Dom Davis (The Blog)

Dear visitor to Norfolk,

Welcome to our county. Please note that, just like the rest of the country, the speed limit is 60mph on single carriage way and 70mph on a dual carriage way unless otherwise indicated. Speed limits are always expressed in miles per hour, not kilometres per hour. With this in mind if you are thinking of visiting our fair county and plan to drive at a constant 20 miles per hour under the speed limit when driving conditions are fine We would kindly ask you to fuck right off. Seriously, piss off to Cornwall or something. We really don’t want you here. You’re annoying and your inability to drive at anything remotely like the speed limit is dangerous because the long queue of cars behind you (and it’s a very long queue now, you bastard) get more and more desperate to overtake and take more and more risks. And the risk taking is not just to get past you, we now so pissed off with you that we don’t care if our overtaking manoeuvre ends with us piling into an oncoming car because the resulting fiery ball of death with take you out as well and we will be heralded as heroes by those stuck behind us and you will be dead, which is an end that is too good for you.

Learn to drive before I’m forced to drop the C bomb.

Love and kisses,

Dom (currently a passenger with The Zozo who is currently stuck behind some prat with low profiles, tinted windows and an inability to drive over 45mph. My next car is having missile launchers)

My iPhone is many things to me, the hub of my mobile digital world. What with all the G’s (3G, EDGE, GPRS, GPS, 802.11g and gyroscope) and the multitude of apps it can do just about anything. Watch films and TV programs? Check. Listen to music? Check. Radio? Check. Read books? Check. Communicate with people via email, facebook, twitter, text and IM? Check. Surf the web? Check. Read books? Check. Play games? Check. Eat money through hardware costs, monthly subscription and the endless handing over of money to Apple (and now Amazon) for new music, films, apps and books? Check, check and check. I dread to think how much money I’ve handed over to Steve, either directly or via o2.

Today that changed. IG Index, who to my mind do the bast spread betting platform bar none¹ released their iPhone app. IG have had a mobile site for their spread betting platform for ages now, even one that’s formatted for the iPhone, but I’ve always found it a bit clunky and the charts (which are a must for the type of trading I do) were buggy and unreliable. The new iPhone app, on the other hand, is very slick, execution appears to be reasonably fast that the orders appear to be executed at the price you hit the button, not the price it’s at when the server finally gets the instruction. The last thing you want is a slow GPRS connection turning your big fat profit into a loss.

A quick check of the forex markets (24 hour, move fast, good for a quick test of anything with small stakes and tights stops and limits) and I spotted EUR/USD was on the up, rallying from a small retracement. 50p a point, stop at 20 points (maximum loss would be £20), limit at 2 points (maximum gain £1) and every intention of bailing the instant I struck a profit or the instant it looked like the trade was going south. A punt, yes, but as punts go not a massively risky one, not over these time scales with the entry and exit points. Worst case I loose connection, the app crashes, or some other disaster, the trade goes wrong and I lose a tenner. Best case the same as before but I get a quid. Actual result: I netted 35p.

The reason why I said the app ‘appears’ to execute at the price you hit the button is because at 40p I hit ‘sell’. Nothing happened. A quick look at the UI and I spotted the close trade button. I hit that instead (35p), a dialogue comes up telling me it’s closing the trade (20p) and the little spinney ‘loading’ icon (15p) followed by a confirmation (10p). Total time to close the trade was about 5 seconds (which is a VERY long time in forex) but a quick check of my account showed I was 35p up.

So there you have it, the iPhone is no longer a drain on the resources. Armed with my new app, a bit of luck and a following wind I might even cover the cost of 3 iPhones (original, 3G and iPhone 4), the GPS dock, the headphones, the mic attactchment, the docks, the stipend to o2 to use their mobile network paid every month since November 2007, the 99p or whatever it is I’ve paid for each and every song I’ve downloaded from the ITMS (and there’s been a lot) and the frightening number of apps I’ve bought (and lets not forget the $15 or so spent on books thus far). Well, maybe not cover, but put a large dent in… well a dent… OK, well 24p more and I can get myself a cheap game for free

¹ Yes, I know the ProSpreads platform can do lots of fun advanced thingies but I defy anyone who doesn’t have a couple of years knowledge to even understand how it’s used. The only thing all the extra bells, knobs and whistles did for me was allow me to blow my £50,000 trial account in half the time it would have otherwise.

I should probably point out that Spread Betting is a leveraged product and the value of your investment can far exceed your original stake. It’s a wonderful way of throwing away money, even if you do know what you’re doing and probably not recommended for those who don’t know what they’re doing. That said, if you really, really want to give it a go let me know because if you sign up for an IG Index account recommended by me I get a bottle of champagne or something. You might also get some money in your account, I can’t remember, all I know for sure is I get goodies if you then go and make a few trades.

As part of the preparations for our forthcoming wedding The Zozo and I have been ordering various things from the internetwebs. One item had to be specially imported from the US (which was good fun in itself since the company in question only shipped to the continental US and wouldn’t take international credit cards. Thank God for postal forwarding companies) and needs duty paying on it when it’s finally delivered.

On Wednesday I got call from the DHL Indian call centre telling me my package would be arriving Thursday and would I be ok to pay the driver cash? I told her I wouldn’t be in and nor would anyone else. This didn’t phase our call centre worker who immediately proposed Friday as an alternative. Still no good, I told her, we won’t be home. This prompted confusion and she enquired as to when someone might be home. I tentatively suggested Saturday knowing full well that would not be an option and was promptly told as such. In the end, due to my audacity at not wanting to take time off at short notice it was decided that they would attempt a delivery on Thursday and when that failed I could rearrange it for a more convenient time or destination.

Now obviously I’m missing something here. Given the surprise at there being no one to receive my item perhaps there’s some simple option I’ve missed. Clearly this has never happened to them before. If it had then I’d be allowed to organise a time there and then that didn’t fall into the next 48 hours. Or maybe suggest an alternative address on the phone. No, they have to attempt a delivery that is guaranteed to fail and then, and only then, can we proceed.

You know it’s going to be a fun journey when you get on the train and your olfactory senses are overwhelmed with The Lynx effect cranked up to the power of 11. That, or the thick fog of someone who’s obviously marinaded in Pretention For Men overnight. It’s kind of understandable if it’s some 14 year old kid trying to impress a girl but when it’s a middle aged bloke you can’t help but think that they should know of the miraculous properties of soap.

I guess I can take comfort in the fact that they didn’t deploy half a can of deodorant on themselves while actually on the train, gassing everyone close by. Something that seems to happen with alarming regularity in the office.

While perusing the App Store last night I discovered Dragons Naturally Speaking dictation app which was available for free download. Given typing on the iPhone keyboard isn’t the fasted of input methods (although it’s pretty good given the size of the keyboard) and considering entering any kind of HTML is a complete sod (yes, all those links, the foot notes, all that stuff I have to painstakingly enter by hand, just for you) I thought I would give it a go.

Apparently it works like this: You install the app, you dictate your text, it fires that off to a server somewhere, that converts it to text and the app presents you with said text.

What really happens is you fire up the app, it fails to connect to the server even before you’ve managed to do anything, you give up, write the blog the old skool way with keyboard and thumb. Hey ho.

Ever since I got my first iPhone I’ve used it for watching films, listening to music and reading the news. The one thing I’d not really tried was using it as an ebook reader (this is the one thing tempting me to get an iPad since it would be ideal for that task). With iOS4 Apple gave us iBooks and I started playing about with some of the free books. While a little odd on the small screen it’s certainly plausible to use the phone as an ebook.

The next step was to download something I actually wanted to read. Unfortunately iBooks didn’t have the next book on my reading list¹ so I resorted to Amazons kindle app which doesn’t have the same ‘book like’ page turning animation but is otherwise broadly similar to iBooks for the actual reading bit.

The verdict: it’s never going to replace a real book, and I still think an iPad would be much better suited but since I already have the phone and can’t afford an iPad it’ll certainly do for now.

¹The Zombie Survival Guide which, ironically enough, is something you’d really want in printed form come the Zombie Apocalypse.

The biggest problem with going to the gym is that it can be a bit dull. I entertain myself watching films and TV on my iPhone but that only works on the cross trainer and bikes. For everything else it’s whatever is blaring away on the big TV and in the pool, sauna and jacuzzi¹ it’s just me and my thoughts. Even when we go together there’s not a huge amount of conversation as the gym doesn’t lend itself to that kind of thing.

There is, of course, another way to get regular exercise that burns off calories very efficiently that couples who Love Each Other Very Much can do. OK, for reasons of endurance, it generally doesn’t last as long as a gym session but it’s much more fun, leaves your heart racing and gives you a warm glow and a happy feeling that just can’t be replicated on a rowing machine. I am, of course, talking about squash².

Friday was my first ever game (The Zozo had played many times previously) and I learned all about the rules, the etiquette and the fact that overhead smashes generally end up with me driving the ball into the baseboard or the lights (regulation squash courts need to be about 15 foot taller). We then tried a proper match where The Zozo proceeded to hand my butt to me on a plate winning 6 games to 0.

Sunday was my second game and it was clear I’d absorbed the lessons of Friday. No longer was it serve, *swoosh*, point Zozo on every point. On occasion I was able to return shots, even break serves and, sometimes, score points. At times we even managed rallies. While my butt was still handed to me on a plate (7 games to 0) the plate was much less ornate. Next time I may even win a game

¹I pay a lot of money for the gym so I use everything to get my monies worth.

²Minds out of the gutter people!

… I am now officially no longer a fat bastard According to the scales at the gym, which I trust, I weigh almost exactly 13 stone¹ with all my gym kit on. This means that, nekkid, I would weight 12 stone²! This is the upper end of my new Happy Weight which means an end to the severe All Salad diet and the beginning of the slightly less severe Some Salad diet. I celebrated with a BBQ, ice cream, bag of chocolate, large fizzy drink and more ice cream³. Hopefully, after all that, the next time I weigh myself I won’t be back in the fat bastard zone and, therefore, back on the all salad diet. All being well in 5 weeks time I’ll be bang on perfect weight and can go on the Very Little Salad diet

¹International and metric readers feel free to use Google to convert stone to lbs/kgs

²Yes, I’m aware there are some units to tack on the end of that figure, but I think they detract from the key headline figure here

³Not all in one day I should point out, and there was a gym trip and two games of squash⁴ to counter it

⁴More on that in a bit

You¹ sit the other side of the office to me, and yet your music is on so loud I can actually identify the song you’re listening to from the sound being leaked from your headphones. Either buy better headphones or turn it down. It can’t be doing your hearing any good at all and it’s annoying the hell out of me. *bum tish bum tish bum tish*

In the interim I shall plug myself into my headphones which a) don’t leak any sound so I can listen to my iPod with it turned up to 11 without annoying people and b) stops sounds from the outside world from leaking in meaning I don’t need to crank up the iPod to 11 unless I want something to be deafeningly loud.

¹There’s two of you actually, thankfully not both at the same time

Soap. It’s pretty boring, fairly ubiquitous, hard to differentiate and low margin. We’ve gone from plain old bars (Imperial Leather, remember that?) and tried every trick in the book to make the product stick out and increase market share and margins. Bars with metal plates that stick onto magnetic holders, soap on a rope, liquid soap, soap with moisturiser, smelly soap, hypoallergenic soap, soap in dispensers, it’s all been tried. Recently one company has taken this to extremes allowing you to buy an automatic, hands free dispenser for their soap. The marketing pitch? With this product you don’t have to touch the nasty, icky dispenser that’s been touched by your families dirty hands.

Let’s step back and think about this. Let’s take our hypothetical hands and cover them in hypothetical dirt. Now we need to clean them, so let’s go to our hypothetical sink and wash them. We turn on our hypothetical taps, pump our hypothetical lemon and lime liquid soap (enjoying the thoughts of sherbet lemons it conjures) and… oh no, the soap dispenser may have put dirt and germs on our hands! Whatever will we do? Now at this point we could bemoan the lack of automated soap dispenser as we risk near certain Ebola, however, I’m going to suggest an alternative. Let’s carry on with our thought experiment. Let’s take our wet, dirty, soap laden, germ coated hands and let’s wash them. Look! Clean! Magic. Kind of renders the automatic dispenser moot. Sure, there’s the gadget appeal but it’s also not the cheapest thing in the the world.

They’ve missed a trick though. Let’s continue our thought experiment, where we take our lovely clean hypothetical hands and turn off the taps. But wait, our lovely clean hands are touching the now filthy taps, necrotising fasciitis ensues followed by death. Automatic taps, that’s what we need.