Just playing around as I’m planning to start a new Photography blog in the new year. I’m hoping to publish something every week, maybe new stuff, maybe old stuff. Let’s see how it goes.
In the meantime, here’s a few i’ve taken in the last year. Hope you like
Had a tweet from those ever so nice people at Microsoft:
Nice try Dave!!
Well done to Bill Gates Steve Ballmer’s Empire for getting back to me, they didn’t have to.
If you actually want to see me reviewing some IT stuff, Gadget Geeks is being repeated on Challenge TV (Yes I can’t work that out either) on Monday nights at 10pm. Can’t remember what episode we were on (5 or 6 I think) so I’m sure you’ll be hearing about it.
This time it’s on Freeview, there is no escape!
Last night i posted a comment on Twitter about having the opportunity to buy an Apple product at 0% interest. Only problem is that I’m pretty broke and dont have the spare cash to afford such a luxury at this moment in time.
I got the usual joshing off the usual suspects and I happened to mention in one of my replies that I wasn’t really impressed by Windows 8. Now I must explain that I haven’t fully explored a new PC using Microsofts one-size-fits-all operating system, but on the times I’ve played with it whilst passing the time of day in PC World (as you do) I havent been that impressed.
I’ve been a windows user since the very first version of that platform came about way back when an Ipad was something that a hospital dished out to stupid kids who poked their eyes with pencils. My two, yes two (i’m not showing off honest) laptops have vista and Windows 7 installed. I’ve stuck with vista on the family laptop as I couldn’t be bothered to update it and probably because it would cause that PC to blow up. I have Win 7 installed on my smaller, slightly bigger than a netbook PC and, overall, the “experience” isn’t bad. Apart from the fact that the laptop is as underpowered as a Ferrari with a Fiat 993cc engine.
I’ve recently crossed over to Apple and find OSX easier to use, no regular multi updates interrupting you, doesn’t take a year or so to boot up and its’s fairly intuitive (Where have I used that term before?) Therefore my aim is to, when I can afford it, replace my existing Mac and my Win 7 laptop with a Macbook. I use my Mac to do all my photographic processing and it’s been an easy experience if I’m honest. You can see the results on my Flickr feed
Back to my tweet last night, imagine my surprise when MicrosoftUK tweeted me earlier today and asked me how they could improve my experience? Cheekily I tweeted back and said they could send me a top spec, high end Windows 8 laptop for me to test and see how I get on with using their all singing, all dancing, flat, metro (though we cant call it metro) styled Windows 8 operating system.
Surprisingly, they never got back to me. I have to ask why tweet someone, out of the blue, and offer to help when, in reality, you have no intention of actually helping that person?
So Microsoft, if you really want to help improve my experience, and want to help me and stop me turning to the dark side forever then how about it?
What have you got to lose?
It’s not as if I haven’t had past experience of testing stuff is it? 😉
Prior to last nights disappointment I found myself in the company of a nurse.
“Wey hey” you may say, we’ll don’t as my partner in crime on Charlton Live, Pete Finch, was also in tow, with a microphone.
NHS Greenwich, in partnership with Charlton Athletic Community Trust, were inviting Greenwich based Charlton supporting men to have a health check. The caveat being that your age was in excess of 35. Being slightly in excess of that figure I fell right into their target category. OK I don’t live in Greenwich anymore, so a little fiddling of the address (sorry Mum and Dad) and I was in.
You can hear the results on this coming Sundays show, including Nurse Tina stabbing me twice. Needless to say most of my “so called” friends and colleagues had a field day at my expense, as will many others when the package is played out. The main thing for me is that it highlighted a few home truths.
Yes I am overweight, yes I need to exercise more. Hopefully it will focus me a bit more, eat even healthier and go for more swims.
So if you are a bloke over 35, find out if your local NHS are running a similar scheme (they probably will), face up to your demons and take action. You’ll be doing yourself a favour.
Yep, just testing, nothing to see here. Move along now……..
I’ve not used this blog for sometime, as you can probably see, so i thought it time for a spring clean and a revamp.
I’m not going to solely concentrate on Charlton, other people write far better blogs on the subject. So I’ve decided to write about any old thing that takes my fancy.
One thing I am going to do is to publish some pictures I took the day after the Great storm of 1987. There from the Plumstead Common area, so look out for them in late October as we remember that horrific night 25 years ago.
In the meantime, here is a Photo I took back in the 80’s – The place has changed a bit.
Not done this for a long long time.
Still, good excuse to put the new toy to test.
Some of you will know that I like to Tweet. Twitter is fast becoming the easiest way of communicating amongst the Addick faithful. Last night we started talking about music. In fact it was all Paul Benson’s fault. Someone had seen his “Addicks FM” selection on Charlton Player. Not the worst one we’ve had it must be said. Somehow the banter got round to what was your first record.
So what was yours? Mine and please remember that I was four years old at the time was Grandad, by Clive Dunn. To this day I cannot explain why I liked it, why I had to have it and why I went with my Dad to a record shop in Plumstead to buy it. I can say that it certainly wasn’t for the B-side “I play the spoons”. It made me think about my musical taste, how was it influenced and why I like certain genre’s, hating others.
My early musical choices were rather bad, in fact they were damn awful. I remember buying some serious cheese. Some of the worst offenders purchased were C.W.Macall, The Wombles and, the shame of it, Terry Wogan.
Like most kids, we grow up listening to the music played by our parents. I’m afraid that I grew up listening to Joe Loss, Glenn Miller, James Last, Shirley Bassey and other assorted big bands. Luckily I was saved by my cousins and their cast offs.
I was about six when I was given my own record player as a christmas present. Somehow I managed to end up with hundreds of assorted 45’s from my cousins. An eclectic selection from early Bowie, yes it was the Laughing Gnome, to the Beatles. I used to spend hours listening to the music.
Somehow I missed out on Punk, I was just that bit too young. When my peers at school were getting into Madness, the Specials and the whole 2 tone scene I was buying music from Queen and ELO. Pretty mainstream stuff, not very rebellious.
As I got older I started to appreciate and get into the Electronic genre, music from Kraftwerk, Jarre, Ultravox, Visage etc. But somehow didn’t embrace the culture that went with it. That’s probably down to having fairly strict parents. I still kick myself that I didn’t rebel.
As a parent myself I can now appreciate how lucky my parents were, I may have been a lippy so and so, but I towed the line. My eldest is gradually finding his feet and his voice. As anyone with a pre-pubescent child knows it can be a little fraught at times. The one thing that consoles me is that he has finally discovered music and what a chip off the old block he is too!
He’s grabbed my old MP3 player and rammed it full of music from his Dad’s collection. For Christmas he wanted the Beatles back catalogue. He’s forever playing Abbey Road. He went out in the Holidays and bought a couple of Muse albums, even though I already had them. My proudest moment was when he came in to tell me that Pink Floyd were awesome and that The Great Gig was his favourite track. It must be down to me then. It must be down to the times he spent in the car with me listening to my pretty loud taste.
So that still doesn’t answer how I got my taste. If I had taken after my Dad, I would be stuck in the 1940’s listening to the big band sound.
I’ll probably never know and to tell you the truth I don’t really care, I like what I like and that’s what makes me who I am!
I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough of the snow and cold weather. Not only has it played havoc with the trains (have a read of Darryl’s excellent piece on 853 about SE Trains) it’s managed to do something that even Adolf Hitler failed to do and virtually wipe out sport. OK so nine clubs managed to get games on this weekend in the English leagues, but the majority of us had to endure a free weekend.
So what did you get up to. I imagine many of you went out sledging and building snowmen. Yesterday when I should have been at the Valley I found myself at that cathedral of capitalism, Lakeside. OK it was a necessary trip to buy some thermal socks at Marks and Spencer. You have to ask, though, who in their right mind visits these places on a Saturday when they could be at their local stadium?
As usual, the place was full of Wet Spammers with a smattering of Spudz and the occasional Woolwich Reject. You could tell by their faces that they were there under protest. Out of their natural habitat and forced to follow their “better” halves around. It’s that bad I’m tinkering with the idea of going to Wycombe on Saturday, just to get my fill of football. Given my recent record at away games, namely Northwich, I think I should be persuaded not to.
I should add that it wasn’t my wife’s suggestion to go to Lakeside!
Somewhat recently I seem to have become obsessed with Tweeting. In fact, just today, I’ve hit the 1000 tweet mark. It’s far simpler than Facebook, easily updated and an simple way of communicating.
Take matchdays – if you can’t go to the game and want faster updates than BBC London or Sky currently provide simply type in “#CAFC” into the Twitter search button and you will find all manner of updates from within the ground. OK you’ll need to sign up to do this.
As “Social Networks” go, it’s easy to use and has none of the bells and whistles that come with other sites such as Facebook, Myspace etc.
The benefit of such a network helps when there is travel chaos, which Southeastern Trains have been actively encouraging for the past couple of days. I needed to know if it was worth digging the car out of the snow this morning to get to the station. Various Tweets showed that it would be foolish to attempt.
The club instantly communicated with the 950 or so followers this morning about the match on Saturday being cancelled. 15 or so years ago we’d be relying on Clubcall to do something similar. It proves how much communication has improved between club and fans thanks to all this new technology available.
The downside is that you get some strange people following you, Twitterbots scour the postings and pick up on key words. You then find them following you. It’s easy to block anyone you don’t want seeing your posts. Even if they are fit…..
I’m BigDL, the club has the tag CAFCOfficial and there’s a wealth of other good people to follow. Not just Stephen Fry!
So what are you waiting for, you’re on the net, dive in.
Out in the rain 