The Northern Lights

Wow. I've just got back from an amazing trip to South Norway at 38000 ft, where I took this photo.

Amazing stuff. I'm very tired, so I'll post more pics in the morning.

UPDATE: My photos are now on Flickr. Click here or on the photo above.

I floo!

I did it ... after several years of 'saying' I was going to do it, today I actually managed it: I flew a plane. Me!

We went to the Hull Aero Club, somewhere near Beverley, and I had a one hour flying lesson. Apparently I did quite well ... which I suppose means I didn't barf or scream during takeoff.

The experience was not quite what I had expected. The planes are a lot smaller than I expected, and they're so light they get thrown around quite easily up there. The view was amazing, when I got chance to actually look at it. We flew out to Bridlington and over the sea before turning around and flying over the Humber Bridge.

I was expecting the session to be a case of me sitting back until the pilot got the plane up to about 2000ft and level ... ah. No. I had to do the whole lot! He had me taxi to the runway ... (the runway: it's that field ... made of grass ... very rural!) ... then he had me takeoff ... ascend ... the fly the plane around all over the place ... play with the radio and locators ... then descend an hour later and land. I hate landings, but was surprised when I brought this hunk of metal crashing into the field how light it was.

All in all, a fun day. Thanks to my girlfriend and sister who got me the lesson as a gift. :o)

I've uploaded the photos to Flickr if you fancy a peek.

Flickrtastic!

Finally, after months of playing with the website, I decided its time I joined. I can't believe how easy it is to upload and manage photos ... and post to my blog. And it's free!

Anyway, have a look at some of the photos I've posted. Miss T and I went for a walk at St. Ives forest, and took some lovely photos.

iPod Woes

My repaired iPod arrived this morning (Yay!). They sent me the original one back instead of replacing it, but that's OK. A coating of Mr Sheen will hide those old scratches :o)

I get it home, and start putting all my music back onto it. 10 minutes goes by, and I notice it's only transferred 5 songs. Not a good start.

I take it out of its dock and discover that the iPod has locked up. I reset it, and all seems fine ... but now I can't get iTunes to recognise it. I take it out of the dock again, reset it ... and this time it starts making weird mechanical clicking noises. This is tres tres not good.

It finishes this theatrical display of clicking and resetting and finally I see a familiar icon on the screen:



Ah heck. Back to Apple.

It worked ... albiet for 10 minutes. I had 10 minutes of iPod pleasure, but alas ... it did not last.

What have I dont to deserve this, Steve?

:o(

Today IMDB, Tomorrow ... Hollywood!

Hey, check me out. I did a Google search for myself (You know ... as we all do from time to time to make sure we don't have a stalker), and look what I found:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1399408/

There are a few films missing that I want to get added, but it's not a bad start.

How cool is that?

Well, I'm impressed ... and I'm having a muffin to celebrate :o)

Birthday Bowling

I've not been 10-pin bowling since I was a ... well, since I was fairly small and had a high, squeeky voice. I thought I'd include these two photos, since my mum almost knocked me out with the first shot ... and my sister looks silly in the second one. Always a good thing :o)

UPDATE: These photos are now available on my Flickr account. Click here to access the photo set.

Birthday!

It's my birthday!

Well, it's actually the day after. I didn't feel it necessary to take time out of my busy birthday schedule to write in my blog.

Hmm. OK, so it wasn't that busy. I spent most of Saturday recovering from the previous night. After loosing the lightweights at around 7.30; Tim, Tom and I carried on. The rest of the evening is a blur (mentally and visually), but I remember a very long walk back to Tim's house at about 1am, and waking up in his spare room. Ughhh! Not drinking that much again! Thankfully I didn't take any pictures, so there's nothing more to post here :o)

I managed to recover enough to go to a Greek restaraunt with Miss T last night. Now we're off again .... this time for Sunday lunch with my family. Busy busy busy.

:o)

Hacking The Airwaves

This is weird. I'm sat in my car waiting for those nice people at Pizza Hut to burn by Pizza ... so I open my Powerbook to do some work. Without thinking I open my web browser, and curse myself for being so stupid ... but hang on a minute ... there's my homepage. Wuh?

I try clicking on a link ... and it works ... eh?

Let me go through this one more time: I'm in my car (Check), I'm not anywhere near my house (Check); I'm browsing the web (Wuh?).

After a bit more investigative work I find that my laptop has automatically found and connected to someone's personal WiFi network. Dunno where it is, but it's not secure and I'm connected :o)

Let this be a lesson to all those WiFi users: SECURE YOUR NETWORK!

Hmm. Having said that, my network is not secure. I wonder if the sheep have been using it? It is a risk. Maybe I should turn on the encryption.

Anyway. Pizza awaits.

Oli Out.

One Unhappy iPod

Not again!

One moment, everything fine: Happily playing songs. The next minute, a sad face on the screen and its now refusing to play anything.

I think it's depressed and needs to be sent back to the Apple hive for motivational therapy. Either that, or I must live in an area not covered by the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field :o)

Thankfully it's still under warranty, so it'll get replaced. This will be my 4th iPod ... and the 3rd I've had replaced under the warranty. Not bad, eh? I never knew warranties could be so much fun. That said ... I'm now seriously contemplating extending it!

Just to put this into some sort of context, here's a photo of my previous ipod from only 3 months ago:

Ho hum. Back to listening to the radio in my car for a while.

C'ya.

Sinking Ship Feeling

Wow, has it really been that long?

Since my last post I've done another show called "Little Me". Miss T was on stage this time, and despite the fact it was an enjoyable show ... it was hard work, and we're all exhausted. As such, I've completely neglected my Bloging duties. But here I am: Refreshed, Ready for Action ... and fed up with work!

Things have been a bit miserable for a while now, but the last 48 hours have marked a distinct dis-improvement. We had a so-called Staff Day on Monday which did much to improve the general morale of staff ... (Hmm. Sarcasm doesn't really come across in print, does it?!). Then today I've had non-stop abuse from a corporate client who didn't just want the moon on a stick, but most of the solar system stringing on a rope, polishing to a shine, and then electroplating with a Nickle-Aluminium alloy ... and still wouldn't be happy with the result. Nghh! One of THOSE days, huh?

Anyway. Tomorrow can't possibly be any worse. Can it?

In other news: Bonfire night is fast approaching. Our neighbours are having their usual party, and this year they've even hinted at the possibility of fire ... Although I don't hold much hope of that given the current weather. Still, it should be fun. I stupidly forgot to invite everyone this year, so there'll be a reduced selection of friends around this time :o(

Hmm. What else? Oh, that's right. I've been swayed by advertising, and have decided to get Sky+ installed this month. (Yay!). We're fed up with the 38 channels of junk that we currently get on DVB, so we're going to be paying £15 to upgrade to 300 channels of junk. That should keep us busy!

Other than that, life if fairly uninteresting at the moment. Miss T is job hunting, I'm tempted to do the same (!). It'll never happen, of course. It's just wishful thinking :o)

See ya'