Mar 07
MoggyApple, Keynote Event, Rumor, iPhone/iPod touch
In today’s strain of boredom, I had a look at Apple’s iPad pricing, and decided to work out what the most probable prices for the device will be when it gets released here in “late April” (cheers, Steve, you promised us late March back in January).
For starters, these are the confirmed US Dollar prices in America:
And then, I did a bit of Maths.
- Firstly, taking a direct exchange price into GBP at today’s exchange rate
- Then adding 17.5% VAT
- Then adding an average inflation based on other Apple products and their UK pricing
- Then making a logical decision of UK price points.
You can see all my working out in this PDF document.
And then, I finally came to these 6 price points. Lets see how close I am when the real prices get released 
Mar 06
MoggyBBC, Media, Politics, TV
Recently we have been hearing that there will be three live debates, featuring the three main political party leaders in the UK, broadcast live on TV, before the election day coming up this year (currently widely assumed to be May 6th).
The idea is based upon the similar American debates that happen on the other side of the Atlantic – and usually, a political strategy that has crossed the pond to us usually has me worried. But not this one…
To sum up for those who don’t know, here is a short quote about the debates from a Guardian news article:
The first programme, to be presented by ITN’s Alastair Stewart, will cover domestic affairs and come from the north-west. The second show, presented by Sky’s Adam Boulton, will cover foreign affairs and come from the south-west. The third, presented by the BBC’s David Dimbleby, will cover the economy – seen as the most important election issue – and will be broadcast from the Midlands.
And here are my main opinions:
- Firstly, the three debates are on three different broadcasters (starting with ITV1, followed by Sky News, and lastly the BBC), meaning there can be no ‘blame’ or ‘bias’ to a single broadcaster or host for a single show. I know it’s against broadcasting law to be politically bias, not just for the BBC, but for all channels in the UK, but I suspect Sky News will show their true right wing colours at some point… or maybe thats just me.
- I am also interested to see that none of the three debates will be held in London, but in varying locations across the country. I would like to see at least one set somewhere in the countryside, so people who don’t live in urban areas (which makes up rather a large proportion of the UK’s population) feel their opinions are heard.
- Which party will benefit most? For me, the Lib Dems. As mentioned on a Question Time debate a few days ago, the Lib Dems will be on the same level or debate as both the Tories and Labour. I suspect that a larger proportion of the mainstream public will change their viewpoints to the Lib Dems.
- I am also glad to see some of the ’strict’ rules put in place for the debates’ format. One that particularly grabbed my eye was the rule that the audience may not applaud during the live debate, and will only do so at the beginning at the end of the show. By not applauding, TV audiences will not be influenced to what the party leaders say based upon what the studio audience thinks. That to me, is a good thing, as the public needs to make their own mind up.
- I am, however, not happy at the reaction given by some of the smaller parties, such like The Green Party, UKIP, the SNP, etc. The thing is, these live debates are for the mainstream, large parties, which are their to promote a future prime minister, not to reinforce opinions of local MP’s – which is what these smaller parties need. Plus, the SNP and Plaid Cymru can bugger off, their policies have nothing to do with me living in England – don’t you dare say that their opinions need to be heard throughout the UK!
So, finally – my political opinion? Well, as I have made it clear before, I am more of a right-wing person, but I will promise myself to base my political opinion solely on the outcome of these debates… this should be interesting!
Sources: BBC News / The Guardian / Sky News / PA; Image source: Sky News
Feb 22
MoggyInternet, Web Design, Website
After a couple of days, I have now officially decided not to recommend on the site 123-reg.co.uk to friends. I will admit that they have been a great hosting and domain provider in the past (my website used to be hosted with them), but the debacle I’ve had in the past couple of days has really irritated me. This is the email I sent to the support centre.
Dear 123-reg,
Up until now, I have been a user of 123-reg services and have had no problems with the service at all. However, until the other day, when I signed up for my third domain (www.******************.co.uk) with you.
The purpose for the domain was simple, to set up a forward to the current .org.uk site. However, I specifically needed the domain forward set up for yesterday morning.. but this didn’t happen since my domain still hasn’t been set up, even after the “up to 48 hours” period of setting up.
Interestingly, today I can still search for the domain on your site, and it is listed as ‘available’, even though I’ve paid for it.
I purchased it at about 5pm on the 18th Feb, which I will admit allowed less than 48 hours for when I wanted the domain (about 10am on 20th Feb), but it is currently 11pm on 21st Feb, well over 72 hours from the purchase, and my domain still has not been set up in my control panel.
Another thing I would like to complain about, with regard to the “up to 48 hours” setting up period – I saw absolutely no detail of this information before purchasing – I only found it AFTER buying the domain. Knowing this info may have stopped me from purchasing the domain.
Because I only needed the domain for ONE simple task that has now passed, and it still hasn’t even been set up, I would like to request my money back (the invoice totalled to £7.03 inc. VAT).
Regards,
Alastair Mogford (username: **************)
PS. This is one of many times that I have tried to send this question. Turns out that both Safari and Firefox are determind to keep me logged into the site, prompting the message “all browser windows must be closed” – which ironically appears when it is the only browser window open.
The response given was rather interesting, they wanted me to fill in a manual form to complete my registration for the domain that had “failed”. There was no mention of any money return, at all.
I shall keep you posted with updates… although, for the moment, I will have to say avoid using the service for the above reason.
Update (9th March ‘10): After chasing the case up, it turns out that my domain failed registration. After asking for a refund, they seemed fine and wanted to pay it in, however it’s only today when my refund has actually made my bank account. 
Feb 15
MoggyRandom
This is a genuine complaint to Devon & Cornwall Police Force from an angry member of the public
A true email sent to the force, lengthy but brilliantly written……
Dear Sir/Madam/Automated telephone answering service,
Having spent the past twenty minutes waiting for someone at Bodmin police station to pick up a telephone I have decided to abandon the idea and try e-mailing you instead.
Perhaps you would be so kind as to pass this message on to your colleagues in Bodmin, by means of smoke signal, carrier pigeon or Ouija board.
As I’m writing this e-mail there are eleven failed medical experiments (I think you call them youths) in St Mary’s Crescent, which is just off St Mary’s Road in Bodmin.
Six of them seem happy enough to play a game which involves kicking a football against an iron gate with the force of a meteorite. This causes an earth shattering CLANG! Which rings throughout the entire building.
This game is now in its third week and as I am unsure how the scoring system works, I have no idea if it will end any time soon.
The remaining five failed-abortions are happily rummaging through several bags of rubbish and items of furniture that someone has so thoughtfully dumped beside the wheelie bins. One of them has found a saw and is setting about a discarded chair like a beaver on ecstasy pills.
I fear that it’s only a matter of time before they turn their limited attention to the caravan gas bottle that is lying on its side between the two bins.
If they could be relied on to only blow their own arms and legs off then I would happily leave them to it. I would even go so far as to lend them the matches.
Unfortunately they are far more likely to blow up half the street with them and I’ve just finished decorating the kitchen.
What I suggest is this – after replying to this e-mai l with worthless assurances that the matter is being looked into and will be dealt with, why not leave it until the one night of the year (probably bath night) when there are no mutants around then drive up the street in a Panda car before doing a three point turn and disappearing again. This will of course serve no other purpose than to remind us what policemen actually look like.
I trust that when I take a claw hammer to the skull of one of these throwbacks you’ll do me the same courtesy of giving me a four month head start before coming to arrest me.
I remain your obedient servant,
Mr ******
The response:
Mr ******,
I have read your e-mail and understand your frustration at the problems caused by youths playing in the area and the problems you have encountered in trying to contact the police.
As the Community Beat Officer for your street I would like to extend an offer of discussing the matter fully with you.
Should you wish to discuss the matter, please provide contact details (address / telephone number) and when may be suitable.
Regards
PC ***********
Community Beat Officer
[Source]
Feb 14
MoggyGeography, Media, Random, World
Call me a sceptic, but I personally believe that climate change and global warming as it is known today is highly exaggerated, and not caused by human actions, such as CO2 emissions.
This belief of mine is based upon the continual unreliable data that is used to influence public opinion.
Image: Guardian.co.uk. This is the professor, who has now resigned, who was at the centre of the 'climate-gate' scandal.
Below is a quote from the Guardian newspaper, regarding the recent “Climate-Gate” email scandal, last November, at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. It reads…
Hundreds of private emails and documents allegedly exchanged between some of the world’s leading climate scientists during the past 13 years have been stolen by hackers and leaked online, it emerged today.
and further on in the article, it states that:
In one email, dated November 1999, one scientist wrote: “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature [the science journal] trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie, from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.“
…this being reference to the declining of global temperatures – essentially meaning these folks FIXED the data they found.
I’m sorry, but the way I see it is that all scientific data should be peer-reviewed before being let out to public domain, but if there was a conspiracy of mis-information – how can we believe anything that is being said is actually fact!? It turns out that the CRU at this university supplies data and climate statistics to both the Met Office and the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change)… which are apparently the two “most reliable sources of climate data” – well, not anymore.
I will admit that this email was dated over 10 years ago now, but below is a quote from another article I found, this time at BBC News, entitled “What happened to Global Warming?“:
This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.
But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.
And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.
These were results from an impartial and independent BBC investigation in October last year.
My question is how the world is meant to respond to these claims, and that “global warming”, could, in actual fact be a worldwide inter-governmental conspiracy plot.
Feb 12
MoggyGoogle, Internet, Random, Search Engine
Google has recently rolled out their new beta website, and in with it a more slick version of their search suggestion tool (where you start typing what you want to search for, and a list of the ‘most popular’ suggestions come up). The feature is pretty good, but also makes me laugh rather a lot as a result of some the funny results that come up! Check out these screenshots from my experiences!
More
Feb 03
MoggyMe, Mobile Phones, Technology, iPhone/iPod touch
In this post, I want to summarise the phones that I have had over the past few years. It’s amazing to see how things change over time!
Nokia 6100
This was my first ever phone. I was so excited! It was a hand-me-down from my mother, and after slipping in a cheap T-Mobile (just after they had changed from one2one!) pay as you go sim card – I was on my way! The phone was pretty decent too – colour screen, games, endless ringtones, etc. I was in love… until it dropped into a water bucket, and died.
Nokia 5140 (blue)
After my incident with the 6100, I decided to get the 5140. It had just been released, and was really popular because of it’s really durable body and strength. It was also marketed out at people who enjoyed outdoor activities (which, incidentally, I was at the time…). In terms of features, it had basically everything the 6100 had, but with a camera. I could only get the phone on the Orange network, so I got a new PASG sim from them.
Sony Ericsson K750i (silver)
After a good few years at Orange, we switched to Vodafone because they had a great business plan deal on that would suit the whole family – incidentally, we are still on the same contract today. Because of the new contract, we could pick virtually any phone, and naturally, I went for the best at the time – the 750i. I was mostly lured in my the insane 2MP camera (the best in 2005!), but about half way through the 18 month contract, the phone turned from being the best thing in the world, to the worst. Everything, and I mean… everything, just stopped working correctly – and I had to put up with this for at least another 8 months!
Nokia N95
This was the phone someone would dream about… and after becoming sick of Sony Ericsson’s dire reliability, I went back to Nokia and got wowed by the flippy screened N95. The specs and details with the phone simply were awesome – but it was just simply too big. It was actually a brick, the same materials used to build houses… I had an 18 month contract with the phone, but got so irritated half way through, I shoved the SIM card into my at-the-time girlfriends old phone, which I think was a Nokia 6000 series phone, similar to the 6100 and 5140 – but a bit weird looking!
Samsung Tocco
The third phone I got with Vodafone on the same contract was the Samsung Tocco. This thing was pretty nice – although it was a pity that the touchscreen wasn’t as responsive as I had hoped. This was my first touchscreen phone, and I was amazed by the concept… but let down a little. I had this little over a year, and just two weeks out of warranty, accidentally took it with me in my wetsuit when I went surfing. Not good!
Vodafone 521 (white)
Phone-less on holiday was becoming hell, so I had to buy myself a new handset quickly, and preferably cheap! I owned an iPod touch at the same time, and didn’t need any other functions other than the ability to send messages and make phone calls! The cheapest phone Vodafone had in their shop, was this, the 527 – a Sagem phone branded ‘Vodafone’ to match the network. It was all of £25. Why so cheap? Well, I’ll just put it out there for you – THIS IS THE WORST PHONE IN THE WORLD, EVER.
And that concludes my phone history. Until a few weeks time, when I’ll be getting an…
Apple iPhone 3GS 16GB (White)
The most epic phone ever. But my question is this – now that I’ll be switching to the iPhone, will I ever move away to another phone company? Or will I be iPhone outed for the rest of my life!?
Jan 26
MoggyApple, Mac, Web Design, Website
Apple, the company of absolute perfection and absolutely no room for error, has buggered up… and I know it’s industrially sad of me to point this out… but I just find it weird.
You’ll notice there is a difference between the horizontal viewing scroll bars on the USA and UK versions of Apple’s Mac website. It appears that Safari only exists in the States, despite the Safari website on the UK section exists, completely normally. Bizzare right? Check it out (click for larger previews):
So there you go. Do I deserve a reward? Or is there some anal reason why this is meant to be?
Jan 24
MoggyApple, Keynote Event, Mac, Rumor, iPhone/iPod touch
On Wednesday, Apple will be holding a media event in San Francisco to release a “new creation”. It’s very exciting news in the world of Mac-fans and alike, they all have one thing in mind… a shiny new touchscreen device from Apple… somewhere between the iPhone and a Mac.
It sounds pretty cool… but I’m not so convinced.
First of all… every single tablet that has ever been released has been, to say the least, shit. Low battery life, big bulky things, little point or use, etc. Then there is the eBook, such as the Amazon Kindle… and every single one of those has been… er… shit, and lacking the functionality a standard computer would have.
Next, what will the point of this device actually be? There is nothing I can’t do with the aid of my MacBook Pro and my iPod touch. Both have internet. Both have email. Both have Mac applications and App Store apps, respectively. The thing that differs, really, is the hardware. My MBP is 15″ in size, well beyond 4 times the size of the 3.5″ we seen in the iPhone. I also have a physical keyboard, mouse, trackpad, webcam, etc. It just makes more practical sense, so long as you don’t mind the size, to have a laptop… and if size is the problem, a netbook. The success of the iPhone and the iPod touch is because of the ecosystem and environment of apps, touchscreen, 3G networking and elegant looking iPod, all in a pocket.
My worry is that because of the “ecosystems”, as I have labelled it, around the Mac and the portable iPhone/iPod… is there really room for another ecosystem like that in the middle? This brings me on to what sort of operating system this device will run. So far, people have said either iPhone OS or Mac OS X. Of those two, I would much, much prefer OS X, but it seems I am not fitting the majority of opinion. Though I think we will see a clever integration of both. It makes me wonder if there will be an almost “dumbed down” version of OS X for this device – but still with support for Mac applications, or even iPhone apps. I wouldn’t like to see the latter, personally, as screen resolutions, mixed up features, etc. will all go horribly wrong along the line somewhere.
Oh god, then don’t get me started on the name. iSlate? iPad? I’d rather not… I’d much prefer the “Apple Slate” or “Apple Pad”… since the “i” has been so overused… and the Apple TV device doesn’t have an obligatory “i”.
So what actually are we going to see? Well, who knows. I guess we’ll find out in under 96 hours time. Will I be watching? Probably. Will I be amazed? Possibly…
And here is one of my past tweets to sum up what I expect…
Update: Ok, it seems like I won’t be getting my full OS X, judging by what everyone is saying… bugger. Therefore I will bet any money that it will run a more advanced iPhone OS with a compatible version of iWork and iLife on the device. It’s either that… or the tablet will be a flop.
Jan 16
MoggyFacebook, Me, Random
In no particular order, here is a list of my favourite Facebook groups (not pages!) to date:
View all of my groups I have joined over the years… Enjoy!
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