Just Me

 

 

So we drove to Cork this afternoon, yup Lucan to Cork on a friday afternoon, the journey can be best described as sauntering, we got checked into our hotel and headed out to try and meet up with a few people although we hadn’t let anyone know we would be about.

So it was about 8pm when we left the hotel. We walked around Cork from MacCurtain st. to “The thirsty Scholar” but no luck meeting any other campers. Ah well, I got to wander around Cork for the first time in over 20 years that I wasn’t there on business and I have to say there was a fantastic “vibe” about the city, maybe it was all the students on the street or the smell of fresh pizza dough in the air but it reminded me of the electricity that was in the air in the Temple bar of the late eighties and early nineties, before it was “improved”

On the way back to the hotel I snapped the picture above with the compact camera. I’m stunned that it even picked up the light but not as stunned as how steady my hand was for a long exposure, especially considering I have had one or two

I can’t wait to get out around this fantastic city with the 5200, I saw some gorgeous pictures just waiting to be taken.

All righty then, well welcome to the first of my weekly features, Wednesday is gadget day!

OK, so a while back I posted a list of gadgets and said that I would be following up with mini reviews of my own personel favourite gadgets, here’s the link to the post.

Anywho, that’s what I’m gonna be doing for the first few of these weekly posts. This week i’m kickin’ it all off with my HP ipaq 6515.

The 6515 is, actually I should say was (a new model has been released), marketed as a mobile communicator, now to be fair it does have a lot of mobile communications type features, but it is primarily a windows based PDA. So it does all the usual PDA type features…

Calendar, Address book, Tasklists, e-mail via sync with outlook or Exchange push, pocket word, pocket excel, adobe acrobat, Media Player (great for podcasts;) some games etc. So before we go any further it’s already a very handy device.

Lets go a little further, there is a camera and GPS receiver built in. The camera is a fairly run of the mill 1.2 mega pixel affair with similar quality to the majority of camera phones available so it’s only really usefull for the odd emergency snap.

The GPS receiver on the other hand is fantastic, it’s just a shame that Hewlett Packard don’t include Ireland when they promise maps for all major western european countries Although to be fair until fairly recently even google couldn’t get good maps for Ireand out of OSI, so lets not be to hard on HP. Anyway, my route planning requirements have been looked after fairly well by “Via Michelin” which draws from the same data as google maps.

Until recently that satisfied my GPS needs but as I’m getting more in to my photo walks I’m gonna need something that gives me a tracklog which is where Megolith comes in. While it won’t do route planning I can use screen shots from google earth as my maps more on that once testing has been completed

News just in thanks to Stalltheball.com it would appear that I should have a look at this new AA Navigator Software, it would appear from what’s been said here that it’s got some great maps for Ireland included.

Okay so I’ve covered the PDA, Camera and GPS. I haven’t mentioned the bluetooth capabilities, I use this for 2 things, firstly my “hands free” connection in the car and secondly I can share my Media Centre’s Internet connection with my PDA enabling me to use the mobile IE app to web surf from anywhere in the house or garden at home (even the smallest room, newspapers are so 20th century) yes, web browsing on a pda can be frustrating as it reformats the page you are looking at in order to make it fit on the 240×240 display, however with things like “news rivers” and “yomoblog” becoming more widespread It’s certainly becoming more useful and less frustrating almost daily.

The last feature of this unit to mention is the GSM phone with GPRS and EDGE connectivity. The GPRS is something I only use occasionally as I’m usually not to far away from a web connection of some sort that I can use to sync to or share. On the other hand if I was using more public transport then that’s a different story, I’m sure it would get more use to pass the time.

The mobile phone feature set is fairly basic it calls people, it receives inbound calls and it sends and recieves text messages, with one exception, the contacts list, it’s synced to your outlook address book so every contact you have is on your phone, if your using Exchange push then you have access to the entire domains contact list, what more could you want from a phone? Well reliability is the only concern I have on that front, now bear in mind I’m not a huge mobile phone user and if you are then I cannot recommend this unit as it has problems about once a month where it simply stops sending or receiving calls and a soft reset is the only way to resolve the problem. Big deal you might think but you’ll only know there’s a problem when you go to make a call, who knows how many calls you might have missed in the meantime.

As for the size/weight well it’s not one for the shirt pocket, jacket pocket yes. A better idea though is to get one of the many beltclip cases that are available, that’s where mine lives quite happily most of the time.

Now for some pictures

Ok the first Picture showsa you the front complete with mini keyboard, which works surprisingly well once you adjust to it. and the othe shows the rear of the unit in it’s case, nice of the case manufacturer to leave openings for the camera and speaker.

The left side of the unit showing (from left to right) it’s IR port, the Camera Shutter/memo recorder button and the volume slider.

The right hand side showing (left to Right) mini-SD card slot and the normal SD card slot, Stuffed with 2Gb card. [homer] mmmmmmmmm Storage [/homer]

And for our final shot some nudity

Just to give you a size comparison but also to show what 12 months of daily use and abuse has done to it. Answer very little apart from the fingerprints

Having lived in Ireland for so long, I don’t ever remember seeing as many Dragonflies as I have since the Job moved office in to Parkwest last year.

These aren’t your regular run of the mile Dragonflies either, some of them are freakishly large. like this one I snapped with the Camera phone this morning on my way into the office. Apologies for the image quality, now I know why photographers never go anywhere without a good camera

I mentioned in the previous post, that my self and Elly had gone for a photo walk this afternoon. Shot loads of pictures, in total something like 220 frames, granted we did delete about 60 on the first look through. Still if you don’t ty things how will you learn?

Anyways going for a stroll to clear our heads this afternoon was great, we talked and joked while we wandered and took it in turns with the camera. I think its time I finally admitted I just can’t take good traditional portrait pictures.

I say traditional because these 2 I really like…

Yea that’s my sweetie, she that seems to have no problem taking great portrait shots, just look at my picture on the top right, talk about making the most of your subject!

I seem more suited to “unusual” photography as you can see by this…

Anyway, that’s all the photo’s I’ll beposting until I get a gallery up on here.

I made some changes on the sidebar today, mostly the order, the excellent photo my sweetie took of me when we went for a Photo walk earlier and I’ve added a feed from my favourite online radio station.

So why do I like this more than other web radio? Simple, When you subscibe to these guys you can create your own stations by just telling what bands\artists\songs that you like and through the voodoo that is “the music genome project” they find tracks that are similar to it and use those for the station.

As the tracks play you can customise “your stations” further by giving a thumbs up or down to any track. This has helped me, since I started using it, to find some of the most unusual and pleasant new music I’ve heard in a long time. Bands such as Skalpel (Jazzy Groove Radio), Guttermouth and Gob (2 great punk revival bands on “Nerf Herder Radio”)

So give it a listen and see what you think yourself.

OK, so the new look is great and all that but there’s a feature here I love and if you read on I’ll tell ye all about it

Ok, so there’s a big red arrow on that picture of the page header, so check out what happens when you clik the buttons, go on you know you want to…

Fine, don’t then see if I care! Harump!

He he, that always gets em, the old reverse psychology

Ain’t ajax just the mutts wobblies

All those imges bar 2 arefrom my own photo gallery, some taken by myself some by my sweetie. I’ll post more details at some point.
And there’s more *cringe* Web 2.0 on the way, sorry I just hate buzzwords, always have done, this stuff is kinda cool though, I’m gonna be adding a “tag Cloud” in the not to distant future along the lines of Elly’s “Author cloud”

The other thing I want to add is a photo gallery with slide-show for a lot of photeeze I have already taken and the ones that I’m going to be taking.

Right so, my “about” page says I like my gadgets. Yet I haven’t said to much about them.

In truth time is a precious commodity and there are lots of things I would like to cover on this blog that I haven’t, as yet, had the time to. but thats a whole other post

Anyway, back on topic, I’m gonna include a list of my favourite gadgets and over the coming days/weeks I’ll post about each.

Hewlett Packard iPaq 6515
Media Centre PC
X-box 360
MP3 player
FujiFilm S5200 Digital Camera
This Blog
The mobile bloging gadget
Heart Monitor

There are lots more that I haven’t mentioned so bookmark this page, as I’ll be adding to the list and linking each gadget to the relevant post as I post them

A few days ago this story surfaced, of a badly punctuated sign at the side of the road, slow news day maybe but even still this guy seemed to think it was his right to criticise a sign-writer in another country and he even went so far as to say “I assume it was produced by a professional sign-writer who didn’t know his job.” The first thing I would say about that statement is “assumtions are the mother of all f*** up’s”

The second thing I would say is that what gives John Richards the right to criticise this mans work? does he not have the right to seek emplyment? Does he not have the right to make a mistake?

Thirdly, if his work is all so bad people will not hire this guy again. That is how a market economy works. Except now this guy will probobally not get any more sign-writing work because of all the negative publicity that you called down on him John Richards. Sleep well, while he and his family find another source of income to replace the one you robbed him of.

Fourthly, John Richards you are a Hypocrite. The following text is taken from the main page of your website…

“We are aware of the way the English language is evolving during use, and do not intend any direct criticism of those who have made the mistakes above.”

Your criticism was fairly direct John, shame on you.

I have in the past made fun of my own spelling and grammer and been irritated by the spelling and grammar Nazi that I am going to marry in the less than a year. To be fair, she does this when beside me or when my mistakes are noticed and I’m within earshot. Unlike John Richards who was so distressed by the lack of an apostophe that he used the worlds press to lash out internationally at an individual. Would his anger and frustration not have been better served by slating the education system that so obviously failed this man? probobally, but then “Malcontent frustrated with his lot in life lashes out at the Irish education system” wouldn’t have gotten quite so many column inches.

As someone who doesn’t have the best grammar (or spelling) in the world, I am regularly the butt of jokes amongst friends and to be fair I have to take some responsibility for my own actions, however when your teacher cannot explain the difference between how to use there and their, simply telling you to always use there (one of many examples from my education) because they can’t be bothered to do there job correctly I won’t take all the blame.

I think your goal is admirable John, I think your methods are self serving and you should really get down from your soap box for a look around the real world, there are far more inhumane things happening in this world today than bad punctuation.

Actually, just thinking about it and after seing this on your website “Due to the receipt of huge amounts of ’spam’ and virus emails, the address previously used for the submission of examples has been withdrawn. We will continue to update this site from time to time but we can no longer receive pictures due to our email address being clogged by unsolicited mail.” maybe you should stay on your soap box and respond to all spam mail correcting there grammar, who knows it might irritate and frustrate the spammers enough so they’ll stop, now that is something that could truly help mankind.

As part of my research I did come across this rather interesting page about the origins of punctuation, maybe mine ain’t that bad after all, just a little old fashioned or ahead of it’s time.

Oh and just before I sign off this post, no I didn’t spellcheck this, I have re read and corrected as many punctuation and spelling mistakes as I could see. So any that remain are not meant as a pun or some form of irony, they are the result of the Irish education systems failure to educate me.

Anywho, enough of the ranting, I think I’ll leave the last word on this to Twenty Major, the guy is wittier than I, so hopefully will cheer the few that have read this entire post.

Mixed emotions but what a race Felipe, I saw a spark of genius early in your Sauber days, your style then reminded me a little of a young Villeneuve (Gilles) maybe that’s what Ferrari saw as well but that style does not suit modern F1, so you have tempered that raw talent with a clear focus on the goal. I was in Nürburg when you had your first podium and today I watched you take your place on the world stage.

Don’t let anyone take anything from that victory, remember 3 things, first, you beat the class of the field, second, the title fight was in your mirrors for the whole race and third, you didn’t need half the front runners to drop out of the race, for you to win.

The real question is not if your next win will come but what seat you’ll be sitting in when it comes, Me I’m hoping it’s gonna be a Red one.

Congratulations on a fantastic drive and an inspired win.