Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category

After an extensive hiatus, in which it was basically ended but then it turned out that none of the actors really had much to do, Red Dwarf returned with a ninth series in 2009 with Back to Earth. It was disappointing.

Thankfully, when it returned for a full six episode series in 2012, it was much improved. Instead of trying some kind of clever, existential plot, they just made six episoded of The Dwarf, as if nothing had changed. The result is that it worked! Six more classic episodes added to the series, without ruining the legacy.

I needed a new set of in-ear headphones for when I go running. I had recently bought some reasonably priced Sony ones, but they just don’t stay in your ears, so in the end I opted for the Bang & Olufsen A8s as one of the guys in my team has them and says they’re pretty good.

In their defence, they do stay in your ears better than any other pair of headphones I have had. Their piston that moves up and down and swivel loop “thing” means that you can anchor it quite well to you ears.

However, this does mean they’re quite tiresome to put on because every time you do you have to swivel the back out, push them in and then close it again to form a tight fit – useless for in the office when I need to take them off to have a conversation with someone every five or ten minutes.

The sound quality is disappointing too. It’s not that it’s bad, it’s just that for how good you would expect them to be at that price – they’re rubbish. They’re not much better than your run of the mill headphones and arguably the Apple ear pods I got with my iPhone produce a better sound. Definitely not worth the money.

Recently, a new lunch place specialising in jacket potatoes opened across the road from our office, named Jackpots.

I tried it out last week, though I wasn’t overly impressed. The potato was nice and the toppings were OK, but I think a few key problems let them down. First of all, you can’t build your own potato. They have a few toppings you can select a combination of, otherwise you have to go for a “set menu” style. In an age of Subway and Barburrito, it would be much better if they could just lay them all out and you could pick any combination.

Secondly, I don’t think the containers they give them out in. They’re like the noodle boxes you get from Wokon. They do fold out to form a flat surface, but they don’t do this very well and that is equally annoying as it has no edges. Give me an old fashioned takeaway box any day.

Recently, I watched the film The Master, that was released last year.

Overall, I wasn’t that impressed. While it was interesting, I think there are a number of points that let it down.

It’s loosely based on the life of L Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology. Though it is also based on some other works, I don’t really think it would make any sense unless you were familiar with Scientology and its origins.

This really shows in the fact that the plot line doesn’t make much sense. Again, if you’re familiar with the origins of Scientology, then you can see what they have done. But if you’re not, I imagine you would by simply left wondering what was happening and why, when there doesn’t seem to be any apparent reason behind it.

Secondly, nothing really happens in the film. It doesn’t really feel like it’s the story of a man who gets taken in by a cult – because he just walks in there on day one and signs up to everything. It feels like just a series of things happening, with no interesting storyline behind them.

It is worth noting however that the film received almost universal acclaim from the critics – so what do I know.

As a child, I never had a chance. By the time I was 14, soon to discover what an amazing band The Smashing Pumpkins were, they had already split up. But, in 2006, front man Billy Corgan and drummer Jimmy Chamberlin reformed the band with a rotating cast of extras to bring out a new album, Zeitgeist.

Many people weren’t expecting good things, with only two of the original band members together. But this was nieve, as Billy Corgan is so much the heart and soul of the band – indeed, in the early days, Corgan would actually play all of the guitar and bass parts himself, putting Chamberlin’s drums over the top, and ignoring the contribution of the other band members so that the album fitted together the way he wanted.

When Zeitgiest was released in 2007, I wasn’t that impressed though. It was OK, but it didn’t really capture my ears – I’ve listened to it a couple of times since with no strong desire to keep going back to it.

Their new album, Oceania, released last year, is no such disappointment however. Bringing back musical memories of their most successful days, the album is everything you want from a Pumpkins record – dark, soulful, and with a hint of fun.

Last week, we headed down to the new steak house located on the Headrow, Miller & Carter.

Despite having just opened, it was actually relatively quiet. We are able to walk up without a reservation, and I would say only about 30% of the tables were occupied – though there were enough people in there to give it some atmosphere.

Was it the best steak I’ve had in Leeds? No. But George claimed that his was. My personal opinion was that it can’t match the top tier of Blackhouse and Gaucho, but it was still an excellent steak, and certainly not somewhere I would be adverse to going back to.

Ah to be 17 again. Billy Talent were rocking the scene, I was there before they were big, etc, etc.

Now, I’m somewhat older than that, and I would imagine Billy Talent are too because time works like that (on this scale at least). I didn’t expect great things from their fourth studio album, and first not to be self-titled, given their previous albums had been good, but not amazing. But it turns out I was to be pleasantly surprised.

While the screaming of Benjamin Kowalewicz has certainly become greatly toned down as the band have matured, it turns out that they actually have some great music underneath it. My personal favourite so far is Show Me The Way.

Last week, we tried to get Elina’s bank account sorted out. When she originally set up the account with Lloyds TSB, they would only give her a cash card account, which is a weird account that has limited functionality, including not being able to use Link ATMs. They kept saying they could eventually change it, but they never have, despite nagging.

So we went into HSBC as I bank with them and have generally had less bad experiences than other banks. They weren’t too happy about doing it at 2:30pm on a Saturday, but eventually agreed to see us. However, they then moaned that we only had two months of bank statements, not three, and so couldn’t continue. So we stormed out of there.

Next we went to Lloyds TSB and once again asked them if they could upgrade the account. They said that their old system that isn’t 100% accurate said no, they couldn’t give her a real current account, but they couldn’t check for sure as their new system wasn’t working. They couldn’t give us a reason either – just “computer says no”, so we left there too.

The next bank along the street was Natwest who aim to be “Britain’s most Helpful Bank”. That is an admirable aim, but then, when you think about it, it’s really like being “Britain’s most gentle rapist” = admittedly more gentle than other rapists, but still ultimately a dick that abuses everyone who comes near it.

So we decided to skip that one and pop in to Nationwide, who are a building society.

They closed at the same time as HSBC, but were willing to set up the account anyway. Indeed, our account manager Shabana actually kept the branch open for us for an extra half an hour while we sorted everything out! She talked us through all their accounts and they immediately accepted Elina for a proper account.

I was so impressed, that I left with a new current account for myself as well! Of course, time will tell whether they continue to deliver on customer service, but so far it has been an incredibly refreshing experience.

PayPal are quite restrictive over what they think is appropriate and inappropriate uses of their service (ie, they just don’t like certain industries), so if you work in those industries you have to use someone else. Someone like Payza.

Unfortunately, if Payza aren’t a scam operation, they seem to be doing their very best to look like they are.

Earlier this year, AlertPay (the original name of the company) re-named to Payza – because re-naming is always a good sign things are going well. Whenever I have filed support tickets with them it has taken weeks for them to get back to me, and indeed getting verified look literally months!

Elsewhere, there are no shortage of complaints. Google has loads of results for Payza sucks, so much so that the operators of the company even felt the need to start up PayzaSucks.com as a counter site. They also have dozens of complaints registered on the Better Business Bureau .

Then, today, they sent an email round saying that they were stopping all deposits to UK based accounts. It said they would notify us when this was back online, but failed to provide any timescale for this – days, weeks, months, ever? Who can run a business on this? It felt very much like when Fult Tilt poker had their licence suspended and ultimately closed.

If they are a legitimate company, then there are some serious questions that need answering…

• Why does it take them weeks to respond to support requests?
• Why do so many requests for support go unanswered?
• Why have they repeatedly lost their licence or payment processing abilities?

Clearly, you can’t run a business on a payment processor that emails you with 12 hours notice that they will be disabling your ability to receive payments, especially when it comes with no indication when, or even if, the functionality will ever be restored.

No wonder MasterCard shelled out a third of a billion pounds for DataCash, they’re probably the closest you can come to a trusted online payment processing provider.

I’ve started using a spare computer monitor as a TV in my bedroom so that I could hook it up to my laptop and stream programmes onto a bigger screen when I wanted to.

However, it’s irritating having to cable everything up, so I purchased an Apple TV to stream directly to it. So far my experience has been on the whole positive, with a few drawbacks.

Set up was reasonably easy, and now I have it up and running, on both my laptop and my iPad I am able to select AirPlay mirroring and begin mirroring my screen onto my TV; it also sends the sound.

That said, not everything works perfectly. Here is how it looks so far:

• Videos in iTunes mirror though there doesn’t seem to be a volume control I can activate from the iPad
• TVCatchUp mirrors but without any volume control
• BBC iPlayer mirrors from my iPad, and lets me control the volume with the iPad volume control
• 4od blocks mirroring from my iPad
• NFL GamePass mirrors from my iPad and lets me control the volume
• Sky Go blocks mirroring from my iPad

It is worth noting that even though Sky think they’re being clever by blocking AirPlay mirroring on the iPad, I can just open up the video stream in a browser on my desktop, full screen it and AirPlay mirror my entire laptop screen.

The built app apps for Apple TV are pretty useless though. They don’t have any apps for iPlayer, 4od, GamePass or Sky Go (and even if they did, I can only have two devices on Sky Go anyway), so I can’t imagine I’ll be doing much with my Apple TV than mirroring a different device to it.

It would certainly be nice if I could use it as a standalone box to watch things on, but until they open it up for third party apps, I can’t see me getting much use out of it that way.