Easy Day - Time To Blog About IPhone 3.0

It's Sports Day at the school where I work today.
That means most of the kids and most of the staff have packed themselves onto several buses and headed off to do the one thing I hated when I was at school - sport.

This, in turn, means I'm virtually on my lonesome for the day. Well, at least until later on this afternoon.
There are a few members of staff hanging around to take care of the select few who weren't allowed to go plus some Year 11 kids who have yet to finish some of their GCSE coursework.

With no one here, there's obviously very little to go wrong which means I'm having an easy day. Not easy enough that it turns to boredom but just enough to have a pleasant day. The timetable has been abandoned for the day and still the bell rings at appropriate times to indicate the start/end of various lessons throughout the day.
I can do anything at any time today and yet I'm finding myself sticking to the bells. Lunchtime started at the same time for me. It will end at the same time and, because it's routine, I'll still get up to supervise when the time comes even though there's no one there.

---

I suppose, as I have a bit of time, I can talk about the update to my iPhone software I downloaded last night - version 3.0.

At first, there was a little confusion as to WHEN on Wednesday, 17th June this update would be made available to iPhone users in the UK. There were people on Twitter who had stayed up until midnight waiting for the update. Personally, I had trouble sleeping that night so was awake by 05:15 and downstairs preparing to download. Unfortunately, nothing.
Rumours were going around that it might be available by 6am BST. When it got that time, I was periodically clicking "Check for Update" in iTunes but still nothing. In the end, I had to leave for work after finding out that it might not appear for users in the UK until 6PM.

Fast forward to yesterday evening - 18:30.
iPhone 3.0 is downloading and beginning its install onto my iPhone. Always a scary feeling when something updates like that. Progress bars stop and you wonder if it's supposed to do that or if it's broke and your pride and joy will be destroyed forever.
Thankfully, this didn't happen to me. Installation completed successfully and, after a restart, I was able to take full advantage of the new features of iPhone 3.0... apart from MMS.

Immediately, the Twitter community started "shouting" at O2 for not being prepared and having MMS available straight away. The deal was that they would send you an MMS approximately 10 minutes after you had upgraded telling you that MMS was available. This was not the case for a lot of people. 10 minutes came and went. 10 HOURS came and went. Eventually, this morning, MMS capability for my phone was activated. For some, they are still waiting.

First impressions are that iPhone 3.0 has made things slightly faster. I certainly notice apps starting a little faster than they used to.
I'm pleased with MMS now it's working.
I'm also pleased with the landscape keyboard that's now available with SMS/MMS, email, Safari, etc.
I'm sure there are a lot more things I haven't noticed yet. Maybe they are things that won't be noticeable but will improve the way I work with my iPhone.
Not sure I'll use the voice recorder but it's a good feature.

Overall, the hype "bigged" it up a little too much and the upgrade only added things we should have expected at the very beginning. Still, I'm pleased I now have 3.0.

BYL.

An Enjoyable Weekend (Pt 2)... not

Rubbish.

I've left it too late.

I've been so busy at work that I've forgotten to finish my blog about the weekend. It's pointless doing it now because I've forgotten the finer details.
I should have done it all in one go.

I'm sorry.

I'm not good at lengthy blogging. I should practice.

BYL.

An Enjoyable Weekend (Pt 1)

I have half an hour of "extra time" before I leave for work today. I'm returning a hire car which has to be back by 08:00. It only takes 10 minutes to drive there.

I've had a really good weekend.
I picked up the car at 11:00 on Saturday. We did some shopping and then drove to Manchester where we were to see Bill Bailey Live at The Lowry that night. We actually spent most of the morning sat at home, bored, wondering what to do with ourselves. The original plan was to leave the house at 4pm, drive to Manchester, giving us just enough time to have a look around the Lowry complex, have some dinner and get to the theatre. However, we were either too bored with the morning or too excited about the night's event that we left at 3:30pm.

After getting slightly lost around The Quays, we arrived at The Lowry Outlet Mall car park at 4:00. We took note of where we were parked (Blue Car Park; Block A) and walked into the complex. I suppose I was expecting something in a Trafford-Centre-stylee because the entrance from the car park looked like some grand hotel foyer when all it housed were 2 self-service pay stations and a staffed pay station. From this grand-ish entrance, an escalator was to take us to the main shopping centre. I was expecting something grand to be revealed to us as we neared the top. Instead, imagine a fanfare playing going up the escalator, that sound of a record being scratched then the fanfare being replaced by the theme to Vision On. That was kind of my level of disappointment.

I'm not suggesting I didn't like the place. It had it's fair share of designer shops, mobile phone stores and eateries. Maybe I should accuse the car park foyer of giving me false hope.

I need to leave for work.

To Be Continued...

Out Of Routine

Things both in work and personal life aren't running to routine lately. Those who know me know I'm a bit of a time freak and everything has its place in the day. Lately, though, my timeline has become quite varied. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, just something I'm not used to.

For example, my colleague's wife has just given birth to their first child (congratulations) and, from today, he starts his two-week paternity leave. I'm temporarily returning to the position I was in when I first started the job, running the network alone.
It's a job, I believe, I do well. I just haven't done it alone for some time. I guess it will be a little reminder of what life used to be like. I'm also hoping, although these expectations could be massively too high, that the rest of the staff understand that I'm ok my own and give me a little leeway. Ha!

As well as that change in work I'm being scarily social this coming weekend. We're doing lots of things running into next week including seeing Bill Bailey at The Lowry, Manchester on Saturday (tweet me if you're going, too), Blackpool on Sunday and my girlfriend's parents staying between Monday and Wednesday. I'm socially busy. It's weird.

I started writing this before heading to work this morning. It's now lunchtime and, touch wood, things are running quite normally. No major problems and I've succesfully completed several jobs.

Change could be a good thing.

BYL.

Jeremy Paxman vs. William Hague

Twelve years on from the classic "Paxman vs. Howard" interview, which I touched on in a previous post, Jeremy Paxman does it once again. This time with William Hague.

Genius. Enjoy - Paxman vs. Hague

BYL.

Terminator Salvation - The Verdict

Last night I went to see the long awaited 4th movie in the Terminator franchise, Terminator Salvation, starring Christian Bale.

I could sum it up in one word but, for the purpose of a decent sized blog post, I'll go into a little more detail.

As a pretty much die-hard fan of the Terminator series of films, I was quite disappointed by this latest offering. I think those who enjoy the films as shoot-em-up, blow-em-up, effects laden pieces will, however, enjoy the film very much.

The visual effects are amazing. There's no question about that. Some better than others but overall brilliant. Unfortunately, I think this is what drives the film. I was only waiting for the next big explosion to keep me sitting there.
Massive Terminator fans will appreciate the subtle as well as the obvious references to previous films. You could tell who these people were by the giggles and little cheers while others were sat there bewildered.

Disappointingly, those two elements were my only good points with the films. Storywise, there wasn't much tie-in with the Terminator story. It seemed like a story within itself which is fine. If only there was a decent story behind it. It was slow to get going before you realised what was supposed to be happening. I think there was supposed to be an, "Oh my God! Really?" moment in the film which I think was given away in the trailers and made slightly obvious at the start.

I'm not a massive fan of Christian Bale but he's a good actor. In Terminator Salvation, however, he applied his Batman voice AGAIN. Sometimes he was over dramatic while at times where he wasn't the focus of the scene he looked like he wasn't so sure what he should be doing.

Overall, it didn't live up to the hype that it received before it's release. I think fans of the Terminator story will be disappointed but fans of the films in terms of visual effects will be very impressed. For what it was, it was also too long.
Better than Terminator 3 (that's not difficult) but not as good as 1 and nothing can beat 2 so far.

3 stars ***

Feel free to leave comments if you've seen it.

BYL.

Morning Musings

It was checking my work email last night before that told me today wasn't going to be very great. Four pages of virus alerts. All Conficker. It strikes again. Even more when I checked this morning.

Still, my routine never swayed.
Up at 6:25 and downstairs in time for the beginning of The Chris Moyles Show on Radio 1. The cats immediately thought it was breakfast time and were weaving in and out of my legs as I walked into the kitchen. I felt like I was on Britain's Got Talent and needed a ball or something.

6:40 and I'm sat down to eat when I hear a beep, then another and it continues. Out of the window I see an Argos Home Delivery truck! At 6:40 in the morning! Someone's going to get a shock when they open the front door and see a man in a turquoise uniform sat on a widescreen plasma telly.

Anyway, off to face the viruses.

BYL.

Spare Time

Careful. This may become a regular thing. Somehow, I'm finding a spare 5 or 10 minutes in the morning before I have to leave. Something must have changes in my routine but I can't think what. Oh well. Can't complain.

Yesterday was a rubbish start to the second half of the term.
I walked into a lovely cool server room to be greeted with red lights which instantly indicated something was wrong and, from experience just a week earlier, I knew exactly what it was. I also knew this was going to set the tone for the day.
I won't go all technical and I only have five minutes before I have to leave but it was to to with power failures, backup power failures and corrupt drives. Not nice. It's still not resolved but today we'll be keeping an eye on it.

It wasn't the best day. The heat didn't help.
The best thing I got out of yesterday was getting a cool new pen. It writes beautifully and rubs out! I was impressed.

A better day will equal a better blog post, I promise.

BYL.

5 Minute Blog

Not long now before I have to leave for work again. Back to full uniform of shirt, tie, trousers, shoes.
Yes, they're back. Work will be invaded once again by kids and teachers. Teachers often say, "School would be a whole lot better without the kids". For support staff like myself, add, "... and teachers.

It won't be smooth sailing this morning because I already know the servers shut themselves down over the weekend and started back up again. With that and the regular moans of the day, it's going to be quite awful.

I'm taking bets on how long it will be after I enter the building when I get my first moan.

Well, here goes.

BYL.