Stuff I didn't get around to posting before I left England

Southall is an Indian dominated district in West London. (If you have seen the film Bend it Like Beckham, much of the movie is set there). I am more familiar with the Indian dominated districts in South London, for instance the area around Tooting. However, while that are contains a lot of muslims as well as hindus, Southall contains fewer muslims and a lot of sikhs. Like Tooting, Southall is full of extraordinarily useful shops. For instance, there are none of those problems you sometimes run into when you need pooja accessories.



And although there are fewer muslims than in some areas, they are certainly not entirely absent.



And I don't know quite what to make of this extraordinary vehicle. It is parked outside a Tandoori house. In fact, the proprieter of the restaurant claims to have invented the word "tandoori" in the 1960s, and that is entirely possible. I believe it is possible to hire the vehicle for use as a party room or similar.



And the vehicle is a subcontinental model of bus, and does not satisfy British road standards and apparently cannot be registered in Britain. However, it is on the road, and it has Pakistani number plates. Presumably it was driven all the way from Pakistan.



How cool.

Mr Blair, pay attention

Non-Australians may be unaware that the city of Melbourne is an extremely Greek place. Australia received a large number of immigrants from Greece in the second half of the 20th century and for some reason most of them settled in Melbourne. (A factoid you hear in Australia is that Melbourne contains the second largest number of Greek people of any city in the world, after Athens. This may or may not actually be true).

In any event, the Greeks of Melbourne are on the whole good people, and one finds famous Australian footballers with names like Demetriou, and Greek restaurants that in the middle of Melbourne that are still open at four in the morning, something that was quite useful when I was there over the weekend. But of course despite being as Australian as can be, the Greeks are still Greek.



Clearly, there is a lot of anger amongst the Greeks of Melbourne. They want the Elgin Marbles back in Greece and they are not ashamed to say so (although for calling them the Elgin Marbles I will no doubt never be served breakfast in any of their restaurants again - which is a shame because the breakfast I had on Saturday was excellent). Tony Blair must surely be influenced by this. The power of Greek Orthodox Community Centres in Melbourne must surely be deferred to.

Redirection

I have a piece on the sad state of Zimbabwean cricket over at ubersportingpundit.

I am just awake

I have just been to the Melbourne blogger bash, with a (fairly) wide assortment of the Australian (and even to some extent other) bloggerati present. It is now 3.51am (although it is 6.51pm in London, so who knows quite what time my body thinks it is) and I am in an internet cafe with Scott Wickstein and his sister beside me. We are just getting through the night, as I have a plane to Sydney to catch at 7am. I would post some pictures, but my card reader is in our hotel. Therefore, they may have to wait until I am in Sydney. And, to tell the truth, a long sleep may precede the posting.

I'm in Australia

This morning, after I had arrived at Melbourne airport at 4.30am, fellow blogger Scott Wickstein was kind enough to meet me at the airport. A little later we found ourselves looking for somewhere to have breakfast in Melbourne. It was still very early, so we ended up at Melbourne's Crown Casino, which is open 24 hours. Scott was struck by the thought that it was Saturday afternoon in England, and that it might be possible to watch the Arsenal v Liverpool match in the casino's sports bar.

Therefore, Scott asked a member of the casino staff if the Arsenal Liverpool game was being shown. The response was

"Er, um, this is soccer?"

Toto, we are not in London any more.

Redirection

I have a little post at ubersportingpundit about the delightful use of the words "Arsenal" and "Chokers" in the same sentence that we are starting to see in the British media.

Posting from me will be light to nonexistent over the next couple of days. See you soon.

The perils of customer support

One problem of providing after sales support in the PC business is that the vast majority of people who ring you up to complain that "My PC doesn't work" aren't actually telling the objective truth. It may be true for them, but often it is what computer people sometimes refer to as PEBKAC (Problem exists between keyboard and chair). That is, there is nothing wrong with the computer, but the user is doing something wrong.

There also a reverse problem, which is that many people who work in support are not experts either. (If they were, they would have better jobs). In most instances I know at least as much as they do, so they are not of any great use to me. Therefore, I do not call support lines unless I utterly have to, and that generally means that there is genuinely a hardware fault, and I want the manufacturer of a computer to take it away and fix it.

Which is the case now. Dell's support lines were closed on the weekend, and the recorded message said to send them an e-mail, and I have been having an e-mail exchange. No problem. A helpful chap named S. Vishwanath initially sent me a list of "troubleshooting suggestions", designed to hopefully fix the problem if it was indeed PEBKAC. I knew that my problem was much more serious than anything that his suggestions would fix, but I went through them one by one to make him happy. I then really wanted to get the message across that I did no what I was talking about, so I used some jargon and even used the "I have a Ph.D. I know what I am talking about" defence, something I do not normally do. (In fact, I have no recollection of ever using it before). I even sent some photographs of the computer not working to demonstrate that I had done what he said, including one showing the computer plugged into an external monitor (and working), to show that it really was the display.





In any event, this was enough for Mr Vishwanath, so my laptop is being collected by Dell, and they are apparently going to give me a new LCD screen.

I can only assume that Mr Vishwanarth is in Bangalore or somewhere in India. Unlike many tech support people he appeared to know what he was doing. (Often, companies like Dell can hire better qualified and skilled people for this kind of job in India than the people who will do it in the west). His English had a slightly formal but stilted style to it. Although he obviously speaks English perfectly capably, it is also clearly not his first language. (It is also good that Dell assigned a single tech-support person to deal with my case until it was complete, and that he gave me his name as a matter of course. Companies that provide less good support are often very reluctant to volunteer the names of their employees that you are talking to).

I was also asked to remove "all removable parts, for instance the hard drive, the CD-ROM drive, and the battery and power adaptor" before sending the computer off. I removed the optical drive (actually a CD-RW/DVD-ROM combo), the hard drive, and the battery as requested. (Actually keeping the hard drive is good, because it means that all my important files are still in my possession). I wasn't quite sure how they defined "all removable parts". I suppose I could have also removed the (internal mini-PCI) wireless card and the RAM, but that seemed to be going a bit far.

And now I get to see how long it takes Dell to fix it. (I wonder where they will take it to fix it too? Will they do it somewhere in the UK, or will they take it back to the factory in Ireland where it was assembled?).

Redirection

I have a piece on the apparent end of the international career of Michael Bevan, one of the greatest players ever in one-day cricket (but an unsuccessful player at test cricket) over at ubersportingpundit.

Blogiversary

Today is the second anniversary of the first serious post on this blog. The true second anniversary of the first post of any kind, which was basically just a "Hello World" post, was on Saturday, but I was too busy swearing to remember.

Of course there is an explanation.

Despite having a fine, powerful, virtually new laptop, my eyes have been straying to slimmer, sexier and more expensive models. Clearly my existing laptop has noticed and has died of a broken heart (even if I did declare that I still loved it). So it is my fault.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck

My laptop's screen has died. Rather than showing anything useful, it is showing a screen full of vertical lines of various colours. Thus I am unable to use my laptop right now. My old laptop has a perfectly good screen, but will only boot if the temperature / humidity / day of the week / phase of the moon / gravitational status of the universe is right, so it is highly questionable whether I will be able to use it. This means that I am rather lacking in computer resources right now, and blogging (and indeed almost everything else - we are far too dependent on our computers these days) will be highly variable until it is fixed.

As it is the weekend, Dell's telephone helpline is not operational. The recorded voice suggested that I send them an e-mail instead. Upon going to an internet cafe to send such an e-mail, their electronic support system insisted that I enter my "service code" - a set of letters and numbers attached to the bottom of the computer - before I would be allowed to send such an e-mail. I have the invoice for the purchase of the computer, which gives my customer number, my order number and my invoice number, but none of these are the number that Dell wants now.

I really could have done without this right now.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Update: At least I am in good company. Laptops are wonderful things, but they can be finicky and temperamental. Desktops are more reliable. I actually have a motherboard in my possession with a CPU and 512Mb of RAM on it. I just need a screen, keyboard, case, power supply and hard drive (plus an operating system - do I want a Linux box?) to have a desktop machine. I must either buy or wrangle these parts so I have some backup. Actually if I even had a screen right now things would be better. My laptop has VGA out. (This is assuming I don't have to switch the external monitor output on while looking at the primary screen, in which case I remain completely screwed).

Can I add a "bugger" to the "fuck" I said already?

Further Update: My old laptop is alive. It's a bit slow, but I can at least get stuff done. Apologies for all the profanities, too.

Even further Update: No, actually my old laptop isn't alive. As I said, it is highly temperamental. I may get it to work at times over the next few days and I may not. Using a public terminal in a library right now.

Redirection

I have a piece on day two of the England v West Indies test over at ubersportingpundit.

Redirection

I have a piece on "voltage rustling" over at Samizdata.

Studies in nerdiness

Yesterday evening, I was in central London. I was expecting a call from a friend of mine, who I was planning on meeting with for coffee. As it happened, she called me just as I was walking through Soho Square. She asked me where I was, and I said that I was in Soho Square. As it was a beautiful spring evening, she suggested that we in fact get take away coffees, and drink them while sitting on the grass of Soho square. As I was waiting for her to arrive, I made a quick run to Oxford Street, where I purchased a couple of take away lattes and went back to the square. I sat down, and as I was waiting I got my laptop out and looked for WiFi coverage.

There was a wireless network with the SSID "Base Station". This is always a good sign. If wireless network has a name like "Base Station" or "Default" or the name of a manufacturer like "eTec" or "Belkin demo" or something like that, there is a good change that the owner is using the access point with its default settings, which means that security is likely turned off any anyone can connect to it. (Whether or not they intend to allow anyone to connect to it, I have no idea. In some instances it is no doubt deliberate, and in some instances it isn't). In any event, I had a perfectly good internet connection in the middle of Soho Square. This is perhaps not surprising given that Soho Square is about ground zero in the British media universe. Lots of people are using all sorts of technology in the area. But it was still kind of surreal. (LCD screens do not do especially well in environments that are bright and/or have lots of scattered light. Bring on OLEDs. But I digress).

My friend arrived, and we sat down and had our coffee and surfed the net for a little bit. It was kind of surreal. The Dell Inspiron 8600 is a little big and clunky, and I quickly looked up the Sony TR2 and showed her how cool that would be. Then for some reason the conversation got round to iPod accessories and then the car she wanted to buy, in the way that subjects which you talk about and browse do change. In any event, we had a very pleasant evening before going our own ways. She told me that she had had a fun evening, and that she would remember the time she sat in Soho Square and surfed the net with me.

Actually, I doubt it. We are in a transitional period with respect to communications. I think it is unlikely that we will be telling our grandchildren about this, other than in the context of "Thinks were once so primitive that this was a novelty". It isn't going to be long before every electronic device that we own is going to automatically connect to global communications networks as a matter of course.

But it is fun for now.

Update:

Redirection

I have some photos of the world's first railway station over at Transport Blog, and a rather funny correction from The Australian over at Samizdata.

Redirection

I have a piece giving an overview of the recently completed test series between Australia and Sri Lanka over at ubersportingpundit.

The best thing about becoming a libertarian......

is that you can abandon the left without having to embrace the right.

Of course, people on the left generally think you have embraced the right, and people on the right think you are still on the left. (I was actually getting this dual reaction for several years before I figured out precisely what it meant).

And did I mention?

The Grey Album is fantastic.

The machine stops

I am in a comfy chair in a Starbucks in Oxford Street in London. My laptop is plugged into a power outlet that Starbucks have conveniently provided near many of the tables and chairs. Although Starbucks have ridiculous overpriced wireless internet access, there is internet access from some other source nearby allowing me to connect for free, so this doesn't appear to be an obstacle. I have a nice cup of coffee, my laptop has my entire music collection on its hard disk, it has an inbuilt DVD player and a high resolution wide screen allowing me to watch movies if I want to. I have a mobile phone in my pocket.

I have tremendous entertainment options, I am fully connected to the global communications network. I have just been chatting in real time with a friend in Australia. I do have an expensive piece of hardware on my lap, but (apart from the cost of the odd cup of coffee) the total ongoing charge for this connectedness is zero. At least it is until I start using my telephone. Before too long, our telephones will no doubt be automatically patched into the internet data service on such occasions to save money, but we are not quite there yet.

However, the technology is simply mindblowing. Compared to the unconnected world we had when I was fifteen, it simply blows the mind.

I suspect the next step is for me to remain plugged into the global communications network when I get up and walk down the street. In practice, I think that what needs to happen is for my laptop to then reverse the situation from when I am stationary. The laptop needs to patch into the telephone, and get its connectivity via cellular networks. Of course, this is going to cost in a way that statying stationary isn't going to cost. That said, flat charges of at most tens of dollars a month for this are not far off. And as for entertainment, the full music collection when working down the street option is with us already. I just need an iPod. And I am not quite sure that I want to watch movies as I walk down the street. Still, there are probably semi-transparent video shades coming.

Obligatory cheese posting

Regular readers of this blog will know that I enjoy a good cheese platter, and I usually have a selection of cheeses in the house for emergencies. This evening, I went to get myself some cheese and crackers as a late snack. I had three. Firstly, a decent sized block of ordinary but tasty and good quality mature cheddar from Tescos, which is what I use for my bulk cheese needs, but which none the less is fine on a water cricket. Secondly, a smaller piece of oak smoked cheddar from the splendid Sainsbury's in Pimlico. Thirdly, a piece of Parmigiano-Reggiano, purchased mainly for grating and serving with pasta, but once again a small slice of this on a cracker is very pleasant.

However, all three are hard cheeses. Nothing wrong with that, but when I started to contemplate this, I came to the realisation that hard cheeses on their own aren't nearly as good as a mixture of hard and soft. I normally have some brie, or some Danish blue, or some gorgonzola, or some camembert, or some dolcelatte, or something like that. And today I missed it.

Of course, it is all the fault of that big Sainsbury's for not having any of that stupendously good unpasteurised brie that they often do have. This led me to buy a piece of another hard cheese, and sent my cheese balance completely out of whack.

Update: I meant "water cracker". What is it with me and cricket, anyway?