Month: April 2016

Nokia Lumia 530 – Quick review

I bought one of these things last year, as my old iPhone 3GS had run into a few technical gremlins that were starting to piss me off. For starters the sound had quit working when it rang + the power button had fallen off. Also I couldn’t use the latest Apps on it ‘cos of the age of the OS on it.

When I bought it, the Nokia Lumia 530 was still selling for around £69, but could be picked up for around £40 if you weren’t too fussy about the case colour. I largely bought it ‘cos of the price + I thought the Windows interface looked craploads better than the newer iOS interface. I ended up with a lurid green cased one.

The smooth rounding of the case makes this phone a rather slippery sucker, and all too easy to drop / accidently smash yourself in the face with it while tinkering with it in bed.

It uses a Nano-SIM, which means I couldn’t transfer my number over to it, and being on Vodafone Pay-as-you-Go making it more seriously awks still.

But at least unlike an iPhone, it has a slot inside the case for a Micro-SD card. The 64GB Micro-SD card I bought for it wouldn’t work, so I’ve started using that in my SatNav instead, and I’ve started using a 32GB Kingston Micro-SD card instead which works fine. Removing the case to insert that + the SIM card is a fairly simple job of holding the top corner of the screen while pushing against the camera lens.

The phone didn’t come with a USB to synch music or charge it, but came with a funny looking mains charger with a collapsible earth pin.

Windowsphones generally get slagged off for not having as great a number of apps for them as iOS or Android devices, but you’ll find apps for the things the cool kids hang out on: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Vine (shit), Tinder, Amazon Kindle, Candy Crush, Blackberry Messenger, Skype, etc.

Battery life, generally needs charging every 24-48hrs.

Worth getting if you need a cheap smartphone to take places you’d rather not take your expensive one, or want a smartphone but don’t want to auction off a kidney in order to be able to afford one.

How to cook Egg Noodles in a Microwave

This is actually easier than it sounds. Normally you boil them in a pan of water for about 3-5minutes.

To do this in a microwave, all you need is…….

1) A Packet of dried Egg Noodles (e.g. Blue Dragon brand)

2) A Kettle full of boiling water

3) A Pyrex Glass Bowl

4) Some flavourings (optional)

5) A Microwave

Put the kettle on to boil (making sure it has water in it), place the nest of noodles in the bottom of the bowl.

At this stage you can add your flavourings to make the noodles more interesting. I like to use curry powder to make curried noodles, but you can also put things like a generous nob of butter, maybe some Oregano…. anything you can think of. You can even Bisto gravy granules to turn the dish into “Noodles in Gravy”, or stock cubes too, though they tend to be a bit salty.

Pour enough boiling water over the noodles to cover them (that’s why you use a bigger bowl for this), and place them in the microwave.

Cook them in the microwave at all power for 3mins 30secs.

Once done, lift the bowl out of the microwave (it’ll be hot), and use a fork to pluck the noodles out of the bowl and to the plate or cereal bowl or whatever you’re serving them in/on.

Idiots guide to dabbling in Forex

Forex is short for “Foreign Exchange”, and is basically swapping over currency from one country for one from another – For instance swapping your British Pounds (GBP / £) for US Dollars (USD / £), like you may do when going on Holiday (Vacation), or in this instance for investing purposes.

For investing purposes, this is basically done by taking advantage of changes in value for the currency over the passage of time. Thanks to the same technology you’re using to read this article, you can keep tabs on it via the internet at a dedicated Foreign Exchange website.



In order to do it for the purposes of investing you will need the following:

  1. Knowledge of what you’re letting yourself in for. If you want to be successful at any kind of investing, you need to get your geek on, and do craploads of reading to learn how it works. If you jump into investing without knowing what you’re doing, you’re going to get your ass kicked (as the Americans say). For that, you may want to consider a couple of books such as Currency Trading for Dummies (among others)
  2. A customer account with an investing broker that allows you to do Forex Investing.
  3. Some money to invest….. most the brokers I’ve seen who allow you to do Forex require a minimum £200 – £300 for your first investment. If you can’t afford to lose it, you may want to consider a different sort of investment.
  4. Research of what’s happening in the market, such as the Currency Heatmaps at Digital Look (I always have trouble finding them again).
  5. Practice via an online fantasy investing game such as what was available at the now defunct Bullbearings (that’s the one I’d been using for at least 10years now) so you can get the hang of what you’re doing without pissing any real money up the wall by making rookie investing mistakes (and trust me, you WILL make mistakes).

Review: DIY for Dummies

This review is for the Kindle preview version of DIY for Dummies.

Well it’s not bad as a DIY book, just not quite as good as the trusty old “Reader’s Digest” + “Collins” DIY manuals that have long been the go-to book for most British DIY’ers.

Found the suggested tools list a bit questionable, like it seems to suggest mole-grips pliers… but doesn’t mention the other types you also need (regular, longnose + sidecutters) for doing tasks that require more finesse than working on pipes, etc.

Also it suggests buying a neon mains tester as part of your toolkit. If you poke around on a certain well known video sharing website called Youtube at the channels of “PhotonicInduction” + “John Ward” (among a handful of others) you’ll see why you’d have to be a Dummy at DIY to use one…

Otherwise the rest of the book seems alright