So dizzy (my head is spinning...)

Need to get my clean on.

Saturday. Last two days before I return to work from my holiday.

I've had Chloe to stay most of the week, but she went home Thursday. She is, however staying tonight. I know that might sound strange and maybe even make little or no sense, but hey. That's life.

Just sitting on the sofa, having some breakfast of fake Shreddies (with demerara on top of course), cup of coffee and glass of orange juice. Trying to fight off Twilight, who seems to want to come and shred my left elbow in an effort to get me to stroke her.

No TV. Nice and peaceful, just the sound of the washing machine rumbling away in the background, the clickety clack of the keys on the iMac's keyboard that I'm using to write this on my ipad.

Okay, the reason the TV isn't on may have something to do with the BT Vision box stopping working since I have now cancelled the package and moved my telephone and broadband to someone else. There's been a few hiccups with the router or the broadband dropping out a couple of times, and I'm also keeping an eye on how fast the service is. I wanted to save money, but I don't want to do that at the expense of the broadband connection making my online life hell. When I say hell, I may be being a tad over dramatic. After all, it's not like it's the end of the world if I have to wait three milliseconds for a web page to load instead of one, is it ?

Scroll down one the page has finished loading then. I am currently looking around for a set-top box to replace the BT Vision box thingy, and have asked myself, how important is the ability to record TV these days ? Almost everything is on catchup TV, or available on Netflix or Love Film. This leads me in the direction of a 'smart' set-top box. One that will allow me to connect to the internet and to use on demand functions from 4od, BBC, ITV etc. It gets to the point where I could spend anything between about £30 (for a plain freeview box) to about £300, (for a freeview HD recorder with smart functions).

Starts to look like its worth buying a new TV with those features built in. All of these things I would rather not be buying at the moment. I don't want to be putting more large purchases on my credit card(s), and I'm not convinced that I actually spend that much time in front of the TV anyway.

So I spend hundreds of pounds buying something that I only use occasionally ? I think I'd rather spend the money on a Dyson.

what could possibly require such padding ? 

The light bulb in the en-suite gave out several weeks ago, and in a fit of efficiency, having waited said number of weeks to do anything about it, I ordered the special bulb off the internet on Wednesday (or Thursday, it's not important). Anyhoo. It arrived yesterday.

bubble-wrap supplies for next 300 years............. 

An anonymous brown box, surrounded with industrial sized bubble-wrap. Inside, was.. well, the light bulb and.. more bubble-wrap. I now had a replacement light bulb, and enough bubble-wrap to recreate at least three of the monsters from Tom Baker's era of Dr Who.

Despite my moaning above about not spending money I don't have, I have been on a mini spending spree lately, but I consider the light bulb a necessity rather than a luxury. I have also bought some new toys for the cats to play with, and those I will show when they arrive, no doubt with their truck load of bubble-wrap or polystyrene.

I have done little editing of my nanowrimo book whilst I've been off. I think I did some on the first day of the previous week I'd had off (I had the week before Easter off, went back to work one week and then off again). I need to be more disciplined.

There are too many distractions.

Another that I have also recently taken steps to limit is Facebook. I have actually gone so far as to remove the app from my ipad (I'm annoyed I can't actually remove it from my phone. Seems it's a default app or something). I have found that I'm not now wasting time endlessly looking through the comments of comments or inane minutia of other people's boring lives. I have gotten just so fed up with some of the bigoted short sighted rubbish that some people put on there. I want to argue with them, or correct them, but lets face it. You can't argue with stupid.

I am getting annoyed with my mobile phone too. It's just so slow, and doesn't seem that responsive anymore. This may of course have one of two causes, that either as it's getting older and more full of apps (even though I don't download any), it's overworked processor and limited storage capacity are getting stuck in the mud. Or it may be that it simply has never really recovered from being dropped in the washing up that time.

Being a bit-geek, I am already considering two courses of action here. I know that my contract does not expire until August / November, sometime, but after checking on Three's website I can upgrade in July at no extra cost, or I can upgrade early and pay a fee. Anyway, the two courses of action ? Well, I am looking at the new Blackberry's coming out, the ones with keyboards (don't even get me started on the point of a blackberry without a freaking keyboard), or something older, that isn't a smart phone at all. A candybar phone that just maybe takes pictures, does text and phone calls. That's it. Since I've got my ipad, and I do take it lots of places with me (reminds me I must show the new case I bought for it, that matches the one for my kindle paperwhite), and this means that I don't use the phone that much anymore for internetting. I may have previously trawled through facebook etc, but I just don't like working from it that much, compared to how easy to use and responsive the ipad is.

Do I get really rebellious, and get rid of my mobile phone altogether ? People would think I've gone mad.

kindletastic

Let's just see how long I can tolerate making a blog entry from the comfort of my own Kindle. Because dear reader, and I avoid the plural quite rightly, that is indeed what I am trying to do. The first thing I notice is that my blog actually doesn't look too bad in e-nk monochrome. The next thing I pick up on is how annoying it is that the editting window on blogspot doesn't fit on the kindle screen.

Aside from that it is actually a shock at how dependant upon spell checking I am. I am using what is now called 'Kindle with keyboard' and as lomg as I don't try to enter nanowrimo on it, It is a fine little keyboard. The temptation is to use thumbs as if the kindle is some sort of distant relative of the blackberry. Ah I miss my blackberry.

Monday Monday... (text version)

Been a good day today. Got an upbeat feeling about this week.

Chloe's back in the UK, the ship she was on docked into Portsmouth this evening. I'm glad to know that she's back in old blighty. I'm just a tad amazed that she didn't manage to start a major international incident, war with France, ejection from the European Union or something...

Her priorities are right on though. She was more worried that she'd missed some youtube videos from Yog's cast. (something to do with that Minecraft game she plays incessantly).

 It's now the second month of life with my HTC Wildfire S. I am still rather impressed with the nifty little thing. I'm getting more used to it, and have managed (as you would have seen) to shoot some video on the go with it, and use that to include into my (v)blog.

I have completely forgotten all the excitement that temporarily besotted me about the prospect of an Iphone (4 or otherwise). They still haven't deigned to announce to the world what the future looks like. Personally I think they like messing with us.

No, not feeling like I missed out Iphone wise. I am, however still longing for the Blackberry. I lament about the battery life of the Wildfire S, and although that's got better since I got the Juice Defender App, it does run low to unusable after a day's work, and that's without me really using it that much throughout the day. It's the lack of the keyboard, and the frequency of updates that I could comfortably get on my Blackberry (without shedding loads of battery life). The decision to not pay for unlimited usage, when I don't need that much has worked out ok, I don't actually use it all. I'm not exactly being frugal with my internet usage on the phone, just careful, and I'm not running out of the 1 GB I got with it (£20 a month). Nowhere near running out of voice or text messages.

Either way, it's not possible for me to change this phone, there's no way in hell I can afford to buy a simfree handset to use with this sim, or to get a different contract just on the whimsey that I have yearnings for the joyous ease of the Blackberry real keyboard. Touch type is all well and good, but it's annoyingly inaccurate. It's that couple of milliseconds slow (not anything like the unusable of the old Windows Mobile in the late 90s. God that was torture) and the faff of typing with my fingers.

Maybe I should file my fingers down, to make them easier to use with my phone ? Sharpen them to a point or something. That'd work, right ?

To Vlog, or not, to Vlog. That is the question.

I've been playing around today with the camera and Final Cut Express to see how easy it would be to put the same person in one scene three times. It turns out that it's actually very easy, when you've spent half the day figuring out how the hell to do it.

After messing about with the technology vs my lack of skill and finally getting to a workable solution. Which I have uploaded onto the M27's facebook page for all the world to see.

I've also decided to have a little play with some of the footage that I've taken on my Blackberry of the cats, and edited that quickly in iMovie. Example of this  :-

Flip camcorder

I have been a little inspired lately by the vlogging style of Nerdzrl who seems to pretty much just take her  flip camcorder with her wherever she goes, and record her conversation to camera, and with real people too. I don't know if the good folks of Cosham would react in the passive way that the public in Canada seem to be happy with being filmed, which is funny really given our propensity to shove a CCTV camera in every conceivable location. (by conceivable location, I don't actually mean the ones people conceive in, although you never know....).

When I was a teenager, like most teenagers, I was pretty convinced that I had a unique and special way of looking at the world, and no one else really understood. It wasn't just me they didn't get, THEY also didn't understand how the world REALLY was. THEY just couldn't see it.

Well now that I am (ahem) older. My opinion is pretty much the same. Except maybe just a little (a little I said) arrogant. I do think I look at the world in a slightly different way to most other people. Does that make me some sort of undiscovered genius ? Hell no. It probably means that I am more socially backward than normal people and have far too much thinking time on my hands.

Anyway, I have digressed. When I was a teenager, I kept a diary. That's not that uncommon. A lot of teenagers do. Inspired as I was by 'The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole' (By Sue Townsend) in all it's generations, I picked up whatever writing implement was to hand at the time and committed to paper the workings of my demented, self absorbed teenage mind. There are volumes of my diary, pages upon pages of it. I told my impressionable, naive, and intellectually reckless young self that 'one day you can publish this, and it will be of comfort to anyone that reads it... ' not so sure about that one now or that 'your children can read it when they are teenagers and will be happy to know that the sort of things they are going through are the same things that their dear old dad was going through when he was their age'. hmmm. If there is one thing that is certain in the universe it is that teenagers most definitely do NOT want to be reminded of any similarities with their parents. As my daughter rapidly approaches her teenage years, one thing comes to mind. There's no way she would ever be interested in reading it.

For one thing, it's pages and pages of self opinionated drivel (see nothing changes). Deluded is the word that comes to mind.

So in the face of my daughter reading my diary, and suddenly having a tearful revelation that I too, suffered as I was a teenager, that I too did awkward uncool things. (still am doing - how's the hat going ?) That I too was a jumbling mess around the opposite sex. A mess around the same sex for that matter.

My point, my point ? Oh yes, there WAS a point. Is the written word more suited to this kind of outpouring or is the video blog (vlog) better ?

iPhone tracks movements. Shock horror. NOT !

You've just got to love how much some people have turned the iPhone vs other operating systems (there are some) debate into a story laced with fever pitched paranoia.

I am referring to the reaction to the unsurprising revelation that the Iphone (and the iPad and iPod touch) store date that records where it has been, and that this information can be accessed from the phone (if you know where to look).

It's not so much the obviously opinion led reporting (and perhaps this blog is no different, but I never pretended to be a neutral observer of anything - I have my opinions, that's rather the point of this exercise). What I find really disappointing is the comments on such news-sites where the story has been reported.

Seriously people, should it really be a shock that something that allows you to make a telephone call from anywhere there is sufficient mobile phone signal actually needs to record somewhere it's relationship with the mobile network's broadcast towers ? Really ? How did you think the system worked ? String between two tin-cans ? Fairy dust ? NEWSFLASH ! If the signal to and from your phone (and indeed anything else that transmits or receives ANYTHING) makes it to and from your phone, it stands to reason that somewhere along the line, if you pardon the pun, the location of your device knowing where it is, is going to be key to maintaining that connection. Simples.

The whole 1984 lobby want to bleat on about how positively Orwellian the iphone is, and how evil and twisted Apple are for putting something like this on their phones. Well, before all those shallow and rather thick people start turning their phones off in a panic (probably better they do that anyway, just to give them less ways to bother the rest of the planet, moe than anything else) this information has pretty much always been around on the device, it's just that Apple recently moved it to a more easily accessible location on the phone. It's always been there.

Then there's the lot that scream it is Apple in particular that are evil for making this dreadful thing possible. But don't all phones / devices that allow 'geotagging' or any other similar function needing to do that very same thing ? Truth is I don't think this technology is anything new, or unique. There are things stored on or by all of our devices that leave mucky little trails of what we've been up to. My advise ? If you're that bothered then either find a way to disable these functions or don't get a mobile phone, computer or even telephone for that matter.

http://petewarden.github.com/iPhoneTracker/

If we want to be connected, we need to be.. er, well, connected. It really is such a non story, that I just had to make more of it by moaning about it here as well. Pete Warden has written an application that takes this data from your phone and then shows you a lovely little map of where you (or at least your phone) has been. This is data that mobile phone companies would already have for example, based on your relationship geographically to one of their mobile phone masts (Cell Towers if you're an American).  Nothing new, scary or terribly accurate either. When I use google maps on my blackberry similar technology pinpoints roughly where I am, with an accuracy of 1400 meters. Not terribly useful to anyone really trying to track me down, unless they know exactly where I live or work, and in which case they'd just try those places anyway.

Is 'Big Brother' watching you ? No.

So, bearing in mind this sort of data has been around for years, the only change here is that it's available (without the need for a data protection act request, or court order) to the person whom the data pertains to . I'd call that progress rather than snooping. No one is doing anything else with this data, why would they ? Sure there are all sorts of things that COULD be done with it, but why, oh why, oh why, would anyone want to ? Only if you are a person of some sort of specific interest, engaged in some sort of criminal activity would this be useful to the 'powers that be'. Of course, in order to get it in this country they'd need a court order or warrant. Personally I'd hope that our security services are using tracking methods a little more sophisticated, reliable and accurate to track down would be terrorists than their own iphones. I'm sure that functions like this are used by law enforcement agencies across the globe, but this again is nothing new at all. Often if someone goes missing the police will have asked the mobile phone company for the location of their last call etc. Besides, if 'big brother' really could be bothered to look in detail at all the data that we throw on the internet about ourselves anyway they'd learn so much more about us. I'm also struck by the sheer illogical nature of the thought that the vast majority of people are interesting enough to warrant such attention, or indeed that any government is organised enough to do such a thing.

Maybe this is the way to solve unemployment ? Pay people to just sit there looking at Facebook or Twitter and applications such as this to track the whereabouts of every citizen in the UK.

I've been busy...

I've been so busy, that I haven't taken the time to make a blog entry. It's not through laziness. Well, okay, looking back, perhaps there is an element of the latter to it, but I really have been rather busy. Not only have I had the loving company of my daughter for the last four days, during her Easter holidays, but I have also been rather absorbed by work for the show. There has also been the small matter of taking care of my two new arrivals.

Midnight & Twilight, our kittens joined our family last weekend. Ever since they have been a bundle of joy to watch, and look after. They've settled in really well, and have gotten used to me and the flat without any problems whatsoever. They are now starting to gain confidence and realise that they can jump up onto things like the sofa, or my bed. Time will only tell just how well they get on with the sofa.

...one of Chloe's pics with her iPod Touch

Chloe and I have had a great week, getting to know the kittens, but also going out and doing things together. We went to Marwell Zoo on Tuesday, with my sister and her two boys. Fantastic day out that we wouldn't have had the chance to do if it wasn't for my sister being able to drive.  We had a brilliant day there, that for me was a little overshadowed by the determined dying of my Blackberry, leaving me without the ability to take loads of pictures like I normally would. I was though, very impressed with some of the shots that Chloe was able to get with her iPod touch.

Drama off the stage has overtaken drama on it at St Peter's. The PCC have taken what seems like the rather political step of sacking anyone on the PCC that did not agree with their view that they sell the Theatre and its land, and the church. This land-grab is supposed to be to release the capitol needed to build a new church somewhere else.

Now I'd probably upset a load of people by commenting that surely if god is omnipotent and omnipresent it doesn't matter a damn where you are when you 'give thanks', so I won't say it. I am rather angered by such a move by the PCC. I don't confess to understand the inner workings of the political machine here, but it seems to me to be callous, ungrateful and downright despicable that they get rid of all these people that have worked tirelessly for the church and the theatre all these years.

Shame on them. Shame on them.

Phoenix Players have been resident there for decades, and have literally raised tens of thousands to keep that building going. To see the potential of them being so summarily chucked out onto the street is galling. It also means that we should at least consider the reality that we may need to find somewhere else to put on the show, as a backup, just in case things get worse.

If you see a Blackberry flying past you.... an angry me may be nearby....

Blackberry battery death. My world has fallen apart two days running now. When I recount the event, it seems so insignificant and spoilt of me that I am almost ashamed. Though, I guess not so ashamed that I prevented myself from sharing it on the interweb.

My beloved Blackberry's battery decided to die yesterday half way through work, it had not been an extraordinary day in anyway, I had not taken or made lots of calls from it. I guessed that perhaps I had forgot to turn the charger on at the wall when I plugged it in on Sunday night, or that somehow I (or someone else) had left the wifi or bluetooth switched on. None of these things turned out to be the case.

As luck would have it, I had taken my netbook to work with me, so that I could make some progress with Laptop, this meant that I was able to hide myself away at the back of the bus on the way home, and get some charge into my phone from my netbook. This was just as infuriating, as not having the phone at all, as I began to be deluged with messages, voicemails and emails from people wondering why I wasn't responding to them. Why is it that people don't understand the definition of 'urgent call' when you advise them that you have next to no power yet ?

The evening was only completed by me having left work late, rushing to get home (as much as you can rush when you are dependant on whatever time the bus driver thinks is acceptable to get you anywhere), trying desperately to sort out the phone issues and ending up leaving the water running in the kitchen sink causing a small flood. What is it they say about more haste, less speed. Well it certainly was true last night. The more I rushed, the more annoyed I was getting. I realised that not only was I completely unprepared to go anywhere, but that with further public transport connections required I wasn't going to get there until about 8:30.

This on top of a succession of those text messages being from people telling me that they wouldn't be able to make it to drama. I could have screamed. I think I should have. Maybe it would have helped. In the end, poor Helen ended up trying to make a session of interest for the 5 people that did turn up, without me. I felt awful, and just wanted to go to bed so that the day would end sooner.

Today's battery death was entirely unexpected, having a decent set of charge bars at lunch time (4pm today due to a later shift), I was surprised (I am being generous, my feelings were better described as something else but I won't use those words here) to see that again the battery status was in red and the pretty much as I left the building, it decided that there was not enough battery left to do anything of any value, turned off the mobile connection, and then 5 minutes later shut down completely. It took all my strength not to hurl the bloody thing across the car park.

Ok. So now I am amazed and appalled by this pathetic overreaction to the loss of the ability to communicate with people so lazily as my mobile phone allows. In my typical 'there's no middle ground' style (it's just one extreme or the other folks) where I was only recently considering changing to an iPhone 4 when my contract comes up for renewal, I am now considering NOT getting a new phone or contract at all.

Yeah right. Anyone want to take any bets on how long THAT idea will last ?

That was the weekend that was

... and now I'm on holiday for a whole week ! Yipeee !

Should I show such gladness being off work for a week ? It's just nice to have a break in the exercise of pushing water uphill with a fork. So nice in fact, that despite a relatively late night while I try to sort something out with Celtx I am up with the lark. When I say lark, I'm up with the alarm clock/radio and the WAKE UP ! set on my Blackberry.

I even left the window open in my bedroom last night. How cool is that ? When I say cool, I don't mean that I was cold, just that the idea of fresh air, and the soothing, but distant sound of the M27 (the motorway, not my drama company).

What's this thing that you've been trying to sort our with Celtx, I hear you say ? Surely Celtx is so easy to install it doesn't take a late night session to get it to work.

Well, no, it doesn't. What I was trying to do, was see if I could get Celtx to run out of Dropbox (service that shares across all your installed computer the contents of that folder - an introduction to cloud computing). Does it work ? No.

Forgive me Iphone, for I have sinned....

Not that I spend a huge amount of time trawling through the Internet for ridiculous stories to blog comments about...

You can now get an app on your Iphone that allows you to make a confession. Seriously. You can't make this stuff up.

Now I know that a lot of Apple fans are pretty near to registering it as a bone fide religion but this is enough to make you, well, laugh, cry or I guess pray. As if people didn't need any more encouragement to treat their shiny apple devices like demigods.

Now, I would try and make a joke out of it, and say 'what's next, a prayer app ?'. But that wouldn't be funny, as they already did that. Three years ago.

The cheeky thing, is it's not even free. If god is supposed to me almighty, and omnipresent, then a) why would I need my Iphone to communicate with him/her/it ? b) Why has he started charging ?

Maybe, just like Sky there's a premium prayer and confession app, or you can buy extra forgiveness ? I mean, that stands to reason, men are well used to spending money when they are feeling guilty. Even when they are not sure what it is they are guilty for, they have been rather efficiently conditioned to 'buy' forgiveness. The flower and chocolate industries are pretty much built and paid for by thousands of years worth of male guilt. Fact.

Now, what about all the Blackberry or Android users out there ? Are they sentenced to eternal damnation because they chose the wrong handset manufacturer to believe in ? No parallels there then. Ho hum.