Ah, the gorging, feasting and binging is over. Actually, I didn't G,F or B to any great extent at all.
On the day itself, we had the obligatory Roast Turkey at the M-i-L's, preceded by a few cheesy nibbles and polished off with a small chunck of crimble pud, custard and cream. We missed out on 'tea' entirely, feeling too full after the roast.
On Boxing Day, we took a short drive up to St Albans to see the Mummers perform the short (20 minute) traditional play, whereby St George kills the dragon, the Turk and the Giant, after being brought back to life by the Doctor. All good fun! I video'ed the entire performance, but at 450Mb it's a bit too large to put online via any of the usual services.My video editing skills leave something to be desired, so I'll leave that project for another day. We then visited friends, and I somehow managed to polish off a bottle of red wine before sitting down to a fine meal of cold turkey, mashed spuds and peas. Food of the gods!
In comparison, the last two days have been utter relaxation. Yesterday, we didn't leave the house, but just vegged around - I did some surfing on the net without actually achieving anything. Today was much of the same, except we had to do some food shopping first.
Ah, but tomorrow! Our Boxing Day friends spend a great deal of their lives running around pleasing their teenage children, and make very little time for themselves, so we plan to 'kidnap' them and take them out to the wilds of Oxfordshire for a relaxing day away from home. They can't believe the miles we cover in our usual weekend awayday trips, so we're hoping to give them a taste of the good life :-)
I did rather better than expected on Christmas morning. When I awoke, I had the following items awaiting me:
Jawbone bluetooth headset (for driving)
Nokia BH 501 headphones (for commuting on the train)
Nokia DT-22 Tripod (for experimenting with HDR photography - my next step)
Simpsons DVD - Series 10
Red Dwarf DVD - Series 1-3 'The Bodysnatcher Collection'
Book - Thames, Sacred River by Peter Ackroyd.
All excellent stuff!! I'm one happy bunny ;-)
Having let all the crowds disperse after the Solstice celebrations, we headed down to Wiltshire yesterday in the fog to take a latest look at the state of Silbury Hill, and to meet up with friends from Heritage Action for a drink in the red Lion at Avebury.
The drive down was somewhat hazardous, as the fog was quite thick in places, and spray from the road was coating the windscreen in gunk - not the most pleasant way to drive! Stopping for petrol, I took the opportunity to clean the windows with a sponge and water bucket, but this turned out to be a mistake as it merely smeared the windows with a water/petrol mix which made things worse instead of better!
Thankfully, as we passed Newbury the weather seemed to clear, and by the time we got to Slbury, the weather had perked up considerably. The hill looked very forlorn, and somewhat slumped on the west side - no doubt an effect of all the recent secretive works that have gone on inside, and which continue (see the Heritage Action web site for details of their campaign for openness about the works)
Continuing into Avebury, I took a short sojourn around the circle of stones before repairing to the pub for the meeting.
Despite only being early afternoon, the light was failing fast, and the fog closed in once again when we neared Newbury and the motorway. In fact, driving conditions were so bad that we only managed an average speed in the high 30s mph, and it took us nearly 3 hours to travel the 100 miles or so to get home.
I had a really early appointment at the hospital today, just as the sun was making an appearance.
This was taken at 7:25am. By 8:30am, there will be no space left in the car park. The white car in the centre of the picture was deeply encrusted with frost, having been left there all night.
Ok, I've had this for a few weeks now, so thought it was time to write about my experiences to date.
First off, actually getting one seems to be fraught with difficulty. I'd searched multiple web sites, trying to find someone who had them in stock. I trawled around countless mobile phone shops, all of whom looked at me as if I was speaking Martian when I asked if they had a Bluetooth keyboard.
Eventually, I placed an order with Expansys, a reputable vendor, who had it listed as awaiting stock: 28 day delivery. And I sat back and waited. And waited. And waited some more. Each time I checked on the progress of the order, it was still reading as 28 days delivery. After three months I cancelled the order (patient huh?) and checked on Ebay.co.uk. I found someone who had a brand new unit on Buy-it-Now for £50, as opposed to the £68-£70 advertised price. I jumped at it, and in a few days had the unit in my hand at last.
It fits nicely into the side pocket of my combats when folded, so is easy to carry and coupling the unit to my N95 was a breeze. I was set.
Initial use was restricted to a few text messages, but a sterner test occurred a couple of weeks ago, when I attended an all day meeting, at which I had to take notes. I tentatively left my laptop at home... I was concerned about relying on the N95 battery having BT active all day - even with a Proporta backup battery. I needn't have worried. Despite having BT active from 10am to 5pm, with a short period of web browsing at lunch, Jaiku running all day and a couple of calls and texts, the battery indicator hardly dropped.
The keyboard has a rest for the phone built in, but I found it easier to have both flat on the desk. I don't have a writable version of QuickOffice on the N95 (yet), so used the Notes facility to document the meeting. This worked well.
Problems? I found that the timeout on the keyboard during periods of inactivity meant that I had to keep switching the power back on and reconnecting. This isn't a bad thing of itself, but was slightly inconvenient when I suddenly wanted to note something only to find the keyboard totally unresponsive!
The only ongoing difficulty I have is with numerics and special characters such as @£#%& etc. To type a number, the Fn key must be used. to get the special characters, Shift-Fn must be used. This takes some getting used to. Plus I have quite large fingers, and find myself frequently inadvertently pressing CapsLock. This leads to a complete jumble of capitals, numerics and characters appearing from time to time, which then have to be deleted and retyped correctly. I'm not a touch typist, and tend to look at the keyboard when typing, so you can imagine the frustration this causes!
Overall, am I happy? Yes. The keyboard isn't something I use every day, but for those times when I need to type a longer text message, Jaiku, Vox entry or Note, then it's 100 times better than using the keypad on the phone. I've never got the hang of predictive text, and use the multi click approach to get the letters I need. With this keyboard, I'm so much faster!
Wake, Commute, Work, Commute, Eat, Sleep
:sigh:
I love Vox. It's one of my first stops whenever I get online, checking up on what my neighbours are up to. I love blogging on Vox - it's easy from my phone and is a good receptacle for all my varied mumblings on totally disassociated topics.
However, like many on here, I also have a couple of other blogs that I'm involved with.
One of the blogs I maintain is actually my partner Mikki's site, Craftywitch.com. She is disabled and largely housebound but is an avid, almost fanatical crafter, producing high quality hand made greetings cards. This is mainly done for friends and family at present, but she'd like to make a real go of it and get her cards 'out there' if at all possible. Everyone who has see her output has been very impressed with the quality and designs. Unfortunately, quality is not cheap, and factoring in the time it takes to make the cards makes it uneconomical as a business venture. Most of her cards are therefore priced to cover the cost of materials, and she does it for the love of the labour. Of course, if anyone wanted to pay for her time and efforts...
The web site was originally envisaged as somewhere to display her designs, and will be used for this in the future, but at present after a recent revamp, holds a series of shop and show reviews. This will be expanded over the coming weeks to include product reviews and hopefully, some technique write-ups. Of course, the cards will take pride of place once I've figured out how to take some decent photos which do them justice.
Commissions are always welcome, so if you're looking for a card for that special occasion, then please get in touch! Please feel free to pop along and check out the site - there's also a link in 'My Links' on this page - and don't forget to pop back frequently to see the updates!
I love Vox. It's one of my first stops whenever I get online, checking up on what my neighbours are up to. I love blogging on Vox - it's easy from my phone and is a good receptacle for all my varied mumblings on totally disassociated topics.
However, like many on here, I also have a couple of other blogs that I'm involved with. I settled on Wordpress for these blogs (no booing at the back there from Typepad!), mainly because I have some limited experience with installing and using the software. I'm not at the stage where I can design my own themes yet, so the range of available freeware themes was a big draw too.
The first blog I write, is not so much a blog, more a database - it concerns Village Signs of Britain. On my travels around the country, wherever possible I stay off the main motorways and 'A' roads and wander through Village Britain, a world unknown to many people, but which is easily accessible. A world of village greens, rural post offices and pretty churches, babbling brooks and agriculture. In many ways, a world from the past. Many of the villages I pass through in this way have their own signs, proclaiming the village name and identity.
The practice of erecting these signs (usually by the Parish Council) was started in Norfolk at the beginning of the 20th century when King Edward VII suggested having signs to focus the identity of the villages around the Royal Sandringham Estate. The idea was slowly taken up by other villages in the region.
In the 1930's Harry Carter, an art and woodwork master at Hammonds Grammar School in Swaffham, carved a sign for his home town. Little did he know that it was a start of a lifetime hobby. When he died in 1983 there were over 200 villages and Towns in the region that boasted of a sign carved by Harry Carter.
There was a large increase in the number of signs at the time of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II and since then other national and local occasions have been marked by the erection of signs. Many new ones appeared marking the Millennium, and the concept has now spread far beyond Norfolk. (I've yet to see any of the Norfolk signs!)
I'd previously been putting my photos of these signs online via straight HTML (which was all my web host allowed at that time), but I'm now transferring them to my blog - the plan is that a new village will appear every day for the next 2-3 months as part of the transfer, after which I'll add new villages as I see them.
Please feel free to pop along and take a look - there's also a link in 'My Links' on this page - and don't forget to pop back frequently to see the updates!
Most people are aware and agree that there is a malaise in our national game. The manager is sacked because the players don't perform. Individually, they are all good players. As a team, they suck. They make all the right noises about pride and passion, but that doesn't translate on the pitch.
Way back when, it was considered an honour to pull on the England shirt. Something to be proud of. Today, it's considered a bit of a financial bonus by most of our prima donnas, who pencil in the international dates months in advance because they're 'the best' and know they'll be picked. And they're obviously distracted when on the pitch, thinking about which bit of Bling to buy next with their match bonus.
Well, tell you what. Let's shake the system up.
No player should be able to personally benefit financially from playing for England. So, no player payments, at all. The honour alone should be sufficient reward. Image rights? The money should go into a ring-fenced pot to help the lower division teams develop young talent for the future.
If the top players don't want to play under these conditions, then sod 'em! There are two possible solutions. Either treat playing for England as a National Service - compulsory with no escape clause, and scathing financial penalties if they're deemed to not be trying hard enough. Or find players that do want the honour, and have the passion to represent their country. I'm sure there are plenty of players from the lower Premier League and Championship sides who would jump at the chance to represent their country, and would do well.
Let's face it, anything has to be better than the current situation. No representation at the 2008 Euros, and now unseeded in the 2010 World Cup too (assuming we manage to somehow qualify for that).
Disgraceful!
<later> Funny enough, the BBC web site now has an article calling for change in the team:
...what will become of England's so-called "Golden Generation" that has turned out to be little more than a cheap imitation? This was the most talented group of England players in 40 years. It must have been - they told us often enough. Not any more.They will be remembered as an unloved, under-achieving group who failed to deliver the success they and their undoubted talents promised.
What was I saying about Bling? Full article can be read here.
This is not an advert…more a piece of market research.
How organised are you when it comes to arranging greetings cards for friends and family? Are you the type of person that wakes in the morning and suddenly remembers that you’ve not bought a card for someone’s birthday, anniversary, house move, graduation etc. etc? Blind panic as you try to find time in your busy daily routine to get to the shop to buy a card and get it in the post in time to arrive? Or do you work off a list, prepared in advance and regularly reviewed?
When you buy greetings cards, do you just grab the first one to hand, or try to pick out a card that matches the recipient’s personality/hobbies/lifestyle etc? Do you buy pre-printed, mass produced cards, or try to pick out something a little different?
How many do you send, and how much do you spend on greetings cards in an average year? - This is a scary question, especially if you use any of the larger card shop chains. The answer may shock you!
Would you be prepared to invest some time in creating a ’shopping list’ of your greeting card requirements, listing dates, names, likes/dislikes etc so that someone else could take the burden of remembering to go shopping for a card off you? Would you consider subscribing to a service that provides hand-crafted greetings cards through the post, with a reminder to send them on a few of days before the event?
If this sounds like something you’d be interested in, please leave a comment.
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