Journal Entries
Creeping Limits
Posted Apr 1, 2005
My broadband account when I purchased it from Freeserve didn't have a data transfer limit. After the company was taken over by Wanadoo - which *still* sounds like a brand of nappies to my ears, but hey, that's another story - the new company started imposing limits for new customers.
Well now it looks like they are going to impose these limits on their old Freeserve customers.
I recieved an e-mail this evening detailing changes to the terms and conditions of my account, and one of the clauses is this:
"Wanadoo operates a fair usage policy if you send and/or receive data in any month which is more than your Usage Allowance or you exceed 30GB we believe that your use of the Service in this way is adversely affecting our network and the Service to other customers. We therefore reserve the right (at our sole discretion) to suspend your Service, make a charge for additional usage or on 30 days written notice terminate your Service."
Whilst, one it could do with a bit more punctuation 
, it, two tells me that I'm only going to get 30Gb of data up 'n' down in a month 
Well that's peanuts for my usage. If I've got a serious bittorrent running I can be pushing 4.5Gb in a SINGLE DAY.
Time to start looking for a new ISP 
Discuss this Journal entry [49]
Latest reply: Apr 1, 2005
GMail gets fatter
Posted Apr 1, 2005
Today Goggle are launching their "infinity +1" project for GMail.
The gist of it is that they're increasing the size of everyone's storage space to 2Gb in the first instance, and then onwards and upwards as resources allow.
Well the amusing gimmick bit is the way that they are doing the roll out.
On the 'Welcome of Gmail' login page there is a pencil sketched graph showing the future progression of the project, and a counter that is rolling along counting up from 1,000 to 2,000 (and done to six decimal places 
) which represents the size of one's current storage space.
It's all being done in what to my mind is a cute and folksy sort of a way, of which I thoroughly approve 
Discuss this Journal entry [34]
Latest reply: Apr 1, 2005
Pans
Posted Mar 19, 2005
For no other reason than I happened to be putting away the dishes after doing the washing up, I decided to work out why I couldn't fit everything back in the cupboard. My conclusion after fiddling around a bit was that it was down to pans.
My pan collection consists of:
A large pan that gets used for pasta.
Two middle size pans which I use for rice.
Two small pans that aren't used for very much - peas and the odd can of baked beans.
All the above pans come with a lid.
A milk pan. Huh? It looks like a small pan that's been whacked on the side.
A thundering great big stock pot type pan with a glass lid that's used for stews, and pasta if I'm cooking for more than two people.
A big non-stick frying pan for curries and stuff.
A small non-stick frying pan which is used for practically everything, especially tomato sauces.
An old non-stick frying pan that is used for nothing as it's losing its non-stick, and I don't much fancy eating teflon bolognese.
A reserve large pan.
Another reserve large pan.
A stainless-steel frying pan that came as part of the set mentioned at the top of the list. I used to use it a lot, but since I bought the large and small non-stick frying pans it hardly ever gets used.
A chapati pan. It's not a real chapati pan, but does make great chapatis on the odd occasion that I make chapatis - about once every 3 years.
An egg poaching pan that seems to bake the eggs rather than poach them, so I never use it.
A griddle pan which was my early Christmas present to myself last year - £28 from Habitat.
And a wok.
I make that 17 pans in total. My cooker comes with only 4 burners on the hob 
Discuss this Journal entry [26]
Latest reply: Mar 19, 2005
Phone calls from politicos
Posted Mar 14, 2005
I'd imagine that most people have heard of the Telephone Preference Service (http://www.tpsonline.org.uk/tps/) by now; and if they don't wish to recieve marketing calls from all manner of businesses, will have registered with the service.
This does not seem to apply to political parties.
About a week ago I got rung up out of the blue by some chap representing the Labour Party, and just a few minutes ago the Tories got in touch. The unifying feature about both of their messages was the sigh from them when I cut them off in mid-flow with, "Why are you ringing me up? Haven't you ever heard of the TPS? Now f**k off."
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Latest reply: Mar 14, 2005
GMail & Opera
Posted Mar 5, 2005
GMail now comes with a basic HTML setting which means that I can now use the service with Opera 7.x 
This means that I now never need to IE ever again 
And when Opera 8 is released in a few months time, GMail will be fully supported by all accounts.
Discuss this Journal entry [21]
Latest reply: Mar 5, 2005
GreyDesk
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