Posts by I'm Brian and so's my wife
121 posts • joined Wednesday 29th July 2009 12:02 GMT
Spectacular change of circumstances
In the months before I finally took the plunge with my first smartphone (Samsung Galaxy S - 3y old and now rooted) it really was down to HTC and Samsung.
HTC really was right up there with the Desire and Wildfire. I knew marginally less about smartphones back then, but I was always impressed with HTC's offerings.
As & when I change phones, it'll probably be the S3 mini - primarily due to the size and weight. I may look at one of the WinMo or Blackberry phones, but I'm comfortable with Android.
Re: Too many "exclusives"
> And yet it produces some excellent content
Indeed! GoT, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Boardwalk Empire, Walking Dead, Sopranos and The Wire are all series my wife and I watched avidly over the last 5 years. They're also all from AMC & HBO.
Game of Thrones
I've heard people recommending this for a year or two, but ignored them since I wasn't at all sure about the fantasy bit of it - all a bit too Dungeons & Dragons for me (those guys used to scare me at school).
Then I started watching it with my wife and found I thoroughly enjoyed it! If anyone else is sitting on the fence over GoT, please give it a go!
Flames for the dragons, natch.
Eh?
> who are coincidentally cheaper and more likely to work long hours on an inspiring project
Wow, it's been a while since I've seen one of those! There are aspects that I'll find interesting and I'll turn to my advantage in order to expand a skill, but there's a great deal more of just banging it out, so to speak.
Oh wait, have I just outed myself as a cynical senior programmer?
@WorkingFromHome
> Where I work now there are several women who can (and regularly do) out-crude anything the men say.
Given your handle, does that mean you're referring to women in your own family?
Dear FRIEND!!
I saw your profile on LinkedInSpa-a-a-ace and wish to correspond with you. My family fled from our planet on a comet (I believe you call it C/2013 A1 Siding Spring) barely escaping with our lives and crates full of precious metals and gems.
We need help to get to Earth and will handsomely pay you to help us. Please, just send all your money to our representative who happens to reside in Nigeria/Estonia/Russia/China to facilitate the transfer of our goods past Earth's customs and we will then transfer numerous crates to the address of your choice, etc.
Re: Why do we like it ?
Indeed - it's easy to forget to look around at alternatives once in a while. Someone at work pledged to do all of their Christmas shopping within their postcode (I'm assuming she meant just the first part rather than the whole postcode [unless she lives on a high street]).
Re: i want cheap drives
Just as well you didn't tweet that...
That scraping sound...
... I can't work out if it's the bottom of a barrel or deckchairs being moved around
Re: This is Britain
For the former: duckduckgo.com (for general searches, anyway)
For the latter: more difficult, but you'd do well to hit some of the price comparison sites and see what other (e)retailers are out there.
They should just use ReactOS, right?
Right?
Re: Skeksis
... want to *help* Gelfling
Ambiguous?
> 51 per cent of respondents said they feel their employer's problems are their own.
I read this and, as a contractor, I agreed: my employer's problem belong to them. I'm here to do what I can to alleviate / eliminate those problems. I spent too many years of being emotionally invested as a permie, I can now deal with it better because as a contractor I know it's not going to be my life's work: I'll do my very best and then walk away with a clear conscience.
Inadequate training and a lack of any clear career path pushed me to contracting - too many firms suffer too much chaos and this is a goldmine (literally) waiting to be exploited by contractors. I can see the frustration in the permie staff in the different places I work: if firms took their responsibilities to their perm staff more seriously it would pay dividends (unintended pun).
Re: More still to do
> block that number from sending similar texts for an hour or two at a time
I guess that would have helped that guy who sent sexy-time texts to everyone on his contact list!
Re: And landlines !
That sounds interesting... make & model please?
Re: And landlines !
We don't even have our landline plugged in any more: it's only used for broadband.
We will have to change this to a POT that's set to silent so that the children could dial 999 if required (ideally only in an emergency!).
As for the mobile spam texts check this page for an explanation of what you can do:
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/phones/stop-spam-texts
Oh dear - you've just triggered a hijacking of this thread for arguments about browser choice and ABP...
Re: Hoorah!
I agree, but the fine needs to be far greater than the profit they make. Is that the case here?
Re: If you can't root it you don't own it.
I'm interested to hear what you've gained by rooting your device. I have a Sony PRS-T1 and I'm wondering about doing stuff like downloading a book off my NAS via FTP, while I'm out and about. I just want to wait until I'm out of the warranty period before I root it.
Is this the anti-virus equivalent of typing Google into Google?
Re: It depends on whether you can get it to stay onna stick.
Which shirley leads to the question:
How does Bob Marley like his doughnuts?
Re: Let me fix that.
The idea of a price comparison comparison site featured in a radio episode of "Mitchell & Webb" a month or so ago.
Re: See John Carpenter's They Live
A very enjoyable film - well worth a watch!
Re: my friend's four-year-old
> ... watching mind-numbing adverts for things she's NEVER going to get
That made me laugh because I remember the desperate yearning advertising would cultivate in me as a child for stuff I didn't really want or need!
That said, I do still fight the urge to upgrade various tech devices to this day, but at least it's my money I'd be spending...
Re: why
@Snowy
It's worse than that. Having paid nearly £30 for our family to watch Ice Age 4 (mostly went for my son) and suffered that "steal a car" ad before the film we then had to tolerate it within the fking dialogue (Lopez's character saying something like, "Piracy doesn't pay," at one point)!
And to add insult to injury, it was a poor film. Fk you, fk your creative void and fk your criminalisation of your paying fking audience. I don't claim to make quality entertainment, but you do and you charge the fking earth for it and fail to deliver the majority of the time. To my mind, having to rely on 3D just highlights the dearth of decent ideas.
That said, we're really looking forward to Madagascar III. King Julian (Baron-Cohen) steals every scene he's in and the penguins & chimps are funny. We're hoping to erase the memories of that previously mentioned PoS.
Re: People's Front Against Bankers
Splitter!
Posted in Why women won't apply for IT jobs
It seems to me that a number of people have considered that, but are asking a more fundamental question: what can we do to make IT more interesting to capable people (irrespective of gender [& other irrelevant criteria]).
My wife & I will be doing our best to overcome our own social programming to ensure that both son & daughter have as broad a knowledge base as possible. That means being interested in what they're doing and ensuring that they get the chance to try out lots of different subjects and activities both in and out of school.
... and breathe!
I imagine you feel a lot better having got that lot off your chest!
<---- Welcome to Friday: I'm prescribing you one of these.
Re: In the 1950s....
> ... there is in effect an infinite supply, because water moves in a cycle and can never be used up
Are you serious? You may be technically correct on the first part, but there were points at which demand outstripped supply and we then started hammering the reservoirs. What would happen when the reservoirs run dry? Would you stick by your assertion that it can never be used up?
Posted in How to screw LIBOR and alienate people
Re: Interesting
I beg to differ - for example there's...
um...
ah... I see.
Posted in How to screw LIBOR and alienate people
Re: Interesting
I would imagine that one aspect would be to support businesses so that they
i) Survive
Leads to retention of staff - greater tax receipts from employees + no benefits paid out
ii) Prosper
Leads to greater corporate tax receipts + possibility of hiring new staff (tax receipts, people coming off benefits).
Of course, that's the theoretical ideal: in reality, YMMV...
Re: Oh dear.
Upvoted purely for mentioning Carrie, lovely Carrie.
Posted in New Samsung chief: I want SOFTWARE
Re: Easy!
I have a strong dislike of Kies & I couldn't agree more with your comment.
Does anyone else suffering weird window re-sizing problems? Of all of my installed applications, this is the only one that does such strange things when I try to resize it.
Vote early, vote often?
Re: Idiots
I checked a few painfully obvious ones, like qwerty and some variations of password. I shouldn't be surprised at finding them but I am - what were they thinking?
Posted in Evernote
Re: Forgot to mention.....
If you don't have an account how will they identify you & the data you store on their servers? Don't forget that your notes are available from your phone or PC.
Given the range of formats a single note could potentially contain, in what format would you envisage the exported file?
It may be that something like Astrid may suit your needs. It links into the tasklist on your Gmail account. I'm currently migrating from the former to the latter, with a view to having a joint to-do / research list with Mrs Brian.
Posted in Evernote
Re: I wish there was a notes app built in
I've got a Samsung Galaxy S (mk 1). It came with a memo app - is that what you're after?
I, for one...
... welcome our new zombie overlords, etc.
Oh - austerity measures on icons? Best fit selected.
Re: £200bn?
Given that it's an Olympic year, please convert your "fucktonne" into a more appropriate unit; the equivalent number of Olympic swimming pools or running tracks please.
VLC FTW!
My first thought was "who the hell still uses Windows Media Player when there are so many better alternatives?"
Mr Darroch
The very best of luck getting people to distinguish between your two companies. I'm reasonably well-informed on business matters (compared to the general population) but as far as I'm concerned News International == BSkyB.
You may be separate legal entities, but I think your reporting styles and corporate philosophies are remarkably similar...
I chose the shouty icon because that's all I hear/see when I have the misfortune to walk past a TV with your (ahem) news program broadcasting.
I'm glad...
... that the caption under the photo wasn't "actual size" <shudder>
That graph is absolutely *shocking*! How can 25+% of people attain the best grade?
The caption to one of the pictures:
"17.5% of students in 2009 got three As at A-level"
What's the flipping point of that? Whoever's in power will tinker & tinker (and generally get it wrong or not leave it long enough to take effect), but right now Gove is proposing to overhaul the exam boards. The proposal sounds good, but we'll have to see about the execution & implementation. Have a search for "gove exam board" and you'll see a link to a Telegraph article (Dec 2011) where he states that universities are starting to cherry-pick students based on the boards they did. This was inevitable.
Re: @I'm Brian and so's my wife
Indeed! Of course, the sale was heavily publicised to ensure that everyone knew about it beforehand.
I walked past a box this morning and noted that it had a BT Fibre sticker on it - gimme, gimme, gimme!
Re: You mean...
I just searched for
http://whatgordondidnext.com/
but it returned a DNS error. How ironic.
Re: You mean...
... and driven through by a twice-sacked (more?) tosser?
6. ...
7. PROFIT?
Posted in 'Real time' PAYE pilot goes live at HMRC
Good recipe...
... for real-time pain throughout the tax year?
Posted in Aliens Blu-ray disc set
Re: Errrmmmm....
The extra footage included (IIRC):
- the family going out to investigate the co-ordinates Burke provided (and the resulting chaos)
- more on the autopsies done on the face-huggers
- moar splosions & gunfire from the robot sentries
A bloody brilliant top 10 film, particularly the director's cut!
