Hello Again!

Jun 30, 2010 | Uncategorized

I thought that I’d add another post before June ends, especially because I’m now on holiday and will be away next week.  Not that you’ll notice because I haven’t been here much in the past two or three weeks anyway.

I’ll be up north in Sutherland where the mobile phone signal fades in and out.  Of course I plan to have the phone switched off most of the time but it is a useful thing to have around.  As a precaution I unlocked an old phone and bought a SIM for a different network to my usual provider in the hope that at any one time at least one of them will have a signal in case of emergency.

dae as yer telt

One of the nice things about firing up the phone was coming across some old pictures lurking in the memory.  The one below is on the Shore at Leith where the water of Leith flows into the docks.  I can not remember where the one to the right was taken although the sign has a kind of “NHS” feel to it (something to do with the colour and the typeface rings bells).

The phone also contains a couple of pics from my last trip to Canada three years ago.  Of course the phone – an old Nokia 6131– still works perfectly so from the perspective of fitness for purpose there is no reason at all for me ever to have stopped using it – but of course I have, twice since then with contract renewals.

The phone which came immediately after it, a Sony-Ericsson, is another that I unlocked but then gave away to a friend who was in need of a new phone.  And currently I have an Android G1 (otherwise known as a HTC Dream) which I really like and onto which I am finally getting round to loading some apps 0 including the Vignette camera app about which I have written previously.

The sun shines on Leith

And come November it will be contract renewal time again and the opportunity will be there for yet another upgrade. There is an inherent wastefulness to this upgrade cycle but there is also a fascination in watching the capabilities of the  technology advance rapidly in such a short time.  Will I be tempted to upgrade? of course.  And probably to an HTC Desire unless, of course, something nicer comes along in the next 5 months.

On a gadget man theme, a colleague with whom I was traveling a couple of times in the last two weeks was using a Sony eReader.  I have largely avoided the delights of eReaders but this looked tempting (even though I have, inevitably, a kindle application on my phone which I haven’t used yet).

And so that was June, a month which seems to have passed in no time at all; a month so exciting that the only thing I can find to talk about is mobile phones!

Who Knows…

Jun 19, 2010 | Uncategorized

boldly going

…where the time goes.

What can I say? Sometimes the time goes by and blogging isn’t on my mind.

The last three weeks have, though, been largely uneventful, which is no excuse for not even a paragraph or two but there you are. Today hasn’t been much better – I gloss painted the interior and exterior of the front door and the surround (primed and undercoated last week).

There has been the football of course, slow to start but picking up the pace a bit in the second set of group games – unless you happen to be following France or England who have been shockingly poor. I also picked up a copy of the last Bond flik – A Quantum of Solace – in a used bin for £3 and found it better than I remembered it as being when I saw it in the cinema.  And I have been enjoying the JJ Abrams Star Trek and old episodes of the brilliant Monkey Dust, although I have found these to be best savoured in short batches rather than gorged upon.

My Stew-Mac guitar has been played -a lot- in DADGAD as I tried to work up a version of The Drowned Lovers (Child 216) to my own satisfaction if no-one else’s.  I’m having some problems with it as the air temperature rises and the humidity varies though.

And, umm, that’s about it – not really a lot to report for three weeks absence is there?