Pixmania – Buyers beware!

Be very careful when buying from Pixmania. For sure, their prices are very competitive, but the goods are shipped from France… and sometimes they’re selling the French version. It is normally noted on the page for the item:

This means that:

• They’ll send you an adapter plug (European to UK) that you have to fit yourself – a minor effort

What they don’t tell you is that:

• The goods will have French manuals included. You may get lucky and have the English manuals included as well, but a lot of manufacturers are only shipping the manual for the locale to save weight and costs.
• The number given on the order confirmation email is ‘no longer in service’

  

The correct number is 0844 369 0372 and it is possible to contact customer service via email as well – first you’ll have to log in with the email address and password you created when you purchased the item.

Calling the Customer Service number is fun too, the system doesn’t respond when you enter the order number and keeps asking for it to be repeated. Eventually, you’ll get to a message that says “All our operators are busy, please call back later” and you’ll get cut off.

I’ll let you know how I get on with sourcing a UK manual…

<Update> In the end I gave up with Pixmania and downloaded the PDF from the manufacturer’s web site.

User Interfaces

I use DxO Optics Pro for processing my camera images as the second step in my digital workflow after importing the files in to Lightroom.

I was originally introduced to it by Ken Rockwell and it does a great job of correcting the lens errors and gives excellent results, but it doesn’t currently include one of my lenses – a Nikon 35mm  f/2, so I used the DxO site to register my interest for a module for the 35mm.

It is very easy to do with an online form to be completed.

The bit that foxed me was the spam check at the bottom of the form.

The attempt show above was the fourth or fifth one I’d tried… It seems that you need to type all the characters in upper-case. Obvious!

ReedsCo – An update

I’ve posted an update to my experience with ReedsCo here. I’ve quoted my comments in addition below:

The watch has been back to Reed and returned. Apart from a very minor glitch that happens when setting the time, where the hands move as you screw the crown down (this only happens very occasionally), the watch has been running reliably and keeping perfect time.

Overall, great service from Reed and (in the end) a very good, working watch that gets plenty of positive comments.

Honda Lawnmowers…

Mainly due to my own laziness and not finding enough time to take it somewhere to be serviced, but my usually reliable Honda lawnmower had developed a habit of cutting out periodically. 30 seconds to 1 minute seemed to be the period that it had settled on, but always happy to restart after a tug on the starter cord.

The lawn here is very small and the balance between the inconvenience of the mower cutting out, getting the lawn cut and the time out to (a) find somewhere to get it serviced and (b) to then deliver and collect the mower were all in reasonable balance.

Having looked after and fiddled with cars since I was 17, (I like to think) I’m quite adept at figuring out the problem and fixing it myself.

This issue, however, had me stumped.

From time to time, I would strip down the carburettor and fuel system; clean out the fuel tank; adjust the throttle cables; clean the plug and fiddle with the wires.

Everything seemed clean and tidy and in good working order.

But, the problem persisted.

Last weekend was the first cut of Spring and the mower seemed to have settled on every 10 to 15 seconds as a reasonable running period, which was little too far out of balance even for me.

Google to the rescue.

I searched for ‘Honda HRB runs then stops’ and the first link had the answer – JustAnswer. Right near the bottom of the thread, the comment;

I decided that the fault must be electrical so I started by changing the Spark plug and that has cured the problem.

A second check on an alternative Google hit on DoItYourself confirmed the solution. Well enough for a trip out to Halfords.

Mower ran perfectly once I’d changed the plug.

Picture Hanging…

Over the weekend, we moved a few pictures around in the house and hung some that had been waiting for us to find a suitable place.

We hung one large oil picture (140cm x 110cm) in a stairwell having run out of wall space in the rest of the house.

At a guess, I’d say it weighs between 15 and 20kg (30 and 70lbs) as I can lift easily it by myself and hold it against a wall without much difficulty.

After I’d hung it using 2 off No. 3 ‘X’ Hooks (with 2 nails) about 80cm apart it seemed secure enough and I moved on to other jobs…

My subconscious had other ideas and prompted me, as a I was waking up this morning, to double-check and figure out whether the picture would stay fixed to the wall!

After some ‘research’ (i.e. Googling for ‘picture hook SWL’ and ‘picture hook pull out’) I found Danny Lipford (there are other references ¹) who has done some testing and has found that the pull-out load on a single nail picture hanger is between 60 and 80lbs (27 and 36kgs) with a Safe Working Load (SWL) – or as it is now known Working Load Limit (WLL), of about 10 to 30lbs less (4.5 to 14kgs).

Danny said the “While the fasteners pulled out of the wall at the pounds listed (except for toggles, which remained intact), they started showing signs of failure at 10-30 pounds less…”

Danny didn’t say which hooks the load reductions applied to, but I’m going to assume the 10lb reduction was on the small hook and the 30lb reduction was on the large hook.

This would give a general WLL of 50lbs (23Kgs) for any of the hooks.

If I can remember back to my Strength of Materials classes; the load divides evenly and that although the vertical load of 10kgs will place a side load on the frame and tension in the wire, in this case the hooks act as pin joints and only react the vertical loads.

This would mean that each hook is supporting a maximum of 10Kgs (22lbs) with a safety factor of between 2.3 and 3, which I think is acceptable given the pictures location and likelihood of it receiving extra load (aka children – or adults, fiddling with it!)

Footnotes

1 – I also found the exactly same tests reported here, but neither quote an original source and couldn’t determine who should get the reference.

Absolute Sonos

I have a small Sonos system at home, with a bridge, two zones and one controller. Although the zones form their own mesh and have a level of resiliency, the weak link in the chain (in my installation) is the bridge from the Sonos network to the home network and NAS where the MP3 files are stored.

Unfortunately, the last time I powered up the computer system after fixing a plug, there was a loud bang from underneath the desk as the power supply to the Sonos Bridge blew up.

When I rang Absolute Sonos to source a replacement, they very kindly sent one out FoC. I thought it was very kind & generous – certainly somewhere to go when I expand the existing system.

The system is now working perfectly again. Thank you.

ReedsCo – A work in progress – Part II

I received a call from Geoff Allnut on Friday. The news wasn’t good…

“I’ve taken the back off and can see that the watch has a Chinese movement. I can’t get spares for these in the UK, so suggest you send it back to ReedsCo in Singapore”

Geoff liked the look of the watch but felt that the Chinese movements are not as well made as the Swiss ones. When I asked about how difficult it was to retro-fit a Swiss movement in to the watch, Geoff said “very”.

So back to Plan A. Reed is happy to repair the watch and I’ll send it to him over the next few days.

Update – 26th June 2010

The watch has been back to Reed and returned. Apart from a very minor glitch that happens when setting the time, where the hands move as you screw the crown down (this only happens very occasionally), the watch has been running reliably and keeping perfect time.

Overall, great service from Reed and (in the end) a very good, working watch that gets plenty of positive comments.