December 2011 – Mike's Twitter Overflow – Tech, Travel, other stuff

Rail Re-franchising: Be careful what you wish for!

Following in the wake of the moan about Virgin Trains, a good item regarding the re-franchising of rail services was broadcast in today’s BBC Radio 4 consumer affairs programme, “You and Yours”.

Here’s a BBC iPlayer link to the article – may not work outside the UK, and will expire in the fullness of time.

Tony Miles, a contributor to the rail industry magazine, Modern Railways, explained that the Government will be re-letting a number of UK passenger railway franchises in the coming years, and that a number of European state-owned railway companies are not only showing interest in UK rail franchises, but are already proving successful in winning them, such as the impending takeover of services out of Liverpool Street by Abellio, the International commercial arm of the Dutch railway company, NS, who already operate services in the North of England under a JV with Serco (Northern Rail and Merseyrail).

The Europeans are interested in grabbing a slice of the British pie for two main reasons, firstly because there is some money to be made, and secondly because the privatisation, franchising or deregulation of their home markets is proceeding at a slow pace.

Continue reading “Rail Re-franchising: Be careful what you wish for!”

Broadband Blindness in North America

B4RN‘s Chris Conder tweeted this interesting ~30 minute video from a producer in Sacramento, CA, on the limitations experienced on broadband in the US, and how the large telcos appear to be failing rural communities, and that deployments of their fastest products tend to be only available in “boutique” (usually high income) areas.

It highlighted how the large telcos found it hard to invest in deploying high speed broadband to sparse communities because of the conflict between affordably delivering a service and paying a shareholder dividend.

The video also spoke to some local community broadband companies in the US who, like B4RN are going their own way, and investing in their own future.

Good quality internet access is starting to become as essential to modern life as a stable electrical supply or safe, drinkable tap water. It’s becoming more of a utility and less of a consumer product.

What’s wrong with VT’s at-seat 1st Class Service?

Following on from Why the Virgin Trains Pendolino is fail…, someone asked me what was actually wrong with the onboard 1st Class service. They didn’t share my negative impression of it, and had experienced, by all accounts, some enjoyable breakfasts. I think they have been incredibly fortunate, compared to my personal experience.

Firstly, there’s the token “weekend” 1st Class service… Continue reading “What’s wrong with VT’s at-seat 1st Class Service?”

Why the Virgin Trains Pendolino is fail…

A repost of a slightly old note from my Facebook profile, updated…

1) Not enough seats, especially ones with tables – yes, even in first class

2) Seats that don’t line up with windows – even in first class, if you’re unlucky enough to sit in coach H, seat 02A, which has the added bonus of the rubbish table to rub a bit more salt into the wound.

3) What was that about “windows”? More like port-holes – the Pendolino has 50% less glazing compared to it’s predecessor, allegedly in the name of “crashworthiness”, but one informed source tells me that it was a cost cutting measure as well.

4) Crap heating and ventilation – a never-ending battle seems to be played out by the floor-level heaters and the ceiling-level air conditioner, your legs being toasted while your head is chilled, waves of sickening heat waft up to your face, while icy blasts blow down the back of your neck. Heating fights cooling fights heating. This is environmentally friendly how?

5) Noisy. Creaks, squeaks and rattles are the order of the day. Interior materials seem to be designed to reflect or even amplify noise, not absorb it.

6) Nasty, mucky, cramped, and smelly loos, with comedy handwashing. Dirty toilet bowls, tiny trickles of water, pathetic hand dryers.

7) “The Shop”. The railway buffet car meets 7-Eleven. Works on the assumption that passengers shall be denied edible food. Don’t even get me started on those “tubes” of UHT milk – nasty. But all tea and coffee is fairtrade, so that makes it okay. Not.

8) Just what did the person sat in the so-called “window” seat do that’s so bad that they are denied an armrest?

9) An apparently perfect Faraday Cage which prevented mobiles/3G dongles working – at least until a mobile phone repeater system was retro-fitted to each train.

10) Comedic (well, it would be if you hadn’t paid for it), unreliable provision of “inclusive” First Class food and drink. Sometimes it’s there, sometimes it’s not, but whatever it is, in my experience it’s frequently not as advertised, and passengers aren’t warned in advance. When I’ve raised this with on-board staff, and with VT HQ, their response is that I “only bought a journey from A to B” and they aren’t under any obligation to provide any of the services illustrated in their marketing material, as it’s a “complimentary” service as opposed to an “inclusive” service. Bunch of weasels!

Pendolino might have taken a step forward in terms of journey time, but at the expense of several steps back in terms of passenger comfort. I guess the silver lining to this cloud is that the quicker journey time means you’re not on the dratted thing for as long.

It’s predecesor, the iconic HST, was proof that designing for both the passengers and for profit can be done.

Slow Roast Moroccan-style Shoulder of Lamb

I’ll be cooking this at some point over the Xmas period. It’s a twist on a recipe from the second Moro cookbook – “Casa Moro“.

It’s a “low maintenance” slow roast oven dish – you do your prep, then get it going in the oven and leave it for about 4 to 6 hours, occasionally basting the joint with the pan juices. It’s cooked on the bone for extra flavour, and the bone helps conduct the heat into the centre of the joint.

You need a bone-in shoulder of lamb. (You often see boned and rolled shoulder on display, but any halfway decent butcher should be able to get you a bone in joint.)

Preheat your oven to about 160C, get your meat out of the fridge and start to let it come up to room temperature.

Grind up 2 to 3 tablespoons of whole cumin seeds – with a mortar and pestle if you’re feeling hard or traditional, or with a coffee/spice grinder if you’re soft/lazy. Ready ground/powerdered cumin just doesn’t give the same result in my experience. Go for the freshly ground.

Mix the freshly ground cumin with about 1 to 2 teaspoons of sweet smoked paprika. This is a bit more than the Moro recipe suggests. I’ve been using La Chinata sweet smoked paprika, which is maybe which I’ve been using more of it, as it’s quite mild and pleasant.

Next, add about half to one teaspoon of hot paprika, and a tablespoon of crushed/ground sea salt and mix it all together to create what is basically a cumin salt.

When you’re ready to put the lamb in the oven, melt some butter, and brush it all over the meat, then rub the meat down with the cumin/paprika salt mix.

Roast the meat at 140-160C for about 4-5 hours (I usually turn the oven down slightly after the first 30-45 mins), occasionally spooning the pan juices over the meat, until it is falling off the bone. The cumin salt rub may form a bit of a “crust”, which is okay.

Serving: I usually do some roasted veggies, such as slow roast red onions, peppers, possibly aubergines or a squash, and cous-cous, that sort of thing. The best way I’ve found to present this is family style – just pop it in the middle of the table with a couple of forks and knives, let people help themselves, and don’t keep count of how many times they come back for more.

In the unlikely event you have any leftovers, try to strip any left over meat from the bones before it cools down fully (it’s just easier that way), and it’s great for sandwiches or using to make Mediterranean-style meatballs.

BGP Convergence with Jumbo Frames

This is something of a follow up to Breaking the IXP MTU Egg is no Chicken’s game…

One of the reasons for adoption that was doing the rounds in the wake of Martin Levy’s internet draft on the topic of enabling jumbo frames across shared media IXPs is that using jumbos will help speed up BGP convergence during startup. The rationale here is that session set up and bulk update exchange will happen more quickly over a jumbo capable transport.

Something about this didn’t sit right in my mind, it seemed like a red herring to me. A tail wagging the dog, so to speak. The primary reasons for wanting jumbos are already documented in the draft and discussed elsewhere. If using jumbos gave a performance boost during convergence, then it was a nice bonus, but that flew in the face of my experience of convergence – that it’s more likely to be bound by the CPU rather than the speed of the data exchange.

I wondered if any research had been done on this, so I had a quick Google to see what was out there.

No formal research on the first page of hits, but some useful (if a few years old) archive material from the Cisco-NSP mailing list, particularly this message…

Spent some time recently trying to tune BGP to get
convergence down as far as possible. Noticed some peculiar
behavior.

I'm running 12.0.28S on GSR12404 PRP-2.

Measuring from when the BGP session first opens, the time to
transmit the full (~128K routes) table from one router to
another, across a jumbo-frame (9000-bytes) GigE link, using
4-port ISE line cards (the routers are about 20 miles apart
over dark fiber).

I noticed that the xmit time decreases from ~ 35 seconds
with a 536-byte MSS to ~ 22 seconds with a 2500-byte MSS.
From there, stays about the same, until I get to 4000,
when it beings increasing dramatically until at 8636 bytes it
takes over 2 minutes.

I had expected that larger frames would decrease the BGP
converence time. Why would the convergence time increase
(and so significantly) as the MSS increases?

Is there some tuning tweak I'm missing here?

Pete.

While not massively scientific, this does seem like a reasonable strawman test of the router architecture of the day (2004), and got this reply from Tony Li:

How are your huge processor buffers set up?

I would not expect a larger MTU/MSS to have much of an
effect, if at all.  BGP is typically not constrained by
throughput.  In fact, what you may be seeing is that
with really large MTUs and without a bigger TCP window,
you're turning TCP into a stop and wait protocol.

Tony

This certainly confirmed my suspicion that BGP convergence performance is not constrained by throughput but by other factors, and primarily by processing power.

Maybe there are some modest gains in convergence time to be had, but there is a danger that loss of a single frame of routing information data (due to some sort of packet loss, maybe a congested link, or a queue drop somewhere in a shallow buffer) could cause retransmits sufficiently damaging to slow reconvergence.

It somewhat indicates that performance gains in BGP convergance are marginal and “nice to have”, rather than a compelling argument to deploy jumbos on your shared fabric. The primary arguments are far more convincing, and my opinion is that we shouldn’t allow a fringe benefit (that may even have it’s downsides) such as this to cloud the main reasoning.

It does seem like some more up-to-date research is necessary to accompany the internet-draft, maybe even considering how other applications (beside BGP) handle packet drops and data retransmits in a jumbo framed environment? Does it reach a point where application performance is being impacted because a big lump of data got retransmitted.

Possibly, there is some expertise to be had from the R&E community which have been using jumbo capable transport for a number of years.?

Ash Mair – Masterchef Pro 2011’s worthy Champion

Lo, the judgely tastebuds have had their say, and Ash Mair was revealed as Professional Masterchef 2011, as many expected.

He also did it in style, with another round of exquisite yet somehow hearty food that showcased the ingredients as much as it showcased his own skill. Merging often delicate Michelin star standard cooking and presentation with a plate of serious substance seems to be an elusive skill, yet Ash manages to pull it off time and time again.

I’m told that look on his face isn’t angst, it’s concentration and grim determination to pull it off.

But, I think it was a close call, as all three finalists pulled the stops out to make an amazing three courses.

I loved the look of Claire‘s smoked pigeon – getting the cooking and smokiness just right must have taken some serious timing and judgement. It’s something I’d have happily ordered in a restaurant. Great looking chocolate and coffee marquise for dessert as well, that would have tied with Ash’s “Spanish pain perdu”. Even though choc and cherries are a classic combo, Claire is clearly clueful when it comes to what works with pastry – just think of that lime cheesecake and bitter chocolate sorbet she did! Sadly, I wouldn’t have touched the oysters – they just aren’t my cup of tea, unadventurous prole that I am.

Steve‘s starter of confit salmon was right up my street, and the duck with braised chicory got my mouth watering. But his dessert – an abstracted peach melba – looked a lot on the plate, a bit too cluttered.

If I’d have walked into a restaurant and been presented with a menu composed of the dishes from all three finalists, I’d have had a tough time choosing – especially for main course!

Ash has been commenting on Twitter about the whirlwind which he now finds swirling around him, and it’s not just the howling south-westerlies we’ve been having earlier this week: He was on BBC Breakfast with Michel Roux Jr this morning, and I don’t know if it was just his laid-back Aussie style, but he still seemed almost stunned!

While Ash is the worthy Champion, the other two are still winners: Hopefully Steve is now on the road to his ambition of a small country house hotel with fantastic food, and as for Claire, I think the world’s her oyster. Just as long as I don’t have to eat any.

Update – 24th Jan 2012:

A lot of the searches which hit this page are wondering where to find Ash so you can go and eat his food. From this recent tweet it seems like he’s off to Barcelona to consult for a restaurant there. So, it may be a bit longer. There is a basque restaurant opening up in London, but so far, Ash doesn’t seem to be associated with it.

The other frequent search term landing here is for Claire’s chocolate sorbet. Sadly, it looks like that recipe is a secret known only to Claire, and now Michel Roux Jr. But, a selection of Claire’s recipes from Masterchef (including the rather good looking chocolate moelleux) can be found on the BBC Food recipe database, along with selected dishes from the other finalists.

Masterchef – The Professionals 2011: Everyone’s a winner…

Another diversion from the usual tech and travel diet, to something which might mean you need to go on a diet…

It’s the big final tonight of Masterchef – The Professionals, and we have three deserving finalists, angsty Aussie Ash Mair who battled on in an heroic-stylee despite getting hot fat splashed in the eye to produce an amazing main course last night, “Spiky” Steve Barringer making delightful desserts from disaster-zone-looking messy workspaces, and clever Brummie Claire Hutchings, who has made some amazing food during the series with brave flavour combinations, all the more astonishing considering she was 22 at the time they made the programme.

So, who’s going to nail it tonight?

Despite wanting Claire to win, my money is now on Ash. He’s consistent in so many ways – quality of the cooking, the high standard of presentation, and after a shaky start being criticised over weak or bland flavours, he’s learned something, now packing a real punch with his seasoning and sauces. He’s even consistent at looking totally embattled and under siege, yet still manages to bring it all together and plate up on time.

While Claire’s scallop sashimi for the chefs’ table last night was definitely brave and innovative, it wasn’t a plate I’d have wanted to eat. It felt like a step too far. Sometimes simple is good, less is more. It just might have been her undoing. It’s a shame, because throughout the series, Claire has just “got it”, time and time again.

But, they all have learned something along the way – Ash with flavours, Claire with preparation, timing and organisation during plateing up, and Steve with keeping it simple and keeping everything cleaned down – which is why they are here in the final.

While there can only be one champion, all three are winners, and deserve to go on to great things.

The final of Masterchef: The Professionals 2011 is on BBC Two tonight at 8pm.

Rural DIY Broadband: B4RN Launches

A few months ago, I’d blogged about B4RN, a community-led rural ultra-fast broadband project in my home county of Lancashire.

Today, they are holding a launch event in Lancaster to signify that they have reached their target number of interested parties who have committed to sign up for the service, and to announce they will be issuing shares in the organisation. I know the folks from ThinkBroadband are at the launch today, so expect to see some reporting from them shortly.

It’s heartening to look at this sea of raised hands from the community meeting – so many people putting their faith in their own community’s ability to organise and do this for themselves, rather than waiting for a centrally funded project that might not help them.

This is great news. I’d said before that DIY was the most realistic option for some of these regional communities. Fantastic stuff.