Looks pretty awesome doesn’t it

IMG_0734

Originally uploaded by davidsheddan

I’ve just setup my Flikr account so that I can blog straight from Flikr - pretty smart. I took this picture out of one of the turrets of Conway Castle near Llandudno in Wales- a gorgeous Welsh day.

• Well done Rangers - great to see #
• Glad Newcastle went down too, nobody is has god given right to be in the premiership- and Newcastle, get over keegan and shearer….! #
• Eh Porsche in trouble… no no no makes the choice for an R8 over a 911 next time seem lik ea good one #
• Poor porsche http://bit.ly/lBCjS
  call 911! #

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• Watching the day dawning over sleepy Motherwell/Eurocentral, weather isn’t giving too much away- will it be nasty or nice :-P? #
• @jhaughey We have got a little gift for Jamie’s christening, don’t really know the etiquette here whats the plans after? #
• @nalmousawi Congratulations have you been given a start date? #
• Who else is up in #Glasgow this fine morning #
• Night 2/3, or overall night 6/7 - I think 6 of 7 is more motivating #
• Anyone recommend the best blogging client for OSX and separately for Windows?> #

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Look at that 1.5 MegaBYTE! a second.. unbelievable! That’s why I love cable over DSL - constant uppable bandwidth

An article I recently read on theregister.co.uk about the recent Digital Britain summit, on the views of the respective CEO’s of BT and Virgin Media. The whole debate is about how fast a connection do home users really require, how can ISP’s deliver that to the last mile, and about how the regulator /government encourages and subsidises where necessary.  Ian Livingstone’s comments that in terms of fibre to the home ” there is not enough demand for fibre to the home to justify its cost.”  You can read the whole article here, but it got me to thinking on the progress that we have achieved in the last decade on the road to highspeed net services.

I recently moved from a DSL connection (from BeBroadband) to a Virgin Cable connection.  I had plans to take the newly announced 50meg service, but as it was not enabled in the area , I settled for the 20meg service until that time.   The point that has become abundantly clear is that, at present, I struggle to even use 20meg, let alone 50meg.  Let’s be honest, most users who buy big fat net pipes are using it for downloading, and in this day and age downloading means bittorrent.  When the connection was activated I took a couple of instances of Fedora Core , from the Redhat bittorrent tracker, and was amazed, that after a while as advertised the connection was blazing down 2.5 meg a second, reliably - and notcing how quickly a 700meg ISO was downloaded.  Next up, a couple of film downloads from iTunes, not really 2.5 meg, but a stable 1.5- 2.0meg.  Most other files that you could download are in teh 5 - 10meg range (songs etc) and they are barely noticeable- a few seconds at most.  Finally a download of a video or two from isohunt, this time, not as popular as a file- and then we begin to see slow down - 800-1200k.  So what’s my point? We’ll simply put, I think for the first time in my life I actually agree with a BT CEO.  I don’t think that there are any services at present which would require much more than 40-50meg.

So do I agree completely with BT?  Well no, I don’t think it’s good to plan the roll out as they are, for the next 3 years saying that 50meg is enough.  Sure Fibre to the cabinet would give an improvement.  My Be unbundled connection was hobbled by a long loop length, meaning that I got 5-6meg, of a claimed 24meg, and I’m sure that a cabinet giving me the 20-40meg would be excellent.  I also think it’s a dangerous thing to say “no need now so lets not do it” because the rising importance of HD means that realistically, for most users, the easiest way to get HD content is going to be over a DSL/IP connection.  Surely BT /Virgin/BBC etc must be lookign at the hardware and realising that a mulitcasting backbone can carry all TV in HD pretty easily (certainly within the timeframe BT are talking about - this would.  I wrote an article a few years back where I totted up how much bandwidth I think the average nuclear family could concievably want- and in that i got a figure of around 200-250meg  (high download bittorent x 2 for the kids, itunes, movies, 3 hd channels, tv, phone etc).  I know with VHDSL2 etc, BT could concievably upgrade in software to 200-300meg, but the DOCSIS 3.0 standard already being rolled out by Virgin means that they will get there first.  Wouldn’t it make more sense for BT to adopt a more exotic and worthwhile xDSL version than bog standard ADSL2+.

So if all compnaies are offering at least 50 meg, will we become bored by speed, can someone really do twice as much on a 100meg connection as they could at 50meg.  As my experience shows, a 20meg connection will more than cover anyones needs at present, so why pay more for 50meg.  Well one interesting side effect of this ubiquitous bandwidth is that perhaps we will come closer to Japan/Asia who can pick up a 100meg symentic connection for £20 a month.  I think by the time we start having all ISP’s hitting the 40-50 meg tier, then the speed of a connection will become less of a selling point compare to price.

One final thought, when I started on the net in 1991-1992 with AOL/Compuserve etc, I can remember the amazement of friends when i got a 28.8kbps service.  I remember the successive upgrades, 33.6kpbs (at the time, we notcied that!, and then 56.6kbps connections).  I remember around this time a rich friends parents having a 128kbps ISDN line! In the Scottish Highalnds!….. I also remember my first taste of a DSL 512kbps connection - that was 10 times the speed of dial up! WOW…. then 2 meg came, and yeah then it started to become common place.

When I got the cable fitted the other day, I went from 2meg - 20meg, was I excited, not really by the speed- the BBC iPlayer on demand on Virgin felt far more futuristic….. perhaps we’re all becoming numbed to speed…. perhaps it’s features and price that matter more…. or maybe I’m just getting old

Today’s widely reported developer preview of the upcoming iPhone(Touch Platform) version 3.0 by Apple is the culmination of work to turn the single evisoaged phone into a total mobile platform, utilisting the best in class technologies alongside the wordclass core of OS-X

I wrote in a long since past blog post that

“NAND capcity is ramping so quickly that midlife refresh of this should see 32GB and in a couple years we’ll have 128GB flash based touches- I give Apple kudos for being ahead of the curve. Look on the touch not as a 6G iPod but as a first generation OSX iPod and you’ll be far nearer where we are at. Shortly the capicity will over take the 30GB iPod that was fine up until a few weeks ago - and further refinements will see the Touch platform ready to take over from the iPod platform within 2 years. My prediction - as has always been the case the baby class iPod- the Nano’s are probably already being transitioned to Apple’s OS X and touch based technologies.”

That excert came from a post titled Five Days with an Ipod Touch written  in September 2007.  I feel vindicated with today’s announcements by Apple, of iPhone 3.0.  Whether it was planned, pushed on by the success of jailbroken development or the impending arrival of the Palm Pre, this is the huge feature rich upgrade that the iPod Touch/iPhone platform has been crying out for.

What’s interesting is that this platform will run on the current hardware, though to anyone looking it’s  blindingly obvious that Apple have some form of quad-core ARM chip based system waiting in the wings to replace the iPhone with.

Let’s not forget the iPod Touch in all this - probably one of the most successful “funnest” iPod’s of all time.  The iPod Touch has succeeded in opening a new revenue stream, acting as almost a baby tablet.  I’m interested to know, that if as divulged the 3.0firmware enables the Bluetooth in the ‘Touch - how Apple will be able to prevent VoIP solutions finally having widespread adoption.

For other iPod’s firmware v3.0 signal’s a deathwatch for the old clickwheel platforms.  As predicted already the flash capcities in excess of 32GB are becoming mainstream, so we will see a gradual shift down the way of flash:

Future xTouch Families

iPhone

iPhone Nano (Same body as iPod Nano - Higher Capicity- App Store)

iPhone 3G (Current product, probably cacpity bump to 32-64gb) - in keeping with capacity scale at present (comparing to iPod Touch)

iPhone 4 (New quad core Arm based phone running Firmware V3.0) - LTE, capcities 64-128GB

• HD Video
• Video Conferencing /iChat integration
• Background processes
• Due Q1 2009

iPod

Low end: iPod Shuffle (Currently 4GB - raising to 8GB in coming quarters)

Mid range: iPod Nano (Will move to being touch based, apps through the store etc) capcity <32GB

High end:  iPod Touch (Might even drop the Touch moniker) - Capacity: 16GB-128GB

I think it’s also worth noting that whilst of late the overlap point was iPod (Click based) OS and iPod Touch based , the new blurring is between the Touch platform and desktop OS X.

What is is about car dealerships in Glasgow?  Are they immune to the credit crunch, such that they have so many customers, just falling over themselves to buy cars that they have decided to cut costs but getting rid of that niggling minus in the balance sheet- customer care.

When I went to buy my first Audi, I was disgusted at the near contempt I got from Glasgow Audi’s sales staff, simply because I was a young guy wanting to buy a nice car!  Well who’s laughing now - George at Ayr Audi- who are a sister branch, that could teach their bigger flashier city branch how to treat a customer- make them feel valued, and understand that whether your spending 5 thousand, or 50 thousand, spending money is a big step to take!

Anyway I comforted myself in the knowledge that it was probably a one off and that on less prestigous brand’s the good old, having a deal, throw in a tank of petrol mentality was still there.  Well horror of horrors, it’s still there, and it’s not in a big prestige brand- it’s alive and well and living at Arnold Clark’s Springburn FIAT dealership.  This is the same Fiat who’s acronym in Glasgow is “Fix It Again Tam” - there’s no reason to be so smug

Shirley is interested in buying a new car, her criteria, affordable, cute, nippy around town, low insurance and low road tax.  So to me, that sounds like a pretty normal set of criteria for a young lady looking to buy her first car.  In discussions a few different model’s were put on the possibility column.  I suggested the new Ford Ka, the Toyota Aygo was mentioned, and Shirley loved the look of the new baby Fiat 500.  We arranged that over a couple of weeks we would visit the 3 dealerships - Ford, Toyota and Fiat, but as the Fiat garage was nearby that was going to be our first port of call.  We went there through the week, and as it was after work arranged a test drive on the Fiat 500 for the following Saturday morning.  Shirley had a sit and a fiddle with the car in the showroom and the omens were good.  On Saturday we headed up to the garage (remember here, that we had booked an appointment and a test drive), all was well and we took a seat to wait for the sales representative. 

We were duly ushered to the “dealing table” and the interesting question came up “how serious are you about buying this car“.  I was a little phased, Shirley and I exchanged glances, and as always I played coy (the truth being that we would probably have made a decision that day), “we’ll it’s probably a couple weeks off”.… and now the customer care fell away - “it’s just that I’d have to move the car out of the showroom”, explained the the salesman.  “My God!” I thought,” how crass of us to assume that we’d have the chance to test drive a car before we bought it, I must have misunderstood “, but not to worry another few gems from the dealer ” you see, we can hardly keep them in stock, so when we get one we sell it”, he went on.   This coupled with the fact that the finance offer that had attracted us in the first place ends in March, and that they didn’t expect to have a car we could drive until April meant that I’d already decided this guy wasn’t getting any commision from us.

So lets just clarrify that, Arnold Clark’s/Fiat’s view of a customer is this:

1. We know we have the hot product at the moment - so why should we try.
2. It might be a lot of money to you, but we can sell to 10 others if you don’t buy.
3. We’re not going to the trouble of getting you a test drive unless you have already decided to buy (so in otherwords you buy the car and then decide if you like it).

Arnold Clark’- I’d suggest you review your policies regarding test drives and the way you treat customers.  Glasgow Car Dealers- that’s twice now, once might have been a singularly poor dealer, but that’s two main dealer branches I’ve experienced at both end’s of the spectrum and you both sucked! When your spending money- one adage that you’d do well to remember, and has never changed is

The customer is always right!!!!

Is writing becoming a dying art?  Perhaps I should clarrify that statement with the correct word - “Is handwriting becoming a dying art?”  I was reading on the bbc.co.uk magazine in this article titled “The slow death of handwriting” .  When I decided to write this blog entry on the subject, I was touched by the irony that I “write ” my blog, but using a keyboard.  To tell the truth, I don’t think that there is any real need to panic.  I’m a great believer in computers, email is certainly faster than mail, if not as personal - but you always have the option to send a letter if you want to.  I also don’t think that writing will ever die out, even with the multitude of smart programs, touch sensitive screens, styluses and the like- nothing beats the immediecy of a pad of paper and a pen - for studying, making a note or writing a shopping list.

The method you use to answer this question, relies mostly on not the content but on the use of writing.  For me, for speed and communications - I don’t think that their is any debate in my mind.  Efficiency and speed are the key thing here, and whatever tool gives me that then that’s the tool I pick, sometimes this might be an email or a text message (nee a tweet ) sometimes it might be a scribbled note on a fridge door (shopping list).  So the question really is, is the art of writing for writing’s sake dying…. is the art form on the decline? Is that a bad thing?

I’ll sum up my answer in this way- the egyptians chipped beautiful symbols into their stone tablets.  It was functional, beautiful and for a long time unsurpassed.  When paper came along, I’m sure that their were those who decried it as the end of civilised society - but here we are again.  I think writing will never die, it can be beautiful, personal and awe inspiring, it’s just now, we have options and methods of communications which are faster, more efficent and neater. 

It’s a funny thing…. progress- you have to let go of the past to embrace the future.

It’s been a crazy busy couple of weeks for me.  Last week I was up at home in the Highlands for a week, which was a great holiday.  This break was enabled by the sandwich of 7 clear days in the middle of my 4 and 3 days of night shift.  As I write I’m finishing the last of my 3 days of nightshift, and am shattered as a result of the long hours and the travel down on Friday from home.

The home trip achieved a lot, a working holiday you could almost call it.  We had a lot of technological stuff to sort out as my parents prepare to move into the New Fearns on a permanent basis.  So in no particular order, we go the following fixed/started/finished

1. Sky HD has been ordered for the New Fearns- a great present for my folks and one that means that I don’t need to worry about present hunting for anyone this year!
2. Plus.Net service as the NF updated to give my parents a larger data cap during peak times, we will probably increase this to the unlimted package in the summer, but at the moment it was only to stop them from hitting the lower data transfer limits whlist I was there.
3. Plus.net cancelled at Staffin Cottage (herby SC) to enable the sale/rent of the house to go ahead.
4. My mum has started blogging! at 60+ read here got a website set up using Wordpress at http://jackie.sheddan.info (make sure not to include www as I haven’t done anything on the CNAME records in DNS yet.
5. Got my gran into using the email client in OS X she can now happily , send, recieve, reply and forward email - at thats at 80+ puts a lot of people to shame.
6. Moved my mum’s entire office and computer setup to the NF.

I’m sure I probably did more than that, but I thought that summarised quite well what we did.  Will write again soon