Every manufacturer boasts their product as being superior to all others.  When I received an invite to see what Panasonic was bringing to 3D I was a little sceptical at all the hype, having just seen Sony's offerings.  One line in the invitation email however did catch my attention:

Winner of Best in Show at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas this year.

Impressive. I wanted to see what all the fuss was about, so last Monday I visited Panasonic HQ to see what made this TV so special.

Brand new and freshly delivered from the States, we were about to start watching the Panasonic TC-P50VT25 - a 50" plasma (note it's not a LCD) screen that was marketed to give us an experience superior to that of watching Avatar at the cinemas.  So, with a handful of other tech enthusiasts, the lights were dimmed in the board room, we donned our futuristic glasses and the demonstration began.

Powered by a Panasonic BluRay player (using HDMI standard v1.4) we were able to see a variety of 3D demo videos, one of which was the Beach Volleyball Tour held at Mt Maunganui.  The colours were crisp and bright, and 3D made watching the volleyball a new experience; some of the shots made it seem as though the ball was passing very close as it bounced out of shot. I am looking forward to broadcasters adoption of 3D channels, as live sport in 3D is as close as you can get without actually being there.

Gaming is another application that looks much better in 3D.  We watched the new Avatar game played on X-Box.  It does take some getting used to, but overall it is much easier to become fully immersed in the game when there is depth to the image.  Any military games looks amazing as bullets and other projectiles seem to leave the screen and head towards your.. head.

If you do get tired of 3D, you don't have to watch 3D all the time; a quick and easy change in the menu puts the TV into 2D mode.

The 3D active shutter glasses are half of the clever technology.  When first turned on (yes they are battery powered) they synchronise with the TV.  As you watch, each lense turns on and off rapidly, which gives you the 3D experience.  Light and able to fit easily over prescription glasses, you get full 1080p to both your left and right eyes.

One way to convince your partner/better half of indulging in this plasma is it uses a lot less power than a standard plasma or LCD screen -  it meets Energy Star 4.0 requirements so you will save on your power bill. 

A 3D plasma is useless without 3D content, so Panasonic are also releasing this year the world's first integrated HD 3D camcorder, the Panasonic AG-3DA1.  Expect to see more of these at major sporting events soon.

Overall, a very impressive offering from Panasonic, and not hard to see why it took out CES.  After seeing such high definition, clear picture, it's really hard to go back to watching anything else without criticising.

To finish up, some answers to the queries I sent Panasonic following my visit, thanks to Andrew Reid, the Panasonic guru:

How does Panasonic's 3D differ from that seen in the theatres?

With the home experience the glasses are synchronised to the screen. When you turn on the glasses on they control how you see the image.

What are so special about the Panasonic 3D glasses?

To remove the possibility of crosstalk or unwanted after images, Panasonic's 3D glasses close off both eyes at the instant that the images change for the left and right eyes. They have been designed to suit many different face sizes, can be adjusted to fit and also fit over glasses.

Will there ever be 3D without needing the glasses and why?

Unsure. There are several forms of auto stereoscopic screens. Unfortunately the current technology has several major issues e.g. eye strain, severely limited viewing angle and poor resolution to name a few. If they manage to overcome these then perhaps but it doesn't seem likely any time soon.

When will broadcasters start to show 3D content?

Unsure. Overseas 3d broadcasts could be as soon as this year. Locally you would need to talk to the broadcasters.

What advantages does Panasonic have over competitors such as Sony?

Panasonic use plasma as a technology for 3D, more specifically Panasonic uses a new generation of our NEO PDP panel that has been specifically designed to handle the increased demands of 3D meaning our panel doesn't suffer from cross talk. It also offers significant improvements in terms of Contrast, colour and power consumption when in 2D mode.

Rough RRP on the glasses and TV?

Glasses will be approximately US$100, each 3D panel will come with one set of these.

On Wednesday last week I was lucky enough to be invited to the Sony Carnival on behalf of Geekzone.  With around 50 other journalists and bloggers from a variety of different newspapers, magazines and TV shows, I was able to preview some of the new product offerings from Sony which included LCD TVs, cameras, camcorders and laptops - basically, I got to go to a gadget geek's heaven!

It was held on the stage in The Civic theatre in central Auckland - massive runs of coloured fabric and multi-coloured lights hung high above centre stage, draped out to the half dozen odd displays they had setup.  Each display focused on a different range of products, with the staff dressed up as carnival workers.  Popcorn was handed out to add to the authenticity of being at the carnival - my thoughts were Sony really must have the marketing budget to go to such lengths!  I have to admit though that it was a refreshing change from the very plain (and now boring) product showcases I've seen in the past.

I could write a very length post on all of the products I saw, instead I'll briefly outline some of the highlights for me from that morning:

• Sony Bravia HD 3D TVs - one word: WOW! I saw a very impressive demonstration of watching 3D in your own home played off Blu-ray discs.  You are still required to wear special glasses (different from those used in the theatre) which I don't feel is ideal; nevertheless, watching live Rugby or playing PS3 all in 3D is very exciting - whether this will be adopted into mainstream or purely remain as a gimmick, time will tell.
• Sony BDP-S570 Blu-ray player - not only a nice and tidy Blu-ray player, this device can be plugged into your home network and you can browse the BRAVIA internet video channels, show your favourite YouTube video in full screen, or watch movies shared from your computer. It has USB ports for plugging in a keyboard (much quicker typing searches in than using the remote) plus an optional wireless network dongle.  Having seen the RRP, it sits at a very affordable price point, and I'm hoping to get a unit to do a full review soon.
• Sony TX5 - this digital camera looks just like a standard camera, it's very slim at 16.7mm and is an respectable 10.2 megapixels. Its impressive feature is that it works underwater (up to 3m) without the need for bulky waterproof housing.  The touch screen on the back of the camera also works while fully submerged.
• SD card support! - Sony has (finally) realised that not everyone wants to purchase their proprietary bubblegum-stick shaped memory sticks, so now the cameras and camcorders support standard SD cards as well as the Sony memory stick.
• Sony bloggie - marketed as a "snap camera", this device is a small and compact HD camera designed for quick and easy uploading of video files to social media sites (such as YouTube).  It comes with a built-in USB arm, and can do up to 5 hours and 20 minutes of HD recording on a 32GB memory stick.  A nifty 360? lense can also be attached to it - placed in the centre of a table at a function, it allows you to record everything going on around (would've been very handy at Saturday's Geekzone Pizza!). Sample video here.

Thanks to Melanie Pohl, from Sony PR for inviting me to this event and providing the included photos (in my rush to get to the event I forgot my camera).

 

Another review of the carnival, specifically the HD 3D TV is available at the NBR - Chris Keall has an article available here (subscriber only) - disclaimer: I don't have access to view this, I've sourced it from Chris' Twitter account.

I'm always after a good deal.  When I'm buying a new tech toy I will extensively search Google for pricing from both local and overseas (taking into account the exchange rate and freight), create a spreadsheet, and figure out the best price from there.  Reputation and after-sales support do affect my decision, but I'm primarily price driven.  There is also the understanding that a cheap supplier won't have the profit margins to support a 24/7 comprehensive support help desk, so all these are factored into my decision.  Once I've picked a supplier, my purchase is put on my VISA, to which the elves at the ASB finance department rejoice at having my slavery to them guaranteed, at least, for a few more months.

Price isn't always the deal breaker - when does receiving good service win over the cheapest price?

During the Christmas break, my partner and I were visiting friends out in Waiuku, a small town south-west of Auckland.  After the hour's drive to get out there, we stopped at a Caltex station to fill up.  It was here that I received excellent service, which triggered my ideas for this post.

As a school kid, I remember the service my folks used to get from their local petrol station.  There was always an attendant to pump your petrol for you, your oil and water were checked, windows washed, and a friendly wave given as you pulled away.  It was only after grazing on far too many unhealthy snacks in store while waiting for the pump to finish, did I remember that thorough service used to be standard. We have accepted pumping our own petrol in exchange for the illusion of sustained lower petrol prices.

I'm not always after the cheapest deal: in hospitality the opposite is true - I frequent places that give me good service.

I always buy my morning coffee from the same cafe since we are now on a first-name basis, and because of this, they look after me.  I'm sure they are not the cheapest, but they give me consistently good service.  The same goes for the restaurants - the ones that have given me the best service, get my continued business.

What dictates where you spend your dollars - price or service? I'm interested to hear what you think, in the comments below.

Outside of my work as a developer at 3Bit, I freelance as a professional (i.e. paid) piano player.  I've played at just about every event imaginable - weddings, funerals, Christmas carol singing, Santa parades, live gigs.  I began learning at a young age, and hated every moment - it wasn't until my late teens that I actually started to enjoy music, and am now grateful I stuck with it (or rather mum made me stick with it!).  I now often sit at a piano for an hour after work to unwind.

Through all my many years of accompanying good singers through to the tone-deaf (and everyone in-between), I've noticed an interesting trend - today, the average Joe Blogs can't sing as well as possibly their grandparents were able to.

The tell-tale sign for me is having to often lower the key of a song to make it easier to sing.

Music is made up of many parts, and one is the key (as dictated by the key signature at the start of the music). If a song is in the key of F, for example, and a wedding congregation is struggling as the music is too high, the key can be dropped down (to D, to C etc), and this brings the notes back into the vocal range of everyone trying to belt out the tune.

The same works in reverse.  If a song is too low, the key can be raised.  The fine art of all this is finding a key that isn't too high or too low.  It is also quite specific to the music. 

If a song features notes that are all quite close on a scale (think Do Re Mi from Sound of Music), the key can be easily adjusted.  If the song has notes all over the place, you have to be careful that the key is a good average over the whole piece, or you'll become unstuck half way through (the carol Silent Night is a good example of a song that features a very wide range of both high and low notes).

At Christmas time 2008, I played for a crowd of 1,500 at a community carols event.  I was amazed that every carol we played had its key dropped down, some quite significantly.  A music purist would shudder at this!

My theory is that most of us do very little regularly singing, and unlike the past generations, our vocal chords don't get the workout theirs did, hence we can't easily get to the higher notes they could.  50 years ago people could sing well, and composers set their music to the key that suited singers the best, which is now too high for us.  Of course, this is just my opinion.

My remedy for this - more singing in the shower, and if you can't hold a tune to save yourself, turn the stereo up louder.

 

Blatant self promotion: if you're looking for some piano accompaniment, fire me an email.

The definition above is taken out of an online dictionary, and I've Kiwified it.  Why is it when we suffer an outage of a service we pay for, that most Kiwis come up with the most unreasonable levels of compensation?

Maybe it's because I'm often on the provider side of the equation, but I think I'm very realistic and forgiving when it comes to a third party failing to deliver a service I'm paying for.  My whole thinking revolves around one simple idea: sh*t happens (from now on, the acronym S.H.).  Am I saying that every outage shouldn't be questioned and just given an "oh well"? No, definitely not. Suppliers should be and need to be held accountable for any issues with their delivery of a service, however, you need to be realistic, and make sure your own bases are well covered.

The argument of "my business depends on this 100%" also doesn't sit well with me - if you have one provider that you depend on, and in the event of an outage you are up a certain creek without the wooden thing, it's your problem.  Running a business without redundancy of vital parts is just asking for trouble. Even the most well thought out and tested disaster recover plans can quickly come unstuck, and it's up to you as a business to be prepared for the worst.

At 3Bit we provide a variety of web-based services (eg web hosting, emails, dedicated servers) for a range of clients in different industries.  We've had the odd outage (few and far between, touch wood) and we work hard to get our clients back up and running as quickly as possible.  We keep them up-to-date with personal phone calls and emails, as a happy client means more word-of-mouth referrals, which we depend on.  An unhappy client will cancel their service, and not hold back in publishing negative feedback to the world. 

We will credit an outage period to a client's account for their monthly fee and that's it.  Lost sales and business are not covered.  When signing up a new client, if I feel an outage would have a high detrimental effect to their business, I will often suggest mirrored setups with different providers.  If they ask for an S.L.A. (Service Level Agreement), I will get one from our data centre provider and make sure everything is covered (including duplicating their setup in another physical data centre). Why? Because S.H.

Two events come to mind when thinking about outages and compensation. 

Back in June, Genesis Energy had an outage where its prepay customers were unable to top-up their accounts due to a computing error.  I remember an interview on TV1 where a consumer was asked how she felt about the compensation she was being offered, and I remember she commented that it wasn't good enough (unfortunately I can't find this interview on TVNZ On-Demand).  My query is, what else could Genesis have done? They've apologised, credited her account, and she still wants more? Would she have been satisfied if Genesis delivered their web programmers to her door step, and given her a paintball gun to exact her revenge?

In December, Telecom had a massive outage from Taupo south.  There was a mass wave of posts from Geekzone users, some of who seem to depend solely on Telecom mobile for life or death situations.  As always, the demands for compensation ranged from the ridiculous to the more realistic.  I think insane's post nicely sum up my feelings:

Personally I don't see why everyone is jumping up and down for compensation. Like DSL your mobile service is best effort. When your phone line has issues and your internet connectivity is cut you don't automatically get a credit from your ISP as you have no SLA.

Any Credit/offer Telecom give customers should be seen as a bonus. If you're relying on your best effort mobile service to support some mission critical application / service then perhaps you should invest in your own measures of redundancy instead of expecting Telecom to take care of this for you.

If it's important you'll have some sort of a backup. If your answer to 'did you have a backup?' is no, then it's obviously not that important to you.

Just recently, one of our virtual servers was down due to an outage with iServe.  What do I expect from them? I expect regular updates with an accurate E.T.A. as possible (being called on mobile from their operations manager was a good start), a credit on our account for the down-time, plus assurance it won't happen again.  I wasn't really too worried with the down-time as we had a Plan B.

Why? Because S.H.

Don't get caught with your pants down. Expect the worst case scenario, and plan for it accordingly.

Phil, aka RedJungle, is getting married today, and if I've timed this correctly, he should've just said I do to his fiancee Sarah right now (freitasm and I are both here at the ceremony).  If Mauricio and I have not yet to tucked into the bar tab early, there will be photos on my Twitter account (if I was really clever I'd figure out how to post directly here from my Nokia E71).

Phil is responsible for the very nice re-design of Geekzone, plus the Geekzone mobile site.  Phil also does some work for us here at 3Bit, and he is lucky enough to be based in the sunny Hawke's Bay.

Congratulations to you both, and thank-you Phil for all your hard-work here at Geekzone.

Over Christmas Day lunch with my extended family, an uncle mentioned he was upgrading his laptop on Boxing Day to take advantage of the sales.  His laptop wasn't that old, so I was curious as to why he was considering a replacement so soon.  His reply was his current laptop had a virus, and the virus was so bad the software he had wasn't able to remove it.  I asked to borrow his infected laptop, and with the promise of beer and food if I could fix it, I booted it up the next day, and was presented with this gem:

(source: 2-spyware.com)

SecurityTool is a very clever piece of deceptive software.  It entices a naive user by presenting a banner on a webpage saying that it has done a quick scan of their computer, and has found viruses that should be removed (this is impossible, no webpage can scan your hard-drive).  The user, believing the advert, downloads and installs this, and then the fun begins.

It configures itself to boot up at startup, changes the desktop background to white and puts a white overlay hiding your icons, and will not let you shut it down (it takes up the whole screen) until you buy a full version. It presents "viruses" that it has discovered (which are all fake) and encourages you to purchase the full version for your protection.  Even my constant pressing of Ctrl+Alt+Del were futile - the program quickly hides the Task Manager behind the screen above.

SecurityTool is very simple to remove - boot into Safe Mode, run msconfig and stop it booting up at startup.  Also, delete the executable and the system returns to normal on the next restart.

As a programmer, I was amazed at how simple the idea of this software is - tell the user they have viruses, don't allow them to do anything until they purchase the full version, the whole time they believe you as they are none the wiser.

All this leads into the point of this post: don't trust the internet.  Some years back when we used to do IT support for a handful of large companies, the biggest threat to their network's security and stability existed between the monitor and the chair of every computer.  An ill-informed user can wreak havoc (just ask the Waikato DHB) with their downloads.

For some reason, unbeknown to me, if a user reads something on a webpage or in an email, they trust it 100%.  All of their common sense and knowledge goes out the window.  They ignore all warnings and information given to them by those in the know, and they follow what they read on screen.

Other things to watch out for:

• A Nigerian (or any other country) prince doesn't have millions to transfer you.
• The flashing banner saying you are the millionth visitor are fake.
• Your bank/TradeMe/PayPal/Gmail et al. have not lost your data, nor will they ask for your password in an email.
• A friend will not send you an email out of the blue, with an attachment you were not expecting.

If you suspect a rat, you can be sure you'll find one.

Being confused about something online is not unusual - don't act on what you read, ask someone you trust (who knows what they are talking about), or seek advice from a legitimate computer store.  You can save yourself a lot of wasted time and unnecessarily lost data by seeking good advice.

Have a relaxing break everyone!

On Thursday last week I was invited on a tour of the Telecom exchanges and cabinets organised by Jay Best (adslgeek) and run by Telecom Wholesale.  My knowledge of the inner workings of the broadband network was pretty limited compared to others on the tour, however it was very interesting to see exactly how internet is delivered to your doorstep.

All my photos were taken on my Nokia E71, see the end of this post for better high-res images from other tour participants.

The geek contingent gathered at Telecom HQ on Hereford St in Auckland to begin the tour.  Four of us from Geekzone (scottpalmer, wazzageek, juha and me), plus a large group from GP Forums and the Press F1 forums.

The tour began at the Mt Albert exchange, and straight down into the cable pit which is underneath the exchange.  The cable pit is where all the cables from the cabinets and other locations come into the exchange.  All of the cables are kept under pressure 24/7 - should a cable be accidentally cut, water will be kept out through the pressure difference plus an alarm sounds alerting a technician.  The leak can also help a visiting technician to find the break and lets them fix the cable before it becomes customer impacting.  I'm embarrassed to  admit that my South Auckland upbringing had me laugh at a piece of cable join called a "pot head".  Very different from what I've seen at lunchtime on main street Manurewa!

From here, this is where my technical knowledge gets rusty.  From the cable pit, the cable pairs are punched into blocks which is then paired to where the phone lines are actually allocated.  Fibre pairs also come into the exchange, run from the new roadside cabinets (see further down for more info).

In the event of a power outage the exchange is fully operational; a separate room of batteries make up the UPS, plus it has two V12 (?!?) diesel engines to run the exchange in the event of an extended outage (these are tested weekly).

The one thing that amazed me about the exchange is the vintage of the equipment.  Most of the gear was top of the line in the 80s, long before the idea of running ADSL over it was ever conceived.  Fast forward to today, and it is expected to run voice and internet, which I think it does very well for its age.

After leaving the exchange, we visited one of the old style cabinets.  Purely a distribution point, a large cable comes in from the exchange, and it is split out from there to the different residences.  There is no smarts in this cabinet; it is very basic, small, and has done its job well up until this point.

As part of their FTTN (Fibre To The Node) project, and in order to deliver ADSL2/VDSL to more people, Telecom has realised it needs to bring it's exchange equipment closer to the customer.  These new technologies operate at higher frequencies which heavily degrade over distance - the only way to make them work is to run fibre to an area, and pair off from there.  With that thought in mind, the old style cabinets don't work.

We were shown the new "Whisper" cabinets, and it packs an impressive amount of tech gear.  Worth around $150k each, Telecom Wholesale installed 95 of these cabinets in total last year.  This year, they are installing 5 a day.  The cabinets have their own power supply (with backup batteries) with the ability to plug in a generator for extended outages. Air-conditioning keeps the equipment cool, and when fully sealed up (the cabinet has two parts - an outer cabinet, plus a fully sound insulated inner cabinet) you can't hear it ticking over (hence the Whisper name).  There is plenty of room for other ISPs are able to install their own equipment in each cabinet should they wish to run their own network.  It really is impressive how much equipment these non-obtrusive cabinets hold, and I couldn't help but wonder how completely unawares passing pedestrians are to the high tech gear just off to the side of the footpath.

With all the expensive equipment in them, each cabinet is alarm monitored in real-time, with Telecom Wholesale alerted if the doors are opened.  They come in two neutral colours designed to blend in with their surroundings, plus are covered with silicon based paint - graffiti is quickly and easily removed with paint thinner and a rag.  The cabinets have been designed and are built in New Zealand by Eaton Power Quality in Christchurch.

Once we finished inspecting a single bay cabinet, we had a look at cables running underground to the cabinet (in a Telecom manhole) which also included half a metre of water.  We were assured that everything works fine whether submerged or not.

To finish up we took a short drive to a double bay cabinet - pretty much the same deal, just with more room for equipment.  The best part of the afternoon came after heading back to Telecom Wholesale in Airedale St, where a pile of Hell's Pizza and beers awaited.  We had a Q&A session for roughly an hour with the Telecom Wholesale team - had I not been concentrating on eating pizza and drinking beers I would've taken notes to expand here. There are some very clever and passionate people who work there.

My impression from our day out is this is a very different Telecom under Dr Reynolds.  We were given full access to take photos, ask any question, and blog uncensored about our experience.  I would've thought that Wholesale would be sensitive about the photography of some of their gear (there was some equipment we couldn't take flash photography of, but non-flash was fine), but we were given full access to everything.  Our discussions ranged in topics, and nothing was off limits - we were given good, clear, no BS answers. This is a very different attitude from the old "evil" Telecom we've known.

I like this "new" Telecom, and inviting tech community members to see infrastructure is a big step in the right direction to improving the public's perception of them.  Beers and pizza help too.

 

On leaving we were given two handouts to take away (available to download here) which give even more technical documentation of the tour.

Videos:

• Whisper cabinets
• Whisper cabinet #2

Photos:

• ChillingSilence's photos
• Zeon's and maha's photos (warning: bandwidth intensive)
• Hervard's photos

Other links:

• Discussion on PressF1
• Discussion on GP Forums
• Discussion on ADSLGeek.com

 

Thanks Telecom for inviting me on the tour, it really was a unique opportunity and I'm glad I went.  Now how about a discount on my monthly broadband?

I have to admit, my knowledge of cars is pretty pathetic - I know that my car has a steering wheel, the accelerator pedal makes it go, and it takes 91 petrol.  My eyes glaze over when people talk about their cars.  I was never into cars as a kid, and I have trusted a variety of different mechanics over the years to service my vehicle.  Yes, I have no idea how to change the oil in my car, and no motivation to ever learn. 

On Monday my car was up for a 10k service, a Hometune technician turned up on time, left me a courtesy vehicle, and rang me later to advise what was needed.  Front brake discs had to be replaced (which I was warned about by Firestone when replacing my tyres in January), and an oil change and new air filter.  The seal on the rocker cover gasket was broken causing my car to leak oil.  To my dismay, oil had also splashed onto the cam-belt, which meant it would have to be replaced as well (it had only just recently been done at my 100k servicing).

Hometune straight away admitted that they should've warned me about it when I had the cam-belt done, and since they'd forgotten to tell me, they were going to replace the cam-belt and clean up all the oil free of charge.  They could've easily told me that the oil leak was bad and it damaged my cam-belt and I would've been none-the-wiser.  I would've reluctantly paid for the cam-belt to be re-replaced, and cursed the day when I bought my car.

I'm very impressed with what the integrity they've shown with my last service, and it's nice to know that an industry where we often hear about people being ripped off through ignorance, that there are still some good guys about.

Their website: www.hometune.co.nz

 

Disclaimer: I gave Hometune a reference in August 2008, which we received a discount on our next servicing.  I am not receiving anything for this blog post.

About a year ago Mauricio asked me to join the moderators here on Geekzone (which I was rapt about).  Before that time, I was very curious to see what happened behind the scenes here, and was able to get the odd sneak peak from scottpalmer and freitasm through #geekzone chat - I thought it would be helpful to blog about what happens here, for those who are also curious.

The biggest difference for a moderator is how we see posts made on the site, as shown below on one of my own posts:



Across the top we get an extra button (edit) which allows us to move posts and edit the content if we need to (we then append [Mod (N8): Message] to inform the user).  On the bottom left, we have a handful of functions such as Trust (gives a user their Trusted icon), Stick (sets that post as always appearing at the top of the forums) and Hide (useful when spammers post and we need to remove a post).  My favourite link is Ban, which does the obvious.

You will also notice on the moderator's view the IP address that appears under the avatar - for every post the IP address of that poster is saved.

We also have a private Moderators Forum to discuss posts on the site, user bans etc - unfortunately I can't screenshot it here, however, it looks the same as all the other forums here, just with more smack talk between the different moderators.

To finish, my top 5 pet peeves from Geekzone users:

1. SPAMMERS! - what's the point in going through the signup process, for us to hide your post and banninate you forever?  We're not interested in what you are selling (we hide/ban on average one user a day), and your post is normally gone within the hour.


2. Spelin and gramer errors - some days I wonder whether the New Zealand schooling needs an overhaul, with some users lacking the basic ability to put a coherent sentence together. Issues with its and it's plus their, there and they're are common.


3. Formatting - it doesn't take long to add links and images (resize, resize, resize!) to illustrate your post - take the extra 2 minutes, and it helps all of us understand.


4. Complaints about ISP speeds - unless it's a question about your setup or sync speeds, don't post about your ISP being slow.  If you want better speed, swap to a different ISP - it's not that hard.


5. Astro-turfing - if you have a website you want reviewed, or a product to promote, use the correct Offers and Wanted forum - don't pretend to be an independent third party that's discovered this "amazing product" then link to it - it's blatantly obvious: your IP and email address, plus a WHOIS of the domain exposes you for the d-bag you truly are.  Don't do it.

Other than my whingeing above, I enjoy moderating and participating in the forums on the daily basis, and it's always great to put faces-to-names at the Geekzone pizza evenings and other events - I also enjoy regularly catch-up with the other moderators and ex-moderators.

In my time here, I've seen that there are some very clever people contributing to Geekzone, and I look forward to possibly meeting more of you in the future.