Each year for the past twenty years I recall someone mention the idea of moving the UK’s time zone to CET, or changing daylight savings or some other such tinkering with the clocks. As I have come to understand time more and more this confuses me more and more. Not that I am confused by the concept of changing a clock, I’ve done that enough that it doesn’t matter to me, but my confusion is to why we need to change a unit of measure rather than changing our attitudes. One of the arguments for changing timezones or using DST is for “safety”, the idea is that if it is too dark in the mornings people going to work or school are more at risk. It is also said that energy can be saved because people wouldn’t use so much lighting if the clocks were different.

What this fundamentally ignores is the fact that time itself is not really variable, not on a scale that matters to our daily lives anyway, in each SI day there are 86,399, 86,400 or 86,401 seconds (yes there are not exactly 24 hours in a day because the earth isn’t perfect). When people talk about fiddling with the time they are really just doing it for political reasons, to assert themselves and their own importance. If it really mattered about the time at which children went to school then schools could open earlier or later, businesses can make their own decisions about when to open and operate. I currently work at a business that opens at 08:30, but I have started at 05:00, 08:00, 09:00 and 10:00 in differing jobs. Delivery drivers, bakers, presenters and many more people get up at a time that suits their work (Shift Work). I once worked with a team that didn’t even assume a 24 hour day, they worked on a short but intensive cycle over many days, living on site and then had a long period off at home.

I imagine the counterpoint to the argument is that if schools started earlier then people would be in difficulty if their employer didn’t change the hours. But already it is difficult for people who are constrained by employers who enforce archaic working practices, changing the clocks isn’t going to make better employers and if children went to school earlier then it wouldn’t be as bad for parents worrying about getting to their 8am start at work. There is supposedly evidence that indicates that some deaths on the road, especially those of commuting school children, can be attributed to poor light levels. Well, I would point out that if the children were to leave school when it was more light (irrespective of clocks) then they would be equally likely to be outside on the streets (doing whatever children do) afterwards which wouldn’t make it much more safe.

Before Christmas I had a parcel to send to Greece, rather than abuse the company TNT account I decided to send it myself and that the safest way to send it was with good ol’ Royal Mail ParcelForce. Mistake… click ‘read more’ to hear my tail of woe..
Continue reading “ParcelFarce Fail!”

Yesterday, I was reading the news during lunch time as usual when I fell upon this odd story. The man of the story definitely has a complex puzzle to put together for xmas day. I wish him courage and good luck!

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/4/20081204/tuk-bin-man-to-tackle-10-000-jigsaw-dba1618.html


 

It turns out that some of the new generation of energy saving lightbulbs may pose a small health risk according to the Health Protection Agency. The advice is to avoid spending more than 1hour in close proximity to a bulb (such as a desk-lamp) because you might receive as much exposure as a day of summer sunlight!

More from Google News here.

I’ve had a couple of HTC phones now and even more Windows Mobile phones. The experience, while not pain free, has roughly been positive. However with the release of the HTC Touch Diamond from Orange really whetted my appetite, it looked like the sexy iPhone challenger and the demos were really quite sweet. It wasn’t easy to get hold of, it sold out very quickly, but this week mine arrived.

First thing I noticed, the non-standard HTC USB interface ("Because we are special"), I could live with this even if all the existing phones in our house use standard USB chargers quite easily.

Second thing, well it wasn’t exactly fast on the start up…

Third thing, well it sucked battery quicker than the proverbial ‘Duncan’s mum’.

All of these things I felt I could get used to, but then there was the killer:

I have a TomTom Go 910, I bought it a few months ago from Dabs.com on sale. It was great, because not only was it the excellent TomTom satnav but it also has TomTom Traffic when used with a GRPS enabled Bluetooth Phone AND it can act as a bluetooth headset! Wow! This has worked great with my works Blackberry 8800, OK but without the modem on my works Blackberry 8310 and it worked fine with my Orange/HTC SPV M600.

Obviously and quite plainly it the TomTom Go 910 doesn’t work with the Bluetooth of the new HTC Touch Diamond! Damn

I’ve called HTC ("Not our problem speak to TomTom"), TomTom ("Not our problem speak to HTC") and Orange ("Its not really a function of the Orange network that has a problem so it’s not our problem.").

I have the right of return and now it looks like I will have to take that up. It’s really disappointing to reach that, I had hoped there was some fix or patch for the software but I asked HTC if it was a known issue and they said "no". So I am left with little choice but to send it back and find something else. I have two phones, so it might just be simpler to downgrade my contract with Orange and save myself some effort.

A sad day for HTC, a sad day for Orange and a sad day for producy expectation.