kief.com

This site has been down for a couple of weeks, thanks to a problem with the hardware I have been running it on for years. Unfortunately I don't really have much in the way of spare hardware for my personal use, so I couldn't just whack it onto another box. Also, I had my server at the offices of a company I used to work for, which meant that working on the box required me to ask one of my old work pals to hang around with me for a few hours after work while I tinkered with it, which I wasn't comfortable with. So I ended up just taking the box home.

I thought I would host it at home at the end of my DSL line - although it's only 256K up, which is peanuts for a real internet server, for my dinky personal site I thought it would be OK. But I kept having problems with the hardware, even though I do have another, similar server, it was having the same problem, which I think came down in the end to some bad RAM that I inadvertently swapped between boxes.

But never mind, although I could have gotten the thing working, I realized I just don't need to be spending that much time on the hardware issues. I do that sort of thing at work, so it's not a learning experience for me, it's just a chore. In the end I decided to sign up for a virtual hosting service.

This is something I never wanted to do, as someone who builds, runs, and develops Internet servers and software for a living, using a crappy ol' virtual host would be a serious comedown. But I didn't get a crappy service, I signed up with verio, who I've used before for the (since sold and neglected) Web Developers Journal. They've always been technically excellent, they give a real virtual server, with root access, onto which I can install anything I want, run multiple sites, etc. The last point was the key selling point for me, I didn't want to just host kief.com somewhere, I have a handful of other sites I run for myself, family, and friends, and the new server has room for everything and new projects I'd like to be doing.

The last point is the key thing, I'd rather be spending what little spare time I have working on the interesting bits of my own projects, rather than wrangling the hardware.

Welcome back to kief.com!

My uncle Charlie has started this year's UK tour with his band. Like last year, they will end up at the blues festival in the Orkney Islands, but unfortunately hasn't got any London gigs. Check out his tour schedule, under the "Gator n' Chips Tour". Charlie's been playing professionally for over 20 years now, and has gotten damned good - his latest CD is superb. If you know me and are in London, and don't have a copy of this disc, let me know, I've got a bunch that I haven't done a good enough job of giving away.

One thing I've realized is that I haven't heard Charlie play in ages, and Ozlem hasn't seen him at all. I'm not sure quite how that's happened, mainly I guess we see each other when he's got a break in his touring (usually we visit them in Switzerland when he's got time off to hang and 'board with us). We would love to catch his gig in the Orkneys, because a) I know they had a great time last year, b) there's lots of other bands to check out as well, and c) it'd be cool to check out the Orkneys. But I doubt we'll make it, mainly because of the expense. We're plotting though, we're determined to check out at least one of their gigs, even though it means an overnight trip.

Last night we revisited a restaurant some friends had introduced us to a while back, this time with my Mom and Lucas. If you live in the west part of London and are into Turkish food, I highly recommend this place. Most of the good Turkish places are to the north and east, in the Turkish neighborhoods, so we're always a bit deprived. This place is called Best Mangal, and doesn't look like much from the outside. The front is basically a kebap shop, with rotating doner meat and people getting their takeaway kebaps, but if you look you'll see a few tables crammed in the back. The mangal - a barbecue in the middle of the shop with skewers of meat and veggies roasting over coals is the first sign that this place is the real deal. Go in, sit down, and check out the menu, and you'll see this is something different, and the food and service confirm it. The guys working there are friendly and fun, and the food is great.

Our friends took us there in a car, so we didn't know how to get there - we took a bus to Fulham Broadway, and walked for half an hour through a dodgy neighborhood. When we left the place, we realized you can see West Kensington tube station from the doorway of the restaurant, so next time it will be easier. From the tube station, just cross North End Road and go left a short way.

Holy cow, this really is the world's ugliest dog. Officially. He's won contests.

via doc

It sounds like someone has tried to follow up on the attacks of two weeks ago, with least 3 attempted bombings. Apparently they've bungled it, the bombs didn't go off properly (all three?? how could they f*ck it up so badly?). Most of the details are rumor at this point; one bomber's backpack had a minor explosion, enough to blow it open, leaving the would-be suicide bomber with an "extremely dismayed expression" on his face. Another one dropped his bag on the train and ran off - people tried to grab him but he got away. Something has happened on at least one bus, a small pop upstairs that blew out windows. One of the incidents was at Oval station, so this may be intended to coincide with the opening of the Ashes cricket tournament.

All in all, a weak effort compared to last time. Piss on you, terrorists. The mood here is much closer to annoyance than terror - one weblog commentor says "The tube better be up and running at home time - I haven't got my walking shoes on!"

These people don't deserve to be called terrorists, I hereby dub them annoyists.

(Assuming it turns out nobody was killed, of course)

So in the past few days some more bits have emerged. A notable fact is that the bombs are now reckoned to have actually gone off at very close to the same time, 9:50, which suggests timed bombs rather than suicide. It's interesting to note the distances the bombs travelled from King's Cross (I'm still convinced they were all put on there), the Circle line bombs both got a pretty good distance from the station, whereas the Picadilly line bomb went off before reaching the next station. Walking between the platforms for the Circle line in each direction would not take too long, but walking to the Picadilly line takes a while. So when I heard they went off at the same time, I wondered whether a single person could have done it, and then got on the bus. The Wikipedia article now has a similar speculation, with timings. I still wonder how someone could (if they did) put a bag onto a train and then immediately get off without anyone saying something. (Update: And I also wonder how someone carrying 4 bags could drop 3 of them onto different trains. A lone bomber seems pretty unlikely at second thought, but the timing is still interesting. Maybe they moved as a group?)

I also thought more about my own timing that morning. It's boring and self-absorbed to go on about this, considering how many people came much closer, and in many cases too close, but it's obviously interesting to me. Anyway, it's now clear that I was between the explosions, the Edgeware Road bomb passed by me in the opposite direction, it probably passed within 10 feet of me on the opposite track as I sat reading a biography of Ataturk.

So have these attacks changed anything? I don't think so. Most commentary seems to be people proclaiming that this proves whatever view they held before the attacks, i.e. that the war on terror is right/wrong, and Britain must stay the course/withdraw its troops, Islam is an evil religion, anti-globalization protestors are assholes.

But the fact is, this wasn't really a surprise. Londoners have been expecting this for a while, although it's still a shock when it finally happens. As for me, I still think the Iraq war was a stupid and irresponsible decision, but although there are many reasons to oppose it, saying troops should be withdrawn now so terrorists won't attack us again is one of the worst reasons I can think of. I support making things right in Iraq. We (Americans and British) have destroyed thousands of lives in that country, we have an obligation to at least try to fix things up. I don't know how we can do it, and I have no confidence that the Bush administration is remotely capable of doing it, but to throw in the towel now would be the depth of irresponsibility.

Maybe I lied, there is one change in Londoners since last week, judging from blogs, comments, etc., English self-deprecation has been suspended, at least for a while, and it's OK to say: London rocks.

A phrasebook for American tourists - many of them are worth running through a translator if you don't understand the other languages.

East Anglian Ambulance is promoting the idea that people should make sure they have emergency contact information in their mobile phone address book in a way that's easy for emergency workers to identify. They're calling this ICE, for In Case of Emergency, and suggest you put the number in an entry named "ICE". I've added this to my phone, although I actually called it "aa ICE Emergency Contact" so it shows up as the first number. As a side benefit, when my phone decides to dial someone from my pocket it will now be my wife rather than a business contact I'd rather not have to explain myself to.

I decided to walk through central London yesterday to get a bus from somewhere south of the chaos, rather than trying to get a bus here at Camden Town. This turned out to be a good idea - a workmate left the office 15 minutes ahead of me and got a bus here, I walked 30-45 minutes to Trafalgar Square and boarded the same bus she was on. This morning I could have used the underground to get in without any problem, but decided to take the Silverlink train from Richmond, which skirts around the center of town and doesn't go underground or through any major stations.

What the hell happened yesterday? I'm curious what we will learn about the terrorists who actually carried out the attacks. Looking at the timeline, all 3 of the trains that had bombs were coming from King's Cross. It seems likely to me, although I haven't yet seen any real discussion of this, that the terrorists must have all boarded trains at King's Cross.

I apparently passed right between the bomb attacks yesterday morning. I took the Circle line through Edgeware road, certainly before the bomb there went off. I don't usually go that way, but ended up on a wrong District Line branch and so switched to the Circle Line to King's Cross. When I got off the train at King's Cross and headed for the Northern Line, they evacuated the station, so the first bomb, on a Circle Line train ahead of the one I had gotten off, had already gone off.

I wonder whether the third bomb, 5 minutes after the first, had already gone off on the Picadilly Line between King's Cross and Russell Square? Certainly there was no indication, other than the evacuation, that it had. There was no smoke, injured people, or anybody at all panicky. But it probably took me at least 5 minutes to get away from the station, including the time I wandered around the street in front trying to figure out the best way to get to work. I'm guessing the bomb went off far enough from the station that the reaction didn't reach street level for a while.

I walked by King's Cross again on the way home, the area I had wandered around in front of the station was cordoned off, and a firetruck and other emergency vehicles were in front. The police were allowing people in at the rear of the station, they had at least a few platforms of overground trains running. There was quite a stream of foot traffic throughout the areas I walked. I also walked by Tavistock Place, it was heavily cordoned off as well. Police were on the streets everywhere, especially at train stations. Went I got on the bus at Trafalgar Square it was packed, people were crammed shoulder to shoulder even at the front door, where you're normally not supposed to stand, and the bus driver was letting people on at the side door which is normally just for exiting. He didn't seem bothered about whether people paid.

Were these guys suicide bombers, or did they use timed bombs? They couldn't have used bombs detonated remotely by mobile phones, like they did in Madrid, because there is no signal on the underground, at least not where the Picadilly Line bomb went off. I read one report in the Guardian which mentioned a timer bomb, but eyewitnesses claim to have seen a suspiciously behaving character on the Tavistock Place bus rumaging through his backpack before that explosion.

I'm not so sure how they could have gotten a timed bomb onto the Picadilly train. The others I can see - they could board the train at King's Cross with a suitcase, putting it by the door and then sitting down. A few stops later they could get off, and have a reasonable chance that nobody who noticed them carry the suitcase on before will notice them get off without it and raise the alarm. An unattended suitcase by the door may cause some nervousness, but it's not unusual since someone going to the airport or to another mainline train station may not want to have to stand up for the whole trip. I'm sure people will be more alert to these in the future, of course.

So this could have worked for the first and third bombs, although the terrorists would be running a couple of risks; one, that someone who happened to notice and remember them bringing the suitcase on also notices them get off without it, which would certainly cause alarm. The second risk is that the train would stop and wait between stations (a common occurance) long enough that the timer would trigger the bomb with them still on the train.

But it's very unlikely they could have done this with the Picadilly line bomb, since it went off before the train even got to the first stop from King's Cross. So assuming this was the planned location for the explosion, and that they did indeed put it on at King's Cross, they would have had to put a bag on the train and immediately get off, and even in the relative complacence of the pre-attack time, it would have been very difficult to get away with this without someone raising the alarm.

If it was a timed bomb, then chances are the bomber was still on the train - maybe the scenario I described above where the train stopped and the bomb went off before the terrorist could get off is what happened there.

The bus bomb is more puzzling, I've seen two different reports of what bus route it was, and I'm not sure whether it would have come from King's Cross. Was it planned, or was it a cockup?

In any case, it's a sure bet people will be highly sensitive to unattended bags for a while, so any future bombers will probably be suicide attacks.

Update: I've read in some places that unexploded devices with timers were found by police. I'm not sure about this though, there were a number of reports of controlled explosions of suspicious objects, but the most reliable reports I've read of that say they've all turned out to be harmless. I've also read that although the Madrid bombers used mobile phones to trigger the bombs, they used the alarm clock function rather than using them as remote triggers, although apparently some IED's in Iraq are triggered remotely using phones. Flit, my favorite military blogger, has some informative points in this area.

The currently under-informed consensus seems to favor timers rather than suicide bombers.

My guess is still that the Picadilly Line bomb went off before it was planned, probably taking the bomber with it (burn in hell, asshole). My theory of King's Cross as the starting point holds up with the bus bomb as well - I've looked up the bus maps, and the number 30 bus stops at King's Cross.

There is wide suspicion that the bus bombing wasn't planned, but that he was on his way to another station to hit. If so, it had to have been an improvised plan, because it was so much later than the other attacks that they had to know the tubes would all be closed. Plus, the 30 bus doesn't go by any tube stations that would make good targets, it goes by Warren Street, Great Portland Street, Regent's Park, and Baker Street, then on to Oxford Street (well down from Oxford Circus, which would have made a good target). Most of those stations are on the Circle Line, and his buddy's bomb had already passed through them on the way to Edgeware Road. The best he could have done was taken out some shoppers or tourists on the street.

So if hitting the bus itself wasn't the original plan, then the fact that the guy was on the bus at all meant something went wrong. Maybe he just jumped on the first bus he could get when things went wrong for him. I would bet he was meant to have planted his bomb on the Victoria or Northern line, both of which pass through King's Cross, and both of which are busy and key, i.e. good targets for disrupting the transportation in central London.

Blowing up the bus, whether intended or not, was more effective than anything else he could have done if he missed his chance to get on a train at King's Cross, since it raised paranoia about the bus system. Until yesterday most Londoners thought taking the bus was the safe way to go if they were worried about a terrorist attack, and it was certainly the best alternative for most people when the tubes were closed, so getting those shut down increased the difficulty of getting around yesterday.

Here are a handful of links for info on today's attacks: The Guardian's news blog is posting updates in a sensible blog format, as is the Londonist. These are much easier to follow than the BBC and CNN, which add new information into the content of an existing new story, so you have to re-read things you've read before to pick out new bits of information. The blog format is definitely superiorer for rapidly updated information.

The Guardian also has personal accounts. The Transport for London site is useful for info on what's closed. I like that the bus services are suspended "Following an incident on a route 30 bus at Tavistock Place". That's some "incident".

There's already a wikipedia page, and a flickr group.

It sounds like one of the trains that was bombed was a southbound circle line train at King's Cross. I had just gotten off a southbound circle line train and was trying to get to the northern line when they closed the station. I wonder how close I came?