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December 27 My last post at Windows Live Spaces..This blog has moved - if you are reading this post via an rss agrigator please update my entry to feed://philbridges.com/?feed=rss2 (clicking on the link should be enough for most programs). The website URL is http://philbridges.com . The primary reason for the move was to enable support for embeded video inside a post and give me a wider choice of plugins for things like Flickr which are currently unsupported in Spaces. Thanks for taking the trouble to read my mumblings over the past year and a bit! Happy New Year..  December 24 Gwn Reedy 'W1BEL' 1942 - 2006
Before becoming President of Paccomm Gwyn did some really pioneering work with the Tuscon Amateur Packet Radio Group really heping to accelerate development in RF data comms. It's hard to believe that just 8 years ago we thought 9600 baud over radio was the dog's nutz, yet today we're looking at a potential for 600Mbs over WiFi 'off the peg' and far greater in various R&D labs around the world. As Paccomm's largest partner we worked very closely with Gwyn & Linda to the point that we were making so many calls to the US that we used a telephone wormhole in London that gave us a US dial tone & US call rates (if only Skype and SIP had been around!). I had a lot of fun working with Gwyn especially manning the PacComm booths at the Dayton Hamventions and that mother-off-all car trips from Ohio back to Tampa in a Mini-van with Bill Slack NX2P and Tom Moulton W2VY. It always surprises me that mention of people like Gwyn rarely shows up in the likes of Wikipedia yet he did so much to change the future, perhaps in 5 year's time the hype surrounding WEB 2.0 etc. might suffer a similar fate?...
December 23 Portsmouth Hurricane AppealA major hurricane (Hurricane Shazza) and earthquake measuring 5.8 on the Richter Scale hit Portsmouth in the early hours of Friday with its epicentre in Paulsgrove. Victims were seen wandering around aimlessly, muttering "Faaackinell". The hurricane decimated the area causing approximately £30 worth of damage. Several priceless collections of mementos from Majorca and the Costa Del Sol were damaged beyond repair. Three areas of historic burnt out cars were disturbed. Many locals were woken well before their giros arrived. Skate FM reported that hundreds of residents were confused and bewildered and were still trying to come to terms with the fact that something interesting had happened in Paulsgrove. One resident - Tracy Sharon Smith, a 15-year-old mother of 5 said, "It was such a shock, my little Chardonnay-Mercedes came running into my bedroom crying. My youngest two, Tyler-Morgan and Victoria-Storm slept through it all. I was still shaking when I was skinning up and watching Trisha the next morning." Apparently looting, muggings and car crime were unaffected and carried on as normal. The British Red Cross has so far managed to ship 4,000 crates of Lambrini to the area to help the stricken locals. Rescue workers are still searching through the rubble and have found large quantities of personal belongings, including benefit books, jewellery from Elizabeth Duke at Argos and Bone China from Poundland. HOW CAN YOU HELP? This appeal is to raise money for food and clothing parcels for those unfortunate enough to be caught up in this disaster. Clothing is most sought after - items most needed include: Fila or Burberry baseball caps Kappa tracksuit tops (his and hers) Shell suits (female) White sport socks Rockport boots Any other items usually sold in Primark. Food parcels may be harder to come by, but are needed all the same. Required foodstuffs include: Microwave meals Tins of baked beans Ice cream Cans of Colt 45 or Special Brew. 22p buys a biro for filling in the compensation forms. £2 buys chips, crisps and blue fizzy drinks for a family of 9. £5 buys B&H and a lighter to calm the nerves of those affected. **Breaking news** Rescue workers found a girl in the rubble smothered in raspberry alco-pop. 'Where are you bleeding from?' they asked, "Paulsgrove" said the girl, "woss that gotta do wiv you?" (Apologies in advance to Mr Erskine should he stumble accross this post - init) Doctor Who to regenerate as "Number 6..."
December 14 I'm a Wii...... and I'm a PS3
This Microsoft 'in-house' spoof ad might be what actually tipped me 'over the edge'..
(Oh, and for more of the same but about the Microsoft Zune click here ..... ) PS - does anybody out there in Cyberspace know how to embed flash video into Windows Live Spaces? December 13 Dad..bagsey your old iPod....29 years ago when I was 21 and newly married I'd be on the phone to my Dad every other day to borrow some tool or seek advice on how to do a DIY job, not to mention seemingly endless supply of hand-me-downs such as TV sets and furniture furniture that came our way.
Almost 30 years on technology has stepped in and my children (the oldest who is 27) are on the phone asking about how to set their broadband and computers up, and I'm hand-ing down my 'old' iPod and computers etc. together with furniture etc. Crazier still my Dad is often on the phone to me seeking help with his computer (although I was very impressed that my Pop managed to install his new HP multi-function printer without my help!) An interesting twist .. December 09 10 reasons why Gmail could be worth a closer look...If you are not a Gmail user (aka GoogleMail) here's a few reasons why I think you should give it a closer look: 1) If you suffer from spam email chances are you've typed in you your email address into a forum or web page where it's been harvested by a spambot. One solution is to have lots of email addresses you can use just a few times and the throw away. The Extra Gmail Address Generator will do this for you so long as your primary account has a full stop in it. For example, if you Gmail account is fred.bloggs@gmail.com you can use this link to generate 1287 of useable addresses that will still land at your Gmail account., here are just a few of them..
..fredbloggs@gmail.com ALL of these address will deliver mail back to fred.bloggs@gmail.com, if however spam starts to come in via one of them you just go into Gmail's filter section and set the filter to ignore mail to that address. 2) A free spam filter - Gmail is currently blocking around 35 spams a week for me, I know someone who traps 2000 spams a day using Gmail. Why waste your bandwidth downloading spam email when Gmail will quarantine it for you 'serverside', i.e - at the server end. 3) Gmail is secure! Most email programs send you username and password in the clear however, Gmail supports secure server access - https://mail.google.com meaning you traffic including your logon password is encrypted from the word go. 4) Gmail isn't just web based , it will work with popular mail programs and can automatically configure email clients such as Outlook, Eudora, Thunderbird and Apple Mail. 5) It integrates great with Google's home page allowing you to check news feeds, mail, news headlines etc. in a matter of seconds! 6) You can of course redirect you Gmail to an existing email account. 7) Most web content filter services are unable to restrict Gmail if you use the https option, I really must try it in China sometime.. 8) You'll get 2GB of online storage for free. 9) On-going 'back and forth' conversations are flagged as chats making it very easy to home in on important mail. 10) It's free! Gmail used to be by invitation only but these days should be free.. if you are having problems signing up click here and I'll send you an invite .. November 19 R U an ebay seller? read on -Smart UK ebay sellers will have woken up to the fact that ticking the box that makes their 'wares' available to our chums in Europe/overseas will often increase the number of bids and generally result in higher final sales prices. Yet sellers are often reluctant to include EEC/rest of the world in auction listings because of the shipping hassle, but often it's actually as easy as trotting along to the Post Office at lunchtime, if not easier!
Web Tip (kind of) - ever tried taxing your car online? Man it rocks, so easy.. checks the MOT register automatically, checks the Insurance certificate too, and sends you the disk in the Mail, how easy is that! (Frees up the Post Office counter for eBay sellers...) November 16 Cool real-time aircraft Java tracker....
Aviation buffs might like this .. now you can track commercial aircraft in real time thanks to Airport monitor , a really neat little neat Java app for Firefox and Internet Explorer... Web Tip - only valid until 23rd November but anyhoo BBC 2 Radio's 'The Green Guide to Life' was all about Technology this week - made me chuckle! Talk to your computer why don't youI have a bit of a dream job (for a techie that is.). I get to fix IT problems, mostly with PCs but sometimes with other stuff like Video Conferencing, WiFi, web stuff like FTP and Comms etc, .
Today I was asked to install 'Dragon Naturally Speaking' to a college's PC, he's heavily disabled having very little movement in his hands so uses something akin to a chopstick to strike keys on a bog-standard keyboard and mouse etc (patience or what!). Dragon have a good track record in speech recongnition so it'll be interesting to see how he gets on. On the same topic you can't help but wonder why on earth are we still using keyboards and mice, they are so last year.. Microsoft Reseach is doing a ton of work in this field and have recently video-blogged some of this work on their web-based 10 channel. "Windows encountered a fatal error...please say REBOOT to continue"
November 06 Radio 3 - rock on?
So, in not so many years time (and seeming perhaps already) 'Stairway to Heaven' and Pink Floyd's comfortably Numb' could be in there with Beethoven, Holst and Gershwin... October 25 'Asta La Vista.. .Tesco??'I popped into the local branch of Tesco the other day and used their fully automated Self Service' check-out facility, not a human staff member in sight. As a supposed I.T whiz kid (OK, so perhaps Fossil would be more apt) I should have felt comfortable using automated technology like this.. errr.. . Truth is I actually felt quite nervous.... probably 'cos I didn't want to look like a complete twat in front of several clearly experienced Tesco self-service shopperss who were hot on my tail. Long story short, I scanned in my purchases in what I hope appeared as a smug re-assuring manner, (discreetly) trying to figure out where the bar codes where on each item, did the deed, swiped my debit card and walked away with a warm feeling thinking to myself, 'oh yeh, got this puppy licked!' It's very clever how it uses the weight of your items to make sure you don't pinch anything but that's another story, as is the potenial for card fraud.. Old farts like me will look at this stuff with our lower jaws down by our knees yet anyone 35 or under will just accept this as natural progression... So.. bring it on (as they say)... October 20 Could I still be a geek at 80?I've just been watching this week's edition of channel 5's 'The Gadget Show' and the piece Jason Bradbury did about donning something called a 'Third Age Suit'. This suit is designed to restrict movement to simulate the effects of being 80 years old and is used by companies for product testing.
All the tasks were incredibly difficulty and/or unachievable for someone who is normally very tech-savey and could do this stuff in his sleep. Assuming I last the next 30 years no doubt input devices such as keyboards, mice and mobile phones keypads will just be something we'll laugh about and we'll just issue voice commands a la Star Trek. Web Tip - I've never been a fan of web-based RSS readers but the new version Google Reader is wicked. For anyone who has hundreds of feeds to watch this must be a dream come true because they can set up folders and organise feeds. You can also share your feeds with some simple HTML code on your website, blog or email, here's a few of mine... and the fact that it's browser driven it's portable so is not tied down to a single machine. Any machine, any OS, anywhere, now this is what Web 2.0 is really all about... A day in the life.. well almost, I have a few security cameras at home set up to to do time-lapse photography using motion detection. I thought it would be novel to show an average day at Whitewalls ....click here to view - see if you can spot the paperboy, me, the Dearest, Emily (daughter 1 of 3), the Postie, Shadow (the 15- year old Whippet), Terry the gardener, a mystery late night-delivery and...... a giant dragonfly?
October 16 Walter Trout Gig - the happy camper reviewSo yesterday evening (Sunday) I was in 'old git' heaven, once again paying homage to Walter Trout and the Radicals at the Wharfe in Tavistock. Hearing someone like Walter using an 'axe' makes you realise what a complete load of poo TV shows such as the X-Factor etc are. As a venue the Wharfe is the best I've been to to date. Only holds about 300 people, but oddly there was some raised seating from a prior event which we were lucky enough to take advantage of but to be honest standing wouldn't have been an issue from what I could see. The icing on the cake was that Walter took the trouble to spend some time with us 'norms' after the show, signing CDs, chatting with us, mingling, and just generally demonstrating that Guitar heroes are just normal people with wives, kids, dogs, cats, mother-in-laws and mortgages. I find it so hard to believe that a man with so much talent, respect and global following is still not playing 'major' venues. Hey weird, I normally reckon swearing at Gigs is out of order, the Who were atrocious and Twisted Sister who supported Alice Cooper were just a complete bunch of losers. Don't get me wrong, I swear like a trouper at work (usually behind closed doors) but hey, there's a time and a place eh? Walter used the F-word maybe 5 or 6 times but I had no objections, it was in context at least from where I sat. He said the lead guitarist of the support act Larry Miller was F***ing brilliant and to be honest, he was F***ing brilliant, so much say Walter dragged Larry back on stage to jam with him for a while! And the few other times Walter said the F-word it just didn't sound like the F-word, there were kids there but I'll bet they didn't notice it. If you haven't heard Walter's Music and you run Windows with Internet Explorer turn the volume up, I've been using one of Walter's songs (Jules Well) as a background theme for over 18 months which has sold a few albulms so I'm told... October 14 British tabloid rants about SatNav (again..and again..thud...)
As in previous Daily Mail SatNav articles this one also doesn't point out that the data used in many domestic GPS Satnav units may not be anywhere near up-to-date, i.e. it could be 2 years old, or it could be 10 years old - so sure, a bypass or motorway could be missing thus tainting a search for the quickest route. I'm lead to believe that GPS manufacturers often source their core data from other third parties who in turn are using 'retired' information from National Mapping agencies such as Ordnance Survey (who incidently I work for all be it on the IT side of things rather than GIS). So in a nutshell, the most recent updates may be missing.. net result? as you'd expect - garbage in.. garbage out. And you know what? a 5 year old road atlas would probably generate the same result but hey .. that makes for boring tabloid reading. And incidently, the article purely 'assumes' the trucks are using GPS equipped SatNavs, a 'slow' day for News perhaps? In next week's blog - drug dealing sex-maniac suspender-wearing vicar uses to SatNav to fleece wealthy widows... October 12 Mom, Pop... R U paying 2 much 4 your Broadband?
Low story short, Pops made the call and is now £10 per month better off and my inheritance just grew by £120 PA. I'd have thought most reputable ISPs would have automatically lowered their existing customers premiums in line with market forces, BT and AOL certainly do, seems firms like OneTel and Tiscali don't. So, if you have a mo just check and see what your ISP is offering for new sign-ups.. to do this though log on to their website but from say your office or a friend's computer so that your details aren't cached... pretend you're a 'newbie' so you get to see what's on offer (often hidden form existing customers, pathetic or what?). If you've heard rumours about it taking 10 working days to Change from one ISP..err, not always true. It took me all of 28 minutes last time I switched, just call your ISP and tell them you want a migration code, companies like NewNet do it all for you from web page without that tedious call to the BT call centre to far off lands??? (can't help thinking BT should really be called IT these days) Oh, and if they won't give you a code send them a mail and just cancel your direct debit around the time you go on vacation for a fortnight.. roughly the same effect but with loads more hassle their end. P.S I just hope Saga or the media picks this up and glams it some, there must be thousands of folks out there getting rooked on O.T.T ISP fees. October 11 I'm a Mac, and I'm a PC
To be honest I'm not actually sure if Apple TV ads are aired here in the UK as I rarely watch TV but this ad about making movies neatly sums up the whole lifestyle thing in just a few sentances. (If you have Quicktime installed on your machine (PC or Windows) the whole series of ads can be found here.) October 05 Segways in Italy...makes sense to me...So anyhoo, like we're taking a few days out this week and chillin' in the hills of Tuscany (Pisa is less than 2 hours flying time from Bournemouth airport which is on my doorstep so it'd be rude not to eh...)
The 'Dearest' and I spent the earlier part of the week in Florence and I was 'touched' to a spot a Tour Guide and his party charging around on Segways... I could so make good use of a Segway in my job, charging around a drab Govt building would be so much more fun.. but I suspect the Health & Safety people would poo-poo it. zzzz... (As our Technology Director at the office would say - 'Sent from the villasanpaolo Hotel, San Gimiginano, Tuscany using the Hotel's WiFi network... ') September 17 Apple memory prices - Apple UK are (surprisingly) cheaper!
Compare this to Crucial's 1GB module being £104 and their 2GB kit at £216.. in both cases Apple UK are cheaper! The gotcha is Apple's memory option is only available as part of the build, the after-sale option is not listed although some of the other Macs use the same modules but at a much higher price. So, if you are planning on buying a new Mac Mini Core Duo go for the 1GB option at the very least. BTW - at £399 the new Mac Mini is stonkingly cheap compared to a PC equivalent...and if you really must run a Windows app Parallels will keep you going until OS X Leopard launches eh.. (All prices above include UK VAT)
September 10 BT Broadband - worst Tech support ever?Being the seasoned old comms fart like what I am part of my job entails trouble shooting home workers broadband problems. I've done around 200 so far and to date I have never been beaten, but hey, last Friday it came close! A senior staff member had lost broadband connectivity overnight so, after the standard 'over-the-phone' diagnostics and a call to BT Broadband's helpdesk to confirm the line and local loop (Exchange) was OK I deduced it had to be a router fault. As the problem needed resolving the same day I decided to a 60 mile car drive would be quick than hanging around for a same-day courier.
Long story short.. I made 6 L-O-N-G support calls to BT Broadband support in which time I was advised that (my customer) had 3 different broadband logons. One said the username was firstnamesurname@hg17.btinternet.com, another said suname@btbroadband.com and another said firstnamesurname@.btbroadband.com . Along the way I was told a password was not needed, and then the password was BT and then also a new password would need to be set (err..folks which is true please?) After 3 hours of phone calls I finally managed to persuade the BT Broadband support people to do a line check and hey presto, there was a fault at the exchange, quite a big one as it urns out and I was told it could take up to a week to fix. That's fine, at least I know knew there was a problem, buy why did it take 3 hours on the phone with support people telling me to check the lights on my router etc? I have to say at this point the support were really friendly, very polite, but working strictly from scripts, and not that it matters in this case but probably based in India. What does matter is that the support people didn't appear to have an escalation process and were blissfully unaware of the Exchange fault (on an 0208 Exchange too!)
So, BT.. listen up folks, rather than spending hundred of thousands of pounds of laborious telephone surveys (I now refuse to do these..zzz) go out and talk to your customers and listen to them. The scary bit is that I do this for a living and struggled with the above, what chance would a regular home user have with support like this? Way to bury your business BT Broadband..... |
For anyone who knows me from those good old days of 
So, a number of courier companies have woken up to eBay, notably 
This 'getting older mlarkey' just keeps on becoming 'loads and loads a fun'! It's 23:10 on a Sunday eve, and (for reasons unclear) I decided to 'tune in' to BBC Radio 3... and hey, Andy Kershaw is there and he's playing some serious Rock! Does this mean that when I'm in the old boys home in say 30 years time they'll be playing Led Zep's 'whole lotta luv', portions of Whitesnake, bt of Purple, Framton, Dire Straits etc?
But anyhoo, it got me thinking about that scene in the movie Terminator where Arnie gets in the cab driven by an android cabbie... in fact I looked for a suitable pic on Goolge images but failed miserably hence the 'Arnie' pic. Bottom line is that this is the start of a twist in technology that's going to sneak up on us and become part of normal life in just a few years and we'll wonder how it happened. There are already viable commercial robot Bar-Tenders working in real bars, BBC's the 
Jason was tasked to perfrom several normal day-to-day tasks such as program his his set-top box, use a mobile phone call and surf the jolly old web. 
As for the band.. awesome.. as ever. This was first time I'd heard Walter & the Radicals since base guitarist 
Once again the British tabloid press has got it hopelessly wrong about SatNav. An 
I was chatting to my Dad the other day (a 75 year old ' Silver Surfer' who must have shares in eBay by now) and I was surprised to discover he was paying £29 per month for a combined landline phone and Broadband package. His service provider (
Within a few minutes of arriving I ran the router line detection wizard and was surprised to see it stuttered. This happens once in a while but typing in the credentials to the router usually gets around..... but not in this case. 
I can only surmise that BT Broadband is making a bucket of money out of wholesale broadband and is just playing lip service to the retail market. This isn't a one-off for me support-wise, BT broadband support generally always been a nightmare, in fact I'm about recommend we drop support for BT at work.|
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