I still have bandwidth problems, and bt are proving to be a bit elusive when it comes to customer support. So this post will be a struggle.
When I was at Croydon Art College, in 1972, Apart from being physically assaulted by a drunken John Bellany, I became aquainted with a delightful blonde girl in my tutor group. We seemed to go here and there, but nothing ever came of it, except my first trip, at her behest, to an early Ann Summers shop. We sat on a water bed and talked about the apparatus in the glass cases. (In those days they were a darn sight seedier than they are now.) However, she was a slave to art and had bought a large,bound, limited edition book of signed etchings by David Hockney. As I recall, it had cost her £150. Hockney had recently emerged as a significant artist and those in the know were buying his work. My uncle, whose Chelsea flat was adorned with such delights as a Colour Television and the Dieter Rams Braun record player, also had a signed Hockney Silk Screen print. The artist was certainly being talked about.
The painting, Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy was one to go and see at the Tate. (from memory) The subjects floated ethereally, languidly, on a deep, fluffy, carpet, as if they were actually on a cloud. Posed in what seemed to me a patrician arrogance born out of wealth and surety of their place in the world, in this case the hypocentre of the Swinging Sixties, it did more than nod back to art heritage; it has been likened to The Arnolfini portrait by Jan Van Eyck, and any number of aristocratic paintings depicting the lord of the manor with his goods and chattels.
The picture is redolent of the age, in symbolic relation to the creative, and ultimately decadent Sixties. Sublime as it is, the subject matter is too irritating to have on my wall. I believe I would come to resent the smug scorn which lurks beneath the calmness and studied chic.
And what of those iconic, beautiful people? Celia Birtwell (Mrs Clark) is alive and well and in the last decade has designed ranges for Hoover, the hoover people, and Millets the camping people. Ossie Clark was was stabbed to death by a former male lover. The cat is no more. It was only a dream, after all.
nb. I cannot at present upload picture content to Blogger. I feel pissed off about this. All that is left is to leave you for the week end in the capable arms of the Cup Size Choir
Be patient, let it load, and enjoy.
7 comments:
Oh yes. And they can do polyphony.
WW. I'm surprised you're still having problems with BT. I switched to them about a year ago and my computer flies along now compared to my last ISP( ok apart from the fault a fortnight ago when east Scotland had a cable cut or something).
But apart from that it has been excellent.
Have you tried switching wifi channels ? There are 12 channels I think. The bt homehub allows you to adjust a lot of your settings to speed things up. Being on the same channel as a neighbour could slow things down via intereference. Also opting out of the BT Fon will stop people piggy backing onto your wifi and sharing the bandwidth.
Defragging the computer will help. As will clearing the unwanted files etc via 'disc cleanup'.
I expect I'm telling you things that you've already tried ;)
BT Fon - how to screw up your internet connection for weeks, until you have a fit of common sense and reinstall the old router. don't go near it.
"BT Fon.... don't go near it."
Unfortunately it comes pre installed in new BT Homehubs Richard so you have to register to opt out which is a pain and can take a while to sort out.
Same with the wifi signal. Even if you use the ethernet cable I can't turn off the wifi signal. Although I'm open to suggestions on how to do it.
Ah, didn't know that. We had an 'old' white router that was replaced with the swish black one when we renewed the contract last year. Anna loves it, but it buggered up my wifi badly, no idea why. We opted into BT Fon and within days the intenet was up and down like a slapper's knickers. I should say that we are 7km from the exchange, so at the physical limit of connectabilty, and never see better than about 300 kbps connection. I had heard that opting out of BT Fon was about as easy as opting out of Reader's Digest competitions, so I just put the old white router back, happy days. I'm interested to hear that new routers have the BT Fon pre-configured. Perhaps not enough people 'loved it' enough to get them to opt in voluntarily.
Technically (problem-solving etc) BT have been fairly good. The accounts and billing side have been shockingly bad. They told us that we would be better off on Option 3 (unlimited broadband), and we asked for it, but it took probably 48+ hours on the phone over nine months to actually get them to make the change. Except for the increased monthly charge, which happened immediately, of course.
I'd be interested in any suggestions for an alternative.
Richard.
I must admit I'd stick with BT now. I've just got the basic 10Gb download at £13.99 per month and if I go over that limit they charge £1 a Gb.
I think the plan with BT Fon is to have everywhere in the UK open for wifi. The problem is that if your broadband speed is already slow then you don't want anything making it even slower.
The hub manager usually sorts out any problems within 10 minutes.
Compared to my last ISP I've found BT excellent.
I thought you could change your options online but it sounds like it's not as simple as that from what you've said.
I think you can *ask* to change them online, but the actual process involves some firmware switch at the BT end, and I have heard that they aren't exactly falling over themselves to help you opt out.
But yes, I suspect they are better than most. They are not dreadful, and inertia does the rest.
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