New tech' set-up frustration

The temperature was a comfortable 18C overnight, pleasant for relaxed sleeping. By mid morning under a cloudless sky it was 27C rising to 33C, one of the hottest places in the UK for a change. In the early hours a message from Jasmine stated that she and Louie were boarding a flight arriving at Heathrow around one o'clock, hopefully arriving at Sophia Gardens by coach around half past five. At last, patience rewarded!

Netanyahu has been in talks with Trump in Washington for the past couple of days, promising a cease-fire deal, but announcing nothing in conclusion. Meanwhile people are killed daily at emergency aid points by soldiers and militiamen alleging they are controlling crowds or hunting Hamas fighters, no longer an army but a collection of insurgents. Killings reported seem indiscriminate and far more victims are women and children than can be considered random accidents. Too little is being said by international leaders backing either Israeli or Palestinian sides about this genocidal anarchy, as that would be an admission of inability to influence events or Netanyahu.  

Most Israelis appear to want the war to end and a deal made to return hostages and resume delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza. Apart from the Zionist fanatics who hold the balance of power in the Netanyahu government. Zionist fanatics who hold the balance of power in the government resist decisive action. Is Netanyahu delaying action until the government goes into summer recess, to impose a deal while there's not enough time for the minority to obstruct it? It would be a gamble. It would break the coalition, but any popular surge of support might re-make the coalition with a less extremist balance of power. Meanwhile each day more Gazans die, shot bombed or starved to death, while the world watches unable to intervene without the risk of destabilising the situation further and triggering a third world war.

Irvine Welsh was interviewed on this morning BBC Today programme about his new book, a sequel to his seminal 'Trainspotting' novel of thirty years ago, with the same characters growing older in a radically changing world. He made an incisive comment about the influence of the internet, especially social media and the emergence of AI. Things which may have developed as an information service have concentrated power in the hands of transnational corporations and operate with their own profitable interests in mind. If you search to inform your answer to a question you have in mind, it is more likely to tell you only what's in its interests to tell you, not precisely what you want to know, undermining our ability and desire to think for ourselves. 

Welsh identifies something I have noticed. I know all the information I need about transport timetabling is out there. I can ask a specific question about when the next 61 bus to town arrives at the nearest stop. In some instances Google search will list a few of the nearest match times, in others it will tell me how to search the required timetables, something I already know and can't be bothered with, as it's too fiddly and time consuming. It wants to drive me to one or more websites, or install an app to obtain the information I need. In each case, those devices will most likely pitch me advertisements distracting me from finding out the simple fact I need. It's not in my interests but it generates ad income and information about my search a third party will use to pitch me more ads I don't need to see.

I finally got around to setting up my new Moto G24, an onerous fiddly job. The tricky task of extracting and inserting the SIM and SD cards was relatively easy this time around, but with half a dozen different accounts and apps needing to be signed into and security notifications responded to, plus endless sets of terms and conditions to be agreed to at every move, on top of the hit and miss wholesale transfer of data between phones, it took a couple of hours. Hit and miss, as the process was interrupted by two separate incoming emails. The only annoyance was Google Wallet, insisting that I set up digital payment card details with an immovable demand filling half the screen space. No point in asking Google how to get rid of this. It didn't understand the question. Fitbit behaved itself however, but the Church in Wales lectionary app didn't transfer and had to be reinstalled. Anyway, the morning was over by the time I finished and it was time to cook lunch. Two big hake fillets poached in olive oil and lemon, plus usual veg.

After we'd eaten, I cleared up and had a line of washing to hang in fierce afternoon heat, then another hour completing set-up of  new Dell laptop, with a Microsoft account passkey, recommended these days for enhanced security. I then started unpacking and setting up the Mesh 1200 wireless network extender pack I bought at the same time as the laptop. The instruction leaflet contained no writing at all, just pictures of each stage in the process which took ages to decode without knowledge or accompanying explanation. I attached the hard wired extender unit and got this to attach to the internet, but completely failed with the other two wi-fi extension units. Google's written set-up instructions were plain and straightforward enough but didn't attach to the router or to each other. Most frustrating, contradicting assertions that set-up was a simple straightforward process.

Despite a late departure Jasmine's flight arrived on time. Their coach arrived late, due to Friday rush hour traffic, but also due to city centre road closures for tonight's Stereophonics concert. The bus station was also closed, as I discovered when I arrived more or less on time to meet Jasmine and Louie. Incoming coaches parked in the town-side bus lane at the bottom of Cathedral Road. After a ten minute wait their coach arrived, and they stepped off it looking dazed and drained. The air conditioning on the coach was broken, so the temperature was thirty degrees or more in direct sunlight. We walked back slowly, grateful for the shade of tall trees most of the way. Clare fed them with omelette and chips, and by ten they were ready to start adjusting to the time zone change, catching up on a lost night's sleep. I pottered around with the Mesh set-up for another hour, then called it a day.

Alpine excursion

We had another early start for an excursion to Luzern this morning. Clare decided not to come along, and took herself off across Basel on public transport to visit Colette, a colleague from Geneva days who lives in the southern suburbs. As we drove along the eastern ring road past the vast industrial estate of pharmaceutical factories, I remembered how we'd first driven this way in 1976, with the children in a Citroen Dyane, towards the Gottard pass on our way to a group holiday in Palazzola, Rome. Indeed, we stopped overnight in a small hotel in a village near Luzern, to get some rest, after having driven all day from Bristol. The place names along the route are still familiar to me, as I'd rehearsed the route with a map several times before this first experience of driving on the continent.

We made good time to Luzern and the coaches dropped our party conveniently in the town centre and then went to park elsewhere. Each tour group is allowed to do this, booking a drop off time to suit themselves, and a return pick up time. All is expertly marshalled by a man wearing a Securitas branded luminous vest. I enjoyed an hour of brisk walking around taking photos, before returning early to observe the comings and goings at the coach stop. There seemed to be mostly selfie stick wielding Chinese and Japanese visitors in town at the same time as us. Many of our group were toting cameras or smartphones, but not one had a selfie stick that I noticed. From Luzern, we drove on into the Bernese Oberland,  past Lake Brienz, then turning into an climbing up a valley on a narrow winding road, to Lauterbrunnen. 

There, we boarded a mountain railway train cremaillere, similar in design to the one that ascends from Yverdon les bains to Ste Croix in the Jura. It offers great views of spectacular scenery as we climbed to 2060m to stop off for half an hour at the busy station of Kleine Scheidegg, passing Wengen on the way. The station serves two different railway lines that link the pass with Grindlewald in the valley 1500m below. This is a hub for winter sports, skiing, hiking and mountain climbing, situated at the top of a pass from where the still snow clad slopes of the Jungfrau, Moench and Eiger peaks can be seen towering above. At station level, most of the snow had gone, though only recently, we were told. The higher mountain passes are only now starting to open for the summer season.

After our brief look around and photo opportunity, a different kind of train took us down the eastern side of the pass to Grindlewald, where we were met by our four coaches punctually. From there it was a a two hour return drive past Interlaken, alongside the Thunersee towards Bern, then back to Basel. Despite rush hour traffic, we were back at the ship by six. It can sometimes take an extra hour if there's any  traffic problem.

Then, a final supper, and bag packing, ready for a nine o'clock departure for the Dreieck Flughafen, and our flight back to Heathrow. Four and a half hours in a coach today, and tomorrow another five hours in a coach plus an hour's flight, to get us home. An inevitable surfeit of sitting, I'm afraid, but with delighful memories and photos of all the places we've seen this past week. It will be good to get back to decent speed internet again. Doing anything apart from emailing this week has been a nightmare of delays and dropped links. And this on a new ship. I think the travel industry that caters for 'silver surfers' greatly underestimates their need for connectivity at least as good as at home.

Central Square Redevelopment Progress

I went to St German's to celebrate the 'Class Mass' this morning. Church administrator Angela tripped over her dog, fell downstairs and broke her shoulder yesterday. We prayed for her, aware that she was being operated upon at the same time. Afterwards, it was pleasing to hear reports that the church hall wi-fi network now covers the entire building. That gives me added pleasure.

I walked into town and back, late afternoon, to visit Central Square and take photos of the construction site. It's over a month since my last visit. All the lift shafts have been completed, and most of the steel building framework. The first giant plates of armoured glass that will cover most of the exterior walls of the building are being installed on the facade which faces Cardiff Central Station. Other photos taken  of the site today are here.

A few days ago, I found a video sequence of views of the whole development on the Media Wales website, showing that the site reserved for building a new bus station, will have high rise apartment blocks above it, extending above the current roof-scape of Lower St Mary Street. I'm not sure I liked what I saw, but it will undoubtedly be lucrative, and will result in continuing growth of the city centre population. The sad thing about this is, many of those who become residents, other than those staying in hotels, will be students or people who keep an apartment in town as a secondary residence, and live mainly elsewhere. Not exactly a recipe for building new community.

In the course of my walk down to Central Square, and back through Bute Park, I picked up sixteen items of litter, most on the way in, very few in the park. That's over 140 bottles, cans and paper cups picked up on daily walks since last Wednesday. 

The sun began to set as I walked through Bute Park. I heard more varied birdsong in the woodland stretch along the Taff than I have until now this year, and not surprisingly, with only a fortnight until Spring Equinox.

Old assets, new uses

With a trip to St German's for Mass and Christian Aid Lent lunch at the end of the morning, I woke up thinking about the church hall wi-fi connectivity problem, then went hunting through my stored redundant technology bits and pieces to see what I could find. There were four Powerline adaptor plugs and ethernet cables, plus a box containing a complete wi-fi router, redundant after our broadband upgrade last year. That was about the time when I bought a wi-fi extending Powerline adaptor set, which was incompatible with the slower originals. I had to lay out more than I expected to complete the upgrade, and thus had a spare set working, in any case at a decent speed.

After Mass and lunch, I installed the kit and found that it worked as planned. The spare wi-fi extender that had been bought also connected, enabling the signal to travel to the furthest extent of the long steel and concrete building. This little success brought me no end of good cheer. I hate to see good working kit go to waste. There's still a lot more I wish I could find a use for, however.

On my afternoon walk, to the shops and the post office in two separate outings, I continued my Lenten 'wombling' effort, collecting this time thirty eight separate cans, paper cups, glass and plastic bottles, along my 3 km route. That's an average of a dozen pieces discarded per kilometre, much the same as I estimated yesterday. The number of slim energy drink cans among the detritus is remarkable, some of them tossed in the few days since I last passed by. As these beverages are marketed to sustain people who are being unusually physically active, I wondered if there's a correlation between this and total disregard for one's physical environment. 

As I was entering Tesco's, at Canton Cross, a mum and a granny emerged with a kindergarten age child in a strop, who dashed a small yoghourt drink from her lips, which hit my coat and splashed me with drops. They apologised but the child refused to, and refused defiantly to pick up the carton and take it to a bin two metres away. After I'd passed them I thought too late what I should have said to the child to bring home the fact that this behaviour was unacceptable - all the situation needed was to say "I'll tell your teacher you've been naughty!"

Within ten metres of the store entrance, curiously, there are no fewer than three litter bins, yet one can walk several hundred metres along Cowbridge Road and side streets leading off it, and rarely find a bin. It's no wonder people have got out of the habit of using them.

After supper I went over to St Catherine's Church Hall to collect some church keys I inadvertently left at St John's yesterday. The Parish youth club was in full session, with table football, ping-pong and an assortment of other table games being played, by over a dozen youngsters, and watched over by several parents, plus Fr Phelim. As the hall is a 19th century wooden building, an original temporary mission church in good repair, still finding use in the church grounds. I felt as if I was stepping back in time forty years to my days as a Curate. Even in these days of electronic devices and games, it's great that there's still a social space in which physical playful activities still continue to give pleasure and forge bonds between children that might even last a lifetime.

  

Not Dewi Sant but Ash Wednesday

Today's first assignment was the Eucharist and Ashing ceremony at St Catherine's, with a congregation of eight. Then, after lunch, a visit to Tredegarville School for a simple Ashing ceremony for staff and two hundred children. As today is St David's Day, their morning had been taken up with the traditional school Eisteddfod. I full expected the children to be fidgety and tired with over-excitement, and was amazed at how relaxed, quiet and receptive they were. I explained what we were about to do and then taught them to sing a Kyrie Eleison I learned half a lifetime ago from the Taize repertoire. Once they'd mastered it, they continued to sing throughout the procession of children to the front to receive their black smudge on the forehead. This was quite difficult to achieve with perfection, as some moved as I was taking aim. 

With prayers, it was all over in twenty five minutes. The look on children's faces as they came up to receive, some smiling, some serious, some looking a little lost in the moment, was just wonderful to behold. I would like to have spent time just looking into each child's eyes a little longer than the few seconds each took, as is possible when I meet children at the altar rail to be blessed during Mass. For me, this deepens the sense of awe and wonder at the heart of the sacramental mystery, seeing them so caught up in the experience of Christ's presence in worship.

Before returning home to finalise a sermon for the evening Mass, I spent a while in the church hall trying workarounds to the problem of poor wi-fi connectivity in the building. A wi-fi range extender purchased has not delivered expected results. The fault is not in the device but in the location of the wireless router, in an office under the stairs near the entrance. There building has a steel frame and reinforced concrete walls, making it just about impossible for router and extender to handshake, except when plugged in at a socket in the lobby, ten metres away. The extender's signal cannot penetrate the length of the hall and backstage as the only power socket is located next to a steel and concrete pillar which masks the signal or deflects it in the wrong direction. 

A powerline network setup with wi-fi extender would do the job nicely, if only there was a free wall socket in office under the stairs. The answer may well be to relocate the incoming phone socket, in the main hall, along with the wireless router itself. This made me envious of the solution adopted by some Spanish telecom internet service providers, of having phone and broadband delivered wirelessly into properties to domestic handsets and routers through a domestic transponder which captures signals broadcast from an 4G cell tower transmitter or a satellite antenna in the vicinity. This is occasionally subject to outages due to electric storms or really excessive traffic, as when there's a key football match or major emergency, and everyone is attached or trying to attach to the network at the same time, but normally, its fast, stable and effective.

There were twenty of us for the Solemn Mass and Ashing ceremony at St German's in the evening. For the second night running, everyone sat in the chancel and enjoyed the acoustical pleasure of singing parts of the service unaccompanied. Each Lent these days, I attempt to do something that requires me to be creative and learn something new and not just fall back on twenty odd years worth of material stored in my liturgy and preaching digital archive. This year, I'm going to highlight the different Psalms which are set for use in the Sunday Eucharistic lectionary, as so often these are sung or said with hardly a reference to them, when there's so much to be said about the rest of the readings. 

Tonight, it was Psalm 51, which has contributed phrases to so many expressions of penitence in Anglican forms of worship, and the daily offices. The biblical texts is annotated with a reference to origin as a prayer of king David occasioned by the unmasking of his adulterous relationship with Bathsheba and his deadly effort to cover up his mortal sin. So often the prophets denounced Israel as an 'adulterous nation', as people's dalliance with the worship of foreign gods was considered in much the same terms, as being a breach of their covenant with God. Plenty of food for thought here.

I also wondered if there was some different effort I could make that wasn't just the usual routine of fasting, prayer and alms-giving, but which would push me into being more aware, more responsible. Often when I'm out walking I start feeling angry toward people who not only wander the streets at night drinking from bottles, but leave them dumped if not smashed in places where this could harm others, and leave the place looking ugly and uncared for. Often after football training or matches on pitches in Llandaff or Pontcanna Fields the grass is littered with discarded bottles and cans. Not all team coaches and supporters seem to be bothered about cleaning up after them. Occasionally I have collected a plastic shopping bag of stuff to carry to the nearby bins. 

It's immature and irresponsible behaviour, but impossible to police. So, instead of moaning and being resentful, I have resolved for Lent to make it my business to keep a bag in my pocket and pick up cans, bottles, takeaway cartons and the suchlike whenever I am walking anywhere. Having decided this at the Eucharist in St Catherine's this morning, I started on my way home, and collected seven pieces in just over half a mile. Some had been stuffed into boundary hedges, others balanced on garden walls, on waste bins, or ledges from which they could fall and smash. Two bottles that were parked on the street outside of Poncanna's gated St Winifrid's apartments lay there undisturbed since I walked to church on Sunday morning. Residents drive in and out seemingly oblivious of the squalor. 

Council auto-sweepers drive by occasionally, but they only do streets and gutters. Trash dumped out of reach seems to be nobody's concern. Well, if I can see it, I can do something about it, can't I? I don't have the energy to exhort others, start a civic awareness trend or a political campaign to extend community service payback schemes for delinquents to every city neighbourhood, but I can pick up what I notice, if I bother to make the effort this Lent. It is a bit of a penance, but it might help make me feel less ashamed about living in such a slovenly society.

   

Settling in

First, time to get acquainted with the chaplain's office again. A new HP Windows 10 computer, set up with an old school user interface. Getting started with wi-fi on my various devices proved to be a nightmare case of deja-vu. The 20 digit password seemed familiar from last time. My Blackberry just remembered it, the Samsung phone I was using here last time had amnesia. The Nexus wasn't with me last time, so it had to be entered manually, but wouldn't take. Eventually I came across an information page about office passwords, which showed that the 'O' was really a zero. I had quite forgotten this annoying little tripwire. The lettering on the underside of the Thomson router is so small it's impossible to distinguish between an 'O' and a zero. Fancy me forgetting! Will I remember next time? 

Getting the Chromebook online, once I'd realised the problem, was quick and simple. I could then continue with the sermon preparation I began a couple of days ago. The completed file transferred to the Windows 10 machine for printing, but the Epson SX130 printer didn't work, complaining of both paper jam and ink cartridges either empty or not authenticated. Thankfully, Paul agreed to print the file for me for Vinaros, also Jenny for L'Ampolla, so I dind't need to go out in the extreme heat of day and hunt for a print shop, even before I'd done my weekend shopping.

Eventually, however, I did walk just up the road to the Spar convenience store, to get fruit and veg and a few other things, to allow me to make a meal that would do for Saturday and Sunday, thus avoiding the task of cooking Sunday lunch as soon as I returned from taking services. I really feel I have arrived when I sit down to a proper cooked meal that I've made in a new place.

Early evening I walked into the town along the coast path and the promenade, all the way down to the port before turning around. I was saddened to see the closed and still empty shop which had housed the chaplaincy's drop-in and worship centre. It had become no longer affordable, as custom for the shop dropped. Truth to tell, over the past few years, many first generation British settlers in this part of the world have slowly returned home, to be supplanted by French people, always high in the visitor demographic, but more now perhaps wanting to settle? Nothing stays the same for long. It's far too early to tell what impact the brexit result will have on UK expatriate communities. Tomorrow there's a Bishops' letter to be read out concerning the crisis.

After supper, it was time to get to grips with the telly, and the Skybox providing UK programmes. So many remote control devices to juggle with. There was another two hour Swedish crime drama on BBC Four, about a medical hypnotist working with the police on solving a crime. Interesting, if wee bit far fetched.

    

Back to base and digital divisions again

Time to go home, so we were up early, gathering our goods and chattels, loading them into the car. We were on our way by nine thirty, stopped at Pont Abraham services by eleven and home in Cardiff by one. 

Apart from dealing with the relatively small pile of mail and doing the food shopping, my major task was sorting and uploading photographs, and preparing a sermon for tomorrow. Our accommodation was a little cramped for two of us, let alone when Owain camped on the floor, but so well situated. I look at my pictures and am reminded just how beautiful and photogenic the West Wales coastline is. No wonder the visitors come here from all over Europe as well as Britain. But best of all is the gentle way of life, the warmth of hospitality and the food, whether you buy things to cook or go out for a meal. And there's ten years worth of holiday exploration of the region's history to prevent you getting bored, whatever the weather.

The only thing that marred the experience from my point of view was poor digital network connectivity, whether by mobile or wi-fi throughout the area. The infrastructure is not fit for purpose, given the large number of visitors that can be predicted to arrive annually. This is damaging for the tourism economy and damaging for all those who live permanently in far flung places and are expected to be there to welcome visitors. What rural Wales offers to wider society is hugely valuable in terms of health and welfare, giving people a respite from the pressures of work and urban living. Yet investment in the improvement of connectivity to rural areas comes late to government priorities. I'm talking here, not about high speed broadband to direct home deliver entertainment packages, but about reliable basic services, email and text messages, delivered as consistently as BBC Radio Four is to most remote areas. 

That identifies the problem in a way. BBC broadcasting sets very high standards of availability all over the country. That's a benchmark for mobile phone signals, and internet access by whatever means. It is possible to get on line in most places, but in some, local server capacity is so inadequate to cope with the fluctuations of demand by increased numbers that every service user is affected.

I'll never forget being able to upload photos via a BT Openzone wifi connection faster than at home on one day, then on another, not even being able to get recognition of the same memorised password to permit access to the same service. That tends to be an indication of overwhelming demand, but it was also true of Ceredigion Council's public wi-fi network access when I tried to use it in Aberteifi's library the week before last.

Sure, people learn to live with these frustrations, but the persistent failure to keep up with the rising demand is a symptom of the gulf between all consuming big city demands and the rest. Escaping from the city to the country is what a large proportion of citizens want to do when they can, but like me, they bring with them expectations about being able to stay in touch with people elsewhere that govern their attitudes and actions. 

If you can get a phone signal on top of Everest and in many parts of the Swiss Alps, why can't you get one right along the Welsh coast path, in places where not being able to call for help could be a serious risk to life? Wake up WAG and Whitehall.