Data Protection

For legal reasons, I would like to point out the following story is purely fictitious. Any resemblance to actual event or to persons living or dead is purely conincidental.

So my better half works for a local college. She writes databases and such like, and develops custom software for them. Tomorrow she has to go out of town on a training session, so about a month ago she tried to book the train tickets online. It's not the first time she's used that booking company so after two weeks she was surprised that the tickets still had not arrived.

So she rang their Indian call centre and explained that none of the tickets had arrived. But was told there was nothing they could do until the day before the journey. She just had to wait to see if they turned up until then.

So another two weeks later, today, and she's due to catch the train at 6 am tomorrow morning. She rings up the call centre. "What is your name? Oh I am sorry madam, we cannot speak to you, we must speak to the card holder only."

"But the tickets are in my name. I booked them."

"Yes but you are not the card holder. And due to data protection we cannot divulge information to you."

"I don't want any information. I already have all the information. I booked the tickets a month ago. They were addressed to me. They havn't arrived, and my train is tomorrow. I need you to sort it out."

"Oh I am very sorry. Please have the card holder call us."

Apparently someone else in the office did ring back and claimed they were the card holder. "Oh yes Sir, we will send the details to the station office. You can collect the tickets in an hour." That should be all that is necessary shouldn't it? The tickets will be at the station when we get there right?

Later that day then we went full of optimism to the station, expecting to find the tickets. "Sorry love, nothing in that name here."

"Well maybe they are in the card holders name. Can you check that name."

*rummage through paperwork* "Nope, nothing of that name. And nothing even going to that destination. Let me try ringing the booking company." He picks up a phone and gets though to the Indian call centre, quotes a reference number...."No I'm not the card holder, I'm the station master..." *more murmering* "..okay then. Thank you." *hangs up* "Sorry love, he won't talk to me. You'll have to get them to fax us to give you the alpha-numeric reference code."

We this is pretty rich. She's ordered these tickets a month ago, they never turned up, so she tried to talk to them herself only to be fobbed off until the day before and then told they won't speak to her anyway.

Oh did I mention that she had used a college credit card to book these tickets. It's registerd in the vice principal's name. So she has to ring the vice principal up after work in the evening and ask him to call an Indian call centre to sort out the tickets?! Oooooookay then.

Well this was about my limit. I decided to take the bull by the horns. Got my mobile out, and called the number. "Right look her my man. I have a reference number here, number xxxxxxxxx, you see. Now it seems there has been some cock up and the tickets have not arrived and they are not at the station as promised. Now I jolly well want something done about this, what!"

"Okay Sir, now to comply with the data protection act, can I ask you some questions?"

Damn I can see where this is going.

"Ummmmm, yes."

"Are you the card holder?"

Now have you ever seen that Simpsons episode where Homer wants to quit his job and writes Mr Burns a letter. But then later regrets it and wants the letter back? So he goes to the post office and puts on his most plummy voice. "Hello, my name is Mr Burns. I believe you have a letter for me?" "Yes Sir? And what is your first name?" Suddenly I see this scene flash before my eyes.

"Are you the card holder," asks this Indian chap.

"Umm, yes of course"

"And what is your name"

Shit! *turn to my other half* "Shit! What's his name." She tells me.

*back to the mobile* "It's "

"Yes Sir. And what is your registered address."

*gives college address*

"Okay Sir, let me see....."

What!?! I got away with it? Probably eventually I will go to jail because of this. However, 10 arduous minutes later I managed to get this guy to fax the station the details the station needed to print and release the tickets. And another 15 minutes after that the fax had finally arrived and the tickets secured.

I don't really know why this had to be so complicated, and quite what the point of quoting "data protection" as the reason they could not help, yet it seems so easy to bypass. What on earth was that supposed to prevent? Do they think that after I get the tickets sorted out I was going to ask, "Oh one more thing. I seem to have forgotton my mother's maiden name and the name of my first pet. You couldn't remind me could you?"

If there is a moral to this, it's don't use QJump to book train tickets. Probably also somewhere I should be repentant for impersonating the Vice Principal of the local college. Although considering it was such a f**k up and 11 hours before the journey there were still no tickets and they still refused to do anything about it, strangely I don't feel bad.

Trains, cows and ponies

I've got it in my mind just recently to go to Exmoor at dawn and take pictures of some of the Exmoor ponies. Trouble is I need to get up at about 3:30am, and I just couldn't motivate myself enough this weekend to get up that early and go out and hope that it wasn't raining on Exmoor and that I could find ponies in the right place. I've been up scouting and there are a couple of interesting places that I will try, I just need to get there in good weather. And the weather being as bad as it has this past week, it's a really big ask to convince myself that if I get up so early and drive for an hour, the sun will come up strong and the sky will be beautiful and I will get some nice pictures.

So instead on Sunday I attempted to take a picture of a steam train! Well that's not strictly tue, actually I wanted to take a picture of the River Tone but with a steam train in the background. There is a bridge in Bradford-on-Tone that crosses the river, that I thought might be promissing, so I visited that.

There are some nice bridges on the Tone, and I thought the river running under such a bridge, while a train went over might be a nice idea. This location wasn't really suitable though sadly. I couldn't legally get to a good point to shoot the scene; the bridge was quite high; the river was quite narrow; and there was a lot of tree and shrub growth obscuring the view. Even if I could trespass into a better position, I can't really see how the scene I want could work here. So instead I decided to climb up onto the track, get the camera about wheel level and shoot the train just zooming down the tracks towards me.

The train in question on this day was the Tangmere, number 34067. There is a public footpath that takes you across the tracks themselves and you can get really close. But trust me, don't get too close when the big cross-country services hurtle though. They go really fast, I mean really fast, past here. It's flat, and a fair distance still from both Tiverton and Taunton and there are no stations left between them so it must be nigh on full speed. A couple went past about 15 feet from me and the ground shook and the wind really whipped about. It was quite awe inspiring. I figured a little steam train might be slower but actually even it managed a fair old pace down the line. It's a good job I didn't go with my initial idea of lying in the track and shoot the train from ground level as it came towards me.

I also met some new friends on this little day out. So it was quite a nice day out.

Selling Images

I've had a lot of positive feedback about my photos from flickr, and even I think that some of my photos are quite nice. So the other day I decided I might as well see if I can make some money, as I think that's a really good motivator. I mean it's easy to say a picture is nice, whereas to actually put you hand in your wallet and say a picture is good I think adds more weight to it.

So I added some images to ImagKind, although that's more of a fine art place and it's quite expensive to have a canvas made so I'm not entirely convinced I'm good enough for that yet. I also signed up for iStockPhoto, which is a microstock library. Images there are as little a $1 each, so I think I'm more likely to see some sales. But as they only pay me a percentage, it will of course only be cents at first. Until I can build up a large enough portfolio of stock, which would probably take at least a year if I could theoretically upload pictures at their maximum rate and have 100% acceptance rate. So probably not then. But pence is better than nothing I guess.

But I did like the fact that I had to pass a 10 question test, and submit 3 images for review before they accepted me. That felt nice to get through. Maybe everyone that applies gets through I don't know, but it still feels nice to believe I have been judged and passed.

This weekend I'm hoping to have some more pictures for upload but the weather is forecast to be so terrible I really don't know.

First

So I've decided to create a blog. Basically because I don't really want my flickr account to be a photo blog, and often there are things I want to say about an image, or photograhy in general that are not suited to flickr. I figured with a real blog it gives me a lot more freedom of expression and allows me to post images that are not so technically good, but which friends and family might appreciate or be interested in, or which might just be special to me.

I might also take this opportunity to comment on computer stuff, seeing as that is something else I am quite familiar with.

I've already referenced some great photography feeds on teh left, so if you're into that please take the time to visit Strobist, Joe McNally or David Tajada and I am sure will will learn a great deal from them as am trying to do.