Last Friday, Skype posted this notice to their status pages indicating that they were contacting users who had bought 0207 London geographic numbers for their SkypeIn accounts. SkypeIn is a service that allows Skype users to have a normal UK phone number that people can dial to reach them on Skype. There’s been nothing more around this topic until an email from a friend today gave it all away…
Skype is telling those users that they are going to withdraw the 0207 numbers they’ve paid for. As an apology they’re giving users 12 months free SkypeIn for another London number – only this time on the new 0203 range. They offer no explanation for why they’re doing this – so what’s going on?
A little digging shows that the numbers sold by Skype are actually allocated by Ofcom to a company called Gamma Telecom – a fairly well-known UK telecommunications provider. So Skype is renting the numbers from Gamma and re-selling them onto users. That’s not so bad right? I mean, it’s like setting up a company that leases cars and you then rent those cars out to people. Except you don’t usually put the make, model and registration number of your car on a business card as a means of contacting you.
Now, personally I have to question the sense behind buying a SkypeIn number for business use, but that’s a separate conversation. The simple fact of the matter is that Skype knows people are using this for business purposes – they’re actively marketing it to businesses – and yet they’ve let this situation develop. What’s the actual root cause is unknown – it may be that Skype and Gamma have had some kind of commercial disagreement, as happens from time to time, and Gamma are withdrawing Skype’s services. Either way, this is a hard blow for Skype to take, especially following their recent two-day outage.
Happily, I can say that the way we’re designing Freewire means that this won’t happen to us. Although we don’t offer a public number at the moment, we’re going about it the right way – we’re a proper telephone service provider, and we’ll get our numbers from Ofcom. We have interconnect agreements to allow people to contact us from all over the place. We’ve built a carrier-grade platform that can provide a reliable service. And we will, at some point in the near future, be able to ‘port’ numbers in and out – so not only will our users be able to bring their numbers with them, but users who are leaving will be able to take their numbers to their new provider.
Isn’t this how all telephone providers should operate?
I was at Dinas Rock in the Neath valley rescuing a young man with a potential spinal injury. Slipped after gorge walking, he felt a pain in his back and they didn’ hesitate before calling us. It was a good, and thankfully, fairly quick rescue thanks to the presence of Rescue 169 from Chivenor. I was glad they were there – the estimated carry-out time from that location was 3-4 hours.
Today we have an exercise. I’ve just checked the weather.
Severe gales. Snow. Blizzard conditions. Severe hill fog. Temperatures of -2 degrees before windchill. Winds of 40-50mph, gusting in excess of 65mph. Oh joy. I’m so glad I prepped my winter kit last night.
Some time ago, I was a religious reader of UserFriendly (about the same time I was reading BoyMeetsBoy and a few other online cartoons). When I came back from the states, my internet access changed and eventually it dropped off my radar. Having recommended it to Sean a few months back, I’m catching up. It’s actually one of the few things that makes me laugh out loud. This quote caught my eye today:
Searching the web without Google is like straining sewage with your teeth.
It’s been a busy week this week and last night I slept the best part of 13 hours. Not my usual night and not recommended on a regular basis, but I certainly feel more awake today than I have all week.
After Sunday night’s swim, I was looking forward to a relaxing week. Tuesday shot that idea down in flames when I started putting dinner on. Nothing complicated, cold ham and boiled potatoes. No sooner had I lit the gas that the pager went off. Turning everything off, I changed quickly and jumped in the car. I was in base within minutes and gettign vehicles sorted. Jumping into Alpha with Dave, we headed up the lane, blue lights flashing. We had two people lost on the Beacons and there was information that they were injured. Heading up over the A470 we aimed for Brecon.
The RV was a large are of grass in front of a farm. Pretty soon we had landrovers and control vehicles from several teams, ambulances and police cars not to mention the many personal vehicles that had turned up. Unusually we didn’t have any spectators from the farm and after sending up a few flares, the hill parties quickly found the casualties. With less injuries than we initially thought, the hill parties walked the lost pair from the hill and we packed up and headed home.
After we got back to base, we parked everythign and reset all the vehicles ready for the next shout – as always. We checked the kit quickly, marked up the few small faults we had (nothing but cosmetic faults) and closed up base. I headed home, looking forward to some food. I walked into the house and turned the gas back on under the potatoes before doing anything – I needed some dinner now. Only thing was, that by the time I’d walked back to the living room the pager was going off again. Running to turn the gas off, I headed out of the house for a second time.
Up to base again – we had a search this time for a 75 year old woman. Alpha was leaving as I arrived, the first response vehicle had left already. John and I set up Echo ready to leave and when the last few had arrived we headed off into Llanishen in Cardiff. This was one of those fast-moving searches, with updated information coming in rapidly. No sooner were we tasked to an area that new information came in and we were re-tasked. It was around 0100 that the police found her on North Road.
Another night of Mountain Rescue.
The sea is a fickle and dangerous mistress and often underestimated. Last night a man lost his life in Aberystwyth, despite our best attempts to save him.
Sean and I had been away all weekend, travelling down to London to see a most dissappointing Mac Expo. I was exhausted having driven all weekend and on Sunday afternoon headed back to Aber with Sean. We were sat in his room each of us geeking away on our laptops when the fire alarm went off. Grumbling, we kicked our shoes on and I suggested we grab coats as it was cold outside. I grabbed my keys and mobile and we headed out. Now Sean lives in a block on the landward-side of the complex, with a courtyard and another building between him and the seafront. Beyond that building is a small road and a wide pavement before the sea wall and beach.
We made our way out to the fire evacuation point on the seafront and were told that there was a gas leak in one of the buildings and that it would be some time before we could go back in. With the wind blowing and the spray from the waves making us wet, we jumped into my car which was parked on the seafront to try and keep warm.
There is a look that people get on their faces when Something Bad happens. It’s a panicked look that means that they’re scared and that somethign has gone badly wrong. They look for someone with more authority than them to try and offload this problem at the earliest opportunity. It was this kind of look that the young lad had on his face when he approached the fire wardens stood on the seafront. Waving his arms frantically, he said something I didn’t catch over the radio, but his meaning was obvious. Sean jumped out as I turned the car off and ran after them, quickly identifying himself as a police officer. I looked over, confused until I saw Sean frantically waving at me. Whatever it was, this wasn’t good.
I ran over to where Sean was and asked what the problem was – someone was in the water. I looked out at the black waters and swung into action. Fire wardens were running alongside us and I frantically scanned the water looking for the young man. When we reached the spot where he went in I looked over the edge and to my utter horror, I saw a leg sticking up in the water. I could see one leg, from the knee down, sticking up in the air and trapped between two boulders. The area in between the boulders was full of water and the waves crashed over him submerging the leg.
I didn’t even think. I knew instantly that he had about three minutes before he ran out of air and died. I had Sean run and get my kit from the car, I told the wardens to call 999 and get an ambulance and coastguard. I knew I had my mountaineering kit and about 30m of 9mm prussic cord. I looked over the edge and realised there and then that the rope wouldn’t hold my weight, his weight and the force of the water and also that I had nothing to climb on so I’d need people to pull us up if I went over the edge. I ran back towards Sean and grabbed my kit as the ambulance pulled up. I tied myself to the rope and ran to the nearest steps, 100m down the beach. Sean grabbed a life buoy from the fence and I headed down, giving Sean what was probably unnecessary instructions to make sure I didn’t get washed out.
I reached the bottom of the steps and jumped down onto the shingle beach. The first wave washed up to my chest and I gasped as the cold sapped the strength from me. I clambered over the boulders, hanging on when the waves washed over me. I’d made it about 15m down the beach when The Wave hit me. It was big, and picked me up. For a moment I lost my grip and was underwater, reaching out and finding nothing but water under my feet and at the ends of my arms. When the wave washed out again, it dropped me pretty much back where I’d been, in a small gab between two large rocks. I gasped for air and looked around and I made a simple decision. There was no way I was going to reach him with both of us alive – most likely outcome was that the coastguard would pull two bodies from the sea if I carried on. I waved and shouted at the crew above me on the sea wall and started back.
I rounded the corner at the bottom of the steps and looked at the steps – there was a welcome sight, a policeman, waiting to help me. I scrambled over boulders thinking that this was getting harder and harder and I slipped between two big boulders just as a big wave smashed me around again. I’d hardly caught my breath to lift a leg over the next boulder when two more waves smashed me against the sea wall. I was already exhausted and I gave myself a mental kick in the arse. If I could get onto this boulder there was a huge boulder next to the bottom of the steps. Jump onto that one and it was two paces to the steps. I looked at the sea with smaller waves rushing towards me and decided to go for it. There was a space between the big boulder and the sea wall that I knew if I ended up in there I’d be screwed.
Someone was watching over me – as I made what felt like a herculean effort to scramble onto this chest-high boulder the waves seems to pause for a moment and I quickly hopped over the remaining few metres onto the steps. Scrambling up as quick as I could, the next wave crashed against the steps, washing over the bottom ones.
I breathed. I spat out a mouthful of grit and salt water and staggered over to the wall where I sat down and tried to catch my breath. A blanket appeared from the ambulance and firemen brought me water to wash my mouth out to get rid of the salt water. A policeman appeared and started talking to me as I willed my heart to slow down. Strangely warm, I watched as the coastguard stood around, watching the waves. I realised why they weren’t rushing to help – it was futile. Looking over the edge at that point and knowing what I’d just been through anyone down there would be dead within minutes – including any rescuers. With no hope of rescue, they would wait it out until they could recover the body.
I got changed and stood around, watching everyone as they waited for the tide to recede a little. Chatting to the coastguard they were grateful for my efforts, though I’m sure there was quite a few shaken heads in there wondering how stupid I was. Frankly, it was a thought that had occurred to me too. One of them turned to me as I described my ordeal – “I know, it’s a difficult decision to have to turn back when you know they’re dying.” I thought about it for a second. “Normally, I’d agree,” I said. “In this case though, it was an easy decision.” Glad that my drive for self-preservation was intact, Sean and I watched some more before heading inside. There was no rush now, the young man would wait for them and they’d wait for the sea.
After spending yesterday helping Mal move house, Mal, Louisa, Sean and I had a cracking good meal in the pub in Pentyrch. Excellent food, the caramelised goat’s cheese starter was just unbelievable.
So it was a well-fed Aled that left the house when the pager went off about 2100. We had reports of a misper in the Beacons and I headed up to base quickly. Asked to head into the Neuadd valley it rapidly became apparent that there was a massive search underway for this gentleman. Both Brecon team and us were out along with some 6 dog teams. I ended up a leading a party from the Roman Road up and over Cribyn and Pen Y Fan and heading off down the north ridge from Pen Y Fan down to Cwm Gwdi. By the time we were walking down the ridge, 169 had come up from Chivenor to help search and spent a few hours quartering the area. By this time, 5am was rapidly approaching and we called off the search for the evening. As I was heading home the pager went off with news of the search restarting at 0600. I headed off to bed.
When I woke up, I wwa happy to find that the misper had been found safe and well. What a night.
I was intending this weekend to catch up with cleaning and some shopping at Custom Orthotics . Not the most exciting of weekends, but I’ve had lots of exciting weekends and I really needed a boring one to catch up on housework. Meh.
So I wasn’t really too unhappy when, at around 1:15pm this afternoon the pager’s shrill tone echoed through the house. “Hurrah” I thought. Now there’s an excuse to get out of hoovering…
I started up to base immediately the 111 message came through and as I reached Merthyr the next message came out – an area call to a lady with a broken leg. RV: Pont ar Daf. So I headed up to base. Chris was already opening the garage door as I arrived and we were soon shutting up the garage again as I piled my kit into the back of Alpha. Lights on. Cockpit check. Seatbelt on. First gear. Drive. Siren on as we reach the junction, and turn right up to the roundabout. Chris tries to reach Lima on the radio and gives up as the sirens go back on for the roundabout. Third. Fourth. Down the heads of the valleys road. Fifth. Sixth. 80 mph on a clear road, lit up like a Christmas tree and Chris is on the radio again. There’s a car ahead but there’s double solid white lines so I can’t pass. I hang back. Down to fourth, ease off, keep the siren off. He sees me and hits the brakes, comes to a stop on a left hand bend. I can’t do anything except pass, so the siren and two-tone airhorn goes on. Check the road, it’s clear, it’s safe, so around we go and off down the road. It’s fairly quiet until we hit the A470 roundabout. Sirens and airhorn, everything stops for us. The vehicles doesn’t deal well with corners at speed, so slow right down for this one. Accelerate away from the roundabout in second. Third. Fourth. Nice clear road. There’s only a few cars ahead of us as we head up the A470.
As we get to the top reservoirs there’s a line of cars ahead. I hang back – no point catching up until we can pass and I accelerate through the dip. Chris hits the siren and I adopt a commanding position on the road – the middle. Cars pull over in both directions as we head up. It’s all going spiffingly. Until, that is, a BMW convertible pulls out to overtake someone else right in front of me. To that driver: you’re an idiot. Fortunately a blast of the air horn made him realise how stupid an idea it was and we passed him. Waving to the speed camera, I keep my position straddling the white lines, taking command of the road. As we approach the turn into the layby, there’s nothing coming and the sirens are finally silenced as we turn in.
Control was set up quickly and pretty soon I was writing the radio logs – three radios, four hill teams, two helicopters and a casualty of unknown location. That certainly made for plenty of radio traffic and before I knew it, we’d found the casualty. The weather caused its own problem though as the casualty was in the cloud itself meaning that neither XR99 – the Dyfed Powys police helicopter nor Helimed – the Air Ambulance could get to the casualty. So this was an old-fashioned callout – mountain rescue personnel searching for a casualty in poor weather.
It didn’t take long. The casualty was on the path between Corn Du and the Obelisk. Our people converged on that location and we rapidly administered first aid and pain-relieving drugs. Before long I was hearing that we were ready for a pickup and Helimed powered up and headed off to pick up our casualty.
I have to say at this point a big thank you to Alistair who runs the “Three Peaks” burger van in Pont ar Daf. He is a star and is always supportive of us, supplying refreshments for us and helping us out. It wasn’t long before he was serving tea to the hill parties as they returned. We packed up and headed back to base and that was it. Another succesful rescue.
Here’s hoping for a quiet night tonight, since tomorrow we’re off to Cardiff to support the guys who are running a half-marathon to raise money for the team. Huzzah.
Up on my Flickr site I have quite a few photos taken on my route to and from work. It’s one of the things I love most about where I live and work is that in between the two is a single-track road that crosses the mountain, and in the mornings with the sun shining it’s a beautiful view that stretches up to the Beacons in the distance.
So when I came up over the brow this morning to find a temperature inversion, I had to stop and take a picture. I’ve seen a few where there’s been valley mist floating around, but this was a true inversion. The office when I got there was in a dark and overcast morning although it’s cleared up to beautiful sunshine now.
It’s days like these that I remember why I love living here so much.
With plans for a few days off and a nice weekend in west Wales with Sean being attested as a Special Constable on Sunday, I was quite looking forward. I was tired after a long week, so decided to get some much needed rest on Wednesday night and head up to Aberystwyth on Thursday.
The plan was going well until around 1100 on Thursday when the pager went off. After some quick soul searching I jumped in the car and headed up to base where I joined the first response Land Rover as we headed over to Brynaman. There was a missing gentleman, but not long after arriving, we got stood down. Back home I went to finish loading the car and shortly after wards I was well on my way up to Aberystwyth. After a nice night of just mooching around the seafront, Sean and I headed to Carmarthen on Friday for his Police training. After dropping him off at Dyfed Powys HQ, I drove to Dad’s in Pontyberem where I was intending to relax and spend some time sorting out my Grandmother’s bathroom.
As soon as I sat down with a sandwich, the pager went off. “Bugger.” I thought. I quickly decided that unless it was nearby, I’d stay where I was – I’d already spent a lot of money on petrol this month. I checked the voicebank once the ‘999’ had come through – the callout was in Ammanford. “Oh, hell,” I thought, “that’s just up the road.” So off I went, giving Sean a quick call on the handsfree on the way. He already knew about this search – one of his instructors was on the way there.
By the time I’d got to Ammanford police station, the RV had moved to Tycroes. Things were already kicking off when I arrived and we rapidly started deploying for a search – there was serious concern for this missing young woman who’d last been seen on Thursday morning. We got ourselves sorted and headed off as quick as possible to catch the last of the evening light. 3 hours, 9 fields, 2 ramshackle sheds, 1 lorry park and countless boggy bits later, we were back at control, waiting for our next tasking. It wasn’t until the following morning the BBC started covering the story, but at this point, this was a fairly major incident. Three mountain rescue teams, several dog teams, a police helicopter and plenty of police officers were all out searching for her as concern mounted and those of us involved feared the worst. Friday night I had a new kind of search – back gardens. This time, we had a PCSO with us who would handily have a chat with the residents first. If they weren’t in, he’d be present to ensure that if there were any problems, there was a police presence there to straighten things out.
After getting home around 0100 and having a quick sleep, I was out again on Saturday morning at 0900. The rest of the day was spent searching and this time we covered some big areas and re-covered some areas that we’d done the night before – a daylight search is very different to a nighttime search. We covered some 38 seperate search areas, stretching from where her car had been left down towards Ammanford, covering about 4 square km. We had a few moments of interest – especially with dogs picking up on other search teams and searching the garage where she left her car, but we were still coming up with no clues as to what happened here. By about 1700 I was tired and had planned to go for food with Sean, so I headed home.
The search continued without me on Sunday morning and at around 1120, the pager went off – stand down. As the BBC says, a body was found which, although it seems is still unconfirmed at the moment, was thought to be the missing woman. A very sad and unfortunate end to a search.
Update: Looks like our worst fears were realised and the police have opened a murder inquiry. Our thoughts are with the family at this time.
Ok, so it’s Abercynon, Wales not Houston, Texas. Nevertheless, at around 5:30pm yesterday, Thursday 13th September, Freewire Platform 2 launched and went live. Last minute bugs were fixed, change freezes were called and DNS changes were made. That’s it folks, this product is now live. We already have almost 10,000 handsets live on the system in Edinburgh, UWIC, Surrey, Portsmouth and Bath and this weekend we have students arriving in halls for the first time to use the system. My mobile is charged, the critical tickets have been resolved and I’m now waiting with baited breath, watching our traffic graphs to see what happens.
By no means is the work over though. There were a number of features that we’ve had to defer to version 2.1 purely because we didn’t have time to implement them – and this is one company where the development cycle is important. We even had a feature that we fixed yesterday and managed to get it working in time – but it couldn’t go in to the final delivery since we’d already stopped making improvements and were just concentrating on fixing critical issues. We’ve got other projects – we have to integrate the existing phone systems of the Universities that we’re present in; there’s the whole Cable and Wireless project which is going full steam ahead; there’s rolling out in other territories and there’s the dozens of fantastic projects that the sales guys are bringing to us that I can’t even think about right now. Of course, we’ll have the usual spate of support issues, I have no doubt, but our testing is complete and we’re live.
Over the next few weeks I’m going to writing a few articles about some of the cool and funky things we’ve been doing recently that I haven’t had time to blog about because I’ve been doing them. I’ll also be blogging about what we’ve got coming. Suffice to say, this project has me really excited – and the company I’m working for and people I’m working with makes that a safe but excited feeling – there’s things in place to make sure that above all, it works.
Anyway, enough for now, I’m off to see what’s broken this morning.