Monthly Archive for December, 2009

Geocaching!

Published on 29 December, 2009. Closed Tags: , , , , , , , , , , .

Geocaching (by William Hook)

I have discovered a new hobby. Geocaching. :D

I’ve heard about it before, years ago, when someone hid one under a bridge (it was on the news), but I pretty much ignored it. Then a while ago, someone I follow on Twitter (yum9me) started tweeting about it so I thought “hm, sounds interesting”. Anyway, I decided to try it out recently, so I downloaded the “lite” (free) version of the Geocaching app for the iPhone, and gave it a go. Anyway, it’s quite fun – I started off with one in London – the South Bank Lion geocache, which is near the Lion opposite Big Ben. I found another two today, in Birmingham, and it’s quite fun – and depending on where it is – pretty easy to do.

The whole idea around the “sport”, if you can call it that, is that you find GPS co-ordinates for a cache, plug them into your GPS unit (I use my iPhone), and then go searching. For example, next time you’re in, say, Iceland, you could attempt to find this cache. The cache itself is usually something small – the inner city ones are generally either a film canister, or a tiny plastic ziplock bag, and the country ones are usually a bit bigger, such as a container the size of a mug or a small box. Inside is anything from a log only, to other stuff like a coin or something similar. You can even hide your own cache if you want to, as long as you follow the rules and so on (eg, you have to put it on public property and it has to say what it is, etc). I might do that one day – there are a few spots I can think of around where I ride my bike that might be quite good.

I mean yes, it is ultimately a pointless sport, but it’s fun to do nonetheless. I’ve found 3 so far and I haven’t even started on the ones in Stafford…which I’ll do when the weather gets a bit better (it’s freezing cold at the moment and it’s raining now).

Moved Hosts, again!

Published on 29 December, 2009. Closed Tags: , , , , , , , .

I’ve moved hosts, yet again. When I first got william-hook.com in October 2005, I was hosted with A Small Orange. However I later moved away from them in 2008, to Minthost, as they were cheaper (and faster too), and then again a few months ago I again moved to Fr3d‘s server, as he was, well, free. However, Fr3d has decided to start charging (and, tbh, too much. :P ), so I’ve moved back to ASO. Actually, I’ve put half my site elsewhere. All the big files that I had hosted on my blog I’ve put on another server I have access to, which has plenty of space available , but my blog itself (which is only 30MB) I’m hosting with ASO. The upside is that I can fit into the $25/year plan, so the hosting overall doesn’t cost me much now. The only thing I’m worried about now is that when I used to be on ASO, the server I was on eventually got pretty slow, so I’m hoping that won’t happen again. If it does I can probably ask to be moved to another server but for now, it seems fine, which is good.

The one thing I am keeping with Fr3d is that he’s hosting a Microsoft Exchange mailbox for me. The mail I don’t really care about (I primarily use Gmail), but it does mean that my contacts and calendars are synced between my PC, Mac, and iPhone, which is awesome – and at £20/year it’s much cheaper than Apple’s MobileMe).

Anyway, so, yes, if you’re reading this, you’re seeing my blog hosted with ASO. If you’re not, your DNS server suck and you should switch to OpenDNS. :D

Merry Christmas!

Published on 25 December, 2009. View Comments Tags: , , , , .

Just wanted to wish everyone a very merry Christmas for today – hope everyone has fun! :)

Twitter Retweets

Published on 12 December, 2009. Closed Tags: , , , , , , .

Twitter. Retweets. If you know what I’m talking about, read on. If you don’t, go to the next post. Simple as that. And yes, this is a rant, because it really irritates me that some people refuse to use it simply because they can’t comment on Tweets, yet that very person keeps retweeting verbatim tweets from someone without making any comments. So uh, why not use the new method, duh? Anyway, to business.

Why you should NOT use Twitter’s new RT method:

It doesn’t allow for commenting on Tweets. Okay, yes, fair point, but about 1 out of every 20 retweets that I ever do have a comment from me, so really, it doesn’t bother me. And most of the time, it doesn’t need a comment. If you retweeted someone, well, you either liked their tweet, or found it funny, or useful, or nice. There’s no need to say that. Really. I get it. ;)

Twitter could “fix” this by adding some kind of “comment” tweet attatched to it, but honestly, I don’t see the need. As it is, I rarely want to comment on retweets, so…whatever.

Why you SHOULD use Twitter’s new RT method:

Duplicates. I follow over 200 people, many of whom know each other – for example, I follow the iTweetReply (iPhone app) team. This consists of three developers, plus the iTweetReply Twitter account and the Syncode Twitter account. When one of these Tweets, do I really need to see the same thing, but retweeted five times? Five times? Five times? Five times? Five times? Yeah, exactly. Sure it might be getting you more exposure, but in the end it’s just pissing me off (and doubtless other people as well).

Annoying people who RT too much. Thankfully, none of my followers retweet stuff so much that I want to disable them, but it’s there if I ever do. I’m close to switching off retweets for one person, but, alas, they’re still using the old method. Yet their personal tweets are interesting, so I don’t want to unfollow them.

You and your company, product, or business. I follow you. You tweet about your personal life. I like this. You also retweet almost everything about your product or company says. Which I don’t care about because I don’t use it or I use a different product. This doesn’t really come under retweets, but it’s almost as bad. I don’t really need to know when your product has a new feature or website or information about it or stats…if I wanted to know this, I would follow your product’s Twitter account. Not you. And then when you did retweet it, using the new method, I could see that tweet, once, and that’s it. Okay?

It’s easier to keep track of. On Twitter’s website, it shows information about your retweets. Including stuff like how many people retweeted something, which of your tweets have been retweeted, and so on. It’s like a super mini version of Google Analytics, but for retweets! :D

It’s less annoying. I love Twitter’s “mentions” feature. It lets me see who has mentioned me in a tweet, or sent me a reply. What I don’t like is when 50 people* retweet something of mine, and then I get 50 mentions of something that I said. Really, I don’t need to see all that. Even more so when every @reply to me is sent via push notifications to my iPhone – it becomes annoying.

It’s a Twitter feature. It’s there to be used, so use it! Remember when @replies were changed to mentions? Everyone cried and said it was a horrible thing and the world would end. 2 months later, no one said anything, because guess what, it works. Once Twitter refine the new retweet method (by adding commenting like I explained above – which other people want), and most, if not all Twitter clients implement it, I would hope that everyone switches over to using it, because it’s great.

*as if I’m that popular. The most I’ve ever had has been about 20 people, and that was only once. Still, god knows what it would be like if I was famous. I’d stab my eyes out.

Birmingham. It’s a Love/Hate Thing. Oh, and Michael McIntyre FTW!

Published on 1 December, 2009. Closed Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Birmingham Buildings - USC

Ah, Birmingham. Some people love it, some people hate it. Personally, I both love and hate it. I love the fact that it has a nice cinema, an IMAX, a pretty nice shopping centre, an Apple Store, two nice big arenas, and so on, but I hate the fact that, outside of that, it’s a ugly dump of a city. Seriously, outside the recent development, there’s nothing remotely making me want to live there, or even drive though it. AT ALL.

MacBook.

Anyway, enough of that. So, on Monday the 16th of November, on the exact day that my warranty expired, I decided to finally get my MacBook fixed. Yeah, this is the problem I had. It took me a whole year to get it fixed. :D Honestly, the problem was there, and it was bugging me, but I just seemed to live with it for the year until the last minute – it’s safe to say that it’s now all fixed, and the keyboard is nice and matte again (it had turned shiny from one year of use), and of coursed, fixed. :)

The problem is that when I went on the 16th, two days later, I got a cold – most likely because I went into Birmingham in the freezing wind with not much on at all. T-shirt and a hoodie, that’s it. So it’s my fault. I had a sore throat/nose, but I was in bed (and, er, on the computer when mum wasn’t looking :P ) for about a week. Anyway, I was up and about from the 25th Nov again, and only now do I feel almost 100%. I’m still coughing slightly but for the most part I feel fine. :)

MIIIIIIIICHAEL MCINTYREEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!

Take two. I had planned to go before (see here), but my dad actually broke his leg in August, so sadly we (we = me and parents) had to cut short the whole journey and not go. However, I got some more tickets for the 30th Nov (which is technically yesterday) and saw him then, but at the National Indoor Arena in Birmingham instead of the O2. End result? Awesome. Funny as ever and it was great seeing him live. If he ever goes on tour again (and I presume he will), I’ll be going again for sure. :)

Oh yeah, and here are some videos. Enjoy: http://twitvid.com/1A465 (the arena), http://twitvid.com/19BE6 (comedy), and http://twitvid.com/98EBC (moar comedy).

The Journey Home? Not so much.

We (we = myself and mum) decided to go by car instead of the train as, well, it’s easier (and last time I went to the NIA, for Cirque Du Soleil, it was actually pretty much dead quiet when we came out). Or so I thought. Half the problem is that by train, there’s a one mile or so walk to the arena, and in the freezing wind, it’s bloody cold. Plus it’s Birmingham so we wouldn’t have made it back to the train anyway, due to stabbing.

Right, so, car journey down was okay. Not brilliant – I mean, the M6, at 6pm, on a weekday, yeah, there’s bound to be some traffic, and there was. It wasn’t too bad though – about a ten minute delay in total. And I managed to botch up the TomTom’s directions a little. All in all, though, that was fine. So, we went in, saw Mr McIntyre, and because our seats were in block 11 in the arena, we made it out and to the car within about 5 minutes of the end of the show. Perfect. So, we back out the bay parking bay, drive around the corner (we were on the roof of the parking garage), and end up behind a queue of cars. For an hour. Yes, an HOUR. I managed to listen to Robbie Williams’ entire new album in the car. One song after that, and we were finally out. It turns out they decided to empty the entire car park, level by level, before we managed to get out of it all. Lovely. Anyway, as soon as we were out, it was fine, until about 5 minutes later when we hit the rest of the traffic. Oh boy.

So, 45 minutes later and we finally were on the M6 and doing more than 40mph. Half the problem with the traffic jam is that the idiot roadworkers decided to close off half of the “expressway” between the central Birmingham area and the M6, for roadworks (At 11pm? At least wait until midnight!), so we had to go around the long route. Anyway, once we were on the last stretch of the expressway to the M6, it was fine…and then we arrived at the M6. Europe’s busiest motorway. Oh, yeah, and due to roadworks, they had turned it into a one lane road travelling at a whopping 10mph. Amazingly enough, they were ACTUALLY THERE, and ACTUALLY WORKING. I almost fainted. Yet, alas, only about 300 meters worth of roadworks required (I counted) 14 miles of motorway to be slowed down to 50mph, and have cones and warning signs and so on all the way along it. What the hell for? As Jeremy Clarkson said on Top Gear this past weekend, surely the point of dropping the limit to 50 is to protect the workforce? What workforce? Why not put the speed limit back up to 70 when they’re not there (so…all the time).

Anyway, that’s enough ranting. End of the day, Michael McIntyre was brilliant and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Also, note to self: take the train next time.