New PC: More Decisions Made

I have decide on an ASUS P5Q Deluxe Mobo, 4 GB of DDR 800 RAM, a 500 GB HDD and an ATI 4850 Video Card.

The GPU was based on a a desire for a PC that can play occasional games, so a ‘decent’ frame rate in “Flight Sim 10” (26 fps @ 1680 x 1050 with AA4x) and “Test Drive Unlimited” (66 fps @ 1680 x 1050 with AA4x) were required, and the fact that it can manage Crysis at 37fps @ 1680 x 1050 albeit without AA is a bonus.

At about £120 it’s a little pricey, but it will easily last the life of the PC without the need to upgrade.

The HDD conclusion came from the fact that with almost everything installed, and some ‘zipping’ up of older, less used documents etc/, I now have almost 50 GB free on a 250 GB HDD!  I may be tempted to install 2 of these drives and use the second unit purely as a backup device.

Managed to go Golfing

After several weeks of really wet Monday’s and another couple of weeks of ‘Man Flu’, I finally manager to get down the golf course today.

Given the 7 week break since I last played, I was quite pleased with how well I hit the ball, and the poor scores were mainly down to very tricky greens!  They are not very flat and the speed of the green seems to vary from one end to the other!

I only played 6 holes, as part of a four ball with three lads I met on the first tee, but by the time we had played that many (another two 4 balls in front!) I was starting to flag a little, and my back has started to tighten up already!

CPU Update

Following on from my recent investigations, I realised that there was in fact a 3.33 GHz Dual Core CPU, the E8600.  I checked the benchmarking details of this item against the E8500 (winner according to the previous post), and found that it gave an average of 40% improvement over my current CPU compared to the 35% for the E8500. So am I going for the E8600?  Probably not!

I added some cost data to my little spreadsheet, and came to the following conclusions for cost per % of improvement:

E8500 - £4.54
E8600 - £5.25
Q9550- £10.05
i7-920 - £16.15

So at £220 rather than £164 (CCL Computers today's date) it is not a cost effective option, and the extra 5% would equate to a 4 second saving on a 1’40 task!!

New PC: Q1 CPU

Still struggling over the spec for new PC, Current dilemma:

First question AMD or Intel?  I am happy with Intel, and it seems that Photoshop CS4 is written to take advantage of the Intel instruction set, so… Intel it is>

Next Question:
Do I Spend £180 and get a 3.1GHz dual core (E8500) or for an extra £100 get a 2.8 GHz quad core (Q9550)? 

Moving up the quad core speed list the 3.0 GHz Q9650 is about £460 – way too expensive.

The Core i7 CPU’s are the last option, with the 2.66 GHz version (i7-920) being available for about £240 (faster versions jump to £490/£880 for 2.9/3.2 GHz)

The article on Tom’s Hardware (CPU Charts Q3 2008)confirms that the dual core at a 3.1 GHz would be on average 35% faster than my current processor across a range of real world applications*, moving to a 2.8GH Quad core would, in most cases only give me a 20% improvement, and the 2.6 GHz i7 would be even worse at a mere 11%.

This is a only true, however, for those apps which currently are not written to take advantage of multiple cores (i.e. almost everything!)  For the select few that are (WinRAR 3.8, AVG antivirus) the improvement for the Quad Core averages 90%, and for the i7 130%!!

If software writers continue to be slow on the uptake of this multi-core technology, I think the 3.1 GH Dual core is the way to go.

* The benchmarks considered here were: 
Applying multiple filters to a large image in Photoshop CS3
Zipping up a large number of files with Winzip 11
Ripping a DVD in iTunes
Converting a large document in Acrobat Pro 9
Running a demo in Unreal Tournament 3.0
Scanning a collection of files with Grisoft AVG 8
Zipping a large number of files with WinRAR 3.8

Only the last two apps are ‘Multi-Core Optimised’

Just about back…

to where I was before the hard disc failure.

I have, after many hours of downloading, and updating, patching, installing etc. managed to restore my PC back to a fully working condition, with no significant loss of data.

All I know that is missing is three weeks worth of e-mails, and none of them were of great significance.

The biggest pain, was that just before losing the drive, I had spent about 10 hours tidying up the “My Documents” and “My Pictures” folders.  After restoration, everything was a mess again, and it just seems much more like hard work when you have to do the same job for the second time!

The upshot of the last rationalisation, is that the free space on the 250 GB drive is now near 50GB, so it will last till I change the PC now.  Additional benefit of ‘zip’ or ‘rar’ ing several large but not well used folders is that the number of files on the drive has decreased by several 10’s of thousands, which makes backups (yes I am backing up every day at present) and defraging much quicker.

Arggggghhh!!!

My hard drive failed over the weekend, it is not even seen by the BIOS reliably, so not much chance of recovery.

I have now switched back to the smaller (250GB) drive that I recently installed Vista 64bit on, and after several hours of updating AV programs, Windows, utilities etc (who would have though there were so many updates in just 3 months?) I now have a vaguely working machine.  Fortunately, I did refresh my backup on the external HDD just three weeks ago, so not too much data loss, but it is still a pain!

OK, now to see if I have configured 'Live Writer' correctly...

Katherine Piccys

I was quite surprised by how well some of the pictures from my little canon iXUS 85 turned out.

Set to 'Night Snap' mode, and flash turned off.  Only a little re-touching (levels, vibrancy and cropping) in Photoshop and they are now available for all to see here:

http://photoalbums.redbreva.co.uk/KJ-12122008/index.html

Katherine Jenkins 2008

Not long got back home from the NIA in Birmingham - Public transport really is shocking for a major city on a Friday night - it took over 1 hour to get a bus 5 miles home! - Anyway...

Really enjoyed the show, not as much as previous shows, not Katherine's fault, I just don't think the NIA is anywhere near as good a venue as Symphony Hall.

Blake were as good as I expected them to be - but a bit louder!!  (One of the joys of a front row seat in front of a speaker)

Faryl Smith was an unexpected, and very welcome surprise - she really is a VERY good singer - but needs some work on 'chatting to the audience' - she forgot the name of the 'Big London Show' she attended last night (It was the Royal Variety apparently)

Finally, William Joseph was a pleasant surprise that should well find at least some of his work on my iPod before too long

Finally special thanks to the nice gent in Block A Row B Seat 2 for the sweets he handed round during the interval ;-)

Will have a look at my photo's in the morning and see is any of them are worth posting.

Good Month For Music

It’s been a good November for New CD’s this year:

Dido : Safe Trip Home ***
Katherine Jenkins : Sacred Arias ****
Hayley Westenra : River Of Dreams ****
Alesha Dixon : The Alesha Show ****
Enya : And Winter Came ***
Anastacia : Heavy Rotation **
Jewel : Perfectly Clear ***
Seal : Soul ****

Plus, Three new Audio Books from http://www.wholestoryaudio.co.uk/

Dune by Frank Herbert (21 Hours)
Bare Bones by Kathy Reichs (9.2 Hours)
Monday Mourning by Kathy Reichs (9.5 Hours)

I had forgotten just how good Dune was, pity they don’t have ‘Children of Dune’ or ‘Dune Emperor’ on there too…

Unfortunately, the concert with Hayley Westenra was cancelled at short notice due to illness, so we will have to wait till early 2009 to see her again, but should still be OK for Katherine Jenkins at the NIA in a couple of weeks time.

Been having a play

With my CCS based website redesign.

Not too much of the new design working yet, just http://startfromhere.redbreva.co.uk/ and My Page (via the ‘My Family’ link).

The rest of the pages are there, either looking really rubbish, or just as place-holders.

Not sure yet though’ why Firefox shows a dark space under the pictures in the Family menu table, it look OK in IE 7.  Hmm bit more digging required into the CSS attributes there I think!

Typical…

Coldest morning of the winter so far – frost on the ground, changing to sleet, and the central heating boiler decides to have a lie in!

The nice man from British Gas came at about 10:00 and found that a fan assembly was seized.  he lubricated it with WD40 and managed to get it running again – sort of, but it’s a bit noisy and needs changing.

He will be back on Tuesday at about 09:00 to replace the faulty part, just hope it keeps running till then.

In the meantime the advice is to leave the heating on as much as possible, because if it stops, it may seize up again!

New GPU

Fitted the new video card this evening, and re ran the windows performance benchmark test.

The 2D figure increased from 4.3 to 5.9

The 3D figure increased from 4.4 to 5.5

But best of all, Photoshop CS4 now uses the GPU on zoom, panning, colour translations etc. to run faster and better.

1st Upgrade in a while

I recently installed the new CS4 edition of Photoshop, which supports hardware acceleration from supported video cards.

Seems my Nvidia GeForce 7300 GT is not one of those supported cards!  Mind you it is a pretty old card now – almost 3 years old and it was only £65 new…

NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GS
Texture Fill Rate (Per Second) - 2.2 billion
Maximum Memory Bandwidth       - 6.5 GB/s
Memory Size                    - 256 MB
Supported DirectX Version      - 9.0c
HDR Lighting                   - 64 bit

According to Nvidia’s web site, this is a card in the “Business User, Casual Gamer, Home PC User” category, and the best card in that group is a 9500GT DDR3 (£38 +VAT)!

NVIDIA GeForce 9500 GT (GDDR3)
Texture Fill Rate (Per Second) - 8.8 billion
Maximum Memory Bandwidth       - 25.6 GB/s
Memory Size                    - 256 MB
Supported DirectX Version      - 10
HDR Lighting                   - 128 bit

So, it should be about 4 times quicker, not bad for less than £50, may even manage to run “Microsoft Flight Sim X” at a reasonable frame rate now ;-)

Skittles Evening

Last night was the annual skittles evening at Howley Grange Scout hut.  There were 36 people in attendance, split into 9 teams of 4. Amy & Beth managed to get onto the same team as each other, Alex & Josh also managed to get into the same team (I suspect some cheating!), But Amanda, Jess and yours truly were all in teams with three strangers.

It was a good night, very entertaining, and plenty of food and drink available, and to top things off: My team came first (Bottle of Wine each) and Jess’s team picked up the wooden spoon (Packet of Shortcake Biscuits each).

A good evenings entertainment to £3, we will definitely consider going again next year.

22 Years !!

On the 9th October 1986, I started working for BT.  Tomorrow will be the first day of my 23rd year in their employ!

I will be spending it in Stockport with one of the guys from the Genesys support team, with a view to getting a new job!!

New Toy…

Well, a new toy for Amanda!

The door of the oven recently broke, and it could not be opened more than 45 degrees, so a trip to Comet was in order yesterday, and this afternoon I should be taking delivery of a new Indesit FI31K cooker – a snip at £199 delivered.

Possible new job?

An e-mail was circulated around the office this week from the head of the Genesys support team, looking for interested people to join them.  It’s two grades higher than my current post, but seems to be a similar job, just on a different platform.

I have had some experience working with the Genesys guys, as their kit frequently connects via the Symposium platform we support.

I spoke to one of the engineers in this post, and it does seem to be an interesting change of direction, and they seem to work well as a team. So I registered my interest.

Yesterday, the manager of the team called me, and after a long chat, I was asked to spend a day working with Sandy, who is based in Stockport, to see if I fancy the job.  There are 7 people interested, but apparently I have the closest match of skills to their ideal.

I called Sandy, and after a chat we agreed on 9th October.

The grade carries a “business needs” car, an annual “on call” allowance (1 in 5 possibly moving to 1 in 6), and an end of year bonus.  I have the option of working from home, or taking a desk in Brindley Place (I would prefer a desk, home working is a little too quiet for my liking), but you have the flexibility of hours to avoid travelling in rush hour traffic.

It’s nice to get a bit of excitement back into my working life again, just hope I can get the job now!

Finally...

After years of trying to get Alex to ride a bike, he finally decided that it was time... I suspect a not inconsiderable amount of "peer pressure" was responsible.

It only took about 1 hour, and he was peddling away quite happily. Cornering, starting off, and stopping safely still need some practice though'.

To celebrate, Alex is now the proud owner of a nice chrome plated BMX bike - £80 from Hawk Cycles

Happy Birthday to me

47 Today!

BTW, this is one of the first photographs taken on the new IXUS 85 ;-)

Well, not a great start to my 48th year… My back is killing me this morning!  Not sure if it was the golf, or the gardening yesterday, but either way its no fun getting older!

Update – X64 Vista

Took longer than I expected, I thought I had a dual X86/X64 version of Vista, but mine was x86 only!  So, I have borrowed the MSDN subscription copy from work for testing.

I have installed Vista Ultimate, but without using the Product Key, so I have about a month to play with it before it expires, but that should be long enough.

The HDD I used was actually a 250GB unit, so plenty big enough to install a few applications as well for a more complete appraisal.

Initial reaction? Well all the hardware works, so drivers are no longer a major issue, performance seems to be just ‘a tad’ slower than the x86 version, but that may be down to the fact of it’s running on a slower disk drive.  When it was first installed it was really slow, but that was sorted by installing the latest graphics drivers (GeForce 7 series) from Nvidia’s web site

Update – Wireless Networking

The BT HomeHub2 arrived this week, and installation was just about as simple as it could be.

The main PC was back on the Internet, with no obvious changes in minutes.

The Laptop within a further 10 minutes (I had to change the security on the router from the default WPA/WPA2 to WEP as that is the only thing the laptop understands)  Signal strength is now 5, was 4.

Amy’s PC took another 10 mins to install the Belkin 802.11n USB dongle, and get connected. Her reported connection speed has doubled from 32 to 64 mbps, and the signal strength has increased from ‘1 or 2’ to ‘4 or 5’

Conclusion – Result!

Update – Foot / Golf

managed to play 9 holes at Himley today, at the end of the round my foot was rather sore, but not painful.  So it seems that it’s just about healed.

The golf on the other hand, well it showed that I haven’t played for almost a month!  The only good thing to take away from the game, was there were no ‘truly awful’ shots, just a lot of ‘not quite good enough’ ones.  The putting was terribly too, three or four on every hole.  The alignment was quite goo, I just could not judge the weight of the shot.

X64 – Time to Try It?

I have been reading with interest the every increasing numbers of people running X64 Vista as an everyday work machine, and am now ready to give it a try.

One reason, is that I hope to upgrade/Replace my existing machine in the next 6 months or so, and as I would like to fit a lot of memory into it, X64 is the way to go…  But only if it runs OK for me…
Plus, apparently, the next version of Photoshop will be available in a X64 version…

So, I have found out my old 80GB HDD, and am going to install a copy of X64 on that drive in my existing PC, install a few of the basic ‘Essentials’ on it (Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Office 2007) and run it as a test for a few days.
I hope to do that sometime over the bank holiday weekend ;-)

BTW, seems the reason that X32 cannot see all of the 4GB of RAM you install, is that the “Total” address space is 4GB, so the more memory you have on your Graphic Card(s) the less RAM you can actually use…  Thought it was odd that a 32 bit OS couldn’t read 4GB of RAM!

IXUS 85 it is….

 

After a little shopping around, I have just ordered my IXUS 85 from Amazon.co.uk and a Canon soft leather case to suit for the grand total of £179.

There were a few cheaper places, but they were either small sites that I don’t have any experience of, or larger name sites charging £7 to £10 delivery!  In the end Amazon was only £3 more expensive, and is the same as the “in store” jessops price – Without a case.

Should be here early next weeks – Bloomin Bank Holidays!

MUTV for Three Months

Just had a call from Sky, and have taken advantage of a half price MUTV subscription for three months at £3 per month.

Seems the channel has just re-launched… so time to have another look, before cancelling again mid November ;-)

Updating My Router

I am currently using the BT Homehub that came with the BT Broadband service, and whilst it has it’s flaws, it is easy to setup and works just fine… except that Amy’s wireless connection couldn’t be further away from the router, and still be in the house.  She has a pretty poor connection speed, and it does drop connections occasionally.

I had been looking out for a suitable alternative, especially as the 802.11n draft boxes are pretty stable now, and was quite pleased to see that BT now offer a ‘new’ Homehub 2.0 which is in fact a 11n device.

It should be delivered early next week, so I need to get a 11n USB dongle for Amy’s PC over the weekend…  Looks like I have to start researching all over again :-(

Pictures from Holiday

Can be found on my website

The first lot are from Alex’s SCUBA diving lesson, the few remaining ones are all I managed to take before the camera died!

Back after a small break

In more ways than one!

1) Yes it’s been almost three weeks –again- since my last entry.

2) Just back from a weeks break at CenterParcs in Penrith.

3) Managed to break my digital camera (The compact not the SLR!)

4) Managed to break my toe!

 

For #1, I have no excuse except that I am lazy, totally pre-occupied with watching seasons 1 to 6 of Highlander on the PC, and am generally a boring person with not much to say, but #2 meant I had no PC/Internet access for 7 days, so a valid reason there for at least a portion of that time.

WRT #3 Whilst away, my Nikon compact digital camera ‘just stopped working’…  It’s a little over two years old, and after taking three pictures, the forth attempt sounded the shutter release noise and then just suffered an apparent total failure!  The lens stayed out, but no amount of poking, forcing, disconnecting and replacing the battery had any effect on it!  Looks like it’s time to replace it, and the current favourite is a Canon IXUS 85 – (Anything between £160 and £200) it’s a 10 MegaPixel camera with Optical Image Stabilisation and Face Recognition. (See Steve’s Digicam Review – lt is known as the SD770 in the US). Originally I was looking at a IXUS 82, Similar but 8Meg and £30 cheaper, but this seems to be some sort of ‘Jessops exclusive’ so I may well go up a model and be able to shop around.

Finally #4, working my last shift before breaking up for a two week break from work, I managed to kick (very Hard!)the corner of a metal filing cabinet with the little toe on my Right foot.  A trip to the hospital was inconclusive, it was definitely not dislocated, may be just badly bruised, and was possibly broken.
If bruised, would be better in approximately seven days, if broken about three weeks.  No treatment, just pain killers.
That was on the 9th, it’s now the 19th, and I still have a slight limp, and cannot wear trainers for more than an hour or two!

So, a week at home, and I can’t even swing a golf club – Oh Bugger!

Best 18 hole score yet…

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	HOLE
4	4	5	3	4	3	4	4	4	Par 35
4	5	9	3	9	5	9	5	7	56
10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	HOLE
4	4	4	4	4	3	3	4	4	Par 34
6	5	6	5	7	6	4	5	5	49

That’s a total of 105, and most of the damage was done on just three holes (3,5 and 7)

Beedle the Bard

Well, Amy has managed to spend £50 of her birthday money already, and it’s not till December!

Once it was announced that J.K.Rowling would be releasing “The Tales of Beedle the Bard” in December she was excited, when she realised that it would be released on Dec 4th, the day before her birthday – she was hyper.  Then when she saw the ‘Collector Edition’ package from Amazon – well….

From Amazon.co.uk:

Offered Exclusively by Amazon (Available in Limited Quantities)
In December 2007, J.K. Rowling unveiled The Tales of Beedle the Bard, a very special book of five fairy tales illustrated by the bard herself, embellished with silver ornaments and mounted moonstones. Amazon was fortunate to come into possession of one of the original copies, and it was our privilege to share images and reviews of this incredible artifact. Now J.K. Rowling is giving millions of Harry Potter fans worldwide cause for celebration with a new edition of The Tales of Beedle the Bard (available December 4, 2008) and Amazon is thrilled to exclusively offer a luxuriously packaged Collector’s Edition designed to evoke the spirit of the handcrafted original.

Tucked in its own case disguised as a wizarding textbook found in the Hogwarts library, the Collector's Edition includes a handwritten version of J.K. Rowling's new introduction, as well as 10 additional illustrations not found in the Standard Edition or the original. Opening the case reveals a velvet bag embroidered with J.K. Rowling’s signature, in which sits the piece de resistance: your very own copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bard, complete with metal skull, corners, and clasp; replica gemstones; and emerald ribbon.

Wow, has it been that long ?

Just realised it’s been over three weeks since I last posted here, where the hell does time go??

What’s been going on? I hear you ask as one (probably because there is only one of you, but hey – it’s my blog and I’ll use poetic licence when I want to!)

Well,  Amy stared in the school production of ‘Grease’ as ‘Miss Lynch’, and was excellent (as was the entire production by the way).

I have played golf a few times, and seem to be getting worse at the moment, I have obviously changed my swing in some way, and the slice is back… but buggered if I know what I am doing differently!  My short game and putting has improved immensely, but the overall scores are still rubbish, as I almost always end up in trouble off the tee!

I have tickets, not just for Katherine Jenkins at the NIA, but also for Hayley Westenra at Birmingham Town Hall (Nov 13th).

I have been on a site visit from work to one on the NHS Direct call centres – at exotic Merry Hill, and attended a three day course for AudioCodes in even more exotic Coventry!

So, overall nothing too exciting there… Sound about right!

Euro 2008 is almost over

 

Said by some to be one of the greatest tournaments of recent times:
we've got the small matter of Germany-Spain, with the promise of a classic final to put the cherry on top of a tremendous three weeks. If Carlsberg did tournaments they'd struggle to come up with anything better.
Chris Charles on the BBC Sport website

But, I am sure that not even Carlsberg could have produced a penalty kick to match this one for sheer class!
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=hP9DJYq54YI

But, NO ONE takes a pen quite like Beckham …

Ole Gunnar Solskjaer

“Tickets for Ole Gunnar Solskjaer's testimonial match against Espanyol on Saturday 2 August are now on sale to the general public.

The Old Trafford friendly will bring Ole's epic career to a close, with the man himself set to play one last game in the famous red shirt.
The occasion gives fans a chance to give the popular striker the send off he deserves after 326 appearances, 126 goals and countless happy memories.”

From ManUtd.com

I have tickets for Myself and Alex, also Neil, Ryan & Nial Sankey. Our seats are on the 2nd row, block 2404, North stand - This is the view from there -

It took 45 minutes of getting busy tone before I was even queued, and then another 50 minutes to get answered! I am not sure I want to ever listen to ‘Take me Home (United Road)’ again!!!  When I did finally get answered, I spoke to ‘Gary’, and he could not have been more helpful.

More Training!!

Seems that I have been chosen, along with two of the other support guys to be the prime for a new product that BT will be bringing to market in the coming months, and that the servers will all be Linux based…

As such we are all to be ‘Linux Trained’ to and ‘Advanced Standard’. Not sure I know what any of that means, but it could be fun!

Minor New Toy

As Amy needs a larger memory stick that her current 512KB one, I decided the best thing to do is give her my 4GB one (I have suffered from lack of space recently too), and I can get a new one… ;-)

So today I have ordered a replacement 16GB – yes 16!! Dane Elec zMate thumb drive from 7dayshop for the grand sum of £36 inc VAT and Postage.

Latest Scores from HGC

I have now managed to get two 18 hole rounds in, and am still yet to beat Neil, but I am getting closer only a few shots in it now.

Scores below:

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	HOLE
4	4	5	3	4	3	4	4	4	Par35
6	6	9	6	8	4	7	5	6	57
10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	HOLE
4	4	4	4	4	3	3	4	4	Par34
7	5	6	8	7	5	3	5	7	55
1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	HOLE
4	4	5	3	4	3	4	4	4	Par35
5	8	6	6	9	5	6	4	6	55
10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	HOLE
4	4	4	4	4	3	3	4	4	Par34
7	5	6	8	5	5	6	5	5	52

I really need to practice holes 3, 4, 10, 13 & 14…

18 Holes - Finally

This afternoon, I went to Halesowen Golf Course with Neil, and we managed to play all 18 holes! It's the first time I have managed to get round 18 holes on any course, never mind one as steep as Halesowen!!

It took us a little over Four and a Quarter hours , but we wern't in any rush, and did let two othe groups play thro'.

The scores were not too hot (Neil 106, Me 110) but we both managed to play some nice golf at times - it's just a lack of consistency that lets us down.

Grand day out

Well yesterday morning we set off for Blackpool at 08:45, picking Amy's friend, Beth, up on the way.

We parked the car up by the "Sandcastle" at just after 11:00, paying £7 for up to 24 hours... After walking over the road to the "Pleasure Beach" we were duly fitted with Wristbands, and waved Amanda off in the direction of "Fleetwood Freeport". We split into two parties (the boys and the girls!) and headed for the rides. The weather was fantastic, dry warm and sunny - to the point where I had to spend £6 just to by a baseball cap to protect my rapidy reddening head!

By the end of the day, Alex had been on 'Infusion', 'The Big One' (twice), 'The Ice Blast' (twice), 'Valhalla', 'The Grand National', 'The Wild Mouse', 'Avalanche' and 'Bling'. The last one was with Amy & Beth - It's the one ride in the park that I just don't like!

We met up with Amanda at about 4 O'Clock and after a couple of large pizza's taken Al-Fresco on the front, we mad our way back into the park for the 'Hot Ice' show, which to be honest, was enjoyed by the girls more than me and Alex, but it was still pretty impressive.

We left the car park at about 9:30, and got back home (after a couple of quick coffee/toilet breaks) at 11:30.

Off to Blackpool

Hope the weather improves for Saturday, we are all off to the Pleasure Beach at Blackpool...
Alex is now tall enough to ride the 'Big One' and is REALLY excited.

Dreamweaver CS4

Well BETA anyway...

It's not actually due for release for another 9 to 12 months, but you can download the beta now, and as long as you have a valid CS3 product key, you can run it in parallel till CS4 is officially launched.

You can find out more on the adobe labs website, but its mainly a radical overhaul of the user interface, along with some very nice new features.  I installed it Thursday, and even in this short time, I really don't want to go back to the old version...

!!Wow Training!!

After a rather length period, I have finally been given not 1 but two training courses over the next few weeks...

On Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday I will be at ITEL's office in Chester to find out all about the new STRATUS 4400 server platform.

Then in July I will be in Central London for 4 days finding out all about the AUDIOCODES Media Gateway. Initial checks of suitable hotels suggest we may be staying just off Trafalgar Square ...!  Sound Ok for a night out (or two) in the city.

Double Figures

Happy Birthday to ALEXANDER STEVEN BRIGHT - 10 years old today...

Delayed Wedding Anniversary

We had to cancel our meal on the 9th May, due to me feeling more that a little rough, but last night we did have a great day out to belatedly celebrate out 16th Wedding Anniversary.

Amanda's mom has the kids for the weekend, so we set off on our own yesterday lunchtime, into Birmingham.  First stop was the Cinema for the latest Indiana Jones film - "The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" Verdict: Taken on it's own a damn fine adventure romp, but when viewed in relation to previous IJ's - Not so good...  The characters are looking a little too old for all that 'swashbuckling action' type of thing.  My opinion is that the same screenplay as a third instalment of the "National Treasure" franchise would have worked much better.

After the film, a pleasant stroll into town, a cup of coffee and a slice of cake in Costa, a walk around the Bullring, before settling down in a bar near St Pauls Square for a nice quiet (but rather expensive) drink.

At 7:15 we took the short walk to 'The Bucklemaker' where we had more drinks and ordered our food.  I couldn't help but smile - top quality restaurant and I have Tomato Soup, and "Steak and Chips"...  Admittedly the soup was Red pepper and Tomato with chili infused something or other and  Caramelised Yellow Cherry Tomatoes, and the steak was an 8oz Aberdeen Angus steak with a coarse grain mustard jus, and the Bucklemaker chips are legendary!  I almost cried when I tasted the steak, I could never of imagined that food could taste that good!  Amanda was equally pleased with her 'Braised Pork Cheeks".

The staff were excellent, helpful and attentive without ever 'being in your face'.

OK, it cast £80 (with tip) for the two of us, but I will definitely go again...

GCSEs - Are they actually any good?

As a parent of a child who is about to start her GSCE studies in the next few months I found this series of articles on the PCPro site rather enlightening, and not a little worrying...

Top of the Class

Back to School With A Bump

Ridiculous Exam Questions

A Little Learning...

MOT Passed

The Bandit has just been for it's first MOT and passed with flying colours...  ;-)

Katherine Jenkins Tour 2008

Tickets on sale this week:

December
1st Sheffield City Hall
2nd Glasgow Clyde Auditorium
4th Newcastle City Hall
5th Preston Guidhall
7th Oxford New Theatre
9th Royal Albert Hall
10th Plymouth Pavillions
12 Birmingham NIA
13 Bournemouth Intl Centre
15 Brighton Center
17 Nottingham Royal Centre
18 Manchester MEN Arena
20 Harrogate Intl Centre
22 Cardiff Arena

Looks like Birmingham NIA on the 12th December it is then, shame it's not at Symphony hall this time.

UPDATE: Two tickets purchased today on the pre-booking fans link... Unfortunately, the location of the seats is not available at this time. I am really waiting with baited breath for my tickets to be delivered so I know where I will be sitting...

Strange Weekend

Well... !

Friday was our 16th wedding anniversary, and I had a table booked at 'The Bucklemaker' in town for 19:30, planning for Carole to look after the kids for us.  Then on Saturday we would be going to Blackpool with Alex and Josh as (an early) 10th birthday treat - He is now tall enough to ride 'The Big One'.

Friday morning started off quite dull, and even rained for a short while, but once it stopped - I nipped off to the golf course (My Monday rota day had been moved to Friday due to the Bank Holiday).

Unfortunately, whilst out on the course the weather really turned, and it was baking hot and sunny - and me without a cap (or any hair!) to protect the top of my head...  Result: By 17:00 I felt really lousy! Spent most of the next two days lying down or sitting on the toilet.

Not all bad tho'

The meal has been re-scheduled to the 23rd (Kids are away that weekend anyway), and Blackpool to the 30th.  Turns out Josh didn't really want to go - he does not like the 'big rides'.

Finally - Man United beat Wigan 2-0 to retain the Premier league title by two points over Chelsea - YES! 

By this morning I was feeling quite a lot better, and yes I was off work again!! So I didn't need to cancel my on the course lesson with Jon. I played four holes under his watchfull eye, and the good this is that I now have a degree of consistency with my wayward shots!  This at least makes it easier to correct them.

In the process I did manage to hit my best ever driver shot - some 200 yards absolutely up the middle of the 2nd fairway.

It was very warm out there again today, but at least this time I took a bottle of water with me, and purchased a new cap to protect my head.  I was wringing wet by the time I got back to the clubhouse, but felt better after a shower and change of clothes.

As I sit here, I am starting to feel a little delicate again, so may go and have a lie down as soon as I have finished.

Another Bank Holiday over

... back to work in the morning.

It was a bit strange today, I have had several Mondays off on the bounce recently, but because a) Amanda and Alex were at home (Amy is away for the weekend), b) Everyone else was off and c) the weather was pretty lousy, it has been a strange day.

What I have managed to do quite a bit of today is: Photoshop CS3 scripting in Javascript.  I am attempting to semi automate my monthly calendar production.

The twp difficulties are 1) I am not too familiar with Javascript syntax and 2) There is not a lot of information about the programming API available.

So far, I can open a dialog box, ask for the Month, Year, Start day and the number of days in the month, and use that information to create a separate document of the same dimensions with the date data printed on it.  This can then be copied over my template with a suitable blending mode, and it sort of works.

I do however need to spend quite a few hours yet working out some of the details.  For example, I can't yet put a drop shadow, of bevel & emboss on the dates etc.

Scout Band

Alex came home from Cubs on Thursday absolutely busting with excitement...  The Halesowen Scout Band had been to his meeting on a recruiting drive for new members, and he wants to join and play his flute in the band.

I spoke to the Band leader, Paul, tonight, and will be taking both Alex and his mate Josh to the induction meeting on Sunday afternoon. At a rate of £1 for a two hour lesson/practice session it seems like an absolute bargain.

He will be taking his DPA flute with him - at least for the first meeting, but he will need to check with DPA if they have any objections when he gets back to school - just in case (tm)

Update your AV for free

If you want a good *free* antivirus, why noy try the latest version 8 of AVG...
http://free.grisoft.com/ww.download?prd=afe

If you go directly to the AVG site, it's quite difficult to find the free version, but WAY too easy to get the paid for version.... hmmmm accident or design??

Nice MacAir parody...

Finally, it's Here...

The new picture arrived yesterday, and now has pride of place above the fireplace...

Before:

After: 

There is of course more to the new look than just the wall shown... new curtains, light fittings, display units, lamp along with a *very* different colour on the other three walls, make for a completely different feel in the room now.

Love It!

Cool Technologies

I have been playing with Dreamweaver CS3 recently, and have completed a couple of training courses on Lynda.com on AJAX and SPRY

My test sites are at

http://ajax-test.rockbox-themes.org/ and

http://spry-test.rockbox-themes.org/

The Ajax one is quite simple to look at, but was a real pain in the but to build - lots of Javascript and PHP code, all to get a page that does exactly the same of the pure HTML version it replaced!
The actual difference is that the AJAX layer makes the web page work more like an application.  When you search on a traditional site, the query is passed in the URL and the results displayed on a separate 'results.html' type page.  With AJAX, the results are posted back to the same page as the query was performed on, making multiple searches much easier.

SPRY is adobes AJAX implementation framework, it is far easier to use than hand coding everything, but at the expense of some flexibility.

One thing I was quite pleased with is the tabbed panels example:

http://spry-test.rockbox-themes.org/Tabbed_Panels.php

But what is particularly interesting on that page is the two RSS feed tabs.  They were built using yet another cool technology: XLST...  You create an XLS file, which is linked to an XML based file.  This XLS is then merged with the HTML file on the server side.  This allows you to embed XML data into your own page.

This is Funny!

New Toys...

Well sort of.

1) New Painting.  As mentioned previously I have just ordered a new Mark Spain artwork for the lounge.  I now have a delivery date of 21st of April, so I have two weeks to ensure that the decoration etc. is complete.

Today we went to the Halcyon gallery in Birmingham, where they were opening their "Figurative Collection" show, and we had chance to meet non other than Mark Spain himself.  A really nice guy, and the free champagne was rather nice too.

2) New HDD for the PC.  Lofty is in the process of reconfiguring his Media Centre PC, and as a result has a couple of 500 GB HDD's going spare.  I have taken one of them off his hands for the princely sum of £40.

I intend to put this new drive (well 12 month old actually) in this PC, and take the opportunity to completely reload Windows Vista.  I currently have C: on a 75 GB drive, and D:, P: and M: on a 240 GB drive.  The plan is to go to a single large C: on the 500 GB, with data, pictures and music in the My Documents, My Pictures and My Music, and use the 240 GB drive as a backup device for those three locations.

Has it really been a month..

... since I last posted here?  Good grief, time flies when you are having fun!

'What's been going on?' I hear you cry, well not a lot actually.  Currently decorating the lounge, in advance of a new painting - 'A Moment of tranquility' by Mark Spain

Ceiling and woodwork has been painted, walls have been re-papered with textured paper, and one wall has actually been emulsion'd to finished colour.  Still not 100% sure on other wall's or curtain colour, so some work left to do yet.

Apart from that, not a lot... Tidied out my CD collection for a recent 'Car Boot' sale, sold about 100 CD's - still *way* too many left really.

Not too much time off from work, but work itself has been pretty quiet.  That's the 'end of financial year' effect - it's either completely mad, or deadly quiet, depending on wether there is any telecom's budget left to be spent before April!

Took a day trip to see Lofty one day, he is now separated from his wife, and filling for divorce.  It's the happiest we have seen him in years!

Have been spending quite a lot of time on Photoshop, working my way thro' the tutorials in Matt Kloskowski's "Layers - The complete guide to Photoshop's most powerful feature', and a couple of online training courses ay Lynda.com.  I have been really interested in the area of 'retouching' and now need to get the camera out and take some good pic's on Amy and Alex so I have some material to work on!

The Beta version of Lightroom 2.0 is now out, and I have taken the opportunity to start from scratch again withLR.  I started importing pictures into LR before I really understood what was going on, and as such - it was always a bit of a mess.  Lets see if I can do better this time!

Golf has been a bit thin on the ground in March, every time I had a day off, the weather was terrible.  Never mind, with the clocks going forwards, evenings are fair game again now ;-) - at least they will be once the decorating is finished...

Ouch!

Car has gone in for it's first MOT today...

At 10:30 I had a phonecall - it failed!!

Seems that there was almost nothing left on the rear pads, and nothing at all on the front pads, to the extent that the actual disks were damaged :-(

The plus side is that the dealership agreed to replace them immediately, and I can still collect the car at lunchtime... The downside is that my MOT will effectively cost me £445

This is so cool...

Virtual Reality on your PC, using a Wii Remote

or if that's not your thing, how about a muti-touch white board, or interactive desktop...

Amanda's Pics online

Unlike me, Amanda does not take many pictures when away, but the few she took can be viewed online at

http://photoalbum.rockbox-themes.org/Fuerteventura2008/index.html

Last day as a single parent

Amanda is due back late tonight (actually more like early tomorrow!), so once our Golf lesson was over, it was all hands to the pumps to clean the house top to bottom.  Actually, it only took about 20 minutes, as we have kept on top of it all week ;-)

So, it's time to relax - settle down and watch Man U v Arsenal in the FA Cup, and then out for a curry...  A little TV and wait for Amanda ;-)

Firefox 3 Beta 3

I have recently installed the latest version of FF 3, and am generally quite impressed. 

I found two Issues

1) The Roboform Toolbar needed to be updated to latest version (6.9.87) which was not a major problem

2) The 'Home' button has been moved from the 'Normal' position on the Navigation bar to the bookmarks toolbar.  This was a major pain in the butt!  Fortunately there is a fix on the Mozilla Forums:

make sure you right-click on the toolbars and select 'customize' before trying to drag the 'Home' button from the 'Bookmarks Toolbar' to the 'Navigation Toolbar'. Leave that 'customize' window open while dragging buttons. If that still doesn't work, disable any weird extensions you have running that might not be completely compatible with this new build.

Unfortunately it seems that many of the developers consider this strange positioning to be 'More Logical' and this tweak may be needed more than once.

Not so much a 'new' toy...

More of a replacement.

On Saturday night -at the curry house - my iPod got smashed, and without a screen it was just not usable. I attempted to live with the Nano for a while, but it's just to darn small - 4 GB is simply not enough space.  Soooo, yesterday I became the proud owner of a 80 GB iPod Video 'Classic'.

I like a lot of the new visual 'tricks' that have been included in the updated software - Cover flow, album are displayed in a slight perspective view - complete with shaded reflection etc., but would agree with the early reviews which stated that Apple were pushing the processor in this platform to the limit.  I am sure they work a lot smoother on newer hardware - the iTouch - for example.

Trouble with the iTouch 32GB would just about be usable, but the price is ridiculous, any smaller is of no use to me. The 80Gb version of the older model was £150 - more than enough!

Still doing fine...

Tuesday - A visit to Barnett's Hill Garden Center filled the morning quite nicely, Alex and I managed to get to the Golf Course for a hour or so in the Late Afternoon.  It was Alex's fist experience of a 'Real Golf Course', we only played three holes, but he did quite well really. Amy had invited Beth over for tea / a sleep over, so it was the 'Stag' again for tea, and after a (false) fire alarm going off - just after we had finished our meals, a quiet night in watching TV.

Wednesday - A *very* late night for the girls was followed by a lie-in for the morning.  Amy, Beth and two others from the drama group went to the pictures for the afternoon, Alex played on the XBOX a lot, and George came to borrow some software - I got to go for a ride on his FJR 1300!! AWESOME!!  A simple meal of Beans-on-Toast, and an evening catching up on some more Sky+ recordings

Thursday - Amy handed over my Valentines card from Amanda, I had hidden hers in the suitcase... Another visit to Moms filled the morning, and Amy was again at the cinema in the afternoon, this time with her boyfriend and some friends from school.  Afterwards three of the girls Katherine, Alex (female) and Abbey joined us at home for a take-away Pizza.  At 19:00 I took Alex (my son!) to Cubs for a 24 hour meeting - I don't get him back till 19:00 Friday!!

Looks like I need to brave the washing machine again tomorrow ;-)

So Far So Good...

Almost three days now without Amanda to keep me in check, and both children are still alive!

Saturday was mostly taken up with two performances of the Panto, and out for a celebratory curry afterwards.

Sunday AM - A small amount of shopping for essentials (Bread, Milk, Diet Coke etc) followed by Gardening/Trampoline for me/kids, Football on TV, and then out for a 'pub Meal' at the 'Stag', finished off by a quiet evening of 'Dancing on Ice' and 'LA Ink'

Monday - I managed to escape for a hour on the Golf Course, and almost wished I had not bothered - I was CRAP!... Took Amy & Katherine to Merry Hill, Relaxed in Costa for a while with a nice 'Skinny Latte' before visiting my Mom. Chip Shop tea tonight (held over from Saturday), and Whilst Amy went back to Phoenix to assist with the 'Big Tidy' I had an hour on the PC, and Alex learnt the finer points of Sync'ing his mobile phone with Windows Media Player.

Has it been that long...

Since I last posted? Wow, time flies!

Ok, what's happened in the last two weeks...

Well, Vista with SP1 has been well behaved, and Microsoft have now released if officially.

I have (finally) been accepted onto the 21C Broadband trial by BT and hope to have 24 MB Broadband soon.

Phoenix productions have performed "Robin Hood - the panto" several times now, to good sized houses and much applause. Two performances left, this afternoon and tonight.

Bike has been for it's 7000 mile service, and fitted with new chain/sprocket set and heated grips.  It cost £600 all in, but the difference in performance, and the nice warm hands says it was worth it.

Work has been manic, we finally seem to have recovered from the "Winter Lull" (TM) and whilst the day seems to fly by whilst you are busy, the week seems to last forever!  Mind you the fact that it was a 6 day week helped that feeling, I have got used to all these 4 day weeks!!

Finally, Amanda has flow off today with some friends for a mid winter break in the Canaries.  I therefore have a week off work to keep an eye on the kids, and weather permitting - get some golf in!

Plunge Taken

I have been able to install a Beta version of SP1 for Windows Vista for some time now, but as the first attempt to install the 1st Beta almost killed my PC, I have been somewhat reluctant.

Today, however, I took the plunge and installed Vista SP1 RC Refresh 2.  Initially it refused to install - a problem left over from the first abortive attempt - but a quick Google sorted that one out.

It took about 1 hour to install, and every seems to be exactly the same afterwards.  Hardly surprising as no new features are being shouted about by Microsoft on this SP.  In fact the only real indication that anything has occurred is the Kaspersky software firewall asking if it's OK to continue attempting to fire up a modified executable.

At Last!! Part 2

So much for lifting the barring within the hour...  No incoming or outgoing all day!

Called customer services tonight, who's system claimed that everything was working OK, was told by me that it wasn't, who's second system also told them everything was OK, was told by me that it wasn't - again, and who's 3rd system ran a diagnostic that confirmed everything was working OK... Guess what, It started working!

I can now make and receive calls on my new phone, as well as send text messages and access the internet..

AT LAST!!

At Last!!

Today I took delivery of a replacement SIM for my mobile phone, 6 weeks to the day since it was first requested!

What is even more amazing is that the order that finally worked, was only placed yesterday morning!  Seems the previous three attempts to order the SIM had 'failed' in the front-end system, the girl I spoke to yesterday decided to bypass the front-end and place the order directly on the back-end system.  Result delivery within 24 hours!

I have put the new SIM in my SLVR, and it has been activated, I am now waiting for the call barring on my number to be lifted so I can start to use it - should be within the hour.

Increasing Popularity

A Total of 2,008,870 Page Views for 2007, with a month on month growth.  It slowed a little in December as I had to remove the iPod 5G themes from the site to reduce my bandwidth consumption (They are the most popular themes)

Funky New Wallpaper

http://www.redbreva.com/Photography/Purple-Glass.jpg (1680 x 1050)

Looks *really* good with the Vista Aero transparency enabled.  Based on the "Colour of the Year" Pantone 18-3943, a clouds filter and a texture filter complete the work ;-)

Windows Updates

Paul Thurrott's Supersite for windows notes that there are two new updates for Vista, that are not yet on the official update site:

December 2007 Windows Vista Application Compatibility Update
The December 2007 Windows Vista Application Compatibility Update is a package of software updates that address common application compatibility issues in Windows Vista. This update is cumulative, and it supersedes update 935280. In addition to the fixes that are contained in update 935280, this update improves support in Windows Vista. This update also includes fixes that are contained in update 932246.

An update that improves the performance, responsiveness, and reliability of Windows Vista is available
This update improves performance, responsiveness, and reliability of Windows Vista in various scenarios.

Useful Free Software

Any DVD Converter Professional is an All-in-One DVD ripper and video converting tool which helps you rip movie from DVD-Video disc to all popular video formats and convert video files between all popular video formats with fast converting speed and excellent video quality. It is a video converter which converts almost all video formats including DivX, XviD, MOV, rm, rmvb, MPEG, VOB, DVD, WMV, AVI to MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, 3GP or FLV movie formats for iPod, iPhone, Zune, PSP or other portable video device, MP4 player or smart phone.

You can get a free version that does enough for most people, of pay $20/30 for a version with a few extra features - Feature Comparison page

very usefull for changing all those DivX / Xvid downloads into DVD ready format ;-)

Happy New Year

To my loyal and regular readers, have a very happy new year... yes, both of you.

Personally, I am glad the festive period is all over bar the shouting, and I can go back to a normal routine of enjoying my golf on my regular days off from work, between period of looking forward to having another couple of days off!

This year was a little different, we had Jackie, Pete & Matt over to 'See in the new year' which was nice.  I was on call, so not too much to drink, but enjoyed myself anyway, and didn't get called.

So what do we have to look forward to this year?
Amanda's 16th Wedding Anniversary (I was there too, but its always the girls anniversary!)
Alex turning 10
Amy turning 15
Amanda Turning 42
Me turning 47
Manchester United staying where they belong - Premier League Champions....
Me actually getting an official handicap, hopefully less than 28!

Yes, I have completely ripped this post off from last year, but so what :-D