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in my mind and in my car… can’t rewind, it’s gone too far.. ooh oh oh oh ohhh….

Hmmm.

Has social networking killed the bloggers? Or rather, have bloggers now, mainly… ahem, moved to sites like Facebook to waste their time?

With the exception of the supreme shane-ness no-one seems to be personal blogging as much anymore…

Mr P… holiday and house moves I suspect played a part…
Clickrich, once a regular poster, not returned since July
The sister… i’ll give her a pass for now, shes planning a wedding.. ditto James, though props for posting now n again
MattyD.. will this current resurgence continue…?
Sarah in Africa… actually shes stayed about the same, which is good, I love reading her blog - kudos to you Sarah!
Dave, geekchic, wwdos… dwindled to nowt…
Mateo and Joood blogs got retired…
Penny4ya - erm… “forced into retirement”

sad times

I used to have this kinda policy where blogs that weren’t updated in the previous month moved off my links list, so if people clicked though there was always stuff there to read… if I did that now, too few would remain!

Was it a (past tense) fad? Is blogging now resigned to be a niche for those of us that reject facebook (so far… more on that later…). Perhaps the personal blog has logically been replaced by social networking, I guess you could say this site acted as a kinda mini-hub for my real-network of people… hmmm…

UPDATE: whilst trying to google who did this song originally I found this… somehow, so perfectly representative of this post… and damn good too.. props to “the wrong trousers”…

              

I’m feeling a bit sorry for myself today, I ache and had my jabs this morning for Thailand… so now my left arm is dead too, ow.

Generally though, I think I’m quite possibly at my fittest ever! I’m training/exercising 3 or 4 times a week using a combination of Simplefit and Crossfit, if you’ve not come across either of these let me explain a few key things… they’re both home based, require minimal kit and focus on variation (especially crossfit!) so suits me fine.

If you were looking for a good way to kick start a general fitness regime, I’d strongly recommend you check out Simplefit - the only kit you need is a chin up bar, its all based on exercises that use your bodyweight alone (sit ups, press ups etc.) and has a good, easy to follow progression as you get fitter.

Once you get a bit more hardcore, move to THE fitness regime cage fighters and special forces use… no really, from all the reading I’ve done, it seems Crossfit is aimed at overall strength/fitness and stamina for more hardcore types… I like it because its really varied… includes swimming/biking too. I’ll be honest, I’m not quite up to WOD level (see site) yet, but I’m getting there!

As both of these sites will tell you, its also about diet.. I made massive strides in this area earlier in the year whilst preparing for the swim, now I’m training harder I am also having a protein/vitamin shake thing every morning… tbh mainly ‘cus it’s chocolate flavour though.

EDIT - I should add, props to PowerHouse for the speedy delivery, good customer service and great prices for my last lot of kit (and protein mix) - highly recommended

              

geekery -
I realised today that I could have all of my bills sent by email now, cool… except for one problem… I need paper bills to hire a car. Doh!

Everything is electronic these days, I love it!!
New driving liscense… online, click click tick the “yes its ok to use my passport photo”… couple of days later bang it arrives… airline tickets = pdf… coach tickets, email/sms… Visa for Oz… electronic… wow… its like a dream of the future I had once… except I could fly in that dream…

web-geekery -
Whilst rebuilding theSHANElife I needed to make changes to the core wordpress code and… I’ve published my first how to: on the wordpress support forums! (If you’re really interested I added conditional code to the get_links function that appends the RSS link and image to the before string so that any links with an RSS feed are taken from the database and gain the standard RSS button in front, which links to their feed URI.)

I also programmed a “current moods” function using the custom fields/meta_info functions to output a current mood smilie… I’m amazed no-one had done this before, I did muchos googling on both these and found only unanswered quesitons…

but wait I hear you ask… thats NOT the uber-geekery???

uber-geekery 1 -
UBUNTU on my new toy??

Yes!

Well… not yet… but I emailed Samsung to ask if installing Ubuntu on my new Samsung Q35 would void my warranty, and to my immense supply they said no! get in!

“Thank you for contacting Samsung Electronics.

[Solution]
Reference: 2102200343
Thank you for your recent enquiry, installing any software (including a
different operating system such as ubuntu) will not void your warranty,
only damage or changes to the hardware will cause this.

————————————————————

I hope this has been of some assistance to you. If you do have any
further queries, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Kind Regards
Jack

Samsung Electronics UK
Customer Communication Center”

so as soon as I’m back from Oz/Thailand, Linux a go go! Wooop!

…hold on… theres MORE uber-geekery???

Yes….

uber-geekery 2 -
I actually really enjoyed these geekery challenges and I’ve realised that if secret plan A isn’t at success target 1 (this will make sense soon, I promise) by the time I return from Oz… I’m sending myself on a course in something incredibly techy with the aim to be in a tech job by january… no really…

              

This is an impassioned plea, from me to all of you.

Please do not give me, or ask me to look after, any plants, ever. Thank You.

In summary…

:: Yukka - RIP old friend
:: Coriander - sprouted, tried to transfer it to a bigger tub… died.
:: Sage - didn’t even sprout from seeds
:: Chilli Plant - “harvest from July-August”, still alive.. somehow, but no sign of chillis.. or tbh much growth at all!
:: Assorted herb plot - now just a nice smelling autumnal looking selection of brown leaves - oops.
:: Chris’s spiky thing - amazingly still alive, but not looking as healthy as when it got here… eek!

2 out of 6 still alive… and barely at that… haha, doh!!!

However…

:: Fake Bamboo plant - still looking great, even with mini-mirror ball and other ornaments people seem to keep placing in it!
:: Fake white lilly things in the hall - could do with a dust, otherwise, A OK
:: Assorted twigs and other vaguely (fake) plant-like things in the toilet - looking great

In summary

Fake Plants - GOOD
Real Plants - NOT GOOD

Please, no plants (or alcohol - I’m mostly giving up) for christmas!

              

Erm… well, I would of said mini-Christmas, but I’m a pastafarian so the FSM gift giving day will have to do (International pirate day, our other holiday was in September).

Today is a good day, I had 3 deliveries due (one thu-mon), one roughly today and the other by midday today… they all turned up between 1030-11 like some sort of magical pastafarian gift giving day… bang, bang.. bang!

My living room now resembles a child box fort makers dream, cardboard n bubblewrap all over the place… which in itself, is exciting enough!

All my new gym kit is here (yay), plus the custom made to measure blinds I ordered and a few other random bits… lovin it when a plan comes together.

Hope y’all have a good weekend.

ps money can buy me happiness, apparently

EDIT - My London gig just confirmed too - So Bar, Fulham, Sun 28th October… be there!

              

Ok, I’ve given in to my urges…. I’m working a lot of hours at the moment on “the plan” (you’ll get to see it REAL soon), planning oz, my gigs and a site build for Shane…

I’ve given in and got help with…

Ironing.

I’m having 11 shirts picked up tomo, and returned back monday, for the sum of £8… now that might seem a lot… until you know that no matter how hard I try, it takes me at least 10-15mins to iron a shirt… and the results really aren’t that great!

Is 2-3 hours of my time worth more/less than £8 ie is this Time Smart… or am I just being lazy??