Dom Davis (The Blog)

So after two days of truly glorious weather I was prepared today. Jumper? Don’t need one of them. I’ll just take it off and stuff it in my bag at the station like I did yesterday. Short sleeved shirt? Check. Sunglasses? Out and ready.

Yeah…

Thankfully I wore a coat and the jumper is still in the bag so I can put that on when I get to work and warm up a little.

Note to self: check weather forecast before planning wardrobe for the day.

They’ve closed part of the riverside walk I use to get in to work. I’m assuming it’s for some kind of planned maintenance given there is a sign saying the footpath will be closed for five days. Admittedly the sign does say it’s closed from the 28th of Feb, a week when I was off so I don’t know if it’s late or a second round of works. Anyway, there is a detour which isn’t too far out of my way, which is s good thing really as every morning I forget to go an alternative route.

I suck at DIY. And I mean REALLY suck. Today I set out with a spring in my step and smile on my face and attempted to build my new bin store. 7 hours later and I had something that bore no resemblance to the picture on the website where I bought it from. It’s not square, the doors aren’t on properly and I’m pretty sure the hinged will break in a few months. Flatpack I can do, but the instant I need to drill my own holes it becomes advanced construction and I really should Get Someone Else To Do It because I can’t Do It Myself. If it hadn’t been for The Zozo coming out and helping I think the whole thing would have ended up smashed to bits and fed into the fire. Still, it’s vaguely functional and it looks better than the old thing. Still, not how I envisaged spending my day.

For all it’s geeky goodness the iPhone has one major flaw: it comes with Apple headphone which are, to be blunt, crap. They fall out of my ears and leak sound like a bugger. With the original iPhone the headphone socket was recessed meaning only a certain subset of headphones would work with it, plus I really wanted some with a mic so I could make calls with them.

While hunting for headphone I had a number of friends suggest in ear noise cancelling ones. I had tried these previously and didn’t get on with them, however, I was assured that if I didn’t get a cheap pair I’d have a much better experience. A quick look on the mac store shows these headphones which fitted the phone, looked good, had a mic and sounded awesome. There was a problem though, the cable broke. Within a month. So I sent them back for warranty repair, only to have the replacement break weeks later. I don’t expect headphones to last forever (the cables always break) but I expect them to last at least 6 months. After about the 5th breakage I got pissed off and decided to get something more robust.

After much research, much consideration and much asking of friends I decided to treat myself to a pair of these. They are, hands down, the best earphones I’ve ever heard. In fact I ended up having to re-rip my entire CD collection because, for the first time in my life, I could understand what people were going on about with lower quality MP3s. Although my shiny new headphones didn’t fit my iPhone out of the box Shure did sell an adapter cable that gave a mic and fitted the iPhone perfectly. The great news was the adapter cable was also the part that gave up the ghost quickest so, while I was back to cables breaking every 6 months it was a relatively cheap adapter and not a phenomenally expensive pair of headphones. In the 3 years I’ve had my headphones I’ve only had to replace the earbuds once, after about 18 months of use.

Shure also have a great reputation for customer service. Their two year warranty is generally no quibble and you send them back the broken headphones and they send you a brand new set. Since it’s a new set they come with a new two year warranty. In theory these should be headphones for life. This warranty is possibly going to be my saving grace as today I did something rather stupid: I washed my headphones. After a bit of testing I came to the conclusion that I was going to have to get my backup headphones out, hunt for the warranty documentation and hope I could get them replaced.

The good news is that I found all the relevant paperwork, everything should still be in warranty and now I just need to contact Shure and see what they say. Fingers crossed I’ll soon have a shiny new replacement set and will be enjoying fantastic sound reproduction once again.

It’s interesting to see the effect that popular culture has on vocabulary. For instance, last night The Zozo was out visiting a friend so I was home alone¹. Me being me I grabbed some instance food and went to play Oblivion.

Now, depending on who you are and your exposure to gaming that last sentence could be perfectly understandable or utterly meaningless. You’ve probably worked out that Oblivion is some form of computer game, and you’d be right. The term ‘instance food’ might take some explaining though.

The term ‘instance’ in this context comes from games like World of Warcraft. You, and many other players, share a game world so as you’re running about you can see lots of other players running about. There are, however, special areas in the game where it’s just you and your group. A new instance of the dungeon is created for each group that goes in. Because of this they’re referred to as instances.

Still with me? Good. Now, an instance generally contains the hardest monsters and the best loot in the game. To beat them you need groups of 5 to 40 people with some instances taking several hours to complete. Being an online game there is no pause button. You can’t just quickly pause and nip off to the loo (well, you can but you run the risk of your character dying and, depending on their role in the group, making it much harder, if not impossible for everyone else). To get round this lack of pausing groups generally take a small break (sometimes referred to as a bio break) after clearing each area. The breaks are normally no longer than 5 minutes and let people go pee, smoke or whatever it is they need to do before pressing on.

Obviously 5 minutes isn’t the longest time so if you’re wanting food it needs to be prepared fast and be something that can be eaten at the computer while playing without really impacting on your ability to play². This can be a little limiting, but you can get creative. Said food is referred to as ‘instance food’. Unsurprisingly toast, crisps and microwavable ready meals are the mainstay of instance food.

While primarily used in the context of online gaming, ‘instance food’ can refer to any quick snack prepared to be eaten while doing something on the computer. So there you go. You’ve possibly learned something new today, and I’ve managed to spin “I ate shit and played games all night” into an entire post

¹Eventually. There was the tiny issue of her leaving before I got home and me forgetting my keys. Again. Thankfully there’s a spare set at the Zoo.
² If you’re struggling to understand why you might want to consider that both World of Warcraft and Everquest (another online game) are referred to as World of Warcrack and Evercrack respectively. There is a reason for that.

The iPhone is a remarkable bit of kit. With it I can check what station the Sheringham train is currently at (Wroxham at the time of checking) thus confirming that Attleborough (being the station I was currently pulling out of) hadn’t been added as a surprise new stop on my journey home. It is then able to ascertain which train you’re really on (Cambridge) and where the next stop is for a hasty decamp, turn round and head back the way you came (Eccles road). It’s also able to tell you when the next train to Norwich is, something I should have done before getting off the train since it transpired that wasn’t until tomorrow (Eccles road quite literally having 2 trains each direction stopping a day).

Once stranded at the station it’s able to pinpoint your location and plan a route home. When that proves to be too far it can be used to summon a taxi to take you back to Attleborough to get a train back to Norwich to get a train home. It can then tell you that you won’t be getting home until nearly 9 and allow you to convey this to the wife. Meanwhile you’re able to update your status and location on Facebook so everyone can follow your plight in near real time.

What it can’t do is tell you that between looking at the departure board and the train pulling in (about 2 minutes) they’d switched platforms on you and you’re on the wrong train. Normally I listen for the announcements on the train, but for some reason didn’t bother today. The ticket inspector can’t have been looking too hard either as he never raised an eyebrow over my having a ticket for another train. The who escapade has cost me £15 and 2 hours of my life. Not happy.

One of the things I love about Cromer is the bin men. OK, collections may not be as frequent or as comprehensive as Greenwich¹ but that’s the council, not the bin men themselves. I’ve lived in some places with some real jobsworths. Get the slightest thing wrong and your bin isn’t emptied that round. The guys on our round are certainly not jobsworths.

Our bins live in a hideous and cumbersome bin store. Getting the bins in and out is a pain and the store was home made for the previous owners so it’s now broken making life even harder. It’s the type of thing that you could actually reasonably expect the bin men not to go into because it is such an arse to deal with. Because of this I have an alarm on my phone letting me know which bin it is this week. On bin day the alarm goes off, I promptly forget and The Zozo puts the bin out. This week I actually remembered and was gathering the kitchen bin when I spotted the revised collection timetable which I’d pinned up a few days before. Normal bin collection day of the 22nd, it said, will be replaced with a collection on the 21st, one day early. Arse. So there we are with a full bin, Christmas and slightly over two weeks until it was emptied.

Two things transpired to save me from a trip to the skip. Firstly was the weather. The flyer had said that extreme weather may delay collection and that collection would be performed on the first day it was safe to do so. I don’t know what constitutes extreme weather but it would appear we had some. I know this because when I checked the bin today it was empty. Collection must have been done either on Tuesday or yesterday. This leads me to the second saving grace: the bin men. Rather than just leave our bin because it wasn’t out they’ve opened the bin store, retrieved the bin, emptied it, replaced it in the store and closed it back up again. This isn’t the first time they’ve done this, they did it when they noticed we’d moved in and we didn’t know what day collection was or, indeed, which bin was to be collected. They’ve also done it when we’ve been away. It’s not something I’d expect them to do, but it’s something I’m eternally grateful for. Bin men of Cromer, I thank you

¹Normal bin every week, garden and recycling bin alternated each week. Recycling bin took everything, including glass and none of this cost extra. This may have changed. Been a while since I lived there.

So for those of you who’ve not been paying attention the back story is here. Anyway, after all the fun and games with nPower with the bills and the demands and the final demands and the re-estimated bills and the real bills and the refunds and the apologies and the here’s £25 because we screwed up I was bombarded with a load of letters telling me how sorry they were, what they were going to do and a cheque for the aforementioned amount of £25. I promptly filed these and lost them.

I was toying with the idea of writing some indignant letter complaining that they’d promised me a cheque but it never turned up. OK, so not strictly true, but it’s not like I’d cashed the old cheque and they could check their systems and cancel it so I didn’t stiff them out of any more money (other than, perhaps, the cost of doing the above which, quite frankly, they deserve).

Happily (or sadly depending on your point of view) the cheque resurfaced among some other paper that had got muddled up among the stuff to be shredded (the mice go through a lot of shredded paper so I shred everything possible). It’s now been cashed and, hopefully, this is the last dealing that I will ever have with nPower. In the words of Smeagol: We hates them!

So after reading about, and getting excited about¹ the release of iOS 4.2 for my iPhone I promptly went home and forgot all about it. I was reminded this morning by Goron after reading his Facebook status² and thought it would be a fantastic idea to update my phone before heading to work.

Heading upstairs I booted up the big mac, kicked off the update and headed to the shower³. Shaved and showered I headed back into the bedroom to get dressed and check on the progress. Still downloading. Hmmm…

Dressed and with 8 minutes to go on the download I headed downstairs to pack my bag, say goodbye to my wife⁴ and generally finish getting ready for work. Back upstairs… updating firmware with a slowly updating progress bar. Oh, and an alert for it being bin day.

Bins emptied and put out I headed back upstairs. Still updating firmware. Well that’s OK, I still have, oooh, 45 seconds before I need to go. Hmmm…

Coat on. Bag ready, 1 minute past leaving time⁵. Still updating firmware, but very nearly done…

…nearly…

…done. Restarting phone. Great… Hurry up! I’m now 2 minutes late and missing the train is awkward… Hmmm, another progress bar. Now what? At least this one is going faster…

3 minutes late, progress bar is gone… syncing? You’ve just sunk! [sic] Come on, come on, comeoncomeoncomeon! …Done!

Grab phone, shout goodbyes to The Zozo, run out of door, sprint to station, jump on train with about 60 seconds to spare.

So what does iOS 4.2 give me over 4.1? Not sure really. Nothing that I’m going to use before I get home tonight. So why did I nearly make myself miss the train to install it? See point 1 below

¹ Hello, geek
² See point 1, and yes, my friends have geek tendencies.
³ Yes, geeks shower. You’re confusing us with the socially awkward Nerd. Very different beast.
⁴ See. Geek, not nerd.
⁵ No, I couldn’t just leave without my phone. See point 1.

I have, or rather had, two umbrellas. A large, automatic, wind proof, keeps me and the bag dry even in a downpour job and a little-un that lives in my bag. The large one is a bit unwieldy when strapped to my bag for carrying so I tend to only bring it if I know it’s going to rain. After all, if I get caught short there’s the small backup. That said the small one can’t really cope with wind… or heavy rain… or, it would seem, opening.

Yesterday as I walked home improperly attired for the freezing rain and biting winds I decided that deploying the small brolly (the large one having been left at home) might help mitigate some of the negative aspects of the weather. It had other ideas. I fished it out of the bag, pressed the latch to allow me to open it and promptly pulled the handle from the brolly. Since being armed with two halves of a brolly was counterproductive I attempted to reattach the handle, an endeavour that I was successful in but that would ultimately prove to be futile. The damage was now done and the handle would easily disengage from the brolly with the slightest gust of bitterly cold wind.

Faced with little other option I did what any hardened London commuter would do: I looked for a taxi. It’s unfortunate that, pretty though. It is, my route into work yields, on average, 0 taxis on any given day. Instead I thrust my hands in my hoodie pocket, hunkered down and set a new world speed walking record from work to the station.

Today I have the big brolly. And a coat. The little brolly is in the bin and I shall be taking no chances against this winter.