News Archives: April 2008

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Birthday BBQ - 10 Days to Go

With about 10 days to go, I thought posting a quick reminder for my Birthday BBQ might be a good idea. So...

Birthday BBQ at Claire and my house, Saturday 10th May.
Bring yourself, booze, and food - and friends if you wish.
Lifts to/from Linlithgow station available. (About half the trains between Glasgow and Edinburgh and all between Stirling and Edinburgh stop at Linlithgow.)
Burning charcoal to cook food will probably start when Nick gets here, after Phil's game. Or about 7.
Burning garden waste on the bonfire will start when I can't hold Sarah back any longer. Or about 7.
We've got about half a tree to burn this year... The other half will get burnt at the fireworks party in November.

Any other questions, drop me an e-mail!

Posted by graham @ 08:39 pm

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Where's the queue start?

My reaction to this story in the Guardian :

"I hope you brought enough for everyone."

"Oh, yes, we did...."

Posted by graham @ 07:53 pm

Wanted - Heroes

I'll be starting a new weekly campaign soon - Monday 28th April if I can get everything arranged in time. The game will be high fantasy, but beyond that it's pretty much "whatever the players fancy". I've got space for a couple more players, so get in touch if you want to join in. Lifts to/from Edinburgh can be sorted out - I believe there's going to be three cars coming out here anyway.

Posted by graham @ 07:36 pm

Virgin vs. Net Neutrality

After the storm in a teacup that is Phorm (*), there is now a real reason to leave Virgin Media - Net Neutrality.

Net Neutrality is how the Internet currently works. You pay an ISP to give you access to the Internet. At the other end, the website you want to reach is also paying an ISP to give them access to the Internet. In between there's a backbone - normally in this country run by BT - and both ISPs (your's and the website's) pay some of the money they charge you to the backbone provider. In most cases there's a cost based on how much data you transfer either a maximum amount per second (more common for home users, although there's often an upper limit or cap) or an amount per Gb transferred (more common for websites, and normally calculated per month and charged in tiers). For example, I pay £18 per month to Virgin for a theoretical 2Mbps Internet connection (in practice the same line is shared between multiple people, so at peak times that's more like 50kbps...) and I pay £30 month to Streamline for a server with 2Gb per month transfer. When I access a page on my own server, I'm paying for the same data transfer twice - once from each end. When someone else is accessing the page, it's more like we each pay for half.

So far, so easy. Virgin (amongst others) want to break this. They want to add an extra charge where the website has to pay an extra fee to Virgin when the data is being transferred to a Virgin customer. Under this model, accessing my own website would involve me paying Virgin (for my home Internet access), and Streamline (for connecting my web server to the Internet), AND Virgin *again* for allowing Virgin customers access to my web site. If I don't pay this extra fee, Virgin will deliberately provide a slower service to their customers when they access my site. Oh, and the pricing is designed so that only the big companies can afford to pay these fees.

Why should you care? Because most sites won't pay. Most can't. Once you get outside the big few - MSN, Yahoo, maybe LiveJournal - the costs are prohibitive. If Net Neutrality is broken, running a website would involve paying a fee to every ISP who might have a customer interested in the site. Any ISP that is not "Net Neutral" will be guaranteed to give you, the paying customer, worse access to the bulk of the Internet. They simply won't be giving you the service you are paying for.

I'm going to look into moving my Internet service elsewhere. The first question I'll be asking is "Are you willing to give written support for Net Neutrality as part of the contract?" Anyone who says "no" won't get my custom. I strongly suggest everyone does the same.

* - Phorm. Even if you believe the more lurid stories about Phorm, it's a fairly simple "man in the middle" attack. Worrying about the man in the middle who's openly admitted what he's doing and has his data handling auditted by Ernst and Young is silly. Worry about the man in the middle who sells credit card numbers to organised crime for $40 a time. If you're taking the precautions needed to stop him, Phorm isn't an issue. If you aren't - you should be.

In fact, Phorm isn't gathering any information that all the major ISPs aren't already making available to anyone who'll pay for it. The only difference is that Phorm has some way of correlating that information with a later attempt to serve you up a web advert. That's blocked by refusing to accept cookies from the webwise domain. If you can't be bothered doing that yourself, you can be sure that all the anti-spyware products will very quickly block it for you.

Posted by graham @ 07:33 pm

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Birthday

The traditional burning things and bbq for my birthday will be on Saturday 10th May, probably starting around 7pm. Usual rules. Everyone welcome, lifts to/from Linlithgow station, bring a bottle and something to throw on the barbie.

Posted by graham @ 08:54 pm

Monday, April 14, 2008

Dad's Eulogy

I've put the eulogy I wrote for Dad up, mainly in case it's of interest to anyone in my family who couldn't make the funeral. I'm still finding it very difficult to talk about the funeral. I went to pieces the moment I sat down after the eulogy, and didn't really recover till the next day. What I said seemed to go down well. Certainly, Mum was moved, which I guess is the main thing.

Posted by graham @ 08:58 pm

Saturday, April 12, 2008

Bother

Anyone fancy playing a game this afternoon? Carry On at Camp David is short one player due to illness. The character's fun and will get involved in most threads of the game. Could be played by either gender. You will need to be able to get to Heriot Watt for 2pm or just before. If you're interested, get in touch asap!

Posted by graham @ 09:30 am

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Help

Dad's cremation is on Friday. I'm giving the eulogy. Which means that at the moment I'm trying to write the eulogy, something I've never done before. (Dad was always the one to give such speeches.)

Any advice would be very much appreciated...

Posted by graham @ 09:24 pm

Monday, April 7, 2008

Dad

My Father died this morning, around 3am. He was diagnosed with cancer nearly two years ago, so I knew this day was coming, but I'm still very much in shock at the moment. I'm going to be spending most of today with Mum, and obviously there's going to be a funeral and such in the next few days. Otherwise, I'm going to be trying to keep things as normal as I can. Not sure I can cope if I stop to think too much.

Anyway, that's why I'll be a bit weird over the next few days/weeks.

Posted by graham @ 10:42 am

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