View from the 14th floor

070429 view 7
Originally uploaded by enrico_cadillac.

I have finally got around to uploading the few snaps I took from the office window to my PC and then on to flickr.

The cunningly labeled "view 1" is the scope of what I can actually see from my office window, the rest are from different vantage points around the floor.

This picture was taken by leaning right against the window and looking down past the rear of Cardinal Place from a couple of offices along. Not a panoramic view, I thought it gave an interesting look down into the narrow canyon of the street exiting onto Buckingham Palace Road next to (I think) the Huguenot Church.

If anyone is interested, the full set can be found here.:

View from the 14th floor

070429 view 7
Originally uploaded by enrico_cadillac.

I have finally got around to uploading the few snaps I took from the office window to my PC and then on to flickr.

The cunningly labeled "view 1" is the scope of what I can actually see from my office window, the rest are from different vantage points around the floor.

This picture was taken by leaning right against the window and looking down past the rear of Cardinal Place from a couple of offices along. Not a panoramic view, I thought it gave an interesting look down into the narrow canyon of the street exiting onto Buckingham Palace Road next to (I think) the Huguenot Church.

If anyone is interested, the full set can be found here.:

The trials of torrenting

The trouble with torrenting from the site I use is that if your upload/download ration gets too heavily loaded in favour of the downloads, you find yourself at the end of the queue for new material. Once that happens, it is almost impossible to download new stuff early enough to be able to recycle it out to other leechers whilst the high demand is there, so you get the late comers and download ratio gets more miserable.

This is particularly annoying as I tend not to have an interest in downloading the biggest blockbuster movies (although I have downloaded a few, I have yet to watch them); I prefer to download TV programmes I cannot otherwise get as they are either as yet unavailable in the UK or broadcast by Murdoch's satellite franchise. From time to time they announce a ratio-building weekend and we're in the middle of one now. I downloaded the entire Superman movies box set on Thursday as soon as the ratio build was announced, a total of 5.07 gigs and am currently downloading a version of Hot Fuzz. I shall give the latter a watch, but I have Superman 1 & 2 on DVD and let's face it, 3 & 4 are pants (particularly 4), but they are popular with the hoi-polloi and it's all doing my ratio good. At the end of the weekend I shall delete the Superman files in their entirety, hoping that my boosted ratio will allow me earlier access to the programmes I want to download.

Only once in the 6 months or so I have been using this site has my ratio gone above 1. It is currently languishing at 0.74 though that will improve slightly as the weekend progresses. The difficulty in some ways, other than me being choosy about what I pull down from the 'net as a rule, is that I can download at speeds approaching 4 meg at the right time of day, but the uploads never get faster than 1/2 meg (in practice much slower). This is good for me, but lousy for ratio building. It took me a couple of hours to grab the entire Superman box set, it is taking days to upload it back to other users.

Still, there's no Stargate or Battlestar out there to download right now and both House and Heroes are entering their final month of their respective seasons. I have downloaded but not watched The Dresden Files, so I guess there's not much out there to worry about until the Autumn schedules start up.

The trials of torrenting

The trouble with torrenting from the site I use is that if your upload/download ration gets too heavily loaded in favour of the downloads, you find yourself at the end of the queue for new material. Once that happens, it is almost impossible to download new stuff early enough to be able to recycle it out to other leechers whilst the high demand is there, so you get the late comers and download ratio gets more miserable.

This is particularly annoying as I tend not to have an interest in downloading the biggest blockbuster movies (although I have downloaded a few, I have yet to watch them); I prefer to download TV programmes I cannot otherwise get as they are either as yet unavailable in the UK or broadcast by Murdoch's satellite franchise. From time to time they announce a ratio-building weekend and we're in the middle of one now. I downloaded the entire Superman movies box set on Thursday as soon as the ratio build was announced, a total of 5.07 gigs and am currently downloading a version of Hot Fuzz. I shall give the latter a watch, but I have Superman 1 & 2 on DVD and let's face it, 3 & 4 are pants (particularly 4), but they are popular with the hoi-polloi and it's all doing my ratio good. At the end of the weekend I shall delete the Superman files in their entirety, hoping that my boosted ratio will allow me earlier access to the programmes I want to download.

Only once in the 6 months or so I have been using this site has my ratio gone above 1. It is currently languishing at 0.74 though that will improve slightly as the weekend progresses. The difficulty in some ways, other than me being choosy about what I pull down from the 'net as a rule, is that I can download at speeds approaching 4 meg at the right time of day, but the uploads never get faster than 1/2 meg (in practice much slower). This is good for me, but lousy for ratio building. It took me a couple of hours to grab the entire Superman box set, it is taking days to upload it back to other users.

Still, there's no Stargate or Battlestar out there to download right now and both House and Heroes are entering their final month of their respective seasons. I have downloaded but not watched The Dresden Files, so I guess there's not much out there to worry about until the Autumn schedules start up.