Chris Worfolk's Blog

According to one of SitePoint’s year reviews, 2008 was the year of Twitter and 2008 having come and gone I decided it was probably overdue that I gave it a go. I have never been an avid use of my Facebook status but the more flexible nature of Twitter looked far more promising.

Perhaps more importantly, though, Twitter has not really spread outside the geek community yet and on the off chance it does, I need to be able to tell people “yeah, I’ve been on Twitter for ages.” Echoes of recent conversations along the lines of “yeah, I’ve been on Facebook for three years now” no doubt.

I am quite impressed with how easy it was to set my phone up and begin using it too. I’m a little disappointed I don’t seem to be able to add multiple phones but the idea of being able to update my Twitter while I’m awkwardly sat in a pub by myself waiting for whoever I’m meeting there to turn up is very appealing if only to give me something to do.

In any case, if you’re already Twittering (is it a verb yet?) then point me in the direction of your page. Mine can be found here.

Continuing our tour of a different restaurant each week which is still going strong now well into it’s second week 😉 , we headed over to Frankie & Benny’s for this week’s exciting Sunday night meal.

Unable to find anything new and interesting on the menu to try I decided to settle in for a nice mixed grill featuring a mere 23oz of meat. Rich also joined me with the choice though it turns out that 23oz isn’t actually that much meat and we both managed to work our way through it.

It was quite a nice restaurant, the staff were very friendly and the waitress even volunteered to take a group photo of us which I thought was more than tip worthy but apparently, I wasn’t allowed to leave one :o. Still, as was pointed out, we don’t get tipped at work so it’s personal preference I guess.

All in all, it was a good night even if I did eat a little too much lol. Roll on Mexican next week…

I’ve finally got round to adding email notifications to further comments being posted on my blog entries. So if you comment on one of the entries you can now opt to be notified by email if someone posts a follow-up comment on that same entry.

Many of us having gone back to work this week, it got to Friday and there was nothing else to do but hit the pub. Plus with it being Kieran’s birthday it was a good reason to celebrate, even if Kieran was a few hundred miles away in Swindon.

It was a rather good turn out in the end with myself, Si, Sarann, Michelle, Greg, Nicola and Kate turning up. Not that I got chance to speak to anyone other than Si or Sarann but I’m sure I will get chance to at some point in the next week.

Last night saw the long awaited work’s Christmas party.

Turn out wasn’t particuarly good, we got about 20-25 people of the 50-odd we have on the books and indeed some people were stuck at work with us being unable to find cover (how rubbish is that!) but I think it was far more noticable because from my generation either simply don’t work there anymore or have lost interest in such ventures.

Still there were enough people there to provide ample conversation and in any case we could at least enjoy a fun night of watching Crabs (who, the best way I can describe her alcoholic type behaviour is to say she is like a young Michelle, though not quite on the same level yet) try and stay on her feet having had a little too much to drink 😀 .

There was also a rather large buffet, to the tune of £800s worth of food which had been laid on. I think I saw one person go up there, so money well spent really. As I explained to someone I think was Emma the regional manager, if they aren’t going to bother to lay on hot, fresh food then we’re just not interested. Though that didn’t stop us from taking a plate home at the end of the night!

All in all it was a pretty good night though personally I would have prefered it if it was just our store as I think would quite a few other people. Good times none the less though, and I’m most looking forward to tooking into my left over chicken 😀 .

The observant of you may have noticed that there are some new header images on rotation on my website and blog. These are in keeping with the original header images – one stock shot, one hero shot and one collage. I’m planning on expanding the amount of images in rotation over time though I only want to do it when I have interesting images to add.

The first one is just an image I picked up off iStock which I loved.

The second is a photo of me blogging, I might re-shoot this at some point in the future as it didn’t come out exactly how I wanted it but then I thought it somewhat of a lost cause to translate my imagination into photography and so got as close as I could.

Finally the collage is a few of my old school pictures from back in the day when I was at high school, or at least six form. Given appropriate aging effects, of course.

Tuesday night saw the first A-Soc social of 2009 and quite a well attended one at that. Given a lot of people are not back in Leeds yet, many have exams next week and it been freezing cold outside (literally, it’s well below 0), we still managed to get probably 15 people to come down.

Our plans to meet in The Terrace had been somewhat thwarted by the union not opening The Terrace we switched things to The Old Bar (which weren’t serving food either), people kindly being directed down by union staff who asked Norm “are you looking for the long haired guy and his dad” referring to Paul 😀 .

The Old Bar was being rubbish as well though and closed the bar at 9. Interestingly Izzy turned up soon after to find us all getting our stuff together to leave. She immediately then made an exit stating that “well, Norm’s not here” – charming. The night ended with Kate trading in some shifts at Rationalist Week for a lift home which is fair enough really.

After somewhat of a hiatus over the holiday period while we caught up on all the pre-recorded episodes that had been queueing up and generally took a bit of a breather, podcasting once again resumed on Monday recording another two episodes for my podcast the first of which will go out this Friday.

I have to say it was good to get back behind the microphone and I’m looking forward to getting back into the swing of things. I am also planning to add some new blog headers, one of which will be a podcasting one.

Lenovo have just announced a dual-screen Thinkpad laptop which is rather cool indeed. Inside the main 17″ screen is a 10″ slide out screen which gives you extra space on your desktop which is becoming increasingly useful these days.

While I agree that at the moment the extra weight, cash and loss of battery life may not make it worth it, you have to remember that this is the first of it’s kind and five years down the line when the technology has developed a lot more this could be amazingly useful.

I was somewhat suprised the other day when my housemates and guests began discussing the Christmas special episode of Jonathan Creek. Namely because I had no idea such an episode had been made, after all the show has been gone for five years. Gone though not forgotten apparently, wiping out it’s competition to take a 36% market share and rightly so too!

Jonathan Creek is an amazing show and news of it’s report, albeit it for only one episode was most welcome indeed. Though having read over the news articles surrounding it, perhaps there will be further specials, though not a new series, based on the warm reception this special received.

As usual the mystery was a good one, though I will admit not to the standard of brilliance that the original episodes reached. I got as far as working out that the attic room they were looking at outside was not in fact the attic room they were in while inside but that is almost a given, given it’s JC and that is as far as I got.

Fingers crossed when that there will be more specials though in any case I think I am going to have to re-watch some of the original episodes and once again bask in the splendor that is Jonathan Creek’s mind at work, even if he is a fictional character.