Blog of Hamlesh

This post is a little on the ranty side, but there is a solution at the bottom

I really really really hate voicemail, I can’t even begin to find the words to describe how much I hate voicemail.  To me, voicemail is one of those technological advancements that should have remained in the last century, let alone the last decade.  Its an old solution to a common problem that still exists today.

This little extract from the Dilbert cartoons should explain part of how the whole “voicemail experience” makes me feel;

(All rights reserved Scott Adams, Dilbert.com)

This really does happen to me, people call me up and either;

1.  Leave long messages – which are better off conveyed in email.

2.  Leave short messages telling me that they’ve sent me an email or to check my email and call them back.

3.  Normal people leave short messages with their details and ask me to call them back.

Ok, so now you’re thinking leaving a short message can’t be a bad thing, and thats surely the point of voicemail… well its not.  Perhaps it used to be, but thats no longer the case.  There are much better ways to convey the information that I have missed your call and need to give you a call back – yep, a text message.  One would also be able to read the sms message and process the information in a much shorter time frame than dialing into voicemail and listening to the message.  Inefficient and stupid, simple as.

So i’ve tried a number of different things over the years;

1.  Turn off voicemail completely – only to get people whine that “oh, I tried to leave you a message but there was no voicemail”… thanks for informing me of what I already knew… yes, I turned my voicemail off, yes it was on purpose, and yes, if it was important enough, you’d have found SOME OTHER WAY to get the message to me.

2.  Explicit asking people to leave a “SHORT MESSAGE” – this worked initially, but people soon reverted back to leaving long messages.

I had pretty much given up trying to find a solution.  Then one day, salvation came, unexpectedly.  I was calling a customer and they were busy, but instead of getting asked to leave a voicemail message (which I don’t tend to do either!) a little recording started to play “this person cannot take your call, please try again later or send a text message”, on repeat.

Finally, there was a solution out there!  The bad news is that its a setting/option provided by their network operator.  A facility which my provider, Orange, does not.

No matter, I found another way.  This works on Orange, it may be different for your service provider.  Using AT&T’s text to speech demo I created this wav file recording “The person you are calling cannot take your call, please try again later or send a text message”.

Then within the Orange voicemail, there is the option for an “extended absence” greeting, now the major difference between this and a normal greeting is that you can opt to not accept voicemail messages while your extended absence greeting is active.  So using a pair of headphones right infront of the mic pickup on my mobile and some careful timing; now whenever someone calls and I am otherwise occupied they hear the synthised voice of Crystal, asking them to try again later or send a text.

Win   Finally!

Download the wav file: here

Or create your own: here

PS: Yes I know Google Voice would be the other solution to this problem, but its not available outside of the US, and I doubt they will bring the service to the UK, not for a while anyway.

The moon seems to be my muse as of late.

I’m waiting to invest in a 2000mm telescope that has a Nikon camera mount, then i’ll be able to take some more detailed shots and of other astronomical objects.

Above was taken just before the “blue moon” eclipse on the 31st Dec.  Annoyingly and upsettingly a cloud covered the moon after this and blocked my view of the moon for the rest of the night

This was taken on the night of the 1st Jan I believe, the moon was really low in the sky making it look bloodshot.

I’ll return to my usual petrol head techie posts soon – honest

I’ve been unhappy with the standard flash on my camera for a while now, and from time to time find myself in dire need of a flash gun which can be pointed at the ceiling (think indoor shots, no natural light, etc). Instances of need however are not frequent enough for me to invest in a Nikon SB-600 (yet), but they are frequent enough to be a cause of great irritation and sleepless nights.  Ok, perhaps not sleepless nights, but you know what I mean.

So, while looking around the shed for a hammer (all 3 of my hammers seem to have grown legs – don’t ask!), I came across an old flash gun that I picked up many many years ago from eBay for a few quid.

(Yes I know its a rubbish photo, taken using my phone)

After excitedly fitting it to my camera, I decided that its “intelligence” was very limited, and I mean VERY limited!  There was also no way to point it upwards – so out came the cardboard, scissors and sticky tape.

Ta da   I’ve set it to full power manual mode, the camera can only tell it when to trigger, but at least its brighter than the standard flash, and its firing light upwards.

Here is an early test shot, taken indoors, my desk lamp was the only source of light in the room.

(Isn’t this just a lovely little espresso cup – recent present from the better half)

Ok the shot is blurry, but the result I’m looking for is the gauge and quality of the light, which is spot on (for a cheap little flash gun and some cardboard).

(Odd box of cables and bits I need to put in the shed)

Again the only source of light in the room other than the flash gun is my desk lamp.  I’m somewhat pleased with the result

Naturally, give it a few months and I’ll be blogging about how this setup was rubbish and I invested in an SB-600   Then again, this “natural” hardware progression is the better way to go in my opinion.  Fudge/Bodge it until you know how to use the tools, then get good tools.

Recently, I’ve been playing with my camera more, making an effort to get back into the swing of “shooting” things and events. I was out the other night, “shooting the moon”, and out once again tonight.

It took me a little while to realize that the best way to keep the camera stable was to lay down on the driveway! My tripod won’t support the weight of the 80-200mm lens.

Was made by combining;

What do you think?

Post a comment or tweet me.

Finally got around to restoring my blog database backup, some content will be missing, mainly images and downloads.  If you need anything thats missing, drop me an email and i’ll see what I can do.  One of the most visited and useful things was my iPhoto fix, i’ll try and get the file back up soon.

Three months after getting the wii chip and clip for my girlfriends wii, I finally made the time last night to install it.  

I’m currently ill with a whole host of things, and looking at a computer screen for long periods of time makes me ill – so I decided to undertake a fairly simple bit of modding.

I took the wii apart, and to my annoyance found this;

Zoomed in;

Yep, it looks like Nintendo have dumped a whole load of “black stuff” around the very chip that I need to attach the wii-clip to.

Very annoying!  It looks like I’m going to have to use the soft mod technique unless I can find a way around this.  I’ve asked the wii-clip makers for their comments.

Pandora is a fantastic website and concept, a radio station that plays music based on the mood you are in. You start out by specifying a song or artist that you like, the system then finds something very similar to that song or artist and streams it straight through your browser. As it plays each song, theres a simple “thumbs up” and “thumbs down” system, hit “thumbs up” and it learns that you like that type of music and plays more of the same and similar. In the same way, hit “thumbs down” and it skips to the next track it finds suitable.

There is a MASSIVE amount of choice, and its a good way to find new music you haven’t listened to before. Accounts are free and you can create multiple stations, for example I have seeded a station using Craig Armstrong, and called the station “Chilled Work”. So when I am at the office, I have my little Pandora Player sitting on the desktop playing some nice mellowed out tracks.

Now, although Pandora is a web based service, I have thrown a VERY BASIC (I must stress at how basic it is!) application together. You will need to have the flash plugin installed – but if you’ve been using the web service you’ll already have that. If you don’t have the .NET 2.0 framework, the installer will grab what it needs and install those files too.

Once installed, the application sits in the middle of your screen, just leave it up behind your other windows, this way you don’t have to have a web browser open all the time. I know most of us actually have a browser open all the time, but this prevents you from accidentally leaving the pandora site, and thus stopping your music.

Get the install files from here. Its a tiny 259Kb in size. If you have any comments (other than “this is really basic” – I’ve already covered that) or would like me to add specific features to it, just post a comment

PS: Won’t work on 64bit OS, as Adobe don’t support 64bit Internet Explorer.

As some of you have noticed, and emailed me about (thanks), the RSS aggregator’s format changed slightly a few days ago.  The new layout should make it easier to read articles and news items.  The aggregator started out as a personal project, it allows me to keep up to speed with whats going on in the news (BBC/FT), IT Security Industry (various), IT Industry in general (thereg + others), and a few other things that interest me.  Since allowing google to spider http://rss.hamleshmotah.com, its started getting a lot of hits, 1000+ unique visitors a day, so obviously other people find it useful (thanks for all the emails ).