Tag: rant

June 17, 2020
There is not a week go by that I don’t get email via my website from some charlatan wanting to boost my website’s listing on Google. Even with spammer detection in place, they still manage to get through.

It has now got to the point that I automatically delete anything that mentions SEO.

December 17, 2015
Good grief. Just received a very pleasant email from the good folk at Intus Healthcare, who supply me with CPAP equipment for my sleep apneoa.

Turns out that Google are hassling them over a link I have in my blog sidebar. They interpret the links as advertising spam because they appear on EVERY page of my blog and the website is not about sleep apneoa.

March 11, 2015
This time last year, I signed up to support the Indiegogo campaign to raise money for a 3rd season of Wil Wheaton’s TableTop. I had enjoyed the first two seasons, and had no hesitation in contributing.

Originally I signed up for the $40 contribution, which would give me a perk of the first two seasons on DVD, plus extras. However, soon after, they announced a LootCrate option at $100. This was described as an “EXCLUSIVE LOOT CRATE BOX with lots of great TableTop Gear inside! Handpicked by Wil, this is a once in a lifetime box that will ONLY BE MADE FOR THIS CAMPAIGN.” (Capitals are from the campaign text)

November 25, 2014
I use Amazon a lot – for Kindle books, for CDs and DVDs, for gadgets; and sometimes even for unexpected stuff like really excellent flour from Welsh watermills. But lately I have been thinking that Amazon isn’t so deserving of my business; from its employment practices to its well-documented tax avoidance.

Margaret Hodge, MP and chair of the public accounts committee, makes a good case that consumer action forced Starbucks to pay tax in UK, and that the same kind of action could force Amazon’s hand.

October 15, 2014
The following is based on what I have learned while trying to cope with unsolicited telephone calls. I have done my best to make it accurate, but I am not a lawyer or expert in this field. If you are aware of any glaring errors in this article, please let me know.

I am plagued with unsolicited phone calls. Sometimes I think I get too angry about them, some friends say I should just ignore them; but when you receive more unwanted sales and marketing phone calls than actual valid calls from friends, family and organisations you want to hear from, you know something is wrong.

April 19, 2013
Just wasted a couple of hours putting my foodadventure.org.uk site right.

I had been playing with facebook like icons, and noticed that the Wordpress Theme I use had an update. I really like Magazine Basic, so I thought going from 2.7.9 to 3.0.0 must be a good move? Big mistake; and yes, I should have backed up, but normally a Theme upgrade is a trivial and reversable thing. Not this time.

March 16, 2013
Just had a fairly fraught trip from Peterborough to Glasgow and back, where – in addition to bad weather – my TomTom (Go Live 1005 World Edition) refused to see any satellites whatsoever.

I tried various things, numerous times, including a reboot and a complete factory reset, but it stayed perpetually searching. while my phone and tablet both were picking up satellites galore. In the end, the phone got me through the trip, using Google Navigation. This meant my (work) phone took a small hit on mobile data, but as it was a work trip anyway, that’s not an issue.

September 28, 2012
Although not a great user of twitter, I have used it as a way of conveniently getting messages from devices like my Kindle through to my blog. Yes, I was doing it to post to the blog, but twitter gained the traffic as well.

Except that has now stopped, with changes to twitter’s API policy. They want anything posted to twitter to stay with twitter, and not be exported or cross-posted to any other system. As a result the IFTTT website has had to remove all of its twitter triggers effective today.

September 4, 2012
August 28, 2012
I’ve had an addiction, for several years, that I have finally decided to kick. My friends have previously told me that it is no good for me; that any enjoyment I might get from it is no compensation for the way it tries to warp my mind; that it is destructive, and the best thing I can do is just walk away. Despite that, without it, I find it difficult to wake up and get myself out of bed.

But, finally, I’ve decided to go cold turkey on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme.

August 12, 2012
A year or so, I was talking about how ebooks were frequently more expensive than the equivalent paperback. It was annoying, but I could kind of understand it, due to eBooks being VATable and real books not. Things have since got better, due to Amazon’s creative use of European VAT regulations.

However, I do not understand this other anomaly. Since buying my new laptop, and realising that it is the first computer I have owned in a long time capable of playing decent games, I have been dabbling with various game demos on Steam, which is a gaming distribution platform. In particular one of the demos I have enjoyed is Hard Reset, and I have been considering buying the whole game.

July 27, 2012
Listening to Radio 4 on the radio today, unsurprisingly heavy with articles about the Olympics. Now, as the Games start, there appears to be a new phraseology being used – that the site of the Games was a “barren wasteland” or an “empty brownfield site”.

This will come as news to the many people who enjoyed the area before the bulldozers came in. For example, the Eastway Cycle Circuit – a 1 mile public cycle circuit, built in the 1970s, and set in parklands, now replaced by the Velodrome. Does this look like a wasteland to you?