Buying White Goods & Reflecting on Media Technology -Where I am now (Part 9) +

I suppose we can not expect white goods to last forever and the washing machine we have and Fridge/Freezer both purchased about 10 years ago are showing signs of age - so we decided to get a replacement Fridge/Freezer  and also check out the Washing Machines. Having found that Currys on the great West Roads no longer exists  we went  to  PC World  (or is it  Curry's ?) just across the road, it  had a good selection on display but nothing that they could deliver until the latter part of January 2014 - they were also unable to make buying both a washing machine and the Fridge/freezer together attractive so as the delay on the Fridge was not something we wanted to have we decided to look elsewhere.
Somewhat surprisingly (to me) John Lewis had far better availability of the same Bosch unit (at the same price) we had seen at Curry's so it's now ordered in a bit of a reversal of the norm where one views at John Lewis and buys somewhere else.

The merged store

Having looked I certainly hope that John Lewis Partners have a better time than that described as the fate of the Curry's PC World employees after the two Dixon Group retail entities merged.

Reflecting on Media Technology -to the Present

So this post will end the series  on my own personal media use through the years - I will though amend and reference the recollections  as I think of other things, tomorrow will start the business of 2014 and time will tell on how the media and technology impacts on this.
Away from the workaday routine I have continued my interest in the burgeoning world of media, for many now the tools and technologies dominate their everyday lives who of us don't know someone who can not manage even a few hours away from their smart-phone or are lost when unable to update their Facebook status?
For me I find some trends concerning, where for example people neglect their physical companions for those who are in another location - still we can not un-invent the environment that has evolved and we should take what benefits we can from mans ingenuity.


 In the last year I have taken an interest in  Video-blogging  and capturing all of one's life (I consider it somewhat imagine in the Turner Show here's an interesting description of lifecasting ). At home I have had an upgrade from Broadband to BT's own superior Infinity and therefore been able to enjoy some of the benefits of further TV choice.
Personally even though RIM as a company has big issues I have enjoyed (greatly) the use of a Blackberry Playbook mainly as a source of radio and podcast catchups but also to receive emails and to research odd topics .

Playbook -great for radio

This autumn I bought for the very low price of £10 the Now TV box which I've added Plex and have the free Plex media server on my PC combined this allows for a greatly expanded collection of catch up services as well as allowing big screen viewing of  content  downloaded  to my PC.