Sonos Roam

Cutting edge as I ever plan to be, a review of the first Sonos Roam which came out years ago, and not version two which, as it turns out, does fix one of my main bugbears with their first attempt.

Bought just over a year ago, the excuse was needing a Bluetooth speaker for an upcoming holiday – as such I used it twice. It has Alexa and (after a recent update) Google voice assistants. It fits in nicely (very nicely) if you have other Sonos speakers.

It has a multi-function button for switching on/off and switching between WiFi or Bluetooth, and appears to operate based on how long you press that button down. Probably I should have read the manual but from what I’ve seen, even the people who have read the manual think it’s a terrible design, awful, and the main improvement between this version and its successor.

You want to leave that button alone.

It would periodically (every week) disconnect from the WiFi, forcing a reboot – which given the “one” button problem (did I mention how bad that was?) is a trial. You really want to leave that button alone. It felt like a bad purchase, I can’t abide tech. not working, not knowing if it’s going to work the next time you try to use it. The problem in this case appeared to be an issue the Roam has with mesh networks, certainly my mesh network. The solution was to stop the Roam from roaming, tie it to one point, as it were. I’m not sure that all mesh networks give you this feature.

Another issue on returning from a recent holiday (where I didn’t use the speaker once!) was the difficulty reconnecting to my Sonos system so that I could group speakers for playback. In this case it turned out the system software had been updated for my other speakers whilst I was away. I’d blame that one on Sonos in general rather than the speaker itself. They do seem to drop the ball from time to time.

All-in-all, not a purchase I’d recommend. Maybe a somewhat generous three out of five. Should I be giving ratings? I’ll have to think on that.

The anti-upgrade, from Apple

A month elapses between posts, five days pass between tweets. Once again I find myself with nothing left to say - which doesn’t sound likely - or no time in which to say it, or perhaps I’ve once again forgotten how. I passed on the gift-wrapped opportunity to give the BBC a well-deserved kicking over the Newsnight debacle and have given my brain cells a well-deserved kicking instead; and all because the developer loves his WPF. Well maybe it’s too early to call it love, but there’s enough of a sense of how much there is to learn and how worthwhile it will be. My car, I wrote about my car, several paragraphs about my car and I have no interest in cars. My car has gone to the great big scrapheap in the sky for which I was paid a sum just short of a cheap tablet computer, or a fraction less than the cost of my daughter’s Christmas present.

Then just as I’m about to give up the ghost, Apple push me over the edge when I rather optimistically decide that, yes, I will update iTunes and I’ll update the firmware on an iPod Touch. What was I thinking? Logic suggested this way I might be able to run some of the newer apps. I was tired. It’s not something I’d normally attempt, especially on a device that’s three years old, which in technological terms is still three years old but to Apple is an opportunity for a good shunning.

I have two complaints; I’ll start with the minor first. If I have my device connected, you’d think when purchasing an app the store would be able to first detect whether the device is capable of running it; you’d be wrong. The tipping point however was finding that previously purchased apps won’t re-install on an iPod Touch with the updated OS because they now require an even newer version of the OS, one not available to your ancient device. Can you imagine the shit storm Microsoft would endure if an OS upgrade resulted in a third of people’s purchases no longer functioning? Apple doesn’t really care.

And that’s because of you since, thirdly - OK, three complaints - whilst this might be Apple’s fault, really it’s yours; maybe it’s not you, but statistically speaking there’s every chance it’s the person sat next to you. S/he’s the person who nodded approvingly when Tim Cook CEO issued his non-apology for the farce over Apple Maps; since it sounded vaguely like an apology that was all it took for some of their captive audience to express sympathy - yet it was something entirely avoidable and it happened for two reasons. Let’s not kid ourselves that Apple was in any way surprised over the inadequacy of their product. They upgraded their customers to Apple Maps because there’s a lot of money in controlling the map, and also because they don’t care, or at least they gambled correctly that they could get away with it.

They don’t care because they don’t have to. You see, you - or the person sat next to you - are equivalent to Ferris Bueller’s best friend Cameron, and Apple is like his hypothesised girlfriend. And Ferris was right to be concerned:

She won't respect him, 'cause you can't respect somebody who kisses your ass. It just doesn't work.

Materialistic wobbles

On Tuesday I caved. In the week in which the world updates their iPhone, I upgraded my Nokia... to another Nokia. This is my first smartphone and I chose not to follow the herd, or even the Android herd that copies follows it; at least that’s what I tell myself. From a distance I genuinely prefer Windows Phone to those two big hitters; so what if Microsoft supposedly makes more money from wielding its mighty patent sword at Android than it does from its own operating system - it has originality to commend it. But comparisons are unwise since the closest I’ve come to a Jesus phone is a three year old iPod Touch, though I did once hold a Samsung Galaxy Nexus.

Could this be a case of blissful ignorance? It matters not, as the main reason for my conversion was a £7.50/month tariff, cheaper than what I had been paying; this isn’t a materialistic wobble after all. It’s not an iPhone or top-of-the-range anything; it's more a bottom-of-the-range something that still manages to drag me into the modern world. I’m not sure whether this is a good or a bad thing. I suspect bad. I suspect I'll forgive myself. And reading of the misfortunes riddled in Apple Maps I confess to a certain schadenfreude since the pre-installed Nokia Maps on my Lumia knows exactly where I am - in my bedroom - useful that.

Amazon’s square peg, round hole

This post is hardly cutting edge; a search shows people asking the same question as my mother, only three months ago. Not quite the same, my Mum’s phone call said she couldn’t find the option to switch off the radio on her Kindle; it wasn’t until after we’d hung up, having agreed to her stopping by after church because I had no idea, that I realised she meant wireless. And indeed this wasn’t a case of her forgetting how, or having lost the hand-written instructions she makes for every device, be it DVD player, iPod or this, her latest device. The wireless on/off option had disappeared. It wasn’t on the main menu, nor had it moved to the settings sub-menu.

Only of course it had. If I’d looked more closely at the blurb under ‘Airplane Mode’, which I’d briefly registered as not having seen before, or if I’d even given some thought as to what ‘Airplane Mode’ might be, I’d have realised this was the wireless option, relocated and renamed and with the on/off options therefore reversed. Presumably done with the noble intention of consistency with other products, the iPhone for example, that’s still a crap user experience.

An iPhone has several functions transmitting a signal and ironically, depending on the aircraft operator, since ‘Airplane Mode’ isn’t standard, it allows you to re-enable the Wi-Fi independently. So if Amazon is determined in its effort to be consistent, to a term that isn’t, it needs a specific option for switching the Wi-Fi on/off, in addition to its ‘Airplane Mode’ - which on my mother’s Kindle can only switch the Wi-Fi off/on. Or perhaps Amazon should concentrate on applying patterns where they fit.

When the bough breaks

How fragile we are, our lives hanging on such an unconvincing thread; from one end plugged into a wall socket, once used for nothing more complex than a telephone call, now winding around the living room, behind the chairs and the bookcase, to the other end plugged into a router; from which other wires protrude; one to the BT Vision box, another to the Nintendo Wii, one more to the television; wires; wires everywhere.

When the router breaks...

On Sunday afternoon I settled down to watch Kick Ass on LoveFilm Instant, or rather with the two hours of streaming my DVD package allows, only to have it buffer then come to a complete stop. Navigating to another page and a check with my daughter - who through BBC iPlayer, ITV player, YouTube, Netflix and so on, can usually be relied upon to be doing something - confirmed she could do nothing either; there was trouble ‘t router.  A reboot later and things were still slow, no chance of video, with occasional outbreaks of adequate performance allowing me, for example, to log on to the BT website and do a speed test. The last time I had such problems I phoned an engineer and we were close to the point where I’d be unscrewing the phone socket, only – thank God - I hadn’t a screwdriver. So with a promise to try this later, I bought a new router instead.

And lo, did the shiny new router provide broadband performance to the speed foretold. This time, well hopefully I’m not on the way to another fried ‘Home Hub’; I don’t fancy the wiring checks required before BT will (presumably) replace it. It was a Sunday, and this being a connectivity problem involving a number of possible suspects, I did the only sensible thing I could do; I mowed the lawn. Try again later, the advice of many, work instead of games; I may be able to play after.

And yea, did the internet return; too late to watch a film, and knackered from gardening, I settled in with the last few episodes of Breaking Bad. Yo, Jesse; at the end of season three he really has broken bad, and it won’t be until Netflix UK start showing series four that I find out what happens next. On television, through the Wii; for Sunday’s challenge aside, Netflix with my help is now as reliable as BT Vision or BBC iPlayer, and this wasn’t always the case. I don’t know whether a wireless Wii is more prone to interference or whether the wireless card was cooked – broken IT appliances often acquire a baking metaphor – but with a LAN adaptor (the console has USB connectors) it worked perfectly, giving me cause to smile… and another wire to worry about.

Not quite there

Another Netflix movie, several episodes of The Office, and I’m of an early opinion they’re not quite there when it comes to on-demand. On Saturday I watched a two-hour film, Departures, and was interrupted three times; it wasn’t enough to ruin the film but it could have been. On Sunday morning; three episodes of The Office without interruption, yet in the evening it took multiple attempts to watch one more. Of the two other films, In the Mood for Love was poor quality but played right through and The Conformist suffered several glitches. This is nowhere near the service I get from BT Vision where, for example, I played all five seasons of The Wire with a consistently better picture quality and experienced minor problems on only one episode; that’s over 60 hours of nearly uninterrupted playback. So besides acknowledging I need to get a life, what else does this tell me? There are a number of possible factors skewing my experience.

• BT Vision is wired into the router, everything else is wireless.
• To play content on the television I use my daughter’s Nintendo console, giving me scope to wonder on the reliability of both software and hardware. How good are the software updates? How good is the wireless on a Wii? When it does lag, which is to blame?
• The only fair comparison I can make is to remove hardware from the equation, and compare Netflix, Lovefilm and iPlayer from my wireless PC.

I suspect however that BT’s impressive performance is mainly due to a looser interpretation of network neutrality - where some content is more equal than others; given the aggressive pricing of Netflix and Lovefilm I’d be surprised if they’d paid for QoS.

Getting social

Two good things happened yesterday; the problem with the house alarm was sorted, and courtesy of Mickey I received a Google+ invite. I should probably take a thorough look first, but whilst I’ve got the urge I may as well post now, haphazard though the result may be. At first sight it looks cleaner, though this is in part the ‘lick of paint’ affect, more space and less clutter; placed on another tab I flicked between Google+ and Facebook and not surprisingly they’re somewhat similar. In functional terms however, Google+ wins hands down.

Privacy on Facebook has always been a bugbear. My own concern is less with how much is public (it is a social network after all) but their strange inability to match privacy settings with the layout; the sections on the configuration page are as if for a different version of the UI, it’s that bad. Google+ on the other hand, allows me to configure the privacy in-line with the layout, and combined with Circles it becomes not only easier but more flexible. For example, my telephone details are only visible to people in my “Family” circle.

Circles are how you organise your contacts; Google+ defaults with “Friends”, “Family”, “Acquaintances” and “Following”, but you can create your own. It’s intuitive, you can tell they’ve spent a lot of time on the UI and it’s at the core of everything; who I share to and what I look at, the default is ‘Public’ but it’s very easy to change. I also like that the share function is plumbed into the Google toolbar at the top; Gmail, Documents and Picasa (soon to be re-branded Google Photos), to name a few, have got it so far.

Hangouts look like fun, though I'm not sure how I'll use them, and I can’t quite see how Sparks fits. With Google Buzz... at the moment my Buzz is a Twitter reader; once Google+ is fully featured I expect it to disappear. And one of those features not yet (but surely soon) available will be some kind of search function, combined with the possible use of hash tags, though with tags I’m not so convinced; of course I'm basing this on how I personally use Twitter.

What I’d really like is a level of integration - or shared functionality - with my blog, which given it’s hosted on Blogger (soon to be re-branded Google Blogs) may one day be possible. I read a post where one brave soul had decided to move their blog to Google+, and if you’re only concerned with content I can see how that might work; but blogs aren’t only content, they provide a personalised look and feel, your own brand as it were. Essentially I’d like to be able to share my blog content on Google+, and to share the Google+ comments within my blog; Google+ and my blog would thus become different frameworks for the same blog data, and my blog data one source to my Google+ stream. I wonder how long I’ll have to wait.

Whoosh!

Having had a whinge about BT, I should at least acknowledge when it works. The new hub arrived, it looks a lot nicer than the old one, it was easy to set up (in that there was very little to do) but most importantly it works. The BT Vision box needed a little coaxing, but powering everything up in the order suggested did the trick. Also it’s worth giving the hub a few hours to settle on a speed. Initially I was still only getting around 1Mb/s and - having ignored the advice about waiting before running any tests - had surrendered to the thought of needing to check all the wiring; a few hours later it had settled at just under 12Mb/s. The literature says to wait ten days for a more accurate reading, but for once I am optimistic. Assuming the hardware problem has been sorted, I now need to wonder on the user problem; somehow this month the house has averaged in excess of 1GB/day usage, and I’m beginning to think it may be less a daughter/YouTube problem and more a parent/iPlayer problem. Yes, alright, it’s my fault.

Putting all your eggs in one BT basket

This has happened to me twice already, and having come from the lovely fibre-optic world that was Telewest (now Virgin Media) it’s frustrating. On the day when BT upgraded my broadband to ‘up to’ 20Mb, I instead (or as a result) experienced a fault at the exchange leaving me without broadband or telephone for three days. And since Freeview comes with my BT Vision box, I was without that too. That was a surprise; fair enough that a loss of broadband means a loss of on-demand content, but to lose the ability to set a recording (which was my first indicator that this too was broken) and once you try rebooting the box as a result, find you’re unable to watch anything, was decidedly odd. Is this ‘bad design or ‘by design’ I wonder? I suspect a bit of both.

Last weekend the connection speed dropped so low the on-demand service stopped working again. A couple of speed tools suggested I was getting a measly 500kbps, and the diagnostic suggested by the BT engineer indicated I was configured for ‘up to’ 4Mb; so I’d found something else on which to deliberate. I suspect, but who knows, I am a victim of BT throttling; my daughter having found the delights of YouTube, corresponding with an email warning that I had used 32GB of my 40GB monthly allowance, is a clue. However, if I believe BT, since the on-demand service doesn’t contribute to the monthly allowance, I wouldn’t have thought this should make a difference and at least that part of the service should still work.

It doesn’t help that my rather creaky Home Hub instils so little confidence. I reboot it on an almost weekly basis and often get stronger signals from wireless devices other than my own; this I hope to address with the new hub I’ve ordered today. But BT, if you’re able to hear this, because with your service there’s no telling whether you’ll get the message, don’t stick “free delivery” on the image unless “free” really is one of the delivery options; it’s kind of annoying.

Chrome yumminess

It says a lot about how much I like the Google Chrome browser that I can say ‘yumminess’ without too much embarrassment, also that I should spend a more-than-is-healthy-for-me amount of time salivating over the new Google Chrome Notebook. As a software developer I default to the position that a Chromebook is of no use to me, though I confess that, particularly with a VDI solution implemented for work, this will become less of a barrier. Besides which, I’m stubborn enough to believe that portable means secondary, and as an additional device it has an attraction.

Two applications that I already use with Google’s browser are Gmail and TweetDeck for Chrome; both use HTML5 notifications and both are preferable to their client application alternative. In moving to the browser they gained simple advantages that I’d never previously considered; integrated search for example. And I could learn to use Google Apps, though I admit in the past to having returned to Microsoft options rather than making the effort.

So where are we on this evolutionary path and is Google’s fundamentalist ‘everything in the cloud’ approach the right way? Or is Apple’s comparatively conservative ‘data in the iCloud’ more likely to succeed? And what gives with Microsoft’s Windows8 emphasis on HTML5 and Javascript? I digress; it’s the shiny objects that have my immediate interest, even though it’s hypothetical. I am on the outside looking in; iPads, Chromebooks, Snoozeberries, Everlasting Updates… such goodies are beyond my reach, and it's probably healthier that way.

The last post

This may be my last post. Earlier today I migrated my Google Apps account to become ‘more like a full’ Google Account, whatever that means. Doing nothing would have meant an automatic transition a few weeks from now; this way (I reasoned) I could at least deal with any problems at a time of my choosing. Ever the pessimist I did wonder about the custom domain name on my blog, the setting up of which had resulted in my Apps account. On the other hand, I’d done this within Blogger and there must be numerous such examples. Cue a few uncomfortable hours unable to log in at all, wondering if that was that and not sure I wanted to ‘start again’, followed by a desperate ‘clear the cache’, as if that was going to work... which it did, and millions breathed a sigh of relief. Well, eleven at the last count.

To be trusted

I have just one on my browser, the RSS subscription extension, and that is all. The problem with any add-on, or to be more accurate the problem I have with any third-party add-on, is amply demonstrated by the message box displayed before installing the Amazon Wish List extension. Do I want to install something that can access my data on all websites and all my browsing activity? Not really! The advice is to only install from those you know and trust. The obstacle is that other piece of advice; when it comes to the web, trust no-one. I’m not sure who said that, maybe it’s just me, but when the help page informs you ‘Your data on all websites’ could mean the following...

This item can read every page that you visit -- your bank, your web email, your Facebook page, and so on … Besides seeing all your pages, this item could use your credentials (cookies) to request your data from websites.

... it doesn’t really help at all. Yes, I ‘trust’ Google and Amazon, but the power of any app. store (and I hope Apple don’t mind me using the term) comes from the thousands of developers who contribute to it. Insufficient permissions granularity means it relies on – and is possibly even hindered by - misplaced consumer faith and worse, in some cases ignorance - including my own.

A kind of subject

So I use the Chrome browser and have done ever since it came out. It has a clean interface, it's beautifully simple to use and it's as fast as they claim; on those occasions when I open Firefox - for the "what does this look like in other browsers" test - I find myself drumming my fingers waiting for it to load.

I particularly like the Gmail desktop notifications that Google now support for their browser. I might as well comment on the online music business as to Google's use of HTML5, but what it has impressed on me is that slow move away from applications running on a desktop operating system, to those running on the web. At home I've recently found myself closing Outlook and keeping the browser open - and of course that's what Microsoft is afraid of.

And now for something completely diff… more or less the same.

The difference between an e-book and a real book: £3.04. Having recently watched the brilliant Any Human Heart I thought I’d buy the book; I considered the e-book but settled on the ‘real’ thing after discovering the electronic version was over 75% more expensive. I’m familiar with this kind of occasional discrepancy when it comes to music, but the music industry has at least matured to the point that when I download an album it’s free of DRM and in a format I can play using any brand of player. If I buy an e-book for my Kindle I am effectively bound to Amazon hardware. Yes, there are applications for reading your purchases on various LCD devices, but these aren’t suitable for extended reading; unless you’re OK with multiple breaks to recharge the battery and the (debatable) increased risk of eyestrain.

Ironically though, it’s the increased eyestrain that may make me choose an e-book over the physical form next time around; on opening the book I find I have to hold it at arm’s length. It’s either that or ‘upgrade’ my glasses.

Kindle

I have finished my first e-book on the Kindle, Jane Eyre; which may account for my more than usual downbeat mood for the time of year. As a device it’s great, it's still on its first battery charge and has plenty of charge left. I can’t imagine reading at that length on an LCD display, says the software developer who spends eight hours of every day slumped in front of two 19” LCD monitors. It’s as easy as reading from a book and in some ways better. The iPad, often touted as competition, is I’m sure as good a general content consumer as you can get, but if you’re looking for a device for the specific purpose of reading (for long periods of time) an e-book reader, the cost of which has been driven down because of the iPad, is the way to go.

On the hardware side I have only a couple of gripes. It has to be small but does the keypad have to be that difficult? Also, the Next Page/Previous page buttons situated on both the left and right sides of the Kindle are too low down; slightly heavier than I imagined, I tend to hold the Kindle further up the side – thus the buttons are partially obscured by my hand. These are small complaints; the keypad is rubbish but seldom used (for example a one-off set up for the Wi-Fi connection - there's a 3G version for an extra £40 - and registering the Kindle to my Amazon account) and the Next Page/Previous page criticism may just be an example of my general awkwardness.

The keypad has a purpose; there’s an experimental web-browser for example, useful functions such as search/annotate and not least the ability to search/purchase/download new e-books. But unless you want to risk dashing your new hardware against the wall in frustration I’d stay well clear, though it’s solidly enough built that it would probably survive the impact.

Leaving aside the contentious issue of DRM and the various publishing formats (Amazon use their own proprietary format), you can connect the Kindle using the USB lead provided and download a huge range of free e-books from sites such as Project Gutenberg. However, it’s the ability to purchase/download e-books, including a good range of those free e-books, from within the Amazon ecosystem where the Kindle scores. Use the built in keypad or use your computer, find the e-book on the Amazon website, click Purchase and… that’s it. There’s no download/synchronise option, it just happens; that’s a great user experience.

Anything but

It just goes to show how much personal experience can influence opinion and not necessarily in the right direction, because whilst Internet Explorer 6 is a stinky browser I can understand (there’s a lot of understanding in this post) how it got there. Back in the day Microsoft were quite an innovative company and IE was an innovative product - oh yes it was! As Obi Wan in my obligatory Star Wars reference might say, it’s “true, from a certain point of view”. Forging ahead instead of waiting for consensus from newly emerging standards bodies can be seen as perfectly valid when there’s only you and Netscape on the scene. Unfortunately Microsoft carried on in this vein right up to, and some would argue beyond, version 6. God help us all.

Tobias wrote a challenging post a while back explaining why he temporarily switched off IE access to one page on his site. Though it struck me at the time as being a little severe I understood the frustration, mainly because it wasn’t the first time I’d heard people complain. I only recollect this as I recently found myself writing a little code - ‘code’ as in tinkering with the blog because I don’t have a life - and hit the ‘it looks fine in everything but’ problem with Microsoft’s browser. I think that was when I really understood the frustration – ‘understood’ as in wanting to burn Internet Explorer, more specifically IE6, to the ground; too severe, right?

Sent from my Nokia

My sister-in-law came to visit not so long ago and to keep her children occupied I switched on the PC. The eldest daughter (who was only nine) asks “What operating system is it?”

“Windows”, I replied.

To which she shuddered and went “EUW!”

You see, their parents are Apple… enthusiasts, and the brainwashing starts so early these days. I repeat: I would possibly (probably?) buy an iMac if I could afford one; because when I mentioned this episode the other day I got the impression I’d inadvertently come out as anything-but-Apple - a heretic if you like. This is grossly unfair, I would never disrespect anyone’s software/hardware proclivities, though I’d like to know the difference between the new Shuffle, at £39, and the new Nano at £129, beyond the ability to see what it is you’re playing.

Troika

I wanted Wave to succeed because, of the big three, I like Google the most – or should that be I dislike them the least? There’s something sad about Microsoft compared to how it once was. I can’t afford a new PC so I’ll not see Windows 7 for a while yet I’ve heard good things. In other areas though they remind me of IBM in the 1970’s; using FUD and the threat of legal action to coerce companies into paying for a licence to protect them from patents that they may (or may not) have infringed. It’s cheaper to pay up than defend yourself – which makes Microsoft sound less like IBM and more like the mafia.

Of course if I had the money I’d skip the PC altogether, buy an Apple Mac and sync my iPhone to it over and over again, if I could afford an iPhone. They're so lovely, but there’s something not quite right and it’s not the control freakery or the fanboys… no, that’s not true, it is those things. Years from now someone will find a decaying Apple II in the attic of Steve Jobs’ mansion and then we’ll discover the awful truth. It’s rather like the sinister and incredibly popular series Friends, everyone looks perfect and you’d like to copy the look but you know things will turn ugly if you dare to sit on that sofa. God help you if you bring your own chair.

Say hello, wave goodbye

I’ve hardly been idle but I need a break from thinking about work whenever I look at the screen, hence I found myself playing around with the ‘share’ options on the blog, again. After adding in the Facebook button I’ve been contemplating Google Buzz; who uses it? I never post to it and rarely read from it, I’m not sure what to do with it; apart from a few short conversations all it does for me is aggregate feeds which makes me think I’m missing something, or maybe it’s missing something. How many ‘buzz’ but don’t ‘tweet’ anyway?

I know Google are serious about social networking since Google Me is in the pipelines and every now and then they buy up some media-related company - they’re up to something, massing their forces, and I'm thinking that the conversation of which I had so few may be the differentiator. So it’s hello to Buzz and goodbye to Google Wave, for which I also had an account and similarly never used; at least in this respect my apathy was shared. I had this suspicion it was less a product and more a framework, a new paradigm for sharing, or something, and I wanted it to succeed - despite not really knowing what it was.

Twenty over five

You can never have enough handbags

This was my explanation to Little Miss R as wife took us on a fourth lap of the John Lewis Tula circuit. That’s the price you pay for getting to do anything you want. We spent longer doing “a quick bit of shopping” than we did at the cinema and that can’t be right; especially since shopping is inherently dangerous for the sleeping partner. If you’re a coward like me you have a stock of non-committal answers to the never ending stream of questions on the subject of “what do you think”; as if I’m going to fall for that.

No, I needed to be back with my GPS - who’d have thought you could spend fifty pounds on something cheap and tacky that turns out to be so much more? Never mind that I knew the way home, I just like being ordered around and there was a whole library of cheap television waiting for me at home.

I have a BT Vision box. From this it can be surmised I'm either astute in my television viewing, I find Rupert Murdoch's continual and cynical undermining of the BBC repulsive or I'm too tight to cough up for Sky. One cool service with BT is the large number of programmes 'on demand'; programming you stream over the net. BT uses your phone line whilst Virgin Media have a similar service over cable. I'm in awe that it works so well.

Thus I've been able to watch 20 episodes of The Office in less than five days - isn't technology wonderful? One day I had a crush on Pam, the next, somewhat disturbingly it was Angela and no doubt it’ll soon be Dwight;I mean, who wouldn't? From this it can be surmised I'm either astute in my television viewing, I need to get out more or I'm too tight to cough up for the cinema.