It seems of late that my phone has acquired a nasty habit whereby it’ll hang for a second or so at random. I’ve not been able to reproduce it, so there’s not a huge amount I can do, but it’s not hugely annoying with the exception of when listening to music.
With this in mind I took the easy option to solve this problem and went on the hunt for a new MP3 player so I could listen to my own music on the train to/from work (rather than the tinny crap from other passenger’s headphones). After some pondering Sadiq linked me to the Sandisk Sansa Fuze, which is just over £50 from Amazon, and with a free trial of Prime I had it rather quickly.
The device itself is flash based, and the version I got has 4GB of on-board memory, with a microSD card for additional storage. It’s simple USB mass storage for putting files on, so no more messing around with additional applications like I had to do with my old Creative Zen, and this also means that it works nicely without any drivers on any OS I care to throw it at. The battery life is fantastic, and manages to keep going for over 20 hours on a single charge before it finally gives in and demands more juice. The other nice thing about the Sansa is that the jog wheel used for controlling the device actually moves. I’ve never liked the lack of tactile feedback found on iPods, and this is a big plus for me in terms of providing tactile feedback.
So far I’ve not had many problems with it, although I’m not sure how well it supports SDHC, as the 8GB card I got doesn’t seem to work too well as the refresh of the internal library hangs when I use that. Admittedly the refresh is slow as it is with a 2GB SD card, but as it hadn’t finished after 30 minutes of waiting, I’m going to presume that it didn’t like the card. This is something I still need to investigate further, but for the time being I’m happy with 6GB of music.
The only other downside that I can think of is that it charges via USB, so either needs plugging into a computer, or the additional purchase of a 13A to USB adapter. Then again, this is common with the iPods these days I believe, so it’s hardly a big issue.
All in all I’m very happy with the Sansa, and would recommend it to anyone else after a small, cheap MP3 player.
Tags: mp3 player, music, reviews, sansa
So, after years of people I know talking about it, at the end of last month I went skiing for the first time. The trip was organised by a couple of people from work and I was convinced to go in November as the deadline for them finding people approached, and as such I was initially sceptical.
The time between being roped in and the trip coming round seemed to disappear, along with money on various things such as clothing, insurance and then hire and lessons for the week itself. We were going to Alpe D’Huez in France, apparently one of the better resorts for beginners such as myself (and most of our group) with plenty of green runs, but also with enough more difficult runs for the more experienced members of our group.
So it was on the morning of the 21st of February that a few of us met at London Bridge train station at the early time of 8am (which was especially early given my going out the night before…. whoops) such that we could head to Gatwick. Our flight wasn’t until noon though, so once we got there and checked in this left a few hours to kill. Still, the flight was fine and we even got a meal, which was unexpected given that the flight was only 90 minutes, before landing in Grenoble.
Once in Grenoble we walked to the shed (there’s no better description for it really) that is arrivals, and proceeded to wait about two hours for our bags to come off the plane, before we got on the bus for the two and a half hour drive up to the resort. This drive took us along part of the Tour de France route, which winds its way up to Alpe D’Huez via 21 hairpin corners, which was bad enough on the bus so I dread to think what it’d be like to cycle. Once at the top we got to our chalet, and went to collect our ski hire before some food and then grabbing some sleep ready for our first morning’s skiing.
The first morning started with a load of us attempting to find where the ESF (who we had our lessons booked with) met and therefore getting to our lessons. Once we’d managed this we were split into various groups, with the majority going off with one instructor and me and one other from our group joining another few others in the slightly lower group (or, as we termed ourselves “Team Special”). We spent the first day practicing our snow-plough so we could actually stop, and everyone fell over a couple of times (especially when they had us doing little hops). After a rather expensive pizza lunch we tried our hands at a few other slopes, one of which was clearly a bit too much for me as I ended up off piste and in a foot of snow (probably for the best given I had no control). A few games of pool filled the evening, with Matt and me taking the undefeated record for Warwick. Not that we wasted our time at uni in the bar playing pool. Honest.
Day two saw us learning how to turn during the lessons, and then having lunch at the top of the Marmottes 1 lift (2300m). Another valuable lesson was learnt here, a “large coke” is actually a litre, and cost 11€. I didn’t order one of those again. The afternoon was spent on slightly more sedate runs than the previous day, and was much more fun as I didn’t feel like I was completely out of control. That night a few of us ventured out on a bar crawl, and explored the old town a bit better with beer and shots in a number of different bars that lead to plenty of amusement and not so much sobriety.
The next few days saw us learning more control in the lessons, and slowly increasing our speed and the difficulty of the runs before finally on the Thursday afternoon I gave the blue run down from Marmottes 1 a go. This was great fun, and I only fell over twice right at the top. Sure it took us an hour to get down (compared to about half an hour for the others) but I was happy that I’d made it.
The last day skiing saw us collecting our certificates of completion of the lessons and then a nice relaxing afternoon skiing, including making it back to the chalet without having to walk in our boots – which was a great improvement on previous days. The evening started with a 5-course meal (including frog’s legs) and then continued with the anticipated drinking, including watching the France – Wales six nations game, various games and Jaegertrains, before we headed back to the chalet and got some sleep before returning to the UK.
All in all I thoroughly enjoyed the trip, and am hoping to be able to get another week in before my annual insurance policy runs out early next Feb!
Tags: Alpe D'Huez, France, holiday, skiing, travel
So, as mentioned the other day we had a fair bit of snow. In previous years this amount of snow would have been great, as I’d have had the day off school or uni due to it either being closed or me being unable to get there, and I’d have been able to spend the day partaking in the customary building of snowmen and snowball fights.
Of course, these days snow can still prevent me from getting to where I need to be, as Monday’s mass-failure of the entire transport network in London showed (I think at one point there was a single tube line operating a normal service, with all buses being cancelled at that time). This means that as long as my internet connection is still functional I still have to work, through the wonders of modern technology. This is all well and good, but my working from home setup is severely sub-optimal compared to the office, mainly due to only having a single monitor and not having a proper desk phone with headset for long conference calls.
Fortunately I had Monday booked off anyway (so as to get some sleep after the Superbowl) and by the time I came to head to work on Tuesday the transport system wasn’t too broken. We’ve also seen no snow since (and hopefully won’t have a tonne fall overnight) so even the woefully prepared councils around here might be able to get away without doing anything and I should still be able to get into the office tomorrow.
Of course, snow isn’t always an irritation – I’m off skiing at the end of the month, where a lack of snow would be quite frustrating. However in the case where I’ve got other things to do (like work) it’s going to prove to be an annoyance.
Tags: public transport, snow, weather, Work
So, for the first time in years we get a decent amount of snow… and everything breaks. I suspect tomorrow could be fun when trying to go to work. :/
Tags: stub, weather
A couple of months ago I installed Ubuntu Eee. At the time I remarked that I was having a problem with the wifi being intermittent, and with my trip to Leeds for Christmas being tomorrow, I’ve had a look at this now.
Turns out that the newer version of the madwifi drivers that Ubuntu Eee ships with don’t get on too well with the wifi chipset in the Eee 701, but an older version doesn’t have that issue. So I’ve just downloaded, compiled and installed these and it’s all good.
Fortunately this is now documented on the Ubuntu Eee wiki (which it wasn’t when I first started looking into this problem) and hopefully will be fixed fully in a future Ubuntu Eee release.
Tags: eee, ubuntu, wifi
Recently it seems that the XBox 360 is making a move away from its roots as a console for gamers, with titles such as Gears of War and Halo, to where it is also suitable for family and party gaming.
The move towards a more family oriented console was first seen with the New XBox Experience that was launched in November. This added avatars, the XBox equivalent of Nintendo’s Miis. It also added in lots more sound effects when performing actions and changed the interface drastically so there were bigger pictures of what options were available at each stage. The changes in interface are for the better, and do make the XBox easier to use, but there’s no mistaking that they also make it more family friendly.
As the run up to Christmas draws towards a close, it is no coincidence that the adverts for games are more for those where the family can get involved, with titles such as Mario Party 8 and Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party for the Wii and Little Big Planet for the PS3 getting advertised heavily, alongside the XBox’s latest weapons in this arsenal; Lips, You’re in the Movies and to a lesser extent Scene It!.
This shift places the XBox in an interesting middle ground, where it is appealing to families on one side, and more serious gamers on the other side with this year’s release of distincly non-family games Grand Theft Auto 4 and Gears of War 2. Of course, this means that it is now open to a wider audience, and could well increase the console’s lifespan.
Tags: games, marketing, xbox
So, the other weekend I commented briefly on the (at the time) rumoured reduction in VAT, which was later announced in the pre-budget report last Monday. This has now come into force this week, with retailers advertising “early VAT reductions” in the run up to this, presumably as a way of tempting customers to spend during the week that I predicted would be quite light on the spending (despite spending over £100 myself).
Of course, there’s not a huge amount that a 2.5% reduction will give you. It certainly won’t help you on regular shopping – and the 2.1% reduction in overall price is hardly something to write home about, especially when compared to the discounts in the sales that will no doubt start before we’re actually at Christmas.
But hey, it’s all fine right? We’re still saving some money now and chances are that most of us won’t get hit with the new 45% tax right… so it’s got to be good! Well – not for everyone. One of the things that people don’t seem to take into account is the amount that will have to be spent on re-printing everything with a VAT rate on it, which will particularly hurt small businesses who likely don’t pay VAT anyway as they’re registered – meaning that they’ll have to take on the cost themselves. Sure, it’s still spending – but it’s not really what the government would have wanted I bet.
Add into this the massive cost in terms of lost productivity from every development team that realised that they’d make a bit of a cock up when they hard-coded 17.5% in there. It’s not going to have been a cheap move, and no doubt will not have been completed everywhere.
I guess over the next thirteen months we’ll see if this has any noticeable effect in terms of average spending and attempting to avoid the recession that everyone keeps on banging on about.
Tags: economy, small business, tax, VAT
Hmm… it seems that I’m updating the blog software more than I’m updating my blog… perhaps I should try and write stuff more often. Perhaps with the impending holiday season I’ll be able to do so.
Still, this post marks a year to the day that I started this blog… and the rate at which I’ve posted stuff has been erratic to say the least so the above should come as no surprise really.
Tags: stub
So, recently I reached the point in my phone contract where I could get an upgrade to a new phone. Seeing as my old Nokia 6300 had taken a bit of a beating and now had some tempramental features (the vibration didn’t really work and you needed to angle the charger connection just right to get it to work) I decided that an upgrade was in order.
With this in mind I headed down to my local phone retailer and eventually settled on the Sony Ericsson C902. The main reasons for this choice being that it’s not a smartphone that tries too hard to do everything and fails miserably, and that it’s around the same size and weight of the Nokia with minimal moving parts. It also has a 5-megapixel camera (and the C905 an eight… I wonder if there’s any reason for the off-by-three model numbering…) with flash, which I might find myself using for those moments that I wouldn’t normally have had my camera with me but there’s something that I would have wanted to take a photo of.
Of course, in changing phones there’s a whole host of problems that arise. There’s a mostly common interface, with the numbers being laid out the same and the T9 letters being on the same numbers; but the space is a different matter. On Nokia phones it’s on 0, but Sony Ericsson have it on #, which lead to lots of hitting 0, realising I’d added a + instead of a space, and then having to remove the character. This lead to another issue, as my Nokia had the clear button on the same button as back, so it was the top right soft-key. The Sony Ericsson on the other hand has a separate clear key, so for a period I’ve ended up hitting back when I mean clear, and then having to recover from that. Still, with time my muscle memory will adapt; and I’m already getting better with things like the space issue.
There was another issue with changing phones; especially to one with Sony involved in its manufacture: Naturally Sony use memory stick based technologies (M2 in this case) and Nokia used MicroSD. Memory cards are rather cheap anyway these days, and I picked up a 2GB one for £15, along with USB adapter so I could ensure I was able to use it as the Sony Ericsson “mass storage” mode doesn’t seem to work too well under Linux, although seemingly “phone” mode works fine under Ubuntu on my Eee.
Still, it’s not all bad about having switched to a new phone. Sony Ericsson have clearly put in some effort with what they’ve done during manufacture. For example the charger, which connects to the same port as the USB cable and hands-free kit, can act as a passthrough connector for either of these other devices so you can connect it to the mains and your laptop and not worry about obliterating the battery life on the laptop through charging the phone through the USB (something else that the Nokia didn’t do).
They’ve also been rather clever with the handsfree kit, making it effectively a mic on a cable attached to their proprietary connector, with a 3.5mm connector for headphones on the end. This means that I don’t have to put up with using whatever crappy headphones are provided, and can instead use my own ones for when I want to listen to music.
My favourite feature still has to be the camera though. When using it there are of course certain modes that you might want, and they’ve handily placed these on 4 “buttons” on two touch sensitive bits either side of the screen. Normally I don’t like touch screens, there’s a complete lack of feedback from the touch so you don’t know how hard you need to press to get something registered. This phone, however, makes use of haptic feedback to provide some reaction to your press; triggering a vibration from the phone when you provide input via these touch sensors. This is great as far as I’m concerned, and was a great surprise when I tried the phone out prior to selecting it.
It also contains an accelerometer so it can detect which orientation it’s in for media uses (it saves photos in the correct orientation so you don’t need to rotate them manually) and games, with one of the games on the phone being a Need For Speed mobile version that allows you to turn the phone to steer.
In summary I like my new phone, usage is pretty straight forward and the little things like the handsfree and haptic feedback have made it quite nifty. I just need to re-train my muscles to the new key layout for spaces and delete and I’ll be very happy.
Tags: 6300, C902, camera, haptic feedback, muscle memory, Nokia, phone, Sony Ericsson
So, the government may be looking to reduce VAT by 2.5% to the lowest allowable by the EU (15%), or so BBC News informs me. They claim that in doing so they’ll encourage people to spend more, boosting the encomy and hopeully helping us reduce the affects of any recession; but will it have the desired impact.
While this might sound good to start with there are a few things to consider. As the article points out, we’re likely to have to put up with increased taxes in the long run to compensate for the lost revenue, and we’re probably going to have to increase our national debt in order to cover for it in the short term if we want to maintain the level of funding for services.
There’s also the problem that people might now wait for the reduction to kick in before they’re willing to part with money, although Christmas will likely force people to spend anyway. This of course has the problem of decreasing spending further while people wait for the reduction to roll round and will therefore damage the economy more in the immediate future.
Finally there’s the cynic in me saying that the consumers might not see much of this decrease. Pretty much all the prices in shops are with VAT included, so people don’t really know how much of that is VAT, and therefore the savings that get passed on (if any) could easily be less than they should be. This will lead to companies making more money, which I suppose is possibly a good thing if we want to boost the economy, but is bad for the consumer whichever way you look at it.
Whatever happens it’ll be interesting to see how this pans out.
Tags: economy, savings, spending, tax, VAT