Archive for February, 2009
February 23rd, 2009
I’ve just received a couple of e-mails from Jayne at Roofing Group UK. It seems that she’s finally noticed that my website ranks rather highly on a search for “Roofing Group UK” and isn’t best pleased about the rather scathing comments I made regarding the company’s customer service.
In her e-mails, she states that it is “unfair“ that I haven’t posted to say that my roof has been repaired, and that it would be nice if I were to “rectify the situation by telling everyone that [my] problem has been sorted.”
Well, I’m not a vindictive man. It’s true, that – eventually – someone from Roofing Group UK did come to patch the leak in my roof. Well, I assume so, anyway: while the leak has gone, whoever repaired it visited during the day while no-one was here and left no sign of his attendance beyond not having closed the gates when he left. No note through the door, no apology for the wait, no explanation of exactly why a brand-new roof had started leaking – nothing. Nor was there any mention of recompense for the damage done to the room and its contents.
So, yes: Roofing Group UK did carry out the bare minimum required by law to put things right, and for that I give thanks.
Incidentally, Jayne would like it known that Roofing Group UK now trades under the name Roofing UK – despite having the same domain name as before, which still shows the same “monthly special offer” of a free Velux window with every re-roof that it showed back when I first found the site – and that the person who owned the company when my faulty roof was fitted, Barry Clay, is no longer in charge and has been replaced by the “original owner” Shaun Walsh.
Read the rest of this entry »
February 6th, 2009
Google has unveiled a new addition to the Google Maps for Mobile fold: Latitude. Basically, it’s a service which tracks your location – or, technically, the location of your ‘phone – and tells your friends where you are. Obviously, you can see your friends’ locations too.
It’s pretty snazzy, and integrates well with the Google Maps interface. You’ve also got the option of running it as a background task in order to keep your location completely up to date: although this functionality only triggers every few minutes and doesn’t keep a packet data connection open it slaughters the battery – I’m down to half charge on my N95 8GB after a single day’s use, although to be fair I’ve been fiddling with Google Maps in general a lot too.
There are slightly creepy, Orwellian overtones to the whole thing – and anyone who thinks Google is probably an NSA shadow op will be putting their tinfoil hats on as we speak – but it’s also bloody good fun. I’ve got a bunch of friends from work added already, and when the iPhone version comes out I’ll be adding some more.
Whether it’ll end up being anything other than a brief novelty – and how long I keep sacrificing battery life for the ability to tell people where I am at any given moment – remains to be seen.
February 4th, 2009
If anyone visited the Frog stand at BETT this year, you may have noticed Bob the Frog glowing with the light of a thousand suns. Well, he’s still glowing – only now he’s glowing at the front of the office, blinding visitors with his incandescent – well, fluorescent, to be precise – glory.
I’m not sure what the marketing advantage of having visitors blinded is, but there must be one…
February 4th, 2009
With a little help from my friend Mr. Steve, I’ve finally been able to assemble all the coins required to build the shield without ‘accidentally’ spending any in the vending machine at work.
No, there’s no point to assembling the ‘puzzle’ – except that someone has gone to a not inconsiderable effort to design the thing to be put together, so it would be rude of me to not.
February 2nd, 2009
Today’s example of Apostrophe Abuse comes courtesy of Energy Innovation in Halifax. You’d think that when you’ve gone to all the effort – and expense – of getting a shiny, custom, mirrored sign printed you’d proof read it. Apparently not. Bravo, sirs. Bravo.
