Arsus

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

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

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

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

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...

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

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

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

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

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.