Jason's Site

This is a subject that boils my blood everytime it comes up. Why do they not get it.

Thank you to Ofcom who have actually stated: ‘ It’s not about technology, technology can always be circumvented. It’s about incentives, we put the technologist back in the box and started to look at why people do it. It’s about how you change the incentive structure, It’s not a technological thing.’ Absolutely spot on.

Now, I have in the past downloaded movies, music & TV Shows, and I will continue to do this out of ease. Let me put it this way. for me to download a film legally, I have a couple of options, in which I can watch the film only once (or a set number of times) – let’s not get started on the fact that most of them that do this don’t even work on my operating system of choice [Linux]. This is also expensive, costing about 50% of actually buying a DVD or Bluray, so, why not do that, and watch as many times as I want? well, I don’t want to goto the shop, I have fast Internet, I can download a bluray in fairly short time (faster than going to the shop, buying it and coming home). Now, let’s look at P2P or even other methods that might not be legal. there’s a single page where I can go to find the movies, the music and the TV Shows, which is a huge benefit, now this could be split into 3 different pages / sites / whatever. sticking with Movies, we have a page for those, I can see very easily which ones are popular (how many people downloaded it), which ones are new (generally they’re dated) and I probably already have an idea as to what I want to watch. One click and I’m done an hour or 2 later, I can watch the film. in some instances, I can watch the film while it’s being downloaded too, just to make life even easier.

The quote from an audience member from Warner argued; just because it’s hard to enforce the law didn’t mean you shouldn’t try to enforce it.

Well, they can arrest me, they can take me to court, they can sue me, but let me say one thing before they try, I buy a LOT of movies, should they try this, then what incentive do I have to ever hand my money to them ever again? I used to download a LOT of music, and equally I purchased a LOT of music, too. since I stopped downloading it, I don’t buy it either. my collection has just stopped some years ago and hasn’t been updated since. so, they’re not getting any money of me anymore, but it’s ok, because I’m not downloading any, either.

I’m not saying that it was right to download the music, but me downloading 5 tracks for every 30 I purchased is surely better than purchasing none, right? and now with movies the same is happening.

Warner, Sony and all you other movie producers, are you listening? I will HAPPILY pay money every month to LEGALLY download your movies. without protection on them so I can only watch them a set number of times. I download movies because it’s convenient, it’s on my system ready to watch on my TV, I don’t have to go buy a disk, I don’t have to wait days for a disk to arrive from purchasing online. Instead of trying to STOP people from downloading movies, why not LET them download movies from your own sources, this means the person downloading knows the movie is what it says, it also means YOU make more money (that’s what it’s all about, right) make it easy, make it convenient people will do it. piss people off, we’ll take our money else where. it’s not the downloaders that are losing you money it’s your own head-up-your-own-arse way of thinking. stop doing it, there is money to be made, open your eyes and you’ll see it.

End of rant – work to be done!

Well, I’ll be changing banks in the next couple of weeks, and maybe this is a good thing.

Let me explain what the final straw was. A friend & I were in town, I needed to go and change my address to my new address, so I handed my friend my card, and told him the address. he went into the bank, and came out 5 minutes later with the address changed.

OK, So it didn’t quite happen like that, I went into the bank, and I changed it, however, anyone could have done it, to any address. I handed over my card, I told the clerk I wanted to change my address, told them what the address is, and that was it. They did not ask me to confirm my old address, they did not ask me to enter the PIN for my card on the machine, they didn’t ask for me to confirm my name, D.O.B. they didn’t ask for any proof of the new address at all, No driving license or passport. So they did not confirm in any way what-so-ever that I was in-fact the legal holder of said card.

On their web-site under changing address, there’s a form which you fill in, and take to your branch – well, I didn’t do this, apparently that would be too much effort, and as I just proved, you don’t need it, anyway. here’s what the site says: “Please don’t forget to sign the form as we can’t carry out your request without a signature.  We use the signature to verify your identity against signatures we hold for you. Please take along one government issued document and one additional supporting document to confirm your details.  Please refer to the personal information and your identity leaflet for details of which documents are acceptable.”

None of this was followed at all in the local branch, I’m absolutely amazed that I managed to change my details, without any form of ID, and nothing with the new or old address’s on. If anyone can suggest a bank to use, at this point my ears are open. – This bank was the Halifax, by the way – at top of town in Basingstoke, Opposite the Sony Centre.

Well, I know I’ve been slacking again, here’s the thing, summer is approaching, we’ve had really nice weather I have new hobbies and also a girlfriend, all of these things keep me rather busy.

So, firstly work, that’s definitely been keeping me busy, but all is well there, and I don’t think there is much I would change about it. well, other than buying more toys, that’s always fun!

As for the new hobby, I have taken up ice skating, no not the namby-pamby dancing, more freestyle, it’s good exercise, this incidentally is where I met the girl I am now seeing.

I still fly most weekends, I have bought myself a blitz avro, this is the roles royce of helicopters. I’m scared to throw it around too much, but it really is a dream to fly. It’s smooth, accurate and does exactly what I tell it to. I’m also throwing my raptor around a lot more, to the extent that parts are wearing out quickly, and I caught the ground while doing tick-tocks, oh well, that was only around £40 and was incredibly fun.

Oh yeah, I also bought a new phone, I bought a HTC desire HD. Running cyanogenmod, and really like it. This also means I can update my blog while the girlfriend is trying on clothes while out shopping (yes that really is what I’m doing). I think it also makes phone-calls, but really, who does that these days?

Anyway, I will try and update my blogs more often, I’ve been meaning to for a while, but laziness is bliss (as is ignorance).

Apologies for any odd random words, I’m doing this on my phone between telling the girlfriend she looks good.  :)

Today was a very good day, though the weather was somewhat cold, it was probably the most fun I’ve had at the airfield in a while (probably since the summer vanished). First of all, the Road on the way was… well… Interesting…

getting up the slope wasn’t hard, we were in Chris’s 4×4, it didn’t even think about it… Then the airfield was somewhat snowy too, having got all my stuff out of the car, it was just a sea of white with some stuff in the middle…

Still, we got the BBQ running, and off for a flight, my first flight was OK, but my landing wasn’t. after getting one skid on the bit we had compacted, and the other skid on the bit we hadn’t, it decided to sink into the ground at an interesting angle. I didn’t take off from here…

My second to last flight of the day, was the first time I had flown with other aircraft in the air (I don’t yet have my A-Cert), The other helicopter was close at times, but he had to be, as this is why…

That’s right, the other helicopter was filming me hovering, despite hovering being frowned upon on the main strip, there was only us two flying, so that’s ok, and I wasn’t going to start throwing it around the air and expecting Scott to keep up with the camera (and I don’t have the confidence to, of course).

and my final flight of the day before my fingers fell off due to the cold, was short, mostly because I couldn’t quite see how much fuel I had left, I didn’t know how much battery I had left, and on top of all that, I was getting somewhat cold. However, it was also filmed (Thanks again Scott).

On the plus side, I was dressed for the weather, which is more than I could say about some people in this weather.

After that, I decided to pack up, but before I headed of, I did have to film Chris try and do some touch-and-go’s with his FunJet. of which, it didn’t quite end how he wish, but it did give us alot of enjoyment. Here’s the footage of thos, I hope it makes you laugh as much as it did us.

First, some successful touch & go’s;

(I know it says Part 3, but actually it was first)

Then, what happened next….

and the results of it…

It has to be said, I do enjoy weekends like this, I hope yours was just as entertaining.

So far, I have not crashed my Nitro Helicopter, The Nexus, due to anything I have done. Which is good. However, there has been problem after problem with it, I’ve had the switch malfunction for the radio electrics, I’ve had the tail rotor pitch rod snap, I’ve had the servo on my elevator malfunction, I’ve had an engine problem that resulted in getting through 4 glow plugs in 2 weeks, and today I had the data cable to my Pitch servo break in flight.

Fortunately, today’s incident I had done 2 figure 8′s, an I had just come in to a hover over the ‘heli-pad’ (this is a clear ‘H’ in all the snow that I had created with the shovel) I was about to land when the wire broke, and fortunately, because the servo still had power, it went into fail-safe (moves the servo into 0 position) and it thumped to the ground. I was only a foot off the ground at the time so no further damage was caused.

Here’s a picture of the broken wire

I guess it’s good that all the “crashes” have been due to faults, but it does take a kick out of your confidence when things like this happen. Still. It’s all fixed (replaced the servo) and ready to go again, but as there’s just over an hour of daylight remaining, I’ll just leave it until tomorrow. Hopefully these problems will become less and less, I’ve had some nice flights with this one recently, and hope I get many more in before it’s killed off.

I think it’s safe to say there has recently been a bit of weather, but why does the country grind to a halt! I spent 40 minutes this evening watching a neighbour trying to get his car out, I did not go and help, because I have no time for lack of common sense. You have a rear wheel drive BMW, you haven’t attempted to shovel any snow atall and it’s higher than the underside of your car, go figure. I spent 15 minutes shovelling the drive-way this morning, and about 3 seconds getting the car out. I still made it to work.

However, Thanks to all the people that took the advice to not venture out in the weather, you all left the roads clear for me. My shovel was used for my car once, and that was in the foot of snow at the office. other than that it was used for other people (they were all in the same carpark, and one of them was in a 4×4).

I also spent an hour this evening clearing part of the road, the part infront of my house. if everyone did this, the entire road would be clear very quickly, stop waiting for the council to clear it up, pick up a shovel and do something about it!

well, rant over. now, go enjoy the snow, and if you can’t get to the office – and do shovel snow and then feel the need to sit down, have a look here: http://revk.www.me.uk/2010/01/what-cant-get-to-office.html

Jason

Well, I just thought I’d wish anyone that reads this a happy new year. Another year is over, and we have only 2 years until the end of the world if you believe the media, so lets make the most of it, it’s time to let your hair down and do everything you promised yourself you would do last year.

2009 has definitely been a bumpy one with a falling out with a very good friend at the beginning of the year it really did get off to a bad start, we are  however talking again, this took alot of work, but I completely understand why we fell out (and it really was mostly my fault), now we are speaking again, I would do anything in the world to keep it up.

I hope you all fun and joys in the next year, you never know, maybe, just maybe, this will be the year for me to celebrate Christmas…. I do have most of the year to decide if I’m celebrating it, though. :-)

J

Well, I’ve not posted for a while. and there’s good reason too. I’m always a big fan of Technology, the way it’s moving and what it brings with it. The Internet is one of those things that has been moving relatively rapidly (though maybe not so much for the normal home-user). However with my ISP, I do get to test some nice connections (sometimes) and connect to test networks, with test routers and so on. I even run a router that I have written a bit of code for, so that I can run my IPv6, VPN links, Fail-over connections & some customised routes (including a tunnel system to have IPv6 on my laptop no matter where I am in the world).

Anyway, For those that don’t know, In the UK most of the lines are supplied by BT, This means if you want internet you can choose any supplier you want, but many of them will be using BT lines to your house, and BT equipment to hook it all up. This, however isn’t too bad, or rather, Wasn’t. BT have been rolling out their 21CN network, which I am connected to, this is supposed to be next generation ADSL, when it was first installed, it was OK, and around a month ago it became unusable. My ISP (AAISP) has been attacking BT regarding this problem, and I’m not alone with the problem, there seemed to be a number of people on my exchange that had the same problem. this is what I get on my line:

The Green bars (going up) ar latency on the line, the higher that bar, the slower things are to respond.
The Red bars (going down) are loss on the line – the lower this bar the less things that get to you
The White is a line disconnect
and the green dots are download (from the internet), and reddish-brown is upload (to the internet)

As you can see, if I tried to download anything I got latency (went slow) packet loss (things just didn’t get to me) and line drops. not to mention my download speek was around 50K if I was lucky on a 4mb line. BT have access to these graphs, and persisted for a very long time that there was nothing wrong with the line. Anyway, a couple of nights ago, they admitted there was a problem, and nailed it down to a Cisco IOS bug in some of their routers, and they did some test work on my exchange / BRAS last night, this took them around 45 minutes and all of a sudden my line was alot better. and I could download at my full speed.

This problem with BT (along with a few others) that seem to show just how incompetent BT are at times has pushed my ISP to look into other  wholesale LLU providers, as an extra option on the BT infrustructure. Although I’m not exactly a fan of some LLU providers from what I’ve seen of BT, could they possibly be worse? probably not.

just to note: this isn’t the case that this problem existed, I can deal with that, technology has it’s problems. What I can’t deal with, is companies like BT that have sole control over fixing them, saying there isn’t a problem when they have been given the evidence to show that there is a problem.

I will be looking forward to the FTTC rollout, and will be testing it. Lets hope BT can do a better job with that than they have done with 21CN

———————–
edit:
BT Have finally fixed my line (actually they did this last week) and everything has been working again, and of-course I’m getting my full download-speeds again. still – I’m waiting for FTTC and my ISP have signed up for Be* LLU wholesale – so I may switch to this to get away from BT for a short while. – This turned out to not be a bug in the code, but they had over filled the pipes from Basingstoke…. Thanks BT, Nice going…

well, almost a month after getting the Nexus 30 Heli, I have finally had a flight. Well, a Hover, but it’s close. Unfortunatlye because of the age of this particular heli, finding parts has been somewhat of a challenge, it’s now unbeleivably close. and here’s me setting it up ready to fly.

So far, it has had a new rotor head, various replacement screws, a new battery, new Gyro, a complete engine rebuild, new rotor blades and a cable tidy up. after all this, it is now much better than it was, however there is still a slightly uncomfortable wobble, coming from the main rotor grips, it seems these have not been machined properly and there is around 2mm of play in them, this by the time it gets to the end of the rotors is quite alot of play (these should not move atall). so I’m now hunting around for Kyosho blade grips – this is a hard task.

Anyway, aside from the blade grips, it is able to fly, though it’s probably not a great idea to do it for very long, as it will damage the rotor head with the wobble, but here it is.

I’m hoping over the next few weeks I will be able to source the blade grips, and get rid of the wobble so that I can actually start to fly it properly (that is, hover for 6 months, then nose-in hover for another 6…)

Yes it’s a toy, but it’s also an expensive one, it would be nice if this was done right.

Overtime, People go through lots of hobbys, and I’m no different. However, I rarely find a cheap hobby to do. I have done juggling and now everytime I’m in Camden I spend £100+ on things for that, though you don’t need to service them, that’s ok. I’ve taken to playing computer games, Guitar hero (mostly the drums) on the Wii and racing games and flight sims on the PC. The equipment to play games properly is also not cheap, you need a nice fast computer, plus the racing games I have a £180 steering wheel set. The Wii is pricey, the drums for the Guitar hero (with Guitar hero) was around £130 and before you know it you’ve spent a few thousand pounds on…. stuff.

Well, some years ago, I took to flying Model Helicopters, started with small ones, and sort-of worked up, I flew someone else’s helicopter, but not for very long, this one was a couple of feet long. I haven’t flown one for a while now, and I was talking about buying one again so I could go flying with it again. However the need to buy one has been shunted out. and here’s why…

Yep, That’s right, I now have a Nexus 30 Helicopter, this has a petrol engine, and no, I won’t be flying this in the house. It did however need some work, This was my fathers, and he…. well…. crashed it. :-) This week has been delivery after delivery of very small parts and the rotor head has been re-built, it has new rotors, and is about ready to crash fly.

Basingstoke Model Flying Club have a field, that I will be at on Sunday, at least trying to fly this. though, it does still need some setting up, testing of the servos, the engine, and a few other checks too, it looks like I will have help in getting it through the checks, and air-born, hopefully some help trying to fly the thing too (I need a trainer).

I’m not scared of flying this. I am, however, scared of landing it, that’s the bit where it all goes wrong. This is going to A) be an expensive hobby, and B) going to take a very long time. I’m pretty sure I’m not going to get bored of this one very quickly, and even if I do, I’ll probably have a helicopter to build again.

Well, wish me luck on sunday for getting this thing off the ground, and safely back again.