BT Exchange Upgrades (Update)

Still no sign of my promised upgrade to a 2mbps service. BT were scheduled to have upgraded my exchange, to allow Demon to up the connection speed, during August but as this is now the 30th August that looks unlikely. I know BT promised that all exchanges would be upgraded "by September 2005" so I suppose they'll claim that means the end of September. Just have to hold tight I suppose.

Unbeatable Beaten

Unbeatable.co.uk, the low cost online electronics retailer, has gone bust. They were one of the first online shops that I used (to buy a pair of speakers) about 7 years ago. A real pity as they regularly had some really good bargains.

As always the moral of this story is to use you credit card for any sizeable purchases as any problem with the goods or retailer become the card company's problem rather than yours. Lets be careful out there.

Rubbish

So, my local council, Angus, have implemented compulsory kerbside recycling. What does that mean? Well, they've issued everyone with a green wheelie bin and a plastic box along with the usual grey wheelie bin. You must now sort your rubbish into the correct receptacle and put them out for collection on the correct days.

The grey bin will be collected alternate Tuesdays in tandem with the green bin while the box will be collected every Friday. It appears they will rifle through your rubbish first to make sure you've got everything in the right bin. If they find an offending item like a tin can in you grey bin they'll refuse to empty it. I can see a lot of angry letters to the local paper when this all starts next month.

The green bin is for rubbish which can be composted like grass cuttings, plant trimmings, tea bags, coffee grinds, potato peelings etc. but no cooked food or raw meat. The box is for paper (but not cardboard), glass (washed but no lids) cans (washed) plastic bottles (washed but no lids) and newspapers, junk mail (but no envelopes) phone books (but no yellow pages). Paper should be placed in a plastic bag but not in the box!

I'm all for doing my bit for the environment but these rules are just overcomplicating the matter and if a jobsworth starts raking through the rubbish to catch people out they'll cause a lot of ill feeling. Similarly the problem of trying to remember which box/bin is due for collection will I'm sure cause problems particularly among the elderly.

When I lived in Germany we had something similar but even more extreme. Every household had a grey bin, a green bin, a white bin and a brown bin with each one only emptied once a month. Madness.

Glasgow Rangers 2:0 Famagusta

Safely through to the Champions League proper where we will probably be destroyed by any half decent team. Such is life, at least we're through with guaranteed cash to hopefully put the club on a more even keel (I'm not convinced it should go on new players).

Like I said after the first leg Famgusta showed some really nice touches and we were very lucky they didn't score. Rangers' two goals were very good and once again Dado Prso proves he is the man to make the difference. He covers every blade of grass, twice, every match. Amazing workrate for such a big guy. What would Rangers be without him? Lets hope we don't have to find out. Nacho Novo? Hmmm, just not good enough.

Watched the match on the big screen (65" diagonal) courtesy of the new projector :-) Works really well in the bedroom running off the Freeview box via Scart. Channel Five had the Man Utd game and the picture on it was also very good (colours were a bit bright though). ITV2 had the Everton game but it was in glorious 4:3. The projector will switch to a 4:3 signal but I didn't bother with that. It was very disappointing seeing this when compared to the other two matches broadcast in 16:9.

After the match Lesley wanted to watch "Lost" on Channel4 which was an amazing experience. Fantastic colours, good contrast with an almost 3D quality to the image. I was just projecting onto the bedroom wall (painted a yellow-orange colour) with the projector sitting on a large book atop the bed. Not ideal but the results showed with the projector mounted to the ceiling and a DIY projection screen with proper black border to improve the contrast the picture will be even better. Not bad for a total budget of less than £500 (projector, cables, ceiling mount, screen). I have my solution for the big football games, TV dramas and DVDs. Well chuffed.

Tags: Rangers Football
Category: Sport

Credit Card Therapy

A whole week without a post about selecting a new television. How can this be? Well, I had a bit of a brainstorm which, er, resulted in me purchasing a LCD Projector! Yup... PURCHASED. Lets recap.

Read more...


The World Cup kicks off on the 9th June 2006, an event which traditionally requires a new TV to better appreciate the month long festival of football. The 2002 World Cup heralded the purchase of my current 28" Wide Screen CRT, but that has to be replaced (it's practically the law :-) before the big kick off. Search the blog for "Telly Quest" (I must get all those posts placed in a category).

First thoughts were centered on a Plasma TV, then progressed to a LCD TV via a Plasma screen and most recently a massive DLP projection TV. Along the way I toyed with screen sizes ranging from 37" to a quite ludicrous 56" DLP monster (way too big for my living room), and then I had a thought *gasp*.

For the Euro 2004 France v England match (happy memories) I borrowed the data projector from work for the weekend. Hooking the 800x600 pixel 4:3 data projector to the Sky Box we managed a 120" diagonal screen size projected onto a cream coloured wall. The picture wasn't half bad considering the fact that ITV's football broadcasts are regarded as the worst picture quality available in the UK. I also watched a couple of DVDs projected onto our bedroom wall and that's when I thought about checking the affordability of a low end 16:9 home cinema projector.

But what about the promise of HD broadcasts and new DVD formats just around the corner? Well, the more I looked into the technology and where it was heading the more I realised it was all a bit of a mess. Sure in 3 years time HD will be the way to go when it's a mature, proven technology but to buy a HD screen now is, in my opinion, a total lottery. I therefore discounted any "HD Ready" requirement (probably until the 2010 World Cup).

I honed my requirements down to the lowest cost (but scores well in reviews) 16:9 projector with a short throw lens (as I'd decided that it was to be placed in our bedroom). The projector should be as small and light as possible, able to be mounted to the ceiling, low fan noise, good looks with Component Video inputs and, if possible but very rare, RGB Scart. I was concerned about DLP Technology and the dreaded "Rainbow Affect" and concluded that I wouldn't risk it meaning I was looking for a low cost LCD projector. After an extensive search of the AVForums and the choice had been made. The cost of the machine staggered me, out came the credit card and quick as a flash the order was in. Ordered it at 10:20PM last Wednesday night, quickly got a confirmation e-mail followed on Thursday at 11:20AM by a shipping notice and by Friday evening it was delivered. Top service from a company I'd never heard of before (but good feedback on the AVForums) www.oyyy.co.uk.

So here it sits, a Toshiba ET1 16:9 LCD Projector for a total cost of £382 delivered. Certainly not cutting edge (a couple of years old now) but perfect for what I wanted at a price that was worth taking a punt on. First impressions, detailed review and further explanation to follow soon.

Tags: TV HDTV DLP Plasma LCD
Category: TV

New Addition

Lesley (my better half) is officially a grandmother!??! This is her granddaughter, Ellie, 2 months old (click on image to enlarge).

Glasgow Rangers 3:1 Celtic

Nice result. Four goals scored, two penalties and two straight red cards for the usual suspects, all is well with the world.

Tags: Rangers Football
Category: Sport

Health Update 41

Well, it's all kicking off now. I've just got a letter from the hospital booking me in for an overnight stay for a liver biopsy. Eurgh, needles, lots of prodding, gawping nurses, hairy arse hanging out of those stupid lace up gown things, oh the humanity. D-Day is the 9th September, which is a Friday and home again for the Saturday. I wonder if the hospital has Wi-Fi?

Tags: Health

Health Update 40

So, a health update. Not been doing so good lately. Just about reached rock bottom if the truth be known. My brain has all but ceased to function and work has been torturous for the last couple of months.

I just can't seem to get going on anything so my Doctor, who showed some genuine interest this time, has signed me off for a month. Time to recharge my batteries and try and stabilise the problems and maybe even start to reverse the decline. Who knows if it'll do any good but the stress of work and traveling has been getting me down.

I can't really afford to take so much time off from my work as the main project is at a delicate phase (it's never anything else) but with a mixture of holidays, working from home when I can and rest for the next month and I should keep it ticking over without causing too many red flags to raised for the evil HR b*stard. A lot of this depends on my boss who tends to make the right noises but it remains to be seen what'll happen when the pressure's on. Wait and see I suppose.

Tags: Health

Blogger Categories

One of the major omissions of the Blogger service is the absence of "Categories" whereby a reader can view a list of posts relating to a particular subject.

I've just started to retrospectively add this feature by utilising the del.icio.us bookmarking service. As this blog contains nearly 300 posts this will obviously take some time to implement. Still, I've made a start but I'm sure Blogger will add the feature natively (enough people want it) before I've completed the task. I'll add a list of the categories to the sidebar at a later date.

Tags: Blogger
Category: Blog

TV Screen Sizes

The seemingly neverending quest to select a new TV continues. To help make sense of all the various screen sizes available for the new HD ready panels I've created a quick image (click to enlarge) showing the most popular sizes and how they compare to each other.

The 28" and 32" are included as I feel these are the sizes a lot of people will be upgrading from by replacing their 16:9 CRT models. Certainly, I'm looking to replace my old 28" Toshiba 28Z13B (bought in time for the World Cup 2002) so it's helpful to compare the difference in scale of my existing set.

The diagram does not take account of actual available diagonal size but instead quoted panel sizes, for example a 28" CRT usually only displays and actual 27" of image while the 56" Sagem HD-D56B has a quoted viewing size of 55.4".

Obviously, as you can see, a 56" screen has 4 times the area of a 28" screen. Nice. The Sagem HD-D56B got a very good write up in this months Home Cinema Choice magazine and interestingly, as the speakers are in the base unit, is actually slightly smaller than the 50" Samsung SP50L7HX I identified earlier as a possible contender. Hmmmm... woof!

I'm starting to lean towards the 56" screen, particularly as DLP technology seems to allow viewing at much closer distances without any drop in quality. The manual for the SP50L7HX mentions a minimum viewing distance of 5.5 feet! A couple of magazine reviews also seem to back this up mentioning that picture quality remained stunning even at a very close distance. Opting for the Sagem HD-D56B with matching stand would solve the problem of where to put the Sat box, DVD player etc that I'd have with the pedestal design of the Samsung SP50L7HX.

Much to think about.

Update: April 2008, I've added a new post to reflect the common LCD and Plasma panels available today.

Category:

• TV
• LCD

iPod Mini Woes (conclusion)

The replacement iPod mini finally arrived yesterday concluding a six week marathon without any mobile music. As I wrote before my original iPod was goosed so I got a brand new replacement.

All well and good but what really pissed me off was Apple's customer service and poor communication. For a repair status you logon to their support website where a running commentary can be found of the process. Item arrived, investigation, under repair etc. That part went fine and finally it said item shipped. Next thing I know the status says "Closed" oh yeah, so where's my iPod? They promised to email the tracking details but that never happened so I had to phone the support line (on hold for 15 minutes) speak to someone in Bangalore who finally managed to root out a tracking number for me. Piss poor.

Status pages are all well and good but they invariably are out of date or are only updated after the event. Case in point is my recent hosting problems (see previous post). They acknowledged the problem on their status page at 12:33, at 16:40 they updated it again saying still broke but hoped to have it back in 2 hours. Checked again at 18:40 no update server still down. The server finally came back at 20:30 but they never updated the status message and finally deleted it this afternoon. Piss poor.

Similarly, my problems last week with Blogger. I couldn't post to this blog for over 24 hours but no mention of any problems on their status page. I finally received a reply to a support email 5 days later saying everything seemed fine now and my issue was probably caused by a server problem they had the same day. So why didn't they mention this on the status page? Piss poor.

Tags: Apple Ipod Support
Category: Gadgets

Hosting Woes

Well, my hosting company's server was down for 7 hours today and appears to be only coming back up now (even though they haven't updated the status page, which makes my blood boil). I've said it before and I'll say it again, steer clear of anything related to Pipex and their hosting companies 123-reg and webfusion. Piss poor, clueless f*ckers (yes I'm in a bad, bad mood).

Tags: Hosting Domain
Category: Hosting Domain

Famagusta 1:2 Glasgow Rangers

Managed to catch the second half of the match courtesy of a hooky internet feed (from Italy I think). I've got to say that from what I could see (from a very poor quality picture) Famagusta are a pretty reasonable side. They had the vast majority of the possession, passed the ball well, all good build up with threatening moves.

Two good away goals should mean that Rangers progress into the group stage but the opposition will pose a threat at Ibrox. How much the heat and travel affected Rangers remains to be seen. Waterreus made a superb save late on and a number of crucial stops but Rodriguez made a dreadful error for Famagusta's goal. Onwards and upwards.

Tags: Rangers Football
Category: Sport

3D Space Model

I've created a quick 3D space model of the most lust worthy object of desire at the moment, the Samsung SP50L7HX. A brief measure of the room and I felt it would fit OK but I wanted a better idea of the sheer scale of the beast by rendering (using Blender, naturally) an image showing the 3D model in the correct location.

I'm really poor at interior lighting so this is just a very quick test to get an initial idea. Lesley commented that it looked well smart and appears to fit in OK. I'll create a proper photorealistic model and rendering of the TV soon and either composite it into an actual photograph of our living room (when decorated) or do a better rendering of the room.

The view shown above (click image to enlarge) is roughly taken from my favourite position, lying on the sofa. There is enough room to allow the curtains to sit behind the corner of the TV and to be easily drawn. One problem though is where to put the Sky box, DVD player, Amp etc. The SP50L7HX has an optional stand add-on but the design of this doesn't allow the TV to placed in a corner so that's a non starter. We'll probably get a small equipment table and place it beneath the window, should look well smart, oh yes.

Tags: 3D DLP HDTV
Category: TV 3D Blender

Samsung SP50L7HX

The more I read about it the more I'm convinced this is the one. Check out the reviews listed below. Nice stuff. I know DLP technology has it's problems, not least the "rainbow affect", but between now and when I finally make the purchase I'll be carefully checking out my susceptibility to the phenomenon. My boss has a very expensive home cinema setup based around a DLP projector so maybe I'll wangle a demo of that first.

What Home Cinema
Home Cinema Choice
What Video Widescreen TV

Regular readers may remember the post where I declared that due to the size of my living room I felt that even a 42" screen would be too large and that I might lean towards a smaller 37", piff, poff, pash. What's the point of spending ridiculous amounts of cash for a few inches more? As the room is stripped for the decorating Lesley has decided that she wants to remove a lot of the clutter when the room is finished. Out goes the large coffee table, side tables, countless knick knacks etc. All she wants in the room is the new fireplace, two sofas and a TV. I'm sure we'll get a couple of small tables for lamps but that will be it. A quick measure of the corner where the TV will go and I feel it should fit OK.

I have no intention of making the new purchase until say, February or March of next year. Plenty of time to gauge the timing of any new models from Samsung or even when end of line bargains are to be had.

Tags: DLP HDTV
Category: TV

Sky TV

Here we go again, another steep price rise for Sky subscribers. My Sky World package will be going up from £41 a month to £42.50 as of 1st September 2005. Enough's enough. Completely unjustifiable so I'll be losing the Sky Movies to take the cost down to £36 (still outrageous).

They've obviously twigged that a lot of people will do the same as that package is rising the most from £33 to £36. Complete and utter bastards, f*ckers... this gravy train has left the station.

Tags: Sky TV
Category: TV Sky

Who's Your Daddy?

I am, you sexy lump of metal, plastic and glass. Yes, the fog is clearing on my year long quest to research, choose, purchase and install a new television in time for the 2006 World Cup kick off.

Forget your LCDs with their small screen size, dodgy refresh rates, smearing, pixelisation and dead pixels. Draw a veil over Plasmas with their endless picture quality problems, screen burn, low resolution and hideously high prices. Say hello to the Samsung SP50L7HX, woooofff! Fifty inches of stunning picture courtesy of DLP technology.

All together now..."this is the one, this IS the oooonnnnneeeee, this is the one..." At least until I change my mind.

Tags: TV HDTV World+Cup
Category: TV

Normal Service Has Been Resumed

Rolling Stone magazine have published a new interview with the man who makes it all worthwhile, Roger Waters. Touching on Pink Floyd, Live8, fat d*ve, divorce (just seen off his fourth wife), golf, pool, the blues, Clapton, Opera...

Tags: Pink+Floyd Roger+Waters
Category: Music

iPod Mini Woes (further update)

The saga of my goosed iPod Mini continues unabated. It took me a couple of weeks to actually get around to shipping the faulty kit back to Apple for repair.

Their support system allows you to track your iPod through the repair process which is nice. They've just updated the information to say that a replacement has been ordered so I can safely assume that it was pretty terminal (as I suspected) and that a repair was not possible. For a personalised iPod (laser engraved) they promise to return the repaired or replacement unit within 3 weeks of receiving the return. I'll keep you posted.

iPod Mini Woes
iPod Mini Woes Updated

Tags: Apple iPod

Digital Home Magazine

Digital Home Magazine, published by Future Publishing, have announced they are to stop the print edition and go exclusively online. There are a number of interesting articles available which should be of interest to any gadget tart, particularly if you're in the market for a new telly.

Xbox 360 or Playstation 3
Top 10 Big TVs
Are you HD ready?

They also seem to have a bit of a scoop on Sky's HD Sky+ service due early 2006, in a news item dated today, but the link to the image and Sky's website seem to be broken. Maybe Sky have pulled the info or they've jumped the gun too soon.

Update: Looking like a scoop as the link to Sky HD info has just come online.

Tags: Sky TV HD

Googleopoloy

Don't look now but I think I may have got things back to what passes for normality. What a pish 24 hours, I did have visions of deleting the whole thing and starting from scratch (In times of crisis, my first reaction: Overreact).

Technorati doesn't seem to be indexing though apart from a brief flurry of activity last night before Blogger decided it didn't want to play ball anymore. The code is a bit more legal now but there are still a number of validator failures to contend with. I'll let sleeping dogs lie for a bit on that front.

All this has made me start to query the power these free services hold over me. Take Google for instance; they own Blogger, they provide this blog with search services, advert revenue, they own Gmail which I use for archiving, Google Maps, Google Earth, Picasa and Hello for photo management, the Usenet archive (Google Groups, formerly Deja-News) etc.

All this is provided to me for free. Great you'd think and yes it is... when they work. But what happens when they don't work? Who do you turn to for support? Who do you rant and rave at to get things fixed? An email robot that's who. How can you really complain when all this is provided for free? But when it's broken it hurts, it hurts bad. How much resource should Google assign to solve the problems of a few users (paying nothing) when they have millions of other customers happily working away with no worries? Worrying thought, no?

The blogosphere is particularly dependent on free services and software from Blogger and Wordpress for publishing, Bloglines and Technorati for search, Del.ici.ous for bookmarks, Flickr for photos the list is endless. What would happen if they all disappeared, or the companies started to charge a fee for their use? Is this what Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft etc are planning? Build up huge numbers of users, make them dependent on their services and then sting them?

Tags: Google Blogger

Whoops

Buggered the template up trying to correct a few errors and now Blogger isn't letting me republish the full blog again. Hopefully get it fixed sometime soon.

Update: This is going to take sometime to get it back to where I want it to be.

The reason for the upheaval was advice from Technorati support after I asked why this site wasn't being indexed by them or the "tags" being picked up. The reason turned out to be an embarrassing number of errors in the template HTML. The validator reported 100 errors on the index page, oh my, how embarrassing. I've got it down to 16 errors as you can see here and guess what? Technorati has picked up my last "Tagged" post. Result.

I need to tidy it up a bit more now with proper Meta tags, Google Search and Adsense, properly aligned images, "Read More..." hack, permalinks etc. Phew, serves me right for harbouring reams of illegal code.

Sorry if this screws up your RSS reader with lots of previous posts reappearing.