BBC websites down tools and head outside into the sun for a while The entire BBC website (less iPlayer) went down briefly this morning. Auntie's online offerings, ranging from free online news to telly and radio listings, recipes and educational content for kids, were all briefly offline. All the BBC's sub-sites were throwing up HTTP 500 errors, complete with a nice little graphic of the …
"Three years ago the BBC's web presences did more or less the same thing. The corporation declined to say what caused it beyond an "internal system failure"."
Actually there was a rather long and in depth blog post about it
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/internet/entries/a37b0470-47d4-3991-82bb-a7d5b8803771
This morning CBeebies on Sky went down too.
Cue the wailing and gnashing of teeth of a nations toddlers as they don't get their morning Hey Duggee, and their parents trying to get an indoor freeview aerial to get a signal.
Maybe related, maybe not. The beeb isn't having a good day.
Though when I tried to login to the news and got an HTTP 500 I genuinely feared that the site had become overwhelmed because some large (and catastrophic) newsworthy Event had occurred.
"Though when I tried to login to the news and got an HTTP 500 I genuinely feared that the site had become overwhelmed because some large (and catastrophic) newsworthy Event had occurred."
My immediate thought - because I noticed the flames on the test card image - was that they were pranking us, perhaps in order to add something real that people would remember when (say) an upcoming Doctor Who is broadcast, with a story set at the time the website supposedly went down due to whatever disaster/invasion/whatever the Doctor averts.
Also: it says in the article that iPlayer wasn't affected - but it was if you scratched the surface: Click on the iPlayer link and the site appeared to be up, but following through to anything therein (at least for me) resulted in the same error.
Was it just me or did other people find that rag doll test card image scary?
I miss the selection of test cards - used to see them all the time so you could set the tv up correctly. Now you have to set reds by David Dikinson's face which varies depending on the last coat of Cuprinol ..., blues by the colour of the Brexiteers' rosettes which brighten and fade depending on the state of the Pound, and greens by the grass at Wimbledon but that's currently brown so doesn't help much. Be great if there was a regular 5 minute test card window at some point for all channels - be more interesting to watch than "Rental Properties Under the Sledgehammer" - but then again it may show just how terrible the current SD broadcast quality is on static images ... I doubt if you could even use the contrast bars on some multiplexes ...
There was more than just the test card.
During the rollout of coulor TV in the UK in 1967 or so, BBC2 carried a number of test programs, which I believe were called "Trade Test Transmissions". They were basically colourfull short documentaries, broadcast at fixed times of the day, so that TV installers has something predictable to set the colour up on the TV they were installing (Colour TVs were still mainly valve driven, and were fiddly to set up, took ages to warm up from cold, and generated large amounts of heat).
I happened to be ill for a while that year, and off school for a week or two, and I remember three of them. One was called "Ride the White Horses", and was about power boat racing, another was called "Skyhook", and was about helicopter cranes, and one was called "Birth of a Rainbow", about rainbow trout farming.
There were more, but I can't remember them. Wikipedia has a list.
Looking a YouTube, they have the one about rainbow trout, and some of the others, but not the other two I remember.
"During the rollout of coulor TV in the UK in 1967 or so [...]"
I might still have the handouts from the Mullard colour TV road-show that toured the UK to educate the technical community before colour broadcasting started. A technical explanation of why PAL was better than NTSC - and how the "banana tube" semi-mechanical system had done colour TV.
IIRC they showed some very colourful test programmes on the TVs dotted round the room.
"Colour TVs were still mainly valve driven, and were fiddly to set up, took ages to warm up from cold, and generated large amounts of heat"
One by-product was that the final stage video valves could also be used in HF SSB amateur radio transmitters. Usually overdriven - so they needed replacing regularly. IIRC Drake transmitters used them.
Talking about the test card made me think. It's interesting to consider that not all that long ago the sum total of available TV was...
BBC1 - not sure what time it started, but certainly not all that early prior to breakfast TV...ran through til around midnight when it shut down for the night
BBC2 - bulk of daytime was the test card. Late afternoon and evening programming, and shutdown around same time as BBC1. Maybe some Open University programming (very) early morning or late at night
ITV - Similar to BBC1 as I recall
Later, Channel 4 launched but it didn't come on until late afternoon, and also shut down at night.
Makes you realise why breakfast TV and the launch of Channel 4 were such huge events. Especially in the case of the latter they represented a significant increase in the overall amount of programming available..
"[...] ran through til around midnight when it shut down for the night"
BBC schedules in July 1953 usually opened with children's programmes at 17:00 - although sometimes in mid-afternoon with a film or live sport.
There was a break between the end of the children's programmes at 17:35 or 18:00 - restarting again about 19:30 to 20:00. Apparently so it didn't provide the temptation for people to miss going to Evensong at their church.
It closed down about 22:40 with an audio only news update. On Sunday the final programme was "The Epilogue" - usually a cleric droning on in the style of Radio 4's "Thought For The Day".
There were no other TV channels.
BBC2 was the reason my dad bought a new TV. The one we had wasn't able to get it when it launched.
I guess the old TV was 405 line VHF and we needed the new TV to get the new fangled 625 line UHF that BBC2 was broadcast on. It was years later before we got a colour TV.
" It was years later before we got a colour TV."
Even after BBC2 went colour - a lot of the programmes were in black & white. Can't remember when "Pot Black" snooker was finally shown in colour. We used to gather at a friend's house (his dad was a bank manager) for Saturday's midnight movie. They seemed to choose films that would show well in colour - like "Operation Petticoat" (aka "The Pink Submarine").
I remember as a child visting a distant relative in Bournemouth who had colour TV (we lived in the penines in northern England and BBC2 and colour took a few years to get to us) and looking forward to seeing Jackanory in colour .... only to find that that week's story was only filmed in black and white!
I think Pot Black was always in colour as the whole point of the program was that it was designed to showcase colour TV.
Meanwhile we were left with B&W and 405-line BBC1 ... I remember watching the 1970 FA Cup Final replay thinking that every Leeds player (white kit) was being shadowed by a Chelsea paluer (blue kit looking dark grey in B&W). Also, 5-nations rugby was a challenge as Scotland/Wales/Ireland all seemed to have chose the same mid-grey shirts!
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I keep meaning to doctor the test card image i've saved for teleconference meetings. Something maybe something with the boss and the company mascot/figurehead/parlor game.
That and hook 'the art gallery' theme song in to the big displays whilst we wait for the obligatory 'can everyone hear me?'
I know, it rarely does not rain here.
I worked on-site at a client in the West End (of London) for 18 months, a few years ago. Getting there involved a mixture of walking and public transport (or just a long walk), and I "wisely" carried a raincoat every day.
What surprised me was how seldom I actually needed it. Maybe five times in 18 months, which might have been a couple more times had I not once or twice taken shelter in the pub at the end of the day until the wet stuff had spent its fury.
We tend to forget that London has a lower annual rainfall than (say) Paris (France, not Texas).
We tend to forget that London has a lower annual rainfall than (say) Paris (France, not Texas).
Supposing for a moment that Wikipedia is a reliable source of information, London and Paris, France have very similar amounts of rainfall. Paris, Texas has nearly twice as much as either! Paris, Texas is almost as rainy as Glasgow, if you can believe that.
Oh, poor souls! Meanwhile, here in the Grim North, AKA Nobodygivesafuckia, we've already had 30+C highs, once again proving, were proof needed, that if you don't live in the South East, you don't count.
Bake, you artisan sandwich eating property-obsessed snowflakes. Feel that? That's what not being in control of your life feels like: Inescapable.
Joking aside, the BBC could melt into an amorphous puddle of media luvvie nonsense and I wouldn't care.
I managed to take down the Doctor Who site for an hour or so about 5 or 6 years ago. One wrong character in a .htacess file was all it took. Dev and Test were not 100% identical to the live environment it seems.
Ringing up the admin guys in White City to request them to restore the file from the nightly back ups was fun. "What is your business case for requesting this". "Nothing flipping works!"
AC obvs
In 'Media Village' data centre/apps room/etc in W12 which does much of BBC and other channels' playout was specced years ago to be able to cope with 30 degrees outside temperature....always seemed a little low to me.
That was for the technology they expected to put it in then. It was never 'full' in my time but with things like virtualisation, there is less space used but it can use more power.....
Also I believe BBC news web stuff might be at least partially hosted there and that row of bays was always rather warm and closely packed.
End the License Fee and axe the TV tax.
We put single mothers living in poverty in jail for not contributing to Gary Lineker's £1.7m salary.
We take mothers away from their children for not paying the massively over inflated salaries of bourgeoisie.
This is socialism, this is communism.
The BBC wants to find away to fund itself and if it wants to continue pushing its ultra left wing propaganda on the nation.
Look everyone – Terry Fuckwit has found the interwebs!
If it's socialism how can the salaries be so varied? Large variations in salaries are a key characteristic of market economies.
There have always been reduced rates for people on lower incomes.
But nice of you to think of the single mothers and other poor people™. Obviously, they shouldn't have tellies in the first place. Such carelessness should not be rewarded by indolence: bring back the workhouse!
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