In web comics I learnt that xkcd rocks (and is worryingly accurate).
Google Reader made my internet addiction quicker and more fulfilling.
Facebook contains most of humanity (and some folk I went to school with)
Planning systems bear no relation to democracy, logic or a useful method of improving your neighbourhood.
Going to gigs a lot is great for the mind and soul but less so for the ears.
English countryside is muddy.
Web video is the way to review video games properly
People are more wonderful than even machines
Good ideas need squared paper
They Might Be Giants invented myspace (sez me)
My time is worth less than a car driver’s
Posting my emusic top 10 got me more readers than anything ever (1500 hits and counting!?)
I should have got cracking on my cack Amiga music project about four years ago
Tag Archives: me
Please Hold, Trying To Connect You…
I have a new phone, hurrah. Yes, a shiny nice new black and modern N95 8GB is mine and now I can finally send off my elderly N80 to see if I can get the speaker fixed whilst moving into the future.
Except, that, wait we’re in Britain so it’s not that simple! Being a conservative soul I’ve opted to port my number and thus not litter the planet with endless messages saying new number 077221… whatever. But this takes some time, a week thus far. It’s a good thing the N95 comes with wi-fi, as it is already seeing some use for me in letting me listen to podcasts with ease by downloading them while I sleep. However, it would be nice to use it as a phone.
Thanks to some googling, I’m now more than a little horrified at the messy reality behind number portability in the UK. Being somewhat naive and hopeful I thought all that happened was that my phone number changed in some large central directory from phone company A to phone company B. Alas, no. No, what happens is phone company A takes the call, says wait a minute and gets phone company B to pick up the line. So, by porting my number I’m increasing the chance of one of the networks failing and causing me not to get the call/text/whatever because i rely on both my original provider and my new provider functioning correctly and staying in business. Also, it wastes resources and means that my calls cost more to route, which I as a consumer ultimately pay for.
This is not ideal.
Thankfully, OfCom have identified this as a problem (chiefly fearing getting shouted at when a phone network goes bust and all the numbers die), and by Summer 2009 it might even be possible to change telephone company in as little as a two hours. The phone companies aren’t keen as it means spending money on some big servers and working our which number has which network. Meanwhile I’ll be carrying around two phones, waiting for one to die so that the other might live.
If you fancy reading up on this here’s a technical explanation of how ported numbers are routed and here’s OfCom’s take on the situation.
The day Stylus dies
is tomorrow, ‘sniff.
As a fan of the site, I think it’s only right that I point you at a number of their articles to encourage you to fall in love with the site just before they stop putting up new content.
Why White Town – Your Woman was a one-off moment of pop genius
The audacity, not to mention ludicrous improbability, of “Your Woman†is astounding in retrospect
The non-stop nastiness of “Gotta Get Thru Thisâ€: Dom Passantino’s Survey of the New Millenium’s UK #1 Singles – Article – Stylus Magazine:
Madonna- American Pie
[03/05/2000; 1 week]It takes a bad, bad song to make a man feel sorry for Don McLean, but this is that song. Don’s version, for all its faults, was at least a cryptic crossword that gave dullards something to decode before their next CAMRA meeting. This, on the other hand, is more like The Sun’s coffee break crossword, with the official first appearance of “SHOCKING LESBIAN OVERTONES†in a #1 song (more will follow) of the millennium. Whatever last vestiges of “not-horrid†this song has are wiped out by the backing vocals, deep in the mix, sounding eerily like Terence Trent D’Arby speaking at you through a medium. In the chronology of Madge #1’s, this comes between “Frozen†and “Music.†It’s a trough between those two moderate peaks.
[1/10]
(which runs all the way from the start of 2000 right up to Gnarls Barkley’s Crazy and reminds you of the terror)
A very nasty dig at Jarvis Cocker, which I don’t agree with but still love, if only for comparing him to the singer from Baby D.
Where record collections go when their owners go where they cannot.
And the ultimate and scary triumph of the fanboy.
Also, naturally, they mainly reviewed albums so it seems only right to link to their right-headed review of Caribou’s Andorra, which unlike most annoying reviews managed to pay attention to the last two tracks, Irene and Niobe which I think are easily the most important and interesting on the album.
‘sniff, at least there’s still Popmatters.