Latest Blog Posts
21 November 2008 Movember: Day 21
Movember: Day 21
Originally uploaded by Tony Ruscoe
We've now raised over £1000!
Donate to me – Your donation will be registered against my name
Donate to Team SDL – Your donation will be divided equally between everyone in my team
Email me – If you want to make an offline donation, I’ll let you know how you can do that
20 November 2008 Movember: Day 20
Movember: Day 20
Originally uploaded by Tony Ruscoe
Full of a cold. Didn't get much sleep.
But... The Mo' Must Go On!
Donate to me – Your donation will be registered against my name
Donate to Team SDL – Your donation will be divided equally between everyone in my team
Email me – If you want to make an offline donation, I’ll let you know how you can do that
19 November 2008 Movember: Day 19
Movember: Day 19
Originally uploaded by Tony Ruscoe
Another smile, requested by my niece.
Donate to me – Your donation will be registered against my name
Donate to Team SDL – Your donation will be divided equally between everyone in my team
Email me – If you want to make an offline donation, I’ll let you know how you can do that
18 November 2008 Movember: Interlude II
Here’s some more Movember-inspired photoshop fun courtesy of Chris Ayton. Chris is going to be my best man at our wedding next year. I hope he takes a little more time, care and attention organising my stag do and writing his speech than he did on these pieces of art...
What I would look like if it wasn’t for the accursed ginger gene
What I would look like with a better, thicker moustache (and some weird skin graft on my chin and neck apparently...)
Can you do any better? Grab one of my Movember photos from Flickr and do your worst!
What I would look like if it wasn’t for the accursed ginger gene
What I would look like with a better, thicker moustache (and some weird skin graft on my chin and neck apparently...)
Can you do any better? Grab one of my Movember photos from Flickr and do your worst!
Movember: Day 18
Movember: Day 18
Originally uploaded by Tony Ruscoe
It's tickling my lips when I talk now.
Donate to me – Your donation will be registered against my name
Donate to Team SDL – Your donation will be divided equally between everyone in my team
Email me – If you want to make an offline donation, I’ll let you know how you can do that
17 November 2008 Movember: Day 17
Movember: Day 17
Originally uploaded by Tony Ruscoe
It's getting in the way when I eat now.
Donate to me – Your donation will be registered against my name
Donate to Team SDL – Your donation will be divided equally between everyone in my team
Email me – If you want to make an offline donation, I’ll let you know how you can do that
16 November 2008 Movember: Day 16
Movember: Day 16
Originally uploaded by Tony Ruscoe
I had to shampoo it this morning!
Donate to me – Your donation will be registered against my name
Donate to Team SDL – Your donation will be divided equally between everyone in my team
Email me – If you want to make an offline donation, I’ll let you know how you can do that
15 November 2008 Movember: Day 15
Movember: Day 15
Originally uploaded by Tony Ruscoe
Nearly forgot to take a picture today.
Time for another shave tomorrow...
Donate to me – Your donation will be registered against my name
Donate to Team SDL – Your donation will be divided equally between everyone in my team
Email me – If you want to make an offline donation, I’ll let you know how you can do that
14 November 2008 Movember: Day 14
Movember: Day 14
Originally uploaded by Tony Ruscoe
Our boiler's stopped working today.
But I've got my mo' to keep me warm.
Donate to me – Your donation will be registered against my name
Donate to Team SDL – Your donation will be divided equally between everyone in my team
Email me – If you want to make an offline donation, I’ll let you know how you can do that
13 November 2008 Movember: Day 13
Movember: Day 13
Originally uploaded by Tony Ruscoe
The Team has now raised over £700!
Donate to me – Your donation will be registered against my name
Donate to Team SDL – Your donation will be divided equally between everyone in my team
Email me – If you want to make an offline donation, I’ll let you know how you can do that
12 November 2008 Movember: Interlude
I’m interrupting the broadcast of my daily Movember progress photos to bring you this picture, created by Google Blogoscoped’s Philipp Lenssen:
Heh. I thought it was pretty damn funny before I even realised it was based on this, which was the title card used for an American TV show featuring Hulk Hogan:
And just last night, Dave spent probably no more than ten minutes creating this in Photoshop:
Cheers Philipp and Dave!
Does anyone else wants to create a Movember-inspired picture of me and my mo’?
Heh. I thought it was pretty damn funny before I even realised it was based on this, which was the title card used for an American TV show featuring Hulk Hogan:
And just last night, Dave spent probably no more than ten minutes creating this in Photoshop:
Cheers Philipp and Dave!
Does anyone else wants to create a Movember-inspired picture of me and my mo’?
Movember: Day 12
Movember: Day 12
Originally uploaded by Tony Ruscoe
Apparently, with this mo' I look like:
- Hulk Hogan
- Morgan Spurlock (Supersize Me)
- Someone from a Tarantino movie
- A German porn star
Any more suggestions?
Donate to me – Your donation will be registered against my name
Donate to Team SDL – Your donation will be divided equally between everyone in my team
Email me – If you want to make an offline donation, I’ll let you know how you can do that
11 November 2008 Movember: Day 11
Movember: Day 11
Originally uploaded by Tony Ruscoe
Someone told me to smile. So I did.
Any more requests?
Donate to me – Your donation will be registered against my name
Donate to Team SDL – Your donation will be divided equally between everyone in my team
Email me – If you want to make an offline donation, I’ll let you know how you can do that
10 November 2008 Movember: Day 10
Movember: Day 10
Originally uploaded by Tony Ruscoe
Had another shave today. Check it out!
Donate to me – Your donation will be registered against my name
Donate to Team SDL – Your donation will be divided equally between everyone in my team
Email me – If you want to make an offline donation, I’ll let you know how you can do that
09 November 2008 Movember: Day 9
Movember: Day 9
Originally uploaded by Tony Ruscoe
I'm running out of things to write now...
Donate to me – Your donation will be registered against my name
Donate to Team SDL – Your donation will be divided equally between everyone in my team
Email me – If you want to make an offline donation, I’ll let you know how you can do that
08 November 2008 Movember: Day 8
Movember: Day 8
Originally uploaded by Tony Ruscoe
Looking a bit more ginger today...
Donate to me – Your donation will be registered against my name
Donate to Team SDL – Your donation will be divided equally between everyone in my team
Email me – If you want to make an offline donation, I’ll let you know how you can do that
07 November 2008 Movember: Day 7
Movember: Day 7
Originally uploaded by Tony Ruscoe
Team SDL has now raised over £500.
Thanks for all the donations so far!
Donate to me – Your donation will be registered against my name
Donate to Team SDL – Your donation will be divided equally between everyone in my team
Email me – If you want to make an offline donation, I’ll let you know how you can do that
06 November 2008 Movember: Day 6
Movember: Day 6
Originally uploaded by Tony Ruscoe
If you look closely, you might see it...
Donate to me – Your donation will be registered against my name
Donate to Team SDL – Your donation will be divided equally between everyone in my team
Email me – If you want to make an offline donation, I’ll let you know how you can do that
05 November 2008 Movember: Day 5
Movember: Day 5
Originally uploaded by Tony Ruscoe
The mo' is slowly starting to show...
Not ready for a shave just yet though.
Donate to me – Your donation will be registered against my name
Donate to Team SDL – Your donation will be divided equally between everyone in my team
Email me – If you want to make an offline donation, I’ll let you know how you can do that
04 November 2008 Movember: Day 4
Movember: Day 4
Originally uploaded by Tony Ruscoe
Managed to squeeze out more stubble.
Might have another shave tomorrow.
Donate to me – Your donation will be registered against my name
Donate to Team SDL – Your donation will be divided equally between everyone in my team
Email me – If you want to make an offline donation, I’ll let you know how you can do that
03 November 2008 Movember: Day 3
Movember: Day 3
Originally uploaded by Tony Ruscoe
Looking a bit tired this morning.
The stubble is starting to show though.
Donate to me – Your donation will be registered against my name
Donate to Team SDL – Your donation will be divided equally between everyone in my team
Email me – If you want to make an offline donation, I’ll let you know how you can do that
02 November 2008 Movember: Day 2
Movember: Day 2
Originally uploaded by Tony Ruscoe
No, it's not the same photo as yesterday. Yes, I'm wearing the same t-shirt. No point shaving at all today really. This is like watching grass grow...
Donate to me – Your donation will be registered against my name
Donate to Team SDL – Your donation will be divided equally between everyone in my team
Email me – If you want to make an offline donation, I’ll let you know how you can do that
01 November 2008 Movember: Day 1
Movember: Day 1
Originally uploaded by Tony Ruscoe
Nice clean shave. Ready for the mo' to grow!
Donate to me – Your donation will be registered against my name
Donate to Team SDL – Your donation will be divided equally between everyone in my team
Email me – If you want to make an offline donation, I’ll let you know how you can do that
Movember: Moustache Month
I hate shaving but I’ve got a clean shaven face today because during Movember (the month formerly known as November) I will be growing and grooming a moustache – also known as a mo’ or a ‘tache – to raise money and awareness about male health issues. I’ve also somehow managed to convince around twelve other men from work to do the same thing.
I’ll be trying to post a photo to my blog every day so that you can keep track of my progress. Ironically, I’m actually going to try and shave more often than my usual once-per-week so that my ‘tache is more prominent but we’ll have to see how much that rips my face and neck to shreds.
If you want to donate, there are a few different ways to do it:
Sadly, a lot of men at work apparently aren’t allowed to help raise awareness of male health issues because their wives and girlfriends are so selfish that they refuse to be kissed by a man with a moustache for just one month, even though it would help raise money and increase awareness of prostate and testicular cancer. Pathetic. I wonder if those same wives and girlfriends would still kiss their men if they had testicular cancer.
Others are too worried about what they’ll look like or how they might get a bit embarrassed walking around with a bit of facial hair. I wonder if these men would get embarrassed when the doctor has to shove his finger up their arse because they need their prostate gland examining in case they’ve got prostate cancer.
If you want to know more about Movember, try the following links:Otherwise, watch this space for photos of my mo’ – and please donate some money!
I’ll be trying to post a photo to my blog every day so that you can keep track of my progress. Ironically, I’m actually going to try and shave more often than my usual once-per-week so that my ‘tache is more prominent but we’ll have to see how much that rips my face and neck to shreds.
If you want to donate, there are a few different ways to do it:
Donate to me – Your donation will be registered against my name [View my Mo Space]
Donate to Team SDL – Your donation will be divided equally between everyone in my team
Email me – If you want to make an offline donation, I’ll let you know how you can do that
Sadly, a lot of men at work apparently aren’t allowed to help raise awareness of male health issues because their wives and girlfriends are so selfish that they refuse to be kissed by a man with a moustache for just one month, even though it would help raise money and increase awareness of prostate and testicular cancer. Pathetic. I wonder if those same wives and girlfriends would still kiss their men if they had testicular cancer.
Others are too worried about what they’ll look like or how they might get a bit embarrassed walking around with a bit of facial hair. I wonder if these men would get embarrassed when the doctor has to shove his finger up their arse because they need their prostate gland examining in case they’ve got prostate cancer.
If you want to know more about Movember, try the following links:Otherwise, watch this space for photos of my mo’ – and please donate some money!
October
I can believe it’s been almost two months since my last post to this blog. And yet you’re still reading it. I guess I should’ve really posted this last night so that I didn’t have yet another month on my blog without any posts. Oh well.
Anyway, here’s what was keeping me so busy in October that I couldn’t find the time to post. And I’m actually going to try and keep it short for once:
The Mighty Boosh – Monday 6th October 2008
Saw these live at Sheffield City Hall. We had excellent front row seats thanks to Chris going to buy tickets early on the morning they were released. I didn’t watch series one or two of their TV series show when it was on BBC Three. I remember watching about five minutes, thinking it was a bit mental, and then turning over to watch something else. After seeing them do a bit of live stuff on TV another time, Suzy bought me the DVD box set of series one and two and from then on I was hooked. Series three was really good, so I was looking forward to finally seeing them live. Although this was obviously an expensive production, it still had that raw home-made-fancy-dress-costume feel to it like the Mighty Boosh TV series had. I enjoyed it.
Michael McIntyre – Wednesday 8th October 2008
Saw him live at Sheffield Lyceum. We had cheap seats up on the balcony thanks to Chris not going to buy tickets early on the morning they were released. I’ve always thought he was funny on BBC Two’s Mock the Week but wasn’t sure what he’d be like doing stand-up. I was pleasantly surprised that he was actually really funny and did a lot of those jokes where he’d keep coming back to them later. I enjoyed it.
Vampire Weekend – Wednesday 22nd October 2008
Saw these live at Carling Academy Sheffield. We were standing for this gig thanks to nobody called Chris going to buy the tickets. Despite having not heard all the album, I thought they were really good. I’ve downloaded it now and actually think they might have been better live than recorded. Nevertheless... I enjoyed it.
Apart from all that, Suzy and I have also been to a few wedding fairs, we’ve been busy decorating our new house, we went to try out the fixed price lunch menu at Loch Fyne (really good food for just £11 per person) and I’ve been reviewing yet another book for O’Reilly.
So there you have it. A very busy but enjoyable October.
Anyway, here’s what was keeping me so busy in October that I couldn’t find the time to post. And I’m actually going to try and keep it short for once:
The Mighty Boosh – Monday 6th October 2008
Saw these live at Sheffield City Hall. We had excellent front row seats thanks to Chris going to buy tickets early on the morning they were released. I didn’t watch series one or two of their TV series show when it was on BBC Three. I remember watching about five minutes, thinking it was a bit mental, and then turning over to watch something else. After seeing them do a bit of live stuff on TV another time, Suzy bought me the DVD box set of series one and two and from then on I was hooked. Series three was really good, so I was looking forward to finally seeing them live. Although this was obviously an expensive production, it still had that raw home-made-fancy-dress-costume feel to it like the Mighty Boosh TV series had. I enjoyed it.
Michael McIntyre – Wednesday 8th October 2008
Saw him live at Sheffield Lyceum. We had cheap seats up on the balcony thanks to Chris not going to buy tickets early on the morning they were released. I’ve always thought he was funny on BBC Two’s Mock the Week but wasn’t sure what he’d be like doing stand-up. I was pleasantly surprised that he was actually really funny and did a lot of those jokes where he’d keep coming back to them later. I enjoyed it.
Vampire Weekend – Wednesday 22nd October 2008
Saw these live at Carling Academy Sheffield. We were standing for this gig thanks to nobody called Chris going to buy the tickets. Despite having not heard all the album, I thought they were really good. I’ve downloaded it now and actually think they might have been better live than recorded. Nevertheless... I enjoyed it.
Apart from all that, Suzy and I have also been to a few wedding fairs, we’ve been busy decorating our new house, we went to try out the fixed price lunch menu at Loch Fyne (really good food for just £11 per person) and I’ve been reviewing yet another book for O’Reilly.
So there you have it. A very busy but enjoyable October.
05 September 2008 Reverse Charge SMS: Refund Received
In my last post I described how I’d been ripped off after receiving an unsolicited reverse charge text message. Three weeks have now passed and I’m no longer out of pocket, so I thought I’d let everyone know what exactly happened...
As planned, I called Tanla Mobile’s London office number and spoke to one of their very helpful employees who explained that they were just a service provider and that the message would have actually been sent by a client of theirs. They took my details (including when I received the message and the number from which the message was sent) and said they’d get their client to call me.
Having heard nothing for a couple of days, I called them again. Tanla Mobile had apparently done their bit and told their client – Music HQ Limited (site currently offline) – to call me, but their client told them they hadn’t been able to get hold of me because I’d not answered and had no voicemail (which isn’t true). So I got a number and email address for Music HQ Media (0870 046 6622 / customer.care@musichqmedia.com) and reluctantly called them myself.
After finding out that the girl I was told to call had left the company that week, I explained my problem to another one of Music HQ’s customer care representatives and was told they’d look into it and call me back within 30 to 60 minutes. Two hours later, having heard nothing, I called them back and got the full story of how this happened...
Basically, Music HQ had purchased a list of mobile numbers from a direct marketing company called Discovery Media Direct where I'd apparently subscribed to something and opted in to my number being sold for marketing purposes.
Music HQ had then “accidentally” sent messages to people from this list instead of their subscribers (who had actually opted in to receiving paid messages, unlike me). When I asked them how many people this had affected, they replied saying something like, “It was a hundred or so but most of those have requested refunds now!”
So on this occasion alone, at least 100 people had received the same message as me, Music HQ had illegally taken £1.50 from their mobile phone bill and then done nothing to try and refund this amount unless the victim of the theft requested it. And I say ‘on this occasion’ because the links I provided in my last post go back to July and September 2007, which seems to suggest this isn’t the first time this has happened, and it probably won’t be the last!
Anyway, they told me I would receive a refund of £2 (including a 50p “goodwill gesture”) by way of a text message sent to my mobile from the Post Office which I would then need to go and collect from any one of their branches. This should’ve arrived with 1-2 working days. So after 3 days, I emailed them and they increased the refund to £3 and I got the message the day after, one week later than originally intended. (As an aside, the Post Office staff were completely puzzled by the message when I showed it to them and they had to call a helpline to figure out how to issue my with the £3!)
Tanla Mobile say that for them to ban Music HQ, even though they’ve admitted to (allegedly accidentally but nevertheless) fraudulently taking money from me, they would need ‘lots’ of complaints to be made to PhonepayPlus who operate on a volume basis before taking action against any company.
In the process of all this, Tanla Mobile has now blocked my number from all their services at my request and Music HQ has requested my number to be removed and blocked from all their services and also from Discovery Media Direct. At least this should never happen to me again, but we’ll see...
As planned, I called Tanla Mobile’s London office number and spoke to one of their very helpful employees who explained that they were just a service provider and that the message would have actually been sent by a client of theirs. They took my details (including when I received the message and the number from which the message was sent) and said they’d get their client to call me.
Having heard nothing for a couple of days, I called them again. Tanla Mobile had apparently done their bit and told their client – Music HQ Limited (site currently offline) – to call me, but their client told them they hadn’t been able to get hold of me because I’d not answered and had no voicemail (which isn’t true). So I got a number and email address for Music HQ Media (0870 046 6622 / customer.care@musichqmedia.com) and reluctantly called them myself.
After finding out that the girl I was told to call had left the company that week, I explained my problem to another one of Music HQ’s customer care representatives and was told they’d look into it and call me back within 30 to 60 minutes. Two hours later, having heard nothing, I called them back and got the full story of how this happened...
Basically, Music HQ had purchased a list of mobile numbers from a direct marketing company called Discovery Media Direct where I'd apparently subscribed to something and opted in to my number being sold for marketing purposes.
Music HQ had then “accidentally” sent messages to people from this list instead of their subscribers (who had actually opted in to receiving paid messages, unlike me). When I asked them how many people this had affected, they replied saying something like, “It was a hundred or so but most of those have requested refunds now!”
So on this occasion alone, at least 100 people had received the same message as me, Music HQ had illegally taken £1.50 from their mobile phone bill and then done nothing to try and refund this amount unless the victim of the theft requested it. And I say ‘on this occasion’ because the links I provided in my last post go back to July and September 2007, which seems to suggest this isn’t the first time this has happened, and it probably won’t be the last!
Anyway, they told me I would receive a refund of £2 (including a 50p “goodwill gesture”) by way of a text message sent to my mobile from the Post Office which I would then need to go and collect from any one of their branches. This should’ve arrived with 1-2 working days. So after 3 days, I emailed them and they increased the refund to £3 and I got the message the day after, one week later than originally intended. (As an aside, the Post Office staff were completely puzzled by the message when I showed it to them and they had to call a helpline to figure out how to issue my with the £3!)
Tanla Mobile say that for them to ban Music HQ, even though they’ve admitted to (allegedly accidentally but nevertheless) fraudulently taking money from me, they would need ‘lots’ of complaints to be made to PhonepayPlus who operate on a volume basis before taking action against any company.
In the process of all this, Tanla Mobile has now blocked my number from all their services at my request and Music HQ has requested my number to be removed and blocked from all their services and also from Discovery Media Direct. At least this should never happen to me again, but we’ll see...
15 August 2008 Reverse Charge SMS: Daylight Robbery
As you should already know, I recently got an iPhone and switched to O2 for my mobile contract. I got my first online bill two days ago and noticed it was more than I thought it should be. I’d not exceeded my call or text allowance. Nor had I exceeded my unlimited data usage either. Was I being screwed by some kind of Jesus Phone Tax? Thankfully not...
After drilling down through five pages of my online bill for more details, I found the charge was for a “Premium Text” sent by 81404 to my mobile on 25 July 2008 at 22:03:18. For the pleasure of receiving this message, I had been charged £1.277 + VAT (i.e. £1.50). I’ve never signed up for anything using my mobile, so this was completely unsolicited. I vaguely remember receiving this message and just deleting it because I assumed it was good old free-to-receive-spam. It definitely didn’t say I’d been charged for receiving it.
I’ve just called O2 to get a refund and the customer service representative suggested I could have “mistyped a number” or “accidentally pressed some keys” while the phone was in my pocket. (He even told me that he knows how easy it is to do this because he’s done it himself!) I explained that the iPhone doesn’t have any keys and that it would be pretty much impossible to send a text message to 81404 by accident, so he was a bit stumped for ideas and put me on hold.
When he came back, he told me the name of the company who had sent the message and gave me a number for them so that I could ask for a refund and said that there was nothing more he could do because I’d entered into a contract with this other company! I explained again that I’d not requested the message and that my contract was solely with O2, who were taking the money from my bank account. He replied with the call-centre-classic: “I’m sorry you feel that way.” To which I replied that it wasn’t a case of how I was ‘feeling’ and that it was fact. He eventually admitted that I was right about O2 taking the money from my account (albeit on behalf of this other company) but still said there was nothing more he could do.
After getting off the phone, I did a quick search and found I’m not the only one who has been ripped off by this scam. Here are some links to others in the same boat:
Tanla Mobile Ltd
39 Charing Cross Road
London
WC2H 0AR
Tel: 08719 180 999
customercare@tanlamobile.com
The O2 guy told me it was for a service called SineQuiz which I guess they might operate. Both the PhonepayPlus and Tanla Mobile’s offices are closed right now but I’ll definitely be calling them next week – and I’ll be using Tanla Mobile’s London office number (0207 494 5600) rather than calling their 0871-RIP-U-OFF number!
I can’t believe this is allowed to happen. Can you imagine turning up at someone’s house with a letter and charging them £1.50 for it without giving them the option of refusing it altogether? Mobile technology has failed me. It should not be possible to get charged a premium rate for merely receiving a text message.
After drilling down through five pages of my online bill for more details, I found the charge was for a “Premium Text” sent by 81404 to my mobile on 25 July 2008 at 22:03:18. For the pleasure of receiving this message, I had been charged £1.277 + VAT (i.e. £1.50). I’ve never signed up for anything using my mobile, so this was completely unsolicited. I vaguely remember receiving this message and just deleting it because I assumed it was good old free-to-receive-spam. It definitely didn’t say I’d been charged for receiving it.
I’ve just called O2 to get a refund and the customer service representative suggested I could have “mistyped a number” or “accidentally pressed some keys” while the phone was in my pocket. (He even told me that he knows how easy it is to do this because he’s done it himself!) I explained that the iPhone doesn’t have any keys and that it would be pretty much impossible to send a text message to 81404 by accident, so he was a bit stumped for ideas and put me on hold.
When he came back, he told me the name of the company who had sent the message and gave me a number for them so that I could ask for a refund and said that there was nothing more he could do because I’d entered into a contract with this other company! I explained again that I’d not requested the message and that my contract was solely with O2, who were taking the money from my bank account. He replied with the call-centre-classic: “I’m sorry you feel that way.” To which I replied that it wasn’t a case of how I was ‘feeling’ and that it was fact. He eventually admitted that I was right about O2 taking the money from my account (albeit on behalf of this other company) but still said there was nothing more he could do.
After getting off the phone, I did a quick search and found I’m not the only one who has been ripped off by this scam. Here are some links to others in the same boat:
- Highway robbery (blog post by James Taylor)
- £1.50 text charge????? (forum thread on MoneySavingExpert.com)
- SMS premium rate spam (posts to the uk.telecom.mobile Usenet group)
Tanla Mobile Ltd
39 Charing Cross Road
London
WC2H 0AR
Tel: 08719 180 999
customercare@tanlamobile.com
The O2 guy told me it was for a service called SineQuiz which I guess they might operate. Both the PhonepayPlus and Tanla Mobile’s offices are closed right now but I’ll definitely be calling them next week – and I’ll be using Tanla Mobile’s London office number (0207 494 5600) rather than calling their 0871-RIP-U-OFF number!
I can’t believe this is allowed to happen. Can you imagine turning up at someone’s house with a letter and charging them £1.50 for it without giving them the option of refusing it altogether? Mobile technology has failed me. It should not be possible to get charged a premium rate for merely receiving a text message.
Update: 5 September 2008 (14:04)
I eventually managed to find out how this happened and actually got a refund. Read more in my next post here:
Reverse Charge SMS: Refund Received
iPhone 3G: It's the little things...
In my last post about my new shiny gadget, I pretty much pointed out reasons why you wouldn’t want to buy an iPhone 3G. I’ve now had it for just over a month and I’m still loving it. But why?
It’s so easy to take the iPhone for granted. Tasks like browsing the web, sending and receiving emails, writing text messages, taking photos and (this next one is shocking, I know) actually making phone calls are all relatively painless and can be done without having to trawl through various menu options on a tiny keypad or remember shortcut keys. But here are a few small features which have made me realise how much I appreciate all the little things the iPhone does. (Disclaimer: These features may also be available in other handsets but my old Nokia N73 didn’t have them.)
Corrective predictive text
Predictive text on most phones is pretty good. But if you accidentally press the wrong key, your phone is never going to be able to spell that word properly. Thankfully, the iPhone also guesses what you were trying to spell. This is especially useful given that there’s no tactile feedback when pressing the keys, so it’s quite easy to hit the wrong one by mistake.
It’s not perfect by any means but it definitely saves me time when sending text messages.
One number, many contacts, no problem
Back in the old days when mobile phone address books just stored a single phone number against contacts, I used to have separate entries for e.g. ‘Jack’ (mobile), ‘Jill’ (mobile) and then ‘Jack and Jill’ (home). Then when mobiles started to allow multiple details to be stored against each person, I split them out so that Jack and Jill’s home number would be stored against each of their individual entries, meaning I had ‘Jack’ (mobile), ‘Jack’ (home), ‘Jill’ (mobile) and ‘Jill’ (home).
Of course, if someone called me from Jack and Jill’s home number, the phone wouldn’t know which contact it was so it would simply display the number which is completely unhelpful. What does the iPhone do in this situation? It tells me that Jack Spratt or Jill Hill is calling!
Furthermore, if they have the same surname, it just tells me Jack or Jill Hill is calling:
It starts to cheat a bit after that though:
This is such a simple enhancement but it impressed me when I first saw it.
Integration with my Garmin nüvi 610T sat-nav
My Garmin has built-in Bluetooth for hands-free calling. With my N73 hooked up, I had to manually dial the numbers I wanted to call from the sat-nav. Hardly hands-free calling. But with my iPhone, the Garmin can access my entire address book and recently dialled numbers, making it much easier to make calls.
Headphone-related niceties
Using the supplied headphones, you can pause and skip tracks. So if you want to listen to the real world around you or skip an awful album track, you don’t need to dig your iPhone out of your pocket.
If you’ve got music playing and you remove the headphones from the iPhone, your music is automatically paused. This is good because it means you don’t have to wake your iPod and stop it manually, and you don’t risk annoying others around you like you would if your music continued to play through the speakers. On a related note, if you do choose to play the music through the speakers, you’ll see that the iPhone has different volume levels for headphones and speakers. This is such an obvious feature but not all devices do this.
I’m sure there are lots more features I’ve forgotten about too. Whenever I come across one in future, I’ll try to remember to make a note (on my iPhone, natch).
If you’ve got an iPhone, which thoughtful features do you think makes it stand out from other handsets? Or are there any features that are annoying the hell out of you?
It’s so easy to take the iPhone for granted. Tasks like browsing the web, sending and receiving emails, writing text messages, taking photos and (this next one is shocking, I know) actually making phone calls are all relatively painless and can be done without having to trawl through various menu options on a tiny keypad or remember shortcut keys. But here are a few small features which have made me realise how much I appreciate all the little things the iPhone does. (Disclaimer: These features may also be available in other handsets but my old Nokia N73 didn’t have them.)
Corrective predictive text
Predictive text on most phones is pretty good. But if you accidentally press the wrong key, your phone is never going to be able to spell that word properly. Thankfully, the iPhone also guesses what you were trying to spell. This is especially useful given that there’s no tactile feedback when pressing the keys, so it’s quite easy to hit the wrong one by mistake.
It’s not perfect by any means but it definitely saves me time when sending text messages.
One number, many contacts, no problem
Back in the old days when mobile phone address books just stored a single phone number against contacts, I used to have separate entries for e.g. ‘Jack’ (mobile), ‘Jill’ (mobile) and then ‘Jack and Jill’ (home). Then when mobiles started to allow multiple details to be stored against each person, I split them out so that Jack and Jill’s home number would be stored against each of their individual entries, meaning I had ‘Jack’ (mobile), ‘Jack’ (home), ‘Jill’ (mobile) and ‘Jill’ (home).
Of course, if someone called me from Jack and Jill’s home number, the phone wouldn’t know which contact it was so it would simply display the number which is completely unhelpful. What does the iPhone do in this situation? It tells me that Jack Spratt or Jill Hill is calling!
Furthermore, if they have the same surname, it just tells me Jack or Jill Hill is calling:
It starts to cheat a bit after that though:
This is such a simple enhancement but it impressed me when I first saw it.
Integration with my Garmin nüvi 610T sat-nav
My Garmin has built-in Bluetooth for hands-free calling. With my N73 hooked up, I had to manually dial the numbers I wanted to call from the sat-nav. Hardly hands-free calling. But with my iPhone, the Garmin can access my entire address book and recently dialled numbers, making it much easier to make calls.
Headphone-related niceties
Using the supplied headphones, you can pause and skip tracks. So if you want to listen to the real world around you or skip an awful album track, you don’t need to dig your iPhone out of your pocket.
If you’ve got music playing and you remove the headphones from the iPhone, your music is automatically paused. This is good because it means you don’t have to wake your iPod and stop it manually, and you don’t risk annoying others around you like you would if your music continued to play through the speakers. On a related note, if you do choose to play the music through the speakers, you’ll see that the iPhone has different volume levels for headphones and speakers. This is such an obvious feature but not all devices do this.
I’m sure there are lots more features I’ve forgotten about too. Whenever I come across one in future, I’ll try to remember to make a note (on my iPhone, natch).
If you’ve got an iPhone, which thoughtful features do you think makes it stand out from other handsets? Or are there any features that are annoying the hell out of you?
24 July 2008 JavaScript: The Missing Manual (featuring jQuery)
I know what you’re thinking. “Three posts in one week Ruscoe? You neglect your blog for all this time, managing to squeeze out a maximum of one post per month and now all of a sudden you’ve got blogorrhea? What gives!?!”
Well – to answer your question – “what gives” is that I'm not as busy as I have been so far this year. I’ve pretty much finished going to the gigs (actually, there are a couple more coming up this year), I’ve partied like it’s 1985, I’ve moved house, and I’ve reviewed two books for O’Reilly’s Missing Manual series, which is what this post is about...
Google Apps: The Missing Manual was finally released on 27th May 2008. It’s a book aimed at people who want to get the most out of Google’s online applications, such as Google Docs, Gmail, Google Talk, Calendar, iGoogle, Page Creator, Google Apps and Google Sites.
Reviewing a book like this, which covers Google’s ever-changing online services, meant that I had to keep right up-to-speed with all the features as they were being released. Even after finishing each chapter, I kept emailing the editor with updates when Google changed the Google Docs toolbar and Google Speadsheets kept adding new features! Of course, as soon as the book was released it was inevitable that some parts of it would already be out-dated. That obviously doesn’t mean the book was immediately worthless though. Only a few parts now contain minor errors, and it’s mainly omissions as new features have been added rather than outright inaccuracies. Regardless, I thoroughly enjoyed reviewing this book and am pleased that all my (what many people probably see as being useless) knowledge about Google could finally be put to good use!
You can read a bit more about it on Google Blogoscoped. And while you’re there, check out Philipp’s book, Google Apps Hacks.
JavaScript: The Missing Manual was released yesterday and I just got my copy today. After reviewing the Google Apps book, I was approached to do this one. I figured that I would probably know everything the book had to offer but how wrong I was! Not only does it cover standard old-fashioned JavaScript techniques, it also covers the jQuery JavaScript library in quite a lot of detail.
For anyone who’s only ever used raw JavaScript, jQuery is like a programming language from the web of the future. It’s everything that JavaScript should have been. It really does make pretty much everything so much easier to implement. Whether you want to create a simple image rollover (which is one of the first pieces of JavaScript I wrote or, more accurately, copied and pasted!) or a highly dynamic AJAX website, this book helps to explain how you can go about achieving it quickly and easily using JavaScript and jQuery.
So if you think you’re a JavaScript guru but you’ve never bothered looking into jQuery, this book is a great place to start and will help to completely change how you think about developing dynamic websites!
Well – to answer your question – “what gives” is that I'm not as busy as I have been so far this year. I’ve pretty much finished going to the gigs (actually, there are a couple more coming up this year), I’ve partied like it’s 1985, I’ve moved house, and I’ve reviewed two books for O’Reilly’s Missing Manual series, which is what this post is about...
Google Apps: The Missing Manual was finally released on 27th May 2008. It’s a book aimed at people who want to get the most out of Google’s online applications, such as Google Docs, Gmail, Google Talk, Calendar, iGoogle, Page Creator, Google Apps and Google Sites.Reviewing a book like this, which covers Google’s ever-changing online services, meant that I had to keep right up-to-speed with all the features as they were being released. Even after finishing each chapter, I kept emailing the editor with updates when Google changed the Google Docs toolbar and Google Speadsheets kept adding new features! Of course, as soon as the book was released it was inevitable that some parts of it would already be out-dated. That obviously doesn’t mean the book was immediately worthless though. Only a few parts now contain minor errors, and it’s mainly omissions as new features have been added rather than outright inaccuracies. Regardless, I thoroughly enjoyed reviewing this book and am pleased that all my (what many people probably see as being useless) knowledge about Google could finally be put to good use!
You can read a bit more about it on Google Blogoscoped. And while you’re there, check out Philipp’s book, Google Apps Hacks.
JavaScript: The Missing Manual was released yesterday and I just got my copy today. After reviewing the Google Apps book, I was approached to do this one. I figured that I would probably know everything the book had to offer but how wrong I was! Not only does it cover standard old-fashioned JavaScript techniques, it also covers the jQuery JavaScript library in quite a lot of detail.For anyone who’s only ever used raw JavaScript, jQuery is like a programming language from the web of the future. It’s everything that JavaScript should have been. It really does make pretty much everything so much easier to implement. Whether you want to create a simple image rollover (which is one of the first pieces of JavaScript I wrote or, more accurately, copied and pasted!) or a highly dynamic AJAX website, this book helps to explain how you can go about achieving it quickly and easily using JavaScript and jQuery.
So if you think you’re a JavaScript guru but you’ve never bothered looking into jQuery, this book is a great place to start and will help to completely change how you think about developing dynamic websites!
Labels: books, development, google, javascript, personal
22 July 2008 Back To The Future: Doc Brown Costume
I was invited to an “80s Movies” themed fancy dress party last month. After a quick brainstorming session at work, I decided to go as Dr. Emmett Brown from the classic 1985 movie Back To The Future. Just in case anybody out there ever wants to do the same, here’s what I did for my costume...
Wig
I struggled to find a good white wig that looked like Doc Brown’s hair and eventually took my chances with a Smiffy’s Madman Wig. For some reason, this wig has ridiculous black frown-lines implanted in the forehead which I decided to cut off, meaning I had to wear the wig a little further forward than it was intended to be worn. But given that Doc’s not that bald anyway, this looked much better.
Suit
Although I wanted to go dressed as Doc at the end of the first BTTF movie – where he’s just returned from the year 2015 – finding the bits and pieces for that costume would have been a nightmare. Instead, I opted for the costume that we first see Doc wearing when he introduces Marty to the DeLorean.
For the radiation suit, I bought a ‘coverall’ disposable boiler suit and made some alterations to it. After cutting off the hood, I created the radiation symbol, broke it into parts (PDF download) and printed it onto an iron-on transfer.
Warning: Disposable overalls melt at fairly low temperatures – I learned this the hard way – so make sure you use a piece of greaseproof paper and put your iron on its lowest setting!
I also removed the elastic from the ankles to make it flow a bit more like the original costume, added the various bits of detail using a pink highlighter pen and made a slit for the top pocket so that I could attach a pen and a piece of paper with a bulldog clip. The Doc can also be seen to be wearing a wrist watch on each arm, so I did the same!
If you watch the film closely, you’ll see that the Doc is wearing a green shirt over a long sleeved cream t-shirt or vest, with the sleeves on his radiation suit rolled up. I couldn’t find the right type of shirt or vest, so reversed this and just wore a green t-shirt under a cream v-neck jumper.
Gloves
For the gloves, I got some yellow rubber washing up gloves and cut them off at the wrists and made a small template to draw the radiation symbols on the back of each hand.
Props
I couldn’t find an old-fashioned square stopwatch like either of the ones used in the movie, so I unfortunately went without. But for the belt, I bought a tool pouch and threaded it onto an old leather belt, along with my camera case (for practical reasons) and a small portable speaker set so that I could play the BTTF theme from my iPod on entrance!
A while ago, I managed to “acquire” some fluorescent plastic test-tubes from a bar which was serving shots in them. These would become my plutonium rods. I tried to push one inside an old plastic bath gel bottle filled with water but it was too wide, so I ended up cutting it off short. I then filled the test-tube with some watered-down tomato ketchup. I tried some fruit cordial but it wasn't red enough. For anyone who doesn’t remember the film too well, this does the trick!
To complete the costume, I downloaded and printed some of these paper props from the excellently obsessive BTTF Stuff website, including the Save The Clock Tower flyer, the letter from Marty and the drawing of the Flux Capacitor.
And there you have it – a complete Doc Brown costume from the brilliant Back To The Future movie. Now, before all the hardcore BTTF fans start telling me about all the inaccuracies, I’d like to point out that I know it’s not an exact replica of the original costume, but I tried my best given the small about of time and money I had to put it together. It was definitely good enough for everyone to know who I was supposed to be though and that’s the main thing!
Thanks must go to Travis Goodwin whose site I found via The Project Vixen DMCNews Mailing List Archive and was the only good example I found of somebody else trying to make a Doc Brown costume! During my research, I also stumbled across the fantastic BTTF Blog, an excellent blog for everything related to Back To The Future to which I’m now subscribed.
WigI struggled to find a good white wig that looked like Doc Brown’s hair and eventually took my chances with a Smiffy’s Madman Wig. For some reason, this wig has ridiculous black frown-lines implanted in the forehead which I decided to cut off, meaning I had to wear the wig a little further forward than it was intended to be worn. But given that Doc’s not that bald anyway, this looked much better.
Suit
Although I wanted to go dressed as Doc at the end of the first BTTF movie – where he’s just returned from the year 2015 – finding the bits and pieces for that costume would have been a nightmare. Instead, I opted for the costume that we first see Doc wearing when he introduces Marty to the DeLorean.
For the radiation suit, I bought a ‘coverall’ disposable boiler suit and made some alterations to it. After cutting off the hood, I created the radiation symbol, broke it into parts (PDF download) and printed it onto an iron-on transfer.
Warning: Disposable overalls melt at fairly low temperatures – I learned this the hard way – so make sure you use a piece of greaseproof paper and put your iron on its lowest setting!I also removed the elastic from the ankles to make it flow a bit more like the original costume, added the various bits of detail using a pink highlighter pen and made a slit for the top pocket so that I could attach a pen and a piece of paper with a bulldog clip. The Doc can also be seen to be wearing a wrist watch on each arm, so I did the same!
If you watch the film closely, you’ll see that the Doc is wearing a green shirt over a long sleeved cream t-shirt or vest, with the sleeves on his radiation suit rolled up. I couldn’t find the right type of shirt or vest, so reversed this and just wore a green t-shirt under a cream v-neck jumper.
Gloves
For the gloves, I got some yellow rubber washing up gloves and cut them off at the wrists and made a small template to draw the radiation symbols on the back of each hand.
PropsI couldn’t find an old-fashioned square stopwatch like either of the ones used in the movie, so I unfortunately went without. But for the belt, I bought a tool pouch and threaded it onto an old leather belt, along with my camera case (for practical reasons) and a small portable speaker set so that I could play the BTTF theme from my iPod on entrance!
A while ago, I managed to “acquire” some fluorescent plastic test-tubes from a bar which was serving shots in them. These would become my plutonium rods. I tried to push one inside an old plastic bath gel bottle filled with water but it was too wide, so I ended up cutting it off short. I then filled the test-tube with some watered-down tomato ketchup. I tried some fruit cordial but it wasn't red enough. For anyone who doesn’t remember the film too well, this does the trick!
To complete the costume, I downloaded and printed some of these paper props from the excellently obsessive BTTF Stuff website, including the Save The Clock Tower flyer, the letter from Marty and the drawing of the Flux Capacitor.
And there you have it – a complete Doc Brown costume from the brilliant Back To The Future movie. Now, before all the hardcore BTTF fans start telling me about all the inaccuracies, I’d like to point out that I know it’s not an exact replica of the original costume, but I tried my best given the small about of time and money I had to put it together. It was definitely good enough for everyone to know who I was supposed to be though and that’s the main thing!
Thanks must go to Travis Goodwin whose site I found via The Project Vixen DMCNews Mailing List Archive and was the only good example I found of somebody else trying to make a Doc Brown costume! During my research, I also stumbled across the fantastic BTTF Blog, an excellent blog for everything related to Back To The Future to which I’m now subscribed.
21 July 2008 iPhone 3G: One Week Later
When the iPhone 3G was announced on 9th June, I was immediately convinced that I was going to get one. Then I realised it still had a crap camera, no MMS and would probably cost me an arm and a leg. And then I changed my mind again just last week and ended up queuing outside an O2 store in Sheffield on Friday, eagerly awaiting their 08:02 opening and the launch of the iPhone 3G in the UK. (Queuing was actually pointless as the store quickly ran out of its stock of just ten iPhones, but I was luckily given a tip-off at lunch time and managed to get one from another store.)
Anyway, I’ve now been using the phone for just over a week, so I thought I’d post some of my early and honest observations. I’m likely to go on a bit, so don’t read this on your iPhone because your battery will be dead by the time you’ve finished... ;-)
First impressions
It’s slick, easy to use, has a really smooth user interface, has some great features and, perhaps most importantly, it’s shiny! However, it does lack some features that many other phones have. And I’m not talking about a one billion megapixel camera (because the camera produces really good, sharp pictures), voice calling (who uses that?) or MMS (because I can live with using email instead); I’m talking about different profiles (e.g. silent, sleeping, work, meeting), the ability to delete individual text messages, display how many characters are remaining when sending an SMS to someone and other little things like that – but the innovative features definitely outweigh all these minor annoyances and these are all things that may still (hopefully) be added in future software upgrades.
App problems after first sync
Putting aside all the initial problems of getting my phone line activated with O2 and then activating the handset through iTunes, I was pretty happy with my new phone’s capabilities after playing with the App Store and downloading a few free applications. (If you’re interested: iPint, Alarm Free, Banner Free, BubbleWrap, TapTap Revenge, Facebook, Shazam and Midomi.) The problems came when I synced my iPhone with iTunes for the first time.
I don’t know whether the problem occurred because I had originally activated my iPhone on a different computer, but after syncing with my main desktop PC none of the apps I’d downloaded to my iPhone would work. Each time I clicked one of the icons, it opened the app for a second or two and then immediately closed it down again. After removing them from the iPhone and re-syncing, everything worked fine though.
Contact syncing issues
Given that my old Nokia N73 made a complete mess of my Outlook contacts when I tried to synchroise them, I decided to enter all my contacts into my iPhone manually with the intention of syncing them with either Outlook or my Google Contacts later. Last night, I decided to sync them back to a folder in Outlook (since my Google Contacts are a real mess due to all the times Gmail added people to my contacts just because I’d emailed them a couple of times). Oddly, not all of my contacts were transferred to Outlook. They were literally nowhere to be seen. I deselected the folder in iTunes, removed all my contacts and tried again. This time, iTunes managed to copy all my original contacts from Outlook to my iPhone – despite still not being able to see them all in Outlook!
After much confusion and experimentation with various configurations, I somehow managed to wipe all my contacts from my iPhone apart from the few that I could see in Outlook. So I then tried to sync with Google Contacts just to see what that would do. This was a complete waste of time because it synced all my Google Contacts, including the new “Suggested Contacts” groups which seems to include everyone I’ve ever emailed!
In the end, I decided to export a spreadsheet from Outlook based on my old N73 contacts, clean them up a bit and import them back into Outlook before syncing again. So far, everything looks good but this should have been so much easier! Things weren’t helped by the fact that iTunes has no contacts manager of its own which allows me to select which contacts to import (like it does for tunes and podcasts).
Something else I’ve noticed is that my contacts list can be pretty slow loading at times, although it does seem quicker when accessed through the Phone icon rather than the Contacts icon.
Visual Voicemail setup problems
Since I was porting my old mobile number across to O2, I waited until this had been done before I tried to setup my visual voicemail. After following the on-screen instructions, entering my chosen password and failing to save my greeting several times (the last step in the process would just keep reloading the page) I decided to phone O2 Customer Services. They suggested dialing 1750 to switch on Visual Voicemail (which I’d already done), switching it off and on again by dialing 1760 and then 1750 (which I’d already done) and even suggested a full software restore (which I had done before trying to setup it up for the first time). After being passed through two iPhone specialists, they decided I had a faulty handset and would need to return it. However, before I managed to hang up they suggested that I could dial 901 just to prove to myself that my voicemail was up and running. And guess what. Dialing 901 asked me to choose a password and record a greeting, after which my Visual Voicemail worked fine!
Actually, one further problem was that when I accessed my voicemail and selected a message, my screen was going black. After a few quick tests, it seemed this was due to my screen protector interfering with the proximity sensor. As a quick solution, I got my hole-punch and made three holes in the protector to line up with the light and proximity sensors which means everything now works fine! (And it doesn’t look as bad as it sounds either because you can’t see the holes for the case.)
3G and battery life
When the original iPhone was announced, many UK and European users were puzzled why the handset didn’t have 3G. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal last year, Steve Jobs basically said that they didn’t include 3G because the chipsets were too big and would drain the iPhone’s battery too quickly. I seem to remember people all over the world complaining about this, demanding that Apple should let its users make that decision for themselves. This time around, Apple added 3G and many users are choosing to switch it off to gain more battery life.
My last phone had 3G, and moving from a 3G device to a non-3G device would obviously be a step backwards for me, so I had no intention of buying the original iPhone whatsoever. Of course, the irony is that now I’ve got an iPhone 3G, I’m using it with 3G switched off most of the time in order to save battery life! Generally speaking, I don’t even notice the speed difference though. The websites I use a lot while I’m on the move – like Google Reader, Facebook and FF To Go – have all been optimized to make them fast to download on mobile devices (including the many first generation iPhones without 3G).
The main problem with the iPhone is that it’s such a great mobile device that you want to play with it all the time, and that obviously means the battery isn’t going to last very long!
If I discover anything else about the iPhone which I fancy sharing, I’ll be sure to make a short post about it straight away, instead of making one massive post like this each month, which is what I seem to have been doing recently...
[Image courtesy of Apple.]
Anyway, I’ve now been using the phone for just over a week, so I thought I’d post some of my early and honest observations. I’m likely to go on a bit, so don’t read this on your iPhone because your battery will be dead by the time you’ve finished... ;-)First impressions
It’s slick, easy to use, has a really smooth user interface, has some great features and, perhaps most importantly, it’s shiny! However, it does lack some features that many other phones have. And I’m not talking about a one billion megapixel camera (because the camera produces really good, sharp pictures), voice calling (who uses that?) or MMS (because I can live with using email instead); I’m talking about different profiles (e.g. silent, sleeping, work, meeting), the ability to delete individual text messages, display how many characters are remaining when sending an SMS to someone and other little things like that – but the innovative features definitely outweigh all these minor annoyances and these are all things that may still (hopefully) be added in future software upgrades.
App problems after first sync
Putting aside all the initial problems of getting my phone line activated with O2 and then activating the handset through iTunes, I was pretty happy with my new phone’s capabilities after playing with the App Store and downloading a few free applications. (If you’re interested: iPint, Alarm Free, Banner Free, BubbleWrap, TapTap Revenge, Facebook, Shazam and Midomi.) The problems came when I synced my iPhone with iTunes for the first time.
I don’t know whether the problem occurred because I had originally activated my iPhone on a different computer, but after syncing with my main desktop PC none of the apps I’d downloaded to my iPhone would work. Each time I clicked one of the icons, it opened the app for a second or two and then immediately closed it down again. After removing them from the iPhone and re-syncing, everything worked fine though.
Contact syncing issues
Given that my old Nokia N73 made a complete mess of my Outlook contacts when I tried to synchroise them, I decided to enter all my contacts into my iPhone manually with the intention of syncing them with either Outlook or my Google Contacts later. Last night, I decided to sync them back to a folder in Outlook (since my Google Contacts are a real mess due to all the times Gmail added people to my contacts just because I’d emailed them a couple of times). Oddly, not all of my contacts were transferred to Outlook. They were literally nowhere to be seen. I deselected the folder in iTunes, removed all my contacts and tried again. This time, iTunes managed to copy all my original contacts from Outlook to my iPhone – despite still not being able to see them all in Outlook!
After much confusion and experimentation with various configurations, I somehow managed to wipe all my contacts from my iPhone apart from the few that I could see in Outlook. So I then tried to sync with Google Contacts just to see what that would do. This was a complete waste of time because it synced all my Google Contacts, including the new “Suggested Contacts” groups which seems to include everyone I’ve ever emailed!
In the end, I decided to export a spreadsheet from Outlook based on my old N73 contacts, clean them up a bit and import them back into Outlook before syncing again. So far, everything looks good but this should have been so much easier! Things weren’t helped by the fact that iTunes has no contacts manager of its own which allows me to select which contacts to import (like it does for tunes and podcasts).
Something else I’ve noticed is that my contacts list can be pretty slow loading at times, although it does seem quicker when accessed through the Phone icon rather than the Contacts icon.
Visual Voicemail setup problems
Since I was porting my old mobile number across to O2, I waited until this had been done before I tried to setup my visual voicemail. After following the on-screen instructions, entering my chosen password and failing to save my greeting several times (the last step in the process would just keep reloading the page) I decided to phone O2 Customer Services. They suggested dialing 1750 to switch on Visual Voicemail (which I’d already done), switching it off and on again by dialing 1760 and then 1750 (which I’d already done) and even suggested a full software restore (which I had done before trying to setup it up for the first time). After being passed through two iPhone specialists, they decided I had a faulty handset and would need to return it. However, before I managed to hang up they suggested that I could dial 901 just to prove to myself that my voicemail was up and running. And guess what. Dialing 901 asked me to choose a password and record a greeting, after which my Visual Voicemail worked fine!
Actually, one further problem was that when I accessed my voicemail and selected a message, my screen was going black. After a few quick tests, it seemed this was due to my screen protector interfering with the proximity sensor. As a quick solution, I got my hole-punch and made three holes in the protector to line up with the light and proximity sensors which means everything now works fine! (And it doesn’t look as bad as it sounds either because you can’t see the holes for the case.)
3G and battery life
When the original iPhone was announced, many UK and European users were puzzled why the handset didn’t have 3G. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal last year, Steve Jobs basically said that they didn’t include 3G because the chipsets were too big and would drain the iPhone’s battery too quickly. I seem to remember people all over the world complaining about this, demanding that Apple should let its users make that decision for themselves. This time around, Apple added 3G and many users are choosing to switch it off to gain more battery life.
My last phone had 3G, and moving from a 3G device to a non-3G device would obviously be a step backwards for me, so I had no intention of buying the original iPhone whatsoever. Of course, the irony is that now I’ve got an iPhone 3G, I’m using it with 3G switched off most of the time in order to save battery life! Generally speaking, I don’t even notice the speed difference though. The websites I use a lot while I’m on the move – like Google Reader, Facebook and FF To Go – have all been optimized to make them fast to download on mobile devices (including the many first generation iPhones without 3G).
The main problem with the iPhone is that it’s such a great mobile device that you want to play with it all the time, and that obviously means the battery isn’t going to last very long!
If I discover anything else about the iPhone which I fancy sharing, I’ll be sure to make a short post about it straight away, instead of making one massive post like this each month, which is what I seem to have been doing recently...
[Image courtesy of Apple.]
01 June 2008 May Gigs
We went to see a few more bands in May. Here’s who we saw and what I thought about them...
The Wombats – Thursday 15th May 2008
The Wombats have been knocking around the charts for a while now but I only really started to notice them shortly after Chris Riley mentioned them when I kept hearing their re-release of Moving to New York being constantly played on the radio earlier this year.
For a three-piece band they have a really full sound, and that goes for their instruments and vocals. Anyone who’s listened to their album will have heard the first short a cappella track Tales Of Girls, Boys And Marsupials. They opened the gig with this and proved they really can sing – albeit like a barbershop triplet!
Full of energy, they continued to impress throughout the gig and proved they really knew how to get the crowd going. They belted out pretty much ever song from their album – occasionally taking it in turns to add some keyboard to the tunes – before leaving the stage prior to the encore, when a huge inflatable wombat appeared on the balcony.
The Wombats are a talented bunch of musicians who write some catchy tunes and certainly know how to put on a good show. I’d definitely recommend getting tickets if you ever get chance to see them.
As always, watch the video above or view the rest of the photos and videos on Flickr.
Joe Lean & The Jing Jang Jong – Saturday 17th May 2008
This is the emptiest I’ve ever seen the Leadmill. You know a gig isn’t very popular when there are no ticket touts hanging around outside. We turned up fairly late and I reckon there were only a couple of hundred people there. Given that Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong were nominated for Best New Band at this year’s NME Awards – along with winners The Enemy and Foals, The Pigeon Detectives (see below) and The Wombats (see above) – this should’ve set alarm bells ringing...
Perhaps word had got out that Joe Lean is an over-the-top drama queen who obviously wants to be seen as some kind of troubled artist. When you tell the already sparse audience they need to do ‘this clapping thing’ and they don’t bother, it’s probably advisable to not shout “Just clap for f*ck’s sake!” expecting them to suddenly join in. And when another twenty or so people have walked out, you probably shouldn’t tell the remaining audience to “shut up and dance to this” either. It’s a shame Joe Lean feels he needs to be like this because the rest of the band seemed fine and the music was pretty good.
By comparison, their support band – The Beggars – were pretty good. Unlike Joe Lean, the four young lads from Reading managed to ignore the lack of audience and just get on with the gig. Their front-man needs to get a bit more stage presence but their lead guitarist, who also took on lead vocals on a couple of the songs, was really full of life and seemed to love every minute that he was on stage. It would’t surprise me if he’s the real talent behind all their stuff.
The Pigeon Detectives – Wednesday 21st May 2008
There’s not much else I can say about The Pigeon Detectives that I didn’t say after we went to see them last November.
Like I said after the last gig, you just can’t beat a classic five-piece band – i.e. lead vocals, lead guitar, rhythm guitar, bass guitar and drums. Despite having injured his leg a week or two before the gig, front-man Matt Bowman was possibly even more energetic that he was last time.
Unfortunately, since their new album was being released five days after the gig, the audience didn’t know all the new songs. That didn’t seem to make any difference though; the audience was still jumping around and singing along to all the new tunes. Having now heard the new album, I reckon it’s probably on a par with the last one. There are a couple of excellent, really catchy energetic numbers that stand out but the whole thing in general is really good.
The Pigeon Detectives didn’t bother with a pointless encore this time either. They just played all the songs they wanted to play and left the stage. I really wish more bands would do this instead of milking the audience for more clapping and cheering. And just like last time, the audience left the venue with another Phoenix-Nights-esque rendition of one of their tunes playing in the background. (This time it was their new single This Is An Emergency.)
Once again, this was a truly excellent gig by who I consider to be one of the UK’s best bands!
I guess it goes without saying now that you can watch the video above or view the rest of the photos and videos on Flickr.
The Wombats – Thursday 15th May 2008
The Wombats have been knocking around the charts for a while now but I only really started to notice them shortly after Chris Riley mentioned them when I kept hearing their re-release of Moving to New York being constantly played on the radio earlier this year.
For a three-piece band they have a really full sound, and that goes for their instruments and vocals. Anyone who’s listened to their album will have heard the first short a cappella track Tales Of Girls, Boys And Marsupials. They opened the gig with this and proved they really can sing – albeit like a barbershop triplet!
Full of energy, they continued to impress throughout the gig and proved they really knew how to get the crowd going. They belted out pretty much ever song from their album – occasionally taking it in turns to add some keyboard to the tunes – before leaving the stage prior to the encore, when a huge inflatable wombat appeared on the balcony.
The Wombats are a talented bunch of musicians who write some catchy tunes and certainly know how to put on a good show. I’d definitely recommend getting tickets if you ever get chance to see them.
As always, watch the video above or view the rest of the photos and videos on Flickr.
Joe Lean & The Jing Jang Jong – Saturday 17th May 2008
This is the emptiest I’ve ever seen the Leadmill. You know a gig isn’t very popular when there are no ticket touts hanging around outside. We turned up fairly late and I reckon there were only a couple of hundred people there. Given that Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong were nominated for Best New Band at this year’s NME Awards – along with winners The Enemy and Foals, The Pigeon Detectives (see below) and The Wombats (see above) – this should’ve set alarm bells ringing...
Perhaps word had got out that Joe Lean is an over-the-top drama queen who obviously wants to be seen as some kind of troubled artist. When you tell the already sparse audience they need to do ‘this clapping thing’ and they don’t bother, it’s probably advisable to not shout “Just clap for f*ck’s sake!” expecting them to suddenly join in. And when another twenty or so people have walked out, you probably shouldn’t tell the remaining audience to “shut up and dance to this” either. It’s a shame Joe Lean feels he needs to be like this because the rest of the band seemed fine and the music was pretty good.
By comparison, their support band – The Beggars – were pretty good. Unlike Joe Lean, the four young lads from Reading managed to ignore the lack of audience and just get on with the gig. Their front-man needs to get a bit more stage presence but their lead guitarist, who also took on lead vocals on a couple of the songs, was really full of life and seemed to love every minute that he was on stage. It would’t surprise me if he’s the real talent behind all their stuff.
The Pigeon Detectives – Wednesday 21st May 2008
There’s not much else I can say about The Pigeon Detectives that I didn’t say after we went to see them last November.
Like I said after the last gig, you just can’t beat a classic five-piece band – i.e. lead vocals, lead guitar, rhythm guitar, bass guitar and drums. Despite having injured his leg a week or two before the gig, front-man Matt Bowman was possibly even more energetic that he was last time.
Unfortunately, since their new album was being released five days after the gig, the audience didn’t know all the new songs. That didn’t seem to make any difference though; the audience was still jumping around and singing along to all the new tunes. Having now heard the new album, I reckon it’s probably on a par with the last one. There are a couple of excellent, really catchy energetic numbers that stand out but the whole thing in general is really good.
The Pigeon Detectives didn’t bother with a pointless encore this time either. They just played all the songs they wanted to play and left the stage. I really wish more bands would do this instead of milking the audience for more clapping and cheering. And just like last time, the audience left the venue with another Phoenix-Nights-esque rendition of one of their tunes playing in the background. (This time it was their new single This Is An Emergency.)
Once again, this was a truly excellent gig by who I consider to be one of the UK’s best bands!
I guess it goes without saying now that you can watch the video above or view the rest of the photos and videos on Flickr.
29 May 2008 Loch Fyne, Sheffield
For Suzy’s birthday last Friday, we went to Loch Fyne in Sheffield. I’d passed the restaurant a few weeks ago and liked the idea of having a good seafood restaurant in Sheffield but was worried they’d not know what they were doing. Little did I know – until visiting their website to get their number for booking a table – that Loch Fyne has 40 restaurants all over the country and they’re experts in oysters, shellfish and seafood!
The Sheffield restaurant only opened on 7th April this year but it’s already getting lots of good reviews. Luckily for us, we managed to catch the end of their Seafood Festival which had been going on all week to celebrate their 10th anniversary. This meant we got to enjoy a spectacular seafood platter from their specials board which included:
We washed all that down with a bottle of Pinot Blanc and followed it with a selection of cheeses with oatcakes, a crème brûlée to share and a coffee. The bill came to exactly £100, which isn’t super cheap but is more than reasonable and definitely worth it.
The staff at Loch Fyne are well trained, attentive and extremely polite, the quality of shellfish is excellent and the ambiance of the place is really relaxing. It’s quite easy to forget you’re still on Sheffield’s Glossop Road in what used to be a poorly lit kitsch Irish cocktail bar called Hanrahans (and then Casa, then Hanrahans again and then some American bar and grill).
They open for breakfast at 09:00 (I assume they serve more than just kippers) and their website says they do a two-course set lunch for £11 from 12:00 until 19:00 Monday to Saturday. Sunday lunch is £12 for two courses or £15 for three courses, although the site also says that’s not available at all restaurants, so check with them before visiting.
And there’s not much else I can say about the place except that if you like shellfish, get to Loch Fyne!
The Sheffield restaurant only opened on 7th April this year but it’s already getting lots of good reviews. Luckily for us, we managed to catch the end of their Seafood Festival which had been going on all week to celebrate their 10th anniversary. This meant we got to enjoy a spectacular seafood platter from their specials board which included:
- 1 Whole Lobster
- 1 Whole Crab
- 6 Oysters
- 4 Langoustines
- 4 Crevettes
- 4 Queen Scallops
- 6 King Prawns
- 1 Razor Clam
- Squid Legs
- ...and a large bowl of hot cockles and mussels
We washed all that down with a bottle of Pinot Blanc and followed it with a selection of cheeses with oatcakes, a crème brûlée to share and a coffee. The bill came to exactly £100, which isn’t super cheap but is more than reasonable and definitely worth it.
The staff at Loch Fyne are well trained, attentive and extremely polite, the quality of shellfish is excellent and the ambiance of the place is really relaxing. It’s quite easy to forget you’re still on Sheffield’s Glossop Road in what used to be a poorly lit kitsch Irish cocktail bar called Hanrahans (and then Casa, then Hanrahans again and then some American bar and grill).
They open for breakfast at 09:00 (I assume they serve more than just kippers) and their website says they do a two-course set lunch for £11 from 12:00 until 19:00 Monday to Saturday. Sunday lunch is £12 for two courses or £15 for three courses, although the site also says that’s not available at all restaurants, so check with them before visiting.
And there’s not much else I can say about the place except that if you like shellfish, get to Loch Fyne!
Labels: food, personal, restaurants
29 April 2008 April Gigs
I’ve just realised that almost three months has gone by since my last post. That’s quite simply because I’ve been rather busy and haven’t found the time to write any blog posts... other than the occasional one for Google Blogoscoped, which celebrated five years in the blogosphere yesterday. (Congratulations Philipp!)
One of the many reasons why I’ve been so busy is because I’ve been going to lots of gigs. So here’s a big long post wrapping up all the gigs I’ve been to this month to make up for it.
Scouting For Girls – Tuesday 8th April 2008
I’d seen Scouting For Girls on BBC2’s Something For The Weekend the Sunday before the gig and they seemed like decent lads who were still enjoying their newfound fame, having only been signed for a year or so. Their excitement is quite obvious when they’re performing. In fact, I think the lead singer was more excited to play the Sheffield Octagon gig than usual because they’d had to cancel four gigs the previous week due to him having a sore throat or something. Although still recovering from this, his ability to work the audience – which mainly consisted of teenage girls, some of which were even holding banners they’d presumably made at school by sticking a few A4 pieces of coloured paper together – didn’t suffer one bit.
Their young fan-base aside, my main grumble would be that they seem to be one of these bands that likes to play a song, get half way through, stop playing, chat with the audience for a while, and then end the song with a ‘big finish’ a couple of minutes later. This would be fine for one song, and maybe two maximum, but it gets a bit tiresome when it feels like it’s almost every song, probably emphasised by the fact that some of the songs do sound quite similar. Other than that, it was a pretty good gig.
Reverend and The Makers – Friday 11th April 2008
To be honest, the main reason for going to this gig was to be there for the opening night of the venue. Around 10 years ago, everyone at university used to go to The Roxy every Wednesday night. The promise of free entry and free beer before 11pm got the crowds of poor students through its doors without fail. But with deals like those, it wasn’t going to stay open for much longer. Apart from a crazy spell where it was home to St Thomas’s Church for a while, it’s been empty pretty much since then until the Academy Music Group took over in November last year and turned it into the Carling Academy Sheffield. Having watched the outside of the venue being slowly transformed from The Roxy Disco into Carling Academy Sheffield, I was intrigued to see what they’d done with the place.
As it turns out, they’d done a pretty good job on the inside of the venue. From my hazy memories of the place, I think they’ve moved a couple of bars, refitted the balcony and generally given it a lick of paint and freshened up everywhere a bit. I was particularly pleased to see they’ve got a red neon ROXY sign upstairs as a tribute to the venue’s historical signs on each side of the building which were removed as part of the refurbishment.
It’s a shame they’d not given as much attention to the support acts they’d booked for the opening night. The first band didn’t sound too bad when we walked through the doors, but then their Kelly-Osbourne-esque singer started to literally murder the rest of their set with her noise. And the next act was even worse. Consisting of what appeared to be two bouncers, two chav girls drinking alcopops and some guy on the decks, the best thing about their act was their “Radio Head” mascot who had a boom box for a head and did poor robotic-style dancing for some of the songs. I can only imagine that they chose these two terrible acts to make The Reverend seem better by comparison.
Despite what Chris Hill has to say about them, I quite like Reverend and The Makers. They should really be called The Makers and Reverend though because it’s The Makers who provide pretty much all of the talent, playing real instruments and belting out some tight tunes. What helped to keep me amused was the fact that The Reverend looked like my mate Gav who was the bass player in a band I was in years ago. Still, they played all the best tunes from the album and they sounded pretty similar actually – and much better than their live performances I’ve caught on TV – so I wasn’t disappointed.
Towards the end of the gig, I went to get my coat and wait for Suzy and Chris near the doors, only to see the entire audience running towards me. I found out afterwards that The Reverend had grabbed his acoustic guitar and told everyone to follow him through the front doors of the venue, where he was making his way to the fictional Penelope’s venue (which turned out to be outside The Crucible) where he was doing a post-gig acoustic set as advertised on some flyers which were being given out before the gig. I soon gathered what was going on when security were trying to make way for him to get out. Since I was stood in the middle of the door way, I stepped to one side and gave him a pat on the back, telling him he’d played a good gig.
The Fratellis – Sunday 13th April 2008
I was really surprised a few weeks ago to hear that The Fratellis were playing a small venue like The Leadmill and jumped at the chance to get tickets. They could have easily have filled a much bigger venue and on the night The Leadmill was absolutely packed, more than I’d even seen it before.
Bar service is usually pretty slow anyway on gig nights, but given that for this gig they were decanting every single bottle at the bottle bar into plastic glasses, it took us 40 minutes to get a drink, made worse by the fact some idiot staff member had seemingly ordered only half pint (284ml) plastic glasses which the bar staff were then using for 330ml bottles of beer and just throwing the rest of the beer away until some guy pointed out they were ripping everyone off!
Bar problems aside, the gig was fantastic. I’ve heard some of The Fratellis’ live stuff before and was expecting it to sound a bit raw, so I was pleasantly surprised when their sound was really polished. Embarrassingly, it took Suzy and I about half a song to realise it was actually them who’d taken to the stage because the lead singer had wet his hair, instead of having the big curly mop he usually has, and they opened with a new song we’d not heard before. It’s a shame they hadn’t released their new album before the gig (it’s out in June) but if the new tracks they played are anything to go by, it’s going to be a good ’un...
Anyway, check out what you missed and watch the video above or view the rest of the photos and videos on Flickr.
We Are Scientists – Thursday 17th April 2008
I first saw We Are Scientists when they supported Kaiser Chiefs at Sheffield Arena last December. Having bought their album after that gig, it seems I first heard them when I played Burnout on my Xbox, which features one of their track. They’re a really good live band who really try and interact with the audience. This didn’t work too well when they were in Sheffield Arena in front of an audience waiting to see Kaiser Chiefs but worked really well at Sheffield Octagon.
I seem to remember there being some discussion about Yorkshire puddings but I can’t remember much about it as I’d drunk more than I should have done really. But from what I remember about the gig, it was good.
The Kooks – Monday 28th April 2008
For the final gig of the month, we went to see The Kooks again, having really enjoyed seeing them play their V Festival warm-up gig at Doncaster Dome last year. Another gig at The Roxy, but the support act was much better than the last time we were there. Palladium kind of looked and sounded like they’d stepped into 2008 straight from the 1980s, but in a good way; you just don’t hear enough guitar licks and synth sounds like those anymore!
Before going to the gig, I’d been listening to The Kooks’ new album. There are some mixed reviews knocking around but I think it’s pretty good. I reckon it’s quite similar to the first album. There’s a good mix of catchy tunes on there. In keeping with the neon KONK sign on the new album cover, when the curtain dropped there was a massive flashing, buzzing, blue neon KOOKS sign above the stage. Much to my amusement, due to the dodgy neon font they’d used, the sign looked more like it said BOOBS rather than KOOKS though.
Once again, we spotted some banners saying things like “LUKE IS A SEX GOD” and “I ♥ THE KOOKS” and a cleverly timed banner just saying “YES” in response to the lyric, “Do you wanna make love to me?” The audience did’t seem that young at this gig though, so perhaps this is just the latest thing. Maybe I’ll make some for when we go to see some more bands next month...
Anyway, despite the banners that made us feel like we were at a Take That concert, this was an excellent gig. They played all the best songs from both albums and I had a right good sing-a-long!
Again, you can watch the video above or view the rest of the photos and videos on Flickr.
Still to come next month: The Wombats, Joe Lean & The Jing Jang Jong and The Pigeon Detectives.
One of the many reasons why I’ve been so busy is because I’ve been going to lots of gigs. So here’s a big long post wrapping up all the gigs I’ve been to this month to make up for it.
Scouting For Girls – Tuesday 8th April 2008
I’d seen Scouting For Girls on BBC2’s Something For The Weekend the Sunday before the gig and they seemed like decent lads who were still enjoying their newfound fame, having only been signed for a year or so. Their excitement is quite obvious when they’re performing. In fact, I think the lead singer was more excited to play the Sheffield Octagon gig than usual because they’d had to cancel four gigs the previous week due to him having a sore throat or something. Although still recovering from this, his ability to work the audience – which mainly consisted of teenage girls, some of which were even holding banners they’d presumably made at school by sticking a few A4 pieces of coloured paper together – didn’t suffer one bit.
Their young fan-base aside, my main grumble would be that they seem to be one of these bands that likes to play a song, get half way through, stop playing, chat with the audience for a while, and then end the song with a ‘big finish’ a couple of minutes later. This would be fine for one song, and maybe two maximum, but it gets a bit tiresome when it feels like it’s almost every song, probably emphasised by the fact that some of the songs do sound quite similar. Other than that, it was a pretty good gig.
Reverend and The Makers – Friday 11th April 2008
To be honest, the main reason for going to this gig was to be there for the opening night of the venue. Around 10 years ago, everyone at university used to go to The Roxy every Wednesday night. The promise of free entry and free beer before 11pm got the crowds of poor students through its doors without fail. But with deals like those, it wasn’t going to stay open for much longer. Apart from a crazy spell where it was home to St Thomas’s Church for a while, it’s been empty pretty much since then until the Academy Music Group took over in November last year and turned it into the Carling Academy Sheffield. Having watched the outside of the venue being slowly transformed from The Roxy Disco into Carling Academy Sheffield, I was intrigued to see what they’d done with the place.
As it turns out, they’d done a pretty good job on the inside of the venue. From my hazy memories of the place, I think they’ve moved a couple of bars, refitted the balcony and generally given it a lick of paint and freshened up everywhere a bit. I was particularly pleased to see they’ve got a red neon ROXY sign upstairs as a tribute to the venue’s historical signs on each side of the building which were removed as part of the refurbishment.
It’s a shame they’d not given as much attention to the support acts they’d booked for the opening night. The first band didn’t sound too bad when we walked through the doors, but then their Kelly-Osbourne-esque singer started to literally murder the rest of their set with her noise. And the next act was even worse. Consisting of what appeared to be two bouncers, two chav girls drinking alcopops and some guy on the decks, the best thing about their act was their “Radio Head” mascot who had a boom box for a head and did poor robotic-style dancing for some of the songs. I can only imagine that they chose these two terrible acts to make The Reverend seem better by comparison.
Despite what Chris Hill has to say about them, I quite like Reverend and The Makers. They should really be called The Makers and Reverend though because it’s The Makers who provide pretty much all of the talent, playing real instruments and belting out some tight tunes. What helped to keep me amused was the fact that The Reverend looked like my mate Gav who was the bass player in a band I was in years ago. Still, they played all the best tunes from the album and they sounded pretty similar actually – and much better than their live performances I’ve caught on TV – so I wasn’t disappointed.
Towards the end of the gig, I went to get my coat and wait for Suzy and Chris near the doors, only to see the entire audience running towards me. I found out afterwards that The Reverend had grabbed his acoustic guitar and told everyone to follow him through the front doors of the venue, where he was making his way to the fictional Penelope’s venue (which turned out to be outside The Crucible) where he was doing a post-gig acoustic set as advertised on some flyers which were being given out before the gig. I soon gathered what was going on when security were trying to make way for him to get out. Since I was stood in the middle of the door way, I stepped to one side and gave him a pat on the back, telling him he’d played a good gig.
The Fratellis – Sunday 13th April 2008
I was really surprised a few weeks ago to hear that The Fratellis were playing a small venue like The Leadmill and jumped at the chance to get tickets. They could have easily have filled a much bigger venue and on the night The Leadmill was absolutely packed, more than I’d even seen it before.
Bar service is usually pretty slow anyway on gig nights, but given that for this gig they were decanting every single bottle at the bottle bar into plastic glasses, it took us 40 minutes to get a drink, made worse by the fact some idiot staff member had seemingly ordered only half pint (284ml) plastic glasses which the bar staff were then using for 330ml bottles of beer and just throwing the rest of the beer away until some guy pointed out they were ripping everyone off!
Bar problems aside, the gig was fantastic. I’ve heard some of The Fratellis’ live stuff before and was expecting it to sound a bit raw, so I was pleasantly surprised when their sound was really polished. Embarrassingly, it took Suzy and I about half a song to realise it was actually them who’d taken to the stage because the lead singer had wet his hair, instead of having the big curly mop he usually has, and they opened with a new song we’d not heard before. It’s a shame they hadn’t released their new album before the gig (it’s out in June) but if the new tracks they played are anything to go by, it’s going to be a good ’un...
Anyway, check out what you missed and watch the video above or view the rest of the photos and videos on Flickr.
We Are Scientists – Thursday 17th April 2008
I first saw We Are Scientists when they supported Kaiser Chiefs at Sheffield Arena last December. Having bought their album after that gig, it seems I first heard them when I played Burnout on my Xbox, which features one of their track. They’re a really good live band who really try and interact with the audience. This didn’t work too well when they were in Sheffield Arena in front of an audience waiting to see Kaiser Chiefs but worked really well at Sheffield Octagon.
I seem to remember there being some discussion about Yorkshire puddings but I can’t remember much about it as I’d drunk more than I should have done really. But from what I remember about the gig, it was good.
The Kooks – Monday 28th April 2008
For the final gig of the month, we went to see The Kooks again, having really enjoyed seeing them play their V Festival warm-up gig at Doncaster Dome last year. Another gig at The Roxy, but the support act was much better than the last time we were there. Palladium kind of looked and sounded like they’d stepped into 2008 straight from the 1980s, but in a good way; you just don’t hear enough guitar licks and synth sounds like those anymore!
Before going to the gig, I’d been listening to The Kooks’ new album. There are some mixed reviews knocking around but I think it’s pretty good. I reckon it’s quite similar to the first album. There’s a good mix of catchy tunes on there. In keeping with the neon KONK sign on the new album cover, when the curtain dropped there was a massive flashing, buzzing, blue neon KOOKS sign above the stage. Much to my amusement, due to the dodgy neon font they’d used, the sign looked more like it said BOOBS rather than KOOKS though.
Once again, we spotted some banners saying things like “LUKE IS A SEX GOD” and “I ♥ THE KOOKS” and a cleverly timed banner just saying “YES” in response to the lyric, “Do you wanna make love to me?” The audience did’t seem that young at this gig though, so perhaps this is just the latest thing. Maybe I’ll make some for when we go to see some more bands next month...
Anyway, despite the banners that made us feel like we were at a Take That concert, this was an excellent gig. They played all the best songs from both albums and I had a right good sing-a-long!
Again, you can watch the video above or view the rest of the photos and videos on Flickr.
Still to come next month: The Wombats, Joe Lean & The Jing Jang Jong and The Pigeon Detectives.
Labels: music,