Colours
Posted: Wed 24 August, 2005 Filed under: D4D™, Thoughts 8 Comments »I’ve just been norking about with one of the colour-schemes for the site, making it so it’s not quite as loud and nasty as it was. All of which made me wonder – which colour-schemes do people actually use?
So go on – which one do you use/prefer? Mine’s “worksafe” in general.
Coming to a phone near you
Posted: Wed 24 August, 2005 Filed under: Geeky, News, Thoughts 1 Comment »A couple of places this week have been talking about a new form of advertising, which sends out information from an advert billboard by Bluetooth to a mobile phone. Dubbed Bluecasting, you do have to have Bluetooth enabled and turned on on your phone in order to accept the data, but all the same it does make me wonder a bit.
First of all, as Bruce Schneier says, what’s to stop someone from sending a phone virus in this way, and secondly, would you trust information coming from an advertisement? I know I wouldn’t.
Personally, I always have Bluetooth switched off on my phone (and it needs a passcode in order to activate it) – but I suspect I’m in the minority on that score. A lot of people seem to leave it on all the time – in fact, 14,000 people accepted the data from the prototype adverts – although that was “only” 17% of the 87,000 Bluetooth enabled phones detected by the adverts in a two week period. To me that just seems like a great way to end up with a carked phone. But hey, what would I know?
Resetting
Posted: Tue 23 August, 2005 Filed under: Geeky 4 Comments »Back in April we got Sky+ installed, and in general it’s been pretty good. OK, I still don’t like it as much as the TiVo we’ve got upstairs, and there’s some *cough* “functionality” on Sky+ that drives me up the wall (the inability to go back and see whatever was on while you were looking at the Sky+ menus, or programming something to record, for instance) but yeah, in general it’s been OK.
Over the last month or two though, we’ve been getting some problems – recordings had been coming up with “failed”, and the Sky+ box had managed to lose about 15% of its available space. I think it was the “failed” recordings that had actually succeeded, but because the box said “failed” it wouldn’t delete those items. But anyway, we could see that there was a chunk of space that we couldn’t access or record over. Unsurprisingly, after a while this was getting to be fucking annoying.
A couple of weeks ago we did a “Sky planner rebuild”, which restored some of the space (if anyone’s interested, if you hit Services, 4, 0, 1 Select in order, you get to a ‘secret’ menu with some options for doing this kind of thing. It doesn’t invalidate your warranty, but you do do this stuff at your own risk) but then it rapildy lost the reclaimed space again.
So on Sunday night we got rid of the last stuff that hadn’t been watched, went back to that ‘secret’ menu, and did a full system reset. It’s an easy task, but do make sure to write down all the stuff you were going to record, because it kills everything.
At the moment we’re back to having the full 100% back and recordable. Only time will tell whether the same problem occurs again. I hope not.
On a TiVo vs. Sky+ note, it’s also worth saying that I’ve had TiVo now since February 2003, and it hasn’t needed to be reset or reorganised at all. We’ve had Sky+ less than six months and it’s already needed a kicking. So, another cross in the Sky+ account.
Stag
Posted: Mon 22 August, 2005 Filed under: Thoughts, Travel, Weirdness 2 Comments »Apparently it’s not just the costs of a marriage that are going up, but also the average spend at stag-dos and hen-nights, although men supposedly spend more than women (an average of £35 more, to be exact).
Quite honestly, I’ve never yet been on a stag-do (although bizarrely I have been on a couple of hen nights) – they’re just not something that really appeals to me, but then again, the entire “drink ’til you puke, then drink some more to wash away the aftertaste” concept has always been a bit beyond me anyway.
Supposedly it’s now the “done thing” to go off for a stag do in a foreign city – Prague, Amsterdam, etc. etc. Personally, if I’m going to those places I’d rather see something of them, instead of being the ubiquitous “Brit on the Piss”, or anything even close to that stereotype. Maybe that makes me boring, or an old fart – to be honest, I don’t care. What it does make me is (on average) £500 better off for every one I’ve never been on.
Sounds good to me!
Organ-ised
Posted: Mon 22 August, 2005 Filed under: Health 3 Comments »
The BBC this week is launching a season called “DoNation“, designed to make more people sign up to be organ donors. I’m not sure how useful it will be – but anything that gets more people to sign up is a good thing in my book.
Personally, I believe that the organ donation scheme should be one where you have to “opt out” rather than “opt in” – although on the BBC breakfast programme this morning there was a spokesman for the NHS who said that it shouldn’t be this way, because the donation of organs was a gift from a person, and as such should be seen that way, rather than a requirement. And when it’s phrased like that, I can’t disagree. All the same though, when you see how many people don’t sign up “because it’s too much effort”, you do start to wonder just how simple it has to be in order for people to do it. And if the situation were reversed, how many would actually “make the effort” to ensure they weren’t on the list?
In order to make things “easier”, the NHS has even sorted out a way to register online to be on the organ donor database. It’s an amazingly easy thing to do – one set of information, and that’s it. Or you can sign up by calling the NHS on 0845 60 60 400. Go on, it’s worth it.