Ian Winter » Personal

Amy’s Ghost

Ian — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 08:00:26 +0000

I was introduced to Amy’s Ghost by a friend (@timblair) as he knows Amy (lead singer). Since seeing them once live at Global in Reading I’ve really enjoyed their music. They played at Reading and Leeds this weekend and the highlights are online at BBC Introducing. If you like it go buy the album from Amazon.

Simplicity with o2

Ian — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 22:23:29 +0000

If you’ve got yourself an iPhone, particular a 3G, odds are you’re out of, or, coming up to being out of contract. You’re probably paying £35/m right now as well. If like me you’re holding on for June/July to see if a new iPhone is launched, which, it probably will be you’re not going to want to jump into a 18/24 month contract to upgrade to a 3GS (albeit tempting). O2 actually seem to have an answer in their reasonable new Simplicity SIM only tariffs. For £20/m you can get unlimited texts and 300 minutes inclusive.

It’s also really easy to switch online once you’ve found the right links. If you click on the “Shop” dropdown at the top you’ll see an Upgrade Your Phone link. Follow that, enter your mobile number and then the code you’ll get by SMS. Once in you can pick from the don’t want a phone section and just pick the new tariff. You can also just go on a month to month rolling contract which is great, saves you money and hopefully makes you ready for the iPhone 4G. You can also “downgrade” to these tariffs and save £5/m if you go for a 12 month contract.

I’ve gone through the process just now and as yet not received a confirmation email but hopefully that’ll turn up soon!

Edit: Still no email but now the O2 iPhone app shows I’m on to simplicity 20 tariff.

New Music

Ian — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 20:55:21 +0000

Thanks to a simple link over to audioporncentral from a mate I’ve discovered all sorts of crazy cool music in the last fe days. Now it’s not everyone’s taste, but, it’s damn cool. Mainly mashups of assorted but general high quality. The particular standout winner are The Kleptones. Their website has all their music available, for free, mp3 download… just the way it should be! My favourite so far is Uptime from the uptime/downtime record. It’s awesome, so many tunes so little time! The Bestival live also is worth a play.

Fitness

Ian — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 20:50:05 +0000

The fitness campaign continues for the most part successfully. I’ve kept to doing at least 1000m in the pool twice a week. It’s taking about 40 minutes each time doing breast stroke which is ok, but, I’d like to do it quicker though on having attempted that last night I’m not sure how much quicker I can do that stroke. I think I may need to try out doing front crawl though I need a better pair of googles for that.

I’ve also kept up the gym working managing just over 8km again on the bike along with some arm work – although the day after swimming that wasn’t a great plan!

Destroy

Ian — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 20:46:38 +0000

My preferred desktop twitter client right now is the excellent DestroyTwitter. It’s got everything your need and is pretty nifty all round.

In the latest beta you can customise the themes and as I was messing about with a few things I’ve created one for me that’s based on the scheme of this site. If you like those colours then you can grab the theme file. Just double click it and it should install.

Here’s a little more about DestroyTwitter:

DestroyTwitter is a robust but compact Twitter application built to run on Mac, Windows, and Linux using Adobe AIR. It consists of a series of canvases that constantly update to keep tweets current and up-to-date using notifications that appear immediately after a new tweet arrives. DestroyTwitter also features complete direct messaging functionality. Messages and tweets can be replied to with the original visible for quick and easy reference. A search function is also available to track anything that’s being talked about.

Fitness

Ian — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 21:33:26 +0000

The fitness campaign continues and seemingly still going OK. Last week wasn’t particularly good with only one trip due to a couple of late nights at work and general stuff going on. Over the weekend that was slightly made up for with a 8km cycle in the gym following by some arm weights, on Sunday I managed to up my swimming distance to 1100m (44 lengths). It did take slightly longer at 50 minutes but hopefully that’ll come down.

So far not much sign of weight loss, though that I’m not too fussed about as long as the belly decreases it’s presence!

Getting Fit

Ian — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 17:23:55 +0000

I decided as a new year’s resolution to try and get a bit fitter. That didn’t really happen so in the last few weeks I’ve been sticking to it by going to the pool twice a week and the gym at least once or twice. First off in the pool I did 20 lengths which is 500m. Last time I got that up to 24/600m and I’m hoping that by the end of the month I can be doing 40/1000m. I do feel better in myself for doing more exercise and also trying to eat better. We shall see if it pays off!

New Site

Ian — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 08:46:00 +0000

It’s actually launched! Using Ray Camden’s BlogCFC, dpSyntaxHighligher & LightWindow (see comments) so thanks to all respective authors. This is possibly the quickest it’s taken me from saying I’m going to do it to actually, well, doing it!

Gone for the light on dark approach this time, fully CSS’d (no it’s probably not valid) and I’m really pleased with it.

Update

Ian — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 11:49:00 +0000

Been quiet on the posting front lately, mainly because Sky Broadband suck. OK, so that’s a bit harsh, their customer service department suck. Pipex also suck.

Basically moved from Pipex to Sky, mainly due to cost as bundled from Sky saves me overall around £25 per month. No brainer. Also would get a faster connection.

Not going to go into the long winded detail right now, but basically the ADSL migration process still sucks and is unreliable. Since being with Sky for just over 4 weeks, just over 3 of them have been without connection. If you want to migrate at the moment I think cancel the old and start up with the new is more reliable!

whois flatpackedworld

Ian — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 13:34:00 +0000

Not really sure, but, following on from the many posts floating about after Tim’s original entry including Ray’s, Andy’s and Mark’s I thought I’d join in. Amongst other things I claim to be, I’m usually aliased as flatpackedworld.

* 25 years old
* Bought a 3 bed house just under 3 years ago
* Going out with my Canadian lady, Jenn, for about 4 months now
* Drives a 06 plate VW Golf GTI in black
* Looks at the Apple store every couple of days thinking I’ll buy a macbook then thinking of reasons not to
* Likes pretty much any food except sprouts and cauliflower which are evil devil veggies of doom
* Loves music, has way too many mp3′s.. really like last.fm
* TV wise likes Scrubs, Fraiser, 24 & CSI
* Films would be Lord Of The Rings, Star Wars, Bad Boys, Indian Jones (can you spot a theme?)
* Been working with CF since around 2000 starting on version 4.5.2
* Director of own company Caffeine Press (yes, I know, the site’s a bit poo… new web2.0 stylie design on route!)
* Co-Founder of office-humour.co.uk – the soon to be social humour site, hopefully!