Freesteel Blog » 2011 » February

Friday, February 18th, 2011 at 11:10 pm - - Cave

How far behind am I with everything? Too far behind.

And caving trips keep somehow happening.

This is Saturday 29 January in Notts II on the day we got a lot of help building a wood store.

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Tuesday, February 1st, 2011 at 11:02 am - - Whipping 7 Comments »

Everyone is overwhelmed by the new police crime mapper this morning, which cost £300,000 to develop, according to the BBC.

Readers with a memory of more than a hamster will recall the announcement in January 2009 where all the police forces had made their own individual crime mappers.

And how I *reported* that the Metropolitan police had spend £300,000 on their single force version, including £134,000 for AKAMI facility for web-hits to be ‘held’ at high use times so that the website didn’t crash when it was launched, because they had so little confidence in their contractors Cable&Wireless to deliver a functioning website for the money.

Their website http://maps.met.police.uk/ is at least still in operation.

In October 2009 I *reported* on the National crime mapper technology launched that day by the Policing and Crime Minister David Hanson:

BBC: So the scheme is this on-line crime mapping is obviously popular, it keeps crashing
Hanson: Yes it is popular. We’ve had an enormous number of hits due to the publicity, but I assure people that on a normal day people will be able to access it really easily and it will really help what’s happening in your area right down to the ward level and the streets where you live.

This was built by Rock Kitchen Harris who had won about 30 of the contracts for the local police forces, so it shouldn’t have cost as much as it did to stitch it all together.

But that was then. Here’s what that 2009 link http://maps.police.uk/view/ looks like today on 1 February 2011:

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