Yaffle's Corner

On Tuesday morning, I saw the E.on van rock up to the flats. I wasn't worried because the first quarter's bill had me about £147 in credit and Autumn was only just started.

As you all know, we had a very mild Autumn, and indeed, I didn't turn the heating on (I only have electricity, no gas) until mid-November. Before then, I was still opening the patio doors to let heat out.

I was surprised, however, when by that Tuesday evening, I had my E.on E-bill and tweeted as much in my timeline.

On Wednesday morning, I received a tweet from @Eonhelp claiming they didn't think it would be that quick and I should check my meter readings, they also told me which bit of my online account to check to see when the reading was actually taken (the breakdown said 31/12/2011 - a likely story).

But, the history told me what I already knew, the reading had actually been taken on 3rd January, so all was revealed. I was still in credit, even with having used heating. My balance was £119 in credit. In tweeting with @Eonhelp I had mentioned I had a question I would ask them.

It was not until today, when a friend of mine mentioned how much he was in credit to British Gas that I tweeted a comment about that, that he should ask for it back, and I mentioned that I should ask E.on for same. Before I could ask them, @Eonhelp was tweeting me.

I sent them my account number and just past six (when they would normally be unavailable) they phoned me. I had warned them that if they withheld their number, they'd be dumped to voicemail. They didn't withold their number, but Amanda (who was on twitter then) told me she wasn't sure what number they gave out.

My discussion with Amanda was excellent. She explained that they would keep taking the £75 on my account by DD each month but that they would credit me the £119 on this occasion because they didn't have enough data to form a different opinion. She also told me that I may be on the wrong tariff if I didn't have storage heaters - which I don't.

So, 5/5 for customer service so far, and I expect my bank account to receive a credit of £119 on January 11th.

Why so long now we're supposed to have fast payments? Well, don't forget, it was past 6pm on a Friday. The next working day is Monday. Amanda was doubtless keying it into a batch based system, so even if it was last night, I couldn't expect things to happen until Monday. As it is, I would have expected it to arrive by Tuesday, and not Wednesday, but I'll update this item once the money actually hits the account.

Since the call was not dumped to voicemail by my phone I checked to see what number Amanda's phone had given out. The answer? 04321.

I chuckled, but I could well imagine other people being alarmed.

If you believe that because you have caller display, you will always see the correct number of the person phoning you, I'm afraid you're living in cloud cuckoo land. The reason that this totally bogus number can appear is because anyone using a "Voice over IP" (VoIP) telephone system can give out any number they want and there is nothing your particular telephone company, or even the one that E.on uses, can do about it.

I have tweeted Amanda explaining this and I hope that their BoFH (who clearly has a sense of humour) will re-program their switch with a number that you can call back, even if that means you have to suffer an annoying voice menu.

Who would have thought that a tweet would have come to this?

You know what it's like. You're traveling and you didn't get a chance to charge up the phone the night before and now, just when you need the phone most its about to run out of charge.

There are ways you can be prepared for this emergency, and the Proporta TurboCharger 7000 (TC7000 from now on) is one such. What is it? Its a battery. Actually, a 7000 mAh battery, with a tough rubber shell, some USB ports and some intelligent circuitry.



The TC7000

The battery has two full size USB ports, marked "Low" and "High" and, in the centre, a mini-USB port marked "In", which is how you charge it.

According to the one page of documentation you receive with the box, which is easy to unpack, the TC7000 is already charged to between 50% and 75%. So you can use it straight away, however, I chose to bring it up to full charge before use. How can you tell how much charge remains? Well, there are four blue LEDs on the top of the box. At any time, press the start/stop button and see how many light up. All four means somewhere between 75% and 100%. Three means between 50% and 75%. No prizes for guessing what one and two lights mean.



Two lights on the TC7000 showing a charge between 25% and 50%

With all this oomph in the battery, it has no problem charging two items simultaneously. As I was taking these pictures with the Nokia N8, I couldn't show a picture of me charging the phone, but here is a picture of the Kindle being charged.



Charging the Kindle

It may not be obvious from that picture, but I was using the Kindle's own USB cable, sans the 3 pin plug. But what about phones? Although any modern phone is likely to standardise on a mini-USB socket, there are plenty of older phones that use a multiplicity of different connectors.

Fortunately Proporta supply a draw-string bag that's full of gubbins as shown here :



The Gubbins bag

In the above picture, the two most interesting items, for me, are the ones on the far right. What you can see there are the two extendable connectors (Full USB at one end, and a mini-socket at the other end) and into each of these, I have placed the relevant connectors I need.

One is the connector for the mini-socket at one end, and has a mini-USB at the other end. This one item allows me to either a) plug the TC7000 into a USB socket on my computer so I can re-charge it or b) plug the USB connector into one of the output ports on the TC7000 and plug the other end into the mini-USB socket on my Nokia N8.

The other one allows me to plug the USB into the TC7000 and the other end into the old Nokia style mains charging socket on my Nokia N8.

I've found I prefer the latter one for charging my N8. Whilst I can easily use the phone whilst its on charge using the mini-USB connector, because I tend to use the phone left-handed, the cable gets in the way. Using the mains connector at the bottom centre of my phone avoids this issue.

I've had the TC7000 for five days. I've charged the phone 3 times so far, and the Kindle once, and still its showing two lights, as one of the above pictures shows.

How much does it cost? As usual, prices vary. I've seen it for just less than £50 on one site. If you buy it from Proporta (who trade in the Amazon UK market place) it costs about £54. A bit pricey, but worth it if you need to keep your gadgets on charge.

I have written about The Lounge several times in this blog. From when I purchased the Pure Evoke Flow through firmware updates to same including the ability to purchase tracks if you caught them playing on a radio station you were listening to.

Over the weekend just gone, Pure sent me a mail describing their new music store. All I had to do right then was register my interest and then I could download a free track. I registered my interest but didn't download the track right away. Later the same evening, I chose to do so.

All you have to do is log into your The Lounge account, select "Store" from the left hand pane, and then you can search for what you want. When I clicked the "Buy" link, I received a notice on the site telling me I'd had my free download, and I received a mail receipt for the purchase too - just as you'd expect if you'd purchased a tune via the Flow option.

To play your purchased track, just select The Lounge as the input source on your Pure Radio, go to "My tracks" and its available to play, along with any tracks you may have purchased using the Flow button.

If the 'Net is a bit slow, it can take a while for your radio to connect to your track. The best way around that is to download it, now that you've purchased it, and then make it available via your music server. The track remains available to you in the cloud.

This latter option is a good thing, as these days, if you have an iPhone, you can connect to The Lounge from that also. The available app gives you full access to all the media available to your The Lounge account, including those items in the "My Tracks" option. (The iPhone App is free until the end of the year - read this month.)

As I wrote in my earlier articles on the Flow purchase system, some rights holders had withheld their content. This new cloud based system seems to be Pure's way of providing all the music content you could want.

By the way, I have to admire Pure's account handling. When I logged in on Saturday, I still had a balance on my account so that I can purchase Flow tracks, or now from the new store. This evening I logged in for other reasons, to find the balance showing as N/A.

I was unamused, but checked my account settings. One thing I had not done was update my address details in the sectioin where my card details are held.

Although Saturday's purchase was free, they must have done a check and as things didn't match, froze my funds.

It was all fixed by me updating my address. The funds were immediately available again, so no need for me to write any nasty mails.

By the way, I believe there is an Android app in the works, but I couldn't find any details on that in my searches this evening.

Although I changed jobs a while ago, I still have full access to the servers at my previous employer, and before you ask, yes, its with full knowledge and permission. I'm not likely to do anything foolish when they're kind enough to continue to host this blog.

Recently, however, they've been suffering from the usual bout of roving SSH attacks and so have instigated the use of hosts.allow and hosts.deny to control whom may login. I was asked by their current admin if I had a static address I could give in order to avoid be being deemed a threat.

As regular readers will know, I have recently moved, and this means that I'm now using ADSL rather than Cable for IP connection. I didn't expect to have a static IP, but I suspect I have, because I've discovered that if you look up my hostname it will show a string of digits which anyone with even a semi-functioning brain stem will recognise as my UK phone number.

Its a very good job that the one thing I don't have plugged into the phone line is a phone. So even if people have enough sentience to suss my phone number, it won't do them any good.

Nevertheless, I shall be taking this up with Home Telecom tomorrow, and if I don't get a suitable response, I'll be taking it up with the Data Protection Registrar since they're leaching one of my personal details out to the public. Scammers will love it.

Oh, and as I shall be suggesting a change of entries in DNS files, I should warn the muppets at Home Telecom that telling me this is difficult simply won't work. I've been a hostmaster since 1994. I know it'll be a nuisance, but tough luck. You've made an extra ordinarily bad decision. But it is easily fixable.

A salutation to an old friend

It may be odd to begin a hardware review by saluting the device that it replaced, but I have to say that my Pure Evoke Flow has done sterling service over the past two and a half years. However, having been carted from bedroom to living room and back again on a daily basis, it was showing signs of age. Just before I moved, three weeks ago now, the ariel fell off, and the lead to the auxiliary speaker, having been plugged and unplugged on a daily basis, has a loose connection, so I was at the point of putting heavy weights on said cable in order to get sound flowing out of it. It was clearly time to upgrade. The Evoke Flow, and its auxiliary speaker, have been put to the bedroom, where they continue to do an excellent job without having to suffer the daily commute.

Welcome new friend

At approximately 20 minutes past 8 yesterday the intercom sounded. "Is that number 4 ********* House?" I answered in the affirmative. Parcelline had found the flat without undue effort. Many other deliveries have involved lots of phone calls. My post code does not yet show my location on most maps and so I've become used to guiding deliveries in, rather in the fashion of flight controllers. All I had to do with this one was guide him up the stairs.

A big hats off to The Pink Invasion Company (excellent name) who, when queried about Saturday deliveries, said "yes, no problem" and arranged the delivery precisely to my specification, so I'm very pleased with them. By the way, you'll find them in the Amazon (UK) market place.

Opening the box

Well, there are no prizes for guessing what's in the delivery parcel. It reads "Pure Sirocco 550" on it. Opening it, the first thing out the box is all the gubbins. One American power lead, one European power lead, two red/black speaker cable pairs, an ariel wire, a remote and two batteries for same.

There were also five pieces of black plastic which are all the same size as the iphone/ipad dock at the top of the console. I'm not sure why five pieces and so have not fitted any, but I have asked precisely why there are so many pieces of plastic. My guess is that each model of ipod/iphone requires a different sort of seating and so these plastic inserts are a way to accommodate all the different models. I'll update this article when I get the feedback¹.

Next out is the console itself. A combined Amp/Tuner/CD and after another layer of polystyrene comes the two speakers.

I connected the ariel first, and then set about connecting the speakers. I've never had "proper" hifi speakers before, and so was not immediately sure that wires without connectors would work, but in fact, its surprisingly easy to unscrew the baluns on the speakers and the console and wire things in securely.

Finally, I plugged the Euro cord into the mains and turned on the master switch. The unit powered up and immediately set about detecting DAB channels.

As a side note, having been delivered with both Euro and American power cables, its interesting to note that the Euro cord comes with a cardboard warning label and a plastic guard device on the pins, whereas the two pinned American cable has no such protection. Proving, if such were needed, that health and safety over here has gone beyond the bounds of reason, or that the Americans are quite happy to electrocute themselves on first switch on.

After scanning the DAB band, the Sirocco faithfully tunes into Radio 2, just as my Evoke Flow had done on first turn on. I would love to know why Radio 2 rather than any other station. But perhaps its a sign of "easy listening".

Binding the remote

Unlike most remotes, the Pure system uses a radio frequency other than IR. I'm not sure exactly what. But in order to get your supplied remote to work with your equipment, you need to get the two to work together. Once again, having possessed an Evoke Flow, I knew what to do. I pressed the "Options" button on the console, selected "Additional Settings" and then "Bind Remote". After that, you have to press two keys simultaneously on the remote, followed by pressing "Select", also on the remote and the job is done. Using the remote is useful for several tasks that can be performed at the console, but they become easier if using the remote.

Making the non-physical connections

Being a top of the range hifi, this device also supports connection to a Wifi network, through which it can then gain access to all the media available from The Lounge.

Connecting to the wifi was easy. First, press the button marked "The Lounge/MP" on the console and the system instantly scans for wifi connections. Select your own, and then, if your wifi requires a password (it should) enter that. Entering the password just involves moving the tuning knob around, and then clicking to select the letters/numbers/symbols you need.

I was not surprised to discover that, after successfully connecting to the Wifi the system discovered a firmware update. You have the option of accepting the update. No, that full stop is not a mistake. You have the option of accepting the update, or waiting for something around 30 minutes before the system will relinquish control back to you. I have asked this of Pure in the past. Their comment is "it ensures everyone is up to date", which is fine, but taking complete control of the console away from you until you've installed the firmware is not a good thing. During upgrade, the system will not output any sounds at all, so you cannot listen to anything. I would prefer that they allow you to elect a "Later" option as well as the "OK" option. Then, it would be perfectly fine to keep bugging you until you actually get around to updating the firmware. This is about the only downside of the entire device.

Checking initial balance and sound

After the new firmware is installed, you can then get to grips with your own media selection. Because I'd had the Evoke Flow before, I already had an account on The Lounge and so adding the Sirocco to the account was easy. Having connected to the Wifi, I just needed to enter my six character unique reference number (its archived in my mail system) and I had instant access to all the podcasts, listen again entries and live streams I had before. There's nothing like Electronic music for giving the stereo a test, so I tuned straight in to 16-bit FM and made the first confirmation. Lovely base tones coming out of the speakers as well as all the other tones you would expect.

Next, was to connect to the music server. If you read my review of the Evoke Flow, you'll know I'm still using Windows Media Player to serve my media collection. So connecting to that just needed me to permit the Sirocco's MAC address to connect and then, I selected Autobahn. A track that some people have referred to as "are we there yet", but, it does pass sound from speaker to speaker and so you can ensure that when you were fiddling with the baluns earlier, you've actually done the job properly.

That came out of the speakers excellently too and so the only thing left was to see if I could connect the Sky+ box audio output to the system.

An embarrassment of input

From all the packing boxes from the recent move, I managed to find the cable that would allow me to connect the Sky+ box to the hifi. Having done that, I pressed the source button on the remote and selected Aux1. This is the input for the 3.5mm jack at the front of the box. The program that was currently being broadcast on the TV then also came out of the Sirocco's speakers and I was able to mute the TV and enjoy some really excellent stereo output.

The full list of possible inputs on the Sirocco are as follows :

Digital Radio (DAB)
The Lounge (web enabled streams with lots of media)
Media Player (if you have a music server, that's the selection to make)
ipod (Insert an ipod - or iphone - into the dock and select)
CD (does anyone use these live any more?)
USB (Insert a stick with MP3 or WAV files on and listen to music that way)
FM Radio (Luddite)
Aux1 (The 3.5mm jack at the front)
Aux2 (The component connections at the back)

All in all, then, however you like to listen to your media, this hifi system has everything you need, including the ability to drive alternative speakers, if you happen to be a fan of particular manufacturers. However, I've been very pleased with the bass ported speakers supplied with the Sirocco and I don't see any immediate need to replace them.

Now that we're on the subject, I can mention tone.

I was a little disappointed not to find controls for Bass and Treble on the console, but fear not.

On the remote, there is a button marked "Tone". Hmm. I pressed it.

On the AMEOLED display at the top centre of the console, you are then presented with two "sliders". One for Treble, and one for Bass. You can then adjust these as you see fit using the left or right arrows on the remote (and probably using the controls on the console), but this is one of those areas where the remote wins out.

As it happens, I've not seen fit to adjust the tone from the default settings at all, but its nice to know that you can if you wish to.

So would I recommend this product to a friend? You might expect me to say yes, given I've shelled out hard cash for it, but actually, yes I would, unreservedly, even if they don't have an iphone/ipod. You don't need one of those to get enjoyment from this box.



1. Update I have received feedback on this issue. The five pieces of supplied plastic are indeed different shells for the most popular ipod/iphone models. Further more, if none of the shells fit your particular model, there are more shells available which will be supplied free of charge upon request.

You have to love the way things work out sometimes.

Over the past couple of weeks, I've beern on call for a customer a couple of times. This has involved getting up at unsociable hours. I had to do this not once, but three times. The customer's planned upgrade was binned twice.

Finally, on Friday, it all went through and the customer thanked my colleague in support and I for our respective assistance. This led the boss to write to his boss praising our efforts. That was the last mail I read on Friday.

In the meantime, also on Friday, I decided to purchase an Amazon Kindle. I'd been putting it off, knowing the bills I'll have to pay come the move (now put back to the end of July), but given that fact, I finally decided to splurge out on one plus some reading material. The Kindle arrived by RMSD on Saturday. The poor TV is currently looking quite unloved, since I spent most of Saturday and all of Sunday doing nothing but reading, well other than the house hold chores.

Someone I follow on twitter tweeted about a particular kindle book¹ and so I added the url in that link to my read-it-later list. The weekend continued and wound down.

On Monday I awoke to a mail from the boss' boss thanking my colleague and I and to a £20 Symantec Applause voucher, which can be exchanged on a 1 for 1 basis with vouchers of equivalent value with hundreds of vendors. It was a no brainer for me to choose amazon.co.uk.

When you're purchasing a Kindle book, you don't have the option of adding it to a basket. 1-Click is the only way - which normally doesn't allow for the use of vouchers. Fortunately, you can apply voucher claim codes to your account first, and then, the 1-click purchase of the book extracts funds from your voucher balance first, before it even looks at your debit/credit card details.

So I have a new ebook to read, courtesy of the company, and a voucher balance remaining. Bargain.



1. The book in question is The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding from you.
Should you not have a Kindle, the book is also available in both paperback and hardback versions.

Its been nearly two months since the last article on the blog and a good deal longer since the last Wednesday Wibble, but fear not, I'm here to redress both.

It can be annoying working for a small part of a much larger organisation, not least because when you would once have fixed the problem yourself, now, you have to try and find the right person to fix it for you. This is not easy.

At the moment, I'm mostly working from home as the group I'm a member of are all based on the West Coast of the USA. I'm one of only two members based in the EU time zone. This saves me a commute and means I don't mind working a bit late in order to interact with my team.

Our story really starts last Friday. We had agreed to support a customer over an upgrade which they were performing between 1AM and 6AM East Coast time on Tuesday. So this meant an early start for me.

The boss and I did our catch up call and as it was a bank holiday over there as well as over here we wished each other well and signed off. At the time, using mail was no problem.

So the week end passed, Tuesday morning arrived and I awoke to do standby support.

Fired up the VPN, connected to mail whereupon I found it demanded a password. What?

Frantic cursings and swearings, checked things, found I could connect to various office systems, so why not the mail?

Sent a mail to the customer from my personal mail advising him to use that or the phone and then tried, in vain, to get mail working.

I logged a support ticket advising its urgency. I chased it up with several phone calls. For the British part of Symantec Corporate Support you have to call a centre in Bangalore.

I was given all kinds of run around, plus two separate Webex sessions, all to no avail.

Then I had the bright idea of phoning the lad in ITRO. He's based in Gloucester. We tried a couple of things, but to no avail either, so we arranged for me to travel in to the office today.

He sorted it in around 10 mins. When he looked at my VPN token he said "Are you still using that?".

"Yes", I said, "I need that for access to the servers on the West Coast.".

He downloaded another piece of software. Its another bit of VPN software.

The UK Group I am ostensibly a part of (for administrative purposes) has always been a bit of an oddity within Symantec. The global borg is slowly moving us all across to the SYMC group. It seems that over the weekend, someone decided that the SYMC soft token was not allowed access to the ML Exchange server.

So, I'm going to have to juggle VPNs, or at least, I'm told you can't use both at once. This will be a bit trying, but not too bad, if it works.

As it happens, in the office I need no VPN at all at the moment, even on the SYMC network. Can't guarantee that will always be the case of course.

Still, I caught up on gob loads of mail today, only to find a mail item from that customer I got up early to support.

It was just to advise me they had cancelled the upgrade window.*Scream*

One thing I dislike is this craze for in-ear buds that tend to come with mobile phones. I always find the damn things keep falling out of my ears, so for less than £20 I have been rather pleased with these Sennheiser ear phones.

The phones themselves are made of comfortable material that fits nicely on the head. You can, of course, adjust them to fit the size of your particular head.

Once on you need to plug in. I am not sure how long the cable is as I have carefully not unwound it all, but it looks as though you could easily get tangled up in the average living room if you did so. At the end of the cable is a standard 3.5mm connector which connects to phones, radios or most hi-fi.

With the phones on, and before you play anything through them, external sounds are muted nicely, which means when you are playing sound through them, other people (on the bus or train, say) are not going to be disturbed.

So. Bass ported it said on the box. Oh yes, they certainly are. Nothing I like more than a good bit of bass, and these bring the base line out nicely.

Thoroughly recommended.