Hooptedoodle #404 - More Adverts from DumbFeed

 I was amused to find another example of OTT locally-targeted advertising - this time in the Edinburgh News website.

Some algorithm somewhere obviously worked out where I live, and that my age suggests I am just bursting to go on a cut-price luxury cruise, and it concocted - for my personal excitement - this tempting glimpse of how I may sail away from North Berwick in style. Just keep a steady supply of booze coming to my cabin, please, Steward. Oh - and cheese Quavers.

Grand! In fact this is just ox-droppings.

In the real world, as everyone who has ever been here knows, North Berwick harbour looks like this [and for a short video, click here], and you will note a total lack of cruise liners - nice, but no cruises, apart from the little motor boat around the Bass Rock.

Sorry about the music on the video, by the way - I guess it was very cheap, though.

Hooptedoodle #402 - International Trade after Brexit; Your Call Is in a Queue

 A couple of weeks ago, I arranged for a package to be sent from Germany. Since there are concerns about the increased likelihood of loss of or damage to goods entering the UK during our "settling in" period, I arranged for the shipment to be fully insured, and for all paperwork, and the package itself, to show the full value clearly.

Sure enough, on Friday I received a letter from Parcel Force's Edinburgh depot, explaining that they were holding a parcel from overseas for me, and that I would have to pay Import VAT of £55 and a handling charge of £12 before they could deliver.

Righto - that's what I was expecting. I went online, on Friday (6th Aug), paid the charge and was offered a calendar to choose a delivery date, there being an additional £12 charge for Saturday deliveries. I swerved the Saturday offering, and arranged for delivery for Monday 9th - that's today, in fact. So I can sit and wait for my parcel to arrive.

Well, maybe. If I check with the Parcel Force Worldwide tracking page for my parcel (above), it tells me that my package is held, pending payment of import charges - this has been the status since 3rd August. If I phone to ask whether it is on its way to me, I get a completely automated service - one of the countless options tells me that my parcel is held pending payment of charges; another option tells me that the charges have already been paid.

I searched in vain for a number which might get me though to a human being. At one point I was offered the chance to speak to a customer service desk, and was presented with a long preamble about how my call might be recorded for training purposes, and that Parcel Force's staff are key workers, and they have the right to expect to be treated with dignity and respect. Eventually a phone started to ring, and then I got irritating music, interspersed with repeating messages about the many shipping services they offer, and how my call was in a queue.

You know what? I'm really not as daft as I may seem. I think it would be possible to spend a very long time in this queue, because I don't think the customer service numbers get answered, especially in the current (predictable) shambles which our departure from Europe has spawned. They leave it to the robots. There may or may not be any key workers present in the customer service area - it makes little difference.

Will my parcel arrive today? Has some decent person at the Edinburgh Parcel Force depot stuck it on the wagon, since the charges have been paid, and since they have promised me delivery today? If they have, why haven't they updated the tracking system?

This is only slightly inconvenient - if the parcel arrives then that's fine - if it doesn't arrive, then I have to change some plans for the rest of the week. Not a big deal - presumably it will arrive eventually. If I had paid the extra 12 quid for the Saturday delivery I'd be really rather cross, though, eh?

I was told by a friend in Germany that his business was looking at buying some equipment recently, and they chose American kit because doing any trade with the UK at the moment is a bureaucratic nightmare. I do hope his impression is not typical.

I shall get myself a mug of tea and read for a bit, keeping an eye on the lane. I am quite a fan of Parcel Force - they have always done a good enough job for me, notwithstanding my occasional rants, and I believe that they will not pretend they have been here, or that I wasn't in. The fact that their online tracking record is wrong is quite a shaker, really...

***** Very Late Edit *****

Parcel finally delivered safely on 12th August - no damage. Delay would appear to be caused by procedures for recording payment of import charges being swamped. If the coin-counters would only tell them, the shipping people would deliver. 

I sent in a pro-forma enquiry on 10th - entry requires the Parcel No (which I supplied). I now have a reply, which says they cannot help me, since I didn't supply the Tracking No (which I wasn't asked for, and which is different). Someone, apparently, will be in touch in 3 working days - now that's strangely familiar.

I'm really happy to have received my parcel, but very disappointed with Parcel Force's bizarre concept of "Customer Experience" - maybe things will improve. A Customer Experience without the option of speaking to a human employee smacks of not treating the customers with dignity and respect, but I guess that's the way we are heading.

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Hooptedoodle #391 - LaptrinhX - an unfortunate oddity or a symptom of something?

 I'm not at all sensitive about privatising my blog, or making it somehow kind of exclusive. It's not that big a deal - if someone reads it and likes it then, good; if they don't like it then they can move on and do something else. If they protest in a comment, then I can please myself whether I publish the comment, and it's all just part of the blog world.

Like many others, I get a bit fed up with the constant lifting of bits of my labours into TMP, but since the combined attention span of TMP is minimal it doesn't matter much, and occasionally someone who comes across my blog through that channel does what I would think of as the normal thing to do, and makes human, friendly contact. [In fact, of late, the borrowed bits of this blog on TMP which appear under the "authorship" of Tango01 have also carried a house official legend identifying the original source - could it be that TMP's views on decency and intellectual property are somehow evolving? Who knows? Who cares, actually?]

Occasionally I find that chunks of my blog are on Pinterest - I am unmoved. On one occasion I was surprised to find that I could purchase a mug or a poster from some on-line pirate, bearing a photo which was actually mine, and was pinched from here. Again - so what?

And then there is LaptrinhX. 

If you visit their site, laptrinhx.com, you may find, if you search for your Blogger ID, that you are one of their featured contributors. I was very impressed to find that some 800-odd posts from Prometheus in Aspic - credited to MSFoy - have simply been stolen, intact. They are reformatted, though not changed otherwise; the comments are dropped, but there they are. This is, supposedly, a news and job-advertising online journal for software developers, and they feature paid adverts which, presumably, generate revenue per hit.

I'm not awfully upset about this, to be honest, my material is in the public domain, and I realise that the pinching is done by a robot somewhere, so I am neither flattered nor personally very offended, but - for better or worse - this blog is all me own werk, Miss, and if someone generates advertising revenue for themselves and their poxy website by using my original thought and images, without any pretence of a by-your-leave, then I find that less than amusing. Thus I felt it was only appropriate to name them in this blog post, and see if it, too, is lifted intact.

Naturally, I wish to offend no-one, but thought it would be appropriate if I were to mention here that, in my opinion, LaptrinhX, their owners, advertisers, bots and readership are all a bunch of sad little wankers; please publish this. I hope they enjoy reading about themselves here today. Consider it an experimental work-out for their editing software.

Hooptedoodle #372 - A Modern Epic - Heroism in Very Small Steps

Morning run - the brave boys from USPS set off with another day's deliveries

Recently, I was brave enough to purchase something online from the United States. I used to do this from time to time in the past, but have sort of got out of the habit. Shipping prices and other overheads have become more problematic (various reasons), and I have a faint concern that the handlers will realise that the package is intended for the hostile liberals overseas, and may drive a fork-lift over it, or urinate on it, or similar (call me nervously imaginative if you will).

At the time I made the purchase, a delivery date of 28th-29th July was estimated, which seemed very optimistic, but no matter - I am not in a particular rush, and I am in any case now a veteran of a recent post-lockdown postal experience of air-freight from New Zealand which took a few months, so I have the calm which comes from experience. It's OK - these are tricky times - the brave chaps on the high seas will do their best for me. Whatever. We have to be grateful.

So I was pretty relaxed about my parcel - it will get here, but it might not make it by 28th July. Hey, there are lots of people in the world with real problems, so I can stand to wait a week or two. This morning I received an email message to say that my package had arrived at the courier, and was out for delivery.

Fantastic! - in a state of some excitement, I followed the links to get some tracking details of this miracle of space-age logistics.

Hmmm. What has happened is that it has arrived at the start of the international bit of its journey. All the previous toil and endeavour appears to have been local bits of USPS handing it on to each other - or maybe putting it back in the bin for tomorrow - or maybe rubber-stamping something [come on - I can't be expected to understand how these things work]. What seems to me like the hard bit has not begun yet, and I have not even mentioned import tax and all the glumph at this end. So I've gone back to my previous assumption that it will not make it by 28th. We have not yet got to tales of aeroplanes flying over the ocean, or Big Tam with the size 12 boots at the depot in Edinburgh.

Mind you, there's still 5 days to go. If it makes it, I promise I shall sing their praises on this very blog. I'm not too worried, to be honest - if it's late it serves me right for being rash - but this view of the innards of the gig economy at work doesn't impress me as much as I had hoped.

***** Late Digression *****

Nothing to do with the above (apart from implications of international shipping, I guess), but I've just got word from Allan at Lancashire Games that they will be stocking Vauban's Wars when it is printed and released. Just thought I should mention it...

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Hooptedoodle #370 - A National Initiative on the Phone

Yesterday morning I was sitting typing when my office phone rang. I picked it up, and was surprised to find that someone had obviously put me on hold. After a few seconds, I was connected, and there was a cheerful, though rather nervous, Glasgow girl ready to speak to me.

She addressed me, correctly, by my full name - could I confirm that she was speaking to the right person? - and she would just take up a few minutes of my time, if that was all right.

I asked, to whom am I speaking? - and she seemed to became rather more nervous.

Hi - this is Linsey, from [mumble] Energy [mumble].

She definitely rushed through the bit about who she was, but - as it happens - I've been expecting a courtesy call from SP Networks, who manage the power lines for our local electricity supplier. We had a power outage a week or so ago, and I phoned in to report it - all routine, and it was sorted out very quickly, but the power company always make a follow-up call to see if the customer is happy. I assumed Linsey was from SP Networks, without thinking about it too carefully, but was aware that this is not how she had introduced herself.

I'm sorry, Linsey, I don't think I know who you are - could you say that bit again?

Yes - as I said, I'm from [mumble] Energy Solutions.

I have never heard of you; I'm sorry, I don't have a few minutes to speak to you.

We are a national initiative, we can supply you with a grant to pay for home improvements, to fit double glazing or enhance your home's insulation.

A national initiative? - I think you are a commercial firm, trying to sell me something. You may be able to help me fill in the forms to apply for a grant, but it would be the Government's money, and your only interest is to persuade me to use this grant to buy something from you. I'm not interested, sorry.

No, no - we are not a commercial firm, we are a national initiative.

You mean, like a government department?

Yes - sort of. A national initiative.

I'm very sorry - I've told you I'm not interested, so if you don't mind I'll hang up now.

All right - no problem - I'll ring you again in a couple of days...


Click.

No you won't, Linsey - I just blocked your number.

I checked up on [mumble] Energy Solutions, and they have a proper website, so I guess they are a serious venture, right enough, but I get really very cross when cold-calling sales people pretend they have some sort of official capacity - a lot of gullible folk must get scammed by this. As for me, I'm too miserable to be fooled, especially if there is money involved. I would be happier if the company's logo, a cute cartoon penguin, looked rather less like Feathers McGraw from Wallace and Grommit.

Zoom - Firming Up

After learning that the world shortage of webcams, caused by demand during lockdown, has put the prices through the ceiling, I've been pottering around to see what else we can do in the short term. My Windows laptop was a big disappointment - the internal camera is very basic; I think the processing power is fine, so it might work well with an external camera (if I had one), but there is another constraint anyway, in that Zoom will only permit one computer, one tablet and one smartphone to be enabled under a single account, and my desktop Mac is already the heart of operations.

Righto - I had a shot with the Android tablet. I didn't expect a lot, but I have to say I'm very pleased with the results. I constructed various experimental stands to hold the thing, and had a couple of brief sessions with Goya and with Stryker today to see how things looked from their end. Very promising. It would be better, of course, to have two cameras on the job, but if the stand for the tablet is rigid enough and stable enough then I can take the tablet down when necessary, and offer views from other angles, or close-ups, or whatever the generals want. The beauty of the stable stand is that I can put the tablet back in its main vantage point without fiddling around adjusting everything.

The best arrangement we achieved has the tablet about 7 feet from the floor, tipped forward (on a music stand, in fact), looking down over one corner of the table. We tried various combinations of lights, with the curtains open and closed - eventually the best arrangement was with curtains closed and all the room lights on, with the camera pointing in a direction which minimised reflected light. The photos were taken by Goya, at the far end of the conversation - there is a little loss of resolution in the pictures, compared with my original screen view, but it certainly looks as though it will do the job.

Remote generals should be provided with paper maps of the table, and we'll improvise some sort of unobtrusive grid reference system to clear up any ambiguities - maybe some form of unit roster arrangement might be a good idea, too. Whatever - I think we can now go ahead. We hope to have a smallish Napoleonic game ready to roll in a week or three.

I'll continue to keep an eye on the insane world of webcams, but the pressure is off for the moment.

The view from 7 feet up in the air - screen capture from the far end of the link. A little clarity is lost in transmission, but it is surely good enough to get us going. My son points out that if I buy an expensive 1080p streaming camera Zoom will detect our rural broadband service, and default to 730p anyway. That would be a shame (though I do fancy a decent camera for creating videos anyway). The mugs do not indicate a mighty consumption of coffee, by the way, I placed them there in case we couldn't find the corners through the camera view. Needn't have worried, I think.

Fighting by Zoom?

Interesting session this evening, using the newly installed Zoom set-up for a 3-way chat  - Stryker, Goya and myself. Videoconferencing. We had some problems with my broadband playing up a bit, but it's obvious that this does offer the opportunity of some remote miniatures gaming. Quite exciting, really - Stryker showed us around the 6mm ACW game he is soloing in his hut at the moment - looks good.

I realise that a lot of people are already doing this, but it's unfamiliar to us, so a fairly trouble-free toe in the water would be a fine idea. We may change our minds at any time, of course, but at the moment the plan is that we should set up a 3-way game to try it out - and pretty soon.

Agreed Thoughts / Guidelines / Givens (any minute now we'll have a Terms of Reference):

(1) for a 3-player game, the host should be umpire and general runner-about, the remote attendees will be the two commanders.

(2) the first game shouldn't be too large, or we will put ourselves off.

(3) a gridded game would work well, since the table layout should be easily visible, and there is no scope for getting bogged down in (remote) measurement - it would also be useful for the commanders to have paper maps of the table/board, for their own reference.

(4) since I have a very clearly marked-out gridded table, and all the necessary figures, I could be the first host - and we might have a look at the CCN scenario 006 for The River Coa in the Peninsular War. We'll use my Ramekin dice-driven activation system, so we don't have problems with the Command Cards, and I'll do all the dice rolling at my end - on camera, of course [The Lovely Rita].

Lovely Rita in her previous job

My set-up ideas on this would be to have my (big, Windows 10) laptop in the games room, with (preferably) a dedicated webcam connected. If the webcam can just stream live video into the laptop through USB, then this full screen display of the battlefield can be offered via the Share Screen option in Zoom. Thus the default screen would be the normal Zoom Gallery view of the participants, with a Share Screen option of the tabletop action, as seen from the webcam (mounted on a fairly high tripod, angled down onto the table).

I assume that all this would work OK. Snag #1 is that I have to get my hands on a webcam. I realise it is possible to set up a smartphone or other device to work as the webcam, but I have an aversion to solutions involving gaffer-tape or wishful thinking, so an actual webcam which just works out of the box would be good, especially for a klutz like me - the scope for dropping an iPhone from a height of 2 metres is too obvious, and just think how that would spoil the game...

I see that the prices of conference-quality 1080p webcams are just about what you would expect - very high - but there are cheaper options, and the options are getting cheaper and better all the time. I had a look to see what is available second-hand on eBay, just to get some experience without busting the bank. When I checked these used items back against Amazon and elsewhere, I realised that, in general, new webcams are on sale cheaper than second-hand ones, and often the spec is better. This is obviously an area where technology is improving and prices are dropping fast. Hmmm.

I was looking at customer reviews on various pieces of kit - some of the Logitech units look good, but it's hard to tell with my current level of understanding without actually trying one out. That's as far as I've got - we have agreed that we would like to try something, and it would be nice if it worked without a huge amount of hassle. At this point I really would welcome some suggestions, if anyone has experience of this stuff, and would be kind enough to help out a little. Any camera recommendations? Any "don't ever do what I did" stories? All welcome.

One small downside of Zoom, of course, is that a "meeting" involving more than 2 people is limited to 40 minutes unless you have a paid account, in which case you are talking about $15 a month. As a loss leader, Zoom are currently waiving the 40-minute limit for new subscribers, and there are some supposedly "special" offers to help during the lockdown period. That's all fine, but I had a think about it. If multi-way Zoom is obviously a good thing to have access to - particularly if old chaps driving across Scotland with vans full of soldiers and scenery are likely to meet with the disapproval of The Polis for the foreseeable future, then $15 may be a snip. When I think about it, I currently pay a monthly amount for an Audible audiobook membership from which I haven't ordered anything for a while, and I also pay for a Spotify account which I never use.

I could get myself organised and save most of $15 a month with very little effort, so that's not such a disincentive. And, of course, I could then keep in contact with my long-lost relatives - two at a time, if need be. Hmmm.

If I can sort out what I need to do about a decent camera - and some reasonably decent ones are only about £30 these days - this looks rather like a goer.

Stryker does Zoom - scary

O Blog-ee O Blogg-er (Life Goes On)

This is just by way of a quick apology - I am having continuing problems with Blogger, and I wish to clear up any accidental breaches of etiquette.

Abergele Market, long ago - can you spot Desmond?

(1) A trifle to start with - the pictures which disappeared a few weeks ago have not come back, but it is reputed to be a known problem and Google are "working on it". If they come back, good - if they don't come back, I may replace the lost images. I may forget.

(2) There are certain bloggers who send comments to my blog and I don't get notified. I'm not sure why - it seems to be a regular feature of certain individuals - I keep an eye open for pending comments. If I've missed any, no offence intended.

(3) For some reason, I am only able to comment on some blogs if I use my own name, as per my Gmail account. If I have stopped commenting on your blog, it is not because I no longer love you, it is simply because I choose to use my MSFoy blog ID. Nothing sinister, it's just that if I use my real name I may get hassle from my ex-wife and the tax authorities of several Western nations. Also Max Foy's widow will be furious if she finds out he's dead.

(4) I can no longer follow any new blogs using my MSFoy ID - again, I am required to use my real name. This may be because my email provider is BTinternet - I've had occasional messages from Google that they cannot validate BT's mail server as having proper security certification - there was mention of some protocol or other (DMARC? - can't remember). Whatever, I'm not very interested.

I guess I have to be glad that it still works a bit. I am offered regular suggestions that I should try New Blogger, but I remember (with a shudder) similar pressures to move to Google+, and I am keeping my hand on my halfpenny.

I'd like to think this is the most boring post I've put here for a while - if you disagree, please don't bother to let me know.

Hooptedoodle #363 - Robot and Foy

Last week I downloaded the app for Zoom, the videoconferencing tool, and, since I've now had three prompts from friends to get my account fired up, I set about doing exactly this.

Filled in the online form to join up, and clicked the button to receive my email, so that I can reply to it and validate my account. What could be easier?

Well, my email didn't arrive. I requested a re-send, and it still didn't arrive.

I got on to Zoom's online customer support, and opened up the chat line. The chat line suggested I should check my spam folder, and maybe contact my workplace IT section for help. I confirmed that I had checked spam, and that I am my own IT support, and the chat line couldn't understand what I was talking about. "TRY AGAIN WITH DIFFERENT WORDS..." it suggested.

Tried a couple of re-wordings, and it became obvious pretty quickly that I was chatting with an expert system, and I was getting nowhere fast. I don't have a lot of time for this sort of exercise today, so I just said "Forget it for now - I'll try later."

To which the expert system replied:

"IF YOU USE LANGUAGE LIKE THAT, WE WILL BE UNABLE TO HELP YOU."

It's disappointing when an expert system has such poor expectations of its own customers. Maybe I will try again later - not sure.

The language problem, I think, is at their end - their chat line must have a very small repertoire of known words.

No worries. Maybe I'm due a return to Skype?


***** Late Edit - Happy Ending? *****

Credit where credit is due - I did receive the activation email, plus the 4 further re-sends I requested. They arrived at 03:11, which is 15 hours after I sent my original request.

OK - I'm probably operational now. I imagine the emails are sent by more robots. Thus my first impression is that Zoom's AI staff are not only sensitive but also remarkably slow. I have a couple of YouTube instructional vids to watch to get up to speed. Maybe later - my robot is still asleep.

******************************

Hooptedoodle #362 - The Liverpool-Holyhead Optical Telegraph

A bit more Merseyside local history, I'm afraid - pretty ancient history, too. During lock-down, I am presently working my way through some of the old BBC TV Coast series on DVD, and enjoying them thoroughly - apart from anything else, it's nice to get a change of scenery, and to see people travelling about in the fresh air and speaking to each other!

Yesterday I watched the episode from Series 2 in which they discuss the North Wales coastline from Anglesey to Liverpool. One of the items covered was the Optical Telegraph, begun in 1826, I think, which was built to communicate between Holyhead, in Anglesey, and Liverpool. My interest was kindled!

Long before any electric telegraph, it was very useful to be able to pass messages back and forth, with news of arriving shipping. In those pre-steam days, most of the sugar trade from the Caribbean and the cotton from the USA came into Liverpool, and voyage times were very variable. When incoming ships reached Anglesey, they only had about 70 miles to go, across Liverpool Bay to the port itself. Ships passing Holyhead could exchange (flag) signals with the signal station, and then the telegraph system (invented, I believe, by an employee of the Liverpool Dock Company named Watson) would send news to Liverpool, where the shipping companies could make arrangements for berthing and unloading, and the local traders could make announcements in the Cotton Exchange and in the local commodity markets, and of course, messages to the ship could be sent back.

The Telegraph stations

 The system used a relay of semaphore stations, sending coded messages which consisted of numeric signals, translated by means of a code book.

Each station would receive incoming signals from an adjacent station in the line, and resend as quickly as possible. I imagine the job of spotting a new signal quickly would be a demanding one, but the signal traffic was heavy, so there might be little chance to doze off! This sounds painfully slow, since someone would have to decode the numbers at each end, but it seems that 3 to 4 minutes from end to end was about average, which is impressive. During the BBC TV show, they made great play of the fact that there was a claim that the fastest ever recorded time for a message from Holyhead to Liverpool was 27 seconds. My reaction was to wonder how they could possibly have measured this, since there was no time signal or satellite clock to check it against. It took me a while to realise that it would be possible to time a there-and-back signal and response at one end of the line, but I have to say that still don't believe they could have done it so quickly!

Ruin of the station at Carreglwyd, abandoned in 1841 when the Puffin Island station opened

Puffin Island

Bidston Hill "Observatory" in the Wirral - telegraph station, and one signal flagpole for each shipping line!

If you want to know more, here's a link to a pleasing little history of the telegraph system - there seems to have been a gradual improvement in the technology - there are still traces of it around. I remember that when I was a small child I saw the signal pylon at Hilbre Island, just off West Kirby. Come to think of it, I never realised until yesterday what that site was!

One nice moment in the BBC programme was a reference to the fact that that one of the coded signals in the book, transmitted as a number, meant "do you have the code book?", which, of course, would convey nothing at all if you didn't.

Hooptedoodle #360 - Something Has Changed

I observe that a number of my recent blog posts will not display some of the images I inserted. I see this symbol instead of each blocked picture:

The picture is still in a library somewhere - hovering the cursor over the missing image shows a sub-caption with the name of a convincing-looking file name on a Blogger library - but I can't see the image itself, either as part of the published post or in a draft version if I switch to the editor. Oh yes - and I can't save it or open it as a separate link. For all practical purposes, the image has gone.

Hmmm.

I had a quick, rather nervous check back to 2011 or so, and I think my older posts are unchanged. This is something of a relief, since the status of my blog as one of The Wonders of the Modern Age would be severely compromised by having the pictures removed. Knocked on the head, in fact. The pictures which have been suppressed recently were (at a quick glance) some photos of book covers, which I nicked from Amazon's website, a couple of photos of items for sale taken from a 5-year-old auction catalogue, a photo of HG Wells playing wargames in his garden which I obtained from Google. My own original photos are unaffected, and I didn't look much further, so the evidence on which to base any heavy investigation is not extensive. However, not being easily discouraged, I have been pondering what's going on here.

I realise that the Amazon pictures are copyrighted, but my blog is not any kind of commercial venture, the photos could almost be described as promotional, since I was singing the praises of the books involved, and my readership is small (anyone over six feet in height, please excuse the generalisation). Quite apart from the fact that I don't suppose Amazon or anyone else would regard the inclusion of these photos as unreasonable use, or even be faintly interested in my activities, I am puzzled, if there has been a change, as to what that change is, and why.

Maybe this is an Apple thing? My desktop machine is a Mac, and my iPhone shows the same thing. However, my tablet, which is an Android device, shows this same NO ENTRY symbol, and they all do this on a variety of browsers, so this would appear to be down to Blogger / Google.

Hmmm.

Maybe there has been a tightening up on the use of unauthorised or copyrighted images? Since my own photos of my soldier collection and the games I play are all over Pinterest and TMP without any permission from me, and since I recently learned that I can order a mouse-mat, a mug or a poster from a company in the US which seems to offer a couple of my photos as stock designs, I can see some sense in this.

It could, of course, just be a glitch in Blogger - such things are not unknown. A number of the routine facilities which Blogger offers have stopped working for me over the last year - I think that this may not be unconnected with the fact that my principal sign-on uses an email account which is supported by a competitor of Google, but that's another story altogether.

Or it could be a change in Official Policy. They could be clamping down, in which case, as long as my entire blog is not wrecked, I have to shrug and say fair enough - probably not before time. If I've done bad things then it serves me right. [Drat]

To put this in context, I do not regard this as a free-for-all. I do try to behave responsibly in these matters - if I do anything that offends someone's rights, then it is normally accidental, I'll put my hand up and apologise, and remove the image straight away. It does happen, but not very often.

Some weeks ago, MSFoy received an email from a lady in the US, complaining that he had used a photo which was her property, without permission. I sent a humble apology and removed the photo promptly. I received a friendly acknowledgement - matter closed, I hope. What strikes me as a little odd about this is that the picture in question, which was in a blog post here some six years ago, was supplied by a library service I used until (I think) last year. For a while I owned a small publishing business - in fact I still do, though it is no longer trading - and I took out a paid subscription to an online library service which offered royalty-free, non-copyrighted images - clip art and photos - which could be used for small-distribution advertising and so on. It was not an expensive deal (as you would expect - quiet at the back, please), so I forgot all about it until maybe 18 months ago, at which point I cancelled my subscription.

OK - maybe that's all irrelevant, but the incident of the complaint seemed like something new. So perhaps Google have changed their rules? It would be possible for some algorithm to check the meta-data behind any image, and suppress it, I guess. I can see this would be constructive in the overall scheme of things. However, the algorithm will struggle with screen-capture images or scanned images, so I really just have to introduce an extra step to get round this. Save an image, display it in my Preview app and take a screenshot. Pick the bones out of that.

Anyway, this post has certainly gone on long enough, considering I am blundering around in the dark. I wondered whether anyone has had a similar experience recently, or if anyone knows if the law or Google usage has changed?

The Asides of History

With grateful thanks to Slap at Monkey Tennis

Hooptedoodle #338 - Well Said, Johanna

I'm not a big tennis fan, though I can waste whole afternoons watching matches on TV if I get caught up. Wimbledon is on the telly. It's a British institution. Strawberries and cream, top players, excitement, thrills and shocks - and it's all brought to us by the BBC. In fact it would be difficult to find much fault with the way it is brought to us by the BBC, but they do suffer a little from the delusion that they somehow own the event. Having given us the Women's Football World Cup, we are now lucky enough to have Wimbledon bestowed upon us. We are not worthy. [At least it is one thing remaining for which we do not have to pay the Murdoch family.]

Yesterday Johanna Konta, who is a British player, lost her quarter-final match in the Ladies' Singles. I didn't see the game, but I did see this clip of the post-match press interview [click to watch it - it's worth the time]. One journalist, who would have been fawning and offering to wash her car if she had won, assumes the role of careers teacher when she loses - we will have an insensitive, analytical look at her weaknesses, and the camera will give close-ups if she is moved to tears. Great TV, too.

Well, no. I am delighted to observe that Ms Konta pulled him up very nicely, and told him his fortune. One small but maybe significant blow against the army of overpaid parasites who make a soft living out of the media aspects of professional sport, capitalising on the dedication, talent, hard work and heartache of others. Just because this twerp gets to interview or write about the best players in the world does not give him any credentials of his own - knock him down with a French loaf. I am sick of seeing microphones being stuck under the noses of distressed sportsmen and women who are obviously struggling to keep it all in.

"How disappointed are you feeling at this moment, Mauricio?"

"Why don't you go and **** yourself, you moron?"

Nice one, Johanna - I shall follow your career with more interest!

eBay - Definitely the End This Time

I recently posted a sad tale about an apparent hack of my PayPal account - I managed to take quick action on it, but it seems that not quite everything was sorted. I now find that I have been subjected to what is becoming a common scam - someone hacks into your PayPal account, inserts a fake address so that they can link to your eBay account, and then - as they have done in my case - sets up a fake listing for sale on your eBay account.

First I knew about it was when I started getting emails about an "unresolved issue" on eBay - someone wanted a refund because I had failed to deliver a set of security cameras which they had bought from me. Erm - security cameras? The listing was still active - it seems I had sold 1 out of 50 sets available. No money had reached me though PayPal. The purchase took place on 22nd May - the following day I got a request from eBay to change my password, and did so, though they sent me no details which might have put me on my guard. I changed my PayPal password as well (again), at the same time.

This morning I had a phone conversation with an eBay security man, based in the Philippines. He was very good and very reassuring - they were already aware of the problems with my account, and are in the process of cleaning everything up - the eBay listing has now been taken down, I have no need to worry about refunding anything - the purchaser (if there is one - that may be a scam too) will be reimbursed. The law enforcement authorities will be notified about the incident as appropriate. Was there anything else he could help me with?

Well, no - nothing else really. I will be closing my eBay account as soon as they let me back into it. That's enough - I've been muttering about this for ages - I think that God has now sent me a sign.

Watch your step. As it happens, I had kept a note of the full name and address which was hacked into my PayPal account, back in April. It is a guy named Nikolaj, who lives in London. Interestingly, the security cameras were supposedly for sale in London. OK - there's lots of people in London, but the man in the Philippines tells me the incidents are related. The security people were quite impressive, though I'd have been more impressed if they'd sorted the matter out before I reported it.

That's it for me - eBay now officially stinks - I have had good use out of it for 15 years, but for me its time is up. There are too many fifth-rate crooks hanging round the internet, trying to suck some blood out of the system.

Cheers, Nikolaj - I do have your full ID and address, and I do have friends in London. I shall fantasize about that for a bit. Incidents like this always (well, "always" is a bit strong - I'm very careful, and pretty savvy, and have had very few problems in the past) leave me feeling ashamed for being stupid. With hindsight, other than changing my passwords rather more frequently, I don't think I could have done much better.

Hooptedoodle #305 - Stone Cold Dead in de Marketplace

I get so used to the convenience of online shopping that it really stings when it goes wrong. Nothing major - no big deal - just a routine shopping story, straight from the pages of Bicycle News [private joke]. The real problem is that we take things for granted - no contingency margins at all - so any pain is mostly self-inflicted.

This week I needed to get some musical kit in a hurry - nothing particularly interesting - just a long-overdue replacement for a carrying case. Had a look around, and eventually bought something on Amazon. I could have looked further, but our experience with Amazon is so overwhelmingly positive in recent years, and they always look after any (rare) mishaps professionally and quickly, so their name has become a bit of a safeguard.

£58, with free delivery. Fine. Easy. In fact the item was supplied by one of Amazon's Marketplace sellers, a big music shop in Yorkshire which also deals with real customers in a real bricks-&-mortar shop. All good. The chances of a staff member in an actual music shop knowing what they are doing must be at least as good as what might be expected in the dungeons of a Corporate Fulfilment Centre.

My parcel was much, much bigger than this...

On Saturday, even quicker than expected, a DPD van brought me a fine big parcel. At the time I was up to my knees in tidying up the garage, so it wasn't until later on that I opened my package. Ouch. Wrong item. They had sent me an enormous case of a different type - same make, but about three times the size (and, incidentally, twice the value). Let's not panic here.

I got online to Amazon, recorded my wish to return the item, which was accepted straight away, and I printed off labels and documents they emailed me to send the parcel back. I also rang up the music shop (they were still open at nearly 6pm - business must be either very good or very poor - take your pick).

Gentleman at the music shop said that these things happen, but didn't seem to care unduly. If I send the item back, they will refund the cost. He certainly wasn't at all apologetic - I got a faint hint that Amazon customers are a bit of a pain in the capodastro.

Now, here's the rub. Normally, in a situation like this, where the music shop knows that you are in a bit of a hurry, the guy might well say, "very sorry, we screwed up - we'll rush the correct item to you, and our courier will collect the wrong one when he calls with it".

Not in the Marketplace. The guy cannot do anything like that, because Amazon have to call all the shots on the refund - this is probably how it should be - I'm sure all you auditors will agree. SO THE SELLER IS HAMSTRUNG BECAUSE HE IS WORKING FOR AMAZON ON THIS SALE.

OK - over to Amazon themselves. I had a pleasant on-screen "chat" exchange with one of Amazon's customer reps, and he said that I have to mail the thing back to the seller, at my own cost, and the seller will refund purchase price plus my postage when they receive it. But, I said, I thought you would send me a label which would get me free return mailing.

Ah, well. This is what would happen if the item had been supplied direct from Amazon's warehouse, but it's different for a Marketplace sale. The seller, you see, has to process the refund and accept the item back into stock. I can understand that, but it does mean that AMAZON ARE ALSO HAMSTRUNG BECAUSE THEY ARE USING A MARKETPLACE SELLER.

To be fair to them, Amazon awarded the princely sum of £5 as a goodwill payment for my inconvenience. They also explained that the procedure is now thus: I repackage the parcel, attach the labels Amazon have sent me, take it to a courier [I used Royal Mail Parcelforce this morning, registered - that's £13.40] and pay the postage to get it back to the seller. When the lads in Yorkshire get their case back, they will check it's OK and will refund my £58 - any betting that they'll remember the return postage without being chased? Once I have seen on my credit card statement that everything is in order I may start again, re-ordering the same item from the same supplier, through Amazon. Just as though it never happened.

Just a minute - you mean they can't take the initiative to send me the correct item without further action from me? No - the transaction ends when they have their goods back, I have my money back, and Amazon's audit trail rings the Angelus. Then I may feel free to start all over again.

Mustn't make a fuss - things usually do go very well. My hopes for a quick, convenient purchase of an instrument case have vanished without trace, however, and I have the additional hassle of checking I get all my money back. Then I have to decide whether I am sufficiently impressed with this episode to risk going round the process one more time.

No. In fact I had already ordered the same item online (outside Amazon, from a shop in Derby - for only £48), within an hour of the conversation. If the original seller in Yorkshire had given even a token pretence of contrition I'd have considered ordering from them again - they will have to pick up the tab for my return shipping, after all. But he didn't. Fair enough. If he doesn't give a stuff, then neither do I, and whether the world is a warmer and more caring place as a result is well beyond me.

Move on - nothing to see here.

Blogger Misbehaving?

I've seen a couple of posts along this theme. I'm currently having problems with Blog comments. For some subscribers (not all, and I don't understand why) I am not getting email notification of pending comments. I also now realise that these "stealth" pending comments are arriving in my Awaiting Moderation folder in batches - sometimes a while after they were submitted.

Very sorry if you've been affected - I know that Stryker, Jon Freitag, David from Suffolk and one or two others have sent comments which didn't trigger the notification email. I live in hope that Blogger will be fixed soon - I don't think any of us has done anything wrong!

I do try to keep an eye on the pending folder.

Hooptedoodle #290 - A Trifle Confused

Very disappointed this morning. One of the disadvantages of waking up at 6am to BBC Radio 4 news is that sometimes I am still drowsy, and my perception of what has been said can be a trifle confused.

However, it seems that Mr Trump is not going to come to Britain to open the new US Embassy in London after all. I'm not entirely clear why he refuses to come, but it seems to be something to do with the fact that he doesn't like the building, and it's all Mr Obama's fault, apparently. That all sounds quite reasonable, I guess, but I was secretly planning to go down to the Metrollopus and join the welcoming throng, so, yes, I am deeply disappointed, and what am I going to do with this little flag?

This is also potentially unfortunate from a diplomacy point of view, since we in the UK might be reliant on some handouts from the US if the Brexit negotiations proceed on their current tack, so I hope there is no element of falling-out in his decision. It's all a bit worrying, really. I'll just keep the flag safe in my drawer - yes, next to the scarves and my woolly hat - since I'm sure he'll be back to see us soon.

I'm sure it will be all right.

I'm also a bit confused about something I may have heard (or maybe I read it) about possible enforced changes in Mr T's use of Twitter. I'm already a little mystified by all that. It is marvellous that he uses Tweets to such effect, and so many of them (and he's no spring chicken, you know), though I don't quite understand how this works. Does he leave the room, so that he can Tweet the same people he was just talking to? Does he go to the bathroom or something? Does he have a special (big?) cellphone for important messages? Whatever, it's all very clever, but it seems there are new guidelines coming, whereby Twitter and Facebook and all that lot are going to be required to take a firm stance on what represents inappropriate use of their services, and are going to have to take responsibility for moderating or blocking customer usage - at least, more than they have done previously.

Obviously I haven't thought through all the implications of this, but it has already been suggested that using Tweets to make nuclear threats to the President of North Korea is an example of the sort of thing which advertisers might find alarming, so we may find that the messages which control our future existence may have to find a new medium in future to make themselves known.

There must be some problem with just talking to people, I guess, or using the traditional communications set-up of the White House - I think we have to respect this, as a special case - but it does seem possible that the Presidential Tweets are going to have to stop. Someone suggested that it might be possible for the President to employ a glove puppet as his spokesman - again, I haven't thought of all the implications, but it would tick a few of the right boxes, it would be very cheap, and it would go down very well with the under-5s.

Fascinating stuff. If you would care to suggest a name for the new spokesperson, please feel free to contribute.

Of Young & Fogg, and Aromatherapy, and Other Things

Topic 1: Young & Fogg.

Here are a couple of well-known - nay, historic - wargaming photos from the days when the whole world was still black and white. What common element is in both these pictures?

Yes - well done at the back, there - the buildings are from a fondly remembered range marketed by Triang, which was most famous because they were made of rubber.

Clive, the celebrated Old Metal Detector himself, has a collection of these splendid little buildings, and there are some fine pictures on his blog [click here].

So who were Young & Fogg? Well, they were a firm specialising in the manufacture of rubber items, who were taken over by the Triang company in the late 1950s. The first result of this acquisition was a range of rubber buildings to suit Triang's Spot On range of 1/42 scale diecast vehicles (the range is attractively described here, on a link provided, once again, by Clive); shortly afterwards, the more famous, HO model-railway-sized Countryside Range appeared, which lent itself more comfortably to gaming scales.

I remember these very clearly - my model railway days were over when they appeared, but I was very taken with them - especially the church. I never had any. The most pleasing thing about them was that they didn't look like other model buildings - model buildings mostly had very straight corners and bright colours, and didn't really resemble proper houses. The Triang rubber houses had cheerfully quirky designs - Cotswolds meet the Brothers Grimm - and had a nicely distressed, rounded appearance. The one feature which was a problem in the long term, of course, was the material of which they were made. Rubber grows old and perishes. The reason you see so few of these on eBay is because they have mostly rotted and been throw away.

I acquired one of the churches last year, or maybe it was the year before, as a makeweight in a job lot purchase from eBay. It wasn't an important element in the purchase, and I was expecting it to be a wreck. It pretty much was a wreck, too.

The rubber had dried out and cracked and twisted - never mind - I stuck it at the back of a shelf somewhere and vaguely thought I might have another look at it some time.

Now this week, I came across the Donald Featherstone picture at the top of this post, and I thought, righto - let's have another look at that rubber church.

Well, it's pretty awful. It should probably just go in the dustbin. However, since I am a madman I did some online research, and it seems that rubber can be softened by immersion in various brews, and the strategic ingredient in these concoctions is Oil of Wintergreen. Hmmm.

Thinks (this should be read in Bluebottle's voice, from the Goon Shows):

(1) I could purchase some Oil of Wintergreen and maybe a few other cheap constituents, and I could stew my church in this for a while.

(2) It would lose it's paint, but when it was softened I could pack it with bits of wood and whatever else was needed to train it back into a church shape.

(3) Leave it to cure and then refinish.

(4) Be the envy of my chums (if I had any).

I'm not fired up into any state of fevered excitement. The first snag is that Oil of Wintergreen is not available in bath-sized containers, as far as I can see. It is prized in the purple world of aromatherapy [ah yes, quite so], and thus it retails in poncey little 10ml bottles, with an eyedropper and an art nouveau label. The prices are not amusing, either.

Which brings us up to date. Has any devoted collector of these rubber buildings ever attempted a makeover of this type? Any views or war narratives which might help?

All advice will be most welcome. In my heart I fear my little rubber church is, to use a technical term, knackered.

Topic 2: Who's this then?

Here are two Napoleonic-period British light infantry officers. Like me, you may feel that you have seen this pair appearing as a comedy act at a seaside theatre. The one on the left is clearly from Les Higgins, and he is there simply to provide a scale comparison. What is the one on the right? He is obviously one of André Maurois' Filifers. This casting is of a very gangly officer - one of his feet is interestingly strengthened by placing it in a clump of grass. I have some ideas about his origins, but would welcome some better informed views.

Any ideas?

Topic 3: Luddites' Cup - Inverted snobbery in the world of Tech.

Here at Chateau Foy we attempt to strike a balance between our love of the venerable traditions of our stately home and of our uncomplicated, rural life and the heady excitement of the rush of modern technology advance.

Overall, we probably tend to be just a little reactionary - I am subjected to much scorn from my son, for example, simply because I cannot see any point in being able to take photographs with my razor, nor watch movies on the tumble dryer. Some element of versatility in my assembled gadgetry is welcome, but I find too many examples of solutions in search of a problem to solve.

Now the Contesse has a Kindle Fire, which she uses to - any guesses? - yes, that's right - she uses it to read e-books. Good. It would, of course, be possible to distract herself while she was reading e-books, by also using it to check continually if she has any email - this is always a good way to avoid coming face to face with the exact dimensions of one's attention span. But she does not normally do this; however, the other night she decided to make use of the Fire's internet capability, and check her social media accounts. She received the warning screen shown below, with which we are delighted. This must get us straight through into the group stages of the European Luddites' Cup, surely?

What a fine achievement. Our son may be too ashamed ever to speak to us again, which is not an unattractive idea.