Category: Uncategorized

First post of 2009. Had a very pleasant New Year at a friends house on the Isle of Wight. I visited the IOW for the first time in 1968 during a posting on a Portsmouth based ship. I went again a few more times for business over the years.

In some ways it has changed and in other it still seems to be that sleepy place across from the South Coast. Went for quiet a number of walks over the holiday break and although the weather was a cold and a bit windy, we had a very nice time and will be going back.

We’re off for the Xmas break at my sisters cottage in Mid-Wales for a quite break. Just waiting for the Turkey to finish cooking and just topped up the water for the home made Xmas pud!

Nice time to spend by the open wood burning fire over looking some of the most lovely country side in the UK.

Time for another glass of fine red wine I think!!

Merry Christmas everyone.

I was sent a link by a USA friend this week about an article that is tracking the Billions of funds that Bernard Madoff,has stolen from investors.

The current total without any of this weeks stories being added, so far comes to a staggering $42 Billion!

Already accounting for at least one death, how much further will his tentacles envelope ordinary investors who based on the supposed  informed advice of yet more financial experts that they should invest in Madoff’s corrupt Ponzi scheme.

One wonders what the SEC and FSA were doing as one of their own, and there in lays another issue about who really manages the Financial Service industry, there needs to be some major Government led investigations into what they were doing with their necessary legislation to protect the ordinary investor from such occurrences.

I would suspect as the current Labour Government is so ‘in bed’ with the City, Barack Obama’s new government will tackle this issue much sooner than the UK government will ever do!

Another good month with the web connection, no drop outs and a steady increase in the download speed.

It seems that after the terrible problems of 2007, we’ve reached a steady state of constant connection with no drop outs.

All we need now is a increase in the download speed, perhaps BT will have to react to the announcement of the Virgin Virgin Media’s 50 MB service.  Of course the proof of that speed at a supposed cost of £46 per month, will need to be seen to be believed. We all know what ‘up to 8MB download speed’ really means!

It seems that the Australian Government is becoming more and paranoid about its citizens ability to roam the Internet with total freedom and it intends to try and stop them.

Under potential legislation, it is proposing to limits everyone’s ability to visit any sites that it deems ‘illegal’. Supposedly proposed to protect children, this legislation seems to be attracting a bigger ‘NO’ backlash by the day.

Here’s some background to the story, maybe we have some Big Brother issues here in the UK, but this proposal moves the Orwellian society of 1984 much closer for all Aussie’s!

Sam Knows the best independent Broadband resource on the Internet, has recently released its first ISP Performance Monitoring report.

The full report produced in collaboration with Broadband Buyer covers a lot of ground and as result is quite large. But it’s worth a download from here.

Another good month on my ISP speed, mostly above 5MB, but with one blip when the power went out in my road and it took over one hour for speed to come back up after the power was restored.

I wonder if I will ever get a better speed that I have now. It seems that the Reading South Exchange has had a number of upgrades carried out over the past few months, perhaps they are going to move on to other exchanges now.

I had to go up to Norwich by train (see the revamped Train Line Web Site)  last week and on the way back had a chance to see how the building of the London Olympics Stadium was progressing.

Very glad to see some of the steel rim structure now beginning to rise from the base. I did not have time to take a snap of the progress, however I did find out that there is now a live webcam located near the site that can be viewed to see the daily progress.

I’m off to Norwich again in the next few weeks and will see if there is a chance to take a picture then.

I was looking into the cost increases of my Gas and Electricity use last week and came across this site which has calculated typical uses for various devices that are used around the average home.

I’ve also been using an electricity monitor over the past six months, this has certainly focused the attention on just how much electricity is used, for example when you turn on your dishwasher you can see visibly just how much it is costing.

I would recommend one of these devices to anyone who wants to start and cut their electricity use.

Another steady month of connection with no drop outs at all for the second month in a row and a steady speed of 4.5 MB for downloads.

It seems that the upgrades that have been going on at the Reading South Exchange are making a real change to stability and constantly higher speed levels.

On a different tack, it seems that many UK users are exceeding their Broadband download limits. I suppose as now so many UK TV companies are following the BBC’s phenomenal lead off (BBCiplayer) with their own TV ‘catch-up’ download channels – ITVCatchp, 4oD, DemandFive to name a few of the UK legal download sources, there are going to be some people that will exceed whatever has been set as their limits.

To me that shows that there is still a very big need to get the UK broadband delivery infrastructure upgraded as soon as possible so that the ISP’s don’t have to impose limits. Will that happen? Here’s the latest suggestions.