Callcentre Unscripted
Damian is gearing up IncompetenceWatch as I type, and just in time comes the news that Lloyds TSB is scrapping the scripts used in its call centres.
Technorati tag: incompetence watch, call centres, Lloyds TSB
Monthly archives: January 2006
Warm weather 'to boost food bugs'
Almost a crossover with Digest here-
Hotter summers could lead to more salmonella cases as people opt for more barbecues but leave food out of the fridge, Professor Paul Hunter warned.
Heavy rain may also lead to more cases of diarrhoea-inducing cryptosporidium.
The University of East Anglia expert said Britain may also see some malaria cases – but is likely to cope.
Not what I’d consider the most pertinent factor of global warming, more of a worrisome side effect.
Technorati tag: Global Warming, Food Poisoning
A year in pictures
Bike Magic have posted a gallery of their front page images from 2005. Nice.
Solar Tower
Whilst looking for stats on the CIS Tower’s photovoltaic refit I found this CIS siteabout the project.
Technorati tag: Solar Power, CIS Tower, Manchester, Photovoltaic
Solar Tower
Whilst looking for stats on the CIS Tower’s photovoltaic refit I found this CIS siteabout the project.
Technorati tag: Solar Power, CIS Tower, Manchester, Photovoltaic
Go less wild in the country
Country dwellers have better mental health than city folk. I always feel much better when I go back to Cumbria.
Technorati tag: Mental Health, Countryside
Hub TV
Alternative sports coverage online. Somehow I don’t think my planned Two Wheels Good voideos will be quite this flash.
Manchester's first biodiesel service station
The first service station in the country to sell only biodiesel opened yesterday on Fairfield Street, near Piccadilly Station in Manchester. It was set up by a co-operative of Manchester motorists keen to promote the new energy source.
Technorati tag: Biodiesel, Manchester
WiFi Manchester
Discreet Wi-Fi boxes will be fitted in around 500 BT payphones across Edinburgh, Leeds, Birmingham, Nottingham, Oxford, Cambridge and Liverpool and Manchetester, creating a ‘cloud’ of coverage.
Users will be able to buy access to access to the web over their mobile phones, as long as they are underneath the cloud.
Many pubs, clubs and train stations are already in Wi-Fi hotspots – but this is the first time anyone has attempted to bring wireless broadband to an urban area on such a wide scale.
Technorati tag: WiFi, Manchester
back to the breadline
From today, and for the foreseeable future, my job at the coop goes to being a one or two day a week affair. I’ve been expecting the change for a while, but i’m still not sure what to do about it.
It does give me an opportunity to go looking for other part time work and dedicate more time to my writing and blogging projects, but it also means a sharp drop in income. At least this time my down shifting has more of a structure to it and i have a bit of a safety net.
Xcite
Xcite is a shop in the MMORPG Second Life where players can buy new and improved genitalia for their avatars. MMOrgy has an interview with its owner.
Javier Puff: It really started back in July when I first joined Second Life. A friend helped me out as a noob, taking me shopping, getting me a decent skin, etc. This is common in Second Life as you know. They also gave me an old set of genitals they had. Suffice to say I was disappointed with it. So one day I set out to build my own and the response was terrific.
Technorati tag: Second Life, Genitals, MMORPG
Peter Hain walks the talk
Peter Hain, the secretary of state for Northern Ireland, and the secretary of state for Wales has taken advantage of a government grant to install photovoltaic panels on his constituency home.
“I decided to put my money where my mouth is. It’s not cheap.” Mr Hain and his businesswoman wife, Elizabeth Haywood, paid £8,000 – with another £8,000 coming from the grant – to place photovoltaic panels on the roof of the barn conversion they refurbished in the summer.
He hopes the investment will eventually pay for itself. Any surplus electricity generated is sold back to the national grid.
“When we are not using it, when we are away, then it generates electricity which goes back to the grid. So we save on our bills when we are at home, and when we are not at home it basically goes back to the grid and we get paid for it,” he added.
It’s also good to see that the Welsh Assembly’s attitude to nuclear is more sensible- there is not yet a case for it because energy saving and more cost effective renewable sources should be utilised first.
Technorati tag: Solar power, Photovoltaic, Peter Hain, Wales
Peter Hain Walks the Talk
Peter Hain, the secretary of state for Northern Ireland, and the secretary of state for Wales has taken advantage of a government grant to install photovoltaic panels on his constituency home.
“I decided to put my money where my mouth is. It’s not cheap.” Mr Hain and his businesswoman wife, Elizabeth Haywood, paid £8,000 – with another £8,000 coming from the grant – to place photovoltaic panels on the roof of the barn conversion they refurbished in the summer.
He hopes the investment will eventually pay for itself. Any surplus electricity generated is sold back to the national grid.
“When we are not using it, when we are away, then it generates electricity which goes back to the grid. So we save on our bills when we are at home, and when we are not at home it basically goes back to the grid and we get paid for it,” he added.
It’s also good to see that the Welsh Assembly’s attitude to nuclear is more sensible- there is not yet a case for it because energy saving and more cost effective renewable sources should be utilised first.
Technorati tag: Solar power, Photovoltaic, Peter Hain, Wales
first wax your stilton
first wax your stilton,
originally uploaded by spinneyhead.
Fine smelly cheese it is too.
Technorati tag: moblog
A day in the life
Has anyone got a program to capture streaming video and convert it to a useable format? I feel the need to grab Tony Blair’s video diary and see if it can be remixed.
Technorati tag: Tony Blair, Video
Naughty pictures
There’s a major security hole in Windows WMF. I think I’ll be trying some of the fixes this evening.
Warning: Toads mating
Can you imagine the road sign for this-
A country lane has closed for three months to allow toads to reach their mating grounds in safety.
The toads live in Norton’s Wood, near Clevedon in North Somerset, but make the annual trip to breed on the opposite side of the road.
Dozens of the creatures are squashed by cars driving along Norton’s Wood Lane, despite conservation efforts.
In 2005, Toad Patrol volunteers helped more than 1,000 toads across the road, working a shift system.
Toad Patrol co-ordinator Andrew Town said there were still a significant number of casualties.
The creatures make the journey to look for spawning grounds in the water-filled ditches, or rhynes, in the Gordano valley.
Top Ten Green Energy Schemes
The Department of Trade and Industry has named ten schemes which began last year that show the way ahead in cutting carbon emissions and promoting renewable energy. They include offshore turbines in Kent, a wave buoy in Cornwall and the solar-panelling of the CIS tower in Manchester.
Technorati tag: Renewable Energy, Technorati tag: Solar Power
Fast Tiger
It’s taken me longer to edit and upload this video than it did to make the model.
Last November there was a rash of timelapse videos of artists at work. I thought they were cool, and I decided I should do the same with a model.
Obviously, I couldn’t do a really detailed model, and I’d be putting it together so quickly that I didn’t want to waste money on something grand. I settled on the Airfix Tiger tank.
Neither my new digital camera or video camera has a timelapse feature, so I had to improvise. I set the delay on the camera to ten seconds and had it take two pictures. This gave me enough time after pressing the shutter to pick up where I had left off and get some more painting or construction done before being photographed. The total build lasted about two hours. To put the model together in such a basic way would have taken an hour without the photography.
There were almost four hundred pictures in total and I stitched them together at two frames per image and uploaded the result to Revver. Enjoy.
Technorati tag: Time lapse, Scale Models, Airfix, Tiger Tank
Diesel and Electric Modellers United
demu.co.uk is the home on the web for the modeller of the post-modernisation plan era British railway system, otherwise known as Modern Image. It has a quarterly magazine and a dedicated showcase event planned for June.
Technorati tag: Scale Models, Model Railway, Modern Image