Evidence gained from torture

Listening to Craig Murray, the former Ambassador to Tashkent, Uzbekistan, testifying to the Commons Select Committee yesterday was an uncomfortable experience. He makes two claims; that when evidence obtained from torture was offered to the security services in 1990 Mrs Thatcher ordered that none of it should be used, and that when similar reports were received in 2002 different rules were in force and the evidence was used.
 
If these allegations are true they represent a major shift in Government policy and one with which I do not agree; accepting evidence gained from torture makes us complicit in that torture and is, frankly, immoral.
 
The next questions are "when did ministers know that they were using evidence obtained under torture?" and "why did they do nothing about it?".

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Carbon-friendly orange juice

The carton of orange juice that I bought from Tesco at lunchtime had information about the item's carbon footprint; I guess we now have to check this as well as the ingredient list and the nutrition table.
 
I wonder if this will be effective? It's certainly the first time I have really been aware of the carbon footprint associated with an individual purchase (excluding flights). It might be enough to make me switch brands or items if it were rolled out across Tesco's entire range.

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Barcelona's plane trees

The taxi to the airport took us through parts of the city that we hadn't visited on this trip and along the road at the base of Montjuic (see photo). The discovery of a fast-moving articulated lorry coming towards us along the dual carriageway leading into the airport (on our side of the barrier) added a little unexpected spice to an otherwise uneventful ride.
 
Overall, a very good weekend but I'm ready for home, a familiar bed, some vegetables with my meals and the return to the daily grind.

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Airport departure lounges

As they go, Barcelona airport is pretty good and rather less crowded and more relaxed than Heathrow, but it is regrettably plagued by people conducting surveys on behalf of the tourist board. This wouldn't be too bad but the questions highlighted exactly how much we'd spent and I think I would have preferred not to know.

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Sitting on the runway

Clear blue skies and bright sunshine at the airport. It looks like we might get away on time and be home before dawn. Woo hoo!

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More of Barcelona

Another shot of Barcelona, rather higher than before and taken after the plane had completed it's turn to the north. We're above the clouds now so further photography is pointless - the landscape is essentially flat from this altitude, and extremely boring.

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Iberian Muffins

Here's a useful bit of advice if you ever find yourself travelling with Iberia; avoid the in-flight muffins because they are practically inedible and bear little resemblance to real muffins. In fact, they're so bad that you would be well-advised to gnaw instead at the seat tray or the headrest, sating your hunger in any way you can until the trolley dollies roll beyond your reach, taking their muffins with them.
 
If I haven't yet convinced you, imagine how a muffin would taste after a week's worth of flights, the constant variation of temperature and pressure defeating the efforts of modern food science to deliver a light, fluffy, tasty snack. It isn't a pretty scene.

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Shopping in Barcelona

Warm and sunny this morning in Barcelona with only a light wind to stir things up. The weakness if the pound makes everything feel much more expensive than it did the last time we were here and we haven't made any major purchases. Buying at home has never been as attractive.

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Lunch after shopping

This morning's wander through the gothic quarter of Barcelona was less brusing on the wallet than I had feared and didn't last as long as the marathon expeditions of yore. Lunch is to be a light snack on the roof of the hotel before we head off to the airport where, unavoidably, there will be more shopping.

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View from the breakfast table

We aren't sitting in the sun but there's a definite threat of sun later this morning if we sit here long enough. The weather looks good but there are guys digging a hole in the ground with pneumatic drills and it's a bit noisy.

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Sunday Evening Dinner

A great dinner at a restaurant called El Pintor; suckling pig was particularly good if a little greasy. Tomorrow is our last day in Barcelona - just time for a little shopping (and lunch) before we fly home in the late afternoon.

View from the hotel roof

I have spent much of the afternoon drinking, reading, eating and generally lounging around on the roof of the hotel. This is the view across the rooftops of Barcelona toward the sea. Sorry about the crane.

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Wifi

Internet access improved when I found the hotel's wifi access
instructions which had been cunningly hidden by the telephone.
Unfortunately, this cutting-edge technology doesn't extend to the roof
so I must drink my cocktail without internet access.

Being abroad with the iPhone and having the data roaming feature
disabled does highlight how much use I make of the data connection at
home when it isn't subject to an extortionate £3/Mb charge. I would be
happy to pay a reasonable amount for a fast data service but to my
mind a reasonable amount would be around £0.02/Mb.

Coffee Time

Lunch went well and now the time for mid-afternoon coffee and cake
draws near. The heat has gone as the clouds have moved in but it is
still warm enough for a session at the bar on the roof, next to the
pool, which is where we are now heading.

A Morning's Wandering

Surprising change in the weather, from heavy rain to brilliant
sunshine. A quick stroll between indoor attractions changed to a long
walk to the beach, where we now sit, outside, for beer and paella.

This afternoon threatens more rain, though, with clouds forming and
drifting inland. There should be time for lunch and modest drinking,
then back to the hotel for coffee and relaxed book reading.

Seafood Dinner

Last night the taxi took us to a restaurant in the port where we had
some pretty good seafood, although an ordering error on my part meant
that I had paella with shells rather than the easy-to-eat de-shelled
alternative. I blame the whisky - I was quite drunk by the time we sat
down to order having consumed most of a very large glass of
Glenfiddich in the hotel bar.

No idea what we are doing today but I suspect art galleries may
feature. Could be grim.

The Parc on the Hill

The walk up the hill from the bus stop is rewarded by great views over the city and, although the park is thronged, the atmosphere is relaxed and we're now chilling under the palm trees.

Big Spanish Church

We've walked from the hotel to the Sagrada Familia, which is a decent stroll, and now we're stocking up on chilled coffee at Starbucks before catching the bus to Parc Guell. Sun still shining and the wind has died so it's rather pleasant.

Post Park Shopping

The ride back from the park to the centre of town was great but an open-top bus is only good as long as the weather lasts and when the wind gained strength we had to move downstairs to escape the chilling. A little light shopping warmed us up.

Wifi is not freely available so I haven't yet succeeded in posting anything, but my phone seems to have connected to several random networks while we were on the bus and downloaded my email. This is a mixed blessing; I am wondering if I should have brought my laptop in case anything urgent arises.

Barcelona

Here we are in Barcelona at Hotel 1898 on La Rambla, right in the centre of town. It's a nice hotel by there's no sign of wifi, so posting this blog could be a mite tricky. Normally, of course, I'd just Google hotspots on my phone but...

Anyway, on the assumption that I'll find a data connection sooner or later, here are my thoughts and musings.

We started with Kir Royale in the hotel bar last night before wandering out into the warm evening air and down La Rambla in search of food, ending up, as luck would have it, at a place called Los Caracoles. Lobster, chicken, paella, mushrooms, asparagus and various other dishes were consumed by the group and much fun was had, particularly by the lobster eaters, whose dinner put up a spirited resistence to the end. Cocktails were suggested but, as the clock approached one am, bed seemed more appropriate and even the noise of late-night revellers on the street outside didn't keep us awake for long.

Time now to hunt breakfast. Fruit and veg seem to be the order of the day after yesterday's meat overload, with coffee and pastries.

Breakfast

Starbucks doesn't give you an authentic Spanish experience, but you can't beat it for strong coffee and fast, familiar service. Back it up with freshly squeezed orange and pineapple smoothie from a backstreet organic juice bar and you've got a pretty good breakfast that nicely plugs the dietary gaps after last night's meat-heavy dinner.

It's warm and sunny with blue skies, so we're making the most of it while it lasts and heading out to see the town.

Scheduled Engineering Works

Dinner in town this evening with friends, which was great. Unfortunately, it seems that their are engineering works between Winchester and Basingstoke so some trains are cancelled, others are stretched an hour by the replacement bus service. News of the engineering works reached me only after I had boarded; I don't walk through the airport station if I can avoid it so I missed whatever notices were posted regading the service alterations, so the double-length train ride was totally unexpected.

It would be nice to receive emailed notifications of planned work (or even unplanned work) on my regular route - does such a service exist?

New Apps

Yesterday I installed two new iPhone apps; MotionX GPS Lite and Dictionary.com.

Both apps are free and, if you want a GPS path tracker (for hiking, cycling etc.) or a dictionary they seem to be pretty good.

Bikes, Again

The more I read about bikes, the more I think I might have to spend £500-600. I think I should stop reading. In fact, I am going to stop, and instead go out for a walk with the wife.

Cycle Routes in Hampshire

Wow. I am surprised to find that Hampshire County Council have a number of cycling leaflets describing routes that actually look like fun. Nothing quite on my doorstep, but a couple (Horndean, Abbotstone Down) might be feasible. I'll let you know, if I ever get round to trying them.

There are other routes available from Hampshire's Countryside, an organisation of which I was not previously aware, and if that isn't enough, there are dozens on this site: http://www.bikely.com/

Update: A few more route collections.

• http://osola.org.uk/rides/
• Bike for all: http://www.bikeforall.net/linkcat.php?cid=75

Sunday Morning Ride

I went for a ride this morning. Not a long one, but the first from home in a very long time. I had a rough idea for a route but I didn't really plan very carefully so the route turned out to be shorter than I'd wanted. Looking at it on Google Maps, it broke down to:

• 2.5 miles from home to the edge of the Hamble in Warsash, 
• About 2 miles north along the eastern bank of the Hamble to Swanwick,
• About 4.5 miles back home, zig-zagging through the estates and dropping in at the Co-op to pick-up extra ingredients (basil and red chilli peppers, strangely) for dinner.

So about nine miles in total, mostly on the road and largely on the flat (although their was a short uphill stretch on the A27). The two miles along the side of the river weren't really challenging (gravelled track and footpath) and, although it was fun, I think next time I will plan a longer route with a larger off-road section.

I did learn some stuff, which I will share even though most of it is blindingly obvious if you stop and think about it.

1. I bought a new pump from Halfords (this one) - it makes quick work of inflating the tyres and the gauge is invaluable; for the first time (probably ever) my tyres were inflated to the correct pressure,
2. A fleece top, which looked like a good idea when I left, was dead weight that sat at the bottom of my rucksack for the entire ride; I won't be taking one next time,
3. Planning is important; a randomly chosen route isn't going to work,
4. Cargo pants are not ideal, especially if they're a bit baggy,

I have also realised that my bike, which is the best part of fifteen years old, really isn't all that good. A quick scout around the online bike stores suggests that I should see quite an improvement for only a couple of hundred quid; anything more than that is probably a waste given how much I ride (not a lot). 

TV

I was never a fan of the West Wing but not because I didn't like it, it was just that it never really featured on my list of things to watch; there isnt' enough time to watch all the good TV, and this was one of the shows that I skipped.

People have told me before that this was a mistake but you know how it is - you miss the first few series of a show and then, somehow, now never seems like the right time to catch up. This morning, I stumbled across this clip (link) and now maybe I think I ought to have found the time. Maybe next year.

Enlightenment? What Enlightenment?

I must now confess that I have this afternoon been somewhat incautious. The DIY went well (remote-controlled spotlights for reading) and the garage is now slightly tidier than it was, but I then wandered like an innocent into the brain-mashing horror of the anti-science brigade, a band of loonies with whom one associates only at great personal risk.

Can it really be that bad, I hear you ask? Yes, I'm afraid it can; have a look (briefly, I would suggest) at some of these sites and wonder that such people can survive in the 21st Century.

• The Flat Earth Society FAQ, 
• Geocentricity for beginners (or idiots): link,
• Religious extremists (not new, but this clear statement of their beliefs is rather chilling): link,
• More Creationist nutjobs: link.

That's definitely enough to be going on with. Let me know what you think.

Does anyone know of an online catalogue of these weird websites?

Spider Oak manages cross-platform syncing - The Inquirer

SPIDER OAK HAS RELEASED a new syncing service for users of cross-platform computers that want to consolidate documents, photos and other types of media.

The sync service allows users of the Mac, Windows and Linux systems to set up an unlimited number of sync routines between two or more locations.

The files are encrypted and stored and the servers provide access to older and even deleted files at any time. µ

via theinquirer.net

Could this be the end of cross-platform syncing issues?

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Excel Array Formulae

Excel has a feature (the Array Formula) for testing multiple conditions before operating on the contents of the cells, rows or columns that meet those conditions. Basically, this technique can be used to, amongst other things, count the number of cells in column D whose corresponding entries in columns B and C satisfy some criteria, which give us, for example:

{=COUNT(IF(($C1=Sheet1!$B$1:$B$10000)*(D$1=Sheet1!$C$1:$C$10000),Sheet1!$D$1:$D$10000,""))}

The formula syntax is relatively straightforward but it here is one way that it can go wrong. If you substitute columns for ranges in the above example you get this:

{=COUNT(IF(($C1=Sheet1!$B:$B)*(D$1=Sheet1!$C:$C),Sheet1!$D:$D,""))}

Shorter and more elegant, but recalculation of this version will take some time. In fact, calculation seems to take, and you’ll appreciate that this is a fairly rough estimate, somewhere in the region of 1,000 times as long. That’s a fairly significant difference and it renders the second version useless. A similar trick with a VLOOKUP expression, changing from:

=VLOOKUP($C4,IRData!$D$6:$AJ$1879,28,FALSE))

to the rather tidier:

=VLOOKUP($C4,IRData!$D:$AJ,28,FALSE))

does not suffer from the same performance problems.

Why would you want your array formulae to work with columns? Future-proofing; ranges have to be adjusted as you add rows to your dataset. For array formulae, however, the cost of this style of future-proofing is too high and we must find other ways to ensure that all data is being correctly processed.

Update: further investigation suggests that columns work acceptably fast in array formulae if you only have a few of them. My application used a couple of thousand and should probably have been re-worked to use a pivot table or some other more sophisticated solution.

Cartoons

New from the Weebl and Bob people: http://www.weebls-stuff.com/onthemoon/On+The+Moon+ep.15/

App Store

One feature I would like to see, either on the App Store itself or on a third-party website, is a listing by review stars on the grounds that well-reviewed and popular applications are worth investigating even when they might be of only occasional use.

Signs at Waterloo

I have noticed that the speed with which platform information for departing trains appears on the overhead signs at Waterloo station has, in the last few months, improved dramatically. It is now quite normal to arrive on the concourse fifteen minutes or more before the train departs and to find that the platfom number is already being displayed.

This is a rare example of improvement on the railway, and I applaud it.

Quote of the Day

An interesting quote from President Obama from Monday (source):

I've said before that one of the great strengths of the United States is, although as I mentioned we have a very large Christian population, we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values.

I wonder if the religious right in America will agree? It seems unlikely.

Mandelson on the Ball

Lord Mandelson demonstrates he is in touch with reality:

We’re standing behind the car industry, but we need to invest in its future not its past and that’s the priority of the government.

Does he not realise that he has missed the opportunity to invest, or do anything else, in the past, by definition of it being "the past"?

Twitter Things

I have decided I like Twitter (link), not least because the community that surrounds it evolves with frightening speed. I use an iGoogle plug-in (TwitterGadget), Twitter itself and Twitterific (iPhone app) to submit updates, as well as a Facebook plugin and a direct link from Plaxo.com. All of these applications/links are free and they represent a very small part of the cloud of services that have sprung up around Twitter. Here are a few others I have noticed:

• TwiDroid - an Android client of some sort,
• TwitPic - a photo handler (Twitter does not directly support images, but it accepts URLs),
• TweetDeck - a desktop client, still in Beta,
• TwitterFeed - no idea,
• Tweetie - an iPhone application for handling multiple accounts,
• TwitterFon - a random mobile client,

And then there are a host of secondary services, of which I was previously only peripherally aware, like TinyURL, that extend the basic user experience. 

All very cool, but does any of it have any practical use? Probably, but at the moment I am just enjoying posting occasional bursts of meaningless rubbish. 

UNHRC Stuff

The Organisation of the Islamic Conference has been trying to pass a resolution through the United Nations that would protect religions, primarily Islam, from insult and defamation. This is clearly ludicrous since it would provide a legal basis for the sponsoring nations to continue to abuse their own people, in direct contravention to the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This story has been knocking around the blogosphre for months, but now, after the resolution was approved by the UN's Human Rights Council, The Economist has picked it up; if we are lucky, there is still time to kill it before it does too much damage.

G20 Protests

Things may have got a little hairy outside the Bank of England today, but a mile to the west it was business as usual (although there were more police around then normal). Aldwych saw not a hint of a soap-dodging anarchist and Waterloo bridge and station were also free of anti-capitalist idiots. All in all, a very quiet day which didn't live up to the hype.