There’s an app for everything!

11 days into the new year and the resolutions are still holding well, even the snow and subzero temperatures haven’t stopped me from going for runs.

The start of the new year also signaled the end of my current mobile phone contract so after much deliberation between the Palm Pre the iPhone or the latest Blackberry I followed the crowd and went for the iPhone. I wanted to stay with O2 (who have been exceptional) so couldn’t add the Nokia N900 to my wish list.

I did a lot of research this time around, unlike last time where I ended up with a Nokia N95 and was forever disappointed with my choice, so didn’t want to make the same mistake this time around. At the end of the day i plumped for the iPhone, I know it has short comings but the coolness won it over, and I would have forever been wishing I had gone for an iPhone had I chosen otherwise.

So phone on order (and delayed due to adverse weather conditions) I have spent the last few evenings reading up on tips, downloading apps in preperation, and working out whether or not I should jailbreak it to make use of 3rd party apps (which I am pretty certain I will), so will post my success on this after I have done it. I feel I should familarize myself with it for at least a week before I jail break it.

With 2 evenings of searching the app store for various apps I thought might be useful to me, I’ve downloaded a selection of the ones I am going to put on my iPhone straight away. I imagine once played with half, will get removed, but I wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing anything.

Radio

1. Absolute Radio
2. last.fm

News

1. Sky News
2. Sky sports – Live footy video and commentary
3. F1 News – latest news from the awesome world of F1
4. Accu
5. Weather – Weather
6. Bloomberg – Live Stocks
7. iTech – Latest tech news

Utilities

1. Alarm Clock
2. All recipes
3. Amazon Mobile
4. App Miner – Search engine for app store
5. Battery Me – Enhanced battery staus
6. Bump – Quick sharing of contacts
7. Car Dashboard – Tells me speed, altitude and heading
8. Convert Everything – Convertor
9. Dig to China – Ever wondered what is exactly beneath you?
10. Ebay Mobile
11. Euro Ncap – Ncap ratings for cars
12. Flickr – Quick upload to Flickr
13. Flashlight – Turns iPhone into flashLight
14. FlightCom – Radio frequencies for airtraffic control
15. Google Earth
16. Google Mobile
17. Gorilla cam – Timer for taking photos
18. GPS Tracker – See where my phone (and me) are
19. Greenflag rescue me
20. iClink – Client for Lotus Notes sync
21. iHandy Level – Spirit Level app as seen on tv
22. Home & Work – Productivity suite
23. iHotUKDeals – Find latest hot deals from hotukDeals website
24. Joost – Internet TV (I thought they died years ago?)
25. Live Flight tracker – Track flights over UK, US, CAN airspace
26. Lotto UK – Lottery results
27. Mirror Mirror – Its a mirror
28. Movies – Latest Movie reviews
29. My O2 – Tells me how many minutes I have remaining
30. Nasa – All things spacey (not Kevin)
31. Natwest – Banking
32. Password Keeper – Store my passwords
33. Paypal
34. Photoshop
35. PriceRunner – Track prices
36. Shazam – Name that tune for me
37. Skype
38. Speedometer – How fast am I going
39. Stars – Tells me which constalations I can see
40. Sunset Sunrise – Tells me sunset/sunrise times
41. Thermometer
42. TODO List
43. Trapster – Speed cam alert
44. DirectGov Travel News
45. Tube Map
46. TV Guide UK
47. Wikipedia
48. WikiTude
49. WordPress
50. World Wide Capitals – Facts on countries and the world
51. WorldMate Travel – Itinerary store
52. Yell.com
53. no to 0870 – Phone number finder

Service finders

1. Around Me – Find places/things near me
2. FastFood
3. GrafittiGeo – Augmented reality restaurant finder
4. My Gas – Petrol station finder
5. ToiletFinder – Vital for a man with a bladder like mine
6. Urbanspoon – Restaurant finder
7. Where I’m at – location finder
8. WIFI Zone – WIFI finder
9. Yelp – Location/service finder

Social Networking

1. eBuddy
2. Facebook
3. LinkedIn – (Might mean I actually update my profile)
4. TweetDeck
5. Twitter vision – To see which I prefer

Games

1. My Guitar – I need all the help I can get
3. Action Bowling
4. Bouncedown
5. Dots Free
6. Magic 8 Ball – How I will make all future decisions
7. Glow Hockey
8. iCopter
9. iDare
10. iMobsters
11. iPint
12. iTrade – Share trading
13. Lightsabre unleashed
14. Zynga Live Poker
15. Maturity Test  - To confirm what I already know
16. The Secret of Money Island
17. Tom Clancy’s Hawx
18. Toobz
19. Traffic Rush
20. Uno
21. Waterslide extreme
22. WordSearch
23. Would you rather?

As you can see it is quite a long list, and I do have some duplicates, but I will remove the naff ones and blog about the really cool ones. If you have any apps that I have missed out that you think are useful/cool then let me know so I can try them out. I should probablly also mention that ALL of the above apps were free, not 1penny spent in the app store yet, as I wanted to exhaust the free ones before I needed to start paying for apps. (Tom Tom £59.99 )

When my iPhone eventually turns up I will blog again with first thoughts and also some steps of stuff that I found particularly useful (having made lots of use of other peoples blogs). Will also post an update on the jail breaking collundrum to allow me to install ‘other’ apps not on the app store (Tom Tom £0.00 )

BTW – If anyone noticed that this blog wasn’t about the building work, its because I am still getting quotes from builders, and as yet I haven’t found a builder that isn’t either going to charge me the earth or rob me when I go out.

There must be a better way

The project is coming along nicely, over the past couple of weeks I have put up the stud wall, plasterboarded and filled the cavity with fibre glass. I’ve added new hard wired smoke alarms upstairs and down (building regs requirement when ever adding a new room to a dwelling) Completed all of the wiring and everything is live other then the sockets in the new room. I’ve even hung the door and started to replace some of the floor boards that were rotten by the now removed shower. In fact I have done so much I am running out of things to do.

The problem is I need to get the new window cut in and a lintel added by a builder, before I can progress much now. I’ve been on at a builder for 5 months now to get round here and do the work. He has been round twice and committed to it, but has let me down yet again. This is par for the course for most builders, especially when it is a small 3 day job, thy tend to not be able to fit it in preferring to focus on the bigger jobs. Whilst I understand that, it doesn’t really help me out.

Any building company that actually paid a bit fo time to customer service, calling back when they promise, turning up when they promise etc, would I’m sure prove to be never out of work. There is nothing worse then taking a day off of work only to find out that th tradesmen doesn’t turn up (don’t get me started on British Gas). Tradesmen generally have a very poor name when it comes to this sort of thing and I can totally see why. Please feel free to comment and tell me why I am wrong, but I have a feeling most of my (3) readers will probably agree with me.

I’ll post some pictures of progress next time I blog. I’m currently upgrading my other laptop to Windows 7, which so far seems to be go remarkably well, although I have to say it looks pretty much the same as vista so I’m wondering if it was worth the £20 Sony wanted for a ‘free’ upgrade. (Another blog topic perhaps)

Another new topic

So after my last post which was blogging about blogging, I actually have something interesting to talk about. Yesterday I dashed out at lunch time to grab a copy of Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, the next episode in the highly acclaimed COD series.

First of all I got a bargain! Sainos were selling this game released yesterday for £26. the RRP is £54.99 and even play.com, who are normally by far the cheapest game retailer could only manage £37.99. So happy in my thrifty approach to obtaining what is widely tipped to be the game of the year I got home and loaded it up.

After the usual frustration of downloading updates, doubled by the fact there was also a PS3 update to download, I eventually got into the game and my first impression…oh my god what a game. I only had limited time but managed to crack on with an hour of a campaign, followed by a 30 minute online death match. Ok so I’m not the best (3rd from last) but I was loving it. I’m not normally too much into this type of game, I typically go for either the driving or football games, and of course the standard gangster mo fo b!tch slapping world of GTA (still the greatest game franchise ever), but with COD I could actually soon be changing my view on these types of games.

Sat there in my study with my projector on my 6ft screen I was emerged in the game, with my headset on balking commands and fellow troops (not too loudly incase I wake the baby), it was as much like the real thing as I imagine you can get, with a huge sense of adrenaline as I crawl around a muddy field.

I’ve got no doubt that COD will get much more use over the next few months then GTV, however the proof in the pudding will be the longevity, will GTV tempt me back? (I am about 79% complete), or will I remain on COD for the long term. After one night I think GTV is at risk, but time will tell. The draw of dodgy deals, money laundering, protection rackets and hookers may well tempt me back from the front line of Afghanistan to Liberty city’s underworld before too long.

(I think the DIY project might be put on the back burner for a little bit )

1 month in

One month into my blog experiment, and I have to say there has been a huge amount of conversations around blogging since this experiment has been running. There have been lots of constructive comments on how a blog and can be of interest and appealing to readers, and also lots of other humorous  helpful advice on suggestions for topics. It would seem that by some, the DIY topic is viewed as being a little boring, and therefore friends and colleagues have taken it upon themselves to suggest other topics to make it more interesting. These have ranged from caravans to dancing to home brewing. All interesting subjects however unsuitable for the following reasons:

Caravaning – Yes my wife and I enjoy taking our daughter to visit all sorts of cool places in our caravan however amongst the caravanning fraternity (the tourist caravanner’s not the pikeys and carneys (circus folk)) there is a code, one of which is to not talk about it too much so in an effort to stop everyone doing it and taking all the good pitches. Which makes me think I might blog about ‘pitch wars’ at some point in the future.

Dancing - Anyone that has seen me dance will soon realise I have no co-ordination and look like I have some sort of mental illness as soon as I attempt to cut some shape on the dance floor.

Home Brewing – My last attempt finished badly in that the barrel exploded and coated the airing cupboard in lager. The only way we could remove the smell was to move house, so I am certainly not expert enough to blog about it.

So for the above reasons I am sticking with DIY for now. I promise once I get past the rip out stage the (mildy) interesting stuff begins, which is the technical part of exending the ring main, adding a new radiator to a circuit, adding hard wired smoke alarms and a little bit on some of the building regs that have to be adhered to when doing minor building work.

In an effort to make things a little more interesting I will be running a live total on the number of times various things occur during this project. Here are the stats so far:

Number of tip runs	4
Number of times shouted at by pikeys for doing it wrong	2
Rusty Nails stepped on	1
Water leaks	0
Electric shocks	0
Trips to A&E	0
Times moaned at for making a mess/noise	14

Today was spent removing the rest of the stud work, it looks like the old shower leaked like the titanic so I’m going to have to replace some floor boards as well, tomorrow I am ‘on call’ with work so may not get much done, hopefully will be able to get the rest of the floor boards up and start working out the wiring.

Viva Las Vegas

So here I am back in Las Vegas for IOD 2009. This is my 5th visit to Vegas and each time I come there seems to be less and less appeal about the place. For some reason these conferences always seem to be scheduled at the gambling mecca of the US, and whilst it is a good place to come and experience it would be nice if just occasionally someone had a conference in a different city. If they could make it a city that I have yet to visit then that would be even better.

Anyway IOD 2009 kicks off on Monday, I don’t think I’m going to blog about the conference as there are many more people here much better positioned to blog about it, and I didn’t really want this blog to be a work related one. Needless to say though I went down to register earlier and even though it is only Saturday the setup team were busy setting up the Expo center and there was a feeling of a buzz beginning in the air, which I’m sure will build up to the launch on Monday.

My sunday is going to consist of a long lay in to try to adjust to Mountain Daylight Time, a late breakfast and then I’m into prep for the conference, setting up the various stands, ensuring the demo’s are running and meeting up with the various people I have to work with during the conference. All that means an early night for me.

Before I go I wanted to share with you a little tip if you ever come to Vegas. When you book in at the hotel reception, try slipping $20 between your ID and your credit card, whilst enquiring about complimentary room upgrades. I have done this three times when coming to Vegas and every time it has resulted in me being assigned a nicer room then I would otherwise have had. Search the web for Vegas and the $20 trick and you will find the details on how to make it a success. On this occasion, I got upgraded to a deluxe room with a strip view on 31st floor. (Much better than the tiny room on the 6th floor over looking the car park that I would have got). For the sake of $20 in my opinion it is well worth it

Cashback? Yes please my dear

Another weekend, another list of things to do to the new bedroom to fit in with my deadline. I’m only having a gentle one this weekend though as the next two weekends I am away travelling to/from the Information on Demand Conference in Vegas, which means this is my last weekend to play with my daughter for a couple of weeks, and therefore am determined to only do a few little jobs. Plus the Brazilian GP is on this weekend, and have to watch that with Jenson about to claim the title.

During the past week, one of my favourite events of any DIY project occurred. The delivery of goodies from Screwfix. I always tend to use ScrewFix or Toolstation for ordering a wedge of stuff to get me started on any big DIY project, firstly it is much cheaper then going to B&Q (even though the own ScrewFix), and it allows me to plan up front what I need rather than making umpteen visits to B&Q on a Saturday which as I’m sure you can appreciate is a pain when it is busy.

Perhaps best of all however is that the DIY shop gets even cheaper when using cashback websites and vouchers. I’ve made a bit of a movement on the whole cashback thing this year, all in all I have earned over £200 cashback. The creation of these cashback websites really are great, you sign up for an account, search for a retailer and click through to the retailer’s site. Any purchases you make are tracked and cashback is awarded to you. The money comes from a referral fee that the referring website has agreed with the retailer, and the cashback website splits the referral fee with you!

In my case I got 6% cashback using the rewardgateway site. Not only that but I also found a 10% of voucher code on hotukdeals.co.uk. So what would have cost me approx £120 normally, cost me £108 AND I earned £6.48 cashback on top of it, bringing my total down to £102. Don’t forget that had I gone to B&Q directly I estimate it would have cost me close to £140 for exactly the same products.

If you’re not using cash back sites and voucher codes yet, you really should be. The ones I use are quidco.co.uk, topcashback.co.uk and rewardgateway.co.uk. Each have different rates for different retailers so its well worth being a member of a few different sites.

As I mentioned I’m off to IOD next weekend. If I have time I’ll try and blog a bit about the conference, in an effort to raise the number of hits on my blog. If I don’t get time to blog then I’ll defo be tweeting live from the event.

Isn’t it u-gly, isn’t it terr-i-ble

When we first viewed our current house I remember there being a Stevie Wonder track on the CD player that was being played at a volume that was slightly too loud to make it uncomfortable.

The previous occupier was clearly a big fan of the legendary Mr. Wonder, especially as they seemed to let him advise on the decoration of the every room in the house. From top two bottom the decoration was a mis match of various different colors that should never be put in the same room (I’ll tell you about the kitchen later). This eclectic mix of colors was complemented by one common theme, a nasty looking green patterned carpet running into every available piece of floor space.

Over the past few years as we have gradually knocked down walls, refitted the kitchen or just painted the walls, I have got great pleasure from banishing the various nasty colors into was is an increasingly hilarious vision of what our house used to be.  The nasty green carpet has now been replaced in 5 rooms, and now only exists in 2 more rooms and the hall stairs and landing.

It was with great pleasure then that this weekend saw the end of one particular piece of Mr Wonder’s inferior design faux pas. The now former en-suite bathroom was covered floor to ceiling with a hideous black tile, that included a pattern of a horrible looking flower. Given that the en-suite was the smallest room in the house with the smallest window the room looked like a dungeonrather than somewhere to relax with a magazine. The feeling of joy as I deposited sack after sack of black tile at the tip, was one that I will remember for some time. In truth I would have enjoyed it more had the pikeys form the tip not been eyeing up my alloys, and generally being obnoxious, but there was no way they were going to ruin that moment for me.

So at the end of weekend 1 the wall is down, leaving just the stud work to remove next weekend, thats when things become much more fun and a little lessstrenuous. For now I’m knackered and off for a nice bit of cake.

Bye Bye Wall

Failed on day 1

I don’t know what the rules are with respect to frequency of blogging, but I figured it would be good if I at least had a picture of the upstairs before I started. Sadly I didn’t take one. After a hunt through some old pics I managed to find one from when we moved in. It at least shows the space that will become the 4th bedroom. Unfortunately it is such an old picture it has the original decoration, something we banished as soon as we moved in, and replaced with good old Magnolia.

Before work began

Loosing my Blogosphere Virginity

Ok. so here we go. After 2 + years of colleagues and friends nagging me about why I haven’t got a blog, I have finally decided to enter the blogosphere.

So what made me decide to do this? and why now?

Perhaps the biggest reason for me not creating a blog before was because I actually think that people have got far better things to do then read about my latest little project. I couldn’t see the point in taking time to make posts into the……blogshere??  to end up with nobody reading them, except the wife, or someone who stumbled upon it by mistake and then realising their error hurriedly navigates away.

In some respects this is still a concern. However I have been increasingly finding myself stumbling upon blogs of random individuals, and also blogs of colleagues, that I have found surprisingly interesting, so it has made me think, maybe at least a handful of people on this increasingly small planet will find some of my posts mildly of interest, and even one or two might find the odd gag in there that tickles them enough to want to come back sometime in the future.

So having almost convinced myself to give it ago, I then had to think up a topic that would warrant me making at least a handful of initial posts to give me something to blog about, just to get me into the swing of things. This wasn’t easy. You see the problem is I work for the worlds largest computer company, within that company there are some fantastically skilled techies who spend their free time working on all kinds of awesome projects, involving all kinds of gadgetry and then blog about the trials and tribulations they have encountered on their journey. I couldn’t possibly compete and spend my time on anything even half as interesting as some of these guys.  I have therefore decided to blog about my on going battle with renovating our house. See, not half as interesting as some of the other blogs out there, but hopefully if you are still reading this there will be something in here that keeps you entertained.

Over the past 6 years my wife and I have renovated 4 houses, from minor redecorating to full blown extensions. Over this time I have picked up quite a few useful skills from electrics to plumbing and joinery (just don’t ask me to do any plastering). In fact a few years ago I almost left my employment to go it alone and start up as a plumber, after fitting a few friends bathrooms over the years though I decided that the enjoyment I get out of doing the manual work only exists if I am doing it for myself therefore I decided to stay put and keep it as a hobby. (Of course for the right money I’d be happy to fit your bathroom )

We have done quite a bit of work in our current house, adding a second en-suite, new bathroom, new kitchen & utility room amongst other things. Now after 2 years we have decided to take on the final major job, which will be to convert the galleried landing and other en suite into a 4th bedroom. Although we don’t need a 4th bedroom just yet, it means it can become my study, freeing my current downstairs study up to become a playroom for my daughter. So thats it, I’m going to be blogging about this conversion over the next few months, posting the odd picture and seeing what kind of interest I get in my bloggage?? When I have finished the project then I’ll make a decision on whether the blog has been a success or if my initial scepticism was correct and that I should leave it up to the pros.