Follow Friday recommendations - 5th February 2010

I keep meaning to do a follow Friday. The reason I haven't yet is because I wanted to do the same format as my colleague @jakepjohnson did here, which sets out the reasons for the recommendations.

So I'm going to quickly bash something out on my lunchbreak.

A good place to start will be @jakepjohnson himself. He's my colleague, but we won't hold that against him. Frequently seen scouring Twitter for marketing tips and money saving, it's also entertaining to read his Twitter feed when he's stuck in the morning commute and moaning about people being rude on roundabouts. On top of that, he's a bloody nice bloke.

Another one of my colleagues @lgladdy also needs a special mention. He's honestly one of the most helpful guys I've ever worked with (he'll even help with a work problem out of office hours) and is worth following if you're into those video games for kids.

Those who know me will probably know that I spend a lot of my time now moaning about pseudoscience and people that are willing to leave their brain at the door and believe any bizarre claim that a random person on the internet makes. If this interests you, I need to point you towards @hayleystevens, someone who doesn't just moan about these things but is actively engaged within the community. She also contributes to the fantastic Righteous Indignation podcast, and can be quite often be heard scoffing at absurd claims whilst also providing fantastic insight.

In a similar vein I can also recommend @SkepticBarista, who to me targets bizarre claims with both wit and action - he's no simple keyboard warrior.

I should also mention @Crispian_Jago for three reasons - his blog and associated ladybird guides) are ace, I came second in his Friday mystery object competition this week, and he was behind what I consider the most devasting attack on the bizarre methods behind homeopathy - the video "if homeopathy works then I'll drink my own piss". He's also one of the people behind a movement to get likeminded people in the Hampshire area together to fight bizarre claims - another person of action.

Finally, on a lighter note, @psdisasters and @VizTopTips always make me laugh, so both are wholeheartedly recommended. Photoshop disasters spots hilariously bad attempts to photoshop pictures, VizTopTips retweets tips sent in by other Twitter users on a host of subjects (and I'm still jealous that @jakepjohnson got a tip retweeted once when I still haven't).

This has been fun, I'll have to do it again sometime, so if I didn't include you this week I might in the future!

When customer service goes bad... I moan and blog for your benefit

As a money spending consumer, I love great service. This also consequently means that I hate bad service.

I'm quite fair though. Whilst I think that it's better not to receive bad service in the first place, I'm also open to changing my opinion on a company if they sort a problem out swiftly. In fact, it can lead me to place a lot of trust in that company going forward, because I know that if something does go wrong I can put some faith in them to sort it out.

Which leads me to PCTV Systems. I've fancied a TV tuner for a while, and finally took the plunge to buy one. I did a bit of research, found one with generally good reviews and went and bought one on Saturday morning.

A PCTV nanoStick.

I installed the drivers for it, as the reviews for the bundled software weren't great, and started up Windows Media Center in earnest (I'll use the popularly used acronym MCE from here for ease of reading). After the boring task of channel searching was over, I excitedly tried out the live TV. I tested a bit of recording. And checked that the cool feature of recording whilst my laptop was on standby worked (another big reason to use MCE).

Then I noticed a few problems. I couldn't get some channels, including Film4 (one of the main channels I wanted a TV tuner for). And sometimes when I scheduled a recording, it just didn't work (I scheduled a recording whilst I was out on Saturday night, something I had wanted to watch for ages and it didn't record). This fault was replicated by me a couple of times over the next couple of days and couldn't work out what was causing it - even if I followed exactly the same steps each time. Obviously playing Russian roulette whenever you try to record something isn't ideal.

In a quest to try and make sense of the issues I was having, I installed the bundled software (TVCenter). After yet more channel searching, I found the channels that weren't working in MCE worked on this software. But some channels were missing completely (including BBC4, another one of my favourites. Yes, I know that makes me mature).

Or were they?

If I went into advanced channel settings, they were there. And I could click on them to view them. But I couldn't add them to my normal channel list.

So I did a so-called 'best quality' channel scan. This took about 45 minutes. And I got the channels. But lost others. Argh!

Some web searches for my problems found other users with similar issues, and no fixes (it seems that just searching for reviews on a product don't always bring up common faults if you don't know what you're looking for).

So my next stop on Sunday was emailing the company that manufactured it, and hoped that I would get some helpful advice.

Did I heck.

I laid out three issues with detailed descriptions on each:

1) Channels which display in TVCenter will not display in Windows Media Center
2) Recording using Windows Media Center only works intermittently
3) Channels not displaying in TVCenter channel list

The reply I received yesterday (Monday) lunchtime said this:

---------------------
1.)
TVCenter channel lists are not available for Windows MediaCenter. If you want
use Windows MCE with your PCTV Product, you have to scan with MCE again.
If you have any issues with MCE, please contact http://support.microsoft.com.
Furhter to it, make sure you have closed on TV viewing app if you want use the
other one.

2.)
For all MCE issues please contact http://support.microsoft.com.

3.)
I assume that TVCenter scanned crypted channels also, which we do not support.
Due to it you cannot see them in the main app.
If you are talking about not encrypted channels, can you add them manually?

Further to it, we didn't released the nano Stick for MCE.

---------------------

Great help, they just bumped me off to Microsoft, and completely misunderstood most of my problems anyway. Furthermore, they attempted to claim that their product was not compatible with Windows Media Center.

And there was a big, big problem with this. Their website and the product packaging had the words "compatible with Windows Media Center". Hell, the back of the box even had a pretty picture of Windows Media Center alongside these words.

Being a stickler for consumer rights, I got a bit more blunt in my reply, and after a few links to UK consumer law websites explaining how any product sold must be as described, said that I trusted that they would now assist me with my issues and not attempt to palm me off the Microsoft. I even helpfully clarified each issue for the support team.

I also had to introduce a new problem that I had discovered. TVCenter (which was specifically designed for Windows 7) had a setting to place the computer into standby, hibernate or shut it down when it had finished a scheduled recording. This simply didn't work.

I finally got another reply just before 5pm today (Tuesday).

---------------------

thank you for feedback. you do not quite understand, you cannot import the
list of channels from TV center into Media Center, you need to scan for
channels in Media Center again.

---------------------

Now, admittedly, by this point I had already decided to take my product back to where I purchased it and say that it was not as described. But this email annoyed me. My reply was a very blunt:

"At no point have I said that I'm trying to do that!"

They outdid themselves and replied just two minutes later.

---------------------

thank you for feedback. have you run Windows Media Center and scanned for
channels in Windows Media Center ?

---------------------

OK, deep breath. Well, actually, I didn't really need to take a deep breath, as I laughed out loud when I read this on my phone. I already had my replacement product in my hands as the store I had purchased it from had agreed to exchange it for me. I replied just for the hell of it though.

"Yes, as described in an earlier email."

I have wasted literally hours trying to set this product up, so I'm happy to waste a bit of their time now.

I swapped this product for a Hauppage WinTV-HVR 900. And it's been a dream. Compared to a wasted weekend, this took about two minutes to install the necessary drivers, and about 15 minutes to complete the MCE setup. And everything works perfectly, including the nice looking remote control that was bundled with it.

So I can wholeheartedly recommend Hauppage. This is despite me finding out tonight that Hauppage actually purchased PCTV (then called Pinnacle) in December 2008. Clearly, some knowledge transfer between the two companies needs to happen, and fast.

And I must also give a 'great service' mention to PC World in Bath. I've knocked PC World plenty of times in the past, and I think they generally have a bad reputation amongst consumers. But despite me going in armed with emails and prepared to quote consumer law, the representative on the service desk seemed concerned at my experience and was happy to exchange the product there and then. I'm always happy to highlight great service as much as bad.

(And they once swapped a cable with no hassle once that I purchased in error, even though I had opened it and I knew that they were well within their rights to tell me to get lost).

So, congratulations to companies that provide great service. And well done to those who have appropriate systems in place to recover a customer's faith in them. We should always publicly mention them.

But it is also our job to moan about bad service and also not let companies ride roughshod over the very rights that are in place to protect us in the first place. When they do, you owe it to your fellow consumers to moan like hell about it.

n.b. I did threaten to report them to UK trading standards. However, since they started offering (admittedly limited) support for MCE with their product I won't (as I did also say "as I trust that you wouldn't wish I contact UK trading standards about this matter, I expect you will assist me now", and it seems unfair to do so despite their woeful efforts). However, I have satisfied my own morals in letting you all know to avoid this company like the plague.

Why I'm not complimentary about complementary medicine

I thought that it might be a good idea to explain to people why I'm always moaning about alternative medicine lately, especially on Twitter.

I never used to really worry about alternative medicine. I've been exposed to it, because my mother-in-law is a registered practitioner in several alternative fields and will happily seek alternative methods and encourage others to do the same. She will also talk, at great length if you want her to, about how evidence-based medicine is evil and has many side effects that your "doctor doesn't tell you" about.

My viewpoint has always been one of indignation to some of the claims made by the believers of alternative therapists, but at the same time I couldn't see what harm it could possibly cause. Just an expensive way to waste money, that's all.

And then I had a son. Once, our young baby son wasn't sleeping very well. He had bronchiolitis and his cough kept waking him up. My wife at the time was working in a local health shop. She had just come off maternity leave and the shop was a convenient walking distance from the house. It was the type of shop that sells herbal supplements and also offered alternative therapies, and I believe that she was comfortable with the role because of her mother's background. And I pretty much ignored it, after all, if people wanted to spend money on such things that is their choice, although I did show annoyance when I learnt of some of her employer's viewpoints on medicine.

One day she came home from work with a random bottle of pills. It turned out that her boss had heard about our son's sleeping problems, picked the bottle off of the shelf and said “give him two of these” to help him relax and sleep. This was without seeing him, without knowing his medical history and without medical training. What's more, I looked at the label and realised that her recommended dosage was actually the adult dose. And this was an infant that was only a couple of months old.

And since his birth, whenever he has been under the weather my mother-in-law has tried to push us towards homeopathy, something which when you learn the theory behind it you realise is utterly ridiculous. If you don't already know, basically a supposed 'cure' is diluted to a point where it is way beyond containing any active ingredient and the probability of finding a molecule of the original 'cure' are so low that I probably have more chance of finding that I am the reincarnation of Elvis Presley and actually quite a good dancer after all.

Why is it diluted so much? Because supposedly water has a memory and diluting the active ingredient actually makes the solution stronger. As many have pointed out, the water manages to conveniently forget all the shit that it has contained over the centuries, and for an excellent video showing how homeopathic cures are created, watch Crispian Jago's excellent video entitled "If homeopathy works... I'll drink my own piss".

My mother-in-law also hates the idea of many vaccines, especially the MMR vaccine (and lets not forget that all the kerfuffle about there being a link between the jab and autism has been proven time and time again to not exist - if you look beyond most of the mainstream media, that is). When she realised that we definitely wanted him to have the vaccine, she offered as an alternative to pay for separate vaccinations. This is despite these vaccines being unlicensed, the child is unprotected between jabs, it greatly puts other children with leukaemia and similar conditions at risk (as the illnesses more widely circulates within the community and they cannot receive the MMR vaccine), and puts pregnant women at great risk of a rubella infection. See this PDF on the dangers of the single jabs, and do an internet search for herd immunity if you want to see what happens when a substantial number of the population don't get immunised from an infectious disease, or read what happened to Toni and David McCaffery's one month old daughter Dana. This will only happen more if we allow myths about vaccinations to persist and we lose herd immunity from deadly diseases which science can actually protect us from.

Here's a challenge for you. Go to a so-called health shop and tell them that you're travelling to a country where you have a high chance of catching malaria. Ask them if they can make any suggestions. People have done this time after time and discovered that they are often discouraged from receiving the essential vaccinations and taking non-proven alternative medicines instead. That is scary stuff.

Google about Matthias Rath and his libel action against Ben Goldacre, who wrote about how Rath was taking out adverts out in South Africa to promote taking vitamin pills to combat AIDS, and even got the South African government on his side.

Sometimes, we need to see that alternative medicine isn't always harmless. Hell, on a university homeopathy course they used to teach that it could treat cancer (in case you didn't know, it's illegal to claim that you can cure cancer unless you can actually prove it).

That's why I'm supporting the 10:23 campaign and will be taking part in an event where I, along with other campaigners, will overdose  (a whole bottle in case you were wondering) on homeopathic sleeping pills to show that they are nothing but sugar pills. This is partly to protest against Boots selling homeopathic remedies in their stores. I've wrestled with whether this goes against free choice of the consumer. However, you go to a pharmacist for professional medical advice, and even the professional standards director for Boots admits that they only stock them because they sell, not because they work.

However, it is not just about Boots, but also to show consumers that they are nothing but sugar pills, challenging the common misconception that they are a form of herbal remedy. Which they're not. And practically every double-blind clinical trial that is out there shows that they act no better than a placebo. Despite all these trials, the publicly-funded NHS still pumps money into homeopathic hospitals, when most other forms of treatment have to be rigorously checked for efficacy.

There are so many myths around about evidence-based medicine that I feel that it really is time to fight back and start shouting just as loud to dispel them. It is time that we as a population regained our trust in the scientific method and evidence-based medicine.

This doesn't meant that I'm always "pro-big pharma". You only need to read Ben Goldacre's amazingly excellent Bad Science blog to see that he will attack quacks, pharmaceuticals and other scientists without hesitation if he feels that they are promoting bad science. But I trust that peer reviewed trials will treat me better than purely anecdotal faith-based medicine if I am ill.

We are currently on a move backwards, back to a couple of hundred years ago before modern medicine, when doctors practised blood-letting because it "appeared to work" and because they had been taught to do it by their mentors. When we purchased lucky charms to ward off evil spirits. It is time to reclaim medicine and promote the stuff that has proven efficacy.

Which one should we cancel? The dads' one seems a good choice

Well, further to my rant the other day about the lack of dads groups in the area, Lucie received a mailing yesterday with a timetable of events for parents. Out of all the groups (there's about five or six on a day), dads get one. On a Friday. In the afternoon.

That should have a stunning turn out, after which I'm sure that they'll quietly drop it due to "lack of interest". However, even if two men turn up and form their own mini-support network I suppose that that's a little result.

I needed a new bookmark yesterday so grabbed a scrap of paper I found. I do this often, I don't own any real bookmarks so will just grab anything that comes to hand. An envelope. A till receipt. You get the idea.

Today I actually read the piece of paper that I stole. It was an amendment to the timetable. It states that "due to staffing issues, the 'Lunch Munch' (groups for fathers and male carers) will now not start until the 5th February".

Maybe I'm getting paranoid. But out of ALL the groups they hold, this is the one they have issues with and they can't find ONE staff member to attend this group? They're not sending anyone such as a health visitor anyway, it says so on the timetable. So all they need is a random member of staff to go along and sit there.

Furthermore, none of the other groups are affected, so they only seemingly have issues for this hour and a half.

Lucie thinks I am being over-paranoid. But this reeks of convenience to me. To me this should have been treated as a priority if they were having staff issues, no matter how well attended it is compared to other groups.

Why?

Because it's the only group that is identified solely as a support group for men. It's the only group where males can meet up together and KNOW that they will meet other males in the same situation. As I said in my earlier post, when I have attended other groups you are almost guaranteed to be the only male there and pretty much ignored. Hell, I remember at one group as soon as Lucie walked away for a moment the lady talking to her turned my back on me as if I didn't exist.

Secondly, when Lucie's groups haven't happened, the women know each other well enough to break out and go to a different venue on an ad hoc basis.

If the aim of the council's childrens' support service is to provide a support network to different types of parents, this is one of the groups that they should have identified as a priority. Instead, I feel that they cancelled it because it is the easy option.

And I think that stinks.

Addendum: on top of what I've written above, there is actually another group on at the same time as this cancelled session, and they even get a health visitor in attendance.

What a load of rubbish

You know that you're getting old when you start moaning about bin collections.

Well, I'm getting old, because here I go....

We haven't had our bins or recycling collected for three weeks. Around here it's meant to be weekly on a Monday.

It isn't a huge issue for us, as we've never created much waste. But all the roads around here are like bomb sites, as Christmas has caused people to accumulate vast quantities of rubbish and just through it on the kerb.

Our first missed collection was on the 21st due to ice and snow. That's fair enough - the safety of the workers must come first. However, due to a quirk of the calendar our following collection - the 28th - was a bank holiday.

Normally in such circumstances of bad weather stopping play they catch up with the areas they've missed first, and then move back to their regular schedule. This time nothing of the sort happened.

What this means is that lots of houses that were due to have collections on Tuesdays and Wednesdays have still had weekly collections, yet we have had to wait until tomorrow.

(Incidentally, the mailing that we got from the council in early December stated that the houses that were meant to have collections on the 24th and 25th of December would have them squeezed into the Tuesday and Wednesday collections, so they haven't really noticed any difference, aside from having to wait until tomorrow for "this weeks" collection).

Like I said, for us it isn't an issue. But attempting to navigate the pavements with a pushchair around all the festering bin bags wasn't fun today.

Bleeding councils.

MP's response to libel reform campaign

I recently wrote a letter to my MP asking him to support the moves to reform the libel laws in this country, and also to find out his opinion on the current situation.

Unfortunately I got a reply that basically said "oh look, there's a fence over there. It looks jolly nice. I'm going to sit on it".

Here's the reply:

-------

Thank you for your recent correspondence regarding reform of the libel laws, which I have noted. I appreciate you taking the time to contact me about this matter.

You asked me to add my name to Early Day Motion 423. Early Day Motions are an expression of backbench opinion, so as Minister for Rural Affairs and Environment, I am unable to sign them.

However Early Day Motions are just one of the many ways in which Members of Parliament can represent the views of their constituents. As your MP I am able to lobby individual Ministers, including the Prime Minister, informally and through written correspondence.

As you may know Jack Straw MP, the Justice Secretary, is setting up a working group, which will consist of media lawyers and other experts, to examine a range of issues around libel. The aim of this group will be to make recommendations on reform. In addition the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee is currently conducting an inquiry into Press Standards, Privacy and Libel and is considering a wide range of issues in this area of law.

I look forward to learning of the new proposals with great interest.

------

OK, fair enough, he can't sign it due to his position. However, I'm disappointed that he didn't hint either way what his thoughts on the matter were. The "wait and see" approach sounds like he's playing it safe to me. I would have at least liked him to agree or disagree with me that the current laws are wrong. I would have preferred that he disagreed than sitting on the fence!

Here's my original email for reference:

------

I would be interested in finding out if you will be signing the Early Day Motion for reform of the UK libel laws (http://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/EDMDetails.aspx?EDMID=39987&SESSION=903)

Many people in the UK feel that the current libel laws allow large companies to silence criticism against them due to the high costs of defending a libel lawsuit, and because of the onus for the defendant to prove themselves innocent (and that there was no damage done to the reputation of the other party... I have no idea how you prove that). The UK is now being treated as the 'libel capital' of the world, with international companies using our courts to sue others for words written overseas, merely due to the fact that because of the internet the words and opinions can be read here. There are concerns that this may make overseas publishers unwilling to allow material to be published here.

There is also growing discontent of the way writers and scientists are treated under the current laws, and this cannot possibly be in the public interest. For example, you may be aware of Simon Singh, who is currently appealing a ruling from the Royal Courts of Justice. He cited scientific evidence that questioned the efficacy of chiropractic treatments, yet has still been dragged through the courts since 2008.

You may also be aware of the NHS doctor Ben Goldacre, who was sued for libel by Matthias Rath for articles criticising his promotion of vitamin pills to AIDS sufferers in Africa. The case was eventually dropped, but not until significant legal costs had been incurred defending the action, which has been quoted as 'unlikely' of being recovered by the Guardian newspaper.

The examples go on and on, but you can read them for yourself on the Libel Reform campaign website at http://www.libelreform.org, which includes an excellent report on the current problems with the law as it stands, as well as proposals for change.

I would like to point out that this campaign is supported by an extremely wide cross-section of the UK community. It is supported by journalists, comedians, scientists, TV personalities, bloggers, human rights campaigners, writers and ordinary members of the public.

I would highly encourage you to join your Labour colleagues who have already shown their support for the campaign in supporting the Early Day Motion - I'm sure that they would be more than willing to discuss the issues involved in the EDM with you.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year to you all. Just a quick thought that goes beyond the usual new year messages. The last decade has seen many close family and personal changes for me. I've been close at hand to weddings but also divorces. I've welcomed new arrivals to the family, but also felt the difficulty in letting go those that have departed. In the last decade I've reached many major milestones; like getting a degree, marrying and having a son.

On a wider scale, we've seen amazing leaps in technology yet witnessed religion causing much angst and strife around the world, especially in the form of terrorism and ongoing war.

However, if we think really hard - really really hard - we should realise that the good outweighs the bad. We should never ever lose sight of that, and I trust that in the next decade some wonderful things will happen. No-one knows what the world of technology will bring, but I look forward to finding out. I look forwarding to joining you all in 2010! Have a good one, and never forget the positives in life.