Moshi Monsters and Apple's Parental Controls

I have a 8 year old that wants to access the Moshi Monsters site using Safari from a desktop locked down with parental controls on an OS X Lion Server.

Moshi Monsters seems to be predominantly a Flash based site that causes the parental controls software some problems. Several other people have found the same problem.

When we first tried to access the site, it was properly blocked and asked for permission. Once it had been added to the list of allowed sites, I thought it would all work.

However, once you log in to your pet, it gets locked at the "Loading" screen, but there isn't any further warning from the parental controls software.

If you look at the source code for the page, it is trying to load information from c.mmcdn.net and I wondered if this was causing the site to be blocked.

I thought if I added this as a bookmark, then the page would load correctly, but it didn't... After a bit of head scratching, I ran nslookup for 'c.mmcdn.net' from a Terminal window and it returned the following alias entries:

> c.mmcdn.net
Server: 127.0.0.1
Address: 127.0.0.1#53
Non-authoritative answer:
c.mmcdn.net canonical name = c.mindcandy.cotcdb.net.
c.mindcandy.cotcdb.net canonical name = orig-10005.mindcandy.cotcdn.net.
Name: orig-10005.mindcandy.cotcdn.net
Address: 94.127.74.140

Once I added 'c.mindcandy.cotcdb.net' and 'orig-10005.mindcandy.cotcdn.net' to the list of bookmarks, the page loaded correctly.

I doubt this is a permanent fix as the Moshi Monster site may change its hosts, but at least it is a temporary work-around!

How do you know a rear brake light bulb has failed on a Land Rover Discovery 3…?

Simple, the car tells you.

The dashboard says:

• Parking brake fault
• HDC fault – Module not found
• Transmission fault

And the car very helpfully drops the car on to the lowest suspension setting (i.e. the bump stops). This can be especially useful when you’re many miles from home. Mind you, someone will probably point out that it doesn’t make that _much_ difference to the ride quality.

My experience with BMW and Mercedes was that they simply told you that you had a bulb failure.

Interestingly, the Service Desk at the dealer (Guy Salmon in Coventry) didn’t recognise the faults as indicating a bulb failure either and referred me to Land Rover Assistance, as the earliest time they could help was the middle of the next week.Guy Salmon didn’t seem hugely concerned that I had a car that I couldn’t drive.

It must be a regular fault, as the ever cheerful Chris (from LR Assistance) had a very good look at the rear light bulbs when he showed up – 3 hours later. A visual check - with me pressing the brake pedal, confirmed his suspicions very shortly.

The whole experience did get quite close to farcical when Chris didn’t have any replacement bulbs with him and had to drive me to Halfords (for me) to buy a replacement set.

An amusing note was that during the conversation on the way to Halfords, Chris and I agreed that it was pretty poor design where a bulb failure takes out the whole car. When I asked if it was also an issue with the Discovery 4, the response was “… well, they’re fitted with LEDs now and they shouldn’t fail”, which neatly provided an illustration of the difference between an Incident and a Problem.

As an ex-Mechanical Engineer, I am dismayed that this wasn’t picked up during basic FMEA. Perhaps Land Rover have not come that far from British Leyland and 1987 where a sister company had passed a design where one fuse protected the headlights and the headlight washers…

So, for example, if the headlight washer motor had frozen up early on a cold, dark winter’s morning as you were happily motoring along the M1 with 3 lanes of solid traffic in your posh new Jaguar XJ40 and you were thinking “… my lights are looking a little dim, I’ll clean them up with my very clever headlight washer…”, you’d find out that the motor was frozen solid when all the headlights went out completely.

Funny how the engineers didn’t spot that in thousands of miles of Artic testing.

ReedsCo – New Updates

Reed Tan has recently updated his Maximum Visibility (MV) watch to a Maximum Visibility II (MV II) with a new movement; different face and hand options.
I think these offer a significant and welcome upgrade to the watch and have recently returned my V1 to be upgraded.
This was originally volunteered by Reed and shows the commitment to his brand and the excellent customer service he offers.

iTunes VAT receipts

If you’re a VAT registered business using the iPad and/or iPhone and are purchasing applications for business use or as part of your application development research, you’ll probably want a VAT receipt from Apple and will have noticed that all the receipts provided clearly state that ‘… this is _not_ a VAT receipt…”

In which case, you may be interested in the following article that describes how Jeremy Richards was able to obtain VAT receipts.

[Update 09/09/2010 – 10:00]

Received 2 VAT invoices this morning – out of a backlog of 8, along with an email stating:

Greetings from iTunes Store Customer Support. I understand that you wish to have a VAT invoices for your purchases. I can certainly see your concern. My name is Srinivas and I will do my best to provide you an appropriate information.

I would like to inform you that, the iTunes Store sells only to customers as end-users for personal, noncommercial use in their respective countries of residence. For more information, you can review the iTunes Store Terms and Conditions:

http://www.apple.com/legal/itunes/ww

Thank you for being an iTunes Store customer. Apple appreciates your business and understanding in this regard.

Regards,

Srinivas

iTunes Store Customer Support

I have replied using Jeremy’s erudite response template …

Dear Srinivas

Many thanks for your reply. Whilst I understand that your terms state that the applications are for personal use I would like to draw your attention to the Apple website that refers to business applications on many occasions. Just look at all these applications on offer. This part is on the iPhone tab 'With iPhone, you get secure corporate network connectivity, access to thousands of business apps, and tool for developing your own company apps.' Are you really telling me that you are selling people apps that they are not allowed to use?

It is irrelevant whether I wish to use my purchase for personal of business benefit. I am a VAT registered individual and I am requesting a VAT invoice. By UK law you have to supply me with one. Please see the [tax office website] for confirmation.

I note that you have already sent me VAT invoices for transaction IDs:

<Invoices Received>

I am currently missing VAT invoices for:

<Invoices Missing>

I look forward to receiving them, etc…

There’s also a similar experience posted here.

[Update 09/09/2010 – 16:00]

All missing VAT receipts received…

Fibre to the Cabinet

Given that the speed on my broadband connection has reduced from 2.1MB/s to 841KB/s over the past 12 months for no obvious reasons – the service provider always claims the line length as the issue, I’m really looking forward to BT’s roll-out of Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC).

If you’re interested in finding out when you’re schedule to go live, then there’s a list here  - I should be patched in by 31st December 2010. Fingers crossed that BT are ahead, rather than behind schedule!

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!