SofaKingCool

I might be 31 years old but as they say “You are never to old to further your education” and that is exactly what I have decided to do.  I had a couple of ideas as to what I wanted to do but I didn’t know how I was going to do it.  My first plan was to go down the legal route and do either a law degree or something similar but after some serious thinking and research I decided to further my IT education.  I have jumped into doing a degree in Information and Communication Technology, but rather than go to university I discovered that I could achieve the same goal from home.

There were many factors I had to consider before I decided on an Open University degree, the biggest being the financial strain full time education would have on my family.  The OU offer a really flexible approach to learning and allow you to set your own study times.  This way I control the pace on which I learn making juggling work, life and study much easier.

The first part of the course is the M150 course which is called Data, computing and information. The course explains how the many different tasks accomplished with the aid of modern computers are performed through the use of a relatively small number of physical and logical mechanisms, and how these mechanisms are embedded into the computer hardware and software that surround us.[1]

This all sounds very intense but from what I have read in the text books and course material supplied it is fairly sedate.  The first unit appears to have very little to do with computers but as you get further into the text it all starts to make sense.  An example of this is how they start to explain the difference between data and information.  They say if someone was to walk up to you in the street and say “50p” you would be quite confused, however if this “data” is linked with the information “a pint of milk costs” it all makes sense.  The M150 course also teaches you how to write simple programs and the legal, political and ethical issues surrounding the use of computers.

The course will take around 9 months to complete with 12-16 hours of studying per week and will give me 30 of the required 240 credits to gain my degree.  Of course there will be more courses that I need to study in order to acheive my goal and they are:

• Information and communication technologies at work (T121) 30 points
• Networked living: exploring information and communication technologies (T175) 30 points
• Accreditation of certified practitioners 1 (MT127) 30 points
• Accreditation of certified practitioners 2 (MT227) 30 points
• Information and communication technologies: people and interactions (T209) 60 points
• ICTs’ Change and projects at work (T226) 30 points

These courses should take between 3-5 years to complete depending on how many I do at a time and how much work I put into them, I am aiming to get it done in 3 years or less.  All this is costing about £2700 which is considerably less than doing 3 years in university and I get the exact same qualification at the end of it.

I will be adding to this section as I progress through the course.

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Citation

[1] Open University M150 course description

Everything else, M150, Open University ICT, M150, Open University, OU

 If you are anything like me, organising things is a must in all aspects of life.  I think this is why I love Ebay selling so much, there is a lot of sorting out to do and organisation is needed.  I decided to make an Ebay profit/loss spreadsheet recentlty, it is a very simple little thing that made me happy because I can track how much I’m making or losing on postage and packing.  I created it using Microsoft Office 2007 and it is compatible with all earlier versions of Office.

The spreadsheet allows you to add your item, sale price, estimated postage cost and actual postage cost.  It will calculate how much you have gained or lost on postage, it will also calculate your overall profit or loss.

To download the .zip version Click Here

To download the .xls file Click Here

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A helping hand, Online shopping ebay, help, microsoft, spreadsheets, tutorials

Time for a little Ebay related stuff! (Updated)

I have recently developed a new love for the internet devil that is Ebay.  Having two young children who appear to be growing up at an almost unhuman rate I have quite a lot of stuff that they have outgrown, so I decided to stick it all on Ebay.

Whilst listing things on Ebay I noticed that the gallery listing charge had been removed so it now costs nothing to have an image along side your listing title in the search result pages.  Now this alone is all very nice but it still costs to have extra images within your listing, or does it.  After playing around with the html editor it would appear that the <img> tag has not been disabled, so providing you can host your images somewhere you can insert images within your listing and avoid paying the extra charges.

I am going to explain to you how you can use this to your advantage and make the best of this.  First you will need to upload your image(s) preferably to a site like Flickr.  Once the image is uploaded you need to get the true address of your image, there are a couple of ways you can do this but these are the easy options.  You can right click on the image then select “View Image” and copy the URL from the address bar.  Or you will need to press the “share it” link in the top right of Flickr and select Embed it then copy and paste the link it provides into a notepad, you will end up with something that looks like this:

<a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/parassassin/2894613154/” title=”Ebay Description by parassassin, on Flickr”><img src=”http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3239/2894613154_31334664db.jpg” width=”500″ height=”313″ alt=”Ebay Description” /></a>

The true address for your image is highlighted in red it, just delete all the other text until you are left with:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3239/2894613154_31334664db.jpg

Click to see larger image.

Now it’s time to insert this URL into your ebay listing, now I could take you on a great html journey to explain everything you can do with it but for now Im just going to explain how to insert the image and float text next to it.  You will need to create your listing by choosing the Advanced Sell option, once you have completed all the fields you should begin your listing design.  First you should layout your listing as you would like it to appear by adding a title and/or a footer, once you have done this create a big space in the middle of your listing by pressing return a few times, you should end up with something that looks like the image displayed here.

Now you are ready to insert your image into your listing.  Click the html tab at the top of the editor, for someone who is new to html coding this may look a bit daunting but don’t worry as by creating a space in the middle of your listing you have created a reference point in the html code.  You should be able to see lots of <br> tags.  These are Line breaks, simply put they are the individual blank lines you created by pressing return.  Now it is time to add some html code to your image URL, I will be using some basic tags to get you started but these will do the trick quite nicely.  Below is the code you should enter in the middle of the <BR> tags in the Ebay editor, just don’t forget to add your image URL in between the inverted comma’s (” “)

<img src=”http://www.ENTER-YOUR-IMAGE-URL-HERE.COM” vspace=”6″ width=”200″ height=”200″ align=”left” border=”0″ hspace=”6″>

This will insert an image to the left of the page and will allow you to type to the right of it.  Once you have done this click the “Standard” tab on your Ebay editor and your image should be nicely displayed on the left of the page.  Then place your cursor to the right of your image an add your description, once you have done that you can remove the extra spaces above and below the image to tidy things up.  If you wish your image to display on the right just change “left to right”.  In fact every attribute can be changed in the above code to suit you.  After some playing around you will be creating Ebay listings full of images without paying the extra fee’s.

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A helping hand, Online shopping beat ebay fees, ebay, flickr, help, tutorials

This post all revolves round the simple task of buying a new washing machine, I say simple but the reality is much much different.

Back in March our washing machine finally gave up the ghost and could not be repaired so me and my partner decided to buy a new one.  We considered visiting our local electrical store but after searching online we found a wider choice of machine and started the online buying process.  We decided on a machine from what we thought was a trusted retailer and paid an extra £25 for next day delivery.  Our machine arrived and from the get go we were very happy with our machine, we had read many great reviews and the person we spoke to on the phone said it was a great washing machine.  About a week later I was in bed whilst my partner was doing some washing before coming to bed, I was woken by a blood curdling scream.  I dived out of bed thinking that something bad had happened, when I got downstairs my partner was clearly shaken but had a grin on her face so I knew it wasn’t anything life threatening.  The washing machine had just started it’s spin cycle and halfway through it started shaking violently.  It shook so much it threw itself about 4 foot into the middle of the kitchen.

So we phoned Comet the next day to ask if someone could come and take this death trap out of our house and replace it.  I spoke to a very friendly advisor who said that it was company policy to send an engineer out before authorising a replacement.  I told her that I would not be happy having the same machine as this fault could have been very serious had my 1 year old been in the kitchen when it happened.  She informed me that once the engineer had seen the machine he would issue a code number so that we could get a replacement machine sent out.  4 days later the engineer came out to look at the machine and informed us that the fault was caused by its stability mechanism failing.  The drum had in fact thrown itself off its mountings at 1600rpm, the engineer said that in his 10 years of washing machine repair work he had never seen it happen.

Anyway back to the lovely customer rep, I explained to her that it was going to be problem being without a machine for nearly 2 weeks (waiting for repair man then ordering a new one).  She suggested that once the engineer has visited I phone them back to get the exchange authorisation number, then I should visit my local store and choose a new machine to speed things up a bit.  So we ventured online and found another great machine at a great price, with the added bonus of having a further 15% off the price.  Unfortunately the machine was out of stock for home delivery. So we checked the stock levels in our local store and rushed to comet to grab the last one in stock.  We arrived at the store and noticed that the machine was much more expensive, the store manager explained that we were incorrectly informed that our online discount and delivery charges could be used in store.

When I got home I phoned comet to explain what had just happened and another very helpful customer service rep came up with a solution.  She said that she could order the machine from our local store and use it as a delivery platform so we could get it delivered next day.  This sounds very confusing but she explained that the online stock is totally separate to the in-store stock but because we had paid extra for the special delivery she would reserve the in-store machine and send the delivery driver to the store to pick it up and deliver it directly to us.  This sounded great and I was left feeling very happy at the outcome, that was until the next day no machine arrived.

The next day I phoned comet to find out what was going on and they told me that no order had been made and the last one in my local store was sold the night before.  Another friendly rep then suggested we choose another machine whilst I was on the phone with him and he would personally put the order through himself.  So we found another machine £20 more than we had originally spent but the rep said he would refund the delivery charge and give us next day delivery for free.  I asked the rep to ensure that this order was made and he stated that he had done it himself and it was definitely been ordered.  The next day came and went but still no washing machine.  So I phoned comet again and spoke to someone who told me that no order had been made, so yet again following another hour on hold I spoke to someone who said I should make another order.  I once again looked online to find a washing machine and found a similar spec’d machine but this one was £40 more than the last, I asked if I could get a further discount due to the f**k up’s they had made.  I was told that I was getting free next day delivery so I should be happy, so the order was yet again placed and I was told that my machine would be delivered before 12pm the next day.

At this point I was at breaking point so I phoned to complain about the problems, after 40 minutes on hold I was put through to the customer service supervisor who assured me that the order was made and this incident would be investigated.  I asked her if she could guarantee that my order was made and I was getting my machine the next day and she stated “Yes I will personally ensure that this order is made correctly and you WILL receive your washing machine before 12pm tomorrow”.

Guess what…… No machine the next day, so once again I phoned them and once again I was put on hold for about an hour whilst they tried to trace the source of these f**k ups.  They decided to place the blame with some poor soul in the stock ordering department and transfered me directly to the people who process the orders.  I ordered my new washing machine and paid the extra and was told it could not be delivered the next day as the delivery drivers “are not allowed to collect anything on weekends” WTF????

So Monday arrived and finally I got my washing machine, it is a very nice machine which we are happy with.  I am just unhappy by the way comet has treated me and has profited from the errors that they made.  Feeling much calmer I phoned head office to complain once again about being lied to by many of its staff and to complain about the person who I complained to the first time.  Their response was just great, “I’m sorry you have already made a complaint so we are unable to accept another one from you” WTF????

So customers be warned if you do decide to buy from comet make sure that you only have one complaint because you aren’t allowed to complain about more than one thing.  Just makes me think that comet are just stuck up their own Uranus.

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Online shopping candy, comet, hotpoint, sucks, washing machine

As some of you may be aware, us lucky xbox 360 owners are eagerly awaiting the “fall update” to our consoles dashboard.  This new update is a total revamp for the box and will do away with the much loved “blades”.  There have been various videos floating around that show a simulated version of the new look and to be honest with you it looks great.  This however is not the reason for me writing this, it is a much more sinister reason, THE XBOX AVATAR SYSTEM.

It has been announced that we are going to be getting an avatar to customise and use on our new dashboard, it should be noted that this avatar bears more than a passing resemblance to the Wii’s Mii’s.  I can appreciate that the xbox team have spent a great deal of time making this update look as good as possible but these avatars are a step backwards for the hardcore gamers the xbox normally attracts.

It is still unclear if these avatars are compulsory but it would appear that we will be stuck with them.  Take a look at the video below to see what these new avatars will bring to the new xbox experience.

As you can see the new dashboard looks very nice but the avatars seem a little childish, in my opinion each of the consoles have a certain type of person play them for example:

• The PS3 user is normally someone who never played the original xbox and will remain loyal to the sony brand.  They care a lot on how a game looks rather than how it plays.
• The Wii users are either young families or part of the ipod youth generation and aren’t interested in how a game looks.
• The xbox user is a more mature gamer who has been around computers for a long time and is more interested in how many “online features” there are.

These are just my opinions so please don’t start calling me a “fanboi” I can see good in all three consoles but have chosen the xbox because of the live community.  I just think that the new xbox avatars are slightly better than the Nintendo Mii’s but not as good as the PSN avatars and this puts Microsoft in uncharted water!

I can see why Microsoft have done this, first they reduce the price to undercut everything else on the market then they release a more family orientated console.  They are simply trying to push the xbox into the mass market and make it accessable for everyone, whist this is good for Microsoft it isn’t all good for the xbl community.  It would seem that most users who post on Major Nelsons Xbox blog are opposed to the new avatar system for the same reasons as me.  The xbox is a hardcore gamers console and opening it up to the Wii market will only slow down the progress of more mature games.  I personally think the community will suffer when the new intake of family users start playing online, in the same way that pubs suffered when they started to allow children in them.

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Gaming stuff avatars, microsoft, ps3, wii, xbl, xbox live