Escape!

This made me smile.

So, why Disjointed Reality?

Twelve months after buying the domain www.disjointedreality.com I've opened it up for everyone to see. Those who had tried typing the address into their web browser over the past year would have seen a very basic web page with a picture of a Highland cow and a small amount of text, promising to post something better designed and slightly more meaningful.

Well, here it is.

So, why Disjointed Reality? What does that mean?

I've been asked on a number of occasions and perhaps not explained it particularly well. At least, I thought I knew in my own mind, but when the explanations came, they were confusing.

Hopefully I can now, finally, make a fair attempt at a precise definition.

I wasn't a particularly early adopter of the internet. As I recall, it was about 1996 when I first set up a dial-up account at home. I used to wait until after 6pm, when phone calls were a little less expensive, bring up the modem utility on my computer and click on the connect button. After a lot of buzzing, squeaking and purring, I was online. From there it was one eye on the screen and the other eye on the clock, knowing that every minute was costing money. With web pages taking minutes to load, especially pages rich in graphic content, time went by very quickly. By 6:30pm, I'd managed to see four, maybe five pages of interest and logged off quickly, thinking… "If I do this every day, my phone bill is going to be huge". It was a fascinating but frustrating experience.

I remember once discovering that there was an operating system update available for my computer and the only way of getting it was to download it from the Apple website. But, it was 80Mb and at about 5Mb an hour download speed over dial-up, that was going to take a long time and cost quite a lot too. Looking back, I think I may have been overly conscious about the cost.

Anyway, I decided to take a chance and started at exactly 6pm the next day. At least it was possible to stop mid-download and continue the next day from the same point. I'd managed to download about 60Mb over the next week, I was feeling confident and was looking forward to the new features promised in the upgrade. The next evening I clicked on the resume download button and nothing happened. Then the progress bar returned to the start and I saw it begin again. 12K, 24K, 48K, 96K… There was quite a lot of cursing that night.

Through all the frustrations, there was a huge sense of mystery and excitement about the internet then. It really felt like a great adventure, going "online".

An online presence is now very much a part of our lives. It can take many forms and each person's experience will be very different. With mobile computing now being far more prevalent, and the availability of high speed wireless connectivity almost everywhere we go, we drift in and out of this online state throughout the day, almost without thinking. Yet going "online" is still like passing through a door into an alternate world or reality, where the ability to learn, to communicate to experience, takes on a whole new scale.

We jump from Facebook to Twitter to Wikipedia, to Google to YouTube, to Skype, to instant message clients to virtual worlds, like Second Life, InWorldz and 3rd Rock, with ease; adapting to the range of social interactions with friends, family and complete strangers. We make new friends and acquaintances as we begin to assimilate all the myriad, disparate applications in this strange, yet now quite familiar alternate reality.

With Disjointed Reality, I'm hoping to bring together the many, disjointed parts of my alternate reality, into the one place.

Primarily the site contains my blog, but over time, I'm looking forward to sharing a wider range of the things that interest and inspire me.

I suspect there will still be some confusion.

Birkenhead waterfront

A new photo set on my Flickr stream.

A selection of photographs taken today, around Birkenhead docks.

Click on the photograph to link to it.

Grumpy old mandom

Oh dear... Another blog post, another moan. I do seem to be using this blog for complaining about things that annoy or frustrate me. Maybe I've got to that certain age - you know - where grumpy old mandom sets in. Is there such a word as mandom? Maybe not… but who cares anyway?

I was reading an article recently, by Stephen Fry. Actually when I think about it, it wasn't an article, it was a podcast - or, as he prefers to call his variety of podcast, a podgram. In it, he discussed at some length the use and abuse of the English language. Although not everybody will find the outpourings of Stephen Fry particularly appealing, I have, in recent years come to enjoy listening to and reading his views and observations.

In this particular podgram, he suggests that we are too tightly bound by spelling and grammar and punctuation; that the formalisation of a language can, in many ways get in the way of what language is all about - communication, the expression and understanding of thoughts and ideas. I know that what I write here is most probably full of errors, but I'm merely transferring words onto a screen as the thoughts come into my head. I'm sure that most of the few people who actually find their way to this blog will be able to understand what I'm saying, possibly with the odd wince at the occasional mis-placed semi-colon or hyphen.

I've drifted way off topic. This blog post wasn't intended to be about language at all. The subject of my moan is a sports television channel called Eurosport and the relatively new facility for subscriptions within iPhone applications.

A couple of months ago, an online friend recommended an application for the iPhone called Eurosport Player. I'm a keen cyclist and love to watch the live coverage of professional cycle racing on television. For many years this was available pretty well exclusively on Eurosport, which was broadcast from a number of satellite sources. It was advertising supported and free. Then, in the UK, around the time that satellite television underwent the transition from analogue to digital, Eurosport was bundled into the Sky network and was no longer free, though still broadcasting a significant amount of advertising (another minor irritation). To watch it meant signing up to a complete package of sports channels at a minimum monthly cost that currently stands at £19. A price I'm not prepared to pay.

Eurosport Player on the iPhone however is affordable. There is no contract. You can pay a recurring monthly fee of £2.39 for as long as you wish, or an annual payment at a cost of £23.99. The service is provided through what Apple calls "in-app purchases". The application is free, but you pay from within the application via your iTunes account for additional content.

I tried it during the Tour de France in July and it was great to be able to  watch the odd 10 minutes during the day on my iPhone. It all worked very well.

When my first month expired, shortly after the Tour de France ended, I didn't immediately renew, but decided to wait until the start of the Tour of Spain "La Vuelta" in late August.

The first few days were great, then Apple released an update to the iPhone operating system. When installed, my Eurosport Player had been reset and demanded that I paid another £2.39 to set up a month's coverage, even though I still had over three weeks of the previous one remaining.

Now I know £2.39 isn't a lot of money and there was every likelihood that I would be able to earn another £2.39 within that month, but I was annoyed.

I tried to post a complaint/enquiry on the Apple support website, but each time I did, I got an on-screen message stating that it was not possible to go to the next page.

I then wrote an email to Eurosport asking how I reinstate the active subscription. Their reply requested several pieces of information, including a copy of my iTunes invoice showing the transaction and iTunes account details. They also requested the UUID (Universally Unique Identifier) of my iPhone.

There is absolutely no way that I would ever send this sort of information in an email. So to cut a long, rambling story short, I missed virtually all of the coverage of La Vuelta and relied instead on web coverage from various sites and RSS feeds.

The in-app purchase system for Apple's iOS devices works fine until a system software update or a restore causes app preferences to be reset. This flaw really needs to be addressed, and an easier, more secure way to recover lost subscription data found and implemented.

I am perfectly happy in my grumpy old mandom by the way, but I think my next few posts should perhaps be a little less complaining.

You can find the podgram by Stephen Fry at

http://www.stephenfry.com/2008/12/22/series-2-episode-3-language/

Ping

On September 1st. Apple launched iTunes 10 and with it a social network for music, called Ping.

 I downloaded the new version of iTunes as soon as it was available and dutifully registered my account with Ping.

Less than a week later I am about to remove all of my data from Ping and stop using it.

The reason is simple. It's not a social network, it's purely and simply a device for Apple to sell more songs in iTunes. A device that uses Apple's customers as unpaid sales people, spamming their friends and contacts with "Buy now" links, every time they buy or like a song or album.

There is no direct communication between friends, there is no discussion.

I know that it is in it's early days and knowing Apple, it will develop and grow, but for the foreseeable future, my account will remain dormant and empty.

I must apologise to the few people I have linked with through Ping, though I suspect that most don't care and the rest feel the same way as I do.

Note: The image with this post is taken from the Apple website. If they want me to remove it, I'm sure they will let me know.

Censored

I recently attempted to post a review of a podcast on the iTunes store, only to have it rejected on two occasions.

I have been listening to a series of recordings made at the London, Regent Street, Apple Store, entitled "Meet the Author" and found them both interesting and entertaining. Actually, Stephen Fry was a little weak, rambling on about the history of Apple, but on the whole, the series has been excellent.

This week, another recording automatically downloaded and synced with my iPod. The featured author this time was Tony Wrighton "sports presenter and best selling motivational author".

My mini review follows. I assume that it was blocked by Apple for two reasons.

1. I used the words "bullshit" and "crap". Both of which are deemed inappropriate.
2. Apple doesn't like critisism of it's own productions.

"I've thoroughly enjoyed this series of interviews and Q&A with well known authors. That is, until Tony Wrighton appeared on the feed. Congratulations must go to Sam Matterface for keeping this going for the hour. I've never heard such a lot of waffle and bullshit for a long time. Virtually every question was answered with "Research shows...". His motivational techniques were, at best juvenile. Associating positive thoughts with a piece of music or a photograph. Make your passwords mean something positive to you. COME ON! Does anyone actually buy into this crap? Do people actually pay him to say "Do whatever suits you"? The audience seemed suitably underwhelmed, if not, embarrassed. Certainly the constant references to the fact that the audience were actually waiting to see Stephen Fry were absolutely true.

Please, iTunes, don't waste my download bandwidth offering this quality of output again".

SCRABBLE® Worldwide (excluding U.S. and Canada)

Open message to all companies considering advertising with GameHouse, Inc. and, in particular their Facebook game, SCRABBLE® Worldwide (excluding U.S. and Canada). Please don't waste your money. Your ads are the cause of great annoyance to virtually all who play this game, because of the manner in which they are implemented, with a 30 second holding period before access to the game is granted. This is having a hugely negative impact on the public perception of your brand.


Also posted on the SCRABBLE® Worldwide (excluding U.S. and Canada) app page.

Facebook won't let me post a status update longer than 420 characters, so I have posted it in my blog and FB will link back.

I’ve been playing around with a homage to Frank Shepard Fairey’s iconic Obama - Hope/Progress poster. Yes, I know the font isn’t the same as in the original, but the word DISJOINTED needed a little more weight. I’m still mulling over ideas for a logo to brand the blog and other Disjointed Reality portals online.

An alternative to cheques

It’s great to see that HM Treasury has published clear information about the phasing out of the cheque clearing system. As a small business owner, simple, alternative cashless payment methods are vitally important. For some time, I’ve been looking at possible alternatives. There are certainly developing technologies combined with current and future generations of smart phones, which make it possible to take card swipes; though there is a not inconsiderable handling charge associated with this. The online payment service PayPal has also made great strides in moving it’s service to mobile devices with applications available for all of the major platforms. The ability to “bump” pay is a very exciting development, but it requires both payee and payer to have compatible phones and online PayPal accounts. Many of my customers are elderly and are certainly not tech-savvy enough to embrace these methods as an alternative to paying by cash or cheque. Hopefully the reasonably generous transition period announced by HM Treasury will be sufficient for all of the developing technologies to mature to the point where they are more mainstream. This does not of course, account for the banks independently refusing to process cheques within a much shorter time frame. I’ll be following this with great interest.

http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/cheque_closure_faq.htm

iPhone 4 (continued) Which carrier?

Following on from yesterday’s post about the costs associated with an early upgrade to iPhone 4, the next thing to be considered is which network to choose as my carrier.

I’ve been with O2 since the first iPhone was launched in the UK in 2007. This was not through choice but simply that O2 was the exclusive carrier at that time, just as AT&T is in the US. Prior to the iPhone launch, I had been a Vodafone customer since 1997. I found that Vodafone’s network coverage suited me - giving good signal pretty well everywhere I went. O2, however, does not. I have no signal at all in my home, even though I live less than quarter of a mile from a transmitter. I work at numerous locations within a 20 mile radius of home and reception is mixed. Mixed enough to necessitate me carrying a second mobile phone on the Vodafone network for reliable business calls. My Vodafone handset was a Sony Ericsson K750i, which was absolutely fine. When I upgraded my first generation iPhone to the 3GS, I had the first gen. unlocked and transferred my Vodafone PAYG sim to it to use for calls only, as Vodafone didn’t, at that time provide a calls and data iPhone package. It was immediately obvious to me that reception was significantly poorer with the iPhone than it had been with the Sony Ericsson. Many work locations cause unacceptable dropped calls. I can only assume that this is the fault of either the antenna in the iPhone, the aluminium enclosure of the first generation model, or a combination of both. When I upgrade to the iPhone 4, I simply want a phone that gives perfect coverage wherever I need to be. Not too much to ask, really. Since the iPhone was opened up to other carriers in the UK there are now four networks offering service plans, (Bizarrely iPhones in the US are still tied solely to AT&T). It had been my intention to switch to Vodafone as soon as my current O2 contract expires, now, I’m not so sure. There’s certainly no point switching to Tesco Mobile, as it is run on the O2 network. So, that leaves Orange. I’ve had no experience of Orange at all, so I may buy a PAYG sim from them and try it in my unlocked iPhone for a while to assess coverage and service quality. I certainly don’t want so sign up to a Pre-Pay contract for 18 to 24 months to find myself even more disappointed than I currently am with O2.