Vent of Hearing

Garages and Cars

I have a car. I bought it when it was a baby, brand new, no previous careful owner. It was a fair price when I bought it, and I knew it would depreciated dreadfully after buying it, but I was in this for the long haul, the whole nine yards. I wasn't going to sell my baby. I didn't want to adopt someone else's baby either. Who knows where it has been, how badly it had been driven, what banks it had been driven away from in high speed chases.

When you do get a new car, and do drive it carefully and controlled, and you get it serviced regularly, you do not expect random things to go wrong with it, yet this seems to par for the course for cars, and garages can get away with murder when it comes to fixing the car for you. I would expect the odd, rare occurrence of a problem, or problems caused by accidents or bad driving.

When you don't have a 'friend in the trade' or know of a good, reputable, cheap garage you are over a barrel when it comes to handing out the dosh. Furthermore, there seems to be no obligation to actually fix the problem. If a garage "fixes" a car and a week later the same problem occurs again, it seems you have no option but to pay again to get it "fixed".

Today I had to take the car to a garage to try and find out why I was having trouble starting it every morning, and why the ignition light was on constantly (typically, it started first time this morning and the light didn't come on). They charged me 30UKP to test the system, discovered a possible cause, but said that it might not fix the problem and they didn't have a required replacement part in stock. The part in question is about 18UKP but my total bill is likely to be over 100UKP once labour and VAT are taken into consideration. And it might not fix the problem (which had gone away) and may not be needed.

(Aside; if I left my car there overnight they could guarantee it being fixed the next day, but if I took it away they couldn't get the part in before Friday. Some sort of 'over-the-barrel' system in place there too.)

Another customer was in at the same time, and had the same test done. They could find nothing wrong, and explained that they had cleaned the spark plugs at bit in the hope that would fix the problem. The charge; 30UKP.

This is just a rant and I should actually be more constructive and find out exactly what the test is, what it involves and why it costs so much. I should also investigate other garages and find out my other options and what can be done, and perhaps expose a corrupt system, but I am neither Anne Robinson or Trevor McDonald and have no wish to become one of their type. So I won't.

Dirk Shada's Detective Agency

So, it appears they are going to remake Shada. I've got mixed feelings about this.

One one hand, cool. The infamous Douglas Adams unfinished Doctor Who episode, finally broadcast. BBCi is also a good experiment in future broadcasting ideas, and getting Paul McGann involved is a clear coup.

One the other, as Neil Gaiman points out, it is only an audio with added graphics, not a video release and production. It is not new Doctor Who. It may be seen as another nostalgia fest rather than the birth of a future new series.

I have to see Doctor Who as the past now. The book series is great, but clearly a different beast entirely. "It's Doctor Who, but not as we know it" Doctor Who is now the subject of fun on programs such as "It's only TV, but I like it"; Phil Jupitas laughing at another cheaply made 70s program.

Basically, I'm saying the BBC should be making good science fiction, not Doctor Who. If the good science fiction happens to be Doctor Who, then we've had our cake and are munching away on it. Making Doctor Who for the sake of it, is only going to fail.

Fire! Fire! Panic!

With a fire strike imminent, the British media have been doing their typical hype thing. Here is a list of things you should and shouldn't be doing during the strike.

• don't smoke inside a building
• turn off all your computers
• don't fight fire with fire
• don't make toast
• [cats] don't get stuck up a tree
• don't drive to close to the car in front
• don't drive too fast
• don't do anything I wouldn't do
• don't drink tea
• do not set light to anything
• do not commit arson
• try to avoid causing chaos
• don't make a terrorist attack
• make oven chips or go to the chippy
• avoid places where fat could burn
• don't listen to the prodigy
• don't believe Billy Joel (he did start the fire)
• don't use fan heaters that might catch fire
• do ensure emergency exists are kept clear
• do report any damaged fire protection equipment
• don't set fire to your pants, especially the ones that say "Keep away from naked flame"
• sofa's might be smoke resistant, but don't test them, okay
• don't commit arson(repeat) cos the army will come and although the Green Goddesses are slow, they will have guns
• avoid lightning
• do wear asbestos
• don't fill you car with petrol whilst smoking a fag and chatting on your mobile phone
• Avoid starting the Great Fire of London
• if you can smell gas, don't switch on the light
• don't marry a homicidal maniac who'll poor petrol all over your house, and then knock a lit match onto it
• don't let your daughter marry a homicidal maniac who'll try to bump you off by stealing into your house at night, removing the battery from your smoke alarm, and then lighting a stove
• ensure you live near a dying fireman who'll think nothing of breaking a strike and foolishly rescue you because he only has six weeks to live

These are all things you shouldn't be doing anyway (apart from the ones I've completely made up or stolen from soap operas). Carry on as normal people. If you are sensible, you are unlikely to get into any trouble. We've been told to turn off all computer equipment at work when unattended. Now, I have seen a computer monitor burst into flames but that was because it had been unused for four years and had been sitting in a loft gathering dust. All the work's computers are less than two years old, and have probably been on all that time (apart from the NT servers which have crashed a number of times).

AqGate (geddit?)

I've drawn a line under the incident with Aquarion. I e-mailed him Saturday accepting his apology and forgiving him (whilst admitting my own guilt for publicly discussing it). He hasn't replied but it looks like he has some serious computing issues to deal with. It also looks like he has lost his job, albeit hopefully temporarily.

Hopefully, it is all resolved between the two of us, and Aquarion can get on being insightful and funny on Aquarionics and I can continue to have lots of great ideas and not do any of them here.

Meanwhile, project Vellum is looking very close to being let out into the wild. I've got an unreproducible issue (the very worst kind of issue) that is stopping vent going live.

The Toy Gatekeeper

Jonathon Delacour discusses gatekeeping, as referred to by Dorothea Salo, and points out that exclusion is done when something should be done in specific way. This reminds me of the maxim "If you want something doing, do it yourself", which sometimes seems to be "If you want something doing right, do it yourself".

After a long days play. my daughter has out a variety of her toys. Having a six month old as well means it is very difficult to get her to put something away before playing with something new (thankfully George appears to be getting to the end of the constant attention phase). As we have a limited space and a large number of toys in the house, they have to fit into her cupboard in a specific way. We encourage our daughter to put things away in the evening (it makes a good game), but occasionally she puts things in the wrong box. It is my role to supervise this, whilst my wife give the six month old his final feed. It is just too time consuming to correct her sometimes or even get her to do it at all, so things end up being misplaced (a lego brick in with the Weebles). Nothing major. She'll get them out again the next day anyway.

My wife doesn't quite see it that way, and had a major sort out yesterday. There were still a lot of toys left out. I dared not put her toys away, fearing the backlash if I got it wrong. So, they were left out, and Daddy got told off for them not being put away. I was given a detail explanation of where everything now went.

I'm wondering if my wife is a "frustrated gatekeeper" as she cannot control the task, yet still needs it to be done in done in specific way.

Starting over

Seems I'm not the only one as BurningBird is refocusing.

During all of this, I'm going to be using Movable Type and RSS, but I'm not going to be writing about either (except a post-mortem document after all the changes are implemented, complete with links to source code). I need to re-focus my technology energies back into applications that I can demonstrate to potential employers, such as my PostCon system.

It seems that as she is searching for a new job, she needs to focus on client-friendly technology. Potential employers "have never heard of weblogging, and could care less about weblogging."

Whilst the reasons are different, this is more or less what I'm doing. A complete refocus after getting caught in the lights of the weblog juggernaut. I leaving taking about weblogging to the experts and do something different. There will be technical talk, but it will relate to my job. I'm still formalising my plans for vent.

delete redo from start

*deletes everything he has just written*

would like to curl up and sleep for fifty years

The best laid plans

I've decided to suspend From the Orient, my web log (in the truest sense of the word), for the time being. It started as a simple list-o-links (did I name the meme? doubt it but it was used elsewhere) grew into something more and ended up taking up a disproportionate amount of my free time to run and update. As a result, other things sagged and grew baggy at the seams. It also became far more introverted into the world of weblogging, far more than I ever wished.

An event this week brought things into focus. I'm not qualified to comment on these things. Aquarion needn't have been so savage, especially as I did consider him a friend. I'll give my thoughts on that little event another time.

Orient will return in a slightly more tricky form, making it a little more fun to play (oops Jethro Tull reference there). More concentration on Oracle, web designing and sciency things that I enjoy.

In the meantime, I'll do the last millennium thing :) of list'o'links as a short term replacement for orient, and work on vent big time. I'll be spending some time working on Vellum too, a major project I've helped Stuart on (in a small way). I think its going to be very impressive.

The ideas I've got for vent will take a little time to sort out, and require Vellum to be operational. If anyone wants to be a contribute for a little writing project I've got, e-mail me. I don't want to spoil the idea, so e-mail only details, but just remember this site is called Vent of Hearing.