Life in the Bus Lane » Tech

LinkedIn can’t do email properly.

rich — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 13:30:33 +0000

From: LinkedIn
To: Rich Wood
Subject: Rich, 6 connections changed jobs in 2011

Please view this email with a client that supports HTML.

My client does support HTML, you’re just shit.

Gmail go slow

rich — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 20:05:59 +0000

Received: by 10.229.67.154 with SMTP id r26cs124180qci; Thu, 8 Dec 2011 11:42:05 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.216.177.212 with SMTP id d62mr23938wem.0.1323297151417; Wed, 07 Dec 2011 14:32:31 -0800 (PST) Received: from hemlock.kill-9.org.uk (hemlock.kill-9.org.uk. [212.110.185.130]) by mx.google.com with ESMTP id fj5si1725890wbb.91.2011.12.07.14.32.31; Wed, 07 Dec 2011 14:32:31 -0800 (PST)

21 hours to move between two gmail servers? That’s a bit shit.

Saying good-bye to Google

rich — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 17:58:34 +0000

It’s not been a good week for Google. First they release an “update” to Reader which pretty much completely ruins it, then the next day make the same update available for GMail with pretty much the same result. Finally, for now, they release a GMail app for iOS, which when you run it presents you with an error saying

no valid ‘aps-environment’ entitlement string found for this application

Does anyone at Google actually test anything they release? It doesn’t look like it from here.

That’s better

rich — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 17:53:14 +0000

5Mbps upload now active:

The end of an era

rich — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 21:39:08 +0000

Apple Stupidity

rich — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 16:45:04 +0000

One more Apple fuck-up to add to the list. The Mac App Store doesn’t work correctly if you have Spotlight disabled. Why the fuck do I need to run a disk indexing application just to buy/update other applications? This doesn’t bode well for their Lion delivery method.

For reference, if Mac App Store gives you an error saying “You have updates available for other accounts” and you get an entry in the Console Messages saying “Multibyte IDs are unsupported”, you’ll need to re-enable Spotlight, or remove your HD from the Privacy settings in Spotlight.

Things that annoy me #2

rich — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 17:39:28 +0000

Companies who still can’t get email right.

Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2011 17:20:43 GMT
From: LOVEFiLM
To: Richard
Subject: Richard’s Essential Cinema: 2011 Hot List + Win The Fighter on DVD

Dear Richard,

We are sorry but we are having trouble sending an email to you. If you would like the see the web version of the email please visit

http://info.lovefilm.com/….

Happy viewing,
The LOVEFiLM team

You aren’t having trouble sending me an email, in fact you’ve been entirely successful in sending me an email, you just can’t cope with multipart/alternative correctly.

NeoOffice no longer free

rich — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 16:33:02 +0000

As of v3.2, NeoOffice is no longer free. You can only download the software if you’ve made a donation of $10 or more in the last year. In my mind, you can’t call it a donation if it’s mandatory, it’s … Continue reading →

Another Tivo annoyance

rich — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 20:20:23 +0000

It still can’t multi-task properly. I’ve just re-arranged my ~~season passes~~series links, and now get to stare at a static screen for five minutes whilst it sits there and thinks about things for a bit.

Two months with a Virgin Media Tivo and why you shouldn’t buy one.

rich — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 11:10:10 +0000

Two months on, and there’s still a lot of work needed before the Virgin Media Tivo is ready for a proper release. Unfortunately for the customers, that release took place a week ago.

Things that still need fixing:

Excessive seemingly random reboots. This is a massive problem which Virgin Media are totally incapable of fixing at the moment. For this reason alone you shouldn’t order a Tivo for the foreseeable future. What use is a PVR if it will lose recordings because of a reboot, or reboot whilst you are in the middle of watching something?
Forced upscaling of SD material, which means you can’t output everything at it’s native format. The Tivo itself is not particularly good at upscaling which makes this even more annoying.
No way of disabling PIN requests for post-watershed recordings. There are no children in my house, why should I be forced to enter a PIN before watching something recorded after 9pm?
An inconsistent mix of HD and SD menus.
You can’t set recordings via the web on an iPhone 3GS (amongst others), the website just tells you that you don’t have a Tivo (I do, I’m sat looking at it).
Setting multiple series links for the same program on different channels is a bit convoluted. It tells you that you already have a series link for that program, but not that it’s on a different channel, you have to explicitly add an additional series link.
You can’t FFWD through recordings from Radio properly.
Those bloody reboots.

Basically you should stay well away from the Tivo until they actually work properly. If I hadn’t already cancelled my Sky subscription I’d have sent mine back for a refund as its clearly unsuitable for it’s purpose at the moment.