Aliya got a blog

Aliya has been using the Internet for a while now, normally for browsing and a bit of online games. A few months ago she started asking though: “How do you make a website?”

After searching a bit, and weighing whether I should host her site and so on, I decided instead to teach her to blog. She made her first post just now, I helped a bit as a spellchecker (I though wordpress.com has one… I guess it will be a paid feature 😉 ).

I also set up her email using GMail, with Google Talk as a notifier and maybe chat.

They are not quite there yet for a primary school kid, but close enough to be easy to use I guess. We’ll see how it goes.

Posted on by Perry Ismangil

Cool new phone service from my telco

Telewest’s new Talk Anywhere service

Telewest’s new Talk Anywhere service is the first of its kind in Britain and will give consumers a choice of packages with 200, 400 or 800 minutes per month. The time can be used to phone local, national, international, mobile and internet numbers for a fixed monthly fee, which also includes the phone line rental.

So let’s see: the cheapest is 200 minutes at £18, which includes line rental, which currently is £10.50. So that means for £7.50 I get 200 minutes, amounting to about 3.75p per minute. Not rock bottom for international calls to Indonesia (or anywhere for that matter) which I can get for 1p to 5p per minute through direct dial providers. But if the quality is as good as current Telewest line, then it’s definitely worth it. The direct dial providers varies so wildly in quality that you have to ring several numbers just to get a good line.

For mobiles 3.75p is extremely cheap, although there is a new company offering discounts to reach 1p per minute, but I’m sure that’s just a teaser rate.

For local/national calls 3.75p is considered expensive nowadays, with unlimited/1-hour redial for 5p etc.

So the big winner is callers to mobile, followed by international destinations if you care about ease of use (no more ever changing 0844 xxxx) and quality (“…so that’s the story. Over. Roger.”).

Posted on by Perry Ismangil

Would you like to own your home?

The Future Of Home-owning

A new housing report may reassure homeowners and potential homebuyers who are worried about the long-term demand for residential property.

An interesting take on residential property market in the UK. They asked young people, future home buyers, on their home-owning preferences. Almost all of them want to be a home owner.

I bought my home back in 2001, less than six months after I emigrated to the UK. I was renting a house for the first year. For me it was a no brainer, because I calculated that the mortage payment is only a bit more (less than 20%) compared with the rent. Even considering the costs involved, the possibility of a price decrease (didn’t happen, instead it increased 100% over 4 years), I figured the most I will lose is the same as renting, so it evens out. I did come into some inheritance money that I used for the deposit.

All in all I’m happy although I now have the additional burden of insurance and property maintenance!

Posted on by Perry Ismangil

Death: is it final?

BBC NEWS | World | Middle East | Hundreds killed in Hajj stampede

At least 345 Muslim pilgrims have died in a crush during the stone-throwing ritual at the Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia, officials say.

Inna lillahi wa inna lillahi rojiun (We are from Allah and to whom we are returning)…

My sister-in-law is doing the Hajj this year, I pray for her but I am not in fear of losing her. This may be strange to non-Muslims, especially from what I perceive to be UK public reaction as reported by the media. Here, death is a final and fatalistic concept, while as Muslims we believe we are transitioning to the afterlife. This is especially true of the Hajj, where would be pilgrims are urged to finalise all affairs, leave no debts, ask forgiveness, due to total submission to Allah during the Hajj.

So while some may scorn the lack of health and safety during the Hajj, such earthly matters are the least of any pilgrim’s concern, it is Allah’s will that one should live or not. This does not mean that the Saudi government as the authority in charge should not do anything. In fact this particular area, which is particularly hard to manage due to a limited time window, has seen massive changes over the years. But if after all that people still die, then all we can say is: Inna lillahi wa inna lillahi rojiun.

Posted on by Perry Ismangil

Fed up paying ridiculous petrol prices?

Welcome to Pipeline Card!

Fed up paying ridiculous petrol prices? Save money with a free Pipeline Card!

This is a good idea. If you’re a car user in the UK, it’s worth a try. If you don’t want to use your normal email just get a new email address (I can even send you a GMail invite).

Posted on by Perry Ismangil

Credit card (un)limit(ed) is bad for your health

Ireland bans credit limit hikes

Banks in Ireland will soon be banned from raising a customer’s borrowing limit on a credit card without getting their permission first.

This can only be a good thing. I’ve had one or more credit cards for the last ten years or so, and it is always very difficult to get into the discipline of not spending what you don’t have. Even if you set it up so you pay the balance in full every month. So much so that for now I have discontinued the use of credit cards except where it makes sense to use the built-in protection from non-delivery of goods etc.

Posted on by Perry Ismangil

Finding a blog client that works with WDevs.com

For my programmer’s blog The Software Toolsmith, the otherwise excellent Performancing extension on Firefox didn’t work well with the Metaweblog API. So while waiting for an updated version I decided to look around for another client. Blog Writer from Zoundry seems to work well. So I’ll settle on that for now.

Posted on by Perry Ismangil