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If you choose to access this website, you do so at your own risk and the Company will not be liable for any breach of local law or regulation that you commit as a result of doing so.

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Tomorrow (Thursday, January 6th, 2011) Anyone who has anything they want to give away in the Sligo area, advertise it on twitter!

Use the #SligoTweecycle hashtag and post what the item is. If someones interested, reply and you can swap contact details in your own time.

Simple. Lets hope it works!

Are piles the eight wonder?

Whoever asked number 5 is probably sitting at home all day asking google these things.

priorities…

I hope ALL of these questions are part of a job interview somewhere

Try and imagine one person asking all these questions in under a minute

So what have we learned from our Google Answers? It seems Google is most frequently used (in this country) by unemployed, bored women who are killing time between soaps by trying to get pregnant.

…and also idiots.

I’m playing with GeoLocation code, I tested out this example http://bit.lyJEs6h. It gave me the coords of ‘my location’, which actually shows the exact location of the fastcom wifi tower I’m on, a couple of miles away. Fair enough.

The coords came up in a javascript alert dialog which I couldn’t copy, so I just glanced at them, opened up google maps and typed in as much as I could remember. I just wanted to see roughly how accurate it was.

I actually didnt remember the whole thing and ended up typing in numbers that were off by .002 lat and .07 long. Imagine my surprise when google maps showed me my house. The map coords in question were a mere 100ft from my house. In other words, I mistyped both the latitude and longtitude by the exact geographic offsets between my house and the wifi tower.

I am now turning off the computer for the rest of the day, I’m just too freaked out.

About 3 days ago I decided I’d had enough and was going to write an app to fix the problem. In a dramatic break from Rory tradition, I actually did write the app, and it actually does work!

PlaylistPurge is a simple android app which deletes any playlists from MediaStore which do not have an associated playlist file on the SD card. You can download the APK here, or the source here.

I hope it helps someone else with the same problem!

UPDATE:

Thanks for all the positive comments, in light of all the people asking i’ve decided to clean this up and release it on the market, which I hope to do in the next month or two. Those of you who’ve already used it probably won’t need it again, but you’ll also appreciate that it could do with a little polishing! I’ll post here when the new version is ready.

Does it take a long time? Yes. Is it worth it? Hell yeah.

In July I ordered something from pixmania.ie – a USB to SATA/IDE Converter Cable. Its a little thingie that connects SATA/IDE harddrives to your PC – like a disk enclosure without the enclosure part. It cost me €15 euro. A bargain I thought. How wrong I was.

The thing worked on arrival, but failed within 10 minutes of being used. I returned it straight away (end of July) at my own cost (they claimed they would refund postage costs if I sent them a receipt for postage, but I sent it and never received a refund). In September, I got an email back saying that I the item had arrived in the returns depot, and been ‘accepted’. In supplier speak this means it was merely delivered to the returns depot. By October I had still received no updates on the status of the return. Then in November I received a replacement unit, with no explanation or documentation. “Great” I thought to myself. “It took almost 4 months to process and replace this single, small item, but at least I now have a working one”.

A few weeks later, the replacement unit failed. It had been used approximately 3 times at this point (its not something one would use every day afterall). I tried to return this replaced unit only to discover that the item was still marked as ‘accepted’ by the returns depot. The item status was never updated. There was no way for me to return it.

Their customer service is a bad joke.

Trying to log in to www.pixmania.ie threw a password error, even after recovering the correct password through their own password recovery system. It was only possible to log into www.pixmania.CO.UK. No email addresses are listed on the site for direct email. Contact forms are hidden away and obfuscated under confusing category names (“for partners”, “suggestions?”, “join our team!” etc). When found, they only allow a maximum of 700 words, and despite filling in my complaint under several categories, I never got a reply. I have tried emailing fotovista (pixmania’s parent company), and the pixmania press department, also to no avail.

I logged in again a week or so later to discover that the original order is now marked as in ‘preparation’. Underneath this it says ‘Your package is ready to be sent’. Next to the USB/IDE cable, it now says ‘Discontinued Product’. Both items in the order also show 0 items waiting for delivery. This is further evidence that the side is designed to be misleading and confusing, to discourage users from attempting to avail of any kind of after sales service.

I tried complaining to the National Consumer Agency who told me :

The registered business address for www.pixmania.ie is in France and therefore where consumer complaints relate to companies located outside the Republic of Ireland but within the EU, the European Consumer Centre (ECC) in Dublin can most appropriately handle your query.

Fine. I contacted the ECC (www.eccireland.ie) who were very helpful, but informed me

[]…we depend on the willingness of a trader to co-operate to resolve complaints.

Obviously that’s not going to work, since they couldnt be bothered to answer my emails. At this point, I’ve spent too much effort trying to get a refund for something that only cost me €15 and I’d feel a bit of an eejit chasing it up. However, I’m sure I’m not alone in my experiences with pixmania, so I thought I’d tell my story to warn people away from this dishonest company.

So to sum up, Avoid Pixmania this christmas!

Here’s the letter:

Please copy this message below and email it to minister@environ.ie to save our street..

Put O’Connell Street Sligo reopening to traffic in the subject box and add your name to the bottom of the letter before you send.

Also, don’t forget to put today’s date!

Mr. John Gormley T.D.,
Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government
Custom House,
Dublin 1

10th. Nov. 2009

Dear Minister Gormley,

I kindly request your immediate and urgent support to address the issue of the proposed reopening of O’Connell Street, Sligo to traffic.

This decision is due to take effect on December 9th, 2009.

On Monday November 2nd, the Sligo Borough Councillors made a decision to remove all mention of the Pedestrianisation of O’Connell Street from the 2010-2015 Sligo Environmental Development Plan.

• Sligo as a Gateway City has a strategic objective of pedestrianisation of the City Centre. This decision has ignored the strategic development of Sligo which has been designated a Gateway by Government under the National Spatial Strategy and has benefited from sustained public investment in critical and enabling infrastructure.

• This decision has passed despite being contrary to current and previous Development Plans and National Spatial Strategy.

• This decision has ignored the majority of submissions made during the consultation period into the planning process:
- 60 submissions opposing the removal of the pedestrianised street
- 1 submission was signed by 2850 persons, as opposed to 2 submissions supporting the opening of the pedestrian street to traffic signed by 100 people. This constitutes a 96.5% majority in favor of keeping the street pedestrianised.

• This decision has ignored the business community of Sligo (including Sligo Chamber of Commerce and the O’Connell Street Traders Association) who fully supported the retention of the pedestrian.

• This decision has ignored the expert advice of the following professionals employed by the state:
- City Planners
- City Engineers
- County Managers Report

• This decision bypassed the legal consultation process. Sligo Borough Councillors, including the Mayor of Sligo, Cllr Jimmy McGarry, announced publicly that the decision to open O’Connell Street to traffic was already made. In the September 9th issue of The Irish Times, the Mayor is quoted as saying

“It’s all systems go, all green lights,” said the Mayor of Sligo, Cllr Jimmy McGarry. “The street will be open to traffic on December 9th.”

• This defies the legal planning process under the 2000 Planning Act. Therefore the decision and proposed Development Plan made on November 2nd does not constitute legal process and defies the public’s right to due consultation and transparency on this matter. This is a clear violation of the Planning Act and has eroded the citizens’ faith in public consultation.

• The Borough Councillors have repeatedly failed to provide any valid argument or professional reports justifying removing O’Connell Street as a pedestrianised zone. They have also failed to provide any documented evidence of significant citizen support for this de-pedestrianisation.

I kindly request your immediate support in addressing this matter.

Yours,