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Tuesday 28 September 2010

Petrol Prices just 17 months on

Just been looking back at my emails from www.petrolprices.com
What are we paying now 115 -119p per litre?? In less than 2 years on!?
It really does take the piss!

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Station  : Tcs Black Cat
Address  : Great North Road, Chawston, Bedford, MK44 3BE
Brand    : Total
Distance : 3.29
Price    : 94.9p
Updated  : 06-04-2009
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Station  : Tempsford Service Station
Address  : Tempsford Road, Sandy, SG19 2AF
Brand    : Shell
Distance : 4.89
Price    : 94.9p
Updated  : 04-04-2009
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Monday 20 September 2010

Tommy Boyd Pubcasts

Don't miss them!

Tommy is joined for more general pub banter – from the arcane to the poignant - by Mark, Fiona and Jason. Thanks to Matt Hollick for the technics and the crossword questions.

http://mrtommyboyd.wordpress.com

Barenaked Ladies Gig and Smartphones

I was lucky enough to win tickets for a Barenaked Ladies gig at the O2 Academy in Leeds last Friday.
As I glanced around I noticed the amount of people taking photos and video with their mobile phones and it suddenly occurred to me just how much my iPhone and satnav had been used in the entire process of getting and being there.

First, was winning the tickets themselves.  I was using the twitter client for the iPhone when Absolute Radio tweeted the competition question to win a pair of tickets.  I tweeted back the correct answer in under a couple of minutes and I was a winner.

Then there was the SatNav with it managing to get us around the traffic on the A1 as we headed North and also directing us to the nearest car park to the venue.  The result was we could leave home with very little continguency time as we did not need to use the paper map, drive blindly into traffic jams and get lost in central Leeds.  Then I used Google Maps on my iPhone to get a walking route from the car park to the venue.

Once inside I was taking photos, HD video on the phone and posting some of the photos straight to Facebook.



It is only just over ten years ago, when I would be at home beating my computer keyboard around the walls because my 28k dial up modem had failed for the umpteenth time to connect to Compuserve or Daemon.  Now we have broadband speed and processor power in our pockets, an always on community.  They say the next billion of the world's population to be connected to the internet will be via mobile devices first.

I wonder where we will be in another ten years?

Thursday 9 September 2010

The Extreme Action Spider

He's been hanging on for the past two weeks, three floors up on the office window, and his web has withstood the recent wind and rain.

I bloody hate spiders though!




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Tuesday 7 September 2010

iPhones, Baths and Rainwater

Back in 2008 I brought my first iPhone. I waited for the 3g as I didn't want to go back a step to GPRS/EDGE data speeds.

The phone survived a 4 foot drop onto a kitchen floor very early on. The case was damaged and after 15 months I finally lost the volume and mute buttons, resorting to using a paper clip to push what remained of the switches inside the case.

I persevered with it determined to make limp on out of contract, enjoying a reduced 1 month sim only contract until the iPhone 4 was released.

With a month to go until iPhone 4 launch day I had a night out in Brighton. I booked into a seafront hotel and got a free upgrade to a suite with a jacuzzi bath.

8 pints later I got back to the hotel room and decided to relax before bed with a bath and to read the newspaper on the iPhone. At 3am I awoke freezing cold, wet, still laying in the bath. The iPhone was laying at the bottom and was completely dead.

Luckily I had insurance and a trip to the Carphone Warehouse was needed. They confirmed the water damage in store. You could see the film of water between the glass and the screen. I was told that they can confirm most phones as water damaged and replace it immediately in store, but as it was an iPhone it had to be sent off to their main repair centre who then may pass it to Apple.

Three weeks later, the phone had been from the store, to the CPW repair centre, to Apple repair centre, each of them confirming water damage. Then Apple repair send a new handset to CPW repair centre, CPW repair centre then 'test' the new handset and finally pass it back to the store for collection.

In the meantime my insurance gave me a cover phone. It was a mid nineties Nokia which had lovely rubber buttons and you could only call, text and play snake on it. Absolute torture after having an iPhone for 18 months.

I finally had my hands on the replacement handset five days before iPhone4 launch day. I was disappointed that I had got another 3G after the guy in store told me it would most likely be a 3GS replacement, but still.

On iphone4 launch day I half decided to queue and attempt to get one. In Swindon (where I was working that week) at 8:40 am the Orange store had a queue of 4, Phones4u I think could not have any left as there was no queue, Carphone Warehouse a queue of 20 and o2 store must have been 200 minimum. My choice of network 3 were not offering it on launch day. I decided to wait a couple of weeks.

Then the 'grip of death' reports started to come out. To the point I decided to wait for longer and still enjoy the £15 a month sim only tariff I was enjoying on my old but now unlocked handset.

All was well until 2 weeks ago when I was putting up a tent in appalling rain. Knowing that iPhones do not like water very much I took it out of my soaked trouser pocket and placed it inside the tent for safety whilst I continued to put it up. However the rain continued and went straight through the inner tent before I had a chance to pull the waterproof outer over the top.

Inside there was a pool of water and floating inside it was the replacement iPhone!!! The screen was flickering and despite getting the hairdryer on it five minutes later the poor thing died. I sent it on its way with the best expletive hymn I could muster. The B, F and C words were used.

So. I write this on my new iPhone 4 on a new contract. The iPhone 3G is going through the three week process as before, but be damned if I was going to use that bloody emergency Nokia again!!

But now I know just how sensitive iPhones are to water expect me to be posting from a Blackberry next week.

PS No 'grip of death' experienced so far!!!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone




Location:High St,Malmesbury,United Kingdom

Wednesday 1 September 2010

The Apostrophe Rap

Let's sort out the apostrophe use once and for all.  God knows what they are teaching the kids in school these days.