Monthly Archives: April 2006

General

Whatever Happened to Choice?

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Towards the Ranch

I’ve spent a bit of time tonight plugging details into the various travel sites around the internet such as Expedia, Travelocity and a couple of airline sites, for our next trip back to Canada.

Whilst I can get an attractive package in terms of the flights, and a hotel for the first night, getting a quote on the car hire seems to be a lot more difficult, as Expedia, and all the sites that repackage their services, just will not give me any choice for the car hire, it just keeps returning rental options from Alamo and nobody else.

As to why I have a problem with a rental from Alamo, it comes down to the small print – specifically the definition of off-road driving. For obvious reasons, the rental companies don’t want to keep their vehicles in good condition, so as part of that, they ban off-road driving, even for the 4×4’s. The problem is that most of the rental companies define off-road rather restrictively as being anywhere that isn’t paved – which causes a bit of a problem when miles and miles of back roads in Alberta are only maintained with either oiled or gravel surfaces. Driving off-road automatically invalidates the insurance on the rental vehicle, so considering that the only way to get to Beth’s parents place is down one of these 10km gravel roads, pictured above, you can see the problem.

Having said that, it is not all rental companies. When this problem came to light a couple of years ago, I phoned round the rental companies in Calgary, and there is some flexibility from some of the companies. For example Hertz define off-road in Alberta as driving off any road that is ‘not regularly maintained’, and confirmed over the phone that we’d be allowed to drive the road down to Beth’s parents place.

So if anybody can tell me how to persuade Expedia to give me a rental from somebody other than Alamo, I’d really like to know how…

Computers/Technology

Right On Cue

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One of the things that was discussed on my RFID course this week was the difference between the fiction of RFID and the fact. The course tutor also commented on how annoying he found some of the scare stories that periodically come out in the press. So today, right on cue, I come across this gem produced by the BBC.

The first problem is that it is somewhat confusing over how the technology works. Take for example the caption on the first picture – “RFID technology broadcasts information to electronic readersâ€? – giving images of your shopping broadcasting information out of the carrier bags as you walk along the street. Fundamentally that isn’t true – the chips only broadcast information if they have power, and that power comes from the radio wave produced by the reader, and is such low power that it can only read within a few metres at most, assuming that there is nothing that obstructs the signal.

They then go on to talk about the ability of the technology to track items, and talk to a representative from Metro Group. The reason they talk to them is thanks to the Future Store Initiative which includes a lot of interesting sequences showing how RFID tags could be used. The simple fact is that the majority of what is shown is total science fiction, and is impossible with the technology. The real question to ask is what Metro Group are doing with RFID now – the same with Wal-Mart in the US, another big leader. In both cases they are using it to track pallets of stock for shipping, not individual items. Nowhere near the impossible vision shown on the Future Store site.

The real highlight of the article for scare-mongering is the section quoting Vint Cerf where he expresses a concern about the chips being used for tracking, which is then combined with the statements from Metro over wanting to track food, and a statement from a former Australian Privacy Commissioner. This blossoms into a vision of individual soft drink cans being able to be tracked, which could end up on a crime scene. Firstly, try to think of a situation where an individual soft drinks can would need to be identified – compare the bar codes on a couple of identical products for a moment and you’ll see that they aren’t currently. Then move on to consider how someone could be individually associated with a drinks can, what would happen, would they have to give a fingerprint or retina scan whenever they bought a can from a vending machine? Even putting aside all that, having the tag attached to a can would render it virtually unreadable anyway, as the metal in the can would interfere with the signal. To be honest a criminal has more to fear from his mobile phone broadcasting his location than a drinks can.

All in all the entire article is based more on science fiction, than any sort of science fact.

Church

Bishop of Oxford – Youth Consultation

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The Advisor Reads the List

Over the past few days there have been a series of consultations going on at Diocesan House in Oxford as to what members of the Diocese would like to see in a new Bishop of Oxford. The group of people included advisors to both Tony Blair, and to the Archbishops of Canterbury and York on appointments. I have to say that my knowledge of the process comes from the episode of Yes Prime Minister where Jim Hacker has to pick a new Bishop and is presented with two choices from which to select the person to recommend to the Queen, so it was interesting to see a bit more of the process.

I’m not sure whether this happened twenty years ago when the last Bishop of Oxford was appointed, but this time, Ian MacDonald brought together a panel of young people from around the Diocese, including three young people from St James, to bring together a list of qualities they thought were required, and present it to the advisors. It was planned that it would only be Beth who would take them up, but thanks to my course finishing early to allow some of the foreign attendees to catch a 6:30pm flight, I was able to dash up to Oxford for the end of the process.

When I got there the group was talking about what being a bishop actually involved, before moving on to coming up with the list of the qualities that they thought the new Bishop should have. Ian then put together the list on a flip chart with post-it notes containing all the suggestions to present to the advisors.

To some extent, the impression that I’ve got of the whole process, is that it is pretty much like the process of picking a new vicar, but on a larger scale. Much more than with the discussions over a new vicar, it’s a process that makes it pretty apparent what a diverse bunch the Church of England actually is. Whilst in a parish you’d often expect for there to be some general agreement within a congregation (although you’d be surprised what a range of opinions come out in the discussions for a new vicar), at a Diocesan level, with over eight hundred different congregations, and with very broad range of opinions encompassing everything from the evangelical and charismatic churches, through to anglo-catholics and traditional prayer book congregations, the process is nigh on impossible to come up with someone who will please everybody.

The same is true of the youth, as we discovered when the young people from our Church had pretty heated debates at school with the young people from Arborfield and Barkham churches over the whole Jeffrey John affair. This was also shown by the combined list of requirements from today, which included wanting someone who was forward looking, willing to step outside their comfort zone, modern, but then also included a request for a traditionalist who liked hymns. As always with youth discussion groups the protocol for leaders was to try to act as enablers for the young people to put forward ideas, rather than put in your own. There were certainly situations where I really wanted to put a lot more to the discussion, particularly when one of he young people threw in ‘Not a Liberal’ as a suggestion for the new Bishop, and backed it up by saying that he felt that all the Christians you see and hear in the media are liberals. I did throw in a comment to the effect that many people believed the reverse, which was to some extent backed up later on when we were in with the advisor when one of the other young people said how much she objected to the campaigning that went on over the production of Jerry Springer: The Opera. Having said that, there were definite themes of listening to, and valuing the input from the youth of the Church which came from all sides, and certainly the message that the new Bishop needs to try to connect with the youth of the Church, came through very clearly.

Actually, some of the suggestions did remind me of a couple of paragraphs in a Grove Booklet discussing choosing a new vicar which cautioned over being very careful over the use of language – certainly some of the terms that the booklet suggests will unintentionally mean something rather different to one Christian than another did come up – however both Ian and the advisor were careful to ensure that the young people further explained what they meant by their suggestions.

All in all we were really proud of the young people we took along. Whilst some of the other young people seemed pretty much in awe of the situation when we were in seeing the advisor to the Archbishops (for some reason the advisor to Tony Blair didn’t come in – a pity since one of the other young people said that they wanted someone who would own up to mistakes, and not be like the politicians in the government) the young people we took along seemed to really take it in their stride, and were able to talk the advisor about their points very well. The feedback from them was good too, with them saying that they really enjoyed the afternoon, and really felt like their opinions were valued and being listened to.

It certainly seemed a valuable experience for everybody, as the advisor seemed impressed too. The picture above is of her being shown the list on the flip chart by Ian, and she looked through and picked out a number of them to talk to the young people about. She also wanted to take the sheet away with her, and Beth overheard her when she was showing it to some of the diocesan staff saying how impressed she was, and how she thought that she might well bring the sheet along to be discussed by the whole appointments committee when they meet in June and July.

In terms of what happens now, the advisor also explained to all of us what happens during the rest of the process. As I mentioned above, the committee will meet in June, and again in July to try and bring together the results of these consultations into a recommendation. Then, probably in September, once everybody is back from summer holidays, the two names will go to the Prime Minister for a decision to be made, at which point whoever is selected by the Prime Minister will be offered the post. As the advisor said, being Bishop of Oxford is a big job, so there may be some time then before whoever is offered it decides to accept, so we are certainly looking more towards the end of the year before we find out who our new Bishop will be.

Finally, just a couple of interesting suggestions that came up on the list. The first, was from one of our young people would have made Rev Sheila proud – that the new Bishop should be a woman. Whilst it had already been discussed in the group that with the current legislation it wasn’t possible, with a group of adults, it probably wouldn’t have been mentioned. However within a group of young people, it was suggested anyway, and it remained on the list that went to the advisor, and she was pretty apologetic that it couldn’t be a woman. She also added that in the Oxford Diocese we have one of the highest proportions of women clergy in the Church of England. The other suggestion the young people voted to remove, although it gave us all a good laugh when it was suggested. One of the young people put in that the new Bishop must sing in the shower – I never did quite find out whether this was as a way to tell if they would be good at singing hymns or something else. However, for the image of an illustrious panel having to ask candidates for the Bishop of Oxford whether they sing in the shower was priceless.

Pictures

RFID Practicals

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Our RFID Reader Portal

Today was the last day of the RFID course, which was the programming part – however I thought I’d just post a picture of the result of our labs on the previous two days.

The purpose of the lab was to give us an opportunity to try out techniques for doing a site survey, and to build a prototype design for an RFID solution, in this case to one of the most difficult tasks, parcel processing.

Whilst there is an awful lot of hype about RFID tags allowing people to find out what is in your fridge from the other side of the street, and grand visions of not having to unload your shopping trolley onto the checkout at the supermarket, the result is really quite different. RFID signals are pretty susceptible to a wide range of hazards such as metal, liquids, and even a box of cables will result in a tag being unable to be read. However this means that alongside the problems of reading a shopping trolley full of groceries, reading tags on parcels when you don’t know what will be in the packages, and you don’t know which way up the box will be is a bit difficult. This is why we were given this as a practical problem. The solution has to be able, at relatively high speed, be able to read a tag on a box containing unknown contents, when the tag could be at any angle.

The solution also has to be practical in terms of cost – so you can’t just surround the conveyor belt with readers. We ended up using three readers, and then bouncing the signals around with aluminium foil (a real solution would use something like steel). This managed to read all of the example parcels wherever we placed the tags!

Church

‘Kingdom Come: The Life of Christ’

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Tonight we had the final part of our Lent Series – not a lecture this time, but a performance called ‘Kingdom Come: The Life of Christ’, a one-man performance by Eric Petrossian. Eric trained as an actor at Trinity College, University of Wales where he graduate with honours. He has also appeared as a stand-up comic, making it to the semi-finals of BBC Talent 2000.

We both really enjoyed the performance, despite, on my side at least my knowing that it was an amalgam of all four gospels – something I’ve commented on before. Essentially Eric told the Gospel story using a simple stage, and few props, and where characters spoke, providing voices. Certainly in the early part, the voices were used to lighten the first sections, partly to balance the heavier, more meaty parts in the second-half. There were also some pretty familiar sounding voices at times, for example, the devil, in the temptations sounds disturbingly like Marlon Brando playing the Godfather, and Nicodemus did sound rather like Sir Alec Guinness. Whilst listing those two out of context does make it sound rather strange, it actually was quite a clever vehicle allowing him to put over the characters without the benefit of any kind of scenery or costume. Certainly when you look at which voices were used with which characters, because we knew the voices, that then allowed us to associate those characters that we knew with the gospel characters.

Quite obviously, with the wealth of material in the four gospels, and only a ninety minute running time, there had to be some careful selection of material. He chose the birth narrative from Matthew, opening with the genealogy through Joseph from the beginning of that gospel, and going on from there. So it’s no angels and shepherds, instead it’s wise men, Herod, and the flight to Egypt. Although the opening was Matthew, there was quite a bit of John that was apparent, partly because Jesus, in the NIV version repeatedly says ‘I tell you the truth’ (the KJV being ‘Verily, verily I say unto thee’), but there seemed to be passages drawn from all the gospels. Interestingly there were sections, particularly a number of the sections where Jesus really harangues the Pharisees which we often don’t get in the normal lectionary, but from the point of view of understanding the story, are really important. So often with the lectionary readings it almost seems like the religious leaders pop up around Easter as pretty two-dimensional villains, here, by drawing on episodes such as the interrogation of the formerly blind beggar from John, and a number of the episodes where Jesus makes significant, and very direct public attacks on the Pharisees, it actually gives them more depth, and you get much more of the idea of the Easter story being the end of something that has built throughout the story.

Perhaps the most interesting part is the end of the play. The resurrection passages are primarily John, although the whole section where Mary mistakes Jesus for the gardener is gone, instead when Mary looks up and sees Jesus standing there we cut straight to doubting Thomas. The play ends at that point, without opting for any of the ascension narratives, with the words of what is believed to be the original ending of the gospel at chapter 20, stating that Jesus performed many more miracles for his disciples that are not recorded in this book.

All in all it was an excellent way to round off our Lent series, and certainly if you get the chance to go and see a performance of the play by Eric, we would highly recommend it.