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

Last Toys of the Year

Unfortunately, they are only 'Domestic' not tech toys :-(

The Dyson that we have been using for a number of years is starting to show signs of age, and the kettle has started to leak, so off to Comet we go....

[Update] We are now the proud(?) owners of a new Dyson DC14 - Overdrive vacuum cleaner and a Russell Hobs 'Colour Change' kettle - Oh Hum!

Nice Night Out

Yesterday was my last working day of 2007, I know some of you think I don't actually go to work as often as a full time worker should - but...

The Late guys came in two hours later than normal, and Angela and I left approx 2 hours earlier than normal, so I was home, washed, changed and ready to go out again by 16:00.

Amanda's mom had picked up the kids earlier in the day, and was not bringing them back till Saturday afternoon, so a night to ourselves ;-)

Our first stop was Frankie & Benny's where we had a very nice meal - service was a little slow, but the food was excellent, and the place was rammed!

Next - Currys, The Epson Photo 950 has finally been retired, two cartridges are now reporting empty again and I an not prepared to wait over a week for delivery from a few online sources, and pay £11 a colour anymore.  I now have a nice, simple, Canon Pixma iP3500 (£55).  It's installed and a test page has been printed - first reaction- set up/warm up time is slow, but the printer itself is very fast.  No idea on Photo Quality yet, but I very rarelt print photo's at home anyway.

Final stop of the evening, the cinema.  We went to see the new Will Smith film "I am Legend" - really enjoyed it!
From the Digitalspy.co.uk review
Smith conjures up enough laughs, drama and old-school action in this one-man show so that the cinema cash tills will keep ticking over nicely this Christmas. Audiences will lap up the special effects and amazing shots of a desolate New York, but at the same time they certainly won't be thinking of the film's various subtexts after they've made it out of the theatre's front doors. It's a better-than-average blockbuster, which sweeps around some large ideas and interesting themes, but never delves for long enough to make this film a true classic.

Overall - a really nice night out.

4 Weeks now :-(

Today makes it 4 weeks since I reported my handset loss to BT, and I *still* have no replacement SIM - OK Christmas did get in the way for the last week, but it is getting rather silly now!

Colour of the Year!!

Seems that this shade of purple has been declared by 'Pantone' as the color of the year - Click on the image for the full Press Release

Pantone, Inc., the global authority on color and provider of professional color standards for the design industries, selected PANTONE 18-3943 Blue Iris, a beautifully balanced blue-purple, as the color of the year for 2008. Combining the stable and calming aspects of blue with the mystical and spiritual qualities of purple, Blue Iris satisfies the need for reassurance in a complex world, while adding a hint of mystery and excitement.