It was THAT kind of shift, last night... (part two)...

OK... typing this up before I go to work tonight :)

So, there I was at our Friday night lunch stand (at 04:08 in the morning! Ye gods, I gotta find an easier and more sociable-hours usable way to earn a living!), when our nice friendly roadside controller comes up and says, "Sorry mate, I gotta nick yer bus, chummy's got a water leak, you'll get a sub" - he meant a substitute bus from the depot - "soon, OK?"

This, when for the first time in close to a fortnight, I actually had a bus whose cab heater worked as advertised, and pushed out warm air, not frozen air from the Siberian regions!

OK, so the bus wasn't exactly all systems go, the nice new shiny just-out-of-its'-wrapping iBus system on it was somewhat stuffed (it wasn't taking trip data, so no recorded bus stop location announcements for the punters to fall asleep by as they usually do), and the front route blind winding mechanism wasn't working properly (it only wound in one direction: naturally, this was not the desired direction!), meaning that I had to change from the day route number to my night route number by opening up the front route blinds cabinet from the upstairs saloon, and winding them by hand (laborious, that!), but forget that - the damn bus had a working cab heater!

And he wanted to nick it off me!

On a bloody freezing night just like it was last night!

Sometimes you just can't win.

So he got my bus.

Naturally, I muttered dark imprecations about the driver of the stuffed bus, the stuffed bus, the controller, engineers, et all. In my very best "Victor Meldrew" impression (from the telly series "One Foot In The Grave"), of course. Must retain some kind of sense of humour, or I'd wind up talking to myself, AND getting answers, too!

Anyhow, I wound up spending my break in a not-very-warm, and very drafty, staff room at the bus stand. Muttering dark imprecations about engineers, spit balls, baling wire, and chewing gum usage...

Hmm... I was talking to myself again, wasn't I?

Add to this the fact that my better half is off with a bunch of our friends this weekend, and partying hard without me, because I couldn't get the time off work (probably just as well, I don't dance, and I really don't do discos - they make my ears hurt!), and you might understand why I was a tad hacked off last night...

The kind of things speeding through my sorry excuse for a brain bucket (skull) at this point were similar to "I've had enough, I don't wanna play no more, gimme me ball back", and "Stop the world, I wanna get off!". You get the idea.

This somewhat less than ideally motivated attitude was inspired by previous incidents of this nature. Whenever you needed a sub bus, the bus the engineers would send out would be about one step away from being a candidate for the knackers yard... and specifically on a night shift, would likely as not have (1) no working cab heater, and (2) probably about as much acceleration ability as a slug, meaning that I'd not only be freezing my toes off, but would have to work my backside off to keep to time, even on an empty road.

So, imagine my shock and amazement when they sent not only a bus that had a working cab heater, but which was actually able to do nought to thirty in less than five hours!

Colour me not only impressed, but totally gob smacked! I sincerely took it all back about what I'd been muttering about engineers earlier (well, until next time, anyhow )

To even things out, it was all things back to normal when I got home a little while later. Once again, I'd failed to win the Euro Lottery jackpot. Hell, I hadn't even got any numbers whatsoever!

Oh... pooh. Back to work again tonight, then!

It was THAT kind of shift, last night...

It was the kind of shift where you find that Morons From The Planet Zog have replaced most of the human population (there's a good title for a comedy Sci-Fi movie - you saw it here first! ..um... the title, I mean, not the movie!).

The kind of shift that you only get when it's a full moon.

The kind on shift that makes you want to scream at the top of your lungs "Stop the world, I wanna get off!".

The kind of shift where said Morons From Zog all seem to want to moan and meander onto your bus (when you're already ten minutes late due to traffic), all spending (seemingly) hours searching for their passes in the most bizarre of places (no, their inside coat pockets would definitely be too easy a place to search first, naturally)...

The kind of shift where you ask someone not to drop the empty coke can on the floor lest it get stuck in the doors.

Yep. He did. of course, they jammed. I then had to spend five minutes unjamming the sodding things.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!

That kind of shift.

It's the kind of shift that had me about ready to pull my hair out in sodding great clumps (if I had any clumps, of course. A No 2 haircut knows no clumps!).

And to cap it all, I got back to the depot, to find that my car was covered in that horrid brown crap called dust that drifts over from the landfill site over the road. My car, that I cleaned not 48 hours earlier.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!

Yup. It WAS that kind of shift.

Stop the world, I wanna get off!

Welcome to the Great British Summer!

As you might have noticed last night, it was ****ing down. Cats, dogs, frogs, rabbits, stair rods, you name it, the whole enchilada was coming down at one point...

Then, it decided to get a mite chilly. The kind of chilly that sends folks who've been drinking all evening a tad, how can we put this, wobbly. Not physically wobbly, you understand. Oh, no, that'd be far too easy. No, this is the wobbly in the head kind of wobbly.

The wobbly that makes brave men attack streetlamps for having one shining eye, and looking at them funny, requiring a slap or ten. That they don't notice that they've probably broken every bone in their fists doing that probably only occurs in the morning, once semi-sober.

It's the kind of wobbly that makes folks get on a bus with no pass, no money, and no idea of decent conduct. Who then insult the driver, as they're looking to get a free ride, and want no arguments or challenges about the fact that they're being complete muppits, criminals (it's technically fraud, that being "attempting to obtain pecuniary services by means of deception"), and, frankly, bloody boring drunkards.

THAT kind of wobbly.

It'd be nice if there were such a thing as a "Sober-Up-Instantly" pill. Better yet, it'd be nice if the Old Bill could come down hard on these gits (as a deterrent, you understand), like they used to be able to in the 60s and 70s ("Come 'er, son" *slap* "we wannaword wiv you" *knee in the groin* "OI! Stop upchucking on me shoes!")... oh, hang on... I'm reliably informed that only happened in "Life On Mars".

Oh... pooh :(

So, back to the initial topic... why the crap weather? Global Warming? Nope. Not in my book, or it'd be bloody hot and dry. I think someone, somewhere, needs to rethink what our climate's doing, and come up with a more accurate - and punchy - name for it.

WEBUG (Weather B*****ed)... that sound about right?

Trials, Toasted arms, Trumpton, and Tattoos...

Well, Jury Service was... Long. Not that much I can add to it, really, mostly due to the restriction on what Jurors can say in public both before, during, and after, a trial. We spent the first week sitting around waiting to be called to form a Jury (being "Jurified" would seem to be a good word for that, wouldn't it?), and eventually got sent home early on the Friday - like most days that week, in fact.

The reason? Seems H.M. Court Service summonsed a few too many of us for that week - go figure. Well, I suppose that's better than not enough Jurors, on balance, but believe me, sitting on your backside doing stuff all is a right royal pain in the (appropriately) rear!

So, into week two, and it begins to look as if we're never going to see the inside of a Jury Box, when lo and behold, we're called to form a Jury Panel. A Jury Panel is fifteen people, of which twelve are selected at random by the Clerk of the Court, to serve as a Jury. I was number twelve - whoopee! I actually got to do something!

Regrettably, I can't do much more than that, due to the rules governing Jurors and what goes on in the Jury Room. Which is a hell of a shame, as it'd make for very interesting reading - the whole Judicial process appears to be covered in a fog-like substance, and while we may know, from the television (from things like "Cops With Cameras" and suchlike), how crooks are caught, it's the process of bringing them to court, and the trial process itself, that exists in a murky world of rumour, confusion, and not a little fear and ignorance, to the general public.

Maybe it's time the lid was lifted, at least a little, to provide a little more reassurance to Joe Public on the whole and complete Criminal Justice System?

Toasted Arms...

Well, following on from my fortnight in and around court, I managed to attend one of my Living History Groups' main events :-)

The "Military Mayhem" event is held in Faversham, Kent, around the middle of August. Now in its' second year, we've attended it for both years now, walking away with Best Static Display 2008, and now Best Living History Display 2009 - you may indeed colour us well and truly chuffed to the max :-)

However, to temper my chuffedness, I picked up the worst case of sunburn to my neck and arms that it's been my misfortune to suffer in many a year.

In the next week, I fully expect to look like the incredible snake man, shedding his skin, as my sunburn peels off

Trumpton playing with hoses again...!

There I was, thinking "Ah, a nice quiet Tuesday"...

Wrong!

From the moment I got to work, I realised that "quiet" wasn't going to describe this night...!

On getting to work, I found that the Fire Brigade (known reasonably affectionately to many as 'Trumpton' (see "Camberwick Green")), were in attendance over the road from our bus depot, at a landfill fire... Um... Uh-oh... Anyhow, to help them make a new urban swimming pool - I mean put the fire out - they'd draped their big bore fire hoses from the hydrant, across the road, to the landfill...

Which made getting on and out of the depot an exercise in care and attention, let me tell you - those hoses are BIG bumps in the road, and when you run over them with a twelve ton bus (even with the greatest of care), it makes for interesting facial expressions from the assembled players from Trumpton!

Chest Tattoos...

And then, to cap the start of a truly long shift, we had someone running around in the road, literally playing with the traffic. Now, I'm NOT one to make fun of the afflicted, but this poor sod definitely should not be out in the community: He was obviously not all there upstairs, and that he was running from vehicle to vehicle, in the middle of the road, trying to say God knows what to the various drivers, was not only sad, it was bloody dangerous.

Add to this that he was visibly physically disabled (serious limping due to a gammy right leg, and a visibly disabled right wrist), means that Social Services somewhere were (again) falling down on the job again - that lad needed constant supervisory care, not freedom to potentially commit suicide by car, for Gods' sake.

I'm just glad that I did not hear that Brixton got gridlocked by a pedestrian incident. His being found with "Pirelli" impact tattooed to his chest would have been a truly criminally preventable incident, to say the least.

Thank the stars the rest of the shift was quiet (if bloody long).

Oh, and Trumpton? Yup. They were still there when I logged off duty at 08:22 - they had a long night of it too, by the look of things!

Freeware Windows Mobile Satnav? Ummmmmmmmm... not quite, unfortunately :(

Well, it's a nice idea, but it's not *quite* here yet, unfortunately.

Recently, I became aware of something called the "OpenStreetMap" project, or "OSM". It's ambitious, and exceedingly well-intentioned. Using open source data, and a veritable army of volunteers across the globe, it aims to provide free GIS (Geographical Information System) data to all who want it. The look is a little like "google maps" in appearance, but that's pretty much, as I understand it, where the resemblance ends. Unlike Telemaps or other commercial mapping data providers, the data is not updated quarterly, but almost daily. The data is updated by the users themselves, and is thus based on first-hand knowledge of a given place.

To stop the nay-sayers in their tracks before they even hit that "comment" button below, I am well aware that such a system is well open to abuse, but as far as I know, this has not happened (yet). I would imagine that before that happens, there will be a few checks and balances instituted. We shall see, anyhow.

So, to get back to the SatNav theme... who's making use of this data?

By the look of it, a fair amount of folks.

And how about freeware turn-by-turn GPS-based satellite navigation applications for Windows-based mobile devices? Well, no, not yet - but that's not for want of trying by some, though.

NavIt utilises OSM data for off-line usage. The map for the UK and Northern Ireland, for example, downloaded from an extractor using OSM data, is around a hundred megabytes (100 Mb) - that's almost the same as the size of map that Navigon MN7 uses (yes, I checked!).

There are a few problems, though.

NavIt is not yet able to perform to any level of navigational capability on Windows Mobile platforms - the location search is not working yet, all roads are treated the same, as far as I can tell, in that there are no database annotation as to whether they're urban streets, motorways, or whatever, no speed limits, and configuration to specific phones means a fair amount of head scratching and brain overheating (if not burning) for those of us who are not exactly not technically- or programming- inclinedand so on. Now, you might think that I'm having a dig at the idea.

Not so.

The idea of a freeware product, utilising publicly-available data, is a blindingly outstanding one, that I'm all in favour of (especially so when you remember the rumour that every time my wallet opens, a new crop of moths emerges!).

However, as you can see from the above, there's a fair amount of work to be done - not surprising, given that it's a project done for free, and typically in these projects, while the end results may be blindingly good, they take a LOT of time to come to fruition - to say the very least!

Instead, the development team appears to be concentrating on the iPhone and Symbian platforms first. Hardly a surprise there, to be honest, most of the teams' developers appear to be more at home with Linux-based operating systems, and that's something of an antithesis of ideology for Windows-based proponents

Still, that they're working in semi-slow-time on the WinMob platform is promising, anyhow

So. Nice idea, not yet mature enough in the Windows Mobile environment for use in turn-by-turn satellite navigation...

But they're working on it

Watch this space

VERDICT: Navigon MN7 trial on HTC Touch Pro 2 WinMob 6.1 - FAIL.

So, there I am, on the way back from spending the weekend at my better half's place, and using the Navigon MN7 trial package to navigate back before I bin it to try NavMii... Yeah, I actually do know the way, but I *was* giving it the full trial period to give it it's fair crack of the whip...

Everything was going reasonably well, it'd actually taken my preferred route - M4 east to the A329M, the A322, M3, and M25, and then I noticed that I never refuelled after I got to my better half's place - and the car was close to empty! OOPS!

So, knowing there are a few fuelling stops near the various junctions of the M25, I came off the motorway at the very next junction (junction 8 (Reigate & Epsom), cancelled the route guidance, and consulted the petrol station POI in MN7. And found, luckily, that BP have a petrol station not a mile up the A217 at Lower Kingswood.

So, I dropped in there, stuck a much-needed twenty quid of unleaded in the car, and disappeared inside to pay for it - their coffee machine was broken, dammit - and reset the MN7 to get me home again from there.

And that's when the problems started again with MN7. It pointed me towards Banstead, and then petulantly locked up - and not knowing the area, I was carefully paying my fullest attention to the roads, listening for the audio prompts from the satnav - which I realised after one roundabout and a junction, weren't forthcoming. So, I found a safe place to stop, and checked the PDA.

Yep, The routing was locked up solid again - it did this twice on the way over to my better half's on Friday, but I'd attributed this to a mid-route pause while I got a take-away at the Bracknell KFC (this time they HAD chicken!) to get a bargain bucket, as requested (it's a veritable standing order for my Better Half - "You coming over tonight?" "Yup" "Bring us a bucket, willya?!"), and then it locked up again under a rather thick canopy of trees at a junction, which I attributed to a process fart as it tried to find satellites again.

This time the map was stuck a hundred yards past the petrol station I'd just left, and I didn't know why - still don't, as a matter of fact. Completely random, that lock-up, by the look of it. There was no interruption of route, and hardly any tree coverage over the road (dual carriageway). And would it shut down?

No chance. Believe me, I tried almost every method short of a soft reset.

So, one soft reset later, I had the damn thing running properly again.

And it bloody went and locked up twice more AGAIN within two miles of each lock-up.

By this time, as one might imagine, I was practically fit to be tied.

Luckily, I had found my way to Sutton, and knew my way home without the need for satnav, which is probably just as well, as I'd probably have launched it and my phone into orbit, I was that hacked off. I HATE being lost (my better half will attest to this!). I find it grossly embarrassing, annoying, and a waste of expensive petrol to boot. This is why I like having a working turn-by-turn satellite navigation package on my PDA/phone.

So, now that I've learned that I cannot trust this package when the chips are down, I've deleted Navigon MN7 from my PDA, and the control program (Navigon Fresh) from my PC as well. No more trials from them - I just cannot trust their software anymore, even in a free trial. You would expect them to have the thing stable, and ready for Windows mobile 6.1, but apparently not, which is a shame, as there ARE things to like about this otherwise excellent package.

"Excellent"? I hear you ask. Yep. Excellent. Its' routing - when it isn't locked up - is spot-on. The TTS (Text-to-Speech) function is damn good. Its' verbal guidance is spot-on, and lane guidance excellent. In all those respects, it gets full marks.

But then it goes and loses those points and more besides almost immediately, because it can't accept 3rd party POI files, it doesn't like mid-trip interruptions, pauses, or petrol stations, locking up each time because of those and other unexplainable reasons, and frankly, the mapping, while up to date, is - even on the WVGA screen on my Touch Pro 2 - too damn small to read in a glance. So there's a whole brace of reasons not to buy this otherwise excellent package.

Hell of a shame, that lot.

Navigon, you've got a shedload of work ahead of you to make this package reliable.

Oh well... NavMii should be interesting, when I get around to it...

Hmm... now the yanks are taking shots at the NHS...

This is a very long and involved Blant with rather heavy political overtones, so bear with me, please.

Check this BBC News article first...

So, some yanks don't like the idea of free healthcare for all, eh? Can't say I'm surprised. It is, after all, a socialist idea - and for any yanks reading this socialist does NOT mean communist, which while having some core ideas of a similar vein, are not, and never will be, the same - socialism accepts that there is a need for a free market - communism does not, and that's just for starters before you get your shorts in a knot!

Anyhow... chances are that I wouldn't be here but for the NHS. Without an NHS emergency paramedic and Ambulance response system, my heart attack a year and a half ago would probably have killed me. It was a sobering thought for me, and having bitched and barked about failings in the NHS for years before, made me sit up and think.

Yes, there are failings in the NHS. Decades of mismanagement, "market driven thinking" (what the hell?! what bloody market - the NHS is not a fee-driven system, it's a Public Service available to all!), and so on, have added layer upon layer of administrative and managerial levels on top of on another - and side by side to one another - that no-one truly knew who did what, how they did whatever it was they did, for whom, and for how much.

Even after some token restoration and reorganisations over the years, it still is in several areas, a bit of a mess, to say the least. And now we have "NHS Trusts", merging of responsibilities, closure of local A&E (yank translation: ER) facilities to super A&Es covering larger areas, that results in longer travel time, eating into the "Golder Hour" of treatment time, and other "initiatives" designed, at the end of the day, to cut costs.

I'm all for efficiency savings, but NOT at the cost of cutting the time it takes to get a patient from incident to A&E - the so-called "Golden Hour" is exactly that, and the patient who gets to A&E inside the golden hour is more likely to survive than one who doesn't. By the same token, the quicker you see specialist help inside that golden hour, the better your percentage of making a full and complete recovery.

This is why the NHS is funded, in large part, by National Insurance. Everyone is required to pay it, that's UK law, and very right and proper this is, too - everyone benefits from it. Over the years, I've paid National Insurance, which while theoretically paying for the NHS, only pays a portion of the monies required to keep it going. But it doesn't pay for it all. For that, there are annual funding additions in the Budget - what yanks would call "appropriations", which are needed to maintain the NHS as an effective healthcare provider.

Indeed, the NHS has been used to form other national healthcare systems, such as the French system - and you lot don't bleat on about the French being communists, do you?

Of course not. What decent self-respecting Red eats snails, for God sake?

But this is all getting away from the core issue: Money.

What some folks have missed is that the USA already has a form of national heathcare system. It's called the The Health Maintenance Organization system, or HMO system. This is an insurance-premium-funded healthcare system, that originated in the need for a national system of healthcare funded in the private sector in the USA. As a result, it's turned into a multi-billion dollar industry, and has fingers in pretty much every pie from genetic research into pharmacology, medical instrumentation, and so on. It's a damned powerful lobby in the USA.

But it's got a major failing built-in. Bean-counters ultimately control what level of care you receive, when you need that healthcare. If you don't have insurance, you don't get healthcare. If your insurance has a certain limit to it's financial value, and your required healthcare would go over this value, you won't get that needed healthcare.

What the yanks need is a form of NHS - and that's where the doctrinal and financial arguments have collided over there.

For a land with political masters that quote the Bible so frequently, and which bleats on about free trade all the time, I think it's quite ironic that we're seeing a country that's trying to serve two masters: God, and Mammon. Here's a reminder to all you yanks out there: There's a lesson in the Good Book that says that you cannot serve two masters. Go ahead, look it up (It's Matthew 6:24, by the way).

Personally, I think the Yanks have lost the plot somewhat when it comes to nationwide healthcare.

Do they want to Bible-thump, or Billfold-thump? They cannot have it both ways, after all: They have to choose one or the other, not both.

So, when it comes to a national healthcare system, their choices are initially simple: Either they adopt a mandatory tax-funded NHS-style system modelled somewhat on ours, and put thousands in the insurance industry out of work (in a recession, no less), or they leave the system as-is, and condemn thousands of their own citizens to a continuing lack of decent and affordable healthcare.

Of course, they could merge the two ideas into one, but good Lord, what a mess that would be - and it's make the NHS's admin/management mess look like a storm in a teacup, but at least everyone'd get a chance at having a healthcare system that was actually worthy of a great nation...

However you look at it, frankly there is no easy solution: you pays yer money and takes yer choice.