Random musings of a Geek

Sold

Yup, I am finally getting myself a bigger and better abode in a nicer part of the village where I live. The house is a 3 bed detached and suitably nicer than my current 2 bed semi

All has gone fairly smoothly so far - we accepted a rather cheeky offer from our buyers and to balance things put in a cheeky offer ourselves, which basically meant that I sold and bought at a relative price based on what prices were in the peak a few years back.

This is the first time I have had to get a Home Improvement Pack, which is, in my opinion, a complete and total pointless rip off. Some bloke came and did a five minute ‘energy survey on my property and created a little booklet based on his (incorrect and somewhat random) findings. Our vendors have yet to look at this booklet, and we had some difficulty in requesting the HIP for the property we are buying. When we did receieve it finally it was the same pointless information that we really did not need to know. How the HELL this helps buyers making a choice to buy a house is beyond me.

If these HIPs had actually replaced surveys it would have made much more sense, but to just have a little energy survey in for around £300  is rather silly.

Anyway, it is a fast sale due to the people we are buying from being a company and demanding a 28 day timescale… so its all a tad stressful, but ultimately worth it

Well… another year has passed… and how fast it has gone too.

Im getting through a bottle of half decent wine (for a change) to commemorate the occasion before the more elaborate celebration this weekend.

My main pressie was my phone (yes I got it slightly early) see the below post, and im still having fun tinkering with it

Yay! Ive finally, after 8 years, managed to get round to investing in a new phone!

After some research, I opted for the LG Viewty, as it was a reasonable price (£136 with £20 ‘free’ credit from Tescos), was PAYG, and had all the features I was looking for.

Im personally not a huge user of mobile phones, thus the 8 years without upgrading, so I avoid contracts like the plague - as they are only of benefit for more intensive users.

I personally find deals like £35 a month for 18 months (a total of £630!) for a ‘free’ iPhone not that enticing. It seems a frikkin huge amount to pay out in the long term. On a PAYG Tesco tarrif when calling one of your five favourite numbers it costs 10p per minute which seems pretty reasonable to me.

So far, it seems to LG Viewty lives up to all the reviews I read… lets face it…. its basically a cheaper iPhone without the apple logo.

Its hard to know what to rave about feature wise cos im so out of touch but it has:

• Web surfing (ill probably not use it much due to cost… but… handy)
• 5MP camera (which seems ok quality so far)
• Video recording (not tried yet)
• MP3 /Radio Player
• Lots of Java apps/games available
• Connects directly to my PC via Bluetooth or USB (my old phone could only manage infrared!)
• Handwriting recognition for SMS/Email writing
• A full QWERTY keyboard mode for SMS/Email writing - GREAT!!!

I personally am loving the touch screen… its so much easier and faster to use than my old phone, and a damn site prettier too.

Now… I wonder if I can get a java ssh client on it

My only beefs so far is scrolling is a little tricky to get used to as the scrollbars are quite small (though you can use what they call the jog wheel), and ive been unsuccessful in unlocking it so far… but I shall persivere. If all fails Tesco will apparently do an unlock for free after 90 days of using their service…. or I can pay them £25 to do it whenever.

The geek inside of me says that ill find a way to unlock it myself or chew my arm off trying.

This has gotta be the most amusing LolCat ever

It kinda reminds me of a collegue who is addicted to coke (the drink!) actually…

So long, and thanks for all the (slightly pungent) fish.

Not that I know a great deal about American politics, but Im glad Obama got the ‘job’ over McCain and Palin… is it just me or does she seem really really scary? Anti gay, Anti Abortion… WTF?

As an atheist myself, im glad another religious nut didn’t get in to impede future scientific progress. Obama seems to be a nice modern forward thinking individual, which is just what the US needs as the <cough>’world leader’</cough>.

Lets face it, he can’t do much worse than Mr Bush…

Well, after years of gathering the willpower to start a blog i’ve finally done it!

So, for my first post I shall have a little rant about the media and how they seem to make every single situation 100 times worse than it has to be.

Take the current economic climate. Would people have been whipped up into such an anti spending lack-of-trust-of-banks frenzy if it wasn’t for the gentle guiding hand of the media? Would everyone have instantly wanted to pull their money out of Northern Rock if the media had not reported its ‘issues’?

I think not.

After all, it was only a few months ago it seems that we were all about to die of bird flu and the world was about to end… now we are being sunk into a bottomless pit of economic dispair because the media will do almost anything to get a good story. Sure there are issues afoot (primarily greedy bankers doing some rather silly lending) but in my humble opinion they have been made substancially worse by the media banging on about it.

Personally, I think it should be banned - stiring the public into a frenzy for no reason whatsoever bar getting a few extra coins in their coffers.