Monday was a B-U-S-Y day for NikFletcher.Com and Feb 06 is officially the first gigabyte month of 2006 for my site! An incredible 330 new visitors chose to visit the site [mainly due to the MacWorld coverage]. Thanks for visiting, and stay tuned for more! :-D

Apple's stirring the rumour mill again with it's forthcoming media event at Apple Campus, Cupertino, CA. The rumours of iBook replacements, widescreen Video iPods, iPod Boomboxes and others are covered elsewhere, so follow any Apple related links here to find out more. As ever, time to start filling the bank accounts and get the debit card ready! Just in case I have any money to spend on Steve's new pieces of kit! ;-)

Recently, I stated I loved to hear from website visitors. However someone who knows how to contact me said "If that's true, why is there now no contact form on your site?" Well the answer was simple. There's been a few spamming vulnerabilities recently with the contact form I use, and so I took it offline to await a fix. Now that fix available [thanks to Josh Lockhart], I've put it back online! I've not yet converted slideshows to Flickr - and with good reason. The time it will take me just to re-configure the layout for the pages is about 30 minutes, let alone ensure that no-ones bookmarks are broken by the change. I've got other more pressing things to do, but it certainly is at the back of my mind.......

Ooooh. I got a mention on MacWorld UK! Just remember where you heard the Apple Store Arndale news first! ;-)

Also, check out the new [+] buttons (right) for myYahoo and Google Reader and Personalised Homepage!

When I re-designed my site, my favourite person said to me: "Wow, I didn't see those Nik's Links before." And I thought to myself, huh? It's been there before right? And whilst it was there before the redesign, it wasn't as visible, due to the old white background and the vertical menu. Whilst this appears it's basically a plug driving people towards my links [only half true ;-)], I thought I'd rave about another of my favourite apps. Salling Clicker. It's a slick piece of Bluetooth software that allows you to remote control your Mac or now [uh-oh] Windows PC! Check out Salling Clicker here along with my other software favourites!

More news on the forthcoming Apple Store at Manchester's Arndale Centre..... check it out here :-)

In the true tradition of English Railways, there's going to be more engineering work this weekend on NikFletcher.Com. My aim is to change all of my slideshows to use Flickr as opposed to using my own software because my iBook will struggle to cope with any more Photo Slideshows! Unlike English Railway maintenance however, there will be no replacement bus services as the site will still be online - I'll just be doing the work offline and uploading it on Sunday afternoon.

Apologies to those who visited in the hope my site would be working. It clearly wasn't and so I've been fiddling with the site to fix it. How did I break the site? Well. I didn't. The software did - but you probably don't believe that! I basically tried to apply a few things to all pages, and it crapped up all the settings. Weird. Anyway, it's all back and good, and hopefully fixed. I've sadly had to take the contact form offline for security reasons, but if you need to contact me, use this address:

enquiries [at] nikfletcher [dot] com

This afternoon I endured waiting at numerous cold stations to get to West Quay, Southampton [30 minutes at a freezing seaside station!] for a little recce for the forthcoming Apple store there.

There's a new Apple store to get excited about - in Manchester :-D! The Arndale is going to be home to it. More news here and here [pdf]. Thanks for the tip Ed!

Ironically this is my first blog post filed under Music in the last 4 months, even though that's what I spend the majority of my time doing! :-o Well, last night we went out for a little [?!] celebration after the dreaded Technical Assessments. Needless to say, a good time was had by all - I'll post the photos when I've had a chance to title, caption and otherwise abuse them! ;-)

I picked up an Apple Mighty Mouse in January, and seeing as I'm going to be busy and then travelling over the next few days, I was going to begrudgingly leave the Mighty Mouse in my flat and take my Apple Bluetooth mouse instead. But that's all changed as I cannot live without the Expose "squeeze", the hidden Right Click, or the Scroll Button! The Mighty Mouse really is a useful piece of kit, and as soon as Apple release a wireless Mighty Mouse, I'll be at an Apple Store buying one.... now get to it Apple! I'm waiting!

Whilst I'm evangelizing the Mac, take a look at this post. It's not only amusing, but also quite informative. :-)

As I've mentioned before, I have a bit of a hatred of Hotmail, and a deep love of GMail. So I was deeply pleased to learn that Google is now offering Google Hosted [well, it's offering it if you're selected for the beta!]. Why is this good news? Well it means that it's going to be possible to check domain email via Gmail's interface! :-D That means I'll probably go to using NikFletcher.Com email addresses if I get selected for the beta. Most people won't care, but if you know and love Gmail like I do you'll probably want to go and apply for the beta with your own domain name!

This has had me in fits of laughter all evening!

- You can lead a horse to water. Jack Bauer can make him drink.

- Jack Bauer makes Onions cry.

- If Jack Bauer was in a room with Hitler, Stalin, and Nina Myers, and he had a gun with 2 bullets, he'd shoot Nina twice.

- If you wake up in the morning, it's because Jack Bauer spared your life.

- Upon hearing that he was played by Kiefer Sutherland, Jack Bauer killed Sutherland. Jack Bauer gets played by no man.

- Osama bin Laden's recent proposal for truce is a direct result of him finding out that Jack Bauer is, in fact, still alive.

- Jack Bauer once forgot where he put his keys. He then spent the next half-hour torturing himself until he gave up the location of the keys.

- Jack Bauer was never addicted to heroin. Heroin was addicted to Jack Bauer.

- 1.6 billion Chinese are angry with Jack Bauer. Sounds like a fair fight.

- Jack Bauer killed 93 people in just 4 days. Wait, that is a real fact.

- Jack Bauer doesn't miss. If he didn't hit you it's because he was shooting at another terrorist twelve miles away.

- Jack Bauer let the dogs out.

- Superman wears Jack Bauer pyjamas.

- Jack Bauer's favorite colour is severe terror alert red. His second favorite color is violet, but just because it sounds like violent.

- Jack Bauer played Russian Roulette with a fully loaded gun and won.

- Lets get one thing straight, the only reason you are conscious right now is because Jack Bauer does not feel like carrying you.

- When you open a can of whoop-ass, Jack Bauer jumps out.

- Killing Jack Bauer doesn't make him dead. It just makes him angry.

- The quickest way to a man's heart is through Jack Bauer's gun.

- Jack Bauer can get McDonald's breakfast after 10:30.

- Jack Bauer is the leading cause of death in Middle Eastern men.

- People with amnesia still remember Jack Bauer.

- It would only take 1 bullet for Jack Bauer to kill 50 Cent.

- Jack Bauer once won a game of Connect 4 in 3 moves.

- Jack Bauer has been to Mars. That's why theres no life on Mars.

- When the boogie man goes to sleep, he checks his closet for Jack Bauer

- Simon Says should be renamed to Jack Bauer Says because if Jack Bauer says something then you better f*cking do it.

Roll On Series 5 which starts on Sunday! :-D Now all I've to do is find a TV that has Sky!

So Orange have confirmed that 20th February is the go date for the new 6280. About bloody time. Now I've just got to be there when it's launched as I don't know how many handsets each Orange store will get that week. Ah well. Not gonna queue early in the morning for that - got an Apple Retail Store to scout for! ;-) Plus there's a FOUR Orange stores in Manc to try before I give up!

Well here it is! My new site design. I'd like to thank those who looked at the original 'draft' version of the site [Seb Payne and Cara] and for their input. Cheers people, and enjoy! Comments are always welcome.

Update: I'm aware that Comments are not fully styled, but I am working on this!

Ahem Orange [and I guess Nokia]. I'm still waiting for the lovely 6280 to come out! I've been told lots of stories about when it's coming out, and my patience is wearing thin! All I'm left with for the moment is this picture! I decided I didn't really need WiFi [hey I have an Airport-equipped iBook that travels really very easily!] and instead of going for something like a T-Mobile MDA Compact II, which is really an enemy as it's a Windows Pocket PC :-o, or the rather horrible looking P990i [thanks for the tip on it though!] I thought I'd stick with a nice Nokia. Unfortunately this one was meant to be launched in November 2005 and it's only been available on Three from the end of December [exclusively]. Why don't I want 3? Well I get 1Gb of free data a month with Orange [for 3 months] as well as 1000 free texts as a student! Now if only the wretched handset would hurry up and be launched! By the way, if you're looking for a way to connect a Mac laptop [or desktop I guess although surely if you're using a desktop broadband is a better bet!] to the net through the joys of 3G data, 2.5G data [GPRS] or bog-standard mobile dial up, then I'd recommend you look at the tutorial here, and the scripts referenced in the in the tutorial here. Another reason I've avoided the urge toww be an early adopter with Three is the fact that there have been a few mentions on the net of the Three-specific software being unreliable and prone to crashing. Thankfully, Orange have a 14 day guarantee with all their phones sold through the Orange shops, so if I find that the handset is, well, crap, I will be able to change it for something else like the Motorola V3x. Hopefully that won't be necessary! :-D

Apologies for the lack of news. I've been busy working on a new site design..... it's going to be online very soon! ;-)

No, I'm not kidding. It's true! The Times has covered the launch of the latest Navy destroyer, the potent Type 45 Destroyer HMS Daring. "Her PAAMS air defence missiles are the size of a public phone boxes, weigh two thirds as much as a small car and from launch accelerate to a speed twice that of Concorde in under 10 seconds." Nasty. "Mess decks are replaced by individual cabins, each with their own iPod charging points, CD player, internet access, five channel recreational audio and larger berths." Nice. I personally think this is a good thing - those who serve the country in war and peace, in my opinion, should be allowed a few luxuries in their off duty time whilst away from home for 6 or more months.

Now let's go use this destroyer to "persuade" Steve Jobs to give us some TV content on the UK iTMS :-)

Left is a screen grab of the Apple Worldwide Jobs pages. Looks like I'm going to have to go have a look where the store could be during mid-year recess, and mark a date in my diary - but there's at least 2-3 months before it opens as the job listings have yet to appear! :-) Looks like I'm going to be at another grand opening in the not to distant future!