Matthew Revell

For the second time in two years, our main TV has shifted out of focus: headache inducing, eye straining, Mr Magoo out of focus.

TV repair bloke says it’s not worth fixing a second time; apparently it’s well known that Samsungs have dodgy tubes and it’ll only go out of focus again. Might as well put the £50 repair fee towards a new set.

Trouble is, now it’s nigh-on impossible to buy a decent-sized CRT TV. Currys, Comet, Argos all have a few portables but, in-store, I haven’t seen anything I’d consider living room size.

I could, of course, give in and buy an LCD TV; after all, everyone else is. While I wouldn’t go so far as saying that HD is the answer to a question no one asked, I am nonetheless astounded that CRT TVs have disappeared from bricks and mortar shops and that people are happy to believe that standard definition images are anything but awful on the current crop of LCD TVs.

While I stand in Comet and marvel at compression artefacts, pixelation and motion blur, other shoppers – seeing precisely the same image – appear happy to ignore the evidence of their eyes and instead listen to the sales person who tells them they too can be a part of this great leap forward. I know too many people who have congratulated themselves on the replacement of their perfectly good CRT with an LCD set. Either I’m over-fussy, the shops have poorly configured their display TVs (quite likely) or everyone else has found a source of LCD TVs that aren’t entirely shite.

I know, the whole point of these sets is HD. I admit that the HD images on the demo sets have been impressive. Equally, the HD sports broadcasts I saw in the States a couple of months back were an improvement over dodgy old NTSC. Thing is, I have no HD video sources: no PS3 or Xbox 360, no Blueray or even an upscaling DVD player and there just isn’t that much HD TV available, even if you pay Sky’s £10 monthly premium for their HD service. And besides, I’m even a little underwhelmed by the performance of some sets when they’ve got an HD source.

Perhaps standard definition just isn’t the strong point of the software in the LCD sets. After all, software’s pretty much the only differentiator between brands, particularly when one company produces a huge chunk of all the world’s LCD screens. And yes, LCD displays never do particularly well when displaying an image not in their native resolution. But I’m not expecting to watch a 625 line image on a 54 inch. I just want what I have now: a non-pixelated, non-jerky, crisp image on a screen around 30 inches. I’m quite happy to have a CRT, if there really is no way an LCD screen can handle those modest requirements.

So, I’ve bought a 28 inch JVC CRT TV from the Dixons website for £150. The one that’s turned up is buggered – purple strip in the middle of the screen, image pin-cushioned – but, assuming the replacement works, I feel as though I’ve been lucky to grab one of the last opportunities to buy a TV that can actually handle standard definition inputs.

I’ve signed up for Entanet‘s part of the BT 21CN trial, So, soon BT will turn up and install a line that’s hooked up to their new pure IP network. I get a 24 Mbit broadband connection and £50 of calls per quarter.

Those in the trial pay nothing but can choose to continue the service – for an as yet undecided fee – at the end of the trial.

You probably haven’t come across Enta before. I only know them because they’re reasonably local to Wolverhampton and I’d always assumed they were a small-scale ADSL reseller and web host, with a sideline in voice telecoms. So, I’m kinda surprised to see them as the only non-BT ISP in this 21CN trial.

You can apply for the trial by emailing 21cn@entagroup.com. Someone from Vivaciti – new to me – will then give you further details. The catch is that you have to be in the catchment of one of the trial exchanges. If you’re in Wolverhampton, you need to be connected to the Penn exchange. Other exchanges are across the West Midlands and include:

Burntwood, Castle Bromwich, Central (Birmingham?), Chelmsley Wood, Edgbaston, Halesowen, Sheldon, Stechford, Victoria and Wood Gate.

You can find out what your local exchange is on the excellent SamKnows site.

After nearly four years, I’m switching away from Bloglines.

I am tired of the – usually – small but always annoying problems I encounter with each use of Bloglines. From timeouts, through their awful “we’ve got the plumber in” maintenance screen, to the increasingly frequent Apache error pages, it is now more hassle to use Bloglines than it is to find an alternative.

Of course, I don’t have to look far. Google provide my work and personal email, let me edit documents wherever I have a net connection and help me plan road journeys; oh, the search is pretty good too. The important thing, though, is that I don’t remember having felt particularly let down by any Google app. Downtime is very rare and errors are handled in such a way that I continue to have confidence in the service.

Google Reader looks good so far. A quick OPML download from Bloglines – glad to see they offer that – and an import into Google Reader mean that I have all my subscriptions. It also appears that the UI is much improved on its days as a Google Labs project.

Starting on Friday 27th July I’ll be presenting a new weekly show on WCR FM.

From 7pm to 8pm I’ll cover what’s going on in Wolverhampton politics and also look at the wider political scene from a Wolverhampton perspective. Each week I’ll have a couple of studio guests, interviews, debate and reports from around the city.

I’m going to take a fairly broad view of what counts as politics; it’s not going to be party political yawn-inducing tribalism. Of course, politicians will be on there: Wolverhampton South West MP Rob Marris is a guest on 7th September, for example.

I think Wolverhampton deserves a show that scrutinises the city’s politicians, that has an open debate about different ways of doing things and that represents the broad sweep of opinion and life in the city.

Some names familiar to readers of this website will pop up, too: Jono will be on to talk about free software and Stuart will be talking about digital rights.

If you’re in Wolverhampton, you can get WCR FM on 101.8 FM. Alternatively, you can listen to a live stream from the WCR FM website and I’ll be making the show available as a podcast from www.wolverhamptonpolitics.co.uk

So remember: 7pm – 8pm UK time on 27th July! There’ll be a phone-in each week too – 01902 57 22 57

Wolverhampton City Council collects glass, paper, metal and garden waste in its kerbside recycling collection.

Note: not plastic or cardboard.

A few weeks back, I asked one of Wolverhampton’s Conservative councillors why there was no kerbside collection for plastic and cardboard. Apparently, he told me, the ruling Labour group were planning to introduce it in the next few weeks.

According to The Stirrer, though, we might have a longer wait, citing an additional cost of £500,000 (presumably annually) to fund the service. The reason? Well, The Stirrer makes the suggestion that the cost is linked to Wolverhampton’s municipal incinerator. Plastic burns well and generates lots of electricity, so says the article. Recycle that plastic, rather than send it into the already sweet air of the city, and the council loses money from electricity generation.

£500,000 is roughly 1.25% of the council’s annual budget. In a city where – as I understand it – only 10% of households actually pay council tax and the council has long had a reputation for financial incompetence, that’s a lot of money.

I’ll have a dig around to see if I can find out anything more concrete.

Update 27.07.2007: See the comments for Political Penguin’s stats on council tax in Wolverhampton. I’ve been unable to get corroboration for the 10% figure and so please disregard it. I still think it’s an interesting question: should we recycle plastic or burn it for energy?

This year’s LugRadio Live is going to be the best yet. Everyone knows that

As usual, we have an exhibition space. This year we want the exhibition to be about doing things. So, hardware hacking, video production, ancient games consoles ready to play, crocheting penguins.

We already have some cool ideas lined up. My favourite so far is a green screen vox-pop stand, where people can record their thoughts about the event, complete with comedy background.

So, if you’ve got something cool you want to do in the LRL exhibition space, email show@lugradio.org. If you wanna run a standard exhibition stand, send us the details too!

Best. Newspaper. Story. Evah.

Westmorland Gazette: Chair destroyed.

LugRadio listener, Munk3h, has created a Wikipedia page about me. I mention it only because of this fantastic phrase:

“LugRadio podcast presenter providing a joe bloggs approach to topics of conversation”

Thanks Munk3h

Update 31.03.07: As I suspected, I’m not notable enough to have a Wikipedia page It’s gone now.

I bought a set top box at Christmas. The shop (Argos) wanted my name, address and postcode to pass to the TV licensing authorities.

Initially, I refused. I have a TV licence, I believe the TV licence is the least bad way to fund the BBC. Out of principle, though, I don’t see why Capita – the private firm that runs TV Licensing – or Argos should be able to demand my details for buying a piece of entertainment equipment.

In a rush, and with a hundred other Chrismas-related things to do, I gave my address and forgot about it.

Today, I received a warning from Capita/TV Licensing. They tell me when and where I bought the “television receiving equipment” and that, unless I ring to tell them that I already have a licence, their enforcement officers will visit me.

In the UK, each address at which TV receiving equipment is used must have a TV licence. Ours is in my wife’s name. Capita appear to check their retailer-provided information on both the name and address, so haven’t found that we are actually licensed.

The tone of the letter is threatening whilst, somehow, managing to weave out of accusing me directly. They tell me it’s illegal to watch or record TV without a licence. They say that, if I need to, I should buy a licence.

Why are they being so vague, when all they need to do is check their database? They even want me to phone them (on an 0870 number) to say that this address is already licensed.

I want to be awkward. If they can’t use their own database properly, yet still want to threaten me with fines and court appearances, I want to put them to the trouble of sending their heavies over, so I can show them our licence. I’ve done nothing wrong.

My new job involves some travelling. International mobile roaming rates are laughably high. VOIP, of course, works anywhere with a decent net connection.

I’ve never had any luck with Ekiga. For some reason, whenever I try to make a call through my Sipgate account, I’m given a “Security check failed” message, even though inbound calls are fine. A quick check in the Ubuntu repositories revealed Twinklephone.

It’s a QT app, so it doesn’t precisely share the look and feel of my Gnome desktop but … it works. It sits quietly on the taskbar until a call comes in or I want to make one and I can talk to people with it. So, it’ll be ideal for use with my laptop and, even better, I can save some electricity by unplugging the PAP2 and using it on my desk PC.