davidgillon: A pair of crutches, hanging from coat hooks, reflected in a mirror (Default)

.... at least five are currently parked outside the electricity substation on the opposite side of the main road. I'd say that definitely points to it being the smoking gun for Wednesday's powercut given that undoubtedly adds up to a tidy chunk of Saturday overtime. It could even be more than five as there's a chunk of road I can't see for my neighbour's huge shed that's big enough to take a couple more (he works for them as well, but his van is still on his drive)

Actually I tell a lie, they've all gone now I look again, and they've been replaced by a big black BMW, which I think I saw outside on Wednesday night moments before the power came back up - must be the boss.

In unwelcome news I seem to be working through the first cold of the year. I felt a bit off on Wednesday, okay on Thursday, and definitely iffy from about 2PM yesterday with a rapidly escalating headache and a touch of chills.In a clear sign of how bad it was, Amazon delivered a book I've wanted for ages and I didn't even have sufficient brain to flick through it and look at the pictures.

I ended up unable to sleep, so booted-up Warhammer on the computer and played some more of the Dwarf campaign I started over Christmas. This may not have been a good idea because as a bear of little brain as I was getting comprehensively hammered by the Orks. I've just been playing the strategic game and auto-resolving battles, rather than waiting 15 minutes each time for it to boot into the tactical game, but when the Orks besieged my capital and ambushed the relief force outside the walls and the game announced it was going to be a decisive defeat if I auto-resolved it I decided I might as well play it out as my campaign was doomed either way. OTOH I wasn't prepared to wait for it to organise itself so I turned the sound off and went to bed with the intention of playing out my inevitable doom in the morning.

Twenty minutes later I realised that there's a near sub-audible rhythmic thud leaking through into my speakers from the background audio of the now-running tactical game, So up again and go take a look at what's going on (I think it's an imperfect cut-out on the off-switch for the external speakers), and the simplest way to get rid of it (because I don't want to be fiddling with audio levels with half a brain) is to play it out. So there I am, half-dressed, no glasses, at 4:30AM, looking at the climactic battle of the campaign so far, and it's the first time recently I've seen the forecast auto-resolve results look completely unrelated to reality. Not only did I have the definite advantage of numbers, but I was fighting from behind city walls, The only advantage the Orks had was their leader, and I could just swarm him.

And that's precisely what happened. They made it onto the top of the wall, and got comprehensively hammered, About a third of their force survived to retreat, and I then sortied and wiped them out. This thing may yet be salvageable, And then I saved game and finally got to bed.

Unsurprisingly I slept late, and I'm still only firing on about six cylinders out of eight, but that's better than yesterday,

ETA: Back up to 4 vans, plus the boss's Beemer. That's not ominous or anything. Glad I bought those camping lanterns!

davidgillon: A pair of crutches, hanging from coat hooks, reflected in a mirror (Default)

I did some more digging into OFCOM's* role in Digital Voice after last night's power cut  - I was planning on doing this anyway, to understand how Digital Voice will impact my mother, given they're talking about phones no longer working for emergency calls even during a powercut and she has an emergency care setup** with the council, but the powercut concentrated my mind wonderfully. And I'm less than impressed.

I finally dug up OFCOM's consultation document on the project, but it took me a good half hour to find it from starting looking, and I'm hardly a novice at web-searches. You basically had to know exactly what it was called to be able to find it on their website, because the search function only works on titles, and I had to go through about three other documents to find out the name. And having found it, I found that, exactly as I had expected, there had been no responses to the consultation from groups representing elderly or disabled people, because they did nothing to involve them in it. IIRC there are 18 responses, of which a dozen are from industry, four or five are from individuals, and the last is from the statutory Communications Consumer Panel of industry experts, which tells OFCOM they need a 2 hour battery backup on everyone's phone to make sure they can dial 999 through the length of a typical powercut, and 8 hours for people at risk, and that they have to treat emergency care services exactly like the normal emergency services and make sure people can contact those as well, And OFCOM have completely ignored that and said 1 hour battery back up for people at risk will do, because everyone else has a mobiile, even though their own document says 2 million don't, and when we just had people without landline or mobile service for a fortnight after Storm Arwen.

Link to the OFCOM Consultation

And I also turned up a response from BT to the article in the Northern Echo that started me looking into all of this - Echo article with the response The response does have bits of the normal PR "Oh, its all a fuss about nothing", but when it goes on to say "we will discuss (vulnerable people's) options which can include delaying their upgrade for a year, when other solutions may become available" that basically admits they know their plans are inadequate and they're hoping the government will bail them out.

*Headdesk*

And in other powercut reactions I ordered myself a couple of LED camping lanterns from Amazon that turned up this afternoon. I think they're a bit flimsier than I'd like for actually taking camping, but they're brilliant (ha!) for sticking in a drawer for the next time the power goes out.
 

* The US equivalent would be the FCC.

** The setup my mother has is fairly typical, there's a bangle she wears on her wrist and pressing the button on that will alert their control room via a box plugged into the phone socket, and the control room will then try to contact her through a speaker and a microphone in the box sensitive enough to pick up someone shouting for help from another room - but obviously that depends on the box having power.
davidgillon: A pair of crutches, hanging from coat hooks, reflected in a mirror (Default)

I posted elseweb about the problems with BT's "Digital Voice" project and no-longer being able to make landline emergency calls in powercuts, so of course we promptly had our longest powercut in ages, Only 90 minutes, but it was pitch black outside and of course it took the heating out with it - gas boiler, but electric pumps. I'm pretty much convinced it was the sub-station on the main road opposite my house as I noticed there was someone working in there just moments before the power came back on. Ironically my next door neighbour has just gone to work for the power network, yet his van was sat on his drive throughout,

On top of which I've spent the day sneezing, though at least the Covid test says "Not one of ours, guv".

The oven is on and I'm planning on warming myself with chicken and chips.

I may as well add the Digital Voice post while I'm on as the publicity about it from BT and OFCOM has been near non-existent:

https://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/19823730.county-durham-residents-arent-happy-bt-axing-landlines/

I made a note to look the background to this story up when I got back from the land-of-no-internet (aka my mother's). The TLDR version is that under a programme called 'Digital Voice' BT are axing the old PSTN landline network come 2025, which means everyone's (new) landline phone will operate via the net, and stop working in the event of a powercut, which will make calling 999 a bit of a bugger.

Apparently OFCOM are allowing them to do this because everyone can now call 999 on their mobiles, except those who don't have one, or who live somewhere with no signal, or whose mobile simply has a flat battery.. The problem for this argument being that the recent Storm Arwen didn't just knock out the power for major areas of the North East, it took out their cellphone coverage as well, leaving some people with no way to call 999 for a fortnight.

It's also going to be a problem for elderly or disabled people who have an emergency care set-up via the phone-line. My mother has one to the local county run system and the only thing I'd seen about Digital Voice prior to the Storm Arwen stuff was a letter from them, which completely failed to explain what was going on.

I'm speechless that this wasn't stopped on general emergency planning grounds, never mind putting vulnerable people at risk.

But Tories.....

 

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davidgillon: A pair of crutches, hanging from coat hooks, reflected in a mirror (Default)
David Gillon

March 2025

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