Continue reading »]]> Ok, so my old trusty Acer laptop finally gave up the ghost, with some very odd distortion on the screen meaning everything was either psychedelic green or pink!  It’d done me a good turn, and it surprised me when I sat to think about how long I’d had it, and the “designed for Windows XP” sticker proudly on the front really should have given me a slap in the face.   Still, having survived at least one HDD and RAM upgrade, and two OS upgrades, to Vista and then to Win7, it really didn’t owe me anything.

I thought long and hard about what to go for;  Did I want a really powerful desktop replacement style laptop, with a Core i7 and all the whistles and bells, or a fast & light Ultrabook?

In the end I opted for the Asus N55S, which is a really beautiful piece of kit.  I can’t seem to find one that matches my spec exactly on line.

Overall this is one very sweet laptop.  It’s powerful enough to act as a desktop replacement for when I’m out and about.  It’s not an ultrabook by any means, being fairly large and weighty, but that doesn’t bother me too much.

Here’s the intro Video so you can see for yourself!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLQ_LwTyDxY

I can thoroughly recommend it!

Continue reading »]]> It’s very nearly Movember, the month formerly known as November, now dedicated to growing moustaches and raising awareness and funds for men’s health; specifically prostate and testicular cancer.

This year I’ll be donating my top lip to the cause for 30 days in an effort to help change the face of men’s health. My Mo will spark conversations, and no doubt generate some laughs; all in the name of raising vital awareness and funds for cancer’s affecting men.

• Why am I so passionate about men’s health?
• 1 in 9 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime
• This year 37,000 new cases of the disease will be diagnosed
• 1 in 2 men will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime
• 26% of men are less likely to go the doctor compared to women

I’m asking you to support my Movember campaign by making a donation by either:

• Donating online at: http://mobro.co/jc74
• If you want to go old school you can write a cheque payable to “Movember”, reference my name and Registration Number 1620310 and send it to: Movember Europe, PO Box 68600, London, EC1P 1EF

If you’d like to find out more about the type of work you’d be helping to fund by supporting Movember, take a look at the Programmes We Fund section on the Movember website: http://uk.movember.com/about

Thank you in advance for supporting my efforts to change the face of men’s health.

As you’ll know Cancer has hit my family very hard over the years, with both of my dearly departed Grandfathers having battled with Prostate Cancer.  My Gran has fought Bowel Cancer, my Mum has recently had Breast Cancer, My Uncle is currently being treated for Prostate Cancer and Dad has an ongoing fight with Skin Cancer, so this is a cause very close to my heart.

Any donation you feel able to make would be very much appreciated!

Thanks & Regards,

Jason Cathles

Continue reading »]]> This time next week I expect to be milling around in Gatwick Airport, eagerly awaiting a flight to Luxor in Egypt for the start of what promises to be a fantastic Holiday!

As you can imagine, I can’t wait!   I’ve booked three weeks of Leave for this, meaning very little holiday during the year to date, so it’s been a long time coming!

The Itinerary is as follows:

Day 1 Wednesday.
Flights in to Luxor airport and transfer to cruise boat. Dinner is served onboard. An Overnight stay on the boat in Luxor.

Day 2 Thursday
Breakfast on the boat. Visit the to Karnak and Luxor Temples. Lunch and Dinner are served onboard. Overnight on the boat in Luxor.

Day 3 Friday
Breakfast on the boat. Visit to the West Bank of the Nile, including Valley of the Kings, Hatshepsut’s Temple in the Valley of the Queens and Memnon of Colossi.
Lunch and Dinner will be served onboard. Sail to Edfu. Overnight in Edfu.

Day 4 Saturday
Breakfast onboard. Visit to the site of the Edfu Temple.  Afternoon sail to Kom Ombo and visit the Temple of Sobek and Haroeris.  Sail to Aswan. Lunch and then dinner
will be served onboard. Overnight onboard in Aswan.

Day 5 Sunday
Breakfast onboard.  Morning visit to the Aswan High Dam, Philae Temple and the Unfinished Obelisk.  A Panoramic sailing on a felucca seeing the magnificent Aga Khan’s Mausoleum.  Transfer to Aswan Airport for flight to Cairo.
Transfer from Cairo Airport to hotel. Dinner in your hotel.

Day 6 Monday
Breakfast at the hotel.  Visit the Pyramid’s, the Sphinx and the Desert Necropolis of Saqqara.  Return to your hotel for dinner.

Day 7 Tuesday
Breakfast at the hotel. Morning visit to the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities with highlights such as Tutankhamun’s burial treasures. Visit to the Citadel, Mohammed Ali Alabaser Mosque and the Bazaar. Dinner will be served at your hotel. Overnight in your hotel.

Day 8 Wednesday
Breakfast at your hotel. Transfer to Cairo Airport.  Flight to Hurghada.  Transfer to Spa Resort on Red Sea Coast in Hurghada.

Day 9 – 14
Relax and enjoy!

So as you can see it’s a fairly full on first week visiting lots of Tourist sites, hopefully lots of Photo opportunities!  Followed by a second week of just relaxing and chilling out in a Spa resort before heading home!

As I write this, I have only four days left at work before my Leave starts, and it seems people are starting to wake up to the fact that I’m not going to be around for the next three weeks.  Seems like getting through this week is going to be hard work!  But it’ll be worth it!  As long as Thomas Cook don’t mess us about any more!!

Continue reading »]]> I may just have mentioned on one or two or six occasions about my fabulous Retired Racing Greyhound Tinker, who we’ve had for well over a year now.

We obtained him from the local branch of the Retired Greyhounds Trust, an organisation dedicated to rehoming retired racers.

They’ve recently produced a promotional video to help in their work, and I’m doing my extremely small piece to help by linking to it below.  In the video clip you’ll see Dillymore, where we got Tinker from, and some gorgeous Grey’s which remind me in so many ways of our little Tinker.

Please take a look, and if you should ever find yourself looking for a new pet, I sincerely hope you’ll give a Greyhound a look.  They are the most wonderful pet, with such a great laid back temprament, such a nice nature, and they don’t need as much exercise as you might think!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ck6-S70as2Q

Continue reading »]]> I’ve come to realise something interesting over the last 18 months or so.   I happened to mention it in conversation at work today and several other people agreed with my realisation, even though they only realised when I pointed it out.

Gillette Fusion ProGlide

I am referring to the quality of Mans Shaving Razors currently available.

For many years I have (in hindsight foolishly) fallen for the marketing hype, and persistently bought Gillette Razors.  After all, they are “The Best a man can get”, right?   My Father always used to use Gillette, and to start with I tended to follow suit.

I’m not sure why, but at some point I picked up a pack of Wilkinson Sword blades, probably on offer somewhere or other, and have been using them for quite some time (since Jan/Feb if not earlier) perfectly happily and without issue.

I’ve recently needed to stock up on blades, so I picked up Gillette once again, wincing as usual about the price!  In use I’ve now noticed something which I’d specifically not noticed with the Wilkinson Sword variety.

Wilkinson Sword Hydro Razors

I’ve noticed that I can only use the Gillette ones about twice before they are blunt enough to leave my face feeling quite sore.  The pack of four blades I bought for an obscene sum less than a month ago has just about seen all the use it’s going to, and I’ll be replacing them once again.    On reflection the pack of Eight Wilkinson Sword blades I bought in Jan/Feb has lasted me until mid June, which is significantly longer, and without such a marked decrease in shaving quality.

I don’t want to think about the price per shave I get out of the two packs respectively, but suffice it to say that I get FAR FAR better value for money out of the Wilkinson Sword ones.  Shaving quality is good with both, and while the Gillette ones might “currently” have the edge (pardon the pun) on first use, they quickly tail off in comparison.

So, I will be bying more of the Wilkinson Sword Hydro razors in the future, and deliberately staying away from the Gillette.  That is until the marketing machine convinces me otherwise and the next incarnation of the “Fusion ProGlide Ultra Extreme Power” or whatever Gillette produce next comes along and I am taken in by the marketing and convinced to give them a try!

Do you have a preferred brand of razor?  and have you noticed a similar problem with the Gillette brand ones?

Continue reading »]]> I’ve seen examples of both Amazing/Excellent Customer Service, and pretty piss poor couldn’t-care-less Customer Service in the last 24 hours.

My DART Tag

Starting with the negative first, earlier this week I had cause to travel through the Dartford Toll Crossing twice. As a reasonably regular traveler of that route in the past, I long ago invested in a “DART-TAG” to make my life easier, and to save a few pennies.  What SHOULD happen is that as you approach the toll barrier, the equipment there somehow senses the presence of your tag, and so just debits the charge to your account.  In most cases you don’t even have to stop, the barrier is sensitive enough and quick enough for you to just slowly drive on through.  The Tag usually emits a loud “bleep” to indicate it’s been recognised, and you get a nice friendly message saying that the toll had been paid (or your credit was low of course!).  But this time, when I tried it on the way “out” this week, NOTHING HAPPENED.

No Bleep.  No nice friendly message, and most importantly NO ACCESS through the barrier.   And of course the car behind me was right up behind me, meaning I couldn’t reverse to reach the machine’s coin catcher if I wanted to.

I had to go rummaging around in the loose change in my pockets, and rolling about in the car trying to find enough change to pay my toll.  I could see the people in the car behind me getting impatient and exasperated, and then I had to sort of wriggle out of the window and reach over my shoulder and behind me to get the money in the machine.

The return journey was a similar experience, only I was prepared for the eventuality that it might not work and had the cash ready to use.

So as you might expect, I looked at the Tag Website to see what if anything was said about a Tag not responding, and there was nothing.  The “FAQ” seemed quite laughable in actual fact, when you consider the number of tags that must be out there (mine is numbered well in to the hundreds of thousands) it is not outside the realms of possibility that they might just stop working every so often, for whatever reason.   Simply NOT having a “What do I do if my tag doesn’t work” in the FAQ doesn’t really make me think that it’s a wholly reliable solution that never goes wrong, merely that the operators of the service are too short sighted to realise that this is EXACTLY the sort of thing an FAQ might actually be Helpful with.   Instead I resorted to the “for any other enquiries please e-mail xxxxxx” option, seeing as the published telephone numbers all seemingly close at 5.30pm!

Anyway, to my disappointment, it’s been over 24 hours now, and I’ve not so much as had an acknowledgement of my e-mail, let alone an answer to my problem.   If I’d have been traveling through the Crossing again today, it would have cost me £1.50 each way instead of £1 each way with the tag, so I’d have lost more money.  I therefore hold this up as a classic example of (1) how to NOT help your customers via your Service Website, and (2) how to NOT help your customers by responding in a timely manner.  There’s nothing for it but to label this as  BAD CUSTOMER SERVICE.

And then the positive.

I was gutted today to discover when I picked my Kindle up intending to use it, that the screen appears to have broken.

My rather broken Kindle

I can genuinely say that I’ve not dropped it, smacked it, or anything else.  Indeed you can see the plastic surround is pristine and undamaged, as is the surface of the screen itself.   I keep it in a purpose made leather wallet which is also totally undamaged.   When transporting it, I tend to put it in my baggage right next to my iPad which is also absolutely fine, so I have absolutely no idea how this damage occured.

Unfortunately it renders the Kindle quite unusable.  The top/right hand part of the screen stubbornly displays the last “advert” it displayed in Sleep mode before I turned it on, and the bottom/left part of the screen works more or less as normal.

So I called Amazon using the “call me back” facility on the Website.   I bought the Kindle back in March this year, from my local Tesco.  I had Googled “Kindle Repairs” and come up fairly short, so really wanted to ask Amazon if they could offer or recommend a repair service.  However I was astounded by what happened next.

I explained what I’d found, and how I couldn’t explain how the damage had occured, and before I could ask my questions, the operator started asking me a few other things.  When did I purchase the unit?  I wasn’t totally sure, maybe as long as 6 months ago from Tesco, I hadn’t bought it from Amazon.co.uk directly.  No, to the best of my knowledge it hadn’t been dropped, or squashed, or exposed to water.  Yes, I had tried the “cold reset” facility.    Ok then, in that case they’ll dispatch a replacement today on next-day delivery, please send the old one back in the next 30 days.

I was astounded.    Given my honesty and sheer puzzlement over what could have caused the damage, I certainly wasn’t angling for a free replacement.  I was expecting to have to pay for a repair or even replace it at my own expense.   Never did I expect a replacement to be sent out just like that.   No “proof of purchase” required, no quibbles, or messing about.  Just a straight replacement, and I hadn’t even asked!

Of course I wasn’t going to turn it down, so I went from being quite angry and annoyed with the prospect of spending another £150 on a replacement Kindle to elated and overjoyed that I’d be getting a Free Replacement (and a postage-paid label to return my old broken one with!) the very next day.

That in my estimation is going above and beyond the requirements of Acceptable Customer Service in to the realms of the Exceptional.  Well done indeed Amazon.co.uk, you have one very happy customer here!

Continue reading »]]> After what seems like an eternity, my new car is here!

My Vauxhall Insignia Elite Sports Tourer

It’s rather nice to drive, positively gliding along the Dual Carriageways. I’m glad I went for this rather than the Ford Mondeo Estate. Visibility in this seems far better than in the 5-door hatchback I tested.

We haven’t tried Tinker in the back yet, that’s a job for the weekend and two people, as the Automatic Tailgate might be slightly confusing and unsettling for him for the first few uses.  The Interior looks quite elegant compared to the older cars I’ve driven:

Insignia Interior

Insignia Interior - closeup of Central console

Insignia Interior - Dashboard

More photos and feedback to follow in due course!

Continue reading »]]> I wrote a few days ago about my interest in a Fuji Finepix XP30 camera.  I wanted it specifically because of it’s underwater ability, and the dustproof/shockproof characteristics would come in handy for my grand holiday later in the year.

However, I’ve been dissapointed, and in retrospect I’m actually glad.

I went ahead and ordered the Camera from Amazon, together with a “Pro” class 16Gb SDHC card for it.  Unfortunately the day it was due to be delivered I was out of the office at a certain Football Stadium.  When I returned and found no parcel waiting on my desk, I contacted Amazon who confirmed that “Home Delivery Network” had put it through the letterbox at 9.02am, and hadn’t obtained a signature.

The only problem being there IS no letterbox at my work address!   Needless to say I contacted Amazon who went off to investigate.  They later confirmed that something had gone awry with the order, and were good enough to re-order both the camera and the memory card for me at no cost.   But the story doesn’t end there!  Of course the Camera itself is out of stock at Amazon now, and the only options are more expensive.  Amazon will be re-stocking but in 3-4 weeks time.

So I’ve been looking around for alternatives.  And having read through in more detail the reviews for the XP30, both at Amazon and elsewhere, I’ve phoned back and cancelled the Camera, and requested a refund.

There are a few alternatives out there, including the Canon PowerShot D10 (12.1 MP, 3.0x, 2.5″ LCD), or the Pentax Optio WG-1 (14MP, 5 x Wide Angle Zoom, 2.7″ LCD), the Panasonic Lumix FT3 (12.1MP, 4.6x Zoom) or the Olympus TG-310 (14MP, 3.6x Wide Angle Zoom, 2.7″ LCD)

I’m not sure which to look at, the Canon and the Pentax both have much better write-ups, and both come in at about the £220 mark.  While that’s a fair amount more than the Fuji XP30, it’s not unreasonable.  The Pentax appears to have the best specifications of the two.

I don’t expect this to be a fantastic camera, but I do want to be able to take it underwater.  The dustproof & shockproof nature also have some appeal given where I’ll be taking it.

Anyone out there have any experience with cameras like this and able to offer any suggestions?