Chris Carline: Personal Website

There aren't (and indeed, haven't been) very many programmes on the television where I absolutely, religiously need to see each and every episode. Thinking about it, the list is very short. My first great televisual love was "Twin Peaks", which I hold in such high regard that I can't bring myself to watch the second and final season to see if it is still as good as I remember (DVDs of these episodes were only released last year).

The next thing I can really remember loving was an obscure British comedy called 'The Asylum' made for about 23 pence and a cornetto. Now, it played repeatedly on the Comedy Channel every night, and I never really got around to watching it properly for a very long time. Flicking around the cable channels over the course of six months or so, I barely saw an episode, and what did see I thought was hideously unfunny.

And then a strange thing happened. I became hooked on it. All of a sudden, with enough context, it became very clever and funny. So I watched and recorded it religiously, taping every episode that broadcast. The timing was perfect. It was the last time it was ever broadcast on television, and rights issues deny its release on DVD. It starred a few people who have gone on to bigger and better things; Simon Pegg (as a pizza delivery boy), Jessica Stevenson (playing two parts -- a nurse-ratchett like force of malevolence, and a politics student who was only allowed to watch daytime TV who ended up believing that 'The Vorderman' was sending her secret messages encoded in the countdown conundrum), a pre-Boosch Julian Barratt (a painter and decorator locked up with nothing but access to renascence art), and directed by Edgar Wright (Spaced, Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz).

Probably the subject of another post before I digress too far.

Anyway. Next up was Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Which was something I was very sniffy and dismissive of for years, until I finally fell for its charms when practically forced at gunpoint to watch the 'Once More, With Feeling' episode in the middle of Season 6. DVD boxes were ordered, and I didn't have to wait long for the 7th season to come out after I'd caught up. I downloaded each episode every week as soon after it was aired in the US as possible, and bought the box set when it was finally released (I say bought, but what I mean is 'pre-ordered the moment it was announced').

Life on Mars, Ashes to Ashes -- both must-see.

Oh, and "X Factor" like nonsense, but I'll gloss over that little personality peccadillo.

The only current 'Must Watch' are new episodes of Doctor Who -- now, I enjoyed the old ones well enough, but they were rarely don't-miss TV. I've been hooked on the New Who since the first Ecclestone 'Run!'.

Actually, there is one other TV show I absolutely have to see, and you might guess what that might be by the subtle clue I left in the title of this post.

Yes, folks: I'm completely smitten with the 're-imagined' Battlestar Galactica. The one where Starbuck is a woman, amongst many of the gigantic liberties taken with the original. And quite rightly so. Galactica shares very few of the central conceits of the original show: cylons vs humans, finding Earth, vipers. It's taken a dodgy old show from the late 70's and turned it into something fantastic, filled with tightly-plotted political intrigue and paranoia. Genius.

I certainly wasn't first in the Galactica queue. I'd been aware of it for ages and thought like it sounded like a complete load of dreck. I couldn't even be bothered to download the pilots from the Internet's popular Internet. Somebody had to lend me the DVDs, and then I had them for ages before I watched the damned things.

I've not looked back. If you're not currently aboard the Galactibus, now's the time. I've just watched the latest episode (season 4, episode 4) and it's an absolute corker, and there aren't enough people I can go 'squee!' about it with.

This has been a public-service announcement.

Now, here's a thing.

You just plug it in. The OS mounts the modem as a virtual CD-ROM drive, and you just double-click the DMG installer contained within and away you go!

Your challenge now is to buy some credit and activate your broadband.

Oh dear...

It turns out that to buy credit online, you need to register on the 'my3' site. When you register, you send your mobile number along with the last six digits of the SIM. All fine and dandy, APART from the fact that they send your initial password via SMS.

The OSX drivers, whilst they work fine for the business-end of the device, it turns out that they do not read SMSs sent to it.

Now at this point, you think, "Sod it, there's this live technical support webchat thing here on the website, let's see what they tell me".

This will in turn lead to them telling you to call the support helpline, which will in turn give you another number to call, which will in turn lead you to finally speak to someone who will in turn put you through to somebody else who will in turn tell you to put your SIM card into an unlocked phone, or configure the modem under Windows.

So, password retrieved, you can finally log into your my3 account and buy some credit.

...or CAN you?

You have to register your card details. Fine. No problemo, normal. What ISN'T normal is that after you've finished registering...

Here is an aside: make sure you unplug the modem from Windows before registering your card as XP gets confused as to which network to use. Whilst you can browse 3's site for free, the card payment process makes use of the 'Verified by Visa/SecureCard' 3D verification mechanism which takes the form of a suspicious window asking you for other card details. Yeah, somebody thought this was a great idea. Anyway. As part of this 3D process, your browser is redirected to the acquirer's website, which of course will be blocked if you're using the 3 modem as you've not got any credit to activate your connection yet...

Your jaw may drop in slack-jawed amazement at this point when you consider how far the stupidity has reached in the process with no sign of abatement.

So where were we? Oh yes. You look to see where the ten pounds of credit is that you didn't notice you were going to be authorising for registering the card. You might have wanted more, but of course, surely you'll be able to top up with a bit more later?

Hmm. Not there. Poke around my3 for a bit, trying to get to the bottom of things and in the process notice that card registration takes 7 days to complete. SEVEN DAYS. You also notice that the minimum transaction size is £10.

Finally, the credit appears in your account. Yay.

Onto the activation process! Wha..?

This is the easy part. In order to make use of your credit (which does not expire) and your "bundles" which do (after thirty days), you have to activate the bundles you desire.

So trawling through a big long list of SMS packages, Voice packages, and so on you get to the broadband options that are actually relevant to the product you've just set in your profile.

Sighing, you buy the 1Gb data transfer package for £10, even though you wanted the 3Gb one for £15. Can't really do much else with it as you can't put another fiver on it until your card has finished 'registering' next week and even then the minimum transaction is £10, so you'd need to put £20 on so it'd split into two £15 bundles and are you really going to use it that much anyway, isn't this why you wanted PAYG in the first place, la-di-da-di-dum.

You test the 3G connection. Victory! It works!

You speed test the connection. Woo! 200kb/sec downloads! Truly this is magic.

You make note to self: Next time, just go to Tescos/newsagents and buy a sodding voucher there.

"God Only Knows" by the Beach Boys. I bet you've not listened to it in ages.

Go listen now. Speakers required, avoid headphones. Play it LOUD.

I mean, headphones'll do in a pinch, but it's really not the same.

Hell yeah.