Category: miscellaneous

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Surf’s up

After literally months of waiting, I’m now using a 1mbps broadband connection after BT finally completed the upgrade last night. Ruralville has been lagging behind a bit compared to other communities in the area, mainly due to our remoteness from the exchange. But BT have recently upgraded the cables to the village in order to get our tiny school connected.
Of course, 1mbps will seem very slow to those people who live in major city centres and are getting speeds that are five or twenty times faster thanks to cable networks. The truth is that many rural areas barely have broadband at all and we are usually a long way down the queue for technical upgrades. Perhaps we will see faster radio-based broadband systems introduced in the near future – they’d certainly be useful around here and probably an awful lot cheaper to install.

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Stationary stationery

I order my stationery from the very well-known mail order company that send you catalogues and brochures every ten minutes (top tip: unless you ask them not to send them!). Yesterday, I ordered a pack of 250 self-seal C4 white envelopes with no window. Today, I received 1000 self-seal DL white envelopes with window. They’ve said that they will send me the correct envelopes free-of-charge on Monday and that I can keep the incorrect envelopes.
I never use window envelopes. My normal usage rate of plain DL envelopes is satisfied by purchasing a pack of 50 from the local post office roughly once every six to eight weeks. So, what am I going to do with three-and-a-half years’ supply of envelopes that I wouldn’t normally use?

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Idiot

I had an appointment with my new dentist this morning, which I forgot due to being snowed under with work. I now have to pay a £5 penalty before they will make a new appointment for me and no new appointments are available for six weeks.
I accept that it was my fault, but it shows the state of dentistry in the UK when I have the choice of one practice in my area that accepts NHS patients and that I must wait so long for a simple check-up appointment.

UPDATE: I take it back. I’ve just checked through the NHS website and found a dentist in the next village who accepts NHS patients and has a hygienist (quite important for me) and could fit me in as soon as next Monday (although due to other things going on I’ve elected to take an appointment the following week).
Of course, I’m still an idiot for missing the appointment that I had this morning. That hasn’t changed!

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More4

Channel 4 is to launch a new digital channel, called More4, which is clearly set to rival BBC4. (via linkbunnies).
What next? EvenMore4? More4Still? 4Ever?

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Useful

For those that have not discovered it already, Google now offer a facility to personalize their homepage. I now have mine set up so that it not only has the familiar Google search box, but also news headlines from three sources, the weather forecast, the comments RSS feed from this site, the latest news on Sussex cricket and Brighton football as well as the word of the day and quote of the day. I’m sure that, given time, I could make even more useful.

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Green Flag Award

Most people understand that the Blue Flag is given to beaches that meet certain standards. But did you know that there is also a Green Flag? Parks and other public open spaces are judged on the criteria of

  • being welcoming
  • being healthy, safe and secure
  • being clean and well maintained
  • sustainability
  • conservation and heritage
  • community involvement
  • marketing
  • management

I’m not familiar with all, or even many, of those that have been awarded the flag this year, but the few that I do know are certainly the sort of places where you can imagine going with the family for a Sunday afternoon. Worth checking out.