News, facts, fiction and fake news

I haven't written anything on this blog for a a decade but this was important enough that I felt I had to write it.

Some background 

I worked for the BBC TV News many years ago and there was a principle that they had in the news that they would go with a story based on a staff reporter but require at least two 'stringers' to go with a story if not verified by a staff reporter. I also filmed in Northern Ireland during 'the Troubles'. There were approximately 30,000 terror attacks during the Troubles and I remember during my time at school we regularly practiced bomb alerts so we knew what to do. Filming in Belfast I ended up seeing what it felt like to have the British military point guns at you. 

Explosion at the Anglican Hospital in Gaza

The news item that I want to cover to illustrate the problem is what was first announced as an 'Israeli missile attack' on the Anglican Hospital in Gaza. Someone I knew some years ago had been a plastic surgeon working at that hospital and I had talked with her about it so I felt I knew the place albeit that I had never visited it. Here's how I first heard the news: I listen to BBC World Service News during the night so it was an audio-only radio version. 

During the night the BBC went to their staff reporter in Gaza for the news of the event. He talked of hundreds of Palestinians taking shelter in the hospital compound sleeping on mattresses on the ground for safety. He talked about body parts strewn around and the figure of 500 deaths was mentioned. The impression one got was of total devastation.

Early in the morning, the BBC spoke to an IDF spokesman who blamed the Palestinians for a failed rocket. The BBC asked for what evidence he had for that and the spokesman claimed the Al Jazeera live feed showed the rocket exploding in mid-air then falling to the ground. The BBC presenter then said he was looking at the same Al Jazeera feed and he thought it appeared to show an explosion mid-air followed by the rocket falling to the ground and then some seconds later a second explosion on the ground possibly caused by an IDF missile. 

The BBC have a copy of this video on their website. It appeared to corroborate what the BBC presenter claimed if the deaths were as high as initially believed. 

The IDF spokesman then became desperate, pleading with the BBC presenter to believe his side of the story and then said they also had an intercept from communications between terrorists that proved they were correct. Asked if they would make that available the IDF spokesman became evasive and said they wanted to protect their sources. He continued pleading with the BBC that they were telling the truth. The whole demeanor of the IDF spokesman was not very professional and so he came across with all the pleading as untrustworthy.

The BBC also had an interview with a university professor in Gaza who claimed to have seen the event. He claimed that yes, the missile had exploded and fallen to the ground but there was also an F16 or F35 in the area that fired a missile at roughly the same time and it was that missile that hit the Anglican Hospital in Gaza.  

I have had friends who are Al Jazeera reporters and their thesis to 'tell the truth but to always look for the conflict in the story'. So I know their approach. Their story headlined 'An explosion hit a hospital at Gaza city, killing at least 500 people and sparking international condemnations.' It was repeating again the number of 500.

Image from Al Jazeerah website

The image looked horrendous! It was obviously a composite, but I assumed used some images from the hospital. Al Jazeera cited the Anglican Diocese of Jerusalem in a statement under the heading

Church condemns massacre at hospital and grieves the loss of 100s of innocent civilians

'The devastation witnessed, coupled with the sacrilegious targeting of the church, strikes at the very core of human decency. We assert unequivocally that this is deserving international condemnation and retribution.'

I've met Archbishop Hosam Naoum and I know how careful the diocese are with facts, usually to the point of making an interesting news story boring. 

Checking other sites the images were equally horrific. For example NDTV:

NDTV used AFP (Agence France Press) material and had a photograph that showed people looking at a building in total devastation.

I knew the Cyprus Picture Editor for AFP some years ago and I new how careful they are with their images. They frequently win awards for their photojournalism.

The article cites UN Human Rights Chield Volker Turk.

"Words fail me," Volker Turk said in a statement.

"Hundreds of people were killed -- horrifically -- in a massive strike at Al Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City, including patients, healthcare workers and families that had been seeking refuge in and around the hospital. 

"Once again the most vulnerable. This is totally unacceptable." 

This is the image they carried: There is massive destruction of reinforced concrete structures and a huge crater. There is an ambulance in the background.

Photo uncredited on NDTV site assumed to be AFP

However...

However, that is not the whole story nor all the facts. Later in the day the BBC came up with a different version of the news of the hospital attack on their website. In that article  they have three photos.

Photo Credit: Reuters

So then I went to Google Earth to verify. Here's a screen capture showing where I believe those photos are taken from:

Image Credit: Google Earth

So the photos appear to match the location (whereas the image from NDTV could be anywhere) but the important thing is, they don't show massive destruction and I would be skeptical of 500 deaths and it looks more like a flash burn from rocket fuel than an Israeli rocket! Although the 'body parts' would have been cleared away quickly there was no remains of the mattresses mentioned at all, and it didn't look like hundreds of people had been there overnight.

There is also some video available that shows how little (relatively) damage there is in the area. A JDAM like the IDF use leaves a very large crater:

This photo comparison provided by

@Israel_Alma_org

, a man who served as a JTAC (A Joint Tactical Air Controller /Forward Observer) who coordinated air and artillery strikes.

Audio intercept

Then later in the morning... the IDF did release what they claimed to be the intercept of the mobile call between terrorists that their spokesperson mentioned.

Link: IDF post of intercept of discussion between terrorists

Transcript:

Hamas operative 1: I'm telling you this is the first time that we see a missile like this falling
Hamas operative 2:  And so that's why we are saying it belongs to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Hamas operative 1: What!?
Hamas operative 2:  They are saying it belongs to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Hamas operative 1: It's from us?
Hamas operative 2: It looks like it!
Hamas operative 1: Who says this?
Hamas operative 2: They are saying that the shrapnel from the missile is local shrapnel and not like Israeli shrapnel.
Hamas operative 1: What are you saying (name)?
SILENCE
Hamas operative 2: But God bless, it couldn't have found another place to explode?
Hamas operative 1: Never mind, yes, (name) they shot it from the cemetery behind the hospital.
Hamas operative 2: What?!
Hamas operative 1: They shot it coming from the cemetery behind the Al-Ma'amadani Hospital and it misfired and fell on them.
Hamas operative 2:  There's a cemetery behind it?
Hamas operative 1: Yes, Al-Ma'amadani is exactly in the compound.
SILENCE
Hamas operative 2:  Where is it when you enter the compound?
Hamas operative 1: You first enter the compound and don't go toward the city and it's on the right side of the Al-Ma'amadani Hospital.
Hamas operative 2:  Yes, I know it.

Some thoughts on this audio intercept: Firstly the audio quality is excellent. The IDF probably therefore cleaned it up but that reduces the credibility of the audio. Secondly the Arabic sounds very clean, there are no expletives for something potentially a major catastrophe. Thirdly the content is almost too neat explaining everything.

So back to Google Earth...

Image Credit: Google Earth

But, some of the video from another TV station in southern Israel seems to show the launch location further away, although the scale on that video is difficult to tell.

Number of deaths much lower than originally reported

Later in the day, the number of injuries and deaths was reversed downwards to maybe 50 deaths. This is still horrendous but nothing like the 500 it started from! That was credible for the photos that I could verify the location for.

The bottom line is that it appears that the IDF version of events is most likely correct but because of their pleading and evasive press spokesman early on, they lost credibility! 

Footnote

There is something to add... some days earlier (Saturday 14 October) the hospital or close to it had been hit severely damaging their diagnostic centre.

Damage at al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza after it was hit by a missile on Saturday evening

Photo Credit: Anglican / Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem

Steadicam operator?

Trying my hand at being a Steadicam operator during the filming a couple of weeks back. It's not as easy as it looks!

The camera does stay steady, but the way that you move affects how it 'bounces'. I'm guessing that a ballet dancer would make a good Steadicam operator, but never found out.

I wish we'd had Jay, a friend who works with my son Daniel, with us. But... it was actually very enjoyable. We'll see how good the footage is.

I should mention that the silver 'foil' is actually a car windscreen protector that we cut up to protect the camera, which is black and hence tends to overheat.

Filming in Cyprus

The last two weeks I've been filming in Cyprus. It has been a real joy... and pain to be back filming. A joy because I love filming, but a pain trying to co-ordinate dates and availability of the crew and actors.

Somehow whenever I arranged the dates something crashed in on them and made it impossible and forced me to reschedule! At last we got to be filming. It's not complete yet, but the majority has been shot now.

The films are two short stories trying to communicate the love of God as our Father to people from the Middle East. They are like modern parables. We started by writing the stories, then recorded audio versions and at each stage checked with people around the region that they worked. Finally we committed to film.

This was also a change in technology for me. Up till now we have been filming in 'SD' or standard definition. This was a move up to 'HD' (high definition) but also towards electronic cinematography rather than just 'video'.

This meant that we are trying to make it look like electronic film. So the focus is incredibly tight and we need a 'focus-puller' as well as DOP (Director of Photography). The results were varied. Some I'm extremely pleased with... some we will re-shoot in a couple of weeks time. Overall though I'm very, very pleased.

What was particularly good was to have my oldest son over here for the filming as sound recordist. 

EasyFlight on EasyJet... not

The alarm went off at 5am, time for a quick shave, after all I'm flying home to my wife. Then a shower before driving to the airport at 5:30. I'm in North Africa so the shower was hot, but tortuous. There is no shower tray and the drain didn't work well in the guest apartment and so the water tended to overflow out under the door of the bathroom and down the corridor. The trick was to have a bucket or two beneath you, standing over one of them carefully. Thus when you showered you would to catch as much water as possible and then tip it down the toilet after your shower.

Driving to the airport was uneventful, if slightly stressed since there was an early morning sea mist rolling in over the coastal highway. Navigation was easy though, since I had my trusty iPhone with me and Jane (the voice of that SatNav App) guided me to the airport. I was driving a virtually brand new Kangoo. I'd last driven one when we rented it from EasyCar in the UK some years back. I had booked a Peugeot 206 with air conditioning but the Kangoo without a/c was my 'upgrade' or so I was told. The alternative was some micro car that the rental company didn't recommend on highways. I took the Kangoo!

Arriving at the airport I was disconcerted to find my flight was not advertised. I was further dismayed when the information desk didn't know about it either. However, another passenger also waiting at information assured me that it was OK and pointed me in the direction of the embarkation gate. Uneventful till I was queuing at the gate and was told that my online boarding pass was invalid and that I should return to checkin and get a real boarding pass. Eventually they let me on, sternly warning me that I should not do it next time. They tried to explain in Arabic. My Arabic didn't cope with that complexity. They asked if I could read French, which I said I could a little, so they pointed me to a box on my English boarding pass in Italian, claiming it was French. The box is to the left of an advert, so I had assumed it was just another advert.

Arriving at Milano I find that transit passengers have to exit the airport and cross to the entrance of the terminal about half a kilometre away.

This time my flight is displayed but showing a delay of 2 hours 40 minutes.

Never mind, I will use the time usefully by connecting to the Internet and doing some work. That it seems, is easier said than done. In Milano you get 15 minutes free and then you have to pay for the rest. I believed it should be worth it to redeem the time sitting around in the airport. 

Setting up the account with Milano Internet was relatively easy, albeit they only accepted one of the three email addresses I tried. I never did find out why they didn't like my gmail address or an address which was relatively short.

When the free time had expired I tried logging in to pay for the remaining hours I wanted. I completed the online form indicating that my residence was Cyprus and the form changed accordingly but didn't accept the address I entered. It appeared that they also wanted my 'Tax reference number' as well. I tried my Alien Registration Number and then a few random numbers but no way would it accept my data.

So I thought that I would try the UK address of our company. Changing my residence to the UK worked fine except now they wanted a ZIP code, and no way would a British Post Code work in that field as it accepted numbers only and British Post Codes are number letter combinations.  Suddenly and without warning the screen changed to Italian and again asked for my Tax Number, presumably my Italian Tax Number (Codice Fiscale), which of course I don't have.

Then there was an announcement over the tannoy that was sufficiently clear that I understood it was about the Larnaca EasyJet flight but sufficiently garbled that I had no idea what the announcement was. The tannoy is actually so loud and the speakers so close to passengers when queuing that it is a serious health hazard.

I visit another information desk and they directed me to one of the gates where there would be specific information about my flight.

There wasn't information but there was an offer of a very small voucher for a snack. My snack cost three or four times what the voucher offered. 4.5 EUR or 3 GBP doesn't go very far in airport eating establishments! However, here was an EasyJet representative who should be given the employee of the year award for going as far as humanly possible to help a client.

I asked him to translate the Italian message on my English EasyJet online boarding pass. A liberal translation, reinterpreted by me, is approximately thus: 'You have just wasted your time with an online boarding pass as we don't accept them in this country so you have to queue like the rest of us'. So despite being in Italian on a English boarding pass it actually applied to a North African country that speaks neither English nor Italian!

Next he tries to help with the problem of the Internet connection. He makes phone call after phone call to different departments around the airport.  He basically agrees that its impossible for a non-Italian to complete the form even though its probably foreigners who need the Internet most in Milano.

Eventually after yet another phone call he says it depends if I am a transit passenger or not, because, he says, since I am not, I cannot have the Internet. I explain that I am a transit passenger, having just flown in this morning on his airline. Ah, he says, and takes all my details and heads off to administration to try and sort it out.

About 5 minutes later he returns and makes another call spelling out my name, email address and other details with the international phonetic alphabet - Foxtrox Alpha India Romeo Hotel Echo Alpha Delta. Then he tells me I will soon get an SMS with a new username and password which will give me at least an hour on the Internet. No SMS comes but I try logging in again with the old username and password and find that I have now been credited with another free 15 minutes... which does turn out to be an hour.

Eventually it is time to go to the gate. I have to go through another Passport Control to get there. This makes two passport controls in Milano to go from one EU country to another EU country, maybe even from a Shengen country to another wanna-be Shengen country! The organization here is bizarre but everyone is very friendly and one just has to shake ones head and wonder.

The plane arrives from Prague and everyone leaps at queuing despite the fact that we will naturally not be allowed to board until they have finished refueling and reprovisioning and changing crews. 

No point in racing, I have an online boarding pass that is accepted in Milano with my seat number allocated. However...

EasyJet have changed their contract with the passengers, it's now an 'English contract' I am told by an EasyJet gate representative, and I am not allowed to take my carryon case onto the plane, it will have to go into the hold. 'Please take all you need for the flight from your case'. So I leave my case on the Tarmac and I now have a collection of other items on the chair beside me. 

When on board the flight crew proudly tell everyone that EasyJet are pleased to announce the new rules for cabin baggage to be found on page 189 of the inflight magazine. Basically this means that if you have regular IATA sized cabin baggage you are unlikely to be able to take it onboard and you need to have a smaller case to have the 'EasyJet guarantee'.

But wait a moment... today is June the 30th... the new rules come into effect on July 2nd.

But the new rules are interesting: One of the good things about flying EasyJet is they have no weight limit on cabin baggage. Sometimes we have had up to the 20kg limit on checked baggage and up to 16-18kg on cabin baggage. With the new rules this means if you have a much smaller bag with your real cabin baggage within your official cabin baggage ready to extract at a suitable time when challenged you'll be able to get away with two 20kg effectively checked cases rather than one. The trick will be to put the small, high density items (like books) in what is originally called 'cabin baggage'.

Apparently this plane is not the one that should have been on this route, but a replacement due to some mechanical problem with the original one, hence the delay. This means that many of the online boarding passes and those issued at checkin don't correlate with the actual seating plan of the plane. People who booked a row of four seats are really put out as there are only three seat rows on this aircraft and somehow some seats have become double booked. The ever friendly cabin crew handle the situation with diplomacy and everyone seems satisfied.

What was observable was that the crew were scrambling and racing to get us off as quickly as possible, since we were within minutes of hitting the €400/person compensation time obligated by the EU. Maybe they were offered a bonus if they saved the airline the compensation it would otherwise have to pay. It ended up they made it by something like 16 minutes! Having a fixed cut off point sort of helps, but in reality what would be better is a scaled compensation: Any delay over 30 minutes, free Internet till you leave. Any predicted delay over 90 minutes, a €30 food voucher (not €4.50 as I actually got). Then the real financial compensation at the 3 hour cut off. And EasyJet, here's a tip... whenever you have a delay offer everyone on the flight a free drink and a free muffin.

The cost of food on EasyJet is quite reasonable, so I order a fresh baguette only to find it might be a baguette but fresh it is not. Sad really because on the other two EasyJet flights I had a chocolate muffin and coffee. The chocolate muffins on EasyJet are such that it's almost worth taking the flight just for the muffin!

The inflight magazine proudly informs us that they are having a trial run with 'mobile check in' at a number of selected airports. One wonders how EasyJet North Africa will cope if they cannot even cope with printed online boarding passes.

I've never taken a Ryan Air flight when they haven't been on time or early. EasyJet is very friendly but efficient… not. I arrived home just before midnight.

Kindle edition

It's almost 12 months since I wrote on this blog. I definitely should get back to doing so. 


I finally got the Kindle edition of my book published. Available both on US and UK Amazon sites: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B004J176AShttp://www.amazon.com/dp/B004J176AS. I priced it at the lowest that Amazon permits: $0.99 or £0.74. Any idea what would be a good price in the UK? The aim is to get people to read it rather than make money (all the money goes to the charity anyhow).

In the image... of a creative God

For the last two years I have been writing a book. Well, it hasn't been continuous work but the initial writing and re-writing happened a couple of years back and then it's been the last year doing the layout, proofing, proofing and more proofing. It's now available on Amazon:

Below is the introduction to the book... to hopefully show you where it's going.

Introduction

For many years I have been involved with trying to share the Good News of Jesus Christ with people: young people through the youth groups at various churches, and others through media in the UK. More recently it has been through media in the Middle East and, of course, directly with the occasional person I might talk to about Jesus: everywhere from a transatlantic air flight to a meeting in the street.

I don’t think I do it well. Looking around, I’m not sure many of us do it very well.

Some people I know are much more open and will talk about Jesus with almost everyone they meet… even with a stray customer coming out of the same restaurant in a same lift or elevator. But it’s not how often we share Jesus that matters so much as whether we really do communicate.

When we try to explain who Jesus is to Muslims, it’s pretty hard. And most of us feel we don’t do that at all well.

I started writing this book as a result of attempting to develop methods for evaluating what we are doing in our media communication of the love of God to Muslims. The following methods were developed by a Muslim Background Believer with whom I shared my thoughts. In the process we became friends.

For some time the group I am involved with had been longing for a set of tools to help us evaluate what we do. Someone from another group worked with us for about six months, trying to get his head around the problem. He wrote, we talked, he thought. He talked with Arabs and he tried different methods, but it just didn’t ‘come together’.

However, something in the chemistry of having this friend from that background in our office every day for six to eight weeks worked, and we ended up with something we have found helpful. One of our aims, as a group, is to act as a catalyst for sharing the Gospel with Muslims through media. My colleague Peter said this should not just stay with us, but be shared further with others trying to do the same thing. So I started to write a book.

As soon as I started I realised that I wanted something out of it myself. Even if it never gets published my desire is that it will accomplish the second aim. That is, to help me think through the issues relating to communicating Christ in a post-modern Muslim context. I added the word post-modern because I think it’s relevant for two reasons.

People have talked about this being a hinge generation, passing through from one established world view to another. Though the implications are very different in East and West I think something similar is happening all over the world.

As I see some post-modern attributes in the youth of the Middle East, I also see examples of pre-modern thought among the older generation there. There are two results of this: Firstly, there is a major culture gap between generations in the Middle East. Indeed, I would see the difference between a young person in the Middle East and their parents as being similar to the difference between a young person in the West and their great-grandparents.

Secondly, there is another significant culture gap when Western modernists attempt to communicate Christ to a simultaneously pre-modern and post-modern Middle East. It is as if people from the West attempt to sail through the gap between the two world views, without really making contact.

Much is written about post-modernism in a Western context, but almost nothing is being written from the point of view of the Middle East. So this book is a journey for me to research, and think through, and see what new things God is doing in the region. God is, as He always has been, creatively dealing with the world.

We need to catch some of that creativity in communicating Jesus. This is a journey that can particularly influence the way we communicate the Good News to people from the Middle East.

There has been talk of an ‘online church’ linking believers from the Middle East together in secret. We have been working towards building online communities who have decided to follow Jesus. However, despite many reservations about the institutionalised church, I am not sure how the body of Christ can be anything other than incarnational. We are commended to meet together, and an online community lacks much that we gain from face-to-face communication and physically shared worship.

There is a third aim in writing this book for me, and that is to re-discover my place in the Body of Christ.
Recently I have become somewhat disillusioned with traditional evangelical church structures and communication techniques, tiring of its output of modernist verbiage. Though I am comfortable sharing the Good News about Jesus, I am not sure that the church is very good news for me, let alone the average Muslim.

Philip Yancey shares a similar path, though his disillusionment and re-finding happened when he was younger. GK Chesterton and CS Lewis were the two authors who he felt helped him along the path.

Although separated from me by a vast expanse of sea and culture, they kindled hope that somewhere Christians existed who loosed rather than restrained their minds, who combined sophisticated taste with a humility that did not demean others, and above all, who experienced life with God as a source of joy and not repression.1

In answer to the question Why did I return? Yancey explains:

My career as a journalist gave me the opportunity to investigate people… who demonstrate that a connection with God can enlarge, rather than shrink, life. I began the lifelong process of separating church from God. Though I emerged from childhood churches badly damaged, as I began to scrutinise Jesus through the critical eyes of a journalist, I saw the qualities that so upset me – self-righteousness, racism, provincialism, hypocrisy – Jesus himself fought against, and that they were probably the very qualities that led to his crucifixion.2

If we are to communicate the love of God to the people of the Middle East, we will need to find ways to separate their preconceived ideas (some of them painfully true) of the ‘Christian message’ we communicate, from the person who is both our and their Messiah.

While you are reading this, you will find that there are areas I leave open to discussion or debate. Sometimes those are in places where I cannot personally see a clear Scriptural direction. Other times, I do see a clear Scriptural direction, but know of other Biblical followers of Jesus who see things differently. One of the major differences between following Jesus and being a Muslim is the acceptance of diversity. We should celebrate this. It’s part of our freedom in Christ. He treats us as people with whom He wants a relationship.

Post-modern Christians frequently object to didactic - formal, structured, unidirectional teaching. They do not talk about a set of doctrines, but about a dialogue. This book, then, is an attempt to start such a dialogue.
Richard J Fairhead
Autumn 2007
1 Soul Survivor – Philip Yancey – page 41
2 Soul Survivor – Philip Yancey – page 42-43

Frustrations

Every Monday the team gets together to review the previous week and plan the next. Dena, one of the key team members felt that there was a word from God: 'Hang in there' for this week. When we had come into work on Monday had found that there were notices on all the cars telling us there was going to be a power outage from 8:00 to 13:00 hours on Tuesday.

So because I was the duty person this week I came in early on Tuesday to turn off all the servers. The duty person is one of the three of us who receive SMS text messages telling us any problems with our servers. For the week we are on duty that person is the key person for all maintenance and the other two [hopefully] get an undisturbed week to work on other projects.

I started powering down all the servers at 7:45, and at 7:56 CLUNK... the power went off. Very unusual for Cyprus to be early. The final server was closing down and the battery backup system gave it enough power to close down neatly. Well, there was nothing to do so for the morning I went off to the boat to put a coat of paint on her.

I arrived back after lunch and the power was already on. So I powered up all the servers. One had a hard disk problem which I manually corrected, but the main Internet connection wasn't working. Diagnosed it with a colleague to be one of the Cisco routers that might or might not be working. This isn't like the router you have at home, its a much more complex rack mounted piece of equipment that when new was a couple of thousand dollars (we bought second hand through ebay). It's a complex unit - we have two of them, which we need to replace soon.

Cisco routers have a terminal connection that you can connect a 'dumb terminal' to and check their status. So tried that and found that the programs we used to emulate a dumb terminal didn't seem to work and so we were then scrabbling around to try and work out what was happening.

Peter arrived in an hour later and said it looked like that when the power had come back on there was a surge which had blown the power supply. We keep spares for some things and did have a spare Cisco power supply so we then had to take it out of the rack to change the power supply.

At that point we found a layout logic problem with the rack. All the cables from the switches to the patch panels went across the routers. This meant we had to remove all the cables in the bay before we could remove the router. This meant all the cables needed labeling so they went back in the right place.

Now detail is not my middle name so it took three attempts to label the cables correctly. We then unplugged them all, and changed the power supply and the router started up correctly. Sounds nice and easy... well... we also had to remove the rat droppings from a vermin attack last year that we had not seen before!

We put it back in the bay and some things started working. Well... most things started working. There had been about 40 cables to label and then plug back in the right place. I had misplugged some of them and mislabeled one of them! I told you detail was not my middle name.

Eventually between all three of us (me on duty and the other two who should be doing other things) we got the system back up and running and everything working again.

I say everything... come Wednesday and totally unconnected with this there was a problem with email on one of our servers in Germany and Peter had been working on this problem and thought it was a problem with the security certificate. So he ordered another one. Unfortunately he put a password into the certificate when there should be none, so when the certificate was authenticated and delivered it didn't work. So he tried (with me across it, as I am the authorized representative of the organisation) to get a replacement.

That failed, coming up with a 'security failure' - so then I am trying to phone South Africa to talk to the company that issues the security certificates and find out what is happening. No answer from the company and tried sending emails/response forms... still now answer. All the while this means our and other companies email is not working!

I'm frustrated. I hate computers. Peter and I ended up talking about the future. I realised I spend my time approximately the following way:

• 80% Technical
• 10% Writing proposals
• 15% Organisational admin
• 25% Partner interaction
• 10% Media

Those of you astute will realise the total is 140%. Yes, that's right I spent more than a working week each week working! The bit I enjoy is the media. The bit I hate is the technical.  Of course, if I have too I shall continue this pattern, but I would really like to somehow get more time for media.

I try to get the technical to be a smooth operation - it's not smooth, we have more work than possible for the team - and that creates a burden for me.

So, why don't we just drop the technical? Or reduce it?

When I say technical, what I mean here is the system maintenance. Maintaining more than 10 servers as a platform to enable the media work to proceed. Many different organisations rely on these servers.

Pete and I looked at the different servers and realised that if we just cut back to our core media project we would still need to maintain almost all of the servers just for that one project. We would save very little time. And... the partner contributions from many different groups actually help us to run those servers which then creates the platform for the main media project we want to achieve. Sort of Catch 22.

Come Thursday and I am still 'Hanging in there', but frustrated.

I get an alert (I'm duty person remember) about the temperature in the server room. The air conditioning in the server room is not working. No problem... obviously didn't restart when the power went back on. Walk round to the server room and press the remote.

Nothing happens.

Oh, must be flat batteries on the remote, since we leave it on 24/7 and don't change it. Find another remote for the same type of air conditioner, test it to make sure it does work on the other air conditioner... take it to the server room and press the remote start.

Nothing happens.

Obviously something else blew up when the power went back on.

Frustrating.

When Dena (our administrator) is back in on Monday I shall have to get her to arrange an air conditioning technician to come and sort out the unit. This being Cyprus, who know how long that will take.

Anyway in all these frustrations we realised we had two needs:

• A Finance Director
• About size young people Media/IT literate 

With both those two needs met then I would be released to spend more time on the media. I'm not looking for 100%, coming up to 50% is what I would like. And I'd like to bring my working week down to about 120%.

Mopping up operations

No administrator means... when things go wrong, we fix it. Well... actually having an administrator means we fix many things anyway, but lots of things the administrator checks up on and sorts out before we get water everywhere.

It's still pretty warm [34C] here in Cyprus and the water cooler is an important part of the office. So, when David came in and found it leaking everywhere it was not cool... well, the water was, but it was now all over the floor.

But the good news is we have an administrator who will hopefully start next Monday. This is definitely and answer to prayer, and she has gifts in other areas too... she has worked professionally in photography and has an interest in art, so maybe there will be more pictures coming out of the office to show you what is happening.

Recession, web 2.0 and the way forward

While I was in the UK I got the chance to visit the CEO of a very big group doing similar work to us, except their budget is approx 200 times bigger than ours. I like them a lot and there is a lot of synergy with them. Because we are in the non-profit area we act as partners rather than competitors.

When I visited I was shown a new integrated social networking and media platform that they will launch in a few weeks. It's close to some of what we had talked about as a group early in the spring. They had the budget to execute it very well. Not that some of the projects we do aren't done well. There is a very creative project we are also about to launch within the next few weeks... but... overnight and today it set me thinking.

This group are also involved with another very large project for audience interaction that I went to see in Australia at the beginning of the year. It's excellent, but very 'heavy weight'. We are working on a module to integrate SMS into that system right now. I have two programmers working on that for the next two weeks.

Yesterday I had an email from the external partners co-ordinator for this project. He challenged us 'Given the rapid changes occurring in social media, this may need to be more a loosely aligned organism rather than a complex system to cope with these changes.' That is what really set me thinking. How and why are projects so difficult to achieve?

We have not always succeeded by a long way, but I always try to be 'fast and light' rather than 'big and heavy' since the world is changing. My target is that if it is not achievable within 6 months then its probably too complex. The Desk Top Publishing [DTP] war is an example of what I mean:

Originally there had been two DTP programs head to head: Aldus Pagemaker and QuarkXpress. By the mid 90s QuarkXpress had become the world leader with Aldus/Adobe Pagemaker a second runner. Both were big complex programs. By 1997 Quark was in version 4.0 and so slow was development it took till 2002 to release a 5.0 version.

Adobe purchased Aldus and then released InDesign in 1999. InDesign was a small simple program with many, many plug-ins. So radical and stable was version 1.0 of InDesign Quark were forced to bring out a 4.1 version within months.

I think that is the way of the future and allows rapid and evolving development. I think their model is right: a small simple core with plug-ins that can be upgraded easily and quickly to do the majority of the work.

I'm looking at one of our projects. It has been excellent with very good audience feedback. It was that project that I mention that in the spring said we needed to integrate social networking into the core of the project. At the moment there is a large amount of interaction, but it still has a significant publishing aspect to the project.

Globally we have two things happening simultaneously:

• A recession leading to a post-recession
  I believe that early next year there will be a second dip, the upturn will be for the Christmas period only, and will then be approx 12 months before we see a real upturn from the recession.
• Web 2.0
  Web 2.0 will permanently change the way we do things. Publishing is dead, long live self-publishing. Well, maybe that is a bit strong, but it is the direction of the future.
  

One respected media consultant put it this way 'While traditional media isn't going away, you basically have two choices: Evolve, or disappear.'

So that's the challenge I have been thinking about today. Chatting with Peter he mentioned that his brother, who is a software developer, said their company only does projects that are achievable within 4-6 weeks. That was exactly what I was thinking about: Light and fast. RAD. Rapid Application Development. And that's the model Adobe took with InDesign.

We have to change - we have to develop a method of working that allows every project to be achieved in 4-6 weeks. Its a different way of thinking. RAD implies developing a prototype very quickly and then evolving it into the final product using customer feedback. So the specification is inevitably light, not tied down.

This doesn't mean that it's flaky - let me quote the media consultant I have been reading again: 'Are People More Creative or Productive Working without Limits? No. Absolutely not. Boundaries matter. One of the biggest threats to not reaching your goal is working without limits.' For us the boundary needs to become time.

When I worked for the BBC many, many years ago I used to work on TV news. The 6 o'clock news went out at 6 o'clock. Plus or minus no seconds! I remember well dubbing a film [yes, we shot film in those days] which was number three in the running order while number one in the running order was going out. At the same time I was listening to production talkback, and hit the rewind button on the telecine machine which would allow a few seconds grace by the time it had rewound ready for play out. The 6 o'clock news went out at 6 o'clock. Plus or minus no seconds!

In so many ways we have lost the concept of deadlines. And computers have caused this. When I was dubbing that film I did the best job I could, then grabbed a few extra gramophone records with sound effects, ran to the studio and added the extra effects live as it went out. It was the best we could do and the audience would have believed all the sounds were real.

But 'the best job I could' doesn't work for computer programs - they either work or they don't work. Looking nice but not working is useless. So we have become used to massive overruns and time slips to make it work.

Somehow we need to change our approach and methods so that we can return to the concept of making something workable within a limited time frame and within a limited budget. But something that is nevertheless good enough that the audience accept it, enjoy it and interact with it. The combination of the recession and web 2.0 are forcing that upon us. We have to embrace it and 'evolve or disappear'.

October? Where has the summer gone?

October already... where has the summer gone? It's difficult to catch up with a blog 2 months old, but I'll try.

Normally we aim to spend approx 3 months doing security stuff for our servers per year. This involves upgrading the applications and looking at new ways of doing security better. Sometimes it might also involve rebuilding one or two servers completely. That we did over the new year, from November to February this year. It was more painful than we expected, but worthwhile.

We were expecting a new colleague and so some of the extra things we hoped to do were put off... 'David can do that when he arrives...' Well, David has arrived and getting him sorted out has taken time too, and he is now taking some of the load, but... we had three security problems this year which meant that we didn't actually get much break from security and we are still doing it 10 months later!

That's not good news for me as the technical stuff I don't really like. I'm hoping that this month will be the turning point from the technical and I can get back to some media work. We'll see. The big thing we are doing is integrating 'dual factor authentication' to our systems. Dual factor authentication is where you have two 'factors' to get into the system - this is something you know and something you have. Banks use this: Often you log in to an online bank with a username and password [something you know] and a pin number generated by a little keyfob device [something you have]. Our system is similar, but its a really huge job doing it.

In between all this I have been working on the scripts and getting equipment for a pilot for a serious of short films we hope to make next year. If all goes well we will shoot the pilot this November. I'm really looking forward to this as media production is much more what I enjoy and get a kick out of.

September, we went back to the UK for 3 weeks. It coincided with my son's 21st birthday and also allowed us both to meet friends and have some business meetings in the UK. It was good but tiring.

Now, less than a week back we have two programmers out from the UK, working on new code to upgrade our SMS [mobile phone text message] system. One of the programmers has been out before - he developed the original version of this system - and with him is another programmer working on 'web services' to integrate the system.

Web services is a strange, but very helpful new concept where servers go to and read web pages themselves to communicate with each other. In this case it will allow servers to send and receive text messages. Servers sending text messages themselves? Whatever for? Well... one use is for a server to send us a text message to tell us it is having a problem and please could we fix it!

I still have an unbelievable amount of email to catch up with... I HATE EMAIL... well... no I don't really but it seems to be that the volume of communication has increased exponentially and I am having problems keeping up with it.

So that's about it. Not the most exciting summer [you'll have to see my other blogs about other activities which were more interesting] but worthwhile and hopefully moving.

Work expands to fill the time available?

We now have an extra person working with us. He's a professional System Administrator from the USA. He's with another group, but on placement with us for two years, spending approx 80% of his time with us and 20% with the other group. His character is laid back and fits in pretty well with Pete and me. So far he has just started... but...

We have had many attacks against our systems recently so have been involved in upgrading the security systems for all our servers. One of the primary ways of doing this is through what is called 'dual factor authentication'. OK, that's a horrid techie phrase, but what does it mean? Here's the problem:

Normally we use a username and password to log into the systems, be that email or website admin or whatever. But if there is someone listening across what we are doing they can capture our user name and password and impersonate us and use it themselves. We have had this happen twice from one of our partner groups in Egypt.

The solution is simple - change the password every time you log in! Sounds simple but complex to administrate in a way that works for normal people. So what we actually do is have the normal user name and password as an identifier plus a password that changes every time. That changing password is either displayed on a little dongle that the user caries or is something you plug into your computer to send the password automatically. The dongle you remove when you are not using it. This latter solution is what we have chosen.

But now we have to get it all to work. This means integrating with all our various systems on 9 live servers. So although we have extra help, we think we need extra extra help. In fact, looking at what is happening worldwide we know that cyber-security will only get more complex. Indeed yesterday Barack Obama launched his cyber security plan. Acts of terror today, he said, could come "not only from a few extremists in suicide vests, but from a few key strokes of a computer - a weapon of mass disruption."

Alongside this we are planning a pilot series filming some illustrative stories almost allegorical, but not quite. At the end of last year we had some funds available to purchase hardware, so have invested in a new camera system. We've not bought all the equipment needed yet for the series, but will have enough for filming a couple of pilots which we hope to do this summer.

In between this, our administrator has left, so there is more admin to cope with. And I HATE COMPUTERS. Yesterday I tried to update our accounts package. It took ages and was complex and the problem I thought would be fixed with the upgrade [some of the statements were refusing to print] are still there. So I have to talk to technical support about that.

Another month gone by...

We have spent the last week trying to get an end of year report completed for Companies House in the UK. Hopefully by the end of next week [when she returns] it will be complete!

One big task we have completed is a complete 'asset register' - that's a list of all the things we own for the non-accountants amongst us. Every year it has been a bit of a nightmare - we get given things, we buy things and we scrap things. Now of course those of us who work here know which thing is 'SATA 300 Gbyte Hard Disk' or a '4x4 812 filter' but financial whizz kids don't and so there has always been a difficulty correlating them. OK, so some of them have little value as far as the accounts are concerned, but they do have value as far as replacing them... so all the things we have around the place have to be listed for calculating the insurance value.

Well... to cut a long story short we have upgraded what we do by attaching a 'asset register number' to each and every significant thing around the office. This means that we can look at a chair with a label that says it is 'item 386' and know on the list what it is and how much it is worth from an accounting point of view and how much it is insured for, or a server... or a 'SATA 300 Gbyte Hard Disk'. It didn't take too long but it will allow us to grow in the future.

I started this company about 8 years ago from a borrowed office [I was caretaker while the owners were away] and a broken laptop [if you can get it to work you can have it]. When I started my aim had been to be 'equipment light' - have as little as possible/necessary since I'd seen the headaches of owning too many things from other companies. Now looking at the asset register I realise that God seems to have had other ideas - there are things all over the place... hundreds of them... I'm amazed and what we have here. Within the last year we have been given loads of pieces of equipment... and taken over responsibility for distributing loads of DVDs since another company closed down.

Our internal auditor looked at the 'to do' list on the whiteboard just as we were about to leave the office and asked how many were still needing to be done. Sadly I could only wipe one of this long list off the board. One item illustrates how frustrating things can get at times - when we first started here the company didn't exist, so everything was in my name, bank accounts, lease, utilities, domain registrations etc. Now we are trying to unwind all that and make it all in the name of the company. Not easy... so I write emails, I fill in forms, I phone and so on. Some I need others for... like the utilities have to be done with the accountant from another company and me at the electricity company at the same time... and then all the emails, forms and phone calls.

One of the things that got into this state were the bank account statements for the organisation. It took ages [emails, forms, phone calls etc] to eventually get access to the online banking and when we did I found that I could only look at the last 45 days record of transactions. So I talk to the bank [see the various blog entries about how bad banks are] well when I say talk I mean I write emails, fill in forms, phone them [quite a few times] eventually... eventually... they said last Tuesday they could send me copies of all the statements. They would be 'sent out today, but the postal service take 7-10 days to deliver them' Really? I thought first class mail was overnight! No, for sure it will take longer than that 'definitely they will be posted today, its just the postal service that takes so long'. We need those statements to complete the end of year accounts.

One the good side, we [Peter and I] had been chasing a problem with email security and it appears that we cracked it this afternoon...

Next week a couple of couples [that's 4 people] are coming out from the UK to do some maintenance work at the office. They are staying at the office guest flat. There is repair work to be done in the bathroom, to the alarm system... basically all around there are little repair jobs that they will be doing.

And... the following Tuesday a new family from the USA will join us. David will be taking over much of the technical support for the servers! They have 3 kids and its the first time living abroad for them. It will be a big step.

And finally... Our administrator has retired now in preparation for the family moving back to the UK. So we have no administrator. She has done huge amount of work. We really really need an administrator. A couple who are early retired came out from the UK to see what it is like out here [and to have a holiday] - they are pretty experienced in finance and administration so could be ideal. Their comment was 'well... nothing we have seen has put us off...' Also a friend of mine [we sail together] said his wife might be interested in helping with the admin. So... well... we need someone urgently and one comment our past administrator made was that she felt the administrator needed some accounting skills.

That's all for now.

Back from Oz

Here is update on what is happening...

Peter and I are somewhat frustrated at the moment.

1) We are getting technical problems that interfere with going forward... Peter is trying to upgrade the security of all our systems, which involves putting in a new system called IPSEC. The server concerned keeps crashing - we suspect hardware even though its only 12 month old. Because he is testing for incoming connections, this stops incoming connections working, including our phone system!

2) This is only part of the security upgrade which we need to do this year. We had already planned this, but as a result of Peter going to ICCM in Holland earlier this year it has become a bigger priority. He met with folk from another similar group and in discussions with them security became a larger priority than it already was.

3) Coming back from Australia I am still feeling I am catching up. Australia has left me feeling I would be happy not to get on another plane for quite a few years - but expect I will have to - I really need to visit a couple of countries in North Africa soon. Australia was good - meeting with another group that is very similar to us and maybe have some projects together. However the main purpose was to meet with a group who have developed a replacement audience follow-up system which we need to replace pretty soon. It was good meeting with them, but concerning in that IF we partner with them and a group others here in the Middle East to roll out the system in Arabic it will mean committing one of our two programmers for a few years to the project.

4) The economic issues are affecting our programmers - one of our programmers is facing the challenge of trying to get a second job paying equal too or more than we pay to try to support his retired parents. There is no adequate pension in the Middle East! This means two things - firstly he will be less available to travel and secondly he aims to be working about 16 hours per day to get the money he needs. Its a nightmare really for people in this economic crisis.

5) I bought a new camera for the office in Brisbane [cheaper than UK or Hong Kong strangely] and have been getting all the extra bits needed [some on ebay] to make it do what we want since returning from Australia. I look forward to making the short pilot films we have planned for this year. I hope I don't get sidetracked by all this boring techie stuff... I am finding all the techie stuff wearing me down.

6) On a personal note, last week I sprained my arm moving the boat [I still feel 18 inside even though I'm slightly older than that] and didn't rest it and was climbing over the lighting grid at the youth theatre, and moving a table to the office guest flat and doing more lighting and then sanding down the seats for the boat... silly really... but left me with a VERY painful arm on Saturday - almost too much pain to sleep. It is getting better now, but I must rest it. Rest is not a word I really understand.

That's about it