Alex Mace’s Blog

We had a letter through the door from our MP, talking about Worcester City Council’s proposed (and I believe, now approved) cuts on CCTV. I’d provide a link to the contents of the letter, but it doesn’t seem to be on his website. Anyway, here is what I wrote in reply.

Mr Foster,

Thank for you for letter regarding the CCTV situation in Worcester. I
will be filling in the survey and returning it to you shortly, but I
thought I would take a few minutes to give you my thoughts regarding
some of the points you made in your letter and related issues.

The overall impression given in the letter is that the camera will no
longer be there and that we will be less safe without them. You say
that you have “seen the statistics showing arrests made thanks to CCTV
evidence”. Neither of these points are particularly informative or
helpful to me. If you have seen the statistics, I think it would have
been useful to put that information in your letter, so that I and
others receiving it could make a more informed decision. Without that
information how am I to know whether or not manning the CCTV
monitoring room is a cost effective use of council resources?

Which brings me to the second point,  the use of CCTV as a deterrent.
Before writing to you, I thought I would take the time to look at the
news stories on the issue, to make sure that I was fully informed.
None of them say that the CCTV cameras will be taken down, or that
they will no longer be recording. They say that they will no longer be
monitored. If this is true, then the deterrent benefit is still there
because the evidence will still be stored.

It saddens me greatly that the image that you portray in your letter
is one where we all need to be watched, constantly, to ensure our
safety. Technology and surveillance are not a panacea. The only long
term answer to our society’s problem is education. Knowledge is a
shining beacon against ignorance. By informing the young they will
grow up to be thoughtful, intelligent people. I would far rather my
council spent it’s money on educating the people of Worcester than
watching them.

I really do not think that it is the “professional” criminal that
makes people feel unsafe in our city. Rather it is the things that
CCTV cannot prevent, merely observe. Things like vandalism, drunk and
disorderly people, gang violence, etc. I am not surprised that you do
believe that it can stop these things with CCTV though, since you are
a Labour MP. I find the Labour Government’s cavalier attitude to
putting us all on databases and giving us ID cards, so you can track
our every move very disturbing. I know the argument, if I’ve done
nothing wrong I’ve got nothing to fear. What if the Government does
something wrong and gets me confused with someone else with the same
name. How can I argue against the system? Our civil liberties have
been hard won and no one deserves, as you voted to allow, to be locked
up for 42 days without charge, even if they are a “terrorist”. Who
decides tomorrow who is a terrorist? Could it be someone who disagrees
with you?

Which brings me onto my final point. I find it deeply distressing and
abhorrent that you raised the 2005 terror attacks in London as a
reason to support CCTV. In this case it neither prevented the crime,
nor caught the people involved. They had blown themselves up, along
with 50 other people. CCTV could not save those people. CCTV will not
comfort the people who lost loved ones. The warm glow of the CCTV
monitor will not put any warmth back into those people who died. You
should be ashamed.

Yours sincerely,

Alex Mace

This is more of a note to remind me in future. Take this bit of HTML:

<button><span>Save</span></button>

If you set the button and the span to have padding: 0, Firefox will still show the button with some padding. You can get rid of this with the following CSS:

button::-moz-focus-inner {
    border: 0;
    padding: 0;
}


Sorted!
 
 

The latest update to the iPhone came out today. I’m not going to go into all of the new features implemented in the latest version, you can find out about them all here. I do have a comment on one change though. In Safari, why have changed the address & search box from having a line each to now being crammed into a single line? While this does free up more space on the page, I’m not especially interested in the content of the page while putting a new address or search terms. That’s annoying.

Other than that, I’m hoping that 2.2 will cure the crashes of Safari and Facebook that I’ve been encountering. Safari will sometimes crash when scrolling through a big page and Facebook just crashes randomly sometimes. I haven’t noticed either crash since I updated, but I haven’t used it that much today. I’ll comment back on how I get on.

It’s been a quiet year on this here blog. To be honest, I just haven’t had the time or inclination to write anything of particular note on here. There are reasons for that and I’m hoping that by dealing with them now I’ll free up time and head space for this place again. I know that I’ve said similar before and a lot of other people have gone for a long break, said they’ll post more often and then disappear again, but I do not plan on actually delivering on my plan this time.

Anyway, this evening Katie & I watched “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford”. It was a very long film, but I enjoyed the breathing space this gave to the story. It was a great film to watch on Blu-ray too, which helps. It reminded me a little of “The Talented Mr Ripley”, only much better because I actually enjoyed it…

One of the problems with my current car (a 1992, 150k mile Mercedes 190E) is that the radio won’t pick up FM, which renders all the various FM transmitters I have for iPods useless. I’ve been looking for a cassette adapter for a little while and on Saturday I saw one in Tesco for £6.97. Considering Maplin in Worcester didn’t seem to sell them and PC World sell them for a ludicrous £14.99, the Tesco price seemed like a great deal.

However, I’ve just done a quick search on Google Product Search (sidenote: which is a terrible name compared to its previous name, Froogle) and I apparently could have got one for 79p. Damn.

Ok, so my site has been offline a little while. I fell out with my host when it proved to be a pain the the arse to set up a regular payment via PayPal and couldn’t be bothered to find another one in the short term. So for now, this site is being hosted on a box in my house. It’s not exactly a powerhouse, being a silent little EPIA SP based machine, running at a mighty 800Mhz, but that should do for now.

In the short term I plan to evaluate what blog software is out there at there at the moment and possibly switch from Wordpress. I also want to transistion from using this domain name (whythehell.co.uk) to alexmace.co.uk and setup proper redirects.

Kate and I are in the process of buying a house, so we’re having a good clearout. We’ve got a load of books and videos to get rid of, so any of the following are free to a good home if you cover the P&P or come and collect. Leave a comment if there is something you want.

Books:

2006 Big Road Atlas
A History of the Modern World
A Tale of Love and Darkness
Accelerated C++
Accidental Empires
American Jihad
An End To Suffering
Anna Karenina
Bravo Two Zero
Business at the speed of thought
Cardinal of the Kremlin
Damon Hill:Grand Prix Year
Delia Smith’s Cookery Course Part 2
Detox
Families & How to survive them
FHM Presents: Bar-Room Jokes
Gaia Peace Atlas
Great Expectations
Guinness Book of Records (1987)
Harry Enfield and his Humorous
Home Networking Bible
How to turn your ex-boyfriend into a toad and other spells
If Chins Could Kill:Confessions of a B-movie Actor
Instant Web Scripts with CGI/Perl
Internet 1997 Unleashed
Introduction to Windows 98 Programming
Lorna Doone
Madame Doubtfire
Making of Star Trek: First Contact
Nintendo Choose Your Own Adventure Book:Flown The Koopa
Official Guide to Command & Conquer
Organizational Behaviour (4th Edition)
Patriot Games
Perl 5 Quick Reference
Personnel & Human Resource Management
Pride & Prejudice
Princess
Sex: A User’s Guide
Sons & Lovers
South Wales A-Z Road Map
SSN
Star Trek: Ashes of Eden
Star Trek: Covenant of the Crown
Star Trek: Federation
Star Trek: First Contact
Star Trek: Generations
Star Trek: TNG Technical Manual
Star Trek: TNG: All Good Things
Star Trek: Voyager: Caretaker
Star Trek: Voyager: Cybersong
Star Wars: Ambush at Corellia
Star Wars: Assault at Salonia
Star Wars: Children of the Jedi
Star Wars: Darksaber
Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace
Star Wars: Showdown at Centerpoint
Star Wars: The Crystal Star
Student Grub Guide
The Age of Innocence
The Book Thief
The Concise Encyclopedia of Formula One (2001)
The Crystal Maze: Choose Your Own Adventure
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime
The Driver’s Little Instruction Book
The Hunt for Red October
The Jungle Book
The Last of the Mohicans
The Machine Gunners
The Mystery of Banshee Towers
The Portrait of a Lady
The Road To Nab End
The Simpsons:A Complete Guide To Our Favourite Family
The Star Trek Encyclopedia
The Star Trek: TNG Companion
The Third Policeman
The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Formula One (1994)
The Worst-Case Scenario Handbook: Dating & Sex
Why Pandas Do Handstands and Other Curious Truths About Animals
Winnie Ille Pu (Winnie the Pooh in Latin)
Women in Love
Women who run with the Wolves

Videos:

A Life Less Ordinary
Bagpuss
Beavis & Butthead Do America
Best of British: Mini
Clarkson: No Limits
Dirty Dancing
Ducktales The Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp
Fergie’s Six of the Best
Fever Pitch
Gone with the Wind
Harry Enfield:Undressed
Independence Day
Man Utd unauthorised: Whose Club Is it Anyway?
Manchester United on Video:Volume 2 Number 1
Men In Black
Muriels Wedding
Murray’s Magic Moments
Patsy Palmer’s Club Workout
Pride & Prejudice, BBC Version
Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
Red Dwarf Series 3: Volume 1
Red Dwarf Series 3: Volume 2
Robin Hood: Men in Tights
Shakespeare in Love
Star Trek: First Contact
Star Trek: Generations
The Very Best: Ryan & George
They Think It’s All Over: Full Throttle
Twister

It used to be a running joke amongst various people I know that the inevitable answer to the question “Where did you go on holiday?” each summer would be “Walt Disney World“. When we started going there were just the two theme parks, the Magic Kingdom and EPCOT Center. I don’t think I realised it at the time, but perhaps even then EPCOT was my favourite park. Spaceship Earth (about the development of human communication) and Horizons (about the technological developments coming in the near future) were probably my favourite rides in the park with Journey Into Imagination (with Captain EO next door) and the original ImageWorks quite high up there too… and World of Motion. I suppose being a Web Developer with a keen love of cars, driving and motorsport that all makes sense.

It is sad to think really that Horizons was demolished and replaced, Journey Into Imagination had many revamps that weren’t as good as the original and ImageWorks was removed. Test Track was an improvement on World of Motion, but it did seem like a lot of holidays were spent wondering if and when it would open. That was (mostly) done in the 90s though when EPCOT was the age of a spotty teenager… We all make mistakes in those years. Last time I was there they had added Soarin’ it was absolutely fantastic so here is hoping the future is bright.

I remember being in the World in 1991 for the 20th Anniversary of the opening and again in 1996 for the 25th, etc, but those days didn’t resonate with me, probably because at the time (I was 9 and 14 respectively) 1971 seemed like pre-history. EPCOT, my favourite park turns 25 today though, which makes it the same age as me, so perhaps that’s why it means something to me. I hope to still be going and enjoying it in another 25 years when I’ll be 50 too.

In work we use Subversion for version control and we are currently transitioning our backups onto Amazon S3. I was looking for a way to backup the Subversion repository to Amazon S3 when I came across Max Schöfmann’s post-commit hook script. Each time a commit is performed it dumps the changes to a file using svnadmin and then loads that file onto S3.

The script does have a limitation though. When it creates a dump it is put into the configured dump directory and uploads it into the S3 bucket with a filename that only refers to the revision numbers contained the in file. When a dump is created from another repository it will upload the resulting file to the same bucket and potentially overwrite a dump from a different repository with the same filename. One way around this would be to create multiple copies of the script with different configurations to put the backups into different buckets. This is not ideal. As our projects have a repository each, I had to modify the script to work with multiple repositories.

The script now assumes the last part of the path to a repository to be the name of that repository. It will use this to store the local dumps (if you keep them) in seperate directories and also to prefix the files that are loaded to S3 with this name so that the files do not conflict. I have also modified the restore script so you can pass it the name of the repository you want to restore and the path to restore it to. Thus one copy of the script can manage the backup of multiple repositories.

It was an interesting little project to play around with as I’ve hardly looked at any Ruby before so I’ve dipped my toe into that pond for the first time. It certainly seems easy enough to pick up and read anyway. Also, obviously big thanks go to Max for creating the original script. Full instructions for installation are on his page. Don’t forget to test the restore function - if it doesn’t work then you’ll just cause yourself problems when the worst happens!

Get the modified version here - s3-svn-backup.tar.gz

You would imagine that the 20:52 train from Birmingham New Street to Ledbury would be a quiet train. That’s what I thought as I plonked myself down at a table seat. There was loads of room on the train. I could put my bag on the seat next to me and keep my iPod Nano on the table without fear taking up more than my fair share.

I pretty much had the carriage to myself, but then, just before the train left the station 2 adults and gaggle of ankle biter appear.

“Do you want to sit at a table?” the more shrill adult says to her progeny, standing next to my table.

“I already am”, I think to myself, “go and spread yourselves somewhere I’m not. There are at least 3 other empty tables in this carriage alone.” They all sat down next to me. I grumpily moved out of my slouching position to make room.

Within minutes, one of the kids made a grab for the shiny iPod. I moved it out of the way and put it down by my side. Then two of the kids start arguing over a book, engaging in a tug of war over the magazine I was reading propped up on my side of the table. I hear no remonstrations from the adults. Admittedly, I had my iPod turned on, so I there might have been something said, but I saw no evidence of the usual “the man will be angry if you don’t behave”.

I just don’t get it. We all have to share public transport, so why on a nearly empty train do people have to come and inflict their kids on other passengers (i.e. me). I would go as far to say it is rude. It shows a disregard for your fellow passenger. You might find your kids annoying, but at least put them somewhere they only annoy you, not others. They should invent some sort of ASBO for people like that.

Or, users of public transport should be given un-removable stickers with “A Bloody Menace” to stick on annoying kids..