My books on my iPod Touch

With the recent update to ipod software 4.1 finally the device is coming into it's own. The 4.0 software included slug like performance and nothing compelling for this iPod touch user.

However that has been turned around with the 4.1 update. The performance is back to where it should be. Now with the previously announced iBooks application I can put my own .pdf files on the device. There have been apps to put reformatted .pdf files on the iPod but for technical books that is as useless as reading the text with /usr/bin/strings.

After fixing a minor photo sync glitch I can honestly say the device is starting to be rather great.

Gannett

Craft project - covered

Here is an idea for a craft project where you don't have to get your hands dirty and get to use all those expensive applications you have lying around. Recreate your favorite book cover as a work of art for your wall. Using a tidied up scan or artwork from Amazon as the starting point build out the cover using a scable vector art package such as Adobe illustrator or Inkscape. With this one I was lucky enough to get a good quality print of the artwork from the original artist.

Try to find fonts similar to the originals paying attention to the character spacing and alignment. Compose the lettering and artwork in photoshop and print to size required.

My personal favorite is A Touch of Strange by Theodore Sturgeon with the Tim White art work which now graces my wall at 30 * 45 cm.

Cheers

Gannett

Your pension pot is £ 53.

In a recent article in the usually much respected Daily Telegraph printed Quote " The National Association of Pension Funds .... which represents 1,200 pension schemes with 15 million members and assets of £800 million, " EndQuote

Do the maths 15,000,000 members with £ 800,000,000 of assets that works out to each member having asset backing of £ 53 each. Looks like a poverty stricken retirement for us all. Even if that asset number was supposed to be billions ( 1000 Million ) that just boosts the assets per member to just £ 53,000. At current annuity rates that's an yearly income of £ 3260 for a 60 year old bloke. I think I currently spend that per month.

Cancel that gold watch its a cheepo Timex for you. On the other hand maybe a better plan is to fondle a contractor and get a $ 12 million pay off.

Gannett

FGW Live by the fine book, die by the fine book.

I hate companies that fine and charge the public for transgressions of there rules but will not pay a fine when they break there own rules. These companies are hypocritical s**ts.

For example ...

I am trying to charge FGW (First Great Western) a penalty notice because the ticket machine sold me the wrong ticket for a journey.

The ticket machines do not offer the cheapest available fare for any given journey. They do not apply group discounts even when you buy three identical tickets at the same time for the same day of travel. Nowhere on either the website or by the machine do they state that "cheaper tickets" may be available at the manual ticket window.

I think it is only fair that when FGW sells you the wrong ticket that they should pay a fine and refund the difference between the paid and actual cost. They are quick enough to fine passengers caught with the wrong tickets so live by the fine book die by the fine book.

Gannett

IT makes you go AAARRGH

Lets face it, IT can really make you go bonkers. There are just so many ways that your PC can screw you over. Here are just a few :

• Monday morning snooze fest - reboot at the start of the week or month and every bit of AV and configuration control software forgets it's history.
• 1/2 started hang - the march of icons hangs, the problem is the next icon that has not appeared yet how does that help diagnosing the problem ?
• Scan mania - searchIndexer, AVscans, Google desktop, system configuration checkers; why is that they all want to scan the machine at the same time ?
• Backup of death - you just want to save your data but the very process of copying the data makes the machine unavailable for normal use.
• Flash past options during the boot cycle - Please choose between booting on a) windows b) something sensible .... opps too late snooze you loose, no time to wait the damm thing just boots what it whats to.
• Legacy applications that break after OS upgrades.
• Legacy websites that break after browsers upgrades.
• Poor websites that only work in certain browsers for no good reason.
• Predictability of restart - every one needs to reboot once in a while, why is the process so unpredictable ending up with random sets of services and process running.
• Upgrade leap frogs - Reinstall an application, an auto update is suggested, update the application, an auto update is suggested, rinse and repeat. Acrobat reader did that every step from 10.0.2 all the way up to 10.14.

Damm that IT that makes you go AAARRRGH.

The only antidote to this madness is of course the "It Crowd" now available on box set at Amazon. :-)

Cheers

Gannett

Gannett's law of internet shopping

"Whenever multiple dependent items are ordered from the internet, they will arrive in the most inconvenient order."

For example if you order a camera outfit the first arrive will be the case, then the camera, then the batteries, and only finally the memory chip needed to actually take pictures.

Gannett

Endowment policies - Keep the profits - dump the cost

The sorry tales describing the failure of UK Endowment policies to deliver on their promises are well documented. What is not so widely recorded is how the insurance and endowment providers managed to keep the profits and dump the risks on the policy holders.

The promise of an endowment policy was to pay off a house debt at a predicted time in the future by means of regular payments invested over time with (the same) insurance company. In addition to that there was a life insurance component that would pay back the debt in the event of an early demise.

The insurance company get from the deal, regular premium payments split between commission, life insurance premiums and cash to invest. The policy holder gets life cover ( that only really benefits the mortgage debt owner ) and a share in possible future profits of a fund he does not control and cannot influence.

When things started to go wrong in the 90's and 00's and the returns from the investments did not match the generous projections upon which the policies were sold, the insurance companies dumped the risk on the customers and just gave up on the moral obligation of meeting the target returns for the policies. The colour coded letters being your guide to their abject failure. What they did not do was reduce the management charges on the investment funds, reduce or remove the cost of the life insurance premiums ( many people would have alternative cover available) or anything that actually alleviated the shortfall costs to the policy holder.

At the time the provision of cheaper monthly payments just drove up house inflation giving no more purchasing leverage as everyone else had the same deal. Basically the payments were cheaper because the debt was not being paid back. The actual overhead costs of the policies, life premiums, selling commissions, and investment "management" charges are obscure or not disclosed leaving the policy holders in the dark about the internal financing of endowment. There is no option to challenge the life companies to tighten-up on costs which would help to meet the loan repayment due.

They promised to pay for your house, you will be lucky to get the price of a second hand car out of most endowment policies. Given that may folks will still have the entire original house debt, will have paid the full interest on that debt for 25 years and will have put in premiums to the endowment policy on top, this all adds up to the Great British housing finance rip off.

Gannett

See also this BBC article

Technical support in 3 stages ( not easy )

There are three stages to the technical support process. Follow these for good service delivery. See if your supplier follows theses critical stages on your next call.

• Knowing.
• Understanding.
• Predicting.

Knowing is about getting a good picture of the situation, gathering the evidence, logs and environment. Knowing is more than just the technical aspects of the situation. Registering the impact of the issue on the customer and consequences of the issue is as vital. That will be the driver for the pace of intervention.

Understanding is built buy pulling the knowledge from the gathered evidence and placing that along side a detailed insight to the environment in which the situation arose. The situation could be a PC failure, Data centre outage or a car that won't start. Unless there is good understanding, technical support is just Googling, "been there done that" and guess work. Lets not pretend a lot of tech support can be done with just a browser, research and good set of documents but moving beyond first line take understanding of product, environment and the interactions that bind them.

Predicting is vital to the technical support process and is more than just guess work. Based on a clear knowledge of the problem, an understanding of what changes can be done to vary the situation, prediction will provide the answer. Sometimes that prediction is based on hard logic and sometimes a combination of intuition and research but you can be sure that the techs that can effectively predict the outcome of their recommendations close more cases first time. Predicting, at it's best, is as near to science as tech support comes. A few experiments may be needed to set the direction but that last interaction along the lines of "This *will* solve your problem" is a thing of beauty. The "will" is emphasized because if you get a "could", "should", "might" the outcome is not certain.

Cheers

Gannett