Scargill

This afternoon I happened to stumble upon this recent recording of the BBC with Professor Brian Cox

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9622000/9622751.stm

The subject matter was interesting and Brian Cox is emerging as a great orator, the kind of person we really need to reverse the current trend away from scientific thinking and back to mysticism which I personally find extremely worrying.

In a world where some understand more than ever about the world and universe around us but in terms of numbers, less and less people can be bothered to try to understand the world around them, the BBC must take much of the blame (for the UK – religion pretty much takes the blame single-handedly in other parts of the world). There was a time when "Tomorrow’s world" at least made an attempt to explain the new emerging technologies but since then the BBC has been on a path of deliberate dumbing down, appealing to illiterate children and adults at the expense of doing what a taxpayers auto-visual tool really SHOULD be doing – and that’s educating us.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the audio recording above as the hapless interviewer tries his best awkwardly to make fun of quantum mechanics instead of taking the opportunity to learn and to help the audience learn from Mr Cox.

I so hate being forced to pay for the continued existence of the BBC – they need to be forced to fight for survival – how many Brits I wonder when comparing SKY with alternatives realise that ITV don’t get the TV licence, so of all the many channels (except for the variations on the BBC) only the one company gets our money (which we have no alternative but to part with) – the BBC – yet when presented with the opportunity to help enrich our knowledge – the best they can do is make fun – thinking we’re just as stupid as they are and won’t understand or care about what Brian Cox and others have to say. What a wasted opportunity.

Never let it be said I don’t try to shop retail….

After a tip-off that Asda have a Bluetooth keyboard the same width as the iPad, I put my Apple keypad on eBay and planned a trip to Gateshead for the weekend to get the new keypad – along with a replacement soldering iron bit for my bog-standard Antex soldering iron. In addition, the backlight went on my keyboard and so I decided it was time, after several years, to go buy a new one.

First stop Maplin in Gateshead, one of very few places left where you can buy electronic stuff locally (there is always RS Components but they close on Sundays and as for so many others, Sunday is my best day for shopping). The guy showed me a pack of generic soldering iron tips that weren’t even remotely suitable – that was it, our main electronics component shop and they had one set of soldering iron tips. Fail. While I was there I had a look at keyboards – nothing but low-end rubbish.

Next stop Asda. After a thorough look around the relevant section of the store I finally asked an assistant who clearly didn’t know what a Bluetooth keyboard was – she rang up the store manager who obviously didn’t know either. You would think they’d simply get on the computer and check stock, but no.

Last stop PC-world. You would imagine as a shop that sells games, they’d have a range of top-end keyboards – but no, just one vastly over-priced Logitech gaming keyboard and the rest were your average run of the mill.

So.. when I got home I spent 5 minutes on the web and ordered everything I need, wondering why on earth I ventured out in the first place.  I did manage to buy an excellent stand for the iPad from Poundland but that hardly justified the fiver or so in petrol for the wasted morning trip.

Peter Scargill

Some time ago, I took my (then) Apple iPhone 3GS and jail-broke it. Why? Because I could and because I was sick of Orange trying to charge £10 a month for letting me share the 3G connection with my laptop.

That’s all history now, Orange have been kicked into touch in favour of the vastly superior THREE company and I now share unlimited 3G with my various devices.. When I moved up to the iPhone 4 I really could not see the point of jailbreaking the phone – but the Apple TV2 is different.  One of the biggest uses for Apple TV is to watch movies and guess what – you’re stuck with iTunes on your PC and Apple format movies.

Neither of the above is a problem for me – but converting movies to Apple format is not something your average person has much time for (couple of hours per video)… and so I took the plunge and had the thing jailbroken using the latest Sn0wbreeze (yup, that is spelled correctly).

The process is easy enough and takes a matter of half an hour including setup but the results are spectacular. Now I can watch movies and listen to music in a variety of formats. Not only that but I also have access to a NetGear ReadyNas Duo, an inexpensive and rather neat network backup device which just happens to be able to stream to the Apple TV – which means no more need to leave a computer on to access movies, pictures and music on the Apple TV. Between the low cost of Apple TV2 (sub-£100) and the Duo ~(sub-£100 excluding disks) – and the nature of the Duo which means with 2 disks you have redundancy (both store identical content – so if one disk goes down you continue on as normal) I now have a reliable solution for handling media at home without using a PC and without lengthy media conversion to suit Apple. It just so happens that software is available for both iPad and iPhone to handle this scenario also.

So is it worth jailbreaking the Apple TV2?  Most definitely – but if it turns your box into a stone – you are of course on your own – follow the Sn0wbreeze instructions carefully.

Let me start by saying I have no interest in Dolly Parton – I’m a Rush/Yes/Pink Floyd kind of person myself, BUT she’s one of Maureen’s favourites to I agreed to go along, quite prepared to be bored silly all night.

I’m not about to go out and buy her records as I think she sounds like a chipmunk, but I do have to hand it to her – first grade professional show – and I was rather amazed at the range of instruments she can handle – and the range of music styles she’s written for. Before the show, as the hoards came rushing in, vendors were selling “Dolly” hats with LED lighting so lots of people were done up like Christmas trees which was quite good. The stage lighting throughout the show was superb (the only down-side being the ONLY two large video displays, which, for those of us at the back, were frankly rubbish. That and a small number of feral teenagers who felt the need to scream like baboons from time to time preventing others from hearing the lyrics, only slightly detracted from what was otherwise a first class show).

We left the Arena approaching 11pm, hungry as hell, on a Saturday night – no problem you might thing… I don’t go to Newcastle much these days having lived there for a decade and not being particularly impressed then – but it’s getting worse – thousands of people looking for food and what do the takeaways do at 11pm – CLOSE.  One by one as we were driving up through Westgate Road – they were closing down. What?  A decade ago when we lived there I remember having a kitchen drawer full of price lists with opening times as late as 12.30pm – today by 11.30pm the place is a ghost town – granted Westgate was never the highlight of Newcastle – but it’s gotten a lot worse by the look of it – and it looks distinctly like you’re somewhere other than Britain. We eventually found a Chinese open just off the A69 – the girl at the counter had the most rotten teeth you can imagine and the food was, well, crap! So much for rounding off a great show.

I guess it’ll be another decade before I bother to venture back to town on a Saturday night. Awful.

But back to the superb concert – check out the photos – sorry they’re not better – I didn’t think they’d be keen on large cameras so just too the iPhone – which can’t really do something like this justice. You can click to enlarge them but don’t expect miracles.

Just a bunch of assorted images that didn’t make it into the Spanish Blog the first time around.  From our summer visit to Spain and France. These images will all expand if you click on them. Hover for descriptions – which also show in the expanded versions.

The image above is not doctored AT ALL – it is merely a panorama – several shots stitched together. This was taken early evening in Galera in Andalucía near the end of August this year – the weather was changing from the normal super hot summer to a brief storm. I don’t think I’ve ever seen colours like this in the sky before!

To put this in perspective here is a panorama from roughly the same spot, somewhat different angle the day before…both are taken from around 3,000ft above sea level.

Yesterday, having returned from our trip to Spain, we needed somewhere for dinner while staying at Cranage Hall in Cheshire.

Purely by luck we decided to take a trip to Sandbach and I suggest anyone travelling take a look in.  We had dinner at the old Barn which has just recently become a restaurant – but the whole area really needs examining. Rather than rant on here- I’ll just show you some photos I took while wandering around late evening…

Feel free to click on the images to enlarge:

Lovely!

Not much happening  so I figured I’d tell you about our weekend. We’re currently enjoying spending time in Spain.

On Friday we set off from Galera to see friends Angie and Dennis down to the area around Cuevas Del Almanzora, near VERA, in Almeria. One of the problems with Spain is… it’s big and in rural areas there are simply not that many main routes – so you might be looking at the map on the right and thinking “surely there’s a straight line from A to B – well, no.

However, the route is pretty much motorway except for a short stretch at either end.

Arriving mid-afternoon Friday we all promptly went off to the beach and then after coming back to their place for a chat and a dip in the pool (remember we’re talking upper 30s temperature here – water’s pretty much part of the day’s entertainment) ended up in a nice little nightspot area nearby for drinks.

The following day we went back to the beach and after a battle with the (not insignificant) waves in which I ended up peddle-dashing my knee on the rocks – after fighting to get back on my feet without getting a mouth-full of salt water, I discovered I’d lost my specs in the sea – hardly a good start to the weekend as you can imagine.

Thinking about it, writing this blog isn’t much fun without specs – so guess where we’re going tomorrow – well today as it’s 1.45am already Monday morning. Anyway, we ended up in a really nice restaurant Saturday night to finish off a very pleasant weekend break. We spent most of Sunday morning driving back up to Galera, but managed on the way to find a great market near Vera (and temporary sunglasses for me – I normally wear Reactolite varifocals). Spanish rural markets are much of a much-ness – you see the same Indian guys selling fake watches and fake sunglasses, but the quantity and variety of fruit and veg is worth seeing and in this case there was quite a large covered-over area selling plants, much to Maureen’s delight.

We got home mid-Sunday afternoon and as it was too hot to do anything outside, I finally got my two new remote cameras working…lots of improvements over earlier models – these allow 2-way audio as well as quite decent imagery, though being cheap Chinese IP cameras the audio is nothing to write home about…. at least now I’ll be able to keep an eye on both the UK and Spain on the iPhone… handy given the increasing unemployment rate in both countries!!

Oh, so there’s this puppy who seems to have adopted ourselves and our neighbours…he’s cute as well until he craps in the garden and starts barking at 1.30am – just after some “caller unknown” has rang twice on Skype and THREE have left YET ANOTHER stupid message saying how cheap calls are in Spain (despite being instructed verbally 3 times not to ever send me a text again). It’s going to be a long night…(Update 2014 – the puppy was later adopted by our <then> neighbours Richard and Chris who have since moved down to the coast where they have a bar)

Don’t forget you can see larger versions of most images by clicking on these smaller ones. More pics here on Google Albums or keep up with our Bedrock Facebook page

This is about my first Facebook App -  up and running. Content management system, the works.

Now why did I put the date in there – because every time I went looking for help about Facebook APPS – it was out of date!  All I have to do now is get the number of LIKES up so I can have a decent name for the page.

If you follow our Bedrock pages and you’re on Facebook- here’s an easier way! Just press the LIKE button below. Sometime I’ll do a write-up on how I did this. Click on the mess below and you’ll get a Facebook LIKE button.

Essentially what you’re looking at on the Facebook page is an embedded blog. This is hosted separately, not on Facebook – and I used a pretty standard PHP APP framework to start the ball rolling and get it on my site – from there on it’s just a specially adapted template to fit into the rather restrictive Facebook page space.

If you want to know more, try the contact page on the App.

One of the problems of owning a place in another country – is keeping an eye on it. I guess this really applies to anyone with two properties – or perhaps an SME with a small office or factory unit.

Not everyone can afford expensive cameras and most people would not have a clue how to fit them. Costs mount up and so for most people, camera security is simply something that the larger companies use.

Well, that certainly does not have to be the case. Here’s my “5-minute guide to remote cameras on the cheap”.

When we got our place in Spain it was always going to be the case that it would be unoccupied some of the time – you can’t be in two places. I started to investigate the cost of camera systems – most of which can be very expensive. Your traditional COSTCO multi-camera packages are useless for remote viewing and assume you’ll plug in a monitor. That’s not much use when you’re thousands of miles away sitting in a restaurant and wondering if someone’s breaking onto your office.

And so without further ado – here’s my adopted solution.

There are a number of cameras on Ebay and elsewhere called “IP Cameras” – that is the camera runs on your WIFI or wired network… and can be accessed from a web browser anywhere in the world. All you need is broadband and a mains socket!

Sadly they vary a lot – the largely Chinese suppliers have major difficulties with the language and seem to pin up manufacturer’s specs without even checking them.  I’ve seen umpteen ads for cameras “with sound” and when checking with the supplier this was a mistake and they’ve changed the ad.

I was basically interested in two kinds of camera – the external weather-proof kind (see image on the left)– and the internal variety with pan and tilt control (see camera on the right). It seems in the low-cost area you can’t have both in one.   Also external cameras tend to need more LED LIGHTING as the distances viewed tend to be greater. On camera left, note the increased number of LED lights around the lens. They vary from model to model.

I settled on cameras who’s manufacturer is Foscam – at least, that’s the name you’ll see on most of them – there’s a very limited set of chips out there and various manufacturers are actually producing more or less the same thing. I’m not going to get into specifying models here – you’ll need to look at what’s out there. But I can make recommendations…

• Make sure you don’t get old models that will only work with Internet Explorer
• Internal – make sure the photo shows an audio socket (round) if you need audio – and make sure it specifies 2-way if you want to talk as well as listen. Does the camera have an internal speaker and mic or do you need external.
• External – make sure the camera has lots of LEDs around the lens.
• Check carefully – prices vary. Expect to pay around £45-£90 (inc postage) depending on models and quantity – and expect to wait 2 weeks if you’re ordering from China.

There is some setup to do and you get instructions with them – you’ll need a PC to set them up and either wired or wireless connectivity. To access these remotely, if your service provider doesn’t give you a fixed IP address you’ll want to go to a DDNS company like no-ip to ensure that even if you lose connectivity at the other end temporarily and end up with a changed IP address – you still get to talk to your cameras remotely.

Most of these cameras also have motion detect in an a control output (for a lamp) but that’s beyond the scope of this article as they are generally 5v inputs and outputs and you’d have to do your own interfacing. Personally I plan to make a relay setup so I can control a floodlight remotely.

So – you have your camera, wired or wirelessly hooked into your broadband – it’s got power, you’ve set it up and can now see your place from anywhere in the world… how best to do this?

For some time I’ve been using a program called Mobiscope to monitor several cameras – but it has the disadvantage that although it handles multiple camera types and is available on both PC and iPhone, it has no control over the camera so if you find the camera whiting out due to extremes of light – you can’t control it…. no pan and tilt etc.

So you can imagine my joy when I discovered that there are now several programs (variations on a theme) for iPhone to fully control these cameras (which is why I specified Foscam). One program called EASYN for iPhone does a CRACKING job, offering controls which vary with the camera. In the case of the models shown above, it will control the output, brilliance and contrast of the EXTERNAL camera, while on the internal camera, in addition it offers pan and tilt control and the ability to turn auto-scanning on and off – and take snapshots.

Incidentally, from the PC interface, all of these cameras can be set to automatically upload single images to a website – or even email you when they detect movement.  Yes, amazingly for the price these features are becoming commonplace.

So there you have it – for WIFI operation you need no wires, simply plug the camera into the wall socket, set it up and you’re off.

So – to get started – go to Ebay and look up “IP Camera” – you’ll find plenty to choose from – choose well. With the right software and hardware you can monitor and interact with several cameras all over the world, from the comfort of your car, hotel or local pub!