I’ve discussed what BT has done make sure the athletes, journos and hangers on have a great communications experience during the Olympics. That’s fine. For me though the biggest test is going to be what kind of experience we punters have. There will be far more of us and we will be wanting to upload stuff and tweet just as much as the highest profile media type.
Category: End User
End User
It’s been a tough one but boy have we got some great pics in the trefor.net phone photo competition. The standard of entries was very high and the judges have had to be brutal in the shortlisting process.
For total transparency the judges were myself and Scott Wroe – Timico’s head of graphic design. Neither of us entered the competition ourselves. We had around 150 entrants and although I did suggest that we would have a separate class for “edited” photos in reality most of the entries were straight off the camera so we have bundled them all into one single mega category. If you entered but have been left out of the short list I’m sorry about that but we have tried to be as objective as we can.
I did get a few suggestions for a polling process but to keep things simple and to allow you to give your views on the photos I’ve decided that voting will take place using the “comment” method. In other words chose a single winner and leave a comment telling me which picture you think that winner should be. By all means tell us what you think or how you went about chosing that particular photo as your winner.
You have until 5pm Lincolnshire time on Friday 27th July which is when the Olympic games start and when I go on holiday. I will count up the votes at that time and tell you who the winner is.
One vote per person please. A person is defined by a discrete email address. By all means get your friends to vote for you. Please don’t abuse the process by conjuring up multiple email accounts and voting for yourself many times. This is a white hat blog and its readers are trusted.
I will award as many prizes as looks right. If there are 5 photos that get far more votes than the rest then there will be 5 prizes – Timico mugs. The standard of the competition has been so high that it merits a better first prize than the mug. I will take the winner out for a curry or simlar provided that person is within sensible easy reach. Perhaps we can meet in London or somewhere.
We have had entries from as far afield as India, Indonesia and New Zealand. A meal out won’t be practical in these cases so if you win you will have to settle for the mug and the deep satisfaction of knowing that you have won a major international photographic competition which will be forever visible as long as this blog remains on the world wide web.
My thanks to all of you who took the trouble to enter and good luck to all those on the shortlist. Get voting…
PS I’ll sort out the prizes when I get back from holiday.
Just as I took ownership of my Samsung Galaxy S3 my S2 died on my. Good timing? The battery ran down over the weekend and it would not recharge.
I still needed the phone. I sent it off for repair. The repairers came back and said it had evidence of water damage. I can tell you that that phone has not come into contact with water. However you can see problems if you use the phone in a damp environment. I my case it is likely to have been listening to BBCRadio4 using the Tune In Radio app over the internet whilst having a shower. The phone has not been “in” the shower – just in the shower room.
This is somewhat unacceptable. Phones should not be this vulnerable. For now I don’t think there is anything to be done but designs need ruggedizing for the future. I’m going to see if I can fix it myself. Stay tuned but for the moment keep your phone out of the bathroom.
We can see Lincoln prison from the back of our house. Last night there was a helicopter out there circling for some time. I took a a pic but it was too dark.
I tweeted “helicopter circling Lincoln prison – wonder what’s going on”.
This morning I got a reply from @Lincspolice (ie Lincolnshire Police) saying “@tref We were searching for a missing person”
Pretty good proactive PR I’d say. Lots of organisations could learn from them. I’ve followed them. I’m follower number 5,592.
Header photo is the view at dawn from our house over towards Lincoln prison – v arty I think.
Ok guys, on the spur of the moment I have decided to hold a photography competition – open to anyone who cares to enter. There are only a few rules:
- You have to email me a max of 3 photos to tref at trefor.net
- I chose a shortlist – max 10 photos (say)
- I’ll come up with a polling mechanism/widget that allows blog readers to vote for their favourite
If we can get enough entries byFriday 1pmEntries due by close of play Friday 13th July.
I’ll see what I can come up with re prizes – say 1st, 2nd, 3rd. The photos can be of any subject matter – it’s up to you. You decide how arty etc. Even I can enter as it is going to be a crowd based judging.
By request I’ve added a second category to accommodate people who want to supply edited shots (instagram etc)
If anyone can suggest a suitable polling widget please let me know.
Good luck & happy snapping.
PS don’t forget to tell me what phone you used. I’ve had a few requests to extend the deadline – this is reasonable – it was done on the spur of the moment – I’ve extended it a week to Friday 13th & judging will take place over the following week with the result decided at 1pm on the 20th.
PPS please tweet
I’m sat in the central lobby of the Houses of Parliament waiting for a 3pm meeting with my local .MP Karl McCartney.
Time was, not so long ago, if I had my mobile out a burly member of Her Majesty’s finest would have ticked me off. Not these days.
Only problem is there is next to no signal. I don’t know how MPs put up with it.
I’m getting a lot of traffic for the post on the Telephone Preference Service. It’s no surprise. If your house is anything like ours we get scam calls on a daily basis. Someone needs to do something about it.
We have varying strategies for dealing with the scammers in our house. These range from keeping them hanging on for 10 – 15 minutes to just swearing at them and telling them to “go away”.
I favour the latter but the choice is yours.
The leap second caught me a bit by surprise over the weekend. I guess I knew it was coming but had forgotten all about it.
Some well known sites that rely on accurate time synchronisation were caught out by the change. These apparently include Reddit, FourSquare, Yelp, LinkedIn, Gawker and StumbleUpon.
There is a bit of noise about this in the media. One might ask “do I care?”. In fact I don’t. None of those sites are of any real interest and none of them are critical to my existence.
What I am more concerned with is the fact that the world has a central clock called Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). I realise that it is useful but it does seem like another attempt to organise our lives. Everything happens so quickly these days.It’s all about time.
Really time is not what it should all be about. It should be about contentment. If the world was run on the basis of contentment then everyone would be a lot happier instead of rushing around like blue arsed flies.
At this point I’m going to stop – I’ve just spotted early symptoms of hippyness and flower power. I have things to do, schedules to meet, money to make etc etc etc. If you want to know more about the leap second Google it – I don’t pretend to be as informative as Wikipedia and readers of this blog are in any case well read and highly intelligent individuals who know all this stuff 🙂
That’s all…
Categories
No swearing day? WTF?
Taking a look at the narrow letterbox shaped photo 
that is the header to this post you might be forgiven for thinking that it was a police identity parade. The strange thing is that the guys, Ashley, Carl and Luke are smiling. Clicking on the photo you will see that they are Timico staff, proudly wearing their branded shirts.
The mirth is becasue they have just had a haircut after betting that one of colleagues, Adam Rutter (photo withheld to protect
the innocent) could not go for a whole shift without swearing. I know, I know wtf do I hear you say?
Well Adam, who is a really nice guy is an inveterate swearer and undertook to maintain expletive silence in order to raise cash for the “Dogs Trust”. Adam brings his dog into work every day and keeps him in the kennel in the data centre car park.
The guys figured he didn’t have a hope so said that if he succeeded in going the whole day without upsetting Mary Whitehouse they would have their hair shaved off.
Tbh they really needed the haircut. They will benefit from huge side effects of the act of generosity – their consumption of shampoo will plummet and whenever they go out on the town will be able to squeeze in that extra beer because they won’t have had to spend as much time “doing their hair”.
Thanks to Faye Hemingway for performing the shearing – she has undoubted skills in that direction. Thanks also to Graham Busby for the photographs.
They raised a total of £250 which is great – if you want to chip
in you can do so here.
You can also check out the kennel here.
Well done to everyone involved – great sports.
Life is such a wonderful journey but it is short
and needs living to the full. If you need any affirmation of this take a look at this rose. It featured in a post a couple of weeks ago.
In the picture on the left it is just about to come to its prime. Two very short weeks later it is a picture of decay, purpose served, perhaps. Enjoy it while you can…
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Dylan Thomas
It rained yesterday. It’s been in the news. Trains cancelled or stranded unable to move due to “water on the line” – millions of gallons of it. In Lincolnshire we saw 33mm of rain fall in one day in a month that has an average rainfall of 52mm – for the whole month that is. Gigantic crashes of thunder reverberated around the Timico HQ building in Newark and flashes of lightening lit spectacularly the town darkened by the black anvil clouds above. The good honest folk of the borough took shelter wherever it could be found. Police cruised the streets in 4x4s interrogating the occasional stray pedestrian as to their sanity or motives. Noah would have been in his element.
So of course I went to play golf!
I left that last sentence as a one liner on its own for effect. Truth be told we played golf later in the day after the rains had gone. It was a warm summers evening in Belton Woods where the (by now) annual Timico golf night out took place. I hadn’t played for a while so took a few holes to get going but managed to get back into the groove. The course was somewhat waterlogged but my trusty Dryjoys kept my feet completely dry and a great time was had by all.
The videos below represent live action putting scenes of me, Kirsty Woodman and Dean Bruce, neither of whom had played before but did very well. That is all.
It is only recently that I mentioned taking a Gig’s worth of photos at the Lincolnshire show using my Samsung Galaxy S3. Well this photo mania madness must stop. Last night I rattled off almost 2.5Gigs worth. Storage is cheap but not that cheap and I have to consider what on earth I will do with all these photos and videos.
The Galxy S3 has a “best photo” mode so that when I shoot in burst mode it deletes 19 out of 20 shots and keeps the best one. This is sensible. Burst mode is good for taking lots of fast changing scenes and for those with limited photographic skills – “there is bound to be one good one amongst all that lot”.
The trouble is I like to take my time over chosing the best photo so I don’t use that particular feature. The problem is then exacerbated bythe fact that I never have the time to sort through the pictures. I’m probably going to live with it and convince myself that storage is not that expensive.
The problem then arises in how do I tag objects in the photos. Google et al seem to let you tag people in photos and they then identify them in others. I have shied away from this for privacy purposes but I may end up tagging – especially if I can do it privately on my PC.
The photo below was carefully selected from the 2.5GB taken yesterday. I think it is a very artistic shot of the rescue boats taken at dusk on the Brayford Pool in Lincoln during the Olympic fireworks display. In the style of the Impressionists wouldn’t you say?
I don’t know about you but I for one am really
looking forward to the Olympics. I have tickets for three sports – footballing in Cardiff, Kayaking in Lee Valley North London and High Diving at the Aquatics centre in the Olympic Park. I could have bought more in the last release, including the much joked about beach volleyball but at £95 just for the ticket I decided I had to draw the line somewhere.
My own Olympic story started on July 6th 2005, the day the winning bid was announced. I was in London, doing some presentations in the City. That afternoon we celebrated alongside everyone else in town, a victory tinged only with
a slight hangover as the next day London was under attack with the July 7 bombings.
Some time later I went on a sewer tour to look at the huge amount of latent communications capacity there is in the fibres running underground in the capital. I was told that the sewer runs right through the Olympic Park. I don’t fancy being a guards having to check down there during the games. Then for the last year or so the ISP industry has been starting to think about its requirements to keep the network running during the games. It’s mostly about bandwidth.
The 2012 Olympic games is going to be all about information handling. Of course it is also about winning medals, taking part and all the good sporting stuff but this will be embedded in a communications wrap the like of which has never been seen before.
In the UK the communications build up has been massive and not without its glitches – the ticketing website and process has attracted a lot of criticism. Now that tickets are being dispatched hopefully that memory will fade.
The serious communications infrastructure preparations have been going on for much longer. BT kicked off its network planning in July 2009 and most UK ISPs will now have
their plans in place on how to cope with the growth in internet usage during the games – basically by buying more bandwidth from BT.
The media build up has also kicked in big time as the torch makes its way around the country. A quick glance at the Facebook page of “Olympics” shows it has 2.8 million “likes”. The London 2012 page has fewer at 379k likes – clearly a newer page and a slightly lesser brand though far more specific to this summer’s needs.
There is a Facebook App “London 2012“ which with only 900 monthly users looks decidedly unofficial although there are lots of links to genuine Olympic resources. Then there is “ London Olympics 2012 “ which is clearly unofficial with only 3,435 likes. I’m not really here to comment on whether something is official or not, the fact is there must be a huge number of social media pages dedicated to the event.
Last night I went to the Olympic Torch event in Lincoln. I was a proud dad as my daughter was dancing as part of the entertainment. Everyone there had a fantastic time. There is clearly a huge amount of support for these games in the UK.
Most of the entertainment was provided by three of the Olympic sponsors: Samsung, Lloyds TSB and Coca Cola.
The Samsung act was particularly impressive because of its use of social media. It included “Twist” and “Pulse”, apparently a popular dance duo. It was at this point that I realised how out of touch I was. I had pushed myself to the front of the crowd of 10,000 people as I wanted a good view of my daughter dancing. I found myself there with “the kids” – mostly 12 – 16 year olds I’d guess. They knew all the acts and all the words to all the songs.
Anyway at the end of the act Twist (or Pulse – you tell me 🙂 ) went on about how these were the “connected games”. All the dancers took out a Samsung phone and started to take photos of the crowd. Twist was elevated onto a platform and took a photo of the entire crowd. That’s 9,999 people (should have been 10,000 but my youngest son was playing cricket – beat Scunthorpe U12s by 10 wickets!).
He then told us that the photo had just gone live at Samsung.com/takepart. People were then encouraged to visit the page to tag themselves using their Facebook ID. I did this – you can see me here (somewhere).
Think about this. The torch is visiting 70 locations. If there are 10,000 people on average at each location then that is 700,000 people being encouraged to engage with Samsung online. Everone who tags themselves are effectively providing Samsung with valuable social media marketing data. These people are also all going to tell their friends to take a look at them in the crowd and at the same time they are all uploading their own photos.
There are two types of person going to the Olympics this summer – us and them. The “us” are represented by all the punters, with or without tickets at the venue or milling around just taking in the atmosphere of London.
The “them” camp is divided into competitors, media and the rest of the Olympic family – the hard working folk of Olympic committees around the world over for a junket to oversee the smooth functioning of the games.
These games are likely to be the most technologically rich Olympics we have seen so far. BT has installed a 60Gbps core network in preparation. Despite encouragement from Samsung the heaviest users are going to be the media. 60Gb amounts to 2.7Mbps for each of the 22,000 accredited media personnel at the games. That’s around 30 x maximum usage per connection seen at a typical business ISP and sensibly has a significant amount of headroom built into the capacity requirements.
As we approach the Olympic fortnight I’m going to be taking a more detailed look at the technology that has gone in to making it all (hopefully) a success – both from the point of view of the “Olympic Family” and us normal folk. Stay tuned.
Also check out this video of the Red Arrows flying over the Olympic torch relay event – they are regular visitors to the skies over Lincoln. On this occasion their leader spoke to the crowd over his intercom – uber cool.
The idea for this post was crowd sourced (all 2 of us) 
on Twitter when I mentioned I was going to the Lincolnshire Show. The subject is tractors. Well one tractor in particular. I’m talking about the Steiger STX-440 Quadtrac. You know the beast. It’s manufactured by CaseIH. Also because I know you like this sort of thing I’ve included some photos of tractors down the ages.
Tractors these days are boys toys like no other. I got to sit in the cab although I daren’t touch anything. Partly because it
was £200k’s worth of kit pulling another £60k of trailer. I could have been devastating. Mr Bean would have filled a whole series with the ensuing chaos.
In one sense the romance has disappeared from the tractor world. One man cocooned in his climate controlled (not air-conditioned as I was told more than once) cab, his hydraulic seat smoothing out the bumps so as not to distract him from watching his favourite episode of Emmerdale, can plant 100 – 150 acres of rape seed in one day, depending on the soil type. 
His GPS system, accurate to 2 mm, ensures he covers every inch of field (mixing units here I know) with his ploughing, harrowing, planting weed killing or furtiloizing.
The tractor shown in the photo is one of two used to service the 3,500 acres of Westhall Farm Welton Cliff. Gone is the image of the lone ploughman following behind his horse struggling to plough an acre a day. The STX-440 with a 12/4 plough will do 10 acres an hour. It’s still a one man job mind you and I daresay the ploughman still likes his crust of bread
and cheese with a pickled onion, and no doubt a pint or two of his favourite local ale in the Royal Oak, or Rose and Crown, or Frog and Parrott or whatever it’s called these days.
Comms on board are limited to the GPS, a two way radio and a mobile phone. This surprised me. I thought it would be sending back real time data on progress. Instead the system inputs data onto an SD card (I think – I didn’t see it and Neil the tractor driver called it a microchip) which, when “full”, is then plugged into the farm computer for record keeping. Helen Rainthorpe of Westhall Farm has complete data on what has been done to every field on her farm going back 4 generations. Has the EC been going that long?
One of the fields, note, is 190 acres. It’s dimensions are all programmed into the system and all the driver does is turn the machine around when it gets to the end of the field (he must by
now have seen absolutely every episode of Emmerdale since the year dot). The speed of progress is programmable and normally determined by what the Quadtrack is towing. If the field has a curve then the STX-440 will naturally follow the curve. There is more, If the field spans two counties which than mean two different lots of paperwork the system recognises this when compiling the data.
I don’t know how much diesel it can take but it needs a huge
tank. No miles per gallon here. It’s gallons per mile more like as its Drawbar power (max) is 371.35 hp (276.9kW) consumes 21.8 gallons (82.5l) per hour. Note the 8hp of the Titan steam tractor (photo inset).
If you’re interested the tractor is busy all year round – July until the end of Oct is prime time for wheat for next season. End of Jan to March/April is the time for planting for spring wheat and barley.
In finishing you should note the John Rainthorpe Quadtrac World Record attempt (I have an affinity with world record attempts) – “Most Quadtracs Cultivating In One Field” is taking place at WestHall Farm on 28th July. The event is in aid of Cancer Research – gates open at 11am – record attempt at 1pm. Give them your support – oo arr.
Just got back from the Lincolnshire Show. It’s 
a great day out with the family. I’ve got a lot to talk about but in the interest of getting a post out today I offer a short one with a wood based theme. The sticks in the header are actually biros – I thought it was a good photo and I bought one for my mate Jamie whose birthday party I am going to on Saturday.
The inset photo is of a pint of Tom Wood beer being pulled. Tom Wood is a local Lincolnshire brewery. Excellent stuff. They were also selling Piper’s crisps, another local product.
My diary is rammed tomorrow so look out for a post on tractors on Friday. You know it makes sense.
I was back in my London pied a terre garret last week – the Kings Cross Traveloge (header photo is view from my room lifted from their promotional literature). I was heading out to dinner for the evening but hooked up to the O2 LTE trial service to finish off some stuff.
I was getting 15Mbps down which was good. Seeing as I was going to be out all evening I decided to run a usage test based on 5 video streams. I loaded 3 iPlayer and 2 ITV streams (for a bit of variety – no other reason though I’d consider myself more of a BBC man than ITV – it’s Blue Peter versus Magpie for those of a certain age) and watched the usage grow.
The screenshot below is at the beginning. I’d been online for 39 mins and in that time downloaded 135MB.
Microsoft’s new Surface tablet is all over the news today. Google it – you don’t need a link from me. Apparently it is going to be available in October. That will be 2 1/2 years after the introduction of the iPad.
I can see it fitting into the corporate market – it will just be another laptop type device that will have all the standard security and device management features an IT manager craves. It will aslo fit nicely with Lync – the Microsoft Unified communications product. Also note that they haven’t delivered it yet.
I would imagine however that it won’t be that attractive in the consumer market. Sounds expensive and high end – the iPad already does that. It needs to be cheap and it doesn’t sound cheap.
I would like more tablets scattered around the house but they need to be down at the £100 level.
I get the feeling that it could be quite a crunch time for Microsoft this Christmas. Will the ability to throw a seemingly endless pot of cash at it make the difference?
What do you think?
Because it is father’s day I have special permission
to publish some previously unseen photos of me and my daughter Hannah. They were taken earlier this month at the Sir Joseph Banks conservatory at the Lawn in Lincoln.
As you can see she is the spitting image of me.
I have entitled the first photo “Give us a kiss”. The second is “Where’s my teef?” and the third is “The Cheesy Grin”.
The quality of the composition is clearly of the highest order though the naysayers out there will say it is easy when you have great material to
work with:)
The photos were taken with the Samsung Galaxy S2 – they predate the delivery of the S3.
Hannah is a real sport and although she has almost certainly inherited some wonderful traits her one great misfortune is that she also has my sense of humour.
I say if that is all she has to worry about she will be ok:)
It’s my blog. I decide what goes in.
Here is a picture of the label on the telegraph pole near my house. I still look most days for signs of the cabinet being upgraded to FTTC. Nothing yet. End of June is not looking good. It’s already slipped by three months from end of March to end of June. We’ll see.
Photo taken with Samsung Galaxy S3 (fwiw).
PS don’t ask me to interpret the code – someone might leave a comment explaining.
It’s the weekend. I don’t normally do trefor.net stuff
over the weekend but I have had a very productive day, whistled through the jobs list and more, and am settling down to watch the football with the kids so posting to the blog seems like an useful thing to do.
Annoying though the non functioning headset socket might be the quality of the camera on these new phones continues to impress me. The camera on the Galaxy S3 is pretty much the same as on the S2 apart from some software features such as the burst mode. Notwithstanding this I find myself taking snaps of all sorts of ordinary things just because I happen to have my camera in my pocket.
When I do this I find some interesting things unexpectedly appearing in the photos I take. The red rose on the right for example has green aphids on it. Looking at the photos I can also see what I can only call red aphids. I suspect these insects are colourless and are just showing the colours of the background object.
The next rose still has droplets of water on it after the rain. These photos all use the macro function on the camera.
You are beginning to see what a softie I am. It’s just that I’m so impressed that I can take photos like this. In the “old” days I used to have to take a whole reel of film (36 shots) to get a couple of decent photos. Now, with the screen for me to be able to line up the shot properly and great autofocus
technology I probably only discard two pictures in every 36 I take. One more rose, for luck.
I also had to put in this other ladybird photo. When I took the picture I hadn’t noticed that there was a small spider nearby. I wondered whether the ladybird was after the spider for food. There were plenty of aphids nearby had it but known:)
I liked the contrast between the bright primary red and black of the ladybird with the delicate pastel colourings of the flowers around it.
I’ll have to draw the line on nature shots for now – these pics 
take time to edit.
If someone could tell me what the purple flowers below left are I’d be most grateful. They are in our back garden.
Much as it pains me I have to tell you that the headset socket on my Samsung Galaxy S3 is not working. I found out because during the week I started to net no audio on my phone though it would work in speakerphone mode.
When this first happened I checked all the settings and there was nothing obvious. Switching bluetooth off seemed to do the trick and I put it down to somehow the phone not having unhitched itself from my Parrot car kit. I can see my car from my panoramic office window:)
It must have been a coincidence because it is now happening all the time. In the wee small hours of this morning I woke up and googled the problem. I found an android forum with a thread that showed the same problem on a different model of handset.
If you had been using the headset sometimes the sensor didn’t work to show that the plug was no longer in the socket. I had to wait until morning to confirm this on my phone. My wife Anne would not have been too happy if I had accidentally switched something noisy on the phone during the night.
I can indeed confirm that the problem lies with the headset socket. Nothing in fact works through the headset.
Sigh. Someone on Twitter mentioned that this sort of thing often happens when a phone reaches end of life. Unfortunately this is the wrong end.
Its worth noting I still haven’t finished testing all the features on the Samsung Galaxy S3. The bit where the phone isn’t supposed to switch off doesn’t seem to work all the time and I have supposedly disabled the LED for alerts but it still comes on. Early days for the S3 I guess.
We are about to find out how well the returns system works!
Other Galaxy S3 problems here.
Home Secretary Theresa May launched the draft Communications Data Bill yesterday with an interview on the Radio 4 Today programme. She has also written a foreword to the Bill arguing why we need it.
I have already written arguments against why we should implement this act. All of my previous points remain and I will restate the two most important aspects here.
- Firstly what is being proposed represents a serious threat to our privacy as a nation. The government wants to collect personal information about our private web browsing, phoning, email, tweeting, Facebook and all other internet related communications. They then want to store this information “securely” for one year so that it can be accessed buy anyone granted permission by senior police officers.
I refer you to last week’s LinkedIn password debacle where 6.5 million passwords being securely held on a server were stolen and published on a Russian website. The next time this could be details of websites you visit. It would happen if this Bill moved into law. Guaranteed.
- Secondly the proposed measures will not catch those who the police et al are trying to catch. If you are hell bent on crime you will easily find ways of going undetected on the web.
Here I refer you to the recent court orders for ISPs to block access to Pirate Bay. One of my most visited blog posts this year and certainly high up on the list of search terms covers how to bypass these blocks. The same will be true with criminals looking for anonymity.
I’ve been thinking of whether there is a middle ground here where ISPs collect data on specified targets rather than everyone and subject to court orders. This could work though opponents will argue that once the capability has been put in place it will be abused. My second point above would also apply so the effort might be futile and money spent wasted (it would probably cost almost the same as if we were collecting all the data).
On balance we all need to oppose this Bill. Email your MP with a link to this post.
The guess the name of the Samsung Galaxy S3 phone competition from Monday was somewhat buried in the review. It is one of the least entered megaprize competitions I’ve run. This is possibly because it was buried in a long review of the Galaxy S3 or maybe the chances of winning were slim becasue there are lots and lots of names it could have been.
I’m going to assume both so this is a short post just to highlight the competition. Then I’m going to narrow down the possibilities as to what the name might be by telling you that it has biblical associations.
I’m not going to limit the number of prizes here. The competition is going to run all day and anyone who gets the name right gets a prize. There is also going to be a further prize for anyone who comes up with the most unusual biblical name (I’m the judge and my decision is final1).
This competition is also open to Timico staff. If they turn their noses at the mug then I’ll think of a different internal prize but it’s a mug for everyone else. Btw the one answer I did get on the previous post was “Tref’s phone”. Although it is the name displayed on the locked screen I am after the bluetooth name which is different.
Get guessing.
PS if you have already won a mug in a previous competition I can find a different prize for you.
1 though it isn’t beyond the realms of possibility that I can be bribed on this one but the bribe is almost certainly going to have to be for a lot more than the prize is worth.
You don’t always need a reason to write a blog post. 
I could justify this one as being a demo of a photo taken with my Samsung Galaxy S3 but it is good enough just as a nice photo of a rose. I dedicate this photo to all who blossom and have goodness in their hearts 🙂 Just close your eyes and imagine the scent. Perfect spring perfume.
Little Olympic factoid for you. The last time the Olympics were held in London, in 1948, there were 2,000 press representatives. This time around there are going to be 22,000 media people. Most of them will be over to cover the women’s beach volleyball finals which is why there weren’t many tickets for the rest of us.
You can picture the scene. The small cordoned off area normally called the press box will actually contain the paying punters whilst the rest of it is for the journos and photographers. Those in the cordoned off area will not be allowed to take photos because they will be the few unaccredited persons at the venue.
I’m a bit cross I didn’t think of this earlier. It might have been cheaper to buy a press accreditation (global blog audience etc) than buy actual tickets for events and that almost certainly gives you all areas access to the last night party. The kids could have come along as camera bag carriers etc.
They might have been a bit suspicious when they find out I was just using my Samsung Galaxy S3 with its camera burst mode. Usain would probably come out a bit blurred but it would give you a feel for the event.
Ah well I’ll have to think of that for the next time.
I’ve been using the Samsung Galaxy S3 for three days now. I don’t think you can sensibly rush out a review within hours of getting your hands on a device particularly as these phones are not simple gadgets anymore. They are highly complex and despite any focus on usability and simplicity there is so much to learn and find out about them that it inevitably takes time.
My first concern was somewhat mundane – the size of the phone. The Galaxy S2 was just about ok for me – I struggled to read the top of the screen with my thumb and was worried that the S3 might be significantly bigger and thus harder to reach. This aint the case. Although the S3 is advertised as being bigger it isn’t that much different in real life, which is good. I also sat it next to a Samsung Note and it isn’t much smaller than that either but a lot more usable as a phone. I suspect we are getting the best of both worlds here.
The Samsung Galaxy S3 is otherwise known as the GT-I9300. I know that this is the underlying model number of the phone because whilst trying to name it something to hook up with my Parrot car kit it automatically connected itself. It was easy. All I had to do was enter the car kit pin number.
I couldn’t, in my desire to get going on a Friday evening, find out how to name the phone. It must have been me because when I discussed this with one of the kids the next morning it took him seconds to find out how to do it. I wanted to call the phone “Rosita the Dragon Slayer”. The kids thought that was daft.
I’ve been gazing into that mobile market crystal ball again. I can see nooootthhhinggggg. That’s because all the main phone vendors have sued themselves into the ground in every single market they operate in. This time Samsung is ringing the changes by suing the Australian Patent Commissioner. I don’t need to say more – you can read it yourself on the beeb.
I’m pleased I just got my Galaxy S3 because it is going to remain state of the art for years to come – until the army of corporate lawyers grow so old they trip over their ever lengthening beards, bang their heads against one another and self-destruct. That’s a wake I’d like to attend. It’ll be champagne and caviar all round all paid for out of the rich estates of the dearly departed.
Other than that you aren’t getting an S3 review until Monday although I will say that I have discovered the burst mode on the camera and it is super cool.
Le Samsung Galaxy S3 est arrive. 삼성 갤럭시 S3가 도착했습니다.Mae’r Galaxy S3 Samsung wedi cyrraedd.Որ Samsung Galaxy S3 է ժամանել.وقد وصلت سامسونج غالاكسي S3.આ સેમસંગ ગેલેક્સી S3 આવ્યા છે.Samsung Galaxia S3 iritsi da.Samsung Galaxy S3 gəlib.Samsung Galaxy S3 đã đến.স্যামসাং আকাশগঙ্গা S3 এসেছে.La Samsung Galaxy S3 alvenis.三星Galaxy S3已经抵达.The Samsung Galaxy S3 kominn.سیمسنگ کہکشاں S3 آ گیا ہے.Samsung Galaksi s3 a te rive.An Réaltra Samsung S3 tagtha.Ang Samsung Galaxy S3 ay dumating.Das Samsung Galaxy S3 ist da.Samsung Galaxy S3 прибыло.سامسونگ کهکشان S3 وارد کرده است
Ok folks. As you can see the Samsung Galaxy S3 has arrived and is in my hands. I’m going to kick the tyres over the weekend and give you a considered opinion of it compared with the Galaxy S2.
In the meantime, seeing as it’s Friday afternoon there is a prize for anyone who can tell me which languages (in order of writing) I’ve used in the above announcement. If no one comes in with them all right then the nearest best attempt wins (all assuming I can remember myself).
My wife, whom I dearly love, said to me this morning “I’ve had an idea”. Ordinarily on hearing those words my body is programmed to sit down in a safe place and surround myself with cushions to stop me getting hurt when I fall over. As it happens we were still in bed so I was already in position, so to speak.
She continued: “I think I’m going to get rid of all my recipes and just use the iPad in the kitchen”. She has dozens of folders containing recipes collected over the years. They spill over the shelves in our utility room and are now apparently looking a real mess. Apart from the fact that the utility room will look tidier her point is that most of these recipes are now available online and despite the fact that she has spent hours lovingly filing them into categories – chicken, beef, bread, welsh rarebit – you get my drift – it is still far quicker for her to find the right recipe using the iPad.
I can see the comments coming. “that’s obvious”, “whey didn’t she think of this earlier” etc etc. This may be the case for the savvy internet users amongst you (ie pretty much everyone reading this blog) but there is a section of society that didn’t grow up memorising the html links on the side of the pram.
She does have a laptop but that is rarely used if the iPad is available because of the boot up time and the portability. In fact the laptop serves more as a media server for watching iPlayer on the TV screen (at which we all marvel 🙂 ).
So there you go. The digital revolution has passed another major milestone – 2012 the year the paper recipe disappeared from common usage. I would welcome inputs highlighting similar evidence of societal change from around the world wide web.
PS I realise that I was treading a somewhat fine line with the title “one for the ladies”. However in our house Anne won’t let me do much cooking as I take far too long and make far too much of a mess and likely polish off half a bottle of red wine whilst doing it. Not being very worldly wise I have made the assumption that this is a normal state of affairs. If I am wrong I apologise but the headline stays :).
I note from the Daily Telegraph that LinkedIn has had 6.5 million passwords stolen and published on a Russian website. When did you last sort out your passwords> Have you got a password policy? Worth getting one I’d say.
This is a perfect example of why we shouldn’t let the government collect data about us. It is going to be lost or stolen or accidentally published. It’s a racing certainty. More here.