The Apprentice Week 7

Thanks to some very strange scheduling on BBC Scotland (who cares about England International football now?) this week’s installment was shown at 11:20-12:20pm. Not being prepared to wait up until the small hours but eager to see the latest disaster I used Sky’s broadcast of the BBC regions on their more obscure channels (BBC2 Northern Ireland Channel 962 to be precise) to watch the program at the normal 9pm time.

The teams were once again mixed up. Sir Alan decided that the fighting between Paul and Saria was too much and that they should be separated. Paul and Saria then picked their team just like the old schooldays (where I was usually the second last to be picked) this time it was Miriam who was last to be picked but put in a very strong performance and must now be considered a serious contender.

James and Ben volunteered to be the respective project leaders for the week in which the task was to negotiate auction prizes to be donated by ten celebrities. The first task was for the teams to select five celebs each and then head off to meet and see what goodies they could extract for the charity auction to benefit the Hackney Empire.

Ben’s team of Paul, Miriam and Timothy worked very well together and managed to secure some amazing items from their selected celebs. The best deal must surely have been Dermot Gavin’s Suzuki Motorbike, an amazing prize. They used Miriam’s charms to sweet talk Michael Winner and she was used again to rescue a very sticky situation when Timothy offended Ian Wright. Miriam’s performance last week as project leader and this week have elevated her to the forefront.

James’ team of Saria, Raj and Sebastian were very poor right from the outset. James has been a consistently strong performer up to this point but came of the rails spectacularly. To be fair Saria picked the three team members leaving him with not much to work with. Saria is a clueless, lying back stabbing witch, Sebastian is a bit off a toff and keeps himself out of the spotlight and Raj is now the weakest of the remaining contestants. They didn’t negotiate hard enough and walked away with prizes, which paled when compared with the opposition.

The outcome was obvious and Ben’s team trounced them at the auction. At the Boardroom meeting Sir Alan seemed to think that Saria had performed well while the other three had let her down. This wasn’t the case - they were all very poor. I do hope that Sir Alan doesn’t see Saria as a contender as this will be a big mistake. James selected Sebastian and Raj to accompany him into the meeting where Sir Alan would decide who was to be sacked.

I have a theory that Sir Alan is working to his own game plan. By rights he should have sacked the consistently weak Raj but he gave Sebastian the bullet the first time he was up for termination. I think Sir Alan takes the opportunity to weed out those he knows he isn’t interested in at the earliest opportunity. He knows that Raj will be up before him again but couldn’t be sure as to when Sebastian may reappear. I think the same thing happened the week he got rid of Matthew and last week’s termination of Laura. Hopefully he knows that Saria is useless and that she will be up for sacking on a regular basis. If Raj is in the losing team next week he will almost certainly go, quickly followed by Saria and then Paul I think. James needs to improve considerably to rescue himself and could also be vulnerable next week depending on which team loses.

Wednesday BBC2 9pm.

Category:

• TV
• Apprentice

Off the Fence

Finally made a decision on my near future ADSL Broadband requirements. The recent flurry of announcements from BT, and just about every other ISP, about fantastical 2/4/8Mb speeds had got me thinking. My current provider (and have been for 8 years now), Demon, have generally been rock solid but these announcements from other companies coincided with a few shaky days of performance from Demon. The main worry I had with Demon was that they appear to be very conservative in their business thinking. They only rolled out an upgrade to a 1Mb connection for home users in December at £29.99 a month. By January BT announced they were doubling their customers speeds for free and everybody else seemed to do the same, the silence from Demon was not well received by a number of their customers (me included).

Now the dust has settled, and the announcements and claims from other ISPs are becoming clearer and reveal that, the actuality of delivering some of these promises is less clear-cut. Once you do a bit of digging you find that things are not as they first seemed. I’ll not go into the ins and outs of it all but the adslguide website is a good place to gather information on all the broadband providers and services in the UK. To this end I’ve decided to remain with Demon and opted for a re-grade to their 1Mb HomeOffice product at £29.99 per month with no caps of any kind. I know that general browsing will show little difference with the increased bandwidth but for long file downloads this will give a nice boost. I often listen to Radio 5 Live through the Internet, while upgrading my virus definitions and downloading various large files and now with the additional wireless network I have in place this upgrade should do nicely for sharing across the house.

I’m sure when Demon are good and ready they’ll increase their speeds further in line with the competition but won’t be forced into premature announcements that could lead to confusion and disappointment.

Update: 9/04/05 Fired up the computer this morning and noticed that exeem was fairly zipping along, nice. Painless experience of the upgrade, all went smoothly, didn't have to do anything at my end apart from filling out the regrade from and faxing it back. Hopefully Demon's account department won't bugger it up at this late stage..

Category:

• Demon
• ISP
• Broadband

Hi Ho, Hi Ho

There are not many working days that can beat payday but yesterday was one of them. Spent the morning selecting the specification for a new company workstation for myself as the current one is nearly four years old and creaking at the seams. Working to a budget, and using the Company's corporate discount, Dell have done me proud. Got the confirmation e-mail this afternoon from UK IT purchasing that it’s been ordered, oh yes.

Dual Xeon 3.0Ghz (800MHz FSB/1Mb cache)
2GB DDR400 Memory
2x36GB SCSI Hard Drives
128MB PCI-E Quadro4 FX1400 Graphics Card
DVD+/-RW
17" TFT, I'll keep the Sony FW900 24" Widescreen CRT and use the TFT as a secondary display for e-mail and stuff while the main screen is for CAD/FEA etc.
plus the usual bells and whistles

All that's left is to talk the boss into stumping up for the Spaceball 5000 and I'll be happy for a few months. Sad I know but it's the little things that make you feel appreciated..

Category:

• Workstation
• Dell
• Spaceball

Essential Albums 3

Thouroughly crap day at work compounded by throwing a flukey last night where I declared I wasn't for going back, ever.

Scrolling through the iPod on the way home up popped the Artist, Van Morrison. What album had I installed? Never fear, Astral Weeks was here... off I drifted, perfection. Definitely in my Top 5 off all time. Madame George, Cyprus Avenue, Sweet Thing there isn't a bad or even average song on the entire album. Recorded in a matter of days with a band thrown together from various Jazz (eugh) session musicians this is his (or anybody else's for that matter) masterpiece.

Van the Man, Belfast boy - like me, difficult to work with - tick, grumpy bastard - full house.

Essential Albums 1
Essential Albums 2.

Category:

• Music

We've all done it

Good story on the BBC of someone who wanted to see the scale of home users ignorance about computers. We've all been called upon to help friends and neighbours I'm sure and I've said in the past there must be a reasonable business opportunity for someone with above average technical ability in computers. I'm not talking about formal qualifications, nothing beats experience and we must have 1000s of hours of it under our belts. I've just spent the morning hacking around inside a Windows 2000 registry to solve the problem of account passwords not being stored in Outlook. Certainly not a task for the inexperienced and something I'd do only for myself.

I live in a small town and every couple of months an advert will appear in the local paper offering their computer skills for hire. They never seem to last long and I've long surmised it's because they're usually young folk with as much business acumen as the Women contestants on The Apprentice. If they took their time and built up some word of mouth, advertised every week and kept their rates reasonable I'm sure they would succeed. I know someone who erects TV aerials around the local area and he's raking it in. Everybody knows he'll do a good job for a good price. Likewise the Window cleaner, good job, repeat business, word of mouth = car worth more than my house.

Anytime someone asks my advice on buying a new computer I give them the stock answer "Buy a Dell". Hopefully that should keep them out of my hair for a few months. Lesley has now shown all her pals my iPod mini and a number of them want one. Fine, but they want me to order it for them!??! No thanks, you can't afford to pay for my time, simple as that. In my review of the iPod mini I highlighted the essential nature of having your music collection ripped and properly catalogued on the computer. Who do you think would end up doing that for them then? Years ago, I did have an idea there was a business opportunity to rip CD collections for cash the first time I ever set eyes on Winamp. There are now a number of services available which will do that for you at approximately £1 a disc.

Despite what Microsoft may tell you things are going to get more complex as time goes on and the calls from family and neighbours will continue. But their attitude will have to change, the increased time required to diagnose, fix and secure the problems are going to demand that it is done on a business, rather than favour, footing. Fire up Word and design a nice little "quotation" template and an even nicer "invoice" template and sit back and wait for the next time your phone rings. If everybody was made to pay for the time wasted repairing virus/worm/spyware/trojan damage they might take an interest in how to stop it, and I might be more inclined to spend four hours helping them.

Family/Neighbour: "Oh yes, I update my virus software every day."
Me/You: "So why is the .dat file dated 2001 then?"

Bastards!

Category:

• Computer

The Apprentice Week 6

If I was tell you that one team had two women in it an the other had one could you make an educated guess as to who lost? Of course you could. I spent most of this week's episode watching from behind the sofa, no not the new Doctor Who but another live, slow motion car crash that is The Apprentice.

How Saria still manages to survive is a mystery that defies all commentary. Sir Alan Sugar even went as far as to call her "very clever". You what? This clueless witch would run any company into the dust faster than a chinless tory boy manager could ever hope to achieve.

Rachel got the bullet because Sugar took great exception to her "mood board". Fair enough, it and it's creator were useless but the back stabbing witch Saria's failure was so laughable and obvious that a double sacking would have been more deserved. Saria burst into tears, relieved to have survived I can only imagine, a board meeting where she blatantly lied about everything she did. I will personally take great pleasure in watching her inevitable sacking and abject humiliation.

Who's next for the chop then? The preview of next week's show had James back in the IMPACT team, he's a strong candidate who has shone consistently and I suspect he will have helped his team to victory in the coming task. This would leave Miriam and possibly Sebastian exposed and up for the chop, marvelous.

Wednesday BBC2 9pm.

Category:

• TV
• Apprentice

Nor-er-Iron, Nor-er-Iron

Best of luck to the mighty green and white army and that they do themselves justice against the England *spit* "we're too good to be playing the likes of you" Team. Lawrie Sanchez has us playing a lot better since he took over, added a bit of confidence and got the team scoring a few goals. Who can forget the shame of the world record 1298 minutes of International football without a single goal? Hopefully Walter Smith can instill a similar bit of order and confidence in the Scotland team who had further to fall than my own Norn Iron based on past glory.

When the qualification groups were announced it was obvious that England would stroll through to the finals in Germany 2006 without any shocks or worries. I notice Eriksson has stated that they have a good chance of winning football's ultimate prize this time but with him at the helm they'll win nothing. They should have won the World Cup in 2002 but for Eriksson's tactical inaptitude and misguided loyalty to fading stars and should have walked their way to the European Championship but for their lack of a Plan B with failure, again lying at the door of Eriksson. He's got everything he wants now with the break to prepare immediately before the tournament so will have no excuses when he fails. I suppose a few key injuries will put a shade of doubt in peoples minds but the rumblings have been getting louder recently about the manager's ability (or lack there of). Failure again will see him go with a nice payoff in the back pocket and zero success with an individually talented team (in today's meagre pickings of World football).

Remember, "We exist"

Our wee country

Category:

• Sport
• Football
• Northern+Ireland

Health update 35

Managed to survive the trip to Glasgow to see little Kylie. Having walked what must have totaled nearly 4 miles in the space of 2 days (a huge achievement for me) I'm stiff as a board and "dying" with the cold (man-flu as Lesley calls it). This is the first viral infection I've suffered since January 2004 so I suppose I can't complain. Lesley gave it to me and the fact she is suffering from it as well as having to nurse me is just enough consolation. The Multivitamin and Evening Primose Oil supplements have obviously boosted my immune system to ward off any viruses until now.

Category:

• Health

The Day Before

Tomorrow, the 23rd of March 2005 is going to be a very special day. For this will be the day that Kylie (the little antipodean pop princess that she is) will finally meet the man of her dreams, me. Oh yes.

I wonder if she'll write a song about it, fame at last... of course it won't change me I'll still be the same down to earth type of guy except I'll be with an international sexpot pop star *sigh* it was only a matter of time. Mind you, the only thing worth missing The Apprentice for is Kylie's arse.

Category:

• Music

Small and perfectly formed

Finally got my hands on the iPod mini Lesley bought me for my 40th birthday a couple of weeks ago so it's about time for a quick review.

First impressions regarded the box it came in, it was tiny. Being used to seeing product over packaged with large amounts of unneeded packaging this came as a bit of a shock. Was this the right parcel? Yes it was for inside lurked a lovely metal cased, silver, second generation, 4Gb iPod mini personalised with a Roger Waters song lyric, "this species has amused itself to death" oh yes.

Having used it for a week and a bit now I feel there are a few comments that may be useful to anybody thinking of buying an iPod or any mp3 player for that matter.

1. iTunes and a computer: I never fully appreciated the importance of iTunes to the iPod. I thought it was just a matter of dragging and dropping files from your computer to the device, but it's not. To get the most out of the iPod a properly set up and populated music library is an essential. I wonder how many people who buy or are given an iPod actually take the time to rip all their music and catalogue it correctly. Thankfully I have a well populated library so it is no longer a concern for me.

2. Battery life: One of the reasons I plumped for the mini was because of the upgrade in battery performance from a measly 8 hours for first generation players to a quoted 18 hours for the second generation machines. After the first couple of days of usage I was concerned that I'd actually been shipped one of the older iPods with the crap battery life. Further usage showed that it is a second generation machine it's just that the battery gauging is a waste of space. I've found that I can have another 3 hours of usage after the gauge shows the battery as being empty. The battery does seem to suffer a lot of self discharge when it is turned off.

3. Volume: After switching the iPod on for the first time I was worried by the low volume of music even when it was set at maximum. You couldn't actually hear anything below halfway while on max it was fine in a quiet room but too faint in a noisy environment. I did a bit of research and found this is a common concern. The EU put a limit on the sound level all machines sold in Europe can play at to prevent hearing damage. That's all fine and dandy but it was really too low even for me never mind Lesely who is hard of hearing. I flicked the "sound check" setting on the iPod to off and found the volume had improved considerably and is fine for my ears. I think there is a utility you can download from the net which can remove the EU restriction from the iPod permanently. Something to be aware of.

4. Charging: Apple no longer package an AC adaptor for charging off the mains. Your computer must have a powered USB port. Most newish computer will have this but if you've got an older machine it is worthwhile checking you can charge from it. Charge times are very long so I think the first essential upgrade should be the purchase of an AC adaptor. I'll certainly be buying one.

5. Capacity: The quoted capacity is of course either 4Gb or 6Gb depending on which option you buy. As the storage is based on a micro hard drive you should be aware that formatting the drive will lose some of the quoted storage capacity. In the case of the 4Gb model the actual available space is 3.7Gb, a heck of a loss if you ask me. I've ripped all of my CDs at 192kbps and I can get about 380 songs on the iPod. If you rip at a lower bit rate you'll get considerably more but I think you'll struggle to get the quoted 1000 songs that Apple bandy about unless you went for a very low quality bit rate.

6. Ear buds: They're very comfy in my ear and the sound quality is pretty good but you'll find that the sound can be improved greatly by investing in a more upmarket set of headphones. I'm sticking with the bundled set for now.

I don't want you to get the impression that I've got a negative opinion of the iPod mini, far from it, I love the little thing. I just thought that these are the sort of things that should be known about it to make sure you buy the actual player that is best suited to you. Personally it is perfect for my needs. I didn't want or need one of the bigger and more expensive iPods, I have about 35 full albums on mine at the moment and can always find one to suit my mood. The real downside is that Lesley has decided she wants one too :( I certainly would not pay full price for it as Apple kit is vastly inflated for the style factor but if you follow my advice I gave here you can make some considerable savings on Apple's products.

Personal Rating: 4 out of 5

Category:

• Apple
• iPod

Light at the End of the Tunnel

iTunes currently reports that I've ripped 360 CDs to mp3@192kbps. The database contains 4566 songs from 740 artists and takes up 26.06Gb of disk space and if played end to end would last for 13.4 days.

This is certainly a "chore" that I never wish to have to do again. There's just a few CDs to round up and that part of the task will be complete. I then need to wade through my hard drives and add the various mp3s I've downloaded over the years (about 15Gb worth). That's a lot of Pink Floyd RoIOs :)

iTunes is setup to use Gracenote for track info and with only one exception it has correctly found and identified every CD in our collection. The one it missed was an internal sampler disk from my days working at one of the UK's leading Hi-Fi manufacturers. Very impressed.

Category:

• Music
• MP3
• iTunes

Help

If you've got a few minutes to spare maybe you could test something I've been working on. It's just a small realtime architectural walkthrough which uses Blender's built in game engine.

Don't get your hopes up it's not going to look like Half Life it's more a test to learn the limitations with respect to low poly modelling (as used in the games industry), radiosity light solutions and small texture files. To turn this into a business application, speed of development is the key driver. What you see on your screen was created in less than two hours from a 2D floorplan, to a 3D model to a radiosity solved, textured, realtime environment.

So if you fancy helping me out with some feedback please download the zip file (1.4Mb) containing an .exe file and two .dll support files (at the moment this is for Windows boxes only but a OSX 10 version is possible). Unzip the files into a folder and run the office1.exe file. It won't install anything apart from placing the three files which can then be deleted when you're done with it. To move about the office you "look" by holding the LMB and move by using the four arrow keys. The window is also scalable so try it at maximum as well to see how it runs.

Things I'm looking for are;

1. Did it work?
2. How smooth did it feel?
3. What are your machine specs particularly OS, CPU, and most importantly, video card.
4. How cool is that glass on the internal walls? I'm really chuffed with the glass and the light bloom effect of looking through two or more panes of glass at once :)

If all went well it should look something like the screenshot below.



office1.zip

Category:

• Technology
• 3D
• Blender

Jinxed

The only possible explanation left is that I was a very, very bad person in a former life. I hope I had a good time practicing my particular brand of evil, because I ain't now.

It would appear that the motherboard on my general office machine (the Athlon 700) has given up the ghost. This is quite distressing, although to be honest it doesn't owe me anything as it's taken an absolute pounding for the five short years of it's life. It's not worth fixing now and I guess it would be hard to find a new motherboard and processor to drop into the case anyway.

Current plan is to get the spare Compaq 1Ghz PIII up on it's feet but I'll need to get a CD from work containing all the drivers etc. Then purchase a cheap hard drive caddy to mount and strip the data from the two hard drives from the Athlon. I'll then use this caddy and one of the hard drives as backup equipment. I really need to copy my iTunes database as I certainly don't want to have to go through the task of ripping 359 (latest scores on the door) CDs again. The iTunes MP3 database is stored on the Beast and weighs in at 27Gb with more to come. All in all I probably have about 60Gb of data that I need to permanently backup. I have a loan of an external DVD writer at the moment from work so I may also buy a wad of discs and burn the data to that (I like the idea of having something physical). This is most depressing or maybe it's a sign that I need to purchase the Mac mini and be done with it, hmmmm....

Added to this latest disaster and my brief woes with the wireless router blowing up (my fault, but all fixed now) was the death of our Freeview box in the bedroom. As I settled down to watch something a couple of weeks ago up popped a message saying there was an update available to the firmware and would I like to download and install. So I said yes and off it went downloading the update through the aerial, unfortunately after the automatic install the box never came back to life. Much shouting and swearing ensued (but, strangely, it still didn't work). Next day Lesley phoned up the supplier and told them it was broke so they agreed to send out a new replacement and when it arrived we were to put the broken one in the box and return, no problem. To cut a long story short, the new box arrived, and after installing I realised what the problem was with the old one. We use an ancient TV in the bedroom where the Freeview box is used and it doesn't have any SCARTS. After the update had downloaded it reset the stored settings which consequently meant it would only work through a TV SCART socket. I reset it using the new TV in the sun lounge and all was well again once retuned to the old TV. A happy ending after two weeks with no Freeview..

Category:

• Technology
• Computer

The Apprentice Week 5

And so the losing run of 4 straight defeats comes to an end. To be honest the personnel have been so mixed up with constant chopping and changing to even up the numbers that there is no longer identifiable men and women teams. Having said that the team with the most women lost, miserably so.

Matthew, poor Matthew, 6ft 9" tory boy with all the brains of a wet sock and a less likeable personality than the bitch thatcher. I almost felt sorry for the sad git, those pleading eyes as Sir Alan Sugar gave him the inevitable bullet (which I predicted two weeks ago) had all the sadness of a one eyed, lame dog about to be put to sleep. He really was a prize wanker, way out of his depth. Favourite quote of the show provided once again by Matthew "two masturbations", "and a buggery" he chipped in giving the team the full gamut of his opinion on modern art. Priceless. If there was spread betting on The Apprentice I'd clean up.

Saira and Raj, the self styled "Asian posse" and the "best sales team you're ever likely to meet" (their own words), produced the, as yet, best impression of a car crash by "interviewing" prospective artists for them to represent and sell their work at an exhibition organised by the teams. It was painful in the extreme and the comparison with the opposing team's treatment of the same artists was striking. Needless to say the artists went with the other team. Saria and Raj then complained loudly to their team members that the artists took against them right from the start "because we weren't posh enough". Bollocks, their interview was the most condescending nonsense I've seen in a long time, "What is your favourite colour?" she asked. Good grief, the woman is a clueless witch.

I've identified my three favourites and would be very surprised if at least two of them didn't make it to the final. They're Ben, James and Timothy. As the show was shot in the summer I imagine the winner is already known if you search for it on some chat boards but I'm keeping well away. TV hasn't been this good in ages. Tune in next Wednesday BBC2 9pm or watch this week's show repeated on Saturday night BBC2.

Category:

• TV
• Apprentice

No strings

My recent descent into old age was eased somewhat by a call from Lewis a couple of weeks ago. In America, on one of his frequent business trips, he wanted to get me something to celebrate my dotage and calling from a computer store suggested he would bring back a wireless router and a notebook card for my laptop. After much "no, no, no I don't want anything" (for all of 2 seconds if that) I caved in and accepted his very generous presents. He arrived back a couple of weeks ago and I got my hands on the lovely shiny new kit. Thanks again Lewis.

First thing was to get a power supply as the one supplied was for the USA only. This was harder than I anticipated as the DC power requirements were quite beefy (5v @2000mA) but my EE bitch managed to secure one from RS Components. Unfortunately, in my eagerness, I had tried a different 5v power supply and as it turns out blew an internal fuse on the PCB. The Electronic Engineer bitch soon got that sorted so I was ready to cook on gas again. Next problem to rear it's head was a lack of power cable for my laptop as I'd left it at work. I got the router installed and it self configured itself based on my existing ADSL router's settings. So everything looked fine. I brought the laptop power cable home tonight and immediately fired it up to check the network. Perfect first time. I'm getting about 90% signal strength downstairs in the kitchen and sun lounge, about 65-80% in the living room and about 40% in the bathroom. First class, 54Mbps achieved while lying on the sofa cant be bad.

Next important thing to do is configure the security encryption (WPA-PSK). While on the sofa I noticed there is a very strong wireless network signal close by so this is doubly important. Must be the neds across the road. I'll also try positioning the router to see what increase in signal strength I can get.

So what will I use this wireless network for? The ability to check the net from anywhere in the house, nice. Lie on the sofa and monitor the state of the markets and maybe consider making a binary bet, very nice. Deliver music on demand to any area of the house with the help of a networked digital media player, lovely.

Category:

• Technology
• Wireless

Digital Plumber

In light of the increasing networking ability of all manner of digital devices to be found in the average home a new qualification has been founded to train tomorrow's Digital Plumbers.

I'm not entirely convinced it would be a profitable career move for anyone but some of the thought behind it seems reasonably sound. The traditional skills of Carpenters, Plumbers and Electricians are in great demand when it comes to fitting out a new house or renovate an existing one. Will there be a great demand in the future for a 4th skill involved in bringing the smart home to realisation? I'm not sure. Yes, you get Network specialists in the IT industry to plan and realise a wired or wireless network but will the need migrate to the home as well? The move to a centralised server in the home for all TV, music, Films, Pictures, Internet, Communication is well under way. Wireless networks will probably play a big part in connecting this all together and we know how much of a black art getting everything talking together can be. I need to think about this further.

Category:

• Technology
• Computer

Bonnie Update 5

Bonnie had the stitches removed from his tail (stump) on Friday. The vet is very happy with his progress and has planned to take Bonnie back in to have the pin removed from his now healed leg break in a couple of weeks. As he is still a young cat the pin will only hamper and cause him pain. Apparently it is a small operation, just a small cut undo a couple of screws and withdraw the pin through the opening.

Bonnie is back to his old self and reinstated to his former position of Number 1 hunter. He still has a bit of learning to do to realise his own limitations particularly relating to balance, but with the pin out he should have nothing else to hinder him.

Category:

• Pets

Health Update 34

Well, I had the much anticipated appointment with the Liver Consultant at the hospital yesterday. If you remember back to last year I underwent a series of blood tests which were primarily to discount various diseases and illnesses which may explain my chronic fatigue. They all came back negative and in these situations ME/CFS is diagnosed. They did however identify that my Liver was unhappy about something as the blood tests consistently showed a high level of enzymes that indicated it was fighting something. To this end I was referred to the Liver specialist. Over 8 months later and I finally got to meet him.

I'll not go into the medical talk that went on as I didn't understand a word of it. He repeated that the tests showed higher than normal levels of these enzymes but not by much. He does want to get to the bottom of the results so that the problem can be brought under control and prevent it from getting out of hand. They took another set of blood samples for various tests for more esoteric diseases and he mentioned it would be highly unlikely that they came back positive.

He, naturally, focused on my weight. It wouldn't take a Nobel Prize Research Scientist to work out that my weight is now the primary factor in any recovery I may hope to make. He will organise various cholesterol tests at my local surgery which will require "fasting" to normalise the result. Hmmmm. As I no longer drink any alcohol the main culprit to my continuing ill health is likely to be a diet high in saturated fats and low in exercise. I'm away to do a bit of research into some of the medical terms he used to see if I can make a start on saving my own life. Another appointment will be arranged for 2 months time.

The Apprentice Week 4

The best show on television comes in with the most exciting episode yet. It's repeated on Saturday night and I'm not going to spoil it for you if you didn't see it. Definitely watch the repeat or set the video (or Sky+ for all you technology obsessed types). Did the women's team (the embarrassingly named First Forte) make it 4 failures out of 4? Or did the men's team (Impact) drop the ball and fail miserably? Come on, you know the answer already. Sir Alan Sugar was fantastic in his pursuit of this week's victim for the bullet. He was determined that there was to be no doubt as to the outcome of it all and that he was to have the last word "You're fired". Top stuff, a type of program the BBC does best.

What get's me is how much I think like Sir Alan Sugar. In the first episode the teams had to buy £500 of flowers wholesale and then sell them for the most profit. Even as he was announcing the task I was thinking to myself "you really want a team to go out sell all the flowers as quick as possible and then go back and buy more". Almost immediately that is exactly what Sir Alan Sugar said would take to impress him. The treasure hunt last week should have revealed a clear strategy. What are the most expensive items and what are the cheapest? Don't waste your time on the low cost items (Jellied eels at £4 a tub for instance) and concentrate on getting the big discounts on the high value items. In this week's episode he asked each team member why they had lost. They all responded by skirting around the issue trying not to point of the finger of blame. I said to myself "He's wanting a name and they haven't sussed it". Next thing you know an exasperated Sir Alan demands, in clear terms, exactly who is to blame for their failure. Brilliant!

What to do?

I got a strange letter through the post today from a marketing and design company. Basically they are in the process of changing their company name. The problem is I own the domain they want. They've registered the name with a hyphen between the words but I own the domain as one word which is their preference. For example I own www.whatever.co.uk and they have www.what-ever.co.uk but want mine.

The letter says they would be willing to purchase the domain off me if I no longer require it. I haven't got around to using it myself yet but I do have concrete plans for it's use and actually own three different domains which are based on a similar theme.

I've checked out the Company's current website and to be honest it doesn't look like much for a company based in marketing and design so maybe there's not much cash to be had. Any idea about how I should proceed? I suppose I should put a value to the domain name and pitch it to them. If they refuse, nothing lost, I'll hold on to it and put my plans into operation at a later date. If they bite then I should make sure the figure involved is sufficient to make me rethink my plans. Sorry to be a bit vague but I don't want to mention the domain in question.

A lot of dust biting going on

Sad news that Tommy Vance has passed away. First John Peel and now Tommy. Best remembered by me for The Friday Rock Show on Radio 1 Friday nights 9pm, during those angst ridden teenage years studying[1] for non important (as it turned out but not like that at the time) 'O' and 'A' Levels. For every worthless heavy metal track there was usually a gem of real music to be found in one of his shows. Especially when he trawled through the vast archives of Top Gear for some serious Floyd, Zeppelin, Cream et al. Proper DJ voice (like he was on 100 fags a day and a bottle of JD before breakfast) too.

[1] Ok, ok, so I've never studied for an exam in my life but you know what I mean.

Getting there

The last mile is a phrase often used in connection with the telecommunication industry and the postal service. Getting the items or services to the door of the actual paying customer is where industry continues to fall down. As I sit here waiting for my iPod to be delivered I obsessively log onto TNT's website to track the progress of my life saving equipment (how do they know it isn't?). It's been stuck in Shanghai for the past 4 days and now it magically appears in Belgium. It'll probably take another couple of days to get to the UK and then god only knows when it'll make it through the mess that is our transport system. When it finally gets on the van to be delivered the driver is going to realise that Apple, in their infinite wisdom, have decided to pick and choose what parts of the delivery address they deemed necessary to print on the documentation. My work's full address runs to 9 lines and without all the info you'll struggle to find it. Obviously the computer systems don't have that number of fields in their database so they arbitrarily lose some of the info. Bastards! The number of snotty drivers I've had complain to me as if it's my fault is unbelievable. I want my fecking iPod and I want it NOW!

I'm also waiting on a delivery from RS Components for a much needed power supply to begin rigging up a wireless network in the house, woof, but more on that later. Tracked it to Perth where it mysteriously remains. I suppose it'll arrive tomorrow but then I'll be torn between playing with hi-tech computer equipment or watching the Champions League in the evening. Decisions, decisions.

Shopping on the net is the way to go but delivery needs to be sorted out. "We can only ship to your home address", bollocks to that but when you do give them your works address they turn up on a Saturday, or 7 in the morning or the day you're working from home, arggghhhh! "Allow 28 days for delivery" er... no, I want it now. "Thank you for your order, we'll ship the item when we get some stock in." Oh no you fecking won't.

Did I mention I'm waiting on my iPod?

General Update 1

I thought it my be a good idea to give a progress report on a number of things and tie up a few loose ends all neatly packaged in one post. I'm really into this blogging thing and use it personally to keep a track of various goings-on and to give me some goals/sense of achievement. Probably doesn't make for riveting reading, but I don't care.

Bonnie: had his tail amputated last Monday. He was almost back to his usual self within a few hours. He had a check-up at the vets yesterday and was given a clean bill of health. Upon his return he immediately looked at the cat flap, then Lesley then the cat flap again and needed little prompting to dive right through it. He was out for an hour in the evening and probably spent most of the night out playing and hunting with Clyde.

Ipod Mini: My birthday present from Lesley was shipped last week (direct from Apple's Shanghai factory) and should be delivered early next week. The invoice arrived this morning confirming I had all the discounts applied for (Further Educational discount plus a promo discount code I got off a website). If you're thinking of buying some Apple kit then I urge you to follow my advice. I entered the name of my old University and immediately got £10 discount without further checks from Apple.

CD Ripping: I seriously underestimated the amount of CDs to be ripped. Currently I've completed ripping 234 CDs, with 486 artists, 2761 tracks lasting 8.2 days and consuming 15.8Gb of disk space, probably about 2/3 of our collection completed. I'll then have to spent a bit of time tidying up the library database to correct some ID tag errors. Great fun.

Health: The worry and stress caused by Bonnie's injury led to a general decrease in my health. I haven't been sleeping as well. I'd wake up about 5 in the morning and couldn't get back to sleep. In the past week that has improved and I'm now sleeping right through but I'm conking out about 10pm which is an hour earlier. Hopefully that now Bonnie is fit and well again (apart from having no tail and a massive pin in his leg) I'll return to where I was 6 weeks ago.

The Apprentice Week 3

Another week, another woman gets the sack. No surprises there then. Sir Alan Sugar tried his best to even things up a bit by selecting the team project leaders (woeful Matthew the tory boy and chief slapper Adele) along with addressing the disparity in team numbers by allowing the girls team to select 3 boys to join them and Matthew selecting 2 off the girl’s team (poisoned chalice or what?). Didn't make much difference to the outcome. The women were one again, crap. No focus, strategy or plan. Hours spent bitching and moaning. Adele appointed Miranda as her PA "to take notes". What the feck did she think she was doing? One member of the team, not contributing to the negotiation and buying because she was to take notes, unbelievable. Naturally, Miranda rebelled and eventually got the sack for not getting behind the leader.

The task was basically a treasure hunt for a list of items to be sourced and purchased for the lowest possible price ranging from a bottle of bolly to a bowler hat. The boys failed to get the bowler hat and were therefore fined £80 for the failure but, in a feat of pure racism, they managed to secure a freeview receiver for nothing. Head witch, Saria along with Raj played the "race" card by badgering an Asian shopkeeper into giving them a freebie. It was sort of along the lines of give us the freebie and we the "Asians" will beat these pesky westerners. Sir Alan Sugar should have remarked on this, but let it pass.

Highlight of the week? Tory boy Matthew describing his reaction when Sir Alan Sugar named him project leader, "Cripes" he said, on national TV in 2005, wanker. He later admitted that he wasn't very good at leading so let his team play to their strengths (in other words his weaknesses) how much longer can he survive? To be honest he should be safe while there are still some women to be sacked.

Tune in next Wednesday 9pm BBC2 for more car crash TV when they take over a Harrods department. This week's show is repeated on Saturday 11:05pm BBC2 and you can also check out the show's website for past and future details. Best programme on the telly.