How not to do it
Posted: Sat 25 July, 2009 Filed under: Advertising, Customer Services, Cynicism, Geeky, Security, Stupidity, Technology, Toyota IE | Tags: ian corbett, toyota ie Leave a comment »This post has been deleted, on the request of Ian Corbett, Marketing Manager of Toyota Ireland, and his legal advisers.
For more explanation, see here.
Still Dead
Posted: Tue 9 June, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Geeky, Technology 1 Comment »Following on from last week’s post about the death of the DVD player and Blue Witch’s comment therein, I decided to get a DVD head-cleaning disk, (disc, whatever) just to see whether it would have any effect.
It wasn’t much of an investment, only £6.50 from Amazon, so it’s no biggie.
Anyway, we tried it out last night, to absolutely no effect whatsoever. In fact, the player won’t even acknowledge there’s a disk in the machine. It spins, but can’t identify a disk at all.
So it looks like the DVD player is now completely kaput fucked, and we’ll need to get a replacement set-up.
Bugger.
The Next 30 Years
Posted: Thu 14 May, 2009 Filed under: Creativity, Geeky, Technology, Thoughts, Writing Leave a comment »Charlie Stross is one of my favourite current sci-fi authors, and this post goes some way to explaining why.
It’s the text of his keynote speech for LOGIN 2009, a conference for online games developers, and the speech is about the changes he sees coming in gaming over the next thirty years. He’s already written a novel based around some of these ideas (“Halting State“) and is currently writing the sequel to it, so I think it’s fair to say he’s done a fair amount of research and thinking about this subject already.
All told, it’s an interesting and entertaining read – and I’m sure it would’ve been even better to see him make the speech in person.
Light Bed
Posted: Fri 8 May, 2009 Filed under: Depression, Domestic, Health, Technology 1 Comment »Recently, we’ve been trying out a weird alarm clock that also replicates the rising of the sun, so it’s “full daylight” when the alarm sounds. It doesn’t do much (if anything) for me, but Herself is finding it pretty useful for the way her body works.
And in related items, today I came across the LOMME bed which is pretty much the same concept writ large. The LOMME (Light Over Matter Mind Evolution) is a pod-bed, and has a built in light-box alarm as well as making use of other light colours etc.
It’s pretty cool – in a “What the fuck?” kind of way – but I’m pretty sure it would be massive overkill for us…
Wayfarer Software
Posted: Mon 4 May, 2009 Filed under: Customer Services, Sweary, Technology Leave a comment »The (far nicer than I could have been) email I’ve just sent to Wayfarer Software’s customer services/support team…
I would like a refund on my Navigator software – purchase no [whatever] . I had to use it properly for the first time on Friday while driving in London, and it’s the most abysmal heap of junk known to man.
The calibration is consistently 400 ft out, which leads to regularly being told to turn onto the road you’ve just passed – particularly in London. In addition, the navigator was trying to send me in completely the wrong direction (northbound round the M25 to get to Greenwich in south London).
I plan to buy a TomTom instead of ever using the Wayfarer software again.
Please let me know what I need to do in order to get a refund on my Wayfarer license, as in my experience it is utterly unfit for purpose.
Sincerely
Lyle
What I should have written would’ve been something like…
Dear Fuckbricks,
Refund my licence for the Wayfarer software now, because it sucks the bollocks of dead porcupines. The fucking thing couldn’t find it’s own arse, let alone find it’s way round London.
Your developers have wasted years of their lives writing this piece of shit. It’s not worth the fucking memory card it’s stored on.
Lyle.
Golf Club Boom
Posted: Mon 5 January, 2009 Filed under: News, Technology 2 Comments »While I’m not a golf player (I stick with that “Golf is a good walk ruined” aphorism) I found this story on the BBC to be quite interesting.
Basically, a new generation of “thin-faced titanium” clubs make a noise on contact with the golf-ball that has been measured at up to 130dB . That’s loud – and it’s been found as potentially causing hearing damage in some golfers.