Gadgets, Web Design, Punk Rock & Jesus

I’ve had 3.5 days in Barcelona at Mobile World Congress (MWC) reporting for PocketGPSWorld and Wired4iPhone. It was great but owing to easyJet’s failure to get my boss over there from Gatwick I was rather busy! Needless to say I’m knackered and my calves are killing me… It’s been less than 12 months since I covered CeBIT for PocketGPSWorld but my mind had clearly removed from it’s memory how much hard work these things are! We have, in the past, been accused of ’swanning about wasting company money’ by some slightly deranged forum users – I really do wish it WAS as simple as gliding around like a swan!

But anyway, short blog as I’m tired…! Have a good weekend!

I’ve been brought up to use Windows. Well, technically I started with a Tandy TRS-80, moved up to a ZX-81, Spectrum 48, Spectrum 128 +2, Sega Master System, SNES and THEN a Windows PC (95, 98, Me, XP, 7)… None of that is relevant but may get some old geeks reminiscing a bit!

Basically, in my proper computing years I’ve generally been a Windows user and had no major issues with it. I wasn’t OS-ist (I even have friends who are black, erm…, I mean who are Mac users) I just used Windows.

At the end of 2008 one of my bosses gave me his MacBook Pro (see here for proof: “…5 years later I’m on my third MacBook, one has been passed on to a colleague…”) as my Windows laptop was ageing rather badly. OK, I pestered quite a bit too to see what all the fuss was about Macs!! Read more

On Saturday I called to a Tesco Local while Mrs-MaFt and Mini-Mrs-MaFt were at dancing class. We didn’t need much -  just a newspaper, some cat food and some sweets for the kids. When I got to the till the till operator – hang on… till OPERATOR?! Glorified name or what?! How hard is it to ‘operate’ a till?! Scan – Beep – Scan – Beep – Card – PIN – Kerching! Anyway, I digress, the ‘valued Tesco employee’ then asked if I was “stocking up for tonight’s snow”. Hang on, I was buying a newspaper, some cat food and some sweets – just one of each item. This is NOT stocking up! To me, stocking up implies buying a lot of each item, not just one!

More to the point, do I actually LOOK like someone who lives off of cat food and sweets?

There’s one thing that I hate more than anything else. Well, actually there are loads of things that I hate but for the sake of a simplified blog post there’s just the one!

What is it that gets me wound up so much?! You may be able to guess from the title and, no, it’s not Rhianna (although chart music does feature in my full list) it’s people who insist on wearing umbrellas at the slightest drop of rain. Come on, we live in England, we should be used to a bit of rain; a lot of rain perhaps. Your hair and clothes will dry and God was clever enough to make your skin waterproof.

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Since my iPhone was stolen at the recent Green Day gig in Sheffield I thought I should actually use the T-Mobile G2 Touch (HTC Hero) I was given back in August. Up until last week I had only used it at home, on WiFI, to check email, play with the browser and grab some freebies from Android Market. You can’t really test a phone like that so, after sticking in my replacement O2 SIM, I thought I’d actually use it as my main phone for a bit.

Sadly the phone was locked to the T-Mobile network… So that scuppered my plans until I came across a link at the XDA Developers forum to Unlock Now, a site dedicated to unlocking Smart Phones. It was reasonably priced and within 20 minutes of placing my order I had the SIM Unlock code waiting in my inbox. Needless to say it worked (they buy the codes direct from HTC) and it is now an O2 G2 Touch! Read more

I would dearly love to show you some video from Monday’s Green Day gig at Sheffield Arena however my iPhone was stolen and was last ’seen’ in Liverpool, near Kensington Gardens…

On Sunday night my car was broken into as well. Nothing was taken but it did mean I had to pay for a replacement window and the hassle involved.

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Music has played a massive part in my life – since I was first introduced to Metallica and Megadeth by my older brother, Nat, I have bought and listened to countless albums. While I was at uni I built up an awesome punk-rock vinyl collection but in a possibly silly move I sold it all a few years back when we were seriously strapped for cash. However, I kept my CD’s and, although occasionally sell a few that no longer get listened to, I still have just short of 900 physical CD’s in my possession. There are clearly storage issues here – while it’s not a huge collection, it certainly isn’t small… Read more

Those who follow me on Twitter will already be aware of my antics this past Saturday afternoon. Me and Mini-MaFt went geocaching – now if you don’t know what it is then check out the geocaching website but, put simply, it is a GPS/SatNav-based treasure hunt. You get a set of coordinates from the website along with a title and a clue and you have to find the ‘treasure’. Groundspeak, the company behind the geocaching website, recently released an iPhone app which links to the geocaching website allowing you to find local caches, see the hints and read other peoples reports on how they got on.

Armed with my iPhone, a couple of goodies (you can leave items for other geocachers in some of the larger caches or do swaps for items already in the box) and a thick coat (it was blowing a gale, but at least the rain had stopped); me and Mini-MaFt headed out across the field towards our local alpacca farm for our first ever cache. Read more

I got an email today from the wonderful CCL Computers (that sounds more sarcastic than it actually is – they are a great company!) as a hard drive I bought from them failed during it’s warranty period. The drive turned out to be discontinued and so I was asked to find a suitable replacement around a similar price, which I did, and replied to their email.

This morning I had this in my inbox:

Hello MaFt

Thank you for your reply.

Your order xxxxxxxxx has now been amended for the HDD0133. All been well will be despatched this evening for delivery on Monday/Tuesday of next week.  Could you please ensure that they will be someone their too accept and sign for the goods.

If you require any further help or assistance please do not hesitate too contact us back by return of mail.

Kind Regards
::name removed::
CCL Returns Department.

There are, technically, no spelling mistakes in there; so well done in that sense! However, I count 5 grammatical errors where the wrong word has been used. For someone speaking on behalf of a big company you’d think they would at least try and give a good impression!

I honestly wouldn’t normally nit-pick to this degree but 5 errors in such a short email did make me laugh!

Remember a while ago I mentioned my Uncle Bli’s animation ‘Highly Overated’? Well, it has now been accepted into the Bradford Animation Festival – well done that man!

See it’s entry here: http://www.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk/baf/Film_Detail.asp?filmid=8648