It’s a Blog ! Not a Log !

that’s what I am, just not had the energy to post on the blog on a regular basis for quite a while now, think its been the winter blues that have been causing it, all these dark nights when I’ve been getting home from work’s to blame.

I shall attempt to remedy that by telling you about things that I’ve done int the week that’s been and gone . .

Sunday was spent walking Blue and then heading over to electrik bar in Chorlton for a most enjoyable night of Sundays 1 Deck Session where the DJ on the deck that night was the wonderfully moustached Andrew Weatherall . . . and boy what a moustache he has . .

Over the course of the evening he played everything from Rockabilly, the Clash, the specials and just about anything else that took his fancy, thoroughly nice man and thoroughly good entertainment was had by all who attended, these 1 Deck sessions at electrik just get better.

Should also point you towards @undeleted’s Blog were you can find a much better write up of the evening and who is the man responsible for this pioneering new camera interview technique “The Chest and Chin”

Monday through to Wednesday weren’t all that exciting just the usual drudgery of work and wondering if we’d be hit by another white out with the snow, the only highlights were watching the new series of Survivors starting on the BBC, which gave me and no doubt a few other dotted around Manchester the opportunity to play spot the Mancunian location, the most obvious was the exterior of the Midland Hotel, where they took Tom to operate on, didn’t recognise anywhere else, but that’s probably down to the fact the BBC have moved production of the new series to Birmingham, so expect to see local shots around there in the coming episodes.

Also spent some time uploading a few more videos onto YouTube . .  yes and they were of the dog Blue, but do you blame me, she is after all the prettiest dog in the world

First up in her new video adventures is the quilt sucking episode, it seems that when you leave Blue alone in the bedroom she has a habit of bunching up the quilt and grabbing it in her jaws and just  “Sucking”

She treats it like its some sort of security blanket or something, anyway here’s the proof and just check out the so serious face when she clocks the camera filming her

Next up there’s Blue enjoying the summer in Longford Park, filmed this earlier on last year, but just never got around to uploading it

Then came Thursday and today, not much to blog about I’m afraid.

As for tomorrow there might be more to blog about, as I’ve instituted #DogClub on Twitter and will hopefully have a few peeps joining me and Blue on our Saturday morning walk around Ivy Green, though this might change to another location as yet undecided.

Also I must say hello to Adrian or to his friends Eddy Layton, who I’ve recently discovered reads my blog from time to time, so Eddy if your reading this say hello to my mum next time you see her and say hello Mrs L and Paul for me.

today and what a ball ache this is, we’ve had 4 new PC’s for about 6months waiting to be swapped out with older ones in the main office area and so far I’ve started and stopped this job about 3-4 times, due to Management changing there minds about how important a job it is, anyway they finally decide that I can start the job for real on Monday and tell me they want it finishing for Friday. . . .  , now that might seem possible, however by having the job finished by Firday what they mean is they want me to install the OS & all the associated software relevant to that PC position and then set up all the use/network settings and once done securly wipe the old PC, reinstall the OS, then relocate the old PC’s into new Positions in the Distribution/Shop areas and again install all the relevant software needed in the those areas to operate the PC’s correctly, not forgettingthat as we don’t use exchange here I’ll first need to copy all the PST files off the 4 old PC’s onto a Network share, then copy them back onto the new PC’s and import into Outlook (on average the size of PST files so far has been anything between 2-3 gig, so long time exporting and importing of.

This job would be a lot easier if we actually had some cloning software available as then I ccould just set up one PC with the main settings that all users have and than just import the PST nad the odd personnel stuff and software they might use, but alas they have’nt, so somehow I don’t think I’ll be completed for Friday.

As of this evening I’d managed to install 3 New PC’s, wipe 1 and reinstall that in its new location, so just 1 new one and 3 old ones to do, reckon Tuesday/wednesday will be finished.

Oh the joy of working in IT, everyone expects you to work miracles and when you don’t wonder why . . . well maybe its because you give stupid deadlines and don’t think about discussing with the IT Dept beforehand.

this time they’ve been helping the members of a local Age Concern keep fit and healthy, heres a few pictures and the press release :

FIT WITH THE OLD FOLKS!

Members from a Manchester based Age Concern group turn to the Wii Fit to help keep active

Members from Out in the City, a local Age Concern group have struck upon a novel way of keeping fit.  Leisurely walks, bowls and swimming have been usurped in favour of a new hi-tech training tool – the Wii Fit.

Four members, aged in their late 50s, 60s and 70s, visited the new wireless lite Carphone Warehouse store at the Trafford Centre this week and were given a demonstration in the popular game.

After the demonstration, the store donated the Wii Fit console and game to Age Concern so that members will regularly be able to use the different Wii fitness games, helping to keep themselves active and agile.

Thanks to the games console, they will now be able to regularly participate in Tai Chi, fitness programmes and can even monitor their posture and BMI.  For those wanting something a little more strenuous, snowboarding, skiing and dance classes are the order of the day!

Jane Barcoe of Age Concern said, “The members love keeping active and doing something different!  This is a great gift from The Carphone Warehouse and I’m sure we’ll have no shortage of people who want to use the Wii Fit.  This is a really innovative way to help our members interact and keep fit!”

Neil Sears, Store Manger of  The Carphone Warehouse at the Trafford Centre, said, “Technology can be a great way to connect with other people and in this instance a perfect way to keep fit too.  The range of technology on the market is expanding, and age shouldn’t be a barrier so our aim is to breakdown the walls and make gadgets simple for everyone.”

The ‘wireless lite’ Carphone Warehouse at the Trafford Centre offers a wider range of mobile communications such as laptops and gaming products too.  The store is one of four to be trialled across England and offering a new format, with expert advice and counsel given on all manner of high-tech issues and gadgets.

Today started off with a flat battery, just what I needed at 8:00am, believe me trying to find a neighbour with jumps leads and who’s not rushing off to work at that time of the morning is like trying to find rocking horse shit, spent about 30 minutes knocking on neighbours doors trying to find someone who hadn’t already left for work and could spare the time to give me a jump start.

Thankfully Mona’s son from 2 doors down was just walking past his front room window and I managed to catch his eye, so after about 10 minutes the car was up and running, really need to get a new battery for the car though now that winters here, this is about the 3rd time in as many weeks I’ve had problems starting the car.

Anyway got into work a bit late, but had rang up to let them know why, so didn’t get any shit off anyone when I got there which was a nice surprise, was expecting to get a 20 minute lecture on the pros of leaving for work earlier . .

Rest of the day was spent using photo-shop to mask some images for a catalogue I’ve been asked to create by a colleague, seems to be going well and I’m quite enjoying learning new photo-shop tricks, so the day passe’s by pretty quickly when you’ve got your head immersed in adobe.

Anyway 5:15pm came about pretty quickly and left work early to get home so we could take Blue to the vets for her annual checkup and her booster shoots.
She’s getting pretty used to the vets now and just walked in without any fuss, previous times I’ve literally had to lift her across the threshold, which for a big dog like a Cane Corso is not good for one’s back.

Vet gave her the booster shoots and some worming pills and gave her the all clear with her checkup, also complemented her on being a beautiful looking dog, something I think Blue already knows and uses to her advantage on many occasions.

Took her for a walk around the football fields afterwards and treated her to a large sausage from the chippy for being a good girl at the vets, don’t know what it is about our dog Blue, but she is honestly the most well behaved dog I’ve ever met and by far the best dog to cheer you up if your ever feeling down, so glad we found her . . .

Discovered a nifty little plugin for Wordpress today called Twitter2Press it allows you to turn part of your Wordpress blog into an image hosting service for all those pictures you tweet, you know the ones that normally got to twitpic or one of the other Twitter picture hosting services.

Its fairly easy to set up and you can be up and running with it on your blog in about 5 minutes flat, I’m using Tweetie 2 to post the tweets at the moment as this seems to be the only iphone twitter client that allows you to choose a custom image hosting service, though i could be wrong (feel free to correct me).

So what are the benefits of hosting your Twitter generated pictures on your Wordpress blog, well for a start you don’t have to point links to them if you what to post them on your blog, there already here, not much of a benefit I suppose, it also in a sense allows you to mobile post to your blog using the medium of pictures, but the best benefit of hosting them is now people on Twitter are now being directed to your blog rather than some image hosting company, so your getting all that extra traffic, and all that extra traffic might just decide to read your blog and maybe even follow it, so it’s hopefully bringing new followers to your own little space on the interweb

Anyway time to eat the Tuna and Lemon grass stirfry I just tweeted about mmmmm yummy

Tweetie 2

I never thought 6 words and 1 number would make me so happy but “Last day at work for 2 weeks” has made me a very very happy man indeed.

In the 10 yrs I’ve worked for the company I’ve never taken more than 1 week at a time for holidays, it’ll be so nice not to have to think or worry about anything work related for a whole 14 days.

Had a problem with my 3g iphone 3g today, had been using it over lunch and after sending a text message had locked the screen, a few minutes later felt it vibrate to let me know a new message had come in, so went to unlock the screen and was presented with just a black screen displaying only the signal strength-date-time-battery life and nothing else.

Thought at first I’d broken it, I tried pressing the sleep/wake button on the front of the phone, but this didn’t change anything next I tried pressing the lock button again to no avail, so there I am with a blank / black screen on my iphone thinking its now completely buggered, with no access to a computer that I could reset it on either.

Anyway being the UberGeek I am I don’t take defeat sitting down, so got on a PC and googled the iphone’s symptoms and came across this fix (see below), well its actually a iphone reset,which thankfully worked, so now I am no longer blank/black screened J

So if the same happens

Just follow this easy guide and your screen can be revived !

Press and hold down the Sleep/Wake button and Home button at the same time for a least 10-15 seconds. This will cause the screen to clear out and then it should display the Apple Logo on the black background.

Once the Apple logo appears it means that the reset is complete and the iphone will restart and your back in touch with the online world . . simple as

Now this is something I’ve been looking forward to downloading from the iTunes Store, quite a fan of Spotify, use it a lot when friends are round our place, saves me having to dig out cd’s or try and find the tune they want to listen to to download.

It has much the same features as the online version and also allows you to download content to your iphone, which means if theres no connection where your going to be you can still listen to your favourite playlists.

Heres Spotify’s YouTube demo of the app

Looks pretty sweet to me

At the moment its a premium service, which if i want to give it a try I’ll have to subscribe to, so I’ll have to get me credit card out and get myself registered for the Premiumn Service I suppose

Spotify

Just got back from Chorlton and a visit to B&Q, got a load of paint for redocarating the front room and hallway, some colour called Toffee Truffle or something, Mel choose the colour as it will stay a bit cleaner with Blue walking past it all the time, did’nt see many people about in Chorlton, had a try of electriks platter, pretty tasty indeed and well worth the money.

Now vegging at home and considering watching Room 1408

(Movie Adaption of a Stephen King book), looks pretty good and has one of my favourite actors John Cusack in it, will let you know what I thought of it . .

Went out for the night in Chorlton with John, Myles and Sarah, was a good night until some scally mate who I’d spent the previous 30 mintues having a chat to and had a laugh with, he seemed ok,  got on fine with him and his mate, left them to go have ciggy out front of the bar, came in for a piss walked passed them both and gave them a tap on the back to acknowledge them and say what a good night we’d had and hoped they were having a good night, next thing I’m having a piss when suddenly i get a fist in the back of the head and turn round and its this scally punching me, because i’d apparently touched his arse, being the big man he bitch slapped me from behind, was’nt really hurt, just more in shock then anything

His mate was sound though just dragged him out of the bar, though next time I hope he has the decency to hit me face on rather then sucker punch me from behind