OK, not exactly 'new' as her back catalogue goes back at least 12 years, but I have never heard Jewel before...
When she appeared as a guest judge on American Idol recently, I was quite impressed with the short clip of her that was used as an introduction. I downloaded a copy of her latest album "Goodbye, Alice in Wonderland" and it's really good! I have since acquired several other of her albums, and have yet to find any truly bad tracks.
A slight country feel, but very listenable to... Recommended for all of you who like solo female artists ;-)
Thursday, February 01, 2007
Rowling unveils last Potter date
From BBC News
The last installment of the Harry Potter saga will be published on 21 July 2007, author JK Rowling has announced.
The latest film based on the books, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix will be released in the UK on 13 July 2007.
She confirmed the date fans will be able to get their hands on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on her website.
The puplishers said it would release a children's hardback edition, an adult hardback, a special gift edition and an audio book on the same day.
The last installment of the Harry Potter saga will be published on 21 July 2007, author JK Rowling has announced.
The latest film based on the books, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix will be released in the UK on 13 July 2007.
She confirmed the date fans will be able to get their hands on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on her website.
The puplishers said it would release a children's hardback edition, an adult hardback, a special gift edition and an audio book on the same day.
A Money Saving Tip
From Windows Secrets Newsletter (subscribe Here)
Use Vista's 'upgrade' version to clean-install
The secret is that the setup program in Vista's upgrade version will accept an installed copy of XP, W2K, or an unactivated copy of Vista itself as evidence of a previous installation.
This enables you to "clean install" an upgrade version of Vista to any formatted or unformatted hard drive, which is usually the preferred method when installing any new operating system. You must, in essence, install Vista twice to take advantage of this trick. But Vista installs much faster than XP, so it's quicker than installing XP followed by Vista to get the upgrade price.
To give you some idea of the potential saving:
Windows Home Premium "Clean Install version" Approx £190
Windows Home Premium "Upgrade version" Approx £130
Saving = £60 !
Windows Ultimate "Clean Install version" Approx £320
Windows Ultimate "Upgrade version" Approx £210
Saving = £110 !!
Use Vista's 'upgrade' version to clean-install
The secret is that the setup program in Vista's upgrade version will accept an installed copy of XP, W2K, or an unactivated copy of Vista itself as evidence of a previous installation.
This enables you to "clean install" an upgrade version of Vista to any formatted or unformatted hard drive, which is usually the preferred method when installing any new operating system. You must, in essence, install Vista twice to take advantage of this trick. But Vista installs much faster than XP, so it's quicker than installing XP followed by Vista to get the upgrade price.
To give you some idea of the potential saving:
Windows Home Premium "Clean Install version" Approx £190
Windows Home Premium "Upgrade version" Approx £130
Saving = £60 !
Windows Ultimate "Clean Install version" Approx £320
Windows Ultimate "Upgrade version" Approx £210
Saving = £110 !!
Saturday, January 27, 2007
Last Xmas Present
Today I went to the Jessops store in Leicester to take a 'starting with studio/portrait photography' course. This was a christmas present from Amanda...
We left the house at 09:00, arrived at the store for 10:15, and started bang on 10:30. There were two girls (Liz & Lisa from WPS Studio) there to act as our models for the day , and the instructor made a good job of explaining how (and why) everything worked. The morning was mostly lecture, with demo's of different lighting effects from on camera flash units, 1, 2 or ever 3 studio light units and the use of reflectors.
After lunch the classrom was converted into two separate studio sets, and the girls posed happily while we all worked out how to use our cameras!
The results from my exploits can be see here on my photo-albums site, not quite as 'interesting' as their web pages on WPS, but easier to show the wife what you were up to all afternoon!
We finished at about 16:30, and had a nice steady drive back home - arriving just in time for the 2nd half of the Man United FA Cup tie against Portsmouth (United won 2-1 )
All in all - a good day
We left the house at 09:00, arrived at the store for 10:15, and started bang on 10:30. There were two girls (Liz & Lisa from WPS Studio) there to act as our models for the day , and the instructor made a good job of explaining how (and why) everything worked. The morning was mostly lecture, with demo's of different lighting effects from on camera flash units, 1, 2 or ever 3 studio light units and the use of reflectors.
After lunch the classrom was converted into two separate studio sets, and the girls posed happily while we all worked out how to use our cameras!
The results from my exploits can be see here on my photo-albums site, not quite as 'interesting' as their web pages on WPS, but easier to show the wife what you were up to all afternoon!
We finished at about 16:30, and had a nice steady drive back home - arriving just in time for the 2nd half of the Man United FA Cup tie against Portsmouth (United won 2-1 )
All in all - a good day
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Baking a Beatbox Cake
Now I am not really into the whole 'Beatbox' thing, but this video on YouTube is just amazing, and you just have to be impressed by the performance, even if the musical genre is about 30 years too late for you
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7GGkKpBR-g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7GGkKpBR-g
Monday, January 15, 2007
Holiday Booked
Nothing to spectacular this year... A midweek (Monday to Friday) at Center Parcs - Whinfell Forest (used to be Oasis) near Penrith in late August.
What will make it a good holiday is that once again, we will be in the company of Jackie & Pete.
What will make it a good holiday is that once again, we will be in the company of Jackie & Pete.
Thursday, January 11, 2007
Another Toy - Free!
I have today ordered an upgrade to my mobile phone, and it's not costing me a penny! Now that's the sort of toy I really like to shop for!
[Edit] Seems I cannot actually order the upgrade till the 16th of January, so I will need to call them back next week :-(
My existing phone (for the last 14 months) is a Nokia 6020, basic, simple, does the job, easy to use etc. no real complaints, but I will soon be taking possession of a Motorola RAZR Z3iM in Red.
The 'M' is for Music - It's iTunes compatible, and can have a 512MB Transflash memory stick fitted to increase it's track capacity to about 100 - OhHum, prolly just stick to using the Nano...
I like the form factor of this design, and as it's free, why not?
[Edit] Seems I cannot actually order the upgrade till the 16th of January, so I will need to call them back next week :-(
My existing phone (for the last 14 months) is a Nokia 6020, basic, simple, does the job, easy to use etc. no real complaints, but I will soon be taking possession of a Motorola RAZR Z3iM in Red.
The 'M' is for Music - It's iTunes compatible, and can have a 512MB Transflash memory stick fitted to increase it's track capacity to about 100 - OhHum, prolly just stick to using the Nano...
I like the form factor of this design, and as it's free, why not?
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
WOW!
My new monitor has arrived already! It is installed and working fine, and all I can say is WOW - That is a big screen... The higher horizontal resolution makes one hell of a difference in applications like Dreamweaver and Photoshop - you can have the tool panels open and still have enough space to work... The text is just as readable as on the previous monitor, if anything slightly more so as it seems to be just a little bigger.
The height adjustment also makes a big difference to working with this screen, I no longer feel so 'hunched over' and can lean back in the chair whilst still reading the screen.
All in all - a most excellent new toy!
Now.... If only I knew someone who could make use of a slightly used 17" Eizo L565 monitor
The height adjustment also makes a big difference to working with this screen, I no longer feel so 'hunched over' and can lean back in the chair whilst still reading the screen.
All in all - a most excellent new toy!
Now.... If only I knew someone who could make use of a slightly used 17" Eizo L565 monitor
Tuesday, January 09, 2007
Time for a new toy...
One of the aims for this year (2007) is to change out my PC, but firstly I want to change my existing 17" monitor for a larger widescreen model, as this would account for a significant percentage of the new PC price.
Well, today I have ordered my replacment monitor. It's a Black Phillips 20 Widescreen LCD (200WX7EB) which runs at a native resolution of 1680x1050. This gives me an extra 400 pixels on the width, whilst maintaining almost the same vertical screen height/resolution.
It has been ordered from Dabs Direct, taking advantage of the newly introduced BT Employee discount, for the grand total of £235 inc VAT. I paid an extra £5 for next day evening delivery, so it should arrive Wednesday 10th
Well, today I have ordered my replacment monitor. It's a Black Phillips 20 Widescreen LCD (200WX7EB) which runs at a native resolution of 1680x1050. This gives me an extra 400 pixels on the width, whilst maintaining almost the same vertical screen height/resolution.
It has been ordered from Dabs Direct, taking advantage of the newly introduced BT Employee discount, for the grand total of £235 inc VAT. I paid an extra £5 for next day evening delivery, so it should arrive Wednesday 10th
Friday, January 05, 2007
A Good Days Work
Today was the last day of my leave - Back to work on Monday - and I decided it was about time I actually sat down and worked out how to improve on my initial - rather simple - PHP scripting.
On the Rockbox-Themes site, there is a facility to upload new themes to a temp location on the server. This sends me an e-mail and I upload to the correct page after verification. The code to do this was quite limited in it's functionality and did not enforce any of the rules that were stated in the text of the page.
As a result I have got somewhat fed up of renaming files, converting RAR to ZIP, JPG and BMP to PNG etc., hence the effort today.
Some two hours later and I think I now have an upload script that should eliminate both the Spam attemps and people failing to follow a few simple guidelines. If you want to see the finished (for now!) code point your browser at http://www.rockbox-themes.org/uploader.txt
Overall, I am really very pleased with the success of the website, in December it reached over 22,000 hits, after stalling at around 16,000 per month since August, but so far this year the average is in the region of 1,100 hits per day!
On the Rockbox-Themes site, there is a facility to upload new themes to a temp location on the server. This sends me an e-mail and I upload to the correct page after verification. The code to do this was quite limited in it's functionality and did not enforce any of the rules that were stated in the text of the page.
As a result I have got somewhat fed up of renaming files, converting RAR to ZIP, JPG and BMP to PNG etc., hence the effort today.
Some two hours later and I think I now have an upload script that should eliminate both the Spam attemps and people failing to follow a few simple guidelines. If you want to see the finished (for now!) code point your browser at http://www.rockbox-themes.org/uploader.txt
Overall, I am really very pleased with the success of the website, in December it reached over 22,000 hits, after stalling at around 16,000 per month since August, but so far this year the average is in the region of 1,100 hits per day!
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
A Grand Day Out
We had a day out yesterday, and just for a change, we thought it would be a good idea to go to a shopping centre!
So at 09:30 yesterday morning we set off for 'Cheshire Oaks' The weather was a bit on the damp and windy side, but even though it's not a 'mall' there are enough covered walkways to ensure that even bad weather is not a problem.
We did spend quite a bit of cash, as the sales reductions on some already quite impressive prices was hard to resist - especially for Amy who still had some Xmas money to spend. I was very tempted into purchasing a 'RD-85DT' 160 GB HDD/DVD Recorder from the Toshiba outlet - £229 but eventually decided to leave it until, either a) Get new TV, or b) Existing DVD player packs up. Hopefully neither of those will happen too soon!
After leaving there we headed just a little North and visited some friends (Peter & Carol) in Knowsley for a hour, before finally arriving home again at 21:30 with an average fuel consumption figure of 49.5 MPG - good to see the new engine is finally starting to loosen up.
So at 09:30 yesterday morning we set off for 'Cheshire Oaks' The weather was a bit on the damp and windy side, but even though it's not a 'mall' there are enough covered walkways to ensure that even bad weather is not a problem.
We did spend quite a bit of cash, as the sales reductions on some already quite impressive prices was hard to resist - especially for Amy who still had some Xmas money to spend. I was very tempted into purchasing a 'RD-85DT' 160 GB HDD/DVD Recorder from the Toshiba outlet - £229 but eventually decided to leave it until, either a) Get new TV, or b) Existing DVD player packs up. Hopefully neither of those will happen too soon!
After leaving there we headed just a little North and visited some friends (Peter & Carol) in Knowsley for a hour, before finally arriving home again at 21:30 with an average fuel consumption figure of 49.5 MPG - good to see the new engine is finally starting to loosen up.
Monday, January 01, 2007
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 days off from work, between period of looking forward to having another couple of days off!
Now as soon as all the bloody fireworks stop going off, I am off to bed... hehehe Grumpy old man or what!
So what do we have to look forward to this year?
Amanda's 15th Wedding Anniversary (I was there too, but its always the girls anniversary!)
Alex turning 9
Amy turning 14
Amanda Turning 41
Me turning 46
Manchester United back where they belong - Premier League Champions....
Hmmm, that's about it - Ah well, it's all gone quiet ouside, so I am off to bed!
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 days off from work, between period of looking forward to having another couple of days off!
Now as soon as all the bloody fireworks stop going off, I am off to bed... hehehe Grumpy old man or what!
So what do we have to look forward to this year?
Amanda's 15th Wedding Anniversary (I was there too, but its always the girls anniversary!)
Alex turning 9
Amy turning 14
Amanda Turning 41
Me turning 46
Manchester United back where they belong - Premier League Champions....
Hmmm, that's about it - Ah well, it's all gone quiet ouside, so I am off to bed!
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
How common is your name
Check out NameBrain and see just how original were your parents being when they named you?
Saturday, December 16, 2006
Photoshop CS3 - Beta
Yesterday, Adobe announced a public beta of Photoshop CS3 , you will however, need a valid keycode for CS2 to be able to run it for more than 2 days...
EDIT: Deleting "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS3\AMT\application.sif" removes the 2 day limit!!
On the same day, Lynda.com have released a free preview showing some of the major new features. Best-selling author and Photoshop guru Deke McClelland has teamed up with lynda.com to create the first professionally produced instructional training on every new feature in Photoshop CS3.
Access this free preview training online at http://movielibrary.lynda.com/html/modPage.asp?ID=327
EDIT: Deleting "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS3\AMT\application.sif" removes the 2 day limit!!
On the same day, Lynda.com have released a free preview showing some of the major new features. Best-selling author and Photoshop guru Deke McClelland has teamed up with lynda.com to create the first professionally produced instructional training on every new feature in Photoshop CS3.
Access this free preview training online at http://movielibrary.lynda.com/html/modPage.asp?ID=327
Friday, December 15, 2006
Stopping the Form Spammers!
Some time ago I set up http://www.rockbox-themes.org to host themes created, by users, for use in the Rockbox alternative firmware program. As part of that site, I created an upload page to allow users to send their work directly to my inbox. However I seem to be attracting quite a lot of junk/spam thro' this route.
One solution may be to introduce a 'Captcha' graphic, you know the sort of thing - enter the following code to proceed (from a distorted image). Seems that this can be implemented quite easily, using code from here:
http://www.white-hat-web-design.co.uk/articles/php-captcha.php
One solution may be to introduce a 'Captcha' graphic, you know the sort of thing - enter the following code to proceed (from a distorted image). Seems that this can be implemented quite easily, using code from here:
http://www.white-hat-web-design.co.uk/articles/php-captcha.php
A Totally Bizarre Site
Daily Monster
This guy seems to make an ink stain on a piece of paper every day, and then proceeds to draw around and with the ink blob to produce some truly amazing and totally bizarre pictures...
Definitely one to check out every now and then.
This guy seems to make an ink stain on a piece of paper every day, and then proceeds to draw around and with the ink blob to produce some truly amazing and totally bizarre pictures...
Definitely one to check out every now and then.
Thursday, December 14, 2006
A Young Lady
The Biological clock has started ticking, and our new Teenager, is now also officially a young lady.
This is also the first time I have used the e-mail publishing feature, where you can send an e-mail to a 'Secret' address and it appears here!!
This is also the first time I have used the e-mail publishing feature, where you can send an e-mail to a 'Secret' address and it appears here!!
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Nice Evening...
Last night I was in Chester with two friends from work.
We were attending a 'tech transfer' for a new server product from STRATUS on Tuesday, but arrived on Monday night to avoid an early morning start. We eat out at a rather nice Italian restaurant 'Piccolino' (32 Pepper Row, Chester).
The Pollo Valdostana was very nice, but the Tiramisu was really quite special... The waitress was excellent, the atmosphere was really nice and I would recommend it to anyone who has the opportunity to visit.
verdict: Not cheep, but still well worth the money
We were attending a 'tech transfer' for a new server product from STRATUS on Tuesday, but arrived on Monday night to avoid an early morning start. We eat out at a rather nice Italian restaurant 'Piccolino' (32 Pepper Row, Chester).
The Pollo Valdostana was very nice, but the Tiramisu was really quite special... The waitress was excellent, the atmosphere was really nice and I would recommend it to anyone who has the opportunity to visit.
verdict: Not cheep, but still well worth the money
Sunday, December 10, 2006
New 'Look and Feel' for the blog
New Title, far more representative of the actual content, new colour scheme, Labels for each posting - still the same crap author tho' I'm afraid ...
Boy, am I tired
Tonight, I am working a 12 hour night shift at work, covering for one of the guys who wanted to attend the staff Xmas 'do'... It's currently just a little short of 5AM, and it's still almost 3 hours till home time! I have been awake for about 22 hours now, and am really starting to flag. Mind you , the overtime will be usefull, just after Christmas...
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