artiss.blog

Blog

  • Ikea and the art of furniture assembly

    I’ve been off work this week – hence the lack of blogs. And I’ve been building the Ikea furniture that was delivered. Oh, it’s been fun. My hands and knees are raw, but it’s done.

    The dresser took me 4 hours yesterday. 4 long, frustrating hours. Whoever designed the system of putting the feet on that dressers needs shooting.

    But not everything was their fault. I built it in the living room as the dining room was already pretty full – the intention was to move it into the dining room once done. What could go wrong? Well, maybe the opening between the two rooms isn’t as tall as the dresser. Doh!

    Anyway, it’s all done now. My computer is now in a corner of the dining room. All I’m lacking is a sturdy shelf – I bought one from Ikea but I don’t think it will take enough weight.

    Now I’m off to buy some telephone cables… at the moment my broadband connection is relying on an extension reel run casually through the middle of the living room 😉

  • WordPress goes widescreen

    Well, my blog has. Yes, I’ve added an extra column to it.

    I thought the information down the left hand side was getting a little long. The further down the screen it goes, the less chance of it being read. So I’ve split it into 2 and divided it onto both sides of the page. The left hand side is for information about me. The right hand side is for information about the blog.

    And it’s still XHTML compliant.

    But in doing so I found a problem with my Simple Wakoopa List plugin – when displaying “newly used” software the links don’t work properly. After having a bit of a fumble about, it would appear the problem is the feed from Wakoopa rather than my plugin – it doesn’t appear the supply them in certain circumstances. A quick fix would be to not display a link if one is not forthcoming from the XML feed. However, just after I wrote the plugin, Wakoopa launched a new API – my plan, therefore, is to move to this. The one downside, though, is that I can’t find an equivalent of “newly used” with the new system. So I’ve contacted Wakoopa. As soon as I get a response I’ll code a fix.

  • That was weird

    Apologies if you the previous post appeared to appear and disappear like a broken Tardis, but I suddenly have problems with WordPress.

    In particular, after finely crafting that last piece, I kept getting the error “Fatal error: Call to undefined function mb_substr()” when trying to edit the post. No others, just that one.

    As much as I’d loved to have spent all night trying to find the exact byte that was the cause, I didn’t. But, weirdly, I think it was to do with the original title – “Updating the BIOS on an Acer Aspire One”. A little bit of title changing and it appeared to be accepted. Of course, I could be way off the mark.

    But it took a lot of editing and chopping about to get it all to work.

    I have come across one item on Google Search that appears related to Search Unleashed. Coincidence?

    Update: I should have followed that link a little further – it’s a known bug in Search Unleashed.

  • Ikea Home Delivery

    With a lot of room changes to make (you know, moving the computer to the dining room, starting a nursery, etc) we visited our local Ikea last night. In total we spent… erm, quite a bit, and it’s seriously drained our savings.

    We’d visited a few weeks ago and planned what we would buy to make last nights trip as quick and easy as possible.

    It was always our intention to arrange a home delivery as many of the items were bulky and over-sized for my small car. However, after looking in their catalogue and on their website we weren’t much the wiser as to how you were supposed to arrange it. About the only thing we found out was that you pay for the items at the usual checkout and then take it to a special home delivery area. Ok. But do we pay for delivery at the checkout? We weren’t sure. I asked his particular question at the checkout and I was told we paid for it separately, when arranging the delivery. I was obviously not sure and by this time I had 3 unwieldy trolleys.

    Eventually we get to the home delivery area. They ask for our postcode. Then they tell us it will be delivered next day. Oh, ok, that’s not possible as no-one will be at home. Can we have it next week (I’m off work)? It’s at THIS point that we’re told that it costs £10 a night to store it. Excuse me? Yep, with no choice but to pay it, I stump up – delivery is on Saturday. We’d paid for the items so we could either pay up, take them home then (which wasn’t an option) or get them all refunded and come and do the whole thing again another day. I felt like I’d been mugged.

    Anyway, I contacted Ikea. I was very friendly and explained what happened and suggested that they should have better explanations of how the process works. Today I received a prompt reply.

    Hej Mr Artiss,

    Thank you for your e-mail enquiry.

    First let me offer my sincere apologies for your recent experience. It would appear that you have not received the level of service that both yourself and IKEA would expect.

    I can assure you that IKEA takes customer service very seriously and will continue to employ all possible methods to ensure that the highest standards are achieved and exceeded in the future.

    I would like to thank you for taking the time to write to IKEA and give us your comments. Objective feedback can only help us improve our customer service and your shopping experience.

    I sincerely hope that any future contact with IKEA better reflects our commitment to Customer Service.

    Assuring you of our best attention at all times.

    Sue on behalf of the IKEA Customer Services Team.

    How automated a response does that sound? I’m not impressed.

  • Acer Aspire One

    Acer Aspire One
    Acer Aspire One

    Well, I did it. I’ve made my mind up and purchased a Netbook. And as you can tell from the title, I plumped for an Acer Aspire One – Windows XP, 120GB hard drive, 1GB memory. It’s excellent and the battery and keyboard are better than I expected (in fact, I’m typing this blog entry on the Acer).

    Only downsides found so far – no disks are provided, so there’s no way of restoring Windows  in the case of a drive failure, and there’s an annoying occasional flicker when using it off batteries (it’s a known problem caused by the power drain). But these are minor issues.

    I bought it from Tesco – via Quidco and with my Clubcard to get maximum returns. And, like the picture, I bought the white one. I’ve also ordered a cheap mouse from Play.com and a nice leather case from Proporta.