Questionable Scots ice-cream flavours

As one who found that a lifetime of eating macaroni cheese meant that the offer of creamed macaroni as a desert one day was enough to bring on an attack of “The Boak”, the news that Harrods will be offering delicacies such as haggis flavoured and Arbroath smokie flavoured ice-cream is something of a stomach-turner.

I don’t rate the hallowed halls of monied excess at Harrods as anything special, other than as a place where people with more money that sense can shop and display their wealth, but the shop’s current plan to offer customers the flavours over the next few days, along with 17 other regional favourites from across Britain, is something that seems like  just another delusional whim of the owner.

The Taste of Britain cone also features Yorkshire pudding, sausage and mash, Worcestershire Sauce, Black pudding, Cornish pasty and Welsh Rarebit –  they must be really stuck for ideas to promote sales there.

The ice cream’s creator, master gelatiera Gino Soldan, told the BBC Scotland news website that the Scottish tastes had their challenges – I’m sure they did, and they must have got through a pile of sick-buckets while producing something edible.

That said, there was actually one item on the list  I might have wanted to  try – shortbread ice-cream!

But, I can do that a lot more sensibly, and cheaply (just how much does Harrod’s charge for a few pennies worth of ice-cream?) by having a nice, normal, vanilla ice-cream and some genuine Scottish, all-butter shortbread. In fact, I may be munching my through that very combination quite soon now, and not worrying about  kippers and custard giving me the boak.

And, as for ice-cream vendors that call themselves master gelatiera and add a nought to the end of their prices… Well, they can go in the same dynamite-lined box as Harrods’ bottled water expert and coffee grinder (I’m afraid I’ve successfully managed to forget his Sunday name, but he does have one).

New pier for Largs

Largs pier and ferry © Thomas Nugent

Just spotted the news that Largs is to get a new £6 million pier to serve the ferry that operates between the seaside town and Isle of Cumbrae, and will provide shelter and overnight berthing for CalMac’s ferries.

Work is currently due to begin in the autumn, with the project expected to be completed by next summer.

The new pier will help provide shelter and overnight berthing for Caledonian MacBrayne ferries, which run on the Largs to Cumbrae route.

Public exhibitions, featuring detailed images and information on the project, will be held in Largs and Cumbrae during September. Cmal’s director of harbours and piers, Lorna Spencer, said, “Community involvement is crucial to the success of this project and we will endeavour to keep the residents of both communities fully informed as work gets underway.”

Piers and jetties

The story about the new pier at Largs gives me the opportunity to gripe about one of my pet hates regarding sloppy use of language.

A quick look at the picture which is described as showing the current Largs pier (and I’m not picking in this particular picture, just using it as an example) reveals that the pier is actually a stone jetty, extending from the land and solid all the way to its end. The ferry currently berths there overnight, as shown, and operates from the ramp or on the foreshore during the working day.

If it was indeed a pier, its structure would comprise of a deck, usually wooden, laid on series of piers, which may be of wood or metal, driven into the sea bed below to provide support for the deck.

It’s a small point, but once you know the correct definition, you’ll find that pier and jetty are used incorrectly in almost every instance of their appearance in the news.

Lloyds TSB employee interferes with customer password

In an example which serves to show just one more reason why the ID Card scheme is fundamentally flawed in respect of the assurances the Government keeps trotting out with regard to how secure our detail will be with them, an employee at Lloyds TSB shows that regardless of how secure the software of any networked computer system may be, the wetware (the people that work with it), is still vulnerable, and the weakest point in the security chain – and always will be.

Time for another plug for the NO2ID campaign.

In a story which should really have had the opportunity for some sort of criminal charges to be brought against the employee concerned – on top the trivial aspect of them apparently losing their job without penalty – the fundamental trust which is needed for a network to be administrated was breached when a customer who chose “Lloyds is pants” as his telephone banking password reported that he found it had been changed by a member of staff to “no it’s not”. Steve Jetley, from Shrewsbury, said he chose the password after falling out with Lloyds TSB over an insurance deal that came free with an account. He said he was then banned from changing it back or to another password of “Barclays is better”, and had first realised his security password had been changed when a member of staff at the call centre told him his code word did not match with the one on the computer.

The bank apologised and said the staff member no longer worked there.

This isn’t fundamentally Lloyd TSB’s fault, and could happen anywhere.

I don’t know if the general public understands that others are trusted with their data on a routine basis – even when I administered a company network, I had free access to the data held on all the employees, and all the clients, and everything in between. Anyone with access to the data can interfere with it, change it, copy it, or just memorise particular items of interest. Unless a system is fully encrypted, meaning that even the owner cannot normally read the data contained once it has been stored, in which case it might be too secure, and be irrecoverable in the event of a simple error. Then there’s the encrypt-decrypt stages and processing to consider.

The easiest way for the unscrupulous to bypass network security is not to make a high-tech attack across the network, but to get an employee into the system – and this particular just demonstrates the fact.

And with a bit of suitable identity theft, or funding of someone who has no criminal record, there’s no amount of vetting that will catch the placement of an undesirable into a position of trust.

In the past, espionage was carried out between countries and nations, now the more lucrative game of industrial espionage is being played for huge rewards, and with tools that the spies of the past could only have dreamed of having at their disposal.

One million bank customers details sold on eBay

Hot on the heels of a recent news story about a contractor working for the Home Office losing a memory stick containing the names and dates of birth of every prisoner in England and Wales (the data was not encrypted), comes the news that a computer containing the banking details of a million UK customers has been sold on eBay for £35. The machine was taken from a company which stores banks’ financial records, Graphic Data.

Details of customers or potential customers of Royal Bank of Scotland, American Express and NatWest were on the computer, which was taken from a Graphic Data site.

Historical nformation on the computer is said to include details of people’s names, addresses, phone numbers, signatures and mothers’ maiden names. Such extensive information could be used to impersonate people and conduct identity theft and fraud.

No wonder I drop in the link to NO2ID whenever the opportunity arises.

The computer was sold by an ex-employee of Graphic Data, and it seems that a second one is missing, although nothing is being said about what it may contain.

“Graphic Data has confirmed to us that one of their machines appears to have been inappropriately sold on via a third party,” said a statement from Royal Bank of Scotland, which operates as RBS and as NatWest.

The contents of the machine were reported by the purchaser, but it’s not too difficult to let your imagination roam a little and realise that for a mere £35 a time, it’s clearly worth the putlay for criminal to sweep up such items from the secondhand market, purely with the aim of finding one with some confidential and valuable data on it.

After all, it’s not as if it’s their own money they’re using to buy the machines, and whatever they happen to get lucky with will go on to fund the purchase of more such items, with the same aim.

St Kilda lighthouse debate

A few weeks ago, we noted the demise of a trawler, the Spinningdale, on one of the islands in the St Kilda archipelago, and that the decision had been made by the NTS to leave the wreck there until at least 2009 – having cleared it of potential contaminants – to avoid causing further damage in a recovery attempt.

The decicion to leave the wreck, rather then clear it immediately, attracted possible adverse comment, but made sense as it reflected the fact that wrecks are natural hazards and happen over the course of time. Like it or not.

There’s another potential source of controversy on the horizon now, as North Uist councillor Archie Campbell has called for the construction of a lighthouse on the archipelago. Mr Campbell said that with the recent reinstatement of lights on the Monach Islands, west of North Uist, the next step was for one on St Kilda. However, he also noted that the Northern Lighthouse Board had considered the idea, but that there were objections from conservationists.

We can’t find any references to a light being established anywhere on St Kilda in the past, so there’s no precedent for installing one, and with today’s navigation systems, it seems a bit late to think about installing one there now. While we do have the current grounding to consider, under circumstances we’ve not been made aware of, St Kilda does not appear to have a trail of wrecks around its shores, so is not really a location one would immediately think of as justifying the cost and environmental disruption that would be added by its installation.

I’m afraid this smacks of something that looks more of an attempt to make some opportunistic political milage, rather than deal with an actual hazard.

Prisoner remake splashes the cash

Although I’m trying to reserve judgement, it’s hard not to engage Sceptic-mode and think of the forthcoming Prisoner remake as nothing more than an attempt to cash in on something successful (you may not understand it, but the original is still very popular 40+ years after it first puzzled its viewers) as hard pressed TV show makers look for new plunder to justify their astronomical pay packets. Sky One is reviving Blake’s Seven, and BBC1 has a ‘reimagining’ of Survivors scheduled for arrival in the autum.

We’ve already ticked the box requiring “names” to be involved with the remake:

Jim Caviezel will play the title role of Number Six and two-time Oscar nominee Ian McKellen will co-star playing the role of Number Two. No. 313 will be played by Ruth Wilson, a BAFTA and Golden Globe nominated actress. No. 4-15 will be played by Hayley Atwell, being pushed in numerous TV productions at the moment, and a film actress. No. 147 will be played by Lennie James who has had a prolific career on television, film and in theater. No. 11-12 will be played by Jamie Campell-Bower, best known for his portrayal of Anthony, alongside Johnny Depp in Sweeney Todd.

There’s been some dire viral marketing,  unveiled at Comic-Con, where delegates were invited to seekthesix.com. (Watching paint dry would have been more fun than this effort.) The convention floor was  also populated with dozens of numbered men in black suits who randomly uttered the iconic phrase “I Am Not A Number”, but no other clues to their purpose other than “the truth is right beside you”. (Inspired idea, wan’t it?)

In another Sceptic-mode moment, I see that the original run of six episodes (six? that was a handy coincidence) “could” be increased, and the mini-series may run longer than stated in the original announcement.

It would seem that the location for the series is just a short hop around the corner, in sunny Namibia.

I wonder if a note about the producers having been “in touch” with Patrick McGoohan, but noting that at the moment, he’s not scheduled to appear in the mini-series, is a euphemism for his reply. We’ll see.

The TV execs are desparate for something to keep their audiences, because recent series like “Lost” and the like start of looking interesting and intriguing, but then suffer from having no real plot, and a dependence on dolls, hunks, and gossip to maintain interest, or like the new “Bionic Woman” which I think I saw has just been cancelled, spend too much time on angst and deep-thinking, instead of just getting on with the action, which their more successful predecessors did.

Keep up to date on the remake faster than me by checking the Unmutual website, where developments are being watched much more closely.

Flash floods strike again

Although there didn’t appear to be any lightning, the rain and thunder that hit us this afternoon sounded most impressive.

When I finally managed to lever myself out of my pit (feeling decidedly under the weather since I woke up this morning) I felt like a walk to try and get some circulation going, and headed of for the shops since I’d run out of bread. I’d forgotten about the earlier deluge, but was reminded of it when I met the Fire Service en route, just arriving to pump out one of Shettleston’s favourite flood zones, where the water was still at knee height after four hours, and at a similar height on the houses that had been flooded, and I had to take a detour since I hadn’t packed my wellies in my back pocket.

After the last floods hit the same place, the houses were modified by the addition of external waterproofing. This comprised a sealing strip applied around the foundations, at the level of the air-bricks installed to ventilate the underfloor area, and fitted with sealing boxes and covers over the air-bricks, together with a slide-in panel intended to seal the lower area of the exterior doors when fitted. I’m guessing these measures proved ineffective today, and those houses unfortunate enough to have been below the water level attained today will still have been flooded, and the owners will be off to a hotel for the night, and digging out their insurance documents, if they have any. Since the last flooding there, as I’ve regularly walked the route, I’ve watched items like the air-brick covers slowly disappear, presumably as the kids discover they can be pulled off and discarded, and the exterior door seals may or may not be effective, but are dependent on someone noticing the impending flood, remembering where the sealing panel is, and actually being at home in order to slide the thing into place.

Since my route was flooded, I headed home via an alternate path, and this followed the main road, where I saw that the tenement closes, and shops on the ground floor, had been barricaded with sandbags in order to stem some of the flow. I’ve no idea how wet it was here when the rain was falling, but the last time it flooded I was there, and driving too, and was about to turn into the same piece of road, when I decided it would not be the best of ideas since the parked cars on the same section of road were floating towards me!

Maybe someone will do something about the drains one day, but I won’t be holding my breath. Although it doesn’t threaten my own home, there’s a proper storm drain that shouldn’t block under flood conditions, but it still does. Every so often I spot a guddle of council supervisors arriving in their nice council cars (not council vans), and they get their council tape measures,  rods and sticks out, and have poke about and survey the road, drains, and gutters. I don’t know what happens after that, but from observation, my guess is that they get back in their council cars, go back to their council offices, fill out some council forms, and file them along with a note in their council diaries to have a council meeting at the same drain next year, or the year after if they’re too busy at another one. This particular one’s been backing up and flooding for about forty years, and the last council convention was held there earlier this year. The most laughable thing is that they feel the need to wear hard hats to look at this drain! To look at something the rest of us walk past on a daily bais – what do they know about that we don’t?

Picture problems

Regular visitors to our Main Site will be aware that we like to have an illustrative picture accompany an article, since it can put the subject into context, or even show what something that has been lost or demolished used to look like when it still existed.

For the next few months, our images will not be completely dependable as they are re-organised, but this disruption is purely temporary, and will only affect small batches, not the whole library, at any given time.

Unfortunately, when we started to provide these images – and we didn’t want to become guilty of bandwidth-theft – we had to provide some method of hosting them, and since we don’t have infinite resources (or any at all for that matter) we had to find something suitable online, and which was priced accordingly. At the time, we’d no idea what format, or even how many pics were likely to be involved, so it wasn’t possible to have a reasonable stab at organising them – there was nothing to organise, and we’d no idea what we’d be organising anyway.

While the accumulation of almost 1,000 images has solved this problem, it also means that fixing it will take somewhat more than five minutes. Since the wiki structure is much more manually oriented than the usual databases we like to live in, there doesn’t seem to be any sort of quick fix we can implement, either to re-organise the image storage structure, or the markup or urls that access the pic and display them on one of our pages. This means just having to churn through everything, largely by hand, and organising things into batches so that the disruption is minimised to at least some degree.

Having done some of the work, it looks like this will take a couple of months to complete, and a small number of pics might not re-appear until the task is completed, since we’ve had to rollback the first attempt at re-organising, which was a dead-end and actually flagged up the impending problem.

Apologies if this happens to affect a page you might be looking at, but the old system had to go, as continuing to use it without the facilities of a database was akin to assigning a random name to all our images, throwing them into a box, shaking it, and then trying to locate an individual item from the box, while working in a dark room.

Burns washed out of Google

Burns Mural Ardeer © wfmillar

Following the comments by that nice Mr Paxman from England, where he dismissed Scotland’s national poet as a writer of doggerel, it seems that Google has unfortunately (and hopefully accidentally) washed him from their aerial view of Ardeer.

For those who haven’t come across the creation before, there is a large mural depicting the portrait of Robert Burns, painted directly onto the concrete sea wall, and measuring approximately 25 feet (8 m) high and 16 feet (4.5 m) wide.

Previously clearly visible on Google’s aerial view, a chance visit to the web view today showed that the mural was gone, and the entire sea wall was burnt out within an area of peak white.

Hopefully this is just an accident, and not something more akin to some sort of censorship or similar, and merely the result of some over-enthusiastic automated processing of the imagery, which Google (and all the other providers) have to employ in order to match and stitch together adjacent image tiles so that they look reasonably homogeneous, and not like some sort of horrible patchwork. Looking at the rest of the view, it is clear that the same process has affected other areas that lie nearby, and their detail is similarly burnt-out.

The mural is still clearly visible on all the other aerial views that cover the location, so we can only hope that someone human at Google notices the burnout, or that someone might take the time to drop them a short note, and alert them to the problem.

Military Heritage Scotland

Please note that this is now an archival article, and refers to a project which was ultimately dissolved.

Set up as a charity, Military Heritage Scotland aims to create a world class museum facility which will embrace all aspects of Scotland’s military history.

The Daily Record covered the story a few weeks ago, Call to build £100m Scottish Museum of War.

Inspired by former Scots Guard James Percy, a steering group has been formed, chaired by  Professor Gordon Murray from Strathclyde University’s School of Architecture and Jon-Marc Creaney of leading architects GCA, and the project is already reported to have attracted a donation from the New York-based Friends of Scotland organisation. The plan is also reported to have received backing from First Minister Alex Salmond – for a museum to rival London’s Imperial War Museum – and MPs and MSPs from all parties have also given their support, although there seem to be no tangible contributions (ie cash) so far – just the political equivalent of kissing babies and looking good.

At this stage, the organisation is seeking donations to help fund a feasibility study, as they have to establish the location of an appropriate site, likely operation costs, and the potential long term sustainability of the concept. We’ve noted the demise of one or two formerly well-established museums in Scotland here in recent years, and while their content may make a difference, falling visitor numbers in all but the most widely publicised venues, eg Kelvingrove, may not be promising. Scotland’s science centres are also pleading for money to keep them open, and places such as The Big Idea in Irvine have simply been unsustainable, and folded.

We don’t have such a facility here (yet?), so we have to hope they get the formula right:

It is envisaged that the project will produce a building and destination that will draw visitors nationally and worldwide, providing an opportunity to display warships, submarines, landing craft, armoured vehicles, tanks and fighter planes, allowing visitors to experience them first hand.

The facility will also incorporate educational and research resources with a repository for books, memorabilia and artefacts relating to Scottish Military Heritage, providing a military centre which will encourage Scots of all ages to take an interest in its own history and heritage.

The preferred choice of site would see a world-class floating museum built at Govan docks next to Glasgow Science Centre, with alternative locations possibly being seen in Rosyth, or Leith docks. Collections would take many forms, with warships, submarines and landing craft moored nearby, and tanks, fighter planes, uniforms, medals and memorabilia housed indoors, with special galleries established for notable features and events.

It’s an ambitious project, and has rightly identified both its setup and running costs as key factors, together with its potential for sustainability. It is a particular class of museum that Scotland lacks, and even a casual tour of facilities down south will reveal a glut of related resources, both national and private.

This project deserves serious attention and support, even of only to stem the steady loss of museums and collections that Scotland has seen over the years.

The group can be contacted using this form.

Or, at:

Military Heritage Scotland

c/o GCA Architecture+Design, Kelvin House, 87 Calder Street, Coatbridge, ML5 4EY

Update

Unfortunately, as per the message received through the comments section below, this project is no longer in existence, having been dissolved on April 2, 2010.