Posts

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Problems with roaming in Portugal

Following some issues with roaming in Spain in 2022 I have been a little concerned about travelling abroad and if I would have connectivity issues. After Spain though, I had travelled to Ireland and Germany and both times everything just worked.

When I arrived at Faro Airport, my phone connected without issue to the MEO network and I was connected.

However what I wasn’t expecting was that twenty four hours later I would get a text from Three that I had used 80%of my data allowance of 12GB.

I have a Three contract with unlimited calls, unlimited texts, and unlimited data. As this is a pre-October 2021 contract I am able to use all those allowances when roaming, but there is a 12GB fair use limit. On all my previous visits abroad, I have never come close to reaching that limit.

So I was somewhat surprised to find that I had used it nearly all up within a day.

I am not sure why, but my suspicion was that iCloud Photos was the culprit, or iCloud Backup.

So first I turned off mobile data and then I went into Settings -> Mobile Data and turned off all the apps which could use mobile data. There were a lot. 

Of course with unlimited data back in the UK, I never need to worry about apps using data.

Alas the hotel doesn’t have free Wi-Fi (well it does in reception) but in the rooms there is a charged for service.

Once in the plane (and in flight mode) I enabled mobile data for all my apps so when I landed back in the UK I would be back where I was when I left.

Towards the end of the week I felt more confident in using mobile data. In the end I never used all the 12GB allowance, but it did make me think about how I will be using a phone if and when I go abroad again.

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Also not working

When I was considering an electric vehicle, I was concerned about where I could charge the car. Having failed to use the chargers at Queensway in Worle, I had seen that there electric charging points in the Carlton Street Car Park in Weston-super-Mare.

You can imagine my disappointment when I headed into town to to park at the Carlton Street Car Park and use their charging stations and they weren’t operational. There was no indication why they weren’t working, and no information on if and when they would be operational again.

So, I drove round to Tesco and parked in their car park instead.

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Couldn’t get them to work

When I was considering an electric vehicle, I was concerned about where I could charge the car. I had seen electric charging points around Weston, including some in the Queensway shopping centre in Worle, next to Aldi.

On a shopping trip I had planned to use these charging points. They did not work with my contactless debit card. However, despite downloading an app, I couldn’t get them to work. 

Having spent too much time trying to get them to work, I gave up and headed off to park in a “normal” space.

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Charging in Bristol

Drove to Bristol. Parked at a Health Club and Spa to charge the car. Checked with reception if I needed to register my car, I didn’t. I then went to plug the car in. I couldn’t get it to charge, so moved to the second charger, this time it worked.

I had some jobs to do, so I did those before heading back to the car. I didn’t do a full charge, but drove off to Cabot Circus.

I had intended to top up my charge using their charge points, but they were all full. So, I had to park in a “normal” space. I had sufficient charge to get home.

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Emergency Steering Function doesn’t work

Finally worked out why I was getting alerts with my Funky. I had the Emergency Steering Function enabled. This feature will ensure that you don’t drift off the road.

Well let’s just say it doesn’t work. Well it does work, just that it doesn’t work with the roads I drive on. After doing some “testing” I found that the system wasn’t getting confused with the lines (or lack of lines) on the road. It was also inconsistent.

So now I am turning it off when I start driving. I was also frustrated to see that despite switching it off, the car doesn’t remember that setting, so I have to turn it off every time I get into the car.

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Uninstalling Wireless NIC on the iMac

Back in November 2020 following the installation of FTTP I did buy a TP-Link Archer T3U AC1300 mini wireless adapter for my iMac which was too far away to be cabled to the router. 

This though was no faster than the built in Airport card, however I could use it on my MacBook which had a slower card and I have managed to achieve speeds in excess of 400Mbps, but not quite the 800Mbps I was hoping for.

In the menu bar though on the iMac was the remnants of the Wireless NIC installation. I never really worried about it, and clicking it just told me the TP-Link Archer T3U AC1300 mini wireless NIC wasn’t installed. I knew that.

However I did recently decide to see if I could remove it from the menu bar.

What you need to do is hold the Option key when clicking the icon in the menu bar, and then you get the following menu item.

So I clicked Uninstall USB-WiFi.

I was presented with a confirmation screen.

I clicked Yes.

I now no longer have the wireless NIC icon in my menu bar and the driver is no longer installed as well.

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First time charging

Drove to work today in Funky and at work set the car to charge. This was not as simple and as easy as I thought it was going to be. I think this was partly as it wasn’t as simple as plugging in the cables and the car charging. However I got there in the end. I didn’t though manage to get to a 100% charge.

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It has arrived

After much thought my new car has arrived. It is a GWM ORA Funky Cat First Edition.

I had been thinking about making the move to electric for some time. In the end I went with a GWM Ora Funky Cat. I will be writing about my experiences with it and publishing them on the blog.

This is a fully electric car and I chose the red and black model.

I’ve never driven an electric car before. The Ora Funky Cat is an electric car, so is also an automatic. Also I’ve only driven an automatic once before, and that was a hire car in Scotland back in March 2006 and that was a (huge) Volkswagen Passat estate. The Funky Cat also has an electric parking brake, so no handbrake. 

It was with some trepidation that I sat in the car and drove off…

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My Photo Stream is Dead

My Photo Stream stopped working on the 26th June. Yesterday I got an email from Apple which said it had been shut down.

This is a quick notice that My Photo Stream has now been officially shut down.

I really liked My Photo Stream, but time moves on. I have moved over to iCloud Photos instead.

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Amazon Fresh to close

Read this article on BBC News: First Amazon Fresh till-less grocery store in UK closes.

Amazon’s first till-less store in the UK, which opened in west London just over two years ago, has been closed. The Amazon Fresh shop opened in Ealing Broadway in March 2021 and was the online giant’s first “just walk out” grocery store outside of the US. It permanently shut on Sunday along with two other Amazon Fresh stores, in Wandsworth and East Sheen.

I used it once, wasn’t that impressed. From a technological perspective, yes it was very clever and worked a treat. The system did exactly what is said it would do.

The main reasons I wasn’t impressed was that, partly I felt I couldn’t pick anything up to check labels, just in case the system didn’t “work”. The main reason was the variety and choice on offer. They did have a good range of stuff, but it wasn’t really stuff that I wanted to buy.

The whole shop has now been boarded up.