will Santa be able to land at London Gatwick airport this Christmas?

People who live outside England can't understand our fascination for the weather. (I count myself as English - and I get away with this trick until people ask me my name.)

Anyway WE English people can't get enough of this topic.

A sunny day in Summer, a rainy day in Autumn and a snowy week in December always come as a complete surprise.

A famous writer (famous in my house  in the 1960s anyway) called George Mikes - wrote about the English and weather (and other important matters) in his  brilliantly observed  book called "How to be an Alien."

Back to the present...

When snow hit the south east of England this week (as it did last winter too  - could it  just be a coincidence?) it caused more than the usual amount of chaos for those hoping to travel around in the non virtual way using planes, trains and buses.

The official capital of England  (which is London - unlike the unofficial capital county - which is Yorkshire) overnight became completely disconnected from the seaside city of Brighton - which over 200 years ago was connected by   reliable stage coach journeys which took about one or two days.

But in December 2010 - Southern Rail and National Express were unable to replicate these achievements - with no trains or coaches running yesterday on these routes.

Usually I don't care much about what happens in the outside world  - as long as it doesn't interfere with my main web site - and being able to update it (the subject of previous blogs).

But this week - my wife Janet  - who was working in Amsterdam Wednesday discovered that the airport she was due to fly back to (which is close to us - and  called Gatwick) was close(d).

Using her Blackberry she was able to  get a  flight to another airport we sometimes use - Heathrow. What she didn't know as I was tracking her movements online - in the same way that you do a UPS parcel - is that due to the lateness of the flights it was touch and go whether she would get a train connection into London - and no chance whatsoever of getting back home - here in the once previously connected region near the ancient city of Lewes.

Apparently - before Brighton became famous - it was referred to as "Brighton near Lewes".

But  even if were near things - we seemingly couldn't get to them any more - due to 8 inches of snow - which later became more like a foot of snow in the rural area where I live.

Things turned out well. Janet got into a hotel in London just after midnight - and she was due to be working in London next day anyway.

So far so good.

But during the course of the next day (Thursday 2nd) all public transport between London and Brighton ceased. It never even got started.

During the course of the day more snow fell.

Janet carried on working - in London - while I looked at web sites which contained tantalizing information suggesting that services might be resumed any time soon. But they never did.

Meanwhile the tv news channels (BBC and Sky) were showing pictures of a closed snowed in Gatwick, travellers who had been stuck overnight in stranded trains, or in stranded lorries on the roadside.

The police in the area advised - "don't go on the roads unless it's an emergency".

Does getting home count?

In my web trawling I came across things I had heard about - but never seen before - the video feeds and traffic cameras from the main roads which linked Brighton and London. And they also showed average speeds.

There wasn't much traffic - but the speeds looked pretty good to me - in fact better than normal at busy times.

But as I know from experience with the A23 / M23 - it only takes a very small bad event for the whole road to be closed down and delayed - for hours. And hearing that some drivers had been stuck on the M25 for 8 hours - I didn't want to take that risk.

Now unlike the plane, rail and bus transport agencies - we had done some advanced planning - having spent about 6 weeks last winter skating on the frozen country lanes in this area - and on one occasion sliding backwards down a not very steep hill. It doesn't look steep in the summer. You only realize that a slope is involved wen you are trying to get your car up it when it's ground to a halt in deep snow.

So earlier this year we did our bit to boost the economy and bought a car with a "snow" button. It's a Landrover Freelander 2.

Because it's so comfortable inside (even though it just looks like a big ugly box outside) I had been doing more driving than usual this year. Driving down country lanes to reach the shops with my airconditioning on  to keep cool. (My previous car was a 2 door Renault Clio.) I hope that removes your stereotype image.

I don't know or care about cars - as long as they go.

Anyway this year I bought one with a snow button (technically it's the same setting for snow and gravel). The man in the car shop said it was the best one for snow.

We bought it after the snow at the beginning of the year had gone.

This was my first chance to test it.

Would it take me on a 30 mile cross country trip to meet up at the closed Gatwick airport - through ungritted roads with snow slush and ice - at night?

We chose Gatwick as the rendezvous - because I can find it. And Janet - on her part had to find a very nice London taxi driver who would risk going so far on the motorway. Because as far as I could see online - that should work OK.

And it did.

My car worked like a dream - and as long as I pretended I wasn't driving a 4x4 beast and stuck to my defensive  driving technique acquired from 9 years of driving my little Clio - I was OK.

There were plenty of spaces in the ground floor of Gatwick short term parking when I arrived at 7.30 pm. And it didn't take me much longer than usual  to get there - because I passed only 3 other cars moving on the way.

I forgot to look left and admire the Christmas tree lights as I drove past Wakehurst place. (I had been there the Friday before to see them switched on. They do very nice honey and nut cakes and hot chocolate in the cafe.) I was too busy looking ahead.

And Turners Hill has that name for a very good reason. It goes up and down. And it was covered in slushy ice. Would I make it? Yeah - I even stopped to let someone come the other way. (I haven't acquired the 4x4  persona yet - which pushes the other cars off the road. Inside my head I'm still a Clio driver in a very fat car  - which is surprisingly easy to park for some technical reason to do with the wheels.)

A few minutes later Janet arrived too. It took us a few minutes to find each other - because I had been chatting to a guy who was sweeping the snow off the road - and he had been there for nearly 2 days fighting a losing battle to keep the airport open.

I had a flask of hot tea in the car.

We got home safely and I cooked supper in my nearly completed kitchen (mentioned in a previous blog). Of couse getting out of the house in the first place meant I had to find some  temporary door handles - because they still need another coat of paint.

And what's the point of this story?

I learned a lot of stuff about the problems of travelling around - which make me very glad that I don't get out much.

I'll just stick to looking at web sites and typing fast.

my ftp died

I've been publishing online since 1996  - so why would I start a blog?

And why this blog - and not one of the others - like WordPress?

It's Monday afternoon. The date doesn't matter. It's likely that the designers of this blogging package will show it somewhere you can easily see it

On Saturday morning - just before going out to shop and eat (even virtual online people do those things) I thought I'd change the title of an article I had recently written on my storage home page. From "SSDs are computer medicine" to "SSDs are tonic medicine" - or something like that.

It would normally take me just a few seconds to make the change - and upload it to my site. That's something I've been doing every few minutes of every working day for over 14 years. It's very quick and painless.

Not this time.

Instead I got a message saying - I couldn't log in.

After checking the web site was still up (that is to say - visible to anyone who wants to see it) - I checked out some of my other sites too.

Same problem - so there was a common cause.

Sometimes these things happen - due to a temporary routing problem - server problem etc. And they fix themselves after 5 to 10 minutes. So it's not a crisis.

It was my day off - and really the change I wanted to make wasn't a big deal either. It could wait.

The web hosting company I use - NTT something or other is the current name -  has  been very reliable in the past 12 years that I've used them. So for me - contacting tech support  has been less than a once every few years experience. All my sites were affected. They're on different servers. I can't remember a time when all sites were affected. Nothing on their web site said anything about a problem. And everything on the web seemed to be working - so I assumed the problem was at my end.

I eliminated some other possible causes - even going so far as to check my firewall settings, reload an alternative version of the ftp package etc. And I had a one on one support session with Norton to see if something had changed with anti-virus settings. That was very helpful - but didn't find a cause. I paused the support session at the point where the next step was to remove and re-install Norton. I needed to get on with other stuff. I had an article to write for another publication - about my favorite topic - SSDs.

The deadline was midnight. I hope they like it. If they reject it - I'll publish it  myself.

If and when  I can get my ftp to work.

Writing the new article  (the future of data storage) for the other publication  (Broadcast Engineering  - I'm happy to say it did meet their requiremenst for the Jan 2011 issue) kept me busy till just before midnight. I emailed it - did a backup and decided to relax and read a book about SEO (search engine optimization) which is one of the things I had bought in my visit to the shops the day before.

You may ask why does a guy who works online go to a bookshop to buy a book about SEO?

My answer is - I need the exercise - because I sit on my butt all day typing and moving a mouse. And I like books - and because on the few occasions that I have ordered books online - they get lost or delivered late. It's only the books. Everything else - from dishwashers to swimming pool supplies gets delivered without a problem.

What's this about pool supplies? - Does the writing pay so badly that I need a pool guy job as well?

I'm not going to say more on the grounds I may alienate myself from other  struggling writers who don't have need of pool chemicals.

And as to the SEO book.... it is the first time in my life that I have ever read a book about search-engine optimization.

You might think that - as selling ads on my own web sites is my primary source of income - I would have read up on the subject a bit sooner. And you'd be right. I do spend a couple of hours each year - in my quieter moments looking at web marketing sites. Those I like are listed on marketingviews.com

Let's forget pool guy for the moment. And let's forget SEO guy too.

I found out this morning that the reason I couldn't upload stuff to my own sites was a technical problem with the ftp stuff on my web hoster's servers. They don't seem to work at the weekend and had only started fixing it a day or so after I had noticed it.

I'm going nuts at this stage.

My working day involves writing stuff and uploading it immediately to my sites- and then reading it from the web - and if I can't think of anything else to do - running a spell checker on it afterwards.

That's not the way I recommend to you budding web authors out there. But it works for me.

Still no ftp - after I've done some filing, paid some bills, talked to builders who have been practising their kitchen building skills in my house. It will look very good  one day - if I  live long enough to see it finished.

I'm suffering from  the web equivalent of cabin fever at this stage. I can't get my content out there.

So I decide to start a blog.

I have a love hate relationship with blogs.

I love it when thousands of bloggers link to my site.

But I hate it when a small number of bloggers - just cut and paste and steal whole articles.

It's a wicked world out there on the web.

No question which blogging package I'll try first... It's WordPress. It's used by CEOs. VPs (or their blogging drones). It's a real grown up package.

But I just want the free one. I've read that it's very good.

I do the sign-up thing.

And wait.

They say wait 30 minutes.

No sign up email.

Sign up again.

Still nothing.

I tried all the sensible things that you can do. Then I thought - well maybe their servers were affected by the same original cyber attack thingy that stopped my own web host.

I don't know. Their support page didn't help.

And it didn't recognize me when I tried to log in.

So what else can I do?

I had lots of good ideas for articles about storage stuff  which I was hoping my readers would see today.

Instead - here I am - typing into a little box in my browser screen.

And it's unlikely that anyone will see it - until after my ftp comes back to life - and I can mention it to my readers.

Why would anyone come to see this blog?

I don't even know its address at this point. So why should anyone else find it?

It's exactly 4pm Monday.

ftp is still dead - after a whole weekend and half a working day.

I guess that's what blogs are for. A way of getting around the problem.

There are probably other blogs out there - which talk about the technical problems with blogs..

But that's not a subject which sparc storage goblin guy wants to think about right now.