One of my pet hates about the tech industry is the constant pressure to upgrade – perfectly good equipment is thrown away, because it is no longer powerful enough to run the latest software. The human cost of this is IT’s guiltiest secret.

One of the attractions of open-source software is that its developers usually go to great lengths to support older hardware. I have a little Asus Eee PC, bought 4 or 5 years ago, which I use when I travel. It’s a great little piece of kit, and so I had no hesitation about upgrading it to the latest version of Ubuntu this morning. However, the install failed almost immediately:

This kernel requires the following features not present on the CPU: pae

A bit of googling showed that the Ubuntu developers decided to remove support for ‘obsolete hardware’ in this latest release. Thanks guys – I expect that from Microsoft, not from you.

However, further googling showed that another developer decided to create a version that put the support back in again. I downloaded this, and my Eee is now happily running Ubuntu 12.04.

Now that’s the real power of open-source.

We called in to have a look round the Hydroponicum at Achiltibuie. Hydroponics is a method for growing plants without soil and with a carefully controlled water supply, which I’d always associated with growing crops in greenhouses in desert areas like the Negev. Achiltibuie is a village in the remote north west of Scotland, an area not exactly known for a shortage of rainfall. So it seemed an odd sort of thing to be doing.

The site is based round two large polytunnels. The staff told us they are off-mains, so they have solar panels, a wind turbine, rainwater capture, etc. In one section of the polytunnels they have a series of conventional raised beds, doing all the things you would expect – farm yard manure, no insecticides, beer traps for slugs, etc. Nothing there to upset the Soil Association.

However, the hydroponic section looked to be the opposite of organic. Plants are grown in inert materials, with wicks dipping into a trough which is flushed periodically with a nutrient solution. This nutrient is bought in by the sackful from a factory miles away.

There is no dispute that the plants do thrive – the Hydroponicum supplies the local catering trade with salad leaves, strawberries, etc. – but it does beg the question why? Why go to all this trouble to rely completely on importing artificial fertilizers when there is plenty of organic materials available on the doorstep? Why not just grow everything in more raised beds?

If hydroponics is the answer, we’re still trying to work out what the question was…

I was rounding up recalcitrant voters last Thursday evening. Just after 9pm I knocked on one lady’s door. She admitted she hadn’t voted:

Oh, Tim Farron‘s so popular here, the LibDems always get in

She must have seen the look of pure horror on my face, for she then apologised and said she’d nip down to the polling station. How many elections have been narrowly lost through complacent supporters?

However, I must admit that she did have a point. A core tenet of LibDem community politics is that votes have to be earned – deal successfully with dog dirt on your local streets today, and the voters may trust you with the keys to Trident tomorrow. A completely unexpected death of a local councillor, a by-election called at short notice, a hectic election campaign … it doesn’t give much time to establish personal credibility with the voters. So I have no illusions to whom I owe my new seat on Cumbria County Council: an energetic, able, and popular MP, and the hardworking community politicians surrounding him.

I was out canvassing last night. I’d had a pleasant chat on the doorstep with a woman, and she invited her husband to join the conversation. A grumpy voice from inside the house retorted: “I don’t talk to politicians”.

Now, this was a bit of a shock. I’ve aspired to a number of careers in my life (I now usually give my occupation as “retired chartered engineer”). But I’ve never gone to bed at night dreaming that one day I would wake up as a “politician”. So, does running for county councillor mean that I have joined the much-abused profession of politician?

My OED says:

politician noun a person who is professionally involved in politics, especially as a holder of or candidate for an elected office.

‘Professionally involved’ is interesting: I hope that my work for Kendal Town Council has been ‘professional’ in its quality; however, as a part time activity without remuneration, it can hardly be called a ‘profession’. English is full of ambiguities.

What is disappointing I suppose is my reluctance to accept the label of ‘politician’, which says much about the regard in which ‘politicians’ are allegedly held. Yet our local MP, Tim Farron, clearly a politician, is held in considerable respect locally. Wouldn’t it be a better world if ‘politician’ was a term people aspired to, rather than being a brush no-one wants to be tarred with?

I must be missing something in the row over the taxation of charitable donations.

• If I’m an ordinary tax payer and I give £10 to charity, then the government boosts my donation by giving the charity £2.50 (notionally the tax I paid when I earned the £10).
• If I’m fortunate enough to earn enough to pay tax at a higher rate, then the government boosts my donation by the same £2.50, but then gives me £2.50 back to do with what I like. Why?
• and if I earn even more and pay tax at 50%, then I would get £3.75 back. Again, why?

One solution to the current political row would be to give this extra £2.50/£3.75 directly to the charities concerned. Bodies such as the Charities Aid Foundation could be authorised to handle the administration, which would also solve any privacy issues.

This would answer the complaint that somehow the government is robbing charities. Or am I missing something?

I first started blogging on Blogger many years ago. Once I was convinced blogging was here to stay, I set up my own blogging service on a computer under the stairs at home (literally) using WordPress software. After four years of that, I decided I didn’t really want to be in the web hosting business, and moved the blog to a virtual server. Now, in a further retreat from geekiness, I’ve decided I don’t really want to be in the software maintenance business either, and have moved the lot to WordPress.com. Someone else has the hassle of making sure all the latest security fixes etc are installed, and it’s actually a lot cheaper. So it’s altogether a better deal.

Or maybe I’m just getting old

I have on my bookshelves a copy of The Limits to Growth, dated May 1972. As the publisher’s blurb on the back puts it, the authors

“conclude that, even under the most optimistic assumptions about advances in technology, the world cannot support present rates of economic and population growth for more than a few decades from now”.

A lot has changed in 30 years: the computer models used in the book seem amazingly primitive now, with graphs printed out on line printers and the dots joined up by hand.

30 years is also a long enough period to see if the model has proved accurate so far. A report reviewed in this month’s Smithsonian Magazine concludes that it has. This is worrying, as the model went on to predict the catastrophic collapse of – well, civilisation -  from the middle of this century. The model also showed that even after making wildly optimistic assumptions regarding technological progress, agricultural productivity, birth control, etc., collapse was still inevitable.

Opponents of the limits to growth approach argue that the predictions of the model so far are only extrapolating historical trends, and the real test of the model will be if the various tipping points it predicts actually materialise in practice.

Unfortunately, once you’ve started falling off a cliff, it’s a bit difficult to turn around in mid air.

 

So, the 100 mile quiche is out of the oven, and all I have to do now is transport it safely down to Kendal Town Hall for the SLACtt 100 mile meal and AGM tonight.

Three disappointments en route:

• The front of the label on the Richard Woodall “Handcured to a Cumbrian recipe and then air dried” bacon says that the company is based in Waberthwaite in Cumbria. This is indeed the case – we drove past it last Friday en route to the World Owl Trust.  However, reading the small print on the back reveals that the bacon is “Made under licence at … Sherburn in Elmet” – which is not only not in Cumbria; it isn’t even on the same side of the Pennines. And as we know, when God created heaven and earth, he also created Lancastrians and Yorkshire folks, and judged it prudent to construct a great range of hills between them, and who are we to question His wisdom?
• This made me suspicious, so I then looked at the Windermere eggs. All Class A eggs have a producer stamp on them to identify the farm they come from. Now I may be being thick, but I cannot find anywhere on the net where Jane Public can type in a code and find out the name and address of the farm. So what use is the wretched code?
• Now thoroughly suspicious, I had a look at the foil cap on the organic milk left on our doorstep by the milkman. It too has a producer stamp, but of course it’s so poorly embossed you can’t actually read it, even with a microscope.

However, even with these caveats, it looks from this Google map that all the ingredients are still legitimate. I will try not to let my suspicious nature interfere with my enjoyment of the quiche

The quest for the 100 mile quiche begins.

So, having sorted out a recipe for a quiche lorraine, (hmm, maybe need a bit of rebranding there – quiche lunesdale?), it’s off to town to hunt for the necessary locally sourced ingredients.

So,I proudly present:

Bacon Waberthwaite Flour Penrith Eggs Windermere Cream Holmfirth Butter Longridge Cheese Appleby Milk Milkman

The good news is that I found it all (except the milk) in the one town centre supermarket – Booths. They do claim to support slow food, so give credit where credit is due (maybe I should repeat the exercise in Asda or Morissons?).

The not so good news is that it isn’t always easy to find the actual origin of (e.g.) “British bacon”, and with the exception of the cream and (possibly) the eggs, none of these would be our normal choice for everyday shopping.

Congratulations on SLACCtt with coming up with this event – it may change our shopping habits!

Just had a quick check in the larder and fridge to see how many of our stock ingredients could go into a 100 mile quiche:

Plain flour Berkshire Lard Holland (!) Stork marge Heaven knows – Holland? Eggs 1UK21450 – Wigan, Lancs Onions “Lancashire” Butter Aberystwyth

So the only ingredients there that would be acceptable are (possibly) the onions. This isn’t going to be easy … looks like a trip to the shops tomorrow.

The invitation from SLACCtt sounds simple enough:

SLACCtt AGM & 100 mile meal
Thursday 8th March 6.30pm, Georgian Room, Kendal Town Hall. All welcome, bring a dish to share of food sourced from within 100 miles of Kendal. Short AGM to follow.

The interesting part is the 100 mile challenge.

100 miles radius of Kendal takes in large chunks of beautiful countryside, and even at this time of year (the worst!) there’s plenty of lamb, poultry, game, bacon, seafood, dairy produce… but producing a balanced meal may be a challenge. Pasta and curries are off the menu seasonal veg are not terribly inspiring, and local potatoes are past their best?

Best idea so far is a quiche, which leaves the question of local flour – there is a mill in Penrith, but I wonder can I find their flour in Kendal? and I do like a sprinkling of nutmeg in quiches – where on earth does nutmeg grow?

We’ve just received our annual bill from United Utilities. Reading the small print, the bill tells me we pay them for supplying our drinking water, taking away dirty water through our connection to the public sewer, and for taking away the rainwater which falls on our property and drains into the public sewer. This is all well and good, except none of the rainwater goes into the public sewer – it all goes into two soakaways, which we paid a local builder to dig out last month (the old ones were no longer working after nearly 100 years’ service…).

There is a helpful page on UU’s website which tells cusyomers how to claim exemption from paying the surface water drainage charge. Reading the small print, I came across this extraordinary exception:

You are not entitled to a reduction if:

• You have re-directed your roof drainage into water butts.

As good green gardeners, we do exactly this – we have a 75 gallon butt at the back of the house, and a 50 gallon one at the front. We use them to water the garden – so none of the water ends up in the public sewer. Yet for some reason a company which on the one hand constantly urges its customers to reduce water consumption, on the other hand sees fit to penalise them for doing exactly that. Can someone please explain the logic here?

As expected, my first attempt at a Family Tree for Star/Open/LibreOffice has resulted in some useful feedback (thank you), so here is a new version of the chart (and I suspect it may not be the last revision…).

When a 16 year old German started work on a word processor in 1984, I bet he had little idea of the software dynasty he was founding. At one stage there were at least six distinct descendants, all claiming to offer something special to computer users looking for an alternative to Microsoft’s Office software.

For those interested in such matters, I’m proposing this little genealogical chart of the family. Any comments, corrections, etc will be gratefully acknowledged!