Jamie's Rants

Extracting Images from SWF/Flash Websites

2012-02-01T15:15:00.000Z

My brother is the head chef at the Foragers Pub in Hove. They recently won an award at the Sussex Food Awards. So far so good, apart from the tiny photo on the awards page and the fact that their pages are written entirely in Flash.

I know that the picture is available bigger, because I can zoom in, both by ctrl+mouse wheeling and using Firefox's zoom and by right clicking and using Adobe's zoom. However Firefox's zoom does not go far enough and I cannot scroll down the page while using Adobe's zoom. So to extracting the image, a simple enough task I thought. Except it's not, because the SWF file referenced by the HTML is virtually empty and once I had located the files they were apparently corrupt.

The best tool I found to get all resources used by an SWF is called SWF Web Vampire and if you need to do this a few times I would recommend buying it, $30 is not a lot of money.

SWF Decompiler, SWF Picture Extractor and the more Linux-y (ie, command line) SWF Tools all looked good, but all reported that the SWF image files I was getting from the website were corrupt. In the end I loaded them in IE and took a screen shot.

Incidentally I feel that the Sussex Food Awards have missed a trick here, if they made their photos easily available, but stamped their logo, and the logo of the company sponsoring the specific award on the image that would surely be a better situation for everyone involved?

ext4 Driver for Windows 7

2012-01-31T20:25:00.002Z

I've tried a few ext2/3/4 drivers for Windows and by far the best seems to be Ext2Fsd. The only thing to watch for is that you need to start the service after you install it by going Tools -> Service Management (F7).

Virgin Media Netgear VMDG280 Wireless Connection Problems

2011-12-19T13:31:00.001Z

I was having very annoying wireless connection issues with Virgin's Netgear VMDG280. Most devices would be fine, but the odd one would connect and have wireless access for a few seconds, but then the wireless connection would die, though the device would still report that it was connected. Restarting everything/anything would just repeat the same. Last night I tried reducing the maximum connection speed of the router from 300Mbps to 54Mbps, which seemed to solve the issue completely. I've since put it up to 145Mbps which seems like a happy medium.

Time Lapse with ffmpeg

2011-12-05T13:47:00.001Z

Because I do it too infrequently to remember, here's how to put together time lapse/stop motion/animation with ffmpeg.

Firstly renumber you images. Make sure that this script won't overwrite anything.

x=1; for i in *.JPG; do counter=$(printf %04d $x); mv "$i" img"$counter".JPG; x=$(($x+1)); done

Then put the images together.

ffmpeg -ss 1 -t 70 -i music.mp3 -r 15 -i img%04d.JPG -b 15M -s 1440x1080 out.avi

The ffmpeg documentation mentions using the "image file demuxer" -f image2 before the input image file name template, but I haven't found that necessary.

Remember that ffmpeg options act on the next input or output, so for example you can set the frame rate of the animation by using -r x before the input image parameter or set the frame rate of the resultant video by using the same switch before the output filename.

In the above example we also add a sound track, starting 1 second into the track and cut after 70 seconds.

eBay Dicks

2011-11-23T20:16:00.001Z

hi there would you accept 260 cash? bearing in mind i can pay cash on collection you wouldnt have to pay ebay and paypal fees(ebay 10% final value fee, paypal 4% service charge). put that ontop of my offer comes to over £300 on ebay which obviously if you look at completed listing they dont get. let me know

- morne1514

> put that ontop of my offer comes to over £300

No it doesn't*, and I'm hoping to get £330 for it, but I'll keep your offer in mind, thanks.

- jamiekitson

hi there no problem, i cant do more then 270 am afraid, if you look online you will see they are new 330 nowadays. as for what they go for on here, i have added you some links to completed listings so you can see for yourself, most of them are brand new and minues the ebay and paypal fees they dont even clear 250 so the choice is yours, let me know otherwise going the other route and buying a samsung galaxy note

- morne1514

Mine comes with a cradle and receipt.

Please go away.

- jamiekitson

no need to be rude, i was offering you a valid offer which in theory should have been good for you and me. you send me links for the ones going for most they go on ebay, thats just retarded as the average NEW ones still sell for under 300 as i showed this to you, as for the amazon link lol even xxx online sells them for 340 new so please you are embarrassing yourself. sorry i ever contacted you i can assure you i wont again

- morne1514

He lied.

lolz i would have actually been the highest bidder if you didnt block me from bidding. gutted

- morne1514

Well thank god I did.

* Yes I did embarrass myself with that maths.

HTTP Headers to Disable Caching in Firefox

2011-11-18T14:13:00.001Z

It took me ages to find this:

Cache-control: no-cache
Cache-control: no-store
Pragma: no-cache
Expires: 0

To alter headers in the IIS7 GUI go HTTP Response Headers. It won't allow you to add two headers of the same name so either add no-cache,no-store or you can set no-cache by expiring web content immediately in Set Common Headers at the top right and add Cache-control: no-store manually.

VSTOR30.exe has changed since it was initially published

2011-11-15T11:43:00.001Z

Note that the following error can be caused by a missing internet connection stopping installation files downloading necessary installation files:

Error: Setup has detected that the file 'C:\Users\...\AppData\Local\Temp\VSD5056.tmp\VSTOR30\VSTOR30.exe' has changed since it was initially published.

There are other posts mentioning installing VSTO 3.0 SP1. You might try installing this on the dev machine and republishing.

Arch Linux on a Thinkpad X220

2011-10-29T14:28:00.000+01:00

Some thoughts on Arch Linux on the X220:

The screen brightness jumps to full after certain ACPI events, such as at startup and lid open. I haven't fully solved this but have added xbacklight -set 80 to my .xinitrc.
Occasionally when I connect to power, yacpi reports a maximum CPU frequency of 800MHz. I haven't been able to reliably recreate or investigate.
Volume/Mute buttons work with xbindkeys, though I haven't got the mic mute to work yet. Also if the machine is muted at boot the mute toggle doesn't work. (Windows seems to exhibit similar behaviour.)
For right and middle click on the Touchpad install xf86-input-synaptics-clickpad. You can also configure XOrg for tapping the corners.
I haven't properly measured battery life, but it's estimated at around five hours with my standard 6 cell pack, which isn't bad, and is similar to the Windows estimate. Actual battery life seems to be more like four hours on Linux.
If your machine reboots after shutdown add rmmod ehci_hcd to rc.local.shutdown.
If your machine pauses at shutdown with e1000e 0000:00:19.0: eth0: Could not acquire PHY then add rmmod e1000e to rc.local.shutdown.
Power button to power off instructions here. Note that you have to hold the power button down for three seconds until the machine beeps. Note also that I couldn't get the "first solution" on that page to work, but the second does.
If udevd times out (after 30 seconds) at boot then try adding your wireless driver (eg rtl8192ce) to MODULES in rc.conf.

I've had a bit of an adventure with wireless, so I thought I'd give it its own section:

I made the mistake of not paying £3 to upgrade the wireless to Intel and got the RealTek 8188ce card by default. The kernel driver ~~doesn't~~ seems fine. ~~that great, use the RealTek driver or better, the AUR package (currently neither is available for 3.1).~~
As I found out to my cost, the Thinkpad BIOS has a whitelist of wireless cards, and if yours doesn't match then your machine won't even boot, even if it is a genuine Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6200. However there are plenty of modded BIOSes out there, although not necessarily quite up to date. Try googling your model number + "whitelist". I got my X220 BIOS here.
Oddly, after installing the 6200 my machine started suspending twice when I closed the lid, fixed by adding the following line to /etc/acpi/actions/lm_lid.sh
```
if [[ `cat /proc/acpi/button/lid/LID/state | awk '{print $2}'` = "closed" ]]
```
Disappointingly the Intel card doesn't seem any better than the RealTek, not connecting as fast as the RealTek did with the Aur driver and it didn't cure my disconnection issues. They seem to have been cured by flashing our Virgin provided D-Link DIR-615 with dd-wrt.

A note for Windows 7 - don't install the Intel HD graphics driver before Windows SP1 or you'll get a blue screen.

Mount/Read VMWare vmdk Disks

2011-10-26T14:01:00.003+01:00

You can try the VMWare-Mount utility, but an easier way is to use VMWare Player to "map" the disk in the Utilities menu in Machine Settings.

UEFI Bootable Windows 7 USB Media

2011-10-17T20:41:00.001+01:00

Instructions here: http://gitorious.org/tianocore_uefi_duet_builds/pages/Linux_Windows_BIOS_UEFI_boot_USB

Problems with the Thinkpad X220 and GPT, UEFI, MBR and Legacy BIOS Booting

2011-10-17T20:13:00.000+01:00

After several days banging my head against a brick wall and suffering the indifference of Lenovo/IBM tech support I have learnt a lot about UEFI, in regards to the X220 in particular.

The X220 cannot/will not boot GPT disks using Legacy BIOS. I wouldcall this a bug.
The X220 will not boot /efi/*/*.efi unless "signed"(?) into BIOS,you have to copy it to /efi/boot/bootx64.efi. I guess this is asecurity feature, but I'm not sure how secure it is if you can bypassit so easily.
Disabling the BIOS setting "USB UEFI BIOS Support" disables *all*USB booting, ie, both UEFI and legacy BIOS. If this isn't a bug then
1. it at least needs relabelling,
2. could be moved/linked to the bootmenu and
3. is redundant as you can disable USB booting using the Bootmenu.

I should say that this was with BIOS version 1.22 (I think).

I recommend following these instructions to create a very useful and versatile boot disk for diagnosis.

If you want to use the X220 UEFI boot menu I recommend disabling booting from LAN as it adds a few seconds to the boot time. You have to disable it in several places in the BIOS to avoid the wait.

See also my more general post on Arch Linux on the X220.

Fix HTC HD2 Digitiser/Touchscreen

2011-10-09T23:31:00.001+01:00

Make sure you try a soft-reset first by pushing the little red button on the back of the phone while it is on. After four months I just discovered that that fixed it. Luckily I hadn't ordered a new screen/digitiser on ebay.

Invalid MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 key

2011-10-04T23:28:00.002+01:00

I eventually tracked down the above error to the file ~/.Xauthority, which I removed, which solved the problem. Perhaps back it up first.

Recipes: Tagliatelle Carbonara

2011-06-20T13:38:00.000+01:00

As pasta has just been revealed to be the world's favourite food, despite what Giles Coren might think, this recipe turns out to be topical. Carbonara is one of those dishes which is so simple that you can taste every ingredient, so every ingredient needs to be a good one. With carbonara I think this is especially true of the lardons and parmasan. I really like Ginger Pig lardons which you can get from Greensmith's, who also do very good parmasan and semolina flour and typo 00.

I recommend using a pasta machine (left), but it's not essential (right). If you are going to roll it by hand you might want to add a little bit of water to the mixture to make it more malleable.

The following measurements are good for one very hungry person, or possibly two small people.

First make the pasta dough by mixing 50g of semolina flour, 50g of typo 00, 1 large egg and a pinch of salt. Use a knife to mix and cut until it resembles breadcrumbs, press together, tip the dough out and kneed it for a while. Wrap in cling film and put in the fridge for about 30 minutes.

Fry the lardons in 1-2 tablespoons of olive oil until they begin to crispen. Meanwhile roll out the pasta dough, fold over and roll again. Repeat this process several times until the dough is a nice and smooth consistency. Then roll thin and cut into tagliatelle. I wouldn't be tempted to leave the tagliatelle too long, the novelty quickly wears thin. If you are using a machine you can skip the final notch before putting the dough through the cutting rollers for slightly thicker pasta.

Cook the pasta in plenty of salted boiling water in a heavy pan for three minutes. Meanwhile beat together one egg, some cream and some finely grated paramasan and season. Once the pasta is done, turn off the heat and drain, returning the pasta to the pan. Pour over the lardons and their oil and mix. Add the egg, cream and parmasan mixture and stir thoroughly. the sauce should thicken with the residual heat of the pan but not cook, you don't want scrambled eggs. Serve with rocket.

Short Reviews: Casa Malevo, Argentinian Steak, Marble Arch

2011-06-17T11:38:00.000+01:00

Go for brunch, it's good value and they have proper morcilla. Dinner is fine, but not outstanding and quite expensive. Sides are mean, especially the chips. I could happily eat two of their little enamel bowl fulls, which at this price is inexcusable, and perplexing when there is so much meat. The set mixed grill we had the other day was very generous, apart from the tiny cubes of very overdone fillet. The rump was nice but inconsistently done (we had four sets), but maybe that was intentional. Service, and the place itself, is very nice.

Short Reviews: Riverfront Restaurant @ BFI, Waterloo

2011-05-17T17:27:00.006+01:00

Before I start complaining, let me just say that the food that we had at the BFI Riverfront was really very good. My smoked haddock fish cakes were nice and strong, complimented by a very good tartar sauce, something that I don't say very often, and the "oat crumb" coating was both crispy and tasty. The g/f's mussels came in a very nice tarragon sauce, which was a bit too thick and creamy for me, but not for her.

No, what I take issue with is the price. At first glance £9.50 - £11 for a main seems quite reasonable, especially for such a prime location, but who has just mussels for a main? You at least need some bread and butter (£2.50). Or just fish cakes and a dollop of boiled broccoli? You'd probably want some chips with that (£3.50). (I have to admit, the single serving of chips was pretty generous.)

Purely on presentation alone the fish cakes were missing something. That dollop of slightly overdone boiled broccoli didn't fill up much of the plate. Besides the cakes, broccoli and shot glass of tartar sauce, a lonely slice of lemon was doing its best to fill up the rest of the space.

Then there is the "discretionary" 12.5% service charge which is automatically added to you bill. Previously it's proved quite hard to not pay the full amount, and I was going to test it on this occasion, but our waitress managed to redeem her rude and brisk attitude at the last minute by giving us two cups with our single pot of tea :) But why oh why don't places like this just add service to the prices on the menu and have done with it?!

So we ended up spending £40 on two mains, one glass of wine and a cake and tea. Not so reasonable.

UPDATE: Apparently VAT is charged on the menu price, but not on added service, hence nowhere includes service on the menu price.

Mongol Rally Non-Sponsorship

2011-03-25T17:33:00.000Z

As you may or may not know, Kai and I are planning to do the Mongol Rally this July. It's a jaunt in the name of charity, but as it's something that I want to do I feel bad asking friends and family to sponsor me do it. So we've come up with something a mite more fun.*

Here's the deal: for every donation that you make you can enter one of our two sweepstakes in which you must guess how far we will travel or how long it will take us. The clock and odometer stop when we either reach the finish line in Ulaanbaatar or fail completely. Our readings are final. Please be as specific as possible, eg, include minutes/metres. Duplicate entries will be disregarded. The prize will be 10% of the value of donations up to a maximum of £50 for each of the two sweepstakes. We'll also see if we can find some exciting artefacts (or tacky souvenirs) to bring back for the winners. All donations will go to charity and the winnings will come out of our own pockets (hence the £50 limit). Clear? Good.

To give you a better chance at estimating: we will be starting at Goodwood, West Sussex at approximately 4pm on Saturday 23 July. We will be travelling in a car that is no older than 10 years and has an engine of less than 1.3 litres, something like a Nissan Micra or VW Polo, possibly a Toyota Rav4 or one of those little Suzukis (if you have a spare one of these or similar hanging around, let us know). There's just one Czech point (haha) which we leave (I think) on 25 July and then the route is up to us. We plan to go south of the Caspian and Black seas, ie, via Turkey and Iran. We also plan to stop off in Odessa.

Using straight lines this is 6,273 miles. Using Google directions it's 6,723 miles to Korday, Kazakhstan where it stops giving directions. When making our visa application we estimated that it would take us 5 weeks. Last year roughly 2/3 of cars made it to the finish line. Feel free to do more research on the Rally:

http://mongolrally.theadventurists.com/

How to enter:

There is a Just Giving page for each of the two sweepstakes. Donate your money and leave an appropriate guess in your comment. I'm afraid we will not be able to correct mistakes, but hey, you can try again.

If you want to guess at the duration of our journey go to:

http://www.justgiving.com/geekoutTime

If you want to guess at the final distance of our journey go to:

http://www.justgiving.com/geekoutDistance

We have yet to decide when we will stop accepting entries.

If you want to donate but not take part there are also two pages for straight donations:

https://www.justgiving.com/GeekoutAmnesty
https://www.justgiving.com/geekout

Donate on either of those pages and you can request slogans to be written on our car, guess when/where Kai and I will have our first argument or who will kill who first and how.

Good luck!

* Fun is not guaranteed.

WSE306: The DIME record should have the following version: 1. Instead, the DIME record contained the following version: 7

2011-02-08T13:15:00.000Z

Fixing the above error involved altering the Microsoft.Web.Services2 version in the configSections of the web.config file from 2.0.0.0 to 2.0.3.0, matching the version named in the soapExtensionTypes section.

Linux Colour Management and Monitor Calibration (or Do You Really Want a High Gamut Monitor?)

2011-02-08T13:08:00.000Z

I am writing this purely because a couple of the highest google hits for things like "linux colour management" and "linux monitor calibration" are worse than useless and useless respectively (imho). I won't name their URLs but their domain starts with linux and ends in .com.

Loading default colour profiles (.icc, .icm files) in Linux is a surprisingly simple matter, there's Argyll (see dispwin) and xcalib for the CLI lovers among you and things like gnome colour manager to make things even easier.

I actually found that Argyll and xcalib didn't work for my chosen screen, apparently because the nVidia driver does not properly support XRandR (yet). However the gnome colour manager *did* work, despite it apparently being just a front end for Argyll. Having said that it did apply the same profile to all my screens, so it wasn't perfect, but it was good enough for me, applying the chosen profile to all the important programmes such as eog, firefox and Gimp, the notable exception being flash, which of course is a big deal in a world of flash video and I have to admit to using picnic on flickr an awful lot.

Short Reviews: The Island Queen, Islington

2011-02-08T13:03:00.001Z

Really lovely staff, a great selection of beers and large portions of good food at very reasonable prices. It's a shame it's so far off the beaten track, but it's worth the trek, highly recommended!

HR

2011-02-01T12:05:00.002Z

Simply hiring the best and the brightest may not make sense in all circumstances, nevertheless the alignment of our core “Competency Framework” with job descriptions, recruitment, appraisal and training and development program, enables a continuous check on the current availability of human asset capabilities.

One wonders under what circumstances not "simply hiring the best and brightest" would make sense. Maybe that's what Google meant.

UPDATE: A colleague thought of such a circumstance: nepotism.

Utilitarian Incompetence

2011-01-31T21:35:00.006Z

I'm sure everyone has these sorts of horror stories regarding utility companies, especially when moving, but that doesn't make me feel better. What makes me feel better is ranting. What makes the below worse is the fact that all of them only have 0800, or more commonly, 0845 numbers and I do not have a land line.

npower

I chose npower because uswitch said they'd be the cheapest for us. Perhaps that should have been a warning rather than a recommendation. Our first problem was that they could not accept either of our meter serial numbers, they were apparently wrong, even though I was looking straight at them. Ironically British Gas were very helpful, despite the fact that we were leaving them. (Note that British Gas have raised my ire in the past too.)

We then received a letter from npower saying that the gas had been cancelled and that they were sorry to see us go. I called them and was told it was probably due to the confusion over the meter numbers and not to worry, the gas was going ahead. I thought I better check the electric too while I was on the phone. Oh no, I was told, the electric has been cancelled, due to them not being able to find the address, and that they would have sent a letter out. There is some paradox in there somewhere.

Unfortunately by this time the tariff that I had requested was no longer available. Not to worry, I was assured that they would connect us on Standard and move us over to Sign Online 20 once we were connected. Having heard horror stories about npower's abilities to sign you up for the most expensive tariff I asked for this to be confirmed in writing. A few days later we received a standard letter thanking me for my call and hoping that I was happy. No mention of tariffs. So I called them again and explained that I wanted it in writing. A few days later we received a standard letter thanking me for my call and hoping that I was happy. I called them again and explained the situation. After a few minutes on hold the complaints department picked up, which was a surprise as I hadn't requested the complaints department, but what the hell. I explained the situation and we now have a letter confirming the complaint, but still nothing confirming the tariff switch.

Barclays

A few days after I'd moved I printed out and filled in Barclays' change of address form, including the date on which I moved. They then sent a letter to my old address saying that my signature did not match the one they have on file. Yes, they posted a letter to the address which I had just told them that I had already moved out of. It was only by chance (see below) that I discovered that the change of address had not gone through.

Virgin

I was very impressed with Virgin's service in moving my connection, we only had a matter of hours downtime. My first bill came and all seemed well. But then the second bill came. It should have been £25, but was £80. Eventually it transpired that they somehow had the wrong account number, despite the fact that they'd been charging the same account for the previous 12 months. They had then charged me extra for their inconvenience. I was assured I would have been sent a letter informing me of this. Happily it was rectified quite quickly and they refunded the extra charges made.

UPDATE: Virgin now seem to be doing a 30meg service for less than I am paying for the 20meg service! What's more, new customers are offered free installation, whereas I would have to pay £30 for the upgrade!

O2

Why oh why do 0800 numbers not get included in my monthly minutes? If only I'd known about 0800 Buster a month ago.

British Gas

British Gas have managed to charge me twice for the same, final bill. Not a small amount either.

TV Licensing

When we moved in we found a lot of unopened mail from TV Licensing. We didn't have a TV so I rang them and spoke to a very helpful guy who promised that we wouldn't receive any more mail from them. He was wrong. Not only did we continue to receive their demands and threats, but they got worse. I really object to being spoken to as if my guilt is assumed until I prove my innocence. In fact they weren't even giving us that chance, many of the letters included a leaflet that "might be helpful to you in court." Having got a TV we bought a TV Licence and continue to receive demands to a slightly different address. I am not going to bother replying if they cannot be bothered to check their records, hopefully they will go to the expense of sending someone round.

Installing Windows 7 From a USB Key

2011-01-26T13:25:00.000Z

Avoid all the stupidly complex instructions out there and download Microsoft's USB tool. Note that if you are trying to create 64bit install media on a 32bit machine you might need to run the 32bit bootsect.exe against your installation media.

Flashing OCZ Vertex 2 Firmware in Linux

2011-01-14T22:45:00.000Z

You cannot flash the firmware through USB, the drive has to be connected to a SATA port.
I believe it is necessary to set the SATA mode to AHCI in your BIOS.
Unsurprisingly you cannot flash the firmware of a mounted drive, so you will probably need to boot from a live CD or USB drive. (If you try you do not get a helpful error message.)
The firmware update utility needs an internet connection to download the latest firmware, so keep that in mind when choosing/preparing your boot media.
The first big hurdle is to stop the drive from being "frozen". Apparently most computers set all SATA drives connected at boot to this state as a security measure. Run "hdparm -I" against your drive and have a look at the Security section, you need to get your drive into the "not frozen" state. There are at least two possible ways of doing this. If possible unplug your drive, while the computer is still running, and then plug it back in again. As long as the drive isn't mounted this shouldn't be harmful. I found this crashed my Dell M101z which wasn't so surprising as the drive obviously isn't designed to be removed while the computer is running (it's underneath the keyboard). However, my old Dell M1330 was fine with hot-plugging the drive and this got it into the unfrozen state. The other way I've heard to unfreeze your drive is to suspend your machine. However this also crashed my M101z when booted from USB.
Download and run the firmware tool. There is a thread or directory that you can download from. These might become out of date, but I think that it should always download the most recent firmware regardless.

Recipes: Steak and Chips

2011-01-07T23:09:00.003Z

You may be thinking "What sort of idiot needs a recipe for steak and chips?" Well I may be that idiot, it's amazing, even to me, how long it has taken me to perfect it.

The Potatoes

Other people, so called "professionals", recommend "waxy" potatoes. To be honest I've never quite understood what that refers to, the insides? Shiny potatoes might look waxy, ie, shiny, but they don't feel waxy. Anyway, more specifically, pink skinned potatoes are recommended, such as the desiree. However I think the most important thing about the potato is not so much the type but the quality and freshness of it, make sure it is firm, and you can mix it up a bit. Baking potatoes are good because you can make very long chips and be economical with the cutting. New potatoes are very tasty and if you use small whole ones they look like mini baked potatoes, which is fun. I also love sweet potato chips and often do half sweet and half other.

Cutting The Chips

You can cut the chips as thin as you can, but I wouldn't make them overly thick. Don't use whole large new potatoes. Rinse the cut chips in cold water.

The Oil

I'm afraid I haven't experimented with oil, whatever I've used has been satisfactory, 100% sunflower, Flora blended, etc. You don't need a lot of oil, the pan should only be about a third to a half full to allow for space for the chips and bubbling. I reuse my oil, sieving it back into the container. Remember to let it cool though, I once forgot and the plastic bottle collapsed in front of my eyes.

Cooking The Chips

When I first started cooking my own chips I thought the idea was to get the oil as hot as possible and cook the chips as quickly as possible, but I was wrong. My professional chef brother explained to me that the way to do it was to double cook them, blanched in cooler oil first and then quick and hot afterwards. Larry and I tried double and even triple cooking chips several times but decided that it just wasn't worth the effort. There is a happy medium though, start the chips off fairly cool, don't worry too much about drying them before you put them into the oil and don't bother with a lid, then after about twenty minutes turn the heat up. Note that sweet potatoes don't need quite as long, so if you're doing both in the same pan put them in a little later. You also have to be careful not to get sweet potato chips too hot as the sugar can caramelise and eventually burn, turning everything black. This has only happened once to us.

UPDATE: We now have a deep fat fryer, which is very useful. Cook the chips at about 130C for 10 minutes, take them out, turn the heat right up and then finish the chips off for a few minutes until golden. Cooking this way makes it very easy to do batches, cook each batch cool first and then finish them off when you are ready.

The Meat

Well matured rib eye is my personal favourite. The butcher I frequent is the Ginger Pig at Greensmith's on Lower Marsh. My favoured way of serving steak to a few people is to buy various cuts, cut them into small chunks once cooked and serve all together on a chopping board in the middle of the table (see below).

Cooking The Steak

Don't start the steaks too early, you don't want to over cook them or have to let them go cold while you're waiting for your chips to cook. Remember that if needs be you can cook steaks in no time at all. On the other hand I have recently discovered that you can leave steaks to stand in a cool oven and if anything they improve. In this vein turn your oven on to about 120C and put your plates in to warm. Pepper the steaks (I recommend Fiddes Payne Rainbow peppercorns). Heat your frying pan as hot as possible (within reason) add some butter and then the steaks. Fry for a minute or two until brown and preferably slightly crispy on each side. If necessary wrap in foil and put in the oven.

Pepper Sauce

In the same pan brown a shallot or two, add a lot of pepper corns (Fiddes Payne again) and then some red wine. Once the alcohol has boiled off add some cream and warm through. Take the steaks out of the oven and stir the steak juice into the sauce.

Other Sauces

Variations on blue cheese, mushrooms (Greensmith's do nice jars of dried wild or woodland variates) and spinach go down well, and Antony Worrall Thompson does a good recipe of baby beetroot in balsamic vinegar and horseradish cream thing.

UPDATE: Famous last words.

Recipes: Vegetable-ish Stew and Dumplings

2010-12-26T19:16:00.001Z

Thanks to my mum for this recipe, and Larry for spicing it up a bit.

Start by frying off some fennel seeds, cumin seeds and maybe some onion in some olive oil.
Add celery and celeriac.
Chipolatas can be added now if desired.
Brown off small cubes of vegetables such as 1/2 a sweet potato, 1 swede, 1/2 squash, a potato or two, a parsnip and a couple of carrots.
Once the vegetables are brown add enough stock to cover them and some grain type things (tinned or dried) such as lentils, beans and barley.
Season as necessary, maybe adding a bay leaf/cinnamon stick or two.
Cook covered in a hot oven for about twenty minutes.
Make the dumplings by mixing self-raising flour and suet in a weight ratio of 2:1. I use 6oz flour and 3oz suet. Add enough water to combine and divide in to round dumplings, I usually make about 10.
After about 20 minutes take the lid off and add the dumplings and cook for another 20 minutes until the dumplings are browned, adding a little more water/stock if necessary.

Luser Support

2010-12-17T11:17:00.001Z

From the supportee:

Is there any way we can change the error message to make it a bit more idiot proof?

From me:

I'm sorry, but on the second line it says "XDataProvider:
System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException: A network-related or instance-specific error occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server. The server was not found or was not accessible. Verify that the instance name is correct and that SQL Server is configured to allow remote connections.
(provider: Named Pipes Provider, error: 40 - Could not open a connection to SQL Server)"

ie,

1. This is the XDataProvider.
2. This is a network error meaning that I cannot talk to the SQL Server.
3. This might be fixed by checking that the server name is correct and the SQL Server is configured to allow connections.

I really don't think it could be *any* clearer or more idiot proof.

From my colleague:

User error. I'm always right.

Property Scams From Gumtree

2010-11-23T13:00:00.005Z

Marcelo Kluvert <marcelokluvert@yahoo.com>

Offering a lovely apartment located in "Central London Via fulham" with two bathrooms and either 2 or 3 bedrooms depending on whether you trust the ad or his email more. Rent is £400 pcm total, including all bills. Marcelo is a very busy man but will come down from Newcastle for a viewing once he has seen a Western Union receipt of a £980 transfer to prove you have funds available.

Georgia Washington <wgeorgia63@yahoo.co.uk>

Is offering a flat "looking very nice and clean" with "well tidy sitting rooms" and home utilities including a lounge, "cable ready", power-shower and an electric shower on "KENSAL RD Kensington". From the photo you might get the impression that the kitchen has a microwave where the oven should be and only has two hobs, but Georgia assures me there are in fact three hobs and an oven just to the left of the photo. Georgia has even removed the ad from Gumtree for you (nothing to do with it being reported as a scam of course), works for Credit Suisse Group and will email you a tenancy agreement. She will fly back from Spain to show you around just as soon as you send her a copy of a Western Union receipt to prove you have the £1000 deposit available. What a nice round number!

Queensgate Berry <berryqueensgate@yahoo.com>

Queensgate Berry will address you as "my dear", sign himself "Mr.Alan" and has a lovely 2 bed property suitable for 2-6 persons (each bedroom being suitable for three students apparently) in South Kensington with "Cable/Satellite CCTV" and a garage at a total of just £200pw! Including all bills! According to the "Landlord Association" rules, "due to past/bad experiences with the other landlords" and as "there is also a fine of 5000pounds if we don't go through the rules and regulations" all you have to do is forward a MoneyGram receipt of £1300 to Mr Alan to prove you have the funds available. Mr Alan's phone number is 07024031949, note that 070 numbers are premium rate numbers, not mobiles.

If you encounter any of these illustrious people or one of their ilk you may be interested in a fake Western Union or MoneyGram receipt generator or a page of useful scam baiting links.

Uncaught exception 'FacebookRestClientException' with message 'Session key invalid or no longer valid' in...

2010-11-09T16:20:00.000Z

If using Facebook’s PHP library you get:

Uncaught exception 'FacebookRestClientException' with message 'Session key invalid or no longer valid' in..

Try adding the following before the offending line:

$facebook->clear_cookie_state()

Linux on Dell's M101z

2010-10-22T13:38:00.024+01:00

I've now installed and configured both Ubuntu and Arch on my Dell M101z and most things work fine. Starting at the bottom:

The M101z does not allow hot swapping of the internal hard drive, perhaps obvious as it really is internal (you have to remove the keyboard to change it) but it did mean that I was lucky I still had my old M1330 which allowed for hot-swapping to update the firmware on my OCZ Vertex 2.
Suspend (s2ram) works as long as you boot with the noapic kernel option and don't have an HDMI device connected when you suspend/resume.
For wireless I've been using the open source brcm80211 driver it seems more reliable on speed and is built into the kernel since 2.6.37, but it's a little bit buggy. Broadcom's own STA driver is stable, but seems very slow at times.
Just because the Radeon HD 4225 video card has an "HD" in the name does not mean that you should use the RadeonHD driver as I tried to under Arch, use the straight ATI/Radeon driver as Ubuntu does automatically. Use Arch wiki's xorg.conf settings. I wouldn't recommend the binary driver either.
CPU scaling works using the PowerNow-K8 module, again I assume Ubuntu did this automatically.
/dev/sdb1 is not created when I insert an SD card. I can create it either by rmmod and modprobe ehci_hcd or attempting to mount /dev/sdb.

It seems like a good little machine, the keyboard's good (I don't have small hands), it's heavier than it looks, the screen is good, it runs quite hot and I'm a little disappointed with the 3-4 hour battery life, I wonder if it would be better under Windows.

Short Reviews: Whitechapel Gallery, London

2010-09-10T00:13:00.000+01:00

I'd been looking forward to eating at the Whitechapel Gallery for sometime, I think I'd judged it mainly on the decor and a quick glance at the menu. Unfortunately the food (why is it that the more business you give a restaurant the worse the service you get? We had to have the dull roast chicken because there was about 10 of us) and way too familiar, bordering on rude, service didn't live up to the price or the decor. The starter was ok actually.

Linux Flickr Downloader Script

2010-06-05T21:09:00.006+01:00

For a while I've been meaning to write a Linux Flickr downloader, but I've been putting it off and putting it off as I thought it wouldn't be easy. But I hadn't thought about using curl and the Flickr API directly and, rather embarrassingly, happened upon a script a few lines long to do just that.

curl "###FlickrAPIURL###" | awk '/id=/ {print "http://farm"$6".static.flickr.com/"$5"/"$2"_"$4".jpg" }' | sed '~s/$farm=\|server=\|secret=\|id=\|"$//g' > p
wget -i p

There are plenty of options for FlickrAPIURL, and Flickr provides a very helpful URL builder, for search for example.

An improved script:

#!/bin/sh

# As is this script takes comma separated tags as argument one and downloads all matching
# images from a single Flickr user, probably you

# To get your API Key and Secret create a Flickr App at:
# http://www.flickr.com/services/apps/create/apply/

APIKey='xxx'
Secret='yyy'

# To get your token you can manually follow the desktop instructions:
# http://www.flickr.com/services/api/auth.howto.desktop.html
# If you do not want/need to sign your call you can remove the MD5ing and api_sig

Token='zzz'

# Note that *all* parameters in URI must be in alphabetical order, so this may not work
# for your method/parameters as is

Method='flickr.photos.search'
Params="tags=$1&user_id=YourUserID"

# Image size: _s small square, _t thumbnail, _m small, none medium, _b large, _o original
Size=""

(
IFS='\
'
Page=1
Pages=1
while [ $Page -le $Pages ]
do
        URI="api_key=$APIKey&auth_token=$Token&method=$Method&page=$Page&per_page=2&$Params"
        MD5URI=$(echo $URI | sed 's/[&=]//g')
        MD5=$(echo -n $Secret$MD5URI | md5sum | sed s/\ \ -//)

        for f in $(curl "http://api.flickr.com/services/rest/?$URI&api_sig=$MD5")
        do
                TempPages=$(echo $f | awk '/<photos/ {print $3}')
                if [ $TempPages ]
                then   
                        Pages=$(echo $TempPages | sed '~s/\(pages=\|"\)//g')
                fi
                URL=$(echo $f | awk '/id=/ {print "http://farm"$6".static.flickr.com/"$5"/"$2"_"$4}')
                if [ $URL ]
                then   
                        URL=$(echo $URL | sed '~s/\(farm=\|server=\|secret=\|id=\|"\)//g')$Size".jpg"
                        wget $URL
                fi
        done
        Page=$(($Page + 1))
done
)

UPDATE: Note that if you want to download original sizes you must request the "originalsecret" by adding extra=original_format to the API URL and use that instead of secret. The awk line needs updating to do this, add -F '"' to separate on double quotes.

Short Reveiws: Bam-Bou, Percy / Charlotte Street

2010-04-27T23:36:00.003+01:00

A lovely little* Asian fusion place close to perfection, and Goodge Street.

The duck, smeared with plum sauce so think and sweet it was like jam, sprinkled with sesame and drizzled with tamarind was moist and tender and some of the best I've ever had, the sticky coconut rice was extra sticky and coconutty and the prawns and squid were excellent too.

The service was some of the best I've ever encountered, perfectly timed, knowledgeable and polite. What's more, our waitress didn't try to sell us more than we needed, even when prompted.

* Bam-Bou feels small and intimate but is actually quite big, three or four floors.

Recipes: Chocolate Pots

2010-04-05T00:13:00.000+01:00

Along with Salmon en Croute this recipe has one of the highest simplicity to deliciousness ratios I know.

Melt 200g butter with 200g chocolate*.
Whisk 6 eggs with 150g sugar until light (both in colour and density) and fluffy. This can take a surprisingly long time, but be patient.
Stir in the butter and chocolate and 150g plain flour.
Pour into 6-8 ramekins and bake at 180C for about 10 minutes, until the top begins to crack. In my opinion it's much better to undercook them and have a runny centre than overdo them and let them go solid and a little bland, as I did tonight.
Serve with ice cream. The fruit is optional.

*Try using half flavoured chocolate such as Green and Black's Mint or Maya Gold.

Short Reviews: The King's Head, Coltishall, Norfolk

2010-03-31T15:07:00.000+01:00

A good gastropub in deepest darkest Norfolk, the King's Head in Coltishall has a fairly standard menu* apart from the fact that about half of it is devoted to fresh and local fish. Make sure you book ahead as I assumed that in a small town in the middle of winter, in the middle of a blizzard no less, there would be no need, but the place was packed and we had to wait until 8:30 for a table, by which time they'd unfortunately run out of the partridge and the lamb. Be careful of the starters, they are huge. After eating my main sized home smoked salmon fillet on guinness "smelt" bread and half the g/f's portion of fried bree? I was already pretty full. On top of that every table gets its own warm loaf**, most of which we took home with us. I thought that prices were quite average for a gastropub, but that would be for London, so I guess it's slightly pricey for Norfolk, the huge starters were around £6, mains started at £10 for pasta and went up to £18 for the steak.

* Not a criticism.
** More of a large bun really. That's not a criticism either.

Short Reviews: Fish Fish, Archway/Highgate

2010-03-28T21:49:00.000+01:00

I'm often amazed at how difficult it can be to find a decent chippie; how hard can it be to take a piece of fresh fish, dip it in egg, milk and flour and deep fry it at the right temperature? I was especially disappointed with Toff's on Muswell Hill, which apparently has a good reputation and seems to be shut of a Sunday evening. And so it was an extra special joy to find lovely fresh light golden batter around some tasty fresh fish and good (albeit suspiciously regular) chips about 2/3 of the way to Highgate from Archway on Sunday evening. It's not particularly cheap (£6.95 for take away fish and chips, £11 to eat in) and I was pleased to actuality be able to finish my portion for once, ie, it wasn't a huge portion, small by fish and chip standards.

Short Reviews: Plum Valley, Chinatown

2010-03-22T21:40:00.001Z

A posh Chinese apparently sanitised for western palettes. The crispy shredded beef was nice and crispy but didn't taste like it had ever seen a chilli, meanwhile I seemed to have ordered the Lancashire hot pot, which I'm not fond of at the best of times. It is possible that we chose badly, our neighbours' set meal looked good, though ours didn't look bad. It was quite pricey too if I remember rightly.

Google Chrome Browser Issues

2010-03-03T11:09:00.021Z

I've used Chrome a few times since it was released, and it's very fast, but for me, it's just not quite there yet, there are these tiny little niggles:

Search as you type. I know I can press ctrl+f, and I know it occasionally mucks up keyboard shortcuts, but I don't care, I want it. Apart from that it makes browsing with the keyboard much easier as you can just hit enter on links, instead of having to hit escape and then enter.
Fonts in Linux aren't quite right, see the flickr menu for example, it goes onto two lines.
Little website specific bugs, for example, in flickr's organiser, if you press enter after adding a tag to a group of images it seems to hit the cancel button rather than the "thanks" button.
~~I'm getting used to using the history page rather than the missing recently closed tabs feature, but the jury's still out on that one.~~ Ah, there is a recenetly closed list on the new tab page.
Would really like to be able to increase the number of thumbnails on the new tab page.
While using the debugger, alt+left/right should still navigate back and forward.
On Linux it has that same annoying issue that firefox has/used to have: if you kill X chrome thinks that it's crashed and wants you to confirm re-opening your tabs.
The spell checker is not as intelligent as firefox's, for example, "exersie" returns no suggestions.
The icon is too similar to Visual Studio's, I get confused :)
It does not check for a site before googling for what you type into the address bar, eg, if you type "intranet" into the address bar you get google results for "intranet", not your local intranet.
The speed boost just doesn't seem as pronounced on Linux.
RSS feeds don't seem to show up like they do in Firefox.
Chrome seems to "steal" Firefox's saved usernames/passwords and history, which I'm not sure I'm happy about.

I also have an issue with Buzz whereby a Buzz that is in both your inbox and buzz-box doesn't get marked as read in one when you read it in the other. I think that it's just delayed, but it does mean that I click on both boxes to see one message. Also, maybe if you're viewing your buzz-box and a new one comes in it should be marked as read straight away.

AND a couple for gmail: gmail search doesn't split words with underscores and the contact autocomplete doesn't search for words after a period.

Self Certificated Sick Leave

2010-02-26T12:59:00.001Z

Please say briefly why you were incapable of work for the period stated above, words like unwell or illness are insufficient.

I had a fever, slight headache and very sore throat which made it difficult to speak, admittedly not essential to my job but I wouldn't want to pass the illness to my colleagues who need to use the phone without sounding like they'e doing a Barry White impression.

Using Outlook Web Access

2010-02-23T15:22:00.002Z

Since my work seem to be refusing to enable IMAP on their new Exchange server and I refuse to use Outlook, which is just too slow and cumbersome for my simple needs, I've spent the last few days getting to know Outlook Web Access, Microsoft Exchange's webmail offering. Here are some tips:

If you're using Firefox and are miffed to find that you can only use the "light" version of OWA, don't be, I prefer the light version and would recommend it to IE users too. And no, OWA does not work on Firefox if you fake the User Agent.
Don't worry about the missing autocomplete/drop down functionality in the To, CC, etc. fields, type in the names of your recipients separated by semicolons and click Check Names.
If you need to import contacts use the desktop version of Outlook.
There is no Discard button on the Compose form (my one annoyance so far), so go straight to the drafts folder, use the check box and click Delete.

It's not too bad really.

Facebook Stream_Get, Offline_Access and getFilters Not Working

2010-02-04T09:59:00.005Z

I am not sure whether I am being stupid, the Facebook API documentation is really bad or the Facebook API just doesn't really work very well, but if you want to display a user's own profile feed on a page (eg, your own feed on your homepage) here are some pointers: (I do not guarantee any of this information is up to date or even correct.)

o) Setup your application on Facebook, it may be easiest to use the sample/example code they give you to start your project. Fill in the Canvas Page URL and point the Canvas Callback URL at your own domain URL. Then visit your Canvas Page URL.

i) To be able to have a page request restricted information from Facebook while the user is not logged in on a particular machine you need to request off line access, you can do this in these two ways, among others:

<fb:prompt-permission perms="read_stream,offline_access">
Grant
</fb:prompt-permission>

<script type="text/javascript">
FB.Connect.showPermissionDialog('read_stream,offline_access', ondone);
function ondone(a){ alert(a); }
</script>

ii) You then need to grab a persistent session key, in PHP this is available like so:

$key = $facebook->api_client->session_key

$key = $_POST[fb_sig_session_key]

iii) Once you've got this key you (or your script) can "become" the user like so:

$facebook->set_user($user_id, $key, 0)

iv) You can then get an array of streams using stream.get:

$streams = $facebook->api_client->stream_get($user_id, $user_id...)

v) I have not worked out how to "filter" stream_get to return just posts, or links, etc. getFilters will return a list of filters, but I have not had any success in changing the return value of stream_get, at all. There are also apps on the filter that is returned that I am sure I have not installed, Doodle Jump for example, wtf?

The $stream[posts][x][type] value in my streams reflects the following:

11 - create/join? group
46 - post
56 - wall post
80 - link
237 - flickr
none - profile pic, note

Changing the content type of my page rid it of some nasty characters:

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />

Remember that PHP's htmlentities() can also take a charset.

See the result at http://kitten-x.com/#facebook.

The ridiculous thing is that you can save an awful lot of time and effort by using the Facebook RSS feeds, such as:

http://www.facebook.com/feeds/share_posts.php?id=userid&viewer=userid&key=akey&format=rss20

To get your key (and userid) go to your notifications page and click on the "Via RSS" link, you can then change "notifications" in the URL to "share_posts", "status", etc.

The TV Licence Swindle

2010-01-27T10:09:00.001Z

So I want to buy a TV licence and pay for it monthly. Simples right? Wrong. It is Jan 20th 2010, so my £142.50 licence will run until Jan 20th 2011 right? Wrong. It will run out on 31st Dec 2010 because they backdate payment to the 1st of the month! I am paying per month, so that will be £11.88 per month for twelve months right? Wrong! It's £28.50 per month for five months. And guess what happens then? You start paying for NEXT YEAR'S LICENCE! WHAT. THE. FUCK?

UPDATE I am now (9 Feb 2010) trying again, this time without the direct debit complication, and yet it's still saying valid until 31 Dec! It's not even backdating it to the 1st Feb.

Converting Oracle SDO_GEOMETRY Fields To Points

2010-01-19T13:21:00.004Z

Just because Google didn't help.

SELECT Alias.FieldName.SDO_POINT.X, Alias.FieldName.SDO_POINT.Y
FROM TableName Alias

The alias seems to be necessary.

Short Reviews: Kim Noble Will Die, Soho Theatre

2010-01-18T17:35:00.000Z

Let me preface this with the letters I, A, C, N, A, A and C, that is, I am certainly not an art critic. In fact, not only do I not know anything about art, but I don't even know what I like. I do not know if I enjoyed Kim Noble Will Die, it certainly passed a short hour of my time, and I do not begrudge it for doing so, though maybe I begrudge the cost of that short hour.

Was it funny? In places. It was also totally gross and certainly not for the faint of heart. I think I would have found it easier to laugh if I'd known for certain that it was all made up, as it was, any laughter there was was often followed by an uncertain feeling of guilt at what you already knew or shock and horror at the next revelation, many of which were graphic, in at least two senses of the word.

I couldn't help feeling a little bit gypped at being asked to leave when a handful of women and their red capped come jars* were asked to stay. I felt more sorry though, for the guy who'd paid £15 to have a bucket on his head for an hour, and the girl who'd been booted out, though at least she did get the consolation Microwave. I'm sure I am supposed to feel gypped at being told to leave, and scared that I might be the one to be booted out, and it wouldn't work if these weren't real people, really booted out, or having a bucket put on their head, but I'm not sure I like it.

* Yes, that's what I said, red capped come jars, there was a lot of coming, and spewing of other bodily fluids, though not much going.

If you actually want to know something about Kim Noble Will Die check out the Guardian review.

Short Reviews: Leong's Legends, Taiwanese, Chinatown, London

2010-01-13T17:30:00.006Z

I don't think I've been to any other Taiwanese restaurant, but Leong's Legends (map) is certainly excellent. If you eat pork and don't mind (quite) a bit of fat I especially recommend the braised pork belly, it's delicious. Service is brisk, prices are very reasonable. Props to ~~Kai~~ RufieC for the find.

Recipes: Rich Chocolate Cake

2009-12-31T16:55:00.025Z

This isn't the easiest cake recipe in the world (see picture), but as long as you make the icing nice and thick it will cover any imperfections in the cake itself. The hardest bit is folding in the egg whites at the end as by that point the mixture has usually solidified into a solid ball, for this reason I melt the butter, not that it helps much. It's also a good idea to let the cake cool (and thereby solidify) completely before slicing it in half, so remember to leave enough time for that.

The cake:

Beat 8oz butter with 8oz brown sugar.
Beat in 4 egg yolks one at a time adding a portion of 4 oz self raising flour after each one.
Fold in the rest of the flour, 4oz ground/chopped hazelnuts and 8oz melted chocolate.
Fold in the beaten egg whites.
cook the cake for 1 hr 15 mins at 170C, 325F, 4G. If it starts to get too brown cover with foil.

Once cooled slice into two and fill with 1/2 pint whipped cream.

The icing:

Melt and mix 6oz plain chocolate with 4oz sifted icing sugar and 4 tablespoons water.

Decorate with chopped hazelnuts.

Short Reviews: Cinnamon Kitchen, Liverpool Street, London

2009-12-28T01:46:00.002Z

The Cinnamon Kitchen is excellent, in fact I think on my last visit it over took Konstam as my favourite restaurant in London.

All of the mains that I have tasted have been very good, the roast goose breast and rack of lamb especially stood out, although I can only describe the safron sauce that the lamb came with as "weird", I'm afraid I can't remember what the goose came with. And the pork chop I had the time before with vindaloo spices (just pleasantly warm) and marsala mash was perfect. The menu seems to change quite regularly, so don't sue me if these aren't available when you go.

While I wouldn't recommend one particular main the desserts are not so consistent, they're all interesting, but I would especially recommend the banana tart tatan, and if you don't like banana the chocolate fondant and mousse. The ice creams are good too.

Price wise the Cinnamon Kitchen is fairly varied, starting at a veggie main for about £12 to the red deer at about £30. My one caveat about this restaurant is that, in the tradition of Indian restaurants everywhere, they try to sell you more than you want or need, on our first visit we ended up with six starters between four people.

Short Reviews: Sandi Toksvig's Christmas Cracker, South Bank

2009-12-21T14:40:00.003Z

Like watching your child's school play: slightly amusing, but only because you know some of the people in it. Five Guys Named Moe and the three opera singers were all very good and professional, something notable by its absence in the rest of the cast. The frequent jokes about needing to rehearse were more true than funny. To cap it all the sound was so bad in our section that we frequently missed parts of the jokes, those that there were. They might get better by the end of the run, but that's not much of a consolation to those of us that paid to see a dress rehearsal for your show.

Wonderful Spam Subjects

2009-12-17T14:08:00.002Z

I love the way that spam filters are forcing spammers to be more and more creative with their subject lines, here are some of my recent favourites.

First we have the euphemism category:

Make your hose's radius great
Classic male 'uppers' Packed and dosed desire
Have a concrete thing in your pants
Settle the warrior in your fly.
ideal for bed-marathons.
Drive her wet and crazy
Getting woody in seconds!
Give your wang bulldozer power!
?"!BE NAUGHTY AND ENDURABLE!"?
Greater male volume and power enhancing.
Be her eromaniac
Enjoy night potency
She'll like your eagerness
Set desire to maximum
Exaltation of having your rod ready-for-action again!

Next we have the bonus "hoister" category, I've no idea why this word is so popular, maybe it's an Americanism:

Hoisters for your pork-lever
Male strength hoisters!
Your favorite ardor hoister!

Then we have the slightly bizarre category:

He was free to write on the snow
Your wife in bath on tape - Looking for sales?
Which she was holding up for it
Erase the memories of the defeat
-..YOUR BLOOD WILL BOIL AGAIN!..- - /!!TABLET OF HAPPINESS!!!/
Give her 3 hour rodeo
Unusual Places to Get It On!
What the doctor ordered - How please knocking-out hottie

On to the Ugh! category:

Energy to tear her ham wallet
Be her tight hole's attacker!
Rub her from inside

And finally the Uh? category:

{?} {?} {?}. {?} {?}
Who knows I collect Blaine dolls, Brian wondered, looking at the one seated on his router.

UPDATE: Looks like I'll have to continually update this post, just had these classics through:

Screw her rabbit hole - If your spaceship needs power
Getting tired after one act? You can easily get energy for ten more this night! - Have surprisingly good lovemaking
Lasting success in bedroom - We can't give you charm of Cazanova: But we can give you wood-on of Ron Jeremy!
Flame of your emotions - Superheat for amorous adventures

UPDATE2:

Your drawbolt will go deeper in - Stimulate necessary growth
What your score? - You'll peck her like crazy

The Lowest Common Denominator

2009-12-09T10:12:00.000Z

I don't often catch BBC TV news, but when I do I am often struck by pointless on-scene reporting and presenters who almost reconstruct events for you, just in case you can't imagine it from their overly emotional language. I prefer the BBC website as it seems less sensationalist, more impartial and removed, but recently there seems to have been a slow slide to more emotive language and articles. For instance, a recent article on the royal harpist convicted of handling stolen goods described her as "hooked on heroin" and "in the grip of drugs", what's wrong with "addicted"? And today I read a story entitled Who was Arthur McElhill? I didn't know who Arthur McElhill was, so I read the story. Having read the article I have no idea as to why it was written and published on the BBC news site. It's a sensationalist horror story that is reminiscent of those cheap glossy mags that have exclamation marks in their titles and that has no useful conclusion.

From The Staff Newsletter

2009-12-03T17:09:00.000Z

The many aims for developing a community of partners include:

Unlocking values, strength and capacity
Developing a channel for sharing customer challenges in a controlled environment and so delivering innovation and good ideas
Working jointly with clients to meet their present and future challenges and needs

I hope that's cleared that up.

Hendry Kai Ian Car Sale Scam

2009-11-28T12:41:00.009Z

If you are a (potential) victim of this scam please email: frauddesk@cityoflondon.police.uk.

Some general rules to live your life by:

If it seems to good to be true then it ~~probably~~ is.
If it quacks like a scam, swims like a scam and waddles like a scam then it's ~~probably~~ a scam.
Even if the deal is reeeeeeeeeeeally good.
Especially if the deal is really good.
Especially if they are selling a new VW Bora in excellent condition for "4000EUR".

Things that should raise suspicions:

A seller does not seem to know which way around their own names should go, for example, Hendry is a surname and Ian is a first name , not vice versa.
You google the person, and find a big fucking warning in RED and YELLOW on their homepage warning ~~idiots~~ people like you not to fall for the scam.
Complicated stories that involve selling goods internationally, eg, I am on business in KENTUCKY USA and I need the iPhone for my son who is in Lagos Nigera... etc, or, the car is in London but for some reason I am selling it on a German website to German users only. See also below.
Random capitalised words, eg: "YOU will ask a friend to come with you to Western Union Office. HE will make a transfer so that HE will be the sender and YOU will be the receiver. YOU will receive the money from Western Union in UK,London"
Native English speakers making simple errors, eg: "If you are not agree with this depozit i will not have eny problem, you can come to my when you want i dont have problem but i will not keep the car for you until you are here..Let me explain to you way i want this depozit:" (Ironically there is a distinct lack of capitalisation here, as well as uses of Z and missing As that wouldn't even be acceptable in America.)

Things not to trust on the internet:

Images of passports. This does not prove anything apart from the fact that the seller has a picture of a passport. That image may have been doctored, the passport may not be real, or they may have just found a picture of someone else's passport that they rather unadvisably put on flickr.
Western Union. It seems that it is very easy to retrieve money from Western Union that is not meant for you.

UPDATE: If you want to scam the scammers a fake Western Union receipt might be in order.

UPDATE: Apparently Mr. Hendry Kai Ian is now offering a BMZ Z4 Cabrio for €5500. Yes, it's still a scam, no matter how much you wish it wasn't.

UPDATE: And a Jeep Wrangler.

Sparkle

2009-11-12T10:56:00.000Z

As it was Guy Fawkes last week the BBC's latest Your Photos gallery is on the subject of sparkle. As you can see, a number of the entries used sparklers to draw pictures on the camera's sensor. If I'd thought about it I would have sent them this picture that I took at Maddy's party.

I Take It All Back

2009-11-10T10:18:00.002Z

I have previously sung the praises of O2's broadband support, well I take it back. I assume that when I joined O2 broadband they still had decent customer support as a hang over from Be Unlimited, well now it seems that O2 have managed to bring their broadband technical support in-line with their mobile technical support, ie, non-existent. I've been having major DNS problems for a few weeks and it seemed to be getting worse (dropping out for about a minute at a time, becoming more and more frequent). I had called a few times, waiting up to 10 minutes on hold and eventually emailed them. They promise to respond within 24 hours. Three working days later someone replied, asking me to call them in order to resolve the issue! The thing is that I know that my issue is not isolated, I don't know many people who use O2 broadband, yet at least one of them has the same issue as me. I have tried calling a few times since, but to no avail, I just get a "we are experiencing high call volumes at the moment" message. You would think that they could hire extra staff. I have since added a couple of public DNS servers to my list which has improved matters. To be fair, since I haven't actually managed to get through, I can't really comment on the quality of support you might get if you did get through, though I didn't reckon much to the email response.

UPDATE: After another three working days I got a second reply saying that the agent could not help me as my from address was not registered with the account. So I have been trying to use their broken form to add my email address to the account. I cannot believe how broken it is, it won't let me save the email address because my postal address is not formated correctly, and the type of phone field is mandatory, and each time the form reloads all the data I have entered disappears.

eBay Annoyances

2009-10-26T10:26:00.002Z

It's been a bit love-hate-hate between me and eBay recently. First eBay managed to set me up with a very nice guy who was very grateful to get a pair of tickets for Daniel Johnston and Laura Marling. He was due to be taking a young lady and had forgotten to get tickets, so he was very pleased to be able to buy a pair from me at face value. Then eBay refused to let me cancel the auction, which was still running, as they have some stupid there must be at least 12 hours remaining to cancel a sale rule. I mean, I didn't have a genuine reason, but what if you were selling a hamster and it died? Or a cigar that got wet? So having gone through the rigmarole of cancelling every single bid by hand, giving the reason as "Item no longer available." and quickly selling them to my girlfriend at £5 I thought that was the end of the matter. But no, this morning I get an arsey email from "flying giraffe" demanding to know why he didn't win the tickets for his £10 bid when they sold for £5, despite the fact that they were at £26 when I cancelled the bids. Here is my reply to him, all the text of his second email is contained within.

> I'm sorry,

Are you really?

> but why have they become unavailable?

They were tragically lost in a terrible tickets-left-in-pocket washing machine accident.

> When you put something up for auction you are
> legally obliged to go through with the sale.

No you are not, there is no contract at that point, otherwise eBay would not let a seller cancel an auction at all. If what you say were true then everybody who cancels an auction would be breaking the law. The only reason eBay stop a seller cancelling an auction 12 hours from the end is that they want to make as much money as possible.

Perhaps I should have just replied "So sue me." Serously, do not email a stranger with some bullshit story about how they've just commited a crime. eBay buyers are quickly becoming my second favourite group of people, just behind pedestrians who jump out in front of me from between (not parked) cars.
Meanwhile my other eBay saga continues.

Blogger Bugs

2009-10-23T17:00:00.011+01:00

I've been wishing I could report bugs to/about blogger.com. Maybe if I post on it someone might hear me.

1) Search

Search on blogger is worse than news.bbc.co.uk. Kind of ironic as google owns (and runs?) it.
i) It does not do partial matches, for example, my post entitled Mixing It Up does not get returned on a search for mix.
ii) Text searches do not match on labels, for example, the post mentioned above is labeled cycling but a search for cycling does not return that post.
iii) Text within the post not matched, eg, the above post contains the word "mixer" in the text, but is still not returned on a search for mixer.
iv) No search on Neil's Meandering Mind blog returns any results. At the moment the fist story is entitled Twitter Vs Facebook, a search for Twitter returns no results. Google hasn't indexed Neil's blog, maybe that's why..?

~~UPDATE: They seem to have fixed iii). Or at least that particular example works now.~~

UPDATE:

v) While editing your blog, if you click Edit Posts, and then do a free text search, the label links on the left do not work. You have to empty the search box and click search and then the label links will work again.

2) Formatting

Formating seems to get lost if I use the Pencil logoed "Edit Post" link on a post rather than going blogger.com -> Edit Posts -> Edit post

UPDATE: I think this is because blogger.com takes me to draft.blogger.com while the post link takes me to www.blogger.com.

3) No WWW

For a while blogger.com did not work for me, I had to use www. This seems to have been fixed now. (See no-www and extra www.)

UPDATE:

4) Comment spam detection does not work.

I don't get many comments on my blog, but roughly half of the comments that I do get are spam. As far as I can see no comment has ever automatically been marked as spam. As with search, google does spam detection so well for gmail, why can't they do it for blogger?

A Christian Response

2009-10-20T15:15:00.002+01:00

Last Friday the Register drew my attention to a post by Australian Christians regarding their find of a "witch's sacrificial stone" covered in "blood". I left a comment pointing out that there is no such thing as witches and that the "blood" was far more likely to be paint or rust, being as it was, on some sort of construction site. Today I received this reply by email, in red ironically enough. (I would like to point out that I am not Australian.)

May the one true living God bless you Jamie and all Australians with His Saving Truth and Everlasting Love! (John 3:16-21)

We at Catch the Fire Ministries will keep praying for you Jamie and all Australians to believe the Bible (Word of God) as the mighty Voice from Heaven that calls, “I died on the cross for you and rose from the dead to save you from eternal death, hell and destruction! Repent of your unbelief / doubt and surrender your life (past, present and future) to Jesus Christ as your personal Savior and Lord before it is too late!”

Time is running out as we will soon stand before Him face to face as our Final Judge! (Revelation 20:11-15)

Say, 'Yes to Jesus, Yes to Heaven Forever!'

Say, 'No to Jesus, Yes to Hell Forever!'

Make the Right Choice Australia, Your Eternal Future Depends On It!

I was slightly economical with the truth in my reply.

I am a Christian, and I do believe the word of the bible, but the bible says nothing about the existence of witches, nor that red stuff is always blood. You wrote to me in red, am I to assume that this is blood too?

Jamie

ps, I am praying for your misguided souls.

Jesus is coming back very soon as the reigning King of kings and LORD of lords! (Revelation 19:11-16)

At the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father! (Philippians 2:10-11)

Are you ready Jamie?

I'm ready!

ps

Does Revelation 19:11-16 really capitalise "LORD"?

Low Battery Warning Beep Script For Linux

2009-10-19T22:33:00.025+01:00

#!/bin/bash

DIR="/sys/class/power_supply/BAT0"
STATUS=$(cat "$DIR/status")

if [ "$STATUS" == "Discharging" ]
then
        WARN=$(cat "$DIR/alarm")
        for PREFIX in "charge" "energy"
        do
                if [ -f "$DIR/${PREFIX}_now" ]
                then
                        REMAIN=$(cat "$DIR/${PREFIX}_now")
                        if [ $REMAIN -le $WARN ]
                        then
                                mplayer /usr/share/sounds/bark.ogg
                        fi
                        break
                fi
        done
fi

Put that in your crontab and smoke it.

Suspicious eBayer Minds

2009-10-19T10:17:00.005+01:00

I recently sold some small bits and pieces on eBay. I wasn't really interested in the small amount of money that they'd generate, I just didn't want to consign them to landfill. The winning bidder of an incomplete set of bicycle skewers, which sold for £3, eventually emailed me to say that he had a cheque for me, "printed by Nationwide". I replied that he could donate the money to charity and I'd send him the skewers. to quote my new favourite blog ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

Dear Jamie Kitson

Thank you for your e-mail. Whilst I have every intention of paying you, I shall now also donate to charity by purchasing one of those magazines from poor young people on the 'high' street.

The cheque will have to go back to the branch which issued it, for shredding and, hopefully, a credit. There can't be that many people with your name where you live and you must have a bank account so I am curious about your response, HOWEVER, I AM keenly aware this is none of my business. If it is a question of security though, as with some eBayers, it would make sense not to use your own name. I am myself concerned about security, which helps to explain my unfortunate delay as I was reluctant to link savings account and card, (which I have done some time ago). Also I am learning while buying, not having been a seller yet. I am wondering whether to have a different ID for sales. Ebay suggests using different eBay and e-mail IDs for security reasons but I think that anyone who encounters Virgin/NTL and tries to do anything with it's e-mail system, is surely doomed. Well I'm sure that's quite enough from me for now, too much probably, so I will leave you with my profuse apologies and regrets.

As soon as I get Paypal I will certainly reimburse you.

Yours Sincerely Andrew

Hi Andrew,

you may have received the skewers by now, if so you will see that I've put a return address on the envelope. I am not overly paranoid about security and my address is publicly available, it just didn't seem worth the effort of going to the bank, queuing, etc. for £3*. In fact I have a two year old cheque from TFL for £2 that I haven't paid in yet.

I don't think your bank will need to credit you as, as I understand it, the money for cheques does not leave your account until the cheque is paid in to the receiver's account.

Cheers, Jamie

* Let's say I get paid £10 an hour, that would make £3 of my time about twenty minutes, roughly the time all that would take.

UPDATE: Oh dear God, will this ever end? I wish I'd just thrown the damn things away.

So far all that has arrived is a "TO PAY" card. It may be nothing to do with you but I have to wonder.
Did you get the packet weighed and proper postage paid? Thanks and sorry to bother you with such a trifling matter but I remembered you saying you don't like going to the bank for small things and it occurred to me that the same could apply to the Post Office. Again I apologise if I'm imagining something absurd and suspect you unfairly, just that you said you posted the set remains weeks ago!
Regards
Andrew

I'm beginning to think that it's me that's being ridiculed.

Dear Jamie

The excess was only 37 pence, plus a fee of £1 and I had to pay with stamps on the card, (at the Post Office which I had to visit anyway). So I shall be refunding you, if indeed it is the skewers and that is just a guess on my part, bearing in mind that I am expecting 15-20 items or so. If it's not the skewers then I shall write you a grovelling apology! Shall let you know when item arrives.

Regards

Andrew

Barclays' Definition of an Upheld Complaint

2009-09-30T13:59:00.003+01:00

A little while ago I made a complaint on the Barclays website about my Barclays Debit Card vs Oyster woes. I wasn't really expecting a response having never had one before, but not only did I get one response, I got two! Admittedly the first was to say that they had promised to keep my updated, and so they were keeping my updated by letting me know that they hadn't finished investigating yet. But the second letter (banks haven't discovered email yet) was the really exciting one. They admitted that some customers had had problems, and went on to say that they didn't have a solution for the problem yet* and then, and this is the best bit, they went on to say that my complaint has not been upheld. Let me just recap, they admit that they have a problem, they admit that they don't have a fix, and yet my complaint is not upheld. One wonders under what circumstances Barclays would uphold a complaint.

* In the meantime I have been to my local branch to request a non-Wave and Pay debit card as suggested. A very helpful chap called the debit card issuing department who said it wouldn't be possible, but after three days he called me back to say that they'd found one down the back of the sofa and that it would be on its way to me soon. I have yet to receive it.

UPDATE: I got on a bus on Friday and did my usual trick of waving my wallet around at the Oyster reader and the bus driver actually asked me if I had a Barclays' card, so it's obviously quite a common issue.

WeGame.com Spam

2009-09-07T11:02:00.006+01:00

I got these two spammy looking messages this morning informing me that "Fioleau" waned to show me a picture. I marked them as spam and clicked the unsubscribe link. But then a friend of mine said he'd received the same thing and that we did actually know a "Fioleau". Curiosity getting the better of me, I foolishly clicked on the "YES" link. Of course, I had to sign up, so I did*. The hilarious, amazing, funny, life-changing image is shown, top-right. Once I had got up off the floor from ROFLMAO I looked for the "delete my account" button. There must be one somewhere, surely? No. In fact I can't even see a "logout" link.

Did "Fioleau" really want to ruin my day with that image, or did WeGame go through her address book spamming every address she had?

* I signed up using a different address to the one that I was spammed on, and at no point did WeGame check I had access to the address I used.

Best Sausage Roll Ever (London, St. Paul's)

2009-09-03T14:40:00.013+01:00

As well as doing fantastic coffees and quality sundry lunch items, Grace on Creed Lane, near St Paul's (in grey here in its previous guise as Tantric Tonic) also do the most perfect sausage rolls (crappy picture, left). Light, crisp and flaky pastry surrounds just the right amount of coarsely ground pork and a whiff of mustard. I'm really not into Ginger Pig sausage rolls (right) where the sausage is the size and shape of your fist.

No Guarantee

2009-08-05T11:40:00.001+01:00

About 18 months ago I bought a refurbished Dell from Gasteiner Technologies which came with their standard one year warranty. Last Friday it died and will no longer power on. I had heard a rumour that under EU rules retailers must always give a 2 year guarantee with substantially expensive/electrical goods. It seems that this is not quite true, but that is because the British Sale of Goods Act meets and exceeds EU law. The SoGA says that an item must last a reasonable length of time. All this left me wondering if standard guarantees/warranties have any point at all? Let alone expensive "extended" warranties.

Usually I would be up for the fight, but I am not really sure that I want to peruse this, I almost accept that I took a risk in buying a refurbished laptop and this time I lost. Having said that they did sell me a laptop for £500 which has broken after 18 months, and that's not really acceptable.

Incidentally I was surprised to find that Dell didn't have one standard price for replacing the motherboard of my laptop. I was originally quoted €400, but when I pointed out I could buy a new laptop for that I was told that I could get a discount, the best deal I was eventually offered was £100 if I bought a three year warranty for £160, which if I was then guaranteed to have a working laptop for three years would have been quite a good deal, if I wasn't so against extended warranties and giving Dell any of my money. I've since been told that buying a laptop from Dell is similar, it's always best to ring them and see what's the best deal you can get from them. The representative also used the rather odd analogy of not being able to take out a warranty on a dead person. After I questioned her on what she'd said she swore that she'd said "insurance", though it still seems a bit of an odd thing to choose to say.

UPDATE: The BBC has a good article on this.

The Mess That Is The Mobile Web

2009-08-04T10:58:00.006+01:00

I wanted to check an ebay auction on my mobile the other day. I typed in m.ebay.co.uk as the m subdomain seems to be the common mobile web shortcut (see m.google.co.uk and m.flickr.com). But that didn't work. Next I tried ebay.co.uk/mobile (I think I might have googled for that) which linked to pages.ebay.co.uk/mobile/web/ which in turn promised me that the address I was after was ebaymobile.co.uk. But that didn't work either! Eventually, I think through googling some more I found it at wap.ebay.co.uk. eBay isn't the first company to use the wap subdomain, see also wap.tfl.gov.uk. I think the most rediculous mobile subdomain I know of is nationalrail's pda.ojp.nationalrail.co.uk. Kai is against the .mobi TLD as he believes that it will fragment the web, but as all these subdomains suggest, we do need separate pages for devices with small screens, as good as CSS is, it cannot do it alone, and once you admit that we need different pages for mobiles wouldn't it be easier if we all knew that we could use the .mobi address? I really do prefer the m subdomain over all of this though, purely because it's fewer letters to type on a tiny keyboard. Incidentally wap.ebay.co.uk is pretty good and ebay.mobi forwards to ebay.com.

UPDATE: Another thing that annoys me is browser detection. If I go to a mobile site I do not want to be redirected to the desktop site just because the site in question doesn't know about the browser I am using.

UPDATE: I emailed ebay about their issue, and surprisingly they responded. In their email was this gem: "We do have carrier-specific mobile sites." WTF?

Technology Bites

2009-07-31T11:57:00.007+01:00

I received what looked like a piece of spam from one of my contacts today. I called him to check and sure enough he hadn't sent it. It seems that spammers are more and more turning to cracking peoples' accounts in order to get spam through filters.

Various issues with the EasyJet website:

Insurance is still added automatically, despite orders by EU regulators to do otherwise.
Once you have provisionally chosen your flights, you don't seem to be able to change them without actually "removing" them first.
Baggage costs £8 per journey leg, but booking a return journey you are only given the option for the entire return journey at £16. As far as I can see the only way to get individual £8 option is to book the two legs separately, and then you have to pay the card fee twice, which is £3 for debit cards and £6 for credit cards, so you may not be much better off anyway.

Booking train tickets is also a bloody nightmare, the train companies seem intent on hiding return fares and promoting single fares. Yes two singles can be cheaper, but you often have to be very flexible with your times otherwise you can end up spending twice what a return would have cost. Bring on renationalisation I say.

My HTC Touch HD is finally back from the repair centre working!

Fourth Time Lucky

2009-07-11T18:29:00.000+01:00

My HTC Touch HD is back at the repair shop. For the fourth time. Since HTC fixed the scratches, after much persuading, that were picked up from the first time that I sent it back the screen had been going blank intermittently. I really don't think much of the quality of their repairs.

Flashing The HTC Touch HD

2009-06-25T21:36:00.002+01:00

Because I keep forgetting:

Start Win7 in "allow unsigned drivers" mode.
Turn off USB connectivity in ActiveSync.
Start the phone in bootloader mode by holding down vol down while booting.
Update the drivers to those here. Note the 64 bit option. If "the device cannot start" unplug the phone and plug it back in again.
Run USPL.
Flash ROM. (Serial HT847KD00009.)

I guess steps 2. and 4. may be unnecessary once you've done it once.

Or...

Copy BLACIMG.NBH into the root dir of your Storage Card.
Turn off your device by using the Power Button.
Remove storage card.
Go to Boot loader mode. (Push and hold Vol. Down + press Power button.)
Insert storage card when you see USB displaying on screen.
Disallow USB connections in ActiveSync.
Disallow On-Access virus scanning.
Run USPL 2.5.
Phone should restart and ask you to press the power button to start flashing the ROM.
Apparently you should always do a hard reset after an update.

More Service From HTC

2009-06-16T10:36:00.000+01:00

Finally getting to the bottom of my HTC service woes. Actually spoke to the repair centre today, who claim that there is no way that my phone could have been scratched while in their care. When I told them that after the first repair it had come back without a screen protector it sounded like I was making it up :( They also said that I didn't fill in the check sheet the first time to say there were no scratches, well that was because there were no scratches. Also really annoyed that it's taken days of effort from me to actually get this information out of them.

HTC Service: No Longer Funny

2009-06-15T23:59:00.000+01:00

So I sent my HTC Touch HD back for the third time a week ago. Usually by this point I have had about three emails giving me some useless, meaningless, but I now realise still reassuring, information. I called today as I am going on holiday tomorrow, and I don't really want it delivered while I am away. The first call made me wonder if they had just lost it. The phone that is. The guy said that it had been delivered but that "delivery had failed" and then asked if it had been collected. Well yes. He didn't call me back. The second person tried to call the repair centre while I was on hold. When they didn't pick up he explained that they might be on a break, and would I like him to ask their secretary to get them back in from their break. Not especially. He also couldn't see any record of my request to not have the phone delivered until I'm back from holiday. He didn't call back either. At 5 I called back again, and finally was told that my phone was "on hold" due to the fact that I hadn't replied to the email that I hadn't received. Apparently I needed to answer some question, which she couldn't tell me, but she would email the repair centre, which by this time was closed, who would email me the question again.

Recommended Listening

2009-06-09T10:21:00.003+01:00

This year's ever excellent Reith Lectures began this morning on Radio 4. The first lecture, Markets and Morals is especially relevant with the news today of Shell capitulating days before they go to court over the executions of Nigerian activists 13 years ago.

Favourite quote from the lecture: "We need to recognise that there are some things that money can’t buy and other things that money can buy but shouldn’t."

Scratches Without The Service

2009-06-05T14:34:00.000+01:00

I spoke too soon. Once I'd received my phone back for the second time, still scratched, I wasn't so happy with HTC's service. I am even less happy with their service a day later when neither of the two people who've promised to get back to me have done so, and I still haven't received any emails regarding the next pick up.

Apparently they have two problems. My phone is regarded as still in transit, despite the fact that I have it in my pocket, this means that they cannot open a new support call. Also they have just discovered that they cannot make outgoing calls, to people such as the transit company/department to ask about why my phone is reported as still in transit. Presumably this is also why no one has called me back, though why they didn't know they wouldn't be able to call me back is anyone's guess.

Incidentally I have found that the best way to get through to someone quickly who will be able to hear and understand you is to dial 01279 206906 and then choose technical support, option 2.

Something That Sucks About news.bbc.co.uk

2009-06-03T16:46:00.001+01:00

I really like the BBC News site, but there is one aspect that completely sucks: search. First you type in your search terms, so far so good. Now press enter or click "Search". What's this? A random list of results from the entire BBC site. But I was on the news site, blatantly I want news results only. So click on "News & Sport". Now I want the most recent result, so I click "Order by date". But I'm not getting the video I want. Oh, videos are separate, of course, on the right. So I click "more like this" under the videos, but it's not there. Now how do I get back to the normal results? How many clicks is that? I don't know, I've lost the will to live.

Eventually I gave up and found the video I was after on YouTube. Albeit in worse quality.

Another thing they could do would be to provide links to new stories from previous articles on the same story, currently they only do it in the opposite direction.

What I Learnt Today

2009-06-02T22:54:00.000+01:00

When you get spam messages from your friends on Yahoo! Messenger! and the like about pills to reduce the size of your measurement in one direction or increase it in another, it is apparently not because that friend has a virus on their computer as I mistakenly assumed, it is apparently because their password has been compromised and there is some presumably automated process out there sending messages remotely. So my replies of "you have a virus" were wasted, you actually need to email your friends and tell them to change their passwords. So if you happen to be reading this Sonia, Diana, Morgan or Raquel, change your passwords.

Service With A Scratch

2009-05-29T14:11:00.001+01:00

About a month ago my phone (an HTC Touch HD) started to behave oddly, often not having reception in residential areas and not being able to make calls or send text messages even when it did. Being used to fluffy (l)user support calls I gave it some time and eventually compared the reception of my phone to my friend's HTC Diamond Pro. The reception of my phone was undoubtedly, markedly worse so I started the returns' procedure, which apart from an amusing email ("The quotation has been resolved... Don’t worry, we’ll keep you fully informed.") and phone call ("What does 'The quotation has been resolved' mean?... This line's very bad... isn't that a bit of a problem for a call centre?") went smoothly and my phone was picked up and fixed under warranty, without question (despite the fact I'd bought it on eBay) in 5 working days. However the screen has been scratched and the unlock code wouldn't work as they'd changed the main board and hence the IMEI number. So I called them up again (I have to say that it really is a lot more pleasant and less stressful to speak to a native English speaker) and again they agreed to take it back to fix it without question, they will even collect it this very afternoon. So I am left with an overall sense that HTC offers good service, despite the fact that if their phone hadn't broken in the first place, and then hadn't been scratched while being repaired I wouldn't have had to go through their returns procedure, no matter how quick and pain-free it is.

UPDATE

Bear Grylls Is A Fucking Idiot

2009-05-27T17:08:00.005+01:00

I've only seen two bits of Bear Grylls' TV program. Is it just coincidence that both of them have brought me to the conclusion that he's a fucking idiot? The first time I just walked in in time to see him crawling breathlessly a few metres through a mangrove swamp in Panama. He finds some sort of mussel type thing, stabs it with his knife, tastes it, spits it out with a horrified "UGH" and throws the poor wasted thing away. He then climbs a tree for no apparent reason, takes his shirt off for no apparent reason, other than perhaps to give the lucky viewers a chance to see his torso and does a frivolous back flip off the tree back into the swamp. He then struggles another couple of meters onto a sandbank, spies a crab which he again stabs with his knife. He lets us know that the crab is well and truly dead, despite the fact that it is still desperately trying to flee and you can almost hear it screaming in pain and frustration. He then rips off one of its claws, sucks out some of the flesh, again finds that the taste is not to his liking and throws the wretched creature away.

The second clip that I saw was picked for me by the annoying guy with stupid hair from the Saturday Night Project. In it Bear Grylls is demonstrating that you can drink the freshly squeezed juice of elephant dung. Nobody needs to know that, let alone have it demonstrated. He's just showing off.

Now it may seem that all survival shows are this pointless and frivolous, but somehow people such as Ray Mears just don't seem that bad. Ray Mears is so much calmer and more thoughtful, and although I can't really see myself getting stranded in the Rockies and needing his camping skills, he does demonstrate things that you could see yourself doing. I cannot see myself trying still warm crab, nor elephant shit juice. Apparently I am not the only one to make this comparison.

If you're interested, the first clip I mentioned is here and here, but you really don't need to find a specific bit of his program it's all ridiculous, just before these clips he covers himself in mud.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that my parents seem to think that Bear Grylls is some sort of modern day missionary, though I am not sure where they got that idea from.

UPDATE: Apparently he has helped some people.

The World Is Not Barclay's Oyster

2009-05-22T12:10:00.004+01:00

I started using a new wallet recently. And my oyster card stopped working. My being a cyclist combined with the rush usually associated with public transport I didn't have a lot of opportunity to investigate. It was a bit confusing though as it is just a standard leather wallet. It recently occurred to me however that it could be down, not to my wallet, but my new Barclay's debit card, which has these wavy lines on. I called Barclay's only to be told, rather condescendingly that the two cards will not interfere. So I off I trotted to Blackfriar's station, had a little chat with the guard and did some testing. Sure enough, the Oyster card was fine when my Barclay debit card was not in my wallet. The card reader even stated "Too many oyster cards" when my debit card was present. So I called Barclay's again to request a new card sans "wave and pay" technology. No deal. But I was told that I needed to call Oyster and give them my card details which would sort the problem. Needless to say I was not convinced. I called Oyster, but unfortunately I don't seem to have the right sort of card, you have to have a OnePay card to be able to pay for Oyster directly from your Barclay card. I am now bored of talking to people in call centres, do I really have to move banks to fix my Oyster card?

UPDATE: My third phone call to Barclay's got the answer I was after: Apparently I can request to "downgrade" my debit card, but only at my local branch.

See also my further update.

Welcome To The 21st Century

2009-05-19T22:23:00.010+01:00

I called my GP surgery today to ask for a repeat prescription. I was staggered by their response: email the request.

If it's surprising to see the NHS finally reach the computer age (I can also view my blood results on-line, though there seems to be no cohesion between departments, the website I use is for renal patients only) you would hope that a major telecoms company has their shit together, unfortunately this is often not the case. When I signed up with O2 broadband I had to use a different username and account to my mobile account. After a little while I was given the option to link the two accounts, but this does not mean that the two are integrated, just that I only have one username, I have to chose to switch between the accounts once I am logged in, despite the fact that I have a "My Broadband" link while using my mobile account.

Paypal are still sending out emails that look phishy, showing a link that looks like paypal.co.uk, but which actually links to email1.paypal.com/xyz.

I've had increasing levels of spam in my gmail inbox in the last couple of weeks, I can't remember the last time I saw a piece of spam before then. It started with one or two a day but rose to about 7 on Sunday. I haven't had any today or yesterday so hopefully that's the end of it.

rss2email Update

2009-05-06T17:07:00.001+01:00

Setting up rss2email on your own server and then adding functionality to allow anonymous users to subscribe to your blog is a bit long-winded and would feel a lot like reinventing the wheel, so let me introduce you to FeedBurner. To be honest I am not sure what the point of FeedBurner is, but hidden away in its functionality (Feed -> Publicise -> Email Subscriptions) is the facility to offer users the ability to subscribe to your blog updates by email. See the Subscribe by Email link on the left for example. This is still a little bit of a long-winded option as the setup isn't the most straight forward and there seems to be a lot of functionality on offer if all you're interested in is updates by email.

www.supportonclick.com Scam Update

2009-04-30T11:32:00.001+01:00

Happened to find this brief, interesting description of what I believe to be the same computer support phone scam that was attempted on my mother a few weeks ago.

Iris Browser / The Reason I Sold My iPhone

2009-04-29T15:54:00.005+01:00

When I first started this post, nearly a month ago, I wrote that Iris browser from Torch Mobile still feels a bit like a beta product. But development of Iris is proceeding at such a pace that this is no longer the case. Iris has always felt like a solid browser, ever since I first started using it at version 1.0, unlike iPhone's Safari which regularly crashed on me. Version 1.0 was all of two months ago now and since then virtually all of the issues that have niggled at me have been addressed (the one major one remaining being copy and paste* within the browser).

When you first start using Iris you may find that the specifics of the user interface odd and even annoying, as my first email to the ever responsive Iris feedback address attests. However after you've been using it for a while these unique traits start to make sense. Clicking and holding to activate a link really helps to avoid accidental clicks, the resulting animation on the link itself, which I can only describe as a visual "boing", serves as Iris's own haptic feedback and the animation on moving/opening/closing tabs serves to inform you about what's going on, and I am assured that pages load while this is going on. Another great feature of Iris is the little inset scrolling window, which not only serves to show you where you are on the page but is also a very quick way to scroll around the page. It's unbelievably quick.

One of the best things about Iris is (was) that you get the iPhone gmail interface. Unfortuntely google, in their infinite wisdom, recently "improved" their User-Agent detection code which foobared Iris in that you no longer got the nice iPhone interface, but instead got the horrible (on such a large screen as the Touch HD) mobile interface. I noticed that this link from google calendar will still give you the iPhone interface (on any browser).

Having said all that, Iris isn't quite perfect. The click and hold isn't quite consistent, I think that some javascript actions happen immediately while others need the hold. Drop down lists appear so small as to be almost unusable, as previously mentioned there's no copy and paste within the browser and some of the user interface still isn't quite brilliant, see history and bookmarks and Opera does some stuff better, such as their auto-full screening and easy access tabs, back and home buttons.

A friend asked me to give a quick mention to W3's WCTMB test with its new canvas test, on which Iris scores 11 out of 16.

* You can actually copy a single word or whole link, and paste, by tapping and holding in the usual context menu way.

rssfwd Is Dead, Long Live rss2email

2009-04-27T11:08:00.001+01:00

I really like having the few RSS feeds that I follow forwarded to my inbox. For a long time I relied on the ever increasingly flaky rssfwd. Since rssfwd finally died a death I have been looking out for a similar service, and eventually came across rss2email, which is now happily installed and running on my server (so easy to setup!). One friend helpfully described rss2email as "old news", so this blog post goes out to anyone else who might have missed it.

Mixing It Up

2009-04-18T17:04:00.001+01:00

Apologies for the long and tedious post, believe it or not it was requested.

So back in August the company I work for was purchased by another company. The list of benefits we were given included the Cycle2Work scheme.

If you're unaware of the Cycle2Work scheme, it's a government initiative offering tax breaks on the purchase of bikes. It's effectively a loan from your employer which you pay back over 12 months from your pay packet before tax, and you don't pay VAT, which means that you save roughly 40% on a new bike. The down side is that after the 12 months you don't officially own the bike. I believe the normal practice is that you then buy the bike for 6% of the original value of the bike.

Now the Cycle2Work scheme shouldn't really be counted as a benefit as it's open to all employees, no matter who you work for, but I imagine that putting my head through a brick wall would have been easier than trying to get it through my previous company's admin staff. Then there was the news that the new company chose to only offer the Cycle2Work scheme through Evans, certainly not the cheapest cycle shop in the world, and something that shouldn't be necessary. Evans also do the scheme a little differently, your company pay them direct and then Evans send you a voucher for the price of the bike. Companies should usually directly give you a cheque for the value of the bike.

So in September I got copies of the forms I needed to fill in and went off to Evans to choose a bike (so I'd know how much to apply for). Originally I had in mind a single speed/fixed light-weight hybrid, and the Charge Plug immediately caught my eye. Once I'd decided that single speed/fixed were pretentious I had a look at the Tap but decided that with the saving I was going to make I might as well go with the more expensive £800 Mixer. Evans didn't have any Mixers in at the time, but I figured that the Cycle2Work voucher would a little while anyway.

After a month or two I went to HR to enquire about the non-appearing voucher, unfortunately English isn't her first language so it took me three attempts over several weeks or months before I understood that the forms would not be processed until we had signed our new contracts in December. Meanwhile the Mixer was still on order so I wasn't too worried.

The voucher arrived some time in February, by which time the Evans' website had started a cycle of naming a date when the Mixer would be available then going back to "contact us for details". Eventually I called Evans who said they couldn't tell me any more than the website, but amazingly gave me the phone number of their supplier when asked. The supplier was very helpful, telling me that the problem was a lack of the Shimano Alfine rear hubs, but Evans should be getting two Charge Mixers in the following week. I called Evans and practically begged to have one of the two and my wish was granted. Unfortunately by this time Evans had put the price of the bike up to £900 and I forgot to see if they'd do a price match as some people were doing it for considerably less.

So was it worth the wait? I suppose so. It's a bit heavy, especially at the back and the gearing could be a bit higher (I usually start in 4th or 5th and regularly get up to top gear, 8th), but the Alfine hub is apparently much superior to the Tap's Nexus. The disks are pretty nice too, my first.

After having a look at all the stickers on the bike I am a bit confused as to who actually makes it. I would have thought Charge make the bike, Evans sell the bike, but it doesn't look that simple. There's the Hot Wheels sticker, who are apparently distributors. Then there is Infinity who I think make the frame. Alex Rims and Continental tyres take care of the wheels. Shimano of course do the gears and breaks. Then there is the Ghetto of Nunney Castle, who I think might test the bike.

UPDATE: I finally got around to weighing my bike, on bathroom scales, so it's not that accurate, but the Charge Mixer weighs about 14kg.

A Literal Apology

2009-04-16T23:05:00.000+01:00

For literally years I have been internally mocking people who use "literally" with sayings that aren't literally true, eg, "my heart literally broke". Well now I am offering an external apology as apparently it's ok to use "literally" as an idiom intensifier, as long as you are careful of "unintentionally bizarre or humorous effects." According to Chambers.

www.supportonclick.com Scam

2009-04-16T13:44:00.015+01:00

My mum had a call the other day from someone claiming to know that her computer was slow and/or had a virus. By unfortunate coincidence when she turned on her computer the Microsoft Windows Genuine Advantage popup popped up, making her think there might be something in the call. Fortunately she was genuinely busy, asked them to call back and called me. My first thought was who would have her number? Certainly not Microsoft. Possibly her ISP, who, unless they were being extremely vigilant, would be very unlikely to call her about computer problems. After a bit of googling I decided it was probably this scam. Today they called back, and sure enough mentioned the website/company that Staffordshire trading standards warned against, www.supportonclick.com.

Also see my update.

UPDATE: Several comments on this post claim that SupportOnClick is genuine, it's not, and my mother is still receiving calls from them despite the fact that there is nothing wrong with her computer and she has asked them not to call her. I am now going to close comments on this post, but if anyone from SupportOnClick would like to contact me, or sue me, I would welcome their comments, and an explanation as to why my mother is still being harassed.

There is now a series of videos on YouTube chronicling one of these calls. It's pretty boring to be honest, it starts to get interesting with the third video.

UPDATE March 2010: My girlfriend's dad has now also had this happen to him, he was instructed to install TeamViewer and told he could call them back on 02033185274.

UPDATE: This has now reached BBC News. And I missed this original story from the register.

You Learn Something New Every Day

2009-04-16T10:44:00.002+01:00

I think I must have been off school the day we did the beginner's Unix class. I noticed some weirdness in my apache error logs today, even weirder, the user was apparently using my own external IP address. After a bit of investigation I noticed that w3m was running on my server, on pts/5, which according to who I was on using bash. I first had to look up tty and pts. Ok, got that. Now switch screens and find pts/5, but w3m doesn't seem to be running. A helpful colleague asked if I'd tried fg, which I'd never even heard of. Turns out you can send processes to the background using ctrl-z* and bring them back with fg, would you believe it? Guess that's how people survive without screen.

* I had wondered sometimes what happened to processes went when I hit ctrl-z accidentally, doh.

Arsus

2009-04-07T14:11:00.001+01:00

As previously mentioned I bought my sister an eeePC last September, and within a couple of months the keyboard and trackpad started to fail. By December the machine was unusable and I started the returns procedure. As I said, the beginning was a bit of a challenge, but as they say, start as you mean to continue. Twice in February I rang to request the promised UPS weighbill, then when I called in March I was told that the procedure had changed and that I would receive a text message. Needless to say that didn't arrive either. The next time I rang the representative said she'd just book the collection herself for the following Monday. She also said that packing the eeePC wasn't essential as the driver would have a box. Well the driver did turn up, unfortunately sans box, which was more than a little annoying as the eeePC had been left with someone who had nothing to do with the situation who then had to run around the house looking for something to put it in. Amazingly it was back three days later, unamazingly not completely fixed :(

Sweet SA

2009-04-01T22:30:00.005+01:00

My first impressions of South Africa might make me sound like a bit of an idiot, but so be it.

For some reason I really wasn't expecting the poverty, I guess I was thinking I was coming to a first world/developed nation, but the disparity in wealth seems to be on a par with Brazil or Colombia.

In India the poor people are really fucking poor, but the rich people don't appear that rich. In Brazil and Colombia and now South Africa (specifically Rio, Cartajena and Cape Town) what is shocking is the disparity between the rich and the poor, kids without shoes walking between BMWs and Mercedes.

Of course what I was expecting was racial disparity. I was wondering whether I would find mostly whites being served by mostly blacks. For the first couple of days that's what I got, but then Kai and I went to a comedy night. The audience was about 50/50 and the large majority of the comedy revolved around race, which really surprised me. The funny thing was (haha) that the most racial comedy came from a British woman.

People seem a lot more open and honest when it comes to race here, it always seems a bit of a taboo back in the UK. And "coloured" is an acceptable term to describe people of mixed race. Also Afrikaanas aren't all as bad as the films make out :)

There are a couple of really depressing things about South Africa: politics (and corruption) and HIV/AIDS. Corruption seems endemic at all levels, we were advised that the police are bribable with practically anything you might have with you, a create of Red Bull was a real life example given, and while we were over there there were two major corruption news stories in just three weeks. One was the case of Schabir Shaik, a close friend of president-to-be, Zuma's, who having been sentenced to 15 years on corruption charges mysteriously contracted terminal high blood pressure and has not spent a day in prison. The other major corruption news story was the disbanding of the corruption fighting police force, the Scorpions, apparently for being far too effective. There are a lot of people hoping that the ANC don't receive 66% of the vote at the approaching election as it would enable them to alter the constitution to prevent Zuma from being prosecuted. Politics and HIV/AIDS go hand in hand as Zuma's rape case unfortunately demonstrates. Zuma was acquitted of rape, but what went uncontested was that he knowingly had unprotected sexual intercourse with a women he knew to be HIV positive, saying that he showered afterwards to "cut the risk of contracting HIV". At the time he was the leader of the National AIDS Council. As for HIV/AIDS itself, the figures speak for themselves. Some townships have infection levels as high as 70%.

Since writing this it seems that the corruption charges against Zuma are being miraculously dropped.

Oh FFS

2009-03-31T18:30:00.001+01:00

For a long time now I have been wondering why I can't login to my Nationwide account in linux. There's no error message, I am just returned to the login page, which isn't very helpful. This evening I decided to try a fresh firefox install. So I started firefox with -ProfileManager and created a new profile. And I could login. I don't have a lot of plugins installed, in fact the only one I could think might have any effect modifies the referer, I usually have it set to not embed the referer. It turns out the Nationwide site needs the referer. So there you go if you've been wondering about it too.

Unintelligent Design

2009-03-18T17:23:00.001Z

You hear some daft ideas for cleaning up the web, but the Mormons are really taking the biscuit:

CP80.org wants all adult material banned from Port 80 ... and ... also suggests that “ISPs could simply block all IP addresses originating from a non-compliant country”.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/03/18/mormons_icann/

One wonders what their definition of "simply" is.

Meanwhile our (UK) government continues its march towards making certain thoughts illegal:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/03/18/thought_crime/

Just Say No

2009-02-20T17:36:00.000Z

Why can't people just say no? It's fine, sometimes the answer is "no", I understand, sometimes it's not possible, or it really is more than your job's worth, but please don't waste 15 minutes of my precious time trying to placate me. Just say no!

Case 1, Novotel Cardiff: When I complained that the internet charge was not clearly displayed on the website and requested a refund the slimy manager came out to see me, asked me if I'd like a drink and asked me to sit with him. He spent 15 minutes telling me in various ways that he would not waive the charge, nor refund me. The receptionist could have told me that!

Case 2, Medical Centre London: Having been prescribed 5 x 5mg tablets on the previous occasion, despite requesting 25mg tablets, I now requested a bottle of 100 5mg tablets (rather than the annoying individually sealed packs of 14). Unfortunately I was given a prescription for 25mg tablets, despite being on a daily dose of 20mg. Now the receptionist could have said "Sorry, only the doctor can alter your prescription." But no, not when she can waste 15 minutes of my time!

Case 3, Chemist's London: I took the prescription to the chemist anyway, hoping they might be out of 25mg tablets. Unfortunately not. Yet again I was treated to a 15 minute ear bashing and ended up leaving the shop while the woman was still talking at me.

I Don't Know Much About Theatre...

2009-02-16T15:32:00.000Z

I wish that I could write an exciting, witty and accurate review of Shun-kin, but as they say, having a blog does not make you a journalist. Suffice it to say that it's excellent. It's on for another week at the Barican, tickets are available. Go and see it. Your only excuse not to would be a phobia of sub-titles, which at times take your eyes away for too long from this beautiful production, I wished that they could have slowed it down a little, though it's already two hours long. We sat in seats CC13 and 14, which at £16 seemed very good value for money, and the only way in which we found our view "restricted" was that occasionally we missed the image projected onto the back of the stage.

Maybe it's the Japanese culture, or maybe it's my ignorant stereotypes, but there was none of that lovie back-patting that I always imagine synonymous with theatre, the sort of thing you get when Christian Slater stars in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest.

If you do go note that the Barbican seems to have strict policy on not allowing late comers into the theatre.

More On 4

2009-02-09T11:27:00.010Z

I promise this is not going to turn into some Radio 4 fan boy site, but Start The Week on censorship this morning was really interesting, and also touched on the Rushdi fatwa.

What I Heard Tonight

2009-02-09T00:10:00.021Z

Radio 4's Classic Serial this and last week was the Arab Chronicles of the First Crusade. Well worth a listen, though I think you may have to see if you can find it by foul means, rather than fair as since it was played over two weeks you will only be able to listen to the second part* on Listen Again.

Before the Saturday edition was Archive on 4, which by coincidence I believe was this week about the fatwa issued against Salmon Rushdi, also worth a listen.

* Tell a lie, they're both here for at least the next six days.

Spam Cycle

2009-02-08T13:26:00.016Z

Got this today:

Clicked on the "Change who can send you invitations and requests" link. Was asked to sign in. Unfortunately I don't have an account (with this email address, I even tried the "I forgot my password" link, to no avail). So how the fuck am I suppose to unsubscribe Microsoft Windows Live?

Old News

2009-02-05T22:19:00.045Z

As instructed by the iPhone Dev Team, I held off updating to 2.2 for some considerable time. Having now been given the go ahead I can report what many people must have known for quite some time:

The battery life is much improved. I usually have to charge every two days, recently after four days the battery was still reporting about 50%!
Responsiveness is somewhat improved. After the upgrade I was very impressed with speed of loading SMS and Maps for example, however it seems to be slowing down again :-/
FStream works properly! Meaning that I can actually (and practically) stream BBC radio over 3G, yay!

Having said all that, after spending an hour on a train trying to use FStream I found that 3G reception is frustratingly flaky and the battery life wasn't *that* much improved, when you actually use your phone.

Of course if I had a mobile with an FM radio none of this would be an issue. So that was the excuse I used to buy an HTC Touch HD.

Having now had a chance to do the same train journey again (in double the time, thanks to the snow) I have now discovered that FM reception is as flaky as 3G coverage, and even ends up being more frustrating, because at least the stream just stops, whereas with FM you drift into intermittent static.

The Touch HD was a bit of a disappointment, mainly because it just wasn't that different to the iPhone. The touch screen is also nowhere near as sensitive* (different technologies I believe) and is not even consistent, the edges need more pressure, which means that often the 'a' key does not register my weak strokes. I really like the predictive text feature, although it's a shame that it doesn't try to correct typos like the iPhone. (I've been told that the iPhone has a predictive text feature, but I can't find it.) Windows Mobile is pretty horrid and the Opera browser is a bit slow and has a nasty habit of continually auto-scrolling to the point which you were on on the previous page while a page is loading and you're trying to scroll. One thing that is definitely better is finding and using contacts, you can always start typing a name and the most recently used will popup. Also the camera seems pretty damn good.

* When I first got the iPhone I actually found this annoying.

Steroid Stomach

2009-01-27T22:43:00.002Z

Today I have eaten:

2 poached eggs with hummus and sweet chilli sauce on toasted muffin halves with tea.
3 small cheese and pickle sandwiches with tea.
A banana and apple. With tea.
A toasted ham and cheese croissant with tea.
A hot cross bun with tea.
1.5 large portions of dinner (lasagne with potatoes instead of lasagne) with bread and tea.
A biscuit with tea.
Another hot cross bun. With tea.

Now I am hungry again.

Negative Interest

2009-01-03T21:14:00.001Z

Seems someone at the BBC reads my blog ;)

Plain English

2008-12-30T22:02:00.001Z

After being asked not to hesitate with comments/criticisms of our new work website, a colleague and I decided that we would speak up for plain English:

Hi

I think the following sentence has a couple of pluralisation inconsistencies:

xxx group provides local authorities with (the) ultimate software solution(s) that deliver(s) on the promise of seamless integration and automation from citizen interface(s) to document storage.

But it's still quite long and indecipherable. The following seems to make more sense:

xxx group provides local authorities with software which delivers seamless integration and automation from user interfaces through to document storage.

Cheers, Jamie

The next day I checked the website and they'd used our wording verbatim!

Stupidity

2008-12-29T10:52:00.003Z

I received a letter from my GP practice the other day requesting that I provide proof of my address as I had yet to do so. I rang today asking if receiving the letter was proof enough. The receptionist failed to see the hilarious irony of the situation, perhaps due to having to work on the 29th December and speak to idiots ringing up and taking the piss.

Mardy Old Bumhead

2008-12-20T10:29:00.000Z

Call me a mardy old bumhead (I am nearing 30 after all), but I when I go to see the beautiful sounding (and looking:) Laura Marling I do not want to have to listen to three kids discussing their disappointing drugs score, nor the rest of the audience singing over the top of her. I did not come here to listen to you lot sing! That coupled with the fact she only played three or four songs and the high quality of the other seven or so bands on the Fee Fie Foe Fum line-up made her a bit of a low-light :(

In other news:

I didn't realise just how many Americans are in prison, 1% of the adult population! As stated in a boing boing article on a death row prisoner. An interesting point is made that the population has risen from "normal" to world record beating levels in just the last thirty years.

Continuing my thoughts on the evening up of prices here and abroad, hopefully we might be hearing less of the cries of "rip off Britain!" Though of course those cries will be replaced by complaints about not being able to afford so much while on holiday and that their dear old aunt can no longer afford a choritzo in her local Spanish supermarket on her quickly devaluing UK pension. Still, if she's bought the house she'll be quids in.