Carmel Valley Road

We're about to ride to Salinas via Lake Nacimiento and Carmel Valley Road.

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Pacific Coast Highway 1 to Cambria

Yesterday got off to a good start when the 'limo' that was arranged to take us from the hotel to the bike rental place turned out to be a proper white stretch limo.

Got to EagleRider and there was a Portuguese guy, Pedro, there hiring a bike and taking the same route as us so we agreed to ride down together. eD from sport-touring.net came along too to help us get out of San Francisco and take us on a bit of a tour out of the city. So grateful to eD - without him we would have been quite screwed getting out of the city! Nice twisty roads out of SF then we stopped at a famous biker cafe called Alice's Restaurant (see previous post for pic).

OK, I don't have time to write more  now - got to go ride! Take a look at the pics and I'll write up more later. We're in Cambria now. About to go try Route 58. :D

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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Escape from San Francisco

The riding is good!

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Penguins and pancakes

• Went to Monterey Bay Aquarium. Saw more sea otters. Penguins will rule the world one day
• Now in San Francisco. Exited BART as Gay Pride March went past with ticker tape falling from the sky. A suitable welcome for our arrival I think.
• Waited 40min for a table for breakfast at Dottie's True Blue Cafe. I had pancakes but I didn't really like them that much tbh.
• Went to visit a friend at Google HQ today. Google HQ rocks. Please can I have a job there? I could be a gardener or something...
• Going to pick up the Harley tomorrow. Now the real holiday starts!

Download now or watch on posterous

IMG_0726.MOV (5083 KB)

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Spot the Seal

I hired a bicycle yesterday and took a ride down to Monterey, where I hired a kayak for a few hours. It was not particularly sunny, but of course I still managed to get burnt. I had a wetsuit on, so I have a nice line at my ankles, and my forehead is glowing nicely. Out on Monterey Bay I saw loads of seals, quite a few sea otters and a seagull using a dead seal as a surf board. :D 

Burnt feet really hurt. Not good.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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Spot the Seal

I hired a bicycle yesterday and took a ride down to Monterey, where I hired a kayak for a few hours. It was not particularly sunny, but of course I still managed to get burnt. I had a wetsuit on, so I have a nice line at my ankles, and my forehead is glowing nicely. Out on Monterey Bay I saw loads of seals, quite a few sea otters and a seagull using a dead seal as a surf board. :D 

Burnt feet really hurt. Not good.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from Steven's posterous

Freezing in Asilomar; TomTom California map?

We arrived in Asilomar yesterday after a 2.5h bumpy bus ride from San Francisco. This conference place is a little odd - kind of like a cross between a scout camp (Douglas Wood anyone?) and something from Amityville. 

Main problem is that it is really cold and misty. This isn't the weather that Arnie was showing off on all those "Visit California" adverts recently! I'm sitting in front of a roaring fire right now. It would be warmer if we headed in-land, but considering we're planning on riding Pacific Coast Highway we might not be getting much sun.

W is working now in some meeting. I'm thinking of going for a cycle ride but I'm not sure I've got warm enough clothes!

Gripe: I still planning the route for next week. I have my TomTom Rider (v1) with me and wanted to add a map for California to it. However, it seems you cannot buy individual state maps in the US. Seems a bit daft when you can buy individual country maps in Europe. The US is the size of a continent and California is about the size of the UK so you've got just as much chance of only needing a regional map. Would someone using their TomTom in Washington really want to be forced to buy a map which included Georgia? Seems like a economically motivated decision by TomTom which is daft when they're about to be crushed by Google et al who will be offering a more customer focused service. 

You used to be able to buy individual state maps for TomTom so if anyone can point me in the direction of one please do. It doesn't matter how old it is - I doubt Pacific Coast Highway has changed much recently!

Pic is of Crater Lake taken on the flight over. 

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Time to ride California again

On Tuesday I'll be flying out to San Francisco and on the following Tuesday I'll be picking up a Harley-Davidson Electra Glide and riding for four days around California. I did this 6 years ago and loved it. This time I'll have W sitting behind me! Like the social media geek I am I'll be using Posterous to tweet, blog and Facebook my pics as I go along. If Google Latitude worked properly on an iPhone I would be able to track my route properly too. Use a map you say? Yeah I guess that would make sense...

Technical gripe - when you email a photo directly from the iPhone to Flickr via Posterous, the GPS Exif data seems to get stripped out, which is a shame. I'd like to have all the photos geo-tagged.

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Post Office Oxford

Post Office Oxford
Originally uploaded by major_grooves

When i arrived at the Post Office with the queue below there was only
two people serving. I wonder how busy it has to get for them to
consider opening all the counters. Really people should be grateful
that the Post Office has shut all the local post offices. If they
hadn't people wouldn't get the opportunity to travel in to central
Oxford and queue for 20 min. Thank you Post Office for being so useless!

LipDub videos and stupid record companies

I made a Barenaked Ladies LipDub movie with some friends in Dundee over Christmas as a wedding present for a friend. It was inspired by a fantastic LipDub movie of the Black Eyed Peas' song "I Gotta Feeling." It's such a fantastic clip, I think I've probably watched it more than a dozen times (also see the follow-up 'making of' video). It's impossible to watch without it putting a smile on your face.

I tried to upload our movie to YouTube. OK, the video has the Barenaked Ladies' song "If I had $1000000" playing throughout, but I just assumed that YouTube would automatically add a "buy this from iTunes" link that you often see on videos with music in them.

Nope, YouTube just blocked the video as soon as it was uploaded.

I knew that most of the major record companies had been getting their knickers in a twist about arranging licensing deals with YouTube so that their music could be posted. Turns out Warner Music Group has thrown a major hissy fit and now all their music is blocked. There are amusing/annoying stories about of people's videos being blocked because some copyrighted music is playing in the background i.e. on the radio or something!

Wonderfully, YouTube gives you the option of uploading the video with a) no audio, or b) audio from YouTube's library of available music. Me thinks that might somewhat spoil a LipDub movie. For example.

I don't really have a problem with record companies protecting their music per se. I've always been against file-sharing as it just feels like stealing. However, I do think that the record companies are being quite short-sighted with the opportunity that YouTube presents to them. When I listened to the I Gotta Feeling LipDub, I immediately bought the tune on iTunes. A few months later I bought the whole Black Eyed Peas album (should I really be admitting this?!).

I didn't buy them through YouTube, so Google gets no money from this - just Apple, the record company and the band. However, I bought them because of the video on YouTube. I wouldn't have bought it otherwise.

Warner Music Group apparently don't get this. I therefore presume they are run by thickos and I fart in their general direction. Black Eyed Peas' record label, Interscope (part of Universal Media Group) are clearly much more enlightened.

Of course everyone wants to get their video on YouTube so they can have their 5-minutes of fame! Instead I have uploaded the video to Vimeo, which is a really beautiful video website. They've actually been encouraging people to make LipDub movies (and even claim to have coined the term). Sadly though, they're getting sued for their efforts.

Anyway, here is the video we made. I expect the morons from WMG will come along eventually and issue a takedown notice, but in the meantime please enjoy:

$1000000 LipDub from Steven Renwick on Vimeo.

A LipDub movie we made to Barenaked Ladies' "If I had $1000000" for Kev and Hilary's Wedding (8th Jan 2010). Filmed at various locations in Dundee and Carnoustie.

Image from Flickr user Tracy Russo used under a Creative Commons licence.

Engrish: Green Grass is Afraid of your Trample

Green Grass is Afraid of your Trample
Originally uploaded by major_grooves

A week last Thursday W got back from a month long trip to China where she had been travelling the silk road. Amongst the 403 photos she showed me this morning were a few amusing examples of Engrish.

A couple more here.

AffectLabs (FestBuzz) at TechCrunch London

BitchBuzz at TechCrunch London
Originally uploaded by BitchBuzz

Yesterday I pitched Affect Labs (aka FestBuzz - for more on that see below) at TechCrunch London.

Update: See also TechCrunch Europe's Event Wrap.

I'm rather pleased, and still more than a bit surprised, to say that we won "best pitch"!

Picture above is me on stage with Mike Butcher, Editor of TechCrunch Europe, receiving a bottle of bubbly.

There were a lot of interesting companies there with some very good pitches. I did think it would be nice to get in the top 5 but I didn't think I'd really done anything to deserve winning. Not that I'm complaining though!

Credit where credit is due though, the presentation was largely based on Jennie's learnings in the run up to the TechCrunch Geek 'n Rolla event earlier this year where she pitched Affect Labs. Some of the slides were ones that she had made for a pitch she did at an Astia London event, also earlier this year.

Of course, like all my interactions with TechCrunch events, I don't like things to be straightforward. I had visited the relevant Amiando page almost as soon as the event was announced. The first thing I did was click on the link to export the event in to my Google Calender. As I knew I was going to be pitching I didn't have reason to buy a ticket or visit the Amiando page again.

So yesterday, at 3pm, I turned up like an eager beaver for some pre-pitch practice.... at Gilgamesh Studios in Camden. Nobody had a clue what I was talking about as I wandered around what looked like a giant empty Indian restaurant asking where the TechCrunch event was.

Turns out the original plan was to hold it at the Gilgamesh Studios, but the venue had quite quickly been changed to the Cafe de Paris near Piccadilly Circus. The people that had already bought tickets were notified of the venue change by email, but as I wasn't buying a ticket I wasn't notified (random link found through Google shows venue as Gilgamesh).

So in future I'll remember not to blindly trust Google Calender exports. In the end I wasn't too late for the event and managed to get some very helpful tips before I went on stage.

Cafe de Paris is an interesting venue isn't it? The private rooms (where we prepared before the pitches) had what they describe as a VIP boudoir but which everyone else described as looking like some kind of porn set. I wonder what goes on in there hmmmm. It would have been a bit nicer without the dodgy stains and cigarette burns on the beds...

Tonight they're hosting the FHM High Street Honeys '09 party. I should have hidden in a toilet for the night or something. Quite contrasting clientele to have one night after the other! Om nom nom nom :D

I got some good questions from the floor. I particularly liked the audience's reaction when I was asked where the technology originated: "Jennie's PhD research in a NLP group at Cambridge University". I think I did hear a kind of "ooh" from the audience. Hud that!

A Hungarian chap, who knows the sentiment field, attempted to ask a technical question. Fortunately, nobody, including myself, could really understand what he was saying. I say fortunately because I did go and speak to him later and I wouldn't have been able to answer his question very well on stage.

One slight issue that did become apparent through the night was our own brand perception. We were publicised as FestBuzz, we were introduced as FestBuzz, and the first thing I did was go up there and say "I'm Steve from Affect Labs". I pitched as AffectLabs (which is the registered name of the company), told the audience about FestBuzz (our 4iP funded Edinburgh Festivals project), and referenced Benchmark7, which is the working name of our sentiment classification engine. Also my business cards are heavily Benchmark7 branded.

Well for the rest of the night I was "the guy from FestBuzz". I had to explain the three names more than a few times. I spoke to Mike Butcher about it and he was definitely keener to refer to us as FestBuzz - "that's what people know you as"! (TechCrunch had written a short piece about us when our 4iP funding was announced). So that's something we'll have to keep in mind as we move forward.

Anyway, I had a great time at the after show party, which was timed to coincide with the end of Seedcamp. It was pretty nice having lots of people compliment the pitch (even before we won) and then have people congratulate me later. :) I met a whole bunch of great people. Now the challenge is to connect the business cards to the faces to the conversations to the follow-ups that may or may not have been promised!

Some more pictures from the event can be found here on Flickr, courtesy of BitchBuzz.

The event was actually streamed live on Ustream. If my day before the event had not been so busy/chaotic I would have put the link in my Facebook account. Is it possible to watch things which have already been streamed?

Thanks to TwistedTree for organising the event.

The 51st Company

In my previous blog post I was lamenting our failiure to get in to the TechCrunch 50.

Well this week, in an unexpected twist to the story, I got an email from TechCrunch CEO Heather Harde asking for us to go over there and pitch.

Oh my heart did skip a beat!

Apparently some companies were at risk of not making their slot, so she wanted us to come over as the "first reserve" so to speak. If it turned out that we weren't needed then we would be given a DemoPit spot instead.

I received the email on Wednesday. She wanted us to fly over on the Friday to work through our pitch then get stuck in on Monday or Tuesday.

Only problem was, since getting the initial rejection, we had been working on other things - not making a specific demo for TC50 (we had something specific in mind that would have been exceptionally cool for all companies there - not just us).

Shortly after getting the email I was on the phone to my co-founder Jennie.

"So you know that demo we were going to do specifically for TechCrunch 50 that was probably going to take about 2 or 3 weeks to get ready? Do you think you could still do it in two days? How about if you just stay here and work on the demo, while I go over to San Francisco, have a great time at the conference and bask in the limelight of being a presenting company? Strictly speaking do you need to take time out to eat and sleep?"

OK, so pretty obviously it wasn't going to be possible. Nevertheless, we could have presented something, possibly shown FestBuzz. The only problem would be that it wouldn't be a product launch, so much as a technology pitch, and TechCrunch 50 is about launching products.

Even if we didn't end up on stage, we would have been in the DemoPit. Doing an exhibition without any preparation would be challenging to say the least. I figured we could probably wing it, however with rather prophetic timing, Jason Calcanis' email newsletter had just arrived with 22 tips on how to operate a trade show booth.

Let's just say that none of these tips include, "decide to go to a trade exhibition a couple of days before it starts and just wing it". Hmmm....

So anyway, Heather had said in her email that she would call me the next day or that I could call her at any hour to discuss, so I did that. No answer on her cell phone so voicemail was left and then I sent her an email outlining my concerns and suggesting that we probably couldn't do it. I tried calling a few more times, because I was really hoping that she would try to persuade me to do the pitch. However I never heard back from her. No phone call or reply to my email, so I guess it was taken as a decline (unless they're still expecting us to turn up. That would be awkward!).

When Jennie and I were talking about the possiblity of doing the pitch, there were quite a few things running through my head. This is TechCrunch 50 and we've been asked to do it! It's web-tech lifetime opportunity - we would be mad to turn it down. Even if the demo is not perfect we should just do *something*.

Luckily Jennie was the voice of reason, not least because she would have to make the damn demo! Sure we could turn up and do a demo of *something* but it wouldn't be good enough. We might end up doing more harm to the company than good. Just because it's TechCrunch 50 doesn't mean we should put our reputation at risk. Even if we're just mediocre, people don't remember mediocre. I think I was being driven more by the prestige of the TC50 badge rather than the practicalities of the situation.

The reality is that although I was extremely excited when I got Heather's email, I knew we probably wouldn't be able to do it. At first I was like "Yah!" but then I "Meh'd"...

So I guess we were the 51st choice company (unless some other reserves had already turned them down!), and Michael Arrington's 75-80% chance of us getting in was fair. I wish the best of luck to whatever company has presumably replaced us. I do hope they get a chance to go on the main stage and make the most of this (presumably) unexpected opportunity.

That's twice in the past couple of weeks I've meant to have had a conversation with Heather and we have not managed to connect. I really hope I'll get the chance to speak with her eventually! And hopefully they'll remember us and Affect Labs will still get a chance to pitch at a TechCrunch event in the future!

N.B. We've actually got a few pitches coming up in the next few weeks. We were selected as one of the Guardian Tech Media Invest top 100 companies and we'll be pitching at the related event at the Emirates Stadium, London on 1st October.

TechCrunch50 Rejection

[Update: We actually got asked to pitch!]

I started writing this post as a response to another person's blog post in which he talked about his rejection from TechCrunch50. It was turning in to a bit of a mammoth response, so I thought I would be better posting it on my blog and just leaving a link to it on his. So it begins as a response...

Hi, we had a similar experience, although possibly with more mishap and with our expectations even higher.

So we applied and were happy to be told we would be interviewed. Unfortunately the interview timings seemed pretty difficult to book and were timed for US West coast people and we are in the UK, so we had a bit of difficulty getting a reasonable interview time.

Eventually we got the interview time set, with the screen sharing and teleconference details sent out. My co-founder and I were waiting in the teleconference (separate locations) and in the screen sharing facility. Our interview was with Heather and we got an email saying she's running 5min late. Fair enough.

I had researched her so knew she was TechCrunch CEO and saw she had worked in corporate M&A, which is similar to my background so I thought we might have something in common.

After a few minutes we could see Heather in the screen sharing facility and she started chatting to us. She says she's in the teleconference but can't hear us. We're in the teleconference too but we can't hear her. Oh crap.

Anyway, we faff around for a few minutes but she says that she has to go and we will rearrange. Oh crap, we've just missed out on pitching to the Techcrunch CEO. :(

We do rearrange. Unfortunately the only time they can do the interview is when my co-founder is due to be hosting a big event for us. So it's up to me alone. I gladly take up the challenge! So I'm due to be speaking to Tyler from Mahalo. Ok, cool.

So in the run up to the meeting, I start getting a bit panicy that the teleconference is gonna mess up again, so I change our phone details to get them to phone me direct. I'm exchanging emails with various assistants to try and make sure they have the correct details. I'm convinced telecommunication technology is going to let me down again.

The time comes. And passes. I'm checking the online room. There's no-one there. No email this time saying anyone is running 5min late. I wait for ages. I have three phones so I keep dialing in to the teleconference rooms to make sure he's not dialed there by mistake instead of phoning me directly.

Eventually I get an email saying Tyler is running a bit late. OK, fair enough. So about an hour after our scheduled time I get the call. I try to demo, but he can't hear me properly. He asks if he can phone on another number. Lucky I have three phones!

So we get on to a decent phone and start the demo. It goes well. Tyler actually has a pretty cool idea for something we could do. I agree it is a cool idea (I'm sure we would have thought of it anyway ;) ). Towards the end of the demo, Tyler asks me to show something quite specific that I'm pretty sure is going to be impossible. I try. I was right - it was not possible (yet).

Anyhow, demo over and Tyler gives me his email address and says if we could rig up a demo of the "not yet possible" thing, then that would be pretty cool.

A few days pass by. Tuesday night at 8.50pm I get a call on my landline. Calls on my landline are either a) my g/f's parents, or b) recorded message spam. Tonight it is c) Michael Arrington's assistant from Techcrunch. Ooh, I wasn't expecting that!

"Michael would like to speak with you in an hour."

Crikey! I do know of him already as I read Techcrunch a lot and I follow his Twitter stream. However, there's always time for some obsessive Google searching and I find out he is no. 100 on the 2008 Time Magazine 100 most influential people list.

Wow. That's quite influential. I mean, granted there's 99 people above him, but there's around 6 billion people below him, so I'm thinking that's pretty good going.

So at 10pm he calls. First thing he says is he doesn't know my name. That's ok, I'm quite insignificant, he can call me Susan if it gives us a better chance of getting in to TC50.

I do the demo. Michael mentions the same cool idea that Tyler did. I presume Tyler mentioned it to him. I agree whole-heartedly that it would be a cool idea. As before I can't show the demo of what he's suggesting, but this time I can show him it in command line form.

He says he "gets it" and he "loves it". The most influential man in Web tech GETS it! He LOVES it! Woo-hoo!

He then says that he thinks we'll be an "edge case" because the other partners (Heather and Jason) have not seen us, but says that his opinion carries weight so we still have a good chance. In fact, he says he reckons we have a "75-80%" chance of getting in.

75-80% chance?! That's like, more or less 100%! I mean, nothing with a "75-80%" chance ever actually fails does it? I mean if someone tells you you have a 75-80% chance of winning the lottery tonight you'd be making friends with the local Aston Martin dealer PDQ. Dead cert! (Notice I quickly suppress the words "edge case").

We wait a few days in eager anticipation. Surely we're in - I wonder what I should wear on stage?

But then I notice a tweet from Michael saying they've made the final decisions on the last companies for TC50.

Oh, but some mistake surely? Our email has gone astray! Curse you technology and your missing emails!

So we wait. And then get the /other/ email.

“Unfortunately, we regret that we are unable to place your company as a TechCrunch50 finalist…"

Oh, bummer.

We also get the invite to DemoPit, which I would *love* to do, but unfortunately in our near-zero financing state (as well as being located in the UK) it is prohibitively expensive so we have to decline. It's probably a good thing in a way, because it would have been a lot of pressure to get the product ready in time and we might not have been as good as we would have wanted to be.

However I am a bit bummed and I can't help wondering what difference the failed teleconference with Heather made. :/

Still, it doesn't keep me down for more than a few hours. It was pretty good validation to have made it to the semi-final stage. It was also a pleasure to get the chance to speak with both Tyler and Michael. I was glad they at least liked our product, even if we didn't quite make the final cut for TC50.

We've had similar validation experiences, tempered with a hint of dissapointment. We got invited out to San Francisco to do the 15min interview for Y Combinator this year. That's a long way to go for a 15min chat. Although we didn't make the final cut, it was good to make it from the 600-1000 companies that applied down to the last 60.

We also applied to all the Y Combinator-like schemes, and all of them interviewed us at least once, so there was definite interest in our company. In fact, we actually got an investment offer from one of them but decided to turn it down in the end so that was an especially good validation.

Since then our company, Affect Labs, has had some funding from 4iP to launch our Phase 1 product FestBuzz and we did get mentioned on TechCrunch Europe, which was nice.

We also have some other very good irons in the fire, one of which is certain and others which we will find out about over the next couple of months.

So I'll be keeping my fingers crossed, but not getting my expectations up too high, because even when you've got a 75-80% chance of success, that's still a 20-25% chance of failure. I mean, if someone tells you you've got a 20-25% chance of dying tonight, you'd probably put on your best underwear...

Apologies for random tenses in this post. I can't be bothered fixing them. Photo from Flickr user KatieL366.

So what is it I'm doing now exactly?

I'd been wanting to start some kind of company for a while, particularly something involving Internet technology, but that idea was limited by my lack of programming skillz. My day job had given me experience of project managing the re-design and re-launch of a pretty complicated business information website/database so I was quite confident I could find my calling in the Web start-up world coming from the business angle.

It was a toss-up between trying to start-up a company and doing an MBA this year. And the start-up won.

Earlier this year I teamed up with Jennie Lees to start Affect Labs. The company is founded on sentiment analysis technology that Jennie had developed during her doctoral studies at Cambridge University. She has since moved to Scotland and the company is now established in Edinburgh.

Over the past few months we've been writing business plans, applying for funding and lots of other cool things. While this has been full-time for Jennie for some time, for me it has always had to be something I fitted in to my spare time and holidays. It also wasn't something I widely revealed at my day-job.

Well, the time has come where I need to apply more time to the start-up. We're starting to try to raise money in earnest and that means more work and meetings. There's only so many meetings I can arrange for holidays! So, I have told my employer my plans and they have very graciously agreed that I can go part-time from September. Eventually I hope to go full-time with the start-up, but only time will tell when we'll be in a position to allow that.

So the exciting news is that we've launched our first product. FestBuzz (with funding from 4iP) is crowd-sourcing Edinburgh Festival show reviews. What that means is that our technology is listening out for all the messages on Twitter that are talking about the Festival shows. We aggregate these messages (aka "tweets") and use our sentiment analysis technology to understand the emotion in the reviews - are people being positive or negative about the show.

The site launched late last week, and is not quite yet 100% operational. We've got a few features to switch on and we're waiting for the Festival to really kick off so the flow of tweets will start.

So if you're interested in getting started with Twitter and "tweeting" your reviews, have a look at this guide (or this much shorter one).

Or if you just want Edinburgh Festival recommendations from the "word on the tweet" please check out the site!


(Image taken from the FestBuzz on Flickr)

Damn those bus drivers

Stagecoach OJ09BZH
Originally uploaded by KK70088

Don't you just hate it when you try to get on the bus and the driver shuts the door just as you arrive. You knock on the door assuming that he'll see you and open the doors to let you on, but no - the ba$tard just drives off and you're left there cursing him, buses, public transport and Gordon Brown.

I was on the bus the other day leaving Oxford and I saw exactly that happen to someone trying to get on my bus. The driver could easily have let the guy on the bus, so I emailed the bus company to query their procedure.

This is what I was told:

Prior to departing a stop the driver is to:

1) look in their mirrors to ensure there are no persons intending to board their vehicle
2) Close the doors
3) Put on indicators to show that they wish to move out right
3) Look constantly in both offside/nearside/inside mirrors to look for any obstacles and ensure that persons are safely seated
4) If safe to do so move off from the stop at slow speed

Once the driver has closed their doors and started their checks we state they have commenced their manoeuvre and should therefore not pick up again on health and safety grounds.

As you can imagine the issue surrounds point 1. If the driver did not see the person in time they will commence their manoeuvre, however the intending passenger may believe they should have been easily seen creates conflict over the interpretation of the incident.

Additionally, if the driver was due to depart a few minutes earlier they will at some point have to commit to making progress and departing, as they have a responsibility to operate the service on time for the other intending passengers left waiting at stops further up the route.

Can't really argue with that. They have to pull away at some time and they are only following procedure. In Oxford, where the buses are quite popular, you can be left sitting on a bus for ages waiting for it to pull away from the city centre while there is a steady drip of people constantly getting on the bus.

Don't get me started on the summer foreign language students!

Attack of the Slugs

Attack of the Slugs
Originally uploaded by major_grooves

The cauliflower crop didn't work out too good. I don't think these guys helped. I went out with a paid of secators the other day and chopped a bunch of them in half. Mwahaha!

LoveFilm result! I think...

I got the following reply from LoveFilm after my complaint email yesterday:

Dear Steven,

Thank you for your email.

I would like to apologise for the inconvenience that this matter has caused you.

I can confirm that I have now contacted my colleague in the warehouse regarding this issue and have been informed that we have limited stock of "Battlestar Galactica - Season 3 - Disc 3" only. We are in the process of obtaining more copies.

I can confirm that I have now requested for "Battlestar Galactica - Season 3 - Disc 3" to be sent out to you as an extra disc (this will be on-top of your normal allowance).

Please bear in mind that when we wish to allocate your extra disc, and the desired title is not available to be allocated to you, no extra disc will be sent out to you. The reason for this is because I have requested for this specific title to be sent out.

In the future please bear in mind that we do have a no late returns policy which make it impossible for us to promise our customers when a specific disc will be send out. It all depend if we have an available copy of one of your high priority titles in our warehouse once we receive a disc back from you and have to allocate your next one.

Instead of waiting for one of your high priority titles to be available we will then sent out one of the other titles on your list to prevent any delays.

Please accept our sincere apologies for the inconvenience caused by this and do not hesitate to contact us if you need more information, we will be happy to assist you.

Let's see if it turns up now!

My plea to LoveFilm

I've been having some trouble getting the next DVD in the Battlestar Gallactica series from LoveFilm. I'm waiting for Season 3 DVD 3. I did email customer support and got some generic reply, but my patience is wearing this so I decided to email again tonight. I've been waiting 4 months.

Dear Yousuf,

As I sit here, still waiting for the next DVD in Battlestar Gallactica Season 3, I look at the copies of Enchanted and Volver (chosen by my other half - they look kinda rubbish) that arrived from LoveFilm today and must conclude: I am not satisfied by your answer or LoveFilm's current level of service.

First, BattleStar Gallactica Season 3 is not a new release. I can not see why there would be particularly high demand for Season 3 Disc 3 unless, unbeknownst to me, it perhaps has an episode featuring Michael Jackson moonwalking across the flightdeck of Battlestar Gallactica itself. Given that I have been waiting months for this disc, and old MJ only died a couple of weeks ago, this explanation is quite unlikely.

I can understand that one cannot expect to get a specific movie on demand, and indeed that you will have different stock levels for different movies. However, Battlestar Gallactica is a series of episodes. This means that people usually watch them one after the other, sequentially. It helps make the storyline flow. Therefore, one would assume that a stockist of any series would have equal numbers of each DVD in the series. Perhaps you might have more DVDs of a later series overall, but one would assume (lost/damaged DVDs notwithstanding) that within a series there would be the same number of DVDs in your stock. Logically, this would enable you to send the DVDs out in order, without too much of a wait between DVDs.

Indeed, for Seasons 1 and 2 of Battlestar Gallactica that was what happened. Every time I sent back a DVD of Battlestar Gallactica, I was safe in the knowledge that the next one would be popping through the door in a couple of days. In fact, although I have quite a low LoveFilm package (4 DVDs max a month I think) watching Battlestar Gallactica was the first time I had "maxed" my allowance. I confess I was addicted to the series (have you /seen/ Starbuck!?!) so I actually welcomed the enforced breaks.

But let me show you the pattern in DVDs received from LoveFilm that makes me suspect that something is not quite right here:

Between 10th December and 5th January this is the pattern (the date is the date of the returned DVD according to my account):

Battlestar Galactica - Season 1 - Disc 1 10th December 2008
Battlestar Galactica - Season 1 - Disc 2 22nd December 2008
Battlestar Galactica - Season 1 - Disc 3 22nd December 2008
Battlestar Galactica - Season 1 - Disc 4 5th January 2009

on 5th January I also returned Pirates of the Caribbean - At World's End.

Then between 9th January and 24th February the pattern was as follows:

Battlestar Galactica - Season 2 - Disc 1 9th January 2009
Battlestar Galactica - Season 2 - Disc 2 19th January 2009
Battlestar Galactica - Season 2 - Disc 3 26th January 2009
Battlestar Galactica - Season 2 - Disc 4 30th January 2009
Battlestar Galactica - Season 2 - Disc 5 24th February 2009

Season 2 was interspersed with Kidulthood, the Orphanage, Penelope and We Own the Night. It seemed for this season that one of my DVDs would always be a Battlestar Gallactica DVD and the other a normal movie.

March also saw we watching 27 Dresses and Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Please don't judge me. I happened to enjoy them both. I consider Russell Brand to be a fine comedic actor, his whimsical style amuses me, and 27 Dresses was surprisingly good.

This brings me to the end of March when I received and watched Battlestar Gallactica Season 3 DVDs 1 and 2. They were really exciting! I can't tell you why, because I can't remember now it's been so long since I watched them, but Battlestar Gallactica is always exciting, so I'm gonna stick with it.

Since I returned Season 3 DVD 2, I have received 14 different DVDs - FOURTEEN!!! - none of them Battlestar Gallactica. Just for your interest, my top rated DVDs in that time were In Bruges, which I gave 4.5 stars (the missus and I really want to take a holiday to Bruge now) and the first series of The Inbetweeners, which I gave 5 stars. Yes - 5 stars! It really is that good! Fortunately the whole series came on 1 DVD!

Can you see where the pattern breaks down? I don't know if you're a mathematician Yousuf, but there is certainly a pattern in the Battlestar Gallactica DVD distribution, which kinda falls apart around Season 3 DVD 3. I can see it.

So, it has now been nearly 4 months since I had my last dose of Battlestar Gallactica. FOUR MONTHS! I doubt many people would think to themselves, "yeah, I'm really enjoying this series. What I could really do with is a 4 month break between two episodes". Nah, no one would say that because they would have to be an idiot.

Does a 4 month wait between episodes seem normal or reasonable to you?

Is there not the slightest chance that there is something wrong with your system?

I'd say I've been patient so far, but the thought of watching Volver and Enchanted has ended that.

Or maybe you know something I don't? Maybe Battlestar Gallactica gets really rubbish at Season 3 DVD3. Maybe you're actually doing me a favour! Really, I'd like to be the judge of that. The rumours I hear are that it stays pretty good throughout.

Anyway, Yousuf I'd really appreciate it if you would look in to this for me. I really have enjoyed using LoveFilm's service over the past few years, but this experience is putting me off. I may consider cancelling my subscription if I don't get the next Battlestar Gallactica DVD soon, and I fear that jobs at LoveFilm may be put at risk by the loss of my £7.82 payment every month. I couldn't cope with having that on my conscience Yousaf.

Yours Sincerely

-Steven




--- On Wed, 1/7/09, support@lovefilm.com wrote:

From: support@lovefilm.com
Subject: Re: Feedback:: Re: Film and TV queries: Battlestar Gallactica - LF8230560TID
To: xxxxxx@yahoo.co.uk
Date: Wednesday, 1 July, 2009, 5:06 AM

Dear Steven,

Thank you for your email.

We would like to confirm to you that that the priority system is not intended as a way
of queuing your selection exactly in the order you wish to see them. Instead it is only intended as more of a 'preference'
system, by which customers can indicate which films from their selection they would prefer to see, from those that we have available in stock to dispatch to you at the time your last return is received.

Please understand that although your priority titles selection serves as an indication to us of which titles you would prefer to see first, I'm afraid we are unable to guarantee the dispatch of any particular title within any time frame. As we do not offer a 'Title-on-demand' service, the allocation of titles from your list on the day of dispatch is simply dependent on availability. If none of your priority 1 titles are in stock on that day, we will send you an alternative from your list.

I'm afraid it is the nature of our system, that we are unable to guarantee that we will always be able to send you any one particular disc (or priority of disc) at any one time. We simply cannot do so as we only have a finite stock of
any disc, and it is impossible to predict when the ones you want to rent will be in stock. This is especially true of new releases, which are always the most heavily requested for the limited stocks we have. Because we know this is not possible to offer this guarantee, we have the selection list system, and not an order queue. We will always dispatch you a priority 1 DVD if it is available, but if not we will dispatch a priority 2, and if that is not available, then a priority 3.

Hope this has answered your query. Should you have any more questions, please do let us know and we will be happy to assist you further.

Please let us know if this answered your question.
If yes, click here:
http://www.lovefilm.com/help/feedback.html?r=p&e=d259a6f6d32efa6aecd69ce62dd701fb


If no, click
here:
http://www.lovefilm.com/help/feedback.html?r=n&e=d259a6f6d32efa6aecd69ce62dd701fb


Kind regards,

Yousuf
--
Customer Services
LOVEFiLM.com
Find the films you want to watch
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Registered Number: 06528297.
Registered Office: No. 9, 6 Portal Way, London W3 6RU, United Kingdom.


Major Groove wrote:

> For the love of the Almighty I have still not been sent the next BSG DVD!
>
> What happened? Did you get a cheap batch that only had one copy of S03 DVD3??? I had them one after the other then I have to wait months for this one!

N97 or iPhone (or G1)

I've had my N95 for over 2 years now. That's at least 6 months longer than the minimum 18 month contract I had when I got the N95.

When the N95 was announced I couldn't wait to get it. A phone with GPS - it seemed brilliant! When I got it I was actually pretty pissed off. The GPS barely worked and it was only when I hacked the phone and installed new firmware that it would actually get a GPS signal in any reasonable amount of time.

That made me pissed off at Nokia, for releasing a phone that I don't think worked properly out of the box, and at Orange for being so damn slow with their firmware updates that I had to hack the phone to get a decent firmware update. Oh, and of course Orange removed the Voip software from the phone because, "it would confuse customers" or something like that. Yeah, not because they were scared of nobody ever paying for a call again, eh?

However, since getting that firmware update I've been pretty happy with the N95. It's a pretty decent music player, the GPS works ok especially with Google Maps (what is the point in Nokia Maps unless you are in a no signal area?).

Now I would like a new phone but I don't know which one to get. iPhone 3G S, Nokia N97 or the Google G1 phone. It's difficult to find objective, comparative reviews. People who are fans of one, seem to be haters of the others. Lots of the reviews, are actually just comparisons of the specifications. I want to know what they are like to live with.

iPhone I would like because the UI and apps look great. But I don't want to feel like I'm jumping on a crowded bandwagon.

Nokia - well I've had Nokias for years now, but they never seem quite perfect. I don't understand how they manage that, being the biggest phone company in the world. I kind of like it that it is European. I've always thought it was cool that a kinda random country like Finland ended up spawning the world's biggest phone company.

G1 - well I don't know much about it.

Hopefully some really objective phone reviewer will happen along this post and make a recommendation.