Month: May 2021

Posted on

Digging up the streets

Long time followers of this blog may recall the long and winding story of my journey to a full fibre connection here in Weston Village in Weston-super-Mare.

Having moved from dial-up to an ADSL connection I was well pleased in 2010 when our local exchange was upgraded to FTTC and we could get a fibre connection.

Having moved house in 2012, literally just down the road, we lost FTTC and had to return to ADSL as the (different) cabinet we had been connected to wasn’t enabled for FTTC.

Five long years later we finally saw cabinet 25 getting the upgrade it needed and I could finally return to the fast speeds of FTTC.

Jump forward three years and following further work by BT Openreach I was able to upgrade to FTTP or as it was called Full Fibre resulting in a download speed of 1Gb/s, which was faster than the 30Mb/s I had with FTTC and significantly faster than the 1.3Mb/s ADSL connection we had when we first moved in.

I did think that was the end of the saga, well it was the end of the saga for me, the reality for Weston Village is that there is now a bundle of companies putting in fibre and cable connection. As a result there is a huge amount of roadworks and cable laying across the village. 

This is as you might imagine making a mess of the roads and pavements. 

So I am now also getting bombarded with pamphlets and advertising new fibre and television services.

Will I change, no, happy with the reliability and speed of my current connection.

Posted on

So long and thanks for all the fish

Well six months ago I subscribed to Britbox. I had BT Broadband for just under a month and got an e-mail from BT saying I could have six months free of Britbox.

Well it was bit of a no brainer, six months free for a service I quite liked the look of, so I clicked yes.

I did say in my post.

Will I renew in six months time? I think that depends on what content we’ve watched and whether they refresh the content over the next few months.

Well, here we are six months later and the answer is, will I renew, the answer is sorry no.

The main reason I am saying no is that I am not watching enough of the content to justify the subscription. It’s not that the content isn’t any good, on the contrary there is a bundle of great stuff in the service. The reality was that though I was interested in watching some of the old series, no one else in the household was interested. I don’t really have a lot of time to watch television on my own, so never got round to watching very much of the series or films on the service. In the end when it came down to it, I decided that I would not renew my subscription.

I don’t think the fact that we subscribed to Disney+ back in December has helped, as there are only so many subscription services you can afford. We also have Netflix, so in the end a service had to go, and as the only person watching anything on Britbox, that was the one that needed to go.

I might renew at some later time, but for the moment it’s goodbye Britbox, so long and thanks for all the fish.

Posted on

Making GTA more “realistic”

When I have a spare minute I quite like the odd game of Forza on the Xbox.

I have always thought the graphics were quite good (especially in HD)

However I have been blown away by this video of GTA which uses AI to make it more “realistic”.

Can it be too long before games look as good as real life?

Posted on

But I blocked the Sun….

So I really miss Google Reader and I also miss Flipboard which worked really well with Google Reader. I’ve not really found an alternative that works for me in the same way that combination did.

I do use Apple News, but really don’t see the point of paying £10 a month for access to what appears to me to be The Times and Newsweek!

My main issues with Apple News are:

Over positioning and pushing of Apple News+ stories in an attempt to get you to subscribe to Apple News. So much so that much of the feed appears to be Apple News+ stories that it almost becomes a pointless exercise scrolling through the app.

Another issue is that local news is ignored to the point that news from Weston-super-Mare for example can be weeks or even months old and no new stories. Part of the problem is that Apple News uses mainstream sources for news, which means local news often is sidelined.

My final complaint about Apple News and hence the title of the blog, is that there are buttons you can use to like and unlike stories, and you can block certain news sources as well. However blocking to me, means that you don’t see the news stories at all! Well for Apple News, blocking means still having the news in the feed, but just then placing right there in front of you.

I blocked the source because I didn’t want to see it, so don’t put it in front of me, ever!

I really should be looking at alternatives for Apple News, so what are you using for curating and collating the news?

Posted on

Marines with Jetpacks

Last September I blogged about how the Great North Air Ambulance Service as testing out a jet pack from Gravity Industries.

Now the Royal Marines are doing the same. The Royal Marines are testing out a jet suit, made by Gravity Industries, to assist in Maritime Boarding Operations.