Which? Convo in 2013 – which debate stood out for you?

I very much agree with Dieseltaylor about the problem of batteries and other consumable parts that cannot easily be replaced by the user. I can see no reason why manufacturers should not be required to design products so that batteries etc can be replaced without the use of any tools. If I can swap the battery for my cheap Nokia phone, why can’t I do the same if I bought an iPhone? Perhaps the EU could legislate on this. They managed to stop Microsoft forcing Windows users in the EU to have a copy of Internet Explorer on their PC, so forcing Apple to introduce products with replaceable batteries should not be an insurmountable problem.

Even when batteries are easy to replace, the cost is often prohibitive. This is often the case with cordless power tools and it is sometimes very difficult to find replacement batteries for cameras.

What I like about this site is that people don’t get into a screaming tizwas if we make a bit of a boo-boo. Hare in Norfolk we say “thare” anyway and things are offen better writ as spook.

Lets see if 2014 is the year I learn to spell :p

I often misuse words like no for know when typing, and their for there. The need for me to re-read for such errors, and also to see that I did not accidentally leave out a word or write nonsense! is a good habit.

I was looking at waterproofs and I swear the first one I came to, and the only one I read had four errors if one includes the review answer and testing. Perhaps we employ Grauniads?
http://www.which.co.uk/home-and-garden/leisure/reviews/waterproof-jackets/sprayway-nyx/review/

Lee – you are not alone.

Thank you, Patrick. All it takes is a kind comment or two, like yours, and no criticism or smirking at bad grammar or spelling. Wishing you a microwave free year.

Figgerty – As a regular, I hoped you and some other regulars would have been given an avatar by santa, as John did.

Mistakes in grammar and spelling can be fun, and one that is relevant is “Your statutory rights are not effected”.

Wavechange & Patrick

Santa wiped me off his list a few years ago when he discovered that I did not believe in him anymore. Don’t tell John though as he would be crestfallen.

I have uploaded several favourite photos and avatars in the past six months but had to discard them straight away as they were too big and the part of the photo shown was inappropriate in one case – instead of a drawing of two golfers shaking hands I had a view of their crotch area – or i other case the area shown was unclear. My last attempt was an avatar of The Scream but that view was just blue paint.

I think more of us would have avatars if the Which? website would automatically downsample images to an appropriate number of pixels, just like photo sharing sites do.

A quick and dirty solution might be to create an avatar on a discussion forum that does downsample images, save the image from that site and upload it to this one.

Thanks Patrick. I have selected one that looks reasonably OK but I still hope to size The Scream so it looks fine in use. It is not quite WYSIWYG, as what I see when sizing/manual cropping is not quite what I get when saved. I may yet decide to return to the global avatar. The scream was 8.15KB after photo editing so I thought it should have been just fine. Don’t waste any more time on this as an Avatar is not going to improve my comments, though it may provide a brief distraction.

I was ignorant (still am in many other respects) as to what an “Avatar” was and why it wasn’t just called an icon. Wikipedia (thanks) yielded: “In computing, an avatar (usually translated from Sanskrit as incarnation) is the graphical representation of the user or the user’s alter ego or character. …….It is an object representing the user. The term “avatar” can also refer to the personality connected with the screen name, or handle, of an Internet user.” I’m sure everyone else knew this. Interesting you are using The Scream Figgerty. I wonder how others chose theirs.

Figgerty has had two versions of DNA so far today. That’s easy. I’m still wondering what Malcolm’s avatar represents.

wavechange, mine is more or less in the spirit of the name (by coincidence) “a graphical representation of myself and, possibly, my alter ego”. As I have posed the question, it is only fair to satisfy your curiosity. It is a self portrait – my facial shadow falling on a stone wall in Devon. Although I must admit it looks like more like one of the bandaged bandits in “Return to Navarone”.

My ISP is MSN which gives you Bing images as soon as you put a subject [e.g The Scream] in the browser [no doubt similar elsewhere]. A quick look shows they have 84,800 (!!) images of The Scream in different interpretations [probably not all approved of by Edvard Munch!] so there might well be one already at the right dimensions and degree of definition to pop straight in. What I hadn’t realised when I did mine was that it would automatically replace the uniform avatar on all my previous posts from the year dot. This is a fantastic benefit because I can now easily pick up old Conversations where I last left them by looking out for the picture of a little cuckoo on a twisted spring [too many clues for the psychoanalysts there perhaps].

Patrick – I wish I had your powers of observation. I once had to dispose of some charity posters when I realised that the QR code I had included linked to Which? Conversation rather than details of a spring fete.

Who’s next? Maybe an avatar related to winter tyres might suit Dieseltaylor, multivitamins for Chrisb1 and a mortarboard for Em for educational postings.

Thanks Malcolm for an interesting explanation. I suppose it is a sort of self-licheness, if a pun may be permitted.

Sorry to report that the posters went into the paper bin. I failed to see the opportunity. 🙁

I don’t wish to dampen enthusiasm but avatars can be a distraction such as the moving one for reader :
jjmmwgdupree
If one is creative they can also be quite entertainingly rude but overall in a pageful of comments I certainly do not want to be distracted by an array of visual tricks going on. !!

Also I am not sure of the power overhead if you are reading on a mobile … : ) …. I am sure someone who cares can probably tell us.

You need to be familiar with the nursery books of A A Milne to understand jjmmwgdupree . . .

With only one animated gif avatar it’s probably not a serious issue worthy of debate. I prefer Dave D’s orange cat. 🙂

I hope that it will not be long before we can search for regular contributors’ recent contributions to a debate. It is a real pain to scroll through long pages on an iPad and no doubt on other mobile devices.

Did any of you spot my fig roll Avatar yesterday. I hope it did not make you hungry. My user name originates from a 1980’s character advertising my favourite biscuit.

Is the Wavechange QR code for his favourite soap or reality show?

Ranting is fine – and a good option to avoid festering roundabouts of thought. And somebody may here may already have a solution or a work-a-round. : )

I like that “Avoid festering roundabouts of thought” Might just tweet that now! I rant for a living but do believe in ranting with a purpose.

I was quite pleased with the phrase myself and here was its maiden outing. : )