We're Not Satisfied Until Your Not Satisfied

Hi Folks

Another month is about to bite the dust and the frightening thing is that tomorrow is September. What is that about? That's like almost the run up to Christmas. People will be making resolutions to give stuff up again soon. People aren't dieting for their holidays anymore they are dieting for their party dresses.

Predictions
As predicted in my previous post by my right knee....The weather is changing. I think I made the prediction on Thursday and when I got in my car on Monday the morning temperature was 7c at 8am. We've had beautiful clear days where the temp has got up to 18c but late at night and first thing in the morning we're into single figures. Barring an Indian Summer, Which is not uncommon in Scotland, the temperature will continue to drop. Better fire up the heating and check it still works.

Blogging
Regular visitors will hopefully be noticing some changes to the blog recently. I've purposefully kept the advertising to a minimum but I've been trying to use more images and beef up the content in the side margins. My two main topics (cigs and iPhone) now have rather cool (I think) picture links and I found a non flash (iPhone friendly) news gadget just to give you our British slant on world affairs.

I've been doing all this to try and make the blog a bit more appealing because I worry that now that it's not just about smoking it's a bit harder to market and make appealing. If you've no idea who I am then why would you want to read what is essentially the diary of a grumpy git in a cold climate who misses his fags and drinks a bit much? I welcome any feedback as to how I can continue to decorate the place to your taste so do use the comments button to let me know. Maybe you could put a link to your blog or one that you know as an example.

Face Book
I've also recently taken the chance of blowing my cover a bit on face book and trying to drum up a bit of trade from a site they have on there about Champix. I'm slightly edgy about this because it links the site back to the real me. The one that people who know me can easily identify. When I started this blog it had absolutely no intention of being a place for friends and colleagues to find out about my life. If they want to know they can just ask. The beauty of the blog was anonymity. Only my mum and my wife were even aware of the blog as far as I know. As I'm new on face book, most of the people who would have ever searched my name will already have done so and not found me and given up so I've taken the risk safe in the knowledge that I can erase the links quite quickly if necessary. Early signs are that the risk has paid off as analytics shows that fifty referrals in the last four days came from face book.

Statistics
In the last 30 days the site has had 523 visitors looking at an average of 2.5 pages per visit. (Must find the page that they only get half way through and delete it). Recently, up until face book at least the search engine searches that bring new folk are Quitzits (I knew I couldn't be the only one affected by those wee bastards) and Jail breaking IOS4.02. Incredibly 24 separate countries have provided visitors this month. With the exception of Russia and China we seem to have all the rest covered.

Tennessee, Utah and Texas are the biggest followers outside the UK. In all the USA brought 57 visits last month followed by Hong Kong with 28, Australia with 27, Canada with 26 and Ireland with 25. After that you get to Singapore with seven visits and so on.

Smoking
I intend to keep pushing the smoking part of the blog on Face book. The Champix site that I've discovered has just reached 500 members and I'd love them all to view this site as well. I was surprised when I searched face book that there were lots of anti smoking sites but that most had very poor following or were hopelessly out of date. The Champix one seems to have it's heart in the right place but, for me at least, it all seems a bit ignorant of the facts. It's full of the sort of advice that I personally found annoying like,'Take it a day at a time' (does that mean I can smoke tomorrow?) and 'Concentrate on something else'. If someone said that they were sitting with a meat cleaver in one hand swigging from a bottle of strong malt whiskey whilst deciding which of their hostages to kill first I get the feeling they would get some twee encouragement like 'at least you wont smell of smoke in prison and your lungs will be nice and pink'. It's the Allen Carr thing all over again trying to convince you that you actually don't want to smoke and that giving up just involves not lighting the thing. Is it possible that I'm the only person in the world that gave up against my will because I wanted to live?

Car
So what's the title of the blog all about this time? Well it's stolen from a fantastic site called despair.com. What they do is take all those motivational posters you see, like 'there's no I in team' and twist them into something less pleasant. I think the latest was: 'BP, Bringing oil to American shores'. Anyhow I chose 'Customer Disservice' for a reason. This is a cautionary tail for all of you customer facing folk. Especially those of you who may be slightly wired to the moon through lack of nicotine.

For the moment we have a conclusion to the car wheel story. On the surface it represents, not so much a win win situation as, a 'this allows everybody to save face' deal. The offer sits like this: I will be getting a brand new front wheel at half price, my 45k service at half price, a wheel (already replaced but showing early signs of corrosion)completely free and my front fog lights (used twice in the past three years) replaced again completely free. Each wheel replaced gets a new 2 year warranty meaning that this particular garage could be replacing wheels for some time to come as they appear to start showing signs of corrosion around 14 months or earlier (their problem not mine).

Here is a very brief history of the problem and, I hope, a stark warning to all those who handle customers (For 15 years I was a retail manager).

Crime number 1: Lack of empathy. When someone has to bring a three year old car in with a major fault it does no harm whatsoever to show some empathy. I'm choosing the word empathy carefully. Prior to an investigation into the cause of the fault you don't want staff to be agreeing that such a thing is a disgrace. They just need to be saying that they understand how the customer might feel about such a problem occurring. This is where the dealer fell completely flat. They were almost confrontational about it.

Crime number 2: Imply that fixing the fault was some sort of good will gesture when the car was still in warranty. Investigation done, fault found, now you can admit guilt and sympathise, even apologise. Instead they were looking for me to thank them for fixing the problem and learn my lesson that I should have allowed them to service it in the first place.

The above fault was identified and fixed. It was a serious fault that shouldn't have happened and I'd be lying if I said that I would have been delighted with an apology. But, had they not behaved as described above, I would have walked away. Instead I decided to bring up every petty complaint about them and the car that I could think of.

The fog lights have condensation in them. They work but they shouldn't have condensation and I found out through the Internet that the manufacturer agrees with me. If I was to replace both units as a customer I would expect to pay between £60 and £100.

The front wheel shows signs of corrosion. It's hard to see these signs because I kerbed the wheel very badly shortly after buying the car. (I was gutted at the time). I had never even tried to claim my warranty as, even I thought, it was a bit of a push given the damage. A life of retailing however taught me that 'where there is a proven fault there is a case even if the fault is not the only damage'. To replace the wheel (which I had planned to do this year) would have cost £164, now it will cost £82.

The signs of corrosion on the rear wheel are very very early and, had I not had another wheel replaced for this in the past, I wouldn't even have noticed them. In about 3 years time however they will become unsightly. In about three years time I would have them replaced at my cost. They'll be replaced next week. No cost to the dealer unfortunately but a cost to the manufacturer.

Finally a half price dealer service. To the customer this amounts to a cash value of between £120-£160. I could save that by going elsewhere but it's always good to get those dealer stamps in the book.

In all that fault should have cost the dealer nothing but man hours. The manufacturer would have supplied the part and the dealer would have fitted it. In addition to that this dealer has paid for a hire car for a week, a set of fog lights, 1.5 wheels and half a dealer service. Cost to them is probably just under £200 plus whatever hassle they've had from their director as he's had about six emails. To me it's a saving of about £400. If their service manager had handled one ten minute conversation differently... Cost to them, whatever it cost to replace the part and probably the cost of the hire car. Saving for me, Nil.

It's also worth noting that I intend to have all this done and be all smiles and charm till it is. But from the outset I've been clear that I wanted them to feel the pain I felt about that fault. So far I've dealt with the dealer. Once the dealer makes good on their promises. I thoroughly intend to start on the manufacturer and their new owners. Can't imagine there will be any point starting at any level below the director for European operations. It will be next year but, if your here, watch this space...

The iPhone Update
Finally, I'm giving you this months statistics a day before I have the full months figures. I'm doing this because tomorrow 01/09/2010 Apple will be holding a press conference to tell the world what they are up to next. It is widely rumoured that coinciding with this will be a new and improved software update. Given that my IPhone bears almost no resemblance to any other on the planet in either appearance or functionality I may be quite busy over the next couple of days trying to keep my phone the way I want it. The worst thing that happens is when the software is updated but the Dev-team can't break it straight away. That leaves me hopping from foot to foot for days. I feel that there may be an iPhone blog before the week is out. Incredibly people find those blogs despite there being thousands of competing iPhone blogs some of which update hourly.

Watch this space

T

TQs' Theory of iVolution

Welcome to the weekly(ish)iPhone blog/update. Some regular readers will not be too surprised to see that I have now become obsessed with the iPhone. Not that I'm an addictive personality type in any way (fags, booze) but this whole iPhone thing has me hooked. I thought I loved my HTC but it wasn't true love. The problem with the HTC (mine is a Touch Diamond with windows mobile version 6)is that it's windows based so works intuitively, syncs with my PC and basically does what I want to do when I want to do it. What fun is that?

Apple have created a phone that is entirely designed around controlling what you can do and when. Not only controlling you but even controlling the developers. That's where the fun starts. Someone bought one of these iPhones but didn't like being stuck with a single network provider. Realising that the phone was just a small PC they found a way to view the file structure of the phone and remove the network provider restriction. Opening the file structure became known as jail breaking, whilst altering the default provider is known as unlocking.

Once you can see the file structure (jail breaking) it's a relatively simple matter to start changing things and adding things. It's no more or less complicated than changing the wall paper on your PC. What's more if you get stuck there are a million forums that will help. (remind me to get back to that) If you get really stuck you can just restore your phone to its un-jail broken state and start again.

The changes that you make to a jail broken phone will be completely lost whenever iPhone upgrade the software which, in my experience, is about every six - eight weeks for minor tweaks and every six months for major operating system type overhauls. The tweaks aren't that big a problem as they are mostly attempts to fix or speed up a process and the Dev-Team as the jail breakers call themselves tend to be ahead of apple on this constantly. The result, a jail broken phone on OS4 is just as, if not more, up to date as an non jail broken phone using OS 4.02 so there is no real need to upgrade. Jail breakers however can't take advantage of an update until the Dev-Team have checked it out and worked out how to obtain the file structure again. For owners of the new iPhone four this is developing into quite an issue. For owners of older cheaper phones like my iPhone 3g with 8gb memory this is no problem at all and an up to date break is usually available within the first 24 hours of an update.

When you upgrade you have to redo the jail break. That involves several things. You need to run software to jailbreak. You need to install software providers known as 'repos' (I need three of these) and then you need re-install the apps that those programs provide. I use Appulous which allows you to install apps without using iTunes (perhaps apps that cost money that you might like to try before purchasing), my3g which makes my phone treat 3g reception as wifi so that I can watch TV on my phone even without wifi, iAddkiller which beats off pop up advertising that you should be forced to suffer according to apple, Finally you need Appsync. What Appsync does is allows you to view your iPhones file structure in the same way that you would view the C drive on your PC with folders, subfolders and files. After this is done you can also re-install your, perhaps, unpaid for apps which will still show against your phone but wont work until the jailbreak process is complete.

The final app I install after a jailbreak is known as winterboard. It's basically a skinning or theme app. Google it and you'll quickly discover that you don't need to be some sort of iClone. You can pretty much change the appearance of everything to suit yourself. There are off the shelf packages that will make loads of changes for you or, once you figure out how it's done, you can make changes yourself. The pic on the right in the ivolution image above is my phone as it presently looks. I downloaded a theme known as iElegance which gave me the background and changed some of my icons to the new look that you see. This theme had a clock and date function that I didn't like it so downloaded another theme called HTC springboard. I copied the files from the second theme and pasted them over the clock files from the first. I then searched google for iElegance type icons. There were loads of them and someone had even made a down loadable zip file so I downloaded this and set about altering my remaining icons. I removed the new folder icons by changing their file extensions and replaced them with new ones that matched my theme. Learning and doing took about three days.

The result shown above is exactly what I wanted. To be clear. If you had just wanted to transform your iPhone to look like an HTC there's a winterboard theme that will do that with weather and calender etc. What I wanted was the appearance of an HTC with the functionality of an iPhone. Thanks to jail breaking, Winterboard, theme developers and the dev-team that's exactly what I've got. If Apple allowed HTC to create an OS for their phone I doubt that it would look to much different. I prefer apples Icons and folders to HTCs menu bars but I prefer the HTC look. I've got it and it works.

In around two weeks there will be another apple update rumoured to be called 4.1. The upgrade will fix an issue with 3g reception. Will I upgrade? Yep. What I have done differently this time is that I have copied folders such as themes and jailbreak apps directly to my computer. My hope is that I can restore my jailbreak fully within 3 hours of an upgrade. If I can then it will be worth it.

Finally, for the most part the jailbreak community are pretty helpful. Loads of how to guides, loads of sites to help you keep up to date. I was surprised therefor with Modmyi.com. I posted three posts there as a newbie and did not get a single response. There was lots of help on the site but I think us newbies with our specific questions may be a bit simpleton for them.

Normal blog to follow and more of the 'iTry' next week.

Cheers
T

Back to reality

Well, that's me back in the real world once again. Today is the last official day of holiday and then it's back to work on Monday.



After joking about the Scottish Weather, apart from a gray Sunday/Monday at the start, the weather was pretty good and, despite my wife's efforts to get me to wear suncream strong enough to protect vampires in daylight, I even have a hint of a tan. It's funny because we've been going up and down to the same region every year for the last seven years and yet we still discovered a forest trail that took us to a bit of deserted beach that we hadn't been to before. (The flies and insects in Forrest particularly loved my suncream and I ended up like that character out of Peanuts, Linus I think, that had a permanent cloud of bugs around their head). Also although we didn't get out fishing quite a few folk did so we had mackerel for tea on several occasions (note to self: look up mackerel recipes online because we're needing to get inventive if we're having it every second or third day). For some reasons the locals in the local town have now decided that we aren't caravaners anymore but are actually locals ourselves. It's very flattering but hopefully it doesn't get too obtrusive as we quite like our privacy. So all in all the holiday did exactly what holidays should do...we relaxed a lot. We stayed for nine days and then had a few days back at home at a slow pace to catch up so all good.

When I got back I checked the blog. The traffic slowed a bit without updates but still gained some visitors from some far flung places. Outside of the UK the USA now sends more visitors than Canada (need to get your friends involved Poet, Hi to Wisconsin, California, Ohio and Florida) with Australia (The Gold Coast has been loyal for a long time but is now joined by Sydney and Adelaide) out in front of the republic of Ireland (think Zoe has lost interest but Peter might still be keeping the side up).
There's also been some welcome but unexpected additions such as Iran, Romania, Singapore and Malaysia to mention just a few. Since I started monitoring in April there have been over 100O hits from 23 separate countries with the average hit spending 4 minutes on the site and viewing 3 pages per visit. OK so some sites get more hits than that per hour but I'm pretty impressed, not to mention grateful, that so many folk have taken an interest in my decisions to; give up smoking, attack a car company and switch to an IPhone.

So, without further ado, what about smoking, the car and the iPhone?

Well I still don't smoke so that's good. I'm not saying when but I did have a drag within the last eight weeks and it damn nearly blew the top of my head off so I think we're officially safe on that front. I don't remember it being anything like that back when I started smoking because, this time, I couldn't even contemplate a second drag. Didn't want to say at the time because I felt guilty but there you go.

I've heard nothing from the car garage. I'm quite surprised because I thought that going via the directors would have got me some response, even if it was just to tell me to shut up. Watch this space though because I will be following it up. I am a member of a forum for my particular brand of car (there is only one major forum for this car). When I got back from holiday I had a 'Friend request' from the forum from someone else in Scotland (my area too). It's only polite to accept such requests, so I did, and then sent him an email detailing exactly what I thought of the dealership. I explained, in reasoned terms, why I wont use the dealer for servicing and even suggested a garage that could do this for him with an average saving of £100 per time. Haven't heard back yet but here's hoping he takes my advice. Through the forum he may befriend other owners and before you know it there shoddy attitude and disgusting policies will be the stuff of Internet legend. I will of course keep you updated on this site but would rather not use this blog to do the actual campaigning.

Bad Apple just a barrel of Laughs

Before I left I also mentioned that Apple were going to address the reception problems of their new iPhone 4. Well they did. They offered every iPhone 4 customer a free Bumper (sort of rubber band that frames the phone) or case (not sure what quality). That's fine I suppose. I would have purchased a case at the same time as the phone anyway because it's a big screen that scratches easily. Despite not ordering a recall they did say that people could take the phone back if they were dissatisfied. In addition to this they issued a software update; IOS 4.01.

Software updates are a pain in the arse for those of us who choose to jailbreak the phone because you have to re-jailbreak and re-install your apps every time it happens. Did this using Redsn0w. Maybe because it wasn't a major upgrade this was easier than last time. It would seem that a major reason for the upgrade was to address the reception issue with the iPhone 4. Apparently it mis-reported reception making it appear that users were getting a better reception than they actually were. To my knowledge this only affected the iPhone 4. After the upgrade however my iPhone 3g shows poorer reception than it previously had. I have to say that this has little or no impact on my ability to make calls it just makes it look like the phone is getting poor reception. If you forget the fact that it works perfectly and gets 3g reception and everything and just go by the bars displayed after the upgrade...It would seem that I'd do better switching back to my HTC touch because it showed more bars. Well done Apple. On the plus side the advertisers have had a field day.
At Motorola, we believe a customer shouldn’t have to dress up their phone for it to work properly. That’s why the DROID X comes with a dual antenna design. The kind that allows you to hold the phone any way you like to make crystal clear calls without a bulky phone jacket. For us it’s just one of those things that comes as a given when you’ve been making mobile phones for over 30 years.

Note the reception bars in samsungs 'Hello'

I'll update again before Sunday but that's enough for now

Quick Update

OK so I'm off on holiday in a couple of hours for the best part of two weeks. You can tell that it's proper holiday time hear in Scotland by the marbled grey sky, smattering of rain and the 45 degree angle of the trees trying to fight the wind. For most people it would be time to rush in doors but, for this hardy Scot at least, it's time to head for a caravan at the seaside. Time to give up bricks and mortar for tin and....well more tin really. Hopefully by the time I return I'll have loads to update you on.

I've just finished writing a letter addressed to 'The Directors PA' of the company that I bought my car from. I've finished the letter by pointing out that, whilst the service manager may be feeling pleased about having saved his company half the price of a new wheel, their company will lose more than this in the first year with just the loss of my humble business. I'll wait to see what the response is before I launch an attack via the official forum sites that I'm a member of. All I want is a wheel but it'll cost them more than the price of a brand new car by the time I'm finished with them if they don't sort things out. I wont be content until I feel that they regret selling me the car every bit as much as I regret buying it.

Apple are also supposed to be holding a press conference today to explain what they intend to do about the new IPhone 4. They aren't expected to do a recall but they will have to do something. Ask Microsoft. They still suffer from the catastrophe that was Vista. Even now that windows seven apparently sorts the issues out most of us have decided that it's just safer and more sensible to stick with good old XP. Mr Jobs could learn from the vista example. The first frustration most of us had wit VISTA was that the security settings prevented us from doing what we wanted to do in the way we wanted to do it. Sound familiar Mr Jobs?

iOS 4 is a really good jump in the right direction. It has Windows 3.1 like folders to keep your icons in. It does almost all the things that those who had jail broken their phones were already doing. MY 3G can multi task, record video and display screen backgrounds even though it is clearly stated that it can't. What's more I believe it performs better in terms of signal etc than the ill fated iPhone 4. Yep I'm looking forward to commenting on how today's activities play out.

Hard to believe that we'll be nearly into august when I get back. It doesn't seem that long ago that I was sitting in my office in January worrying about whether it would be Champix or not smoking that would drive me out of mind. Turns out I was already there.

Hope you guys hang around till I get back.

Speak soon

T

Getting Mobile

OK, We're about three or four weeks in now and I've had a good chance to thoroughly evaluate the iPhone.It will probably take a few articles to get all my ideas down but, to start with, lets look at how I came to own an IPhone.

I could have switched to the IPhone two years ago but didn't want to. Why? Well I just don't like Apple to be honest. The world seems to work perfectly well without Apple. Windows PCs do everything that you need a PC to do whilst apple PCs are bit funny about doing anything unless you want to do it the way Apple prescribe. For a while it was almost trendy to slag off windows but I stuck by them. Bill Gates et al were the ones who realised that computers needed to be simplified or they'd never catch on.


At school, 1 million years BC, or so it seems now, I actually remember that we were allowed to pick computing as an extra subject. (At this time you weren't allowed a calculator in maths.) This extra subject was something that you weren't sitting a certificate in but that gave you a break from your studies and made you a more rounded person. My mum had purchased a Sinclair ZX81 and I was interested in finding out how to get it to play space invaders. For three one hour classes at school I relentlessly plugged code in to a BBC micro. I had no real understanding of the code but, words can't describe, how rewarding it was at the end of three weeks to hit the enter key and have a circle appear on screen. My code had plotted that circle. It's easy to see why, at that point, the computer hadn't comfortably invaded the home.

During the late 80s and early 90s my job was as a retail manager. The PC was just about to change this world forever. It started with a barcode scanner and then, before you could blink, we had EPOS (Electronic Point of Sale). The till was recording what was in stock, what had been sold and what needed ordered. Managers with up to thirty years experience walked away from perfectly good jobs to join company's that hadn't yet invested in EPOS. They were payed to manage shops not as bloody scientists.

It was late into the decade (1998) before I was persuaded to part with over £1000 on a PC with the Just released windows 95 and office 97 (I think). A heavenly three gb memory and a massively limited and expensive subscription to dial up Internet. I was way ahead of most who, liked the idea, but had far more important ways to waste their money. 12 years later I can't think of anyone who doesn't own a PC or, at very least, a mobile that would put that first PC to shame.

For me I entered the mobile world quite late. Despite spearheading computers I was a bit reluctant about the whole mobile phone thing. I loved the gadget end of things but I didn't want people to be able to get hold of me whenever they wanted. (I'm still a bit like that now). I love text and am amazed with what phones can do but I'm not in love with being available.


The first phone came around 2000 and was an Erickson. Not a Sony Erickson but an Erickson. They hadn't got together yet. This mobile consisted mostly of a battery and could phone and text. The only really advanced thing was that it allowed you to write your own ring tone. I believe I'm the only one that ever did. (Jean Michelle Jarres' oxygen never sounded so good). The next few phones only came about because the phone companies were giving away great mobiles to get you to switch networks. The phones themselves just got smaller and smarter. Flip phones, slide phones etc.


Then it happened. When everyone else in the world went for the small and slim Motorola razor I went for the Sony Erickson smart phone of the time. Cant remember the exact model but this bad boy was the first of the true smart phones. Hewlett Packard were doing something pretty impressive with their PDA and windows and some new upstart, blackberry, were pushing emails but the Sony, using the symbian operating system, had advantages over them all. About the size of a cigarette packet it had a stylus to allow you to write texts. It had a working pocket version of MS Office (my iPhone still doesn't do this well). Using blue tooth, a GPS receiver and a dodgy version of tom tom I was the first person I knew to have satnav on my phone although Nokias were just about to do that bit better.

The funny thing was that people liked my phone but didn't love it. Even Sony Erickson seemed to spend more of their R&D dollars on creating a good MP3 player and camera phone than on exploring the true smart phone market. Most liked my phone but thought it was too big. When Nokia pulled out the N95 it seemed like history for my phone. Talking of good MP3 players...Apple were bringing out a phone.


When I was due for a new handset I was quite excited. Symbian was, and is, good but I'd found a handset with Windows. Windows had to be the way to go. Truly sync with your pc. Again a stylus but this time the writing recognition had improved to a point where you really could almost write natively. Some folk had gone for the newly released IPhone but what did they know. My HTC didn't even need a separate GPS receiver because this one was built in. I could surf the Internet and connect to wifi automatically I could tell you the weather or access google maps. The only downside was that my package didn't give me free Internet. We're only going back three years but most mobiles charged a ridiculous amount for the Internet and access was painfully slow. The HTC also had pocket office and could hold my MP3 library so why did I go for the iPhone?.....

Stay hooked to find out.

T

Credit Crunchies.

In a few days time it will be June. In Scotland there has been fresh snow on top of the already compacted stuff in the cairngorms meaning that they are having one of their best seasons ever.

At the same time we're being told that this will be a barbecue summer. They've been making that prediction for the last few years but, based on recent events, this time it may be true. For a massive amount of reasons I distinctly remember 2003 as being a barbecue summer and, so far, this year isn't close but it is better than the last few.

Now that the car's fixed and the weather has picked up I should be making a b-line for the caravan and, possibly for the first year in a few, the boat for some fishing. Instead I'm at home for the holiday weekend. Why? Well 2010 is fast turning out to be the toughest time I've had in nearly 20 years. Every time I think that, once that's paid I'll be fine, something else comes up. 2010 is fast becoming reminisce of 1994 when I set up home with the , then to be, wife. Thing is 1994 is a year I look back on as being one of the best years in my life. We really did have nothing and yet we really were happy.

2010 so far involves:

- Being skint (British term that means that you have no money)
- Giving up: Smokes and cutting seriously down on alcohol
- Realising it's not all yours: Lot's of folk on the outside think we've got it all. We have but it takes a hell of a lot of work to keep it.

Something tells me that 2010 is going to be a key year when I look back but it feels pretty tough when I look forward.

Is this common? Who knows? The people that follow this site have gradually disappeared but have told a variety of stories. I'm sure others will do the same. Poet has had a tough time but is getting ready for the future whilst K is preparing for exams. Zoe is also doing the exam route. It's weird but 2010 might end up being the year everyone hated and yet the year that changed everyones life.



On a different theme: The Ipad arrived on these shores today. Fools queued outside overnight to be the first to own. Now I'm not a professional reviewer but I do have an opinion:

Apple are saying 'the price is right'. An 8gb pc is un-sellable under normal circumstances but that's what your £400 gets you. A big Ipod touch and nothing more. The top spec 3g 64 gb macine is nearly £700. For an Iphone with a big screen that loses the camera and phone capabilities and still has additional costs for the net???????

Get a net book. Get a good net book. It won't have apps as such but it will do everything an iPad can do and so much more. Can you watch streaming tv on a netbook? Yes. Can you have a massive music library? Yes. Dictionary, email, encyclopedia etc? Yes.

The ipad looks great and I'm fast becoming an iphone convert but, come on, this is an idea that should have gone so much further. I'm flummoxed why there isn't a use able pc in my car. Why it doesn't connect to a mobile device that I take with me and connect to my pc?

A tablet that, when connected to my PC collects all my music, photos, movie files etc, when docked to the car provides navigation, records the journey via web cam, offers the passengers music and DVD, and, also via web cam, provides reverse parking assistance. When I park the car I lift the 8-10 inch removable screen part and take it with me like an iphone or PDA. Nothing I'm asking for there requires any sort of new tech. You just got to do it guys.... Back in the 90s pc makers made so much of multimedia. My first multimedia PC was 2.3 gb with intel inside. It actually did everything a pc could do back then. Manufactures now need to really work at making multimedia work for us now. The same multimedia in the home, the garden, the car and the workplace. No new inventions, just a better use of the tech we have.

Rave over.

Stay hooked

T