Blog | Gary Smith's Blog

Programmer & tech geek

Archives

Long Lost Family – A Brother Found!


I don’t know if you’ve been watching Long Lost Family, the program about people who have ‘lost’ their parents and/or siblings through adoption or the child being taken from the parent(s) for other reasons. The process of initial contact and then being re-united is usually an emotional roller coaster. Understandable given that the period of separation…

Read More

My Recent Trip to Batesville AR


The Back Story This is probably going to be a fairly long story as it all started around 5 years or so ago. I’m a bit sketchy on dates but according to the trusty Facebook timeline, my daughter Alexandra became friends (on Facebook) with Nell Tebbetts in 2009, quit Deakin university in 2010 and started…

Read More

The Real Cost Of Customer Support – to the Customer


I often wonder how many work hours are wasted each and every day in customer support and sales telephone queues. Has anyone ever done a study? It seems to me that for all the technology and the whizbangery of modern telephone systems, all we really get is a whole lot more wasted time. I called…

Read More

Farewell Prime TV


When I posted a week or so ago about technology turning things to crap, it was Prime TV that had seriously bad reception. I don’t watch TV much, but when I do I prefer it not to be disrupted by weirdness in the picture, audio that breaks up and loud ‘chirps’. That’s how Prime TV…

Read More

Is It Just Me Or Is Technology Turning Things To Crap?


It seems to me that technology hasn’t been a major improvement in some areas. Take digital television for example. Watching a movie late last night and the signal dropped completely 7 or 8 times for 20-30 seconds each time over a period of around 45 minutes. That never used to happen with analog TV. Sure,…

Read More

Should E-Books Be Cheaper Than Printed Books?


I had an interesting email yesterday from Amazon’s KDP support team (KDP is Amazon’s self publishing program). I’ve spent a lot of time over the past few years working on programs that teach people how to self publish through services such as Amazon KDP, so I have an interest in what’s going on in the self…

Read More

Another Attempt At Blogging


Over the years I’ve created a few personal blogs all with the same distinct feature – I write for a while and then stop! This time around I’m going to write about anything and everything without any specific format, topic or plan. We’ll see you long that lasts…

Read More

  • Recent Rides

  • Recent Posts

  • Archives

  • Tags