Damp Works

Ah, Mes Amis I have been away for far too long, yet again. I had hoped to write an update yesterday, but the ancient office IT declined an invitation to engage in conversation with the internet until late afternoon. This in no way justifies my long silence; I have had access to the web pretty much constantly in the meantime, but I just haven’t got around to writing.

So, where have we got up to?

We have just had a fortnight off work, during which we have had work done to the Gin Palace. We knew, when we moved in, that there were a few minor spots of damp, but over the past three years or so, these seem to have got worse, what with the wet winters and rising water table, so we bit the bullet and brought in contractors to hack off a load of plaster in the living room and inject a load of gooey stuff into the walls to provide an artificial damp course.

This has now been done, but we are leaving the top skim of plaster until the spring a) to recharge our finances and b) to be able to monitor whether or not the walls stay properly dry in the event of prolonged rain without mucking up any redecorating. Our neighbours too, are having a huge amount of building work done over the next six months, so having the bare render showing will enable us to keep an eye out for any consequent cracking in the walls arising from that work (though I have to say that the builders have been exceptionally considerate and helpful in the first couple of weeks of work so far.

In tandem with the damp proofing, we have also had a French Drain dug around the front of the house to take water away from the foundations. Hopefully, the two measures together will allow the Gin Palace to remain dry and damp-free for many years to come.

The upshot of all this is that we spent a large portion of the fortnight we were off either hiding from workmen upstairs, or cleaning and tidying the place. It’s the wrong end of the year for a spring clean, but that’s what it got.

With the work going on next door, we have additional, if temporary, easy access to the side of the conservatory that abuts number 65, so we have also sanded and re-covered the woodwork with preservative since when the building work is completed I shall have to hire someone substantially skinnier than me to get into the gap to do the work. Actually, I think there will be more space than that statement suggests, but nonetheless, it would have been silly to ignore the opportunity.

All this, plus a little desultory gardening, has filled our fortnight as has some questing on Warcaft.

It was a holiday, but not as we’d know it, Jim.

Mobile Telephony

After some months of dithering, I have acquired a new Smartphone. When my contract with O2 ran out in June I let it ride, beguiled with the possibilities as they seemed at the time, of a new iPhone 6, or at least mouth-watering 5S or the much-rumoured ‘budget’ 5C.

Well, big fan as I am of iPhones in particular and Apple in general, I was solidly underwhelmed by the new phones when they were finally launched. The 5C is clearly NOT a ‘low-cost’ product, it is simply a price rise in the iPhone 5 kept down by increasing the plastic content and branding it as a feature. It’s a nice phone to be sure, but it is horribly overpriced for a product that effectively makes a virtue out of stagnation.

The 5S is another beautiful piece of engineering, but the prime advances are not ones that appeal to me – at least for the next few years. I do not want a phone with a fingerprint scanner in it. I daresay the day will come when I have no option, but by then they will hopefully be more reliable and unhackable (unlike the ‘unhackable’ iPhone 5S which was hacked within 48 hours of launch by some enterprising Germans). Similarly, the 64 bit architecture may be the future, but I do not feel up to the task of being an early adopter. Let it bed in for a couple of years.

On top of all this, the price is unbelievable, both for the phones themselves and for the 4G tariffs that accompany them. Once again, 4G may be the future, but right now, coverage is limited and frankly, the so-called contract ‘deals’ are largely daylight robbery.*

The upshot is that I have, after a little over 4 years of iPhone use, during which time we have re-equipped the Gin Palace with many items Apple, I have gone Android for my new phone (as, subsequently, has Furtle). In a couple of years time, when I am again looking to upgrade, I shall look closely at what Apple are offering at that time – probably the iPhone 6S by then – but they will have to seriously up their game either in product or price (or both) to tempt me back. I accept that they see their iPhones as premium products demanding premium prices, but frankly I was struggling to reconcile that approach with the iPhone 5 and failed completely with the iPhone 5C. The iPhone 5S is undoubtedly a premium phone, but packed with features I do not, as yet, require or desire.

So. Where did I end up?

For once, I did a fair amount of research, which is rather unusual for me insofar as purchasing phones goes. I looked briefly at the Nexus 5, I hovered over the Sony Experia and the Nokia Lumia. All perfectly serviceable phones (though I have to say that the Nokia’s dependence on Windows skewed me against it, for the simple reason that their app store is so far behind the big two). Given the glowing reports from friends, I was (and am) much attracted to the Samsung Galaxy S4 and for a while it looked as though I might go for that. A friend suggested that he’d heard good things about the HTC One and as chance would have it, I had the opportunity to examine one in the flesh as it were.

A couple of Sundays ago, Furtle and I met mathcathy in East Ham for drinks and dinner and it transpires that she has an HTC One, so I blagged a quick look. I was very much impressed by the styling and the tooling; it is a very well engineered phone and made largely of aluminium, rather than backed with plastic. Cathy’s is a silver finish and I have to say that I coveted it very much. Subsequent research confirmed my thoughts and this weekend just gone, I acquired one -though in black – I may be the only person in the country to have bought it in black.

I bought the phone outright for once and took out a 12 month sim-only contract. And yes, it’s 4G, but I only got the 4G because it happened to be the day that O2 were launching it and there was a reasonable deal to be had. As long as I don’t stray out of London, Bradford or Leeds (!) I have 4G, though I understand wider coverage is expected soon.

As of last night I have managed to wrangle a number of custom ringtones onto the device and I am enjoying it hugely. The only annoyance (and what is the point of a new phone if you can’t get annoyed with it?) is that I do not seem to be able to find a setting that will put my apps in alphabetical order (though if I view them in “Airdroid”, that will display them like that) by default.

As it happens, Furtle, spurred by the increasing failure of her ancient iPhone 3 and possibly by my acquisition, has just upgraded too. She has gone for the Nokia Lumia, which is rather cheaper, but still a very nice phone. She is less addicted to fancy apps and general Smartphone use than am I, so the smaller range of available apps is not so much of an issue for her as I would have found it.

We are now both set up for the next couple of years, giving Apple time to produce something that might tempt us back to the fold…




*That said, ellefurtle and I seem to be very much in the minority holding this view