April 2011
1 post
March Milage
Total cycling commuting miles for March: 349.8
January 2009
2 posts
4 tags
My first event of 2009
Yesterday I completed my first cycling event of 2009.
Whilst the CCS Reliability Ride is not really a race, it is also a bit more than the Sunday club runs. Before the event I decided I would have fun and ride round with other CCS club members, but half way round that plan changed and it turned into an ‘eyes out’ dash to the finish.
The morning started with driving rain and a...
4 tags
Macworld; What Happened?
I love all Mac related events, it’s a time that new shiney gadgets are unveiled and I work out how I can purchase them.
This years Macworld event started off with the shock of Apple pulling out and the main man Steve not performing another Steve-note.
But nothing compared to the actual event!
Let’s sum it up: iLife, iWork, iTunes DRM free and 17” MacBook Pro.
Honestly I do...
December 2008
1 post
4 tags
Happy New Year
As the World crashes into 2009 I dust off my keyboard. Nope not really I’m out somewhere enjoying myself but it felt about right to post a little note just to say have a good New Year’s.
September 2008
1 post
4 tags
Back on my bike
That’s right after a two year break I’m back on my bike and taking on the UK again. In 2006 I cycled from Lands End to John O’Groats, in 2008 I’m take the south bound road and cycling from John O’Groats to Lands End. This time around I’m hoping to raise money for the Breakthough Breast Cancer charity following on from my own personal encounters with the...
August 2008
2 posts
3 tags
Brighten Up The Office
If your lucky you have an office instead of a cubical. If your really lucky you have an office that is well looked after and painted in some subtle tones to inspire a relaxing working environment.
If your me you end up in a studio with a bright yellow wall behind you and a bright blue to your right.
This does not provide a perfect environment for the Creative Services crack team that is Jim Brown...
4 tags
What a busy few months
Wow looking back at my site the last article I wrote was nearly 4 months ago. Damn the time flies when your on the cross roads of life and life changing decisions mean you have to take a break and access where your going. So if you know me or have followed this blog you will no doubt know that I work as a sales development manager for Oscar Products; a small local packaging wholesaler....
April 2008
2 posts
7 tags
The Day I Met James Toseland
James Toseland is the current World Super Bike Champion, and now the best British bet at winning the MotoGP. Think of him as the motorbike version of Lewis Hamilton. Now I will level and say I have not always been up to date with my knowledge of motorcycling, so put me up against a die hard fan of Mr. Toseland and honestly could not answer questions about his beginning’s in trial bike...
4 tags
So WordPress 2.5 Is Out?
Version 2.4 was skipped and the WordPress development team jumped straight from 2.3 to 2.5, and what a move it was. They have even updated the WordPress site to match.
To be honest this feels more like a full digit upgrade than a point improvement. But this could be down to the visuals more than anything.
The admin panel has had a complete make over, and whilst it is getting some stick and...
March 2008
5 posts
4 tags
No Longer Lost
How long has this show been running? I remember I first started watching series 2 a few years ago. In fact the first episode I saw was the beginning of series 2, with Desmond going about his life in the hatch. At the time I had Sky television and so could watch the show, yet I felt lost confused as there were references to the first series I did not get, there were also too many questions needing...
5 tags
Great Notification Dreamhost
I woke this morning with the plan on spending some time updating mine and a few other sites I have hosted on my Dreamhost account.
But after firing up Coda it reported it could not connect via ftp. So I decided to try standard http, only to find my (and others) down. Off to the Dreamhost site where I find a support blog with this message. Turns out they are moving the cluster my site is hosted on...
6 tags
Nice one IE
Over the last few days I having been bringing back my old Vaio laptop from the dead. I purchased the laptop many moons ago, before my adventure into the world of Apple. But once I had found utopia with OSX the little Sony got put away some where and forgotten about. Meanwhile Microsoft have seen sense and 180’d on their views and IE8 will be the first fully functional standards aware MS web...
5 tags
Lazy Sunday Afternoons
It feels like ages since I’ve put together one of those more personal posts were I go on about stuff that no one else really understands.
But today has been one of those crazy lazy Sundays that has left me feeling quite content. Which is strange for tomorrow morning Lucy is once again off on business, this time she is only heading over to France and only for a week.
But in light of that we...
7 tags
I Only Wanted The New NIN Album
Yesterday saw the release of Ghosts I-IV from NIN. Not only was this release not really publicised but it was also following in a similar track of Radio head and their In Rainbows album. Not quite a ‘pay what you feel’ option but some seriously price reduced DRM free chunage. Being quite a closet NIN fan I wanted to download this, but I decided to go with the free 9 track starter pack...
February 2008
4 posts
5 tags
How Many Fonts...
Jon Hicks has been ‘fiddling’ with his site; his words not mine.
If you take a visit over there you might notice some good looking heading tags. Or you might not. Why is that?
Jon has decided to target specific fonts in the CSS. Normally when declaring fonts in a tag you would go some thing along the lines of a couple of system fonts and then a font family: body { font-family:...
5 tags
Are You html 5 or xhtml 2.0
I spent my lunch hour reading through Mike’s brilliantly well written article about the differences between the proposals for both html 5 and xhtml 2.0.
Normally something like this would not have engaged my full attention but recently I have really been trying to touch up on my standards; for reasons that will get explained later.
But reading through this I found myself already seeing...
6 tags
Graphic Design Poster Competition
Veerle started a competition last week with the goal to sum up what you thought graphic design is all about.
I started off enjoying looking through the Flickr pool for the submissions until at the week end whilst sitting with young Oscar I had a quick idea, the result was not really graphic design per say but it was creative.
Then sitting there the other evening I thought more about what I...
6 tags
Sudbury Joggers
For the last couple of evenings when I have been out running round Sudbury I have noticed an abundance of other runners and joggers out there.
On one run I actually saw the same person twice! Once within the first 2 minutes and then on the last leg.
You could say that there are still plenty of people out there taking up their New Years resolutions and keeping fit.
Personally I like to think...
January 2008
6 posts
6 tags
Where is the price drop Apple?
Let’s be honest, since its launch back in March 2007 it has not exactly been as big as can be expected. Yet I have always had a little flame for the media box that is AppleTV and often found myself stopping by the Apple store with my mouse hovering over the ‘Add To Basket’ button. Earlier this month Uncle Steve decided to have another go at the AppleTV market with Take Two. A...
5 tags
Sans iPhone
You have read that right, I am without iPhone.
My beloved little gadget; the third arm I have learnt to live with; the grail of all Apple products has broken.
It all started with a bike ride. The phone was in my pocket, as I do nearly every day, yet this time when I went to retrieve my phone I noticed it was turned off.
I hit the ‘home’ button to check and sure enough nothing. So I...
5 tags
Off The Road
Step back about 4 years and that is when I first purchased my Marin Wolf Ridge. Since then it has been my ‘knobbly’ tired bike and the bike of choice for commuting and general use. In that time it has clocked up several thousand miles and only causing one little problem. Yet on Friday when I went to the shed to remove my steed I noticed the handle bars were loose. Not just loose, the...
10 tags
welcome to 2008
This is the traditional ‘first’ post of the year, you know the ones where we all discuss our plans for the coming year.
Looking back at 2007
On a personal level 2007 has been a bit of a mixed up year, full of ups and downs with the odd twist. The highlight of the year without doubt had to be tv birth of by neice Francessa but that did not happen until July so lets back track a bit. ...
5 tags
250km
A good way to start the year. Reached my first Nike+ milestone (maybe I would have reached it sooner had I not stopped running during the summer)
5 tags
Christmas washout
Rather than getting a white Christmas Lucy and I ended up with a washed out Christmas.
It all started just after the turkey feast on Christmas day, Lucy was feeling a bit strange and so when to lie down. Two hours later she had a temperature and the shivers. Two hours after that I went down.
We ended up cutting the family plans early and retreating home. To which the next four days were spent...
December 2007
6 posts
3 tags
Happy Christmas
To all my family, friends, colleagues, readers and online peeps out there, Happy Christmas!
For me it has been a strange old year but now it is time to put everything aside and eat and drink too much and spend time with those people that make life what it is.
So have fun all and I hope Santa brings you what ever it was that has been on that list, not sure how he will get my new Yamaha R6...
6 tags
Online Video Virgin
Today Viddler took my online video virginity.
I had purchased a Sony PC5 camcorder back in 2001 and at the time took some footage but never did anything with it. Finally, 6 years on, I’ve imported the footage into iMovie and started messing about.
Quite a bit of the footage of back in my kiting days so it was a trip down memory lane as I put together a quick tour in my lessons of learning...
7 tags
Envy & Other Sins
On Friday the guvonour decided to take the afternoon off, can’t argue with that he is the boss. But when he said he was heading down to the big smoke to watch his son I was intrigued. Turns out his son is a member of an unsigned British group called Envy & Other Sins and is taking part in a competition on C4/T4 for a chance for a record contract. I have not followed the competition,...
5 tags
Back To Running
With the nights getting darker and the days colder I’m not getting out on my bike so much. So I dug out my iPod and Nike+ sensor and decided to hit the tarmac again.
After a few quick runs around the block I knew I needed a bit of motivation to keep on track so I started browsing the Challenge gallery on the Nike+ website.
The first one I clicked onto was the PC vs. Mac; well I just had to...
7 tags
Untitled
Some times you just can not think of a title and so you go with the old month and year algorithm. To which I’m now theming Nov07. I’ve always wanted to knock out some custom themes that are hand built from the ground up. But everything I try I end up with WordPress moving the goal posts (in respect of function changes in 2.3) or a incomplete style sheet and this bugs me! They never...
3 tags
It is NOT a Llama
For a quite a while now there has been a farm of what I thought were Llama’s in the local village of Long Melford. Until one day a customer came into work and wanted some carrier bags for the produce from his Alpaca farm in Melford. I soon realised my mistake and after a conversation mentioned to him of my online presence; Funky Larma (yes he too pointed out the spelling). He suggested that...
November 2007
5 posts
5 tags
Never Take Me Seriously
The other week end I was round at a friend’s house.
Whilst my head was deep inside a pizza takeaway menu trying to decide what to have, Glen was fluffing about on his PC.
He called over and said that everything had paused and nothing was working, without rising my head I replied with “have you tried turning it off and on again”. Before I was able to follow up this classic IT...
4 tags
Can We Have Some Order Mr. Chairman?
Last night I chaired my first committee meeting.
During the Annual General Meeting of the local cycle club last month, chairman Peter Whitely decided to step down as chairman. During the silence that followed and the prolonged silence after volunteers were asked for, I sat there and pondered the idea.
I should have looked back over time and realised that I just can not say no, instead I poked my...
6 tags
Finally Getting My Money's Worth
When I look in System Preferences it now tells me I’ve been a .Mac member since 2004. Since I purchased my first Mac I have signed up to Apple’s own web service but until the last few weeks I have only ever used a .mac email address. Now armed with Leopard and an iPhone I can finally see the point in the service and have changed my work to use it more.
Mail
First off I’m now...
5 tags
Leopard, A Week Later
As any Mac user worth his salts will know that the latest version of OSX was released on October 26th October. Due to a bit of a mess up with a new hard drive I did not get round to installing Leopard until the following Friday. Since then I have had a little over a week to try out some of the claimed 300 new features and give it a bit of an airing.
Installation
For the installation I opted to...
5 tags
The Post 30 Post
This time last week I woke up to my 30th Birthday. (Yes it has taken a while to write this, the started off with me making a big mistake and finished with a cold from hell)
The plan for the day started with me waking to a massive migraine headache thing that put me on my ass (must be the age) After a while it passed and Lucy and I were due up at the farm for the statuary family get together. You...
October 2007
5 posts
5 tags
Finally Found Facebook
I think that it is the thought of my upcoming 30th Birthday; yep I’m getting old. But over the last few days I’ve finally logged onto Facebook and been searching for old friends, or sometimes just names I know!
So if you get a invite from me, don’t worry it’s just some form of pre-mid-life crisis going on. Just accept it and move on, I know after Saturday I will be.
6 tags
So The Big Cat Is Coming
If you are a Mac user you will no doubt know that the new OS 10.5 is on the way. In fact Leopard is due for release on the 26th October; only a few days away.
So far I’ve always upgraded to the latest version but recently I’ve lost the way with Apple. Despite other bloggers detailing a few reasons why they would upgrade, if I was asked a month ago if I would the answer would be...
4 tags
Now I'm Happy
There has always been something about Project Gotham Racing that I’ve loved, even when it was Metropolis Street Racer on the Dreamcast.
The forth incarnation of the game hit the 360 last week and I picked up a copy yesterday and after a couple of hours it’s safe to say I’m pretty impressed.
Not only do you get the standard array of supercars to drift round corners but this time...
8 tags
The Plastic Bag Debate
Every where you turn some one is talking about caring for the environment and doing your bit.
One of the main subjects of concern is packaging and the critical issue carrier bags. Now obviously because I work in the pacakaging industry it does make me a bit biased, but on the other hand most of my leisure time is spent enjoying the outdoors so I’m not writing this from a business point of...
7 tags
I Made The Switch
So I’ve made the switch from Windows to Mac.
But hold on I hear you cry, you have been a Mac user for years. Well that is true but only in the ‘home user’ market. Recently I’ve made the move in the work office environment.
Oscar Products is a small business and like many small business’ in the UK we use Sage for all our accounts, purchasing and sales orders. If...
September 2007
5 posts
1 tag
Got A Busy Month
This Monday it will be October 1st, the year feels like it is flying away.
Once again this year shibbyonline will be going PinkForOctober in aid of breast cancer awareness. Given that Jacqui is back in hospital at present for further surgery it feels the right time to show some support.
But that’s not all on the 15th I will also be taking part in Blog Action Day. This is an idea that...
5 tags
It's Halo Time
There are times like today when I just love living in sleepy quiet Sudbury.
Because it means there are no queues at Woolworths and you canjust walk on in a pick up a copy of Halo3!
This game as been in the making for the last 37 years, or so it seems. I know that Chris has had it on pre-order at Amazon since April 2006!
As usual I did not pre-order, I did not panic and run around I just took...
3 tags
24th And I'm At Home
It is the morning of the 24th September; around 8:30, and by all accounts I should not be here.
In fact I should be some where in Scotland on a bike making a dash for the border, taking part in another end to end cycle ride. Yet instead I’m sitting here with a laptop trying to decide what to do today.
Beginning of the month everything looked to be on track for another crack at cycling the...
4 tags
Delusions of grandure
I just can not stand reality shows; Big Bother, I’m a Celebrity and anything else like that just makes my skin crawl. The only thing worse than those shows are the talent show; X Idol, Pop Factor, Britain’s Next Drama Queen. They are all just excuses for 15 minutes of fame. Lucy on the other hand loves them, so much so that Saturday evening we had to watch another round of qualifying...
5 tags
Missing something?
Look through your feeds, notice something missing? Content? Yep I’ve been elsewhere the last few days. Understandable if you had this parked outside! It all started last week, having ordered the bike I was getting like a school boy at Christmas, I could not concentrate on anything and was turned upside down. Finally Monday the 3rd arrived and I set off to collect my new machine. Since then I...
August 2007
4 posts
6 tags
Blag some new kit
Online cycle shop Wiggle are running a competition at the moment where they are giving away a full Shimano XT groupset.
All you have to do is tell them why you dersve it over all overs. Here is my excuse:
I think I deserve a new XT groupset as my bike needs one badly and I’ve begged the other half but I can’t buy anything new until she has her wisdom teeth out. So I’m having to...
5 tags
Canon 40D Is On The Way
In the last 24 hours or so details of Canon’s replacement for the 30D has been unveiled. It started with Amazon ‘accidentally’ putting the page live of their site, then counter details were released across the tubes. I for one use Digital Photography Review as my source of all things Photography based, so when I see it there I start believing. Whoot! Given that I only upgraded...
5 tags
The Test Ride
Earlier this week I passed my DAS test, which means I am now able to ride any size bike (insurance costs permitting) I wish.
So as a means to get my foot on the bike ladder I went out and purchased my first motorbike; a Yamaha FZ6 S2.
Ok technically this is not my very first motorbike, when I turned 16 I did not go down the usual route and wait for a car, I opted to get on the road early and my...
6 tags
DAS Passed
Yesterday I had my last lesson on the CB500 with Ian over at Excel Rider Training.
It started at 9:30 in the morning with my test booked for 13:30 that afternoon. To be honest it was a long day and as it went on my nerves were getting worse, have not felt like this for a quite a while; well since my driving test.
I knew my Achilles heal would be the U-Turn having slam dunked the bike twice on...
July 2007
9 posts
5 tags
Francesca Chamberlin
Born this morning at ten past ten, Francesca Emily Chamberlin weighed in at 7lb 4oz. Welcome to the world, it is most definitely a better place now.