Hull City Football Club.

Have after 104 years finally made it to the premier league. We now have 3 top tier sporting teams. Hull FC and Hull K.R. from Rugby League and of course Hull City in the football league. Having 3 teams in their top flight can only be a good thing for the city.

As good as the KC stadium is many, including myself, believe that it will need to be expanded. Currently, the stadium holds 25,000 which is fine for the Championship. They laid plans for a further 5,000 seats to be added to the East Stand and that plan should be executed as soon as it possible. Not the next season though as that should be viewed as a consolidation season where the view is to simply stay in the premier league. However, after next season and assuming they stay in that league then during the close season they should do the upgrade.

The game itself, the Championship play-off final, had some excellent moments with some delightful football from both sides. Bristol City were the more lively side for the opening 10 minutes but for the remainder of the first half it was Hull City who dominated. A wonderful textbook volley from Windass on 37 minutes was all that separated the sides at half time. Hull City played the better football in the first half with some lovely passing that would grace any premier league side. The second half saw Hull City laying back content with their one goal lead which gave Bristol City more chances. Hull City always looked dangerous going forward however. The second half never lived up to the excellence of the firs half but Hull City hung on to their slender lead until the final whistle. Bristol City throughout the game never really looked dangerous. It was not to be their day as time after time their attacks either came to nothing or where snuffed out by a stout Hull City defense. Of the two teams on display Hull City looked the better side. The solitary goal by Windass was excellence personified. It would not have been out of place in any top premier league game. The lead up to the goal came from a counter attack. Campbell ran into the penalty area out wide. Stopped, looked up, saw Windass and placed the perfect pass right onto Windass's foot. Windass then first time volleyed it and the ball went screaming into the Bristol City goal. It was a fine effort and the 1 goal lead reflected the state of the game at the time during the match. Hull City where the better team on the day and fully deserve their chance to play in the premier league.

Will they survive in the premier league? Yes, I think they will. They will finish in the bottom half of the table but for a first effort that is all that can be asked of them. Do they need new players? Undoubtedly. Their is enough self belief in their own abilities as players and as a team to allow them to play some lovely football that is right up their with some of the best teams this country offers. But, in some areas they need new players. Windass and Barmby are not spring chicks anymore and they will struggle with the pace of the premier league. Perhaps the managers method of starting those two then later on in the game replacing them Folan and Fagan, respectively, will allow the two elder players one season of premiership football, but with an eye to the future those two should be replaced because of their age alone.

So, the city of Kingston upon Hull will have 3 teams playing in their respective top leagues next season and if all 3 teams can make an impact in their sports next year, it can only be a good thing for the city as a whole.

Well done Hull City.

Little Swiss.

On the outskirts of Hull, next door to the Humber bridge, is a forest commonly known locally as Little Switzerland. There is a short piece about Little Swiss on this page. As you can see from that last link Little Swiss is part of a national trail walk. Little Swiss is a place of outstanding beauty, it is largely untouched land these days but in earlier times there used to be a quarry there. All that is left of this now is an old black painted mill that was used to crush the chalk from the quarry. Not far from Little Swiss is Hessle foreshore. In fact one can walk from Little Swiss directly to the foreshore itself. Here and there pathways and steps have been laid as well as some protective fencing to, it is hoped, stop people, kids in particular, from falling down some of the steep chalk faced drops.

Also at Little Swiss there are ponds, these are usually dried up during the summer but can be seen in all their spledour during the winter months. Spring time is a particularly splendid time to walk around as everything is in full bloom. My wife and I will take our children there at least once a month throughout the year, though my ability to walk is diminishing evermore with each passing day, I still look forward to walking around and walking around this area in particular. This allows our children to take notice of natures changes during the coming of, during and after each seasonal phase. Of course, being boys, our two elder lads more enjoy the challenges of climbing trees and the slope sides than they do watching nature. Still, time, age and all that will soon see them running around less, assuming we still take these walks by then, they will start to enjoy what an almost unfettered nature walk has to offer. It is one of the few places dog owners are still allowed to take their dogs. For what should be obvious reasons one is expected to keep ones dog on a leash but there are some people who let their dogs roam free. As with everything in life there are the few that destroy the enjoyment of the many. These are the ones who never pick up their dogs muck. However, the vast majority of dog owners do so the fact that dogs are allowed and the added fact that dogs do roam free should not put you off going to Little Swiss.

One thing I have never understood is why our council does not do more in the Little Swiss area. If they did more by way of investment in the area then Little Swiss would soon become the place people would associate with Hull which surely cannot be a bad thing. There are plenty of wide open spaces within it which would lend themselves to, say, an open theme park or perhaps a childrens activity area or some such. Perhaps, open air music displays could be laid on. Not just the rubbish kids listen to today but also classical music. Specialised guided walks could be laid on, run and guided by the council. Walks to show the history surrounding the area and nature walks and so on. As one walks around Little Swiss one can see markers which show the way that various walks should go to get from start to finish but these walks are self servicing in that one gets a walk guide and then decides which walk to take and off you go. These walks are all well and good but the obvious security and safety to the public that a council sanctioned and run guided walk would offer has got to be better. To see what could be done in the Little Swiss area one only has to have driven around Devon and Cornwall to see what could be done with open areas surrounded by trees. Down there they have loads of little theme parks dotted around, and often hidden in the sense that if you did not know it was there you probably would never find it. The possibilities of what could be done are almost endless. But, during my close to 50 years of life on this fragile planet I do not recall ever seeing an advertisement about Little Swiss. In my humble opinion, as one who has enjoyed the beauty of the place for many years, they should be shouting about it to anyone and everyone. It could surely become a major attraction for tourists and local people alike who enjoy life off the beaten track.

However, for this to happen the council would need to spend some money on the place first to ensure that all the relevant health and safety laws that plague modern life are adhered to. And that is the major stumbling block. There is not a council in this country that would speculate to accumulate so, there is really no chance of the council spending money with an eye to the future tourist trade and the simple pleasures it would give to local people all year round. In fact, If anything along these lines where to happen I can almost guarantee they would start charging for entry which would negate the whole thing if they did that.

On a sunny and warm day Little Swiss is the perfect place to have a picnic. Whether you are young or old it does not matter. For the older brethren amongst us there are some lovely walks which do not take you down hundreds of rickety steps. It takes longer to get to the same place but there is more to be seen and enjoyed. For the younger ones, and assuming Mam and Dad are not the type to stifle their kids natural energetic flair, there are chalk faces to climb on. Open areas where parents and kids can play ball games. Long rambling walks to be taken and if you go the right way you could find yourself on the foreshore at Hessle.

In such a short post as these it is impossible to portray the natural beauty of Little Swiss but if you live within a 50-75 mile radius of Hull then it is well worth a couple of hours of your life to get to it and pay the place a visit. If you are planning a visit to Hull, assuming they give you enough time to explore it then Little Swiss is well worth adding to the itinerary. There is a huge car and bus park nearby that is in fact parking for the Humber Bridge viewing folk but right next to the car and bus park is the entrance to Little Swiss itself.

Go on. You owe it to yourself.

Do you?

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As we walk blindly.

Into ever more surveillance used under the banner of 'protecting' people it is quite simply scary how the police and others, can get away with installing and using ever more surveillance equipment.

There are those who say 'if you have nothing to hide what is the problem'? The problem is that more and more innocent people who would never commit a serious crime and being stored on police databases. How anyone can't see the issue with this has given up what little freedoms this country used to offer its citizens.

The police, of course, are loving every minute of this current obsession with security. In the name of protecting the citizens under their control they want more and more of the same installed everywhere.

It has, of course, nothing whatsoever to do with protecting the citizens under their control and has everything to do with exactly that. Control. If they know every step someone has taken as they go about their daily lives they can use such information to create yet another false case against an individual.

The police will not filter out anything. They will store everything. Every movement you ever make will be stored for 5 years. If you have a car then that too will be stored. Your children, who may never ever commit a crime, will have their movements tracked. And so the list goes on and one and...

I am sure there is a base for a human rights campaign here. Either through our own court system or though the E.U. courts. the latter being more concerned about such things so may be the better course of action. Whichever way is used it should be done. I will not do it as I put my family first and foremsot and the last thing I need to bring down on my family is heavy handed police hellbent of snuffling me out. Whether anything will ever come of that remains to be seen because from what I have seen over the last few years we are all walking blindly into a surveillance society without so much as a whimper of a complaint. As is usual for the British, the English in particular, we will not see what is happening until it is too late to retaliate. But one thing is certain, we will retaliate eventually. By which time the police will have got into every area of our daily lives and they will fight to keep it 'for your own protection'.

Welcome to 1984 in 2007.

Can we laugh?

I read this BBC article and something my long dead Grandma used to say jumped immediately into my head. She used this term a lot. "All fur coat and no knickers" which meant that whoever she aimed the phrase at had no money but plenty of debt.

I guess we can expect the less well off to be hit by the latest credit crunch but when it hits those more affluent people we are supposed to feel sorry for them. But why should we? It is well known that those within the middle class bracket always take on more debt than they should to fund a front end to the world that says "Look! We have money." But the reality is that they have no money at all because their very existance is all debt funded. Hence "All fur coat and no knickers."

Can we laugh at their current situation? Of course we can. And I do. My wife calls it inverted snobbery. I simply love seeing the middle classes struggle financially. It proves to me just how false their whole existence is. All the pretense. They deserve everything they suffer during the current credit crunch and long may it go on once the country has got over it.

In that article there is a quote by some Senior debt adviser. It reads. "I've had at least two clients sit in front of me and tell me they would of killed themselves if they hadn't found out we were here." Oh those poor darlings. Perhaps the world would be a better place if they hadn't of found them.

Inverted snobbery or not. We on the lower rung of life's fragile existence are suffering too but it is truly heartening on this lovely sunny Sunday morning to know those above us on life's ladder are suffering more than we are.

Let the phony buggers suffer.

Microsoft and security.

Don't laugh please at the back. I know that those are two words that do not go together in any meaningful way.

Still, for we Linux users it is amusing watching Microsoft (MS) continue to plug security holes in their
Operating Systems (OS) commonly known as Windows. As well as these security hole plugs they are doing other things in an effort to secure their OS's in other way, such as separating the administrator user from a normal user (something we Linux platform users have been doing for years) and trying desperately to ensure every system user abides by this rule. Sure WindowsXP had this option 7 or 8 years ago but with that particular OS it was easier for the user to by pass this and make their everyday user an administrator too. The users did this because they found entering their administrator password was a chore they were best without. Plus it stopped various programs, and the OS itself, from putting up nagging requesters which said things like "you do not have the privileges to do this operation" and other such.

According to this msn blog post IE8 will finally attempt to address the gaping security weakness called ActiveX. Not before time either. ActiveX is a known exploitable hole in MS's flagship browser that has seen many Windows users systems compromised many times. They apparently are going to do with ActiveX controls what Firefox has been doing for years. Firefox needs to do it because the userlaying OS it was created for, Linux, demands it works that way. MS browsers on the other hand are created for an OS platform that was built upon a single user system. Bolt on after bolt on after bolt on until the system is a mishmash of separate entities glued together, and only slightly held together at that, by the kernel.

MS have not been innovative in the OS arena ever. They have copied other OS's best features, rehashed it, so it sits within the OS, and inexplicably created security holes whilst doing so. Windows 95 was the "most secure Windows ever". Windows 2000 was the "most secure Windows ever", Windows Vista is the "most secure Windows ever" and so it goes, but in fact each incarnation of Windows while being more secure than the previous version were in fact as weak on security in reality than just about every alternative OS platform available.

MS tells its users, those unaware that alternatives exist or if they know alternatives exist then MS creates Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) about that OS so that in the minds of those users MS Windows is secure, that Windows innovates in this area and that area when in reality they have never innovated on anything. Multiple users was not MS's idea. Fancy graphical displays, Aero, was not MS's idea. Securely encryped file systems was not MS's idea and so on.

99% of all viri are spread via MS's OS's. 94% of all spam emails originate via MS's OS's and so on. These are not my figures but figures provided by people who depend on this continuing so they can sell their product "to protect the customer" and other such rubbish. The real truth is that if MS's made their OS's secure in the first place, which they will never do because other software houses depend on Windows being insecure, there would be no need for these software houses product at all. MS had the chance to create from scratch a new OS with security as the foremost requirement after WindowsXP came out. It took them 7 years to create a new OS that was really just WindowsXP with a shiny new interface (Aero) and within those 7 years they paid mere lip service to security. Sure Vista is ever so slightly more secure than previous MS OS's but it did not go nearly far enough. It had the chance and it blew it. Now, with users more aware of the security threats out there that target MS systems MS are falling from grace. Sure they still dominate the OS market but that dominance is being attacked on all sides from alternative OS's that are secure at their very core. Another thing is that in their efforts to make the user aware of things happening on their systems they throw up requester warnings time and time and time again to the point of annoyance. This 'feature' can be turned off and most all savvy users do so but that in itself creates yet another security hole in the making.

MS flagship OS may not go away tomorrow but it is on the decline and it will stay on the decline until such a time as MS get rid of the current code base and start from scratch with a totally new OS that starts with security and builds on that. Even then I am not convinced MS will totally halt, let alone reverse, the current decline. Time will tell on that.

For what it is worth in this blog post I have been a Linux user since 1991 and in that time I have seen it grow and grow with real innovation after innovation but, and it hurts me to say this, I do not honestly think the Linux OS's are ready for prime time, even with the likes of Ubuntu suite of OS's and (open)SuSe creating a GUI that everyones grandmother could use. Well, the Linux OS's may be ready for prime time but I am not sure the (ex-)Windows users are ready for the Linux OS's simply because of how Linux works. In this i am thinking of the need to have a root user and a totally seperate user for everyday tasks. MS are trying to get Windows users to work in this manner without much success from what I have seen so I cannot see them liking how the Linux OS's do things even if, like Ubuntu and friends, they start abusing the sudo command. Sure, a relatively new thing called PolicyKit is gaining traction that alleviates things in this area so again, time will tell.

School dinners.

We have two children aged 11 and 10 who currently attend primary school. When we moved house they moved school and one of the first things they mentioned about this new school was the dinners, or as our eldest put it "The dinners here are crap!". So, we decided they could alternate between a week of school dinners and a week of coming home at dinner times.

The coming home bit is okay because there are no major roads between the new school and our new house, though there is a minor road but both children are road aware, probably because of the walk to the old school which meant crossing 3 major, busy roads, plus, the school is just shy of 6 minutes walking distance away, so they are relatively safe from cars when walking home.

Now, the state of dinners in U.K. primary schools is in something of a flux at this time because of all the government mandated changes to remove the crap pre-heated dinners they serve our children. Food that was cooked in a city miles away then transported to local school. This was, in our city's case, a trip of some 180 miles. Once at the school the keep warm bins the food was kept in would be re-heated before being served up for our kids to eat, or not. Usually, not. Then that idiot chef, who's name escapes me right now, got involved in the whole process. More money per child was injected into the coffers and the food itself changed to so called 'healthy foodstuffs. Added to this is that most all primary schools are going about setting up in-house kitchens again and hiring properly skilled cooks to work in those kitchens.

While the change of foodstuffs from the crap that was previously on offer to the new 'healthy' food was a good move, it went in the wrong direction. The fact they foistered this change onto young children, some of which no doubt had never seen anything other than chips or a precooked microwaved dinner in their young lives, was a bad move. Consequently, more and a more children took 'packed lunches' or went home. Suffice to say that while a lot of good came from the idiot cooks idea there was also a downside to it.

Our children say that the only downside to coming home for dinner is the lack of playtime they get before sitting down for dinner at school and after they have eaten. Food wise, we allow one small chocolate bar (penguin, blue ribbon etc) but only if they eat the main thing which is usually a sandwich or toasties of some sort, we never fry stuff, we don't do chips, burgers etc etc, a yogurt is always offered up. We prefer them to have something that we hope will not interfere with their evening meal and that is what usually happens, though even with the smallish amounts they have they still ask not to do them a lot at evening meal time.

As i said above our children alternate between a week taking school dinners and a week coming home. One thing we have noticed since we started this regime is that on the weeks they stay school dinners they are always hungry when they come home and always eat an evening meal, whereas when they have come home for dinner they are never hungry when they come home from school and always say "don't do me a lot of food please" prior to us cooking the evening meal.

While this is by no means a scientific experiment it does show us as parents that our children do not get the sustenance they need when staying school dinners and that they do get the sustenance they need when coming home for dinner.

Fallen values.

I, nor my wife, are in any way religious but as I read this article on the BBC web site about how marriage has become more of a stigma than two people living together, and the rise of same sex partnerships, I could not help agreeing with the sentiments portrayed within it.

I am second time married. The first time yielded two children but the emotional tussle.along with many other things that simply was not right, between us two adults proved too much to bare and eventually we split up. Our children are now emotionally strong adults because after the break up we both had unfettered access to them. They are both emotionally strong because even though they lived with my now ex-wife in the house we bought and was almost fully paid for. I sent money, I took both children on holidays, provided for them in every way I possibly could. I was, and still am, there for them when/if they ever need a fatherly word in the ear. Even though I left the family fold I never really gave up on my parental duties, though some would say I did that the day we split up, those people would be wrong. What I am trying to say here is that because two people no longer feel there is any love left between them does not necessarily equate to bad parenting. As long as one or the other does not simply disappear.

I know how we worked things out is not for everyone but it does show that it is still possible for two people who where once intertwined in marriage can provide for their offspring.

My second marriage is much better emotionally. We have a much stronger foundation on which to bring up our 3 children. There is no conflict between our 3 children and the two from my first marriage. My wife treats my first two children with the same deference as her own. My first two children treat our 3 as brothers, and the same reversed applies, and visit often.

The scary thing for me is that my wife and first wife on occasions sit and have a cup of tea whilst discussing my faults!

I believe in the sanctity of marriage but not necessarily in the need to be married in a church.

There are many reasons why marriage itself is on the decline. Not least of those reasons is the legislation that allows for 'civil partnerships' and the outlawing of discrimination against homosexual people. I have nothing against such things in themselves but I do feel they are amongst the root causes of marital decline. For a government to claim they think people, couples, are lacking in their parental responsibilities and then at the same time enshrining in law various things that undermine those responsibilities smells of double standards. The very people that should be showing others how it should be done instead undermining the very fabric of society with legislation against the core values that society relies on. As the church say in the article above the the lower down the chain of life we place marriage is sure to affect us all in the years to come and can, in fact, be seen today with the number in our jails and the ever increasing use of drugs and crime as a way to 'get by' in todays society.

The solution? I don't know, but then I am not paid to know. I do think, however, that until our government stops the double standards on family life and actually does something to support it at the very core then things are only going to get worse for society as a whole.

MS SP3 cockup.

Though they, MS and their army of blinkered followers, would like you to believe they issues where not caused by MS but by AMD CPU's (anyone remember WinTel?), an ASUS motherboard and a driver file that should not be there that is automatically run at boot-up. There are, apparently, some further combinations of setups out there that also trigger the bugs. More information of what causes the problems and how to fix those problems can be found here.

We have 2, out of 12, MS XP machines left dangling on our network. Our two elder boys need the MS platform for school work, but that may, nay should, change in the not too distant future as our council looks into cost savings in the council ancillary staff and educational budgets. Our two elder boys need vendor lock-in because of the limited foresight of previous councilors here. That and the fact the local council probably got a back hander or cheaper than normal goods from MS. However we arrive at the state of local schools IT the simple fact is that pupils and students need to purchase an expensive OS for home use so they can complete whatever work is set for their homework, but I digress.

So, imagine the dismay of several parents when their systems when into 'Reboot Hell'. People like me who fix such issues for people have been very busy these last days as the queue to have their machines fixed took me most of 1 14 hour day to fix and the fix itself takes roughly 2 minutes to do.

These sort of incidents highlights why vendor lock-in is bad. Bad for customers that is and yet they keep on using it. I have converted a few away from MS and a few came to me to have MS Vista removed for them and in most cases replaced with an OS that does not suffer from vendor lock-in.

No matter how MS spin this they are in the wrong for not having their setup program check for the CPU type and the driver file causing most of the SP3 issues. But, no. They are trying desparately to deflect the blame on others as usual.

Karoo ignoring users (part 4)

And so it went. This will be the last post in the Karoo ignoring users set as they eventually got in touch with us, us being HWSRN (He Who Shall Remain Nameless) and I, who are part of the KCom dubbed Karoo Technical Forum, and the outcome of that is a meeting scheduled for later this very month. So, they are no longer ignoring us but are in fact looking forward to the collaboration between them and us. They claim the silence was to give us all some space and a chance to calm down which for HWSRN did not and is not happening. But, we are going forward with a view to help shape how they deliver their broadband service for the home user and if some of that rubs off onto business users then all is well and good.

The conversation was short and sweet but at least they contacted us and not us them. Well, save for an email I wrote complaining of their handling of the whole affair.

There are changes coming to the new package sets. More additions to separate Karoo Pro from the other two package sets. ReverseDNS has gone cold so that is unlikely to surface as on option any time soon, if ever, which is a shame because that is something i wanted. Multiple IP's, at a cost, are coming. More upload speed is coming. A better control panel which will allow customers to decide when their download allowance can be used rather than the rigid midnight to 8am structure currently used. User regulated QOS is being touted as well as a few other less interesting bits and bobs. A much more detailed page or two on when a customer did what on-line. The possibility of customers being able to decide which protocols are allowed from their network or machine at what time etc. I have no idea at this time what extra cost these optional add-on bits are going to cost but cost they will.

There is other stuff too such as fibre to house (F2H) which they are doing now for all new houses built with the rest of us having to wait until such a time as they replace all the ancient copper lines with fibre. Apparently the cable guys are looking into several options in this area so I guess until such a time as they have discovered the cheapest way of doing this transition it will not actually start. But from what was said they are close. This, of course, is not going to happen overnight but will happen eventually. They are not talking years and years in the future either. So expect that to come to your house soonish.

The wheels of industry move slowly and Karoo are not exception to that rule. All the above is coming but they will not, probably cannot, give time scales to market.

So, after weeks of silence they finally broke and contacted us and told us those snippets of information. Now that this blog series draws to a close with this being the last blog post in the series what should I call any future post? Information from Karoo? Help me decide.