Ashdown-Eyes is a new site featuring photographs taken in the small forest in the south-east of England where I grew up: Ashdown Forest. The photo on the right is the one that caught my eye, but there are many other beautiful shots of plants, sunsets and animals from within the forest.
Check out the site, and provide some feedback for its creator, Gareth Price. Make sure you don’t miss the past photos section which is where I found the amazing fungus photo!
Another lottery at Bayport Alameda; another wasted morning 🙁
There were only four houses on offer this time (the fifth in phase 14 was pre-sold). Turnout seemed to be about the same as for the last couple; much higher than for the first few lotteries though. The process is also becoming much more streamlined now. Arriving at about 8:45am there were only a few people there, but coffee, cookies, cakes and doughnuts ready. Around 9am they open the doors, but only let small numbers of people in (taking names, contact numbers and plan numbers that you are interested in just in case one of the “winners” should drop out later on). Once everybody is processed, they do the lottery out in the main courtyard area now (the first couple were just outside the door of the sales office, on the models side – that area is now too small to hold everybody). The numbers are drawn, and the lucky person/people get to choose the lot that they want from those left in that day’s release, or pass if they do not want any of the remaining plans.
If any of the folks at Warmington Homes are reading, I have a suggestion for how to improve the fairness of the lottery process… Rather than giving everybody just one ticket, they should be given one for the new release plus one for every other release of the same collection that they’ve attended previously. That way those who have been turning up time and time again, but never been drawn, get some credit for their previous attempts. Of course, dropping the whole lottery thing and just selling the houses to people first come, first served would be even better 🙂
Since several people have commented on the master plan, I updated it with the last few releases. I changed the format slightly to make it easier for me to maintain too – the phases that have been sold are now grey, and the models are shaded red. For those not familiar with the master plan, Atlantic Avenue runs along the bottom of the map, with Alameda College on the right, and the former naval air station off to the left. Also, I don’t know the current state of the Landing phases; if anybody reading knows which they’ve sold already, let me know and I’ll update the plan. Click on the thumbnail above to get a larger version.
I’ve also created Bayport category here on my blog for all the Bayport-related posts, and moved all the old posts into that category too.
Finally for this week, I also created charts for the average price of each plan from one phase to the next for each of the collections (except Landing as I have no information for that one). Note that this is not necessarily a fair comparison as the mix of options has changed from one release to the next.
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There is one Harbor phase missing, phase 10, as I cannot find the price sheet for that – if anybody could let me have those prices I will add them in as well.
Update: Thanks to Carl H. I have fixed the price for the plan 6 house in the phase 6 release of the Cove collection that was wrong in my original graph, and also added the prices for phase 10 to the Harbor graph.
I decided not to comment on the political aspects of the latest US Presidential election in my blog, but one thing that has been bugging me for the last few days is the poor quality of the technology that they use to collect and count the votes in what is their most important election.
Firstly, there were all the debates about the lack of a paper trail on the fully electronic machines. I don’t even know why this was a debate. It seems to me to be obvious that a paper receipt should be printed. It is odd that nobody debated this for ATMs or lottery ticket machines, but when it comes to something as important as voting there is a question about the need for a receipt.
Next, a couple of my colleagues voted using the optical scanner machines. They did get a paper receipt, but not one that verified that the machine had read their selections correctly! The California lottery terminals work on a similar scheme (you fill in the circles with a pen and machine ‘sees’ those marks), but the lottery folks felt the need to not only print your selected numbers on the receipt, but also to remind you to check them before leaving the store. Why was this basic step missed from the optical scan voting machines?
Then, today I read an article at Wired about machines in North Carolina losing votes because they could not hold as many votes as the manufacturer (UniLect) claimed. So, why did the machine not stop accepting votes when the limit was reached? My ATM manages to stop trying to hand out cash when it runs out; the same ATM will tell me that it is unable to issue a receipt when it runs out of paper too. How come this basic resource monitoring was not part of the machine’s design? That’s not the end of it though. Why was the machine not tested by the county officials before the election? Surely, testing the maximum number of votes it can hold is one of the acceptance tests?
Don’t get me wrong, I think that fully electronic voting machines are the way forward, but I also recognise that there needs to be a proper audit trail and proper controls over who has access to the machines and the software that they run. A number of web sites (e.g. http://www.thudfactor.com/voterfraud/) have shown how easy it is to rig an election using an electronic machine. What was not stated so clearly was that it is also possible to design one that with appropriate testing, and a proper audit trail, can do the job fairly. Here’s my simple list of requirements:
The advantages of electronic voting are obvious – touch screens that can display information in a number of languages as well as walk the voter through the election one choice at a time, rather than presenting them with a form to fill in, should make it much less likely that the voter will accidentally make the wrong choice. It is up to the software industry to make them demonstrably reliable so that the voters will trust them. Maybe this is one case where importing a machine might be a good idea too (that way the manufacturer will be less likely to have an interest in the result of the elections it will be used it, something that was clearly not the case with at least one US manufacturer).
Comments?
Yet more reasons to switch from Windoze to anything else. The Register is reporting that MessageLabs has intercepted a small number of phishing emails containing a sophisticated new attack that does not require the recipient to click on any links.
The attack exploits another hole in Windoze to install scripts on the box so that the next time the user logs into their online banking the information will be stolen.
Interestingly, there is also a statistic at the end from MessageLabs claiming that they detect between 80 and 100 new phishing web sites every day. I noted last month that I had seen a sudden increase in the number arriving in my inbox; this seems to be another problem that is on the rise. Something needs to happen to improve the security of Windoze, and soon.
On halloween night I was out with my girlfriend’s family (including three young kids) on a trick or treat mission in the Ingleside area of San Francisco. While they collected candy, stickers and even helium-filled balloons, I was snapping shots of the amazing work that some people had put into their halloween decorations. I had not planned on taking the photos, so I had no tripod – just a very steady hand and my trusty Canon S100 digital camera.
The residents of the Ingleside neighbourhood really got into the whole halloween thing; most of the houses had at least some decorations. Many had inflatable decorations and lights everywhere. There was even an animatronic black cat on one (perfectly manicured) lawn. Jack-o-lanterns everywhere of course, and at one house the two-headed owner answered the door to hand out the candy (to those kids brave enough to ask once they saw him!). The house to the left though gets my vote for the overall best decoration (click the photo for a popup larger version).
A week or so back I tried to take a friend and his wife, visiting from the UK, up to Equinox – the rotating restaurant at the Hyatt Regency hotel in San Francisco. We were not actually going to go for dinner, just a dessert in the cocktail area – dinner is way over-priced for the quality of the food on offer, though the view is hard to beat, especially on a clear evening.
It would seem though that the restaurant has been closed to be used as a “Human Resource Control Center” for dealing with the hotel workers strike that was going on in San Francisco at the time. Not sure why they needed to use the rotating restaurant for this, as opposed to a couple of empty rooms, but it sure was annoying!
Good friend Grif sent me a link to a press release at dpreview.com for the new limited edition black version of the Canon Digital Rebel camera. The photo of the camera is actually of the Japanese version, where they’ve always had the choice of a black version. This was one of the things that was putting me off getting the digital rebel, especially when I saw the black version while in Tokyo.
They also have a review of my current favourite choice for my digital SLR (when I finally get around to buying it!), the Canon 20D. This would seem to be the better choice at the moment, although it is quite a lot more expensive so I might change my mind again if the black version of the rebel is available for the same price as the regular version.
The Register is reporting that game makers have been hit with graphics patent violation suit. This one relates to rendering of 3D scenes on a 2D monitor. The patent, 4,734,690, is assigned to Tektronix and was filed in 1987. See also my earlier comments on software patents.