Devices
Posted: Sun 26 February, 2023 Filed under: Domestic, Green, Technology, Television Leave a comment »Over the last few weeks, I’ve managed to get through two TVs – which is annoying, but thankfully hasn’t been hideously expensive.
Back in Tiny House, my TV was comparatively tiny, I think a 24″ screen. It was fine for the space I was in, and lasted me well. However, in New Place, the living room is considerably larger, so the comparatively tiny screen was less than ideal – but still worked.
This all came up in conversation with friends, and one of them offered a larger screen for free – they were moving, merging houses and so on, and had an extra 43″ screen that otherwise would just be going spare (or going to the tip) so I was happy to take that one. It meant I didn’t have to get a new one, and it was also a case of being a bit greener, rather than just trashing things. I collected it about a month ago, and it’s been fine until this week.
For some reason, it’s ended up throwing a complete wobbly – something to do with the sensor/receiver for the remote control, from what I can tell – and became a nightmare to use. If the remote worked at all, it was as if it was the key was staying down and repeating the input continuously. And it was with two different remotes (the actual TV remote, and the Sky remote that was also able to operate the TV) which is what makes me think it was the sensor/receiver. Regardless though, it made the entire thing into an absolute pain in the chuff, and even a hard reset didn’t fix things.
So… despite all my good intentions, I ended up ordering a new screen, the same size as the one I’d been given. (As I know it at least fits/works in the new living room) It got ordered on Friday and delivered on Sunday, which is pretty good – particularly as I was out for most of Saturday anyway – and it’s all now installed and set up, so I’m happy.
Obviously I’d rather that things had worked out better for that middle screen, but at the same time it’s been moved at least two (and probably three) times, so it’s at least vaguely understandable. Anyway, they’ll go to the tip tomorrow, in order to be as recyclable as possible, and all that jazz.
Re-Identified
Posted: Mon 25 October, 2021 Filed under: Customer Services, Domestic, Getting Old(er), Getting Organised, Technology, Thoughts, Travel Leave a comment »For some reason, this year has involved renewing both of my primary forms of ID – a few months ago it was the passport that got done, and I’ve now had to do the driving licence as well.
In fairness, both processes have been pretty painless, and made much easier through technology – the passport had some issues with uploading a new photo (because I wear glasses, and photos without a reflection on the lenses is *difficult*) but it’s all involved a lot less hassle than one would expect.
The driving licence also pulls through the photo from the passport process (although the reverse doesn’t apply, weirdly) but it needed a lot more linked information than I expected – for example, why does my driving licence renewal require me to know/remember my NI Number? I’d already connected it to the passport system/number etc. for verification, so that seems like an unnecessary extra step, really.
Still, it’s all done, the new licence card arrived promptly – and well within the quoted two weeks – and the old one got cut in two and returned.
I now shouldn’t need a renewal on these things for another decade. How time flies, and all that!
A Flaw In The Safety
Posted: Fri 6 March, 2020 Filed under: Cynicism, Driving, London, Technology, Thoughts, Travel Leave a comment »Following on from the post a while back about driver assistance things, I had another interesting one a few days ago.
I’d hired a Vauxhall Insignia in order to ferry people around a bit, and the weather was disgusting – heavy rain, lots of spray, and lots of idiots with no lights on.
Anyway, on the section of the M4 I was driving on, there were roadworks, and the lanes had been narrowed as a result. And that was where the problem came in.
The Insignia had the Lane Change Warning thing, which detects when the driver is drifting across lanes without indicating – and in the case of the Insignia, it also tries to push you back into the lane you’re departing. Not my favourite thing at the best of times, but in this case it was actually picking up on the wrong lane markings (because they were glossy and shiny in the rain) and so actually kept on pushing me “back” towards the crash barriers, and would have left me scraping along them if I’d not been paying attention.
I can understand why it happened, and how. It was also easy enough for me to sort things out (eventually by turning off the Lane Change completely) but I can also easily see how things could’ve gone wrong, if I were the sort of driver who relied on these aids, who didn’t pay attention, or left those aids to do things because they’re there to help.
And what would’ve happened in that situation if it were a fully autonomous (“self-driving”) vehicle with no controls, or potentially people who didn’t drive, or couldn’t understand the danger signs?
There’s still a way to go on these things, I think…
Self-Incrimination
Posted: Fri 21 February, 2020 Filed under: Domestic, Driving, I Don't Understand, Legal, M1, People, Technology, Thoughts Leave a comment »It’s no secret that I tend to assume people with dashcams are usually shit drivers. Obviously that’s not always the case, but in my experience it’s predominantly true – as though there’s an attitude of “Well I’m perfect, and it’s all these other idiots on the road” or something.
I also know that it’s now far easier to upload one’s dashcam footage to report driving offences when the police haven’t been there.
What I do wonder is how many people self-incriminate on those uploads? For example, if one were to upload video of someone undertaking on a motorway, only for that footage to also show that the reporting driver had been middle-lane-hogging for the previous ten miles, and thus being at least a partial cause of said undertaking…
And no, this doesn’t involve my own driving. Just something I noticed occurring in front of me on the M1 this morning, and then started thinking about the extrapolations.
Driving Assistance
Posted: Sun 19 January, 2020 Filed under: Driving, Technology, Thoughts 2 Comments »During the last three months of 2019 I ended up hiring a few cars for longer rides and so on. There was no particularly good reason for it – the primary motivation was that some of the drives were likely to involve heavy traffic, so having an automatic seemed like a decent plan. Outside of that, cutting down some of the mileage on my own car, and also well, it was just fun to play with some different cars.
Out of it all, it was interesting to me to see how much driving has changed, and primarily the plethora of driving assistance things that’ve been added in the last few years. Things like auto start/stop, lane-change warnings, automatic lights, automatic windscreen wipes, intelligent cruise control (the one that automatically adjusts speed based on vehicles around you, rather than just ‘70 mph and that’s it‘) , road-sign recognition, and speed limiters.
In general, I’m really not a fan of these aids and “helpers” – as has been noted before, I’m a bit of a control-freak, and I don’t like ceding driving decisions to them. My main reasoning on this though isn’t actually about my own driving, it’s about the driving of others. It seems like a lot of these things help to make drivers feel that they don’t need to be so aware of what’s going on, and so they become less conscious of their surroundings, which makes for things being more dangerous, rather than less.
In the end, there were only two that I found to be useful, and even then there’s only one that I’ve “missed” having at all.
I used the speed limiter more than I thought I would – mainly on trips where I’d been an idiot and done big day-trips (three or more hours each way) or where I was coming back after a long and active day. On those occasions, knowing that I couldn’t take the car over whatever I’d set meant it was something I didn’t have to concentrate on, and that meant I could give more awareness and concentration to the actual drive. I wouldn’t use it on a day-to-day basis, but it was definitely useful on the times when I did activate it.
The only thing I’ve actually missed though is the automatic windscreen wipers. It’s more about reducing my own annoyance than actually being useful as such, but I’ve noticed its lack. Particularly on motorways (which is still the great majority of my driving) I find rain is too changeable, too random for regular windscreen wipers to be effective without occasionally squeaking when there’s not been enough rain, or not clearing rapidly enough when a sudden dollop lands (or there’s more as one passes a truck or whatever) So you end up changing the intervals, or only triggering a manual sweep when it’s needed, or whatever. Anyway, it annoys me whatever happens.
The automatic wipers took all of that away. Leave them on auto, and they’d handle it all without hassle. Yes, it’s odd (in some ways) to see them go from nothing to a sudden three wipes, or increasing the cadence in response to that truck chucking up a load of water or whatever. But it still meant it was something that wasn’t annoying me, which tends to be a positive…
Kindling Discontent
Posted: Sat 14 September, 2019 Filed under: Domestic, Kindle, Reading, Technology, Thoughts Leave a comment »Last weekend, while down in Devon, I lost my Kindle. Entirely my own fault, and primarily due to being a dickhead – but still, bloody annoying.
I ordered a replacement pretty much immediately, and hoped that Amazon had improved the method for restoring all the books I’ve got onto the device. It’s been a bloody awful experience the last couple of times, but the last time was three years ago. So, knowing how swiftly they release new stuff on AWS/Cloud, it’s got to have been worked on, surely?
Welllllll, yes and no.
The experience is a bit better – at least now it keeps a record of what books have been put into Collections (think of each Collection as a bookshelf) which sort of makes things easier. But not much – because you can’t actually select, for example, a set of Collections and say “Deliver these”.
Instead, it’s still horrifically manual, and dirt-slow. You have to go to the Amazon site, and then “Manage Content and Devices”. If you only have a few books, then great, that’s fine. I haven’t – I’ve got about 600. So even selecting the maximum of 200 books at a time – which is sort-of easy, although still involves scrolling the page down until it’s got that full 200 listed, and then “select all” – then takes forever to actually push them to the Kindle.
With the Collections, once the books have been pushed to the Kindle, it should then put them into the right places – so that’s at least a small improvement. Last time, I had to re-add books to the Collections as well, which made the entire thing a massive pain in the arse.
The thing is, none of this should be difficult. So long as one does backups of the device (and the Sync process is actively encouraged by Amazon, so one can read a book on one device and then continue it on another) then it should be a simple matter of going “Copy the stuff from this backup onto that machine”, in the same way it does for my iPhones.
All told, even with the improvements, it’s a rotten first experience with a new device. It surprises me just how bad it actually is – the entire thing seems to be something that Amazon doesn’t expect to happen, or that’s only been tested with five or ten books. I wonder if it’s something Amazon will ever get round to fixing…
Small Wins – Backup
Posted: Fri 26 April, 2019 Filed under: Business, Change, Cynicism, Domestic, Getting Organised, Photography, Technology, Thoughts, Time Leave a comment »Way, way back in the day – Nov 2006, to be precise – I bought a backup drive for all my music, photos and work. It wasn’t anything hugely special – a now laughable 320Gb drive – but it did what I wanted, and made sure I’d got everything preserved. (Amusingly, I just took a look, and the roughly-similar drives now done by WD start at 3Tb!)
And then I moved a few times, and the drive got separated from its power brick, and I sort of gave up on it a bit. Over the last few years I’ve mainly been using online backups instead (which mean that as soon as I save a file, it’s backed up, and synchronises to my other machines) and the drive became even less of an issue.
I always knew where the drive itself was, even though I was fairly sure I’d lost (or thrown away) the power lead/brick. The drive has been on one of my bookcases, doing nothing except attracting dust.
Last weekend, though, I found a random power cable that looked like it might fit the drive. So I took them both into my office this week, and gave it a go.
At the end of the day, I’d pretty much given up on it – it’s been sat there doing sod-all for a number of years, and has been carelessly moved, shoved in boxes and so on. So I expected nothing.
And yet, when I plugged the cables in and connected it to the laptop, it all worked. Straight away, with no issues, clanks, grinds, or other Warning Noises Of Doom. Needless to say, I’m actually pretty impressed.
Of course, I’ll also now be working to ensure that a lot of it is backed up somewhere else as well, as that drive is distinctly venerable, but all the same, it’s a bit of a win for it all to have come back in the way it has.
The Joy of Tech
Posted: Fri 22 March, 2019 Filed under: Bankruptcy, Domestic, Finances, Geeky, Getting Organised, Rebuilding, Technology, Thoughts 3 Comments »Yesterday, while doing a quick shop on the way to work, I suddenly realised I’d left my wallet at home. Bugger.
I was just about prepared to take everything back to its shelves/locations, when it occurred to me that actually I was still OK – I had my phone with me still. That meant I’d got the ability to make a contactless payment – and because I’d also added the details of my Monzo card/account to the phone, it meant I had everything I needed.
It’s pretty amazing, the way these things have now become so much more mainstream than they were ten years ago, or even five. Since I got the Monzo card eighteen months ago (it’s the only one I have that also connects into my ApplePay account on the phone) I’ve stopped carrying cash except for specific occasions – for example, the car wash I use still only takes cash.
I still prefer to carry physical cards (hence usually having a wallet) but it was still interesting to realise that forgetting it is no longer the “Oh shit!” moment it used to be. (So long as I remember my phone, and that I can use it, anyway)
Ain’t progress grand?
Upgraded
Posted: Mon 3 December, 2018 Filed under: Advertising, BT, Customer Services, Domestic, Geeky, Milton Keynes, Technology, Utilities 4 Comments »Last week, I upgraded my internet connection to an “Ultrafast” one – known by BT / Openreach as G.Fast. Apparently they’re slowing down the roll-out of this in favour of full FTTP (Fibre To The Premises) roll-out, but for now it’s the best speed I can get.
G.Fast offers a guaranteed 100Mbps download – and I’ll get compensation if it dips below that – which is amusingly ridiculous. When I moved here six-and-a-bit years ago, I was only just able to get ADSL and a 2Mbps connection. It was painfully slow, although it did enough for the necessary at the time. When FTTC (Fibre To The Cabinet) came here, I got it, and went from 2Mbps to 75 overnight. At that point I could do streaming TV and so on with no problem at all. And now I’ve doubled even that. Truly insane.
I wasn’t actually aware that this tech had been installed in my area, but BT sent me a promotional mail about it at the start of November, and I’d dragged my feet on it a bit. But then I got a “Black Friday” promotional letter about it as well, where I could also get it installed for free, for an extra £1 a month on what I pay already. Well OK then.
(As an aside, it’s the only “Black Friday” deal I bothered with at all – and only because it saved me money on a product I was actually interested in)
The engineer came round on Friday to do the installation – it needs some changes at the cabinet, and as it’s still new stuff, they’re doing it with engineers rather than self-install. This had a happy side-effect, in that he also appears to have finally fixed the line problem that’s been plaguing me for more years than I care to mention. (And has cost me the price of an engineer visit on one visit out of the five, because they worded the ‘fix’ badly, but that’s a dead issue now)
Ever since I moved in, the line has been dodgy on occasion, and it’s just got worse over time. The broadband connection has been fine in general – unless I have to make or receive a phone call. At that point the crackles on the line were enough to knock out the broadband connection. BT insisted this wasn’t possible, and that all the options I suggested were Just Wrong. (Because obviously I don’t work for them, so what could I possibly know?) In that time, I’ve had five master sockets, and swapped from ADSL to FTTC for broadband, so I knew it was nothing in the house. It was always either going to be a fault in the line (“Oh no, sir, that’s not possible, more people would be complaining if that were the case”) or in the cabinet itself (also apparently “impossible”)
Anyway, this time the engineer could hear the problem, and tested to find where the problem was. Surprise surprise, it was in the cabinet. So while he was redoing connections for my new broadband, he had a look round the cab, and the terminators on my line (I dunno) in the cab were “worryingly loose, I could just pull them off, didn’t even need pliers“. When he came back to the house, oooh look, what a surprise, no crackle on the line.
So, I’m now working with a 150Mbps download connection, and a lovely crackle-free phone line. All told, bit of a win.
Reducing Caller Spam
Posted: Mon 29 January, 2018 Filed under: Advertising, BT, Customer Services, Domestic, Getting Organised, Marketing, Technology, Thoughts, Utilities 4 Comments »When I moved to the current place, I got a new phone number – not surprising, as I was in a new area, and a new (to me) house. As always, I registered that number with TPS and so on, and made sure it was ex-directory. I usually only use landline phones for broadband purposes – although it turns out I also use it here for some calls, as the mobile coverage inside the house is shockingly bad. So I have a phone landline, and a phone connected to it.
Unbeknownst to me, the number I got had obviously been owned by someone else before me, and that person was the type of fucking moron who’d sign up for all kinds of promotions, and ran up all kinds of debts. So right from Day One I was getting a couple of calls a week looking for the previous occupant. (Well, the previous owner of that phone number – it wasn’t a name connected to the house at all) And because they were for a previous person, it turns out that TPS doesn’t really apply. (Which is an interesting, and fucking annoying, loophole)
Even so, I re-registered with TPS, and put a spam-calls block on the line. (Which was absolutely useless, and so came off again) It was only a couple of calls a week, and usually while I was out at work. *shrug*
Over the last two years though, it got worse. The phone’s call log would get filled up in the course of a week, all with “Number Withheld” and “International” numbers, along with the ones who didn’t conceal their numbers, who left messages and blocked up everything else. I used a couple of other number-blocking services, none of which did much good. Hell, if I were cynical I’d say they were the ones who sold the number on and spread it ever further. Not that I’ll ever know for sure, one way or the other.
Late last year, the situation was ridiculous. We’d gone from a couple of calls a week right up to filling the phone’s call log every day. Nothing was working to prevent the calls, and it was just getting stupid.
So I bit the bullet, and changed my phone number. I explained to BT why I was doing it – in the hope that they now blacklist that number completely (although I doubt it, they’ll just have farmed it off on some other unsuspecting sap) – and got a new number allocated to me. Same set-up, it’s ex-d, and registered with TPS.
The big difference though, is that in the three months since I got it changed, I haven’t received a single solitary spam call. My phone call log stays blank (as I said, I don’t use it that often) and it’s lovely.
Sometimes these extreme measures are the ones we need to take. I wish I’d done this one two years ago…
Technical Dipshittery
Posted: Fri 20 October, 2017 Filed under: Business, Customer Services, Domestic, Geeky, Stupidity, Technology, Weirdness Leave a comment »Yesterday, I got a text message from O2, telling me that they were going to be closing their TuGo app (an app that allows phone calls to be made/received through my wifi connection, when the mobile phone signal is bobbins) at the end of November. It gave some options for enabling better alternatives, including their ‘4G & WiFi Calling’ through a range of phones, so it will no longer need a separate app.
That’s all well and good – and TuGo has always been a bag of shite anyway. So I started to go through the process, as ‘detailed’ by O2 of how to get it all set up on my phone.
Except that once I’d enabled it on my phone (or tried to) it told me I needed to do it via the O2 website, to activate it on my account. Bit of a pain in the arse, but OK, let’s get it done.
Oh.
The page detailed in the message doesn’t actually contain the information necessary. I can see a link explaining how great the 4G and Wifi Calling is, but nothing to activate it.
So, I start up a LiveChat with one of their Tech Gurus, who tell me that it’s still showing I’ve got Tu connected to my account, and that needs to be removed before I can do anything. No worries though, they’ll sort it out. Give it about half an hour, reboot the phone, it’ll be done.
Except it wasn’t.
So I got back in touch with O2, this time by phone instead of LiveChat. Oh dear, oh dear.
I (eventually) got through to another of their Tech Gurus, who again says that Tu is still connected to my account, and that I have to uninstall the TuGo app on my phone in order to get rid of the connection. No idea why the previous tech person said they could do it, that’s not possible, it can only be done from your phone, sir.
So I uninstall the app, in the usual way. Oh no, sir, you haven’t uninstalled it. You’ll need to go back to the app store, reinstall the app so you can uninstall it. (Eh? What?) Yes, you’ll need to reinstall the app – you didn’t uninstall it, “you just deleted the little picture on your phone”. That’s a direct quote. From a Tech “Guru”. Who doesn’t appear to even know the word “icon”.
So. Let’s see how this goes. Phone call goes to speakerphone, so I can go through the process while the “Guru” is still on the call, and telling me what I need to do. I reinstall the app – and in order to get in to it, I have to rebuild the connection and association with my number – because uninstalling the app has got rid of all that information . Which is exactly as it should be.
I rebuild the connection, then go into the app’s Settings and Delete the Account. The Guru says “Oh there we go, I can see you’ve now uninstalled the app”. No, I haven’t, I’ve deleted the account. The app is still installed, I can see it. “No, it’s uninstalled”
All the way through the call, that “Guru” couldn’t tell the difference between “Delete the Account/Connection” and “Uninstall the App”.
It’s resulted in two further interactions with layers of O2 management, telling them the problems, fixing the issues, and generally getting it more sorted.
And all the way through this, all it would have taken was for that “My Device” webpage saying “You’ve still got an active connection to TuGo – you need to remove that before we can progress. Here’s how.” That would’ve fixed everything, and I wouldn’t have needed to speak to O2 at all, let alone a total of four times.
Sometimes I just despair of people, and companies.
Recharging and Vindication
Posted: Mon 9 October, 2017 Filed under: Car Repairs, Customer Services, Cynicism, Domestic, Driving, Getting Organised, Milton Keynes, Single Life, Technology Leave a comment »A couple of weeks back now, I took my car to the local Kia dealership (as it’s a Kia) for its MoT. It had been serviced there a couple of weeks prior, and at that point the dealership hadn’t impressed me for a couple of reasons I won’t go into for now.
It passed the MoT just fine – needed two bulbs replacing, and that was it. But that evening, once I was home, the car wouldn’t start – the battery was completely flat. The only thing different to its usual treatment was the MoT, and the recovery guy who came out to sort things agreed it was likely they’d done something to flatten the bloody thing.
I spoke to the dealership the next day, and they denied all possibility that the problem was down to them. Couldn’t happen, sir. You left here fine (forgetting that it was running when I got in, I hadn’t had to start it) so it can’t be us. Just one of those things. If you really want to check, we’ve got a super-expensive tool for testing batteries properly, you can come in and we’ll do the check.
Which I did. Went in, and this super-tool said “Battery 100% OK”. Fair enough, it might be one of those things, I suppose. They were quite patronising about it all, and again insisted it couldn’t be anything to do with them. The only other way to find anything (“sir”) would be to drop it in for a couple of days, let it wait around and we’ll see if it drains, or what might be wrong.
However, the problems went on. It’s never completely flattened on me again, but I’ve been more aware of the delays on starting, and I’ve given it some bigger runs just to ensure the battery is as topped as possible.
So last week, knowing I’d got a hire car for a day-trip to Leeds (of which more in another post) I also booked it in to the dealership again for today, so they could have it a couple of days and find out what the problem is. It led to a bundle of fucking about, but it all came together in the end.
Lo and behold, this evening I got a call. Apparently, the battery *is* fucked, despite what their super-tool said a week ago. So they’re replacing it, and will then see tomorrow how everything goes, and hopefully I’ll collect it on Wednesday.
It’s fair to say, we’re going to have words when I do collect it. This has been a shitload of hassle, and it’s taken me a bundle of time away from work in order to keep on getting things sorted. My sense of humour has, as they say, somewhat failed about the whole thing. It’ll be interesting to see what happens – but I do feel somewhat vindicated about the whole thing.
What the dealership doesn’t seem to realise is that the servicing department is as much of a sales tool as the showroom is. I’ve got a Kia, and so far I’ve been quite pleased with it. I would have considered getting another one – and it would likely have been from that dealership. But if they can’t sort me out with a cheaper car and be competent, why the *fuck* would I stick with the same company once the current issues are sorted, let alone buy a new (to me) Kia?
Paying for Parking
Posted: Fri 28 July, 2017 Filed under: Domestic, Driving, Geeky, Milton Keynes, Parking, Technology, Thoughts Leave a comment »During the working week, I regularly park in an area controlled by parking meters – not one per slot, but in big blocks, so you pay for your ticket/parking at a machine, and return the ticket to the car.
It’s an area/business that in many ways doesn’t seem to have kept up with progress at all, but in others is quite a way ahead of most other places. It’s very odd – and it seems like a lot of people are caught in that middle space between the two extremes.
You see, the meters themselves take cash, and only cash. There’s no facility to take card payments, let alone contactless. I assume that some of this is down to maintenance costs – the more things it can do, the more things there are that can fuck up.
Then at the other end of the scale, we can use online/mobile payment setups like RingGo to pay for parking, which is super-easy to do, and works really nicely. (There are other parking payment providers, most of which are worse than RingGo, but they’re still getting used by various councils etc. around the country) There’s no need for cash, it’s all smooth and simple to do, with the parking wardens having smartphone equivalents where they can check each vehicle’s registration and see if it’s paid for parking online.
Both solutions seem to work, either with the super-basic “put coins in the machine” or the semi-techie (but still really pretty simple once it’s set up) paying via mobile/online. There’s also the ability to pay by phone using RingGo, but that appears to be overly complex.
However, both options seem destined to confuse the majority of people. I regularly see people dredging pockets for change – which is becoming less common, with the prevalence of debit cards and contactless payments, so they’re surprised and unprepared for needing coins to park – or completely stumped by smartphone apps, or having problems with the paying by phone.
In some ways that harks back to people not being prepared, but at the same time I do understand that these meters are a bit of a surprise. They’re so low-tech in many ways, and people just don’t seem to expect that. But they’re also unprepared for using their smartphones – despite this whole pay online/app thing becoming more and more common for parking – and don’t have the relevant app, or have it set up. And even with 4G coverage etc., it seems that a lot of them are utterly unable (or just unwilling) to sort out installing the app and just doing things the easy way.
I don’t know what the answer is. I think we’re in this weird hinterland at the moment, where we’ve still got simultaneous low-tech and hi-tech solutions, and people are just caught in the middle, too advanced to be happy with the low-tech, but a large number also still unhappy or uncomfortable with the hi-tech alternative, so they’re stuck in some kind of mid-tech wilderness.
It’s very odd, but interesting to watch and see how things go.
Something New
Posted: Fri 14 July, 2017 Filed under: Bankruptcy, Customer Services, Cynicism, Domestic, Finances, Getting Organised, Rebuilding, Technology, Thoughts Leave a comment »Over the last week or so, I’ve been trying something new (well, new-ish) in the financial sector – Monzo.
I’ve been aware of a few of this type of “new banking” start-ups of late, but Monzo interested me when I read this article that talked about how closely it kept track of payments, and their whole customer service set-up. In my own experience with banks, it’s customer service that is their greatest weakness, so I’m interested in how other ‘non high-street’ new financial organisations address it.
At the moment it’s “only” a pre-paid credit card option, driven entirely through a smartphone app – but they’ve got their banking licence, and are aiming to be starting a current account as well, again all driven through smartphone apps.
So far, the experience has been pretty good. (Note – for purposes of this, I used my iPhone – I can’t say anything at all about the Android version) I got the app through the App Store, and went through the initial stages. Basically, just a name and date-of-birth for verification purposes, and then they order your card.
This took some time – but the expectations were managed all the way through, showing the queue of applicants, where I was in that queue, how many people were before me, and how many after. Now, my cynicism kicks in slightly here, as I noticed that the number of applicants always stayed around the 25,000 mark, so it *could* just be a steady flow of incoming customers, or it *could* be all smoke-and-mirrors guff to make me think they know what they’re up to.
It took about four days to get to the top of the queue (I could’ve jumped places if I’d promoted Monzo on social media, but frankly, fuck off) and once that happened, I got a notification to say so. This was where the identity stuff came in, and needed address details, plus an in-app photo of driving licence for proof-of-address, and a 5-second video to prove I’m real.
I’ve done an initial top-up (of a completely manageable amount – if the entire thing turns out to be a scam, I won’t be screwed) and the card has been sent to my home address. It’s due to arrive today, at which point I’ll have to connect it to the app – slightly annoying, as surely they know all the necessary details already – and then it should be ready to go.
I’ll write more about it in a month or so, once I’ve used it and seen how I feel about the entire thing. So far, though, it’s been an interesting and positive experience – I hope it continues to be so!
Connectivity
Posted: Mon 3 July, 2017 Filed under: BT, Business, Customer Services, Domestic, Technology, Thoughts, Utilities, Weather Leave a comment »Yet again, my home broadband connection has gone to pot over the weekend.
It’s an ongoing problem – basically, there’s a leak in the outdoors part of my connection, so when it rains heavily, water gets in, and corrodes the connections in the master socket. I start to know it’s going to be bad when any phone call I make (not that I make many on the landline, but still) starts to get crackly. After a while, it then gets bad enough that the next ingress of water breaks things properly, and leaves my modem/router dropping the connection and reconnecting on an all-too-frequent basis.
In the five-and-a-bit years I’ve been in this house, I’ve had four master sockets. Now soon to be a fifth.
BT refuse to believe that this is the problem – this has been going on for ages, and they’ve done line checks etc., but won’t replace the outside part of the connection, for some reason.
So we go through the farce of doing fault-tracking, “We can’t find anything” and then booking an engineer to come out. Every time, I get told “If it’s a problem past the master socket (i.e. with my own wiring) then it’ll cost £129.99 on your next bill”. It won’t be with my wiring, because I’ve got precisely one socket, and one connector/splitter (also supplied by BT) on it.
Everything else will be fine, it’ll just be corroded connections in the master socket. Again.
This time, I’m going to aim to get the engineer to reinstall the master socket, but do so higher up the wall (so water doesn’t get in, as it can’t climb cables) or on a longer cable inside the house, so I can put it on a shelf or whatever, and again, let gravity deal with the problem.
The engineer’s coming out on Wednesday morning, so we’ll see what happens from there. It’d be nice (and really quite novel!) to have it sorted properly this time. But only time will tell whether that’ll happen or not.
Attention Span
Posted: Thu 5 January, 2017 Filed under: Charm School, Cinema, Cynicism, Domestic, Films, People, Seeing Films, Technology, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »Yesterday, there was a bundle of news coverage about Apple’s supposedly-upcoming “Cinema Mode” for iPhones and iPads as part of the next iOS release.
This will (again, supposedly) allow people in cinemas – and other darkened environments, one assumes – to check their phones without disturbing those around them, mainly through use of a ‘dark’ colour-scheme, so the display doesn’t glow like a lighthouse.
In fairness, this annoys me on a regular basis at the cinema – there’s always some fuckknuckle who wants to check stuff while ‘watching’ a film, leaving their phone’s volume up, or some other piece of vacuous self-centred idiocy. But really, a phone mode to cater for that?
It irritates me that so many people now seem to be utterly incapable of sitting for a couple of hours and watching a film. There’ve been a couple of films I’ve seen recently where it seemed like everyone else was eating popcorn (or sweets, or both) from rustling paper bags throughout the film, and/or then sodding off out to the toilet and whatever else.
As has been noted before, I really don’t understand people. I don’t get why someone would pay to see a film, spend even more on food and drink, then either not be able to sit through the film without breaks, or without checking their phones. If you’re going to do all that, why not wait til it comes out on disc/download/TV and watch at home, where you can pause, rewind etc., and not worry about missing bits while you go to drain your microscopic bladder?
Mind you, I also don’t understand why cinemas insist on putting all their food/refreshments in noisy paper bags. Surely there must be another option by now? A fabric version or similar? Or larger bags/tubs that allow hands in and out without touching the sides?
ReKindled (Again)
Posted: Wed 19 October, 2016 Filed under: Amazon, Bankruptcy, Customer Services, Cynicism, Domestic, Geeky, Kindle, Reading, Rebuilding, Technology Leave a comment »Just to top off a pretty expensive fortnight, while I was away over the weekend the Kindle broke. As with previous ones, the screen film cracked, so half of it is working and the other half isn’t. In short, fucked.
As it turns out though, I can’t be too annoyed (annoyed, sure, but not too annoyed) as it turns out I’ve had this one just short of three years. Considering that before that I had a spate of broken screens in less than a year, it could’ve lasted a lot less time.
Yes, I’d rather these things were more resilient, were designed to last longer than 18 months.
Anyway, it’ll be interesting to see how things have progressed with Kindles, and whether they’ve improved the ways to reload content onto a new device. It was horrific three years ago, so I’m hoping for improvements, it’s fair to say. (And if that doesn’t happen, I’ve got a backup from the old device – so maybe I’ll just be able to roll that onto the new one.)
We’ll see.
EE’s broken payments
Posted: Sun 16 October, 2016 Filed under: Customer Services, Domestic, Finances, Geeky, Technology, Thoughts Leave a comment »As I wrote yesterday, I ended up having some major issues with the cottage’s already-installed 3G Dongle through EE.
Basically, it’s either not been used for a while, or the previous people ran the account into the ground – there’s absolutely no credit or data available on it. That’s OK, you can connect to EE still and add a credit. Or at least you should be able to.
Basically, the device is set up so that it can still connect to ee.co.uk , and that doesn’t come out of the data allowance. All’s well and good. But. Ah, but.
The thing is, when it comes to processing payments, the processing isn’t all done on ee.co.uk. It also goes off to get the 3D secure (also known as “Verified by Visa” or “Mastercard [something]“) from the relevant bank. Only that’s from a different (and thus not-allowed) domain outside of EE, and because there’s no data allowance, the connection is refused, and the credit transaction fails.
All you get to see on screen is “An error occurred” with “Try again”. Which is… unhelpful.
What’s more unhelpful is that EE’s transaction system has pre-authorised the amount you’ve topped up by. So the funds are then locked by your bank. They’ll be released when the transaction doesn’t complete – but it can take two to three working weeks for that to happen, because banks are paranoid and slow and shit. And EE are just shit, because their failed transaction doesn’t release those funds.
Even better, you can’t then offer feedback or contact EE. Because – yes! – all the online feedback is done through a third party, and goes off to a different domain.
So you’re basically left with no data, no top-up, locked funds, and no way to contact EE to tell them so.
Even worse, I suspect it’s only because I’m a techie that I understand it this much – for Joe Public it’d just be “it’s broken, and EE are shit”. (Which isn’t something I could argue with either, but at least I can understand why it’s broken!) It’s a simple scenario, but one I’m willing to bet they’ve never tested, going on the assumption that people would top up before they ran out completely, etc. etc.
I’ve written to them to explain the same situation, so it’ll be interesting to see what they come back with (if anything)
Mobile and Connected
Posted: Sat 15 October, 2016 Filed under: Customer Services, Domestic, Technology, Thoughts, Travel Leave a comment »This weekend, I’m away in Dorset, hoping to spend some time relaxing and writing, getting some of the stuff out of my head that’s been resident for way too long.
I’ve been to the particular place I’m staying before, and knew they had a semblance of internet connection (albeit through a 3G Dongle thingy) but when I got here, I found it’s not working properly. (It’s on EE, and because they’re shitheads, there are mega-issues when there’s no remaining data on the device. That’s a post for another day)
So anyway, while I’m wanting quiet, I do still need connection for a range of things. As a result, I went into the nearest town, and bought a MiFi device of my own which turns out to be working pretty well. Considering the location (in a valley, with next-to-sod-all anywhere nearby) I’ve got enough of a 3G signal (blipping up and down to a single bar of 4G) to keep things connected and fine.
It’s meant that as well as doing some writing, I’ve also been able to do some outstanding work stuff that needed completing, and all that usual stuff.
Indeed, it’s doing well enough here that I’ll continue using it, and be interested to see how it works in other places I go to over the next few months. Ain’t progress/technology interesting?
D4D Performance
Posted: Fri 25 December, 2015 Filed under: D4D™, Geeky, Getting Organised, Technology 1 Comment »This year, D4D’s performance as a site hasn’t been that great. I’d noticed a lot of times when pages timed out, or seemed to get lost along the way, but couldn’t find what was causing it, despite looking hard on several occasions.
Last week, I finally found what the problem was – and it wasn’t in something I’d done, which was nice. More importantly, it also wasn’t something that was showing up in code or settings – because it was a plugin that wasn’t doing what it had been told to, for whatever reason.
I’ve got a security plugin on D4D that’s supposed to take automatic backups, to add some safety and recovery to the site. That was set to take a backup every week, and to only store three backups, then overwriting the oldest.
Except that wasn’t what was happening. Somewhere along the line, something had gone wrong, and it turned out that it was taking a full database backup (with a different filename each time, so no over-writing etc.) every fifteen minutes. Then storing them in a folder that was hidden away in a non-obvious location, with a non-helpful filename.
Even on a server that says it’s got unlimited space, that was taking the piss. It was making the server work extra-hard for no good reason, and causing a whole load of problems.
I finally found it all, and ended up both deleting the old files, as well as killing off the backup task completely. (I’ve written my own automated job now which is working fine, and not causing any problems. The moral of the story? Don’t trust other people’s code.)
Since doing that, I haven’t seen the site crash. I’m hoping that the problems are now fixed, the stability will improve, and that 2016 will be a much better year for D4D™
Fingers crossed.
Re-tyred
Posted: Sun 22 November, 2015 Filed under: Customer Services, Domestic, Driving, eTyres, Getting Organised, M1, Technology, Thoughts, Travel Leave a comment »Over the last month, the car has had a complete set of new tyres (admittedly, bought two at a time) as it was definitely That Time Of Year when it’s a good plan., with the onset of winter with added rain, snow and ice. It’s been at least a year since the front ones were changed, and longer since I did the rears, and while they’re still well within the legal limits, I know they were nowhere near as good as they could/should be.
The front ones got changed a couple of weeks back – something I was really pleased about while I was driving last weekend. At that point, the road conditions were vile – heavy rain, standing water, and one particular section of motorway surface that could best be described as interesting – and the car stayed solid on the road, which is something that some others certainly weren’t.
I avoided using eTyres this time – partly because I’m not convinced of their services etc., but also because they didn’t stock the tyres I’d decided I wanted to try out.
Having looked around, I opted this time for Michelin Cross-Climate tyres, which seem to be a good option for going across the full range of road/weather conditions I’m likely to hit in the coming months. I’ve also never had a full set of the same tyres on a car, so it seems like it should be interesting.
The rears got changed today, and the change has been significant, even in the short time I’ve driven on them today. I’m pretty sure it’s not just a psychosomatic thing, the whole vehicle felt more rooted to the road, more stable.
We’ll see how things go. This morning was also the first serious frost of the year – I was driving through snow on the M1 yesterday – and I’m pretty sure we’ll have a few more days like it in the coming weeks. I’ve got the best part of a thousand miles to cover over the next couple of weekends (not including the usual weekly travel) so by the end of that, I’ll know a lot more about how the car feels with the new setup.
Missing Limb
Posted: Mon 30 March, 2015 Filed under: 1BEM, Domestic, Getting Organised, Stupidity, Technology, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »This morning I somehow managed to leave my phone at home. (Well, I hope it’s at home – otherwise I’ve done something really stupid with it)
It’s quite an odd feeling really – you only realise how much you use the damn thing when it’s not there. The ubiquity of a smartphone for simple things is suddenly noticeable.
Already today I’ve had several thoughts of “Oh, I’ll just get the phone and…”, followed by the realisation that I can’t.
Calling it a “missing limb” is a bit hyperbolic, but it’s definitely a feeling of something missing, something you’re used to having around that’s not there any more.
I’ll be fine – it’s not like I’m surgically attached or anything – but every so often something will jar, and I’ll think “Bollocks” again.
Let’s just hope the damn thing is at home. I’m sure it is, but there’s that nagging ‘what if you did something dumb?‘ mental voice going on…
Televisual
Posted: Wed 11 March, 2015 Filed under: Domestic, Finances, Getting Organised, Technology, Television, Thoughts Leave a comment »A couple of months back, I damaged my TV. Nothing major – the cats were being arseholes. I chucked a cat-toy near them, and hit the screen, resulting in a broken line of pixels, and a broken bit of display crystal so it had a bit of a blob. (Think how an LCD-display watch used to look when it broke/cracked, and you’ve got it)
It’s been a minor irritation since – not even big enough to be an annoyance, just every so often the line of pixels would flicker white and be noticeable, or the broken bit of display would be more noticeable with the rest of the screen (depending on what was on it at the time) and it was getting worse.
So anyway, this week I finally decided to replace it – and I’ve done so. It’s a bigger unit than the previous one – 32″ from the 24″ I had – which is a significant increase of screen size, that I hadn’t quite catered for in my head. It still fits in fine, and doesn’t dominate the room the way I find lots of the really big ones do, but I think it’s at the upper limit.
What really surprises me – although it shouldn’t – is the difference in prices and screen sizes to fifteen or twenty years ago.
Twenty years ago, when I bought my own first new TV, it was the same screen size as the one now – but it was a massive beast, needing two people to lift it safely, and cost me about £800. It was a serious unit, to say the least.
Now, the same screen size – and I know, it’s an LCD/LED rather than a CRT display, which makes a massive difference – is easily carriable by me, and cost maybe a third of what that old Sony one did. Even the image quality is markedly improved. It’s quite remarkable, the way progress and changes in technology have come on in that time period. Food for thought, of what we might have in the next twenty years…
Fitbit ChargeHR
Posted: Sat 31 January, 2015 Filed under: Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Old(er), Getting Organised, Health, Technology, Thoughts, Weigh Less, Weight Loss Leave a comment »Over the last year or so, I’ve been using the FitBit Flex wristband to keep track of my daily steps, sleep statistics and so on. I’ve been generally impressed with its ease of use and so on, as well as the integration/communication with the FitBit App.
As it worked out, the only thing I wasn’t too impressed with was the strap itself – in that year-ish, I got through two straps, and had just ordered a replacement for the second. That’s not ideal, and is something of a design flaw. (I’ve let them know about it, so we’ll see what happens)
At the time I got it, I was a bit annoyed by a perceived lack of functionality within the Flex, so I was interested to see that they’ve released some more wearable things with more functionality – the Charge, ChargeHR and Surge (which is almost a smart-watch in its own right) – and I ended up getting a new ChargeHR.
Because I’m exercising more and so on, I was wanting a device to track heart-rate and so on as well, and the ChargeHR does that. I don’t need the full functionality of the Surge (plus I didn’t want to be taking myself up to that price point) but this one does pretty much what I want, particularly in combination with the phone.
The strap on this is a bit more obtrusive than that of the Flex – I can feel it as I’m typing this, for example – but all told I’m so far impressed with the device. And it has some of the extra things I wrote about a year back – and the Surge has built-in GPS as well, which was another.
It’s interesting seeing how these devices improve over time. It’d still be nice to see more innovation, but at least they’re doing more, and still maintaining a decent battery life and so on.
I’ve only had it a couple of days so far, but will probably write more about the ChargeHR in a couple of months’ time, as I’m more used to it.
Writing Tools
Posted: Mon 22 December, 2014 Filed under: 2014/15, Cynicism, Geeky, Technology, Thoughts, Write More, Writing 3 Comments »Many many years back – before D4D even started – I used to have a couple of palmtop computers. I started off with the Atari Portfolio, then ended up with Psion devices, a 3a and then a Revo. I used to love these things – they made things easy, and gave me a lot of time/ability for writing. Of them all, the Revo was the best for also having a decent keyboard.
These things were tiny – far smaller than today’s tablet devices – but had enough power to do general organisational stuff, and plenty of writing along the way.
In 2015, I want to do more in the way of writing, and I’ve been looking for something similar to the Psions of old – the main requirements being small size, and a decent keyboard. One thing I hate on tablets is the “on-screen keyboard”, which is nigh-on impossible to touch-type on. There’s no real feedback, and it’s hard to type clearly/cleanly/correctly on the poxy things. When one is wanting a device primarily for writing/typing, that’s hardly ideal.
There’s a couple of smaller tablets that also have decent keyboards – but then, if I’m looking at that I might as well get just a small/compact laptop. Mind you, a laptop (even a small one) is still larger than I was looking for.
Ideally I’d like something the size of the old Revo(ish) with a decent keyboard, and better connectivity. Doesn’t seem like much to ask for, does it? Particularly when you consider that such a device was in existence more than a decade ago. But it just doesn’t seem to available. The best alternative seems to be something like the Typo2 keyboard for my phone – except that then negates the case/battery-pack I’ve already got, and also buggers up some of the other phone functionality. Which makes it a bit more pointless.
I feel the same about “smartwatches” like Apple’s iWatch and so on. Sure, there’s a lot of things that are cool on them, but when I think of what Casio used to do with digital watches back in the 90s – watches with calculators, databanks, thermometers, barometers, heart-rate monitors and so on – then the smartwatches are actually pretty dumb.
It’s just annoying – it seems that for all our technological advances, in some ways the devices we have now are less useful than those from a decade ago.
Backed Up
Posted: Mon 1 December, 2014 Filed under: D4D™, Domestic, Geeky, Getting Organised, Media, Photography, Technology Leave a comment »One thing that’s changed over the last four years is the way that I back up data. I used to have a big-ass (for the time) hard-drive that held all my backup files, but I haven’t (hadn’t) fired it up in years.
Now I use DropBox for most things – at least the things that aren’t commercially sensitive or need extra security, etc. I don’t necessarily trust/rely on them, but it tends to be where most of the stuff sits (as well as on through another paid-for service for my work stuff and so on) and it suits me to use them for the moment. That may change a bit over 2015, there’s a more secure and privately-held service that might do better, but for now, DropBox suits me.
However, I recently realised that all my photos and music files were still sat on that old hard-drive. Which has sat untouched for four years, through four or five moves. Oops.
I fired it up over the weekend, thought I might as well bite the bullet and see if all’s well or if it’s dead and I’m screwed.
Thankfully, everything worked first time. I’ve pulled all the music data off, and that’s now sitting in multiple locations again. Next will be the photos – although I’ve also spent some time looking at old images and seeing what’s what (and just looking back at events of the last eleven years, which is what the drive holds) It’s been quite the journey…
Perfect Timing
Posted: Thu 31 July, 2014 Filed under: 1BEM, Customer Services, Cynicism, Domestic, Insomnia, Sleep - or lack thereof, Sweary, Technology 4 Comments »On a totally different note, why is it that batteries in smoke alarms and CO2 detectors *always* need replacing at 4am?
Bastard bloody things.
Still, at least I now know – not that I had any doubt, and I certainly didn’t need any proof – that I can’t sleep through a CO2 alarm.
(And of course yes, I can now – because I pulled the dead/dying batteries out of the fucking thing)
TomTom
Posted: Sun 1 June, 2014 Filed under: Cynicism, Driving, People, SatNav, Technology Leave a comment »I’ve speculated before that my little TomTom satnav perhaps hates me. Whatever, it certainly likes trying to confuse me, and generally be shit.
My drive on Tuesday illustrated this perfectly.
Yep – the icon at the bottom says turn left, while the map view says turn right. No left turn at all.
I don’t usually understand why people screw up so badly when using SatNav (except for the absolute reliance and trust in technology being correct) but on this occasion I could understand why someone might make a mistake. It’s hardly helpful, after all.
Connected? Revisited
Posted: Wed 30 April, 2014 Filed under: BT, Customer Services, Domestic, Technology, Utilities Leave a comment »Back at the start of March, I was having issues with my Broadband connection, which BT was doing a fantastic job of avoiding. Because it would’ve cost me significant amounts of money to take the day off and wait for BT to chuff about investigating. Besides, while the weather’s been fine it hasn’t been that much of a problem.
So I’d postponed the appointment, BT had promised to make it again – and hadn’t. Quelle surprise.
Last week it got worse again – ‘coincidentally’ after it had pissed down with rain – so I got back on to BT. We went through all the rigmarole again, including dealing with similar levels of understanding (or lack thereof) from the first-level support people. It amazes me just how effing dumb their script is, and how incapable they are of deviating from it when they’ve already been given the relevant information.
Still, one conversation with the supervisor/manager later we got progress, and my line being monitored (again) for 24 hours by second-line support.
They’ve called today, and confirmed that (yet again) my line is shit. This time, because I’m working from home, there’s an engineer coming out on Thursday to fix it. There’s still been all the bollocks about “If it’s a fault inside the house you’re liable for it”, but I’m pretty damn sure it’ll turn out to be an external issue. Anyway, we’ll find out soon enough.
And after that I suspect I shall be having words with them about why it’s taken five months to fix a problem that (I predict) required no access at all to my house.
Breaking Things
Posted: Sun 13 April, 2014 Filed under: Creativity, Cynicism, Geeky, News, Security, Stupidity, Technology, Thoughts Leave a comment »Last Friday there was a big(ish) story in the BBC and Media about the convicted paedophile who is requesting his laptop – complete with ‘non-obscene’ images of one of his victims. Dorset Police were quoted in the story as saying it would be ‘unlawful’ to delete/remove those images from the laptop, because they’re not technically obscene or showing nudity.
Now, aside from the fact that there’s something so blatantly wrong with this entire process (and why wasn’t the laptop just removed/destroyed as part of the evidence and ‘proceeds of crime’ bollocks?) then surely this is a perfect opportunity for a tragic IT-related ‘accident’?
Make sure it’s believable, could happen, and is feasible, and it’d be the devil’s own job to prove anything.
For example, a liquid spillage. Or leaving the machine next to – I don’t know – some kind of large magnet. Maybe the metal scanner in a doorway. Or just mis-filed in such a way that a) it can’t be found or b) it got destroyed. Lost property, IT security, avoidance of possibility for divulging person information.
There are many, many ways in which this could’ve never been an issue. The mis-filing and “sorry, can’t find it” would be easiest (and probably hardest to be disproved) but any of them would work nicely. It’s more of a problem now, because they’ve admitted that a) it exists and b) it’s currently in an OK state. Ooops.
Twat-Nav
Posted: Wed 26 March, 2014 Filed under: Domestic, Driving, SatNav, Technology Leave a comment »Following on from the London visit last Friday, I’m now pretty damn sure that I’m going to be replacing my satnav at some point soon.
I’ve had this one now for a few years, and it’s always been a bit – quirky, is probably the politest term for it. (Downright vindictive would be another)
On Friday it pissed me off by giving plainly bad instructions – on several occasions. On two junctions it was indicating that I needed to be in the right-hand lane, and it was only through paying attention to it that I realised it meant “Oh no, not that right, I meant the right-hand lane of these two, you’ll be turning off again in a second. If you’re on that right-hand lane, you’ll be going wrong in 5.. 4… 3.. 2..” That’s seriously unhelpful! It also has a nasty tendency to tell me to turn/u-turn at junctions that don’t allow that to happen. If I were heeding only the twatnav, I’d’ve been in deep shit a couple of times, and probably have points on my licence as well.
When I was up in Derbyshire a couple of weeks back for the wedding it did similar things, as well as trying to send me some very dodgy routes including single-lane farm tracks. It was almost as though it was saying “I’m bored of direct routes and level ground – let’s have some fun!” And while I’m happy with interesting drives, several portions were pretty fucking hairy indeed.
So yes, I think that it’s time for the SatNav to be retired / replaced. I haven’t got any major journeys now for a few weeks, so we’ll see. But its days are definitely numbered.
CGI
Posted: Mon 10 March, 2014 Filed under: Cinema, Films, Photography, Seeing Films, Technology, Thoughts Leave a comment »Over on Twitter this morning, I saw this image, a behind-the-scenes photo from Pirates of the Caribbean, showing the actors in their motion-capture suits, that allows CGI stuff to be added afterwards and move the same way the actor does.
Now what interested me the most was that the entire outfit – clothing etc. – was also all applied in CGI. And that had never actually occurred to me. I got that the various faces/tentacles/prosthetics were applied by CGI, but for some reason I’d never clicked that the clothing was all computer-generated as well.
Ain’t progress grand?
Flickering
Posted: Tue 4 March, 2014 Filed under: Commuting, Cyclists, Driving, Health, People, Stupidity, Technology, Weirdness Leave a comment »As I’m now working in Cambridge, I’m seeing a lot more cyclists. And a question occurred to me…
If a cyclist has one of those flashing/strobing LED cycle-lamps at a high-flash-rate, and they ride towards a driver prone to epilepsy through strobing (which isn’t something one would normally/usually expect to encounter while driving) who is responsible for any damages etc. should that driver suffer a fit at the wheel?
I’ve seen four or five cyclists already with these super-bright LED lamps set to a *very* high strobe rate, and it just made me wonder…
Fitbit Flex – Sleepy Time
Posted: Thu 20 February, 2014 Filed under: Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Health, Insomnia, Project 42, Reviews(ish), Sleep - or lack thereof, Technology Leave a comment »Carrying on from yesterday’s post, I’m writing a bit about how I’m doing with the Fitbit Flex, a wristband pedometer and sleep monitor. Today it’s more about the sleep monitoring that the Flex does.
As with the pedometer side, the sleep monitoring can be a useful tool, but it’s not something to rely on absolutely.
The sleep monitoring is activated manually (which is usually OK, but could be a pain in the ass on occasion) and also needs to be manually deactivated – which is more of a pig, because if you forget, it screws the figures. It would be nice to have some automatic deactivation in there, although I suspect that the variables for it are pretty wobbly.
Based – I assume – on movement during the night, the Flex can report on “Sleep”, “Disturbed Sleep” and “Awake”. “Sleep” is – again, I assume – when the sleeper is motionless, as REM sleep paralyses the body. (which is why most people don’t sleepwalk, or do anything else physical that they’re dreaming about) “Disturbed Sleep” is when the sleeper is moving about. I’ve no idea how it discerns “Awake” though – it pegs my awake-in-bed time as ‘disturbed sleep’- so I assume that “Awake” means “Registered as sleeping, but actually walking around”. As such, the categories are a bit rough, but at least provide an illustration of sleep quality – or lack thereof.
One thing I do find affects me though is actually looking at the results. (Which is a bit meta and ‘chaos theory’, but bear with me) It’s one thing to feel like you’ve had a bad night, but it’s another one entirely to know it with the readings from the Flex. And yes, I could ‘leave it’ til later, but damn it, I’m interested. However, it does make me feel more tired, more justified in being tired, with that knowledge of “Oh yeah, but I had a crap night”. Seeing the information makes me aware of that crap night, and does affect how I feel during the day. (Similar to how reading a horoscope first thing can sometimes subconsciously direct you towards doing the things ‘predicted’)
It is interesting though. It’s proven that I usually actually get by on 3.5-4 hours sleep per night most of the time, and that it’s really only when I’m on sub-three-hours that I feel shockingly bad. I have good nights (rare), bad nights (common) and very bad nights (thankfully not quite as common as I’d thought)
I’ll keep on using the Flex for this – as I’ve said, it’s a useful indicator, if nothing else. Whether I continue to be aware of the timings or not, bearing in mind how much that knowledge affects me, remains to be seen.
Fitbit Flex – Taking Steps
Posted: Wed 19 February, 2014 Filed under: Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Health, Project 42, Reviews(ish), Technology, Weigh Less, Weight Loss Leave a comment »It’s now been a couple of months since I got the Fitbit Flex, and it’s been pretty interesting. I didn’t buy it to boost my fitness, or any of that other rot – I just wanted to see how much I do walk on any given day, keep track of it, and also to look at how I sleep. (which I’ve written about before)
The sleep monitoring is quite useful – although I do wonder about how it affects me subliminally. (of which more later in the week)
For the walking / pedometer, it shows I’m currently walking about 3 miles a day. Not brilliant – but equally, not at all bad. I started this year with the intention of getting out and walking more, and getting into a routine of doing so. (This actually started back in November-ish, but has been more fixed since January) I try to make sure I walk around the village (a decent mile loop) most days – although I still sometimes fail to do so when the weather is truly vile – as well as walking more when I go to the local cinema etc.
The Flex helps me keep track of that, and it’s been useful. There is a certain satisfaction when it buzzes away on my wrist, letting me know that the daily target (currently set at 5,000 steps a day, approx 2.5 miles) has been achieved. And weirdly it does get into your head – I find myself thinking “Oh, well if I park there, it’s a longer distance to get to the shop/cinema/whatever, I’ll be closer to that target” and similar.
If nothing else, it’s a useful tool for just keeping track of exercise through the days and weeks – but also as a minor kick-up-the-arse for actually getting out and walking more.
Convergence
Posted: Sun 12 January, 2014 Filed under: Change, Design, Geeky, Health, Technology, Thoughts 1 Comment »Since getting the FitBit Flex, I’ve been thinking a lot about technology, innovation, and devices.
Why?
Because actually, despite being useful, the Flex feels something like a backwards step. Despite it still doing a number of things, it’s nowhere near as advanced as it could (and should) be.
Yes, this one device – worn on a strap on the wrist – can detect/monitor motion, whether that be steps, or motion during sleep. It can communicate via Bluetooth with my phone. But really that’s about it. It’s not got GPS to show where I’ve been, it’s not got a display for showing time, heart-rate, or anything else. In essence, it’s a pretty dumb device.
How has this happened? I remember back in the late 80s and early 90s when Casio were bringing out watches galore, and they could do so much more than the Flex. Casio’s corporate history is amazing for the number of innovations and firsts. Their first databank watch was made in January 1984, their first watch with GPS was released in June 1999. Within that time they certainly made watches with thermometers, weather predictions, heartrates, and many others.
So why are we now in some ways less advanced than these watches of 20-odd years ago? Why can’t my Flex also display the time, or be able to monitor my heartrate? Casio did it 20 years ago – it just seems bizarre that we can’t get one device to do all that now.
Monitoring Sleep
Posted: Thu 9 January, 2014 Filed under: 2013/14, Domestic, Dreaming, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Organised, Health, Insomnia, Project 42, Sleep - or lack thereof, Technology Leave a comment »Over the years, I’ve kind of got used to sleeping really badly – although I’d still like to know the causes, and whether it really is as bad as I think/feel it is.
The reason I’m not sure is because – as I think I’ve said before – according to partners, sometimes I’ll have slept through the night, but woken up and been convinced I’ve had a bad night. Yes, I apparently manage to dream that I’m waking up and having a bad night. And yes, that is really really fucked-up, however you look at it.
Anyway, as part of the whole ‘weighing less’ part of this year, I was also wanting to monitor (or at least better monitor) my activity, steps-per-day and the like. So I’ve ended up ordering a FitBit Flex which should let me keep an eye on all of that at once. It’ll also integrate with a couple of other apps on the phone etc., which will make for some interesting reading over time. The only downside is that I’d have liked one that also allows me to check/monitor heart-rate (and really, why can’t you get a wearable wristband device that’ll do that? It can’t be that difficult, surely?) but there just isn’t anything like that around at the moment. The closest would be the Pulse from Withings – but that doesn’t do the integration stuff, and doesn’t keep track of heartbeat in the way that I wanted.
I’m not relying on it, or assuming it’ll be the thing that changes everything for me – but it should at least answer some questions, particularly about how I sleep. And that at least will be interesting, and make it worth what I’ve paid. Anything else is a bonus, really.
Big Screen
Posted: Tue 15 October, 2013 Filed under: Domestic, People, Technology, Television 3 Comments »An email went round work yesterday, that Costco have a 65″ TV on a special deal for £2,000. (I don’t know why we get these emails, but hey ho)
I’m just gobsmacked by that. A 65-inch screen – that’s nearly five-and-a-half feet of diagonal screen-size!
I honestly don’t get the desire/need for these super-large screens. Admittedly some of that is due to the fact I live in a tiny house where something that size would take up about two-thirds of the available wall space, but I still don’t get the appeal, the way that TVs now seem to dominate living space.
I used to have a big-ass wide-screen TV, although that was pre-flatscreens, and was a huge lump of Sony Trinitron that took two people to lift it. Even that though was only about a 36 or 38″ screen – this advertised one would be nearly twice that in size.
Fair play, other people seem to want TVs this size – it’s just not something I aspire to own, and I can certainly think of many better things to spend £2,000 on.
Data Migration – Kindle
Posted: Mon 10 June, 2013 Filed under: Charm School, Customer Services, Domestic, Finances, Geeky, Getting Organised, Technology, Thoughts Leave a comment »By contrast to the ease of migrating data to the new laptop, resyncing a new Kindle is an absolutely shite experience.
The actual purchase/delivery of it is great – ordered on Friday, arrived today. But synchronising it is crap.
Rather than a simple “download everything” option – or even having a “download everything on this page” – you have to choose to download each eBook individually. Even on the website, it’s a list with individual controls. Not even a checkbox against each item and a ‘download all’.
Why? I’ve no idea. But it means that what should be a simple “connect this device to my Amazon account” to download everything becomes a nightmare of (in my case) roughly 1,000 mouse-clicks. That’s no exaggeration. I’ve got 260 books on my Kindle. For each one you’ve got to click on “Actions”, then “Download”, then Select the device (there’s only one device – at least fucking auto-select it!) . For each book.
It’s a truly painful and shit experience, and there’s an email going to Amazon to explain that.
More Broken
Posted: Fri 7 June, 2013 Filed under: 1BEM, Domestic, Finances, Geeky, Stupidity, Technology, Thoughts Leave a comment »It’s obviously the month for tech stuff to break.
Following on from the laptop, the iPhone battery pack, and the iPhone cable, the Kindle’s just died. (I know, I know, “That doesn’t happen with books”, blah blah) My own fault, out with friends last night, had the Kindle (in a case) in my pocket all night, and somewhere along the line it’s got squished, and the screen has cracked in the way eInk ones do, so it’s no damn use to anyone.
I *should* have left it in the car, but forgot. That’s the way of things sometimes. No idea exactly when it happened, although it was probably when five of us crammed into a taxi, which was fairly tight.
Ah well, live and learn.
Impetus
Posted: Wed 5 June, 2013 Filed under: D4D™, Domestic, Geeky, Technology, Writing Leave a comment »One interesting side-effect (currently) of the new laptop is that it seems to have caused a resurgence in writing, or at least the desire to write.
I don’t know why though – although I guess some of it is down to having a nice new clean (and reliable) keyboard that makes things a bit easier.
I’ve also installed a couple of bits of writing software – Scrivener, and my old fallback, CeltX – as well as the LibreOffice package. (an open-source version of Microsoft Office, and much better in my opinion)
We’ll see how things go with a potential writing resurgence, but at least it’s starting off pretty well.
Data Migration
Posted: Tue 4 June, 2013 Filed under: Domestic, Getting Organised, Technology, Thoughts 3 Comments »Every time I get a new computer – laptop, PC, work machine, whatever – and/or change jobs, one of the biggest challenges is always taking existing data and moving/copying it to the new device. And it’s not just the data, it’s also the applications – the programs that make use of the data.
But it’s also always getting easier. The process this time was the smoothest to date, and a lot of that is down to ‘cloud’ services. I store a lot of my stuff now with Dropbox, although there’s also plenty of other services. I store my data in an encrypted fashion, so it’s also secure – while I like the ease of storage on Cloud-based services, I don’t trust them with my information – but it means that once I’d installed Dropbox on the new laptop, then my key files were all being synced and downloaded.
The other thing I like about using Dropbox and it’s ilk is that if you save your files there immediately, it’s not just a saved file, it’s automatically backed up. The risks of my losing important documents is pretty much gone, because I save everything to the folder on my machine that links to a cloud-based service. All my work stuff (which is also backed up with Subversion Version Control) goes to one service, all my personal work, writing etc. goes to a different one. But the key thing is that everything’s safe, and I don’t even need to remember to do a backup.
For larger stuff, it’s still a case of “copy onto portable hard drive” – I prefer the speed of that to doing it via wi-fi – but even that is easier now with the much larger sizes of portable drives. At some point, I could add a NAS (Network Attached Storage) box, so all the data is in one central location, and the machine(s) just access it off that box/server. But for now that investment isn’t worth the time, energy or money.
All told, getting New Laptop sorted out has probably taken the best part of a working day – but that includes learning the idiosyncracies of a new Operating System and downloading/installing the apps, odds and sods that I want/need, as well as getting the data over. It’s been a pretty easy process, I have to say.
Equipment Longevity
Posted: Mon 3 June, 2013 Filed under: D4D™, Domestic, Geeky, Technology, Thoughts Leave a comment »As part of yesterday’s post about equipment failures, I realised just how long I’d actually had the previous laptop, which was quite surprising.
Looking back, I should have realised it was quite a while, thinking back to where I was and so on at the time I got it.
I’m pretty tough on technology, so it’s actually quite impressive that the Dell laptop lasted just under four years. I do a lot of travelling (as has been written about too many times to mention) and the laptop will always just get shoved in my backpack, rather than using a ‘proper’ laptop bag. (Mainly because I’ve seen too many idiots carrying laptop bags over one shoulder, seen how easy it is for people to steal them, and how much it makes you a target, a sign of visible wealth/gadgetry)
I dread to imagine how many hours of use the Dell laptop has had, but I’m pretty sure that it’s more than paid for itself over the four years.
Equipment Failure
Posted: Sun 2 June, 2013 Filed under: Bankruptcy, Change, Domestic, Finances, Geeky, Getting Old(er), Getting Organised, iPhone, Shopping, Technology, Thoughts, Weirdness 1 Comment »Don’t worry, this isn’t another post about the joys and pitfalls of getting older…
No, instead it’s about technology, and why the bastard stuff all ends up failing at the same time.
First of all, this post is being written on a new laptop – which I really could’ve done without having to get, but needs must when the devil drives (and/or you’re a web techie and wannabe-writer). The old Dell laptop – which it turns out I bought back in September 2009, so I shouldn’t whine so much, I guess – had been getting flakier over the last six months, but I’ve been eking out the life of it since then, suffering the occasional (and then more regular) hard-drive crash, and the ropy keyboard with some keys that only worked intermittently.
This week though it’s been crashing every time it was in use, and was obviously getting to the point where I needed to a) pull all the relevant data off it like NOW, and b) replace it with something else. And with a trip up to Manchester this week where I’m *really* going to need a reliable laptop, this was the weekend for it.
So I’ve bitten the bullet somewhat, and the new one is a (dirt-cheap) Asus thing, running the already-much-disliked Windows 8. To be fair to Windows 8, the old laptop was on the much-loathed Vista, which I never really found all that annoying. Eight annoys me more so far, but I’ll get used to it.
The other two equipment failures are both iPhone related, allbeit power-related rather than device-related. (Although I did think one of them might’ve been the phone being fucked, which was a real worry) First the Mophie battery case has failed. Again. (More accurately, the cable/charger for it, which will no longer charge) I love the Mophie cases, but they do seem to be somewhat crap, and only last about a year. And then the normal iPhone charge/sync cable also went kerfut and wouldn’t charge the phone. So I’ve had to get a new cable for that as well – considerably less expensive than the laptop purchase, but still, why all at the same time?
Oh yeah, and the fridge in the house also played up this week, with one day where it didn’t appear to be working all that well. Fortunately it’s now back up and running.
But why the hell would four things, two fairly major, all decide to kiff out within the same week? Weird things, I tell thee, weird things.
Phone Security
Posted: Tue 5 March, 2013 Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, Geeky, Technology, Thoughts Leave a comment »Yesterday there was a load of stuff on radio news with police warning about people who don’t secure their phones with a PIN code.
Supposedly it makes them more valuable (to thieves) if they’re unlocked, and also means all your personal information is available – which is obviously usable for nefarious purposes.
Personally, I’ve always had a PIN-lock on my phones, and don’t really get why most people don’t – yet apparently only 20% of people use a PIN-lock at all.
I do understand the concerns of some people – that, for example, they may be in an accident and emergency services would need contact numbers – but at the same time I’ve always got that elsewhere in my wallet etc.
As it is, I’d rather keep my primary information safe.
Under Attack
Posted: Sun 10 February, 2013 Filed under: D4D™, Technology Leave a comment »Over the last few weeks, D4D has been getting a really heavy load of spam hitting it, and I don’t really know why. Akismet is installed for antispam, and reports itself as working, but the load is getting ever higher. It’s been two to three hundred a day, and while none of them get to show on D4D itself, they’re still a pain in the tits from my side.
As it turned out, a lot of it was coming from a small collection of IP addresses, so I spent a little bit of time today blocking everything from those IPs – and lo, the spam has fallen massively.
It may be that with time they’ll change IPs again, but if I see it happening, I’ll just add those IPs to the blocked list too.
Failing Technology
Posted: Mon 24 December, 2012 Filed under: Domestic, Technology Leave a comment »Over the last couple of days, I’ve had two bits of tech fail – one through my own actions, one through general wear and tear.
The one that wasn’t my own fault was – as usual – the printer. Piece of shite. I suspect it’s just had enough, having moved three or four times, being used as a sleeping podium by cats, and then (probably) not used as much as it should be. So when it came time to print out some stuff today – thankfully, nothing essential to the season, and nothing that can’t wait a while – it’s kippered. I’ll get a new one in the new year at some point, but it can wait.
Slightly more important is my landline phone, which is also well and truly dying. That one’s my fault for being clumsy, I spilled orange juice on the base station, which means all the buttons are – well – sticky. It’s not good. In fairness, it’s also lasted pretty well, a similar number of moves (if not more – I can’t now recall exactly when I purchased the poxy thing) and so on, and it’s taken a clumsy git to kill it.
Again, it’s nothing hyper-urgent, I’ll sort a replacement in the new year. It doesn’t affect the broadband, and the phone itself works (although it’s getting worse) so things are OK for the moment.
Anyway, just two failures, nothing major, just annoying. All part of life’s rich tapestry.
Alternative Version(s) of Free
Posted: Mon 23 July, 2012 Filed under: 1BEM, Advertising, Cynicism, Technology, Thoughts Leave a comment »While at the cinema this weekend, I saw an advert for the Nokia Lumia – this advert, in fact (although the final price was different)
Most of it’s nothing major, but the last five seconds or so hold the kicker.
“Free, from £15 per month”
And you’ve just got to wonder, how something that costs from £180 a year can be seen as free by anyone except marketers/advertisers.
Restoring
Posted: Fri 29 June, 2012 Filed under: Customer Services, Domestic, Geeky, Technology 3 Comments »So, while the insurance bullshit rumbles on, I went to the local Apple store tonight and sorted a replacement phone. Apple sell replacement phones for ‘out of warranty’ replacements. (a much nicer terminology than “water-fucked phones”, to be fair) Apparently they’re made from some reconditioned parts, but that means they cost £140 to replace, not £500.
The entire process has actually been really simple. I know I’m no Apple advocate, but sometimes they’re worthy of praise all the same – just not brainless adoration.
In this case, the actual transfer process took about fifteen minutes, start to finish. Restoring all the data is taking a long time, but it looks like I’ll have a complete restore, that I won’t have lost a single thing. And that is impressive, however you look at it.
All my contacts, all my email, even all my photos. (which were the thing I really expected to lose) This is A Good Thing, for sure.
Google Web History
Posted: Thu 23 February, 2012 Filed under: 1BEM, Geeky, Legal, Privacy, Security, Technology 3 Comments »On March 1st, Google’s privacy policy is changing.
If you don’t want your web history (among other things) stored past that date, you need to delete it in the next week. If you leave it ’til 1st March, it will be too late – you need to have done it by the end of 29th Feb.
The EFF has a useful page here about how to delete your Google web history.
CEOP
Posted: Tue 7 February, 2012 Filed under: 1BEM, Advertising, Cynicism, Geeky, People, Stupidity, Technology Leave a comment »And on the subject of CEOP, which is (apparently) part of the UK Police, wouldn’t you have thought they could’ve made the acronym into eCOP instead?
As an example, they probably could have called it ‘Exploited Children’s Online Protection’. Or something.
Mind you, it just goes to show how little thought went into CEOP in the first place, doesn’t it?
Internet Safety
Posted: Tue 7 February, 2012 Filed under: 1BEM, Advertising, Cynicism, Geeky, Technology, Thoughts Leave a comment »Today is, allegedly, “Safer Internet Day“.
Surprisingly, it’s not being mentioned or promoted by CEOP, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection bunch of muppets Centre. Not a thing.
Wouldn’t you think that – if CEOP were actually any fucking use at all – they’d support and cross-promote this Safer Internet Day? Or even have created the concept themselves.
London Police Corbett
Posted: Thu 2 February, 2012 Filed under: Corbett, Customer Services, Marketing, Stupidity, Technology | Tags: Corbett, Half-Corbett 1 Comment »I see in today’s news that the Metropolitan Police have committed a Corbett, ‘inadvertently sharing the email addresses’ of ‘a number of’ victims of crime with each other. In total 1,136 emails were sent out on Monday, the Metropolitan Police said.
Yep, another case of CC: instead of BCC:
Of course, it’s not a Full Corbett, because the Met has actually apologised, and will write to the people involved, explaining what happened. Let’s hope they use BCC this time…
Detection, not Prevention
Posted: Thu 9 December, 2010 Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, People, Technology, Thoughts 1 Comment »In Birmingham, the police are installing microphones/sensors to detect the sound of gunshots. It’s being marketed as a way of reducing/preventing gun crime. And I don’t quite get that.
As an overview in the BBC story says,
West Midlands Police seem sure this initiative will help cut gun crime and give officers more confidence heading into unpredictable situations.
Despite this being a pilot there is a belief that if successful this will be rolled out to other UK cities.
But it’s not going to cut gun crime.
These sensors work on the sound of a gunshot. So they’re maybe – maybe – going to detect that a gun’s been fired, and roughly where. (A 25m (80-odd feet) radius in a city is a pretty big location) But the gun’s got to be fired before it can be detected. It has issues (obviously) detecting gunshots from inside a building, or where a silencer is used.
And the detection method? Again from the BBC story,
The £150,000 system records an audio clip and sends police a GPS location.
A police officer trained to listen to the clips then makes a judgement on what they have heard before deploying officers.
So the sound has to be detected/recorded, then sent to the control room, then listened to by a trained officer, then the police get deployed.
Not really preventative at all then, is it?
Synapse Phones
Posted: Tue 26 October, 2010 Filed under: Advertising, Business, Geeky, iPhone, Technology Leave a comment »If you’re tired of run-of-the-mill “standard” smartphones, it looks like this may be something that’s of interest.
Synapse Phones will take your order for a customised smartphone (running Android 2.2) and ship it in Q1 of 2011
Think about for what you use your smartphone and what you will do with it. For example if you are someone who loves to take thousands of pictures, you can choose the 12MP camera and a xenon flash for taking pictures at night or under bad lighting conditions or if you want to store your whole music collection on your smartphone just choose a high amount of memory.
Seems like a good idea – and the prices aren’t epically unreasonable either. I hope it works out as a good business.
Xmarks is closing
Posted: Tue 28 September, 2010 Filed under: Business, Customer Services, Geeky, Technology, Thoughts 1 Comment »Over the last three years, I’ve been using the xMarks service (formerly FoxMarks) to synchronise all my bookmarks between Home PC, Laptop, Work PC, and iPhone. It’s always been a free service – allbeit one I’d have happily paid for – that made life *so* easy when it comes to keeping bookmarks in sync.
So it’s really sad news today that xMarks has 90 days to live. I don’t know of a better service for synchronising bookmarks (and passwords) in the way that xMarks does, and it’s been awesomely useful for a very long time.
For me- and it’s a point they raise in that blog post – I would’ve happily paid for the service. Not loads – but £10 – £25 a year, certainly.
A very sad day.
Loss of Sync
Posted: Wed 15 September, 2010 Filed under: Geeky, iPhone, Technology, Thoughts 4 Comments »When I got the iPhone (and on previous phones before that) one of the best things I used was a service called Zyb.com, which allowed you to synchronise contacts to their online database from your old phone, and then pull them down to the new phone. It made life *so* much easier, allowing you to do in ten minutes what otherwise turned into a dragged out and nightmarish process of copying contacts across one by one.
When Herself’s mother got an iPhone recently, I planned to do the same thing using Zyb, but I couldn’t. Because Zyb.com is no more.
A couple of years back now, Vodafone bought out Zyb, because it was such a good service. At the time they said it would carry on being available, and they’d got no plans to shut it down. Now though, they’ve closed down Zyb, and relaunched it (kind of) as part of Vodafone 360°. It’s nowhere near as good, fast or useful as it was as Zyb.
I’m really annoyed by this – despite having been a subscribed/signed-up user to Zyb, I didn’t get any notifications about the service closing down. It’s only having done other research about it that I find Zyb closed on 31st July.
As yet I haven’t found a decent replacement for Zyb that was as smooth and painless (and fast) as Zyb. Vodafone 360 took nearly three hours to sync things, and even then it’s not as good. Any suggestions?
Facebook Users
Posted: Thu 29 July, 2010 Filed under: 1BEM, Charm School, People, Technology, Thoughts 2 Comments »Radio One’s headline on this was “Facebook users details are available online” – which elicited a “Well, duh!” response from me. They’ve always been available online – at Facebook. All of the information held in this file was already available at Facebook – it’s just it would’ve taken a bit more effort to get it all.
Every one of the people listed in the file hadn’t set their privacy settings properly. That’s more of an indictment about either
- how complex Facebook made their privacy settings
- how stupid / lazy people are when it comes to those settings
- how people really don’t think about their privacy and security at all
And that’s it.
If you can’t be bothered to check your privacy settings, you deserve to have your details published. After all, if one person can do it, so can others.
iPhone
Posted: Sat 17 April, 2010 Filed under: Domestic, Geeky, iPhone, Technology 4 Comments »After 18 months with my Sony Ericsson C905, it’s time to update my phone again. The Sony Ericsson has been a good phone, and there’s lots of bits I like with it. It’s getting some problems with its keypad and so on now, but it’s been an OK phone all round. I haven’t used the camera on it as much as I thought/hoped I would, and really it’s been mainly used (as are most of my phones in the end) for the basics – calls, text messages and emails, and internet access.
So with camera-resolution being less of an issue, I’ve decided to take the leap and get an iPhone. Herself swears by hers, and the other people I know with one also swear by it. I’m still unconvinced by the touchscreen – I’m used to touchtyping text messages on the normal phone keypad, and it seems a bit weird to not have that possibility with the iPhone. But I’m sure I’ll get used to it.
It’s going to be an interesting experience. I’ve got reservations about it, but the iPhone is the best of the bunch at the moment, and there was absolutely nothing else that appealed at all, nor anything that’s coming out in the near future. Should be entertaining, anyway.
NewlyWeds
Posted: Thu 25 March, 2010 Filed under: Geeky, Media, Technology, Twitter Leave a comment »One of the funniest Twitter things this year was NewlywedsOnTJob , a prank by a best-man, automatically recording every time the newly-married couple went at it – start, stop, times, “frenzy index”, “Judge’s review”, the lot. It was very funny to just get the updates saying they were at it again – sometimes in the middle of the working day – and ended up with twenty-odd thousand followers all told.
Things went quiet at the end of February, when Best Man had said he’d be telling the groom about the prank. I hadn’t heard anything, so today did a quick search and found the end of the NewlyWedsonTJob story at I Am Staggered.
It’s well worth the read – made me laugh, anyway.
Slimline Plug
Posted: Wed 11 November, 2009 Filed under: Creativity, Geeky, Technology Leave a comment »via bsag, I think this slimline plug is an absolutely fantastic idea.
UK 3-pin plugs are pretty sturdy, but if you’re carrying a couple of power cords around – or phone chargers, laptop power bricks etc. – then you quickly become aware of how bulky they are too.
The design of the slimline plug is aimed at getting round that, and seems to work really well. Even better are the adapters that allow three or four slimline plugs to be used in a space similar to that of a normal three-pin plug.
iPhones Galore
Posted: Tue 25 August, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, iPhone, Technology, Thoughts Leave a comment »On the journey into London yesterday, I couldn’t help but notice how ubiquitous the iPhone now is – it seems like everyone and their dog has one.
When I used to commute in to London from Bracknell, Blackberrys were the thing everyone had – or at least all the “Look at me, I’m so important” fucksticks had, anyway.
While I do agree that iPhones are a nice bit of kit, I’m still not convinced I’d actually use one if I had one. That lack of a “proper” keyboard is (for me) still a significant factor, as most of what I do on a phone involves typing – text messages, emails, SSH connections to servers for admin, that kind of thing.
But there’s also the ubiquity of it that’s (for me) detracts from any desire to own one. It may be childish, but I have a built-in reaction to doing “what everyone else does”, and while it’s not an over-arching reason for not getting one, it certainly contributes.
Migrating Contacts
Posted: Mon 3 August, 2009 Filed under: Geeky, Getting Organised, iPhone, Stupidity, Technology Leave a comment »As I said yesterday, one of the more interesting challenges with Herself’s new iPhone was getting the contacts to transfer across from her old Samsung G600 phone to the iPhone.
When it comes to contacts and phonebooks, Samsung are – to be polite about it – bloody awful. They don’t support useful standards like SyncML (basically a standard set of markup for addresses, contacts etc.) and instead stick to their own proprietary method. And their phones really don’t like giving up their data. In this case, it wouldn’t even send the information via BlueTooth, or save the details from the phone onto the SIM in order to transfer that across.
In short, a fucking abysmal experience when it comes to transferring away from a Samsung phone to anything else. (If memory serves, even Samsung to Samsung is a pain in the arse, let alone Samsung to anything else)
On my Sony-Ericsson phone, I can regularly sync the phonebook up to an online service called Zyb, who make the entire process pretty painless for phones that support SyncML. It also gives you a backup of the entire contacts database, which can be useful if (for example) you lose your phone, or have it stolen. They’re now owned by Vodafone, but in a fit of surprising sanity, Vodafone haven’t locked out non-Vodafone users from the service.
Through Zyb, when I upgraded my phone at the end of last year, importing the contacts etc. took ten minutes, and was one of the smoothest examples of that procedure I’ve ever done.
Anyway, on checking, it turns out the Zyb supports the iPhone – so that seemed to be the way to go.
After that, the process was fairly simple.
- Sign up Herself with an account at Zyb
- Install the iPhone app for Zyb (they even provide a link to it in the sign-up process, so it includes all the information necessary)
- Type in all the contacts from Herself’s Samsung, setting it up with correct addresses, merging mobile/contact/home/work numbers into one contact where necessary
- When done (about an hours work) sync the Zyb contacts onto the iPhone
- Job done.
Of course, if Samsung supported SyncML (or any other decent service) then it would’ve been a max of ten minutes to sort out. As it was, it took an hour. It could’ve been worse – far, far worse – if we’d been trying to do it via SIM or BlueTooth and then had to reorganise everything on the iPhone.
How not to do it
Posted: Sat 25 July, 2009 Filed under: Advertising, Customer Services, Cynicism, Geeky, Security, Stupidity, Technology, Toyota IE | Tags: ian corbett, toyota ie Leave a comment »This post has been deleted, on the request of Ian Corbett, Marketing Manager of Toyota Ireland, and his legal advisers.
For more explanation, see here.
Still Dead
Posted: Tue 9 June, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Geeky, Technology 1 Comment »Following on from last week’s post about the death of the DVD player and Blue Witch’s comment therein, I decided to get a DVD head-cleaning disk, (disc, whatever) just to see whether it would have any effect.
It wasn’t much of an investment, only £6.50 from Amazon, so it’s no biggie.
Anyway, we tried it out last night, to absolutely no effect whatsoever. In fact, the player won’t even acknowledge there’s a disk in the machine. It spins, but can’t identify a disk at all.
So it looks like the DVD player is now completely kaput fucked, and we’ll need to get a replacement set-up.
Bugger.
The Next 30 Years
Posted: Thu 14 May, 2009 Filed under: Creativity, Geeky, Technology, Thoughts, Writing Leave a comment »Charlie Stross is one of my favourite current sci-fi authors, and this post goes some way to explaining why.
It’s the text of his keynote speech for LOGIN 2009, a conference for online games developers, and the speech is about the changes he sees coming in gaming over the next thirty years. He’s already written a novel based around some of these ideas (“Halting State“) and is currently writing the sequel to it, so I think it’s fair to say he’s done a fair amount of research and thinking about this subject already.
All told, it’s an interesting and entertaining read – and I’m sure it would’ve been even better to see him make the speech in person.
Light Bed
Posted: Fri 8 May, 2009 Filed under: Depression, Domestic, Health, Technology 1 Comment »Recently, we’ve been trying out a weird alarm clock that also replicates the rising of the sun, so it’s “full daylight” when the alarm sounds. It doesn’t do much (if anything) for me, but Herself is finding it pretty useful for the way her body works.
And in related items, today I came across the LOMME bed which is pretty much the same concept writ large. The LOMME (Light Over Matter Mind Evolution) is a pod-bed, and has a built in light-box alarm as well as making use of other light colours etc.
It’s pretty cool – in a “What the fuck?” kind of way – but I’m pretty sure it would be massive overkill for us…
Wayfarer Software
Posted: Mon 4 May, 2009 Filed under: Customer Services, Sweary, Technology Leave a comment »The (far nicer than I could have been) email I’ve just sent to Wayfarer Software’s customer services/support team…
I would like a refund on my Navigator software – purchase no [whatever] . I had to use it properly for the first time on Friday while driving in London, and it’s the most abysmal heap of junk known to man.
The calibration is consistently 400 ft out, which leads to regularly being told to turn onto the road you’ve just passed – particularly in London. In addition, the navigator was trying to send me in completely the wrong direction (northbound round the M25 to get to Greenwich in south London).
I plan to buy a TomTom instead of ever using the Wayfarer software again.
Please let me know what I need to do in order to get a refund on my Wayfarer license, as in my experience it is utterly unfit for purpose.
Sincerely
Lyle
What I should have written would’ve been something like…
Dear Fuckbricks,
Refund my licence for the Wayfarer software now, because it sucks the bollocks of dead porcupines. The fucking thing couldn’t find it’s own arse, let alone find it’s way round London.
Your developers have wasted years of their lives writing this piece of shit. It’s not worth the fucking memory card it’s stored on.
Lyle.
Golf Club Boom
Posted: Mon 5 January, 2009 Filed under: News, Technology 2 Comments »While I’m not a golf player (I stick with that “Golf is a good walk ruined” aphorism) I found this story on the BBC to be quite interesting.
Basically, a new generation of “thin-faced titanium” clubs make a noise on contact with the golf-ball that has been measured at up to 130dB . That’s loud – and it’s been found as potentially causing hearing damage in some golfers.
Address Migration
Posted: Thu 21 June, 2007 Filed under: Customer Services, Geeky, Getting Organised, Technology, Thoughts 1 Comment »One of the things that always infuriates me when I get a new phone is the sheer hassle that’s always present when it comes to moving the address book (and/or contacts) from one to the other. For some reason it’s just never as simple as it could/should be.
Of course, there’s the ‘classic’ option, of saving all the contacts onto the SIM card instead of on the phone. But if you actually use the contacts and address book, then you need them to be on the phone – the SIM just holds ‘name &number’ data. So if you have a contact called (for example) Tom, and he has a home phone, work phone, mobile, and email, that’s four records on the SIM. On the phone, it’s one record – which is, of course, how it should be.
But I’m yet to find a phone that has a simple “Send all the contacts from this phone to another one” – whether that’s by Messaging, Bluetooth, IR, or anything else. Even (or, perhaps, particularly) Windows Mobile can’t manage this task – it can send your contacts one at a time, so why can’t it do all of them in one big bundle of data?
In fairness to Windows Mobile®, it does synchronise with MS Office on a PC. Fortunately, so does my new phone. So I could connect the XDA to the PC, synch all the contacts off the phone into MS Outlook , disconnect the XDA, connect the K800i (which, of course, also has a completely different cable) and synch the contacts out of Outlook onto the K800i. But all the same, what a faff.
Is it really that difficult to handle phone contact transfers?
I know (before Gordon says it) that this is one of those events where user-centred design would work really nicely. I don’t care how the phone transfers the address book – I want it to Just Work™, without being a nightmare faff of cables, or one-by-one data transfers. Just one simple ‘Move my address book to another phone’ option – or perhaps even a first-use option (i.e. one where the process is part of the initial phone set-up) that simply says “Copy the address book from your old phone?” – and if you choose it, you get to choose whether the data transfer is done by IR, Bluetooth, WiFi, or something else. (Bluetooth is the ideal candidate, of course, with WiFi a close second).
Is that too much to ask?
Nagging
Posted: Thu 29 March, 2007 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Technology 3 Comments »While I have to admit that in general we’re both pretty pleased with the TomTom satnav unit I bought earlier in the year, there is one thing that I wish I could change.
TomTom operates in what I refer to as “Goldfish Mode”. Much the same as the voiceovers in Masterchef (Sorry, Masterchef goes Large, god help us all) and Dragon’s Den, TomTom assumes you have- at best- a memory span of thirty seconds. Which means you get instructions like
“In 500 yards, turn right at the roundabout, first exit.“
You get to about 100 yards from the roundabout.
“Turn right at the roundabout, first exit“
You get to the roundabout, and start to go round it
“Take the exit“
It drives me insane, and a lot of the time I find that it’s actually distracting, because you start to wonder if you’ve missed something relevant.
All I want is an option on the menu that says “Just notify me of the directions ONCE” that I can tick, and not be treated like I’m a bloody idiot. I know, lowest common denominator and all that bollocks, but jesus, just once, can’t something also have options that aren’t for that low-end user?
Notification
Posted: Mon 12 March, 2007 Filed under: Charm School, Technology, Weirdness 4 Comments »In the course of my current work, I use laptops a lot. I suppose desktop machines may do this too, but I don’t know – the one I use at home doesn’t really have that problem.
Anyway – whenever I turn on the laptop (whether my own, or the one at work) in the office, it’ll flag up a little notifier in the bottom-right hand corner of the screen saying something about “Unable to detect any wireless networks”.
Now, fair enough, I don’t mind it telling me that it can’t find the network. What really annoys me though, is that – particularly in the case of the work laptop – I have wireless networking switched off at the hardware switch. It’s not operating. Full stop. There’s no wireless network in the office, so it’s pointless having the damn thing turned on.
But Windows is unable to detect that actually, there’s no active hardware for finding a wireless network – so there’s no flaming chance at all of discovering that network. But it still flags up the message, every bloody day. I know there’s no wireless networks found, because the bloody sodding wireless network card is turned off, you stupid, stupid machine.
Grrrrr.
Handwritten – an Update
Posted: Thu 1 February, 2007 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Security, Technology 1 Comment »About a week ago, I wrote about the cashpoint (ATM) machine with the handwritten notice on it – which (to my surprise) garnered no comments at all.
Anyway, walking past the same pair of machines today, I noticed that this time the same one was out of order, but had up the machine’s default “Out of service – please use another machine” message on the display. No handwritten sign was in evidence at all.
I wonder if anyone’s noticed yet that they lost money last week?
Workflow
Posted: Thu 10 August, 2006 Filed under: Geeky, Getting Organised, Photography, Technology, Thinking About... 7 Comments »Yes, I’m afraid I’m going to be banging on about iTunes, Picasa, JPEG vs Raw, and so on again. Because it’s all come up in the last week, Workflow has been on my mind a bit (and there’s some work-related stuff behind the scenes as well) so it’s all ending up as a bit of a brain dump.
Personally, I can be bloody disorganised. Well, that’s not strictly true. I usually know where things are, what needs to be done, when it needs to be done by, and how I’m going to do it. It’s just that I can be very “last minute” about things – particularly when it’s all to a deadline. It’s something I know – and acknowledge – about myself, and that I know I need to fix, or at least learn to handle better.
So anyway, I working on organising myself a bit better. But that’s not what this post is about. Oh no. Instead it’s about file structure, and file organisation instead. You lucky people.
You see, Gordon has said a couple of times that certain bits of software (iTunes, Picasa etc.) mean he no longer needs to know where files are – the software keeps track of it for him, and – for him – that’s fine. Unfortunately, doing that kind of thing drives me utterly fucking crackers.
Because I know where I put stuff, and I know (pretty much) what is where. I know that all my music sits in c:/music, but then I know that under that it’s kept in a file structure, so it goes c:/music/[band]/[album name]/[tracks] , and I never, ever have a problem finding where the stuff is that I want. To me, that’s organised, because I don’t need to fuck about thinking “is it in that folder? Or is it (iTunes, I’m talking about you here) in ‘compilations’? Or in some utterly random other place?”. I don’t need to use Google Desktop Search, I don’t need to Search for files. I think I use the “Search for files” function in Windows maybe once a year. If that. I know where my stuff is.
With photos it’s similar. Everything sits in c:/photos. I know, it’s unimaginative. But it’s easy to find. Then I name folders with where I was, or the subject of the photo series, and all the photos from that session/day/trip go in. If it’s been a holiday, you’d find it in c:/photos/[trip name]/Day [number] . I’m bad in that I don’t rename the files individually to say what’s in them – I should, but I don’t. But I know what’s where, and I can usually find the images I want when I want them. And again, to me that’s what being organised is about.
Yesterday, Gordon wrote
WHERE the files are doesn’t matter. HOW iTunes structures the folders doesn’t matter. As long as you can find the MP3s in iTunes (which is where the ID3 tags come in) then why do you care that an album is stored in ‘compilation’?
To me, it does matter where the files are. I want to be able to find them, to use them outside of that one specific application. For my music stuff, I can play it on the PC using RealPlayer, but I also use another program to write the music files to my MP3 player, or yet another one to write them to the phone so I can use that. For my photos I can use one program to view the thumbnails so I can select what I want, I can use Photoshop – or Paintshop Pro, or ImageMagick, or Corel, or whatever – to edit those photos, I can write them to a CD/DVD as backup, or I can transfer them using FTP to another site. Because of the way I work, I do need to know where the files are. I don’t want to be wasting time figuring out where Application A has stored them so that I can find them with Application B, C or D and use them in that.
So yes, it’s my workflow. Maybe I should be more flexible, or something. But because I do use different programs for different things, I want the files that I use to be in the same place, in my own organisation. Not in some arbitrary thing that one program uses, and then insists I have to use because it uses it. It’s a personal perspective, but I don’t like having workflows and decisions forced on me, whether it’s by Arsehole Bosses, or programs.
Maybe I’m a dinosaur. Maybe I’m a control freak. I don’t know. What I do know, though, is that at no time soon am I going to be letting a fucking program tell me it’s storing stuff according to its own structures where I can’t find the bloody stuff easily without using a search to do so.