Mozilla is trying to get into the Guinness book of records with most downloads in a 24 hour period. It’s going on now - get Firefox, spread Firefox.
If you don’t know what that is, and you’re reading this in Internet Explorer — [doink]. That’s me hitting you in the head with a rubber mallet. It’s an awesome web browser, and is to surfing the web what spoons are to eating soup — a necessary tool, and a curvy, shiny piece of awesomeness to boot.
(I haven’t actually installed FF3 yet. Mozilla’s load-balancing is good, which is to say the website was still up for me to hit download, but not that good, in that I’m getting 5 k/b per second down a pipe that should give me 1.25 mb/s. I’m looking forward to it, though, in a geeky kind of way).
Update: FF3 installed on three machines now and I’m loving it on all of them. Most of my extensions/add-ons have been upgraded (not the Delicious one, oddly enough) and it seems to run smoother, faster and less resource intensively than before. Although it does seem to have a larger RAM footprint than FF2, where my systems would grind to a halt with this much memory in use in earlier incarnations, FF3 seems well stable. Happiness is a shiny new browser. Yes, yes, I’m a geek.
I’m trying to be more diligent about diet and exercise at the moment, having had enough of being ludicrously unhealthy. Wii fit is helping a bit, but if you catch me at a moment of weakness, please snatch the cheeseburger/pizza/whatever out of my hands and slap me in the face with it, then try to pot it in the nearest bin. Also, if you want to play squash in West/Central London let me know.
This year marks the 10th year anniversary of my leaving school. There’s a reunion and all, and I’m trying to make up my mind as to whether I go.
On the plus side, a lot of what I went through falls into the category of “crucial, formative stuff” that’s made me who I am today, and I am very fond of a few of my peers and staff there.
On the minus side, the half dozen or so friends I had at school may or may not be going, and I didn’t have a lot in common with the remaining 100 or so folk in my year. Every encounter I’ve had with them since then has been very amicable… but, y’know, do I want to throw myself into a context where I (at least 10 years ago) categorically did not fit in?
Have any of you gone to these reunion things not knowing many people well? Did you have fun? Did you tell people you were a professional killer by trade? Were you at school with Minnie Driver?
Incidentally, it’s also the 10th year since I matriculated at college and I have no ambiguity about that party. I’m going in with bells on. But then — I see half of those friends on a weekly basis.
Postscript: TEN YEARS man. TEN YEARS.
I can’t find the “ten years” scene on YouTube so this will have to do.
I was an early tester for Songkick, a social music application that scans your musical tastes and finds you local gigs to buy tickets for. A friend introduced me to a founder of the service who invited me in, but it is now open to all.
It’s awesome. I’ve become determined to be a little less middle aged and do more fun stuff like this mid-week and so the emails recommending gigs all around London from bands I already like? Fantastic. It probably wants integration with Last.fm so it can draw on historical listening patterns rather than just what you’ve got in your database (I have a lot of crap music I really ought to delete/archive)…
That said, I haven’t got around to booking anything yet. Maybe I’ll start with the next Urusen gig in a couple of weeks…
I’m off on holidays tomorrow - Tunisia - for a much needed break. Will not be very connected for the week, so please do contain your desire to speak to me until the 20th. Expect pictures and anecdotes on my return.
Recommendations on what to do whilst I’m there on a comment / email before 2pm tomorrow please ;-)
My friend David is off to Argentina to begin his life as a diplomat. We had drinks on Friday - was amazing to hear him describe the places and people he’s going to be living and working in/with. He tells me that on a clear day, he can see Uruguay from his apartment.
The whole concept of picking up and relocating my life, however, is not one I find palatable and am happy to leave David to it. It’s sad to see him go, and great chat and Harrison Ford impressions will have to wait until he works out Skype, but at least I’ll have somewhere to stay when I’m in Buenos Aires.
I may need to take up golf, first, of course. I understand its an essential component of the expat existence over there.
Disclaimer: T-Mobile is a client of my agency. I don’t work on the account, and receive no discount. The below, as ever, represents my personal opinion.
Last night I went to a friend’s birthday party at her place in North London. As a point of fact, I didn’t really know where I was going until after I’d left the house.
I was able to check the venue (using mobile Facebook), find it on Google Maps, and entertain myself playing bubble breaker when the Circle line proved unreliable. And mobile Gmail is pretty good, too. The fact that I have an unlimited data tariff (Web & Walk costs £7.50 a month) means I have no compunction about accessing these services either.
I’ve always been a bit of an early adopter, but given how much people are using services like Facebook and Gmail these days, I do wonder if this stuff has hit mainstream now. Are you using mobile web services? Why not, if not?
In point of fact, my phone, a HTC Hermes (the T-Mobile MDA Vario 2 incarnation thereof) has been annoying me of late. It’s been a bit unstable, slow etc. I’m in need of the Windows Mobile 6 upgrade. I’m waiting for the day that Coolsmartphone.com reports that its out for the Vario 2…
Two Slingshot movie updates (quick refresher: Slingshot is the movie production house my brother founded and runs):
First, Sugarhouse, its first feature, opens in cinemas around the UK on the 24th of August. It’s a great film - you can try to win tickets and/or see where its showing via the Sugarhouse movie website. Flashalicious. Please go see it… To my friends, I’ll aim to organise some kind of evening out at the cinema to watch it. It’s an urban thriller, set in East London, and revolves around the lives of an accountant, a crackhead, and a killer. More or less in that order.
Trailer!
Exciting!!
Secondly, thank you all for your votes for Vito. HE WON!! There’s a big budget for Slingshot to make the first ever user generated film, and the Sun reported on the auditions… so its all systems go!
Thanks to everyone for your ongoing support. Watch the Slingshot blog and the Myspace Movie Mashup site for more updates!
I’m loving poker at the moment. The subject line is a term for a certain type of straight draw in poker (when you get five cards in sequence for a hand) — where one card is missing. A risky hand to bet… and a wonderfully silly name for it. It’s also known as a Gutshot, which isn’t quite as dramatic a name…
James and Matt introduced me to the finer points of the game, and Damo’s playing now too… We’re on Pokerstars (I’m div6 if you want to find me)… and you can check my recent form on Sharkscope.com - a bit up and down recently…
I think I enjoy poker for the human element — they say you’re meant to play the people, not the hands you’re dealt. I’m still probably a little too conservative but am getting better and have had a decent couple of weeks of form. Looking forward to another tournament at the Gutshot, a club near Farringdon where I occasionally play live tournaments…
Been in Malaysia the last few days for my cousin’s wedding. Been amazing: lots of my cousins around, all on great form, and one of the first time in years that all my Dad’s siblings (all 7 of them!) were in the same room at the same time. Lots of, erm, singing, and an amazing quantity of quite ludicrous dancing.
My cousin set up the wedding for the morning, allowing people to sleep through the afternoon’s heat before making it to the reception in the evening. Even without my jetlag waylaying me, it was a great concept… Evening was huge fun and videos and photos will be uploaded on my return the UK. Congrats to Geets and Ivan — v. proud.
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