Thought for the Day - Oscar the Grouch & watching the way we talk

The last of four recorded Thought for the Days that were being broadcast on April Sunday mornings just before the 8am news in Kim Lenaghan's programme.

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A few years ago I interviewed Oscar the Grouch. You know, the grumpy, green hairy creature who lives in a trash can on Sesame Street.

For over 40 years the man inside puppets like Big Bird and Oscar has been Caroll Spinney. He had brought Oscar over to Belfast to take part in our local children’s TV production Sesame Tree.

I chatted with Caroll for a while and then he reached under the table and reappeared with Oscar. And so began a surreal ten minutes of conversation with the shaggy puppet.

Grouch by name, and grouch by nature, Oscar likes to grumble.

He prefers broken things to objects that work.

Asked about his impressions of Belfast he moaned: “There’s only one problem with Belfast: it’s much too attractive. Very beautiful city. I like things that are more run down.”

And like any tourist in these parts, Oscar had made the pilgrimage up to the Giants’ Causeway. He sounded uncharacteristically impressed: “I wandered around on the various levels, and I climbed all over it. I went up one side and down the other. Beautiful!”

Mmmm. His grouchiness didn’t seem to be turned up to eleven. Either Oscar was suffering from jetlag or he was secretly more mellow than he liked to let on.

Maybe he’d been reading Ephesians 4. “Watch the way you talk. Let nothing foul or dirty come out of your mouth. Say only what helps, each word a gift.”

I think, deep down in his trash can Oscar the Grouch understood this. Despite his negativity, begrudgingly he knew to look for the positive.

Then I asked Oscar my killer question: “You’re grouchy, you’re a hoarder, you like a nap, I’ve got to ask, are you related to my wife?” Caroll gave me a wry smile and I hastened to add that the question originated with my wife. He gave me a signed photograph to take home to her!

“Watch the way you talk … Say only what helps, each word a gift.”

Maybe I could learn from Oscar.

Thought for the Day - Easter Sunday - It's not all about me: thinking about others (while waiting for the stone to move away)

This is the third of four recorded Thought for the Days that are being broadcast on April Sunday mornings just before the 8am news in Kim Lenaghan's programme.

Inspired by an early Sunday morning in September 2013.

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It was dawn on a Sunday morning. The bedside clock said half five. I tossed and turned, becoming more and more aware of a sharp discomfort in my right side. Below my ribs, it was sore. Sore in a place that shouldn't be sore. I melodramatically announced to my wife that I was going to drive myself to Casualty. By the time I reached Broadway the pain had become more acute.

Triaged and given a couple of pain killers which might as well have been Smarties, I sat a while on the uncomfortable plastic chairs violently jiggling my leg, before pacing up and down the waiting room like a caged animal. My groaning must have sounded like a mother in labour.

My name was called. The doctor listened to my gasping explanation of the symptoms and nodded his head. "I bet it's kidney stones" he said. "You sure? Not my appendix?" "Nah, totally the wrong place. I had them a few years ago. Agony. Let’s get you something for the pain and then I'll prove it's stones."

Pain killers were injected into the line in my hand, a saline drip went up and the acute pain along with the I'm-going-to-die feeling began to subside. An X-ray showed a stone, just a few millimetres in diameter, blocked on its way to exit my body. Tablets would widen the tubes, and more tablets would manage the pain. I should go home to bed and see if it would clear. And later that day it did.

I was lucky. I walked in and walked out of Accident & Emergency. A painful episode, but short-lived and curable. But while I hung around the waiting room it took such effort to lift my head and see the other people around me.

An older couple sat holding hands, the lady in her dressing gown, her partner ashen with concern. People sleeping off hangovers in the entrance porch. Ambulances bringing urgent cases into A&E. A young man with a badly cut face brought in by his mother.

Ambling around like a wounded bear I tried to pray for my fellow sufferers ... and myself. I don't think I finished many sentences in my on/off pleading with God. Their backstories were unknown, but their need for relief, reassurance and results was obvious. It wasn't all about me.

In the midst of all our own pain, it is sometimes possible to think of others besides ourselves. To some we can offer direct assistance and reassurance like my doctor did with me; for others the least we can do is to pray on their behalf and ask God to intervene.

Somehow for me the discomfort and the remaining pain vanished. Just like that. One tiny stone had moved away. Freedom from pain.

Christ has risen. He is risen indeed.

- - -

The third last sentence “Freedom from pain” is deliberately ambiguous!

In one sense, the small stone moved and I was free from pain. I’d be quick to point out that Christianity doesn’t offer instant freedom from pain in this life. Though I might argue that in an eternal timeframe it does.

Happy Easter.

Thought for the Day - Palm Sunday - What is real worship?

This is the second of four recorded Thought for the Days that are being broadcast on April Sunday mornings just before the 8am news in Kim Lenaghan's programme.

It's partly based on my observations at a gathering of Sunday Assembly Belfast just over a month ago. It was so nearly based around the divine cake they served at the end until I spotted a bumper sticker while driving home from Ballymena.

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Recently on a damp Sunday afternoon I gathered with 40 or so other people in a dimly lit venue in Belfast. Some like me had come on their own. Others in groups. Younger couples brought small children.

There was an enthusiastic welcome and announcements were made. A small band that was assembled at the front played a song. The lyrics went up on a screen and we were gently encouraged to sing along. A 23 minute illustrated address was delivered by a well-spoken woman standing behind a carved wooden lectern. A collection was taken. And there was more singing.

Church, but not as you know it. You see, one of the songs was Blondie’s Sunday Girl! And the address was about “the Suffragette movement in Ireland and what we can still learn from it”.

Franchises of Sunday Assembly are popping up all around the world. It’s not intentionally anti-religious and the Belfast organiser stressed that they weren’t hung up on atheism. As a regular church goer – from before I was born – I was curious to see what this Godless service would be like. Would Sunday Assembly feel like church? Could God really be banished?

It was a deliberately secular humanist space, albeit with plenty of inherited ecclesiastical references. People gathered together where they could celebrate life through song and word; and where they could be open to challenge about the issues being discussed.

God was not being worshipped. And yet God was definitely not absent. Unannounced God was still at work, in me at least, through the challenge of building a fair society and even the mindfulness exercise near the end – a practice not unfamiliar to some churchgoers – which was a very natural opportunity for quiet, meditative prayer.

Driving along some time later I noticed a car with sticker in its back windscreen saying: “Liverpool is my religion. Anfield is my church.” Cheering on the terraces can so quickly be replaced with chanting for a manager to be sacked.

This is Palm Sunday and as Jesus entered Jerusalem the crowd was cheering for him, when they thought he was going to overthrow the occupying Roman regime. Yet days later when he preached a different agenda, attacking the religious authorities and valuing the wrong sort of poor and downtrodden, the crowd turned and called for his crucifixion.

Comradeship on the football terrace isn’t enough for me. Nor is just getting together with likeminded souls for a shared experience on a Sunday morning in church or an afternoon at the Sunday Assembly.

Where you worship isn’t what matters. Who and how you worship does. Are you worshipping yourself, a team, a tribe? Or are you wholeheartedly worshipping the God that created us and gives us the strength to endure and maybe even forgive the oppressive forces at work around us?

Thought for the Day - personal invitations & setting people free to grow

Who knew Thought for the Day was now broadcast on Radio Ulster on Sunday mornings too? Who knew that they'd be quite so difficult to write for a Sunday morning audience! So many ideas that – in my mind at least – might work for a weekday breakfast eaters or commuters failed to match the slower pace of the weekend (which still has some breakfast eating and travelling, but less so).

Today and for the next three Sundays you'll get to hear my pre-recorded voice just before the 8am news in the middle of Kim Lenaghan's programme.

These words, recorded on Thursday, turned out to be so very appropriate as I watched Sepideh - Reaching for the Stars yesterday afternoon in the QFT and listened to Jermain Jackman's inspiring victory speech on The Voice. Both Sepideh and Jermain are people who have received encouragement to pursue their dreams.

Apologies if I rudely awoke you this morning, but ... Pay attention! Set people free to do new stuff; don't pigeonhole them!

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I spend far too many weekends attending local political party conferences and reporting about them online. Time and after time at recent conferences, speakers recounted who, when and where they were approached to get involved.

Relatively few people seem to wake up in the morning and decide to become a politician. Existing party activists recognise the gifts and passion in people they meet and invite them to join their party, and lure them into running for political office.

Most explain that they’d previously had no notion of becoming involved. But when they were singled out by someone they respected, they reconsidered and acceded to the request.

There is power in recognising and encouraging someone’s talents.

In contrast, all too often I hear of people who were told in school that they’ll never be good at a subject. One friend was told by a teacher that he’d be a waste of space and would never do anything with his life. Yet now he’s a visiting professor and runs a successful creative company that sells programmes around the world.

He wasn’t constrained by his teacher’s predictions. But some people are.

Maybe you were told that you’d never sing in tune, that languages would never be your thing. A negative intervention can put a student off a subject or dissuade them from learning a skill for life. They can be deterred from even attempting to appreciate music and hindered from throwing themselves into learning a language and appreciating another culture.

Anyone who lives or works with other people – students, colleagues, customers, families – has a choice: either pigeonhole people, or else release their potential.

God called Moses to lead the Hebrew people out of Egypt. Moses wasn’t confident of his ability to serve God like that. But God encouraged him, coached him, and surrounded him with other gifted people. He had tough times, and it took longer than anyone expected. But in the end, he did it with God’s help.

Jesus called his disciples to join him. They hadn’t been to discipleship school. Some could fish. One collected taxes for the Empire. Another was an anti-Roman rebel. But Jesus invited them to step out on a new adventure and walk with him.

What would happen if we set the people around us free to explore new skills and activities? Give them a chance to try out new roles even if they need a bit of persuasion. And failure can be an opportunity for growth.

Oh, and if Jesus calls you to follow him, why not take him up on the offer and see where he takes you.

iPod Nano + Novero Rockaway bluetooth earbuds = a great combination (though let down by the earbud build quality)

As an avid listener to podcasts, for years I wore an Apple Nano iPod on a lanyard around my neck. The Nano would sit in my shirt pocket and the earpieces were never too far away to pop into my ears if I was walking somewhere and wanted to tune in.

Unfortunately the cable coming out of the Nano was prone to wear and tear. After six months use, one ear would stop working and from that point it was only a matter of time before the other ear would give up too.

After the second generation iPod, Apple abandoned the lanyards: I imagine they got fed up with warranty replacements. Some case manufacturers provided something similar for a while, but they were never as good.

When the latest iPod Nano – seventh generation – was released in 2012 I rejoiced that it had built-in Bluetooth. iPod sits in my shirt pocket. It’s small and light enough – and the pockets are deep enough – that it’s never bounced or fallen out.

Novero Rockaway earbuds were a good match. They’re very light, have a flat cable that sits in an unfussy way across your neck and came with a free set of Comply Foam tips that sit snugly in your ear. (They come in small, medium and large - recommended.)

The right hand earpiece seems to be the clever one. A flimsy plastic cap at the end screws off to reveal the Micro USB charging port. It takes a couple of hours to charge, and in my experience plays music for 7-8 hours and remains on standby for ever. The Rockaway can pair with your phone as well as a music device, swapping to it when a call comes in. While in theory the Rockaway keeps an internal list of up to eight devices that it can pair with, I’ve found that when swapping between Apple devices (iPod and iPad) I sometimes need to put the earbuds into discovery mode and re-pair.

After a month or so a crack appeared in the flimsy cap and eventually a piece broke off. And every few months since it seems to shrink in size.

But much more disturbing, this week I realised that one earpiece kept falling out of my ear and then noticed that it was because the thin plastic holding the right earpiece onto the cable had given way and was wobbling about.

Unfortunately the poor build quality doesn’t match the pretty solid technology in the Novero Rockaway earbuds. Exactly seven months old, used frequently – but never abused and thrown into the bottom of a bag – I'd expect earphones to be robust enough to still be in one piece.

The iPod Nano’s Bluetooth support improved in the most recent firmware upgrade and as long as the iPod Nano and the earbuds stay within range, they can both go into standby and not require a manual reconnection when you want to listen to something again.

Bluetooth earbuds paired with the iPod Nano turns out to be a very convenient way of listening. Now to navigate the warranty process – which I suspect will say this is normal wear and tear – and find some more robust earbuds to use.

Update - I was wrong. They've just replaced the headphones. Thank you Novero Customer Service!

Hiding your Publication Scheme defeats the purpose of having one ... and raises your costs through needless FOIs

Publication Schemes are supposed to publicise what information a public body holds and regularly makes available. The Information Commissioners Office have a Model Publication Scheme for District Councils in Northern Ireland, listing the type of information that they must make available.

You should publicise the fact that information is available to the public under the scheme. You should make sure the model scheme, guide to information, and schedule of fees are all available on your website, public notice board, or in any other way you normally communicate with the public. [Source: ICO Guidance]

As well as listing the information being made available, a publication scheme also signposts how to access it, usually offering URLs for online documentation. In theory this should cut down on needless Freedom of Information requests, since interested parties can find the information themselves without assistance. It cuts cost and improves transparency.

North Down council have (recently?) revamped their web presence, and in the process taken a step backwards in transparency. The new website has a nice look and feel, but it’s very light on information in some areas.

There is a page devoted to their Publication Scheme. However, it just lists the headings in their scheme and doesn’t link to the actual scheme. So the public are none the wiser about exactly what information is already available and how to access it. Mandatory items like the “most recent election results” are now missing from the website.

Oddly, at the time of writing – 21 March – not a single set of minutes from 2013 have been loaded onto North Down’s public repository. (Minutes tend to go online about one month after a meeting takes place: approved at the next month’s meeting. So I'd expect February's minutes to be missing.)

Their Local Government Reform page also refers to “images on this page show our current boundary, and the areas (in red) which will become part of the new North Down and Ards district council”. Yet there are no images on the page.

Magherafelt District Council have a reasonable publication scheme. Some other councils go further and keep the scheme as a set of browsable webpages with live links to the information. However, Magherafelt District Council haven’t managed to publish any council minutes since June 2012, rather contradicting their publication schemes advice that “minutes of Council meetings available on the website”.

Back in 2009 I blogged about my experience asking Magherafelt District Council for electronic copies of minutes. After been offered paper copies (at a cost) they relented and sent them electronically. And after a struggle it turned out that the council had voted in March 2005 to publish their minutes on their website. But four and a half years later they still hadn't got around to it. Seems that the wheels have fallen off that wagon again.

From past experience, I’d say that Belfast City Council has a pretty slick FOI process. However, checking their Publication Scheme tonight I found that the document (linked to from two different webpages) is dated February 2003 and has just celebrated its tenth birthday.

Someone in Belfast didn’t get the "memo" from the ICO that “Authorities which are still operating publication schemes from before 31 December 2008 should note that these expired on 1 January 2009.” While they might want to claim that they’re not a District Council and that the NI District Council model publication scheme does not apply, they could default to other model publication schemes for NI.

I’m sure the local ICO office in Belfast would be glad to offer advice …

Missing publication schemes, absent minutes and out of date documents lead me to make two conclusions: (1) transparency is not at the heart of local government in NI; and (2) members of the public are disinterested – or disheartened – and not reminding councillors and council officials that information is missing.

Neither of these is a sign of a healthy local democracy.

Argos say they're no longer taking paper vouchers

I'm not sure why Casio put such good batteries in their 'cheap' digital watches, since the plastic straps break every 12-18 months, while the watch face carries on telling the time for many years beyond that. It's difficult to find replacement straps for some of the models, with a new watch costing less than sourcing the strap and the + time-to-locate.

So I popped into Argos this morning to pick up another watch of the same design I've been wearing for the last 10 years or more. I've been carrying a paper Argos voucher in my wallet for a while, so this seemed like a good opportunity to use it.

"Haven't seen one of those for a very long time ..."

One call to the store support line later, and the news was that Argos stopped taking these vouchers a couple of years ago. However the paper voucher has no expiry date mentioned in the text on the back - and I didn't ever notice signs up in Argos to warn customers that the vouchers were being withdrawn (M&S had quite a publicity campaign when they withdrew their paper vouchers).

In the end, the Rosses Court staff were great and applied a discount to the value of the voucher.

I suspect that since vouchers aren't actual currency, stores are quite within their legal rights to refuse to take them at any time. However, from a customer service perspective, I was glad that Argos honoured the voucher.

But if you've any paper Argos vouchers in your drawers or wallets, best get them out and spend them as quickly as possible. And that probably holds true for other antique specimens from other retailers.

Update - Michael suggests:

In the law of contract, a paper voucher is an offer which you can choose to accept. Offer + acceptance + consideration (in this case the watch) = binding contract. If there is no date on which the offer expires it is basically on the table forever. Unless the Terms and Conditions state otherwise.

Inconsistent hand baggage sizes on Flybe website

Flybe's Baggage FAQ states that hand baggage on its non-Loganair flights must not exceed the dimensions 55cm x 40cm x 23cm and a weight restriction of 10kg.

The online check-in form states contradictory dimensions, suggesting a significantly smaller 50cm x 35cm x 23cm.

Which is it?!

Flybe's baggage policy is already much less generous than many other airlines: for example easyJet allow 56cm x 45cm x 25cm with no weight restriction as long as you can lift it.

Web booking discrepancies - eg, Belfast City Airport's car park cancellation process

Every online booking journey seems to be unique.

While the processes for checkout and even order cancellation at big name retailers like Amazon are well oiled and well understood, smaller organisations offering online payment are often more haphazard in nature.

Tonight, booking a car park place in Belfast City Airport's long stay car park for the end of October, I wondered what would happen if my flight changed or I needed to cancel?

The FAQ on the website had good news. If I gave them more than 48 hours notice, I'd get a full refund.

For those products that can be cancelled, you may cancel your booking up to 48 hours prior to your scheduled departure time at no charge.

The text in the confirmation email was less clear cut.

Cancellations are subject to the terms and conditions of your booking. Please note should you wish to cancel your booking, a cancellation fee will apply. No refund is available for unused or part stays

So which is it? Full refund with 48 hours notice? Or cancellation fees? While Belfast City Airport is a timely example, there have been other examples I've stumbled across in the past week. Clarity and consistency at the different stages of the booking process would be helpful from all retailers.

PS: Booking a space in the long stay car park at the City Airport is currently cheaper for 7-15 days (flat rate offer of £30) than booking for 5 days (£38.50). I wonder whether there's any penalty for leaving the car park early?

Northern Visions loses funding for Belfast's community TV station and digital media centre

Northern Visions (or NvTv) is a not-for-profit community community digital media and arts centre. It has an Ofcom license to transmit a free-to-air, analogue television channel across Belfast via a 500W transmitter.

It is very disappointing to learn that at a time when digital media is on the up - and at a time when the barriers of entry for communities should be at their lowest - that two of Northern Visions' normal funding streams (Arts Council of Northern Ireland and NI Screen) have pulled the plug and no longer see NvTv as fitting their funding remit.

Skilling up communities to tell their stories is a key part of a shared future in Northern Ireland. Telling and sharing the stories of marginalised groups, older groups, interface communities, special interest groups should be part of enriching our understanding of each other.

At a time when the UK government is wanting to develop the mostly overlooked community TV sector, it is a disappointing that Belfast's existing community TV station and digital media centre is facing closure.

I hope that the DCAL minister as well as OFMdFM (wearing their Cohesion, Sharing and Integration hat) will work with arms length funding bodies to ensure that no stone is left unturned in assessing whether Northern Visions can be kept going as a viable and increasingly valued community asset.

Northern Visions are collecting statements of support over on their website. Update - their feedback form sends your comment to DCAL and OFMdFM. OFMDFM are replying to say that

"the issue you raise relates solely to the Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure (DCAL) ... we trust that they will respond to you in due course."

Two and a half years ago, along with a number of other disreputable characters, I took part in a series of Blog Talk programmes - somewhat unusually taking the online world of blogging onto Channel 62 of Belfast television sets! (To be fair, the episodes were also available to view online.) Imagine my surprise when a few months later I met my previous next door neighbour and she said that she'd seen me on television. TV? No, not me. I was flicking channels and there you were sitting on a sofa talking about politics. Ah ... they must be showing Blog Talk again.

One BBC producer even admitted to me that she flicked through the Northern Visions archive to look for potential community contributors.

Northern Visions are not alone. Other arts organisations are in the process of announcing the results of substantial funding cuts. In the current economic climate, with reduced public funding available, it is inevitable that organisations will have to scale back and in some cases close: good organisations as well as bad ones.

Update - Northern Visions have issued a press release along with statements of support.

When is the price not the price? B&Q's misleading 5 for 4 pricing poster

Sprucefield B&Q are running a "buy four get one free offer" for loft panelling. Given the poster above, having lugged five packs onto a trolley and over to the checkout, would you be surprised if the bill came to over £20?

Turns out that the pricing poster is displaying the average price for five packs when you pay for four at the full price of £5.80, an is not stating the unit price you pay for 'each'. In smaller than small print in the bottom right corner of the poster (see below) it explains "£5.80 when sold individually" ... not that there's any option to buy them any other way than individually.

A misleading price? Or just a very badly formatted poster that "was sent by head office"? Maybe Trading Standards should decide ...

For the driver who referred me to the Highway Code on the M1 tonight ...

Sometimes I wonder why Roads Service construct such long slip roads to allow drivers to join the M1?

Instead of steadily driving along the full length of the slip road and being able to pull out into the inside lane without braking and halting all the traffic behind them, every night on the way home there seems to be a race to see who can get off the Stockman's Lane slip road and onto the south bound M1 the earliest.

Tonight, faced with at least a third of a mile of slip road in front of him, one particular 4x4 driver decided to pull off the slip road and cross over the solid white line and over the chevrons to join the inside lane of the M1.

Annoyed that I wouldn't immediately come to a stop and let him in, he wound down his window to tell me that the Highway Code allowed him to drive over chevrons.

Well, not in any copy that's been printed in the last 20 years!

So this post's just for him.

Rant over ... for now.

UK Thomson TiVo on its last legs

Back to the theme of the downside of technology refresh. This time it's TiVo.

Years before Sky+ and PVRs built into Freeview boxes, TiVo introduced the quantum leap beyond programming a VHS video recorder with Videoplus codes.

A silver box with an analogue tuner inside, a 40Gb hard drive that could store up to 40 hours of basic quality video, and a phone connect that allowed it to dial a freephone number in the middle of the night to update its electronic programme guide. The big benefit was that you could set it to record all the episodes of a particular series rather than having to remember to programme the video each week. And there was a handy button on the remote that jumped 30 seconds forward: six clicks would bypass a normal ITV three minute ad break. Ground-breaking in its day.

In the UK, the Thomson manufactured units were marketed to Sky customers starting in Autumn 2000 before Sky fell out of bed with TiVo and launched their own (rival) Sky+ box. Shortly after, online electrical retailers picked up and sold off the surplus stock. Confession: I bought two, kept one for myself, and sold the other after six months (by which time they were a bit rarer and attracted a keener price) and used the money to fund a lifetime subscription to the dial-up EPG updates.

Over the last two months, various informational messages have been popping up to explain that TiVo would soon be integrated into Virgin cable boxes. And finally last week the dreaded message arrived explaining that the "lifetime subscription" service would be finishing on 1 June.

Without the updated EPG, the boxes are pretty useless. Manually setting record times would be a backwards step! Along with other bloggers, I'm surprised that TiVo and Sky have kept the EPG information available for so long.

The closure of analogue terrestrial transmission in Northern Ireland towards the end of 2012 as part of the UK's digital switchover programme was always going to lead to the obsolescence of the TiVo. But Virgin's deal has hastened its demise. And with the delay in the launch of Canvas YouView - internet enabled Freeview TVs and set top boxes allowing you to roll the EPG backwards and stream old programmes on-demand - until early 2012, TiVo's withdrawal is is at least six months too soon.

So after 9 years, the silver box with its original hard drive that has been spinning nearly continuously, hardly ever missing a recording. Bet its replacement consumes less power but doesn't live to its 9th birthday!

TiVo's website explains:

Beginning in 2011, customers of Virgin Media will be able to purchase Virgin Media TV, powered by TiVo. For further product information, please see www.virginmedia.com/tivo.

TiVo Series1 DVRs were manufactured for sale in the UK from 2000 to 2002 and were available exclusively to customers of BSkyB. This box has not been actively sold since this time and new accounts are not being activated. If UK Series1 customers have product or technical questions, they can receive support via email to bskyb-support@tivo.com.

After over 10 years of operation, the UK Series1 TiVo service will be discontinued as of June 1, 2011. Since November 2010, monthly Series1 customers have not been billed and will continue to receive free service until June 1, 2011.

Without the program guide data provided by the TiVo service, Series1 boxes will have limited - if any - functionality. They can still be used to view previously recorded programs and, under certain circumstances, may be used to record programs manually.

The newest generation of TiVo PVR and service is now available from Virgin Media. Virgin Media is extending a special offer to current TiVo Series1 customers within a Virgin Media cabled area so that they can take advantage of the Virgin Media TV powered by TiVo.

The ups and downs of my Snow Leopard upgrade experience

Working in the IT industry, you learn to be nervous of software upgrades. Whether it’s a browser, a database, an application or the whole operating system, running bleeding edge software exposes you to bugs and misbehaving features.

And so it was on my Mac Mini. The Leopard version of the Mac OSX operating system had been installed for years. And when the next version, Snow Leopard, was released, I reckoned that the devil I knew was better than the devil I didn’t. All that risk for a predicted 10% speed increase and some new features like facial recognition in iPhoto. Why touch something that wasn’t broken?

So I waited. But with the next upgrade, Lion, only months away and a double upgrade bypassing Snow Leopard unlikely to be supported … and with the new App Store available, enough time had passed.

The operating system upgrade itself went smoothly. Put the DVD in, run the upgrade, reboot and there it was. Tried a few applications and they started up ok.

So what went wrong?

Turns out my trusty seven year old HP Business Inkjet is no longer being supported by HP. What’s the typical lifespan of a printer these days? The drivers for Leopard don’t work under Snow Leopard, and HP didn’t produce new ones.

I could have found this out 18 months ago if I’d jumped to Snow Leopard early, but instead I discovered 10 days ago that I’d be on the look out for a new printer. Lucky enough I was using the last of my supply of ink cartridges, and the duplex unit has been chewing paper recently.

At the moment I recommend the HP Officejet 6500A Plus ... particularly it’s ability to upgrade itself over the web in less than half the time it takes to load its drivers onto the Mac! While it has a USB port, it's much more flexible to use it plugged into your broadband router. Then it's accessible by any computer at home. Just don’t try to buy it from Amazon as they won’t deliver it to Northern Ireland despite the “Free SuperSaver Delivery across the UK” on the product webpage. You can add it to your shopping basket, but when you reach the checkout, it will refuse any Northern Ireland delivery address.

The Drobo NAS connected via USB seemed to be working ok until a period of sustained reading and writing (EyeTV recording programmes and then transcoding them into iTunes) when it would declare an Error -36 and promptly disconnect itself from the Mac. Under the same conditions, it worked perfectly under Leopard. But something’s changed: maybe the tolerance on the USB power. Reconnecting the Drobo via Firewire (of course, needing a FW800 to FW400 lead) has fixed the issue, though has the consequence of slowing down OSX startup.

Over the past few years I’ve been very impressed with the Drobo. For those not familiar with its brilliance, it houses a number of SATA hard drives (up to 4 in my model) and uses its proprietary BeyondRAID technology to offer storage across the pool of physical drives, building in enough redundancy for one drive to fail. (BeyondRAID can be thought of as a combination of RAID1 and RAID5.)

One of the main problems with RAID disk arrays is that while they can protect your data in the eventuality of a disk failure, they are often difficult for mere mortals to reconfigure when you want to add more capacity. The Drobo’s unique selling point is that it allows you to pull drives out (if they’re dead or too small) and replace them with larger ones. All this drive swapping happens while the unit is running and connected to your computer. The speed of light and hard drive technology means that it still takes a long time to mirror your existing storage onto a new drive and regain redundancy – from memory 1TB took about 13 hours to replicate – but you don’t lose the use of your storage while you’re waiting. Idiot proof.

Older Drobos – like mine – only connect to one computer at a time. A thin DroboShare unit was bundled with my purchase that sat underneath the Drobo and allowed its storage to be shared over your home network. But the speed was slow, and the benefits of hosting an iTunes library on the directly-connected Drobo far outweighed the sharing of the storage across the LAN. (Newer Drobos model support protocols such as iSCSI over Gigabit Ethernet.)

The Error -36 errors somewhat dented my confidence in Drobo. Thankfully connecting by Firewire seems to have solved the problem, but I’m surprised not to find similar tales mentioning Drobo, EyeTV, USB and Error -36 on Google.

The next question will be how long to wait before installing Lion. 6 months? 18 months? Certainly I’ll know to check and wait for printer drivers to become available before upgrading!

Happy New Year

We'd a lovely, reflective walk this afternoon: a "Dock Walk" around Titanic Quarter with Chris Bennett and friends. At the end, Chris handed out a prayer - his prayer for the new year. It's published on his blog, but I cheekily reproduce it here as it has much to offer as we all step into the next 12 months of life.

Dear Lord, please give me

A few friends who understand me and remain my friends;

A work to do which has real value,
without which the world would be the poorer;

A mind unafraid to travel, even though the trail be not blazed;

An understanding heart;

A sense of humour;

Time for quiet, silent meditation;

A feeling of the presence of God;

The patience to wait for the coming of these things,

With the wisdom to recognize them when they come.

Amen.

I particularly like the idea (and phrasing) of "work to do which has real value, without which the world would be the poorer". That's a challenge and a half.

Happy New Year. May it be positive and peace-filled year I which you both experience and share warmth in the communities in which you work, rest and play.

La Mon Hotel - a great hotel if you can find it

Six years of living in East Belfast and I was only once in La Mon Hotel.

It’s a known unknown. I’m aware that I’ve no idea how to get there. Pushed to give directions, I’d wave my arms and say that it’s somewhere in the Castlereagh Hills, in-between Gilnahirk and Roselawn, but a bit further out.

I reckon I was within a couple of fields of La Mon Hotel whenever the rough country track turned into a field and I finally realised that what my GPS had suggested as the “Fastest Route” to the La Mon Hotel “point of interest” was neither fast nor a route. I held off turning around in the false hope that it would turn out to be a through road and would deposit me out onto tarmac at the far end.
The point of interest pin was probably a hundred metres askew from where it should have been.

Retracing my steps drive as dusk fell and snow started to fall, I briefly wondered whether I was about to recreate the scene from the film Clockwise in which the headmaster (played by John Cleese) takes a catastrophic shortcut through a field. Would I end up so lost that I’d have to stay in the car, in the snow, all night?

Having escaped my rural meander, I got directions from a nearby corner shop.

“Up the road and turn right. You can’t miss it.”

Much more convincing than Tom Tom.

(Arriving at La Mon Hotel late, it turned out the Nelson McCausland's session on Why unionists ignore culture at their peril was also running late. You can read about it over on Slugger, and also listen to some loud fifes and drums.)

3% plastic surcharge at Belfast airport car parks

Are you aware that it costs extra when you pay for airport parking by debit/credit cards at Belfast International or Belfast City Airports?

Having conquered my previous compulsion to get up ridiculously early to catch flights to England and arrive at meetings in time for breakfast, I’m now a much less frequent visitor to Belfast’s two airports. (Though blog readers may wish to disagree!)

So as I pulled up to the short term car park barrier at Belfast International Airport I felt smug as I reached out the car window to put my credit card into the entrance machine and noticed the message about using your credit card rather than taking paper ticket. I hadn’t forgotten all the old tricks!

Half an hour later, Cheryl had landed, raced through customs, and we headed back down the long corridor to the door. I paused at the parking payment machine, shoved in my credit card and out of habit (normally for expenses) pushed the receipt button.

Bit of a waste for £1 ... but then my eye caught the screen.

£1.03.

Where did the 3p come from?

Pretty sure the signs in the car park all said £1 for an hour. Then I looked up and spotted the sticker up in the top left hand corner of the payment machine (above the card slot, the screen and the buttons) which explained that debit/credit card transactions attracted a 3% surcharge. A 3p charge for following the airport’s advice and using my credit card?

It turns out that Belfast International Airport (or perhaps more properly, Q-Park who manage the car park) introduced the 3% plastic surcharge back in May 2010. It’s a handling fee passed on by card companies.

BIA assure me that “signs are placed on ALL entrance and exit barriers as well as ticket machines ... the most logical place to alert drivers to the change” so I must have missed it on the way into the car park.

But strange that I noticed the messaging about using plastic for convenience and missed the signage about the surcharge? I doubt it was as obvious as the example photo from the long term car park.

Strange that I didn’t notice the above eye-level sign when I stepped up to the pay machine?

BIA also highlight that they’re not alone: Belfast City Airport also charge 3% extra for the convenience of using your flexible friend. Though travellers using City of Derry Airport suffer no such penalty.

Belfast City Airport have for some time mentioned the surcharge on the parking pages on their website. Belfast International Airport have just added details of the surcharge to their website, but don’t mention it on the outdoor tariff signs.

Given the city centre rates to park at local airports and the high ratio of cars to staff, you’d have to assume that it’s not a cost-recovery business and that there’s quite a high profit margin that feeds money back into the operation of the airport.

Maybe some of that will be spent on rationalising the mass of signage that now greets car owners as they arrive at BIA: short term ... drop off ... £1 for an hour ... 10 minutes and the screaming “no U-turn” signs.

Pay by plastic, pay a little bit extra. You have been warned!

(Particular thanks to @szlwzl for the crowd-sourced photos.)

Fewer planes, more trains and automobiles?

It's been a strange week. Normally I'm the one in the house who does the flying around. At least that's the way it used to be. Three or four days a week, I'd be away. I normally treated catching a plane to England with all the respect I'd give to catching a bus. It got me from A to B.

Occasionally they'd be late. One got de-iced before they’d closed the doors and the French pilot yelled some choice Anglo Saxon out the open door to get them to stop. There were the two nights in the last ten years I've spent sleeping on a bench in Heathrow Terminal 1. One plane aborted its take-off. Twice I’ve turning up for early morning flights that a corporate travel company had forgotten to pay for. More recently, one plane’s door wouldn't close and I turned up six hours late for my own meeting. But in general, I viewed planes as being more reliable than buses or trains.

This week I wasn’t the one in the house travelling. So while I was discovering the joys of walking Littl’un to school and then catching a train into work, I wasn’t the one stuck in Brussels on Thursday night with no flight home. I tried to figure out a rescue travel plan – Eurostar from Brussels = fully booked; Eurostar from Paris = fully booked; first seat on a Paris-Belfast flight on Sunday evening = now cancelled. But I’ll not be the one stuck on a sixteen hour ferry crossing (no berth) on Sunday night, nor chugging on the train to Dublin and up north to Belfast.

Nevertheless it’s shaken my normally relaxed attitude to air travel. UK and Irish airspace has been shut down this week longer than immediately after the 9/11 attacks. Longer than Air Traffic Control strikes. The natural but violent phenomenon of a volcano a long way away in Iceland is casually wafting its ash into the atmosphere above our heads like a smoker tipping their cigarette and the wind blowing the ash into your face.

What’s never happened before (to us) has happened.

And it’s flummoxed us. Travellers are bamboozled. Many people have no idea how to start planning to get home. They rebook onto the next flight. In turn it’s cancelled. And they rebook again. Hearing news reports from around Europe, I sense a lack of survival instinct to drive some travellers to find ways home that aren’t doomed to further cancellation. What did we do before low-cost flights?

It’s also obvious that some travel companies are better prepared that others.

Having learnt their lesson during the many cold snaps since Christmas, easyJet’s website very quickly and easily points passengers to the current flight list to see which ones are still marked as Operating and which ones have been Cancelled.

Ryanair have sensibly cut their losses. It’s obviously cheaper for them to stand down crews and check-in staff, cut the volume of calls to costly call centres and reduce the churn of booking and rebooking by simply cancelling flights for a 48 hour period, rather than running a creeping 12 hours at a time window of cancellations.

On the other hand, Eurostar’s website was struggling to cope on Thursday afternoon and evening. While the early screens would show availability of fares for various trains, by the time you progressed through the next parts of the ordering journey to specify the name of the passenger and whether you wanted marketing emails and text messages, there were no seats to book. Their call centre (naturally) took time to draft in extra staff and for a long time, it just turned away callers with a polite message. Wonky website. Incommunicado call centre. Frustrated travellers and bookers.

I loved the story that workers at Belfast City Airport took advantage of the closure to repaint lines on the normally difficult to maintain runway.

The volcano’s not going away. It’ll smoke and belch for days or weeks or months. The wind will change and the jet stream will blow ash into someone else’s face for a while. Flybe will realise that their small fleet of turbo props fly at lower altitudes and can charge a premium to those who can afford to pay to be transported on short fuel-thirsty domestic hops.

And we’ll all travel by plane less. Last year, the economy encouraged people to holiday closer to home. This year, an unpronounceable volcano will further diminish the fly-drive market and boost sales of rooms in Scottish B&Bs and nights in caravan parks. Update - Alain de Botton sums up the possibilities nicely on the latest podcast from Radio 4’s Today programme.

Me? I’ll just be glad when our family is hopefully reunited on Monday evening when a tired and crumpled traveller makes it home four days late from a three day trip. And I’ll check the small print of the travel insurance as well as the trans-Atlantic sailing timetables before she jets off to the US in June!

PS: I think we should arrange some kind of rota to keep an eye on Slemish. Wonder if any of the North Antrim candidates would like to work that policy into their campaign?

PPS: Belfast Film Festival is now on. Lots of good stuff to go and see!

PPPS: The Prisoner on ITV looks a bit rubbish. Pity.

PPPPS: Bet there’s not a lot of room on Sunday night's ferry for antics like the video below, captured this summer on the way back into Larne!

The People's Manifesto - 4x4 drivers, MPs, goats, legalising drugs and the 1967 Abortion Act

I wish Mark Thomas still had his show on Channel 4. I miss his left wing take on life as well as his ability to expose and amplify the weaknesses of corporations and governments. Luckily he still writes books and apparently he still pops up on Radio 4, though I've yet to catch any of his shows.

The People's Manifesto is a short book published at the conclusion of Thomas' 2009 It's the Stupid Economy tour and a couple of radio shows. He toured the UK asking audiences what polities they'd like to see implemented, and held a vote at the end of each evening. A selection of the winning policies were published.

The book's publishers Ebury Press have put up the £500 deposit and £500 towards campaign expenses for Danny Kushlick to stand as an independent candidate in Bristol West.

"4x4 drivers should be forced to drive everywhere off-road, even to Sainsburys."

"Anyone with a 4x4 in a city must also volunteer for the nearest mountain rescue service."

"Those in favour of ID cards should be banned from having curtains. Those with nothing to hide have nothing to fear."

"Goats are to be released on to the floor of the House of Commons (no more than four); MPs are forbidden from referring to them ever."

There's a lot of common sense in amongst the more random and surreal suggestions from the public. While understanding that the issue is complicated, I have a sympathy with the ten reasons to legalise drugs, though Thomas always finds a way to comically cut through the mature analysis.

"Illegal drugs are often impure ... cocaine is cut with baby milk powder, making life very difficult for liberals boycotting Nestle products."

The audiences had much to say about MPs.

"MPs should have no job other than that of MP ... There are few other jobs in the public sector where people are encouraged to moonlight as part of their job description. You don't see many teachers abandoning a class to give a speech for Swiss banking conglomerates, declaring, 'If all I did was teach you'd end up with very bland teachers.'"

The policy suggested and voted for by the Northern Ireland audience was a series one.

"To introduce the 1967 Abortion Act into Northern Ireland ... I confess to being shocked whem the Belfast audience voted for the policy ... Until then, I thought that Northern Ireland operated under the same rules as the rest of the UK. But no, the law that applies in Belfast is the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act, a statute that was created before women could even vote, let alone voice concerns over their reproductive rights. This law is so antiquated that Section 26 of the Act makes it an offence for a master or mistress to inadequately feed or clothe a servant."

Thomas goes on to explain reference Dawn Purvis' attempts to get the legislation introduced, and the other local party's opposition claiming that affording women reproductive rights would damage the peace process. He finishes with the observation that

"... the British government is willing to support the fight for abortion rights around the world [through the Department for International Development] - just not in Northern Ireland, the one place where they could make most progress really, really easily."

Another ethical manifesto policy came in the guise of

"The garment trade should print the age of the person who made each item in the label ... Perhaps surprisingly, 'cheap' doesn't always mean lowest standards: the 2009 report by Labour Behind the Label gave Gap and Primark a better write-up than Debenhams and John Lewis."

Since we're on the eve of a General Election, it's opportune to mention the policy suggestion

"To introduce 'None Of The Above' on ballot papers."

This would allow constituency elections to be re-run with "proper candidates" if the public disapproved of the selection, and it might help politicians and parties "to reconnect with the electorate in the prospect of losing to an empty chair".

Scared of the Other (part 3) // Muslims

I didn’t intend to start a “scared of the other” series of posts, but something I thought about writing ten days ago, but didn’t, has continued bubbling in my mind and now spilled out.

Question Time and David Dimbleby came to Belfast’s Waterfront Hall back on Thursday 11 February. The panel included Jim Allister (TUV), Gerry Kelly (SF), Margaret Ritchie (SDLP), Lord Trimble (UUP/Cons), Sammy Wilson (DUP) and Shaun Woodward (Lab).

There were at least a couple of live blogs following the questions and answers: over on Slugger O’Toole, and on Biased BBC. Live blogs do have a tendency to become pass-remarkable. They’re informal, offhand and snippy rather than being an authoritative account of the event.

One comment in particular stuck out from the Biased BBC coverage. It was written by that blog’s main organiser and writer David Vance, an anti-agreement unionist commentator who can often be heard on radio and TV, and is currently a spokesperson for the TUV (and tipped to be their Westminster candidate in East Belfast).

Responding to a comment by “Julio”

Julio: not enough muslims on this edition

David Vance responded a few seconds alter with the words

David Vance: Yes, no Muslims in the audience…one upside

Last time I checked, Muslims didn’t wear a special badge, wear a uniform, share a particular style of haircut … or all have the same colour of skin. You can’t spot a Muslim in an audience any more than you can spot a Christian, an atheist, a gay, an accountant, a lawyer, a fluent Irish speaker, or a TUV voter.

Stating that there were no Muslims in the audience – to me – implies prejudice, religious intolerance and plain ignorance. Fear of the other.

The comment got some debate over on Slugger at the time, though no direct response from David Vance on that point.

Incidentally, the TUV are pretty vocal against the Irish language. David Vance recently issued a statement on the matter, and the TUV’s vice-chair and election candidate for Lagan Valley Keith Harbinson caused a fuss a few months ago when he issued a statement (later amended) calling it a "leprechaun language".