Dictation & Dialogue

Quite annoyed today, after having a sore throat for several days now I finally decided enough is enough, especially when it’s affecting my ears now also.  A short visit to the docs detailed a bacterial throat infection and has given me some Phenoxymethylpenicillin, try saying that fast!  Either way it looks to be a few short days off work followed by a 2 week holiday which I should enjoy assuming this infection is cleared soon enough!

Its not all fun and games tho, time is money and time off is lost money, not happy with that however despite the doctors advise I am to return to work tomorrow, with a little luck that is.

Finally finished clocking up the accounts for the past two months, quite happy with what seems to be a good financial month this September but rather dissapointed at expenses in July and even in August too! I use the software JGNash rather than GNUCash as both are platform independant and can be used on my memory stick which is always a good thing. It’s Wii night again tonight though so I need to get some quick practice in beforehand!

Today was a good day though at work, with classic performances in Miniclips China 2008, the office was split into two teams, “Team Tech” and “Team Sales” with my star “Team Tech” claiming records in all events! I myself hold 3 of the 5 office olympic records although I’ve listed them all below:

100m – 7.52 (Me)
Javelin – 103.21 (Paul Dutton)
Hammer – 94.23 (Paul Dutton)
Long Jump – 16.13 (Me)
Hurdles – 8.12 (Me)

Not that Alan Owen will actually read this… Tough luck Al, YOU LOSE!

So we’ve been sitting here now for 6 hours and 45 minutes with no telephone, no way to realistically get on with any degree of productive work, and we’re still sitting here! Although it’s not all that bad, this is my second post of the day (go me) and I would have easily crushed Alan Owen on Red Alert if circumstances would have allowed the game to finish rather than get disconnected half way through.  A few pints wouldn’t go amiss but walking out wouldn’t be the best solution available to this problem.

Who would have thought you could be so bored without a phone?

… I guess at least we still get paid, although I wouldn’t have minded a single days wage being lost for this one.

I’ve decided that the currently live Soul Reaver template is finished, it’s not 100% perfect to what I wanted and the code is messy but hey, it works right? I’ve asked Matthew to have a look though the code to determine the cause of the graphical bug I had earlier so between us hopefully we can come up with a solution.  It’s often quite annoying when it’s a tiny ammendment which would make the theme far nicer, although IE7 decided it hates my translucent PNG background whereas other browsers like it… Typical eh?

Phones aren’t working either at work which is a fault at BT, brilliant stuff. Means both myself & my team are sitting here (along with most of the company) with little productive work to be doing, although there are always the articles, tickets and other things to be doing which usually get side-lined for times like these I suppose.

I’ll be starting work soon on a new site for Melanie Sherriff, one of Janines friends who recently had a photoshoot with Janine, I’ll post more news on this as I get round to doing it.

For now however… I’m considering Red Alert until lunch!

Ok, so it’s something I’ve been working on for all of a few hours but it’s almost finished and I decided to launch it live now anyway whilst the final tweaks are made.  Unfortunately there is a horrible image issue with Internet Explorer but the site looks perfect in Firefox. I’ve actually been doing more work on Janines site than my own of late, that can be found on www.janinemusgrove.co.uk

Check out www.janinemusgrove.co.uk, I’ve finally got round to modifying a design to suit her needs.  The original design was Xiero however it is now customised and eventually will be completely done from scratch for her. Looks nice anyway, enjoy!

http://www.janinemusgrove.co.uk

After being aware of Googles new web browser (courtesy of El Reg) I decided to give it a look at.  Google as we all know are specialists at the minimalistic approach to everything, yet still packing everything that you need! (Gmail anyone?) There’s been a lot of hype about the new browser and after several hours of use I’ve decided that it’s not quite my cup of tea… Yet… Why?

Google Chrome Logo

The browser appears to be based on Apples Safari, a simple, yet effective approach to web browsing that cannot be faulted on rendering speed.  It appears to function better than Safari on Windows at least, although a true comparison cannot be made until it is set to tackle Safari on their home turf of Mac OSX, and also it needs builds available on Linux.  However, unfortunately it seems I’ll be booting to Windows more often to make use of the software as it is not yet available on other operating systems, which makes my Ubuntu / Vista dual boot lean more towards Vista until a Linux native version is available.

At least Google got it right making it open source, can’t fault them on that, it’s been a staple of Mozilla for some time now.

Anywho… My main gripe with the software (as it is with other browsers) is the lack of useful functions & features. I use Firefox, not only for it’s cross compatibility, but also for it’s massive array of extensions. With a few clicks I can annotate a screenshot, check any mail accounts I wish (when not checking Thunderbird) and my favourite of the moment is PicLens (or CoolIris as it is now called.) Whilst I should not really be comparing Googles latest gem to extensions within Firefox, as with other browsers I’ve tried it just doesn’t offer enough up front to make me want to change. I guess I’m set in my ways and until Chrome supports at least other Google applications I can’t see it taking the default spot on any of my computers!

On a more positive note, it looks pretty sweet. Loads pretty quick and I can imagine it being well used within mobile phones in the future or web-enabled hardware alongside gOS. I’ll keep it running whilst at work today but I think that it’s another browser that just sits there looking pretty on my desktops for a short time at least. I’ll refrain from making this into a review as it is mainly opinion and I’ve not yet covered all the features it does have or what it is really capable of, however it is based on a few hours use, compared to many several years using Firefox… I’ll stick to what I know best, for now at least.

A few screenshots:

Screenshot of Google within Chrome

After browsing MOSH for a few applications for my phone, which hasn’t been done in a while, I came across a nice little application called “Water Box”.  There is a similar application for MacBooks which allows you to rotate the hardware to make the water move within, although it’s much better moving a mobile phone than a laptop! It can be viewed in action using this link: WaterBox.

Among other applications installed were a trial version for the latest Kaspersky AV, never really needed previously however it’s always good to have it on board (used it for several years now on PC.) Handy Task Manager, and an updated version of GlobalRace for the N95 8GB.

I would review the software but there’s enough of them around already, although I may update shortly with further downloads.

After a well spent lunch I’ve found information on Rayman Raving Rabbids 3, (might be a little behind on the times with it though…) For those who are un-aware, the Raving Rabbids range of games are party games on the Wii, consisting of a very loose connection to Rayman but mainly focussing on the Rabbids themselves. Strange little critters as below:

Typical little character

There’s a wide range of mini-games spanning from the original two games, all utilising the WiiMote & Nunchuck combination, examples include: “Fart Wars”, where the characters have eaten too much chilli and launch into the air with the power of the pump, in an effort to make it to the toilet first. “Burp” which consists of standing atop a gateway with a few cans of soda pop, fizzing up the pop by shaking the WiiMote and drinking the liquid to produce a large belch, the faster the shake, the more destructive the burp! And “Burgeritos”, where you must deliver increasingly stacked burgers to a character waiting at a table, balance is key and you will often drop the burgers!

Either way, the third installment in this madness is “Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party” and it also makes use of the Wii Balance Board (Wii Fit). Needless to say, even without this addition to the gameplay it would already have a place within the games collection. Infact, the pre-order is already sorted from Play.com!

Hard at work, with no time to develop a theme of my own I’ve opted for a superb Mario style theme, live now. At some stage in the future I guess I’ll have to make another but for now this is pretty good!