mattnewton.co.uk

I hate automatic responders.  They’re so impersonal and they more often than not don’t get the job done, but they just serve to confuse and anger.

Let me give you some examples:

Trying to contact Virgin Atlantic as a Flying Club member - if you email them from their website, it appears that your mail goes through a filter and based on the words you use, a standard response is sent back to you.  So if you happen to mention claiming backdated miles, then you’ll get a pretty standard response along the lines of:  “We understand you are trying to claim miles….”.

So what’s wrong with that?  Well, nothing, I guess if that’s exactly what you want.  In my email, I happened to mention the word “Miles” and I didn’t want to backdate any, but I still got the automated response.

Another one is Vonage.  I recently had cause to ask if they knew why on certain occasions the US phone number that I call doesn’t work and tells me that the number is not in service (which I know is not the case).  If I redial, it’s fine.

Along comes this automated response with lots of useful suggestions.  Then it’s passed on to someone who picked up on a keyword and went and reset my Vonage router.  I only asked if they knew why it does it.  So then the customer agent has done something to my line.  Aaagh!  so I email them back (with hsitory) and ask them to undo whatever they’ve done.  Guess what?  It picked up on the keyword in my email and sent me an automated response with a thousand and one useless suggestions to cure a problem that I don’t have.

It’s one thing sending an automated response back when you’re out of the office, or to acknowledge receipt of an email or query (that’s good) - but I do wish that companies would stop taking emails and filtering them and reading them incorrectly.  It’s a sure way to ensure that they get one back from me full of keywords that will confuse the crap out of their filters.

I’ve been waiting for quite some time for an excuse to visit Cadbury World in Bournville and was quite excited when Vic booked tickets for us all to go.

We drove down in the morning, arriving at a decent time, which gave us plenty of time to look around.

I have to say that I was quite disappointed with the whole experience.  I was expecting Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, instead I experienced something along the lines of …err… something quite different.

Once we got our tickets that we’d pre-ordered, we joined a queue with about 500 groups of schoolchildren.  We then got through the doors to the exhibition - armed with our free chocolate (well, it’s not free is is, it’s included in the ticket price).  The first part was informative - I’ll not go into details in case you intend to go.  Once you come out of there there’s an exhibition - we apeared to walk right into the middle of it, so we watched until the end and then watched it as it started again until we got to the bit we’d already seen.  The animations were pretty good - I’m not sure how they did it, but it was quite impressive.

Then on to the next exhibition.  We caught the tail end of the previous showing, so had to wait 6 minutes for it to start again and then watch it all the way through before we could move into the next room.  I’ll not tell you about the next room so as not to spoil it if you decide to go.

Coming out of there we moved into another exhibition where there were lots of monitors - some turned up really loud and some hardly had any volume at all.  Coupled with the fact that there were about a gazillion schoolkids in the same room, it was impossible to hear anything.  On the point of the schoolkids - why do they all have to go to the toilet at the same time?  We went to take Tom only to find half a school outside the toilet all wanting to go.  Aaagh.

Onwards with the tour, we went up some stairs and into the packaging area where it was forbidden to take photographs.  I don’t know why, because there was nothing to photograph.  The walls all had boxes of (I suspect empty) chocolates piled up so you couldn’t see in and where you could see in, all that was to see was a conveyor belt bringing the odd box of chocolates down to an unknown destination.  At one point we saw a human, whose role appeared to be to sit and watch these boxes disappear down a hole.

We visited all of the exhibitions, but one in particular stood out.  The Purple Planet.  It stood out for the wrong reasons.  There were a number of exhibitions but no information as to what they were.  For example, there was a row of 4 or 5 spinning shapes and superimposed onto the wall they had things like a Saxaphone, a Teapot, a Top Hat and something else.  What did it do?  How do you work it?  I have no idea.  (If anyone knows, please enlighten me, as I just didn’t see its point).  Throughout the tour there were a number of non-functional exhibitions (possibly just temporarily broken) and it was just about that point where I lost the will to live.

At the end of the exhibition, we went into Essence.  I have to say that the whole queueing thing at Cadbury World leaves a lot to be desired - when we got in we were at the back, so the kids couldn’t see a thing.  (I’ve probably been spoiled by Disney where they’d ask the adults to step to the back so that the kids could see what’s going on).

After our liquid chocolate (very tasty) we went into the Bournville Museum.  Quite interesting, but someone had their head in the way of the projector the whole way through the film, which kind of spoilt it.  So I went to the back of the room to watch the packaging robots (ahhh, that’s where the boxes were going to!).  In the time I watched them, they must have lifted about 20 packets of chocolate onto a pallette for wrapping.  A human could have definately gone faster, but having said that, there were hardly any chocolates coming down for it to pick up (the website does warn you that there are busy and slack days and gawd, this must have been an ultra slack day).

So bored to tears watching the slow-bot and not wanting to re-watch the Bournville film again because the aforementioned head was still blocking part of the projection, we decided to pack up and go home.

On the way out I heard a couple of old geezers talking and one of them summed it up nicely.  When asked by his mate what he though, he said: “It’s alright, but I wouldn’t bother coming again”.

My sentiments exactly.  And I’ll be writing to Cadbury World to let them know what I thought and what improvements they could make.  I doubt the’ll listen, but it’ll get it off my chest.

I’ve been watching out for this for months (and in case you’re wondering, freesat is supposed to be written with a lower case f). Some time earlier this year, I read about a new service from ITV and BBC to provide what equates to Freeview - via Satellite. Now I know this has already been done by Sky, as I signed up to the Freesat from Sky service about a year ago, however, freesat is set to offer HD programmes. Anyway, you can read all about it at freesat.co.uk.

So, I thought I’d have a piece of the action. I searched around and found a couple of sites that had some information on freesat and I also found out where to buy the decoder and so on.

Well, today’s the day. The freesat service launched at just after midday. Did you miss it? You probably did. Whay do I say that? Well, considering the service launched today, the equipment you need to be able to watch it isn’t available. So who’s been watching it?

After making a few calls and dropping into a few outlets on my way back from work tonight, I’ve found that some of the designated retailers don’t know about freesat (one called it “freeset”) and none of them have any stock of the equipment required in order to be able to view it.

I’ve done some homework and John Lewis are getting them in soon (although I suspect that they’re already in stock, but they don’t know what to do with them).

Curry’s are getting deliveries later this week and should have them in by Thursday / Friday (so I expect the same could be said for Comet).

Argos are showing them on their website and available for pickup, but out of stock in every location (sounds like the trouble we had trying to get the Wii).

So, with that, I’m not sure I want to get one just yet. I may wait until Humax do the PVR version of the receiver - the HDR-9300FS.

I just hope freesat’s launch party isn’t based on audience figures, otherwise they’ll be celebrating with bread and water tonight.

At last.  I’ve finally taken the plunge and opted for a new design.  It wasn’t as painful as I thought it would be, but there again, I only decided to bring over the DIY archive pages.  Why?  Well, because I could see that people were still reading them (for some reason not even I can explain!).  So they’ve been left for posterity and your viewing pleasure

Well, here goes.  Hopefully now it’s easier to update I’ll actually write more often.

Matt

I recently took 2 weeks off work so that I could spend some quality time at home, relaxing, going to the gym, going for a swim with Chris - you know how it goes. However, the first weekend had hardly started when it was decreed: “I’m going to decorate the lounge”

Off to B&Q we went, got all the emulsion, the trusty Basecoat, all the nick-nacks you’d expect top use during a decorating job (there’s always some you forget) and a couple of plastic dust sheets to cover the stuff that was too heavy or too awkward to move out of the room.

Anyway, on to the good stuff… I’d decided that all the speaker cables, aerial cables and satellite cables were going to be hidden inside the wall. How easy is this to do? Well, to be honest, it’s a piece of cake - especially if you’re decorating the room afterwards I picked up a good trick off the electrician when he did some work at our house, and that was not to channel the whole wall, but to knock small holes in the to create the path that you want the cable to follow.

When I looked at all of the holes I made in the wall, my first reaction was: “Oh crap. I hope I can plaster”:

Unfortunately, because I didn’t want to mess around with the coving, I had to leave the satellite cables coming from the ceiling - trust me, it was much easier than the alternative.

As this was the first set of holes I’d put in the wall, I’d done rather a lot. I fed the cable through each hole just after I made it, then knocked the next hole out and so on.

I did three of these in total: The one you see here, one on the right of the room for the right-hand speaker cable and one next to the stereo, which contains the DAB aerial going up through the ceiling, into the airing cupboard and into the loft to sit happily with the other aerials. (Our loft looks a bit like an antenna park these days!)

So, once the cable was in, all I had to do was cover it up with some cardboard so that there’s less of the hole to fill with plaster and also so that the cable isn’t stuck in plaster (although my first though was so that I could move it around if I needed to, but once I packed it in with cardboard, it wasn’t going to go anywhere. Luckily we had loads of cardboard left over from the boxes and boxes of stuff that Christopher got for his birthday. So, when it comes time for someone to knock this wall down in I don’t know how many years time, they’ll have a pleasant surprise when bits of cardboard with Bob The Builder pop out at them

Now, what if you want to move the position of the moutning boxes, I hear you ask? Well, I thought of that. This next shot clearly shows how I assume that I’ll need clear instructions on how to pull cable through the wall next time I come to open the mounting boxes. (Click for a larger image):

In case you can’t read what it says inside the cable housing, each box has: “Spare cable in wall” written on it, and a handy arrow to show the direction to pull from, should it be needed

One thing that you do have to be careful of when you’re burying cables in the wall is that you don’t damage the cable. I know that sounds obvious, but just in case, I tested the cable before I started, once it was in the wall and then again once the holes had been plastered up.

What can happen (and did happen to me, which is why I’m glad aI left so much slack) is that as you’re gently twisting and turning the cable to where it needs to be, you can damage it. Lucky for me it was only at the very end!

So, holes done, cable in, all I needed to do was to plaster - and hope that I could still do it.

The plastering went OK - and I remembered a tip I read on the internet about smoothing over by putting the plastering trowel in hot water first. That saved me a bit of sanding later.

Once the plaster had dried, I had to sand it down. This didn’t take as long as I thought it would, because the plaster had settled nicely and I’d cleaned around the edges of the holes, as you can see.

Next job: Basecoat. That covered up any would-be imperfections in the wall (and also my plastering job).

Once coat of Basecoat and three coats of emulsion later and the room had nice bright white walls. (Just a shame that the coving also took three coats, as this was the biggest pain in the backside)

All in all, I’m pleased with the way that the cabling went - you can’t see it and you can’t see where I knocked holes in the wall. I must admit that I did enjoy smnashing holes in the wall - even though I didn’t know whether I’d be able to cover them up again or not. Well, what’s the worst case scenario - I’d have to get a plasterer in. Luckily it didn’t come to that

The painting seemed a doddle compared to the rest of it. I was getting a bit freaked out by the time I had to

So, holes done, cable in, all I needed to do was to plaster - and hope that I could still do it.

The plastering went OK - and I remembered a tip I read on the internet about smoothing over by putting the plastering trowel in hot water first. That saved me a bit of sanding later.

Once the plaster had dried, I had to move the piano out of the room to make way for the floor going down. This thing weighs a tonne (probably literally). I was worrying how on earth this was going to get shifted out of the way so that we can lay the floor, but thanks to our friends Dan and John who came to the rescue and made it look so easy, the piano is now sitting (temporarily) in the hallway. I need to get it back into the lounge at some point. Wonder if you two guys would be free again

In this picture, you can see the same area, but finished. Trust me, there’s not a lump in the wall. The floor’s down - thanks again to my dad, who’s a total expert when it comes to wooden floor. The final stage was the beading around the floor. Again, dad to the rescue. I just can’t handle a mitre block to get the funny angles.

While we were doing the beading for the floor, I realised that we hadn’t left enough gap to take the audio cable and the speaker cable that I wanted putting in. So, the audio cable didn’t make it, but there were still some places where the speaker cable wouldn’t fit in, so we had to trim the edge of the floor. Off we went to B&Q to buy a B&Q equivalent of the Dremel Multi tool. What a waste of time. No sooner had we put it together and attempted to chip little parts away from the edge of the floor than smoke came billowing out of the thing. Back in its box it went and off to B&Q for a refund the next day.

In the end, we managed to do it with a Stanley knife. The cable’s in and it’s hidden.

So much for a relaxing couple of weeks off!

Just after Christmas I started work on what used to be the spare room and is now the nursery. It was a relatively easy job. Having said that, the hardest part of it was scraping all of the awful wallpaper off (most of it just pulled off in long strips as it had been up that long), but as the wallpaper came off, it was dragging the emulsion off in patches that was underneath it. Not a problem, I thought, I’ll just sand it all down.

Thirty minutes of sanding and having only covered about twelve square inches with a room full of dust, I gave in. There must be an easier way. And there was. It’s called Basecoat. A couple of layers of Polycell Basecoat will cover up most imperfections in your wall - thank goodness. OK, so it took 2 or 3 coats of basecoat then 2 coats of emulsion on top of that, but it was a lot less hassle and much quicker than sanding down the whole room.

So, emulsion done, painting done, that only left one more thing to do - the floor. I had to call in an expert for that. My dad’s good at stuff like that - he can cut floor around the doorframe with ease, knows how to properly measure the floor where bits need chopping around things like doorframes, corners, etc. I did, however get quite acquainted with my jigsaw (the power tool, not the puzzle) and figured out how to get the cuts at each end right and then cut them (almost) straight.

With the floor down, the emulsion and painting finished, all I had to do was put up the curtain pole and hang the curtains. Should have been an easy job, but for some reason, every time I drilled I hit the mantle, so I had to keep pluggng the holes up and touching them up with emulsion. I got there in the end though, and the finished result was what we’d wanted.

Chris’ bedroom was easier - it was all one colour, but I did have to lay the basecoat down first though, becuase even though I used a steamer this time, them underlying emulsion still came off in patches.

Again, my dad came to the rescue and helped with the floor and a few days later I put up the curtain pole and his new curtains, which he keeps telling me he doesn’t like and he prefers his old ones. What can you do. Still, his Noddy duvet and wall pictures should take his mind off it, not to mention one of those rugs that looks like a town - you know the one - it has roadways, shops, etc printed on it.

The only hitch I ran into with Chris’ room was the door strip. I knew that we were pretty close to the heating pipework underneath the floor just outside his room, and I didn’t fancy drilling down into the floor to put in the door strip only to hit a main heating pipe. So I had to try to lift the floorboards, which was harder than I thought it would be. To cut a long story short, we just worked out where the beams were and drilled downwards, hoping that we were drilling into those beams to anchor the strip. Luckily we were.

All that’s left to do upstairs now is the bathroom and our bedroom. I have a feeling that it may be some time before we get round to those.

I’ve been meaning to post this update for some time now and as it’s a quiet time of year, i thought what better time. Besides, it will probably give me some inspiration to get on and do the Nursery in the New Year. Anway, here goes.

The kitchen is finished. All the new spotlights have been put in, the holes from the old spotlights have been covered up, the ceiling has been replastered and it’s all been emulsioned and painted

Phase 1:
The existing lights have been removed (that’s what the big circular holes are) and the new ones have been put in, along with the necessary wiring.

Phase 2:
The existing artex has been scraped away, the unwanted holes magically covered up and the ceiling is replastered. You can see the new lights hanging down from the ceiling ready to be seated back in their holes once the ceiling has been emulsioned.

Phase 3:
All done. I sealed the ceiling with watered down PVA solution and gave it about 3 coats of white emulsion. It’s the first time I’ve used a roller, as I used to use those paint pad things. Rollers are so much easier and use less emulsion too - well, compared to the way I was slapping it on with the paint pads!

The thing about using a roller is that I have to wear a hat so it doesn’t get into what bit of hair I have left. This is the only time you’ll see me wearing a Microsoft garment and I truly enjoy splattering it with paint, emulsion or whatever comes its way.

I’ll spare you from the pictures, but suffice to say that I completed my office whilst I was on holiday. It looks good, if I say so myself and that hole where the plug used to be is no more. In fact, if you didn’t know it had ever been there, you wouldn’t know where to look.

The new lights are up (and are responsible for heating the room to almost 30°c, which is unfortunate, but to be expected from 4x 50W halogen spots, I guess - mental note, must get a dimmer switch), the wooden floor’s downm thanks to my dad (I’m about as useful at cutting stuff as I am at following directions), all my cables are hidden (apart from the one I broke whilst laying it under the floor, but we’ll not talk about that one!) and I’ve added a piece to my desk to hide all my cables - which has had the nice effect of stopping it from wobbling from side to side, which is good.

Now then - watch this space for the changes in the kitchen. All I have to do is finish it off this weekend and the job’s done. Then start on the nursery…

Update - 29/12/2004:
I know I said I’d spare you the pictures, but here’s one anyway:

It’s just a shame that the audio cable (seen here in black) that I laid uner the flooring (down the side of the edging) must have got whacked at some point and it produces a loud hum. It’s now been cut off and I’ve got a new one, which I’m going to run up into the loft and behind all the furniture, so it’ll never be noticed. In theory.

Oh, and if you look carefully behind the right hand valve of the radiator in this picture (click the picture to enlarge it), you’ll not be able to see the hole in the wall I referenced earlier. I thought it would never cover up, but a bit of sanding sorted that out in the end.

Following on from my previous entry, I decided that Polyfilla just wasn’t going to do it - and I couldn’t be bothered cutting pieces of wood to fit into the hole to pack it up. So, off I went yesterday evening to B&Q to get some ready-mixed plaster and a plasterer’s trowel. What a good investment.

After a bit of sanding down the Polyfilla from where the plug socket used to be, I put a blob of plaster on the trowel and packed it in to the hole. It did the job and it hasn’t fallen out! I picked up a good tip off the internet to help the plaster dry smoother - and that was to run the trowel under hot water and then run it over the plaster to smoothen it out - it worked.

Pleased with this, I came downstairs and started to plaster the channel in the utility room wall where the electrician had put a cable for an outside light. As you can see, a neat job, I think you’ll agree.

So, there’s another thing I can add to my list, but I think I’ll leave the ceiling to the professionals.

Now all I have to do is wait for it to dry, seal it and sand it (or at least I think that’s the order I have to do it in).

I may have mentioned this before, but when we moved in here, there was a plug in my room (my office) that was, how shall we say… put in very poorly. (It was a metal-faced double plug without a backing plate (and therefore, I assume without an earth. Drilled down and eventually popping outside underneath the porch and then drilled into the hallway was the crappy piece of 13A flex that it was on). Not safe in my books. As a temporary measure, I took the metal socket off and put in a metal backing box and a proper plastic double socket. I’m no electrician, but it worked.

Anyway, once we had the electrician put all things right and do some other electrical-type jobs that needed doing, we removed the dodgy wire leading from downstairs to my office (via outside and a bit of jiggery pokery as it would appear) and made the socket inactive. Now I have the job of filling it up before I decorate next week. Easy job…or so I thought.

Well, as you can see, I’ve tried to fill the hole with Polyfilla. At first I put a nice thin layer in so that it would stick to the breezeblock at the back. Once this dried, I put on a second later, this time disregarding the instructions not to lob in too much at a time.

Over 24 hours later, and what should set in 2 hours has still not set. So I’ve pulled out all of the stuff that hasn’t set and I’m leaving it to dry for another night.

After speaking with Bob, what I need to do is cut up some old pieces of wood and knock them into the hole to avoid putting too much filler in there. Once that’s done, I can fill over the surface of the wood and sand down where necessary.

Now there’s another job for me while I’m off next week - sanding. I’ve bought a Black & Decker sander for all the bits that need doing. I don’t know what the previous owners did to my wall to make it need loads of touch-ups, but it’s certainly going to keep me busy for a while before I can paint the room.

More on the big hole in the wall later. Once it’s filled I’ll take another picture and then see if we can see it once it’s sanded and emulsioned over. I do hope not.