my landline is still out of service

london

i was telling steve, the guy who goes to all those free food offers, about my landline not working, and that i found out it is due to a substation fault that is run by BT. he said to call talk talk my provider anyway, just to let them know and hope that they might chase BT to hasten the repair… so today i contacted talktalk on their online chat… to find out that i need to contact them when i am at home… so when i got back from the library where i could use the wifi there to contact them online, i called them on my mobile, which fortunately is still on the free calls, and they did the check, but i was left on hold for so long waiting for them to finish the check and tell me if i need an engineer to make a housecall, that it came close to the  1hr free call i am allowed to make and so i closed the call. i can call them back, i have 200mins of free calls a month, but i am a bit bored by it all, and so i shall just wait for another day to face them… the last person of their helpline that i got had quite a difficult accent, so that i can hardly understand her. or maybe i am just getting deaf. 

i doubt they can do anything anyway. but i have told them now and hope that it will register that i have called and lets see if they can do something about it. i am writing all this offline, and will post it when i go down to the tate britain and use their wifi. earlier i was about to go to the tate britain when a storm came up, and make me decide to delay going there. 

now the storm is over, so i shall most probably go .

simon is the one most affected by not having a wifi… he watches a lot of catch up tv. we can still watch tv, but only when it is showing at the time we watch.

 2.51pm here i am at the tate 15C. they said raining till 5pm but it has stopped here. sun has come out too. 

gadgets

london 8.39am 12.1C cloudy thursday 2016

i have the overspill on my wordpress reader and this morning it delivered something new to me. well actually it always delivered something new haha. but this time it is about gadgets. specifically it talked of how making gadgets has become so easy but also a great idea can be copied easily too. but it make me realise there is a company that sells cheap razors online. and mattresses online. its strange that i have not heard of them. it is because they advertise in facebook and word of mouth via social media. and i dont haunt social media. but then i am not  in the market for those things.

come to think of it, i consume a lot of tv and the internet. so talk talk has come into my life and established itself with me. i am their type of customer i think. though they must hope there are more of me but who would spend more money on watching films on netflik and their other services. they will be able to find those people too, because so many like watching films and the latest films too. and so many like to talk on mobile and use smartphones. 

i have always noticed razors are very expensive and have got round it by buying from the £ shop where disposable razors can be bought 5 for £1. though i have noticed that seems to be getting limited choice now. now i read that this company does a subscription service of $1 a month to try and then $3 a month. (it is in america, dont think they have come to uk) and they send u the razors every month. its great if u use up a lot of razors, but i dont.

a 5 for £1 razor pack can last me a year. haha. i reuse each razor many times. and i dont shave everyday neither. looking at the website of their supplier, dorco, they still cost a bit. £6 or so for a 4pack. so my poundshop £1 pack is still the best value for me. makes you wonder how that £1 shop can do it, giving us such cheap razors and still have to support all those stores with staff costs and rent. and for us no need to bother about postage costs or having to hang around the flat waiting for the courier to come. perhaps they cannot do it anymore. remember it was quite some time since i bought those razors, still using them, and at that time there were quite a lot of those £1 shops, with different owners. now i think there is only one, poundland.  i have not been to that shop since i bought those razors, so it might be they are no more sold anymore in any £ shops. certainly when i was in poundland in brixton, i could not find any of those razors. 

added. 12.08pm 13.9C cloudy. a courier came and delivered the new router that talktalk says they will give me when i started the new broadband package. lucky i was in to open the door for him, because the package was too big to slip through my letter box.

 it is easy to set up and now we are both online with it. they say it is faster, but i cannot see the difference. though simon did say he noticed it is faster in his windows laptop.

ah well, now we got a spare router that works fine really but it is nice to have a spare, just in case.

talktalk says  i should keep this router on all the time. i am thinking whether i should ignore that and do what i normally do, switch it off when overnight, or when i go out. maybe if they are kept on all the time, the speed will increase. there used to be a button which when pressed tells u what speed you are getting. but i cannot find it now. or maybe it does not exist in this chromebook.

i am old fashioned thinking these gadgets need to warm up and catchup on the speed, but i think that is old hat now. they should all work instantly… so i dont think keeping it on all the time will improve the speed.

 even in the old router the speed was tolerable, it is not instant, in that it takes a slight delay for the page to come up, but not very much delay, the main text appears and it is the adverts that take some time to download and i am not bothered with the adverts really, so could not careless if they take their time to download.

 and the tv programs works well on the tv, they can be seen without any freezing. 

 

 

 

new broadband plus free sim card calls with talktalk

london 3.54pm 7.4C cloudy monday 2016

today i just agreed on a new package for broadband and free calls on mobile with talktalk. it is £22.95 a month. includes the line rental.  for that i get unlimited broadband, plus 200mins of chat, unlimited text, 500MB of data. and they will refund the balance of the lump sum payment i made to pay the line rental, so i dont lose out. even factoring in the cheaper line rental i was paying before, £15 a month, as opposed to about £19 now, it still works out cheaper. and i get the free chat on mobile. 

i suppose it is the best i could get. though my previous package cannot be beat. it is free. haha. but i suppose it is not possible to get that again. i consider it a gift from talktalk. i actually contracted to pay £5 monthly for a broadband only package. a day later i wrote to ask if i can get it free, because i just read their advert saying they are giving it for free to new subscribers . and they kindly said they will give me a free discount. and it was a really great offer, because subsequently that monthly fee increased to £7, and then recently to £9 and it was all discounted so that i got it free for about 18months. really amazing.

this one they promise the price will be fixed for the duration of the 18month contract. that means it will expire june 2018. ah well, previously i only got broadband, no free calls on the mobile. this one includes free calls on the mobile and other things. and i get a new router too… maybe after that hacking of the router in the news recently, they must have decided they better give us a more secure router. but lets face it, whatever the price, i cannot do without broad band anymore. haha. i am in thrall to broadband now. i consider it indispensable now. they were clever to link it to the tv… with it we can get HD, (high definition) and that really makes a big difference to the viewing experience.

i have a friend who watches a lot of films, and is not on HD. he says he does not miss it. well, it is because he had not seen it. i think once he has experienced it he wont go back. but right now he gets to be able to record the films on his tv(his tv is still the old fashioned kind with the fat tube sticking out at the back) on his digital recorder. he says by doing so he is able to fast forward any adverts.

the HD tv wont allow him to record films on that digital recorder. or at least i dont think so. certainly my video recorder has long ago been thrown away because it cannot be used once we changed to digital tv. well,

it does bring home to me that i am living in the future. so depandant on wifi, and these electronic gadgets. it is wifi… that one has become a big game changer. it is hard to think of that time when we were perfectly happy to have no wifi signals. 

dont tell me what to do, said this old person

london 11.44am 12.7C cloudy saturday 2016

i was surprised when the library person came to me and ask me if i am on the wifi. i said yes, and it turned out that a old couple , man and woman, was unable to log onto the library wifi.

i went over to them, as i was curious why they could not. their laptop says the connection was weak. they were using firefox. so i said switch to internet explorer or chrome, instead of these uncommon browsers. he said he liked firefox so dont tell him what to do. well, when i heard that, i simply made a ‘huh huh’ and moved away. if u are going to expect me to help u dont start off by saying dont tell me what to do. if u know so much u wont have this problem. i find that is the trouble with old people.  they dont want to be told, and yet, they get into problems with the internet. and should welcome people who will tell them. my way of dealing with old people who tell me not to tell them what to do, is to drop them, and let them squeak in their own juices. 

so i went back to my laptop, and continued to read the papers.

later i saw them leaving, so it looked like they were unable to get online even using internet explorer, or whatever it is called now. haha. its quite possible they are using the old internet explorer which is being replaced by what is it?, the name escapes me  for the moment.

but there is a way of doing it to get online that is not intuitive and what u would expect. haha. but i am not going to help them. hehe.

 

 

megabus

london 10.43am 15.6C (so warm!) thursday 2015

this morning on my way to the library i went into the victoria coach station to get a free copy of today’s metro, and i saw a table all laid out, with a board saying draw for a £500 voucher from megabus. they were doing a promotion.

but also there were coffee cups there saying get your free coffee!! well that made me take notice so i went over and found out it was a megabus promotion.

well i know of them and have used their £1 fare to bournemouth. that is a real bargain. though interestingly enough in their leaflet there was no mention of the bournemouth service from and to london. this is because there is no bus service but it has a train service which is a better service, as it is only 2 hours instead of 3 by bus. but they dont advertise that one. instead they advertise their services to france, germany etc. if that is all for £1 i dont quite see how they will make money unless of course they only reserve a limited number of seats at £1 and the rest at usual prices. anyway i got my coffee and am now in the library enjoying it whilst i am surfing the internet. haha.

i told some of the people there about the free coffee. and this man who had been there often, came over to me and showed me his smartphone and asked me how to get rid of the logo which says other services. i said why do u want to do that? clicking onto it i saw a button saying connect to wifi so i told him u could use that to connect to the library wifi and u can get online free and surf the net. so i did it for him, and found he gets connected straightaway without asking for registration. that is strange but maybe smartphone users can do that. later i asked him has he got online, and he said no. so i checked and found he does need to register.

he is still doing it now. because he got a really long email address. one of the silly mistakes people make, he was using his name and boy he is from africa with a long name. and typing all that in a small smartphone screen is murder. so i told him next time if there is a next time use a short email address. haha. another person, a lady asked me how to get onto the library wifi so i told her. and she got it quickly.

that guy is still doing it, writinghis long email address. so i told him write any address, they dont really check. but he does not believe me. haha. i dont think he got online even now. haha. well, he illustrates the old saying u can bring a horse to water but u cannot make him drink. haha. u can shove a smartphone on someone but he still have to learn to use it.

usually there is a leaflet on the desk telling people how to do it, get online in the library. but there is none today.

it is so easy to be connected to the web in london, but i realise it is not so easy elsewhere, esp in india. i read an article about wifi and internet in india and how google and android are trying to get everyone connected . google introduced android one, supposed to be a cheap smartphone so everyone can get connected but it is not doing well. no one is buying it. it seems.

they say the reason might be that it is 2G and not 4G, but i think it is just people being suspicious that if it is so cheap it cannot be that good. in india where people cant even get a signal, to talk of taking 4G instead of 2G is laughable. i wish google will sell those phones here in uk. i would buy them. a smartphone for £25 would be a god send . here u can get a free smartphone but u have to shackle yourself to a monthly pay plan, for 2yrs. not really free.

and now i got a free mobile sim from talktalk,i dont mind a cheap smartphone.  i recently got an email to confirm my order, i am hoping to get the sim delivered in a few days. ( i made the order on 1.12.15 but i never got an email confirming it, that is why i did not receive the sim. so that i had to go back to their customer services to ask them, and to reorder. ) they even sent me my mobile phone number on that sim, and it is very easy to remember , so i shall keep it rather than change it.

added 12.47pm there is a voucher from burgerking for £2 king burger and bacon double cheese burger plus fries. i am tempted.  not often u get these discount vouchers from burgerking. most times, it is macdonalds. 

i can use my library wifi now

london 12.21pm sunny 14C sunday

how nice! i can get online using the library wifi. so they must have fixed that weak diffie helman whatsist!! they have taken their time! maybe the big interest in hacking stories from talktalk et al, may have persuaded them to strengthen their security. 

the fog has lingered quite a long time, and it is a nice effect it gives to the air; very autumnal.

but now it is clear and it is sunny. the effect of the fog is like haze. obscuring the far views, but without the smell of burning. i read that the haze is going in malaysia, singapore now. so that must be a huge relief for those living there, though i fear it will come back every year. 

funny enough when it is the fog, no one feels upset and worry about pollution, and the effect on their lungs. it is a different story when it is the haze and then everyone wants someone to blame.

i wonder what causes fogs… isn’t it polluted air? as usual i google it and here is the answer to what caused fog in the morning. no , it is not pollution. though london used to be fogged in victorian times, and that was due to the coal fires… so maybe the fog in victorian times is really smog. 

wifi in the library

london 5.37pm sunny 19.4C saturday 2015

as you know the library wifi wont allow me to log on. or rather chrome wont allow me to log on. and today chrome gave me this message when i again tried to log on.

Server has a weak ephemeral Diffie-Hellman public key

ERR_SSL_WEAK_SERVER_EPHEMERAL_DH_KEY

Hide details

This error can occur when connecting to a secure (HTTPS) server. It means that the server is trying to set up a secure connection but, due to a disastrous misconfiguration, the connection wouldn’t be secure at all!

In this case the server needs to be fixed. Google Chrome won’t use insecure connections in order to protect your privacy.

what a cute name diffie-hellman. haha. anyway i wrote to the westminster library email including this explanation  and got a reply saying they will let their engineers know of it.

earlier when i wrote to them about it, they said they are aware of it and their engineers are working on it. i hope it will get it solved. it has been an awful long time that it has been unable to work for my chrome, so i think the library engineers were flummoxed by it. so hope this get them a kick in their backsides to find out the bottleneck that caused my chrome not to connect to them. 

changing habits

london 7.38pm 12.9C, thursday 2015

i thought it will be difficult to change my habit of taking the bus everyday to the library. but i find it is not that difficult. i used to walk to the library, until i got my free bus pass, and so began to take the bus instead. but now i have reverted to that and find it was a nice habit, that walk to the library. it is enjoyable to walk, i get to see new things and observe more variety of people than just those who take the bus. of course for the two days i have been doing it it has been dry. i wonder if i will feel the same way about it when it is cold and wet. haha. i sent an email to the library informing them of the wifi situation. and got a reply today from them. they are looking into it, are aware of it, and can only ask that i use windows for now. well, my chrome dont have windows, and today in the library, a woman also could not use it, and she was using firefox. but the librarian switched her to safari, (she was using an apple laptop and seem to have all these other browsers installed) and it worked with safari.

ah well, i used the library computers when i want to get online, and i use their chrome installed in it, and it works so maybe it only do not work with chrome in private laptops.

i use the library computer to put in the daily mail unique numbers.

interestingly, my chrome wont allow me to log into the mymail website even when i am at home using my own broadband. i wonder why. it worked on my previous chrome browser, but since i had this new one installed, it seem to have blocked that mymail website, and only that one so far. well, that is the mystery of the internet for you. fortunately it is not crucial.

you could say that will teach me to use chrome, haha. if i had windows this would not be a problem. i guess u could say that, but for a lot of other reasons, i am still glad i got chrome.

the papers were saying they got a survey from agatha christie readers asking them what is the most popular story they like, and it seems ‘than there were none’ came first. it was originally titled ’10 little niggers’, but u can bet that must have raised a ruckus, and was soon got rid of.

it so happened after i read the article in the papers, the library return section got the paperback with that title so i borrowed it. rather good, as i have not read the book.

i have seen a film version of it on tv. quite a old film.it was in black and white so i know the plot. but it will be interesting to read her version. 

the book  was first published in 1939, and the characters seem to like calling everything ‘queer’, haha. 

today, i decided to walk to the library instead of taking the bus

london 3.59pm cloudy with sunnybits, 17.5C tuesday 2015

following that article i read in the papers finding that walking for 20mins a day can lead to good health, i decided to walk to the library from now on and resist the temptation to take the bus. it’s a pleasant day, not raining, when i set out, so it was a nice walk.

just as i got out of the block of my flat, i saw my neighbour who lives across the hallway on the same floor as me, (there are only two flats on each floor) and he was pushing a double decker pram, his baby girl on the lower deck, and her older brother on the top deck.

i asked him where he is going and he said, spelling the words, the zoo. he said the boy does not know it, but that is where he is taking them. not sure why he does not want the boy to know. the kid is at the talkative stage and very independant. 

i said with surprise, its in regent park, isn’t it? you are not walking there are you? he said he walks everywhere, because it is his only chance to keep the boy quiet and not have him wander off, as he has to ride on the pram.

our path soon diverged, so i branched off. i did not have time to ask him where the au pair was. or have they decided to release her and take turns, mostly him, to look after both, now that the little girl is older.

at the library, i got to read not only today’s newspapers, but also yesterday’s, because even though the library was closed for the public holiday, they still get the papers delivered. it even got the sunday times, the only paper they order on sunday. this library closes on sunday but still order the sunday times.

there is something about yesterday’s news. somehow it is not so interesting as today’s news. i daresay it is psychological, but nothing i think is as stale as yesterday’s news. haha.

i noticed the library wifi has the same problem with connection as saturday. my chrome wont allow me to connect with it. saying it is unsafe, something about their license has expired 3days ago.

i went to the desk and told him about it, and he was puzzled why. we found a lady sitting nearby and asked her, and she said she could not get online either. the librarian did not know why. 

but later, a  chap came ,sitting next to me, i found after peeking at his screen that he was online. so i asked him how he did it, and found out he could not get online using chrome but could do so with microsoft windows. 

i walked back, it rained whilst i was inside the library because i can see the roads were wet, but i missed it, so the walk was a pleasant one. you would think it would be cold, 17C after all, but it was not. really very pleasant even though the sun was not shining, the clouds were blocking it, but it was still quite bright.  i think because there was no wind. 

i went into the underground carpark underneath the sainsburys to emerge inside the store right next to the toilets so an easy route to the toilets. i found this route when it rained one time, and to escape it i ran into this underground cave like area to find that it is a great shortcut into the sainsburys above. that time there was no one at the gates, but this time there was a man,at the in gate. ( i wonder if they charge to park there, or is the charge offset by a sainsbury receipt. but he let me walk through, just greeting me. i greeted him back. 

i had all the shopping i need, so dont need to do any so did not bother to browse the shelves further into the sainsburys after my toilet but headed straight out and walked the rest of the way home.

there was a summary of august weather in the papers, and it seems it was a wet august and less sunny too. and it was making fun of the met office prediction that this summer will be hotter and drier than most, when it looks like this august may be the wettest for cornwall. the el nino effect it seems.

from personal experience i dont really notice that it was raining so much , not consciously, it might well have rained a lot but if i am not caught up in it at that moment, i wont notice it. and if i am indoors it is a strange thing, but unless i look out of the window i am not aware of it raining. i cannot hear it , the rain here is very quiet, unlike in malaysia where it does make a lot of noise, thunder and lightning and noisy roof, and noisy gush of water from the guttering.

to me it was a nice august , not too hot and no hay fever, because the rain washed out a lot of pollen from the air. 

free wifi is everywhere

london

this is spoken from  a london perspective of course.

i got an email from wifi02, telling me that there is a £1000 draw for those who log onto the free wifi everyday.

i wonder why they want people to log on to it…ifit is sending me lots of adversts it is not working for them because i dont get any adverts sent to me when i am on.

like now when i am at the kfc in victoria and using the 02wifi.

 there are lots of eating places on this mezzanine floor and no one bothers u if u stay here as there are lots of tables.

and because of the email from 02wifi, i have logged onto them rather than the victoria place wifi.

actually the 02wifi is much faster than the local one. so now that i know of 02wifi, i will use them even if the promotion for december is over. so maybe it is working, this email promotion. haha.

but it also is good for me too to know of it. otherwise i wont know they are here and that they are so fast, faster than the wifi provided by this shopping area. seems like a win-win situation.

i was earlier at the library and their wifi is now on and it is so slow. when it was down the last few days i was using another wifi, and that was faster. but now i see that wifi is gone. so it must have been set up by the library to replace the normal wifi. but their normal wifi provider is so slow it is terrible.

it has to be said that each local library seem to have different speeds. the one in charing cross is quite fast.

but now that i know of 02wifi i shall seek them out and give them preference. i shall send this now but i hope to find an outdoor spot and get a bit of sun as it is such a sunny day today.

1.48pm well i am back home. went looking for an outdoor spot. there are many around here but it was quite cold outside what with a breeze blowing and the sun went behind a cloud, so i just wandered to the local waitrose but the queue for the coffee machine was quite long and the queue to pay was even longer, as itis the peak of the lunch hour, so i decided to go to house of fraser to use their loo. haha. it is very pleasant inside , and i browsed the goods . saw a long plastic mac, made in china costing £10, maybe it is useful, though it is so long, and it packs into quite a large pack.

i had a BP poncho given to me when i went to see the opera broadcast in trafalgar square and that is ideal size but i seem to have lost it as i could not find it anywhere in the flat. ah well, it might turn up one day. haha. in the meanwhile i shall use a virgin marathon jacket that i found in hyde park after kate and william’s wedding. i think that was 2011 or 10. (googled it and it is 11 april 2011).

all the things i use are things i found and they are really very long lasting and so useful. but those days are gone now i think because i have not found anything at all in the last year or so.

oh i should correct myself. there was a woolen hat , like a bobble hat but without the bobble, (found out from google that they are called beanies) on the bus this morning, but i have so many of them that i have found over the years that i dont want to pick up anymore. 

added.6.12.14 i have discovered that not all the 02wifi is fast. for eg when i was posting the above, i was sitting at the kfc but got o2 by cafe rouge. that was very fast. but another day i sat at the macdonald sitting area and got the o2 done by macdonalds and that was very slow. perhaps macdonalds dont want to encourage people sitting there just using wifi.