It’s been snowing lots, like when Oscar was born! This time he experienced the snow. Maybe next time he’ll remember it.
Snow Ozzie
January 19th, 2013
Oscar’s mastered the stairs
December 31st, 2012Up or down; no problem.
Oscar’s mastered the stairs →
December 31st, 2012
Oscar standing
December 30th, 2012
Oscar is getting SO good at standing without support. He’s up to about 20 seconds and knows he can do it. He should be asleep though, really :p I guess he’s also learned to save his best tricks for bed time!
Laura and Si’s wedding pics →
December 29th, 2012
We loved seeing Mr & Mrs Lapish getting married. The ceremony and reception were lovely and lots of fun. The best pics we got are here, including plenty of Oscar.
Ozzieboy (The Trailer)
December 28th, 2012Oscar’s first year.
Windows 8
December 21st, 2012I’ve been playing around with Windows 8 a little. I don’t rate it very
highly yet. I was impressed with Windows 7; it’s familiar but powerful.
Windows 8 takes things in a new direction, and I like to see things pushing
forward. However, at the moment it feels like you have 2 operating systems
installed. And they gel together even less well than the various VM
environments there are, e.g. for running Linux on Windows, or Windows on
Mac.
Some stuff only seems to be available in one of the ‘OSs’ (such as
restarting the system – it took me a long time to figure out how to do
that.) And the stuff that’s available in both ‘OSs’ has clunky transitions
(such as applying windows updates: I started in Metro, and clicked to see
more details about the 20 available updates. I got jumped into the Desktop
view, and I had to click again to view the details.)
rm -rf
December 5th, 2012Argh! I just rm -rf all my iTunes library. I feel like such a n00b.
The music is backed up (in many places, including iTunes+) and I was in the process of adding Movies and TV shows to a backup, but deleted the wrong copy.
So, me and Caroline have 3 episodes of Battlestar Galactica left to watch on the iPad, and then we’ll have to wait to watch the final season until I’ve managed to recover them.
Charges for phone unlocking
September 18th, 2012The practice of locking phones bought under a contract is pretty rubbish. However, my experience has been that towards the end of your contract, when you’ve finished paying off the phone subsidy, carriers unlock your phone, that you now fully own.
However, Three UK are refusing to unlock my iPhone, which has just reached the end of its contract, without me paying a £15.32 administration fee. An admin fee they want me to pay, for them to undo the shitty thing they did to my phone.
I’ve tried escalating the issue, but even the complaints department won’t budge on this policy. I’m not sure what I can do next. I’m tied to Three unless I pay the fee.
I’ve sent the following email to David Dyson, Three CEO (I had to guess his email address), but don’t expect that to reach him. Worth a punt.
Hi David
I’ve been a happy Three customer over the last two years. Now that my current contract has expired, I’m planning to buy a new phone, and start a new contract, hopefully with Three again.
However, I’m preparing my old phone, which is now completely out of contract, and therefore fully paid for, but your customer services and complaints team refuse to get me the unlocking code without charging an admin fee of £15.32.
This fee is completely unfair. I’ve paid for the phone outright now that the contract has expired.Please can you have a look at your policies around handset unlocking charges. I understand that phone locking is considered necessary when the handset price is subsidised by the contract, but once the contract has been paid for I should be released from any obligation, and given the freedom to use the handset as I like, including on any network.
I have a case number for my complaint: [redacted] My current handset is an iPhone 4, bought from 3 with a contract 2 years ago.
All the best
Matthew
Update: Three’s executive office called me, but they won’t budge on the unlocking admin fee. They insist charges to unlock are standard practice, but it hasn’t been my experience:
- O2 UK – no charge, even during the contract
- Vodafone UK – no charge for contract phones
- Three Ireland – No charge once you’ve completed the contract
Should AI get rights?
September 8th, 2012I’ve sometimes wondered about the likes of The Animatrix and Battlestar Galactica, whether if we do produce AI that wants to be alive or have other rights, will we be mature enough to give them those rights. I really hope we will be, but people are pretty slow to adapt to change. But! We’ve had lots of sci-fi stories to help us ponder and prepare for that day. Maybe we’ll have prepared ourselves. (If you haven’t seen The Second Renaissance from The Animatrix, then definitely watch it.)
Sadly, from the looks of this article on TechDirt and its comments, from a generally intelligent community, it looks liked here’s no hope we’ll skip the atrocities the next time there’s an oppressed group in our society.
