in which the internet is greyed out

There's some new trouble at 'Mill today as we see a few big internet sites blink off the air. Wikipedia and Flickr spring to mind, with one gone dark and the other showing selectively darkened photographs. Google is running a campaign notice on its home page.

The reason is driven from new US Bills being shunted through the American system to try to protect Intellectual Property. It's supposed to be about protecting IP that is being systematically stolen, for example by cloning sites with commercial agendas. Anti piracy, which most of us would support.

Instead, in its current form, it is probably applying brakes to sensible progress and sharing of ideas and innovation. The most obvious example is the impact on social computing, the likes of facebook, twitter, blogger, flickr, wiki and so on. More controls, more monitoring and more security. Don't misunderstand that I want to have control over my personal data and access, but I don't want to prevent the evolution of new good ideas from the simple applications that mashup transport timetables or location of spare Boris-bikes in London through to the big new ways of presenting information and media online. Then there's the music applications that let people co-operate on a single work from multiple countries. Or the various ways that people can now self publish.

At one level there's the important argument about the price of freedom being eternal vigilance. The challenge is to not use such blunt instrument that it kills the spark that creates the initiatives in the first place.

And to not set up systems that ultimately get circumvented by the very organisations being targeted. A case in point is a sports streaming site which was run from a US-based .com domain. It was seized by America's Homeland Security and nowadays displays three very impressive looking badges from the Department of Justice, National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Centre and Homeland Security Investigation Special Agent.

The thing is, the site has then sidestepped the blockade in a couple of ways. One, it re-routes its operation from Spain (and a few other countries as well), secondly, it has created a variation of its name in the US market.

Now I'm not directly judging this site, but I am saying that if some sort of blanket restrictions are applied to try to stop the obvious rogues, there is a risk that the more genuinely creative and sharing processes will get caught up in it all as well.

I'm not sure how old the Internet is, but I can still remember the first time I used FTP based access, via a modem, to hook onto someone in Australia's files, as part of a sharing experiment. It was before Microsoft had an IP stack and we used to patch in something called Netmanage to get connectivity with those modems that made the weird shooshing noises when they connected.

In technology terms, it wasn't that long ago, and then, as Mosaic and Netscape evolved we started to talk about organisations using web addresses instead of street names. At the time it seemed far fetched, but of course nowadays its passé.

The innovation hasn't stopped, but any new legislation needs to be carefully thought through so that it isn't just a barrier and some kind of attempt to protect the status quo. The recent Booz Allen report on the Internet suggests it represents 3.4% of world GDP and 21% of GDP growth in mature countries over the last 5 years.

Its not about gimmicks for their own sake, but experience suggests that there's a lot more new stuff around the corner and we must be careful not to stifle its ability to surface.

unplugged without warning

I should have noticed the warnings as I arrived at the train station early today. Instead I was more intent on getting a ticket.

There was a line of animatedly talking people at the ticket office so I tried the machine instead.

I picked the right option from the variety of very similar sounding train ticket types and made it to the platform with a couple of minutes to spare.

Thats when I noticed the surprisingly small number of people waiting today. The rest must have known something that I didn't.

I looked towards the digital sign. Instead of showing train times and an estimate of how many minutes delay, it had another message.

"Bus service only due to overnight theft of signalling cables"

I started to plan an alternative route and then suddenly an overfull train appeared. It wasn't the correct one, but it was going in the right direction.

I decided to get on and see how far I could go before being turfed onto a bus. I was slowly moving my mindset back to that of a rail traveller.

The train was only about 20 minutes late at this point. By the time we arrived at the destination it was an hour and a half late.

Still, I had my Kindle with today's news on it to read whilst I stood in the train's corridor for around two and a half hours.

ever decreasing space

I've been using a few main line trains to get around over the last few days. It made me decide to restart my Kindle newspaper subscription.

The previous one just stopped after I had another one of those card alerts where they phoned me to say they thought someone had been using my credit card.

That was way back in November and I think the bank might have been right on this occasion.

I agreed to let them stop the card and ordered another one but then some previously agreed payments also stopped working.

The Kindle newspaper was one and its only recently that I've noticed it again.

It's most useful when I'm travelling and only have intermittent connections because the paper downloads itself in a few seconds and is then fully available offline.

So planes and trains are the best uses.

Trains especially because the available space to read gets smaller and smaller as one approaches a busy destination.

the glasses are not half empty

Just over a dozen miles cycling today, which can count towards next weeks's targets. In theory I could also count Saturday's mileage towards next week because I ended up at 52 miles from Sunday to Saturday. I won't though. I also know my mileage is not a lot compared with the people who commute by cycle every day, but I regard it as a worthwhile increase from practically zero at this time of the year.

The wine glasses are also mainly empty, except Saturday evening when we had a pleasant meal with some very agreeable Minervois from those naked people.

But I guess my biggest achievement from the random selection of January things I wrote down was to get moving again on the novel writing. It takes a little time to get back into it and I'm having to unpick and rewrite some parts, but I do feel as if I've got the story back in my head again.

Maybe not 1,600 words per day, but certainly enough to be serious. I may just sit in the chilly sunshine and write some now.

poached high street with sherry trifle

Yesterday was the Thirteenth of January and also a Friday. Some might link those facts with the strange economic out turns we also heard about.

In the U.K. morning, one of the biggest supermarket chains reported poor results, which is the latest in a long line of faltering high street and out of town megastore downturns.

And then, by the evening, the global pools of missing money have formed deeper troughs with about nine of the European countries getting a credit down rating. Now it's not just Greece, Ireland and Portugal under inspection, but we are seeing the bigger countries like Italy, Spain and France getting a thumbs down.

All of them have been playing "who blinks first" as they hope the headlines go elsewhere.

Meanwhile the empty can continues to get kicked along the high street.

We know it's a connected world and a global economy. But that doesn't mean that everything has to look and behave the same.

These windswept high streets have been going through multiple phases across the decades. The big chains arrived. Then the multi brands (several shops with different names but all part of the same conglomerate). Then the new mall developments (which is all the same shops in many locations). Then the out of town mega-mall. Then e-shopping.

So now there's plenty of gaps in most town centres and not much unique. I know some local well-heeled areas where the little shops have come back, but its an exception.

Meanwhile the main commerce model moves to dark stores (no customers allowed inside). Instead it's internet ordered, professional shoppers pick the goods and its delivered in a van. Then the customers top up from a local shop with a few unique items.

But we've got to be careful that by doing this we don't wipe the remaining signs of uniqueness away. If I'm in Madrid I expect there to be Jerez adverts rather than just Coke and Apple.

If I'm in Stuttgart I'll expect a few Mercedes adverts but how about some Dinkelacker-Schwabenbraeu too?

It's not just about choice, it's also about personality.

slippery

The mornings and evenings are still dark, although I noticed yesterday at around five in the afternoon there was still a very small hint of light and an orange edge to the sky.

The dark somehow makes getting 'in position' for early meetings that much more challenging, and from today we've the first noticeable frost of this Winter.

By this time last year we'd had the deep snow and its related mayhem, so this year seems quite pleasant by comparison, with a soft sunlight accompanying the dusting of frost.

It's also strange that only two days ago I could contemplate my outdoor cup of coffee before the meeting, but today I somehow think I will give it a miss.

we are from the sun

An email from an English friend in Madrid came wandering my way today. It links well with my comments a few days ago about not letting friends drop from the radar. This one was after a spectacularly long gap.

So I sent a reply and referred to some of the places I'd visited in a city that I know more from the blog posts of another.

And then a different friend's email was playfully critical of my home-made music. Their review comment translated that the music was not their cup of tea. It was too poppy, too middle of the road. This person is more avant garde in their taste. I considered this criticism a positive result, however. The original intention (as part of a curry house bet) was to make music that was mainstream.

The critique got me thinking and I decided to cut another track this evening. I wanted to take some of the same pop elements I'd used in the other music and mix them in a more electro-jazzy way. I loaded some of the loops onto a keyboard, added a midi trigger for some drums and bashed out the three minutes or so that's below. It's really only a lumpy practice track, complete with over loud fuzzy guitar, but it's an excuse to plug in a synth keyboard again.

As inspiration I wanted to call it 'Sun', faintly acknowledging all that Yes/Topographic Oceans type music, where a single track lasts 25 minutes and is named 'nous sommes du Soleil' or similar.

So my Madrid friend's email came at the right time. When I needed to think of Sun, I could instead think of Sol.

I looked quickly through my pictures from Madrid, but other than the Tio Pepe building, the only other one I could spot of Sol was the metro station.
Maybe I should add a train into the mix.


Esperando del sol (small room mix)

component object model strikes back when all I want to do is type

The last day has been a bit of a blur. I had a report to finish and some fancy calculations and it took pretty much from waking up until time to go to bed.

I finished the report and did the defensive 'double save' to ensure there was more than one copy around but then as I opened it again to check, I got one of those cryptic messages. Word popped up a little extra box in which it triumphantly proclaimed "Ole!"

Or more precisely "Ole error!" - I could almost hear the castanets.

Totally unhelpful. A Spanish error between me and all my hard work.

I shut down Windows, tapped my head whilst rubbing my tummy and then located an earlier version of the saved file. Hold breath and "File Open".

Fine. I was back in business, but now have a nagging doubt that Windows will be looking for another opportunity to eat the document I've created.

the bridges of early morning London

Early morning meetings in Central London followed by a walk across Westminster Bridge. I'd been particularly early for my session and had time for a pre-meeting latte in a coffee shop across the way.

I was the only person sitting outside at one of the pavement tables, yet it's my preference to sit outside when possible at this particular place, which has a view right across towards Downing Street.

Come to think of it, there were also only a few regular tourists blocking the main crossing at Parliament Square although this was more than compensated by the coach loads of exchange students doing visits to London Town.

They arrive in a sort of soundscape. You can hear them long before they come into proper view. Loud conversations, foreign languages, headphone music and giggling with loud shouting related to the road crossings.

Even London's loud traffic doesn't drown them.

And then, about two seconds after I took this picture, I ran into a friend crossing the bridge in the opposite direction.

first creme egg sighting

Yep. Cracking, as they say.

tracking mileage

I've decided I might need to compromise on my cycling objectives a little. I suppose I can make some sort of sliding scale from the dark winter months back towards the lighter finer weather.

In the last week, I've recorded three sets of mileage from different days, as follows: 16, 18.8, 20.8. It gets past the target of 40 for the week, but includes mileage on Sunday (today), which I'd rather include in next week's total. I decided its better to front load the objective rather than have the whole weekend used to claw back missed objectives.

At this stage, for week 1, I've decided to compromise and split Sunday's mileage down the middle and to use half for week 1 and the rest for week 2. Therefore Week 1= 45.2 and Week 2, so far, = 10.4. It feels better to go into a new week with something clocked up rather than all zeroes.

Of course the whole thing will also be dependent on where I am/access to bicycle/remembering to take something that helps me monitor mileage. Overall this might be a tricky objective to track.

Re-entering the Ozone layer

For one of the events over the seasonal break I had to make a sort of mix tape of old music. We are talking about music from way back in the twentieth century here. It needed to include mainstream guitar rock music, punk and pop and I decided it would be best to produce it as a mash-up.

That's where (e.g.) Led Zeppelin is played cut to the beat of the Jackson Five - it's as easy as A,B,C etc - OK and Lady Gaga did get a look-in too.

The mix was boshed together in about half an hour on Logic Pro and then dropped onto CD, complete with a whimsical label - referred to as "Cheesy Dip 2011"(click to play ).

Of course, it became the slope to re-awakening my interest in mixing music and last weekend I found myself slipping from the bananas section in the local supermarket to the magazine racks and sliding a copy of 'Sound on Sound' into the trolley.

The magazine is full of gadgets and advertisements, but I've resisted the temptation to buy new stuff, realising that I'm probably only using about 1/10th of the technology and instruments I already have stashed away in the home office and the 'music room'.

And the iZotope Ozone 5 upgrade doesn't really count*.

* I'm sneakily getting things ready in case I decide to try FAWM (February Album Writing Month) again next month.