Using a Minolta Digital Camera with Photoshop?

http://www.dalibor.cz/minolta/index.htm

The RAW support in photoshop is supplied by a plug-in. The current version does not support the Dimage A200, and the workings of the plugin itself are well short of the standards you would expect from Adobe. The latest BETA version does support the A200, but again it's functional rather than inspiring.

Enter 'Dalibor Jelinek' - this guy has written his own photoshop plug-in for RAW support of Minolta camera's and it is a big improvement over the Adobe version. Go to his website above and download the demo version for free. Again his curent release does not support the A200, but the BETA version (2.2) does... I have been using it for a few days now. He is very responsive to questions, and there is an entire Forum to provide support and advanced assistance.

He also produces a windows extension called Dalifer which allows full access to the EXIF and NoteMaker data from within explorer, alloows windows to display thumbnails of MRW files, even showing where the focus indicator was when the picture was taken.

The current state of my front tooth...

This is a picture taken recently, you can see just what a poor state the fit of the crown has got into over the last 20 years.


Coupled with the fact that it keeps falling out, and it hurts... is it any wonder that I want it changed?

Xmas Presents 2004 ...

Two pair of trousers - very much needed
Aftershave - very nice
New Shoei XR1000 - Kagayama - Very nice
Shirt, Pants, Pyjamas,
Harry Potter DVD
and a part share in an X-BOX

Over fed, tired, irritated by overactive kids, still nursing a mild hangover from last night - all in all quite a successfull xmas!

With Styling like this...

TEATRO D1 - The Super Media Center 2005 PC

The Media centre PC in your lounge may actually be worth considering!
Read more about it here

I have been Xmas shopping - Bloke style!

Yep, it's that time of the year again - time to indulge youself with a large portion of "Boys Toys"... We visited our local Renault dealer today and have placed an order for a Grand Scenic

We are having the smaller 100 bhp diesel version with a few added bits (Slidding centre console, sunroof, parking sensors etc) in a metalic "Flame Red". The current expected delivery date is 20th Feb 2005, but we intend to hold back registration till 1st March and have it on an 05 plate.

I have checked the insurance, and if anything it is actually slightly cheaper than our current 1.6 Megane... Have you tried out www.confused.com yet

hehehe, happy christmas to me!

Now here's a computing story with a difference...

The Apple Graphing Calculator Story

The Tattoo has healed nicely

3 weeks on and all the swelling and redness has faded, all of the scabs have dropped of naturally and it's all smooth to the touch. I am really pleased with it.

Finished for Christmas

Whoopie, I have now finished work till Tuesday January 4th 2005... 11 days away from the office, boy do I need the break!

Phantom of the Opera

Went to see the new film of Phantom on Sunday - It's excellent! If you haven't seen it yet, why are you reading this - get to the cinema now!

I shall be looking to pre-order the DVD as soon as it's available, I also want to go back to see the stage show again :(

Back to the Dentist - and it's not good news!

For a couple of months now I have been making trips to my dentist... Basically I have a crown on one of my front teeth (A cycling accident when I was 17), which has kept comming out. The verdict this time is that the root is rotten and infected and will have to be taken out!!

The options I have are:
Live with a gap - errrmmmm NO!
Have a Denture - NO!
Have a Bridge - No! - I really am not keen on the idea of distroying two perfectly good teeth to hold a false one in place!
Have a Dental Implant - Uhmmmm Looks really good, should give a permenant solution - only downside is : it's expensive... Aprox £1600

So Implant it looks like it is then. I have to go and get an impression taken in January for a temporary denture, and then have to see the specialist to discuss my options - really not looking forwards to haveing the root extracted!

New Toy Time again!!!

It's no good, I just could not resist the lure of a better quality semi-SLR type digital camera. The Minolta DiMage f300 is good, but is just sooo sllllooooowww at starting up, charging the flash etc...

Inspired by the recent purchase of a Canon EOS 20D by a friend (Very nice!!) I looked for similar but a LOT cheaper. I finally decided upon the Minolta DiMage A200

I bought it from Jacobs in Birmingham, where I got a deal of a Lexar 80x 512 MByte Compactflash card, a lowepro soft case and the camera for £555 - a saving of £35 on retail. OK, possibly not the absolute cheapest I could have got it for, but I feel it's worth a small premium to be able to go and shout loudly in busy shop if you have a problem that is not being handled to your satisfaction!

I Finally got my Birthday present on Monday

After a 13 week wait, on Monday this week I finally made it to Dado's and got my Armband tattoo done.



I am really pleased with how it turned out, and it was nowhere near as painfull as I feared it might be. Uncomfortable would be a better word. It was a little sore for the rest of the day, and early the next morning, but now it's fine. It's scabbing over just nice, just need to wait a few weeks now for the grey to fade to it final lighter shade.

Mike's out of Hospital

The results from the Cat-Scan are mixed:
Good - no further growth of existing tumours
Not So Good - no shrinkage of existing tumours
Bad - a couple of new shadows on his lungs, which may (or may not) be more cancer

He is however feeling a lot better in himself, and is looking forwards to Xmas

Amy is 11 Years old today

It's Amy's 11th BIrthday, and due to the ongoing illness of Amanda's dad, we decieded against having the usual "Familly Party". Amy was a little dissapointed, althought she understood the reasons.

So I suggested taking "half-a-dozen" of her friends to the pictures to see "The Incredibles"... She ended up inviting 9! So off to the cinema we walked this afternoon, Me, Amanda, Alex and 10 11 year old girls!!! Total Chaos, but the film was excellent and the girls behaved well. We then came back home for a Domino's Pizza and a slice of cake.

If there is anything noiser than 9 11 year old girls in an enclosed space - I sure don't want to hear it!

10 Children and 2 Adults at the Cimena - £44
PopCorn & Coke for same - £33
Pizza & More Coke - £36
Look of delight on daughters face - Priceless!

Great Website

http://www.miniusa.com/crm/jumpgame/jumpgame.jsp - run and jump into a new Mini - how many points can you get?

w.Blogger V4.00 Release Candidate 2 installed

I have just updated from Beta 1 to RC 2, looking at the history file I would expect no issues, and certainly do not currently have any of the issues fixed between the two versions

Hospital Again

Amanda's dad, Mike, is back in hospital again. he has been battling against cancer for the last few years with some success. He has been thro' a colostomy, and recently completed a 6 week couse of kemotherapy. He was due to get the results from his latest cat-scan on Monday, but instead was admitted with severe heart palpatations.

He has been in for 5 days now, and is feeling very down.

The Da-Vinci Code

I have recently completed "The Da-Vinci Code" by Dan Brown, WOW! It's one of the best novels I have read in years!! I have no idea where the facts end and the fiction starts, but it all blends so seamlessly and it is a real page turner.

It seems that Ron Howard has the task of turning this book into a film, I hope he does a good job of it, I fear for the results of a "Hollywood" treatment on such a complex story line!

I have now started to read "Digital Fortress" by the same author, the story has already captivated me, but I do have a few issues with the repeated confusion between a 64BIT key and a 64 CHARACTER key, a small point, but enough to reduce the credability of the story.

The INK has finally been re-scheduled

The new date is Monday December 6th - 10:00 AM

Happy Birthday Amanda

Today is Amanda's 38th birthday... Congratulations sweetheart

She has just opened her cards and presents, and we are going into Birmingham as soon as we are all washed and dressed. The annual German market is currently on, she has £40 in birthday money to spend and we all fancy a cooked breakfast!

Hayley Westenra in Concert

[Listening to: River of Dreams - Hayley Westenra - Pure (04:20)]

Last night I took Amy to Symphony Hall in Birmingham to see Hayley Westenra in concert.

It was a really good evening, the girl has got the voice of an angel!!

She walked onto stage at 7:30 pm sharp, and started singing "Amazing Grace" whilst the small orchestra looked on silently, slowly joining in to wards the halfway stage. I was almost in tears, what a fantastic voice! she sang 4 songs and then introduced her "guest" a greek tenor Mario who perfored two songs - then an interval : after 35 minutes!!

The concert resumed after 20 minutes with two solo violin performances, before Hayley returned in a changed outfit. The same "a few from her, followed by a few from him" with another change of frock... Finally the obligatory encore which include a haunting version of "Pokarekare Ana" (another slightly moist eye moment) and "Hine e Hine" which finished as a duet with Mario.

There were numerous plugs for a "Special Edition" of Pure, on sale for a mere £15 - Rather a lot of money for an assorted collection of 7 additional tracks, when you already have the original album! The program was £6, again a little expensive given the size of it

Overall verdict - Excellent performances - just a little on the short side, not really very good value for money

The "INK" has been delayed

It was originally going to be 2nd week in October - but Dado was on holiday... there was then a period were Steve wasn't available due to work commitments, but finally we booked Thursday 4th November - the day after tommorow!!

Unfortunately, that has had to be cancelled, there has been a death in the family, and the shop will be shut for a few days. Steve is going to arrange another appointment for sometime soon....

Toys have been delivered

[Listening to: Episode 1 - The End - - (30:02)]

Tonight I have been over to the Parcelline depot to collect Amy's phone, and yesterday the XBOX was delivered. The phone is on charge, and the XBOX is well hidden - It's to be a "Family" xmas present. Still waiting for the games... The post office left a card today with two packages that could not be delivered - it may be the games, or simply the Paper and ink I ordered for the printer! I can't collect those till 45 hours, yes you read right 45 hours have elapsed from the failed delivery!!!

The Family is getting a new toy

[Listening to: Comfortably Numb - Scissor Sisters - Scissor Sisters (04:26)]

Did I ever mention that our Video Recorder is broken? NO! Oh... Well about 12 months ago there was a power cut on the estate, and when power was resumed, the clock on the VCR was 'stuck' at 06:00... Nevermind, we don't record on it (Sky +), in fact we hardly ever use it at all!! Then a few months ago, we had another power failure, this time when service was restored the VCR was completely fried! As I said - it's not a big deal, I have hardly any Video tapes, and we use Sky+ for recording - so I may as well scrap the box...

Trouble with that is a large space under the TV, so I have just ordered a new toy to fill the space : A Crystal XBox !!!

I am getting the Console, a SCART cable, and two games : "Shark Tale" for the kids, "Burnout 3: Takedown" for me

Amy is getting a new cellphone

[Listening to: Lifted - Lighthouse Family - Ocean Drive (04:34)]

It was such a shame, Amy loves having her mobile "pay as you go" phone, she saves up pocket money for top-ups and is never without it - But every few weeks she gets a £3.00 Ring Tone text message with no obvious source that completely wipes out her credits.

I have spoken to Orange, and unfortunately unless we can find out who is sending them, we cannot stop them - but there is no "from" number!

So, I have agreed that she can have an early xmas present, she is getting a "Samsung E700" on contract next week. Orange are currently offering that phone for FREE, with 120 minutes talktime (any network, any time) and 30 text messages per month for £15. That should be arriving on Tuesday.

As this one is a 'flip' phone, it should also stop her making "accidental" calls - she kept forgetting to lock the keypad on the Nokia!

I have warned her NOT to let anyone else play with this phone! She used to pass the 8310 around her friends as if it was some sort of game machine!!

School Choices Made

On Tuesday night, after much deliberation Amy decide that she wanted Earls, Hillcrest, Leasows as her three school choices. The LEA form was filled in and posted off.

Now we need to wait till April to see which school she gets offered.

Just to spice things up a bit, last night there was a suspected arson attack at Earls School, and most of the 1st Floor was destroyed!

The SV is back...

[Listening to: Aerozone - Jean Michel Jarre - Aero (04:57)]

I picked my SV100 back up from the shop last night - Joy!! Sorry I just do not like the Hornet, way to "Revvy", lacking in low end power - I spent most of my time on the bike going up and down the gearbox... If you enjoy winding on the revs (6000 to 11000) you would probably enjoy it. The other problem was the size : ITS TINY!!!

I was wrong about the cost : The final bill was about £280 - But what the hell, it looks really cool and feels great!

As soon as we get a nice sunny day, I will post a picture.

Secondary School : Part TWO The Earls

[Listening to: Last Rendez-Vous - Jean Michel Jarre - Aero (05:08)]

Last night was the turn of "The Earls" school in Halesowen to host prospective year 6 pupils and parents. Like Hillcrest, the school buildings and facilities were well presented and a good case was made in an excellent speech by the headmaster, unlike Hillcrest - this is a mixed school.

Music and Drama facilities were good, they are a "Performing Arts College" teaching Drama and Dance up to A Level, computers were generally quite good spec and well networked, they even offer the option of taking MSCA alongside GCSE's in Computing!!

It's now up to Amy to decide which of these two schools she would prefer to go to, the 3rd option being Leasows school. This is the nearest school, but the condition of the facilities are a disgrace, the pupils seemed surley and uninterested on the tour and the exam results are, quite frankly, poor.

New helmet

I have just treated myself to a new helmet, I have been wearing a shoei XR900 for almost 3 years now, and have take a real fancy to the new XR1000. It is so light (1.3 KG!), and fits so well...

My favourite is the Kagayama paint scheme...

SV1000 - Making it my own

I have been riding the SV1000 for a few weeks now, and love it to bits... There were just two minor issues, 1) the lack of a screen made motorway riding less fun than it should have done, and 2) the riding position, although upright was still just a little too far forwards for confort after 30 minutes...

So, on Friday I fitted a "Bug Screen" - £40, it's not big, but it just gives that little bit of protection at 70 MPH, and today the bike is in the workshop at Streetbike to have the handlebars changed to a set of "medium" Renthal bars. This is rapidly turning out to be quiet expensive! The bars are only £25, the fitting - about 2 hours in total - £100, but it also ment the frontbrake hose and the clutch hose needed changing (too short!), that's about another £120 (Blue Stainless steel braided), so I am not expecting much change from £250!!

Add to that, they only found the clutch hose wouldn't reach once they fitted the new bars - so the hose won't be in stock till tommorow.... and I am going to be riding a Hornet 600 courtesy bike for the next day or two!

Secondary School : Part ONE Hillcrest

We spent a couple of hours around Hillcrest school for girls a couple of nights ago. We were generally very impressed with the facilities, the range of extra corricular activities, the disciplin and the attitude of the girls we saw.

They have a Drama and Dance department, they are also a "Microsoft Partner School" with excellent (for a school!) computing facilities.

We have another couple of schools to see over the next two weeks, and then we need to work out what is going to be the best for Amy.... Is it too late to change my mind about having kids?

Finally Getting Some Ink Done...

[Listening to: 17-Notes.../Twisted Every Way... - Andrew Lloyd Webber - The Phantom of the Opera (09:40)]

Well after some 15 months of thinking about it, I finally decided I was going to get a tattoo, I drew up the design over 12 months ago - it is an Armband based on the headband worn by Elrond in the Lord of the Rings Films, the sword is "Sting" Bilbo/Frodo's trusty side arm.



When I discussed it with Amanda, she agreed to pay for it as my birthday present. The design has been given to the tattooist, and a provisional date of 2nd week in October has been agreed for the work to be done. Stevie K - No stranger to a tattoo studio, has agreed to go along with me for moral support.

SV 1000 - What a machine

[Listening to: All I Ask Of You - Andrew Lloyd Webber - The Phantom of the Opera (04:14)]

I have had the new bike about a week now, and managed about 100 miles. All I can say is WOW!

It really is a nice ride, It feels much more stable in a straight line, sits nicely on the road in corners, and accelerates like S*!t off a shovel!

My only criticism would be that after about 40 minutes, my back was starting to ache a little, I may have to change the handlebars to raise them a little, and I definitely want a "Fly Screen" to just take some of the pressure off speeds above 50.

Problems with w.bloggar since upgrade to Media Player 10

[Listening to: Mouses Big Day - - (09:38)]

As you may have realised, I have no been listening to the same track for the last half-a-dozen posts... There is a MediaPlayer plugin which w.bloggar can use to allowit to determine the currently playing track, and add it to the top of every post.

Since upgraing to Media Player 10 - this plugin does not seem to be returning the correct information.... Oh Hum!

Moto Guzzi Breva 750 - The Saga Finally Ends

[Listening to: Mouses Big Day - - (09:38)]

Today, I took delivery of a six month old Suzuki SV1000, the Breva has gone... Its fate is to sit in the warehouse of the dealers till MotoGuzzi can be actually bothered to send an exhaust and disk to the UK, when it will be sold for whatever they can get for it.

The SV is a Very different beast to the Breva - the throttle is very lively, the riding position is less "Sit up and beg", and it feels very tall when riding. I think it will take a few days to get used to this one....

Amy has a new bedroom

[Listening to: Mouses Big Day - - (09:38)]

I put the finishing touches on Amy's bedroom this weekend. No not me taking forever to decorate a room again, we were waiting for the new curtains to be made...!

New cutain rail was fitted, and the curtains hung... She has now gone from a "Barbie Palace" to a sophisticated room suitable for a young lady.

Latest on the ongoing "Broken Breva" situation

[Listening to: Mouses Big Day - - (09:38)]

It's now been over 4 months since the warranty claim went in for the exhaust and disk on the bike, and I am still no close to getting it fixed.

I phoned Speedaway today, and told them I want rid of it, and I have e-mailed "Trading Standards" asking for clarification on my legal position. I am now waiting for the sales manager to call me back with an offer on the bike, hopefully involving a trade with a 2nd hand 2004 Suzuki SV1000 that they have in stock.

The Laptop has pulled thro'

After an extensive low level format operation, and a day one recovery procedure, the patient is stable but still some way off full fitness.

The boot time to working (with internet page loaded via wifi network) is now in the order of 32 to 35 seconds, a backup is currently being taken to a new second partition in case there is a recurrence of the condition.

The family have been notified, and are spending time with the patient in recovery.

Laptop on lifesupport!

For a little while my laptop has been quite slow to boot up, Windows XP Pro loaded in about 30 seconds when it was new, and I expect it to slow down a little as I generally load it it with all the useful little utilities that make it MY laptop, but....

How does 10 to 15 MINUTES sound?

I have been meaning to do something about it for a couple of weeks, but the wedding video has been taking up all my spare time (and some!), so tonight I inserted the "Ultimate Boot CD 2.4" and ran an IBM/Hitachi disk utility - Unrecoverable sectors!!

At the moment, I am LOW LEVEL FORMATTING it, ready to reinstall from the manufacturers Recovery CD's, but have taken the proactive step of contacting Customer Services at "The Laptop Shop" to see if it is covered by warranty.

First post with w.blogger v4

I have been using a program called w.blogger for the last few months, and it really is excellent.

• Post and Publish on Blogger, b2, MovableType, Nucleus, BigBlogTool, BlogWorks XML, Blogalia, Drupal, Xoops, E-Xoops, Upsaid, PostNuke, TheBlog, Blog-City, blojsom, Roller Weblogger, Domino, LiveJournal, EraBlog.NET,pMachine, TypePad and YACS blogs


• Edit Posts and Templates


• Save Posts locally for further publishing


• Import Text files


• Add links and images


• Format text font and alignment


• Multiple accounts and blogs


• Post preview


• Colorized HTML code


• HTML tags menu


• Find/Replace option


• Post to many blogs


• Ping to Weblogs.Com


• Title and Category Fields


• Spell Checking


• File and Image Upload


• Custom Tags Menu


• Toolbar Icons Skin


• Supports Windows XP


• Easy Account Configuration

Allthough it is freeware, I decided it was time to make a contribution... I am now using a beta of Version 4... :)

First day of my holiday week (at home)

Having got back from Blackpool yesterday, the plan was for the rest of the week to be spent in the garden, on the house etc, doing basic maintainance. Unfortunately the weather is foul - thunderstorms etc, so change of plan... Off to B&Q latter for paper and paint - and decorate Amy's bedroom.

Wedding Video DVD finally delivered

Well, after several weeks of hard work, I finally finished Steve and Rebecca's wedding Video DVD. It was a big beast over 80 minutes of video footage, 35 minutes of the main service, 30 minutes plus of speeches, and a couple of "Extra's". All with animated menu's etc. I was quite pleased with the result, and when they saw it on Friday night, I think they too were happy with it.

They have now taken it away and it should be viewed by a few more people soon, lets see if I get any feedback!

Magnetic Bracelet

Now, I don't know about you, but I have always thought the idea of a copper bracelet being the cure-all for everything from period pains to arthritis to be completely rediculous...

Having said that, I have just brought one! Not because I have any great expectation that it will do any good (because I have no such expectation!)... mainly because I like the style and weight of it, and at £10 it is a reasonable prices item of jewelry.

If, however, over the next few days - all my aches and pains vanish - I will let you know! (But don't hold your breath)

Nice Weekend Away

Just back from a long weekend away in Blackpool. Stayed at "The Big Blue Hotel", which is right on the south entrance to the Pleasure Beach. Our room in fact overlooked "The Big One", "The Big Dipper" and "Steeplechase" to name but 3. If you were in the room during the day it was quite noisy as the rides roared past, but they generally shut off about 10:00PM, so it was not an issue.

The Hotel itself is excellent, and I have no doubt that we "Will Be Back", to paraphrase Govenor Schwarzenegger

me and Amy spent most of Sunday from 10:00 to 14:00 riding anything and everything on the pleasure beach, the new ride "Bling" was a dissapointment, and we ran out of time (Amanda got bored) before we went on the "Ice Blast" - We were also completely soaked at that point, having just been on "Valhalor"

August Bank Holiday - Old Trafford

Hurah, First tickets of the new season are now mine....

I have four adults & 1 child ticket for ManU v Everton on August 30th - My Birthday... and Amanda is going with me for her first game.

Usual location, North Stand, 3rd tier... Lets just hope it's a good game

New Drive Delivered and Installed

My 250 GB drive arrived today, it took about 3 hours to move the data across from the current drive using Drive Image, but it was painless...

The new drive is quieter, faster and bigger, so a result al round then!

Adobe Premier Pro - Wow!

As you may be aware, I have been experimenting with video editing / dvd authoring software recently. I have purchased a copy of ULead VideoStudio 8 on the grounds that it produces good quality files, is relatively easy to use, and is very cheap. The DVD authoring, however, is a little restrictive. I have a trial version of ULead DVD Factory, that seems to give me most of what I want in a DVD authoring package, but I am having trouble getting that to run correctly.

I have now downloaded 30 day trial versions of Adobe Premier Pro & Encore.... Bloody expensive, but OH MY GOD! it should be compulsary for all software to be that good...! Simple effects that I manages in about 10 minutes in Video Studio took 10 seconds in Premier Pro, and it was so easy to use, if only it was £400 cheaper...

A short clip with a couple of effects in can be found here Slow motion confetti throing, Picture in Picture, colour balance corrected, brightness and contrast adjusted....

On the plus side, the main reason I want all this power is to help build a wedding video for Steve & Rebecca... I ahve some pretty cool ideas on what I want it to look like, and effects required etc... I just need to ensure that I have finished it inside 28 days

Football season is almost here

It seems only a short while since the end of the football season and Euro2004, but the 2004/5 Premier league season will soon be upon us. I have just applied for my first home game tickets of the season... Everton on August 30th - My Birthday...

I got to 3 games last season; Wolves, Birmingham & Southampton... Lets hope I manage at least that many again this time

New HDD on order

Now I have started to use Digital Video on the PC, I am finding a shortage of storage space an issue.. I currently have two 120 GB drives
Drive 1
C:\ (System) - 30 GB capacity, 15 GB free
W:\ (Backups) - 36 GB capacity, 5 GB free
V:\ (Video) - 45 GB Capacity, 6 GB free

Drive 2
D:\ (My data) - 40 GB Capacity, 30 GB free
M:\ (My Music) - 55 GB Capacity, 12 GB free
P:\ (My Pictures) - 20 GB Capactiy, 10 GB free

I have a total of 70 GB free, but spread out over 2 discs and even that only allows for about 3 hours worth of captured + finished video!

So I have just ordered a new drive (250Gb Hitachi Deskstar 7K250) and will replace Drive 1 as this is a) the slower of the two drives, and b) it is the easiest to remove from the case!
C:\ (System) - 40 GB
W:\ (Backups) - 40 GB
V:\ (Video) - 160 GB

That should allow for about 6 hours worth of captured fles (12 GB/hour), the finished .AVI files(12 GB/hour) and WMV files for the website (150 MB/hour)
and still leave plenty of room on the D:\ for working files used during burning.

The drive has cost £120 inc VAT, P&P from CCL Computers

3D Printers?

I know this original article is dated January, but I missed it at the time...

Basically, you have an "Inkjet Printer" that has special conducting and semiconducting polymers instead of ink, and build a 3d model of whatever you have designed. Ok that would be cool just by itself, but the latest twist is that you can 'print' the electronic circuitry inside the device as you build it...

MP3 Library for your HiFi?

For quite some time now, I have been loooking for a HiFi based MP3 player. What I actually mean by that is a HiFi separates style unit, with a good sized hard drive (80 to 160 GB), wireless network connectivity (ethernet connection would do - at a push), a decent quality audio decoder and encoder and standard phono stereo outputs. This would sit in my HiFi cabinet in the space currently used by my Cassette Deck.

So far, I have been completely frustrated in my search - lots of AV streaming boxes for connecting into TV etc, usually requiring your "server" pc to remain switched on...

Today, I thought I had found the answer to my problem - The Cyruslink. Given Cyrus's reputation, you just know it is going to be good quality (audio and build), the 160 or 250 GB drive is actually close to excessive (I currently have my entire MP3 collection stored in 45GB at 192 kbs), and the additional music zones are not currently on my list, but could be usefull with two kids in the house. You can even control it from your PDA!

So then, what's the problem - why is it not on order? - Simple £3000 for the 160 GB, £3500 for the 250 GB and and additional £200 for the PDA Remote Control software!!

What is an Agnostic?

I am not a religious person, but have never been sure if I was an agnostic or an atheist.. Today I read this page, and I am now convinced that agnostic is the correct description...

Latest XP SP2 installed

This time it's build RC2 Build 2162...

I will be glad when this thing is finally released, it takes a couple of hours to uninstall the previous version, and install the new one each time!

Personally, I have not had a problem with SP2 since about March!, and even then it was pretty trivial...

Schools Out

Not sure about the rest of the country, but our local schools have all finished for the summer holidays today.

The Plus Side : For the next two weeks, traffic into work and back will be almost non existant, and for the following four weeks about 50% of normal.

The Minus Side : Evry day I have off from work will be spent in the company of the wife and kids!!

The Megan went to the shop today...

Took the car in to Renault Birmingham this morning, and collected it back this afternoon... It needs a new door handle on the rear off-side door, but as it has to be painted to match the car it will be about two weeks...

I tried to enable RSS...

Following some instructions I barely understood, I allegedly enabled RSS feed on the blog.

Only one problem, when I connect my RSS feed reader to it - it was empty!

[Edit: Took about 20 minutes before the RSS reader picked it up, I forgot it was only set to refresh every 30 minutes]

Archos Battery - Part 3

My new 2800 mAh battery arrived yesterday, I charged it up for about 3 hours, but it only lasted for 7 hours under playback test...

I put it back on charge, and left it charging all day, and ran the test again... after 5 hours it was at 43% indicating a run time of about 8 hours!

Not too impressed so far. I will use it as normal for the next few days - allowing only small discharge amounts before topping back up. I will then test again, and see if the battery improves ater that.

Finally finished the painting in the Hall!!!

Started mid September 2003, took a short break from September 18th to July 8th... ! It is now complete Hurrah!

Now that's how warranty claims should work...

Had a little problem with the Megan yesterday, the rear - offside door would not open! It felt like a mechanical failure as there was no resistance on the door handle, unfortunately this door also has the child lock engeged : Not able to open it from inside either!

Took the door panel off this morning (after removing the rear seat, searching around for my Torx set etc) and found a small plastic clip had broken. Popped over to the dealers (Renault - Birmingham), explained what had broken - they pointed out that it was still under warranty - some 14 months after I brought it 2nd hand!! It's booked in for nextr Friday, and they will even supply a courtesy car for the day.

The broken part is about £1.50, the labour was estimated to be £150 + VAT

A "Natural" form of contraception

If you are considering becoming a parent, or are wondering if you did the right thing by not having children... let me ease your mind.

I have recently been forced to endure that most dreaded of parental responsibilities : The School Concert

Now, some of you - propably the ones without children in Primary Education - may not think that too bad, well watch the video of the concert online HERE... And that was one of the better ones I've been to!

If someone had showed me clips such as this when I was younger, I too may have remained a "non-parent"!

The Bike repair saga continues...

I went into the dealers yesterday, the downpipe has been delivered, the silencer is due "Any time now" (TM), and the disk is "On it's way".

ON the plus side, they have basically agreed to call me as soon as the exhaust is in stock, and I can have it fitted AND the bike serviced the NEXT DAY, with the use of a loan bike for the day.

Not the greatest news, but at least its getting better not worse!

Hillcrest School - Birmingham

It's that time in the life of a parent that you are really not looking forward too - choosing a senior school for your first born!

Amy is very keen to take the 11+ examinations and apply for King Edwards IV school (if successfull), but wisely she has agreed to keep her options open, and yesterday I took her to Hillcrest School.

Unike King Edwards (5 Ways), Hillcrest is a Girls only school. On this fact alone, I would prefer Hillcrest as I really believe that girls, more so than lads, will work harder in a unisex environment. There are two King Edwards Girls Schools, but they are more difficult to travel to.

Another consideration is that, well to be kind - Amy's work rate is steady, and I am a little concerned that the strong accademic push of a grammer school, may not suit her. Hillcrest seem to have achieved some good results without applying too much pressure to the pupils. They also have dance and drama activities, which her ladyship would love!

Archos Battery - Part 2

I was getting a little concerned over the length of time it was taking to recieve the battery I ordered on the 24th June (almost 2 weeks), so I checked on the website - the little bugger was stil in my shopping basket...!

Seems I followed the link off to PayPal, and forgot to click the final confirmation button. Ah well, it's ordered now.

New Video On-Line

http://mycameras.redbreva.co.uk/MusicLive2004-High.htm

Amy, as a member of the Howley Grange Choir, joined together with a number of other schools from around Dudley to perform a 30 minute piece called "Choosing Chums" at the Dudley Music Live festival yesterday. The stage was inside Dudley Castle, and it provides a magnificent backdrop.

The video was edited in Video Studio 8 - Trail Edition, I am really starting to get comfortable with that application, and I think I will be buying the full version very soon. I had chance to use "Adobe Encore" the other day to author a DVD - it is a truly spectacular piece of software, but price wise - well out of my league.

Two New Marks Spains - Part 2

I collected them this morning, and they look magnificent in the frames. They sit either side of "Black Dress", and compliment it very nicely.


best of all, as a valued customer, I got both pictures, in better than standard frames for £500 - a saving of almost £75

Video Editing Software

Up till now, I have been using Microsoft Movie maker 2, which came free with XP. Very easy to use, but the quality of the output is sadley lacking. after a little digging around, it was suggested that I try ULead VideoStudio 8, it's only £43, and you can download a 30 day demo.

I used it last night to produce a DVD, and I am very pleased with the quality of the finished article - All I need to do now is learn how to take better video!

Congratulations to the new Mr & Mrs Kilmister

[Listening to: Sealed With A Kiss - Agnetha Faltskog - My Colouring Book (02:35)]

Amanda and I attended the wedding of Steve and Rebecca yesterday, apart from the weather (Sunny the day before and after, raining on Saturday!), the day went off without a hitch.
The service was excellent, the vicar is a real character and made it one of the most personal services I have even seen. The wedding breakfast, which was held at the Birmingham Metropole (Hilton) at the NEC, was trully magnificent, and the evening reception was a party that will be long remembered. We stayed in the hotel last night, and rounded the proceedings off with a very nice "Full English" breakfast.

Best of all, I only have the very slightest of hangovers this morning.

At Last! - A Date

Ok, it's not the greatest news, but at least we now have some idea of when the exhaust components will be delivered to the dealership - 5th to 10th July. I have cancelled the service booked for the 5th, and the shop have agreed to service and fit at the same time.

Still no news on the disc, I have e-mailed MotoGuzzi Customer Services again and requested that they provide this information ASAP, and asked for a loan bike in the meantime..

As ever, I will keep you posted

Battery life on my Archos Jukebox

The latest versions of Rockbox include a battery test routine. You basically charge your cells up, start this plugin, and wait...!

It simulates reading a 128kbs MP3 file, and keeps a log of battery life remaining, along with a timestamp, untill the remaining battery is 4%

I ran it several times and got a value of about 9.5 hours each time - the delay is an amazingly straight line, but the time is way too short compaired to other peoples units. So tonight I dismantled the box, and checked the battery contacts etc... I have now started another run of the test, if this gives similar figures, I may have a failing battery :(

Oh what the heck... I have just ordered a 2800 mAh replacement battery from www.newmp3technology.com, with the current good exchange rate it works out at less that £22 delivered!

Rang Italy - AGAIN!

I have given up on Speedaway Motorcyles to do anything about trying to hurry MotoGuzzi up, so I called customer services again today. The lady requested the bikes FRAME NUMBER, and stated that she would chase warranty and spares departments to find out what has happened, and would contact me with dates as soon as she gets an answer...

Oh well, lets see if she keeps her promises

The Bed Has Landed

I booked 1/2 a days leave yesterday as Alex's new bed was scheduled for delivery...

Having cleared all the plates and pictures from the wall, and moved the pot plants out of the way, I dismantled his old bed and took it downstairs. The delivery wagon arrived at 13:30 and they were gone by 13:40 with the bed and mattress safelt installed in his bedroom.

Slight snag - the headboard has not been delivered! Called the shop, it's out of stock - inspite of the fact that we requested the bed not be delivered untill the headboard was available - They have promised to get one in within the next couple of days.... It's not been my weeks really... :-(

*STILL* no spares from Moto Guzzi...

Good grief, just how long does it take to get an exhaust system and a Front disc from Italy to the UK....?

Over 5 weeks it would appear!

I was looking to change the Breva 750 for a Breva 1100 next year, not too sure now, it may end up being a 1200 bandit!

Two more Mark Spains will soon be mine...

I ordered the two Monochrome etchings today, and as a regular and values customer, I got the pair of them for £500. Should be about 10 days to get them framed and "Float Mounted" in the frame of my choice... :-)

Why you should dump Internet Explorer

See the article at LockerGnome - "Why you should dump Internet Explorer"...

Makes quite a good case...

New Mark Spain Pictures

Mark Spain has another couple of new works out - two monochrome etchings "Silent Composition" and "Pause For Thought",


and a painting "Thinking of You".


The painting is just stunning, and if I had somewhere to hang it I would be really tempted - Fortunately I don't, so I'm not...

The etchings on the other hand... One either side of the "Black Dress" in the lounge..? Photo's of the kids can be moved...


I'm going to the Halcyon Gallery in Birmingham tommorow to have a good look at them - They ordered them on approval for me - At £275 each (approx), it's not an insubstancial investment, but I love them - so I don't care! Better still, Amanda really likes them too!

Finally got back to the Gym Today

After two weeks of cold/hay fever a general malaise took over, which was not helped by the fact that Livingwell Birmingham chose just that ime to start a refit! It's been almost 4 weeks since I last went, but today I finally made the effort... No doubt I shall regret it tommorow!

Don't you love it when....

... nastly little blighters get their come-upance : http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/05/24/ebay_scammer_scammed/

Blimey! That was a quick two weeks!

had a phone call this evening, it seems Alex's bed as ready for delivery! They offered Saturday or Tuesday, but neither day is suitable... Looks like he may have to wait just a little longer yet.

How long does it take to fill up 1 Gig of storage with spam?

How well do Gmail's junk filters work? Let's find out! Spam my shiny new G-mail account at prattboy@gmail.com Give my address to spammers, newsletters, annoying people, whatever, and let's see how long it takes!

Get the full story her : http://gmail.prattboy.net/

Alex finally gets a new bed (on order)

For almost 6 months we have been talking about getting Alex a new bed... He is currently still in his CotBed he has had since births, and he is now 6 years old!

It's not really as bad as it sound, the cot sides came off many years ago, and he is quite small for his age, so still did fit, but over the last few months it started to look a little tight!

Yesterday, we went shopping and ordered him a new full size single bed from "Bed World" near Merry Hill. Its a "Silentnight Georgia Divan and Mattress" with sliding doors on the base... £230 with a metal "Jenna" Headboard. Should be deliverered in about two weeks.

It only took 4 Weeks and 3 Days

.... But Moto Guzzi have finally agreed to swap out the front disk under warrantee.... Yipeeee!

I called them again this morning, and got a promise that they would call be back TODAY, this afternoon they did just that.

All that I am waiting for now, is for the parts to arrive at the dealers... As they still don't have the exhaust and downpipe some 3 weeks after they were ordered I am not holding my breath!

Generate your own Favicons...

[Listening to: The Waiting Room - Genesis - The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (05:21)]

From http://www.htmlkit.com/services/favicon/

Would you like to display your own icon on the browser address bar when visitors view or bookmark your web page? The favicon feature makes it possible to brand address bars, bookmarks / favorites, and/or tabs with custom icons.

The FavIcon from Pics makes it easier to create icons for your web pages. Simply select a picture, logo or other graphic (of any size/resolution) that you already have for the "Source Image" and click "Generate FavIcon.ico"

It really works, looks good, and best of all - it's free!

Still chasing Guzzi Support!

[Listening to: The Chamber of 32 Doors - Genesis - The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (05:39)]

I am getting very fed up with this now!

Laptop Rebuilding - Does it never end...

I have come to the conclusion that rebuilding your PC, any PC - but especially laptops is a never ending task... In spite of all the time I put in last week to ensure that I had everything I could think of installed before making an image... Today I have just spent another hour adding stuff.

What had I forgotten? How about Winzip, Adobe Acrobat - don't forget the Acrobat Speedup without which Acrobat is a pig to load... various updated hardware drivers...

But I now think I am close to a complete build :-)

I'm now fully In-Car GPS'd

Just been for a quick run in the car with the aid of the TOMTOM 3 navigation... What can I say, it would even be hard for me to go wrong with directions as good as that...

The user interface is a little ideosyncratic, but once you can persuade it to go where you need it to it gets you there with the minimum of fuss.

The map's are not 100% - it wanted me to turn right across a dual carriageway with no break in the central reservation! - but as soon as you leave the chosen route, it automatically compensates and points you back in the right direction...

The Axim Rocks!

INstalled the CF WiFi card, it detected three local WiFi networks, 1 of which was mine!! Selected it, it asked for the 10 digit passkey and connected!

Used MSN messenger, Internet Explorer - worked great.

Unable to test out the TomTom software last night, as I had no access to the car, and the GPS kit needs to be connected to additional power to function... That's the mission for tonight.

What I also want is a simple method of checking the battery status, I may try BatteryBar, it's free! Or, I may get BatteryPack Pro from OmegaOne, it's $20 and it comes highly recommended.

Moto Guzzi Customer Services - Again

Called them again today, the very nice lady told me she was waiting for a reply back from the warantee department.. so basically Still No News. She has promised to call me back on the mobile as soon as she has some information....

The Axim Has Landed

It arrived at 7:30 this morning!

Unboxed it and took all the bits in to work. I have had chance to play with it after it's 4 hour initial charge, and so far I am impressed. I have used Active Sync with the works laptop as a Guest, and installed a driver for the CF WiFi card, and copied a few files over.

The media player makes a good job of both MP3 and Windows video files, but you really do need headphones connected!

Graphics are excellent, screen display is great.

I have just installed ActiveSync at home, so lets see what Pocket Outlook 2002 can do. I will then set about connecting to the wireless network. Back later!

No news from MotoGuzzi customer services

I have still not heard from Customer Services about changing my front disk under warantee... I have been back to the dealers, and called guzzi direct again - but it seems that today is a bank holiday in Italy.... Doh!

My PDA is due to be delivered tomorrow

Had a phone call today, my new PDA is to be delivered on Thursday - Hopefully whilst Amanda is in the house... And tomorrow is my early day, so I may get some time to play with it!

Been to the cinema today.

Decided agains even trying to see Harry Potter - the Q was about 200 yards!

We settled for Van Helsing, my advice - don't bother...!

I really wanted to like this film, the trailers looked good, Ms Beckinsale looks really good in leather, and the idea sounds fun, however some of the special effects just don't pass muster (Leaping from horse to horse, Mr Jeckyl, in fact too many to mention) some are excellent (the werewolf transformation), and the "updated story" is, at times, just plain silly!

Score out of 10 : 5

Laptop troubles continued...

It was still taking forever to boot the laptop - at least 3 minutes to get a usable desktop, and even then simple jobs - such as displaying the start menu, took almost a minute the 1st time...

I removed the swap file, completely. Removed Hibernation support. Defragged the HDD again, re-enabled Swapspace - this time fixed at 512 MB, converted the FS to NTFS and all seem to be running OK now.

New disk image made (3.5 GB) and copied over the wireless to the desktop PC, ready to be burnt onto my recovery DVD

A Little Laptop Trouble

Since the hicough with the GPS Mouse a few weeks ago, the laptop has been running sluggish. For example - 75 seconds to boot up! The other day, it completely failed to boot, and I ended up in safe mode to get it working again!

Today, I went to use it this morning, and it failed to boot again. I was in no mood to mess about again, so I booted to the "PowerQuest Drive Image" CDROM, and selected a complete system restore. I took a complete image, just after XMAS last year of my working system with most of the bits on.

Within an hour I had a working system again, but I have been "Tweaking" for most of the day, on and off... 19 MB of Windows updates for starters, remove a couple of apps that have fallen by the wayside in the last 5 months, update the virus checker, add Desktop Sidebar, do a boot time defrag of the HDD, run Bootvis a couple of times to ensure rapid startup. Smaller updates have also been done ; Flash 7 installed into IE, Fun packs downloaded and added to Media Player and Movie Maker...

I am now just about done, one last defrag of the D drive, and I can create a new Drive Image of the PC - Ready for the next time it fails!

Parcel collected, not what I had hoped

[Listening to: My Immortal - Evanescence - Fallen (04:24)]

OK, I have my TOMTOM 3 software, and the GPS hardware for the AXIM 5.... I just don't have the PDA to run it on yet :-(

I was hoping that the PDA would arive first, giving me a day or two to play, before getting some additional kit and software - ah well...

The car mounting kit looks to be excellent quality, the manual is adeqate - it seems to tell me everything I need to know, with simple to follow diagrams, time will tell once I get to load it!

Now this is what the Internet is all about

[Listening to: Whistle Down The Wind - Sarah Brightman - Encore (03:29)]

http://www.animalsontheunderground.com

The Animals, made up using tube lines, stations and junctions were spotted by Paul Middlewick some 15 years ago.


The original Animal, the Elephant was discovered while Paul was staring at the tube map during his daily journey to work.


Since then, the Elephant has been joined by many other Animal friends. You can meet some of them on this site by clicking the 'animals' link. More Animals are being 'discovered' all the time If you want to know more about them and what they get up to, why not join our mailing list?

On a happier note...

The couriers failed to deliver a parcel today - that'l be the DELL PDA... I should be able to collect it from the depot in the morning....

Not a happy Bunny!

I have heard from the Bike dealers today... It seems that Moto Guzzi have agreed to replace the exhaust, but not the front disk brake under warantee! I have spoken to Guzzi Customer support and await their reply.

Breva Site Updated..

[Listening to: 04 The Riot Of Your Time - Scorpions - Taken By Force (04:13)]

The title just about says it all really.... (Updated Breva Page)

Alex's Birthday

Today my little boy is 6 years old... He is now the proud owner of a water pistol, a biplane kite, a nature explorer kit, some "boring clothes" (his words not mine) , and some £100 in cash! We will be going shopping in Toys R us on Saturday :-)

The Red Breva...

Well, it's been some time since I last updated my bike site, and in fact I have completely redesigned my entire website... but last night I finally but some content into the new shell. (http://motoguzzi.redbreva.co.uk) Nothing spectacular, just moved the content from my old site to the new one. Tonight I shall attempt to bring it up to date...

One Down, One to Go...

This weekend was the "Family Party" for Alex's Birthday - He will be 6 on the 27th, Next week is the tough one, the "Kids party". That is to be a bouncy castle affair at the local leisure centre.

This one was quite good fun, a Bar-B-Q in the Garden.. The weather was magnificent, my cooking was superb and a good time was had by all. Amy had her first go with the video camera, and although she quickly mastered the controls, she needs a little more practice on the "slow and smooth" techniques! You can see an edited version of it here.

The run up to this weekend was tough, as I had to get the garden tidy, beds weeded, Hedges trimmed, lawns cut, connifers lopped etc. but it was worth it in the end. NOTE TO SELF: start to tidy the garden in April next year!

Rockbox just keeps getting better...

The latest version of Rockbox now supports displaying the filename of the NEXT song in the playlist... cool.
Using this information on a limited size screen is a bit of a challange, but with a combination of scrolling, alternating lines I have finally managed!

Batt:%bt Vol:%pv
%t5%s%?it<%?in<%in. |>%it|%fn>;%t5%s%?It%it|%fn>>
%t5%s%?ia<%ia|%?d2<%d2|(root)>>;%t5%s%?Ia<%Ia|%?ia<%ia|%?d2<%d2|(root)>>>
%t5%s%?id<%id|%?d1<%d1|(root)>> %?iy<(%iy)|>;%t5%s%?Id<%Id|%?id<%id|%?d1<%d1|(root)>>>
Trk: %pp of %pe%?ps<{%ps}|> %?iv
Trk Time: %pc/%pt

%pm

A Sample Translation:
%t5%s%?it<%?in<%in. |>%it|%fn>;%t5%s%?It%it|%fn>>
show the first section of data for 5 seconds (%t5)
If it does not fit on screen, scroll it (%s)
is there a valid id3 trackname tag for the current song? (%?it<)
If there is, is there a valid id3 tag for the track number (%?in<)
Yes there is, so display it, followed by a full stop (%in.)
No there is not, so display nothing (|>)
Yes there is, so display it (%it)
No there is not, so display the filename of the track instead (|%fn)
End of first display section(;)

show the second section of data for 5 seconds (%t5)
If it does not fit on screen, scroll it (%s)
is there a valid id3 trackname tag for the NEXT song? (%?It<)
If there is, display the word NEXT: followed by the track number, a full stop and the title (NEXT: %In. %It)
I have assumed at this section, if there is a trackname ID3 tag, all the tags are populated
If not, display the same information as for the 1st section... (|%?it<%?in<%in. |>%it|%fn>>)

Simple eh?

Want is a very powerfull word.

I know I don't need a PDA, but I really WANT one.

My interest was recently ignited by the news that Dell have launched the Axim X30, with a 600 Mhz processor and Windows Mobile 2003 SE, but not in the UK yet!

I started looking on the Dell UK site to see when it would be out, no news - bummer! I read a few reviews, and found battery life was in the region of 3 hours!! What chuffin use is that to anyone?

What I did see, however, was the X5 GPS bundle... and as one of the main reasons for having a windows PDA was to be able to use autoroute and GPS etc I was hooked!



Car cradle, Car Charger, GPS unit, GPS software, cables, 128 MB SD card, 400 Mhz processor etc. It's no good I really WANT this tool..........

New Blog Posting Tool

[Listening to: Tired Of Sleeping - Suzanne Vega - Days Of Open Hand (04:24)]

Up till now, I have just been using the web interface to post to Blogger.com, but I have just happend across w.blogger

It seems to be a really cool little application, and it will automatically insert the current playing music from Media Player 9 at the top of each post!

It's been a quiet week, lots of work in the office and the weather has been warm enough to get out in the garden.

The garden is starting to look quite good again, plants blooming and growing, hedges and edges trimmed, conifers lopped back to a sensible height... Just as well, we have family and friends over this weekend for a B-B-Q to celebrate Alex's 6th Birthday. Should give me chance to play with the HC-40 again, or I may even let Amy have a go... The result of my first experiment in Video editing can be seen here, it is streaming, but it's designed for Broadband download.

No news from the bike shop yet, but they did say it may be a couple of weeks... It's still running OK(ish) but the sooner the disc and exhaust is replaced the better!

I am being tempted into the world of PDA's - The new Dell Axim X30 loooks to be rather tasty - plain looking but plenty of power, Wireless networking and bluetooth built in.. However it's only just been announced and I can't find a UK price yet.
The other option was a Dell X5 GPS, but at almost £600 with all the extra's - that's a little too rich for my taste at the moment :)

The Breva went to the shop on Monday.

The front brake is vibrating in use, because the disc is buckled! It Needs a new one and a pair of pads.

The ratteling noise from the exhaust is due to the Catalytic Converter collapsing internally, and that need to be replaced.

The reason the exhaust is blowing, is that the downpipe is 1" too short! That too has to be replaced!

The rear hub is also showing signs of corrosion, and they will have to replace that too.

Good job it's still under warrantee!

I just have to wait a couple of weeks now for the Guzzi engineer to agree and for the parts to be in stock. I'll than have an almost new bike again!

Did I tell you the story about my GPS receiver?

Well I decided it may be useful to have a GPS receiver to use with AutoRoute on my laptop, I didn't want to spend a lot of money to test out the theory, so I looked on E-Bay. I won one at auction for £30 from a guy in Hong Kong.
I used it on our recent trip to Llandudno, and it worked like a dream, or at least it did for about 70 miles, and then it packed up! No amount of reloading of drivers etc made a scrap of difference, and I tried 3 other PC's - still no good.

At this point I decided to write it off and get a better quality one from someone in this country.

I chose a "RoyalTek - Sapphire Smart Antenna" from the GPS Warehouse. I opted for the serial connection model, as it stated that serial was compatible with more GPS Software than the USB. It arrived quickly enough and I set about connecting it up, that's when I realised that I have a "Legacy Free" laptop - No Serial ports! Sheepishly I called them, and they agreed I could send it back and exchange it.

It cost me an addition £10 in postage to replace it, but it's here now. I have installed it on the laptop, and it's a cracker!! The accuracy is really good, and it's as stable as anything.

Blogger has a "New Look"...

Google have just gone to town on Blogger, and the results are fantastic! Completely new interface for creating and maintaining the blog, and a load of nice new shiny templates to use too.

I have moved the hosting from my own site, to Bloggers own "blogspot.com" Partly because - well why not? and partly due to the introduction of FrontPage extension on my own site, I am not allowed to FTP to it!

Anyway, site republished to new location, and with a new look, all in less than the time it took to get a pizza delivered! Must go, pizza man just arrived

Has it really been that long.....

I am still playing with the MS Hosting and Front Page 2003, I think I have now finalised my methodology... I have a root site www.redbreva.co.uk, that is simply a "Placeholder". Each of the sub sections from the original site will now be hosted as a completely seperate "Sub Domain", all with a Family look-and-Feel, but with their own independant colour scheme and sub menu.

Desktop Side bar is still great!

www.allofmp3.com is a superb place to download you mp3's from...

I have bought myself a Digital Video Cam-Corder, the Sony HC40, it really is rather good. I used it a little on a weekend away in Llandudno. Transfering the video to the PC was simplicity itself... Connect the Camcorder via the firewire port and Windows Movie Maker popped up and a wizard did all the work. I was then able to edit the video, add title, save as PAL and burn to DVD with a menu - all in under 1 hour....!

Another toy recently acquired is a USB GPS reciever for use with AutoRoute on the Laptop, tried it out on the above mentioned weekend to Llandudno and it worked like a dream! OK, not exactly a difficult journey Home - Wolverhampton - A14 - A55 - Hotel, but as a proof of concept it was a success. I will try it out again soon and give a more detailed report ;-)

Today is our 12th Wedding anniversary, and I have just finished a 12 hour Night Shift at work, so I am closing down now to get some well earned sleep.

Whoops, it's been a couple of weeks...

Well to be fair I have had a few difficulties with my hosting. I upgraded to MS Professional hosting with 1&1 so I could experiment with Database driven web pages. Part of trying to find out why it didn't work, resulted in me removing all the subdomains from my site - this broke the Blog, and I forgot to put it back!

Ok, what's happen since my last posting... I have an appointment at the hospital to get my eyes tested for mid June. Mom is started to get very frustrated at her lack of mobility, but she is continuing to heal well. I have registered Opera for my Phone - it's just too good to not use.

I have started to use "Desktop Sidebar" try it, it's free and it's damn good!

Got my eyes tested today... I am being refered to the hospital! Seems that is an abnormallity on my retina that my indicate the early stages of Glaucoma - It may be nothing, but the optition want's it checked by a consultant just to be sure.
Not good really!

Been playing with FrontPage 2003 again - I finally think I'm starting to understand how it works! It's sooooooo diferent to Dreamweaver, and in many ways vastly inferior, but there is just so much cool stuff that it can do with a FP enabled ISP, I think it's worth the effort!

It's been a busy week at work, we are already short staffed due to people levaing and not (yet) being replaced, but then one lad was off for 3 days with a cold, and the workload was higher than normal! With 5 staff, we normall handle about 25 calls, several days this week we have had 35 calls with 3 staff!

Mom is still in Hospital, surgery was done last Saturday, and she is now waking a lttle with the aid of crutches. No date for her release yet thro'

I am getting more comfortable with FP2003, but have completely failed to read any of the "How To" book that's been in my bag for two weeks! Same with the Photoshop CS book - chapter 3 still awaits me!

Opera on the phone does seem to be really good, and I may be persuaded to pay for it when the subscription ends later this week. The "TextView" BBC-Sport site works quite well on it.

The cold I had last weekend has almost cleared, but I have still been very congested this week - so no Gym for 8 days now!! At least I have managed to maintain my weight at sub 13st! I really must make the effort to go on Monday morning, even tho' that means getting up at 6:30 on my day off! I need to be in Birmingham anyway for 10:00, as I have my annual eye test :-(

Not a bad week, 4 days at work - mostly spent working on our internal systems. It was good to be doing something constructive for a change. Unfortunately I now seem to be coming down with a cold - sore throat, snotty nose etc. etc.

My mother has been taken into hospital for a hip replacment, the surgery is due to be done today, so hopefully we will be able to visit tomorrow.

I have had a load of grief with BT-Yahoo e-mail account this week, none of the messages from Rockbox were being received on either of my two accounts! Everything else seemed to get thro' - including all the spam! So I have now started to use an e-mail account from my Web provider 1&1, that works fine, and it's quicker to type!

Still getting on top of Front Page 2003 as a web editing platform, main problem this week has been a) finding time and b) deciding on what look and feel I want from the redesigned site. My early attempts look fine great IE, but rubbish when viewed in Firefox. Oh Hum, maybe I just say "Bugger it" and do and IE only site? I then had a second go, and it now seems to work in both browsers. I am assuming at this point, that Firefox compatability, equals Netscape compatability? At least recent Netscape...

I have downloaded a trial version of Opera onto my mobile phone this week, will try and play with that a bit before the trial expires. certainly looks good at first glance, time will tell if it's actually worth spending money on.

I am currently working my way through "50 FAST Photoshop CS Techniques" to try and get the best out of Adobe's latest and greatest package... seems pretty good so far.

Got away on time, but the train was 20 minutes late getting into Birmingham, and was then completely overcrowded.. The six of us were all sat seperate from each other! We got to the Hotel OK, and checked in - we were on the top (4th) floor, jackie, Pete and Matt were in the basement, and the lift was not working! Our room was just big enough to fix a double and single bed in and still be able to move - good job it was only 1 night!

We went out, and walked along Oxford Street, and Tottenham Court Road before stopping to eat at a steak house, rather expensive £98 for 4 adults and 2 kids, but no complaints about the quality of the food...! back to the hotel to get changed, and arrived at the theatre with perfect timing - 19:20

The show itself, was FANTASTIC! I really want to go and see it again...!

By the time we got back to the hotel, and had a glass of wine in the room - it was turned midnight! Breakfast at 09:00 this morning, and off to the Tower of London, spend a few hours around there, before heading back to Victoria for food (Settled for a Burger King, you can only spend that much so often!), walked along Picadilly, up Regents Street, and into Hamleys. That took another hour or so, before heading back to Euston.

Our train, the 18:05 - Was Cancelled! We had to catch the 18:40 to Liverpool and change at Birmingham International. Just as we walked onto the train, they announced that due to overcrowding - again - they had "Declassified" the train, and we could sit in 1st class... A quick sprint back along the platform and we got a block of 6 seats together... Hurahhhh! So at least that part of the Journey was OK.

Got into New Street at 21:00, caught a bus without too much of a wait, and got back home at 21:40... completely exhausted.

Glad I am not at work Monday, and I don't think, on reflection, that I will be getting up at 06:30 to go to the gym! Not this week.

Off to the smoke today....

We have tickets for "Phantom of the Opera" tonight, in London. I have to get Alex to his Nanny's, get back here, catch a bus into Birmingham, and catch a train to London - all before 10:00 am!!

Phone fully charged, Walkman fully charged, Camera fully charged, bag packed, ready to go!!!

Been playing with the web stuff again the last few days. I now have a new domain name - RedBreva.co.uk, there is a subdomain of weblog.RedBreva.co.uk that this Blog should find home from now on...

The mark-and-amanda-bright site has temp. moved back to btinternet hosting, and I have finally got FrontPage extensions sorted on the 1&1 home for RedBreva.

My links page has also moved to btopenworld for now- with two of the link images not dispaying! On both of these sites some pages will be broken, as the unix server used there a) is case sensitive and b) does not allow spaces in filenames!

Still not happy with the publishing on FP2003, I may use it for page design and still use Dreamweaver to post!

Last night was fantastic...

I took the Girls (Wife & Daughter) to the NEC arena in Birmingham to See Shania Twain in concert. The show was superb, Shania looked fantastic, the band were brilliant, and the support.... was Bjorn Again - magnificent!!

The stage was in the centre of the arena, and the seats gave a good view. Amy was tired by the time we got home (about Midnight), but see managed to get up on time for school this morning. I managed to drag myself out of bed at 06:30 to get to the Gym in time for BodyPump - Inspite of the fact that it's my day off.

I have got my new book from Amazon - "Teach Yourself Frontpage 2003 in 24 hours", all I need now is the software... come on Microsoft!

I am finally getting back to my "Starting Point" with the website after this weeks upgrade. The main site is currently uploading, and the DNS has been reconfigured to point to the correct sub-directory... so that should be back online within the hour. My "StartHere" page is already back up and working, abeit on a new subdomain, so I get a familier screen when i fire up my browser now.

I started to use Frontpage 2003 at work today, it's a LOT better than when I used Frontpage before... but it's still isn't Dreamweaver... The site publishing was a bit strange, but I think I have got that sorted now, and it's got tabbed layout, spilt Code & WYSIWYG layout etc, but there does not seem to be the simple "click and drag" link creation mechanism that makes DR such a joy to use... Ah well, I suppose I will get used to it eventually.

I have got plenty of space on the new site (some 500 MB), and have created a folder for a completly new site. I won't start this till I have FP 2003 installed.

It's been a week, still happy playing with the Nokia... Amy has used her months worth of text messages in a week! and I have ordered an upgrade for Amanda - well her phone that is - a Nokia 3100.

I had a good long chat with Orange billing on Tuesday, and have changed both mine and Amanda's tariffs. I was Orange Talkplan 120, amanda was Talkplan 30.
I am now O2 - 100, giving me 100 minutes anytime, x-network talktime and 100 text messages per month, Amanda is now T-Mobile Freetalk 750, giving 750 minutes of offpeak x-network talktime per month. In total REDUCING my monthly bill by £3.00

I also upgraded my webhosting, from Unix to Microsoft, this week... I am not yet back fully online, as there were a few issues, but the Blog is back...
I intend to completely scrap the current site and start again, but this time with Frontpage 2003. I have had to start using it at work, and would like to continue to use the same package at home. It helps when Microsoft have agreed with BT that we can have a copy of Office 2003 Professional, and Frontpage 2003 for £17 each to use at home!

I hope to have a dummy front page back on the mainsite by the weekend.

I am really plaesed with the Nokia 6600, it works really well as a simple phone (obviously an important point!). In the "simple but effective" mould is the ability to switch it to handsfree and back again, and being able to re-order the icons in the main menu.
The camera is quite effective (Given reasonable level of light), the video really does seem to be lacking and I don't think I will be getting much use out of that feature. I can now recieve e-mail, access web pages and send Photo messages from the phone. I have it happily syncronising with Outlook 2003 on my Laptop via InfraRed, and will experiment soon with Blue tooth on my main PC.

The heater is burning quietly in the greenhouse, checked the temperature every morning this week - somewhere between 0C and 1C, not bad when it was -3C outside!

I have converted my old 8310 into a Pay-as-you-Go phone, and that is now in Amy's control.

Hurrrrahhhhhhhhh! I finally have my Nokia 6600... Phoned Nokia again this morning, and the young man I spoke to sounded as fed up as me with the constant lack of stock. He did howevere, advise trying one of the Orange shops in town, seems thay are a seperate part of the business and they DO have some stocks.

I took a brisk walk into Newstreet at lunchtime, and 30 minutes later emerged with my new toy. I now need to wait for them to swap the numbers so I can start using it properly. The camera seems to be quite good, and the IR link works to my business laptop. I will have a play with bluetooth, and if it works as advertised, I'll get a dongle for my home PC.

Washed the greenhouse, and put everything back... so now we are ready for this weeks frosts...

Well, its been a quiet week... Solved the problem of spoolsv.exe on SP2 (There was a hotfix!) and everything except a couple of Shockwave games (Polar Bowler and Blasterball).

Have given the greenhouse a fumigation today, in an attempt to destroy the mildew fungus that has killed several plants, and reduced most of my geranium cuttings to near death! I also finally got round to getting a heater - well we are almost at the start of winter (March!)

I am slightly annoyed with Orange - The website now lists the Nokia 6600 as available, but calling the phonesales people gave the answer - Not in stock yet! It seems that the web and call-centre are seperate parts of the business! As the website does not list the 6600 as available for upgrade yet, I can't do anything but wait a bit longer yet! Bugger!

That was a long weekend, I was at work on Saturday (8 hours) and Sunday (12 hours) - and I was exhausted by the time I got home.
I now have Monday and Tuesday off to relax, but as the kids are off school (half term), it may not be too relaxing!

I have played Joss Stone about 10 times now, and I am loving it.... If you havn't heard it, you really should.

I installed Windows XP SP2 on Friday - I was accepted into the Beta trial, it took a long time to download (222 MBytes) and the feed was quite slow at the server end - 20 KBytes per second. It then took about 3 hours to install it, tidy up the HDD, Back it up, Defrag it and finally install SP2 (That took almost 1 hour!)

No major dramas so far, but I do have a problem starting Photoshop 7, it hangs unless I kill spoolsv.exe!

OK, my new headphones have turned up today, they are VERY well made, VERY comfortable and VERY nice sounding. How effective they are at noise reduction, I am not too sure - it's very quite in here at the moment... :-)

I had a text message from Orange - still out of stock of the Nokia 6600 :-(

I have been invited to take part in the Windows XP SP2 Beta trials, I shall be downloading that soon, I hope.

Finally for today, I got "The Soul Sessions" by Joss Stone on CD - Excellent, go buy it now...! It's less than £9 - delivered!... And it was a most excellent way to test my new headphones!

I downloaded Firefox on Monday, it's the latest 'Browser ONLY' from mozilla - it does seem to be very quick, but it is a bit slow to load up. Frustratingly, it displays my CSS pages completely differently to IE 6 - neither of them get it right, they just get different bits wrong!

It's been a long week, but the weekend strats here... I have Sunday and Monday off.

It was the last performance of the Panto yesterday, I went last night with Arthur & Margaret (From Stoke), Stuart & Vanessa (From Wokingham) and Alex. The show was really very good. Yes, there was a lot of fluffed lines, and as it was the last show - the backstage crew were playing a few tricks on the cast but it was very funny.

The climax of the show was when James (Baron Hardup) actually went down on one knee and proposed - For Real - to Naomi (Prince Rupert) in front of the entire audience... Luckily, she said yes - and there was hardly a dry eye in the house. Congratulations and good luck to both of you...

ON a different topic altogether, I have completely failed to find the Voyager 1010 driver CD, so I asked BT's Voyager support - Ther will post me a replacement CD, Nice one guys!

Well I am really ticked off now... Just spent another hour or so on Amy's PC...

Still struggling to keep the Wireless network connection up, I think it must be the driver for the Voyager 1010 usb dongle network card thingy... I can't find the original CD that came with it..

I then made the BIG mistake of allowing BT Yahoo! to install the Parental Control software... what a pile of crud! I am going to have to wipe the PC and start again from scratch, but not before I have had a REALLY good look for the original Drivers disc that came with the 1010. It's going to be at least next Monday before that happens!

On the plus side, I have now been consistentlt below 13 stone (82 KG) for a week now... That's almost 1 stone lost since I rejoined the Gym in October...

Still no joy on the Nokia 6600 front... have spoken to Orange again tonight, and it seems that there is a problem with the software and they are not due in stock untill next week at the earliest! Bugger!

Ah well, at least there is my headphones to look forwards to.

Last night, i started loading Amy's PC from scrath with her own copy of Windows XP Pro. So far so good, but still a lot of work to do before I let her loose on the internet again....

Quite a good day... Manchester United beat Southampton 3-2 in a very exciting and tense match, we actually arrived early enough to have something to eat and drink before the game started, and Saha scored on his debut...

I have decided to get another pair of headphones, and have taken the plunge bigtime : A pair of Bose Noise Cancelling headphones - A snip at onlt £275... Gulp... Ah well you can't take it with you... I suppose the DVD recorder will have to wait till later in the year now, perhaps my Xmas present?

Not too sure about Rubens album, a bit too much "Hip Hop" and not enough "Soul" for my taste... Can't win them all...

Good things come to those who wait... I finally have my 1 MByte ADSL connection, I have got my bike back home, I am going to Old Trafford tommorow to watch United play Southampton, and Opening night (MK II) went off without a hitch last night (Although the audience was only about 60% complete)

Amanda managed "Front of House" without incident and a reasonable profit was still made, in spite of the limited number of punters.

Remember I said my legs were killing me yesterday - I was wrong, that was just pain : Today they are killing me! And Finally I managed to write my first working application in VB.Net 2003. A simple One arm bandit type of game, but it worked, and it seemed quite straight forwards.

last night, my music of choice was "Clay Aiken - The Measure of a Man". Clay was runner up in last years American Idol, and it really is rather a good album... sort of like a male Dido?

Tonight, it is "Ruben Studdard - Soulful". Ruben was the Winner of last years American Idol, I'll let you know how good it is (or not) later...

The Good News : Opening night for "Cinderella" was not infront of an half filled theatre.
The Bad News : The show got cancelled, a total of 7 people turned up, audience, cast, crew combined... Tickets will be valid for next Wednesday instead.

I took the bus into work this morning...
The Good News : My bike was still there this morning, and the roads were fairly clear
The Bad News : The battery was too flat to start the bike. I ended up calling the AA out, and within a few seconds of the jump leads being connected, the bike started.

I have left it at work tonight, the roads are clear, but as usual our estate is still a skating rink. I'll get the bus in again tommorow morning, and ride back...

I had another 3 miles or so of walking on icy pavements today - my legs are killing me tonight.

Oh My God!!! Less than 10 mm of snow this afternoon, and the whole of Birmingham, the Hagley Road and the M5 (North and southbound) is gridlocked.

I managed to get about 1.5 miles on the bike before all the slush started to freeze - and that took about 1.5 hours! I have had to leave the bike parked up in a side road and walk the rest of the way (4 miles) - I finally got home at 19:40, exhausted and wringing wet with sweat. It wouldn't be so bad, but I had 30 minutes on the cross trainer at lunchtime!

All I have to worry about now, is how do I get to work in the morning - Will I be able to get to work in the morning? - and how and when do I go to get my bike back! Will it even still be there!

It's Opening night for Phoenix Productions first panto "Cinderella", I hope they are not playing to a half empty house!

Flippin' Heck!! 45 minutes it just took to install VB.Net on my PC... And I still have to go through it all again on the laptop....

It comes with a "Getting Started" manual, a large number of class description Posters and 6 CD's - Yes 6!!!

There is a Windows 2000 SP 4 disk, a 'Prerequisites' disc, 3 MSDN Library CD's and finally the VB.net CD. This has now swallowed approximately 2 GB of my disc space... Good job I have plenty available!

Now all I need to do, is a) find time to go thro' it all again on the laptop, and b) even more time to sit down with the book and work out how to use it. The one thing that is immediately obvious, is, it is very different to VB6.

better put the laptop on charge, I think I need a full battery before I start!

Did a little more experimenting with CSS on the webpage yesterday. On the Holidays page, I have replaced the table construct with more CSS. It looks the same in the browser, but should allow future changes of layout and/or colour scheme to be done far more easily. It also renders very quickly, and the page is smaller...

Well one of my new "toys" has arrived in the post this morning - VB.net Standard (2003 edition). I don't have time to install it at the moment, I am off to the Gym in 1/2 hour... All I need now is for Orange to call me to change the phone!

I have finally sat down and spent a little time playing with the Website re-design. I am attempting to use a Dreamweaver template and a .CSS style sheet to handle most of the work, leaving me to just cut and paste the actual data from the old site to the new one.

I am not sure, at this stage, how effective it will be but it seems OK at the moment. You can see the "Work In progress" here

I have decided to avoid a Graphical interface altogether at present. There are two reasons behind this 1) I am interested to see what I can do without using graphics, and 2) There is enough to learn as it is, without the complication of graphics.

The biggest problem I have using graphics: The background colour... If I change the colour of the background at any time, it seems to require a HUGE amount of work to regenerate all the graphics to look correct.

I have noticed, just how quickly the fwe working pages load and render.. Do I really need graphical buttons.... Uhhhhhhmmmmmmm

Boy, that was a crap course!! I have been down in Maidenhead for the past two days on a "Call Pilot Networking" training course at Nortel. Most of the exercises failed, for all four groups of students...

On the plus side, I went to the cinema last night... Runaway Jury. It was pretty good, quite accurate to the book (at least as I remembered it, wasn't it a tabacco company in the book?)

And I have finally finished the "Dark Materials" trilogy on Audiobook. That's one good thing about a four hour round trip in the hire car!

Still no Visual Basic, no Nokia 6600.... Not Fair:::: I WANT MY TOYS!

Double Doh!!

As if having to wait for my new cell phone wasn't bad enough, I've had an e-mail today from Amazon... My VB.NET is out of stock and it will be another week to 10 days!

I also had a e-mail from BT confirming my order to upgrade to 1MB ADSL, but they have got the full price on it..... Lets hope I get that sorted out before they start billing me!

Not a good day from a "Boy's Toys" perspective!

Doh! Another text message from Orange - STILL no 6600 in stock... I am starting to sulk now!

On the plus side, I have just ordered an upgrade to 1MB ADSL connection, the upgrade is FREE, and BT are doing an Employee special offer rate of £33 per month (£41 for normal punters), as my curreny employee offer has expired that means I only need to pay an extra£5 per month to get double speed connection.....

Now if only I could get my new phone.....

It's been a bit of a busy week, one way and another... Work has started to pick up again after the xmas lull, and I have spent about 7 hours finishing the Program for the panto.

Did I ever mention that my daughter, Amy, in a drama group : Phoenix Productions? No, well she is... Amanda has got the post of 'Front of House manager' and is responsible for Program & refreshment sales, and I got volunteered with designing the program. My own fault, I was very critical of the standard of the last one, and when asked "could you do better" was daft enough to say YES!

Finally finished it yesterday morning, burnt two copies to CD (Publisher 2003 & PDF format) and handed them over to the producer. The show starts in just over 1 week, so it was a bit borderline. However when things like the running order are still being changed with only two weeks to go, what can you do?

I bought a copy of Publisher 2003 specifically for the job, and I have to say - It's excellent. The last time I tried this program was version 3, many years ago, and it was awful. So there you are, some MS software DOES get better in newer versions, and it not ALL feature bloat.

I have already started on the program for the summer show, which is not till June. I fully expect that it won't get finished untill the last moment again, but I can get the 'Look and Feel' approved, and the basics in place now - or at least as soon as the Panto is finished in a couple of weeks.

I have been impressed with the Laptop performance too, 2.5 hours continuous battery use still 40% left. I finished the battery off by playing MP3's for another hour, so 3 1/2 hours on a full charge would seem to be realistic... Not too shabby!

On Friday, I went to a lunchtime Bodypump class, different instructor to my morning classes : My God do I ache today... I don't think I have EVER worked so hard (physically) in my life....

No news on the Nokia 6600 front, or at least no good news: I had a text message from Orange on Thursday to say that they still have no stocks. At least they are keeping me informed... always have liked Orange customer service.

Today, I have been playing with the configuration on my Archos MP3 player. Running Rockbox firmware you can save multiple configuration files to allow you to easily change everything about the player for different uses. For Example: I now have a Walkman and an In_Car setup. The In_Car config, sets a lower volume level, flat equalisation, flips the screen up-side down, loads a larger font and a simplified 'While Playing Screen'.

In the process, I managed to overwrite my Walkman WPS configuration, so having spent about an hour recreating it, I have 'Cut & Pasted' both WPS files to my Website. At least I can't loose them again!

I downloaded a copy of "BBC BASIC for Windows" last week, boy what a trip down memory lane. That coupled with the work I have been doing on websites recently (Home & Work) has re-ignited my desire to do some programming. I have now ordered a copy of VB.Net 2003 from Amazon - £87, not too bad, and that should be here sometime this week. I want to make my own Playlist generator as my first project, and maybe a version 2 of my Rockbox configuration prog, it's been 12 months since I last worked on that....!

Ohhhh! :-(

Lady from Orange did phone me, as promised, but they are out of stock of the 6600....! She will call me back in "About a week" when they have some more in. Hope it's not too long, I want it for next Thursday; I am on a course in Maidenhead (Again) and want the toys to keep me occupied during the evening!

Talking of toys, I got a Cassette adaptor for my Archos over the weekend and tried it out yesterday... it works a treat. When I first put it in, the sound was all distorted and totally un-listenable. I then realised I had got the volume on the car stereo at only 2... Normally too quite to hear, I then tuned down the volume on the walkman from 85% to 65% and it worked fine. I have now saved a configuration called In-Car, and another called Walkman so I can quickly switch between the two settings. Man, I love this Rockbox firmware...

OK, so the Gym hurt... My legs have been like lead all weekend. Not that it stopped me getting back to the Bodypump class this morning... Boy am I going to suffer tommorow!

Over the weekend, I have been playing some more with the re-design of my website, using CSS rather than tables. The test page is here... let me know if you get problems with it... ;-)

Went into the greenhouse yesterday, everything was covered with a grey fungus,,, I have had to have a major chop at most of the cuttings etc. to clear out the rubbish. I'ts amazing tho' some of the geranium cuttings are actually flowering. I have removed these, to give the roots chance to develop. and several of the other plants are budding left, right and centre!

Back to work today, it was was nice to have a week of doing nothing. Sometimes you just need to chill...

Have been playing with Access 2003, updating the CD database etc. All my Macro's have now been converted into VBA code, and DIGITALLY SIGNED!! Unfortunately this has re-awakened the desire to program, and I am now contemplating buying VB.NET 2003 (£87)!! Damn will this spending never end?

Talking about spending, I noticed last week, that the Nokia 6600 is now available on Orange pay monthly. I called Orange to find out what the damage would be... On my current Talk 60 plan : £240!!! However if I up my talkplan to 120 (Extra £10 per month), the phone is £120, Ok over 12 months its the same cost, but I can have more calls, and it's not all cash up front.

They requested a change to my talkplan, which comes into effect today. The very nice lady from Orange is due to call me back today at 13:00 to sort out ordering the new phone... Can't wait...

Took the laptop to Amy's drama group last night: I am doing the program, and was very impressed with the battery performance. I was up and running in MS Publisher 2003 for two and a half hours, constantly changing things around, saving, and changing again... and still had 33% left!!

One thing I did realise last night, there is a *lot* of politics in laying out a program... Costumes: Before or After "Front of House" etc etc etc

Never mind, its looking good now, just waiting for the adverts and photographs so I can get an almost finished version for aproval...

OK, I am now off to the Gym... should be fun...

Yesterday, I went to the Gym and had a much more aggresive work-out, and boy! do I know it... My arms and shoulders are very stiff today. Who said it was supposed to be good for you.

If I have loosened off by tommorow, I will go again... just a sucker for punishment I suppose

Just finished updating the Music listing on my website for last year. 38 CD's I bought in the 12 months !! I thought all this MP3 stuff was supposed to be reducing record sales...

As a matter of interest, the 38 purchases break down as follows :
New music by a 'New' artist : 9 (24%)
New Music by an 'Established' artist : 3 (8%)
Back Catalogue of an 'Established' artist : 17 (44%)
Audio Books : 1
Various Artist Compilations : 1

I do not really expect the large % of back catalogue to continue into 2004, and I have just about had enough of compilations; there are only so many ways to repackage the same 'couple-o-hundred' tracks...

The good thing is the relatively large % of 'New artist' purchases. Perhaps the reason that record sales have been increasing recently is the greater quality and variety of artists being released...

Got my copy of OneNote and Access 2003 from Microsoft this morning; I have installed Access on both Laptop and Desktop (allowed in the T&C's) and it works fine. Really don't see any differenec between 2003 and 2000 versions at present (except the obvious cosmetic makeover), but will use it over the next few days and let you know if I find anything. One Note, I have installed on the desktop, still not too sure what it's all about...

This is the first Blog entry to be done from the laptop... can you tell?

I have finally took the time to sort out recording to the Archos from the Turntable on my HiFi, and have spent a couple of hours recording some of my old singles to MP3. I am now recording a couple of Albums that a) Are not available of CD or b) I don't like enough to buy again, but don't want to lose.