Mike's Twitter Overflow – Tech, Travel, other stuff – Page 16

Please accept new prefixes XYZ behind ASfoo – make it stop!

Those of you who ran networks in the 1990s (possibly even in the early 2000s) will remember the excitement you had joining your first Internet exchange, plugging in that shiny new cable to your router interface, and setting up your first peerings.

Back then, you may also remember that in the rapidly growing Internet of the day, it was common courtesy to let your peers know that you’ve taken on a new customer, or acquired some new address space, so they could update their configs – particularly any filtering they were doing on the routes exchanged with you, which were often quite small and maintained manually, except for the largest providers.

Your message would go something like this:

Continue reading “Please accept new prefixes XYZ behind ASfoo – make it stop!”

Bit windy out! Using social media for good…

Unless you’ve been living below ground for the last 24 hours, those of you in the UK can’t have helped notice it’s a bit windy out.

This sort of severe weather inevitably brings disruption, but I’ve been heartened to see a number of organisations using social media to spread the word quickly.

The social media folks @VirginTrains, Amy & Ste, have been doing a great job of relaying information out via Twitter, especially regarding heavily disrupted services into Scotland. Behind the scenes Virgin has been leading the UK rail industry on a project to improve the flow of information to passengers during disruption, and from what I’ve seen today, it seems to be working really well.

They are clearly providing a bi-directional conduit for information – they are getting their info from regular incident update calls (which should happen every 20 minutes, apparently), and direct from their route control, which means the information is very fresh, rather than out of date, which has classically been the normal complaint if you were to phone National Rail Enquiries.

What is missing is a copy of the Twitter feed on the Virgin Trains website – there’s currently no realtime information about the state of their service today provided on their website, no banner saying, “It is windy. Stuff is broken. Please check before you travel.” It is relatively trivial to embed an “alert bar” and/or a Twitter feed into a webpage, and would help those who happen to not use Twitter.

Also worthy mentions to @HeathrowAirport and @LondonCityAir(port) who have been using The Force for good today, providing regular updates about issues with travel to LHR due to a fallen tree on the Piccadilly Line, and to LCY due to an earlier meltdown on the DLR and the high winds making landing and taking off a challenge for the pilots on the smaller planes which fly to London City.

The main thing I think the LCY Twitter folks could do better right now is actually give more info about what is/isn’t cancelled – rather than “contact your airline” which sort of smacks of “not our problem”, even if that’s not the sentiment.

Ah well, wind has picked up again and the sideways rain has returned. I’ll see if I can spy an ark coming down the street.

SOPA/PIPA Roundup

I’ve sort of wanted to write things about the frankly worrying SOPA bill in the US Senate and PIPA bill going through the US House of Representatives at the moment, but the fact is, others are doing a perfectly good job writing about it elsewhere, and why the hell should I waste even more precious bits repeating the good stuff they have already said.

So, I’ll quickly roll-up what I think are interesting articles:

A technical whitepaper on how the proposed method of doctoring DNS responses (domain blackholing) isn’t a good idea if we want to maintain a cohesive Internet.
The open letter to Congress from some 80 distinguished Internet engineers about the same.
A blog article by Paul Vixie about the end-to-end nature of a DNSSEC query and response.
Tom Daly, IaaS provider Dyn Inc’s CTO, on why breaking the DNS to achieve the goals of SOPA/PIPA is a bad idea.

I’ll add more as I find/read them and think they are worth linking to. There are a lot of articles and opinions out there, as you can imagine, and I’m now just adding to the melee, I suppose.

But, the most worrying thing I find is that what is being proposed is effectively the same type of DNS doctoring and blackholing that other “less liberal” Governments (China, for instance) have been known to use to block access to things like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

“Oh, but we’ll only use it for blocking X”, they say. Question is, does the existance of the mechanism to do this constitute an invitation for it to be used for blocking other things in the fullness of time? Are we going to end up with domains being injected into the feed of “bad things” because it hosts something that arbitrarily earned some sort of “dislike” from those who have control?

Paging George Orwell, to a courtesy telephone, please.

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.