Food

A Gift from Yorkshire

Wensleydale with cranberries cheese made in th...

Wensleydale with cranberries cheese made in the town of Hawes in Yorkshire, England. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Talking of cheese as I was the other day this mini food review comes courtesy of my folks’ latest travels with their motorhome which took them into Yorkshire and shows that Britain’s food producers are still thinking of new ideas.

While in Hawes they visited the Wensleydale Creamery and tried their many varieties of excellent cheeses and brought me back a sample of Wensleydale cheese with strawberry.  It’s a smooth cheese that crumbles in your mouth and has a delicate fruity flavour.  Its not shown on their website but they also produce other varieties such as Wensleydale and Cranberry which is a favourite of mine already that I enjoy just by itself – being sweet and creamy – and also in a slightly decadent version of my perfect burger.

Cracking! as Wallace would say.

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Jubilee Britain, Outdoors, Tech, Transport

Cycling Back

Shimano Deore XT Schaltwerk hinten (am Mountai...

(or How It’s Made – 1945 Edition)

I ride a bike to work, and enjoy cycling, the wind in your hair, well the wind in just about every part of you depending on how you’re dressed.  So it was interesting to watch this video showing how bikes were made in postwar Britain, shortly before the coronation.

[Vimeo via Gizmodo UK]

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Jubilee Britain, Outdoors, Society

British Traditions Roll On

The MC holding the cheese.

The MC holding the cheese. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Even in the 21st Century some English traditions are still clinging on thanks to the dedication of individuals.  One of them, the annual cheese rolling at Cooper’s Hill was run, rolled and somersaulted yesterday.

The tradition was officially ended in 2010 but has been continued by enthusiasts even though last year’s contest was controversially cancelled over plans to charge for taking part.

The four races down the 200m hill were run in conditions described as damp and the Jubilee Cheese was won by Craig Fairley of Brockworth.

See fuller coverage and photos over at Metro.

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Jubilee Britain, Tech

Brittanica – Going Digital Gracefully

English: Title page of the Americanized Encycl...

English: Title page of the Americanized Encyclopedia Britannica (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Techdirt recently reported on how a British institution adapted to the new century’s technology rather than trying to sue its competitors into oblivion or whining “that’s not fair”.

The first decade of this century has seen a massive shift to digital distribution and consumption both legally and illegally.  Some traditional media creators have reacted to this with great anger and lawsuits that would keep Ally McBeal busy for a few series (ok, showing my age there, but it was the last legal series I watched).  Instead of adapting business models to cater for these new outlets, providing exclusive tasty content or extra value with digital downloads to tempt people away from pirate sites for example, they have tried to simply legislate the problem away – hence SOPA et al.

They criticise artists who give away content for free, ignoring the facts that this can generate sales as people will often pay for foll0w up material, as also often happens after someone downloads pirated material and then buys the album after they find they like it.  As a content producer I don’t condone piracy, but I don’t feel that tighter copyright laws will help either.

Which brings me on to the venerable, weighty and very British Encyclopedia Britannica.  In the nineties a CD based publication was launched and then as that market faded they launched their own online encyclopedia in the face of the onslaught of Wikipedia and the like.  In both cases they saw what was coming early on and adapted and restructured in order to embrace and make the most of the emerging technology rather than hold on to the past.  Britannica.com is still here alongside Wikipedia because it has evolved, moved with the times and because of its history and reputation it is still a trusted source of information.  They have a premium paid-for service that provides extras for members such as videos, research tools and more.

From door-to-door to digital with no fuss, taking it all in its stride.

[Techdirt]

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Tech

Beware Geeks Bearing Solutions

Windows Generations

Windows Generations (Photo credit: UWW ResNet)

This morning my phone rang, it was an unknown number but I answered it because I thought it might have been the same person who had just sent me a text regarding a tech query.

The caller identified himself as working for Windows Support Services or some such company and immediately I thought, right how shall I work this one.  I’ve had this call before, as have friends of mine.  The ruse is that they call and say that your computer has suffered an error and has sent Microsoft a message which has then been sent to Windows Support to follow up and that is why they’re calling.  They ask you to go onto your web browser, type in bing.com and search for their name.  Naturally it appears in the search results but as it’s Microsoft’s search engine they use this to claim that they work for Microsoft, saying “look, you can find us on Microsoft’s website.”

You click on their site and immediately download and install a remote access client.  With this client running the caller then remotely disables your antivirus.  This is when they start asking for cash, in order to allow them to keep your PC running healthily.  I have removed this client from various PCs, it’s not difficult but if you were a novice you’d never know that it was malware.

I had decided that when I next got one of these calls I was going to play dumb and go through the whole spiel, pretending to type in the web address, pretending to look at their website, pretending to allow him to connect.  Pretending that I couldn’t understand why whatever they were trying to achieve wasn’t working.  Then I was going to say “does it matter that this is an Apple computer not a Windows one?”  Click, beeeep.

As it happened I was a little busy with my genuine tech query so in the end I let him go through the script, which has changed now and no longer talks about errors being sent to Microsoft but now says that you may have picked up viruses and spyware inadvertently but as a registered Windows user they have been asked to check your computer for problems.

“That’s strange though,” I said.  “I don’t use Windows.”

“You don’t have Windows?”

“No, I use a Mac.”  (I don’t, I have a Windows 7 laptop, Windows 7 netbook and Windows 8 desktop, FYI).

“You don’t have any Windows computers?”

“Nope.  And I want to know who gave you my details, this is very serious, I’m going to look into this.  And you should know, I’m an IT manager.”

“Who for?”

“A local company, that’s irrelevant.”

“Well, I can’t tell you who provided the details…”  blah blah blah.  “Thank you for your time, have a good day.”  Click, beeeeep.

On an online forum another person called by the original scam called them out on the “Microsoft gave us your details” part, as I had done on the previous call – he told them that Microsoft never gives out customers details to third parties, and he should know, being a manager at Microsoft UK.  Click, beeeeeep.

Quality.

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Random, Tech

Our Very Own Millennium Bug

Chips

Our company has a piece of software that was built in the nineties using C++, designed for Windows 3.x and still to this day refuses to accept which century it’s in.  Most customers, and presumably their accountants don’t notice (or perhaps care about) the date on their invoice.

Last month we sold glass, according to the invoice dates, on the very day in 1912 the Titanic sank.

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Design, Tech, Typography

Edits – A Beautiful Online Magazine

Edits Magazine Front Page

Gizmodo UK reported a few months back about an online magazine about photography that is unlike any other and I’ve been meaning to post about it on here as it is very much a pointer to how digital magazines should embrace the possibilities of the technology.

Edits Quarterly, by Ian Coyle, doesn’t try to recreate the look and feel of a paper magazine, you simply scroll down it, or rather the images and pages smoothly, seamlessly slide upwards revealing the next article.  The use of typography is wonderful, the imagery striking and the articles are superbly written.

It is a truly innovative and beautiful publication.

[Edits via Gizmodo UK]

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Outdoors

Crowded Mountain

Mount Everest from Kalapatthar.

Mount Everest from Kalapatthar. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It seems you just can’t go anywhere to be by yourself these days.  Not even Mount Everest.

Outside Magazine reports that at the start of the spring summit season last weekend there were 300 people on the mountain.

I know the feeling of going up a mountain in the Lake District and finding the summit crowded with people, that can be frustrating enough when you want to take photos of the view but to mount an expedition up the world’s highest mountain and have to queue for the summit – that’s frustration, even for us English who have made queuing an artform.

[Outside Magazine via Gizmodo UK]

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Bag Fiend, Bags & Storage, Health

Bag Fiend – The Best Kind of Bag is the Free Kind of Bag

Bright Green Rucksack

While riding my bike to work this morning I was caught by the fuzz.  Ok, it was neither as painful as it sounds or as serious.  The local police and road safety campaign were out again asking cyclists to complete a short questionnaire about our cycling habits and as a reward you receive the bright and shiny rucksack you see above, free!  As I cycle every day I applaud this effort as anything that helps drivers see me is a bonus.

It’s a nicely made bag, very visible with reflective stripes, has a couple of sizable internal pockets and a couple of decent sized external pockets that have elestic straps inside but open mesh lower parts which is the only downside – though I’m not complaining as it was, as I say, free.

As I sat down, about to put the bag under my desk Nick, one of our window fitters, walked by “ok, we know you’ve got a new bag, stop playing with it,” he said.  “But it’s new and shiny,” I replied, “and free.”

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Society, Tech

Pay Attention People

Heads up

Heads up (Photo credit: Brett Jordan)

A couple of years ago I was on my way home from work, it was December, raining, cold and I’d just walked two miles.  I was just approaching my street when a loud group of youths came walking the other way down the narrow path which was separated from the road by a railing.  Most of the group passed by me except one lad who was busy texting on his phone, not looking where he was going.  I walked as close to the wall as I could and he passed by.

The next thing I know this lad is shouting at me about how I should look where I’m going and that I nearly knocked his phone out of his hand, I carried on walking while he continued to rant, apparently about how important and the centre of the universe he was and that I should have moved for his lordship.

Having had a really lousy day I turned, walked back and firmly told him that it was him not looking where he was going and was only looking at his phone – “yeah, cos I’m busy” he replied – working on a multi-million pound equity deal no doubt – while his friend held on to him and his girlfriend crowed “it’s not wurf it mate” to me.

I agreed with that at least so turned and carried on walking.

It turns out that this condition afflicts many people these days – the inability to move from one place to another without tweeting or updating facebook – so much so that in New York signs have been put up to try to prevent collisions in future.

The signs are actually the work of street artist Jay Shells who campaigns for better social etiquette and whose previous works have included signs about not flicking cigarette butts on the ground.  Of course it’s not just pedestrian collisions that happen because of people not watching where they’re going, people have actually been hit by vehicles too so the message is serious.

So mind where you’re walking out there and if you’re reading this on the move for goodness sake LOOK UP!

[Metro]

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