Category: Uncategorized

I’ve watched with disbelief over the past few days how this story has continued to develop.

I can’t believe that the Policia Judiciária have put both parents up as official suspects, particularly as it seems to be based on what appears to be flimsy new evidence that has been put forward such as DNA traces found in their hire car!

Are they really trying to say that the McCann’s killed their daughter, hid the body locally and then 25 days later put it in to the hire car boot and took it away to some other place to bury it whilst all the time being hounded by the various press packs.

I’m no forensic scientist, but surely after 25 days, unless a body has been kept in a freezer (which one did the McCann’s use!) any body will have certainly started to decompose and would have left massive amounts of DNA in the boot of the car (even if wrapped), more than enough to be conclusive.

Also if the car has, or is playing such a big part in the investigation, why has it not been seized, why were the McCann’s still using to drive to the Airport yesterday.

I think that the Policia Judiciária are putting up smoke screens to cover what seems to be a lackluster investigation that has shown up serious failings in their system.

More to follow on this unfolding story I think.

I had a discussion the other day with some colleagues about the scales of measuring the size of objects. There are many ranges of definitions from small to large for example.

But what about something that is outside this range? So after a short discussion we came up with a list from one end to another, I know it’s not definitive, but I’m sure it covers a pretty good range. Unless of course you know more!!

Size Range – From top to bottom!

• Infinite
• Gigantasorous
• Humongous
• Colossal
• Immense
• Huge
• Gigantic
• Large
• Big
• Normal
• Small
• Tiny
• Minute
• Diminutive
• Microscopic
• Atomic
• Subatomic
• Infinitesimal

Argentina beat France at the opening match of the Rugby World Cup!!!!

What a win and what a competition this will be.

A few months ago we received one of those free samples through our letter box, a small bottle of washing machine Comfort Conditioning Cream – with Sweet Almond Oil fabric softener. Instructions were to use it in the same way as our normal fabric softener. I think half the bottle was used and the rest left to one side as not being of much different from the original softener.

Imagine my surprise when I found out today that quite a number of other people had received the freebie and had suffered the same problem without realising the cause; a blocked softener dispenser!

It seems that the thickness of this sample seems to have congealed in the dispenser as the washing machine had warmed up and when the machine reached the softener cycle, nothing came out.

Why we had not realised that is was this sample that was the culprit I do not know. You have to clean out the softener dispenser every so often anyway. How this subject came up I can’t remember, but I know at least six other people that had the same problem who won’t be using the full size version of this sample. Sorry Mr. Comfort!

During my recent short trip to Southern France I used the French Autoroutes again.

I think I have been driving on these roads (and many ordinary French roads) for over 25 years and I am always amazed how easy they are to use. Yes, the tolls have increased in recent years, but as the saying goes, you get what you pay for. Clean service stations, very few traffic jams and an easy drive (is the road covering?).

I wonder why our Motorways have not caught up with the same notion of providing value for money, well I suppose its because there owned by ??? That’s a good question, who does own our motor ways. It’s easy to see who owns the M6 Toll road and how much better it is than other UK motorways, maybe its because it’s a Toll road!

I can’t see how the UK can cope with any further increase in the number of cars on our roads, unless like the French, we use our roads better and start introducing some form of ‘pay per use’ and use that money to improve the roads.

I had a few days off last week and went with some good friends to another fiends house in Southern France just south of the Ardèche gorge.

I had never been to that part of France before, but what a great place, beautiful countryside, great food and great wine.

Needless to say coming back with a few case for the home ‘cellar’.

The high-point of the week was a drive down the road (D290) that runs down the section of the Ardèche river gorge that all the Kayak use. Some fantastic sights and pictures.

Certainly worth another visit to see more of the area and sights sometime in the future, maybe even use a Kayak done the river!!

UK Citizens Online Democracy provides some interesting Web Site that are a benefit to all UK citizens.

• TheyWorkForYou – Sign up to be emailed when something relevant to you happens in Parliament.
• WriteToThem – Find out and contact your Councillors, MP, MEPs, MSPs, send them a letter/email and believe it or not, they will write back to you.
• PledgeBank – Tell the world “I’ll do it, but only if you’ll help me do it.
• HearFromYourMP – Get email from your MP. Discuss it with your MP and other local people.
• FixMyStreet – Having problems with graffiti, fly tipping, broken paving slabs, abandoned cars or street lighting. Report, view, and discuss local problems.

Use them freely, they’re very helpful.

My mother lived in Upton Upon Severn for many years till her death and I have some very happy memories of our many visits to her bungalow from our homes in Worcester and Reading.

What a sad sight it was to see the recent flood damage caused by the overflowing river Severn following the recent torrential downpours. Upton is not unused to flooding as I witnessed many times during our visits over the years.

The lower flood marker is 1885, the upper 1947

The reason for a major event this time, was the timing – middle of the Summer and the forgetful government Environmental Agency not turning up with the flood defenses, which in fact should have been kept in Upton in the first place. The resulting disaster can be seen in this aerial shot from the BBC.

Had the flood defenses been in place as can be seen in this picture during the earlier June floods, it would have prevented much of the damage that was created by the lack of flood defenses.

Upton Upon Severn is slowly getting back to normal, and it will face flooding again, but the flood defense must be kept in Upton and maybe local can be trained to erect them as and when needed.

I had a call from a friend of a friend of friend the other day, “my PC won’t start, and I understand that you can you help me?”

After arriving at their home and having a look at the PC (running a non-updated version of XP home!) I found that it was not booting from the hard disk. Asking if the user had tried anything to get it working I was met by the usual blank stare! Cutting a long story short, I finally managed to get the PC to boot.

However, much to the PC owners horror, all their graphic images (they run a small wedding photography business) had disappeared from the hard disc. Stating the obvious, I said that at least they could re-load the latest data from their backup… Can you hear the silence?

I’ve worked in IT for many years and it still amazes me how often I hear the the cry of my PC’s broken and I don’t have a back up!!! What is wrong with people? Don’t people care about their data?

With the cost of backup hardware (the DVD writer in your PC ) at an all time low (£16.00 for a LiteOn 20X DVD+/-RW/RAM L/S black drive) and much free software available (ZDNet reviews), know one can say that they can’t afford to make a back up! Of course there are many more options for backing-up/archiving your precious data, that’s not the point of this post, it’s more about YOU making that backup in the first place!!

Moving on from this basic PC house-keeping task is the question of how long will your backup last? It certainly is question that is getting asked quite lot at the moment as more and more of our world becomes ever more Digital!

I found this interesting article on the Daily Telegraph web site that not only talks about backups, but more about the changing standards of digital media and what that means as we need to protect more of our digital data over longer periods as technology evolves.

My PC phone call person? He lost a lot of business and in fact was sued by a number of people for losing their wedding pictures!! However,  I do know that he now backs his PC up every day! You’ve been warned!!!

Other reference information of interest.

• Backing up your data, what about restoring it?
• Digital cameras ‘not backed up’ – BBC Article
• Back up your PC – PC Pro Guide

Technorati Tags: PC Backup, Data Protection

I was carrying out some research over the weekend on the status of the attempt by the House of Commons MP’s to except themselves from the Freedom of Information Act (pleased find out that they failed) when I came across this article on the Times Online web site.

It’s really an essay by Philip Johnston (home affairs editor of the Daily Telegraph) who is this year’s winner of the annual Charles Douglas-Home Memorial Trust Award.

It’s a great article that discusses and shows how under the Blair government our civil liberties have been eroded more than under any previous government (WW1 & 2 periods excepted) of modern times.

The opening sentence gets you easily into the rest of the article…

“In his first statement to Parliament as Prime Minister, Gordon Brown said that “Britain is rightly proud to be the pioneer of the modern liberties of the individual.”

Other introductory paragraphs include…

“If Clement Attlee is remembered for post-war welfare provision and the NHS, Harold Wilson for Sixties optimism, Edward Heath for joining Europe, James Callaghan for the Winter of Discontent, Margaret Thatcher for reducing the size of government and John Major, however unfairly, for sleaze then we will look back on the past ten years [under Blair – my insertion] as marking a serial assault by the State on the civil liberties of the citizen.”

As the essay points out, individually the changes that have been made have been accepted as needed. However, when viewed collectively, we are now have much less liberty than we had before Blair and his legislative onslaught on our freedom.

I am sure that even George Orwell would not have envisaged such a state of affairs even in his wildest dreams. I also remember watching a Tom Cruise movie a while ago called Minority Report, I did not rate to highly at the time, but the more that I think about the film in light of the current situation, the more I think that we are not far away from the main thread of the movie being a reality.

But back to the essay; I may be behind every other blog post about it, but it is worth a read even though you have to move over ‘nine’ pages to read the whole thing. It make for very interesting reading.

Link to the main article is here