A true bargain

Not long ago I noticed a bottle of Remy Martin XO in a spare room at my parents’ place and, after a week or so considering whether I should liberate it from its sad and lonely position of clear underappreciation, I enquired about it. Dad’s immediate response was “Do you want it? You can have it,” but Mum was not going to give it away so easily. I suggested a barter of cooking wine as that would be the most likely fate of the alcoholic beverage in question and it was well received. After lunch we visited three different Chinese grocery stores before finding her preferred brand in the preferred quantity, two bottles of which set me back a whopping AUD$14.60. I offered to buy her more but she felt it was already overpriced considering that Dad was going to give it to me for free. She was clearly very pleased with her loot and talked excitedly about inviting us around soon for drunken chicken, one of her favourite dishes. Now all I need to do is acquire some suitable glassware to appreciate the cognac, something which I have yet to develop a taste for but feel I ought to in order to give the item its due, pay the proper respect as it were to the artisans who spent centuries honing their skills and the connoisseurs appraising them. Indeed, it’s almost enough to make one want to don a well-tailored dinner jacket and smoke Cuban cigars. Which ones would go best I wonder?

Rescued from a fate in the frying pan

Knowing your consumer rights

I’m a real wimp when it comes to ordering pizza. I don’t know what it is but I hate talking to people over the phone for any kind of official transaction whether it’s contacting real estate agents, sorting out the phone bill, ordering goods over the phone, anything. I never seem to have the right answers at the ready and under all that stress and pressure I inevitably leave out some important detail.

So when I discovered that all the hours of research I’d put into choosing my replacement PDA had come to no good I was both disappointed and terribly vexed as to what to do. I’d heard many times over the radio and via word of mouth that when you buy goods over the internet you have 7 days to cancel your order. I took that fact for granted when I made my purchase as, due to low stock levels, I’d never seen the item in the flesh so there was a reasonable chance it might not be what I expected. When it came to it though, I quailed.

What were my rights? Are they the same in the UK as in Australia? What if my reasons aren’t good enough? What if there are hidden charges? What if they say no? My first phone call to the shop informed me that I would be charged £10 and 15% the cost of the item to return it. In this case it would amount to nearly £40. Not a good start. I nervously tell the customer service person to hold on that whilst I do a quick search to find out what my rights are. It took me a little while to find the information I needed and a lot of encouragement from a colleague before I was finally ready to call them again.

I read the Trading Standards website section on distance selling and waited until almost everyone had left the office so I could stutter without an audience.

“Hello, uh I’m ringing regarding my order, it’s err number [blah]. Yes, well um, I spoke to someone before about this and basically I’m quite disappointed with the product. What’s that? Well … it’s too bulky. Your website didn’t provide details of the dimensions and it’s far too big for my purposes.” It’s a bit of a white lie but I was suprised at the bulk and that is my main complaint with the product. “The lady I spoke to before said I had to pay $X to return it and … and I’ve just been reading the Trading Standards website and I just d-don’t accept that that’s the case”, I say sounding nervous and desperate. The girl taking my call says she’ll just go and check.

It turns out that the charges only applied to ‘Business Customers’ (an honest mistake I’m sure) and so everything’s ok. I’ll get a full refund and they’ll even arrange a courier to pick it up although at whose expense I’m not sure. Phew and hooray, it worked! Now I must tell everyone I know that according to the aforementioned website:

The Distance Selling Regulations give you the right to change your mind and cancel an order within seven working days. If you do decide to cancel, you should put this in writing, either by letter (a proof of postage certificate or even recorded delivery would be wise), or you can fax or email. A telephone call is not sufficient, unless both you and the trader agree otherwise. The time limits are as follows:

Goods: Seven working days after the day on which the goods are received;

Services: Seven working days after the day on which you agree to go ahead with the agreement.

Also, if they try to pull the “Sorry, you’ve opened the box so we can’t accept it” trick, the only thing I could find of relevence was the following:

You must take care of goods whilst they are in your possession and, if you are returning them, you should take reasonable care to ensure that the trader receives them and that they are not damaged in transit.

Actually, the consumerdirect.gov.uk site, which I just noticed in the tradingstandards.gov.uk disclaimer, states your rights more succinctly. When it comes to these things, wordy detail makes me feel more at ease.

It’s a gas gas gas

Threatened with having my geek license revoked due to my lack of soldering iron I needed a quick solution. Happily, the gods smiled upon me and quicker than you could say “Hey, Maplins is having a sale!” I headed over to the small Uxbridge branch and wrested the last SolderPro 70 Gas Soldering Iron Kit from the shelf for a mere £19.99.

The nice man in the shop informed me that the butane canisters were also on sale. Double yay! A nice touch in this model is that there’s a clear window at the base of the handle which lets you see how much fuel’s left. A few sparks later and we have something that might pass as a spaceship in a (very) budget sci-fi flick.

No longer will I travel in fear of being stuck somewhere with no means of fixing my dodgy electrical improvisations. Plus I can now make a Minty Boost!

10 ways to void your Eee warranty

A colleague at work has a habit of proclaming interesting ‘facts’ with great authority. I forgive him because he is old (and well-meaning, probably) but occasionally it bothers me enough to prompt a quick background check to support my indignation.

Last week he claimed that Asus have not only extended their Eee warranty to cover upgrading the RAM (a ridiculous policy to have excluded that to begin with) but that they also allow you to upgrade the flash drive. “Really?”, I said? “That sounds like complete bollocks”, I thought quietly to myself but in a rare moment of wisdom decided not to confront him on the issue.

A quick online search yielded nothing to confirm (or deny, I’ll grant) his claim but I did stumble across an article in the Register about a guy, Ivan Cover, who pimped his Eee with a touchscreen, GPS, Bluetooth, FM transmitter, you name it. Ivan’s website goes into a fair amount of detail and although I was slightly disappointed to find a lot of it was done by first installing a usb hub I’m dead impressed by the touchscreen and dipswitches. Some of the photography’s not bad either.

A close up of the GPS antenna and Bluetooth module, taped into place.

List of Mr Cover’s Eee-enhancements (har har) to date:

1. USB hub
2. GPS with antenna
3. Bluetooth
4. SDHC Card reader
5. Additional flash drive
6. Power switch (dipswitches)
7. 802.11n Wifi
8. FM transmitter
9. Modem
10. Touch Screen

Total cost: 454.38 USD. On his site he states, “If you say I could get a much better, powerful, plain old, regular laptop for the same money, I say: Where’s the fun in that?”

Hear hear!

It’s not what you think

OK I’ll admit I can be a little particular in my tastes and perhaps reading up on the 10 Worst PC Keyboards of All Time didn’t help. But when I finally found the time to sort through my swag of internet purchases I quickly realised my £8 Targus compact cheapie was only going to bring me misery and frustration. It was clacky and the keys were difficult to press and unlike the picture online it had a tiny and poorly placed backspace key, one of the cardinal sins of keyboard design.

I decided to spend some effort searching for a compact keyboard with a sensible layout and am considering the Ergostars Saturnus but have yet to work up the courage to spend over £50 on something that others spend much less on. Then again, it is my primary input device.

In my online travels I stumbled across this, er, pointing device.

I had to suppress my sniggering to avoid drawing attention but on further investigation it seems like a reasonable enough idea – a mouse you hold like a pen. Nothing earth shattering there but what is with the design? Why not make it look more like a pen and less like something that vibrates and gyrates and gets funny looks from customs officers?

Perhaps it’s just me as according to this webpage, which also displays a schematic and action shots (don’t get your hopes up), it’s won some sort of design award. Suspiciously the category of the award is left out.

As my maths teacher used to say, ‘True but useless’.

xkcd is the only web comic that’s really captured my interest so far. It’s simple, frequently nerdy yet can also demonstrate a surprising amount of sensitivity.

How it works

I read it, had a bit of a laugh, a bit of a sigh then wondered, if this was clear to me when I was younger would it have made any difference?

girl meets boy

I read ‘girl meets boy’ by Ali Smith the other day whilst my other half was having her once a month (or so she claims) epic nap. As there seems to be a dearth of decent fiction out there featuring lesbian characters I was pleased to add another title to my very short list.

However, I was a bit impatient with the airy-fairy central character at first and did get the sense throughout the book that those with right-dominant brains were taking the mickey out of those with left-dominant brains¹. At first I thought ‘What have we ever done to them?’ but then I remembered the world is probably run by left-dominant brains. We’ve probably told them repeatedly how impractical their brilliant ideas are or perhaps just politely but consistently turned down their grant request for a study on gender and identity politics among post-Colonial Filipino dugongs. Poor ancient sea cows.

I suppose it’s as pointless to complain about the under-representation of left-dominant brains among fiction writers as it is to complain about the lack of highly creative tax accountants.

It reminds me of a conversation the other day.
“Why is that these amazing things only happen to artists?”
“It probably happens to other people too but artists actually write about them.”

But maybe non-artists write so badly they never get published.

If only that were true.

¹ see Lateralisation of brain function

Quick status update

In case anyone’s wondering what I’ve been up to I thought I’d give a vague outline. Yep, the fallback plan came into action sometime in October 2007 and I’m now living and working in dreary London at its dreariest. My weekdays consist of 3 hrs commuting to and from work and 7.5 hrs wondering if working in London is always this unchallenging or if I’ve been unlucky and/or selling myself short and therefore winding up in monkey jobs.

I must admit that I’m grateful to have time to think. It’s led me to the following conclusions:

1. I’d really like to give this career thing a real shot before resigning myself to the quieter path of focusing purely on one’s work and keeping away from office politics and often, therefore, advancement.

2. Sabotaging one’s own academic career might have served an obscurely significant purpose at the time but it’s a bit of a pain in the arse later in life, especially when considering point 1.

I’ve forgotten the rest but you get the general gist.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not all bad. The commute gives me a good excuse to invest in new gadgets to help pass the time and the weather’s brightening up slowly. It’s kinda cool to experience real seasons and changing landscapes. I think once we’ve settled in a bit more and the weather gets warmer the girlfriend and I will be getting out and about on our bicycles exploring the countryside.

Meanwhile we’ve decided to stick it out in London for 5 years so that means acquiring a few low-tech items to make our lives a bit more comfortable, such as… :D

Geeks like these

As I was doing some research ahead of my planned laptop rebuild I came across an article in the Inquirer entitled One man writes Linux drivers for 235 USB webcams. Geeks like these give me the warm and fuzzies and make me think about furthering my plans to study Economics.

“Huh?” I hear you say. Well I figure it’s one way I can combine some of my own interests whilst contributing to the promotion of Open Source. By doing the sums and, if they add up, developing a solid business case one could then present it to the kinds of people who can make decisions that affect lots of people. A short while ago, when I was feeling a lot more fired up about this topic I went searching for articles that were written from less of a technology enthusiast point of view but more from a — and I really lack the vocabulary here so I will just say “business-y” perspective. There really wasn’t a whole lot out there but I did come across this, The Emerging Economic Paradigm of Open Source, which was the most thorough discussion I could find at the time and actually not a bad read. Hmm, maybe I should ping the author one day…

Distro dilemmas

So after yet another Windows update my venerable Thinkpad X24 has all but ground to a halt. Sure, I could upgrade my machine but I love my lightweight laptop and I’m too tight to fork out and buy a Vaio or an Air right now, especially when the Thinkpad is likely to keep chugging away for many years.

The lazy former sysadmin in me has decided it might be time to bite the bullet and return to using Linux on my desktop. Then I sigh because I don’t have a heap of time to muck around and I really just want something that works and I’m a long way from home and a pile of other machines I can use in case I screw this one up.

But wait a minute…it’s been a few years since I’ve been in the market for a Linux distro. Perhaps the situation has improved. Perhaps there’s now a plug and play distro out there that really will do everything I want it to and more. Fat chance seeing how I’m so particular but I stumbled across this handy Linux Distribution Chooser which made me reach my conclusion much faster.

The Desktop Linux Market survey at desktoplinux.com was also interesting as well as article on Choosing a desktop Linux distro by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols. A colleague recommended a distro called Puppy which I’m sure will appeal to my other half just because of the name. One wonders just how many puppy loving geeks are out there…

Still, it looks like it’s still going to be bog standard Fedora or openSUSE for me :( Damn those concerns about employability.