June 2008

Firstly we have the Gandalf on Abbey Road / You Shall Not Pass shirt.

Click here to order one. I promise you won't look as fat as me*
(*This is not a promise)

And secondly, we have the Keep On Staring (it makes you look like a) Moron shirt.

Order one here. You probably won't look like a Gumby.

If enough people as stupid nice enough to buy shirts like these, I could afford a decent camera. And possibly my rent.

Go on, you know it makes nonesense!

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Here is where I was sitting:

And here are the results...

Firstly, with the Amoi WP-S1 3/Skype Phone:

And with the 3 Mobile Huawei E220 USB Modem:

Not really that much difference is there? To be honest, the dongle couldn't get a HSPDA signal and defaulted to 3G, but was still slightly faster.

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A while ago, as a result of a drunken conversation about how all advertising was rubbish and even a monkey could come up with workable ideas, I made this thing. Then lost it.

Now I've found it again.

Did Hello magazine ever use such an obvious idea? Or Heat? I don't know. But if they do, I want a cheque.

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It says:

“DEAR NUTS,

One way to make Big Brother more interesting would be to shutter the housemates in, thereby depriving them daylight, then to enforce random artificial day-and-night cycles on them. Within three days, you’d have a house full of paranoid, gibbering, psychotic wrecks, all itching to get theit hands on any nearby weaponry and run amok in an orgy of bloodletting. Well, it worked for the KGB, if you believe Tom Clancy

Tony Blews, Stafford”

(Page 96, Nuts 23-29 July, 2004)

“Dear Nuts,

The only way to make Big Brother more interesting would be to shutter the housemates in, thereby depriving them of daylight. Then, after hiding a variety of both blunt and bladed weapons in the house, enforce random artificial day-and-night cycles on them while lacing their food with caffine and hallucinogenics. Within three days, you’d have a house full of paranoid, gibbering, psychotic wrecks, all itching to get theit hands on any nearby weaponry and thence run amok in an orgy of bloodletting. Which would be nice.

Tony Blews, Stafford”

I still prefer my version, but thanks for the phone. Can I have a new one now? I'm sending you this letter again...

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So, what do you get for your 50 quid?

Apart from the device itself, the DVD style box contains a SIM card, a manual that I didn't bother even opening, two USB cables and some padding that I didn't bother to eat.

No installation CD? Nope. The clever little chappy installs all it needs from an built in memory stick type thingummy which pretend to be a CDROM. Take a not, USB device makers: This is the way forward.

One of the USB cables is a standard 6 inch one, which works ok but means that the modem is hanging about where I usually have my mouse (never having got used to the crappy touchpads that most laptops have). The other is a much longer affair with two Type A connectors at one end, just in case your computer can't push enough power out from one socket. This is fairly useless to me, as the added cable length means the device needs the two plugs to be connected, and the two USB sockets on my Dell are on opposite sides of the case. It works great if I have my "media slice" connected, as that gives me 2 extra USB sockets on the back, but it also triples the weight of the machine, so I usually leave it to gather dust.

I'm using the long cable to connect to my telephone instead.

What you probably can't tell from the photo, is that the sim card holder is held in place with sellotape. It won't fall out during normal use, but did pop out a few times while in my bag. Hence the classic British engineering fix.

So, how fast is it?

Firstly, here is what I got through my phone on a good day:

And here is what the new dongle gives me:

A bit faster, as you can see. I managed to get up to about 2900kbps by standing outside the house and getting a clear line of sight to the nearest transmitter, which is about 300 yards away.

With this "proper" internet modem connected, rather than the mobile phone, Three aren't restricting what I can access. So now I can waste my time on b3ta, and won't get an electronic telling off if I accidentally try and watch some young flibbertigibbet shaking her udders on YouTube.

So what does it cost to run?

Well, you have a choice: £10 for 1gb, £15 for 3gb or £25 for 7gb.

A nice range of prices for you there. Being a bit skint, I opted to only spash out a tenner, and my 1gb lasted a week.

Luckily, you can stick on as many addons as you have the money for, and don't need to wait until with end of the month. Next time, however, I will be getting the £25 top up (assuming that I get hold of some money).

I'm quite happy with it, currently. When I get the chance, I'm going to have a wander in to the countryside, and see how well the modem (and indeed the AMOI phone) function when quite far from a transmitter.

Update: Thanks to 3 Mobile Buzz for linking to this page!

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Hurrah! One of my T Shirts arrived today. The "Thinking Ban" one:

Great, eh?

I got it from Vistaprint on a rush order (I was a bit drunk) but if you want one, then I'm afraid you'll have to go through Cafepress.

Vistaprint are good, fast, and cheap. Plus they seem to have a special offer every day. If you're lucky, you can get a hell of a lot of stuff for free and just pay the postage. Thats what I did.

I'm sorry about the picture of the fat, grumpy looking bloke modelling the shirt, but that is me.

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