Scargill

Archive for December, 2010

Never really taken that much notice of Stephen Fry before – apart from his tours around the States – but this is very, very good. I can think of many arguments I’ve had in my time that I could have done with his verbal skills.

Yes, that IS the headline figure that’s being bandied around right now.. but I’m having a lot of trouble with the way this is being handled. “The department of Education has so far not commented” – why the hell SHOULD THEY comment?

A computer costs money – it’s not an essential like FOOD or clothing. I wonder how many of the 2 million parents and kids who have no computer, ACTUALLY chose to spend their money on an X-BOX or a WII or some useless plastic Chinese JUNK?  Are the people who’re badgering the Department of Education actually suggesting that WE (i.e. the taxpayers) should sort this out? Because if so I think we should be polling those parents and kids to see if they’re prepared to forego the other entertainment before ONCE AGAIN the taxpayer coughs up.

Almost every child in the western WORLD can gain access to a computer, be it at the local library or at a friends (unless the 2 million all live in the same town!) or at a million other places. If they and their parents choose to spend their money elsewhere, should we be worried? It seems more and more these days that everyone is responsible for kids except the parents!

Why, you may well ask am I making this request? Well, I got up early this morning and I was reading the BBC news. I noticed that something like 29% of people have actually signed up for organ donation whereas in surveys, 60% feel they should donate organs. Meanwhile there are queues of people waiting for organs.

Why the big gap? Presumably because the organ donation people don’t get the address of their form around enough, we’re all too busy and somehow, getting around to filling in the simple form escapes most of us – I know that’s how it was for me until today. I also noticed that although they have lots of print campaigns they’ve forgotten to provide people with images for their websites – to help promote organ donation.

Surely, unless you have some weird religious reason not to donate (and one might even ask if that applies in the 21st century where we CAN SAVE LIVES if organs are made available) there can be no reason, in a country where there are long waiting lists of people dying through lack of available transplants, why anyone would want to die and let their valuable parts turn into dust when they could be helping someone else?

Ok, so here’s the link for the organ donor form.

I never thought I’d see the day, but Skype have video running on the iPhone and iPad. Not much fun for Android or Windows Phone users but for Apples fans – a great day…

Head on over to Scargill’s iPad site for more info.

http://ipad.scargill.net/2010/12/30/skype-video-on-iphone-and-ipadat-last/

Here we go – as usual I’m off-camera as I’m the one doing the video!

Maureen and I are having a nice break at our cottage in Bellingham! And why not.  Here’s hoping you have a very nice Christmas break – and if you’ve not seen it yet, I recommend getting hold of the movie INCEPTION over the Christmas break. I’ve now watched it three times – it’s an absolute WINNER.

Jobs all done, everything’s working… I think it’s possible we’ll actually get a couple of day’s break without worries – what more could you want.  Time to plan the summer get-away, which right now is looking like a drive down to Portsmouth, over to France and then the drive down to Spain. Lots of opportunities to go to places we’ve never been before!

Merry Christmas

Update 2022

I had a video in here but YouTube seems to have lost it – Groom’s Bothy – sold years ago and now renamed to Groom Bothy – what HAVE they done to our front door!

The protests in London were a sure sign that our version of democracy has failed.  Our Royal Family were attacked in their own car for heaven’s sake. Now, I’m no follower of the royals, indeed generally I’ve no interest in them at all, I’m not even sure what place they have in the 21st century but they are there and they are our royal family – the people responsible for smashing the window should be put away in prison for a long, long time.

I used to think the Chinese were terrible – such an incident over there and indeed in many countries would result in a number of people being tear-gassed or worse – and I used to think “thank heavens that doesn’t happen here in civilised Britain”.

Well, clearly we’re not civilised any more – yesterdays riots proved that – we’re a bunch of badly behaved morons and should be treated as such when we act that way. I personally think the education hikes are terrible – but then I think the recession is terrible – hey, DEAL WITH IT. We’re in financial straights and I see ABSOLUTELY NO REASON why students or anyone else should be sheltered from it. I’ve spent my life working and paying taxes and had ABSOLUTELY ZILCH out of the government or the people of Britain – I owe others NOTHING and yet I’m asked for more and more taxes, if they can’t get it in pay, they get it every time you spend money. Anyone who has managed to bring themselves up from the bottom gets RIPPED no matter which way they turn – and it’s about time things changed.  But getting pissed and ripping up London is not going to help the tax-payers, is it?

We keep hearing about Android tablets  – what do we see in the shops or on the web that’s actually for SALE? A solitary Galaxy Tab which is selling well but is a bit on the small side and hardly “thin” – and that’s about it – other tablets are either still in the works, still using older versions of Android – or recalled. Meanwhile the iPad has it’s new operating system upgrade, new Apps updates and now there is Apple TV -  which means that thanks to the REMOTE app, you can now use your iPad or even iPhone to control your TV, browse your music selection, make playlists and more.

I can’t think of a better gimmick for parties right now than to appear armed with wireless iPad and offer to let guests make their own music selections.  It all works and the Apple TV product is cheap.

Chances of getting compatible software on an Android device in the near future? I don’t think so.. all we need now is for SKYPE and APPLE to get their act together and put Skype video on the iPhone 4.

Peter Scargill

It’s quite some time since I did anything with YouTube and I have to say, well impressed. After spending the morning putting together a short video (you may get a smile, it’s not Hollywood – but the NEXT ONE will be!!) and trying to decide where to store it. I normally use BLIP.TV but I thought I’d give YouTube a try. there was a time when it took AGES to get stuff up there but hey – times change. It took only minutes to upload and annotate. Well impressed…

Of course I forgot all about the jacussi bath, real fire and a thousand other features but next time….

I normally keep my gripes for larger companies but in this case I’m going to make an exception…  on 15th of October 2010 I sent a payment to them for a battery and charger for my camera. on 16th of October they sent a note to say they were shipping my order. on 17th October they sent an email to say it was shipped and would arrive in 5010 working days.

What they didn’t say at the time was that that the good were shipped in CHINA on 17th.

After 3 threatening letters all of which were of course wasted – the goods turned up today, 6th of December. Just so you know if you get the urge to buy anything from them. Over SEVEN WEEKS!