thinking: relating- celebrating :-)

When I was 11, I had just the most fantastic music teacher.  For the next 7 years we worked on all types of music together, one on one, in group classes, in a wind symphonia and also in the school orchestra.

Later on we did music tours with a 70 piece orchestra made up of the senior players from the 4 high schools that he taught at.  Wonderful times and just about the best times I had at school.

Since then I have listened to and played all types of music but not as much as I would like to have but it would be fair to say that music still has an important role in my life

The last two weeks have been a bit too busy and so it has be great to hear two quite different takes on music related by two great people.

The first was on National Radio and was wide ranging and engaging. Just the thing for Saturday morning driving around time. Plenty of music history from 1981 and before plus some current music from Dunedin.

Playing Favourites with Graeme Downes
Senior lecturer in contemporary rock music at the University of Otago, and a founding member of The Verlaines (They recorded 120 songs in their careeer) . File Size:13.2MB about 35 mins
Date: (Sat, 12 Jul 2008 10:06:00 +1200)

Songs by Simon Comber “Jaws of Life” and “Happened Before” by The Tweaks – (not included in the show as they have been edited out for copyright reasons presumably.) Tono and The Finance Company “Daffodils & a Cashbook.” plus a few others that I missed.

Graeme’s PHD was based on the music of Mahler and his musical journey 30 years on makes for an interesting listen.

Benjamin Zander is clearly a great inspirational teacher on many levels and a Mahler fan.

“A leading interpreter of Mahler and Beethoven, Benjamin Zander is known for his charisma and unyielding energy — and for his brilliant pre-concert talks”.

Just the thing for the end of the week.

Or go here if the video doesn’t play for you. When Ben plays a Chopin piece the audience is invited along as well. You have to see it to get the back story. My late and much loved music teacher would have been very proud.

I always thought he had one of the best jobs in the world but to hear Zander reframe it as a way “to awaken possibility in other people” does make a huge difference and that is exactly what TC did.

Note: Today is National Poetry day in New Zealand.

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There is a major meltdown of customer service expectations taking place over the way the launch of the new 3G capable iPhones are being mis-managed in New Zealand this week.

Go over to iPhone data plan aggregation to read some of the debate (around 50+ comments so far on a site that management might actually read.)

There is also a firestorm over at various other tech and media sites which I don’t read myself but maybe you do.

The background issue is that mobile data is still too expensive for most people to use and even worse it still only runs at close to dial up speed according to the Check your coverage link – in my area here are the results (If it is very slow why does anyone actually care about data on a mobile phone?)

2G/2.5G coverage in your area – Best (Green graph)

“This location has a very strong signal, so you will definitely experience excellent quality for all services. Your mobile data connection will be as fast as a dial-up connection.”

The TV interview being referred to is  TV 3 Campbell Live here If you didn’t see it already you should.

While Mark may not have seen the exact plans referred to by John Campbell it is sophistry to imply that the management and marketing teams didn’t research all of the pricing models available and he was well aware that pricing comparisons would be made.

Vodafone then made a judgement call on pricing models and it has backfired in a big way.

A few weeks back much was made of new data plans also at Rods site see 1-a-day/ and apparently these plans simply don’t apply to the iPhone. Plan choices are very restricted and quite inflexible.

To quote Bruce Hoult (Comment by Bruce Hoult at 9:40 am on 9 July 2008)

“Also that “$1 a day” casual data rate Paul Brislen was so happy about a few weeks ago, where everyone in the thread was talking about “that will go well with the iPhone”? It seems the iPhone is the ONLY phone you can’t use those with. Vodafone’s iPhone FAQ clearly says that if you don’t buy a data plan then you can’t use the internet AT ALL, and that the $1 a day is not available. Wtf???”

My conclusion is that if you get an IPhone at present the only reasonable way to use it without major data expense is on the WiFi networks like CafeNet or Tomizone* if they are available in your area.

*Been trying to locate hotspots at Tomizone there is a google map like interface but it’s very clumsy and slow and really hard to use on an almost dead connection anyway.

It would be much easier if I could navigate to a city or even suburb and do my searching at that level.

Speaking of data speeds I have a more fundamental local problem. My existing broadband connection is almost dead.

The obvious culprit is school holidays and the fact that yootoob is way more interesting that most NZ television.

In fact my internet connection has slowed so much that I can even complete the recommended speed test. Try it yourself although that site may have crashed out (won’t work anymore on IE 7)but Firefox 3 is OK.

Have a look at this screen-shot. It is quite typical and this test eventually got timed out.

I won’t say at this point who my ISP is but let’s just say I’m making plans to get service from a different company. It has simply been too hard to upgrade to ADSL2.

I can still get speeds of up to 1mb during the day at up to 3mb at midnight but that is not terribly useful when most of my work involves accessing web based software applications.

If you look closely the test immediately before this one got to a download speed of 1.7mb downstream which is sad but usable.

On a brighter note: If you are one of the 5000 or more people in NZ who already have an iPhone (or an iTouch) for that matter can you please tell me how this blog site looks on your screen.

I’m running a series of filters that are meant to detect iPhone / iTouch and display accordingly.

Hopefully it works and normal internet speeds will be restored soon but switching suppliers is not an easy thing. It seems like a huge opportunity for customer service people to excel and I hope they do.

(TBC in a later instalment.) Hope and trust your day is going better.

Update 6pm: Telecom announces a new 3G broadband device which looks promising on many levels. Maybe number portability could work in teh opposite direction and telecom will get lots of new customers from this.

“Telecom’s 3G mobile broadband network was upgraded with rev a technology last year which means Telecom’s cell sites now have the ability to deliver average download speeds of 800Kbps and 300Kbps upload, resulting in an experience much closer to DSL broadband on customers’ mobile devices.”

Now higher data speeds and capped rates with SMS warnings and a 30 day money back consumer protection all sounds like a breath of fresh air. I never thought I be pleasantly surporsed by a new Telecom product but I am.