Hello, good morning and welcome...

[Steve Maskery]

There is no reason for anyone to have noticed, but I've not been here this week. There is a reason for that.

On Monday, our oven went pop. It was a replacement, under warranty, for its predecessor. At least this one lasted 20 months instead of 6. Ninja is not the brand I thought it was. They do have a 2 year warranty, though. But that meant two round trips to Limoges, 45mins each way, to get it swapped.

When it went pop, it tripped the electrics. When the supply was restored, our LiveBox (orange router) wouldn't boot. So I rang Orange. Now I do not rate our service from Orange. The internet is up and down like Boris Johnson's trousers and if I want to access a 4G signal, or even a 2G signal, for that matter, I have to go for a walk. It is both poor and expensive. We are paying €97 per month for fibre internet and two mobiles, one of which is, some months, never used.

But there is one very good thing about Orange, they do have an English-only Customer service line, and you don't have to wait half an hour to get through. 5 or 10 mins max.

So I called Orange. She said we would have a fix withing 48 hours. She would send a new power supply unit. Now I used to be a computer engineer, and I know that a faulty PS could do this. But I do not understand how a power outage could damage the PS in this way. So I was skeptical.

But I waited. Wednesday came and went. I rang again, and I accidentally pressed the wrong button and got through to Sales. Good mistake. She reduced our monthly bill by €13. Still, I still don't have Internet and it's still expensive. But we will also receive a LiveBox7 instead of a LiveBox6. I have no idea if that will make any significant difference with the venerable legacy IT kit that we have.

The new PSU arrived yesterday. It made no difference, as I thought.

I rang again and got through to TechSupport, somewhere in India, I guess. The guy spoke good English, so I was happy. He checked the line. The problem is with the fibre connection. He will order an engineer, earliest Friday afternoon (today). Yesterday I got a call at about 3pm. Can he come now? Unfortunately I was 40km away, so sorry, no. But he turned up at 10am today and all was good by half-past. And he spoke English, about as good as my French. We got by quite well.

However, all the above is preamble to my central point. I cannot believe how much the absence of Internet has impacted our lives all week. It's not just that I can't do my morning crossword, but no emails, no phone, no Radio4, no films or telly, no WhatsApp calls to SWMBO's sister, no accessing my bank, and no general searching for information. I have no idea how we lived when we were kids. This has disrupted my life in a way I never imagined possible.

It's now noon and I am going to sit down and do my regular morning crossword. Pleased to meet you again, friend.

S

 

[Spectric]

There is a reason for that.

To busy eating sausages .

 

[Spectric]

I cannot believe how much the absence of Internet has impacted our lives all week.

It can be positive, you have to do those things you keep puting off and it saves money because you cannot buy online.

 

[Steve Maskery]

To (sic) busy eating sausages .

I'll have you know that this morning I was at my lowest weight since moving to France, probably the lowest in the last decade. So Na, na, na-na, nah.
S

 

[Steve Maskery]

It can be positive, you have to do those things you keep puting off and it saves money because you cannot buy online.

When you live in the middle of nowhere, as we do, buying online is actually cheaper than going shopping. Anywhere is 40m away, and I can't guarantee getting what I want when I get there. I personally am funding Jeff Bezos's boat.
S

 

[duke]

Regards to relying on our devices, I can remember back in the day staying at the cottage for the weekend with only a rotary phone and a shared party line. Total bliss those days were.

 

[AndyP]

We are also in a very poor mobile signal area, my new Samsung mobile right now is only showing H+ data strength, which I believe is less than 3g.
For different reasons we have now ditched any sort of cable fed connection and sold our soul to the other mega-yacht owner and nutcase, Mr Musk.

 

[spb]

We are also in a very poor mobile signal area, my new Samsung mobile right now is only showing H+ data strength, which I believe is less than 3g.

H+ is significantly better than 3G, but less than 4G; think of it as 3.75G if that's more useful. The progression goes, roughly, 2G/GPRS, E, 3G, H, H+, 4G/LTE, 5G.

 

[Spectric]

I personally am funding Jeff Bezos's boat.

Yes old jeff has a clever business model that is in essence nothing more than a pipeline from Asia into the UK and Europe, a lot of people just giving a few quid will go towards a bigger boat and I bet he does not eat sausages on his boat, probably roast exotic something.

 

[AndyP]

Thanks Stephen, I had misunderstood, who on earth came up with that system?

 

[spb]

The problem is just that there isn't a system. Over the years various people and companies have come up with new ways of doing mobile data connections, each with various advantages over the previous ones. Each one gets given a name, some more descriptive than others, when it's in the development/prototyping stage. Some of those achieve widespread adoption, and the letters are just shortened forms of the names their creators gave them.

Then occasionally the industry just decides, fairly arbitrarily, that this particular new tech is "better enough" to deserve being called a new generation, and that's when you get a new 3G/4G/5G label. Sometimes that's because it's a genuinely different way of doing things, but sometimes it's just that incremental improvements have made it so much faster than the previous 'G' that they think it deserves it as a marketing name.

 

[Gill]

Our landline is being transferred to another company because landlines are to be discontinued at the end of the year. As a result, we’ve bought a new mobile phone and we’ll be getting our internet from a different company altogether. I hate being dependent on a gadget that’s battery powered.

If/when Putin attacks, you can bet one of his first targets will be the mobile phone network.

 

[Doug]

I called in my local corner shop the other day to pick up some tinnies, when I saw the amount of folks in the shop I nearly didn’t bother but a slurp was much needed so I proceeded to the fridge.
On joining the back of a large long queue & realising it wasn’t moving I was about to return the beer when a voice from the front shouted “is anyone not picking up or dropping off a parcel, not wanting a lottery ticket & not paying by card as the internets gone down”
With much joy as I was the only one paying cash I proceeded to the front of the queue, paid for my purchases & left the shop thinking what a sad state of affairs that the commerce of a business could ground to halt so quickly because of the loss of an internet connection.
We really have become far to dependent on it.

 

[Cabinetman]

Our landline is being transferred to another company because landlines are to be discontinued at the end of the year. As a result, we’ve bought a new mobile phone and we’ll be getting our internet from a different company altogether. I hate being dependent on a gadget that’s battery powered.

If/when Putin attacks, you can bet one of his first targets will be the mobile phone network.

Putin for you, cataclysm for me, when/if everything goes pear shaped we are all stuffed, without even a survival booklet we won’t last long, can’t look anything up and almost all knowledge is lost.
Sorry to be gloomy.

 

[Spectric]

we are all stuffed, without even a survival booklet we won’t last long,

We should be able to remove our internal doors to make a shelter a lot faster now we have cordless tools, back in the day they would have had to use a manual screwdriver to undo those slotted hinge screws.

 

[Steve Maskery]

We should be able to remove our internal doors to make a shelter

Yes, and it will make no difference whatsoever.
It was nice knowing you all.
S

 

[Cabinetman]

We should be able to remove our internal doors to make a shelter a lot faster now we have cordless tools, back in the day they would have had to use a manual screwdriver to undo those slotted hinge screws.

Till the battery runs down then they’re completely useless. Sorry just thought, unless of course you meant building a shelter from Nuclear weapons, shelter under the stairs I seem to remember.

 

[Lons]

Our landline is being transferred to another company because landlines are to be discontinued at the end of the year. As a result, we’ve bought a new mobile phone and we’ll be getting our internet from a different company altogether. I hate being dependent on a gadget that’s battery powered.

If/when Putin attacks, you can bet one of his first targets will be the mobile phone network.

We lost our landline last year and I tried VOIP for six months before ditching it completely.
What affects us most is that our mobile signal isn't great and we need a booster indoors so now when we get a power cut which often happens we're completely isolated unless I get in the car and drive to the top of the hill.

Advice from the power company and BT is to report outages and issues by 'phone or on their websites....err yeah they've really thought that one through

 

[Doug]

At the moment I’m sorting out a few things that have involved downloading apps the thing is all these companies give me a Q R code to get the app.
Am I missing something but how can I scan the Q R code when I’m looking at it on the screen of the device I want to load the app to

 

[RogerS]

I called in my local corner shop the other day to pick up some tinnies, when I saw the amount of folks in the shop I nearly didn’t bother but a slurp was much needed so I proceeded to the fridge.
On joining the back of a large long queue & realising it wasn’t moving I was about to return the beer when a voice from the front shouted “is anyone not picking up or dropping off a parcel, not wanting a lottery ticket & not paying by card as the internets gone down”
With much joy as I was the only one paying cash I proceeded to the front of the queue, paid for my purchases & left the shop thinking what a sad state of affairs that the commerce of a business could ground to halt so quickly because of the loss of an internet connection.
We really have become far to dependent on it.

Ah but then what would all those pointless influencers or ‘content’ creators do?

 

[RogerS]

At the moment I’m sorting out a few things that have involved downloading apps the thing is all these companies give me a Q R code to get the app.
Am I missing something but how can I scan the Q R code when I’m looking at it on the screen of the device I want to load the app to

Ah, Roger’s First Law in action

 

[SamQ aka Ah! Q!]

At the moment I’m sorting out a few things that have involved downloading apps the thing is all these companies give me a Q R code to get the app.
Am I missing something but how can I scan the Q R code when I’m looking at it on the screen of the device I want to load the app to

The more complicated they make it, the easier it is to foul up. A wise man once wrote that.

 

[John Brown]

As far as I understand things, the advantage of a landline was that they ran off giant batteries at the exchange. Surely that all went out of the window when System X was introduced?

 

[Lons]

As far as I understand things, the advantage of a landline was that they ran off giant batteries at the exchange. Surely that all went out of the window when System X was introduced?

I don't know about that but what I do know is that before BT went digital to us about a year ago our landline could still be used during a power cut so it got power from somewhere.
Because that would be lost I also know that in the case of someone vulnerable having no access to a mobile they could get one FOC, my elderly neighbour did exactly that. She was worried sick as she had heart and other issues and as it happens she had a massive stroke in the middle of the night, couldn't work her mobile and died a few days later.
Not saying that was anyone's fault btw or that she would have been able to get help more quickly, she should have been wearing a panic button but had left that in the bathroom.

 

[Accipiter]

At the moment I’m sorting out a few things that have involved downloading apps the thing is all these companies give me a Q R code to get the app.
Am I missing something but how can I scan the Q R code when I’m looking at it on the screen of the device I want to load the app to

I asked Google... which came up with this:

AI Overview
To scan a QR code already on your phone screen, use built-in image recognition tools: take a screenshot and use Google Lens (Android) or Live Text (iPhone) to read it. Alternatively, on Android, long-press the image to scan, or on iPhone, save it to Photos and long-press the QR code.

Android (Google Lens / Photos)
Method 1 (Screenshot): Take a screenshot of the QR code. Open the screenshot in Google Photos, tap the "Lens" icon, and it will decode the image.
Method 2 (Circle to Search): Long-press the home button or navigation bar, then circle the QR code on your screen to scan it.
Method 3 (Samsung Gallery): Open the image in the Samsung Gallery app and tap the Bixby Vision icon

If that doesn't make sense then if you do the search (how to scan a qr code when viewing it on the device) it should bring up the same but with additional links to some videos.

 

[Spectric]

shelter under the stairs I seem to remember

No good as I live in a Bungalow, maybe having less height means I might miss the blast wave !

What affects us most is that our mobile signal isn't great and we need a booster indoors so now when we get a power cut which often happens we're completely isolated unless I get in the car and drive to the top of the hill.

Yet the old analogue system worked for decades and even during the power cuts in the seventies, we keep using that word called progress .

At the moment I’m sorting out a few things that have involved downloading apps the thing is all these companies give me a Q R code to get the app

Yes you can have fun with that one, I rang a company a few months back wanting to buy something and they said it is easily done by scanning the QR code on the site. So I asked how do I scan this code, just point the phone at it and it will do the rest, no my phone is not allowing this so they went through all sorts of settings which I said my phone does not have. What phone are you using, my phone is a Panosonic with nice big buttons and just a tiny screen that is connected to my broadband via an adaptor. Is it a mobile phone, yes it is mobile and with a range of about 40 metres from the base unit. Eventualy something twigged and they said is it a landline phone, yes it is and my number would have showed that on your phone, you said it is a mobile, no I said it is mobile and they hung up.

 

[Spectric]

Yes, and it will make no difference whatsoever.

But it gave people something to do and stopped a mass panic of people trying to go somewhere, many would have been vaporised before even getting a door removed.