I was just burning a data DVD in Brasero, and the following dialogue popped up.
Brasero screenshot
Ah, I get it. It’s negative because the data is going out of the computer and onto the DVD. Still not sure why it thinks I’ve got 2 billion megabytes though… 
Seems like O2 is down this evening. It must be a fairly widespread problem since loads of people have posted about it on Facebook and Twitter.
I searched for information online but there was nothing on O2′s website, which is pretty poor.
Some forums discussed the outage, although there were no facts – only speculation that building work at a data centre had damaged the power supply to the building.
Anyway, I don’t care. I don’t like being phoned, and I also have a Vodafone handset if I particularly feel like calling someone.
As for data service to my iPhone, this is being supplied by my WLAN deathnet. My ADSL is almost as fast as a 3G connection(!)
Perhaps the service I will miss most is SMS – although most of the people I care about will know that I’m also contactable by other text-based protocols. 
That said, I’m off to sleep now and will not be contactable by any means for several hours. Goodnight!
I bought a BluRay-ROM drive for my media PC this week, and so I decided to bump-start my collection of BluRays.
I dredged through the bargain movies at Play.com and ordered ten of them.
Much was my surprise when they started arriving today and I discovered that they were individually wrapped!
I can’t understand how they can possibly save money by using ten cardboard packets and ten orders with the courier. It seems to me to be more efficient to pick the ten discs in the warehouse, put them in one box and post the box off.
Not to mention the cost to the environment (or perhaps more importantly, perceived cost).
I dropped my iPhone 3GS this week. It fell perfectly face down on the pavement, and the glass front shattered.
The screen still works perfectly, and so does the touch-screen. Unfortunately some of the shards of glass are loose and they have an unpleasant tendency to stick in your thumb when you swipe to unlock the phone.
I will almost certainly have to pay for the repair out of my own pocket – and maybe even buy a whole new handset. Currently all of the iPhone handsets retail for over £400.
Broken iPhone
Broken iPhone
For my email and calendaring, I use Mozilla Thunderbird with the Lightning plugin (which implements the Sunbird calendar inside Thunderbird – nifty!).
As you can see here, Lightning is helping me plan my morning at work efficiently, by automatically checking over 4 billion of my calendars. Perhaps by that time it has fetched all of that metadata, I’ll have been lucky enough to miss my first meeting 
And hot off the press, another fail entry.
I placed an order with Amazon, and received this confirmation email.
Screenshot - Amazon email
I sure don’t remember ordering an ARRAY(0x6b390274), but hey, if it’s free…
For ages I’ve been meaning to collect together all the fails I come across and post them on my blog. So let’s get started.
This snippet is taken from the user manual of a Hannspree Xv-S LCD TV.
Operating conditions Temperature Temperature 32°F to + 104°F ( 0°C to + 40°C) Humanity 20% to 65% (no condensation) Altitude To 10,000 feet (3,000m)
For those of you who didn’t spot it… apparently this TV will work where there is between 20% and 65% humanity. So, Russia?
This is a rather old email thread (as you can see from the fact I mentioned “in the new year”, i.e. looking forwards to 2009. I consider it good practice to retain the relevant parts of the history when replying, but this conversation has gone on for so long that the formatting is getting a bit silly…
When an email thread gets too long
I just received my phone bill from O2 by email. See if you can spot the deliberate mistakes. Click for a bigger version.
O2 phone bill
Is it just me, or is this not the kind of error message you want from a company that handles your bank and debit card details?
Error 500 from PayPal