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Firstly, I should point out once again that the Eurocon is held in the Netherlands so local time while we were there (I'm home now) was 1 hour ahead of UK time. My server is set to publish times based on the UK so while that last comment said it was 3am when 'Flower' kicked us out of the con room it was actually 4am and there were still around 15 of us talking in groups.

After that I chatted with Shuzon before sleeping, fellow Parrot and cage-mate for the weekend (poor him). Another interesting hour as he told me about how to make beer (though I still couldn't do it). Shuzon is our 'Brewer from Bavaria' having studied it at university and then having his own 'micro-brewery' making mostly pilsner. Now days he is retraining to be a waiter. Now, at this point you may be thinking like me "how hard can it be to be a waiter?". Well, it takes 3 years of training but you wont find him just pulling pints (erm, ok, based on previous photos from this Eurocon it's clearly VERY hard for me to pull pints). His course covers a wide range of things from the back office paper work, food preparation, cooking the perfect meal at a customers table (flambee without burning the customers). It also covers the most difficult of all waiters tasks, correctly taking an order when 5 people order at once, speaking a language that for you is not your first, second or third language. So pretty much a degree then.

Anyway, back to the title. Remember the old arcade games where if you got so far you'd get "Extended Play"? Well, I had a plan. I was only at the Eurocon because of a sick parrot; Flubby. Now, it turns out flubby lives about 2 hours south of where the Con was held so by checking my driving times I worked out I could get to his house and still drive another 4 hours back to reach the ferry in time. The plan was set, I checked with the other parrots to make sure it wouldn't likely be a problem to just turn up on his door step. Kculon was staying with Flubby after the con - he's from America and combined Eurocon with part a European tour with his wife. Gath was driving KC to Flubby's house on his way home. So with everyone agreed it would be good, the plan was set - "Operation Flubby", or "let's have a Parrot Con", because Shuzon then decided he could change his route home if I could drop him off at the nearest station after our surprise visit. I thought I was being nice by visiting, on the drive down to Flubby's house Shuzon casually mentioned that from Flubby's house the train will take 4 hours longer but he wouldn't get another chance to say hello for another year at least so it was worthwhile.

On arrival I made the mistake of trying to speak German. Not good. "Ich bin Kanga und ich haben dienen Meditzen". I'm sure the grammar as well as the spelling is wrong - please fix it flubby like I get to fix your English spellings. Anyway, when he eventually realised it was kanga he appeared more than surprised enough to make it worthwhile. Especially since Gath and Kculon had been there for a while already and hadn't let it slip that I was coming too. Meditzen referred to the Spitfire Beer I had brought for him (a small thank you for letting me go in his place while he was ill), along with a little book of funny adverts for the beer. Meeting flubby reminded me of that song "Isn't it Ironic", i forget who by. Not because meeting him was ironic but because of the words of the song that go "It's like meeting the man of your dreams, then meeting his beautiful wife", Flubby being only a voice to me in all the time I've known him and Suzanna, being his wife.

So, we had a mini parrot con, Kanga, Flubby, Kculon, Gath, Shuzon, Suzanna (Flubby's wife), Arianne (Gath's girlfriend), Pam (Kculon's wife, apparently a mean guitar player so maybe we'll have a parrot theme tune soon!), and Flubby's children, Alexander and .... , sheesh, 28 hours later and I can't remember, was it Felix?

This should really be my last post on the Eurocon so I'll try to remember the other great moments and answer some earlier questions I wrote.

Another good time we had; All of us flying together a big mission. All of us means over 30 players. We took B24 bombers from a field and flew a long mission to bomb a target on the far side of the map. Each bomber has 2 wingmen, so that was 90 or so bombers taking off and flying together. One of the problems of having so many players up together is that the computers have to work so much harder generating the graphics. I hear that Krod had a frame rate of 2 frames per second. Normally a monitor should display 60 frames per second! My PC will normally make 50 to 60 frames per second but you can see from the screenshot my rate dropped to 22FPS.

You may remember earlier I pondered over the power usage and data rate to the internet for so many players is one small room, or large room in this case. -bijl-, one of the organisers enlightened me just before I left. The internet connection was a regular ADSL line, 3mb down, 512kb up. To me that's impressive! 40 players were using that 512kb up for Teamspeak (a radio channel we can all talk to each other over), the game connections, any other uploading/downloading, everything. Consider that UK ADSL providers suggest their connections are suitable for 'up to 5 PC's' in an office, and we had 40 doing very internet intensive stuff. It shows to me how well the games are written to transfer all the information they need over such a small line.

Onto power. The reason the event was limited to 40 players is they did some calculations on how many watts are used by a PC, monitor and worked out that the safe maximum was 40 - even though the hotel had more rooms, it didn't have any more power points that could handle more load. I asked how many power points they had us all connected to via extension leads. The answer. 3. 40 PC's, 40 screens, 1 local server , 1 huge network switch, 1 not so huge network switch, 1 ADSL router, that's at least 80 devices not counting some joysticks that need power, the projector, the fridges (for the drinks of course), all running off 3 connections to the hotel power. Don't try this at home folks!

The hotel was actually a converted monastry from what I could work out. The rooms were small but did have a shower and toilet. The monastry bit comes from some black and white pictures in one coridor showing photos of monks in front of the building, and statue of jesus on the cross in the courtyard. The food was very good, a selection of foods provided for dinner and no one went hungry.

We weren't the only ones in the hotel. There were a group of singers practicing in a nearby room as well as several large families. It looked like a great base for a family holiday, the large garden was full of climbing frames and slides and there was also a large field. Next year (if I get to go) I'll take some bats and balls for a game of rounders.

This time last week I didn't know I'd be going to the Eurocon. The first Eurocon photo was taken on a ferry. Book, Coffee, Laptop. Let's play spot the difference with a return photo; Book, Coffee, Laptop, ahh, I can see the difference, an original Eurocon 2008 'Dead Parrot Con' ID badge :-).

This is not something I expected to be writing last week. It's not even something I expected to write two days ago but life moves in mysterious ways, so here I am, Laptop, Book, Coffee, sitting on the SeaFrance Rodin Dover – Calais Ferry, writing for my blog offline because I don't have internet access. Well, I do if I use my phone but that's much slower to write in, expensive and it's easier to save and post later when I return to civilisation.

So, What's Eurocon and Why am I going?
Eurocon is a big meeting of like minded players of flight sims. Predominantly Warbirds, and for our squadron (>>>PARROTS<<<) at least, AcesHigh2. It's held at a place in the Netherlands (that's about all I can say for now, I'm trusting TomTom SatNav to guide me safely – for an old map hand like myself that's not a comfortable thing to do but needs must and all).
“like minded players” is essentially middle aged men from all over the world, you'll meet them later if you're not bored of reading already. At the meeting we will
play on the flight sim (fairly normal, we do that from home),
make friendly conversation
visit an aviation museum
learn some things
drink a little....

Why am I going?
Firstly, it looks like fun. However, I wasn't planning to go and hadn't booked a ticket. Wednesday morning all our >>>PARROTS<<< squadron got a message that one of our members was ill (Flubby – perhaps it was bird flu?) and he could not take his already paid for place. If one of us would like to take it, all we had to do was get to the hotel. Did you know it's only 3 hours from Calais?
The big question was whether I'd get permission from my wife Rhonda. I asked Wednesday night when I got home and the answer was no. However, 11am Thursday morning she changed her mind (Perhaps that very large bar of Galaxy chocolate left in the fridge had something to do with it). So, Here I am, sitting on a ferry, Home PC loaded in the car, laptop rolling from side to side as I try to type, sailing away from the white cliffs of Dover.

Grown men, playing flight sims sound strange?
Perhaps, but stranger still is the international nature of my group of friends within the >>>PARROTS<<<. We may all fly a World War 2 style flight sim, trying to shoot each other out of the virtual skies, but we are all children of the modern age. We all detest war, we are all grateful we are not going to war ourselves. We all appreciate the sacrifice of our forefathers in the wars of our past. 'Strange' is that it's quite likely My grandfather was fighting my friends grandfathers while retreating to Dunkirk and landing landing on the Normandie beaches. Yes, every other >>>PARROT<<< comes from a country Britain has been at war with, yet fortunately now we are friends. Germany, France, USA, Argentina, Spain, Italy, are all represented by my friends.

Anyway, for the rest of the crossing I'll enjoy my book (review to be posted after a dozen others I haven't got round to posting) and look forward to posting more about EuroCon, with pictures, from the EuroCon itself.

Interesting, I just tried to report spam to a company who I assume ran the campaign in good faith. The report got an unexpected response:

: host lonvs07.kinexus.net[212.113.24.167] said: 554

    Service unavailable; Client host [89.234.3.158] blocked using

    relays.ordb.org; ordb.org was shut down on December 18, 2006. Please remove

    from your mailserver. (in reply to RCPT TO command)

Panic! One of our server IP's got blacklisted as a spam source!..... phew, not the case (thank you slashdot), emailiq are filtering their email for spam using a blacklist database that shut down over a year ago. The blacklist have decided they gave enough notice to people filtering against their list, so from now on they are reporting every email checked as being spam. If you're not getting email today, better check with your mail provider.

This company may not have meant to send spam, but because of spam they now have no email until the reconfigure their servers. Events like this show just how much spam is really costing everyone.

I've just come across an interesting article on boingboing (a web site with blog like posts related to computer things), it appears the BBC are trialling the iPlayer service to work to iPhones. BoingBoing noticed (or at least someone noticed and boingboing re-reported it) that they identify an iPhone by accepting the browsers name. They then send an MP4 video stream for your viewing pleasure.

There's a couple of interesting things there:
1) There's no "DRM" - the software technology that prevents you copying and sharing the file with others. I guess the thoughts are you'll not be copying it because you'll be 'streaming' the file and wont get to save it. You can download the file though, the article on boingboing explains how. I also imagine they've changed the screen size to suit an iPhone which is quite low quality for TV so it may not be too pleasant to watch on other screens anyway.
2) MP4's can be played by my windows mobile 6 PDA/Phone. I'm not sure I can persuade my windows mobile browser to tell the BBC it's an iPhone but the effort the BBC have gone to in trying this on an iPhone means that they may extend that to other platforms later.

I wonder if there is a term in use called "Messenger Lag" or similar, meaning; the effect of having two or more differing conversations with the same person when typing over instant messaging services.

I've just been talking to my Mum on Messenger, she's staying with my sister in Australia at the moment. Whenever we talk on messenger we have at least two simultaneous conversations. While I type the reply to one question she'll start asking the next, or reply to a question from a couple of lines before. Sometimes that gets a little confusing... like this;

sharon says:Hi Steve,
Just about to go to bed - just checking you are okay?mum x
Steve Root says:i'm ok
Steve Root says:busy busy week
sharon says:thats good. lots of orders? or just work
Steve Root says:KBB in birmingham yesterday, kinetico tomorrow
Steve Root says:just busy with work, though dave did some orders yesterday
sharon says:sounds good
Steve Root says:i've had one survey this morning, one new measure this afternoon, margaret is jus tfinalising a bedroom for survey next week
sharon says:was kbb worth going to?
Steve Root says:may have found a good custom size door supplier, but I need to do more on bedrooms first
sharon says:any sliding wardrobes?
Steve Root says:long way to go though
Steve Root says:not worth having, current sliding doors are better
sharon says:where
Steve Root says:where what?
sharon says:you said a long way to go though
sharon says:so i said where
Steve Root says:Birmingham is a long way
sharon says:oh
sharon says:i thought you meant the supplier

Does podcast start with a capital P? It's not something I've though of before, the whole podcast thing passing by me until today - when I stared in one!*

Podcast's are like radio shows that you listen to offline. If you have the right software, the show will download when you are on the Internet and copy itself to your music player. Then you can listen to it when you are out and about. Although I am a fan of audio (be it music, documentaries, comedies and so on) as much as the next person, I've never got round to playing with podcasts and finding ones I want to listen to regularly.

The biggest reason for that is the difference between iTunes and Windows Media. Having just played with the iTunes podcast setup instructions as directed on this page, I had the system setup in less than a minute so I should automatically receive the future shows as they are released. Unfortunately, I don't use iTunes for all my music. My new phone syncronises through Windows "ActiveSync" which talks to Windows Media Player. I dare say I could change that to sync with iTunes, or figure out how to make podcasts work with Windows Media player but I simply haven't spent any time to figure that out. I used iTunes when I won an iPod Shuffle, but I don't use the device that often. I've been using my new phone to listen to music (it synchronises with Windows Media Player) but that too may be a passing fad.

Now, that's my excuse for not listening to podcasts out the way, what made me start listening today I hear you ask.

Well, my experiences with taking a spammer to court have garnered a little media interest, to which point I was interviewed at the beginning of the week by "Out-law" magazine. They are a magazine that focuses on legal issues of technology. I've been reading it myself for a few years too. They have a weekly podcast but I've never listened to it. I have read the transcripts though, just never downloaded to listen. The interview with me has been included in this weeks podcast. The whole show is 10 minutes long and if you've ever wondered what I sound like now is your time to find out. (If you don't figure it out during listening the spam story is in the last half and the harmonious Scot's accent isn't me, it's the journalist).

Happy listening folks.

*star is probably a bit strong, featured may be a more accurate word.

My recent posts about taking a spammer to court have had quite a lot of interest. A whole host of people came via something called "Stumble Upon". I'd never heard of that site so had a little look... which has turned into a longer look!

Stumble Upon is a web site where people share links to other web sites. Using their toolbar, you can click the "stumble" button and it will take you to a web site that may be of passing interest. Where it takes you is defined initially by the subjects you say you are interested in and then (at least I guess) how you rate those sites.

My first stumbles this evening have taken me through a variety of linux related web sites, including this one (screen shot provided in case it vanishes off the web). It appears to be the text of the linux kernel (the operation system) but someone has changed the font colours in different places so that you can see a picture of the Linux penguin logo. I highlighted the bottom row of text in the screenshot so you can see the text is still there - just black on black.

I'm not sure how long I'll stay on 'stumble upon' though, I can see it eating a lot of spare time.

Some things make you smile, some make you laugh out loud.

If you've been here before you may know I've taken some spammers to court. After the directions hearing I actually posted who they are. It seems that they also visit this blog, because they replied! Not in their own name though - read the comment from "Richard Jones" and how I identified him as the original spammer.

Backups are important. This tenet will be learned the first time you lose important files. Knowledge in itself is useless, it's the application knowledge that reaps rewards.

Having learnt many years ago the cost of losing data from a computer, I've become a dab hand at setting up backup routines for my laptop, desktops and servers. In the past I used a windows shell script to copy files from my laptop to a space on my office server. That server backs up again to an off site server just to make sure the data is kept. Unfortunately this script has been somewhat unreliable of late. At some point, on a never quite identified file, the copy action would fail and backup would stop. I needed a new solution, one that would be reliable, simple to set up and cost nothing but setup time. I found it in the shape of some linux software called rsync and a windows client to rsync called DeltaCopy. Actually, DeltaCopy is more than just an rsync client, it can be an rsync server for windows machines but I didn't need that. That would be very useful though if you are using an old windows PC as your file server though.

What's rsync?
From their web site: rsync is an open source utility that provides fast incremental file transfer. rsync is freely available under the GNU General Public License.

I've known of rsync for years, but never used it until now. Essentially the programme will compare files in two directories, if a file has been updated it will copy the updated parts and not the whole file. My script solution copied everything whether or not it needed to be. As I'm on the same network as my backup server bandwidth really isn't a problem. However, the rsync solution means I will be able to succesfully backup from home over the VPN.

Setup was really easy.
First set up our linux server to run rsync as a daemon. That means it runs all the time waiting for other rsync programs to connect to it. That's the same way a web server like apache works, sits there waiting until it has something to do, does it, then waits again. How to do that will depend on your server software but for my Trustix powered server it was simply "swup --install rysnc-server" and it was downloaded and installed automatically. Trustix has reached end of life now, so if you are looking for a new operating system you'll find rsync on most ready to go, including redhat and ubuntu.
Second set up my laptop to use an rsync client. That includes choosing which folders I want to synchronise with the server
Third, enable the rsync client to run as a scheduled task on my laptop.

This is where the DeltaCopy program is so useful. It's a windows point and click graphical interface. Installation was a breeze and I confess I didn't read the instructions to see how it worked it was so simple. You create a "profile" for each synchronisation task you want. For me there's only one, I called it "laptop backup". Then add all the folders (or specific files) you want backed up followed by the server details. At the bottom of the profile is a section called "schedule". DeltaCopy links seamlessly to the windows scheduler, so I set my backup to occur every day at 11am. Later I found settings that let me get an email on whether the backup worked and how well it went. If it works, the email includes the rsync result information too.

Today the first success email arrived at 11.07. In 7 minutes the folders had been synchronised and my backup completed. It's so fast because only changed files have been copied across the network. The full backup is a huge 21Gb.... perhaps that explains why the script would fail, 21Gb over a wireless network would take.... a long time.

The final step of any backup: Test it worked and test regularly. Testing is easy using this method, just open the file from the server over the network. To think of all those hours I used to spend waiting for a file to be recovered from my TR1 tape backups.

Taking a spammer to court to get them to stop isn't for the faint of heart.

Here's the history:
A company, "Cybernet Media" (stick .co.uk on the end of that and you'll find their website, I'll not give them the benefit of a link) started sending spam way back in 2006.
I asked them to stop, they continued.
I pointed out to them that by sending it they are breaking The Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003. I asked them to reply and confirm they would stop sending the spam. I said that if they send any more I'll bill them £50 per email for my time so far. I said if they didn't reply I'd take more formal action.
They didn't reply, I didn't get round to taking the formal action... until they sent 2 more emails. I phoned them and faxed them. They said by phone they'd stop but decided to send 4 more emails within 24 hours. This was now August 2007.
So, I sent them an invoice for 6 emails. They didn't pay or respond.
I called them again in September and said if they don't pay I'd take them to court. They didn't pay so I started a small claims court action against them.

Here I made a mistake: I asked for the damages plus a statement from them that they would comply with the regulations in future. That meant it had to have a "directions hearing" which of course cybernet didn't turn up to either. Still the result of the directions hearing was headed by a line: "1. There be judgement for the claimant for damages to be determined by the court" - so I guess that means they agree I have a claim the only question left is how much.

I now know the small claims court can't make people say they will comply with regulations (that's what the judge explained to me in the directions hearing). To do so I would have to take out an injunction. If they break the injunction and send more spam, they commit a criminal offence of contempt of court (and could even go to prison for that). Problem is I still haven't figured out how exactly what to do to take out an injunction. At the moment all I'm claiming from them is the damages from them sending spam and me having to chase them to pay the damages (which, incidentally, they've never contested. They haven't even replied to the court which as directors of a limited company may be another offense under the Companies Act, I'm not sure though). Anyway, damages so far £1,005.37.

I still have another week in which to decide if I want to take out an injunction on them but to be honest I have proper work to do and I can't afford the time to research it. I do now realise why the information commissioner has never taken anyone court for breaking the regulations though. The judge raised a good question - "Do you think they will actually pay?". I have no idea, I'd rather hope that with a court order against them they would have to. My case is against both an individual and a company. They don't declare their company number on their website (they really should, but hey, no one's perfect), "Chris" who I spoke to didn't know the company number and then claimed he worked as an agent, not for the company. As he sent the spam, I put him down personally on the claim as well as the limited company. Mid February is the hearing date - I'll keep you posted!

The BBC iPlayer came out of beta recently and they've been advertising it's release to the masses across BBC TV. I tried the beta version earlier in the year (well, 2007, you know what I mean) and my first response to it coming out of beta was simply "Have they fixed it then?".

Why?
When I tried the Beta there were two big flaws. First, "Peer to Peer", second "Kontiki".

What's Peer to Peer (For those that haven't already come across it.... probably most of you)? Traditionally if you want to download a file from a server, your computer visits that server and asks for the file. The server sends it to you as quick as the smallest bottleneck in the system would allow. For example, on a lightly used web server like mine, I can download a file as fast as my broadband connection will allow. A quick test gives me 4,656kb/s (or about 4.5Mb which is what my router says my BT Broadband speed is running at). Now, what happens when a hundred people try and do that from my server? Well, the server only has a 100Mb connection to the internet so the best all of the 100 visitors would get is 1Mb of speed each. More likely, some get the file slowly, others get a 'server busy' response. Time to buy another server, but what if your budget doesn't stretch that far? Some bright spark realised that if 10 people have already got the file, they could start acting as servers themselves and share the file with other people. Their upload bandwidth from their internet service can be used to increase the speed at which others can get the file and take the load off the original server. If the server were to be unavailable, people would still be able to get the file from other people who already had it, thus the network becomes faster and more reliable as more people download and share the file.

All good so far. This technology, known as "Peer to Peer" file sharing, was the reason Napster became so successful in sharing music (OK, mostly shared illegally) and other still available software (like BitTorrent) helps people share digital files and software (for example OpenOffice) legally (although there is a lot of illegal file sharing on BitTorrent and other Peer-to-Peer networks too).

So where was the problem with Peer to Peer in the BBC iPlayer Beta? Simply - they never said they were using it. Installing the software then downloading a programme meant I started to upload it too. This unexpected extra upload bandwidth caused me problems. The video was uploading so other more important things got delayed (EG: why did that server backup take so long today? Why is my email sending so slow today?). I'm a great fan of using Peer-to-Peer to share files but I like to have control of how much network upload bandwidth it can use and the time of day it can use it.

The second problem was the peer-to-peer software itself. It's a programme called Kontiki and while being simple for the user to install (well, I didn't even know it was installed) it gives NO control of upload or download speed. Now in Peer-to-Peer situations download speed generally isn't a problem, you are limited by the upload speed of everyone else and as typical broadband upload is 450kb/s I would need to 10 uploaders for me to download at my broadband line's capacity. No control of the upload causes a real problem as I said above, important traffic can get delayed. With software like BitTorrent I would simply limit the upload speed but Kontiki doesn't allow that. I read since then that turning off the iPlayer didn't turn of the Kontiki file sharing either - files uploading even when the software was turned off.

Anyway, enough about the Beta, Betas are meant to find real world bugs so they can be fixed. Surely our great BBC found fixes to them before releasing the product to the masses?

Erm, Yes and No.

Yes, they added a warning that it uses a Peer to Peer application to share the file. Even have a nice video on their web site with Huw Someone (the newsreader whose name I forget) saying how peer to peer works. They didn't really make enough of a point in my opinion about how people on capped broadband connections may use up all their bandwidth allowances without realising. I also wonder how the ISP's will find this, with everyone uploading files (knowingly or not) their bandwidth usage will increase and I'm sure somewhere along the line that will cost them more money. Still, the BBC do now tell you that iPlayer will use Peer to Peer technology and I gather other online TV providers don't yet do that.

No, they didn't fix Kontiki. Within minutes of installing my laptop performance suffered. Aside from the issue of not being able to control upload speed (my hardware firewall at work thought it was being attacked and stopped all the uploads though - it emailed me several hundred lines of blocked traffic logs to tell me) it took almost exclusive use of a processor. Fortunately my processor is a Dual Core and only one core was getting hammered. It still destroyed the start up time, shut down time and generally made everything perform slower than normal.

I went online and looked around for fixes for Kontiki, there doesn't appear to be any. It appears that Kontiki have made a very good job at selling themselves as the software to use if you're a TV company and want to send TV over the internet for the lowest cost to you. Sure it saves the BBC, Channel 4 and Sky a fortune on bandwidth costs and should be improving the download speed to people who want to watch the programs - it just takes out decent PC performance in return.

I did allow it to continue to download a program. Once downloaded the program played fine. It played on Windows Media Player (albeit in an iPlayer view of WMP), quality was OK, sound was OK, sure it won't win any awards for perfect clarity but then I didn't take the time to plan to watch the program on the real TV so I don't mind that.

Looking for Kontiki fixes I found some people moaning about the DRM security in the files. DRM (Digital Rights Management) stops you copying the program to other devices, like another PC at home or to your friends PC. It's necessary because the people who created and own the program only allow the BBC to show it to people in the UK. Unfortunately the DRM system they are using limits the iPlayer download software to work only on Windows PC's with Windows Media Player. Read on though, iPlayer's web only version solves the Microsoft Only problem quite nicely.

Sorry to say it BBC, Kontiki isn't for me - I'm uninstalling iPlayer shortly and I just HOPE you made sure it removes all traces of itself. (later note: it appears it did - phew!)

Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of being able to catch up on programs at times other than the TV schedule says. Which brings me onto the one GREAT thing about iPlayer. You can now watch the program online, on demand. No downloading to watch later, just fire up your web browser (Firefox for me, Internet Explorer for others, or perhaps Safari if you're Mac way inclined), press play and enjoy the program. The quality seemed to me much the same as the downloaded program quality. Hooray! no Kontiki! no PC performance issues! no software to install!

I ran a bandwidth monitor to see just how much bandwidth the iPlayer wanted to just watch the program and was pleasantly surprised, it averaged between 530 - 605Kb/s over the 1 hour program., about 0.6Mb/s. Even if you don't get the maximum ADSL 8mb/s second your ISP offers, 0.6Mb/s should be well within your range. In December, BBC news carried a story comparing broadband speed across the world and gave 3Mb/s as the average UK speed, so for most of us iPlayer online should work fine.

So in summary, I think iPlayer is a good thing if you only use the online version. Perhaps the download version will improve over time.

So far my experiments with sipgate VoIP have been good. The next step has been to buy an adapter that will convert our home phone into a VoIP phone. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, the sipgate softphone is fine for me when I'm using my laptop but it doesn't have the same convenience of picking up a phone and dialing. Secondly, we make quite a few calls between the family (my house, mums house and the office) and all those calls soon add up. If VoIP works, we should be able to call each other for free (or at least no more than the one off hardware costs).

Just making and receiving VoIP calls isn't the whole objective though, I need our home phone to continue to ring on our home phone number. We're still keeping the line (it's our broadband connection too) and many of our friends know to reach us on this number. So, I wanted to use VoIP when it works for us, and our traditional line if ever it doesn't.

This is where choosing the right adapter comes in. I had to find an adapter that had an FXS port, and FXO port and an ethernet port. What do all these acronyms mean?

• Your normal analog phone plugs into an FXO port (eg the BT Plug on the wall) You could think of the O meaning 'office phone system' if you like, or perhaps 'O'h what a big phone company.


• The BT Plug on the wall can only be connected to FXS equipment, that is your regular phone. You could think of FX'S' as 'S'imply my desk phone or 'S'ubscriber/customer to the networks plug on the wall


• I didn't mention it earlier, VoIP = Voice over Internet Protocol if you didn't already know


• and SIP = Session Interaction Protocol, which is one method for VoIP to work, much the same as you can send a letter in a white envelope or a brown envelope and it's still a letter, you can SIP or you can Skype and it's still a VoIP call

I needed an adapter that had both an FXO port (so I could plug our regular phone into it) as well as an FXS port (so the adapter could be plugged into the wall like a normal phone).
Via the Ethernet cable it gets plugged into our home network (and onto broadband internet via our home router). The adapter has to log into the SIP service (sipgate in my case) so that it can receive calls over VoIP. You'll notice that from my earlier post I now appear to be online( ) all the time. That's because our home phone is logged into sipgate ready for the next call.

Anyway, onto which adapter I chose.
I found a linksys SPA3102 which had all the required features. It's the latest incarnation of devices from a company once called Sipura who specialise in Voice of IP products. Sipura were bought by Cisco (Cisco are big in business networks, Linksys is their lower end home/small office brand of networking equipment) and are now a part of Linksys. Most importantly I could find users with some experience of the linksys/sipura devices amongst various forums. Although lots were having problems and there seemed to be a fair few needing to do or waiting for firmware updates, many of the replies were giving solutions. I am always more worried when there is a a lack of forum/troubleshooting activity than I am to see it, I don't like being at the leading edge of technology any more than I have to and forum activity shows a product is being well used. It was also within my budget (free wasn't an option, but the £50 price tag was close enough for me to give it a whirl). Being part of the huge Cisco corporation probably isn't a bad thing either, at least I can have an expectation that the device will be around and supported for a while.

I consider myself a pretty network savvy person but this little grey box (photo at the top) had me confused for several hours.

• Step 1: open the box, gasp in awe at the simple instructions.
• Step 2: plug the provided wire from SPA3102 into phone, plug original phone wire from SPA3102 into BT wall outlet (well, actually, the broadband filter but let's not get picky).
• Step 3: wonder why there is no dial tone and nothing happens.
• Step 4: decide it must need to be enabled from within the web interface. The next problem was entirely of my own making. I departed from the instructions. The device has TWO ethernet ports. one for "internet" one for "computer". Now, if I had a cable modem that presented an ethernet port as it's connection to the world I could probably follow this part, but I, along with many others have ADSL and a wireless router. I plugged the "internet" part into my router and didn't bother moving my PC's ethernet wire from the router to go via the SPA3102. I couldn't connect to the web interface, I couldn't hear any dial tone on the phone (the instruction said I could configure things through a voice menu). I could see the unit had collected it's IP address from my router but I just couldn't connect.
• Step 5: Decide to read the instructions and do it the strange way. Web configuration now working! Realisation now dawns, it's not strange at all, the device has a firewall and can only be configured from it's LAN side, not the Internet WAN side. It doesn't know that it is already behind a firewall router so the creators took the sensible approach of making it be configured only from it's own Ethernet side. It looks like
• Step 6: Lesson learnt, now how to configure it so i get a dial tone...
• Step 7: Realisation dawns that it is already configured to give the regular phone a dial tone. I don't hear a dial tone.... "Houston, I have a problem". Is the unit faulty? Not likely, electronics are pretty good in my experience, it's normally something obvious... like the wire. Unplug everything and look very closely... yes, it's the wire! The wire they provided is an RJ11 plug. It's a small squareish plug with 4 wires, or at least 4 slots where wires can connect. Except telephones only use 2 wires. My old cordless dect phone (a couple of years old BT Freelance XD 500 as it happens) uses the outside two slots of the connector. The SPA3102 uses the inner two slots. Ho hum, off to the web to order £9 worth of wire adapters, most of the cost made up from carriage (BT to RJ11 so the phone can use it's own wire to plug into the SPA3102, and an RJ11 to BT so I could plug the SPA3102's supplied wire into phone line).
• Step 8: The instructions at this point became very vague. Well, actually, they didn't exist (note to self, never again gasp in awe when technical instructions look simple). I had to log on to the Linksys web site to find answers of how to do things. As the device needs broadband to work, that's not so big a deal but it would have been nice to have a PDF manual or at least where to go for a PDF manual.

On the plus side, the device is cleverer than I thought. It let's me:

1. Receive a POTS (Plain old Telephone system) call - and ring my regular phone.


2. Receive a VoIP call - and ring my regular phone


3. Make a VoIP call - once configured


4. Make a POTS call - once configured (I made it so we have to dial #9 to get the regular phone line for calling, VoIP is cheaper but POTS has tried and tested reliability)


5. Receive a POTS call - forward it to another VoIP destination


6. Receive a VoIP call - forward it to another POTS destination

There are hundreds of settings on this thing, but very little documentation. Without the Linksys web site I would have never been able to guess how to configure the dial string (so we dial #9 then phone number for POTS call).

So, was it worth the £50 (+ wire adapters!)? Yes. I just wish they'd made the instructions more available.

Next stage of my VoIP experiments, finish making our new Avaya IP Office 500 phone system work as a SIP endpoint

I've been playing with VoIP for a while now. VoIP = "Voice over Internet Protocol" and it's essentially using computer networks as your phone network. Skype is a form of VoIP. The one thing I have against Skype is it's closed protocol that means only Skype things will work with Skype. The more open standard is called SIP, and lots of companies make software and devices that will work with each other through SIP. Our new office telephone system can connect to SIP in the same way it connects to our BT phone lines (actually, there's no physical connection as the SIP calls would come in via our internet connection rather than a physical BT line plug).

One of the downsides with learning anything new is the time it takes to learn. The downside with any communication network is that it's only as good as the number of people that are already using it (I have only a half dozen contacts on my Skype account and my MSN Messenger account).

My recent VoIP experiments brought me to the www.sipgate.co.uk website. They've really made the set up easy. I signed up for an account in less than 3 minutes. I downloaded their version of the X-Ten softphone. They've made it so that it downloads including your account settings. All I had to do was install, no settings to change, it worked immediately! Superb! Anyway, less than 5 minutes after discovering sipgate, I called myself from the office to my new sipgate phone. I picked up one of their free local numbers, so you can call me too on 01227 808060 from your real phone(s). If you already use a SIP service, you can call that number free by using whatever prefix you need to connect from your service to sipgate.

That means you can call me on one local number wherever I happen to have my laptop set up. At the office, at home, In a hotel while visiting suppliers around the UK or even if I'm working abroad. Therein lies the one problem, I need to have the laptop turned on for the phone to be working and available. The good thing is that SIP doesn't require a specific computer, there are devices that will connect SIP to your normal house telephone (and even let you use both networks together), as I said our office phone system already works with SIP (or will when I figure out how), my mobile phone has software that allows it be used as a SIP phone, our ADSL router will also let us connect a regular phone to the SIP services. You can also buy dedicated SIP phones from around £50 (and DECT cordless SIP phones are around £100).

I've still lots to learn about SIP and making it work. One little gadget I just found on the sipgate site is a snippet of code that may* tell you if I've got my SIP device connected to the internet..... may, or may not.

Bonjour mes copain et lectuers,

Je trouve une neuvelle (pour moi) musiciene - elle s'appelle ViRGiNiE est elle francais. J'adore cette music, seullement une guitar et voix. Plusieurs de ses chansons sont en Anglais aussi.

Ecoute sur l'internet:
http://www.virginie-music.com/

Ou peut etre youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjWJmc2te_w

Break out the champagne everyone, Paul O'Brien, from Intellimailer has told the Information Commissioner's Office that they will be sending no more spam. The ICO is happy that intellimailer have been educated in the correct meaning and interpretation of the law and will send no more spam, ever.

Fantastic!

If you receive any spam from intellimailer, report them to the ICO (I have a contact there who has the case history, email me if you'd like the information) and please let me (and any readers) know how you get on.

By the way, the full list of domain names they used to send spam to me has grown a bit, so here it is in full:

intrer11.co.uk
intrer12.co.uk
intrer14.co.uk
intrer15.co.uk
(and checking whois, they're continuing to buy domains starting intrer for some reason. Note they haven't registered intrer13 yet, guess they're superstitious!)
intellimailer.org.uk
int-mailer.org.uk
emaileronline.co.uk
int-mailer-uk.co.uk
ukmailing-co.co.uk
uk-mailing-co.co.uk
emailer-online.co.uk
the-intelligentmailer.co.uk
kt8.com
mailing-software-uk.co.uk