The answer is simple. They will not let me.

As you know I like to take photographs. Some are what you might call “Artistic” and others are more of a documentation of history. Personally I love looking at old images form when I was younger, or of places before I knew them in the past. Because of this I take pictures of the here and now for people to look back on in the future.

As the an Apple store opening is something that draws the crowds I thought this was something I should look at capturing on (virtual) film. Before I did this I emailed Apple and asked if there was a problem with me doing this out of politeness.

Sadly Apple responded stating that they have a policy of no photography in the stores and would not be able to mane an exception for the launch. They did say that if I queued up and only took a couple of pictures then there “shouldn’t be a problem”. Not overly happy with being told that I am not allowed to take a picture, but almost saying that I could get away with taking a couple, I pushed for a definitive Yes or No. I was not surprised to get back a polite No.

In the end I decided not bother going down to capture the day and I suspect there will be plenty of pictures taken by camera phones. Most of the phones were probably iPhones so the image quality will be low and the pictures out of focus, but at least we have some records of the day. :-P

So, I have had my rant, and Apple have dropped a long way in my estimation of customer relations. In the interests of neutrality I feel it important to point out I did not ask for permission to photograph inside the Sony Shop, but Ikea have said yes (and that is bizarrely true).

I was writing a long post about Freecycle and where it is going in the UK at the moment, but then realised the guardian had already written what I was going to say.

All I want to add is that I have always like the concept of Freecycle and am on the whole pleased it exists, but have always been disappointed by the heavy handed approach dictated by the central organisation. I find the way they threaten legal action against people using the word Freecycle for exchanges not moderated by them disgraceful. Lets hope that the now independent truly community driven versions are a success.

Update: The UK Freecycle groups that have left Freecycle, that to me looks like most of them, have now got together and branded themselves Freegle.

I would also like to give my support to Ema Wright who Freecycle have threatened legal action against on there web site. I believe such comments were a knee-jerk reaction, but still shockingly unprofeciaonal.

Prepare for a mini rant and waffle…

I received a call last night from an automated service asking “where are you?”. No, it is not the next generating of Twitter, but what appeared to be a service that translates text messages to voice for land lines.

A similar service caused havoc at our office when it kept calling back, then stopping, then calling back, and stopping, calling back, stopping, etc, etc. This was caused by a customer sending a media message to our land line by mistake and a bug in the BT system at the time.

The first thing I did was call the phone company at 1:30am to have it disabled, and they transform me somewhere, and then again, and then to BT faults despite me not being a BT customer and there was not actually being a fault. Fortunately they had the instructions to hand.

The magic instructions were to, and you may want to do this now, call the automated service on 0800 587 5252 and follow the instructions. You can restrict the times it will call you, or disable it completely.

While disabling the service I discovered I should not be called in the middle of the nigh with the default settings. Considering the number I was supposed to call to cancel the service (according to the message) was an 07 number I am presuming it was from another telephone company, or more likely a scam to get me to call that number and charge me a fortune (some 07 numbers are still premium rate).

Update: The originator has not been tracked down! Apparently the message was sent in error, with the aid of alcohol, from a Virgin mobile.

Let’s be honest about this, it takes a silly amount of time to clear a cheque with today’s technology, but we have come to expect that. One thing I have relied on is that all cheques take the same time to clear, so if I pay in a cheque and wait a couple of days, it will clear before any cheques I write are drawn.

I know that people say that the money leaves my account instantly and the bank holds on to it for a while, but it has worked for me until I tried to pay the tax man. I received a letter from the bank yesterday informing me of a £39 charge for bouncing my cheque. After calling up it appears that organisations such as Revenue and Customs, and customer who pay extra, can have cheques cleared quicker.

I politely told the bank that they will be refunding this charge, and they did.

…and the answer is no, I did not miss it because it did not happen. Sorry, yes, it’s another general rant coming on.

The tax on fuel has in fact been frozen until October where it will go up 2p per litre that is not far off inflation. So why did the petrol prices go up just after the budget? Probably the same reason why they went up last time (when the tax did not change at all), that reason being marketing and spin.

People seem to believe that if a price rise is announced in the budget that it will automatically come in to force at 6pm. This means that if a petrol station put the prices up then people presume it is because of the budget and not because the petrol companies have raised the price. Well that is my explanation.

Don’t get me wrong, the petrol companies are entitled to raise the price if they want to, and hiding the rise by using the budget is perfectly legal, but as consumers let’s not be taken in by the smoke and mirrors.