Harry's Blog

I've never tried using a Kindle electronic book reader. As they aren't backlit I doubt I'd use one - I tend to read ebooks in bed with the lights off, so wifey can sleep.

But thankfully Amazon offers free Kindle apps for Android, PC and Apple devices. Thus you can read in the dark on your iPod Touch or HTC Desire.

Now the truth be told as an ebook reading app Kindle does leave something to be desired in terms of features. For example the iPod version doesn't let you change the screen brightness - but the Android version does.

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I must admit that I've fallen out of love with photography this year. Being busy with our new addition (the wonderful baby Will) limited my time for the hobby and over time I've become somewhat disillusioned with it. It's not helped that none of my recent pictures have been any good and people have told me so. You need some encouragement to keep up with learning a new hobby - when you get the opposite it can take the wind from your sails.

To be honest if wifey would let me I'd probably put my DSLR on Ebay tomorrow because I'd rather the cash than something I didn't really use. I've been considering selling the DSLR and just relying on my SLR film camera. I've sold one 1.6x crop lens today and have another I could sell. Leaving my best lens for the film camera.

Would that be mad? Probably. Though would fit in my long term goal of buying a full frame DSLR should my love of the hobby return. I'm just starting to feel the love coming back. Not from playing with my very expensive DSLR, no, by messing around with the Vignette app on my new phone and using my film SLR.

Taken with Vignette on a HTC Desire phone.

Can any of you lend me a grand? See Canon has just announced the EOS 7D camera and I'm lusting after it.

What is clear is that the Canon EOS 7D is replete with features, many of which seem like a fulfillment of an enthusiast checklist. Other features are clear responses to just about every corner of the digital SLR market, features that are heretofore only seen on one or two cameras from Nikon, Pentax, Sony, Olympus, and even Canon's Rebel line. The end result is that much of what Canon users may have admired in other cameras is now available in the Canon 7D. - imaging-resource.com

Any of you want to buy a Canon EOS 50D and battery grip?

The Cowon S9 32GB is without doubt the best music player I've owned. Previously I had an iRiver Clix 2 4GB that I was very happy with as it combined good sound quality with the ability to read books. I've also got a Creative Zen 32GB which was great as I could get my entire CD collection on it. However the Zen didn't have a book reader.

I began shopping around for a player with a 32GB capacity but also a good book reader. Sound quality was the major factor and after reading many reviews I settled on the S9. I'm really glad I did.

The sound quality is excellent, both through my CX300 in ear phones and my PX100 open phones. The battery life is outstanding and the screen is amazing. It's a delight to watch movies on and TV programmes downloaded from BBC iPlayer.

The book reader is very good too - making it very easy and pleasurable to listen to music and read at the same time. The radio reception is the best I've had in any music player I've owned.

The user interface is very good indeed and tweaked via the freely available CLAW UCI it's even better. My only criticism of the player is that it uses a propriety USB cable rather than a regular mini plug. But that's no big deal. All in all I'm thrilled with the S9.

If you're in the market for a touchscreen music player with good format support, excellent sound quality, an amazing AMOLED screen and super video playback (including BBC iPlayer support) then the S9 is the player to go for.

This isn't my Cowon S9 32GB review. You've probably noticed that from the title. It was meant to be though. I just haven't finished that yet. Along the way though I picked up Fiio's wonderful little E5 headphone amplifier and I thought I'd post this mini review to tell you all about it.

But first, why on earth would you need an amplifier for your MP3¹ player?

There are several reasons. Firstly the headphone amp in many personal music players is cheap, nasty and the last thing on the mind of the designers of what might be otherwise an excellent quality PMP. Some lack power, meaning that even on small headphones you have to crank up the volume to hear in a noisy location but the result is distorted sound. Also small rechargeable personal music players - even the very good ones - aren't designed to be able to power massive audiophile headphones with an impedance of 300ohms.

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Trying to achieve anything with Vodafone customer services is like trying to wrestle a Vaseline-coated snake while wearing as Teflon gimp suit.

But after two weeks of trying the snake is finally back in the box, so to speak.

Here's a tip for you if you need anyone at Vodafone to show they give even the merest shit about your problem. Don't phone regular customer service, talk to the cancellations department instead. If they think their money-teat is going to go dry they'll be much more helpful.

Looks like our obscure village in Dorset will be on Google Streetview before too long. And given I was just stood at the window pointing my camera at the car I may end up online too.

You wouldn't believe the hassle we've had since moving house trying to get broadband.

Yes we now live in quite a rural location. But we're on a new build estate that apparently has superb cabling around it to enable fast internet access.

So what happened to our order for Broadband?

• BT cancelled our first two orders without telling me.
• Order three I was assured would be fine as they'd remove a tag on our line. This didn't happen.
• Another phone call to BT and the tag was removed. We ordered broadband again.
• We got a phonecall saying we couldn't have broadband at all at this location.

Now when I switch on my wireless here all I can see are about ten BT home hubs. So someone at BT has no idea what's going on here. The village seems to be in some records black hole for the company. It was the location of an experiment to bring broadband to rural areas a few years ago and clearly someone didn't tell the rest of BT.

Anyway we wonder what the heck to do next. I've already been working several weeks on dial up and it's driving me mental. We consider actually moving house again.

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You probably won't want to watch this video if you're easily offended by the word "fuck" or have no sense of humour.

It's been something of a stressful week. First there was the issue of whether the Anglican Church actually was actually compassionate and decent enough to pay Maternity Allowance¹.

Then our ISP Tiscali managed to lose Denmark. As the site I edit for my job resides on servers across the North Sea this was rather problematic. Technical support, which of course is nothing of the kind, wasn't very helpful, offering the usual "turn your pc on and off again." In the end I just went to bed with the hope that things would be working in the morning and I wouldn't lose my job. Thankfully Denmark had been rediscovered by Tiscali by then.

But as you can imagine I didn't fancy going through that kind of turmoil again. So I ordered business mobile broadband from Vodafone. It turned up yesterday and didn't work. The express card seemed fine but the sim card was clearly broken.

Thus began a Kafkaesque trial on the phone to Vodafone. To say this company had shitty customer services is an understatement of massive proportions. They were quite astonishingly poor. I was transferred around seven times.

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We had a note put through the door the other day warning of a particular scam. It involved being told you had a parcel to collect and to phone a certain number, a premium rate number.

This is not a current scam, it was briefly active in 2005 and was quickly stamped on by authorities. Even when active the warning email was wrong. Yes the scam involved getting you to phone a premium rate line. But this was charged at £1.50 minute, there was no instant £15 connection charge as the warning states.

Unfortunately warnings of the scam are being spread once again. I can completely understand why helpful people would warn others of this. But please don't pass it on yourself, because it's not true anymore.

Click through from a statement regarding this scam from the premium phone line regulatory body which you should give to anyone spreading the scare story.

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Well the work CMS is on the fritz this morning so that gives me a little time to waffle here. I've got my mind on so many different, yet minor, things that I wonder where to start.

I've got to pack a few things as we're off to Dorset for a few days, a nice long break until Monday. There's a holiday feeling in our house probably due to going away for a bit longer than usual and because we're getting to run off for an evening of luxury away from the twins on Friday night.

The weekend also brings a chance for me to point my camera at some interesting things. I'm particularly looking forward to doing so because I've read and learned quite a few new techniques and lessons since I last had some attractive scenery to photograph. I've got all my camera gear packed up and ready to go.

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Like many blokes I do rather have a love for technology - and it is after all part and parcel of my career¹. Which means that if anyone actually wants to watch something on TV here they have to wade through a ridiculous collection of controls.

Connected to our HDTV are a Tiscali set top box², Sony DVD/surround system, PlayStation 3 60GB and Xbox 360 Elite. To complicate things further three of these reach the TV via a HDMI splitter box and reach the surround system via an optical cable splitter.

And we don't watch DVDs on the DVD player, oh no. That would be far too simple. We watch DVDs via the PlayStation 3 as it upscales very well. So to watch a DVD you have to make sure the HDMI splitter and surround switcher are routing the PS3 output correctly and then you've got the TV on the HDMI channel.

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Now how is this for cool? A fire extinguisher powered by two MiG-21 engines. I shit you not.