This is ridiculous. In order to get their cheapest deal I would need to change supplier twice. They don't even advertise that this isn't available to existing customers. The website just hides it from the list of tariffs if you're viewing the "existing customer" version. (It's also difficult to get from the marketing summary to an actual price list for each tariff; there's no direct link).

Their other options all strangely have £50 penalties for changing tariff or supplier early... perhaps they want to stop people leaving for those like themselves suppliers offering new customers the best prices.

I can find the cheapest suppliers using online comparison websites, but the cheapest option means separating Electricity and Gas so I'd have to deal with two companies who will most likely both give good deals only to new customers and both make arbitrary guesses at future usage so that I end up paying for it all in advance.

Either I repeatedly change supplier every time one or more of them have "new customer only" deals or cease caring about how much it costs and stay with one of them just because it's easier. I've been doing this with Scottish Power for several years now (on whichever tariff appears to be cheapest - this is deceptive because you end up stuck on one while they bring out a cheaper option).

Another option which I've wanted to do for a while is switch to a "Green" Energy tariff. This is easier because the best tariff isn't necessarily the one that has the lowest price. Ecotricity have recently started doing a Green Gas package too, which means I don't end up negating any benefit from sustainable electricity with my gas usage. They're also making good progress towards generating 100% of the energy they sell themselves from renewable sources.

Why does it take several weeks to change energy supplier? I can understand that the first 2 weeks are caused by vulnerable people being sold tariffs on commission by rogues, but why is the additional time required?

I also attached it to the buggy of an unsuspecting victim kite flier at Wallop which produced this track:

Red parts are slow, green (turning to blue) parts are faster. The maximum speed was 36 MPH.

Map data ©2004-2010 OpenStreetMap contributors.
OpenStreetMap data can be used freely under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license.

After a short drive to Wallop we were left waiting until after 1am for our accommodation (a motor home) to arrive from Scotland because it was stuck in a really bad traffic jam north of Oxford... fortunately we had some late night entertainment watching an AA man get into a car with the keys locked in the boot. He survived people tripping over him and the jack that was holding the car up too.

It rained on Saturday morning but the sun came out later and the weather on Sunday was much better. Plenty of sun to burn me while I took a few hundred photos. I'll have to try and remember to actually use sunscreen next time. I left early on Monday morning for the 8½ hour train journey back home.

I was going to buy a new camera soon... but for the first time in 5 years I've finally found a use for the viewfinder and some of the newer compact cameras lack one. It's impossible to take burst shots of someone moving past you in sunlight using only the display. The Canon IXUS 300 HS can take 240 FPS video but without being able to aim it quickly that might not be very useful.

A long trip on the DLR later and I arrived at the Prime Meridian Line in Greenwich, which has moved since they decided where to put it.

I had another late lunch at Tate Britain before looking at the art on display there. Much better than Tate Modern but I didn't get many photos because taking photos indoors without the flash on is almost impossible with my camera.

Spent a couple of hours in Selfridges looking for something interesting before leaving with two Elephant Parade elephants.

I had a late lunch of haddock and chips before wandering around wondering why almost anything qualifies as "art". There was a massive traffic jam of taxis outside when I left. A quick wander around the maze that is Harrods looking at things over-priced in the thousands of pounds, before heading home for dinner.

Drawing 11 wives is not trivial, and my drawing skills are rather poor so I've had to copy and paste a lot. I'm not going to attempt to draw in children too because there's not really enough space.

Images of Muhammad are controversial, but violent threats are not the answer.

As best man I gave a speech at the reception, although there were a few other things I would have said if I was less nervous at the time. Kevin and Leah have been together for many years now and I've lost track of where either of them was at any particular time because living far apart they appeared to spend more time visiting each other than being at University. Fortunately now they have both graduated they're living in Scotland again where I can see more of them. There are many reasons why they complement each other which I can't easily put into words, although their shared fondness for duck is one of them... luckily there are takeaways open late here.

There are some photos on flickr and a video involving helium balloons.

I put everything into the remaining ASDA bag which managed to survive the walk home (except for a handle) although it looks like the bottom was ready to give way too:

ASDA's bags normally split down the side very quickly:

I used one of Tesco's basic non-free bags for over a year before the handle eventually gave way (but the various holes in the bottom are ready to go too) and I still need to get it replaced...

So... the message is: reuse your carrier bags, as long as you paid extra for them first. I used to have a bright green Marks & Spencer carrier bag that intended to survive forever, but it got covered in sticky Irn-Bru so I had to throw it away.

It's difficult to communicate with BT's outsourced email support. In 2008 it took several months to get them to remove my number from the phone book (despite laws against it there are unscrupulous companies who will just call up everyone to advertise their junk). It usually takes several attempts before someone who understands English properly deals with the issue.

During my time as a BT customer I have repeatedly received direct marketing by post, despite never agreeing to this. Usually it's advertising a 12 month auto-renewing contract for some free calls at an arbitrary time of day. Just send off the small bit of paper. Then, in April 2009 they sent me this waste of paper:


I complained threatening to raise the issue of pointless waste of paper with Watchdog and received a phone call within 30 minutes informing me that I would no longer be receiving marketing from BT (as requested). Unfortunately this statement (which I have recorded) was untrue.

In June 2009, August 2009, and October 2009 I received more direct marketing. For a company that claims to be environmentally friendly they waste a lot of paper on me. Under the Data Protection Act 1998 I have the right to prevent processing for purposes of direct marketing but BT appear to be unaware of this item of legislation. It has only been in existence for a decade, after all, and BT don't react that quickly (e.g. IPv6).

The marketing in October is interesting because it implies I'm using another supplier for outgoing calls. Which is partly true because analogue PSTN lines are difficult to interface with without introducing nuisance echo (BT won't provide VoIP services to non-BT-broadband customers), and I rarely make any calls. In fact I managed to not make any calls on the BT line for 2 quarters triggering an automatic (illegal) penalty charge for the FREE Caller ID service.

Trying to complain to BT by email used to work, and their forms have the option to communicate by Email or Phone. Despite selecting Email and providing an alternative contact phone number they insisted on bombarding me with missed calls from multiple numbers that I had to block.

After some attempts to get the charges removed from my bill (as an aside, BT cannot bill correctly either and once managed to miscalculate VAT causing them to deduct 2p more from my account than they claimed on the bill summary; their only way to fix this was to issue a £1.00 98p credit) I gave up and migrated my line rental to another supplier. It costs more per month (25p, now 21p after the VAT changed from 15% back to 17.5%) and I can't make chargeable outgoing calls (due to yet another part of BT being incompetent, because they're the monopoly provider and so it's effectively still provided by them) but they don't send me unwanted direct marketing.

BT refunded me for the charges and prepaid line rental (including the discounts for paper billing, which was a bit silly) but I had to email the CEO to get their attention because their standard support service just started ignoring me.

Problem sorted, right? I'm no longer a customer, they know I have requested that they do not use my personal data for direct marketing, so I should receive nothing more except a final bill. No. That would be too easy. Instead in November I received this:


Which not only tries to market their services on A3-sized paper but defames my new provider (who they appear to think I've been with for 3 months already). Apparently I should watch out for "nasty surprises in the first bill".

This continues in December and then February the following year (I must have missed out on January marketing). No one else except TV Licensing is this persistent. I've contacted their Executive Level Complaints department requesting that my details are deleted, which is another right under the DPA principle that data should not be kept for longer than is necessary. I'm no longer a customer so they don't need my data.

If this doesn't work I'll need to raise a complaint with the ICO because I'll have run out of other options. Apparently terminating a contract without notice doesn't get their attention and they still want me to be a customer. I know the ICO have already had to deal with BT refusing to stop direct marketing to other people in the past.

Even the older hardware isn't supported by the manufacturer itself, instead third-party developers contributing drivers to the SANE project provide the only way of using these devices. (Which is probably a good thing as actual manufacturer drivers are likely to be closed source).

Unfortunately newer models of scanner hardware doesn't actually provide anything new. Scanning a 300 DPI image at 4800 DPI only makes the resulting image data larger (and most likely makes it less usable as minute details of the paper/film grain will become visible). With no reason to buy such hardware and develop drivers for it, these will go unsupported until the used hardware is no longer available.

So I now have a Canon CanoScan LiDE 60. I'd link to it but there's no longer a page for it on Canon's website. As far as I can tell this is currently the only bus-powered high-speed USB scanner supported under Linux (except perhaps the LiDE 50). The (latest) drivers for it aren't available for 64-bit versions of Windows (just like my TV receiver cards... there is a pattern developing here).

Line art scans of documents can be compressed very well, which is useful for the mountain of old bits of paper that I should throw away...