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My friend has a reasonably new Mazda MX3.  Unfortunately she could not get her phone to connect to the Mazda’s bluetooth.  The main problem was that the Mazda bluetooth never appeared as a device on her iPhone.   She asked me to help and we followed the instructions in the manual.  The instructions for connecting a phone via bluetooth are:

• Get your phone out and enable bluetooth
• Navigate through the menu on the car
• Select ‘BT Setup’ – annoying the last item in the menu
• Select ‘Pair Device’
• You are then offered a pin (by default 0000).
• You should then see the car appear as a device on your phone (by default Mazda).
• You then theoretically click on Mazda and then enter the pin.
• You should then be connected…

The problem for us was that the Mazda never appeared as a device.   This means you can’t select it on the phone and the car just shows an ‘Err’ message during the BT setup process.   If you Google around for solutions, they all say you need to reset you whole car by disconnecting the battery or go to a dealer.  Well, who wants to do that!

The Solution

The solution we found was to setup the phone through the voice command system.   So, this is how to connect your phone to a Mazda via bluetooth.

• Hold down the phone button on the steering wheel.
• The car should go into ‘Listening’ mode and you then need to speak to it.
• Say ‘Pairing options’
• Then follow the instructions all the way through to the end which finishes with giving a name for your phone (you can make this up).  Please note – don’t give up too early (even if you think you have completed) because unless you name you phone it won’t be able to connect.

Voila – you should finally have connected your iPhone to your Mazda bluetooth.  I hope this helps someone.

I never signed up to Vodafone marketing (spam) text messages in the first place but they send them to me anyway. I’m sure this isn’t legal.  Anyhow, they offer the option of opting out but seem to keep sending them anyway.  I really wish there was a good small customer facing mobile company I could use.

It seems to be a common problem that people want to stop accidentally making a request to Siri or using the voice control when the phone is locked. I’ve been in meetings when at least four different people have checked their iphone, launched Siri and then had their phone announce to the room ‘I’m sorry there is no match for that’.  So here is how to disable Siri and voice control from a locked iPhone.

Step 1 – Turn on Siri – Counter intuitively having Siri enabled will give you the controls you need to stop Siri and voice control being started from the lock screen. Go to Setting -> General -> Siri and toggle enable.

Step 2 – Turn off Siri from the lock screen. Go to Setting -> Passcode -> disable Siri.

Voila.

If you have disabled Siri completely then you won’t have this control and there isn’t a toggle  for voice control in the same way. Hope this is helpful.

I hate companies that don’t provide pricing up front on their website and get a software sales person to call you.

To stop you having to give them your details they charge – $300 per month for up to 25 hosts.

Over 25 hosts – they make up the price each time based on your company name and the car you drive.

I just visited the Headington Festival and saw the Headington Hillbillies playing. They were really good fun and played so great songs. 

There was also a really cool classically jazz pianist with a portable piano.

  
The Headington festival was great fun and I’ll definitely be going next year. 

I’ve just launched a new website for our flat rental in Aberdovey called Aberdovey Sea Front Accommodation. We started to rent the flat last year and it has been going really well.

I’ve just been trying to buy a few hundred pallets and confusingly there seems to be licensed pallets and unlicensed pallets.

A licensed (or stamped) pallet is a pallet that has been made to a particular specification and is guaranteed to carry 1 ton. All licensed pallets are made in the same way, using the same thickness wood, the same number of planks, the same type of nails etc etc.

An unlicensed pallet will fit the size specifications but cannot be guaranteed to hold a ton. You can send an unlicensed pallet through a carrier (pallet network) no problem.

Just discovered the brilliant online chess tool here: http://en.lichess.org/

We have just had a new baby and it’s being weighed quite regularly to check that it is growing properly. I’m an engineer and was wondering how accurate the scales that the midwives were using. We are based in Oxford and the scales that the midwives were using is the Seca 834 baby scale which is accurate to 10g up to 10kg and then 20g over 10 kg.

I’ve just made a fresh install of backuppc on Ubuntu 14.04. However, when I visited the web interface then the browser just shows a bin file like this:

Having a bin file server from Apache (or any other web server) generally means there is a fault with the webserver and the script isn’t being parsed before it’s served.   A quick look at the Apache log files located at /var/log/apache2/error.log shows the problems:

unable to connect to cgi daemon after multiple tries: /usr/share/backuppc/cgi-bin/index.cgi

Apache2 isn’t parsing the file through a cgi script.  The Apache server doesn’t have the cgi module enabled.  You can enable an Apache module from the command line without editing any configurations.

sudo a2enmod cgid

Then restart apache2

sudo service apache2 restart

You should then have a working copy of backuppc.