Andy's Blog

Whilst the Sun is out and I am away from the Gym, to allow my wrist to recover from its recent battering at a Karate Tournament, I thought it would be remiss of me not to go for a pleasant stroll around the back of the Industrial Estate where I work.

Through an Industrial version of the wardrobe in the Narnia stories and you go from Industrial Estate, and all its pre-fabricated buildings, to nature at its wildest… or at least a British version of wildest where the most that will harm you are stinging nettles and thistles.

Listened to Alicia’s Attic as I casually strolled and put the iPhones camera through its paces, as can be seen below.

Stunning song from a group I’ve not heard of before, on an album I didn’t know I had and found after pressing a button on the iPhone I didn’t mean to.

Sometimes ‘Shuffle’ mode on the iPhone brings up some absolute pearlers, causing you to stop, appreciate and relate to your own personal moment, which is what all great music should do..

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Three days, two parties, one mother of all hangovers!

That’s it I have had my fill of Indian meals for the rest of this year, and after the Karate meal yesterday, I have had it with drink.. for at least the next day or two.. maybe.

One fairly valuable lesson learnt during the party last night; when having consumed several bottles of Cobra, don’t attempt to MSN people from your iPhone.  The co-ordination required to select the right people and send intelligible messages is severely impaired!

Three more days of work and one afternoon of giving an armful (practically) of blood is all that now seperates me from the festive cheer.

Now if you don’t mind, I have a keyboard which looks deceptively comfortable and inviting.  Zzzzz…

I am not sure if it’s either my mood attaching particular meanings to tracks, or the album just connecting with my particular mood; but whichever way it is I am finding that Nickelback’s “All The Right Reasons” is hitting all the right spots for me personally.

The last few weeks have been a bit up and down and, as suggested within previous posts, some realisations bringing a more ‘calm’ me; Why worry about something over which you have no control?

This album hasn’t been off my iPhone for a few weeks or more, usually at a ridiculously loud volume, and particular tracks ‘seeming’ to chart my mood at a particular time over those weeks.  These being, in chronological order;

• Far away
• Next contestant
• Photograph
• Animals

There is always a danger of reading too much into this selection and not understanding the context into which these fit… but, and I have to admit to not understanding the *actual* meaning behind some of the songs, I think, as most people do, I just keyed on a particular sentiment or verse and attached my own feeling to it and made it make sense to my own situation.

That said, my current mood music “Animals” is just a pure grin-like-an-idiot, wind the amp upto 11 and do the same on my new plaything;  A Kawasaki ZX-6R!

600cc’s of diablo black fun, with a top speed of 168mph, 0-60mph in less time than it takes to blink (or hit the back of the car in front) and me sat on it grinning inside the helmet to match the grinning demon’s face painted on the outside.  I am one VERY happy troozers!

So if you see me wandering around with the earphones in, you’ll know what I’m listening to, and if you don’t see me – I’m the screaming black demon that just whizzed by..

As has been previously mentioned on this blog I am an Internet Junkie, my ‘Geek’ credentials having been admitted to on many an occassion, and proudly too dammit!

Therefore, when my Internet connection is rudely yanked from underneath my feet, which seems to be the case again with O2 and it’s increasingly flakey 3G service, I start getting the DT’s.  So many things to see out there, what with my rejoining the facebook and MSN world again (thanks to what could only be called a viciously blunt pep talk from an unforgiving Glaswegian friend of mine), and me unable to participate!

The iPhone is good, with some limitations, but the O2 service seems not to quite live up to the device.  Time to shout at some Customer Services personnel methinks, and continue the ancient art of SMS’ing some friends whilst I wait for normal service to resume.

Now is the time for big decisions to be made, or maybe ever-so-slightly later due to waiting for the right time to broach the subject and people to be available for their views.

It certainly feels like I am running to stay stood still at the moment, so I have decided to fill up the iPhone with an esoteric mix of music and have a wander around the local park to try and get some perspective and clear the head.

“Shuffle” mode on the iPhone is an interesting beast at the best of times, flicking from Fleetwood Mac to Metallica and then onto early Genesis – try setting your mood to THAT mix!

Woke up a wee bit late this morning which meant that all spaces in the works multi-storey carpark were full, requiring me to find the overflow car park which I have never used before…. and it’s 10 minutes before work starts! Buggar!

Thank gawd for the herd instinct, just follow the car in front and hope he isn’t trying to find his way to Skegness. He wasn’t. Unfortunately where we did finally end up, the overflow car park, was a wee bit further than a 10 minute walk from the office. Double-Buggar!

However, the walk from car park to office in the bright crisp morning, listening to The Clash on my iPhone at full tilt was a rare pleasure. I think I may have to do that again!

Forecast for the day: Looking up!

Pop Quiz: What song was I listening to?

Quite why my friends are still surprised when I turn up with a new gadget is a bit of a mystery to me, you’d think after all these years (and all these gadgets) they would have learnt by now.

After thinking it a bit of a gimmick, plus already being in a contract with Vodafone, I have finally gotten myself an iPhone after O2 rather kindly offered to buy me out of my current contract. So I am now the proud owner of a 16Gb Apple iPhone 3G!

…and I have to say I am MORE than delighted and impressed with it.  Up till now I have been using a combination of other products to be the uber-chic man about town;  My Nokia 6500 Classic mobile phone (with Vodafone data tariff), Nokia n810 Internet Tablet for accessing the Internet, and an Apple iPod Nano 4Gb for music.  The iPhone now replaces all of these.

Now there is a bit of a wrench in dropping the Nokia n810 as this runs my Operating System of choice (Linux) and allows me to run a large number of Open Source products which I also use on my desktop PC at home (see my previous post here for more info).  However all these apps never really ‘fitted’ together in a seamless way, which the iPhone does.  Also, the need not to waste batteries (on both the mobile and n810) when bluetoothing between the two devices so I can 3G connect to the Internet is a bit of a bonus.

It’s not entirely a perfect device, but the advantages far outweigh the imperfections;

• Where’s cut-n-paste?  I would love to be able to snip bits of information out of websites or emails and post them in the notebook.
• When you minimise an app, it closes it (apart from the music)!  So when you are in the facebook app, and then decide to check your email, it disconnects you from any chats you were in
• iTunes!  *sigh* I have to run Windows to update my iPhone with music or install apps.

That all said, I am online now stalking friends on facebook whilst listening to some very early Genesis tracks – bliss!