The Woos of August.

I can't believe its been a number of months since I last had the opportunity to blog. I did have one underway but machine reset before I could post - think that was back in June sometime. Even my twitter activity gone down lots... Mainly due to the woo's or work though as been over busy. Same at home with a 21 months old.

Anyhow not much has happened really, as said been very busy. One change is that my MacBook bit the dust so now have a 2009 model 20" iMac. Quite nice, obviously 5" bigger screen. OK not portable but can leave that to the Dell laptop we have - combined with browser technology in my phone.

Not managed to do any personal development either which is a shame. Think I may have to download the latest iPhone development kit and give that another try.. did make a start on some stuff but never finished. Managed to get my Macbook drive out of system before sold for parts on ebay and bought a £5 external case to put it in. So that's sweet - means all that on there I can access...

But talking computers for a bit. I do think the iMac is sweet. Got my mini wireless keyboard, wireless mighty mouse, wireless net connection so only lead is that to the power. And they look sexy too. Think that's why my daughter is addicted to watching her night garden on there - get her youtube fix. Think I may have to use my ripit to put the dvd's on the hard drive instead of keep loading in the DVD's she has.. Save me the work :) of swapping disks .

One thing I am looking forward to, on a personal level, is that in 4 weeks I go on holiday. We're flying out to Majorca for a week with some friends coming along too. Be nice to get away from the UK as last year we didn't. Also doing a stay at hotel near Gatwick as early early flight (check in by 4am there) which is a change. Normally rushing down there at 3am in the morning.

Anyhow, lets get back to some techie stuff for a change. One thing I have changed in the past 4 or so months is I sold my GTX260 (loved that card) as I bought a ATI5770. Not quite a powerful I think that the 260 - but its DX11 so wanted to see what that was like. Not sure its much more for BFBC2 that playing but have seen some effects I believe that were not in there before. Also I can't remember if I had bought my Mamba mouse before last blog or after?

Means only upgrades I am considering in the coming months is a second graphics card (either 5750 or 5770 to crossfire) and possibly a bigger case. Would prefer another 5770 but all down to the cash situation. All really playing at moment is BC2 so no rush.. Do have a backlog of games I need to play though.

So to make sure its techie here is breakdown of systems in house (current used systems and not any of old ones like Amiga, P133 notebook, etc)..

Dell i3 notebook. Think its 2.4ghz?

iMac 20" 2.66Ghz C2D

My baby now : i7 920 running 3Ghz (not overclocked much) with H20 cooler. 6Ghz ripjaw memory, XFX 5770, X-Fi fatal1ty, 1TB WD Black, usual dvd all in Antec 900 with a 700w PSU. Razer Tarantula keyboard with Mamba mouse and a HP 2475W monitor.

Both PC's running Windows7 with desktop also having ubuntu on it. iMac running Snow Leopard.

That's it, a snapshot in time of my current system setup. Think, years to come people can see what systems we were using hehe. That is also a unique or Youtube. I am not sure how long they retain video and accounts if not used but in theory people who do videos and die will be immortal on youtube - some are being so now.. The footprint that we leave now certainly is much bigger now that it was before.

Anyhow, think its time to stop the babble and go to a meeting.

So what have I been doing over the past week? Well on occation I have been doing some iPhone development - well learning iPhone development. Its slow going purely to having minimum amounts of time free. But such is the way. And few other things to try and recatch up on too.

Just wandering how comes using this interface for blogging. I do microblog on twitter under netroman user name. I also have some sort of journal program I bought as part of package from MacHeist. Excellent software and good for journal from my Macbook - however not played much with (as same with other bits I bought including a webpage program).

Quite funny as I'm no Apple fanboy or PC fanboy. I don't mind using Windows (though prefer Linux). I do enjoy using my Macbook also. I think they are both excellent to use - my desktop PC is most powerful being i7 and my wifes laptop is also more powerful that my Macbook as that is i3 (macbook is c2d 2.2Ghz). But it wizzes along nice and quick.

Anyhow, moving away from what was saying about starting some iPhone stuff. Nothing major at moment, just put button on screen that changes label but giving me the fundimentals on doing such stuff. Its amazingly different to say PC/Unix development though at the same time quite similar in that you can recognise certain things.

How comes when a techie writes a blog it starts to get techie hehe. What I need to do is re-create my old original webpage but with new features. To be honest I am not sure I have backup now as when I moved 4 years ago I threw out loads of old backup CD's. Just thinking that its probable that my old webpage was on there. Even containing the last ever webcam image captured of me when I was still living in Bournemouth back in 1999. I used to have software that would capture image and upload every timed amount of time.

O yes, those were the days. Would be nice to find that - plus all the other pics I had on there from 90's and early 00's. Anyhow, have to do a quick end again as time is limited. May have to revisit another blog in bit. Why I use twitter more :-)

Few weeks since last blog

So its been a number of weeks since last got to blog. And to be honest I am only going to get time to do a short one today also. Lots things going on including things such as my iPhone development and also finding out about these freebie sites for things such as macbooks etc.

People seem to be selling the info on ebay and the like? signed up too.. got my link which is http://apple.freebiejeebies.co.uk/239724 So for any of you people out there wanting to help me get a free macbook I would appreciate it :-)

Anyhow, when I get more info on iPhone development then I will add these. But in mean time can help guy get better computer for it hehe.

Ah, been almost 2 weeks since last update. Just goes to show that been too busy to rant and rave. I am fairly happy this week apart from issues with my PC upgrade.

So last week I decided if I sold motherboard, CPU, etc that could get newer i7 920. Anyhow, sold and ordered parts. However, here is first issue. Motherboard I ordered from aria was out of stock, however I was not told that. when I went to look for it for some specs on website it had vanished. No email saying out of stock etc..

In end I phoned up, ordered a different more expensive one. Here goes my second problem. Original board I ordered was brilliant and cheaper. New board, although brilliant too and with USB3 it only has 1 PCI slot. So, this is required for soundcard, however I was using 2 slots because I had an excellent PCI wireless network card.

So, plug in old netgear USB adaptor and no Win7 drivers. Ordered a new one... more cost. However, much better as dual frequency. Anyhow, so now I got my I7, motherboard, 6Gb memory. Cooler wanted, out of stock.. Arg.. However, again little bit more cash and got an excellent on. PSU not powerful enough, arg. New PSU. So basically quite expensive, but upgrade once every 2 years so... GFX cards still good for todays games - unless want DX11???

Anyhow, spur of the moment upgrade done, PC running smooth. Top notch parts. I love my system, got my nice IPS 24" montitor, my nice GTX260XXX and now i7 with 6Gb all with Win7 Pro. Nice to game on, along with vid and picture edits of course. Far too powerful just to Facebook :-)

There is something else that gets me - Facebook, or rather that type of site as not picking on jst one. I remember the day where we all used to play outside and just used to chat with kids round our area. When one of friends moved to USA it made it almost impossible to keep in contact, well we couldn't afford airmail. These days, Facebook, email, skype - webchat.

But just modern day technology at work...

Technology with our kids and the future

Not so much a rant but some more thoughts I had while walking around. Basically came from a meeting I had today when I had to write on the white board, followed by reading a random tweet where someone has had a training day on those electronic boards now.

Was thinking back to when in school and teachers used to write on chalk boards. Then this new technology of white boards came out. I remember some of the rooms got it.. Now of course its all going electronic? but its not just that...

I was wandering, can you imagine in 30 years time say our kids saying to there kids "I remember when you only had 150 TV channels 24/7 and had to attach your console to the TV". Where as we (or at least I would say) I remember when we only had 3 TV channels that used to finish for the day around midnight, and TV consoles there were in black and white and had a paddle for controller. I mean, we had black and white TV up till age or 12...

MP3 players. Now there is some excellent technology (jeez I even own an iPhone though prefer my music on my player). I mean, imagine showing you children (or grand children) your old walkman. Even a CD walkman. I remember taking my CD walkman to the gym years ago.. These days I got my 1000 sounds on a clip player? Go figure. And my main player I can fit most of my entire CD collection on???

Electronic downloads is another. CD's, films, games. Now I have to admit I have not done any music or films (like my music and films on a CD/DVD). But using Steam I have purchased a few games now. All you need is that code off the paper OR even purchase through them.. Some great deals - I just got Empire Total War for like £6.80???

And there you go. Technology peak, the Internet. Imagine; again in 30 years your kids saying to theirs "I remember when you had to sit in front of a TV to watch it". And there it is... The greatest technology achievement in the last 50 years...

Feb 1st so already 1/12 into year

Pretty obvious that title comment really - 12 months in year, on down etc.. But there you go, wanted to state the obvious because sometimes need to as some people keep asking silly questions?

I'm at a point now where I have been putting down the pro's and con's about being one of the current few to jump into the iPad. Not even sure if available to buy yet in UK? But loving my iPhone and so seriously thinking of getting one. However, there is a limit on what I am willing to pay. I see that entry level in US is $499 so I am not willing to pay £499 if that is price they introduce here?

I believe no more that £300 is acceptable as to be honest its only really got functionality of my iPhone. Just means I would not have to carry my MacBook upstairs or go on my desktop PC? Not sure on ibooks though as can't see me reading lots. I like the tactile feel of pages myself, the smell of a book - both new and old.

Moving on from that. Started with it being February. Now this is good because we are moving through the year towards months like April/May. I like these months as these are the first months I think of when thinking "I can go down to the coast". No there is nothing stopping me from going to the coast during winter months; and through my single years I used to. But these days its more about young daughter on the beach that going into bars.

This would not be an issue back in the days when I used to live down near the sea; but work ruled that one. What would be nice is to write a killer iPhone or similar app :-) Maybe I should blog about these things - getting into iPhone development - if could prize MacBook out of wife's hands...

Twitter, Wiki, Facebook. I use these on on mostly a daily basis. Are these a change in the revolution of the internet? I started using the internet back in 1994, creating my first webpage back then. This was while at University. Now I remember editing that HTML in my text editor, getting a picture on the page. All good fun stuff. Now, moving on from there - these days we can have social network sites where we can share photo's, thoughts, and never have to worry about trying to code these.

I miss my personal created website. I miss all the images I had on there (there are missing, presumed dead on the internet somewhere). Maybe some day they will come to light on some backup server somewhere.

And the internet, sorry another random thought. I was watching Survivors the other day (its a UK series where most of world - or least UK wiped out by virus). Now with automated servers, etc, you would think that the web would still be alive but none ever look for this info while roaming around. A part of it should always survive as is there any way to turn this off??

Random thoughts over. Time to get back to the reality of life and work.

Technology moves so fast these days. I remember back in about 2002/2003 I was working for Vodafone. They had an idea, that the future was one device for all. so one device you would use as a phone, but also a PDA type device, but also things like browse internet. I remember the video they had of some guy at Newbury trainstation with headphones into his PDA whilst looking up a map..

Well as I do all this on my iPhone (and my previous HTC) I can say that they kind of got it right. Technology moves at a fast rate these days and soon we'll have even more integration.

Start of random thoughts...

I thought to myself "I need a place to shove down my random thoughts" mainly because places like Twitter is limited to just a few hundred characters. Thoughts that come into my head really do have more content than that so this left me hunting for my first real blog...

Funny really, I've been using the web for 15 and half years now - September 2010 will be 16 years. That is some time looking at webpages. In the early days, I would say up to about 3-4 years ago, I used to have a webpage. A webpage I used to code by hand (I was brought up with having to type out your HTML) and had thoughts, images (lots of images) etc.. Funny thing is, lost all that content years ago when I last had an account with free webspace.

So now its images on facebook, yada yada yada. Sorry, i'm going off on one again - though that is partly why thought I would start to blog???

Yea, in those hay days, used to have random thoughts, had some tutorials on C/C++ coding, lots of pictures and thoughts. Lots of thoughts. I mean, things that go on in my head..

For example, about 10-11 years ago (before I moved from the coast to my current county location) I was chatting with a friend. We were talking about time travel in a more serious conceptional way... Things like is it possible, if so would you be able to do it in 100 years, etc.

Now my thoughts were like this. Current we thing of mapping time in 4th dimension. So to be able to map say time travel you would need to map an item in this dimension. However, this would mean you would only be able to map something for the life it has existed. So for example a tree that has existed for 2000 years then map this is ok for that time. However, something like say a watch may only be 10 years old.

Also this would mean that the time machine itself would only be able to go back for the life time it has been created? Now, possible ways around this maybe things like projecting a field from the object (such as a rock) around the machine sort of sharing its lifetime?

Now I can't see us having technology this advanced in 100 years but that said, who knows with how fast we are progressing technology wise?

See, this is what I mean by random thoughts. Started with hello and ending with time travel concepts hehe.