Bull's Rambles

After having a bit of hassle with the NHS and Care Agency I decided to look up my rights, this information was very useful so I thought I would share it.

The first thing to know is that it is perfectly legal to record audio and video in your own home, you can tell the person being recorded as a courtesy, but you don’t legally have to.  I obtained this information from the Information Commissioner’s Office, and the relevant part of the Data Protection Act, section 36, states -

36 Domestic purposes

Personal data processed by an individual only for the purposes of that individual’s personal, family or household affairs (including recreational purposes) are exempt from the data protection principles and the provisions of Parts II and III.

Secondly you are perfectly entitled to record telephone conversations too, according to OFCOM

Can I record telephone conversations on my home phone?

Yes. The relevant law, RIPA, does not prohibit individuals from recording their own communications provided that the recording is for their own use. Recording or monitoring are only prohibited where some of the contents of the communication – which can be a phone conversation or an e-mail – are made available to a third party

Finally here are some useful links if you find yourself in a similar situation to me -

• CQC – This regulates care agencies, and the minimum standards pdf is a useful resource.
• NMC – This gives you information regarding Registered Nurses, be sure to read the code of conduct.
• DH – This is the department of health’s website and is packed with information, I suggest you at least read “The national framework for NHS continuing healthcare and NHS-funded nursing care – July 2009 (revised)”
• CAB – Citizens Advice Bureau, useful for putting you in touch with helpful people, email them though as phoning and visiting doesn’t get you too far.
• Community Legal Advice – Free legal advice.
• PALS – They will answer any questions you have regarding the NHS, I’d suggest anonymous enquiries.

Thia is all just advice, I am not a lawyer so check the information out yourself, I cannot be held responsible if the above post gives any false information blah blah……..

Also note this post only relates to England.

I’m a bit late with this news but Hooked on the Fly is now airing on The Sportsmans Channel, the satellite imagery used in this show was all created using NASA World Wind and uses only non-commercial satellite and orthoimagery.

The air times are -

Sunday 6:30 PM
Tuesday 10:30 PM
Wednesday 11:30 AM
Thursday 2:00 AM
Friday 6:30 AM

If anyone is interested in satellite clips like those used in this show contact me at bull@bullsworld.net or leave a message on this blog, I provide HD resolution clips using h.264, compatible with Final Cut Pro, as well as non-commercial imagery I can process commercial imagery, whose rights you own, to use in any clips.

I’d like to wish all the viewers of my site a Happy Christmas, if you don’t do Christmas then I wish you a good 25 and 26th of December on the Gregorian calender. Hope you all have fun and eat loads, here’s an ide post comments on how you celebrated along with your country, I’m sure it could be interesting, and if I get enough posts I might even make a simple World Wind Add-On.

At long last NASA has given credit to World Wind, Patrick Hogan, Project Manager for World Wind at NASA Ames, has just let me know that NASA has awarded this years Software of the Year award to NASA World Wind.

Details are posted on the community run  forum at WorldWind Central, Patrick goes on to thank the Open Source community for helping the NASA team achieve this, I hope this shows other Government agencies that Open Source projects can work and that collaboration with the public can achieve great things.

The official announcement reads -

“We are pleased to announce that the NASA Software Advisory Panel has selected NASA World Wind Java (WWj) Software Development Kit (SDK) and Web Mapping Services (WMS) Server (ARC-15166-1) as the winner of the 2009 NASA Software of the Year.”

The formal ceremony for the presentation of the winners’ medals is scheduled for the NASA Project Management Challenge Conference, February 9-10,2010, in Galveston, Texas.

I was reading the forum at last and came across someone mentioning Danish imagery in World Wind Java, this seemed a bit unfair to .NET users so I downloaded the WWJ SDK and converted the data from Scankort to a .NET xml, I also included the California NAIP (slow speeds) and open street map layers.

Download the xml here and unzip it into your config\Earth directory.

See the websites linked above for terms of use.

For the past couple of days I have been having problems with my internet connection dropping, the only solution being to do multiple reboots of the Modem.

At first I obviously thought it was something I had done, I had updated my Tomato firmware to a newer version (Teddy Bear Mod), but I couldn’t spot anything wrong, then I began to suspect the modem (it’s a stupid webstar one), so I contacted Virgin and was told it was a fault in my area and given a ref number for the issue.

So now I have a reference number with nowhere to actually check the status of it, the Virgin status page has a red icon for broadband but below it says there are currently no issues, checking my area also gives no issues, but checking daily updates gives plenty of issues, unfortunately none related to my ubr (Staverton).

So according to Virgin there are broadband issues but there aren’t any broadband issues, my area has no issues but does have issues according to a technician, all issues that are listed say they will be fixed within 4 hours (then they are updated to say they will be fixed within 4 hours, 4+4+4+……), I guess I am left to reboot my modem every time my connection drops, renew my lease on my router, then wait for the next drop and repeat, arghhhh.