This week

Have posted more on delicious this week than for a while because there seems to be quite a lot going on in our little world. Must work out how to combine blogging and delicious and furl properly - oh, for the time.

CBN website is nearly done, I think - still a fair way to go but it's one helluva behemoth now. Plenty going on with CBN to stimulate the mind in other places too, as well as the potential for an ABC conference to put all others into shade if a couple of large orgs can see sense and part with 1/500th of some dosh they have just been given. BT have escaped being broken up but who knows if what has happened instead will actually achieve anything positive for UKBB. Two sprogs got into the regional netball team and one invited to a Gifted and Talented Kids summer camp - doesn't want to go, of course, but ....Finally sat down in the sun in a layby with a couple of others and sorted out some of the wheat from the wheat to give us focused actions over the coming months with £'s as the priority, instead of just campaigning, talking, moaning and getting frustrated with lack of action etc. Feeding rabbits strawberries seems to do very odd things to them - possibly a form of wabbit wiagra?!

More to do in Bolivia - wish we could just go and live out there and get on with it. Too many distractions here and this is a project that has become close to my heart. I believe that some of the intended results there, and the implementation thereof, could definitely benefit UK communities. Ideas for schools and e-gov here that won't pay a bean for the research (how the hell do these guys in suits in Westminster etc get away with asking for input from skint rural business people and NOT paying??) but may well yield some very interesting information that we can commercialise.

Definitely water in the antenna off the hub meshbox. Anyone out there who likes climbing high roofs, don't hesitate to get in touch. I cook a mean chilli chicken now and then there's the CAT5 in the boxes under the stairs and dangling all over the house that could do with finishing!!

Am noticing that the word broadband is showing up in more and more of my non-broadband newsletters as the Internet Marketing world, and many others, take hold of the potential and start to exploit it. One minor worry recently has been the
IAB Guidelines for broadband adverts. Minimum streaming speed is 200kbps - Dave, I think we may have found a way to break the network and it's totally legit!!! Overworked DSLAMs watch out as we take out a guerrilla marketing campaign that shows the UK how crap their connections really are.

Like I have time for the above, and now I'll probably get done for consipracy though actually the fact that the UK first and middle miles are so vulnerable needs to be taken into account by those who think what we have now is adequate. Is it really? What if I or someone threw as much at broadband ads on UK sites as the Crazy Frog guys chucked at TV advertising? How much would it begin to cost UK business if there was a major DoS-type breakdown of the network?

Oh, and heard that they are trying to close the Tourist Info Centres. Have we forgotten FMD so damned fast? Can we remember the figures of how much tourism puts into the UK economy compared to farming? The Foot & Mouth crisis which closed both of these industries highlighted the reality. To close down TICs without replacing them with our Virtual Museum etc would be foolhardy in the least, and economically damaging even more so. Faced with people looking up info on the Net prior to their visit to tourist spots, they say "Close". We say "Think out the Box" and give something that the Net can't. But in the layby, we put the Virtual Museum into the holding stack for a while whilst we concentrate on other ideas. In fact, I think we put 10-15 ideas (the ones we could remember because we were ill-prepared for the meet!) on hold. I would think that isn't even a 1/4 of them between the three of us.

Ah well, here's to a long weekend at the first Unofficial Colloquium, camping, milking, quadbiking, surveying the network, trying out 5.8Ghz kit, and all the other things you do on a weekend off with CANdoers!

Bolivia

Forgot to post that Carlos Mesa (am I right?), the president of Bolivia, has resigned. No-one seems in a big hurry to take his place, and a few people died in the demonstrations (miners, from what I heard) about the nationalistaion of the energy industry. Bolivia so need to get on top of all this energy stuff as they are sitting on literally a gold mine/oil well and yet the country is so impoverished. Much as I would like to return as soon as possible, and wouldn't go near La Paz except to walk down the MDR, everything is so confused at present, in my life and theirs, that an imminent return seems unlikely. Also, it's winter, and summer in UK is bad enough without a southern hemisphere winter to cope with. Hoy, Alberto, 15 grados, viento frío y lluvia, y aquí es verano, te juro!!!!

Sing your own ringtone

Who needs the crazy frog when you can use a karaoke service from KTF in Korea to put your own personal ringtone on your mobi? My kids did some of my ringtones on my Nokia which are fantastic except when you forget to turn your phone off in important meetings!

Onspeed and BT

BT/Yahoo have partnered with Onspeed to improve the dial up experience. Trouble is, it seems to be being called 'high speed internet access', yet it's just a compression utility rather than an increase in connection speed. As a diehard conspiracy theorist who can see shadows when the sun is high overhead, I'm dreading seeing areas of the UK etc without broadband connectivity (let's start with Scotland)being told that this is the solution to their woes instead of solutions to connectivity problems being found, or FTTH etc being explored.

At least they know they couldn't call it 'broadband' or there would be an outcry, but in the US 'high speed internet access' is the term most often used anyway, not 'broadband' because of the huge discrepancy between the offerings from the BabyBells and telcos, and the impossibility of agreeing on exactly what broadband should be to be sold under that name.

No 10

Well, we went to No 10 on Wednesday last, Malcolm, Andy Cawdell and I, to meet Matthew Taylor - Señor Blair's Chief Advisor. The 'Boss' was on his way back from a sojourn in the US talking to Bush prior to the G8 Summit so no press to capture our arrival as they were all at Heathrow! And now Malcolm and Brian are going back on Friday for a follow-up meeting.

No 10 is an interesting place; actually, it's an office block with a flat at the top. Wherein lives Gordon Brown bizarrely, not the Blairs. (Already in situ!) The art collection reminded me I don't know the first thing about art, but I know others who would undoubtedly have been impressed with it all (John Wilson for one). I guess the same applies to the furniture and ornaments, about which I also lack knowledge but some of them were probably worth more than my house.

Weird meeting room. Not often you get to sit around a coffee table on antique furniture you are scared to spill the coffee on. Good meeting is about all I can say, and as there are already more in the diary, it obviously went well from all sides.