Is there food?

I’ll bet there are a few stories like this around, but here’s mine. I’m actually typing this up to send to Garry over at Autumn Skies, so if you’re reading this and are in a similar boat, do let him know.

I ordered an iPhone from Carphone Warehouse on Thursday afternoon, but heard nothing. I called them Friday night, and they told me there was a problem with the orders, and they weren’t going through. The best thing I could do, they said, was to go to the store on Friday morning if I really wanted one.

I got up at 5:30am on Friday, headed off down to the local Carphone Warehouse, and joined the other person in line. Nice chap, totally non-techie, non- gadgety, but loves his iPhone. Fair enough.

By the time the store opened at 9:02, there were twenty people in line. The first four of us got 16gb iPhones. Well, number four was told there were only three 16gb devices in stock when he got to the tills, despite earlier being told there were four. After complaining, the fourth device magically appeared. It had “accidentally” been placed in the reserved bin. Later, the assistant manager would actually confess, and reveal it had been put by for a colleague in another store. Naughty.

I left the store at 10:10. It took over and hour for O2’s credit checking systems to catch up. I paid my money (quite a bit actually, 16gb phone, Jawbone headset, new case), and took my new device to work. I didn’t play with it at work, it stayed in the car.

Around lunchtime, I got an email from Carphone Warehouse telling me my web order was shipping. I called them, and was told they couldn’t see my order. Nothing they could do. I called the store, who could see the order, and called their retail helpline to get it cancelled. Which they did.

I got home and tried to activate my phone. I couldn’t even pull down the iTunes 7.7 update from Apple as their servers were, at that point, crumbling under the stress of launching in the US (and 21 other countries).

Finally I got iTunes downloaded, installed, and tried to activate my phone. After three attempts, the iTunes part went OK. The phone flashed up a message saying “a signal is required to complete activation message”. Odd, as I had no service.

My Dad came over with his O2 iPhone. Service was fine.

The following day I called O2. Apparently they knew nothing about my number, and I should call Carphone Warehouse. I did, and was told to come down to the store.

In store, they called O2, who said there was a backlog, and that I’d be activated by midnight on Saturday. If I wasn’t, said the assistant manager, come back Sunday and I’ll “force it through”. He also pointed out that there was a credit note on my account for the amount I’d paid for the previous web order. They’d cancelled it, yes, but not refunded the money. I was told to call them to ask for a refund, but couldn’t get through when I got home.

After being advised by O2 and Carphone Warehouse to toggle the phone off and on every hour or so, and doing this with no change in my “No Service” status overnight, I called O2 again. Still no sign of the number, told to talk to Carphone Warehouse again. They did say all should be well by 6pm tonight though.

I returned to Carphone Warehouse. Asked them about the “No Service” problem, and they called their retail helpline again. Whilst on the phone, I asked them to find out about getting my refund. Apparently, now it’s a credit note, the only way to get it back is a cheque. Which could take 28 days. Annoying.

Their retail helpline suggested calling O2 again. Which they did. O2 still don’t have my number, but claim activation should happen tonight, before midnight. They can’t be sure of anything, don’t have my number on the system, and don’t actually know that there’s any paperwork coming through or anything.

The store can’t “force it through”, O2 have no idea when anything’s going to happen, and I have what is essentially an iPod Touch that I can’t do anything with. They’ve said to come back tomorrow if nothing happens, but reports online suggest that it could be as late as Thursday before anything happens.

It looks like O2, Carphone Warehouse, and Apple have all failed miserably during the launch of the 3g. In addition, Apple managed to knacker first generation iPhones with the 2.0 update, as activation wasn’t possible after the upgrade. My Dad’s device was bricked for a good few hours while Apple’s servers were offline.

I’ll be posting impressions of the App Store, and the iPhone 3g, when O2 and Carphone Warehouse get their act together.

Here’s a brief update on the iPhone situation.

I called O2 again, and spoke to Nicola. She used various details to try to locate any record of an account, and can’t find anything. Not using email, surname, or post code. Least of all using the mobile phone number I’ve been given.

She’s said it sounds like Carphone Warehouse haven’t sent my details across, because orders that are falling foul of the delayed activation are visible on their systems. She’s advised that I should wait until tomorrow morning (like I’ve got a choice) and call Carphone Warehouse again. I’m thinking of getting a bed down there. There’s a McDonalds next door and everything!

She also said that new activations are taking 2-3 working days. So it sounds like I’m looking at Wednesday before I’m up and running, even if someone grows a brain tomorrow.

In the words of the immortal James Dalton - Patrick Swayze, Road House (1989) - “Be nice, until it’s time to not be nice”. I think the time to “not be nice” has come. Tomorrow, it’s Kung-Fu Warehouse, brothers and sisters. Skadoosh.

Update: I’ll keep this post updated until there’s something significant to report. Carphone Warehouse’s phone system asks for your mobile phone number when you call them, which their system doesn’t recognise, even though it’s their receipt that’s got the number on!

I think this is round 3, not sure now, lost count.

I’ve just called Carphone Warehouse again (on 0870 087 0168). I spoke to Alan, in Preston, who was extremely pleasant on the phone. In fairness to them, everyone I’ve spoken to have been very polite and efficient. I just think they’re getting nonsense information from other sources and nobody really knows what’s happening.

Anyway, Alan - in Preston - said that my details were all stored on their systems, and that said systems had sent the information off to O2, but that the aforementioned systems hadn’t had a response from O2. In the words of Alan Partridge “a-ha!”.

So, Alan (did I mention he was in Preston?) sent the details to O2 again, and also sent them via email. This took a few minutes while I endured the cheesy piano rendition of “Man On The Run” for the millionth time, but Alan returned and said he’d sent everything off.

Apparently, O2 have sent an email to Carphone Warehouse assuring them that by 1pm today, all Friday customers will be activated. They’ve said the backlog will be cleared today, and as there are no more iPhones to sell, so no new activations, things should settle down.

I asked how this affects me, if my details were botched and are only just being sent across, and Alan didn’t really have an answer. He said they usually advise 2-24 hours for a new connection, but that with the chaos lately he didn’t know how long it might take.

So, I’ve not been back to my local store yet, but I’m going to pay them a visit at lunchtime, and see if I can get rid of the nasty Jawbone thing I bought. I’m sure it’s a perfectly good headset if you’ve got a compatible head. My head, it seems, it distinctly incompatible.

WordPress › Blog » WordPress 2.6

WordPress 2.6 is now available. Hit the link above for lots of info on what’s new.

I’ve updated my hosted blogs, so if you’re reading this and I host a blog for you, you’re good to go. If you’re reading this, you know me, and I don’t host a blog for you (but you’d like one) let me know…I’m sure we can sort something out…

As for my favourite new features, there are a few. The Press This bookmarklet is extremely nifty, and auto senses whether you’re posting about a link, quote, picture, or video. Hopefully it’ll ramp up my blogging habits a bit on ITF. I might even create an asides type category for short and sweet posts. What say you, reader?

To use it, drag the Press This link out of the Write Post page onto your toolbar, or make it a bookmark, then just click it to include a link to the page you’re currently viewing. Or, select some text, and click it to include text and link. Or try it on YouTube…or…you get the idea.

Also there’s nifty theme previewing if you fancy trying new themes out, post revisioning (which will be handy for CMS and magazine style sites, like Eurocritics), and Google Gears support (hit the turbo button in the top right of your admin). Gears support looks nice, and does provide a nice speed boost. If I’d had it before moving away from my former hosts I might not have moved. But then I lurve WebFaction, so I’m glad I did.

Last couple: image captions (coming soon to ITF), and better image editing support in the editor are very welcome, as are the usual bug fixes and performance tweaks.

Another very solid release from the team. 2008 is certainly WordPress development’s most successful year to date.

The first act of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog is now online! View its Whedonesque brilliance here.

Tune in for the next exciting installment on July 17th, with the concluding part available on the 19th.

Warning: characters may burst into song at any moment. Viewer discretion is advised.

That is all.

I might have to get a Wii again just so I can play this.

One of the most interesting looking titles I’ve seen in a while. And also one of the goriest and most violent. Not what you expect from the Wii really.

June was the weirdest, hardest, most emotional month of my entire life.

My second son, Ethan, was born. I took a week off work to get to know him.

Three days later my mother died from terminal breast cancer. Brain Metastases. After two years of fighting the vile thing, we were all shocked when we found it had spread to her brain. 8 weeks after the diagnosis of “brain mets” she was dead.

A few days after that, my other son caught a very nasty dose of Chicken Pox. As he was getting over that, he was rushed into hospital with suspected meningitis. After blood tests, a terrifying night in hospital, and a chest x-ray, he was diagnosed with pneumonia. Watching my three year old child bleeding out of a cannula in his arm, looking as scared and tiny and confused as I’ve ever seen him is a memory burned into my mind.

It was Mum’s birthday two days before her funeral. She would have been 53. I carried her coffin. I’m quite proud of that. Many of us wore pink. I’m proud of that too.

A few days after that, Ethan got Chicken Pox. Doctors had told us things could be “complicated” if that happened.

At the end of June, I went back to work feeling like I’d lived a lifetime’s worth of emotions in a single month. Joy, sadness, despair, terror, pride, worry, doubt; I’ve run the gamut. It was like the part of me that takes care of emotions had gone into critical meltdown. Engineers are still working to get things back online. Sometimes I think they’re starting to get somewhere, sometimes I don’t.

I miss Mum. We’re over half way through July now, a month and a half after her death, and I miss her terribly. I was tidying up my Gmail contacts the other day, and found her listed. While moving my contacts onto my new iPhone, I saw her number. I haven’t been able to delete them yet, insane as that sounds.

My life can’t stop even though sometimes I just want everything to freeze. I’ve caught myself humming the Dr Horrible Freeze-ray song since Act One. Yes, I am bonkers. I know I have to keep going for my two wonderful boys, my wife, my Dad, my sister, everyone I love: my family.

I’ve been so directly exposed to the miracle of life - and I find it (scientifically speaking) amazing that new life can be created in the way that it is - that I should be able to find a great deal of comfort in the cycle of things.

But the double whammy of that and the finality of death - a death that seems so mercilessly unfair and without reason that it forces you to question whatever crazy rules the universe actually exists by - in such a short space of time is difficult to process.

At times I’ve felt like I’m watching somebody else; that this isn’t actually happening to me. I was convinced at one point that the whole thing was a dream. As I sat in the hospital waiting room with my son, watching the big red digital clock on the wall click over onto Friday the 13th, and seeing the nurses that hooked my Mum up to a morphine pump on the last night of her life milling about, for a moment I felt with absolute certainty that I wasn’t awake.

That’s a terrifying sensation: it’s often that people say “I thought I was dreaming”, but being confused about what’s real and what’s not, trying to shake the feeling that everything around you can’t possibly be real, whilst at the same time knowing that it is, very, terribly, inescapably real, is like psychological vertigo.

July is another month. August will be too. One day at a time, one month at a time.

Ethan’s spots have cleared up. While his feeding may have dropped off slightly during his illness, he’s feeding so well it’s difficult to notice. My oldest son is doing much better. Returning to work restored a sense of normality, but avoiding that normality made the situation seem not quite so real.

Being back in a routine that Mum isn’t part of doesn’t feel right. It’s not normal. I suppose now I need to define a new normal.

Now, normal is a life where I can’t call her on my way home from work and set the world to rights. I can’t ask her how long I’m supposed to cook a piece of beef for. I can’t call in at lunchtime with a chicken salad cob.

Normal, for now, is seeing my Mum’s email address and filling up with tears.

I can’t possibly express in one post how great mum was. There’s a very good chance that you, dear reader, didn’t know her and don’t know me. But if you’ve lost someone to cancer - or just lost someone incredibly dear to you - and you feel like I’ve felt, hopefully you’ll read this and know that you’re not alone. Even though, at times, you’ll be absolutely convinced that you are.

I suppose this post is written entirely as an attempt at catharsis. It’s not a eulogy to mum, that’s for sure, although you might well see one of those on these pages at some point. I’m hoping that writing this helps - if not me, then some other reader who might stumble across it.

In either case, it will have been worthwhile.

I’ve been looking forward to this one: the WordPress client for Apple’s iPhone has been released, and is available on the App Store.

As seems to be the trend, I’m writing my thoughts on the app, using the app. And it’s pretty good.

It lacks a certain amount of advanced functionality; there’s no capacity for advanced formatting, no way of inserting links in posts, and no capacity for blog management outside of writing posts. But this is a version 1. A first attempt. And as such, it’s a good one.

The interface is slick and easy to use, you can manage and post to multiple blogs, and there’s full support for tags and categories. Tags aren’t pulled from your blog, so best remember what you’ve used before.

It could do with a spellcheck, but that might be out of the question. It could also do with a way of posting links - maybe use the embedded Safari functionality employed by the post preview tool, but have a button to add a link to the currently viewed page?

I take my hat off to the development team though - this is easily the most impressive blogging experience I’ve had on any phone (including n95, and windows mobile platforms).

I look forward to the future of iPhone WordPress. Now, how do I get in on the beta and some ad-hoc distribution?

[](http://www.istherefood.com/wp- content/uploads/2008/07/donkeypunch.jpg)

It is, quite simply, the most distasteful, depraved and nihilistic film I have ever had the misfortune to sit through. I freely confess that there were times I felt physically ill simply watching it. Certainly, I would have walked out long before the end had I not had to write about it.

[Donkey Punch is the vilest film Ive ever seen, says AMANDA PLATELL | Mail Online](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1035810/Donkey-Punch-vilest- film-Ive-seen-says-AMANDA-PLATELL.html).

If that’s not enough to harden the resolve of any horror fan to see a film, I don’t know what will. The Mail’s spectacularly point-missing review is an entertaining read for all the wrong reasons, so I thought I’d chime in with my thoughts.

The aforementioned Amanda Platell claims the film falls firmly into the “torture porn” category, and manages to cram in a mention of real life knife crime to prove her point. Apparently Donkey Punch:

has no redeeming features whatsoever. There is not a single shred of humanity, imagination or creativity detectable anywhere among its 99 long minutes.

And I’ll admit, it’s not the most original film in the world. It is, essentially, Dead Calm with a higher body count, and without Nicole Kidman or Billy Zane. But it’s a well shot, well acted Brit thriller and actually attempts to serve as something of a morality tale for today’s youth.

The story revolves around three girls from Leeds (one of which is played by the daughter of Beowulf himself, Ray Winstone) who, while on holiday in Majorca, hook up with the crew of a luxury yacht; a group of (mostly) posh British lads with sex and drugs on their minds.

The first third of the film plays out like a music video (which is perhaps unsurprising given director Olly Blackburn’s previous career), as the girls dance around, drink, and take drugs to the tune of various dance tracks.

When the yacht heads out to see, the crew decide to go swimming. Oddly, the girls all seem to have their swimwear, despite only nipping out for a night of clubbing.

After their dip, a brief discussion of various sex acts (one of which being the titular Donkey Punch) ensues, and things inevitably turn fruity as two of the girls head off down to the yacht’s master bedroom with three of the boys. During said fruitiness, one of the boys administers said violent sexual act with undesirably fatal effect.

And then things start to get interesting.

The final two thirds focus on, psychologically, what happens to a group of people when faced with something horrible. It’s not really gore-packed enough to be considered full-on horror - even the film’s most gruesome kill is far tamer than, say, the final kill in Switchblade Romance - but does manage to build up an impressive amount of tension as things progress. This may in part be thanks to the score by genre favourite François Eudes (former work includes À l’intérieur and Switchblade Romance itself).

Now, to return to our friend Ms Platell: Donkey Punch features a cast of characters who take drugs, drink, and indulge in group sex, and they all end up in pretty horrific circumstances as a result. In my book, that’s about as moral as you can get. It’s a return to the old “ah, the teenagers are screwing around, Jason will almost certainly come and behead them” school of horror morality that served the genre so well in the past.

In short, screw around, take drugs, and the nasty man will chop you into little bits. Frankly, if today’s youngsters took this to heart, the world would be a better place. It’s the distinct absence of fear that’s resulted in the culture we have now - there is no boogeyman any more. And if there was, he’d likely to be too scared to make an appearance for being knifed or shot himself.

This film doesn’t glorify anything that takes place within its 99 minutes. It doesn’t even revel in its gore, and doesn’t result in the kind of “am I really watching this?” discomfort that something like Hostel 2 does. Don’t get me wrong, I rate Hostel 2 quite highly, but for its own reasons. I can’t remember if I’ve discussed that on these pages, but either way that’s a debate for the future.

So then, Donkey Punch. Or Donkey Punch _(say it like it’s a kind of drink served out of large wide glass bowl - that’s how the ticket guy at the cinema said it - _anyone for Donkey Punch? Yummy!). It’s a pretty good, Brit made thriller, with some great cinematography and strong performances. It’s got sex in it, and people get killed in a variety of ways.

I’ve seen a lot worse.

[](http://www.istherefood.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/twitter- whale.png)It looks like Twitter have screwed up big style. I added several people to my Twitter account (feed? roll? What’s the correct technical term here?) at Wordcamp UK on Saturday, and now they’ve all vanished.

After adding them all back in again, I’m now thinking: is there any point? I’m sure some people can’t quite see the point of Twitter anyway, but it’s a handy way to keep up to speed with distant contacts. I’ve got a few folks from Blogcritics on there, and the previously mentioned Wordcamp crew.

Clearly Twitter have rolled back some sort of database, and have had to restore a version that’s lost shedloads of data. Check this link and you’ll see lots of people talking about lost followers.

If I managed to lose that much data, I’d be fired. My users would have no faith in the service I offered. Not to mention the cost of losing that much data.

And to make matters worse, there’s no mention at all on Twitter’s blog. There is, however, a notice on their status page. But how many users know about that? You’d think a service like Twitter could send a ping to all of its users to notify them of the problem.

I could move to Pownce or Plurk, but I can’t be bothered. There’s nobody I have any interest in following on those services, which really does defeat the object in my eyes.

I’m not sure yet whether I’ll carry on with Twitter. I’d like to hear from anyone that’s completely put off by the recent cock-up.

Fail Whale indeed.

[](http://www.istherefood.com/wp- content/uploads/2008/08/8285-dellstudiohybridspan2.jpg)I spotted these on Dell’s site earlier today. I think they look great: they’re just the right size to snuggle on one corner of your desk, are aesthetically pleasing (except for the bamboo one), and apparently don’t use a great deal of energy.

I bet they’d make a nice Hackintosh alternative to the Mac Mini, or a decent home server. I’d like to suggest they’d make a good Media Center machine too, but I’ve had trouble getting the integrated Intel 3100 graphics to play nicely before (largely overscan related, tbh, so YMMV).

So, anyone at Dell want to send me one to review? No? Curses.

Anyway, link!

[Dell Studio Hybrid Desktop Details](http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx /desktop-studio-hybrid?c=uk&cs=ukdhs1&l=en&s=dhs&ref=homepg).

[](http://www.istherefood.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/icon- big.png)I noticed that Wordpress 2.6 broke one of my favourite plugins - [Organize Series](http://unfoldingneurons.com/neurotic-plugins/organize- series-wordpress-plugin). I don’t use it on Is There Food, but it’s handy at Eurocritics. Thanks to the post revision functionality in 2.6, Organize Series goes a bit bonkers (it doesn’t know any better, bless it) and you end up with “part 8 of a 3 part series” after a few revisions.

But I’m happy to report I found a satisfactory work around: turn off those pesky post revisions. They’re great in the right environment, but for single user blogs they might not a great deal of help. And for now, I’d rather have working series functionality on Eurocritics than post revisions.

First off, follow the mighty [Lester Chan’s](http://lesterchan.net/wordpress/2008/07/17/how-to-turn-off-post- revision-in-wordpress-26/) advice to turn off post revisions. You can also use the SQL he’s posted to delete revisions from your database (although you might want to keep them around for the next part).

Then, fix the damage that’s been done. You’ll need to check through the wp_postmeta table and get rid of any references to posts with ids that relate to revisions. Then, set the series_part value for each of your existing posts to be the correct value.

Once you’ve done that, harmony and equilibrium should be restored.

Link!

Organize Series and WordPress 2.6 « Unfolding Neurons.