I’ve been a customer of 3 for many, many years – in fact I was a customer of 3 right back when they came along to the UK market and were really just Orange, with a different operator name displayed on your handset!  I’ve been such a fanboy of 3 that I’d recently worked my way up to 4 simultaneous phone contracts for different members of my family.

All that, however, is about to change!

Recently my wife’s handset developed an annoying fault .  It should have been a simple fix, if the call centre operators had actually listened to what they were being told, however they didn’t!  After the usual scripted nonsense, removing the battery, SIM card, SD card, factory reset etc… the phone was still faulty and was, of course, sent back to 3 to be repaired, only to be returned with exactly the same problem.

OK, these things happen – so we called them up again and told them that the phone was still faulty.  After going through the same scripted nonsense a second time the phone was sent back for repair.  Again!  Once again the phone came back – with exactly the same fault – only this time we knew that they had removed the case as they hadn’t refitted it properly.  The phone not only didn’t work but had a large gap running down the centre of the entire length of the phone!

Once again, we called 3, only to be asked to go through the same scripted nonsense – despite my protestations that removing the SIM card etc, wouldn’t fix the case.  Eventually we arranged to have the phone sent back for a third time, where we were assured by the operator that the phone would be completely exchanged for a new replacement!  HURRAY!

The replacement phone arrived WITH EXACTLY THE SAME FAULT AND EXACTLY THE SAME CHASM DOWN THE SIDE OF THE CASE.  Despite assurances that it was in fact a new phone I wasn’t buying their story and I asked for a callback from a manager.  Now I’m almost convinced that the manager in 3 call centre is chosen daily by drawing names from a hat as the person that eventually called me back could barely understand what I was saying, let alone why I might be angry at the service that I had received – so I asked them to get someone else to call me back.

Fast forward nearly a week and I am still waiting for a call back (and still waiting for a phone that works), so when I had a spare hour I rang them to find out why I hadn’t had a call back yet, only to be told that my complaint had been escalated to the “super special complaints team” – Yes, that’s how this team were described to me!!!  And in fact they were so “super special” that no-one else apart from that team were allowed to read the notes on the account and that no-one could speak to them, until they were ready to speak to me (which may take another two weeks) – at this point I was so monumentally pi**ed off that I got onto twitter and started ranting.

Then along came a Guardian Angel!  @ThreeUKSupport – UK based 3 support staff!  After a bit of miscommunication and being told that they have a  ”24-48 SLA on our email inbox ” (I’m not actually sure if that’s 24-48 days as it certainly wasn’t hours!!!) they agreed that in-fact there had been a substantial amount of piss-taking and would my wife like a brand new, replacement handset from a choice of 3 different models?  Well, of course she would!

At this point in the story, you may wonder why I am currently so unhappy with their customer service as eventually the problem was sorted….  Well I’ll tell you why….

Roll on another month and my job is now requiring me to do a fair bit more driving, so I buy myself an in-car charger and suction-thing windscreen holder for my phone with the intention of running a black-box type app (think air plane black box) and some GPS navigation software (more on these in a future blog post).  I identify several likely candidates from the Android Market and get installing.

For the next week and a half, I struggle to get these apps working well together.  I go through many different variations, including the apps provided with my handset only to find out that if I want the camera to be in use, then I can’t have any kind of GPS based software running!!!!  After a fair amount of trawling online forums and support sections of app websites I discover that my chosen model of phone, a HTC Desire HD has a little bug, or glitch!  Under no circumstances, can I have my camera activated whilst using GPS – they simply won’t play together!!! (see here & here amongst others…)

Initially I thought “Hey, this won’t be a mega problem – I’ll drop my buddies @ThreeUKSupport a line and they’ll suggest something to help me out…”  Now, @ThreeUKSupport only work Monday to Friday 9 – 5:30 (yes, their online support staff work regular office hours!) but I figured that I would drop a tweet and the next day one of them would get back to me….

So, the next morning rolls around and their first tweet is the usual “Hi, this is Nicki….” type of tweet followed by a plethora of support responses, though none, directed at me – no problem, I’ll just drop another tweet – and low and behold Nicki replies “Going by online forums it seems to be a reported issue with the phone I’ve raised it with our technical team but to be honest if it’s an issue with the phone, or 3rd party apps I’m not sure we’d be able to do anything” After a few tweets back and fore, I quickly realise that perhaps I’ve jumped the gun and should have spoken to their Indian colleagues to at least get the whole issue dealt with in more than 140 characters….

Now perhaps I’d simply run out of patience with 3, following the wife’s phone nightmare, but in just one day I’ve been blatantly lied to and talked over to the point of me wanting to cancel all of my contracts from today.  The following are just a few gems from 3 customer support today:

• No sir, no handset is capable of running both a camera and gps software together, not even the iPhone is capable of that!
• Yes sir, we did tell you that the phone had GPS and a video camera, but we never said you could use them together!
• Android is not allowed to use GPS and the camera at the same time
• Your phone is inferior to all other Android phones (that can do this)
• Why would you want to use GPS and a camera together, that’s just silly
• This function is simply not supported on the Three network (despite it working on my wife’s 3 phone)

In spite of the above, I kept telling 3 that I appreciate that what their online support agent told me was correct and that I wanted to work with them to resolve the issue, even if that meant me paying a nominal fee towards a different handset.  Their response:

Yes Sir, for just £400 (yep four hundred quid) we can upgrade you to a HTC Sensation

When I pointed out that I could get the same phone for roughly £100 less sim-free and that I’d happily accept a reconditioned handset in exchange for my immaculate Desire HD the stock excuses above came out and was basically told to pay the £400 or shut up!  Eventually, when the agent ran out of steam of his mocking my use of technology I requested a manager call back to see if there would be any movement in the price.

Whilst sat on the toilet my phone started ringing.  A 3 manager was returning my call –  normally I don’t answer the phone when in the office, but this time I felt is especially apt!

He went through the entire repertoire as above, even shouting above me when I tried telling him that YES, Android was capable of running the functions together, even the almighty iPhone could manage this mammoth task and even how, YES IT DOES WORK ON THE THREE NETWORK ON OTHER ANDROID PHONES!!!!  In the end I told him that I was sick of him speaking over me and now, once again my “issue” has been passed on to the “super special complaints team”.

I shall await a call back within the next month from their crack team of ninjas…

In the mean time, if anyone from 3 customer support reads this post (which I highly doubt) I was willing to rationally discuss this problem with your staff and even pay towards getting a working solution, however the only suggestion that went some way towards fixing the issue was for me to spend a silly amount of money on an overpriced handset!  I’ve been a loyal customer for many years now, at my peak, paying over £100 a month into your coffers – but not for much longer!  As each of my contracts expire I shall be moving them to another network.  PAC Codes at the ready!

I had recently moved my Ubuntu 11.04 “server” away from my work area where it was running via a bridged wifi connection from my main workstation and installed it in the living room, plugging it directly into the ADSL router.  This gives me the advantage that other PC’s and Android devices on the LAN could access it without the bridging PC being powered on.

However, silly me forgot to install any kind of remote access software.  Initially I was just going to install SSH, so that I could use PuTTY from my PC or ConnectBot from my Android phone to remote into the server but then being the ubergeek that I am, I thought it best to be thorough and install a remote desktop solution, in this case XRDP.  This allows me to connect directly to the X server, rather than limiting myself to the command line only.

To install the SSH server simply type the following into a terminal window:

sudo apt-get install openssh-server

Then to get the remote desktop server installed, type:

sudo apt-get install xrdp

And that’s it!

To access the remote desktop from Windows, simply use the Remote Desktop Connection icon found within Start | All Programs | Accessories | Communications folder.  If the icon isn’t there you can launch a Remote Desktop Connection by typing mstsc  into the Windows command prompt (and if that doesn’t work – download the installer from here).

When I get the server fully operational as a media centre I’ll simply buy a wireless keyboard and mouse and hook it directly to my LG LCD telly, but until then remote access will suffice!

OK, well not quite free, but this is a tactic that we have used previously when money has been tight at Christmas – and believe me when we say that it has actually saved us money every month.

If you have a teenager, then you’ll likely know the frustration of constantly forking out cash for mobile phone top-ups.  On average we were forking out £10-£15 a week to keep our lovely DD in contact with her friends and as Christmas approached the obligatory request for a new touchscreen or Blackberry was received.  So we decided to look around at the contract deals and found that a decent deal could be had for way less than the £50-£60 a month we were spending and what was even better was that we could actually track the usage of the phone online and therefore control the monthly bills.  So anyway – back to the reason for the post…..

Carphone Warehouse are currently offering a deal whereby you get a free handset, including HTC and Blackberry options and up to £200 worth of shopping vouchers when you get the phone – so that’s no money down and a new phone  for your darling teen and up to £200 in your pocket to finish the Christmas shop, or at least enough to start the festive booze shop!

You can find the deal here.

This post will be absolute techno-babble for most of my readers and if you don’t understand the title then it’s probably best that you skip the rest….  I’ll post something with a wider audience appeal soon, however I needed to document these steps for my own future use (as my memory sucks!) and hopefully someone may also find this post useful!

That said, I like to play around with web development and have a myriad of projects on my little Ubuntu 11.04 LAMP “server” and until today I’ve used subdirectories to separate my individual projects, however this has lead to problems in the past when deploying a site from the development environment to the big www.  So now I’m moving to subdomains

After an hour of Google-ing I cobbled together a simple solution that works for me.  I work primarily from a Windows XP machine which has an entry in the hosts file that points the domain “dev” to the linux box.   Rather than carry on using http://dev/holiday/ to access my new photo site I wanted to use http://holiday.dev/ – so here is how I did it…

The first thing to do is to add an entry for the new “host” into your Windows hosts file, which can be found in C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc  (assuming that your install is based on C:\Windows).

Open the hosts file with notepad and add a new entry for your subdomain.   If you are running Windows 7 then you will need to run Notepad as an Administrator.

As you can see my Ubuntu servers’ IP address is 192.168.0.206 and its hostname is dev - all that I need to do to enable the new subdomain from my Windows PC is to duplicate the existing record and changed the host name to  holiday.dev 

The next step is to create a new host record on the Ubuntu machine – to do this enter the following into the Ubuntu console (noting that you should use your own subdomain here):

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/holiday

And when prompted with a blank document enter:

<VirtualHost *:80>
	DocumentRoot /var/www/holiday/
	ServerName holiday.dev

	<Directory /var/www/holiday/>
		Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews Includes
		AllowOverride AuthConfig FileInfo
		Order allow,deny
		Allow from all
	</Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Save the document and all that is left to do is to create the symlinks in sites-enabled to allow the site  to be served with the following command:

sudo a2ensite holiday

And a quick restart of apache with the following command:

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

or

sudo service apache2 reload (Ubuntu 11.10)

and you are good to go!

Edited: Minor changes for Ubuntu 11.10!

I regularly watch foodie videos and have just stumbled across an absolutely awesome video of one of the great French masters, Pépin that I just had to post!

I just wish I could de-bone a chicken as quickly and neatly as that…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAekQ5fzfGM

Technique is definitely a dying art!

I’m adding this one to my to-do list for next summer – perfect picnic food.

I’ve been moaning for months and months (if not years) about my current set of kitchen knives.  My early Sabatier knife block set is now around 15 years old and has been so used and abused that the steel has worn smooth!

I still remember finding them for the bargain price of £150 in a sale and being called insane for wasting* so much money on a set of knives but, boy, have they served me well.

I know that I could probably just buy a new steel and get them sharpened and they would probably last another 15 years (the boning knife is still exceedingly sharp despite constant abuse) but it doesn’t stop me window shopping for a new set.  And I think I’ve found my next dream kitchen purchase.

You may ask why is it a dream kitchen purchase, well at £485 for a 6 knife set there’s little hope of them gracing my kitchen anytime soon

Ladies & Gentlemen, I give you the Wusthof Classic Ikon 6 Piece Knife Set.

(Click for more info and to purchase if you are feeling rich! appreciate the finer things)

The set comprises 9cm paring, 14cm tomato, 16cm Slicer, 17cm Santoku, 20cm Cooks and 20cm Bread knives and a rather nice looking block – an absolute steal if you ask me!

Not normally one to name drop, but these knives are favoured by many celebrity chefs, including Gordon Ramsay and Jamie Oliver.  You can also check out the Wusthof site for more info @ http://www.wuesthof.de/en/ – Oooh, they also do a 9 knife set in the same range @ £692!!!

*15 years later and I think I have proved that it was money well spent – You know who you are!!!!

I’ve never been good with purely vegetarian dishes – I always want to add a bit of meat for texture and flavour!  However in an attempt to reduce my meat intake I knocked together this tasty, filling and more importantly healthy dish in under 15 minutes last night and more importantly I didn’t miss the meat at all!

For those of you on a Slimming World diet it should fit in perfectly as an evening meal on a green day.  It’s not a completely free meal, but as with most of my recipes each ingredient is optional, so feel free to add/remove bits to your hearts content!

The first thing you need to do is finely chop a red onion or two.  It does need to be fine, not chunky – the rest of the veg makes up the chunky part of this recipe.  Here’s Gordon to show you how…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwGBt3V0yvc

If you are cooking alone then you’ll probably want to pre-chop all of your veg so read ahead, otherwise chop as you go with your cooking partner stiring as you go!

Once you have your finely chopped onion, put your wok or large pan on a low heat and add about a tablespoon of Olive Oil.

Once the oil starts to warm up add your onion and add a pinch of salt, which will not only bring out some of the flavour but also help stop it browning too quickly.  After a few minutes your onion should start to soften then a few cloves of finely chopped garlic to taste.

You’ll now want to get your linguini on as you start to add the rest of your veg.

Next, dice a courgette into 1-2cm chunks and add with a good grind of black pepper.  As you start adding the veg you may want to turn the heat up a little to keep the heat in the pan.

Next add your peppers – I’ve used one red and green, again cut into 1-2cm chunks.

Now halve or quarter (depending on size) a handful of baby plum tomatos and toss them in and drain a tin of plum tomatoes, adding the juice to the pan.  Remove and dispose of the hard stalk ends and chop until the the tinned tomatoes are almost a pure, add to the mix!

Don’t forget to check your pasta at this point!  Now, this is important – TASTE the vegetable mix and add seasoning as required.

Hopefully all is well and your pasta is only a few minutes away from being cooked so now halve 4-5 chesnut mushrooms then slice the halves finely – I’m talking 2-3mm thick and add to the rest of the delicious vegetables.

Once the pasta is cooked, drain and add to the sauce, toss, serve with some freshly grated parmesan and enjoy!

How do you get people to pay attention to aircraft safety videos?

Air New Zealand appear to have the answer!  As part of their “Nothing to Hide” campaign they’ve released their “Bare Essentials of Safety” video, created for their domestic 737 services.

Enjoy…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-Mq9HAE62Y

All of the people in the video are actual Air NZ Staff who volunteered to bare all.  Gotta love body paint!

Also – behind the scenes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnhVcD74i14

Normally I wouldn’t consider making a post whilst drunk…

BUT… I’ve just been alerted to a video on YouTube of my MOTHER and Aunty Gaynor,  singing There’s a Hole in my Hat, to the tune (almost) of There’s a Hole in my Bucket.  This was apparently due to an incident with a hat and a candle.  You’ll have to listen to the song for the explanation!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqdJUhg7QFA

Yes, that is the ladies room of the Holland House Hotel, Cardiff!

This has got to be one of my favourite types of recipes.  Simply chuck things into an oven proof dish, bung in the oven and serve with loads of rice and french bread!

There is no measuring, no weighing and virtually no stress – even those who profess to be unable to cook can make something that tastes great!

I had a pack of chicken legs left in the fridge that weren’t used at a BBQ and couldn’t be bothered to do anything fancy so I grabbed a couple of courgettes, a red, yellow and green pepper, a few small red onions and half a pack of baby plum tomatoes.  If I’d have had any olives, a handful would have gone down a treat too…  A glass of white wine, throw that in too! That’s why I love these kind of recipes – want a hint of garlic?  Throw in a lightly crushed clove or two!  There is no right or wrong way…

To make this work you must weigh nothing, simply cut all of the veg into similar size pieces, drizzle over some olive oil and add some sea salt and plenty of freshly ground pepper, mix and pop in a preheated oven at 375°F/190°C/Gas Mark 5 for roughly an hour.

Give everything a rough stir after about half an hour and when the timer pings, make sure the chicken is cooked through.  The easiest way is to use a temperature probe but if you don’t have one simply pierce the thickest piece of chicken near the joint and if the juices run clear – it’s ready!

Serve with some basmati rice, french bread and an ice cold bottle of Pinot, or whatever you want!