Scary Phone Calls

Had a very scary phone conversation today. And made a fool of myself too. It started with a letter on the mat when I got home. “Please ring the Barclaycard fraud hotline” it said in letters that weren’t particularly large and didn’t sound that friendly either. It was signed by someone whose name I forget. But when I rang the number, that person answered. The man himself.

This totally threw me. Barclaycard is a big company. I really didn’t expect to get straight through to the person who wrote the letter. And only yesterday I’d had a phone call from someone at “Windows Support” anxious to tell me about a virus that he knew was on my computer (although he didn’t know my name – asking only to speak to “The person who lives at your address”). Anyway, the chap from Barclaycard started asking me security questions and I started thinking about a scam model where you send someone a letter with a phone number on, get them to ring the number and then ask them for some security questions. And so I asked “How do I know you’re from Barclaycard?”. This threw him. After a while (during which he must have thought some interesting things about me) we decided that I should ring the number printed on the card and talk to them instead. I thanked him and rang off.

I called back on what I now thought would be a proper number and it was all above board. A company I had bought something from a while back had suffered a security breach and my card was therefore “under suspicion”. I get a new card soon, with a different number.

It struck me afterwards that what I did was almost sensible. If the bank is going to spend effort making sure I’m who I say I am, then I should probably put some effort into making sure it really is the bank I’m talking. Although next time I’ll just check the website first.

Going the Distance

This came up on the car this morning. I had to stop and take a picture, as I’d come over all “IBM PC”.

Marks and Spencer and the Inverse of Service

I’ve mentioned the book The Thank You Economy before. If you are in the business of providing things for other people you should read it. One of the central tenets of the text is that you should regard a failure on your part as a chance to show just how good you are in “failure mode”. The idea is that if you shine in this aspect of the business then you can create your own evangelists. At the very least you will prevent people from moaning about you in blog posts.

Marks and Spencer have not read this book. Or at least the lady serving us today hadn’t. We were returning something that had broken. And we were told that “Because it is part of a two part set we have both parts so that it can go back to the suppliers”. Now, from a Marks and Spencer business process point of view this probably makes sense. But from a “Customer with a broken thing point of view” it sucks. It meant that we had to go home, find the other bit, and come back again.

I hate it when people try to make their problems my problems. It is not my problem if someone sells me something that subsequently breaks. It up to them to fix it. If they immediately try to bat the issue back to me I reckon this is wrong. In the end of course, being British, we meekly went away to find the other part, but if I’d been on my own, without the civilising influence of number one wife, and there hadn’t been a queue of people waiting behind us, I think I would have had a go at getting a happier outcome there and then.

The item in question was not expensive and there are much worse things that can happen to you than having a dodgy customer service experience. However, the thing that most upset me was the sense of an opportunity being missed. Rather than making happy customers (who they presumably want to come back some time in the future) they have made us a bit less inclined to shop there and look somewhere else next time.

Weather Flow for Windows Phone

There are loads of weather applications for Windows Phone. Today, on a whim, I bought one. Weather Flow looks lovely. It also has really nice Live Tiles. There are only two things I don’t like about it. It can be a tad slow to find the weather information (although nothing terrible) and it doesn’t have exactly where I live on its list of locations.  Worth a look though.

Recovery For Idiots

I’ve just invented a new policy for all those important disks that you get with cameras and computers which become so important when you subsequently try to sell your old stuff on ebay.

As soon as I get them I’m going to throw them in the bin.

I’ve just spent a chunk of the day looking for a set of mysteriously vanished drivers and they would seem to be completely lost. If I’d chucked them away as soon as I got them, rather than put them “somewhere safe”, I’d be in the same position as I am now, but at least I’d have not wasted all the time getting here.

Don’t Buy Dodgy SD Cards

Some time back I bought a couple of economically priced cheap SD cards. They were rated at category 10 (the fastest you can get) and were huge (32G). They were from a shop based in the Channel Islands who have sold me good stuff in the past. I can’t precisely recall their name, but I seem to remember that they are open all week.

Anyhoo, one failed shortly after purchase and the other has developed the interesting ability to turn filenames into guacamole and move datestamps into 2315. Having thought about this properly I’ve decided that perhaps I should have spent the same amount of cash on cards that were around a half (or perhaps even a quarter) the size but were from companies that I’ve actually heard of. It is very unlikely that I’ll wander out and take 650 pictures in a single trip (even assuming I’ve got enough battery power to do this).

I’ve come to the conclusion SD cards are one area where false economy will not just fail to save me money, but also raises the possibility that I might not get my pictures back home.

Inspiring Teacher Award

A couple of weeks ago I got an email saying that I’d been shortlisted for an award. The Student Union at Hull has instituted a set of Teaching Awards and I’d been nominated in the “Inspiring Teaching” category, which was very nice.

I was invited to an awards ceremony where they were serving tomato soup, roast beef and profiteroles. My favourites, which was even nicer.

The actual ceremony was fantastic. They even had a band who played through the evening. The result for my category was towards the end of the proceedings, which was a bit nerve wracking, but the food and conversation were great and the time passed really quickly. Then came the results. And I’d won. Which was amazing.

I staggered down to the front and was presented with the trophy. Photos were taken and then I staggered back. I’m not usually someone who is lost for words but I was this time. In fact I still am. It is just so nice. Thanks everyone.

The iTunes Experience

Apple make carefully designed and beautifully presented products that amaze and delight their owners. They also make iTunes. Which is amazing, but not in any good way.

Yesterday number one dad got a new iPad. I heard the news with dread. Because it meant that I’d be the chap installing it. In theory this is easy, just back up the first iPad and then restore the backup to the new iPad. A doddle. Except….

The new iPad refused to talk to the version of iTunes on dad’s laptop. So I fired up the Apple Upgrade Manger. Which found an upgrade for itself. Which failed. Eventually I figured out that it was trying (and failing) to uninstall the old version. Nothing I could do would persuade the darned thing to get out of the way so that I could upgrade iTunes. Time for Plan B. Install a new version of iTunes on the desktop and use that to do the upgrade. Installation went well, tried to sign into iTunes and authorize the computer. Turns out that iTunes is incapable of remembering dad’s password for more than ten minutes. Go through the password reset. Authorize the computer. Plug in the old iPad to perform the backup. Fail. The iPad will only talk to the iTunes library on the broken laptop. One wrong press now and I wipe the iPad by restoring an empty library onto it. At least you get the warning now. I’ve known people wipe their iPods when they get a new computer. Why Apple persist in such a stupid library arrangement in this cloud connected world is beyond me. Anyway, no dice.

So decide to just register the new iPad so that we can do something with it. Find that that iTunes has forgotten dad’s password again. Get another password.  Finally get the registration completed and start restoring applications onto the new iPad. Three hours in and we now have something working.

I’m going to have to back up and rebuild dad’s laptop so that I can do a clean install of this idiotic program. I looked up the procedure to back up the iTunes library. It seems that there are two ways you can do this. Copy the files and hope or buy a program to help you do this.

I’ve thought for a while that Apple are probably quite happy to give users a horrible experience if they use iTunes on a PC. I’ve found PC installations to be very fragile and completely impossible to get off a machine. There’s no way I’d install iTunes on any of my PCs, in fact I keep an “emergency Mac” around with iTunes on it that I use to keep my Apple devices up to date. I’ve found the Mac version of iTunes to be a lot better behaved, thank goodness.

One of the great things about iOS 5 is that you can do pretty much everything without using iTunes. As for me, I’m off for a lie down….

My Two Dogs

Digby and Wrex

Simon Grey has been posting about his dogs. So I thought I’d post about my two. On the left we have Digby, who is sufficiently autonomous that he can fall downstairs unaided. On the right we have Wrex, who doesn’t do much by himself but has a really cool remote control.

Digby doesn’t get out much these days. But today I powered him up and let him wander around for a while. The best comment about him that I ever heard was from someone who actually owned a dog. “That’s just what my dog used to do” she said as she watched him wander around. It is a crying shame that Sony stopped making Aibo robots, they were just getting interesting when the company pulled the plug.

With all the sensor and processor developments taking place at the moment Aibo 2.0 would be awesome.

Protecting your data for free

What’s the most important component of your computer? The cpu? That expensive graphics card? The three monitors that you’ve plugged into it?

Wrong.

The most important component in your computer is the data that you put into it. If you lost any of the others it would be a simple matter of getting another lump of hardware. Sure, it might hurt a bit, but the fix is an easy one. Just replace the missing piece.

If you lose your data you not only have the problem of restoring the information, but frequently you don’t know just what you have lost. The importance of that little file of test data or the original of that letter you wrote nine months ago will only become apparent long after you’ve replaced the failed disc drive.

That’s why you should use Dropbox, Live Mesh or Skydrive (or all three if you have a lot of files you want to look after). These systems put your data in the cloud for you. Dropbox is good because it also does versioning, you can even recover when you damage a file by overwriting. The other two are good because they provide a bit more free storage. Google are also getting into the cloud storage act with Google Drive, which is available in the US but not the UK yet.

I keep all my files in the cloud. I can fit all my important documents and presentations into the few GBytes that they provide for free. All the above systems let me easily move my files from one machine to another, so if I get a new machine I just have to sign into the account for that particular service and then wait as all my files are magically loaded onto it. This makes the hardware pretty much incidental. I can use any machine to work on since the latest versions of my files will arrive from wherever I was working before. The decks I’m going to present on my “twisty top” tablet will move onto it in the time it takes me to walk to the lecture theatre.

All these systems are free and there is no excuse for not using them.

Don’t Forget the Sanity Check

I sent out a bunch of emails today with the details of the lab demonstrations for the First Year programming course. Last time I did this I managed to make the final part of the schedule repeat, so that I had some students down for multiple sessions. At the time I remember thinking “Better not do that again”.

Of course I did though. I had all the sessions spread over four days, which is a long time. Too long. If I’d done a simple Sanity Check – e.g. “If we can mark 66 students in one day, how long does it take to do 170 or so?” then I’d have figured out that something was wrong. But I didn’t. I just blindly copied down the slots and pasted them into the timetable document. Idiot me.

This illustrates an important point. Just before you press send, or submit the file, or do whatever it is that sends your work off, you should do a quick “Sanity Check”. Just make sure that there is nothing obviously wrong. Quite often you’ll focus on all the small bits (like I did) and not check the big picture. See if you can come up with some simple test that you can use to make sure that nothing is stupidly wrong – like creating 240 slots for 170 students…..

Singapore Rocks

Before I went to Singapore a few people said that I’d like it there. They were right. I’d go back tomorrow if I could. For a Brit it has a weird “Abroad without being abroad” kind of feel. The cars drive on proper side of the road. Lots of the streets have familiar, English sounding names. Even the mains sockets look the same. And yet, unlike the UK, there is a vibrancy about the place that is really rather nice.

They have lots (and I mean lots) of shopping malls. They have Prada and even Mont Blanc shops like other places have Starbucks. And they have Starbucks as well. I’d love to have had more time to take a bit more of a look around, most of what I saw was basically like a tidy, well run city anywhere in the world.

My advice; if you get the chance to go, just go. Even if it means a 30 hour journey.

Mage Knight Winner

Over the last two evenings we’ve been playing Mage Knight, a game that number one son brought along. My goodness it’s complicated. Cards, markers, dice, crystals, hexagonal maps, little figures and towers. And a winner. Me. Not sure how I did it but I ended up with more fame than anyone else at the end, which is how they decide who wins. Great fun.

Good Friday at Sewerby Hall

Today, despite the poor weather and the even nastier forecast, we headed of to Sewerby Hall, another of my favourite places in all the world. It has the most amazing gardens, as you can see above. We had a great lunch and then took a walk along the cliff tops.

This picture is probably more in keeping with the weather, which by now had gone back to horrid grey mode after the promise of yesterday.

Merely Hornsea

Now, isn’t this a turn-up for the books? After yesterdays “grey-fest” today has dawned all bright and sunny. Of course, we’ve got to stay at home waiting for a package to be delivered, but once that arrived we headed out to Hornsea Mere, one of my favourite places in all the world. It has a place you can buy cups of tea, and a very old Pike stuck on the wall.

It also has a pitch and putt golf course where I once got a hole in one. Unfortunately it was the wrong hole though. The massive slice I played at hole number 1 somehow ended up in hole number 9. And there are ducks and geese and boats and stuff.

“You lookin’ at my bird?”

Cafe view

If you are lucky enough to be a student at Hull and you are at a loose end later this term, take a trip to the Mere. Just a great place.

A Floor in the Plan

Happy Holidays Rob…

Today could have gone one of two ways:

Good weather -> trip to the seaside
Bad weather –> replace the flooring in the porch

Ho hum, at least the stuff in question didn’t put up too much of a fight. And we do have quite a small porch.

Last Open Day of the Season

We had out last formal Open Day of the “season” today. We’ll be having more University Open Days later in the year, but this was our last one for entrants for next September. Above you can see some of the audience. Thanks for making the trip to Hull folks.

Happy 40th Birthday Darren

Notice how Darren (HellBoy) has filed down his two horns to just a couple of yellow marks on his head, specially for his birthday…

It was Darren’s 40th birthday yesterday. He knew this. What he didn’t know was that we did too. So when he turned up for a “jetlagged drink” this evening he wasn’t quite expecting a whole bunch of folks to jump out and say surprise. So we did.

Great fun was had by all, lots of familiar faces, drink, and cake. Number one wife reminded me that the next “big birthday” for me will be my sixtieth. Can’t wait.

Open Day and Holy Trinity HDR

I took this in Hull Holy Trinity Church this morning while I was up town shopping. It is an HDR picture made from five original images. I’m quite pleased with how it turned out.

Then, this afternoon we had our last Saturday open day of the season. As usual I took a shot of the audience:

Another good turnout. And of course we had a lucky (!?) winner of my XNA book.

After the open day it was back home to vacuum round the house (what  lifestyle I have) and spend some more time playing with HDR pictures.

I quite like this one too. Next time I’m going back with a proper tripod. Balancing the camera against bits of the furniture doesn’t always make for the best compositions.

If you live in Hull and you haven’t had a look around Hull Holy Trinity church then you are missing out. It has an interior that would put quite a few Minsters to shame.

Hull Digital March Meetup

This evening I went off to the Hull Digital March Meetup. We had a talk from Steve Bell of Kingston Communications about the upcoming fibre optic developments in the city. It looks like we are going to get some seriously fast networking around the place, I’m looking forward to getting it where I live. Then we had a talk from Gareth Hanson and Dave Foy who run 'Woof', an on-line marketing consultancy based in Hull. They were talking about Google Analytics. I use it on this site to carefully track all my visitors and analyse the effect of changes to the content so that I can relentlessly tune the material to increase the number of visitors and make them stay longer.

Actually I don’t. Because my blog is not really a business as such. I have Google Analytics enabled, and every now and then I go and look at which way the curves are going, but I don’t really do much with the information. But the important thing is that I could. Gareth and Dave made the point that by proper configuration of the analytic content in your pages you can find out where readers “bounce” from the site and the effectiveness of each step of your transactions. The bottom line is that if you are serious about making the most of your web presence, and finding out which of your pages are working hardest for you, you should look into this technology.