Steve came over today and we spent a pretty productive day churning out code. We did it tag-team style with one of us writing and debugging while the other fiddled with the database, then when one of us came across code witten by the other, we’d switch jobs and continue.

Mobile’s still not working though.

I’m stopping my Orange contract and have just received a PAYG SIM and topup card from them. Amusingly the topup card expires in 2029 so I’m going to make it my aim to keep it until then

When ringing the activation number I first managed to confuse the voice recognition system, and then the human I got through to explained he couldn’t help me because his computer wasn’t working. I laughed, lots and will phone back later.

Well they’ve made this a bit easy! I’ve spent the day following the beginner’s tutorial and have a rudimentary spaceship shooting game working. It shouldn’t have taken all day, but the tutorial videos are aimed at someone who’s never used Visual Studio or C# before. I know what an “if” loop is now, at least

MS appear to have made it quite straight forward to get things moving around the screen, which is good.

In other news, my Internet connection is having problems and is currently grinding along at 3MBits after spending the past half-hour having a fit and disconnecting every two minutes.

Apple Macintosh Classic running System 7.5.3

You know, to the uninitiated, installing an operating system in your computer is a daunting and complex task, full of the great unknown and the fear you may cause permanent damage to your beloved and expensive computer. To those of us who remember two floppy Linux installs and alpha-quality partitioning tools, installing an OS is easy; bung in the CD, press ‘Agree’ then ‘Next’ until it starts installing.

Are you feeling bored? Is the challenge of reinstalling Ubuntu or XP not hitting your tech g-spot any more? Then try a new one - get a Mac Classic running System 7.0.0 and attempt to install System 7.5.3 on it using nothing more than two floppy disks and another computer with a USB floppy drive and the Internet.

Those of you who owned a Mac back in the 90s will probably look at Apple’s site and go “ahh sea.bin files, righto I’ll just put Stuffit Expander on my Mac and away we go”. Then you’ll realise you need a system 7.0.1 or higher boot disk in order to mount the install image. Those of us who were messing around with Atari STs and low spec PCs at the time (being fascinated by Windows 3.0 on our 286s, even though all it did was play Solitaire) will take several hours to even work out what a sea.bin file is, and even longer to work out how to get the sodding thing into our old Mac. Thank you Google, you made the job only take a day.

I’ll write up the process later, along with a separate doc explaining how to diagnose and fix RAM faults since one of those cropped up too. Old hardware is ace stuff, it’s so knackered and liable to stop working at any moment. You want to see the corrosion on my Mac’s motherboard. In fact the whole inside of a Mac Classic is verging on a work of art.

I am attempting to upgrade the system software on my Macintosh Classic. Currently it runs System 7.0 and I want it to run System 7.5. I have the System 7.5 images from Apple, and a Macbook with an external USB floppy drive. I also have a set of high density floppy disks.

Not that getting data from one to the other is easy. I’m lost in a world of sea.bin files and not a lot of idea what to do with them. I didn’t own a Mac when this stuff was current, and it appears nobody ever thought “aha in 18 years time people will be downloading System 7 images from the Internet onto their new Macs and then want to install them on their old Macs”

I’ve been at this too long, I’m giving up for the night.

Photo from Wikipedia

After looking at the amount of money I throw down the drain every month, and feeling slightly irritated that most of it I have to pay, I’ve been looking at things to chop out or pay slightly differently. After weeding out my council tax, insurance, rent and other things like that number 1 on my list of “whoa that looks a bit expensive” was my mobile phone.

I’m on a contract, it costs me £35 a month including typical call usage and other junk (insurance and an Internet bundle). My family and everyone else I know with a mobile has a pay-as-you-go and it seems to cost them at most £10 a month.

So off I go to ring a certain fruity telecoms company to ask a very straight forward question “How do I switch from contract to PAYG, and will it cost me anything?”. I found their number and encountered their automated system, from which none of the options sounded remotely useful. I opted for “I want to change my billing details, but not my contact details, or payment details, I have another query” and within a few rings got through to a nice human being.

Since this is the modern world with the magic of VOIP, the person I had on the end of my phone was not in the same country as me. I am fairly certain he wasn’t on the same continent as me. I asked my question and he answered it in a pleasing way, informing me it would be free to go from contract to PAYG, and would I like to do this?

Well yes I would, this is so easy and I am happy!

OK, so I have to go on hold and be transferred to the relevant department (probably the bloke in the cubicle next to him). And here’s where spanners start falling into the works. Due to a bit of good old Chinese Whispers and misunderstanding they assumed I had already cancelled my contract, and already had a replacement PAYG SIM, ready to be activated. No, I don’t… I want one, is it still free? Does any of what I’m asking make any sense to you, or have you run off your script and are rapidly ad-libbing into a nasty dark pit of confusion?

Hm? Yes, I can hold again I guess… this is turning into a game, I no longer care if my query gets sorted, I want to see how many people I can talk to. I’m bored with nothing else to do today.

The crappy hold music ends, the line goes silent… and after some confusion an very nice English lady comes on the line. Hurrah! Someone I can speak to in my normal tone of voice, using normal slang, at my normal speaking speed, through a line that doesn’t sound like damp string. I may just get somewhere yet… This callcentre woman was good, she’d obviously been given the freedom to listen to her callers, think a bit, and suggest ideas to help them. She wasn’t a robot reading from a script.

She told me that no, unlike what the other lot had said (she didn’t sound too impressed with them either) it wouldn’t be free, I would have to buy out the end of my contract. So I did, since I have to pay that money even if I choose to give up and remain a loyal, money pissing contract customer. Replacement SIM will arrive within a week and “all” I have to do is ring back and get it activated.

So yeah, I’ll have to go back to the giant chicken farm and hope they can understand my routine request to have a PAYG activated.

A small point to make

Please do not fall under the misunderstanding that I dislike the people in the foreign callcentres that I spoke to originally. I’ve got no problem with them. my problem is with the companies that decide to shunt our calls over to another continent, without deciding whether the idea works socially. I’m English, I speak a certain way, using certain phrases and with an accent. If I was asked to handle calls coming from the other side of the planet I’d probably get things equally confused, mixed up and wrong.

Just because something is technically possible, and will save money, doesn’t mean it’s always socially acceptable. Outsourced, foreign callcentres are just bad bad inventions. It’d be like me teaching my kids by slapping a pile of instructions on their desks and saying “get on with it”. It’d work, but it wouldn’t be very good.

I’ve just pruned my GMail, chopping it down from a flabby 780MB to a leaner 500MB, mostly by deleting bulk adverts, spam and a few high-volume mailing lists I no longer read. While unsubscribing I came across the slightly controversial new-look Daily Dilbert mails.

Dilber’s ace, I read it every day, but since they started producing an RSS feed I’ve been tracking it in there instead, so I have no need to see the daily email.

It’s fortunate then that they provide this handy URL for me to click on…

If the link to unsubscribe does not work, please visit http://dilbert.com/manage_subscriptions.process/eyJHcm91cElEc19VbnN1YnNjcmliZSI6WzNdLCJFdmVudElEIjoxOCwiRGF0ZVN0
cmlwIjoiMjAwOC0wNy0yNSIsIkhhc2giOiI5NTM2ZTM3YjY1Yzk2MmU4ZjVl
YjE1ZDk0NDdmOGFkYyIsIlVzZXJJRCI6IjU3NDY2IiwiUmVnaXN0ZXJEYXRlIj
oiMjAwOC0wNC0xMCAxOTozMTo0OSJ9/. Do not reply to this email, it is not monitored.

Yeah…

Earlier this year I decided to try and make the weed-strewn mud behind my house into something more interesting than nettles, bindweed and rosebay willowherb (which I just learnt is edible). So I went to the garden centre and bought a few packets of “meadow flowers”. Being of the opinion that wild flowers are quite able to germinate by themselves, without human intervention I scraped the weeds and glass off my patch of land and threw the seeds on and left them.

The flowers have made good use of the hot, sunny weather and torrential downpours of the past month and there’s a bright riot of colour behind my car. It’s pretty good

Following my mess with online banking yesterday I decided to do something constructive. Originally all my passwords lived in my browser and were synchronised between machines using Google Browser Sync. Now this is no more and once again I was forced to either remember them, or write them down somewhere. Writing down passwords is a silly thing to do, so following a recommendation I downloaded and installed KeePass Password Safe.

It works very nicely, I’ve even got the password database stored in my SVN server for safe keeping. I also installed it on my Mac (using KeePassX) and after a quick svn co I had the database on my Mac too, all working.

Shame there’s no Nokia Internet Tablet version, it’d be perfect then. Oh well, I’m happy with 99% perfect

For fuck’s sake.

Last week I managed to mess up while logging into my Natwest online banking. For some reason the system forgot who I was and wouldn’t let me in, instead suggesting I re-register. So I did, choosing a new password and suchlike.

Because I’d just re-registered they needed to send me an activation code through the mail to unlock all the extras that the online banking can do. Fair enough, the letter arrived yesterday.

Today I try to log in and … it doesn’t know who I am again! I’m fairly sure I got my password correct, but either there’s a big cockup with my account or I didn’t.

I will now have to re-re-register and await yet another stupid authorisation code. This time I will take the highly insecure action of writing my password down on a bit of paper and keeping it safe. Online banking - you have failed. You’re asking for too many codes and bits of password and sequences of numbers to veryfy that I am me. You gave me a two-factor authentication device that I have to use when making bank transfers. Why not use that?

Produce a challenge code that I have to key into my authorisation machine, and then provide my response as another code? If my card’s PIN is secure enough for withdrawing cash, and physically having the card is secure enough for buying things online, then the system should be good enough for online banking, no?

Or just ask for random parts of my personal details each time, it’s what you ask when I forget my password… why bother with making me remember something extra that I have to write down because I am too overloaded to fit it in my brain?