… make sure you’ve got a friend.

If only someone had told me! The IP camera up the lighthouse plugs into a WiFi Access Point configured as a range extender, which through an external antenna connects to another Access Point with external antenna a mile away on my roof and into my home network giving internet connectivity to upload a picture every ten minutes.

But any tiny change I make to my home network (like changing subnet ranges ) seems to break the link, and to fix it means lugging a laptop up the 112 steps of the lighthouse. And if you’ve missed something vital at the other end (like turning something on) it’s a long walk down, back home, back to the lighthouse, and all the way up to the top to try again.

I spent a whole afternoon trying to get things running again after (stupidly) trying to upgrade encryption from WEP to WPA. It doesn’t make sense that you can’t configure the wireless side of these these over a wireless connection!

So, yes, it would be so much easier if there was someone else (or another me?) at the other end with walky talky. 10-4?

Probably unfortunate given what I do for a living, but there you go. Actually, I’ve always wondered if it’s a useful trait - I’m not usually a proponent of technology for technologies sake - if I can solve a problem without getting high-tech, that’s my preferred option.

I may just be feeling paranoid, but it seems that the bytes have been ganging up on me recently - I have a growing number of niggling problems that refuse to go away. The odd challenge can be quite enjoyable, as long as the implication of not fixing it is not too severe - but you soon start to realise how much we have grown to depend on email / google / multimap / skype and all the other trimmings when you can’t get them.

And worse, it almost makes me feel physically ill when I start to feel I’m not able to keep it all running - when things go wrong faster than I fix them; when the silicon is ruling me rather than vice versa. Is judgement day coming?

Having decided to give Vista a chance, how is it repaying me? My machine has started bluescreening two or three times a day at the most infuriating times (like when you’re blogging about it). I’m going to live with it for a bit longer rather than doing anything rash - ongoing.

The lighthouse webcam crashed earlier in the week - usually gets sorted by turning the power off then on again, but from inside the lantern there was no sign of life outside - meaning a second trip with more keys, tools etc. Turns out it was a blown fuse so nothing major - fixed.

I’ve replaced the firewall in my modem / router with a mini-ITX box running IPCop - the idea was to secure my network a bit better while allowing certain individuals more access to growing numbers of devices I’m hosting - but it absolutely refuses to let OpenVPN work as advertised, and I’ve loved that application when I’ve used it in the past - ongoing. While fiddling I did muck something up with the blue network meaning it wouldn’t grant dhcp leases to wireless devices - fixed (phew). Postscript - OpenVPN is now working perfectly - turned out it was a problem within the network and not with ipcop - zerina is a great plugin that makes managing OpenVPN a doddle.

My Acer easyStore NAS is pretty much up and running now, but I still have a niggle where every time I restart my laptop the backup application can’t then see the drive - you have to remove protection then re-protect to run a backup, meaning you have to do it manually every time - that wasn’t the idea but I haven’t been bored enough to try and get some more support after the last time - ongoing.

Do things like dodgy starter solenoids on my truck count as computer problems? Still adding to my irritation though - hopefully this week I’ll crack more issues than arise and get back to a tolerable level of ’silicon rage’.

Of course I’m my own worst enemy - I will not leave well alone, and have to keep fiddling or trying to improve things. But the moral of this story (if there is one) - don’t let the machines grind you down!

I’m sorry that my first post in so long has to be a rant, but having spent hours on the phone to various technical support lines I have to vent…

Worrying about the vulnerability of work on my new Dell laptop, and wanting a bit of resilient storage to boot, I bought an Acer Altos easyStore NAS device which comes bundled with a bit of software called DiskSafe Express. I know there are many ways of doing this, but I thought this was a ‘proper’ one (should be for the money) but what I wanted was a setup that automatically keeps a current image of my entire drive somewhere safe, without me having to think about it.

What the easyStore appears to be is a funky little box running linux, with 4×250GB SATA drives in hot swap carriers, a gigabit ethernet connection and 2 USB ports for additional drives. The web interface allows various configurations of drives, but mine out of the box had the drives arranged in a RAID5 array giving just under 700GB storage.

Reading the instructions, most of this is left free to be used to maintain ‘backups’ - you have to specifically allocate space for network shares, and it chonks away when you assign more - advising you don’t increase any share by more than 20GB at a time. So this ‘backup’ thing is quite integral to the device it would appear, and I’m happy so far.

When I come to install the bundled software on my Vista Business laptop is when the trouble starts - it complains ‘Microsoft iSCSI Initiator v2.00 or later is not currently installed’ and sends you to the Microsoft site to download it - but on that site amongst the list of supported operated systems Vista is missing - it appears iSCSI Initiator is included in the Vista distribution. Downloading it anyway doesn’t do any good because if you try and run that installer you get ‘Setup could not find the update.inf file needed to update your system’.

SO Googling etc. around iSCSI and Vista doesn’t shed much light, so as a desperate last resort I try and get some technical support from Acer. I hope I heard a sympathetic groan there - because my forehead has brick shaped imprints - I was directed to a premium rate phone number for technical support so I created a ticket online. Two days later a reply comes back saying I was probably downloading an upgrade from Microsoft, try the full software or failing that ‘discuss the problem further with Microsoft’.

Microsoft quickly determine that Vista was ready installed on my new machine when I got it so I should contact the manufacturer for support, or they were happy to help, for something like £46. Dell were very friendly, but were unable to offer any meaningful advice on an obscure aspect of Vista - the most useful thing they suggested was I get an external hard drive which could back up my entire computer ‘at the push of a button’.

What I’ve read about iSCSI sounds very good - if it can be got to work, because it’s supposed to enable direct communication to a physical device on a IP remote network device (block level I/O). These network devices are typically SAN (Storage Area Networks) or NAS (Network Attached Storage).

I’m going to see how much further I can get as I’m sure I can’t be the first person to try and use this kit on Vista, but I’m already dreaming up an alternate strategy - so much for thinking this would be easy.

Postscript: Although top marks go to Dell for ringing me back this morning to see how I was doing, taking details and promising to find out what they could for me, duffers award goes to Acer support. Fiddling with the box management pages I found an obscure link to Acer support. There was an FAQ section which offered no help whatsoever, but then I spotted a ‘Windows Vista’ link on the left taking me to a secret world of downloads to make Acer products work with Vista including … an updated DiskSafe Express - it looks like it’s installing … to be continued (no doubt)

From Critical Faculty Dojo:

“It is stupid, even bordering on criminally irresponsible, to just throw their [Natural England's] hands in the air and just abandon large swathes of the country to the sea until we are absolutely forced to - and there is no guarantee that this will in fact happen.”

Amen!

I’ve discovered, there are increasing questions being asked about the new quango Natural England that took over from Countryside Agency and English Nature.

No matter how well meaning and reasoned arguments may be for how best to cope with unsustainable defences, they’re all based on the premise that the defences can’t be maintained. My position is that they must be maintained until it’s impossible - we may not be able to stop nature, but we can at least give it a bloody good fight.

As for these suspicious motives wishing to abandon swathes of coastal communities - I wonder how much Horlicks it takes them to get to sleep at night?

Last weekend there was a splurge of national publicity over a leaked document that considered options including allowing the sea to breach defences between Horsey and Winterton, flooding low-lying areas as far inland as Potter Heigham and Stalham, where new sea walls would be built. The villages of Eccles, Sea Palling, Waxham, Horsey, Hickling and Potter Heigham, as well as parts of Somerton, would be lost to the sea.

It is one of the options that were discussed behind closed doors at a conference in Norwich on climate change in the Broads, organised by Natural England and attended by representatives of the Environment Agency, Broads Authority and Norfolk County Council, plus other organisations.

Listed as option four in the document outlining the proposals for the Upper Thurne basin in the face of rising sea levels: “Two retreated defences would be built at Potter Heigham and Stalham and land seaward of these would be breached, creating an embayment on the coast between Eccles-on-Sea and Winterton Ness,” it reads. “The total flooded areas would thus be approximately 6,500ha. The broads (Martham, Horsey, Heigham Sound and Hickling) would become inundated by the sea, fen vegetation would be lost. It is likely over time that a spit would develop behind which coastal and inter-tidal habitats would develop.”

The document says that maintaining coastal defences in their current position will become “increasingly difficult and expensive”, adding: “The increasingly unsustainable nature of the Horsey to Winterton frontage beyond the next 20-50 years thus opens up the possibility of re-aligning the coast as described above within this timeframe.” It continues: “There is an argument for progressing straight to option four, for it can also be argued that by selecting a radical option now, the right messages about the scale and severity of the impacts of climate change is delivered to the public. However, a decision to progress immediately to option four is likely to be met with strong political resistance and the up-front costs would be large.”

The first option listed is to do nothing to adapt to climate change: to fail to maintain coastal defences and inland flood embankments, allowing them to fall into disrepair and be breached by the River Thurne and the sea.

The second is to hold the line, the current policy of the Environment Agency. This involves maintaining the sea defences and flood embankments in their current positions. Under this option, saline intrusion - something all farmers fear - would get worse as sea water passes under the coastal dunes.

The third option is to adapt the line: allow the sea to flood some places while building barriers and embankments to protect other parts.

Now this isn’t actually a new plan - it was was initially drawn up by English Nature and the Environment Agency in 2003 under what was called the Coastal Habitat Management Plan (CHaMPS) for the Winterton Dunes. It has been discussed widely by those involved in coastal issues and is not some new secret conspiracy, it just hasn’t grabbed mass public attention before.

Neither is it a certainty - the people who drafted it and considered it’s merits are mainly doing so from a viewpoint of wildlife, environment and habitat. Little or no thought has gone into the practical effects on economy, infrastructure or practicalities, let alone trifling subjects such as human rights.

I’m not about to add my voice to those who are slamming the Eastern Daily Press for initially publishing the story - I believe they are doing their usual top class job of responsible journalism - the public in Norfolk have a right to know what is being discussed that could impact their lives, irrespective of whether or not it could / will happen, it’s being talked about.

At Happisburgh, we can clearly demonstrate the result of taking the view ‘it will never happen here’ - because it can and probably, eventually, will. What we’re fighting here is a growing reluctance to expend effort and resource defending our vulnerable coastline against an encroaching sea.

I appreciate the view that we can’t fight the sea forever; that there must be some land lost, but I have seen absolutely no evidence that anyone has considered how we can actually allow that to happen in a controlled fashion with due regard for fairness and social justice to those that are affected by that move.

Despite all their rhetoric and considered sound-bites, at Happisburgh we have found out what it means in reality - that those on the ground are just abandoned to ‘take on the chin’ the loss of property, livelihoods and communities, and without even any sign of appreciation for the sacrifice were being expected to make, if indeed they even realise we are making a sacrifice.

Many in Happisburgh had their head in the sand about losses on the cliff: “It will stop before it gets to the village” they said until we lost the lifeboat ramp to the beach - then the village got behind the fight. Neighbouring villages said “poor Happisburgh, but it will never happen here” until the publication of the second generation Shoreline Management Plan announced the intention to abandon defences of all but Sheringham, Cromer, Lowestoft and Great Yarmouth. Now there is vocal campaigning from Overstrand and Scratby and others now those communities realise what’s in store for them if we don’t stand up and be counted.

I hope this news finally gets the rest of Norfolk to wake up and see what’s in store for our beloved county if we don’t stop these faceless bureaucrats.

Somewhere between defending all of our coastline forever, and retreating sea walls to a more defendable position (Norwich?) there lies the path that will be followed. And I bet if it’s not a formal ‘do nothing’ strategy then that will still be effectively what happens - it costs them less! But next time a storm surge comes down our coast we may not be as lucky as we were last November - this time the sea might get in somewhere and we could have a major disaster.

If this were a fight against a new airport runway, victory is preventing them doing it - here we have to stop them not doing something - in the mean time they’re winning.

We cannot allow this to happen - we have to fight, now!

A piece by Raphael Pontual in this months .net magazine led me to think about what it is I do, and how I expect to compete in a marketplace filled with those who spend far more time than me keeping up with current techniques and technologies.

I’m only just starting to really get into jQuery and design patterns, and I have to make an effort not to keep reverting to old tried and trusted old skool strategies that have worked for me in the past.

The piece I believe was more aimed at design, but a relevant excerpt is: “It might seem crazy, but the older and busier you become, the less time you have to find out about the latest trends and adapting to the new graphics software. Meanwhile, there’s always a new generation that spends hours learning everything about the latest creativity suite.”

I’m a developer, not a designer, but I get what he’s saying, that successful professionals concentrate on identifying and solving problems, rather than just throwing gadgets and glitz at a project. A design for the sake of it is nonsense, it has to solve the problem, and the best solution is often the simplest whether it uses the latest whizzbang2.0 bling or not.

A good friend Sujvala kindly left a comment on an old post of mine ‘I want to be Clarkson‘ and one opinion he has is that I have an ‘infantile enjoyment of new toys‘ yet I’m ‘old enough to keep the safety catch on whatever is being tinkered with‘. I really like that.

Yes I do like toys, especially well thought out ones, but there’s a big difference between a toy and a tool. A tool has to earn a living.

The challenge when developing for the web, or making a fibreglass mould, or fitting a satellite dish (or most of my other previous employments) is to identify what it is you’re trying to do, what the challenges are, and what the most appropriate methods are to solve those problems.

Tried and tested (and safe) often beats bleeding edge, although you always have to be open to the idea. As Confucius said “It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop.“

It’s been a long time since I’ve been on Happisburgh beach, which is a real shame since I live less than a mile away, but I often walk the dog heading inland which takes me half an hour, rather than the two hours or so if I go to the cliff because I get carried away.

There was more than the usual amount of flotsam washed up at Low Light, reminding me of David Shukman’s article on BBC news about the new battle for Midway - plastic rubbish washing up and killing Alabatrosses (Albatrosii?)

It is absolutely disgusting the amount of crap we leave behind in our environment - I often return from walks with hands full of plastic bags and such like found in hedges and on the side of the road. That we’re also polluting somewhere so remote is horrifying!

I don’t know what the answer is, but there must be a way to reduce our consumption of plastic, to recycle more, and to better dispose of what we don’t / can’t recycle.

Whatever the reason behind it, there’s no doubt that Happisburgh has a bit of a problem. The fact is that without maintained coastal defences, the sea is reclaiming land it has been denied for so long, and those unlucky enough to be living there at the time are paying the price for the decision to stop maintenance of the defences.Many cite Happisburgh as an example of the impact of Climate Change - sea level rise obviously means that in years to come we will have a different relationship with the coastline than we do now. However others suggest that what’s happenening at Happisburgh doesn’t have anything to do with Climate Change and everything to do with isostatic rebound after the ice age causing the east coast to fall while the west coast rises.

But to claim that ‘stories like this are constantly peddled by the leftist media‘ also misses the point. For whatever reason, our government now feels unable to continue funding defence of the majority of our coastline, but is neglecting it’s moral responsibility to mitigate the cost of that decision on those it affects.

If we get more publicity for the injustice by saying the root cause is climate change - guess what my opinion is?

I finally found an hour or two to read a bit more into OpenSocial - the innovation (?) promoted by Google to ‘make the web more social’.

On the homepage is a nice link to a 57 minute YouTube video - that I couldn’t get enough bandwidth to stream acceptably, so I watched the chunks - all six of them - and I’m feeling not very well.

How corny could they make this presentation? Initially I was put off by the symbolism of the fires, and the play on ‘open’:

“We believe this format of bringing developers together in an intimate setting to work collaboratively in the open, is the best way to engage with the developer community”

In other words, they approach a select few ‘partners’ and say ‘we’re going to make this big announcement - jump on board or miss the wagon!’ They make it look cosy by doing the presentation outside, but I doubt there was anyone in the ‘audience’ not part of the launch, and I’m surprosed they didn’t sing any songs - there was enough of a dance.

Google are starting to get on my nerves a bit - you can’t help but see them everywhere, and I’m getting a bit suspicious of motives.

I like the idea of OpenSocial - if I get it right - it’s like the Facebook developers platform, but open so anyone can use it. Great. But they seem to have gone a bit further by putting JavaScript gizmos and methods on top. Not so sure. I’m not a fan of all this Ajax - it too often is bling for bling’s sake and gets in the way of sensible functionality.

I’m not totally anti the rich user experience - times I’ve seen it done well it is neat, but it can be overdone, or inappropriately applied. Much like technology as a whole. I’m a KISS person myself.

So perhaps I should just concentrate on the Data APIs and concepts, and not get put off by the ’shiny’ distractions.

Anyway, back to OpenSocial - it seems to have a good amount of adoption by the PR - if there’s a critical mass it might take off. But I remember a similar hubub around OpenID and that one has gone quiet.

This open stuff is great for developers perhaps, but isn’t everything ending up looking the same? Yes MySpace jumped in because they’ve been hurt my the Facebook API no doubt. And all these business networks are all like LinkedIn - where’s the USP? They’ll all end up like Ning where it’s who’s using an application makes it stand out rather than the application itself.

It’s been a good few years since I tried in earnest to write anything for the Windows environment, but a day wrestling with Visual C++ and it all comes flooding back.

Why is everything so flaming complicated?

It may seem to be easy to do relatively simple things like designing dialogs and laying things out in a window, but when it comes to tying it all together and doing something useful with the app - and bear in mind that I tend to do I/O or other such functionality - it’s a bleeding nightmare.

So I’m sat here frustrated when I start remembering how much more satisfying I found Java when I was developing neural networks and genetic algorithms. ‘Can I talk to serial interfaces and read from joysticks?’ I wonder, and a quick bit of Googling and I’ve found a few references to potentially useful iraries and I have to say it looks hopeful.

So before I fully commit to the hateful slog that will be Visual C++ development, I might spend a few hours seeing if my forehead will have less brick imprints if I build usingJava instead.

It certainly would have a nicer feel to it.