Life

I rather suspect that I was not the one person that James thought would be reading his blog article, but nevertheless I did and with some interest. There are many routes to and indeed through university and it struck me just how different my story is to his.

Sadly this tale takes place before the prevalence of digital photography so it’s a little light on images. In fact it really begins at a time when photography itself was in its infancy, paint was the order of the day.

Never Destined for University

My ancestors didn’t go to university. Most of them barely went to school. They were farm hands and factory workers with the odd miller and dressmaker thrown in just to add spice. In 1944 however there were significant changes to the state education system – changes that meant that both my parents were able to get a far better education that their predecessors.

I was born into what was very definitely a white collar family. I would argue that we were working class – even though my parents made their living with the pen and not the plough we had no central heating, double glazing, car or telephone.

I was a normal child, I loved sport and playing outside, building dens and generally acting like I was a character from a Just William book, or more likely from the Beano. I quickly noticed though that my interest in science and maths was a little more keen than most of the kids around me. The roofs of my dens stayed up and it wasn’t my aerial runway that snapped, dropping Craig derrière-first into some very uncomfortable looking brambles.

In the early 1980s home computing was taking off and my elder brother wanted to be right at the cutting edge. We couldn’t afford that, but we had a steady stream of second hand equipment that he’d push to its absolute limit. I was a bit young for this but I tried to join in, I think I annoyed him quite a bit but these were valuable lessons to me. I learnt to program a computer when I was about 8 years old, about the time I learnt the offside rule.

I found school frustrating. I had trouble concentrating in the classes I wasn’t interested in and trouble coping with how slow the ones I was interested in moved. Nevertheless I did quite well, but I’m sure there were a few teachers tearing their hair out in the full knowledge that if I actually applied myself in their classes I could have done so much better.

I knew what I wanted to be though. I knew at 8 years old that I wanted to be a computer programmer. These were exciting times and the more and more I heard in the media and the more equipment I managed to get on the bench in front of me the more I was sure. Studying history was just not where it was at. Who learned anything from history anyway? Computing, that was where you had to be. Computing was going to be increasingly important in society and it was going to be where I made my career.

There was a problem however. My parents were quite remarkable simply because they had both stayed on at school to get O Levels and not left to find work at 14 (or even 11). A Levels? University? It wasn’t something that was in my culture. Besides, by age 16 I felt that I’d had just about enough of formal education, I felt I was being babied by the system, it was channelling me down a very generic route and actually preventing me from studying the things that would be best for my future.

British Telecom Research Laboratories

Fortunately for me, British Telecom’s world renowned research facility at Martlesham was a comfortable cycle ride from where we lived and at 16 I joined their Trainee Technician Apprentice scheme to train to be an electronic research technician. I never had any intention of actually working as an electronic technician though, by that point it was clear that electronics research in the UK was all but dead. If BT were going to continue with research it was going to be in software, not electronics.

The training group had tried their best to alter the apprenticeship to reflect this, but in reality they hadn’t gone anywhere near far enough.

I was young and rather petulant, the course wasn’t what any of us needed and I was – on reflection – rather obnoxious about this. I almost got fired. Several times. They really weren’t happy with me doing just enough to scrape through the electronics stuff and using the time and facilities to learn more the kind of computing that I thought I was going to need. To them I was pig-headed and insubordinate. To me they were irretrievably mired in the dogma of a dying industry. I was just – but only just – smart enough to toe-the-line enough not to actually get fired, even so I sailed pretty close to the wind a few times. I even wrote a farce called “BT Terminated” which loosely chronicled the battles I had with the Training Division. They found a copy of it and did not see the funny side. I almost got fired for it.
Nevertheless I did actually enjoy my time as an apprentice and the TTA scheme was hugely important to me, a lot of the skills that I still use today were learnt on that programme.

BT’s Operations and Maintenance Centre

I graduated from the training scheme and went into the OMC team. At that time the Operations and Maintenance Centre was a network of computers that controlled the vast majority of telephone exchanges in the UK. This was very different to the systems I’d been working on as a trainee which were generally small experimental developments.

The OMC team wasn’t really my first choice, the problem was that I was very conscious of what the training division thought of me and there was no guarantee of a job at the end of the apprenticeship, so I thought any job in software development was a good outcome.

Unfortunately I walked straight into the same kind of problems that I’d battled throughout my apprenticeship: the OMC used some rather dated technology and methods and wasn’t really compatible with my enthusiasm for being on the front-line of technology.
They viewed me as a having a dangerous obsession with the cutting edge that was putting the UK’s telephony infrastructure at risk and I viewed them as dangerous Luddites whose desperation to cling on to the 1970s, use defunct and irrelevant methodologies and archaic technology was putting the UK’s telephony infrastructure at risk. The truth of course, was somewhere in the middle and if we hadn’t all been quite so pig-headed I think we could have achieved something rather significant.

It was in the OMC team though that I first learnt the realities of trying to build and maintain a large mission critical system that required extraordinary resilience. A lot of the lessons I learnt then are very much still with me today.

I was conscious though that my technical skills were falling behind the curve and that was going to make it difficult for me to find a more suitable position. I needed to get out of there or my career would suffer. Unfortunately at the time the OMC team was deemed to be under-performing which made it very difficult for anyone to transfer out. If I was going to get out, it was almost certainly going to be out of BT.

Then a few things kind of happened at once. Firstly, a new boss arrived – he’d come through the graduate programme which wasn’t unfamiliar to me, I’d worked with graduates during my training programme and these were some of my favourite times, their theories and my practical ability were a good combination in the research environment. We made some pretty remarkable stuff happen.

That did not happen here.

The new boss was a nice guy and he was doing his best, but he was a new graduate trying to deal with an embittered and demotivated team and he wasn’t shining. To me it was really obvious: he had no special ability, no great knowledge of how to develop software that had been imparted to him in the hallowed halls of some arcane seat of learning. He was now just like I was when I was 16, starting out learning his trade, it’s just that he was doing it as a manager not as a technician.

Some time around then, one night in the darkest corner of the dingiest nightclub in town a girl I’d met a few weeks before said something that would change my life forever.

She said “You must meet my friend, I think you’ll like each other”.

Some Kind of Stranger

You know those things that really only ever happen in films? Your eyes meet across a crowded room, you tip your hat, smile and calmly wander over to where she’s stood. Something witty immediately springs into your mind and everyone lives happily ever after. Yeah, it didn’t go anything like that.

I’d never been formally introduced to a girl who I was supposed to like before and it was all a little awkward. We both – almost immediately – pursued relationships with other people. Nevertheless I couldn’t get the girl out of my head so I was glad that we started turning up in the same place a lot of the time. I was more glad that I wasn’t the only one doing it deliberately. With the pressure off we’d chat a lot and, well nobody was surprised when those other relationships didn’t last so long.

One of the first things she told me however is that she was going to University next year. I knew that almost all long distance University relationships fail – and fail quickly. I didn’t want to lose her.

I’d long held the idea that when I was a bit older I’d take what amounted to a career break and go to University. It was a target that I’d chalked onto the wall of things that I’d like to achieve at some unspecified point in the future.

Right now I was going nowhere in my job. I knew that this was the kick up the arse that I actually needed.

I looked at the new boss’s salary and mine. I looked at the progress that I could possibly make in 3 years if I stayed. I did the sums, I calculated the opportunity cost. It was clear that getting a degree for me at that time was a good investment.

At the time the web was taking off and the opportunities for software developers were rapidly increasing. I thought it highly unlikely that I would struggle to find a job even if university didn’t work out. The girl however, she was definitely for keeping.

BT did sponsor people to go university but they only allowed the cream of the crop to apply and not only did I have a the under-performance of the OMC team to contend with but the fact I’d narked off pretty much everyone in my command chain throughout my entire career up to that point.
BT were however offering voluntary redundancy which, if used wisely, might just see someone through 3 years of study.

Suffolk Wildlife Trust

Unfortunately the redundancy scheme was closing and it would leave me with a 9 month gap until until the start of the next academic year. So I took a career break and I actually ended up working for Suffolk Wildlife Trust. They needed IT skills which I could provide, at the same time I was able to get out into the meadows and woodlands of Suffolk as part of their habitat management function. Spending 9 months of my life not chained behind a desk was just the sort of break I needed.

A lot of this work actually meant leading teams of volunteers and this was one of the most valuable experiences of my life. These people wanted to work, but a lot of them – for a variety of reasons – had been tossed onto the scrapheap of life. Many of the people had learning difficulties and this is one of the times I remember my perspective on the world suddenly whirling round to a totally different angle. I had to find a new way to lead because what worked in the lab and on the sports field wasn’t going to work here. I learned compassion, patience, understanding. I learnt to lead by not just giving orders but also by supporting people and enabling them to get the job done. Mostly it was simple things like not sighing when I had to explain for the 19th time that day how to use a brush saw. Seeing someone’s expression turn from sadness to joy just with the simple words “You’re doing a good job!” is a powerful thing indeed.

The skills I learned at SWT have helped me in so many ways in so many different parts of my life I can’t even begin to try to quantify. I was genuinely sad when my time with them came to an end.

Going to University

Hull got short-listed almost by default, it was one of only six universities that offered both the degrees we wanted. Outside of Oxbridge it was the second highest rated. We also both knew people at Hull and it came with good personal recommendations.
It’s worth mentioning that I was 21 at the time which meant that I counted as a mature student and the fact that I didn’t have A levels or equivalent academic qualifications was therefore not an automatic bar to my acceptance onto a course. Having said this I did still have problems getting traction with quite a few places. I realise it was easy to overlook my application, I’d done an apprenticeship in electronics but that probably just meant that I was just really good at soldering. Similarly I’d worked for a software house as a software technician but that could mean that I was just loading copies of Word onto people’s PCs. Hull was one of very few establishments that I believe properly considered the detail of my application rather than simply dismissing it on face value.

I wasn’t exactly the normal first year student. I’d already been through the phase of being young and away from home. I’d also come from an environment where not turning up in the morning because I’d overdone it the night before wasn’t an option. I went out a lot, but I knew when to call it a night. Having said that there are plenty of weekends that I plainly don’t remember.

So in a remarkable turn-up for the books I turned out to be a model student. I’d finally got myself into the environment that I wanted, actually studying the subject I wanted. Sure there were aspects of the course that I didn’t agree with but I’d grown up a lot since leaving BT. Yes I was still annoyed because I believed my time could be better spent in some areas but I’d gained a sense of perspective, the problems really weren’t that bad and the overall result was very much for the better.

At the time the big software corporations hadn’t got involved as much with student activity. There were a few events, notably The British Computer Society Challenge which is the reason you’ll find my name etched into one of the plaques on the wall in the department.
The department itself also ran a number of challenges which I always seemed to manage to unintentionally avoid, usually through strange coincidences such as them happening to book the closing date on the same day as a major music festival.

I had fleeting involvement in Freeside. When it started the main aim was to explore free, open source software and to get such operating systems (not just Linux) running on any hardware it could get its hands on (not just PCs). I would have liked to have spent more time on/in Freeside but it just didn’t happen, by the time I really became aware of it I was moving into my third year and a lot of extra-curricular activity was dropped so I could concentrate on the important things.

I don’t remember much about the third year, I don’t remember a single exam and I only have the vaguest memories of graduation.

Graduate Life

Apart from a brief sortie into the world of database middleware development I stayed in the area of communications and large public safety systems. Something had changed though, I was no longer that petulant child trying to fight against everything I saw as wrong. All that natural drive and energy were now being used in a positive direction, they were making a huge difference in my career and were really helping the businesses that I worked for.

In 2008 however I was ready for a new challenge, something that I knew was going to be different and take me to places I’d not been before. So 8 years after graduating I rejoined the University of Hull, this time not as a student but to lead the development of the Brigid Command and Control system. Seed Software has undergone a few changes since then and my role has changed and developed. Being a student at Hull was the first time I really felt at home with my career in computing. Being there as a leader and a mentor is an immensely fulfilling role and one I hope to be able to continue for some time to come.

If you’re wondering what became of the girl, I saw her recently. She’s doing well, has a very successful career. She lives in a little Georgian Cottage in Suffolk with a small black and white cat and her husband, who just happens to be a certain Computer Programmer.

It’s not a big thing, especially considering all the culinary adventures I’ve had, but up until 7pm this evening at no point in my life had I ever attempted to bake bread. Those two mini-loaves on the right are my first ever attempt and not only do they look like bread they actually taste like bread too!

As a child I was fascinated by how my mother would mix the dough and kneed it. Then the magic started – the dough would rise. Then she’d bake it and we’d have bread. My mother made bread, wonderful smelling soft bread. Most people had to buy bread, but my mother could make it. To my child’s brain that was very impressive.

This probably explains why I’ve been entirely happy to undertake some ludicrously complex and technical culinary challenges but to date not bread baking. I was scared. I was scared that I might not be able to do it and that if it didn’t work it would ruin the memory of that smell. It would ruin part of my childhood.

But it did work, and actually to me it’s quite a big thing.

Like any sane and right minded individual, since a young age a good portion of my Christmas lunch time has been dedicated to avoiding the terror of the Brussels Sprout. Tiny pockets of horrible the little green blighters stalk dinner tables up and down the land at this time of year. Leave just a tiny space on your plate and they mount a full assault, screaming their war cry, “Do you want any sprouts oh go on have one oops that was seven oh well they’re good for you!”

This situation is exacerbated considerably in my case. Living in a rural area has some great advantages, but it has its hazards to. In particular there is the danger of knowing a sprout farmer, which I indeed do. So for me not only is there the danger of copping a sprout grenade at a friend or relative’s house I’ve got two enormous stalks of green ghastliness sat in my pantry staring at me.

A little while ago though a good friend of mine took me aside and whispered in my ear. The trick”, he said, “is to cut them in half and roast them with butter and ginger – lovely!”

I didn’t have any butter but I did have some extra virgin olive oil and some ginger paste, so I put a good glug of oil on a baking tray and mixed in half a teaspoon of ginger paste. After taking the outer leaves off the sprouts I then halved them and put them cut-side-down on the baking tray, threw a pinch of salt over the top and chucked them in the (fan) oven at 180 Celsius for 10 minutes.

As promised they were indeed lovely – the outer leaves a little crispy and slightly sweet and the inner full of ginger-laden flavour.

Like many things the problem with sprouts is not the sprout itself, it’s the fact that many people have no idea how to cook them in a way that I like.

I lost last weekend, although not in a hotel in Amsterdam^[1]
I lost the weekend trying to find out what was wrong with my central heating system. What follows is one of the most bizarre journeys of home maintenance that I’ve ever been on.

It all started when I was woken on Friday by a nasty groinching noise – the sort of groinching nose that an expensive electro-mechanical device makes shortly before it relieves you of the contents of your wallet. Worryingly the only two candidates in the next room were the central heating pump and diverter valve, both of which definitely fall into the category of expensive.

I crossed my fingers that some sort of airlock was responsible so bled the pump and a couple of nearby radiators. Hey presto the system burst back into life so I went back to bed.

On Friday night however, whilst I was cooking, I heard a very similar nasty groinching sound coming from the boiler. My wallet yelped, then ran away and hid. Praying to the gods of home maintenance that I wasn’t going to need to call a plumber I hoped that the boiler was simply resonating a sound that came from somewhere else. Regardless, the system was clearly unhappy so I went upstairs and turned the central heating off, but for some reason I can’t quite fathom left the hot water on.

It’s at this point I need to mention that we have a Y-Plan system – the water that the boiler heats can either be used to heat the hot water tank or the radiators depending on the position of the mid-position (diverter) valve.

What happened next surprised me slightly. The boiler fired up and the pump started running – no nasty sounds. So the problem was clearly not the pump and I started to look very suspiciously at the diverter valve. Motor valves are notorious for failing, jamming and just generally going wrong. So I grabbed the “manual” lever and waggled it about. It moved freely but something else interesting happened – the boiler stayed running no matter whether the diverter valve was sending water to the hot water cylinder or round the central heating circuit.
So I left the valve in the mid-position sending hot water to both circuits and we had heat in the radiators. Until the hot water cylinder got up to temperature, which was rather too soon for my liking.

It’s times like this I’m glad that I have a chunky wood burner.

I had things to do on the Saturday but I did manage to get rather a lot of reading done – service manuals for everything in the system and at the end of it all everything was still as clear as mud. One thing that did occur to me though was to measure the boiler input voltage. When the system thought it was heating hot water – regardless of what it was actually heating – there was a something around 240V at the boiler.
If I switched it to central heating it dropped to 150V. So the nasty groinching sound – the sound like something failing to start was probably not because of a mechanical failure but because of a lack of juice.

I breathed a sigh of relief – the fault was electrical. The only component unique to the central heating circuit was the room thermostat my beady eye of suspicion fell upon it. Basically a thermostat is just a temperature controlled switch so I decided to bypass it, just to test. In theory this was a perfectly valid thing to do – if the central heating worked with the thermostat bypassed it would point very strong indeed at the thermostat being at fault. The problem was that the central heating control circuitry is a mixture of two different manufacturer’s wiring instructions and I misinterpreted. So instead of bypassing the thermostat I actually shorted out the output of the programmer. I had a pretty good idea what I’d done when I flipped the “On” switch and heard the almost instant clank of the trip switch flipping “Off”. I may have sworn. Quite a lot. This is because I’m a trained and apprenticed electronic technician and as such this kind of control circuitry is as much, if not more my domain of expertise as an electrician. So making this sort of cock-up is highly embarrassing. I swore some more, to make sure there was enough swearing to communicate just how annoyed with myself I was.

Then I removed the erroneous link wire and prayed once again to the Gods of home maintenance, hoping this time that my stupid mistake hadn’t fried anything expensive. After checking the circuity and components for any physical signs of damage I crossed my fingers and flipped the switch back on again. Initially I did think I’d got away with it. Nothing fizzed, popped or banged, there were no strange smells and nothing appeared to be getting hotter than it should. Nothing that is apart from the boiler which was merrily heating water and the pump was happily whirring away. This was odd because both the central heating and the hot water were turned off at the time.

At least I knew I didn’t need a plumber. I knew who to call; Ghostbusters.

Now I’ve never been particularly frightened by the paranormal so I thought I’d take this opportunity to do some investigation. If I turned the thermostat up to 30 degrees the boiler stopped. If I turned it down to 10 degrees and the boiler started again – the boiler, pump and thermostat were working perfectly.

The real issue though was that I’d made matters worse. Not only did I have the problem of the nasty groinching sound to solve but my central heating was now being operated from beyond the veil. So I grabbed a plastic colander, put it on my head^[2] and began my journey into the supernatural. I’d recently short-circuited the output of the programmer and now there was a switching malfunction. I had a pretty good idea what the problem was. Inside the Danfoss CP75 programmer are two relays, one for the hot water circuit and one for the heating. With it all safely isolated I popped the case off the central heating relay and found precisely what I expected – a miniature poltergeist with a teeny-tiny arc welder had mischievously welded the contacts together.
The real explanation is a little more mundane – this is not unusual for a relay that had been massively, but only momentarily, overloaded (say by some idiot shorting the output). As the contacts meet the sheer amount of power melts the surface and they weld together. The breaker then cuts out and prevents further damage. If you’re lucky the damage is only superficial and a little tap will break the weld.

I was lucky. What I did notice however was how much crud there was around the contacts. A few minutes with some fine grade wet-and-dry soon had them looking like new.

I put the programmer back and hey presto the system now works perfectly both for hot water and heating. Apparently so much crud had built up on the relay contacts for the central heating circuit that it was no longer making proper contact at all.

A good result in the end. Sure calling a “heating engineer” might have saved me quite a lot of time – someone with experience would probably have identified the programmer much more quickly than me. But then I wouldn’t have got to run around the house with a kitchen utensil on my head singing old Dean Martin tracks^[2]
They’re also unlikely to have identified the output relay directly. Those programmers are no longer made so not only would a “heating engineer” be charging me a premium for a new programmer I’d be facing a substantial bill for wiring it in, too.

[1] If you don’t get the reference search for Lloyd Cole & The Commotions – Lost Weekend
[2] Insert “as is the tradition of my people” or “as my faith demands” as you choose.

There’s almost a throw-away comment in my last article, The Internet and the Office Roof,  “I was prepared”. We all knew about the St Jude storm and we knew fairly well when it was going to hit. But what does “prepared” mean? What did I do and what do I have that made me well prepared?

In many ways that story is far more important than me jumping on and off the office roof trying to find some mobile Internet. There’s some kit I have that’s useful but let’s start here because it’s simpler;

Things I Did Before the Storm

Loose objects outside are problematic. They can get blown around and damage themselves, other things or simply get blown away. So the day before the storm I had a wander around. Bins are a classic problem but ours have a little pen they live in and I thought them safe.

Garden furniture is another problem but ours is folding, so I collapsed it all and weighted it down. It’s quite heavy so in that state I was confident it wouldn’t budge.

I also surveyed the structures around the house – the decking, the fencing, the bin pen, the Wendy house. Were these in good condition? Were there any parts loose or vulnerable that might need fixing down?

I took the time to draw some water into the camping container. Some large scale power outages were possible and there are a lot of electric pumps in the water network. Although we didn’t lose water there were disruptions nearby.

Rechargeable devices are great, but useless if they’re not charged. So the day before the storm I made sure that everything that I use and all out battery packs were on charge well in time for the storm.

I had a good look at the house too – did everything look in good order? Again anything loose or vulnerable could cause big problems. Chimney pots for instance are pretty big and heavy, you don’t want a loose one crashing through your roof.

Things I Have that Might Help

An “A” rated freezer like mine is a far better place to store cold food – even if it’s turned off – than a cool  box. However the greater the thermal mass in the freezer the longer it will remain frozen. If you have a load of cool blocks it’s worth chucking them in the freezer a day or two before the storm (which I did).

I always keep a stock of tinned and packet food in as well because this is the country and things happen. A few days worth of relatively nonperishable food is a good thing to have regardless. I make sure that I always have rice, lentils, dried egg noodles, soy sauce and spices. You can make a stir-fry with all sorts of things, most notable vegetables which you can store for a good period of time without a fridge and you can always make lentil curry.

I have a lot of camping gear – stove, lights etc. I made sure they were all easily accessible. It’s nice to have a kettle rather than just boil water in a saucepan, but it’s by no means essential!

A lot of camping things are battery powered rather than rechargeable so I make sure that I always have a small stock of (the right) batteries.

Three of my favourite (portable) lights are these.

The NightSearcher Trio is available from a number of places. It’s a rechargeable LED torch and it’s exceedingly bright. It has a big handle that’s easy to grab and a flat bottom which means that it can be placed upright – pointed at the ceiling. In that mode it will happily light an average sized room. It claims to work for up to 23 hours. I can’t vouch for that but I can vouch for the fact it lasts many hours indeed.

The Ultrafire Q5 is another torch, but it’s a pencil variety. It can run off its own special battery (expensive) or a pair of AAs. It’s nothing like as bright as the Nightsearcher but is pretty impressive for the size.

A Tilley Lamp – this is a pressurised paraffin lamp so you really need to know what you’re doing to use (and maintain) one of these safely. It throws off a reasonable light and will last several hours on a tank of paraffin (kerosene). Its big advantage is that it also throws off a lot of heat as well so if you’re stuck with neither light nor heat it’s ideal.
The most dangerous thing about these is getting one lit. After that – with reasonable caution – they’re safe to use indoors.

The Powergen is a mobile phone power pack. It’s essentially just a battery with 3 USB ports on it that provide power. It also has a LED torch on it. It’s good for about 4 charges of a modern smartphone.

A corded telephone – when the electricity fails generally a cordless phone base station stops working. The resilience of the UK Telephone network is actually quite good and the chances are that even if the power is out the phone will actually still work – as long as you have a phone that doesn’t need any power other than from the phone line itself. This particular phone lived in a workshop for years, hence the sawdust.

A Nokia 6310i. It’s an old, stupid mobile phone but from a disaster-coping view it stands out in 2 ways.

1. The transmitter and receiver on this model were particularly good.
2. It has a genuine 3 week standby time.

This gives me a pretty good chance of being able to communicate even if everything else goes wrong – and for some time too. Although I still have to sit on the office roof (or walk up the nearby hill) to use it.

Tea Lights – small self-contained candles that apparently can last up to 8 hours. They last 4, but they’re cheap and can be used relatively safely without the need for candle-sticks.

A 12V power pack. These are actually designed to start cars that have a flat battery but they come with a range of accessories, notably torches and car accessory sockets. We have one primarily to keep our smart-phones topped up for a week or so when we’re camping well away from power. There are a lot of things you can run from a car accessory socket. Some power packs even have inverters so you can use normal household appliances with them (although probably not for long).

A battery powered radio – in this case actually a DAB and FM / AM radio. Local radio is often the most reliable source of information when all other forms of communication are failing.

Gin – it’s good for cleaning wounds and in dire circumstances it can be used as fuel. Apparently some people drink it, too.

Work Related Things

Half of your county might be without power but the rest of the world doesn’t stop. You’ve got to try to continue to work as best you can. Naturally I have back-up plans.

My main machine is a high-end laptop with an SSD that I normally use docked. This has two advantages.

1. It’s effectively its own UPS.
2. I’m mobile. I can work anywhere I can put the laptop down without having to move a lot of stuff.

I have a good quality laptop backpack bag. This means I can cycle easily with my laptop – useful if for whatever reason the car in unavailable or, let’s say, the local roads are strewn with broken branches, fallen trees and other debris.

I did consider getting a mobile broadband deal but I end up without Internet / WiFi so infrequently that it just makes no sense. For the amount that I need it I can tether my phone instead.

My parents-in-law are in easy cycling distance and they’re on a different telephone exchange and use a different ISP which means that the chances of the Internet failing in both locations is fairly small. There are also (actually) a few WiFi hotspots in the local town and there’s another town that’s not too far away that has loads.

I have a SIP phone which means that I have a telephone – the same telephone – wherever I can find some Internet with half reasonable bandwidth.