Category: just-plain-life

As part of the deal with my new phone, I can trade in any old phone for a load of money. So rather that trade in my lovely SPV M700 which I want to keep as a spare phone or sell for a lot more, I'm going to sell my Ericsson R520m. I was planning to sell my old Ericsson T68 but it doesn't seem to be working any more. The R520m was bought off contract for 200 pounds the day it came out (never to be repeated again). I loved the phone, it had everything including GPRS, Bluetooth, Infrared, SyncML and Speakerphone. It also had that unique sensor pads which meant you could answer the phone with a swipe of the hand.

Whats special about the phone is that I had some great times playing with the phone and it lasted a very long time (9 years now). It also had some great voice memos on it from things I couldn't remember at the time. One of the most memorable was the very first voice call from Sarah, dating back to 18th March 2002. At the time I kept it because I found it funny to hear how Sarah miss said the road name but now its somewhat sad because we didn't stay together and its strange to go back to almost the point where everything started. How much stuff like this do we delete everyday? Stuff we should be archiving or saving somewhere? Our digital memories are just as important, specially for someone like myself whos grown up using such technologies all the time.

I had a scare when I got back from Berlin, my home server had crashed and burned. Grub was screwed and I couldn't work out why. So anyway, I've stuck xubuntu on the box and everything safe but I don't know what I would do if I lost all my photos etc. I know I have copies on CDs and DVDs but not the latest stuff. I really need to get Amazon S3 into my rich media syncing soon.

The video above was shot on my new phone at lowest quality and everything is done in one shot. Enjoy.

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I've not blogged for a while due to taking some time out to try and relax while in Berlin. This has caused a serious amount of back log in my email, calendar and general view of whats going on out there.

On top of being on holiday, my work phone (Nokia N80) is pretty much screwed now. It only works when using speaker phone. At least a while ago it still worked with my bluetooth headset but now even that doesn't work. This means if you've been trying to call me and not getting through or getting through, I've not been able to reply to you.

I finally got my bike taxed and recieved a stupid amount of real mail (mainly informational stuff) but also some stuff which is critical. All I can say is I will do them but I'm currently on a train heading up to Newcastle for BBC Innovation Labs and it only starts there. Edinburgh and Glasgow are Wednesday and Thursday. Thankfully I can enjoy the weekend – fixing my home servers.

Yeah came back to also find my home server with a Linux error about a read only file system. Almost the exact problem I had with my laptop while I was in Boston, so hopefully I can fix that myself. Unfortually this might mean dragging the thing down from the loft (trust me if you had 4 LBA hard drives in a dell beige case too it, you would moan). I've also decided that its time to upgrade to Smoothwall Express 3.0 for the firewall/router setup i have. Hopefully having a Wireless Zone will also help with the problem my flatmate has been having

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Ok what the hell am I doing up at 3mins to 8am? Yes this is so wrong on so many levels. Someone set a meeting for 10:30am then changed it to 9:00am. Ok I can live with that but setting the meeting all the way down almost near the M25 in a place only accessable by car or only one train is insane. Basiclly it meant I had to get up 6:30am, be out of the house by 7am (yes no time for breakfast, oh I long for those days when it use to take me 10mins to shower and get changed). Anyway the train from Woolwich Arsenal was due to leave at 7:10am and did. Luckly thanks to shouting at the guy who was screwing around with his travelcard ticket I was on it. If I wasn't I would be screwed. Now let me take a moment out to say to those who would say to me, why didn't you get the one before so you can be certain you would be there on or before time. Well let me fill you in, if I was to do that. I would have had to be on the 6:55am train (which to the sounds of it my flatmate used). That would have required me to get up at 6:15am and the train is the slow one which means I would have got there all of 5mins earlier that the other one. So screw that, i'm sorry I'm not getting up 15mins earlier so I can get there 5mins earlier. Sorry I'm being harsh and grumpy but I got other issues.

In the mornings the trains are bloody packed to the max, not even standing room, only squeeze room. But what really put me in a bad mood today was my windows mobile phone. Yesterday I restart my phone and for some reason during booting up it crashed when loading up egress my rss reader. Why it was loading it up so early I don't know but it got upset with some update and bang off it went. After a series of restarts and charges I decided to leave it over night. Wake up to find its still screwed, so I had no option but to do a cold restart and wipe everything off it. Yes this is what Steve f'ing jobs was talking about but screw him, my phone is my phone and its pretty useless without the additional 3rd party applications – even if there is the risk they might kill the phone. And lets be honest phones go wrong anyway. Because today my work phone a Nokia N80 didn't work when making a call. It makes call but I then have to switch it to speaker phone to hear the other person. I haven't put anything on the phone and I've done nothing with it. Its even still got a standard 128meg memory card in it, which is insane because I have 1gig cards hanging around in my bedroom. About 4 months ago it wouldn't full sync with my computer and 2months after that it certain applications such as mail kept freezing up, ultimately requiring a reboot. How does Apple and Steve 'my way or the highway' Jobs think his device is going to survive the test of time? Anyhow I've digressed too much.

Some of you smarter folks are maybe asking what happened to your scooter Ian? Well its in the bike shop being MOT'ed and I was meant to pick it up yesterday. But I called to check at 4pm and they said call back at 5pm when I found out yes its ready but I need to pick it up before 6pm. Now White City to Liverpool Street and a short bus ride or walk should be do able in 30mins. But oh no, it took all of 45mins and by the time I got to Liverpool Street when i could call them, it was after 6pm already and they were not answering there phones at all. So yes I had no bike. This wouldn't be so bad if I wasn't going to Berlin early tomorrow and had not a ton of other things to do today including picking up my bike, repairing my phone, arranging a geekdinner and packing.

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Yeah we've all seen them but to have one just around the corner from where you live is a little off putting to say the least.

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So I'm having a bad day, so rather that rant on about life I thought I'd catch up on some news and blogs. Obviously some of this has caused me to write a few blog entries. I've been in need of a holiday for a while now, I was planning to go to Portugal last week (Hence my Dopplr feed was kind of correct but not). (People have been saying I've been looking a little sleepy for the last few months, and I can certainly say I've not been sleeping all that well but thats the way it goes). But that was before buying a new Fridge Freezer, the old one has not been working for along time now and it was long overdue.

So where best to get a very cheap Holiday? The Web and I'm hoping blogs. Stowe Boyd was the one who clued me into Portugal and the joys of Lisbon out of season. It sounded amazing but I'm not finding many options for Lisbon on most of the travel sites. So if you could go anywhere warm in the next few weeks, where would you go? Oh It needs to be cheap too.

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1st Rule after a party, don't sleep before everything is cleaned up. 2nd Rule after a party, check behind the sofa for left-overs. 3rd Rule after a party, check your fridge for weird ingredients. 4th Rule after a party, check your freezer for Beer cans because they tend to explode.

Forgot rule number 4 and a week later found yellow ice over most of the freezer. Worst thing is, I cleaned out the Freezer before the party.

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I was doing some late night shopping in Sainsbury's as you do and walked pass a new range of fruit juices. These fruit juices are sold as popular alcoholic drinks without the alcoholic ingredient. So for example I'm currently drinking a Cosmopolitan without the Vodka, and its honestly great. But you know whats better, the Mojito version! Spearmint leaves, Lime and Sugar together is amazing and there's been many a time I've wanted to order one without the Rum. Well now my wishes have been granted.

The Sugar content on these drinks are actually not that bad but yeah you don't want too many of these on a night. I did try the mojito juice with some rum yesterday but to be honest it needed soda as the rum was over powering.

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People keep saying, I saw you in the London paper or I saw you at Minibar. Generally there asking hows the house mate search going?

Well I'm glad to say finally after a bunch of weirdos and some simply rude people, I found a house mate through a friend of a friend. She's geeky and Japanese which you have to agree is a ideal match for a house mate in my house. Shes also moving in next weekend, so its all going well.

Now for those who find themselves in a similar position, here's a couple of thoughts.

Being in the London paper did nothing on the house sharing end of things at all. I didn't get a single request from that at all. I did however get 15 of my friends texting and calling me saying I saw you in the paper today and yesterday. Timeout has great contracts and rendered a couple of enquirers but no viewings. Craigslist was almost pointless. While Spareroom.com and Gumtree did get a few viewings. There was a couple more places the ad went up like Facebook (1 viewing, also cost nothing) Moveflat,
etc.

So generally the best thing to do always is to tap your friends networks.

Now if I get my hands on a Wii now….

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