Archive for the ‘Life’ Category

I’ve been checking out del.icio.us just now and gone as far as to install the Firefox buttons and everything. I’m not massively happy about it taking up space in my browser as it makes my URL field smaller but it does seem like it could be useful. I could do to bookmark things rather than just leaving the browser open on a page for a few weeks.

I do like the who else bookmarked this page thing. I added a random blog I came across and several other people have already saved it, it will be interesting to see what they have put about it.

So I went down to Gilds to get registered yesterday and was told the two people that do it were not in, so come back tomorrow. So I went back today and was told they don’r register people on a Friday and I needed to come back next week!

Today has been an absolute joke of a day so far even before that. When I got up I found my computet had restarted. Power glitch maybe? The result is all my software was offline including my downloads so there is bandwidth wasted and my music was obviously off too. My desktop seemed completely screwed because of it because I had to pull the cable out the back to get it to restart.

Plus last night Firefox crashed with loads of pages I had kept open to come back to over the course of the past week. This is after me and my parents had a big talk about finances for next year and how I was utterly, utterly screwed.

Also in computer related problems, the coding I was doing for a client turned up to be a massively bigger job than I thought it was going to be and far more flustrating as well. It managed to cause no end of problems and ate up most of my morning.

As for job hunting, as my the fact I am going to yet another agency, it’s being completely unsuccessful. Both my interviews I had with The Woodman and Iceland turned out to be go nowheres and still place after place that said they would get back to me has failed to do so.

It’s getting to the point where I am running out of money to job hunt. The amount I have spent on buses without getting anywhere is just silly. It’s also destroying my summer plans. If I had a job I could just go do the hours I have and spend my free time working on projects. But because I don’t have allocated work time and free time I can’t focus properly. And even when I can get focused on something by the end of the day I’m usually too depressed to do anything other than to go to bed anyway.

I’m in dire need of a plan. And a breather in which I have the time to write one. Which would require me getting a job and there seems to be a worldwide conspiracy preventing that. The rare escapes I do get (ie my social life) are about to get slashed as Fonze is probably going to bail on them as he’s almost as broke as I am so there goes any hope of enjoying even a small part of my summer (ironically named a holiday).

I’d like to say that it’s just a temperory problem and I just have to hold out until I go back to uni. But given I don’t have a job, my holy grail of uni accommodation may be in jepody. When factoring in how bad the summer was going to be I thought I had it covered but I didn’t consider what would happen if you removed hope from the equasion.

I don’t really know what to do now. I could go home, go to get and listen to Seether. Go home, go to bed and watch DC or TNG. Or reject the idea of going home because home is depressing and stay in Eniac indefinitely. They are all good options I guess.

Every now and then someone comes up with an idea for a product that was such an obvious business opportunity that you wonder why nobody has made a serious go of it before. I’m talking about Heatseak the pornography browser :p.

This is the kind of thinking most of the pointless Web 2.0 start-ups I mentioned in my last post need.

I’ve been reading Mashable which is a blog about web 2.0 start-ups. It’s quite interesting to see what is going on with new websites but it shows you how much of an unoriginal place the internet can be. Almost all of the websites and recent start-ups on there are either MySpace or YouTube clones. Some of them don’t even try to pretend they are not. I think if these start-ups are really going to suceed they need to be far more innovative.

I was reading over on Release 1.0 about a company called Goodmail which wants to charge for people sending emails. Basically you pay a few pence for each email and they gaurentee that it will be delivered to the recipent.

Esther Dyson puts some good points forward about why it would be an advantagous thing but I think there are still strong reasons again. For a start, the idea that people just want email to be free because it used to be free is somewhat bankrupt in that nobody would want to see a more costs involved even if it was paid for originally and also that email isn’t free. We already pay for it in our ISP fees, or domain and server fees. So adding a sending fee is making us pay twice. Even in the case of webmail such as Hotmail and gMail it costs us in having to endure annoying advertising.

Further more, such examples such as the fact we pay for snail mail I don’t feel support the case. It’s not a good thing we have to pay for stamps. It’s not like we had an open choice to pay or not and choose the paying route, it’s just how our economy/society works. I hardly ever use the mail. Why? Because emails faster and cheaper. Yes, we have massive spam problems. But so does the mail, so does the phone with cold calling.

Best. Gig. Ever.

I miss posting on forums, I’m in one of those moods to start a new forum. I have drifted apart from my usual online homes and could use something else to sink my teeth into, especially given that I could free up a vBulletin licence (or two, maybe). But that would mean picking a topic. A programming forum would be good but there is no niche so attracting users would be tricky. Doing a TV show or celeb site would also be good although most of the TV shoes I love have been cancelled. So many decisions, I just want to start a new forum dammit! That way I can buy a new domain.

I got a letter from Norwich Union Direct today saying the following…

Did you know that people in your road are enjoying great Home Insurance from Norwich Union Direct?

It then listed my street. My mum jokingly suggested I should ring them up and ask them who the people were. I decided to take her up on the idea. After all, what’s the point in telling me people in my street have it if they can’t tell me who they are so I can validate that they are telling the truth?

Having the luxary of a microphone and a phone that does speaker phone I took advantage of my right to record the call so you can all have a listen. It takes about 10 seconds to get into it (before you hear anything) as I couldn’t be bothered going back and editing it ;).

Norwich Union Direct call

From the 23rd of July, FilmFour will be free apparently. I’m not sure if it includes FilmFour+1 and FilmFour Weekly as well though I would imagine it does as nobody is going to pay for them when the main channel is free. Importantly, it’s going to be on Freeview so I will be able to get it at uni :).

I had a read of Digital Spy‘s story on it and apparently FilmFour Weekly is going to close. FilmFour should hopefully have some good movies on though, they are launching it with Lost In Translation.

Got down to Labour Ready for 6:45 this morning. Sat around for 2 hours before we were all told there wasn’t going to be anymore work available today. Had to bus it back home at peak time. So not the greatest start to the day.

I did get quite a bit of coding done today, indeed I started writing a new product from scratch and have done probably more than half of it which is a lot of code given I have also been working on other things. But overall it’s not been the greatest day. I’m hoping double South Park followed by double Sugar Rush will pull me out of it. Providing I can get control of the cable box.

And what do I have to look forward to? Getting up at 6 again tomorrow to go down again. And maybe the day after too.

On the flip side, it’s now only 3 days until I go see Billy Talent. My one salvation. Well actually my second after DC though it’s not having such a moral boosting effect as of the past few days.

That or it’s just drowned out by the soul destroying events currently happening. I mean, the stuff I have done today for my script involved piles of AJAX and JavaScript. This is the kind of stuff world leaders like vBulletin are doing. What the hell am I doing in the same place as the rest of the losers at the agency? Have a possible client wanting some development work though so hopefully I will get some joy there.