Monthly Archives: October 2021

Not All Heroes Wear Capes

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On Friday 15 October, the SERV S&L was presented with The Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service by the Lord Lieutenant of Surrey. Geoff Streeter was one of 20 volunteer SERV S&L members who attended.

What Is SERV S&L?

SERV S&L (Service by Emergency Rider Volunteers for Surrey and London) are a charity organisation, made up entirely of volunteers, comprising motorbike riders, car drivers, controllers, and fundraisers. They transport blood products, urgent samples, medical supplies, and donated breast milk to hospitals and milk banks across Surrey & London, as well as carrying out a daily delivery of blood to the Air Ambulance service that covers Kent, Surrey, and Sussex. They support the regular delivery rounds that the NHSBT (National Health Service Blood and Transport) have in place; unlike the NHSBT, SERV S&L also operate throughout the night. All of this is provided free of charge to the NHS, releasing more money for patient care.

What Is The Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service?

QAVS (The Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service) celebrates the outstanding work of local volunteer groups across the UK. Created in 2002 for Queen Elizabeth II’s Golden Jubilee, QAVS awards shine a light on the fantastic work of voluntary groups. QAVS awards are the highest awards given to local voluntary groups in the U.K. (they are the equivalent of a personal MBE) and they are awarded for life.

Geoff’s Involvement with SERV S&L

A Personal Recollection

At the end of 1980, Paul McCann had a relation who could not get an urgent sample transported to the testing lab until the next morning. He was frustrated by this and organised a meeting to see what could be done, the result of which was that a group of advanced motor cycle trainers from a (now defunct) group called Star Rider decided to try to run a delivery service for blood/samples at night. I was not at that meeting but I heard about it from a fellow member of the Laverda Owners group; I made it to the second meeting (on 8 December 1980) and have been involved ever since. We obtained a room with a couple of bunks in a wooden building owned by MEFAS (Malden Emergency First Aid Society) and a telephone line, and started operating in early 1981.

The main distribution point for blood is located in Tooting and serves London, Kent, Surrey and Sussex (we have partner organisations in Kent, Sussex and Wessex). We do a main nightly run with typically 6 to 10 boxes down to an arranged change point for Kent and Sussex. We also partner with similar organisations across the U.K., and have occasional relay runs, for example, from Edinburgh to central London (I think that’s the longest that we’ve been involved in). More common are runs from Bristol. We typically shift 20 boxes a night and samples in the other direction and have about 8 riders/drivers on shift every night.

Financially, we get support from some Masonic Lodges and business groups. They prefer to buy bikes for us, and Citroen have given us a car (DS3) on permanent loan. We are in the process of acquiring/refurbishing a scout facility in Sutton to provide a base for the bikes/cars/van as well as for volunteers who live on the periphery of the area. We also raise funds by box waving outside supermarkets, garden centres, Brooklands, Waterloo Station, etc.

I started with the group as a biker, and used my Laverda 750, Laverda 1200 and Honda 650 Turbo to deliver blood and samples from 1981 until 1990, when I switched to car deliveries (which I continued to do until last year). I also acted as Treasurer from 2006 until 2010. I have been one of the controllers right from the start [Ed.: Controllers orchestrate the logistics of a shift; hospitals and partner groups place their orders and riders and drivers are dispatched as required – accurate scheduling and data logging are required to ensure efficient co-ordination and communication so that each run can be completed reliably], a role that has changed a lot over the last 40 years. In the early days controllers needed to be physically present with the one rider and the telephone. Then we moved to using pagers (but still needed to be present in the hut/sports centre) before everything changed with the advent of mobile phones – I now control from home. The expectation is that volunteers do one night a fortnight, but a shortage of volunteers relative to growing demand means that for a few years now I have been doing at least one shift a week.

Final Word

Congratulations Geoff, 40 years of volunteering for such a worthy cause is a fantastic achievement. All of us at Dyalog Ltd are really proud of your contribution.

To find out more about the amazing service provided by SERV S&L, including how to make a donation, visit https://servsl.org.uk/.

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Announcing the Beta Programme for Dyalog APL Version 18.2

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I am very pleased to be able to announce the start of the Beta testing of the next release of Dyalog APL! As explained in June, we decided to delay the release of version 18.1 in order to take a closer look at some of the optimisations that had been implemented in 18.0 (and were therefore also present in 18.1).

Our analysis of the optimised code concluded that, due to the nature of many of the new algorithms involving modern vector instructions and code generated from templates, we need significantly more time to create tests that will cover absolutely all the different cases that have been implemented. As a result, we do not feel that it is in the best interests of our users to release v18.1 in its current form.

The good news is that the features of modern source code management systems, combined with our collection of regression tests, have allowed us to create a new version of Dyalog APL that contains all of the new features added to versions 18.0 and 18.1. This includes bug fixes made during these two development cycles, but not the optimisations that make us feel uncomfortable. To differentiate this version from the existing version 18.1, we have decided to call the new version 18.2.

Everyone who was signed up for the v18.1 beta programme should now be able to download v18.2 beta. If you are not signed up as a beta tester already but would like to help us with testing, please get in touch. Under Microsoft Windows, testing should be significantly simpler this year, as we have started producing Microsoft Patch files (MSP) as the delivery mechanism for updates – something I have personally been looking forward to since before I joined Dyalog Ltd!

Version 18.2 Performance

One unavoidable consequence of the above is that the performance of v18.2 is closer to that of v17.1 than to v18.0. Our own tests show that we have not been pushed ALL the way back to “square one”: v18.2 appears to be slightly faster than version 17.1. Once v18.2 has been delivered we will work on carefully re-implementing the most valuable optimisations that have been removed. We welcome your input on which primitives you think we should speed up first, so please participate in testing v18.2 and let us know what you think we should prioritise as we start work on version 19.0!

Recommendations regarding Version 18.0

Over the summer, only one additional defect related to performance optimisation was discovered and fixed. We are not currently aware of any outstanding defects in v18.0 caused by recent optimisations. Dyalog Ltd is committed to providing support for version 18.0 until the arrival of the 3rd release following it, in accordance with normal policy.

However, if you have not yet upgraded to v18.0, Dyalog Ltd strongly recommends remaining on your current version and moving directly to v18.2 when it is released. If all goes well, this will happen at the end of 2021 or very early in 2022. If you are already using v18.0, then we recommend that you make plans to start evaluating v18.2 and moving to it as soon as possible.

Conclusion – and Apology

We are painfully aware that the defects found in v18.0 and the resulting uncertainty have seriously inconvenienced some of our users, and I apologise for this. The root cause is the growth and rejuvenation of the Dyalog development team. Our original processes for quality assurance relied on years of tacit knowledge; when enthusiastic new team members break significant new ground, more explicit planning and QA processes are required to make sure that new approaches are safe and stable.

When we resume work on optimisations following the release of v18.2, this will be done according to new guidelines that require the process to begin with a careful risk/benefit analysis of any enhancement to primitive functions. We will do everything that we can to move forward in a way that will allow us all to eventually look back on the events of 2021 as a significant step towards a more capable and reliable development organisation and product.

After all, in another two years it will be time to celebrate 40 years of Dyalog APL!

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