PigBlog

Back in December last year, Simon Guilfoyle, police inspector and systems thinker, published this rather good blog article: Life in the Fast lane. He briefly explored what happens when the lane discipline goes wrong, and how capacity is reduced by that, but then moved on to use this as a parallel to managment and targets. He’s also done a similar thing with a visit to a pub.

Now, this stuff interests me, and I’d reccomend the blog to anyone, but I’d actually like to explore the motorway as a system, and what breaks it, and try to speculate why.
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They’re at it again then.

The politicians, despite being met with indifference over the wholesale filtering of domestic Internet connections, our right honourable overlords now wish to promote “good, clean, wi-fi” in public spaces.

Whatever the fuck that means. No porn, maybe? The conspiracy theory types will say this is just the thin end of the wedge for censorship. We could have all sorts of content considered ‘unclean’.

I’ve already discussed that providing wi-fi for public access can be hard, and this is a further obstacle. It’s unclear what the term “wi-fi provider” defines- it could be anything from the biggies like BT Openzone down to my local friendly garage or pub who have chucked a Netgear domestic router in for customers to use.

I’ve already said how hard it is to do filtering properly, and you don’t have to take my word for it.

It’s a bit easier to do on a larger scale, with some enterprise-grade hardware and a subscription, but this costs thousands of pounds a year, and still isn’t 100% accurate.

The domestic routers a lot of small potential wi-fi providers use are the same sort of stuff we all use at home. Here’s my router’s filtering setup page:

A typical domestic router’s filtering setup: dependent on manual entries. Click to embiggen.

It’s reliant on maintaining a list of dodgy sites and entering them. Other routers can block based on DNS hostnames, but this, once again, relies on manually keyed blacklists. This is not going to encourage the provision of free wif-fi if people have to stump up time and money, or face legal problems if they don’t.

Here’s a wild idea: if you’re a parent, talk to your kids about the content available on the Internet (the chances being, if they’re teenagers, they can probably teach you a thing or two). Don’t devolve parenting to tech, and if you really have to, do it on the device, where you have control.

I’ve had a discussion recently on Twatter with Stuart Berry. He seems like a nice chap, and we had a good discussion.

Stuart’s a GP in the NHS, and campaigns for free wifi in NHS buildings with the #nhswifinow hashtag. There’s some really good points: I spend a couple of days in hospital in 2009, and would have killed for decent connectivity, rather than the expensive, shit web access on the bedside TV I did have. If you were in for a long time, it could really help.

Now, don’t know much about healthcare, or the NHS, but I *do* know a bit about wifi, and providing wifi networks over a reasonably-sized site.

I don’t, in principle, disagree with the idea. I’d actually rather like to see universal Internet connectivity for all, everywhere. I’d use it.

However, this is one of those things that, just like the the campaign for wifi on NXWM buses, gets picked up and run with without asking the right questions or considering a few harsh technicalities.

Good wifi is expensive. Good connectivity is expensive, remote managment is expensive, and on-site support engineers are even more expensive. There’s a real danger of people taking the idea of their £15/month domestic broadband, and £35 domestic router, and imagining it will cope on a much larger scale. Trust me: it won’t: I have tried it. It’s unreliable, hard to support, and a wholesale pain in the arse. You can do this, and people do, but you have security and potential illegal usage to bear in mind, on top of all the “I can’t connect” queries, or the “think of the children” content filtering.

Stuart quoted £400 for an ambulance ride to hospital- that sounds reasonable. So, if we’re being a bit awkward, 1 ambulance ride is equal to a decent access point. Which would you rather have if you’re ill? I do think the wifi is a good thing, but can the NHS afford it (and, critically, if not, who does pay)?

An unmanaged, unsupported, poor-performing network is probably worse than nothing, as it delivers the promise, then fails to provide- I wish this idea well (especially as it has secured independent funding), and the proposed device looks very interesting, but providing public wi-fi over shared 3G? *boggle*. The fact that the link in the article goes via facebook speaks volumes.

Turning in particular to buses, the only current, economically viable way to get Internet connectivity to a moving bus (or train, come to that) is 3G (or 4G, I suppose). 3G data is great. It gives us connectivity in many places- but it has problems- dead spots, high latency, changing IPs- I’ve covered this before.

I’d also raise this: surely a good proportion of potential users have their own 3G these days? It seems the whole world had a smartphone before I did, and most of these can do the wifi hotspot trick for if you have a device without it’s own 3G radio. 3G data is no longer expensive, especially compared to the cost of the device you need to use it….

As is traditional, I went to Walsall Beer Festival. Unusually, I went in the day on Saturday, hoping to avoid some of the beers running out, and have it not so busy.

It worked, to some degree, but there were still a few notable beers that had run out: Backyard Brewhouse‘s Chinook IPA had gone, so we had to take a post-festival visit to The Fountain for that (well worth the trip). In all we found 5 or 6 beers no longer available: it seems everyone likes the same sort of beer (pale, hoppy ales and IPAs) as us.

Beyond that, it was great. There was still a good choice of great beer, decent food on offer from the town hall restaurant, and a friendly, relaxed atmosphere, so a big thanks and kudos to Walsall CAMRA for a great job. My one slight complaint? More seats required- us poor middle-aged types with kanckered legs and backs can’t stand for long. We did find seats, but they were in short supply.

Next year, I reckon, it’ll have to be a day off and visit on Thursday afternoon.

My bike has been stolen, from the Barns Lane area of Rushall this morning. My own stupid fault in one way- it was unlocked.

It’s a Forest Green GT Nomad Hybrid bike, similar to this one:

A bike similarish to my stolen GT Nomad. Click to enlarge.

with a 19″ frame, a black back wheel (the front is the original silver-coloured one). The bash ring on the chainwheel is missing, and the brake cable outers are silver rather than the original black, so it’s fairly distictive.

[edit]
Here’s a picture of an almost identicatal bike (front). Note mine has the bash ring on the chainwheel missing, silver brake cables, and a black back wheel, and this one (an unknown colleague’s) has had a replacement saddle, which mine needed…

An almost doppelganger.

This is a bit painful: I’d usually steer a million miles from linking the Daily Fail, bu there’s local content.

If you drive along the Rugeley bypass (the A51/A513 multiplex), as I did last Sunday from the Stafford/Milford direction, you can’t really miss two things: Rugeley Power Station, and the huge Amazon “fulfilment centre” (i.e. a big shed).

This article I’m reluctantly linking is written in fairly typical Fail style:

Between a sooty power station and a brown canal on the edge of a small Midlands town, there is a long blue building that looks like a smear of summer sky on the damp industrial landscape.

*[retch]* Where do they get these journos from?

but still has a bit of interest, and makes an interesting read just to hear about some of the organisation. The way the staff are employed leaves something to be desired though: it being the all-too-common scene these days of temporary contracts and hire-and-fire.

This is letting light in on the magic a bit of course: to me it still is magic that I can sit at home (or at work, or, well, within reason anywhere), and order stuff, and a few days later the magic pixies deliver it to me. Of course, the pixies are HGVs or Transits, ships, containers, railways and all the other infrastructure we barely think about (like this huge warehouse in Rugeley), and all the people, too- people on minimum wage, on short term contracts, and at risk of losing their job for going off sick, if the story is to be believed.

There’s a couple of further, better written articles I’ve found on this, but they’re US-based: The Price of Amazon’s Free Shipping, and I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave.

This is all a good indicator of the way things are these days of course. Lots of hidden layers we don’t see, outsourcing, but (on a more positive note) some great use of tech. Tech that’s useful, rather than flashy. I’m still loving the idea that, in effect, stock gets dumped anywhere that it will fit, rather than a designated place, and just gets scanned as being there.

Amazon, like any big, successful business, has some practices you’d rather they didn’t have, but by god, the system works…

It’s well about time I blogged about our new furry children. Our previous pets have all had finest shitty handcrafted HTML pages, but practically all my web output goes here now.

After the death of Meowth we were, frankly heartbroken. Our pussycat friend was our surrogate child, and our companion: in short, irreplaceable, but having said that we can’t not have a pet or pets.

To this end, we went off to Cats Protection, and found our new friends- a pair of black and white cats, sister and brother, who had to be homed together. They have since been renamed QT McWhiskers and Kitty Softpaws
or QT and Kitty for short.

It’s been a long and at times painful settling-in period: they have spend weeks under the bed, only coming out to make a ton of noise at 4am: we’re wondering what their previous home was like. Now, however, they are coming round. Kitty has taken to the catflap, and QT is starting to consider it. I have a lapcat again, even if she doesn’t spend hours there like Meowth did as she got older. QT is a big soft Mommy’s boy, Kitty is Daddy’s girl.

One hing I have decided is that there will be more photos: We didn’t have nearly enough of Meowth, or some have got lost or deleted.

Given the poor weather, with heavy snow, recently, it’s not surprising that gritting has come to many people’s attention, and, as BrownhillsBob comments on his 365 tumblr, there’s some real nastiness and misinformation.

I’ve lost count of the number of people insisting every side road is gritted, and that Walsall MBC haven’t gritted main roads, and blaming the council for their own shortcomings as drivers.

Let’s get some things straight:

* Walsall MBC do many things badly. They also so some things well; bin collections and gritting are things they do well most of the time.

* Despite the bullshit perpetrated by some, Walsall MBC’s gritters were out and about on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (18-20 Jan). I saw them around Walsall Wood on several occasions, on one occasion coming by just in time to help free a truck stuck on Walsall Wood canal bridge.

* On Sunday morning, the A461 was slightly slippery, but perfectly passable for a clumsy twat like me to drive a car I drive rarely on summer tyres without hitting anything, or even coming close. I’m no driving god (by a long shot) but the usual technique of leaving a lot of room, maintaining momentum where possible, and using the controls gently seems to work.

* Generally, you have a choice to drive or not. If you’re unable to control a vehicle in slippery conditions, well… don’t. Your 4×4 won’t beat physics, either, as won’t those winter tyres I keep banging on about (but both will help, and having winter tyres on a 4×4 will shock most people). It’s your responsibility to drive safely, within reasonable margins- so if it’s snowy or icy, you should expect slippy roads, and drive to the conditions, expecting others to slide. Alternatively, you could just make up “facts”, accuse the council of “dereliction of duty”, and complain. If it’s life or death, then it’s pretty certain you’ll have had some driver training. If your usual route isn’t gritted, choose an alternative that is.

* Grit isn’t magic. It lowers the freezing point with salt, and aids grip and breaks up ice and snow with the actual gritty bits. To do this, it needs time, and crucially, some traffic to grind it in. Additionally, it can only cope with a certain amount of snow.

* Gritting resources are finite. There are only so many staff and trucks, and a lot of roads.

I’ll gladly lay into Walsall MBC online (and I’ve done so before), but this is just silly. The gritting teams are doing a good job.

I take a passing interest in politics, or at least in the results of politics. My own political leanings do, as anyone reading will probably eventually realise, lean leftwards, and in a mockery of the old cliche, as I get older, lean more so.

I’ve been criticised online when I’ve mentioned the shortcomings of local politicians, with the suggestion that I should get involved.

Here’s the rub: I don’t want to. I’m not interested enough. I’m not interested in a future in politics, and quite frankly, I have neither the time or energy to do so.

Most of all, I don’t want to be involved in the games and the bullshit.

Last night’s display (documented fully by BrownhillsBob, Aiden MacHaffie,and discussed beforehand by The Plastic Hippo in a far better way than you’d find here) by the local Tory bunch voting themselves a raise while employees and citizens suffer cuts, aided and abetted by the Labour group abstaining, allowing the motion through was stunning. Note: at this point I’d like to make it clear that at least 2 councillors have made it publicly known that they will not be accepting the increase. This is to be applauded, but the situation is either amazing incompetence (by neglecting to offer an alternative), or there’s something I’m missing, and it’s some grand scheme.

I’ll be generous: I’ll ignore the possibility of incompetence, because I can’t quite believe it: the people involved know the process and how it works, so they would know what would happen. They’d previously stated they would oppose the raise.

So then, why does the world of politics have to be all about games, point-scoring, and petty battles? Why is the whole thing so detached from what it should be? One look at our politicians in the House of Commons should be enough to convince us that efficient, sensible public service is a long way from what goes on.

Am I being too simplistic? Is there something I just don’t get? I think I’m a fairly pragmatic person, but as such, I recognise there are things I don’t understand. Maybe this is one of them (and if it is, please comment), but I dearly wish we could cut the crap, and get councillors politicians at all levels that look after the people that they represent.

It’s worth mentioning that a much loved Walsall pub, The Fountain has re-opened (yesterday), after being closed in August, and amazingly not catching fire.

Local brewery and nice chaps The Backyard Brewhouse have bought the pub. I’ve not visited yet, but when I do, it will get a PubBlog revisit entry. It’s nice to see another good local pub re-opened, since The Swan has done so well.