Gah! I'm half dead!

I got to London Paddington on Thursday just before 22.30 and needed to make my way over to Waterloo for the next leg of my journey. So I went to the ticket office and asked for a ticket to Whitton that would include underground to Waterloo.

It cost me �16.90

"Thats quite a lot I thought..." as I walked from the office. I got outside, looked at the ticket and it said Witham and not Whitton - which wasnt where I wanted to be going at all. So I returned to the ticket office and exchanged the �16.90 worth of tickets for a �6.30 TravelCard and some cold hard cash...

I will provide quick reviews/scores once I have been home and sync'd my Palm up, as I'm not typing it all in again :)

I will however, make mention of what films you should be looking out for over the next few months.

Pans Labyrinth - Guillermo del Toros beautifically crafted tale of fantasy
Hatchet - Adam Green's gory, funny and superbly put together old school slasher.
See No Evil - superb slasher starring Kane from WWE
The Living And The Dead - awesome. Pure brilliance that will have running a rollercoaster of emotion. Miss this and miss out.
The Lost - Lucky McKee strikes again. Outstanding horror.
Behind The Mask:The Rise of Leslie Vernon - an interesting take on the mocumentary/horror genre. Mixes comedy elements and a true horror story with gorgeous story emements.
The Host - Korean monster movie. Funny, touching and a little jumpy - this one keeps your interest all the way through.

Off home later to see both my kids and Shell, who has remained inebriated since my departure so as not to miss me :)

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[link]   Posted @ 13:30

Damn those chaps over at Link Bunnies.

I have a new comic to read and its ace.

xkcd - A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.

Its RSS feed will be added to my Netvibes pages forthwith. I also need to update my links at the side. I have some new ones to add and some to remove (like Men In Hats which has been dead for some time).

Tonight I am off to London for FrightFest 2006. I shall provide reviews of the films as and when I can.

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[link]   Posted @ 07:49

So, Snakes on a Plane is out. Some people love it, some hate it. People I know who have seen it, have loved. I need to go and see it, but I wont have chance this week.

Tonight I am working. Tomorrow is Terry's funeral.
Thursday night sees me off to London to attend FrightFest 2006 in Leicester Square. The weekend sees me watching 23 films over 4 days and then next week, we have the kids. So earliest opportunity will be Sunday 3rd September!

Anyway, back to SoaP. If you want the board game, you can get it!.

Also, the talk of sequels has started and below are some posters for you to titter at. These can all be found elsewhere on the net, but I have hosted them here to save peoples bandwidth. They are not my own work (I'm not that talented).

Enjoy!

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[link]   Posted @ 10:46

OK.

I am, fucking great!

I needed a way to integrate my web office environment with my PDA - a Palm Tungsten E2. The main ingredients?

Google Calendar - my online calendar
Remember The Milk - my online Todo list

I am not worried about using the PDA as a means of inputting these things, but as a means of checking on where I am meant to be, what is happening and what I have planned. If I need to add a new calendar item, I add a note on the PDA and do it next time I am online.

What am I using?

2 pieces of software. 1 free, 1 paid for.

Go and get the following:
remotecalendars
Chapura PocketMirror

And here is what you do:
Install remotecalendars on your PC. Click on "Subscribe a remote calendar". Enter the iCal details from the RememberTheMilk site and ensure it is going to the default Calendar. You should now get an updated Tasklist from RTM.

Click on "Subscribe a remote calendar" again. Enter the iCal details from your Google Calendar and ensure it is going to the default Calendar. You should now get your entries from your Google calendar (with a couple of oddities).
So far, so good.

Now you need some commercial software and for this I chose Chapura PocketMirror Professional XT 4.1.4. However, they have other options depending on what model of PDA you have and what functionality you need. They even have a while new PIM system that integrates with Outlook, if you need that much!

Install PMPXT, ensure you have the correct settings for what you need to achieve - having Outlook overwrite the PDA calendar makes most sense to me as all my data is coming to Outlook from elsewhere. Same with the todo lists.

When I get a little more time, I shall wrote a clearer page about how to do this, with screenshots and full instructions. Until then, I am off to find more things I can do with my web office environment :D

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[link]   Posted @ 18:49

I left off a couple of presents from my list from the last post - I also got a new frying pan and a set of saucepans. One of them was filled with Dolly Mixtures. I love dolly mixtures...

Some may think that odd - but I cook. In fact, I'm rather good at it. I could do with a dish washer though (ignoring the fact that the kitchen has nowhere to plumb it in!)

Shell is being kept busy at the moment, organising Terrys funeral and trying to get his estate sorted out. And the forms! Jebus - when you get born - they are a max of 2 forms to fill in and sign. When you die - boat loads of the things!

There has also been a change to the commenting function. After spending a couple of hours removing SPAM comments - my good friend Andy has setup a verification section at the bottom of the "Add Comment" page, to defeat scripts. I was alerted to the SPAM when I noticed that one of my entries had 57 comments. Now, I know I'm a popular read - but I ain't that fucking popular!

I shall update again tomorrow with some links.

Meanwhile - I'm still looking for a Google Calendar to Palm sync. Anyone?

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[link]   Posted @ 14:36

So yesterday I turned 35 (boohoo)...

Got a lovely meal at Shells mums (including JaffZilla from Pimp That Snack and my presents - including T-shirts, a pair of jeans, Banksy "Wall and Piece" book and a 6Gb iPod mini!

I've wanted an iPod mini for ages - I dont like the size of the larger ones so the mini was the one for me. The 6Gb ones were rare when they were made (and have better battery life than the 4gbs), so how on earth Shell and her mum managed to find a new one nowadays... but they did!

Then this morning, Shell was called to say that our good friend Terry had passed away this morning.

He had been a client in a home that Shell was working in some years ago, and even after she left, she kept in contact with him and we all became good friends, visiting him often. He came to ours for Xmas last year (along with the kids) and had a great time. He has always been in reasonable health, so we were suprised when we had a phone call on the Saturday before last, telling us that he had gone into hospital. Shell went down to the hospital, only to find he had been sent to the Weston Hospice. Liver cancer, lung cancer and heart failure...

I saw him last on Wednesday afternoon. We took him a tub of "Chocolate Chip Muffin Chaos" from Asda and he loved it.

I'm sat here writing this with tears in my eyes as I think of him and how upset Shell is now.

Bye Terry. I'll miss you.

Terry Lewis

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[link]   Posted @ 13:21

Today I am

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[link]   Posted @ 07:39

Following my comments to Tecno yesterday and his subsequent reply, that got me thinking about blog engines.

There are several ways of having a blog, having a hosted system or host your own.

Hosted blogs included Blogger, LiveJournal, Typepad and blog.com

There are lots, lots more. Google is your friend.

For self hosted solutions, check out a review of engines here. A couple more not mentioned on that site, include:
BlogHoster
Grey Matter
subText

Tecno - or have a word with Andy, I use his blogging engine...

Self hosted really is the way to go, as you can change *anything* you dont like. I'm still looking at various multi-user blogs for use on my other sites (current testing b2evolution and LifeType at home), while Andy finishes off his Xoops modules.

Anyhoo, the "web office" thing is going quite nicely and I have the outline of an article ready to go. I am now investigating "voice-to-email" and "fax-to-email" to integrate into the whole solution.

The next phase (once I have decided on all my products), so to convince 4 other people to sign-on for a non-existent project and see if the whole thing can be run online. The whole process will be documented, etc. Should be fun :)

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[link]   Posted @ 08:50

You are a gibbering bitch!

I cannot comment on your site cos I dont want to create another login. Use a proper blogging engine and host it.

So there, I have blogged you here instead. You bitch! And say hello to Davina - I can't believe she's stuck with you for this long!!!!!

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[link]   Posted @ 18:05

So then, my quest to have an online office is moving ahead quite nicely. Here's what I have so far (being used on a daily basis):

EMail: GoogleMail - cos its fast and useable. If it had folders, it would be perfect. It was a toss up between this and Yahoo! Mail! - but something just wasn't right about it.

Calendar: Google Calendar - its pretty damned awesome. Its uncluttered interface is a pleasure to use and its Quick Add function is very handy. Can also email you your calendar entries every morning and can export in XML and iCal.

Tasks: Remember The Milk - its easy to use, can have multiple lists, and its details can be exported in a range of formats.

Word Processing: Writely - full featured, fast, easy to use. Also gives you the facility to email stuff to your id, that then become documents you can work on. Beautifully done.

IM: Meebo - one page for all. It supports AIM/ICQ, Jabber, Yahoo and MSN. Setup an account, loging once and get connected to all your IM networks at once, all cobbled together with a neat interface.

Blog/Wiki/Groupware: JotSpot - an all for one system offering blog, wiki pages, group calendars, file and photo storage, etc - all free for 5 users. Ideal for a small office environment.

And finally, the thing (for me) that holds it all together.

Portal: Netvibes - with the iCal and Gmail modules, a RememberTheMilk RSS feed and my Meebo page - One page that provides me a large chunk of information provided by the other sites. Easily customisable with your own feeds, news feeds, etc, etc

What else is needed?

Contacts: The one within GoogleMail is fine and dandy, but the detail you can assign to a contact is pretty flimsy but more than usable. I will be searching for something more substantial - maybe a CRM type system.

Spreadsheet: I haven't yet started testing spreadsheets - but I will be soon. I am concerned that with Mail, Calendar, WP and Spreadsheets all offered by Google - I will be tempted to keep them together but I am looking for functionality, presentation, ease of use and availability over "keeping it in the family".

Database: Its a bit of an odd thing really. What kind of database do you need? I dont have much of a need for a database these days (I use a spreadsheet for any little ones) so I'm not sure this something I will be able to investigate easily. But I'll try.

I will of course keep you updated with my progress, put some screenshots up as I review each product, etc

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[link]   Posted @ 09:10