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Will we get Virgin Media cable?

Weston Village by James Clay

On the other side of the village…

I like how Weston call their new housing developments villages, this conjures up images of a village green, a local post office, a pub and a red phone box.

Reality is that this is a modern housing estate, though has to be said with an ancient communication infrastructure relying on old copper cables!

It is no surprise that when builders come in and build a new housing estate they provide electricity, gas, water and sewage, but when it comes to connectivity, they fall back to the trusted copper cables.

Why when a new housing estate is built they can’t install fibre straight in, I will never know. Though recent press reports indicate that this may now happen… only taken ten years.

But back to the other side of the village, across the main railway line which splits the village (we do get steam trains on that line, but this isn’t Titfield Thunderbolt railway lines, no this is high speed GWR and CrossCountry) we have seen Virgin Media come in, dig up the roads and pavements and install Virgin cabling to the houses there.

There isn’t much to discover on the web about Virgin Media and what will be available, according to the website, they say it’s not in their plans… seems strange to spend lots of money on the infrastructure to connect homes, but never actually connect them up! I expect it will be available shortly, and I wonder what sort of stuff will be on their fibre cables? In some parts of Bristol for example, we have 200Mbs connections, though I think that Virgin would also like you to take their TV packages as well, something that puts me off them, as I don’t watch that much live TV and prefer BBC iPlayer, Netflix or Amazon Prime.

What has got me wondering, now they have installed cable on the other side of the village, will they cross the railway line and do our side of the village, will they get us some decent internet connectivity, as BT Openreach have consistently failed to do so. There are some CATV covers quite close (and on our side of the railway line) but not sure if they are anything to do with Virgin Media, or even if they are related to any possible roll out of Virgin Media Cable.

Of course no news on the Virgin Media website, so we shall have to wait and see.

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Reducing Roaming Costs

Royal Hospital Kilmainham

Last week I was in Dublin for the LILAC 16 conference. The last time I was in Ireland was in 2012. Back then I was on an EE contract and when I arrived at Dublin Airport I tuned flight mode on, on my iPhone as I didn’t want to incur huge roaming charges. There was quite a few press stories (and still are now and again) on people taking their smartphones abroad and racking up huge charges in their phones because of the way modern phones use data. I spent the week using wifi and making the odd call home when needed.

Since then there has been new EU legislation on roaming charges. I also have moved away from EE and have a new contract with Three using an iPhone 6S Plus. The contract gives me unlimited data on the phone as well as unlimited texts and a generous number of minutes, well who uses their phones for making calls these days?

So before this visit to Dublin I checked the Three website and was pleasantly surprised to find out that I could use my phone abroad with no extra costs!

So before this visit to Dublin I checked the Three website and was pleasantly surprised to find out that I could use my phone abroad with no extra costs!

Though I have an unlimited plan, there are some restrictions when using my plan abroad.

If you have all-you-can-eat data you can use up to 12GB. If you have all-you-can-eat texts you can send up to 5,000 texts.

So during my visit I was able to easily join the Three Ireland network, make calls, send texts and use data with no problems or worries. Though it has to be said the UCD eduroam wifi network was excellent and faster than the Three 3G network, whilst the 3G was faster and more reliable than the hotel network. As I was there only three days, the 12GB allowance was more than enough.

After I got back I got a text from Three. According to them I saved £56.36 which was nice.

According to them I saved £56.36 which was nice.

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20 years later…

Back in the mid 1990s Apple released this video about their vision for the future and included a tablet that is reminiscent not just of the iPad, but also the iPad Pro.

There are a couple of things to note, the drag and drop planning, the sharing of content and ideas and using mobile devices to capture stuff (today we’re using mobile phones and tablets for this).

I like watching these videos to see how far we haven’t come and how far we have.

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Do you want to know how to send e-mail?

Do you want to know how to send e-mail?

In 1984 this was not as easy as it is now, but luckily we had the Thames TV programme Database to tell us how.

Also watch the end for a data transmission for the BBC Micro, you could record to a tape recorder (or VCR) and then load onto your computer using a tape player!

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Whirling your iPhone around

One of those cinematic moments that sticks out was the bullet-time scenes in The Matrix. Since then the technique has been used in a range of films, and in the past has involved multiple cameras, tracks, lots of tech and timing!

Now with just an iPhone, a piece of string and a plastic glider you can create some amazing videos. Though not as easy it sounds, did require a fair bit of thinking and experimentation. You can see the process in this fun video.

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Streaking on the Pogo

Polaroid Pogo printer

A few weeks back I had a problem with my Pogo printer printing while in my bag and the paper getting jammed in the print head (the heating element). I managed to clear the jam and when I did a test print, all seemed fine.

Using the Pogo yesterday the prints were coming out with streaks across the prints.

Pogo print

As you might think my first reaction was that I had a damaged print head. I printed a few prints, all had the streaking issue.

So I did start thinking about replacing it with a newer Pogo model.

Reflecting overnight I realised I might need to clean the print head. I recall reading an issue with dust on the heating element causing streaking. I had left the printer for a few weeks without using it over the Christmas break.

The solution was to clean the print head was to use the blue “cleaning” card that comes with each new pack of paper. Place it at the bottom of the pile of paper and as it passes through the printer apply a little pressure back and forth over the top of the printer where the print head is.

You may need to do this two or more times, depending on how dusty your printer is. I was lucky enough to get away with a single pass through.

I then printed a new picture, the result was a print with no streaks.

Pogo print

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Tech Stuff – Top Ten Blog Posts of 2015

Not too many posts on the tech blog this year,  surprised though that the post  Google Glass is Dead, or is it… didn’t make the top ten!

Looking at fonts especially those designed for comic strips was the tenth most popular posting in 2015. Written in 2010 it was about the excellent Comic Book Fonts available. Read the post Comic Book Fonts.

Thinking about the Apple TV back in 2012 was the ninth most popular post on the blog. Apple TV Thoughts was quite a long post on my reflection on the Apple device.

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The eighth post is from 2008 when Apple added free episodes to the iTunes Store. The high ranking for this post is probably down the blog post title: Free iTunes TV Shows (on UK iTunes Store).

A few years ago my HP printer died when I replaced the inks. The seventh most read post is about my dead printer. My printer is dead!.

HP PhotoSmart B110a

I haven’t done a podcast choice for a while now, but the sixth most popular post on the blog was the second in the series, Podcast Choice #02 – Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4. Quite a popular post as people seem to keep wanting to have my copies of the shows I have downloaded over the years through iTunes.

Comic Life is one of my favourite apps on the Mac, but once I lost my styles and that is at number five. Where are my Comic Life Styles?

Wifi makes an appearance at number four, with my experiences at a Haven Holiday Camp. Haven no wifi.

More Wifi this time with my experiences with BT Wifi networks resulted in the third most read post, called I don’t like BT FON.

In November 2014, we finally got free wifi on First Great Western trains, and my post about this, Finally, free FGW wifi on the train was the second most popular blog post in 2015.

Cadbury Twirl Bites QR Code

I use to post a lot of posts on QR Codes and the most popular post the year was this one from January 2015 about the ones you found on Cadbury chocolate bars. Cadbury QR Coding and Twirling.

Happy New Year and all the best for 2016.

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iPhone 6 Filmmaking Tips and Tricks

Nice useful video with some tips and tricks when using an iPhone to make films.

I am still astounded by the fact that I can use a device, as small and as cheap as the iPhone to create, shoot, edit and share films on. It wasn’t that long ago, that you needed a lot more kit and software to do all this.

If you have an older iPhone, you can still do much of this.

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“Hey Siri, give us a hint.”

Apple has sent out their invites for their “annual” iPhone release.

Hey Siri, Give Us a Hint

If you ask Siri on your iPhone, to give you a hint, you get some quite witty responses.

IMG_1001

IMG_1002

IMG_1003 - Version 2

IMG_1004

As well as new iPhones, the rumours also say there may be a new Apple TV. That I wouldn’t mind to replace my old 720p model.

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Dusting off the Pogo





Polaroid Pogo printer

Many, many years ago I went out, after listening to people on the Twitter, and purchased a Polaroid Pogo printer, well according to the Twitter it was six years ago in 2009.

I bought it for £50, though it soon fell in price to £17…

I did use it for a while, but there were some core reasons why it never really clicked for me, partly the size of the prints, just 2” x 3” which was too small for most things. Couldn’t really see a practical use for such small prints, even if they were stickers. The other main reason was that the quality of the prints was quite poor in comparison to the HP photo printer I had at the time. So like many other devices after the novelty had rubbed off and the curiosity value had waned, it went into the cupboard.

It was recently though that after making notes in a my new work notebook (trying out visual note taking for project planning) that I realised I actually wanted to include a diagram in my notes. I could have attempted to draw the diagram, but I am not that good at drawing clear diagrams. Also in this case I wanted the actual diagram, not a drawn representation of the diagram. I then remembered the Pogo printer and I wondered…

I had to connect it to the power adapter and remember that the easiest way to do this was to send it the image file over Bluetooth. I was actually quite surprised and impressed that it worked.

I then realised how useful it would be for making notes, well supporting handwritten notes. I could use it to print off slides from Powerpoint presentations, diagrams from said presentations, covers of reports (as visual reminders), images as visual cues for notes, cartoon strips (usually xkcd) even photographs of locations where meetings or events were been held.

There are some challenges in using it. It only likes JPGs and only in 4:3. It will print other ratio but expect to get some unexpected cropping. One strange outcome is that square images (like those created in Instagram) come out in portrait mode.

The most consistent way of printing has been sending files from my Mac to the printer via Bluetooth. I have had success in doing this with a Windows 7 laptop, but the experience has been inconsistent and some days it just won’t work! Alas because of the Bluetooth restrictions imposed by Apple, you can’t print to it from an iOS device such as the iPhone or the iPad. Having said that, LG released a ZINK printer that utilises an iOS App to enable you to print using your iPhone. It should be said that the process works fine with an Android phone.

Aa a result if a diagram is in PNG format and not in 4:3 ratio then you need to use an image editing package to ensure it will print correctly. Likewise if you export a wide screen Powerpoint presentation as JPGs, you again need to adjust the size of the image (canvas size) so that it all prints and ensure that the Pogo doesn’t crop the slide image.

The ZINK paper it uses isn’t easily available on the high street, so I just bought some on Amazon, watch though as the prices vary quite a bit, I did manage to find 70 sheets for £8.99 which was reasonable.

So far I have found using the Pogo printer a really useful tool in supporting my note taking and planning. I am not sure I would go out and buy one just for this, I was lucky I had it in the cupboard, but they do go for quite cheap prices on eBay if you are interested.