COMPUTERS, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

[PanBiker]

Indeed they normally do but I don't want to be tied to the centre everyday. I have no problem as long as I have a definite date.

[Stanley]

I'm glad I am not dealing with them..... Best of British Ian!

[PanBiker]

It would help if they used only one method of text communication. On the one hand I get an email asking for information which I reply to. Almost at the same time I get another email asking me to visit the business dashboard on the internet as they need further information! I have notified them on both pointing out that I have already sent the request. Seems like one doesn't update the other. All done on the same reference number so with a bit of luck they wont instigate two separate O R engineer tickets. Not my problem if they do it's their system that duplicates all the requests.

I am squeaky clean on this one, I have done it all by the book and done all the tests asked of me and reported the results, twice!

[Tizer]

It's a sad tale Ian and I hope they sort it soon for you. Unfortunately our service companies seem to be somewhat under-performing these days!

Stanley, I got a 67MB Ubuntu base update this morning. Did you get it and if so has it corrected your gthumb problem?

[Stanley]

Yes Peter I got it and the others that followed and that did occur to me but at the moment I have no need for it and other fish to fry.....

[PanBiker]

Talk Talk have gone very quiet, no reply yet to the engineer request on either channel.

[Tizer]

Yes Peter I got it and the others that followed and that did occur to me but at the moment I have no need for it and other fish to fry.....

When you've fried your other fish and want to use it again let me know via this thread. I've got a couple of things for you to try that might eliminate the problem. They're simple and won't take much time. They've caused the same problem for a couple of other people.

[Stanley]

Thanks Peter I will, a bit of help is worth a lot of pity as they say.....

[PanBiker]

I have given Talk Talk a nudge on our Business Broadband dashboard messaging, still no response. It's still marked as an open repair ticket with a note for customer response which I have done twice now. I will be asking for a refund when it's sorted for loss of service.

[Stanley]

It sounds like terrible service Ian......

[Tizer]

Thanks Peter I will, a bit of help is worth a lot of pity as they say.....

I realised that in the meantime I would probably forget what I wanted to tell you about gThumb so I decided to write some notes. Having done that it seemed just as easy to make them into a post and leave it there for when you feel like tackling the problem. They are simple and don't require any fancy IT jiggery-pokery!...

Below are solutions that two people have found when they encountered the same problem as you. These are all I could find on Google and Ubuntu Forums searches. Most of the search results refer to several years ago with different problems and older versions of gThumb.

1. A problem was caused due to an external drive not being unmounted before removal from the PC. This could be a USB stick, external HDD, phone, camera etc. Before disconnecting, these drives should always be unmounted - right click on the icon, then select and click `Unmount' or `Safely Remove From Drive', whichever is offered. This person's problem with gThumb turned out to be due to a drive being seen by Ubuntu as still being mounted even though he had disconnected it.

To check for this, open your File Manager and look in its L.H. side window to see if anything is still listed there, such as the drive types mentioned above. If one is listed then right click on the entry and select Unmount.

2. A second problem like yours was traced to a large corrupted JPG file. The man had tried other things with no success and in desperation he moved his main photos folder to within a different folder. gThumb then opened as normal. He moved it back to the original location and the problem returned. Then he moved sub-folders individually, and finally the files, until he found the one that stopped gThumb working. After deleting the file all was well.

If you know which was the last folder you had open when you closed gThumb before the problem arose you might be able to try a shortcut by temporarily moving or renaming that folder so gThumb won't `see' it.

[Stanley]

Thanks Peter, I've printed it and shoved it in the drawer where I put such reminders.

[PanBiker]

I poked Talk Talk yesterday and got a confirmation of an Open Reach engineer for today for our loss of internet at Bosom Friends Centre. 8am to 1pm rtoday so I was up at 7.15am and round at the centre at 07.55. I took some milk with me so I could make myself a brew. Jamie from Open Reach phoned my mobile at 9.15 he was just setting off from his last job at Gisburn, he got to me at 9.30.

I showed him where the master socket was and he tested the line which was solid back to the exchange. That basically put the fault either in the cabinet which for Green Street is the one outside the Police Station. I always thought it would be the same one as ours on the Croft which is at the bottom of Park Road but not so. Jamie said the Police Station cabinet is a vectoring cabinet which basically means that any changes made take about 5 minutes to update on the network. Unlike the other Fibre cabinets which update almost instantly. He said he would check the cabinet first as it was not uncommon to have reversed connections which would stop the router from syncing with the exchange. Our new router has a single LED which flashes amber under a fault condition and during syncing and becomes steady white when the connection is stable. He asked me to watch to see if the router came online and off he went to check the cabinet.

He rang me 20 minutes later to say that he had indeed found that our line was reversed when the cabinet was re-commissioned during the recent Fibre to Pole roll out. Router was still off line though! He came back round to have a look and retested the line still OK. He said that now it could only be a faulty fibre port but to fix that he would have to ring the guys who control the infrastructure, in India! He said this usually involved about 15 minutes of negotiation to justify the request with the guys out there. Once done and reconnected to new ports it could take up to half an hour for the changes to update across the network. With my CISCO hat on this will be the backbone routing tables updating to incorporate the new port definitions. I was a bit taken aback by this in that the entire infrastructure of the Open Reach network in the UK is actually controlled off shore by a foreign power. Apparently it is cheaper to do it this way, he agreed with me though that it's not the best arrangement and leaves the entire network under foreign control.

Anyway new fibre ports granted, reconfigured at the exchange and we still have no lock. We opted for a complete hardware reset on the router which was still running on defaults anyway. Five minutes later after the reset it finally came online. Steady white LED and reporting 51Mbps at the router. This may well stabilise faster over the next few days as the connection settles down.

He got a call from his boss to say that one of the other engineers had run out of diesel and he was waiting for the AA for tow to a filling station. He had inherited his job list! Job done Jamie got on his way and It only took me about 5 minutes to rename the SSID for the WiFi to what we have notices for and set the password accordingly. The router is upstairs and the WiFi is OK downstairs but I reconnected the two WiFi extenders that we have just to boost it a bit more for the full length of the room.

Thought I had done for the day until I got home and found the site down.

[Stanley]

Ian, I share your shock that our BT broadband network is ultimately controlled from India. Is this the ultimate goal of outsourcers, to make us dependent on other countries as has happened with Brexit?

[Tizer]

Unfortunately it doesn't surprise me. Many of our systems now, at some point or other, are in the hands of foreign nations. We've been quietly handing over control behind the scenes.

[PanBiker]

I related the story to Jamie of when I worked at Thomas Whittam Sixth Form in Burnley. The IT servicing contract was outsourced and the help desk where all faults had to be reported was in the USA. I was in the front office doing all the jobs the managed service didn't cover (39 actually) one of which was the job of reporting IT faults to the help desk. I had a special bat phone button set up on my Cisco phone on the desk. My former technician who had been re-employed under the BSF scheme with the IT support firm sat in an office upstairs no more than 50 yards away from me.

It worked like this, fault is discovered in some piece of IT kit. Teacher has to find time to relate problem to me. I get straight on the bat phone to the guys in Seattle where it is the middle of the night for them. I report fault as related to me. Five or ten minutes later the IT guys in the office upstairs get a text on their mobiles and a confirmation email with the job reference. They also get a 15 minute clock running for completion of the work regardless of complexity or requirement! The IT management company maintained a productivity file on their employees based on target attainment. Guess what, it didn't work. The delays in shoving messages backwards and forwards across the Atlantic sometimes meant that planned lessons failed because of faulty kit.

To give the lads a chance I used to ring them and give them the drop on the job before I rang the support desk. Quite often with this tweak, jobs were sorted before they had a ticket number!

My line manager, found out and I got hauled in and given a verbal warning not to buck the system despite the modification being beneficial to the college. She was upset because she hadn't thought of it and sent out a dictate! God forbid a pleb like me using initiative, second nature to me as my previous roles were as Network Manager. Nowt as queer as folk, anyway the former Bursor, School Manager elevated herself to Principal of the college and then it shut down, it's still shut.

[Tripps]

Many of our systems now, at some point or other, are in the hands of foreign nations. We've been quietly handing over control behind the scenes.

And in full view as well in some instances. Look at this. Stanlow Refinery

Assets like this should not be allowed to be in the hands of such people. Steady Tripps - you'll be voting Labour next.

[Stanley]

All these things come under the heading of 'commanding heights of the economy' and regardless of who issued the warning, surely it is good advice?
Ian, your experience at the college is all par for the course when you get into the field of academia. David Moore once told me that the most common trait amongst higher level management in education was that they wouldn't support or encourage initiative in the lower orders because they were defensive about their own positions and as soon as an underling had an insight that others had missed they were dangerous.

[Tizer]

These researchers have also tested Samsung Pay and Mastercard but found they could not be exploited in this way...
`Researchers find Apple Pay, Visa contactless hack' LINK

[Stanley]

My understanding is that that is only if an app is used on a phone and presumably wouldn't work on the card itself?
Seems like a high risk to take for convenience. Presumably swiping the card would do just as well?

[Tizer]

It seems to be all about tricking the iPhone.

This is what we should be doing in the UK. We've got the brains, we just need to keep the funding going...
`British firm claims quantum-computing breakthrough' LINK

[Stanley]

I agree Peter and the cost of getting such potentially high returns is peanuts relatively speaking.
We have forgotten how to work in fields or drive HGVs and only really understand jobs where you can sit in a warm room so this is right up our street!

[plaques]

Deep Mind and NHS data,
Both Mrs P and myself have Patient access on the computer. Mrs P some time ago put the NHS App (the one for venue Passports) on her phone. minimal data input, NHS number etc: Got the QR code plus access to all her medical records. Badgered into doing the same on my phone some months later. Started off with the same bumf then wanted extra NHS data or other options including driving licence photo. Buggered about taking a photo of the licence and posted it on. Then pops up 'we want a video of you speaking some numbers so as to compare with your photo' At which point the phone nearly finished up in the bin. I believe in security but to get this App you now need a PhD in mobile phones.

[Big Kev]

I went through the same process to get the NHS app, I needed the Covid vaccine 'passport' for a holiday in February next year (can't beat being prepared). I've binned off the Patient Access app now I know I can order repeat prescriptions from the NHS app.

[Stanley]

Mark Zuckerberg has apologised for the outage yesterday. He says the cause was a mistake made in configuring the routers used to manage interactions between the services.