Archive

Archive for July, 2009

BSM dump ‘unappealing’ Vauxhall Corsa

July 28th, 2009 No comments

Apparently, the driving school BSM is to replace its basic vehicle for learners – the Vauxhall Corsa – after signing a deal with Fiat. The reason given is that the first car purchased by 70% of learner drivers (mainly young women it would seem*) is the same model as they learned in, although I rather think the discount offered by Fiat had more to do with BSM’s decision.

How things have changed. I learned to drive in an Austin Metro and would have never even considered such an awful car.

* obviously young men can’t afford to drive as they are discriminated against by the insurers.

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BT Freestyle 2010 Recall Function

July 27th, 2009 No comments

I was recently trying to explain to someone how call-waiting works (Talk Talk had enabled it on her line without explaining what it was or how to use it, so she though the beeping was a low battery warning)
“Just press Recall (or R) when you hear the beeps”, I said.

“I can’t find Recall (or R)”

Surely all modern phones have a recall button (or so I thought)

“What model phone is it?”, I asked.

“a BT Freestyle 2010”

A quick Google later produced the user manual, and on page 23 you find:

BT Freestyle 2010 Recall

assuming of course that the original and new callers haven’t both given up by now and hung up. Why is this buried in a menu? Surely the Recall function should be as accessible as the buttons for dialling and hanging up. Given that BT promote this type of calling feature they should make the phones feature-friendly.

I ended up explaining how to disable call-waiting (#43#)

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Alert “Low mem2” on iPhone

July 23rd, 2009 No comments

iPhone Alert Low mem2While using the app “WiFiZone@UK” I got the error message “Low mem2” on the iPhone (3G OS 3.0). Tapping OK cleared the error message which repeated several times.

I haven’t seen it since and a Google search doesn’t help.

Has anyone else seen this or have any idea what this semi-cryptic message means?

Closing Schools will close Hospitals and Businesses

July 21st, 2009 No comments

Clue PillScientists from Imperial College London are asking that schools be closed in the autumn term to reduce the spread of swine flu.

What they fail to mention is that this will effectively close thousands of businesses and more importantly the hospitals vital to treating the more serious cases, as parents are forced to stay off work to look after their children.

Maybe those giving the advice don’t have children, or are paid enough to be able afford to have the nanny look after the children.

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Need a small Acrylic Sheet?

July 19th, 2009 No comments

Acrylic SheetI’ve been cutting our old shed down to make a playhouse for our children. The new front has a small window, so for safety I wanted to use Perspex, or to use its generic name, acrylic sheet. Wickes wanted 15 quid for a 2mm thick sheet 1220×600 but I only needed something 420 x 385 and they don’t do anything smaller. 2mm was also a bit thin; B&Q do a 4mm thick sheet but for 24 quid. Screwfix, as ever, were cheaper (half the price) but you need to buy five sheets – fine if you’re building these for a living but not for a one-off.

I then turned to ebay, and found several sellers offering smaller sheets around the A4/A3 size. I found one selling a sheet 500×500 – almost perfect. The listing even mentioned cut-to-size and included an email address so I fired off a quick email and they quoted me a 3mm cut-to-size piece delivered (to my work address for convenience) for £2.69 + £3.50 delivery.

So if you are after a piece of acrylic (or other plastic material), I can recommend Retail Engineering Design Limited.

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Can’t Uninstall Photoshop Elements 2?

July 2nd, 2009 No comments

PhotoShop Elements 2 SplashscreenWe’ve had an odd one today: Before installing a copy of Photoshop Elements 6 on a Vista machine, we thought it best to uninstall an older version 2 that was on the system in case anything got fouled up by the new version (or rather the old version fouled up the new install).

That was easier said than done. There is no uninstall option under Program files, so Control Panel was used, but it threw back the error that the “‘Uninst.isu’ file is not valid”. Reinstalling version 2 in an attempt to fix any corruption was also not successful, but we then noticed that the uninst.isu filedate had not changed.

After trashing the file, we again reinstalled v2 and uninstall then worked OK.