A Place Called Providence

So everyone is going on about 1968. I was born in 1961, so my revolutionary moment came at the age of seven. But I remember it well. We were driving down to the coast to get the ferry to France to drive to Spain for our annual family holiday. It took three days to drive in those days, with no motorways, no aircon and no AA recovery. Our parents were hard. We kids were harder. No seatbelts, no nothing.

That year, we were on the road to Southampton (or Portsmouth) when my father, listening to the radio news, suddenly pulled over, looking pale. “We might have to go back.” he said. Why? He’d just heard about the Russian invasion of Hungary and maybe for a moment believed the third world war was about to break out.

Anyway, we moved on. We went to Spain. War didn’t break out. Maybe he thought it if did, we’d be better off on the south coast of Spain than within 30 miles of London. Who knows. That is my only memory of 1968.

This place sure is wonderful when we get winter sun. Like being on top of a mountain. Lovely.

When I arrived at the office this morning I thought this was a clue that we were in for a wet and windy day. Sure was right - I think the building is floating. Do they know something I don’t?

Amazing slideshow. My first ever job was just along the road from this depot. That said, I don’t think it existed in those days.

Securitas robbery CCTV

McDonald’s to serve up ‘A-levels’

McDonald’s has won approval to offer courses which could form part of an A-level standard qualification.

The fast-food giant, airline FlyBe and Network Rail are the first three firms to be approved to offer courses equal to units of the new diplomas.

Something stinks at Societe General, but I don’t think it’s a lone trader. Nor does Fred Destin and he know more about the subject than I do. There’s one thing I’d add about Kerviel - he may be a computer genius, but if he did what he did, he’s really a hacker who hacked the systems.

Fred Destin: Not buying the Jerome Kerviel - SocGen story

I just find this whole story had to believe. So I asked an [unnamed] friend of mine for his advice on this larger than life story, and here are his insights:

* Everybody who is anybody in trading or banking is mentioned in Bloomberg. But as late as Wednesday, this was not the case for Jérôme Kerviel. Not one mention anywhere in the system. Even people who left the industry 10 years ago still have their profiles in tact. But not Jérôme Kerviel.
* Bloomberg did, however, create a profile for him overnight with his photo, education and a link to their news articles which now do mention his name –but only after Le Figaro did so. Oh, and Le Figaro is citing Bloomberg News as the source of Jérôme Kerviel’s name and yet he is not mentioned in any article published in Bloomberg News.
* In order to loose €4.9 billion in the futures market one would have to trade at least 10 million futures contracts. The problem is that the daily volume of Eurostoxx futures are only about 1/4 or 1/3 that amount –and that includes all the players, not just one bank. Moreover, if one’s positions become more than 10% of the open interest, it sets off alarm bells in the futures exchanges. But apparently not if you are Jerome Kerviel.
* SG has extremely sophisticated risk management systems. How did he get around it? SG has no
response to this but let it be known via the Banque de France that Jerome Kerviel was a “computer genius” but according to the web he went to business school in Lyon. Could he be a computer genius? Yeah why not. But with all the other facts that don’t add up, it almost defies credulity.
* The margin requirements necessary on the number of futures contracts necessary to produce such a loss would come to about €400 million. Where did he get the money?
* SG has decided to prosecute him but on only very limited terms: document fraud and attacks on their internal control systems while not pursuing any monetary damages and saying that he did not
attempt to profit from the trades. This will allow them to pursue him in the courts on a very focused case which reduces the risk that they will have to reveal any of their internal accounting.

The nice people over at CanonBuzz have leant me a camera for a month. Why? Because I’m an arty blogger. So I get my hands on a Canon HG10 which I’ll blog about here. Mike Atherton got one too.
I Can Has HG10? at sizemore Connection? We both are Seesmic users. Also, like Mike, it took an age to get his off DHL. It took me a week to get mine into my hands - seems that DHL delivery drivers won’t ring doorbells, and management aren’t about to ask them to do it.

Anyway, now I have this hard drive high def camera so I have to find out how to make online movies with it. Firslty, I already have an HD camera - a 20Gb JVC. I’m not much of an online video guy, though I love the idea. It just seems that there is too much hassle getting stuff edited and up. I’m up for a simpler world though - let’s see how the Canon does.
The Canon has a 40Gb drive, which you can fill up all you like before you have to decide what to do with it. Once you do decide to do something with it, it becomes a bit different to a normal video camera - you can’t just take the film out and put it in a box. You have to connect the camera to your computer and suck the video off it and then store it. and as you can film 40Gb at a time, it can also fill up your hard drive fairly fast. I have a 500Gb drive from Maplins, so I won’t fill it ou overnight, but if I use this camera and my JVC regularly, I would end up with multiple hard drives, not really what I want to do. I guess I need to find some backup system like DVD.
Anyway, before I can worry too much about that, I need to work out how to get some footage off the camera itself. I use a Mac, a MacBook Pro to be precise. So, I’ve plugged the camera into the Mac by USB and, lo and behold, I can see the camera hard drive in the finder. Now I just need to work out what all those files are. More soon!

Sainsbury’s car park this morning. No doubt making an emergency delivery for Halloween. It’s the fizz that gives you whizz …

Walking along London Rd the other day, I noticed an intriguing sign on the open market.

So I went to take a look, and found a small piece of Amsterdam transplanted to Brighton. Amsterdammers sells those classic Dutch bicycles. Many (many) years ago, I worked in a bar in Amsterdam called Fat City, lived above the shop and rode around during the day on a sit-up-and-beg classic bike. Avoiding the trams, I took long languid rides around town, going nowhere in particular - as I had no-where to go. Now I want a new one.

Second hand and new Dutch bikes

Original Amsterdam City Bikes This site offers you a genuine design classic – the Dutch bicycle. The time has come to enjoy cycling in elegance and comfort that Britain has not seen for yonks. The quality built into the Dutch roadster makes it a serious alternative to other forms of urban transport. Geared up for the summer, these bicycles are here to let you swish down the streets, past people and cars in full glory.