Back at work today after a week off cruising up the Thames from Reading to Oxford, I’ll put some photos up soon. Nice and relaxed, but now I’m back the annoyances of having to deal with the bike theft are rearing their head again. I also have to sort out some kind of transportation for the winter.
I swear, me and phones nowadays are like me and watches when I was little. I can’t stop getting newer, better models! I bought myself a T-Mobile MDA Compact (aka HTC Magician, Qtek S100, i-Mate Jam or 02 mini) yesterday. It’s a tiny little thing, not much bigger than a regular phone, but it runs Windows Mobile 2003, so it’s basically like my old iPAQ and a phone combined, which is exactly why I bought it.It was free on a new contract with T-Mobile, and it’ll cost about ?Ǭ£45 to cancel my current Vodafone contract, which is exactly how much my V550 is worth on Ebay at the moment, so it hasn’t actually cost me anything at all, plus the T-mobile tariffs are a little bit cheaper - that’s how I justify it anyway!!Of course, the first thing I did when I got it home was download the free software from xda-developers.com and unlock it so that I could use my Vodafone SIM until my number’s been transferred. I’ll also be installing the ‘BigStorage’ ROM from the site to get rid of the T-Mobile branding and gain a bit of extra memory.
Haven’t posted on this blog for a while as I’ve been busy with other things, so I thought I’d better put something up.
I’ve been thinking about redesigning this site to reflect my growing hobby of photography. I’m absolutely loving my Nikon D70 and like the idea of having a more prominent online gallery to share my photos with others. The other option of course is to simply buy a Flickr account!
Bike news: Thanks to a friend selling his R1, I’ve purchased some more tuning parts for mine. I’ve fitted:
I saw the new version of War of the Worlds last night. Overall I thought it was very good, although the ending seemed a bit hurried. The alien (can’t call ‘em martian anymore) tripods (war machines) are awesome, and you really get a sense of just how invincible they are.
I think Spielberg has taken a lot of cues from the book and the 1953 movie and mixed it all together really well. Of course, if you wanted to read the book, It’s in the public domain and you can get it free from Project Gutenberg. I’ve also got the double CD of Jeff Wayne’s musical version and have been listening to it all morning.
One thing: I know Spielberg wanted to make more of a ‘people and feelings’ movie but I would have liked to have seen a couple more battle sequences, perhaps one with a tripod and a warship, like the confrontation with the ironclad ‘Thunderchild’ on the album (pictured right).
We’re installing IP phones at work and I found one on my desk this morning. They seem pretty neat. Mine’s a Cisco 7912G.It’s receiving it’s power over the ethernet… I wonder if you could modify an RJ45 connector to make a mobile charger or MP3 player power supply? The other power input to the phone, which isn’t being used is a whopping 48V - the IEEE 802.3af standard, so there’s a lot of voltage (or current when stepped down) to play with!It’s also acting as an ethernet switch - it’s plugged in between my PC and the network port behind the desk, but no traffic to the phone appears to be arriving at the PC’s network card. I might bring a small hub in from home and rig it up so that phone data is sent to the PC as well, then get Ethereal capturing and analysing the packets. In theory, you could write an application that notified you of incoming calls on your PC etc.Browsing through the configuration menus on the phone also reveal some bits and pieces. There’s a TFTP server somewhere - presumably for software updates - and the directory information is supplied as XML from the same server (generated from an ASP file - although it’s not well formed XML)
Well, I’ve just gone into London on the bike and come back out again. I went to pick up a friend who was stranded at London Bridge. It’s a slightly odd feeling in the city. There are still people walking around and going about their business, but further in it’s quiet and relatively empty, except for police cars tearing around in all manner of directions.
I went past the houses of parliament and was surprised that there wasn’t much of a police presence outside. I stopped a policeman to ask him for directions and he seemed shocked, and kept on apologising because he couldn’t help me - I felt sorry for him for some reason, let him get back to his colleagues and found my own way.
On the way out I passed the MI6 building in Vauxhall, I bet they’re busy in there this morning! Traffic coming out of the city is, unsurprisingly, extremely heavy. I even got stuck on a bike on the A4 near Earls Court. I ended up crossing the central reservation with a load of other bikers and going down the wrong carriageway!
It’s strange, I haven’t really thought about the fact that I only have a few days left at MFI before I move on to another job. Today it sort of hit me and I started to feel quite sad that I was about to leave all the friends I’ve made over the last 5 years. Add that to the anxiety of starting a new job and it’s altogether quite an odd feeling.
I guess it’s about time I let the cat out of the bag. I’ve been offered, and accepted, a new job. Basically I’ll be doing the same things as I do now (systems development, web programming, administration etc.) but getting paid a bit more and working in a nicer location. I’ve been at MFI as the eCommerce team’s Analyst/Programmer for nearly 5 years now and it seems like a good time to move on to pastures new - Everyone moves on and 5 years is a long time to be in one job in my industry. I’ve been involved in all kinds of interesting and fun projects during that time and who knows, maybe I’ll be back some day - You never can tell what’s around the corner.
Just a quick note to say that I went to see “The Life Aquatic” with some friends yesterday. Overall it was quite a funny film, but did suffer from being a bit slow at times. I’d rate it a 7/10.