Scott Fraser Lifestyle

The Bank of England may have concerns about the rising house prices, indicative of a roaring property trade, but one group definitely not against this continued boom: estate agents.

Sure, they have been heavily put upon by every comedian since Tutankhamun struggled to find that little place of his own among the heavily populated Valley of the Kings, but for their deceit, their lies, and their tales of spin.

The thing that really gets my goat is their fees.

G., I., and I have finally found a house of reasonable measure: it’s a very nice house, albeit stuck out off Hollow Road in Cowley, which mean it’s slightly too expensive for what it’s worth (to us, at least). ‘Managed’ by Scott Fraser Lifestyle (link), they are currently desperately seeking new tenants for this vacant (but still under lease) property. So desperate, that is, that they’re replying to wanted ads on Daily Info (link) — something I discovered when the gracious agent emailed me advising the house actually while I was travelling to see her and the property!

Anyhow, I’m sure you’ve got the story by now: nice house, three keen lads, keen agent. The ideal triumviate, some might say. Just a shame that the agents, as always, try to take advantage; a grand advantage to the tune of nearly �400. That’s nearly half a month’s rent on a seven month lease! The shocking breakdown…

• “For each individual [application] form completed, there is a processing fee of �80 to cover administration costs PLUS an additional �40 per guarantor form completed.”
• “A futher fee of �80 per household to cover the preparation [i.e. photocopying] of the tenancy agreement.”
• And finally the sneaky “check-out fee” mentioned in clause 9 of the Application Notes: the cost of checking the inventory �80…all passed on to those willing tenants.

…and who knows that they charge the landlords, all for taking our money by direct debit and passing it on to them (minus suitable administration costs, of course)?
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John Hegley Special Double Bill at the Lyric Hammersmith – 4-15 May

***Two newish shows from comedy�s poet laureate***

With two different shows on display I�ll be down at the Lyric in May It�s in W6, if you come with a Twix, will you please eat it up on your way to or from the Theatre, or out in the foyer

For more details on John see his excellent website (link). Alternatively, he has published a number of books of poetry (which I’ve only seen in Cambridge’s increasingly expensive Oxfam shop) or, for the poor students, his poems can be found on Poemhunter.com (link) and even listened to on his BBC mini-site (link).
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XXX Update

Two nice long papers have appeared on the XXX pre-print servers. The first (link) reports more results from Lefebvre et al. for their nanotubes amazingly suspended across pillars etched onto a substrate. Temperature dependent PL from SWNTs describes Photoluminescence (PL) and photoluminescence excitation (PLE) spectroscopy of pillar-suspended single-walled carbon nanotubes has been measured for temperatures between 300 K and 5 K.

The second (link) is a review article describing a range of Raman studies on double wall carbon nanotubes (DWCNTs), the recently discovered third class of CNTs. The Raman response of double wall carbon nanotubes suggests that DWCNTs offer important physical advantages over more fragile SWNTs while still offering a similar rich-variety of physical phenomena to their single-shelled cousins. The sharp-eared, or should that be eagle-eyed, of you will no doubt focus, or whatever the earal equivalent is, on the haunting mentions of “successful applications”, or is it just me feeling poor again?
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Audrey Links…

Just a few Audrey links…

The Unofficial Hack FAQ (link)

I-Appliance BBS (link)
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Audrey Lives!

Easter truly is a remarkable time of year: I thought my lovely Audrey Internet Appliance (link) had died a death in smoke on returning from the US; I had even tried to get it working three times; but now it appears it has come back to life! Audrey, which ran off 110V US-style, got fried when I tried to run it off a cheapo step-down voltage transformer (which admittedly did warn against using with electronic devices). Early this week I found an industrial step-down transformer and tried to run it off that…to no avail. There wasn’t even any power from the plug-top transformer; so I popped off its casing, and then that for the whole machine, looking for fried components, but there was no sign of any burn marks (just lots of oily fingerprints on the metal motherboard cover). So there was still some hope. Desolder gun in hand, I rewired the power-supply lead and hooked up a handy Thandar-Thirlby (programmable) constant current source. Audrey’s lead has eight pins: 2 @ 5V; 3 @ 3.3V. So, with current limits set, I fired-up the T-T and…nothing. I was just about to give up when I flicked the two channel switches and brrrrr the Audrey buzzed into life. Within seconds it was again giggling away (see flash intro here soon). When it gets back online, I’ll post some more details and links.

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