Dec 21
I was bemused by this sign today outside the National Portrait Gallery in St Martin's Place, London. You'll note the symbols for a disabled person in a wheelchair and a person pushing a small child in a buggy. You'll also note that the sign says that "this entrance is for Access only". "Access" with a capital 'A'.
You might think that that's almost exclusively what an entrance is for. Access. So restricting the entrance to access (with or without a capital A) doesn't achieve very much. "This door may only be used as a door." To repeat those words of wisdom handed down by the internet, "Oh noes!!!" So I'll leave you to think about why they used the capital A. And what it might say about disability and the way that those who are required by law to provide reasonable access to buildings think about the whole process.
Nov 10
Back when I was a young man, seems like a couple of hundred years ago, a British education was thought by some to be second to none. A university degree was freely available to anyone that had the basic intelligence and the drive to achieve it. To have questioned whether it should be freely available would have been almost unthinkable. And yet today, as I'm writing this, thousands of students are taking to the streets of London to protest the Government's plans to allow universities to charge tuition fees of up to £9,000 a year.
According to Sky News:
'NUS president Aaron Porter says the planned 300% increase in fees is "utterly unacceptable" and an "outrage".'
In my opinion, it is utterly unacceptable and an outrage that students should have to pay any fee whatsoever.
And yet Sky News reports that:
'The Government says the increase in fees will make the system fairer, because students will not have to pay back their loans until they are earning more.'
This is the kind of government we have right now: one that not only makes the situation much worse but employs 360-degree spin in trying to justify it.
The British education was so highly valued in part because it was freely given to the people by a government that recognised its value. To reduce it to just another bought-and-sold commodity simply cheapens it. I wish these students all the luck in the world. But given that we have a government known for targeting the poorest and the weakest, I fear for their futures.
Sep 10
Back in June I wrote a piece about hidden data charges for mobile phone users, referencing my own problems with Virgin Mobile. Summing it up, I was charged about £75 for going over the 25 MB per day usage limit - Virgin had charged me £2 per extra MB. My problem with that wasn't that I'd been charged for the data I'd downloaded, it was that I hadn't been adequately forewarned about it when buying the phone.
Anyway, the good news is that Virgin have changed their pricing policy. From 27th September, anyone on a Pay Monthly or Pay by Direct Debit plan will only be charged a one-off payment of £1.69 for going over the 25 MB limit on any day. So the maximum that any of those customers will pay for one day's internet use on their mobile phone is £1.99. That seems like a much better deal to me. Thanks, Virgin. But do please make sure that customers know about it at the time they buy the mobile phone.
Jun 16
Recently, when trying to take pictures with my Canon 17-85mm lens on my Canon 40D camera, I've been getting an error message: "Err 01: Communications between the camera and the lens is [sic] faulty. Clean the lens contacts." At first it was intermittent and sometimes just switching the camera off and then back on again would stop the message from appearing. And cleaning the lens contacts didn't seem to make any difference to whether, or when, the message would apear.
Lately, I get this message more often than not so I had another go at cleaning the contacts, watched a video on the subject and decided that I might not be using the correct cleaning fluid, so I decided to get expert advice - or, at least, as expert as you'll get in a camera shop.
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Jun 12
Dozens of football fans have been turning up at Trafalgar Square in London this evening in anticipation of watching football on the big screen. Only problem is, the big screen was taken down, as one Police Support Officer on the scene said, "because it was thought that there could be violence".
Did it not occur to them that there might be violence because the screen has been taken down?
Jun 10
I'm very pleased with my new mobile phone. I know there are far better models out there but I have to balance features with affordability. If someone offered me a free HTC Incredible for the same £10-per-month deal I'm on now, I'd grab it so quick you wouldn't even see the blur. But my LG GC900 suits me: it has an 8 MP camera which yields reasonable quality pictures and can also be set to save them in a size suitable for mobile blogging as well as in a size suitable use as a 'desktop' or a contact's image; it can do 720 x 480-pixel video; it has 3G connectivity as well as WiFi and Bluetooth; it has a good set of PIM apps as well as the usual MP3 player and an FM radio; it even has a dedicated Google Maps app to go with the built-in GPS receiver and, while it won't give me live turn-by-turn directions, I don't need them - I rely on my SatNav for that; it can even do video calls, though I don't yet know anyone else with a videophone.
On top of all that, it's only costing me £10 per month for 24 months which includes the price of the phone, 100 minutes to any local or national number per month, 3,000 minutes per month to other Virgin Mobile users, and 500 texts per month. Add up what the calls and texts could cost and you'll see that the phone isn't really costing me very much at all. So, as I say, I've been very pleased with my new mobile phone. I'm not quite so pleased with Virgin Mobile, however...
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Jun 5
You're looking through the lens of your DSLR, you've metered your subject and the background, calculated your shutter speed and f-stop, zoomed and framed your subject for the perfect shot, when suddenly the loud voice of a tourist almost shouts in your ear, "Excuse me, can you help me with a photo?", thrusting his camera in your face.
What do you do?
The moment's gone. Your subject has moved on. You've lost the shot. What do you say to this visitor to your country with his expensive Nikon DSLR firmly anchored in green-box mode?
Do you reply with politeness, or sarcasm, or with humour? Do you reply?
I'm always tempted to ask them precisely what they thought I was doing with the camera stuck to my face: fly-fishing? Spraying my roses? Stealing people's souls, perhaps.
But I'm British. So I merely say, "No, sorry", and move on to the next shot. How about you? What would you say?
May 31
A short while ago I got locked out of my Facebook account because I used a mobile phone application to log in. I thought I'd let you know the details so that you can avoid having the same problem.
The first time it happened, I logged into Facebook using the Opera Mini browser. Straight away I got a message saying that Facebook was unavailable and that I should log in later from my PC. When I did, I got a message saying that someone had tried to access my Facebook account from Norway and that this might be a hacking attempt. (I forget the actual wording of the message, but it doesn't really matter; what's important is the way Facebook handled the problem.)
Now Opera Mini isn't a normal web browser. When you request a web page, that request goes to Opera's server in Norway which fetches the page, renders it in a form suitable for mobile phones, and sends it back to Opera Mini. No wonder Facebook thought that someone in Norway was trying to access my account. Someone was.
I was asked to change my login password, which I did, and the problem seemed to be solved. It wasn't, of course...
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