@craiggrannell@mastodon.social
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craiggrannell

@craiggrannell@mastodon.social

#Writer for hire. Mostly #tech, #Apple, #games, #retrogaming, design. Smashes out words for #Wired, #Stuff, TapSmart and others. Writes #DailyRetroGame here on Mastodon. He/him. GF/DF. Likes #Lego and Mini #Schnauzers. Email: hello at craiggrannell dot com // https://linktr.ee/craiggrannell

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craiggrannell, to random
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Having trouble sleeping of late. Not sure why. Might be the light waking me. But I’m always awake around 5 and then I just doze for a bit until it’s time to get up. But I also have tinnitus that’s been quite bad of late and so have a quiet audio thing running on my iPhone every night.

Mrs G just send over a link to this: https://www.snoozeband.co.uk/products/snoozeband™-deluxe-sleep-mask-with-headphones

Tempting. Anyone tried one of these (or similar)? If so, any good?

craiggrannell, to random
@craiggrannell@mastodon.social avatar

Curious throwaway line in the latest Doctor Who: didn’t the Doctor say something about visiting those guys when Ruby mentioned Star Trek? Presumably just a joke and the IP costs would be terrifying. But makes me wonder if they’re in a ‘fictional’ universe or something now.

craiggrannell, to random
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Not much new in this piece, alas. Merely reinforces that a majority of Brits think Brexit was a mistake BUT that quite a few leave voters believe that because Brexit “hasn’t been done [properly]”, and that even remain voters have no appetite whatsoever to fight against the status quo. So the near future at least will likely be further decline and Labour picking at the edges of the Brexit deal for meagre wins that won’t annoy anyone too much.

From: @JoePajak
https://mstdn.science/@JoePajak/112434409625485278

craiggrannell, to random
@craiggrannell@mastodon.social avatar

Quick question: what are you hoping for Apple to reveal at WWDC this year? I’m writing a piece and it’d be useful to get insight into improvements devs and anyone else hopes Apple makes or new things it introduces (and how they are achieved).

craiggrannell, to random
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Good review, but: “I don’t think anyone was asking for a lighter iPad Pro”

Really? As a 12.9in iPad Pro user, the one thing I’ve always hoped for was that the tablet could one day be lighter, without any major compromise.

From: @arstechnica
https://mastodon.social/@arstechnica/112435818059703356

craiggrannell,
@craiggrannell@mastodon.social avatar

@jonhicks @arstechnica Yeah. I don’t know if the difference will be meaningful. (Most of my iPad Pro use is handheld and music creation, a lot of which is one hand to hold and the other to interact.) But any fairly large drop is good.

craiggrannell, to random
@craiggrannell@mastodon.social avatar

“Remittance advice is not worth the paper/bytes its written on”

Indeed. Frankly, I’m a little disappointed that their accounts team is all “talk to your bank”. I have. I spent hours on the phone to my bank. And every single time, the response was that my account is fine, there are no blocks on my account, and that the bank has insufficient data to open an investigation into this missing payment. Frustrating.

craiggrannell,
@craiggrannell@mastodon.social avatar

@chexum Yep. That was my first thought. But my bank’s fraud dept confirmed my account has no freeze of any kind and that there is no payment being blocked/checked. It just isn’t there.

craiggrannell,
@craiggrannell@mastodon.social avatar

@chexum I mean, maybe? The fraud dept didn’t seem fazed through. But I got the impression if there was a block on my account or the payment, they’d have said so.

And thanks. I hope it’s resolved soon also wouldn’t bother be so much if it was 50 quid or something. But… it’s not.

craiggrannell, to random
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@markv @callionica Indeed. Occam’s razor suggests only two possibilities:

  • Human error (incorrect details typed in for the payment)

  • Routing error (at any point between their bank and mine)

But without the info, I’m kind of stuck. Hopefully someone will actually send me some. I’ve asked twice now.

craiggrannell,
@craiggrannell@mastodon.social avatar

@markv Heh. No worries. It’s actually been really nice on here with so many people trying to help. Feels very much like a little community.

stroughtonsmith, to random
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The 13” iPad Air review units that Apple sent out are $1,700+ if you price them up 😅

craiggrannell,
@craiggrannell@mastodon.social avatar

@stroughtonsmith Fairly common for Apple to send out the highest specs or to shift them around for various reasons. I’ve only ever had a couple of entry level units before: one of the MacBook Airs and the first 24in iMac. Mostly, I’ve had units closer to the maxed-out spec. What surprises me isn’t that Apple does this, but how many reviewers don’t even mention the spec of the machine they were sent and explore how that affects the performance and other factors that they’re seeing.

craiggrannell, (edited ) to random
@craiggrannell@mastodon.social avatar

UK folks:

  • Publisher states a payment has been made + sent remittance.
  • I have not received the funds (after six weeks now) and my (UK) bank’s customer services, fraud and international teams have all stated they cannot see any payment and that I do not have a block on my account.

Any advice on what to do? I’ve never been in this situation before, and the amount of money is not insignificant. But also, the publisher appears to be very much in “we’ve paid so nothing we can do” mode now.

craiggrannell,
@craiggrannell@mastodon.social avatar

@rowan_johnson Not much chance of this company going into administration, unless something very, very strange is happening behind the scenes that I’m not aware of. This isn’t one of the world’s biggest companies, but it’s still a sizeable and reputable publisher.

craiggrannell,
@craiggrannell@mastodon.social avatar

@rowan_johnson Thanks so much for the advice. It’s most appreciated.

craiggrannell,
@craiggrannell@mastodon.social avatar

@ellneal Yeah. If they’d not paid, I’d just nudge. Thing is, they’ve always been fine previously. So clearly something’s gone wrong here. But the problem is that the publisher’s accounts payable team isn’t now providing the information I need to fix things. Or to at least send my bank.

craiggrannell,
@craiggrannell@mastodon.social avatar

Thanks to folks who’ve provided thoughts. A quick follow-up:

  1. Big company. It has funds. Not stonewalling me because of that.

  2. Emailed snr editor/snr ops/accounts payable.

  3. Asked for but haven’t received routing info. Accounts points at remittance doc, which my bank cannot use.

My hope is latest email, specifically asking for routing info (UETR, MT103, etc) will get me what I need. My fear is it won’t. Although, frankly, the publisher should be doing this, not me.

Alas, I am a cog.

craiggrannell,
@craiggrannell@mastodon.social avatar

@pete My editor is a boat rocker. I suspect once he hears what’s going on, he might be a bit annoyed. Holding that back for now, mind, because he’s stupidly busy and his boss has already been on the case.

craiggrannell,
@craiggrannell@mastodon.social avatar

@callionica Yeah, that’s what I’ll ultimately have to do, I think. Although their attitude appears to not be that the money’s gone missing, but that they’ve paid and I should now figure this out myself.

craiggrannell,
@craiggrannell@mastodon.social avatar

@marcpalmer @rowan_johnson Problem isn’t that they haven’t paid – it’s that they claim they have (and have sent remittance advice) but that the money is not in my account. So they’ll argue they’ve paid.

And I love Mike’s video. It’s great. I’ve… done that kind of thing in the past. Bit of a different situation here though.

craiggrannell,
@craiggrannell@mastodon.social avatar

@gruff Yeah. Their ‘proof’ right now is to email me, telling me: “As per our end, it has been paid.”

Quality stuff.

craiggrannell,
@craiggrannell@mastodon.social avatar

@rowan_johnson Payment advice was sent to me on 3 April. I emailed on 12 April, asking for expectation in how long it should take for payment to arrive. It’s now 13 May. No idea what system they’re using, but, yes, it’s got to be something biggish.

craiggrannell,
@craiggrannell@mastodon.social avatar

@digitalpardoe They are pushing very hard with the “get your bank to open an investigation” angle, despite me having told them my bank cannot investigate without any data.

I think human error is likely too. But regardless, I need proof of payment, rather than notification of payment, which is all I have right now.

craiggrannell,
@craiggrannell@mastodon.social avatar

@digitalpardoe My guess is there’s a fundamental misunderstanding coming from some rando in accounts payable who’s just checking the payment “went through” and confirming as such. If not and they do have information, that doesn’t put the publisher in a good light, frankly.

craiggrannell,
@craiggrannell@mastodon.social avatar

@callionica Not sure where the payment came from. I’ve asked for confirmation. It’s a USD payment but remittance came from .co.uk. However, I suspect it’s an international transaction (and those are much more prone to error).

stroughtonsmith, to random
@stroughtonsmith@mastodon.social avatar

‘The iPad Feels Lost’, with some damning supercuts. Short and sweet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xh-u9ls-hNY

craiggrannell,
@craiggrannell@mastodon.social avatar

@markv @cdoncarroll @stroughtonsmith It has for a long time now. The problem is I believe this also impacted on key UX decisions. Apple expended a lot of engineering time on letting you drag documents between multiple machines (which gave great demo) but ignored mundane but genuinely useful features like proper external display support for iPad. It was a bit embarrassing that a Samsung phone often did better there than an Apple tablet.

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