This is a curious set of headphones. The OpenEar Trio by Shenzen Alex Technology. They're completely flat and designed to sit outside the ears. They're designed so you can hear your surroundings. If you're outside exercising, it's useful to hear cars creeping up on you. If you're on a conference call, being able to hear the doorbell ringing is essential. These are super-lightweight. Once…
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Wherever the historians go, chaos is sure to follow… Dispatched to Victorian London to seek out Jack the Ripper, things go badly wrong when he finds the St Mary’s historians first. Stalked through the fog-shrouded streets of Whitechapel, Max is soon running for her life. Again. And that’s just the start. Max finds herself in a race against time when an old enemy is intent on destroying St Mary…
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I found a curious little bug and I'm interested in who you think should take responsibility for it. My mobile network provider sent me this message: I clicked on the link, and got this error message from their website: The error is caused by the trailing full-stop. Remove the full-stop and the page loads. There are four potential culprits here... Virgin Media's Web Team Should their…
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Long time readers will know I used to work in the mobile industry. I used to blog about all the crappy things that customers experienced. Well, I'm back, with a doozey! I decided to sign a new contract with Virgin Mobile. After a brief chat with customer services, I agreed a contract for two new pay monthly SIMs and negotiated a handy discount. I was told the SIMs would be sent out, and I could …
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I've just built this magic floating record wall on the cheap. I think it looks great during video calls. Here's how I did it: Step One - Stalk eBay With lockdown, I couldn't exactly go to my local record store. And I didn't fancy rummaging through bins of second hand items trying to find exactly what I wanted. So I decided to buy a job-lot of records from eBay. Beatles collections are…
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I've recently seen lots of people tweeting this supposed newspaper clipping. An olde-timey warning about wearing flu masks. But is it too good to be true? The first thing to do with any image of a text quote is to search for the text. Look, I'm not saying tumblr isn't great, but… I wouldn't exactly trust it as a primary source! That said, tumblr has a neat feature which makes it easy to s…
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SIP is a stupid acronym. It's basically a standard way of making phone calls over the Internet. This means you can make and receive phone calls over WiFi. Here's how I got it working - for free - on Android. By the end of this tutorial you will be able to: Receive calls to a new phone number, sent via WiFi to your Android handset. Receive calls to your existing phone number, redirected to…
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A black porter publicly whips a white Englishman in the hall of a Gloucestershire manor house. A Moroccan woman is baptised in a London church. Henry VIII dispatches a Mauritanian diver to salvage lost treasures from the Mary Rose. From long-forgotten records emerge the remarkable stories of Africans who lived free in Tudor England… They were present at some of the defining moments of the age. …
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Stuck in lockdown, what else is there to do other than rewatching old sitcoms ad nauseam? When I was a kid, Frasier seemed to be the epitome of sophistication and wit. It is still, mostly, hilarious. The farce is sublime, the puns intricate, and the pomposity is cringe-worthy. But, naturally, large parts of it have not aged well. Originally I was planning on writing an episode-by-episode…
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Another day, another phone scam. Yesterday, I received a call from +442085044434 by someone trying to get me to "invest" in BitCoin and other Cryptocurrencies. I managed to drag the call out for 6 minutes - have a listen: 🔊 💾 Download this audio file. The caller admits the trading and advice isn't regulated. That they don't need permission to make marketing calls. And that Estonia is t…
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I recently gave an online presentation at Tech Nottingham. It went off without a hitch, and I got some great feedback. I'd like to briefly discuss the tech that I used to make it all work. Here's "mission control": On the left portrait monitor, I had two windows. The top one was Zoom, running in Chrome (more on that later). This was what I was presenting from. I kept it on screen so that I…
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A modern take on Charles Dickens's classic tale of a young orphan who is able to triumph over many obstacles. Written and directed by Armando Iannucci, based on the 1850 novel by Charles Dickens. It stars Dev Patel as the title character. This is such a joyous movie. It is a fast, funny, and beautifully shot piece. I've no idea how faithful it is to the original. Frankly, I don't care. A…
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