Having just watched The Secret Life of Brian on Channel 4, I remember that I’ve yet to post my review of Spamalot.
I took Heather along just before Christmas for her birthday to a Saturday Matinee (the only tickets left). The musical follows the basic plot line of the Holy Grail and includes scenes from the film, but has been re-scripted for Broadway, which is the first problem.
It felt like some of the English humour was taken away to accommodate the Americans, and forgot to be put back in for the West End version.
Also the extra bits felt like they were written by either Mitch Benn or Richie Webb, both I can go and see for less than a tenner, a lot less that Spamalot!
However it was still funny. The set is really good and has been made to look like the original style of Python animation. The French and the Knights who say Ni. A full 10 out of 10 to Tim Curry who played a great King Arthur, if you do get a chance try and see the show before he goes (although if Keith Allen is free, I’m sure he would make a great replacement).
As per any West End show you will need to take out a small loan for tickets, programme and drinks but it was worth it.

I went with Heather to see Hot Fuzz on Wednesday. I could attempt a 300 word review, but I’ll just go for BRILLIANT. 10/10.

Spending a night in A&E gives you a good chance to read so when Heather went home to get my stuff, I got her to pick up the only book I could remember that was on my book shelf that I hadn’t read.
First starting the book it felt quite a bit like The Liar, which was a good read from Stephen Fry. However not too long into the book the plot line felt even more familiar, to the point where I was sure I had read the book before. Then I realised that this book is a really crap rip-off of the The Count of Monte Cristo a book which I spent a year reading and really enjoyed. So by this point I knew what was going to happen. In the end the book was just a let down. Shame on you Mr Fry! 0/10

This morning at 6.30 I headed down to Asda, knowing that if I went via Amazon the postman would only be arriving by now and also for only a fiver I was getting a much better deal.
Now if by this point you don’t realise that I’m talking about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, where have you been.
As this was the last book I was sure the spoilers would appear as soon as possible, so I put myself into a media blackout. The mobile was left upstairs, the TV was unplugged and the local newspaper was still in the door. Even the trip to the supermarket involved a silent car journey and fingers in my ears.
So why all the fuss? I only started reading Potter in 2001 after book 4 came out. Bored one day at uni I stole a copy of book one, the following day book two and by the fifth day all four were finished.
The books aren’t bad, a bit repetitive but I was hooked. So every time a new book came out I got it straight away. However this time I went for no stop reading.
The final book is a good read, it only drags a bit near the middle. Tales of good vs evil, right vs wrong and of course the predictable plot lines.
Now I could spoil it for you by saying how it end, so here it goes

well.

if you can still get a copy for a fiver it’s worth it. £8.99 at a push but not the £17.99 it says inside the cover. And whilst were there Bloomsbury were saying that it’s worth it, yet book 6 has the same number of pages and is a quid cheaper and 5 had almost 200 more pages! With sales in the millions surely some economies of sale could be reached in reducing the costs?
7 out of 10

Wow, my second blog post in as many days.

On Friday night the David, Estelle the misses and me went to watch the Zutons at the Lincoln Engine Shed.
Whilst at best I recognised around 7 of their songs (really should have listened to their albums before going), it was a great night.

The highlight was the encore where they just jammed for around 10 minutes including a great drum solo.

If you get the chance they are great live, and if you live near Lincoln and haven’t been to the Engine Shed you should. It’s one of the best venues I’ve been to.

7/10

I’ve not reviewed either my Nexus or any apps for it, but I’ve found Wordfeud to be an exception.

It’s a Scrabble clone for Android phones and it’s really good.

It allows you to play at your leisure against one opponent per board, with 20 boards at any one time.

The GUI is nice and clean and I don’t have a problem with the adverts.

It’s still an early version so there are some issues, the biggest one being that it needs to run the game via a server, and as popularity grows the server crashes. It’s similar to what happened early on with Wordscrapper on Facebook.

What I hope to see in future versions:

• Play against 2, 3 or 4 opponents
• Add a TWL dictionary for the Americans who keep complaining about it having illegal words which are fine in SOWPODS
• Allow users to shuffle their tiles whilst waiting for their turn
• Customer alert sounds and trackball colour
• Custom friends list

There are people who are complaining about the adverts, these appear straight after you make a move. I’m more than happy with this as it keeps the game free and means I don’t have adverts on the screen whilst looking at the board. People asking for a “Pro” version need to make sure that they will be fine if the backend servers go down after they have handed over money. Whilst it is still having outages I would suggest holding off releasing an ad-free version.

A quick tip is to go into Settings (click the menu button from the main screen) and activate background notifications. This way you’ll be notified whenever it’s your turn to make a move.

If you’ve got an Android phone, download it today

Reading this on your mobile download it in the Market now.

If you fancy a game I’m artesea

Finally a radio app for Android worth getting.

TuneIn allows you to listen to pretty much every online radio station (well all the UK ones I wanted). Unlike other radio apps, this won’t try to open the stream in the build-in player, which then fails to open anything. Instead it handles the steaming itself.

You can add presets making it quick to find your favourite stations, and by using GPS it should be able to find the closest local stations to your current location.

It runs fine on both Wifi and 3G, however my test to try and listen to 6 Music on the morning drive failed as I hit patches of 2G, where the connection speed was just too slow.

The only problem I’ve got so far is that the station icons have a transparent background, but one to be used with a white/light background, making stations like BBC Lincolnshire almost invisible.

As this app is free (ad supported), it’s worth installing on your Android phone.

If you’ve got an Android phone, download it today

Reading this on your mobile download it in the Market now.

The other night whilst in bed I thought
* ooh could do with a book to read,
* think I still have £10 of Amazon vouchers,
* what was that book called which featured God in the title and was in the Radio 2 book club the other month,
* quickly launch www.bbc.co.uk/radio2 on the phone,
* find the “desktop version” link, then the book club link,
* discover the book is called “When God Was a Rabbit“,
* launch the Kindle app and search,
* price is £4.99, reasonable,
* press Buy
all done in under 5 minutes.

It’s this reason why I really like having the Kindle App on my mobile. It gives me instant access to a book, on a device I already carry around with me all day long, so if I’m in a queue, in bed, on a train, in a coffee shop, I can continue to read from where I last left off.

So what’s the problem. Well the book would have cost 30p less if I got it in paperback from Amazon. I can’t lend the book to a friend after reading it and even letting my wife have a read is pretty tricky. I can’t give it away to a charity shop. Whilst I can transfer the book to other devices (new mobile, my PC, a Kindle if I was ever lucky to get one, a tablet), this can only happen whilst Amazon still exists. Should be fine for the next few years, but what about in ten? Yet I still have books I purchased when I was twelve on my bookshelf, and others handed down through generations of my family.

In the US Amazon are trying to allow you to lend a book, but you can only do this once and publishers really don’t like this. So what about a different idea.

What if instead of just selling ebooks, Amazon offered the option to rent them. Not in a public library only one person per virtual copy, can only be lent for 4 weeks, can’t be returned early. But in a paid, £1 a week, as many copies as they can shift (with the option for publishers to push the price a little higher if they wished) way.
And if the book would have cost £5 and you’ve enter the fifth week of reading, here have it for keeps.

This way if Amazon disappeared tomorrow, my book collection wouldn’t go with them. If I wanted to recommend the book to others, I would even be tempted to pay for the first week to get them started and if I loved a book so much that I wanted to keep it, I could order the paperback.

I know if this was offered to me I would be spending a whole lot more in the Kindle store than I am at the moment.

A few months ago I was kindly sent a review copy of a Baby Baavet. I promised at the time I would write a review, but work and Beatie have resulted in personal time at the computer has becoming rare.

A Baavet is made of pure wool, instead of feathers (ouch) or polyester and promises to regulate body temperature and is dust mite resistant.

The Baby Baavet is used as a cot topper, and unsurprisingly goes on top of the cot mattress.

In our Ikea cot it is slightly larger than the mattress, but then it does allow us to tuck it down the sides.

So far Beatie is happy to either lie on it,

or even jump around.

Initially it appeared to help her sleep, however whilst I would love to say that she is still sleeping through it would be a very tired lie.

If we had the money I’d be tempted to get a full size topper and Baavet for my own bed, but for now I have to make do with catching a quick nap with my head on Beatrice’s bed instead.

Magic Hour is just like Instagram in that you can add filter effects to your photos, except it’s for Android (iPhone version available too) and doesn’t come with another social media place for your files.

There are two versions, Free and $1.99. I suggest starting with Free, seeing if you like it and then buying the full version. Free limits the photos to 640×640 (full 1024×1024), doesn’t allow you to launch straight in to the camera, edit files already on the phone and only allows you to download 3 filters from the market. However you can still create your own filters, take photos and upload them to flickr, Facebook and Twitter.

It’s simple to use and on my Samsung Galaxy S II not too slow (although from the market reviews slower processors might struggle a bit).

Download from the market here – Free / Full

So having had enough of my Nexus 6 at best running breakeven whilst on charge in the car using the Sat Nav, and at worst loosing 1% every minute I recently decided to invest in a Aukey Quick Charge 2.0 30W 2 Ports USB Car Charger Adapter.

Not only does it support Qualcomm Quick Charge, but has a second 2.4A for your iDevices, allowing the wife to be able to charge her phone at the same time.

With the Quick Charge port, I can run Google Maps Navigation, Tune In Radio and still come out with a 20% lift on the battery after a 30 minute drive.
Have the screen turned off and the phone is reaching 80% battery in no time at all.

As someone who finds that their Nexus 6 needs to be near power most of the day, having a speedy option within the car for only £9.99 is a bargain any day.

Pros:

• Cheap
• Fast charging
• Comes with a good quality and length USB cable
• Dual port to charge a second device

Cons:

• No power light on the charger, my car can be fussy some days and requires moving the charger around until it’s correctly in contact with the 5V port, a light on it would let me know when I’ve found the sweet spot.

Score: 9/10

I’ve had my Soundpeats Qy7 headphones now for over 6 months and they are a great buy.
The quality of the sound is fine for my ears (I’m sure for audiophiles you’ll have some issues) and they stay in whilst at the gym or walking.
I use them most days and the battery life is around 7 hours per charge and a full charge doesn’t take too long to complete.
I went for the black and red model, however since then the range of colours has extended to include full white, full black and yellow cables, plus the original green ones.

If you do buy these make sure you test all the different parts to find the right match to keep them held against your ear. I found that some were too loose, and others actually hurt, but I’ve got the balance right and they never fall out.

Pros:

• Cheap, I picked these up for £19.99, they are now £12.99 on Amazon.
• Stay in my ears whilst moving.
• Good battery life.
• Fine for talking on the phone, caller is clear, and they can hear you fine.
• As they are bluetooth the cable isn’t pulled by my coat, or when I move my phone.
• The ear buds are connected using a flat cable so they never tangle in your pocket.
• Charged via MicroUSB so I have chargers everywhere.

Cons:

• No idea how much battery is left, you get a battery low prompt around 5 minutes before they die, would be nice to have a key press to read out the current level.
• The all in one function button is a bit hit and miss on what it’ll do. Long press to turn off can be taken as the two second hold to redial the last number, other times it’s the voice search.

Score: 9/10

Enjoy computers? Enjoy drama? Then watch Mr. Robot!

Amazon have got the UK rights and you can watch it as part of their Amazon Prime service.
If you don’t already have Prime and not had it for the last year you can get a 30 day trial in which you can binge all ten episodes.
Alternatively you can by the show for £16.99 in HD and episode 1 is available to watch for free.

I want to rave about how great it is, but don’t want to spoil a thing, other than the final scene of episode 9 was so rewarding.

I’ve used these WinnerGear Rumba Earphones now whilst in the house, walking to work and on the train. I was sent them for free to review and normally use Soundpeats Qy7 bluetooth headphones.

The audio quality is better than my bluetooth headphones and a huge increase on my normal emergency earphones (which came with one of my past mobiles). Although they aren’t noise cancelling, they do a good job of stopping other noises get in. They are sold as “best bass”, I’m no expert but the bass did sound better and not at the cost of the other ranges.

They are braided which gives a nice feel and helps with pocket knots, but I still ended up with one today. There is no volume control, but an answer/pause button. The earbuds did a good job of staying in my ears the whole time and there are two alternative sizes provided in the storage pouch.

Pros

• Good sound quality
• Nice feel and finish
• Sit in my ears perfectly
• No need to worry about battery life

Cons

• Not wireless
• Tangle in my pocket
• A tad too expensive at £20

Overall they won’t replace my bluetooth headphones as I’m not keen on the wires, however they will be kept for the dreaded moments when my headphones say “battery low”.

Score: 7/10

Thanks to the wonderful people at Aukey they’ve sent me some stuff to test.

First up is the Aukey Nylon Braided Lightning Cable.

By being braided it should be less likely to kink compared to the cable that Apple provide with their iPhones. It’s also less likely to knot up, however when trying to pack it does like to spring out. At 1.2 metres long you can use the phone whilst on charge without having to sit next to the wall.

Being Apple MFI certified, your phone won’t moan about using an unsupported cable.

As with any USB cable the main test is how they perform in 6 months, and I’ll update next year.

Thanks to the wonderful people at Aukey they’ve sent me some stuff to test.

Next is the Aukey Outdoor Bluetooth Speaker.

This little bluetooth speaker is built like a builders radio, it can take a good kicking and I’d expect it to survive a drop from some scaffolding.
The audio quality is what you’d expect for a £20 bluetooth speaker, good but not amazing.
Pairing was a breeze with my mobile, however after that it was let down by the bluetooth. I had the speaker on my dining room table, walking through the doorway to my kitchen (a distance of several meters) was enough to cause the audio to start dropping out, which means that either the phone stays with the speaker, or the music has to be paused if I’m not close enough.

It has a hidden micro usb port for charging and also comes with a 3.5mm port for audio in, if the device you use doesn’t have bluetooth. It would have been nice if it also had USB A port, then I could have considered powering a Chromecast audio from it and then wouldn’t need to rely on the poor bluetooth, but it’s a cheap speaker.

Overall 3/5

A couple of years ago I purchased some Soundpeats QY7 bluetooth headphones. I use them when travelling and other than the battery life and charging find them pretty good.

So when Soundpeats asked if I’d like to try their Q16 truely wireless bluetooth headphones I said yes please.

They are pretty easy to set up and fit more comfortably than the QY7 with the over ear loop. It comes with three different sizes of ear buds to let you select a shape that best fits.
As there is no wire between them they stay in better (although the QY7 were pretty great anyway) as there is nothing to pull them out.
The audio quality is fine for my tastes.

However there are some downsides.

The first was noticed straight away, I watch a lot of video on my phone, yet the audio was always out of sync. Netflix, Youtube, iPlayer, NOW TV, if you enjoy watching lips move and then hearing the sounds maybe it’s ok, but quite simply these aren’t good enough. From what I can tell the primary ear piece is paired to the phone and the secondary ear piece is paired to the primary. To have stereo sound there is the delay whilst the primary is telling the secondary what to do. For Spotify or the radio this doesn’t matter, so these aren’t bad if you go running. Except depending on where the phone is you’ll lose connection to one of the ears, suddenly going from stereo to mono in one ear. The experience is quiet off putting and normally just moving your body gets the sound back to stereo.

Whilst the QY7 needs micro usb via a socket hidden by a rubber plug, the Q16 each need a micro usb via a socket hidden by a rubber plug. The packaging includes a Y shaped USB cable to charge both at the same time, but with big brands doing in case charger (at a premium price) it would be nice to move away from rubber breaking over time.

At £31.99 (and £9 off with this code PFDX2XS2) at Amazon they are cheaper than others available, but for now I’ll tend to stick to my QY7s.

Score: 6/10

The Mojo is a Google Assistance device very much like the Google Homes. I got one on import a while ago for my desk.

Now we don’t have a Google Home nor an Amazon Alexa so I can’t compare to them, but as someone who isn’t an audiophile I’m pleased with the audio quality that come out of them.

Now I primary listen to Radio 2, RadioX or Spotify at my desk, whilst all of this is possible via my laptop, my laptop speaker isn’t great, I also use sites that need sound, so I had to adjust one and the other to get the best balance and also I’m not hogging ram.

The problem listening online is that the audio will be out of sync with the actual radio elsewhere in the house. This isn’t too bad whilst the rest of the house is noisy but when everyone has gone out, suddenly that echo type sound gets off putting.

So I looked in to getting another Google Assistant device. A Google Home Mini looks a bit too flat for me, and a Google Home is above the price I want to pay.
Fortunately Scan had started to sell the Zolo’s for just £35 including postage. (Still disappointed with Google and Amazon still not sorting out the blacklisting of Chromecasts and Google Assistant devices).

This one lives in the kitchen, it’s great for helping with the cooking “Hey Google set timer for 25 minutes” and by creating a home group I can play the same audio over both devices at the same time. This is brilliant when it works, but the Google Home app and Google Homes also appear to have this problem in that they just stop working and you need to delete, leave and then rebuild.
The Zolo is an improvement on our old DAB radio which needed to be in an exact place otherwise the interference in the kitchen blocked the signals. It’s also easier to changes the station and can be turned off by tapping, instead of the stupid feature our radio had which was to hold down the power button and then press OK, just pressing power switched to FM which was even more crackly.

With the Spotify integration it also easy to just listen to an song/album/artist, and great fun for the kids. No more scratched CDs, or aux cables plugged in to iPods to the back of stereos. So we picked up a third for the girls bedroom. They can listen to what they want, ask it questions and by using the Google Assistant app on my phone and the “broadcast” commands you can also have a little fun.

I’ve mentioned problems with the home groups, the other issue is the location of the lights. On my desk it’s fine, but in the kitchen the Zolo is above head height whilst sat at the table, so you can often do “Hey Google” several times before it kicks in, and that’s hopefully before the Zolo downstairs has already picked up your query. Having the lights on the front instead of the top would have worked better. The other issue is when the audio just stops, occasionally it seems like a buffering issue, and returns a couple of seconds later, but other times that’s it, no more sound.

However I would recommend it to anyone who want’s a small smart speaker for their smaller rooms.

7/10

I had recently been looking for some completely wireless headphones. My bluetooth, but wired between headphones are OK, but new tech!

However I really didn’t fancy the prices being charged, and I have had previous bad experiences with some a couple of years ago.

So when I found these Wireless Bluetooth 5.0 Headphones for just £30 with a promo code thought it was worth a trial.

They come with three different size earbuds, I suggest you try all of them. Whilst my right ear was fine with the one attached, my left needed the smaller one to stay in.
There are no other wings or hooks, so these need to sit in your ears. Despite feeling like they might fall out, tipping my head to one side didn’t shift them.

The audio is fine for music, I’m not an audiophile so I can’t comment on great bass or wonderful treble, but everything I listened to was good to my ears.
It was loud enough whilst at my desk to drown out the noise of the others, but can be soft enough to hear what’s going on around me whilst walking in town.

Compared to earlier devices, the Bluetooth 5.0 (and probably some other codecs), means that watching video is also fine on these. I’ve sat through episodes on NOW TV, Netflix and iPlayer and not noticed any lip sync issues. I’ve also not had one ear suddenly dropout.

The battery lasted 5 hours and 15 minutes before I got the “low battery” warning, and another 20 minutes before they finally gave up. The case can do around four charges, so they are fine to charge whilst at work.

You need to be careful when putting them in the case to charge, whilst the magnets help get them in the right place, just a couple of mils out and they won’t charge and the case might not shut. Wait to see the tiny red led show on each piece to confirm they are charging.

Overall these are a huge improvement over both sets of bluetooth headphones I’ve previously used.

Score: 9/10

Earlier this year we purchased our first house which finally meant I got control over the installation of our heating system. In the house already was a Draytek wireless solution, with a thermostat in the living room and a controller next to the combi boiler. If the living room was too cold, it would send a signal to turn the boiler on, and when it was too hot it would turn the boiler off. All the timings were programmed directly on the thermostat. Around the house we have a number of Thermostatic Radiator Valve (TRV).

My spec was that I should be able to control the thermostat via an app and my Google Home devices. It should allow for as many or as little variations in programming. And important for me, that my bedroom should be cool in the mornings, but comfortable in the evenings, as previously I’d need to remember to turn down the TRV as I went to bed, and remember to turn it up when I got up in the mornings.

So on Prime Day I purchased a tado Wireless Smart Thermostat Starter Kit which was in theory a direct replacement for the Draytek. Along with a single tado Smart Radiator Thermostat to see how well that would work and if we should invest in more around the house.

Now the first problem is installing a thermostat system in July, it’s pretty hard to test anything.

For installation you start with the Wireless Bridge, this is the device which sits in the middle of everything and connects to the internet. It needs to be connected via ethernet, powered via USB, and the recommendation is to set it up next to your home router. Unfortunately my 140 year old brick house has the router at the front window, the boiler at the back utility room and the range for the tado system isn’t great. So I went for a more middle ground and put the bridge next to one of my wifi mesh points in the dining room which has an ethernet port at the back.

The installation of the Wireless Receiver was pretty easy. I followed the steps in the app, telling it what boiler and old receiver I had, and it guided me through labelling the existing wires and how to connect them to the tado.

The thermostat is wireless so you just scan the QR code to set it up, configure the timings and dump it whichever room you want, for me this was the Lounge.

Finally I have to install the TVR. I removed the old Myson valve from the radiator in my bedroom (1 on the floor plan), and then need to work out which of the 10 extra fittings provided I need to attach together along with the correct length pin extension to use the tado. There was little help from the app in showing which one I needed, especially as the Myson TVR is one I’ve seen in a number of previous properties so it’s not as if it is uncommon. Also whilst everything seems to suggest that in horizontal mode the display should be facing upwards, every picture has it facing sidewards.

As the months pass and the temperature beings to drop, the heating is finally needed and here is where the problems appear.

The first is pretty basic, the thermostat in the living room is a white box with no always on display. You need to press the button on it to trigger the white LEDs to show the current temperature and for it to ask if you want to raise or lower it. An e-ink or LCD display like provided by everyone else, or a mains powered colour display could tell me at a glance if a) the room is too cold and b) if the boiler has been triggered to turn on. So instead I end up using the app.

The second is pretty serious. If the Wireless Controller can’t speak to the Wireless Bridge it will go in to a backup mode. This can be a) turn the heating on, b) turn the heating off, c) keep doing what it was already doing until told otherwise. By default it’s set to a), so when it started playing up, the heating was turned on at 2am in the morning burning through expensive gas. To change it to b) or c) you need to find a help guide online and press buttons on the controller. There is nothing within the app to change this behaviour.
So it turned out that having my bridge in the Dinning Room was too far for the controller, so I had to move my wifi mesh in the kitchen away from the utility room and closer to the dining room so that I had an ethernet port somewhere nearer the boiler, but not too far from the thermostat. This sort of fixed the connectivity issues, but has resulted in a weaker wifi signal in my garden. Also the bridge is now further away from the bedroom and that occasionally causes problems and drains the battery. Maybe I could throw more money at this solution and just buy a second bridge. Stick that in the bedroom and the front of the house will be covered, whilst the bridge in the kitchen can handle the boiler. But no, this system can only have one bridge.

The third issue was with the TVR in my bedroom. So I had it set up to be pretty much off all day, except between 8pm and 10pm where I wanted it to raise the bedroom temperature to 19c. It gets to the evening and whilst in the living room it’s feeling rather hot. So checking the app I can see that the living room is currently 21.5c (target is 20c), and the bedroom is 18c. So tado has turned the boiler on to warm up the bedroom and is heating the rest of the house. I go up to the bedroom, but the radiator is cold. For some reason the TVR has closed the valve as it’s nearly warm enough. If I set the temperature higher the valve is opened and the radiator beings to warm up, but again it closes before it reaches the target, whilst still telling the boiler to pump hot water around the house to every other room.

So yesterday I contact Amazon, who were kind enough to refund the TVR and I’m back to manually tweaking the Myson in the bedroom to find the right temperature. I’m still on the fence about the Wireless Thermostat and Receiver