Rare Earth Prices May Hit Smart Phones
I’ve just been hearing on the BBC’s Wake up to Money, that rare earth prices are set to rise, as China imposes export restrictions. This may mean that defence equipment won’t be able to get everything it needs and prices of devices like smart phones may rise.
Am I bothered?
Not really, as I believe that the real developments in the future in defence, security and medicine will be mind-based like software and no-one has ever proved to me any decent reason to buy a smart phone. After all who needs something physical to be smart? Smartness comes from your own brain.
I can text, tweet and make phone calls from my trusty Nokia 6310i and it’s as smart as I need. If it were smarter it might start to rule my life! But, that’s my job!
New Power for an Old Friend
One thing that got temporarily lost in the move was the charger for my Nokia 6310i. It will probably be found, but I thought that it would be prudent to have a spare, as I do have a spare phone and a spare battery.
I found a new one for just £5 at a stall in Chapel Market.
A New Charger for My 6310i
So now I have a fully-charged phone again.
Little Bits of Cardboard
I took this picture at some time on the journey to Scunthorpe, possibly between Peterborough and Doncaster sitting comfortably in First on East Coast and it shows one of the problems of complicated journeys on trains.
British Rail Tickets
On my trip from Saturday until this morning, I collected eighteen of these little orange tickets. Some incidentally, were marked “NOT VALID FOR TRAVEL”
Surely, those in charge of our railways could do better!
But let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater and make the ticketing dependent on a smart phone. I am old enough to never need a replacement for my Nokia 6310i and if you can’t do it on that, I’m not interested!
So perhaps we need just one orange ticket per trip,that is the same as the ones we have now,but has a bar code printed on the face, so that it can be read by a simple reader in the conductor’s hand on the train.
Viruses on Smart Phones
It is being reported that smart phones are now being targeted using apps that contain trojans and viruses.
This is just another reason, why I stick to my Nokia 6310i.
It is now ten years old and may be a bit battered like me, but it sends texts and hey, it makes phone calls too!
I can drop it, which because of my stroke, I frequently do and if I go away for a few days, I know it will stay charged long enough, so I don’t have to take the charger.
An Old Friend Returns
My Nokia 6310I returned from the menders today, after just forty-eight hours away. All it needed was a change of keypad at a cost of around thirty pounds!
You can’t imagine how it feels to have an old friend back again in good health, even if they are rather battered like me. It links perfectly to my Jaguar X-Type with Bluetooth, the keys are easy to use even for me in my state, text messages are easy to send, it lasts a whole week on one battery charge and it has all the strength of the proverbial brick outhouse.
Who wants any of these modern phones built with all the fragility of porcelain,unwanted complexity, features that no sane person would ever use and battery life of a few nanoseconds?
Especially as I found yesterday that as-new 6310Is are available in Bury St. Edmunds Market for a few pounds from a very competent stall run by a charming and very knowledgeable Sikh gentleman. His stall was outside H Samuel
Couriers Revisited
I had a parcel delivered today by Parcelforce.
- They sent me an e-mail, so I could track it.
- I was phoned by the driver at 8:30 to check that someone would be there.
- The parcel was delivered at 9:00 by the usual cheery driver.
So if they can do it so professionally, why can’t others? APC can and delivered my repaired Nokia 6310i later this morning.
Why We All Hate Couriers – 2
I’ve just seen on the courier’s web site that my phone won’t arrive until between 16:55 and 17:55 today. So after waiting in all day yesterday for a non-delivery, I now have to wait in all today, for one at an inconvenient time. I do have other things to do, you know!
At least though, I have been able to charge up an old Nokia 6310i, so I have a phone. But I think, I’m on a tariff far more expensive than the one I need for such a device.
Don’t buy a Nokia X6 if you’ve had a stroke!
I have one of these phones and for my situation, they are designed all wrong.
My biggest problem is that I have had a stroke and I drop things or knock them on the floor. If I dropped my Nokia 6310i, it just carried on working. The X6 falls apart and you need to reenter date and time. It is totally unfit for my purposes.
It is a bit of a pity really about this lack of robustness, as I liked a lot about the phone.
I have just phoned O2 and they have agreed to swap the phone for something hopefully more suitable. So that at least is a positive thing and a couple of stars at least for O2. But they are generally very good over the phone and I’ve stayed with they for nearly 20 years.
Products I Won’t Ever Buy Again!
As these companies are ruining the football by interrupting it with advert breaks, I won’t be buying their products in future.
- Ladbrokes – I use Betfair
- Bacardi – Be patriotic – Drink Scotch or Irish Whisky
- Lucozade Sport – I bet it’s not gluten-free anyway or has maltodextrin in it.
- Bet365 – I use Betfair
- EASports – Only sad people play computer games
- Shell – Be patriotic – Support your pension and annoy the Americans, by buying BP
- Swiftcover – I’m very satisfied with NFU
- Kia – What’s wrong with my Lotus and Jaguar?
- Audi – See Kia
- British Gas – I might buy their products if they connected me to the gas network
- Gillette Fusion – I have a beard and have had one for over 40 years
- Doritos – When I looked they weren’t gluten-free
- Ford S-Max – See Kia
- Freesat – I’ve got Sky AND Freeview
- Sony Ericson Phones – I’ve got a Nokia 6310i
- WKD – Enough said
- Moonpig – I always have a stock of proper cards – Remember my father was a proper printer and anything printed is a work of art to me.
- Stella Artois – Crap chemical lager, that’s not gluten free. What’s wrong with real ale, like Adnams or Greene King anyway.
- We buy any car – I bet they don’t and you’d getn more selling through eBay or AutoTrader
- Carling – See Stella Artois – A policeman once told me, you never get trouble at a real ale pub.
So they’re rather a load of dead beat no-good products anyway, that the civilised world could do without. It either proves you need advertising to sell rubbish or good products don’t need it. Or perhaps both!
Old Mobile Phones Never Die
I use the legendary Nokia 6310i, which I got in early 2003. It has been all over the world with me and has been dropped so many times that it is probably the world’s most battered phone in daily use. It’s also still on the original battery and that lasts a whole week away.
I’ve got a new spare ready for when this one finally fades away.
Incidentally, I’m in the technology business having written software for 45 years, and feel that we spend too much time putting useless bells and whistles on to things that work well. It would be better to use all that effort to create new applications and systems.
This picture shows the phone in Naples.
A Battered Nokia 6310i in Naples
This was actually taken at the Meridian Line. Note the time on the phone and the spot of sunlight showing it is midday.
The Anonymous Widower 