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7 months?!

11-Jun-09

Friggin’ hell times flies! I seriously didn’t think it had been that long since I had posted! Well nothing has changed.

Planning an nice “epic” 12 day trip down Europe at the moment with my sister Nicky though and was just thinking this would good be a point base point.. y’know.. blog and stuff along the way :)

The Plan…

Fly: London Stanstead -> Stockholm, Sweden

Train: Stockholm, Sweden -> Malmo, Sweden -> Copenhagen, Denmark (night)

Train: Copenhagen, Denmark -> Malmo, Sweden -> Berlin, Germany (night) -> Frankfurt, Germany

Train: Frankfurt, Germany -> Luxembourg, Luxembourg (a couple of trains actually via places I can’t recall)

Train: Luxembourg, Luxembourg -> Berne, Switzerland (few trains again I think)

Train: Berne, Switzerland -> Rome, Italy (night)

Fly: Rome, Italy -> London Stanstead

Flights booked, working out the night trains. The one which goes on a boat from Sweden to Germany is just going rock! The whole thing is just going to rock. So many new places and the journeys on the trains will just be amazing.

InterRail pass and being under 26 years old FTW! £145 for a 5 days in 10 rail pass! Few extras for beds on night trains that we’d pay for a hostel anyway. Cheap RyanAir flights either end. InterRail forums very useful too.

Just getting stressed out about working out the night trains at the moment and where to buy the suppliments we need in advance while avoiding internation phone calls. Not straight forward working out who from and then how! It’s not a choice on most online rail ticket shops :(

I’m sure this will give me plenty to post about ;)

Shell xx

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Asus eee 1000H!

12-Nov-08

I gave my laptop to my sister when she started uni. Well, I lent it her so she could work out what kind of laptop she wanted. It’s what she wants though so I’ve left it for her to have. Getting on now but good for her and nice and portable with a 13.3″ screen with out being too small for her. Managed to get a new motherboard and DVD RW put in it before I gave it to her as well for nothing ;)

Now I’ve become more increasingly stuck and annoyed at not having a laptop since!

I’ve been pondering over all these netbooks for a while, well ever since Asus launched their first one. I found the screen size and res on that though to be completely useless. I decided I would hang on till Christmas as I’d read how all the manufactures were bringing out their own. You’ve now got HP, Acer, ASUS, Samsung.. it goes on.

I’ve been looking at 10″ netbooks with the Atom processor in since they appeared recently. The more powerful “ultra mobile” netbooks just don’t justify the performance for stupid cost for me. I need internet access etc, nothing fancy. The 10″ ones are all of a muchness to be honest. So why did I decide to go for the Asus eee 1000H? 2 main things.

  • Battery life. It has a 6 cell battery and quoted up to 7.5 hours battery life. The Acer One has only a 3 cell battery for example.
  • Linux. The eee has a whole “branch” of Ubuntu especially for it. With everything already compiled and set up that you should need to get the best out of your eee. I’ve used Ubuntu of recent as I am Linux fan girl and it is incredibly simple to install and just go, and works. I was once a Gentoo lover, but of recent I just don’t have the time to spend endless hours fiddling to get it to work and waiting for things to compile and the such. I still love and appreciate the point of it though, compile exactly what you want means better performance, a “polished” system. Yay if I had the time! :(

I have had debates with people on my hard drive choice as well since deciding on it. I have gone for a standard old skool SATA drive, 160GB in size. Yes I agree solid state hard drives are cool. Cost and the huge size difference (40Gb compared to 160GB) just simply won me over here though. My last laptop has had the same hard drive with no problems for years, been all over the place with me, no problems. If I dropped my laptop I would be more concerned about the screen or something! Also I doubt the thing would be on either as I don’t carry laptops around in standby or anything. I think of the whole coolness of solid state hard drives just makes them sound better than they pratically are.

This one comes with XP on it which I think I’ll leave a very basic install of on it as I have the space. I’ll end up using this for work or something one day and be so bloody thankful I have Windows on it, I know it.

Well, I get it tomorrow night. Then have my mum for the whole of the weekend including friday night, so god knows when I’ll actually get to sit down and play with it. That’s my point. I don’t have time to play these days, I just need something practical! Which this is, very much so.

I currently have 36 comments between me, Brett (TheMole), and Steev on my Facebook status on this. Mad.

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Flickr

01-Oct-08

Been playing with Flickr recently… and fallen for it big time!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/shell_uk/

Found out how to turn geotagging on on my phone the other day too, so photos (when I choose!) automatically have co-ordinates attached in the Exif data which Flickr then uses to report the location of by its self. Very cool.

Also got it set up so I can email photos to Flickr direct from my phone (I’m sat at a PC long enough these days to sit going through photos to upload as you may have noticed), as well as the option to post things on here as a blog entry too, handy!

Still got to sort a few rough edges out round here since I upgraded Wordpress and the skin, so will slide in a nice Flickr side bar section or something when I do that.

Shell (forgetting about her soup that has gone cold now :( )

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Upgraded Wordpress

16-Sep-08

Done what has needed doing for a while. Upgraded Wordpress and stuff.

Still some fiddling to do but I’m going to bed :P

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Hmm… Who I pester tooday?

23-Aug-08

Hmm.. Who I pester tooday?

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Booze and breasts combined, finally

23-Aug-08

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/08/21/winerack_firebox/

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New toy!

20-Aug-08

touchdiamond.jpgNew phone/toy! :) HTC Touch Diamond. A nice refreshing new approach for Windows Mobile devices (that I am sadly addicted to). Very different interface to previous (but with the old normal interface nice hidden behind it) but very cool once you’ve got use to it! Small, light, and a very nice look.

See the specs here: http://www.gsmarena.com/htc_touch_diamond-2368.php

It’s got it all. The dogs do das.

The interface is very iPhone like but a lot better IMHO. I’ve spent quite a bit of time recently arsing around on an iPhone too trying to get ActiveSync going on it (argh, Activesynce on an Iphone, yes offically licensed from Microsoft may but it’s crap… turned out it couldn’t handle the number of folder in the mailbox!). Just don’t get me started on the iPhone.

HTC Touch Diamond FTW!1

Photos took with it from last weekend when my mum stayed and we did London touristy things:
http://www.michellez.net/photos/v/august_mum/

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Meh.

15-Jul-08

p1010741.JPGMeh. That’s it. Meh. Another fecking infected bite on my arm currently that I’m trying not to itch, and trying to get not get pissed off about certain things or I’ll just stress myself out silly.

Paris photos are here - you think that’s a lot? There were more!

I must upgrade Wordpress and add some image verification stuff to stop the stupid bots sign ups. Same for Gallery actually too.

Not tonight though. Going to drink some more beer and watch some tele stuff.

Moved the other weekend. Went for a walk earlier. Realised how many food places there are round here. It’s.. silly.

You might find > this < usefeul. DNS MX record tool look up thingy. Checks multiple DNS servers including domains own name servers. Made for the guys at work primarily as they kept asking me how to use nslookup to check MX records ;)

There was more I was going to say. God knows what. No one cares anyway.

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Around somewhere..

24-Jun-08

I’m around, somewhere…

Had an interesting time in Paris a few weeks ago. Loved it. Once is enough though. I may consider south of France in future. Suprised myself with firstly what French I actually learnt at school and secondly that I could still remember it…!  Must get some photos up. Seemed to have walked the whole place. Up, down, all over. Took me the rest of the week back at work and the weekend to recover. I needed another holiday to recover from the holiday! God knows if I’ll actually manage to do any of the other trips I want to this year. Any one involved else seems to have lost interest.

Been doing techy stuff of the mail servery flavour when I have been in front of a computer recently. Been an arse finding out how to do everything. Really should document it for me to refer to in future and for other peeps.  The nice person that I am ;) Ubuntu + Postfix + Courier IMAP + SpamAssasin + PostGrey + SquirreMail + ProcMail… FTW though in the end.

On a geeky note, did the Dr Who Exhibition at Earls court recently with Hyphen. Bit short for an exhibition but still loads there mind and wasn’t expensive (£9?). Props etc from the recent new series. Was good. Highlight had to be me nearly falling into and destroying the tardis though… I managed to some how throw by body weight so I fell funny, missed it, and ended up on the floor instead though. Ahhh.

Think I’m moving soon. Think. Long story but I need some where bigger and more space for me.

Been doing some PHP coding once again the last few days for a project for work, spending time on the PHPFreaks.com forums. Nice helpful guys but at the same time I can even help out (very dusty PHP…) answering some questions giving back to the place. I did mean to spend some time this evening looking at JavaScript and AJAX for some idea floating around in my head. I got distracted by Facebook though :(

Bed now. I need time to lie and.. think. Dangerous.

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New toy

03-May-08

lumix.jpgWell I’ve been wanting one for ages, and I’m going to Paris in a few weeks… and I’ve just got a pay rise, so I thought hell. I’ll finally get one.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ3
It has 10x optical zoom in a small compact camera :) The reason I’ve wanted one so long!

There are two higher models the TZ4 and TZ5 but it’s really just down to the megapixels and I didn’t see the point spending the extra money. Most end up on this website, maybe the odd one printed, and this will do it happily.

It’s got plenty of impressive bits. For example - ever tried to take a photo with the camera above your head, i.e. in a crowd? It has a special LCD mode so you can see the screen!

Paris is at the end of the month, so keep your eyes peeled for photos from it. Hopefully before if I get an excuse.

The lovely pay raise at work is nice too…

Now off to a typical bank holiday weekend. Oh wait. The sun’s shining!

Over and out.

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