Kevan Cummins's activity

Hi Badger Cheers for reply - I've been away from the community for 3 months as it was getting me down last time I was on here as I find there is a lot of negativity especially in the months after the switch from the old forums to the new community - this was my first post on returning to look at the site yesterday so thanks for letting me know it was lighthearted :-) as i was thinking that it was a bad idea posting here again. I'm going to keep coming back for a while and see if the vibe is a bit more positive. Kevan

  Hi Badger I'm just trying to help people. I have no connection with identity cloaker except that when i tell people about the different options for watching TV overseas and they use my preferred method (identity cloaker) and follow link from my site then I benefit from referrals (as I do with other sites that I promote). I am always open about this and always offer an alternative link direct to site to allow users to choose whether to credit me or not which is common practice. I should have spent more time discussing other options in my post and normally would have as without this it does sound like an advertisement. As I came late to this discussion many of the other options had been mentioned by you and others. Identity cloaker is my preferred method of watching UK TV live. Because bandwidth isn't great here in Italy it's usually better to watch downloads but this means you need to wait for download to finish and with the poor bandwidth in Italy you can't watch live TV and download at same time. A site I use regularly is http://uknova.com and I leave site on overnight to download programmes. I like this site as it's run by UK TV enthusiasts and the site won't allow anything up there that can be bought on DVD - such as Doctor Who from the BBC - so it tries to be ethical about copyright. There is no cost to join the site but you need to be able to download torrents on your computer and need software such as http://www.bittorrent.com/ to do this - this software is free. You can get lots of old UK TV from the 1970's and 1980's that enthusiasts recorded on good old fashioned video tape as well as the latest TV from the past week. If you aren't that worried about ethics and are happy to download stuff that breaches copyright then you can use a site like http://www.thebox.bz/login.php where you can basically get anything from UK TV (for example all 8 series of Shameless) or you can stream live from the net using links already in this thread - again you need torrent software. I'm not a fan of these sites as often the bandwidth isn't great because the servers hosting the sites aren't able to cope with the traffic and can't stream well - also I prefer where possible not to use sites that don't have permission to stream stuff that is copyright. Bandwidth can also be the problem with 'get UK TV sites' and you need to choose carefully to make sure you don't get a site that just uses one server in the UK that might get overloaded with users. I'm sure there are some good ones out there and if you have used them successfully then that's great. I like identity cloaker because it avoids using a 'UK TV package' solution and the problems that can come with these. The best way to watch UK TV is to use BBC iplayer and ITV player and to do this you need a UK IP address and Identity cloaker is the best way I've found after lots of research to get this. I have to admit that I originally found the hard sell of the US Military encription statement on their website a bit off putting but in fact you are better off switching encryption off if you are watching TV in italy as bandwidht here is typically poor in rural areas and encryption uses up bandwidth (i can't watch live TV with encryption on and need to switch it off then it's just enough to watch live). I also like that they are transparent about their servers - you can select from a list of servers in each country. At present they have 6 UK servers and keep adding new ones whenever there is an increase in demand (latest one added this month). I wish I hadn't come on this post now as I don't want you to think I am advertising! Kevan  

oops - posted same message twice so have edited this - can't find a delete option

Hi everyone If you want to watch UK or US television then the services mentioned previously just gives you a UK proxy server IP address. These are typically just a rented sever to use as a proxy, all you get is an IP address to use and some open source software. Often companies marketing themselves as a UK Television Proxy can get into trouble with UK TV companies like the BBC. Also you are limited to just one proxy in the UK or one in the US per subscription (you might even like to watch some German television or Dutch television and you won't be able to do this with one subscription). I chose to use identity cloaker as it's not marketed as a UK television proxy provider. The software allows you to access servers in countries all over the world so anyone who wants to watch US television, Canadian television can do so. The support is fantastic and I've always received a personal response by email the same day when I have had questions in the past. It's also cheaper than any UK TV Proxy service. The software isn't actually designed to allow you to watch TV abroad - this is just a bonus as it's actually designed to hide the location of your computer from others while you surf the web. So you can use the software to improve your security online. Also when you are surfing the net then you will automatically get google.co.uk and other Uk sites by default (or US sites if you choose another country). For this reason alone it's worth having the software! It's really easy to pay for the software (credit card or Paypal) and there is no automated rebilling for the service - just an email reminder to renew when your subscription runs out. a 10 day trial is 5 euros and you can sign up for 3 months, 6 months or 1 year. A years subscription is under 7 euros a month. In terms of bandwidth needed - I would say you needed a speed of around 1MB to comfortably watch live UK TV on BBC iplayer or one of teh recorded shows. I'm in a small village and my connectivity isn't great. I test my connection a few times a week using http://speedtest.net/ and it's consistently around 0.7MB so I'm not quite fast enough. Typically when the kids are watching CBBC live then we get a pause for a few seconds every 15 minutes or so but it's still very watchable. PS if you click this link identitycloaker then I do get a small referral fee from identity cloaker as I'm an affiliate but I mainly promote the software because I'm a huge fan of the software (would be willing to pay 7 euros a month just for tricking websites into thinking I'm in the UK so I automatically get English language version of the site and the UK version e.g. www.google.co.uk instead of www.google.it etc) and am so happy to be watching great UK TV again and want others to be able to access it. You can simply go directly to the web site and load the software here http://www.identitycloaker.com/ and I won't be getting any referrals :-)  

Hi HazyI need broadband for work and where I live there is only one option for a landline connection for braodband which is Alice. This was only introduced last year and was a godsend as we only had ISDN before that which was so slow that you clicked a link and went to make a cup of tea while the page loaded.The Alice broadband speed isn't too bad - an average speed test for my home connection shows that it downloads at 0.65 MB/sec from a server in Rome with a ping of 78ms - I know this is a bit too techie but in real world terms means it takes 1 minute to download an MP3 file of 5MB. This is still an ideal as usually you will be downloading web pages from servers in UK or further away but it's definately usable.The Alice broadband is a bit tempremental (it went down this week for 24hours and a couple of months ago it was down for a week) I went out and bought a mobile connection as a back up. It costs 20 Euros per month for 100 hours and the connection is definately faster than my landline but I have a good signal where I am. The downside is that the 100 hours limit is not enough so I use my landline mostly and switch to mobile when I get frustrated and need a bit more speed.I'm afraid I don;t have any experience with Tiscali but as Sebastiano says I feel privaliged to actually have broadband and am overall happy to have Alice here  - there are lots of people where I live who can't get it because there is a waiting list with a very long wait (some people have been on the list for a year and still not got a connection yet)Kevan

Ok see you all at the BBQ

Hi Andrew That would be great - I'll send an email in a moment asking for photos. Also see you this evening at the BBQ - there should be 6 adults and 3 kids coming in our group from Force - I sent a PM this morning to Sarah and Mark but it's a bit late as I missed the PMs they sent about the BBQ until today as I've been off the forum for a couple of weeks busy with work - hopefully they will get the PM and defrost enough food - if you are helping organise BBQ today then could you let them know CheersKevan

Hi AndrewSounds like another great day out - everything happens at the same time in August but it's great to have so many great festivals to choose from - I tried to find a short video clip of the Palio at Fermo but I didn't come up with much but a short clip from someone in the crowd who gets really excited as it must be her horse winning. Also no photos with creative commons licence to show the event - I'll have to get down there with my own cameras to get some good shots.

Thanks Andrew for giving a better description of the jousting - there are a few photos on the link - one of which shows a rider hitting the target with his lance which you can click on to see a bigger view - I've copied the thumbnail here - and some videos of the procession.If you are interested in historical festivals with costumed re-enactments and tournements with horses and lances then there is also the Torneo Cavalleresco at Servigliano coming up with the medieval re-enactment on Saturday 15 Aug and on Sunday 16 riders compete to collect a series of hoops of decrreasing size on their lance. 

Don't get me started on dangerous beasties in Asia...I'm glad to be back in Europe with nice safe dangerous animals. I have been living in fear of being attacked by wasps since watching those horrible B movies with names like 'Swarm' and 'killer Bees' and it sounds like you have to be careful here in the countryside in Italy.I was always led to believe that hornets were solitary creatures and fairly rare so up until now haven't really regarded them as a threat but I've learned something new today.Kevan