I wondered what these guys were doing on the M5 near where I work. They have setup major roadworks and we are talking a temporary base with about 10 portacabins of offices, lanes narrowed and all sorts of stuff. My mate told me they were strengthening 3 bridges but since these bridges are pretty rural types, I wasn't convinced.
Well, the truth is, they have planned 26 weeks for the work!! Yes, that's right, 6 months to strengthen 3 small bridges, all within a couple of kilometres of each other. Apparently one was struck by a vehicle (but is still in use) but please!
I've seen people replace railway bridges in a day and with cranes clever techniques, the obvious thing would be to remove the old bridges and crane in new ones, a couple of days of hassle for the people who usually drive over them (could have been done in the summer) and almost no hassle for the motorway drivers.
What is this country coming to. Goodness knows how much money this is costing!!
Tuesday 25 August 2009
Thursday 20 August 2009
Living in the Spiritual
I thought it was time I stopped moaning about things that are unlikely to change and write something more thought provoking. Well, I have started reading a book about a guy called Rees Howells who was a famous intercessor and learnt very deep lessons about effective prayer and generally being totally submitted to God in every area of his life.
I realised as I was reading that I as well as many Christians are not even close to the sort of life and attitude that would make us really effective as Christians. When we pray, we often pluck prayer points off the top of our head and pray for all kinds of stuff, only to wonder why they are not always answered. If Jesus only said and did what His Father did, then shouldn't we do the same. These sorts of prayers are betrayed by people saying things like, "please keep them safe" when Jesus assured us that as Christians we would experience exactly the opposite since the world hates us (or should hate us). At best the prayer is pointless, at worse it damages our understanding of how God works and teaches those around us that God is the God of safety and comfort rather than suffering and discipline.
Another area where we often fall short is just in the day to day 'ministries' that we are involved in. If the spiritual world is more real than the physical and if the cross should be at the centre of our life, if we cannot please God without faith and if everything we do should be for the glory of God, why do we suppose that we can do 95% of it in human strength? We like to say things like, "God has given us common sense" or "I was led to do this" but what about the fact that God is not a God of recipes and tick boxes. What is correct for one person is not necessairly correct for another and just because God wanted you to feed the homeless yesterday doesn't mean that he now wants you to do that indefinitely. Do we honestly approach every situation in prayer? Do we even strive for it? Do we actually know what God's voice sounds like or do we rely on other people, emotional church experiences or theological knowledge to work out our next step in life?
I fear that we put too much emphasis on theological type learning and far too little on practical work related to hearing God's voice, dealing with blockages in our Christian life and learning how to be dynamic and Spirit led.
God be praised that He hasn't given up on us!!
I realised as I was reading that I as well as many Christians are not even close to the sort of life and attitude that would make us really effective as Christians. When we pray, we often pluck prayer points off the top of our head and pray for all kinds of stuff, only to wonder why they are not always answered. If Jesus only said and did what His Father did, then shouldn't we do the same. These sorts of prayers are betrayed by people saying things like, "please keep them safe" when Jesus assured us that as Christians we would experience exactly the opposite since the world hates us (or should hate us). At best the prayer is pointless, at worse it damages our understanding of how God works and teaches those around us that God is the God of safety and comfort rather than suffering and discipline.
Another area where we often fall short is just in the day to day 'ministries' that we are involved in. If the spiritual world is more real than the physical and if the cross should be at the centre of our life, if we cannot please God without faith and if everything we do should be for the glory of God, why do we suppose that we can do 95% of it in human strength? We like to say things like, "God has given us common sense" or "I was led to do this" but what about the fact that God is not a God of recipes and tick boxes. What is correct for one person is not necessairly correct for another and just because God wanted you to feed the homeless yesterday doesn't mean that he now wants you to do that indefinitely. Do we honestly approach every situation in prayer? Do we even strive for it? Do we actually know what God's voice sounds like or do we rely on other people, emotional church experiences or theological knowledge to work out our next step in life?
I fear that we put too much emphasis on theological type learning and far too little on practical work related to hearing God's voice, dealing with blockages in our Christian life and learning how to be dynamic and Spirit led.
God be praised that He hasn't given up on us!!
Monday 17 August 2009
Incompetents of the week - O2
Well, I had to share these guys stupidity with the world. Now don't get me wrong, people make mistakes which is fine but a company this size should either 1) Have noticed these problems earlier and done something about them or 2) provide a rock solid way of logging the faults so they can be resolved, neither of which are true in this case.
I got an email saying my bill was ready to an old email account so I thought I would update my details and point them to the new email. I clicked on the link in the emai but being a suspicious person, I decided to type o2.co.uk into the address bar and navigate from there. I got to the details page and first thing I noticed was that the mobile they had for me was some number I had about 10 years ago! (despite them sending the bill for my new mobile number to this address!). Anyway i changed them and tried their "find my address link" and got some error which promptly also removed the values I had just typed in (web development 101, always check that fields are retained when an error is displayed). OK, assumed it was not working so I free-typed my address, retyped the other fields and tried again, same error, "You must type in a house number or name". Wonderful, I had - idiots. (WD 101, test that any changes you make have not broken the functionality of the page). OK well most people would have thought, sod it, they have 10 year old information already, they might as well have 15 year old wrong data and waste my subscription money storing it (WD 101 - do not store personal data unless you need it and use it, make sure it is checked for correctness otherwise delete it).
I decided to give some feedback to the team who might, let us assume, already know there are website problems. Could I find a link? Nope. I tried searching for all manner of things and couldn't find it. I tried "asking Lucy" who kept saying she didn't understand the question, obviously they modelled her on a genuine call-centre operator. The contact us page was blank, even when Lucy said, "I don't understand, use these links to contact us" the links didn't do anything. Several of the pages looked like the layout had been broken even a link from google for web site contact went to some funny error page. A bad day for O2 online. Well I could have given up and give O2 the undeserved accolade of having no complaints about its shoddiness but I thought I would go the extra mile. I sent an email to webmaster@o2.co.uk, not sure yet whether that will work and then decided to call O2 and tell them I couldn't use the website. I called the Cust Services number and go something like 1 to change account details and billing, 2 to upgrade or leave 3 for something else and 4 for the iphone. Right, what do I select? I didn't press anything and got the message again. I thought afterwards it might register a problem and say, "please hold for an operator" (like they usually do) but no, I got the message again. Eventually I hung up and found an online form to feedback about the website to O2 which I filled in.
O dear. To fail in one area is understandable, to fail in 2 is sloppy and to fail in all of them is incompetence. O2, I don't care that you are part of Telefonica because your services suck. Sort it out!
I got an email saying my bill was ready to an old email account so I thought I would update my details and point them to the new email. I clicked on the link in the emai but being a suspicious person, I decided to type o2.co.uk into the address bar and navigate from there. I got to the details page and first thing I noticed was that the mobile they had for me was some number I had about 10 years ago! (despite them sending the bill for my new mobile number to this address!). Anyway i changed them and tried their "find my address link" and got some error which promptly also removed the values I had just typed in (web development 101, always check that fields are retained when an error is displayed). OK, assumed it was not working so I free-typed my address, retyped the other fields and tried again, same error, "You must type in a house number or name". Wonderful, I had - idiots. (WD 101, test that any changes you make have not broken the functionality of the page). OK well most people would have thought, sod it, they have 10 year old information already, they might as well have 15 year old wrong data and waste my subscription money storing it (WD 101 - do not store personal data unless you need it and use it, make sure it is checked for correctness otherwise delete it).
I decided to give some feedback to the team who might, let us assume, already know there are website problems. Could I find a link? Nope. I tried searching for all manner of things and couldn't find it. I tried "asking Lucy" who kept saying she didn't understand the question, obviously they modelled her on a genuine call-centre operator. The contact us page was blank, even when Lucy said, "I don't understand, use these links to contact us" the links didn't do anything. Several of the pages looked like the layout had been broken even a link from google for web site contact went to some funny error page. A bad day for O2 online. Well I could have given up and give O2 the undeserved accolade of having no complaints about its shoddiness but I thought I would go the extra mile. I sent an email to webmaster@o2.co.uk, not sure yet whether that will work and then decided to call O2 and tell them I couldn't use the website. I called the Cust Services number and go something like 1 to change account details and billing, 2 to upgrade or leave 3 for something else and 4 for the iphone. Right, what do I select? I didn't press anything and got the message again. I thought afterwards it might register a problem and say, "please hold for an operator" (like they usually do) but no, I got the message again. Eventually I hung up and found an online form to feedback about the website to O2 which I filled in.
O dear. To fail in one area is understandable, to fail in 2 is sloppy and to fail in all of them is incompetence. O2, I don't care that you are part of Telefonica because your services suck. Sort it out!
Thursday 13 August 2009
Cheap Patents
I was reading about some farce situation in America where Microsoft have been sued and found guilty by a Court for infringing a patent and fined £175M and also ordered to stop selling MS Word in America. Why? because according to the court, MS have infringed a patent that covers using XML in computer documents like the new MSXML format used in Office (and also other formats used in suites like OpenOffice).
Personally I like to think of MS as the big bully of the software world like everyone else but in this instance, I think it shows up again the problem with the patent system. A patent is to legally protect a good idea. It has to be something novel, not just a play on an existing theme but here is the rub, it only has to be an idea. I can sit at home, come up with idea and do nothing with it other than patent it and hope someone else wants to buy the idea from me.
If indeed the company who filed the patent were commercial, they should have done something with the idea by now and not be allowed to enforce a patent. In software, it is easy to come up with ideas to patent. Why don't I patent using eye-movements to play computer games (except it probably already is) just because it is an obvious next step and then some company can buy the idea from me?
It needs to be overhauled. It's not like Frank Whittle patenting a jet engine which he is developing and doesn't want someone else to copy for a while but software patents? honestly. Let people maybe have a year or so to do something with the idea, perhaps develop it into something practical and if not, the patent is void!! MS, I hope you win the appeal against the stupid conviction.
Personally I like to think of MS as the big bully of the software world like everyone else but in this instance, I think it shows up again the problem with the patent system. A patent is to legally protect a good idea. It has to be something novel, not just a play on an existing theme but here is the rub, it only has to be an idea. I can sit at home, come up with idea and do nothing with it other than patent it and hope someone else wants to buy the idea from me.
If indeed the company who filed the patent were commercial, they should have done something with the idea by now and not be allowed to enforce a patent. In software, it is easy to come up with ideas to patent. Why don't I patent using eye-movements to play computer games (except it probably already is) just because it is an obvious next step and then some company can buy the idea from me?
It needs to be overhauled. It's not like Frank Whittle patenting a jet engine which he is developing and doesn't want someone else to copy for a while but software patents? honestly. Let people maybe have a year or so to do something with the idea, perhaps develop it into something practical and if not, the patent is void!! MS, I hope you win the appeal against the stupid conviction.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)