Since I swapped my phone over to something I can actually use I’ve been calling and texting quite a bit more. In fact I’ve even had to top up the Pay As You Go (PAYG) which I hadn’t had to do for over a year. This rather surprised me as I was mostly just sending texts with the odd quick call and an update of the operating system. I had a look at T-Mobile’s website to discover that they were now charging me 14p per text, £1 for the privilege of using data and an eye-watering 35p/minute to make calls – in fact they even charge a pretty hefty 20p/min to phone “free” 0800 numbers. I hadn’t really noticed how high their costs had gone as I really only used the phone occasionally with the odd high burst when away from home or abroad (I originally chose T-Mobile for their German coverage.)
Mobile phone firms really try to tie people into monthly packages tied to “free” phones but this doesn’t suit me. I wanted something that was PAYG but with the ability to boost it to a more inclusive package for the odd month when I had more frequent mobile requirements. T-Mobile didn’t seem to do anything suitable but there are quite a few virtual phone providers such as Asda and Tesco that do this sort of thing. The one I picked up on was Giffgaff (prior to that I had just assumed was some bit of random advertising prior to The Big Bang Theory.) Anyway, it turns out that Giffgaff is a spin off from 02 that runs a reasonably priced PAYG service with the addition of “Goody Bags”: prepaid packs of free call minutes, texts and data downloads that apply for a fixed period. This seemed to do what I wanted…
Except it didn’t. I logged on to their website and tried to order a SIM. It threw up an error and suggested that it would work if I tried again. I did, it didn’t. The unique selling point with Giffgaff is that it is largely user supported. They have extensive help forums and I have to say that the people posting on these forums are both helpful and polite which makes a real difference in these days of universal internet rudery. I tried various suggestions such as using different browsers and clicking on links from the users’ signature banners. None of this seemed to work so I gave up for the day. The next day I received 20 emails telling me that a variety of SIMs were in the post!
The problem was I didn’t know whether the batch of emails were a computer brain-fart cleared by an eagled eyed ops manager or whether I really was going to receive a batch of SIMs. To date I haven’t received any but I ended up going down a different route which is related to me checking out the mobile coverage. There are two mobile masts at the end of our road. I know one of them is operated by T-Mobile but I didn’t know who ran the other. It turns out that it is operated by Three, one of the smallest of the mobile operators but also one with an offer that really appealed to me: 3p/min for calls, 2p per text and 1p per MB of data – all with the option of boosting with their version of the “Goody Bag”. I sent off for a SIM.
The SIM duly arrived and the coverage in the house is fine. It also seems to work at most of the other I’ve tried so it is beginning to look like a bargain (less than 10% of my previous charges). That just left the task of swapping my mobile number, something I’ve never done before. It turns out to be a really simple task and I have to give some credit here to T-Mobile whose call centre staff were very helpful and not in the least bit obstructive when I told them I wanted to leave and asked for the PAC code (possibly they saw how low my mobile usage is). I then put this into Three’s online transfer form and 24 hours later I was all switched over. If only swapping energy and broadband was that simple.
So that is me vaguely into the 21st Century with a phone that I like, can use and a mobile rate that won’t threaten to bankrupt me. I suppose the next thing is to get a PC that doesn’t run some ancient version of Linux.
Sunday, 27 October 2013
Sunday, 20 October 2013
All Creatures Great And Small
I’ve been spending the week off to coincide with the kids Autumn holiday week. I did have great plans to take them out to various places but my daughter decided to spend Monday doing an impression of Linda Blair from The Exorcist (which I now discover is actually the actress’s name – the character was Regan). Anyway, after spending a day removing pea soup from the furniture, carpet, local priest etc she wasn’t really in a fit state to go out on the fun filled week I’d planned. This was probably just as well as I was also looking after our friend’s dog which is a cross between a Staffordshire Bull Terrier, Vietnamese Pot Bellied Pig and a tank. Needless to say I couldn’t walk the legs off the mutt and even after a five mile march he could still happily pull me over when I was holding his lead.
By Friday the weather looked reasonable enough and my daughter well enough to journey out. We decided to give Edinburgh Zoo a go. It’s a few years since I’ve been there and their big selling point is that they now have Giant Pandas. I was a bit worried about this as I thought it would mean that the place was packed out but when we got there the pandas had gone all Marlene Dietrich and weren’t on display. Good – I think they are useless blighters at the best of times. Apparently, some people had left on the spot when finding this out they couldn’t see them – I can only assume that these are the same people who turn up to the Louvre in Paris, head straight to the Mona Lisa and then bugger off having seen that overrated postage stamp.
Edinburgh Zoo is a reasonable size but possibly feels bigger than it actually is given that it is built on a steep hillside. There are a variety of animals there although some of the more iconic zoo animals are missing – there are no elephants or giraffes – but what they do have seem to be well housed and for the most part look content in that idly-bored-with-proceedings look that zoo animals tend to have. I did try to take a few photographs but I am rather limited by my basic photographic equipment (just my 3MP phone) and the fact that the animals are either lounging far enough out of view to reduce themselves to a dozen or so pixels or moving so damn fast that they don’t stay in focus.
I did get a few reasonable pictures. The Rhea came out pleasingly well although it tried to peck the crap out of someone’s iPad which was hilarious.
I took a picture of this snake which was nicely in view and doing sod-all.
I was very taken with the one horned Indian Rhinoceros (or to use it’s pleasing Latin designation Rhinoceros Unicornis). These are magnificent beasts and they came very close to the viewing gallery.
I tried to get a decent picture of the lions. Just like a domestic cat they are very good at doing nothing much in particular. I did consider chucking a ball of wool at it but I zoomed this picture in to the point of pixilation.
Like any good zoo they have a colony of Meerkats. These ones didn’t have Eastern European accents or sell dodgy insurance products so I think our TV advertising creatives have been lying to us. In fact I don’t know why they gave them Eastern European accents in the first place. South African I could accept. Anyway, the buggers wouldn’t get any closer so I zoomed it to hell. Simples!
If there is one feature that I think is really fantastic with Edinburgh Zoo since I was last there it’s the penguin enclosure. Penguins are really good because they get into the whole being in a zoo thing – this chap was happy to pose for a photo.
This one also posed but I received a text when I was lining the shot up. By the time I sorted that out he had fallen asleep.
The penguin pool has glass viewing panels on the side which allows them to be seen swimming underwater. It’s absolutely mesmerising and allows them to be seen in their natural environment – birds that fly underwater. It’s really astonishing that evolution has pushed them in this direction and incredible to see. Unlike the pandas, of course, who appear to have lined themselves up for a Darwin Award with their inappropriate diet and aversion to reproduction.
Anyway, everyone seemed to enjoy their day out – even my eldest son who appears to have been possessed by the spirit of Kevin The Teenager.
Edinburgh Zoo is a reasonable size but possibly feels bigger than it actually is given that it is built on a steep hillside. There are a variety of animals there although some of the more iconic zoo animals are missing – there are no elephants or giraffes – but what they do have seem to be well housed and for the most part look content in that idly-bored-with-proceedings look that zoo animals tend to have. I did try to take a few photographs but I am rather limited by my basic photographic equipment (just my 3MP phone) and the fact that the animals are either lounging far enough out of view to reduce themselves to a dozen or so pixels or moving so damn fast that they don’t stay in focus.
I did get a few reasonable pictures. The Rhea came out pleasingly well although it tried to peck the crap out of someone’s iPad which was hilarious.
I took a picture of this snake which was nicely in view and doing sod-all.
I was very taken with the one horned Indian Rhinoceros (or to use it’s pleasing Latin designation Rhinoceros Unicornis). These are magnificent beasts and they came very close to the viewing gallery.
I tried to get a decent picture of the lions. Just like a domestic cat they are very good at doing nothing much in particular. I did consider chucking a ball of wool at it but I zoomed this picture in to the point of pixilation.
Like any good zoo they have a colony of Meerkats. These ones didn’t have Eastern European accents or sell dodgy insurance products so I think our TV advertising creatives have been lying to us. In fact I don’t know why they gave them Eastern European accents in the first place. South African I could accept. Anyway, the buggers wouldn’t get any closer so I zoomed it to hell. Simples!
If there is one feature that I think is really fantastic with Edinburgh Zoo since I was last there it’s the penguin enclosure. Penguins are really good because they get into the whole being in a zoo thing – this chap was happy to pose for a photo.
This one also posed but I received a text when I was lining the shot up. By the time I sorted that out he had fallen asleep.
The penguin pool has glass viewing panels on the side which allows them to be seen swimming underwater. It’s absolutely mesmerising and allows them to be seen in their natural environment – birds that fly underwater. It’s really astonishing that evolution has pushed them in this direction and incredible to see. Unlike the pandas, of course, who appear to have lined themselves up for a Darwin Award with their inappropriate diet and aversion to reproduction.
Sunday, 13 October 2013
Archives
I was really delighted this week when two (almost) complete Patrick Troughton Doctor Who stories emerged from Nigeria of all places. By coincidence I have just finished watching the last of Troughton’s stories with the kids. I haven’t seem The War Games myself for at least 25 years and it really was as good as I remembered it – a solid story, excellently scripted and never dragging in spite of it’s 10 episode span. I had been telling the kids that after that it was the last of the 2nd Doctor stories but now we will have Enemy Of The World and Web Of Fear to look forward to. The latter is a real treat as the last Christmas episode alluded to this and left me somewhat clueless as I’ve only ever seen the first episode (as would most people under 50 until this week).
The funny thing is that I discussed this with a colleague who works at the BBC earlier this week. He commented on the rumours indicating that this referred to a couple of old tapes that turned up a while ago. I assumed he meant the two odd episodes that surfaced in 2011 (he probably did). The conversation I was having with him regarded the deletion of old data. Some data has to be removed for legal reasons (for example the data protection act) but more often than not it’s for simple economic reasons to save on disk storage. This was largely the same reason that so many old TV programmes were wiped – the VT was regarded as a far more valuable asset than the content recorded on them. I can understand that it’s difficult to determine what will be of interest in the future but it’s small consolation that so many Doctor Who, Top Of The Pops and Wednesday Plays were regarded as ephemera: passing trivialities to be watched and wiped.
The economic arguments do make some sense in a hard headed accountant’s mind but the costs of archiving in some basic form are surprisingly trivial in the larger scheme of things. The problem is that it’s not always obvious exactly what will prove of interest to future generations. Pick an old newspaper up and the cover story may be intriguing with the sports pages providing a trip down memory lane but the biggest interest is actually the adverts and classifieds. What were people doing, what did they aspire to and spend their disposable income on? Turn to the letters page and it can be surprising at both what ordinary folk were concerned by and even what the prevailing received wisdom was.
The BBC did archive certain programmes, often quite haphazardly, for posterity and sometimes they hit gold. Purely by chance one archive from 1957 is the very first TV appearance of a very young Jimmy Page later of Led Zeppelin super-stardom. Of course, in 1957 the BBC had no idea of how significant he would become (and not in the area of scientific research as he suggested.) It does make you wonder what else of significance was lost:
Deleting old TV programmes looks mindlessly myopic now but I believe we are doing the same again. This time the destruction of content is in the digital sphere. It looks like trivia but the comments sections on web pages, blogs (like this one), Twitter and the whole raft of social media are going to be the historians’ goldmine in the latter part of the 21st Century. That’s as long as we don’t idly hit the delete button for the sake of the cost of an extra disk drive.
The funny thing is that I discussed this with a colleague who works at the BBC earlier this week. He commented on the rumours indicating that this referred to a couple of old tapes that turned up a while ago. I assumed he meant the two odd episodes that surfaced in 2011 (he probably did). The conversation I was having with him regarded the deletion of old data. Some data has to be removed for legal reasons (for example the data protection act) but more often than not it’s for simple economic reasons to save on disk storage. This was largely the same reason that so many old TV programmes were wiped – the VT was regarded as a far more valuable asset than the content recorded on them. I can understand that it’s difficult to determine what will be of interest in the future but it’s small consolation that so many Doctor Who, Top Of The Pops and Wednesday Plays were regarded as ephemera: passing trivialities to be watched and wiped.
The economic arguments do make some sense in a hard headed accountant’s mind but the costs of archiving in some basic form are surprisingly trivial in the larger scheme of things. The problem is that it’s not always obvious exactly what will prove of interest to future generations. Pick an old newspaper up and the cover story may be intriguing with the sports pages providing a trip down memory lane but the biggest interest is actually the adverts and classifieds. What were people doing, what did they aspire to and spend their disposable income on? Turn to the letters page and it can be surprising at both what ordinary folk were concerned by and even what the prevailing received wisdom was.
The BBC did archive certain programmes, often quite haphazardly, for posterity and sometimes they hit gold. Purely by chance one archive from 1957 is the very first TV appearance of a very young Jimmy Page later of Led Zeppelin super-stardom. Of course, in 1957 the BBC had no idea of how significant he would become (and not in the area of scientific research as he suggested.) It does make you wonder what else of significance was lost:
Deleting old TV programmes looks mindlessly myopic now but I believe we are doing the same again. This time the destruction of content is in the digital sphere. It looks like trivia but the comments sections on web pages, blogs (like this one), Twitter and the whole raft of social media are going to be the historians’ goldmine in the latter part of the 21st Century. That’s as long as we don’t idly hit the delete button for the sake of the cost of an extra disk drive.
Monday, 7 October 2013
Carron Dam
One thing I am often looking for is alternative dog walks. Whilst I have enjoyed walking through the Helix and I often go to Plean Country Park I do enjoy a little variety just so I don’t have to look at the same old scenery every day. I was planning on going through the Helix again this Sunday but the last time I went Sam rolled in something unspeakably smelly which resulted in me cleaning him with dry dog shampoo, followed by wet dog shampoo and finally Alberto Balsam coconut and lychee shampoo – after which he still had the aroma of vaguely stinky dog. Jake suggested going to Carron Dam which isn’t a bad idea as it has the advantage of being within walking distance of the house, it is off road, so I can let the dogs have a run, and it contains a sufficient array of bad smells to keep the mutts amused.
It took about 25 minutes to walk right around the dam but this did include a couple of stops for Jake to remove stones or something from his wellies. I did try to take a picture of some wildlife but the rabbit and squirrel that I saw were faster than the cheap photographic equipment that I had with me. I did take a picture of these mushrooms as they don’t move as fast.
Overall it’s a pleasant walk around even if Sam did find something vaguely disgusting to roll in. He now smells of coconut and lychee.
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