Gardening, Technology, Wildlife

The pond fountain

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I wanted a fountain for my pond.
I’ve seen online that some of them are suitable for ponds with wildlife living in them, so bought one.
There are some that can pump thousands of litres of water per hour, but my pond only holds about 150 litres, and I didn’t want Niagra Falls – just a little water fountain.

Also, as there’s no electricity in my garden, and it’d be a pain in the arse to add it, I thought I’d try a solar-powered one. You can get ones with battery supplies for when there isn’t any sun, but they’re expensive, and it’s been pretty sunny in my garden of late. That’s almost certainly set to continue, right?

I blame Iceland. They seem to be getting the blame for everything else at the moment.

Edit: The day after, with brilliant sunshine. I was getting a good 12-15cm of height, from the single jet attachment.

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.

Gardening, Wildlife

Building a pond – day 4

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It’s day whatever of this never-ending task that I still haven’t completed.
Ponds are hard.
I consulted two people – someone who has worked in the building trade, and someone who is a keen gardener – and both told me that building a pond is “a lot of work”.

Still, I’ve started, so I’ll finish.

My girlfriend suggested we needed some oxygenating plants for our pond, before we put the tadpoles in.
Luckily her mum has a pond which had (spawn, and then) tadpoles in it, so we took some (plus some water) from there.

Oxygenating pond weed is hard to come by. I tried B&Q and several garden centres (by phone), and several didn’t sell it, but suggested Almondsbury Garden Centre. They seemed very friendly on the phone and confirmed a selection of oxygenating plants, so I went out there.
What doesn’t come across in the video (because I didn’t film very much) is how big the place it. MASSIVE.

The next video may be more interesting, as I’ll be attempting to feed the tadpoles.

Business, Daily Life, Technology

Jelly

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When I Google-image’d for “jelly”, I didn’t only get the type of thing usually inedible by vegetarians, because Jelly is also a coworking/networking/working event.

Essentially it’s designed for self-employed individual types, who spend all day on their own at home, fighting the urge to switch on the Xbox, and trying to motivate themselves to keep working, without going mad from the loneliness, or the distractions of cats, children, or a sudden desire to do something incredibly mundane (that never looked remotely interesting until you weren’t supposed to be doing it).

The idea is to get together in a shared space, and occasionally talk to one another.
There is some networking opportunity there, but you don’t go just to swap business cards, and there’s no requirement to stand up and talk about yourself for 60 seconds (people will look at you very oddly if you do).
Just because you meet a PR guru doesn’t mean you can only use/recommend them for all future PR needs, and you don’t have to get up for it at 5am, pay membership to join a bloody “chapter” or learn a secret handshake, either.
At the ones I’ve been to, there was even free tea/coffee and biscuits.

The majority of people who have attended the ones I’ve been to so far, are either web designers or web developers (possibly due to it being arranged via Twitter). I’m not either.

My current circumstances are as follows:
1. I work part-time at weekends, in a crappy job in a petrol station. This is tediously boring, involves working in the middle of the night, is bad for my health (mental and physical), and it isn’t paying my bills either, which is why…
2. I’m looking for another job. It’s pretty boring, and hard to keep at it, when the economic odds seem massively stacked against me, and every news report tells me there aren’t any jobs left.
AND
3. While I wasn’t working for part of 2008 and 2009, I came up with an idea for a business. I’ve been working on this for a while, and I attended workshops at City of Bristol College in Business Startup, but it’s hard to keep both the motivation and confidence in the idea going, with little validation from people who aren’t friends/family.
PLUS
4. I’ve a fascination with the media, especially writing and radio. However, it is fiendishly hard to get into, easy to fall out of, and the radio industry seems to be stuck in a rut at the moment of thinking that listeners just want back-to-back music (and adverts), with little-to-no personality from presenters (assuming they still employ presenters, and aren’t running 10-hours-a-day of automation).

When I first heard about Jelly, I thought it was a great idea, and commented about it on Twitter.
I was immediately invited, but felt I wouldn’t quite fit with it, given how little I was accomplishing at home. The idea of doing whatever you do at home, with other people, would have involved me mostly drinking tea and feeling slightly sorry for myself.

Lee Cottier (who organises the Bristol/Bath Jelly Coworking events under the guise of @CoWorkingWest) practically insisted I come along, and talked me into it.
I wasn’t sure I met the “for creatives” brief that the event had chosen, but Lee thought my radio stuff would. Bizarrely, I didn’t even think about that side, as it is something that has not yet made me any money whatsoever, so I’d disregarded it altogether.

At the first meeting, I was very late. It starts at 9.30, and as I left home very late, got lost, and nipped into the busiest Post Office in the world to send a “quick” parcel (more of my worldly goods, eBayed), it was nearly noon by the time I got there.
This wasn’t an issue. The venue is booked all day, but there is no requirement to start at the start, or end when the organisers end.

I thought I’d feel a bit of a fraud, because I thought that all the people there would be moderately successful. While this is true, they weren’t all financially supported by what they were doing at Jelly.
I spent a lot of time talking to an author, who despite having already been published, couldn’t afford to live purely off of that.

There were two tables – one big with lots of people sat round, one small with two people sat round. Feeling a bit unconfident, I took a seat at the smaller table.
I did some work, wound up chatting to some very interesting people about publishing, and although on paper all I did was send some emails, post some forum messages and tidy/type up some radio/script notes, there was no denying that it had inspired me to go on and do more.
I set some things in motion that day, which would give me more constructive things to carry on with, afterwards.

It also gave me a small amount of hope.
Spending all day on your own, watching the news, listening to the radio, and looking for a job that seems more unobtainable by the hour, you can really get quite depressed.
While the economy is undoubtedly screwed, these were all people who were making a living at doing something. They were all able to attend a coworking event on a weekday, so had flexible working hours.
Just getting out of bed, getting dressed and going to an office, was brilliant for motivation. Never mind that it wasn’t MY office, I wasn’t getting paid for my work, and I wasn’t working WITH any of these people. Together, we were all working…separately.

Yesterday I went to my second Jelly meet.
I came on leaps and bounds with EatInBristol (my business project, aka #3 above), and met some more interesting people.
In the space of seven hours, I got a major task completed that I had been putting off for a long time and sent some important emails, someone else filmed an advert for the Doritos King of Ads competition, and we’re all a lot more clued up on UK recruitment law thanks to a completely unplanned cross-table discussion.

For more information on Jelly:
– See http://workatjelly.com (for how it started)
– See http://wiki.workatjelly.com for information on one local to you
– And if you live in Bristol/Bath, contact @coworkingwest on Twitter, for information about when/where the next one takes place.

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.

Gardening, Wildlife

Building a pond – day3

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There’s been some debate about whether you technically “build” a pond.
Surely you “excavate” it, more than “build” it?
You’re taking away, mostly…..although I suppose then you put some things back in.
This is the third day of me digging a hole anyway.

As you can see, I’ve had a busy few days, mentally.
I had a sudden worry with all these huge “rocks” I kept finding and killing with a pick-axe, that one of them might be a water/sewer/gas pipe or something else important, so contacted the landlady to make sure there wasn’t anything running through our garden, before continuing.

Also, unfortunately it rained on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.

On the upside, that means I was continuing the build on Saturday, when my girlfriend was there to help.
With me pick-axing, and her shovelling, things sped up infinitely (well, at least by 2-3 times, anyway).

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dbmo7-xO1w8&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

And there we have it. There’s a pond in my garden. Currently without any water, filters, or animals to speak of, but a pond nonetheless.

Gardening, Wildlife

Building a pond – day 2

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This is like a mid-season episode of Lost. It could be called “day2”, or “the day not much happened” or just simply “Tuesday”.
In fact, it is quite difficult to see what I’ve done, on video.

After day 1, I was exhausted.
After putting the video online, I thought “this is really dull – nobody will want to see the rest”.
Yet, without me mentioning this project on Twitter at all, that last post got a surprising amount of views. In fact, it got more views than any prior iwantedparklife post.
It could be a complete concidence. Maybe it is just because the Twitter festival was about to take place, and my name was mentioned with the other ticket holders on their site.

Anyway here is what happened on day2:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYIN_fzJthI&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

It’s like digging your way out of a quarry. There’s no soil, just more and more bloody rocks.

Gardening, Wildlife

Building a pond – day 1

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“Pondlife”?
“Pondbuild – almost live”?
I need a better name for this.

I’ve been pondering a pond since I lived in my old house. I’ve just moved house about 6 weeks ago, and thought I saw a frog in the street (cul-de-sac) recently. My suspicions were confirmed, sadly, by a dead frog squashed flat after being run over, a few days ago.
Our garden was a bit too square, with patchy grass and waterlogged, so me and my girlfriend decided to do something about this, and also put some trees, bushes, and vegetables in.
When the landlady found out what we were planning, she insisted on giving us some money to help out with this, and coupled with the frog I’d seen recently, we decided to build a pond.

There will be no fish, as they’ll only attract more cats. Plus fish are really dull, aren’t they?
My girlfriend said she only really liked tropical fish (so can’t go outside), and having them indoors would make the place look like a dentist waiting room.

So instead, I’m going for frogs, plants, and rocks.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hzIMj4DJwc&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

They say that farming contributes to global warming, due to the high levels of methane produced. It’s all true.
After an hour of digging with a spade and all that bending over, I can tell you that the level of gaseous emissions in my garden had at least doubled.

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.