Chris’s IntaWeb Log Blog Dooffa

Just watched Southland Tales … It linda made no sence at all but was fantastic ! Yup go watch it and see what I mean :). Amazing film and so different to anything I’ve every seen before. I can’t wait to watch The Box.

Posted via my iPhone using the Wordpress App … quite impressive really :).

Recently purchased a camera from pixmania.co.uk and personally I’m going to avoid them like the plague. Their backend systems are just crazy slow … and I mean crazzzyy slow. I’ve ordered from them in the past and received my items next day so I thought I’d get the same treatment. Well apparently not -

1. Item ordered July 1st at about 11am.
2. By 5pm on the same day their site was showing no progress at all. Thinking there might be a payment issue I called them. Sounds like an India call as I could hardly understand what the lady was saying when I spoke to her. Turns out that there is nothing wrong but I should call back tomorrow as the “Validation” part takes 24 hours.
3. July 2nd they appeared to do nothing at all.
4. July 3rd it showed as validated and all the way through the ordering process.
5. July 4th they bothered to ship the item.

What on earth took them 4 working days to ship something they had in stock !!! Either someone messed up somewhere or that’s just the way they do business. I’ll assume it’s the norm for them as they didn’t communicate an issue at any time.

So I defiantly wont be buying from them again anytime soon. You’ve lost me as a customer.

I’ve used Nero since the days of 5 or possibly before then. I’ve also always paid for the upgrades. But I’m not thinking about Nero 8 and wondering what the point is ! I only use Nero BurningROM and Nero BackItUp, all the other junk doesn’t even get installed. So it there any point in me paying for the upgrade ?

Why not offer a Nero Lite package for people to pay for that just want the basics ? Surely I’m not the only person on the planet that would pay for that ?

Well our company is doing well and it’s time to find some more customers. To do that we need to sort our marketing out. First stop the website: www.glo-networks.com, get the design finished and started up a blog.

Previously we’ve found the blog to be a handy way of communicating our technical abilities without having to clutter the website up. So here it comes again.

Read this over the weekend. It’s basically a new potential to SatNav. A system on the roads reports to the SatNav what the speed should be is and the SatNav yells at you to slow down if needed. On top of that they want the SatNav to actually make the car stick to the speed limits and not let you break them. Great idea really, get on it !

But think about it a second, it’s just like speed cameras or safety cameras or whatever they try to call them to make us like them ! These systems are only effective on one type of person, that’s the insurance paying, road tax paying and car registering public. So by following the law and being good you can get in more trouble. Fair enough some say. So what happens to those that don’t have insurance or those that don’t pay their road tax or those that don’t even register their cars, bikes etc ! Well if they ever get caught they get a ban and or a small fine. Why not pour the research into catching that lot and actually deterring them from being baddies in the first place ?

Yes I know that if they don’t pay their road tax their cars get crushed or if they don’t have insurance they get a ban. These type of people really don’t care about bans or crushed bangers. As if they did there’d be none of them left. Put in proper punishments that will make these people think again. Or better put some tech in place to remove them completely from society.

Rant over

So the Tefal QuickCup isn’t really as great as I first thought. After a few months of using it here’s a few issues -
a) Very noisy when in use.
b) Leaking filter / hole in the bottom - a puddle appears under the device
c) Just wont switch on sometimes. No matter how much the power button is pressed or how many times it gets reset sometimes it just wont power up at all. Leave it unplugged a few hours and suddenly it will be fine again.
d) Power use, because the power wont always come on we’ve started to leave it connected over use. Expecting it to not use any power when not in use but in the morning the top appears to be warm to the touch which is weird. So on went the power meter and it appears that over night it uses 0.01 kwH.
e) It moves around the kitchen top when it’s not got enough water in it. Not good as you normally leave it to fill the cup … great to come back with it having traveled across the counter and dumped a load of water elsewhere.
f) Nowhere near boiling water out of it really.
It so feels like a generation 1 product. Having said that we’re still using it.

How on earth is this bloke still hanging around ! I heard his “Big Show” hah, on the radio the other day. What’s big about it and why on earth is it exactly the same as the show he did like 15 years ago on Radio 1 ? And why are their a bunch of idiots in the background all the time clapping and yelping ?

Time for him to move on me thinks.

Over the last few weeks out phone Exchange has been upgraded to the new BT 21C (21 Century Network). Since they’ve done that mess our ADSL is slowed down and sync takes 3 times as long. So here’s the stats of our home ADSL line.

We have 2 other ADSL lines and they’ve all had the same treatment. Each one now takes alot longer to sync and we’ve lost at least 1Mb of each line. The ISPs claim that it’s all to do with a new re-training of the line … what a load of rubbish. We’re over 3 weeks into the new exchange doofa and it’s not getting better. Just hope that this isn’t like this to stay ! !

A bit of a werid post for my site but none the less here it comes :). I work from home most days and thus get through about 7 or more cups of tea a day. Each cup requires a 2 or 3 minute boil of the kettle and at 3kW that’s an interesting hidden cost of a cuppa. Well looking to somehow cut our electric bill I’m using energy meters everywhere. In that process the kettle keeps coming up trumps as the big spender :). So I spotted the Tefal QuickCup on the gadget show a few months ago and wondered if it was out yet. Well apparently it is and a quick check with Argos and 2 days later it’s here.

Simple review as it’s a simple product … it does exactly what it says on the tin. Very hot water out the top from cold in seconds. It holds about 6 good cup fulls and is easy to fill. Has a filter on it though I don’t really care about that and wonder if it will work without it, I assume it does.

It does however make a bit of a noise (sounds just like the hot water maker thingys in cafe’s) and it spits and splashes a little. The noise was a little off putting at first but then the ease of use and potentail energy savings speek for itself. 1 day in and you kinda don’t notice the noise anymore.

There should really even be a trade in of your old kettle to this new one under a potential “green” badge … marketing people you listening ? I hearby predict that the old kettle’s days are numbered. There’s completely no point in waiting for hot drinking water any more.

A few weeks ago I posted about missing RAM on an IBM x3650 server running Windows 2003 here. Apparently after a call open with MS for 3 weeks, they suggested doing this KB913568.

IT WORKED !!!

Hurrarr, just a megga pitty we lost a good customer in the time it took to get it sorted :(.