Birthday Parties and Websites
Posted on October 26, 2008
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It’s been an amazing week since my 29th birthday weekend, and over a week later I feel like I’ve got my motivation to jump into the lifestyle I’ve been planning for the last few months to full charge.
Midsummer Weekend: Wine Tasting and Clone Roses Gig
Posted on June 23, 2008
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Well Midsummer was not exactly the glorious sunshine I might have hoped for, in fact come the tail end of Saturday night we were hiding under cover away from torrential rain fall. Something which in Thailand was an Awesome experience and I would have been dancing in it without question, over here still just seems not the same when the cold hits you as well. Still, I kind of envy the couple of friends who did jump full on into the rain and really enjoyed the moment.
Weather aside though, wine tasting at Wine Buffs was as always a fantastic evening with a generous selection of quality wines, and then banter with a friend I haven’t caught up with for months., along with watching The Onion Movie (Which I’d gave 3 1/2 stars - worth a watch) made a good start to the weekend.
Saturday’s highlight was the Clone Roses gig, with support from The Forge, a band who went to school with a friend of mine, who turned out to be particularly Awesome, and made a great warm up to the Clone Roses, a Stone Roses Tribute group who if I didn’t know we’re a cover bang, I could easily have been convinced it was the real thing, and they really kicked out a good show for the crowed who loved them.
So rounding the night off till the wee hours in Friars Court, avoiding the rain and rather enjoying their selection of Cains beers, who seem to be their new supplier (Though it’s been a couple of months since I’ve been in, so I don’t know how new)
Rounding the weekend off with the now traditional Sunday Roast for the few people hanging around made the whole weekend really great fun, and got to see a lot of faces which makes it all worth while.
Nicely set up for this week, where I’m making serious efforts to get into a proper health routine. So we’ll see how that goes later in the week.
Summer Solstice = Awesome
Posted on June 20, 2008
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It’s nearly the longest day of the year again, which would normal mean festival season is under way for me, but not so this year since as a collective my friends and I are boycotting Glastonbury due to the dreadful choice of Jay-Z as headliner, and many other lack luster acts filling the bill. I would have gone anyway, but Latitude festival has Sigur Rós and Death Cab For Cutie headlining, which is pure awesome.
Amazingly Glastonbury even has tickets still available, and I am very tempted to go along regardless, but since I’ll be seeing Sigur Rós again in Sweden when then play at Way Out West festival in Gothenburg, I don’t think I can afford to splash out on a 3rd festival when I should be saving to travel around South East Asia at the end of the year.
I’ll be listening to the new Sigur Rós album Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust over the weekend as well, just to get me in the mood for the Summer Solstice and I’ll be making the most of all the extra hours we have this weekend with Wine Tasting, watching The Forge play at the Parr Hall in Warrington, and then cooking anyone who’s around Sunday roast. Good times all the way then!
Mass Dolphin Beaching: Who’s To Blame, Navy Technology or Natural Causes?
Posted on June 11, 2008
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On Monday this week a large number of dolphins beached themselves in Cornwall, 70 or so in total of which around 30 are reported to have died, an extremely rare event to say the least and obviously questions are been asked as to why this happened.
MobileMe: Who Cares?
Posted on June 9, 2008
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It never ceases to amaze me how people get so excited when Apple take technology that has been around for ages and stick it in a white shiny box. Sure they always add a few tweaks and a nice user interface, but I’ve yet to see them really impress me with something really revolutionary.
There is lots of buzz around on the net about Apple’s new MobileMe service, which features push email, push contacts, push calender and a raft of other sync solutions they are pimping as "Exchange for the rest of us" acknowledging that they aren’t doing anything really new themselves, in fact there are tons of services out there already, Apple is behind big time one this one.
I can see as an iPhone user this would seem amazing, what with Apples history of not allowing them to install 3rd party apps, but now Apple are are introducing that ability in version 2.0 of the iPhone software, personally I’d be looking else where for some software that is more universal rather the lock deeper into Apple’s monopoly over the hearts and minds of their follows/users.
Boy Drowns In Bed: Dry Drowning, Not As Uncommon As You’d Think.
Posted on June 7, 2008
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A title to a news post about a 10 year old boy drowning in bed is pretty attention grabbing, not least because it seems pretty unusual to say the least, but upon reading just a little more to find out that 15% of all drownings happen when the victim is no longer in the water is more the a little creepy.
For a 70 pound child even an ounce of water getting into the lungs is enough to cause the larynx or windpipe to spasm and the airways to become blocked.
The incident that caught my attention first took place in Jackson, Florida, but a quick Google search for some more details on that event shows that several other children have lost their lives in the same way in recent history.
Stuff like this always makes me think, particularly when you wonder if there was anything that could have been done, or if in that same situation would you spot that there was a problem in time you would miss any potential problems completely. So I put this down as something to be aware of following some water related mishap, but otherwise won’t let it trouble me.
Now On Twitter
Posted on June 3, 2008
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I’ve been thinking about using Twitter since it first started but have never really picked it up for some reason, however I do plan on using it while traveling since the ability to update via SMS will make a handy way to keep some sort of communication with the rest of the world when an Internet connection is hard to come by.
My Twitter username is OddEssay in keeping with my travel journal theme.
Although for some reason I can’t get the SMS updates to work, so I’ll have to plug away from that this evening and I’ll play around with some of the widgets they offer then as well to publish the feeds on my blogs.
First Impressions With My New JCB Though Phone
Posted on May 22, 2008
Filed Under Gadgets, Reviews, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
I’ve had my eye on the JCB Though Phone for a while now, when it first came out I liked the idea but never really saw the need for it myself, much happier with carrying a Sony Ericsson Cyber Shot phone with me, so I would always have something on hand to take pictures with.
But when my K800i was broken following an “encounter” with a wave while been held in a waterproof pouch that turned out to not be so water proof, my thoughts on what to replace it with started drifting back to JCB phone once more, this time much more seriously. Since it reviewed well, and fits nicely with my quest to make all my equipment as rugged as possible ahead of my travels at the end of the year, I decided to pick one up. Read more
Why I’m Unsubscribing from Napster To Go
Posted on May 20, 2008
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I’ve been a huge supported of Napster’s “To Go” subscription service for a long time now, been able to fill up my 60GB Creative Zen Vision: M was at first quick, easy and worked, but over time niggling problems have crept in.
Trying Out Firefox 3.0 rc1
Posted on May 18, 2008
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I never know how to really test web browser software, so upgrading Firefox to the new 3.0 Release Candiate 1 was a tough choice to make. The install went without a hitch, but as always with using cutting edge Firefox versions the first thing it did was disable several of the extentions I make use of - While most of them I can live without, the Del.Icio.us plug in been turned of has really impacted my ability to get a real feel for the way it handles as a browser; I use a lot of keyboard shortcut keywords attached to my bookmarks, so for instance I just type “gm” in the URL bar (Pressing ctlr+L to focus there swiftly) and I should arrive at Google Mail.
So a bit of a step backwards in that respect, beyond that though it seems to run a little quicker - but maybe that’s conformation bias, time will tell I guess, I’m sure it’s going to be an improvement, but it will just take a little bit of time to fine tune the way I like my settings.
Voyage Of The Odd Essay (Travel Blog)- A Trip Too Pai From Chiang Mai And BackMarch 6, 2009
- Valentines Day Trip Back To ThailandFebruary 16, 2009
- Another Day, Another Country: Now in LaosFebruary 5, 2009