Ron Sexsmith - Long Player Late Bloomer

Now, to my shame, I hadn't really taken any notice of Ron here before I saw a recent documentary about him on BBC4. The programme was in fact about the man himself and the making of this album, which I ordered the very next day, so impressed was I.

The saying goes, you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, and this really applies to Ron, who just doesn't look the part. What's more, seeing him during the recording process you would never expect him to come up with the stuff he does. Shame on me. He's fantastic. His singing is great, his song writing is better, he seems like a thoroughly decent chap adrift in a world that expects artists to be extroverts and usually a pain in the arse. He is neither, and that's really appealing. To me anyway

The music on offer here is gentle. It's beautifully produced by a chap who 'got' Ron and made the most of him, Bob Rock. Maybe it's a little too gentle in places, there's very little edge to any of the tunes, though the lyrics are exceptionally interesting.

If you've never listened to Ron, I'd give him a go... I know I got the album weeks ago and it's growing on me each time I play it, always better than the other way around.

Very highly recommended, 9/10, you could buy it here.

Fasthost "Support" - Laughable!

And of course by putting the word "Support" in quotes in my title, I am indeed, as you'd expect, implying that Support is the very last thing they seem to actually provide.

I've been using Fasthosts for my own and my client's hosting for many a long year now. I've paid them a fair few bob over the years, and I've brought them new customers, in my capacity as a self employed web developer, (see www.xledev.co.uk). Up until very recently, this has been a fairly stable and satisfactory symbiotic(ish) relationship, and I've happily sung their praises to anyone who was interested. But it's all gone Pete Tong recently, because I've had troubles, and with these troubles has come the requirement to contact their Support department. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

I won't bang on, because if you search the web you'll find many examples of annoyed people who've fallen foul of Fasthosts in one way or another, but I can give you a couple of amusing examples, and a little advice.

There are two ways you can approach them, by phone or by email. By phone costs you money, and a great deal of time. Eventually you might get through to someone, but in my experience they will sound a very very long way away. They will be quiet, and there will be an annoying delay on the line, and though I totally admire people who have gained any sort of fluency I another language... I can't help but feel they don't really understand half of what you're telling them. When what you're telling them is technically complex, this can be, ah, problematical.

Then there's email. Email is quicker for you to actually create, but it is eye-wateringly long-winded to get anywhere. They never reply quicker than 24 hours, and often take longer. Their first reply is always just that, a reply, no effort having been made to solve anything. They will ask you for some more information. 24 hours will pass. In my experience, the next response will be from someone who has not actually read your email properly, it will be a knee jerk reaction, and it will probably imply that you are at fault. Reply, 24 hours pass. You might break through the drone wall at this point and get through to someone who actually understands what you want... maybe. They may help at this point, or they may ask for more info. You'll notice that a week has nearly passed. Eventually you might get it sorted, and they might gently apologise.

One example recently, was that when developing pages using ASP, their new hosting was not returning error messages, just a general purpose page which told you nothing. I made a page with an error on it, and called it "deliberate-error.asp" in order that they could see what I was on about. After three days of getting this across to them I received a message from them saying that the page I had given them had an error in it, and perhaps I should fix it myself! Doh!

I tried hard to lay off the sarcasm in my reply, because I reckon it may have been lost completely on this 'support' operative who, I imagine, was "not from round here".

I am currently locked out of my account, because when I log on I'm told that a transaction I instigated (I didn't) has failed due to a problem with the payment (it's a free option and is trying to take a payment of exactly £0.00). It says I should either update my payment method (I can't as it won't let me in to do so) or Cancel. When I click Cancel a message comes up saying it's "Unable To Cancel". Checkmate.

The support phone call I made about this suggested I should email in for support, as they didn't understand what I meant. I emailed in four days ago and am yet to get a response worth having.

Advice. Only ring them if it's not your own phone bill and you've nothing worth doing for an hour or so. If you email them, try and tell them absolutely everything about your account, including FTP details and password, cos that will save you at least one 24 hour cycle. Never type too much in the email to support as they clearly stop reading after the first sentence.

Finally, probably, use 1&1 for you hosting.

Fasthosts, as my teenage son would say : "Epic Fail!"

Arriva - Please Keep Your Distance

Last week I was merrily rattling along in my car on the old school run, all was right with the world, I was in quite a good mood (for me). I was doing about 50mph along a straight bit of road in excellent visibility, when from a side road emerged a coach. I'm not sure, but I'm guessing the driver didn't even look in my direction, and he certainly ignored the Give Way sign staring him in the face.

He pulled straight out in front of me, causing me to brake violently. His smoking pile of junk then proceeded to accelerate at snails pace, belching toxic smoke, onward towards his next victim no doubt.

I avoided running right up the back of him by a few feet, and as I pulled back from him I glanced up at the neon display on the rear of this abomination. I was close enough to read through the grime, "62". For verily there is only one bus goes down this particular road, and it is indeed the 62. But there was more... the 62 disappeared and a message came up in its place. I approached closer to read it, ironically. "KEEP YOUR DISTANCE" it said.

My good mood shattered, I was stuck behind this flickering message for quite a long while, long enough for me to mull over some thoughts about this sign.

First and foremost of course, I heartily wished I could comply with this instruction, and keep a distance so great I would never have to see it again.

Secondly, just exactly what is "Your Distance", i.e. my distance, and what if my distance was about a foot... would that be okay? I suspect not.

Thirdly, which sad sack of bones sat down in his or her office at the Arriva HQ and thought to themselves, what on earth can we do now we've got these dot matrix signs for the bus numbers? Shall we flash up interesting info, like the time? (no! then they'd know we're running late!) or maybe a happy message like "Have a nice day" or "Sorry our antiquated piece of crap is holding you up"... No.

No... then inspiration came... "KEEP YOUR DISTANCE"... that's what we'll say to them. Ha ha!

Arriva, do us all a favour and just say "62" on your sign. That's all we really need to know. Thanks for the advise about the distance thing, but really, just a "62" will do.

Kate Rusby - Make the Light

It is now a few years since I last reviewed a Kate Rusby album (see here), during which time, as I understand it, she's become a mum and put out a Christmas album, which I have to admit I've not bothered with. Bah Humbug... Christmas, thank the lord it's over. Anyway.

This album is, unlike her previous work, self-penned. Not being an avid reader of sleeve notes these days (due in no small part to how small the bloomin' writing is on the darn things) I would not have known this if I hadn't read it elsewhere. The songs sound just the same as they usually do. Which is, of course, quite excellent. I could bang on about each individual track, but in fact they all merge together into a wonderful calming glorious whole, leaving you with about 50 minutes of peace and tranquillity in an otherwise noisy and discordant world.

Having been a rock fan all my life, this sort of stuff should not impress me. But it does. Greatly. My previous purchase was some old noisy tosh from Them Crooked Vultures, which should be more my cup of tea given the participating artistes, but it leave me cold. Rusby leaves me warm, which is just what you want in our current icy climate. I think I'm on the change. Nurse! The screens!

Very highly recommended, 9/10, you could buy it here.

Microsoft Small Basic vs Roblox

Can I commend to you a piece of software from Microsoft... how often do you get to say that? It's called Small Basic, and it's a free download.

I've been on the lookout for a programming language to encourage my 12 year old son Josh to get started on turning into a mini-version of me. I guess some dads, frustrated Wayne Rooneys, buy a football and march their kids out into the middle of a wet field. Me, I just want him to grasp the fundamentals of programming, especially as he wants one day to work for Media Molecule and develop Little Big Planet 8 or whatever. I've not had a lot of success up to now, but this Small Basic is excellent, and after me showing him a quick demo program last evening, I couldn't prise him off it to go to bed. A breakthrough.

There are very few icons cluttering up the toolbar, and the whole process is very simple. You type code into one window, with an excellent IntelliSense system in place to help remember syntax, then hit Run and either a text window or a graphic window (or both) opens up and you get to see the results immediately.

It's entirely feasible to write little games like Snake and Breakout with this system, and there are plenty of examples on the Net to look at and learn from. Notably, the language uses a 'Turtle' to draw on the graphics screen, which I think is a Logo language like construct to make graphics a little more fun. It works, he loved it.

The beautiful simplicity (and relevance - the code looks like real Visual Basic) of Simple Basic is in stark contrast to my experience using the scripting language associated with Roblox. Now, you may not have come across Roblox, but it is an on-line game based on a Lego-like world. If you have children and they haven't heard of Roblox either, I would advise you don't tell them. Roblox, IMHO, is heroin for children. It is highly addictive. My lad has been on it for 12 months now, and shows no sign of getting bored with it, despite the fact it looks, to an adult, fairly dull and badly rendered. All I can add is that he had the briefest of dalliances with World of Warcraft recently, which appears interesting and looks marvellous - but did not stick at it more than a couple of months. I couldn't afford the fees for both, so he had to choose, and he chose Roblox in an instant.

One possible saving grace (for me) for Roblox is that it has a scripting language. Great, I thought, I'll get the little blighter into programming with that! But could I get it to work, could I coconuts. I'm a software developer of 30 years experience - and I could not get it working. Obviously some people can... maybe I'm being dense, but as an intro to programming it sucks, and I would advise against it.

Just while I'm ranting against Roblox, can I mention something? Roblox cost money to play, fair enough. But it has a currency that is vital to the kids enjoyment of the game. This currency costs real money too - not a lot, but it adds up over the months. If you were clever enough to write a good script, or you design a good costume or a game level, you can sell it to others in the Roblox community. That seems okay, you could reduce your gaming costs by being a bit clever. But even if you do, Roblox takes a percentage cut on all deals! You're enhancing their system by adding good content, and they still screw you for some cash for doing it. This is for kids remember. Humph.

Ahem.

The page for downloading Small Basic is currently here though I guess that might change. Highly Recommended.