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Archive for the ‘Misc’ Category

Linksys Router RMA update

October 24th, 2005 No comments

Last week, after still receiving no further word from Linksys about the RMA procedure, I emailed to find out what was going on, but got no reply.

Last Friday, I got a note through the door saying that UPS had tried to make a delivery. I was confused by this, because they hadn’t even arranged to pick up my old defunct router. Did they really mean delivery, or did they mean to put pickup? If so, then I was still waiting for the address label to be emailed.

Two things then happened today:

  • I finally got an email from UPS containing a link to an electronic mailing label, which I needed to put on the old router.
  • UPS delivered a brand new shrink wrapped replacement router

Fortunately, this has given me a box to return the old router. Just got to get UPS to come out again to pick it up.

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Linksys Router goes titsup

October 12th, 2005 No comments

I’ve had a Linksys WRT54G wireless router since 2003, but last Wednesday, it just died with no front panel lights.

The LED was still lit on the power pack, but nothing whatsoever from the router. I remembered reading somewhere that Linksys gear has a three year warranty, so I called the freephone number on the Linksys UK website. This connected through to the US, and although the line was bad, and the tech support guy’s accent was difficult to understand, he processed an RMA return. Unfortunately, I’m still waiting for an email telling me where to send the router for replacement.

In the meantime, expecting a long wait for a replacement, I ordered a new WRT54GS router from amazon.co.uk on Friday, which was despatched same day by Royal Mail ‘first class’, so you’d think I should have received it on Monday. Not so. It didn’t even come on Tuesday. It finally arrived today. Once again, Royal Mail have proved their inability to provide a decent service.

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Flood Risk Complacency

October 12th, 2005 No comments

So the Environment Agency has commissioned a survey and come out with the statement that up to 41% of people in the UK are unaware of the risk of flooding to their homes.

So who holds this information about who’s at risk of flooding? Guess what, it’s the Environment Agency.

The blindingly obvious question is: Why doesn’t the Environment Agency just tell these people they are at risk – problem solved without wasting time and tax payers’ money on pointless surveys?

Europe’s Changing Map

October 4th, 2005 No comments

Here is an excellent interactive map of Europe from the BBC, showing the changes over the last 100 years.
This is the sort of thing which should be taught in school.

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New Horwich Pics

September 21st, 2005 No comments

Added some more pics in the ‘About Horwich‘ section of our gallery.

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Mailinator:Spam Map

September 20th, 2005 No comments

Ever wondered where all that spam is coming from? Take a look at Mailinator’s Spam Map.

They have mapped the geo-lookup of the IP addresses in their received spam against google‘s maps.

Doesn’t seem to be much there at the moment, and I suppose that distributed bot nets won’t show up because they wouldn’t make it into the top list.

I was surprised to see the one in London was one of uk2.net‘s mail servers.

Postscript: Brian Pipa who wrote the code for the Spam Map contacted me about the above image, asking which browser/OS was used (Mac OS X/Safari), as the formatting was not as it should look.

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Congratulations England!

September 12th, 2005 No comments

Congratulations to England on winning the Ashes!
Great Stuff!!

England Flag
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School Traffic’s back

September 5th, 2005 No comments

Well, it’s September and the biggest clue that the summer is over, is that my journey to work now takes 33% longer. Yes, the schools have gone back.

I still don’t understand how the school run affects traffic at 7 o’clock in the morning when school starts at 9.

What also doesn’t make sense is that the traffic on the motorway is so much heavier. I could understand increased traffic on local roads, especially around schools, but why does the school traffic increase the motorway traffic?

What happened to walking or cycling to school, or even getting a bus?

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Speed Camera sites for Tomtom

July 25th, 2005 No comments

After trying the ‘Safety’ camera trial on Tomtom, it appears that the demo file is severely limited. Most of the the known cameras are missing.

However, I found the pocketgps.co.uk website where you can download free POI files for speed camera locations for Tomtom and other GPS units.

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Day 7 without a TV

June 28th, 2005 No comments

Back in 1990, I purchased a Panasonic TX24-A1 24″ TV (along with an NV-F70 Video recorder). The TV served me well for 15 years until the sound started going on the right channel. Feeling that I’d had a good innings out of the TV, and sensing a long awaited excuse to upgrade to a widescreen model, I purchased a Panasonic TX32-PD50 in April from Sound and Vision in Farnworth, Bolton.

Now, only two months down the line, the TV has developed a fault. Read more…

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