Karl Poe

Catch 22 when moving to the UK

Most Britons don’t think of it twice (and why would they?) but their country is rigged with catch 22 situations for people, trying to move to the UK.

Here are couple examples:

1. In order to get a national insurance number, you have to be working. However, in order to get a work, a lot of employers will require national insurance number on a job application;

2. In order to register as a freelancer, you have to have a national insurance number. However, in order to get a national insurance number you either need to work or be registered as a freelancer;

3. In order to open a bank account you need proof of address. However, in order to rent a house you will often need a bank account;

4. In order to get a mobile contract (so that you can use the bill as a proof of address) you need to have a bank account. However, to open one you need a proof of address.

And so on, and so forth.

It’s funny an frustrating at the same time. The only way out of this mess is really to just lie somewhere, which is what a lot of people end up doing.

So, if you’ve decided to move to the UK, get ready to play some catch 22 ;)

This is not how Lennon imagined it

In short: Liverpool airport sucks and so does RyanAir.

Full story: Today I was supposed to attend the biggest internet and new media conference in the Baltic states - Login 2010, but I’m sitting at work, following its twitter feed instead. Why? Because I’ve missed my flight on Monday.

After coming back to Liverpool from Krakow on Sunday, I’ve decided not to go back to Carlisle just to come back in the morning to fly to Kaunas. So me and my better half stayed at Hampton hotel, which was amazing. Not only because the hotel is across the street from the airport, but because the room was great and the service was amazing.

Unfortunately the fact thet the hotel is so close to the airport didn’t help us much on Monday. After checking-in, we went upstairs just to find a massive queue of people. Between 6:00 and 7:30 there were around 10 flights, meaning there were over a thousand people waiting to go through security. And even though airport workers would let people who received final boarding call for their flight through, you’d still have to wait in another line by the security and they didn’t seem to care if your flight was about to leave.

We’ve arrived at the gate just to get the door shut in front of us. There were 5 of us, all with lugage. Here’s the “fun” part — the plain was on hold while they were unloading our lugage and we could actually see it! So instead of taking 2 minutes to let us on, they were waiting for around 15 minutes. Such is the RyanAir policy. It’s also their policiy not to refund you in such cases. The best they could offer was paying 100 quid each to transfer our flight two days later from Birmingham.

OK, so the reality is that it was sort of our own fault. RyanAir and other airlines do warn you to arrive to the airport 2 hours before the flight. However, it would be crazy to deny that their policies are flawed and that Liverpool airport has some serious flow management problems. Especially as I’m not the first and probably not the last to rant about it, just google it. On top of that, they are extorting people to pay for fast lane.

Periscope simulated timeout expired

I wrote a little rant about Google a couple of days ago. Since they have not yet solved the problem (or even attempted to), I found a temporary workaround posted here.

Basically what you need to do is take your original feed (not FeedBurner address) and create a pipe for it at Yahoo! Pipes (you will need a Yahoo! account). For example in WordPress the default feed address is www.yourblog.com/feed. To make matters more simple, you can clone this pipe and change Fetch Feed block with your feed.

Save the pipe and don’t forget to change the name as well as description (or you can remove description all-together). Use the same name for your pipe as your FeedBurner feed, because it will be shown on subscription page (so don’t call it something like “Backup”).

Now copy RSS address for the pipe (not pipe URL) and use it as your source feed in FeedBurner.

That’s it!

Oh, and don’t forget to turn off FeedBurner plugins as it will create an infinite loop (pipe will not be able to access the original feed).

Hope this helps some people and also that FeedBurner will step-up it’s game and fix the darn problem.

Google doesn’t care about you… Get over it!

Today I’ve noticed that FeedBurner does not update feed for one of my blogs. I’ve started investigating and ran into a weird error when trying to resync the feed: “Periscope simulated timeout expired”

Googling that error returns only a handfull of results. Searching WordPress forums, FeedBurner Google Group, and Twitter, adds couple more results to the bunch.

So far it seems that the problem is with non-English blogs and is specifically attributed to FeedBurner as both: people using WordPress and people using Drupal face it.

Unfortunately it seems that everyone who had this problem, had it in the past week or so and there’s no solution yet. To make it even more “fun”, there’s no way to contact Google about it. FeedBurner help site says to report it to the forums, but it does not seem like anyone is actually reading those forums.

Frustrating, but not really unexpected. Why would Google care for someone using their free service, when they don’t even care for Nexus One owners, who paid a lot of money for their devices. I’m starting to think that Steve Jobs was right when he called Google’s “Don’t be evil” motto BS. Google is way too big to not be evil. They just don’t give a sh*t any more…

Rammstein in Manchester

I went to Rammstein concert in Manchester last week. Actually, calling it a concert is not very accurate - is a show, and not just any show… It’s a mash-up of music, fire, lasers, and more…

Even though I’ve been a fan for years, this was the first Rammstein show I have attended. Before going to the concert I was a bit worried that it might not be as great as my expectation were, but it was actually even greater than I’ve expected.

Besides the “usual” stuff such as spitting fire or using fireworks, a man was also set on fire right on the stage, Flake was rowing his boat in the sea of fans’ hands and the stage itself was never the same - it changed with every song.

This was the best concert I have ever attended! I will probably be listening to the setlist from this concert for months to come.

What will you do, when you phone gets stolen (or lost)?

A friend of mine has recently lost his phone. Someone found it and turned the device off right away. The thing he was worried about most was not the phone itself, but all the data like e-mails, phone numbers, kids’ photos, etc. It’s definitely not very pleasant knowing someone is going thought your personal stuff.

I decided not to wait till I loose my phone and started looking for different solutions of retrieving the phone and/or wiping the data remotely. I have T-Mobile G1, running Android OS and there are plenty of apps that can report phone’s GPS coordinates or wipe data remotely. However, most of those apps assume that whoever finds the phone will keep your SIM card in it.

Two apps that I decided to settle with are Remote Wipe and SIM Checker. First one allows you to wipe the phone and SD card by sending an SMS message - I’ve tried it, works like a charm. Of course, it’s worthless if whoever finds the phone, uses their own SIM. That’s where SIM Checker comes into play. It registers you SIM card and if a new one is inserted, it will turn on GPS and report phone’s location + new phone number via e-mail or SMS (or both).

Of course, this does not guarantee retrieval of the phone as the thief can simply wipe it, but if they do, at least you can be sure your data is safe.

Defending Android

I like Android — that’s not a big secret. Currently I own T-Mobile G1 and I hope to get Nexus One (or Two?) some time soon. And I would also never ever even consider buying an iPhone. Why? Because I like to do things my way and not the way Steve tells me to.

I was shocked, amazed, and angered while listening to the latest episode of TWig. Two of the hosts — Leo Laporte and Gina Trapani — have Nexus One, and Jeff Jarvis is an Apple fanboy. Usually both Leo and Gina do a pretty good job explaining things to clueless Jarvis, but in this last episode he was blabbering nonsense and other hosts were just eating it up.

Maybe they just didn’t want to start pointless discussion (arguing to Apple fanboy is like talking to a wall), I don’t know, but let me explain couple things Jeff got wrong.

1. “Google app on iPhone is better than on Android”

First of all, Android has Google Apps, not a single Google app, which my understanding is what iPhone has. So instead of launching an app to fire-up other apps, you have separate applications: Gmail, Maps, News, Voice Search, etc.

2. “It’s hard to get to news”

Well, hello, that was the big thing with the so called Genie Widget, that displays weather, news, and other useful info. Freakin’ iPhone doesn’t even have widgets! And if you don’t want a widget, because you’re saving screen space or are concerned about battery life, just use the app. It’s called… (surprise surprise) News!

Maybe the problem is that Mr Jarvis doesn’t know how to get into menu as it’s not like iPhone where the whole damn phone is one big menu. It wouldn’t surprise me as he didn’t know what notifications are for and how to turn them off.

There are other things Jeff gets terribly wrong, but I can’t stand it any more, so I just fast forward the parts where he talks about Nexus One. I’d be sympathetic if he admited that he does not know how to do stuff and asked for help, but he keeps telling how it’s much easier on the iPhone and so on. Of course it’s easier when you have used it for a while. Stop “thinking” like Steve told you to and start thinking for yourself!

I think both iPhone and Nexus One are great phones and they have their own specific markets. Android is for people who like experimenting, discovering, and figuring things themselves. Whereas iPhone is for “busy” (read: lazy) people who can’t be arsed to do anything more than learn how to use a single button.

Managing multiple twitter accounts

As long as I only had two twitter accounts, I would simply use separate browsers to logon to them. Firefox for the main one and Chrome for the secondary one. However, with the addition of @KarlPoe, it became a little more complicated to juggle multiple accounts.

At first I tried Brizzly. It seemed OK, but what I did not like was that it used it’s own service (instead of Twitpic) to host photos. Then I’ve tried HootSuite, but it had the same problem as Brizzly. Finally, I’ve realized that I will not find anything better than plain old twitter.com + @troynt userscript.

However, one problem remained - switching between the accounts. Loggin-off and logging-on every time I wanted to check for new tweets or post something was just not right and also time consuming. That’s where CookieSwap came in handy.

Now I can switch between my accounts in the matter of seconds and still have all the advanced features that @troynt userscript has to offer.

My twitter - my way! \m/

CyanogenMod vs Super D

Even though I love CyanogenMod ROM for it’s stability and extensive features, recently it has been going downhill with every new update. Slower and slower and slower…

That sort of forced me into doing some exploration and I have stumbled upon Super D. This ROM is phenomenal. It’s not as stable as CM, but it’s crazy fast. Also, the battery life seems to be much better on my G1, using this ROM. Even with home app locked in memory, compcache enabled and window animations, the battery lasts me the whole day. Granted I have 1600 mAh battery, it still lasts longer than using CM.

Anyway, because it seems that there’s no need to wipe the phone when switching between these ROMs, I just use whichever comes out last. However, since Super D uses bits and pieces from CyanogenMod, it usually means that I end-up using Super D.

Instead of “Hello world”

I always wanted to blog in English. After all, English was the language I have started my blogging “career” in. However, I didn’t want to abandon my main blog, and maintaining two at the same time was just too much for my OCD.

Anyway, sometimes I get these urges to start something new. Tonight was one of those nights. After hearing about #CarlisleTweetup, my new Twitter account was born — @KarlPoe. At the same time I thought that this tumblr blog will be a great company for it.

And so here we are…