Tag: camera

Following up from my ULEZ fine – The computer is wrong!

Honda Silverwing in front of a Mountain in Ireland
This scooter hasn’t passed through London in a decade and I can prove it!

I have a follow up to the post about cloning of my scooter licence/number plate.

Ian Forrester | @cubicgarden

Great, just got a ULEZ fine for a Honda car with a cloned number plate in London!

However

I drive a scooter not a car
I can't legally drive a car
I live 200miles away in Manchester
Haven't ridden in London for over 15 years
I was mid air in a plane across the alps when it happened

My scooter was locked up and hasn't moved according to the many locks, multiple trackers and CCTV's in the garage.

But I need prove it wasn't me?
According to…

bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp3743
wilsons.co.uk/news/what-to-do-

March 11, 2026, 3:46 pm 2 boosts 8 favorites

Its been pretty hellish, with everything falling back to the analogue hole aka writing letters by hand to prove who I am with the DVLA. The MET police called me and after verifying they who they said they were, we had a long conversation.

Ultimately they identified the licence/number plate was incorrectly found using TFL’s (Transport for London) APNR (automatic plate number recognition system). Aka the computer vision was wrong! One character was off and that was enough for me to get the fine and go down the route of trying to prove my innocence. So I had to write to DVLA again, saying my number plate was not cloned but there had been a APNR mess up (I use my words carefully).

With my crime reference in place I wrote again.

The automated number plate camera used to capture the Honda Civic CAR has the wrong number plate. The number plate is actually a *****Y* which leads to a Green Honda Civic CAR. The number plate *****V* is my Honda Silverwing 600 cc SCOOTER/MOTORBIKE which has not been ridden in London for over 12 years and was locked in a garage under multiple CCTV’s during the date and time in question. I personally was on holiday and have many Manchester airport cameras  and passport checks to prove I was not driving either vehicles. I have included pictures of my SCOOTER with the number plate in question. You can even see its the wrong size and SCOOTER don’t have front number plates! When I received this PCN, I thought my number plate was cloned as the SCOOTER has not moved or unlocked while I was on holiday. So I raised it with the DVLA and Police . I personally only have a motorcycle licence and can not legally drive a car or have ever owned a car. I urge you to use common sense and look up a Blue Honda Silvering 600 and see its not even a CAR. Let alone a Honda Civic CAR in Green. I have added the Honda Civic registrations in a simple look up you could.should have done. DVLA are also aware of this issue, alongside the GM & MET police services. This has been very stressful and honestly I’m upset about the amount of time I have had to use to prove my innocence over an automated camera.

So now I wait…

I assume TFL will send a letter saying sorry but this has taken a lot of time and effort on my part. What a waste of public resources too.

This is clearly a screw up and my suspicion of my number plate being cloned was right as there was no other way; although that’s what I thought thinking the camera was correct. Heck I fell for the trust the computer till the conversation with the police.

How many others have gone through this? Those automated number plate cameras are everywhere and honestly it chimes with all the problems with automation, surveillance and no transparency. Heck something simple like a V & Y can cause injustice.

A reminder to support the Open Rights Group and Big Brother Watch in the UK.

Updated 30th March 2026

The letter I got back from TFL

Its finally over, they admit there was a administrative error and they had charged the wrong vehicle. This for me is a clear case of the computer says no; as mentioned above a worrisome trend of automated surveillance.  The wording peed me off but what did I expect?

Anyway its done now, I can ride my bike without worrying about being pulled over for some stupid automated computer mistake.

Timelapses I recently taken

I am privileged to have an amazing view across East Manchester to the Pennines. It is a great view and nothing large has been built in between, obstructing the view. This is part of the reason why I have a small TV and went for the projector route for big screen view.

Recently I had a conversation with my Newcastle friend Oli Wood and we got talking about his timelapses. I mentioned I had entered a timelapse into the life in a day documentary. Oli suggested I should do more, especially because its built directly into the Google Pixels camera.

Since then I’ve been doing some experiments behind my black out blinds so I can use my living room hue lights as usual without it messing with the timelapse. I would say they are pretty good, but I’d like to sort out the autofocus and position it somewhere a bit more towards the Pennines.

I will certainly do one for New Years with a quicker shutter time. Hopefully to pick up some of the great fireworks I usually see during my new years eve parties.

Its fascinating to see how the question, how normal am I hits home

How normal am I?

I was watching the NGI Policy Summit last week and it was good. Lots to take away but I found What your face reveals – the story of HowNormalAmI.eu. Stuck out as one of the highlights.

Dutch media artist Tijmen Schep will launch his latest work – an online interactive documentary that judges you through your webcam, and explains how face detection algorithms are invisibly pervading our lives. Can we really asses someone’s beauty, BMI or even life expectancy from just a photo of their face? After experiencing his creation, we’ll dive into the ‘making of’ and emerge with a better understanding of what face detection AI can – and cannot – do.

If you haven’t seen it, give it a try.

But I found the social media responses really interesting. It seems half the people are talking and sharing their data, while the other half are talking about the details. People can’t help themselves and compare the details although they know its bias.

Its a provoking art project and deserves to be watched fully. Theres plenty of details here once you watched/experienced it.

Google silently puts a knife into the Pixel 4

The view of the red moon through my window
Shot on a Google Pixel4 through my living room glass with nothing special

The Google pixel 4A looks like a really good phone and reminds me of the Nexus 5x in price and style. I won’t lie, the battery size and onboard storage certainly impressive compared to the Pixel4.

I’m still impressed with the Pixel4’s camera and its still good for me so far. But I noticed its currently leaving me with 50% battery at the end of the day. Its ok but remember I’m not really going out much at the moment. No idea what it would be like when I’m out and about again?

Its clear to me, that although I like the Pixel range, I would go for something like the One plus phone next time around. I mean look at the Pixel4a vs the Oneplus Nord?

One decision I have made is I will most likely this time around fit a new battery in the next 9 months. No idea why I didn’t do it for the Pixel2.

 

Facial recognition technology stealing our feelings

Stealing ur feelings

I really loved do not track, and was happy to see Stealing Ur Feelings.

Stealing Ur Feelings is an augmented reality experience that reveals how your favorite apps can use facial emotion recognition technology to make decisions about your life, promote inequalities, and even destabilize American democracy. Using the AI techniques described in corporate patents, Stealing Ur Feelings learns your deepest secrets just by analyzing your face.

It narrowly missed out on November’s public service internet notes.

Google clip, decentralised intelligence?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AD48ZEltaSo

The reviews are appearing about the Google Clip camera. Its not great but to be honest, the only thing I found interesting about it on the announcement, was all the logic/intelligence was onboard. Google has become well known for doing the logic via their own cloud systems, so this was a surprise.

the main reason Google Clips isn’t as worrying as “Google camera that recognizes your family’s faces and records them automatically” sounds is that Google made a few carefully considered technical choices to protect its users’ privacy.

The first is that everything on Clips happens locally. Nothing is synced with Google’s cloud at all — except the photos you save into Google Photos. All the facial recognition happens on the device using its own processing power. None of it is paired up with whatever facial recognition you may have set up in Google Photos. It doesn’t pair faces with names, it just recognizes faces it sees a bunch over time. It also tries to ignore faces it doesn’t recognize. So if you’re at a park with your kids, Clips will endeavor to only take photos of your kids.

The clips the camera takes are also stored only on the camera itself. They don’t try to sync over to your phone unless you ask for them. They’re also encrypted on the camera, in case you lose it.

On first look, I thought it might be a similar replacement for Google Glass, then I thought maybe its the Google GoPro but it doesn’t seem to operate like a point and shoot. So I thought maybe a lifeblogging devices like the autographer and narrative clip. But it seems to be a different category all together.

Its a interesting device, but certainly pricey for a new category camera.

Airbnb: What should be declared upfront and is simply illegal

https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/935305053258125312

Shocking tweet about a Airbnb host which setup a IP camera in the visitor bedroom. It very much reminds me of the camera in Simple which was ultimately the downfall of the Manchester restaurant.

The whole thing is just wrong but to make things worst is Airbnb’s customer service (they call it customer experience) which seems to want to keep it all under-wraps. This is surely a criminal offence and suspended isn’t nearly enough!

Of course this isn’t the only case, heres another one.

Shocking stuff! Of course my Airbnb has no cameras, no listening devices and I don’t even have a Philips Hue light in the spare room. I was going to install the Google Home mini for the purpose of controlling the lights but decided it wasn’t going to work, as it refuses to stay local.

It does raise the question of what should be declared upfront on the site before the guest books.

Life isn’t lived, through the end of a filter

Snapchat photos of author of the vice piece

Interesting piece from Vice about Snapchat camera shots, replacing standard photos. I tend to put snapchat in a similar category as Instagram which I’ve written about previously. I picked out some of the highlights…

Writer Arushi feels similarly, and has written about the way Snapchat has started to make people view themselves. “I’ve found myself becoming dependent on filters to validate my appearance in selfies on more occasions than one. Honestly, it scares me because that’s so screwed up,” she said over Twitter DMs. “We’d rather have a digitally obscured version of ourselves than our actual selves out there. It’s honestly sad, but it’s a bitter reality. I try to avoid using them as much as I can because they seriously cause an unhealthy dysphoria.”

“This behavior supports the vision that a social body—self objectified—is more relevant than the real felt body.”

Plus some questions about self-objectfication

New Girl

Dr. Giuseppe Riva, a professor of communication psychology at the Catholic University of Milan, told VICE that social media activity promotes self-objectification. “This is particularly true for Snapchat and Instagram, which provide a mirror-like vision of young women, which is also altered and shared,” he said. “This behavior supports the vision that a social body—self-objectified—is more relevant than the real felt body.”

Those taking Snapchat selfies aren’t just experiencing the effects themselves. Talullah, from Kent, described how men were starting to believe that Snapchat-filtered photos were accurate portrayals of the people in them. “Some guys I speak to say stuff like, ‘You don’t look like your Snaps,'” she explained. “It’s like, ‘Dude, I’m not walking around with a headband of sparkly stars around my head.'”

These apps are too new for any proper scientific studies to have been carried out on the potential long-term consequences for some users. But Dr. Riva flagged eating disorders, alongside body dysmorphic disorder, as possible effects. “Self-objectification—thinking about and monitoring the body’s appearance from an external observer’s perspective—is the largest contributor to both the onset of eating disorders and its maintenance. This is what we discovered in our research,” he told me.

I mentioned on a work slack how much I find people who use Snapchat and Instagram filters on dating profiles close to deplorable. It sounds harsh but I feel like they are deliberately trying to deceive (consciously or unconsciously).

Of course I find dating sites partly responsible for encouraging people to connect their instagram accounts, in the hope they can ram-raid another pool of personal data. The whole thing feels misguided and maybe irresponsible. Another thing I read shared from a colleague at work, might start to explain how these things are held up and thought to be a good idea.

…mathematics, engineering and computer science are wonderful disciplines – intellectually demanding and fulfilling. And they are economically vital for any advanced society. But mastering them teaches students very little about society or history – or indeed about human nature. As a consequence, the new masters of our universe are people who are essentially only half-educated. They have had no exposure to the humanities or the social sciences, the academic disciplines that aim to provide some understanding of how society works, of history and of the roles that beliefs, philosophies, laws, norms, religion and customs play in the evolution of human culture.

The problem is the rest of us are just ignoring the “disconcerting sociological phenomena that are embedded into the very nature of today’s social media platforms” or we can’t be bothered to think deeply about this all? Although as I’ve said before, there is a massive industry wanting to keep the thinking that way.

https://twitter.com/RealMoseby96/status/855165277985804289/

Suddendly the term “disconcerting sociological phenomena” seems a lot more apt…!

A win for openness

Android on a Camera

This camera by Nikon is a win for openness, google and of course android

The first mainstream digital camera to be powered by Google’s Android system has been released by Nikon. The Japanese company’s point-and-shoot Coolpix S800c model is being marketed as a “social imaging device”. Demand for compact cameras has suffered because of the rise of smartphones.

Is it ugly? Maybe a little…

Is it fascinating and a wonderful combination? Yes…

Google always wanted Android everywhere and it started happening a while ago. Now this is just a logical extension of where digital cameras may go. Instead of some crazy proprietary embedded operating system, why not Android?