This isn't any ordinary M&S ad
Posted by stephen on Thursday, 27th September, 2007 @ 22:57
A little while ago I went to see Pam Ann's One World Alliance show, which was brilliantly funny. My favourite bit being her mock M&S ad, which I've looked for online for ages. Finally I've found it! Beware, content and language might not be ideal for work!
iPhone UK
Posted by stephen on Tuesday, 18th September, 2007 @ 10:30
So the cat is out of the bag... It's on O2, it's £269 (the same price as the 16Gb iPod Touch, same as in the US), it's on an 18 month contract, ranging from £35-55 per month, with unlimited data, which apparently means 1,400 web pages a day and no more. It's EDGE/GPRS because apparently 3G would kill the battery. There's a wifi agreement in place with The Cloud, offering free access at around 7000 hot spots in the UK. And it comes out on November 9th, mostly from Carphone Warehouse.
My plan... Activation of the phone happens through iTunes once you get the phone home, much as it does in the US. So, buy the phone, unlock it and run it on T-Mobile web'n'walk, starting at £22.50 per month, including 3Gb data. No visual voicemail, but it's not a big loss.
How about that free access on the Cloud? Might that make it worth the extra cost to be on O2? Well, unless it requires creating an account with The Cloud registered to your phone number and logging in at each access point, I'm wondering if perhaps you're simply let online if you have an iPhone MAC address. If so, the network won't matter. We shall see!
A Powerful Feeling
Posted by stephen on Monday, 17th September, 2007 @ 22:39
How many iPods could you be powering?
Trip to the Seaside
Posted by stephen on Saturday, 15th September, 2007 @ 11:57
Making use of having a car, Richard and I decided we'd pay a little visit to the seaside on Monday, having ruled out driving to Germany because another 8 hours or so of driving didn't seem particularly appealing.
We'd originally planned (on Sunday) to hire bikes and go up to Katwijk, which is about 5 miles west of Leiden. Zoe recommended against it and mentioned Noordwijk, a little further up the coast, was much nicer. So we set off in the wrong direction for half an hour and explored the Dutch countryside before heading back into Leiden and onto the correct road.
At that point I was rather glad we had the car because a rather intense sea breeze was coming inland, and the people on the cycle path running parallel to the road looked like they were struggling somewhat, and as they ride bikes nearly every day of their lives I'd have stood no chance!
It didn't take long to follow the signs for Noorwijk aan Zee and soon enough the car was parked and we were stepping out onto the beach. Or, more accurately, the beach was coming up to meet us as the wind blew large amounts of sand into our faces.
We wondered around a little, Richard taking lots of photos of signs, bins, etc as he is want to do. Meanwhile I admired with great awe the many kitesurfers being thrown dramatically across the sea before us. How they maintained any kind of control was a complete mystery. It looked like an amazing experience, but one that's tear me apart quite quickly!
Wandering up from the beach again and into the town, it had a very familiar feel. A strange mix of fairly ugly concrete hotel apartments that you find at any holiday-in-the-sun type resort mixed in with something not far off a sleepy English coastal village or small town. Lots of interestingly named holiday homes, a small parade of shops and restaurants and the like. It was all very quiet and closed, despite summer (if you could call it that) only recently coming to an end.
Once we'd returned to our temporary home in Leiden I decided to have a little look on Google Earth and see where we'd been. And it stuck me just how close to being parallel with Southwold it is. A place where I spent many a weekend and summer holiday when I was growing up.
And on reviewing a few of the pictures I took, it struck me how in some of them I could quite easily have been standing near the seafront on the Suffolk coast, 120 miles across the North Sea.
Oh, and one last thing... Notice the road network in the Netherland in the picture above, and then compare it to that of East Anglia.
Over 190 years
Posted by stephen on Friday, 14th September, 2007 @ 19:41
That's how long it would take to experience just a single second of the life of every human being alive today. Every day nearly 16.5 million years of collective experience is being added to who we are. I start to wonder just how useful my day was... and how many more hard disks Google need.
Schiphol To Paris
Posted by stephen on Wednesday, 12th September, 2007 @ 21:47
During my recent "business" trip to Holland to visit the International Broadcasting Conference, Richard, Zoe and I decided that we should have a little adventure on Sunday. We were going to go to the seaside, when I mentioned that we had thought about hiring a car. Zoe piped up that she'd never been to France, so we decided we'd pick up a car from Schiphol Airport and set off. As we approached Antwerp, Richard pointed out that Paris was only 3.5 hours away. And none of us had been before.
Rather than blog the rest, I've decided to create a little comic from some of the pictures we took.... Just click on each of the page links below to take a look.
OU Course Materials Arrive
Posted by stephen on Wednesday, 12th September, 2007 @ 18:23
I'd prepared myself for having missed the deadline for registering for the first course of the degree I've been planning to do with the Open University. The deadline was last Friday, and I posted the completed forms in the nice prepaid envelope on Thursday afternoon. And just as I put it in the postbox I noticed the prepay was 2nd class, so it'd be a couple of days before it arrived. D'oh! I'd have to wait to start next time around, February next year.
But it seems luck is on my side at present, because just before lunchtime DHL delivered me a rather heavy box marked Open University course materials. And then after lunch the postman delivered me a second, similarly marked but slightly smaller package. So it would seem I've made it for the course starting in October, woohoo!
Looks like I'll have a lot of work to do though...
And I've just ordered the 4 books from Amazon I'll also be needing for the course. Best I get finished reading American Gods pretty soon if I'm starting on this lot in a month.
Super kitten...
Posted by stephen on Saturday, 08th September, 2007 @ 09:03
Super kitten can hear you coming from all directions.
Wall kitty...
Posted by stephen on Friday, 07th September, 2007 @ 10:55
Wall kitty is taking you out of phase... mwuhahaha-eow.
Careful cute doggie...
Posted by stephen on Thursday, 06th September, 2007 @ 19:16
It would seem I've watched too many epsiodes of Cute with Chris and seen far too many pictures on icanhascheezburger.com. I've been going through my random picture collection just now and...
Careful cute white doggie... evil black doggie is targeting you with his laser beams.
Django Everywhere
Posted by stephen on Tuesday, 04th September, 2007 @ 19:41
Following on from the previous post, I've been asked how I'm turning a Django app into a Windows application. Well, I found a rather useful description of how someone else did it. Things are made simple by using SQLite instead of a full on DB for the backend, and a great bit of software called cx_Freeze that captures everything a Python app needs to run and turns it into a .EXE file that works anywhere.
Also on the Django front, I was perusing the Django blog and was excited to see that Django works on the iPhone. And I'm not talking about the admin interface working through the browser, I'm talking about running a Django app resident on the phone itself. What a great way to build apps that work when the phone is offline! And the link above discusses using pickles in Python to effectively cache data for offline use from an online source. Great stuff.
Productive Procrastination
Posted by stephen on Tuesday, 04th September, 2007 @ 15:18
Here's what I should be doing right now. Maybe making a list will help with making them happen. Maybe it's just a good way to post something here for September so I don't get all neurotic about not updating the site for another 45 days or so.
- Get subversion set up and in order for 2 separate clients, one on Windows, one on Linux. Then explain as fully as possible how they should be using it.
- Verify several of the backup procedures we currently have in place are all working optimally.
- Finish the Django app I've been working on and package it up into a nice .EXE for easy installation on Windows. Document said application. Deliver to client on Thursday morning.
- Fill in the registration documentation for my Open University course "Introduction to the Humanities", remember to take it to London tomorrow to get Richard to sign it so they can invoice the company for £565, and get it in the post so it'll be with them no later than the 7th.
- Write some sieve scripts to make my email more organised now I've moved it all to a new setup of Postfix+Dovecot.
- Move the above mail setup (in it's nice little virtual machine) to a server in a data centre rather than in my spare room. The company's email probably shouldn't rely on my house being in tact, powered and attached to the Internet.
- Finish building clever subtitle system by building the clever subtitle component.
- Reinstall neuron2 after a couple of signs of a rootkit, finally taking it up to Debian Etch in the process (the easy part), migrate the email, sites and other general fluff (the hard part).
- Help client move their DNS to a provider that allows them to change their zonefile even if it's the evening or a weekend.
So I should be doing those things instead of writing this really. After that I should...
- Make sure I'm in Stratford for a meeting at 10.30 tomorrow.
- Pick up servers from central London remembering to pay the congestion charge.
- Remind Richard I really need my house key otherwise Sophie may be starved of food and attention while I'm in Amsterdam over the weekend. If he doesn't then it's probably best I don't come back if I value my life.
- Tidy house a little so it's not too embarrassing to face the kind people feeding Sophie upon my return.
- Win lottery/sell company for lots of money/save lots of money and sort out house and garden and car and life in general.
On the plus side however, I do have a list of things that I have done...
- Found passport.
