Monthly Archives: February 2010

Pictures, Travel

Ghost Town

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On the way to visit Beth’s parents, the last township we pass through is Atlee, Alberta. As you can see from the wikipedia entry, it officially has a population of 28, but I’m guessing that is a bit optimistic. This is a video we shot a couple of years ago – we drive through Atlee about a forty seconds in, and then cross the track bed of the old railroad before continuing on towards the ranch.

Canadian Gravel from Richard Peat on Vimeo.


As you can see, there really isn’t much there. There is even less now.

A few weeks back, Beth’s parents headed off for some winter sun in Hawaii, and when they returned, the one remaining building, the old schoolhouse was gone, burnt to the ground, apparently by the local authority because the building was considered dangerous.

As anyone who looks at my Flickr photostream will know, I have taken lots of pictures of the building over the years – despite being pretty exposed and windy up on the prairie, and getting increasingly dilapidated, it has withstood the worst that Alberta could throw at it. The dilapidation, combined with the prominent location (you could quite literally see the building from miles away down the road) and the fantastic skies out there made for some fantastic pictures.

Perhaps because Atlee is a bit out of the way, it has survived where many other of the one room schoolhouses have now gone. Whilst I’ve seen a lot of signs marking the locations of the old schoolhouses on our travels around the province, this is perhaps the only one I’ve seen that was still standing in situ – indeed when you looked inside it was very much as if the teacher and children had just moved out – the blackboard was still on the wall, and the frame for the swings in the grounds still stood, along with the outhouse. True, it’s location probably isn’t suitable for any kind of tourist spot, but as a piece of Alberta history, it was probably one of the last relics of how the people of the prairie used to live.

In it’s heyday, Atlee was one of a number of townships, regularly spaced along the railroad line – next along is Buffalo, then Cavendish (note the alphabetic naming too). The local farmers would bring their produce to the railroad line where it would be shipped, and the township had a school for the local children. As the roads and transport has improved, the need for frequent townships grew less. So Beth went to school at the one room schoolhouse in Buffalo – that building too has long since gone, moved to provide extra classroom space elsewhere. Grain and produce can now be shipped by truck, so the railroad line has gone. People can drive to the post office, so Beth’s parents go to Jenner for to collect the mail, and their postal address is Jenner. The only place the Atlee name is still used is by the oil companies, and for a communications mast that stands nearby, and now the last building is gone.

Certainly it is going to be strange next time we head out that way, not having the old schoolhouse marking the way. Atlee really is now just a dot on the map…

Computers/Technology, Web/Internet

The Problem with Migrations

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Back in the early days of ADSL access to the Internet in the UK, migrating always used to be a pain, and invariably the end user ended up being without their broadband service for a period of time whilst the migration occurred as you waited for the old provider to disconnect you from their service and the new provider to connect – all of which was pretty ironic considering that both providers were just reselling the same product provided by BT Wholesale.

All of that was supposedly solved with the arrival of the Migration Authorisation Code introduced by Ofgem and BT initially as a voluntary process, but made compulsory from February 2007. The process is intended to smooth the transition resulting in a loss of service for at most a few hours. The process is supposed to go as follows:

  1. User obtains MAC code from old provider
  2. User gives MAC code to new provider when opening new account
  3. BT Wholesale make the switch
  4. Old provider closes old account

The whole idea is that the process is supposed to be simple for the consumer, but it doesn’t always work like that.

There are a number of issues with the system, often with obtaining the MAC in the first place, but twice in the last week I’ve come across issues with the process with two totally different providers.

The issue hasn’t been with the physical switches, both of which occurred without a problem, the issue has been with stage four of the process – in both cases the old providers have failed to pick up that the MAC code has been used, and have carried on trying to charge. In both cases the providers in question, O2 and PlusNet have said that the account should close automatically when the code is used, but in both cases they have quite happily carried on charging despite the connections having been swapped – in the case of O2 almost three months previously.

The problem seems to be a disconnect between the accounting systems and the physical systems. In the case of O2 I had already discovered that O2 didn’t bother to take most of the information that BT Wholesale provide to resellers – indeed it was one of the reasons I terminated the account. With my current connection from Zen Internet I can see all of the line status information from their customer portal, including details of the current line speed, dates and times the line speed changed and so on, and their helpdesk can see when the router was connected and when it was disconnecting. The O2 team had nothing, certainly not the BT Wholesale information, and not even basic connection information – the most they could see was that the router was currently connected – their suggested strategy was to watch the lights on the router to see whether the line was staying connected. The lack of information seems to follow through to their account system as well – whilst BT Wholesale have available details of MAC codes being used, it is incumbent on the provider to actually look at the information. When I phoned up about the account problem and spoke to someone in O2 billing, he all but admitted that they didn’t check anything like that and that I should have been advised to phone up and chase up the transfer after it had been made. The one consolation with the O2 problem is that whilst I had multiple phone calls, and a lot of time spent on hold trying to get to the right team to sort it out, they at least have a freephone number on which to call.

Today I found we had the same problem with the Church broadband account, which again we recently switched. The process went through smoothly, but PlusNet have failed to pick up on the change and are charging anyway. It is somewhat more of a pain to sort out as their billing system has already raised a direct debit instruction and they cannot retract it, but again the point remains that the PlusNet systems are not using the available information about the use of the MAC code, and it seems to be incumbent on the end user to chase up. The downside here is that PlusNet use an 0845 number, and with their high volume of calls at least two-thirds of the call was spent on hold.

Both O2 and PlusNet are large ISP’s, with generally good reputations, but both seem incapable of completing what should be a relatively straightforward task of transferring a user under the industry agreed process. Having been bounced around by both their customer service teams I am left wondering whether I’ve just hit bad luck, or whether everybody else has different expectations of good customer service. If that is the case I’m left wondering what one of the providers with poorly rated customer service would do!

The lesson from these cases of course is once you’ve completed a migration, always phone up your old provider and tell them, because it does seem that these two at least can’t really be bothered to check the BT Wholesale information themselves.

Apple/Mac, Computers/Technology, iPhone, PocketPC, Symbian, Windows Phone 7 Series

Late to the Party – Windows Phone 7 Series

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Yesterday afternoon the internet was buzzing with details of the launch of Microsoft Windows Phone 7 Series in Barcelona. Only it wasn’t really a launch, it was more a demonstration of a preview version of the platform. It’s predecessor was only launched last autumn, and this pretty well complete rewrite of the Microsoft mobile phone platform isn’t going to be available to buy until around the same time this year.

Whilst it certainly seems to have innovative features – a user interface that does things rather differently from the current favoured multiple pages of icon design that is almost ubiquitous, along with an XBox Live tie up to link your mobile and console gaming – it does seem a pretty brave move to show your rivals what you’ve got planned months and months before anything is going to be released. Even when you take into account that Microsoft are often much more open about showing preview releases of upcoming products than Apple for example, it still seems very early to be showing.

However, when you think about it, if Microsoft wants any part of the rapidly growing mobile applications market, it had to do something.

Microsoft, just like Nokia, Sony/Ericsson and all the rest were caught massively on the hop three years ago by the launch of the iPhone. Smart phones were very much of a niche market, and most regular consumers used a phone to make calls. It was possible to add applications onto smart phones, but again it wasn’t something that many people did.

Roll forward three years and the iPhone has really gone mainstream, it still surprises me how many people have them, and who they are. Many of them, even relatively non-technical are comfortable with the idea of adding applications, reading e-mail, browsing the web and playing games from a phone handset. On top of this Google has moved in on the market making waves with it’s Android operating system. Established players like Nokia have found their market share falling after years of failing to ignite the smart phone market.

Then we get to Microsoft.

They had a niche in corporate markets, and certainly I’d come across techies from time to time using (and more often than not cursing) their Windows Mobile handsets. The ability to program applications in the same languages as desktop applications certainly helped adoption. However they largely dropped the ball. Whilst they have carried on releasing updated versions of their platform they’ve largely been left behind, giving the impression – intentionally or not – that they weren’t interested, that they were happy to relinquish their market share to Apple and Google. In the corporate space Blackberry has grown, certainly in our company those users who are issued with a smart phone are issued with a Blackberry, and many of the executives ask for one by name. Any mobile applications would have to be developed for Blackberry, not Windows Mobile now, and Blackberry provide the tools to do that.

As I’ve said, the iPhone seems to have really gone mainstream, introducing a growing range of people to a smart phone, and the techie space seems to be being filled by Google Android. The iPhone is selling by the million, and producing billions of application downloads.

What Microsoft were showing looks interesting, and if they can sort out the reliability and stability problems that established wisdom say plagued previous versions it would be a good platform, but it would be a good platform if the phones were on the market now. Between now and release Apple, Google and the rest will certainly be releasing updated and new versions of their phones and software. The Microsoft gamble is that having seen the show yesterday, people will be willing to wait, and that come the autumn they will be willing to put aside the previous reputation for being buggy, put down their iPhones, Blackberry and Android phones, write off the money they’ve spent on apps for those platforms – or in the corporate environment infrastructure, and switch over to a Microsoft phone. I’m sure there will be a good few techies who will do so, but the average consumer or the corporate user? It remains to be seen.

Country/Seaside/Island Parish, Movies & TV

David Easton – Why Did He Have to Go?

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One of the busiest postings on the blog of late has been this one which I wrote a while back about An Island Parish which after almost exclusively focusing on Rev Guy Scott, suddenly seemed to discover that there was another church at the bottom of the street – the local Methodist church led by Rev David Easton. The reason the post has been getting so much attention of late has not been particularly because of it’s content, but because of the most recent series of An Island Parish which has just finished a repeat showing on BBC2. This time around the Anglican church is almost absent, aside from a story about a new peal of bells, and instead the fourteen episodes heavily feature Rev David Easton as he moves away from the Isles of Scilly to his next posting.

I have to admit that I didn’t see the series when it first aired last year, having missed it’s return. However this time around I was able to catch up and see what the fuss is about.

The problem is that the commentary is very much framed that David Easton is being pushed out, against the wishes of his congregations, so if you browse through the comments made on my posting there are comments quoting employment law, and a lot of people speculating about a variety of reasons for David being asked to leave. However a large part of the problem is that the programme totally failed to explain the process that was going on.

Each church denomination has different ways of managing their clergy staffing. Historically in the Church of England clergy would be “given the living” of a parish, and were largely set up for life. I can think of several parishes in my part of Berkshire where this has happened, and one priest has remained in post for his entire working life, and in one case where the priest remained in post despite repeated legal attempts by the diocese to remove him. More recently clergy are often appointed as what is called a “Priest in Charge” at which point they are employed on a fixed term contract, and at the end of that period the priest, local bishop and parish consult about whether the contract is renewed – we have just been through this process at St James’.

The Methodist church does things differently. They operate a process called “stationing” – you can find a detailed explanation from a serving Methodist minister online with part one here, and part two here. The basic idea is that minsters are itinerant – i.e. they expect to move from appointment to appointment. The standard appointment is five years, after which a minister can apply for an extension of up to five years. From the commentary on the programme David Easton had been in post for seven years, so had already been granted one extension. Unlike the Church of England where a priest can remain for more than thirty years, the Methodist Church actively encourages circuits to move ministers on, much as their founder John Wesley would move from place to place preaching.

It is also important to highlight that the decision is not a purely local church level decision as it is in the Church of England. All Methodist churches are grouped together and to some extent managed in what are called circuits – for example my Mum, who preaches on her local Methodist circuit contacts a representative of the circuit to establish which of several local Methodist churches she will be taking services in over the next few months. In the case of the Isles of Scilly the circuit is based on the mainland in Cornwall, hence why on several occasions during the series Methodists came across on the ferry to show support. Whilst the location perhaps limits the ability of ministers and preachers to be mobile between the Isles of Scilly and the mainland a bit more than normal, it is still part of the same system that operates across the rest of the country. The decisions on extensions are made at a circuit level by a group of Methodists elected from across the circuit – so the group that ultimately made the decision was drawn from across the circuit in Cornwall, and the decision was based on what was best for the circuit as a whole, not one particular church.

The main point to bear in mind is that whilst obviously the average person in the pew often only views things from the point of view of their particular church, and will be sad to see a popular minister go, and equally the minister involved will be sad to leave, it is a normal and accepted part of the way the Methodist Church operates, much like the way a regular large company will move staff around between offices. Whilst this season of An Island Parish brought the process into sharp focus, every year, all across the country the process is taking place and ministers are moving on – it’s just a pity that An Island Parish didn’t take the time to explain this.

For further reading there is more debate on An Island Parish at this blog, which amongst other things includes an official statement from the Methodist Church on David Easton.

General, Pictures

It’s a Boy! (Maybe)

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Scan 2.1Today I had the day off as it was time for the second ultra-sound scan for Baby 2.0 down at Frimley Park Hospital. Whilst we usually try to get appointments at either the beginning or the end of the day, this time the only slots available were late morning, and knowing the usual timekeeping, I figured that we wouldn’t be done by lunchtime.

My guess proved to be well founded. Unfortunately like pretty well every hospital they schedule appointment slots for the time they would take if everything goes according to plan, unfortunately this morning they had had some sort of crisis, and by the time we got there were running almost an hour late. Bearing in mind that we also tend to come early because of the twenty minute adventure of finding a space in the car park made doubly annoying this time thanks to the piles of snow in the car park that fairly obviously hadn’t been taken account of when the barriers counted vehicles in and out.

Anyway, when we got in, thankfully this time the ultra-sound operator didn’t have to chase the baby around to get the required measurements, indeed it was exactly the opposite in that the baby was quite comfortably in one position and really didn’t seem to want to move. However the operator got a good look and was actually able to stop and show us the heart beating away, and we saw bits of rib cage, and arm and leg bones. After trying various ways of having Beth positioned, he resorted to poking in order to get the baby to move, and finally got the last measurements. The still baby also gave him a good clear view (if you know what I mean) to identify that our midwife at Finchampstead still has the touch, as she said from listening to the heartbeat weeks ago that it was a boy, and the operator here also said that it looked like a boy – of course they are never totally sure, so we’re going with probably a boy, and keeping a girls name or two in reserve just in case!

As Beth hasn’t developed Gestational Diabetes this time around, this will probably be the last scan – although there is another diabetes test in a few weeks to confirm. Whilst it’s nice to get all the extra scans, as Beth says, she gets mighty bored sitting in the waiting room at the hospital. ETA for the new baby is still some time in early June.

Now does anyone want any girls clothes…