March 2005

Perfect for me. Check out the iNO.
Musta seen me coming!

Via those geordie nuttaz at Newlinks

I woke up very fuzzy this morning after taking my wife out for a chinese for her birthday. We managed to consume 2 bottles of red wine between us and were both a little “squiffy” when we staggered home. I don’t usually eat chinese but i made a special effort and quite enjoyed it!

As i stumbled around at the local school playground after dropping the kids off i noticed a green iPod Mini being brandished by one of the local mums. Not that she looked like the sporty type either mind you! It appears that everyone has one! Apart from me. Bah. I even spotted a little kid who could have only been 10 with an iPod Shuffle! He was being dragged around the local shops by his parents who looked the like they could easily afford to buy as many as they wanted. Double Bah.

I have been making an effort to listen to the FM radio on my Nokia 3200 just to see if i could justify an MP3 player. I hate Radio1 one though and Radio 4 often just becomes too random after you have to stop listening every few mins to answer the phone. It reminds me of my days as a temp working as a “picker packer” in a local factory - about 15 years ago. They had Radio1 on all the time blasting out of hidden speakers in the roof. You could guarantee hearing the same songs over 6 times in one shift! Arrggh. The only thing that kept me going was writing “Rave On” on the packages that were going to Manchester. I hope that someone there appreciated all my hard work!

After my post yesterday about getting a new mobile i did a little research and found that i could play AMR format files as ringtones on my phone. I got hold of the Nokia Multimedia Converter and have uploaded the “Windows XP Startup” tune to my phone and set it as the ringtone.
The quality is really crappy and the little speaker distorts it badly - but it does work! So with a little help my wife will be able to have the real “staying alive” as her ringtone. There - i have just given away her age! Did i mention it was her birthday?

Gnngg. The new Stereophonics track has just started playing on the radio. I heard it at lunchtime and also on the way home last night and the way in this morning! I wonder what i would choose to listen to if i had my iPod with me?

Hmmmm……

The thought of having an iPod is still in the forefront of my mind at the moment. As is getting an Apple Mac computer. I have the money to get both from our savings but there are more important things to spend it on. New bathroom suite and a new garden patio and stuff like that.

I was (attempting) to get a new ringtone for the wifes phone the other night whilst we watched Most Haunted Live on LivingTV. I have got plenty of MIDI ringtone files downloaded via torrents but for some reason the beggers never play on the phone! You can load them into the Nokia Sound Converter program and mess with the polyphonic vaules and MIDI channels etc - transfer it to the phone and it then does not play. After several hours of going “this one?” or “how about this one?” and then finding that the shortlist of 3 from over 6000 did not work got me a little pissed off to say the least. I did a bit of googling and found a message from someone saying that the MIDI files need to be about 10-20k for it to play on the model of Nokia we both have. Therefore off i went to find a MIDI file editor to trim it down. That was at around midnight. I did get one but could’nt figure it out. I wished our phones played proper MIDI files, MP3 or WAV files as ringtones.

So that got me thinking about getting a new phone…….

And it starts again. A new fad to think about. I picked up a brochure from CarPhoneWhoreHouse whilst shopping the other day and scanned it for a new phone! I don’t need an iPod if i can get a phone that plays MP3s - like my SPV used to. I won’t need a multimedia jukebox thing that plays videos if i get a phone that does videos too - like my SPV used to.

Hmmm.. see a pattern emerging?

I can get a new SPV (the C500) here at the MoDaCo Shop for about £148 and then buy a 512mb memory card to go in.
I remember that it was nice having my SPV as an all-in-one unit. Phone, MP3 player, video player, organiser, games machine, camera.

Maybe i should get one of them instead of an iPod?
I have £90 saved up at the moment. Maybe next month then..

Someone slap me! - or get me a better paid job!

Since the demise of India Foxtrot on eBay there has not been many bargains to be had from our friends in blue. I am still using by Black and Decker hedge trimmers delivered with the crime number still attached. My first purchase on eBay perhaps…

However, it might be worth keeping an eye on Bumblebee Auctions. Looks like most items might be “collect only” though and seeing as this is a UK wide website - may not pay to shop here when you have worked out the petrol money!

Need i say any more?

Whilst walking the dusty lates of the Internet this lunchtime i stumbled across this little gem on an idea!
You will need to switch to using Azureus as your Bittorrent client to get it to work - but its worth a go.
How to never miss an episode with BitTorrent and RSS

via pealco.net

Agent Cook strikes again. 

Nuff said..