Shane's Gone!

This week has flown past, tons of things have happened and this is the first time I'm getting a chance to update this small site of mine.

I think it was Thursday the 8th that we went for a few drinks in honour to say bon voyage to a solid mate, Shane. Being the young jet setter he is...he's off to study in Spain for a year, having just returned from Sri Lanka to help out in the Tsunami aid.

A couple of pics are available on the moblog of course...and the infamous "15 second rave" is also available on there.

New Years is gonna have to be in Madrid then....!

+nicks

*update* Forgot to mention how much of a soldier he is for coming out with us....must have got home at about 2:30am and he had to leave for his flight at 3am....legend

Film Review: The 40 Year Old Virgin

As you know, I quite often like to review a film I have seen recently and this one I really have to do! I just came from seeing the film and it is honestly one of the greatest comedy films of all time. In fact, scrap that....THIS IS the funniest film of all time!!

My belly was hurting from laughing so much. Minute after minute the jokes and comedic actions kept coming...

It's a very simple plot, as you can tell from the title, the film starts off with the character Andy (played by Steve Carrell) being a virgin...at 40 years old. His workplace friends soon find out and make it their mission to get Andy laid....

The beauty of this film is that every single character is funny, sure it is derogatary, offensive and male humour for the most part...but who cares, it just works brilliantly!

I urge everyone to see this.....

+nicks

The Great Walk!

On Saturday, Jenny and I decided to embark on a bit a hike and walk to London from near where I live. Having previously visted the moorings at Greenford, we were aware that The Grand Union Canal there would take us straight into Regents Park. My estimation was that it was about 10-12 miles and would approximately take us 3 hours to complete.

It was a beautiful day to be out in the sun and the shade from the overhanging trees beside the canal kept us cool, so are journey started off really well. I was using my new GPS unit to monitor how far east we were going, it was pretty cool.

Along the way, we saw the vast array of different shapes and sizes of canal boats. It really made me want to own and operate one, I was aware however, that each boat altough looking relatively dated is about £30,000! Still....it does seem like an enjoyable life to lead...

The main reason why I wanted to go on this walk was to see how the transition between surburban London and inner London was made. The journey was uninteresting for the large majority of it because the scenary changed very little...mainly fields/factorys. It was only when we managed to reach Kensal Green that things became more appealing. We could see the canal side flats, which looked relatively small...but attractive enough to live in.

Walking on from there, we reached Little Venice, things perked up a bit as there were so many people out and about...particularly those interested in canal boats. There was even a canal boat tea shop....but the £5.70 price for a ploughman sandwhich put us off completely!

By this stage, we were completely shattered (Jenny more then myself of course!) and our gentle strolling along meant that we were already 3 and a half hours in!! It was mutually agreed that we should struggle onto Paddington and then catch the train to wherever we wanted to go...

ending up at Embankment at All Bar One for a well deserved drink!!

A few piccies are up on the moblog if anyone is interested to see....

+nicks

IPTV is here!

IPTV is technology which allows streaming TV content available via the internet. So far, no mainstream broadcasters have featured this, although the BBC are planning trials this month.

However, there already exists a few peer-to-peer programs that allow you to stream live TV shows to your dektop. The only snag is that the content comes from east Asian cable broadcasts, which means that 90% of the channels are in a different language.

This did not deter me so much while I was experimenting yesterday as I was so glad to see this technology working pretty well. The software that I chose to download and install was www.pplive.com. The site is in Chinese I assume, so make sure you hit the English version and also, switch languages when you have installed the software.

You literally end up with dozens of channels to connect with. Connection does take a few minutes per channel, however, as the software needs to find and download from other peers. Once the software has buffer the stream, your regular media player opens up and play the TV channel...way cool!!!

Some of the better channels in the line-up are: HBO, ESPN, Premership football, Movie Channels and a few random "Unknown" channels.

I managed to watch part of "House of D" and "The Island" yesterday in good quality before my eyes let me down. (Not sure how they got The Island broadcasting on a TV station in Asia, but that's Asia for you I guess!)

Give it a whirl....the download is only ~900kb. I've attached some pics to my moblog for you to see what quality you can expect.

The technology is still in it's infancy and more people are needed to decrease waiting times between switching channels.

+nicks