artiss.blog

Category: Life

Random thoughts on life

  • Moving House

    Moving House

    No, not mine. My eldest daughter, and her fiancee, have bought their first house! They’ve been renting until now so a house of their own, on a newly built estate is exciting.

    They have a while of rental left on the old property, allowing them to slowly move. However, getting carpets put in the new house has held things up and they’re still waiting for one for the living room. With the clock ticking they couldn’t wait any longer. I’d always said I’d go and help out – despite them not living nearby – and I was called up on Saturday to see if I could go and help them, 2 days later, on Monday and Tuesday.

    Thankfully, I have a very understanding and flexible employer and I was able to do this without any issue at all.

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  • Changing email

    Changing email

    For various reasons I’ve changed my email address. For people, this could happen for various reasons – a change to a vanity domain, moving email providers or loss of access for some reason.

    When this happens, you’re left with a mountain of online accounts, which you now need to change. In my case, because I use a password manager, it was easy to identify the accounts, so I set out to do it. As well as password change I’ve taken the opportunity to get accounts closed that I no longer use (and, for retail sites, I have no order history). However, it’s all been made incredibly tricky by a large number of sites with bizarre rules or, simply, a lack of functionality.

    Let me take you through what I found…

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  • Ford Puma: How to reduce DAB interference from rear dashcams

    Ford Puma: How to reduce DAB interference from rear dashcams

    If you have a rear dashcam fitted to your Ford car then they seem prone, particularly on the new Puma’s, to causing interference with the DAB reception. In the case of the Puma, this is because of the location of the DAB antenna.

    I had my dashcam fitted by Halfords who did a great job but the interference was terrible, making digital radio pretty much unusable. I took it back a couple of times and, each time, they got it a little better. But I was still unhappy so took things into my own hands and did some experimenting. As a result I’ve got it better still – not perfect, but better.

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  • Selling Boxes

    Selling Boxes

    Have you seen those news stories where somebody has bought the latest Xbox from eBay for an incredible bargain price and it turned out just to be the box?

    I always wondered why anyone would sell a box for legitimate reasons until such a time that I wanted to – I bought my wife a used iPhone earlier in the year and I wanted to put it in a genuine box to, well, present it better. And I turned to eBay and found such a box.

    And that got me thinking. I had a cupboard full of Apple product boxes – I could make some money from selling these. I’d love to say it’s going well, but it’s not.

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  • On THAT notch

    On THAT notch

    The amazing new MacBook Pro’s are here and for reasons that I find bizarre, the notch at the top seems to be attracted all the attention.

    Not the blistering performance. Not the amazing new screen quality. Or the return of a MagSafe power connector and numerous useful ports.

    But a notch.

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