It’s been a while coming, but finally I popped the question and for some unknown reason Katie said yes! So this is it then, I’m off the market. Please ladies, don’t weep and don’t, for goodness sake, do anything silly.
On a serious note, I’d like to say a big BIG thank you to all that have congratulated us over the last couple of weeks. I’m really looking forward to my life with Cake - she’s a good ‘un… I’m not a big fan of deeply personal emotions on my blog - but screw it, I bloody love her. I couldn’t be happier.
Here she is folks, the light of my life. But what happens when girlfriends become technoweenies? I love her, but why on earth does she have to double click on links? And why oh why does she type “hotmail.com” into Google rather than just typing it into the address bar!?
Why? Because she a technoweenie.
I guess the question is - Would I want it any other way? OK, so she does take 10 times as long to search the internet, but could I cope with a fellow geek? I guess the truth is I kinda like being the ‘computer-savvy’ one in our relationship. So she has a job working with real people. So what? I love my mac, and it’s all good… Really…
Am I on my own here? Or does everyone else who’s in the ‘web business’ have a ’significant other’ whose as power-geek as them? Oh well, she’ll learn. No matter how much she hates my iPhone, she’ll still use it to watch an Island Parish.
After reading Paul Walsh’s post about why he loves Tweetdeck (play nice kiddies, he’s paying for my freelance lifestyle at the moment) I started thinking about the new UI that was recently added in version 0.19b. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great App - and Adobe should give this guy some credit for choosing Air on which to build the best Twitter desktop App I’ve ever used.
But it’s this bloody new UI added in the new version. Apparently, it’s “Overall new cleaner” - well, yeah, I guess. Trouble is it’s at the cost of usability. Fair enough use icons to denote functions in an App, but not when the icons used have no accepted meanings. Checkout a screenshot I lifted from the offical site of an early build - the main functions can be accessed by text buttons. No fuss, no mess. Want to Tweet? No worries, the button is right there…
But these have been replaced with fussy icons that don’t really tell me what they do at all.
Ok, I can see why this has been done, as using text buttons for all the new functionality that’s in the most recent version probably wouldn’t fit in the current configuration. But I say give us the choice, I don’t really know what these icons mean, so it’s a learning curve. Maybe I’m lazy, but the new “cleaner” Interface has made this awesome app (for me at least) harder to use.
Alright, rant over, I’m feeling like enough of t***t now. Bottom line - This is still a great app, and if you’re a Twitter user you’ll wonder how you ever coped without it.
Following on from a post earlier this year entitled “You know when you’re living in a shared house when…” I’ve had some further thoughts on the whole house sharing thing. Well, I say some further thoughts - more like one big lurking brown thought. As you may know I’m now living in another shared house - but this time with a bunch of guys and gals I didn’t really know before I moved in. I’d say I was quite lucky in this respect - everyone has been awesome.
But, I’ve just been to answer a call of nature and someone had left a rather large brown gift waiting for me. Despite 4 flushes, it refuses to budge - so I’m unsure what to do. What’s the etiquette for this kind of situation. I mean, I know it’s not mine, but it bloody stinks. Should I try an tackle it with a spoon? Give it a few more flushes? Or just leave it for the next unsuspecting person, who may or may not the owner of said object? Who knows - if you do - please comment with suggestions asap as I’m likely to have nightmares about what I like to call the “Lid Lifter”.
As close friends will know I made a big move in August, one that saw me packing up my life in Walsall and moving 200 miles to the south coast. The last two-and-a-bit months in Littlehampton have been fun to be sure, but very different to my life in Walsall.
I just want to say a BIG thanks to all the people who’ve made me feel so welcome, and an equally big thanks to friends in Walsall for being so supportive of me moving away. It’s great to have joined a new church, where I’ve been made to feel very at home, but sad to have left behind such a great community.
So, here, are a few highlights from the past two months…
By the way, you can see the full set of photos (in much higher quality) on Flickr
What does it take to get me to blog about your product? Well, a shed load of free goodies does grease the wheels somewhat! The nice people at Berocca sent me this “blogger relief pack” - which consists of a few toys (some of which are Windows only! Boo! Don’t they know that all the cool bloggers are using Mac?), a keyring, a pen holder, a glass, a “stress” ball (aka a standard bouncy ball) and a big tube of their product. It’s some kind of vitamin supplement that’s supposed to help you through your “stressful” day…
So, I really liked all the cool stuff you sent me - but I’m not sure I’ll be trying your product.. I’m not sure that 850% of my recommended daily allowance of Vitamin B2 is a good idea… Surly that’s why they’re called “recommended allowances”… But anyway, any other companies want me to spread the word? Be sure to include a pen - that’s always a winner with me!
Apparently the Times called this film “Delightful”, and “4 stars” says the Daily Mirror. In fact, this films seems to have received rave reviews from critics across the bored. So it was with some confidence that Katie and I rented Mike Leigh’s latest offering last night.
The only accolade I can think of to give this bore feast of a film is that it holds the record for putting Katie to sleep in the least time possible, I think she lasted 2.65 seconds. Sally Hawkins was the only saving grace in the “feel good” picture, I hope she goes on to better things than this.
I’d love to give you a run down of the plot, or at least the basic premise, but there really was none. Follow any 30-something Londoner around for a week, observing them at even the most mundane task and you’ll have an experience a lot like Happy Go Lucky. About 45 min in I took to forwarding through the chapters on the DVD to see if it would eventually go somewhere - it didn’t. Thank goodness I didn’t waste my time on it. I feel sorry for the people who sat though it (trapped like rats on a sinking ship) at the cinema.
Searching through stuff in my parents garage to take on the recent move down south I found a disc with this awesome video on it that some mates at school made. It’s a blast from the past, and still makes me laugh. Just a shame that some numpty stuck a “Presented by roobottom dot com” on the end in an effort to muscle in on other peoples creativity…
That’s the old joke right, they hate to love me and I love to hate them? Well, as Confucius say: Lot of truth come from crap Jokes.
By now I’m sure anyone whose called me or spoken to me in the last few days has heard me say “Yar, oh hi, yar, I’m speaking to you from my iPhone… *snort*”, and thought “T***”! But nevertheless I have it in my grubby mitts and I LOVE it! Yeah, OK, so the battery life isn’t great and it still doesn’t do voice dialing - but it’s mine… My precious!
Alas there is one big, terrible, steaming, huge, pile of festering turd - the O2 website. Never have I come across a web service so inept and terrible at every turn as the dog-shite that O2 are serving up.
My first encounter with the webshite was when I tried to track my order. I clicked on the link from the email they sent me, only to discover that as I was already logged in - my session had expired. So I was given the link to log in, which I did, but then it takes me back to the O2 homepage. From here there’s no links to order tracking, so you have to go back to the email and re-click the link. Which then tells you your session has expired!
In the end, the only way to access your order is to log out, click the link, copy the link, log back in, and paste the link… Nightmare.
The next was MMS. Everyone knows that picture messaging is Soooo last year, and that’s why Apple haven’t added this feature, but some freak still send me one. No problem though, you get a text with a web link and a code to type in. (Which could be better - like having the code in the url) but still… But, uh-oh, the link is dead! An Apache error occurs. I even emailed O2 “Support” about this - to which their answer was “we know, we’re working on it, but don’t ask us how long to sort it ‘cos our web team is clearly rubbish!”
I could go on, but suffice to say that for a company who is as big as O2 you think they could afford to spend a few bob on some decent systems and developers. The monkeys they’ve got working there now should be sacked, and they should get some actual monkeys in. They’d do a better job.
Let me tell you, I was bloomin excited on Monday to be able to order the new iPhone 3G. Especially as some of my mates had such a hard time getting on the O2 website let alone actually being able to order the thing.
It seems that O2 had expected maybe 100,000 hits total for the day. What they actually got was 250,000 by lunchtime. And while we’re on the subject, the O2 website is AWFUL!
So it’s now 34 minutes into July 11th, and I should be writing this confident in the knowledge that a friendly UPS guy will knock on my door in a few hours and proudly present me with my shiny new phone. But I’m not… Far from it. The fact I received a email from O2 today telling me they’d refund any postage I’d payed didn’t exactly fill me with confidence.
So we’ll see.. I’ll update this post thought the day. Boring as it may be, I’m excited about it. I’m also keen to see if Lloydy and Ellen manage to get themselves one from the store.
Update - July 11th @ 9:32am
Well, after speaking to a very nice Scottish woman, and despite ordering my iPhone at 8:03am on Monday - it looks as if I won’t be getting my new toy today. In fact, according to her (I think she took pity on me after hearing my disappointed “oh”) I’m looking at around another two weeks. Gutted. Hope you had better luck Lloydy.
Update - July 14th
I was in the Apple store in Birmingham yesterday and they had plenty of iPhones. It’s a bit annoying when I’ve ordered one like a week in advance, and now have to wait another two to get mine. I really don’t understand why Apple can’t help O2 fill some of their pre-existing orders rather than selling to new customers in store. I’m now toying with the idea of canceling my online order and trying my luck at the store.
Update - July 14th @ 12.40pm
Called O2 who say my iPhone will be delivered on Friday.. I’m not holding my breath!
Update - July 17th
Still no iPhone, but I did get my bill via email! Yeah! O2 so far are AWESOME!! no. really.
