Oh dear Lord! Gerald, come quickly, that dreadful Mark Glover is about to bore everyone to death with another of those horrible end of year summary round-robin-esque posts that make such DULL reading every December. How utterly awful!

That’s right dear reader, it’s the annual End of Year Summary Round-Robbin-Esque post! Yes, yes I know Everyone does them Every year and they aren’t much fun, but this is my blog and I’ll write whatever I jolly well want to, thank you very much. If you don’t want to read it you don’t have to, I won’t be offended, but don’t expect me to take the hint and not write posts like this, because it’s what I do.

So, without further ado:

My 2008 in Summary

The last year, which at the time of writing has approximately 9 hours and 9 minutes left to run, has been pretty good for me, one way or another. Things started slowly enough, with my degree still dragging, and work dragging even more. I was still working full time, and for a few weeks I got to pretend to be in charge whilst my supervisor was off work with a bad back.

At Easter I visited Cardiff for the first time and survived. Unknown to me at the time (although I suspected it) I’d just failed a large chunk of my year through not doing my coursework properly, and soon I’d be going on to fail an equally large chunk of the exams as well. Nonetheless, I was in good spirits when I directed my parents to the Jolly Sailor in Saltford to celebrate my 22nd birthday in June. They’d bought me what must rank as my ultimate gadget of all time, my iPod Touch. I won’t start ranting about it here, but it’s bloody fantastic! At the end of that month I developed an ingrown toenail, which has left me limping for the last 6 months, but should be fixed next week when the NHS chop my leg off.

Darling this just won’t do! If he doesn’t find something to talk about that isn’t a disgusting medical condition soon I’m going to need another G&T!

In July I embarked on a summer work schedule that would see me in work every single day for over a month. It was pretty gruelling, but I hold no grudges as whilst there I got chatting to the girl who I’m now extremely pleased to call my girlfriend, L. Her arrival in my life has impacted my opinion of the whole year, and she dominates the remaining months, both in terms of time and my moods.

August and September were a blur of work and dates that sped by far too fast but left me with enough happy memories for a lifetime. L’s gentle but firm influence helped me pass all my resits and enter my final year of university, my degree finally back on track.

At the end of September L returned to her own university course in Plymouth, and so began the now familiar routine of driving or training the 130 miles between our cities every weekend. It isn’t an ideal situation for many reasons, but we’ve made it work and shall continue to do so in the New Year.

December involved sharing the run up to Christmas with a partner for the first time in my life, and the whole experience was better for being able to share it with L. We spent Christmas itself with our respective families but much of the rest of the holidays have been ours to share.

In a few hours she and I will attend our first New Year’s Eve party together. I predict it’ll be like When Harry Met Sally, but with less shouting.

Gerald, will you wake up! He’s finished talking about his 2008 and now he’s going to be disgustingly optimistic about the year ahead. I don’t think I can take much more of this; it’s making me feel queasy!

2009 Here I Come

And so to the New Year. What does 2009 have in store for me? Well first and foremost, a lot of coursework. I’m expecting to be snowed under pretty much solidly for the next two months, but once it’s complete I’ll never have to do coursework again! L and I are celebrating with a weekend break to Brussels in the Spring, the result of hard saving and a small Lottery win last year.

In the Summer I’m expecting to complete my degree and then things get weird. For the first time in my entire life, I have nothing planned. I went to uni as soon as I’d finished school, and so I’ve been in education solidly for the last 18 years of my life. Every year I’ve known that come September it’ll be back to school, 6th form or university. This year September won’t be back to anything. How bizarre!

Obviously I’m hoping to repay the extensive investment in my education over the last 18 years by my parents, teachers and the State by getting a job, but what job? Perhaps this time next year I’ll have the answer to that big, looming question.

For now though it’s still 2008, and what better way to finish off the year than by wishing you all a

Happy New Year!

Oh thank goodness, I thought he’d never stop!

Merry Christmas

to all my readers!

Some time ago I wrote a post detailing what I thought might be the future of energy consumption in this ever more environmentally aware world that we seem to be occupying, and if your browser handles the transition from my old blog platform to WordPress a little better than mine does, you might still be able to read it. For those who can’t, or would rather not trawl through the archive for October 2007, I stated that thanks to massive advances in technology, electric cars might soon replace petrol and diesel ones.

I went on to list the example of the Tesla, a battery powered, electric motor propelled roadster, which had been featured on the BBC’s technology show, Click. Well, it seems that a year and 2 months on, Top Gear have finally caught up, as last week they conducted a review and test drive of the Tesla, and were reasonably impressed.

However, they then went on to show a video of James May reviewing the new Honda FCX Clarity, which he thinks is the most important development in the history of cars in over 100 years, and you know what? I’m inclined to agree with him. In fact, I feel so strongly about this, that I’ve spent all of 10 seconds on YouTube, and have found a clip of his report for you to watch. I appreciate that it is 8 and a half minutes long, which in internet terms is nearly a year, but if you have even the slightest interest in cars, the environment, climate change or the future, I really think you need to watch it:

Now, is it just me, or is this the key to solving that cornerstone of the global warming problem, car emissions? The technology in this car could, as I understand it, be rolled out to every single vehicle type on the road, just as soon as the fuel is available to supply it. It could, I think be rolled out to ships as well. Many new submarines are already using hydrogen fuel cells as their main source of propulsion. Trains already use electric motors to turn their wheels, so why not replace the overhead power lines and diesel generators with fuel cells instead?

Planes, I admit, may be a different matter. The dangers involved in carrying compressed hydrogen would have to be overcome, as would the extreme power needs required by modern jet engines, which perhaps electric motors simply cannot deliver yet. But this technology isn’t finished. It can still be adapted and improved for different purposes, with the result that one day we could see all our energy needs met in this way.

There is still a long way to go before hydrogen filling stations are as abundant as petrol stations, but it is happening slowly. Even if governments continue to reject the option of forcing car manufacturers to adopt this technology by law, the market itself will create the demand for these cars, and soon too.

I can’t say when the hydrogen pumps will get fitted at your local Tesco Petrol station, nor exactly how much it’ll cost, but I sincerely hope that by the time my trusty Ford Fiesta is due for retirement, I’ll have the option of switching to hydrogen. And if that option is there, and it’s affordable, I hope I won’t be the only one asking to whom I make the cheque payable!

(Have you seen any petrol stations offering hydrogen yet? Would you consider buying a hydrogen fuel cell car next time you visit the forecourt? Do you see this as the future, or am I getting all excited about nothing? Comments below please)

Just saw this over at Steve Clayton’s blog and thought I’d share:

(This is an embedded Youtube Video and I’ve absolutely no idea whether it’ll show in your RSS reader. If you can’t see anything please click through to the site for the full experience)

A very amusing comment on the miniturisation of Technology I’m sure you’ll agree.

It’s 24th December 2003 and my 15 year old self has just arrived home from a 12 hour shift at Waitrose. I enter the lounge to discover the family tree is up but not decorated, the ceiling decorations are nowhere to be seen andmy family are rushing around like maniacs trying to get the house clean before Christmas Day. I’m left to decorate the tree by myself, whilst the ceiling decorations lie forgotten in a box somewhere. By the time I’m finished it is bed time and I am tired and cross and finding myself pretty short of Christmas cheer.

Back when I was a kid, Christmas was the biggest deal of the whole year. I’d have my list written in November and would be unable to sleep by mid December due to the excitement building up in me ahead of the big day. That all changed that year, when I discovered for the first time the harsh reality of Christmas for adults. It’s a lot of work for a very short day of relaxation and happiness.

Subsequent years have proved almost as bad, with long working or uni hours and ever more preparation to get through before the 25th. Last year was my first Christmas in my New Flat, and with it my first tree, decorations and everything else. To this day I still feel a slight pain in my fingers when I recall tying lengths of thread to several dozen new baubles over the course of about 4 hours one evening. As for presents, I finally fell into that worst category of men, the Christmas Eve panic shopper!

This year things are different. I now have a girlfriend, L, and like all girlfriends her mission in life is to organise me (with my whole hearted support, naturally). We spent an entire weekend buying and wrapping presents a couple of weeks ago and I now have nothing left to buy for anyone this year, apart from L herself, who has come in under budget, but I’m working on that.

When I returned from Plymouth on Sunday night I considered going to bed, but, in the spirit of organisation I stayed up til half 1 in the morning hanging ceiling decorations. It reminded me why my parents have always been less than enthusiastic for this task, as I’m finally reaching the point in my life (aged 22) where climbing on furniture to stick drawing pins into the ceiling just doesn’t hold the same appeal as it once did.

The tree, also, is planned, even if not yet bought. For the last few weeks I’ve been working extended shifts at work, which have seen me not getting home until around half past 8 every night. This ends tomorrow (Thank God) and I’ll be leaving work at 3pm on Thursday, driving to B&Q and crying over the cost of Norwegian Spruces. The idea is that by the time I drive L back to Bristol for the holidays on Saturday, the tree will be standing, covered in working lights and ready for us to decorate together, just to prove that we are a real couple who do couply things together.

Tonight I think I’ll write the dreaded Christmas cards, of which I have 3 large boxes, having bought new ones without checking to see if I had any left for at least 2 years in a row, as I discovered the other day. Wrapping paper will also not be a problem, as it seems to my (not entirely scientific) estimates that I should have enough to wrap a double decker bus, should the need arise.

My point, besides possibly irritating all those less organised people with my gloating, is that for the first time in years, when Christmas finally arrives I shall be ready, happy and enthusiastic about the day. I’d begun to think that Christmas was just a colossal waste of time and energy, but a little festive planning has left me as excited as a child all over again. And no, I won’t be working a 12 hour shift on Christmas Eve this year. I’ve elected to finish on the 22nd, so as to enjoy the holidays that bit more, with no more stress and planning to be carried out by The Big Festive Deadline.

Happy December Everyone!

Earlier today I was sat in an unusually sleepy lecture on Consumer Buying Behavior in Tourism. The lecturer was trying, in vain, to get the class to contribute and kept putting questions to the students to try and get them thinking and responding to what he was telling them. Afterwards he remarked to me that he really wished that students would make more of an effort to challenge lecturers about what they are being taught.

“Back in my day, students used to be rebellious. They argued with authority and fought against ideas they disagreed with. These days young people have become commercialised conformists and all their individualism has gone.”

He then went on to tell me about how his peers, outraged by the siting of a US Missile base near their home, had chosen to protest by storming the place and pulling down the fences. It didn’t change anything, but at least they were able to make a point. There was a strong sense of idealism and anger at the establishment for permitting what they saw as injustice in the world.

This got me thinking; why have we moved from a world where students were on the forefront of political and social debates, always making their opinions known and campaigning to change the world, to one in which students don’t even bother to question the information being spoon fed to them in lectures, never mind take an interest in current affairs or speak out against injustice? Why don’t we ever rebel? Is it simply laziness? Is it the consequence of living in a consumer entertainment world, where no one ever has to think for themselves?

Quite possibly, but I have another suggestion that I wish to put to you today, oh dear reader. Could it be that these days there simply isn’t anything to rebel about or against? Could it be that we simply don’t need to make a stand anymore?

Perhaps the biggest single difference between my generation and the previous generation of university students is that right now, in 2008, life is pretty sweet. Back then there were real problems to be concerned about. There was a Cold War going on. Serious, very real threat of a Nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the West. There were wars that actually affected people in the West; the Vietnam War for example, where large numbers of soldiers were dying or being brutily maimed. There were periods of wide spread civil unrest, power shortages, povety. Lots and lots of thing to get angry about.

And we just don’t have that anymore. Yes there are still Nuclear weapons and other WMDs in the World, but no one is really expecting them to ever be used. There are still wars, but they are a long way from here, and thanks to the reduced size of the military and better risk assessments, most people don’t know anyone serving over seas, and far fewer still can name anyone who has actually been killed or injured in battle. As for power shortages, I can’t remember the last time there was a cut here, and the petrol pumps rarely threaten to run dry.

The fact is that life is pretty good. Okay, the economy is in recession, but since most students don’t have stocks and shares or large morgages, they remain relatively affluent. I get annoyed when I see my electricity bill. I can feel my blood pressure rising when I get stuck in traffic or when I can’t find a parking space at the supermarket, but that is as bad as things get for me these days. There just isn’t anything that makes me really angry, and there isn’t anything I’d pick up a plackard for just now.

One day this happy little problem free world will again be punctured by something terrible and outragous, and when that day comes I think the student population as a whole will be rallied to do what it can to fight the powers that be once more. But whilst times are good I suspect my lecturer is going to becoming yet more frustrated by the care free, unquestioning nature of those who enter the classroom.

What do you think? Did you ever rebel against anything when you were a student? Would you do so now? What gets you angry enough to speak out? Answers in the comment box please.

Hello and Welcome!

This is the first post written exclusively for the new version of the blog, which is still very much in the development process, but which I think is ready for me to start posting again. For those who are still working their way over from the old version of the blog, hey there! It’s ok, you’re in the right place! It’s still me, Ignorminious, although as you can see, the name of the blog itself has been changed, for reasons which I will explain in a moment. But first a warm hello to everyone who is finding the blog for the first time, you are very welcome indeed. Don’t forget to check the About page for more information.

Now, time for a little house keeping I think. The new blog comes with a new URL for the RSS feed, which is as follows:

http://ignorminious.co.uk/feed/

Got that? Good. The URL for the site itself remains unchanged, despite the change of site name and a complete overhaul of the site itself. As those of you with eagle eyes will have noticed, I am now using WordPress, rather than the scripts that I wrote specifically for the old version of the site myself. This should offer me much greater functionality and usability, as well as improved security for you guys, as WordPress should prove fairly resistant to the hackers who made my blog life a misery by constantly hacking the site databases and either posting rude messages or else deleting large sections of the archives, which was an utter arse to fix. Yes, I do consider myself posh  enough to use phrases such as “utter arse”, so if you don’t like it you can jolly well sit on a hot buttered crumpet and swivel!

This, for those of you reading off the site itself, is not the final design for the site, nor even my design. This is one that I downloaded from the WordPress Theme Directory to make everything look nice until I develop my own custom theme. I hope you approve. The name change is mine though, and although I don’t intend to shell out for a new URL for the site, I shall be using my Ignorminious alias less often from now on, as it wasn’t proving memorable enough to ever be widely adopted, and it isn’t much fun to type in either, as those who’ve tried it will know.

I’ve done my best to import my old posts into the WordPress system and have met with some success. They are all here to a greater or lesser extent, but many are suffering from formatting errors that I simply won’t have time to fix, and for which I apologise. Right now though I’m more interested in looking forward than looking back, and there are many exciting improvements still to make.

So thus concludes my first post! If you have any thoughts about the new blog, why not drop me a line or two in the comment box, or perhaps just say hi? It’ll be great to hear from you

 

In September 2006 I launched my blog after several weeks of intense coding effort. It was born out of the bordom that followed the completition of my previous web project, and I was proud at the time that it was entirely a project of my own coding. Over the following months I gradually added to it and improved it in ways that many bloggers thought were stupid. After all, it was taking me days to code what others were adding in minutes, thanks to plugins.

Over the years the site grew and grew, and as it did so, it began to pop up on the radars of hackers. Ever since then I’ve been the victim of regular hacks, which have wrecked the blog and cost me countless hours to repair. It is for this reason that I have taken the painful decision to end development of my blog as it is, and switch over to the Word Press content management system. This will offer me a range of exciting new features previously unavailable to me, as well as the security of water tight coding that won’t let people hack me every few days.

The site will be offline for a while whilst I convert to the new system, but I hope to be back before long with a fresh new design and a blog that everyone can enjoy for a long time to come.

Thank you very much for the support you have shown me over the last 2 years.

Those of you who were reading in June this year might remember that I made an impulse purchase of a new domain name, on which I proposed to host a site showing myself in a professional light.

Well, the other day (ok, about two weeks ago now) I finished the main build of the site and let it go live. There are still a few small bugs to fix (the search box doesn’t work) but the site is there and therefore I feel I should promote it.

At some point I’ll make a point of adding in lots of links to the new site in appropriate places on the blog, but for now, if you fancy having a look, please click through to http://markglover.co.uk and have a nose around.

If anyone has any comments about the site, positive or negative, please use the contact option to drop me an email, or comment on this post, as I’d love to hear from you!

Well, time for me to go to another seminar, so as the guys at Warner Bros used to say:

That’s all for now folks!

usual things. Adverts for viagra, a Nigerian Prince wishing to give me all his money, a bank telling me that there is a problem with the account I don’t even have with them, an angry Ebay user threatening to sue me for the non arrival of the laptop I supposedly sold them. The usual stuff that I’m sure each of you gets as well.

That is OK. I expect to find such stuff. It is only to be expected that antisocial individuals with far too much free time will waste it finding ways to annoy other people. None of the emails should be taken seriously, because even the people who write them never expect to get anything out of it.

What I find slightly more concerning is that other junk mail. You know, the paper kind that someone has to actually take all the way to your letter box. Remember that junk mail? It was the most annoying thing in the world before computers came along and upped the bench mark.

That sort of junk mail isn’t from a nobody who still lives with his or her parents. That kind comes from real companies and costs real money to produce. Lots of money, actually. So what confuses me is why these companies seem happy to distribute these leaflets and letters without paying any attention whatsoever?

I ask this because since I’ve been living here, I’ve received quite a number of these things that not only aren’t applicable to me, but couldn’t possibly be applicable to anyone else living in my flat.

The most common of these is, of course, estate agent adverts. I probably get one of these at least once every three days, and not one of them is any good to me because, like every other person living in my building, I rent my flat. And because I rent it, it isn’t mine to sell, which means I really don’t need an estate agent just now, thank you.

I also don’t need my windows replaced. One of the joys of living in an apartment block is that all exterior fixtures are the responsibility of the owner of the whole building, which means even if I did own my flat, I couldn’t have my windows changed unless I bought the rest of the building too, and had the whole lot changed. Which I’m not going to do, obv.

For the same reason, no thank you, I don’t need you to repair my roof. Or fit a new television aerial to it, though it’s very sweet of you to offer.

The stair lift was a good idea, and one that I was actually considering, right up to the point that I remembered I live on the ground floor. I feel quite sorry for the various companies who waste their marketing budget trying to sell myself and my neighbours cheaper gas. If they’d done any research at all, they’d have noticed that the building is electricity only, which means my gas bills are pretty much as low as they are ever likely to go, although if they would like to pay me for the gas I don’t receive, I’d be more than happy to consider it.

Perhaps my favourite so far was the catalogue I found on my doormat this afternoon, displaying what it assured me is the best range of electric wheel chairs in the South West. Whilst I don’t doubt that the products in question are good quality, I’m perplexed as to why the distributor actually came into the building, noticed the lack of disabled access, looked around and saw that every single person living here is under 30 and no one is disabled, and then decided to leave everyone a catalogue anyway. Talk about a job’s worth!

Have you received any junk mail recently that you felt perhaps should have been targeted more precisely at someone else? If so, why not tell me about it in the comments box?]]>

For reasons I’ve been unable to explain, entries have been popping up in completely the wrong order for weeks, and it has brought the site to its digital knees.

After about an hour of troubleshooting with a friend of mine, we discovered that there has been a change in the coding standards for MySQL database queries. It is only a small change, but it broke everything.

They’ve decided that everywhere I’ve written a ‘ in every database look up I’ve done for the last 5 years, I’ve now got to replace it with a `.

That’s right, ‘ must become `. That pointless little decision, which wasn’t picked up in any error messages has cost me around 10 hours of troubleshooting time over the last couple of weeks.

Thanks a bunch techy people!

I’m going to bed.

Goodnight.]]>

I’ve been away from these pages so many times over the last 18 months or so that I won’t waste my breath promising to blog three times a day from now on or write you all personal messages, as that would be extremely stupid of me, especially since we all know it won’t happen.

I shall resolve, therefore, to blog as little or as often as I have time for over the coming months. I’d like to think that I’ll be here at least once a week, but I know if I commit to that in writing I’ll fail to stick to it within a fortnight, so it is probably easier not to both.

There are two reasons for my absence these last few months, which I offer to you by way of explanation, rather than feeble apology. Firstly, I had a very busy Summer and, so far, Autumn is shaping up pretty much the same way, as I’ll cover in more depth in a moment. Secondly, as often happens, my blog was hacked and sadly suffered serious database damage as a result. I’ve not quite straightened it all out yet, but hopefully we’ll get there eventually. At any rate it is usable again now, so use it I shall.

So, what news then?

Well, first and foremost, after 5 years of living the single life, in July I found myself a new girlfriend, who from here on in I shall refer to as “L”. She is a large part of the reason why I’ve not had time to blog recently, because as those who have girlfriends will know, they can be extremely time consuming, and doubly so if you actually like spending time with them, as is the case in this relationship. The only reason I can find the time to talk to you now is that L is currently in Plymouth, where she attends university, and I’m here in Bristol during the week, which leaves my evenings free to get on with the stuff I’d ordinarily be trying to do at the weekend, such as blogging.

The other drain on my time recently has been work, which dramatically increased in July from 4 hours a day 5 days a week to 15 hours a day 7 days a week for a time. Luckily it has calmed down again now, although it’s now so low that I’m actually looking for another job on the 4 days a week when I don’t have uni. If you know anyone who is actually hiring in the Bristol area, please let me know!

Thanks largely to L’s motivational influence I made it through my exams in the summer and so was finally able to embark on my final year of my degree in September. If I’m able to pass everything this year I shall finally be free of this monster that has cast its shadow over me for nearly 5 years now.

Work continues on markglover.co.uk, with the hope being that I’m able to finish it very soon and link to it on my CV when job hunting. I’m actually quite impressed with what I’m coming up with, even if the progress is far slower than I’d like.

The other day I switched from Internet Explorer, which I’ve used loyally since I first got internet access in January 1998, to Firefox, which as those who use it know, is basically better. My IE was beginning to break down and I was getting less and less satisfied with its performance, so it seemed like a good time for a change. At some point I might write a little article on Firefox, once I’ve had longer to play with it. The difference most applicable to this post is the built-in spell checker that allows me to type this directly into my browser, rather than first having to write it in Microsoft Word and then copy it across after checking it. Much faster. Until such time as I write up a review of the browser, if you are interested you might consider this excellent blog post by Stephen Fry on the advantages of Firefox over other browsers. In fact, I can highly recommend Stephen’s blog generally if you are after a good read, as his is one of the best on the internet, in my humble opinion.

Well, the clock is ticking steadily around to midnight, which means I should be making tracks, since my uni timetable demands that I be up at 6:30am tomorrow. I’ve enjoyed writing this post immensely, and I hope you feel the same way about reading it. I do hope so.

I shall return when next I can find the time to pop in and say hello, but until then, if you are new to the blog, why not look through the archive to see what I had to say back when I was posting daily?

Some of it was quite good you know, even if I say so myself!]]>

F5. *Click* ….F5…*Click*……F5………. *Click*……F5….F5…………CTRL+F5……..*Thump*

……

Oh Fuck Off!

Anyone who has so far had a play with the Reworked BBC iPlayer, which is currently in beta testing, will be only too familiar with that sequence of events, as it?s just a small snippet of what you must go through if you wish to actually use the iPlayer for, oh I don?t know, watching stuff.

I am rather hoping that this technical flaw is a symptom of beta testing, coz if you think normal iPlayer drops its connection to the BBC servers rather too often, you ain?t seen nothing yet! I have sat for nearly 90 minutes attempting to watch all 22 minutes of the latest edition of the BBC?s wonderful Click programme, and I?m still 4 minutes from the end.

This is a terrible shame really, because in most other aspects, the new iPlayer is a huge leap forward from the current one, which itself was pretty good. This beta features a reworked user interface, integrating both TV and Radio into a single player, as well as lots of small improvements, such as a list of recently watched programmes for you to go back to and an enhanced ?More Like This? system.

The programme information below the enlarged viewing window is now collapsible and contains both programme and series information that compares in length with that made available on the Radio Times website and, best of all, they?ve finally included a link to the programme?s website!

Unfortunately it doesn?t actually go there yet. Instead it links you to the beta of a new programme guide section of the BBC website, which also fails to provide any links to the actual website for the programme you actually want. I?m assuming they?ll fix this eventually.

Another rather snazzy enhancement, which I suspect is a response to user feedback, is the ability to resume your watching from where you left off last time. Whilst I imagine they?ve put this in with the intention of allowing viewers to pause programmes and come back to them on different days, it has the added benefit of speeding up the recovery every time the player crashes and you have to refresh the page.

Aside from the crashing, the one thing that really does irritate me about the design for the new player is the information displayed when you hover your mouse over a programme link. Whereas before you could find out at a glance how much time you had left to watch the programme, now you have to click on through to the programme itself to get the same info. On the other hand, at least once you get there, you are told not only how much time is left, but also the exact time (to the nearest minute) that the programme will be removed and also (for some programmes) the date on which it was originally broadcast.

Although I?ve not been able to find out anything official about this yet, it would appear that the Beeb have decided to extend the time for which programmes are available on the site from 7 days to 14, which , if nothing else, earns this beta a big thumbs up from me.

To round off this mini review: the iPlayer Beta is pretty good. In fact, I?d go so far as to say very good. The technical problems will sort themselves out before it goes live, because they did with the previous version, and once they do, I?ll be first in line to absorb all my BBC content from this one, superbly well thought out website.

Nice one Beeb!]]>

this post to test out my device.

Now, a year on I’m testing another new handheld piece of pricey kit. This time it’s my new iPod Touch, and I’m head over heels in love with it! Let’s start with the physical: it sits perfectly in my hand, weighing just enough that I know it’s there, but not nearly enough that it could ever tire me out. The screen is 3.5″” of crystal clear, touch screen goodness that is more than adequate both for web browsing and watching video or viewing pictures. It knows which way up it is and will adjust from portrait to landscape views quickly and without hassle whenever you tilt the device accordingly.

Sadly for the designer of the shell, it is completely eclipsed by the incredibly sleek and intuitive user interface. I’m typing this on the touchscreen keyboard, which despite being so small that I must be hitting 3 or 4 keys at once, it is quite rare for me to mistype and it is actually a pleasure to tap away at this thing. If you do make a mistake, the interface will compensate and correct your typing as you go. Obviously this can be a pain when typing non-standard words, such as web urls.

The features are also pretty impressive. As well as all the wonderful iPod features, it contains a very usable email client and a fully functioning web browser, capable of correctly displaying even my poorly coded sites

I’ve only had this device for a week and a half but already this has replaced my mobile as my favourite handheld device for email and web access. I would love to stay and chat about this all day, as I really do love it, but sadly work must intrude once again. Rest assured I will be reading your comments on here as they come in :-)]]>

TWO!

First we have one that was played by Microsoft Technology Evangelist Steve Clayton at the Nlab Social Networks Conference, which you can read more about here. It is a highly amusing parody of what would happen if Microsoft tried to design the packaging for the iPod:

(This is an embedded YouTube video and must be viewed using a Flash enabled web browser. The video may not appear in your RSS feed, so please click through to the website to see it properly.)

Then my good friend and fellow blogger Custard linked me to a similar video, parodying the upcoming Microsoft iPhone Zune:

(This is an embedded YouTube video and must be viewed using a Flash enabled web browser. The video may not appear in your RSS feed, so please click through to the website to see it properly.)

I hope you find these two videos as amusing as I did :-)]]>

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/page/item/b00c6sdc.shtml?src=ip_potpw

This is the BBC iPlayer version of the programme about Bill Gates, broadcast to commemorate his retirement from Microsoft next week. I thought it was a fascinating biography, not just of the man himself, but also of much of Microsoft?s own history.

If you have a spare hour and are interested, I highly recommend taking a look.]]>

Nlab Social Networks Conference at De Montfort University in Leicester. The schedule for the day is a busy one, but nonetheless, I?m hoping to live blog my way through the various talks and workshops, for your reading pleasure.

I?m actually writing this passage in my hotel room, as last year I had to wait until the registration session, which meant I had to combine typing my introduction with meeting all the other delegates. This year, I?m trying to be organised a little better.

I know it is common for many live blogs to be written in reverse chronological order, with the end of the day at the top of the page, but I figure that since most people reading this will be doing so after the event, it makes more sense for them to read down the page rather than up it.

Here we go:

9:34am - The refreshment room is buzzing with delegates. Some, like myself are on laptops, frantically preparing to blog the day. Most though are stood around the room, drinks in hand, discussing the programme for the day. It is certainly going to be a busy one, with no less than 5 keynote speakers. It?ll be very interesting to see what they have to say…

11:00am - Steve Clayton from Microsoft gave a very humorous talk on small business. He discussed issues of trust and the benefits of blogs in business, which can open them up to their customers. It some ways it was similar to last year’s MS talk, but the message is still a good one.

11:53am - Roland Harwood from NESTA explored the metaphor of the Social Network as a city. He drew some interesting parallels between the organic growth of a large city and its internet equivalent. Interestingly, Sue Thomas said afterwards that her work looked at social networks compared to nature, rather than urban development. A lack of power sockets and issues with the air-con are, so far, the only dampeners on the conference.

1:03pm - Andrea Saveri from the Institute for the Future, Palo Alto gave a quick fired talk on the Future of Work. Amplified Individuals was the buzz word going round as Andrea discussed the concept of collaborative work by internet uses. It seems this idea extends well beyond the obvious blogs, YouTubes etc, and can include projects and diverse as collective fantasy games with real world tasks to complete and companies appealing to people to help them solve their technical problems. For me, her ideas really summed up everything that is good about the internet.

The next day… - Well, as with last year’s conference, my laptop eventually ran out of battery, and, also like last year, there weren’t nearly enough sockets to go around. So, blogging sadly had to be put on hold for the day, but now I shall give you a brief run down of the afternoon:

After a lunch spent networking with the other delegates, Ken Thompson from SwarmTeams kicked off the afternoon session by drawing our attention to Swarms. Followingon from Roland Harwood and Andrea Saveri, he looked at teamwork and collaboration in nature and the comparisons with social networks on the internet. He gave a fantastic demonstration in which the delegates used their mobile phones to collectively reply to questions that he texted to us from the internet. The results could then be viewed in real time on the projector screen. Added onto of the blogging, note taking and Twittering, this extra level of communication took those of us with multiple devices running to the very limit of our typing abilities, but it was well worth it.

Next up, Jim Benson of Modus Cooperandi looked at the practical applications of social networking in a business environment, with some surprising results. He admitted that many of the most common social networking tools, such as Facebook and Twitter, might not be as good for businesses as had been assumed up until this point. This provoked a delegate into arguing the case for social networking via SMS. By the end of the session it was still unclear who had come out of that debate on top.

We went immediately into workshops at this point. The choice this year as excellent, and I had much difficulty in eventually choosing Sean Clarke’s session. This was not to be regretted however, as his demonstration of how to integrate many of the popular websites into each other with the use of RSS Feeds was extremely well recieved by all who attended. I came away from the workshop with my head literally buzzing with ideas and plans for improving my own websites.

By the time of the panel session, the fatigue of the day was clearly begging to show among delegates. Nonetheless, a very stimulating question and answer session was enjoyed.

When Sue Thomas brought the day to a close, my mind was made up that this was an extremely successful Nlab conference and may have even been better than last year’s one.

If you want to read a more detailed blog of the day’s events, Jess Laccetti expertly blogged the whole day for the conference website.]]>

Written last night in the hotel room which turned out to only have expensive internet access, hence uploading the following morning

Well the journey up to Leicester was rather hellish, with an hour and a half of sitting in stationary traffic whilst emergency resurfacing work was carried out on the M42.

I?m writing to you now from the bedroom of my hotel, which we visited earlier to drop bags off before going to a session by the Creative Writing and New Media MA group at DMU. I must confess to being rather impressed by the presentations given, which were both professional and inspiring. One lady was attempting to use Web 2.0 to raise awareness of the situation in Burma, whilst another had combined a blog, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter to write an online novel, in which the characters lives were played out across these various different platforms.

After the presentations had ended, we moved base camp to a fantastic Indian restaurant, where we spent most of the evening. The conversation that flowed was, not surprisingly, all about new media and social networking, and this was enhanced when it was discovered that a party from a Leicester Uni conference were also in the room. They came over to us and we talked about the similarities between the two conferences and how they were looking at the Web 2.0 problem from the point of view of the museum sector, where as we will be looking at the whole thing.

A short walk back to the hotel found 6 or 7 of us sat in the Saloon Lounge for an hour, drinks in hand, discussing dissertations and projects on various postgraduate courses. We have an early start tomorrow, with conference registration at 9, so I?ll sign off here and get some shut eye.]]>

I?m about an hour away from leaving Bristol and heading up to Leicester for the Nlab Social Networks Conference, being held at DMU tomorrow. It?s interesting to me how, in the run up to this technology conference, virtually every new form of communication has been used to keep the information flowing between organisers and delegates. The conference has a website, a mailing list and even a Twitter account!

Unlike last year, where I ended up in no internet hell, this year I?m staying at a hotel that promises to have internet access at all times. For this reason I fully expect to update you all on my adventures later on this evening, although failing that I?ll be Live blogging from the conference itself, as of 10am tomorrow morning.

Oh, and at some point I?m going to rant and rave about how much I adore my new iPod Touch. It really is the best thing in the entire world!

Laters!]]>

Luckily this time I have an excuse, namely the other woman website, which I talked about the other day. When I started the project I envisaged something quick and simple. All I had to do was create a simple site with no special features, on which I could write about myself for people wishing to know more about me. The entire thing was going to take perhaps 6 hours to build, I thought.

8 hours later and I?ve just about got the title bar the way I want it. Now, I?m not a web design virgin. Not at all. I?ve been dabbling on and off for nearly a decade now and as regular readers will know, I built this very site that you are reading right now. But this time I felt that, because of the continuing browser war, which now sees Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari all holding large shares of the market, I?d make my site look good in all of them.

Oh dear.

The problem is as follows: an organisation called the W3C has responsibility for setting the standards that web site coders must follow. They are fairly simple to implement, easy to learn about and, for the most part, very effective. Alas browser coders are a pompous lot, generally speaking, and they all think that they know better. As a result, not one of the Big 3 browsers actually meets the standards entirely, and because of this, they all display web pages in a different way.

Here is my title bar as it appears in Internet Explorer:

…and in Firefox:

…and again in Safari:

You see the differences? That is after 8 hours of making tiny changes to my style sheet, saving it, uploading it and then checking what it looks like in all three browsers.

Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft, Mozilla and Apple need a clip round the ear hole and told to fix it?]]>