Chris Tomkins’ Blog

Nowadays I hardly ever buy something without seeing if I can get it cheaper elsewhere or find a discount voucher online. A few days ago, I got even more evidence of why its pays to shop around. Shelley and I were looking at buying a fridge/freezer (one of these big American style ones) and locally could only find the one we liked in Currys (there doesn’t seem to be a great selection of shops that sell fridge/freezers now adays) for £599.99 plus £49.95 delivery - a grand total of £649.94.  Thinking this seemed a bit steep, we decided to come back and shop for the same thing online.

First we tried the shopping comparison web sites - Kelkoo, Dealtime and Shopping.com which gave us a better price of £569.99 from Dixons with free delivery (already a saving of about £80). Then we scoured the web for free vouchers which gave us another £20 off the Dixons price, so now a saving of £100. Next I went to the cashback site I tend to use, Freefivers (let me know if you want to join and I’ll refer you), which gave me 1.25% cashback with Dixons, about another £7. So far, I’d saved £107 off the price in the shop but then I thought - lets buy it using my American Express Platinum card which gave me a further 5% cashback, ~£35.

So, all in all - shopping around saved me over £140! Not bad for 10 minutes work online, particularly when you compare it to the time getting to and wandering round the shop.

Bargain!

When I travel on business I tend to take internet access in the hotel for granted nowadays - it doesn’t have to be wireless but it seems to be becoming the norm. But how much should it cost? I guess it depends on the class of hotel, but the £15 for 24 hours I’ve just been charged by the Holiday Inn Ipswich Orwell seems excessive - especially as my home broadband costs less than that for an entire month! The alternative was £6 for an hour or £75 for a week - not exactly a great choice. Most of the hotels I’ve stayed in recently have had free wireless (even some of the B&Bs I’ve stayed in have free wireless) so £15 for 24hrs is definitely a bit steep.

What do you think?

Just discovered that you can now choose to receive your TV license via email - so if you want to cut down on the paper you receive (yeah I know its only one piece a year in this case) then just go to the TV Licensing website and change your preferences so that you receive your TV license and any other communications via email rather than post.

I’ve already switched to online statements for my bank and online bills for my mobile phone, broadband/home phone, gas and credit card but still seem to be inundated with paperwork at home - roll on the day when I can access all my bills online from one place, see summaries of my expenditure and be advised of when I should switch to an alternate provider/package - I’ll keep dreaming

One of the first tasks of a new parent, is to register the birth of your child which is what I did last week when I went to the Southampton Register Office to register the birth of our daughter Beatrix. We could have done this at the Princess Anne Hospital where she was born but forgot until we were leaving and were then carrying far too much to make the necessary detour on the way out! Luckily you have 42 days to register the birth so we had plenty of time.

In this day and age where fraud is so prevalent, I was amazed to discover that when you register a birth you need absolutely no official form of identification - in fact only one parent needs to attend and you don’t even need to take the baby!

The only information you need, in addition to the chosen name of course, is the following:

- The date of birth of the baby

- The gender

- The surname of the mother

- The hospital at which the birth took place

This is then used to look up the baby’s birth (yes, the NHS and the Register Office have an integrated computer system - what a surprise!). In addition, you provide the following information for both parents which is recorded but not placed on the birth certificate:

- Full name (including maiden name)

- Date of birth

- Place of birth

- Occupation

Then, once this has all been registered, you get given (for a small fee) 2 birth certificates - a short version (as shown in the photo) which shows the basic information and is usually sufficient as a form of identification, and a full version which is required to obtain a first passport.

Note: You’ll need the birth certificate to be able to claim child benefit and the £250 child trust fund voucher you and your child are entitled to.

Before our daughter Beatrix was born, we decided we would attempt to breastfeed her rather than bottle feed her to give her the best start in life. So far, one week in, things are going really well. However, the main problem for me, as the dad, is breastfeeding is not exactly something I can do (no cheeky comments about my figure now!). As I’ve begun to realise though, this doesn’t mean there is nothing for me to do while Shelley is breastfeeding. So far my list of jobs have included:

• Fetching extra pillows to prop her up
• Rearranging the current set of pillows to make her more comfortable
• Fetching a stool for her to put her feet on
• Fetching her drinks - breastfeeding is thirsty work
• Stripping Beatrix before the feed to ensure she is not so cosy she falls asleep while feeding
• Keeping Beatrix awake by tickling her feet or playing with her hands
• Holding Beatrix in position
• Answering the door or phone while Shelley is breastfeeding
• Fetching muslins to wipe up any spillages
• Getting the changing mat, top and tail bowl, cotton wool, nappy and clean clothes ready for a change afterwards if required
• And most importantly - chatting to Shelley and keeping her company

I’m sure there are some things I have forgotten - but hopefully you now understand, breastfeeding is something both parents take part in - not just the mother.

Early yesterday morning my wife Shelley gave birth to our lovely baby daughter Beatrix Rose at the Princess Anne hospital in Southampton. After a real panic when her heart rate dropped significantly at the hospital she was deliver by cesarean section at 4.18am. For those of you who like to know these things she weighed 7lbs 6 (well the first time they weighed her she was 6lbs 5 but after a midwife said she looked bigger she was weighed again and the original scales were found to be faulty!). Both mother and baby (and dad ) are doing well.

Check out some more photos in my Flickr set.

For the last 12 months or so there have been rumours about Microsoft buying Yahoo! and I even blogged about it back in May but today Microsoft have formally made a bid for Yahoo! valuing them at $44.6billion. There is no news yet from Yahoo! as to whether they are going to accept this offer but with the current forecast misses and predicted job loses at Yahoo! it is a definite possibility (even more consolidation as I predicted).

This could mean a serious shake up of internet services if it goes ahead as Microsoft and Yahoo! have a number of overlapping internet services - email, instant messaging, mapping, portal, search, etc. which I’m sure long term they would look to consolidate - a serious undertaking! I, like many internet users, will definitely be interested to see what they do with services such as Flickr and Del.icio.us.

If this does go ahead, watch out Google!

Just over a couple of weeks ago I wrote about my hopes for online services in 2008 and it looks like they may already be starting to come true. What I was looking for was data portability - the ability to be able to have a single login, a single profile, a single current status, a single set of contacts, a single set of photos, etc. etc. and be able to take them with me to whichever online service I wanted to use.

The DataPortability.org group was set up with pretty much exactly this in mind. I was a bit sceptical that it would come to anything initially as there were very few members but it looks like the big players are all joining up. So far there are representatives from Google, Facebook, Plaxo, LinkedIn, Twitter and Flickr - an amazing feat to get them all at the same virtual table I’m sure.

The first thing to come out of this, I think, will be more widespread adoption of OpenID for user login, probably as it is the simplest. There are already a number of sites supporting it (1,2) and some big companies talking about introducing it (read about France Telecom). If you haven’t already got an OpenID, then go and find out about it as I’m sure you’ll need one soon

I’m hoping we see lots more from this group in the future.

Still don’t get this whole thing about data portability? Then check out this video which explains it all.

As today was forecast to be one of the best days so far this year weatherwise, and definitely the sunniest since my camera arrived, my sister and I decided to do the Farley Mount - Ashley walk from Walkingworld as recommended by Helena (read her review and take a look at her Flickr photo set to see what she thought of the walk in spring).

We got off to a bad start with the instructions saying “..park in the most westerly car park on the southern side of the road at Farley Mount Country Park - great if you have a compass! For those who don’t what they really mean is the Monument car park on the left hand side of the road. Unfortunately this was full - lots of people making the most of a nice winters day so we ended up parking in a car park about 100 yards further back up the road and then started the walk. From then on, the directions were excellent especially the inclusion of pictures at major junctions and the walk was really enjoyable - definitely worth the £1.50 charge for the walk details.

As Helena mentioned, the walk was not quite the “easy walk” you would expect from the description on the web site. There were quite a few inclines and in places the track was incredibly muddy, specifically the Clarendon Way section which was particularly muddy in one place - definitely one for walking boots and not shoes!

The walk itself though was really nice, although I feel early spring is probably the best time to do it - less mud, more wildlife (although we did see a large herd of deer, a woodpecker and various other birds) and a sunny day would definitely enhance the excellent views.

Take a look at the rest of my Flickr set to see other pictures from the walk.

This morning was my first day back at work after the Christmas break, at least it was supposed to be. I had planned to go into High Wycombe today, not because I had any specific meetings there, but I like the social side of being in the office and as I plan to spend much of this month working from home just in case Shelley gives birth a bit earlier than the 23rd January due date.

So I set off this morning at my usual time of 6.45 and the traffic seemed pretty quiet on both the M27 and the M3, as expected as a lot of people won’t return to work until Monday. Just before junction 5 on the M3 (London bound) the traffic alerts announced there had been an accident on the slip road at junction 4a but that the main carriage way was unaffected so I chose to continue. Shortly after Fleet services the whole carriage way came to a standstill and the traffic alerts announced the M3 was closed between 4a and 4 and that a diversion was in place from 4a. After about an hour and a half in the queue of traffic I made it to junction 4a and by this time it was gone 9.30. With the prospect of at least another hour to get to High Wycombe (I had only travelled 45 miles in 2 and 3/4 hours!) I decided it would make more sense to turn round, head home and spend the rest of the day working from home.

It turns out, the accident between a car and a lorry (as reported by the radio traffic alerts) was actually caused by the body of a woman being found on the carriage way (read more) - the second time such an incident has happened on the M3 in the last month (read about the first incident).

It looks like snow is forecast tomorrow, so might be another day at home for me. My thoughts go out to the woman’s family.