I hate advertisments.  Sorry if you hate them too, but I need to use every income stream available to me at the moment.  I’ve tried to make them subtle; no flashing graphics, no lurid colours.  I’m hoping they’ll generate a little income for me as I get the the visitor numbers up.

I only get a few pennies when an ad is clicked, so I’m not expecting to get rich.  But please take a look at the ads from time to time, and if there’s anything that genuinely interests you, please go ahead and visit the advertiser’s site.

Thanks,

Colin.

PS. Please don’t click multiple times in the hope of sending me cash.  Google is wise to that and will cancel my account if such ‘abuse’ takes place. Ta very much.

Merry Christmas to all our family and friends!

For my previous post, I was going to embed a link to a YouTube video of BBC’s Top Gear where Clarkson reviewed the Tesla.  Unfortunately, BBC removed the video because it violates their copyright.  Rant starts:

WHEN ARE YOU CONTENT MAKERS GOING TO REALISE THAT YOUTUBE IS FREE ADVERTISING?!!!!!  Sorry to shout, but this makes me mad.  The programme is not for sale, and it has been broadcast free over the air.  What possible loss could the BBC face by having it on YouTube?  Indeed, the clip ended with a teaser stating that James was going to explain “later” why battery cars would soon be killed off.  Seeing this made me think “Oh, I’ll have to go and watch that when I have time”. 

I usually record Top Gear anyway, but I delete most of them un-watched because I don’t get much time for TV.  I tend to record more than I can watch so that when I do want to watch something I have a choice of viewing.  Those that I watch get deleted, together with anything old that is unwatched.

SEEING THE YOUTUBE CLIP MADE ME WANT TO WATCH THE WHOLE PROGRAMME, BBC!  DON’T YOU GET IT?!!!

Oh my god, these people are so stupid!  They get the clip taken down, but I bet that if you go to www.youtube.com and search for “top gear telsa” as I just did, there’ll be another clip of it. 

BBC!  You can’t beat them, join them!  I really don’t see the point in trying to get these clips taken down.  It’s futile.  Taking them down doesn’t increase your viewers, but leaving them up might.

I still feel mad about this but you get the point, don’t you, dear reader.  I’ll stop typing now so we can both get on with something more productive.  Thanks for letting me ‘vent’.

Note: I did have an embedded video from YouTube for this post, so you could see BBC’s Clarkson from Top Gear reviewing the Telsa.  BBC took the video off YouTube because of copyright.  See my next post for my rant about this.  So, on with the subject at hand…

Until now, I’ve always said that when I win the lottery I’m going to buy a Ferrari.  I’ve now changed my mind.  I want a Tesla Roadster.  There are a few improvements they need to make before I buy though.

On my estate (that’s not ‘my estate’ as in the country estate I own, it’s the ex-council estate on which I live).  On my estate, our garages aren’t connected to our house; they’re about 30 meters away.  I can’t run an extension cable out to the garage to charge my Tesla.  That’s clearly a bit of a problem.

However, my current driving consists of four daily five-minute trips to and from the nursery, and the occasional trips to the gym, shopping, and visits to clients for work.  Although three or four times a year we take a longer drive for weekends away or holidays, for the day-to-day travelling, the Tesla would be the perfect car if I could charge it.

I like to accelerate quickly to the speed limit, but then I cruise along with a long line of cars behind me who want to go faster.  When it comes to a corner or a roundabout though, I don’t like to slow down, so I like a car that corners well. Unfortunately, the Tesla doesn’t seem to like corners, partly because of those eco-friendly low-resistance (and therefore low-grip) tyres, and partly due to the fact the batteries are so heavy.

So, here’s my suggestion to Tesla so they can make me a perfect car: make the batteries removable, and divide them into pods that can be carried from the car to the house for recharging.  Make it so the car can run on as few as one pod, and the more pods that are fitted the greater the range. 

They would have to do some clever stuff with the electronics so that the pods with the lowest charge are used first, leaving the maximum amount of charge in as few pods as possible, but the idea is that I (we) can remove the most discharged pods for charging at home or at work when there is no car-charging point available.  Pods that are fully charged remain in the car until they’re used.  For long journeys, just make sure all the pods are charged.

One more thing would be handy.  Include a switch for the airbag so I could easily enable it of full-size passengers and disable it when using a child car seat.

So, Tesla, just a few minor points and a lottery win are all that stands in the way before I buy one.  Of course, if you want to lend me one for review, or even give me one and stick a load of advertising on it, then that would be even better.  Contact me through the comments if you’re up for it!

I had to re-install Windows XP on my 18 month old Dell notebook to solve a problem I was having. Unfortunately, the problem still remains. But, that’s not what I need help on.

See my earlier posts about my T-Mobile mobile broadband on my phone? Well ignore those. The following has nothing to do with the broadband connection on my phone, it is about the mobile broadband USB dongle I have, and the cable broadband (via a WiFi router) I have at home.

I was a bit surprised about how my set-up worked before the reinstall, but since it did work (and it suited me), I didn’t look into how it worked. Now it has changed though, and I want it back the way it was. Here goes!

At home I was connected to the net via WiFi to my cable broadband provider, Virgin (lovely 10 meg trial period ends next week). However, my smtp email server settings were set to use the USB mobile broadband dongle from T-Mobile.

What would happen was that Outlook 2000 (I know) would send and receive emails via USB mobile broadband, while simultaneously my surfing on IE (I know) would use my WiFi-based cable broadband provider (at much higher speeds).

I verified this was happening by sending emails (which would fail if sent using my cable provider), whilst running a broadband speed test (showing over 8mbps) at www.speedtest.net. That proved that emails were going via mobile broadband and IE was using the cable broadband, at the same time.

Since the reinstall, I can either use mobile broadband exclusively, or cable broadband exclusively. I’ve checked a few settings, but can’t see anything obvious I can do to get it back to the previous settings.

Can you help please?

If so, please leave a comment or twitter me www.twitter.com/ColinBowen. I’ll post any answers here in the comments anyway. Thanks very much.

PS. I know the fonts sizes are different, but I can’t for the life of me figure out how to change font sizes in WordPress. I know, RTFM, but life’s to short.

Here’s an update on the T-Mobile mobile broadband (on my mobile phone) saga.  I received a nice email as a result of my letter to their customer services.  It informed me that my speed would not be reduced in December because my usage in November did not break their 1GB limit.  I don’t understand that, because (apart from the last few days of November) my download habits were the same in November as they were in October, and in October I used 4.27GB!

They did clarify that if I exceed the 1GB limit in the future, the speed would be reduced from the advertised ‘up to’ 1.8mbps to 64kbps (a 96% reduction in speed) for two weeks.  If I went over the limit again after that, it would be a permanent reduction.

So, is the ‘Fair Use’ policy fair?  No!  There is no way to monitor your data usage on the phone, and there’s no way to see it on their ‘My T-Mobile’ online service.  So, how are you supposed to know whether you’re getting close?

Since this all started, a voluntary code of conduct for ISPs has been introduced, part of which states that an ISP will make ‘timely’ contact with a customer to warn him or her that he/she is approaching their limit.  I don’t know whether T-Mobile has signed up, so Google if you want to find out.

What would be fairer is to say that (with adequate warnings) if someone exceeds the ‘fair use’ limit, then any data in excess of that limit would have the speed reduced.  In other words, 1.8mbps for the first 1GB of data, and 64kpbs thereafter.  Otherwise we’d be paying for 1.8mbps each month, but getting only 4% of that speed.

Of course, all ISPs should be banned, yes banned, from advertising ‘Unlimited’ broadband when there are limits as imposed by a ‘fair use’ policy.  If the normal speed is limited (ie 1.8mbps), and the amount of data is limited (to 1GB), then I ask; exactly what part of the service is ‘unlimited’?

This thing looks glued to the road (at the front, at least). I’ll have to get round to watching the programme on TV.

I’m sure The Stig is my Cousin Les.

Two posts in one day!

Not many posts about F1 lately, but I wanted to share this old news I’ve just seen.  Martin Brundle will be commentating and David Coulthard will ‘a pundit’ with Eddie Jordan and the anchorman Jake Humphrey (who?).

I must say, I don’t like the ITV-football-style sound of an anchorman and two pundits, but I’m absolutely delighted that Martin will still be commentating and that David will be involved.  David Coulthard has so much good stuff to say, and the more former drivers involved, the better.

I’m so pleased we’ve got rid of the adverts; I’ve been doing my bladder exercises already.  And talking of bladders, I’m glad we won’t have to listen to James Allen’s constant stream of irrelevant analogies.

Shame though that we’ll lose Louise Goodman.  She got off to a shaky start but was later able to get great access and(sometimes flirty) interviews with some of my favourite drivers.  Some people won’t be happy, but I’m pleased to see Ted Kravitz joining the Beeb’s line-up.  More of a worry for me is Lee McKenzie (female) who I don’t think I’ve seen, but she comes from ITV and Sky (oh oh) and is daughter of an F1 newspaper reported (oh oh again).  Hope we’re not dumbing down.

I haven’t been keeping up with the news, so I wonder if they’ll bring back the music from the old BBC Grand Prix programme, The Chain by Fleetwood Mac.  Listen to it now, and if it doesn’t bring a smile to your face, make your heart race and give you goose pimples at the end, then you’re either too young, or not an F1 fan.

Customer services told me that they can’t deal the matter further, and suggested I write to their customer services department in Doxford.  Sent the letter yesterday.  Will let you know the result.

What she did say on the phone is that the 64kbps speed will last two weeks, but if I subsequently exceed the data allowance then they’ll make it permanent.  I’ve asked for confirmation or clarification of the policy as I can’t find it on their site.

My phone, an MDA Vario III (HTC TyTN II) uses WiFi or HSDPA mobile broadband.  If I leave WiFi on, when I leave the house I get an annoying popup every time the phone finds a WiFi connection asking if I want to connect.  So, I’ve been using the mobile broadband exclusively.

What was putting me way over the data allowance was downloading audio and video podcasts overnight.  I use the excellent Beyondpod, a “free, open source, RSS feed reader and podcast manager (podcatcher) for Microsoft Smartphone and Pocket PC. “ 

I’ve set BeyondPod to download new podcasts at 4am daily.  What I didn’t know (and there was no way to find out) is that the podcasts used 4.27GB in October.  The T-Mobile ‘fair use’ amount is 1GB.  1GB = approx eight one-hour audio podcasts or less than three video podcasts a week.  I think it was October that I found the video podcasts, and BeyondPod will have downloaded some older podcasts too.  In any case, three hours worth of video podcasts isn’t that much.  That’s without any surfing too.

The day after my call to T-Mobile about their ‘fair use’ letter, BeyondPod released a new beta version.  One of the features of this new version is an setting that prevents the downloads if the only data connection is mobile broadband.  In other words, it only downloads if I’m connected to my home broadband via WiFi.  I also found a button on the keypad that toggles between WiFi and mobile broadband, so all I have to do is remember to toggle when Ieave or return to the house.  Even if I forget, BeyondPod won’t download the podcasts if the phone is set to mobile broadband.

In summary, I’ve worked out a way of reducing my mobile broadband usage considerably.  I’ve told T-Mobile about this in my letter.  Now I’m waiting to see whether they’re going to take a ‘fair’ view of my situation.