Month: July 2014

Making do with last year’s model

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Nokia 100 and Apple iPhone 5

It’s almost August, so I’m within a couple of months of my initial 24 month mobile phone contract with Three coming to an end. I bought my iPhone 5, along with a new contract, in September 2012.

At the time I decided to go for a new contract because my current phone at the time, an iPhone 4, was not in a good state. It would randomly reboot around once a week, and sometimes when it came back up it would ask to be connected to iTunes, as if it hadn’t been activated. The battery life was starting to get rather poor by this point as well. Rather than spend money on a new battery and hope that it would also fix the reboot problem, I decided to take advantage of the launch of the iPhone 5 and just get a new phone. And because iPhones are so expensive when bought without a contract, I took on a new two year contract at the same time.

This time, my iPhone 5 is in a better state by comparison. Admittedly it too doesn’t have the same battery life as it did when I got it, but that is to be expected, and I have backup batteries in both my usual bags to top it up if needed (which actually isn’t that often). It’s as reliable as it was when I got it, and thanks to the improvements in iOS 7, it’s more useful now than it was two years ago. And iOS 8 will hopefully make it even better.

So, unless the rumoured iPhone 6 is amazing and has must-have features, I’ll sit it out and stick with my current model for the next twelve months. Not only will I not have the upfront cost of a new handset but a SIM-only contract will be much cheaper – around £14 per month instead of the £34 per month I’m paying now, saving me £240 over the year, or £5 per week.

Christine is in a similar position with her phone as well, so hopefully between us we’ll have the capacity to save quite a bit of money over the next year. There’s no point having the latest and greatest model if the current one works fine, and does everything I need it to. I’d rather have the extra money.

Roku 2 XS Streaming Player review

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A photo of the box for the Roku 2 XS Streaming Player

Last week I purchased a Roku 2 XS Streaming Player from Amazon. Normally costing around £80, Amazon are now selling them for £55, making them just £6 more expensive than the slightly newer but more limited Roku Streaming Stick (sponsored link).

When I discussed streaming media boxes last month, the streaming stick was my original first choice, but this was before the drop in price of the Roku 2 XS. Compared with the Streaming Stick, the 2 XS adds a number of extra features:

  • A USB port, for plugging in external hard disks to watch video files from.
  • A Micro-SD card slot to expand its storage space from the 256 megabytes provided as standard.
  • An Ethernet port.
  • Analogue outputs for televisions that don’t support HDMI.
  • A motion-sensitive remote for playing games, with Angry Birds included.

The latter two don’t bother me too much, but extra capacity could be useful if I end up installing lots of extra channels.

I’m really impressed with it, actually. The box is tiny and can sit comfortably in the palm of your hand – in fact, the remote control is longer than the box itself. Speaking of which, the remote is simple and doesn’t have lots of seemingly useless buttons like most of our other remotes. It doesn’t come with HDMI cable as standard, instead shipping with an analogue cable, but you can get a reasonable HDMI cable from most pound shops these days.

Setting up the Roku

Device setup is quite easy – plug it into your TV and the mains, and then the device will try to connect to the internet. If you haven’t plugged an Ethernet cable in, you’ll get to select a Wifi network, and enter the passcode. Your device will now ask you to go to a computer and set up a Roku account, and then enter a code to link your device to your account. You do need to enter either a credit card number or PayPal email address to create an account, but you won’t be charged unless you purchase an app which costs money.

Roku will offer several channels to you, and then you’re ready to go. It’s easy to navigate around, although sometimes there’s a bit of a lag between you pressing a button on the remote and the box reacting. The newer and more powerful Roku 3 should have less lag but it’s quite a bit more expensive.

Setting up your Roku with your YouTube, Facebook and Flixster (for UltraViolet) accounts is done on your computer as before, but the Netflix app requires you to enter your username and password on the device itself. You can use an on-screen keyboard, or a mobile app for iOS or Android which turns your phone into a remote control, with keyboard entry. I found that the Netflix app would not accept a password with special characters so I had to change it first.

Using the Roku

Once set up, the device is really simple to use on a day to day basis. Firstly, you don’t need to turn it off, as it effectively runs on the same power as a Raspberry Pi and can be left plugged in and switched on without drawing too much electricity. This means it doesn’t take ages to boot up when you want to watch something. Apart from the slight interface lag as mentioned before, it’s quick to navigate through, and as most of the apps are official and authorised you get a consistent experience – the iPlayer app works in a similar way to the BBC’s web site, for example.

I’ve mentioned BBC iPlayer, but ITV Player, 4oD and Demand 5 are also available, covering all four main free-to-air broadcasters in the UK. Of the paid-for streaming services, Roku supports Netflix and Sky’s Now TV, but not Tesco’s BlinkBox or Rakuten’s Wuaki TV. US users can get the Amazon Prime Instant Video channel but it hasn’t launched in the UK yet.

If you want to watch content on your own computer, such as films that you have copied from DVDs, then you can install the Plex app on your Roku, and the Plex Media Server app on your computer. The Plex app on the Roku is free for 30 days and then there is a small charge to keep using it – I paid £1.49 but I think this was a special offer.

Another nifty feature allows you to beam content from the YouTube mobile app to your Roku, in a similar way to Google’s ChromeCast stick and Apple’s AirPlay. An icon appears on your screen, which will show the video on your TV, but you retain control on the mobile device. Right now, YouTube and Netflix are the only two apps which support this although I haven’t tried Netflix myself.

On the whole I’m really impressed with the Roku. At £55 it’s only just over half the price of the Apple TV, and can do just about everything its more expensive competitor can do, and more. The interface is simple and enjoyable to use, apart from the slight lag as mentioned earlier. I would definitely recommend it.

Un-cancelling Dropbox Pro

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Yes, I know, that didn’t take long. But having spent a week with Microsoft OneDrive, I decided that Dropbox Pro was actually worth paying extra for after all.

I originally cancelled Dropbox Pro because I didn’t need the extra space that I was paying for, and indeed had access to enough extra space in OneDrive. So I spent most of last week moving my photos (which take up most of the space) from Dropbox to OneDrive – almost 15 GB in total. This took several days to upload, on and off.

I then decided to enable the photo backup feature in OneDrive’s iOS app. Dropbox has a similar feature, as does Google+ and Flickr – all of the photos in your camera roll are backed up. And this is one of the key reasons why I decided to go back on my original decision and re-subscribe to Dropbox Pro – OneDrive is a bit dumb. It wanted to upload every image on my iPhone again, even though they were already there, having been copied across from Dropbox.

To put this into context, this amounts to over 1000 images, plus a few videos. That’s a lot of data to duplicate. I’m lucky that both my home broadband and mobile internet services are “unlimited” but it would still take a long time and require tidying up afterwards.

This is something I mentioned a couple of years ago in the technical superiority of Dropbox. Dropbox does a lot of things to reduce the amount of bandwidth it needs, by automatically detecting duplicate files, only uploading the modified portions of files, and synchronising files on the same network directly as well as with Dropbox’s servers. And last week an update to the Dropbox desktop client enabled ‘streaming sync’, which should allow large files to upload more quickly. OneDrive is evidently a much more basic client, that doesn’t check for pre-existing files.

What’s more, when I copied all of my photos back into my Dropbox folder, there was no need to upload them all again. Dropbox keeps copies of all files deleted within the past 30 days – or, for an extra $39 a year, its packrat feature will keep any deleted files indefinitely (business customers get this as standard). So it was able to bring all 15 GB of photos back online within a few minutes, and not several days.

Of course, cloud storage is pretty much the only thing that Dropbox does as a company, so of course it has a greater focus on the quality of its product. Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Apple and most of Dropbox’s other rivals all focus primarily on other products, with cloud storage as a small sideline.

As much as I would prefer to pay less for Dropbox Pro, my experiences over the past couple of weeks have convinced me that it’s worth paying a bit more for a better service. OneDrive may now be giving me over a terabyte of storage as part of my Office 365 subscription, but I can do so much more with the 100-and-a-bit gigabytes I get with Dropbox Pro, even though it costs extra.

The Seven Minute Workout

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Chinese Water Dragon

Last year, some sports scientists found that it was possible to do just seven minutes of high intensity exercise, on a regular basis, and still achieve fitness levels normally requiring lengthy runs or cycles. By doing 12 activities, for 30 seconds at a time with just 10 seconds in between, you can get your daily exercise requirements out of the way in a short space of time. Plus, no special equipment is required – you just need a chair and some clear floor space.

Whilst I’m trying to go to the gym two or three times each week, I thought I’d try the so-called ‘seven minute workout’ to see if it would be worth doing on the days when I don’t have time to go to the gym. I downloaded an app to my iPhone, which I’ll review tomorrow, and made a start.

Firstly, the ‘seven minute workout’ takes longer than seven minutes. It’s actually nearly eight minutes, if you allow ten seconds between each activity. Secondly, you need to be aware that this is a ‘high intensity’ workout. On the discomfort scale, from 1 to 10 where 1 is easy and 10 is ‘why am I doing this to myself?’, it’s about an 8.

In other words, you should already be reasonably fit before trying this workout. And as you will know from yesterday’s blog post, I’m not particularly fit right now. I got part way through exercise number 11, which is push-ups with rotations, and basically collapsed in a heap on the floor. I barely attempted the last one, which is side planking. It took me a long time to get my breath back afterwards and some assistance from my asthma inhaler was necessary.

I’m sure the seven minute workout is great if you’re a busy person wanting to maintain fitness, rather than someone like me who needs to get fitter in the first place. Maybe in a few weeks’ time I’ll be able to do it without nearly giving myself an asthma attack. But right now it’s a bit too extreme for me.

…and back in the gym too

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Tortoise

As well as re-starting driving lessons, I’ve also started going back to the gym regularly. It’s been a long time since I last did regular exercise – certainly longer than I’m willing to admit – and it was showing. My fitness levels had dropped significantly, so on the odd occasion when I’ve been late and had to run for my morning train I’ve ended up seriously out of breath. And I’d been getting podgier around my waist.

One change I made with the staff at the gym was that I would have two different workouts available for me. One is a shorter 45 minute workout, to be done once or twice a week, with around 30 minutes of cardio. Then there’s a longer 75 minute workout for when I have more time, like the weekends, with 30 minutes of cardio and more resistance training, to be done weekly. The shorter workout means that I can be in and out of the gym more quickly on weekdays when I get back from work, and so I should be able to go more frequently.

Going back to the gym after so long away has been difficult. I’m fine on some machines, such as the cross-trainer, as I still walk for at least half an hour a day, but others have been a challenge. I’m supposed to be able to run at 8 km/h (5mph) on the treadmill for 10 minutes, but lately this has been running for 6-7 minutes with a walking break in the middle. My upper body strength is nothing like what it was when I last went regularly so some of the resistance machines are really hard work, even with light weights.

That being said, I’d forgotten how good it feels when you’re able to relax after an intensive workout. And I’m sure the exercises will get easier as my fitness improves again. But I’m mostly looking forward to my clothes fitting better.

Cancelling Dropbox Pro

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Screenshot of an email confirming a downgrade to Dropbox Basic

At the weekend, with a heavy heart, I cancelled my Dropbox Pro subscription, and reverted to a basic account.

I’ve been a Pro user, paying $99 each year, for almost the past two years. But when Dropbox emailed me to say that my Pro account was up for renewal in a couple of weeks, I didn’t feel like I could continue to pay for it. $99 is a bit less than £60, which is money that I could spend on other things.

But there’s also the issue that I’ve already paid for four years of extra storage for Microsoft’s OneDrive, from when I signed up to Office 365. Whilst the Office 365 package only provides an extra 25 gigabytes of storage, I was using less than that with Dropbox. So it was hard to justify continuing to pay £60 per year for something that I was barely using.

This isn’t to say that I will no longer use Dropbox – it’s still my favourite cloud storage service, and besides, I have some shared folders that I need to keep going. But I’ve shifted all of my photos over to OneDrive, since they take up most of the space. So I’ll be using both in tandem, at least for now.

Dropbox is now one of the most expensive cloud storage services, when compared to Microsoft, Google, Amazon and the rest. I may be tempted back if its prices drop (and I noted this in the survey that I was asked to fill out when I cancelled). Also, I’m looking forward to seeing how Apple’s iCloud Drive service turns out when that launches in the autumn. Though iCloud’s extra storage tiers are also rather pricey – 100 gigabytes is £70, which is more than Dropbox, and the next smallest is 20 gigabytes which may be too small. Perhaps Apple will also drop its prices nearer the launch, as I expect more people will be upgrading.

I do feel a bit sad about downgrading my account, even though it makes financial sense. Perhaps as and when Dropbox lowers its prices, I’ll come back.

Update: I changed my mind less than two weeks’ after this was posted, and re-subscribed to Dropbox Pro.

Easing lactose intolerance with lactase

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Lactase enzyme

It’s been about a year since I discovered I was lactose intolerant (or at least, worked out why I was frequently bloated and having to go to the toilet more often than most people). Since then we’ve switched most of the dairy-based food we eat home with lactose or dairy-free alternatives. This has meant that we now buy a lot of our groceries online from Ocado, as their selection of such products is much better than the other supermarkets in our area. Ocado is a little expensive, but unlike our local Tesco, they sell a variety of flavours of Swedish Glace, a soya alternative to ice cream.

That’s all great when I’m at home, but not so good when I’m out and about. Whilst most coffee shops will make a drink with soya milk instead of cow’s milk (and Starbucks now do it at no extra cost, yay), good luck trying to order a dessert at most restaurants that doesn’t come with cream or ice cream. I’m particularly looking at you, TGI Friday’s.

For instances like this, I have a couple of bottle of lactase enzyme capsules – one for each bag that I take out with me. Lactase is the enzyme that breaks down lactose in your digestive system, and sufferers of lactose intolerance cannot naturally produce enough of it. These capsules therefore top up your lactase, so that you can digest foods containing lactose. One taken just before a meal should mean you can eat normally.

I say ‘should’. I’ve been using the pictured capsules for a couple of months now, and they work most of the time. However, despite having one just before a big ice cream in Dublin, I still felt awful the following day.Whilst the label suggests taking one at a time, maybe I should have taken two on that occasion.

Lately I’ve been taking these lactase capsules before any meal that hasn’t been prepared at home – in restaurants, or with takeaway food – regardless of whether it looks like it contains milk, cream, yoghurt or cheese, as you sometimes can’t be sure.

The lactase capsules are not cheap though, with a bottle of 60 capsules costing a little over £10 from Holland and Barrett. Thankfully they do have regular sales and at the moment they’re buy one, get a second for half price. Holland and Barrett sell a number of products of questionable effectiveness, but these capsules do seem to work in my case. And no, I’m not being paid to make this recommendation.

It is nice to be able to have a bit more freedom when eating out, without having to worry about how you’ll feel the following day.

Back in the driving seat…

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A photo of a Rolls Royce outside a hotel in the Lake District

Yesterday was my first driving lesson since 2007. It went quite well, on the whole.

Those of you who have been reading this blog for many years will remember that I had lessons in 2006 and 2007, and took my practical test twice (and failed) in 2007. Afterwards, I ran out of time and money, and ever since I have been fortunate enough to be in situations where having a car hasn’t been so important. But we’re looking to buy a house soon, and being able to buy one that isn’t necessarily close to a railway station would be nice. Plus, as and when we start a family, having a car will be a big help.

We’re both learning at the same time, with the same instructor, but with lessons on different days. There’s no race to see who passes first but we can’t really go forward with a house purchase until at least one of us is driving.

Despite it having been almost seven years since I last got behind the wheel of a car, it was surprising how much I remembered – even if it took a little while to get used to it again. What took weeks of practice all those years ago took less than an hour to pick up again. That’s not to say that I can get ready to book my practical test any time soon, as I definitely will need more practice in the meantime. In particular, I got a bit flummoxed when trying to pass some cars parked on the left, with an oncoming bus and then being required to turn right.

I will need to take my theory test again as the test I took in 2006 was only valid for two years. I’ll need to get around to booking that soon. It’s changed a bit since I did it, with the pass mark now 45 out of 50 rather than 30 out of 35 (I got 33 last time).

My next lesson is next weekend, where I’ll be tackling some roundabouts.

Le Tour de France comes to Yorkshire

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Penny Farthing

Tomorrow is the Grand Départ of this year’s Tour de France cycle race – probably the world’s best known cycling event – and it’s taking place in Yorkshire. Although it’s a French race, with most of the stages taking place in France, the first stages are sometimes held in other countries. The local tourist board, Welcome to Yorkshire, put in a successful bid to host the first stage, beating other bids. The first two days, Saturday and Sunday, are in Yorkshire, and a third day will see riders bike from Cambridge into London.

The Grand Départ – the start of the first stage of the race – is in central Leeds on Saturday. Initially heading to Harewood House and Otley, the riders will then cycle up the Wharfe Valley up to Skipton, then through Grassington and across the Yorkshire Dales National Park to Hawes (home of Wensleydale Cheese), around to Leyburn, on to Masham (home of the Black Sheep and Theakstons breweries), around the Ripon bypass, and ending up on The Stray in Harrogate. The teams will move overnight to York.

On day two, they will start from the Knavesmire, home of York Racecourse, and head back through the centre of Harrogate before passing through the amusingly named village of Blubberhouses. They will drop down into the Aire Valley to pass through Addingham and Silsden, and onwards to Keighley, before following the Worth Valley to Haworth, home of the Brontë sisters. They will then climb up onto Oxenhope Moor, drop down into the Calder Valley at Hebden Bridge, and then ride up again along Cragg Vale. A sharp left turn will bring them down into the Ryburn Valley at Ripponden, just down the road from where I live in Sowerby Bridge, before again going back up on the moors to cross over to Elland. They will pass under the M62 and go through Huddersfield, and onwards to Holmfirth, where Last of the Summer Wine is set, and then to Woodhead Reservoir on the Yorkshire-Greater Manchester border. Entering South Yorkshire, the riders will then make their way to the end of the stage in Sheffield, near the Don Valley Stadium.

Unlike when London hosted the Olympics in 2012, there hasn’t been much controversy about hosting the Tour de France. This is probably because hosting the Tour de France will cost a few tens of millions, rather than billions of pounds, and the expected economic gain from increased tourism during and after the event is likely to be four times more than the cost. The main controversial issue has been the necessary road closures, but at least these are just for two days and not for several years.

And the event has enjoyed great community support. Most of the shops on the high street in Sowerby Bridge (which isn’t actually on the route) have yellow bikes in their displays, and this is a trend repeated across the county, especially in towns on the route. Various arrangements have been made to transport spectators where the roads are shut, including a 50% increase in train capacity, and high numbers of visitors are expected.

Normally I’m not interested in sport but I’m looking forward to the Tour de France this year, if only to see the places I recognise on TV. Yorkshire is home to some wonderful countryside and it’ll be great to see it broadcasted to the world. Of course, it being Yorkshire, it’ll probably rain this weekend, but I’ll keep my fingers crossed for nice weather.