St Lucia: Cola Confusion

OK, here's one for you. Waitrose is a UK thing, right? Wrong! Over here in St Lucia is a big supermarket chain called Super J's, and for every one of their own own-brand item they sell, they seem to sell about 3 Waitrose products. Surely, after buying the goods, shipping them over here, payif import taxes, and so on... that can't be cost-effective?!??
(I smell an ulterior motive...)

Video: Greetings from St Lucia!

Here we are, on our honeymoon. We got here yesterday and we were planning to go to the beach today. However, things haven't gone quite according to plan...

St Lucia Innuend-o-Rama

We're in St Lucia at the moment, and I'll let these pictures speak for themselves.

Let us know what you think in the comments section below...

NHS HealthSpace - What Was The Point?

For those of you who are reading this and know what NHS HealthSpace is, you might want to skip this first paragraph. Basically, the NHS had this great idea, that they'd put everyone's medical information in secure spaces online for healthcare professionals around the world to access whenever you need treatment.

This time last year, I recieved a letter, asking me to fill in a form to sign up for an account and post it off - this would, in turn, allow me to view my "Summary Care Record" online and check what my doctors' surgery had on file for me - allergies, conditions, test results, that kind of thing. Fair enough. I dutifully fill in the form and post it off.

A week later, I get a letter back. They'd like to verify my identity, and want me to turn up at my surgery with my passport and a utility bill at a pre-given time. No problem. I turn up. Half an hour of sitting around later, and I'm told my account will be active shortly.

Another week passes, and I get another letter. "Unfortunately we have been unable to complete your registration due to an administrative error whilst you were registering." They want me to turn up again. Fine. I drive across town, produce my ID, and I'm once again assured it will be all ready to go within a week or so.

Yet another week passes, and finally I can log in. My details are shown to me. Name - check. Date of birth - check... "No further information is held". A quick phonecall to their helpline, and I'm told that my surgery is "in the process of uploading all the records, and they'll be online to view in a few days".

I forget about it - more important things to do - until today. Signing on, and indeed, still, no further information.

Ultimately, the NHS spent around £1billion - yes, that's £1,000,000,000.00 - on this system, also known as "Connecting for Health" - and what does it do?... Nothing. What a waste of money.

Orange San Francisco - A Review

First, a disclaimer - I work for Orange, so please take that into consideration when reading this. I try to be unbiased, but y'know.

We get many phones come through the stock room at work - some good, some not so good. Usually, the good ones are really expensive.

All of Orange's own-brand phones so far have been very much toward the "budget" end of the market - coming in at about £50, and having a very limited feature set - cameras between VGA and 2MP, proprietary headphone sockets, low-resolution displays with dodgy pixellated fonts... you get the idea.

However, the San Francisco (better known abroad as the ZTE Blade) came in a delivery today. I decided on my lunch break to open one up and have a play with it, and I was so impressed that I found myself touring it around everyone else in the shop, showing it off.

The Orange San Francisco

Big "Wows", "Oohs", and "Aaahs" came from the moment it switched on. Very fast bootup indeed - straight into the Android homescreen. Oh yeah, maybe I forgot to mention that - it's running the 2.1 Eclair version of Android straight out of the box.

The display is capacitive - none of the resitive baloney that blights the Rio and Miami models in the range. It's 3.5" diagonally, so nice and big. Oh, and it does multitouch for pinch-and-pull zooming like on the you-know-what-phone.

The camera is superb. Even though it's got no flash, it's 3.2MP with auto-focus, and happily focused in on objects and text only a few centimeters away from the lens.

Add to this the inbuilt WiFi and GPS, and you've got yourself quite a package.

And how much would you expect to pay for this little device? £200? £150? No, it's £99... or £79 from your local Orange shop if you work for Government or the NHS. Bargain.

It would do pretty much everything my iPhone will do - and having had a play with one, I'm seriously tempted...

Brightly-Coloured Fail

Well done Debenhams...



Sent from my iPhone