Live like Robert Wheeler

I was just watching the news reports of the Royal Wedding. I thought to myself “who were the bridesmaids?” So I typed “who w…” and Google autocompleted “who were kate middleton’s bridesmaids”.

A few minutes later, I thought to myself, “What did Harry say to William?” This time I had that slight expectation, and was happy to see it took just “what d…” to get “what did harry say to william”. It just shows how valuable the Royal Family is to the UK. There are the ultimate PR tool for Great Britain. They add words.

I have noticed that in the last few days there has been some considerable press coverage of the everyday life of Hugh Bonnerville, star of Downton Abbey. I have been enjoying it quite a bit. For example, the Telegraph printed the following yesterday:

“Hugh Bonneville’s simple pleasures

Few, if any, users of the Twitter social networking website make a better advertisement for married life than Hugh Bonneville, the Downton Abbey star.

The 47-year-old actor has lately regaled his 16,600 followers with his happy experiences at Chessington World of Adventures with his wife, Lulu, and nine-year-old son, Felix. It is the simple pleasures for Hugh: he talks, too, of his joy at “jogging through a bluebell wood… glorious.”

His tip for wholesome television viewing for Easter Monday? Just William on CBBC. “It’s superb family viewing,” he decrees. The star not merely of Downton, but also of films such as Scenes of a Sexual Nature and Conspiracy of Silence, Bonneville has undoubtedly come a long way since he started out at the National and the RSC in productions of The School for Scandal and ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore.”

I would recommend carefully reading any other pieces on this man that you may see in the Press. There is clearly a lot to be learned from them. And a lot of sharp claws too.

4 minutes into the first match of the tournament and I have already realised that this is going to be a miserable World Cup. If it is not the normal problem of the Germans/Argentinians/Italians/Portuguese bribing the officials, we now have a new thing to content with. Why on Earth did the South Africans bother building all the stadiums, putting together the bid, spending billions on it and holding an opening ceremony, if they let their football fans play these ridiculous headache inducing plastic trumpets?

They produce a constant drone that sounds like a swarm of bees operating buzz saws. It is an utter disgrace. What is the justification? Are they part of the heritage? Who was it that popped up and decided that these things are the perfect way to express their excitement and patriotism? They are basically saying “we are going to annoy the shit out of you and ruin the game for you, just because we want to, HA HA, HA. You will not want to come to football matches after this”. In my opinion it is inconsiderate, intimidatory and bullying behaviour. It should not be allowed.

What is the matter with FIFA? Why didn’t they ban these things? And what is wrong with the South Africans? Do they have some kind of genetic mutation that means they do not find these things incredibly annoying, or a barrier to the thinking processes? I thought it would be hard to find an ‘instrument’ that was more annoying than the bagpipes, but the South Africans have gone and done it and then some, and about 30,000 of them have decided to play them all at the same time.

How is this fair to the other teams? How is this fair to the other fans in the stadium? I am having to watch the match with the sound all the way down. I can not enjoy or focus on the match with that sound, and the players don’t look like they can either. It is an utter shambles. I have already wrote to the BBC and ITV asking if they can add an option for crowdless commentary on the red button.

AAAAAAAARRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

…what does “progressive” mean? I mean when it is used by the ex-Labour Government and the ex-prospective members of the ‘Rainbow’ coalition?

Is it just possible it was a concept made up on the hoof by Alistair Campbell to desperately try and create an imaginary group Labour could use to try and legitimize clinging onto power.

Also, is there anything less genuine than Alex Sammond, leader of  of the SNP, who won 6 seats in Parliament, asserting that the Conservatives, who won 306 seats, had no right to rule as more people didn’t vote for them than did?

Meanwhile, enjoy Adam Boulton calling out professional unelected bastard, Alistair Campbell live on Sky News.

…and doing similar with professional wig wear Ben Bradshaw MP:

As some people may be aware, I am afflicted with disgusting scabby claws which crack and bleed and the first sign of a mild breeze. This has sadly deprived me of a career as a hand model. Gloves do not offer much protection. I generally avoid trying to use any creams on my hands. They tend to sting, and do not really seem to do much good. However, for the last couple of weeks I have been using the ‘Garnier Hand Sensitive Soothing Restorative Hand Cream’. This is quite simple recommendation. It works quite well, you only need to use a little of it, it seems to help my hands heal, and it does not sting too much.

Apparently it contains maple sap extract and allantoin. This means absolutely nothing to me. Neither does any of the other pseudo-scientific nonsense on the back of the tube. It is a cream that helps cracked skin on your hands get better, end of story.

Imagine the scene. It is the heady Summer of 2006. Sven Goran Erikson haircuts are all the rage and the nation is enjoying the famous cheats of Italy scam their way to a dirty World Cup win. One man’s quest to give hope to his nation leads to an international media event, culminating in an invite to tea with the Queen. Having accomplished anything any man could ever want to, that individual turns his attentions towards a new challenge: Creating the greatest video production company in the known universe.

Of course, creating the greatest video production company in the known universe requires a certain image and corporate identity. And for that, we turned to probably the greatest design company in the known universe, pointwentyfive. Since then this company has provided fulfilled all of our graphic design requirements. Notable jobs included designing our corporate logo and associate stationary and business cards, which look a bit like this…

…and the packaging for our first commercial DVD release, the critically acclaimed ‘The Angel and Daniel Johnston – Live at the Union Chapel’:

This was a particularly interesting project as it entailed using existing pieces of art by Daniel Johnston, a world reknowed outsider artist and musician. The final product delivered by pointwentyfive was a full set of production ready master files, including variations for foreign markets, which we were able to hand directly to our manufacturers. The high standard of the packaging and design was praised in several of the press reviews for the final product.

We find that pointwentyfive come up with a range of ideas and proposed designs, and they give us ample opportunity to feedback and develop the designs, even when we need modifications to fit changes in the specification very late in the day. The quality of what they deliver is top-notch.

Overall, pointwentyfive come with the highest recommendation, and therefore receive the coveted Robert Wheeler Star of Distinction.

If you have ever bought a laptop computer in the past you will probably know that they tend to come complete with a bunch of completely useless software pre-installed that you will probably need to uninstall before you can get any practical use out of it. One of the primary culprits is a particularly useless piece of software named “Norton Anti-virus” or “Norton Internet Security” or “Norton Plague Repeller”, or whatever it is called this week. The main reason that the trial version of this software comes pre-installed in trial version on so many machines is that it gives the manufacturers the chance to convince you that your nice new machine will become extra specially vulnerable to virus’s, worms and everything else as soon as your 90 day trial runs out. The continual popups that appear at any time when you are using your machine prompt urgency, and effectively try and frighten users (a great number of whom will not be very completely confident with the machine or the operating system by the time the trial ends) into buying a subscription to this overblown piece of bloatware.

So before I say anything about this rather nice laptop, I would like to say this. Norton Internet Security is not worth the money. If you are using your laptop for personal use, you would be just as well served with a something like AVG free and routine scans with Malwarebytes Anti-Malware. Norton is a nightmare piece of software. It has a habit of cocking up other program and driver installations, and it can be a real pig to uninstall. There was on version of Norton that not only could you not uninstall, but you could not even switch off without upgrading to a newer version. What kind of application has no option to be switched off? Do not fall for their cons, I would recommend that you steer clear.

Now, to the laptop. After you have deleted the useless utilities, you will find that the Presario CQ61 is a very nice laptop to use. The 4GB variety I have seems to handle most of my routine tasks such as web browsing and video editing fairly well (although it is not so good at importing from firewire video cameras, more on this later). The keyboard is nice to type on, and the touch pad (which does the job the mouse would do in a desktop) is fairly responsive and useful. The screen is fairly acceptable and readable, which becomes slightly more challenging when it dims when operating solely on battery power. The screen seems to have a very narrow vertical viewing angle, a small shift in your viewing position can cause a large loss of contrast. This should not be a major issue if you are using the laptop by yourself, but it could cause issues if you were showing a video to a small audience of potential clients. However this machine is fine for leisurely watching of videos, being ideal for using BBC iPlayer and viewing DVDs using the built in drive.

Battery life is ok, but you should not expect to get more than one hour of continual use out of it with wireless enabled. Careful management of Window’s power options could extend the usable battery life longer.

The machine comes with a total of 2 USB connectors and 1 extra USB/e-sata connector. E-sata is a connector used for exclusively for external hard disks, and is a desirable alternative to USB when dealing with projects require a lot of data very quickly, like recording music or editing video. Most people will not use this connector for e-sata drives, but it is also compatible with USB (although it takes a little bit more fiddling to get a USB connector to fit into the socket).

There are four other connectors, VGA and HDMI ports to allow you to plug your laptop into normal computer monitors and HD TV’s, a media card slot (for most standard card formats) and an ethernet socket so you can connect your machine directly to a router or modem. There is also a built in wireless network adapter, which can be disabled to save battery power by pressing a button just above the keyboard. Unfortunately there is no firewire connector and no expansion option to allow you to add such a connector. This is quite frustrating for those who wish to import recordings from tape based video cameras such as the Sony Z1, and edit while working ‘in the field’. This is a common problem with recent laptops, as including a firewire socket as standard means paying a royalty to Sony (as they own the technology).

This is a very solid machine for those who only need it for office based tasks, web browsing and other home use. It would make an ideal student machine. Having said that, it is worth noting that this machine comes with a built in webcam (meaning live pictures of the machine’s user can be sent when using online chat software), and it may not be suitable for younger students if their parents understandably did not feel it appropriate for them to have access to such a device. It has enough power to run heavy duty software, but the lack of firewire connectivity and the narrow viewing angles of the screen make it less than ideal for use as an on the road video editing solution. The Sony Vaio laptops which feature firewire may be a better option for video editors (check for references to i.link connectors, the Sony name for firewire, in the technical specification before you make your purchase). However, I have found the Vaios to be unreliable, and they have a reputation for poor heat distribution and developing DVD-Drive faults.

This machine would be ideal for:

Students
A first machine for someone who is learning how to use computers
Someone looking to replace their desktop machine with something smaller
Someone who needs to use their laptop for an hour or so on the train

Vacuum cleaners have made major strides over the last 30 years. That does not mean they have grown cybernetic legs and started strolling around your living room (actually you can get vacuum cleaners that do something close to that now), but it does mean that the technology of sucking the dust and dirt out of your home has greatly improved. The earliest vacuum cleaners could be grouped in the usual product line up of the snake oil salesman. Most were not much more than rather useless bellows, or rotating brushes and beaters that actually did very little practical to displace any dust at all. In the later half off the 20th Century the likes of Hoover started to great bag based vacuum cleaners that could actually shift dust and dirt, although their efficiency and impact was still questionable. The first I can remember having is this one:

The first real innovations arrived with the bagless cleaners from the likes of Dyson. I have had a few Dyson cleaners, but the Dyson DC22 Baby is probably the best. Normally I go for upright models, but faced with space being at a premium, the compact DC22 seemed the ideal choice. Indeed, it fits perfectly into the space underneath the sink, freeing up space underneath the stairs that it would have otherwise occupied. If I had any stairs, that is.

Being the compact model does not mean that the DC22 lacks any of the power of the larger models. It comes with a selection of useful tools, including a really good floor tool that goes some way to making up for the lack of one handed maneuverability of an upright. It is well suited to cleaning cobwebs, the telescopic vacuuming hose thing being long enough to help even real short arses reaching all the nooks and crannies.

It also copes well with a range of debris and detritus. Gerbil flingings which surround their cage are short work for the DC22, although they often seem to take this as an affront and up their flinging rate by 200%. However, it struggled to suck out a beetle that was cowering in a long haired rug. It does quite a good job of picking out dirt and fluff from the gaps and cracks in floorboards. The small stature of the main body of the unit means that it is easy for you to move around it as you clean.

The DC22 has a fair capacity, but you do need to empty it fairly regularly. You have to be a little careful with this, as it is possible to accidentally open the dirt chamber before you have a bag ready for it.

Overall this is a really good little vacuum cleaner, ideally suited to those living in flats or anywhere else with limited space. It gets your dust and dirt out of your carpets and almost anywhere else you might want to get such stuff out of. It looks pretty nice too. Overall I strongly recommend it.

Big screen TV’s are generally marketed with a mass of slogans, buzzwords and inscrutable features. A lot of these slogans, buzzwords and inscrutable features actually add up to very little of any used to the average viewer. As LCD, plasma and now LED screens have replaced old style cathode ray tube (CRT) TVs in the market place, it has become progressively more difficult who is offering the really quality products.

Price and brand presence is not always the best indicator. Sony tend to be slightly more expensive than their rivals, but their investments seems to be targeted more at developing their brand rather than the actual products. Thus, Sony products tend to spend a lot of time and effort shouting about branded features that are often outdated or just not effective by the time they get to market.

Samsung has in recent years gone for an alternate approach. Those who work in the field of video may be aware that Samsung have for some time taken interest in some of the most progressive and useful research and development being undertaken in some of the world’s finest academic research institutions. The B650 series is one of the first of their TVs to capitalize on this development. The B650 series has features that actually make a practical difference to regular TV viewers, and has a range of features that ideally suit the viewers who are transition from standard definition to high definition viewing.

One of the first key features that stand out is that these TV’s are actually designed to use a host of clever tricks to make TV pictures that are not HD look watchable on a big TV. TV pictures are made out rows of tiny dots. When you stretch a normal standard definition TV picture over a great big HD tv, each dot gets stretched until it almost looks like a little square, and the whole image starts to gain a blocky, mosaic quality. The B650 series can use a couple of tricks to smooth over these blocks and use information from preceding frames to fill in a bit more detail. These types of tricks are always a trade off between the improvement they deliver and the side effects they cause, but in my opinion the end result is that your standard definition TV pictures look a little bit more watchable.

The TV also has a trick which it claims gives the image smoother motion. LCD and plasma screens do not respond to sudden changes of the onscreen image as well as the old style CRTs. This can mean that motion is not captured as well, or seems jerky. The trick works by the screen drawing the picture twice in the time it would normally draw it once. The second time the picture is drawn the TV uses a computer trick to create an intermediate of the preceding and next picture. The TV tries to guess what the image would look like if the camera had been working twice as fast, and then slots that into the pictures you are watching. The result is that you get an image that is noticeably smoother, and may be nicer to watch for some people.

This trick also has a downside however. It is advisable to turn the option off when watching films on your TV. Programmes recorded with film cameras are generally recorded with half the number of pictures of programmes and events recorded with video cameras. This gives them their characteristic ‘film look’. When you watch a film with this mode switched on it can start to look very unnatural and strange. The best way to describe it is that you can be watching a feature film, but the image has the qualities you would expect to see on a soap opera or sports event. It is quite hard to explain, but most casual viewers could probably spot the difference. It is quite easy to switch off this mode, but it does require a bit of fiddling with the remote. I would expect that most people would end up leaving it permanently on or off.

In terms of image quality, it seems very very good. It can be pot luck with new TVs. Very often even TVs of the same model can have actual screens manufactured by completely different companies. The unit we received had a very good screen, with no bad pixels (dots on the screen that do not work properly). However, the sound was rubbish. I would not recommend that you use the built in sound on this TV unless you have very low standards. Here there is another problem. The TV has a system which allows you to pass through audio to an external amplifier. This means that any audio that goes into the TV comes out of your stereo’s speakers. However, I noticed a problem with the analogue pass through that causes the audio to go out of sync with the picture. This can be rectified by accessing the service menu and setting a delay of 100ms, but it is not a procedure for novices. This should not be an issue for digital and HDMI sound outputs and inputs.

If you have an internet connection you can also use this TV to access some online features through your TV screen. The B650 series has an ethernet socket on the rear, so if you have router with ethernet sockets you can plug it straight into your TV and use it to watch Youtube videos, get weather reports and news from Yahoo. There are some other internet features and games, and there is scope for them to be updated. Generally they are quite usable, but navigating by remote control is not ideal. It may have made more sense to have included support for a wireless keyboard and mouse, thus opening up the possibility of using email and making Youtube searching easier than picking letters off of a grid on the screen.

You can also use the ethernet socket to connect your TV to your home computer network. Using the bundled ‘PC Share’ software, you can use your TV to play video, picture and music files that are stored on your computer.

If your TV is too far from your router to be conveniently reached by a cable, you could connect using a wireless bridge such as this one: Edimax EW-7416APN Wireless 802.11n Access Point Range extender

(You will probably need to set it up to work with your network on a computer first of all.)

Overall these are very good TVs. It has the right blend of useful features and gimmicks balanced against a fine picture quality, good HD performance and sleek design. Overall, I recommend it.