Wednesday 4 July 2012

Online Petition to Grattan PLC (www.grattan.co.uk)


This is an online petition to encourage Grattan PLC (www.grattan.co.uk) to honour the sale to all of its online 'customers' who have purchased the Samsung 17.3inch Notebook for £18.

Honour the sale of the £18 Samsung Notebook which we have paid for

It is a simple notion that when you pay for item you expect to receive it.

If you purchase an item in a store, the second you have completed the transaction, the deal is done. It is cowardly to hide behind the smallprint on your website to back out of a sale which as far as the consumer is concerned is complete.

To everyone who has purchased the notebook for £18 on www.grattan.co.uk, please sign this petition and make some noise. You have purchased the item. Demand to receive it.

This petition will be given to the multi million pound company to ask for what we have paid for. Keep your email confirmation as proof.

And of course, pending the outcome, tell everyone you know how AWFUL, or how GREAT, the grattan service has been.



M&S have recently had a similar and well publicised issue where they have publushed the wrong price online and they decided they WOULD HONOUR the sale after a petition from their customers.  Lets work together to ask the corporate multi million pound company to DO THE RIGHT THING!


So PLEASE click on the link below to join the petition and be heard!


http://www.change.org/petitions/grattan-plc-www-grattan-co-uk-honour-the-sale-of-the-18-samsung-notebook-which-we-have-paid-for

Tuesday 3 July 2012

Review Of Jabra HALO2

I have been lucky enough to receive the new Jabra HALO2 wireless headset to review.  Everything written is entirely my own views and wording.

First Impressions

You know when you walk in to a store and pick up an item and straight away it feels good?  This is one of those items!  It stylish.  Its light.  It folds up like sunglasses.  And it looks especially cool if you place it on the head of a large 11 month old boy!  So my first impression from opening the box was pretty good!


Dylan with blurry dancing hands


What It Does


Wired and Wireless for Music and Calls.  This really sums up the product in terms of what it does.  And of course, who would ever plug the wires in if you don't need to?  It uses bluetooth technology to give you a wireless range of up to 10 meters.  However I find it can get a little crackly if you go to the next room, so keep your phone on you.  Unfortunately bluetooth is not great at busting through walls.  Through thin air it's just fine.


Does It Come In Pink



No.

Description


The earpieces slide easily up and down to allow for different size heads.  So from 11 month baby up to large man head I can confirm it will fit almost everyone.  On the right earpiece it has a single button which you can use to pause and restart your music, or to answer and drop calls.  It has a touch sensitive volume control too, which is really cool.  You slide your finger up or down on the earpiece to change the volume.  Or you can double tab the top or bottom to skip tracks.  Pretty nifty!


Picture not stolen.  Just borrowed.




Connectivity


I have personally been using this with my brand new Samsung Galaxy S3 phones, however even the oldest of phones have bluetooth so this product should work with almost anything, phones, tabs, mp3 players etc.  Of course all of your iThings too.  You can plug in the cable to charge the headset whilst listening to the music too, which is handy.


Ease Of Use


Being a man I dont read instruction.  The controls on the headset are very obvious and very natural.  You fold the sides in to turn off the device.  The fold the back out again and they click in to place to power back on again.  The touch sensitive volume control is child's play.  I tried to double tap to change the tracks before knowing the device could.  Its literally that simple.  And as I am reviewing the product I did read the instructions afterwards to make sure I'm not missing anything.  And yes, I figured it all out in the first 2 minutes.


Technical Stuff



All of the technical stuff I find pretty boring.  Cool names for basic things.  I'm sure it all means something.  If you wish to read through all of the techie features such as 'AM3D Virtual Surround Sound 2.0' then please check out the web link below.


Overall Ratings


Look and feel - 9/10


Looks good.  Feels good.  Dylan certainly sports it well.


Sound quality - 9/10


The overall sound quality is very good. Due to the nature of bluetooth, if you are near other electrical items you can sometimes get a little buzzing which is occasionally noticeable.  Its certainly better than my little earpiece headphones.  Next best thing to playing the music from the surround sound speakers and keeping the neighbours up all night!


Value for money 7/10


This retails for around £65 which is a pretty reasonable price for this item.  You can get bluetooth headsets for around half of this price, however the quality of this headset shines through and warrants the slightly higher price tag.  If you value quality and style then this is for you.  If you only buy cheap and cheerful, then put this on your Christmas list, and be a very good boy!


Recommended by me?


Yes.

To view the jabra website page on this product please see - http://www2.jabra.com/sites/mobile/ap-en/products/pages/jabrahalo2.aspx


Sunday 1 July 2012

How to get your child to eat his food

This is a how to get your child eating his food well (if he is Dylan).  This is a tried and tested method with Dylan.  This has not been tested on other babies and so may not work with yours.

Dylan insists on many things in life.  He knows when it is bed time.  He knows when it is time to get up in the morning.  He knows when he wants a nap.  He will call "Daaaaa... Daaaaa" when he wants to get up, and he will whinge and whine lots when he is ready to go to bed.  And he knows who he is happy to leave the room and who he isn't.  Mummy can't go anywhere.  Daddy can sometimes.

In some situations you can manipulate things to get your own parental way.  However when it comes to feeding time at the Dylan zoo, then Dylan's way is the only way.  Otherwise he will dinosaur your face off!

Dylan 'dinosauring my face off'.


Dylan has 3 meals a day.  He has his milk, and then his food around 30 minutes later.  His first milk of the day must come within seconds of getting out of bed.  As soon as he is downstairs, he screams in baby language "MILK MILK MILK!! GET ME MILK NOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWW!!".  If you were me, you'd do as your told.

After his first milk he will have his weatabix or his porridge.  He has both of them mixed with whole milk and microwaved for 40 seconds.  And then stirred, not shaken.  He knows if you have followed his instructions wrong, so it's best to do it this way ever time.  This is the only meal of the day he will accept being spoon fed.  He eats his cereal with a 99% reliability.  He finishes off every mouthful 90% of the time.  He turns away breakfast 1% of the time.  He's a big fat boy, so we don't fret if he misses one meal in a hundred.  As long as he's had his milk.

For lunch, he will not be spoon fed.  As soon as he realised that he has teeth, he has fingers, and he had mastered the pincer grip, he decided to flex his independence muscles by way of refusal.  If you offer him anything savoury on a spoon he will thwart it across the room without a second thought.  So for lunch he will often have things such as a cheese sandwich.  Other times he has cheese and bread separately.  He will often have scrambled eggs on toast.   Other times he will have a mix of cheese squares, ham, bread soldiers, cucumber sticks and various other nibbly things.  He eats his lunch with 90% reliability.  We always make too much in case he decides will would rather play catch with his imaginary friends who sit all around him at the high chair.  And when he has had enough, he will let you know by clearing his plate.  He does this is a very clear and methodical way.  First - SMASH IT!  He likes to demonstrate that the food is no longer fit for purpose by crushing it with his incredible hulk fists.  And then he will flail his arms like E Honda (the fat guy from street fighter) until his tray is empty.  Job done.

Dinner can be a little bit tricky.  As by this time of day he starts to get tired.  And just like his mother, when he is tired, he can be a little tricky to handle.  You would need to be a mix between a hostage negotiator, a lion handler and a makeshift Egyptian dinner time god to be able to say or do the right thing when either of them become tired.  His dinner comes in the format or things like pizza and veg, fish fingers and veg, whatever we have for our dinner and veg.  In veg we trust!  The veg we use is frozen mixed veg.  They come in handy small pieces which are ideal for finger food.  The other bits of his dinner are all cut up to be finger sized too.  He eats his dinner also with a 90% reliability.  And again will demonstrate to you that he is finished with his SMASH and THROW technique described earlier.  When he starts to get a little tetchy but our parental spider sense kicks in and we know he is still hungry despite his primate style behaviour, a good technique that works quite well is to break his food up in to even smaller chunks, so that they are literally bite sized.  By this time of day he sometimes finds chewing away at chunk of food a little tiring.  After all, he has had a busy day.  

Another winning tip is to never put too much food on his plate for his lunch or dinner.  If he see's a whole pile of food he decides that he couldn't possibly decide what piece to eat next, so he manually reduces the amount of food available by using all his available limbs.  He likes to have his food segmented so he can pick and choose what piece to eat next.  He likes to have his peas to one side so that he can roll them around and perfect his pincer grip.  Its a little bit pedantic, but it is his preferred way.

The main thing is that as long as you allow him to feed himself, and to present the food to him in an easy to manage way, then he will eat everything.  He will even feed you too, to demonstrate that he is happy with you.  Much like a cat bringing you a dead bird.  But a lot nicer to receive, being a human and all.

In case you are ever likely to babysit my child, you will find this very helpful.

How does your child get on with eating?

Please read my other posts such as my post about lazy stay at home parents - http://thedaddyadventure.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/lazy-stay-at-home-mums.html

Silent Sunday



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