Category: Blogging

This blog has moved…

…well – it's moving!

Moving
Moving

I've finally got off my backside and sorted out a new home for my blog.

Go right ahead and click through to

My Happy Place

The RSS feed has changed, so you'll have to re-subscribe am afraid…
But yeah –

Hope you like it – and well – thanks for your readership to date!

Love ya,

J.

PS – I'm still in the process of moving things over – only about 8 or so more posts to go – I've just been uber busy – but as a reward – you should find some shiny new things over there to look at while you wait 🙂

PPS – All feedback welcome! There, not here. Obviously.

X

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So… This Fancy Dress Picnic

About a year or so ago now, I was stuck in traffic on a bus going past Clapham Common, when I saw these three creatures walking across in the distance…

The first one, in at the front – was this guy dressed up as a green sea monster – a bit like a loch ness monster crossed with a dragon of some kind. Well, he had this outfit on and he couldn’t *really* see where he was going, so he kept going off course and wandering around all over the place.

The guy at the end was dressed as a hammerhead shark, with these two hand-painted boxes stuck to the side of his head. He looked awesome – all dressed in grey – it was clear what animal he was supposed to be. Anyway – he had this really long tail that restricted his walking somewhat… making him really slow.

In the middle – keeping order in all this chaos – was this small girl, in a big pink dress, holding a pink umbrella with tassles hanging off the sides… she was a jellyfish see. And back and forth she ran; at the front stopping the Dragon and pointing him in the right direction and then quickly back to the Shark again to pull/push him forward.

( they may’ve looked a bit like this )

For 20mins I watched this spectacle unfold in front of me, the whole time wearing a great big grin on this face of mine…

“Wonderful…” I thought “…Fancy Dress during the day, people don’t do that enough.”

Which is when I had the idea for The Fancy Dress Picnic – 🙂

The idea stayed in my head for a week or so before disappearing into the far reaching caverns of my brain… until it was discovered again.
This time prompted by watching the quite frankly awesome NZ film, Eagle vs Shark* – on a flight over to the US.

*if you haven’t seen it – this screen kinda gives you an idea why I might’ve been reminded of the picnic – our protaganists meet (properly) at a ‘come as your favourite animal’ party…

So yeah – thusly the idea arrived back in my head again – and this time I kept hold of it; kicking it around through Spring and eventually raising it again in a pub in Chiswick with some friends who all decided that it was a fantastic idea for a party and that we should organise it immediately to coincide with our friend Clare’s birthday at the end of July… (or as close to as we could get) …and so!

The Fancy Dress Picnic!

Date: Saturday August 2nd 2008
Place: Clapham Common
Time: 1pm ’til late (Roger’s working on getting some bar space for later, later
The Theme: Come as your favourite animal

You MUST MUST MUST RSVP with the name of your animal that you intend to come as.

The reason for this is to prevent embarrassing moments for all and sundry – I mean – you’ve worn the same dress as someone else before right?

Well.. can you imagine all of us turning up as cats?
That’d be rubbish.

You name it, you claim it.

Me? I’m going as a Hammerhead Blue Shark

I’ve setup a facebook event, Roger’s blogged about it and together we have been working *really hard* to get this crazy day off the ground…
At the time of writing we have 30(ish) confirmed guests – ALL coming as different animals!

And YOU are welcome to come and join us 🙂

If you ‘dont do’ facebook then simply leave a comment on this here blog:

The animals that have been taken read like this:

  • Shark (blue shark now – can’t find a hammerhead costume)
  • Lemur (ring-tailed)
  • Turtle (Ninja)
  • Tiger (unspecified as to Bengal or Siberian)
  • Fawn (Roe, presumably)
  • Lion (-O?)
  • Macaroni Penguin (they don’t dance)
  • Bears, brown (family thereof – this is allowed under the new rule which I have just made up. But ONLY for real families. Birth and/or marriage certificates may be asked for)
  • Ladybird (spotted)
  • Squirrel (evil grey or timid red? Who knows..)
  • Kangaroo
  • Donkey (a seaside one from Brighton!)
  • Evil Herbivore (giraffe)
  • Meerkat
  • Bear (Polar)
  • Bee (bumble)
  • Chicken
  • Spider (house)
  • Dragonfly
  • Butterfly
  • Panda (giant?)
  • Rabbit (bunny)
  • King Penguin (must be distinct from the Macaroni Penguin or will be disqualified)
  • Flamingo (pink)
  • Cat (domestic)
  • Alpaca
  • Sloth Bear
  • Bat
  • Peacock
  • Peahen

The rest of the animal kingdom is there for you to choose from.

Much love and maybe I’ll see you on Saturday 🙂

EDIT – – – –

Thanks to my awesome Mobilistic Skillz –
We now have all of the directions to the venue available on your Mobile!

All you gotta do is open your phone’s internet browser and type http://mippin.com/fancy

Directions are all right there – Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Falling a bit behind…

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…

Thursday Morning

Morning has arrived on the field of Pilton. There are tents as far as the eye can see and I’m blogging this live! As I type this to you I’m sitting outside, brew in hand and soaking up what rays there are (via my solar charger, natch).
Everyone’s here now..

Time for breakfast methinks – then we’re off to explore!

In the meantime, check out these pics 🙂

– A fair few tents! –

– Prepare for rain… –

– Soaking up the rays –

The Mobile Geek of Glastonbury!

In the first of this year's Glastonblog-posts –
I bring you a quick review of last year's gadgetry plus a view towards this year's… 

………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Cross posted, with permission, from SMS Text News

………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Greetings readers, your friendly neighbourhood Whatley here!

While some of us are off gallivanting around the Maldives… sorry, ahem… A DESERT ISLAND …other bloggers, like myself, have to make do with the festival season to amuse themselves here back in the UK.

And what better festival other than the Mother of all festivals: Glastonbury!

🙂

Yes, it really IS that muddy. I took that photo myself.

Last year, I think I’m pretty safe in saying;

I was the ONLY person to live blog Glastonbury from a mobile phone.

Yes. That’s right, I blogged the whole darn thing (well as much as my battery would allow) from my Nokia N95-1 (the original silver one, the one with the REALLY poor battery, y’know?).

In fact the only reason my current blog exists is because of my then(?) obsession with Mobile Blogging.

You can go back and read some of my exploits here, here and here if you’d like.
But really, all you need to know is, at the time, the only way I could do this (AFAIK) was through VOX.

VOX has a neat little application that sits on some/most Nseries phones that you can download and is also available as one of the upload options in the Share Online app, also found on most Nseries phones.

Power wise, again only for last year, I had three N95 batteries (BL-5Fs for the true geeks among you) and these two things below:

That on the left is an independent battery charge-base and that on the right, a portable double AA battery powered phone charger.

The former proved itself to be extremely useful, then and indeed over the past year of ownership too. With that handy little device I can always have one battery in my phone, while another charges. This, of course, is all well and good until you go and lose the damn thing… which is what I did a matter of days ago.

I digress.

The thing on the right, I bought that from Amazon, thing is mind…

It . Was. Rubbish.

In fact I think it actually USED more battery power than it actually gave back. I ended up passing it onto some fellow festival-ite in our circle of tents…it conveniently came with a bunch of other adaptors – not just Nokia; covered SE, Motorola, Blackberry… the lot. You name it. So at least that much was handy about it…
However, for me – it was no good…

And don’t even start me on the quite frankly RIDICULOUS "Orange Charge Tent".
I mean, who wants to QUEUE for an hour to charge their handset, only to discover that when they get to the front, they then have to wait around for a further two hours to watch their phone charge at an unsecured bar.
Joined up thinking really not their speciality it would seem…

So… How did I stay charged?

Well, while the Orange monkeys were missing out on potentially 3hrs of great music, I managed to find a little store amongst the clothes stalls and falafel vendors, which specialised in phone charging.
You paid a fiver a go and it was kept under lock and key and all was fine. The system the guy had running behind him reminded me a little of chargebox and it wouldn’t surprise me if they were one and the same… I’ll ask them this year and see. Anyway, this little store became a daily haunt for my good self.

In the morning I’d get up, review any content from the night before, write a quick post or two and then upload as much as I could before my battery died. After that I’d mosey on down to aforementioned phone charging establishment, pay my fiver, and then go off and meet friends who I’d arranged to meet at a later time (do you remember when we did that?!).

Later that afternoon I would pick up my phone, liaise with all the folk that had been trying to reach me for God knows how long, and then get off to another stage where upon I’d take more photos/videos that I would later, no doubt upload.

Lovely stuff.
So aside from the not-so-brilliant portable phone charger, last year was a reasonable success.

But what about this year?

Well, my VOX blog is still up and running.
So I’ve got that working just fine, but now – look at all the other things I can do!

I can upload via SMS, MMS or Email via Moblog.
I can simply make a phone call and speak a blog post through SpinVox.
I can boot up Qik and stream LIVE content direct to the internet. Not only direct to my QIK page, but if I hit ‘55’ while I’m streaming, my 500-odd followers on Twitter will get told about it too!

The plethora of Social Tools now available to the modern, festival-going geek, really… truly… is a spectacle to behold.

I shall be using ALL of those services/apps/tools I’ve listed above… and probably more.

The question is Dear Readers, which ones do YOU think I should be using?

What should your Mobile Geek of Glastonbury be packing in his rucksack to ensure a complete all round mobile performance?

Leave your suggestions below or, if you have anything you want showcased/tested over the coming festival season, email ewan@smstextnews.com

Yes – I know he’s on a 'desert island', but he’s already emailed me twice today with two new products that he’s been sent to give to me try out in the mud of Pilton…
________________________

 

The Glastonblog begins!

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Stupid, Stupid Barclays

or – “A rant about convergence, or lack thereof”

Right, if you’re reading this and you have any idea of the kind of person I am, you know how I feel about my mobile phone. You know I love it, you know I’m never far from it and you know that above all, if I could, I’d use it for just about everything.

This last point is the kicker for me.

To give you a rough idea of what I’m talking about, here are just some of the things I use my phone for:

  • Contacts/Address Book
  • Calendar/Diary
  • Gaming
  • Email
  • Internet
  • MP3/Music Player
  • Camera
  • Video Camera
  • Directions/Maps/GPS
  • TV/Video Player
  • Live-Blogging
  • Micro-Blogging
  • Tube Map
  • Instant Messaging
  • Etc etc…

Because I carry my N95 8GB (pictured above) in my pocket, quite a small device take note, I don’t have to carry an iPod, Nintendo, TV, Camera, TomTom, PC, map… the list goes on.

All of these things (and many others) are no longer clogging up my pockets thanks to this rather awesome little handset.

Why?

Well this is, in part, down to the innovations of the team at Nokia. However it is also owes a lot to my own personal preference; Nokia have enabled me to do all these things and have by doing so have also empowered me to stop carrying all of the other devices.

I don’t like carrying lots of things in my pockets. At best, I will leave the house with my keys, my phone and my bankcard. That’s it. Only those three items.

Right then. Keeping all of the above in mind, let’s direct our attention for a moment to this thing:

– Barclays PIN Sentry –

Could it be…

My First Calculator?
The latest toy from The Early Learning Centre?
Or maybe even a band new phone maybe?

No. No. And No.

That, there, is Barclays ‘PIN Sentry’.

Excusing the ridiculous name for a second, let’s take a look at what it’s actually for.
Any time I want to log into MY internet banking, I have to put my Debit Card into that contraption, enter my PIN number and then, and only then, will my bank allow me to log into MY account.

First up, the whole sodding point of having internet banking, to my mind, is so that I can access my account from anywhere where there is INTERNET.
Until they truly crack mobile internet banking (and trust me – on the basis of this – we’re going to be waiting a long time), then this really is the only option for anyone wanting to access their account anywhere… (short of actually going into a branch, but really, does anyone do that anymore?).

Second, I get the whole security aspect of it all, really I do, but do I actually need this thing as well?!
I already have a unique 12 digit unique ID number, an 8 digit secret password and a five digit passcode.

Do I really NEED more security?

Surely there has to be line drawn between security to entry and barriers to entry? Right?

…sigh…

Next point – it is clear, from the points laid out above, that I like convergence. I want one device to do everything for me…
…Of convergence, I am a fan.

I do not want to be carrying that stupid, stupid piece of plastic around with me everywhere I go just in case I might want to log in to my internet banking. Idiots. Really.

Just no joined-up thinking whatsoever.

Finally… This post has been a long time coming; Barclays started introducing this towards the end of last year, (as did a few other banks, so I’ve been told), so I apologise if it seems a bit late in the day as it were… But yes, the final point –

I’ve actually spoken to Barclays about this and I’ve outlined my point of view. As a result, I have now been opted-out of this new system and my PIN Sentry is happily gathering dust in a draw somewhere in my room.

WOO!

If you’re a Barclays customer and you find this idea as absurd as I do then I would strongly urge you to do the same.
Call your bank, tell them they’re idiots and get yourself opted out. The opportunity cost of this, just so you know, means that you will be unable to set up any ‘new payees’ via your online banking. I’m happy to live with this. I don’t often pay new people and if and when the situation does arise I can simply call the bank and get them to do it for me.

Here endeth the rant.

……..

On a lighter note – have been working my backside off lately, (super exciting new project for SpinVox), so next weekend I’m going to head off down to Pilton to a little music festival you may’ve heard of…

Next weekend I’m headed back to Glastonbury.

And I can’t WAIT!

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Read about my Glastonbury Mobile Geek plans over on SMS Text News and yes, you guessed it, just like last year, I’ll be blogging the whole thing from my mobile phone, (although I doubt very much I’ll be doing any internet banking).

😉

Vote Now! (Food 2.0)

Go Team Six!
Go Team Six!

I mentioned in a post a while back that I was taking part in the Food 2.0 project – aptly named:

"Nom Nom Nom".

Well, it's all done now, so you can nip over and have a look at my team's page here and you can also vote for the winner too.

– vote for us – vote for us – vote for us –

So PLEASE jump on over and check it out…

🙂

WOOOOO!

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