How do we kick our synchronous addiction?

submitted by kingkilr to programming
[link] [28 comments]

Salma Hayek + Penelope Cruz

Salma Hayek + Penelope Cruz submitted by kahlveen to pics
[link] [50 comments]

Hey Reddit, did you know that Lindsey Van (a woman) set the ski jump record – for both men and women – at the Vancouver Olympic facility, but she can’t compete in the games because Olympic ski jumping is a men's-only sport.

submitted by FieldofScience to WTF
[link] [124 comments]

I hiked to the bus where Chris McCandless (the Into the Wild kid) died in Alaska. I found this letter on the bus.

submitted by tuumi to reddit.com
[link] [189 comments]

"Moon" - if you haven't seen this movie then get out there and buy it on DVD/Blu-ray (if you're feeling dapper), it was in my opinion, the best film of 2009 in front of Star Trek.

submitted by wearedefiant to reddit.com
[link] [249 comments]

Who else removes logos from stuff you buy?

submitted by esotericguy to AskReddit
[link] [213 comments]

You are an explorer.

submitted by jh99 to science
[link] [121 comments]

Did anyone else enjoy CoD4 a lot more than MW2?

Did anyone else enjoy CoD4 a lot more than MW2? submitted by Rubin0 to gaming
[link] [503 comments]

Guy snowboards through DC on a towline while being chased by the fire department, who just want video of it

submitted by Castlerock to reddit.com
[link] [56 comments]

This is now one of my goals in life.

submitted by ItsThatGuy to programming
[link] [57 comments]

I DO COCAINE!

I DO COCAINE! submitted by Ratatouille02 to pics
[link] [116 comments]

Well Done, Reddit.

submitted by djh816 to reddit.com
[link] [143 comments]

Today, I went to my favourite diner and ordered french toast. The waitress left this for me on the back of the cheque.

Today, I went to my favourite diner and ordered french toast. The waitress left this for me on the back of the cheque. submitted by scottb84 to pics
[link] [229 comments]

Myst Online is back. And it's free. If you haven't tried it, now's the time to before the open-source fun begins.

Myst Online is back. And it's free. If you haven't tried it, now's the time to before the open-source fun begins. submitted by deviantgent to gaming
[link] [115 comments]

Ow, my brain.

Ow, my brain. submitted by andy68916 to pics
[link] [201 comments]

Another east coast snowstorm brewing

By Anthony Watts

Forecasts call for another 20 inches of snow in Washington DC with snow spreading to NYC this time. Feb. 8 (Bloomberg) — Storm systems barreling across the country may bring as much as 20 inches (50 centimeters) of new snow to Washington and Baltimore starting late tomorrow, while New York may receive a foot, forecasters said. With [...]

Sir David King: Half Right on the IPCC and Global Warming Policies, Despite Bad Logic

By Anthony Watts

Guest post by Indur M. Goklany Sir David King, erstwhile Chief Scientific Adviser to Her Majesty’s Government, famous for his claim that “climate change is the most severe problem that we are facing today—more serious even than the threat of terrorism,” had an op-ed in the Telegraph over the weekend, in which he notes that the [...]

NOAA’s new website climate.gov – a first day sin of omission

By Anthony Watts

Today NOAA officially announced www.climate.gov It didn’t take skeptics long to find a sin of omission. WUWT reader Dave N. pointed this one out to me. Let’s start with the lecture to skeptics in the Dec 31st 2009 story “What the future may hold” which is an article about sea ice extent. The climate.gov website has [...]

NOAA’s new ‘climate service’ – not a sure thing yet

By Anthony Watts

Here’s a chance to tell your congressperson not to waste more taxpayer money on repetitive services already handled by NCDC. This looks to be nothing more than a fast track press release service. Given how badly Tom Karl has handled PR in the past, such as the disastrous NCDC Climate Change Synthesis report with photoshopped [...]

UCAR: Roof white out helps UHI

By Anthony Watts

I find it humorous thatUCAR had to resort to modeling to prove something that can be measured empirically. But then again this is UCAR, and they have a big computer at their NCAR office. Painting roofs white would probably help cool NOAA weather stations that are positioned on rooftops, like this one on the roof [...]

IPCC Gate Du Jour: Aussie Droughtgate

By Anthony Watts

Andrew Bolt of the Herald Sun digs up another issue with non peer reviewed World Wildlife Fund reports in the IPCC AR4. It turns out a new paper in GRL handily disputes the cause of the drought. He writes: Melbourne University alarmist David Karoly once claimed a rise in the Murray Darling Basin’s temperatures was “likely due [...]

The Superbowl “Green Police” commercial

By Anthony Watts

My story today on changing out my incandescent recessed lighting for high efficiency LED units couldn’t have come too soon. I don’t have to worry now. This video below is one of the most talked about Superbowl commercials today. You have to watch it more than once to catch all the visual gags in it. Watch the [...]

Munging Madagascar

By Anthony Watts

Since we’ve been talking about IPCC’s “Africagate” recently, it seemed like an opportune time to point out what sort of GISS station adjustment goes on in data from it’s nearby neighbor island. Welcome Verity Jones first guest post on WUWT. FYI for those who don’t get the implied data munging  title, “Munge” is sometimes backronymmed [...]

Swapping my lights: fantastic!

By Anthony Watts

No more twisty bulbs for me! I’ve installed a new LED lighting system for my home that beats twisty bulbs in every way. It has been awhile since I discussed technology here, so this will be an interesting diversion for many readers. I’ve always been a fan of alternate energy and improved energy efficiency, and I [...]

New study using satellite data: Alaskan glacier melt overestimated

By Anthony Watts

From a press release provided by Centre national de la recherche scientifique in Paris, France: Improved estimate of glacier decline in Alaska. Glaciologists at the Laboratory for Space Studies in Geophysics and Oceanography (LEGOS – CNRS/CNES/IRD/Université Toulouse 3) and their US and Canadian colleagues (1) have shown that previous studies have largely overestimated [...]

Tracking the Earth’s orbit: looking for warming signs

By Anthony Watts

From a press release by: National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (NOCS) Understanding past and future climate The notion that scientists understand how changes in Earth’s orbit affect climate well enough for estimating long-term natural climate trends that underlie any anthropogenic climate change is challenged by findings published this week. The new research was conducted by [...]

A “Small Document”

By Steve McIntyre

On July 29, 2009, Phil Jones emailed Tom Peterson of NOAA (1248902393.txt) … I have a question for you. I’m going to write a small document for our web site to satisfy (probably the wrong word) the 50 or so FOI/EIR requests we’ve had over the weekend. I will put up the various agreements we [...]

Rose on Fortress Met Office

By Steve McIntyre

David Rose of the Mail places the Met Office obstruction of FOI requests squarely in the spotlight. The Met Office obstruction left a singularly bad taste with their sequence of untrue excuses for not producing John Mitchell’s Review Editor comments. First, they claimed that Mitchell had deleted all the emails concerning AR4. (This excuse came [...]

Leake: Today’s IPCC Blooper

By Steve McIntyre

Jonathan Leake of the Sunday Times has another IPCC blooper for breakfast tomorrow, this one about a looming 50% decline in north African crop production, a claim that occurs not just in the eccentric WG2, but the Synthesis Report: The most important is a claim that global warming could cut rain-fed north African crop [...]

Slimed by Bagpuss the Cat Reporter

By Steve McIntyre

As many CA readers know, I was slimed today in the Independent by reporter Paul Bignell, best known for his hard-hitting expose of Bagpuss the cat. Bignell reported: The children’s television producer Coolabi has bought the rights to produce Bagpuss for television, but Mr Postgate’s son, Daniel, has scotched plans to bring the series [...]

CodeSOD: Phishing for a Refund

By Mark Bowytz

As I'm sure is the case with many of you, I sure do love me some tax refund. Once my W2's and other year-end tax forms documents come in the mail, I get my e-File in and wait for my refund to be direct deposited.

Now, since the whole refund process involves computers and the internet, of course, it's a prime target for spammers and phishers who want nothing more than to ignite a little FUD and get some of your hard earned cash.

The below snippet comes courtesy of Andy F. who writes, "Idiotic spammers and phishers probably provide your site with a glut of terrible code, but I got a chuckle out of this credit card validation function found in an HTML file attached to a 'UK Department of Energy Refund Notice.' It also included a variety of non-valid PIN number checks."


function Validate() {
   if (document.logonForm.my_card.value == "") { 
      alert("Please enter your card number !"); 
      document.logonForm.my_card.focus();
      return false; 
   }

   if (document.logonForm.my_card.value == 0000000000000000) 
      { alert("Invalid card number."); return false; }

   if (document.logonForm.my_card.value == 1111111111111111)
      { alert("Invalid card number."); return false; }

   if (document.logonForm.my_card.value == 1112223344443231)
      { alert("Invalid card number."); return false; }

   if (document.logonForm.my_card.value == 2222222222222222)
      { alert("Invalid card number."); return false; }

   if (document.logonForm.my_card.value == 3333333333333333)
      { alert("Invalid card number."); return false; }

   if (document.logonForm.my_card.value == 4444444444444444)
      { alert("Invalid card number."); return false; }
...
}
 

A pretty WTF bit of code to be sure, but Andy's last sentence got my gears turning - Could there really be...MORE?! So, after scanning Google, I found that it was a piece of hot debate and included the original web page in its full glory.

As it turns out dear readers, the above code snippet is merely the tip of the iceberg. The entire file itself is the quintessence of WTF. Of course, I never expected that a phishing site would be a beau ideal of good coding practices, but...ugh...you really have to view the source to see what I mean.

Here's a link to the source - as a text file

However, for the adventurous - here's a link to a local copy of the page so, preserved as it was originally.


Sponsor Appreciation, Banzai Bouncer, Untraditional Data Rack, & More

By Alex Papadimoulis

Please show your support for The Daily WTF by checking out the companies that have been kind enough to sponsor us. And, in doing so, I’m sure you’ll find some pretty cool products and services built by like-minded developers and IT professionals.

 

The Daily WTF Sponsors

Microsoft WebsiteSpark   Microsoft WebsiteSpark - a great program for web shops and freelance web developers and designers where you get some great software (Visual Studio Pro, SQL Server, Server 2008, etc), at no upfront cost for three years; it also provides support and resources to help grow business
Peer 1   Peer 1 - provides award-winning Managed Hosting, Dedicated Hosting, Co-location, and Network services offered through 15 data center across North America. With over 10,000 businesses hosted on their legendary SuperNetwork™backbone, PEER 1 delivers one of the highest server performance and network outputs in the industry.
Mindfusion   MindFusion - a great source for flow-charting and diagramming components for a variety of platforms including .NET, WPF, ActiveX and Swing
SoftLayer   SoftLayer - serious hosting provider with datacenters in three cities (Dallas, Seattle, DC) that has plans designed to scale from a single, dedicated server to your own virtual data center (complete with racks and all)
SlickEdit   SlickEdit - makers of that very-impressive code editor and some pretty neat Eclipse and VisualStudio.NET tools and add-ins, some of which (Gadgets) are free. Check out this short video highlighting just one of SlickEdit's Visual Studio integration features.

And now, back to our regularly, completely off-topic scheduled program.

 

"I came across the Banzai Jump 'n Go Obstacle Course Bouncer on Walmart.com," notes D. Kablanc, "it looks like Walmart needs to hire a new Photoshop artist."

 

"Don't they normally put those disclaimers in the fine print?" wonders Martin Sapsed, "just seems like a strange place putting it next to the sign promoting the water park."

 

John Spalding writes, "that sure is one Heavy Duty traffic cone."

 

"Wait a sec," Rowan Pope writes, "I thought cars came with all DVD players?"

 

"Ugh," an anonymous reader wrote, "the local newspapers really are't catching up..."

 

"I was in an Ethnic grocery shop in Glasgow," David writes, "and spotted this rather untraditional use for a 42U data cabinet."

 

"I saw this in a Japanese restaurant in Lisbon," Miguel Lourenço noted, "do fish really say grrr?"

 

"Ah, the EULA Hotel," writes Samuel Hartman, "I'd hate to see their reservation form!"

 

"I remember this one," Justinas Lelys writes, "it's from when Mickey Rourke is female and Winona Ryder male."

 

"I can't say I was surprised to see that I'm now being charged a fee for being charged fees," writes Lincoln, "and with the wierd alignment, I have to wonder if they're saving room for the FEE FEE FEE."

 


Emergency Faxes

By Mark Bowytz

As far as technologies go, faxing is ancient. It predates the telephone by over a decade and, despite vast advances in scanning and email technology, the fax still remains a standard form of communication.

When a transmission goes out, the occasional telecommunication ‘hiccup’ or line noise can corrupt the fax. Most modern fax machines have some rudimentary error handling that will alerts the user that the fax should be resent.

This method of managing failures has been working so well that no one really saw fit to change it. That is, until a business analyst at Torre L’s company had a bright idea.

“What if the user isn’t babysitting the fax?" he worried. "What if the sender’s fax machine can’t detect that there was a problem? We should fax back an error report!”

Though the analyst's concern was valid, Torre and his group argued that sending back a failed fax transmission would not necessarily make it easier.

They argued that it could tie up the original sender's machine and could actually prevent someone from resending their original fax.

"It's okay," the analyst replied, "Our software can send and receive in parallel. This idea is the best thing since the iPod! It's bulletproof!"

But the arguments were for nothing; in management's eyes, the business analysts were always right and the feature was completed in short order. Named the "FaxBack" program, it did exactly as the name implied; it faxed a failed transmission back to the sender (as identified by Caller ID) moments after the failure occurred.

Everything went along without a hitch for a good long while. That is, until two police cruisers — sirens blazing — showed up at Torre’s office. They said they were responding to a 911 emergency call, but there was no emergency and nobody claimed to have dialed 911.

They officers left shortly thereafter, but, in the wee hours of the next morning, two different police cruisers rushed to the scene. Again, there was no emergency and no 911 call, so they too left without incident.

But the third time, when a cruiser showed up the following afternoon, the officers refused to leave until the source of the “disturbance” was identified. The police department was certain that a call came from a phone number within the company, and they demanded to know what exactly was going on.

After spending the rest of the afternoon and part of the evening of tracing phone calls internally, Torre traced the 911 calls to the data center, or more specifically, to FaxBack.

The faxes machines, like the office phones, had to dial "9" for an outside line. So when FaxBack responded to a failed fax from New Delhi by dialing "9", and then India's international country code of 11, a "special case" rule in the the telecom system kicked in.

Whoever had first installed the telecom system had the bright idea to treat “911” as a special case since, ordinarily, one might not think to first dial “9” in case of an emergency. The special case applied to the lines in the fax pool -- even if the caller would only ever be a computer.


CodeSOD: Almost Counting Past 100

By Mark Bowytz

"At the contract shop where I work," writes John S., "I have been assigned to a new web-enabled mapping program to help take a look at some of the issues they've been having."

"When an item is added to a map, it is given a label, such as Item #1, Item #2, etc., with the number on the label incrementing for each new item. We had been having a problem where map labels were not being assigned uniquely when there were more than 100 items per map. It was always starting at Item #100 when reloading the map from the database. This was causing issues since it was the map label name that was being used for the unique identifier (don't get me started on that). Curious, I took a look at the code to decipher how the label ids were being assigned."

setCount: function(label) {
        var layer;
        var count;
        if (label.charAt(label.length - 2) == ' ' ) {
                layer = label.substring(0, label.length - 2);
                count = label.substring(label.length -1) * 1;
        } else {
                layer = label.substring(0, label.length - 3);
                count = label.substring(label.length - 2) * 1;
        }
       
        if (this[layer] < count) {
                this[layer] = count ;
        }
}

"Each time the map was loaded, a function iterated each layer to find the items assigned to that layer, and then to parse out the number from the code and keep track of the maximum id. Apparently they had the foresight to account for more than 10 items, but not for more than 100."


Passed Around

By Lorne Kates

Photo Credit: pheezy @ flickr The rejection had taken three months to arrive, and now somebody, somewhere, owed Luis K an explanation.

Why had a required feature been rejected? He couldn't tell from the cryptic jumble of control codes and received/forwarded stamps that overflowed the "office use only" box. The internal trouble-ticket system just showed "handled externally".

He'd discovered the missing feature his first day with Hausdorff Solutions. He'd received a satisfying "good catch" after filing the feature request with his department head. Surely, she'd know why.

Passed On

"I have no clue," Shirley stated, sliding the paper back to him. "We don't handle these sorts of features."

"But we do navigation functions," Luis said.

"This," she replied, pointing a stiff finger at the form, "Is a mapping function. Mappings are a completely different department. I have no idea how they handle these things. You should submit a 27b-6 for clarification."

Luis blinked, stymied at the disconnect. He looked at Shirley's accusatory finger.

Sometimes all the left hand needs to know is where the right hand is, so it knows where to point the blame.

"I'd hate if anyone got in trouble for missing this," he said, frowning. "Who did this get passed to, so I can clarify it with them?"

"Vern in Accounting," she offered quickly, pointing out his "received" stamp.

Vern couldn’t have made a price quote without an estimate from Lena in UI Design, and she couldn't modify anything without input from Paul in User Acceptance. Anything Paul did first got submitted for approval by Mr. Fischer, the project lead.

Mr. Fischer, his face awash in the azure glow of his monitor, didn't even look at the offending slip of paper.

"We do not deal with new features,” gruffed the man in the always-pressed brown suit.

"It isn't new, sir!" Luis pleaded. "It's in the specs!"

"Would it need to be added to the existing navigation subsystem?" Mr. Fischer asked.

"Yes, but—"

"Ergo, it is a new feature. Not our company's responsibility. You'll need to file a 27b-6 with The Consortium."

Luis paled at the thought of tangling with that bureaucratic kudzu.

Passed Up

Hausdorff and three other companies formed one of the project's action groups. Their group, along with three other groups, were the German conglomerate. The conglomerate was sub-contracted to another conglomerate of European companies, who were themselves sub-contractors of an organization of customers. Those customers, along with their North American and Asian branches, formed The Consortium. And each member company in The Consortium could, in turn, sub-contract their work out to other companies— fractally on and on.

"No, I don't have a 27b-6," he said to the young woman on the other end of his fifth extra-office phone call. "I just want to know who the request was passed to, so I can find out who they passed it to— and so forth."

"I can find out for you, I suppose— if you really feel you need to do that."

Luis taken aback by the tone of her voice— resigned rather than disinterested. "Unless there's a better way?"

"Perhaps," she replied, her voice hush. Luis could picture her hunched over the phone, a hand over the receiver as not to be overheard. "But if you tell anyone, I'll deny that we spoke. You didn't phone through official channels so you can't prove anything!"

"I won't tell," he said, glancing nervously around his cubicle.

"The truth is, there are only two companies qualified to handle any request; the one that generated it, and the one that handles it in the end. Everyone else is just an intermediary. Well, maybe those two companies, since they work in the same field, know each other already, right?"

"Then maybe," Luis pondered aloud, following her line of thought, "the process could be streamlined a bit by establishing a direct link between them, don't you think?"

"I would never!" she retorted, aloud and deliberately. "Good day, sir!"

Luis hung up, and stared at the form. Nothing looked familiar, just an overlapping litter of foreign control codes and forwarding stamps.

And then, the form stared back into him.

Passed Back

Luis recognized one of Hausdorff's sub-contractor's control codes. Their peculiar format of encoding the date as a hex number was unmistakable. Had he filed the request directly with them, half of the pass-throughs could have been eliminated.

And then he recognized the mark of one of that company's sub-contractors...

Having seen the unseen, he mentally sliced section after section from the jumbled chain. That left just three nodes; Hausdorff to Lindenmayer, Inc. for feasibility, Lindenmayer to Banach Systems for cost analysis, and then...

Back to Hausdorff for approval?

Furious, Luis opened the internal ticket-tracking system, and entered Banach's tracking code. If this could have been solved with an intra-company request, or worse, a face-to-face...

An entry from one and a half months ago popped up.

"This is a new feature request. We only deal with existing features. Submitter must file a 27b-6. Status: Rejected by Luis K."

After a few moments, Luis swept the fragments of his mind off his desk, and dutifully filled in a 27b-6.


CodeSOD: Else... where?

By Alex Papadimoulis

"I had a professor once who said that given enough NAND gates, he could rule the world," writes Rob B. "This was a roundabout way of saying that, using a whole bunch of NAND gates, you could create the function of any other logic gate. You shouldn't, because the other logic gates exist and it would be hugely wasteful to use NAND gates to do the same thing, but it can be done. It turns out this applies to code as well."

"We got some utterly garbage C++ code from a subcontractor. The error-to-lines ratio was amazingly high, and there were a lot of things to hate about it (like having one global function to get bits from a binary value which didn't work, and several different localized one-off solutions which did work). My main WTF moment, however, was the following."

while(true)
{
    if(mainType == 7)
    {
        subType = 4;
        break;
    }

    if(mainType == 9)
    {
        subType = 6;
        break;
    }

    if(mainType == 11)
    {
        subType = 9;
        break;
    }

    break;
}

"Just look at that for a minute," Rob continues, "I spent a lot of time thinking about this. The while loop is only there so that the break can be used to jump over code. I've never seen an unconditional break at the end of a loop before, but there's a first time for everything."

Rob added, "all I can figure is that the developer honestly didn't know that there is such a thing as 'else if'. But he did know about 'if', 'while', and 'break', so he cobbled together an 'else if' in the most ridiculous way possible."


Error'd: Oh, I see.

By Alex Papadimoulis

"I'm pretty sure that the price tagging software at Forever 21 trims the beginning and end of the Description field," George. "Either that, or these are more popular than I realized."

 

"The new grading software the school uses takes security very seriously," Ben W-R writes, "not even the intended recipient can decipher the progress reports."

 

"I think only Kurt Godel can solve this one," writes Paul G.

 

Frank got this exceptional note on his invoice.

 

"I mistyped a date on some web form," Michael Sondergaard noted, "obviously, it wasn't wrong enough."

 

"I got this error when trying to launch Battlefield 2," notes Russ.

 

Phillip Sitbon commented, "I love knowing when software points out bad self-referential habits!"

 

"I've been planning the migration of a database server to a new Veritas Cluster Server-managed cluster and thought that I should verify the install procedure," Jarrod Spiga writes, "but let's just say the instructions supplied by Veritas/Symantec are less than clear, especially on pages 123 and 124."

 

"At the visitors' center in the Little Farm in Tilden Park (Oakland, CA)," notes Colin, "there's a scale that tells you your body's water volume. Mine is apparently '-STACK @ 555'."

 

"I've been using a Yamaha AW4416 multitrack recorder a lot lately," noted Erno Palonheimo, "this is what happens if you don't have a hard disk hooked up and try to enter the song edit mode. Extra points for the... creature. Penguin? Maybe."

 


Classic WTF: The Network Batch File Virus

By Alex Papadimoulis

The Network Batch File Virus was originally published on March 15, 2007.


The early 90s were exciting. Tim Berners-Lee invented HTML and created the first of the many internets we have today. A bunch of dancing dudes in foil costumes built the first Pentium processor. And who can forget Eritrea gaining independence from Ethiopia? Well, I could, but I wasn't following Ethiopian politics so much those days.

At the time, Chilton W. was working at a company that provided software that auto insurance companies used to keep track of users, policies, cars, etc. Things were going great, too. They had sold their software to one third of all auto insurance providers in the U.S.

The architecture consisted of a main system (which they owned) at each insurance provider's location, physically linked to other systems on a local network. This didn't work under the typical client/server model, though, it was a daisy-chained, peer-to-peer setup.

Often just one computer on the network could connect to the internet via dialup, so troubleshooting was a matter of dialing into the main system, checking for problems, then walking a user through the steps of testing each networked computer. It was usually the low man on the totem pole at the client's site that would get tied up for a few hours, changing configuration settings and testing. It was a tremendously tedious process, and the answer was generally either a bad cable, bad software install, or a dead hard drive.

Chilton saw an opportunity to simplify the process by deploying a remote diagnostics application. Deployment was, in fact, pretty easy — a batch file could upload the utility to the insurance provider's main system, then someone there could copy the utility to a floppy and manually get it out across all the other systems. Chilton still didn't like that he'd have to explain to each user how to copy the utility, though, so he added the ability for the utility to replicate itself across the network.

Chilton's script was a godsend. He could easily diagnose problems with one call, one batch file upload, and one execution of the utility. A few minutes later, a log file would be created that could easily and accurately identify the problem. Chilton's productivity skyrocketed to the point that he could solve ten or more problems in the same time it took his coworkers to diagnose one.

The future was bright for Chilton. He began showing others how to use the utility, and everyone loved it. When a relative offered to send him back to finish college, though, he put in his two weeks' notice. His boss requested that he write documentation about the utility, so he printed up the batch script and wrote extensive documentation about how it worked. A few days later, he left.

A year later, he ran into one of his old coworkers and asked how things had been going at the company. "A month after you left, everything went crazy," he said. "Management said we had to wipe all of our hard drives and recall our systems from the field. Tech support was down for months!"

"What?" asked Chilton. "Why?"

One of the comments Chilton had left in his script read "this self-replicates, similar to how a virus works." It was read by the wrong person, and a "security expert" was immediately brought in. His conclusion was that this was clearly viral batch file, undetectable by every antivirus software product on the market. The fear that an elusive virus had permeated throughout the network lead to the company hiring very expensive investigators to look into the issue. The head investigator found nothing, though, so he was fired and the investigation ended. Ultimately, new computers were bought for everyone, and tech support was able to get back on track.


CodeSOD: Break Out

By Alex Papadimoulis

“I’m continually amazed by the unique and clever solutions developed by my colleagues,” Mark writes. “And I should say, I don’t mean ‘amazed’ in a good, innovative-idea-to-save-company-money sort of way. It’s more a wow, that’s more wrong than I could have ever imagined sort of way.”

“Take, for example, this snippet of code that I found recently.”

    for (int i = 0; i < dtModules.Rows.Count; i++)
    {
        if (dtModules.Rows[i]["id"].ToString() == ID.ToString())
        {
            dtModules.Rows.RemoveAt(i);
            i = 34598;  //used to jump out of the for
        }
    }

Mark adds, “perhaps the original coder thought that the word ‘break’ must be offensive to someone out? And really, it’s easier to just pick a random number to force the for-loop to exit and then hope that nobody ever has more than 34,598 modules.”


Nobody Does Business on December 31st!

By Mark Bowytz

Steve's phone gave its distinctive internal ring.

"Steve! Hey! Happy New Year, man! Jeff here from Corporate AR!" the caller was speaking a mile a minute. "I sent you a critical email. Did you get it yet?"

"Nothing yet, but let me refresh Outlook," Steve S. clicked Send-and-Receive and waited for a moment. "Okay... yeah, I see it. Go ahead."

Steve gave the caller points for trying to hide his panic, but as things went on, it was quite obvious that something had hit some fan... somewhere. But for the most part, Steve mostly tuned him out. It wasn't the first "Jeff from AR" that he had spoken to.

Now make no mistake about it: Steve isn't an accountant, nor does he work with any financial systems on a regular basis. But the system that he maintains does, however, feed the corporate Account Receivable (AR) and General Ledger (GL) systems on a regular basis. Periodically, the bean counters reconcile the dollars in the AR system to what has been sent to the GL system as a sort of check-and-balance process and, almost always, everything is in sync. Almost.

In the first few days of January, it's the same song and dance. An email will land in Steve's inbox, and the source of the email is always who started within the past year or so. The subject is typically something ominous that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up — **URGENT! CRITICAL ISSUE!** Billing System Clearing Account #12345678 for Business Units XYZ & ABC — and the email always comes complete with a few screenshots from systems that look as strange and foreign to a non-finance person as SQL would look to the person sending the request. However, the panic-worthy bottom line is always the same.

Jeff from AR continued, "the outage for Business Unit ABC is off by $1.3 million and I have no idea what is causing this. Can you please look into these items ASAP and let me know your thoughts?"

Of course, any time that a balance is over $1 million off, it tends to make anybody sit up and take notice. But for Steve, the feeling of déjà vu was quite palpable.

Did You Check the Logs?

Steve started into his research by asking, “When was the last time that GL was balanced against AR? And was it in balance?” While he never got a direct answer to that question, Steve eventually found out that everything seemed to be good right up until the end of December. “Were there any errors in the processing of the last GL file we sent you?” Steve asked, “ You know, the file that has the records with the effective dates of December 31st?”

“Not sure – I’ll have to check the processing logs and call you back” replied Jeff.

Moments later, Jeff called back and reported that the processing logs said that the problem was, Batch Consists of Posting Transactions in Different GL Periods. He snarkily added, "well, of course! That explains it. How could we be so stupid!?"

Steve thought the problem sounded familiar, so he called up the "GL Gurus" to look more closely at the problem and figure out what it meant. This is when some lights of recognition start to glow more brightly in peoples’ heads. “Hmmmm, it seems we’ve seen this before. What does it mean again?”

After lengthy debate, one of the gurus proclaimed “Oh, yeah, we can just change the dates in that file from December 31st to December 30th and then rerun the file.” So later on, lo and behold, the file processed cleanly and matched the GL 100%. Everyone was happy, vowed to remember to do that next year, and life moved on.

The 13th Period

This year, Steve simply had enough. He knew he wouldn't remember the issue the following year, and he was not content to just let the matter die.

Rather than sweep the matter under the rug again, Steve started doing some snooping on his own.  Eventually, he found someone who had archived an email from years past.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Lewis Dodgson <ldodgson@initech.com>
To: *GL-All <gl-all@initech.com>
Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2002 13:44:08 -0500
Subject: reminder—do not use December 31 as journal entry date
 
All,
It has been noted that we have received a couple of journal 
entries with a December 31 effective date. This is a reminder 
that using that date will post the journal entry to Period 13. 
Period 13 is reserved for business unit collapsing entries 
and Corporate year end entries.

Regards,
Lewis Dodgson
Assistant Vice President, Accounting & Operations

Amazingly, the GL system has special logic built into it based on the magic date of December 31st and it had been there for literally years. Steve wondered Didn’t anybody think that anybody processed transactions on the last day of the year? Why wasn’t this found out earlier? Sure there was turnover in the financial departments, but the gurus should have remembered the solution, after all, they were the GURUS for crying out loud!

Enough was now finally enough – Steve was now committed to do something, to keep this new year cluster&$^% from happening again. He weighed his options - Should he lobby for the dropping of the 13th period? How many systems would this affect? Could he make a case for such a project spanning different groups? Could he sell a techy reason for completely changing how the company did business to a bunch of stuffed shirts in finance?

In the end, rather than upset the corporate apple cart, Steve put in a simple change request so that his system won’t send 12/31/YYYY in any more GL files. If the system hits that date, it’ll use 12/30/YYYY instead. The GL system apparently doesn’t care. As long as as a date is “some time in December” and it’s not “December 31st”, things will be fine.


Cultivate Teams, Not Ideas

By Jeff Atwood

How much is a good idea worth? According to Derek Sivers, not much:

It's so funny when I hear people being so protective of ideas. (People who want me to sign an NDA to tell me the simplest idea.) To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions.

To make a business, you need to multiply the two. The most brilliant idea, with no execution, is worth $20. The most brilliant idea takes great execution to be worth $20,000,000. That's why I don't want to hear people's ideas. I'm not interested until I see their execution.

I was reminded of Mr. Sivers article when this email made the rounds earlier this month:

I feel that this story is important to tell you because Kickstarter.com copied us. I tried for 4 years to get people to take Fundable seriously, traveling across the country, even giving a presentation to FBFund, Facebook's fund to stimulate development of new apps. It was a series of rejections for 4 years. I really felt that I presented myself professionally in every business situation and I dressed appropriately and practiced my presentations. That was not enough. The idiots wanted us to show them charts with massive profits and widespread public acceptance so that they didn't have to take any risks.

All it took was 5 super-connected people at Kickstarter (especially Andy Baio) to take a concept we worked hard to refine, tweak it with Amazon Payments, and then take credit. You could say that that's capitalism, but I still think you should acknowledge people that you take inspiration from. I do. I owe the concept of Fundable to many things, including living in cooperative student housing and studying Political Science at Michigan. Rational choice theory, tragedy of the commons, and collective action are a few political science concepts that are relevant to Fundable.

Yes, Fundable had some technical and customer service problems. That's because we had no money to revise it. I had plans to scrap the entire CMS and start from scratch with a new design. We were just so burned out that motivation was hard to come by. What was the point if we weren't making enough money to live on after 4 years?

The disconnect between idea and execution here is so vast it's hard to understand why the author himself can't see it.

I wouldn't call ideas worthless, per se, but it's clear that ideas alone are a hollow sort of currency. Success is rarely determined by the quality of your ideas. But it is frequently determined by the quality of your execution. So instead of worrying about whether the Next Big Idea you're all working on is sufficiently brilliant, worry about how well you're executing.

The criticism that all you need is "super-connected people" to be successful was also leveled at Stack Overflow. In an email to me last year, Andy Baio -- ironically, the very person being cited in the email -- said:

I very much enjoyed the Hacker News conversation about cloning the site in a weekend. My favorite comments were from the people that believe Stack Overflow is only successful because of the Cult of Atwood & Spolsky. Amazing.

I don't care how internet famous you are; nobody gets a pass on execution. Sure, you may have a few more eyeballs at the beginning, but if you don't build something useful, the world will eventually just shrug its collective shoulders and move along to more useful things.

One of my all time favorite software quotes is from Wil Shipley:

This is all your app is: a collection of tiny details.

In software development, execution is staying on top of all the tiny details that make up your app. If you're not constantly obsessing over every aspect of your application, relentlessly polishing and improving every little part of it -- no matter how trivial -- you're not executing. At least, not well.

And unless you work alone, which is a rarity these days, your ability to stay on top of the collection of tiny details that makes up your app will hinge entirely on whether or not you can build a great team. They are the building block of any successful endeavor. This talk by Ed Catmull is almost exclusively focused on how Pixar learned, through trial and error, to build teams that can execute.

Ed Catmull talk at Stanford

It's a fascinating talk, full of some great insights, and you should watch the whole thing. In it, Mr. Catmull amplifies Mr. Sivers' sentiment:

If you give a good idea to a mediocre group, they'll screw it up. If you give a mediocre idea to a good group, they'll fix it. Or they'll throw it away and come up with something else.

Execution isn't merely a multiplier. It's far more powerful. How your team executes has the power to transform your idea from gold into lead, or from lead into gold. That's why, when building Stack Overflow, I was so fortunate to not only work with Joel Spolsky, but also to cherry-pick two of the best developers I had ever worked with in my previous jobs and drag them along with me. Kicking and screaming if necessary.

If I had to point to the one thing that made our project successful, it was not the idea behind it, our internet fame, the tools we chose, or the funding we had (precious little, for the record).

It was our team.

The value of my advice is debatable. But you would do well to heed the advice of Mr. Sivers and Mr. Catmull. If you want to be successful, stop worrying about the great ideas, and concentrate on cultivating great teams.

[advertisement] JIRA 4 - Simplify issue tracking for everyone involved. Get started from $10 for 10 users.

CodeSOD: Meaningless Progression

By Mark Bowytz

"One of our desktop applications has a progress bar in it," Bryce N. writes, "and as I was working more and more with the code, I noticed that the progress bar would progress to a seemingly random part in the bar, but never past the halfway mark. This would probably be ignored, if it weren't for the fact that I noticed that my breakpoints would only be hit when the bar reached the 'random' mark."

"While I was trying to discover why, I found this in the code:"

     /* There is really NO eloquent way of calculating what the progress 
      * of a given method/task will be.  One task may be downloading or copying a file while another 
      * one might be grabbing huge chunks of data for file creation.  Since we want to see 
      * a progress indicator but can't determine this value, we'll simply play with it so it has the 
      * appearance of running; (i.e. we'll take it to 50%, execute the task, then come back and finish 
      * the progress upon completion.)  This is a Microsoft STANDARD... I'm sure of it! 
      */

     Random R = new Random(); 
     int _percentage = R.Next(Convert.ToInt32(.5 * _bar.Maximum));

     string status = ""; 
     for (int i = 0; i < _bar.Maximum; i++) 
     { 
         if (i == _percentage) 
         { 
             //execute the real code 
         }

         // Always perform progress step 
         _bar.PerformStep(); 
     }

"Well, there you have it, the code tells the progress bar to progress somewhere between 0 and 1/5 the length of the bar, then execute the real code. Brillant!"


Error'd: Scientific Phonation

By Alex Papadimoulis

"Drat!" Arttu notes, "the limits of displaying long numbers caught me again!"

 

"It took a few tries," John writes, "but the second option worked."

 

Andrew writes, "I really hope I live to be more than 0 years old."

 

"IT professionals can wear many hats," Rich Lovely wrote, "glad to see our local college is preparing us for this one."

 

"Thanks for the self-esteem boost, CNN," writes Chris Heng.

 

"I finally matched the lady's head with the buff guy's body!" writes Chris H, "Does that mean I win?

 

"After a hard day's work debugging web services, I decided to visit the vending machine to treat myself" wrote Iain Collins. "Apparently fate has a sense of humor."

 

"I saw this today while browsing our University 'Cadetship Opportunities' notice board," Dean Camera writes, "Apparently not even the University staff read the darn thing."

 

"I stood there for a couple of seconds trying to figure out what this means," notes Jason Berberich, "I'm still not sure."

 

"I signed in remotely to help clean up the work computer over night," Jacob writes, "but then I came across this interesting problem with the disk-cleanup wizard."

 


Bad Code Offsets: Open Web Innovation

By Alex Papadimoulis

By now I'm sure you've heard of the Bad Code Offsets project. I announced it here back in November and gave a pretty exciting update in December, where we were able to give a whole bunch of money to some great open source projects. But what was especially exciting was the The $500 Good Code Grant.

Tell us how your free and open source project prevents bad code from being created and show us how $500 would make a real difference in your project
— or —
Propose a new, free and open source project and show us how $500 would help you get it started

There were some fantastic projects that contacted us about the grant, but the response from Eric S. Raymond — as in, the Eric S. Raymond — made the best case for his project, GPSd:

We really do drive out bad code, in both direct and indirect ways, and we supply examples of good practice for emulation.

GPSD is a service daemon and device multiplexer that is the open-source world’s basic piece of infrastructure for communicating with GPS receivers, and it’s everywhere Linux is – running on PCs, on embedded systems, and on both OpenMoko and the entire line of Maemo cellphones. We’re directly relied on by dozens of applications, including pyGPS, Kismet, GPSdrive, gpeGPS, position, roadmap, roadnav, navit, viking, and gaia. If you’re doing anything with GPSes on an open-source operating system, GPSD is your indispensible tool.

...

The reporting protocols used by GPS sensors are a hideous mess — the kind of mess that tends to nucleate layers of bad code around it as programmers with insufficient domain knowledge try to compensate for the deficiencies at application level and wind up snarling themselves up in ever-nastier hairballs. Part of what GPSD does is firewall all this stuff away; we know everything about the mess so you don’t have to, and we present clean data on a well-known port in a well-documented wire format. We then provide client-side service libraries that will unpack GPS reports into native C, C++, Python, or Perl structures so you don’t even have to know about our wire format.

If our client applications had to deal with the back-end mess of poorly-specified NMEA 0183 and seventeen different vendor-specific binary protocols, I for dead certain guarantee that the total community bug load from GPS-related problems would go up by an order of magnitude. And I’d bet more than any of the $500 prizes the Alliance is offering on the bug count going up by two orders of magnitude.

We also try to drive out bad code indirectly in the same way we keep our defect level low — by providing an example of good practice that extends all the way up from our development habits to the zero-configuration design of the gpsd daemon.

We're proud to support the GPSd project, and will be disbursing the grant money right away. Ideally, we'd like to deliver a giant, over-sized check in person, but we felt the exorbitant production cost was not a good way to spend the Alliance's limited resources. And speaking of those resources...

Join the Alliance for Code Excellence!

Thank you to everyone who joined up as a Patron Member. As I mentioned before, The Alliance for Code Excellence is a not-for-profit venture that's 100% volunteer driven, and members pay for the hard costs (materials, legal, postage, etc) through their annual dues of $50.

So if you like what we do, feel free to become a member. A one-year membership is $50 and, as a welcoming gift, you'll receive a black T-shirt with our logo on it.

  

Become a Patron Member

Cost: $50.00

Select T-Shirt Size:

Good Code Grant 2.0

Thanks to our members' support, we'll be giving away another $500 to a small, lesser-known open source project that could use it effectively. The guidelines are almost the same as before: simply tell us how your free and open source project prevents bad code from being created and show us how $500 would make a real difference in your project, and we'll consider donating to you.

So what's different from last time? We're only considering existing projects, not to-be-created projects. It's not that we don't want to support ideas, it's just that we have another idea for those.

Announcing the Open Web Innovation Grant

We've noticed that there are a whole bunch of open source frameworks and applications, but there aren't too many free and open source websites that aren't inundated with ads. One great website that comes to mind is Ajaxload; it's a simple little website that makes those ajax "loading" icons for you.

We're not entirely sure why there's a lack of these websites around, but I suspect a large part has to do with the cost. Software tools aside, a website that generates a reasonable amount of traffic can cost a bit of money to run, and not too many people are eager to commit to spending that in the long term.

We're hoping to change that. The goal of the Open Web Innovation Grant is to remove the cost barriers to creating free and open source web applications. Here's what we'll do as part of the grant:

All you need to do is tell us your idea, how you would implement it, and what support you'd need to launch. Remember, the goal is to build a project that helps reduce the generation of bad code, even if that means saving developers time.

The 1,000 SLOC Offset

I was originally planning on ending things in the previous paragraph, but I couldn't resist sharing this. Bad Code Offsets can be purchased in all sorts of denominations, ranging from 1 SLOC to 10K. While we certainly expected the 1 SLOC's through 100 SLOC's to be sold, we were surprised when an anonymous supporter purchased a 1,000 SLOC Bad Code Offset. I'll leave you with a (crappy cellphone camera) picture of what the 1,000 SLOC offset looks like.

Unlike the lower denominations, these are oversized and come matted and framed in the color of your choice.


Bring Your Own Code: Avoiding the Splice

By Alex Papadimoulis

One mistake that rookie carpenters will often make is to measure for trim molding – baseboard, casing, crown, etc – by the linear foot. Take the casing on a 7’ door, for example. Each leg of the door requires 84” of trim and the header needs 32”. If your house has 16 doors, and each side of the door needs 200” of trim, then that adds up to 533’ 4” (16 x 2 x 200”). And since you can get casing in 16’ boards, you’d need to order 34 boards to get the job done, right?

Not quite. You’d actually need 38 of those 16’ boards. Although each 16’ board can easily fit two 7’ door legs, the remaining 24” should be scrapped, as a splice in a header casing is about as professional as modHmm. And while door casings are relatively easy to measure for, baseboard and crown molding can get trickier.

Photo Credit: oddsock @ flickr

A general rule of thumb – especially for stained wood – is that splices should be avoided at all (reasonable) costs. While it’s unreasonable to expect an extra-long board to be made for rooms longer than 16’, there’s no reason to splice a 7’ and 4’ section together. Actually, there is a reason, but that has less to do with materials cost and more to do with a lazy carpenter who estimated incorrectly.

Bring Your Own Code

Your exercise for the day: write a function that calculates the number of boards needed to trim out a house.

For bonus points, have your program print the cuts needed on each board.

Special thanks to the lazy carpenter that I hired (and all his spliced moldings) for inspiring this BYOC, and to Todd Lewis for encouraging me to finally write it up. If you have your own fun coding exercise, don’t hesitate to contact me!


Lunel on Sunday

By norths@mnjenfrance.eu (Jon & Mary in Lunel)

I left a long gap - sorry folks, too much to do and I kept feeling uninspired about writing. But this morning we walked into Lunel as usual on Sunday. The town is always buzzing - market day, most shops open, cafés full to bursting and friends meeting each other in the street. Mondays are by contrast almost dead.

Our regular routine is to buy vegetables at our friends Christine and Martial Vanvooren's stall (untreated produce from their market garden on the way to Marsillargues) by the Halles, then to get cheese at the magnificent stall in the Halles (maybe also fish, or duck sausage, from other stalls there), then meat at the Halal butcher Encas and bread at one of the central bakeries, after which it's time for our coffee or beer. We almost always end up at the Bar des Sports on the corner opposite the Pescalune statue (see previous post on Lunel).

This morning we met our neighbours there and 6-year-old Rémi was chattering away about his life and his friends - and rushing off to meet them - while his dad Bruno drank a coffee with us en route to their lunchtime engagement. Mum Christine was there in passing, but had already met up with friends in other cafés, so only said a quick hello in passing. And several of their friends stopped to say hi too, so we were well entertained for over half an hour before we set off back through the flower market towards home.

There we found the little drama of the morning - the pompiers (firemen) were there lights flashing rescuing a lady who'd fallen down the steps from the main market and apparently broken her ankle. In France you always call the firemen rather than ambulance first of all for an accident and it's they who are trained in first aid.

Then as we walked back down the avenue des Abrivados I remembered to take a photo of the completely blocked footpath - the Mayor here is very keen on keeping footpaths for pedestrians, but each Sunday as you can see the path by the carpark is occupied by cars to you have to walk in the road, and it's about time someone did something! And for autumn colour nothing beats the pyracantha just along the road from our house!



Bed & breakfast

By norths@mnjenfrance.eu (Jon & Mary in Lunel)

When we came to France we found ourselves in a house with spare bedrooms and we decided to offer B&B. To begin with it was mainly for our UK friends and acquaintances, but in 2007 France passed a law requiring all publicly advertised accommodation to be formally registered. The Lunel Tourist Office noticed our website, and we decided to register rather than remove the details.

It turned out to be a fairly simple process. We were offered the chance to register with accommodation agencies, but decided to remain 'hors label'. So some Tourist Office staff came with a local Councillor whom, as it happened, we knew. M Moysan is a neighbour and the Member responsible for cultural affairs and we'd already met him to discuss music in the town. Apparently they usually bring an elected Member with them, and in this case I think it satisfied a natural curiosity to see how his English neighbours lived, which we well understand. Anyway, we apparently passed with flying colours and duly completed the paperwork. Now we appear in tourist guides and pay the very modest taxe de séjour which helps fund tourist publicity.

Lunel is not crowded with B&Bs - it's not really a tourist town, but a lot of people pass through or find it convenient between Nîmes and Montpellier, hills and sea, vineyards and Camargue. So it's not really surprising that almost immediately people (mostly French) started to phone with requests for rooms. Several were pilgrims, starting from Arles via Saint Gilles and Vauvert towards Montpellier on one of the many routes across France to the shrine at Compostela in north-west Spain. One of these was a young Korean man spending the last of his savings on a life-changing journey having lost job and girlfriend all at once. Others have been people visiting friends and relatives nearby, or coming to a wedding in Lunel, or taking work-related exams which start bright and early in the morning. Just now we have a young man, Gabriel, who is with us 5 nights a week for 3 months while he takes an arduous heavy lorry-driving course; and Theresa, a young Englishwoman, as just left having been over for a fortnight to train French franchise owners how to run a Bagel outlet in a new shopping centre in Montpellier.

We still welcome friends and family from the UK and elsewhere, though visits have tailed off in the past year because of the fall in the value of the pound though we still welcome all who can make it. For the rest we try to cover costs, not really to make a profit. We have other English friends who have run their B&B as a fully-fledged business and have scarcely had a moment to call their own between March and October. We try to balance our life and other commitments here with our efforts to offer a comfortable and enjoyable stay for our paying guests, but in any case our French guests have offered us a glimpse of the country and culture we've joined and an opportunity for us to practise and develop our language skills!

The silence of the bees - Le silence des abeilles?

By norths@mnjenfrance.eu (Jon & Mary in Lunel)

This week 10,000 bee specialists from all over the world have gathered here in the south of France for the 41st Apimondia conference. I hadn't heard of this until our local newspaper published an article today highlighted the event and the work of Vincent Tardieu. He is a French journalist who writes a blog (and has published a book) called L'étrange silence des abeilles, about the often mysterious disappearance or reduction of bee populations. Of course this is deeply worrying because much fruit and vegetable production depends on bee pollination.

As the newspaper says, the problem is that although they disappear by the thousands or millions, nobody really knows why, and Tardieu has attempted to find out through enquiries in the USA, in France and elsewhere. He says: "beekeepers think the problem is pesticides, virologists think it's definitely a virus, some entomoligists think it is a parasite, while other researchers blame some kind of genetic decline or competition with foreign immigrant insects.

One of these is the Japanese hornet (voir aussi article en français), a fearsome beast 5 cm long with a violent sting and no natural predators. As a wasp-hater since childhood I'm particularly worried about these because their huge nests have been spotted in the south west of France. Apparently they kill ordinary honey bees by hovering outside their hives and decapitating the workers as they pass. Ugh!

The article refers to the industrial-scale pollination practised in the USA with huge trailers of beehives being towed round orchards from Florida to California. There, bees are disappearing though nobody has found carpets of corpses. In a murder mystery, it goes on, if there are no corpses then there isn't a mass murderer, but Tardieu is convinced that reductions in bee population are due to a cocktail of ills, parasites and chemicals which threatens their very survival. He ends "these extraordinary insects preserve our delight in food and in the beauty and diversity of the countryside, so keeping them alive is very much our business."

Two footnotes. Our friends Christine and Martial Vanvooren who have a market garden here in Lunel use other insects to pollinate their crops inside poly-tunnels - this is obviously practicable if you have an enclosed space but not in the open. And I was relieved to discover that grape flowers are pollinated by wind so it seems our wine supplies will survive threats to the bee population.

Wirksworth to the fore

By norths@mnjenfrance.eu (Jon & Mary in Lunel)

As I write, the Wirksworth Festival is about to start and the latest issue of Community Fayre has just arrived in the post. Those who thought this blog would be about our life in France need to adjust their sets, but only slightly - it is about our life, and occasionally that will include our life before France, including 27 years in Wirksworth, the little Derbyshire town that still means a lot to us. Among other things we still have family and friends there.

Community Fayre is the community newspaper. It has just reached its 150th edition and is full of interest for those like us who have Wirksworth connections. Apart from the Festival, of which more below, it has articles on Elliott Rennie promoting his Ellympics (slow motion sprint, paper plane javelin and invisible curling) from the 4th plinth in Trafalgar Square - Elliott is son of our architect friends Rosie and Graham and also a colleague 'cellist of Mary's in the community orchestra (a genuinely inclusive musical group that's been going for many years).

The word community appears a lot in Wirksworth life, and there it is not an empty word. Long before we arrived there Anthony Gell School had been a beacon for town activity as well as secondary education, and for a time the whole of Derbyshire imitated Wirksworth's Community Education Council. The Town Council supported community efforts, as it doubtless still does, despite its own slender resources. (We have often bemoaned the way English local government takes away funds from local initiative whereas the French commune system leaves even small towns and villages with much more local control). The paper, the orchestra, the twinning with Die, the festival and much more sprang from this sense of sharing resources and working together. Small as the town is, it punches well above its weight.

The Festival has become a real artistic beacon, both in performances of all kinds and through visual arts - the Art & Architecture Trail is extraordinary, preceded only at the beginning by a few events in much larger places like Brighton, and both visual arts and music have both retained a local element as well as attracting talent from much further afield. It will, undoubtedly, be a great success, and we are proud of all our friends including the current Chair Bill Lounds who put so much effort into making it so.

Community Fayre this time is full of nostalgic memories and touching reminders of old friends - the Sam Taylor award set up by his parents Judie and Paul and brother Tim in his memory (he was killed in a road accident 11 years ago) for an outstanding pupil at the secondary school; our old neighbour Lester Simpson who has brought his huge musical talent into the life of the town, a memory of Ken Wilson who died this year and helped our sons among many others in Wirksworth Cricket Club, Lee Bowyer from our son Sam's year in school now following in his father's footsteps in the family paving and aggregates business. It also recalls the beginnings of Community Fayre itself in the early 80s, shortly after we arrived in Wirksworth. For those of us who have lived there it's a proud product of a real town community.

We can and do keep in touch with those, friends and family, who are still alive and well and living in Wirksworth, so there is special poignancy in remembering some of those who have died. Some of them are mentioned above, and other special friends included Mike Pegg who shared my enthusiasm for wine and passed on to me his home-made wine racks; Maggie Riddle whose friendship reinforced our involvement in twinning and our developing interest in living in France; and Peter Hoon, whose lovely black and white prints of Wirksworth were so often Christmas cards or little gifts we still treasure. His widow Jenny is curating an exhibition of them in the Festival this year, and I have used some to illustrate this post.

French Quakers

By norths@mnjenfrance.eu (Jon & Mary in Lunel)

I was brought up a Quaker (member of the Society of Friends), worked for many years in the British Quaker headquarters and, although I'm no longer a member I still have sympathy with Quaker principles and admiration for many Quakers. Long before we came to live in France I also knew that there was a place called Congénies, the original seat of the French Société des Amis but I had no idea that it was just along the road from Lunel and that the old 19th century building had been restored as an active Meeting House. We quickly made contact with local Friends.

The origins of French Quakerism are romantic, told in full on the Congénies website where you can also find details of current activities. In brief the original group was part of the widespread protestant dissent in the Cevennes in the early part of the 17th century, but unlike many other such groups which fought a guerilla campaign against government forces, this group was pacifist. So in a sense the French group predated the birth of British Quakerism in the 1650s. But because of language barriers (at that time they spoke Occitan, not French) and poor communications, the French group did not learn about or identify with Quakers elsewhere for over a century.

But they did eventually become Friends or Quakers in name. Even now the Society in France is very small, with only around 500 adherents, and apart from a Centre in Paris, the Meeting House Congénies is their main building. We found we had friends in the Meeting already and we soon began to attend Meeting from time to time and to help out with the considerable job of running the Congénies Centre and its activities.

Just as churches in England are charities, so here they are associations. But religious associations are complicated here, and it has been interesting for us as sympathisers but not members to find that there is a role for us in the 'lay' association which has to exist to run nonreligious Quaker activities (upkeep and letting of the Meeting House for instance) alongside the 'church' or religious association (which has its own Law of 1905). In such a small group people are of course glad of any help they can get but it is at least a comfort to me that, thanks to this strict separation of the secular and the religious in the French state, there is a natural place for someone like me who no longer believes in a religious sense but who is a sympathiser.

Further information about Quakers on these sites - France, Britain. These sites and the Congénies one above have links to further sites.

La vie associative

By norths@mnjenfrance.eu (Jon & Mary in Lunel)

I've just met a British man who has lived in northern France for a few years and is gradually improving his French. Like me he finds this hard work, and nowhere more so than in meetings - also like me he had spent years training people to run meetings well and in the end he has given up the struggle of going, and with it given up some of the friendly contacts you make through belonging to local associations.

In France associations are part of everyday life and, like many British clubs, an ideal way of finding social life, so many expats in France join them and find themselves involved in the unique French meeting. In the UK these are usually relatively orderly affairs in which there is a Chair(person) steering the business, a secretary taking minutes, and a written agenda. I have never encountered the latter in France, and almost all the meetings I've been to have taken place in a constant buzz of talk, after the long flurry of bises and handshakes at the start. Since even French people find it difficult to hear what's being said, it's no wonder foreigners feel left out if they are uncertain of their French.

In England, we both spent much of our lives working in voluntary organisations, at different times as paid workers and as volunteers. I spent most of my working life employed to improve the voluntary sector, so I'd tried to understand how the 'voluntary sector' worked in France, without much success. Some years ago a French friend used the expressive phrase le tissu associatif to describe the voluntary sector in France, but it was only after our move that I discovered how important the association is to everyday life here. The idea that people should be able to band together to do things for mutual and/or community benefit is at the root of the modern state: the right to form associations is enshrined in the law of 1901 which everyone knows about.

Of course many people belong to clubs and societies in the UK, but many of these are not really seen as part of the voluntary sector. Here everything from sports clubs to arts festivals, small local choirs to national charities, environmental organisations and campaigning groups are Associations Loi de 1901. They have a status in and alongside every commune and alongside the local and national state and commercial sectors. And they have advantages in exemption from taxation and in access to local communal resources, meeting rooms and so on. Above all they are in most people's minds as part of everyday life, whereas in the UK many people who belong to clubs don't really think of the voluntary sector or know what it is.

Because the association is such an engrained part of French life people here do jobs as part of the bureau (committee) of the association, and presumably enjoy the even more frequent meetings involved! Otherwise France and England are nearer when it comes to willingness to volunteer - never enough pairs of hands for some jobs, some members who are content to enjoy the group activity but don't offer to help out, and plenty of people who'd never think of doing work without pay. However, I think the UK is a long way ahead in organising volunteers through local volunteer bureaux and I think in training programmes and so on. (committee) of their favourite

I think la vie associative is a healthy and positive part of French life and we really enjoy our voluntary work here - I just wish meetings were less chaotic!

Why Lunel?

By norths@mnjenfrance.eu (Jon & Mary in Lunel)

This was the question we were asked often by French friends when we first arrived in France, and are still asked at regular intervals by French and English friends and acquaintances alike. We've been here over 2 years now and have no cause to regret our decision, so I thought we should try and explain both our reasons and the varied motives of the questioners!P

We started to come to France regularly in the early 90s following the twinning of our UK town Wirksworth with Die in the Drôme. After numerous visits we decided we'd like to live in the south of France when we retired, but that we'd prefer open skies to mountains. Unlike many people we know, we also wanted to live in a town with services we could walk to, not a remote village to and from which we'd have to drive to get food or medical attention. We wanted a fairly modern house, not one we'd have to restore or maintain a lot.P

Some of the French people we met found our decision to live in a place with a fairly high north African population hard to understand, but our experience of London, Nottingham and the UK in general had accustomed us to multi-cultural populations. Lunel has a mosque, some halal butchers and you often hear Arabic spoken in the streets and cafés. In many ways though, the more traditional culture - Occitan influences, everything connected with bulls and horses, the Spanish influence - seemed more unusual to us, but we have been fascinated to discover it all.P

For others, whether French or English, it is our choice of a comparatively urban setting that has been difficult to understand. This is of course just a matter of taste, but while we admire the beautiful rural retreats of many of our friends, we have already had many occasions to be thankful for the convenience of medical services at hand, and get more exercise walking or cycling around town every day than I think we would driving everywhere. We also know people who have struggled in emergencies through their relative isolation, and we wonder if in 20 years' time lifestyles which depend on cars will be sustainable, let alone environmentally sound.

Lunel is not a smart town, and many of our friends have I think consciously chosen prettier surroundings or more attractive local markets and shops. But this is a functional town, much of it quite old if still rather down-at-heel, growing fast and so with life and resources even in a recession, and new resources like the Médiatheque about to open on our doorstep. It's convenient for 2 (you could argue 3 or 4) airports, the Autoroute and the railway. But most of all, in a short time it has become home and we have good friends and neighbours here. No regrets, in other words.
P
The symbol of the town is the man fishing in the canal, the Pescalune. Only people born and bred here can describe themselves as 'pescalune', while we incomers are known as Lunellois. But I like to describe myself now as 'presquelune', hopefully becoming more identified with the town as the years go by!

Music outdoors

By norths@mnjenfrance.eu (Jon & Mary in Lunel)

Each 22 June is the Fête de la Musique in France. All over the country, in halls and theatres and most of all outside there is music of all kinds. I was spoilt for choice of photos of this year's offerings in Lunel and in the end chose the South Highland Pipers, a versatile crew who did not only Scottish but Irish numbers with appropriate changes of instrument. Now, as I write, it's the Lunel Jazz Festival with 4 evenings of late concerts under the trees in the park.
P
All through the summer in the south of France there are outdoor concerts. When we were in England we went to a few, notably a performance of Don Giovanni in the beautiful gardens of Tissington Manor. Indeed there are opera companies which specialise in outdoor performances - but they have to be prepared for rain. When we went, with our French friend Françoise on her first ever visit to England, we took a picnic (bubbly, smoked salmon etc.) which we ate under umbrellas with 100 or so others in the rain, and Françoise was already amazed; but when the performance started it poured down at least twice and the musicians had to stop and scurry for cover, while we sat in soggy rows, umbrellas deluging water each into 2 neighbours' laps. Then we left, before the opera was finished, and we heard afterwards that they had sung the final arias huddled undeer a little hut which was the only covered part of the set. Judging from the weather reports from the UK this year people will not have had an easier time.
P
The French experience is much more reliable, apparently. Thank goodness, because people pay mega-euros to watch grand opera in the Roman theatre in Orange or in the courtyard of the Palais des Papes in Aix-en-Provence (as we did a couple of years ago to hear our all-time-favourite Marriage of Figaro). There is an odd performance cancelled because of a thunderstorm, but usually the rain stays away and the warm late evenings are ideal for sitting and listening. And although the acoustics are variable, and amplification almost essential even for classical music, and although insects sometimes home in on the bright lights to plague audiences and performers, it's preferable to the stuffy interiors of concert halls in a hot summer. A few weeks ago we went to 2 indoor concerts here in Lunel - the Cheltenham Ladies College choir and string orchestra, and the Bucks County Youth Orchestra. They were in the Salle Georges Brassens, an impressively refurbished concert hall, and it was comfortably cool, but the sound of the air conditioning did not add to the enjoyment of the music!
P
The only slight blip in our enjoyment of the jazz this week has been the appearance of one of the local policemen ejecting people from the small patches of grass where they were sitting, near the main seating. We had our chairs on the paths, which was fine, but it seemed to be unnecessarily officious. His colleagues strolled by without commenting or intervening, it was just him!
P
Now we look forward to the start of the new season of music with rehearsals of our choir Crème Franglaise and then at the end of October the (definitely indoor) Mandoline Festival, almost unique in the world and with music of terrific quality and variety.

Wine

By norths@mnjenfrance.eu (Jon & Mary in Lunel)

It's time I wrote about wine on this blog. It's one of the reasons we are in France, and a continual interest and pleasure. There is plenty about it on our website too but this adds another dimension.
P

Living in England we enjoyed the benefits of an international wine market - plenty of choice from Europe, but also from the Americas, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. Also the supermarkets took (still do take I think) their wine buying seriously, employing reputable experts to select their wines, and we could always select with the aid of tasting columns in the weekend papers and of websites like Tom Cannavan's excellent Wine Pages. And in Wirksworth we had a wine tasting circle which met regularly over many years, a group of friends who enjoyed evenings together but also explored different kinds of wines - grape varieties, countries, supermarket favourites and so on.

All the time (since the early 1990s) we'd been coming to France and visiting vineyards. The photo shows me recently in one of the first I ever visited, Cave Didier Cornillon in Wirksworth's twinned area of the Diois (a group of communes around the town of Die in the Drôme départment). The pictures in the background are by our artist friend Ali Benyahya who lives nearby and is building his gallery next to Didier's caveau.
P
To begin with on holidays we explored the Die area and its delicious sparkling Clairette de Die, and so met Didier soon after he had branched out on his own from the cave coopérative in the area (now known as Jaillance, with an output of 6 million bottles of bubbly a year and an impressive website - take a look). Didier has also prospered, making an impressive range of still wines as well as Clairette and, for a few years now, also running a good winery in Tunisia. Then we branched out down the nearby Rhône Valley, into Provence and the Languedoc, and of course we could not resist calling in on Bourgogne, Beaujolais, the Loire Valley and indeed Champagne on our journeys to and from England.
P
The contrasts with the UK are striking. Although wine is much more part of everyday life for many French people, most only know the wines of their own region. Exclude Champagne from that - everyone drinks it on festive occasions. Maybe people buy Bordeaux reds on special occasions. But to find people in the Languedoc who know or drink Beaujolais, Bourgogne, Alsace or Loire wines or even Côtes du Rhône, still less know which grapes are used for what, is fairly rare. And as for overseas wines, you find very few on sale and fewer French people who know anything at all about them. It was a real surprise to find a local vigneron who had been a consultant in Uruguay and was full of praise for South American wines - but admitted that the experiment of importing them to sell here had failed.

So I've had the pleasure of being accepted quite quickly as someone who 'knows about wine' among French friends, and as a result have extended my researches through introductions to some of the fairly numerous family members and friends of friends who are in the wine business. We have so much to explore still in France - the south-west, the Jura and Alsace, and the whole of Bordeaux - and within driving distance into Spain and Italy too, although we have started to discover the diverse wines and unusual grape varieties of north-east Italy near to the Slovenian border, which are hardly known in England let alone here in France! And we're hoping to develop a regular wine tasting circle here too.

Road safety

By norths@mnjenfrance.eu (Jon & Mary in Lunel)


British people often say it must be hard to drive on the other side of the road, but of course when you move to another country you get used to it after a bit, and we'd already had plenty of practice on holiday. But there are certainly differences between French driving and British - motorways/Autoroutes less crowded, more hair-raising overtaking, even less reliable signalling on or near roundabouts for example.

A few months ago in The Connexion, an English-language monthly for ex-pats I'd recommend to anyone, someone wrote to suggest the paper did an article about bad French driving. The editor rather weakly replied that it was not their job to offend the French. Well, I don't want to do that either, but I did wonder whether there was any substance in the the idea that things were worse here. So I looked up road accident stats (not straightforward, but official websites yielded the answers in the end) and this graph showing road deaths is the result. In 2002 before President Chirac started government initiatives against drink driving and speeding, in countries of almost identical populations, well over twice as many people were killed on French roads each year; even now British road deaths are over 40% lower than here. Injuries seem to follow the relative figures. Official publications say the problems are still mainly too much speed and too much drink, and take very seriously the target of reducing accidents. France is not the worst country in Europe - Ireland is about the same and Portugal much worse, for example - but as French residents now we shall certainly take extra care, and try not to resent the increase in speed cameras!
P
When we arrived here I decided I should know what the equivalent of our Highway Code said. The Code de la route turns out to be a clear, thorough and I think impressive document, well-illustrated and informative: I don't think the British counterpart has for example a description and explanation of ABS brakes. There are some interesting differences - for example single yellow lines in France mean you can neither unload nor park, dotted that you can unload but not park. In a country addicted to fresh bread there are numerous 'arrêt minute' areas where you can hop out to get your baguette at the boulangerie but otherwise, the Code says, dashing into the bakers is parking (stationnement) and not a simple arrêt. While I'm on about French road rules, a very useful one to remember is that 50 km/h (roughly 30 mph) speed limits start automatically when you see the town or village sign (black on white edged in red). That is one reason for the often useful 'you are now leaving such and such a place' signs (no red and with a diagonal line through the place name) - it also signals the cancellation of the town speed limit. For dozy drivers and map readers it's also a handy revision tool - as in 'where the hell are we now - never mind I'll check on the way out'. I've written about this on our website too.
P
So despite my wish for scrupulous fairness I think there is some reason to be wary of other drivers on French roads, and particularly never to try and guess which way they will head on roundabouts (something my French friends also complain about a lot). And it does really seem as if, however fast you are driving, there's always someone behind you wanting to go faster. Never mind, it could be worse - according to a French govt publication it's far more dangerous on the roads almost anywhere in eastern Europe or even in Portugal!

Friendly French

By norths@mnjenfrance.eu (Jon & Mary in Lunel)

This week Mary went to a committee meeting. As in most organisations, whether choirs, churches, sports clubs or whatever, people often rely on them and their meetings for social contact and mutual support. In this case people were feeling upset and perhaps guilty because a member had sadly and unexpectedly died and they wondered if they had done enough, whether they could have helped more and so on. But in the course of conversation it turned out that the person in whose house the meeting took place lived only 3 plots away from another active member, but neither had any idea that the other was a neighbour.

This would not I think happen in our street. When we arrived in late 2006 three neighbours were in the road welcoming us ten minutes after we'd arrived, and we've experienced unfailing friendship and support from our neighbours ever since. We live in a cul de sac (which by the way is technically a French expression but is hardly ever used for a dead-end road - un impasse or voie sans issue on road signs) in which all the houses are fairly close together, and people tend to know what's going on nearby. English friends in towns and villages nearby confirm that neighbours are equally friendly and act as an informal neighbourhood watch!

But there's one feature of French life which is different from what we are used to in England. Both the letterbox and the doorbell are at the front gate, not at the front door of the house. Obviously this makes life easier for post-people and other deliveries. Among other things they don't have to risk life and limb if there are dogs in the front yard. But when someone comes to your house, unless they know you well they ring the bell and wait in the street. Given that many French homes have large solid gates and high walls or hedges, you've no idea if anyone is in or not, especially if the front garden is large. In the case of our committee friend who had not realised who were her neighbours, she lives in an area with large plots round each house and far enough from the centre of town that people use their cars all the time rather than walk, so it's not surprising that she hadn't bumped into them in the street.

When we came to France we carried in our minds somewhere the myth that French people are more private and discrete than English people. We have not found this at all - indeed we've been overwhelmed by kindness and warmth on all sides - and we've also found a similar myth here about how 'the English' are back in the UK. It all confirms us in the resolution we made early on not to generalise about 'the French', but at the same time you realise that simple things like the placing of letter-boxes and doorbells makes a difference to everyone's view of privacy.

There is one final thing - if you know roughly where someone lives but have forgotten the exact address, the letterbox usually gives you a clue - you are supposed to put your name on it. Indeed, when we first came to live in France and borrowed a friend's house for a few weeks, the post woman took back mail addressed to us at first because we'd forgotten to add our name to our friend's letterbox!

Language

By norths@mnjenfrance.eu (Jon & Mary in Lunel)

We've just finished a season of French conversation classes. Well, classes is a bit of an exaggeration - mornings of exploration followed by great lunches more like. It's over two years since we discovered the RERS (Réseau d'Echanges Réciproques des Savoirs) network. This is a national network of associations for the free exchange of information all over France. Its local branch around the town of Sommières a few km north of here has over 140 members.

We'd been searching for French lessons, and Quaker friends suggested we try the Tuesday morning sessions of RERS in Calade, a social centre in Sommières. We discovered a vast echo-ey building (an old school, which like many ex-schools in the UK is well-adapted to adult education, but not to multiple groups of loud pupils and loud teachers competing in close proximity to share their limited knowledge of foreign languages), and soon decided to meet in people's houses instead. Mary and I had steered clear of purely British groups like Britsnîmes (a very popular English-speaking association based around Nîmes - lots of French people like it too) because we wanted to prioritise learning French rather than meeting other Brits. We do this anyway in RERS...

Initially, the conversation group was for English-speakers (British people, a couple of Danes, a couples of Swedes, a German person or two) to brush up their French for an hour from 10-11. Then French speakers who liked to learn English started to arrive at 11 to have an hour's English conversation. Soon, the English conversation became serious enough that Mary began a separate Monday evening group - suitable for people who work as well as us retired folk - here in Lunel: this now has a dozen members, and is very successful. But we still have the Tuesday So now, each week except in August, a group of 15-20 meets in someone's house to converse in French for 2 hours, and in English from 11 on, followed by a shared lunch (delicious and varied - surprisingly there is usually enough of everything and rarely too much of anything).

This only describes a fraction of the activities of RERS, of which more anon. But it has been the start of some wonderful friendships for us as well as helping us improve our French.

Cycling

By norths@mnjenfrance.eu (Jon & Mary in Lunel)

This is a good weekend to write about cycling as the Tour de France reaches its climax. Since we've come to Lunel our bikes have come into their own - nice flat countryside after the serious hills of Derbyshire. We often use our bikes for gentle trips into town, and Jon rides around the local countryside in search of old roads, nice views and good photos. Lunel itself has made some efforts to accommodate cyclists, with green lines on pavements here and there, but these seem to lead to places you don't want to go to, or to peter out or include serious bumps over kerbs that are not really adapted. So I've joined Lunel à Vélo, which is a combination of social cycling group and campaigning organisation. You can see their blog at http://lunelavelo.over-blog.fr/

Cycling is a passion for many in France, and there are few fine weekends when you don't find parties of lycra-clad cyclists pedalling the roads into the Cevennes. That is far more sporting than we, or I think the average Lunel à Vélo members, are. The Tour of course is at another level altogether. Two years ago (amid drug scandals which have frequently marred the race) it passed the end of our road here, and my main memory is of 2 hours of wierdly-shaped publicity vehicles and then two groups of cyclists, two pelotons (the word comes from the same root as platoon) flashed by. This year we have watched most of it on the television, to begin with with curiosity, but with increasing admiration and sense of suspense.

There are some who say that the whole race is bound to be riddled with drugs - how can we know, although there are random tests? But the sheer power and endurance of riders who can ride over 150 km most days for 3 weeks at speeds averaging nearly 50 km/h (30 mph in old money) is awesome, and we have cheered the heroism of the American many times former winner Lance Armstrong who has returned this year after several years recovering from cancer and retained his third place with the most formidable climbs. We have admired the transition of Bradley Wiggins from Olympic track gold medallist to successful Tour rider who found reserves of strength to hang on to 4th place on Mont Ventoux; the amazing and talented Schleck brothers whose performances credit the tiny country of Luxembourg; and the sheer brilliant speed of the Manx Mark Cavendish who bursts through to win more stage than anyone else and hopes to do the same on the Champs Elysées tomorrow. We admire the supreme talent of the winner Contador. And we admire the teamwork of those whos pace-making and sheltering from the wind enables each of these stars to achieve what they do.

Weather

By norths@mnjenfrance.eu (Jon & Mary in Lunel)

The British are supposed to talk about the weather more than most, but we've found our French acquain- tances pretty adept at it! We moved here for the 300+ days of sunshine a year you get in the 'banana' along the Languedoc coast of the Med, even when it is stormy and cloudy over the Cevennes inland. Like today for instance, with a clear lue sky and temperature already 26° at 9 in the morning. One of the few things I remember from our geography teacher Barney Jacob, who had catch-phrases including 'med typ clim' (for Mediterranean-type climate) which we have now learnt means weather like this. Not really surprising when I think about it!

On clear days like today the wind comes either from the north or north-west - Mistral or Tramontane - and the humidity drops well below 50%, so washing dries quickly but you have to water the plants more (and it's never really enough - lots of people have automatic watering systems here). The northerly wind can be quite violent (common motorway sign - VENT VIOLENT SOYEZ PRUDENTS) but usually it's just a pleasant cooling breeze in summer. On the frequent bright winter days it's another matter, positively cold.

Then quite suddenly the wind will switch - anywhere from easterly through southerly to westerly brings humidity and cloud from the sea and just sometimes rain. When it rains it rains. 15-25 mm in an hour is not uncommon, and we once had 50 mm. Naturally the drains cannot cope and if you go out you wade through lakes.

Lunel is prone to flooding, but luckily we are on the good side of town, 11 m above sea level as opposed to 9 on the east side where houses are regularly flooded. This comes partly from flash floods from storms here and partly from the river Vidourle which runs about a km east of the town and brings the accumulated storm waters from the Cevennes. It is one of the most notorious rivers in France for flooding, and the town of Sommières a few km upstream has terrible floods once every 20-30 years, with perhaps 2-3 metres of water reaching up to the first floors of houses in the town centre. Stories of large fish in people's bedrooms are commonplace. This is not new - at the Roman site of Ambrussum on the river between here and Sommières excavations have revealed buildings destroyed by floods and rebuilt each time a little higher above the river at 25 year intervals 2000 years ago. Rivers in France have genders - Le Rhône, La Loire - but Le Vidourle is considered by locals to be almost god-like and so above gender, just Vidourle.

Oh yes, and we sometimes have snow, but not for long!

Le Pic Saint Loup

By norths@mnjenfrance.eu (Jon & Mary in Lunel)

Living as we do in the flat lands near the Mediterranean coast of the eastern Languedoc, the dramatic southern outpost of the Cevennes, the twin outcrops of the Pic Saint Loup and l'Hortus, are visible almost everywhere. Near the coast you see them on clear mornings by the Canal du Rhône à Sète, crouching on the horizon across the wild marshy country of l'Etang d'Or, the grander hills of the true Cevennes just visible beyond.

A little further north, in the vineyards just above Lunel and from the nearby A9 Autoroute, they provide a backdrop and hint at the great wines produced in their shadow.
But you begin to get a sense of the drama of the Pic, l'Hortus and the valley between as you drive west out of Sommières on the D1 through St Matthieu de Treviers towards the pretty and tortuous village of Notre Dame de Londres. All along the road are glimpses of the twin peaks.



Then suddenly you are much closer. The names of famous vineyards of the Pic Saint Loup appellation (still part of the overall Languedoc one, but the vignerons there relegate that to the small print) line the road and you find yourself dramatically between the rocks. They are hard to capture in photographs - trees and nearer hills keep obscuring the view, but here are a couple of pictures which make the link to the all-important vineyards.


Senators to debate Yar'Adua exit

Nigerian senators are set to debate a motion demanding sick President Umaru Yar'Adua hand over power to his deputy.

City regulator boss steps down

Hector Sants, chief executive of the Financial Services Authority, announces he is to step down as head of the City regulator.

Iran 'ups nuclear fuel enriching'

Iran has begun the process of enriching uranium to 20% at its plant at Natanz in defiance of the West, state media says.

Google forced to use humans to support Nexus One

Cuts get out fee for T-Mobile contract too

Google has opened up a US support number that will be answered by a human being, as well as tweaking the small print to make its mobile phone more attractive.…

Web threats: Why conventional protection doesn't work

Social care flat fee plan denied

Health Secretary Andy Burnham denies planning a £20,000 compulsory inheritance levy to help pay for social care for the elderly in England.

Toyota in global recall of Prius

Carmaker Toyota is recalling 400,000 hybrid cars worldwide, including 8,500 in the UK, because of braking problems.

Heathrow 777 crash: Ice to blame

Final AAIB report confirms earlier fuel feed conclusion

The Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) has released its final report into the 17 January 2008 crash-landing of a Boeing 777 at London's Heathrow, confirming its earlier interim conclusion that ice in the fuel feed system caused the incident.…

The power of collaboration within unified communications

Student terror conviction quashed

A man branded a "wannabe suicide bomber" will not face a retrial on terrorism charges after a conviction is quashed.

Tymoshenko bloc 'contests result'

Members of Yulia Tymoshenko's bloc say it will contest the conduct of Ukraine's presidential vote after her reported defeat.

Teacher qualifications 'too low'

MPs say entry requirements for teacher training courses in England are too low and damage the status of the profession.

West Ham fear relegation meltdown

West Ham owner David Sullivan says the club faces "Armageddon" if they are relegated from the Premier League.

Woman's skeleton found by workmen

Police investigate the death of a woman whose skeleton was found wrapped in carpet at a Manchester building site.

Sheen charged with assault

Actor Charlie Sheen is charged with assaulting and threatening his wife Brooke Mueller during an argument on Christmas Day.

IPS's double IT has risks, says commissioner

Doing a good job nevertheless, he controversially adds

Identity commissioner Sir Joseph Pilling has expressed concerns about the Identity and Passport Service's two-stage approach to its core technology.…

Web threats: Why conventional protection doesn't work

Ice 'probable cause' of BA crash

The fault which caused a plane to crash land at Heathrow Airport in January 2008 was "unrecognised", a report says.

Dr Conrad Murray charged over Michael Jackson death

The doctor who allegedly gave a fatal cocktail of surgical anesthetic and sedatives to Michael Jackson was charged with involuntary manslaughter — more than seven months after the singer’s death.

A bully and a liar: Met chief Ali Dizaei thought he was above the law

A Scotland Yard commander who was jailed yesterday for four years has become the most senior policeman to be convicted of corruption offences in more than 30 years.

Sri Lanka opposition leader held for 'plotting coup'

The former Sri Lankan army chief hailed last year as a national hero for defeating the Tamil Tigers was in jail last night facing possible execution.

Hector Sants resigns as FSA boss

By Jill Treanor

• City regulator thrown into chaos as chief executive resigns
• Move casts doubt over future of the FSA

The City regulator was thrown into chaos this morning as chief executive Hector Sants resigned.

Sants, a former banker, is stepping down from the Financial Services Authority (FSA) in the summer. He has decided to tender his resignation ahead of the election, which has cast uncertainty over the future of the FSA because the Conservatives have a policy to disband the regulator.

Concerns will now be mounting about the willingness of chairman Lord Turner to remain in his post during a radical overhaul of financial regulation following the taxpayer bailout of the banking system.

While Sants had told friends that he intended to stay as chief executive for only three years, the timing of his departure so close to the election will raise speculation that he decided to announce his departure now because of the uncertainty facing the FSA.

The Conservatives have announced plans to disband the FSA and hand its powers for supervising banks to the Bank of England, effectively tearing up the system of regulation introduced by Labour when it was swept to power in 1997. The opposition has blamed the current tripartite system – involving the FSA, the Bank of England and the Treasury – for the current financial crisis.

Sants said: "When I was appointed I told the board that I planned to serve as chief executive for three years, and I intend to stick to that timetable. Of course, those three years have encompassed the most extraordinary circumstances for a financial regulator, and I am very proud of the manner in which the FSA rose to the challenge of dealing with such unprecedented turbulence across global financial markets.

"Moreover, I believe the FSA candidly examined the failings in financial regulation that contributed to the onset of the crisis, learned the lessons and has gone on to reform itself into a much stronger and better equipped organisation.

"I believe the FSA has made great strides in ensuring that such individuals are in place in the UK and I am sure that after I leave they will continue to do invaluable work to ensure financial stability and protect the interests of consumers."

He joined the regulator in May 2004 as the managing director responsible for wholesale and institutional markets which allowed him to avoid direct criticism of the supervision of Northern Rock, the first bank to endure a crisis of confidence in living memory.

The banking crisis erupted just as he became chief executive in July 2007, from which point he was embroiled in overseeing the nationalisation of Northern Rock and the bailout of Royal Bank of Scotland and HBOS.

Turner tried to present a picture of business as usual at the FSA and paid tribute to Sants. "Hector has given outstanding service and leadership through the turbulent last three years and has played a pivotal role in reforming the FSA into a truly effective organisation. He will leave behind an organisation with strong purpose and a clear strategy," said Turner.

"We will be immensely sorry to lose him, but understand his decision to move on in the summer and wish him well in whatever he chooses to do after his departure. In the meantime, we will continue to work together to deliver the FSA's reformed and intensive supervisory approach and drive forward the global regulatory reform agenda.".


guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds


Captain Scott: The Journey South

Photographs from a new exhibition marking the centenary of Scott's voyage to the South Pole.

First Scottish 'terrorist' has conviction quashed

A Scottish student dubbed a “wannabe suicide bomber” has been freed today after appeal court judges quashed his conviction.

Toyota recalls hybrid cars over brakes

By Justin McCurry

Around 8,500 British Prius owners affected in recall of almost 0.5m vehicles by carmaker hit by string of recent safety scares

Toyota is to recall almost half a million hybrid cars worldwide, including 8,500 of its Prius model in the UK, in the latest blow to the carmaker's reputation following a string of safety scares.

The recall will begin immediately in Japan and similar measures are being prepared overseas, the firm said today. Toyota GB announced that the recall will apply to 8,500 owners of the third-generation Prius in the UK. It will send individual letters to all those owners explaining details of the recalls, which will involve a 40-minute software update to the car's braking system.

Today's announcement follows about 200 complaints in Japan and the US over a software glitch in its best-selling Prius petrol-electric hybrid that can cause temporary brake failure at low speeds on bumpy or icy roads.

"I apologise for causing trouble and worries for many customers over the quality and safety of Toyota," its embattled president, Akio Toyoda, told reporters in Tokyo today, his second public apology in less than a week.

"We sincerely acknowledge safety concerns from our customers. We have decided to recall as we regard safety for our customers as our foremost priority. We will redouble our commitment to quality as a lifeline of our company. We will do everything in our power to regain the confidence of our customers."

Toyota GB pointed out that so far there had been no reports of accidents linked to the problem in Europe.

Toyota's Japanese headquarters informed the country's transport ministry of the recall of 223,000 hybrid cars in Japan across four models: about 200,000 of the 2010 Prius model and much smaller numbers of the Prius plug-in hybrid, the SAI and the Lexus HS250h.

It said it would take remedial measures concerning a further 213,000 hybrid cars outside Japan, including the US and Europe, taking the total number of vehicles affected to around 437,000.

The new Prius is sold in about 60 countries, with sales totalling more than 300,000 vehicles since the first models were rolled out last spring.

Toyota, the world's biggest carmaker, is already faces criticism following the recent recall of more than 8m cars worldwide affected by potentially dangerous acceleration problems.

The Prius, the world's most popular hybrid, was Japan's top-selling car last year and hailed as the ultimate in green auto technology. But mounting fears over its safety could unravel Toyota's attempts to dominate the growing market in fuel-efficient vehicles.

In the US Toyota is battling to save its reputation in the face of lawsuits linked to accidents, an investigation by highway authorities and mounting criticism of its handling of the crisis by the Obama administration.

The brake defect has been responsible for four crashes in which two people were injured, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which has launched an investigation. There have been no reports of similar accidents in the UK.

The recall of the Prius represents a worst-case scenario for Toyota now that safety doubts surrounding its cars have spread to its hitherto fiercely loyal customers in Japan.

"Toyota has been, beyond any doubts, the top player in hybrid car segment, and the fact that Prius and other hybrid models will be part of this massive recall significantly dents its image," said Suh Sung-moon, an analyst at Korea Investment and Securities in Seoul.

Toyoda, the grandson of the company's founder, promised to work closely with US regulators following criticism that the company had only recalled cars with faulty accelerators under pressure from the US government.

"I have spoken with US transportation secretary, Ray LaHood, and given him my personal assurance that lines of communications with safety agencies and regulators will be kept open, that we will communicate more frequently and that we will be more vigilant in responding to those officials on all matters," Toyoda wrote in today's Washington Post.

He said the firm was working around the clock to fix the problem, but conceded that it needed to do more to regain the trust of American drivers. "We are taking responsibility for our mistakes, learning from them and acting immediately to address the concerns of consumers and independent government regulators."

Toyota said it had fixed the software glitch responsible for the braking problem in Prius models that went on sale from late last month, but had yet to repair models sold before then.

The admission that it had started fixing the brake glitch about a week before it went public with the problem has prompted allegations of a cover-up.

The firm will start informing Japan dealers immediately about the glitch, which takes about 40 minutes to repair.

Industry watchers said Toyota's handling of the recalls had seriously damaged its brand image. "Until the recent crisis, Toyota was the best performing and most valuable car brand in the world," said David Haigh, the chief executive of Brand Finance, a UK consultancy, adding that the Prius had "put Toyota right at the leading edge of the green car movement".

He added: "Sadly, the inept way Akio Toyoda and his management team have handled the recent crisis has massively damaged the brand."

The firm has been widely criticised for failing to deal more quickly with the defects. It took almost two weeks for Toyoda, who was made president last summer, to comment publicly after the accelerator recall was announced last month.

The company is also anticipating a flurry of lawsuits in the US over the brake problem, in addition to those already filed in connection with "sticky" accelerators.

Today it was reported that the owner of a 2010 Prius has sued Toyota in Los Angeles, claiming that the company had failed to fix the brake defect.

Toyota's North America chief executive, Yoshimi Inaba, is due to come under pressure to explain his firm's poor handling of the recall when he testifies in front of a congressional committee in Washington tomorrow.


guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds


Family affair: Italian sausage-making

By Tim Hayward, Mustafa Khalili, Elliot Smith

Tim Hayward and the Zoccola family make a variety of sausages, pancetta and coppa



Iran 'enriching high grade uranium'

By Haroon Siddique

Russia may back further UN sanctions after Tehran announces Natanz plant has begun production of 20% enriched uranium

Iran began enrichment of higher grade uranium today, state TV said, ignoring the threat of further UN sanctions by the US and its allies.

Iran's Arabic-language television channel, al-Alam, said production of 20% enriched uranium had started at the Natanz plant.

Ali Shirzadian, a spokesman for the country's Atomic Energy Organisation, told ­Reuters that "preparatory work" had began at 9:30am in presence of representatives from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said on Sunday that Iran would produce uranium enriched to a level of 20%. That announcement was greeted with alarm in the west and raised fears that Tehran wants to advance a nuclear weapons programme.

The US and France led calls for what would be a fourth, broader set of punitive UN security council sanctions. A senior politician in Russia, which in the past has urged talks rather than punishment, also said economic measures should be considered.

The Pentagon stepped up the pressure for sanctions saying it wanted measures in place "within weeks, not months". The remarks from Russia raise the prospect of China standing alone among the major powers in opposing sanctions against Iran.

Today China called for more talks and refused to comment on the prospect of economic measures. A foreign ministry spokesman, Ma Zhaoxu, said: "I hope the relevant parties will step up efforts and push for progress in the dialogue and negotiations."

Last night, the head of the Iran's atomic agency said it would not further increase the enrichment levels for the uranium if the west provides fuel for the reactor at the Tehran nuclear research centre.

"Whenever they provide the fuel, we will halt production of 20%," Ali Akbar Salehi told state TV,

The percentage measures of enrichment refer to concentration of the most fissile isotope, U-235 – which can sustain fission chain reaction. A weapon small enough to put on a missile would require uranium enriched to more than 90% U-235. Iran was previously enriching uranium to 3.5%.

The Islamic republic, which insists its nuclear programme is aimed at generating electricity, says it needs 20% fuel for the research reactor producing isotopes for medical use.

Ahmadinejad's announcement on Sunday came 48 hours after Iran's foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, said a deal on exporting its uranium abroad to have it enriched was close to being finalised. An similar agreement last October to export its uranium rods to France eventually unravelled.


guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds


Six Nations 2010: no cause for alarm, says Wales winger Shane Williams

Wales winger insists no panic buttons have been pressed following Six Nations defeat against England.

'Colin Firth serves the script'

By Paul MacInnes

Nicholas Hoult and Matthew Goode, stars of Tom Ford's A Single Man, in conversation



Freezing weather returns to Britain

By Matthew Weaver, Helen Carter

Cold weather and heavy snow forecast for parts of UK and conditions set to worsen later in the week

Bitterly cold weather has returned to the UK and forecasters warn that conditions will worsen later in the week with a warning of heavy snow for parts of the south-east.

Last night temperatures again plunged below zero in some parts of the country with biting winds and snow flurries adding to the chill. There are fears that grit supplies nationwide have not been replenished since the cold snap in January, raising the prospect of further difficulties for motorists.

The Met Office warned there could be heavy snow in the south-east England later in the week with as much as 15cm on high ground. It issued an early warning for heavy and possibly drifting snow for east Sussex, Kent and Medway for Thursday and Friday. There will also be a risk of widespread ice on the roads.

The chilly weather is forecast to last into the weekend, but conditions are not expected to be as bad as last month's big freeze.

John Hutchinson, forecaster with MeteoGroup, said snow showers in the east would be broken by sunny spells today and tomorrow before turning heavier towards the end of the week.

He said: "Most of the sleet and snow will be in eastern areas, and Kent will see the worst of it.

"Through today there will be sunny spells with the wintry showers in eastern parts and temperatures will rise to between 3C and 5C. That bit more sunshine will mean the snow will struggle to settle during the day, though it could settle over the hills in north-east England."

A spokeswoman for Kent police said drivers are being warned to take extra care while the wintry conditions persist and a Highways Agency spokesman said there are warnings for drivers to take care throughout southern and eastern England.

The Welsh Local Government Association warned at the weekend that councils across the UK had failed to stock up on enough grit since the January cold snap to withstand another bout of freezing weather.

Steve Thomas, the Welsh LGA chief executive, said: "We are not just talking about Wales here but the whole of the UK."

But David Sparks, chairman of the Local Government Association transport and regeneration board, said councils would continue to "work tirelessly" to keep roads and people safe and to make sure essential services could still function.

Sparks, a councillor on Dudley Metropolitan borough council, in the West Midlands, said local authorities would work together to share salt supplies and make sure it was available in the worst affected areas.

"Despite forecasts of a mild winter, many councils stockpiled more salt this year but after the longest cold snap in 30 years, systems are stretched but are holding up," he said.

"With more snow forecast for some parts of the UK, everyone, including central government and the Highways Agency, is going to have to carefully manage the way they use salt.

"Although in some areas, last month's snow and freezing weather went away, councils in many places have had to continue to grit the roads.

"Councils have been working hard to replenish their salt stocks with some authorities importing salt from abroad, but they can only restock as fast as salt suppliers can dig salt out of the ground.

The average temperature last month of 1.1C (34F) was colder than for any January since 1987 and it was the ninth lowest recorded in the past 100 years. Parts of Scotland and the north-east of England experienced snow as deep as 58cm, while the lowest temperature was -22.3C, recorded in Altnaharra in Sutherland, in the Highlands, on 7 January.


guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds


Umami in a tube: 'fifth taste' goes on sale in supermarkets

Umami, the elusive "fifth taste" that has long fascinated experimental chefs such as Heston Blumenthal, is to go on sale in tubes on the high street.

BA crash due to 'unknown' ice issue

By Haroon Siddique

Fault which caused BA plane to crash at Heathrow two years ago was not covered by safety requirements, says report

The fault which caused a British Airways plane to crash land at Heathrow airport two years ago, narrowly missing the airport's perimeter road and nearby buildings, was not covered by aviation safety requirements at the time, an official report said today.

The Boeing 777 lost power due to a restricted fuel flow to both engines, the Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) said. It concluded that the crash on 17 January 2008 was probably caused by a buildup of ice in the fuel system on the plane, which was carrying 136 passengers. No one was seriously injured.

The ice probably formed from water that occurred naturally in the fuel, and when fuel temperatures were at a "sticky range" when ice crystals were most likely to adhere to their surroundings, the report said. Safety regulations "did not take account of this phenomenon as the risk was unrecognised at that time".

Research in the 1950s had identified the problem of ice formation in fuel systems from dissolved or trapped water but did not identify the possibility of accumulated ice restricting fuel flow.

The AAIB concluded that the fuel oil heat exchanger on the plane was susceptible to restriction when presented with a high concentration of soft ice and a fuel temperature below -10C.

Having lost power, the BA flight, arriving from Beijing, came down within the airfield boundary at Heathrow but 330 metres short of the runway, sliding 372 metres before coming to rest.

The left main landing gear (MLG) collapsed and the right MLG separated from the plane. Everyone was safely evacuated. Thirty-four passengers and 12 cabin crew suffered minor injuries, mainly to the back and neck. One passenger broke a leg.

The report said the cabin crew, led by the captain, Peter Burkill, became aware of a possible engine thrust problem just 43 seconds before touchdown.

Losing speed, the crew, hailed as heroes after the crash, tried to increase engine thrust but there was no response from the engines. A mayday call was put out three seconds before touchdown.

There was not enough time for the flight crew to brief the cabin crew or issue a command for passengers to brace themselves, the report said.

There was a significant fuel leak, and an oxygen leak caused by damage to the passenger oxygen bottles from part of the MLG.

On 28 November 2008 a Delta Airlines Boeing 777 suffered a similar ice problem while flying over the US. This prompted an investigation by America's National Transportation Safety Board, with the AAIB having an accredited representative.

Nine safety recommendations were made following earlier AAIB reports into the BA incident and a further nine were made today, including some which address plane "crashworthiness" – the ability of an aircraft to withstand an accident. Boeing and the aero engine company Rolls-Royce have taken steps to prevent the ice phenomenon from happening again.

A BA spokesman welcomed the report. He said that although there were no specific safety recommendations for the airline, it had worked with the relevant authorities and manufacturers "to ensure that the highest safety levels are maintained".


guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds


LIVE - Labour on the NHS

By Andrew Sparrow

Minute-by-minute coverage as Labour's general election coordinator, Douglas Alexander, and Andy Burnham, the health secretary, outline the party's plans for the NHS

10.38am: That's it. Here are the main points.

• Burnham denied being in favour a £20,000 levy on estates to pay for a national care programme. He said that the government was still considering its options. And he attacked the Conservative alternative as "backward-looking".

• He reaffirmed Labour's commitment to giving suspect cancer patients the right to diagnosis within a week. He claimed this would save 10,000 lives and he said it would cost over £500m.

• Alexander announced a new online campaign attacking Tory health policy.

10.36am: Asked again about social care, Burnham says he set out three models in the green paper: a partnership model, a voluntary model and a compulsory model.

He says there is "no decision within government" as to which of those three models the government will promote.

The Tory proposal for people to pay an £8,000 insurance fee is "backward looking". It provides an incentive to put more older people in care.

10.32am: Q: Where does the money come from? And will Labour have a pledge card?

Burnham says Alistair Darling has promised to protect frontline services for the next three years.

Alexander says health will be a central feature of the campaign.

We want there to be a very clear choice in relation to policy.

That's why he wants to ensure "adequate scrutiny" of the Conservative party.

Q: So will there be a pledge card?

Alexander says we will have to see whether there are five pledges, 10 pledges or more.

10.29am: Q: What cancers will this target?

Burnham says it is particularly important to target lung cancer, bowel cancer and ovarian cancer.

Q: Where did the 10,000 lives saved figure come from? And won't faster diagnoses produce a bottleneck?

Burnham says GPs tell him they could do more tests more quickly if they have access to the right equipment.

Because patients aren't picked up quickly enough, they have to go into hospital for more invasive treatment.

By making this decisive shift towards a more preventative service, we can make better use of resources.

10.24am: Q: Is Labour planning a death tax on estates to pay for the national care service?

Burnham says there is a consensus that long-term care services need "fundamental reform".

The government published a green paper last year. It is consulting on options.

The story on this in the Guardian today is "inaccurate in a number of ways".

There is a "scurrilous campaign" being run by the Conservatives on this.

Q: Where is the Guardian story inaccurate?

Burnham says it talks about a £20,000 flat levy. Burnham says a flat levy of that kind is not his preferred option.

The Conservatives have set their face against reform ... I believe the biggest mistake this country could be would be to step back from reform.

If the government abandoned reform, it would leave an "inadequate" and "unfair" system in place.

People are paying from their own pockets "in large amounts" to fund the cost of care.

10.21am: Q: When does the target get rolled out? And how much does it cost?

Burnham says he is "confident" it can be introduced by 2015.

Hospital trusts would strike deals with GP practices to deliver this.

It would cost £180m a year for the first three years. That's the cost of new equipment.

10.18am: Q: Haven't we heard about this seven-day target before? And aren't the Tories right about cancer outcomes being very poor in the UK?

Burnham says:

And I was sitting here thinking you did not have memories that long.

He admits Gordon Brown announced that one-week pledge before Labour's conference.

On survival rates, Burnham says the NHS has reduced cancer mortality rates by 19%.

10.15am: We're onto questions.

Burnham says today's pledge is about creating new "testing capacity" within the NHS.

Q: How will the government achieve its plan to save £2.7bn by moving more care from hospital to home?

Burnham says the figures have been "carefully worked out" in the department of health. He can provide a full breakdown. (Cathy Newman from Channel 4 asked the question. On her factcheck blog, she suggested yesterday that these figures are bogus.)

10.14am: Alexander says voteNHS will build on the support of internet campaigns like Ed's Pledge and Back the Ban.

Labour is also launching a CameraON/CameraOFF campaign to highlight the difference between Tory rhetoric and Tory reality.

10.09am: Alexander and Burnham are here.

Burnham says he does not believe in over-claiming for the NHS. He's not complacent. There are many places where it could improve. But there have been real improvements over the last few years.

At the 2005 election Labour promised to bring down waiting times to a 18 week maximum and to half MRSA rates. People said it could not be done. But it was achieved, he says.

Today Labour is promising to ensure cancer patients get their results back within one week by 2015. Experts say this could save 10,000 lives.

Catching cancer early also saves on treatment cost further down the line, he says.

This will place cancer services in the UK "on a par with the best in the world".

Burnham says:

As we have seen in the past, the NHS can move mountains when it is given a very clear job to do.

Labour's national guarantees will be the "battleground" for the election.

The Tories would scrap the guarantees on day one of a David Cameron government, Burnham says.

Labour today puts its cards on the table.

10.07am: They've just handed out a news release. Burnham is launching a voteNHS.com website to support a key element of Labour's health manifesto. The release says:

The "target cancer" campaign aims to save up to 10,000 lives by backing a pledge to create a new NHS guarantee of cancer diagnosis within one week of GP referral, allowing patients to be tested and told their results in just seven days.

9.59am: I'm at Victoria Street now in the holding room, waiting for the press conference to begin. Coffee and biscuits are available.

Reading Gordon Brown's speech, I see that Labour's health policy has got more guarantees than a branch of Currys. There's a cancer guarantee, a waiting time guarantee, a GP access guarantee, a health check guarantee and a care guarantee.

8.58am: The Labour party is holding another campaign press conference this morning.

Douglas Alexander, the general election co-ordinator, and Andy Burnham, the health secretary, have invited journalists to their HQ at Victoria Street to hear them "outline Labour's campaign for the NHS and the threat posed by David Cameron and the Conservative party policy on the NHS".

I'm not sure how good it's going to be; Gordon Brown delivered a big speech on the NHS just yesterday. But if they don't have much new to say about the NHS, there are plenty of other topics to ask about. The press conference starts at 10am.


guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds


Lou's Pseudo 3d Page

Lou’s Pseudo 3d Page. Spectacularly detailed exploration of the road graphics used in racing games prior to true 3D. This is a potential gold mine for anyone looking for a fun project to try out with canvas. Bonus points for comet integration—I’m still looking forward to the first real-time multiplayer game in the browser using comet and canvas.

Integrate Tornado in Django

Integrate Tornado in Django. A handy ./manage.py runtornado management command for firing up a Tornado server that serves your Django application.

Sketchpad - Online Paint/Drawing application

Sketchpad—Online Paint/Drawing application (via). Impressive canvas based bitmap drawing tool with an extremely smooth UI.

svg-edit

svg-edit. Click the “Try out SVG-edit 2.4” link—this is an impressive, full featured open source vector graphics editor that runs in the browser.

A quote from Emmy Huang, PM for Flash Player

As has been pointed out by the community, there is an existing crash bug that was reported by Matthew Dempsky in the Flash Player bugbase (JIRA FP-677) in September of 2008 that still exists in the release players. It is fixed in Flash Player 10.1 beta, and has been since we launched the beta in early November 2009. [...] So what happened here? We picked up the bug as a crasher when it was filed on September 22, 2008, and were able to reproduce it. Remember that Flash Player 10 shipped in October 2008, so when this bug was reported we were pretty much locked and loaded for launch.

- Emmy Huang, PM for Flash Player

A quote from Kevin Lynch

Regarding crashing, I can tell you that we don’t ship Flash with any known crash bugs, and if there was such a widespread problem historically Flash could not have achieved its wide use today.

- Kevin Lynch

twitter-text-conformance

twitter-text-conformance (via). This is a neat idea: Twitter have released open source libraries for parsing standard tweet syntax in Ruby and Java, but they’ve also released a set of YAML unit tests aimed at anyone who wants to implement the same parsing logic in other languages.

What's hot? Introducing Zeitgeist

What’s hot? Introducing Zeitgeist. Dan Catt’s first project at the Guardian. “When something appears on the Zeitgeist page, it’s because it performed better (got more attention) than the norm for that content type/section/day”. The application itself is written in Python and runs on Google App Engine.

A History of the Sentence "Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo."

A History of the Sentence “Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo.”. Complete with explorations of the grammar in Lisp.

WildlifeNearYou can now tag your Flickr photos for you

WildlifeNearYou can now tag your Flickr photos for you. I’m really excited about this feature: if you opt-in, WildlifeNearYou will now write name and latin name tags to your Flickr photos after you’ve marked the species in the photo. This is even more interesting when you combine it with our suggest-a-species feature (the photo won’t get tagged until you’ve approved the suggestion). We also set the location on photos which don’t yet have one, but the real fun is the machine tags we’ve added, which allow developers to use the Flickr API to find photos by their WildlifeNearYou metadata (trip, species and place IDs). As a neat extra touch, the identifiers we use in the machine tags are the same as the ones used by our custom wlny.eu URL shortener, so it’s trivial to turn a machine tag in to the URL for that page on the main site.

TomTom 940T vs iPhone TomTom: a real road test

By Jon Honeyball

Last week, I had to drive to Brussels. I took the overnight ferry by Stena Line from Harwich which plonked me into Hook of Holland at about 7am in the morning. Ideal for a fast sprint to Brussels, or so I thought. Thick fog everywhere, traffic queues everywhere, and Rotterdam was a mess. Fortunately I had [...]

Symbian Operating System, Now Open Source and Free

Symbian Operating System, Now Open Source and Free. With Symbian now open source, are there any widely used operating systems left (besides Windows) that don’t have an open source core?

dogproxy

dogproxy. Another of my experiments with Node.js—this is a very simple HTTP proxy which addresses the dog pile effect (also known as the thundering herd) by watching out for multiple requests for a URL that is currently “in flight” and bundling them together.

Comet (long polling) for all browsers using ScriptCommunicator

Comet (long polling) for all browsers using ScriptCommunicator. More Comet from the Plurk team: 80 lines of dependency free JavaScript implementing long polling using script tags (hence working cross-domain) across IE6+, Firefox, WebKit and Opera. The clever bit is the code to detect loading errors. It doesn’t try to fix the infinite loading indicator problem—is that still a cromulent usability concern?

HipHop for PHP: Move Fast

HipHop for PHP: Move Fast. Facebook have open-sourced their internally developed PHP to C++ compiler. They serve 400 billion PHP pages a month (that’s more than 150,000 a second) so any performance improvement dramatically reduces their hardware costs, and HipHop drops the CPU usage on their web servers by an average of 50%. “We are serving over 90% of our Web traffic using HipHop, all only six months after deployment”.

John Redwood welcomes clarification of householders’ liability when clearing snow from outside their homes

By John Redwood

John Redwood has welcomed confirmation from the Government that householders who clear snow from the pavements outside their homes are unlikely to face any legal liability should someone slip or have an accident. In response to a letter sent by John to the Department for Transport seeking clarification on the legal risks to homeowners, Sadiq Khan, [...]

THE ENEMY WITHIN..

By David Vance (noreply@blogger.com)


Did you read that the head of Britain’s special forces has been trying to stop the publication of a book by a senior BBC journalist which describes in “tactical detail” operations carried out by the SAS in Iraq from 2003 to 2009?
The major-general, who cannot be identified for security reasons, is concerned about the impact of Task Force Black on the elite regiment’s operational effectiveness because of the contents, which are understood to be based on interviews with members and former members of the SAS. Negotiations with lawyers representing the book’s author, Mark Urban, Newsnight’s diplomatic and defence editor, and the Ministry of Defence, have been going on for months, and a compromise had been reached.
I suggest that the BBC's visceral hatred of our military - and our Special Forces in particular - drives this sort of project and even though the publication of this book may result in future deaths of OUR soldiers, I am sure Newsnight's Urban has no such worries. 

LORD BROWNE - BBC IDOL

By David Vance (noreply@blogger.com)

I wonder what it might be about gay corporatist Lord Browne that encourages the BBC to give him ANOTHER spot on the Today programme, second day running?

WHEN A DEBATE IS NOT A DEBATE

By David Vance (noreply@blogger.com)

The BBC allows all shades of opinion, from A to B! With our first past the post system no longer looking so good for Labour, time for the Today programme to have a debate on alternatives. So, around 7.51am this morning bring on Hillary Benn and Chris Huhne to cover the topic - what could be more balanced than that? All shades of political opinion...!

Parliament infested.....

By noreply@blogger.com (dizzy)

We're doomed I tell you! A plague of moths today, but what next? The Thames turning to blood and the Death of the first born?

Mr. Allen: To ask the hon. Member for North Devon, representing the House of Commons Commission what proposals there are to end the infestation of moths in T block; and if he will make a statement.

Nick Harvey: Significant numbers of the Common House Moth (Tineola bisselliella) were first reported in the House in early 2008 and preventative treatment has been undertaken since then. In order to minimise the use of pesticides and the consequent risk of exposure to potential toxicants, a process involving moth pheromone has been employed. Although activity in T block remains an issue, monitoring of moth activity shows that moth numbers within the House of Commons estate are generally declining. Alternative methods of eradication, including heat treatment of items and individual spraying of offices to kill larvae, are being considered.
Run for the hills!

P.S.
Doesn't "T Block" make the place sound like a prison?
P.P.S. Do email me photos of the moths if you can! Would really ,love to understand the scale of the infestation.

Vexatious behaviour

By Bishop Hill

Eli Rabett is trying to argue that the requests put into the University of East Anglia were vexatious and also that they were turned down. Now, I know something about this, having put in one of the requests myself, although I was not part of the coordinated effort to ask for them five countries at a time. I just took the blunt approach and asked for all of them.

What is interesting is that neither my broad sweep nor the piecemeal requests were rejected as such. While everyone got a response that was in the form of a rejection, the grounds given were not that the request was vexatious. Each of us was in fact directed to a new webpage where the information we had asked for (or at least the paltry collection of available agreements that UEA could find) was to be found. The grounds for the rejection were therefore that the information was publicly available already.

The FoI Act allows public authorities to treat requests made obviously in concert as a single request, at which point it is possible to reject them as vexatious or demand payment as the circumstances demand. The fact that neither of these things happened shows that Eli's supposition that the requests were burdensome is wrong.

 

ALI DIZAEI...BBC ICON

By Robin Horbury (RobinHorbury@gmail.com)

The newspapers are well-and truly laying into jailed Met Commander Ali Dizaei this morning; it seems that the world and his wife knew about his corruption and his bullying, but the Met sought to cover it up as best they could because they feared his chants of racism - and shared his 'equality' agenda. So of course did the BBC. They disgracefully made his pack-of-porkies autobiography Not One of Us Radio 4's book of the week when it was published, despite its lack of obvious literary flair (to put it mildly!); and then there's this gem of an interview by Andrew Marr soon afterwards. Here's a small extract of the gut-wrenching exchange to illustrate how avid Marr and his cronies are to hear and air such claims:

ANDREW MARR: Just to be clear, you're saying that the police are still institutionally racist?

ALI DIZAEI: Yes they are. We are less institutionally racist than ten years ago. Have we got a clean bill of health? No. Is it within our grasp? Possibly. And I think the reason this is very important, and I think politicians ought to really take this very seriously, because there is direct correlation in the way the police service looks in terms of this composition, and the way we deliver a service to our community.

ANDREW MARR: You have become Commander at the fifth attempt, which of itself suggests that you are abnormally tough and determined to keep going when other people might have given up long ago. Was it frankly humiliating to have to do, go through that process five times...

Why should Lib Dems vote twice?

By John Redwood

As David Cameron said, after 13 years in government and just a couple of months before a General Election, the Prime Minister has been miraculously converted to changing the voting system. All those doubts and disagreements with such changes which he used to harbour [...]

Great news – early spring!

By John Redwood

It’s wonderful to hear from the forecasters that after the fabulous BBQ summer and the mild winter we are now hurtling towards the early spring. It’s just a pity that could be on our snow sledge in near freezing temperatures! The forecasters [...]

Derek Wyatt launches MyMP

By noreply@blogger.com (dizzy)

How marvelous, there is now an iPhone application designed to make an MP accountable called MyMP.

I sincerely can't think of a better way to make an MP more accountable to his constituents than by producing an application for a closed source proprietary operating system on a jailed handset exclusive to specific networks with either high monthly contract costs or extortionate PAYG airtime and data plans.

Yay for accountability if you're willing to spend money!

Will Dave Really Crack Down on Lobbyists?

By Guido Fawkes

Yesterday Dave had a go at the hidden hand in our democracy: Now we all know that expenses has dominated politics for the last year. But if anyone thinks that cleaning up politics means dealing with this alone and then forgetting about it, they are wrong. Because there is another big issue that we can no [...]

Spot the missing politician

By LFAT

Dear readers, It is with some concern that I read in the papers that Iran could face tough new UN sanctions within weeks after it announced plans to step up its uranium enrichment programme. Iran’s nuclear chief, Ali Akbar Salehi, earlier said Tehran had told the UN’s nuclear watchdog it would start enriching uranium to 20% from [...]

@Kevin_Maguire gets his tweets read out in Parliament

By noreply@blogger.com (dizzy)

Oh Lord, what has Twitter become! Whilst I don't agree with Maguire's politics, I did find this little retelling of his Twitter updates in Parliament rather amusing. Stupid Lib Dem activists!
I spoke this morning to Kevin Maguire, the respected Daily Mirror political journalist. He told me to check what was going on, and I had a look on his Twitter page. I know that we all need to be careful about Twitter, but apparently he was sitting on a train and updating it. I shall read through what his page said, as he suggested I should. First, he wrote:

“On train a bloke’s boasting on mobile he got Evening Standard to claim Lab has secret plans to shut Kingston Hospital”.

The next post was:

“Train bloke now boasting the hospital scare story cooked up at his kitchen table. Very proud of Facebook following”.

Next:

“He’s ‘a manifesto to write’. Tory? Wearing Hibs scarf. Clocking his details. May sneak photo to track down. Or could always ask!”

The next post begins, “Name’s Dan”, and then gives part of his telephone number and continues:

“Wondering if he’s a Lib Dem.”

The next post reads:

“Got Hospital Closure Man’s pic. Going into meeting then will discover who Dan is”.

Then the next one:

“This is the Kingston hospital scare bloke. Anyone know him? He’s a loud mouth in public places”.

And then:

“Ta all Tweeters. Hospital phone man ID’d as Lib Dem activist Dan Falchikov. He should stop SHOUTING on train”.

I bet the hon. Members for Richmond Park and for Kingston and Surbiton wish he would stop shouting on trains, because it appears to have disclosed the nature of what is going on here.
The power of teh interweb huh? Still requires stupid people to be overheard by journalists of course.

Ian Katz in the Graun

By Bishop Hill

There's an interesting piece by Ian Katz in the Guardian today. His approach to the current state of global warming is to declare that every rock has to be lifted before any progress can be made. This doesn't seem unreasonable.

He has also started to think about where we go from here, and wonders about the possibility of removing the IPCC from the control of governments and having it run by national academies.

Next, the credibility of the IPCC – or some form of scientific high court – must be restored. In the short term that means appointing independent experts to review any alleged errors in the panel's reports. At the same time the IPCC should renounce, or at least severely restrict the use of, grey ­literature. "If that means you can't be comprehensive then don't be," says a senior scientist advocating this course. There is a strong case for more radical reforms: the panel should arguably be replaced by a body controlled by national scientific academies rather than governments.

The problem with this is that the national academies are wholly (or nearly wholly) owned subsidiaries of governments, even the nominally independent ones like the Royal Society. Those of us who are suspicious of the IPCC are hardly going to be convinced by a body run by the likes of the Royal Society's climate head honcho, ex-IPCC man Sir John Houghton, or the NAS's Ralph Ciccerone, he of the Hockey Stick panel shenanigans.

 

Michael Meacher on the Hockey Stick

By Bishop Hill

The left wing Labour MP Michael Meacher has posted an article about problems with the Freedom of Information Act and makes a passing allusion to the Hockey Stick affair.

It is dreadful that the FOI requests made to the scientists at the UEA climactic research unit were so disgracefully blocked (albeit that some of the climate change sceptics demanding the information may have been obsessive and partisan themselves). Some of the data, for example concerning the location of 42 rural Chinese weather stations or the width of annual growth rings of trees in frozen Siberian bogs, might be arcane and of minute relevance to fundamental climate change questions, but it should still have been made readily available. The evidence about the 'hockey stick' is much more serious and should certainly have been provided in full. Scientific data should be a free resource to all who seek it. But that of course applies much more widely than just to contentions about climate change.

Amen to that. I wonder if he has read my book?

 

Comic for February 9, 2010


Comic for February 8, 2010


Trimester

Also, it's not like anyone actually calls up the Nobel committee to double-check things.

02/5/10 PHD comic: 'Cecilia in Thesisland, Pt. 4: Follow the Wait Habit'

Piled Higher & Deeper by Jorge Cham
www.phdcomics.com
title: "Cecilia in Thesisland, Pt. 4: Follow the Wait Habit" - originally published 2/5/2010

For the latest news in PHD Comics, CLICK HERE!

Comic for February 7, 2010


You seem uncomfortable.

I've been trying to remember to post the pictures I like online for the past few months. So this is a reminder to myself.

This image below didn't turn out quite how I wanted it to:

But that said I keep on coming back to look at it. I like the lighting, and I love the way that the brick wall on the right hand side angles towards the building on the horizon.

Enjoy. Or not.

Sunset

A similarly "not perfect" image is this outdoor shot. I have only one irritation with this shot - and that is that the trees are clipped at the top. Meh, such is life.

(I have two styles of photography; semi-random where I snap what is in front of me, and staged where I try to construct a particular picture - the two images above? One of each.)

ObFilm: Bound

Comic for February 6, 2010


02/3/10 PHD comic: 'Cecilia in Thesisland, Pt. 3: To be sure, this is generally what happens when you think'

Piled Higher & Deeper by Jorge Cham
www.phdcomics.com
title: "Cecilia in Thesisland, Pt. 3: To be sure, this is generally what happens when you think" - originally published 2/3/2010

For the latest news in PHD Comics, CLICK HERE!

Comic for February 5, 2010


You Hang Up First

No, YOU stumble past a series of post-breakup hookups in a daze as you slowly realize what you've lost and how unlikely you are ever to get it back first.

Comic for February 4, 2010


Revenge is not good. Once you're done. Believe me.

I was interested to see Adnan Hodzic discuss life without evolution in the GNOME environment recently.

I too use GNOME as my desktop environment (I sometimes toy with various tiling window managers before getting annoyed at something or other).

My solution to the GNOME problem is to purge the gnome-desktop-environment package and instead my own local package gnome-desktop-minimal. This package is a meta-package which includes a smaller selection of GNOME packages, notably ignoring several that the gnome-core package would pull in such as eog - why install that when I prefer qiv or feh?

If I believed we could agree on precisely which packages to include I would submit a bug to the gnome team "Please provide gnome-desktop-minimal" or similar. Still I suspect individual biases/preferences will make such a suggestion contentious at best and impossible to satisfy at worst.

ObTitle: Léon

Comic for February 3, 2010


02/1/10 PHD comic: 'Cecilia in Thesisland, Pt. 2: Down the raw bit code'

Piled Higher & Deeper by Jorge Cham
www.phdcomics.com
title: "Cecilia in Thesisland, Pt. 2: Down the raw bit code" - originally published 2/1/2010

For the latest news in PHD Comics, CLICK HERE!

Tensile vs. Shear Strength

Although really, the damage was done when the party planners took the hole punch to the elevator ribbon to hang up the sign.

Foschart: a FOSDEM schedule app for the N900

Hello internet! I am at FOSDEM 2010 in Brussels. I tried the fosdem-maemo schedule application for my Nokia N900, and decided to write an alternative app which is easier to use with my fingers, and looks more like a Maemo application.

screenshot of foschart

The result is foschart. It's just something I knocked together in a few hours yesterday, but it's pretty usable already. It supports showing talks grouped by track, by room, and just in chronological order, and a list of favourites. It's all happily kinetic-scrollable, etc., and is very snappy once it's started.

There's no proper release or package yet; if you want to package it up properly, please do! But for now, apt-get install python-hildon, then copy foschart.py and schedule.xml to /opt/foschart, and foschart.desktop to /usr/share/applications/hildon. Then it should show up in your application list, and away you go. As ever, patches welcome. Enjoy!

Update:

The illustrious Jonny Lamb has made a package!

I'm IPv6 ready

Why I've IPv6 enabled my server and how I did itWe hear the horror stories every now and then. We're running out of IPv4 space and soon the world as we know it is going to end. One day we'll run out of addresses and computers will have to live behind the evil jail of NAT. There is another way, and that is of course IPv6. ISPs are mostly burying their heads in the sand, and won't implement it until there are more IPv6 enabled websites. Webmasters are waiting on IPv6 addresses to be handed dished out by hosting companies who are too lazy to do anything until ISPs dish out addresses to surfers. A vicious cycle indeed. Luckily, we host with Bytemark, who dish out native IPv6 addresses so we don't have to rely on hackish Sixxs tunnels. I have a /56 on my VPS. The first thing to do was to to bring up 2 addresses in /etc/network/interfaces. I tried putting a separate ipv6 stanza (the way you're supposed to do it), so I used post-up commands by placing this under iface ethe0 inet static

  #Bring up additional ipv6 addresses on same if
  up ip -6 addr add 2001:41c8:10a:200::1/56 dev eth0
  up ip -6 ro add default via fe80::1 dev eth0
  up ip -6 addr add 2001:41c8:10a:200::2/56 dev eth0
I saved myself a reboot by also running the up commands on the command line. Just as I did for v4, I planned to use the first address for everything, except lighttpd, because Apache is already using port 80. I added an extra Listen line to /etc/apache2/ports.conf
Listen [2001:41c8:10a:200::1]:80
All of my vhosts listen on *:80, so that's good. Lighttpd's server.bind syntax only supports one bind address and port, but you can bind to multiple addresses like so:
server.use-ipv6 = "enable"
server.bind = "::ffff:212.110.165.233"
$SERVER["socket"] == "[2001:41c8:10a:200::2]:80" { }
Next I turned on ejabberd's IPv6 support by adding the inet6 keyword to thgis stanza in /etc/ejabberd/ejabberd.cfg:
{listen,
[
{5222, ejabberd_c2s, [inet6, {access, c2s}, {shaper, c2s_shaper}]},
...
]}
Next up wasmy IRC bouncer, ZNC. I'd told it to explicitly bind to a certain IP address so I could have a vanity address. That needed disabling so I can connect to IPv6-only IRC servers (which to be honest isn't going to happen anytime soon.) Postfix has IPv6 support since 2.2, and i have 2.5.5 so that should just work, as it currently binds to all addresses. For good measure, i added inet_protocols=all to /etc/postfix/main.cf For Dovecot, I added listen = [::] to /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf. Note that listen = * refers to all IPv4 only. Bytemark's hosted TinyDNS servers support IPv6 records (prefix 6 for automatic rDNS, prefix 3 otherwise), but I stupidly totally forgot about this and used this generator to cook up some AAAA records to match my A records. A little testing with the SixXS IPv6-IPv4 and IPv4-IPv6 Website Gateway, which is basically an IPv6 -> IPv4 web proxy that refuses to retrieve anything hosted on IPv4, and I confirmed everything was good to. Stop Press! Aren't we forgetting something? In keeping with the tradition set by kame, and followed by Google and many others, I needed a bouncing logo thats only shown to surfers that connect via IPv4. Lucky I had an animated gif that I'd made earlier. In Django, you can do something like
":" in request.META["REMOTE_ADDR"]
to work out if your surfer is an IPv6 surfer. IPv4 users can sneak a peak at using the SIXXS gateway See it's that easy. If your host gives you IPv6 space, then you have no excuse not to be leading the way to the move to adopting IPv6.

Clearing unwanted recent tags from the N900 photo viewer

The camera/photo viewer on the N900 has a pretty nice tag cloud widget, which lets you quickly label your photos before you upload them to Flickr. (The novelty hasn't yet worn off!) But an autocompletion accident left me with a tag in the widget that I'd really prefer not to be there when I'm showing off my nice new phone to people.

I spent a happy¹ few hours trying to figure out where it gets the set of tags from. The viewer asks Tracker for the most commonly-used tags, but this tag wasn't used on any of my photos, so wasn't coming from there. In fact, it didn't appear in any of Tracker's database files! After a bit of investigation, I discovered that the photo viewer keeps its own independent set of recently-used tags, not in Tracker, but in GConf, at /apps/osso/image-viewer/recent_tags. Lest you should find yourself in my position, a quick

gconftool --set --type list --list-type=string /apps/osso/image-viewer/recent_tags '[]'

will expunged your undesired utterances from the cloud. Bug report time. Next stop: finding a tool that lets the user remove typos from the autocompletion database …

1. Grr.

OpenVPN + NetworkManager with Ubuntu

My home machine, on an ADSL line, runs an OpenVPN server, so I can connect remotely and access resources (because otherwise I'd need to use IPv6, or something).  Now, the OpenVPN server pushes various routes to remote clients, because my home network is a little complex.  Today, I finally got my netbook (runing Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic (netbook remix)) connecting properly to the VPN (turns out things are happier if you set comp-lzo consistently), only to discover that network-manager was routing _everything_ over it - not ideal, given the VPN server is on the thin end of the ADSL connection...

Anyway, turns out you can fix this by modifying the VPN connection in Network Manager, going to IPv4 Settings, changing the method to "Automatic (VPN) addresses only", then going to "Routes..." and ticking the box marked "Use this connection only for resources on its network".

And now I have speedy internets again (and a working sixxs tunnel)

Django-powered Snow

During the planning of our Christmas card at work this year, a mad idea came up. Do we ignore mad ideas? No, we tackle them head-on.

The idea was to build an internet-controlled snow machine - you'd hit the button on the website, and watch a member of the Torchbox team get pelted with snow. When we first came up with the idea, we dismissed it as being "too complex", but after a while, we came around.

Cue three days of frantic development and phoning round to get the parts. I'll be posting a full build article, with all our source code, once we're done.

The brief summary is that we have a Django app which handles rate-limiting of snow, and tracking who has clicked the button, which then communicates with our snow machine using Artnet and DMX. Ustream is used to stream the video back to the internet.

Still, I imagine you want to see it in action, so head over to snow.torchbox.com, and have a go. It's only online 10 - 5 UK time, and only until Tuesday (we can't fill our office up with paper snow forever), but it's still very good fun, even if you don't know any of us!

Bustle 0.2.1

A couple of days ago, I released version 0.2.1 of Bustle, someone's favourite D-Bus profiler. As the version number suggests, there aren't really any big new features; most of the changes just make it a bit nicer to use, like showing you all the bus names a service owns, ellipsizing strings, a slightly less spartan UI, etc. Having finally gotten around to cutting a release, I've started wondering what to work on next. There are various small things I have in mind, such as searching, filtering, integrating the various statistic tools (bustle-time and friends) into the UI, and so on, but it'd be nice to have a larger goal to work towards.

One recurring feature request is the ability to see messages' arguments. This isn't currently possible because the simple plain-text logs produced by the monitor (which is a variation on the theme of dbus-monitor --profile) only includes the message header. I've thought for a while that the right thing to do would be to log the raw dbus messages, together with a timestamp, but wasn't sure what the files would look like. (Maybe shove the timestamps into the message headers?) Rob had a nice idea: why not log to pcap files? This avoids inventing a new format—the UI would just use libpcap and feed each message through the dbus parser—and would also let you look at the logs in WireShark, if you're into that kind of thing. I'm hoping to find some time to give this a shot soon. (Maybe on a cold Christmas evening, in front of a fire?)

In the meantime, have a peek at what your D-Bus-using applications are up to, and let me know what's missing!

Hotmail Spam

Or "why your mail from hotmail may not reach me"Lately I've been having a major problem with spam sent from hotmail addresses using hotmail's own SMTP servers. This has evaded sanesecurity's signatures and SpamAssassin, even though I've fed about 100 of these messages to sa-learn and also given some to steveb at sanesecurity. Some of these new spams I've been getting even have a negative SpamAssassin score! They are mostly random waffle (not 411, viagra or sex), with a hyperlink embedded. My email address is never in the To: or Cc: fields.. I have tried contacting Hotmail in the past about issues such as this, and its like talking to a brick wall. Previously, the most obvious spam was rejected by our SMTP servers at SMTP-time, and that which was likely to be spam, but not certain, was delivered to a Junk folder. Now, I am going to configure my server to accept then silently drop all email which is routed via a hotmail.com SMTP server where my name is not in the To: or Cc: fields. (Technical issues with the way the SMTP servers are setup prevent me from rejecting it at SMTP-time at present.) This means that if you use Windows Live mail to Bcc me an email then I will no longer receive it. You will not receive an automated reply, in the interests of reducing backscatter.

Adobe Air UPS Tracking

Track your parcels from the comfort of your linux desktop!Today I noticed that UPS have developed a widget that allows Windows and Mac users to track their parcels. This looked useful, as I would no longer have to sit refreshing a web page to satisfy my curiosity as to where my parcels I send are, but just wait for pop-up notifications from an application that sits in my system tray. First you'll need Adobe Air. Adobe's Linux installer doesn't perform all of the steps required for 64-bit systems, and their guide is a bit lengthy, so I've transcribed it into a shell script which you can download: install-adobe-air-ubuntu-64bit.sh The UPS site claims that Linux support is "coming soon", and they seem to do some user agent sniffing with Flash, so I downloaded it in a Windows and placed a copy here The first thing to do once you've made an account is to click Options at the bottom and untick "Show Widget Character", "Show News Ticker" and "Show News Flashes" to make these annoying resource-hungry bits go away. Now you're left with the bare window. Alas it has a huge black surround (which is transparent on Windows and Mac), it and consumes a fair amount of CPU power just idling, but it does appear to work. You can even minimize it to the system tray. Hopefully the Linux version is indeed coming soon, and will address these issues. At least UPS recognize that use Linux users exist, and chose a cross-platform technology. Now I can send my parcels from the comfort of my workplace, with a guarantee they'll be picked up between 10am and 5.30pm next day (when I'm at work; DHL/HDNL through Parcels2Go can't guarantee this timeframe) without having to take time to visit the post office, I can track and get progress alerts from this widget, and if the parcel is over 2kg, its cheaper than Royal Mail anyway, when booked through Interparcel. Despite the Economy service being advertised as non-guaranteed next-day, all of the parcels I have sent have arrived next day. What could be better than that?

South 0.6.2

In my neverending quest to save the time of those using RDBMSen, South 0.6.2 is released.

It mostly contains bugfixes, but there's now support for extending introspection to third-party apps without having to edit their source.

I'll probably start working full steam on South 0.7 soon - there's a refactor of the migration engine (mostly done), of startmigration (not started), and a few changes to command names to make them nicer (the old ones will still work), and to the behaviour of default values.

I'm hoping 0.7 will be the last release before 1.0, at which point I will claim I've been working in an octal version numbering sequence all along.

Empathy 2.27.0's Private Mode

An oft-requested feature in Empathy and Telepathy is support for OTR (Off The Record) encryption of messages, interoperating with the OTR plugin for Pidgin and other popular IM clients. We've been resisting implementing it so far, mainly because we think there are better ways to do end-to-end encryption of messages and audio and video calls over XMPP, which we hope to implement in the not too distant future.

However, a nice aspect of OTR as compared to other encryption solutions is that it allows you to plausibly deny having taken part in a conversation. We believe this to be an example of a wider trend towards deniability on the internet, a position which is backed up by the growing popularity of Tor, and by several modern browsers allowing you to cover your browsing tracks out of the box.

As a result, we've been working hard to help secure your privacy while you're using Empathy. We've had to do this quietly for various legal reasons, but we're proud to announce Empathy's new Private Mode. When enabled, your contact list will be anonymized, as will your entry on your contacts'. Thus, you can conduct conversations with anyone without fear of repercussions from their discovering your identity, or of anyone else knowing the conversation took place:

It's not obvious how to bring these privacy benefits to Jingle video calls. We came up with a technique we refer to as Kitten Secrecy (patents pending in all relevant countries), and managed to integrate it with Empathy with the help of our friends at Collabora Multimedia, who constructed a fantastic GStreamer element using only two leaky queues!

We think the results speak for themselves. The source is not quite ready for release yet, but (lawyers permitting) we hope it'll be public by the end of the month. Hope you can wait until then!

the Telepathy and Empathy teams


If you're about to leave an angry comment:

At the Boston Gnome summit, Robert McQueen, Sjoerd Simons and I sketched out a plan for the API for end-to-end encryption of communications (implemented using XTLS, OTR or anything else) and how we'd implement this API for OTR. Work's just started on a challenge-response authentication API, which is a prerequisite. Stay tuned; or, jump onto the Telepathy list or #telepathy on Freenode if you're interested in helping out!

Telepathy BOF at the Boston Summit

Jason's hands were tired after typing two days of excellent notes on sessions at the Gnome Summit, so I took over writing up the Telepathy BOF (which was largely about Telepathy integration in Gnome Games).

Gnome Games's tubes code is broken because of Empathy moving to Mission Control 5, which broke the contact chooser they were using (which used Mission Control 4). A Canonical person (your scribe did not catch who it was) has written a contact selector in C which just uses telepathy-glib, which Gnome Games will use and then start working again. This widget could form the basis of the long-anticipated telepathy-gtk.

Rob pointed out that it's currently a bit of pain to request a channel for yourself: you can't just call one D-Bus method and get a channel back, you also have to implement a Client.Handler object on which MC will call the HandleChannels() method. Sjoerd noted that Empathy has helper code for doing this in simple cases, which could be moved to tp-glib (it's under the LGPL).

Jason wants a way to share high scores with your contacts. (Digression about a gnome-games high score server on gnome.org ensued, the notes of which your scribe lost in a kernel panic. One main point is that global high scores end up just featuring incredibly good scores and people setting their name to obscenities.) Jason wonders if g-g could publish your high scores to your contacts in the background?

J5 wondered if any g-g people are documenting how they're using tubes, because he was always confused by them, and he reckons this is a very important thing for app developers. Rob suggested pushing this into tp-book, and Sjoerd noted that Danielle has a helper which lets you say "give me a stream to this person" and get a GIOChannel back branch with methods to convert between telepathy address GValues and GSocketAddresses, which could conceivably be extended to set up a socket automatically. J5 thinks that if patterns for using tubes were really well documented, people would jump on the chance to use them.

Jason mentioned that people were discussing having a help option which jumps you to #gnome-games-$lang. J5 said that Ximian tried that, but found that people would just end up in empty chatrooms or paste goatse at each other. Integration with DevHelp would be nice to let people post examples etc.

J5 suggested that another good way to improve documentation is to make writing it a requirement for SoC. Rob noted that Telepathy hackers know that you need to use, eg., a Handler and a Tube, but it's hard for people really immersed in the stack to remember which prerequisites people need to learn in order to understand that stuff. Sandy said they'd been discussing documenting requirements and standards for SoC students, and thinks it's a great idea to ask students to blog stream-of-consciousness "this is what i did" updates. People have to make sure that they do this as they go along, because you forget the learning process after a few weeks.

Advantage of peer-to-peer high scores: you don't get the problem of one incredibly good person dominating. [info]ajaxxx suggested that you could make high scores decay over time, or once you reach a particular level, to address this problem.

Tetrinet is latency-sensitive: will that be a problem with Telepathy, particularly using MUC tubes? Rob said just try it and if it's too slow it'll get faster as the implementation of Tubes improves. Sjoerd noted that for tetrinet you probably want to just export the Tetrinet server over a multi-user stream tube, rather than using d-tubes.

Telepathy should use UPnP to make FT and tubes fast in more cases. This is on the TODO list.

Boston Gnome Summit and Maemo Summit

I'm just getting ready to fly away to Boston for the Gnome Summit. I'm looking forward to meeting people and seeing MIT, as well as getting the chance to spend more than a few hours in Boston (unlike every other time I've been there).

Inevitably, I haven't been organised enough to propose a Telepathy- or Empathy-related session, but Rob McQueen, Sjoerd Simons, Andres Salomon, Dafydd Harries, Shaun McCance (when he's not busy running a pair of interesting-sounding documentation sessions!) and myself will be around if people are interested; maybe something will coalesce. If window manager theming is more your kind of bag, Thomas Thurman's running a session on CSS in Metacity/Mutter. It'd be great to talk about integrating IM with the Gnome Shell; Moblin's people panel and many parts of Maemo make interesting use of Telepathy, and it'd be nice to have something similar on the desktop.

Speaking of Maemo, going to Boston means I'm not at the Maemo Summit in Amsterdam, which is a real shame: I'd love to meet more of the Maemo community, hear what people have up their sleeves for the N900, and discuss how Telepathy could help. Happily, Marco Barisione's giving a talk about how Telepathy's used on Maemo, and how you can use it too; relatedly, Travis Reitter and Mathias Hasselmann will speak about the address book, one of the heaviest users of Telepathy. Also, Marc Ordinas i Llopis is hosting a BoF on extending the (frankly stunning) Hildon desktop, and Ian Monroe is giving a talk with Sergiy Dubovik about preparing Qt4 applications for Fremantle and Harmattan. I hear Philippe Kalaf is also floating around somewhere. ☺

See you in (the wrong) Cambridge!

Announcing Heechee

In my opinion, there's just not enough Subversion servers on the internet.

That's an opinion you'll probably never hear me express - I much rather everyone move over to a DVCS (*ahem* mercurial) - but Subversion has, some would say quite rightly, earned its place as the dominant VCS for nearly every part of the IT community (apart from big, lumbering, financial companies).

Recently, I've been slowly switching away from subversion for my personal projects into Mercurial. This, in itself, a painless process, but with my public projects - particularly South - this has the unintended effect of slightly alienating some of my users. Most are alright with adapting - after all, it's quickly becoming the norm to use a DVCS - but there's still a few people left out.

One of the particular issues I have is with svn:externals. A lot of apps - including some we have at work - rely on svn:externals to pull in external dependencies into a libs folder along with the project itself. Externals is one of the few features of subversion that I thought was pretty much perfect, and it was sad to see my move to Mercurial break it.

This week, at DjangoCon, Chris Wanstrath did a nice talk on DVCSen. One of the questions led him onto hg-git - the awesome git backend plugin for Mercurial, that the GitHub guys wrote - and how they first investigated the idea of an svn gateway to expose their repositories transparently to subversion users. From what I gathered, subversion's wire format proved too tricky to deal with, and so they turned elsewhere.

However, the idea of a subversion gateway intrigued me greatly. What better way to transparently serve South so people can still pull it using svn:externals while still developing in Mercurial? With that in mind, I started looking into Subversion's wire protocols and their delta format (svndiff) sometime yesterday afternoon.

After some digging, reading an obscure academic paper and liberal application of Wireshark, I grew confident enough that I could at least implement something. A day later, and I'd like to present the very first version of what I'm calling Heechee (if you get the pun, ten nerd points).

Heechee is a transparent mercurial-as-subversion gateway. It serves a Mercurial repository as a Subversion WebDAV-based repository. It's still in the early stages, but at the moment it will serve its own mercurial repository to subversion in such a way that you can check out the repository, and update to various revisions within it.

You can check it out at BitBucket. It's pretty alpha code, and make sure you have the dependencies mentioned in the README, but it works, which greatly surprises me. I plan to much improve the code to support more 'advanced' features, like being able to do more than checkout and update, as well as exposing tags and branches correctly. There's even the chance I'll stick Git support in, when I've had a play with Dulwich.

Still, hopefully I'll soon have it so it can serve South's code via svn, and thus restore harmony to my land of VCS users.

So, please, take the code and have a play with it. It's not formally licensed and released yet, but it will probably be Apache licensed. Feedback and suggestions for features, as well as how to linearise trees into svn histories, much welcomed!

Cycle lanes on pavements

Why I almost never use cycle lanes painted on pavementsYou know the cycle lanes I'm referring to. A white line painted down the middle of the pavement, so that cyclists and pedestrians can share it. Some of them are quite good, but the inner-city ones are generally a waste of time The main problem is that these lanes give way to every side road, so you have to slow down and look over your shoulder at every side road. It is also annoying if traffic is waiting to pull out the side road. Other annoyances are limited space to overtake slow cyclists or pedestrians spilling over from their side of the pavement, and a bumpier road surface than the main carriageway, tight corners and "Cyclists Dismount" signs. Luckily, in the UK "use of these facilities is not compulsory and will depend on your experience and skills" (The Highway Code for cyclists (61)), so you don't have to use them. They are sometimes useful as a legitimate way to bypass red traffic lights though. I recommend that you instead use bus lanes instead. "Most bus lanes may be used by cyclists as indicated on signs ” (65), so if there is a picture of a bicycle on the blue sign at the start of the bus lane, you can use it, and it'll be a smoother, faster ride.

Verbal Nagios Alerts

Have verbal nagios alerts with festivalHere's a fragile script I cooked up to do it Verbal Nagios