Clunkclick

This may be a topic that's a bit long in the tooth now, but I like to know what's causing it. Did a few bus and tube journies earlier this week using my Oyster 60 + RFID card and came across an interesting effect. Normally, I keep this card in a wallet with other RFID banking cards and when making the occasional journey on a TFL bus present it face on to the reader when sanctioning the trip - works a treat, never had any problems, leaving the card in the wallet. However, followed the same procedure on bus and underground this week, and, as usual, the bus reader was happy with the card in the wallet, whereas the readers on the underground refused to recognise the card unless it was taken out of the wallet. Any one know what's going on here ? Is this a frequency/proximity related thing or something to do with one system having incoming digital radio signal collision detection and avoidance system and another not ? Nick

Meanwhile, the important things, like getting Theresa, Dave and George and their friends and associates to Birmingham 15 minutes ahead of conventional rail goes ahead unrestricted - witness the cut through back roads of Ruslip which are currently being trashed by a stream of 10 tonne dumper trucks. N

I'll keep it simple, with so many things on the go at the moment and the way my lucks running, I don't want to stuff up the motor whilst experimenting with steering assist - presumably increasing steering assist will increase "Feed-back" from the road I've got a steering wheel knob. I'll try a bit of low speed maneouvering first in the residents car park, with and without, to see what's most comfortable. The main problem is that, with the plastic molding underneath fingers 2-4, I'll only be able to grip the wheel with the thumb and forefinger on the RHS. Sans knob, I should be able to get a good grip on the wheel at the junction with the spokes sufficient to keep it on the straight and narrow. But its turning, especially at low speed where there's going to be an issue and perhaps the knob will come into its own there. And a keener eye will need to be kept out for potholes. And, obviously, doing a manual gear change isn't advised during a corner when the feed back load on the wheel will be greater and only the RH will be available to steer.n I reckon fitting the knob at the 4 O'clock position would suit me. A bit of experimentaion in the car park will assistI I got an old pair of winter motorcycle mits, I got a feeling they may help with grip. And its probably wise to give it a week or so, to allow the fracture to settle down, before resuming driving because of the feed-back forces from the wheel. The support comes off again next week for finger exercising, so if the medicos consider it safe enough to do that at that point, should be OK for light driving - I only use the car once a week to get to my phys exercise destination of choice - back on the treadmill pro temp. Nick

This isn't just the action of random consultants. This system has been devised, planned (Albeit ok on the back of a fag packet) and various parties agreement has to be obtained across previously geographically and organisationally separate hospital entities before it can all kick off. And it has probably been set-up in this way to favour contractorisation - making simple one process added value that can be easily tendered for contract. Its definitely not for the comvenience of patients, as I found out. Having worked in the NHS in the 1980s, I know that what is now essentially one health authority serving the whole population of NW London (2 million in 100 square miles) was previously a collection 6 District Health Authorities each serving on average 300,00 in a 25 square mile area. And most of the hospitals that are currently serving in the new bigger unified larger authority were originally designed and built to operate against the smaller model or even earlier versions. Given that, unavoidably you have a process, which for sake of argument is called process one, or "Detect, align and re-set broken bones" , do you, in the face of reduced resources, add another process on the end called "Hand Therapy" - and then geographically disperse the delivery of that output. Of course not, not unless the purpose of the add-on process to hide the effects of not doing process one properly. That's where the expertise at Richmond House appears to lie - organisational bull****. Does the Foreign office organise a mercy mission to country X and then require those supposedly in receipt of the mercfy to visit Whitehall plus every regional government office in the Uk for the handouts ? Nah ! And . . if you want to go Stasi and code me an "Anxious patient", . . . can I introduce you to my lawyer who may well dispute that assertion, in the context of these facts. Nick

I had cause earlier this week to experience what I presume is the new schema for treatment of some Orthopaedic injuries in my health district after falling at home and breaking a bone in one of my fingers. I fell over in the house late Sunday evening (23:30) whilst putting out the bins for collection and did so very awkwardly, colliding with bits of domestic kit before coming to rest. When I got up, its was evident that something was wrong with the ring finger of my right hand - its was splayed a good 35 degrees to the right of normal position and was painful to touch. It was clearly broken and needed attention - couldn't go to bed with it in that state. So, I drove myself in to the local Accident and Emergency (2.5 miles away) and within 2 hours (2 O'clock in the morning) had been recepted, x-rayed and consulted by an A & E Nurse specialist who told me that I had a spiral fracture of the proximal phalanx (The bit of bone between the knuckle joint and the mid-finger joint) and who further told me, after a phone consultation with a doctor, that I might need surgery and couldn't be treated at this hospital. I found the last bit of this advice a bit strange as the hospital (Northwick Park) I was attending was a District General Hospital, which, when it was built in 1970 , was designed to deal with 85-90% of all the treatment needs of people within a five mile radius. But I am aware that the health care set-up in North-West London is in the process of being re-modelled and chunked-up into larger catchment areas, for whatever reason, and being in a bit of pain, I really wasn't in a position to debate this advice. However, I didn't realise how far I would have to go to get treatment. So, I was sent home, without being checked for stroke, with one of those aluminium strip peg-type splints over the end of the finger, verbal advice to use paracetemol as needed drawn from my own resources and a referral letter to a hospital plastic surgery clinic to be held at 14:00 the following day at a hospital in inner London 14 miles away !!!! - The electronic records, including X-Ray, were transferred electronically to Royal Free. On investigation of possible travel arrangements I found that the destination hospital (Royal Free) has even less patient car parking facilties than Northwick Park and decided it wouldn't be a good idea to drive through heavy inner London traffic with a splinted finger. So, on Monday, I made my way by tube and bus to the Royal Free - a journey that took only one hour forty minutes, due, uncharacteristically, to all the transport connections working flawlessly, arriving at 12:20 for the 14:00 - appointment. Luckily for me, the crowds on the tube were less than usual and I did the whole journey for free on my 60+ Oyster card. Eventually was seen at 16:00 (Missed lunch) and was advised by this gentleman that in his opinion surgery was in appropriate and that the injury could be re-splinted and that I would have to attend outpatients Hand Therapy for periodic exercising. I'm also told that I will be left with a residual twist/tilt on my finger - little did I appreciate then, how extensive that would be ("You are not going to play the piano, are you ?- I should have said "Yes") So that's a 14 mile, 2 hour journey, at hazard in London, by an unescorted OAP (I live on my jack and recovering Lymphatic cancer, who was still slightly in shock, who hasn't ever visited this part of London before and who could have had the fall on Sunday due to a minor TIA (stroke) to be told that the treatment will be the same as could have been administered at my local hospital - this really takes the biscuit - the take it or leave NHS designed for the convenience of the providers. Where did whoever designed this "System" get his ideas from ? Chairman Mao's accounts of the "Long March" or those of the Allied POWS at the end of WW2 ? In the end, I get released from clinic 16:30, with a plaster cast on my hand/fore part of forearm and told to report to the on-site Hand Therapy unit for an appointment. They were clearly under pressure. They then went on to tell me that I could get these Outpatients hand exercise sessions at a hospital nearer to me, Mount Vernon (7 miles away) So, I opted for that. Told to wait home Tuesday for a phone call from Mount Vernon Hand Therapy Unit. Eventually, got out the Royal Free at 17:00 and battled my way through rush-hour tube and bus crowd, arriving home after an hour and twenty minutes. Following day (Tuesday) j- rest day ? No. Incoming, Phone call from Mount Vernon, "Please attend clinic 10:30 Wednesday". **** a Fitbit. Attended Mount Vernon as instructed - that's another 40 minutes each way, with all the connections working uncharacteristically well (Bus-train-Bus). Into Clinic bang on time, into a room where other patients were getting hand treatment on a series of what appeared to be 2.5 feet square office tables pressed into service, no screening or anything. Asked, within earshot of other patients, to provide therapist with brief details of my current medical conditions - patient confidentiality ? . . . out the window ! The cast was removed and replaced by one of those personally molded thermoplastic hand support, lashed-up with a coloured tape which I was invited to chose, from a selection (Talk about taking the Michael) and then given an appointment for a weeks time. With the cast off, I can now see that the finger, although no longer splayed out at 35 degrees is now tilted over at 45 degrees to the plain of my hand and, on researching this matter, I find it can be treated simply by a minor surgical procedure, which isn't even an "Open" procedure using "K-wires", sometimes being done on an outpatient basis under a local anaesthetic. Honestly, what a complete lash-up. All due to under funding. When I broke the Schaphoid bone in my wrist in 1979 the full treatment was done at Northwick Park - the value of the UK economy was then, half the size it is today. Lewis Carroll couldn't have written this. Definitely, not a one stop shop. Coming to a place near you soon, if its not there already And remember that these arrangements are only a stepping stone to full contractorisation. Whilst the hospitals involved at each point are still part of the NHS, at the moment, I suspect that many of the staff employed as therapists etc are employed like Uber drivers. So, there you go, granny's xmas presents for the next 2 years sorted - year one, jet pack (As used by the Swiss flyer) + Tom-Tom, year two a subscription to the All England Law Reports and a copy of Salmond on Torts. Nick

Yep, the Ansman (Self-calibrating) nis under reading compared with an old Fluke 73:- Ansman now says the old Duracell's are 2.62v and 2.94V and the new Panasonic is 3.05V (Room is warmer now). Corresponding Fluke values are 2.9v, 3.13v and 3.23v. Perhaps the PP7 on that needs changing. The second new Panasonic battery is in the machine - presume that's better than 3.23v as it was higher originally. Unfortunately, the new battery hasn't stopped the problem. After an extended shutdown, it stlll halts with a red LED during boot and only resumes when the mem-ok switch is depressed. After an extended shut-down followed by a restart, I'm finding that all the CMOS values are reverting to default i.e. it hasn't preserved any changes from the last start-up. As to cause, hardware conflict ? Short to case ? corruption of BIOS software ? Component failure ? Taking the easiest first - hardware conflict. I had noticed that when the add-on card for graphics (MSI, ATI R7 360) was installed part of the on-screen menu for the on-board BIOS program was being corrupted. Perhaps I'll revert to integrated on-board graphics (ATI 4250) again remove the MSI graphics board to see what happens to the BIOS. N

Just to put a damper on things, I went by London Underground and bus to two locations this week and, having not done this for some time, was mightly impressed by the new rolling stock (On road and rail) and the frequency of the service and seemingly reduced journey times - on the basis of experience gained 10 years ago, I budgeted for 2.25 -2.5 hour for one journey and was pleasantly surprised that it only took 1 hour 40, doo-to-door for 14 miles (As the trains go). Nick

Been having trouble recently with starting up one of the home built Asus based desktops - keeps on halting the boot showing the mem OK light at red. Up to this date it had been running fine. When it stalled on-boot, hitting the mem-OK button on the MB enabled it, after some time, to find a set of CMOS values it was happy to boot with. It then attempted to continue the boot and stalled (Mem-OK light off) but subsequent hitting of the system warm-boot enabled the system to boot to Windows (10). It ran perfectly OK in Windows and was only experiencing difficulties with the BIOS. Eventually, I established that the CMOS was loosing some of it values (Only the values which weren't default (Not video or main memory)) when the computer was switched-off - the reset CMOS values message was being displayed as the thing attempted to boot (But when I went into the system, the hardware detection i.e. disks, memory, video were being detected correctly and only minor items were being lost e.g. "Num lock off on start". So I took out the CMOS battery, which is only two years old and showing 80-90% full power and 2.8-2.9 volts and replaced it with another Duracell from stock (Same age and showing slightly poorer values) and fitted that. But it did not solve the problem - my understanding is that as long as the voltage is over 2.5 volts there should be no problem. Nevertheless, today, I bought a pair of new button batteries and fitted the best showing one of these (70-80% power, 2.8 volts) and the system booted without problem !!! (Remains to be seen whether the CMOS values will be retained after extended closedown) Both sets of batteries were tested on an Ansman tester (Designed specifically to test button cells and AAA to DD cells). Why should there be such a different response of the machine to batteries which were clearly above the voltage threshold and which appeared to have an adequate charge ? The pair of batteries (Same blister pack) I bought today were marked that they were good to 2027, yet none of them showed 3 volts fresh out of the pack and one of them only showed 70% charge. Further point, is it likely that the CMOS is faulty i.e. by not recognising acceptably charged and outputting batteries ? Nick

Crashed over at home at the weekend and put a lengthways spiral break into my RH ring finger at the section between the knuckle and mid finger joint). After a lot of tooing and froing between hospitals, damaged finger is now supported by one of those lightweight thermoplastic splints with 3 x fingers in splint (Middle to little finger) leaving thumb and fore finger free. As I have been manipulating light objects round the house and am typing this post two fingered without discomfort, just wondered whether any one had experience of driving in this situation, tips and tricks and the rights and wrongs. Any advantage in using a steering wheel spinner ? I have read that as long as the condition doesn't persist for longer than three months you don't have to tell DVLA - under the treatment regime I understand that the splint will be removed at weekly OPD sessions for hand exercises and will be dispensed with within 6 weeks. Nick

This Brexit process . . . if it wasn't so comical, it would be tragic. The way its being handled on both sides, its like a job creation scheme for politicians. This country is fast turning into a global laughing stock. What school of negotiation training did May go to, where the opening gambit is to slag off the opposition before opening talks have commenced ? Nick

A word of warning to newly retired, very occasionally and unusually for the modern UK, the beneficient action of a third party may mysteriously advantage you in perhaps in an unexpected and unintended minor way. In no way regard this as evidence as an enduring change or evidence of a permanent reversal in the attitude towards the elderly or those who are not regarded as making a full-scale "Contribution". Don't whatever you do, feel flushed with an exuberance for life and its wonders and vissitudes and say hit the high street with the intention of righting the reported fall in Lord Sainsbury's return on capital in the current trading year. It won't work And both you and Lord Sainbury will be disappointed. For instance today, I find myself in this self-same position and even now, after recovering from the severe cultural shock, am taking measures against a disproportionate rebound response - it so happens that following a similar earlier advice this month, I received advice from my other public service pension provider today that my monthly stipend has been increased by a full £4 a month. So that's now £8 a month increase in total - but that follows five years when the CPI "Rigging" ensured that both pensions didn't increase at all (And that followed on from a preceding period of of my last six years in public service employment when there was a pay increase embargo). So, in words of Shaw Taylor, "Keep 'em peeled and tight" (Whatever they are) and resist the temptation to send of ex-Chancellor a "Good luck with the new job " card. N

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-39784170 Handbags at dawn . . . but being a Von (Or a distant rel of a Von), Mr Juncker will only have one repost:- Don't fink the blagging and scribblings on the back of them fag packets will stand up ! Nick

Wait a minute, there is another candidate with a sense of purpose, organisation, determination and regimented authoritarian style, who, like the Donald, believes certain forces are undermining his attempts to obtain a good showing on western ballot papers . . .trouble is they are:- https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/3453080/thaad-us-missile-defence-system-south-korea-north-korea-nuclear-war-latest/ Nick

The search for the elusive answer is at an end, Al's got 'em all:- (Just let the clips play on, it gets better and better).

Oh dear, isn't this just yet another re-hash of the "Undeserving poor" argument (Demonisation) from the 17th and 19th Century Poor laws, as re-presented in 1979 and every election since, advanced by paid claques on behalf of an elite ? What happens in 20 - 30 years time when the best part of the labour force in retail, transport and warehousing are automated out of jobs (As is predicted)- you could be talking about 10-15% of the current working population - do they all get moved to cliffside properties in anticipation of the next lemming goldrush ? Surely, the gigantic challenge for the whole population for the next 50 years onwards is not whether or not they are contributing to economic output, an output that will be largely automated and increasingly unaffected by any human input (Including those that think they've made a disproportionate or unrewarded effort), it is how to fill the time and manage mental health in the absence of everyday workplace involvement. "More please" and associated issues was only an issue for the mean spirited 200 years ago. The Monotheistic justification of business is as dead as religion's duck as a source of all human validity. Nick

But that's already the case for the shed loads of "Left-behinds,life-time benefit claimants and pre-mature retirees". Only change might me for some of the JAMs and high income earners - at least the JAMs might do better on the social benefits side. The only people that are likely to do well out of Brexit will be the people that are already doing well from the already chaotic state of the market ("Which will fix everything") economy i.e. the bankers, the lawyers, excess profiteers, the money launderers, the pimps, drug-dealers, people traffickers, 18-25 club operators/owners, the buy-to-let landlords and the property developers - not much left after this bunch of "Stakeholders" have lunched for anyone else. And from what "Two-Brains" was saying on R4 recently, pensioners are in for a good kicking on the "Triple lock", even though it was stated that more than 50% of UK pensioners are on incomes less than the Income Tax Personal Allowance (£11,500 ?) - Tory PR infers that all pensioners are on incomes near the average wage (£33,000). So, what the Tories have announced so far is that domestic consumer demand is set to take a big hit from Brexit (Already happening with prices) and the continued effect of the continued austerity program on public expenditure and that the taxpayer will still have to fork out for the same level of "Foreign aid" aka bacshish in order to secure all these new near and far east trade deals that the Brexiteers want and with no guarentee any amount of the income stream from these deals will come back to this country for spending or taxation i.e. Sir Phil Green mode. I'm encouraged. Nick

522 to 13 - with a majority as slim as that, you can clearly see why a GE is necessary . . . . N

Just shows how loosey-goosey our constitution and electoral arrangements are. Logically, once that letter requesting Brexit was handed-in, the local UK constitutional and electoral processes ,on something as important as this on should have been frozen until the vote had taken place on outcome of EU negotiations. As its currently being carried out, the Tories can acquire a crushing Parliamentary majority to apply to any dissenting voices at the time of the Brexit negotiations outcome vote and this majority could based on a general election mandate which would feature every issue other than Brexit writ large in their prospectus. If that isn't corrupting democratic process, what is ? Nick

If she wins that renders the post brexit negotiations Parliamentary vote pointless. Could that be considered a form of Gerrymandering ? Kiss goodbye to your Employment T & C's, healthcare, pensions and a meaningful life, unless you're in the lucky 10%. . . . and start learning Turkish. Nick

As I have said before, I'm not much of a believer in the total effectiveness of the current marketing mantra, that of running away from a provider, at the first sign of trouble (And this is the first problem I have had with Infinity in six years), when you encounter an occasional blip in service provision. There are many more customers than ISPs, so power still rests with the providers (Why do you think BT bought out Plusnet ?) and, in these circumstances, if all customers do that, you end up with a commercially sponsored "Race-to-the-bottom" (sic) in service standards (i.e. the complete opposite result from that suggested by the current marketing mantra), with providers thinking they can get away with low standards because the consumer has only come to you because they vacated an arrangement with a provider who had lower standards than you. And then before you know it, your resenting customer suggestions and complaints leading to eventual "Barrel- bombing" of any customer that complains - classic bureaucractic thinking at work, only the difference between the two sides now is commercial rather than religious or tribal. As a assembler of home computer systems for the last 20 years and with the increased pace in the advance of technology in computer bits, its almost envitable that you acquire multiple machines as part of the system roll-over relegation leapfrog process. Ask anybody on here that's being doing this. Originally, there was one desktop, then there was a laptop + desktop, after 8 years the desktop was off the mark in terms performance and design (Having been designed for XP) and was at the time of relegation running Windows 7 (when Windows 8.1 was current). So that was replaced. After 13 years the XP laptop was replaced because it had multiple repairs by that stage and was struggling dealing with modern graphic intensive internet and Windows 7. Surprisingly, both relegated systems continue to operate until today and whilst there is no role for the old laptop, the old desktop (Or at least the mainboard, + processor + memory + storage was stuffed into an old Case) and allocated the media server role (Cheaper (and more capable)) than buying a new smart TV with built-in internet capability. And, contrary to any normal expectations its currently running W10 !. In the same vein the Windows Lynx was bought to replace the 6 year old Blackberry Playbook which was again struggling with modern internet graphics, had a broken mini usb power connector and the battery, which at that stage was approaching 1,000 re-charge cycles, was expected to expire. As of today, its now done 1,176 re-charge cycles and, even well-discharged, the voltage remains above the critical minimum for start-up. As to VW buses, I just can't see the attraction:- N

Got it running on two portables and two desktops (Have retained 7 and 8.1 in a Dual boot facility with the intent of keeping a rolling succession going). Its OK, once you remove the mail program, Cortana, Edge (Using Powershell) and all the other "Crap/ bloatware" - beware, if you remove the "Shop" icon, reinstalling removed W10 apps becomes difficult, even with Powershell. Eventually managed to get Outlook 2010 operating on all machines (Bar one of the portables) using Exchange. Had problems on one machine with subsequent updates - one update (Anniversary) tried to download and install 40 times (In background) before it finally succeeded (Might explain recent high data usage on ISP account) - needless to say there were no helpful user messages conveyed to my desktop whilst all this was going on - only discovered when Update History was examined over another issue. Also, there seems to be an issue on my Lynx tablet with dropping Wi-fi/Bluetooth connections - not sure whether that's W10 and/or the cheapo hardware, though its worthy of note that the Windows 10 Bluetooth drivers supplied with W10 are dated 2006 ! - obviously, the bookmark is stuck on the page entitled VAG Tips and Tricks. Oh, and W10 doesn't seem to like the text handling software on this site ????? I have been experimenting with one of these "Speed-up" programs to tweek settings so that the W10 operates sans delay at all times - good results - found that, as usual, a month after a fresh installation, everything started slowing down. Just been advised today that the Lynx tablet will be receiving the "Creators' (Or is that " 's" ?) Update, so I'm switching that off until next month and relying on the Playbook - the update is reported as being huge and can't be deferred or stopped and, due to other MS "Gifts" this month, I'm already well on the way to exceeding my data allowance. Nice of MS to allow the user to decide when its convenient to download - Book mark stuck on the page headed United Airlines ? Being a CC post, I can't, of course, let the opportunity pass, without mentioning that other inspiration of the IT revolution - BT, whos's Ombudsman has just contacted to me , a month and a half after registering with them, to progress my data usage complaint 's from September last year. Funny old quasi-legal process, where BT states the complainant's case for them (Without an input from me) and foward's it to their own retained Ombudsman, who, when asked whether I can add to (And correct) the very brief (And possibly misleading) statement of MY CASE by BT, tells me that they have a "House style" that restricts text to 2000 characters - you couldn't make it up, could you ? Nick

Ultimately, the likes of Nigel and Donald rely on a critical mass of the population (Swing/sleeper voters or states) to achieve a democratic result and I would have thought that puts a limit of the factionalisation trend in mass marketing that is useful to the the motivating forces - no matter how well managed and clinically segregated the election presentation is , there is a limit to how many people a candidate (Or his party) can appear to be at any one time. And the alternative is inconceivable i.e. trying at election time, through a marketing campaign, to even slightly de-program a population faction or factions to take a view nearer to yours - isn't that what used to be main stream politics over here !!! N

And then, again, despite all the double-finessed management techniques of today, we still witness in the global and personal life techniques of 'suasion that are less than subtle - 59 cruise missiles in place of the milk on your doorstep, for instance. Number of data points ? Pretty expensive marketing campaign though - the World according to Rupert says £667,000 a pop. N.

I'm OK with that, as long as you keep the fixated lecturing PITA in this sandbox. N

"All the audience were happy, . . and smiling, all the men had erections and all the women were ovulating left and right" True to IT form - Two hour delay on my moderator approved posts ! N