Finally used the Nikon

[Listening to: Filthy And Gorgeous (Atoc Vs Superbuddha Remix) - Scissor Sisters - Remixed! (04:14)]

Yesterday lunchtime I took advantage of the pleasent weather to go a walk into Birmingham town centre, and took the D50 with me.. The results of this trip can be seen here

Tried VISTA again...

This is the third time I have installed Windows Vista (AKA Longhorn) on the laptop, this time build 5270, and sadly for the third I have removed it pretty quickly. This time it looked a lot better than the first time, more feature are present, and the needlesly complicated virtual folder nonsence has been improved... however, a Centrino based laptop that cannot see the wireless adaptor is of no use to me!

I even went to the Intel site and downloaded the Vista BETA driver, and installed that - It still cannot see any wireless networks!!

It is also a shame that the video card in the laptop is not capable of displaying the AERO interface, so no transparent windows etc.

The install routine has been improved a lot, but it was *really* slow, taking almost 1.5 hours to complete - previous builds were about 1 hour.

Just as well I ghosted the laptop before I started - ah well, better luck next time.

Weight Check

At 19:30 on 30-07-2005 : 14st 1lb, 26.7% BF
At 16:30 on 14-08-2005 : 13st 5lb, 26.3% BF
At 19:30 on 29-08-2005 : 13st 3lb, 25.8% BF
At 17:30 on 12-09-2005 : 13st 0lb, 25.7% BF
At 17:30 on 26-09-2005 : 12st 12lb, 25.0% BF
At 19:30 on 10-10-2005 : 12st 10lb, 24.5% BF
At 17:30 on 24-10-2005 : 12st 8 lb, 24.9% BF
At 18:30 on 07-11-2005 : 12st 7 lb, 23.9% BF
At 22:00 on 21-11-2005 : 12st 7 lb, 23.9% BF
At 22:00 on 05-12-2005 : 12st 6 lb, 23.1% BF
At 22:00 on 19-12-2005 : 12st 4 lb, 22.9% BF

Although I am still generally relaxed about my intake, I have been a little stricter this week to allow a bit more lattitude over the Christmas holidays. Added to this, my training regime now includes quite a bit more CV exercise, which seems to burn the fat off quite well.
I am clocking in at between 7:30 and 8:00 minutes for a single timed mile at present. I would like to try and get that up to 16 minutes for 2 miles as my next major benchmark.

The Minolta has a new home

[Listening to: Across the Universe of Time - Silent Night, Holy Night - Pure - Special Edition (03:43)]

Today I posted the Minolta A200 to it's new owner in Oldham.. I got £270 for it, a figure I am very happy with. jessops had only offered £100 in part-ex against the Nikon!!

Boys Toys

[Listening to: Everyday - Erasure - Other People's Songs (02:01)]

Today I once again went into Jessops at merry Hill to torture myselft over a new camera...

OK! I admit it I cracked under pressure - I am now the proud owner of a Nikon D50 Digital SLR camera, a 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 G ED lens and a 70-300mm f4-5.6 G lens. I also had a 512 MB 80x SD memory card and a Lowpro bag.

All in a grand total of £655

Oh yes, the reasoning for picking the D50 over the D70s... twofold, one - price, I just could not spend the extra, and two - a nine week delay in getting any stock of the D70s

Looks like I'd better get the Minolta A200 on EBay, pretty sharpish!!
EDIT:
It's now on EBay

FIA push ahead with planned aero changes

[Listening to: Let's All Make A Bomb - Heaven 17 - Penthouse And Pavement (04:07)]

From www.formula1.com:

The FIA’s World Motorsport Council met on Friday and agreed the main objectives of the 2008 Formula One Technical Regulations.
The FIA's Centreline Downwash Generating (CDG) Wing design. October 24, 2005. © FIAFollowing the FIA’s recent release of plans for their Centreline Downwash Generating (CDG) rear wing, one of those objectives remains to change the aerodynamic characteristics of the cars so as to make it easier to overtake without increasing cornering speeds. The other is to reduce drastically the cost of competing.

According to the FIA, detailed 2008 regulations will be finalised in the week commencing December 19, 2005, and will include:

A standard Electronic Control Unit
Long life engines
Long life gearboxes
A single tyre supplier
Restrictions on the ability of the teams to change their aerodynamics during the season
Rev-limited engines
and other measures


OK, I understand What they want to do, and Why they want it done, but surely this range of changes removes the cutting edge technology that is supposed to make F1 the pinnacle of motorsport?

ALWAYS read the small print...

[Listening to: The Way - Clay Aiken - Measure Of A Man (04:06)]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/12/08/xbox_photo_auction/

Weight Check

At 19:30 on 30-07-2005 : 14st 1lb, 26.7% BF
At 16:30 on 14-08-2005 : 13st 5lb, 26.3% BF
At 19:30 on 29-08-2005 : 13st 3lb, 25.8% BF
At 17:30 on 12-09-2005 : 13st 0lb, 25.7% BF
At 17:30 on 26-09-2005 : 12st 12lb, 25.0% BF
At 19:30 on 10-10-2005 : 12st 10lb, 24.5% BF
At 17:30 on 24-10-2005 : 12st 8 lb, 24.9% BF
At 18:30 on 07-11-2005 : 12st 7 lb, 23.9% BF
At 22:00 on 21-11-2005 : 12st 7 lb, 23.9% BF
At 22:00 on 05-12-2005 : 12st 6 lb, 23.1% BF

I have continued my relaxed attitude to my intake, without going too mad, and have still maintained the weight. Very pleased indeed.

The training Session with Liz last week, went well and I have a new program to (hopefully) prevent boredom setting in...

Amy is 12 Today

How time flies...

For her birthday, she has had a makeover at Boots No7 counter, and recieved £50 worth of cosmetics.





Click on the above image for a larger (870 KB version) of Amy in her very natural looking makeup.

Now *that's* III

True to his word, my new plugs arrived in the post today. Tommorow will be the first chance I get to wear them, so lets see how well they do...

Firefox 1.5 - Final Release version

From http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/

The award-winning Web browser is better than ever. Browse the Web with confidence - Firefox protects you from viruses, spyware and pop-ups. Enjoy improvements to performance, ease of use and privacy. It's easy to import your favorites and settings and get started. Download Firefox now and get the most out of the Web.

Here's what's new in Firefox 1.5:

* Automated update to streamline product upgrades. Notification of an update is more prominent, and updates to Firefox may now be half a megabyte or smaller. Updating extensions has also improved.
* Faster browser navigation with improvements to back and forward button performance.
* Drag and drop reordering for browser tabs.
* Improvements to popup blocking.
* Clear Private Data feature provides an easy way to quickly remove personal data through a menu item or keyboard shortcut.
* Answers.com is added to the search engine list.
* Improvements to product usability including descriptive error pages, redesigned options menu, RSS discovery, and "Safe Mode" experience.
* Better accessibility including support for DHTML accessibility and assistive technologies such as the Window-Eyes 5.5 beta screen reader for Microsoft Windows. Screen readers read aloud all available information in applications and documents or show the information on a Braille display, enabling blind and visually impaired users to use equivalent software functionality as their sighted peers.
* Report a broken Web site wizard to report Web sites that are not working in Firefox.
* Better support for Mac OS X (10.2 and greater) including profile migration from Safari and Mac Internet Explorer.
* New support for Web Standards including SVG, CSS 2 and CSS 3, and JavaScript 1.6.
* Many security enhancements.

Now *that's* Customer Service Part II

[Listening to: Boulevard Of Broken Dreams - Green Day - Bullet In A Bible (04:45)]

Antone from www.customearprotection.co.uk was due to call at approx 18:00 last night to attempt to fix the problem with my left ear plug.

At about 18:30 he phoned to say he was just leaving Stafford, but due to traffic problems it was about 21:45 before he got here!! he checked the plugs, and decided the best thing was make a new pair of moulds...

It should take about a week, as he has several more days of travelling to do before he gets back to Poole.

Scrap the Toaster...

[Listening to: Music Of The Night - Katherine Jenkins - Living A Dream (05:48)]

http://www.thetoastshop.co.uk/!!

I really hope that this is actually a spoof - but with the internet, you can never be totally sure!

Katherine Jenkins - Concert Program Cover

[Listening to: Time To Say Goodbye - Katherine Jenkins - Second Nature (03:44)]

Click on the above thumbnail for a larger version (213 KB)

Letter from the Hospital

Dear Mr Bright
I am writing to confirm that the hospital has received a referral letter requesting and appointment for you to be seen in MISS S SHIRALKAR's clinic

We will contact you again in a few weeks time. We will then ask you to telephone the BookIng Service and arrange a suitable date and time for your appointment. etc. etc.

Good to see we are not wasting taxpayers money with unnecessary bureaucracy! I mean we could have spent millions an networking all the surgeries and hospitals computers together, allowing GP's to request an appointment on-line, and for the system to send you an appointment direct!!

Now *thats* what I call Customer Service

you may remember a few weeks ago I mentioned that I had ordered a pair of custom ear protectors from the bike show...
Well, it took about two weeks for the company to catch up with the backlog, and for the royal mail to get them to me, but arrive they did, and they fitted great... very comfortable. The only problem is, that the left one seems to keep coming loose everytime I look over my left shoulder. By the time I get to work (15 minutes) it is so loose as to be ineffective!

This morning I sent the company an e-mail explaining the problem, I got a phone call this afternoon - Antone is in the midland tommorow, was I available late afternoon/early evening for him to come and attempt to sort the problem out!

Katherine Jenkins - Symphony Hall Birmingham

The following is taken from a latter on complaint to the managment of Sympony Hall...

Last night we attended a (very good) concert at Symphony Hall by Katherine Jenkins, which was a birthday treat for my wife.

We had tickets for Level 4, Door 3, Row C seats 28 and 29. We arrived at the correct door at approx 19:20, and waited to be show to our seats. On presenting our tickets to the girl, she did not seem to know how the seats numbered in her area of the auditorium, and spent several minutes trying to local the correct seats, leaving us standing like lemons in the doorway.

She then sought advice from the other usher at that door - it seems that seat 29 was occupied! Having collected all the tickets from the people in row C from 29 to the end, they were unable to sort out the problem - in spite of the fact that there was NO ONE in that row with a ticket for seat 29!!

Having left us standing even longer whilst see when to talk to the box-office - the ushers seemed to think the seat had been double booked!! - the concert had by this time (19:35) started, and we were starting to feel very uncomfortable standing by the pillar - not just because we need to sit down!!

After a few minutes, the male usher than directed us to some spare seats on the back row of that section - causing several people to be disturbed. We at least were able to settle back and start watching the show. At 20:10, the original occupants of out 'new seats' arrived, and we were then asked to move again. We received several nasty comments from the people we disturbed (again) on our way out of the row, and we were highly embarrassed.

We were than taken to some other empty seats on C row (23 and 24 I think), and once again had to disturb several people on our way to them. During the interval we had opportunity to explain the situation to those around us and apologise - but why on earth I should have felt compelled to apologise for a mistake over which we had no control I am not sure!

We then took the opportunity to talk to the usher, who actually wanted us to move back to our 'correct seats' at this point - in spite of the fact that he still had no adequate explanation as to how there were still more people to fit on that section of row than there were seats! I did not really fancy ending up in the middle of an argument with other customers just as the second half was to begin! Fortunately there was another woman there with him by this time (supervisor?) who suggested that it would be better if we stayed were we were for the second half - and if the original occupants of those seats did eventually turn up, *they* would be seated elsewhere.

Fortunately, this situation did not arise and we were able to enjoy the second half of the concert without further embarrassment, and did queue up afterward to meet Katherine and get our program signed.

The entire episode, did however take the polish of what was planned to be a very special evening with my wife on her birthday

Visual Basic .Net 2005

This evening I have finally started to play with the FREE VB.NET 2005 that I downloaded the other week.

The main reason for the delay was lack of ideas on what to try and program.... That and lack of time... and that - well you get the picture...

But then this morning I remembered an application that I started working on in VB6 some 2.5 years ago - RockConfig

Since then the amount of options that are available to set in Rockbox have grown at an alarming rate, so I thought:
Not only would starting again in the 'New' language be a challenge, but there is probably even more need for an application f this type than ever!

All I have done tonight is rework the 'File Handling' routine to load the entries from an existing .cfg file, and output status messages to a log file. No error trapping yet, no use is being made of the data read in, but it's a definate start

Firefox 1.5 Release Candidate 3

What's New in Firefox 1.5 RC 3

Firefox 1.5 RC 3 is a test preview of our award-winning Web browser. Firefox 1.5 RC 3 is available for our testing community, Web site and Web application developers, and our Extension developers.

Here's what's new in Firefox 1.5 RC 3:

* Automated update to streamline product upgrades. Notification of an update is more prominent, and updates to Firefox may now be half a megabyte or smaller. Updating extensions has also improved.
* Faster browser navigation with improvements to back and forward button performance.
* Drag and drop reordering for browser tabs.
* Improvements to popup blocking.
* Clear Private Data feature provides an easy way to quickly remove personal data through a menu item or keyboard shortcut.
* Answers.com is added to the search engine list.
* Improvements to product usability including descriptive error pages, redesigned options menu, RSS discovery, and "Safe Mode" experience.
* Better accessibility including support for DHTML accessibility and assistive technologies such as the Window-Eyes 5.5 beta screen reader for Microsoft Windows. Screen readers read aloud all available information in applications and documents or show the information on a Braille display, enabling blind and visually impaired users to use equivalent software functionality as their sighted peers.
* Report a broken Web site wizard to report Web sites that are not working in Firefox.
* Better support for Mac OS X (10.2 and greater) including profile migration from Safari and Mac Internet Explorer.
* New support for Web Standards including SVG, CSS 2 and CSS 3, and JavaScript 1.6.
* Many security enhancements.

Weight Check

At 19:30 on 30-07-2005 : 14st 1lb, 26.7% BF
At 16:30 on 14-08-2005 : 13st 5lb, 26.3% BF
At 19:30 on 29-08-2005 : 13st 3lb, 25.8% BF
At 17:30 on 12-09-2005 : 13st 0lb, 25.7% BF
At 17:30 on 26-09-2005 : 12st 12lb, 25.0% BF
At 19:30 on 10-10-2005 : 12st 10lb, 24.5% BF
At 17:30 on 24-10-2005 : 12st 8 lb, 24.9% BF
At 18:30 on 07-11-2005 : 12st 7 lb, 23.9% BF
At 22:00 on 21-11-2005 : 12st 7 lb, 23.9% BF

I have really relaxed my intake over the last few days - Fresh Cream Cake on Friday, Toffes over the weekend, Stollen Cake from the German Market etc, and have still maintained the weight. Very pleased indeed.

I have another trainig session booked with Liz for next Monday, as I am starting to get a bit stale on my current training program, and need to 'mix it up' a bit.