Luffer's blog

Windows 8 Preview First Impressions

2011-09-17T17:11:00.000+01:00

I recently decided to trial the Windows 8 Developer Preview on my PC, the main reason for me wanting to do this was to see how the touch interface was going to work on tablets. I have an HP TouchSmart laptop which should have been perfect for experimenting with this. Unfortunately my efforts to install it to a Virtual Machine on my laptop didn't go too well.

Firstly I couldn't install the 64-bit version because my laptops CPU doesn't support hardware virtualisation, so I had to download the 32-bit version. This wouldn't install either for reasons I still don't understand, the Windows 8 installer just kept throwing error messages. My only option remaining is to set up a partition on my HDD and install it properly, but I'm not ready to do that just yet. Instead I decided to install it to my main desktop PC.

This was remarkably simple compared to the trials I'd been through on my laptop. The Virtual Machine was set-up in just a few seconds, I enabled the Hardware Virtualisation in my PCs BIOS and mounted the Windows 8 .iso into the virtual DVD drive. Booted it up, and the installer ran without a hitch, although it did take a while to complete.

So then, what are my thoughts? Well before going in I had reservations about the new Metro UI they have been showing off. My gut feeling was that it wasn't going to work on a desktop PC, having now used it, I can confirm my worst fears are well founded. The Metro UI feels like a badly tacked on interface that is restrictive, basic and unwieldly. It simply doesn't work well with a mouse and keyboard, the gestures are impossible to use and the UI feels very poorly thought out. There is no easy way to exit Metro apps and nothing about it seems at all intuitive. When I first picked up an iPhone, I pretty much knew exactly how to use it, the same was true for Android. However, I felt totally lost and confused inside the Metro apps, it's hard to explain it, but it all felt wrong.

One of the main problems I experienced with the Metro UI was the inability to perform touch gestures using the mouse and keyboard. I can see how in theory the Metro UI would be quite slick on a touchscreen, it just doesn't translate at all well to more traditional PC control methods. The problem with this is exacerbated by the forced use of the Metro UI as the Start menu.

Let's focus on that for just a moment, the Start menu is gone in Windows 8, you click on the Windows icon in the taskbar, it takes you into the Metro UI. From there you get the tile interface seen above, this is where you launch all your apps from. The problem with this is it's a mess, you can't get much on a screen because the tiles take up so much space and it's hard to find anything. Getting fast access to your programs is going to be a thing of the past!

The other problem is going to be with developer uptake, in order for a program to run in the new Metro UI it needs a totally new interface designed, but not just one! Traditionally a developer designs one interface for Windows and the OS deals with resizing the window to whatever the user desires. It can be any size too, unlike in Metro when you can only have two apps open side by side!

Now they need to design the traditional desktop UI, as well as a full screen Metro UI, a split screen Metro UI and the tile UI. It puts much more of an onus on the developer not only to design their applications, but also to test them too!

My prediction will be that classic Windows desktop applications, like Photoshop and office will continue to have only the desktop interface. The extra effort involved in creating all the interfaces will outweigh the benefits.

It seems that the plan is to get tablets running the same software as desktop PCs. The big problem with this is that tablets are not designed for productivity, they are designed for consumption and they are great at doing that. However, a tablet that can edit pictures in Photoshop or edit videos in Premiere is unlikely to be a realistic proposition. The CPU and graphic requirements these programs will demand is going to far outstrip tablet technology.

Microsoft have taken the wrong road, Apple and Google have both developed an OS that runs on phones and tablets. It's a tactic that works well and keeps the desktop OS separate in the case of MacOS and to a lesser extent ChromeOS.

This is what MS should have done, developed an improved Windows 7 for the desktop as Windows 8 and then developed Windows Phone 7 further to accommodate tablets.

I fear for the future of Windows now, unless MS decide to make the Metro UI totally optional so it can be disabled on a desktop, mouse & keyboard PC, I don't see any way that Windows 8 can be a success. Hopefully they'll come to this conclusion as well, and the sooner the better!

Site connection issues

2011-08-20T12:28:00.003+01:00

So here's the thing, I have a website (http://www.techietalk.co.uk) and I have a user who regularly contributes news articles to it. However for the last week she has been unable connect, I've not seen anyone else reporting problems. It could just be a problem with her local machine, but she has tried in several browsers and done all the basic checks such as emptying page cache etc.

It's only my site that she is having a problem with, which is odd. Can anyone think of any reason why this person is getting blocked? She is seeing error messages like:

Opera: Connection closed by remote server.
Chrome: No data received, the server closed the connection.

I've got her to connect to the site through http://www.hidemyass.com and through their proxy the site seems to load fine for her. I've just asked her to do a trace route to see if that gives any clues, but I've not had the results back yet. This one has me stumped, any suggestions?

My thoughts on the BBC/Sky F1 deal

2011-08-01T12:46:00.007+01:00

If you are an F1 fan then there was huge, earth shattering news at the weekend which you cannot have failed to miss. For those of you who aren't, a new TV deal has been agreed that will see coverage change dramatically from next year. The exact details of how it will all work are still unclear, but essentially Sky will broadcast all the races live. The BBC will show half the races in full and the other half as a highlights package.

The areas which still remain unclear are whether the 10 races the BBC are showing will be live or deferred coverage. It is also unknown what the highlights package means and if in fact the 10 full races will actually be extended highlights as well.

My initial reaction to the news was that of unmitigated anger that F1 could move to pay TV after years of being told that could never happen. In fact we were being told this could never happen by Bernie Ecclestone (the head of FOM and television rights holder) as recently as May!

"it isn't possible that F1 could go on to pay-TV, we wouldn't want to do that." - Bernie Ecclestone

The BBC have clearly been forced to make cutbacks and it seems that rather than drop F1 totally the BBC themselves have brought Sky in on the deal. After all, the BBC have the contract until 2013 so if they pulled out early they would have to pay huge penalty fees to FOM, clearly they were eager to find a solution to avoid that scenario. It would seem the proposal they came up with would leave the BBC paying roughly the same amount it would cost in cancellation fees but allow them to keep half the races. Seems like a good deal from their point of view! Let's have a quick look at the figures shall we?

The BBC currently pays £31m per year for the television rights, under the new agreement they will be paying just £15m with Sky contributing £25m. So the BBC save around half their current spend and depending on the cancellation clauses may even be saving more money than if they'd dropped F1 entirely!

So, why did the BBC turn to Sky for help rather than another terrestrial broadcaster? Simple really, ITV had already dropped F1 and have shown no interest in it since, however Channel 4 & Five have both been in talks with FOM to make an independent bid. They wouldn't be interested in a share with the BBC, they would just take the lot. Sky on the other hand aren't in a position to bid for F1 since there is a Concorde agreement in place which exists between all the teams and FOM that states

"the Commercial Rights Holder may not permit Formula 1 events to be shown only by pay television in a country with a significant audience if it would materially adversely affect audience reach in that country."

As Sky are a Pay TV provider, they could never be granted the F1 rights while this clause existed, this is pretty much the best deal Sky could hope for in order to get their foot in the door. Of course, once they are in the pressure will then be on the teams to have that clause removed when the Concorde agreement is renewed next year, paving the way for F1 to move to Sky permanently from 2018 when the new deal expires... assuming the BBC don't drop out of this new deal early as well which wouldn't be surprising.

So where does all this leave the fans? Well they are given a whole load of spin for the BBC, FOM and Sky, but we weren't born yesterday and being told things like:

"we believe this new deal offers the best outcome for licence-fee payers." - Ben Gallop (Head of BBC F1)

"It's good for Formula 1, for sure there are going to be a lot more people viewing, and a lot more opportunities for people to view, so from that point I'm very happy." Bernie Ecclestone (FOM)

"(the deal) is rather good news and should be positively welcomed by fans." - Eric Boullier (Lotus Renault team principle)

So let's take a closer look at viewer numbers shall we? Currently the BBC F1 programme is among the highest rating shows they have, regularly topping the list of viewing figures, not just for BBC content, but for the whole of television! Currently over 6 million people regularly tune in to a race on Sunday. Sky on the other hand only have a total of 10 million subscribers, and that's everyone with a Sky box, not just those who have Sky Sports!

I'd like to know how exactly the viewing figures are going to go up? Inevitably the BBC will lose a lot of casual F1 fans if it's not being shown regularly, there will also be a lot of die-hard fans who lose interest once they can't follow the full season live. With the cost of a Sky subscription they won't be winning many new customers either, a quick look at the costs involved:

A Sky subscription with Sky Sports will cost £470 a year, if you add HD coverage to that which is free on the BBC it's another £120 a year. A total of £600! Now considering they are only broadcasting half the races exclusively live, that means they are asking an F1 fan without Sky to pay £60 PER RACE! Of course they will "enjoy" the rest of the channels and programming Sky offer, but they've lived without it in the past and would only be subscribing for coverage of the F1.

To take to task the issue of viewing figures even further, since Sky took over the rights to Cricket, they have seen audience numbers fall through the floor. When Channel 4 was covering it the sport was watched and enjoyed by many hundreds of thousands, if not millions more viewers. This is exactly what we can expect to see happen with F1!

The sponsors will also have to make some tough choices now, the calculations they make are simple. It's a very basic spend per head. You take the number of people viewing combined with the projected airtime you will get and divide it by the money you are willing to spend. Clearly with viewing figures going from several million to potentially just a few hundred thousand they will have to justify their expenditure which may prove very difficult indeed. F1 can expect to lose some of its sponsors altogether and others to reduce their spend dramatically.

Of course the fans don't actually matter at the end of the day because it's the money that talks. We are often told how the fans are crucial to F1 and that they are the one who own the sport, blah, blah, blah.... But it doesn't mean anything. The only glimmer of hope for fans is that FOTA (Formula One Teams Association) decide they don't like the new deal because it will lose them too much money in sponsorship. However, that's unlikely to happen. No doubt that of the extra £9m that FOM are making from this new deal, a fair chunk of that (if not more) is going straight to the teams to keep them sweet. The general consensus so far seems to indicate that the teams don't care about the fans either as long as they have the money in the bank. So far nobody has made a stand for the fans of the sport, F1 has found itself on a slippery slope having reached a peak in the last couple of years on the BBC.

I have to say I am utterly perplexed at how the BBC who are a public service broadcaster can simply offload one of its flagship titles in this fashion when they already own the exclusive rights for another 2 years! Losing something like football to Sky was a different scenario, since the contract had expired and they simply couldn't afford to outbid them. Here, the BBC have actively sought out and made a deal with Sky in order to shirk their responsibilities. It is truly disgraceful and all parties involved BBC, FOM, FIA and FOTA (excluding Sky, who have simply jumped at a business opportunity) should be utterly ashamed.

It's made even worse given the current situation with Rupert Murdoch!

I'll leave you with one final comment from Bernie Ecclestone himself that really sums up the whole situation:

"Sky have been trying to buy the TV rights from us for a long time, but we won’t because they are not free-to-air broadcasters. With their viewing figures it would be almost impossible for teams to find sponsors. That would be suicidal.” - Bernie Ecclestone, May 2011

Quite right Bernie, R.I.P F1!

Sky Go doesn't work on 64-bit computers?

2011-07-14T15:58:00.005+01:00

I recently experienced the "new and improved" Sky Go service, which has replaced Sky Player. I watched the A-Team film on it at the weekend which was a terrible experience. The film I mean Sky Go worked exactly the same as Sky Player did before it.

However, today I tried to watch something else and it failed to work for me, spouting "Error c:1501" whenever I tried to start a stream. So I did what most people would do and checked the forums for advise, but I couldn't see anything that worked for me. Then a box popped up telling me I could chat to an advisor, so I did. Here follows the transcript of my conversation, what a complete waste of time it turned out to be!

Welcome to Sky Live Chat Service. A Sky Advisor will be with you shortly.

You are now connected with Graeme.

Graeme: Hello, you're chatting with Graeme, a Sky advisor, may I take your name please?

You: James

Graeme: Hi James, how are you today?

You: I'm trying to use the new "improved" Sky player, but I keep getting "Error c:1501"

Graeme: Ok we will have to do some troubleshooting which will take some time, are you ok to do this?

You: yes

Graeme: Great!

Graeme: Have you downloaded the Sky Go desktop?

You: yes

Graeme: Please can you right click anywhere on your open ‘Sky Go’ desktop and select ‘Remove This Application’. After the Sky Go desktop has been removed, please close all open browser windows on your PC except for the one in which we are chatting.

Graeme: Please let me know when you have done this.

You: okay, all done

Graeme: Excellent!

Graeme: What operating system are you using?

You: Windows 7 64-bit

Graeme: Ok you will be unable to use the 64 bit windows 7 can you try another version please.

You: how exactly would I do that?

You: Sky Player used to work for me

Graeme: Sky does not support 64 bit computers.

You: yes it does!

Graeme: Not Sky Go.

You: errr... yes.. you do. Unless you don't support any PC sold in the last 2 years!

Graeme: We do not support this sorry.

You: Or does the new Sky Go not support 64bit computers when Sky Player did? If so why?

You: Please check with your supervisor, you must be wrong. Sky Player worked!

Graeme: I am not wrong James we do not support 64 bit computers with Sky Go.

You: So how was I able to use Sky Player then?

Graeme: This is a different platform and it does not support 64 bit computers.

You: So your new and improved player doesn't support ANY PC sold in the last 2 or more years?!

Graeme: We do not support 64 bit computers on Sky Go.

You: Again, virtually every computer on sale today is 64-bit. So are you saying Sky Go does not support ANY new PC?

Graeme: I am saying that Sky Go does not support 64 bit computers.

You: Look, this is crazy. Sky Player worked fine on 64bit Windows 7. Do you mean it doesn't work in a 64 bit browser?

Graeme: Unfortunately we currently do not support 64 bit systems if you go to the Sky Help forum you can find additional information there.

You: Sorry Graeme, you clearly don't know what you are talking about. Sky Player/Go does work on 64bit computers. I am using Firefox 5 which is a 32bit browser, do you actually understand the difference here?

Graeme: Unfortunately we cannot provide any support with this operating system currently, however I want to help you the best I can which is why I have directed you to the help forum as I am aware there is postings up there which will answer your questions.

You: I've already checked the Forum, it didn't help. That's why I came to here. Can I please talk to someone who actually knows what a computer is, you obviously don't have the required knowledge or expertise to help me.

Graeme: Our company considers that content and language to be inappropriate. If you continue to send improper messages, I will be forced to end our chat session.

You: How was that inappropriate? Do you understand the difference between a 64-bit OS and a the 32-bit software it can run?

Graeme: I am not here to tell you the difference between the software. I am here for support and I am currently unable to support you.

You: Which indicates to me that you don't have the required knowledge or expertise, which is why I have asked to talk to someone else. Seems perfectly reasonable to me!

Graeme: If you wish to speak to someone else you can end the chat and speak to another advisor if you reconnect.

iPad 2 Smart Cover

2011-04-18T15:20:00.004+01:00

I was asked on Twitter to post my thoughts on the iPad 2 smart cover. I've been using it for a few days so think I'm in a position to give my opinion on it now.

It's quite neat that's for sure, but it doesn't really offer much protection. Yes, it does cover the screen when it's not in use, but the back of the device is totally naked. I've already managed to pick up a few scratches on the back of my iPad. The touted screen cleaning abilities of the cover are a joke, just having a soft fabric laying on the screen can't clean it! What I have noticed though are marks on the screen where the hinges are. This means you end up with three distinct vertical lines down the screen, they can be easily wiped away, but it's still annoying when it happens.

The different configurations of the cover are handy in certain circumstances. I've used it in both forms at various times. The upright stand is great for propping it up on the desk while watching a video or other times when you don't need to be "hands-on" with the device. The raised keyboard position is ideal for web browsing and typing blog posts like this one. I can type almost as quickly on this keyboard as I can on a real one. Having the slight angle means you can easily see the screen over your hands, and you aren't typing on a totally flat surface.

The magnets that the cover uses to connect are quite clever, I think it must use a system of opposing magnets that force it to hook up in the correct location. It just seems to know where to go! Simply swing the cover towards the edge and it will snap on. When it's attached the magnets are strong enough that it can support the weight on the iPad dangling beneath, but not if you start jiggling it about too vigorously. It will soon lose its grip then!

When the cover is used in one of its two setups, it's great. The problems only arise when you aren't. Holding it with the cover open can be annoying, it doesn't magnetise itself to the back as it does to the front, so it wants to constantly flap open. If you fold it into a triangle and hold on to that, it gives you something to grip, but it makes typing on the keyboard harder with your thumbs and it still wants to flap about too much.

It's an expensive cover that doesn't really offer any real protection, but the stand system is useful. Is it worth the money? Probably not, it's expensive and I'm sure there will be other 3rd party solutions that will do a better job than this.

EDIT: Updated with a video below to show the marks.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Blogging from the iPad 2

2011-04-18T11:29:00.002+01:00

I just downloaded and installed a blogging app for my iPad called BlogPress. Seems quite good so far, this will be my first post using it so this is really just a test. Thought I'd write down a few of my thoughts on the iPad 2 while I am here. They probably won't be much different to any others you've already heard or read elsewhere though.

First of all, the actual device is gorgeous, from the moment you first power it up the display pops out at you. The IPS panel gives stunning quality, even if it doesn't have the much touted "retina display" resolution. Text is clear and easy to read, viewing angles are brilliant. Although the screen goes a bit darker at extreme angles you can still see everything without trouble.

The battery is good, even when the device was new and I played with it for almost a full day, the battery still had life in it by the end. I can imagine under more normal demands I could be going a full week without going near a power socket. Of course, I can only imagine that, because after almost a week, I'm still using it constantly, for almost everything. From email to twitter, web browsing, gaming, iPlayer viewing and now blogging. The iPad can do it all! In fact, maybe my current iPad usage is going to be normal from now on?

Many of the apps designed for the iPad are a joy to use. The slick fluid interface of apps such as Twitter are quick to navigate and intuitive to use. The ones that aren't are fairly easy to avoid thanks to the app store reviews.

The implementation of multi-tasking is very good, I was never sold on the fake pseudo version Apple devised. But having used it, in practise you'd never know any difference. You can switch between apps in an instant and pick up exactly where you left off. Certain processes can even continue running in the background when you switch, such as music and the ability for apps to send notifications when they aren't running helps with things like alarms, email and twitter.

Of course it's not all good! There are a few niggles (some bigger than others) that are frustrating and others that are inexplicable. For example, the iPhone and iPod Touch both run the same iOS, yet the iPad lacks some of the core apps. The Clock, Calculator, Weather and Stocks apps are all missing in action. This seems utterly mad considering they must be there in the source code of iOS, but simply locked out on the iPad. Finding replacements for them on the app store is fairly simple, but the good ones have to be paid for which is annoying when the Apple versions were already excellent.

The keyboard, whilst easy to type on, particularly in landscape mode also gives some minor annoyances. I'm now fairly accustomed to the Android keyboard used on my mobile phone. On that I can long press a key to get alternative characters, such as numbers and other commonly used symbols. On the iPad I have to switch to the numeric keyboard to access those keys. Worse still is that when you do so, the few symbols that are included on the main keyboard actually move to a different location!! Who the hell thought that was a good idea?

Sticking with the keyboard for a moment many of the common symbols have been relegated to a third keyboard layout. The +,=,#,$,% are all three keyboards deep. But why can't they adopt the Android method and have all the numeric and common symbols on long presses, with other symbols just one keyboard change away. Or if not that, then make one of the two buttons that currently change it to the number keyboard change it to the symbol keyboard instead. That way it's not so much effort.

The only other real annoyance I have with the iPad are the notifications. Now notifications are a great idea, they notify you of stuff which is great :-) The problem with notifications on the iPad and iOS in general is they are far too intrusive. When a notification appears on the iPad it opens a dialog box in the middle of the screen to inform you about whatever it may be. A new tweet directed at you, your turn in an on-line game, a calendar appointment and numerous other app specific things. This can be very inconvenient, especially if you are watching a video, or playing a different game. It will simply interrupt whatever you are doing until you dismiss the pop-up dialog. It gets very frustrating when you are as popular as me :-) I was watching something on the iPlayer last night and my video was being interrupted every 4 or 5 minutes with a notification of some sort.

Why can't the OS just put a little icon in the status bar so I know something wants my attention but doesn't demand I deal with it at that very moment? Yes, I could turn off notifications, but that would be just as inconvenient as then I wouldn't be informed of anything.

Hopefully iOS 5 will help address some of these issues, I don't know. But I'll be disappointed if they don't! Especially when far better solutions are already in use by Android.

Well that was a much longer post than I'd intended it to be. Creating it on the iPad has been fairly easy. I haven't even mentioned the Smart Cover which I promised someone I'd write about. That will have to be another post because it's lunchtime now!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Getting mobile interwebs

2011-04-11T17:58:00.011+01:00

I'm looking at options to get my internet fix on the move. I've got an iPad 32Gb wi-fi on its way to me right now, I also have a laptop which I cart around and have to find wifi hotspots to piggyback on. I want something that will put an end to the hunt and I've found some things I quite like the look of but I need to know if it will work.

I could find a forum somewhere and post my questions there, but I know quite a lot of my tech-savvy friends read these posts, and I trust your advise more!

So, I'm looking at the Three MiFi device and I'm currently confused by the two options. They are the:

MiFi Pay As you Go +3

MiFi (5GB)

The first one appears to me to be £71.99 for the MiFi device. As far as I can see, there is no data included, so I'd have to PAYG and "top up" with a 30-day data bundle before I can use it.

On the other hand the MiFi (5GB) package is a "monthly" contract according to the site. It costs £39.99 for the MiFi device and a monthly fee of £15.99 for the 15GB of data.

Now that second option sounds very expensive over time. However, looking at the site I can't see any minimum contract length detailed. So, my question is:

Is there anything to stop me buying the MiFi (5GB) for £39.99 + £15.99 for the first month and then cancelling the monthly contract?

This would cost me a total of £55.98 and give me 15GB of data to start me off! That's a saving of £16.01 over the PAYG option, plus the cost of whatever data plan I added. Then would I be able to just get top-ups instead once I have the MiFi device rather than paying the monthly contract?

Or, even better, could I purchase a "Tablet SIM Pay As You Go + 12" for £51.49 which would give me 12Gb to use over 12 months for a single fee?

I don't see anything obvious that would prevent this, the MiFi device and SIM cards are both on the Three network. Am I missing something obvious in all this?

Revisiting the iPad

2011-03-16T11:46:00.003Z

So a little over a year ago I posted my thoughts on the iPad, you can check the post by scrolling down two entries. It may have been over a year ago that I wrote it, but not much happens here :-)

Anyway, basically I said I wasn't interested for several reasons. Some of those issues have been addressed with the iPad 2. They've added cameras for a start (see I told you they'd held them back on purpose) and multi-tasking is available now. Well okay, that was available with an iOS update on the original iPad too, but the new dual core A5 CPU should make it much better. Of course we have to be careful here, because it's not true multi-tasking, but it will do for now.

They still haven't added the SIM card slot to every device and I still don't understand why they need to produce different models for that. They still haven't really adapted the iOS for a tablet either, though it's better than it was when the original iPad came out.

I still feel it's overpriced, but then when you compare it to other tablets like the Xoom and Galaxy tab it doesn't look that bad after all so maybe for once I'm being a little harsh on Apple for that one?

All this waffling is just a long winded way of me saying I'm going to buy an iPad 2. Now I know it's still not perfect, however I have several reasons for wanting one. I currently use an iPhone 3G for all my app store requirements, but I haven't used it as a phone for a long time. I've had my HTC Desire for a year or so now, there's a whole other post about that phone but for another time maybe...

The iPhone 3G is showing its age now, new iOS releases aren't supporting it so slowly apps will no longer be available. It doesn't have multi-tasking which is getting really frustrating when I'm playing several games at the same time.

I think the time is right to get myself an iPad now. The things missing are things that don't bother me so much. The poor cameras aren't an issue, they'll be fine for Facetime/Skype and that's all I'll need them for. I have a DSLR for real photos and my camera phone for when I want to take a quick snap. The new iPad 2 should fill my requirements quite nicely for now.

New F1 season is dull

2010-03-14T16:19:00.004Z

It was with much excitement that I awaited the return of the F1 season for 2010. It had so much promise with the most competitive field for years. Several teams all very close in term of performance including Ferrari, McLaren, Red Bull and Mercedes.

Not only do we have so many top teams, there was also the prospect of seeing four world champions all on the track together (Button, Hamilton, Schumacher and Alonso). Never has an F1 season had so much to offer but as if that wasn't enough there was also the introduction of three new teams to the grid. The addition of Lotus, Virgin and Hispania meant we would have the largest field since 1995!

Things were still looking good during qualifying with the new teams faring better than would be expected. There was also lots of competition at the top with Ferrari looking strong until the Red Bull of Vettel smashed their times. So with a great starting grid there was still everything to race for.

It was when the actual race started that things went downhill. The first few corners had some incidents including the oil burning episode of Mark Webber that saw some turmoil left in his wake. There was also a move by Hamilton on Massa which he didn't manage to stick. But after that there was absolutely nothing to talk of.

Sure after around 15-20 laps they came in to change tyres, but that barely affected the grid. Though the McLaren's of Hamilton and Button did both benefit by gaining a place. But after the pit stop nothing happened except for a couple of retirements from the new teams.

Sadly for Vettel he suffered a mechanical failure with his exhaust which just meant he had to surrender his pole position and cling on to whatever points he could. This was the only small piece of drama in what was otherwise just a procession of cars pretty much from start to finish.

The new rules have basically killed off any tactical manoeuvrability with fuel loads and pit stops. The tyres are too good and last too well negating the need to change them, other than the dictated requirement to use both types. I would think that a set of hard tyres could last the full race distance!

Post race interviews were worrying too with drivers saying they weren't really pushed because they had to manage tyres. This is borne out by the lap times which didn't really drop below 2 minutes despite qualifying times being several seconds faster.

We really don't want this situation at all, the drivers should be out there to race, not nurse their cars around the track!

We need a change to the rules and fast. A minimum of two pit stops would be one way forward but is unlikely to get team approval now the season has started. They couldn't get agreement beforehand!

Another option that wouldn't involve a rule change would be to stop the tyres lasting as long, it would have the same effect as mandating two stops but wouldn't require team approval. This would at least enable the drivers to race the cars to the limit without having to worry so much about tyre wear.

If things stay as they are now you can expect every race this year to follow exactly the same pattern. The top teams will go into Q3 using the super soft for a fast lap time, then be forced to start the race on them. They will then pit at roughly quarter distance for the harder compound which will will then last them to the end of the race.... YAWN....

Fans deserve better than this, it seems that every attempt to make the racing more exciting over the last 3-4 years has had the exact opposite effect!

What is my ultimate solution? Well I have an idea and that's to stop meddling! Remove all the ridiculous rules and regulations (other than those for safety) becuase they just don't work. Set a sensible budget cap and just let the teams produce the best car/driver combination they can for the cash!

Let them develop double/triple diffusers and extra down-force if they can, why not? Let them test mid season if their budget allows, it's up to them how they spend it up to the cap. Stop trying to micro-manage F1 and let the car designers and engineers do the best job they can!

My thoughts on the Apple iPad

2010-01-28T00:09:00.002Z

So tonight the internet went a bit crazy with the culmination of weeks, no months of hype! Apple finally unveiled its highly anticipated Tablet device they've name the iPad. I thought I'd share my initial thoughts and reaction to the device as undoubtedly the rest of the internet will.

I've never been a huge Apple fan, I have an iPhone 3G but it's the only device I own. If I wasn't able to jailbreak it then I wouldn't own that either. However, with all the hacks and modifications applied it becomes an unbeatable device. It shows what Apple could do if they really tried!

With the announcement of the iPad it seems nothing has changed, it's a disappointing over priced half arsed attempt at a tablet. It seems obvious to me that Apple have deliberately crippled this device so they can easily improve it in future annual product update cycles.

At the end of the day, the iPad is basically a big iPhone without the calling, SMS and camera functionality. The biggest surprise here has to be the lack of a camera, I mean seriously... cameras have been standard in devices for years. How can Apple think it acceptable to leave one out of this device and how much are you willing to wager that they'll add one to the next iPad? The iPad would have been ideal for making video Skype calls with its internet capabilities after all, to say nothing of the popularity with video blogs.

It seems Apple have produced an awesome piece of hardware but just not bothered with the OS too. Why create a device with this much power and a screen this large and then slap the iPhone's OS on to it? This means no multi-tasking, but perhaps the biggest crime is NO FLASH support! In a machine this size web browsing is a big part of the experience. If you can't use Flash then it effectively renders the iPad useless. It's such a massive let down! Just look at the top of this post, don't you think it looks ridiculous with the small icons separated out across that massive screen? Apple haven't even tried to customise the firmware for this device!

Then we come to the price, why do Apple think it is appropriate to charge an extra $130 to have a SIM slot added to your device? You can't even use it unless you pay a monthly subscription to a mobile data provider! The slot should be part of the standard hardware, I simply cannot believe that it isn't.

The iPad has far too many things missing and adds nothing new to the current offering to make me even remotely interested. I'm not going to rule out ever owning one, in a year or so when they release an update that should have been what this is and the OS is improved and I can jailbreak it. Then I might be tempted. This reminds me very much of the original iPhone, a great idea but fatally flawed in its execution.

I'll pass for now, come back when you've got it right Apple!

More essential apps for a Jailbroken iPhone

2009-11-28T17:42:00.019Z

Back in February I wrote a post about the iPhone jailbreak and the apps available from Cydia which is the equivalent of the app store for jailbreak programs. You can read it here if you've not seen it before Jailbroken iPhone 3G - essential apps.

Since then quite a lot has changed, the iPhone 3GS has been launched and with it an update of the iPhone OS to version 3.0. This introduced numerous new features that addressed some of the most compelling reasons to jailbreak. The new OS gave us copy and paste, MMS, Spotlight search, 3G tethering, better Bluetooth support, a voice memo app, push notifications and other smaller improvements.

However, it didn't address all the issues and customisation still has to be the most compelling reason to jailbreak an iPhone. Fortunately it didn't take too long for people far more clever than I to figure out a new jailbreak for OS 3.0. The even better news is it's now even easier than before!

If you haven't jailbroken your iPhone yet, there has never been a better time to do so! Head over to Blackra1n where you can download a small application that will run either on a Windows or Mac PC. When you run it you will need to connect your iPhone via its USB cord, then simply click the button. A few seconds later and you're all done! It really is that simple.

The first thing you'll want to do is load the new iPhone App "blackra1n" which you'll see has appeared on your dashboard and install Cydia. This is your gateway to all sorts of cool new things you can do with your iPhone!

Some of the previous essential apps are still just as essential as before. Mainly WinterBoard, ToneFXs, BossPrefs, LiveClock, WeatherIcon, LockCalendar and Cycorder (if you don't have an iPhone 3GS).

Of course since February there have been a lot of new developments in Cydia too! The Cydia store is the main thing to know about. Previously 99% of apps in Cydia were free, only a small number required you to purchase a license from a website before it could be used properly. Now the developer of Cydia, Saurik, has integrated store functionality allowing other developers to charge for their apps.

This is a great thing, it encourages some superb apps because there is a revenue stream available to them, it also opens up the door to people disillusioned with Apples App Store. For the end user you get an easy way to purchase and pay for these apps as well as an easy way to download them again in the future because it remembers your purchases!

Right, so onto the main part of this post and the new "essential iPhone apps"! First on your list has to be AptBackup. This app will backup your jailbroken iPhone apps saving you a huge amount of time and hassle when you upgrade the iPhone firmware. You see when you apply a new firmware you lose your jailbreak and all the associated apps, you have to start again from scratch. With AptBackup you simply run the app before you upgrade your iPhone, this stores a list of all the apps you have installed. When you've finished upgrading the firmware and performed a new jailbreak simply go to Cydia and install AptBackup first. Then run this app and hit the restore button. The app will then download and install all your old jailbreak apps automatically. It will save you literally hours if you have a lot of apps installed!

It's important to note that AptBackup doesn't actually backup any files or programs. It just creates a list of apps that you have installed and will download and re-install them automatically. This is perfectly adequate for most situations though. Any customisation to settings you've made are normally remembered. There may be the odd exception, but considering the time it saves, you won't be complaining. You might also find that an old app will no longer function on the new firmware so it's a good idea to do your research first. It may be an idea to wait for apps to be updated so they are compatible, especially if like me you come to rely on them!

My next recommendation is for qTweeter, this allows you to send Twitter and Facebook messages from any application and at any time. You just have to use a gesture and swipe your finger down from the top of the screen. There's a video below so you can see how it works:

If you use BossPrefs, don't worry qTweeter will still work happily. It will change the BossPrefs gesture to a horizontal swipe on the status bar!

Moving on I've got a great little utility that will be a money saver for those on pay & go or with a limited SMS allowance. The iPhones SMS implementation has always annoyed me because I never now how many characters I've used! Step up SMS Helper, this awesome little utility integrates itself into the iPhones SMS app and will tell you how many characters you have remaining and when you run out tell you how many messages you're using. It does this in a cool way by animating the "Send" button. When you are typing it flips around to show the characters remaining, then when you stop it will flip back to a send button again. When you reach the end of the first message the button will turn Red giving you a clear visual indication that you're using more than one text. It's fantastic and even better totally free!

I haven't listed these apps in any order but if I had this next one would probably have to go at the top! It's called SatusNotifier, it integrates itself into the shell of your iPhone and uses the Statusbar at the top to place small icons next to the battery indicator. It will put up a little speech bubble when you have new SMS messages to read, an envelope if you've got unread email and a mute icon when you have your iPhone set to silent. There are more notifications available including missed calls, MMS, IM, Calendar and RSS. They can all be set individually if you have no use for a particular notification.

Another app for you here, this time it's just a cosmetic thing really. If you've taken the time to add photos to your contacts then you might be interested in installing Cyntact. This is another app that integrates seamlessly with the iPhone OS and will place small thumbnail images of your contacts next to their names in the contacts list:

Hot on the heals of Cyntact comes CyDelete, this gives you an easy way to delete apps installed via Cydia. When you delete an app installed via the App Store you can do it by clicking on the 'x' when you hold your finger on an icon. Cydia apps don't do this by default, you have to remove them using the Cydia package manager. It's easy enough and in some cases where Cydia apps integrate into the iPhone OS there is no icon so you have to do it this way. However, for those that do place an icon on the dashboard CyDelete will allow you to remove them using the same method as those purchased in the App store!

Here is another example of how jailbreaking your device can give you more freedom. Have you ever been annoyed that when you receive a text message you have to stop what you're doing and go to the SMS app? Even if you just wanted to send a quick reply? Well now you can forget all that frustration with QuickReply for SMS! I've included a video to show you how cool it is:

Just like qTweeter above it will overlay the SMS functionality on your current app. You can compose a text and send a reply and return to what you were doing before. No need to shut down your browser or other app first! It makes so much sense to be able to do this and will save a lot of frustration.

I have just one final recommendation for my essential jailbreak apps, it's only just been released but it is quite cool. The app in question is called SnapTap and it will give you a physical button to press when you take photos using the iPhone camera. Of course it can't actually add a button to the iPhone, but what it will do is change the function of the volume button when you are in the camera app. You'll never need to adjust the volume when using the camera so it makes perfect sense. With the SnapTap extension installed when you open the Camera you can use the volume up/down button to take the photo. It makes taking photos of yourself so much easier because you don't have to guess where the button is on the screen. It's also a lot more natural and allows you to hold the iPhone in a more traditional camera style to take pictures! It also works when using it for video to start/stop recording on the iPhone 3GS and is compatible with almost all the other apps that use the camera too. There's another short video below:

So that's sums up my updated list, I'll probably have even more in a few months and will end up writing a Part III. Until then enjoy these apps, tell me what you think and if you've found any gems that I'm missing let me know!

Shortest scam email ever?

2009-11-20T09:30:00.003Z

This was in my inbox this morning:

From: British Tobacco Office
Subject: Prize

Message:

send your details to claim one million pounds in the tobacco promo

The scammer didn't even feel the need do disguise his email address so if you want to claim my prize feel free. His address is mrjohncarrick1@hawamail.com, of course you'll have to guess what details he wants but I guess bank account number etc.. so he can transfer funds, possibly a good idea to include your credit card number too just in case along with your address.

Goodwood Revival 2009

2009-09-25T20:39:00.004+01:00

Last weekend I spent a fantastic day at the Goodwood revival. There was supposed to be four of us in total, but sadly two had to drop out. One because something else cropped up that he couldn't get out of, the other person was ill on the day so stayed at home in bed.

That didn't stop the two of us left having one of the most fun days out I've had all year, and that is a year that includes the F1 GP at Silverstone!

We arrived really early after being told you need to be there as soon as possible if you don't want to spend half your day sitting in traffic. The fact we didn't have to pick up the third person meant we also saved ourselves an extra 20 minutes on our journey time. I think we actually got into the circuit at about 8:30am so had plenty of time to explore before the first race at 10am.

I always like to walk round a circuit to get a good idea of the track so that was the first thing we did. Even though it all opened up at 7:30am, it was still pretty deserted when we arrived so it was nice to be able to wonder around freely and easily. It probably took us about 45 minutes to complete a lap at a leisurely pace, just a tad slower than the 1m50secs the car were lapping in a bit later that day!

While we were walking round lots of aircraft starting landing on the runway in the infield. Some amazing planes were showing up and as there is fairly open access every where we decided to take a trip into the infield for a closer look at some of the classic planes. We also found the Earls Court mock up with a fabulous car show inside the hanger.

Seeing all that the infield had to offer meant we actually missed the first race at 10am and once we escaped we discovered just how busy the place had become! We didn't bother with stadium seating as they were quite expensive, but it was becoming evident how valuable they were. We started to make our way round the track again to find ourselves a suitable vantage point to view some on-track action. We ended up walking over half way around the circuit again before we decided to rest our legs for a while. It wasn't a great spot but we needed some recuperation time having walked non-stop from 8:30am until what was now gone 10:30am.

One race later, from our less than ideal position and we felt it was time to set off again to find somewhere we could see a bit more of the racing. This done we settled in for an hour or so of spectating until we got hungry, time for lunch!

Another trek to the nearest grandstand to find some food wagons, but massive queues everywhere. It was going to be busy regardless of where we went, so we just stood in line for about 20 minutes and ended up with a slightly pathetic burger for an extortionate price. Never mind though, nothing could compare to the £12 they were charging for the programmes!

After lunch we experienced the worst renditions of "Happy Birthday" and "Rule Britannia" I've ever heard. It really was quite embarrassing, it was Sir Stirling Moss's 80th birthday over the weekend. I was great to pay tribute to him, but they seriously couldn't have found anyone with a worse voice to do the job! What was quite amusing was watching the faces of all the spectators, I wish I'd got that on film.

Later in the afternoon one of the highlights of the day was seeing the Vulcan bomber doing a fly past, which you can see below. There really was nothing to spoil the superb day though, we spent over 12 hours at the track and loved every minute of it. If you've never been I really can't recommend it highly enough to you. There's something for everyone, whether it's the racing, aircraft, fairground, live music, dressing up, stunning scenery or the merchandise tents with all manner of period paraphernalia available to buy. They manage to cater to the whole family!

I took my Toshiba Camileo P10 camera with me and took quite a lot of video during the day. Much of it is just cars flying past on the track, but after some editing I put together a 15 minute video. Considering the camera was less than £100 and produces HD footage, I'm quite happy with it. You can see it in two parts for yourself on YouTube, don't forget to hit the HD button though!

Wii fit progress

2009-09-07T16:35:00.003+01:00

It's been a week on my new "fitness" regime now... how's it going? Well I've been doing my bit every day for at least 30 mins. The good news is the 1lb it reported I'd lost after the first couple of days didn't come back again, the even better news is that I've lost a further 3lb during the week. So a total loss of 4lb!

In fact it's all pretty positive really except for the realisation that to reach my ideal weight it's going to take me a very long time. I don't really want to lose the weight any faster than that, but I just don't know if I'll be able to keep it up for the amount of time needed!

Still anything is better than nothing and as long as I don't put the weight back on again I'll stay relatively happy. I'll try and do at least one update a week here, it's just another motivating factor for me to keep going if I have to report back.

Wii fit update

2009-09-01T15:22:00.003+01:00

So on Sunday I reported that I had picked up a copy of Wii Fit, mainly for the balance board. The game just comes with it really, but I need to get fit anyway so I decided to give it a go, despite me being convinced it's just a gimmick. See my previous post "Getting fit with Wii Fit" for more on that.

Three days later and so far I've stuck to the commitment, I've done at least 30 mins a day, probably nearer to 45 actually. I figure if I do 30mins a day that's probably a reasonable workout for my fitness level. I'm actually quite impressed with its ability to engage your whole body in the training exercises. I've built up a good sweat when I've played it and while it's easy to cheat the system there's no point. You won't lose weight or build up muscle by just shaking the remote a bit. You have to engage with the game and actually work at it, it requires a level of dedication and a willingness to do things properly.

I'm finding some of the exercises pretty tough, simply because my fitness level is about as low as it could possibly be. I can't physically do a push up for example so need to work on my upper body strength first, something that Wii Fit doesn't really address. So I've got some dumb bells and I'm doing some curls to work towards my goal of doing a push up :-)

However, I certainly know it's working to some degree, I can feel my muscles ache where I'm actually pushing them. I'm trying hard not to over do it, I know that can be dangerous. But it's a fine line because if you don't push yourself then you won't accomplish anything.

Wii Fit actually reported I'd lost 1lb today and my BMI dropped very slightly, I'm not sure how much to read into that though. It could be accounted for in so many ways, the only way I'll know for sure is if it stays like that tomorrow and continues to head down over the course of the next week or so. Basically, I'm not going to get too excited yet, and even if I have there are many, many more I need to shed yet!

It's good to see the graph though, it's nice to see how you're improving but only if it's going down. I have a feeling if the line goes back up I'll lose interest pretty quickly!

Having played it I am convinced it will help with my fitness though, especially if I do it every day. I'm certainly going to try, but it could take a very long time to get my body into shape. I don't want to go on any crash diets, they don't work, so I'm doing it the hard way. A sensible balanced diet and exercise!

Stay tuned if you want to follow my progress!

Getting fit with Wii Fit

2009-08-30T20:12:00.002+01:00

It was never my intention to buy this game, I always thought and still do think that the whole thing is a bit of a gimmick. But I wanted a balance board for a couple of other games and to be honest, it really wouldn't do me any harm to lose some weight. So if it did work then that would be a bonus.

Initial set up was nice and easy and the end result was unsurprising. It lists me as being just inside the obese category which I already knew, just confirming (as if it needed) that I have to lose weight.

I took part in a few of the activities and while they didn't seem too taxing at the time, I now realise that it actually has given me a bit of a workout. I can feel my muscles ache slightly, not in a "I can't move" way, but in an "enough to know I've done something active" way.

I'm still not sold on the game being able to help me lose weight in any meaningful way, but I'll give it a chance and see if it makes a difference. It seems most of the activities revolve around you having to keep balance, which isn't surprising as you're using a balance board, but I don't see how maintaining your centre of gravity gets rid of fat!

I'm also not sure what the point of setting targets is, I thought it would create a workout programme for me to help meet my goals. But I just seem to be left to do whatever I feel like, so I have no idea how much I should be aiming to do each day. The "personal trainer" is a waste of time too, apart from demonstrating each exercise they do nothing apart from spout really annoying and unhelpful comments.

Still, let's give it a chance I'll try and play it every day for a fortnight and see if there's any improvement. Watch this space!

Great hosting for Wordpress - WPWebHost

2009-08-25T15:39:00.011+01:00

This is my first real post in quite a while, I seem to have been concentrating on my twitter account. I didn't think I'd get it at first, but I really enjoy this micro-blogging format. It's quick and easy and I don't have to think about it!

Anyway, this post is a bit of a plug for a company I've been using for a few months to host my website. I can honestly say I've never used a hosting company as good as these guys!

I can't remember how I actually found them now but I'm so glad I did. When I decided to switch my site to Wordpress from Drupal I was using a standard web hosting company. I had a problem with my Wordpress installation and they just said it's my problem to deal with, nothing wrong with their servers! After a bit of digging on the net I found that it was their service that was the problem, but there was nothing they would do to fix it. I could either put up with it or go elsewhere. That's when I hit on the WPWebHost guys!

I must admit when I signed up I had no idea what I was letting myself in for, I'd not researched them or anything. It was most unlike me to act like that, I'm normally very thorough when it comes to this sort of thing. However, my site was starting to get more visitors and I needed to switch my provider quickly! As they were fairly cheap and gave a 100 day money back guarantee I figured there was nothing to lose, it couldn't get any worse.

Once I'd signed up, their tech support simply couldn't have been any better. They offered to move my site for me from my current host to their service for free. After sending them my account details it was all done and ready to go within a couple of hours. All I had to do was update my domain registration to point to the sites new location. Super easy, amazingly efficient and a real breath of fresh air.

What makes WPWebHost so great is that they have configured and tailored their servers for Wordpress hosting. It means that things just work on their packages and the benefits of that can't be under estimated!

As always I have a had a few problems with my site, normally as a result of me doing something stupid. In every case whenever I've emailed their support, no matter what time of day I've got a response usually within an hour with the problem either fixed for me, or a solution.

The thing that's worth noting here is that it doesn't matter what the issue is. They are happy to provide technical support for Wordpress itself, I've even had them troubleshooting a plug-in I was using.

If you use Wordpress or you have a blog and you're thinking about taking it to the next level, or just considering using it for a project, I cannot recommend WPWebHost highly enough. Take a look at their Wordpress hosting packages and give it a try, if you don't like it you can always get your money back. I'm convinced that won't happen though, you can find a link to them at the top of this article!

What’s on your iPhone?

2009-07-25T11:45:00.005+01:00

A friend made a blog post with all the apps he has got installed on his iPhone which you can read here:

What's in your iPhone

So in reply to that blog, here is my response. This is what's on my iPhone:

Page 1

The first thing to notice is that my iPhone is jailbroken which means I can customise quite a bit on the phone. The most obvious thing is the wallpaper, having a custom wallpaper is normally only possible on the lock screen. Now whenever I see an iPhone with a black background I can't help but feel it looks boring.

Another thing you may have noticed is the reflective dock and the different image for the dock. Also the carrier logo (02) in the status bar at the top is the actual O2 logo rather than the dull O2-UK you would normally see.

Two of my app icons are also different if you look closely. The Clock app is actually showing the correct time and the Weather app has the current weather for my location displayed.

I think the only other thing worth mentioning here is the Cycorder app, this gives the iPhone 3G video capability. No need to upgrade to an iPhone 3GS for that!

Page 2

Nothing much of note here, Tioti TV+ is great if you need remote record for your iPhone. Far better than the offering from Sky! Air Sharing is great for carrying documents around if you don't want to have the hassle of a USB stick.

Page 3

It's the games page, PapiJump is a great little game that is simple yet addictive. Peggle and Flight Control are my favourite games. But probably my most heavily played title has to be B-gammon, I simply love Backgammon and play it as much as I possibly can. It's the only app that has been on my iPhone from the day I got it!

Page 4

Another app page here, and of course some gratuitous cleavage as well. These tend to me my rarely used apps, though Tweetie should really be promoted! WunderRadio is great for listening to radio stations via the iPhone too.

Page 5

This is the page where I keep my "work apps", so there's a weight converter a noise level meter a couple of gobo libraries. A lighting rig remote control (Luminair), a dip switch tool to save my brain working out the binary arithmetic and finally a gel swatch library.

The more observant among you may have noticed there's a bit more cleavage here too!

Page 6

The final page of apps! This is my Jailbreak page, it has Cydia the package manager and installer. Winterboard which lets you customise the theme as I explained earlier and ToneFXs allowing me to have custom SMS alerts etc.

I also have StatusNotifier which puts little icons in the status bar when I have new mail, or my phone is on silent. There are other icons too, it's rather a handy app. Oh and of course more cleavage :-)

I love my Jailbroken iPhone, it gives me all the things Apple should have done!

The car door saga

2009-05-08T17:20:00.006+01:00

I have a lovely car, well I like it:

Recently the electric window broke in the passenger door, I did a bit of research and discovered that it was likely to be the window regulator. I had no idea what one of those is or what it does, but I have a good friend in the motor trade who sells car parts to garages. I explained to him what the problem was and he ordered me the part.

I had to wait a couple of weeks for it to arrive as the supplier was out of stock. It arrived last week so at the weekend I went about replacing it. Having no idea what I was doing I searched the internet and found a fantastic tutorial on the Seat forums:

Replacing the front door window regulator

Armed with this comprehensive guide I felt fairly confident and set aside a reasonable chunk of time (3 hours) to do the job. It all went surprisingly well and without too many dramas, though I did have a problem getting panel back on with the new metal guides attached because they were slightly longer than the old ones.

However, almost exactly three hours after I started the job was done. I hit the button and to my joy the window went up and down again just as it should. I was enjoying the feeling of immense satisfaction at a job well done and also saving myself a few hundred quid by not getting a garage involved.

Just then, total disaster struck! I closed the door...... Now normally this wouldn't be a problem, but for some reason I just could not open it again. I tried for the inside, the outside, tried locking and unlocking it. Nothing would let me open the door again!

I eventually gave up and resigned myself to paying the dealer a fortune to put it right. So today I took a trip to my 'local' Seat dealer, some 20 odd miles away. To my amazement the service manager was extremely helpful, he told me exactly how I could fix the problem myself. I was expecting him to just book it in and quote me a three figure sum to do it for me. I left with the reassuring words of the service manager in my ears, "Any problems, just give me a call and if you want we will be happy to do it for you, but it's going to cost you!".

So, armed with this fresh information and worried about the required cash needed to have it done, I was determined not to be beaten! As soon as I arrived home I removed the door panel as explained to me. Immediately I was able to open the door, hallelujah!

I haven't been able to fix the problem totally though. It seems the metal rod that pokes up through the top of the door card and acts as the lock has been bent. This means when the door panel is fitted the lock can't move up and down. So it's stuck and won't allow the door to open.

The service engineer said I could try to straighten it, but it would probably be easier to replace the whole rod. He will have to order the rod, so I've decided to at least try and straighten it. I'll give it a go tomorrow because it's getting cold outside now. I'll let you know how it all goes.

I'm on Twitter

2009-05-08T17:15:00.002+01:00

Yup, just like my blog I held off for a long time. But now I've finally given in to the Twitter lure. If you are a fellow twitterite you can follow me at http://www.twitter.com/lufferov, leave me your details in the comments below and I'll follow you.

Formula 1 and the FIA, what a joke

2009-04-03T10:15:00.004+01:00

So the new F1 season opened in Malaysia at the weekend and it was a superb race. In fact it's the most excited I've been about a new F1 season for a long time. The rule changes are set to make things a lot more interesting. But just a few days later, the FIA have managed to turn a fantastic race into a complete farce and potentially ruin the entire season before it's barely begun!

There were a number of incidents in the grand prix, I want to focus on three of them here:

Trulli - Hamilton

Trulli was the one who lost control and put his car off the track. Hamilton gave the position back whilst waiting for race control to give them an answer, just to play it safe. Race control never gave them an answer as to whether he had to do that! So is it the right decision, I think that's controversial. But what's really not right is setting out to make Hamilton look like the bad guy in all this.

Barrichello

How about the first corner where Barrichello caused an avoidable accident taking out other competitors? Ending Kovalainen's race and ruining Webber, Sutil and Heidfeld's race! He finishes second and nothing is said about it. Now what if that had been Hamilton? I can't help thinking it would be a totally different story then!

Vettel - Kubica

Then there was the Vettel, Kubica crash, which in my view was clearly 50/50. Vettel had track position and Kubica did not leave him enough room, I don't see how or why Vettel should have been forced to give up his position there. A 10-place penalty for that incident is harsh.

It would seem there are now three stages to an F1 race, qualifying, racing, and the FIA manipulation of results. What's the point of watching a race when the result can change several times after the event?

Do FIFA go around awarding goals after a football match because of a foul the referee didn't see, or deducting them because the ref awarded a penalty which he shouldn't? In fact is there any other sport where this sort of thing happens?

Jailbroken iPhone 3G - essential apps

2009-02-02T14:18:00.007Z

No activity here for a month, and then two posts in one day! What's going on? Well I've been finding out lots of cool things about the iPhone and I have to tell people.

I've got an iPhone 3G, I've had it for a while now. It's a great phone in so many ways, but it lacks some pretty unforgivable things, I've mentioned some of them here in previous posts. However, thanks to the wonders of the iPhone jailbreak these shortcoming can be fixed. That is if you are prepared to hack your phone with a little utility.

Just thought I'd post some of the really useful apps you can get on a jailbroken iPhone which lets it do the stuff you would expect it to out of the box. But also discover some of the cool things you can do to enhance the iPhone even more.

First of all though, you need to get your iPhone jailbroken. This really couldn't be any simpler, there are a couple of options but by far the easiest is QuickPwn. All you have to do is update your iPhone to the latest firmware from iTunes, then connect your phone up and run the QuickPwn application on your PC or mac. It gives clear instructions on what you need to do and it really is so simple and painless. You can download the latest version of QuickPwn here:

http://www.quickpwn.com.

I'm not going to give you a full step-by-step guide, it's all pretty self explanatory anyway and there are already hundreds of people out there who have done it before. If you're really confused just do a Google search!

Right, so I'm going to assume your phone is now jailbroken and you are free from Apple's closed world. The first thing you want to do is check out a new application installed on your phone called Cydia. It's basically a package installer/manager for the iPhone. A bit like the App Store, but consists of unofficial applications which are not approved by Apple. Most are completely free, but some require you to purchase a key to fully unlock them once installed.

You'll probably have to install some essential upgrades if it's the first time you've run it, so go ahead and do that first. To learn how to use Cydia I recommend this tutorial. When you've got the basic idea take a look below at my suggestions for what's essential for you to install from Cydia to get the most from you iPhone.

The first thing has to be WinterBoard. This allows you to theme your iPhone, from something as simple as adding a customised wallpaper to your iPhones menu (called the Springboard). To a full blown theme changing the icons, sounds, keyboard, clock, battery indicator etc... According to Cydia there are currently 673 items compatible with Springboard that you can download as well as 91 different battery icons, 27 keyboard layouts, 94 lockscreens, 44 sound themes, 103 system themes and much more besides!

For example, don't like the way you have to slide your finger to unlock the iPhone? No problem, just install "A Better Tap to Unlock". It will let you unlock your phone with a tap on the screen. There are so many customisations you can make!

Next on my list is ToneFXs. It lets you change your ringtone easily, but also lets you set sounds for new sms messages, Voicemail, email, calendar alerts, keyboard clicks, photo shutter, lock & unlock sound, charging sound. Check out this rather long video of ToneFXs in action. Can't say I like his choice of sounds, but that's the point, you can have whatever you like!

My next tip is BossPrefs which gives you quick access to turn on or off, 3G, Edge, Wifi, Bluetooth and email. It also gives you access to power options to respring the iPhone, reboot or power off. This can be very handy if you have a problem!

Other cool apps include LiveClock (used to be called LiveTime) which turns your clock icon into a real clock that actually shows the correct time. WeatherIcon, that means your weather icon will show the current weather instead of a sunny 73 degrees all the time. hClipboard that adds a copy & paste capability to your keyboard!

LockCalendar, which puts up to ten upcoming events in your calendar on the Lock screen. This is so useful and was a huge oversight by Apple!

There is also a selection of games available ranging from a Pacman style rip-off called "Macman", to a port of DOOM & Quake, emulators for the NES and Sega Genesis (MegaDrive), a MAME app and more besides.

To sum up, jailbreaking an iPhone really does open up a whole new world of possibilities! I could never go back to a generic firmware now, I've seen the light. Give it a try, but make sure you know what you're doing first. I'd hate you to destroy your precious phone!

EDIT: How could I possibly forget what is almost certainly the best app for a jailbroken iPhone. It's called Cycorder and it gives your iPhone video recording capability. It's truly amazing, the video quality is superb with almost no compression. It captures video at 384x288 which is a 4x3 aspect ratio at 15fps, although this will drop to 6fps in low light conditions. It sound like that might be bad, but trust me. The low frame rate means that the shutter is open longer allowing more light in per frame. This actually allows Cycorder to perform better in low light conditions than many other camera phones because you can actually see stuff... albeit slightly jerky, but in my opinion, that's better than not seeing anything at all!

Take a look at this demo of Cycorder which was actually recorded on another iPhone using the Cycorder app. Video quality looks great, sound is clear, the whole package is very well done.

UPDATE: There's now a follow up post to this article on my blog - More essential apps for a Jailbroken iPhone

iPhone MMS, FINALLY!

2009-01-11T11:44:00.005Z

I had to shout out about the iPhone finally being capable of MMS!

A new app is available on the store called "MMS Photo Messaging". It allows your iPhone to receive MMS messages and it works really well. The even better news is that it's free to download and receive messages. While you're reading the rest of this post go and:

Download with iTunes

Right, when you've installed it all you have to do is enter your mobile number and the PIN you use to read your MMS messages on the O2 website. It will remember these in future and just take you straight to your inbox. Once there it downloads any existing MMS messages and will download any new ones as they are sent to you. So, the next time you get the SMS alert from O2 to say you have a new MMS, just load up the new app and it will be there for. It works in a similar way to the email application, so it should be fairly familiar and easy to use.

Now it's not perfect, a couple of things are holding it back, they are:

1) It costs money to send MMS messages, you have to buy credits for approximately 35p per message depending on how any credits you buy.

2) It can only do picture messages.

3) The service can suffer during high demand meaning it keeps asking for you to log in.

Now these are problems that are not too serious, it would be nice to have MMS messages come from your tariff. But clearly that is not possible for a 3rd party application, and it really is simple to buy credits. The price of sending messages is cheaper now than it was when it got released, there are also claims that prices will fall further in the future.

Now the service has been running for a while and it has become a lot more stable. I haven't had it fail on me for a a week or so now. This is great news, it's also great that Apple let this onto the App Store, finally admitting the need for an MMS application for the iPhone. Perhaps we will see MMS integrated into a future firmware, that would be nice. Until then though, this is a brilliant programme that everyone should have installed.

It's in the can

2008-12-10T01:30:00.004Z

Well the recording of Noel's Christmas Presents has taken place. It all seemed to go very well, even though it took over an hour longer to record than scheduled due to retakes. It was a great experience and I enjoyed every minute, but I'm not sure I'm interested in working in the TV industry. Not that I ever had any intentions of doing so, but nothing about the week has made me feel inclined to pursue it as a career path. I'd never say never, but I think theatre is where my heart is for now at least.

The show is already a fading memory, the very next day I was straight on to the next job. It's now time for Pantomime, this year I have the delights of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. We're currently in technical rehearsals and opening night is Friday evening. So lots to cram in to get the show fit for the paying public.

Still got the transmission of the show to look forward to though. If you are interested in seeing my beautiful theatre in all its glory here are all the confirmed transmission dates for the show. First broadcast is on the 21st December on Sky One at 6pm, it is then repeated as follows:

Mon 22/12 11.00 Sky1

Mon 22/12 20.00 Sky2

Wed 24/12 18.00 Sky1

Thurs 25/12 10.00 Sky1

Thurs 25/12 16.00 Sky1

Thurs 25/12 21.00 Sky2

Fri 26/12 15.00 Sky1

Sat 27/12 20.00 Sky1

Sun 28/12 09.00 Sky2

Mon 29/12 08.30 Sky Real Lives

Mon 29/12 09.30 Sky Real Lives +1

Mon 29/12 11.00 Sky1

Mon 29/12 20.30 Sky Real Lives

Mon 29/12 21.30 Sky Real Lives +1

They certainly like to get their money's worth out of a show like this! There are no excuses for missing it, unless you don't have Sky I guess.

For now, "hi ho, hi ho, it's off to bed I go"..... more rehearsals tomorrow!

Noel's Christmas Presents

2008-12-05T21:42:00.004Z

So the lighting and sound is in, the set is up and the cameras are ready to roll! This whole week has been utterly crazy, a complete whirlwind. So much activity, so many people.... what do they all do? I have no idea!

Apart from a days rehearsal tomorrow we are pretty much ready to go. It's a really alien concept this TV malarkey though. So much time, money and effort goes into one performance, then it all gets ripped down and thrown away. Nothing like a week of shows or even a tour, just a one hit wonder. Of course the whole thing gets captured on film but it's not the same as a live show.

Haven't had a chance to take any photos until today but here is the finished set. It's looking pretty festive! I'll let you decide how it measures up to the model I posted earlier in the week.

Here's another photo from another angle, this time with one of the many cameras in shot.

So we've just got a day of rehearsal tomorrow with Mr Noel Edmunds and then record the programme in the evening. At which point someone will shout "That's a wrap", and the really hard work begins of dismantling it all into the early hours of Sunday morning!

Sky One filming

2008-11-29T22:19:00.004Z

So this week will see my theatre become a TV studio to record a programme for Sky One with Noel Edmunds. The show is "Noel's Christmas Presents" and will be broadcast on Christmas day. More details will be available nearer the time but for now Sky have this on their website:

http://sky1.sky.com/show/noels-christmas-presents

It will be an interesting week for me, I've never done any TV or film work before. Having to get used to a whole new dictionary of terms is bound to cause some confusion. Quite how two industries so closely linked can have such totally different names for things is slightly odd. But since theatre is far older, I maintain our names are the correct ones!

The content of the show is all pretty secretive given that the nature of the programme revolves around surprises, so I can't really tell you anything more about it at this stage.

We've already done a fair amount of preparation work to make the venue more TV friendly. Mainly involving the removal of seats to make space for cameras. It will be interesting to see how the set turns out. For those who don't know, a scale model is produced before it goes off to the set builders for full size construction. I took a photo of the model for reference which you can see below:

The red box with the teddy on it will be a large video screen for VT with the two sofas centre stage for Noel and his guests and the whole thing is encompassed by a star cloth. How accurate the finished set will be remains to be seen!

It all kicks off properly on Wednesday when we put all the lighting up, Thursday will be set build day and Friday is Sound and Cameras get in. Then we spend all day Saturday in rehearsals followed by the filming on Saturday evening in front of a "live ~~studio~~ theatre audience".

I'll update the blog as and when I have time with photos and more details, but for now "STANDBY STUDIO"!

iGoogle ruined

2008-10-16T22:31:00.004+01:00

Anyone who uses iGoogle will probably have seen the new version today. If you haven't, do yourself a favour and never look, it will break your heart to see how badly Google screwed up one of the best "personalised homepages" on the web.

That nicely organised layout you had sorted and were perfectly happy with will be destroyed. They have introduced a left sidebar for the tabs, why I have no idea, and it is a disaster!

I don't even use the tabs, I just want a single page where it shows my Gmail, Facebook status, Calendar, Google Reader and BBC news headlines. Now I have it all squished over to the side and a big empty space on the left for the non-existent tabs. What was wrong with them at the top? They weren't in anyone's way up there!

They've updated some of the gadgets now, for example, the BBC News shows a summary as well as the headline. But I don't want the summary, it takes up too much space. Before there was an option to expand the headline if you wanted to see the summary. Not now though, and you can't change it either!

Google Reader is supposed to work from within iGoogle, but the scrolling doesn't seem to be very happy when doing that. It should be using an iFrame so the tabs and main header stay at the top, but it doesn't. Not nice!

Then there is the Gmail gadget, before if I clicked on my Inbox I'd be taken to Gmail. Not now though, instead I'm taken to the iGoogle version of Gmail, it's so bad!

They've also taken away the option to minimise a gadget. Well, you can still do it but you have to use the drop down menu instead of the convenient button on the gadgets bar.

GAH! I'm really quite disappointed in this, there is no way to go back to the old version so iGoogle is no good to me now. Damn it! I'm actually quite upset about the whole thing, which is most unlike me...

Why do people have to tinker and fix things that are never broken? It's going to be the Xbox 360 next and the new dashboard update, MS have managed to destroy that too, seems like everyone is at it!

This has suddenly made me realise one of the big problems with this kind of modern web development. In the "good ol' days" a program was updated and you could read reviews, then decide if the new features were worth getting. If they were you installed the update, if not you just kept the version you were using. Or, if you didn't like a new version, you could un-install it and go back to the old way.

I hate this "forced upgrade" path that is happening more and more, I want to have control of my PC, I don't want my computer usage dictated to me. But now, I have to either just put up with it, or stop using it altogether, but that's not so easy when you've become so accustomed to a certain way of doing things.

Google reader broken

2008-09-17T12:37:00.002+01:00

What have they done to the Google reader? It's my favourite RSS reader and since this morning it doesn't work. When I try to access the reader I am greeted with this screen:

I don't know what's gone wrong, but that certainly isn't right. I can't read any of my feeds now and that is proving rather inconvenient! I hope this issue is fixed soon!

ITV Catch Up player broken

2008-09-14T01:21:00.002+01:00

I rarely come across something so broken that it can't even perform its most basic function. However, in the ITV web based catch up service I've found a contender!

Everyone is at it now, the BBC have the iPlayer, Channel 4 have 4oD and Sky have the Sky Player. I've used them all, the BBC iPlayer is by far the best, though 4oD comes a close second with it's huge archive. However, ITV seem to have lost the plot and missed the whole point of a catch up service.... that you should be able to actually watch it!

For a start the ITV Player is web based streaming only, so you can't download content to watch later. It also uses a horrible media player built into the site that has broken controls.

I missed qualifying for the Italian F1 GP today and as it had a lot of incident I really wanted to see it. So I took a trip to www.itv.com to watch it before the race tomorrow, what I experienced I never want to repeat.

For a start the video quality is atrocious, compare it to other offerings and it is massively compressed. Viewed at the default postage stamp size on the website it looks almost passable, but go to full screen and you can't make anything out the pixels are so large! When I think how lovely and almost broadcast standard the iPlayer pictures are I don't know what they were thinking.

This wouldn't be quite so bad if it meant it worked well, but the streaming is terrible. I have a fabulous ADSL connection and am lucky enough to sync at almost the full 16mbps and get great download speeds. So I expected to be able to watch the programme uninterrupted, just like I do on the iPlayer or 4oD. Not so I'm afraid, I was able to watch about 20 seconds of video before it started to buffer, which made me wait a good minute. When it resumed I was given a further 30 seconds if I was lucky before having to wait a similar amount of time for the next tiny segment.

I thought I'd pause the stream and let it download the video in the background for a while, so off I went to make some tea and do a couple of other bits. When I came back and restarted the stream, I got 20 seconds of video before the next buffer session.... it seems the player won't download a large buffer at all!

As I really wanted to see the qualifying session I persevered with this for a while, until roughly half way through part one. At which point for no reason, the player jumped to the ad break and then into part two! Strangely the adverts worked perfectly, no buffering what so ever..... As soon as I was back into the F1 programme the buffer cycle started all over again, until a couple of minutes in when it decided it had had enough of part two and skipped to another ad break..... then another ad break..... and another ad break.... and another..... and another..... It was basically skipping every part of the actual programme and just showing me the adverts!

So, I reloaded the page and decided to try again. Only trying to skip part one, which I'd already seen, but this just set off another ad break loop! The "rewind" button doesn't do anything so I had to reload the page again, and the same thing happened on my third attempt.

I though maybe there was an issue with that feed, so I tried another programme, same thing happened with the buffer cycle ending in the ad loop. I thought maybe it was the browser so I tried IE, same result. I though it might be my computer so tried the laptop, still no joy.

So I haven't seen the GP qualifying, I've wasted a good hour of my evening trying and I'm pissed off! Browsing the ITV forums reveals that there are hundreds of people with the same issues and they go back months. Still they exist, still there are no signs of a fix and still ITV continue to push this "service". It's appalling, if it doesn't work, stop wasting everyone's time and remove it until it does! Don't release buggy, broken webware just to pretend you are competing with other stations, do it properly or not at all!

I know I'm not the only one, but can any of you get it to work? Has ANYONE managed to watch something without any problems?

Google Chrome - First impressions

2008-09-02T23:51:00.002+01:00

So it's here and I've been using it for about an hour now. First impressions are very good, it has a very simple, minimalist UI and I like it!

I don't have anything solid to back up my claims, but sites certainly appear to load faster in Chrome than they do in Firefox. In fact a quick test with www.bbc.co.uk reveals that Firefox loaded the page in 8.84 seconds while Chrome did it in 7.3 seconds. Nothing scientific in that, but it gives you an indication.

It also uses less memory, with Firefox and Chrome both having one tab open with identical pages fully loaded reveals Firefox using 125,684k and Chrome only 29,636k. Now a lot of that could probably be accounted for by the various Firefox plug-ins I've got. But that's still pretty impressive stuff!

One thing I am impressed with is the drag and drop. I can take a tab and pull it off the browser to make it a new window. What was particularly cool was discovering that you can drag tabs from Firefox straight into Chrome!

I've not experienced any rendering issues so far either, all the site I've tried work really well. The incognito mode is an interesting idea, you can open a new window in this mode and all your browsing will be kept secret, no bookmarks or cookies will be left behind. They say this is to let you shop for surprise presents, but I think we all know what they really intend it for :-)

Not so sure I get the new Omnibar which combines features of the address bar, and Google toolbar in one. I really loved the Firefox 3 address bar, but so far I'm just not getting the same great experience with it. That might change in time though.

In summary, this is going to be a strong competitor to the big three (IE, Firefox, Safari). Not sure I'm ready to give up Firefox with all its plug-ins just yet but I could see a time when that may happen!

Google announce new browser

2008-09-02T12:25:00.007+01:00

So, the inevitable has finally occurred. Google have officially announced their own web browser designed to compete directly with Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari etc..

I hate to say it, but it does actually sound rather promising and I'm looking forward to seeing and hearing more. It's called Chrome and you can read all about it in this (of all things) comic strip! One of the big advantages it has is that just like Firefox it's open source.

So the dominance of Google continues, what with Gmail, its GoogleDocs suite, the Android mobile phone OS, now this web browser. They really are starting to dominate not just the desktop, but our lives as well.

How will MS react to this, they've been having a tough time the last few years. It seems they are no longer at the cutting edge. Perhaps this is the beginning of the end for the huge corporation, it had to happen at some point.

EDIT: Just heard that the beta is going to be available TODAY! First screenshots are already appearing. Check this out:

Certainly going to be keeping a close eye on this, will be installing and testing this as soon as possible.

What's wrong with the iPhone

2008-08-28T16:55:00.005+01:00

So you probably know by now that I've got an iPhone 3G. My last blog post bemoaning the convoluted methods required to transfer contacts and calendar entries kind of gave that away. So instead of waxing lyrical about how great the iPhone is, I'm going to be a bit more critical and list all the things that are wrong with the iPhone! If you are considering a purchase, think about these things carefully, you may miss them more than you think when they are gone.

No MMS support: I mean really, come on! How long has MMS been around now? Yet Apple have decided to not support this. Crazy.

No SMS folders: Yup, there are no folders on the iPhone for your messages. No sent messages, no drafts etc... Very frustrating. Want to save a message to send later? No can do!

No video recording: It seems that Apple have deemed it unnecessary for the iPhone to support video recording. The 2 mega pixel camera seems to have attracted a lot of press. To be honest I can live with that, the images are pretty good to be fair. But you can't use the iPhone to record video, even low end budget camera phones support this. The iPhone is supposed to be top of the range yet it lacks this feature.

Can't change battery: Yet again, and as seems to be standard on Apple devices, you can't access the battery. This isn't a big issue yet, though it does limit how far you can travel without a re-charge.

No Flash support: The iPhone has a great web browser. Using the internet on the iPhone is a pleasure, not some torturous experience you force yourself to endure like on some other phones. But they missed out a Flash player, this can be so very frustrating when you follow a link to be greeted by a Flash site that just won't work.

No Javascript: Similar to the Flash criticism above. You can become suddenly unstuck when browsing a website when it uses JavaScript. You'd be surprised just how many sites do and won't work on the iPhone as a result.

No cut & paste: This is quite a common complaint, and it is a fully justified one. I've never had cut & paste on a mobile before to be fair, but the iPhone with all its other great features is just crying out for it.

No Flash: No, I'm not repeating myself. The iPhone has no flash, camera flash that is. Forget about taking pictures in a dark environment you won't see anything.

Poor 3G: Okay, not an iPhone problem exactly, but as it's only available on one network I think it qualifies. 3G reception is atrocious, O2 have a really poor 3G network. I've just joined O2 from three, three's 3G network is amazing, they have fantastic coverage. The same cannot be said for O2, and they don't seem to be in a huge rush to roll out improvements either. I live in an area with no 3G coverage from 02, yet three gave me a full strength signal here. Even venturing into a large town only gives me 2-3 bars of 3G signal on the iPhone.

Crippled performance: Even when you do have 3G, the quality is limited. YouTube doesn't perform any better than it did with Edge due to limitations set in the firmware. You aren't allowed to use the iTunes store unless you are connected to a wireless network and the AppStore is limited when using 3G.

Poor Synchronisation: As my previous blog entry explains, sync'ing your iPhone to a Windows PC is a painful experience if you are trying to port contacts and calendar entries but don't use MS Outlook. Work arounds exist, but they shouldn't have to, it should be easy to synchronise with more than just one program.

Bugs I found a bug tonight as well, if you use the stopwatch and hit the lap button then it puts the lap time in the list below but then resets the timer. This behaviour Is wrong, the total time should be cumulative and should not reset at the end of a lap. There are other bugs I've heard about but this is one I came across on my own. Not the end of the world but it makes you wonder how a feature bug like this has made it through testing. I have to add up all the lap times to get a total.

As a whole package the iPhone is fabulous, there are many great things about it. But for Apple to have completely brushed over numerous basic and fundamental mobile phone functions is inexcusable. The first iPhone was always going to be touch and go and mistakes could be forgiven with it being their first foray into the mobile market. But they've had time to listen to consumers now, find out the weak points and fix them. Yet many still remain and Apple seem intent on continuing to ignore them.

Having said all that, I still love it. And I'm not even someone who likes Apple products, I've never had an iPod and never owned a MAC. Something about the iPhone is just special.

iPhone 3G - Google Calendar and Contacts sync

2008-08-26T01:43:00.011+01:00

How would one go about syncing calendar and contacts from a Nokia N73 to a new iPhone 3G?

Sounds like it should be a simple task right? ... Wrong! The contacts bit was fairly easy, you just nee to use the Windows address book. Don't worry if you don't use Outlook Express normally, you only have to do it the once and it's all done. Copy your phones contacts to the Windows address book using the PC Suite, then use iTunes to sync your address book to the iPhone. Simple!

However, Calendar entries are a lot more problematic. iTunes will only work with Microsoft Outlook on Windows, if you don't have it then iTunes will tell you "No supported calendar application can be found". Not very helpful really, especially when you find out Apple only supports an expensive Microsoft application that you probably have no need for. I certainly wasn't going to buy it just for this, so I set about trying to find an alternative method that didn't involve me entering hundreds of appointments manually!

While I was searching for potential solutions I suddenly remembered reading something about synchronising my Nokia calendar with Google. So I thought, if I can get my calendar onto Google, I'd then only have to get it back off Google onto my iPhone. I'd solved it, or so I thought....

Actually getting my calender onto Google wasn't that hard, I found a web service that will do it for you with the built in sync software on the phone. GooSync was the the place to do this, simply register for an account. They send you the configuration in an SMS message which you save to your phone. Then you allow the service to access your Google calendar, a few seconds later all your events should have magically been transferred for you.

We are now half way there, unfortunately GooSync doesn't have any support for the iPhone, so I still had to figure out that bit. In fact it turned out to be the hardest part! You see Apple really do like to make things awkward sometimes. A lot of the things they do are brilliant, but every now and then they like to throw a spanner in the works and shoot themselves in the foot. There is just no easy away to sync Google Calendar with the iPhone. Hours of searching turned up no perfect solution, it just didn't seem to exist. Just as I was about to give up my prayers were answered and along came NuevaSync!

I managed to use NuevaSync to get Google Calendar to sync with the iPhone. Not only does it send all the events to your iPhone it also offers 2-way synchronisation, so changes you make on the iPhone are sent to the Google Calendar and vice-versa. Many of the other horrible solutions won't allow 2-way communication so this is a big bonus for NuevaSync. That and the fact it's free as well!

You should bear in mind that it's only in beta, so use it with caution. I've only had a quick play with it, but everything seems to be working flawlessly. It uses Microsoft Exchange so you don't have to jailbreak or install any third party applications, just enter your NeuvaSync account details into you iPhone and it works!

It's also compatible with contacts too, so you can sync your Google contacts using the same account information. If I'd known this before I'd have used it to sync my contacts as well instead of doing it through Outlook Express. If anyone tries this let me know how it goes.

Quite frankly this is an amazing service that I would be perfectly happy to pay for, so for it to be offered free is brilliant. It will be interesting to see how long it stays free once it's out of beta and demand goes through the roof :)

For now though, if you have an iPhone 3G, and you've got a Google Calendar, this is by far the best solution out there!

STEP BY STEP

1. Create a GooSync account.

2. Enable GooSync to access your Google Calender.

3. Save the SMS from GooSync to your phone.

4. Allow the synchronisation to occur auto-magically.

5. Check your Calender entries are saved in Google calender.

6. Set up a NeuvaSync account.

7. Enable NeuvaSync to access your Google Calender.

8. Enter your NeuvaSync details in your iPhone. WARNING: At this point you will lose any Calendar entries in you iPhone, they will all be replaced with your Google Calendar.

9. Wait for the Calender entries to be transferred across to you iPhone.

10. Create or edit Calender entries on your iPhone or in Google and watch as they are sync'ed on the fly.

Sit back, relax and marvel at modern technology. ENJOY!

Star of stage and screen

2008-08-14T00:05:00.003+01:00

I'm going to be on TV, well actually, probably only the back of my head.... but we all have to start somewhere! Also, it's only the local news, so unless you are in East Sussex you'll miss out. Anyway, those that get a chance can tune into Meridian Tonight at 6pm on Friday to see me at work.

You see we had a film crew come in yesterday to make a feature about the theatre and the show that is currently running. There are several bits that had me in shot, though how many will make the final edit is anyone's guess. They did ask me for an interview being the stage manager, however I politely declined their offer. You see, I work behind the scenes for a reason, I'm happy not being seen!

If anyone does see me though, leave a comment and let me know... but I'm not holding my breath. I'll be the only person wearing black, probably with a set of cans stuck on my head.... much like my profile picture come to think of it!

Nearly killed by the Police

2008-07-17T16:01:00.002+01:00

I was very nearly run over by the police last night! Walking back to my car after work I witnessed a police pursuit end in a crash which finished less than 2 meters from where I was stood.

Frankly I was shit scared as the police car hit the vehicle it was pursuing and then came careering out of control towards me. The car being chased came up to a junction controlled by traffic lights which another car was waiting at. He mounted the curb to try and go around the stationary vehicle, almost knocking over three pedestrians on the pavement in the process. Then instead of going left he decided to turn right, just as the police car had gone around the stationary vehicle the other way. This resulted in the police hitting the car in the driver side door, at which point they both skidded across the junction heading straight for me.

The driver of the car escaped from his vehicle quite quickly and started to run away hotly pursued by the two police officers. I just waited where I was for a couple of minutes until about ten more police cars all descended on me.

I gave them my details and I'm just waiting for a phone call to get me down to the station to make a statement.

Tumbleweed

2008-07-13T16:47:00.003+01:00

It's quiet round here ain't it! I thought this might happen when I got my monitor back so I could play on my consoles again. I spend what spare time I have playing on them and not enough time on things like this.

Anyway, I've not been playing games exclusively, I've been pretty busy with work but I've also been working on a new project. It's not really finished yet, a lot still needs doing, but if you want a sneak peak then I'll tell you about it.

I'm developing a new web site, I haven't done anything like this is a long time. I figured I'd give it a go and see how it turns out. I decided to use a Content Management System or CMS for short to take a lot of the leg work out of it. I've never used one before, all my previous sites have been hand coded from scratch. I went with Drupal because a couple of people I know have used it and recommended it and a web site I use over at http://www.ugvm.org.uk also uses it. It seems to do a pretty good job so thought I'd investigate.

I've got the bare bones of the site together now, I just need to get working on customising it. But where to start? I don't know anything about Drupal, I need to do some investigation. If anyone has any recommendations on where to look for this send them to me please!

So now I've told you a bit about it, I bet you're all gagging to to see it right? Hmmm, well okay, maybe not. But if you do want a look you can find it over at http://www.techietalk.co.uk.

I'll try and post again soon and maybe talk about some games next time.

Silence is golden!

2008-06-28T14:40:00.003+01:00

The last few weeks I've noticed my PC has been making a lot more noise than usual. The fans seemed to run up to 100% and stay there constantly after just a couple of minutes from switching it on. I had initially thought that the monitoring software that regulates fan speeds had gone a bit screwy so I kind of ignored it telling myself I'd sort it out later.

Well last night I decided that "later" was now, so I fired up the software to be greeted by angry alarms blaring through my speakers at 1am! Not the best thing to wake the household with, but oh well, it was too late to worry about that.

Apparently my CPU temperature was hovering just over the 90 degree mark, and my case temperature was 70 degrees! Ouch, that CPU is nicely roasting away and probably has been for a few weeks. I decided I had to do something about it, but that 1am was not the time to strip the PC apart. So this morning out came the compressed air and tool kit.

OH MY GOD! I've never seen so much dust in my life...... The case was stuffed full of the stuff. No wonder I had air flow issues, all the fans were totally clogged up. A good blast of air outside and a well aimed hoover sorted that issue out. Then I figured while I was at it, it couldn't do any harm to replace the thermal paste on the CPU. So off came the heatsink/fan and the old stuff was carefully removed from the copper heatsink, and the top of the CPU. A fresh application of some Arctic Silver 5 paste and a quick re-assembly later it was all done.

Time for the moment of truth, everything worked straight away (phew!) and this time the fans didn't ramp up! After loading the monitoring software again, the good news is the CPU is now at a more comfortable 61 degrees, and the case a refreshing 38 degrees! Now I can sit in peaceful silence once again.

So, if you're PC is noisier than you'd like, it might be time to give it some TLC and sort out air flow inside your case. It can make a HUGE difference!

Monitor heaven!

2008-06-19T21:14:00.002+01:00

So after all the worry about never getting my monitor sorted out. I received an unexpected phone call from the Staples store manager today. He told me my replacement monitor had arrived and I could pick it up whenever was convenient. So straight after work I headed down to the shop to be greeted by a brand new 24" wide-screen Gateway FPD2485W-EU.

I am very impressed with this monitor, not only is it HUGE (it's replaced a 21" screen) it has loads of connections. DVI, VGA, 2 x Component, S-Video and 4 x USB ports. It's astonishingly bright, has a pretty big 1920 x 1200 resolution and not a dead pixel in sight.

If I had to have one complaint, it would be it's simply too big. I have it paired with a 19" 4:3 monitor, and it's kind of dwarfed it now. Plus because it's so new the image quality is so good it really shows up my older monitor for how poor it really is.

I must go now, my eyes are bleeding from all the light emanating from the screen. It's burning my retinas!

Monitor hell!

2008-06-18T10:12:00.004+01:00

The saga continues, another call from Staples today, apparently the replacement monitor isn't on its way as promised. I should point out that this isn't a Staples problem, they have been fantastic. The problem now is that Gateway have been taken over by Acer and Gateway will no longer talk to Staples about the issue. They accept they have my old monitor and that it can't be repaired, but won't talk about any sort of resolution. In fact talking to the Staples store manager Gateway (or the company that used to be Gateway) have been very rude to him.

As if this all wasn't bad enough, things are further complicated because I bought the monitor from Staples on-line. Now apparently the bricks and mortar store is a separate company to the on-line retail arm. What this means is that technically the store manager shouldn't have taken my monitor in the first place, however, he did because he's a nice guy and wanted to help. So the whole thing is a bit of a mess!

The store manager has vowed to do everything he can to sort this out for me and is taking a complaint up with his head office. He is hoping that his management might carry more weight and get some answers for me.

I'm pretty confident this guy will follow it through and sort it all out, but I'm not sure where I stand legally now. The whole thing is a bit complicated!

PayPal - hypocrites!

2008-06-12T22:00:00.002+01:00

I've had a couple of friendly games of Poker recently with some people I know from a newsgroup. It's just a bit of fun roughly once a month and the losers all pay the winner £5. We've been using PayPal up to now but a couple of us (myself included) have had our accounts frozen because apparently gambling breaches their acceptable use policy.

On the surface this seems fair enough, if perhaps a little harsh. However, if they have a principle that the service cannot be used for gambling then I'm happy to abide by it. This was the e-mail they sent me:

"After a recent review of your account, it has been determined that you are currently in violation of PayPal's Acceptable Use Policy. Under the Acceptable Use Policy, PayPal may not be used to send or receive payments for activities that involve gambling and/or gaming activities, including but not limited to casino games, sports betting, horse or greyhound racing, lottery tickets, certain games of skill, and other ventures that facilitate gambling."

Of course it's not as simple as that, because PayPal are in fact perfectly happy to allow you to use their service for gambling as I found out upon investigation:

https://www.paypal.com/uk/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=xpt/cps/general/BetFair-outside

"You can now use PayPal with Betfair – the world’s largest betting exchange."

So, either they do allow the service for gambling or they don't, which is it? It would seem it's both! You see they are quite happy to let their principles slide when they can make a profit from it. They take a cut from all transactions made through PayPal to BetFair and that's fine. But if you just want to organise the occasional friendly game of Poker then you are an evil gambler who must be banished from PayPal forever!

Like I said in the title, PayPal are hypocritical *&%$*!

An iBlog

2008-06-12T15:15:00.004+01:00

I think I might change this blog from a standard blog, to a new fangled iBlog! What's the difference you ask, well there actually isn't one. It just seems to be the fashionable and trendy thing to chuck an 'i' in front of everything these days.

What does this 'i' actually mean anyway? What's so great about an 'i' that makes it so special? Google has iGoogle, the BBC has the iPlayer, BT have announced a new product called the iPlate which is supposed to increase your broadband speeds. There are countless other examples and it's getting to be beyond a joke!

Apple created the 'i' brand and I believe the first product to sport the name was the imac. It was a great product that pretty much sparked the turn around in the companies fortunes. Then of course came the hugely popular ipod. I can understand that a company like Apple would want to use the 'i' branding to its full potential. I don't have any issue with that at all, it's all the other companies who are jumping on the band wagon and trying to exploit the popularity that bugs me.

Why couldn't the marketing gurus over at BT and Google have come up with an original title for their products? What exactly are they being paid for if they just look for a successful brand and imitate them? Perhaps that's exactly what they are being paid for! Either way, how do I get a job doing this, I have some great marketing ideas ready to go. How about the iBurger, the iPen or the iSoap! All these ideas are bound to sell in their millions, I am a marketing god!

Still no monitor

2008-06-10T16:13:00.002+01:00

It's been ages since my computer monitor was sent off for repair. I've had to slum it with just one screen for weeks, it's amazing how much easier everything becomes when you have a dual screen set-up. I've really missed all the extra space I've become accustomed to for web browsing, usenet and more all at the same time.

Anyway, Staples phoned me up to say they can't repair it, booooo! However, they are going to give a a shiny new one instead, yaaay! Just got to wait for them to call me back some time this week when it's arrived so I can collect it. It can't come soon enough as far as I'm concerned, then I can get back to the important business of playing video games again!

James likes to

2008-06-10T12:22:00.004+01:00

A friend of mine just did this on her blog and I thought I'd give it a go myself. Basically you type "(your name) likes to" into Google, including the speech marks. Then you copy and paste the results, here are mine:

- James likes to, write down the first 10 search results. Hmmm, someone's obviously been here before me. I guess it's right though because I'm doing exactly that now.

- James likes to relax by swimming, walking the coastal footpath with Jane or catching up with the TV programmes he's recorded. Well, I don't know anyone called Jane and I don't do much swimming. I am always playing catch up with the TV though.

- James likes to capture stories as they happen. Errrm, not sure I've ever captured a story before but if someone wants to tell me what sort of net is needed I'll give it a go.

- James likes to get high on. Get high on what? I need to know!

- James likes to go for long walks with Laurie on the beach, likes to buy her flowers. I sense a bit of a theme here, apparently people called James like the sea, but again I don't know any Laurie's.

- James likes to watch fat porn. Apparently so, who am I to argue with that. (I don't by the way, but perhaps I should give it a go)

- James likes to keep it hot. Oh yeah!

- James likes to pull Susan's pony tail. Again I don't know any Susan's either.

- James likes to play football as much as possible and DJ in clubs and radio in his spare time. A very definite no on all counts there!

- James likes to go out at the weekend (not on "school nights" any more as the next morning is too hard!). Well I tend to work weekends so technically I guess that means I'm out, but I haven't been been to school in years.

What does Google think you like to do?

Repairing disc scratches

2008-06-10T01:43:00.004+01:00

As a result of having to move all the old rubbish for the new central heating, I discovered a box of audio CDs I've not seen for years. I decided to rip them all to my PC so I can actually listen to them occasionally! However, some of them would seem to have divorced their protective cases and had a bit of a party in the box. This meant they were badly scratched rendering them unreadable. That made me quite sad because although I hadn't listened to them in a long time, I'd spent quite a bit of money on them and I had some good CDs amongst the casualties!

As it happens, I was browsing through Maplins today when I found a little disc repairer from Procare, imaginatively titled "Compact Disc Surface Scratch Repairer". It cost £24.99 and as my damaged CDs would have cost considerably more to replace I decided it was worth a shot. Here it is repairing one of the naughty little discs:

It's mains powered and is a two stage process, first it rubs down the disc with two rough pads. Then you swap them for two buffing pads and add some magic fluid that buffs it up and gives it a protective coat. You can see two of the pads here:

I must say, I've been very impressed so far! I've fixed three CDs that refused to be recognised before and a couple of others that constantly skipped. One of them had a deep gouge in it and although it hasn't got rid of that, it did fix it enough for me to copy the CD to my computer!

I even dared to try it on a video game, I've got a copy of Wii Play that always crashed when selecting 2 players. I was never really sure why it did that, there were no obvious marks on the disc. But a quick run through the machine and it worked flawlessly, amazing!

The whole process takes about 4 minutes and the pads are supposed to be good for 50 repairs, replacements can be obtained but I don't know how much they are. I'll be fixing more CDs tomorrow, I haven't had any fail yet so it looks like I may get all my discs back! YAY.

Does a lot of work for charity mate!

2008-06-07T12:53:00.003+01:00

Okay, it's rant time, sorry! As most of you know, and should know if you've read the short profile to the right of this post. I'm a stage manager, I work in theatre and over the course of a year we do a lot of charity shows and fund-raising events. I don't mind them too much, sometimes they can be badly organised due to their lack of experience but then that's why we are there. We are the professionals tasked with making sure their event runs smoothly.

Just recently certain organisers seem to have got the wrong idea though. Comments have been made that it's a charity event and we should be volunteering our time to make their expenses lower. Now I'm sorry, but that is really not acceptable. Everyone who works in the theatre does so for a living, it's our job. We try our best to keep staffing levels to a minimum but certain people are needed to run a show. If we gave up our wages for every charity or fund-raising event staged in our theatres then our income would be significantly lower.

That's not to say we are all heartless though, when the tsunami hit Asia we had a huge event with lots of big names. It was a lot of work and we all put in a lot of hours. Everyone was paid for their time, but as far as I know, everyone involved donated all the money they earned to the charity.

I also do a few things each year outside of work as well. For example, tomorrow I have given up my day off and volunteered to do a fund raiser for St. Wilfrids hospice which is a local charity. I'm even going to miss the Grand Prix!

So, if you ever organise a charity event, please don't expect the people working on it to do so for free. We have to make a living the same as the rest of you and if your charity show is in the theatre it means another professional show isn't. We still need to pay our bills regardless of how much we like the cause you may be raising cash for. We all do our bit in our own way, but at the end of the day it's our job.

Upheaval

2008-06-02T23:29:00.003+01:00

We are having new central heating installed at the moment, they started the process today. Arriving at 8:15am, just the time when the whole house is in a state of chaos anyway!

I'm starting to question if it's really worth it. Sure the old system doesn't work properly and it's pretty damn cold almost everywhere in the winter. But seriously, the work involved is just nightmarish! Every room has to be cleared so the floorboards can be taken up, new pipes laid and the old removed. It's bad enough when you have to do it to decorate one room, but the workmen need access to all the rooms in one go. Where are you supposed to put everything?

It involves dismantling beds because the rooms are too small to move them about. Dismantling the fitted units because they need to get under them, to do that they need to be emptied which means finding somewhere to put all the clothes and junk. You can't put them in the airing cupboard because the new boiler is going in there so you have to empty that too! Taking up all the carpets, it's just crazy.

On top of this we figured while we are in this state of upheaval, we might as well get the bathroom refurbished. So a new bathroom suite for there and re-tiling to take place. It just adds to the chaos and mess though.

Seriously, if you ever have to do something like this, book yourself into a hotel for the week. Trying to live your life amongst all the bedlam isn't much fun..... and it's only day one!

Picking a mobile

2008-06-02T19:46:00.003+01:00

I've just had to go through the traumatic experience of picking out a suitable replacement mobile phone for my mother. Her old one, which was mine originally needed replacing because the screen kept getting corrupted. I think the phone got a bit wet while she was out in a rain storm and it never fully recovered. It has good days and bad days though so it's all a bit odd.

The thing is, my parents seem to assume that I'm an expert in all things gadget and whenever they have any problems I'm always their first port of call. Now in most cases they are perfectly right to ask me, but on mobile phones I don't really have a clue!

I upgrade my phone every 12-18 months on a contract and usually just opt for the latest Nokia at the time. My old phone, the one my mother has now is an N70, at the moment I'm on the N73 and I will probably go to the N96 when it's released in a couple of months. So other than that I have no idea what's what in the world of mobile phone technology.

I did a bit of browsing on the O2 website to see what was out there but really they all seem pretty similar to me these days. The problem I have is that I tend to end up looking for phones that I would like, but of course this usually isn't suitable for her. I eventually settled on the Samsung U600 as the phone of choice, it seemed like a good balance between simplicity and features.

Before committing to a purchase I looked for a review and found that it isn't the greatest phone. Lots of complaints about the poor keypad and the camera not being too hot. One of the reviews recommended the G600 instead, so I went back to O2 and looked it up. It was available but quite a bit more expensive and she doesn't really need a 5 mega-pixel camera or a music player with 40MB storage. So, I decided the U600 was the best bet and handed over my recommendation so she could call up customer services and place the order. Of course the queue to actually speak to a human was endless and we waited on hold for ages, during this time I happened to mention the other phone. Immediately she wanted to know all about it and decided that she wasn't going to have second best, even if she would never use half the features it offered.

So decision made all that remained was to place the order, except that now she was given another choice. Black or Pink? What a dilemma! I had to do a quick Google image search to see the difference while she discussed the pros and cons of the different colours with the operator. Finally Black was decided on and now I await the arrival and inevitable call for help when nothing on the phone works because it's not the same as the Nokia. Except I won't have a clue either because I've never owned anything other than Nokia myself!

So did I make a good choice? Is the G600 a decent phone? Will I rue this day for years until it finally dies? I guess I'll find out soon enough.

Vizage

2008-05-30T19:34:00.006+01:00

So things didn't go so well for Vizage last night. I spoke to Sam today to see how they were doing and they are both fairly upbeat although very disappointed to be buzzed off. Especially with the way in which it happened.

I have always felt that by the time they get to the live finals the buzzers should be removed. It's fine to have them for the auditions, but at this stage every act remaining should be allowed to complete their spot. If the judges don't feel they are good enough then they should never have been put through to the finals.

In my opinion Sam and Vicki handled themselves very well in front of the judges, they acted in a highly professional manner. A complete contrast to the reaction from the Dean's of magic the night before.

It was always a huge gamble to go against the judges advice, but lots of people, myself included had told them to stay with the act they've been working with professionally. Did we all give bad advice? I don't think so, they are Vizage, a vocal illusion act. It's what separates them from other acts on the circuit. To drop the singing aspect would be to go against what Vizage is and that would be just as bad for them in the long run.

In my opinion the show put far too much emphasis on the singing. Sure Vicki isn't as good as some of the singers on the show, but that isn't the point. The main focus of the act is the quick change, it's something that was almost completely ignored during the build up. The viewers were led to believe that if Vicki dared to go against the judges it would be a complete disaster. They were at a huge disadvantage before they even began. But the response from the audience both during the act and when they were stopped was indicative that it was being enjoyed and people wanted to see it to the end.

Staying true to their act is what they wanted to do and they are both still convinced they did the right thing. As Sam stated, the judges are entitled to their opinion, that doesn't make them right. What is frustrating is when underhand tactics are employed, such as Simon hitting Amanda's buzzer. That really shouldn't be allowed and Amanda was clearly very annoyed with that.

So what's next for Vizage? Well I think it's safe to say they haven't committed professional suicide. They have already received several offers of work, a couple of them sound very exciting. They may not be appearing on the Royal Variety Performance, but they won't be short of work. They are a professional act that have been working for years and they will continue to do so. This show has raised their profile and I can't see anything but good coming from it in the long run.

Best game ad ever!

2008-05-29T00:22:00.005+01:00

This is possibly the best trailer / advert for a video game I think I've ever seen. It's so bad it's good! I'll let you watch to make up your own mind:

Hopefully they didn't mean for this to be a serious advert because if they did they were way off the mark. But for a tongue in cheek light hearted way to advertise this game they've struck gold.

I wasn't really interested in this game before now and to be honest I'm still not that keen. But full marks for effort!

In other news, Vizage are appearing in the live semi final of Britain's Got Talent tonight (Thursday 29th) at 8:30pm. Please give them your vote!

Birthday weekend

2008-05-26T22:33:00.003+01:00

So it's official, I've now entered my fourth decade of life. I've managed to successfully navigate 30 years without too much turbulence along the way. The question is, what do I do now? You see, I think I may be having a slightly early mid-life crisis... well, perhaps crisis is a bit too strong, but I've been having thoughts recently about what I'm doing with my life.

It's not that I'm unhappy in any way, that couldn't be further from the truth. However, everything is just a bit too comfortable at the moment and I could do with giving myself a kick up the arse. I'm just drifting along a bit right now, anyway, I don't want to go any deeper into this just now. I'll take a few days to think things through and see what I come up with. Perhaps I just need a new hobby, or perhaps just a holiday, I've not had one of those for about five years!

I decided that as it was a significant birthday and as it fell on a bank holiday weekend. I should declare the whole weekend as my birthday instead of just restricting myself to one day. It worked rather well and would highly recommend it to others. Friday night was curry night with friends, that was great and I didn't get home to bed until 5am. The Saturday was dedicated to doing family things and I went out for a meal with them to celebrate. The Sunday which was my actual birthday I had to work all day, but that was fine, it turned out to be quite an easy day and we finished early. So that just left today, which I was working.... again! This time though my colleagues had bought me a lovely birthday cake and again we were able to finish early.

I'm now sitting at home wondering how to round off my birthday weekend, and I can't think of any way to do it. I'm pretty tired now though so I'm thinking perhaps a hot drink, curl up in front of the telly and watch something like the new series of Battlestar Galactica that I haven't had time to start yet. After all, I'm getting old now I have to start taking things easy!

Britain's Got Talent

2008-05-24T17:24:00.005+01:00

I've just heard that two good friends of mine have made it through to the live finals of "Britain's Got Talent". The friends in question are Sam and Vicki, aka Vizage, the quick change illusion act. It's common in my business to make friends with loads of people who you'll never see again once the show is over. However, in Sam and Vicki I've found that not to be the case, they are great people and true professionals in their field.

I've known Sam and Vicki for a many years now and have worked with them extensively on shows in the past. I am really pleased they've made it through because I was a bit concerned they may not progress past the preliminary stage after their audition didn't go as well as could be expected.

If you saw the audition then you'll know what I mean and if you didn't then you can see it on YouTube:

I know that the pair of them have practised long and hard honing this act until it is perfect. Unfortunately on the day of the audition Vicki's nerves got the better of her voice, but hopefully she'll be on top of her game for the next round. I'll certainly be giving them my full support and vote, watch out for them next week! Good luck guys.

So I got a blog

2008-05-22T22:30:00.003+01:00

Well it took me a while, but I finally succumbed to the blogging phenomenon. I've already made my first post which was a rant about car insurance, so this is just a quick follow up. I'm not really sure why I've started a blog or who I expect to read it, if anyone. Perhaps it has something to do with me turning 30 at the weekend, I dunno. But anyway, here it is, let's see if I can keep it active.

I'll probably use this blog to talk about anything interesting that happens to me, so it probably won't get updated very often! I'll also use it to talk about games, post my impressions and my progress. I already read a few gaming diaries and while this won't be quite as detailed as some of those (deKay and TheRev I'm looking at you) I'll try and keep it relatively up to date with what I'm playing.

So, to kick things off what am I playing now.... well, nothing! You see my lovely 21" wide screen monitor that I use for my 360 has been sent away to hospital. It needs a new back light and with only a few days of the 12 month guarantee remaining I decided I needed to act. So until that returns in a week or so I won't be able to get my CoD4 fix, or make any more progress on GTA4.

Fortunately I can still use the Wii on my other TV, but I'm not really playing anything on that at the moment. Perhaps I should, I've got plenty of games I've not completed including the rather fantastic Super Mario Galaxy. I also have Zelda which I've barely touched and Metroid too. I really should take this opportunity to give these games a good outing, but I just don't seem to have any enthusiasm for the Wii at the moment.

I guess that's about all I have to talk about for the time being. Actually another thought just crossed my mind. Perhaps I created this blog because I don't have my 360 to play, when my monitor returns this might all be forgotten. Time will tell....

My job sucks

2008-05-22T22:16:00.001+01:00

For car insurance!

Just been searching for quotes on-line and used confused.com to find the best price. My renewal was £307 but Confused said that the AA would cover me for £156! "Woop" I thought so went there to check the details and buy the policy.

However, it appears confused.com got a bit confused about my occupation. I told them I was a stage manager in theatre, but for some reason the AA thought I was a production manager in manufacturing. Once I had corrected these details, my quote from the AA went up to £270! Ouch.... Still cheaper than my renewal price, but how much am I being penalised for my job!

So I'm still trawling the sites to see if I can get a better price but I'm getting a bit sick of entering my details over and over again now.