How to be Tasteful

 

Prunella Servatius Hawke is an artist, who paints houses. Not two coats inside and out, but as watercolours for your enjoyment, business or publicity.

Prunella can also create images that are ideal for blog and letter headings.

Don't be Afraid of Voip

 

I made a daliance into Voip some months ago and it all went a bit pear shaped.

But I do spend a lot of money on phone calls and Voip does look to be a sensible way to cut those costs.

1. I used to have three BT lines into the house and these cost about £120 each. But since Celia died, I don't really have a need for Fax now, so that line went to save money. I could probably get rid of one of those lines in the future, but at the moment I need both, as broadband round here is so slow and the two lines give me about 2Mb, which has to sustain not only myself but Lyndsey in the Stud.

2. Calls on Voip are much cheaper. For instance, typically you will pay about a pence a minute for calls to places like the USA and Germany and about half BT's rates for those to mobiles.

So I have installed four Voip 'lines' into the stud. These cost £2.99 each and act just like normal phone lines. I've also chosen numbers slightly out of area in Newmarket, as this is so much better for a stud than Haverhill.

So what advantages do I get?

1. Obviously, there is a cost saving. I have cut one line and calls look to be about half what I was paying before.

2. I used to divert my main number 01440-783789 to my mobile, but now I've diverted it permanently to my main Voip number 01638-778586. I do pay a bit for the diversion, but a lot less than I did.

3. When I get a messaage to the Voicemail, I have arranged Outlook to send a text message to my phone. And of course I can access my Voicemail from any phone in the world.

4. All Voicemail is delivered as files that I can play in my Windows Media Player. This means that if you are in a business, where sometimes you need to keep these files for legal purposes, you've already got them.

5. Celia was a family barrister and a lot of her clients were abused over the phone by ex-partners. Go to Voip and everything is there for the Courts.

And what happens if the Internet goes down?

1. I still have my standard BT line, which is permanently diverted to the Voip number. If you have a power or Internet failure, all of your calls will still get recorded on the Voicemail system for later recovery.

2. You can still dial out on the BT number and of course cancel the diversion.

Not the greatest of inconveniences and probably much less than losing power or broadband.

So try it and remember that if you spend a lot of money on lines, calls to mobiles or abroard, you will get a quick saving.

You Don't Have to be Serious

 

One of my clients, The Warranty Co, uses an integrated blog to add life to a serious web site.

Go and enjoy.

Changing Broadband Suppliers

 

Over the last few months the performance from my broadband supplier, Pipex, has gone from good through bad to worse. I used to get a full 1 Mbs connection, but I'm lucky now to get 200 Kbs. It also has great gaps where there is no connection at all.

When I complained to them, they wanted me to run a special connection for six hours, which meant that I couldn't do any work for that period of time. That is probably some of the worst service ideas, that I've heard in a long time.

So I have swapped to BT.

Luckily, I have two phone lines, so I just got BT to put broadband on the other one and all I did was plug my modem/router in and put in a new user name.

I'm now up to 1.5 Mbs and it was so easy.

Speaking to various people who know more about ISPs than I do, I get the impression that since Pipex have been taken over by Tiscali, there has been a lot of technical dumbing down.

But the important lesson here, is that getting a new broadband supplier is not as difficult as you think.

Unsubscribing From Web Sites

 

As you may or may not know, my wife, Celia, died in December. She was always signing up for various newsletters from reputable companies and over the last few weeks, I've been trying to unsubscribe from them.

With most companies there are two simple methods :-

1. You click a link in the e-mail and this takes you to an unsubscribe page where you type in the e-mail address and then click unsubscribe. This works well.

2. The second and better method is where the e-mail address is built into the link that is clicked. This works even better.

One of the problems, is that I can't send e-mails from her e-mail address and I've just diverted her e-mails to mine. So some companies, like Tesco, want an e-mail sent from the e-mail address to be unsubscribed.

I can't do that. (Well I could, but I'm playing the bereaved person here, who knows little of the Internet.) So in Tesco's case, to cancel her messages, it took me a couple of e-mails.

So their system, which is probably designed to make it difficult to unsubscribe, actually costs them money, as it is not a fully automated system, that can be used by the person who received the e-mails.

Other companies require a login to unsubscribe. As Celia never wrote her passwords down, I can't do that. So those companies that continue to send me unwanted e-mails are now on my never-buy-from list.

So when you design an unsubscribe system, do it properly.

Testing Your Internet Speed

 

Sometimes you want to find out the performance of your broadband or Internet speed.

There is a simple web site called SpeedTest.net, that tests both your download and upload speeds.

Go to this web site and you get a map of the world showing a whole raft of servers with which you can check your speed. The best for you is marked as a yellow pyramid.


The web site then does a download and upload test and then displays the results as a web page.


Note that this site also has good links to help you to choose a better ISP, if yours is rather slow.

Note too, that I have used the Daisy Presentation Browser to create the images for this post. This program allows you to set the dialog to any size you require, so that in this topic for display I have chosen 1024 x 768. You can also remove all of the tool, status and address bars to get a cleaner web page.

I Hate Laptops

 

I do, as they get dropped and stolen.

But, now that I am alone and I have two dogs to look after, I like to spend more time in the kitchen. As we have a wireless network here on the stud, a laptop was a sensible solution.

I bought an affordable HP from eBuyer on the recommendation of my son, George, and it works well. All I did was type in the network password.

But as with all laptops the pointing device is awful.

So in PC-World, I bought a Logitech LX7 Cordless Optical Mouse.

It works well and improves the experience no end.

Closing an eBay Account

 

My wife, Celia, died on the 11th December 2007 and I had to close her eBay account.

Interestingly, I had to do it in writing, for security reasons. Apparently, there are people who close them maliciously.

But their people in Dublin, were sypathetic and professional. You'd be surprised that not everyone is like that.

Wireless Phone Extension

 

This is not specifically an Internet problem, but it is one of those nice bits of technology that comes along occasionally, that is so simple you wonder why it wasn't developed years ago.


Look at the phone above, which appears to be plugged directly into the mains.

It isn't, the device that is, is one end of a small wireless link that can reach for about fifty metres. Two of these devices add an extension to a typical phone or fax line, so that you can have a fixed phone in another room or office.

The cost is just under £40 from EBuyer for a pair of devices. This cost is typically a lot less than getting an electrician in, who'll probably charge at least £75 for an extension. It's also safer than all of those trailing wires, which you can trip over.

You can also link up to three extensions to the same base station and up to three sets should work together in the same range.

So what would you use them for?

1. Providing a temporary extension in an bedroom for visitors or someone who is confined to their bed. You could use a traditional wireless phone, but few of these are friendly to the disabled or the elderly.

2. Moving the location of a fax machine in an office.

3. Typically on a building site there is power but no phone lines, except in the site office. You could use these devices to put a movable line anywhere on site with a fixed phone, that can't be taken away and lost. If it gets smashed, Argos do a phone for under a fiver!

Think!

One thing they can't do is provide a link for broadband.

Creating a Video

 

A few posts ago, I showed how with a very simple camera you could upload a video to YouTube and add it to a blog.

I've now added titles and credits with a standard piece of software called Movie Maker that comes with Windows. It is very easy to use and creates smaller files for uploading to YouTube.

Adding Video to a Blog

 

This is Anna playing and enjoying herself in the front garden with Lizzie the basset hound.


Note that this video was taken on a Fuji S5700, which is not the most sophisticated of cameras, but it can take about thirty minutes of video on a 2Gb SD card. The video was then uploaded to YouTube, cutting and pasting the code into this blog.

It's that's simple.

Nuisance Calls From 07975-825284

 

This idiot rings me twice a day. I've not caught him yet and I only know because my phone tells me someone has rung. So I've no idea whether it's a silent call or someone trying to sell me something.

So I tried to report it to BT's nuisance call bureau on 0800-6614413, but they said I must report it to Orange. Guess what, every number I could find needed an Orange mobile phone to report the problem.

But I'm happy with mine and think it a bit rich to have to change my mobile to Orange to report one of their idiot customers.

Eventually I found an e-mail form and sent this. I doubt I'll get a reply.

The Orange number 07975-825284 rings me twice a day. As yet I've not managed to catch it, but my phone says I've been called. I've tried to ring it back, but I get an answerphone with a full voicemail box.

Can you please sort it?

My landline is 01440-783789

I should also say that I couldn't find an address to write to on the Orange web site.

That is a disgrace and it should be the law.

As a follow up to this, I caught the call this morning. It was a company called Financial Connections, ringing despite the number was registered with the Telephone Preference Service.

Let's hope that stops it.

A Sensible Opt-In

 

I've just had an e-mail from Opinion World.

Whether it should be classed as spam or not, I will not say, but it has probably turned up in my InBox because someone has passed on my e-mail address legitimately.

But this is the interesting bit.

We are sorry if your e-mail address has been used for this offer by mistake and we apologize for any inconvenience caused. If you do not respond to this mail we shall not contact you any further.

I suspect I will not hear anything more from this company.

What a civilised way of sending out a direct mail, with an automatic destruct.

Fixing Washing Machines

 

I have a feeling that many household appliances these days are now made to be easy to manufacture. These days most machines seem to be easy to take apart, which is probably because they're easy to put together.

Twenty years ago, they were often glued together and difficult to repair. Many a time, I tried to repair a tumbler drier and ended up with a load of parts on the floor.

But things have changed now.

I've recently repaired a tumbler dryer and a washing machine by purchasing parts off the Internet. The sites were helpful too.

Just use Google to search for the make and model number.

Second Hand Car Parts

 

This is probably an obvious application, but it wasn't to me until someone suggested it.

But there does seem to be several sites where decent parts can be obtained.

The Great Storm

 

On the 16th October 1987, we experienced one of the worst storms in the UK. Contrary to popular belief, it was not a hurricane, but it caused more damage than any storm for 300 years.

At the time we lived at Debach, north of Ipswich and we were without electricity for nearly two weeks. Luckily we cooked on a gas AGA and surprisingly the phones kept going.

It is also the time, when I had the narrowest escape of my life.

I’ve always got up early in the morning to work, as it is the best time, when you don’t get interrupted by phone calls or family. But that morning although I was up, I wasn’t in the office as luckily there was no power. At about six-thirty the chimney blew over, came through the roof and went right through where I normally sat.

We’d also turned out two horses in the field that night for the first time. One was an old racehorse, who’d been confined to his box for two years with leg problems and the other was a newly-weaned foal.

They had no problems, as instinct kept them to the safe place in the middle of the field, with their backsides to the wind.

So would the Internet help?

Hopefully the warnings and the weather forecasts would be better. But I suspect that the chaos might actually be worse, as many people would be unable to connect and would be suffering from severe withdrawal symptoms.

Watch Your Text Messages

 

Today, in an important case at the Old Bailey, text messages between parties involved in the case were read out.

I think that if you are using text messages for business purposes, then it is important you keep a record of every message sent.

LiquidDrop sends text messages from the desktop and every message is saved in your e-mail program. Any replies are also saved too.

How to Test a Page is Indexed

 

The web site has been submitted to Google and the other search engines, but you don't seem to be getting any traffic.

Sometimes, this is because the pages have not been indexed yet, as search engines do sometimes take up to thirty or so days to get around to looking at your pages.

At other times, this may be because the page that is not getting indexed is not connected to the index page of the web site. This can be down to a coding mistake, but it can also be because the menu system you are using is not readable by one of the search robots.

There is a simple way to check if a page has been indexed.

Take a phrase of about eighty to a hundred characters in the page, that you feel may be fairly unique, add quotes to it and put it in the search box of the search engine. If I was searching for this message, I might use.

"At other times, this may be because the page that is not getting indexed"

Note the quotes, as these make sure that the phrase will be searched for in exactly the way it was entered.

If you don't find the page, then it has not been indexed.

It is also a good idea to set up a Google Alert for a new web site or page. this way you'll know when it has been indexed.

Ryanair, easyJet and LastMinute.com

 

We don't need a holiday, but we'll be trying to get away this weekend before the winter closes in.

So I spent an hour or so looking for cheap flights on Ryanair, easyJet and LastMinute.com.

You type in the dates, select a starter airport and then go through a load of suitable destinations.

easyJet were excellent in that every time you went back to the start page, all you had to do was change the destination and click search.

This sort of worked with LastMinute.com, but they kept going from September to October on occasions. How annoying!

But with Ryanair you have to start again with everything. Grrr!

eTyres Over The Internet

 

As an experiment I ordered two tyres for my Jaguar X-Type Estate, from eTyres.

I should say at this point, that I'm about 12 kilometres from the nearest garage and that usually they take an hour or so to fit them. So actually going to buy the tyres is a waste of time as far as I'm concerned. Especially, as I often have to go back as they don't have the tyres in stock.

I ordered the tyres on Saturday and I had them fitted today.


As you can see a fully equipped van turned up on the time we'd agreed and an hour later, the tyres had been changed.

I would use them again.

Especially, as I got the tyres about twenty percent cheaper than from my normal supplier.

Online Voter Registration

 

Just renewed the Voter Registration online.

Excellent!

Senior Railcard

 

I've just turned 60, so I've bought my first Senior Railcard, which gives me discounts on train travel.

I did it online and got the card the next day in the post.

WikiScanner

 

WikiScanner is a concept that lets you see who edits the entries on WikiPedia.

Michael Linehan of Marketing-Alchemy.com has posted this in the LED Digest.

It's fun to play with WikiScanner, and you can find this search engine here: http://wikiscanner.virgil.gr

That's the basic. Now for some points I have not verified.
Supposedly, among many revelations, some of the more interesting (and funny) ones are:

MSN Search is "a major competitor to Google". That's what MSN added to their page

Microsoft edits Apple entries, adding more negative comments about its rival

In the 9/11 Wikipedia article, the NRA added that "Iraq was involved in 9/11"

Exxon Mobil edits spillages and eco-system destruction from oil spillages article

FBI edits Guantanamo Bay, removing numerous pictures

Dell Computers deletes negative comments on customer services and removes a passage how the company outsources work to third world countries

Microsoft tried to cover up the XBOX 360 failure rate

DieBold, the company that controversially supplied computerised polling stations in the US elections, removes numerous paragraphs with negative comments

FeedBlitz

 

I've added a link to FeedBlitz, so that you can get a nightly e-mail about what I'm posting.

Join using the box in the left column under Subscribe.

Sydney Car Centre and Monster.com

 

Accusations have been made by people who post comments on this list, that some of the spam from Sydney Car Centre comes in some way from Monster.com.

I strongly suspect that Monster is a completely innocent party in all this. Could it be that addresses are being harvested in some robotic way from the site, by someone posing as an employer?

I'm going to be putting my CV on monster.com and see what happens. I shall be using a new e-mail address that will not be posted anywhere else.

Perhaps, if anyone else does this, they might like to tell me what happens.

Managing Yahoo Groups

 

I manage two Yahoo groups.

One of the problems is that people join and then attempt to polute them with large amounts of spam. This has resulted in several worthwhile groups having to be shut down.

So how can this problem be minimised.

1. Tell all new members that they can't post until they've posted one sensible post and set them on moderation until they do so.

2. If that first post is spam, just delete it.

3. If they send another spam message, then remove them from the list.

The two lists that I manage have not had any problems with spammers.

Odd Spam

 

The web site, I wrote for Nicholas Comfort, got some really weird spam last night. In fact it got about a hundred copies of similar messages entered into the contact form on the site.

Below is the result of your feedback form. It was submitted by
(OrZS3l@"websitename") on Tuesday, July 31, 2007 at 23:00:31
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

email: OrZS3l@"websitename"

subject: im3gp@"websitename"

name: 2aS7yR@"websitename"

company: Rm1N403@"websitename"

message: eW0vghy@"websitename"

formname:
To: tCA5@dSk.com
From: PUSZ@ftg.com
Subject: mfst***I290phU0
Bcc: onehundredmbits@aol.com

I290phU0

Reset: Clear

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

HTTP_USER_AGENT: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0)
REMOTE_ADDR: 121.156.57.188
HTTP_REFERER: http://NICHOLASCOMFORT.com/contact.html

Note that "websitename" is nicholascomfort.com. I never put e-mail addresses real or otherwise in web sites, unless they are encoded in JavaScript.

I just can't see what the person (or robot) who sent this was up to.

I've since modified the form, so that you have to make a choice from a pull-down list. I've also put checks on e-mail addresses being added in the Subject and Name.

This should defeat robots.

Check out the contact page to see what the form now looks like.

Iran

 

I've just noticed from Google Analytics, that I'm getting a lot of visits to my web site from Iran. They are all going to the page on Search Engine Optimisation.

I hope the Yanks don't get the wrong idea about my dealings with the Iranians.

Royal Mail and Paypal

 

Sell something with PayPal and Royal Mail will print a label for you and knock it off your PayPal account.

An interesting connection.

Google Maps

 

I've just added Google Maps to two of the sites I'm working on.

This one is for a firm of solicitors called the Cambridge Family Law Practice. This one is for our stud, Freedom Farm Stud.

Once you get the hang of the Java, they are very easy to setup.

they are infinitely better than Multimap, which seem to have developed a horrible habit of resizing your browser if you print the map. With Google Maps, you don't have to have a separate print page.

Pictures

 

Sam Shaw is an artist and the wife of Martyn Downer.

I've used one of her paintings to show how few pixels can be used to display images in a blog.

Here's the painting at just 200 pixels.


Here's the same painting at 400 pixels, which can be clicked for a larger one at 800 pixels.


It always surprises me that highly detailed pictures like Sam's still look good at a very reduced level of pixels.

I just guess that the brain fills in the bits that the eyes can't see.

The Hidden Beauty of Numbers

 

The FT has an article with this title today and it’s about a Professor Rosling, who is revolutionising the way statistics are shown.

http://www.gapminder.org

He’s sold it to Google for a lot of money.

It might be worth investigating.

Charities and eBay

 

eBay has a very nice and simple web page, where you can collect money for your charity.

All you need to do is register and then people can nominate your charity when they sell.

The Power of Outlook 2003 and 2007

 

We all have the problem of keeping track of our contacts, the e-mails we write to them and the documents and letters we post to them.

Later versions of Outlook from 2003 onwards have a large Notes section in each contact.


Note how Word documents have been copied to the Notes. They are just double-clicked to open them.

You can copy any document or e-mail message to this folder to create a complete record about the contact.

No-Free-Phone Mobile Phone Contract

 

I've had my mobile phone for about six years now. It's a Nokia 6310i and at present I run it on an O2 contract, that is of course expensive because I pay for free phones that I don't want.

Incidentally, I had a problem with the phone a few months ago and I was able to get it repaired for £25 by a company in Cambridge. They told me that they repair lots of these phones as it does everything most people want.

So does any company offer a mobile phone contract, where I don't have to pay for other peoples' free phones?

Cleaning a Laser Printer

 

Improving the quality of printing on laser printers is often just about keeping it clean.


I'm changing a cartridge here on my HP 4500 Color Laserjet. Note the Dyson DC-16, which is an excellent portable vacuum cleaner.

Postcode Anywhere goes International

 

I've used Postcode Anywhere for some years. They've just gone international, so you can find and check addresses in US, UK, Canada and Europe.

Here is some information relevant to their international addressing software.

The developer page for the international product can be found at the following page. This page contains all technical information needed to set up the international address finder in your application.

A demo of the international product can be found here.

As far as the pricing goes, the size and cost of the per-click credit packs can be found at the following page. The credit usage for international addresses is 1 credit per request for UK, US and Canada, and 2 credits per request for everywhere else.

It soudns like technology worth checking out.

Ryanair's On-Line Check In

 

Just used it to check-in for a trip to Salzburg on Wednesday.

It seemed to work very well.

The Baker

 

This is a review of the film called The Baker, which has been produced by Dan Shepherd, who is a friend of our youngest son, George.

The film has just been signed by a distributor and recently it won an award at the Tremblant Film Festival in Canada.

I'm sixty next month, but I do go the cinema regularly with my wife of nearly forty years. So we're not particularly your young cinema goers.

We watched a courtesy copy of the film on our 17 inch non-widescreen television with a crap sound system. The film has faults, such as it doesn't play well on a small screen, but what film does. It also needs atmosphere in that I think it's one of those films where the bigger the audience the better the enjoyment applies.

It's a film that I want to see in a large cinema to get rid of those problems.

So is it a good film?

Yes.

The film is unusual with more than a touch of the surreal about it. Although, I only saw an early copy, it is very well made and doesn't suffer from the bad continuity, sets and acting, that befall so many low budget productions.

It also has one of the most innovating sex scenes, that I've seen in a film in a long time.

So if you are lucky enough to find this film in your local cinema go and see it. You won't see much violence or graphic action, but you will see a film that will make you smile and say that that was a very good effort.

Although very different, I think if you liked Sideways, you'll like this film.

It would be rather nice, if the readers of this blog could influence events and get this film shown to a wider audience.

But isn't that what the Internet is supposed to be about?

Bonusprint

 

I'm not a lover of digital cameras as I feel that real film gives a much better quality.

But to save weight on our recent holiday, I just took a small digital camera and then used the Bonusprint web site to print those I wanted.

It was simple to use and even survived a power cut in the middle.