It’s been a while! I did get the BlackBerry Bold 9000 on the 2nd of January. I had one hell of a wait in the T-Mobile store! There was a different set of staff to the last time I went in and as we soon discovered everyone had been told to come back on Friday 2nd January for their upgrade… I felt so sorry for the staff they were clearly shattered. Words really cannot describe how much I love this thing. I’m a total BlackBerry fan anyway, but the Bold is just awesome. Everything about it is lush. You really have to see the screen on these things to believe it. I keep loading the same pictures on both the Bold and the iPod and the difference is staggering. They’ve also fixed the issue with the memory filling up and just wiping all your texts with no warning. Now you can set it to free up memory in the background (the dreaded ninja wipe) or just let it warn you. Soooo much better. Took a while to get used to the full QWERTY, but I’m there now. It’s bliss having WiFi and GPS on a phone too. They’re two things I’ve not had before because I kept hold of the BlackBerry Pearl 8100g instead of upgrading for a few years.

I’ve stuck a fair few apps on it already. Actually managed to get TwitterBerry and BerryStore to run which was nice. Would love a decent IRC client for it, but as I have the iPod Touch with me all the time anyway it’s no biggie. A lot of people have moaned about the poor battery life of the Bold compared to other BlackBerry devices, but once you get the latest firmware and manage your power settings it’s actually pretty good. I can get about 8 days out of it with WiFi/BlueTooth/3G only switched on when I need them. Admittedly I never make phone calls, rarely receive phone calls and haven’t been texting so much lately, but it does a fair amount of e-mail receiving. I also put it in bedside mode every night. Compare this with the iPod Touch which needs charging every 2 days or so even when it spends most of the day powered off! The thought of having to charge a phone every day horrifies me.

Well I wasn’t very good at writing more often, I spent too much time thinking “oh I would write about that, but maybe I should wait until something else happens” as if my life is exciting… These were the dying moments of 2008.

After NXE killed my 360s GPU I sent it off to Germany to be fixed and actually got the same one back! Shame they managed to leave black scuff marks all over the front It was pristine when I sent it out. Grrrr. Might be time to stick a decal on that now like the Wii I guess. Sadly Microsoft are completely mental and not only did they not inform me the 360 was fixed and being sent back until 2 days after I’d received it, but now they keep e-mailing me to remind me that they haven’t received my 360 for repair yet… Mad. Well NXE doesn’t seem to have broken it yet, even though it now looks like total arse through HDMI. At least I can play stuff. Bought myself Rock Band 2 to cheer myself up. Loving it so far, kind of liking the way you can mix & match levels, though the OCD side of me doesn’t know how to cope with not working through it on Easy then Medium then Hard then Expert. Songs are great though.

Since I started writing this entry I’ve actually played through most of Rock Band 2 (I’ve joined the Rolling Stone Rock Immortals List). Been gold starring quite a few songs on bass which I’ve never really tried before. That probably makes me happier than it should

Really need to buy a 120Gb HDD for the 360 (don’t be silly I’m not buying the Microsoft one!) then I can stick a few more games on the HDD and transfer the Rock Band songs to Rock Band 2. 20Gb was fine at the time, but now it’s a little puny. Kna‘s gone through the process and the world didn’t end so it’s time for me to give it a try.

I bought myself the 8Gb iPod Touch on Black Friday, I also used QuidCo so got quite a nice saving and cashback combination going on. I love it to pieces. A bit weird getting used to having so little space (it replaced an 80Gb iPod Video) but the coolness factor makes up for that. Only real gripe I have with it is that a lot of the apps are made for the iPhone and so try and work out your location using GPS on startup… the Touch doesn’t have GPS so it gets quite annoying. I’d like to be able to enter somewhere in the settings to say where I am or something. I’ve filled the poor thing with free apps too. Gradually working out which ones I can get rid of and which ones are keepers. Oh yeah and thanks a lot Apple for changing the Touch 2G (and iPhone) to use USB only for charging and not the usual hybrid of firewire and USB, now none of my old docks will charge the Touch – baaaaah!

My laptop died the other day (12″ G4 PowerBook), it’s been good to me for years but now refuses to charge. I will take it apart and have a nose about but I need a new one. I can’t afford another laptop let alone another Apple one so I’m looking at netbooks. Ultimately I really want the black Samsung NC10. It’s lovely. It’s also still over £300. Which sucks There is the Acer One with Linpus for £180 but it doesn’t come in black and it only has a tiny weeny 3hr battery (8hrs for the NC10). However, I could get the Acer + 9cell battery + decal for over £100 less than the NC10. Which is quite tempting. Baaah if I had a job right now I’d get the Acer without even thinking and get the NC10 as well when the price comes down a bit (probably in March when the MkII and the NC12 get released). Not sure I can survive with no laptop for that long though…

Finally going to get my new phone on Friday too. Upgrading my BlackBerry Pearl 8100g to a Bold 9000. Tried to upgrade a couple of weeks ago but was told it would be £250 to upgrade, or free if I waited until Friday 2nd January… errrr, I’ll wait please! I think my phone knows it’s being replaced though as it’s started wiping my text messages even when the memory doesn’t look full. There are at least 3 messages that I’ll never receive as they tipped it over the edge in the last week. So damn annoying!

using my newly fixed n800 again. Oh friend how I missed thee!

I am now officially a Jo of the minted variety. Money cleared yesterday apparently. Just moved a stash of it into savings… gonna be earning about £80 a month in interest. Wheeeee!!!!

The amount of money in my savings account is currently at AWESOME. I bet I spend it all on booze and gadgets. Go me!

I’m on a total high from this right now, but I know soon I’ll remember I had 3 hours sleep last night and I really shouldn’t be awake… let alone going to see my favourite cousin off, she’s moving to Australia-land forever and then going back out drinking again straight after…. ow! Ow!!

R.I.P. DeathCopter

OK, I really couldn’t think of a good title.

The Wii arrived at about 20:00 last night. I was shocked! GoGo Amazon.

Spent a while setting it up, downloading the updates, linking my Nintendo account (grrr for forgetting which e-mail account I’d used waaay back when I got a GameCube).

Only now do I realise TVersity doesn’t work with the Wii yet. Bugger. Oh well, looks like they are planning to get it working. If not I’ll just have to make use of the drops in Xbox 360 prices.

So… now that I have lots more time to sit around my house and mope (if you hadn’t heard, yeah he dumped me again. Once more with no real reason other than he’s bored. AND once again on the same weekend of the year. Nice.) I figured I need something to take my mind off things.

I can’t go out, cos Reading sucks. All I ever hear is how great Chris is, well he didn’t treat me too well, so pardon me if I don’t worship him like everyone else.

I finally bought myself a Wii. Annoyingly I know I am still going to want the black one that plays DVDs… so this one may get sold in the Summer, but hey, I’ll still use it for now.

The next item on my list is a NAS box. I have a spare 400GB drive. I’m planning on setting that up with rips of allllll my DVDs, then mapping a drive to it from my media server and having allllll of my media available on my media player in my room. I also heard that the Wii works with TVersity… which is handy cos I have that on my media server too. Looks like I can start watching all my stuff on my living room TV too. Yay!

…the lot of ya ;op

OK, not all of you are to blame… but you probably would have been given the chance.

I asked people to talk me out of buying the Nokia 770 Internet tablet (no it’s not a phone before you say “didn’t you just get a Blackberry Pearl?”). So anyway, after an entire day of “oh just buy it” and “go on, you know you want to” at work and on IRC/e-mail/MSN…….. I’ve now ordered the bloody Nokia N800. I only went to the Nokia UK shop to have a look at it, and the entire page was filled up with a big picture of the N800 with a big green BUY IT button.

I am weak.

I’d been trying to justify it. Cool though it is. Couldn’t I really have just got a cheap PDA & stuck linux on it? Well yeah I could, but when I saw what was on offer at Maemo I was gobsmacked. I am planning to have some fun with this. Possibly changing my contract with t-mobile soon anyway, so I may see if I can jiggle things about a bit so I can easily afford the £10 a month for the unlimited (up to 30GB a month… mental no?) wifi access thingy. We have 2 Starbucks in Reading now. Shame one isn’t nearer my office. Then there’s the Turtle and its wifi. I may have to start socialising just to get the most out of this thing!

It’s fuckin’ sweet as though :oD

Xmas was poo as usual. But then when the family is forced to be together it’s bound to kick off I s’pose. Xmas Day went OK, but Boxing Day was just one big argument.

For Christmas Eve we went to the Rising… big mistake. I really don’t ever want to go back there until they get a proper full-time landlord. One that actually gives a shit. Why oh why did they piss about with Ollie & Danny. They were the best landlords that place had in years… Anyhoo, This time they were serving Coke from big store-bought bottles so they were flat & disgusting (I hate coke, but watered down pub Pepsi is OK), so then I went for Smirnoff Black Ice which tasted a bit odd, so I checked the best before date… best before AUGUST 06!!! Alcohol takes ages to go off, they must have had those bottle for years! When it was taken back to the bar they got another from out back & said “August 06? Is that OK?” No it’s not OK, you could get closed down you fuck-heads! You have no idea how tempting it is to report them for selling out of date beverages (it was clear all of the bottles were out of date & that they had no intention of disposing of them) and the state of the ladies loos and watch the place get shut down… Oh yeah & I forgot the laughable bit… they charged people £2 to get in. There were about 10 people in there FFS! Luckily we got in before that started happening. There is no way in hell I’d have paid for that.

So anyway, gifts. This year I got:

Rent paid for December | Bird Table | Bird Feeder | Air Plant | Zoundz | USB Cells (basically USB AA batteries) | a big fluffy (toy) rabbit called Horatio | lots of chocolate | a Baking Tray | QI General Ignorance book | PhD book? | Gloomy Bear slippers | Vanimal Zoo Human Gass figure | Invader Zim/Gir talking figure | a fluffy hat | Very Intelligent Pocket

For myself, I got a new mobile phone. I hadn’t upgraded in 2 years and I really wanted a wifi phone. I spent ages looking around, but t-mobile just doesn’t have the best range of phones. The only 2 wifi ones in my upgrade price range either didn’t have a camera (yeah I hated camera phones at first, but now I’d be lost without one. I use it for all sorts of things where I would once have written stuff down) or didn’t have vibrating alert (nothing dodgy ;op but if I didn’t have this I would never answer my phone or know I had messages. At loud gigs it is invaluable). So I’ve given up on a wifi phone for now (praying that the N93 or better is available for my upgrade next year). I settled on the BlackBerry Pearl (8100g). I know lots of people hate blackberries, but this one was the same size as my current phone so not too bulky, but still with a large screen (I hate small phones, I’d lose them). I ordered on-line on the Thursday, heard nothing at all, not even a confirmation so then I queried it with CS on the Friday & it was dispatched immediately & turned up on the Saturday. Woo!… except it didn’t work :o( The phone itself was OK, although it kept hanging whenever I did anything. The camera on the other hand was completely DOA. Every picture came out bright pink and green. I uploaded an example. Clearly a hardware error. So I e-mailed CS again & got told no-one would be able to answer my query until Monday at 08:00. *sigh* I waited until Monday & at 10:30 gave up and phoned t-mobile. I was told I could either get it fixed, or send it back & get a refund. There was no way I wanted it fixed. I’d ordered a new phone, not a refurbished one. So I e-mailed off an RMA form. Waited 3 days (damn Christmas post!) for a pre-paid SD bag to arrive and sent it back. I’d been told it would be 5 days (not working days) from them receiving my returned phone to being able to re-upgrade. So I swapped my Christmas leave with a colleague so that I would be in Reading on the 5th day, ready to go into the t-mobile shop this time & re-upgrade. After hanging around in the shop for an hour & a half I finally got my upgrade, free this time, and the camera works! It’s great, I really like the numberpad and shockingly I’m actually using SureType & not multi-tap. I’m not as fast at SureType as I am multi-tap yet, but I’m getting there. SureType beats T9 into a bloody pulp so far imo. I didn’t want to scratch my new little beauty so I bought a skin for it, shame the black one isn’t out til January. It currently looks like it’s wearing a pink condom. Poor thing. It has a nice little 2GB micro-SD inside though :oD

As I am now ill with festive germs, I will no doubt be spending NYE at home. I’ve gone through the pain of the sore-throat and the general acheyness, but now I am a snot factory. I have to go back to work on Tuesday too. That’s too soon!!

OK, I’ve been slack again. It seems whenever I actually do anything, I don’t have time to write in a blog. It isn’t ironic, it’s annoying.

Sooo… my iPod turned up I love it! I love it! I LOVE IT! Time on the Hexercyle flies by now I can listen to random stuff on full blast.

Gogol Bordello was AWESOME. We missed Disco Ensemble, but Danko Jones & Bedouin Soundclash were pretty good too. My feet were killing me as I’d been standing up in silly shoes for what seemed like hours (well, it was hours). Met quack from the bit forums :o) Sadly because Chris refuses to believe me when I say we need to go, we missed the last train back to Wokingham from Waterloo and had to go via Paddington and get a taxi back to mine from Reading. Gah! I also got called a “fucking Cossack” in Stockwell tube station by an Australian… not everyday that happens…

After much bitching around with Solio, I finally found out they’d had problems with their payment system. Which is apparently why they thought they’d shipped it to me in September when in fact they’d just taken my money & not sent me anything or any e-mails… When they deleted my last e-mail without it being read I sent them the snotty e-mail saying I would never buy from them again. Then I got an apology & a refund. Woo! So, because no-one else makes anything as cool as a Solio, I bought a black (I wanted hot pink) Solio from the Apple store. It got delivered the same day & I am now the proud owner of a solar charger that is carbon neutral & fucking rocks. I currently only have the iPod charger tip (cos I got it from Apple), so now I’ve put all the tips I want on my WishList just hoping I get them for Xmas.

Talking of my WishList, I finally got around to sorting it out a bit. I’ve added lightbox to it, makes it slightly more interesting than just a list of links. I’ve embedded all the lighbox stuff into the main xoops templates so I’ll probably use it in more of the modules now.

I also got the Ross Noble Randomist DVD delivered last week. Oh… My… God! It’s almost 10 hours long. TEN HOURS! It’s pretty awesome. The Mighty Boosh Live DVD comes out on Monday too. I have soooo much stuff to watch :oD

I just re-entered that world of maniacally refreshing the Apple order status page. I finally gave in & ordered myself an iPod Video 80GB in black. Yum! The Apple store have come through for me yet again, the iPod itself had a build time of only 4 days, but being a dumbarse I forget to check the time for the case. 1-2 weeks :o( It was therefore due to arrive on the 14th of November. Then handily the case I’d ordered turned out to be discontinued. So they e-mailed me to apologise, say that they did not have a direct replacement so they’ve amended my order and that the new expected delivery date is November 7th. Whee! THEN I get home & find new glorious e-mails saying it’s actually been dispatched already and is on a UPS van in the UK, due to arrive on or before THIS FRIDAY! Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!

I am slightly excited by this.

BTW if anyone replies to this with “eeeew iPods” or “eeeew Apple” I’m just gonna delete the comments so don’t bother ;o) I’m already a very happy iPod 1st gen (old skool baby), iMac & PowerBook owner thanks.

AND… Saturday is the Gogol Bordello gig! Will the excitement never end.