My first time $schunting CCTV cars

The first hot spot I drove past using the location finder on Google maps, I spotted one of the CCTV cars. It was the cleverly positioned one that watched for banned lefts from Wentworth St south into Commercial St, and banned right turns from the other side. At first I didn’t know what I should do, and started to panic when I saw cars approaching, and was worried that I’d miss a few; my conscious wouldn’t be able to take that. I found a spot to park, then headed to the corner to keep an eye, still not knowing how to warn drivers before it was too late. It soon became apparent that no drivers were turning south from the eastern section, I mean why would they, as they would have just driven around in a circle. I found this out the hard way by missing a driver coming from the western section, who didn’t indicate, he just turned. I sort of leapt into the road as a reflex, but he just sort of hesitated, then carried on, wondering what on earth I was doing. So far I had watched £60 being flushed down the drain. Within the next 15 minutes however, I saved 3 cars, all who indicated right, which obviously gave me warning to approach them. They all understandably looked at me as if I was a psychopath, but when I pointed to the car, clear as day in front of them, looking like a shuttle craft from Star Trek, the smile beamed from their faces. I took great delight in informing them “I just saved you £60”; this won’t be the last time I do this for sure. The first driver I told said he just saw the driver of the CCTV indicate for him to go south, so this had me questioning myself, and had to take a few steps back to make sure I was reading the restriction properly. I had, and I told the driver to reverse a few feet and check for himself; I got another little flash from him as he passed after doing a u-turn. That CCTV car driver was a cheeky blighter indeed, it was suppose to be prevention, but he was clearly wanting them to fall into his web. The second car didn’t put his window down at all, so I had to rely on my voice being loud enough for him to hear me, and to see the car I was pointing at. I made sure I had my camera and taxi badge around my neck, as I thought this might add to my authenticity of not being a nutter (much! haha). I had stupidly gone out without a hat and gloves, and I was also starving, but that corner of London provided everything I needed. Firstly there was a luggage shop, which also sold hats and gloves - £3 each!! And then I got a chicken wrap from the corner café. By this time the car had performed a 3 point turn and legged it – now I knew the immense satisfaction the NoToMob crew must feel on a daily basis.

My Canon 5D MKII on dropping frames, and now a hot pixel.

I bought a Canon 5D mkii late last year, and almost immediately I saw that there were dropped frames/freezing (only just noticeable) while filming in HD. At first I just thought it may just appear that way in camera, but once loaded up on the computer in Quicktime, they wouldn't be there. There were however similar issues once on the computer, but I took that as just being the size of the files, and that one day in the future all my HD stuff would play fine. It wasn't until a few months later that I finally noticed that the glitches were being seen at the exact same point while filming, on replay on the back of the camera, on my HD TV, and on my HD laptop. Before calling Canon or the shop and being told the usual "try turning it off for 5 minutes, then back on again" I decided to explore all the avenues I could to suss out if it was firmware, in camera settings, a lens issue, the image stabiliser, or that my CF cards weren't fast enough. So, I updated the firmware, turned off image the image stabiliser; these didn't fix it. Now my CF cards. I have 3 that I bought off eBay several years ago, that were cheap so obviously knock-offs, but I knew not to use these. Instead I used the 2 Compact Flash Cards that I won in competitions in photography magazines, so I knew they were legit. You could also feel the difference in speed. These were 2 and 4GB, so seeing how this camera chews up memory, I bought a 32GB Lexar CF. All of these cards produced the same results. I then looked back at the footage I had shot using a tele-zoom 100-400mm lens, and none of it had any of these dropped frames, so for the moment the 24-105mm looked like the culprit. I noticed that this 24-105mm needed some lens correction in Camera, which the camera did automatically if you chose to do so; I turned it off, everything seemed fine, but it did eventually happen again. I then remembered I took some macro footage of a spider about a week after buying the camera, with a Sigma 70mm EX lens - the second video clip contained the dropped frames, so it was now clear it wasn't the lenses. Now I had explored all the possible solutions, I called Canon and asked them what needed to be done. They were saying it needed to be sent in for repairs, which would mean 2 things - 1) I would be without my camera for anything up to 2 weeks, 2) It would almost certainly cost about £40-£50 in special delivery costs. I then called Jacob's photography in Canon St London where I bought it, and they told me to bring it in and they would exchange it once they saw the issue for themselves. I brought my laptop just in case they wanted to see all the examples, but it wasn't necessary, they were happy with the 2 clips stored in the camera. Before I left the shop with my new camera, I put the battery in and stood by the window to film the traffic outside as a test; there didn't appear to be a problem (as yet). Later that night I plugged it into my HD TV to do some tests, and everything seemed fine, but as I panned the camera I little white dot caught my eye. Now, I remember seeing 2 of these little white dots while doing close ups of some family members with my previous camera, but just assumed it was dust and needed cleaning. For this to appear immediately after the exchange was not good. I had a feeling that this might be a "hot pixel", so I did some looking about on line, and sure enough many others had been experiencing this with HD SLRs. I tried all the tips like sensor cleaning and sensor re-mapping, but the whitish pixel remained. The camera will have to go back yet again, as for me this is annoying, and if I am asked to do anything important with my camera, I don't want others complaining of this.

There are 2 examples of dropped frames here by another 5D user

http://www.landoimages.com/JefferyLando/drop_framesh264.mov
http://www.landoimages.com/JefferyLando/drop_frames2h264.mov

And here are a couple of examples of a hot pixel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0S2bl-CgMMM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kv-w1E6WX4

My suggestion to anyone going to buy an HD SLR, is if you take your laptop with you and a spare battery for it fully charged, then you can give it a test before leaving the shop, and avoid the inconvenience of repeated trips back. A spare battery shouldn't seen as being an added expense, as I assume anyone buying one of these is a seriously into photography, and will have more than one battery; so just buy it in advance. If you buy your camera on line then you will be asking for trouble. These cameras are as cheap in stores as they are on line, so don't buy on line or you'll be paying a fortune in postage costs if it has these problems

My appeal is upheld over an alleged box junction offence

Last year my wife received a penalty charge notice for stopping in, what was considered to be by the authorities, a legal box junction. I saw otherwise, so set about researching the details of box junctions, i.e. their required measurements, faded paint etc... I didn't care if this was going to take a lot of time and work to do, as I always see these as a challenge. There are all sorts of statistics out there, of which I don't know which are true, but apparently of those people that appeal, about 60-70% are won. This simply means that 60-70% of PCNs are illegally issued, but the councils have an ace up their sleeve - the upstanding citizen. Well that's not me (in this sense anyway). Here is the video evidence I produced -



I used this website to find out what was and wasn't legal with box junctions -

http://www.ticketfighter.co.uk/yellow.htm

Here is the letter received telling me of our win at the adjudicator. Disappointingly the fact that the box was faded in my opinion, wasn't what won it for me, it was the fact that the authorities didn't have the correct documentation for the box to be in the position it was. I wonder just how much money has been made from this box when

Replacing my iPhone 3GS screen myself

The iphone screen I had ordered finally arrived, so I wasted no time in getting to work replacing it. I made sure and watched a couple of Youtube videos all the way through to make sure I knew what to expect, and one of them was a guy filming himself to see what mistakes he would make. His main one was pulling the screen too hard, thus pulling all the connecting cables away instead of gently removing them; noted. The part that concerned me, and would ultimately lead to a lot more money being spent, was the fact that a hairdryer/heat gun needed to be used to remove the glass! So it wasn’t just a case of unscrewing stuff and replacing; there was some fiddly stuff to do. It wasn’t this part that screwed everything up however, it was removing the LCD screen. In the video the guy is seen taking out the screws then using a tool to slip under the LCD to remove it. Mine didn’t just slip out, and I spent a while jostling with it. In the end I put too much pressure on it and heard a light cracking noise; I turned it over to find I had damaged the LCD. This was what I was dreading the most, just making it worse and worse. I didn’t know at first how damaged it was, so I got on with sorting the glass section out before worrying too much. The glass was not what I was expecting, I though it would just separate with a little bit of heat, instead it deformed the frame and damaged all the rubber sealing. Okay, so it would be a little exposed to increased moisture, at least I will have saved on taking it to Apple; that’s what I was telling myself. When it came to sticking the glass to the midframe, it was as bad as I had imagined; a very uneven seal, and the rubber peeling away. I plugged it all back in anyway, just to see where I was at, and the LCD was in quite a bad way; only the top half was barely visible. When I tried to push it all back together it was a struggle as you can imagine, and once it eventually did go in (after cutting away most of the rubber seal) the screen was just a mess of colours. I quickly got on line to find an LCD screen, and although there were plenty about, and for a reasonable price, I couldn’t wait for several days for it to arrive. I eventually found a place in Bermondsey that stocked them, but unfortunately they were double the price of most on line stockists; I had no choice. When I arrived, I walked into their workshop, and asked for the LCD screen only; I did ask the price for the whole front unit, but £69.99 was a bit much. Now, as I was a little shaky due to my iPhone being completely stuffed, I had a little trouble putting screen together with all those minuscule screws. The two guys in there saw this and insisted they help me. I didn’t want them doing it for nothing, and already felt like an idiot because I had tried to fix it myself to save money. In the end they said they would be happy to do it for free, so they did, and pointed out that I was a second away from breaking the screen again by placing it over a part that should have gone above it! I took a £5 note out of my bag and told him to buy himself a drink, but he flatly refused. I persisted, pointing out that I would have cost myself even more if he hadn’t of stopped me; again he refused. When I told him the least I could do was tweet about the company and tell others, he said this was what he really wanted – word of mouth was the best thing for a company like his. Now, the question is would I do it again, and the answer is yes, because my phone worked, although I will buy a complete mid frame assembly to replace the deformed one. The problem with the LCD was that the frame needed to be separated in several places with a sharp object that could slot between them. The rest of it was a doddle, so I am buying a new mid frame assembly, and putting my iphone back into it’s previous cosmetic state. Funnily enough, when I got onto eBay to buy a complete mid frame assembly, the only company selling this, besides ones in Hong Kong with up to a month delivery, was this same company! In the end the total for parts was about £83, and all the running around. But, I didn’t have to send my phone away, it was cheaper than Apple, and for the future I will buy the cheap mid frame from Hong Kong in advance, so if I do break my screen again, it will be a fraction of the price.

http://www.parts4ipods.com/

They're great people, and much cheaper for parts and repair than Apple stores.

A phishing scam sent to me, paleeeeeese.

Dear,
Greeting to you,

I am Mr Yannick Ahmed from Burkina Faso I want to seek your assistance, I’m a staff
of BANK OF AFRICA,(BOA) In my department I discovered an abandoned sum of
USD$7.8million US dollars in an account that belongs to one of our foreign customers
who was assassinated with his entire family since 2003,

Since his death, the bank has been expecting his next of Kin to come over and claim
his money because the bank can't release it unless somebody applies for it as his
next of Kin, please I want you to stand for me as his next of kin so that the bank
will transfer the fund into your account then I will come over to meet you in your
country for us to share the money, do not view this as been illegal but an
opportunity as await your urgent response to enable me give you more details.
Please reply with those information's below so that I can know you very well before
I go ahead with you,

Your Full Name
Your International passport or ID card.
Your age.
Your private telephone number.
Your country.
Your profession.

Remain bless,
Mr Yannick Ahmed

We received a PCN in the mail yesterday for our car allegedly being stopped in a box junction on New Cross road. At the moment in that area there are lots of roadworks and road changes that have been ongoing for many months (even years). Recently Kender Street was closed, as can be seen from this photo http://www.flickr.com/photos/35264141@N06/5059872374/ I took which is at the junction the alleged offence occurred. Because this street is now closed off, it is reasonable to assume that the VERY faint box junction at the intersection of these roads was no longer in use/being monitored. This is even more apparent when you look at it from this angle http://www.flickr.com/photos/35264141@N06/5059872728/in/photostream/ and see that several sections of road have been relaid on it and nearby, but the "box" has not been repainted, so it basically looks again that it has been left faint or partly removed because it will eventually be tarmacked over. What I am pointing out here is that the box is very faint - if you look at the first photo with a freshly painted red lines, you can see the difference in visibility between them and the box junction - WHY WASN'T THE BOX JUNCTION REPAINTED FOR BETTER VISIBILITY? We all know why, because it's a money making scheme that no one will fight, that is except me. I fight all my PCNs, and have won 80% of them for reasons such as this.

looked at from this angle http://www.flickr.com/photos/35264141@N06/5059261423/in/photostream/ it doesn't look like there's any box junction there at all. Yes it's easier to see from a camera mounted on a 30 ft pole, but when you are low down in a car, in the haze of the afternoon traffic, a faint yellow line is hardly visible to 90% of drivers.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/35264141@N06/5059261773/in/photostream/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/35264141@N06/5059873536/in/photostream/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/35264141@N06/5059260839/in/photostream/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/35264141@N06/5059259217/in/photostream/


These other photos show areas of road nearby that have had paint removed, or other box junctions that have also been tarmacked over and not repainted - what exactly is supposed to be being enforced in that area at the moment is anyone's guess. Certainly not something that it should be legal or moral to charge unsuspecting motorists over.

Last night's bilk

I was heading down park lane when a hand went up at a bus stop, so I had to do that thing where you look in the rear view mirror to see if there’s a bus behind you, then, make eye contact with the person to make sure it’s definitely you she is hailing. There was no bus, so I pulled over, only for 3 young guys to come to the window from the back of the queue instead of the woman whose hand went up first. As she wasn’t walking toward me I asked where these people wanted to go. They were about 20 years old, two black and one white, and they type of people that used the phrase ‘ya get me’. If there’s anyone on this here Earth that I immediately take a dislike to is those people who use this term; NO I DON’T BLOODY GET YOU, WHY DON’T YOU EXPLAIN IT TO ME? They asked if it would be more than £30 to Fulham Broadway, even though I had a little feeling that this was to put me at ease; that they had £30 and therefore I wouldn’t have anything to worry about. As I hadn’t had any “trouble” for a long time (except a couple of sickies and some spilt wine) I let them in the cab against my better judgement. They were right young geezers, and even though they were trying to be chatty and overly friendly (something that would usually make me very suspicious) I gave them the benefit of the doubt. The first spike on my concern graph (besides the “street accent”) was when they said they needed a cash machine literally as we pulled away. They said there was a Sainsbury’s in Fulham they could use, but I decided to stop at the first I saw in order to see that they actually had access to money. The first was on Knightsbridge, and as soon as one of them was out I was already being told that these machines didn’t work with their card. I didn’t understand what that meant until the one that got out came to my window and asked what ‘you card has been denied’ meant; well, exactly what it says on the tin I would have thought. He then showed me his card, which looked like a very basic credit card. He told me that it was a cash card, and that it’s the type you put funds on. One side of me was saying to get rid of them there, but the other side was saying ‘they owe for the trip to here so far’. Well I took them on to Fulham where they said it could only be used in supermarket machines. One of them asked me about my sat nav, how much it cost, and what model it was; his response told me what kind of people they were – ‘I can get you lots of sat navs’. Why the hell would I want more than one? Another little sign that this was all wrong was while we were stopped, and one of the boys asked me if we could stop the meter until we were moving again. He then went on to ask if he could have me number to use me privately. I asked him why he would want to use a black cab if he thought they were so expensive (he also commented how unfair it was about the £2.20 minimum at the start). He tried to say it was because it would look better among his friends if he was driven around in a black cab instead of a cheap minicab. Instead of stopping in Fulham Broadway as asked, they took me all the way to the Sainsbury’s in Townmead Road. As soon as I was at the cashpoints and one went over to them, the other two got out and started edging closer to the riverside. The one by the cashpoint said there was a problem, that he couldn’t get any money out, so I locked the cab and went over to have a look; I could hear a small jeer from the other 2 who obviously weren’t expecting this. He told me to watch what happens when he put his numbers in; it told him he had insufficient funds. I then got very serious and said ‘right, this bulls**t, you better find some other way of getting the money or I’m calling the police’. He then motioned to the other two to give him their phone so he could call his mum. He went through 3 phones, all of which went dead conveniently as he was typing the number in. I then got my phone out and asked for the number; now a number they were typing into their own phones was suddenly impossible for them to remember. ‘Right, I’m calling the police’ I told them, and as I dialled the number they a laughed and jogged off around the back of the supermarket. I got the police on the line as I still had them in sight, then while still giving location and descriptions, I got in my cab and headed down the adjacent street to where they had gone. There were several exits through the flats, so I was trying to guess how far they would have got to, but as I got out my cab and turned, I saw them running toward Townmead road. I quickly got back in and headed after them again. By the time I pulled up next to them they hadn’t even noticed I had caught up with them. I had the officer on the phone all the way to the end of Stephendale Road, where I knew a dead end was on its way. Just before we all got there I had put all my equipment and money in my rucksack ready to get out on foot. I wasn’t quick enough however, because when they headed through the gate and into the dark green, I lost which direction they went in. I had the police on the phone the whole time, and picked one of the exits to try my luck – they had definitely gone. There were some nearby flats which they would have definitely gone into by then, so I knew the chase was over. I met a police van on Imperial Road coming out of Fulmead Street in a hurry, and I made contact to confirm I was the driver. We both knew they would have gone inside by now, so I shook the drivers hand and thanked him for coming. I keep looking back over the whole thing and wondering what I can learn from this. Unfortunately because there have been many people I have picked up, who I had thought were going to be trouble (and sometimes were) but still got paid, it’s impossible to know who the ones are that are actually going to do a runner. In 6 years of doing this job, I would say that, off the top of my head, I have only had about 4-5 runners (ones that actually got away), so it’s not something to warrant a complete change of practises unfortunately. Several others have tried, but I caught them, called the police, left the meter running, and got the police to make them pay the amount up to that point.

So remember that one cabbies –

-‘ya get me’ boys
-cashcard that can only be used at their destination
-2 black and one white.
-the white was skinny, short hair, blue shorts, grey and blue rucksack
-one black boy had 2-3inch afro, reasonably built, wearing an Orange JD sports bag diagonally over his back
-other black boy had short plats, was a bit overweight, and was wearing (I think) a grey t-shirt and tracksuit bottoms
-they were all about the same height (about 5ft 3 – 5ft 5) and were not intimidating
-They lived in the vicinity of Peartree Court and the end of Stephendale Road SW6.