tenthofjune

This morning it took me 25 minutes to get to the motorway (a 5-6 minute journey) due to queues on the A6. Was this queue shown on TomTom traffic? No. Has it ever shown on TomTom Traffic? No.

When I did get to the M61 motorway, it was predicting congestion between junctions 5 and 4, but clear after that. In reality there was no traffic between 5 and 4, but slow crawling traffic from junction 4 onwards, but not according to TomTom.

TomTom traffic information is becoming increasingly worthless.

In the past, if you wanted the latest map for your TomTom, you went to TomTom’s website, paid for it and downloaded it. Now TomTom has changed it so that it is only possible to download the maps using its ‘TomTom Home’ software.

Not a great problem, except that the latest maps can only be downloaded and installed using the latest version 2 software. Unfortunately, TomTom hasn’t bothered yet to release version 2 for Mac users, who are stuck with v1.5, so Mac users are excluded from using the latest maps unless they can find a Windoze PC on which to install Home and use to download the maps.

To make matters worse, the new maps are currently on offer at discounted rate until the end of January 08, so by the time TomTom get their finger out and release version 2 of Home for Mac, this date will have passed, and Mac users will have been effectively excluded from the offer.

Q: why is version 2 required to install a map, something version 1.5 was perfectly capable of doing previously?

Q: why can’t the map be downloaded directly from TomTom’s website as was the case if the past?

Q: why are TomTom being so slow to release version 2 for Mac?

I contacted TomTom, suggesting that since they’d failed to get a Mac version out in time for the offer, they should extend the offer for Mac users. The response was:

We’re doing our best to come out with an update as soon as possible so every customer could download maps and updates using their own pc or mac.
But for now unfortunately indeed there isn’t much our mac customers can do for downloading maps besides using a different windows based computer.

Which roughly translates as ‘tough’.

The correct customer focused response would have been “we appreciate the inconvenience the delay in getting the Mac version released is causing our valued Mac based customers, so we have extended the discounted map offer to those customer for a period of one month after the software is released.”

I recently got a cheap 3 spot light fitting from Aldi. (Likely to get trashed by my two young daughters, so wasn’t after anything expensive)

It came with tungsten halogen lamps I had not seen before – G9. However, at 40W each, it was too bright for the location, so I went looking for replacement lower wattage lamps.

B&Q wanted £5.98 for two 25W lamps. Unfortunately, unlike last time, Screwfix didn’t fare much better, wanting £24 for ten (plus P&P)

The winner this time was our local DIY shop, Wallpaper supplies in Horwich, who were selling 25W lamps for £1.25 each.

Update October 2008

Even better – Aldi now have a pack of three 25W lamps for £1.99.

Following a Which? complaint to the EU in 2004, Apple have agreed to reduce the cost of tracks on the UK iTunes store from 79p to 74p (in line with pricing on its other European sites). (El Reg and BBC) While this is obviously welcome, one part of Apple’s press release gives rise to concern:

Apple will reconsider its continuing relationship in the UK with any record label that does not lower its wholesale prices in the UK to the pan-European level within six months.

So what happens, if after six months, these record labels refuse to lower their prices? Will Apple remove these labels from the store? If so, then isn’t that bad for the consumer? At least if they remained, the consumer still has a choice.

I still maintain that unless you are interested in single tracks, it is cheaper to buy from play.com or CDWow.

Bolton Council make recycling collections on a fortnightly basis. Addresses are assigned to a Blue or a Yellow week. You can check which week you are on at their Sort-it website, but it fails to tell you one very important piece of information: which weeks are blue and which are yellow. They do include a calendar hidden inside the free council propaganda newspaper ‘Bolton Scene’, but many people will have binned this as soon as it dropped through the door and therefore lost the calendar.

When we moved in last year, I emailed the council to ask which weeks were which and they very helpfully emailed back a well formatted excel spreadsheet showing blue days. This begs the question why this spreadsheet is not available for download on the Sort-It website.

Here, therefore, is a calendar for 2008 showing blue and yellow weeks.

I have since found links to poor quality scanned PDFs on Bolton Council’s own blue and yellow calendars on the normal council website. Why these are missing from the Sort-It site is still a mystery.

According to the Register and the BBC itself, BBC Radio 1 has taken on itself to partially censor the Christmas classic “Fairytale of New York” by the Pogues and the late Kirsty MacColl.

The line is question is “You scumbag, you maggot you cheap lousy faggot, Happy Christmas your arse I pray God It’s our last”. Ironically, the BBC has chosen to censor ‘faggot’ in case it may offend anyone, but considers ‘arse’ to be acceptable.

Not being American, a faggot is either:

• a bundle of sticks or
• a meatball

so the British Broadcasting Corp is also pandering here to the American use of the word.

Hang on though, isn’t ‘Fairy’ also a derogatory term for homosexual? Shouldn’t they therefore change the title to ‘Tale of New York’ for fear of offending someone?

Interestingly, the ban does not apply to Radio 2, further showing how much Radio 1 has lost its way.

UPDATE

Radio 1 has now backed down.

No doubt most people are aware of the current story regarding John Darwin faking his own death in a canoe in the North Sea five years ago, and his wife moving to Panama on the proceeds of the life insurance.

Now if only he’d tried faking his death on a canal boat, he would have been re-enacting a famous palindrome: A Man, A Plan, A Canal, Panama.

So close…

You may recognise the picture on the right. It is called a ‘cross dowel’ and is used together with a screw to fasten furniture panels together.
B&Q stock these, however, they want £4.08 for a bag of five. That’s just over 81p each. That may not seem a lot until you compare that to Screwfix who are selling bags of fifty for £1.80. (a little over 3.5p each) Even if you had to pay the £5 P&P on Screwfix, that’s still only 13.5p.
Interestingly, Screwfix and B&Q are sister companies, both being owned by Kingfisher. I would expect a higher price at retail premises over mail order but I cannot believe that the difference is due solely to the cost of the retail premises.

As always, it pays to shop around.

Nice to see that Experian haven’t wasted any time in exploiting the current scare due to HMRC’s Child Benefit Data SNAFU. Entering ’25 million’ (or even just ‘million’ into Google, gets you an advert for Experian’s credit checking service, offering to ‘check that your Child Benefit data isn’t being used for fraudulent purposes’.

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