BatteryHQ

Cheat the system: eat a cake

For those of you that enjoy the delights of the nintendo Wii console and all the arm flailing, wrist flicking that goes along with it, you may have come across the new ‘Wii fit’ system. Essentialy this is a game (accompanied by special gaming board) that makes the player get up off their sweat-stained sofas and unclog those arteries by exercising in front of their TV.

It didnt work with Mr. Motivator so why should the japanese think that this is a sure fire winner? Well, people love their consoles nowadays, and alot more people are riding the healthy bus, what with the increase of obesity in Britain since its introduction from America in the early 80’s.

But what of the lazy gamer? those folk who just love to drive their cars into other cars, shoot hookers or persuade a fat italian plumber to fight a huge turtle thing?

Well, Nate lanxon over at Cnet.co.uk has devised a genius way of simply playing the game, but still being allowed to enjoy that extra beer, or an entire chocolate gateaux. But is it more effort than simply playing the game? Find out here: http://crave.cnet.co.uk/gamesgear/0,39029441,49297871,00.htm

Why i don't despise Orange

I have been an orange customer for probably 6 or 7 years on pay as you go or more recently as a contracted customer. In this time i have had countless problems with my phone, my bills, my tariffs, my indegestion etc and yes, these problems are irritating.Now it may seem at this point that i am whinging. Not so. For me, these problems were all resolved with a minimum of fuss, and generally with a good natured orange customer service representative. Just the other week i was going through some issues and i was speaking to a great girl who not only sorted out everything quickly and easily but also chatted about university, what i was up to that day, what she’d been up to etc. It was great. I admit that to get through to her in the first place i had to wait on hold hearing the ‘your call is important to us’ nonsense for about 10 minutes, but to recieve such good service at the end made the wait worthwile.

Now this post is really a rebuttal to Mr. Nate Lanxon’s complaints about Orange on his blog here: http://www.lanxon.co.uk/index.php/2008/06/16/why-i-despise-orange/ and i accept that for some, Orange’s service is not always up to scratch. For example, he (Nate) mentions the irritating aspect of being put through to foreign call centres. I believe that this happens when orange’s british call centres close after 6pm, so to other customers: phone before that time. Having said that, i was put through to their indian centre to resolve broadband issues and was able to totaly reconfigure my internet connection over the phone.

My contract itself is incredibly good, offering me unlimited texts, 800 minutes and a free top of the line phone for only £25 a month. And i believe that this displays some of the good service that orange can (but does not always) deliver. In fact, when originaly phoning to find out the date of when i was able to upgrade my handset, my (incredibly friendly) customer service guy not only offered me an upgrade there and then, but noticed i sometimes go over my text limit and so upped me to an unlimited amount, knocked my minutes up to 800 and knocked £5 off my original bill.
I am in agreeance (yes, its a word) with Nate that Orange’s customer service is lacking in quantity (i.e. amount of staff employed), but for the most part, i think they do a very good job. They recognise long term customers and treat them to deals and upgrades that keep the customers returning. They will have lost a valuable customer if Nate decides to switch to a competing company but this is a casualty of the ever changing mobile market, a market which is very much a perpetual battlefield in which there will always be heavy losses and many gains on all sides. There will also be those that should be nuked into the ground (im looking at you, vodafone).
I shall be staying with Orange.

fact, fiction...anything

Now i stumble on alot of junk these days, usualy blogs (such as this) talking about random people’s (such as me) boring lives (such as mine), but every so often i stumble upon something groundbreaking and fascinating that i read, such as: clothes for cats, electronic cat tags, video cameras for cats, custom cat houses etc.

The other day however i stumbled on the above image. My instant thought was (and this has no relation to belows blog entry) that it was photoshopped. Come on, i know london well ish and ive seen alot of it. I mightve noticed a bloody huge half telescope sticking out the ground at the most popular spot, right?

Still, i read the articles (here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telectroscope) and this just added fuel to my ‘its fake’ fire. The idea is that it was supposed to be a giant tunnel between london and new york. Yes thats quite sane. Instead, its a telescope that allows you to ‘see’ through the earth. Also sane. Still the idea has been done and is attracting lots of attention. Huzzah!

Im torn though. Part of me says: ‘so? we have internet and we have webcams. How is this different?’ And i still think this. in fact, thats pretty much all i think, so im not torn at all. Yes its in a lovely gold case, but so are many watches and theyre hardly revolutionary anymore. I can leave my webcam on to a guy in australia and boom! i have punched a hole right through the earth and can see the other side.

Maybe im missing the point and if i am, then fine, im wrong. But i dont quite see the fuss. Sorry.

Web 2.0

I love it. I love how somebody blogs about some fantastic sight to be found on sweet planet earth such as the worlds biggest swimming pool, or victoria falls or the african savannah, and the comments that follow are littered with accusations that it is “photoshopped”

God it makes me chuckle. Im aware that most are probably saying that out of humour as the whole ‘woah, that has been photshopped’ is so old that its funny. But when you get people pointing out ‘artefacts’ in a quite clearly normal image trying to argue that this is a classic example of how to tell a picture is fake? i laugh harder. i really do. Sometimes i wee a little. But its photshopped, so my pants stay dry.

Back up

Heres a concept. I back up my files (photos, music etc) onto a hard drive. Is this a brain? no.

However, i back up my memories, and thoughts onto the internet on this blog/facebook etc. Is THIS a brain? Again, the answer is no. But at least when im old and senile i will have a hard copy of my life to look over and pinpoint exactly where it all went wrong. Will it be quitting my career to join a trio of juggling throat singers? will it be investing all my money in something called fuckenshitten inc?

Takin all bets!

Stray pixels

Now ive had an irritating stray pixel for about a year on my sleek 19inch lcd monitor.

Wouldnt be too bad but this one pixel is bright green and its very obvious. 

Anyway, today, i poked it and the sucker vanished. 

"if you leave it even 1 minute past, you WILL be clamped"

These were the words i was met with regarding parking outside the flat i pay nearly £4,000 a year to live in.

I was phoning up lincoln university’s security department to enquire, quite nicely, about the options of getting something along the lines of a temporary parking permit so that, when i make the 2 hour drive to lincoln for my exams, i have somewhere to park my car. 

Now i didnt think this would be an issue. Surely, they dont expect every student to fork out shed loads of cash they dont have on train tickets/bus fares when so many of them could do the drive up and down on less than 20 quid.  And i was more than happy to pay a few quid for a temporary pass or the like to allow me to park in the perpetually empty car park outside my building.

So, out came the phone and before long, i had been put through to lincoln’s security people.

“oh, hello, i live in the student village and im driving over for my exams on sunday evening, i was wondering if you could tell me what the procedure would be for parking in the courts car parks. Is there a temporary permit i could buy?”

“no. You cant park there”

“what? at all?”

“you can park between 4pm and 3am, but if you are there even a minute after 3am, you WILL be clamped”.

“rrright, so can you tell me of any other places i could park?”

“no”

“oh. Sooo, what exactly does the university expect students to do when they come in for exams?”

“there are signs in the village explaining parking procedures, you know thatyou cant park there.” - notice how my question is not answered in the slightest.

“So, considering im paying almost £4,000 to live there, why is it that im not allowed to park my car there for a couple of days while i sit my finals?”

“its the universities regulations”

“yes but WHY is it their regulations”

“I can’t tell you that”

“right, thanks”  - i hang up.

Now im no strangers to the complete lack of care and service recieved at lincoln universities student housing. After my hot water was deemed to be at a ‘very dangerous’ temperature and that something will be done “immediately” in november 2007, im told it is still at that temperature in may 2008. One of my flatmates went for weeks with no key for her door as the accommodation service didnt get round to providing her with new ones. We went for months with a broken hoover even after we phoned up for a new one perhaps 7 or 8 times, then were complained at for the state of the carpets. 

Now this is bad, but it annoyes me more when we got a letter demanding money off us, the day after we discharged a fire extinguisher. Fine, i admit, we shouldnt have done it and im hapy to pay for its refill. But i dont like how they ignore all of our problems, fobbing us off with ridiculous excuses but are all over us the moment ANYTHING happens they could ask for money about.

And now the car parking thing is really just the last straw in it all. Dont get me wrong, i’ve loved living there. Ive made fantastic friends and had a whole heap of fun in the area. But the service provided for such a huge amount of money is appalling. Truly appalling.

I really do think ‘shame on you Lincoln.’

Name length beaten by spaniard

Uncool.

My name: Andrew Peter Lanxon Fisher Hoyle  

Pablo picasso’s ful name: Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Martyr Patricio Clito Ruiz y Picasso

I tip my hat to you, sir.