daily life: love your neighbour.... not your customers.

Finally an excuse to reference this piece of junk!

Fellow Sky television subscribers will probably have experienced the terrible build quality of Sky Set Top Boxes (STB). Thomson Sky(+) HD boxes are probably the most notorious of these, and very few of the original 2006 boxes are still functioning; the build quality was so bad that Thomson have now lost all Sky contracts.
As a customer of 10years+ I know too well how bad Sky hardware is, and in October the Thomson HD box under my TV that had spent more time being power-cycled than displaying 'quality programming' finally died from tuner failures, and I paid £65 for the privilege of Sky replacing their 5h17 hardware with a refurbished box (a box that had already broken in another persons house and had been repaired).
Well this refurb is a pile of donkey turds, so I fired off an email to Jeremy Darroch the guy in charge of BSkyB (click the link to email a complaint of your own). Often when you contact him somebody sorts everything out for you, but being me the complete opposite happened.

Today I get a call from Sky. I think 'Yay, Sky will give me a shiny new STB that might work for 6months before breaking'. Notice that I didn't expect a STB that works, this is Sky we are talking about, a company that purchased the Amstrad brand to 'improve' quality. How poor does your brand have to be if a rebrand to Amstrad is seen as positive?

Well I was obviously being optimistic because this is not what happened, instead the 'lady' on the phone described her job as 'I'm phoning to defend Sky from you slagging off their boxes'; nice to see impartiality is being taught to Sky's telephone operators. With a job description like that she obviously denies that Sky hardware sucks gonads, tells me I am a liar because I've only had 1 replacement Sky box which means I obviously don't have any problems with their hardware, and finishes off by claiming I threatened her and was abusive. If you've ever had an argument with a call centre you may be aware they are trained to say this when they are 'losing' an argument. By accusing you of threatening them they instantly disarm you, and you become worried that they will report you to somebody; often it is a good sign because it means they are worried that you are making some valid points, but with Sky it means they hang up on you or you hang up on them.

The woman did phone me back to offer a 'free engineer visit'; when Sky hire some engineers they might be able to provide that service, but at the moment they just have installers. An 'engineer visit' is Sky code for replacing your naffed box with somebody-elses naffed box that has been re-jiggered to work long enough to survive the 3month warranty period. So I told them where they could shove that.

So yet another failure of Sky customer service, they managed to tell a 10year+ customer they were a lying aggressive and threatening individual, and made it clear that around £10,000 of subscription and hardware payments does not entitle you to £50 of metal and plastic as a good will gesture.

daily life: campaign to stop identity theft...

... of me!

I have a pretty strong online identity, and people that know me are aware of my username across multiple sites (which I'm not going to post here for obvious reasons).
But many years ago I noticed someperson(s) or organisation trying to steal this identity as a flurry of accounts were opened up with my username and lay dormant for years.
Today I discovered that Twitter joined that list as somebody setup a Twitter account in 2009 with that username and to this date has not made a single tweet or even followed the inane tweeting of Jay-Z or Kanye West.

Fortunately I was able to procure most accounts prior to this process beginning, but I still get annoyed by failing to procure it for GMail even though I was beta testing it at the time.

One day I will track down the individuals responsible for this and punish them accordingly. So I give you fair warning, even though you won't actually find this blog because you stole my gmail account.

Plus, some wang on Xbox Live decided to copy my avatar to, I keep running into the little sod.

politics: an apple a day

I'm apparently an evil man, I leave my TV on standby and therefore I am single handedly destroying the environment, felling every tree in the Amazon, clubbing baby seals and melting the ice caps with a blow torch.

But am I? I think not.

Yes I have devices on standby, but my mobile telephone is over 5 years old, the last time I flew on a plane was 1998, I have had the same laptop for 4 years, my current MP3 player for 2 years and the one before that for 5 years. My home theatre system was 7years old before the amplifier blew, and my current amplifier wont be replaced for a long time either.
I always turn the lights off when I leave a room and I don't leave the tap running when I clean my teeth.

So I say to the people that upgrade their phone every 5 minutes just because Apple have released the iPhone 4.10234 and have just purchased the iPod Generation 56 to replace the iPod 55 that they listen to when flying from Cornwall to Devon, and get fit using their Wii rather than walking a real dog in a real park, well I might use 0.01w of electricity when my TV is on Standby, but you are doing infinitely more harm than I am, so SHUT THE F UP ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING or stop being such as consumer.


You know that guy called Al Gore, the guy that failed to become President of the US so became a right bitch about it? Well he is on the board of Apple which is according to Green Peace one of the worst companies for pollutants and waste out of the major manufacturers (especially when you consider how few products they actually market compared to Sony and Samsung) clicky and clicky, and Nintendo manage to stay at the bottom of the pack for yet another year.

rotfl: blatant attempt to get more readers.

In an attempt to make up for a lack of content I am stealing the work of what I hope is a talented individual. If this is actually a real posting then we must contact the authorities immediately because this guy is not safe to drive our streets in a Silver Ford Focus, let alone a Mint Green one.

LOOK HERE

entertainment: socially akward

This post is probably going to be a bit of a nonsensical ramble over several topics. So let's first start where it all began.

Chuck, the TV Series, is meant to portray the bumbling of a Mr Bean-esque Nerd who ends up as a spy. But if Chuck is a Nerd then I'm the Pope, and now Chuck can solve all of his problems with 'magic' (that well known trick for solving an impossible situation caused by inept writers) he is less Nerdy than ever. I wont even get started on his Australian girlfriend and her 10" heels.

I like to think of myself as a bit of a Nerd, maybe not 'Revenge of the Nerds' level, but I think I have a few of the classic characteristics.

MovieBob did an interesting video about what defined a Nerd in the past and how people selectively apply the label to suit their needs. It's an interesting watch even though it isn't one of his best videos.
I don't really mind it when nerds are caricatured as spotty, socially inept, cowardly, loners but what does annoy me is when square jawed, gel haired, 6ft, glossy toothed individuals are claimed to be 'Nerds'. 
The Big Bang Theory is just within the levels of acceptability in this instance largely due to the exceptionally funny Sheldon who manages to counter balance the fact that Leonard clearly isn't Nerdy enough.


So I'll finish this post the way any true Nerd would

Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise

technology: a series of tubes.

It seems that everybody is watching TV on the internet. It is being sold as a convenient way to watch anything at any time. This is of course a lie, it's actually a fantastic way for broadcasters to mitigate PVRs and cut costs.
I record practically everything I watch, much of it in HD. Broadcasters hate this because HD is expensive to produce, edit and then distribute. Secondly, they hate that I can fast forward all the adverts. Broadcasters aren't making these shows as a charity, they are getting money from advertisers which has been dwindling because TV advertising is less effective than ever.

But enter the internet, this provides a cheap way to send sub-standard resolution video to you and it also prevents you fast forwarding the adverts. You try skipping the adverts on 4oD, you can't. So the broadcasters can prove how many people are watching their adverts and therefore charge more to the advertisers, and because the quality of streamed video is often far below broadcast they save a fortune.

So next time you think that the broadcasters are doing you a favour by letting you stream their shows, just remember that you are doing exactly what they want you to do.

daily life: let's call the whole thing off.

This is something that irritated me a few months back when perusing the shelves of my local Tesco. I was looking for some Cheese Muffins to have with my scrambled eggs for breakfast (Morrisons Cheese and Onion Muffins are actually much nicer).

How do I like my eggs in the morning?

I just told you, SCRAMBLED.


To my horror I see that the muffins are described as ENGLISH MUFFINS. In America they might be ENGLISH MUFFINS, but in England they are just muffins. What world do we live in where we have to tell English people that something is an English muffin? A world where our children think of those invading American Muffins as a true muffin.
Even worse, when you search online you have to search under crumpets to find a muffin. I can't take it any more.

Well I say enough, let's send these imposters (and their nylons) back to where they came from, and once again feast on an honest British muffin.

anouncement: charity appeal 2011

In the 2011 UK budget George Osbourne announced a tax incentive that didn't get much media attention. In the event that you missed it I'll give a brief outline.

Under the new IHT rules, if you leave 10% of your estate to charity in your will, your relatives pay 10% less in Inheritance Tax. Not a bad deal when you think about it.

So today I am announcing the 2011 theguywhomoanscalledmatthew Charity to Help theguywhomoanscalledmatthew. I'm not saying I want all my readers to drop dead, but I am encouraging each of you to leave 10% of your estate to my new charity who's sole purpose is to help me :¬), because my woeful Adsense doesn't pay the bills. And while I am at it, click my bloody advertising links.

Then, if you were to have an 'accident' you can rest peacefully in the knowledge that you helped the less fortunate... ME.

In the event that you don't want to will your money to me (shame on you), then why not give some money to The  Dogs Trust, but not the Cat Protection League because cats are lame.