martinlittle.com:thinkThin

I did secretly set some aims for 2003, and I've hit a few of them, but by no means all. In my mind, I have a few things I'd like to get done in 2004, so we'll see how that goes.

Keeping this site updated has become a very big part of my life. Thank you to you all for reading, commenting and getting in touch with me.

Tonight I'm still not sure what I'm doing, but the phone is charged, so there will be photos! I've been too lazy to fix my scripts, so the permalinks will be snapped right after midnight. This page will still work though!

I'd like to wish each and every one of you a fantastic 2004, and I look forward to seeing many of you in the year ahead.

This morning, I had to get up very, very early to catch a bus into Glasgow and then a bus to Edinburgh. At 6.20am(!!!), a time I only occasionally see -- normally after a good night out, I got out of bed, jumped into the shower, packed my bag and headed out into the freezing (down to -6C here today) weather. The bus didn't turn up...

My mum gave me a lift to the other end of the village, to try and catch the next bus, which finally arrived late ... and then proceeded to break down on the motorway. We were stuck there, with no heating, for about 20 minutes, until the next bus came along. My sister was on that one, so we had a chat on the way, which was cool. My journey to Glasgow ended almost two hours after it began! The second part of my journey was thankfully incident-free.

The temperature has hardly changed here today. The latest report is saying it is -3C, with sleet expected on Hogmanay. Ugh.

I rocked home today to see my parents. Dad gave me a bread making lesson, and here's the mighty result. De la!

Blogging Deek complaining about my lack of recent blogging.

I've taken the plunge and picked up an X-Box and Project Gotham Racing 2. I have some *serious* reservations about inviting the beast of Redmond into my living room, but I have a 10 day return. If you have PGR2 and want an online game, let me know!

A queue (half hidden by the van) for expensive cheese.

Your time has come!

I got this card from a local Nepalese restaurant (great food, well recommended). Didn't realise I had eaten there quite so often! ;-)

Project Gotham Racing on the X-Box, looking at the castle. I may need one of these, I think!

Friday was our departmental Christmas lunch at Blonde. Normally I don't enjoy eating out at Christmas due to the inevitably reduced level of service, quality of food and rushed nature of the meal. Blonde had none of those problems -- even though I ended up arriving very late (40 minutes -- there were NO taxis!), my starter was still steaming hot and doubly tasty (mussels) and my main course (venison) arrived promptly after I had finished my starter. The house wines we had were very tasty and well priced. Quite possibly the best Christmas meal I've had in a restaurant!

Following that, we had something of a mighty pub crawl. We kicked off at Borough, then after a few hours headed to the Meadow Bar, followed by Native State, assembly and Beluga, finally arriving at Bar Kohl to sample several of the tasty vodkas on offer. I strolled home with some chips just after 1am; pretty good day all in!

Today is present wrapping and getting into the Christmas spirit thanks to those lovely people at SomaFM [direct links to the streams: 128kpbs | 24kbps].

The previous photo looked much better on my phone. You really can see the snow in this one.

First snowfall in Edinburgh for winter 2003.

Feels good!

The coolest thing I got was the 2003 Christmas CD from the Pro (playing right now in my house); he's also posted a Christmas message online, an idea which I may well steal.

Things to do and people to see now.

I *am* the man on the Clapham Omnibus. Need an opinion?

Christmas tree with real carol singers!

Already had birthday lunch with Al, visited the Saatchi Gallery and walked miles. Now off to the Turner exhibition at Tate Britain.

Mr Whipcracker (AKA Jim Hughes)

Mobi meet at Pommelers Rest.

Wooops. Too many beers at lunchtime. Afternoon is going to be a lot of fun. This is holiday!

Some cool blue trees on the South Bank. Thankfully these ones didn't shoot water mist like most of the others (weird concept -- soak you when it is really cold weather, and encourage pavement icing).

With tree and wheel.

Gourmet Burgers with Karen, Eric, Jeff & Steph.

Taken from the Tate Modern Private Guests Lounge, dahling.

Everyone relaxing on the floor in the Turbine Hall.

Can you see Allan and I?

Shopping with Allan. This photo is for Jams.

• my train journey on the WiFi train, including my chat with the Chief Exec of the train company
• finding wireless access in London

I am here, and it is blooming raining!

Anyway, I'm putting that all behind me for over a week. Tomorrow is London on the WiFi train as part of Mobitopia WiFi day. Then hooking up with Allan and an assortment of others for a fun weekend and a mini Mobitopia meet. Back up here next week, for a few more days R&R. Case is packed, housesitter sorted and I'm good to go. The one thing I haven't sorted is which one of these online maps to try out. They aren't cheap, but anything to save carrying a book. ;-)

I'm actually feeling pretty excited about some time off work and catching up with people. Now for a brief sleep and then up and go. See some of you soon!

Cool morning sky!

Now to the business end of the post. I'm making my way to rock with my brother in London on either Thursday of Friday (I'm having a small challenge organising transport at the moment). We're planning a mini Mobitopia meet on Monday. Details to be confirmed. I'll probably stay down there until Tuesday or Wednesday. As far as I know, we don't have anything particular planned (do we bro?), so if you want to catch up for a drink or food or ... whatever, let me know here or on my mobile (you can use the contact form, and send to mobile). In fact, if there is something I should totally see when I'm there, leave a message too, please.

I've been going to the gym for a while now, and managed to keep on going even after Allan headed to London (I'm marking that down as an achievement!). It's all well and good going along, but I kind of felt that I needed some kind of driver for it all. So ... I am going to run the Edinburgh Marathon in June. I already do a fair amount of running at the gym, so, my thinking goes, upping the time shouldn't be THAT hard.

Some proper shoes were in order, to avoid wrecked knees and legs, so I fired along to the same place Allan got his shoes (he's doing the London Marathon) -- Run and Become. Selecting running shoes is a whole lot more involved than you might imagine. Word to the great service at Run and Become!

I like what I ended up with: a pair of Saucony Grid Praxis. They don't really sound like the name of a shoe, but there you go. I also got some double comfy (and pretty strange-looking) socks, so I'm all good on the gear front. Now I need to get my gym program tailored and find some other people to run with. I'm quite fancying getting back into some cross-country, as well as doing the marathon. Back in the days when I was still at school, I used to run for Kilbarchan Amateur Athletic Club. Looking at the pictures on the site, I still recognise a few of the faces! Any pointers towards friendly clubs in Edinburgh are very welcome.

Thanks to some thread-based assistance from Neil & Ker, Tree1.0 was successfully moved into the production environment on time and on budget. Thanks to the whole team for all their hard work and dedication. Opening hours for viewing the installation change daily. Bring alcohol to ensure entry.

Anyway, Time magazine says cameraphones are the second coolest thing of 2003 [via Reiter]. Nice, but ... cameraphones were easily available back in 2002, when I picked up my T68, and I think they were in shops at the tail end of 2001. Skipping that minor detail, it is nice to see some recognition of the technology and the impact it has made and continues to make. (The number one item was the iTunes Music Store.)

Without a doubt, the coolest thing I picked up this year was my P800 (my full review is here). In terms of innovation and complete cool-factor, that wins hands down. My P900 is nice, but the P800 was the paradigm shifter.

2003 has seen my collect a few other cool items, including a SliMP3, and I've innovated software-wise, getting my own blogging tool together as well as adding functionality allowing me to blog photos and videos from my phone(s).

However, the second coolest item I got this year is ... a mop. Yes, you read that correctly, I'm advocating a manual floor-cleaning device. In August I got new vinyl floorcovering (AKA lino, much nicer than those words suggest!) in my new kitchen and also in the bathroom. Sandy, the Queen of Clean(ing) bought me a Dettol Easy Mop and made me promise to use it. Good to my word, I have used it, because it really is so quick and easy and it totally gets my stamp of approval for Just Working. Got vinyl floorcovering? Get a Dettol Easy Mop and make your life easy.

Definite dud of the year goes to Three, the mobile phone company. More on that one soon.

Here's my Christmas tree sans baubles. I don't have any thread, so it will be tomorrow before version 1 comes online.

I've installed it, and they've fixed quite a few of the little gripes I had with previous versions. The key differences I'm liking:

• The message list pane now shows status for reply, forward and unread as icons directly on the message envelope instead of using text.
• Only mark a message as read when it has been open in the preview pane for a configurable number of seconds.
• No more new mail alert notifications when the incoming messages are Junk.
• The progress bar now appears in the mail 3-pane window when reporting progress for operations like downloading new mail or a message body.
• Junk Folder Purging works on all accounts and not just the first one.

Some of the icons have also been updated although, annoyingly, not the main application icon, which looks like a regular mail message and still sometimes confuses me! It really is a great piece of software and, along with its close relative Firebird (my browser of choice), make a great team for maximum Internet enjoyment. Oh, and it isn't susceptible to the viruses and hacks some other mail programs are...

Jams verifies his 1995 Nokia 5.1 encourages London tabloid readership.

That was a very tasty Friday dinner. Definitely time for a beer now!

I've kind of let my hair grow longer than it has been for years. Now I need it cut, but not just shaved like I normally get. Any suggestions?

• I have no idea whatsoever how I found this site, but I am SO glad I did. From here there is a link to an 11MB WMV video, of a guy doing the most incredible things on a skateboard I have ever seen. Even if you think skateboarding is the exclusive domain of pimply yoofs, still watch the video. It is amazing. Wow. Jim -- how are you getting on?
• Lego pieces, magnified by 1000. I especially like the walkie-talkie [via the 2lmc spool]

Since I highlighted the comments section, quite a few people have told me over IM, or even in person(!) that they really enjoy reading them. So, I've added the last five comments left to the front page, over there ->

The downside is that it makes the page feel very busy, so I'll need to take a look at some kind of reorganisation. If its not one thing, its another. ;-)

Please feel free to leave a comment and let me know what you think!

The big wheel has arrived in Edinburgh as part of the Christmas celebrations. It escapes me which part of the Christmas story involved a big wheel right now..

It has been a lovely day here. The sky is putting on a lovely closing show, right in front of me.

As has been expected for a while, Sony Ericsson have launched a 'home' version of their firmware upgrading software. No more trips to your local service centre, or, worse, sending your phone away for weeks at a time to have an incremental upgrade applied.

In the interest of research, I decided to give it a go last night. I got the new P900 cradle out the box for the first time (I was still using the P800 cradle) and got everything ready. The online instructions are well laid out with plenty of graphical pointers to help you find the pertinent information regarding the currently installed firmware version.

It was then that I hit a little speedbump. My hope with the upgrade had been to move to Organiser version R2B02, however I was told that my R1C01 was the latest available for my phone after entering the CDA number. I hoped this was just a tiny mistake, and went ahead and upgraded anyway. This involved installing a small application on my computer, downloading a file (thank goodness for broadband!) then the actual installation. All completed without issue, however, checking the firmware version on my phone, I still had Organiser R1C01.

After a quick spot of investigation, it would appear that Orange have restricted P900 owners from upgrading. Bah! Hopefully Orange will see the error of their ways, and relent, as they have done since the T68 to T68i upgrade.

The process itself seems to be well done by Sony Ericsson, although it took a bit longer than the 10-15 minutes updating a Siemens S55 takes. I've put some additional photos on my site showing the whole process.

Of course, I now have a blank P900. I can never be bothered to do a backup, since my 'data' (MP3/Ogg files) is on the memory stick, any text messages I want saved are on the SIM and one quick sync with Outlook gets all my contacts, tasks, calendar entries and notes back on to the phone. After that, first port of call is ALWAYS the super useful Configurator, which appears to have had a recent makeover giving it a rather minimalist look. A few clicks later and my phone has a full compliment of GPRS, WAP, email and MMS settings and I'm on the road again. Now to find some fun new apps to put on it!

This first home upgrade is, no doubt, intentionally small in terms of changed functionality. Here's hoping we see some more significant upgrades in the future, and hopefully also for the P800.

Taking a step back and looking at the bigger picture, I'm wondering if Sony Ericsson will allow all phones to be upgraded in this way. It looks unlikely, seeing as none of the other phones in the range come with a desk stand, the P800 being the exception; a physical connection between the phone and computer was required for the upgrade. Perhaps Over The Air (OTA) updates might work for other phones, given that the firmware will be considerably smaller than for the P900. Thank goodness Sony Ericsson have finally put home upgrades into practice -- at least for non-Orange P900s.

The current level is:

Yesterday Deek hassled me because I didn't post anything until the afternoon. Hopefully this will keep him happy!

At lunchtime I went to Jessops (a pretty big UK camera store chain) to look at digital cameras with Sandy. Slap bang in the middle of the cabinet were two cameraphones! It would be amusing if, in five years time, it was the other way round, with the store selling all kinds of phones, and a few dedicated cameras.

I have been looking for some plants to go in the hall for a while. Tonight in Safeway as I was getting food for tea I saw this guy. It was a bargain 2.50, so I got two. P.S. Like the new mirror, too?