Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category

On Saturday I indulged my final act of hedonism before ending the Christmas amnesty on Campaign for a Debt Free Chris by heading to Browns for a meal with Kieran, Si and Sarann.

The food was good, myself and Si both opting for the Browns Bacon Cheese Burger which rose to the class the of the restaurant very well. The company was equally good too as we whiled away the hours reminiscing about back in day. Good times.

We recently held the One Life wrap meal to see out the end of the One Life course. I’m not so sure how successful it is, it’s nice to go for meal but nothing is really wrapped up. Even if not I would like to think it brings course participants together but then most people are in A-Soc already. Maybe we just need to change our advertising strategy.

We ended up down at Wagamama which I wasn’t overly impressed with. Their bench seating and place holders that were simply McDonald’s tray liners but without the trays isn’t exactly the hallmark of a good quality restaurant. Food was good, I think, but not really being a fan of it and their refusal to do my chicken in a bun to simulate the idea of a chicken burger didn’t held matters.

Still afterwards we got a long night’s drinking at ‘Spoons so all ended well. Even if it was a bit of a couples fest with Jonni+Kat and John+Lil.

Richard Wisemen tweeted about this Amazon product listing recently, it’s a little travel desk which hucks onto your steering wheel so you can use your laptop while driving.

Richard was most impressed by the customer images that users have taken the time to upload but I personally think it’s the quality reviews that people have written to really let us know how effective the product is that is the real gem of the page.

Wow is this thing great! I use it as a “mini-bar” when the friends and I go out to the bars. I can quickly fix multiple shots of tequila for myself and the friends as we drive from one bar to the next. We also discovered that if you place a pillow on top of it and turn on the cruise control you can catch quick naps on the interstate. If you swerve to the left or right the rumble strips on the road wake you up in plenty of time before you get into trouble. I can now take longer trips without being tired!

Also, i am now dating a midget and she fits nicely on the steering wheel desk which allows us to experiment sexually while driving. This thing is like WD-40 or duct tape, it is a million and one uses!

This has been a total lifesaver. It allows me to prop my sheet music against the wheel, allowing me to play the guitar with both hands while driving.

It is also great for holding your food if you decide you want a full meal (but you can’t check facebook on your steak), rolling illegal products in clear view of officers, and it makes a GREAT holder for your 6 pack of beer so you don’t even have to reach in the backseat to get another (reaching behind you while driving is dangerous)

This desk leaves just enough room to control the wheel with my knee so my shoulder is free for my phone and I can type with one hand and eat my lunch with the other. Best invention EVER.

I had hoped to find a low-cost/safer alternative to a car seat for my 21-month old. I was certain this would work well–even allowing me to see her clearly while driving (I am a freak about child safety!). Imagine my utter shock when she careened into my head while backing out of the driveway. And the darn “child seat” turned over too–seemingly it moves with the streering wheel—WTF? Luckily, I slammed on the brakes, and we have sustained only mild-to-severe concussions

Do you have any idea how hard it is to read Braille books while driving? Every time I’d hit something my book would slide off my lap onto the floor and I’d lose my place. Problem solved…Thanks Laptop Steering Wheel Desk.

Definitely one for the Christmas list.

When I went to bed on Sunday night I wondered if I would feel any different turning 23.

Turns out I would feel much worse as I woke up the next morning with my cold having returned with avengence. Still I eventually dragged myself out of bed and got as far as sitting on top of my bed for another few hours until I felt good enough to move.

Luckily Michelle was here to cheer me up so we headed into down to grab some lunch ending up at Brio in The Light which did a rather nice Italian roast chicken dish.

This left me with an afternoon of taking it easy on my birthday and as such I headed home for a business meeting. Well, sort of anyway, myself and Norm had a teleconference with the BHA so we could consult on Humanist Week 2010 – exciting times and all that.

Finally in the evening we headed down to River Plate on The Calls which served some absolutely amazing steaks including my delicious fillet and George’s huge 700g cow. I would highly recommend it if you are looking for a great restaurant though obviously it’s Calls prices. We managed to balance the night out by ending at ‘Spoons though so all was good.

Got myself an iPhone this week as, as much as I love my Sony Ericsson k800i which has served my exceptionally well for these part three years (it is honestly a fantastic phone) it is started to look a bit dated and as what most people would consider to be a geek, I decided I needed to move with the times a bit more.

So far I have thought it a very nice device to use, it’s not the greatest invention to ever benefit man kind but as a smart phone it does what it needs to do exceptionally well. I don’t use a great deal of applications but I am loving having Tweetie and Facebook at my finger tips and easy access to Wikipedia and the web has proved very useful as well – not that these are something specific to the iPhone of course.

It really came into it’s own at the pub today though when Norm informed me that my podcast feed was down. This was a most amateur mistake on my part of having the permissions set wrong on the config file and so when I did an upload the local copy which specifies the full domain name as the database host overwrote the live permission and MySQL kicked the remote connection from my server’s ISP into touch.

I needed to fix this fast so I headed over to the Apps Store and found myself a (free) SSH client which installed in a few seconds and allowed my to connect in to my server via SSH from my iPhone, go into the file I needed to update using vim and edit to the host to the correct setting. Problem solved!

The real test of course is when my number ports over on Tuesday and I start actually using it as a phone.

I also have yet to work out how I am going to set everything up – at the moment I have it syncing with iTunes at work because I don’t want to spoil my home machines with such software. However I need to sync it with my music so I can make use of the music functionality. And work out if I can connect it to the hands free kit in my stereo – otherwise I may end up making in car calls on my k800i still!

We finally made it to the Leeds Museum on Sunday and while we only had an hour or so to get round it, it was quite interesting none the less. It was a little more grand than I had expected with a large arena style room in the centre and plenty of winding staircases with different exhibits on the different floors.

We made it round most of it in the time we were in there but most of it in a rush so we could have easily spent a few more hours in there. All in all, worth a visit though nothing spectacular.

Had my first experience at Little Tokyo on Saturday.

To be honest, it was very disappointing. The pricing wasn’t too bad for the quality of restaurant I guess but not being a fan of Japanese food I didn’t really enjoy it too much. Also they don’t have forks which was rather irritating, I did ask and got a pair of child’s chop sticks which didn’t really help the situation as it’s not that I can’t use chop sticks (not that I can, it was a mission) it’s that I wanted a fork – I used the actual chop sticks anyway.

On the plus side though it was reasonably amusing to watch some of the other patrons try and traverse the walkways between the tables (which are inset into the floor) in high heels plus they had somehow got the idea it was someone’s birthday and so we ended up getting Dan a birthday sundae complete with sparkler.

We went down to the Royal Armouries today between various pubs and found they had a new exhibit on The Tower of London (which is nice as they probably knicked most of their stuff from their initially 😉 ) so we went to have a gander.

It wasn’t amazing as it was stuck up on floor 5 and was more informational than physical exhibits to look at but it was never the less very interesting.

I dabbled for the first time in Yahoo Answers last week.

The concept, for those who haven’t seen it, is that you ask a question and everyone else has the opportunity to answer it. To help keep things balanced there is also a points system where you earn for answering questions and spend by asking questions.

As such I asked can a tree get swine flu? I got a number of answers and when the time had expired picked the best one, which gave me quite a technical answer to the question (it’s no, for those that are wondering).

Good stuff.

I ended up back at Ikea on Monday to pick up some more stuff.

I have to say I really don’t like the place though. Aside from the main reason which I will come on to, they charge £30 for home delivery which seems crazy, Tesco are delivering my bed – on a Saturday – for like £6 and a lot of the stuff they currently have in the show room isn’t even available to buy anymore.

The main reason I don’t like Ikea however is how smug they are about how awful their customer service is. As if it is something to be proud of. They have big boards up saying “we aim to serve you within 8 minutes.”

8 minutes? Are you having a laugh? Even if you hit those targets, that wouldn’t be something to be proud of. It’s not like they even really have a Total Experience Time, that 8 minutes is just the time you spend in the queue just to get your stuff scanned through a till.

I know McDonald’s is a world leader in such areas but do you know what the target time for a customer queuing before they get to the till is? 0 seconds. A lot of the time they hit it as well, and most of the time a customer will be served within the target Total Experience Time target of 3 minutes – and that is to provide a full meal, not just to take payment for a few boxes.

It’s not like they can’t cope with the demand either, they have had 3-4 tills open despite having over 20 tills they could potentially open, both of the times I have been there recently.

Not impressed.