Radiac's Diary

Why the London olympics will suck

2012-03-22T15:28:27-00:00

I have been passed a transcript which my source assures me is of the meeting where the olympic committee planned the design brief for the new GB olympic kit:

"After the disaster of our olympic logo, the terrible mascots, and the abysmal failure of our plan for ticket sales, we really need to come up with an amazing olympic kit for our athletes."

"Absolutely! Well, we've got this globally recognisable flag which is red white and blue, that's a start. But we don't want to be boring - how can we mix it up a bit?"

"I know, lets take out the red. Nobody will be expecting that!"

"Oooh, and lets introduce a new blue! How about Turquoise!"

"Excellent work, team! But I'm guessing someone will complain about the lack of red. Lets try to head off any criticism from the press - any ideas?"

"I know - red shoes!"

Everyone yells "Cheers!" as they raise their cocktails to each other, before relaxing back onto their sun loungers on the tropical beach where they hold their meetings.

It's a monumentally poor design decision, the latest in a series of monumentally poor decisions surrounding the games. People will be sitting at home watching the games on their TV (because nobody can actually get there in person) and they'll be saying "Who's that in white and blue? Finland? Argentina? Is the UN fielding a team this year? I thought we were in this race?"

Brace yourselves, people of earth. The entire olympics will be like this.

Those who can, do. Those who can't, organise the London Olympics.

Radiac's Tips for Christmas Day

2011-12-24T11:56:44-00:00

This is the last working day before society dictates that we all have to take half a day off to be with family, so I thought now would be the perfect time to share with you my top tips for a productive Christmas Day.

Plan your day

There are certain activities on the day itself which are marginally enjoyable - the meals are often above par, and while we all find the unwrapping of presents to be tedious at best, the activity often produces many useful items, such as pens or socks. Once you have decided which activities you wish to attend, you can then start to plan how to optimise your time.

Schedule some automated alerts

This can be a great way to cut short an activity to get back to work. For years it was sufficient to surreptitiously send yourself a text message, but these days family members are increasingly wise to this ruse, and with the proliferation of touch-screen phones, it is quite difficult to send the message while your phone is still in your pocket.

However, do not fear, technology to the rescue! Just install asterisk, hook it up to a PSTN gateway, and schedule your call with a simple:

echo "asterisk -rx \"originate SIP/mobile extension 1@angryclient\"" | at 11:17am Dec 25

At the appointed time, your computer will ring your mobile SIP client and connect it to your angryclient extension context, which you should configure to play a recording of a client with an urgent complaint.

For added efficiency, answer the call by "accidentally" putting it on speaker phone - your family will hear the whole thing, thereby avoiding any unnecessary conversation with them - you can get back to work with a simple "You finish unwrapping the presents without me, I'll be back as soon as I can".

Charge your laptop

When all else fails, although societal conventions mandate that you physically have to be with family, it is perfectly acceptable for you to be there while using your laptop. Any complaints of "I hope you're not working, it's Christmas Day!" can be dispelled with the trusty old alt-tab from your text editor to Solitaire - "No no, see, I'm having fun like the rest of you."

Additional resistance can be anticipated from certain relatives when you set your laptop upon the dinner table, but one of my favourite tricks is to load it up with some cheerful Christmas songs - everyone loves those! When asked "Why are you typing?" simply explain that you are queuing up songs for the rest of the meal.

There are, of course, many more techniques for turning the day into a productive paradise, but these simple steps should be enough to get you going this year. Christmas day no longer needs to be the ocean of boredom and dispair that it once was!

How to lose a customer

2011-10-25T18:33:31-00:00

I have recently had the pleasure of having needing to contact the customer services department of three companies. Two will be getting my custom again, one will not.

Firstly I had to phone Dell about my broken XPS M1330 laptop. Apparently nvidia hadn't counted on their graphics chip getting hot, so when it does it basically expands, pops its solder, and no more laptop. Despite being a year out of warranty, all I had to do was mention the Sales of Goods Act 1979 to the Dell chap, and before I knew it I had an engineer booked to come the next working day, for free, to fix my laptop, for free. They might make shoddy hardware, but they have great customer service. Happy customer, will buy again.

The next company was Amazon. Well, I say Amazon - it was actually one of those random companies who sells through their market place. I ordered a cheap headset for my desk phone, and when it arrived, it was not "Condition: new" as advertised - it was covered in detritus consistent with it having been previously inserted into someone's ear. Two short e-mails later, and I'm keeping the device and getting a partial-yet-significant refund - they must have lost money on postage alone. The pressure of keeping a good rating in Amazon's marketplace seems to ensure good customer service. Reasonably happy customer with device now sitting in bleach, will shop in the marketplace again, and have even left this particular company good feedback.

But the third one was Ebuyer.

I last bought something from Ebuyer in 2005. My experiences with them back then were dubious and limited, and since then I have only heard bad things, so I usually buy my computer bits from either overclockers or amazon. Having said that, I do try to shop around and get the best deal, so when it came to buying a cheapo stick of ram for my netbook, I figured it would be worth giving Ebuyer another try, given they were nearly �5 cheaper than Amazon, and I didnt need the memory for a week and a half.

Oops.

Three times they told me the product was in stock, but three times they then changed their mind and told me they couldn't deliver it. Twice customer services told me it would be sorted. When they missed the delivery date, they told me they'd push it through and give me free next-day delivery. Finally when I complained on twitter that it should have been here yesterday, they promised me a phone call.

Even after their relentless incompetence they could have still saved the situation at this point, and turned me into a repeat customer. If a company screws up repeatedly but then apologies and does everything in their power to get me my order as soon as possible, I'd totally forgive them. I'd probably sing their praises to anyone I could for the rest of time, like I did and do for Amazon and Dell. Especially if the company did it for a trivial order and made a �1.91 loss due to having to switch from a discontinued line. I'm not expecting free stuff or compensation, I'm just expecting good customer service, and to receive what I ordered.

This is what I expected from my phone call, but it seems I expected too much - at least from Ebuyer.

Firstly, the phone call never came - they only rang after I complained on twitter for the third time. Sure enough, they fell on their sword and admitted that they had been out of stock all along, but then they told me that they have cancelled my order, and as compensation have added a free next-day delivery token to my account - regardless of the fact I'd already been given a free next-day delivery token the day before, but it had done me no good.

I expressed my disappointment at the delay in no uncertain terms - which is quite unusual for me - and she gave me some line about how the customer service girl was new. I'm not sure exactly how is that an excuse, it just means their training and systems suck. She finished the call by saying that she wouldn't want me to think that it's representative of their normal level of service.

Well, it might not be, but I'm never going to find out. Even though their memory is still cheaper than anywhere else, I've ordered it from Amazon. I refuse to give Ebuyer another penny.

Next time you are looking for some computer hardware, may I recommend Amazon or the ever-awesome Overclockers - even if they are �5 more than Ebuyer. At least it'll arrive.

There is never enough time

2011-10-13T07:58:49-00:00

It has been a busy couple of months since my last entry. As ever, there has been a lot of work to be done - my to do list is down to a mere 70 items. Not that I'm complaining of course - with the economy continuing its merry journey to the bottom, it's good to still have lots to do.

On a sadder note, my gran passed away last month, at the impressive age of 105. These days I try not to let this diary get too sentimental, but thought I would at least mention it, as she made the front page of the local paper. It's quite remarkable to think of all the changes she saw the world go through since she was born in 1906. For those reading this who knew us 10 years ago, she is now buried with my mum in Sevenoaks Weald.

For those who enjoyed my last entry about archery, I have taken part in 2 of the 3 archery competitions I mentioned, and really sucked at both. One was in gale-force winds (that's my excuse and I'm sticking with it), and although I had a new heavier bow for the other one, I struggled to reach 100 yards, ending up with a score that was almost half that of when I used my dad's enchanted bow - although I did get one arrow in the inner gold (some may say by more luck than judgement, but they would be mean-spirited sore losers), and I won �2.50! I will try not to spend it all at once.

I have several large projects scheduled over the next few months, so don't expect too many entries in the immediate future - but if things go to plan, once they're out of the way I should be able to start wrapping up some very long-term projects - and start releasing stuff after 9 years of code silence. Pencil in to check back at the start of January...

Archery

2011-08-17T11:43:34-00:00

My dad is an archery enthusiast, and so, therefore, am I.

Growing up I was vaguely aware that my dad was keen for me to take up the bow - subtle little things, like an archery target appearing in the middle of the lawn, or him saying "I am keen for you to take up archery" - but until recently I have always been too busy learning too many musical instruments, or being too tired from my strenuous days spent typing away at a keyboard.

However, I recently decided to take up archery, entirely of my own accord and without my dad pointing out that my local archery club ran beginners courses. Despite my reservations, I discovered that it was indeed a rather enjoyable pastime, not least because I got most of the arrows in or near the gold, the archery equivalent of a bullseye. Well, at least until I moved from a recurve bow to a longbow, and the distance went from 30 yards to 100. Now I mostly miss.

Regular readers will be aware that I have neglected once-cherished activities, such as this diary, ever since I realised there was a causal link between how much I worked and how many DVDs I could afford. I therefore doubt you will be surprised to hear that since the beginners course I have not made much time for archery practice.

In that light, I'm still not entirely sure why I have taken part in two archery competitions so far this year, nor why I plan to shoot in another three. Needless to say I embarrassed myself at the first, only managing to get 15 arrows on the target (the average was over 60). I did somewhat better in the second competition, despite a longer distance - but to be honest, I think that was mostly because my dad had lent me his bow, which I believe to be enchanted.

As my school reports always used to say, must try harder.

Still, at least there's one tenuous aspect of archery that I hope I'm not a total disaster at; I have just made a website for the Sevenoaks Archery Club. If you live in or around Sevenoaks and think you would enjoy walking around behind a target trying to find your arrows (I jest - unless you use a longbow, of course), get in touch with them - coaching is available for beginners most Saturdays. And yes, for those wondering how I became involved, the club was indeed recently founded by my dad.

Ubuntu 11.04 classic and separate x sessions

2011-07-03T11:46:20-00:00

Forgive me regular readers, it has been almost 3 months since my last diary post. As usual I have many excuses (lots of work, fair amount of DIY, and two holidays), but for once I have a lot to say, so I'll try to get writing real entries soon. For now though: I'm alive, and stay tuned for my next entry, which should be here in a day or so and will most likely be about cats.

Now for a public service announcement. Here's a helpful hint for the two other people in the world who use Ubuntu with an nvidia card and multiple monitors, but who have failed to get separate x sessions on 11.04 working.

Short version: restart compiz.

Update: this will apparently not help if you use Unity, so it only applies for Ubuntu classic mode.

I use two screens, and prefer separate x sessions to twinview, because the latter is pretty poor. It has always worked well in Ubuntu, but with the upgrade to Natty Narwhal my second screen stopped working properly.

Those of you who follow me on twitter will no doubt remember me complaining about Unity. I tried it when it first appeared in their netbook edition, and disabled it thinking it was a bad joke, so was astounded to find that in 11.04 canonical resolved none of the issues, but had somehow managed to find a way to make it worse, yet think it was good enough to be the default. I lasted 40 seconds before I switched to Ubuntu Classic, but in that time I did notice that windows on my second screen had no title bars. More Unity bugs, I assumed.

However, under Ubuntu Classic, windows in my separate x session still had no title bars or other window chrome, and weren't even focus-able. Second screen was completely useless. It did work if I restarted in "Ubuntu Classic no effects" mode, but that had various issues, not least forgetting to redraw half the screen.

After putting up with it for a couple of months, I finally gave up. Here's what to do to get the separate x session working under 11.04:

Create a script: vi fix_crappy_narwhal.sh

Put this in it:

#!/bin/bash
# After upgrading to Ubuntu 11.04, compiz fails to initialise the second screen
# This should sort it out
DISPLAY=:0.0 compiz --replace ccp &
DISPLAY=:0.1 compiz --replace ccp &

Save and quit
Make sure it's executable:
```
chmod 755 fix_crappy_narwhal.sh
```
Run it manually this time:
```
./fix_crappy_narwhal.sh
```
Add it to System -> Preferences -> Startup Applications for next time

Hopefully that's helpful to someone between now and October when Shuttleworth forces Unity on us in 11.10.

Reinventing the wheel

2011-03-09T14:45:06-00:00

Sometimes things are good enough. Sometimes you can work around the problems and make do. Sometimes you have to start from scratch.

Last week I was tapping away in SciTE, trying to overlook its obvious shortcomings as a text editor, as I always do, since it's the best that I can find. I was writing a program to tunnel telnet over HTTP, because neither protocol on their own was good enough for what I was doing. I was writing it in Python, which doesn't offend me as much as some languages, but it's still not perfect. I tried using socket libraries, but none of them fit my exact requirements, so I decided to write my own abstraction, despite the obvious design flaws in sockets that I would have to work around. After a while, I was happy that my program did what I needed, and decided it was time to make it run in the background as a proper daemon process. I then began my hunt for python daemon libraries - and it turned out that although there were many, they were either buggy, unfinished, or missing crucial features. Eventually I found one that looked reasonable enough to use, with only a couple of obscure bugs. Only there was no documentation.

If you have ever written a plugin or library that completely lacks documentation, I hate you.

What is the point of you spending hours working away on something, just to release it to the world in a state where someone will need a thorough understanding of the problem to go through your code line by line to figure out how to use it? What is the point of writing thousands of lines of code without leaving any comments? What is the point of you? Nothing. Stop wasting my time and get the hell off my planet. Sociopath.

It is at times like this that I often think it would be a good idea to write my own. From the past bitter experiences that are the many half-finished projects which litter my hard drives, I know this isn't always the right thing to do. Reinventing the wheel leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to not getting your code finished by the deadline. So this is something I generally try to avoid these days.

But despite my best intentions, it still seems that almost every non-trivial project I work on needs a semi-abandoned yet somehow best-of-class plugin or library where the developer has spent the past 17 months filling their blog with useless posts about how the next version will be way more awesome, which is why they can't be bothered to fix any of the bugs. Almost every non-trivial project I work on therefore involves writing an abstraction layer between my code and their dross, letting me work around the bugs I discover and fill the rest of the file with comments to the effect that if there is a god out there somewhere, please will they smite the developer who has inflicted this living hell on me, so that someone else spots an opportunity to develop a marginally better library that I can write a new abstraction layer for, and fill with some new and more inventive insults.

Sometimes things are good enough. Sometimes you can work around the problems. Like this time; I left it as it was, and ran it using upstart. That'll do, pig.

So if I solved that one, the reason for this post? Today I tried to get PIL to draw a rectangle with a 4px outline.

Well, actually I was trying to get it to draw a placeholder image, a simple rectangle with diagonal lines from the corners. I wanted it to use 1px lines, but since I didn't want it to look ugly and PIL can't draw anti-aliased diagonal lines, I had to supersample, meaning wider lines. With such a well-established and mature library such as PIL, you can reasonably expect these sort of common requirements to be met, and the diagonal lines were indeed a couple of lines using reasonably sensible arguments. But for some reason the developers clearly decided that setting a width on the outline of a rectangle was something that nobody would ever want to do.

Do I sigh as normal, leave a comment or two in my code, and work around it by drawing several lines or one rectangle inside another? No. Enough is enough. Developers of the world should be able to expect two similar functions in a library to accept similar arguments, particularly when it comes to setting the width of the lines on a rectangle. It is time to draw a line. Hur hur.

I therefore announce with much pride and delight, that I have decided to write my own version of PIL. One which doesn't suck.

My image library will have a sensible and consistent approach regarding line width, and will anti-alias your diagonal lines for you, if you want. While on the subject of images, I've never liked the common image formats, so my imaging library will use its own format, which is specifically designed not to suck. Of course though, there seems little point writing it in an imperfect language such as Python, so I will be writing my own programming language too. Since there are no decent text editors available, I'll also write a new one of those.

While I'm at it, I figure I may as well come up with replacements for HTTP, telnet, sockets, and every other nonsense aspect of these terrible modern-day operating systems, so I can rewrite my program from last week in a more sensible way. In fact, I will use my new programming language to develop a new operating system, which will be better, faster, stronger. Although for a long time I've thought that machine code is terribly inefficient, so I think I may need to develop my own CPU too. I can probably do something to improve GPUs at the same time, so in fact, I'll be developing my own computer architecture to make sure that my image library will always be operating at peak efficiency.

Actually, I've always suspected semiconductors are a crap way to do microelectronics. I should probably start there.

A busy couple of months

2011-01-31T19:02:23-00:00

Once again, the diary has fallen silent while I've been caught up with other things.

Work-wise, I've nearly finished the CMS, and I've written a bunch of Django components as part of it, which I plan to release gradually as separate projects, so I'm hoping they should prove interesting to those of you who like that sort of thing. I also have several other projects that are nearly there (sysadmin, javascript etc), so I'm hoping 2011 will be full of releases, although that depends on how much real work I've got on.

Of course, I'll need somewhere to release this stuff, so I'm also in the process of refurbishing radiac.net to focus on personal stuff, and preparing to launch a sister site where I plan to move my code projects.

Other than work, my voyage into the world of DIY continues. In the past few months I have partially boarded the loft, regrouted and resealed the shower, decorated most of the rooms, drilled lots of holes in walls, and soon I will be replacing the bathroom taps - if I can ever figure out how to turn the hot water off.

Snow!

2010-12-02T08:53:09-00:00

Well, it's that time of year again, where radiac.net gets covered in snow! And unlike most years, the UK has joined this esteemed site in getting covered in snow too!

Apart from Cheltenham, that is. Yes, that's right, while the rest of the country has been plunged into a delightfully extraordinary early winter and has been getting 10cm of snow a day, which everyone on TV and Twitter has felt compelled to point out with snow reports and photos, we managed a half-assed sprinkling of white ice on Monday, and haven't had anything since.

Well, apart from the bone-freezing cold. We're getting plenty of that. It's times like this I really wish I hadn't picked up Tristan's habit of going out to the shop in all weathers wearing shorts and flip-flops.

10 for 10 on 10/10/10 at 10:10:10

2010-10-10T10:10:10-00:00

Hurrah! Happy 10/10/10 10:10:10 second, everyone! I had announced that to commemorate this amazing moment in time, and to celebrate (very approximately) 10 years of the very finest site on the entire internet (this one), I would release 10 of the projects that I have been working on! But since then, I had an even better idea, one that is about 10 times as awesome: instead of releasing 10 projects, I would release one project which is 10 years old! Yeah!

This decision has absolutely nothing to do with several unexpected and time-consuming work projects, and is in no way linked to not having 10 projects ready for release.

Without further ado, I proudly present my BBC BASIC full WIMP skeleton library! Not only that, but I also threw in my light WIMP skeleton library, and am re-releasing DImager - a handy disk image reader/writer in its own right, but it is also written using the full WIMP skeleton library, so will serve as a useful reference in your own projects!

What's more, if your browser supports JavaScript, you can see the source code in all its syntax-highlighted glory! Although if you find this code useful, chances are you'll need to find a more powerful computer - try borrowing a friend's mobile phone.

For anyone looking to add syntax highlighting to their BBC BASIC source, you're welcome to grab my BBC BASIC VI brush for SyntaxHighlighter! Check me out, I just keep on giving!

It took me a while to get the tokenised BBC BASIC files on there - I couldn't get Ubuntu to mount the floppy disk. There is also some documentation, but it's been 10 years, so do forgive me if it's a little high-level.

Awesome or what?! Bring on 11/11/11 11:11:11!

Chancel Repair Liability is Fun

2010-09-15T12:27:39-00:00

If you have bought a house in a church parish since 2003, you will probably have already heard about chancel repair liability. In fact, if you have bought a house in England at all in the past 8 years or so, there's a fair chance you'll have heard about this, as it affects about 40% of properties. For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, chancel repair liability basically means that when you buy your house, you could also be buying the responsibility for the upkeep of your local church, so you can buy insurance to protect yourself. But when I looked into it, the details amused me so much that I thought I'd pass on what I'd found out.

It's super-fun but takes some explaining, so bear with me.

The house we have bought is in a church parish. Because it's in a parish, there's a risk that it's on glebe land. Glebe land is land that was, back in the day (as in the Norman Conquest days), set aside by the church to provide income for the rector of the church. When the parish church needs repairing, the congregation are responsible for where they sit at the west end, and the rector is responsible for the chancel at the east end of the church - and he gets his money to do that from the glebe land tied to the parish.

All very well and good, back in the day, when you had to donate 9/10ths of your income to the church to avoid going to hell. However, nobody thought to do away with glebe land at any point since then, so all over England there are still parcels of land in parishes which are still classed as glebe land. And these are no longer owned by the church - when Henry VIII broke it up and sold off the land, he sold the liability with it, creating lay-rectors.

The best bit is that none of the maps marking out the glebe land were accurate, given they were mostly drawn from memory by monks in the 13th century, and the maps haven't been kept up-to-date because most people had forgotten about glebes until 2002, so these days figuring out what is glebe land is mostly guesswork, and involves trawling through ancient manuscripts in the national archives at Kew.

That's irrelevant though, because as it stands, the law says that there is a chance that if you buy a house anywhere in a parish, you're actually buying a house that's on glebe land. And if the east end of the parish church needs repairing, you are liable for the costs.

This came up in a case in 2003. The people who owned the land were asked to pay something like �10,000 for repairs to the church; they said they'd pay, as long as the church agreed to give up its rights to charge them again in the future, which seems like a extremely generous and fair approach in this day and age. However, the church said no, and it took them to court. During the course of the court case they found out the foundations of the church needed replacing etc, and the repair bill reached about �240,000. The owners lost the case, had to pay for repairs, plus the legal costs of around �200,000. And their liability remains, should the church need any further work - so nobody in their right mind would buy that house now. Not only have they lost almost half a million over the repairs, but their house is now unsaleable and therefore essentially worthless.

As a result of this, there is now a booming industry in chancel repair liability insurance. We'll come back to this in a moment.

When this court case reached the press, there was a bit of Daily Mail outrage and the government moved to appease the people by putting a stop to it. They did what Labour did best (apart from going to war), and passed another law saying that the church has to register interest in any property built on glebe land before the property is sold for the first time after October 13, 2013. At least there is an end in sight. However, that still leaves the next 3 years, plus however long it takes to sell your house after 2013.

So now when you're buying a house, your solicitor will usually carry out a chancel liability check, and this will tell you whether or not you are in a parish. At that point, you are able to take out an insurance policy to protect you should it turn out that your property is on glebe land and the church registers an interest in it.

Loving this yet? It gets better.

At this point, you may think that it would be a good idea to determine whether your property is on glebe land before you take out insurance. However, if you do that and find out your property is on glebe land, there is no longer a potential liability - it is now a definite liability, and you can no longer buy insurance. Remember, you can insure against the risk it is liable, not against the risk the church may claim.

Not only that, but by law you now have to inform the land registry, the church will find out, and you're now going to the top of their hit list when their roof leaks. And of course when you come to sell your property, the liability - the unlimited liability that remains for the rest of time - will have a significant negative effect on the value of your property. So now you're not only guarding against repair costs for the church, but you also have to protect the value of the property - when you come to sell it, you can then point at the insurance and say "Don't worry, this liability is neutralised".

Well then, let's buy a chancel repair liability insurance policy, you say to yourself. They come in many different flavours; 25 year purchaser, 25 year successor, 35 year purchaser, 35 year successor, in perpetuity purchaser, in perpetuity successor and so on. The first obvious problem with this is that if the church does register an interest in the property and I didn't buy a successor policy, although I wouldn't be at risk for repair costs, I would not be able to transfer the policy to the next owner. So what, you say, that's their problem isn't it?

Well, imagine you go look around two properties; they are both 3 bedrooms, both in good condition, and then in the small print you find out that one of them comes with a free gift of unlimited liability to the church, the purchaser policy can't be transferred, and you can't get insurance because the liability has already been declared. You'll be buying the other property; the house with liability is now worthless, so the purchaser policies are essentially worthless.

But if you buy the 25 year or 35 year successor policy and the church declares an interest, in 25 or 35 years the property will be liable, so the value will drop, so those are again essentially worthless. So as far as I can tell, 5 of 6 types of policy these people are selling aren't worth the paper they're written on.

If you're not getting screwed by the priests, it's the lawyers.

Now this is a slightly misleading explanation, because I've overlooked the fact that these policies include cover for diminution of the value of the property - if the property is unsaleable, you would just need to make sure the insurance covers the value of your property, and provided you don't plan on moving in the next 3 years the purchaser cover will be fine. Of course though, you'd presumably get the money but keep the land as nobody would want to take the liability off your hands; you'd have no choice but to burn the house down and try to donate the land back to the church. And pay for whatever claims they made in the meantime.

But we want to be covered, so let's forge ahead and go for the in-perpitutity successor insurance; now we have to decide how much coverage we want to go for. The natural choice would seem to be the cost to repair or replace what is presumably a historic building. But remember, this is for the rest of time, so there is no limit to the liability. The rector could cancel his insurance policy, burn down the church, bill me for the repairs, burn it down again, bill me for the repairs, over and over and over again. He could be the start of a great family with thousands of descendants, all who become arsonist rectors at my local church. True, that would probably be illegal, but only if they got caught with petrol and a lighter, and only if their shares in the local building company were discovered. But I digress. The point is, there is no limit to how much money the church can ask for.

The best bit is that we have no idea how many properties are built on glebe land, so we don't know what share of any cost we would have to pay. We could be the only property in the town, or the whole of the parish could be glebe land. There is no way of telling.

So, you now have to buy an insurance policy for a potential, unconfirmable liability, without having any idea what your share in it would be, and with it having no limit in terms of cost or time.

Which is why it is amazing they sell insurance at all. The more you look into this, the more it feels like a scam - it seems like the insurance companies are just using the law to print money. They point at the test case and say "Look, it cost them half a million", but that was extreme, as from what I understand it was a house next to a derelict church in the middle of nowhere. And it was called "Glebe Farm". Now, there are unconfirmed reports that the church has employed a fleet of solicitors to make sure that as many properties are registered as possible - but the reports are unconfirmed, and usually appear on the websites that are selling insurance.

Having said all that, the cover isn't very expensive - for the "expensive" in-perpituity successor cover up to �500,000 we were quoted a one-off cost of �170; cover up to �3,000,000 for �370. If you're buying a house in England these days it's usually going to be well in excess of �100,000; the solicitor does a chancel check, and surprise, you're in a parish; now, would you like to pay �50 for 25 years cover? In the context of a �100,000+ purchase, what's �50 to safeguard the value? You'd pay that, right? After all, who's going to pull out of a purchase over that little extra cost when every other house in the town has the same potential liability? So pretty much everyone buying a house in a parish between 2003 and 2013 will buy a policy, there are approximately 10 million homes in parishes, and houses are re-sold at an average of 7-8 years - that is a lot of money for the insurance companies.

But at such a low cost for such a high cover policy, the insurance companies can't be expecting to pay out on all that many of them - they'll make a loss even if 1 in 2850 people makes a claim, before you take into account their costs. And even at those odds you're at least 120 times more likely to die in a road accident. I'm not a gambling man, but those are pretty good odds.

So on balance, you could be forgiven for thinking that this is a bit of a scam. Now, bear in mind that I'm not a lawyer or a historian, so you would be insane to use my ramblings to influence your decision on whether or not to take out chancel repair liability, so don't - I can't be held responsible for you ending up owing millions to your local arsonist rector. And of course, if your mortgage company is demanding that you take out insurance, you don't have much choice in the matter. However, I think my point has been made.

For the curious, we kept our �300 and spent it on a new fridge.

Bear in mind that the above article is my somewhat sensational take on the issue; I am not a lawyer, so I may even have got some details wrong, as unlikely as that sounds.

It looks like there are some great comments below, but take everything with a pinch of salt. If you want to read a more informed and balanced exploration of the subject, I suggest you get the book Chancel Repair Liability: How to Research It, and consult your own solicitor before making any decisions.

Tapatiotastic

2010-09-07T10:44:54-00:00

I have been searching for a particular mexican sauce ever since Tristan brought it over and got me hooked on it in 2002; I have tried many alternatives, but they just aren't good enough. In 8 years, the only success was during a month in California with Leela last year, where I insisted on trawling every supermarket we passed, and still only turned up two bottles.

However, I have finally found a ~~dealer~~ supplier in the UK - Hot Headz import and sell the delicious Tapatio hot sauce. Not only that, but the bottles were half price!

Words cannot describe how delighted I was at 7.30 this morning when this arrived:

Mmmm. That may look like a lot, but it tastes so good. I anticipate another order around Christmas.

Quesadilla time!

New Phone, or How much I like Apple

2010-08-27T08:25:21-00:00

A couple of months ago, in the depths of my diary-less house move, I purchased a new phone.

I have repeatedly refused to join the legions of Apple faithful. At first it was because their products were overpriced and incompatible with Windows, and if I was going to buy an overpriced computer that was incompatible with Windows, then it was damned-well going to be something made by Acorn, which were superior in every way.

But once it was clear that there was no future in Acorn, and that I'd have to back Apple if I wanted to continue to fight the Microsoft machine we all so hated, I still refused, and bought a Risc PC anyway, because it was still superior in every way. I did come close to reluctantly buying a Mac Mini as a development machine, but then they released Safari for Windows - thanks, Apple!

Then there was the iPod. I went for the Rio Carbon, which was superior in every way. And of course, we can't forget my only trip into an Apple store, when I humiliated the owner by showing him that his best Mac book laptop things were inferior to my Sony Vaio in every way.

Which brings us on to the original iPhone. I must admit, I was tempted by it when I saw that touch screen, but I soon snapped out of it and bought myself an N95 8GB - it had 3G that I could hook my laptop up to out of the box, a removable battery, a front-facing camera, full multitasking, blah blah blah - superior in almost every way. Not to mention that it was a lot more open - plug it in and it shows up as a drive, no iTunes nonsense required. Oh yes - and cheaper.

Roll the clock forward a couple of years, and the iPhone has become the best phone on the market, so I had no choice but - oh, wait, no, that would be the HTC Desire, which does everything the iPhone does, only better. And isn't made by Apple. So I bought an HTC Desire.

A few weeks after I bought my phone, Apple announced that they would be releasing the iPhone 4, which would be absolutely awesome and superior to every other phone on the market. It's testimony to Jobs' ability as a salesman (or the gullibility of his market) that he managed to spin multi-tasking and folders as major innovations, received to cheers and wild applause; my N95 did that, and my Desire does that too. As well as being able to hook it up to my laptop out of the box, having a removable battery, blah blah blah - superior in almost every way. Not to mention that it is a lot more open. Oh yes - and cheaper. As for video calls, my N95 did that too, and it's not something I will miss in the slightest - although I did once use the front-facing camera to check I had combed my hair, so I guess they're not entirely useless.

But still, it's hardly the world-beating phone Apple says it is. Given their actions recently over rejecting apps without good reason and banning anything related to flash outright, I still can't understand why people are getting so excited about a device that at best brings the iPhone up to recent Android offerings, and will no doubt be surpassed again in the near future - some would argue it has already. But people do buy, and in amazing numbers.

I think that's what gets me most - Apple keep doing things that only benefit Apple, then they tell their users that it's all to improve the experience, the users lap it up and cheer, and go buy more inferior overpriced products. It's the attitude that Apple could never possibly ever do anything wrong - the fanboys would find a positive way to spin the news if it came out that Apple source their silicon by grinding up the bones of baby unicorns.

But then I guess some people just prefer Apple, and that's fine - if you're happy with your inferior iPhone, paying the Apple tax, having to use iTunes for all your data transfer needs, and needing to have your fourth and fifth fingers surgically removed to get decent signal, then fair play to you.

We Love BT 2010

2010-08-12T20:09:03-00:00

I've been moving house again, so that can mean only one thing - yes, that's right! It's time for another episode in this long-running series that I affectionately refer to as "BT's Continued Reign of Relentless Incompetence".

Knowing what has happened in the past whenever I have dealt with BT, I thought this time we'd just keep things simple. I rang their house moving line, and said that I'm moving to a house half a mile down the road, gave them the date, and said that because we'd be on the same exchange, we'd like to keep our number. Sadly they couldn't process my order that day because their systems were down, so I rang back the next day. That time the system was up but she didn't know how to use it, so kept me on hold for about 20-30 minutes while she asked for help. But as Ben said, a house move is such a rare event, how can they possibly be expected to cope?

Eventually the order went through, she assured me we could keep the number, and as the days progressed I checked the system to make sure that the order stayed there (unlike last time). I was up at the new house on the day of the move, so I kept checking the system to see how it was going. When it said the order had been completed, I was very excited and plugged the phone in to discover that the line was dead. I thought maybe it was just taking a while to go through - ever the optimist - but when I got home that evening, I discovered that the other line was dead too. Well, not entirely dead; there was a dial tone there, we just couldn't make or receive any calls. Nice.

I rang customer services to find out what was going on. I ended up speaking to someone in a call center in India; I wouldn't mind this if the people on the other end of the phone had a firm grasp of the english language, but it's often the case that as soon as you start trying to go into the details of a complicated issue with them, they get a bit confused; I explained my situation, and after a long pause, I was not entirely thrilled to hear "So, you want to move house?"

(I must admit that I was delighted when this call was followed up by a BT survey - particularly the bit when they asked me if I had any comments, that was fun)

I registered a fault; "it looks like it might be a problem in the exchange", they said. Gosh, really? I whined at various departments in BT, but nothing happened until the faults team looked at it the next day. I plugged it in and it worked! They had managed it, I thought! Until I rang my mobile, and discovered they had changed the number. Oh well, can't have everything. I made enquiries about it, but they said it would take 3 working days to change the number over, and I was keen to order ADSL, so I decided it would be best keep BT out of it, and started telling people my new number.

No sooner had my order with my new ISP gone through than I recieved an email from BT customer services, replying to one of my queries from a few days before. They apologised, and explained that my phone number should have been moved across, so they had helpfully put in an order to have the number changed back, due to happen on the day before my scheduled ADSL activation. BT assured me that the change would only be in their database, and wouldn't affect my ADSL order - which begs the question, if it's just a database change, how come it takes 3 days?

Miraculously, the number change went through without any problems, didn't interfere with my ADSL order, and everything was brilliant! At least until the next day when they tried to activate my ADSL, when they turned off my line again instead.

I registered another fault; "it looks like it might be a problem in the exchange", they said. Sounds familiar. It's almost as if there are two people working in our exchange - the provisions guy prefers playing Farmville to doing actual work, so just turns off the phone lines in question and leaves it for the faults guy to fix the next day. When the fault guy got round to looking at my ticket 3 days later, he flicked a switch and suddenly it was all working. Awesome.

Only 12 days to get it working this time, which must be some kind of record for them - certainly is when dealing with me. I must admit that I was pleasantly surprised at how easily it had all gone. Almost too easy...

Needless to say, their incompetence didn't end there. In a last-minute twist of truly BT-level corporate efficiency, a few days later I discovered that if you tell BT that you are moving house and want your phone line moved, they assume that you only want your phone line to move, and that you want your billing address to stay the same. After realising why I hadn't had any of the promised post, and a mere half an hour on hold, I managed to explain the situation to someone in another distant call center, who assures me that the address is now all up-to-date. Time will tell.

Many of the people I have spoken to throughout this process, and on previous BT-related escapades, have seemed like very nice people. Based on their answers to questions, they sound intelligent and understand the area they are working in, but are crippled by confusing systems which make their jobs harder than they need to be. It astounds me that something so common as moving house can be so complicated to get screwed up in 5 different ways, and I think it's quite telling that in over 10 years of dealing with BT, the only thing that has got better is their process for registering and dealing with faults.

Personally I'd just prefer it if they got something right the first time.

Commemorating 10 years of radiac.net with 10 for 10

2010-08-07T11:18:01-00:00

As the observant among you may have noticed, my diary has been silent for several months. Normally I manage to squeeze at least one inane entry out celebrating the inane happenings of someone who spends their life in a basement, but this period of silence has been because I've had too much to say rather than not enough. It has been a very busy, exciting and stressful time, and I have several entries written in draft form on my other computer, which I'll post up over the coming days and weeks. However, I can't get at the other computer at the moment, because it's unplugged and buried beneath several boxes, as a result of us moving house.

This news will not come as a shock to those of you who follow me on twitter, but Leela and I have bought a house after 18 months of searching, and we have spent every free waking minute since completion getting ready to move - painting rooms, tidying up after the electrician who put network cables into the walls, and I tiled the kitchen floor. We moved all our stuff over last weekend, spent this week cleaning the flat and finishing off the work here, and finally handed over our flat keys yesterday, just before taking delivery of our fridge and installing my vodka in it - the sign that we have finally completed our move (ignoring the piles of unopened booxes, of course). But more about all that later.

As the silence of the past few months will attest, the busy house-moving activities, combined with an ever-increasing workload, meant that I passed right over the 10 year anniversary of radiac.net. I launched this site on June 17th 2000, and although lately the frequency of my entries has dropped off significantly as real life has got in the way, it has been an important part of my life online and off over the years, and I still fully intend to restore this site to its former glory.

Which leads me to the somewhat foolhardy announcement of 10 for 10 on 10/10/10 at 10:10:10.

What is this, you ask? I'm not suffering from delusions of grandeur, but I feel 10 years of any site being active is worthy of celebration. Those of you who visit my site rather than reading the RSS feed may have noticed that this year I've had a countdown in my sidebar for 10:10:10 on 10/10/10. You may also have noticed that despite always saying how I'm working on things, I haven't actually publicly released anything since the last version of Fluffy the Forking Server in 2002. Add these up together, and there is only one possible thing for me to do: at 10:10:10 on 10/10/10, I will be releasing 10 projects to commemorate 10 years of radiac.net.

These projects will range from small libraries to larger server-side applications. Given recent house-moving delays, I may not have as many of the big ones ready in time as I had hoped when I had this idea at the start of the year, but I'll try to keep fillers to a minimum, there should be a few things in there which show what I've really been up to, and I hope that there will be something of interest to all of my friends and visitors.

Now, stand by for a few entries as I work through my drafts from the past year.