Oxenholme to Heathrow in half the time?

This week on the drive home I managed to catch the last part of Lakeland Radio's news bulletin which mentioned the possibility of travelling from Oxenholme to Heathrow in half the currently time that being in just two hours.  I thought this very strange, why Heathrow, is there a need to travel there when we have airports closer at Manchester, Liverpool, Blackpool, and don't you have to travel into London first then back out to Heathrow.

Back home I did a search of the web to see if I'd heard things right and was only able to find two media outlets in the North West reporting this story, one of them being this news report by Lakeland Radio and the other from the Blackpool Gazette.

From reading these two online reports it became clear that they were probable mostly copy n pasted from a Department for Transport press release that is trying garner support for the proposed High Speed Rail link (HS2) and seems to make out that it's be possible to travel from any North West station to Heathrow in two hours - the press release must be written by someone who thinks England doesn't pass the bounds of the M25

Does this two hour claim stack up?  I've tend to do the train journey into London from Oxenholme once or twice a year and it's possible to get down to London Euston from Oxenholme in 2 hours 45 mins, just enough time to settle down and watch a movie.  If you want to then goto Paddington then the train times allow you 1 hours to get on the tube to Paddington then it's a 15 minutes train to Heathrow.

Keeping the Euston to Heathrow times the same that would mean the journey between Oxenholme and Euston would need to be done in 45 minutes to meet the 2 hour claim - so is this possible with HS2.

Short answer is No.  Well HS2 could have a speed of around 240MPH and London is around 250 miles away so at best the journey would be over 1 hour into London.  Now the HS2 proposed will only get as far north as Birmingham although the release implies that it's go as far as Manchester as uses this as the basis for the 2 hour claim.  So lets say HS2 was to get as far as Manchester, could that help, I don't think so - all trains from Oxenholme tend to stop at other North Western stations which take up to a hour of the journey, I can't the number of stops reducing, so I can't see any time savings.

Conclusion is I think the report is pie in the sky, at best I think it would reduce journey times by upto 30 minutes but that will be lost if you have to change trains on route to London.

I wonder why more of the local media hasn't report this, is it obvious it's not a going or is it bad timing publication wise.

Cumbria Broadband Champions Map

I've produced a overlay map of Cumbria marking out all the parishes and which have a known Broadband Champion based on information found on Cumbria Broadband, looks sparse doesn't it, I'm sure there are more but look on the web it's not obvious who there are.  So this is where you guys come in to help fill in the blanks so we see a sea of green instead of the current red.

A walk-though on how to provide to details is available at the bottom of this post.

I've created a Google Spreadsheet where at minimum the name of the Broadband champion should be added against the relevant parish, also details like social network links can be added, these are optional but would be good to be added so as to extend the community and add ways on communicating on this subjects between those interested.  The spreadsheet can be updated by anyone, I will periodically pull the data from the spreadsheet to update the map, I'm also happy to input names myself if that's easier for some, a link to the various ways of contacting me is on the spreadsheet.

The current version of the map is shown below, link to larger interactive version is shown below which has options to embed in websites, this map can be reused by anyone supporting Cumbria Community Broadband, I'll post updates on this blog and on the spreadsheet, free free to let me know what your think of the map.

Map - Large Version

Walk-through on how to fill in the spreadsheet with details 

Google+

Yesterday my Google+ invite came through after someone kindly invited me earlier in the week - these things take time.  This post is on my initial thoughts on using Google+

Before getting onto Google+ the only knowledge I had was from watching the demonstration video's and certain users views from podcasts like TwiG.  This was probable a mistake as these guys are the Google fan boys and give an impression that it's great but I'll come back to the difference between them and us 'normal' users.  The impress I got was I could find and join a circle/hangout - how wrong could I be - VERY!!!

So I logon Google+ for the first time and I'm presented with a blank canvas consisting of just me and a message from the kind soul who invited me.  So lets find a circle to join, first problem met, there are no 'public' circles, you have to create your own circle and find people to add to it - they'll know they're in your circle but not what circle it is.  If you're from the Twitter wealm think of a circle as a Twitter list which can't be shared, so rather than one person doing all the hard work curating a circle that can be shared, with G+ everyone has to create their own in the vain hope that everyone is roughly having the same Circles.

To start with I've created a Circle called Locals - South Lakes, Cumbria, England and using names from Twitter added 11 people with Google+ accounts (you search in real names not nicknames), so I've been using it for nearly 24hrs now and between the 12 of us in my circle we've conversed between each other zero times.  This may lie a problem for ordinary users like me, I think you're going to have to have alot of people in your circle to get to the point of finding out whether it's going to be useful for anything.  You could say twitter on occasions is the same, alot goes on during the day but once midnight comes everyone turns into a punkin and all goes quiet till the morning.

So why have the likes of Leo Laporte's TwiG clan taken to it so easily compared to Joe Public (you and I), well they've got the advantage to being able to quickly create a network of circles just by adding well known people from tech and as this network listen to shows like TwiG then Leo's Clan are invited into the right circles so they're able to get the most out of what Google+ is offering.  For Joe Public we have to do alot of work upfront to just tip the surface to what Google+ has to offer and there maybe easier non Google ways of achieving the same goals for certain people.

So far I have 40 people in my circles and my feeling of Google+ is like it's just Buzz 2.0, I can see alot of newbies losing interest and sticking with Twitter and/or Facebook, too much effort if needed to hunt out other people you think maybe of interest and create circles for them.  Then when you have a starting point the next difficulty is turning your one way messages into a two way conversion both in written form and in a hangout.  

For me the only part I could see being useful is the hangout feature for discussing certain topics between upto 10 people via webcam, for example at work I use a suite of applications known as SAP Business Objects, there is a very good forum called BOB Forums for post requests for help regarding the application or helping others in written form.  I think it would be good to have a Business Objects hangout for occasions when it makes sense to discussion face to face rather than through a long winded post thread.  At the moment I trying to see if I can find a way to make this work - this maybe a long road as I'm having to try and set it up by posting in BOB Forums ask people to come and find me on Google+ - if Google was to allow people to setup public Circles then this would be a lot easier, all that would be need is for me to point people to the public circle.

I've seen this sort of hangout type activity happen very successful and easily using a combination of Twitter and TinyChat.  It's a simply a case of tweeting everyone in a Twitter list asking them to join a TinyChat session.

My Initial Opinion - Google+  =  Buzz 2.0

Improvements Needed - Public Circles

Cold Phone Call - International Routing System Scam

Last weekend I was fortunate to get a cold call which when you hear the first few words you know it's a scam, normally I would just put the phone down but I wasn't the one who answered the phone and they managed with no difficultly to get past my first line of defense (another family member).  So how do they know these details, well it's not hard to get this sort of info, the electrol roll matched to the phone directory - all bound to be sound on the open market - basic marketing data sold on and on to the point that it's being used illegally.

So I decided to have a bit of fun, to see how long I could string them along - see end of post for some audio of the conversation (headphones recommended).  The last time I did this was when someone called me saying they could do me a better deal on the cost of my phone calls, to which I asked how they were going to better a deal that doesn't currently costs me anything.

Before I go through the details of the call I'll give a quick overview of the scam.  You'll be picked a random from their list to be called and they'll imply that there systems have detected a slow response coming from your computer and would like to sort the problem out.  They'll ask you if you have a computer and could you go to it and look at a part of the windows logs (Event Viewer) to give the impression that your computer has problems.  Then they'll ask you to download some software from a website, this is the sting where the software could do anything, you're as good as installing there malware for them.  Then the scammer attempts to get their reward where for a fee they'll offer to remove offending virus's they say you have - It's all a con and if you follow any instructions they give on your computer then you're good as opening up your computer to the whole world.

Well I was never going to fall for this in a month of Sunday's, as I'm usually the first point of call from family & friends requesting tech support from me.

Let the FUN commence:-

An Indian girl starts going through a short script explaining that they're router has identified a slow response coming from my PC and they're calling to check everything is ok.  The art to not playing ball with these type of calls is to response with answers/questions that are less likely to form part of their script responses.

Having said they've identified a slow response they asked if I have a computer to which I responded "What is a computer?" and proceed to have them explain what they are meaning, whether it is like a fax machine.  I finally gave them the impression that I now had a rough idea from them of what a computer was and had access to one although I'm woolly on whether it was mine, works etc..

Next they ask me to go and switch my computer on, now there's a difference between switching on a computer and saying you have - for my part in this exchange I just said to my Indian cold caller than I had switched it on but was nowhere near my computer through out this phone call.  Time for the next phase of Operation String Along - I wait a couple of minutes, pretending the computer is booting up with them during this time asking if I'd switched it on and me saying yes then a finally response of "It's on a screen which says 'Checking system files - 2%'", this confused them but they were quite happy to see the progress of this message through, although my made up screen text I relayed wasn't in there script - so I put the phone down for a few minutes.

When I next pick up the phone they were still there on the other end eagerly awaiting an update to which I responded "It's now saying 3%", this went on and on with me edging the % progress another notch when twenty minutes later I was saying it was at 15% which it stayed stuck at for the next 10minutes.  Now if I was giving tech support then I would of quickly worked out that at this rate I was going to be here all day and would make my excuses to end the call but these guys were very happy to wait it out.

Next phase now was to see what would it take for them to end the call, so I asked them as this was taking along time to resolve could they help with something else while I waiting - first I asked them if they can solve problems with televisions, then I moved onto trying to get them to help with a printer problem.  Well they couldn't help with my television problem but were happy to help with the printer problem but not until they resolve my computer problem, to which I said my computer problem is going to take all day at this rate and whilst we're waiting could help me with my printer problem.

At this point she was getting lost in how to deal with the call and wanted to put me through to a senior technical person who by coincidence sits next to her.  Now over half an hour had passed and it was clear they were going stick at this so it was time to quickly bring this to an end - so I told the 'senior' guy I wasn't happy with the service I was getting, I'd asked for help with sorting out my printer whilst we waited and that I wasn't happy to wait until the computer problem was resolved first.  During this part of the discussion I questioned them on how they got my details and where they were based, the answers they gave didn't make much sense, they said they got the information from the International Routing System, then said it came from the info entered when you register Windows.  I asked whether they were based - Salt Lake City the response (unlikely), also I asked if they get the information from Microsoft to which they said yes, so I tripped them up by saying I never registered windows - at this point they were starting to trip themselves up.

I finally brought the call to an end when they said they'd have to put me through to their technical support team in order to resolve my issues but the sting in the tail which is the point to this whole scam if I'd allowed the call to follow their script is that they would be a charge of £29 for this service if they were able to solve the problem.  I gave them a minute to put me through and solve to my problem but they wasted that time and I decided to terminated the call.

Whilst this was all going on I dug out a mic and connected it to my ipod to record some of the conversation (last 8 minutes of the call) - now this was unplanned so the result isn't the best with me sounding loud and the other side being very quiet but it's still worth listening to as you'll get a good idea of the call from mostly my side and when listened through headphones you can pick up good parts of the other side.

I've posted my clips using SoundBoard which also allow comments be to added to the track which I thought would be useful to allow listeners to do.

(Listen through headphones recommended)
Clip by lakeuk
Clip by lakeuk

Some websites I've found where others have come across this type of scam:-
Theo Gray - Blog Post
Money Watch - Blog
Eaton Bray
Computer World - Austrailia