Archive for July, 2007
Option
So I finally caved and bought myself a PS3. Amazon had such a good deal on, where I basically got three games, an extra controller and an HDMI cable for free, that I just couldn’t resist. I just want to play around with Little Big Planet so much, I was going to have to buy one eventually, so it seemed as good a time as any. It’s another one of those daft Amazon things where the console and games ship separately, so now I’ve got a console with nothing to play on it, but I’m sure that’ll rectify itself soon enough.
I know it sounds daft, but I listen and read so much about games each week, that it’ll actually be nice to be in a position to try things out for myself. I just like having the option of being able to switch on any of the current consoles and see what’s new.
Bookcase
I’m getting good at this Ikea furniture building, I built three bookcases tonight and I’m almost at the point where I can do one in about ten minutes. I built the other one yesterday and Andrea built a couple of bedside tables (those dreaded items they didn’t have in stock for so long) so at last all the storage is there and we’re able to start putting things away. Despite all my complaints about Ikea, there’s no way I could have paid for all the furniture in this place so easily without them. And it will be nice to finally put everything away, even if I don’t look forward to carrying all those books upstairs.
Replace
After exactly three and a half years, this afternoon was the last time I’ll be in my flat. We’ve spent the last few days cleaning the place top to bottom, fitting new flooring in the kitchen, scrubbing the bathroom and kitchen (Andrea having an especially good time with the oven) and moving the last remaining items out and over to the new house. It all had to be done by 2pm today because that’s apparently when the letting agent was going to turn up to check it all, so that’s what time we finished off and left at. We came back at 3pm because that’s when they were meant to confirm everything was OK, only to find that nobody had bothered turning up. Annoyed, we went back inside to place a couple of replacement items in the cupboard and left again. And that was that.
I thought I’d be more emotional about it, it seemed weird to leave something I’d called home for so long, but it really didn’t effect me at all. A lot went on in that place, but now it’s all just confined to history.
Simpsons
The Simpsons Movie. Far better than I expected it was going to be, and far funnier than any Simpsons episode I’ve seen in years. 3 1/2 out of 5.
Guide
As I mentioned already, I had Sky installed, re-introducing me to a world of television I left behind almost four years ago. In those proceeding years a lot of the channels have changed, some of them have just evolved, some of them are brand new. But what hasn’t really changed is the user interface, which is almost identical to the one I first used on Sky over a decade ago, let alone four years ago.
When I heard about Sky+ and season passes and all that stuff, I expected it to be similar to the TiVo that I bought about 5 or 6 years ago, especially since Sky chose to promote their own Sky+ system over the TiVo one, ending the UK support for that product. But the reality is that it doesn’t even come close. There’s no guide searching, no telling it to record programmes that much a name on a specific channel, season passes literally are just that - you have to keep renewing them every time a series starts. So even though I know that I’ll want it to record Top Gear for me whenever that starts, I can’t do that, because there’s no way to start a season pass without having it in the guide in front of you. The list of stuff you’ve recorded is as basic as it comes, and hidden behind the coloured buttons on the remote. In fact, the coloured buttons on the remote seem to do everything, as they’re mean different menu items on different screens. No easy to press button to take you to your recordings, or an easy to understand menu structure, no, it’s all pretty much just random. And if you were hoping it might suggest things you’d like based on your viewing habits, forget about it.
TiVo ran from a 50Hz processor six years ago, and did more in terms of usability and features than the Sky boxes manages to do. And when put next to a Windows Media Center PC, which is what I’ve been using for the past 18 months, it comes across as nothing but a joke. Even the simplest thing, like browsing the guide, is made much harder than it should be. If you were browsing through all the channels (and there are hundreds remember) and were perhaps 5 or 6 pages in before you saw something you might watch a few minutes of, when you bring the guide back up again the cursor isn’t where you left off, it’s right back at the start. So you have to scroll through all those pages again to get back to your browsing. It’s almost like the people that designed the software have never actually used it to watch TV.
Sky
I have returned to a world where there are over 500 channels (I’m guessing) and it takes you over two hours to sit and go through them all (which we did) and all you’re doing is looking at little snippets of the ones you find interesting. I’m amazed there’s a whole channel devoted to weddings. I’m even more surprised that it has a +1. It almost seems like putting on a television channel nowadays is becoming as easy as it is to setup a website, however small and niche your audience you can somehow put together enough money, and enough interested advertisers, to get it on there. If only the interface to it all was as good as Google.
Transformers
Exactly what I expected, great CG, silly plot, big explosions, confusing finale. It’s a total kids film, ten year olds will love it, but sometimes you need more than giant robots fighting for two hours. 2 1/2 out of 5.
Inconvenience
Ikea is both a blessing and a curse. You walk around the store for ages looking for all the things you want, you find a whole bunch of things you like and they’re all remarkably cheap. You then get to the warehouse bit at the end, grab yourself a trolley, and go to find the aisle and shelf to pick your products up from. And then you find out that they don’t have them. And that you can’t pre-order any of them. And that’ll just have to come back.
Five times.
I don’t quite understand why they run their business this way. I can only imagine that lots of people just give up and don’t come back and simply go elsewhere. Cheapness and convenience have to run hand in hand, there’s no point in them being cheap if you can’t actually get any of the things you want. One of the things I learned was that even if you’re going to get items delivered, you have to pick them up from the shelf yourself, pay for them as normal, and then take them to the delivery people and tell them you want them to deliver it to you. Online ordering is out the window as well, it’s only done in two small areas of the country right now.
When they get so many other things right, those things they get wrong just stand out even more.
Lakes
Me and Andrea spent the weekend down in the Lake District with Jennifer, Alan, Steph and Dave at the summerhouse belonging to Alan’s parents. You expect a summerhouse to be a small cottage, just a little place you escape to when you need to get away from it all. And as we drove into the village that the house was in, looking around us, me and Andrea thought that’s exactly what we were in for. Little did we expect the large, open plan, modern single floored house overlooking a lake that awaited us.
After arriving on the Friday and getting over the size of the place we just sat down with some drinks, some food, some good music and chatted. And then came the international Kerplunk battle of the century, as we split into teams of three and battled to the death. Although when it was one game a piece it was decided that was probably a good time to stop before somebody lost an eye.
On Saturday Steph and Dave went off for some hard bicycle riding, while the rest of us took the more leisurely option of Alan’s car and a trip through the hills and eventually ending up at the local slate museum/mine/factory. It really is an area surrounded by beautiful countryside, and although it was a pretty quick tour there was still enough time to try and take it all in. We did make the mistake at one point of getting out of the car and hiking a small way up a hill, where the wind was cold enough to chill the wings off a penguin, but it was the kind of mistake we only made once. Back at home that night and the gang back together it was a chance for Alan to once again show why he’s the most enthusiastic player of charades, and for Dave to show us all how to play Twister with real grit and determination. The rest of us, we just got drunk on Andrea’s lethal cocktail combinations.
On Sunday we all took a walk from the house around to one side of the nearest lake before taking the 40 minute boat ride back again. I’m always reminded during walks like this how unfit I am, so it was nice to only have to walk half of the distance and instead sit on the peaceful and serene boat as it skirted over the surface of the water. Nothing makes you forget about work and well, frankly everything else, like being surrounded by mountains on a beautiful stretch of water like that.
A good time was had by all and hopefully it’s something we’ll be able to do again soon. Although I think it’s going to take a couple of days for my arm to heal after all that frisbee.
Potter
Best one I’ve seen yet, although I’ve only seen the first and second (and everyone says the third and fourth are better). Much darker than what I’ve seen so far, although still felt spread a little thin over the long running time. 3 out of 5.
Blinds
There’s nothing like a set of blinds to make a house feel like a home. What a huge difference it has made getting them installed today.
The guy who came around to measure for them and find out what I wanted thought I was crazy because I wasn’t having them all the same colour and was actually daring to use different colours in different rooms (although no, they’re not all different throughout). Just because everyone else has no imagination doesn’t mean to say that I have to be the same.
There’s also nothing like an alarm to make a home feel safe. Although I had no idea that it was going to take almost seven hours to install.
Incompetent
Having expected to hear from BT by this point, Andrea tried phoning them tonight to find out what’s going on. I phoned them yesterday, and after the usual 35 minute wait was fobbed off with an excuse that it hadn’t been five working days yet. But Andrea wasn’t going to take that kind of crap. The first time she waited on hold it was a good 40 minutes and nobody had yet answered, so she hung up. The second time (now later in the evening), it had been 50 minutes without an answer before she hung up and called again, before waiting another 20 minutes before somebody answered. Amazingly, they didn’t have the details of the order I’d placed the previous week and she had to do it all again! This time however the woman made it sound like the easiest thing in the world, gave us a phone number, an account number and a date for installation. Why could none of them do that for me before? Is there only one person in their organisation that can actually do an order for a new line?
I said they were a joke before, but they’re far worse than that, they’re an incompetent mess, and I urge anyone to avoid them as much as possible. Although of course, you can’t. Because you can’t do anything in this country without a phone line first and the only way you’re going to get that is via BT. I don’t even make land line calls, I only want it for the broadband, which I’ll ultimately get from Sky.
I’m going to have to phone again in another couple of weeks to cancel the line at the flat. God help me.
Undoubtedly
I’m having to sit in the house today so that tradesmen can come in and get stuff done. I have no internet connection, no television, no laptop (this is obviously being written after the fact) and simply a magazine to entertain me. I am thoroughly, incredibly, undoubtedly, bored out of my tiny little mind. I’d actually rather be at work. How’s that for a scary realisation.
Jigsaw
So our bed turned up yesterday, as expected, and today we opened the boxes with the plan of putting it together. As we opened up each box we kept expecting to find what you would expect with any furniture that required some assembly - instructions. But alas, these were nowhere to be found. So instead we set about building a 6’ king size bed like a large jigsaw puzzle, hoping that at no point we would screw or hammer something into a place it should not be. And you know what, we did it perfectly, completing the job in less than a couple of hours, and quickly taking the opportunity to lie on it once complete. I think we both had a real sense of satisfaction in our work and the next time you’re building furniture, why not throw away the instructions and work it out for yourself.
Green
Why is it so hard to find green bed sheets. I want to use the colour green in the bedroom (I’ve generally got an idea in my head for a different colour in each room) but it seems like green in the land of bedding means plants and flowers, so every duvet cover and sheet set we find has floral patterns embroidered into them. It also seems like green is not the colour of the moment, so actually finding a store that has them in the first place is far harder than expected.
Homecoming
Today is the day I got the keys to my new house.
My own house. Paid for with my own money. Well, the banks money. But that’s a technicality.
It may take some time to sink in, and there is plenty to be done (carpets get fitted tomorrow), but at the moment it’s feeling pretty good that all that waiting has finally paid off, because here I am, something to call my own.
Hold
The anger that BT manage to conjure up on normally docile human beings is certainly worthy of study. We’re having to make a whole bunch of calls to them at the moment in order to get a new line installed, and it’s a complete joke. The first time I phoned them up I pressed the appropriate options on their menu and then was told that I didn’t need to wait on hold, I could just type in my phone number and they would phone me back. Thinking this was a great idea I put in my number. Half an hour later I got a call and a person said they were from Broadband Sales. That’s not the option I selected I told them, so they put me on hold as I was redirected to the right department. After 30 minutes of sitting on hold, I hung up.
I then looked on their website about new lines and the first thing that it redirects you towards is “Order Online”, so I did, thinking that then I wouldn’t have to wait on hold anymore. Days later, long after they’re meant to have contact me about it, I phone them again. Once more, I choose the menu options and then sit on hold for 40 minutes before somebody from Broadband Sales answers it. You can imagine my ire at this point. He puts me through to somebody else (another 10 minute wait) who then tells me that they don’t deal with online orders and that I need to phone the BT Shop, which is a different number. I phone them and I’m told that they’re closed for the night.
I phone them back the next day, and am told that the BT Shop doesn’t deal with lines (I thought that already, they sell phones and computer equipment) and am put through to somebody else. After another 20 minute wait I’m told that the online orders don’t actually go into their system and that I need to place a new order with them directly. Which I do.
Don’t go into their system? A phone company with not enough people to actually answer the phone? They’re a total joke.
Zodiac
Truly excellent thriller. You come out of the cinema feeling like you’ve just watched the longest film ever, because it just seems to never end, but you can’t help but admit that you thoroughly enjoyed it. 3 1/2 out of 5.
Also, happy birthday Mark.
