As I have said before on more than one occasion, I have spent a lot of the last  20 years or so setting up/designing/maintaining and being involved in a series of online projects themed around my boarding school and the young gentlemen, such as myself, who went there. A labour of love it may have been but a labour it was nonetheless. I don’t regret any of it but as some of you reading this may know, setting up things for others to use or enjoy online can be an empty business.

Inspiration & The Reality Gap

Pondering...

Firstly, you can’t do it quickly. You many have a brilliant idea, one you may visualize with crystal clarity in your head but if you ask any sort of creative person – say an author (ahem) – they will all agree that at this stage, you project is approximately 2% complete. This is often completely at odds with your own perceptions but I would have to throw my hat into the ring and agree with them. Many is the time I have been sitting at work or driving home in the car, when an absolute corker of an idea has filled my head, just above the nose. At this point, shamefully, my gas pedal hits the floor and speedbumps become a thing of skant concern. By the time I reach the end of my gravel driveway, bound up the front steps and allow my manservant to welcome me into the foyer of the family pile, the fire of inspiration is still burning fiercely. Hives removes my coat, the cat drops my slippers at my feet and I power up the PC. The harsh white glow of the screen then slaps some sense into me and most of the enthusiasm  fades like…well, like a sentence without an end.

For a lot of the time, that’s exactly what happens. During the year long gap in which I didn’t blog, that happened about 3 times a week. Now and again, it still happens. You just have to live with it. Now that the blog is up and running again, all I have to do is type and as you will have hopefully have seen, I manage it much more often. Thanks to Evernote, I don’t tend to drive home like a lunatic anymore either. If anyone ever solves the problems or fat fingers and a small touch screem, it will indeed be a perfect world.

If it ever becomes possible to forget that GTA Vice City and it’s tempting streets exist, then that will also be of great help to me.

I’ve drifted again haven’t I?

Well, what I am trying to say is that the first hurdle to creating online wonderment is that its a f**k of a lot of work, even to do it slightly well. To do it very well, you have to be 9 people or 1 genius.  I fit into neither camp. I take my time, get frustrated, Google a lot and copy other people. Don’t look so shocked. I suspect I am not alone.

The one hurdle I sometimes find it hardest to get over, is that some things are beyond me. This usually presents itself when I have spent an afternoon looking for inspiration. Common places for this are…actually going to stay secret, suffice to say there are sights and technical achievements to boggle the mind. Now, I can use Photoshop but its a huge oil-burning pig of a program. The manual for version 5 (the last one I read) might as well have been written in Latin. What the online help file for Photoshop CS5 must be like, I can only imagine. I usually use Fireworks to create my graphics, but even that is largely a closed book to me. I  do what I can and mostly what I need to do. It’s partly why I have never done this sort of thing professionally. I couldn’t stand the idea of being asked to do something I didn’t know how to do. Also, I use about 10% of Dreamweaver when coding HTML. I suspect I am not alone in this either.

Finally, you have to keep it alive. I know this to my cost and you ignore this key ingredient in your online project at your peril. It’s hard to be specific about anything other than my own stuff, but take this blog entry for example; once posted and I have Tweeted a notice of it’s newness to about 100 followers and put it on my Facebook page for 400 friends to see, I will get about 20 hits. Tomorrow, when people get to work, I’ll get about the same amount again. This week, I might make 100 hits. This is unique visitors and doesn’t include return visits. If I make no post next week, I might get another 10 hits and after that, maybe 5 a week until I post again. I can promise you one thing. No one is looking to advertise on my site. Unless you have invented iPlayer or iTunes (I think I see a pattern), a lot of people are not going to give a monkeys about what you have done. You could be really, really lucky like me and have a target audience, some of you whom like what you have done but mostly, you will be ignored. It’s a tough lesson, but all the hit counters and spinning visitor globes will not bring people to your site in droves.

It’s not all doom and gloom though. I once mentioned Gillian Anderson, Clint Eastwood and Pamela Anderson in a blog post (as a test) and got almost 300 hits in a week. This sort of experiment is frowned upon and the Google bots will soon find you out, so don’t try it (unless you are blogging about famous celebrities of the 80s or course). Quite what would happen if I mention Justin Bieber, Dancing On Ice, Lindsey Lohan or Red Nose Day,  I can only imagine. Oops.

The one thing I find hard to babble on about is…well, babbling on. You have to be able to write a bit; I can – write a bit that is – but I don’t do it very well, not on paper or screen at least. Most of us know what to say but either because we haven’t done very much of it since the age of 15 or perhaps because we never could in the first place, we can’t put into words. This is not a huge worry but it’s something you should be aware of. Most of your readers’ brains will work out what you want to say and very few will feel the need to tell you where you have gone wrong. In any case, you will be understood.

So, after struggle, torment, plagerism, manual reading, googing, relaxing, typing, patience, calmness, panic, frustration, desperation, defining your own creative limitation and often going for walk to clear you head, you are done.

Shouting At The World

There's only one really...

In a word, don’t bother. I pondered for a while before writing this paragraph and while the first sentence seems a little harsh, it rings true. Perhaps it didn’t 15 years ago when there were dozens of search engines, all eager for your content. Now there is just Google and to a lesser extent, Bing. Google is really the only one that matters and it’s bots will eventually index your online world and show it to the world. Well, they will show it to the world if they enter the right search terms. If they don’t, you webby work might as well be in a bin bag in the shed. Again, harsh but true.

But remember, you have friends – both Facebook and real, tell them and tell everyone on Twitter. That process alone will grab the attention of those who know and love you and who are eager to click a link whilst slurping the Kenco.

Of course, as I said before, I am lucky. My stuff was and is for a largely captive, ready made audience of old school friends. They are brilliant, receptive and sometimes embarrassingly grateful. I feel guilty sometimes because I get frustrated when they don’t use my site exactly the way I intended or because I wish they would contribute more but a swift kick up my own backside soon rids me of this. This swift kick is usually in the form of someone I haven’t spoken to in 20 years suddenly popping up or like this week when a well respected author of online content and the printed page finds the time to join my new forum and enters into a short correspondence.

So, don’t bother shouting. Do it because you want to and because a few other people might like to see what you do. Don’t worry if you don’t work on it for a while and don’t worry that your audience is getting frustrated or thinking less of you for not spending your Sunday afternoon banging away at your PC keyboard. They will still love you when you do come back, no matter how long that is. Go for a walk, go to Vice City or go and sit on someone else’s sofa watching X-Factor, eating chocolate muffins and trying to convince them they will be a great mother.

The more you do, the more you will have to think about and write about and the more likely you will be able to spend an hour typing 1600 words about yourself to no one in particular.

A bit like I have just done.

Trip

Look out, I’m back again. No longer got nuddin’. I think it’s safe to say that today I have summin’ at least. In a departure from the normal policy of just reading my old blog posts (admit it bloggers, you do it too), I am going to quite literally add to the number of words in the world.

It’s been a busy old time of late. Last weekend, I went to watch the Army V Navy rugby game at Twickenham with all my friends. That sentence hardly does it justice but I thought I’d get the meat out of the way first. The train tickets arrived in the post a few weeks ago with a mysterious set of instructions. On Friday 2nd May, I jumped on a train for the first time in years and headed for Reading. All I knew was that I would be meeting one of the conspirators and that it would definately not be Sean, as I had spoken to him on the phone earlier and he had been given a different set of instructions. I climbed out at Reading after a moment of blind panic concerning an automatically locking door and an almost 40 year old blogger, only to spot Bruce Whitton. Now several hundred of you will have no idea who that is. He is a big cheese in my school Old Boy network and I had not seen him in over a year. Unfortunately, I was only 99% sure it was him and in that terribly british manner, chose not to shout across the station. I now know it was indeed Bruce. Bugger.

Anyway, what to do with myself? Do I wait for the crowds to clear and let my contact find me or do I go hunting until someone recognises me? I tried the former to no avail and headed up the ramp for the exit. At the top of said ramp stood Sean. One of several moments of confusion and mild dishonesty that would greet me over the next few days.

We drove to what turned out to be Farnborough and the home of big and tall Stan. After some very nice (diabetic friendly) food it was off the the pub and a few hours of intense political debate with Mark, Stan’s brother. At about this point, the joy of not drinking was hammered home. Diet Coke sits on you alright until the 2 or 3 pint. After this, you enter a clarity of thought outside your normal frame of experience. Combine this with the lack of energy caused by low blood sugar and you find yourself very, very, very sober. I am beginning to get used to it but as your increasingly slurry, chums slowly slide under the table, its quite difficult (actually pointless) to explain things to them. Diet Coke no.4 is quite literally the last thing on earth you want. What I did want, and quite desperately it has to be said, was some cheese on toast and a cup of tea. Luckily, it was almost evening pill time and time to head back to Stan’s gaff.

You must realise at this point, I was none the wiser as to how the rest of the weekend would play out. I was going to bed without knowing one thing about Saturday.

Saturday came just a few long hours later and time for another wonderful Stan breakfast. Now at this point, I notice that both Sean and Stan are wearing DYRMS OBA rugby shirts.

Clue one.

Then to Farnborough railway station and a short hop (well, a train ride actually) to Clapham Junction. Here I was thrust head first into The Slug & Pellet, whereupon I met some more friends, old and new. Helen (Hx) & mummy Hx, Heidi (HHx) & Si and Amy. There was much taking of photos and hugging. Unfortunately, it was too soon after breakfast so they ate while I had a Diet Coke. Out came the Army V Navy tickets and the secret was out of the bag. I had never been to Twickenham before and it was a really kind idea of theirs to take me.

The game was no classic but once you are sat down listening to the crowd, it doesn’t matter. It was cool and now I have done it.

Thanks guys.

Gravelands

Whilst staying at Stan’s place. I heard this. Now I have a copy and it is the weirdest, strangest thing I have head in ages. It is also a work of genius. I have also ordered a copy of the previous album.

Lazily, I nicked the following review from Amazon…

“The King is James Brown, an Irish postman. He was discovered singing Elvis songs at a karaoke bar. A record producer had the idea to record the Nirvana song “Come As You Are” with an Elvis impersonator, and he was struck by how much Brown sounded like Elvis. Yes, he actually does sound a lot like Elvis. Anyway, after they recorded the Nirvana song, they decided to record a whole album of songs by dead rockers. Yes, it’s an album of songs by dead people sung by an Elvis impersonator. Somewhat surprisingly, the songs are played “straight”. The songs aren’t played for laughs at all. They are somewhat interesting for the most part, with “Come As You Are” being the best of the lot. If that sounds like something you would be interested in, here it is.”

PC

As of this precise moment. This PC is all mine. It’s taken 4 years but I now own it all. What surprises me the most is that it still flys along. Ok, I stuffed it full of memory, almost 2 terabytes of hard disk space and a 512mb Graphics card over the last few years but this morning I played Crysis with all the settings set to medium. The PC savvy amongst you will realise the impressiveness of this. Others can rot in luddite hell.

Hole

I was going to blog about this alone but having typed for an hour or so, my gloom has lifted. A weird, indefinable gloom. I hope it wasn’t too apparant over the weekend but I tend to swerve from happy to not happy quite distinctly lately. Yesterday I was a bit glum and today I am not. Who knows why?

Oh and its hot. I hate that.

x

At last! A day without the need to hunt for decent title. I am not sure what happened to last Sunday’s post, it was obviously not meant to be. I was off work until the Wednesday giving me plenty of time to make up for it but other things got in the way.

Tavistock.

It’s a lovely place, Tavistock. About 15 miles from here, just on the edge of Dartmoor. It’s small town architecture and winding streets are a stark contrast to the violent, depressing, chav-infested sprawl that stands not more than a burning tyre’s throw from my gaff. I am a frequent buyer of spices, pulses and other such diabetic friendly/Slimming World friendly commestibles from either the indoor market or a great little shop on the high street.

Unusually, I was there on Monday this week. Normally, the Rover is berthed in the riverside car park by 9am on Saturday, long before the hordes arrive and in plenty of time to park within easy walking distance of the ticket machine. It’s not the walk to the machine I object to, just the walk to AND from the car. Do you lock the car and walk to the machine or do you risk it and keep one eye on the car while you are gone? Why does it seem so stupid and pointless to walk to a machine, very often in the same direction of your ultimate destination, then walk back to the car, then walk….

…but I digress. It’s Monday and its about 2.40pm. Off work and ferrying Mum and her sister (my auntie) to Tavistock Cottage Hospital so that a consultant can have a poke and a prod at a troubling wound on Mum’s thumb. Her most recent visit to the GP had scared the bejesus out of her and me by suggesting it might be something awful, so I dropped them off and parked up, fully intending to wander into the town, buy some cooking stuff, a newspaper, perhaps a cuppa and then go and pick them up when signalled on the mobile to do so.

Having parked up (see paragraph 2), I wandered into the town, bought some vanilla pods, some sugar-free, 90% cocoa solids chocolate and a newspaper. Then I had a cuppa and read the paper. Then I went back to the car and read my paper some more until the 90p, 1 hour ticked ran out. Exiting the car-park, I drove to a place approximately, 100 yards from the hospital and parked. Yes, parked free of charge. I could hardly believe it, in a space by the side of a road. No double-yellow lines, no single-yellow lines, no “resident’s parking only” sign – nothing. By now it was almost 4pm, but as it was a hospital appointment I was quite prepared for the possibility that she might still be waiting to go in. So I read my paper some more and listened to some more Dale Winton on the radio. 4.15pm and my window-steaming slumber was rudely awoken by my amusing, if alarming, ringtone – the phone ring noise from “24″. Reality dawned and having ascertained that she “would start walking down the hill” (why do they do that?), I duly collected the two smiling and strangely similar ladies.

It turns out all is well and the poorly is just a deep infection, easily vanquished by some strong antibiotics.

The mood driving away from the hospital was much improved on when we arrived, The Dixie Chicks are on the Ipod and sugar-free Sherbet Lemons (everyone suffers for my condition) flow like wine. At the bottom of the hill, I click the indicator on “right” only to be asked “What are you doing?”. It turns out that the only thing that had kept them going whilst sitting in the tiny, sterile waiting room was the thought of Omellette and Chips in a cafe and a walk round the shops.

So once more, there I was parked in the riverside car park in the same berth. I walked to the ticket machine, bought another 90p ticket, walked back to the car, walked to the high street, went into some shops….well, you get the idea.

By now, however, it is gone 4.30pm and in that wonderful, customer-focused way, everyone and everywhere is shutting. Only in this fair land could an establishment, whose sole purpose is to feed people, close just prior to the point in the day when people are getting a bit peckish. We are on the verge of giving up when the smell of roasted coffee pulls us into a side street and we sit down, just the three of us alone at a corner table in a very homely, tea-shop-style establishment. The walls are adorned with blackboards featuring every sort of food the tired shopper could imagine, but then the waitress comes over…

“We are just serving drinks and things from the patisserie at the moment”.

I swear to god, there were 4 members of staff wandering about in that place. It was just before 5pm and they weren’t serving any food. Up and down the land, kitchen tables were groaning under the weight of fish fingers, beans and chips but Kenco and a donut was the best we could hope for. For all I know, they started serving hot food just as everyone began taking after-dinner walks to aid digestion, just in time perhaps to catch that all important “full-up”trade.

Only in England folks.

So, the ladies both had a cream tea and a cappacino and I had a small Earl Gray.

Time Of The Month.

It’s a wonderful time of the month at the moment. Traffic-shaping technology has once more temporarily reduced by broadband speed to that of a milk float. Not a new milk float mind you, one long overdue for a service. I just have to put up with this until a random point either a few days or weeks from now when it the download speed shoots skyward and normality is resumed. This is all part of a “fair use policy” that I unintentionally agreed to many years ago when I neglected to read a lengthy Email with a jeweller’s eyepiece.

I noticed the words “fair use policy” on a mobile phone advert the other day. This provider was offering “unlimited texts” all of the time for £30 a month or something similar but the words “fair use policy” briefly appeared at the bottom. Now, I am no lawyer (like Tony Hancock, I never really bothered) but this kind of thing really gets my goat. I am on an “unlimited” tarriff with my broadband but I notice (now that I finally decided to read the terms and conditions) that “in order to guarantee an acceptable level of service to all customers” my broadband speed “will be reduced after periods of excessive traffic”. This is mysteriously murky and non-specific but no doubt perfectly in keeping with the huge wad of cash I chuck in their direction once a month. I also pay line-rental on telephone line I don’t use just so I can have ADSL.

“Get cable” I hear you cry. Well I would, but for at least two reasons…

1. Virgin won’t run a cable to my house as it would have to run through 4 gardens to get to my little corner.

2. Two words – 13 months of an 18 month contract left.

I notice that Virgin are now offering 32Mb speeds. Whoopie-flipping-do. If this post doesn’t go live until Monday afternoon, at least you will now know why.

Work.

It is Monday tomorrow and my Excel project has come to an end. Tomorrow I am back to the day job and at least 5 days of solid data-entry keying awaits. On the positive side, I will finally catch up on all that music and all those audiobooks I have kept on standby since July 8th last year. Further blogs will no doubt reveal more.

Tap, tap, tap, tap…]]>

*Warning* – Some of you may find the following entry very geeky and uncomfortable. Sorry, but I like stuff and that’s it. I have no time for coolness.

Vista Ultimate Fun

Hey Geeks. I tip my head back and cackle maniacally at your feeble, Windows XP-equiped PCs. I got hold of a perfectly legitimate and legal copy of Vista Ultimate Edition on Friday and after a very quick installation, all is going swimmingly. Almost all anyway.

Things I like about Vista.

1. It’s fast. Not in a “make your games go faster” type way, just in a “everything happens so smoothly” type way. Programs I use every day like Word, Dreamweaver, Fireworks and Photoshop are so much easier to use thanks to this.
2. It’s undeniably pretty. No really.
3. Animated wallpaper. This makes me sound very sad but I have an animated wallpaper called “animated bliss” and it’s a bit like the old green hill and blue sky wallpaper found in XP, but this time it moves. Every blade of grass waves in the wind. The sky changes according to time – daylight, sunset, moonrise, night, sunrise…it’s very, very, cool.
4. It feels much safer and is constantly and politely asking me to confirm stuff. This sounds annoying but it isn’t and makes perfect sense.
   Stuff glows and is transparent.
5. I have no life. Empty, empty, empty…

Things I don’t like about Vista

1. I thought I had prepared for everything, but it now appears that no Siemens mobile phone software works on Vista. I now have no way of getting my photos from phone to PC. It could be worse. I could be in the middle of a project involving taking one photo with my phone every day. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr….
2. So far, that’s it.

Concert For Diana

As I write this, Elton john is hammering his piano at the Concert For Diana. I really don’t know what to think about the latest round of big concerts like this. It all started with Live Aid I suppose and I admit at the time thinking it was all terribly exciting. It was terribly exciting I suppose because nobody had really done it before and it was all so new. The idea of famous people singing with other famous people and doing cover versions of other famous people’s songs was quite cool. After 20 years though, and about 20 more concerts, it all seems a bit dull.

I don’t confess to understand the exact reasons behind today’s bash. Many of the commentators in the media have made much of the fact that Diana loved pop music like it made her so special. I suspect she liked a good tune and a quick dance like 90% of the population but because it was Diana, it was of mind-shaking importance. But she loved Duran Duran and Status Quo didn’t she? Well she was filmed clapping along a few times I suppose. She has been gone 10 years and we are still judging her via a media obsessed with untruths and assumptions.

Her sons are behind the concert but I suspect it’s only in a “the people loved her, give them a concert” type-way. They loved their mother and think of her every day. They don’t need today and after listening to an hour or so of it, I don’t think we do either.

Don’t forget its Live Earth next week. I can’t wait. A concert to highlight the dangers of global warming. If you really need Keane ,The Sugababes and Joss Stone to tell you about the imminent extinction of the planet then perhaps it’s time the sun scorched the surface of the planet clean and nature started from scratch. When Bob Geldof can’t see the point of a charity gig, you have to start worrying.

Industrial Action

So Friday arrived and I crossed my first ever picket line. It was a generally placid sort of affair. As loads or my work colleagues read this, I will be as non-specific as possible and once again be as uncontroversial as I can.

As far as I am concerned, I thought the strike was a bad idea. I rarely see things as black and white and this and is an argument with a lot of grey. I happen to think I am paid ok. Of course I’d like more and you would have to look long and hard to find someone at work who wouldn’t. It’s just that it’s the wrong time to strike. My employer has lost a load of business and hence a load of income in the last few years and I would rather go to work and do my best to ensure that my employer is still in business this time next year. I am not convinced that this one day strike (and whatever follows) will do anything to ensure the future of my company. Probably quite the reverse.

I won’t strike at this time. This doesn’t mean I won’t ever strike or I think any less of the people who do strike.

It was a well behaved event anyway and I never thought it would be anything else. I work with quite a decent bunch of people after all. It is after all, nice to work in a country where this sort of thing is allowed.

If I had one wish, it would be that as the industrial action goes on, both sides think a bit more about the other and what drives them.

A Room Full of Argues

Another first for me on Saturday 7th July. I am going to a reunion/gathering of people with one thing in common. We all have the surname Argue. There isn’t many of us about and it is going to be interesting.

I might tell you all about it this time next week.

Nighty night.

Over the last few months or so, my broadband connection has sucked. It goes up and down, slows down, speeds up and displays gibberish instead of web pages.

For 2 years, I was happy with a 512K connection. So much faster than dial-up. Then wonder of wonders, I was upgraded to 1Mb. Much, much better. Unfortunately (as I was told), I am on the very limit of distance from the exchange and I was unlikely to go any faster any time soon.

A few months ago, I was sent an Email by my provider (the big telephone one) that informed me that I could upgrade to their latest option which included an unlimited download capacity. Woohoo. This was good news. I frequently abused by 30Gb limit. This new option also promised speeds of “up to” 8Mb. Right. Just because I had to know, I visited their website and put my phone number into the little box that said “check your number and see what speed you could be getting”. The following popped up..

“Our records indicated that you may be able to recieve speeds of 2.5Mb on this line.”

Woohoo.

So now I pay £26.99 a month. I can’t get cable because the cable company refuse to lay a cable across 4 gardens to get to me. I can understand this I suppose, but it is galling that some of the guys I work with have 10Mb cable connections.

I got a new free router (yet another one…is it any wonder where their profits go?) and set it all up. I was sent an Email telling me that my service would be upgraded on Feb 15th. Feb 15th came and went. Still no speed increase. Infrequently at first, my connection would drop and I had to reset the router. Nothing major.

Just lately its annoying. Really annoying.

I got to the end of my tether last week and decided to contact “customer support”. I place it in quotes because it is neither customer focussed or in any way supportive. What follows is true. There is not one tiny bit of dramatic license.

Firstly, you post a query on the website. I entered the following in the box.

“Hello. Can you help me please? My broadband connection is very unpredicatable. It changes speed from 512k to just under 2mb, seemingly at random. The connection drops 4 or 5 times a day. Thank You”

Almost immediately. Yes, immediately a little box opened at the bottom right of my screen. That little ?Help Icon in my system tray had sat their for years and I had always wondered what it was for.

“Hello. My name is Vijayakama and I have been allocated your support issue.”

I was a little disturbed that this missive had crept past both of my firewalls, but this was clouded by my momentary joy.

Neil: Hello. Thanks for replying so quickly.

VJ: You are welcome. Let’s see what I can do to help. It will take our minds away from the miserable rain.

(Is anyone else feeling warm and fuzzy?)

VJ: First off all, can you open Internet Explorer and go into options?

Neil: I don’t use Internet Explorer. I use Firefox.

VJ: You must use an Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer is a program to show you web pages.

Neil: I know what it is. I just don’t use it. I prefer Firefox and have been using it for many years.

VJ: I am sorry, we are not trained in Firefix (sic).

Neil: OK. I am in Internet Explorer options.

VJ: Thank You. Please ….

(at this point I am directed to change or check about 20 settings in Internet Explorer including Site Advisor, Cookies, Trusted Zones, Deleting my cache…)

VJ: This will take some time, shall I place you on the queue?

Neil: No its ok. I have done what you asked. I am quite proficient with PCs.

VJ: How is your connection now?

Neil: 420k

VJ: Good. That is within the limits for your area.

Neil: That’s ridiculous. It has dropped 200K since we started talking.

VJ: Do you understand contention ratio?

Neil: Yes, its the theoretical number of people with whom I share my connection.

VJ: Your contention ratio is 20 to 1

Neil: But my connection speed was a consistent 1Mb for 3 years. It’s only since I upgraded to the latest Option that my speed has fluctuated so much.

VJ: Could you go into Internet Explorer.

Neil: Why?

VJ: I need you to check somethings for me.

Neil: OK.

VJ: Can you confirm that your site advisor is Enabled?

Neil: We just checked that.

VJ: I am not sure you enabled it. Please also empty your cache.

Neil: The Site Advisor has NOTHING to do with connection speed. I don’t even use Internet Explorer. Nothing you are asking me do has anything to do with my connection speed. Can you just test my line for me or contact the people at my local exchange to do it.

VJ: No, we cannot do that.

Neil: Why not?

VJ: Is your site advisor enabled? Would you like to go on the queue until this task is completed?

Neil: I have checked. It is done.

VJ: What is your connection speed now?

Neil: 505K

VJ: Your speed has increased.

Neil: Please try and understand what I am trying to say. For 2 years, I had a CONSTANT connection speed of 512K. Then I had a CONSTANT connection speed of 1MB. Now I had a connection that varies between 300K and 2.5MB seemingly at random. This is almost useless and completely annoying. In addition to this, the connection fails once a day and I have to reset all my hardware to get it back. I have clean wiring – no halogen lights, microwaves or power cables anywhere near my router. I have visited numerous websites and found several that indicated 100s of people with the same problems as me. Can you either check my line or send an engineer to check my equipment?

(long pause)

VJ: Do you know what your contention ratio means?

Neil: Yes. We just discussed this.

VJ: You may need to empty your cache.

Neil: I would like to stop talking to you now. Please don’t take this personally. Please show this to your supervisor or manager.

Whilst you are quite pleasant chap, you are obviously not sufficiently trained to help me. As a result, your Customer Support service is slightly less useful than doing nothing at all. I am paying a considerable amount of money for a substandard service only because I have no choice in my area. If I could cancel my account today and switch to a local cable provider, I would do so. But I can’t. I asked you to get my line checked and you refused. I asked you to send an engineer and you said you couldn’t. I gather from the many websites I have visited that you are based in India and this may be the real reason you cannot contact the telephone exchange 4 miles up the road from me. I am half tempted to drive over there myself and tap on the window.

This is a complete disgrace.

I just checked outside and it hasn’t rained since Monday.

Goodbye.

Ok. So I was a bit sarcy at the end. The funny things is, my connection has been stable at 1Mb for days now.

Who won that one then? Not sure.

Off work all week. Going to see Jane (dad’s wife) on Friday for the weekend. Sophie is coming with me, so much Robbie Williams in the car on the way I suppose.

Apart from Messers Turnbull and Mansfield, very few of you will sympathise with today’s scribbly ramble. This is part of the reason I chose the subject. For over 15 years, I was employed in a few jobs that required me on a regular basis to assist others with their Computer and IT problems.

In 1987 this was a far different beast than it was in 2001 when I formerly stopped taking the IT shilling. In 1987, PC’s were a stange oddity in the corner and mainframes (actually called minis for some reason) sat in large offices sucking life from the national grid with alarming ferocity and using diskettes the size of an opened Financial Times. In the early days of my IT employment, we just got on with it. As long as we provided reams and reams of green and white reports for middle management, we were generally left alone. We were kept busy printing and they were kept busy reading – a symbiotic relationship if ever there was one. Our abilities and opinions were rarely challenged and even I enjoyed fairly high regard amongst my colleagues as I wandered the building with a wheelbarrow full of reports dressed like Don Johnson from Miami Vice (rolled up suit sleeves never go out of style).

At home around this time, most of the nerdly persons owned Commodore Amiga’s, Atart ST’s and ageing Sinclair Spectrums. Home computers were so far removed from workplace computers that the two never came into conflict. You couldn’t even nick any useful consumables from work – apart from the odd mousemat or diskette of course. Music on a computer? The internet? Movies on a computer? Not a chance. ‘Twas the age of the blocky pixel, the chunky graphics and the whiny chip music.

Around 1993, it all changed. The original home computers withered and died. Nearly everyone who bought a new computer bought a PC and my life changed. I too bought one and suddenly my desk at home looked like my desk at work. I had the same software and the internet wormed it’s way into my life. All of a sudden, TV adverts (mostly AOL to be fair) promised a world of technological entertainment where 100′s of “channels” (actually just web pages) would inform, entertain and educate you and your family well into the 21st century. This was bollocks of course, but the rot had set in. By the mid 90s, the whole world and his dog had a PC. To be honest, most owners knew little more about the PC and its operations than their dog did. It was nobody’s fault and I don’t want to user-bash but in a marketing victory unseen since the Rubik’s cube or the Hula Hoop, John Q Suburbia now wanted – no needed – a PC more than anything else on the planet. How else was he to educate his children, balance his bank account and delve into a world of virtual 3d entertainment?

Actually, I am still waiting for that last one myself.

So, where am I heading with all this?

Well, along with this new PC came an almost unbelievable transformation in the everyday home computer user. Overnight, those who previously popped out for a pint at lunchtime or read the paper, suddenly started to try and install Flight Sim 2 on the company mainframe (sorry..mini) and would wax lyrical about every IT related subject under the sun. At first this was just a little amusing. Then it got a little annoying. Then I was pissed off an a regular basis. This continues to this day and I am sad to say that in 2006 it’s even worse.

I work with people who regularly ask me things or tell me things that make me want to laugh like a bathing hippo. It is so, so hard not to laugh out loud. This is not arrogance, indeed I am not sure what it is. It’s hard not to slap them and it’s even harder to explain.

I take the car to the garage. It fails it’s MOT. They fix it. I pay money and I cry for a few hours. It happens once a year. I never lift the bonnett other than to put a bit of oil in or to fill up my windscreen washer reservoir. I NEVER try and tell the mechanic what to do or try and do it myself. If they give me a piece of advice, I usually follow it. I am clever enough to know that they probably know what they are talking about. OK, so garage mechanics are probably not the best example. Subsitute Doctor, Dentist or whatever if that helps.

Why oh why does everybody not do the same with computers? Day after day after day I am assaulted with at least one request or opinion that even after all this time I am at a loss to deal with. I am not talking about Helpdesk stuff. When I looked after 35 users on a network and helped them with Windows, Word, Excel and Access, I mostly had a great time. 9 times out of 10 they were very grateful with my help and I got a great deal of satisfaction. What I AM talking about are the endless questions, opinions and statements that spew forth during my working day.

Particular favourites in recent years.

1. “I am thinking of buying a PC to help my kids with their schoolwork.” This is decreasing in popularity as less homes these days are without a PC. It’s a strange statement as most of the people asking don’t really seem to know what they mean. If you ask for a few more details, they have seldom thought it through. If they just say something like “well, he/she uses Microsoft Office at work” or “his teacher says it will be a good idea because he/she is interested in them” then that’s fine. What usually happens is they get ratty with me and arrogantly stomp out the room. This same sort of person buys the cheapest PC they can find (usually Packard Bell from PC World) and immediately sets up Broadband Internet Access in their child’s bedroom. I used to warn about the dangers of internet porn but I stopped. They just assumed I was some sort of pervert for knowing about it in the first place. I long ago decided to let The Daily Mail rant about this vile topic in the hope that Britain will be cleansed over the next decade or so.

2. The person who buys a PC and then hardly uses it because the internet is broken. This is alarmingly common these days. “I switched it on and the internet broke. Telewest came out to fix it and told me that the internet is not broken but I know it is – my friend says.”

3. The banner ad-clicker or the free software downloader. Oh dear. Porn from nowhere. I now run. I run like the wind. I have NO chance of coming out of this one unscathed. It starts off many different ways but usually something like “I have an icon on the desktop I can’t get rid of”. You have to feel for them. They have had to make a difficult decision – talk to work colleague about embarrassing porn thing or have your family taken away by social services because your a vile perv. This person has no anti-virus software and no firewall and deserves to burn in hell for that alone as far as I am concerned. It is at this point that I run. I put one hand on my hat and run far and fast. Nothing you say from this point on will be acceptable to your colleague in any shape or form. You see, there is no way that they or any of their family has been anywhere near any porn site – ever. EVER!! No. You are wrong. It came in the window on its own or the milkman did it or something. How dare you suggest such a thing. The fact that, as I found out many years ago, their internet cache and history details a pornographic appetite worthy of one of the more perverse Roman Emperors, is just not relevant. Get a firewall, some anti-virus software and download some anti-spyware software you cretin. The best of them are all free. Get it or don’t, just don’t talk to me again EVER.

You see, dear friends, I know a thing or six about computers. That’s why you ask me in the first place. If you don’t like what I say, bugger off and ring a helpline. Better still, throw the PC in a skip, buy a Playstation 3 and keep your bank statements in a shoe box under the bed. With the money you save by not needing Broadband, buy your kid some encyclopedias (ok very cheap encyclopedias).

If you must have one – they do look quite cool after all and now only cost about £200 – remember this. Buying a paintbrush doesn’t make you an artist and buying a typewriter doesn’t make you an author. I don’t say this to be cruel or arrogant but I have been asked questions about buying PCs over and over again and I have seen how some of it works out. But of course, you all know that. You already have a PC and you read my blog. Achieving such a task probably puts you in the top 10% of PC user ability.

Monday and its cold. The car looks like a choc-ice and I know it’s going to be no match for my flimsy plastic scraper. Its been the first night without snow for about a week but mother nature is making up for it with inch-thick clear ice. Two choices:

1. Empty a whole can of de-icer all over the glass. 99p well spent.
2. The always scary jug of tepid water.

As I am a) Dukie & b) A Man, I have no idea of the value of money so it looks like the aerosol ammonia will be my weapon of choice.

I have wheeled the portable gas heater into my bedroom in the hope that I will warm up. The window is open, as directed in the helpful instructions, but I may still pass out before I finish this.

Yesterday’s nap didn’t do me any good as I woke up with a migraine. This is the worst kind of migraine as its very difficult to go back to sleep. Sleep, as any fellow migraine sufferer will tell you, is the best cure for a migraine.

Its my own fault really. I was web coding all yesterday from early morning until whenever it was I stopped to blog. At work when keying, we have to take 5 mins break every hour, something I should do at home I suppose. Still, its Monday now. Work is in 4 hours or so and I have Frank Skinner’s audio biography to listen too.

Happy 6th of March.

The Management

Jeremy Paxman once said that there are only 10 sorts of people in the world – those who understand binary and those who don’t.

Funny, clever and the only thing that has stayed stuck on my cork noticeboard since day one.

You can’t beat a day coding at the old PC. Some of you reading this can appreciate the raw excitement of this – the moment when you bring the damn electronic beast to its knees and it finally does what you bloody want it to.

The version 6 overhall of my web site is taking for ever but is going to be worth it from a purely personal level. Since redundancy 3 years ago, I have not been able to web code and get paid for it. I was a bit worried at the time that my coding prowess would depreciate over time as would by creative ability. Strangely enough, sitting at work doing the Royal Mail thing and listening to the greatest music in the world fills my head with ideas all the time. I once read that a lot of programmers and designers do their best work on the beach or on long train journeys with nothing more than a notepad and pencil. At last this makes sense.

Pinned to the aforementioned notice board (not in Microsoft Outlook’s To Do List) is a list of web site aims. There is nothing quite like crossing one of these off the list. Today it was – “Display the 5 latest topics from the forum in box on the website”. Not earth shattering by any means but I must admit to punching the air when it worked. Huzzah. And, yes Stan, I will let you have the code it you want. When its works properly that is. I never said it worked perfectly.

I fear my number one on the list – “Don’t use tables – only Cascading Style Sheets” will never be crossed off. More flexible and compatible my arse.

Oh and one more thing before I go.

An old Westboard chum of Heidi and Helen got in touch today and I dutifully forwarded the note to them. I love it when a plan comes together.

L8r Doods