Skype

Occasionally, things come along which change the way you do things. This time it’s Skype.

I’ve followed Skype from its early days when two Swedish guys developed it and stuck it on the net. I tried it then, in its early days, but the interface wasn’t very good - you could only do voice calls and as with many of the VoIP* services at that time, invariably the calls were very bad quality with the talker sounding like he/she had a very bad stutter.

(*Voice Over Internet Protocol – voice calls routed over the internet)

I then watched incredulously as the Skype founders sold ‘the company’ to eBay for $2.6 billion dollars, the plan being that eBay could make a sale on their auction site and then link the seller and the buyer at the press of a button. Needless to say, what seemed like a good idea turned out to be a non-starter and virtually nobody used it for that purpose.

eBay then wanted to float off Skype (it now carries 8% of all international telephone calls) but it transpired that eBay had only bought the concept – the Swedish founders had kept ownership of the underlying technology! Who did that deal?

A few months ago, eBay, having taken a $1.7 billion write-down, sold a major stake in Skype to some private equity house and I’m sure they’re hoping (especially the person who let the technology slip through their hands) that it has a rosier and more profitable future.

All that commercial stuff aside, I installed Skype when my son, Tim, was off to the Middle East to support the war effort in Afghanistan. He convinced me that Skype would be the best way to communicate.

I downloaded the application and was very surprised with the user interface. It’s so easy that even J can use it. No – it’s so easy that even my brother can use it! Press a button and you have a video call going – I can see my son lying in his air-conditioned tent in Qatar. End that call and press another button and hey-presto, I can see and speak to my brother in Glasgow (not a pretty sight with his front teeth out). Press another button and all three of us can have a three-way chat about the football. And all for free. It’s great.

I do have a couple of problems with Skype though. When I test the service with J to establish if my camera and mike are working (me in the lounge and J on the terrace) she will insist on flashing her boobs. I think I’ll send in a report to Skype (press another button – ‘Report Abuse’) and get her ex-communicated I suppose you’d call it!

And given that most people now use the video service, I continually get strange women asking me to ‘be their friend’ and ‘open a video call with them’. Of course, these ladies will want to charge for the privilege of looking at them doing whatever they’ll be doing. Maybe I could ask J to pay for one of these calls for my Xmas?????

Anyway, if I haven’t put you off with the ‘strange women’ problem, you can download Skype from the URL below. And it’s best to have a recent version of Windows which supports Skype video calling. Good luck.

http://www.skype.com/intl/en/download/skype/windows/

A Book About Home

I’ve just finished a book by the ex SAS man, Andy McNab – he of the ‘caught in Iraq and had to crawl 2000 miles through the desert, whilst being mercilessly tortured, to escape’ fame. His first book was ‘Bravo Two Zero’ which I vaguely recall reading, and I vaguely remember it was quite a gripping tale, probably because it was true (well, I’m sure he used a bit of poetic licence on a few occasions).

The book I read recently was titled ‘Liberation Day’ and was the story of some sort of US Secret Agent who worked outside the normal agencies (CIA, FBI etc) and who was tasked with killing off or capturing the people responsible for getting money to the Taliban and other terrorist organizations. The story started in North Africa, moved to the US which was where he thought he was retiring to, but then moved to the South of France for his one last job.

Now the point of this blog posting isn’t to do a critique of the novel but to point out that when you’re reading a book and virtually every page you read is set in your own back yard, it’s a bit weird. For reasons I give below, I think I’ll give books featuring the Côte d’Azur a miss from now on.

I’ve often wondered how novelists do their research but it’s obvious that McNab spent some time down here – only by being on the ground could he possibly have known the details he did about Nice, Monte Carlo, Antibes and Cannes. I checked his website to try and establish if he has a place down here but it didn’t say. The fact that McNab never shows his face in public (see picture above) meant that I was unlikely to find out much detail about his holiday home, if that’s what he’s got. Anyway, the level of detail he went into was incredible and was far too much for my liking – the plot could have done with beefing up at the expense of the minutiae which he continually dragged the poor reader through but at least if I ever want to spy on somebody or follow them, well I know exactly how to do it, right down to how you do the toilet on a 24 hour surveillance job!

But back to reading about your own locale – I found myself mentally transporting myself to his locations to try and work out if they were accurate or whether he’d merely looked up Google Earth and Google Street View which I suppose he could have done. But generally, they were spot on so I reckon he just spent a couple of weeks driving up and down the Côte d’Azur noting down details for his novel and lunching in the cafés and bars which formed part of the rather thin plot.

It was all a bit distracting. When I should have been digesting the facts about how money moves about the Muslim world and how it eventually reaches the Taliban, I was trying to think if the arch in Antibes is actually 12 feet thick as he said it was!

Now a bit of a jump here – McNab is obviously a supporter of the British troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and his website links to another website, which is basically a blog written by troops in these warzones. On some of the postings there are videos taken by the troops as they go into battle and the one I stumbled across, quite by accident, has a rather shocking scene in it where ground troops are fighting the Taliban at quite close quarters. As they advance they come across a couple of the bearded ninjas in a ditch and simply shoot them!

Good or bad – it’s up to you to decide. Let me have your comments. The URL to the video is below (you don’t see any gory bits).

http://www.battleseen.com/video/348263f5e4f86

Dozy Sarkozy Makes Us Less Cosy

Old Sarko is at it again. He’s proposing a ‘carbon tax’ to help France meet its global warming targets. He announced that his ‘fiscal revolution’ - a new levy on oil, gas and coal consumption by households and businesses – would come into effect next year and would encourage people to use less fuel.

Three quarters of the French population are against the new tax, according to one poll which shouldn’t surprise anyone – the French are against any change, anywhere, anytime! They are also suspicious that the new tax is a wheeze to plug a budget deficit that has ballooned due to the economic crisis. In typically bombastic and totally surreal fashion, Sarko likened the new measure to decolonization and the repeal of the death penalty, saying both of these ground-breaking reforms were unpopular at the time.

The levy will not apply to electricity, as with 80 per cent of electricity produced in France coming from low-emission nuclear plants, it would make no sense to increase the price of such "clean" power. Starting at 17 euros (£14.85) per ton of carbon dioxide, the tax will be introduced in the 2010 budget and is expected to raise 3 billion euros. It will push up the average household heating bill and raise the cost of a litre of unleaded fuel by about four cents per litre.

The tax will rise over time, Sarko said, without providing further details of by how much or when - although some estimate it could rise to 100 euros per ton by 2030.

OK – so here are my views:

If the ‘carbon tax’ is to raise €3bn in the 2010 budget that’s the equivalent of a 1.5p rise in UK income tax. Not good but not spectacularly bad either. At least Sarko is telling us what he’s trying to do – use less fuel and you’ll not be ‘punished’. Use more fuel and you’ll pay a tax, the proceeds of which will help the less well off and the more efficient users of fuel through the issue of 'green coupons', whatever they might be!

At this point I should mention that as our house is virtually all-electric (we use a small amount of gas), we are unlikely to be affected although if, as quoted, the price of petrol rises by 4 euro cents a litre, that could cost our household another €70 per year.

But, and here’s the big but – one sure fire way of reducing fuel consumption is to allow householders to install solar panels. I mean, we get 4 months of really hot weather, 4 months of warmish weather and 4 months of mild/cold weather so if solar panels are going to work anywhere, they’ll work here but, we’re not allowed to install them.

There’s a government sponsored scheme doing the rounds at the moment where a solar panel company will install the necessary panels for say €20,000, but they don’t charge you a thing. The government provides a 40% grant taking the cost down to €12,000. EDF, the national electricity supplier then contracts to buy your electricity off you at our house’s equivalent of €2,000 a year for 6 years and hey presto, after about 6 years you have virtually free, carbon free, hot water and in some cases, heating. The only thing is that local mayors have the power to allow the installation of these panels or not, and most of them refuse point blank. It’s crazy. The only people who would see our solar panels (given the nature of our roof and the position of the other houses) would be easyJet pilots and their passengers!

So why does the government offer these grants? It’s because the French, like most developed countries, have climate change targets to make, otherwise they end up with swinging great fines, so they offer incentives to householders like me to be more efficient, but then the local mayors, in their infinite wisdom (oxymoron - French mayors and wisdom) ignore all this stuff and say ‘non’.

It’s crazy – but then it’s France!

Chiswick Flyover

The Chiswick flyover celebrates its 50th anniversary this month and I bet not many of you know that it was a certain Jayne Mansfield who declared one of the ugliest constructions in London, open on the 30^th September 1959. The party, if that’s what it’s meant to be, will be held on the Chiswick roundabout at 12 noon on September 30.

Who dreams these things up? Who decided that the Chiswick flyover should be celebrated with a birthday party? And who will damage their reputation beyond salvation by actually attending? And I suppose they’ll close the roundabout, a major artery into London, for the day. It’s a farce.

O.K. – the flyover was the first major highway development in London after the end of the war and in the early days it probably helped motorists get through the Chiswick junction as they headed into London, but these days, not only does it look like a remnant of post-war, unimaginative construction but it causes huge transport problems when an accident happens. Traffic backs up onto the M4 and then motorists look for alternative routes clogging up all the minor roads, eventually causing chaos out to, and around, Heathrow airport.

If you’re wondering why I’m writing about a bit of road, it’s because when I moved with IBM from Glasgow down to London, my new office overlooked the flyover and for 18 years, I had the pleasure of crossing it every day on my way to work.

In the mornings you dreaded reaching the Chiswick flyover as that’s where the traffic, heading into London, came to a standstill. You then knew there would be a crawl for the last 7 miles or so into the centre of the city. That 7 miles would take around 1 hour, the same time it would have taken in the 19^th century by horse-drawn coach, but I digress slightly.

On the way back home in the evenings however, you actually looked forward to getting to the flyover, as that was the start of the motorway proper and traffic zoomed off along the M4 as soon as they had crossed its highest point.

And so the Chiswick flyover was a daily source of both frustration and hope for me for many years. At one stage, quite a few years ago, they thought that they would have to pull it down as apparently the bolts holding it together had rusted, but whether that was a wicked rumour to cause us flyover veterans even more angst, I don’t know but it never happened.

And finally, a story related to the flyover.

On my very first day in my new IBM Chiswick office, my boss (a certain Mr Brian Lomas) grabbed me at lunchtime and said, ‘C’mon Tommy boy – we’re off down the pub for a pint’. We got into his car, left the IBM underground carpark and drove around the Chiswick roundabout (where the party will be held) and parked in a pub virtually underneath the flyover. Brian ordered his pint of bitter and I asked for a pint of lager. When Brian’s pint arrived, he downed it in one. Ignoring my look of astonishment (and admiration) he said, ‘C’mon Tommy boy, drink up. I only park the car here, I drink in the pub across the road’!

Finally, finally – I had trouble deciding whether to have a photo of the flyover or the nice lady who opened it. I settled on the latter but have included a URL for those of you nerdy enough to want more info on the Chiswick flyover.

http://www.iht.org/motorway/m4chisslou.htm

Do I Look Fat In This ?

We’ve all been there guys. The missus is going out and after the fourteenth change of clothes she actually asks what you think of the 15^th outfit. Does my bum look fat in this?

What do you say? Yup dear – you look like a 2 kilo tub of lard squeezed into a sausage skin. Or – don’t you think your boobs would look better INSIDE the dress? Or even – if you took the two sofa cushions out of your knickers, your bum wouldn’t look so bad! Or even – you ALWAYS look so nice in that dress – was it your mother’s?

And so, gentle, kind things that we are, we say – of course you look great in that dress darling – is it new – it really suits you. Lovely colour and the shape of it is beautiful. It’s a triumph darling. I can’t wait to go to the party with you in that. Every man in the room will have his eyes on you.

Now, I’ve never complained about my wife’s body – not once in 25 years. I’ve been ever-so-complimentary. It’s been big and small, lithe and not so lithe, toned and not so toned, but I’ve never been anything less than blindly enthusiastic and if you’re thinking that the word ‘blindly’ was a deliberate way of introducing some doubt into the discussion – you’re wrong.

And so last week when I was proudly showing (and for the grammar police amongst you that’s not a split infinitive – you know who you are) – proudly showing the pictures I took at my Broadstairs weekend and I got to the one where I’m sitting in a restaurant with my long-lost family, she exclaimed, ‘my God - look at you – you’re huge’. Well I just burst into tears and went off and had a burger, a pizza and 4 beers as a consolation. One always eats when one’s marriage is on the rocks! I mean, the picture doesn’t really do me justice. I had a tight shirt on and it was probably the way I was sitting or maybe because it was the 3^rd full meal I’d had within 24 hours. Whatever – all I know is that my Wii says I’m not obese unlike somebody I could mention!