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Really cheap bathroom installation, will the tiles stick?
2008-02-08 17:10:00
Got another estimate to replace the bathroom suite and it was better than the last one but it was still floating on cloud nine. This time when I spoke to the bathroom fitter I made a point of not mentioning new bathrooms and instead just described it as replacing the old bathroom suite with the new ...
More About: Bathroom , Cheap , Stick , Tiles

System bugs exhausted, gone for a lie down
2008-02-02 13:36:00
Another week has passed with barely anything working until yesterday, when all of a sudden, after a couple of give me strength moments, the test environment started behaving in a way that let us make some progress. We had to go through some blood letting to get there though. One of the testers didn’t have his contract renewed. He was considered weak though he was just used to a more structured environment and couldn’t cope with the chaos, which meant he didn’t have the confidence to raise many defects in case he got shouted down by a developer. Some of the developers attitude being something like ‘if you can’t take the heat get out of the kitchen’. Splice in a few swear words in there if you like to get a bit more realism. If they try that attitude with me I’ll just ask them ‘what heat?’. Anyway some progress is being made and it may just be possible that we will have closed enough defects by the close of business on Monday ...
More About: System , Bugs

Posting blog entries via email, anything could happen
2008-02-02 12:23:00
I’ve been looking into how I can upload blog entries via email. I had a look at the Wordpress admin pages and it said to create a secret email address, which I did, and any email I sent to that address would appear as a blog entry. I setup Outlook to access that new email address and it failed. Tried to send and receive from the new email address on the iPhone with the same result. I started to think that I was missing part of the big picture here when it suddenly dawned on me that I might have setup an email address at Wordpress, but that that wasn’t an actual email address. All that was doing was telling Wordpress where to get any email blog posts. I had to also provide the Wordpress software the pop3 server name, the email address and the password. The doh moment was when I realised that I had to create that email account with my web page service provider, which I have. Just make sure those details were the same as those I suppled to Wordpress and that should be it. T...
More About: Email , Blog

Email on the iPhone, Gmails IMAP acting like POP3 & BT?s POP3 mimicing IMAP
2008-01-25 12:09:00
I noticed this morning that after an initial batch of email on the iPhone, received before about 8am, I hadn’t received any more email by 10am. Maybe I’m just not very popular. What is common about those 8 accounts? Two are on BT, one on Easyspace, one for this blogs domain where I receive emails from ...
More About: Email , Iphone , Acting , IMAP

Fixing this bit of software might bust that bit over there, you mean you wa
2008-01-24 12:25:00
The project, while it has brief periods of stability, is about as wobbly as a jelly on a rollercoaster. Just about anything some of our developers touch goes wrong. Write some new functionality and its riddled with bugs. Fix a bug and they introduce a couple more. Generate a build for the test environment and it ...
More About: Software , Bust

Replacement iPhone with v1.1.2 & how long does it take to load this page?
2008-01-21 18:52:00
I got a replacement iPhone from the Apple store but I got the impression they thought it was a homegrown problem, especially when I mentioned XP. The guy confirmed that the speaker didn’t work, hence phone conversations not working. When I mentioned that neither party could hear anything and therefore that meant that the microphone also couldn’t ...
More About: Pod , Iphone , Page , Long

iPhone stops working as a phone, convinces itself it?s an iPod Touch
2008-01-20 22:01:00
This morning I noticed that the iPhone hadn’t received any email, which was a bit strange. I then noticed that it wasn’t connected to a mobile network. I had a look at the Carrier settings and there wasn’t any. In fact there was no Carrier settings option. Seems that the last, try hard and it might, ...
More About: Pod , Apple , Iphone , Ipod

iPhone firmware 1.1.3 on XP, painfull syncing
2008-01-19 13:10:00
Went to the Apple shop to see what they could do about the iPhone not syncing with iTunes and waddayaknow it synced perfectly with a MAC in the shop. The guy in the shop was immediately pretty sure that the problem was therefore at my end i.e. my combination of the iPhone and Windows XP. He ...
More About: Pod , Iphone , Firmware

iPhone software 1.1.3 and the ?invalid response was received from the devic
2008-01-18 22:09:00
I saw that at the Apple show there was a new version of the iPhone software - 1.1.3 - which provides some enhancements like allowing you to send SMS texts to multiple people at once. Sounded mildly interesting. I started up iTunes and synced the iPhone and there’s some text where it says when iTunes will ...
More About: Software , Pod , Iphone , Response

Vista?s cloudy screen, download new Radeon driver and it?s OK, for a couple
2008-01-12 21:23:00
The Vista pc’s screen has been cloudy for a while, for months. When I start WoW it changes graphics mode and its ok but when I come out of that sooner or later it’ll go cloudy again. I’ve tried restoring to a restore point prior to when this started but it doesn’t do any good. The ...
More About: Screen , Download , Driver , Cloudy

iTunes taking 22 hours to convert a movie for the iPhone & Windows with no
2008-01-06 21:00:00
I’ve managed to get some movies ripped and onto the iPhone but several, which ripped OK and were apparently converted to MP4 ok by Handbrake refuse to sync. They appear under movies in iTunes and are even playable there. In iTunes, if you right click on these non-syncable movies then there is the option to convert ...
More About: Windows , Movie , Itunes , Iphone , Convert

Uploading favorite CD?s, movies and books to Facebook & finishing Call of D
2008-01-02 19:57:00
I’ve started to make sense of Facebook at last, well kinda. There are some apps you can install that allow you to create lists of favorite films, books, owned CD’s and games. You can also write reviews if you wanna get lippy. What is quite good is that once you have started listing items then these ...
More About: Movies , Books , Call , Favorite

Shocking price estimate to replace a bathroom, $8,500 to fit!
2008-01-01 13:07:00
We decided to have a look at replacing our bathroom units and visited a bespoke bathroom shop. Every single item was sold seperately so you get a great opportunity to generate a fabulous cost for your new bathroom. Didn’t even get an estimate from those guys, so went down to the local all-singing, all-dancing hardware chain and ...
More About: Bathroom , Price

Belkin USB wireless adapter, 802.11g+ not working too good
2007-12-31 22:03:00
The Belkin USB wireless adapter I was using never connected consistently, in fact mostly it didn’t connect at all. I checked the model number and it was a 802.11g+ rather than the normal g, and which is supposed to connect over a greater distance. Well it may have done that if I had been bothered to test ...
More About: Wireless , Good , Working , Adapter , Workin

WD Passport 250gig drive, another powered USB socket goes west
2007-12-28 15:27:00
I got a West ern Digital 250gig Passport drive the other day to replace my old 250gig USB drive which broke when it crashed to the ground from atop the PC. The Passport drive doesn’t even have a power connector as it gets its juice from the USB socket, so there went yet another reliable powered USB ...
More About: Drive , Socket

Belkin USB adapter not working, sometimes
2007-12-28 14:03:00
I’m still having occasional trouble with my wireless connection on the XP PC. I had to go through various bits of jiggery-pockery to get the old D-Link uninstalled then I was able to install the software for the Belkin, but that doesn’t connect very well. It thinks it’s connected as it flashes its light like it’s ...
More About: Working , Adapter , Workin

Getting movies on the iPhone with AnyDVD and Handbrake
2007-12-28 11:38:00
I’ve managed to get some movies on the iPhone using AnyDVD and Handbrake. AnyDVD works OK and manages to rip just about any DVD you fling at it, even Blu-Ray apparently ferchrissakes. It’s quick too, ripping most movies in between 30 and 45 minutes. The Handbrake softare, that converts those ripped movies to the MP$ format ...
More About: Movies , Iphone , Anydvd

Hacking away forever & loading up laptops with company data, better not los
2007-12-21 20:49:00
Everything continues to go wrong on the project and nobody is very surprised. The developers fix something over here and something goes belly up over there. Just about anytime someone touches some code it busts the system. The staff who have been here for a while aren?t surprised at all. But then their attitude is everyone’s ...
More About: Laptops , Company , Data , Forever , Loading

Beltek wi-fi dongles that just need reinstalling & why do non-home PC?s hav
2007-12-18 20:06:00
Got a Beltek wifi dongle the other day to replace the old D-Link that was playing up. I ran the setup disk first, plugged in the dongle which hunted around for a network, entered the key, and it connected. Sort of. The light certainly flashed away like it thought it was downloading something but no apps worked. ...
More About: Home

Th worst software build ever & getting push email on an iPhone
2007-12-14 00:59:00
We have been delivered a couple of the worst system test builds I have ever encountered this week, and that is saying something. Our lot, the developers, are allowed to get away with blue murder. They check squat. They perform the most pathetic smoke test that they can get away with which results in days of ...
More About: Software , Email , Iphone , Build , Push

Neverending development & falling drives
2007-12-12 06:52:00
We took another build of the system and it was worse than usual. When I had a quick test of the system there were all sorts of problems. Before the software is released into the system test environment it is smoke tested in the development environment. I found out that the smoke test is a pretty ...
More About: Development

Vista graphics drivers & jamming a system together
2007-12-07 20:48:00
My Vista screen has been very grainy for the last week, which is a drag as prior to that the picture was really good. I suspected the worse, some Vista graphics driver upgrade, so did a restore to a couple of weeks ago and that appeared to cure it. Not so. The screen appears to gray out ...
More About: Drivers , Graphics , System

Got an iPhone, on eBay? fat chance
2007-11-27 19:15:00
Finally having heard yet another iPhone podcast yesterday I suddenly got cold feet about the idea of getting an iPhone from eBay. It seemed it would be just too easy to download one iPhone patch too many and turn the thing into a patched to hell and hacked to death ex-iPhone. Also the final eBay price seems ...
More About: Iphone , Chance , Ebay

Buying an iPhone on eBay
2007-11-26 17:05:00
There are a lot of iPhones auctions on ebay but you have to check the ads very thoroughly or you could get seriously burnt. Many of the auctions are for O2 phones that are pre-activated, not ot be confused with un-locked, and come with an O2 pay as you go sim card. Well that’s fine in that ...
More About: Buying , Iphone , Ebay

Is my car running flakey software?
2007-11-26 13:58:00
I keep getting odd things happening with my car, a VW Golf. This morning the rear wiper refused to work. Also, on the dashboard there are numerous screens that are paged through via a switch on the end of the wiper stalk. The screens display number of miles done all told, since last reset, average speed, ...
More About: Software , Running , Flak , Flake

Do I get an iPhone on eBay, more lousy Vista upgrades
2007-11-24 16:00:00
I’m getting sorely tempted to get an iPhone, just not sure whether to take a chance on an unlocked iPhone from eBay or getting one directly from O2 and hoping that sooner or later we follow the German example and make O2 unlock them for us. Of course if the latter happens I’m already locked into ...
More About: Iphone , Vista , Ebay , Upgrades

Doing regression testing in India, on an agile project
2007-11-21 08:33:00
Some bright spark has come up with the idea of doing future regression testing offshore in India . Now this is a project which prides itself on doing agile and scrum and all that stuff. It’s painfull enough for me to make headway in this kind of environment but somehow we are. I was introduced to a representative ...
More About: Agile , Testing , Project , Regression

iPhone gets 3G and Ken Follett?s The Pillars of the Earth
2007-11-20 19:56:00
The iPhone is to get 3G in May 2008, apparently. Now we’re talking. Betcha they have battery problems with that. I saw that Oprah Winfrey has just made Ken Follett ’s The Pillars Of The Earth her book of the month. That’s a big deal as the publishers printed 621,000 more copies for expected sales. Now that’s ...
More About: Iphone

Agile more like fragile, Scrum, a ruck
2007-11-14 20:39:00
There are now about 18 people at our Scrum meetings and that’s just too many. I thought the idea was to have about 7 or 8 people. It’s so obvious that we are in pain due to the complete lack of documentation on our very Agile project. There are only two people who know how the ...
More About: Fragile

The Burning Crusade & Call of Duty 4
2007-11-11 18:55:00
I bought the WoW expansion The Burning Crusade , not that I have finished the original game, currently at level 33, but because of a load of other enhancements to players that I have been told about. As soon as it was installed it wanted to download a patch file, which is 641mb in size. I thought ...
More About: Vista , Call