Monthly Archives: June 2006

MP3,USB,Radio,Voice Recorder – In a Pen!

This is quite possibly the best Pen in the world. Well I hope it writes well. It’s an MP3 player, USB flash drive, FM Radio and Voice Recorder…oh and you can write with it.
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With a capacity of 512MB it’s the same size as my iPod shuffle which I use at the gym. But there’s never any pens there to log my training session. This would be the ideal gadget. Wouldn’t it? After all it has a clip. Well I’ve thought about it and it would be good toy, but silly for the gym. So what about the office? Perhaps, there’s some uses, however I loose pens so easily. If i lost my MP3 player as well?.. I think for the moment I’ll stick to a simple pen, iPod Shuffle, iPod Video and streaming radio over the internet.

“Experiencing a very high volume of calls”

I’ve been on hold a lot recently and noticed a pattern. They call claim to be “experiencing a very high volume of calls”. Now, either I’m very unlucky or they’re lying. I suspect they really don’t employ enough people to handle the calls. Most people probably don’t phone enough to notice that the message is always there. Maybe next time I phone I’ll tell them I’m a little busy, could they wait another minute.

New Phone – Samsung D600E

I’ve just got myself a new phone. After a long time of switching between my Sony Ericsson T610i and P910i it has come time to get something better. My phone of choice, Samsung’s D600E. This phone includes everything you could want, including an amazing 2MP camera (with flash).
D600E
Since I didn’t want to get a new contract (lets face it I’ve only for 3 months left in the UK) the only reasonable way to get a phone was to win one off eBay. After 2 days of being out voted at the last minute my trigger finger was ready. This time I was the winner, only 12 GBP over the budget I’d set myself for the final frenzy of bidding.
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Night out in Chorlton

This Friday I went out with JohnBoy to Chorlton-cum-hardy, or Chorlton short. Now I’ve lived in Manchester for many years and yet have never been out in Chorlton drinking. It’s one of those places that always seems too far away from the centre of town and there’s not at the top of the list. However, it’s got a great reputations for going out drinking. In recent years Chorlton has become a trendy place to live and go out. As a result there are a number of small bars that have DJs playing in the corner.
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Celebrity Engineers?

Would it be possible to have celebrity engineers? With all the Pop Idiol (aka American Idiol), Big Brother and Celebrity this that and the other isn’t it about time Engineers got the credit they deserve?

If you try and think of some celebrity software engineers, there really aren’t any. The closest thing to celebrity is probably someone like Bill Gates, or Linus Torvald. I can tell you having personally met Linus, that he’s the most boring person in the world. He wouldn’t know how to be outgoing if someone gave it to him written in a fully commented C program. Perhaps what the engineering community needs is it’s own version of Hello Magazine, it could be, entertainingly, called Helloworld! Magazine.

So what would it take to be a celebrity engineer? More importantly could I be one?
Update 1: Always wear sunglasses.
Update 2: Get a fancy camera phone & Wikipedia page.
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The Redwings – again

Last night I was back at Dry Bar in Manchester to watch The Redwings.
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They were playing the same venue a previously mentioned here. This time they sounded a little more together. I’m starting to get into these. There was a different feel, i don’t know if that was because they’d moved the stage around or just because it was so darn hot in the basement. After we had a few drinks but JohnBoy had to go as he was driving.
Have a listen to them on their myspace page

Sun is back

The weather this weekend has been amazing. Pushing close to 80F. While watching the England match at the pub it was getting quite warm. Thankfully we were sat by the door enjoying the breeze. The rest of the day consisted of drinking in the sun.
So on Sunday I decided to continue the time in the sun by getting out in the garden. With my shirt off cutting the lawns and cleaning my conservatory roof. However, I think it was all a little too much. Today my back is a nice shade of red! Ah well, out with the aftersun and it’ll cool down.

Skype Phones

I’ve been using Skype for a while now. I have to say that the quality of their service is getting a lot better. As with most of these services, I’m on the poor end of things. Being a Mac user there’s normally a lag of getting support for hardware. However, IPEVO have now available their Free-1 USB phone on the Mac. It requires having an application running while Skype is online. However, when it’s running it makes Skype an amazing service. I now use Skype more than I do my regular phone. It’s so simple to use. Simple pick up the handset, hit the green Skype button and then scroll through contacts. Or, if the contact isn’t the your address box it’s possible to just dial the number. What an improvement on the USB headset I’d been using before.

Scalding Water

There has been a recent trend for signs to appear above basins in toilets saying; “Very Hot Water”, “Scalding Water”, “Beware Scaling Water” and so on. Here’s an example from the Motor Heritage Museum.
scalding water
I’ve had a look online and cannot find the “Water Hygiene Regulations” that it talks about. All that I do know is that my hands are frequently burnt by the water from taps in public toilets. This has lead me to use the cold taps whenever I see one of these signs for fear of being burnt. Guess the hygiene regulations aren’t working for me.
I wonder how long it will be before someone sues for getting burnt from the tap?!

Party in London

This weekend was by birthday, however there was something a little more important going on in London. Matt & Sally who got engaged a while back but they were now having a joint celebration along with Sally handing in her PHd Thesis.
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The weather was amazing during the day were we chatted and caught up. Sally had booked a floor of the Boardwalk bar in Soho where we started off the cocktails followed by beer.

Full selection of photos are online here
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