Book read: Secrets of the Conqueror by Stuar Prebble

An interesting read of the operations of the SSN HMS Conqueror pre and post Falklands war. Also describing the inept political covering up that followed over who took the decision to sink Belgrano outside of the 200 mile TEZ.

Pre/Post Falklands is revealed as an operation to capture Russian towed array sonar to gain information on their capability. It is conjectured that this is the true operation that was wanted to be kept quiet during the subsequent loss of ships logs.

The subsequent political fall out from this meant that a crew member Narendra Sethia was accused of stealing the logs and supplying a Labour politician with the information needed to question the government (he had in fact just kept a diary that he provided to a trusted person with a view to publishing).

A sub-story is his winning of a libel case against the main papers - something that cannot easily be undertaken if you do not have the financial backing.

Sethia went on to meet survivors of Belgrano in 2000:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2000/oct/18/argentina.falklands

Artic Convoy Medals

The long campaign has paid off, there will be a medal associated with the WWII arctic convoys:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-20783362

I could never understand how it had taken so long, I have heard only a few descriptions of what conditions were like - these were volunteers whose efforts were conveniently forgotten post war.

Film: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey directed by Peter Jackson

I went to see this latest Tolkein middle earth adventure - a little apprehensive about it being another three parter for what was a single book.

It was an enjoyable film, that holds the attention well - and the revolutionary 48 frames per second is impressive.

Martin Freeman plays the central character of Baggins really well - and the film centres around him. The effects and battle scenes are impressive, the storyline is long but much simpler than Lord of the Rings.

Patrick Moore RIP

Really sad news about Patrick Moore today, I watched this months Sky at Night a programme I have watched since around 2004 when I got my first PVR.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-10525469

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/science-obituaries/9732840/Sir-Patrick-Moore.html

A truly inspirational and dedicated man. I can remember him judging a model contest when I was growing up, and he loved my brothers Airfix model of Apollo 11!

For people who watch the show, they've gradually seen him become more frail over the last few years - still a shock to hear the news though.

Peer to Peer lending set to be regulated

Interesting article on peer to peer lending which is due to have some regulation in the UK.

http://www.lovemoney.com/blogs/the-economy-politics-and-your-job/politics-and-finance/18741/peertopeer-lending-set-to-be-regulated?source=1000564

Probably most importantly from a compensation perspective should a firm fail - that would be an important backup for any investor. Of course it is something everyone thinks about since the near fall of Halifax/RBS and the run on Northern Rock.

These sort of businesses are exactly the type of competition the mainstream banks need - cut out the middle man, who has for too long made too much money and offered poor loan deals.

Keeping the lights on

Christopher Booker always writes very good articles on the folly of UK energy policy, and this is a good example:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/9715919/Well-slash-your-bills-but-it-will-cost-you-more-says-Ed-Davey.html

Reading it gave me an idea, let's fast track the House of Commons onto the energy mix they are talking about - mainly wind power. The lights would go out at regular intervals, and maybe this would galvanize them into a more reliable policy!

HP v Autonomy

HP's sad demise continues, claiming dirty tricks in the Autonomy buy out. I only know a little about Autonomy - but it always felt like a company over selling a dubious capability. Oracle famously turned up their noses, with Ellison seeing the business was not worth what was claimed.

That left HP to wade in and lose their money. In some ways this is what UK companies of old (think Ferranti) fell foul of, buying an American concern that simply was not worth the money!

Cringely has a good article:

http://www.cringely.com/2012/11/28/hear-that-sound-its-hp-founders-bill-and-dave-spinning-in-their-graves/

Film: Skyfall directed by Sam Mendes

I saw Skyfall at the cinema, and it was pretty good. It did feel a little like a series of set piece stunts linked up by a background plot - but that does not detract too much.

As always the stunt scenes are really well done. A lot was made of us hearing a little more of Bond's background - but that was quite weak really.

The product placement was not too bad - I missed the Heineken bit which they paid so much for. Also they found a good balance of showing iconic representations of text messages rather than using it as an opportunity to product place a mobile phone handset (which date so quickly as to age a film prematurely).

I feel they played a bit too much on Bond "getting old", a bit absurd that - also leaving them less room to manoeuvre on subsequent films.

Film: Quantum of Solace directed by Marc Foster

Before going to see the new Bond I rewatched this for the first time since seeing it in the cinema.

I still found it to be a good film, the critics say it was a bit weak because it was Bond trying to be Bourne. There is some truth in that, but I think there is no harm in that.

As always the car chase scenes are really well done, and the plot is not too bad.

Film: A Woman Under the Influence Directed by John Cassavetes

A film that feels more like a extended play or drama detailing a very vivid picture of someone's mental illness and a working class families' attempt at dealing with it.

Peter Falk stars as the husband of his wife Mabel, and struggles to deal with the whole deterioration until she is sectioned by a doctor.

There is no coverage of her 6 month treatment, although some references make it sound like it was very crude. Given this film was made in the 1970s it is ahead of it's time in covering a difficult topic, something that even today is considered difficult to admit or talk about.

Energy Policy - Nuclear Power

The building of new nuclear has proved challenging for the UK. The consortia are folding and we do not have the time left to build them.

But a ray of light from Hitachi:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20134735

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20137573

So we might now stand a chance of building them, without too much French intervention or restrictive practice...

Ceefax retired

The analogue switchover has happened in the UK now, the last transmitter has been closed off. With it dies Ceefax, after 38 years - the BBC website had the final shutdown transmission pictures...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20032882

Film: Hurt Locker directed by Kathryn Bigelow

A film about the Iraq war, and the bomb disposal team and their tour of duty. There are a lot of suspenseful sequences of defusing bombs, and action sequences which depict what fire fights must be like (lots of inaccurate shooting because of the conditions).

The central character is obsessed with the danger of his job, the fact he faces death at every bomb he is called to defuse. Consequently live away from Iraq seems mundane and humdrum.

An interesting and thought provoking film.

Film: Casino Royale directed by Martin Campbell

I saw this in the cinema back in 2006 and decided to rewatch a DVD of it. Astoundingly this DVD had found its way into the 20 pence bucket at Cash Converters.

I think when I saw it in the cinema I did not take a lot of the plot in, being rather irritated by the endless product placement that a Bond film should be able to rise above.

But on re-watching this did not annoy me so much - so I could concentrate on the plot. Of course all the product placed mobile phone handsets look very dated now. I did find one piece of placement, the heart defibrillator that Bond uses to recover from a cardiac arrest actually an interesting public safety/education message.

Also I saw the cameo of Richard Branson being patted down at Miami airport amusing - also more amusing was that it had to be cut out of the in flight movies of British Airways!.

The film still holds up - all action and refreshing of an good brand.

Energy Policy

To more specialist areas of media this will not be news. But finally this week the risk of our enforced European energy policy were spelled out in harsh terms. The changes of power outage as we move to renewables and failing to provide enough backup power plants to replace older coal generators has gone from 1 in 3300 years to 1 in 12 years.

We've dragged our feet on commissioning new nuclear power is the one factor I can think of that has had some media coverage.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19842401

There is one columnist I can think of, Christopher Booker who has been charting this sleep walking into energy shortages for a few years. He has some extreme views on climate change - which are sometimes hard to accept. But on energy policy I always feel he is correct.

Book read: Priceless by William Poundstone

An interesting economics book about how people can be influenced in a subconscious way on the pricing of products in everyday life. Each chapter presents a small experiment or case study and tries to explain the results.

The main themes of the book is anchoring, where someone is drawn to a price by being influenced by seeing (sometimes unrelated) prices or numbers. You can either believe that marketeers are either steeped in this psychology or have found it to work over many years.

It feels like an area a regulator would eventually get hold of and try to control, and also as the secret gets out the effect of such priming of thoughts would have less effect because the subjects "know the game". Still it was nice to have the game explained and the rationale behind it.

The pioneers of this type of thinking, a mix between psychology and economics were Khaneman and Tverskry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amos_Tversky http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Kahneman

Film: Inception directed by Christopher Nolan

This is a film that depicts the world of peoples dreams - and where a new kind of fraud can be committed, that of planting an idea in the dreamers head by appearing in their dream and altering the course of events.

The plot of this film is both clever and complex - I really liked the area it was describing and that was highly original. But the plot is complicated and quite layered, which means I will have to watch again to fully understand it.

But having said that a really engaging film with some great action sequences.

Fox News

A very sad example of how the need for live news channels to feed the viewer news as it was happening went wrong:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-19763649

So they should have been broadcasting a 5 second delayed picture, so they could cut if things turned bad - but the live pictures went out.

Still it is a sad situation that the news channel knew this would be bringing in viewers - and eventually they got more than they bargained for.

Employment Law

Newsnight has had some good stories about the state of low pay employment for immigrants in Britain. They exposed the fact that Romanina/Bulgarian workers who are not allowed to work as full time employees are exploited by being classed as contract workers. This happens to the extent of mininum wage laws being broken by insisting that payment is for the number of rooms cleaned (the example cites Hotel work).

This has pushed out reputable companies who cannot compete on those terms and lets cleaning contracts go to companies who exploit this type of law.

Part of this is down to the out source culture and contract at cheapest price - the government could go a long way to fine the Hotels involved to ensure they source labour from appropriately run companies.

The frustrating thing is Britain is not short of employment legislation to outlaw this practice - and to provide some protection to these vulnerable workers. As always, typical of the Blair era, we made laws we had no intention or idea of how to enforce - just assuming that everyone would abide by them.

Book read: Music of the Primes by Marcus du Sautoy

This is a book I've been meaning to read for a while. It is a mathematical history of prime numbers, and the Riemann Zeta hypothesis.

That may not sound too promising for a book, but it is a very interesting and readable account. The history side is fascinating, the great names that have worked on the this area over the centuries. The book also describes the use of primes in cryptography and also describes the use of computer power to verify (but not prove) Riemann.

So I wish I had read this sooner, but glad that now I have - a book that you could not put down once you had started.

Raspberry Pi Manufacture

Raspberry Pi manufacturing was being done in China - the only realistic option for the volumes they were thinking of making.

The first change was getting professional distributors involved once the scale of the orders became clear, and now the device will be manfactured in the UK - presumably the volumes now make it economic to do.

That is really good news, the first British made computer for a couple of decades?

http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/1925

Apple v Samsung

I am sure this is only the start of the patent litigation in the tech industry. It looks like Apple have won their case against Samsung products copying Apple ideas that are patented.

Samsung shares have slid on the ruling that sees them paying $1bn dollars in compensation, and maybe having products withdrawn from the US market.

Overall I agree with those that say it will be bad for consumers in the market and limit competition. How long can ideas that are "out there" be something a company can protect, Apple sell a high margin product and locking out competition for many years is surely counter productive.

I always sympathise with the James Dyson views on patents, he won a case when he was trying to bring his vacuum cleaners to market - so I do feel they have a place. Here is his comments on the case:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/9500480/Its-obvious-that-British-courts-should-defend-firms-patents.html

Neil Armstrong RIP

Very sad news of the death of Neil Armstrong yesterday. Inspired a generation even though he kept out of the limelight and led a normal life after the landings.

I saw this quote and I think it sums him up very well:

"I am, and ever will be, a white-socks, pocket-protector, nerdy engineer -- born under the second law of thermodynamics, steeped in the steam tables, in love with free-body diagrams, transformed by Laplace, and propelled by compressible flow"

Here is the link to the Telegraph obituary:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/science-obituaries/9499820/Neil-Armstrong.html

Facebook Economics III

I can't resist another analysis. There are 2.13809 billion shares issued. Currently trading at $19.41 per share, $41.50 billion market cap That's a loss of $44.02 billion...

Olympics 2012 Memories

Now the Olympics have finished here are the memories I will look back on:

1. Mo Farah 5000 & 1000 metre double, incredible achievement.
2. Usain Bolt 100m/200m double and the relay record, proof that it was not all talk.
3. US 100m women's relay record.
4. Bradley Wiggins time trial victory in cycling.
5. David Rudisha breaking the 800 metre record.
6. An opening ceremony the trod the line between eccentricity and absurdity well.
7. Jessica Ennis winning the Heptathlon, 200m and 800m in particular.

In short it will be remembered as a great event, despite all the initial worrying (remember the wrong flag being raised for the Koreans?). It is a boost for the countries image, and will probably be a tourist boost for years to come.

Book read: Cosmos by Carl Sagan

I bought this book on the back of watching the iconic 1980s series Cosmos. It is an interesting and thought provoking read, covering similar areas to the series but going into more detail on some areas.

Clearly a big thing for Sagan is the search for extra terrestrial life and how we would go about it, or even recognise any signals we might receive. The book also gives a general treatment of scientific advance right through to Einstein's ground breaking work on relativity. It also analyses missions such as Voyager, and theoretical missions of how far we could travel in the vast distances of space.

Of course the book feels like a bit of history now, Sagan sadly died in 1996 at 62. He would have been fascinated by the continued discoveries like exoplanets and images from space telescopes.

Book read: Fear Index by Robert Harris

I had resisted reading this book even though I like the authors other work. To me a book based around financial engineering and low latency trading seemed to have limited options - compared to maybe Enigma or Fatherland the other works I had read.

Now having read it I quite enjoyed it, Harris does a good job of explaining the technicalities of hedge fund trading and works a thriller plot into the book by having the central character doubt his sanity as an investigation of a break in and assault at his luxury home.

A subtext of the book is to make the reader stand back and wonder about how obscure financial trading has become, relying on computers and automated processes to do the work - the hedge fund company in the book has developed such a automated system and is looking for new investment.

Betting Results 2011-2012

Last year I started tracking my sports betting - I do not bet much per event but it is a way of keeping interest in things like football, as I've long since been an avid fan.

So the year is up how did I do?

Name	Value
Total staked	£626.05
Avg Odds	2.31
Profit/Loss	-£17.75
Avg Profit Per Week	-0.40

A breakdown by sport:

	Total	Won	Lost	% Win
Football	406	195	201	48.03
Tennis	35	27	8	77.14
F1	30	22	8	73.33

This year I am trying some different approaches:

1. A cleaned up spreadsheet with weeks properly demarcated.
2. A virtual bets to test out some more outlandish odds.

FIlm: 4 months, 3 weeks, 2 days Directed by Cristian Mungiu

A really bleak moralistic film set in 1980s Romania where abortion and contraception are not legalised.

A pregnant woman has arranged an abortion to be performed, but the man performing has a high price both financially and morally.

A thought provoking film, nothing heart warming here though - but well shot and minimalist sets throughout.

Facebook Economics II

So after my initial post IPO analysis the shares are still taking a battering on the market.

There are 2.13809 billion shares issued.

Currently trading at $23.09 per share, $49.36 billion market cap

That's a loss of $31.96 billion...

Microsoft Decline

Interesting article describing Microsoft slow decline and internal strife:

http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2012/08/microsoft-lost-mojo-steve-ballmer

Focusing too much on competing with themselves, rather than turning out good products. Rushing things to market to make a deadline. Microsoft had some significant firsts, ereaders, tablets but they just could not make them a success. This is astonishing despite their huge budget for such work.

If the anti-trust investigation had broken them up, would that have really being doing them a favour?

Casio CFX-9850G

A late 1990s graphical calculator, I bought this when I wanted to see how things had moved on from the original Casio graphical calculator. It is more powerful, a full 32KB of memory, and has a lot more functions. It even had a PC connect mode, but despite all that it feels a little underpowered even for back then.

It does have nice keys, display and I can remember my sister preferring to use it because you could see the calculation you were doing. More interestingly it ran on triple A batteries so no expensive replacements.

Found at:

www.caffnib.co.uk/calculators/calculators.html

Tour de France 2012

I am not a big cycling fan, but with history in the making I decide to watch the final state 20 that ends up in Paris. So Cavendish won, with Bradley Wiggins setting up his final sprint. It is clearly a really technical precisely timed event, the break away which had 20 seconds at one stage was reeled in in the final 5km.

A nice piece of history a British 1-2, whereas we've only finished at best 4th. Cycling seems to be resurgent and it was an interesting thing to watch unfold.

Casio FX-992

This was a calculator I bought after my degree and used for a few years. My first solar power/battery powered one. It had a supposedly more intuitive input system, where you could enter the function key before the number you wanted to apply. It took a while to get used to from the previous models.

Found at:

http://www.calculator.org/Pages/calculator.aspx?model=fx-992s&make=Casio

The Flashing Blade

For some reason I thought back to my summer holidays when I was growing up. For a couple of years there seemed to be re-runs of a French imported series called The Flashing Blade. It was an epic series on horseback it seemed, so I looked it up:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Flashing_Blade

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-ZEDNkZ2L4

Casio FX 7000GA

For my A levels, in the first year I bought a graphic calculator. The college I was attending was getting a bulk order and I bought through that, I seem to remember it was about £30 but I might be wrong. So this is where graphic calculators began, it was a pretty neat machine, with a simple programming language too. Any exam would first involve writing a quadratic solver for use in problems! Programmables were allowed in the exam, as long as they had been "reset" before the exam started. I remember my A-level this procedure was done, but they did not press the reset button properly.

Found at:

http://www.voidware.com/calcs/fx7000g.htm

Casio FX 100C

For my secondary school exams I got a new calculator and used the FX 570 as a spare. I don't remember it being more capable than that, and it was back to a more chunky design. I seem to remember at the time that it would better to go back to a simple AA battery.

Found at:

http://www.calculator.org/Pages/calculator.aspx?model=fx-100C&make=Casio

Casio FX-570

My second scientific calculator, lasted my from about third to fifth year at school. It fell apart as I remember, but it was a neat calculator including fractions, constants, and base conversions

Found at:

http://www.voidware.com/calcs/fx570.htm

Casio FX-82

Nostalgia time, this was my first scientific calculator and Casio FX-82. It only had an 8 digit display, a sliding on/off switch. I used it in my first couple of years at senior school. It was actually quite bulky for a calculator.

Found at:

http://www.voidware.com/calcs/fx82.htm

Film: Dodgeball directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber

I re-watched this comedy from 2004, a formulaic but funny film about a run down gym that faces closure because of a mega corp gym next door having bought up their mortgage debt.

There only way out is to enter a Dogdeball competition to try and win the money to cover the loan. Amazingly they go onto win and save the day. Really this film still feels like a Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn comic vehicle.

There are some good cameos, Lance Armstrong to give the motivational speech to Vaughn when he is thinking of quitting before the final, Chuck Norris to give the casting vote when the team look like getting diqualified.

An unimportant piece of film history...

Olympic Torch

I saw the Olympic torch come through my home town today. In truth it is one of those ocassions to look back on and say "I was there", the occasion itself was a little fleeting.

Still the torch came through, the town was packed. Preceding it were the various sponsors Coca Cola, Samsung mobile, and Lloyds Bank.

Some coverage in the local papers:

Linux Multi Partition Install

I had to do a multi version linux install on an old PC, and it struck me that the distros do not make this as easy as perhaps it could be. These are the problems I had with the process (applying to CentOS 5/6 installs):

1. The boot loader configuration for Linux is pretty involved. The distro you are installing will get it right for the version you are just installing, but preserving other Linux installs on other partitions is not well catered for as you are given a "chainloader" windows like default for them that does not work.

2. The /etc/fstab setup now used UUID for the partition by default. This is fine in itself but when combined with insisting on making mount points for other partitions that you will re-create with later installs renders the earlier install non bootabe.

3. The same applies to the boot command from grub, it looks for a UUID by default although that is not such a problem.

4. When booting from a DVD to the install an image from a partition, it would be really nice if the installer would let you start any iso image not just the specific version you have booted the install disk from (then you could have a "universal boot USB drive/DVD".

5. It would also be really nice to have the ability to select the image you want to install from a disk partition, of across NFS. It must be possible to provide this functionality that would make things easier...

Running Records

With the Olympics just around the corner I found it interesting to look at the running records, also very interesting that the longer distances are still covering the ground fast:

Distance metres	Record Time seconds	Speed metres/sec
60m	6.39	9.3
100m	9.58	10.43
200m	19.19	10.42
400m	43.18	9.26
800m	101.01	7.92
1500m	206	7.28
3000m	448	6.69
5000m	757.35	6.60
10000m	1577.53	3.16

Banking Adverts

I've never seen a paper today to full of apologies:

- A "sorry" from Barclays, and a statement that the customer is top priority.

- A "we're working hard to put things right" from Natwest

- A "join us we're not as corrupt as those other banks" from Nationwide.

I do feel a little sorry for Natwest, an upgrade went wrong and suddenly everything collapsed. Probably should not cut back on IT so much maybe...

Barclays, little sympathy, even though it is the investment arm that has being exposed as corrupt.

Nationwide, hope they do not get too big - even though it appears a lot of deposits are heading their way. This is the only real way for the consumer to vote, if you do not like a bank's ethics - don't bank with them.

Itanium HP v Oracle

The very sad yet predictable end of Itanium. With products just left with HP, they try to convince Oracle that the need to keep producing their database on the platform...



You can hardly blame Oracle on this one, there must be no profitability in releasing this product on their platform.

At the time of creation you could not have forseen the multi core and 64 bit potential of the x86 line, and this has largely caused Itanium to be a flop. Had that not being the case then there may have been more customers willing to take the pain of an architecture changeover. AMD of course came up with x86-64 - had they not I would not be so sure the Intel would have been keen to extend the life of the processor in the server space given their second product.

Barclays Libor Fixing

The news of the fixing of interest rates for lending between banks is hardly surprising given their track record. It is hard to trace a direct link to how it affects everyday finance, which is why the BBC has also bolstered the story with aggressively marketed interest rate fix loans which have turned out to be bad for some small businesses.

There seems to be more of an attitude in government to do something about this, which is refreshing - although may lead to nothing. The injustice is that you would go to prison if this was done in any other line of business - it is after all straight fraud. But somehow we always excuse the banks, because they both help set the rate and also bet on the rate there is an obvious conflict of interest.

I think the individuals involved are probably suffering enough because internally the banks will deal with them. I would like to see a roughing up of the senior management - to remind them they earn those salaries for a good reason, and it is they who set the rules of how business is conducted. They will claim they knew little of the fraud, which maybe brings the charge down to negligence while running a bank.

Beckham Olympics

Well perhaps the first own goal of the Olympics. I think even the most ardent anti Beckhamite would recognise he probably deserves a place as an over age player in the Olympic squad. But we seem to have the misconception that we want to actually win at football anyway. It is one of those sports that should never be in the Olympics, and we have just demonstrated in Euro 2012 that we are nothing more than also rans...

So why not select Beckham, he has a world wide brand that would attract interest and is still serious about playing. It's not an event we are expecting to win, and perhaps it would help shift a few tickets.

Tax Efficiency

It is hard not to feel a little sympathy for Jimmy Carr, caught using a dubious tax efficiency scheme - having himself used low tax paying corporate as part of his comedy routine. Giving us a sense he was "one of us", when in fact he was at the same game.

But the lesson learned here is to simplify the tax system, the simpler it is the less loop holes you will have to close! It was wrong of Cameron to name him directly, as he has found out many of his conservative party donors are doing similar or worse - and in the interest of fairness they should be named too.

Likening tax to a moral issue is highly dubious though, the real annoyance here is the rich being able to use mechanisms that are never available to the ordinary person - who ends up footing most of the tax bill.

Book read: Life on Air by David Attenborough

An interesting account of Attenborough's life in broadcasting. What I did not appreciate was his pioneering work that saw him join the BBC at the very outset of television. Everything was being learnt from scratch, and the fact that wildlife was seen as a thing that television could do well was interesting considering how primitive the equipment was.

The book shows him moving on from commissioning programmes to presenting them it all feels like a steady transition and Attenborough probably makes light of how difficult the switch was.

He clearly has a good understanding of the technical side of television right from the early days, and from that had an instinct for what could be achieved in terms of filming. These were interesting accounts and really reminded you of how primitive the technology was (but of course at the time was high technology)

Encrypted Partitions

I am very late to the game here, I've being using gnugpg for years to encrypt files - but only recently have I looked at encryting entire partitions, for example on an external drive.

Having seen it is common place on Ubuntu/Fedora for internal drives on operating system install. But for a seperate drive it is easy too:

cryptsetup -y luksFormat /dev/sdb1

This formats the partition ready for use with LUKS a standard for encrypted filesystems. This will prompt for the passphrase to access the volume.

cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/sdb1 secretfs

This associates the file /dev/mapper/secretfs to the device, through which encrytion will occur. The passphrase will be prompted for.

mkfs -t ext3 /dev/mapper/secretfs

To create the ext3 filesystem.

mount /dev/mapper/secretfs /media/disk

This mounts the newly created volume.

All very neat and simple, do that on Windows!

Peer to Peer Lending

With UK banks restricting lending, partly because of reserve contraints, and mostly because they are sitting on lots of bad debt that they do not want to admit - I think it is time for governments to look at other forms of lending to provide some much needed competition.

Peer lending has been around for a few years and it is an obvious choice for cutting out the banking middle man. It just need some extra backing from governments to push it more mainstream.



It seems too good to be true, a borrower pays less interest than a regular bank loan, and a saver receives more interest than if it were sitting in the best paying savings account (they are accepting some extra risk though).

Diamond Jubilee

Well an interesting few days, overall I think it went well. The BBC have been slated for putting on what amounted to a "6 hour One Show" for the Thames barge, which lacked any useful commentary. But that aside it went off well even if the weather did deteriorate toward the end.

The concert outside Buckingham Palace was also well done. It's unlikely we'll see this kind of thing again so there is the feeling of it being once in a lifetime and maybe once in several generations.

These occasions also serve to remind us how much affection the royalty are held in. Despite a bleak 1990s they have now got a convincing line up for future generations, Charles probably remains the one question mark - his reign may test out loyalty again depending on how it is handled.

Facebook Economics

After a couple of weeks of trading, it's nice to sit down and work out how they are doing

The shares have taken quite a battering, and confidence is down.

There are 2.14 billion shares issued.

$38 per share, $81.32 billion market cap.

This was an incredible floation price, remember it is just a website people use for free, with advertisers try to target those people, and with Facebook every so often changing the privacy rules to try and make it more of a business proposition.

$27 per share, $57.58 billion market cap.

That is a loss of $23.74 billion, 30% of the flotation price. Maybe now things have found their true level, but I cannot see how this business can justify much more than a 10-20 billion value (and even that is pushing the imagination).

That would imply a share price of $9...

Budget U turns

Some of the more ridiculous micro management in the recent budget have been withdrawn amongst all the noise of the Jubilee celebrations. The dead in the water pasty tax, the ill thought out charitable donations limitations.

In all gives the feel of a government not thinking things through, and perhaps over pre-occupied with things that do not help the country - smoothing through the News Corp take over of Sky springs to mind.

So is it time to start remembering why you got put into power, forget the short termism and self interest and perhaps do something that the country might remember you for!

Interview with Hart-Dyke

About the sinking of HMS Coventry in 1982, and life after.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/falklandislands/9272406/David-Hart-Dyke-the-captain-of-HMS-Coventry-recalls-the-horror-of-his-ship-sinking-in-the-Falklands-War-It-was-black-with-people-on-fire....html

SpaceX Launch

With the retirement of the space shuttle, the ISS is being resupplied by Russia and now a first launch by a commercial rocket company SpaceX.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-18165913

So the start of a new era of commercial space flight, it clearly has been coming for several years - and maybe manned flight is not so far away. The question of what NASA concentrates on, pure research and exploration - private industry can concentrate on lucrative satellite and low earth orbit applications. The launch seems to be a joint partnership with NASA - who are presumably providing the launch control.

Hodgson first game

Well England managed a victory away against Norway for the first time since Alf Ramsey was England manager!

But a laboured victory, England made it look like hard work against Norway who were nimble and well organised.

So not a good sign for Euro 2012, England drift to 14-1 in the markets.

Of course it is only a friendly and it was a win - but it does make you worry about stronger opposition to come. The thing about the Euros is it is nothing but strong opposition, no easy group games to build confidence in.

Facebook IPO

So it has finally happened a floation on the stock market for $38 dollars a share around $100 bn in market capitalisation. You can now have your own piece of the social media company.

I think the companies frank admission that they have yet to move advertising from the PC platform to mobile (where most users access the site from) probably tells all you need to know about their future. In business terms this means they are already yesterdays company. No doubt extremely popular with users, but unless you put adverts in front of them the "free" bit of the social network will not sustain the business.

I think Zuckerberg and Sandberg know this, so the IPO is probably the height of the company. It is still an amazing story of a business grown from its initial venture capital to this point where they have found enough banks to back a floation and presumably found enough people to initially buy the shares. What was it P T Barnum said about the birth rate of suckers - it's clearly true!

As always it is a crying shame that so many talented people are spending their lives working out how to make users click on an advert to drive revenue growth. Maybe we now know what kills off all civilisations, an increasing obsession with trivia rather than true innovation.

The financial press I have read have all said this is not one for your pension fund!

Film: Michael Clayton directed by Tony Gilroy

An interesting film that portrays a soulless legal firm that is looking to settle a long running lawsuit and stop substantial damages being awarded to people affected by a companies product.

George Clooney plays Michael Clayton a legal "fixer" or janitor as he puts it, who gets to do all the dirty work and arranging that makes such companies tick. In the film there is not much evidence of what his special talents are, but you get a feel that he is has a long held position in the firm doing this role.

On the case the legal firm is looking to close, Clayton is asked to try and stop the legal genius behind the case from going off the rails and exposing the fact the firm knows full well that the companies product was dangerous. He starts to do this but then becomes increasingly disillusioned when he discovers what is going on. In the end he turns on the legal firm and captures evidence that would mean the case would collapse.

A good film and does a good job of describing both the corporate soulless face of typical big American companies and employees, and the behind the scenes reality and shady dealings that go on from day to day.

Carriers back to VSTOL

Well the U turn on the strike aircraft has been U turned. We are back to the VSTOL variant of the F35, which means less payload, less range, less strike capability. Actually we might not be able to operate in hot environments!

It gets us two things some cost savings (which I think you can immediately write off as there will be further cost overruns), and maybe a faster delivery.

Meanwhile our Navy pilots are training in America to keep skills alive, in the current day F-18. Why don't we structure the contract to have these from day one on the carrier and only buy into F35 when America has got it working!

At this rate we are going to end up with an expensive BaE carrier, with no inter-operability with the US - with which we can draw up to some danger spot and pretend to launch stealth aircraft from!

As always Lewis Page has a good analysis of the self interested parties involved in this kind of decision making:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/05/10/f35_u_turn_idiocy/

Small Change Results

Here are the results of my cashing in, I weighed the coins to get an idea comparing to a nominal weight of £1 to get the value.

Coin	£1 grams	Weight	Estimate £/coins	Actual £/coins
1p/2p	350	3571	10.20 / 714	9.93 / 657
5p	68	740	10.85 / 217	11.55 / 231
10p	65	1880	28.90 / 289	28.50 / 287
20p	25	1349	54.00 / 270	53.60 / 268

I estimated that the 1p/2p were split 40:60 but it was much nearer 50:50

Optical Media

The death of optical media cannot be that far away, maybe 5 years before it is gone completely?

I am old enough to remember the introduction of the CD, and you could not think of a time where the CD would feel like an LP record did then.

Within a couple of years I think we'll see USB boot only to install computers. The last bastion will be the retail DVD markets and 5 years maybe does seem a little short for that. If film downloads take off though I think that will see their fate sealed.

In some ways it is sad, another piece of mechanical perfection disappearing and making computers that little less diverse and solid state only. In a similar way hard drives, which probably have a slightly longer life span will one day be replaced with solid state devices.

Small Change Crisis

I am not very efficient with small change, and it has built up in the last couple of year.

I did some weighing up and worked out things had got out of hand and it was time to try and cash it in somewhere

I had seen people using CoinStar machines, and knew about the 8% processing charge, but it also turns out that they return vouchers redeemable in store.

But then I was in Natwest and they paying in machines now take coins - and probably have done for a few years maybe. Also paid into your account with no transaction charge.

This was the way I went for, it works pretty well - and now I can solve my loose change crisis.

Roy Hodgson England Manager

A surprise appointment, and a bit of a snub for peoples favourite Harry Redknapp. The FA have gone their own way and by taking on Hodgson have opted for a football man with wide experience of managing - but with little domestic success.

He definitely would not have been on the shortlist of most fans - but then there are not many candidates, it has become a very limited market.

I hope he does well, he is no showman - but wouldn't it be great to see an England side that can defend, work hard in midfield, and score goals on the break?

Space Shuttle Retirement

Some interesting photos of the Space Shuttles as they transit to go into museum retirement:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-17749899 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-17874273

Youview

A while ago I wondered why Alan Sugar never got into the Freeview PVR market a few years back. But he has seem to have got involved with this project, an IPTV system backed by the non-Sky major broadcasters.

On paper it is interesting, the proposition is that there is still a market for buying the box upfront and not getting involved with any contract or subscription. But it is running late, and is probably missing its window (it would have picked up sales during the digital switchover). Also now internet enabled TV's are becoming more common place, really nothing more than a custom portal on iPlayer type services - there is stiff competition to buying yet another box.

There do seem to be concerns about this consortium overstepping the BBC remit to public service broadcaster (you could argue that catch up services like iPlayer have already done that). I kind of agree, but unless it turns into a success that's not a major problem.

Book read: Sea Harrier Over The Falklands by Commander "Sharkey" Ward

A very interesting account of the Sea Harriers operated from HMS Invincible during the Falklands war. Ward gives a very good account with plenty of technical detail, the threats they faced and gives a taste of the danger involved in the operation.

Ward also gives a good description of the tensions between Invincible and Hermes squadrons. It is his perception that a lot of Flag orders were not well thought through when it came to over tasking the Harriers on Invincible. Also his account implies that the squadron on HMS Hermes just were not as capable or comfortable with operating the Harrier effectively. This is pretty astounding, and is the first time I've heard of such a split - but his account is so compelling it is hard to discount.

He also has no time for the RAF, stating that the Vulcan raids were vastly expensive and achieved little but provide the RAF with a token gesture during the war. He feels the Fleet Air Arm were the forgotten ones, as it is they who provided the only realistic air cover.

He also feels the Navy just did not do enough to promote their role in getting the operation off to a successful start - without the landings there would have been no recovery. It is thought provoking stuff, since the Navy now is probably the service that is suffering most and is most unbalanced in capability in the defence cuts.

The one other thing is that you come away with a sense of admiration for these pilots, they were asked to do a lot and perhaps were not best remembered for it.

The man himself has a blog, and talks about our current hopeless defence procurement:

Portsmouth Relegated

Well the inevitable has now been confirmed, Portsmouth are relegated from the Championship after a 2-1 defeat by Derby at home today. Relegated by their 10 point deduction for going into administration.

This means they will play in division 1 next year. It will probably do them some good, in their current shape they need to rebuild and be run as a better business. Successive owners have all proved unsuitable and have not had the best interests of the club at heart.

The naming of the divisions has been abused in recent years, what it really looks like is:

Division 1 - Premiership Division 2 - The Championship Division 3 - Division 1 Division 4 - Division 2

Quite absurd really, so in old money Portsmouth are now in division 3.

As a footnote Portsmouth bowed out of the division with a 2-0 defeat away at Nottingham Forest (managed by ex Portsmouth boss Steve Cotterill). Southampton on the other hand finished second in the division to earn promotion with a 4-0 win over Coventry.

Ceefax

With the analogue switch over happening in the UK, the analogue text service Ceefax will soon disappear. Introduced in 1976, it is a system that I grew up with. In the days before internet and 24 hour news it was the place to get up to the minute sports results or news stories. The page numbers would be ingrained in your mind.

But it has had it's time, more immediate forms of finding things out have dominated the last 15 years. It is the end of an era though, but will the internet suffer a similar fate to one day be replaced by something more convenient and more suited to the task? It is more likely to evolve into that thing rather than be replaced by it - unless excessive regulation or government controls come in to stifle it.

Book read: One Hundred Days by Admiral Sandy Woodward

I had resisted reading this book previously as it had some luke warm reviews on Amazon. But I bought the re-released 2012 edition and have just finished reading it. Overall a very good account of the naval aspects of the 1982 conflict, and putting into good context the decisions that had to be made with the constraints that were faced at the time.

Looking back at decisions with hindsight can always lead to unfair criticism and Woodward does a good job of describing of thought process and tries to put you back at the point of the decision. So the controversial Belgrano sinking was from a genuine fear of a pincer movement on the British fleet and a potential air attack from planes from the carrier. Woodward wastes no time in saying that the submarine command from London was a farce, and he should have had more control over their order and zones of patrol. It was a genuine advantage the British had at sea, and it was still very effective even though it was clearly hard to manage.

Performing the landings with the air power still a factor is also described in great detail. The navy sacrificed ships to get the landings underway - but what a price to pay.

The book is very much about the direct experiences he had, and only a little is spend on the actual land war - as it is something he would only have second hand knowledge of anyway.

An interesting read, and a good description of what it is like to have to make operational decisions.

Walk: Brownsea Island

A rare return of my walk blogs. We went to Brownsea island which is in Poole bay via a short boat trip. It is National Trust owned and is run mainly as a nature reserve. There were many walks you could do, but we walked around the coast and back across the middle of the island, about two and a half miles.

It was a nice trip, but you have to factor in island entry costs £6 and a boat trip of around £10.

Also we saw the star island attraction the red squirrels - long since forced off the mainland by the grey.

Equitable Life

My first pension scheme was with my first serious employer, a small computer consultancy who proclaimed they were "The Future of Computing Technology". A nice company, but if this was the future then computing had no future.

They did not contribute much to their pension scheme I think 1-2% so I resolved to put some money in myself over the 2.5 years I was there. I very conscientiously read all the literature and worked out the predictions and thought it was not a bad investment if it worked out.

Of course this was slighty before 2000, when Equitable were closed to new business because they are insolvent due to promises made to guarantee annuities rates to certain 1960s investors. When they withdrew this they were taken to court by policy holders and lost, which it turn caused the collapse of the society.

What followed was a 10 year farce where the government wriggled and squirmed to avoid paying out any compensation, as the FSA were clearly not on top of the finanical position of the society. For me the high point of this was the statement in the House of Commons by Ruth Kelly (a Labour MP who rose quickly through the Blair ranks) who said there "was no evidence whatsoever of any failure on the part of the FSA".

Well she is in the Lords now for some reason, and today I received my compensation of £400 (scaled back from £1600 to be affordable). I really feel for the people who had an entire working life of pension contributions with these guys.

A Level Reform

This is a question that comes up every year, what to do about A levels:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-17595345

The proposal this time is to let University academics give the curriculum content. At the moment it is set by exam boards, who because they are in competition with each other have been seen to pride themselves on being the "easier" board. This has led to a drop in standards.

But the other problem is that letting Universities set the curriculum might end up making the courses even narrower, and a criticism today is that the subjects should broaden or to allow students to study more subjects. Universities would see the A level of "their" subject as being the feeder for their degrees and not aimed at someone who will stop studying the subject at that level and who needs a broader base.

The first year of degree courses is increasingly being used to provide a "what you should know by now" phase to the degree. This is unfortunate and must be disheartening for students who have already invested two years since school. Maybe two years is too long, the first year should be the broader base, and the second year is used to focus on the subjects the student then knows they want to study.

Film: The Piano Teacher directed by Michael Haneke

A dark and powerful film about a repressed middle aged female piano teacher. She has not quite made concert grade pianist but is still a strict and severe teacher of piano. A pupil arrives who is self confident and has an eye for her. Initially she rejects him, but then lets him into her warped world and repressed/dominating personality.

Certainly not an easy film to watch, and has some very controversial themes.

Film: Code Unknown directed by Michael Haneke

This is a rather intractable film that is really a sequence of scenes stitched loosely together. The main theme of the film is consequences of our seemingly meaningless actions. A pasty thrown into the hands of a beggar in Paris links the central characters. There is no strong story line or plot, just observational scenes. An interesting film but you have to work hard to understand any of it.

Personalised Search

A lot of coverage of Google changing their privacy policy and sharing information about users across their services.

Personalised search, although seemingly an obvious thing to offer I think misses the point. Ideally when you search for something, typically you want the same results any other person would get (if only so you can easily say "search on this"). Personalising kind of robs you of that. What I think is missing is some sort of context input to your search, allowing results to be filtered by that. That has the benefit of being interchangeable between people as well as allowing fine tuning on what is being searched for.

Rasberry Pi Launch

Great news the long awaited Raspberry Pi board is now taking orders. I imagine it will be a while before you can actually get on with the huge demand, and is sounds like a couple of big distributors have been bought in to be able to ship the expected demand

So its an important day for two reasons, it is a leap year and this really cool project starts shipping.

Can't wait to get one.

Pearce England Manager

At least for a friendly tomorrow against the Dutch. Redknapp's stock maybe falling a little, with the thrashing of Tottenham 5-2 by Arsenal at the weekend.

That probably will not stop the FA from appointing him, but it will be interesting to see how Pearce does - he has been on the international scene for a while, and probably knows the environment better.

Film: Crimson Tide Directed by Tony Scott

A tense submarine thriller about a old school sub captain played by Gene Hackman and his XO played by Denzil Washington.

They are sent on patrol in a Trident nuclear submarine, with the backdrop being Russian rebels gaining control of nuclear weapons.

The film centres around the tension between the captain and XO, this boils over when a message is received for launch, a subsequent message is corrupted that may cancel the order. The captains wants to see things through (a little improbable!), and the XO wants to acquire the news message.

Not a bad film, a lot of poetic license and stretching of authenticity. It is no surprise they end up with a Russian sub trailing them with the amount of noise that was happening on board. Also the sonar displays are not authentic, they are portrayed as radar scopes - presumably what the viewer would relate to more easily.

But the main plot of the film is sound, the moral decision of whether to see through the order or seek confirmation.

Portsmouth in Administration

Not overly surprising, they have gone into administration to get access to their finances after the HMRC winding up order.

Suppliers have been withdrawing services, players not getting paid, 10 points now docked in the league. It feels more serious than last time as there does not seem to be any buyer waiting in the wings. HMRC are unlikely to yield on their unpaid tax demands.

Still I predicted the end last time this happened, so I hope I am wrong this time.

Capello Resigns - New England Coach

He was probably looking for a good excuse, and the FA provided one by going over his head on the Terry captaincy.

So after 5 years the Italian hard liner has gone. A good qualifier with a poor world cup behind him.

Who is next, they could do a lot worse than Martin O'Neill - and they probably will with recently acquitted Redknapp.

Still like the rest of nation I am prepared to think he is the best candidate...

http://dontgetdemoralised.blogspot.com/2007/12/new-england-coach.html

Diamond Jubilee

I am by no means a royalist, but this is a day that we will not see again in my lifetime - the Queen marks her Diamond Jubliee 60 years on the throne.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16896731

A remarkable achievement and a nice piece of history to live through, only Queen Victoria has reigned for longer.

Book read: Surely you're joking Mr Feynman by Ralph Leighton

I recently got the last two Feynman books that I had not read. This is a light hearted biography that concentrates on stories that the author was told by Feynman. They range from childhood days, student days, Los Almamos, to Las Vegas and beyond with each chapter being self contained. You get a sense of Feynman as a character not motivated by riches but driven by an interest in what was around him, either scientific or his wider interests.

It never goes too deep into Feynman himself, undoubtedly a complex character - I got the sense that he was always projecting himself in simple terms intended to be taken at face value. In truth he was much more complicated than that, and this book never really gets into any level of detail of Feynman the person.

Still an interesting read, and probably the best book for an initial introduction.

Portsmouth winding up order

Another match against HMRC for unpaid tax, looks worse than last time - could this be the end? (again)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/16710949.stm

Fred Goodwin to lose title

There were two reasons why he possibly should have kept it:

1. As a memory of the countries collective folly over a "golden economic age", when it was really banks like RBS over leveraging to destruction (theirs and ours)

2. A new "high bar" of what does it take to lose a knighthood

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-16821650

But overall a sensible decision, it has taken long enough!

Topfield Retirement

I've had this Topfield 5800 PVR since 2006, I've used it everyday since then and it has been a good piece of hardware. When I bought it Freeview PVRs were very rare and this was one of the better ones. I had a bad experience with a Pace Twin recorder that I suffered for a couple of years (now that was unreliable!)

It had a couple of firmware upgrades to get series link and recommendations, also to improve reliability as it crashed a little in the early days. I particularly liked the record two channels at once with playback of a third (if on the same multiplex as one of the recordings), also it had simple resume and skip functionality.

The user interface was a little clunky and dated but was functional. It did provide a USB interface for archiving, but at USB 1.0 speeds! Still it was a little project to get the tools working on Linux that could do this.

Sadly Topfield have not really kept pace with the market place, here is an interesting blog summarising the decline:

http://gonedigital.net/2010/12/30/how-topfield-lost-the-plot/

So I've switched to a Humax, having been impressed by the earlier model I bought my parents. I'll write up a review once I've used it for a while, but so far it feels a well executed piece of hardware - and gets ready for the switch to HD services.

Still thank you Topfield for the years of service.

Facebook IPO

Rumours are the IPO is close to IPO, maybe next week. Expecting to raise an unbelievable $10bn valuating the company at $75bn. Those are incredible figures when you consider what the business really is. They have a lot of mindshare, and certainly a lot more credence than the early dot com companies, but even so?

Still good luck to them, I won't be investing and hopefully my pension funds won't either!

Film: Hero directed by Yimou Zhang

A film about the time before the first emperor of China, about trying to unite the various kingdoms and form one China. The plot centres around an assassin who has defeated the major threats to the most powerful leader of one of the kingdoms.

There are many twists and turns, some epic fighting scenes. The fighting is fantasy martial arts with flying and supernatural powers - this for me detracts from the film a little. Also every defeat in battle, the defeated is granted an over symbolic final last words scene - rather than just dieing!

Still a good film with good action sequences with a good background plot to keep the intrigue doing.

Microsoft CEO

I always try and read the Cringely predictions for the year, and a new Microsoft CEO is one of them:

http://www.cringely.com/2012/01/prediction-7-a-new-microsoft-ceo/

I kind of agree, Microsoft have being treading water in too many areas - except maybe gaming. Of course they are still immensely profitable, but relying on stalwarts such as Windows and Office cannot go on forever - and currently they look like failing to make the Cloud transition very convincingly.

High ranking executives have been leaving the last few years, Bach, Allchin, Ozzie - those are the ones I can remember. This maybe a strategy by Ballmer to keep the replacement options limied, of course a company can appoint outside of the current management structure. It will be interesting to see if this prediction comes true, and who replaces him.

TV Wishlist 3

It is now getting time for me to replace my old TV setup, and 7 year old early LCD TV, and trusty Topfield have lasted me well.

I wrote a blog almost two years ago, anticipating the arrival of a TV with PVR features, just supply your own hard disk!

http://dontgetdemoralised.blogspot.com/2010/02/tv-wishlist-2.html

But sadly it only got as far as recording, and live pause - no schedule features, no twin tuners, and definitely no series link.

That is a real missed opportunity, I suspect it the big manufacturers Samsung and Panasonic not wanting to "compete with themselves" on their STB offerings which might already offer this.

So the replacement with be both a box, and a HD freeview TV - although I can tune down the TV requirements given the vendors have failed to live up to the early promise!

Wikipedia donation

Over Christmas I made my first ever donation to Wikipedia. I had been meaning to when they first started running the campaign a couple of years ago. I suppose what stopped me was the additional problem of setting up a PayPal account - I just about justified it to myself by thinking that account might come in handy in future (in general I like to limit the number of services I use, and only commit to signing up to something if I think I am going to make good use of it and check on it regularly - PayPal was borderline for that criteria)

So I made my small donation, when you read about the number of servers they have compared to the big corporations it is incredibly small. Of course they are serving mostly static content, but it seems a small number even for that.

The thing that made me donate was the fact that it is the first place I turn to for initial facts on something, and the articles are usually very high quality. If Wikipedia was pay for then I probably would - but I hope it never goes down that route. Of course this raises the question of how can any web enterprise ever be viable if it was not for a benevolent owner with deep pockets - but that is another question.

CES Keynote

I watched the annual keynote by Microsoft at CES. This year it was announced that this would be the last time Microsoft would do this event, after appearing at the conference to keynote since the late 1990s.

Sadly it felt like a sign off end of an era rather than Microsoft showing new technology, it was done in a "conversational style" with Ballmer being asked questions by a main presenter, and then other people doing some demos.

The first segment was all about Windows Phone, and how they are taking a "social" integration view of the whole thing. I'm sure the handsets and platform is good, but you could not help feeling there was an elephant in the room (getting out sold and having to rely on patent litigation to get revenue from other vendors who have more successful products).

Then we went onto Windows 8, for me this is what Windows 7 should have been to anticipate a fashion for tablet computing (something Microsoft failed to start in the mid 2000s). But as we know Windows 7 put Vista right, and Microsoft fell behind. Stil Windows 8 may get this right, although you can see it being niche for these devices, I do not think they will get across the platforms right or popular.

Finally to end on a high, there was an Xbox and Kinect demo. Every year we get told that this will become the content center piece of the living room. Maybe it is true this time, and they did announce content provider deals this time. The voice control demo also looked good, although I think I would find it frustrating to use even though it looks fairly slick.

2012 A New Year

The politicians are already setting the expectation that this is another tough year for European countries. David Cameron who previously was hoping 2011 would be the turnaround year, having to admit that this is some way off.

It is important to keep perspective, but government cuts are going to bite harder this year - as they wrestle with overspend versus economic investment for the future.

The housing benefit caps will start to appear, and it is not clear whether having such high claims (in London in particular) was paying the market rate, or creating a distorted market where landlords were charging over the odds because they knew the government would pay up. Either way it is no consolation for those who are having to vacate, the news had an example today of a £2000 a month property in London that was nothing more than a modest mid terrace block house. Lack of affordable housing is a continuing problem that we've ignored for too long.

What affordable housing there is, the government is now promising to make sub-letting illegal and force people on good wages to pay market rates. This is a story recycled from earlier in the year, but progress on this would free up housing to the most needy.