I Have a New Phone!

I have posted about my dilemma about finding a new phone and until today, that dilemma still held. I didn't want a touchscreen device but I did want the features of a smartphone. Preferably I was looking for another Sony Ericsson Phone as I was already familiar with the layout and am particularly bad when it comes to using other phones. I had been initially looking for a smartphone with a querty keyboard so that I could overcome my fear of having to type on a n unresponsive touchscreen but the only few that I was considering seemed to have a major flaw in them somewhere. The Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro Mini for example had a very poor battery life and many people complained that this really got in the way.

Bad Sat Nav

My task for today was to fix my sat nav which is now wholly unusable and won't get past the splash screen - despite many, many resets. They say that desperate times call for desperate measures and so I have pinned the problem down to an error with the memory card. Switching the device on without the SD card seems to work fine - well, as fine as a sat nav can be without the maps and the software to tell it how to run. So I formatted the SD card.

The Very Last of the Summer Wine

Today sees the end of one of the longest running sitcom in the world, Last of the Summer Wine. I wasn't an avid viewer of the programme but it became one of those things that you assume will always be there. Peter Sallis's superb vocal talents gave rise to the instantly recognisable voice of Wallace (from Wallace and Gromit) and he has somehow managed to stay in the show from day 1, throughout the 31 series and despite now being almost 90 years old. Because of his long term involvement, it was only right that he got the last word of the show that was not only funny, but summed up the show "Did I lock the door?"

Reading Festival

Today has been an amazing and very very long day. An early start this morning for the drive down to Reading sans satnav and with a couple of scribbled down directions and we managed to find it without getting lost! This was mainly down to my passenger who spotted the signs to the city centre and for the festival once we got a bit closer. I managed to pack in a lot of music at several different locations around the site and we even had time to stop off at the alternative stage and watch Milton Jones. That was one of the funniest half hours I have ever witnessed. How he managed to fill the time with just one liners is amazing and he is definitely one of the cleverest comics around today.

My Car is Falling Apart

I had a couple of errands to run today and after each one, I noticed that some other part of my car had broken / fallen off. , as I was driving back from Portsmouth I noticed that my passenger windscreen wiper had split not long after I had had the car serviced. I decided it must just be bad luck and that they were just old and had had their time.

E-Numbers

Recently, food has been through a resurgence from the tradition introduced in the 80s where food and science first started to really merge. Back then, scientists were discovering all sorts of wonderful chemicals that can be added to food to make it taste nicer and look more appetising. In the last five years or so (perhaps more) there has been a strong tend towards organic, locally sourced food where you know exactly what has gone into what you are eating.

The Great British Waste Menu

Before I watched this programme this evening, today's post was going to be about how I'd spent most of today listening to Radio 4 (and rather enjoying it!) Instead, this programme really caught my attention - save for the endless repetition which I suspect may be in part because it was initially designed to be several separate shows.
Despite this, it was a really enlightening programme highlighting the waste generated by our food culture.

A New Set of Wipers

As I was driving back from Portsmouth the other week, I noticed that one of my windscreen wipers was flapping around at the bottom. At this point I was more concerned about it not falling off before I got home than anything else. The weather was changeable and when it rained, it rained quite heavily. The last thing I wanted was a wiper out of order - and if the blade came off then would it scratch my windscreen?

Bugs

My step dad has today found a flaw in the shiny new website I developed for my parents villa. When he went to look at the site on his work laptop - which surprise surprise has internet explorer 6 on it - found that it looked slightly different to the image he had seen before. What is odd is just how different it looks; the navigation bar is vertical rather than horizontal and the pictures have squashed themselves as if they have forgotten how wide they should be.

The Next Big Redesign Begins

Having finally decided on a design for my blog, I can now apply it to my personal website which is looking worse and worse by the day. I have several options here, the first being a simple copy and paste job and the second a more lengthy extraction process where I comb through the hundreds of lines of code to try and find the sections that I have actually used.

The Great British Bake Off

The superb partnership of Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins has once again been reunited for this lastest programme in the food calendar. There have been mixed reviews online with the Guardian recommending it as a pick of the day and the Telegraph labelling it as a poor Masterchef copy.

The Journey Home

We knew the weather wasn't going to be great for driving but I certainly wasn't expecting to be awoken by the sound of thunder at 8am this morning! The rain was hurtling down and at one point, we had considered staying a bit longer until the storm had passed.

Into Tenby

We have once again been very lucky with the weather which held out just long enough for us to take a trip into Tenby. In the summer sunshine, it is beautiful enough to rival many of the European cities with clean beaches and fabulous views. Out of the sun however, the attraction fades and it becomes like many of the other seaside towns in Britain that are so reliant on the changeable weather. We managed a good two hours and had a look round some of the shops, a sit down in a café and by overlooking the harbour. Another chance for my mum to play with her new camera of which the smile detection element came in very handy taking some of the photos when we were squinting away from the sun.

A Trip to the Beach

We have been very lucky with the weather today and apart from a few spots of rain this morning, which rather cut short our trip into the village, we have had mostly sunny skies. We managed a nice walk down to the beach this afternoon to make the most of the good weather and lay on the sand for a bit to soak up the rays. I have since discovered that my watch doesn't like the sand as I struggled to get it off this evening. I hope a good wash will get rid of all the bits that have clogged up the release mechanism but that is the downside to the beach I suppose. I wasn't brave enough to take a dip into the sea, even with the warm weather, but there were plenty of people who were paddling around.

To Wales

Today has been a rather pleasant day with the weather holding out for the most part other than a few spots of rain on the road. First stop was Barry near Cardiff to pick up my grandma. We stopped off at the Captain's Wife in Sully for lunch and I had the most delicious open chicken pie. The food all looked very nice but I rarely pass up the chance for a nice pie. Pudding was in the form of a normandy style apple flan with toffee sauce and vanilla ice cream and was equally as nice although I have my doubts as to whether or not it was made on site.

The Big Redesign

It has finally happened, I have got round to giving this tired old blog a much needed face-lift. It has been many months in the pipeline and as part of the first birthday celebrations, I put my head down and started typing. The most difficult part of it all has been the conditional elements and I still haven't quite got those sorted.

Website No. 2 - Done

I've finally finished the website for my parents - and about time too. I sat down last night and kept going until the very last bit was done. I have had the seal of approval from my mum and will await the fate of my step-dad's verdict tomorrow. Overall, I'm pretty pleased with it as I've been the one making the decisions about the design and layout rather than asking someone else relying on specifications given to me.

Choices

This post is substantially less philosophical then the title may suggest. It is in fact dedicated to the latest release by the Hoosiers. A first for this blog will be that the video clip embedded for your viewing pleasure will be utilising YouTube's new embed code which doesn't force Flash upon its users and those of you with HTML5 compatible browsers will be able to watch using that instead.

Happy Birthday Blog!

It's a bit late but I've just realised that on the 11th of August last year, I wrote my first post on this blog. I can't believe that it's been more than a year and I find myself somehow both in the the same and a very different position at the same time. I am heading off to Wales soon - as I did at about this time last year - but on the other hand, I am coming towards the end of my university life. I am searching for jobs, filling out application forms and have actually got quite a lot on my plate.

Better Luck Next Time

I had thought that today had gone reasonably well. Time seemed to go very quickly during the time I spent at IBM and after a brief introductory presentation about the company (which in hindsight was a bit of a waste of time) was the bit that seemed to last the longest. We then had two group sessions to complete as well as a confirmatory aptitude test.

To Portsmouth!

The day of reckoning is upon us... technically it's tomorrow but for me, I'm more nervous about getting here and finding the building tomorrow morning than I am about the day itself. I've always been a nervous wreck when it comes to doing new things and things involving travel even more so. I usually give myself way too much time and end up very early and over plan everything. Even little things like going to the train station, I have to plan for things like delayed trains, missed trains and cancelled trains and then I'll spend ages on Google maps checking and double checking where to go.

Multiplayer Mahem

I collected my car this morning and paid the hefty bill. Turns out I had a corroded exhaust and needed new front brakes. I didn't know anything about the exhaust - I assumed it would be particularly noisy or smoky or something but hey, what do I know about cars? The brakes don't seem particularly different although the handbrake has been adjusted so that I don't have to pull it up so far to prevent the car moving. I fear it may have been more than a little bit abused on the hills of Sheffield so it's good to know my car isn't going to be rolling off and causing damage during the night.

MOT

I found out when I was renewing my tax disc last week that I was a tad overdue for my MOT. Today was the earliest it could be done and so I hauled myself out of bed at silly o'clock this morning and headed down to Kwik Fit for 08:30. I usually take it to a Vauxhall garage but as my warranty has expired anyway, I thought I might as well try somewhere a bit cheaper. You hear horror stories about all the garages but I think Kwik Fit has a good enough reputation to trust them.

Galleria

The website is coming on nicely now and I've found the original photos taken from years back rather than being stuck with the poor quality 600x450 ones currently online. I've been trying to make some modifications to the javascript gallery I'm using but thus far with very little success. I don't mind creating things myself but I always seem to struggle when I have to use code from other people. Perhaps we just think in very different ways but some people seem to have no problems at all with it. I can't even get the examples from their website to work!

My New Favourite Ingredient

I came across this small jar of wonderment whilst routing around in the cupboard and now I can't get enough of it. I haven't found a similar product in any other supermarket so I might have to stock up before I return to Sheffield. Sainsbury's Taste The Difference Caramelised Red Onion Chutney has made this weeks mealtimes so much better than they would have been without it. It has worked wonders on a chicken sandwich, a cheese sandwich and as of today, on top of a Ritz cracker between two slices of fruity Wensleydale cheese.

Fruity Fixing

I received a message today requesting my services as someone who is good with gadgets to try and fix an iPod nano. As I read the message, I saw that small i and knew I was in for a hard time. These things - the nano in particular - are troublesome little blighters. They are sealed units which prevents you fixing any internal problems and they are made by Apple which means you have to use iTunes to put songs on them. If iTunes is the problem then you are stuffed and you have a very expensive memory stick with a screen.

Another Flashy Project

When I started my university course almost three years ago now, I vowed to my friend that I would one day learn how to make a game so that we could play over a long distance. She resides in London during term time and we greatly miss our gaming sessions. The game in question is the British version of Blackjack which is more akin to UNO then 21 / pontoon. The game isn't widely known and there are so many variants of the rules that finding an existing game is very unlikely.

Inception

It's taken me a good deal longer than I wanted it to but today I finally got round to seeing Inception. Overall, I have to say I'm very impressed. I wasn't expecting this much from a movie but someone had clearly put a lot of thought into it rather than just rushing it out. I always think that movies that make you think are the best ones and this film certainly has that Matrix feel to it with a philosophical twist that makes you question reality.

A Spot of Scrabble?

In a nostalgic trip back to the olden days, and to help combat my mother's addiction with a Facebook hosted rip off of Scrabble, we decided to dig out the board game from the depths of my wardrobe and have a couple of games. I was beaten by almost two hundred points in the first game thanks to a lucky set of tiles that allowed the word 'jewelled' over two triple word squares. I pulled it back in the second game however with a distinctly less impressive three point lead scraped during the final few tiles.

Broken, Recovered and Fixed

Not necessarily in that order however. Today has been a rather frustrating day in PC land. Since bringing my PC back from Sheffield, I have had to reinstall windows XP after it refused to dual boot with the existing Windows 7 installation. This problem is my own fault since I installed it afterwards and thus knackered the boot loader. When I did go to reinstall it however, I came across two problems. The first was a lack of blank CDs so I ended up scrabbling around online for a way to make a USB memory stick bootable to install XP. I did eventually find one such method with a program called PeToUSB and although it was slightly different to the usual setup process you have with a CD, it worked fine.

A Bit of a Tip

Somehow, whenever gardening gets done in this house, it is always just after the green waste has been collected. As such, we decided that leaving almost fifteen bags of garden rubbish outside in the hot and damp weather for a week and a half would be a bad idea. A trip to the tip was in order and it has changed a lot since I was last there.