Category Archives: Gripes

Gripes

Tesco – A Warning

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Earlier this week I bought something in Tesco. It had one price on the shelf, and a different one when I got to the checkout. I was in a rush so didn’t bother to query this.

Today I bought a bottle of hair conditioner. £4.48 on the shelf, and when I got to the (self-service) till, it showed £4.58.
I asked the self-service supervisor person, and she told me that due to the VAT increase, and the size of shop, the prices on the shelf might be the pre-VAT-rise price, instead of the post-vat-rise price that the till shows.
She added that if I wanted, I could check this with customer service, but they had a big disclaimer somewhere, so it was all above board, and it’s unlikely I’d get it for the shelf price.

Given everyone knew the VAT was going up, I don’t think this is good enough. The size of the shop is immaterial. Bigger shops have bigger budgets and more staff.

A part of me wonders if this isn’t just a clever way of looking like your prices haven’t gone up, while still putting them up. Most people know the price of milk, but if you buy 20 items, you’re less likely to notice if it comes out £1.50 more.

Is this even legal?
Displaying one price and charging another?

Either way, I’m going to be more vigilant with this. Maybe you should be too.

Gripes, Travel

The Package Trip – Returning Home

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What a journey back.
This morning I felt terrible. On the short coach ride to the airport, I thought I was going to vomit.
Then we stopped and picked up some noisy chavs from another hotel. The kids were loud, and the dad kept over-yawning in a ridiculously over the top manner. Irritating.
On the way out, I got checked at the airport by the handheld scanner, so it’s only fair that my girlfriend get scanned on the way back home.

We boarded the plane, and they were showing music videos on the tv screens.
What would be the most inappropriate thing to show on a plane (with audio over the PA system, that you can’t turn off), before taking off?
How about Cheryl Cole’s hit “Parachute”?

Lyrics here: http://www.musicloversgroup.com/cheryl-cole-parachute-lyrics-and-video
Yes, really!

Quote:
“I don’t need a parachute
You’re gonna catch me
You’re gonna catch if I fall
Down, down, down”

On a plane!
Unbefuckinlievable.

Take-off was smooth, flight smooth, staff superb. Incredible really that you can travel 6 miles above ground, at 400mph (they announced it), and it feel like you’re barely moving.

Some of the passengers were really annoying though.
Two chavvy Bristolians ended up behind us, choosing to sit in a manner which meant every movement they made, knocked the back of our seats.
My girlfriend thought they were really tall so couldn’t help it, but when they got off at the end, we realised they were just arseholes. And short-arses.

Also, for the entire flight, the guy in front of me with his stupid quiffed hair couldn’t decide whether he wanted to read his book, or put it away in the overhead lockers, or wear his coat, or put it in the lockers, or sit on the other side of the plane, or sit with his mate. Just sit down and sit still for fuck’s sake! How hard is it?

My girlfriend got a vegetarian lunch that she said was quite nice. As I wasn’t feeling well, just the smell of mine was turning my stomach, but it looked nicer and possibly more edible than the breakfast on the way out.

A few other random comments

Thomson/First Choice’s safety announcement video sucks.
I told them as such (actually I used the word “unprofessional”) in the customer survey they asked me to fill in on the return flight.*
(* I also mentioned their poor choice of a song called “Parachute”, and marked the flight food as “poor” – I’m amazed they have a box for “excellent” at all.)
It’s like the normal safety video, which tells you about reading the safety card, and where the life jackets are, except it’s presented by primary-school-age children.
I shit you not.
One primary school age girl telling another primary school age girl to store her teddy bear in the overhead lockers.

I don’t especially like children on tv anyway, and for something as serious as a safety announcement, I want it demonstrated by someone who is at least old enough to have had the relevant safety training.
Considering how competent their actual staff are, I think it does them down too. Is it all so easy that an 8-year-old can do it? Of course not.
I may write them a letter about it.

Ibiza is very clean

Most of the rubbish is natural – like leaves.
They have not just bins, but separate recycling bins – everywhere.
There is practically no dog mess anywhere. There are lots of dogs, and lots of bins for waste of said animals, complete with free bags.
Sadly, there are quite a few cats, which don’t seem to be owned by anyone. Crazy cat people put out food for them, so you’ll be wandering down the street and happen upon a load of cat food all over the place. Cat shit to follow shortly after.

Checker cars taxi service

£27 fee (each way), but the price is agreed before you go anywhere, and drivers friendly.
It works out marginally more expensive than parking my car for a week there, but with the added bonus that I don’t have to drive to the airport at 5am when I’m not really awake.
There are cheaper ways, but split two ways, it’s not that bad. It would have been £10 for both of us to get to Temple Meads via the airport bus, then we’d have to get home with all our bags and whatnot. A recent test suggests it’s about £10 from Temple Meads home, by taxi. There isn’t a direct bus.
For the extra money and convenience, it’s worth it.

Gripes, Technology

iPhone Twitter clients. Not as good as they used to be.

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A year ago I was happily using Tweetie on the iPhone.
Then the guy who created it, announced that he was creating a new version. He’d changed the colour scheme and I didn’t like the new version, so I stuck with the old version.
Another while longer, and he announces he’s selling up to Twitter – and Tweetie would become the official Twitter application for the iPhone.
Great! Nothing could go wrong there, could it?
And so Twitter for iPhone was born. An official app at last, with the proper backing of the company that created the service. It should almost certainly be better, and have new features included at a much faster rate than before.
It transferred, changed name from Tweetie to “Twitter for iPhone” and while it is undoubtedly a cleaner interface, it really isn’t very good.
I was right about them implementing new features quickly – far too quickly.
When Twitter decided to go from old style RT: or via retweets, to new style retweets, the now-official Twitter app stopped supporting the old method instantly.
Sometimes it’s nice to add a comment/joke to something you’re retweeting. You can “quote tweet” but it’s not the same.
But I was alright – I was happy using the old version of Tweetie from before the sale. Happy that is, right up until it started crashing a lot.
Then when Twitter made some changes to the way you log into the service, Tweetie stopped working altogether. It won’t log in at all.
Tweetie no longer works
I was forced to abandon the best Twitter app ever made, and start looking around for an alternative app.

Twitterific

I used this when I first joined Twitter. It made a pleasing twittery-bird noise when you started the app, but I eventually stopped using it, because locations and photo updates were a bit fiddly/non-existent.
I returned to it now, only to find out they have completely screwed the layout.
Where’s all the buttons?
I’m all for a clean interface, but not if that means having to click “benparkatbjs“, every time before I can load anything else. Crap.
Twitterific screen showing main feed
And there’s ample space at the bottom of the main screen for some buttons, too. Seems silly not to have included them.

Tweetdeck

The iPhone version of the full-screen mission-control style interface you get on Mac/PC/Linux.
When it launched, it was heralded as being really quite good.
What makes Tweetdeck so good is just how customisable it is. You can add columns, a quick swipe left or right goes from mentions to the classic Twitter timeline and back again. You can specify keyword searches and save it as a column, for when you’re armchair surfing while watching the apprentice, or another program with a live Twitter debate happening.
Tweetdeck is very customisable
It features Retweet new style and retweet “classic” style, and has a dark theme.
However, it keeps crashing on me.
There’s really only so many times I can type a message and have the app crash as I try to send it, before I give up and use something else.
If it could be stabilised to stop it crashing all the time, I might well use Tweetdeck as my main client.

Hootsuite

While this ticks a lot of boxes for me, it fails on some things that are so spectacularly silly.
Why is the inbox and outbox for DirectMessages, separate?
When replying to a message, sometimes it can be handy to see the conversation from earlier – to make sure I’m not repeating myself, and in the case of some people who don’t reply quickly – I may well have forgotten what I asked by the time they reply.
Hootsuite's main feed
I like the dots at the base of the screen, which similarly to Tweetdeck lets you see which screen you’re on.
It suffers from the same problem as Twitbird in the way that if you want to go from the main feed to mentions, you either have to have configured them to be next to each other, swipe multiple times left or right, or exit to the menu to then select the one you want from there.
The “contacts” tab is an unncessary button. If I want to reference them, surely I’d start a new message. From there, there should either be a users list option in there, or to work as Echofon does, where you start typing a message and it guesses who you are referencing.

Twitbird

What the hell were they thinking with this interface?
Twitbird's bizarre main feed screen
The buttons at the bottom left are possibly the least helpful things you could need.
From left to right, far left button returns you to the top of the screen. Pointless – just tap the top of the screen and it returns there anyway.
Next along is a tick box. Click it and you get only one option – to mark all as read. Again – surely it could do that automatically when you reach the top of the screen?
The middle button of the flower. What does that do? Probably something urgent that I need regularly.
I urgently need to change the wallpaper
Set the wallpaper? You’ve got to be kidding me? On the main screen?
How often do I change the background wallpaper, that it needs a button on the main screen?
The funnel-icon is a filter, with options to display all tweets, latest unread or first unread. Just not sure that’s really necessary.
Where’s the option to view my mentions, or see my Direct Messages? How can I see my favorites?
Go left, gives you an option of mentions, direct messages, but it’s a clunky ‘mentions – back – direct messages – back’ sort of menu structure. It’s just a bit poor really.

Echofon

I won’t lie. What first attracted to me to Echofon is the fact that it looks a bit like the old version of Tweetie. It’s got a sort-of “dark” theme for reading in bed, and has the ability to disable screen rotation (for when you’re reading in bed, and lying on your side, you can tilt the phone sideways without it tilting the words the wrong way from you again).

Echofon's main feed screen
It has a very handy feature that auto guesses who you’re messaging, as you start typing the username (much like sending an sms on the iPhone). This comes in incredibly handy.
Echofon's autosuggest
Echofon isn’t perfect either though.
While it supports the iPhone4’s multitasking mode and runs in the background, the Direct Message count never updates properly.
Consequently, I have always received the “direct message from <user>” email from Twitter, a long long long time before Echofon notices (which is rare).
To be even more frustrating, when you reply to a DM sent to you in Echofon, it doesn’t at that point check if you’ve received any messages – so it can look as if you’re constantly messaging someone who isn’t replying to you (which is only very occasionally the case).
Until it crashes.
When it crashes, and you open it again, it will suddenly check the DMs and update them all the right way around.
Another annoyance with this is how clunky it is to get to your favorites.
I favorite things A LOT during the day – especially pictures and video clips – to look at later when I’m not busy working. It is rather annoying to have to click menu, favorites to see them. Then you can’t just swipe one to delete it, you have to click it, then press a tiny yellow star. Not ideal at all.
Preferably, I’d like a button at the top or bottom to link directly to favorites. I very rarely use the “lists” button.
Recently Twitpic have been having some technical difficulties. I either can’t access the site to view pics, or I can’t post anything.
In the options, the only other photo services you can use with Echofon are Tweetphoto or Flickr. It would be nice if it worked with Google Picasa, or had some kind of FTP option to upload photos to my own webspace, as I don’t really like uploading photos to third party sites at all – which you’ll know if you’ve read my post about privacy (to be fair, none of the other apps support either of these options, either).

What none of them can manage.

This new style of retweets that Twitter has adopted makes it really awkward to see if someone has retweeted you.
Why can none of the software clients just show them in the “mentions” tab? If someone is retweeting you, even by the new style, they’re still mentioning you. They should just be combined into one column.
At the moment, I get completely lost looking for whether I’ve been retweeted or not, and it’s nice to know (and thank the person involved) if someone thought the twaddle I’ve just spoken was actually worth retweeting.
Several clients above have a “my tweets retweeted” screen. That’s great, but it doesn’t tell you WHO retweeted them.
They can for tweets others have retweeted. I can see that one of my friends retweeted something that Duncan Bannatyne said. Why can’t I see who retweeted my crappy joke?
For the moment, Echofon is my preferred client as the best all-rounder.
Hootsuite probably second.
It could all change though if Tweetdeck could just make their app stop crashing.
Gripes, Technology

Blogging Systems

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Well here I am on WordPress.
I’ve taken my coat off, but I’m keeping my shoes on for a bit.
I’ve been considering leaving Blogger for a while now. (You’ll find my old http://iwantedparklifebutitwastaken.blogspot.com empty.)
It all started when I wrote about the Spotify iPhone app a few weeks back. I wrote about the pros, but mostly about the cons. After clicking the “publish” button on Blogger, I discovered a lot of the problems I was experiencing with Spotify were down to user error. The options I so badly needed to use Spotify mobile WERE there, but I wasn’t looking in the right place.
I quickly went to Blogger, and attempted to switch the post back to draft, hidden from view.
I couldn’t work out how to do it.
Having to Google this seemed awkward, but that said, it’s unfair of me to slag off Blogger because their options seemed unclear to me, when clearly that’s EXACTLY the same mistake I made with the Spotify app, earlier. (If you’re wondering, you just edit the post, and click “save as draft”, which also removes the live version.)
Before I realised how to unpublish a post, I started looking around at alternative blogging platforms, so thought I’d share my findings here.

iPhone editing and viewing

This being 2010, I’ve been thinking for a while that it might be nice to be able to blog via iPhone if I’m not near a computer, so I started looking at ways of doing just this. Some of my recent posts about things like customer service and technology used on weekend breaks, could have been written on those weekends away, if I could write them on an iPhone.

Blogger

Mobile blogging is where Blogger falls down really.
The user interface (when viewed on an iPhone) is awkward. I can log in, but I really wouldn’t want to write blog posts for Blogger, on the iPhone.
And from the reader’s perspective it’s no better either. A Blogger blog, when viewed on a mobile, doesn’t give a mobile option – so it’s all a bit fiddly, with lots of zooming in and out.
So what other options are out there?

Posterous

Posterous claims to be the easiest way to blog. You can literally email pictures, video, or text, and they convert it into a blog post for you.

I’ve got issues with this as a concept.

The most obvious problem I can think of is what you do if you make a typo? What if you want to go back and replace a photo, with a better/different one?
When you access Posterous on the iPhone to attempt to make such changes, the interface isn’t great really. They don’t seem to have a mobile editing site, and although they have an app called PicPosterous, it is geared more towards photogalleries. Which is probably great for photographers, but I wanted more of a photos/text mix.

There is the option on their homepage to email them content without even signing up. That’s all great, but how are you going to remove it later?

When I went to a blog (picked at random) on my iPhone, I got a very easily navigable system though.

A posterous blog I found at random

I’ll give them marks for a nice mobile experience, from a reader’s point of view.

Tumblr

Someone asked me what I thought of tumblr a few months back. I’d never used it. Had no opinion really.
From what I could see though, people seem to use it mostly for kinda photo-diary type projects.

It looks pretty nice from an iPhone, and I like the fact that you don’t get presented with a list of text when reading a blog. You get all the posts, expanded. I like that a lot.
Especially with viewing a photo blog, that looks really nice.

Scrolling through http://tumblr.gothick.org.uk/

They also have an app in the app store. For making said posts, from a mobile location. Excellent.

This urged me to actually create an account.

Especially because on Tumblr’s site, they state that they offer “the best iPhone publishing app in existence (for free)”.
Bold claims.

I signed up for an account, downloaded the app, and had a go.

Unfortunately, within about 20minutes, I’d decided Tumblr wasn’t for me.
For one, the options to post something ask if you are posting a photo, text, a video, etc.

The tumblr app makes you choose from different types of content

What if I’m posting a couple of photos, AND writing some text to go with it?
Sure you can write a description and tag it to an individual photo, but that’s hardly ideal, is it?

I like that when you post, it gives an option to “send to twitter”. It’s not a all-sent, or no-sent. You can pick and choose.
I also like the fact that you can change the date when it posts, and that you can queue it to post later. However, if after you’ve posted it, you want to change the post date – tough. No logical reason I can see for this to be unchangeable.

Also, if you have something you’ve posted which has a mistake in it, you can change from “publish now” to “save as draft”, and…where’s it gone?
After a bit of searching, I found it again. It disappears off a few menus down. Not the greatest user interface.

Nonetheless, I picked a photo and uploaded it.
Next thing I went to my computer and opened my new blog.
There’s a picture I’ve just uploaded from my iPhone. Great!

So where is that stored then?
I’ll be screwed if I know.

I right-clicked and “copy image URL”, then logged into Tumblr and deleted the post.
Then I pasted the image URL into the address bar and hey presto – the image is still there.

So I’ve deleted the post, and it no longer shows up in the Tumblr dashboard, or through the app, but the image remains somewhere on Tumblr’s servers.
Why?
Are they stockpiling my old images?
I couldn’t find how to remove an image PROPERLY in any online help, so I emailed Tumblr about this.

24 hours later, after clearing my browser cache, and I can still see the picture I’ve deleted.
Several days later, I get a reply saying that the image has now been removed.

That’s great for one image, but what if in three years time, I want to move my blog (including ALL my photos) to somewhere else?
They are my photos, no? I can do what I like with them (including deleting them)?

This “looking like it’s deleting things, but then it isn’t really” put me off Tumblr.
Even Blogger uploads your photos to Picasa, enabling you to later go and remove them from a kind of media library (although this might take a while with a lot of posts, as there’s no obvious way to show which photos are linked to which Blogpost posts).

Side note: This is just a comment, but why does Tumblr’s site feel like Facebook? I hate Facebook. Facebook is a shit layout, with a shit search system.

WordPress

My radio site (parkandgardner.com) uses WordPress.

Although my Blogger account predated my initiation into WordPress, I like WordPress a lot. The reason why I’m so harsh on Posterous not having a full-featured iPhone app, is because WordPress has one.

And WordPress’ iPhone app is better than Tumblr’s app, because I can change the dates of posts, and post multiple types of content at once.

WordPress’ app isn’t perfect though. I can think of obvious improvements.

For one, it isn’t immediately obvious which posts are drafts, and which are published. You have to go into each one and see to find out. This could so easily be rectified in design, by just colouring them differently on screen.

The preview doesn’t work brilliantly, and although you can add multiple photos (but no videos at all), because it adds them in a html view, more than a few at once would easily get confusing.

Wordpress App - a little less html would be nice

While you can set the date on the post to whatever you like (occasionally handy), the timestamp is not changeable. Not sure why this would be.

You can however, edit any post shown, and switch from published to draft at will. The posts you set back to draft don’t disappear off to another menu anywhere.

A self-hosted WordPress blog doesn’t by default have a mobile theme. There is one free though, called WPTouch, that you can install yourself.
If you get a blog at WordPress.com, hosted by them, they include this mobileness as standard.

How a WordPress blog using WPTouch looks on an iPhone

My posts are all very readable on a mobile, and when I log into the admin page from a computer later, I can see exactly which photos are attached to which posts in the “media library” section, and delete them as I wish.

It lists all photos you have uploaded, and which posts they’re featured on.
Not to sound like a control freak, but after my recent hassle of experiences with deleting my own photos from Tweetphoto, Yfrog and Twitpic, I’ll take a WordPress site over any of the other above offerings, any day.

First impressions of wordpress.com

Like I said, bjsproductions uses WordPress. But I self-host a WordPress.org installation, which gives me a lot more options. WordPress.com is nice, and they do the hosting for you, but a bit lacking.

For example, before I set up a free wordpress.com account, I searched through the themes available at wordpress.org.
Having found a couple of really nice themes, I then set up a wordpress.com account (the one they host for you).
Sadly, there seems to be a much more limited supply of themes for wordpress installs hosted by wordpress. A paltry 96. Some really ugly ones.
None of the ones I really liked from WordPress.org are available, so this will have to do for the moment.

Also, although they install WPTouch as standard on WordPress.com, they do insert an advert into every post, which they don’t do when you host it yourself. I suppose they have to make some money somehow.

So ok, WordPress.com isn’t perfect. The lack of options is already getting on my nerves, I’m not sure I like any of the available themes, and I’ve had to give up attempting to edit this on Google Chrome because it just doesn’t work (I finished it in Firefox, with no problems). I’ll probably end up on a self-hosted WordPress.org installation, once I’ve thought up a domain name.

Which really, when I think about it, means that I’ve spent several weeks looking at different blogging platforms, for “something like WordPress”, and picked WordPress. Time well spent, I’m sure you’ll agree.

(Note: This post was updated on 29th November 2012, to reflect a website name change. bjsproductions.co.uk is now known as parkandgardner.com.)

Gripes, Technology

Security and privacy online

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There’s been a bit of talk recently about security and privacy.

A journalist from The Guardian stalked a girl via Foursquare, Facebook is never far from the headlines, and sites like
http://icanstalku.com have brought to light how much information you’re really giving away, while snapping photos and sharing them online.

But what if it’s too late for prevention?
What if you’ve been taking photos and sharing them online for ages, via services like Twitpic and Yfrog. What then, eh?
Presumably you can just select all your photos and delete them, no?

Well, no.
If you try and find a way to delete all your photos from Twitpic for example, you’ll likely come across this handy information.

That’s two options right there.

Neither of which actually deletes anything.

“Both of these methods are undo-able, which means that your account and photos will be restored if you login after deleting your account.”

Everything is just temporarily hidden from view.

So the only option, if you want to delete them is to do it from the main screen. ONE AT A TIME.

After every one, you get a handy popup message to ask if you’re absolutely sure, before the page very slowly refreshes, and you can attempt to delete another. Everything is geared to making sure you don’t just delete all of YOUR OWN photos.

Twitpic isn’t the only option though. Maybe Yfrog is better?
In a word, no.

In fact, Yfrog is odder still.
Bizarrely the frequently asked questions includes NO mention of how to delete your photos.

I call this bizarre, because if you go into the user forums, just look at this page:

The most popular question by a long way, is how to delete photos.

It isn’t immediately obvious how to delete multiple photos either (no way as far as I can find).

Someone asks in the yfrog forums how to remove their account, and the answer given is to open a support ticket.

They’ve made it as complicated as possible, for you to just remove your own photos.

Do you use Tweetdeck?
Unless you’ve changed the default picture uploader, you’ll be using TweetPhoto, when you upload a picture.

How to delete A (singular) photo?

 

Easy.

Is there a way to bulk delete old photos?

No.

“How do I delete my account?”
Well yeah…about that.
We didn’t really think anyone would want…errr…

Unbefuckinglievable.
Not only can you not just click to “delete my account”, but you’ve got to delete every photo individually.

The one saving grace I’ve found with all of this is that Twitter for iPhone (the client I (and lots of others) use at the moment, formerly known as Tweetie) has the option for custom api endpoints.

No, I didn’t know what they were either.

What this appears to mean, is that with a few plugins to WordPress, I can post photos from Twitter to my own webspace, host them myself, and have full control over them.
It isn’t immediately obvious how, but I found these instructions via Google at random, which seems to explain it.
All a bit more complicated than it should be, in my opinion.

I’m not a fan of Facebook, and we all know there are massive privacy flaws there, but services launched since (such as photo-sharing sites) are clearly no better.
Say what you like about Google, but at least I can go into Picasa and delete one/some/all of my OWN photos if I want to.

Update: I contacted Twitpic to check if I was missing an option, and see if there is any option for bulk deletions. I got this reply from them:

Still no change from my earlier opinion then.

Daily Life, Gripes

Charity is so boring

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When did charity start to get so boring?

Yesterday I was in the centre of Bristol, and there was the usual modern sort of charity collector we’ve all seen a million times before.
There he was, permanent grin on his face, swirling a clipboard round and throwing it around like a fucking circus entertainer.
“Alright ladies?” he says in far too over-friendly a manner, as two poor women he’s never met before try to wander past him.
It’s every man for himself though, so I used the fact he was distracted by a couple of attractive girls to pass by without him “raising awareness” of my bank details, to set up a Direct Debit for their monthly payments.

When did it come to this?

When I was at primary school, I remember we had a charity day of sorts. It involved everyone bringing in some spare change, with the aim being to cover the entire school hall from corner to corner, in money. As a kid, this seemed quite fun.
There might have even been a bit of an Art Attack angle to it, with some sort of picture or pattern, made via the placement of the different colours of coins. Fun.

I used to be a member of a charity organisation myself actually.
Although my part in it had nothing to do with fundraising, as part of my commitment to the organisation, every member was supposed to hang around for a couple of days in Christmas, shaking tins and begging people for money.
I never partook in this for the whole time I was there.
I thought “I hate those people who pester me for money outside Sainsburys – I don’t want to be one of them.”

Also, as our organisation was media-related, surely we could do better than that?

When the Bristol Folk House (a kind of adult-education centre by day, music venue by night) needed to raise funds a couple of years ago, they set up a music night with BCfm (a local community radio station that also needed to additional funds), and split the profits.
There’s a night of music and entertainment, broadcast on the radio, that raises awareness of some upcoming musicians, the Folk House and BCfm, while helping to bring in needed finance to two local businesses.

I recently attended the Bristol #Twestival.
This is predominantly a way of raising money for charity, but has the nice by-product of becoming a night out, and the chance to meet people you’ve been chatting to on Twitter.
I was concerned about even buying a ticket. I worried I would be sold-to, from the moment I got in the door. Although I’m not heartless, I’m not affording to live at the moment, so additional spend is really not possible.

Why did I even think I’d be given the hard sell?
Well, I went to a comedy gig a while back for charity.
Ticket sales went to the charity, and all profits from the bar.
There was a short break between each act, during which I was forced to watch a horrible slideshow of African children in harrowing conditions.
To cheer myself up a bit, I joked this is like a catalogue that Madonna gets at Christmas.
To shake up the monotony of Powerpoint Poverty, they sent people round to the tables to flog you armbands, roses (“for your girlfriend”) and any other crap they could make a profit on.
The headline act didn’t come on til 11pm, by which point I was completely fed up, exhausted, and I’d been repeatedly made to feel like I hadn’t given enough.

I was worried the #Twestival might be the same, but I was surprised.

It was £5 for a ticket.
Then, on entry, I was given the chance to check my coat “but wait and see if it’s hot in there before you do”. No pressure at all.
I was shown further in by a volunteer, who advised me where I could buy cake/drinks/raffle tickets.
There was no requirement to buy anything, and I wasn’t given the hard sell.
I bought a large slice of cake for the nominal fee of £1, because I hadn’t had any tea yet.

Ticket sales went to charity, as did the coat-check fees. There was a raffle held, with tickets for a £1 (or 5 tickets for £4), with prizes donated by local businesses. Instant exposure for local businesses, plus more money going to charity.

At the end of the night they topped their target, by some margin, and everyone was a winner, baby. That’s the truth.
I spent maybe £12 the entire night, with £10 of that going to charity.

I guess that’s another issue I have with the charity muggers on the street.
They might give it the sympathy vote when they come to your door and talk to you about the ones they’re raising money for, but don’t be fooled by the idea they’re doing it because they care.
Street/door fundraisers earn £7-£10 per hour, and some are on commission for sales.
Some are paid per hour for the travel time to get to the city centre.
See this current advert from a recruitment website:

Clearly charity muggers on the street do work, because otherwise they wouldn’t have them.
I’m not saying you can run a night of entertainment every night of the week (or that it would continue to bring in money), but begging for money, and attempting to guilt-trip me into it, is surely the lowest form of charity.

Recently, I was offered the chance to work for a company (in a call centre) phoning people at home and trying to shoehorn Direct Debits out of them.
I had emails from the company who found my details on a recruitment website, and an agency who got me to register, then offered me the same job.
It would seem sensible, given that I’m not affording to live at the moment, to take such an offer. But who wants to be told “fuck off!”, 50 times a day? Not me. I wouldn’t want to be one of those. You can’t even even distract them with pretty girls and cross the street to get away.

Business, Gripes, Technology, Travel

Yorkshire – credit where due

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I’ve just got back from a weekend away. It was a chance to stop worrying about my current financial problems and lack of decent employment, for a brief period (although ironically, by spending money).
There were some mistakes along the way. I took my old Nokia 6600 with bluetooth GPS receiver (and an ancient version of TomTom mobile on the phone). Together they make up a usable sat-nav (with very out-of-date maps).
Sadly, I forgot the old pay-as-you-go Vodafone sim card I need to make the thing work. The phone won’t let you do anything without a Vodafone sim card in it, and both me and my girlfriend are on o2.
Luckily my girlfriend can read a map pretty well (because I’m rubbish at it).

Also, we were going to be travelling for 5 hours each way.
On the day we left, I spent most of the morning picking music for my iPhone (my collection has now got too big to just synchronise it all).
A couple of hours into the journey, when the DAB reception was falling apart (see below), I reached for the iPhone, then realised I’d left the cable that connects it to the radio, at home. Balls. Oh well – maybe we can pick one up somewhere on the way?

Before leaving, we went looking for cheap hotels. There was a good guide to getting cheap hotel rooms on MoneySavingExpert, but the best hotel deal was regarding Travelodge’s £19-per-night offer. Sadly, the deal involved booking your room at least 21 days in advance, and we were booking about 5 days before we left.

We looked around a lot online, and got more and more frustrated. Not just at the lack of availability so close to Easter (we had after all, left it quite late), but also at the fact that some hotels increase their prices during the Easter period. Why? Because they can.
I can certainly see the sense in this from a business perspective, but it did put a lot of them out of our price range.

Price comparison sites were fairly rubbish as well, due to them all listing hotels “FROM per night”.
While this is great in November, when you enter the dates during the Easter holiday, you find that they’ve added another 50% to that price.
There was a lot of “the f**kin robbing b****rds!” coming from the living room that week.

We did find an amazing-sounding hotel in the middle of nowhere, run by Buddhists.
While I was initially concerned about staying in a hotel run by a religious group (of any denomination), there didn’t seem to be anything too bad about the place.
It offers only vegetarian-friendly breakfasts (which both suited my girlfriend and didn’t bother me, as I don’t have a cooked breakfast very often).
Also, smoking/alcohol is banned from all rooms, which I assume would sound off-putting to undesirables.
I instantly assumed that a Buddhist retreat would be quite simplistic and cut-off, but all rooms come with free wifi.
It wasn’t expensive either.
Sadly, this was fully booked.

With time running out, I remembered that LateRooms.com had got us out of a hole on a previous occasion.
Then, we had actually driven all the way to the South coast (of England), without much planning at all, and were struggling to find anywhere to stay. We asked in several B&Bs, but the people of Torquay mostly told us they didn’t rent rooms “just for one night”. If I’m honest, I can’t imagine staying a whole week in Torquay.
I think I’d just got my iPhone at the time, so with the help of Google, and Laterooms (who need an iPhone app if they don’t have one already!), we finally managed to find somewhere to stay.
LateRooms helped us again this time, and we had found our rooms within the hour.

Customer experiences

While I was away, I experienced varying customer service from loads of different places, so thought I’d tell you all about those that performed well (and those who didn’t).

Welcome Break – stopped at Hopwood Services for a cup of tea.
It has a large pond (or a small lake) with tables overlooking it, but unfortunately it was raining, so we sat inside.
It is quite a large services, with a mobile phone shop inside. I asked at the shop regarding a connection cable, but the only one they had was £12.99. From the look on my face, the person in charge replied “I know that’s expensive – so I could maybe go down to £10”. I declined his offer.
I’d swear I bought my current one for about £3. I agreed I’d go up to maybe £5 given the circumstances, if I happened to spot one somewhere else.

Currys Digital – During the weekend, we happened to wander past a Currys Digital in the street.
I asked regarding my mp3 player connection cable (which lets be honest here – is a 1-2m (tops) cable with one jack plug on either end. It costs pence to produce), and they told me they had just the thing, and would need to nip out back and find them.
The assistant returned with a 1.8m Belkin-branded lead. How much? “£12.99”
Completely mad.

I looked in WHSmiths (who had every cable but that one), and Wilkinsons, then stopped looking. I managed the rest of the weekend without the cable. Power to the..err..poor.

Marks and Spencer – We had an interesting lunch at Marks and Spencer’s cafe in York.
On entry, my girlfriend notes a sign that says that one of their ovens is broken, and so food may take longer than usual.
We ordered our hot food and sat down.
You get your drinks at the till, so we had something to drink.

We then waited a long time.
How long do you wait, before wondering if they have somehow lost your order?
There was a few “maybe just another couple of minutes”, before my girlfriend went back up to ask how much longer our food might be.
Turns out they had lost our order, somewhere between the till and the kitchen.
They apologised, and we were given free additional tea/coffee.

When they turned up with our hot food, we were given a full refund of said food.
That’s right – we essentially paid for “tea for two”, and got tea, plus a free refill, plus our hot food. Lunch in total cost us about £1.50.
Hats off to Marks and Spencers for going above and beyond. They realised their mistake, and not only apologised, but also gave us our money back.
Instead of recounting how long we were waiting, or how they lost our order, we can now tell people about how we got a jacket potato and soup for free.

O2 – 3g/Edge is pretty poor up north.
I spent the weekend in various parts of Yorkshire.

The following photo taken from o2’s own coverage checker.

The blue circular-ish bit in the centre is York. They have 3g coverage. The rest of it? Err..no.

York – parking is very expensive.

£1.70 for 1 hour, or £3.40 for 2 hours. Nice zero-discount there for buying additional time. (It does start to get (slightly) cheaper over 2 hours)

Most of York’s main car parks are pay-and-display.
I hate pay and display car parks, especially when sightseeing, as it seems like you’re always clock-watching, and in a rush to make sure some arsehole isn’t about to clamp/tow you.
If you get a bit lost and take a bit longer to get back to your car, who needs the extra stress of wondering if they’ve got a £70 release fine waiting for them?

>So a tip for anyone visiting York – the visitors map given away by the tourist information office has loads of car parks listed. They’re marked “A”, “B”, “C” etc. There are also car parks on there listed as just “other”.
Go to the “other” car parks!
All the ones we tried had barriers, pay-on-exit type, plus were staffed and had opportunities to pay by credit/debit card.

There is a park and ride system in place, but it’s £2.30 for a day return, each.
The first visit to York, we were only there 2-3 hours, which costs £5.10.
Given the choice between paying £4.60 to park miles away and bus in, or paying 50p more for the time we were there and being able to park right in the centre, I know which one I would (and we did) choose.

If there were 4 of you (a family, for example), the park and ride option would be £9.20, yet you can park all day in central York for £10 with the convenience of having all your stuff with you. Park and ride system = FAIL!

Jorvik Viking Centre – York

Incredibly knowledgable staff ready to answer any question.
Very cool/modern videos and models about how/where they found the artifacts.
If you like the little car at Cadbury World, you’ll enjoy the ride at Jorvik Viking Centre, through an odd little village.
The only thing that was disappointing was that some of the exhibits use touchscreens, which I just couldn’t get to work. Either it misinterpreted my keypresses, or just didn’t recognise that I’d touched the screen at all.
Check out Bob the skeleton. He’s definitely had his teeth whitened.

York Castle Museum – York (obviously)
Maybe split it into two trips if you can.
It really is absolutely massive, and we were pretty tired by the end of it.
There’s a very cool Victorian street (I quite like that sort of thing for some reason) with all sorts of shops.

At various times, it gets dark and the streetlights come on.
There’s some nice attention to detail, such as the fact that there was nobody in the bank, as it was a bank holiday.
I was given a free copy of the “Kirkgate Examiner” – a mock victorian newspaper. I believe it’s recently started suffering, as everyone is reading it online.

I was convinced that this was something Banksy had snuck in.

glasssmoother

Mangling board and…”glass smoother”? Uh huh. Of course.

York has some actual old-fashioned streets though.

DAB – Whoever is currently in charge of DAB radio, hasn’t a hope in hell of turning off the FM transmitters anytime soon.
DAB has different multiplexes – if you can pick up say Digital One, then you can listen to Absolute Radio, TalkSport, Amazing Radio (and various others), as they are all on the same multiplex.
There’s also a BBC National one, containing Radio1, 2, 3, 4, 5live, 6music and all the other BBC National stations.
BBC National and Digital One should both be available nationwide.

Well I can tell you that there were quite prolonged periods of quiet time en-route to the North East of England and back, where I failed to find anything on DAB. Granted I was driving, but if DAB is to succeed, it isn’t any good for it to be only usable in one point of a bedroom at home.

Hotels – pretty average.
It’s possibly unfair to complain about the decor of our hotels, as they were the cheapest available. Neither had more than 3 stars, and were chosen by their availability and price.

The first night was spent in a hotel in the middle of nowhere called the Burn Hall.
It doubles as a conference centre for training courses, etc.

I felt a bit uncomfortable staying in a room on the ground floor. I’m not sure why.
We had freeview, but the TV was the most complicated I have ever used.
It defaults to analog, you push for digital. The TV guide didn’t seem capable of letting you scroll channels and go to that channel – scrolling to an interesting sounding show, then hitting like “select” or “go” or whatever, just gave you further information about it. Whoever designed that TV can’t have ever used it.
Nonetheless, the function was there.
The radio (built into the TV, and accessible by pressing one of the teletext buttons…of course!) was a nice addition.

The website lists that each bedroom includes “dial up internet connection (with network cable)”. I’ve no idea what that is. There was a network-lan-cable type jack in the room.
I’d swear that while booking, “free wifi in reception” was mentioned (though I can’t find it now). I managed to just about get a good enough mobile phone signal to (very painfully slowly) access Twitter, on occasion, from one spot in the hotel room.

The food was more of an issue.
As the hotel was in the middle of nowhere, and we didn’t really know the area, coupled with the lack of 3g reception, meant we decided to eat at the hotel restaurant.
There were two food places – a dedicated restaurant, or a kind-of bar which also did food.
The bar had less choice, but both had very complicated menus, with very fancy-sounding food.

As my girlfriend is a vegetarian and I’m a fussy eater, we struggled a bit to find anything that either of us wanted on the bar menu, so “Richardson’s Restaurant” it was.
There were two tables left when we got there. One was in the centre of the room , and one was right by the door to the bar. My girlfriend didn’t like the idea of everyone watching us eat, so we took the one by the bar door.
Draughty, it was.

We both felt very much out of place. Neither of us eats in places that posh normally.
We decided to skip the starter, as there wasn’t really anything either of us wanted on there.
I asked what the “potanesque sauce” (See “Yorkshire Chicken Supreme”) contained, and was told “tomato”. Before I could say “that sounds nice”, the waiter continued with “..garlic, anchovies…” at which point I asked for it sauceless.
What the hell is “fondant potato”? Nothing like a Fondant Fancy, presumably. I decided it was probably just a potato in a funny shape.

When the food arrived, I wasn’t offered ketchup or salt/pepper. I didn’t ask, as it somehow felt awkward to do so.
It turns out that a fondant potato is a roast potato. And yes – in a singular! My dinner was ONE piece of chicken, with ONE roast potato. To make it even more bizarre, it was delivered to me on the biggest plate I’ve had in front of me since I last visited a Hungry Horse.
My girlfriend’s dinner (the Spinach Italian Potato Dumplings) was delivered with a separate bowl of mixed vegetables (because putting some vegetables on the enormous empty plates wasn’t the done thing), so I had some of those.
We did get a second biscuit with our crème brûlée (think it was only meant to come with one) for free, though.
At the included-in-room-price breakfast the following morning, there were sauces in plentiful supply, so clearly posh people still like ketchup.
We made the most of
it, having a cooked breakfast, cereals, toast, AND croissants.

The second night was in a hotel in Malton called The Talbot.
The hotel room was basic. It could have done with a bit of redecoration, and the carpet was a bit dirty in places.
The remote was missing from the TV, which only had the 5 analog channels anyway.

For whatever reason, I had assumed that Malton was a reasonably small, quiet place.
A little town in the countryside with not much going on, thought I.
We lucked out really. On venturing into the town in the evening, we found several bars with loud music and even-louder lairy women out drinking heavily.
One of the louder bars had a sign on the front which said “room vacancies”. I had actually very nearly booked our room there! Online, it sounded like a nice country pub. Ironically, it was out of my price range, thank goodness.
We found an Indian restaurant called Malton Spice, which served enormous curries. Neither me, nor my girlfriend could finish either of ours.

The location of the hotel is really very good. It’s right on the main road on the way in (or out), 2 minutes walk from the centre (with its own car park), but far enough away that you don’t get drunken people wandering past the front shouting.
Sadly, the drunken people were shouting so loudly from the high street they could still be heard from our room. They did eventually shut up, and we got some sleep.
The staff at our hotel were very nice, even letting us remain parked in their car park after check out, for us to have a look around the town, and get some snacks.

Malton has some lovely streets, but is also home to the most hideous window display I’ve seen in a long time. Admittedly this was in a butchers, but pretty hideous nonetheless:

Surely the stuff of taxidermist dreams.
You can’t see the (hopefully not real) fluffy chicks nearby.

Malton as a town seemed to be thriving. In fact, most places seem to be.
There was a slightly odd shopping arcade in Beverley, which had one shop at the front and one at the back, and all empty shops in between. Aside from that, everywhere seemed pretty well.
If I take one thing back from the North-East, it’s that they don’t appear to be doing too badly.
We went to several high streets in a few different towns while travelling, and none were half-filled with empty shops, like some streets in Bristol.

The last day was spent in Goathland (apparently where they shot Heartbeat, but I don’t watch it (if it’s still running) so didn’t know who any of the local celebrity postcards were of). It was perfectly nice, although without any signal on my mobile at all for the entire time I was there.
Incredibly, it might not have mobile or DAB signal, but it IS on Google Streetview!

View Larger Map

Oh and there were very helpful friendly staff at the train station ticket office. We caught an old fashioned steam train to Whitby and back (no time spent in Whitby due to bad planning on our part combined with irregular train timetable), before driving all the way back to Bristol.

Oh and after I put away my Thermos flask and took off my cagoule, I took this photo.
A trainspotter wouldn’t take photos like this:

which made me laugh for some reason.

En-route, we stopped for fuel at a petrol station where I was served by an incredibly bored-looking young man, wondering where his life had all gone so wrong. There’s the back-to-reality reminder that I need to get back to job searching. That’ll be me, this coming weekend.

Gripes, Technology

O2 + 3g iPhone tethering = rubbish.

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I moved house a month or so ago. Unfortunately, there was no phone line at all in my new place, and much as I don’t use the phone, I do use the Internet. A lot.
I requested a phone line from BT, but it was going to be 7-10 days. What was I to do?

While I own an iPhone, living with just that, and only on 3g, was going to be awkward.
Browsing the web to look for furniture for my place on a tiny screen, wasn’t going to be that easy.
Then I remembered that you can now tether an iPhone to any computer, and connect your computer to the Internet through the phone. Brilliant!

I’ve done it before, back in pre-3g days, and it was painfully slow.
Pre-3g, it was considerably slower than a dialup modem.

Surely it’s improved to insane levels these days though?
There are adverts suggesting that mobile broadband could practically replace a home broadband line.
I live 2miles from the centre of a city, so have 3g reception all the time too. My luck should be in.

Sadly, despite me being on an iPhone plan with o2 with what is known as “unlimited data” inclusive, this does not include anything used while the iPhone is tethered to a computer. There’s an additional charge for that.
Really, it’s deeply unfair.
Downloading a song to my computer while it’s tethered to my iPhone costs additional money, but downloading the same song to my iPhone doesn’t. Rubbish, eh?

When tethering was first announced, I slated the overpriced nature of this.
It was £35 a month for an iPhone plan on o2, with unlimited data on the phone, but no way to connect it to a computer.
Suddenly the option to connect it to a computer was possible, but at what cost? £10 a month, for “up to” 3gb of transfer downloaded to said computer. £3.33(ish) per gb is insanely expensive really.
I wasn’t going to be watching the iPlayer, or downloading music – that’s for sure.

I ordered the o2 tethering bolt-on, via o2’s website.
For some reason, there is a 24 hour wait for this.
I excitedly waited 24 hours, off-net, to be reconnected.
24 hours came and went. I gave them about 30, then phoned them up.
Order? What order? You never got it?
They can put it through now, but it’ll take another 24 hours though. Rubbish.
I only need it for 10 days, and I’ve wasted 2 already just trying to get them to provide me with the bloody service.
They’ll apparently email me instructions of how to set it up.

Another 24 hours later, it was finally working.
o2 never sent me the instructional email, nor even a text to confirm it was working. I figured it all out by fiddling with settings, using Google, and checking it every hour.
Right at the start, I was petrified I might go over my 3gb allowance and face the wrath of even more additional charges, so I disabled photos, java and Flash in Safari and Firefox.

Is it lightning quick?
No.
Can it replace home landline broadband?
Not a chance.
Is it the only option I have, and do o2 know it?
Double yes.

It isn’t usable long term. Not at all.
There I am on the Internet, updating my Twitter status, when my sister phones me.
I answer without thinking.
My Internet connection dies.

This was an ongoing theme throughout the following 7-or-so days.

The highpoint of this was making a change via my online banking.
My bank has a system for some changes where their asks you for a pin code. Then the bank phones you to tell you the pin code, and you enter the code from the phone, back into the site.
So my bank phones me to confirm I’m not a phisher who has stolen Ben Park’s bank details.
I answer, and they give me a code to put back in on their banking site.
In answering, it’s disconnected me from the net.
First time I enter the code, I get a “page cannot be displayed”.
I remember I’m probably disconnected, and attempt to reconnect.
Then I lose all 3g signal.
5mins later and a phone reboot, I finally complete the system.

Over the next few days, the 3g signal is neither a consistent speed, and sometimes it disappears altogether.
I get my phone landline and broadband installed on the specified date, and put a note in my diary to cancel this mobile broadband in a few days before the month is up.

The first time I call, all seems well. They cancel it. No further charges for me.
10 days later, I get a bill from o2, who have charged me for the service for another month, despite me cancelling it. It’s only £10, but on principal I don’t pay for services I don’t want/use.
I call them and speak to someone who tells me that they’ll just update my direct debit amount, to take the correct amount I actually owe them. Good work.
As half of o2’s computers are down at the moment, she advises I call back in a couple of days to make sure that they’ve got all the information correct.

Monday morning on the 8th March, I phone back, and get offered a completely different solution.
It turns out they can’t adjust the Direct Debit amount at all, so what they’ll do is take the extra £10 this month, and credit back to me the month after.
Not the greatest outcome, but it’ll do. I don’t really appreciate paying for their fuck-up though.

10 days later I receive a shitty text from o2, telling me I haven’t paid my bill this month, and to make payment immediately.
After verifying they definitely haven’t take it from my bank, I phoned them to find that rather than just adjusting the Direct Debit, they’ve cancelled it altogether. I manually pay the bill over the phone, and casually check about this £10 credit while I’m on.
£10 credit? What £10 credit?

Unbefuckinglievable.
She said she’d apply it but it might take 24 hours (as everything seems to, at o2) before I can see it.
Just checked, and it seems it has been applied, although my bill is still wrong. It’s a step in the right direction I guess.

Before hanging up, they did try an up-sell.
Do I have broadband at home?
I explained I do, it’s with another company, and for the next 12 months.
Apparently I should definitely consider o2, when my contract is up.
I’ll certainly keep that in mind, because they provide such a reliable 3g connection, with such brilliant customer service.

Gripes

6music’s content isn’t the problem

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If you believe the reports in the Guardian or the Times but which the BBC is refusing to comment either way on then it seems 6music is for the chop.

If you’ve never heard it, it’s a bit like Radio2 for the under 50s. Interesting presenters, music you don’t hear anywhere else, new bands, etc.
Due to that, sometimes I can’t listen to it because I think the music is shit, but at other times, it gives people like Adam and Joe a much needed home for their comedy, which might not fit quite so well anywhere else into the other BBC stations.

So why’s it being axed (allegedly)?
Nobody is listening to it.
Take a look at the official Rajar listening figures via MediaUK.
Listening hours for mid 2007 = exactly the same as mid 2009.

In the fourth quarter of 2008 (a high point for the station), the most-listened-to show was Adam and Joe, which had only 69,000 listeners.
At the same time, the Asian Network (also allegedly about to be culled) peaked at 29,000 listeners.
(Figures from The Guardian)
At the same time, Radio2’s peak was 3.07million.
3.07million people listening to Terry Wogan reading out boring listeners’ letters. I’ll never understand what Wogan’s appeal was.

So why is nobody listening to 6music?

I think the problem isn’t the content of 6music, but the fact that it is DAB digital-only.
DAB is a pain in the arse, and it’s expensive.

The main selling points for DAB (to the consumer) are:
1. No interference
2. More stations
3. Better quality sound, including stereo on all stations
4. Easier to tune

Frankly I’ll ignore #4 completely, because it’s so stupid. How hard is it to tune an FM radio? Most modern FM radio just auto scan til they find what you want. And then you save it if you like listening to that station. You know where it is. Hard to tune? No.

#1 is true. There is no interference really. There is obvious dead zones though.
I live in Bristol and there’s a section of the M32 on the way in, where I can pick up only 4-5 stations from the massive list I normally have.
In my old house, there was about three spots in the entire house where I could get a decent DAB signal (all the stations I’m expecting).

#2 is partially true. While there are more stations, a shocking number have gone bust. Much as I enjoy listening to JackFM (not available on DAB), I can’t help thinking that a station without presenters most of the day, won’t last very long.
I used to enjoy The Storm with it’s presenterless few-advert format on DAB, til it went bust.

Music – presenters + adverts = Spotify.
And Spotify has less adverts.

Most of the stations on DAB are copies of what you can get on FM. The number of purely DAB stations isn’t that high.

#3 is laughable.
The big selling point of DAB (over say AM) for listening to stations like Absolute is that it’s in crystal clear stereo sound, nationally.
So next time you hear an advert saying you can buy a Pure DAB radio for around £40, go and look for one.
You might find something like the Pure One Mini.

£40.
But hang on! There’s only one speaker.
The big selling point is that DAB is all stereo sound, but the radios aren’t capable of giving you that in stereo sound.
£40, and you don’t even get two speakers. Rubbish.

It’s even worse in a car.
Not everyone wants to sit in their kitchen all day. What if you’re a courier? How are you going to listen in your van?
When I bought my in-car DAB radio, I could only find about 2 car radios under £200, that featured DAB.

But what if you’re buying a new car? Well DAB isn’t even an option on your Ford Transit van.

So what. Big deal.
Not everyone is a courier.

Let’s try a car. The Renault Clio? Nope.

Maybe you’re loaded. Screw it. I’m going to buy a Porsche 911 Carrera S (start price £70,000)!
Nope. No option, when building my Porsche.

Never mind. I’m rich, and completely bonkers.
After buying my Porsche, I’ll nip out to Halfords and buy myself an in-car DAB, and pay someone else to fit it for me.

Arse.

Having found a random non-mainstream supplier for your in-car DAB, and bought something like this from JVC:

…then you’ll go to install it, and you’ll notice it gets worse.
While normal DAB radios you can buy for £40 seem to be able to play FM and DAB via the same aerial, in-car radios can’t.
Why not?
Who knows? Who cares?! Either way – it means you’ll need two aerials on your car.
Perhaps something like this that goes outside the car, and sticks (to anything metal). It’s attached by a long cable too, but as long as you’re driving a convertible or don’t mind spending all day with the window open (or drilling a hole through somewhere), it’s fine.

And it still doesn’t work in tunnels.

Daily Life, Gripes, Technology

Unexpected item in the bagging area

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What is wrong with people?
Not a week goes by, without someone moaning to me about the “unexpected item” error you get in self-service checkouts at the supermarket.
If you’re getting it, it is YOUR fault.

Seemingly it’s a problem we’re all having, all the time.
Well I’m not.
Ever.
I’ve never thought of myself as a genius, but as I’m seemingly the only person in the world who can figure out how to use these machines, I thought I’d write a post explaining this, why it occurs, and how to resolve it.

I’ve had no training in building these machines, but from what I can see, there’s two things going on.
1. You scan.
2. You put it in the “bagging area”.
First the machine scans a barcode, then it expects you to put something in the bagging area.
I’m pretty sure it checks the weight of the bagging area, to make sure you haven’t bought 12 toilet rolls, and scanned them through as a Snickers bar.

It will report “unexpected item” if you just chuck something in the bagging area, because you haven’t scanned it.
That’s your fault.

So scan it, then put it in the bagging area. Simple.
You’ve scanned it, it’s waiting for you to put it in the bagging area.

Where a few people get confused is where they use their own bags.
Given it measures the weight, you already know you can’t just put your bag in the bagging area.
You know this doesn’t work – don’t fight it.
Don’t blame the machine.
If you put a bag in the bagging area without scanning anything, it’ll complain. YOU are using the machine incorrectly.

If you’ve been struggling with this, the solution is so simple you will kick yourself.
For this example, I’ll be buying a 2pt bottle of milk.
You scan the milk, then put it in your own bag, then put the bag (now containing milk) in the bagging area.
It weighs it, and it is approximately the weight it was expecting.
You do this for each new bag, as you add them.
Simple.

If that doesn’t work for you, then you’re still doing something wrong. I haven’t had an argument with the machine about unexpected items in months.
The only argument I have is when you have 4-5 bags, you’re attempting to put money away and pick them up, and as you’re a tiny few seconds slower, it tells you “please take your items” as if you’ve forgotten.
I’ve got a simple solution to that too – swear at it. Profusely.