October 2008 Archives

I spend a silly amount of time online every week.

I've got accounts on most of the mainstream social networks (God I hate that term!), as well as twitter, jaiku, loads of fora, mailing lists and of course instant messaging systems.

My typical daily routine used to involve checking my email before I'd even had a shower in the morning, so this cartoon from XKCD brought a smile to my face:




But joking aside I sometimes do wonder if I am spending simply too much time online.

Fifteen years ago I didn't even own a computer. My job, which was in food and beverage, involved me interacting with the public all day long, 5 days a week. The idea that I would have "friends" in Australia, US, Canada etc., etc.,  "chatting" to me at all times of the day or night would never have even entered my head.

I used to write letters to friends and relatives to keep in touch.

Nowadays I rarely write letters of any kind, yet I'm in touch with people all the time.

In some ways all these "connections" are fantastic, but in other ways I miss the simplicity.

I miss sitting beside an open fire and reading a good book. (While I still read I currently don't have access to an open fire!)

I'm not complaining. I enjoy what I do, which is why I do it, but I still think it's important to take stock of things from time to time.

Either the IEDR believes its own PR or the PR company it uses are clueless.
I'm not sure which one it is.

In any case they've pushed out yet another one of those "look at how wonderful we are" type press releases. You know the type. A few facts padded by loads of waffle with pretty much no substance.

Read about it over on my domain blog.

And while talking about the IEDR Tom was good enough to share his insights into the IEDR's crazy claims

I also decided to put the domain iedrsuck.eu live - nothing very exciting for the moment, but I'm sure I can find new things to do with it

I posted about this yesterday on the company blog, but forgot to mention it over here ....

We've managed to secure a deal for our clients that can give them up to 75 euro of free advertising credit with Google Adwords.

More details on the blog and offer page

I don't use Windows that often. Generally speaking I use Windows in the office via Parallels Desktop to access one specific bit of software or when I remote desktop into a server on the LAN to bludgeon more rules into my Exchange profile.

This afternoon I decided that a game of Battlefield 2142 would be a good idea, as killing random players on a multiplayer server is good fun.

Now if I had been thinking clearly I would have fired up the Mac OSX version, but based on what ensued I somehow doubt that my choice of OS would have made much difference.

At least it would be if the EA games updates were:

1. Where they say they are
   
2. Easy to find
3. On a decent connection

Needless to say they aren't any of the above, so almost 2 hours later I still haven't managed to download the updates, as the EA games download servers are so damn slow.

(and I probably should add on another 45 minutes for all the other random windows, antivirus and other software updates that have decided to force themselves on me since I booted into XP)

While I may be happy enough doing some quick editing of a php or html document in vim (or equivalent) I miss having access to software like Dreamweaver (the license was for a really old version). I don't think I can justify paying Adobe's prices for a new Dreamweaver license, so what are my options?
Ideally I'd like something which is similar to Dreamweaver, but a LOT cheaper?

Can anyone make any recommendations?

And please don't say NVU!

Maybe some people only get a couple of emails a day... I know I don't.

If you don't put a subject to your email I cannot know what it's about without opening it.

This wastes my time and yours.

A meaningful subject line means that I can prioritise the email, find it later or simply pass it onto the correct person.

How hard can it be?

Seriously

While I love my Mac there are some things that drive me mad.

Where the hell is the hash (#) key?

It's ALT+3 on my keyboard, but you'd have to be a genius to work that one out by yourself

At least the tilde (~) is on the keyboard, unlike a standard Italian PC keyboard which seems to have it hidden from view for some inane reason.

Why on earth anyone would want an action figure based on either McCain or Obama?

Oddly enough some people do.

Maybe Republicans and Democrats alike are using them a bit like voodoo dolls?

In any case according to Entertainment Earth the Obama action figures are selling nearly five times more than the McCain ones.

I'm not sure what you can infer from that useless bit of trivia, though it did amuse me nevertheless.

I've posted a few times in the past few months about my adventures looking for a house or apartment.

At the moment I've had to suspend the hunt.

Why?

I'm currently waiting on the bank to get back to me about a mortgage. If I get mortgage approval then I can forge ahead, but without knowing what way the bank is going to respond I can't do much more.

The events of recent weeks, with most of the world's financial institutions coming close to bankruptcy and stock exchanges crashing etc. etc., does not help.

I suspect that any mortgage applications they receive at present are being scrutinised a lot more closely, which might explain why I've been waiting.

In the meantime all I can do is try building up my "nest egg".

Of course if I won the lottery all these issues would vanish!

Related articles by Zemanta

• Markets in Europe and Asia Plunge
• How the world's economies are coping: only Iraq thrives in world slump
• House prices drop at fastest rate in 25 years

I'm curious.

Do people own bluray players yet?

Or are you all still waiting for something....

Please vote on the poll