BT Mobile

Earlier this week, I realised that I have not seen my mobile phone for at least 5 days...  After checking every pocket in every pair of trousers I own, and every jacket; turning the house upside down; searching the office; searching the garage etc. I had to conclude: I've lost my Motorola V3iM :-(

Yesterday I called BT Mobile to report it 'Lost or Stolen' and they have blocked that SIM, I then spoke to the orders department and confirmed that I am in fact eligible for an upgrade on all four handsets on my calling plan.

The end result is that

• I get a new Motorola KRZR,
• Amanda's Pink V3i (with sick battery) get replaced with a brand new on of the same,
• Alex's old Nokia will be swapped for a Silver V3i, and
• we get a Motorola K7 SLVR (red) as a spare handset (just in case)
• My staff discount has been changed to a newer (better) discount
• My calling plan was analysed and a less minutes/more texts plan costing less put in place.

All in all - I am now a happy bunny again

Sky+: The Conclusion

Engineer arrived this afternoon, and left a little later leaving behind a nice new 80GB Thompson PVR3 ;-)

I now have a new box, with double the capacity of the old one, and have already entered all the series link info into the planner...

Conclusion: RESULT!!

3rd round at Halesowen

Only 9 holes today, the weather was mild but a bit misty at the start, but as time went on, it started to get wet. Having started without full waterproofs, gave up after 9

A couple of holes were new personal bests, but 7 and 9 are proving to be difficult, I am having a real problem with hitting long(ish) irons on an uphill lie... Ah well, at least it's a topic for my lesson this weekend.

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	HOLE
4	4	5	3	4	3	4	4	4	Par35
6	5	6	4	7	4	8	6	8	55
10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	9	HOLE
4	4	4	4	4	3	3	4	4	Par34
-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-

Joke fit for an 11 year old (3)

A man is arguing with his wife who says he is far too fat and unfit.
"Get in shape!" she yells at him
"Get in shape?" the man shouts back. "I AM in shape. Round is a shape."

Sky Plus - Update

Have just heard back from the Sky Customer Care department...

They are sending and engineer out next Thursday (Free of Charge) to replace my faulty Amstrad box with a brand new Sky+ box.

Wooooot!

Lightroom 1.3

For all those Lightroom users out there, version 1.3 is now available from Adobe

From the Readme...

Lightroom 1.3 includes corrections for the following issues:

• Writing XMP metadata automatically has been corrected for performance issues
• Printing with the native resolution option enabled no longer sets the wrong dimension for portrait oriented images
• Prior to Camera Raw 4.3 there was the possibility that artifacts in edge transitions could be introduced through the Bayer demosaic and luminance noise reductions algorithms. This has been corrected.
• The Canon sRAW format and the Fuji compressed RAF formats are now supported.

Lightroom 1.3 includes the following enhancements:

• The import dialog now offers the option to render 1:1 previews as part of the import process
• The export dialog layout has been enhanced
• A Lightroom Preview Export SDK is available for developers to create and distribute Export Plug-ins. Further details are located on Adobe Labs

Katherine Jenkins

I have just taken delivery of "Rejoice - Special Edition" by the very lovely Katherine Jenkins.

I have to say it's my favourite album of hers to date... My iTunes rankings for the tracks are:

• 3 x 2 Stars
• 10 x 3 stars
• 2 x 4 stars

and that's not bad by anybodies reckoning!

Sky Plus

Over the last 12 months, I have been experiencing a problem with my Amstrad PVR2 Sky+ box... When it's recording, and you are watching another channel, or even just pausing a channel and watching a few minutes behind, there is a major 'skipping' and blanking of the audio track.

It seems, according to the forums on DigitalSpy that this is a known issue, with a significant number of these Amstrad boxes, caused by a software update last year.

The forums are full of success stories from customers who have received new boxes free of charge - even when the original box is well past it's warrantee period.  There is a very useful template supplied, along with the email address of James Murdoch (CEO of BSkyB) to request a replacment.

I sent my e-mail off tonight, i'll keep you posted as to the outcome.  If they don't change it, I have to decide if I pay £150 for a replacement unit myself, or take up the free offer of a BTVision box for BT employees.

Oh Bugger!

After last night surprise snow, looks like my proposed golf round is off today.

Joke fit for an 11 year old (2)

From BBC Newsnight

There were these two monkeys in a bath.
One says "Ooh, ooh, ooh, aah, aah, aah"
The other one says "Well, put some more cold in then."

Musical Discovery

"Raising Sand" by Robert Plant & Alison Krauss

From the Amazon.co.uk Description:
American bluegrass star Alison Krauss and Led Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant team up for one of contemporary music's most unlikely partnerships, and in doing so create a memorable and diverse collection of lovingly crafted songs.

The MusicOMH review expands on this:
It's a curiosity that, just as the Led Zeppelin revival is reaching fever pitch, Robert Plant is sneaking out this album of reverential duets with Alison Krauss. What it does, though, is show the singer's softer, sensitive side - something not all that apparent when atop thunderous Jimmy Page guitar riffs.

In his recent solo career Plant has tended to keep an open book, as last album 'Mighty Rearranger' testified, with its variety of loosely world music-influenced songs. Raising Sand narrows the parameters a little to concern itself with lightly bluesy music, but at no time does either singer sound restricted.

Quite the opposite. Krauss is an ideal vocal foil, and at times the two really do sing as one. The real revelation is Plant's ability to sing quietly, with exquisite tenderness, for long periods of time. Whilst there were occasional hints of this with Zeppelin this is uncharted recorded territory, and the accompanying textures are parted in respect of this.

Finally, the BBC review:
The first thing you notice about Raising Sand is how the pair's vocals compliment each other. Krauss’ honey-sweet chords can be saccharine on her own work at times, but here she's balanced by the mature grain of Plant's almost whispered delivery. On "Killing The Blues" or Gene Clark’s "Polly Come Home" they nudge up against each other, buoyed up by Greg Leisz’s floating pedal steel. And this from a man renowned for going ‘baybeeee, baybeee’. Phew...

Joke fit for an 11 year old (1)

From BBC Newsnight

Patient: Doctor, Doctor I feel like a moth
Doctor: What?!
Patient: I feel like a moth
Doctor: You don't need me, you need a clinical pyschiatrist
Patient: I know, but your light was on.

iTunes Ratings

I have decided it's about time I actually tried to get some sort of order to my iTunes music collection, and step 1 of that process is to 'rate' as may of the tracks as I can.

Stage 1:
Decide the definition for each of the 5 star ratings.

• No Star - Not yet rated
• 1 Star - If I never heard this track again, my life would probably be better, but certainly no worse for it!!
• 2 Star - I wouldn't change station on the radio if this track came on, but I would never request it either!
• 3 Star - The base "I Like It" level, it's not a 'Great' track but it is 'Quite Good"
• 4 Star - If this track came on the radio, you sing may well sing along to it, you would almost certainly feel a little bit of pleasure upon recognizing it.
• 5 Star - A 'Desert Island Discs" contender, a real favorite.

Stage 2:
Create 6 'Smart Playlists' based on each of the above ratings

1. 218 Tracks, 13 Hours
2. 416 Tracks, 1 day
3. 319 Tracks. 1 day
4. 146 Tracks, 10 Hours
5. 22 Tracks, 1.5 Hours

That only leaves 9067 Tracks (27.5 Days!) to be rated!

2nd time around HGC

Managed to play 12 holes today. Having switched from a 'Trolly bag' to a 'carry bag' certainly helps around this hilly course.

A couple of the scores were *very* pleasing, but several holes were let down by just one wayward shot, that ended up costing 2 or even 3 to recover. The 7th and 8th especially seem to be causing me some problems.

Overall, I am quite pleased with 54 for 9 holes, it is 10 shots better than last week!

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	HOLE
4	4	5	3	4	3	4	4	4	Par35
4	5	7	5	6	5	7	7	6	54
10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	9	HOLE
4	4	4	4	4	3	3	4	4	Par34
7	8	7	-	-	-	-	-	-	54

Wow!!

Just checked the site stats for www.rockbox-themes.org, Visitors to date this year:  1.3 Million

The data volumes downloaded from the site this month amounts to almost 170GB!

The above graph shows the number of visitor per month for this year, Octobers figure being over 267,000.