T-mobile renewal disappointment

I have come to the end of my 18 month contract on T-mobile (UK) and was hoping to renew, keeping the same phone (a reliable SE W810i) and take a reduced line rental package.

I currently pay £20 per month on the lowest Flext plan. They have offered to reduce it to £15 per month, but this does not include a new phone.

However new customers are offered the same tariff for £15 per month and they get a new phone.

Each month my phonebill is over £20 due to data access charges, so I am not a terrible customer, but I am very disappointed on what has been offered.

So I shall be leaving T-mobile this week.

Eating Chinese Food

There is an excellent article on Dim Sum about Chinese Dining Etiquette.

I wish the people at work would read this before going out for a Chinese!

It’s really frowned upon to suck or lick your chopsticks, then help yourself to more food from the shared dishes! This is unhygienic and will put fellow diners off their food. Chinese people are really particular about food hygiene.

Michael Rosen, Poet Laureate

Our son brought home a reading book, and peering out from the pages was a picture of Michael Rosen, although it did not say so any where in the book.

Apparently he has just become children’s laureate:

Michael Rosen, who was today appointed children’s laureate, set out his stall for the two-year stint with a pledge to fight to bring back into classrooms a love of reading for pleasure.

The above book scan comes from the ‘Oxford Reading Tree’, see his comment about it:

“It’s taken a long time for my daughter to bring a picture book home from school because she’s been bringing home the Oxford Reading Tree day after day, week after week. The idea that that’s what the school provides to children in her class who might not encounter other books horrifies me. We don’t care about lists of words. We care about the Gruffalo. So why aren’t kids bringing home The Gruffalo?”

Anyway, belated congratulations Michael.

New London 2012 Olympic Logo

Everyone is raving about slating the new logo for the London olympics in 2012, so I thought I would design a quick logo to see if I could do better.

Clearly, I have gone with web-ready version, as you can never be too sure about whether certain colours can be rendered on certain systems. Also, why be imaginative, when you can use Helvetica as your chosen typeface?

Obviously it cost a little less than £400k, so if Seb Coe and the others are interested, I would be more than willing to provide my services.

The Facebook Effect

When Friends Reunited first took off, it was blamed for bringing together old schoolmates together, and leading to the breaking up marriages as people tried to relive the past. But that just seemed like loose morals to me.

However, I have been using Facebook this last couple of months and I think this is having a different effect on me.

But the effect is borne of jealousy. When I see old school friends and it says they work at BarCap or UBS, or they are living in New York or Singapore. Or that they are self-emplyed, I feel a little insignificant working as an employee at a small local business.

Instead of looking back on your life at 70 and having regrets and thinking of what could of been. People linking up with friends from 10 years ago are looking back sooner, at a point when they can do something about it.

Looking back and taking action now, so as to live life without regrets or false ideas of what could have been.

Feed the head

Try Feed the Head, for some weird fun.

It has amused and bemused in equal measure in my office.

Lambda Oxygen sensor on our car

The Lambda sensor on our car has failed, causing the EML (engine maintenance light) to come on. So the car is going to the garage today to be repaired. We know it is the lambda sensor, because the EML light came on before we had it serviced 2 weeks ago, and after repairs it went off. But not before a car computer diagnostic revealed a problem. The garage said that if it came on again, we would need to get it fixed.

Although the car is not behaving strangely, we are going away for a long weekend to the west country, and we don’t want to have any problems when we are down there.

But what is the lambda oxygen sensor?

The exhaust gas oxygen sensor (EGO or O2), or lambda sensor, is the key sensor in the engine fuel control feedback loop. The computer uses the O2 sensor’s input to balance the fuel mixture, leaning the mixture when the sensor reads rich and richening the mixture when the sensor reads lean.

St. Patrick’s Day Toad in the Hole

Hosted on Zooomr

The batter was made with Guinness (Irish stout) instead of milk and for my first attempt at ‘Toad in the Hole’ everyone said it was very tasty (although it looks a little pale on the photo).

This is where I got the ‘Toad in the Hole’ recipe.

Magnolia Firefox bookmarklet fixed

Ma.gnolia have released an updated bookmarklet for Firefox. It now no longer pops behind, but now in front. I have been waiting for this.

Here’s to more bookmarking!

Happy New Year!

Happy new year! Hosted on Zooomr