Freshers Week

There was very little chance of me being bored this week with the plethora of events happening. Saturday night was the official start to the week with Pop Tarts and as this event is almost guaranteed to have a fire alarm go off at some point, I decided to avoid being stage manager and went for the cowardly general crew option. As it turned out, there was nothing to worry about. Everything went to plan and there were no major occurrences - typical.

Two Weeks in Training

This post might end up being quite long as I have two weeks worth of very full days to catch up on. I have been attending the TSC senior training course for the past two weeks and they have been some of the busiest weeks of my life. With socials organised almost every night and a full days training during the day, I have only really been in the house to sleep and very little else. I often found myself coming home, getting changed and shovelling some food down my throat before heading back out again and so haven't had any time to keep up with the blogging.

Getting Settled

Today has been about getting settled into my new surrounding, stocking up the cupboards, fixing bits and bobs and some cooking. As I had little else to do today, I decided to go to the massive Tesco on Abbeydale Rd in the hope that they had a decent clothes department there. I had seen a coat on the Tesco online website earlier in the week on special offer for £10. It seemed too good to be true and so I wanted to check it out before committing to buying it to save on the hassle of having to return it if it wasn't what I wanted. Sadly the menswear department there is practically non existent. They have womens and children but very little mens and so all I ended up with was a rather expensive shopping bill, and a lot of time wasted sitting in traffic.

Packing and Unpacking

It's another travel day and I'm back off to Sheffield again. This time I am moving in for good (although I'm coming back to Birmingham next weekend because due to a lapse in judgement, I decided to book the coach from Birmingham rather than Sheffield). This morning's packing has been greatly helped by yesterday's boredom which meant I had a significant head start. As I am almost guaranteed to have forgotten something, I think I did quite well this time as so far I only appear to have forgotten my toothpaste (something easily rectified by the multitude of toothpaste dispensing outlets nearby).

Many Singles from the Many Weeks

Given that the last time I did one of these was the 14th of August, I think I have been slacking a little. I haven't been paying too much attention to the new releases lately so keeping up with what has and hasn't been released is a little difficult. On top of that, I spend most of my time switching the radio on and off to avoid the horrific songs that are being played at the moment. Particular annoyances are 'We No Speak Americano' which has been played to death and I now reach for the off button as soon as I hear the fist note. If I were playing Name That Tune, I'm pretty sure I could name it in one it's been played that much.

The Elm

Now that I've had the phone for a day - and just about used all of the features on it - I think I'm in a position to give it a review. Overall, I am very impressed, as I said yesterday. There are a few things which seem a little bit odd and could do with a bit more thought. My main gripe is that the social networking integration leaves a lot to be desired. You can access Twitter, Facebook and MySpace through the home screen however, this is shown not as a separate app but just shows the feed of updates / tweets. There appears to be no way to update your own status / tweet / view profiles and pictures etc however, you can access the photos by going to your photo album (where you would expect to find your photos and those stored on the phone). Here there are options for many more social networks including flickr, picasa and blogger and if you want to include a picture, there is an option to send a tweet, create a blog or send the photo to facebook. You would think that if they can provide the facility to update with a picture then you should be able to update without a picture?