would have re-employed more of our previous students if I had the vacancies...

What does Sun and the student get out of this ? Well lots of things.

If we get the right candidate they are enthusiastic and keen to learn as much as they can in the year they are with us. This means they don't mind doing what some might see as boring work, setting up lab systems to reproduce customer problems. In this area they can be setting up a small desktop type machine all the way up to a complicated E25K configuaration, San environment or cluster for example. One candidate likened this to 'real computing'.

The students also get to help us manage the servers we run our business on.

They bring ideas. We can be set in our ways and although we innovate it is amazing how an outsider can see things we do not.

They get the chance to be treated as peers to the full time lab staff. One student has commented in the past that he was impressed we did this. But it is only fair - after all what is the difference? We all need a sandpit in which to learn. Making mistakes is ok as long as it does not mess up the whole operation or if there is a way of recovering from the situation. My experience is that I am just as likely to make mistakes as any student I have employeed.

The students sit with the smartest technical brains Sun has in IMHO. Special skills that mean these clever engineers prefer to solve customer problems and innovate tools to do this instead of developing new products. So the students can sit in and listen to seem pretty mind blowing conversations.

Students can contribute to REAL projects. In our lab there is always a list of things that need doing a mile long. So they redesign our internal networks, introduce new services/servers get to use the latest Solaris releases and hardware as soon as it appears.

We have had some wonderful experiences with students. As the years have gone on I think we have made better choices of students to work with us. We have also gone international. A lot of students we have are from other countries who choose to study in the UK. Chinese, Hong Kong, two Greeks and we have in the past had two female students. The candidate has to be right for us. I am insistant that they must know Linux or Unix a Windows/NT expert will not enjoy or be enjoyed.

So if you are in a position to think about students it is worth doing. You need to start recruiting in January for them to start in July when they do their gap year ( in the UK ). You need to think about what they will do and be prepared to sell the job to them. What training will you offer, mentoring etc. We are lucky in that our students usually stay until September so they can help train the new students who start in July.

One last thing. At forty four I am no old age pensioner. But twenty year old students do keep you young.