Author Archives: Steven

About Steven

Steven Jackson is a web developer based in the North East of England

Primark

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As a geek who’s not overly concerned with appearance, clothes shopping has always been a bit of chore for me.

The rise of stores such as Primark has changed that forever. £3 t-shirts that look very similar to £30 or £40 designer t-shirts, £5 dress shirts, and £8 zipup tops etc. Most of the items seem to be as well made as far more expensive items, and current with whatever’s fashionable.

Primark has de-risked clothes shopping for me. If I see something that I like, it’s probably quite stylish, and even if it turns out to be a mistake, or falls to pieces after a few washes (hasn’t happened yet), it’s not a big concern at those prices.

It’s not all perfect though… I do have some worries about how much the workers making the clothes are earning. It’s not something that I’ve looked into, but they can’t be making much putting together £3 t-shirts…

Another issue is how busy the Primark’s stores are. Unless you go just after they open, they’re not the most pleasant place to be, as they’re just too busy.

Despite those issues, I would hate to go back to a time before Primark and its competitors graced the high street.

I’ve even started buying multiples of certain items that look good on me and wash well. A certain £8 zipup top that I liked reappeared in a local store after I thought they’d sold out. I bought three of them (in addition to the one I already had), so when one wears out, I’ll just go in my cupboard and retrieve a new one.

Further RSS Improvements

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In order to make the main review feeds for all my sites work with Internet Explorer 7, I’ve changed the feeds from RSS 0.91 to RSS 1.0 (routing round an issue with the DTD in RSS 0.91). I’ve also reduced the number of items per feed to 15, to stay within the RSS 1.0 recommended limit.

Carsurvey.org, MotorcycleSurvey.com, and MobilePhoneSurvey.com now have links to their RSS feeds from their main New Reviews pages, as well as the RSS autodiscovery links that were already present.

Comments RSS Feeds

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Following a suggestion from a visitor, I’ve added RSS feeds for all reviews on Carsurvey.org, MotorcycleSurvey.com and MobilePhoneSurvey.com. They’re dynamically generated using PHP, so I’m crossing my fingers that over 80,000 new RSS feeds don’t bring my server to its knees.

As a bit of insurance, I’ve padded the ID part of the URL out to a fixed width, to make converting the dynamic feeds to a static directory tree easier. That’s my backup plan if server load is a problem. Ultimately even that might not be enough, but I’m going to be optimistic and see what happens.

Whilst implementing this, I was pleasantly surprised to discover Feed Icons. It’s great that there’s a standard icon set to use for displaying feeds, which is free to use. The icons have been liberally sprinkled around my sites.

Kurt Kinetic Road Machine

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Last week my latest fitness toy arrived – a Kurt Kinetic Road Machine

Basically it’s a trainer for my bike. It allows me to ride indoors when the weather is too horrid, or my muscles are too sore to make running pleasant.

I’ve fancied a trainer for quite a long time, but didn’t realise until recently that good quality trainers are not that expensive, and also fit mountain bikes (I ride a hardtail mountain bike with road tyres).

I did some research into the various trainers available, and came to the conclusion that I wanted something reasonably quiet, that felt at least vaguely similar to riding on a road. This seemed to rule out turbo trainers (too loud), and magnetic trainers (the resistance and feel are quite different from road riding). The heavily computerised trainers were also ruled out as being too expensive.

Looking at the fluid trainers, the Kurt Kinetic Road Machine seemed to have the most consistently good feedback, so I placed an order with the Planet X, who are the UK distributor. The kit I bought included a computer to attach to the handlebars and a spare tyre, and cost £196.50 including delivery. A CycleOps Climbing Block was also purchased from Wiggle, to lift the front wheel level with the back. Brief impressions below:

  • Firstly, the build quality is very impressive. I can’t see how you could possibly break this thing, and why they offer a lifetime warranty.
  • It’s supposed to be quiet, and I have heard people claiming to use them in flats. Well it’s not bad, but I certainly wouldn’t call it quiet, and wouldn’t want to live downstairs from someone using one. No problem in my garage though.
  • It feels pretty similar to riding on the road, except there’s no opportunity to rest, so ten miles on the trainer is noticeably tougher harder than riding on the road.

Eighteen miles is my longest ride so far, and the only downside I’ve found is that even riding in an unheated garage in November, I get very hot, very quickly. I don’t think I’ll be using the trainer in the summer, but then there’s no excuse for not getting out in the fresh air then.

To make things more interesting, also I picked up an Ipod nano from the Apple UK Refurbished Store. £65 delivered for a black 1st gen 2Gb nano was a very good price. To go with that, I bought an XtremeMac SportWrap from Amazon UK. I’m very impressed with both of them. Long rides seem to go much more quickly with podcasts and music as company.

Overall, I’m very happy with this set up, and would buy it again without hesitation.

The Single Founder Myth

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I’m a huge fan of Paul Graham’s writing, but having just read The Single Founder Myth by Mike Taber, I find myself agreeing with Mike more than Paul.

Mike links to a Joel on Software post from 2000 called Ben and Jerry’s vs Amazon, which despite being over six years old, makes the choices faced in running a startup very clear.

I’m not sure I qualify as running a startup anymore, as Carsurvey.org is over 9 years old, but I run CSDO Media as a one man band, and I definitely prefer the organic “Ben and Jerry’s” method of growing a company.

A new website in less than 12 hours

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Less than 12 hours after coming up with the idea, I’m happy to launch CarFilter.co.uk (link now removed)

It’s a simple site for searching UK car reviews, based on Google’s new Custom Search Engine

Inspired by the review Matt Cutts wrote, I spent some time writing lots of URL patterns that would filter only the review pages of most major UK car sites. I’m pretty happy with the result, which I think gives nicer results than just a plain “model manufacturer reviews” search on Google UK

Budvar Lager and Online UK Supermarkets

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I’m a bit of a fan of Budvar Lager, but it’s quite difficult to buy it in reasonable quantities anywhere near my home. My local ASDA used to sell it, but I haven’t seen any there for about nine months.

As usual, I did some searching online to see if I could find someone who would sell me Budvar at a reasonable price.

Firstly, all the specialist Internet drinks sites proved to be useless. They’re fine for premium wine and spirits, but the postage for crates of lager is just too much. I don’t want to pay £35 or so for 24 x 330ml bottles of lager. I like Budvar, but not that much. Kronenbourg 1664 is nearly as nice, and is often on offer at my local ASDA.

Tesco, Asda and Sainsbury’s all claim to offer Budvar online. Below is a brief summary of my experiences with their services:

Tesco:

My first order was with Tesco. They had a good offer on for 24 x 330ml bottles of budvar for £18 each + £5 delivery

First annoyance is that you have to create an account and log in to browse the site. It really puts you off checking out what they have on offer

The site is functional, but is not very pleasant to browse. The text is too small, as are the photos. I wasn’t tempted to browse past the lager section

Delivery slots were hard to get. I had to book over a week in advance. The delivery slots were also two hours long

Despite the above issues, three crates of Budvar turned up as requested. The annoying thing is that they now no longer stock Budvar at all 🙁

Overall marks: 6/10

ASDA:

This felt like a trip back to 1998. Their site (just recently updated) works with Safari, but doesn’t like Camino. I was shown a page suggesting I upgrade to Internet Explorer 4 or higher, or Netscape 4.5 or higher. There was a link to a non-existent page on Netscape’s website. No mention of Firefox etc. This is a disgrace in 2006

Their site in general is comparable to Tesco’s site. ASDA’s navigation is worse, but their product details are better

They do allow you browse (using Safari) without logging in, and they showed Budvar as being available. Once I created an account to place an order, Budvar wasn’t listed

I raised a query about this through their website, which states that they will back to you in 48 hours. It took them roughly two weeks to call me (it was long enough that I can’t be specific about the number of days). The guy I spoke to said that the site you see without logging in is just a demo, and that products shown there might not actually be available

When I asked about why my local store didn’t stock Budvar, and why I couldn’t order it, he suggested filling in a form elsewhere on the ASDA website. Somehow I have my doubts that this would result in me being able to buy Budvar anytime soon

I’ve been bombarded with emails by ASDA since creating an account. Many more than either Tesco or Sainsbury’s. So much so that I’ve asked them to stop sending me emails

Overall marks: 3/10

Sainsbury’s:

Sainsbury’s site is nicer to use than either ASDA or Tesco. Bigger text, clearer navigation, no login required to browse the site

They stock 4 x 330ml bottles of Budvar for £3.99, but you save £1 if you buy two packs. So basically it’s £21 for 24 x 330ml bottles. More expensive than Tesco, but at least they still sell it

Delivery was available within two days, and the delivery slot was one hour. Noticeably better than Tesco

As it was pleasant to browse the site, I order some Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream (on offer) and 20 bags of Bacon Wheat Crunchies (not available at my local ASDA)

Everything turned up on time, although I only got 48 bottles of lager, rather than the 80 I ordered. They do warn you that this might happen. The 20 bags of Wheat Crunchies were delivered filling a single carrier bag to capacity 🙂 (they don’t sell multipacks). The lager was in carrier bags with 8 bottle per bag. Surely it would have been easier to deliver two crates as Tesco did?

I’ve just been emailed a £5 voucher for my next order, which will cover the delivery charge. They also offer free delivery between Tuesday and Thursday if you spend more than £70

Overall marks: 8/10

Conclusion:

From my admittedly limited experience, Sainsbury definitely seem to have the edge over Tesco in terms of the customer experience, and ASDA have some serious catching up to do

Small changes to the Carsurvey.org comments pages

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On the comments pages, the reviews now have their dates and times displayed in the same format as the comments. This is in response to a visitor request, and makes things more consistent across those pages.

The review summary and “Add new comment” page elements have been enlarged to make them more visible.

As usual, these changes have also been made to the Mobile Phone and Motorcycle sites.

Samsung SGH-i760

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Engadget have just posted details of the Samsung SGH-i760, and it looks very nice indeed.

It’s a QWERTY slider Windows Mobile device weighing only 119g, complete with HSDPA and and WiFi. Basically it has all the features of the HTC TYTN, but at only 2/3 of the weight.

I still think I’ll be going for a Nokia N95, combined with my existing Dell Axim X50v, but currently this new Samsung would be my second choice for a new phone.