Monthly Archives: January 2006

Computers/Technology

Peter Gradwell at the BCS

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Peter Gradwell at the BCS

Tonight, for the first time in ages I went along to a British Computer Society meeting. Although I’ve been a member for many years, either I’ve been busy elsewhere, or not interested in the topics that the meetings have covered. In general I’ve just not really felt the need to go along.

However tonight was a bit different, as they had invited Peter Gradwell, who runs gradwell.com, the company that hosts both this blog, my e-mail, and the other domains I look after. Over the past couple of years gradwell.com has been moving into VoIP and his session tonight was a whistle-stop tour of the whole subject looking at both small scale single user solutions right up to big multinational corporations. It was certainly a very interesting and informative session, particularly the point that VoIP itself isn’t the reason why call charges appear cheaper, indeed he suggested that in most cases if you called the USA from the UK using a VoIP service in the UK, the call would almost certainly drop back onto the normal phone system in the UK rather than crossing the Atlantic on the internet.

Other interesting bits of information from the evening were that if you’re worried about your calls being intercepted then currently VoIP is the way to go as governments are playing catch-up and can’t currently listen in. Having said that they are keen to try and find a way, as it is believed that terrorists are now using things like Skype to communicate for precisely that reason. He also explored the issues of 999 calls over VoIP and the associated problems, which also included a pretty detailed description of how the location issue was solved with mobile phones and 999 calls.

It was definitely a worthwhile way to spend the evening, my only disappointment was that having swapped a number of e-mails with Peter I didn’t get a chance to talk to him. After the session he was surrounded by people with lots of VoIP questions, so I headed for home.

Aside from being the first BCS meeting I had attended in a while, it was also the first time in a long while that I had been back to the University of Reading. Thinking about it, it is now more than a decade since I graduated. The meeting was held in the Palmer Building, which has been refurbished since I was there. The car parking situation hadn’t improved though. There were also familiar faces amongst the other attendees, one of which was Dr Shirley Williams who taught a number of my courses when I did my degree. (In fact looking at the list of staff it is interesting to note how many of the names are familiar.) What was also interesting was comparing the crowd at the meeting with the crowd of people who turn up to something like the Geek Dinners. Now the basic principle seems the same, get together a load of IT people, and an interesting speaker, however the atmosphere is totally different, with the BCS meeting being pretty dry in comparison to the Geek Dinner. Also whereas in the Geek Dinner situation I’ve met all sorts of interesting people, I really didn’t speak to anybody in the same way at the meeting, despite being a new face. Interestingly the meeting had to move rooms from the 32 seat room that was booked, which does maybe imply that I’m not alone in not going along, and that the meetings are often poorly attended. Certainly I think it might be an interesting experiment for the BCS to try out a Geek Dinner style meeting.

Church, Music, Pictures

Work on the Organ Begins

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Dismantling the Organ

If you’ve visited St James in recent months you are sure to have either spotted the Organ Pipe in the porch, or had a brochure shoved into your hand, all related to our appeal to have our organ restored. Well, as of yesterday, the workmen finally arrived to start the job, by taking the whole thing to bits, and moving it to a workshop in Kent, where it will all be rebuilt, repaired and in certain areas modernised. Of course then they’ll take it all to bits again, and put it back in St James, hopefully just in time for Easter!

There wasn’t much to see at the pipe end of things, but when I stopped by the Church for a look, work was beginning on taking the console apart. Now it has to be said that various organists have said various things about this console at times – some suggesting either a bonfire, or use of an axe, but apparently the console is going to be restored too! However the key difference will be in what is going to be modernised, the electrics.

The organ was put into the Church in 1936 (in fact the last person who referred to it as the ‘New Organ’ has only died within the past couple of years) to replace a small chamber organ in the north aisle, and was built by the Compton Organ Company – better known for their cinema organs, including the organ at the Odeon Leicester Square. You can read a history of the company here. As with the cinema organs, our Compton is what is termed an Extension Organ, where maximum use is made of the minimum number of pipes by reusing the same pipes for different stops on the organ console. This meant that St James could fit a reasonably versatile instrument into a pretty small church, and to be frank it is the only option for a real pipe organ in the building. In order to get all this pipe reuse working, the only option was electric action, so the bit that is getting modernised is the bit that has been causing the problems, the 1930’s original switches, circuits and wires. These are in such a state that when the initial survey of the organ was carried out prior to this work there was concern about moving the wires in case some of them broke. Looking into the back of the console as it was dismantled there is a warning in red pen written on a label inside, fairly obviously from later than the 1930’s warning of the danger of electric shocks from the wires in the back – something like this would never get past health and safety today!

What we’re looking forward to later in the year is that with the modern electronics, we’ll actually be able to get a mobile(ish) organ console. Whilst currently we were afraid to move anything, the new wiring will have two different points where we can plug the console into the organ, allowing the organist to be better located whether the choir is singing from the front for Matins, Evensong and the like, or the north aisle for services that need the altar rail.

Anyway, I’ll be sure to take another picture of the finished article in a few months time.

Beth's Reading Log, Books

Toast – Not Just for Breakfast Anymore…

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I decided to get ‘Toast: The Story of a Boy’s Hunger’ by the TV chef Nigel Slater for a couple of reasons – first, I seem to have this obsession with toast recently – see The Interesting Thoughts of Edward Monkton and Jasper Fforde’s creations – but also I thought perhaps it would be good to read a biography, as I’ve been rather obsessed with fiction lately. And it got good reviews on Amazon, so, hey…

I was both intrigued by the writing style and saddened by the story. Because of his culinary interest, the book is not written in a general ‘when I was 6, this happened…’ style, but is broken down into memories centred around food. It starts with a memory about toast – seemingly the most perfect food, according to Slater – but charts his relationship with food as it relates to his mother (who was a horrible cook, apparently), through the tensions in his relationship with his father, and to the competitive nature of his relationship with his stepmother. Although the memories are grouped in generally chronological order, there is no sense of a continuous narrative. To me, this meant that it always seemed fresh, and was never boring.

But neither was it always comfortable. Slater did not have a terribly happy childhood. His mother died, presumably from asthma although it is never stated directly, when he was about 10. What I found crushingly sad was that he wasn’t even allowed to go to the funeral – he wasn’t even told it was happening. He was packed off to his aunt’s house, and brought home again when it was all over. No wonder his relationship with his father was strained! And although the reader can sympathise with the way his father actively sought companionship after his wife’s death, you ache for the boy Nigel as he is pushed aside in favour of the not-so-fairy tale wicked-ish stepmother.

Toast: The Story of a Boy\'s Hunger

What I found disturbing (although I do hate to admit it – I’ve obviously led a sheltered life…) were the overt sexual references throughout the book. There were a few rather dodgy experiences with uncles or men that worked at the house – Nigel must have been a vulnerable target, as he was the youngest by far in a household with an ill parent – but also the frankness with which he describes his sexual experiences during and after completing culinary college and during his first jobs gave me pause a few times. It’s not graphic – he does have a way of being frank, but not explicit in his descriptions – but it did make me feel uncomfortable to think that people felt they had to behave like that. Like I said – sheltered life, me.

So – verdict? I enjoyed the style, as I found it refreshing not to be a diary or chronology but rather a genuine collection of memories, although – as is realistic, if you tell the truth – I did find some of the content difficult and heart-wrenching. But that’s life isn’t it? Not everyone lives a fairy tale…

General, Movies & TV

Do They Think We’re The Ladykillers?

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Now it has to be said, that one of Howard’s Games Nights is not exactly the quietest of activities, and I wouldn’t have been surprised to either have a neighbour, or even a policeman on the doorstep on Friday asking us to keep the noise down, especially as Howard now lives in an apartment block with neighbours in three directions. However there has been nothing, no complaints at all.

Then I started thinking. Howard is currently working pretty odd hours, and only a couple of days a week. Despite not appearing to work he has a posh apartment, and flashy car (with dodgy registration), and a large group of men turn up and make a lot of loud music. Reminds me a bit of the plot of The Ladykillers, the 1955 movie starring Alec Guiness as a criminal planning a robbery whilst pretending to be practising music with his friends in the back room of an old ladies house. Some of you probably know the 2004 Coen Brothers remake… Maybe even now the neighbours are thinking that Howard is some sort of master criminal… Or maybe not. 😀

Anyway, speculation aside, the movie is well worth getting hold of, and also a great example as to why Guiness always bemoaned only being remembered for Star Wars!

Church

Lets Talk About Sex

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So tonight was the first time that we’d talked about sex and relationships with the older young people in the Youth Group since No Sex Please We’re Teenagers.

This time we were using a DVD called Fresh, from a group called The Tribe, backed by The Message Trust in Manchester. We’re working through a number of their sessions, and certainly this, like the previous session has gone down well with our group. We also made use of some of the things we’d picked up from watching “No Sex…“.

As usual there were some interesting moments. We kicked off with rating ten attributes for your perfect partner – and most of the boys put looks at number 1, whilst the girls generally went for sense of humour, or trustworthy. Again there was a quite shocking lack of knowledge, which is ultimately why we cover the topic quite frequently – tonight we had at least one person who didn’t know what an abortion was, there was the usual looks of horror when we talk about STD‘s, particularly Chlamydia and it’s lack of symptoms, and perhaps most worrying was that a number of the young people thought that AIDS had been cured.

Whilst it is one of those sessions that we as leaders don’t overly look forward to, partly because of the subject matter, and partly because Beth and myself, as a couple doing the session we do get quizzed by the young people about our history at times. However when the young people demonstrate, as the young people on “No Sex…” did, that they are being affected by our culture, but have a frightening lack of knowledge, if we’ve at least equipped them with a better understanding of the issues, risks, and how to cope, then it is worth a bit of discomfort for the leaders.