RT @nickjfrost: “I think breathe right strips may have just saved my marriage, They’re amazing. Goodbye snoring.” Someone after freebies?
Oct 15 2009
From RV To Caravan
I’m hoping that Mum and John are having a good time down in Falmouth, where they’ve parked their caravan to have a mini-break away from the stresses of work and see Nick, Ros and Ros’ mum. Last year they made the decision to sell the motor-home they had toured round in, as it was a little impractical to drive it down some of the narrow country roads you find in the more picturesque areas of Britain. I’m hoping we’ll see some posts from John on their trip, with a few photos, upon their return, as John has come on leaps and bounds in terms of regularly posting.
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Oct 12 2009
Happy Birthday Bro
As you have most likely guessed from this post’s title, today (12th October – we’re just into that day over here in Kazakhstan, and I doubt he’ll read this in the 4 or so hours left of the 11th of October back in Britain) is my brother’s birthday. He already has the best present he could wish for, as his Facebook friend’s and reader’s of John’s blog already know. I’ll post on that soon.
I hope you have a great day with your family and friends, and that you stay sober enough to remember it Tuesday morning 🙂
Sep 23 2009
RT @nickjfrost: “… … It wa…
RT @nickjfrost: “… … It was one of the ‘staysis’ sleeps. … …” — Is that the opposite of a GoBro sleep?
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Jun 19 2009
Hurricane With Windows Mobile 6.1
For any UK readers, you’ll also find it listed as an Orange C550 (HTC often sell their models on via other networks, and so often each model has a lot of alternative names).
Anyway, despite the down direction on the joystick being a little wonky, since installing WM6.1, I’ve grown to like the phone again. I have learned that EITHER using WM5torage (a tool to enable the phone to be used as a mass storage device, thereby avoiding the need to install ActiveSync on a PC first) OR OMAPClock (a tool to overclock (or in my case attempt battery life improvement by underclocking)) on this particular model, with this particular ROM (selang09’s wm 6.1 – a breeze to install thanks to ubrdave’s helpful instructions here) caused some sort of corruption, leaving my phone convinced that all EXEs were not valid Windows CE applications! I’m assuming it was the underclocking that did it somehow. Anyway, lesson learned, phone NOT bricked, so re-flashed it, and carried on guessing what some of the included Chinese language programs do.
With 6.1 installed, I was able to start using apps that required .NET CF 3.0 or above, like PockeTwit, though live access to the camera does seem to not be possible – don’t know if this is a hardware limitation that the developers haven’t been able to work around, or whether this is related to the non-standard ROM I’m using. I’ve yet to try Barcorama on the Hurricane (a barcode scanner application), but I can imagine the ever present security guards in Kazakh supermarkets getting their knickers in a twist if I attempt any price comparisons/uploading 🙂
Here is a quick screenshot of how the phone looks right now, I miss the ability to easily add/remove components from the equivalent of the today screen, compared to the Kaiser with its WM6.1 Pro, but I haven’t yet had to fall back to my v.old Sony Ericsson K700, so I can’t really complain. Editing homescreens on WM2003SE involved plugins and XML files for the main config, so I’m hoping I can bluff my way through customizing the interface a little in the future.
May 25 2009
Birthday Meal With Dad And Nick
Again, I think I may have used PockeTwit to provide a quick update at the time (25th April), but here are the proper photos. Dad and Nick came over for a meal to celebrate my 30th birthday. Whilst living in Clydach, any time I drove into Swansea, I’d pass a restaurant that looked interesting. TBH, anywhere that sells New York Italian food is likely to get a thumbs up from me, and whilst not exactly a dinner jacket required sort of establishment, the food was delicious. Anna behaved very well, and the next time we’re back in Wales, I’ll gladly be heading over to Frankie & Benny’s.
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- Dad Nick Anna Clydach
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- Irina Anna Clydach
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- Chris Nick Irina Anna Clydach
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- Nick At Chris’ Birthday Meal
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- Irina At Chris’ Birthday Meal
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- Chris Birthday Meal
May 18 2009
Xbox 360 Posts
Just a quick explanation for anyone wondering why a games console appears to have hacked into this site 🙂
The short version is that my Xbox 360 posts details of games I have played recently, and any achievements attained. Whenever you see the nickname AntiSceptic, you can swap that for Chris, in your head 🙂 SilentlyScreaming is pretty much the only other alias I tend to use online. That was too long for Xbox live though 🙁 So I had to use my second choice, the one I ‘borrowed’ from Gavin all those years ago.
The slightly long winded version is this… IF my console is connected to the internet (not possible right now, as I have no xBox WiFi adaptor, and there is no network socket in the in-law’s living room), then every time I play a game, the Xbox Live service is informed of any relevant data. From Microsoft’s servers, the people over at 360voice & GamerDNA extract enough data to create blog posts. (See the last link in this post to see the original version). From here, my blog grabs the RSS feed for that page (see here), and posts the information up, under a different user account (it was simpler than trying to form lots of regex expressions to swap AntiSceptic for Chris or ‘I’, and I didn’t like making it look like I was actually talking about myself in the 3rd person), using the WP-o-matic plugin.
As mentioned, the Xbox 360 is currently offline, so the posts so far have all been my console ‘complaining’ that I’m not giving it enough attention. I’m not sure what will happen when I reconnect it when we move back to our flat – whether it’ll ignore games played and achievements…. …. achieved, or amend the older posts, or simply provide a summary of what has been missed.
Anyway, why do all this? Because I wanted to see what was possible. Am I claiming any sort of originality here? No, Narcogen has been doing this for a couple of years, I only just got around to viewing his site’s source to get a clue how he achieved this. Ha, upon checking I had got the right URL for his blog, I now see that each Xbox post actually has a link in it to 360voice. Hey ho.
You can see my official profile over here, and the 360voice/GamerDNA pages here.
May 14 2009
Last Known UK Photo Of Anna?
Unless I took some on my phone, here we have a shot from Dad’s camera, when he and Nick met us at the airport, after John very kindly drove us all the way down to Heathrow. Despite over eager rule enforcement from the coffeeshop staff re. exact seating positions allowed, it was great to see Dad and my ‘little’ brother one more time, and we are looking forward to hopefully seeing everyone again this Christmas.
So, here we have it, the last British picture (14th May) before we play catch up with all the Kazakh photos…
Chris Irina Nick Anna at Heathrow
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May 06 2009
Catch Up Post
There haven’t been a lot of ‘real’ blog posts recently, with tweets from my phone being the normal method of updates. So, just to sync everyone at the same time, we went to see Dad on Saturday, over in Evesham. Luckily the car didn’t need any major work done to it (it was making a noise like an Austin Metro engine when you turned the steering wheel), just a top up of the power assist steering fluid. This meant I was happy driving on the motorway with Anna and Ira, without worrying about breaking down or exploding 🙂
It was great seeing Dad, Aunty Chris & Bob again, and to catch up with what has been going on. I hope to see Dad and my brother Nick (and maybe Roz?) before we leave for Kazakhstan on the 14th. From there, we moved onto Cheltenham on Sunday, to see some friends who had not yet met Anna. Irina managed to find a great deal on a room at the Queens hotel in Chelt, which I’d never been in before, let alone had a room. TBH, the rooms, staff and decor were all fine, but I think the reputation of the place had led us to think it would be a lot better. Ira #2’s boyfriend (Andy) instantly became a demi-god when he took a quick glance at our pushchair, diagnosed and then fixed the fault within a couple of minutes – the brake had been semi-engaged since the day it arrived, which meant pushing it and Anna uphill was un-necessarily arduous. Unfortunately, whilst returning from town the brake had fully engaged, so we had to half carry the thing up the Promenade. Silver linings in a cloud and all that though, as if it hadn’t finally engaged like that, we’d not have mentioned it to Andy & therefore struggled over in Kazakhstan pushing it along stony tracks etc.
So what plans today? Sort out a couple of things for John’s upcoming 60th birthday, help look after Anna, generally not get in the way of Irina who is packing boxes to send ahead of us for Astana & try and check out the rest of the demos I downloaded over the weekend for the XBox 360.
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Apr 25 2009
Just had a great b-day meal wi…
Just had a great b-day meal with Dad, Nick, Ira and Anna
http://twitpic.com/3ym9w
Frankie And Bennys Swansea
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