whatleydude

Thanks to the complete and utter uselessness of some of the ‘essential’ gadgets I took away with me to Glastonbury this year, the blogging has fallen somewhat short!
I shall endeavour to catch up forthwith…

- Glastonbury, from the ground up -

In the meantime…

If gadgets are your thing – take a look at this post that I wrote for Mobile Industry Review last Wednesday, (in the car, en route to the festival to be precise), outlining just a few of the technological wonders that I was packing in my rucksack…

You may remember, back when I had Less than 24hrs in San Francisco, that everywhere I looked I kept being reminded of The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

Not that I kept seeing Sarah Connor-themed posters… Oh no.
(could’ve made an interesting new angle for the next Terminator mind)

The ones that haunted my vision were for someone called ‘Sarah Marshall’.
This, out of context, made no sense to me…

However – all was to be revealed when I returned to the UK when a reasonably new (and good) friend of mine, Mike Sizemore, (blogger, vlogger and all round jammy film reviewer), invited me along to a top secret blogger screening of Judd Apatow’s latest film, ‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall’.

Having never seen or heard of the film before, aside from the aforementioned US poster campaign, I was quite pleased that Mike had thought of me and the invite was even more attractive as a) I managed to swing a ‘plus one’ and b) it was as the Soho Screening Rooms (which sounded suspiciously seedy if you ask me).

To whet my appetite even further, Mike even included a link to the latest Forgetting Sarah Marshall trailer…

DO NOT WATCH THIS YET

Ok. Judd Apatow is someone I’ve only just got to know. Having steered clear of Knocked Up (it didn’t look like my kind of film) I recently rented out – (check me, old school) – Superbad.
Which is easily one of the best films I’ve seen this year.

I watched the trailer, laughed a little… wasn’t sure… saw a couple of guys from Superbad… saw Russell Brand… realised it was a free screening.. and made my mind up.
One quick call to the girlfriend later and I had an evening of free entertainment in Soho, with blogger buddies AND I get to impress the Girl.

Who cares what the film is like right? Wrong.

Hand on heart I went into the cinema descended into the depths of said screening rooms not really expecting much. ‘Expecting much’ is not something I do often. Not expected anything is the best way to a) avoid disappointment and b) be pleasantly surprised. Fortunately, this time round, the evening fell firmly into category ‘b’.

Y’see I had this horrid COCK SHOT feeling that the trailer had given away all the funny bits and, for a little while, I thought COCK SHOT I was right. But, I am happy to report that COCK SHOT there’s still quite a lot of amusement to be had throughout the rest of the film.

That aside, COCK SHOT, for maximum enjoyment, I would recommend avoiding the trailer for this film as much as possible because as much as it does entice you into watching the film itself; it also gives away its fair share of funnies… I found myself knowing which joke was next as I’d watched the trailer several times and kinda knew which bit came when y’know? Please – don’t let this put you off – this film IS very, very funny.

Something that took me that took me completely by surprise was that beardy man over there on the right ————————————————>

He was actually very good in this film.

Although I can’t say I’m surprised.

Russell Brand is one of those comedians who I tell everyone I can’t stand and yet find myself often watching him on the tellybox and chuckling away at his dickensian wiles as he meanders his way around our fair language like a blind man on a bicycle…

I want to hate him, but I can’t.

Git.

And as I said, in this he is cast perfectly.

Git.

I don’t do film reviews often – although coincidentally enough, the last one I reviewed was a comedy also (albeit an unintentional one) – so for me actually sit down and bother to write this up means it’s actually worth seeing.

I laughed that hard I nearly wet myself.

No really. Forgetting Sarah Marshall has the some what strange honour of being the first EVER film that I was able to leave the room for. EVERY film I see I always make sure I go before I sit down.
I hate those people that pay £8-£10 to go and see the latest blockbuster and end up missing a massive chunk of plot because they forgot to have a number one before they went in.

I mean REALLY. It’s like 2 hours people!
You’ve just paid to watch the damn film – so sit down and watch it!

*sigh*

Anywhoo – I won’t be doing that again in a hurry, on the way back I was blinded by the light from the projector and ended up tripping on the step, stumbling up the stairs and then hitting a fellow blogger in the chops (sorry Annie!).

I digress.

This film is funny. See it.

Finally – Props to my mate Scott who saw this outside Hammersmith Tube Station last week…

It seems the hate campaign is spreading…

I mentioned in my last post that I felt like I had to write a little bit about very short stay in San Francisco.
After the madness that was CTIA in Las Vegas, stepping off the plane that Thursday evening at SFO was like a breath of fresh air…

I flew to Las Vegas (via Dallas Fort Worth), on Sunday March 31st.
Did a bunch of SpinVox things (worth a click through – great video) for them whilst I was at CTIA.

Lots and lots of fun.

I hung out with some cool folk, took part in some cool events and generally just had a good time… You get the idea.

The following Thursday however, I had to fly to San Francisco.

THANK YOU LORD.

I don’t think I can actually find the words to say how much I love that place. Really. It’s just… Brilliant.
Regular readers will know that this wasn’t my first trip to SF, so I kind of know my way around a little bit.. which was nice.

I landed at something like 9pm and I was scheduled to fly home the following evening around 7ish so I had :
*adopts film trailer esque voice*

“Less than 24hrs in San Francisco!”

So what did I get up to?

Well, after sharing a cab with some new friends that I met in Vegas, I must’ve got to my hotel around 10ish I guess?
Checked in, took my cases up, chilled out… I was gonna hit the sack then and I thought…

“Y’know what? I love the bar here. If I’m only here for a short amount of time, I best make the most of it. I think I deserve a Gin & Tonic…”

So off I trotted down to the Redwood, (beautiful bar this – it’s got Harry Potter Paintings on the walls… if you know what I mean), ordered myself a glass of Tanqueray & Tonic (extra lime) and just sat… and chilled.

Lovely stuff. About a half hour or so later I decide to go for a wander outside, get some air etc… and I end up chatting to this random guy, Tomas was his name, Danish chap, chatting to him about SF.. where’s good to go out etc.. He was in town on business with a couple of friends and had just been turned away from a club as they weren’t allowing large groups of men without any women. It happens.

Anyway – he and I head back into the bar and there are his (also Danish) mates talking to these women.

“Right, I can see where this is going…” I thought to myself “…I’m gonna have one more then head to bed”

I got it half right…

I was chatting away to Tomas just off to the side of the group when one of his mates called over to get the round in…

“Gin & Tonic!” I replied… and suddenly I had a LOT of attenton!

“Oi! You’re not Danish!”

“I never said I was!”

Que much laughter and explanations etc… These girls were in SF for a friend’s wedding. Great bunch they were too. The lot of us all ended up going clubbing together. (A place called ‘Slide‘ – Yup. It had a slide. Brilliant).

Fantastic night. Great company too.
Was really refreshing to be out with a group of girls who weren’t out on the pull or who weren’t looking for anything etc… They just wanted to have a drink and a chat and maybe a little dance and generally just enjoy their evening.

The Danish guys were mental. But we loved them for it. Hehehe…

All in all a great night was had - 
Friday rolled around so I went shopping… Bought LOADS of T-Shirts (more on that soon), some new boots, some DVDs and, surprise surprise, a new suitcase to bring it all home in. Heh heh…

Before I sign off – A blog post wouldn’t be complete with me adding in some relevant media…

First – some photos from SF.
A few from my recent trip but most from my trip in October last year… Hope you enjoy them.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

Oh – and as a point of interest – ALL of the photos above were taken with a Nokia N95.
LOVE that phone!

And second…

One of the great things about being in the States is you get to see some of the latest shows/films etc…

And you also get to see some of the awesome posters etc and you often get a hint for what’s coming too…

So for instance, last year, there were Heroes posters everywhere.

This year however I kept seeing things like this one —–>
And variations thereof…

Had no idea what it meant. No idea what it was about. Nothing.
For some reason I kept thinking of The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

Good thing is these posters became suddenly very clear to me upon my return, when my new (and actually quite cool) friend Sizemore invited me along to a ‘Blogger’s Screening’ of the new comedy, ‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall‘.

And bloody good it was too, (thanks dude).

Full write up to follow…

So I’ve kinda got the blog-bug back again.

I don’t know why it’s back, or where it’s been etc…
All I know is that I’ve got a bunch of stuff I want to write up.

I could just mass-post the lot, like I did last time, but I think too much content is a bit of overkill.

So here’s just a quick list of things I’d like to write up:
(thanks to Mr Lloyd Davis for the photo too by the way)

• I was in a cabaret show the other day. Must blog it.
• The BBC interview I did. Must blog it, (properly).
• Some general life things, 6mths with SpinVox etc.
• The (self-imposed) T-Shirt Challenge
• San Francisco (I covered Vegas already)

And I think that’s it…

I’m going to try and cram everything in over the coming days. But it won’t be more than one post a day… Can’t suddenly increase the words for my loyal readers!

Thanks by the way – whoever you are…

On that note. I’m painfully aware that only VOX members are able to comment on my posts. Which is kinda sucky. So I’m moving… not yet, but soon… to a decent blog-hosting page etc.

A good friend is helping me sort it out at the moment, once we’ve got the template finished, then starts the massive (again, self-imposed) job of consolidating.

I’ve been blogging all over the place for the best part of three years now. So I’m going to go way back to my very first blog and pool all my posts together under one roof…
Like a back catalogue see?

Cool. Expect that sometime before the Summer… (hopefully).
In the meantime – if you want to comment and you’re not a member of VOX, then just drop me a text and tell me what you think… my number is +447774898681.
Looking forward to hearing from you…

And finally…

I got my ticket to Glastonbury! Wheeee!

Kinda has some special resonance on this here VOX as Glastonbury was the reason why I started here, remember?

EDIT – This is a re-post from VOX so you’re looking at my new home now -Woo!

“Greetings from Barcelona. I am loving Mobile World Congress seen a lot of cool stuff. Hanging out at the SpinVox stand and hanging out at the Nokia stand. Going out for dinner with the SpinVox crew now. Make sure you check out spinvox.com because we’ve re launched the website. I haven’t got internet access in my room so hence me blogging through SpinVox.”


spoken through SpinVox

This piece first appeared over at the SpinVox Blog in the early hours of this morning. But upon re-reading it this afternoon I figured I’d publish it here too on my VOX as I don’t consider it a just another ad for them but rather a personal recommendation of some of their FREE services.

And anyway, it’s my blog, I’ll post what the hell I like!

As ever, all comments welcome.
Enjoy..

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SpinVox For You – YES YOU! – cross-posted from The SpinVox Blog

That’s right! You! There! Reading this!

So I was chatting away to one of my peers the other day and I happened to mention I worked for SpinVox and their immediate (and rather dismissal) response was:

“Oh, that Voicemail thingy?“

And I said:

“Well… Yeah.. but NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO! As well..“

Y’see – Whilst I do agree that one of the killer applications of the SpinVox product is Voicemail… (we’ll come back to this one another time – it really has saved my life on more than one occasion) …there are still SO MANY other ways you can have SpinVox in your life.

Allow me to outline three that I personally use quite regularly…

1) Ok. Let’s start with group text messaging. Know what that is? The ‘one to many’ thing yeah? No? Well look, let me tell you about Blast.

Blast through SpinVox has two cool benefits: First up, (which I think is just damn cool on its own), you can speak a text message. That’s right. SPEAK. A. TEXT. Cool as.
The second benefit is not only can you speak your SMS but you can also set up a predefined list of up to TWENTY recipients. That’s right, Twenty.
That is cool. I honestly had no idea it was that many… (I thought it was like five or something) …I think I’m going to have to review my account definitely.
I only have the numbers  of a couple of loved ones in my group at the moment. Maybe I’ll delete them and create a new group of blast buddies: “Pub friends” – yeah, that’ll work.

2) Next – You’re out and about and you remember – (like me) -

“Damn, I must remember to pack that thing for tomorrow“

So what do I do? I call my Memo through SpinVox number, leave myself a little reminder message, and then – when I get home – it’s there in my email inbox:

“Dude, don’t forget to pack that thing for tomorrow“

Cool? Maybe.
Handy? Hell yeah!

Especially if you like to keep notes throughout the day and don’t have time to write anything down.

3) Finally, one of my favourite applications of the SpinVox product: Blog through SpinVox.
Admittedly, something I’m yet to demonstrate on this blog – (we’re currently midway through redesigning the place – I’ll activate voice posting after that goes live) – but I have used it before on my own blog and I’m glad to report it works very well.

You can literally blog from anywhere. Well… anywhere where you can make a phone call anyway… Mount Everest for instance!

Thing is, and this is what makes it a ‘must-have’ instead of a ‘nice to have’:

With Blog through SpinVox the ‘I was’ becomes ‘I am’.

And that, to me, is just SO powerful.

Try it. I dare you.

______________________________________________________________________________________

EDIT:

Early reports say that that ^ reads like a SpinVox ad.
Meh.

WHY OH WHY can I not just hit ONE BUTTON and sync my events on Facebook with every other sodding calendar I have to keep?
See Plaxo/Yahoo/Google/iCal/And any bloody S60 calendar app I tend to be running on my N95 right now…

WHY?!

Talk about a blinkin’ walled garden. Apparently the walls are coming down. Well blow me if that’s not about time. I wrote a piece (that I never published here but hacked it to pieces, updated it and edited the mobile parts of it together here for smstextnews) wayback in September detailing what a pain in the ass backside this was/is.

The piece (entitled ‘Think of the Children’) talked (well – the unpublished parts did anyway) about Jaiku and Twitter and how they can happily ‘co-exist’ within the industry… Hang on – Let me go get the quote:

I’m sorry if this is out of context – but you’ll get the idea:

The walled garden appproach that these services offer mean that interoperability between the competition* (*my definition of competition is anything that competes for my spare time – my Nintendo DS is competition for the book that I’m currently reading for example) is impossible.
Imagine if you will Yahoo Mail refusing to send your emails to a Hotmail (sorry – Windows Live) account and/or a Gmail account.. Ridiculous huh? But this is what is happening currently with MySpace/facebook.

.

The Operators/Carriers of this world have finally come round to the idea that interoperability is the way forward. A quick glance at any website proves this as I would imagine you’d be hard pushed to find a tariff that doesn’t include Xnetwork minutes. Of course, this has not always been the case… but, eventually they (the operators) sat up and listened.
This is what the social networking sites of today should be working towards..

.

I’m a big fan of the micro-blogging service known as Jaiku. But more so am I a fan of one of the co-founders – Jyri Engelstrom.
He believes [or at least I think he does] in complete and open syncronosity across such services..
This is evident not just through recurring themes on his blog but also whenever he is asked the question:

.

‘Which is better; Twitter or Jaiku?’

.

You would think that, if pressed, he would of course say ‘Jaiku’. He would have to! Right? Wrong.
No. Jyri is an evangelist of co-existence… What do I mean?
Twitter works. Jaiku works. Why shouldn’t they work together?
Why insist that the user must choose one or the other and not both?

.

Taking this theme and expanding on it… – Why can’t I send a message from my facebook to my friend’s myspace?
If I tag a photo on flickr why aren’t my bebo friends notified?
One day, I hope, this will be the case… much like, as mentioned, how Xnetwork minutes are now ‘as standard’…

So yeah – interoperability (or lack thereof) really hacks me off..

But hey – while we’re still on the subject of facebook (ish)…

Cont in Part 3…

Believe it or not – I am.. in fact.. originally.. from Essex.

An Essex Boy in fact.

I like to think I hide this little known (well – not any more) very well.

What with the accent only creeping out on occasion and only slipping back into my native tongue whenever I cross the border…

Not many people seem to pick up on it.

All this aside – it is actually nice to get home every now and then.

As much as I could never live back in Essex ever again – (or to be more precise; back on Canvey Island in Essex), I do have a few, very dear friends who still live there.. and along with some of my family – they always give me an excuse to head home.

I moan and bitch about the place but secretly, I actually love it.

There’s no train station, (you have to get a train to Benfleet then get a bus/cab/lift onto the Island itself), there’s one cinema, one McDonalds, three schools and a lake…
It’s in the Thames Estuary (just before Southend) so therefore people speak with the ‘Estuary English’ twang – aka ‘The Essex Accent’ – the place has it’s ups and downs and it ain’t perfect but I guess it’ll always be home.

One thing I tend to do whenever I go home is take a walk along the sea wall – if the tide is in I’ll walk out into the sea along the old sea wall and stand in the middle of it. It’s one of the most calming things in the world a is one of my ‘secret places’. The place where, when things are stressing me out and the world is feeling heavy on my shoulders, I can just go and be.

Stand. Breathe. Take it all in. Y’know? Let everything go out into the big blue.. (or grey/brown).

Christmas has been good so far. Caught up with my best friend.. I call him my best friend.. he’s more like my Brother to be honest. My brother from another Mother if you will… But yeah – saw him, his family. Saw my family too. Still at my Mum’s at the time of typing – heading back tomorrow. Drunken Boxing Day Karaoke to tackle first!  Hehehe…

Cannae wait to get back to sunny Teddington… I don’t have many friends back here at ‘home’.

I’m reminded, as I write, that it may well have been a contributing factor as to why I moved away in the first place… Which is fine – I know who my friends are and I love them very much.

There just isn’t a large collection of them on Canvey.