I need a keyboard that lights up!

Shuttered 3D glasses cut light by a bit more than 50%. The monitor adjusts, but this means I can see little else in the room.

The main light in the room would be a good idea but it does have some flicker, which is normally OK (unusual for me) but clashes badly with the 3D shutter glasses, so I have to play in the dark(ish).

So I cannot see the keyboard, and whilst a lot of game play works fine with a 16 key grid on the razer mouse, when I need to press a key - even just to see a map, I struggle. Hitting the wrong key can be a problem in game!

Using nice FILCO keyboard now, but need one that lights up with solid LED not strobed. That may be a challenge. I used to use the proper IBM model M keyboards that unicomp still make, but have been convinced to try these FILCO ones. They are OK and I am used to them now, though I miss my model M a bit. The model M did not light up either.

Or, I suppose, I wait until I sort the new den and have a nice big TV with passive 3D so I can use with the lights on!

The Telegraph are now spamming me illegally!

What is worse than getting on someone's mailing list is getting on a mailing list that thinks you are a business/commercial subscriber and not an individual subscriber. They seem to be impossible to get off the master list (the one the scum selling the lists has) and they consider that they do not have to follow any of the rules for individual subscribers as they think (mistakenly) that it is a commercial address.

We still have the stupid situation that the ICO will do nothing about complaints of spam or junk calls.

We still have the stupid situation that you can sue for damages but courts seem to consider that there are no real damages for "a spam email". And the same spammer does not send enough to start to be worth any damages (and if they did, they argue that you should have used their unsubscribe link).

Now, I will be going on a cruise late this month, first one I have been on. I have checked, and if I roam my mobile to the ships mobile service the data will be costing me over £10/MB. These spams are often HTML and link in images and so on.

Whilst I will have a 2400bps "all you can eat" sat phone link with text only email options on its own mailbox, I may occasionally check emails on my normal mailbox. If I get one of these spams I will be able to work out the amount of traffic it took and that will be a few pounds at least. So that should give me an actual, tangible, amount of damages for which to sue. Of course, I have to check that the rules apply if I check my email from outside the country.

It really should not be this hard. If the legislation only had a £50 minimum or something then everyone could sue the sender every time every spam from a UK company arrived, and the whole scummy industry would fall on its knees in no time. I really think it is time something was done about this. Maybe suing a newspaper is a way to tackle it - so I think The Telepgraph will get a formal notice before action in writing on Monday.

They have a defence that they have "taken such care as in all the circumstances was reasonably required to comply with the relevant requirement". My argument to that is that there is no way to know that an email address is an individual subscriber or not, and so no steps, short of never sending unsolicited email, could be taken - so their only choice to comply is never send unsolicited email. It would be interesting to actually have that point with a judge, even if I lose it.

They were kind enough to provide the appropriate address :-

This email is from Telegraph Media Group Limited - 111 Buckingham Palace Road, London. SW1W 0DT registered in England under No 451593

Getting old

One on the many things they don't really teach you in school is what it means to be "getting old". Shit that happens as you get older.

I don't just mean just the biology - which is an important aspect and they could (should) teach you. What with each and every cell losing some of its DNA as it replicates (yes, I mistyped that as DNS the first time) you find more and more of the basic functions of your body get a bit less reliable. Hence being on insulin and now, as of today, being on ACE inhibitors for slightly high blood pressure (lets hope it helps with headaches). Homeostasis - ha!

But there is a lot more to it - and I wonder if schools should try and teach people "life cycle" somehow. Sadly (being an old fogey now) I suspect that these young 'uns will not listen.

We get older and slower and less reliable and a cellular level and the macro implications of that. But it is not all bad...

We get wiser and smarter in some ways (until the dementia kicks in). We have "seen it and done that" so many times we know what you have to expect. Little things like "read the small print", and "always assume someone has an angle and is not so much out to get you but they will screw you anyway". I record all my calls, not because I ever have to refer to them but because people know I record them so they don't bullshit me. Or I just use the threat of "I'll check the call recording" and they back down. I am sourly tempted to record all face to face conversations next! You get sick of bullshit as you get older.

We also go through financial changes - for many it is finally paying off the mortgage (which would be nice, but, heck, I am married, so not happened yet). For many in my line of work it is working your way up a payroll ladder and ending up reasonably well off. In some ways it is like playing World of Warcraft (yes, seriously). At the start you collect copper and silver coins and aspire to a gold coin, but almost all you want to buy is also cheap. When you get to higher levels you are mining some serious fake minerals (no, not "unobtainium" but close) and collecting loads of gold, but what you want to spend costs lots of gold. I seriously remember the times (in real life) that were bad, when every penny mattered, and when "being my round" at the pub with mates mattered. Now I will often be the one buying lunch and have (on several occasions) not even looked at the bill before paying it. What they don't tell you is the hassle does not stop - being a tad better off comes with the annoying demands of relatives and unexpected expenses that are now thousands or tens of thousands not just tens of pounds like they used to be. I am sure that kings and queens have hassles I could not imagine, but I bet they have hassle none the less.

Of course not everyone does the same, but however well off you are it is not likely it is "more than you need" and it is always going to be hassle. They don't teach you that at school either. The striving for better is never ending, it really is.

So, as I say, today is a new tablet every day. More to the daily regime. These ACE inhibitors are meant to be good for me anyway as they protect my kidneys as well as lower my blood pressure. All I hope right now is that they help with headaches.

Because that is another thing you don't realise. When you are young nothing hurts unless you do something daft like graze your knee. When older more and more "normal" stuff is uncomfortable or hurts, so you avoid doing it. My feet hurt, FFS, and it not like the doctors actually know why - even diabetic peripheral neuropathy does not quite fit as my blood sugar levels are good and my feet are not actually numb. I wear sandals because that is less uncomfortable. Life sucks.

And that is it - like sucks - and then you die. But at my age I am starting to get more and more "fuck you". I have friends that have died from cancer and they get very much "fuck you" very very quickly when the clock is ticking. For most of us it is a more gradual realisation. So yes, the bat cave, den, whatever it is, is happening and it is going to be my "space" and hang the expense. You can't take it with you, as they say.

So yes, I have opened the whisky I got the other day. It is £10 a shot, which is silly. It is aged 39 years. It was distilled on my 10th birthday and I find it amazing that someone made that whisky and probably knew they would never see it bottled, let alone drunk. Well done to them, and thank you - it is a nice one. Here's a glass to you, whoever you are - cheers!

Update: No nasty side effects to ACE inhibitors yet, but only on 2mg. We'll see how it goes.

Bad account management

I can't say who the customer is, which is a shame as I am sure people would appreciate the irony (and before anyone tells me off, I use "irony" in the wrong way, ironically, as a funny co-incidence).

But we have a customer that thinks that we should call them if we have not had payment within 7 working days in order to check that they got the invoice. Not doing so is "bad account management". This is on an account on 30 days terms.

Well, I am sorry, but we have thousands of accounts on 30 day terms, paid on time, but not within 7 workings days. No way am I hiring a team of people to call and check the invoice arrived for every one of them every month.

This is especially daft when we have read receipts for the invoices in question, so we know they were received and read on the mail client. No need to call!

Anyway, long story short, they were most unhappy and complaining of bad account management (i.e. us not calling) because they had some statutory late payment penalties.

Turns out that we were wrong! They had not paid late. This is pretty rare for us, but we worked out how it happened. They had simply not paid several earlier invoices and we allocated payments in order of due date. The solution, apart from an apology, and a credit of the wrong charges, was to manually allocate the payments to invoices as they had requested. This meant crediting £120 in statutory late payment charges.

Of course, I am sorry when this happens, even if caused by the actions of the customer (paying later invoices and not earlier ones). We don't do this to wind people up and we are very keen to do things right (in the services and in the invoicing). We hate making any mistakes.

Now, having done that, we know exactly which earlier invoices were not paid, and the statutory late payment penalties now due add up to £190, not £120. So it is just as well they pointed out our error so we could correct it, as otherwise we would have under charged what was due

Some times I love it when an accounts department in a big bureaucratic organisation gets stroppy, especially when they end up owing more as a result.

Anyway, at least this means we can concentrate on providing quality service and not wasting time on silly accounting issues.

Some will think I am harsh, but if you knew who this was if would be funny. Needless to say, we have also asked if they need to review the credit terms to fit the way they work, and to set up a consolidated bill each month instead of ad-hoc bills as new services are installed and so on - we are actually trying to be helpful under all of this, really.

P.S. Customers will normally get the first penalties credited anyway and we work with them to solve whatever caused any misunderstanding or late payment in the first place and make sure it does not happen again. The objective it to ensure people pay on time, not to make money from penalties.

XML done badly?

We are getting quite a lot of experience with XML these days, having had to use it to interact with BT and other suppliers, even HMRC, and having used it internally for many things, we kind of think we know what we are doing.

One of the big things with any XML based system is choosing the style of operation. There are a wide range of different approaches to how one structures data in XML. It really is giving people enough rope to hang themselves.

XML has two basic concepts - the object and the attribute. An attribute is something which can appear in any order within an object and has a unique tag so can appear once (or not at all) and has a simple string value. An object can appear in another object, and can even interleave with text (though apart from HTML, nobody does that really). Typically an object can have a list of objects contained within it, and the order can matter and specific named objects can appear more than once. These objects can have attributes and can have a text content (or other objects as content).

Now, this does lend it self to some types of data structures. For example, if you have a row in an SQL table the columns will have unique names and the fields will be strings, so making an object with attributes matching the column names makes a lot of sense.

Some times you want to pass stuff in a generic way and even have data types defined instead of inferred from the string itself, and for that an object is not a bad idea as it can have attributes to say the data type and other meta data, with the text content being the value.

But some times people go really mental, using objects and text content to do things that are far more logically attributes (as they appear at most once, and order does not matter). A simple example is the XML used to tell the Iridium Go! to do something, sent as an HTTP POST with a SOAPAction and classic SOAP envelope XML.

So, first issue :-

         <userCredentials>
            <userName>guest</userName>
            <password>guest</password>
         </userCredentials>

Given that the userName and password can logically only appear once in that, and the order they are used really has no meaning, why the hell not :-

<userCredentials userName="guest" password="guest"/>

That would be way simpler. Or, perhaps, if all performTask requests must have credentials, then make them attributes of that top level object.

Then we have a requestList that contains <taskID>2</taskID>. So again, why not taskID="2" ?

Then we go for some generic parameters, and now it gets really verbose :-

               <options>
                   <name>Enable DNS forwarding</name>
                   <value>true</value>
                   <dataType>boolean</dataType>
               </options>

I mean, what can I say, why the hell not just enable-dns="true" somewhere? Or perhaps <option name="Enable DNS forwarding" type="boolean">true</option>

However, this is where things get annoying - I personally prefer a less verbose style, but whatever style you pick, you could at least be consistent. Why the hell have things like that incredibly verbose "option" above, but have things like a taskID that is "2". What does "2" mean?

I assumed it was some sort of sequence of some such, so I tried 1. Guess what, it seems task "1" is "Set SOS state and start sending GPS updates", where as task "2" is "Start an Internet connection" (which is what I wanted). Why the hell go for incredibly terse and meaningless task digits rather than something like <taskID>Start Internet Connection</taskID>

Anyway, needless to say I now have a simple script to start and stop the Internet connection from my laptop, including defining which ports are open.

Interestingly TCP copes, even ssh, though at this speed telnet is possibly a tad better.

What was a surprise is the mosh did not cope. It tried, and got started even, but it started re-sending some UDP packets. These just clogged up the tx queue by the look of it, and meant even more latency, and that meant it did even more re-sends, and so on. It got to the stage that it would send several UDP packets from a port in a short period, apparently give up and try another source port, all before getting a reply back to the first port (which it was now ignoring). Seems mosh can't quit cope with the nearly 2 seconds round trip time and incredibly slow transmission rate. Pitty.

However, a simple ssh or telnet was just about usable for irc.

Anyone wanting this script for their Iridium Go!, let me know.

Back to the future, I mean past.

I remember the days of Prestel, 1200/75 and a 40/25 text screen. I was 919995141 by the way.

I have been playing with this Iridium Go! thing, and have managed to work out how to get the damn thing to work for a straight IP connection!

It is marketed as having mail, web, text, calls, and even "social media integration", but the feeling in the office was that it would only be those specific things that worked at all. However, Iridum more generally, as opposed to Iridium Go! is marketed as allowing data calls that pass IP. I am pleased to the the Go! is indeed as flexible.

I am testing using a £99/month package that has unlimited data and texts, which makes it ideal for texting, and even spending ages using telnet on a cruise if I get bored.

Basically, the apps that one uses with iPhone and iPad all send some nice SOAP/XML to establish the "Internet call" and send details of firewall settings and stuff to work. They then talk to proxies on 192.168... addresses to get mail and access web. With these selective firewall settings which were not visible (without doing packet dumps) I was, of course, unable to make any sort of connection to the outside world.

However, it seems if one selects "Internet call" on the on-screen menu it makes a connection that works according to the configurable firewall settings. I managed to use telnet to get to irssi to access irc, and post on irc. It has some lag, obviously, but works. It is a tad like those old Prestel days though being 2400bps.

Next trick is playing with mosh to get a more interactive feel. I also need to make something to send the "internet call" settings rather than having to press the button.

So this means I can use their tools for the likes of calls, texts, and email. I can use the laptop for things like irssi/irc, and I can open ports for things like rsync if I need.

Starting to be impressed now.

Saving the planet?

Interesting article on the BBC "High-powered hairdryers under threat as EU considers ban" today.

The couple of points I take issue with are :-

(a) Restricting kettles. Obviously, it makes no sense whatsoever to restrict the power rating of a kettle. The energy to boil an amount of water is going to be the same regardless. The article does not say the "restriction" would be on power ratings, but that does seem to be the implication. Thankfully the referenced report is slightly saner and talking of (wasted) thermal mass of heating element and heat lost externally whilst in use, and so on. Better designed kettles I have no problem with.

(b) The comments from hair dressers - I tend to agree that, like kettles, if you have lower power dryers then they will be used for longer, and not really help. But also, what seems odd is that I would expect professional hairdressers to have no problem buying "commercial" hair dryers which I would hope are not subject to the same restrictions.

We had this when replacing our tumble dryer recently. It was a powerful one, but the manufacturer don't do them any more (not in EU anyway) because of these silly rules. Again, if less power then longer to dry stuff, so why? In fact, many things are not run on the highest temperature anyway - the higher power is probably because it is bigger, and hence means fewer loads. Ultimately it takes an amount of energy to dry clothes, so reducing power does not help. What you need is greater efficiency in getting that energy to the clothes.

Anyway, the answer was simple, I just purchased a "commercial" tumble dryer. This allowed me to choose from a range of way more powerful devices, actually expanding my choice rather than reducing it (having not considered a commercial appliance before).

I am sure the same will apply to kettles, hair dryers and everything else they are restricting.