What's The Point?

A requiem for Britain's first multiplex cinema

 

An iconic local landmark that played an important role in my childhood has just closed after less than 30 years and is scheduled for demolition, so as yet another part of our heritage bites the dust I take a fond look back at The Point, the UK's first multiplex cinema. I'm sure I am not alone in having so many fond memories of that place: countless cinema trips, often to see the latest Roald Dahl or Disney animation, were part of the routine when I was young, sometimes with a group of friends as a birthday treat, sometimes just as a family outing, and the sight of that big red neon pyramid glowing against the night sky always filled me with excitement. Although I haven't set foot inside for years I can still vividly recall it: the wide staircase leading down from the entrance to the foyer with its central box office, the smell of popcorn, the illuminated signs above the auditorium doors spelling out the names of what seemed like exotic films I was far too young to watch, and the red tip-up seats.

The Point opened a couple of months after I was born so it has always been there on my many trips to Milton Keynes, a reassuring presence in this ever-changing city and one of the last links with a childhood long gone. It is such an unmistakable icon and one of the first things to be seen when getting off a bus in the city centre that it has become a familiar and accepted part of the landscape and things just won't be the same without it, although it has been very sad to watch its decline in recent years.

Cloud computing is the future for universities

This article began life in late 2013 as an answer to a question in an assignment for the Cloud Computing module of my undergraduate degree programme, in which each student was given a cloud technology and asked to explain how it could benefit the university, mine being Rackspace hosted services. My response was well received by the lecturer and I feel it has genuine real-world merit as a solution to the challenges of academic IT provision so it is deserving of a wider audience, hence my decision to share it here. It is reproduced largely as submitted but with minor edits to remove references to the specific institution that would be inappropriate to reveal in public, and the mention of Rackspace by name is not showing favouritism but simply because that is the specific technology I was given by the lecturer; other similar cloud services are available and equally valid in this scenario. Although this text is now over a year old, the situation has not changed greatly and most of the problems discussed remain contentious issues, so it is still just as valid as when it was written.

Facebook groups and the curse of the unavailable attachment

Something that has been annoying me for ages and shows no sign of being fixed gives me cause to have another dig at Facebook I'm afraid. I'm sure you've all experienced this - someone shares something to a group but all you see is this message:

Utterly pointless really - why bother telling you someone has made a post you're not allowed to see, especially as the comments then just fill up with people saying they can't see it. I know why it happens - the person whose post has been shared has set its privacy settings to something other than 'public' so those group members who are not their friends don't have permission to view it. As the person who shared it is likely to be friends with the person who originally posted it, they probably won't even know some people can't see it.

The anti-scrappage scheme

After yesterday's angry post about the damage caused by the scrappage scheme, I started thinking about a way to make amends so here I present my anti-scrappage scheme that rewards drivers for keeping their old cars on the road. After all, continuing to run an older car that was built over a decade ago and has long since had the environmental damage caused by its manufacture offset has got to be greener than scrapping it and buying a new one.

The scrappage scam and why it still makes me angry

The Labour government's vehicle scrappage scheme was certainly one of the most controversial recent developments affecting the British motor industry and rightfully provoked a massive outcry. Basically, between May 2009 and March 2010, anyone could trade in any car over 10 years old that had a valid MoT and had been owned for at least 12 months against a new one, and the government and the manufacturer of the new car would each contribute £1000 off the list price in return for scrapping the old one. This was very cynically justified on environmental grounds as removing old and polluting cars from the road, but in reality that was an obvious smokescreen and the real aim was to stimulate the car sales industry that had suffered a massive decline. It may be almost five years since the scheme ended but even now the sheer amount of unnecessary waste and destruction it caused and the fact those responsible were allowed to get away with it still enrages me. In fact I would go as far as to say the scrappage scheme was nothing short of a crime against the environment and the British public, and the people responsible for its creation should be punished with criminal charges.

CityRover - what if things were different?

One aspect of the car industry that fascinates me is the 'what ifs'. So many difficult decisions have to be made and it is interesting to ponder how things may have turned out had circumstances been even slightly different. A potentially fascinating case was recently raised almost as a throwaway comment on the excellent AROnline website so I decided to give this a little more thought. The conjecture was this: had the CityRover been successful, could we now see a partially recreated form of Rover Group in the ownership of Tata?

Too many Routemasters

Here I explain one of the reasons why my interest in buses is waning - this may be a controversial one, particularly to London bus fans, but I firmly believe there are far too many Routemasters in preservation. Living in the Home Counties means London buses have always tended to dominate local events, but since the Routemaster was retired from London service and the remaining fleet sold off in large quantities, the number of the type on the rally scene has increased massively in recent years. They are to classic buses what the MGB is to classic cars, so common that sometimes it seems more are preserved than were ever built.

Why are links from Facebook crashing my browser?

Another tech post detailing a problem that's really starting to annoy me but I haven't managed to find a solution to. Whenever I try to follow a link to an external website from the Facebook app for Android, it crashes the browser with that patronising and unhelpful 'Unfortunately, Internet has stopped' message. Having read that Android's built-in 'Internet' browser is not the best, I downloaded Chrome from the app store, only for the exact same thing to happen. The browser starts to load, but before the URL even appears in the address bar, it shuts down and generates the error message so I can't even see the URL it's trying to load.

This behaviour is consistent with any external link from Facebook, regardless of the external site's address, and is getting so frustrating as it seems something very simple has been overlooked somewhere. I don't know if the cause is the Facebook app formatting URLs in a way that common browsers can't understand, or something missing from the browsers' URL handling, but I suspect the former as the problem occurs in multiple browsers. If anyone has any further information, or even better a solution, please leave a comment as this problem is starting to drive me mad.