I’m going to hunt down the people responsible for programming at E4, Channel 4 and Paramount Comedy. Why ? Chuffing “Sex and the City” – that’s why. My darling Emily has the Sky remote again and so far we’ve had an hour of this..AGH! I’ve seen this episode about 20 times now… E4, then E4+1, then Paramount… will the madness ever end!? If I hear that woman say, “That night …” again I’ll chuck a brick at the TV..
Well.. maybe not a brick eh ? Not for the cost of that widescreen jobby.
What else did I wanna talk about ? Ohhh yeah, I remember. British Gas. They’re running a very high profile advertising campaign which states…
“Every 60 seconds a customer switches back to British Gas”
Now this of course is true. BT ran a similar campaign about a year ago. However, both campaigns are fundamentally flawed. They play on the utter stupidity of customers. Ask yourself the question – “Yes, 1 customer returns every 60 seconds BUT how many LEAVE?”.. Well, figures from the energy giant reveal that embarrassingly during the first 3 months of 2005 they lost 388,000 customers or over 4,000 per day. This equates to losing 4 every 60 seconds. DOAH!!!! Plus, to make matters worse British Gas are widely expected to raise their prices for both gas and electricity in August by 15-20%. DOAH!!!!
My advice? Check USwitch.com and get a better deal!
So what else did I wanna talk about? Well, I broke the C550 I’ve been playing with. Who knows what I did. It stopped playing MP3s, tones and music in games, although strangely it continued playing ringtones and text message sounds. Strange. After a hard reboot (you have to turn off the phone, hold down the two softkeys and then power on while holding them down), all seems well again. I’ve been running a lot of pictures taken on the phone but lets do a head-to-head example shall we? Let’s see a shot taken on the SPV C500 at its maximum resolution – 640×480, then the same shot on the same resolution on the C550. Good test ? Here we go..
Here’s the C500 shot..
And here’s the C550 shot of the same thing, same resolution..
Well, I dunno about you, but the C550 shot looks clearer. Ahh.. it’ll all be in the review.
What else did I wanna say.. Ooooo yeah. The tornado in Birmingham. Yes, Birmingham, England. Now whenever I hear “tornado” in a news item here in the UK I think, “Yeah right, probably just a tree got blown over”… but no, actually this does appear to be quite a biggy – at least by our weather standards! Check out these pictures from BBC News and these pictures from Sky News. Yup – roofs blown off.. that’s pretty bad! It affected Kings Heath, Moseley, Quinton, Balsall Heath and Sparkbrook and caused millions of pounds worth of improvements (sorry, I had to do that joke). Possibly the worst part of a tornado hitting Birmingham – apart from the devestation and damage – is having to have our local accent on TV. Don’t get me wrong, I come from the Midlands and I’m a Black Country boy (Wednesbury) originally before moving north into Staffordshire, but the accent can be a bit cringe-worthy when broadcast on the TV. The news crews always have a happy knack of interviewing someone with the strongest and thickest Brummie accent in the world..
“It was omaaaayyzzinn. The tree just blew across the roe-ad. Then this bloke cum out ond eee had gloss bits stuck in is leg. Yaw know?”
Right.. off to sleep for me now I thinks…