OK, so. Things that annoy you. Not gonna lie, 100%.

Printers can be stupidly complicated, they should be just simple plug in and use items, yet seem to require someone with a phd to actually get them to work properly.

My nine-month disagreement with my water company has come to an end and I have emerged from the battle as the victor . I have just received a cheque because... well, they won't say. Alongside the cheque is a note which literally reads:

...Goodwill gesture: Payment issued without admission of liability. We are indemnifying and keep indemnified against all future claims in this case... This payment of the aforementioned sum shall release us of all liability arising out of the said occurrence...

If I had any backbone I'd return the cheque and request an actual apology rather than a pay-off. But, hey, I'm short on cash right now and would like to put that dough towards a new tv.

[No longer annoyed - case closed]

What was the issue over?

Vermi Claus wrote:Printers can be stupidly complicated, they should be just simple plug in and use items, yet seem to require someone with a phd to actually get them to work properly.

Inkjet printers basically have to be used once a week minimum or they will categorically fail without question. The trouble is, nobody has need to print often and so doesn't do this.

So yes nobody knows how to maintain them and even then they strawberry float up on you.

Buy a laser printer. strawberry float, a dot matrix or thermal receipt printer would be more reliable

(And that's what they actually use for franking postage at companies for this very reason.)

Harry Ellis wrote:What was the issue over?

There was a collapsed sewer in our street and Thames Water sent a lorry round every day (sometimes more than once a day) for over eight months to siphon out the waste. I recognised that this had to be done but they were regularly doing this work at times between 6am and 8am (including weekends, bank holidays and once at 3:45am WTF) or after 8pm and it was bloomin' loud. After many phone calls and letters, no answers were gained as to why a permanent fix was taking so long or why they had to do it so early (or late) each day; I contacted the Consumer Council for Water (CCW) and from that point onwards the work was done and I gained a cheque. It was frustrating but my persistence - quite literally - paid off.

Hoorah!

Harry Ellis wrote:What was the issue over?

A matter of eighty dollars.

jawa2 wrote:

Harry Ellis wrote:What was the issue over?

There was a collapsed sewer in our street and Thames Water sent a lorry round every day (sometimes more than once a day) for over eight months to siphon out the waste. I recognised that this had to be done but they were regularly doing this work at times between 6am and 8am (including weekends, bank holidays and once at 3:45am WTF) or after 8pm and it was bloomin' loud. After many phone calls and letters, no answers were gained as to why a permanent fix was taking so long or why they had to do it so early (or late) each day; I contacted the Consumer Council for Water (CCW) and from that point onwards the work was done and I gained a cheque. It was frustrating but my persistence - quite literally - paid off.

Hoorah!

It wasn't your letters it was the wasps you set upon them spooked them.

Qikzmas wrote:It wasn't your letters it was the wasps you set upon them spooked them.

Hee! Parakeets are the new bane of my life, Qikz; they literally shredded the wood edging on my roof and, having got that repaired, they're now doing it on another part of the roof. I forsee many posts about this in the coming months .

jawa2 wrote:

Qikzmas wrote:It wasn't your letters it was the wasps you set upon them spooked them.

Hee! Parakeets are the new bane of my life, Qikz; they literally shredded the wood edging on my roof and, having got that repaired, they're now doing it on another part of the roof. I forsee many posts about this in the coming months .

Blu Tack is well known to attract parakeets.

Moggy wrote:Blu Tack is well known to attract parakeets.

This is probs true! Just when I thought I was safe from nature... it turns and bites back .

The current trend of poor sound mixing in TV programmes, movies and games. It’s been an ongoing complaint on Points of View and for whatever reason it’s still an issue all these years later. This never used to be a problem.

I finished watching Tenet tonight, an already confusing film made worse by surely one of the worst wavering audio soundtracks I’ve ever encountered. Normal one minute and then far too loud the next, with muffled dialogue that’s barely audible amongst the music and explosions.

Even the latest COD Black Ops, listening through the 3D pulse headphones with the in game settings on headphones, some of the spoken lines are impossible to hear clearly without subtitles. I played it with the TV speakers, soundbar and headphones and they all suffered from it. I don’t know if it’s much better on a fully fledged 7.1 job, but for the rest of of us it’s hopeless.

Come back stereo, all is forgiven!

KK wrote:The current trend of poor sound mixing in TV programmes, movies and games. It’s been an ongoing complaint on Points of View and for whatever reason it’s still an issue all these years later. This never used to be a problem.

I finished watching Tenet tonight, an already confusing film made worse by surely one of the worst wavering audio soundtracks I’ve ever encountered. Normal one minute and then far too loud the next, with muffled dialogue that’s barely audible amongst the music and explosions.

Even the latest COD Black Ops, listening through the 3D pulse headphones with the in game settings on headphones, some of the spoken lines are impossible to hear clearly without subtitles. I played it with the TV speakers, soundbar and headphones and they all suffered from it. I don’t know if it’s much better on a fully fledged 7.1 job, but for the rest of of us it’s hopeless.
Come back stereo, all is forgiven!

There's definitely a consistent theme with Nolan's films and people having issues with the sound. I don't think he cares though, given some quotes from him:

I actually got calls from other film-makers who would say, ‘I just saw your film, and the dialogue is inaudible.’ Some people thought maybe the music’s too loud, but the truth was it was kind of the whole enchilada of how we had chosen to mix it.

It was a very, very radical mix. I was a little shocked to realise how conservative people are when it comes to sound. Because you can make a film that looks like anything, you can shoot on your iPhone, no one’s going to complain. But if you mix the sound a certain way, or if you use certain sub-frequencies, people get up in arms.

We made the decision a couple of films ago that we weren’t going to mix films for substandard theatres.

But even in other films, TV programmes, and video games, I have the subtitles on most of the time now. Easier than constantly going back to catch dialogue that's too muffled or quiet to be heard.

It’s just so ridiculous. I can understand certain scenarios where you’d perhaps make a conversation difficult to hear (if you’re in a war zone for example) and you’d created a narrative where the whole point was to miss what had been said, but to make scenes inaudible when what is being discussed is integral to understanding the whole plot it’s bloody stupid. Especially when it’s just music drowning out the words.

Also on the subject of Tenet, it also suffers from aspect ratio shifts throughout. So one minute it’s got black borders, the next it doesn’t.

I've come to think Nolan is a bit of a prat and those quotes on sound don't really do anything to suggest otherwise.

Nolan does come across as a bit of a prat, that's true.

Speaking of annoying audio issues I'm currently pissed off as the headphones that I bought only about 8 months ago and paid a reasonable sum of money for have decided to strawberry floating break.

Currently in discussion with Amazon about getting them replaced under warranty, I can't imagine that will be an easy process.

Jenu-All I Want For Christmas wrote:Nolan does come across as a bit of a prat, that's true.

Speaking of annoying audio issues I'm currently pissed off as the headphones that I bought only about 8 months ago and paid a reasonable sum of money for have decided to strawberry floating break.

Currently in discussion with Amazon about getting them replaced under warranty, I can't imagine that will be an easy process.

... or it will be surprisingly painless! Replacement item being sent out ASAP!

Hopefully this one doesn't strawberry floating break within a year!

KK wrote:Also on the subject of Tenet, it also suffers from aspect ratio shifts throughout. So one minute it’s got black borders, the next it doesn’t.

It's not the first film he's done that in, it's something to do with IMAX.

Everything pre-Interstellar was fine sound-wise with Nolan - with perhaps the exception of Bane's overly muffled dialogue in TDKR - so I don't really understand why he shifted towards unusual sound balance from Interstellar onwards. Even people with top of the range sound systems were getting pissed off with getting that film to sound right.

Prestige and Batman Begins for example have superb clarity for all the dialogue. All a bit strange really.

KK wrote:The current trend of poor sound mixing in TV programmes, movies and games. It’s been an ongoing complaint on Points of View and for whatever reason it’s still an issue all these years later. This never used to be a problem.

I finished watching Tenet tonight, an already confusing film made worse by surely one of the worst wavering audio soundtracks I’ve ever encountered. Normal one minute and then far too loud the next, with muffled dialogue that’s barely audible amongst the music and explosions.

This so much.

Christopher Nolan movies suffer from this quite a bit. I don't know who he uses for his post production, but he needs to look at using someone else, because it's a consistent issue in his films.

The worst film I've ever watched in terms of mix was the first Fantastic Beasts film. I couldn't hear Eddie Redmayne's character most of the time, and I didn't have a strawberry floating clue what was happening in the film, as most of the exposition was by him.

I understand, I've spent tonnes of time mixing audio and it is difficult most of the time. But I'm some asshole sitting upstairs mixing with shite equipment and with zero knowledge. They are professionals.