Tonight, the god-awful ’service’ came to a head, and I finally sat down and wrote a complaint. I’m turning it into an open letter here.

Dear Sir/Madam,

I write this evening to make a complaint in regards to the driver of the 19:09 55 bus to grange estate. I have, in the past, managed to overcome the urge to complain, however, tonight was the straw that broke the camels back.

Your slogan is “raising the bar in customer service”, however, regularly and without fail, your buses fail to maintain their scheduled timetable, usually arriving and leaving their scheduled stops up to 10 minutes early. This is especially bad at the letchworth station bus stop, where I have come out of the station at 1900 to see the 55 going by. At this point, my only options are to attempt to beat the bus to the bottom of the road as it completes its loop, walk home, or take a taxi.

This evening was one of these occasions. At 19:04, as I crossed the road to the bus stop, the 55 arrived, ejected some passengers and waited for a few seconds - I can only imagine to allow the driver to massage his timetable so that it isn’t obvious to whoever manages the drivers that he’d completed early -, at this point, I believed - naïvely as per usual - that he would wait at the stop until 19:09 and then proceed.

What actually occurred, was him closing the doors as I was within 25 meters of the stop - walking very close to the edge of the pavement so as to make him aware of my presence -, and then beginning to pull away. At this point, my blood began to boil, as this is a regular occurance, and I stepped into the road to block his way and flag him down. At this point, your driver motioned me out of the way and accelerated towards me while mouthing the words ‘fuck off’. Fearing for my own safety at this point, I jumped out of the way of your bus and took a taxi home at the cost of £5.

I’m not really asking for compensation at this point, although, that would be nice. In fact, I’m moving back to London in part because of the awful bus service you provide - no buses on sundays, no buses after 7pm -, which makes it impossible to do anything after work without walking for miles, or paying for taxis.

What I am asking for is this:

1) Reprimand the driver of tonight’s 55 bus. At the very least, suspend him, and re-educate him on the fact that he is only there because buses can’t yet drive themselves. He is not God, and he doesn’t have the right to risk customer lives. I’d honestly rather see the guy get his ass canned or moved to a different service that I don’t have to endure.

2) Fix the clocks on your buses - there’s obviously something out of whack there, when the rest of the world believes it’s 19:05 (or 19:00…) and your bus drivers believe it’s 19:09.

3) Implement a policy whereby the buses may only run to their timetable or run late at every stop. No making up time, no departing stops 5-10 minutes early just because no-one happened to be there at the time. Driving a bus isn’t rocket science.

4) Hire someone to do an audit of tachograph cards to match mileage vs time to see exactly how awful your ’service’ is.

5) Hire some bus drivers who understand the concept of a smile and customer service. Sure, it’s a shit job, but, they applied for it, so they ought to be able to apply a feign happiness and a smile when dealing with passengers.

That is all.

Kindest Regards

Also, should you ever need to make a complaint, first write it in a text editor, then browse to http://www.arrivabus.co.uk/contact-arriva/ - the page has an insanely low session timeout. In the 10 minutes it took me to write this, my session had been killed. Now I get to fill in their ridiculous form again. Ever heard of an email address Arriva?

I’ll be making another post should I ever get a response from them… their contact page responded only with this:

Thank you for contacting Arriva. We appreciate your feedback. If you have asked us a question we will try to respond within one working day. If you have made a comment that we need to investigate further, we will do our best to get back to you within ten working days.

Lomographers, I’m looking at you.

I’m not a professional photographer, and I don’t claim to be.  My grandfather was a professional photographer, however, and as such I treat the profession with a great deal of respect; that being the people who are accredited within the profession - i.e. BIPP Licentiates, Associates and Fellows.
I don’t have much respect for rank amateurs with 2 or 3 digital cameras, several 8GB CF cards, and the view that happy-snapping 3000 ‘candid’ photographs during someone’s wedding will result in at least one or two good photographs that the client will like.
After all, years of rants from a professional photographer (who would maybe shoot 2-3 rolls of 120 at a wedding, and have 2-3 rolls of perfect imagery at the end of it) about amateurs tends to give you certain views on things.

As such, when Adobe released the pre-launch videos of “Content Aware Fill” in action, it gave me the taste of bile in the back of my throat, and a feeling that as a whole, we were taking yet another step towards the brink of no creativity whatsoever.  Take 1000 photographs, find a couple that came out semi-ok, and then content-aware-fill them to make them perfect; instead of spending time being creative, and taking two or three good photographs to begin with.

Today, I finally got my hands on a copy of Photoshop CS5, and was able to run a couple of my own photographs through it, to see just what this hype was all about.  What follows are the results.

The image below was taken moments after a storm passed, and a gap appeared in the clouds revealing the most amazing rays of sun.  I love sky photography, when it’s interesting.  While framing this shot, I had to make a judgement call about whether to include the near-horizon [with the lamp-post], or, to crop much of the sky and foreground out with a longer focal length.  I’m not a fan of removing things [except blemishes from dust, etc. on lenses] from photographs after the fact, and would much rather just scrap a photograph entirely if when I get it onto the laptop, I find an aspect that would require surgery to fix isn’t to my liking.
I’m quite satisfied with the outcome of the photograph below, but, I think it’s a perfect candidate for the new Content Aware Fill.

Camera: Canon EOS 30D - Exposure: 1/160 - Aperture: f/11 - Focal Length: 18mm - ISO: 160

At first, I tried using the Spot Healing Brush Tool (keyboard shortcut J), set to Content Aware mode.  The outcome was not at all what I expected, and in fact, worse than if I’d use the clone tool to manually fill that area.  Note the shift downwards, of the silhouetted bushes, and the hard blurring into the sky.

After trying that a few times in different places, with similar results, I decided to give the select-delete-content-aware-fill method a try.  In this, you just use the marquee tool (M), to select an area, then hit the delete key, which will then trigger it asking you how you’d like it filled.  Choose content-aware, and await the horrendous results:

I gotta say, so far, I’m completely unimpressed by this new ‘feature’.  I’m doing everything exactly the same as they did on the hype-videos, and the effect I’m getting is completely different.

I will admit, the first time a friend linked me to the video showing Content-Aware-Fill in action, and asked for my response, it was one of both complete anger, combined with wondering whether this would make it possible to easily create that Matrix effect of lips being sealed together into nothingness.  I have to say, it succeeds quite well at that:

Public domain image from Wikipedia Commons

So, there we have it… if you’re a satirist, Content Aware Fill is likely for you.  If you’re a photochopper of images, you can probably get better results the old fashioned way.  I did look through the preferences for CS5, but couldn’t find anything related to content-aware-fill… so I’d be happy to hear from anyone who actually managed to get it to work.

Lord Carter of Barnes
House of Lords
London
SW1A 0PW

Re: Your quaint ideas about the internet

Dear Lord Carter of Barnes,

On behalf of everyone who actually understands The Internet (it’s not actually a series of tubes), those who oppose dictatorship in its many forms, and the fair people who don’t have their head stuck so far up the outmoded, antediluvian and superannuated backsides of the music industry that they can no longer see sense; I would like to respectfully say ‘Fuck you, and the horse you rode in on’.

Consider this: you are attempting to push laws through to support an industry that is flailing around in its death throes. You are also going to be solely responsible for putting the United Kingdom on a par with China in terms of Internet freedom; or lack thereof.
I realise you have no problem sleeping at night while considering pushing for these things to happen; with respect however, I believe your ability to sleep at night is merely because you are so out of touch with reality that you shouldn’t really be in charge of your own sleeping arrangements.

Milord, I put it to you that perhaps you should ask your children (or if you don’t have any, someone elses children; and at that, children who actually have used the internet) to explain to you the freedoms that the internet gives people in an already heavily oppressed society; and why enforcing ridiculous laws undermine its very nature and cast questions on the very possibility of any further technological advancement on these shores.
Do you really want the legacy you are remembered for throughout history to be as the man who wasn’t strong enough to see sense or find the truth, and let a dying business ruin the future for generations of people?

Yours, very sincerely and respectfully

It is a design feature;
Steve Jobs collects the souls;
So cutting peoples wrists on the MacBooks;
Means quicker soul harvesting.

Also, I need a sticker for my new MacBook… one which reads “Built from aluminum tempered with the charred, crushed skulls of pretentious mac users“

IP,TCP Ports
10.0.0.1,22 143 5000 12345 31337

Of course, once I had this data, my mind started down the path of ‘wouldn’t it be nice to have an automated system that would e-mail me and tell me if any ports change (read: “if any developers set something up without my knowledge”), and also tell me if any hosts are added to our network.  I present to you an automated network monitoring script, this will scan your network and send you a detailed report (with port probing), via a direct SMTP connection to your remote mail server - which is useful in the event that your network gets compromised and you can no longer trust any binaries.  All that you need to do is put it somewhere, make it executable, and add it to a cronjob - mine runs hourly, but I’m paranoid.

0 */1 * * * /root/bin/nmap.pl auto >/dev/null 2>&1

The e-mails look something similar to this:

Nmap Scan Report. Hosts/Ports changed!
Generated on: 2008-12-08 18:39:44

——–BEGIN——–
10.0.0.1 is a new host with 3 ports open/filtered.

10.0.0.1 has these ports open: 22,111,5000
22 might be ssh
111 might be rpcbind
5000 might be vtun
——–END——–

All code that I’ve written is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales Licence.  Where non-commercial means don’t sell it, not ‘you can’t use it in your company’. =]

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#!/usr/bin/perl
use File::Copy;
use Nmap::Parser;
use Net::DNS::Sendmail;
use warnings;
use strict;
 
#config begin
my $nmap_path = "/usr/bin/nmap"; #path to nmap binary
my $nmap_args = "-T5 -F -sV"; #nmap arguments (accepts multiple), do not specify any output arguments!
my $ips = ""; #networks to scan, accepts standard nmap input
my $save_as = "/root/parser-cache.xml"; #path to storage file - this file is used for comparative scans, so it's best not to place it in /tmp.
my $email_from_address = ''; #from address to use when sending mail - should probably exist to avoid sender callouts
my $email_to_address = ''; #address you want results delivered to
my $email_sender_domain = ''; #domain to masquerade as - useful in cases where remote mta checks helo.
my $email_subject = "Nmap Network Scan Results"; #subject for email.
my $debug = "false"; #enables some output if you need to test auto on the cli - i.e. why mail isn't being sent.
#config end
 
my $np = new Nmap::Parser;
my $old = new Nmap::Parser;
my $curr = new Nmap::Parser;
my $tempstore = "/tmp/parser-cache.tmp";
my $emailfile = "/tmp/nmap-notify";
my $newmachines = 0;
my $auto = (lc($ARGV[0]) eq "auto");
my ($sec,$min,$hour,$mday,$mon,$year,$wday,$yday,$isdst)=localtime(time);
 
sub debug
{
    print "@_\n" if($debug eq "true");
}
 
sub print_twice
{
    print "@_";
    print EMAIL "@_";
}
 
sub create_files
{
    foreach (@_)
        {
            if(!-e $_)
                {
                    print "$_ does not exist... creating\n" if(!$auto);
                    open(TEMP,">$_") or die "Can't create $_: $!";
                    close(TEMP) or die "Couldn't close $_: $!";
                }
        }
}
 
create_files($save_as,$tempstore);
 
if($auto)
{
    open(EMAIL,">$emailfile") or die "Can't create $emailfile: $!";
    print EMAIL "Nmap Scan Report.  Hosts/Ports changed!\nGenerated on: ";
    printf EMAIL "%4d-%02d-%02d %02d:%02d:%02d\n\n",$year+1900,$mon+1,$mday,$hour,$min,$sec;
    print EMAIL "--------BEGIN--------\n";
}
 
if($auto)
{
    debug("Running auto mode");
 
    if(-s $save_as)
    {
        $old->parsefile($save_as); #load previous state
        $curr->cache_scan($tempstore); #set temporary file to store xml after we're done
        $curr->parsescan($nmap_path, $nmap_args, $ips); #scan current hosts
 
        for my $ip ($curr->get_ips('up'))
        {
            my $ip_old = $old->get_host($ip);
            my $ip_curr = $curr->get_host($ip);
            my @alltcp = $ip_curr->tcp_open_ports();
            my $numtcp = $#alltcp + 1;
            if(!$ip_old)
            {
                print_twice("$ip is a new host with".$numtcp."ports open/filtered.\n");
                ++$newmachines;
            }
        }
 
        print_twice("\n") if($newmachines != 0);
 
        for my $ip ($curr->get_ips('up'))
        {
            my $ip_old = $old->get_host($ip);
            my $ip_curr = $curr->get_host($ip);
            my %port = ();
 
            if($ip_old)
            {
                my @tcpdiff = grep { $port{$_} < 2}
                                    (map {$port{$_}++; $_}
                                    ( $ip_curr->tcp_open_ports , $ip_old->tcp_open_ports));
 
                if(scalar @tcpdiff)
                {
                    print_twice("$ip has these new ports open: ".join(',',@tcpdiff)."\n");
                    for (@tcpdiff)
                    {
                        print_twice("\t"."$_ might be ",$ip_curr->tcp_service($_)->name,"\n");
                    }
                    print_twice("\n");
                }
            }else{
                my @tcp = (map {$port{$_}++; $_}
                            ( $ip_curr->tcp_ports('open') ));
 
                if(scalar @tcp)
                {
                    print_twice("$ip has these ports open: ".join(',',@tcp)."\n");
                    for (@tcp)
                    {
                        print_twice("\t"."$_ might be ",$ip_curr->tcp_service($_)->name,"\n");
                    }
                    print_twice("\n");
                }
            }
        }
    }else{
        $curr->cache_scan($tempstore); #set temporary file to store xml after we're done
        $curr->parsescan($nmap_path, $nmap_args, $ips); #scan current hosts
 
        for my $ip ($curr->get_ips('up'))
        {
            my $ip_curr = $curr->get_host($ip);
            my @alltcp = $ip_curr->tcp_open_ports();
            my $numtcp = $#alltcp + 1;
            print_twice("$ip is a new host with ".$numtcp." ports open/filtered.\n");
            ++$newmachines;
        }
 
        print_twice("\n") if($newmachines != 0);
 
        for my $ip ($curr->get_ips('up'))
        {
            my $ip_curr = $curr->get_host($ip);
            my %port = ();
 
            my @tcp = (map {$port{$_}++; $_}
                      ( $ip_curr->tcp_ports('open') ));
 
            if(scalar @tcp)
            {
                print_twice("$ip has these ports open: ".join(',',@tcp)."\n");
 
                for (@tcp)
                {
                    print_twice("\t"."$_ might be ",$ip_curr->tcp_service($_)->name,"\n");
                }
 
                print_twice("\n");
            }
        }
    }
    move($tempstore, $save_as);
    print EMAIL "--------END--------";
    close EMAIL;
 
    open(EMAIL,"<$emailfile") or die "Can't read $emailfile: $!";
    my $mail = Net::DNS::Sendmail->new();
    $mail->verbose() if($debug eq "true");
    $mail->senderdomain( "$email_sender_domain" );
    $mail->to( "$email_to_address" );
    $mail->from( "$email_from_address" );
    $mail->subject( "$email_subject" );
    while () { $mail->data($_); }
    $mail->sendmail() if($newmachines != 0);
    debug("mail sent");
    close EMAIL;
} else {
    #Unsure whether or not to move the output of this into $save_as... it may
    #be that someone runs this, and doesn't take care of the output, in which
    #case, we still want to be notified that night.
    $np->cache_scan($save_as);
    $np->parsescan($nmap_path, $nmap_args, $ips);
    print "IP,OPEN TCP PORTS\n";
    for my $ip ($np->get_ips('up'))
    {
        my $ip_check = $np->get_host($ip);
        my %port = ();
 
        my @tcp = (map {$port{$_}++; $_}
                  ( $ip_check->tcp_ports('open') ));
 
        print "$ip,".join(' ',@tcp)."\n" if(scalar @tcp);
    }
}

Festive… me?  No, that’s the last thing anyone would accuse me of being in December.
I’m averse the spirit of christmas as it is these days - an excuse to push capitalism in everyone’s faces, a social requirement to buy things you can’t afford for people you barely see the rest of the year and probably don’t like.  It’s sadly just another way to force people to take loans that they can’t repay, and push people to commit to responsibilities that, at any other time of year they couldn’t fulfil; I find it a sad social commentary that such importance is placed on making that single day of the year meaningful, when in fact the demand for it to occur in a pre-defined way on a pre-defined date merely serves to make it completely insignificant.

Wouldn’t you much rather have someone give you a present at a completely random time of the year, for reasons other than social expectation, where it’s obvious that more thought than “How much money will this leave me to spend on the countless other people I have on my list?” has gone into it?

That’s not to say I completely reject it; I buy cards for people who I consider close, and I visit my family, but I’m happier once the event has passed and people return to normality.

There are few things pleasurable or interesting that are not controlled heavily by governments, or by societal expectations. Salvia Divinorum (lit. Sage of the Seers), is a member of the Sage genus and the Mint family; it is one such currently uncontrolled thing. Salvia was relatively unheard of until recently - I’m sure the internet helped with this somewhat - existing only in small, cultivated patches in Oaxaca, Mexico, and has been used by Mazatec Shamans for what I can only assume must be millenia. Militant religious groups - among others - around the world are currently pressing government bodies to add Salvia Divinorum to the list of ‘good things that we don’t want anyone to have because it allows them to escape from what we decide their reality should be’… in English, they want to make it illegal to use and/or possess this plant.

My interest in Salvia Divinorum and its primary constituent, Salvinorin A, is an extension of my fascination with the world of the arcane.

There are some things I should note, Salvinorin A is not a party drug, it is not something that you pop as a pill, it is much more than that; the plant itself, only exists today because of the Mazatec people who cultivate and tend to it; as such, it deserves much respect, and should be revered. I highly recommend reading about the beliefs of the Mazatec people in regard to this herb before trying it yourself. I can also recommend The Salvia Divinorum User’s Guide as a great source of information to get started with.

I ordered a 10ml bottle of tincture, flavored with peppermint to mask the odorous taste, and in the two days it took to arrive, did a lot more research on the best setting and frame of mind to be in while taking it, along with traditional ceremonies performed prior and after. When it finally did arrive, I must admit that I was over-excited; this is most certainly not something which will give you benefits without respect given. I tried 5ml (according to the dosage guide that came with it, this is a very high dose), in the middle of the day, and beyond feeling a little heavy in myself, experienced nothing.

Tonight, having learned much from my botched attempt, I meditated for an hour, and then - with a slight assumption that the tincture must be weak - took the remaining 5ml. I was unsure what to expect, I find that no-matter how much you read online, as I said earlier, everyone is unique. Laying on my bed, what felt like an eternity passed, and I felt myself slowly losing contact with my physical body, strange visions drew themselves on my eyelids, impossible to focus or describe. My ability to judge time completely left me, in my head, I would have assumed a mere 15 minutes had passed, at most, in actuality, it was nearer an hour. Unfortunately, my reason for knowing this was due to not having turned my cell off - it rang, twice, so I ended up being dragged out of my trance and had to answer it.

At this point, I had assumed from everything that I had read, that what I had experienced in that time would be all I would experience. Most people speak of the effects not lasting more than about 30-45 minutes, so having turned my phones off, I lay back down and resigned myself to a botched experience.

All I really remember, waking up 2 1/2 hours later, is a feeling which I can describe only as having my existence attached to a dimmer switch, and someone slowly fading me down to insignificance. Waking up, I felt dazed and confused, as if I had just regained consciousness after a general anaesthetic and after a few minutes, my brain slowly re-engaged with my muscles and I was able to step out onto my balcony for air and a cigarette. Standing there, gazing out across the sodium horizon, a feeling of peace washed over me, the demons that had been plaguing me badly for the past few months have gone, and I can think clearly again. Many people say that an experience in which you remember nothing afterwards is not desirable, or useful; in my humble opinion, I got what I desired - the two things I had asked for while meditating.

My plan is to buy a Salvia Divinorum plant, to cultivate and care for myself, and later, have a milder experience in which I can learn things about my subconscious and possibly make my demons disappear permanently. I can’t help but feel my respect for the old ways is justified.

Being single has its charms; no, really, it does.  Singledom goes very nicely with being a social outcast; I control my own schedule outside of work hours, and am free to play computer games and generally be geeky.  There is a limit to these charms, however.  It’s been two years since I last heard the words ‘I love you’ uttered by someone other than a very close friend or a family member, two years since I gazed into the eyes of someone I loved while laying together, two years since experiencing those crazy little moments that pass so quickly, where life seems so perfect, two years feeling alone in the world.

Call me crazy (it’s okay, you can, I really am insane. The doctor said so.), but I hate experiencing things on my own; going to museums, walking in parks, going to the beach, going out for a meal… in my eyes, these are all things couples do, so I don’t do them.  Partly to avoid seeing people in love - it’s not jealousy, just acceptance of the truth -, and because it all seems so gray.  I love discussion, so experiencing things, and not being able to talk about them, hear what someone else thought, seems pointless.

I’d love to be social… be one of those people who can walk into a room full of strangers and immediately start talking to them, making new friends, getting dates; that’s not me though.  I’m the quiet one who sits and watches everyone interact, wondering why I find it so hard,  I’m the one who leaves after 10 minutes because I feel overwhelmed, I’m the one who browses the missed connections… hoping.

It’s funny how far you can fall in two years.

Life is funny that way.

I live in an apartment, it is nestled on the 3rd floor between countless other apartments, where other people live. There are a couple of businesses here, but they’re in one of the other buildings, and no-where near to me, so I was a little surprised to find a “Non-Domestic Rating Demand Notice” both back and forward dated, for my council tax.

So far, I’ve tried calling the number for their offices, which seems to be constantly engaged - I guess they figure that if they leave the phone off the hook, then no-one will want to get in touch with them (similar logic to how they decided that my apartment is a business premises as far as I can tell) -, and the appeals number on the back, which went through to voicemail.

Tomorrow, some poor person in the council-tax department is going to wish they’d called in sick today, because the level of incompetence displayed here has really pissed me off.

I’ll no-doubt update this with further revelations of just how much a London Borough council can fail at their job.