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New Laptop: The Analysis

October 31st, 2011 by Antony - General

I’ve been using, and loving my (Late 2008) Macbook for nearly three years now, and it’s been a fantastic piece of equipment.

The late 2008 model was Apple’s first unibody construction laptop and at that time carreid the ‘Macbook’ label instead of the now ‘Macbook Pro’. I got mine during the one day ‘black friday’ sale with the double bonus of the VAT rate being cut down to 15%. I never looked back, It became my main computer and my PC was left to get dusty in the corner of my spare room.

The MacBook has been all over the place with me including to Iceland and back and forth Germany on EasyJet. I’ve used it for photos, video editing, emails, web browsing…and was used for all my London Marathon coverage for work earlier in the year…but alas I think my little machine has come to the end of it’s life.

A short while ago a hairline crack appeared on the glass screen, and since upgrading to Lion I’ve noticed a bit of a performance drop, despite it being the (then) top 2.4Ghz Intel Core 2 model (with the back light keyboard). So I think it’s upgrade time. The MacBook Air has been something I’ve had my sights on for some time now, ultra portable and just as powerful as the MacBook Pro range it would be the perfect replacement for my Macbook.

I’ve done a quick comparison using GeekBench based on realworld scores and the costs* of the different laptops.

The only sad news is a quick phone call to my local Apple Retail store, they don’t carry the 2.8Ghz i7 model in stock *sad face*

*I’m fortunate to work for a company that’s in Apple’s Employee Purchase Program (EPP) meaning I get a little discount on my Apple purchases.

2012 Virgin London Marathon

October 2nd, 2011 by Antony - General

So this week news of whether you’re in the London Marathon or not having entered the ballot comes out.

The nice people at the London Marathon have an interesting approach to letting you know, instead of posting you a letter or sending you an email – the print a whole magazine.

Thankfully it’s nice and easy to find the relevant bit of the magazine with the results in it…It’s the cover!

I must admit I’m relieved with the outcome!

Male Cancer Awareness

September 22nd, 2011 by Antony - General

Enlarge

Here’s a couple of videos that have been created to encourage men to check what’s inside their trousers for cancer. A topic that doesn’t really get enough air time in a world where men don’t really talk about what lives down there.

The most recent video is by the Male Cancer Awareness Campaign and features ‘Glamour Model’ Rhian Sugden including a slightly scary but “oh phew they’re not real” moment.

However, slightly less ‘naughty’ and featuring the lovely Rachel Stevens there’s this slightly older video from Everyman.

It’s obvious where these campaigns are targetted and I certainly think they work. Personally I think the first is a little close to the mark (we’re not all Page 3 obsessed you know).

I do get the feeling that MCAC said they wanted an EveryMan video to their creative agency but if it encourages more men to keep a regular check on things down there it can only be a good thing!

Giant Spider invades Bath!!

September 13th, 2011 by Antony - General

It’s that time of the year I guess but for this chap I’m going to call in air support.

Seen lurking in the tub, He (and I’m reliably informed by Mel courtesy of the Alan Titchmarsh show he’s a he because of the bulbous bits at the front) was escorted out of the bathroom window to go and terrorise someone else!

Yes, the first photo was a close up, the above should give you a more accurate sense of scale.

Congratulations Helen and Harley

September 3rd, 2011 by Antony - General

image

Now available on Getty

May 3rd, 2011 by Antony - General

So following on from this years Virgin London Marathon it would appear I’ve been ‘papped’ by a Gettty photographer.

That’s me standing on Richard Branson’s right in the red ‘Virgin London Marathon Staff’ jacket.

I had the privilege of being in his entourage for the day watching him start the race, travel back to the finish to award trophies and on the Tube to the Virgin Money cheering zone.

So my small claim to fame – a photo of me is available to purchase on Getty (but no doubt I will be cropped out of it if it’s ever used!)

The original image is of course available to purchase here http://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/112285026/Getty-Images-Sport

Getting calls from 0800 408 9340?

February 6th, 2011 by Antony - General

So looking at my google analytics stats it seems the top keywoard people are searching for before landing on my blog is 0800 408 9340.

If you’re one of the people who’ve just goggled it and wondered why you’re looking at my website, hopefully this post will help explain.

A while ago I received a call from 0800 408 9340 asking if I would like to upgrade my Virgin Media service, with a fantastic offer that seemed a little too good to be true, so being cautious of these kinds of cold calls I decided not to take them up on the offer.

After the call I posted a tweet to @VirginMedia asking if it was genuinely their number.

@virginmedia Is this one of your outbound numbers? 0800 408 9340 - just had a call offering 2 months free XL tele is it genuine?

January 10, 2011 3:18 pm via TweetDeck ReplyRetweetFavorite

@antonysimm

Antony Simm

And here’s my the response I got

@antonysimm Yep, that seems like one of ours. ST

January 10, 2011 7:57 pm via TweetDeck ReplyRetweetFavorite

@virginmedia

Virgin Media

So it seems to be a genuine Virgin Media number.

My blog lists my latest tweets over there on the right, so while the above tweet was still in my feed, seems google indexed my blog.

Southeastern promoting pornography in the emails?

January 29th, 2011 by Antony - On the Train, Online Stuff

Probably not, however it’s an embarrassing accident which could have easily have been avoided.

I’ve just come back from a little winter holiday, flying out from ‘London’ Gatwick Airport. Investigating my route to the airport I did a little comparison between the Gatwick Express, and the regular Southeastern Trains. My conclusion was to book myself an offpeak open return on the Southeastern service (slightly cheaper, and almost as fast).

So I signed up to the Souteastern Trains website, and ordered my tickets, then sat patiently waiting for my email to arrive with my ticket collection reference.

The Email arrives, all seems good! Happy customer.

However, as from time to time I have a little bit to do with sending emails from my place of work, I took a close read of everything, including the small print. I was surprised to see the email address they want me to add to my address book to avoid SPAM was xxx@xxx.co.uk!

Southeastern train small print

Now don’t get me wrong, I want to make sure that my important emails don’t end up in the SPAM folder, but there’s no way I’m adding xxx@xxx.co.uk to my address book! I wasn’t aware I should be expecting those kinds of emails from Souteastern. The domain xxx.co.uk doesn’t actually belong to any particular website at time of posting, it’s one of those ‘parked’ addresses running automated ads for websites offering the sorts of things you’d associated with ‘xxx’.

I honestly don’t think this is intentional; I assume they added this email address as a place holder to be updated later. However there’s a golden rule for any pre-live development and testing that they may have forgotten when working on the email creative.

Don’t use any content or data in development and testing that you wouldn’t want to appear in live.

Irrespective of them not testing/proofreading it properly the email is live with the wrong information on it, if they’d used something info@southeasternrailway.co.uk it would still be wrong, but wouldn’t be embarrassingly wrong.

You should be able to see this yourself on any emails currently coming out from Southeastern Trains website so take a look. Screen shots of both my registration and ticket booking email are below:

I’ve reached out to Souteastern to let them know of their little error.

London’s largest free eye test

January 17th, 2011 by Antony - General, On the Train

So I was standing in London Liverpool Street train station, waiting for my train to bring me back home, and a little something dawned on me.

Anyone who’s been through this station (or saw the T-Mobile ad) will know that the main departure information board is at a 90 degree angle to all of the platform gates, and there’s an upper walkway around the top of the station. Not that the walkway is particularly relevant but it does make the observation easier to make.

Now I think my eyesight is quite good, I’m not saying it’s perfect but, everything seems to work fine both up close and far away.

Looking around me there seemed to be different clusters of people standing nearer or further away from the information boards, which got me thinking…When the station isn’t ‘rush hour’ busy and there’s plenty of space, people are standing where they can comfortable read the board, and everything’s nicely in focus.

Liverpool Street Station

Perhaps for their next advert Specsavers could paint lines on the station floor, with the train information being the ‘eye test’.

Which ever line you had to stand on to be able to read the writing would give you an indication of whether you need glasses or not.

Starting to blog (again)

January 6th, 2011 by Antony - General

So, I few years ago I thought I might give blogging a bit of a go, installed wordpress and made my first post! And….erm yup, that was it, not much more happened,

This year I’m going to take it more seriously (not quite seriously enough to sign up to the WordPress blogging challenge), but I’m aiming to post more regularly through the year, whether it turns out to be interesting or not is another thing!

My actual new years resolutions is to research my family tree. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for some time so I’ve started by taking a look at ancestry.co.uk, myHertiage, and GenesReunited (from the makers of what we used before Facebook, FriendsReunited) as tools to help me. I never knew that you could get easy access to census data from the UK, and Births, Marriage and Death records. It’s looking to be an exciting challenge!

I’ll update my blog with snippets I find as I go along.