I am aware that these days all I seem to do is poke fun at bad spam, but this amused me greatly this morning...

One of our websites has a 'contact us' form, which (as all contact forms do) asks you for your name, email address and message and then emails me whatever message they send. Pretty basic stuff.

The most common message we get is from SEO companies "guaranteeing" us the first page of Google (although not for any specific search term); I particularly like the fact that they always demand a response including the website address (but, err, YOU contacted US, surely you know who we are?!), phone numbers and physical addresses, despite usually being from somemadeupshit@gmail.com

Today, however, the "internet genius" who is offering us this fabulous service has put, as their email address, "224 Lawrence Road". Now, Gmail can be quite clever at times but I don't think even the mighty Google can deliver email to an address like that yet...

To be fair, this is an issue with all energy companies (although to be honest, I haven't really noticed those nice people at Good Energy doing it...) but British Gas were the ones foolish enough to send me my new bill today, so...

Why do they seem utterly unaware that energy usage changes seasonally?!

I pay by direct debit (because it's cheaper, and easier, and I'm lazy); however, because I don't always use exactly the same amount of gas my account drifts in and out of credit.

Over the summer, I've been paying an absurdly high monthly amount, with the result that my account is quite heavily in credit. So, at the end of October, with temperatures falling and the central heating starting to get turned on more and more what have British Gas done? Halved my monthly bill.

This is all very nice, but it means that in six months time, as I'm turning off the central heating, they will notice that I am, by then, heavily in debt to them, and they will double my monthly bill for the summer.

WHY?!

It seems pretty obvious to me, that people will use more in the winter than in the summer? Why not just look at my billing history, and work out that they only need to slightly reduce my monthly charge, and things will even themselves out over the course of a year?

I have the dubious pleasure of acting as more and more of the "Consultant" it says on my job description these days. Due to policies at a certain client, actual software development is all supposed to take place elsewhere, with the cheapest developers money can buy, rather than getting people who know what they're doing to do the job in a fifth of the time.

Now, wearing my contractor hat, this actually works out nicely for me. If there's a chunk of development that would take me 10 days, I now spend 5 days writing the spec for these drones and roughly 20 days "consulting" to explain how to do the damn thing, telling them how to do basic tasks like testing and debugging, and then working out what they've done wrong once it makes it into a real test environment. Makes the entire process more profitable to me (although it does suggest that this approach may be a false economy to my client... ho hum)

However, there is an emotional downside. I'm a coder by choice. If I wasn't being paid to do it, I'd be coding stuff anyway. I've also been doing it for ... eek, over two decades. So, I am both experienced, and a grumpy old man. I can, and routinely do, find fault with just about any other coder because nobody ever does things precisely the way I would. I know this, and accept it's a personal flaw, and usually will let things slide as long as they work.

My current "consulting", however, is reaching new depths. We have a system which reads in a (potentially binary) file, performs a few byte translations, and ftps the result to another machine. Pretty basic stuff, that should be bread and butter stuff to any half-decent coder.

The work, however, is done in C#, by someone who has clearly only ever been trained in C# and has no real grasp of how things actually run underneath all the frippery of DotNet. Consider, then, this email conversation which has taken place over the course of some 3 weeks:

Drone: We have some data corruption; also with very large files the process is very slow.
Me: Oh dear. are you by any chance reading the file in as text, rather than binary?
Drone: Yes. we will fix this.
Drone (some time later): The processing is still very slow - it seems to be when we're converting the string back to binary data to ftp
Me: Err... why the hell are you having to convert anything? Didn't I tell you to read it in as binary data?
Drone: Yes, we do. Then we convert it to string, do the translation, and convert it back.
Me: Well stop it. Not only is that horribly inefficient, but you're probably getting all sorts of stupid implicit conversions from DotNet. Keep binary data as binary, FFS.
Drone: Yes. we will do this.
Drone (some time later): We are still having data corruption.
Me: Fine. Send me the code for a change, or I'll refuse to help any more.
Me (after reading something which, charitably, we shall call "code"): So, still converting to string then? How else can I say this - it's binary data, keep it as binary data. Stop making things more complicated than they are.
Drone: But in DotNet there's no easy way to find and replace in a byte array. If I convert it to a string I can just use the replace() function.
Me: (bangs my head against the desk)

Now I have to find a polite way of saying "well what the f$*k do you think is happening when you call that replace function? You don't think that maybe, just maybe, DotNet has to loop through the damn string anyway? How the hell can you think that just because there's a function call, data processing a string will be any faster than data processing a byte array?

This just confirms to me that all programmers should, at a bare minimum, be forced to use nothing but C for the first 5 years of their career - preferably with a smattering of assembler. Bringing people up in high level "frameworks" apparently creates programmers with cotton wool for brains.

But sometimes it does some Strange Things.

Wasn't sure what I was in the mood to listen to today, so I glanced down at the "Artists you may like" box that popped up. It offers up a half-dozen artists I've never heard of (no bad thing) along with their genre tags. This is where it gets odd.

Why does spotify think that I might like Common, described as "midwest, hardcore rap"? Or Jurassic 5, who apparently are leading lights in "Turntablism"? Is this what I get for queuing up Lady Gaga a few times? Has it completely ignored the time I've spent listening to their "Prog Rock" channels?!

(ok, I clicked on one and actually Jurassic 5 is quite listenable-to....)

Loudtwitter is back. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted...

Well, you've had to put up with various rants and I'm aware that a lot of them have been directed at Demon. So, by way of penance, I give you a first for this blog - an anti-rant!

Having finally been driven to distraction by Demon (blogs passim), I bit the bullet and drastically improved our internet connections. For the same price as I was paying Demon, we now have two ADSL lines, each one with a different provider - AAISP, and Plusnet. The reasoning behind this is simple - unless a plane lands on our local exchange, this should give enough redundancy that we're never offline.

( I'll save the uninterested a long, rambling, 'these guys are so cool' rave )

Just received some spam offering me design services, to mamtaskitchen. I'm choosing to ignore the clear implication that they don't think any design went into the website, but I was amused by the line:

If you already work with a designer, why request a quote to see how much you could save through one of our agencies.

Why indeed?

Dear Demon

When you're talking to a customer who is requesting a MAC, who has just told you why, and who has already transferred his domain name away from you the previous week, that may not have been the best time to ask him to fill in a customer satisfaction survey.

On the other hand, if I win an iPod for my "I hate you and I'm leaving you" survey responses, that would be a good note to end on!

Well, after 15 years of custom and numerous comical fuckups, Demon have finally driven me away - a MAC is on it's way to me as I type. Assuming, of course, that they don't screw that up too...

I've ranted about Demon here before - largely because once a year they conspire to seriously mess something up. This year isn't quite as spectacular as the time they accidentally issued a cease order to BT (resulting in a month with no connection), but if I have one more person tell me that the reason for 3 weeks of uselessly slow downlink speeds is because I've been "upgraded", I will pop down the road to Demon Towers with a pitchfork and a flaming torch.

A combination of apathy and a fear of being offline has always put me off moving. This time around I realised that for the same price I was paying, I could have an entire second line supplied by AAISP (much love) and still have change left over enough to keep my old line on a cheapo Plusnet deal as a backup. Combine this with the coolest router I've ever owned which will load-balance across a pair of ADSL lines, and even provides a fallback to a 3G dongle, and nothing short of a nuclear war should be able to knock me offline now.

First step was to transfer our main domain out of Demon's hands. That was fairly easy, although despite Demon being an ISP they insist on such a request being faxed (faxes? have I fallen backwards into the 1980s or something?) or snail-mailed. That was released on Tuesday, and the DNS changes now seem to have rippled worldwide enough that no more mail is going via Demon.

And so this morning, with a heavy heart, I called up the "Customer Relations" team at Demon and asked for a MAC. They did ask why, but once I'd told them "my line's been broken for three weeks and your engineers clearly have no clue what the problem actually is" the fight went out of them. The nice man did valiantly offer to make me "an offer", but conceded that it was unlikely to beat the £6 a month that Plusnet do, so he's put the request through.

There was a comic moment when he asked what I was currently paying - curious, as he presumably had my account details in front of him. I pointed out that the last bill I'd received (earlier this week) was charging £408 for the month, which was just another sign of why I was leaving (their accounts department ineptitude, not their astronomical prices).

With traditional Demon-ic timing, the helpdesk called me 5 minutes later to pass on a question from the engineers of "is it any better". No, no it isn't, but I would suggest they stop wasting their time as I'm not going to be a customer of yours in a matter of days.

So I'm sad to be ending one of the longest customer relationships I've had (off the top of my head, the only company I've ever been a customer of for longer is British Gas). But I'm also angry that a once-great company has sunk so low, and seems to care so little for it's customers. The only reason I'm getting daily calls from the helpdesk (which don't do anything, but at least make me feel loved) is that I kept hold of the number for the incredibly-well-hidden UK-based customer retention team from the last big disaster, phoned them up and shouted at them.

Since it was offshored, their helpdesk hasn't been allowed to actually talk to the engineers. There's no way to escalate a problem through official channels (you have to phone secret departments) and despite occasional claims to the contrary, there is no longer any specific support for business accounts. Gone are the days when you could phone straight through to a technician who understood that at least some of their customers know their stuff.

So, now I'm on a shiny new (and horribly fast) line for my main net connection, and will shortly move to a cheapo provider for my backup. More reliable, and cheaper as well.

All assuming, of course, that Demon manage send me a MAC which works. History doesn't leave me hopeful.

Unfortunately.

I received my "daily" update call from Demon at lunchtime - this is a creative use of the word "daily", but at least they're calling me which makes a change. It's also a creative use of the word "update", as until yesterday the status has remained at "well the engineer call is open but they haven't bothered to pick it up yet, I'll chase them".

Still, the C&W engineers have finally decided to read the call. And their response is to ask if the problem still exists.

"Yes", I say. "It is. Did they actually try changing anything?"

"Err." says the Demon man - I feel slightly sorry for him, but getting yelled at is the price you pay for being the customer contact. "No. But they noticed that the line isn't getting disconnected over the last few days, so they thought maybe it had fixed itself."

"No", I say, feeling a little like Ford Prefect in Hotblack Desiato's stuntship. "I just stopped fiddling with it."

"Oh. Well, I'll let them know and they can get right to work on it."

"Does that mean another week goes by before they ask if it's any better, then?"

"Oh no", he says, trotting out the same nonsense I've received every single time I've talked to Demon's helldesk since they offshored it. "I'm sure it be sorted very soon now. Definitely not another week. Umm. I can't give you an actual time. But I'm sure it will be soon."

I can tell this is going to go on forever, and I have this horrible feeling that when I ask for a MAC in a week's time, all hell is going to break loose because the bloody idiots have LLU'd me without asking, or indeed even telling me. So I try a different tack.

"Can't you just put it all back the way it was? You know, like two weeks ago before you 'upgraded' me?"

"No sir. That's not an option. We had to change the equipment in the exchange to upgrade you to this much faster service."

"How is this faster? I'd be better off with ISDN."

"Well yes sir, but once it's working you should be getting 12meg. At least."

"I don't need more speed. I never needed more speed. I need the speed I had."

"Sorry sir. I'm sure it will be fixed very soon."

Me too. My new line arrives on Monday.

It's been a while since I posted here, so it only seems reasonable to mark my return with a rant. And, courtesy of the Demon / Thus / C&W chaos that is my ISP, it's a good one.

Monday morning, my net access is slow. And I mean, painfully, "oh my god has someone replaced my ADSL router with a 56k modem" slow. I went through my normal routine of bouncing the router, but it was still as slow as hell.

Speed tests from various places quoted me downstream speeds of around 0.15mbps; something like 8 times less than I would expect. Curiously, my upstream speeds remained where they should be. Even more curiously, my router was reporting an ADSL2+ connection. On to Google, then...

Turns out, plenty of people have been broken by the "upgrade" to ADSL2+. But I don't think I'm one of them - all their problems are around routers struggling to hold the line; crappy sync speeds, large amounts of errors. Me, I have the same solid sync that I've always had, syncing with a downstream speed over 13mb, zero errors anywhere.

I spent most of Monday afternoon waiting for Demon's Undead Text Chat to respond, before giving up and emailing them. I got an automated reply saying they were far too busy to do anything, but would get back to me in 48 hours.

Considerably more than 48 hours later (not to mention 3 different computers, different router, various config tweaks and a few animal sacrifices to the various ADSL Gods) I bite the bullet and phone their Helldesk. Spoke to a nice man who grudgingly admitted that I might have a problem, but that he couldn't possibly raise it with an engineer until I'd run a number of speed tests from their "approved site", with plenty of time (i.e. hours) between them, so that they were "sure it was a problem".

But, I said, I've been running speed tests at all kinds of time of day and night since Monday - they *all* say exactly the same thing; about 0.15mbps downstream, normal upstream, solid, fast sync on the router. Tough, he says. Even if he did raise the fault now, the Clueless & Witless engineers would bounce it straight back without those tests.

Bute, I said (in a slightly more desperate tone), this is a business line. I pay a lot of money for this line. I need it to run at broadband speeds - I spend a lot of my time using remote access, which at these speeds is ... tedious. Well, I said "unusuable", but you know what I mean.

Sorry, says Helldesk drone. Nothing I can do. Fine, so I'll do the dumb tests, phone the Helldesk again late afternoon and pray that the engineers can be bothered to look before Monday. Like hell I will.

Luckily, since the last total disaster I've kept Demon's ultra-secret "Customer Relations" phone number. Seriously, this number doesn't seem to be linked to anywhere from their website, but I did once find it on a publically visible document so I've never felt too bad about using it. Rather than 20 minutes in a queue, I get straight through to a very helpful man who understands where I'm coming from, even if he can't help technically. He says he'll get a senior tech to phone me, who I might be able to persuade to raise it with the engineers right away. A callback from Demon? Yeah, right.

But no, the senior tech does indeed call. On the wrong phone number, granted, but you can't have everything. A series of questions and tests, and he concedes there's a problem and raises it with the engineers while I'm still on the phone. Adds a note to frigging well look at it this month, what with it being a business line and everything.

So now, I'm in the hands of C&W engineers.

Oh shit.

One of the dubious pleasures of having a website is that I regularly get spam from SEO slime, trying to sell me their services, promising to put me at the top of Google (although never for any specific search terms, I notice...) and quintuple my revenues (which are, err, zero) overnight.

In virtually every case it's an obvious mailmerge type letter; it usually starts off telling me how hard it was to find Mamta's Kitchen, which I always find hugely amusing because I only really started getting this kind of spam after it, you know, got to be easier to find because of search engines and stuff.

Today's is no exception, telling me that the SEO "struggled to find you in the first couple of pages". Well what were you searching for then? The first test search I did was for "mums chicken curry" because I know that's popular. Go on, go and google it. I'll wait.

edit to add: my beloved, being smarter than me, did a search for something far more generic - tandoori chicken - and we're still on page one. wow

The best bit, however, was when he was saying that another nail in my coffin was that Google only indexed 808 pages, which is "quite low" on his planet. Small tip; if you're going to spam your crappy SEO services to me, at least add some code into your automated scripts to check the numbers are actually low before sending it out to prospective suckers - ahem, sorry, customers. Sure, 808 pages means that Google hasn't quite picked up every single recipe yet, but it'll get there.

On a side note, searching for "mamtaskitchen" reveals that Google now gives us that funky "menu links" thing under our home page (oh you know, the thing that you usually only get on real websites) :)

We have a lot of big files, which I want to back up online.

By big I mean 5-10meg each (they're image files) and by lots I mean (at last count) around 35k. That translates to something like 270gig (and rising) so it's quite a lot of data. I could probably filter it down massively but even if I reduced it by 75% (which is unlikely) that's still quite a few dollars even in the world of S3.

I know image files won't be very responsive to conventional compression, but I suspect this is a special case. Given the sheer volume of data, I'd be quite happy to have a HUGE external dictionary that was common across the images, on the grounds that given, say, a 10gig dictionary, even if you only shave an extra few kb off each individual file, you're ahead in the grand scheme of things.

It further strikes me that I can't be the first programmer/photographer to have had thoughts like this, so hopefully someone has gone that extra step and actually tried getting such a thing to work. My Google-fu is weak today, however. Has anyone come across such a thing?

So, the government response to a massive (well, I guess it [i]is[/i] 150%) increase in PigFluians to 5, is to order up another 15 million doses of Tamiflu, and sending every house in the country a leaflet that will tell us ... well, pretty much nothing because there's no real information to convey.

Either the government is in blind panic "we must be seen to do something" mode, or they know something that I don't. A mildly infectious strain of apparently mild flu is not something I need a leaflet about, no matter how hysterical the media gets (in the absense, presumably, of any [i]actual[/i] news to report) and I don't see how buying enough anti virals (which will have a use-by date which is likely to be reached before 50 million doses are, in fact, required) for every person in the country is spending my taxes wisely either.

I hate mindless dosomethingisms.

Was it just me, or was 'Back To Earth' a bit ... crap? I mean it felt like a 90 minute Comic Relief sketch that never quite came off.

In keeping with the spirit of public announcements, this week is National Cask Ale Week, which is an excellent excuse for you to all go down the pub. Go on, go and have a pint (of cask ale, obviously - it doesn't work if you go and have lager or lemonade). Look on it as supporting your local brewery through the recession :)

Curiously, the wazzocks at Weatherspoons have decided to have their Real Ale Festival week next week instead of this; seems a bit of a missed marketing opportunity to me, but hey ho...

A quick plea to anyone better at recognising birds than I (in other words, everyone on the planet) - anyone know what bird this is?

Coolest office feature ever - the Office Helter Skelter

The only trouble is, I now have a mental picture of a perfectly normal office, occasionally interrupted by a distant "Weeeeeeeeeeeh!!!!"

Well, it's taken a very long time, but the advantage of visiting creative people like gothick_matt is that they prompt you into obtaining some round tuits.

This is the timelapse of our shed being demolished last year; the second part will be the construction of our greenhouse, for which I need to remember where I put those files!

Apologies for the crappy image quality; ancient webcam shooting through dirty window, what can I say.

Thank you, BT, for your latest and greatest attempt to make me feel all warm and fuzzy about being your customer.

I got a letter today with the wonderful "Two great ways to save money with BT" headline, telling me that 0845 and 0870 numbers would be free (if, by free, you mean "finally included with all the other free minutes we've inflicted, unwanted, on you over the weekend, just before Ofcom force us to do so). Oh, and I could get really good value broadband from them too (well, for three months, at which point it becomes one of the more expensive options on the market).

Oh, and we're making a few other changes too. Like, redefining our "Friends and Family" offer so that it will exclude just about every phone call we ever make from a landline (only mobiles and international now - well I have a mobile and Skype for that). Oh, and we're raising the cheapest line rental by 8.7%. Yay us.

What they neglect to mention in the actual letter, and only appears in the crappy little sales booklet that grudgingly has some figures at the back, is that they are raising the cost of daytime calls 15% from April. That's ignoring the rise in call setup fees (up 17%) and any number of the various call features (caller display, call waiting and all that stuff) by roughly a third.

It's an interesting tactic, BT - during a recession, customers are watching the pennies, so you decide to slap huge price increases on them in the hope that ... they won't all leave?