Monthly Archives: September 2007

General

‘Why Didn’t You Chase My Cow?’

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If you as an average suburbanite came around the corner to find a cow on the loose – what would you do?

Last night after work I needed to stop by the Church for a copy of the notice sheet, and as you may be aware, close to St James is Church Farm. As a result of the recent Foot and Mouth outbreak the owner of Church Farm has been complaining quite vocally that due to the movement ban his cattle are stranded in a particular field and he is not allowed to relocate them. The important point to consider if this sounds a bit odd is that the field is crossed by a public footpath, and the local council also won’t close the path.

With this in mind it was quite a surprise as I drove up Church Lane to come around the corner and find a large black cow trotting towards me. Unlike my wife I have little experience with cattle, so whilst there have been occasions when I’ve been called on to help, for example the occasion we came down the road to the ranch and found one of the cows very determinedly walking along the road to town, I basically do what I am told and rely on the greater experience to encourage the animal back to where it should be. Not quite knowing whether the cow on Friday was running from something, or just on a curious wander I just stopped totally so as not to scare it.

Interestingly the cow did the same, came to a stop, and then slowly walked up to the car checking it out, it then wandered over and started investigating the hedge on the other side of the road.

Then a woman came around the next corner obviously looking for the cow, which didn’t seem to bother the animal until the woman was followed by the owner of Church Farm running after them both, at which point the cow bolted again and ran on down the road behind me.

With the cow already disappearing away I then moved off up the lane – primarily to get out the way of them chasing the cow back up the road, however I then got an earful from the owner of Church Farm as he passed. Primarily I think he was probably worked up over having one of his animals running around on the road, but still I apparently should have got out and chased the cow back up the road for him rather than do what I did. My lack of farming experience shouldn’t have stopped me standing in front of the animal running down the road it seems. Anyway, a little further up the road, just beyond the gate through which the animal had escaped was another bemused motorist who had no idea why a strange guy in an overall had asked him to stop, so I stopped alongside him as the cow was chased back up the road and finding us in the way went back into the field.

What is interesting though is that I think I probably did what any average suburbanite would do when confronted by a large animal loose in the road, indeed the standard advice in the Highway Code when meeting animals on the road is not to scare them. Certainly the idea of getting out of the car to chase a possibly slightly freaked out comparatively large animal in the opposite direction wouldn’t seem to be high on the list of wise things to do. So the question is, what would you do?

Computers/Technology

Microsoft Extends Windows XP

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So after my having rolled my laptop back to Windows XP comes news that due to customer demand Microsoft is extending the life of Windows XP by six months – the official line is that it is to help customers who need more time to switch to Vista. Needless to say they deny that the change is due to slow sales of the new OS… Whilst on the subject, thanks to Martin for highlighting this cartoon on a similar subject.

Transport

Arguing with the SatNav

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One of the things I did when I sorted out my laptop at the weekend was update the supporting software for my various Garmin GPS units. There were a couple of updates for my little StreetPilot i2, the first being an improved quality British voice for the unit – which does sound slightly different – and then one of the regular software updates.

Driving to and from the Wrexham area I noticed that one of the changes seemed to be that the unit was a lot more keen for you to follow it’s route than before. If that sounds a bit odd, I’ll explain.

If you’re heading anywhere north from here, the SatNav units and route planners will invariably go for the A34 from Newbury to Oxford heading onto the M40, then will always take the northern route around Birmingham, taking the M42 and M6. However I’d never consider using the A34 thanks to it being two lane all the way and congested with lorries heading north from the south coast ports, and will instead usually take the A404 and join the M40. Although slightly longer in terms of distance, being three lanes there are less delays with lorries. I’ll also tend to take the southern route around Birmingham too.

Coming back south today, I took my usual route, and carried on along the M40 at the A34 turn off. In the past the SatNav has usually switched to my usual route – the difference in time is minutes at most, but after this software update it appears to do things slightly differently. Instead it tried to take me around the south side of the Oxford ring-road, adding a good ten to fifteen minutes to the end time. As I again went past that turn it recalculated again and went for my normal route, and with a much lower finish time.

It’s fairly obvious that the system is not recalculating a full route when it recalculates, the primary reason I’m sure being speed. Most SatNav’s will not search every possible route between two points – the techniques they use to prune the search tree and to determine which routes are not worth searching are obviously the thing that differentiates the performance – check out this recent article comparing the routing engine performance of the three major brands for some examples. Anyway, what the latest update appears to be doing is trying to first guide you back onto it’s existing route. Thinking of some of the other points on the trip where I diverged, for example when I came off the M40 a couple of junctions early to enjoy the back road route home – great fun as long as you don’t get stuck behind a tractor – it doesn’t seem to do a full recalculate and is making much more effort to turn you around than it did before. Considering that by this point on the trip the SatNav is only really on to keep track of the safety cameras it’s a bit annoying that it starts arguing with the way I’m going!

Thinking about this, perhaps the ultimate improvement to a SatNav system would be one that learns. For example my back route home from the M40 is only a few minutes longer, and is a route I quite often take as thanks to the tank being pretty empty, and the car nicely warmed up it is a nice antidote to the usually miles of motorway cruising I’ve been doing – the ultimate system would remember previous patterns and not, as it did today suggest two routes to get me back to the motorway before finally fully recalculating.

Computers/Technology

How to Make Your Wi-Fi Really Useless

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So tonight I’m off on a business trip, visiting a potential customer in the morning, and enjoying the delights of a hotel. Thankfully I managed to find an alternative to the Travelodge room that was originally proposed for me (at a site that someone on Trip Advisor reviewed as ‘Absolutely Awful’) at a Best Western in a village a few miles up the road, the Llyndir Hall Hotel. This place is only £5 a night more than the Travelodge, but Trip Advisor has a load of good reviews for this one – on paper it looks an absolute bargain – plus it has broadband internet in every room, either cabled or wi-fi.

So lets start off with what’s good. The location is lovely, a nice country house surrounded by fields. Incidentally, the postcode for the hotel in Google Maps – also used by the hotel itself sends you slightly off track – the actual location is just round the corner and clearly signed from the main road. All the staff are friendly, and it’s a nice big room with a decent bathroom and pretty quiet – I can’t hear the corporate party downstairs at all! The food in the restaurant is good too – certainly beats the Little Chef that is apparently the only option at the Travelodge.

The main annoyances are the TV setup, which like many hotels in the UK has a seemingly random selection of channels, some of which are showing Sky card errors – and the broadband internet access.

My room is one of the ones with wi-fi, whereas other parts of the hotel have ‘broadband modems’ – according to the guest directory both should have a login, but I didn’t see any of that when I connected.

The problem though is the restrictions. The key things I want to be able to access are my e-mail and the company network – neither of which I can get to. Trying to access any site using SSL produces this web page – basically the unable to access page for the hotel networking appliance they have installed. Since our e-mail is kept secured I can’t access it that way. The other option is to use the corporate VPN but like pretty well everything outside normal web pages, that is blocked too. As a result, aside from browsing round websites, I can’t actually access anything useful. Just to round it off really well, the wireless router is just far enough away that the signal keeps dropping off.

It’s not as if it isn’t possible to do it properly. Last year I stayed in a hotel in Chester that had network points in every room (a much more reliable connection than Wi-Fi) – and had no problems accessing either the VPN or e-mail, it’s just seems that here someone has decided to install networking, but without actually considering what people might want to use!

So if you want a nice well priced country getaway this place is great – just don’t bother if you’re on a trip where you need full internet access, indeed access to anything other than standard non-secure sites.

Just a little post-script, I have been able to get all my e-mail – thanks to the wonders of X-Series. All a bit compact on the small screen, but I found out what I needed to know.