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Consequences of a missing Key!!!

I read with intrigue the story about a key from the Titanic which is being put up for auction along with a postcard soon!

Apparently had this key not been misplaced from the Titanic is possible that it would not have floundered as it did. The key was for the binocular cupboard in the Titanic crows nest and it is said that if the look outs had been equipped with binoculars they might have been able to see the fatal iceberg sooner and give sufficient warning so that the ship could avoid it.

Read more – click here

So why did this catch my notice. Well I think there is a moral to this story. If we are about to embark on a large project – or launch something big we need to make sure that we have any key items along for the trip! It is possible that we might proceed with the mission and fail in some way because a critical item had been overlooked. It is remarkable that the captain of the Titanic was willing to set sail and then navigate through an area that was known to have icebergs around with his lookouts not fully equipped for the job. And look at the consequence of this situation.

Fibre to the home in Amsterdam

After reading John Connells comment on my last post I decided to explore the situation in the Netherlands. I very quickly found the following site which provides information about the Citynet Amsterdam project. This project aims to deliver fibre connections to 40,000 homes. read more about it here.

Citynet Amsterdam

Much of the site is written in Dutch but I could get enough information from it to appreciate this is an approach this has the potential to deliver serious amounts of bandwidth to the home.

I just wonder what the authorities here in the UK cannot see the longterm benefit to move towards this sort of infrastructure. In the UK we always seem to have the infrastructure lagging the needs of the media which are in demand.

I believe that this was true when the first digital services were introduced ( ISDN ) and continues to be the case now when in most cases the best we can get is ADSL – which is ofter heavily contended making performance almost as poor as and analogue modem connection! I have my self collected quite a bit of data that bears this out!

As I write this post a quick check on speedtest.net shows that my current link ( which is an up to 8Mbps service) is providing a 2341 kbps downlink this is actually very good for 8pm when it is not uncommon to experience download speeds of just a few hundred kbps

Broadband Rocks in Japan!!!

Or Broadband is really Broadband in Japan,

In the context of my earlier rants about broadband in the UK this following article make very interesting reading.

It seems that in Japan users can enjoy a fibre connection which can deliver 100 Mbps and can enjoy full screen high quality video delivered via their BB connection!

This shows that where there is a government will it is possible to go beyond the copper cable infrastructure that currently has a strangle hold on our capacity to deliver broadband to the home.

Click here to read the article.

Kemnay Kirk – Summer Picnic August 2007


Each year members and friends of Kemnay Kirk meet with the Kemnay Pleasure park to have some find, games and a barbecue. This year was no exception and once again the rain stayed off! Some readers might find this an interesting statement! Scotlands weather can be a bit unpredictable at times ;-).
We had a great time enjoying each others company, playing games ( the annual game or rounders was as competitive as always you might expect) and of course enjoyed a burger or two!!

You can look at some photos taken on the day by clicking here

Frivolity ;-)

I was amused when I glanced at John Connells blog to day to see that he had produced a likeness of himself in the style of the Simpsons! See his image here! It’s a reasonable representation I think 😉

I could not resist spending a little time checking out the site a Simpsonizing myself!!! You can try it for yourself, see SimpsonizeMe.
I feel that this does capture some of my characteristics…….