In praise of Safestyle UK.

We have new double glazing. As with any big job in the house, we were nervous about how it would go, especially as just after signing up with Safestyle UK to do the job I made the mistake of googling “safestyle reviews” and was faced with countless people who’d had terrible experiences of shoddy workmanship, long delays and no customer service. The reviews here seem pretty typical of what I found. And so, of course, we worried.

I am very pleases to report that our experience has been very different from those unfortunate people. The salesman was fine, and turned up when he said he would. (Yes, of course he used many sales techniques straight from the text book, including phoning “his boss” to “see if he could get us a better quote”, but he was in no way pushy or bossy). And we were surprised how quickly they said they’d be able to fit us in. A two day-job, arranged for less than three weeks after the salesman’s visit seemed excellent, and so we signed. The surveyor turned up a couple of days later, again at the agreed time, to take the more detailed measurements, and he too was a pleasure to deal with.

And then last Thursday the fitters arrived; two vans each containing two guys all of whom were friendly and efficient workers. Having read the reviews I mentioned above, I’d taken photos of every corner of every window so we could prove the state of decoration before fitting in case we had any complaints or disputes with them – but I needn’t have bothered. The whole house was re-glazed, including a front door, french doors to the sitting room, and eight window units, in one day, with no damage whatsoever and virtually no mess. 

Safestyle UK fitters in action.

As I said the windows were fitted only last Thursday, so I guess there is always the possibility of problems developing as things settle (a few of the negative reviewers did mention cracks appearing after the installation took place) but our experience so far has been nothing but positive, and I hold out good hope that if anything were to go wrong they would be just as efficient in sorting it out as they were doing the job in the first place. Time will tell.

In praise of Spotify

Anyone not heard of Spotify yet? 

The spotify.com homepage.

I’m not usually the first to get into new things online, but I’ve been using Spotify for a few weeks now and am utterly, utterly bowled over by it. If you’ve not heard about it, how best to explain it? It is an online music service that gives you access to an astonishing catalogue of music of all genres and ages, all streamed straight to your computer. And it’s free. And legal. Right now, for example, I’m listening to a random selection of 1950s blues. Earlier this evening I played the brand new album by Lily Allen.

How does it work? Brilliantly. Search for your artist, album, track – whatever – and click on play. The music seems to start instantly – no buffering delay – and from what I can hear the quality is excellent. Imagine iTunes, but instead of being able to select only from the tracks you’ve ripped off CD or downloaded (legally or otherwise) from iTunes store, MP3Sparks, Limewire or wherever, you can pick just about anything you can think of. 

Spotify playing Franz Ferdinand’s Tonight (2009)

And if you can’t think what you want to listen to, the “radio” mode is great. Just select a decade (or range of decades) and a genre (or selection of genres) and it will play random tracks from its catalogue until you tell it to stop.

Spotify in “Radio” mode playing 1950s blues.

Just like in iTunes you can make up playlists (there’s already a facebook aplucation to help you share your playlists with friends as “mix tapes”). Of course the one thing you can’t do is download the tracks to your iPod or burn them to CD for the car and so on. But while your connected to the internet* you’ll soon find you go no-where else for your music. And if we’re heading towards a time when we all have broadband access wherever we are, I can see a time when none of us will need to ‘own’ copies of music – we’ll just access it online from a giant catalogue like this. 

The free version of Spotify has access to the entire catalogue, and is supported by minimal advertising; you get one short ad about every 20-30 minutes in my experience, which is not obtrusive at all. And if you really don’t like the ads, you can pay ten quid a month for an ad-free subscription.

It is simply astonishing, and I love it.

(*A broadband connection is, of course, a necessity for the streaming to work.) 

The Theist-Athiest Spectrum

Just had a flick through God Delusion and couldn’t find the passage I wanted to quote earlier, but I did find this passage:

Let us take the idea of a spectrum of probabilities seriously, and place human judgements about the existence of God along it, between the two extremes of opposite certainty. The Spectrum is continuous, but it can be represented by the following milestones along the way.

1. Strong theist. 100% probability of God. In the words of CG Jung, “I do not believe, I know.”
2. Very high probability but short of 100%. De Facto theist. “I cannot know for certain, but I strongly believe in God and live my life on the assumption that he is there.”
3. Higher than 50% but not very high. Technically agnostic but leaning towards theism. “I am very uncertain, but I am inclined to believe in God.”
4. Exactly 50%. Completely impartial agnostic. “God’s existence and non-existence are exactly equiprobable.”
5. Lower than 50% but not very low.  Technically agnostic but leaning towards atheism. “I don’t know whether God exists, but I’m inclined to be sceptical.”
6. Very low probability, but short of zero. De factoatheist. “I cannot know for certain, but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there.”
7. Strong atheist. “I know there is no God, with the same conviction as Jung ’knows’ there is one.” 

Naturally I find myself pondering where I would place myself on such a spectrum, and also where I have been in the past. I don’t suppose I’ve ever been at 1, but certainly I was at 2 for a good few years. Whether it’s been a gradual or sudden change I can’t be sure, but I think I’d say I’m at 5 with a nod towards 6 at the moment.

Out of interest, Dawkins places himself at 6 leaning towards 7.

Where are you?

Another bus stop…

Another comic take on the Atheist Bus ads, this one from Christianity Today:

My very own bus

The best I could manage…

…using the Personalised Athiest Bus slogan generator. 

Thanks to Bishop Alan for the tip-off!