Cat + Chicken = Cute

I recommend watching this:

New blog!

This won't be too intersting for most of you, sorry. I'm starting a new blog at s60bt.blogspot.com/ for my final year project. If you don't know what it is then either read the introduction or just ignore it.

Down to my last ~40 tictacs

I've just got back from ice skating in Plymouth. It was with the CA youth project, which has older (12-14) kids and I hadn't volunteered on before. The skating was really fun, though it makes feet hurt. I changed my skates to size 12 half way through and they gave me some cool ones which didn't ahve laces! Unfortunately they were more slipery than skates should be. I kept doing silly stuff but unfortunately didn't manage to fall over. There were too many people there really. I say "bring back IceTrax".

Now my feet are a bit owy, though not too much. Slippers feel incredibly comfortable.

I don't think I've done anything that exciting this week. Never mind. You should just imagine I have.

Through liveplasma I have found Shpongle. They're great. Type in an artist you like and it comes up with similar ones. Try it after you've read this post. I've found a lot of cool music. If only there was a quick way to aquire music albums... That reminds me, I need to take my washing out the machine. (Prizes for anyone who can guess what machine, even incorrect guesses get a prize!)

This weekend (under 24 hours!) Hannah's coming to stay in Exeter for the first time in what seems like ages! The weekend after is DJ Yoda. That reminds me: need to get Lemon Jelly tickets soon.


Coffee time now peeps. Keep it unreal.

Tips and Tricks

Here's a load of random tips and tricks. Mostly boring, geeky stuff, though it could come in handy to someone someday (probably me, when my computer / phone breaks). Unfortunately I can't be bothered to link all the things here. just use Google - it's not hard. Please feel free to add your own in the comments.

Nokia Series 60 Symbian (specifically my 7610) applications
I originally posted this here but now it's also here:
Some apps I have (some freeware, others not) on my 7610:

• FileMan (I think its better than FExplorer)
• OggPlay (plays mp3 as well)
• Lookup (search for parts of phone numbers)
• Forward (save attachments to a directory onthe phone)
• ControlFreak (Winamp control and full desktop control!)
• Opera Mini (Great for stuffonmycat.com)
• Nokia mobile search (good for maps in the UK)
• Symella (Gnutella client)
• S60Bible (the whole bible, very useful and easy to read, but no search)
• Cocktail (Tells you how to make hundreds)
• EggClock (handy countdown timer
• smart dialer (essential - just start typing someones name/number 2 call them
• SMSFace (displays a bit of SMS without you having to open it)
• SMS-timer (send texts in the future)
• FSCaller (full screen caller. dont know why s60 doesnt have this as standard)
• CellTrack (random cell tower info)
• PVPlayer (play videos full screen. ive watched a whole smallville app on my phone)
• Disco (take a photo of someone + it makes them dance!)
• SplashPhoto (gallery better than the nokia one)
• AppMan (application manager)
• ZipMan (unzip + unrar files)
• SysMan (great task manager which replaces nokias one when you hold down menu key. displays ltos of info and is BRILLIANT. can also do system-wide shortcuts e.g. pen-7 writes a new text to my girlfriend)
• Python (for coding stuff)
• QuickOffice (open doc, exel and ppt files)

Firefox Extensions
Firstly, get Firefox if you don't already have / use it. It's safer, faster and has many more features than Internet Explorer. Once you've got it you can add extensions. I use these:

• Adblock
• All-In-One-Sidebar
• del.icio.us
• DOM Inspector
• Download Embedded
• Download Statusbar
• Greasemonkey
• Image Zoom
• Session Saver
• SmartSearch
• Smiley Xtra

Windows programs
Here's some random useful tools to have on a Windows box:

• SmartFTP
• Picasa
• Process Explorer
• Google Talk
• Azureus
• UltraVNC
• StrokeIt
• AVG Antivirus
• ShellEnhancer
• Netlimiter
• Google Desktop Search
• VLC media player
• KazaaLite Mega Codec Pack
• AutoGK
• DVD Decrypter
• Notepad2
• NetTransport
• FileMon

Websites
These are useful to have bookmarked / open. Some work very well as bookmarklets. Check out the links to the right as well - they're actually useful.

• del.icio.us/dave1010
• Google Maps
• Wikipedia
• Coral Cache
• Google Cache
• Wayback Machine
• BugMeNot
• TinyURL
• Google Reader
  

I can't think of much else at the moment. Maybe there'll be more in the future...

Anything is possible with enough selotape

Like, for example, a zip line on our stairs, suitable for banister parts or umbrellas with knives attached. Hopefully I'll get some photos before it gets destroyed. In the latest installment of automated house attack mechanisms I made the umbrella fire activated. Nice.

Back to work now.

Err, why am I awake?

My plan was to get up at 10am if I could. I got up before 8am. That's really weird. I don't know how I did it.

Q: A baby cage? Isn't this harmful to children?
A: No, All of our products are tested on third-world country test subjects experimentally for six months. After each experiment, each child showed no signs of physical or emotional damage. Using Baby Cage products are 100% safe! None of our products can cause permanant damage to a child or infant.

-- babycage.net

Ooh, moblogging. Awesome!

Do be doooo! This is fun. Try blogging with your mobile. Means I can blog whilst watching Smallville! I don't have much to say tho, so I'll just say a few words: twaddle, pie, antelope, digestion, chipmonks, trumpet.

Location : UK
Moblog from my mobile phone

Nick's back!

Nick is back! Randomly. I have photographic evidence but I cannot publish that from the pub.

Update: I found a program (PicoBlogger) which can post small images. Woo! Go me!

Valentines: Good! Car broken: Bad

Hello my fellow (and non-fellow) readers of my blog and welcome to today. My car is uber-broke and I'm half way through selling it. On a much more positive note, I had a super-fantastic week with Hannah!

I got there on Monday so we just chilled for the evening. Tuesday was Valentines day! Lots of fun romantic stuff! Wednesday was chilling day, where I sorted out my car a little and then went to London. We went to Camden market where there's a shop called Cyberdog, which has some quality stuff. I need to get some more money though. Thursday was the history society dinner, which was really nice. Hannah looked (and always does) fantastic! I was super lucky to be accompanying such a beautiful woman. The food was very good as it was chicken. No cheese though. Today is still Friday, which is / was the day I had to leave. Very sad. Leaving Hannah is virtually impossible.

I got a coach back to Dorset and tried to get insured on Hannah's car. It'd cost me about £400 to do it today, so I decided not to. Mum's kindly taking me back to Exeter tomorrow (Sat), where I'll be carless (not Carlos, he's Spanish) until I get one.

More good news: Stuff on My Cat (link) is back up!

A journey of traveling

I'm writing this from my mobile on the coach. We're at Ringwood.

Friday was the day of almost leaving. The afternoon consisted of swimming with Community Action then we went 2 the Ram 2 election results + drinks.

On Saturday I got up, packed and drove 2 Dorset. About 15 miles from my destination my car started making funny noises. I pulled into a petrol station + called the breakdown people...

Update: It seems as though Opera Mini doesn't like me writing long posts. This is what else I'd written on my phone at the time...

Luckily I appear to still have breakdown cover until the 27th Feb. They took me to Merley, where I got picked up by Ed's Dad to go to Bournemouth for Ed and Rich's birthday.

We went to "Edwards" bar, which had some nice drinks and OK music. We then went to Jumpin Jaks and participated in much dancing.

I slept on Sunday morning then went out with my sister Amie in the afternoon. We sent skibobbing! Then we went to the Lantern Church, where they had a "cafe service". They had good cakes and biscuits but alas no coffee. The talk was very good and they did a quiz too!

Later on Sunday I went to the pub with Rhys and Becky. I almost lost my jacket.

I called the garage on Monday and got Britannia Rescue to take my car away. The garage said "car no workey". To cut a medium length story short: I'm gona get a new car.

I booked a coach and am now (when I wrote this on my phone, but not actually the real now) on my way to see Hannah for Valentines week! Woo!

Now we're on some road somewhere. It has lines and the occasional bridge.

Chaos in Culverland

This is the story of how Tom and I temporarily destroyed our house. Step 1: Make sure Mike has drunk a little to much so he can't hear you moving furniture around. Step 2: Move coffee table and poof into Mike's room. Note: This would have been a sensible place to stop. We didn't stop. Next came the armchairs...


The armchairs worked amazingly and we laughed for quite a while. We then contemplated taking it to the next level: the sofa! Step 3: Try to get the sofa out of the lounge. It's a challenge.

Step 4: Pivot! Our sofa is slightly larger than our hall. Luckily our sofa is slightly squishy. At this point I think we had no idea how we were going to get it to Mike's room.

Step 5: Lift it over the banister, more pivotting. Step 6: Push it into Mike's room. It didn't fit. It kinda got stuck...

This was all very exhausting. That lead to the next step. Step 6: Take a break. You can also see our phone mobile in the foreground onthe left. We hope you like.

This was very scary as well as exhausting. Mike could have woken up at any point. He didn't though.

Step 7: Celebrate in our cunningness and stupidity. The existence of furniture in Mike's room led to the absence of furniture in the lounge.

The very messy lounge.

In all the confusion and excitement I'd put 2 difference trainers on! Luckily one was left and one was right, corresponding to my left and right feet. Excellent!

It was then time to sleep. I heard loud banging in the morning and remembered our incredible sillyness from the night before. Oops. Our house is a big mess, but it's getting better. We managed to get the sofa back. We'll do the chairs in a sec. Sorry Mike!

Art?

I few days ago I bought some selotape. I thought what better way to use it than some kind of art-thing. It's made of apples, milk cartons, Frisbees, radios, loo rolls, plastic bags, medicine boxes and lots more! I hope you enjoy it. I call it Life2.0. I think.

Rachel's wedding

A few weeks ago I went to my cousin Rachel's wedding with Hannah and my sisters. Here's a photo of (from right to left) Hannah and me that Vicki took with my Dad's gajillion magapixel camera.

Rachel's wedding 2

Here's Amie, Me and Vicki (from left to right). 

News from the crib: Valentines, iTunes, Power cuts and much more!

It's nearly Valentines day! Woo!

This week I've done / doing a tripple dose of Community Action work. Tuesday was soundbase, where we played Trivial Persuit with some seniour citizens and had tea, coffee and biscuits. Thursday was homework club, where we helped some kids with homework and played some games. Today is Friday (currently) and I'll be going to swim club for the first time in a while, where we'll be taking some kids swimming and playing in the water. All lots of fun.

I've managed to get iTunes to wake me up now, alarm stylee, with these cunning scripts. I should have been able to get it to work with built in Windows scheduling but I couldn't, so I used this program to get iTunes to play at the time I wanted.

This is the most incedible user interface I've seen. It's kind of like Minority Report. Watch the video and be amazed.

Google reader is a great news / RSS reader and allows me to catch up on Cute Overload. Unfortunatelt StuffOnMyCat seems to be down at the moment and doesn't have a feed :-(.

Last night we had a power cut! It seemed to be the top half of Culverland Road and some of Union Street. It was crazy because we had nothing to do! No TV, no Internet, no anything! Insane! Luckily we had lots of torches. The oven worked so I had 1kg of lasagne. Tom's laptop was fully charged so we watched Austin Powers. Mobile phones still worked so we could get on the Internet a little anyway. The power was back on again after about half an hour or so, then it went off for a second, which was annoying. Now it's working fine.

This weekend I'm most probably going home as it's Ed's birthday today and was Rich's yesterday. After the weekend is St Valentines Week, where I'll be staying with my lovely girlfriend Hannah.

Last night I made some art-type-thing. Photos on their way.

When you've finished reading my blog, read Nick's.

Cute Overload: Pandog

Have you ever seen a "Pandog". It's actually just a cute dog that looks like a panda. Aaaah! Click the link now!

MSN is closing down!

This must be true because I got it in an email and some of it is even IN CAPITALS!

Hey it is Andy and john the directors of MSN [ah yes, Andy and John, our good friends at MSN], sorry for the interruption but MSN IS CLOSING DOWN! this is because too many inconsiderate people are taking up all the name (eg making up lots of different accounts for just one person), we only have 578 names left. [How do they know it's 578? That's really weird]

If you would like to close your account, DO NOT SEND THIS MESSAGE ON. If you would like to keep your account, then SEND THIS MESSAGE TO EVERYONE ON YOUR CONTACT LIST. This is no joke, we will be shutting down the servers. Send it on, thanks. [So the servers are going down anyway? Now I'm confused. I better do exactly what the email says.]

WHO EVER DOES NOT SEND THIS MESSEAGE, YOUR ACCOUNT WILL BE CLOSED AND YOU WILL COST 10.00 A MONTH TO USE. ["You" will cost 10.00 a month to use? What, I thought I was free! Now I'm going to have to pay for myself! I'll pay myself in smarties as the exact currency wasn't specified.] SEND THIS TO EVERYONE ON YOUR CONTACT LIST. NOW YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO. PLEASE DO NOT FORWARD THIS or REPLY. COPY THE WHOLE EMAIL. GO BACK TO YOUR INBOX AND CLICK ON NEW. AND PASTE THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION

I'm glad Andy and john got my attention. I hope they got yours too.

Note for those without an IQ: this is not true.

America

The BBC have a great report / survey on America. Apparently 44% of Americans think the US is the most cultured country in the World!