ALLERY (see Wikipedia for background) was first installed in this Web site about 8 years ago. That was version 1. I installed version 2 a few years later (for security reasons and general exploration), but did not delve deep into it. It is still installed, but I chmoded it to 700. Recently, shortly after our wedding, I started experimenting with version 3, which is also known as Gallery3 (because the name “Gallery” is very generic, non-unique). Despite is being barebones by default, with additional modules it is highly extensible/configurable and I have added many modules that can be seen in the live site. For me, Gallery3 seems to be the best FOSS Web-based photo album software bar none. It is far better than Facebook’s proprietary ‘cloud’-based option, which I installed Gallery3 to replace (the wife was quitting Facebook for image hosting). I did experiment with some other options, but these were less well-suited. For those who may be curious (or those wanting to replicate some functionality), the latest Gallery3 album uses a slightly modified (by me) Clean Canvas Theme. along with the following modules (configured appropriately):

• AddThis
• Akismet
• Album Carousel
• Album Tree
• Carousel
• DownloadAlbum
• Exif Data
• Gallery Stats
• Image Block
• Local print
• Notification
• Search
• Slideshow
• Social Share
• Tags

A few more modules are installed by default and additional languages got installed manually.

People should increasingly self-host their photos. The opposite trend is worrisome as there is no guarantee of albums preservation; it’s hinged on somebody else’s business model. Go to the Gallery Web site and learn how to reclaim your photos. It is a long-term investment of time and effort.

4 days before the end of this month

ITHOUT a doubt, there are circumstances where evidence extracted from CCTV is valuable. For instance, if there is a street/pub brawl, one can use footage to verify or falsify eyewitness accounts or the story told by those involved in a brawl.

For the most part, however, CCTV fails to justify its great cost, not just monetary cost but also the cost to our civil liberties. Today I got a good reminder of that.

Having spent nearly an hour speaking to security personnel and the local police, I found that CCTV did, in fact, capture the stealing of my hybrid bike (retails at around £500) roughly two hours ago. This was captured because I only ever park and chain my bike to solid objects like designated bike rails in front of cameras and in the presence of many people.

Not only did several cameras capture good footage of my bike being stolen but also the store manager (the store I was in for just 10 minutes) was at the parking lot witnessing the crime. Was that enough to prevent the crime? No. To capture the perpetrator? No. To return the stolen bike? No.

The perpetrator wore a hoodie, so it is hard to identify him (the footage only identifies him as a black man in his mid-twenties, to quote security personell who investigated it). It is too early to assume that the bike won’t be returned and the perpetrator caught, but the matter of fact is, CCTV, as I long argued (for many years), does not help prevention and rarely helps identification.

If the perpetrator is very naive, in which case he or she is removed from the scene early on, then it might work, but the hard cases cannot be resolved by CCTV. All that can be achieved is the confirmation that a certain crime occurred and in cases where an insurance agency is involved, it may help prevent insurance/benefit fraud. My bike was not insured. I don’t know any people who buy bike insurance.

Surveillance tools which are run and owned by the state (or law-enforcement agencies), as in CCTV, are not there to protect and arguably they do not serve as a deterrent either. They are probably not worth the investment. More people need to be on the ground, creating more jobs and adding to real security, not sci-fi pseudo-futuristic security theatre.

Hours on the line and several days just waiting at home for promised calls, all in vain

Y 2013 BT saga continues. At this stage, it’s not a technical fault, now it’s a support services failure. There is no excuse for being unable to call at a specified time several times in a row, especially when an automated caller dispatches formal reminders that those calls should be expected. It shows either arrogance or negligence.

For the uninitiated, my BT connection has been rocky since January of this year, leading not only to chaos with my professional and personal life (I am connection-dependent) but also to approximately a dozen hours on the phone (net total) with BT representatives overseas.

Diagnosis involved physical work from me too, all up to the point where actual engineers were sent to my house to address the issue by bypassing what might have been a faulty socket. It wasn’t conclusive. Why did it take BT so many months to send out engineers to the troubled site?

After the issue had been resolved I was promised that the supervisor (whose name I will omit) would discuss compensation with me. So I called up and spent a long time on the phone arranging for him to phone back (he was not working that day). I actually had to stay at home all morning and afternoon that day in expectation of that call. But he didn’t call. He must have ‘forgotten’. So then I had to call again — a call lasting about a quarter of an hour, with me addressing a person who never heard of my case at any time before and therefore had to spend time catching up. He said the supervisor would return a call but never said when. Apparently he phoned back when I was out (one cannot expect a person to be at home 24/7 by specifying no time, home is not a prison cell). Why did he not call at the specified time in the first place? This is becoming nonsensical, wasteful, and difficult for everyone.

So yesterday I had to spend another half an hour or so on the phone (a little less) only trying to get hold of the supervisor to get my compensation. So far I have spent nearly an hour just trying to get hold of the person who can issue the compensation. This is in addition to a dozen or so hours on the phone this year — hours spent in vain as they probably needed to send out an engineer to the house all along. Well, this is what it’s like being a BT customer. If your time has no value and your connections stability has no high priority, then BT might be fine. You will end up speaking to many different representatives, explaining your problem over and over again; solution can take weeks or months to be found, so satisfaction from the customer is clearly hard to attained.

The only reason I have not quit BT is that they kept making false promises that they would resolve the issue and changing ownership/management of the line to another company can take weeks in the UK (with wired connection being down). That’s the lock-in they have through landline. All I can do now is warn others that BT has very dysfunctional support services which fail to call back when they promise to call (this is not the first time they fail to phone back) and can’t send out engineers with equipment that can fix the problem because that may be ‘too expensive’ for BT (over the long run, not resolving the issue would prove even more expensive for both sides).

Update: the supervisor ‘forgot’ to phone again. This is at least the third time. It’s inexcusable. I called up with no anger but with a more assertive tone and got compensation, or so they claim (we shall see billing next month). I actually had to say that I would escalate this to their management in order to make real progress. It’s sad that being gentle and polite just doesn’t get things done. The supervisor, whose name I prefer not to share (for his own protection, which he may not deserve after repeated failure to call), tried to use the “I have been unwell” excuse for sympathy and mercy (fearing escalation to his superior), but why is he working then? Excuses for failures don’t make things any better, they make things worse. BT has a systemic issue in its hands and unless something is done about it, many other people will suffer the same way I suffered.

Y BT Internet connection has been faulty since the beginning of this year. I have spent no less than about 10 hours speaking to support representatives in an offshore call centre, all of whom go through the script and a list of steps that “test” the connection, never mind if a dozen people before them ran the same tests. I have been polite but assertive, especially after these issues persisted for months. But never ever did they send out an engineer (meaning, a UK-based person paid at UK rates) to address the issue. At one stage they sent out a replacement router, but unsurprisingly this did not resolve the problem.

Imagine having a flaky connection when you work from home (in the employment sense). Calls are dropping, SSH sessions are dropping, IRC logging and conversations are choppy, and even Web browsing is very erratic. Imagine this going on for about 4 months. Imagine having your ISP refusing to just fix the issue by sending an actual person to the site for investigation.

My issue have been escalated internally numerous times and I have just spoke to their manager about it. No compensation can ever recover or make up for the time and work lost due to BT’s systemic incompetence. But wait, it gets worse. Not only is BT too ‘cheap’ (must increase shareholders value!) to send out an engineer; it is unable to even follow up with calls that it promises to make. The automated phone reminder which says they would call works correctly, even phoning me to wake me up at 7 AM on a Sunday. But the actual representative ‘forgets’ to call. Oops. I guess the customer does not matter enough to inform. If the customer stays home for a 2-hour time slot allocated for a call, they can just be left out in the cold, right? Well, that’s BT.

My issues with BT were serious back in 2011 when they were unable to simply set up my connection, incurring weeks in delay. I should have taken the hint and taken my money elsewhere, but BT has a monopoly on the lines. So I stayed with BT, only after their cancellations department was very insistent and successfully persuaded me to give them another chance. They also compensated me which was an admission of guilt more than it was a compensation for all the time lost and the agonising experience lasing weeks.

BT’s issues are not technical. BT’s issues are systemic. The company assumes its customers are dumb. It insists on running simple tests rather than addressing low-level issues that have been ongoing for months. It would rather have you suffer for days and talking to poorly-paid employees than send out a person who — through direct physical contact with the infrastructure — can probably remediate the issue immediately.

BT is not a company that cares about people. It cares only about money to the extent where it forgets what customers actually mean and why bad service will give them bad reputation and discourage new customers from joining,

Today, after months of bad service, BT said they would send an engineer (at long last!) to my house, but only in two days from now (I stood firm on quick action), meaning that I would suffer from faulty connection for a couple more days until I go on vacation (Monday). I also need to wait at home for a five-hour time slot on Saturday. Great, eh? See how much bad service from BT impacts one’s life on a daily basis.

If you never relied on BT for anything, do yourself a favour and never do. BT doesn’t care about people, it will take your money and run up a tree, then tell you that you must be dumb and the fault must not be theirs. You are just a fool with his/her money…

LEXA data is not an accurate measure of site popularity (see my views from 2005 and from 2006), but trends as judged by Alexa can sometimes — especially for large sites — indicate if a site is going mainstream or going away. With statistically-meaningful deviations from the baselines it is now fair to say that Twitter has jumped the shark. The amount of communication I get in that site is definitely not increasing and it seems to be turning more and more into a hub for celebrities, perhaps because 140 characters are enough for them or their PR agents to communicate with. Many former Twitterers seem to be logging in less (some never at all), or reading less, certainly communicating less in the comments — something which is also a growing issue in Facebook and Google Plus, less so in JoinDiaspora, which is my favourite social network these days.

have become exceedingly concerned about a trend that I’ve been watching in recent years, especially after the great transfer of wealth, aka “economic meltdown”. Whistleblowers are ferociously attacked, sites are being gagged, and bank accounts get forzen for those who do effective activism against a corrupt banking system which is now clawing away people’s savings. Last night I changed my avatar in all social networks to a photo of me covering my mouth. As we approach a class war like never seen before we must fight for the right to free speech. Without it, only the plutocrats get to popularise their points of view.