Archive for February, 2010
Royal Mail FAIL – photos of damaged letter
Once again the Royal Mail have failed to deliver. Well – that’s not strictly true. They did deliver – but just look at what I got. How on earth did they manage to deliver a letter with this much damage? It is crumpled and ripped, with part of the envelope missing. There is a big hole in the envelope at the bottom left. And if you look [...]
NatWest debit card FAIL
A few weeks before leaving the country for a three month holiday I got a letter telling me I’d get a new debit card soon. Obviously I didn’t want it to be delivered in my absence so I went to the branch and told them that I didn’t want a new card to be sent out, and that I would re-order a card when I was back. I was assured by the staff [...]
Setup Trusteer Rapport to protect other websites
Trusteer Rapport helps to stop key loggers from stealing your passwords, and stops viruses or spyware from seeing what you are doing in your web browser. Many banks are now offering it for free download. You can for example download it from NatWest’s website here – even if you aren’t a NatWest customer. It is preconfigured to protect a [...]
Finding the best WiFi channel with Vistumbler
If you are having trouble with your WiFi connection you may have heard that it is a good idea to connect to your WiFi router on a quiet WiFi channel to avoid interference from other WiFi devices. WiFi myths It is in fact quite unlikely that other WiFi devices are causing your problem. The WiFi protocol is designed to cope with many other [...]
Trusteer Rapport password leakage problem
If you bank online then there is a good chance you will have been prompted to install a software product called Trusteer Rapport. It is recommended by NatWest, HSBC, First Direct and a whole list of others. Trusteer Rapport helps increase the security of your Windows operating system by attempting to block keystroke logging attempts, screen [...]
Incomplete banknote from NatWest cash machine
What would you do if you went to a cash machine to get £20 and got the below two bank notes? This is what I got when I used one of NatWest’s cash machines in London recently. One of the £10 notes is fine, the other is only about 3/4 complete. This obviously isn’t good as no shop will accept a note like this (unless they don’t [...]
Writing WordPress posts offline in Word with the help of VBA macros
If you want to write your WordPress posts offline (i.e. in a separate editor to the WordPress editor), then you may find you have to spend a fair bit of time reformatting the blog post to add any required WordPress formatting before you can publish. There are lots of reasons for wanting to write your WordPress blog posts offline. You may not [...]
How to be a vegetarian in Japan
Out of all the places you can visit in the world, one of the hardest for being vegetarian must be Japan. In Japan you will find it hard to find restaurants where you can get vegetarian food, and you will find your options for vegetarian food in supermarkets more limited then they will be in most other countries. The Japanese vegetarian [...]
ADSL signal to noise ratio and line attenuation chart
Whilst trying to diagnose my broadband connection problems I found many articles telling me to look at my modems values for signal to noise ratio and line attenuation values. The articles would then give big and complicated descriptions talking about distance to exchanges, DSLAMS, frequencies and all kinds of other things which I’d classify as [...]
Vegetarian friendly restaurants in Takamatsu, Japan
Takamatsu 高松 is a city in the Kagawa prefecture 香川県 of Shikoku Island (Japan’s 4th island). It is always hard to find vegetarian food in Japan, but it gets more difficult the more off the usual tourist trail you are. If you should find yourself in Takamatsu (高松) here are some restaurants where [...]
