A Daisy Chart
I think it’s about time, that I put a proper Daisy Chart in this blog.
A Daisy Chart
If you’d like to play there is a free shareware version of Daisy available from this page.
The chart shown is a typical Daisy Chart, showing a Date and Time Analysis, where a Date field is mapped by Day of the Week to a set of boxes or nodes in an arc of a circle. A Time field is also mapped by Hour of the Day. (These are two of up to a hundred different mappings or filters in Daisy.)
The data relates to the testing of a new communication program for the Internet. The other groups of nodes relate to Success/Failure, the various Faults and for how long the user was Connected.
Note the histograms on each node, which show how many attempts were made and how many pieces of electronic mail were received.
Each arc of nodes is linked to records, that have the same values. Thus, if you click on the first node of the group Date, you will select all of the records, that take place on a Sunday.
As you examine this chart, look at the values on the histograms and the detail in the nodes and links.
Apologies To My Readers
For some reason, I am now unable to edit the galleries, so the pictures aren’t as I would like.
WordPress seem to have changed the software, so that it is impossible to click on the gallery to add more pictures or edit the existing ones.
I would assume that they’ve put new software up and it’s not compatible with Windows Vista and Chrome.
Buying British Rail Tickets From Outside The UK
I just bought a ticket on Southern Railway. As ever, I will pick up the ticket from an automatic machine, before I travel.
I noticed that it said on the site that the method I chose was the preferred one for UK and Overseas customers.
If this is true and I’ve no reason to doubt it isn’t, then say an Australian booking a ticket in the UK, should do the following.
1. Ascertain the train company, who handle the route he wants to travel. The National Rail Enquiries web site, tells you this, when you check train times.
2. Go to that company’s web site and book your ticket, paying for it with a debit/credit card. Note that the actual company seems to always give the best price and often, you’ll find a special deal. Using an intermediate company is inevitably more expensive and they all seem to be generators of unwanted e-mails to your Inbox.
3. When booking, elect to pick up the ticket, any time before you start your journey. you need to chose a station, but it’s not important as tickets can be picked up at any station with a machine.
4. Make certain, you note the 8-character booking reference, the card you used and the journey you booked.
5. As you can pick up the tickets two hours after booking, probably by the time you arrive in the UK, that limit will have expired, so perhaps it’s a good idea to go and get all your tickets at a quiet time soon after arriving. Even if the company you specifically want doesn’t accept foreign credit cards, it certainly looks that some do.
Two Days Junk Mail From Virgin Media
They may have been inefficient at fixing my phone problems in the past, but they certainly know how to get junk mail through my door.
Two Days Junk Mail From Virgin Media
I’ve also read, that they still haven’t concluded a deal with BT so that their TV customers can get the matches BT has the rights to.
Most of the junk mail was addressed to that person, who doesn’t live here, the Mr. D.E.A.R. Householder.
Anything, marked without my name is instantly put into the green sack for recycling. Perhaps I should hang one outside for the postman!
BT Are Making A Big Play For Customers
BT seem to be pulling out the stops to get customers to use their broadband services to get sporting TV, and especially football.
BT Are Making A Big Play For Customers
As I’m a customer of BT Vision, I don’t need to do anything.
100,000 Downloads And Still Counting
The 3D-printable gun has now been downloaded over a hundred thousand times according to this report on the BBC. Here’s part of the report.
Californian senator Leland Yee said he wanted a law passed to stop the manufacture of 3D-printed guns.
“I plan to introduce legislation that will ensure public safety and stop the manufacturing of guns that are invisible to metal detectors and that can be easily made without a background check,” he said in a statement.
According to Defense Distributed, most of the 100,000 downloads have been in the US, followed by Spain, Brazil, Germany and the UK.
The blueprint has also been uploaded to file-sharing site the Pirate Bay, where it has become the most popular file in the site’s 3D-printing category.
Calls to make such a gun illegal and stop the downloading, will fall on deaf ears. After all to create an illegal gun factory, all you need is a few thousand pounds or dollars to buy a quality 3D printer. Many aspire to have a weapon for personal protection or to settle scores with rivals or neighbours.
This gun is still crude and what worries me is not this gun, but the follow on designs, that will be possible as 3D printing gets more affordable and a lot better.
How long will it be before a crime is committed using a gun, that has been downloaded from the Internet and printed?
American Express Password Problem
I should say first that it wasn’t AMEX, who had the problem, but me, as I’d forgotten, what my login to their site was. I never write anything down or store it on the computer, so I had a problem, as the Mark One brain had forgotten it.
But their site is very professional in the way it dealt with someone like me.
Firstly, it asked me to enter my card details, and then it sent me a temporary password to login to the site.
This password was a six character alpha-numeric code, with the alpha characters in upper case.
On typing this in to the site with my customer ID, I was able to get in and change my password.
AMEX passwords are simple and must be a mixture of alpha and numeric characters, where case is irrelevant.
All very simple and as it’s AMEX, I suspect it’s a lot more secure than it looks in the first instance.
If all websites had such good security and simple passwords, on-line systems would be much more secure.
Ed Balls and Twitter
You can read what you like into this story about Ed Balls handling of Twitter.
I would just ask one question. Would you like to see this politician in charge of the economy?
How Not To Deal With Deceased Customers
Virgin Media is called over the coals in this article on the BBC web site, where they messed up over the account of someone who’d died.
When C died, I didn’t have anything similar although dealing with some organisations was more difficult than others. I actually had a letter published in The Times about it.
I was widowed last year, and it is only now that I’m starting to get my life together. The response of the various government and local authority departments in handling all the paperwork involved has been very patchy.
Registrars: excellent, very sympathetic and efficient; Work and Pensions: bereavement allowance came through with a few hiccups, but not too difficult; Premium Bonds: system worked but could have been better; council tax: this was reduced automatically on signing a form by St Edmundsbury — totally painless; DVLA: its online systems worked well; winter fuel payment: found difficult to claim and missed it for last year.
The private sector wasn’t that much better, with some companies having people whose sole job appeared to be to deal with bereavement faring much better than those that didn’t. Some wanted death certificates, some accepted faxed copies and others took my word.
We need a lot more joined-up thinking in this important area, as, with nearly a million deaths in the UK every year, it would surely help the bereavement process for those left behind if every company, organisation, government department and authority were automatically notified. After all, if St Edmundsbury can do it here in supposedly sleepy Suffolk, then surely everyone else can.
The best private company was undoubtedly Carphone Warehouse, who had a dedicated person dealing with the accounts of customers who’d died. They even sent me a refund, which I spent on a good bottle of wine.
More From The Institute Of Economics and Peace
the web site of the The Institute Of Economics and Peace is fascinating.
Shown here, is a comparison of the various US States. As most would expect, Maine and Vermont are at the top, but to me, there are some surprising states in the bottom ten.
And here is a global terrorism index.
Both reports have very good interactive maps.
I think research like this is invaluable, when it comes to sorting out the world.
The Anonymous Widower 