The number of unwanted telemarketing phone calls we receive have increased a lot after a recent telephone number change.
There are various ways dealing with such calls:
1. For a short term relief just hang up.
I am a honest and polite person and for the last 5 years I tried to be rational and sensible when dealing with unwanted telemarketing calls. This did not help. It was a waste of time.
Once I overcame this politeness, I can now terminate an unwanted call in just 10 seconds. “Hello I am calling from Super Cheap Calls, would you be interested in… CLICK”.
2. The better solution is to register your number with the Telephone Preference Service (TPS). By UK law it is unlawful to make unsolicited direct marketing calls to registered numbers.
Save the registration confirmation as it is required when submitting a complaint.
The registration can take up to 3 months to come into effect so wait this long before submitting any complaints.
It is the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) who enforces the above law. You can find handy complaint templates at their making a complaint page.
Even if the phone call is originating from abroad, there will be an UK company that is responsible for the offered product/service and is intended to receive your money.
Ask the caller who you will be paying to.
3. If you have a lot of spare time, a third approach is to try and waste as much as possible of the callers time.
The conversion rates (successful sales out of total calls) are low so the call centers rely on quick finishes on calls that do not result in a sale.
If enough people did this, the call center operation would become unprofitable due to high calling costs and amount of time spent on unsuccessful calls.
Ask about every single option in the offering, tell them to hold while you are getting a pen and paper, tell them you don’t understand, ask about costs and cancelations, tell them to call back in 5 minutes and start asking the same questions.
My personal record is 8 minutes, can you beat that? (leave a comment)
Before and after pumpkin
This poor pumpkin looked so much better before Hallowe’en.
Before
After
The question is, how did you feel before and after this year’s Hallowe’en party?
Fix iPod click wheel problem is not working
The iPod is a little more than a year old, just out of warranty. After using it extensively on the Bose SoundDock, the click wheel stopped responding.
This is a reported iPod bug and the common fix is to reset it. With this 40Gb, 4th generation model you flip the hold button to on and back to off. Following that you push and hold the select and menu buttons simultaneously… and pray.
The problem was that the iPod did not want to reset it self, no matter how hard and for how long I pushed. Next step was to flash it with updated software. This did not help. Following step was to restore it from the computer and deleting all music on it. That did not help either.
I was desperate so I bowed my head and entered the Apple church shop on Regent’s street, London. It was full of prospective Appleheads (or is the expression Macheads?) fingering G5’s with monstrous flat screen displays.
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There was a presentation of iMovie HD going on. The presentation was watched by 50 or so people, all crouched over their Appletops and clicking away.
The so called Genius Bar was all booked up. Almost. I could get an appointment 5 hours later but I had evening plans by then. Subsequently I tried booking a slot online but 3 days in a row all day was booked out just 5 minutes after opening time. Do people camp outside the store to get support?
A trendy assistant was passing by me so I caught his attention and explained the problem. He put on a fantastic smile and informed me that “iPods are so cheap nowadays that it’s better just buying a new one instead of trying to repair a faulty one”. I asked whether this was the official Apple company policy and was told nervously that “no, just his personal opinion”.
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Five days later during which time the iPod had been turned off and unused I turned it on by performing the above mentioned resetting ritual. To my amazement the click wheel was back and working.
If you need to copy any music back to your PC you may have noticed that iTunes does not allow that. You can browse for the music directly but it’s all in hidden folders, highly unorganised.
The best way to copy music back to your computer in my opinion is to use WinAmp media player with the ml_iPod plug-in. Once you have tried it out, you may even prefer it’s media library to iTunes and just get rid of iTunes!.
Update
Here is a great advice from the reader Tim:
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“I had the problem with the click wheel not working . Sure enough after switching it on hold andwaiting a few minutes then turning it back on the click wheel would work but only for a few minutes. The answer is to get something very thin but quite tough (I used the corner edge of a blister foil pack of pills I had) and very carefully go around the outer and inner edges of the click wheel. You will notice that small debris gunk will come out. After having done that switch to hold and wait for a couple of minutes and then switch the hold off and away you go. Completely fixed. I’m over the moon”
Plasma Irony
The recent “Win a free plasma TV” campaign on Sky Digital is causing a ghost image on the plasma because it is bright and stays in the same position for a prolonged time.
Can’t think of a good analogy at the moment. I’m sure there is one.
Mirrormask (2005)
Currently the only chance to see Mirrormask in the UK was to catch it at the 49th London Film Festival. So we did just that.
Neil Gaiman was part of the team creating the movie and this of course is why me and many other Sandman fans were excited about watching it. Sandman is a cult comic book with very original illustrations and stories.
The movie starts of with some very colourful and loud scenes from a circus performance were we are introduced to the main characters.
There is Helena (Stephanie Leonidas) who is a child but very mature for her age and unhappy with the nomadic lifestyle of her family.
Her father, played by Rob Brydon, seems to be in charge of the circus as well as of the family but only until there is a crisis. He then descends into a sad state and is not even able to comfort his own child.
Helena’s mother Joanne (Gina McKee) falls ill early in the movie. When she has to undergo a risky brain surgery, Helena experiences a very vivid and strange dream.
In this dream Helena’s meets Valentine (Jason Barry) who will become her guide and hero. Had Helena been a bit older Valentine might even have been a boyfriend.
Valentine is not your ordinary knight in shining armour. In addition to bravery and the care taking of Helena, he also displays common human features like fear, greed and jealousy.
Neil Gaiman’s influence is constantly obvious in the many illustrations, masks and surreal plots throughout the movie – surely a treat to any Sandman fan. Unfortunately this was not enough for me to cover what I thought was mediocre acting. I suspect the fact that the actors had to act in front of a blue screen and some behind masks for long periods is partly to blame.
A nice touch to the performance was the fact that some of the main characters from the movie were on stage before the movie to introduce them selves personally. There was Stephanie, Jason and Rob. At that point however we were not yet familiar with the characters so it wasn’t such a treat as it would have been after the movie.
A Q and A session was promised for after the performance. We missed it however because after sitting in first row and being bombarded with CG (computer generated) graphics and loud sound track we escaped quickly back into the real world.
Oh yeah, the short story by John Williams called Hibernation shown before the main performance was spectacular!
Old fashioned wet shaving
Last months announcement of a five blade razor prompted me to write about a much better alternative. A shave that is cheaper, closer and with less risk for razor burns or ingrown hair: the old fashioned wet shaving.
I used to be the ideal mass consumer. My deodorant, shaving cream and after shave all smelled the same and I was happily buying into the latest razor blade on the market. I could not resist names like ‘Turbo’, ‘Speed’ and ‘Mega’; especially when put together.
This meant that I had to buy a new razor every 6 months. Of course that the cartridges for the old razor were not compatible but I just assumed that this was the price I had to pay to be using the latest and the best.
Boy was I wrong. After reading an article about old fashioned wet shaving and trying it out, I have been converted. The old bi-daily scraping has been replaced with daily wet shaving. If you are suffering from razor burns and/or ingrown hair, you have to give it a try.
There are three main components in a gratifying shave: a badger brush, a double edged safety razor and high quality shaving cream.
The badger brush will bring the most important change. It lifts up your beard and massages the skin to make it softer by using the brush in a circular motion
A natural badger brush traps a large amount of water which is then transferred to your face. Put some shaving cream in your palm and lather it up by making a circular motion with the brush.
Authentic badger brushes are quite costly. Go for the smallest size you can afford. Just make sure it’s badger.
Traditional shaving soap is very rich and enables the blade to slide easily across your skin. It is made from natural ingredients which means you will not get it in ‘Turbo Mint’ but instead in coconut, violet or traditional sandal wood. Expect to pay around £13.50 for a large tub that will last more than 6 months.
The safety razor is a bit tricky to start with. You will not be able to shave with the famous ear-to-ear stroke seen in commercials. Instead you will be using many small and light strokes. Since there is only one blade the shaving angle is important but does not take long to get used to.
Double edged razor blades are very affordable. A pack of 10 best quality blades is £2.50 which means you can change them more often than those more-expensive-than-gold cartridges. Each blade has two edges so it’s almost like a two blade cartridge. By having two edges you don’t have to rinse the razor as often. Purely genious!
Don’t splash any alcohol based products on your newly shaved skin. It has just been exfoliated by the shave and is very sensitive. Instead use a after shave moisturiseror or even better some Skin Food. It moisturizes the skin (non-greasy) and makes it amazingly elastic.
Shopping list:
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Shaving brush – badger: £60 ($106)
Shaving cream: £13.50 ($24)
Safety razor: £25 + £2.50 ($48)
Skin food: £10 ($17)
I get my gear from the traditional English Geo. F. Trumper. They even have an online shop.
Hopefully you have a barber shop not too far away from you too.
P.S: Here is The Onion’s comment on a five blade razor.
IMDb ratings and links for MyVue.com
Aren’t these wonderful Internet times that we are living in? Things are moving quickly to the ever so popular Web 2.0 and one can spot changes all around: recent blog oriented purchases, easily mixing together information from various web sites and all things are best in three.
As a frequent visitor of the local cinema (Vue) I always cross check all showing movies at IMDb to see what people say about them. This involves a lot of copying and pasting and switching between browsers (actually tabs).
This is very 1999 and I thought that writing a GM script that pulls information from IMDb and displays it directly at MyVue.com was much more 2005.
ImdbRatings4Vue.user.js was born.
To use this script you should ideally be using Firefox 1.0.x. You will also have to install the GreaseMonkey engine. Once that is done, right click on ImdbRatings4Vue.user.js and choose “Install user script”.
GreaseMonkey scripts are also supported* by other browsers like Opera (which is freeware nowadays by the way) and by the Turnabout plug-in for Internet Explorer 6 for Windows.
*I have only tested the script on GreaseMonkey 0.5.3 running on Firefox 1.0.7.
49th London Film Festival
The booking office has just opened for the 49th London Film Festival (LFF) and as always there are some film gems that you do not want to miss.
Mirrormask is the latest movie from Neil Gaiman, the creator of Sandman. The two showings of Mirrormask at the LFF are possibly the only showings in the UK for a while.
Some of my favourite European cinema movies are from France, Turkey and Czech Republic and I can see from the film listings that these countries are well represented at the LFF.
Demetrios Matheou has written a rough guide to the festival which is an excellent presentation of some of the highlights of the festival.
Here is my festival planer in case you want to join us at the festival..
showModalDialog in Firefox and frames
I use Firefox exclusively and every now and then I come across a site that is crippled. This means that parts of it will not work in Firefox because the site is using some kind of IE only functionality.
One example is the function showModalDialog. This will create a modal pop-up when using IE but because it is not a W3C standard, it is not implemented in Firefox (Mozilla) and will just cause a JavaScript error.
Greasemonkey is a very powerful extension for the Firefox browser that lets you inject your own JavaScript into any web page. This includes overriding any present functionality.
While this can be used to bypass poor security implementations a far better use is to fix usability errors or mash together information from different sites.
I present you my first Greasemonkey script. It is a workaround for showModaldialog by replacing it with a standard confirm dialog: “Are you sure?”.
// Author: David Kaspar
// ==UserScript==
// @name showModaDialogFix
// @description Implement show modal dialog in Firefox
// @include http://<enter your site(s) here>
// ==/UserScript==
window.showModalDialog = function() {
return window.confirm("Are you sure?");
}
Install the script
If the site you are visting is using frames, you may have to use the below version and insert the name of the frame that is calling the showModalDialog function:
if (window.frames.frameNameHere) {
window.frames.frameNameHere.showModalDialog = function() {
return window.confirm("Are you sure?");
}
}
Update 04/05/2007
No progress with Firefox modal windows so instead a work-around: forced focus on pop-up.
During the latest cross browser compatibility push at our company, a team member devised this work-around and it works sufficiently in all browsers we tested (IE6, IE7, FireFox 2, Safari, Opera).
The idea is to force focus on the pop-up window. This is achieved with the javascript function window.focus().
This method will not work if the user has JS switched off but since JS is a basic requirement for our services, we can expect JS to always be on.
Cafe Vergnano, 62 Charing Cross Road, London
Let me tell you where to currently get the best espresso coffee in London: at the small Caffé Vergnano 1882 on 62 Charing Cross Road, London.
I was lured in by a sign saying “voted best coffee shop in London 2005” but did not have any expectations. Yet another publicist trick I thought.
The caffé is fairly small. Just a few tables and two bars along the window and the wall. When I visited there were three staff working and they were skilled and very efficient.
First thing you notice when you enter the shop however is the massive Elektra Bell Epoque Q1-C espresso machine.
On a note on the wall you find out that these machines are hand made and only a few (10?) are made each year. The Vergnano coffee company elects each year a European Vergnano coffee shop and lend them one of these “Rolls-Royces” of espresso machines. This is the first time ever a London shop has had the honour.
I ordered a double macchiato which was brewed very well. Good temperature, excellent taste and no bitterness nor sourness. The barista even made a perfect rosetta on top of the coffee, effortlessly.
Each coffee is served on a tray with accompanying glass of water. Do it right and have the water before the coffee to clean your palate.
All the coffee machines, grinders, tables (and staff) are so clean and sparkling that you could almost make the mistake and think that the shop is closing or closed. This is however another sign of perfection and that coffee making is taken very seriously in here.
The coffee experience was so good and such a surprise that I had to have a second double macchiato just to assure my self that it had been for real.
Getting there: get off at Leicester Square tube station. Walk North along Charing cross road. The café is on the left side, just a few blocks up.