Scargill

Bit of an update really rather than something new… the weather this weekend kept up – i.e. it was sunny – but hardly record-breaking – a tad cool out of the sun in fact, so I did my bit and went to B&Q for some stones for the garden but actually having had success with my new solar flood circuit – see a couple of blog entries back – the circuit works a treat and I’m now running 3 AA rechargeable cells and a PAIR of sets of 3 series white LEDs in parallel – up to now the combination is giving very reasonable pathway lighting – but bear in mind the sun’s done well for the last couple of weeks – the solar cell had no problem charging the batteries – funny really, my wife Maureen normally heads off to better weather in the States and she ‘s been away 2 weeks – it’s rained most of it over there and been QUITE the opposite here for a change. Even Galera hasn’t had the sun we’ve had.

Apart from that I’ve spent the rest of my day, well, in a complete fantasy world. Check out Cities XL 2010 the last post in here – I’ve started to get to grips with it now and this is so near science fiction – but it works. The program is basically Sim City on steroids, the difference being you can actually go in there and be part of your city, none of which would be THAT impressive if it were not for the sheer scale of the areas you can work in  – tonight I’d just finished putting together a major freeway leading through a sub-urban area into a massive sprawling city and armed with a glass or two of wine I drove through the city in more or less real time – to say we’re looking at AT LEAST 20 to get from one end to the other (if you don’t cheat) kind of puts this in perspective – all the way there are people going about their business – kids playing in front of houses, cars going from home to work and vice-versa… it really does put some kind of perspective on modern PC power – there was a time when the PC could just about manage the angles of a PONG ball going back and forth.

And with that I’ll leave you with some screen shots. A picture paints a thousand words – or whatever – these are crude screenshots  and bear no resemblance to the fluid, real time video quality graphics in the actual game… and remember this isn’t a prefab – I put this lot together in blocks… I need to write to the developers – I want customisable street signs! These are late-evening shots.

Ok, I’ll admit, I have nothing against the royal family and no interest either. They fascinate me about as much as does football, rugby and tennis – which is, well, not.

So today with no chance of getting any serious work done and not one to sit around doing nothing (plenty of time for that when you’re dead) I spent the morning in a futile attempt to resurrect some plants.. when that failed and the weather cooled off (I’m not complaining, it’s still sort of sunny here in the Northeast) I decided that I simply could NOT bring myself to watch the Royal fiasco – and so went off in search of a new challenge – which usually means a new game where one blows away Korean soldiers.

Just as I was starting to look, an email came through from some service I signed up to years ago alerting me to bargains and it was this that led me to take a look at Cities XL 2011.   I’ve been a Sim City fan in the past but then they sort of lost the plot and the SIMS did nothing for me in the same way that Coronation Street does nothing for me… I’ve always wanted something a little more powerful – in fact a lot more powerful – something that would not only let me create entire cities but get in there and drive through them – or sit on a street corner watching my creation unfold like some weekend God enjoying the fruits of his or her labour. Well, I have to hand it to the creators of Cities XL – they’ve done it. I’ve not had so much fun for… weeks.

Essentially Cities XL 2011 lets you start off with a blank canvas, dropping in roads and anything from individual houses to blocks of accommodation for everything from chief executives down to factory workers. You can create farms, office blocks, factories, recreation… I mean – just about anything you need for your average city…

Enough blethering – here’s my first attempt. The original quality was great but due to the utter lack of screen video capture programs out there, I stuck my iPhone 3GS on a microphone stand and videoed the screen so it looks a little like one of those cheap Sunday market copy videos…. but I think you’ll get the general idea – this is serious world-building kit – look around -  cost me under 15 quid – worth it for the fun I’ve had today ALONE..

It’s hard to believe the weather we’re having here in the Northeast… it’s been sunny now for over a week – and to keep the gardeners happy and keep the air fresh, it has conveniently rained overnight twice only to return to full sunshine in the morning.

I remember “April showers” when I was younger, when it would be sunny with constant drizzling but in recent years the weather has just been PANTS ALL SUMMER.

If this is our share of global warming – bring it on!  It’s giving me the opportunity to do something I’ve not done in a while – play with solar lighting. I’m trying to do a better job than the Chinese do while keeping the cost to next to nothing. So far so good. 2 transistors and a couple of other bits. Just need to stop batteries getting too flat now.

Finally.. is it ME or is Adobe updating that stupid reader 2 or 3 times a week? You’d think by now they’d have it right.. Imagine what the infinitely more complex Windows 7 or Apple operating  systems would be like if they had a many problems – you’d be updating every minute!!!

For many years I used Microsoft’s Smartphones and 18 months ago I took the plunge and moved to iPhone, which apart from the odd yearning for Android I’ve never really regretted. The one thing that REALLY gets me annoyed when I think about it is the inability to share my connection from my Orange iPhone – with my laptop – or more importantly, the iPad. With the MS phone it was simply a matter of paying $20 for something called WMWIFIROUTER, a piece of software which shared the connection over WIFI with my laptop.  Turn it on and bingo – the laptop gets a WIFI connection from the phone’s 3G connection. 

I really can’t handle Orange’s restrictive practices on this, helped by Apple who provide the facility to share WIFI then block it so that Orange can charge a staggering EXTRA £10 for the facility to work – and remember I’m paying something like £30 a month to start with for the privilege of limited (something like 3 gig) data on the iPhone.  Come end of contract I’ll be looking to THREE, who offer their MIFI units with “all you can eat” data, WAY more minute and WAY more texts than Orange for only marginally more outlay. Hopefully by the time my contract is out that difference in cost will disappear (the above with THREE is £35 a month – I don’t know if they include tethering).

In the meantime – the iPhone 3GS is now 18 month old, I have a few months left before considering when to upgrade and what to upgrade to.. and so I thought I’d take a look at jailbreaking the phone – which simply means removing Apple’s ultimate control over it.

Redsn0w ( http://blog.iphone-dev.org/ ) will jailbreak all but the iPad2 and so I downloaded the program to my Windows 7 PC after much reading on the subject. Well, of course it didn’t work – turns out you need to use the program in XP SP3 compatible mode – but hey, it’s free – who’s complaining! A simply right-click option on the shortcut did the job.

Minutes later, one jailbroken iPhone – it really is that simple – note the new brown icon in the photo on the right – except – that Cydia, the repository for jailbroken apps – is currently having issues with Amazon who provide their storage…  basically for now it’s bust – Amazon have been unable to provide them with working connectivity for around 3 days now – absolutely amazing.  So I figured I’d have to wait patiently, not something I do well, for them to get their act together so I could go and grab the relevant software to make my phone, once more into a handy source of signal for the iPad and laptop when on the road, however it turns out that you can grab free programs while the service is down – you just can’t get the paid versions.  I’ve grabbed PDANET and within seconds had it sending a password-protected WIFI signal to my iPad. No problem at all. Until the site is up I’m restricted to http: sites and not secure ones but no doubt that’ll be resolved within the next day or so.

Of course, I have a MIFI unit which provides WIFI access – but that’s on THREE – and there are believe it or not times when Orange’s signal is the stronger.. so now I have the best of both worlds. More on this when Cydia is NOT bust.

The iPad2 wasn’t the only upgrade this month, yesterday we took my venerable 140,000-miles Mercedes e-class to the dealer in York and exchanged it for a new(ish) black model.

More modern and efficient, it’s not as gadgety as the original would have been in it’s prime but being several years newer and in considerable better condition with black-as-a-black-thing tinted rear windows, it’s a pretty neat upgrade non-the less.

On our way back from the York Merc dealer (via a VERY nice nearby garden centre to which we’ll return) we gave it a hammering at which point I was told to slow down for fear of losing my licence so it has no problems in that regard (diesel but far less truck-sounding than the old gold Merc).

The car already has an auxiliary socket for iPods, meanwhile an iPhone Bluetooth adaptor is on the way, personal number plates being registered and we’ve just sent off for customised floor mats, meanwhile I’ve just discovered where the battery is so I can look at fitting a 250v AC invertor somewhere out of view and a mains socket in a handy location. The next job will be to fit the must-have white LED arrays on the front but that’ll have to wait for a meeting-free weekend.

This one is coming to Spain with us in the summer so it’s important it can charge everything at once!

Somewhat earlier than expected, Apple’s latest IOS release is up and running – simply head off to iTunes to grab the software and update your i-device.

Upgrading the iPhone 3GS was simple – a matter of a few minutes download and off we go. Despite some issues with a cheap Chinese cable I bought, the upgrade went quite smoothly – all sorts of drivers being loaded and resets being done completely automatically in the background… I just went off for coffee and let it get on with it.

The software upgrade allows you (at last) to play videos and imagery on Apple TV directly from the iPhone. The setup is amazing – once upgraded, all your videos, pics and tunes on your iTunes computer are immediately available on your iPad or iPhone etc… and typically Apple – it just WORKS…

The browser has been speeded up thanks to the new “Nitro Javascript Engine” and it’s claimed that this alone doubles browser speeds –though that of course will all depends on whether your target website is making heavy use of Javascript – many do. The hated change to the mute button now allows users to select whether they want to use that button for muting or rotation control…  and apparently iPhone 4 can now serve up WIFI to other devices-  though no mention of  the 3GS – BUT this DOES APPEAR TO WORK over Bluetooth and USB on the iPhone 3GS which is interesting. No idea why you can’t do this over WIFI on the 3GS as that facility was built in from day one but Orange wanted to charge extra for it!

Similarly iPad – the upgrade just works…  video quality from videos on your PC iTunes setup is amazing.  So – for free, faster iPhones and iPads – can’t be bad!

Peter Scargill

p.s. I don’t recommend this but I didn’t go through any lengthy backup procedures and all worked well regardless. Upgrading the phone and iPad each took all of 15 minutes from start to finish with virtually no interaction required. So why are you waiting.. go get IOS 4.3 now!

After an early start (over-enthusiastic alarm going off at 6.30am I headed off for Worcestershire – a leisurely 4-hour drive (for a driver with an attention span of around 2.5 hours).  I made good time until I actually got there – then sat in a traffic jam for half an hour! 

The purpose of the day was to do a video shoot (green screen) and to finalise a PowerPoint for the FSB’s forthcoming conference.

All went well for once – which was nice, apart from a little high  blood pressure. It turns out that the venue the conference is at, has a rather interesting restrictive policy regarding broadband. Not content with making a whopping charge for actually supplying broadband for 2 days (that’s not unusual – in the past we’ve had to order a BT line in and pay 3 months rent- though in recent years we’ve usually paid a lump sum and then used our own routers to share out the signal) this lot really take the cake – they want paying for every single computer or device that’s plugged into their networks – and they REFUSE to allow you to use your own routers – even down to refusing (if it’s even legally and technically possible) use of the like of MIFI units.  God knows how they’ll handle the public using WIFI sharing (tethering) to their iPads.

I’m keeping mum for now, but when this is all over I intend to detail charges and the name of the venue to alert others to this utterly unacceptable practice. Unbelievable. The venue is in Liverpool incidentally!  But apart from that, the day was pleasant enough and now… a local Indian I think…

Peter Scargill

I can’t honestly remember a more stressful or more comical day than today… you couldn’t dream this stuff up…

After 2 days of struggling with dodgy broadband, I got up this morning, the plan being to hold a video conference at 11am. We use a package called ooVoo as it handle multiple video locations (Skype does that but not that well). All was ready. All I had to do was remind everyone to check the videos early. No matter what happened I was prepared – ORANGE broadband on one telephone line, FSBTELECOM on the other – what could possibly go wrong?

I should have known when I could not get through to the right people that it was all going to go wrong. So, with minutes to spare, people started coming into the video – all but the most important who could not get through.  It turns out that for various reasons my request for the fully commercial ooVoo had not gone through – and the free use of multi-video that ooVoo offered earlier this year was no longer an option. The program started asking for money and eventually we gave up and reverted to that old standby – the TELEPHONE CONFERENCE.

Can’t go wrong with that can you..  of course as I don’t even own a normal phone, it was SKYPE for me – but I have an account where I can make calls for a penny a minute – I NEVER run out of credit.

Only a couple of minutes later we were JUST about the start the conference when my wife Maureen came into my office with a message “the telephone guys are dismantling the post!!!!” -  I rushed outside and sure enough the crane is outside and they’re starting to take the post apart.  “What about the telephone lines” I asked. “Oh they’ll be disconnected for a few hours” came the reply.

I’ll miss out the bit about soaring blood pressure and profanities etc but needless to say, shortly thereafter the telephone guys went back off in their van, the pole intact.  I went back to my meeting, amazed. No doubt they’ll return at another inconvenient time to rob me of the chance to do my job. Between that and 2 days of no electricity only a couple of weeks ago – which led me to fit uninterruptable power supplies all over… so the broadband would work no matter what (well, who would expect the pole to disappear!!??)

And of course I’m doing all this running back and forth in the mud as our garden’s still not recovered from the farmer’s field overflows.

I wasn’t back in the meeting for 5 minutes and the phone went dead – no SKYPE credit. I’d neglected to think about the fact that it was an 0844 number and they don’t come into the normal cheap pricing bundle – I was getting hammered by the minute and my credit, enough to last weeks normally, evaporates in minutes.

This then, was the start of MY day today and it’s been like this all day – one episode after another. If I don’t have a heart attack today I’m good for another 20 years.

How was YOUR day….

(relax… deep breaths….)

I’ve been sitting getting annoyed about the coverage that the BBC has given Rupert Murdoch’s “The Daily” when it’s not even available here as it’s US-ONLY.  Worse, they’ve closed the comments section so you can’t have a go at some of the more challenged writers who think the web is free… the BBC’s website certainly isn’t free – we pay for it in our TV licence. Frankly the website is the only interaction I ever have with the BBC as I can’t stand the radio programs (a choice of pseudo-intellectual crap or music and DJs to appeal to kids only) and it’s very rare I can find TV programs of worth (though I did like “Com Fly With Me” which sadly only lasted for 6 episodes).

“When will Murdoch realize the web that the web is designed for free content and that he cannot rule the world” – says one commentator.. why not? The BBC rule the UK along with BT – no matter what you do you can’t escape them – at least you don’t have to buy Murdoch’s papers! I wonder if the writer pays his license fee?

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..