a temporary basecamp

A temporary base for a few days before we head to Edinburgh.

In the movies, most of the time its the villains who have the big houses, with long drives and fancy swimming pools.

Not sure where this puts us?

Comparing television road programmes by party success

With the recent talk of which UK car programme is to be presented by which person, I thought an experiment was worthwhile. Simply put, which presenter could throw the best party? And perhaps which would be the most worthy?

I've seen the group of presenters that are about to be transferred to Amazon run a party before. It's on the TV channel Dave most weeks and is pretty awful. I can't place it as worthy, and most of the time the same group seem to smash everything up, set fire to it and tell everyone that their selected form of transport is inferior to that available to millionaire TV presenters.

This brings me to Chris Evans and the party we attended on Sunday. Part of the CarFest events, and a charity money raiser for Save The Children. I think that ticks the worthy box, along with it being a highly enjoyable day, with Chris Evans acting as a superlative host to the many people at the event.

We arrived as the car track events were in full swing. I don't know much about cars, but they'd included a few fun ones like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, a kind of James Bond style Aston Martin and a wide range of Ferrari and similar supercars.

Later we saw club cars, hot-rods, dragsters and a selection of Formula 1 cars on the track too.

This is about when we had a footwear disaster and had to return to the car for a speedy changeover. By the time we got back, the music had started and then rocked on for the next six or so hours, well into the dark hours, when everything finished with fireworks.

No contest for who won.

More on the music later.

forces of nature

Time for a walk along a coastal footpath.

There's large chunks of the original path that have fallen into the sea. The underlying ground is made up of something called Gault clay known as blue slipper, which, as its name suggests, is partial to a bit of sliding around.

Fortunately we'd picked a sunny day and so although we were not too close to the edge, there was little prospect of any large scale land movement.

Not to say there hasn't been in the past. A whole village has fallen into the sea, as has a large part of an amusement park. This picture from above shows the well-known Blacking Chine amusement park as well as the fallen cliffs leading towards it.

The rest of the park continues and has been rebuilt across the road although inside the older section are various paths marked with no entry signs, which adds to the sense that we are dealing with major forces of nature. Then look the other way and everything seems tranquil.

blue, not red, around sunset

A quiet moment on deck before we dock back at Portsmouth. It's that time when the sun is about to set, which adds something of an unreality to the scene.

The Spinnaker Tower shows off its blue paint-job. The Emirates provided sponsorship, but although the Emirates' customary red paint was ordered, there was something of an uproar. Red is the colour of the adjacent rival port of Southampton whereas blue is the correct colour for Portsmouth.

Common sense prevailed and the Emirates found itself sponsoring the Spinnaker for the Americas Cup with blue instead of red.

scanned in depth

Something of a personal best this time when I came through airport security. I was travelling alone, with only small hand luggage.

I'd already take my laptop, iPad and Kindle out of the small briefcase and put them into a tray.

"Belt?"

I removed my belt.

"What's in the other bag? Anything electrical?"

"Some cameras"

"Please could you remove them"

"Are you wearing boots? Can you remove them too."

By now I was up to five trays. This is my personal record.

Through the scanner.

Beep.

Man scans me. Nothing found.

"Random check. Please could you go into the body scanner and stand on the yellow footprints"

I do. No beeps.

He asks me to go back past the metal scanner and then back in again.

All okay.

Then I start to gather my five trays of items together. Two still cameras, a video camera, a laptop, an iPad, a kindle, some minor toiletries in one of these see-through bags. My belt. My shoes, My small briefcase, My phone.

"Is this your bag?" asks another man.

"Yes"

He starts to go through the "Did you pack it yourself?" questions.

We progressively empty it. He takes everything that is in an inner bag out and dusts everything with one of those special wipes.

All clear.

I start to repack. Other passengers pretend not to notice.

RemoteGoat reviews @ukmixtape #edfringe preview @LiveTheatre ★★★★★

Today's post is more like a guest post than one of my own.

I'm borrowing a few lines from RemoteGoat's review of the Mixtape Preview at Live Theatre on Friday evening. The full review by Gary Dugdale is at www.remotegoat.com

As RemoteGoat says:

"As Mixtape shows usually focus on a set genre, tonight’s show was an example of what can be expected at the Edinburgh Fringe Show this year showcasing elements from each of the 25 odd shows they’ll be performing.

Mixing all genres of songs works well and equally, focusing on one set area works too. My preference is the mixing of types of songs as this means a broader scope of knowledge is needed to successfully win the coveted golden mixtape. You folks in Scotland will be lucky if you catch a show while the crew are there.

Another flawless, extremely entertaining show tonight, well done boys and girls."

Oh yes, and Five Stars from RemoteGoat! ★★★★★

@ukmixtape in the wild at rehearsals @LiveTheatre

Here's a minute of the rehearsals at Live Theatre before Mixtape's Preview on Friday evening, which sold out to a full house.

Lookin' good.

about time I used one of the pods

I thought I'd try the Pods at Heathrow today.

I used to sometimes use the car park where they are sited before they were running regularly, which invariably meant catching a shuttle bus.

Then main T5 car park opened, so I habitually park there for short journeys or pre-book the valet if it is for longer.

However, when I park inside T5 myself, I usually park on the same floor as the Pods anyway, so it's about time to test them.

Beep-beep.

yesterday we entered a #totebag overload situation

The tote bag above is really my guilty secret favourite among the bags we're taking to Edinburgh Fringe. It's pretty easy to guess the original song too, vastly easier than any of the actual Mixtape scripts.

And the first few tote bags seemed to spark twittery comments and song suggestions much faster than we could actually produce any bags.

The early totes have been relatively simple, but now I'm starting to detect a creeping elegance.

Well, they will soon be seen on Princes Street and The Royal Mile. Even the ones that have over-adapted song lyrics.

alternative customer relationship management techniques

Yikes, today I was sent one of those 'we're sending the boys round' emails.

Aside from the problem that I'd already cancelled the contract in question, I felt the tone exceptionally harsh for something which had a theoretical due date of only 2 weeks ago and was for a tiny amount.

"Your account with XXX has an outstanding balance of GBP 17.28. If this balance is not settled by 01 Aug 2015, your account will be placed with a third party collection agency.

Please note that as we are obligated to pursue the entire unpaid contract value and your company will be liable for the entire outstanding balance and for any and all collection costs incurred by XXX including the fee for placing the account."

That's how the email started. It went on to say that it "had no choice but to take these steps". Of course, they could have phoned me to find out what was happening, but I suppose that would require a human touch.

Then the email went into the threats, which are interesting if you are thinking of placing data into the Cloud. First a threat to destroy my credit rating (remember I've already cancelled this contract):

"Please be aware that if your account is placed with a third party collection agency, it can dramatically affect your credit rating."

Then a threat to destroy all of my Data:

"In addition, XXX will have no obligation to maintain or provide Your Data after the time specified in your Master Subscription Agreement, and will thereafter delete or destroy all copies of Your Data in Our systems."

So they threaten me and say they'll destroy all my data.

When I called their International Help Desk (which required me to specify the language before I could go any further), they checked their system. Yes, I had cancelled. Their system had sent my message to the wrong place. The billing person agreed that I was right.

I'm still waiting for the apology from my "Customer Representative".

Did I mention the nature of the software in question? ...Customer Relationship Management.

hip hop through the subway speakers?

A few years ago I was sitting on a New York Subway, when some hackers jacked into the MTA carriages's audio system and started playing hip-hop through the speakers. No-one in the carriage seemed to bat an eyelid, and I wasn't sure if it was commonplace or if New Yorkers were as insulated as Londoners when on public transport.

I wondered at the time just how long it would be before this started happening to other forms of transport.

I now see a couple of hackers have just published some computer code which can be used to intercept automobile firmware and mess around with the systems. They have been doing it in plain view, so that manufacturers get onto the security requirement, but it does raise the kind of issues I was thinking about as I travelled uptown on the 5.

Cars have a sort of Local Area Network whose speed has been progressively increasing for the last few years.

There's a few standards like CAN (Controller Area Network) and LIN (Local Interconnect Network) which have to be more resilient to electromagnetism and EMF noise as well as having workshop-friendly industrial looking connectors.

A typical modern car has 50-100 microprocessor systems, so these modern-day computer linkages are pretty important, and have progressively increased in speed, running at around a Megabit per second in modern cars.

Naturally, car manufacturers are already talking about wifi car diagnostics, and the wifi extension IEEE 802.11p has been around for some years, specifically as a vehicular communication system to support ITS (Intelligent Transportation Systems). The idea is that cars can talk to one another as well as to the workshop.

That's where the modern-day equivalent of the subway train hackers come along. If they can bridge the gap from the roadside to the car using wifi, and then hook onto the car's 'LAN', there's a potential way to exploit the car's control system.

The two guys that just tried it with a Chrysler in the USA also illustrate the start of an intriguing era for cars.

They get more computerised, but the uConnect fix for the Chrysler has to be uploaded manually via a USB stick into the vehicle. Its's supposed to be a driver-friendly update, but I do wonder whether its is completely foolproof? We all know the strange things that can happen with, say, a Windows update.

I remember when we needed to update something in the sporty little red car. It ran the special car version of Windows and needed someone with a fairly extensive computer knowledge to get it all working. Or the time my smart windscreen was replaced by a normal windscreen fitter who effectively disabled the whole car for about three weeks until all the right control systems could be reinstalled by the car dealers' people.

So, who will get there first? The car dealers or the hackers? Maybe Suzi Quatro was prescient with 'Can the CAN'?

rare migratory vehicles

Around town with some friends in the evening, we briefly commented on the interesting cars in the residents' car park. We are now at that time of year when cars get shipped over to London from places where it is inconveniently hot.

I noticed the blue Aventador first. It allegedly glows in the dark like something out of Tron, and nearby the accomplice red Lamborghini just looks pretty.

There's a couple of Aston Martins, but no-one seems to notice them as the air-freighted cars start to appear. The Roller next to the Lambo flew first class and next to that there's a middle eastern plated G Class Mercedes, admittedly with the AMG spec to keep the price north of £100k. The Merc and the Lambo still have sand on them and the Lambo has those Italian-flag coloured disk brakes.

I don't think I'll be keeping up with the neighbours.