Meltdown
Posted: Fri 25 April, 2008 Filed under: Domestic, Geeky, Music Leave a comment »When it was announced that Massive Attack would be the curators of this year’s Meltdown Festival at London’s South Bank Centre, I knew it’d be interesting.
And indeed it was – if I lived closer to London, there were three or four things I’d have liked to go and see. As it is, though, the big thing was that Massive Attack themselves would be doing two shows – one at the start of the festival, and one at the end. (as well as a remixing of the Blade Runner soundtrack with live orchestra, which I would’ve loved to see)
Tickets went on sale at 9am today – at which time I was, as mentioned below, in an interview. I doubt I could’ve got away with saying “Oh, can I start it a bit late, so I can try and get tickets for a concert“, so instead I just had to hope that all would be well.
As it turned out, I’ve been lucky – a ticket to the show at the end of the Festival is now mine! The start-up show is already sold out, but the finale should be a pretty good one too, so I’m happy.
Mute
Posted: Sat 12 April, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Geeky, Weirdness Leave a comment »Isn’t it amazing that you can still confuse some people by just turning their phones to silent when they’re out of the office, and the bloody thing keeps ringing?
Even after [cough] years with mobiles, some people just still don’t know how to silence them. Thankfully, some of us do know how to do so…
Incommunicado
Posted: Fri 28 March, 2008 Filed under: Domestic, Geeky, Thoughts Leave a comment »One of the things I really liked about the cottage we stayed in when we’re in the Lake District is that there’s no coverage for our mobile phones, and no internet access. It means that while we’re there, it’s very hard for us to be contacted by work- or by anyone else.
In particular, I like having no internet access. I know that if it were there, I’d be using it – I’m a sad and simple geek, and I’d make use of internet access if it were available. When on holiday, well, it’s just a lot nicer to not have the tempation there in the first place. Yes, it means that I’ll have a whole bundle of emails to deal with when I get home (and I didn’t bother this time with an out-of-office message for my email) but I think it’s a worthwhile price for a peaceful week.
As always, if anyone had really needed to get hold of either of us, they could have called and left a message. (And in fact several people did exactly that, including a couple of agencies with possibilities of work for me) It’s not an ideal system, but it does seem to work, and people seem to understand that when I/we call them back – particularly if I explain that we’ve been in “the land of no-coverage”.
And now we’re back with all the communication devices. It’s been a nice week, but in a lot of ways it’ll be good to be back with ‘normal’ communications. It’s still good to have days or weeks where those things don’t exist though – it just means it’s a proper break, with no urge to stay in touch. No bad thing at all.
Not Yet
Posted: Tue 25 March, 2008 Filed under: Customer Services, Domestic, Geeky 1 Comment »Well, having done some major fucking about this evening (And Yes, that is the technical term) we can now send emails from home again.
In the end I’ve set up an SMTP server on one of my hosted sites, and we’re using that rather than screwing around with BT. So we can send email – in addition to the absolute fuck-up BT have made with blocking the emails themselves (and not telling anyone about it) they’ve also changed their perspective on using an external SMTP server. (Up ’til the 12th, I had to send all email via BT’s own mail server – now they’ve fucked about with everything, I can send mail with an external mail server – and of course they didn’t tell anyone that either!)
So for now I’m not going to swap suppliers just yet – probably. The contract is up in June (The anniversary of when we moved in – although they initially told me it was a three-month contract and then I could leave any time, so I detect the possibility/probability of another call to their customer ‘services’ – and of course they’ve broken the contract anyway, with their failure to sort out emails at all) so we’ll be moving supplier in June without a doubt.
At least this way I get to do some more research on which supplier is the best one to replace the smeghead shyster twatbags at BT.
Changing Broadband
Posted: Tue 25 March, 2008 Filed under: Customer Services, Domestic, Geeky 9 Comments »Since March 12th, I haven’t been able to send email from home. BT Broadband have an issue with SMTP servers, and still can’t actually tell me when it’s going to be fixed. (Supposedly it ‘might’ be in the next 24-48 hours, but they can’t guarantee it, and can’t really say what the problem is either.)
So I’m going to be looking at changing my broadband provider. Currently we’re considering either Tiscali or Sky (as we use them for TV service anyway) as the best options for the area. Of course, first I need to get an MAC code from BT Broadband so I can move easily, and tell them where to shove their ‘service’.
Mind you, it does mean it’s likely to cost me less, which is a bonus.
Design
Posted: Fri 7 March, 2008 Filed under: Domestic, Geeky 1 Comment »Damn you, Gordon – you had to link to the ‘habitual’ Bedside table, and I had to click on it.
Now I want one. It’d be ideal for me – particularly (as Gordon said) the ‘bookmark’ section. Fantastic.
Mind you, the entire site has some very groovy designs – particularly this excellent sink/tap design, which I really want…