This arrived via email today [thanks Ellie!]

1) 10p Mr Frosty Ice Pops on long summer days!
2) Gordon the Gopher!
3) You could do or tried to do the Prodigy step. 'You're no good 4 me....'
4) You owned or longed for an Adidas three stripe tracksuit
5) You owned a compilation tape with TOP TUNES such as "Mr Vain", "What is love" and "Rhythm is a dancer" and 'How Bizarre, How Bizarre"
6) Girls thought Blue Mascara was cool!
7) Girls actually fancied Garry Barlow more than Robbie Williams
8) The Racoons! (nuff said)
9) You owned a pair of Nike Air Max, and wore them to death
10) Mr Motivator (What ever happened to him?)
11) Running on the spot dancing!
12) You wore leggings/cycling shorts with long t-shirts
13) You owned a Bennetton, NafNaf, sweater shop jumper or waistcoat
14) Girls owned scrunchies in an array of colours and tacky headbands with their names written on in thick glitter
16) You bought Smash Hits for the song lyrics and the immense amount of stickers that you would stick everywhere!
17) You had a pen pal
18) You could only watch the Simpson's on sky
19) On a Saturday afternoon you watched Catchphrase, Gladiators, Generation Game, Noels House Party and then Casualty
20) You taped the Pepsi Chartshow on radio one and tired in vain to pause the tape before the annoying guy talked and ruined the whole thing.
21) Cans of Coke were 25p
22) 10p Space Raiders Crisps
23) A grey Fruit of the Loom jumper was a must have
24) Sharkie & George were the crimebusters of the sea
25) Puffa jackets
26) You used the line "it's a free country" every day
27) The Sky sports Blimp!
28) Impulse body spray for girls
29) Hooch Alcoholic Lemonade (where's it gone?!)
30) 'Don't forget your toothbrush', 'TFI' and Big Breakfast with Chris Evans
31) You had at least one troll
32) You know the dance to Macarena and Saturday Night. You also tried to scat like Scatman John! Bi bat ba ba da bo...
33) You watched Baywatch and longed for the day that Eddie & Sharni got together!
34) You watched Byker Grove 'ha ha ha whatcha laughin at!'(the Theme song ending), and saw PJ get shot in the eye with a paintball
35) PJ and Duncan not Ant and Dec! Dodgy Pop Not Dodgy Presenting!
36) Shellsuits & bumbags!
37) You longed to live in Beverley Hills 90210
38) Home and Away was a prime time ITV programe watched by millions
39) You owned a Spice Girls album
40) Fruit salads and black jacks!
41) Strike it lucky on a sunday night with Michael Barrymore when he was straight & married
42) Chain letters
43) You had fake ID
44) You remember Todd Landers in Neighbours
45) You religiously watched Saved by the Bell on a Saturday morning!
46) You more than likely lost/nearly lost a wobbly tooth on a wham bar!!
47) CK one (probably the fake one from the market)
48) Going Live, then Live and Kicking was the place to be on a Saturday Morning - you know you remember the number 0181 811 8181
49) You knew every word to the theme tune from Fresh Prince of Bel Air
50) You collected Premier League Stickers and did swoops at playtime
51) Girls wore crappy lipstick such as - coffee shimmer, heather shimmer and birthday suit!
52) You wore kickers and wallaby's with the tags hanging from them
53) You thought saying - "I know you are, you said you are but what am I" to every cuss that that came your way was so cool!
54) "love got the world in motion" with the John Barnes Rap
55) when you used to run away from some thing and shout 'leg iiiiiitt'
56) Had laces that were twirly, so tied themselves; only available is bright fluorescent colours
57) You had one of those ethnic striped indie tops - probably in purple.
58) You said lush at least once every hour and everything was cool.
59) Status was achieved and judged by the number of friendship bands you had.
60) Hair mascara in blue, red, blonde and purple
61) East 17!!!! With Tony Mortimer…
62) The Suncream song (does anyone know the real name?!)
64) POGS!!!!!!!!!

I'm tweaking the site behind the scenes at the moment. If you're experiencing problems, please try again later! :-) Thanks

......what a better retail environment we'd all have! With my contract ending this next fortnight, I'm now on the hunt for my latest and greatest mobile. I've been walking around town this afternoon seeing where I can get a good contract from, and I was appalled at the wide variety of stories told by the varying shops I visited. After having asked whether a particular handset had Wi-Fi built in, or whether there was a MMC/SD card slot to add it into, I was incorrectly told in a T-Mobile shop that a T-Mobile handset had wireless connectivity. Nope. That handset has only Bluetooth, and that means a huge difference [Wi-Fi being the sort to use in Starbucks or at home with our soon to arrive - fingers crossed - wireless router and hugely faster than Bluetooth, Bluetooth being only for short range transmission - IMO less than 10ft]. I enquired in two different branches of The Link and whilst I was spoken to by apparently very knowlegeable sales staff, they told me two very different stories about the soon to arrive Nokia N80 phone - one saying there was yet to be a firm launch date, even though review models are already doing the rounds, but that it probably wouldn't be that far away; the other saying the phone was due to be the last of all the N series phones to be launched and that I'd be lucky to get it by Christmas or January 2007! :-o

Apologies to those who thought I would be adding to the iPhone speculation, but er no. It's more an endorsement of the service you get in the Apple Store. The sales staff are HUGELY knowledgeable, and don't add to the rumours of the timing and arrival forthcoming products! To conclude, when Steve Jobs said during his MacWorld Keynote that Apple Stores offer one of the best buying experiences in the entire world, I believe he was right. I've visited three Apple Stores [Regent Street, Trafford Centre and Meadowhall] and the staff have always been 'hands-off' sellers, and more than happy just to answer the slightest question even if you're not actually at the till ready to buy the latest and greatest hardware. :-D

If you're going to camp out at Brent Cross on Friday/Saturday - GOOD LUCK! I won't be joining you, but if you have a Brent Cross Opening T-Shirt you want to give to a loving home, let me know! ;-)

Shock horror! I've run out of Tea bags, so until the matter is resolved [i.e. a trip to Asda is in order!] I guess my productivity is going to nose-dive ;-)

Update! The crisis has been resolved..... Thank goodness for Asda!

As mentioned previously, this Steve Jobs movie poster competition made me laugh. Here's some more entries that I loved!

This BBC article is quite an interesting, if somewhat ironic read. Which Nielsen NetRatings criteria apply to me?

- Apparently, iTunes users' prefered alcoholic drink is hard cider followed by imported beers and then domestic beers. 1 mark for each [3/3]
- Top magazine among iTunes fans was hi-tech bible Wired. 1/2 a mark [0.5/1] Wired is good, but not the best.
- Nielsen said iTunes users were 2.2 times more likely to own a Volkswagen than the average internet user. Audi and Subaru were also popular with regular users of the Apple store. I don't have a car, so I score 0 :-( But I guess I could get mark for the fact I would buy a VW if I could afford / needed a car ;-) [1/3]

A scary realisation that I'm almost a stereotypical iTunes user [almost, as I'm not between 12 & 17!].

I've updated the site structure, getting rid of the boring text pages before photos, so please update your Bookmarks! :-D Thank you!

Do you want your blog to be read by more people? Do you want to share links with my blog? Well read more!

If you want to be included on my Links page [which will shortly be re-adjusted to include a Blogroll], then here's what I ask of you:

1. Your site must be publicly accessible [e.g. no private MSN spaces or subscription blogs].
2. You must link to http://www.nikfletcher.com in return
3. Your blog and content must not be of a 'dubious' nature

In return, I will place a link in my Blogroll section. To get started, Contact Me, being sure to use the subject "Link to Me" on the form otherwise the message will not be received!

If you're not convinced it's worth your while, well here's five facts about my blog.....

1. On average 2000 unique visitors each month....
2. An average of 55,000 hits a month......
3. My blog is found by searching on Google for any of 200 keyphrases.....
4. Between 10 and 20% of all visitors bookmark my site.....
5. I get visitors from all around the world - Japan, Australia, Europe, America, Canada......To get a feel for where in the world people visit from, try my Frappr Map, and don't forget to add yourself! ;-)

I was fortunate to be able to pop out to the Apple Store Trafford Centre [whose opening I attended in November], and there were a store full of the new Intel-based iMacs. All I can say is that they're BLISTERINGLY fast [when I consider their performance against my iBook G4]. iMovie launches and loads a project almost instantly, and Safari launches on one dock bounce. Whilst I don't have the pleasure of comparing it to a G5 iMac, I'm certain that the new models are going to rock. Time to start to saving, and ask for donations I think! ;-)

This had me rolling around in fits of laughter. The winner has just been announced, but here's my particular favourite...

Picked up one of the newish Apple Mighty Mouse today at Apple's Regent's Street store in London. I've been using it on the train for the last 2 hours, and I have to say I'm incredibly impressed with the way it works. It's very responsive, and the extra buttons work very well. The great thing is that it also works on WIndows 2000 & XP! :-o So if you've got a Windows PC, try it out! I love the configurable buttons, e.g. I now squeeze simultaneously the two sides of the mouse, and it clears all the open windows of programs to the side of the window. Sweet!

How small is that Apple packaging? That's to scale with an iBook G4 12"!I'm currently enjoying a 3 hour train journey to London, so I thought I know, I'll test the latest Web Software that the MacWeb has been talking about recently - namely RealMac Software's Rapidweaver, Karelia's Sandvox and Apple's iWeb. Before I go any further, I should add that whilst I'm a big fan of Rapidweaver, as much as possible I've tried to remain impartial and gone "back to basics". I set myself the basic task of creating a Blog, Photo Album and an assortment of other pages using the above software. As this site is created in Rapidweaver [from now on known as RW, Sandvox being known as SV], I also tried to replicate my site's content as much as possible in the other software. Note, I didn't try to replicate the design - merely the content!

iWeb

Time Required to Create Test Site - 16 minutes
Time Required to Export Site - 3 minutes
Web Space Required to Host site - 7.9MB

Pros: Apple's Media Browser is a definite plus allowing a really easy way to drag and drop content direct from a window without having to export from iPhoto first. Very easily customised designs - drag and drop again a very well implemented idea. Generates all the Photo Albums automatically - no need to add individual pages.

Cons: No Custom HTML :-( On occasions, the Mediaa Browser wouldn't copy my image to the page header. It ignored the fact that I had selected the header on occasions and simply inserted the image as a new image that overlapped the page. Why do I have to endure the .Mac splash screen on startup? If I wanted .Mac, it would already have been shown in the System Preferences. The Importing of Photos took nearly 3 minutes on my iBook G4, and granted they were 7MP photos, but thats too long to wait. Hidden option to export to folder [for manual upload].

Summary: iWeb is a good choice for absolute beginners, and whilst it will serve them well, the user might out grow it quite quickly. I can't help but wonder why iWeb wasn't included with .Mac, it would have made much more sense to be the "connector" between iLife and .Mac. There are a couple of user issues that I experienced, that whilst annoying, didn't really ruin the iWeb experience. People will probably be reluctant to spend another £69 on .Mac after buying a new Mac, and will probably use their ISP web space and it isn't clear how to do this from within the software package - the help is geared towards .Mac.


Rapidweaver

Time Required to Create Test Site - 9 minutes
Time Required to Export Site - Less than 10 seconds
Web Space Required to Host Test Site - 2.0MB

Pros: Very easy to set up. The theme variations are useful and a well conceived idea. The flash slideshow is well implemented, and the image re-sizing took under half the time it took with iWeb to import the same photos [1 minute]. Plugin-extensible, and so can add more features from 3rd parties. Currently the only one of the three products to have a huge selection of 3rd party themes. File consolidation very effective, and produces XHTML strict code [unlike iWeb]. Very fast to export/preview

Cons: Can't have Slideshows and Albums created from one page - requires a little bit of manual selection and page creation. Not as easily modified as iWeb - requires a bit of either CSS or manual fiddling with the theme. Uses Edit & Preview panes - however I'm not that fussed about this.

Summary: Whilst Rapidweaver does have some minor flaws, it is a an outstanding product that enables beginners to get online quickly, but the user is unlikely to outgrow the software thanks to the huge amount of "Pro" features hidden beneath the shell.

For Sandvox, I was unable to publish a site [it is a beta after all]. Once I have downloaded a trial version of the working version 1 release, I will include a review here at NikFletcher.Com

....possibly not! This ZDNet Article has a lot of serious facts, apart from the fact that the Government isn't actually going to give away iPods. :-( But that doesn't mean it's not a good idea. Where do I sign up for the trial, and when does it begin?!

That would be I. In my bid to try and get an actual site online with the dratted Sandvox software, I entered what I thought were the correct settings to publish my test site in a special folder. Unfortunately, with the PITA that is the setup assistant, it didn't work, and instead overwrote the blog page for a short while. Sorry about that.

Just as well I have no intention of changing to Sandvox. It's just not as good as it was supposed to be..... :-(

Apologies to any visitors who were unable to view the website at any stage today. I've been tinkering with the webspace, and due to the vast amount of pages on the site, I thought it best to make all the pages inaccessible whilst I fiddled with the settings in case anything were to go wrong! All pages have been re-uploaded - any problems with the site, please use the Contact Form. Thanks!

After trying to explain yesterday to a mate why MacWorld Expo is so important to Mac fans, I gave up. It was just too difficult to explain :( However thankfully someone else has put an explanation into English from Mac talk for the masses to understand. Check it out here.

I found this story very amusing. It appears even Micro$oft's allies are taking pot shots at Windoze. Look out for a remark from Steve Jobs during his MacWorld San Francisco Keynote on Tuesday [Morning for the USA, 5pm for us Brits]!

I've been compiling more links and have been busy uploading my entire iPhoto library [bar a few photos] to Flickr. Enjoy these new sections - however please note that the Flickr page is still in "Beta" as I'm not using a finished page plugin yet! ;-)

Came across this video today [Caution - it's a Quicktime file]. It's a very amusing look at "Windows Vista". If anyone reading thinks "Why the **** is this funny?" - It's a Mac that's being used in this spoof! :-D

This arrived via email a few weeks ago [thanks Claire!]. Leave your scores in the comments. I'll do mine at some stage, but if you don't understand any of these, please be polite in the comments! ;-)

YOU KNOW YOU ARE A MUSICAL GEEK IF . . .

1. your favorite pickup line is, "What's your favorite augmented sixth chord?"
2. you can look at a piece by J.S. Bach and say, "You know, I think he could have gotten a much better effect this way"
3. you like to march around your room to the rhythms of Stravinsky's "Le Sacre du Printemps."
4. you love to quote Walter Piston.
5. you long for the good old days of movable G-clefs.
6. you like polytonal music because, hey, the more keys the merrier.
7. you dream in four parts.
8. you feel the need to end Tchaikovsky's "Pathetique" Symphony with a Picardy third.
9. you can improvise 16th century counterpoint with no trouble, but you frequently forget how to tie your shoes.
10. you lament the decline of serialism.
11. you enjoy the tang of a tritone whenever you can.
12. you like to deceive your friends and loved ones with deceptive cadences.
13. you only drink fifths, and then you laugh at the pun.
14. instead of counting sheep, you count sequences.
15. you only sing tunes that make good fugal subjects.
16. you find free counterpoint too liberal.
17. Mussorgsky's "Hopak" gives you nightmares.
18. you wonder what a "Danish Sixth" would sound like.
19. the "Corelli Clash" gives you goosebumps.
20. you can hear an enharmonic modulation coming a mile away.
21. you have ever done a Schenkerian analysis on "Three Blind Mice."
22. you have ever tried to do a Schenkerian analysis on John Cage's 4'33".
23. you have hosted a "Gurrelieder" party.
24. you have ever pondered what an augmented seventh chord would sound like.
25. bass motion by ascending thirds or a sequential pattern with roots in ascending fifths immediately strikes you as "belabored."
26. you know what the ninth overtone of the harmonic series is off the top of your head.
27. you can name ten of Palestrina's contemporaries.
28. you can answer your phone with a tonal or a real answer.
29. you have ever heard a wrong note in a performance of a piece by Berio, Boulez, or Stockhausen.
30. you suspiciously check all the music you hear for dangling sevenths.
31. when you're feeling particularly prankish, you transpose Mozart arias to locrian mode.
32. you keep a notebook of useful diminutions.
33. those "parasitic" dissonances make you queasy, especially when left unresolved.
34. you have composed variations on a theme by Anton Webern.
35. you know the difference between a Courante and a Corrente.
36. you have trained your dog to jump through a flaming circle of fifths.
37. you have ever used the word "fortspinnung" in polite conversation.
38. you feel cheated by evaded cadences.
39. you have a poster of Allen Forte in your room.
40. you know who Allen Forte is.
41. every now and then you like to kick back and play something in hypophrygian mode.
42. you wonder why there aren't more types of seventh chords
43. you wish you had twelve fingers.
44. you abbreviate your shopping list using figured bass.
45. you always make sure to invert your counterpoint, just in case.
46. you have ever told a joke that had this punchline: "...because it was POLYPHONIC!"
47. you know dirty acronyms for the order of sharps.
48. you consider all music written between 1750 and 1920 to be "rather elementary."
49. you memorize dates and times by what they would sound like in set theory.
50. you not only can identify any one of Bach's 371 Harmonized Chorales by ear, but you also know on what page it appears in the Riemenschneider edition and how many suspensions it has in the first seven bars.
51. you got more than half of the jokes in this list.

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Bill, Bill, Bill. No-one want windows everywhere! [I don't want it anywhere]. The BBC has an article about his speech at the Consumer Electronics Show, and I disagree with the notion of Windows everywhere. Here's a favourite amusing story of mine:

At a recent computer expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the car industry and stated, “If GM had kept up with the technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25.00 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon.”
In response to Bill’s comments, General Motors issued a press release stating, “If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:

1. For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash twice a day.
2. Every time they painted new lines on the road, you would have to buy a new car.
3. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason. You would have to pull over to the side of the road, close all of the windows, shut off the car, restart it, and reopen the windows before you could continue. For some reason you would simply accept this.
4. Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.
5. Only one person at a time could use the car unless you bought “CarXP,” but then you would have to buy more seats.
6. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast and twice as easy to drive — but it would only run on five percent of the roads.
7. The oil, water temperature and warning lights would all be replaced by a single “general protection fault” warning light.
8. The airbag system would ask, “Are you sure?” before deploying.
9. Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the antenna.
10. GM would require all car buyers to also purchase a deluxe set of Rand McNally Road maps (now a GM subsidiary), even though they neither need nor want them. Attempting to delete this option would immediately cause the car’s performance to diminish by 50 percent or more. Moreover, GM would become a target for investigation by the Justice Department.
11. Every time GM introduced a new car, car buyers would have to learn to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.
12. You’d have to press the “start” button to turn the engine off.

Well said GM!

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The Nik's Pics! page has now been updated with lots of AJAX and DHTML goodness thanks to Isaiah Carew's Collage Plugin.

Well after much procrastination and hesitation, I finally ordered the 24 Series 1-4 Box Set. It's just arrived, so I think it's time for lunch [and a light viewing session] :-D

As a visitor, you can tell when I'm fiddling with the website. Odd loading times [if it loads at all], lots of missing pages and occasionally a distinct lack of any text styling at all :-[. Today was one of those days where I played with the site - it really was just behind the scenes updates with some code updates and a couple of blog feed images added. So I check the "live" site - the one you're reading right now - and noticed the "Made with Rapidweaver" box wasn't straight and the Frappr map wasn't linking correctly. Bugger :-! Sorting the link is easy - I'd merely missed off a "/" from the Frappr URL, but the formatting baffled me. In a bold move I re-coded the sidebar content and it now has sorted itself. Phew. [A later autopsy of a backup file revealed some code that created a break in the text - even though I didn't write it in!]

And the meaning of all of this? Well it's merely a plug for RW - there's a few things I'd love for the folk over at RealMacSoftware to sort [and I'm sure they will] - but Rapidweaver still blows away all the competition - especially seeing as Karelia Software's Sandvox program is running behind their initial schedule. I can't wait for MacExpo as there could be some more news on a new Rapidweaver version :-D! How do I know that? Let's just say a little birdy told me some things..... ;-)

Welcome to 2006! :-D I'm going to be away from my Mac intermittently over the next week or so, but I'll be blogging when I can. Stay tuned, and don't forget to party! ;-)