On new year’s day I posted my targets for 2010.  Here’s an update:

• Finish repair and decoration of the house - Nope
• Move house – House valued by two different agencies, several houses looked at
• Achieve CCIP (Cisco Certified Internetworks Expert) certification – No progress
• Become an accomplished CCNA (CC Network Associate) instructor – Teaching first course later this month
• Stay fit – Hmmm.  Still playing football….
• Stop biting my nails – Done
• Run two 5k races and another 10k race (hopefully with my pal Chris) - Chris should be booking for March
• See 6 London shows (at least one every couple of months) – Saw comedy, but no shows as yet

As you can see, progress is slow, but I’ll get there.  I plan to take a week off soon so that I can study for the BGP exam for CCIP, and we should be off to see a show later this month for my birthday.  If Chris gets his act together and signs us up for the race I’ll get out running too, and moving house isn’t going to be a quick thing, but we are making strides.

I’ll keep updating until I’ve done everything!

Since I installed Windows 7 on my laptop (which is pretty nifty) I haven’t been able to find a driver to work my built in webcam.  Well, giving it another search this evening popped up this gem, which details a solution to the problem.  I’ve been months without the camera, can’t believe I’ve not tried that before.  Never mind.

Just a note – the solution says to point to the x32 folder (even from a chap running the 64 bit version of Windows 7).  I didn’t, I pointed to the x64 folder, and it still works fine.  Figured I’d probably be better off with the 64 bit version of the driver.

I’ve loved Billy Connolly for years, since I was a little lad.  I love his style of rambling, swinging from one topic to another.  He’s not a joke teller, like Jimmy Carr, but a storyteller.  He carries you along with him whether you like it or not.

So, when I saw that Jimmy Carr had tweeted that he’d just been to see Billy perform (and that he was brilliant) I was immediately excited – I might get the chance to go!  I’ve never seen him live before, so it was a thrill to think that I might get the chance.  I checked with friends if they wanted to come and then set about trying to get my four tickets.

I was immediately disappointed, for the sites which appeared at first glance to have tickets available turned out to be sites with no tickets available.  The bastards.  In a last chance ditch I phoned Ticketmaster, and was told that there were standing tickets left for the show on Tuesday 26th January (though these didn’t appear on their website).  After calling friends to check the revised date, and going through the agony of trying to get through again, and not knowing if the tickets would have gone, I finally had it all confirmed – I was going to see Billy Connolly!

So, last night I saw Billy Connolly live for the first (but hopefully not the last) time, and it was bloody brilliant.  No support act, just straight in with a two hour non-stop show.  A chap in front of us had a brilliant laugh too, and boy did he use it.  Typical Billy style, wistfully meandering through topics, all the time face-achingly funny.

Jimmy said it first, but I’m saying it too.  I bloody love Billy.

When the iPhone came out in 2007 there were a series of ads around that showed off all the new magic that the iPhone brought to us.  At the end of the ad the phone would ring, yet it would ring with a ringtone that was never included with the iPhone.  Well, apparently it is an iLife tune, and is available to download as a ringtone here:

http://www.lifeclever.com/the-missing-iphone-ringtone/

You’re welcome.

On the second of January Mrs Tom and myself set off to London for a bit of a day out.  We had family staying over Christmas and with our holiday being a group tour it felt like a while since we had spent any time together alone doing something for ourselves.

We had a bit of a wander and a nice dinner in a Spaghetti House chain restaurant.  Not amazing but not bad either.  After that we took ourselves off to the Soho Comedy Club which is in “The Comedy” – a pub just off from Leicester Square and near Piccadilly Circus in Oxenden Street, where The Comedy Store is.

It cost £5 to get in (£7 without the flier we had) which is excellent value – The Comedy Store up the road is £20-£25.  The pub is very nice downstairs, but the comedy happens in a room upstairs where around 120 people are crammed into quite a small room, but there is enough room for everyone to sit comfortably – sort of like being in the cinema – people have to move if you want to get up.

A couple of the acts really caught my eye – Joel Dommett and Eric Lampaert.  They were both really funny and pretty original and I really liked them.

So here they both are (Joel’s video is the performance from the 2nd Jan I actually saw):

For the last two days I’ve been working from home as the weather has made it too dangerous to attempt the 45 mile trip to work, some of which is along “non-main” roads.  However, due to limitations on our VPN I’ve not actually been able to do much other than keep on top of emails and other work which doesn’t require access to the resources based in the office.

The reality of this is that there really isn’t much that can be done from home, so I’ve been taken the opportunity to start the spring cleaning in the house.  Following the holiday period when our house is filled with loads of people the place is still yet to get back to its normal order (which is actually not that neat anyway), so it has been a welcome opportunity to clean up a bit.

In line with our desire to move house this year we’ve also began the process of downsizing our estate – getting rid of things that we just don’t need anymore but have hung onto for reasons unknown.  It’s a difficult job for me because I’m a bit of a hoarder but now comes the time to be ruthless – we don’t have the room for the stuff anyway, so it just needs to go.  My problem is that I feel guilty about just slinging stuff out and it ending up in landfill, I want it to go to someone who will use it, or if its broken then recycle it properly.  This does however take a bit of effort.

Freegle is a website which helps you recycle stuff that may be of use to someone else.  It’s built around Yahoo! Groups and if essentially a mailing list – people post stuff to the list and people that want it offer to take it.  You can also post “wanted” notices too.  I’ve used it in the past in its former incarnation of Freecycle (which I still think is a better name) and it has been useful for helping to get rid of things, and also to help others who might actually want the stuff you no longer do.

Having realised through re-reading this that I am turning into Adem, I will now get on with checking work emails and a bit more cleaning up.  Good day.

Hi folks,

I took one video whilst we were away too, which can be found here.  It’s of Vietnamese football fans going mental after their 6-1 victory over Cambodia in the 2009 South East Asia Games.  It was crazy walking through the streets whilst all that was going on; the people couldn’t be happier and yet at the same time it was all brilliantly good natured, not the slightest hint of feeling threatened by it all.  I took this video from the hotel in Ho Chi Minh City where the Americans would do their “five o’clock follies” during the Vietnam/American war, where we were having a wee drink and listening to some old gent crooning away before the band came back on.

Not new year’s resolutions because they are so last year, and I think they are tainted with a stigma which means that no-one really expects you to follow through with them. But I do have targets. I’m thinking that if I list them here where they can be viewed forever, and if I publish an update every month as to my progress, I might actually think about trying to achieve them. Probably rubbish, but it’s worth a punt. Here goes:

• Finish repair and decoration of the house
• Move house
• Achieve CCIP (Cisco Certified Internetworks Expert) certification
• Become an accomplished CCNA (CC Network Associate) instructor
• Stay fit
• Stop biting my nails
• Run two 5k races and another 10k race (hopefully with my pal Chris)
• See 6 London shows (at least one every couple of months)

I’m not going to beat myself up if I don’t meet them or things change, so let’s see how I get on with it. I might also update the list too, as I’m sure there are more things I want to do than that.

Just a quick note for those that are interested, our holiday photos from our honeymoon to Indochina are now up on the interweb at flickr – http://www.flickr.com/photos/smallcheese/sets/72157622942278665/.

Enjoy!

Today I caught the new high speed service from Ramsgate to London St Pancras, and for the first time ever for a train journey to Lond0n for me, I actually got there faster than I could have done driving.

Train users elsewhere in the country will be used to this of course, it’s long been possible to get from London to Glasgow in just four and a half hours. The journey from Ramsgate to London Victoria however takes, at best, around one hour and fifty minutes. For 64 miles. to Charing Cross takes even longer. Today however, I was delighted with the journey time of one hour 15 minutes to take me to St Pancras.

So, I can now travel a few miles farther and do it around 35 minutes faster which is fantastic news. The price difference of just a couple of pounds extra was well worth the time saving for me, which today was essential to fit in with my timetable. The train was smart and comfortable too, and if I’d known there were power outlets next to each seat I would have taken my phone charger to get me through the day.

Of course I wasn’t travelling at peak times on a packed train so I can’t really say what the morning experience would be like on a normal weekday, but today there were minimal numbers of fellow travellers so the journey was probably the best train ride I’ve ever done.

So, based on my limited experience of the service, use it, it’s brilliant. Fact.