Category: Uncategorized

I’ve only been blogging for some 20 months. After I discovered the small feature set and limitations of Blogger’s own editor, I then tried a number of off-line blog editors.

The choice at the time seemed quite small. I started off using an early version of RocketPost, but found that this kept crashing for no apparent reason, then moved onto Qumana, however its then lack of a UK English spell checker and some poor support experiences seemed to annoy me a great deal. I tried some other methods including ordinary text editors and even Word!

During my searching for a replacement, I then discovered a Beta version of Windows Live Writer lurking on a Microsoft web site.

Since then and with the latest upgrade recently loaded, I think I have now found a blog editor that fits all the requirements that I certainly need. It’s consistent, it has many good features and it runs well with no crashes. Its easy to install and set-up and there is a good set of forums to deal with those tricky questions.

If you’re new to blogging and want a good off line blog editor, then Window Live Writer may be the one for you. – No I don’t work for Microsoft and I wish I could say the same for Vista! But it’s getting there.

Another broadband story appeared yesterday about the ongoing poor performance of broadband speed delivery in the UK by Internet Service providers (ISP’s).

According to the BBC news article, Which Magazine carried out a survey of some 300 UK broadband users and found that…

The average speed achieved in the Which? trials was 2.7Mbps, with the lowest coming in at under 0.09Mbps, barely at dial-up rates, and the maximum only reaching 6.7Mbps.

It’s very clear from this report and conversations that I have had with various users that there is a vast difference in broadband download speeds across the country.

I am sure that the BBC article will receive a high number of comments from users, but I am surprised that some of these have not already appeared on the BBC Have your Say page.

Another point that the article discusses is the overselling of potential speeds that users can expect as part of their contract. For example its pretty much accepted that unless you live in or right next to your local telephone exchange, no one is going to get 8MB download speeds.

Of course, it is possible to purchase dedicated (and expensive) lines that will give you 8MB (and above) speeds, but this post is relates to the general consumer products sold by the likes of BT, TalkTalk, Orange, Tiscali and others as can be found in listings such as these [1], [2], & [3].

But back to the overselling of speed, it seems strange to me that ISP’s can still get away with implying that their product is one thing; when, in fact it clearly is not. Just about the selling of every other product seems to be highly regulated in the UK, why not Broadband Speed. The Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) seems to be pretty limp with it’s approach to monitoring and even Ofcom (who are supposed to be the regulator) seem somewhat uninterested in sorting out the situation.

Looking back at the Which Survey figures – I was not one of those surveyed and I don’t subscribe to their publication, I wonder how those surveyed measured their Broadband speed. After having some speed issues last May (the related support issues could fill ten more posts, maybe they will!) – I’ve been a broadband user for some years I decided to monitor my download speed on a more regular basis. Partly for my own interested and partly to feed back this info to BT who are my ISP – how uninterested they were, I soon found out. – Another post perhaps.

There seems to be quite a number of non-ISP tools available in the Internet for testing broadband download speed, not all of them work well, but the once I’d spent some time searching and testing, I use these three, One Stop Click, Audit My PC & tcp/IQ.

By using the first two tools and working out an average, I’ve produced a set of graphs since I started monitoring my broadband speed.

Some background info, I’m served from the Reading South Exchange which is approximately 1.5 miles/2.5 km.

May 2007 Averages: Download – 4.066 MB, Upload – 384.2 KB

June 2007 Averages: Download – 3.436MB, Upload – 359.7 KB

July 2007 Averages: Download – 3.380MB, Upload – 355.3 KB

So far August has thrown up some small issues, not helped by poor support, but the speed seems to be building up again.

Do you have speed graphs that you can share? I’m sure that everyone would be interested.

More on the state of support in a later post.

Will this be the title of a future post? It could be the final event in the ever increasing progress by the UK government and police to capture the DNA of the entire UK’s population.

If Kath Mashiter, of Lancashire police, and Brian Pincher, of Norfolk police get their way this is what might happen after they manage to get the law changed to capture the DNA of speeders & litter louts even before they have been prosecuted!

The English and Welsh police already have the power to take your DNA when you’re arrested and keep it (forever) even if you’re not charged with any offense!

The government has announced that it will open a public debate on this subject, but if it goes the way of past debates, in my opinion it will be another white wash and in the end, it will result in the title of this post becoming a reality before very long.

See related story here.

Another survey on the decline in the numeracy skills of 18-25 year olds in the UK with this BBC article.

It’s old hat now, but I still go back to the fact that the teaching of old fashioned ‘times-tables’ should never have been dropped from schools. Of course there is the common response today, that you don’t need them as we ‘all’ now have calculators!

To me, mental arithmetic (using tables based calculations) is fundamental to just about everything that you do today.

I may be in a minority here, but surely if there is to be any progress in securing any final peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, Blair has to talk with and include Hamas in any discussions.

If as Blair might claim, he helped with the final agreement for the Northern Ireland situation, he then has to understand that unless you include equally all the interested parties, you will never achieve a total solution.

But their terrorists!!! I hear the cries; yes and so were the IRA, the UVF, the UDA, the LVF and many other splinter groups, but in the end, it seems that peace has finally come to Northern Ireland!

There will be many pitfalls in this round of the peace talks, but if the Northern Ireland example can be used, providing everyone is included in the talks, common sense will prevail. Will it happen next week, next month, next year, who knows. But one thing is sure, it is only by talking an making agreements that will finally sort this terrible mess out.

Further to my previous posts [1], [2], [3] on this subject, I was searching for some related info when I came across this on the BBC‘s Breakfast web site.

In a series of online reports BBC reporter Susannah Streeter looks at various aspects of the UK Surveillance Society. Some very interesting points raised here.

Add to this a news item yesterday(16th) related to the recent Tesco bomb story where some more letters turned up late due to the recent UK postal strike, some at UK radio stations.

The TV report showed that the police were taking DNA swabs of the UK radio staff for ‘elimination’ from their enquiries! I wonder how many of those swabbed realise that their DNA will be kept on the police DNA national database for at least the next 10 years even though they have done nothing wrong!

Excellent news for people on organ replacement waiting lists today as the UK Chief Medical Officer calls for a change to the UK donor scheme where everyone is a donor unless they specifically opt out.

I know that not everyone agrees with this potential change and yes there are some religious groups that do not agree, but surely its better to have a surplus of organs available for transplant than a shortage.

I’ve been a Donor Card holder all of my life – well at least from 16 when I joined the Navy and can see no better way of using what ever is ‘working’ from my body when I’m gone. I can’t use it can I?

I’ve just realised after my last post that it’s been nearly a month since I last posted! What was I doing in that time? I must get back into the habit.

Keep reading, this will amaze you!!!

A strange thing happened today, my wife calls to me from her PC, “Have you bought anything from Amazon?”

“Not recently” I replied, “Why?” “I’ve got an email her saying thank you for your order and another saying its been shipped”

I have a look at the emails and sure enough there they are using her correct email address. But I do not recognise the goods that are in the emails. I click on the link to look at the tracking details and try to log in, but my wife’s normal password does not get recognised – no surprise as she does not have an account!

So, then confused I click on ‘reset password’ and duly receive an email which I use to reset the password. Once that is done I then go to My Account and low and behold I am presented with the complete details of another persons Amazon account!!! Full name, which is exactly the same as my wife’s, but with different address, telephone number, last five figures of their credit card, credit card expiry date etc!

I check the other persons email address and find that it is the same as my wife’s, so now I am completely confused!!

So, what to do now? Being an honest person, I ring the other person and of course much to her surprise tell her what’s happened, understandably she is not too pleased at hearing this. She also now understands why she has not not received any emails about her purchase from Amazon as they have all gone to my wife!

After some discussion, the reason becomes apparent, it turns out that when she got her broadband from her ISP, they allocated her an email address based on her name and as we had the original name, they added a 1 to her name (which of course is the same as my wife), for example, name1@isp.com.

After more discussion, I find out that when she opened her Amazon account (this was her first order), her daughter who was doing the typing slipped up or forgot to add the 1 to end of the email name! Hence my wife became the recipient of the emails and through the ‘Forgotten Password’  link was able to reset the password and gain access to someone else account!

What about my wife’s Amazon account? Well as I said she before has never had one, we’ve always used mine, bit I have sent gift packages to her and given her email address as a contact, I initially though that this may have got confused with my account.

After finally calming the other person, I’ve forwarded the emails to her, suggested that she log in to her Amazon account to change her password immediately.

What about Amazon? I had a long conversation with their phone support, needlessly to say they were not too pleased to hear that this could and has happened – so am I from a point of view of protecting my own Amazon account!

I’ve never been a fan of numbers at the end of names in emails, if you use this type of email address (john.smith253@isp.com) as a logon to another system for email records and then later you accidentally type john.smith235@isp.com, then someone else is going to get your emails from that organisation and from our recent experience, plenty can go wrong.

Luckily, for the other person I didn’t order hundreds of pounds worth of goods from Amazon, but maybe one day someone else with a number in their email address won’t be so lucky!

I’d be interested to hear comments from others that have had similar experiences.

Looks like we’re all going to pay more for having nice gardens!

As the time for the forthcoming Council Tax revaluation gets closer, Gordon Brown in his current guise of Chancellor has ensured that the Valuation Office Agency has signed a legal agreement with the Land Registry that will give it access to Britain’s biggest land database.

From October, the size of every garden, patio and outbuilding will be electronically submitted to the Valuation Office Agency every time a house is sold.

Looks like this good old Labour Government has found yet another way of squeezing yet more juice of out of us lemons!