Category: Uncategorized

Posted on

I’ll give you £2 to put my bin out

I have four bins, two collected fortnightly and two collected 4 weekly, making a total of 78 collections per year. I have to put these bins in a collection point at the entrance to our close. The council say I can put my bin out after noon on the day before collection, and it must be taken in by noon on the day after collection.

If I am unable to manage my own bin then the council will, quite rightly, offer an ‘assisted collection’ service where they will come into the garden and move the bins for me. This adds a lot of time to routes, which in turn adds cost. It’s an essential service for those who need it.

I don’t need it as I am in incredible physical shape and can move my own bins around. However, I am often working away overnight so it’s sometimes impossible to stick to the rules on bin times. In my quiet cul-de-sac this is OK, but on a busy pavement it really wouldn’t be.

Sometimes I just forget to put the bin out, and this can mean another 4 weeks wait for the recycling to be emptied, which means trips to the tip or cramming recycling in against its will. Not an ideal situation.

So how about I pay the council for an assisted collection. Let’s say £15 a month, which is just over £2 per collection. I’d be happy with that to never have to worry about remembering to put it out. I reckon it would take about 2 minutes to come into the garden, get the bin and then put it back again. That’s an hourly rate of £60, which should more than cover the cost and enable the council to fund generous overtime for the crews or additional recruitment, which would be popular with them and good for the local economy.

Is this any different to when I buy a new washing machine and pay an extra £20 for the guys to carry it inside to my kitchen?

You might think it would be hard to manage this. It really needn’t be. Our system already tells crews about assisted collections as they arrive at the property, and the information updates minute by minute. Payment by credit card, Apple Pay etc is easily implemented so I could pay now and in 5 minutes the crew would be aware of it.

A better service for me, more employment, recurring revenue for the council and a stronger local economy.  Who’s going to go first?

Posted on

How many devices does one man need?

…and how many can he realistically carry?

For years I worked as a laptop-only worker.  Office, home, train, hotel – the trusty laptop did the job with a variety of accessories such as data cards, USB sticks (which I invariably lose within 2 weeks) and external drives.  It worked – I always had the files I needed and didn’t have to worry about synching favourites, address books and source code.

Over time, the forces of progress conspired to break this policy.  As my computing needs grew (working with ever larger databases, processing high-resolution photographs and manipulating complex project plans) I was drawn to bigger, faster laptops.  At the same time I was spending less time in the car and more time in airports and railway stations, drawing me to the lightweight and low power ultra-portable notebooks.  So, I succumbed to a meaty desktop with 24″ monitor and a Sony Vaio so small I sometimes look in my bag and think I’ve forgotten it.

The laptop is fantastic.  Sure, an 11 inch screen is useless for photo editing and the 100Gb drive and slow processor stuffs up serious database work, but it’s a great tool for mobile work.  Such is the portability that it’s always with me and no hassle at all to pull out for a quick email check or MSN session.  That is when the big Achilles heel becomes apparent.

Vista.  Or, more precisely, Windows.  In the 9 months or so I’ve had it the boot-up time has stretched from a fairly poor couple of minutes to nearer 10 to get a useable system.  This utterly defeats the object of a super-portable device.

I get around this by having a smartphone.  My Nokia synchs faultlessly with Exchange so I can quickly check emails and put together brief replies.  It’s good, but I can’t reliably read HTML content, web links are a pain to access on a tiny screen and data costs are piling up (to which T-Mobile may now have the answer with their fixed data plan).

So as well as the desktop PC I now have

  • Sony TZ-11
  • Nokia E61
  • iPod Touch (for music and video)

Despite carrying 3 devices all the time, I still can’t read emails, view websites or run MSN without either waiting for Vista to boot up (and connect to my phone or BT Openzone should it be available) or go cross-eyed squinting at half-formed pages on the Nokia.

So, please, can someone design a device which

  • is the size of a chunky smartphone
  • has a VGA or half-VGA screen (QVGA is just too small)
  • boots in 20 seconds and suspends / wakes near instantly
  • seamlessly chooses between wireless LAN, bluetooth modem and inbuilt 3G as available
  • is capable of running an RDP / ICA client
  • accepts external storage devices – USB memory sticks via a separate adaptor cable would be fine
  • can be charged via a standard mini-USB lead
  • has a QWERTY keyboard

I can then leave the laptop in the bag more often whilst travelling and still have a single device to replace my Nokia and the iPod.

Someday soon…