Bodmacity

Woke up this morning absolutely shattered! I just could not get to sleep last night. I decided at around 1am to get up and make myself a mug of Horlicks. It must have worked because I eventually drifted off. Earlier I had popped the TV on and started to get engrossed in Jude(an excellent adaptation of a fine book) but took the sensible option and turned it off. 😉

So when the alarm tried to get me up this morning I was having none of it. In the end I silenced it by throwing it under my pillow. Eventually I raised my weary body though and after my daily ablutions I found I had literally 2 minutes to get to the station. I ran hell for leather the whole way and nearly killed myself doing it. Not because I almost got run over or impaled on some random garden furniture but because I thought I was going to have a heart-attack. I can’t remember the last time the old ticker my pounding so hard!!

This exertion brough on a spot of asthma so I sat there for half an hour weezing in the train carriage :-). I’m okay now though, a little shaguared and due for an earliy-ish night. I say early-ish because I am meeting up with Debs in Soho tonight. The restaurant is called Spiga. Haven’t been there before so I don’t know what it will be like but it has had some good reviews.

Catch youse later 🙂

I have just taken possession of a Samsung D600 mobile phone. My old A1000 is now defunct thanks to a cracked LCD screen. The damage was caused when I dropped it on the wooden floor in the lounge while capering about. They just don’t make ’em like they used to :-). I am pleased with this new phone, although it will take a while to get used to because of it’s diminutive size. The form factor makes using it a little fiddly. I expect this is purely because I am used to the brick-like proportions of the A1000.

The D600 has a sliding front cover which moves up to reveal the keyboard underneath. It glides in a silky smooth fashion and finishes with a satisfying “tchk”(I am easily pleased :-)) However, the major reason I chose the phone is for the 2.0 megapixel camera and the superb screen. Click on the image below for the full size version taken at the maximum 1152 x 864 ‘Mega’ setting. The French Market in Staines High Street

Kudos to Samsung for including a USB cable and PC software in the bundle. This makes transferring diverse types of media a breeze. You can also edit contact, imprt/export from Outlook/Outlook Express and perform various other functions. Another good addition to the bundle is a TV lead to enable photos to be shown on a normal television. I will be trying that out in the future.

Well the weekend away in Bath went very well. The predicted nasty weather didn’t materialize. At least not in our neck of the woods. Cornwall did get it pretty bad with reports of motorists stuck on Bodmin Moor in the snow.

Bath itself is a delight. As you approach the valley overlooking the city you are struck by the uniformity of the architecture. All houses are built from the same sandstone and are predominantly Georgian. It is not surprising to find out that Bath is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The main attraction here is the famous thermal spa in use since Roman times.

It was amazing to wander around the spa with the steam gently rising from the waters and to think of our ancestors coming here to socialise, do business and generally pamper themselves. Adjacent to the main bath is the sacred spa where pilgrims came to see the priests and offer gifts.

After walking around the baths and studying the many displays in the musem we took a drink in Sally Lunns which proclaims to be the oldest house in Bath, being erected in 14 -something!! We sat next to a Japanese couple who looked very worried when their toasted buns arrived. I must admit they were very big almost as big as a dinner plate. They really didn’t know what to do with them ;-). If you want to try and make one yourself, the recipe can be found here.

Later on we headed up to the Royal Crescent. Amy was very tired when we go up there. We didn’t realise before setting of that it is mostly up-hill, so that wasn’t a good idea in her pregnant state. The crescent itself consists of a semi-circle of Georgian houses that are perched on a hill overlooking the Botanical Gardens below. The houses seemed to be privately owned. I wonder how much one of those would cost?

The 360 has just been released in the US. Currently as I write this countless gamers will be marvelling at the excellent graphics and exclaiming over the enhanced sound. Or will they?

Looking at the "have your say" section of the BBC website it seems like a lot of people will be holding fire and waiting to see what will happen when Sony release their next generation console namely the PS3.

Many fans that want to buy the Xbox have stated that it is best to wait at least until after Christmas because at the moment fans are paying a premium to be the first to savour the new technology. I think that the "wait and see" policy is a good one as the console will most certainly become cheaper and more titles will be made available as time goes on. The most exciting times are yet to come, when developers get to grips with the new architecture and extend the games features beyond the veneer of glossier graphics.

I am just testing a new hosting provider, namely apisnetworks.com. I have installed in my shiny new webspace a php blogging system called Serendipity or s9y in it’s abbreviated form. My first impressions are very good. Installation was a breeze and so far it has been a solid bit of code.

My previous blog software was called pluggedout. Both are similar but s9y handles custom templates more elegantly(thanks to the use of the smarty php template engine).

Also it has a few more features, which is to be expected because there are a team of software developers developing it as opposed to just one developer in the case of the pluggedout system. Both are good and worth a look, but s9y has the edge at the moment.

I spent an hour last night working on a new skin for this blog. It is inspired by urban landscapes and fits the bodmacity name very well. Expect to see it some time in the new year.

I took a walk along the river this lunchtime. It’s like spring out there! The sky is blue and cloudless and it must be about 20º C. Here’s the proof that we do have good weather in England 🙂