Month: May 2016

Listening to books, part II

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Back in 2012, I signed up for Audible and listened to a couple of audiobooks – ‘How to be a Woman’ by Caitlin Moran and ‘God Collar’ by Marcus Brigestocke. And then cancelled my subscription, as there wasn’t anything else that I wanted to listen to at the time.

Fast forward to the beginning of this year, and I started to realise that I was missing out on books that had been written by public figures that I liked. An Audible subscription made sense again, and there was a good offer on, so I signed up again.

You’re Never Weird On The Internet (Almost)

The first was You’re Never Weird On The Internet (Almost) by Felicia Day (Amazon link – sponsored). It’s a memoir that chronicles her life, but especially her early acting career, and how she came to write and star in the ground-breaking web series The Guild. I came across The Guild towards the end of season one, but enjoyed every subsequent season as the episodes came out, and I’ve regularly watched Felicia’s YouTube channel.

Felicia talks candidly about her issues with anxiety and gaming addiction, and how these have affected her career. Whilst I’m lucky to not suffer regular anxiety attacks, I found it enlightening how Felicia dealt with them. It was also interesting to hear about someone who was educated outside of the mainstream schooling system, but who subsequently went on to excel at university.

The audiobook includes PDF with photos from the book, so that you can get the references.

A Book For Her

I followed with Bridget Christie’s A Book For Her (Amazon link – sponsored). The title satirises Bic’s ‘For Her’ (sponsored link) range of pens that were also ridiculed by Ellen DeGeneres.

Like ‘How To Be A Woman’, ‘A Book For Her’ is a book about feminism that would sit in the comedy shelves of a book shop. It’s not a laugh a minute, and deals with weighty subjects like female genital mutilation with the seriousness required. Bridget talks about her life and upbringing – leaving school at 15 – and the difficulties she encountered in her early years as a stand-up comedian.

Bridget’s humour is very sarcastic, and this extends to her narration. As a listener, you are frequently chastised for being too lazy to read the book, and that you’ll miss out on some of its illustrations. For this reason, I would suggest reading the book and listening to the audiobook, as both offer some things that the other doesn’t.

And I think most people will come away from reading/listening to it having learnt something, like how feminists have never actually burned bras. They weren’t allowed to, due to health and safety.

Cheer Up Love

This book (Amazon link – sponsored) is subtitled ‘Adventures in depression with the crab of hate‘ and is about author Susan Calman’s issues with chronic depression. The aforementioned ‘crab of hate’ is the antagonist of the book, and is the manifestation of Susan’s bad thoughts. It’s also a memoir (you may be detecting a trend here) and chronicles Susan’s life and career, first as a lawyer and then as a stand-up comedian. (Christine and I went to see her in Hebden Bridge in 2014)

If you suffer from depression, then I think you’ll get some mileage out of this book, as Susan covers how she’s able to deal with her condition and her coping mechanisms. If you don’t, then you’ll still get something out of it – the title, ‘Cheer Up Love’, is a listed example of a phrase that well-meaning people say to her that really doesn’t help. But there are some tips for dealing with a friend or loved one who suffers with mental health issues.

Back Story

‘A book by a bloke, at last!’, you may think. I haven’t specifically gone out of my way to listen to feminist memoirs – it’s just happened that way – but the latest book that I’m listening to is Back Story by David Mitchell (Amazon link – sponsored). Yes, it’s another memoir; David tells the story of his life whilst on a walk from his flat in Kilburn, north London into the city. The title refers to the problems he has had with a bad back, and how walking has been one of the few non-medical interventions that has helped relieve the pain.

I’m only about an hour in so far, having started listening on Monday, but if you’re used to David’s monologues from his Soapbox web series or work on 10 O’Clock Live, then you’ll know what to expect. You’ll also find out that David isn’t quite as posh as he’s made out to be, especially on shows like Would I Lie To You? on BBC1. Yes, he was privately-educated, but his parents encountered significant financial hardship to be able to do so. And yes, he went to Cambridge and is on TV, radio and has a newspaper column, but at the time that he wrote the book he was still renting a flat and didn’t own a house.

I’m a fan of David’s work and so it’s not surprising that I’m enjoying the book so far.

Up Next

I still have three more books to listen to after I’ve finished Back Story:

It takes 2-3 weeks to get through each one so it’ll be a while before I’m looking for any more books, but if anyone has any suggestions then I’ll be happy to hear them.

Thirty-two

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So today’s my birthday. I’m 32, which isn’t a particularly notable age, other than the realisation that my GCSE exams were half a lifetime ago. So rather than ramble on about how I’m feeling old, I thought I’d look back at what I’ve written on my birthday in previous years:

I’m actually surprised that several years went by where I didn’t think to write anything on my birthday. That may have something to do with not having the ability to schedule blog posts in advance back in ye olden days. 2005 was a particular surprise, as back then I often posted new entries multiple times a day – this was in the days before Twitter and the like.

As for 2017? Well, I have a whole year to think of something to write, I suppose.

We’re not doing much for my birthday – I’m at work as normal today (and have a two hour afternoon meeting!) but we’ll probably go out for dinner tonight.

mPow Magneto wireless Bluetooth headset review

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A photo of a mPow Magneto wireless Bluetooth headset

When my latest set of headphones stopped working in one ear, thanks to a loose connection in the jack, I decided that it was probably about time to get rid of the wires altogether and go wireless. I’d previously tried some cheap no-brand Bluetooth headphones in 2014, which were terrible – a non-standard charger cable, poor sound quality and cheap plastic-y construction. I think I used them once – I’d bought them for the gym but then stopped going and haven’t been back since.

After browsing through Amazon, I came across these mPow Magneto headphones. The reviews were generally good and they ranked as the number best-seller in wireless headphones. I purchased them for £16, but at the time of writing they’re selling for less, making them a bargain.

The headphones aren’t completely wireless – there’s a flat wire between the two earpieces which also has a remote control on the right side. But they’re less prone to tangling than regular wired headphones and you can run the wire behind your neck. The ‘Magneto’ name refers to the magnets in the earpieces – you can attach them together and wear it as a sort of necklace when you’re not listening to them.

The remote control has volume control buttons, and a general purpose button used for turning them on and off, and for pause the current playing track. There’s also a microphone, and when paired with a phone you can use it to make and receive telephone calls. The right earpiece has a micro-USB port for charging – a full charge takes about an hour and gives around 8-10 hours of music playing in my experience.

Pairing with your device is straightforward, and if your device supports the Bluetooth Battery Service, you’ll be able to see how much charge your headphones have left. My iPhone 5S supports this; when connected, the Bluetooth icon in the top right gains an additional battery indicator and a new ‘Battery’ widget appears on the Today pull-down. The mPow Magneto will also play an audible warning every 5 minutes once you get below 30% battery remaining.

Sound quality is pretty good – decent bass and reasonable clarity. Audiophiles will probably want to spend more on something better, but I was pleasantly surprised – I’ve used wired headphones with worse sound quality before. Although sometimes radio interference affects the range – the sound can become choppy if your device is more than a foot away from your headphones, but it depends where you are. Other times it can be a couple of metres away and be fine.

Going wireless does have its downsides. As far as I can tell, you can only pair your headphones with one device at a time, whereas you can plug wired headphones into any device with a 3.5mm audio jack. Although you can use the headphones whilst they’re charging, you may have physical difficulty getting the right earbud to sit in your ear as you do so. Plus, the need to recharge your headphones once or twice a week may put some people off, as will the extra battery drain on your phone or device (especially if you normally have Bluetooth turned off). But not having to unknot wires that then dangle and pull when running is quite liberating.

There are better headsets out there, if you’re prepared to pay more. But the mPow Magneto is fantastic value for money and gets my recommendation. I use them daily and have been really impressed with them.

Nesting

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A photo of our Nest thermostat with the heating set to 19 C

Along with our new boiler, we also got a new thermostat – a Nest Learning Thermostat. I’d actually bought it in January, in the hope that it could be fitted to our existing 1970s central heating system. With both Christine and I being on maternity and paternity leave respectively, we were at home most of the day and so the heating was on almost constantly – I hoped that a better thermostat would cut the amount of energy required. Alas, the fitter who came to install it told us that our system was too old – he could fit it, but it would only power either the hot water or the heating, and not both at the same time.

Now that we have a more modern boiler, we could also make use of the new thermostat.

The previous thermostat also dated from the 1970s and was a basic model that, theoretically, would heat the house until it reached the set temperature and stop. But I’m convinced that it didn’t do the latter – the heating would still be on even when it was utterly roasting. With such an old system, the fault could have been in any one of several places. Either way, it’s not an issue now.

Whereas the old thermostat was upstairs, we’ve fitted the Nest in the dining room. You can install it using the standard thermostat cables to your boiler, or there’s a micro-USB socket and an AC adaptor included. We decided to go for the latter, in case we want to move it somewhere else. It’s quite easy to fit to the wall and the backplate even includes a spirit level to help you align it correctly.

The Nest offers several useful features:

  • It learns how long your heating system takes to warm up. So if you want the house to be warm by 7:30am, you tell it that, rather than telling it to come on at 7am in the hope that your house will be warm enough by then.
  • You can tell the thermostat that you are away, allowing it to maintain the house at a cooler temperature, thus saving energy.
  • Your thermostat can be managed using official apps for smartphones or tablets, or on the web.
  • It has a motion detector, so the display turns off when no-one is about. It can also turn your heating down if it detects no motion in the house for some time.
  • Integration with IFTTT and other smart home technologies.

Whilst it’s been a warm couple of weeks, thanks to the Nest our heating has only needed to be on for an average of 30 minutes per day. I’m hoping that it will save on our energy bills – my mother-in-law has one, and she credits hers for halving her gas bill.

Adventures with a black box

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A photo of the 'black box' in my car which is monitoring how I drive

There’s currently a small, circular black box in my car.

It’s a piece of electrical equipment that my car insurance company (Diamond, part of Admiral Insurance) sent to me, that connects to the 12-volt cigarette lighter port on the console. I’m to keep it plugged in while I drive for the next three months, and then return it.

The device will record how I drive, presumably using accelerometers, to make an assessment as to how risky of a driver I am. If I drive safely, breaking slowly and softly and not accelerating hard, and avoid driving too much at night, then I should get around 20% knocked off my insurance premiums when I come to renew in the autumn. And as I’ve been a fully qualified driver for less than a year, a 20% discount equates to quite a big saving – about £150 based on this year’s premium.

The black box was sent to me free of charge, and, provided I return it on time, it won’t have cost me anything. The only risk is that if my insurance company thinks I’m a careless driver, that my premiums could go up instead (only around 80% of customers experience a reduction in premiums). But I think I’m a reasonably good driver – I tend to value fuel economy over speed – and I only brake hard if I have to.

For young drivers, so-called ‘telematics’ insurance policies are increasingly popular as they’re sometimes the only way that teenagers can afford to drive. InsureTheBox is one such firm – their black box is professionally fitted (presumably taking data from the car’s ODB2 port), but comes with additional benefits. A driver who was left unconscious following an accident was saved because his insurance company notified the emergency services.

For now, I’m just using this little black box for three months. It comes with a USB port, which is handy as I had to unplug my existing car USB adaptor to be able to use it. Also, it’s currently stuck to my car using gaffer tape as the provided sticky pads did not want to stick to the bumpy plastic panels of my Nissan. It fell off literally seconds after I took the photo above.

My car insurance renewal is in September so we’ll see what effect this has nearer the time.

New boiler

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A photo of our new Bosch boiler in our kitchen

In addition to a new downstairs bathroom, we’ve also invested in a new central heating boiler for our house.

This was mainly a necessity, rather than a desirable enhancement. The existing boiler dates from 1976, making it 40 years old. This is far older than most boilers – by comparison, my parents have had their boiler replaced twice in this time. If it broke down, I doubt we would have found anyone able to fix it. In which case, we would have needed a new boiler anyway, so we might as well get a new one at a time that’s convenient for us. With Christine still on maternity leave, and the weather warming up, last week seemed like a good time to do it.

The old boiler was a so-called ‘back boiler’, located in one of the chimneys in the house and with a gas fire in front; there were also two other gas fires in the house that we had removed in the summer. We also had a large hot water tank upstairs in what will be Elizabeth’s room.

Boiler installation

The new boiler is a combination boiler that provides both heating and hot water, so the old boiler, hot water tank and gas fire were all removed as part of the works. Additionally, we had to have the boiler in a different place, as it wouldn’t have fitted in the chimney and would’ve been awkward to access even if it did fit. So it’s now in the kitchen.

As it’s a newer-style condensing boiler, it should use significantly less gas than the previous boiler. Which is good – we spent a fortune over the winter as Christine was at home all day with Elizabeth during the coldest months of the year. It’s manufactured by Worcester-Bosch – one of the better makes and comes with an 8 year guarantee. There’s also a filter, to remove impurities from the water in the system, thus pro-longing the life of the boiler – that’s the black thing on the pipes in the photo.

Cost

We got two quotes for the work. The first was our current energy supplier – a large British firm specialising in Gas, who quoted us over £6000 for the work. Thankfully a local firm quoted us less than £4000, so we went with them. They managed to do the job in two days, rather than three, and we got an interest-free credit deal for two years.

As well as the new boiler, we also got a new thermostat (more on that later), and four new radiators in the downstairs rooms. One of these, in the kitchen, replaced a hugely inefficient electric radiator; the others replaced existing radiators that were removed and stored during our earlier renovations, but haven’t worked well since they were reinstalled.

Whilst the work has been costly, I’m hoping it will pay off in terms of lower gas bills, and should mean that we’re not stuck with a broken boiler in the middle of winter.

Making a house a home (part VIII)

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A photo of our new downstairs bathroom

It’s been a little while since my last update on renovating our house – January to be exact. We’ve actually been spending time working on other peoples’ houses in the meantime – my mother-in-law needed her hallway repainting and we returned a favour by helping a friend who helped us a lot last summer.

The big change is in ‘the triangle room’ – for context, see this blog post from September. We’d always intended for this to be a downstairs cloakroom with a toilet and washbasin, and, now it is. We bought the toilet, washbasin and a matching tall cupboard from a local bathroom store at a decent discount, and then got a local plumbing firm to fit it. The main aim of this is to allow my mother-in-law to visit – she’s disabled, and can’t get upstairs, so having a downstairs facility will mean that she can finally come and visit us. For this reason, we’ve bought a taller toilet.

Alas, we can’t use any of it yet. The location of our sewerage pipes means that we’ve had to have an electronic macerator fitted, and that still needs to be wired in. And when that’s done, we’ll need to be very careful about what actually gets flushed down the toilet.

The rest of the room needs finishing off – there’s no paint on the walls, no floor covering and no tiling around the washbasin – but we’ll get to these jobs in time. We’re also looking at buying some more wall-mounted cupboards, so that we can carry on using the room as a storeroom – albeit, a more tidy one.

Departing Azeroth

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After almost 10 years, today I deactivated my World of Warcraft account.

I’ve played the game precisely once since the birth of our baby – which was about 5 months ago now. I haven’t logged in once during that time. Playing games has dropped down my priority list and I just don’t have time anymore.

There are other reasons. It costs money to pay and we’re a bit short of that at the moment, following another couple of recent household expenditures and the fact that Christine’s earning less due to being on maternity leave. It’s an expense that we can do without.

But I’m also not enjoying the game as much. The ‘golden years’ for me where 2007 to 2009, when I played alongside my then girlfriend and in an active guild. Most of my fellow guildmates have since quit, or are spread out across different servers. Most of the time, I’ve been playing on my own or in ad-hoc ‘pick-up groups’ (or ‘PUGs’) which aren’t always a pleasant experience.

There’s also the issue of the next expansion, Legion, which is due to be released later this year. Normally I look forward to expansions – especially with there having been no new content in the game for months now. But my 6 year old Mac Mini won’t be able to run it, and I’m getting too bored with the game as it is to keep playing without upgrading. And again, it comes back to money – I don’t have the spare cash for a new computer, as much as I would like to upgrade.

My account is still paid through to the end of June – annoyingly, I bought another 6 months in December thinking I’d have loads of time to play whilst on paternity leave. But I doubt I’ll have the time to log in before then. Thankfully, cancelling your subscription merely freezes your account, so my characters will still be there waiting for me should I ever return to the game in future. But, for now, it is farewell to Azeroth.

Sending everything to Gmail

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A couple of weeks ago, I decided to consolidate all of my personal email accounts into my Gmail account.

Considering that my relationship with Google soured after they killed off Google Reader (yes, I’m still bitter, three years on), this may come as a surprise. Until recently, I only used Google services for my calendar, search, maps and the advertising on this blog. I’d even stopped using Gmail, and had all messages there forwarded to my Outlook.com account. Mail sent to this domain was managed by its own IMAP server.

I’ll explain why I changed my mind in a series of sub-headings.

Gmail’s better spam protection

On my own email server, I had SpamAssassin (albeit without the Bayesian learning system which isn’t set up by default on my host), Pyzor, and the use of Spamhaus‘ blocklists. This still wasn’t enough to prevent spam getting through, and at its worst I was still getting 10-15 messages a day in my inbox. Gmail’s spam filtering is much better, despite a few false positives. For example, an email from my mother was sent to the spam folder as it was about transferring money – I’m guessing Google struggles to tell the difference between my mum and someone purporting to be a Nigerian prince. But over the past couple of weeks, I think there’s only been one spam email that has got through.

Not having to look after my own email server

The email server software offered by my host, Dovecot, is fine, but I’ve had to do things like enable DomainKeys and SPF myself. Ditto for tuning SpamAssassin and installing Pyzor. Outsourcing my email to a third party makes it easier.

I had considered using Google Apps, or Office 365, on my domain, but ran into issues. With Google Apps, you can’t use an email address already associated with a Google account, so I didn’t take that forward, and got stuck trying to enable Office 365’s DNS settings. Whereas I was just able to set up a series of email forwards to send everything to Gmail.

Notifications for important email only

If you turn on Gmail’s Priority Inbox mode, it’ll attempt to sort your email into ‘Important’ and ‘Everything else’. Crucially, that means that Gmail’s mobile apps will only notify you about important messages (if you want), rather than every new email message that isn’t spam. This cuts down the number of distracting notifications on my phone.

One (powerful) inbox to rule them all

By forwarding the email to this domain and from my Outlook.com account (reversing the previous situation), I have all of my personal email in one place. And that one place has decent mobile apps and a powerful web-based interface. By default, my host offers SquirrelMail which is very basic; I have since replaced it with RoundCube but Gmail is still easier to use.

Access to third-party services

With Gmail, I can finally use services like Unroll.me to clean up my inbox (which I’ll eventually devote a separate blog post to), and IFTTT, to name a few. There’s also Inbox by Gmail, which I’ve been trying recently and it’s a very impressive improvement to the basic email inbox. Again, I’ll have to write about it in more detail sometime.

Although I don’t pay for Gmail just yet (and nowadays I’m loathed to rely on services that I’m not paying for), there is a paid-tier of Gmail offering more storage should I require it. However, as I don’t use Google Photos, I’m nowhere near the storage limit for my Google account and so I don’t need to pay for it at present.

For those of you wondering what email address to use, please continue to send messages to neil@neilturner.me.uk. This has been my primary email address for well over a decade and I plan to keep it that way. Whilst everything gets forwarded to Gmail, I will still reply to messages using that address, and should Google decide to change Gmail for the worse in future, I’ll be able to port it somewhere else.

A day out at Chatsworth

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Chatsworth House

I booked a day off work on Wednesday, and we went on a road trip to the Chatsworth Estate in Derbyshire. The estate is owned by the Duke of Devonshire, and has been in the Cavendish family since the 16th century. There’s a large stately home, gardens, a farm, an adventure playground, and a farm shop, all open to the public.

Christine and I have both been to Chatsworth before, but separately; Christine lived in nearby Chesterfield about ten years ago, and I’d been with my parents in August 2003. Going back was always on our to-do list, and now that we have a car, getting there and back in a day from Sowerby Bridge became do-able.

Google Maps did its usual thing of offering a choice of routes. There was the expected route on the motorways, via Sheffield, or a more direct and scenic one through the Peak District National Park. As it was sunny and the two routes would take about the same amount of time, we chose the latter. It was a great drive, which took in part of the route taken by the riders of the Tour de France when Yorkshire hosted the Grand Départ in 2014. Alas, a couple of sections of road were shut and we arrived about 15 minutes later than planned, due to diversions.

Arriving at lunchtime, our first activity was to fill our rather empty stomachs. Chatsworth offers a number of places to eat, although as we came on a relatively quiet Wednesday, our choice was limited to a couple of outlets in the Stables Courtyard. We went for the self-service restaurant on the basis that the tea room across the way would have probably maxed out my credit card. I’m sure the food is exquisite, but our budget doesn’t quite stretch that far as yet. In any case, the restaurant food was good, and it was busy, suggesting that locals with money to spare come here just to eat.

Guinea Pigs

Our first post-lunch visit was to the farmyard – a part of the estate that I haven’t been to before. It’s not quite as big as the farm at Temple Newsam, and did cost more to get in, but there were more staff on hand to talk about the animals. We got introduced to Maggie the sheep, and were allowed to pet a days old chick that had recently hatched. The farm has over 30 guinea pigs and there are regular handling sessions throughout the day. Entrance to the adventure playground is included with the farm ticket, and I’m sure our little poppet will love it when they’re a bit older.

Afterwards, we went to look around the gardens. Sadly we only managed a small section – enough to get the classic photo of the house and fountain at the bottom, and to go into the temperate house. The temperate house includes some banana trees; Chatsworth was where the Cavendish banana was first cultivated. It’s now the most commonly-eaten banana in the world. We would have stayed longer, but in between baby feeds and staying out of the rain, which was starting to fall by the afternoon, we didn’t manage the upper sections of the gardens.

We called in at the farm shop on the way home. The Chatsworth Farm Shop is regularly voted one of the best in Britain, and it’s easy to see why – it’s huge, and the staff are knowledgable. We picked up some locally-cured bacon and sausages, made from pigs from farms on the estate, and some local cheese. If you’re a foodie, then the farm shop alone is worth the visit.

For the drive home, we decided to take the motorway route. But we had good day out and I’m sure we’ll be back there before too long.