How not to do Twitter support

January 25th, 2012 by Alistair MacDonald No comments »

Warning: This is a rant. I do it now and then when something annoys me. Call it therapy.

I have an xbox 360 that was kindly given to me by a friend who had a spar, and I am currently working through another friend’s game collection. I say working thought, I am still on the first game, but I am not the biggest games player and you can’t rush these things you know.

Anyway, I was wondering a while ago if the BBC iPlayer was available for it and when I checked I found that it was not because Microsoft insisted on charging for it and the BBC was not allowed to do so. Then last year it was announced that it will now be available on the xbox early this year. If it is available for free then I decided I really should wire up the console to the Internet, and it would make life easer if I know this before next week’s broadband install. It has not been clear if it will in fact be free so earlier this evening I thought I would do something radical and ask.

I was going to use the support section of the web site but as the xbox twitter support account claims to be the “Guinness World Record Holder” of the “Most Responsive Brand on Twitter” so why not ask them on Twitter? This is a transaction of what happened…

Alistair MacDonald (@alistair) 25/01/2012 18:00
@XboxSupport When the iPlayer is released will it be free to use or will I need to pay like the other TV services?

Xbox Support 2 (@XboxSupport2) 25/01/2012 18:02
@alistair We don’t have that information, unfortunately. ^PC

Alistair MacDonald (@alistair) 25/01/2012 19:01
@XboxSupport2 Thanks. Any pointers to find this out would be welcome.

Xbox Support (@XboxSupport1) 25/01/2012 19:04
@alistair Sorry, we don’t have any info. ^PJ

Alistair MacDonald (@alistair) 25/01/2012 19:09
@XboxSupport1 Do you not have the ability to escalate queries you can’t answer?

Xbox Support (@XboxSupport1) 25/01/2012 19:11
@alistair We do, but that info has not been released yet. ^PJ

Alistair MacDonald (@alistair) 25/01/2012 19:14
@XboxSupport1 Wait a moment, I thought you said you did not have any info. Are you saying it is secret at the moment? When will it be out?

Xbox Support (@XboxSupport1) 25/01/2012 19:16
@alistair We don’t have any info regarding that. Let us know if you need anything else. ^PJ

Alistair MacDonald (@alistair) 25/01/2012 19:19
@XboxSupport1 If you could escalate my inquiry that would be great. Thank you.

Xbox Support (@XboxSupport1) 25/01/2012 19:23
@alistair Cheers! ^PJ

Alistair MacDonald (@alistair) 25/01/2012 19:24
@XboxSupport1 When and how will I get a response?

Xbox Support (@XboxSupport1) 25/01/2012 19:29
@alistair We are unable to respond with more info on that. ^PJ

Alistair MacDonald (@alistair) 25/01/2012 19:35
@XboxSupport1 Sorry but I feel like you are sticking two fingers up at me. Can I make a complaint? Do you have an email address?

Xbox Support (@XboxSupport1) 25/01/2012 19:37
@alistair Sorry you feel that way, but we aren’t able to assist. We do have report card coming out, you can check your DM’s for those. ^PJ

Alistair MacDonald (@alistair) 25/01/2012 19:53
@XboxSupport1 I have found the contact details I require through the web site and will take it from there.

Xbox Support (@XboxSupport1) 25/01/2012 19:54
@alistair Ok, sounds good. Let us know if you need anything else. ^PJ

It is true that I always got a response from Twitter, although I can’t say it answered my simple question. For reference I called the xbox live support number on the web site after this last tweet and got an answer straight away. The answer being yes I will need to pay for “gold membership” to access the iPlayer on the xbox, and that is just not going to happen. Why could they not tell me this on Twitter?

Now I don’t claim to be a Social Media expert, but I am an advanced social media user and I know how not to treat people on Twitter. Microsoft got a lot right here in fact, but the big thing they got wrong is treating a person like an idiot and not having a next step when the canned responses they have fail them. Even if they could not tell me then they should have taken the conversation off twitter and politely said that they were really sorry but we can’t tell you yet and why.

Okay, rant over (for now).

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Posted in Rant, Tech

Broadband and line rental for £8.56 a month!

January 23rd, 2012 by Alistair MacDonald 1 comment »

It is a constant surprise to people that I have not had ADSL broadband at home, ever. In truth I do have a 3G Mifi that is essentially a portable wifi access point and at £8 / month for 5GB transfer (an old half price offer that I still have) and I use it when at home and away.

With last year’s VAT rise I was paying £12 a month for the fixed phone line with evening and weekend calls. I was looking for a cheaper option and considering going mobile only when I spotted a great deal from Plus Net. I sign up for an annual contract with the monthly cost is £12.73 (offer expires 14/02/2012). So now I can have an expected 16mbps broadband with a 10GB transfer limit for just 73p more than I was paying for just the line. I could have had a monthly contract instead of an annual one for a few more quid and a setup fee but I went for an annual one.

In the past I had a Plus Net business connection at my old office, and two family members use them, so I have confidence in there service. They are owned by BT (shudder) but run as a separate company with decent support. You might also find it amusing that they own the company I am moving away from.

What is better is that I used Quidco and got another £50 cash back (offer expires on 31/01/2012). I recommend checking Quidco for all big inline purchases as it has saved me over £200 over time. So now for the next year my monthly cost is the equivalent to £8.56, a whole £3.44 cheaper than I was paying for the phone alone. I am oddly pleased.

If you want to do the same then please consider using my Quicdo affiliate link to place the order. It will not cost you any more and I get a small kick back of you do. Also as part of the Plus Net signup process please enter that “alistairuk” refereed you for the same reason. If do not want to then that is fine, I still recommend taking the offer if you can.

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Posted in Reviews, Tech

Port Designs Berlin Sleeve Review

November 6th, 2011 by Alistair MacDonald No comments »


It has been a while since I have been asked to review a product on my blog but if someone wants to send me something shiny then I am more than happy to do so. In this case I have been asked to review any laptop case from GearZap.

As someone who attends a lot of tech events I needed something that was going to protect the laptop form the usual knocks and bumps on the train, have handles to carry it with other bags in the same hand, and not look overly shabby.

I could chose any of these 15″ laptop cases but with some advice I selected the Port Designs Berlin Laptop Bag 15/16″ Sleeve. It met the requirements and looked smart enough to for most occasions without feeling odd at social occasions.

When unwrapping the bag I was quite pleased with with the look and feel as it came across as not overly cheap, but on overly posh. A middle ground I am most comfortable in. The case is designed to so you can open it up and the computer and function without it being removed. Annoyingly it appears that unless your laptop is the exact size required it will just pop out of the holders. Initially this was disappointing but I find myself slipping the laptop in and out with ease so much it is a feature I am probably best without.

My first outing with the bag was to a hack day where I already had another bag with the usual hack day bits and bobs in (mouse, power strip, external HDD, sleeping bag, etc) so the bag was just being used for the laptop and the power supply. The bag has a large zip pocket that holds my small power supply and UK power lead without loosing it’s shape, but squeeze in any more and it looks like it has been eating pies and not exercising. If you carry lots of junk with your laptop then this bag is probably not for you, but if you just need a small PSU like me then it is ideal.

There are also two open-topped pockets with Velcro under the handles. The handles fold neatly in to these pockets but I have not yet had cause to do this. They are convenient for pens, business cards, flash drives and other small items. The handles are also well padded so are not constantly digging in to your fingers like many bags I have had in the past. There is no shoulder strap as it is just not that kind of bag.

So in summery it is a good smart looking bag if you travel light and well worth the £30. If you need to carry more or need both hands then you are probably better of looking for something bigger. For me it is spot on and I will definitely continue to use it.

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My no voicemail experiment

October 5th, 2011 by Alistair MacDonald 2 comments »

Yes, that is correct, as of last night I am no longer using voicemail on my phone so to leave me a message you will need to use email.

As of two weeks ago I have become very busy for reasons that I will no doubt be blogging about soon. As a result I can not take many mobile calls and a lot of people are calling me leaving messages. I am constantly finding several messages on the phone at a time, some already dealt with, most duplicated in an email, a few from the same person calling back multiple times, and a huge number of “please call me” messages with no hint as to why or if it is in any way important. It should also be noted I don’t have time to respond to all of the messages.

As a result I have decided to stop using voicemail all together on my phone. I looked at several solutions over time that will take the voice mail and convert it to an email for convenience, but this only makes retrieving the message easer and does not simplify me making my response so it is email all the way I am afraid. I am not the first to do this as some friends have already given this a go. So from now on if you need to contact me then please send me a VERY SHORT email me and I will respond by email.

Please don’t feel this is unfair. It is a common question “how can I reach you quickly”. Although people don’t realised it they are in fact asking how do I jump the queue to get Alistair to do something. The truth is that I can not do everything, respond to everyone, and be at your beck and call. Sorry but I need to prioritise and no matter how important you think your issue or question is it might not be top priority when combined with my list of things to do. Moving entirely to email helps with this prioritisation.

Also please be brief in your email. If it is a line or two and I can deal with it when it arrives then I will, otherwise it will be dealt with in the evening, the following day, or in the following week depending on what else I have to do. Things do get missed so feel free to email again, but only after a few days, and include all I need in the latest email as I will probably delete the older ones.

Finally let me know how this works out from your perspective.

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Do you fancy riding on steam trains or a BBQ this weekend?

August 24th, 2011 by Alistair MacDonald No comments »

For the last couple of years we have had the Geek Steam BBQ on the August bank holiday weekend just north of the M25 (in Colney Heath). What we do is run some trains (both steam and electric) round the track and have a BBQ. This year we are doing it again just because we can and it is fun. As an added bonus there is a visiting model engineering club bringing some more steam engines so there will be more chances to ride and more interesting people to chat with.

If you can make it along then you are welcome to join us. Don’t worry if you are not interested in the trains, it is just a chance to socialise. Just let me know you are coming and bring a selection of food to share. There are more details on the micro-site.

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Posted in Events

If things were a little different

July 30th, 2011 by Alistair MacDonald No comments »

A while ago I was playing with some fonts used by large brands and using them for another company name for fun. There are some more I did just after that but never quite got round to uploading until now.







For anyone reading this blog outside of Tyne and Wear the British Rail text is in Calvert produced by typographer Margaret Calvert for the Tyne and Wear Metro.

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Dorkbot NCL and Maker Space

July 2nd, 2011 by Alistair MacDonald No comments »

Sorry for the short notice on this but Brian and I will be giving a presentation at this Monday’s Dorkbot NCL about Maker Space, Newcastle’s first hacker space. Hopefully we will also have a good discussion around how to take things forward.

If you did not know Dorkbot is a geeky show and tell and in addition to us Alex McLean will be taking about live coding as a performance.

More details on the Lanyrd listing and the Maker Space web site and not forgetting the Centre for Life’s web site. Please come if you can.

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My silly second blog is back. :-)

May 27th, 2011 by Alistair MacDonald No comments »

I used to have a second blog of daft photos and the like hosted on Vox.com that was closed down by Six Apart last year. My intention was to move it elsewhere but I never quite got round to it. Eventually I managed to get it moved across to the Posterous platform with a few issues that needed working round. Today I managed to get most (but not all) of the bugs sorted that included the need to edit every one of the 400+ posts. So…. please have a look at my Posterous (formally Vox) blog.

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Tyne Tide Times 2011

May 18th, 2011 by Alistair MacDonald No comments »

For a couple of months I am hanging out in an office on the Newcastle quayside with a view of the River Tyne. Being an office totally devoted to work we have been discussing the high and low tides quite a lot. Eventually we downloaded the 2011 Tide Tables PDF from the Port of Tyne web site for no reason what so ever. As I am learning Python properly now I set myself the academic challenge of extracting the high and low tide times from the PDF and placing it in a CSV so I can do something more interesting with the data if not more useful. If you wan to do the same then please have a go. TyneTideTimes2011.zip.

Update: The time in the file is Greenwich Mean Time. For British Summer Time add one hour from 2am March 27th 2011 to 2am October 30th 2011.

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Metro Timetables

April 30th, 2011 by Alistair MacDonald No comments »

For a long time I have been trying to get a copy of the Tyne and Wear Metro timetables in a format that I can work with in software. Although Nexus (the owner and the former operator of the Metro) is mandated to distribute the timetable they can choose the way the information is distributed, and they chose a PDF for each station.

Last year I decided to create the Metro simulator that shows the state of the Metro system at any given time. This was so I could find out how many trains there were on the network at a time and visualise where they were. To do this I manually entered the weekday timetable. A task that took 18 hours over several days just to get the weekday timetable in.

I did not give up thought and although the recent timetable changes were not great with only a few peak time trains being dropped I decided to make a big push for the new timetables rather than altering my current on.

The way I eventually successful in getting the information was via a Freedom of Information request to Nexus via the My Society web service What Do They Know where you can follow the communications relating to the request. I must confess I was expecting the standard we have the PDFs again, or perhaps now the commercial interest card to be (inappropriately) played, but instead the gentleman responsible was most professional and got the information I was requestion instead of trying to get out of giving it. For that I am truly respectful and grateful.

I have been also given some legal advice regarding any IP issues and in short we can do just about anything with it and distribute it. The one thing we can not do is exactly reproduce and distribute it, but that is not an issue here. If you want to play with the data yourself then it can now be downloaded from Weekday and Weekend.

Update: The time tables have changed again slightly but I intend to create an updated database to reflect that.

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Posted in Tech