Fear and Loathing on the Learning Curve: Observations on Life, Tech and Web Design from a Slightly Misanthropic Mind

Usability Ballache: O2 Broadband Sales

I’ve just moved into a new flat in North London and so we’ve had the joy of set­ting up the vari­ous essen­tial util­it­ies — chief among them (of course) being the Interwebs. Being an O2 mobile cus­tomer I get pref­er­en­tial pri­cing for O2 broad­band — they’re also cur­rently offer­ing 3 months free for new signups. And if that wasn’t enough, Quidco were (until a few days ago) offer­ing up to £100 cash­back. Cha-ching!

Ordering this most bar­gain of pack­ages, how­ever, proved to be a bit tricky. O2 require that you pay by Direct Debit, and that the bank account you spe­cify for that must be registered to the address for which you’re order­ing broadband.

On top of that, they authen­tic­ate the cus­tomer fur­ther by check­ing the details of a debit or credit card which must also be registered to that address. Having just moved here, none of my cards or accounts are registered here, so I would have to amend the details on one of my accounts before I could place an order.

Fair enough, you might think — as did I, to a point — so I changed my account address to the address of my new flat. The order still wouldn’t go through, how­ever — there was one fur­ther obstacle still to nav­ig­ate. Turns out the address has to match exactly, unlike most e-tailers where only the num­bers in the address (plus the post­code) have to match.

Entering my post­code and build­ing num­ber in the order form pro­duced a list of addresses, includ­ing the build­ing my flat is in, but not a list of flats. Instead, the closest address was “28, Flat A-G, <my street> […]” (num­ber changed to pro­tect the guilty). So I could select every flat in the build­ing, not just mine. OK..?

The kicker was that most e-commerce sites allow you to cus­tom­ise the address after pick­ing it from a list. Not so with O2, where the lis­ted address was all I got; no oppor­tun­ity to edit. So I had to change my bank account’s address to this — incor­rect — address before the order would go through. And all cor­res­pond­ence arriv­ing here is addressed to every flat, not mine. Good work, O2 web developers.

DJ Deja Vu: Annie Mac Trends

We’ve a some­time ritual in the office of listen­ing to Annie Mac’s Friday night show on Radio 1 — usu­ally on a Monday via iPlayer. Despite no doubt noble inten­tions, Annie’s show is a temple of main­stream banal­ity and repe­ti­tion, its con­ser­vat­ive playl­ist inter­leaved with vacu­ous pop sound­bytes, obnox­ious shouty vocal stings and (most annoy­ingly) a bloody air­horn sample.

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Hipstamatic and Rebooting a Hobby

As any­one who hasn’t been liv­ing in a sack for the last few years will be aware, the iOS (iPhone, iPad, iPod) plat­form has become some­thing of a pop­u­lar hit, with an App Store that now com­prises hun­dreds of thou­sands of apps for all pur­poses (both real and ima­gined) under the sun. I’ve owned an iPhone for the last two years, and dur­ing that time have tried a fair few. Many have been impress­ive, but none so much as Hipstamatic (iTunes link), which I bought on a whim after see­ing some of its out­put on Twitter. And I’ve found using it to be quite a trans­form­at­ive experience.

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Jobhunting with Less Pain, Part 3

I’ve already had some great feed­back from the first two parts of this art­icle, so I’m pleased to be able to share the third and final part today.

Having read this far, you should have some idea about the pro­cesses required to set your­self up with an inter­view with a pro­spect­ive employer for a job you actu­ally want. For most roles, this is the most cru­cial step, and giv­ing your­self the best pos­sible chance of suc­cess is key.

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Jobhunting with Less Pain, Part 2

The first part of this art­icle dealt with my motiv­a­tions for writ­ing it (very meta, eh?) and the basic steps you should take before start­ing out on the path to find­ing a new job — decid­ing what job you want, and pre­par­ing a CV that doesn’t suck.

The CV sec­tion alone turned into a colossal beast of a thing, such that the ori­gin­ally envis­aged single art­icle turned into a multi-part series, the true extent of which will only be known once I’ve fin­ished writ­ing it. In this second instal­ment I’m going to dis­cuss cover let­ters, the “hunt” itself, and per­haps round off with some words about recruit­ers, if you’re lucky.

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Jobhunting With Less Pain, Part 1

A new influx of recruiter spam plop­ping into my inbox this after­noon promp­ted me to write a post I’ve been mean­ing to put together for a few months: a col­lec­tion of my top tips for com­plet­ing the job-hunting pro­cess with as little pain as possible.

This art­icle ended up becom­ing a bit of a beast, so I’ve split it into sec­tions which I’ll post daily for the next few days until — like a strange, inform­at­ive ill­ness — I’ve got it all out of my sys­tem. UPDATE: You can find the second part of the art­icle here, and the third and final part here. Enjoy!

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