by Suw on October 31, 2006
After much consideration, discussion and changing of minds, this year Kev and I decided to try a Frank pumpkin. Frank, of course, being the big scary rabbit from Donnie Darko. Easier said than done because he doesn't exactly have a face that reduces easily to shades of light and dark. We also had problems with an overripe pumpkin which managed to be both squishier and thicker-walled than we would have liked. The carving was a wee bit rushed, and lack of good pumpkin carving tools does sort of limit one's finesse, but still… it's a jack o'lantern. We will have to refine this design for next year. And get some better cutting implements.
Frank, the Donnie Darko Jack O' Lantern
technorati tags:hallowe'en, frank, donnie darko, jack o lantern
by Suw on October 31, 2006
So that's it. My fling with the Blackberry Pearl is over. It has been sent back to T-Mobile, from whence it came.
I tried to buy a Nokia E61 instead, on the same Web 'n Walk plan, but T-Mobile has taken against me quite severely, telling me first that “because of your credit status we are unable to offer you a pay monthly phone”, and then when I tried again, “We're sorry but we're currently unable to
place your order, as your credit status prevents us offering you an
additional line on your account.”
Bullshit. My credit rating hasn't taken a dive in the last week, and no, thank you very much, I don't want to buy a copy of my credit report directly from the credit reporting company. This is more about T-Mobile's stupid system wherein you can't keep an account but change the phone, you have to cancel the account and then buy a new one with a different phone.
This is the most appalling customer service. First, they missell me the phone, now they are refusing to sell me the phone I actually want.
I'm tempted to just stay with Orange, but to be honest, the T-Mobile plan is a lot cheaper than the Orange one, and Orange don't seem to have the same range of phones. Luckily, my Treo seems to have magically healed itself (for the most part), so I wonder if the wig-out was due to water in the works rather than anything intrinsically wrong with it. Although the slowly growing yellow wiggly squiggle on the screen remains so it is definitely still on its way out.
This will all get sorted out eventually, but only the little fishes know when. Meantime, use the old phone number if you're going to call me because the 'new' one no longer works.
technorati tags:t-mobile, phones, crappy customer service
by Suw on October 28, 2006
You may have noticed a sudden slew of old posts being republished here, all of which have now been deleted. You may be wondering wtf that was all about.
It's ok. It was just Kevin playing with my Treo – he hit 'Sync All' in mo:Blog, thus causing it to republish a whole bunch of stuff I wrote last year.
Special apologies to William Meloney who left a very nice comment on the reposted version of this post, The Connected Life from May last year, which has sadly now been deleted. William, I can respost it to the old post if you like – I still have it on email. Just let me know.
As for Kevin, well, it's lovely to have a boyfriend who is both curious and technically inept. It provides me with hours and hours of fun. I'm just not going to mention either the Sony Minidisc or the iPod here. No sireee. Not once.
by Suw on October 26, 2006
As if flying isn't enough of a hellish chore these days, with daft hand luggage restrictions, over-zealous security and long waits, the French have decided to go one better with their new MP2 terminal at Marseilles:
The city of Marseilles has seen the future – it has no carpets. A minimalist, no-frills air terminal, intended specifically for low-cost airlines, opened yesterday beside the city's existing airport.
Carpets are replaced by a painted concrete floor. There is no air conditioning. Passengers have to carry their own bags from check-in to security control. There are no luggage trolleys. There are no shuttle buses or swivelling gangways to reach the aircraft. Travellers walk across the tarmac to reach their planes.
Independent Online Edition > Europe
Wonderful. That's just want I wanted. A miserable flight that lands at a miserable airport. It sounds worse that Charles de Gaulle:
The MP2 terminal at Marignane, near Marseilles, looks remarkably like a
freight hangar. That is not surprising. Two years ago, it was a freight
hangar.
…
Passengers will be encouraged, and expected, to spend as little time in
the terminal as possible. There are only 30 seats in the whole building.
Bugger that for a game of soldiers.
technorati tags:flying, marseilles, airports
by Suw on October 26, 2006
I really hate it when software updates break things, particularly when that update is to Firefox and the thing it breaks is the one extension that makes me love Firefox. I've just installed Firefox 2.0, which means I've just discovered that 'extensions' have now become 'add-ons' and that the one extension I loved is not compatible with 2.0.
I love Tab Mix Plus, and I'm glad to see that there's going to be a new version soon, but surely Firefox is sophisticated enough to scan through our extensions and tell us if there are any that are not going to be compatible? I would have waited a week to install Firefox had I realised that it would break my favourite extension.
So I'm going to try Flock for that week. Annoyingly, you can't import your bookmarks from Firefox into Flock, which means I had to port them from Firefox to Safari and thence into Flock, but I seem to have mislaid some along the way.
Kevin's been raving about how great Flock is – seems it is finally fulfilling some of the potential I saw at BlogOn last year. I'm not sure if I'll move my blogging from Ecto to Flock, but I might give it a shot. Certainly Flock's Flickr uploader is better than either 1001 or Uploadr, so I'm already converted there. Still, I'll spend a little time setting things up, and I've set Flock to be my default browser, and we'll see what we see.
Meantime, shame on you, Firefox. For the next release, how about you work on notifying us when we update if you're going to break things?
by Suw on October 26, 2006
Ten people have now signed up for my pledge to stop drinking sugary drinks for three months, so I have only another ten to go! If you're interested in giving up all those evil sugary drinks, please sign up before 22 November.
This is something I really want to do – even need to do – but it will be so much easier if I have some moral support behind me every time I'm confronted with the evil temptation of a can of Coke. Think of it as an opportunity to be the little wing?©d angel sitting on my shoulder whispering supportive phrases every time the devil of sugary drinks suggests that I mainline some Ocean Spray Cranberry and Blackcurrent.
by Suw on October 26, 2006
From the ORG blog:
Should the term of copyright protection on sound recordings stay at 50 years or be extended?
This question has been hanging in the air for the last couple of years, with the music industry lobbying government for an extension on the grounds that the royalties they earn from old recordings are essential to bringing new acts to the stage and supporting ageing musicians. They believe that copyright term on sound recordings should be the same length as the copyright in the composition, which currently stands at life plus 70 years.
On the other hand, copyright reformers argue that term should remain the same in order to protect the public domain and to free the huge number of old recordings which are no longer commercially viable and therefore not being released by the record labels. They also argue that there is a greater economic benefit to allowing works to pass into the public domain after 50 years so that new works can be made from them and new businesses that specialise in niche markets can flourish.
This question of term extension, along with many others, is now being considered by Andrew Gowers in his Review of Intellectual Property which was commissioned by the Treasury and is due to report before the end of the year.
The Open Rights Group believes that term extension is such an important issue that it deserves focused and rigourous discussion, so we've invited people from number of backgrounds to give us their thoughts and opinions.
We would be delighted if you could join us – the event is free to all, but places are limited so book now!
Schedule:
6.00pm – Registration.
6.30pm – Keynote by Professor Jonathan Zittrain, Chair in Internet Governance and Regulation at Oxford University.
7.30pm – Panel Discussion, moderated by John Howkins, RSA & Adelphi Charter; guests include Caroline Wilson, University of Southampton, Faculty of Law; others TBC.
8.30pm – DJ set by The Chaps, playing a pre-1955 public domain set.
10.00pm – Close.
Date:
Monday 13 November 2006
Location:
Conway Hall
25 Red Lion Square
London, WC1
United Kingdom
Nearest tube:
Holborn
If you sign up, but find you are not able to come, please do let us know so we can release your seat to someone else.
by Suw on October 22, 2006
If there's a single undesirable side-effect of contentment within a relationship, it's the expansion of one's midriff. A year ago, when Kevin and I had started dating, I was a bit thinner than I am now, but a year of eating out and him cooking me crepes on a Sunday morning and overall general happiness has resulted in, shall we say, a slight enlargement of certain measurements.
And whilst there are several undesirable side-effects to travelling as much as I have this year, (which, yes, I know is not as much as some but it's still more than others), the worst is that I lost control of my diet. If you're a long-term reader, you'll know that I'm hypoglycemic and that a couple of years back I put myself on a six-meals-a-day-regime and it really helped. Well, all that's slipped. I'm back to drinking very sugary drinks, eating highly refined white bread, and generally doing things that I know are bad for me.
The result is that over the last year or two, more people have come to understand from first hand experience what I mean when I say that when I'm feeling a bit low on sugar, I get “militantly hungry”. Kevin has developed a knack of spotting when I need food long before I get that far, but still, it's not good.
So I'm back to where I was in June 2004, looking at ways to make me change my diet. My biggest weakness is, as it always has been, Coke and other sugary things. Now, giving up anything is not, of course, a physical challenge so much as it is a psychological one, and that's why I've been gathering stats. I know what changes I need to make, I just need the motivation to make them.
One day, when I was idly reading the nutritional information printed on the side of a 500ml bottle of Coke (and there's an oxymoron if ever I saw one… 'nutrition' and 'Coke' in the same sentence) and I realised that if you totted it all up, there's 53g of sugar in it. Now, I used to do a lot of baking in my childhood, and I know you can bake a cake with 100g of sugar… so that's just over half a cake's worth of sugar in a drink I can polish off within a few minutes.
Now, I don't mind the idea of eating cake, but I know cake is sugary so I don't eat all that much of it. Same way I don't eat lots of biscuits and rarely, if ever, eat sweets. I mean, a packet of Fruit Polos is something like 96% sugar… I hate to think what the other 4% is. So I can easily see that cakes and biscuits and sweets are sugary and it's really easy for me not to eat them.
It's harder with fruit juices, because part of my brain tells me that they're made of fruit so they must be 'good for me'. I've become a big fan lately of Cranberry juice, and Cranberry and Blackcurrent juice. I can down a whole litre of that stuff in no time. But it turns out that despite being a fruit juice, the sugar content is astronomical, with one box of Cranberry and Blackcurrent containing 126g of sugar. That's one and a quarter cakes. And I can drink that in a morning, easily.
When you compare amounts of sugar per 100ml, from drink to drink, you see that there's not much variation. Lucozade Original predictably comes out worst, because it's a drink that's supposed to be packed with sugar – it's an 'energy' drink after all. Schwepps Lemonade comes out best, with only 4g/100ml. Lucozade Sport looks like it does better than the Schwepps Lemonade, but it's deceptive – it has only 3.5g/100ml of “sugar”, but it has a bunch of other carbs in it, bringing the total carbs per 100ml to 6.4g.
Anyway, here's a pretty graph to illustrate:
Now, when you start thinking less about absolute comparisons and start visualising the amount of sugar in each container in terms of how many cakes it would bake, you can start to really understand how much sugar you are consuming.
There be lots of sugar in them there 'innocent' Innocent Pure Fruit Smoothies (* figure is for the pineapple, bananas & coconut variety).
So, it's time to stop. Every time I look at a can of Coke, I will see half a cake. Every time I stare down a nice box of tart Cranberry, I will see a whole cake. Cake is my yardstick of choice – I can resist cake. And if I can resist cake, I can resist Coke.
You see where I'm going with this.
I pledge to stop drinking sugary drinks for three months, but only if 25 other people will too. Sign up before 22 November, just in time for the challenging Christmas period, and we'll help each other through. Trust me, it'll be worth it – I know from experience that just stopping drinking sugary drinks does make me feel better and I'm sure I can't be the only one who'd benefit.
So I'm up for it. Are you?
by Suw on October 17, 2006
I was so happy when my Blackberry Pearl arrived this morning that I nearly missed an appointment because I spent so much time figuring it out and playing with it. It's a nice phone – small, lightweight, nice camera, decent interface. But I'm afraid it's going to have to go back to T-Mobile.
The reason that I decided to buy a phone from T-Mobile was that the Web 'n' Walk tariff looked to both me and Kevin to be one of the best data tariffs in the UK. Data here is dreadfully expensive, but Web 'n' Walk promised 'unlimited internet browsing on the move'. (Where, of course, 'unlimited' means 'no downloading big files'.) One of the reasons I didn't use the Treo for internet activity more often was a general fear as to what would happen to my bill if I went over my 4mb allowance. Orange aren't particularly clear about what the penalties are, but I'm betting they're expensive and I've known people accidentally run up bills of thousands of pounds, so I'm very wary about my usage. But the idea of what is basically unlimited surfing and email seemed like a great idea.
Over the weekend, Kevin satisfied his OC comparison shopping gene and came to the conclusion that the Blackberry Pearl was the best of the Web 'n' Walk phones offered by T-Mobile, so I ordered one online. When it arrived this morning, I noticed that it didn't seem able to connect to the internet via GPRS Рthe phone's connection status is permanently 'data connection refused'. So I rang support and they told me that the reason I couldn't connect was because I have to pay an extra £5 per month to get access to the web.
Huh. That wasn't on the website. Apparently I need a service called 'Instant Email' which hooks me up with Blackberry's 'push' email service and the rest of the net. I asked if I could just use the net and not have the push email, but the whole thing's tied in together and I can't have the net without the push email. Which means, I can't make use of the Web 'n' Walk tariff I have bought without paying another £5 per month.
I have a sneaking suspicion that this isn't allowed, and that Trading Standards might have a thing or two to say about it. When you buy a service or product online, you should get what you have paid for with no hidden charges – yet that is exactly what this is.
Let's just review what T-Mobile's site says you get with the Pearl:
Corporate blackberry
Web 'n' walk internet
Instant email
Bluetooth® audio
Bluetooth® data
Look! “Web 'n' Walk internet”… no sign of that extra charge though.
And when you look at the different types of Web 'n' Walk plan, they all say 'web browsing on your phone'. No sign there of an extra charge either.
Indeed, all the way through the sign up process, T-Mobile never once say 'You have chosen a Blackberry phone which will require you to pay an additional £5 per month for access to the internet'. In fact, Kevin's just been through the whole T-Mobile site and has been unable to find any notification of this additional cost. If T-Mobile had mentioned it, I could have picked another phone, or I could have chosen to accept that additional fee (although I probably wouldn't have). But insisting afterwards is just not sporting.
I'm just lucky that I spotted this within the seven day return period guaranteed by The Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000, which T-Mobile kindly included a leaflet about. Under these regulations, you have 7 days to notify the vendor that you wish to cancel your agreement, and must return all equipment within 7 days of them telling you where to send it. (And I'm betting the cost of that is going to be borne by me, too.) So that's what I'm doing. It's not that I can't afford the extra £5 per month, it's the principle of the thing. I will not be conned like this.
Tomorrow, I might just give Trading Standards a call… and maybe the Advertising Standards Authority too. Meantime, I'm going to have to struggle along with the Treo, which is now sometimes working, and sometimes not, but always a pain in the arse.
by Suw on October 17, 2006
My new T-Mobile Blackberry Pearl came this morning, and I have to say, it's gorgeous! Haven't quite figured out how to make the internet work yet, but so far so good. I'll be emailing everyone with my new number soon, but if you think you need it and I don't get in touch, please ping me.
More later, when I've figured things out.
(And thanks to Kev, for doing all the comparative shopping for me, and for helping me make up my mind on what I wanted.)
