Tag: actually

I wanna build a house!

Posted on by bobdvb

We are currently house hunting and that is proving to be quite a painful experience because the market really has over-inflated the price of property in the UK. I look at some of the properties and I think, why would I pay that much?! But, I really want to build my first house, however the market for land is even more uncertain. The houses that I visit have proportions that are designed for a different generation and the market seems to be under the impression they can sell a property with some over inflated price based on the value if the property was renovated less some minimal cost to renovate*. One significant factor is that we are a couple that like to cook together and most kitchens are too small, thus you either compromise your lifestyle or factor in major structural changes. With land I find that people price it based on the potential, which isn’t fair because they haven’t actually put any effort into giving the land value. Land shouldn’t be worth some mythical value which doesn’t actually give you anything in return because at the end of the day it is a location plus dirt not a virtual house.

So, if someone reading this knows of some land to buy or has some land they want to sell then let me know! I will even pay 1% commission to anyone helping me secure the purchase of some suitable land. There is an incentive for you!

 

* In addition many people add in the expense of moving and selling the property plus the expense of buying their next property. More on the fairness of the property market in this article on economically sustainable housing.

Liberties in the UK and Photography

Posted on by bobdvb

This is the kind of posting that will likely make me no friends in government security, but I’m tired of all of that.

Traveling

I’ve been reading far too often lately about the liberties being taken away from us in the UK for the sake of our protection from terrorism. As a regular traveler I have never minded airport security until recently. I flew out of New York a few months after “9/11” and felt quite satisfied that security was sufficient. However, since then the authorities have stacked on more and more restrictions on travel based on badly founded risk assessments. Examples of these are:

1) That all persons carrying liquids could be a threat to safety

2) Our shoes are a potential hiding place for objects/substances that could threaten safety

So, lets take a look at those threats:

1) There was a reported threat that it might be possible to make a binary explosive by mixing two or more chemicals in the bathroom of an airliner. This is the stuff of Hollywood legend and has very little practical application.

2) Richard Reed, a disturbed English/Jamaican man from Bromley who found religion after being in prison. He failed to ignite a small quantity of explosives hidden in his shoes. So that is one failed attempt to blow up a plane with a badly conceived and executed plan.

So overall, I now have to have my liquids scanned (what use is it to put the bottles through an x-ray machine?) and I have to take off my shoes to prove I am not hiding any explosives in them. Apparently for some people it makes them feel more secure to know that action is being taken, but do they really realise how ineffective this action really is? How much of a waste of resources it really is? If I wanted a knife on-board an aircraft I could make one out of readily available materials (drinks cans), or I could just fly first class and order the steak!

Photography

Apparently it has now become a crime to take photographs in a public place and even where it isn’t a crime it is now decided that if you are taking photographs of public places that you must be a terrorist planning something. When did it happen that actions that many could consider common actions became so suspect. Not all of us just take photographs when we are tourists, some of us like to take pictures when we are out and about of interesting but everyday subjects. It also is becoming a crime to refuse to give your identity when asked by a Police Officer and this I also disagree with.

I am not an opponent of the Police, I think many of them do a sterling job but I felt I had to write an email to the Kent Police Authority just as an appeal to their better nature and it is in the Read More section below and as always I welcome comment.

Continue reading “Liberties in the UK and Photography” →

Test Signals on BBC HD for the masses

Posted on by bobdvb

On the BBC Internet Blog, Andy Quested has discussed the various issues around the addition of a test signal to BBC HD. It makes for very interesting reading, well worth it for anyone wanting to better understand their television and get a better picture.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2008/12/a_christmas_present_from_the_h.html

I actually emailed Andy about one part of his article:

 “The audio is actually two blocks of wood being banged once a second – nothing to beat the real thing!“

I emailed him to say that in college one of my much respected lecturers (Morgan Jones) proposed using a spark gap as a syncronisation source. Few things in nature are more instant than a spark and the correlation between the light and the light is absolute (subject to the speed of sound, etc).

His response was that he would look at it but he also raised another issue, how do you deal with the fact that an audio compression system based on the psycho-acoustic model might ignore such a short spike of audio? Frankly I don’t know, I am not sure I know enough about compression systems, but it seems worth a look.

Bob

Definition of a Friend

Posted on by bobdvb

In response to a blog entry by Euan Semple :

Since I have moved jobs my relative profile has increased, through press releases and now because I have stuck my oar in on DigitalSpy to correct some speculation about my companies future products.

I have always been a prolific tart when it comes to socialising (especially on-line), but recently I was ‘found’ on Facebook by someone who is an avid user of our products. I decided that, although this person is known to me, I would deny this ‘friend’ request just because by many measures I don`t actually know them.

Euan and I have met only very rarely in person and in our previous lives interacted on-line as part of his now famous community at the BBC. This makes me comfortable considering hm one of the loose social network of on-line friends that I have, but without some personal connection or professional relationship, if the association is too loose I don’t feel I can ‘friend’ someone.

I invite comment… 

Pre-release

Posted on by bobdvb

Now that my profile has become a fair bit more public I get asked quite alot if people can have pre-release hardware for products that are arriving soon. The truth is, it's not that simple, we are a mass-manufacturing company and for us to produce something in low volume (such as samples) it is incredibly expensive. It takes a certain amount of time to set-up a production run, then the sample run may only produce a fraction of a full production run, or another alternative is that the boards assembled by hand, anyway there are various methods all producing expensive hardware. This can be one of the most significant single expenses we might have in development after paying the developers.

Once the software is tested and all the bugs tidied up we can actually start manufacturing completed products in a couple of days, the turn around is amazingly quick because of the preparation that happens in advance. So the time between the last bug fix and the shelf is actually very short when there is a pressure on time from the customers.

So, please, first there is no point in asking for prototype hardware, it's too expensive and second you'll get products when they are ready we don't delay for our fun! We need the return on investment as soon as possible, so we release at the most appropriate moment for everyone.