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Milton Keynes

Today I drove down to Milton Keynes to visit Jonathan & Dillon. We went to the Flying Fox Inn at Woburn for a light lunch and did some shopping in central MK.

In and around the Black Country

I spent the weekend with Louise & Vernon. On Saturday morning Louise & I went to Solihull whilst Vernon played golf. In the evening we had a lovely meal at Prezzo in Bromsgrove.

On Sunday we went to the Black Country Living Museum, 1 mile north of Dudley town centre.

Over fifty historic buildings from all around the Black Country have been moved and authentically rebuilt at the open air museum, to create a tribute to the traditional skills and enterprise of the people that once lived in the heart of industrial Britain. Covering 26 acres of former industrial land, the museum transports visitors back in time from the modern exhibition halls to the canal-side village, where costumed demonstrators and working craftsmen bring the buildings to life with their local knowledge and practical skills.

Whilst not cheap, I can recommend Hobbs’ fish & chip shop! This 1930′s shop in the museum village sells traditionally cooked cod, roe and chips; reputed to be the best in the midlands, using beef dripping for frying.

Forge Motorsport Action Day

Yesterday I went to the 2011 Forge Motorsport Summer Performance Car Action Day at the Castle Combe Circuit near Chippenham, Wiltshire.

The Drift Team were just starting when I arrived, taking the corners at high speed and at right angles to the tarmac, no doubt made more tricky by the fact that the track was wet from the rain.

During the afternoon the rain stopped and the sun came out. There were loads of performance cars to look at from the hundreds of car clubs that attended, and plenty of track action to see from the banking around the circuit.

Optical WLAN technology using LED lighting

The Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute (HHI) will be presenting its latest developments in Hall 11.1 at this year’s “Internationale Funkausstellung” (IFA) from September 2-7 in Berlin, Germany. With its Visible Light Communication system, the HHI presents a novel method of broadband transmission…

Using standard off-the-shelf LED lights, broadband data streams are transmitted in visible light to computers and other end devices with communication capability. The broadband transmission speed is 100Mbits/s although speeds of up to 800Mbit/s have been achieved in the lab.

This transmission technique, which uses the energy-efficient electronics of LED technology, is ideal for both distribution of broadband video streams and two-way communication – from internet usage to video conferencing.

The optical wireless technology can be deployed in situations where wireless LAN is uncalled for – e.g. in hospitals or manufacturing processes. Basically, however, the areas of application can be anywhere that LED technology is used. Using visible light has the further advantage that data can only be transmitted and accessed within the visible light cone itself.

The fundamentals of Visible Light Communication were developed by Fraunhofer HHI in association with its industry partners Siemens and France Telecom Orange Labs within the framework of the EU OMEGA project.

Weekend in Yorkshire

It’s back to work again tomorrow after two weeks on my hols.

I decided to spend last weekend with Andrew and his family and so I booked Friday and Saturday nights at the Ramada Wetherby hotel.

I set off for Yorkshire at 8:30 on Friday morning, and after an hour’s driving I broke down on the Motorway. The engine cut out and would not re-start, so I called Autonational Breakdown and they arranged to send a recovery vehicle. The Highways Authority turned up and took some notes but were happy to leave me on the hard shoulder to await the breakdown truck. The breakdown guy arrived and initially thought it was a fuel pump fault, but after various tests it was clearly not, and so he winched the car onto the back of his truck and took me and the car back to my local garage.

The car had undergone a major service at the garage in May, which included new spark plugs, oil, filters and timing (cam) belts. Hooking up the car to the OBD-II scanner revealed a cam shaft fault. On further investigation the technician discovered that the secondary timing belt had broken. Not a quick repair as it would have caused damage to several, if not eight, exhaust valves. Then, of course, it was necessary to try and diagnose why the belt had broken.

I’m very grateful to the parents for agreeing to add me to the insurance policy for their Lupo, and allowing me to borrow it so that I could continue my trip. I eventually made it to the hotel for 8pm instead of noon as I’d originally planned. I spent the rest of the evening with Andrew, Sarah, Fiona, Anna & Murray.

On Saturday, Anna & Sarah continued with food preparations for that evening’s BBQ in the garden. It was to celebrate Fiona’s 17th birthday. Andrew mowed the lawn and filled Noah’s (empty) sandpit with water to make a paddling pool. Once Anna had added cup-cake mixture to 24 ice-cream cones and cooked them and then piped vanilla butter icing on top, Fiona went to go and buy Matchmakers or something similar to stick in the icing to make the buns resemble 99 ice-creams. Matchmakers couldn’t be sourced locally and so small sections of chocolate fudge fingers were used instead.

The cones were a little unsteady by this point and so Andrew was challenged to make some sort of rack to stand them in. After a few minutes poking about in the loft he came up with a length of kitchen cabinet kick panel. Then Andrew drove Murray & myself to Auto Spares Kippax to buy a drill to make suitable ice-cream cone sized holes.

On returning home, Andrew quickly drilled 25 holes in the panel, sanded the holes and added a block of wood at either end to stand the panel off the table. The cones fitted nicely into the rack and looked great along the back of the table in the dining room alongside various other puddings and the birthday cake.

Paula and then Fiona’s Danceology and college friends arrived and Anna organised a game of Empires (which I was very bad at). By the time the game had ended the BBQ food was ready. We had beefburgers, sausages & salad followed of course by the various puddings. Anna then organised a game of Ghetto Articulate, but I joined Sarah & Paula on a walk with Flossie the dog. Paula then got a lift home and later that evening I returned to the hotel, leaving the teens to their Wii games and sleepover.

On Sunday morning Fiona’s friends left. Then Ross came over and took Fiona for a pub lunch. Andrew, Sarah & I went over to Thorp Arch. On our return to the house we had something to eat and then I left for the journey home.

Weekend with Louise & Vernon

I drove the parents over to Louise & Vernon on Saturday morning. We went for a pub lunch at the Queens Head Inn followed by a walk up the Worcester and Birmingham Canal towpath. In the evening we had a lovely garden BBQ.

On Sunday we went to Ashdown WW2 Camp for the ‘Wartime in the Vale’ event, said to be the Midland’s largest military vehicle and re-enactment event celebrating Armed Forces Day and the wartime contribution made by the people from towns and villages throughout the ages in The Vale of Evesham. We then went on to Evesham Country Park. It was an interesting day, but very hot weather.

ICANN approves historic change to Domain Name System

ICANN’s Board of Directors has approved a plan to usher in one of the biggest changes ever to the Internet’s Domain Name System.

During a special meeting, the Board approved a plan to allow an increase in the number of Internet address endings – called generic top-level domains (gTLDs) – from the current 22, which includes such familiar domains as .com, .org and .net.

“ICANN has opened the Internet’s naming system to unleash the global human imagination. Today’s decision respects the rights of groups to create new Top Level Domains in any language or script. We hope this allows the domain name system to better serve all of mankind,” said Rod Beckstrom, President and Chief Executive Officer of ICANN.

New gTLDs will change the way people find information on the Internet and how businesses plan and structure their online presence. Virtually every organization with an online presence could be affected in some way.

Internet address names will be able to end with almost any word in any language, offering organizations around the world the opportunity to market their brand, products, community or cause in new and innovative ways.

“Today’s decision will usher in a new Internet age,” said Peter Dengate Thrush, Chairman of ICANN’s Board of Directors. “We have provided a platform for the next generation of creativity and inspiration.”

The decision to proceed with the gTLD program follows many years of discussion, debate and deliberation with the Internet community, business groups and governments. Strong efforts were made to address the concerns of all interested parties, and to ensure that the security, stability and resiliency of the Internet are not compromised.

ICANN will soon begin a global communications program to tell the world about this dramatic change in Internet names and to raise awareness of the opportunities afforded by new gTLDs. The application process will also use this period to elaborate on what is involved in applying for a new generic top-level domain.

Under the plan, new gTLDs applications to be accepted beginning on January 12.

The decision to launch the new gTLD program raised the curtain on ICANN’s 41st public meeting, taking place in Singapore. It is just one of the issues that will dominate the weeklong meeting.

On Wednesday, the focus will turn to cyber security with the inauguration in Singapore of a specially built “hardened” facility, the first of three around the world that are helping to secure the domain names of all countries.

The Singapore meeting will continue through the week and conclude on Friday with a public meeting of the Board of Directors.

ICANN’s mission is to ensure a stable, secure and unified global Internet. To reach another person on the Internet you have to type an address into your computer – a name or a number. That address has to be unique so computers know where to find each other. ICANN coordinates these unique identifiers across the world. Without that coordination we wouldn’t have one global Internet. ICANN was formed in 1998. It is a not-for-profit public-benefit corporation with participants from all over the world dedicated to keeping the Internet secure, stable and interoperable. It promotes competition and develops policy on the Internet’s unique identifiers. ICANN doesn’t control content on the Internet. It cannot stop spam and it doesn’t deal with access to the Internet. But through its coordination role of the Internet’s naming system, it does have an important impact on the expansion and evolution of the Internet. For more information please visit: www.icann.org.

Facebook tag suggestions feature

On Tuesday, Facebook announced via it’s blog that a Tag Suggestions feature has rolled out to most countries after initial launch in the US last year. The feature is intended to make the tagging of friends in photos much easier. When you or a friend upload new photos, Facebook will use face recognition software to match your new photos to other photos you’re tagged in. Similar photos are grouped together and, whenever possible, Facebook will suggest the name of the friend in the photos.

For example, if you upload pictures from your cousin’s wedding, Facebook may group together pictures of the bride and suggest her name. Instead of typing her name many times, all you’ll need to do is click ‘Save’ to tag all of your cousin’s pictures at once.

Some users have complained that although they can turn the feature off, they weren’t explicitly asked if they wanted it activated, and that it raises privacy concerns. Graham Cluley, senior consultant with security firm Sophos, said “Many people feel distinctly uncomfortable about a site like Facebook learning what they look like and using that information without their permission.” Defending the technology, a Facebook spokesperson said that there had been “misconceptions” about what it does but apologised for not properly informing users.

If you want to turn the feature off, here’s how:

Log-in to your Facebook and click ‘Account’ on the top right hand side of your homepage and then ‘Privacy Settings’
Under the list of options click ‘Customise settings’
Scroll to the section ‘Things others share’, and click the ‘Edit settings’ button next to the words ‘Suggest photos of me to friends’
A box will pop up and you then click the grey button which says ‘Enabled’ and select ‘Disabled’, then close the box by clicking ‘OK’.

An evening trip to Stratford

Andrew mentioned on Messenger the other day that he’d be spending a few days in the caravan at Atherstone, so I rang his mobile this evening to see if he’d like to meet up in Stratford-upon-Avon. I spoke with Sarah as Andrew was concentrating on driving somewhere, and after a few calls because the signal was so bad, it was agreed that we’d meet outside the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in a couple of hours time.

I’d just parked the car when I got a call from Andrew to say they were at Tesco’s and would be with me shortly, so I walked to the theatre and waited by the river. I think the geese and swans were a bit put out that I wasn’t feeding them anything. It was about 8:30pm by this time, and I did the obligatory ‘Just checked in at..’ status update on Facebook, and then sat admiring the view. The weather was still nice, although there was a stiff breeze. There were people milling about, but I was surprised by how quiet Stratford was.

A short time later Andrew and Sarah arrived. It was a nice surprise to find that Fiona and Flossie were with them too. I hadn’t seen any of them since Anna and Murray’s wedding in Yorkshire back in June last year. We had a nice walk along a length of the river Avon and back.

Microsoft confirms purchase of Skype

Microsoft has confirmed that it has agreed to buy internet communications service Skype. The company is to pay $8.5 billion (£5.2bn) in cash from the investor group led by Silver Lake. The agreement has been approved by the boards of directors of both Microsoft and Skype.

Microsoft say that the acquisition will increase the accessibility of real-time video and voice communications, bringing benefits to both consumers and enterprise users and generating significant new business and revenue opportunities. The combination will extend Skype’s world-class brand and the reach of its networked platform, while enhancing Microsoft’s existing portfolio of real-time communications products and services.

Skype will support Microsoft devices like Xbox and Kinect, Windows Phone and a wide array of Windows devices, and Microsoft will connect Skype users with Lync, Outlook, Xbox Live and other communities. Microsoft will continue to invest in and support Skype clients on non-Microsoft platforms.

“Skype is a phenomenal service that is loved by millions of people around the world,” said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. “Together we will create the future of real-time communications so people can easily stay connected to family, friends, clients and colleagues anywhere in the world.”

Skype will become a new business division within Microsoft, and Skype CEO Tony Bates will assume the title of president of the Microsoft Skype Division, reporting directly to Ballmer.

Founded in 2003 and based in Luxembourg, Skype was acquired by eBay for $2.6bn in September 2005, and then acquired by an investment group led by Silver Lake in November 2009.

Ben Woods, head of research group CCS Insight, is reported to have commented “The big unanswered question is how do Skype assets work for Microsoft… how do you justify the price?”