Well, it’s looking overcast, wet, and lacking leaves on the trees. But it’s pretty typical for the season. See if you can spot the faint lines created by the Flymo robotic lawnmower!
Category: Thoughts
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Ebay fees. Are they worth it?
To a certain extent yes Ebay fees are worth it, however at times you might want to reconsider how much you spend on the platform.
What are Ebay fees for?
Ebay fees cover the cost of running Ebay, hosting your listing, “advertising” your listing, and protecting you as a seller.
Are fees way too much for what you get?
For the most part yes they appear totally illogical and out-of-proportion for the service you get.
Can I calculate how much I would have to pay in fees to Ebay?
I created a tool a few years back so people could instantly see how much Ebay and Paypal would charge them to sell an item when sold at a particular price. Instant Ebay Calculator can be found here. This tries to help sellers ahead of any sales.
What alternatives are there?
There are all sorts of free (Facebook, Gumtree) or lower-cost platforms. Then there is Amazon for catalogued items (the fee structure is similarly-high).
Why not use the free ones?
The free ones are fine in theory, but they play host to most amount of time-wasting, fraud, rogue-transactions, and criminal activity.
So the fees help pay to protect me as a seller?
Yes and no. You are protected against rogue transactions and some time-wasters, but as a seller you will always get stung if (a) the buyer wants to return the item (forcing you to pay for return delivery), and (b) if the buyer decides to never actually pay for the item they have ‘bought’ (in which case eBay turns a blind eye and charges you fees unless you kick up a fuss!)
What do I use?
As I ran a business (PigFlog) based 90% on Ebay, I definitely used it, and inso doing I probably generated about £80,000 in fees which I paid to Ebay / Paypal / Amazon. I’ve been there and done that, and received no thanks from them. Today I still use Ebay and Amazon here and there for items which I need to get rid of from around the house.
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How I get broadband (successfully) in the Norfolk suburbs
After using BT’s not-so-fast network for just over 2 years (with the false promise of a speed increase from the council), I switched to a mobile broadband solution through the Three network.
The speed we had through the Origin Broadband / Plusnet (BT / Openreach) system was usually around 6Mbps down and 1Mbps up. This was OK to work with, but at the beginning of this year it all went tits-up and suddenly decreased to dial-up speed (see 2nd screenshot).
2018 
2019 We had multiple BT engineers out, but no-one could fix the speed back to what it was so they simply gave up and refunded my contract money. Given that I work from home I thought I should step in and sort out an alternative system. I’m glad I found a solution!
The kit I used to set it all up:
1 x Three sim card with unlimited data
1 x Huawei B525 4G Router (read about my 5G upgrade plan here)
1 x Poynting 4G-XPOL-A0002 Outdoor Antenna
1 x Antenna man to mount the antenna on the side of the house (in the correct direction) & drill a hole through the wall into the house.
The white 4G antenna is mounted on the silver TV aerial pole. The current speed through Three is now around 20Mbps down and 8Mbps up (on 4G) or 14Mbps down and 6Mbps up (on 3G).
An added bonus of using the Huawei B525 is that it comes with VOIP meaning the wife is happy with a pseudo-landline in the house. We basically plugged our regular telephone into the router and it works just like a landline (with the exception of the number being a mobile number). Note that incoming calls only work when the router is switched to 3G only. Outgoing calls work on 3G only, or with Auto selected.
I’ll keep my eye out for the time when the broadband lines are upgraded to something that actually works, and that can compete with the mobile signal. But right now, there’s no competition in this part of the countryside.
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Broken Mail App on IOS 13 to 13.2.3 (iPhone 8)
I have noticed (along with a few other people online) that when I ‘upgraded’ my iPhone 8 from IOS 12 to IOS 13 the mail app seems to really struggle to work correctly. It is generally very sluggish, taking forever to launch and update.
Whenever you look for a solution online it simply says restart everything (phone, network settings, apps, mail config). However none of this actually changes anything.
I can’t get my head around the fact that this is an app that’s been with the iPhone since day 1, yet today it struggles to work as well as it did 10 years ago! Is technology simply too advanced for basic apps?
In any case, while this is still an issue I have temporarily moved over to the gmail app…
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Failed to get anyone to join a Meetup.com group
It is important to write about how plans can go wrong, perhaps so that others can learn from my errors? This is my Meetup.com fail.
I have used meetup.com before to join a few groups and I used it to create a basketball group a few years ago (and people came from day 1).
However, I created a ‘business hacks’ group at the end of the summer and scheduled a total of 4 meet-ups. Over the course of these 4 events I met absolutely no-one despite building up a group size of 75. The events ended up as me in a pub, with a pint and a notebook! On the bright side I did get some work done.
I seriously cannot understand what went wrong with the event organisation. Was it inconvenient timing/location? Did I look scary on my profile pic? Did no-one want to discuss business hacks?
In any case, after meeting 4 I cut my losses and closed down the group.
An outsider might think that you would be able to form a group and advertise an event on this type of site for little or no cost. Unfortunately this isn’t the case: at £25 a month, or £300 a year it certainly isn’t cheap. From my perspective I feel totally fleeced at this stage. And given the pricing I think there’s a slight gap in the market.
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When will we get a proper 5G mobile router?
At the time of writing this post there only seems to be 1 5G mobile router out there: the Huawei 5G CPE Pro. As this product is holding the monopoly it seems we should expect some alternatives soon. But when?
What I’m hoping for is a nice upgrade from the incredible and solid B525 (4G), with VOIP, regular antenna plugs and enough LAN ports on the back. The 5G CPE Pro appears to have only a couple of LAN ports, some odd antenna plugs and no VOIP.
Also because of the lack of alternatives the CPE Pro has a pretty crazy price-tag at the moment (£400 vs £125 for the B525).
The reviews on Amazon for the CPE Pro do seem pretty positive when you dig down to the details. Each one reporting increased Internet speeds even with no 5G access yet (some significant jumps, other smaller increases). The only negatives are about Huawei’s customer service, issues using the 2 LAN ports, and the antenna sizes.
I guess we just need to wait a few months and something better will turn up.
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Got myself an interesting blog logo
It’s just a bit of fun really but I thought I should brandify my relatively new page with a fun blog logo. As I’m in the logo business (an off-shoot of the DJ agency, catering for DJs and Musicians) I thought it only necessary to lead by example.
Not sure about the hair colour at this stage, but it definitely makes me stand out! All comments welcome!
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Target: to own Tesla solar roof tiles
Ever since they were first launched in the US I’ve had my eye on Tesla solar tiles. For those of you who haven’t seen them before, they are basically like regular roof tiles, but with integrated solar panels!
Regular-style solar panels (which ain’t pleasing to the eye when on residential roofs) have been around for my entire lifetime. So a new visual design is something that really is amazing.
From what I’ve gathered in the press, the estimated cost will be around £20k for an average roof, so it’s going to take a bit of intense saving to have that to hand. But once installed it would feel amazing to have my roof tiles generate power for the house!
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A Beautiful View of Ice on Velux
After the temperatures plummeted to sub-zero last night we woke up to a crazy ice pattern on the bathroom Velux window this morning.
I’m sure there’s some form of scientific explanation for this pattern but let’s just stick to looking at how beautiful it looks!
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Three UK Mobile Content Restrictions gone MAD
So yesterday I found that I couldn’t access 2 of my sites. This one (my blog), and Storm DJs East Anglia. After a bit of head-scratching I find that they were both fully-intact and perfectly error-free when I switched on my VPN!
I found out that somehow they have been listed as Adult-Content / Offensive and are not currently accessible through Three Mobile…
I phoned Three this morning to report it, and the India-based operator said he would ‘raise the case’ and ‘get it sorted’. I asked him how it would be sorted without the web addresses, and ‘it just would’.
Following on from this useless call, I sent an email to content@three.co.uk where you can send ‘appeals’. Let’s hope they sort it fast!
*Note I am writing this blog post on the WordPress app as I can’t access it any other way right now while on non-VPN Three.
See below for how this site looks:
This afternoon Three got back to me to tell me that they have to ‘review’ all new sites before they are allowed (which is plain rubbish as there are thousands of sites published daily). See their response below:
