John Allsopp

Professionally engineered Internet solutions for humans

Scarborough shops: 30 March 2007: A disconcerting number of old Scarborough shops are closing down, which is a real pity because what attracted me most about Scarborough at first was that the shops weren't all chain stores. John More closed down recently, not that a pottery shop is of any concern to a funky young man like me, but it had been there for yonks and, yes, I had been in there recently (to buy a gift you understand).; But now Bernard Dean, the music shop, is closing down. It's been in his family since 1945 and was a music shop before then. I asked him if it was the Internet that nailed it, but he says not, he's just ready to retire. So in a town with two academic institutions both with serious music departments, and with a really huge music scene, we are left to the vagaries of Mancini's opening times, nice chap though he his. Hmm, but a quick check in Yell says there's something called Knight Music here. I'll have to investigate.; Anyway, Mr Dean reckons he's got a couple of weeks left to clear the remaining stock so get down there, everything seems to be reduced.
Hong Kong views: 29 March 2007: So, our lady friend who lives here on the 17th floor (of 28) sees this as her view:; .. she did mention the smog. Our gentleman friend who lives here on the 25th floor of 28 looks out onto:; Look! They have sky too! Ain't the Internet wonderful?; He says "After living in UK for more than half year, I can only experience the real British culture in the last few days. I love the sharing with you guyz, the real fish & chips, the stove, the warm beer, the art, the stream train etc etc (also,, I do like the airbed ~~). Super thx for giving me those experience !!!! Oh..~ I have already started missing lovely kanba and mitzy...~ have to go to Scarborough in big sunny day next time ~~!!"; How cute is that! He nice man (and she nice rady).
I've spawned something.: 28 March 2007: The nice people at Electric Angel seem to have been inspired by my blog. I caught wind of them using my site as an example of one that weaves in some individuality with business and now they've decided to junk their site in favour of a blog. Bloody creative people, screw down the furniture, they can't see anything good without stealing it. I thought the idea was you came up with ideas not just nicked them! Still, there's nothing new under the sun .. obviously my blog was the first one anyone had ever seen, in fact, I invented the Internet. And computers. Electricity? Mine. The Angels are good people, so I wish them well, and I've a lot to learn from them. So long as they don't write a better blog than me.
Railway Cottages case study: 28 March 2007: Another case study for you.
Worthington case study: 27 March 2007: Another case study for you.
Recommended Records: 25 March 2007: Listening to some works from Recommended Records takes me back to my adolescence, but I fear they've become more radical even than then and I'm finding it difficult to break in. Old stuff I love includes (try it from the link above) Slapp Happy, check out excerpt 1 from Acnalbasac Noom, the drumming (any Chris Cutler, really) in something like Excerpt 1 from Henry Cow's Western Culture, the Art Bears, Winter Songs excerpt 1 (again Chris Cutler). Recommended used to market themselves using sampler tapes (I helped to duplicate one for them in days of yore), but I think they've stopped doing that now. I bought the closest thing I could find a year or more ago .. The Angelica festival and just didn't really get it. So, do your best and if you find something you like let me know.; I think the people from Manfat Voodoo would like this stuff, but who knows?
Hong Kong: 25 March 2007: We entertained a couple of my partner's friends from Hong Kong over Friday and Saturday. They painted a nightmare vision of Hong Kong as a place where people get up in the morning and go to work for 9am, then work until probably at least 9pm but more likely later, and if you work for one of the top four accounting companies 1am is normal, then you come home, sleep, and do it all again, five and a half days a week. Imagine that, where that's normal, where if you don't do that you fall behind (not like here where you might to that for the reward of getting ahead). That leaves no time for cultural activities, and little time for family: most have maids to take care of their kids. Nightmare. And when you think about it, the first thing you think of when thinking of Hong Kong is business rather than culture or art. That could always be my ignorance poking through again (Wikipedia says: martial arts films).; The female friend lives here on the 17th floor (of 28) while the gentleman friend lives here on the 25th floor of 28. They are going to send photographs of their views of whatever that bit of water's called (update: see blog of 29th).; We gave them an English pub experience on the Friday night in which I tackled the difficult subject of Engrish. These friends are highly educated, perfectly able people but I caught them saying "Engrish" and wondered whether it was like my total inability to roll my Rs which must give me a comedically English quality when trying to speak Spanish, and the French inability to say 'th', so "where are my clothes" becomes "where are my clozies". They immediately tried again, and out came a perfect "English". We decided it was simply habit, a faster and easier neural pathway, rather than an inability such as those others. And that's what pubs are for .. ironing out these cultural folds.; They also spent a great time working on Chinese pictograms with a friend who has previously said she thinks in pictures and then has to work out the words for the pictures in her head.; Given they'd not seen much of our countryside we toured up the coast and back over the moors. These pics are with the Canon Digital IXUS 65.; We found a couple of North Yorkshire Moors Railway steam trains in at Grosmont.; There was a beautiful moment as I was standing on the platform taking pictures when a little girl saw me and started waving her Thomas The Tank Engine flag at me for the picture. I took four pics until this one, the others variously had flags in front of her face or were blurred, but she kept waving at me and looking, even moved to a different window. There was enough time for me to show her her picture through the window before the train pulled away. It's the shared innocence. I was there because "whoa, steam trains", and so was she. We were both children in awe of the machinery. Magical.; Now I don't know what the laws are in this situation, but my partner did raise an issue about putting this on the blog. A chap was taken into police custody in Scarborough two days ago for videoing at a school playground (but he was innocently trying to record what our schools are like for his family back home). I'm thinking: if anyone knows who she is please ask her parents to get in touch with me and obviously if they feel they'd rather I remove it I will. Her (I presume) dad was smiling and saw the pic, and I also presume that's her mum smiling there in the picture. For me, this was a really beautiful, innocent and playful moment and I have a real problem with being stopped from sharing that. I even have a problem with having to write all this and, essentially, spoil the sanctity of the moment with such considerations. So there's the picture. If anyone knows there's a law to stop me doing that then do get in touch, but I don't think there is and I don't think anyone involved would have a problem. You can't have an Internet without any pictures of children, that's ridiculous: just put "little girl" into Google images: 10.7 million of them.; Anyway, a great day was had by all.
ISP trouble: 23 March 2007: So there I was at 10:30 on Monday morning when my browser windows started to come up with faults and a BT Wholesale page came up, just the once, saying "your Internet Service Provider BISCIT Internet Ltd has ceased trading", and that was as far onto the Internet as I could get.; Back at the start of February I blogged about having a conversation with BISCIT (my ISP) about upgrading. Actually in retrospect the prompt for my desire to upgrade was I started to feel my connection had slowed down. Maybe now I think BISCIT had raised the contention ratio or something in order to save cash. Now, I always knew that BISCIT's admin was shoddy after their accounts got into a complete mess and it took a lot of pushing to get them to upgrade me, but the way I was treated made me think they were getting themselves straight.; The thing that made me stay with them was the Internet connection was always reliable, and I know some people for whom it isn't. However I'm in the clear because I never recommended BISCIT to any of my clients .. I couldn't until I could see their admin had been sorted.; At the end of that upgrade conversation in February I asked to sleep on the options and for the chap to call me back on Monday. He asked me to email them to remind them to call, which I didn't really think was acceptable since I was trying to buy something. Anyway it took me a week or so to do that, after which nothing happened, so I called them, I was third in the queue, then second, then first, and that wait lasted 55 minutes before my SkypeOut credit was gone, I never did get connected.; So then I sent another email. The problem with all this is you can't just get another broadband supplier, you have to get the old one to release your MAC code. So you have to choose a broadband supplier that has a working admin department, will answer the phone, etc. I was trapped (although perhaps that's now changed).; If I'm honest, I feel a bit of a chump. I was oblivious to BISCIT's woes even though it was public knowledge. So I need to work out a business continuity plan that includes a Google Alert for my key suppliers .. my ISP, my web host, and my domain name supplier.; I don't think my process for choosing BISCIT in the first place was flawed, and I've done the same again. I looked at Broadband-help.com and according to that three companies were top overall: Get Online B, ICUK Internet, and idnet. Each one seemed to be better than the last so after calling for my MAC address (from the page supplied by BT) actually I called BT first to see if they could connect me straight away (nope, five days, plus you get a router and a free phone and all that nonsense I didn't need) so I called idnet, spoke with someone straight away, three days, sorted.; Now this morning it's taken two good phone calls to get connected. I called idnet twice. I have to say, a gold star should be sarcastically awarded to the person at idnet who designed the system that, when someone calls to say they are lacking a broadband connection because their ISP's gone bust and wishes to migrate, sends that person their access codes by email. Applause. But I spoke to someone, they provided the codes, no problem.; However they couldn't get my Linksys WAG354G router to connect me. ADSL was being provided, but I wasn't getting an Internet connection. So I spent 55 minutes on the phone to someone in, I think Pune. She said Mumbai is very hot and humid and busy, but Pune is beautiful.; Now she was fantastic. Well the first person I called said "err, my computer's just gone down, would you mind calling back?" But Gurusharal who took my call the second time was spot on. She used the NATO phonetic alphabet to overcome any accent barriers, was very helpful, went through the whole setup of my router, wired and wireless (remembering I have three operating systems here), we upgraded the router's firmware too.; Now that is why I don't buy on price. Good support is worth too much.; So I'm back online, apologies for any delays caused. I now have a 2.7Mbps connection (the best I can get from an 8Mbps connection), a fixed IP address (which I requested from BISCIT but never got), and apparently that 2.7Mbps is shared between upstream and downstream. For those that don't know, in ADSL (the real name for broadband) the A stands for asymmetric and means that while you might get 8Mbps downloaded to your computer, uploading files (eg. photographs to something like Flickr) is sent over a much smaller 'pipe', perhaps only 256kbps. This is because in general use we send the URL for a website and want the whole content back, so ADSL is in proportion with common Internet usage. For me, however, if I want to host websites, 256kbps upstream isn't within a plane journey's distance of being good enough. But now, with both those things perhaps I can host a few low traffic sites. So I'm bigger and better, not to mention faster. And at last, I'm free of BISCIT's paperwork losing system. There's just the small matter of 915 emails to sort through from the past 4 days.
Poor: 19 March 2007: According to this (click for 'by newspaper' and then choose the Scarborough Evening News) I live in the poorest part of the Scarborough Evening News' readership with the lowest average income of just £24,000. I think that's household income. From memory I think YO11 1 is Castle Road down to the south seafront and west as far as possibly Valley Road but I'm not sure.
Not sure: 18 March 2007: You can never tell if these things are exercises or real rescues, but we just (14:15) watched the coastguard helicopter pick someone up from where the hotel fell into the sea the other year. My g/f noticed orange smoke, then the helicopter. Then we noticed there was someone hanging from the helicopter. Then it landed, and took off. (Update: apparently Sunday is practice day); Speaking of which, I notice it must be the anniversary of the truly tragic death of Kim Barrett and her son and daughter Luke and Aimee Greenwood who were taken off the slipway in North Bay by heavy seas two years ago. I used to walk so gingerly down that slipway because it was just that, ultra slippery. No matter how carefully you walked down it, the green weed made it as slippery as ice. Anyway, as I've been running in the last week or two I've noticed a number of people staring out to sea at that place, one in tears and being comforted. And there are lots of flowers there too of course. I do remember looking for the girls body as I ran the coast. It's an awesome thing. Perhaps we are just too used to things being made safe for us. One moment you're playing in the waves, five minutes later your family's drowned. Running around there too the day after, there really wasn't a lifebelt visible from that spot, the nearest was around the headland. The council certainly put a few up quickly after that.
Bugger me!: 15 March 2007: It was only when I was receiving a bit of surprise sodomy in the market a short while ago that I realised what had gone wrong. A grammatical terrorist had inserted a comma in my shopping list where it didn't belong and I'd ended up asking for "a pound of passion, fruit".
Nikon D80: 14 March 2007: I believe photographs can make a website. Ever since I started doing websites I've always used Castle Narrowboats as an example of a stunning photograph making the sale in a blink .. except they've changed it all now and messed it up. The photograph they used to use is, I think, five down on that page, but for some reason everything's gone green and the quality of those pics is much worse. Maybe it's not the same shot ... hang on ... no, nothing like the same shot. But still, you don't need to read the words to know you want to be on that narrowboat.; Increasingly, photography is part of my offering. Now I'm no Paul Caponigro (the work may look stunning online, but, trust me, if you get a chance see the real prints do it .. they stop you breathing), but I did study photography and I do my best and I haven't come across a situation yet where what I did wasn't a huge improvement on what the client provided themselves.; Much of the work is presently interior shots of rooms .. there's a lot of that coming up .. so I've been pressing into service my old Pentax ME Super which I bought with my first grant cheque back in 1980 or thereabouts (and after that unwise decision I was (almost) forever in debt, living for weeks on baked potatoes and awesomed out when my parents bought me a pound of cheese), together with a set of lenses from my brother in law. I've then been taking the film to be scanned onto CD by Jessops which not only costs a little bit each time which I have to pass on to my customers, it also wastes a good hour and a half of otherwise perfectly useful and chargeable time while I wander into town to give them the film, lose the ticket, search for and find the ticket, then treck back out again to pick up the CD. And that's not counting the time I have to spend making myself look less like a toffee that's fallen down the back of the sofa just in case I bump into one of you, my fragrant readers, in town.; You can see the quality of that process in the Cafe Heart site. I rather hoped that with a bit of discussion we might be able to work out better machine settings, but the blacks are all black and the whites are all white and even though it's scanned at a fairly high resolution there just isn't the detail, and in putting together a visual example of my work, I decided enough was enough (consistent with Rackham). So, given that Jessops were offering a pay nothing for a year, interest (but not stress) free, deal, I bought a Nikon D80.; Given that I hadn't been doing the adolescent thing of lusting over it for months before buying it .. I'm treating it very factually as a piece of business kit .. I've not had the post purchase blues. All I'm getting is a strong feeling of gadget love: it is a beautiful thing.; So let's now look at a picture from each of the three cameras, all in automatic mode, first, the Pentax Optio 330GS (if you click the image, you'll be able to download the original file). Meet Mitzy:; Then the Canon Digital IXUS 65:; Then the Nikon D80 (on automatic, straight out of the box):; Now, all I've done is resized the images you are seeing. I'd normally sharpen them after that, but I haven't this time, so that explains the slightly soft focus effect. These are jpegs saved at 100% quality.; I'm no photography critic either, but the first thing to say about the Pentax shot (the first one) is the cat moved .. but it was a sunny day, you'd imagine the shutter speed would have stopped that. Anyway, apologies. We've got a significant blue halo around the tail against the sky, but we have got sky unlike ..; the Canon (the middle) which manages to overexpose the sky and the sunny brickwork .. the same problem I had with the street shot in the original test .. and we still have a blue halo.; The Nikon D80 shot is in a different class. The colours are the thing that surprised me. In that respect the old Pentax did better than the Canon which washed out the colours, but look at the vibrant colours in the Nikon shot. Now I know you can increase colour saturation afterwards, but it can look a bit obvious, the Nikon's colours look enhanced but good. Plus we have sky, sunny brickwork, and detail in the shadows. Also the Nikon's given us a small depth of field, the brickwork blurs off rapidly. In the other shots it looks like we've been given quite a small aperture bringing most of everything into focus whereas perhaps the Nikon has a faster shutter speed available so can still give us depth of field. It displays in the viewfinder the points it's using to drive the autofocus, so if it's able to measure the distance to different parts of the subject perhaps it can work out how much depth of field it needs and then give us just enough. A smaller depth of field emphasises your subject, making for a more striking, more direct, less distracting image.; Here's detail from all three cameras, Pentax, then Canon, then Nikon. With the brickwork I'm not really sure why they are all blurred. On a sunny day it shouldn't really be depth of field or movement, but it's clearly something.; The thing is: I just clicked to test-download the Nikon shot and found myself staring at it. You want to look at the Nikon shot. The others are fine, factual. They are margarine, the Nikon is organic summer field butter that you just want to bury your face in. I remember meeting a friend who worked in a hifi shop and taking in a Chemical Brothers CD and we tested it on two CD players, a good one, and a great one. The good one was good. But the great one stirred your soul. You can't define this stuff, but it provokes an emotional reaction and buying something is an emotional thing. The D80 will be an asset.; You get what you pay for. Rather like me, actually.
Science shenanigans in the land of the free: 11 March 2007: Wow, I had no idea this sort of thing went on .. the Bush government getting scientists to agree not to talk about sensitive climate change issues when on overseas trips.
Threebies: 11 March 2007: How quickly can I create a website? How does 15 minutes grab you? I mean, OK, it's a rubbish website, but I wrote the text, uploaded it to a server, bought the domain and we're up and running. I can invoice people with Paypal over email, so anything else is just a nice-to have :-)
Holidays: 7 March 2007: Together with some friends we made a list of places we'd like to go: A Scottish Loch lodge, camping in Northumberland, Rome to see the Berninis, the west coast to see the Gormleys, Ireland's West coast, New York, Iceland, Florence, Madrid, Barcelona, Bilbao, and wherever Guernica is.
Punk: 6 March 2007: I was talking to a friend about punk reminiscence (I'm not into it, contrary to what you might think), and he said "those were the happiest times of my life". Well, that was thirty years ago for chrissakes, something's got to change.; So I got to thinking when, for me, was the happiest time of my life. I can think of a few crap times, but not that many, so I think I have to say I am very, very happy right now and great swathes of my life have been more or less happy. Bully for me, I guess. I'm sure that's only a little bit about me making good decisions, so I don't feel pleased with myself. I just feel lucky. It's probably genetics in that my default setting is I'm a happy chappy. My friend had some parental problems, I grew up in a stable, happy home. And more than anything I've had the support, love and intelligence of my partner for almost 23 years, and we haven't had kids so I suppose we used that time and freedom to balance our lives.; There's also that I'm in a job where I'm in control of my future. He works for an institution, he's a cog in a machine, while I can follow my nose and do what I like so long as I have clients who want what I do. That's the essence of jobs like being an artist or open source software developer .. being driven, motivated by exploration and personal growth. It's a beautiful thing.; And dare I say .. you make your bed? OK genetics and your upbringing, and OK I was lucky to find such a beautiful partner, but equally, we work at that and the rest is about the life decisions you make. I'm not a Tony Robbins evangelist, but in the tough times, sometimes there's clarity here. I'd just caution if you are in a tough time, don't get sucked into spending all your money there .. their skill is persuasion. The book's good enough.
Tracking dots: 5 March 2007: Apparently some, if not many, printers deliver, hidden in dots on the pages they print, the date and time of the print, and the serial number of the printer. This is there for legitimate purposes .. to stop you scanning and printing fivers (dollar bills, actually) .. but I didn't know about it and I bet most people don't. What a big trail we leave behind us.
Get Safe Online: 5 March 2007: www.getsafeonline.org looks like it might be useful, and I can only support them in their hope to "decrease novice computer users' reliance on PC-literate friends and family to protect them against online crime"
Tom "Carver" Harvey: 5 March 2007: This chap is a friend of ours. Not friend enough, obviously, for him to ask me to do his website (the bastard), but y'know. It's good work isn't it? His paintings were very good too.
Boots: 4 March 2007: Just to wrap up the ongoing story of the hair gel in Boots that, three times has come up £3.49 on the till yet was labelled £2.99 on the shelf (see previous), this was promised to be fixed and it was. It was now labelled £3.49 on the shelf too. How did I know this wouldn't work in my favour?; But then, how could I complain, they had it on a two for one offer.; So maybe that's the rule. Dance fast enough and no-one can catch you.
Gig: 4 March 2007: We played a gig a few nights ago, a charity event in Whitby, and on the bill with us was Panda Lasagne. Now, I've no idea whether they are signed or what, but I loved every second. They are three young guys .. I never actually saw the drummer, he was tucked away in the corner. I say young because that's really the theme .. forget Nouveau Visage face paste with extracts of Bonomonomommommoohhhhhh and active Selenium 5 microbomblets, if you want to feel young, vital, virile, spunky even, if you want confident freshness, take Panda Lasagne.; They are fun, energetic, and 60% punk. The bassist blew me away. He looks like butter wouldn't melt, but give him his bass and, it's not that he turns into a wildman, but that bass playing was an absolute inspiration.; It took me back to my days in prehistory with Ron Johnson and Big Flame and the Mackenzies .. fast as hell, jagged, but fun too.; There's a bit of Busted/McFly about them too (having read this they say they'll try to iron that out). Catch them when you can. If I were A&R I'd have signed them there and then.
New camera 2: 1 March 2007: I had a go with the new camera on a point and shoot basis and you can see the results here.; If you wish, you can download the original files from the old Pentax, and from the new Canon.; If I just resize them so you can see them, you'll see the main difference, which has been my problem with the Pentax for quite a while now: Pentax first:; Then Canon:; Basically, pretty much regardless of the exposure settings I set on the Pentax, it tends to get it wrong. I don't think that was always the case, but it is now. The shops are too dark, basically, despite me exposing for them. The Canon's got the shops right, but it's overexposed the sky: if I want more detail there I just get a band of one other colour, so there's no detail there at all. Still, I prefer the latter, since it was the shops I was photographing.; As far as detail goes, first the Pentax:; Then Canon:; I'd lazily expected a 6 megapixel camera to provide images twice the size as a 3, but that's wrong isn't it? To get 3.2 megapixels, that's 3,200,000 pixels, let's use a square (it isn't, but for argument's sake) you'd have sides of 1,788 pixels. To get 6 megapixels, you'd need 2,449 along each side, so an image, the car in this case, isn't twice the size, it's just 2449/1788 = 1.37, a third bigger. Oh well.; It's difficult to tell the quality with the Pentax because it messed up the exposure so badly, but if I tweak that a little, you can see the Canon is a long way ahead.; So now, if this were for a website, the best I could get out of the Pentax is this:; and the Canon:; So, there you go. It's certainly not perfect, but it's also certainly an improvement.
New camera: 1 March 2007: I have a new camera (the 'old' Pentax Optio 330GS isn't working well any more, I still think there are three parts to the exposure system and one has failed), a Canon Digital IXUS 65, a PC Pro recommended product. Here's what they don't tell you in the sales process (well, they may argue they do, but if so it's certainly de-emphasised).; Expect to wait over a month for it to arrive once you've ordered it. Same problem as always, a well reviewed product is in great demand and the ones on the boat coming over are pretty much already sold.; This is also an argument for not buying what you see in a shop. Maybe those are the products no-one wants. My local Jessop's had a place on the shelf for this camera, but no product.; The Pentax used Nickel Metal Hydride rechargeable batteries, standard stuff, so I could carry spares. The Canon uses its own battery pack, so if you want to carry a spare, you'll have to buy one (£29). Plus, when you get it, you have to wait about a couple of hours before you get to play with it while the battery charges up.; My Pentax is 3.2 megapixels and with its 128MB Compact Flash card at top quality it'll store 72 pictures. The Canon offers 6 megapixels and comes with a 16MB SD memory card, so I'm expecting to maybe be able to store, well, four pictures before it runs out of steam. So I'll need a new card too, but they seem to be very cheap (so why be so tight in the first place) and for, say £14 I think I'll be able to store maybe 200 pictures (update: with a 2Gb card it's saying over 700 pictures!).; I'll come to the good stuff later, you do at least get the cables to connect it to your USB computer socket and the tv. Looking at the size of it, it's much easier to carry around .. lighter, much smaller and more pocket shaped than the old one.; I went to the vets last Saturday and a woman crouched down in the waiting room over a box of whimpering puppies said the last had been born only a few minutes earlier. They were very cute indeed although they were to grow into 12st Neopolitan Mastiffs so my guess is 'cute' is a short-term description. I keep saying I should keep my camera with me at all times, now perhaps I can.
Awful Retail: 1 March 2007:; I wanted to link that 'Corn Exchange' text to the Corn Exchange website, but that site completely crashes my browser so I don't think I'll bother. Using Firefox 1.5.0.9 over Fedora (6 I think), the intro runs but as soon as I roll my mouse over it to click an option, all instances of Firefox just disappear. So, another great advert for Flash.
Zopa: 1 March 2007: Zopa was featured on Channel 4 News today. Now that's my kinda thing. Using the Internet to enable people to lend to other people, and people to borrow from other people. Beautiful, really beautiful. So open source is messing up software, community banking is messing up banking, VOIP has messed up communications, TV and radio schedules no longer really mean anything, retail, of course, was completely messed up by the Internet as was music sales .. and it isn't stopping any time soon. Groove-on.