Gareth Jones

Back on the 19th of March I sold an Align T-Rex 450 with a load of modifications and a DX6i transmitter to a guy on eBay. He paid promptly and eagerly awaited his parcel.

I took the parcel to my local Post Office and had it sent via Parcel Force. Standard Express48 delivery cost £11.25 but bearing in mind the value of the contents I also took out enhanced cover for an additional £5.70 to bring the total to £16.95.

Two days later the buyer sent me an email to say that the parcel had arrived but that the helicopter was broken in two places. From the damage caused it was clear that the parcel had been subjected to considerable force from above, crushing the helicopter inside the well-insulated box. Dismayed at the incompetence of the service seeing as the whole box was wrapped in “FRAGILE” stickers, I at least took solace in the fact that everything was covered by the enhanced insurance and that everything would be put right at no cost to me.

The buyer emailed me some photos of the damage for me to see for myself. Amazed at how much pressure it must have taken to snap those areas I thanked my lucky stars for taking out enhanced cover. I completed a claim form, printed out all of the relevant evidence and sent it off to Parcel Force. I issued the buyer with a refund and he promptly returned the parcel to me.

Almost three months on I’m still waiting. Initially I was supposed to be getting an inspector come and see the helicopter for himself, but that story changed last week to them needing confirmation from the recipient that the helicopter had been damaged. Apparently the photographic evidence and a print-out of his email confirming the matter aren’t good enough. I asked what would happen if they didn’t receive a reply from him and they said they wouldn’t be able to pay up. I pointed out that in that case I’d have to take them to court and the response was “that’s not a problem”. So despite me being their customer, me having purchased the insurance, me having filed the claim and me having the helicopter at my place for the last 9 weeks or so waiting for their inspector, they now need confirmation from an unrelated 3rd party before honouring their insurance policy. I’ve read through all of their terms and conditions and there’s nothing in there about needing to consult with the recipient at all.

They claimed to have sent a form to the recipient on April 1st and another one on May 3rd – though having just spoken to the buyer this morning he said he hasn’t received either but would be happy to complete such a form if one turned up.

Update 1: on the 9th of June I received an email from the buyer which stated that he had received a letter from Parcel Force asking for confirmation of the damage and that he had replied. So far though I am still yet to hear anything from Parcel Force.

Update 2: yesterday, three and a half months after I first posted the parcel, I received a cheque from Parcel Force for the full amount that it will cost to repair the helicopter. I’ll be sending it off for repair shortly – and obviously won’t be using Parcel Force! The Royal Mail has problems, but at least when they make a mistake they’re pretty quick to pay up!

Two of the photos I took in San Francisco back in 2004 have been selected for use in the 2009 edition of the Schmap San Francisco Guide. Lots of other photos were used as well so it’s not exactly an exclusive club I’ve joined here, but it’s nice all the same. The selected photos are below.

Last Wednesday I left for the Nürburgring in Germany with my father. We stayed in Dover that night and got a 7am ferry over to Calais the next morning, then drove down to Nürburg.

We got there around 4pm on the Thursday evening to find the place totally packed with people from all over the world. The track was open from 6 to anyone who wanted to take their car – whatever it was – around the famous course. We opted not to go round at that point having just spent a day travelling down, and we’d go the next day.

The next day the course was closed to the public because it was host to some real races. I took loads of photos and videos – and in most of them you can get a good sense of how hot it was there.

Saturday morning the track was due to be open to the public again, but dense fog kept it closed for a couple of hours. Thousands of people had turned up for the weekend as the lower track was also hosting the OldTimer Grand Prix at the same time. Eventually we got on there and did a couple of laps before being pulled off again due to the bad weather.

I managed to record the second lap around the circuit despite having been told to put the camera in the boot when I was spotted while trying to film the first one…

The fog never really lifted at all during the day and so the course remained closed to the public, though the Grand Prix on the lower circuit went ahead anyway. We were due to come home on Sunday and so had no time to use the remaining laps on our card before leaving, so we managed to sell them to some locals who would use them another day when the weather was better.

You could sit in the Aston in the photo while a professional driver took you round the course at maximum speed for just under 300 euros. I never went as over 250 quid for 5 minutes of entertainment is well steep, but I imagine it must be a fantastic ride. Surprisingly it went out with a new customer every half hour or so…!

The food was fantastic and we did’t have a bad meal once. To think that France is famous for having the best chefs, the food in France is crap compared to what we had in Germany. The French could certainly learn a thing or two there.

As part of the tour that we were on we were supposed to stay in Koblenz which is about 35 miles east of Nürburg, but as this meant we’d be 35 miles in the wrong direction on Sunday morning we opted to check out a day early after finding some available accommodation in Wiesemscheid. This village is too small to offer any proper entertainment but so close to the track – and more importantly west of the track for Sunday morning – that it didn’t matter. Once again we had a fantastic meal here – made all the nicer since they forgot to add it to the bill the next day!

We started back at about 8.30 on Sunday morning, again in thick fog. We travelled for about 100 miles before finally making it out of the fog in the Netherlands. In Belgium it was sunnier and in France we saw a return to the hot weather that we’d seen on the way down.

The twitter feed came in handy as I managed to keep certain people updated on our progress through Europe, though now that I’m back in the UK it’s not that easy to see how I’ll use it again until next time I’m off somewhere!

I think it would be good to stay in Koblenz for a night or two again next year despite the distance, because it’s the closest city to Nürburg and has the most choice of places to go out at night. It would be good to have a night or two in Nürburg itself too though so that we can be close to the track all day and be able to drink without having to worry about how to get back to the hotel later.

All in all a fantastic trip and I’m already looking forward to the next one.  :)

Photos and videos are available to view in the usual way.

I went on holiday to Cornwall last week for a few days. Upon arriving in Looe after a 5 hour drive down, the weather was nice and I was looking forward to checking out some of the places I remembered from when I was 13.

That was Wednesday. On Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, it rained. On some days it rained the whole time, while on others there were intermittent periods of sunshine.

It was still a nice break nonetheless, and in total I either visited or stayed in Looe (nice), Fowey (nice but wet), Newquay (turned out to be Blackpool of the south – avoid), Bude (nice), Chard (dump), Yeovil (nice) and Bath (nice).

I’ve uploaded photos to Flickr and they’re available to view in the My Flickr section.

I’ve tried about six or seven different Flickr plugins for WordPress over the last week only to be disappointed to find that they’re either clunky, only work inside the side-bar or don’t work at all. Today I finally found one that I could use as a foundation to build on.

Flickr Photo Album seems to be a fairly popular plugin that, from what I read on the forums, has sadly had many of its features break with the release of WordPress 2.8. The fact that it was so close to what I wanted though (a clean, minimal photo viewer that works in the main content area and not just in the side-bar, though side-bar support is also available) meant that it was worth trying to find out what exactly was broken and how to fix it.

After editing some code and tweaking the layout a bit, I’ve got the plugin working the way I want it to and it’s now displaying my Flickr photos in the My Flickr section.

Around a year ago now I was working at my computer one night. Suddenly it made a few clicking sounds and immediately I knew that this was bad news. Unfortunately, while I considered my immediate backup options and tried to decide how best to save all of my files before my computer finally died, it blue-screened on me and refused to start up again. Yep, catastrophic disk failure. It hadn’t even given me enough time to make some essential last-minute backups.

I spent the next hour or so researching the best way to get my data off a broken hard drive and found a forum where one guy had frozen his drive in the freezer, arguing that the extreme cold would slightly shrink the parts inside and bring any contacts closer together. Why not try that? The disk had already refused to yield anything to the six different bootable recovery disks that I had tried so I felt that I had nothing to lose.

I wrapped the drive in a plastic bag to prevent moisture from getting inside it and placed it in the freezer. The next morning I removed the drive and found it to be so cold that my fingers stuck to the metal. I connected the drive to my computer and turned it on, not really knowing what to expect. Amazingly, it booted into Windows. I managed to move everything of any importance off the drive onto a second drive before the disk finally warmed back up to room temperature and failed again.

After buying a new drive and re-installing Windows and all of my other software, the first thing I did was look for a backup solution. I found one in Carbonite. Carbonite automatically and securely backs up the contents of your hard drives for roughly £30/year and offers unlimited storage. It’s continuous and automatic, secure and encrypted. It’s also available for Mac. The peace of mind that I get from knowing that even if my flat was to burn down to the ground, all of my music, my photos, my work – everything – is all backed up off-site on secure servers.

As a happy customer I’d recommend it to anyone.

Here’s Alex Stocks, my brother in law, getting a soaking at Oakwood Park over the summer. The fact that he was so close to the end of the slide when he fell off the sled just makes it all the funnier in my opinion.