Technological wasteland

My old flat was technology-tastic. I had broadband, a big tv, sky, sound system, etc. All a boy needs to keep his boy pad, well, boy padish. My new place is not quite so well blessed (aside from the hardware I brought with me, some of which is still mothballed at my parents). My internet troubles have already been documented and suffice it to say that my faith that bt had begun to shed its former status as a massive leviathan of incompetence has been thoroughly trashed. I must have rung them up at least 20 times now to fix this broadband nonsense and got a different answer every time. Wankers.

Meanwhile I am still trying to sort out my tv reception. Like I said, I had sky at my old place and, with the exception of one or two pretty massive thunderstorms, it delivered consistently good quality tv (sound and picture wise, not necessarily program content) into my living room which after three years there, I accepted as the norm.

I don’t have sky at my new place and I am uncertain at the moment whether I can, or indeed will, get it for various reasons. Nevertheless I am finding that projecting grainy, 4:3 aspect ratio analogue onto my 16:9 widescreen tv is far too distressing. However Elia has kindly lent me her terrestrial digital tuner which picks up most of the free to air digital channels, with the exception of the ITVs (no real loss there) and E4, but I still, bizarrely, get E4+1 and this at least allows me to deliver most tv into my living room with reasonable picture quality.

Of course this is except when it rains when it all goes down the pan and I get nothing. I am not going to ascribe this to Elia’s digi tuner because it picks up some channels absolutely fine (the eminently redundant shopping channels work rain or shine). So I conclude it must be the signal strength that I receive as to where the issue lies. So in an attempt to improve the situation I ventured out to purchase a decent tv aerial this weekend as, thus far, I have taken my signal through my 12 year old portable tv’s wire loop aerial (a glorified coat hanger) so wasn’t expecting miracles from that.

On the highly dubious recommendation of the sleazy salesman in Comet, Slough (Maidenhead is too classy to have anything as trashy as a retail park), I bought the most expensive aerial available. A jazzy looking silver thing with loop and sticky out aerials and light emitting diodes all over it and all manner of self promoting techno-jargon.


Got it home, unpacked it and installed it, to be greeted by reception worse than that delivered by the aerial from my 12 year old portable tv. Yes, worse. To say I was fairly indignant is an understatement. Anyway, the shiny, silver, pile of shit aerial is going back to Comet, Slough, at some point this week.

I am very irritated by being stuck in this technological wasteland. It makes life very inconvenient as my internet dependency is limited to the slightly clunky paraphernalia at work and the terminals available with the nice folks at Apollo video, Maidenhead. Who incidentally are also kindly furnishing me with the DVD collection of 24 (presently on Season 1 at 14:00), which at least my DVD player delivers with consistent high quality.