New Years Plans

So, according to Kev, sounds like a warm up at home, with some food in the agricultural shed and older friends, followed by a youth party in Schonborn with loads of fireworks and alcohol.

Me not being much of a alcoholic, I shall be looking forward to the German tradition of fireworks galore in the streets just after midnight.

Anyway, before any of that, I'm off to Limburg Cathedral to sing with the choir there at the end of year service. You know me, can't turn down a good sing....

Stay safe everyone and enjoy

Merry whatchamacallit

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL !!!!!!!

Now that I have unwrapped my new ASUS 3D monitor (I'll talk about it later), its time to go to the Christmas morning service at church and have yet another good ol' sing. Just shattered after the last sing and only 6 hours sleep...

More Carols? Yes Sir!

Another day, another carol service, this time in my own church back home, the little church of St. James' Bushey. Lovely little place, and I'll try to talk about it some more later on.

Anyway, beautiful evening, another great sing - and this was a big plus:

The "Swinger" wasn't there, therefore meaning that I didnt have to wear a gas mask to sing and breathe.

Oh, and one week to Christmas Day XD

The journey back

So today I drove back from Aberystwyth for Christmas - the joys of packing the car with almost everything - and as it just has to happen, you've guessed it, SNOW in the Welsh mountains.

So the journey was fun, saw a few cars on their roofs, and another the wrong way around in a ditch. But since I have the SmartMobile in winter mode (winter tyres, 0W40 super-cold oil and snow chains at the ready) the weather was no match for me.

Just home was the problem, minor issue of keys and me having to break into the house........

Anyway, I'm still in time for choir rehearsal at St. James', so off I go

St. Albans Singing (again)

Well its this time of year, and last night was the infamous Aldenham School Carol Service in the Cathedral and Abbey Church of Saint Alban. interesting catch, the choir was so big, they ran out of candles. So there were 10 tenors and basses at the back who were in darkness. Suppose it was for the best, as the older ones should never be trusted with fire.

Anyway, a very good sing, got to catch up with a few people (students and staff) and well worth the train journey back from Aber just for it.

Now that I'm on the way back to Aber (with mum beside me), I just have to put up with a few more lectures, then a drive back home.

Dissertation?

Hmmm, soo may assignments from other departments and modules seem to somehow of caused my dissertation to be forgotten for the past week. Thats negative :(

However, I guess there can be a plus side to this: A fresh mind and view after the little break will hopefully improve the project. Lets see that this is the case.

Airport Security

So, I've just had my first on time train - that’s right, lucky number 16 - guess British rail can actually run a decent service.

WAIT - did I just say that?!?!?!?!?!?

Anyway, this is supposed to be about airport security here at Birmingham International. It’s rather fancy, or at least that’s what I thought.

The first thing to say, and I'm sorry all you Linux fans, its running Windows XP - why, don’t ask me. For airport security to be running windows, and at that XP, is quite risky, so many security flaws that people will find, and I bet (but can’t confirm this) that they have some sort of internet connection, or maybe still have solitaire or minesweeper installed or that "I can’t be bothered" day.

So, I thought I'd explain the process, but since I'm on my Touchbook with limited programs, I can’t create a flow chart. But I may add one in the future, It'ld be quite cool **Is It'ld actually used?**

So, it starts with the bog standard 'show your boarding card to a person because the machine is broken' starting gate. This is followed by the expected snake queue system guided by a biological person saying numbers (I also hate the person who said "Lane 7 Ma'am" to me, she definitely won’t be in my will).

So, when in the queue, there are those normal announcements, "remove belts and high heel shoes." or the "laptops and liquids must be removed from bags". So still no different to a normal airport security. But the next bit is where it gets fancy.


The trays have barcodes on them, which are scanned when they enter the X-Ray machine. Above the entry is a camera, with a live feed to the scanning assistant, so he can see what’s going in the scanner. The exit point has a push bar, which allows the "interesting" or potentially dangerous bags to be pushed into a different shoot, so that the owner can’t get to it and run off and end the world or similar. Otherwise the tray goes down the good shoot, and you get all of your irradiated possessions back (including my belt so that’s the world doesn’t have to see my patterned Topman boxers).

Now onto the computer side of security. As I said, they are running Windows XP (some would argue for, others against - please argue on this in the comments sections). They operator has a touch screen with all the controls for the system - stop and start the belt, good shoot or bad shoot, change scan layers etc. - and plays God with your possessions.

If your tray goes down the bad shoot, the scan data is saved and assigned to the barcode. This allows the bag rummagers to scan the barcode at their "desk" and bring up all the scan data on their touch screen, where they again can go through all the layers.

Now, hopefully they delete that data - but then being an airport, for "security" reasons, they may store this data indefinitely. They don’t state the data storage terms anywhere and I think asking might be suspicious.

Now I have to admit, that is a cleaver system, however I am worried a bit about the data storage of the scan data and photos taken by the camera. Maybe a sign would be useful. On the other hand, maybe freedom of information would make them give me a copy of my tray scan?

Right, that’s the end of my Black Forest hot chocolate from Costa (it was very nice). Just time to spell check and post, and I still have one and a half hours to wait for boarding, the down side of Aberystwyth and its 1tp2hrs (one trains per two hours) service.

Tie to enjoy some more free Wi-Fi - iPlayer downloading maybe???