John Allsopp

Professionally engineered Internet solutions for humans

The Daily Star: 24 July 2006: Lebanon's Daily Star seems to offer good journalism in English and a useful way to escape the Western news bubble. Ya Libnan too.
Broadband recommendations: 24 July 2006: I'm increasingly often being asked to recommend a broadband provider to people who are moving from dialup, which means basically people who aren't that bothered about the Internet (or they'd have already moved), and I'm finding myself in conflict.; I'm a professional advisor, so I find myself unable to recommend a product that carries a risk of not working properly. That seems justified in the case of, for instance, a B&B that might want to offer wireless Internet access to its clients (who may arrive one evening, leave the next morning, and will absolutely want the Internet connection to be working if that's what they've paid for), but even in the case of someone buying broadband so their daughter can do homework, given the increasing propensity for people to do things last minute, you don't want broadband to be unavailable the night before an exam or hand-in. So, just like the old rule that says your bicycle lights only malfunction in the dark, you only notice broadband has stopped working when you need it.; Having said that, in the situation where I haven't the time to make a proper judgment, I'll turn to the reviews and comparisons of others, and I tend to turn, for ADSL (Broadband) advice, to www.broadband-help.com.; Using them, I chose BISCIT Internet some years ago, and they've served me very well from a service and uptime point of view (although I have some unresolved issues of slow initial connection to deal with at some point, but that might be my Linux).; Even though at the time BISCIT were top dog for customer service, I ended up with horrendous problems. Perhaps a year ago I started to notice that whereas I was paying £30 or more (can't remember) for my broadband connections, there were ads for broadband for £19.99 and then £14.99 so I contacted BISCIT and they agreed that I could have, essentially, a better (faster) service for less money. I agreed to that, and then it took perhaps six months before I could actually get them to do it.; The situation became more complicated as they left it, because I wanted my accounts backtracked to when I gave them the go ahead. I was paying more and getting less, and I wanted that money back. Eventually, they agreed, but came back with a shocker. Despite using their service for a couple of years, apparently I'd never paid for the modem I was using, worth £140 or so, and so instead of them owing me money, I owed them.; I tracked back and couldn't find any invoice or any payment, so I had no defence. This is partly because, as I understand it, any ADSL supplier holds a token that allows them access to the last mile of copper wire to your house, which is where ADSL happens. If you want to move supplier, your current supplier has to pass the token to the new one, and they won't do that unless you're up to date with your accounts. There was no point, therefore, arguing.; So let's summarise the story so far. I used the best broadband supplier who forgot to invoice me for equipment, knew I hadn't paid for two years and never chased me for it until I chased them. Furthermore, they held me on a tariff that slowly became less value for money than alternatives with no intention to keep me up to date until and unless I hassled for it. The moral of the story so far is, then, check your broadband every six months or so and hassle your supplier to make sure you're getting the best deal.; All that from the best provider. I suppose the cynical might say my system plainly didn't work, I got the hassle anyway, and paid through the nose for the privilege. That's probably true, but I still maintain that using a system of peer review, ie. www.broadband-help.com, I minimised my risk. I should say that BISCIT's technical support has been really exemplary.; So now broadband is being offered free of charge by many providers. Talk Talk, Sky, Orange. Well, let's be clear, it's not free of charge because all of those providers give broadband away as part of other equally lucrative contracts for, for instance, mobile phone services or satellite tv. All of which serves to make the whole thing more complicated.; But take a look at current pub topic Talk Talk which offers free broadband. If you follow this through even their official site shows they are so overwhelmed by demand if I were to subscribe now I wouldn't be connected until the end of September. What are the chances of their admin being 100%? And as we've seen above, if you fall out with them and want to change, their records have to be correct in order for them to pass their token to the next supplier. If they think you owe them money, nothing will happen.; If you look at the reviews for Talk Talk, you'll see problems with phone answering, emails not replied to, and so on. Changing my service with BISCIT was a pain, clearly no broadband supplier wants to make it easy for you to get more by paying less from them. It's in their interest not to answer the phones efficiently or answer emails.; Finally, I have to factor in my time. If I'm charging, say, £35 or £40 per hour and the client wants help to setup broadband, help when it goes wrong, and advice, ultimately, about changing suppliers, my time will soon mount up. Much better to go with a company that provides products and services that work and helplines that help and if that costs a little more each month, that's probably cheaper than repeatedly calling me in to solve the problems caused by crappy service. This, write large, is the basis of my IT support service.; So you see my dilemma. This is a lot to explain in a moment when a client asks 'who do you recommend me to go with'. I can only recommend the best service I can see. Most recently I recommended Eclipse to someone and that seems to have gone OK, but I just know they're wondering whether they were right to sign up to pay £14.99 a month when the ads say they could have got it from Talk Talk for free.
A pet hate of mine: 22 July 2006: I'm clearing some cupboards out and I found a list from the careers service at uni of good careers sites, so I went to one, www.thebestjobs.co.uk.; It's quick and easy to use. I selected IT as my work area, and North as my geographic area and then it gave me another level so I selected Web Developer out of a long list of possibilities as my job and North Yorkshire as my area and pressed search.; The message telling me nothing's been found is hidden right at the top of the screen in small writing the same colour as everything else, so I missed that and tried again. Then I noticed it.; Well, OK, I was hoping but there aren't that many web developer jobs around here so let's maybe widen the search geographically and see how things are. Let's choose Anywhere.; Still nothing. No web developer jobs anywhere. That's quite surprising. Maybe Web Developer is quite specific, let's see what jobs there are. Let's try "any job" "anywhere".; Nothing. YOU MEAN TO TELL ME, YOU LED ME THROUGH THAT WHOLE RIGMAROLE AND YOU HAD ABSOLUTELY NO 'IT' JOBS AT ALL ANYWHERE, AND YOU KNEW IT BEFORE I EVEN STARTED BUT YOU STILL THOUGHT IT WAS FINE TO WASTE MY TIME LIKE THAT? Tossers.; A site like that should be designed to forewarn the user of that sort of outcome. Maybe they were overenthusiastic about what jobs they'd get. Maybe the whole thing's closed down but no-one remembered to unplug the website. One way forward would be to list how many jobs there are in each category. That way, users can navigate to where the opportunities are.
Theremin: 22 July 2006: So there I was at the Creative Coast networking bingo event in which we were supposed to meet people and do skills swapping stuff, and, incidentally, where we were supposed to get a pizza buffet but I thought the restaurant (The Villa) very mean in that regard, and I got talking to Cap'n Antz and his red, flakey nose and, as he always does, he had some handouts for a gig. Now: this gig sounds really interesting.; It's Olivine vs Theremin at Vivaz. Olivine, he says, think of themselves as the hardest band in town. I've seen them, they do shake your flares. And they have a didgeridoo player with dreadlocks. So yes, you wouldn't wander into their pub and shout .. well, you just wouldn't wander into their pub.; Anyway, Antz has put together a band to challenge them for the title "hardest band in town". He has a theremin but seemed strangely reticent about telling me where he got it from, and has assembled various additional musicians into a band that will practice twice before the gig. Did he mention a violinist?; The gig itself will be decked out in boxing regalia and the bands will alternate, each playing one song each time. Apparently the audience will follow some form of scoring system, like a real boxing match .. so many points for an upper cut that lands, etc (I'm out of my depth here, can you tell?), and in the end, Scarborough will know which band is the hardest.; Now that gives me a thrill. What a fantastic idea. Ideas are one thing, but Antz makes them happen. I think I have to be there. Hope to see you there.; Vivaz (next to Pizza Hut, Scarborough), 4 August. Doors open at 10:00.
Café Heart: 20 July 2006: .. and another: Café Heart
Whitby ArtNet: 19 July 2006: I've another case study for you, this time Whitby ArtNet
The Beauty Myth: 16 July 2006: I'm re-reading Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth and it's really changing me, radicalising me, and it's coming out in conversations.; The other day I came out with a summary of part of the book that said men, generally, are satisfied with their bodies, while women, generally, are not. This goes all the way back to the Bible, where man was created in God's image, but women were created from a spare rib. Men are like God. Women, are like spare parts. Someone said "if you believe in the Bible".; But I think that misses the point. I don't know my facts here, but I assume the Bible was written by a man and presumably after the fact. So whether Jesus came to earth or not, the Bible was written outside his editorial control, and surely such an important text, just as now, would have been influenced by what people wanted society to be. Male people. Males who have always held control over society.; Genesis 3:16: "Unto the woman He said, I will greatly multiply thy pain and they travail; in pain thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee." These are the words of control, of power aimed at keeping women down.; And after the second wave of feminism, women are still nowhere near free. Yesterday The Independent carried a story about Essex County Council proposing to turn off its street lights after midnight in order to save energy, citing environmental targets. That's a curfew for women, who have campaigned, and still campaign, for adequate street lighting to deter rapists and muggers. And it's justified by reference to a problem, global warming, that I think would never have happened if women were the powerful ones, or at least if it did, the solution would have been taken more seriously. So, men caused the problem, but it's women who suffer the problem, and the solution. When, exactly, is this going to change? Because I want it changed now. Right now.
Oliver's dancing Susie: 16 July 2006: I achieved a couple of ambitions over the last two days. Gosh that reminded me of something: a friend's very sulky South African girlfriend who, when we gave her two sweets when she asked for couple, sulked and then threw a strop because where she came from "a couple means more than two".; Anyway, the first fairly major one was I played a gig on Friday and people got up to dance. And there we were, me playing drums, them dancing. How fantastic! I've always wanted to do that. I almost learned the violin one time so I could play jigs and reels. I think it's to do with me absolutely not being the 'life and soul of the party' type. I don't even dance, myself. I tend to (I think I've discussed this before in relation to being tall (yes, here)) sit on the sidelines and watch. I get huge enjoyment just sitting and watching a party in full swing, I don't have to be in there jumping about, it's great to see others doing it. So I think perhaps it's natural for me to start to think about how to contribute more to a party like that, and it's a small step to thinking I could provide the music. So that's an ambition achieved. Fantastic.; Another very small minor one was, I wanted to be fit enough to run to the top of Oliver's Mount in Scarborough. You get fantastic views of Scarborough from up there, by the way. So yesterday I had to run for six miles, which is the longest I've run since doing my 10k last year and I decided to make the break for Oliver's Mount. From the Grand it took just 20 minutes to reach the top, and it's really beautiful up there on a summer's day, there are bits of meadow, it's like being out in the proper countryside.; On a completely unrelated topic, but I find it's disproportionately inside my head, I find I can't forgive Susie in Big Brother for finding so much amusement in Richard and Mikey having a serious argument about killing or otherwise the field mouse that found its way into the house. Susie started by instructing people to go and tell others they can/can't do whatever, and in the heat of the argument, she was helplessly giggling in her bed, and later, found there to be sufficient merit in her behaviour that she told others how funny she thought it all was. I've no time for Richard ("remember what I told you", err why? and *told*) and no particular feelings about Mikey (besides being irritated by how he walks .. how crap is that of me?), but have some empathy ffs! They were getting upset, getting upset is bad, it's not funny. If they'd killed each other would that have split her sides? And the justification? She lives in the countryside and there are mice .. oh I can't be bothered. She lives in the countryside, that's the point. Good for her. I doubt somehow that she worked for that although I'm sure she'd get very uppity about that. But how I'd laugh at her upset. And while I'm at it, her disgust at the general cleanliness in the house. I wonder whether she has a cleaner to clean hers. Anyway, I can't forgive the laughing thing, she's cold, not nice, she has to go.
Business Link: 10 July 2006: Yowser. I've now officially been approved by the local Business Link as a supplier of websites to the people they advise (and provide grants to).; It's no small thing. I had to be interviewed, they checked my accounts, my insurances, my skills and abilities, business plans including continuity and marketing, my method of working, approach to quality, system of charging, and my client contracts. I had to submit six references which they checked out. So I'm proper chuffed.
Spurn Point: 6 July 2006: We took a day off yesterday to explore Spurn Point.; It's a two hour drive from Scarborough if you take the coast road, maybe 90 minutes if you take the A roads. We parked at the visitor centre (open Friday, Saturday and Sunday only) and walked the length of it, which we reckon is maybe an 8 mile walk there and back, more or less.; A friend had mentioned it, actually I think they holidayed there for a few days, and then it was featured on the BBC tv programme, Coast. Given that the BBC is putting its entire archive online, I can't work out why I can't find more information about that programme online, so this will have to be from memory. Well, either that or Wikipedia.; Apparently in the second world war the authorities decided that Spurn Point would be an ideal landing point for the German army. It has long stretches of beach, no major local population to defend it, and it would afford the Germans a perfect place from which to lob missiles at any traffic to and from the port and docks at Hull. So they built several big guns, made an enormous effort to create 6' square blocks of concrete and placed them along the beach to stop tanks, and built wooden defences too. At Spurn Point itself, they dug underground defences and ditches big enough to stop tanks. All very serious stuff.; It was a misty day, Scarborough had been in fret, blown in from the North, for a few days, so at the start we couldn't see our destination. This shot is of the river side (the Humber) looking at the point as it curves to the right. We should have been able to see the lighthouse, but couldn't. As we sat, while we couldn't see anything, there was a constant low drone of ship engines.; We saw a couple of birds of prey sat on the phone or electricity lines. I'm no expert, but looking in the book maybe they were Buzzards, maybe a Harrier, I'm liking Montagu's. I don't think so, but that's the closest I seem to be able to get. For a complete amateur, this isn't easy. I'm using the RSPB Birdwatcher's Pocket Guide, and their own website, and the pictures are really very different indeed. So anyway, they were big brown birds. The thing that struck me was big black eyes and black spindly legs so it took me a while to think they were birds of prey, but the hooked beak did it. They were relatively large too, so bigger than a Kestrel. Maybe I should be working from this shortlist but I've lost the will. Maybe I should just enjoy them and not be so damned databasey.; The river side is mostly mud flats. This first image shows the tide in, but as we walked back, the tide was coming out and the flats extend for miles. Spurn Point is an important bird habitat. There's a hide for watching them, but I don't know if it's just open to anyone.; We were amazed at the range of plant (and animal) life here. The place was ablaze with colour, and even though we had a light crosswind and the point is very thin in places, the perfume from the flowers was really stunning.; How irritating. How distinctive is this caterpillar? I've bought the reference: Caterpillars of the British Isles. Yet I can't work out what it is. Maybe it's a Clouded Buff. This is supposed to be relaxing, not frustrating!; At the point itself, there's a lighthouse, a few houses, some sea navigation buildings, a pier housing the 'pilot' boats. Nowhere to get a decent cup of tea though (but there was a tired caravan that said it was a cafe, but that was closed).; We had checked the weather and it gave a small chance of thunderstorms, but by the time we'd sat and eaten on the Southernmost tip, we could hear a thunderstorm building off Grimsby, and another inland. As we walked back, the lightning started, and when the rain came down we took shelter under our one showerproof, huddled against a sand dune in case I got struck by lightning.; It was fun rain though, a break from the damp heat, and warm enough not to be uncomfortable. On the way back the sun broke through again.