Tuesday 5 January 2010

Working all day but getting nothing done

This morning I got up quite early (about 6.20am), I don't normally like to get up early in the Winter because it's so cold, but I thought that I probably wouldn't be able to get back to sleep again and might as well get up.

I had received a reply from Phil about how to get exiftool to copy tags from a file but not overwrite existing tags, so I tried to try it out. I wanted to keep the command in a readable format (I was typing it up in notepad to copy to the command line), so I put each parameter on a new line.

But when I tried it, it didn't work - it turns out that Windows uses a different escape character to Linux, '^' instead of '\'. So I tried again with the correct character to escape the new lines, but it still didn't work, it seemed like the caret was being passed to exiftool as a parameter instead of escaping the new line. I did some googling, but couldn't find anything, so posted to the cpan/exiftool forum, to check if the problem was with Windows.

I had a reply from Fixation about how much it would cost to fix my MT-24EX Macro Twin Flash's broken foot. They said
App. cost would be £25.00 labour and £5.02 parts.+ VAT.
That seemed reasonable, so I went on their website to get the info for sending it in. They have a form that you need to print off and send in with the item, but when I came to print it, I found I didn't have the printer installed (since I reinstalled Vista recently).

I checked the printer drivers in my 'Useful progs' folder, and they were from 2007, so I went on Lexmark's website to check the latest drivers, which were 2009. After downloading and installing the drivers (and switching McRad's PC on so the printer was available), I could fill in the form.

I found a suitable box in Quindelmouse's room, and McRad had a big box of packing material that I could use. On the fixation website, it said you should keep a copy of the form before sending the item to them, so I switched Maccy's comp on and used the scanner to make a copy (as I'd switched McRad's PC (the printer also has a scanner on it) off by this time.

After packing it up, I needed to post it. I remembered hearing about parcel deals on hotukdeals (probably about a year or more ago now), where the delivery company would come and pick up your parcel for four or five quid. So I had a search on hotUKdeals, and found Next day Courier (up to 10kg) within UK - £6.90 @ Parcelmonkey (possible £4.90 with Quidco/topcashback) - OR Parcelbee (up to 30kg) for £6.49.

I went on the ParcelMonkey website via quidco, but after I'd added insurance for £500, the price was about £20. So I checked the Royal Mail website, and the price there was more like £5 (except Royal Mail don't come and collect the parcel). They did have lots of links to online postage on the parcel page, but when you click it, the options available are small letter, large letter, and small packet, nothing mentioned about parcels.

Since I'd have to take the parcel down to the Post Office anyway to send it, I thought I might as well just pay for it at the Post Office. So I went down town to the Post Office, through the slight bit of snow we had this morning. I wore my Rabbit fur Ushanka and normal thick coat, and if anything, was a bit too warm.

The cost for sending the parcel was £6.70, Special Delivery. The town was quite busy. I came back home and then started writing this blog post.

It seems that getting my flash fixed is turning out to be quite expensive, especially given how long I've spent this morning on getting it ready to send and taking it down the Post Office.

In the afternoon I found that MySQL wasn't working in Ubuntu anymore. I did lots of googling and changing stuff to try and get it working again, but failed. Some useful pages that seemed to be related to my problems - apparmor denying mysql read/write privileges, Fatal error:
Can't open and lock privilege tables: Incorrect file format 'host'
, mysql install error, and how to reinstall mysql. Not being able to find a solution that worked, I posted to the Ubuntu Forums to try and get some help there.

I also watched a video about a new service called Twittollwer, which is a service that allows you to choose someone with lots of followers, and then get their followers to also follow you. The beauty of twittollower is that you can choose people who are in the same niche as you, thus getting targeted followers. e.g. I could choose photographers with lots of followers, then I'd get their followers (who must be people interested in photography) to follow me.

The twittollower system is automated, I presume it works by following people who are following the person/people you choose, in the hope that they'll follow you back, and then unfollowing them if they don't follow you back within a certain time period.

They show some evidence of good results in the video on the twittollower website, and also demonstrate how cheap twittollower is compared to rival methods of getting twitter followers. They also show how you can make lots of money through your twitter followers.

At the moment, twittollower costs $67 a month for the first 200 people. I would have given it a trial, but they said you need to create a new twitter account rather than use your existing twitter account. Also, I don't have any products or services to promote and make money from at the moment (and I don't want to promote clickbank photography ebooks not knowing whether they're actually any good or not).

So I gave twittollower a miss for the moment, though they do say they'll be increasing their prices (possibly to $800-900 a month) in the future. Anyone subscribing now gets their pre-launch special monthly price 'locked in'.

The other thing that concerns me about it is that I know twitter bans people who mass follow and mass unfollow. But Matt Garrett was promoting it (and is behind it), so I would have thought that he's made sure it doesn't have any problems like that.

The style of the guy promoting twittollower in the video, Tahir Shah, was quite weird, coming across as overly enthusiastic and very overt in his marketing methods. He also said that he realises how important people's time is, but then goes on and on making the same point multiple times in a very 'around the bush' way, rather than just making the points quickly. Because of his droning on, for quite a bit of the video, I just had it on in the background while I got on with other stuff.

Food
Breakfast: Bowl of Choco Moons; Cup o' Tea.
Lunch: Honey & Mustard Ham with Iceberg Lettuce Sandwich; Apple; Clementine; Slice of Stollen; Posh Chocolate Biscuit; Cup o' Tea; 3x Chocolate Truffles.
Dinner: Beef burger with Grated Mature Cheddar Cheese, Tomato Ketchup, and Iceberg Lettuce in a Bun; a Bun; Chicken & Vegetable flavour fake Cup a Soup. Pudding was Trifle Sponge with Tinned Mandarin Segments and Coffee Custard. Coffee; Cherry Liqueur.

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