Scargill

Actually, Eventful month, more like it!

Between trips to Dublin in the Republic of Ireland as a guest of ESBA (European Small Business Alliance) where I visited Google’s HQ down there and managed a trip around the Guinness factory, then onto Spain for a short “break” (Alicante, Murcia, Mojacar, Galera, Malaga) then back up to Edinburgh for a series of meetings, it’s been pretty much non-stop and throughout the whole thing I’ve had the flu – not exactly ideal timing.

After Edinburgh I came home to an all-morning Skype meeting to talk about Intranets while looking forward to enjoying a peaceful weekend, forgetting we had a boatload of prior arrangements. On Saturday we travelled to Whitley Bay to a dentist appointment (100 mile round trip) and there on to a rather nice Italian restaurant in North Shields.

I used to live in Tynemouth and spent a lot of time in North Shields, which was enough to put anyone off for life as back in the day it was, well, a dump, but like everything else, “things change” and North Shields Fish Quay is really quite pleasant now with a boatload of restaurants, cafes and takeaways for every taste.

We had lunch – and when I say pizzas at £3.75 you might laugh but they were as good as pizzas  from some well-known Newcastle Italian restaurants at well over twice the price. Between four of us, we had wine, beer and coke, starters, garlic bread, main course and either coffee or deserts for £40 all in (that’s a tenner each). I can WELL recommend a trip to the Quayside and we’ll definitely be going back. Good food, good views and surprisingly little smell of fish!

While at the quayside, we popped into an indoor market full of second-hand furniture and I spotted a LED floodlight for a tenner. I took a chance as it might not have worked – indeed the guy running the stall was off on holiday and so a lady from a nearby stall handled the deal, offering me the lamp for £8 – we didn’t even have to barter. When I got it home it worked a treat, so as soon as it’s not bag-bitingly cold that’s going up in my back garden to save me standing in cat-poo in the dark.

Did I mention, the weather on Saturday was CRACKING considering it is November in the Northeast of England – as you can see, clear blue skies (that image on the right was taken mid-afternoon and is not in any way enhanced).

From there we went on to the Tynemouth market which is in the train station down there on Saturdays and is quite a large affair, well worth checking out. By then my ears were freezing and the first thing I bought was a new furry hat.

There was a stand with some great looking pies and so the next purchase was a corned-beef pie for dinner (and beyond.. it was big). We visited the stall of a fellow who claimed to be manufacturing LED lighting (though he did mention getting stuff made in China and his lights did look remarkably like the ones you get off the shelf from China) and I’d planned to put his details in here to help promote local business. He had a new  company and his son had been in the business for some time, so he said. We listened intently then took his business cards.

We had a quite night in on Saturday evening once I’d retrofitted Maureen’s car with some new red LED strip foot-well lighting and we spent the rest of the night catching up on Fringe, Continuum and a couple of other EXCELLENT American TV shows – there are a ton of really good US productions right now on Sky and it’s down to finding time to keep up – only made possible because of the Sky HD box recording everything. That and a slice of corned-beef pie finished the evening off nicely.

Sunday morning I checked out the LED lighting market guy – sadly his own website, referred to twice in his literature, doesn’t actually exist despite careful checking – and as for his son, that company looks to be merely a subsidiary of a Hong-Kong company. I do like to “shop local” where possible but he was talking about 5w lamps at around £8 each. After that I think I’ll just stick with buying directly from China via EBay – a bit of a disappointment but not completely unexpected. In you’re keeping up to speed you’ll know that UK prices are still way over the top for these. Check out this link for a good price from a UK supplier. Yes, that’s for 10 !!! Not checked this supplier out yet but I’ve some 8w ordered for Hollyberry Cottage so I’ll let you know if they’re any good in a future item.

After catching up with the email mountain and some reporting, we returned the Asus Transformer to PC World – it simply would not charge – which is very inconvenient. After a trip to the skips to get rid of a very old printer we arrived at PC World – to their “Knowledge Centre”. I don’t know about you but the phrase suggests knowledge to me – but nothing has changed at PC World, the guy took one look at it and sent it off to Asus. They had no test leads, nothing they could us to make use of any of that “Knowledge” – so just more hype then.

To finish off the day we visited the MetroCentre in Gateshead to see the movie Skyfall. Absolutely the best Bond ever and I’ve seen them all several times. Cracking movie – don’t wait for video – go see it now while you can. Entertaining, funny, full of suspense. Judy Dench deserves a medal.

Today it’s back to the grind and I’m hoping this week to fit in some time to get back up to speed with my Internet Thermostat design which thanks to constantly moving around has been on the back-boiler for a while.

Between endless meetings and a holiday, I’ve not spent a lot of time at home recently and this coming week will be no exception. I’m not looking forward to travelling up to Edinburgh for endless meetings- not least because it will be freezing cold up there.

The cats certainly noticed my absense – my two boys – Simba (front) and Ollie have been all over me since we got home last night. As I dozed off last night, I could feel one of them sliding under my arm for a late night hug….and this morning when I awoke, he was trying to suffocate me… since then they’ve been following me around endlessly… as you can see here. Quite content to just be nearby and not after food or anything.

Strange creatures. Click the image for larger versions.

I’ve been working now for something like 42 years without a break, that is I’ve never claimed dole and for some of that period, in addition to financing the national health I paid for private medicine merely to try to minimise any down-time if I was ill (because really that’s all that actually happens with private medicine in the UK by and large – if you get anything seriously wrong you still end up being treated by the same doctors)

When I was young I recall there was something called National Insurance – the second word being the important one – the idea was that you were insured against unemployment. You paid money – and the more you earned, the more you paid. If for any reason you fell on hard times and became unemployed, the amount you got back was to some extent dependent on what you’d put in.

Today of course that entirely sensible mechanism is history. We’ve sleep-walked into the most ridiculous situation wherein those who pay in the most, at best get no more than others – and overall get even less.

My dad spent most of his life working hard, employing people and paying taxes. At one time I recall our engineering company employed over 30 people, some of whom stayed with us for most of their lives. When he died, my mother lived in modest comfort near the coast. She might have expected more but the recession of the 70s put pay to much of the wealth my dad had worked hard for, but at least she had her own home and modest savings. When some time ago she needed to go into a nursing home as her days were drawing to a close, we found ourselves responsible for administering her estate and witnessed, horrified, as the nursing home funds ate into what funds she had. This despite being surrounded by others, some of whom may have not worked a day in their lives getting similar care and only a few miles North in Scotland, people in similar situation having the same care for free (well, paid for by UK tax-payers).

Today with retirement not yet there for my generation but on the horizon, we read that the government openly admits that care bills will continue to soak up most of our savings. A rising number of elderly face losing “almost all of their wealth” to pay for social care.

This is not about Conservative or Labour politics, it is about a generation of utter financial  incompetence on behalf of those we trust to run the country. Those of use who have “played our part” and helped countless unemployed including those who have never done a day’s work, including those who’d like to pull the system apart yet continue to scrounge from it, throughout all of this we’ve gone about our daily businesses and paid our share of taxes – and for what – to get ripped blind when we are least able to look after ourselves.

A lifetime of contributing to a broken system that in the end will let us down while continuing to fund perfectly healthy people who can’t get their own act together and those who would do us harm.

So who are the fools – the corporates and banks who’ve been ripping us off all these years, or the poor suckers who’ve financed everything with their taxes?

A short update (with video) on a couple of items of interest to those in Northumberland -  and in the case of THREE mobile users, those with coverage issues everywhere.

http://scargill.wordpress.com/2012/10/15/the-three-home-signal-box/

This is amazing – see the video – if they can pull this off–look at the stats for how much magnesium there is in the world – and now they have a high-power laser that works from the sun. The idea is simple – magnesium (as anyone who went to school before the dark ages will now) burns like hell  – and converts directly into magnesium oxide – well, now it looks like the Japs are on their way to converting it back!! I used to play with this stuff as a kid – who would have thought…

After passing through the Hexham Farmers market we headed off past the church to the Hexham Eating Festival.

Well, not so much a festival as a load of stands with food and some (very nice) vintage cars…. non-the-less the park in Hexham was really alive this afternoon – thanks partly to the weather and probably just as importantly thanks to some imaginative eating options – as well as the usual ice-cream and burger vendors there was, would you believe.. a CHURROS vendor – not only that but clearly one who’s done this before! I could hardly believe my eyes (being used to these only in Spain) – though I’m prepared to bet that one of the couple running the stall was Spanish – good call!!

In case you don’t know what Churros are  – take a look here  – they may be new to the Northeast but they’re standard stuff certainly over in Andalucía – not the healthiest option but most welcome! Here they were eaten standing up as you might eat chips – in the market towns in Spain it’s common to eat them at a café with hot chocolate or coffee as dipping material. It’s making my mouth water thinking about them. That’s our Thursday treat when we’re over in Spain.

We had two of the grand-kids with us (stunning isn’t it – 58 and I have grand-children!!) and so they were as keen as we were to sample the delights on offer – in a messy, mixed-with-ice-cream sort of way. I can’t think of the last time up here in the Northeast we had a combination of a good set of food vendors AND good weather to boot! Last few times I’ve been to the Hoppings it’s chucked it down!

There was a company doing chicken and pasta done on a hotplate, another doing steaks… you name it and a great selection of ancient cars to give you something to do while stuffing yourself! That and sunshine in a park – what more could you want!

Then of course there was the obligatory blow-up slide – amazing the construction they can make out of simple blow-up plastic – the kids thought it was Christmas!

On the way out we went past a really interesting display of vintage cars, lovingly looked-after by their owners. One model – the 3-litre Capri brought back memories, it was one of my first cars and went like a rocket – even by today’s standards (I had the 3-litre purple automatic – fantastic stuff). Interesting though though – that must’ve been, what, 70s and we were using litres then – but not for fuel (which I recall was actually affordable at well under £1 a GALLON!)

There were far more cars than I have room to show here – perhaps if they repeat this next year (that would be nice) they’ll come back.

We finished the trip out with a visit to the Pound-Stretcher store – which of course the kids loved as they came away will all sorts of colouring materials – always a winner. I came away with a load of new fluorescent markers and a new set of razors for chopping up stuff.

A spot of weed-killing (it’s still not raining – the stuff might just work this time) and the sun is starting to fade, kids have been slug-hunting in the garden and I’m in here doing a write-up while the new tablet charges. After this morning’s fiasco with the burning electricity pole I’m thankful I can do this! We came back note to the sparkies finishing off re-connecting some of the neighbours who lost power during the morning’s fireworks.

Click on any of the images above to see larger versions. Here are a few more – again, click to see the full-size versions.

9:15am Saturday morning – noticing lights flickering and finally dying, residents of Elliott Terrace witnessed an amazing event as despite the calm, dry weather, a telegraph pole half way up the street burst into flames quickly followed by a series of explosions. Within minutes the entire top end of the pole was engulfed in flame.

Molten plastic insulation showered the ground and set part of the road on fire until residents put out the flames with water. A nearby car escaped disaster by only a couple of metres – hence avoiding a major catastrophe. Residents were left with temperatures of 4c and no heat or lighting.

Our neighbours knocked on the door and as we looked out all we could see was smoke and flame, for a moment it looked as if the whole post was going to burst into flames. Had the car set on fire we could have been looking at the street ending up in flames. Emergency services took 20 minutes or so to get there by which time the fire was out.

Standing at the gateway there were flames and several explosions at the top of the pole – and the next thing flames showered down onto the street only a couple of metres away from a car. The fire was quickly put out by a neighbour but by the time the flames died on the post, the electrics were totally shot – thankfully the more powerful cables at the top seemed to escape damage as I’m still writing this blog!!!  Fire services are here and no doubt someone will have to dismantle the lot and replace the pole – I just hope they can do it without robbing us of power long enough for he freezer contents to go the journey. I guess I’ll be spending Monday in my out of office office (i.e. top of the hill in the car armed with laptop and phone)

Amazingly within a couple of hours the electricity guy was up and dismantling the burned out cables while keeping the working main line running – well done.  He reckons within the day the power will be restored but that ultimately the pole will need replacing (obviously).

It’s been one hell of a weekend – week, even– I’ve been in meetings since Tuesday through this afternoon (yes, on a Sunday) with only a few hours break in the middle and I’m completely exhausted. I got home tonight and Maureen and I started to catch up with “Falling Skies” (series 2) – I say catch up – thanks to the miracle of fast-forward, I managed to start almost at the beginning and as of 20 minutes ago I’m now bang up to date – Maureen could not quite keep up the pace but I’m sure she’ll catch up this week.

Tomorrow I’ve a horrendous backlog of tasks, emails and phone calls but I plan a day or so with a friend catching up on gadgets by way of relaxation mid-week – that’ll be nice. Expecting a new solar panel and controller coming over from China in the next few days – lets hope I don’t have to wait to go abroad to test it!

Meanwhile my old pal Ollie (on the right) is taking the opportunity to spend some quality time with his dad – it’s not obvious from the photo but I’m frantically typing here and his head is bobbing up and down according like a yoyo – he’s complete oblivious to it!

If you have a half-decent PC and you have the urge to kill – I suggest checking out “Alliance of Valiant Arms” – but beware – the kids out there are heartless – I’ve managed to last out 8 minutes tops up to now.

It has to be said so I will.. “against my better judgement” my wife bought an HTC ONE X recently from THREE. I’d suggested an iPhone but no, she wanted Android. The move to THREE was partly my fault – as I’d ditched Orange as they kept backtracking with their “unlimited data” offering and generally support was useless – Indian call-centres with people working off scripts – and not very well.

I’ve had no cause to griped at THREE and to be fair the ONE X is a powerful and sleek-looking phone, but today, Maureen’s sparkly HTC ONE X decided it was ready for an operating system upgrade. We followed the simple instructions – and before long we had an updated phone.

No problems, absolutely fine – except that whereas before it was working with WIFI perfectly, now the WIFI was stone, cold dead. Nothing I could do would make it find either of our access points it had previously worked with perfectly.

So at around 5pm I rang THREE. Guess what – Indian call centre, same routine. I could tell within minutes that the guy did not know how to solve the problem – his amazing answer “well sir, we’ll have to restore the phone to factory settings” – in this day and age – do people REALLY find this acceptable? All your settings gone – all your apps needing reloading-  it was THEIR fault the upgrade didn’t work.

The fellow decided the best way was to LOGMEIN remotely to my PC (good job I had a PC). He installed the HTC Sync Centre – the idea being to backup all the files to the PC – well, it would NOT talk to the phone under any circumstances –while he was struggling, I was looking on Google –apparently this is a common failure with the HTC phones! All I got when I pointed that out was a “?”

After 4 hours he ended up telling me how to backup music etc. which I already knew – the hard way. This would not of course backup Apps or contacts – but I’d pretty much figured that out.

I thanked him and put the phone down, backed everything up (4 hours of my time is worth – well half a day!) and reset the unit to factory settings, including removing and re-inserting the SIM.  All done – all back to just-purchased status quo… but no WIFI!!

So we rang THREE up and explained. Would you believe they were offering options like sending the phone for repairs with up to 28 days downtime!!! This is a virtually new and expensive phone. You can imagine how we handled that. Right now after much shouting and bawling, we’re down to 10 days down-time – as against a replacement phone on Monday, which is what we need… not to mention compensation for all the time I spent and will spend re-installing everything – it’s being escalated to complaints and they will ring us back tomorrow. What a USELESS BUNCH.  A phone that can’t handle an update and a company that don’t know what to do about it. This would NEVER happen with Apple – I’ve upgraded my iPhone and iPad umpteen times without a single hitch!! I’ve also had stuff out of warranty replaced at the Apple store without question. Customer first.

Update 30/8/2012 – Only after getting stroppy with customer services did we eventually get them to agree to send an envelope to arrive Monday – with a “promise” verbally and “we will try” in writing to return the phone in 5 days. The PROBLEM is if they don’t find a fault they want to charge £20 !!! 

Here’s the deal, we went to the market today and lo and behold the WIFI started working – great – went home – as we approached home – one of our WIFI signals started to work – GOODNESS…. but by the time we got up the hill to the house – the signal had vanished. In the living room with the router – nothing – not a SAUSAGE. By now I was beginning to have ideas – so I went to the bedroom at the far end of the house – CONNECT. I did a series of APP downloads – flawless. I then walked back downstairs to the living room where the signal originates and unbelievably – the signal got weaker – and eventually disappeared as I got to the living room.

I can and will REPEAT this and put a video on YouTube – because otherwise tech support at Three won’t believe me.