Last night almost exactly 36 hours after my ADSL died at home, lots of lights started flashing on the router and my broadband returned.

So, today I am working from home again and feeling a little less stressed.

However, I have now decided to take out a monthly subscription to the T-Mobile WiFi service, as it is only £20 a month vs £10 per day if I pay each time I need it. I think I will start working from the coffee shop twice a week as I do work slightly more productively there, and it does help to get out of the flat at times.

I also now have some more flexibility in working and can more easily pop out during the week if I feel like a short break to visit an exhibition ect as I don’t have to worry about paying for WiFi access when out.

I just have to get used to drinking that quantity of coffee again - I was quite “off-colour” last night from a caffine overdose.

I shall also be firing off a letter to BT complaining about their customer “don’t care” department. I pay a premium to BT compared to their cheaper competitors as I want a decent service. Yes, things break down and I do not expect 100% perfection in that regard.

I do not however expect to have to spend something an hour and a half on the phone over two days dealing with people who have no real understanding of the service and are just trying to read off a script in a call center. That is not a premium service. If that is what BT offer now, then frankly I might as well switch to Carphonewarehouse - at least I know they will be crap.

I popped home from my office/Starbucks to have a short break and see if BT had managed to get my broadband working after they left a voicemail asking if it was OK now.

After a futile conversation with BT - I headed back to the “office” to carry on working and just as I left the flat and was walking along the riverside path, a chap who looked suspiciosly like he was flat hunting stopped me and asked what I would think to having a bar and piazza with seating along the riverside right outside my flat.

He seemed somewhat shocked that my reply was one of aghast horror at the thought of a bar with noisy patrons a mere few metres from my living room. We have enough problems with chavs on mini-motorbikes and party boats with their thump, thump, thump music on Saturday nights as it is. A bar with outside seating would be a nightmare.

It’s not as if Canary Wharf is lacking in bars with outside seating around the docks area already!

If he is thinking that the abandoned pier nearby would make a good spot for his bar - then he wont get far as the locals are very much against anyone trying to set up a business (or home) on it.

I think I shall keep an eye on the local planning controls website, just in case.

I have lost my broadband connection at home! Eeek!

So, it looks like I shall spend a few days in the local Starbucks working from there. I may be a tad hyper as well, as the local branch has run out of decaf coffee and there is only so much of the real stuff I can cope with per day. They have also run out of the the usual paper napkins as well - I hope they can’t run out of internet!

Anyhow, the internet died almost to the minute at 10am yesterday (suspicious?) and it took until 5pm for BT to accept that there was a fault outside my control - and will look into it within 48 hours.

So, a few days in the coffee shops in Canary Wharf trying to work and not oggle the handsome chaps in suits wandering around the place. I prefer Starbucks as their T-Mobile WiFi is more reliable that the Sip ‘n Surf from the Cafe Nero - and frankly, I find Cafe Nero coffee too bitter for my palette anyway.

I am sure you are familiar with the infamous Tuguska event where a body (asteroid or comet) entered the atmosphere and probably exploded about 5 miles above the surface in Russian Siberia.

I was half watching a documentary on one of the documentary TV channels last night and the usual comment was made about what would happen if this had occured over a major city as opposed to a near-deserted forest.

That got me thinking - just how big was the impact zone, and what would it actually look like if overlaid on modern cities?

For example, according to Wikipedia, “The Guinness Book of World Records (1966 edition) states that due to the rotation of Earth, if the collision had occurred 4 hours 47 minutes later, it would have completely destroyed the city of St. Petersburg.”

The images below are a series of Google Map screenshots resized to include an overlay of the Tunguska impact zone.

It should be remembered that a Tunguska event over a major modern city would cause considerable damage, but not catastropic to most structures, as most buildings in the tree flatened area would survive (concrete being stronger than wood) - although windows etc would be smashed and there would be considerable loss of life from the burning in the central area, and secondary loss of life from the impact of the shattered glass in offices, falling trees and people being “blown” off their feet for some significant distance.

Also worth noting is that while there is the area with the flattened trees - the zone affected is considerably larger as the wind force would have still been strong beyond that immediate area and would have caused some damage.

The source for the overlay map is based on one found at the University of Georgia website.

The central grey circle represents the approximate area with trees subject to physiological light scorching. The red area is where trees were flattened - and the two circles are just helpful distance markers, 20km apart. The actual area affected is about twice the diameter of the outer circle, although there was no long-term damage - but anyone standing (for example) 60km away from the center would still feel the air-blast as a short-lived, but strong gale force wind.

London

Miami

New Delhi

New York

Paris

Rome

Seattle

Tokyo

Feeling safe now?

The London Gazette was first published in Oxford on 7 November 1665. Charles II and the Royal Court had moved to Oxford to escape the Great Plague of London, and courtiers were unwilling to touch, let alone read, London newspapers for fear of contagion.

When the King moved back to London, the newspaper came with them and continues to this day.

It is not the sort of newspaper that you would expect though, being predominantly being where government notices are published.

For example, if a military person is “mentioned in dispatches”, then it here that they get “mentioned”.

The London Gazette

They have recently (about a week ago) relaunched their website.

I use them occasionally for research, as their search engine is rather good so it is easy to find notices of Bills which will be submitted to Parliament in the near future. The notice itself contains a lot of detail, so it often saves the hassle of reading the bill itself. I am using it a lot at the moment for my research project as the railway company reguarly changed its plans during construction - each time requiring a new Parliamentary act to be passed.