Archive for the 'Babble' Category

Page 2 of 14

Winter Snow Crushes the UK

Published on February 3, 2009 in Babble and Life. 2 Comments Tags: british weather, iPhone, London.

A somewhat heavy bout of snow throughout the UK overnight during Sunday night resulted in areas of the country grinding to a complete halt.

Overnight temperatures in London hit -3° to -7° celsius leaving every public transport service cancelled for the duration of the day as upto 8" (20cm) of snow hit the capital. Yours truly ended up having the day off from work due to the buses not running. So I spent most of the day observing the news, reading ebooks and generally chilling out.

Airports faced widespread disruption after a Cyprus Airways plane skidding whilst on the runway. Eventually Heathrow closed both it’s runways and half of outbound flights were cancelled leaving foreign commuters somewhat confused as to how little snow could cause so much chaos. Continue reading ‘Winter Snow Crushes the UK’

Updates (rather long)

Published on July 20, 2008 in Babble, Life, Site Stuff and Technology. 8 Comments Tags: Apple, Harrow, iPhone, K2 theme, Wordpress.

On a spanking Sunday morning at 08:55 I am currently listening to what could be the most relaxing track ever – Stir It Up, from Bob Marley & The Wailers Legend album. I had forgotten how sublime this album was.

Blood Test Woes

Recent life updates would most notably be visiting my doctor for the first time in 18 years to have my first ever Blood Test. I have a severe aversion to needles and even threatened my dentist at the age of 15 so suffice to say that I was shitting bricks. I am no stranger to knives or being stabbed but if you come at me with a needle, I’ll run a bloody mile whilst screaming like Carlton from Fresh Prince. The whole process went by really fast even though the doc was doing the procedure in my left arm, my right arm was clenched ready to let rip. My mother was there to keep an eye on me though! Sad yes, required? Hell yes.

Carphone Warehouse iPhone Woes

What else? A week after its release I am still trying to get a flamin iPhone. I seem to be blessed with living amongst retards in my home town. They seem to exist everywhere right now. I have only been with Carphone Warehouse for 13 months now and I never knew how crap an experience it was to get any sort of information from one of their employees in a store.

I played a blinder on Friday though. I had visited various CPW stores in my town over the week and came to the conclusion that they were only selling iPhones to new customers and not those wanting to upgrade to one. Sounds silly but bear with me here. For days I had been told that they wouldn’t be getting stocks for weeks now and they had computer problems. I can understand that…to an extent, just don’t play me for a fool here.

Me: I’d like to sign upto CPW for an iPhone and an 18month contract please if I may.
Salesman: Sure, if I can take your details, proof of address then I can <checks computer> yes get an iphone delivered to you on Monday. What colour would you like sir?
Me: Oh you have them in stock? In that case could I upgrade my other current contract to an iPhone, and then let my girlfriend know that you have stock?
Salesman: Er, let me just check if we can get you an iphone sir. Hmm, our allocation system isn’t quite working and won’t let me set you up with one.
Me: I can see the reflection of your screen in that cabinet behind you mate, I see either a figure of 400 or 500 on the screen.
Salesman: …but the system isn’t really working and I can’t order one for you.
Me: But you could when I wanted to sign up as a new customer?
Salesman: Sir if you could call the CPW Customer Helpline here they could possibly upgrade you…
Me: Right, cheers.

You could repeat the above about 4 times as I had repeatedly visited various CPW stores around my town. I had read of other CPW customers being in the same situation so I had an idea. Why not ring up their Helpline and say I wanted to ‘leave’. I am out of contract so why not? Mobile phone companies would do anything to keep a customer. To cut a long story short I phoned up and requested a PAC code (a code used to port your phone number to a new network), and they asked why I was leaving. I fed them the story and they right away asked what iPhone I wanted and what colour. So I now have 2 months free on a £35 month contract and an iPhone coming on Monday. Sweet!

WordPress 2.5 = A Whole Lot of Headache

Can I even give myself in to liking WordPress 2.5? I can’t stand the damn thing and no matter how much I use it, I just can’t get with the stupid admin screen! It is a mess! I am not the only person with these views it seems. WordPress development is progressing at such a rate that plugin/theme authors can barely keep up – this isn’t good. I’m still trying to sort out compatibility issues with Internet Exporer 5/6/7 and now WP2.6 is out!

Thieves/Expenses/CatCams

That thieving tart PR has stolen the theme I was going to move this blog to. This current K2 theme doesn’t feel as robust as it used to any more although I guess WordPress 2.5 is mostly to blame here. So theat tart who is too lazy to find a good theme for himself has stoled the one I was going to mod! Thieving Apple fanboy scum!

What else? Oh I have just spent £1200 on a bloody prayer ceremony at my house. This lasted over two days and really cheesed me off. I hate things like this and I’m not even flipping religious in the first place. It was mainly for the parents though so I can’t complain. Actually I can because I’m about to buy them a 42″ HDTV for a £1000 ffs.

What else? Oh Mr.Lee has his own CatCam! Ever wondered what your kitty cat gets up to when it leaves your house? Well Mr.Lee’s owner stuck a camera on his collar and the results are great!

Apple’s App Store arrives

Worra load of crock. Apple’s big iPhone launch as well as Firmware 2.0 launch has kinda backfired on them. Firmware 2.0 is an utter buggy pile of poo right now, with features such has widely reported high battery usage, repeated apps crashing, phones/touch’s automatically freezing etc. One list (here) just highlights even more stuff.

Luckily the App Store, accessible via iTunes and a small application on your device is rather good. I wish I could say the same for the quality of apps there because they are all rubbish aside from a few. Installer.app via Jailbreak has way better third party applications so far.

Twinkle: The Twitter client from Installer.app makes its way to the store with a bang. This is basically a location aware chat client that lets you leave twitters (140 character messages) to others in your area. It is a great idea that works so well.

Spinner Prologue: A maze game that makes use of the accelerometer present on the iPhone/Touch. Frantic, fun and you end up waving your device around like a llama.

Remote: Apple came up with this free masterpiece. It turns your device into a wifi remote allowing you to fully control iTunes on your computer, or even AppleTV. Doesn’t sound all that – until you try it that is. Eats up battery power though!

ZinTin: Now this is another location aware app. It allows you to exchange photos, share information with other users in your area. Every user has their own ‘wallspace’, which can contain your own photos as well as images from other users. A great idea that is strangely addictive.

NASA Announcement Due – Then again…

Published on May 13, 2008 in Babble and Links. 2 Comments

We’re not alone!

NASA has scheduled a media teleconference Wednesday, May 14, at 1 p.m. EDT (17:00 GMT for us Uk’ers), to announce the discovery of an object in our Galaxy astronomers have been hunting for more than 50 years.

Taken from the NASA.gov website:

"A video file about the discovery will air on NASA Television on May 14. NASA TV is carried on an MPEG-2 digital signal accessed via satellite AMC-6, at 72 degrees west longitude, transponder 17C, 4040 MHz, vertical polarization. NASA TV is available in Alaska and Hawaii on AMC-7 at 137 degrees west longitude, transponder 18C, at 4060 MHz, horizontal polarization."

See? I knew it! Aliens really do exist and they’ve found em!

Weekend Mumblings

Published on May 11, 2008 in Babble and Life. 4 Comments Tags: british weather, internet browsers, K2 theme, kainzy.org, Wordpress.

Kamikaze attack, a Wasp and WordPress

Man its hot out thar! Temperatures were hitting 28c outdoors and 30c in my room this weekend.

It was so damn hot that on Friday, a rather large fly decided to try and cool off by doing a kamikaze run straight into my left eye and completely knocked me out during a lunchtime walk by the side of the lake near my workplace. It was lodged in my upper eyeball and I could feel the bugger moving around but could I get it out?! Could I heck… I ended up walking home partially blinded, crashing in to random people as a result. I had to take a different route home too – it would be too embarrasing walking through Harrow town. Suffice to say that I eventually removed it, but fark me did that hurt!

On another note I was woken up on Saturday morning by a strange buzzing sound. It turned out to be a flaming suicidal wasp who preferred my cool pillow to the rather hot air. Needless to say this took me by complete surprise and saw me crash off the bed. A few hours later I was working under my desk rerouting some cables, and guess who I bumped in to down there? The blasted wasp was back and sent me fleeing to the nearest air freshner can. Coupled with a lighter it would be toast! Sadly the bugger had vanished by the time I had returned…

April Snow Showers

Published on April 6, 2008 in Babble. 5 Comments

Now here is something that was rather unexpected on a Sunday morning, an April morning of all things. I woke up at 8am to find my room brighter than normal. Upon looking through my window, the houses and everything were all fluffly white with snow! Tons of the stuff! Snowball fights ahoy as my mother, father and girlfriend got pelted with the stuff!