First place in the Senior TT went to Steve Plater, with second going to Manxman Conner Cummins and third to Gary Johnson.

Pictures are on Flickr, as ever:

Isle of Man Senior TT 2009

Isle of Man TTXP 2009

The upgrade problem comes through O2 somewhat setting expectations with the upgrade from the original iPhone to the iPhone 3G. Naivety on both sides has played a part here - customers in believing that there was an ‘implied’ promise to allow upgrades on the same terms when Apple refresh the product, and O2 in not thinking early adopters would interpret that offer in such a way. O2 have, quite rightly, pointed out the original iPhone was not subsidised, whereas the 3G has been - hence the drop from £269 to £99 for the 8GB. Some foresight from O2 might have allowed them to ensure the terms were absolutely clear; that the upgrade offer from old to 3G was a one-time deal because of the unique manner in which the original was provided. Perhaps also, knowing Apple’s refresh cycle, O2 might have been better off-setting the subsidy over 12 months instead of 18.

So - we shouldn’t have expected O2 to write off the subsidy, and O2 should have been clearer on terms. Mistakes made, lessons learnt - etc. HOWEVER, where O2 are currently failing is in their inability to provide a ‘fair’ means for the fans, early adopters, whatever you want to call them to commit to another 18 month contract without buying their way out of their current one. I’m currently paying £35 per month and my contract expires in February, 2010. It would cost me £315 to buy my way out of that contract - on top of the cost of the £275 iPhone 3G S (32GB as the space is the main factor in my upgrade decision). So, that’s £590 and I’d also be paying £35 per month for my new O2 contract.

A fair deal would be allowing the upgrade while recovering the subsidy cost. Looking at the pay-as-you go costs, the iPhone 3G 16GB would probably cost roughly £400, unsubsidised (between the 3G 8 and 3G S 8 pay-as-you go prices). Given I paid £169 for my iPhone 3G that’s £231 of subsidy (ignoring that O2 will have a margin built in to the pay-monthly cost - so these figures are at most - and give O2 some of that margin on the hardware too!). That’s £13 a month of my contract paying off the subsidy - with 9 months left I’d pay £117 to pay that off. Still not cheap, but a lot more reasonable than £315 - and O2 retain my business and I get a new shiny thing; win-win, right? There are a number of people saying ‘tough, you signed a contract’ on Twitter in response to #o2fail - but I’d argue that good business here would be to offer a deal as I’ve described that addresses O2s costs while not bleeding their loyal customers dry.

Next up is the price of Tethering - and this applies to all iPhone users, new and old. On our “Unlimited Data” service we would be charged £14.68 to use 3GB of data via tethering, or £29.36 for 10GB in a month. The argument from O2 is tethering uses more data. Maybe so, but data is data and when they launched the iPhone O2 couldn’t have been more clearer on what unlimited meant. This is taken from an artle on the Telegraph.co.uk:

”Customers find ‘unlimited with limits’ confusing, plus most people don’t speak in megabits or understand what they equate to,” said O2 UK chief executive Matthew Key.

”So we’ve taken the decision to remove the fair usage cap so that ‘unlimited’ really does mean ‘unlimited’ – this is a market first.”

Well, O2 - you’ve gone and confused your customers as by charging for tethering you’ve essentially said that you’ve yet another definition of “unlimited” that includes “limits”.

O2 = Fail.

This squirrel appeared once but I had my wide-angle lens on and by the time I changed he had run off. But thankfully he returned a little while later and by then my camera was prepared.

We stayed at a site called Park Gate which was in a pleasant area near Ravenglass. The site itself had the basics - toilet and sinks, and stones ready for camp fires. No showers. The owners were very pleasant and came round each day selling firewood (which came in handy when what we bought from a Texaco garage wasn’t quite enough to satisfy our need to burn stuff).

Getting there was… interesting. I managed to get the address wrong so the directions I followed on the iPhone took me somewhere near Hawkshead. Once I got to Ambleside I felt that we were probably not in the right place, and getting to Hawkshead confirmed it. I eventually got a reasonable enough EDGE connection and located the right place; some 25 miles away over the hills. Nearly two hours and a very fun drive (seriously, it was nice to try my car on the winding country roads and hills) later we arrived at the correct place - just as the rain stopped and it started brightening. I had a beer and a rest then put my tent up. I say I put it up, but really I took it out the bag and others pretty much did it for me as I looked so useless; in fairness I was given the tent and hadn’t taken it out of the bag before. I think I’ll get a better and bigger tent for Glastonbury next month.

After the tent was done we had a quick bite to eat from the barbeque, pictured here:

A little later we went for a walk and found a pub to have our evening meal from (Steak!) before heading back to the camp site, getting the fire roaring, and drinking a quantity of alcohol.

A late night was followed by an equally early morning - and the sun was out for a beautiful Sunday. We recovered from the night before for most of the morning, enjoying the sun, before heading to Ravenglass followed by Muncaster Castle and grounds.

The evening started with a barbeque again before we headed to a beach near Ravenglass for the sunset. The destination was partly because Kate and Paul wanted to check out a geocache nearby. We got a little lost and I ended up turning around at the entrance to some kind of waste site that seemed like it might be a bit of a military-like base. We got to the beach which was nicely marked with an MOD sign warning of markers and gun testing. I took some photos of the sunset until a police car arrived and seemed to take a keen interest in us and my car.

They followed us to Ravenglass before eventually heading off. I hoped to get some nice pictures across the bay there; but that turned out to be a bit rubbish because the tide was out. Unfortunate timing. Dave introduced us to Pinchy, the crab, who we hoped would become a friend to us all - until Jane panicked and dropped the poor thing. We’ll miss him.

Finally it was back to the camp site for drinks around the camp fire once more before bed time and the journey home the following morning.

NOTE: No crabs were harmed in the making of this blog post.

As ever, click the image to go through to my pictures on Flickr.

I’ve ordered a Lee Filter kit for my camera but unfortunately that’s out-of-stock; which is a shame as I’m off to the Lake District, camping, this weekend and it may have come in handy for some landscape shots.  I just hope it arrives before I go to the Isle of Man.

Flowers:

And my cat, Tuesday:

As usual, click the images to see the rest on Flickr.

There are a few pics of the various stages of beard -> mustache-ness which can be seen on Flickr by clicking the above image.

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The full set can be found here: Zen Football Tournament - May 2009

Saturday I got up fairly late and decided to call ‘BARBEQUE’.  While setting up the sun was a bit on-and-off, but by the time people arrived it had decided to stick around for a bit - with spots of rain only coming as the garden entered the complete shade of the house - so it was in for Guitar Hero then:

On Sunday I was up at stupid-o-clock (7.15) for a “photo-gig”; helping out a workmate who was covering a youth rugby tournament in Rochdale.  First experience of professional photography, and clearly I have more to learn, but it was interesting (and knackering!) none-the-less.  The photos were for Rugby Event PHotography and one of my pics is provided below.  I’ve not made the lot available on Flickr as they’re available to purchase by parents on the linked Website, so I don’t want to jeapodise sales.  

In other news, my sister’s been very ill lately with Orbital Cellulitis.  I’d post a picture of what that looks like, but I think you should be allowed to exercise discretion as to whether you see that (see here if you dare: Orbital Cellulitis - this isn’t my sister btw).  It’s a serious infection around the eye area which carries risks of blindness and worse.  Good news is Sis’ has been given the all clear today.  My mum was telling me about her eye tests - where every time a ‘C’ appears my sister was declaring “I can’t see the ‘C’.”.  Mischievous one is Jen’.   People who know me may now realise bad puns is a family trait.

Image via Wikipedia

I’ve been having a bit of a catch-up on my comics of late; having neglected any serious reading for so long I ended up nearly 12 month behind - mid ‘Countdown’ and therefore pre-’Final Crisis’.

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve brought myself up-to-date on my Batman subscriptions (to my shame, at some point I didn’t notice I wasn’t getting Detective Comics - and yes, I know both it and “Batman” are on hiatus for a few months). I have now completed Final Crisis and Batman R.I.P. - which was brilliant. Due to my huge backlog however I’ve missed out on the news of “Battle for the Cowl”; the follow-on to the events of the above two - so this evening I’ve been trawling e-bay and Forbidden-planet.co.uk to get the missing titles. I’ve now got most of them on order; with the exception of Oracle 1 and 2.
The following Wiki entry covers what the entire story comprises; and details the follow-ups which I’ve also now added to my subscriptions. Wikipedia: Battle for the Cowl.

What I need to do now is find Trinity #1, catch-up on Superman and Action Comics, and stay up-to-date with my Batman subs!