Scargill

Archive for the ‘General’ Category

As promised, here’s a picture of the FSB’s annual Chairman’s Dinner in London…  a very pleasant evening… Vince Cable was the main speaker – I spent the evening talking to my table guests but not one to be shy, I made sure I got a decent photo with Mr Cable to add to my collection of politicians, now including Tony Blair, Michael Heseltine, David Cameron, William Hague just to mention a few.

My table consisting of various international ambassadors and we had an absolutely marvellous time. Not only that, but I’ve made new contacts out of it…. weather in London was marvellous…. what more could you ask for..

Why, you may well ask am I making this request? Well, I got up early this morning and I was reading the BBC news. I noticed that something like 29% of people have actually signed up for organ donation whereas in surveys, 60% feel they should donate organs. Meanwhile there are queues of people waiting for organs.

Why the big gap? Presumably because the organ donation people don’t get the address of their form around enough, we’re all too busy and somehow, getting around to filling in the simple form escapes most of us – I know that’s how it was for me until today. I also noticed that although they have lots of print campaigns they’ve forgotten to provide people with images for their websites – to help promote organ donation.

Surely, unless you have some weird religious reason not to donate (and one might even ask if that applies in the 21st century where we CAN SAVE LIVES if organs are made available) there can be no reason, in a country where there are long waiting lists of people dying through lack of available transplants, why anyone would want to die and let their valuable parts turn into dust when they could be helping someone else?

Ok, so here’s the link for the organ donor form.

Here we go – as usual I’m off-camera as I’m the one doing the video!

Maureen and I are having a nice break at our cottage in Bellingham! And why not.  Here’s hoping you have a very nice Christmas break – and if you’ve not seen it yet, I recommend getting hold of the movie INCEPTION over the Christmas break. I’ve now watched it three times – it’s an absolute WINNER.

Jobs all done, everything’s working… I think it’s possible we’ll actually get a couple of day’s break without worries – what more could you want.  Time to plan the summer get-away, which right now is looking like a drive down to Portsmouth, over to France and then the drive down to Spain. Lots of opportunities to go to places we’ve never been before!

Merry Christmas

Update 2022

I had a video in here but YouTube seems to have lost it – Groom’s Bothy – sold years ago and now renamed to Groom Bothy – what HAVE they done to our front door!

I thought yesterday was bad enough… the twin car batteries I use for handling mains drop-outs here in Wark had been acting up for some time and I’d been getting unexplained drop-outs where our broadband router would just drop out for no reason – but it wasn’t until yesterday I put it all together – the batteries were dry as a BONE. I’ve refilled them but I’m thinking it may be too late for them. But today has been FAR more interesting.

It certainly has been one of those days. The Merc collapsed last night – front legs gave up altogether. Maureen woke me up to announce that it was sitting on the front driveway with the front wheels buried in the wheel arches. Merc in their usual “make a mountain out of a molehill” manner managed to come up with a bill of around a grand to fix this. Can you imagine… you could buy a brand new motor scooter in Carrefour for that amount of money.

Fortunately they’ve come up with a loaner – I say fortunate as I have 3 days of meetings ahead of me and I desperately need a car. I’m sitting here late at night writing because I was just enjoying a superb episode of FRINGE on Sky (if you’ve not watched this excellent sci-fi, you are missing out) and I noted some upgrades for the iPad (not, sadly the eagerly awaited 4.2 operating system upgrade which is now looking like Friday depending on who’s rumour-mill you read) but an upgrade for a long-forgotten program called SharePlus.  If you’re familiar with office systems, I’ll just say that this seamlessly handles SharePoint – no matter what kind of authentication you use. I’ll leave it at that as this is not really a technical blog.

So an expensive start but at least an interesting end. And now I think a book. I’m trying to see if the iPad will really work for reading books so I have one of the few Arthur C Clarke books I’ve not yet read ready and waiting. Now here’s the trick… had I bought a Kindle – I’d have been stuffed because Maureen is already asleep and turning the light on is not an option. Stanza on the iPad on the other hand is backlit and a simple slide of the finger turns the brilliance up and down – a soft glow is all I need to read with (practiced as a kid, my mother always wanted my light turned off so I must’ve read thousands of DC comics by streetlight).

I’ve been getting to grips with Apple TV having bought one of their miraculous new black units this week. Essentially you plug the black box into your TV and Bob’s your uncle – streaming videos for rent, streaming video, sound and pictures from any of your PCs which have iTunes on them and from this weekend, fingers crosses, streaming directly from your iPod/iPhone/iPad to the TV… I can’t wait. May as well relax how, I have 3 very busy days ahead – and at the weekend it’s upgrade time for the gadgets. Add the Apps called StreamToMe into the mix which lets me watch my PC-based movies etc. on the iPhone or iPad… and I’m just about all set… been trying to get a setup like this for years with the PC and never quite made it. Marvellous.

(Update – car’s all sorted…. can’t use Apple TV until Apple get their finger out with the iOS 4.2 updates.

Fancy a break in Northumberland – then check out Hollyberry Cottage Holiday rental in Northumberland

For the first time in what I reckon must be 14 years I’ve turned off work email so I can have a proper break! I say 14 years because surely there was no proper Windows email much before Windows 98?

Hard to imagine that the SMTP protocol we use today didn’t appear until around 1982. I recall running a “bulletin board” to send other people’s emails back and forth using something called a “midnight line” which was basically BT ripping everyone off. Only one person at a time could use the BBS as they had to dial into my system using a modem then every night someone would ring into my BBS, collect up and deposit mail for everyone and they would then use this BT concession to send mail down to London and even overseas.

I’m thinking however I probably didn’t start using email seriously for business until the mid-90s.  I do still have somewhere an Outlook file for 1999 on CD. It suddenly occurred to me that I’ve never stopped reading this stuff since then!

It’s going to feel strange! I’m on the plane early this afternoon to Spain to catch the very last of the sun over the there. The weather looks like clear blue skies for at least a week, but temperatures are unlikely to get over 20C, a far cry from the summer when we hit peaks of 40C… but nice painting weather!

I was doing the maths this morning… 56 years old, at least one tin of tuna fish a week… I must’ve started eating Tuna sandwiches around, lets say to make life easy, 6 years old. That’s 50*52 as a minimum – 2,600 tins of tuna… Goodness!

Anyway, that’s the background. I’ve never been one for Sunday lunches and so for as far back as I can remember, I’ve settled for tuna fish sandwiches on a Sunday. Over the last few years Maureen’s been buying “Chicken of the Sea” from Costco – a light coloured and rather pleasant tuna in spring water. They’ve been out of stock for a few weeks and so I’ve been experimenting. Over in Spain I discovered I like the tuna in jars in Sunflower oil and sure enough when we came back to the UK I tried it here – not as nice as the stuff over there but then the weather might be having an impact on that. Somehow sitting eating a sandwich in cold, rainy Britain isn’t the same as sitting up in the mountains with the sun blasting on you.

Anyway we just happened to pop into ASDA looking for a cheap video player and I headed off to the food section in search of Tuna. I’ve NO idea of pricing on this stuff but what caught my eye this weekend were the price DIFFERENCES.  Asda Tuna Chunks in Sunflower oil – 49p  and at the other extreme, John West Tuna Steak in Sunflower oil, a whopping £1.69

I decided to put them to a side-by-side test:

The John West tin was in fact SMALLER by some way than the Asda version – but on opening there was very little spare oil in the former… so I squeezed out what little was there – and put the tuna in a bowl. The Asda tin on the other hand had lots of oil in it and by the time it was squeezed out there was no more tuna in the tin than in the John West variety despite the bigger can size.

With two bowls in front of me the differences were subtle – the two had exactly the same look once bashed slightly with a fork but the John West product was ever so slightly darker.  On tasting I felt the two were similar but the John West product had a SLIGHTLY stronger flavour – I could have been influenced by the colour.

So I passed the two bowls to my only other resident expert…. her response was immediate – she knew which one she preferred… to be honest I thought the difference was so slight as to be irrelevant but then I’ve been eating the stuff for so long now my tuna taste buds are probably shot.

So which one did Maureen pick as the better product? The £1.69 John West product? No – the Asda 49p Tuna!

It’s been a productive weekend up to now… my article in Computing Magazine went through, which was nice of them and I spent the day working quietly on the FSB’s mass emailing system, having finally figured out how to track links. I wasted half the morning trying to find a decent article on cross-browser rounded corners to tidy the visuals up a bit – but even that works now.

We then went out last night with friends to a local restaurant just off the military road (see photo – experimenting with my new HDR camera software, this was taken just before sunset amazingly) and had a very nice time indeed. Today, having promised we’ll open up Hollyberry Cottage for business at the start of October, we’re off to do some grafting. BT are delivering the broadband line next week so I’ll finally get a change to sign up to the FON network and give that a go – I’ve an APP on the iPhone to tell me where the hotspots are and apparently there are several in the village of Wark! In case you have BT Total Broadband and are not benefitting from this amazing free service, here’s the link, not that I’m pushing BT by any means – I used them because in the back end of Bellingham there are not that many alternatives.

Do you live near or pass by Nunwick, Simonburn? Have you been travelling to and from Hexham and noticed that HORRENDOUS STINK? Have you complained to Tynedale Council about it yet? If not, why not? The stuff is called AGRIVERT. If you look it up on the web the company have been clever enough to ensure they have all the initial entries – however it IS recycled human waste and it absolutely HONKS. If anything is guaranteed to make you want to PUKE rather than enjoy the countryside – this is it. Complain to Tynedale council at 01434-652121. The British countryside should be preserved for all, not poisoned with this stuff. I’ll be onto them first thing in the morning…

Never heard of it? Check out these links.. you’ll be horrified.

http://www.northumberlandgazette.co.uk/news/Stench-incurs-villagers39-wrath.6102941.jp

http://www.alanbeith.org.uk/news/000593/residents_raise_agrivert_concerns_at_embleton_meeting.html

http://www.hexham-courant.co.uk/sport/rugby/1.409321

http://findarticles.com/p/news-articles/northern-echo/mi_8047/is_20061110/residents-kick-stink-field-human/ai_n48553685/

Peter Scargill

Another trip to London and more travel misery. It’s be coming a habit. I arrived at Newcastle station to find Starbucks closed, part of the car-park out of commission for no apparent reason, the ticket machines displaying their guts as workmen looked inside and other services out of order. There’s always SOMETHING bust at that station. Alighting the train we started the usual barrage of reasons why the service was late, ending up leaving Peterborough a full half hour late.

Of course there is more to come as the London underground is in turmoil, not that you’d get me inside that terrorist target without a fight but that means less availability of taxis!

The ONLY reason I don’t take the car is the length of journey… 3 hours or so tends to be my limit before feeling the urge to doze off. Even taking a plane would not entirely solve the problem as you still need taxi/train at the other end.

It’s back to rain in the Northeast, down here past Peterborough it’s still sunny… maybe a couple of says more sun before we descend into winter. 5 weeks and counting to clear off again. Quite looking forward to my day in London tomorrow – myself and a small group of volunteers are going to learn about legal aspects of running forums.

Oh, “Have I got news for you” – Episode 28 Series 6 according to the iPlayer – if you’ve not seen it – it’s a must – funniest thing I’ve watched for months. they have the non-too-sharp-looking leader of the transport workers union on and Ian Heslop walks all over him – very funny.

I should say I am pleasantly surprised, I was thoroughly expecting rain and snow – and it’s been sunny all day (Wednesday), sunny enough, in fact to continue wearing shorts as I’ve been doing for the last 5 weeks – but only just… and of course typical of the Northeast, as the sun goes down, the chill sets in.

Tomorrow begins another series of time-consuming meetings which stop me from actually doing the job… but at least they’re all over in one 4-day batch. My very expensive car after 5 weeks of sitting in the driveway was only one step removed from a brick this morning. Had to borrow friend Chris’s jump-leads to give it enough power to turn the starter. Second and last Merc for me, next time it’s a Volvo. I’ve extended my October stay in Spain to 2 weeks – I know it’ll not be super warm but at least there’s a good chance it’ll be sunny for more than a day. I know where I’d rather be but for now it’s back to life “as normal”. Bought a video lead for the iPhone from Tesco – and guess what – it doesn’t work with the iPad. I did think of asking the assistant in Tescos for one brief second, then sensibly dismissed the thought. That’s it really, nothing special to say…