'So where have you been?' Read one of my 37 email messages that all desperately required my attention just now. Yes, I've been away, but thought better than to tell everyone just on the off chance they stop emailing me. Since Thursday, I've been all over the place. I was in London Thursday evening (and almost got caught out by the freak weather) and since Friday have been away in sunny Bournemouth Scuba Diving. (For those who know Scuba, I was doing my PADI Open Water Course). It's a bit of a pain though to be honest, this going away thing. 37 email messages? It's just too much - or rather it would be too much were my mail not so filtered. Things that are from this site get dragged, kicking and screaming, through a whole load of filters, and all those messages sent to my GMail account are too, just a few more. Tags, TO: address filters, Stars, Add Tags and simple 'Archive' add to the great GMail spam filter. The Scuba was great, but sometimes I wish my Mac were with me, just to make life easier with email and all sorts of other things.
Anyway, I'm back (at least until 20th August) so it's time to get posting, start replying (apologies if I've seemingly ignored a message. I'm getting there) and get my RapidWeaver theme released.

It appears Apple's soon to be releasing a Bluetooth mighty mouse (although how soon is anyone's guess. Given the love I have of the corded one, this is going to be a no brainer purchase - my iBook only has 2 USB ports so the less devices that use them, the better. Read and see the photos here. Of course, if this is all WWDCs about, I'm not going to be the only pissed off person. Anything to do with the iPod & Peripherals should not be showcased at WWDC. Leave it to some other show Apple. We want Macs, Macs, and Mac OS X Leopard. A nothing else.

I'm not a fan of MySpace (who needs to rely on someone like Rupert Murdoch to provide content for your website? I'll post my own thank you), so I didn't shed a tear at the fact that MySpace was hit by a huge blackout overnight. What a tragedy. The Beeb covered the story for some reason (presumably in some sort of public service message to all the distraught MySpace users who were up half the night hitting F5) and makes you wonder why they weren't able to stay online longer. I mean, come one if I can afford hosting that offers multiple power sources and offsite backups, surely Rupert can?

So it's real. Microsoft is creating an iPod rival. Zune is the name, and boy are we all excited about it. Er, not. You see, just like Windows Vista, it's taking Microsoft 5 years to try and catch up with Apple. Sure, Amazon might be about to work with Microsoft on downloads, but can you see people abandoning iPod + iTunes? I certainly can't. I'm not going to comment on the device - but if this is anything to go by, Microsoft just gave away too much to Apple. Nice try Bill, Steve and Ray. Better luck next time!

Apologies for the sketchy postings, some web-design work has been priority number 1!

Someone had far too much time on their hands and drew up these rather funny sketches. I think they're priceless! I apologise if you find them offensive - they're not intended to offend!

As the Germans Saw it:


As the French saw it:


As the Italians saw it:


As the Americans saw it:


As reported by the press:

Isaiah Carew is the man of the moment! (I would say he's the hardest working man in Northern California, but I would risk offending RW's other plugin genius Loghound). Isaiah's new RapidWeaver plugin looks like it's going to be one of those plugins that just changes the way you build a website. I've not built that many pages using Blocks, but the features he's introducing may just bring about yet more changes to my site. It's a free update when it arrives, and quick frankly, I hope it arrives soon as the RW-web is going into overdrive about this! Keep up the great teasing work Isaiah, and I look forward to getting my mits on this! ;-) Incidentally, Isaiah is going to be one of the guests on the next episode of Northern Bytes (yup, that's one of the guests!), so if you want us to ask him something (apart from 'Can I have a copy of Blocks 2.0 please?'!), let me know in the commments or email! Thanks for agreeing to be on the show Isaiah!

Doesn't time fly when you're having fun?! It certainly does in this case. Many of you know I use RapidWeaver for my site, however I'm also quite active on the RapidWeaver forums too, and today is the day I finally reached the 2,000 post milestone on the RealMac forums. Thanks to everyone who's helped me progress with my CSS! For the eagle eyed amongst you, there is a little 'thank you' hidden within the code for the site. Enjoy.

I've been really busy recently with quite a lot of web-design projects, and the first to come to fruition is this, my own space on the web! Let me know what you think of the new design, and if you've got any issues (I mean IE issues, not personal issues ;-) ) with it, please let me know!

Adium, the open source jack of all trades IM client has recently become a beta version 1.0. I used Adium when it was still about version 0.84 (not touched it for at least 6 months) and I have to say I'm impressed with the sheer brilliance of the software. I've installed a new theme for it, and quite frankly, I'm not using iChat or MS Messenger again! Here's a screen grab (I'm using a semi-transparent window in iPhoto style):

Digg.com clones are springing up everywhere nowadays, however iusethis.com is one of the best. List your apps (go vote for RapidWeaver if you like it!) and see who's using what. OS X for now, I'm sure more is on its way.

Here's my profile!

As I explained last week, this week was always going to be busy. However, it turned out to be a whole lot busier than I anticipated! All was going well on Wednesday, and with the end of term party, I was really looking forward to a break. But since Wednesday, wow. What a mad few days - it feels like it's be another week of its own!

Wednesday evening: End of term party - Was going well 'til about half-past midnight - a friend of mine's leg decided to give in, sending her crashing down to the floor. We ended up spending an hour waiting for an ambulance (with a wheelchair and a police van in between - we did nothing wrong, but don't ask!) to go to A&E. I returned home about 3.30am Thursday morning. She still can't walk.

Thursday morning: 11am - Dress rehearsal for concert in afternoon. I was kinda tired, so it was a hard work to begin with. 1pm Concert. Went well, despite the sleep deprivation, and was well received.

Thursday evening: 7pm - recording Northern Bytes thru Skype, talking to Dan Wood of Karelia Software. iBook nearly went into meltdown, so switched it off and went for a drink.

Friday (day-time): Packing! Oh I do love packing. Especially when you look at all the piles of stuff you've sorted and then realise about 33% of it might not fit into cases.

Friday evening: 7pm - Concert to listen to at Bridgewater hall (RNCM Symphony Orchestra). Elgar 'Cello Concerto & Cockaigne Overture, Gershwin American in Paris, Resphigi Fountains of Rome was the programme. Was a great concert, with Yan Pascal Tortelier conducting. 10pm - last night of term drinks in nearby bar. Midnight - Packing continues.

Saturday morning: 3am - packing completed, time for sleep. 7.30am - reveille and breakfast. Clear out finished, and flat vacated just as taxi arrives at 11.30am.

Tip: Never come home from university by train. Especially if you have 7 heavy bags to carry without the aid of a trolley.

I arrived fine into London Euston. But then things went horribly wrong. The buggy that Virgin Trains had requested just drove by to take some other person to wherever it is people take buggies to (in my case, the Taxi Rank). So I took a £1 coin, and released myself a trolley. I wheeled all 7 cases up the ramp to the departures area to discover the only way to the taxi rank is down a flight of stairs. After a brief, but eventful, session of deep thought, I decided ask someone how to get to the taxi rank, and it appears that I ought to have just followed that ****ing buggy down into the bowels of Euston. So I got into the taxi and was at Waterloo after a whistlestop tour of the capital. After having paid the £10 fare (gulp), I discover there are absolutely no trolleys to be found at Waterloo. So I just piled my stuff up, and tried walking. No chance - the suitcases just toppled over. A very kind American lady did help me figure out how to best stack the bags and for a short while it all appeared to be sorted. Until the lift that was just 15 metres away.... I was now in an angry mood, so just dragged everything somehow onto the train (with the help of the guard).

Quite how I got home in one piece, I don't know. But who-ever that kind American lady was, THANK YOU! I'd still be sat in London without her help - and that would be a great shame, as we're about to light up the BBQ. After a marathon of a day, all I've got to show you is this photo of my train arriving into Manchester before I boarded. Enjoy!


Time for a cold (preferably alcoholic) drink me thinks........ more soon :-)

Click me! How many hours can you waste with this?!

RealMacSoftware have just announced the release of Public Beta 2 of RapidWeaver 3.5! Head over to their mirrors list to grab your copy. Nice work, Dan Ben & Simon!

Last Friday, a large group of us went to see 'Over the Hedge' at the cinema. I've not laughed so hard in ages! The animation is just brilliant, and the guys at DreamWorks have clearly done some ingenius work to make the animals look so good! The music is excellent (another soundtrack from Harry Gregson-Williams, with songs by Ben Folds), and I'd really recommend it if you enjoyed the film (Amazon link). Thursday sees Pirates of the Caribbean 2 come out, so I might be busy then too. So much to do before I leave at the end of the week!

It's been a while since I was able to blog, and a lot's happened since then!

1. My End of Year Recital - done on Thursday, went well (thanks for asking!) and have been enjoying the new found freedom that the end of year brings. With the price of beer going up significantly on my return home (£1.30 going to £2.80) I'm savouring the moment.

2. Moving Out! - End of year means my lease on the flat ends in a week (9th July) and so packing and trashing things has become a favourite. It sadly also means I lose the high speed internet through the University.

3. World Cup! - Sure we lost today (***king Argentinian cheating scumbag referee) but it's been a great few weeks. England did play really well today (particularly when reduced to 10 men ironically) and showed up Portugal later on in the match. If Portugal were owed a goal, we were owed at least 3. But that's life. I had intended to post a rant about why I'm not particularly enamoured with the Argentines (World Cup - France '98 + Beckham + That Foot + Today's Ridiculous Refereeing = great hatred) but I'm not going to. Sorry!

So, what now?!

1. RapidWeaver themes - FIrstly I'm putting my site into a new custom RapidWeaver theme (I'm aware that I've still not fixed this design for IE 6, but for god's sake get Firefox!). Then I'm going to make some themes for general public consumption.

2. XCode and Cocoa - I've toyed with Cocoa and XCode for ages now, and I want to get on with it now.

3. Holidays! - Quite a few of them actually. August sees me go to Turkey for a week with the folks - and I can't wait for the heat and scuba-diving! Start of September sees me in Sweden for a Choir tour for a long weekend - after the amount of abuse I shouted today, something tells me I'll be singing Baritone this year. Then, the week before Freshers' Fortnight, I'm off to Paris to see a flatmate, and Apple Expo Paris.

4. Manchester - Back September 17th!

This coming week is going to be really fun, and hopefully I'll have a whole load of Flickr photos online at some stage to share the good times with everyone! More as it happens!