Here's what Europeans are buying amid the COVID-19 lockdown – aside from heaps of pasta and toilet paper The rush to work from home as COVID-19 grips Europe has led to bumper sales of related tech for distributors, official stats confirm. The UK government has followed policies enacted in Italy, Spain and France by locking down citizens to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus, while remote working in other regions of the …
Yeah, what a time to discover my mum's laptop (which is the same model as mine) doesn't have a camera. Fortunately a friend of hers lent her one in the end but not until after I'd scoured the web looking for options only to find that there was nothing available sub-£80!
A day or so later some £5 '50MP' (yeah, right!) Cams came up on eBay from a 'UK seller' in 'Liverpool'. A few days after they were supposed to be delivered, the seller who is actually in Hong Kong and lying and their location, cancelled my order and send a long ranting email about how the authorities had stolen a whole load of their stock.
Oh well. At least it's not urgent for me any more but I pity anyone trying to get one for a lonely and/or isolated relative at the moment
Have you tried using your phone as a remote webcam. On Android you can use DroidCam and IP WebCam to do this. I've used them with Teams, Zoom and Skype and they work ok. You need to install a client in your PC for them to work with the above applications.
Google Play Store links below:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pas.webcam
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dev47apps.droidcam
Well we have had it with RM the amount of stuff lost recently beggars belief. (Not late but actually lost).
As an example a largish box full of lamps gone, just vanished.
Disappeared from their system, originally card through the door with no knock, organised redelivery, no delivery, 2 weeks later call them no record.
Need to insist on using a reputable carrier I suppose.
Popping down later to pick up another cocked up delivery rather than risk losing yet another item.
I do not mind slower and late delivery at all, but losing it WTF.
OTOH they're the most reliable here. I've had all manner of problems with other carriers who seem to either lose stuff in their systems, deliver to the wrong house or simply not see a house name carved in 6" high letters on a block of stone. Under normal circumstances I prefer to get Amazon stuff delivered to a locker. Vendors' systems that can't cope with a house not having a number are another problem.
The posties, however, know us, would be able to deal with a misaddressed parcel and also know enough to link us and our daughter who lives a mile away and have been known to leave her parcels with us when they didn't have anywhere handy to leave it there. It's the sort of thing that happens out in the country!
Just see what happens to some (crappy) online forms where your actual address has neither a number, or a street. We are:
House Name,
Village,
Town 3 miles away
For deliveries, it doesn't help that the postcode doesn't take you very near to the end of our drive. It's quite near the house, but "you can't get there from here".
We're not quite the same - House name, Road name, Post town about 2 miles away. At least post code works for us. The other day I tried ordering something over the phone from the local pharmacist - their merchant S/W required a house number to verify a card payment over the phone.
And what's this "City" field so many forms have? I haven't lived anywhere that ranked as a city for the last third of a century.
Having briefly worked as a parcel delivery guy I can categorically state that many of the houses that don't have a number are a royal PITA to deliver to. My experience was that many such houses have their name in small letters on their front door (60' from the road) or the sign on the road is obscured by vegetation or dirty. If you have problems getting deliveries then make certain that your house name is CLEARLY visible from the road. If you don't then chances are the driver is just going to blow off your delivery as too much effort. He/she has 140 such drops to do and doesn't have time to play "hunt the house". Yes, I often heard the lame excuse "But the postman knows where we are!" but your postie delivers to you EVERY DAY. The delivery guy covers a much larger area and delivers to you infrequently, so is not going to remember where you are. If your house name/number is not CLEARLY visible from the road, you are going to get failed deliveries, even in housing estates where the number sequence is "obvious". Delivery drivers aren't the highest paid so don't expect them to go out of their way to find your house. Make it easy for them and your stuff will arrive.
I sympathise with you. We have pestered our parish council for a street name for years, but last time I met him he claimed it was with the municipality and nothing happened there.
I suspect the problem is that the parish chairman is from a different party than the mayor, the latter is upset that we vote for the wrong lizards and therefore we can't have a street name. Bit of a bugger, as emergency services do not use GPS here.
"and therefore we can't have a street name"
How about street with No Name"?
Many years ago a friend worked in the local Royal Mail sorting office. Quite often he did the detective work needed to match a very incomplete address. IIRC such letters now get transferred to a national dedicated office - where there is no source of local knowledge.
"[..] many of the houses that don't have a number are a royal PITA to deliver to.
It amazes me how many houses in my street or adjacent ones - do not have a visible number.
Having said that; Royal Mail have twice delivered letters to me that had little resemblance to my address or postcode - not even the right town once. The best one was when they pushed a "no answer" card through the house next door's letter box. It didn't register to them that the big "49" by the letterbox flap - did not match the "51" they had written on the card. Quite often my neighbour at "5" exchanges mis-delivered items with me.
A neighbour had am unwarranted "not in" notification from a courier - with a justification picture of a numbered house. It was about half a mile away. The courier said that they follow their GPS directions and assume they are in the right street when looking for the house number.
"Not late but actually lost"
A UK (Far East) order on the 27 January failed to arrive. The seller arranged a replacement that arrived the next day. Then today (3 April) a 1st Class Jiffy bag arrived with what appears to be the original order from January. No indication of damage or other reason for its delay.
There were stories many years ago of freight wagons in sidings being discovered to contain Xmas mail sacks from decades before.
"You can also use an instant read meat thermometer."
The lower range of those is probably rather imprecise. A fridge one is probably a better scale match - or a freezer one if you let it warm up a bit first. Both of which are rather bulky to insert into any orifice.
It has always surprised me that many people relate a high temperature to subjectively feeling themselves to be hot. The subjective feeling is a relative temperature - so you actually feel as if the room is cold.
Told I'm WFH from Tuesday.
Friday my HP inkjet decides that black does not exist ... Poo! Waste £35 worth of ink following the trouble shooter.
Give up
Order a shiny new Canon injet on Sunday.
RM deliver it on Tuesday.
Works perfectly out of the box.
Problem solved. Thank you JL and RM
Now if only I can get my magic wand to fix the SMART error (aka "Its (not quite) dead Jim" ) on my company laptop. Never rains etc......
"inkjet"
There's your problem, right there.
I could be snarky and say it was because its was a HP, but all ink jets seem to be equally terrible. The cartridges dry out more often than I print, and I've never *needed* to print in colour...
Got a brother Mono laser ~10 years ago. Still going strong with very light use.
My Epson inkjet decided to stop working this week, so I've also ordered a Canon. Though I guess I shouldn't complain too loudly as I bought the thing at the end of 2000 and it has worked brilliantly until this week.
I also have a Brother colour laser printer that was being disposed of by my office. It prints B&W very well but colour prints aren't great and have a smear of magenta all over the page.
A friend's son is classed as very vulnerable - so he was moved back into his parent's rural house with no time to plan.
After working online for several day he announced he was starting to suffer physically from using his small laptop. A couple of hours later he had my 27" IPS 1920x1080 screen to solve the problems - with a HDMI cable scavenged from my DTV box. One happy bunny.
Not that my laptop browsing is particularly compromised. A 26" 1920x1200 has been divorced from its twin on the big PC - the only downside being the edge shading of a non-IPS screen viewed close up.
Neighbours are raiding my stock of spares for all sorts of essential things - particularly batteries for remote controls and toys. Still - it is a quid pro quo as they add my fresh produce needs to their family shopping lists. The only chore is remembering to inform them all that I'm still alive ok every morning. I'm getting fitter by the day - as the neglected exercise bicycle has replaced my daily brisk walk. Sunbathing by an open window boosts my vitamin D - and gently starts my usual summer tan.
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