New look blog header.... ;-)

Well, I got a bit bored with the header on my blog here, so I decided to change it a bit. My intention originally when I set this up many moons ago was to have a chinese-style pagoda as the header, so I tried to draw one myself. Unfortunately, my art skills suck ass so badly, so I never got it quite the way I wanted it.

So, now I was browsing though my camera pics on my hard drive in preparation for backing them up while I wipe the fecker clean and re-install, and I decided "yeah, I can do something with this pic" so I played around with it and here's the result! :-)

Oh, here's what the original gate looks like!

note for the future.....

....when you're ringing up AIB 24hr banking and you put in your pin code etc, and they ask you for the service code, rather than waiting for the robot to realise you're not clairvoyant and actually tell you what the service codes are, just hit "88" to go straight into the queue to wait 20mins to talk to an actual human while listening to the Lighthouse family.......

My iPod officially sucks.....

Well, it looks like it's time for me to upgrade my iPod Mini. I have it nearly 2 years now (2 years at xmas) and the battery on the damn thing has just about had it. I only ever use the thing twice a day, once walking to work, and once walking home - half an hour each way. Not too much to ask that it survives the trip on one charge is it? At the mo tho, I'll charge it up overnight, it'll work on my way to work, and then die when I'm half-way home that evening. Not exactly what you want in a "portable" music player!

Read a joke(?) about Apple's sales strategy a while back, about their iTunes lock-in:
Day 1: You buy a deveice that can hold 3,000 songs
Year 1: You buy $1,000 worth of music off iTunes
Year 2: You buy $1,000 worth of music off iTunes
Year 3: Your iPod battery dies and you have to start all over again.

It sucks that Apple expect you to buy a new iPod when your old one dies rather than just replace the battery. Looks like I'll be going on the web, see if I can get a cheap nano (my 4Gb mini is plenty space for my music collection, but I might as well buy a 20Gb or 40Gb so I can back up my hard drive onto it). Failing that, there's lots of 3rd parties that will do Apple's job for them and sell you replacement batteries.

phone upgrades :-(

Well, I decided a few weeks ago to upgrade the firmware on my phone using the instructions at this site, and I think I may have killed my phone. I followed the instructions, downloaded the app and went to run it. It dind't work the first few times as every time I plugged in the phone, as bloody windows autorun kept interrupting and trying to download pics from the memory card! Got it to shut up eventually, and the firmware install semed to go ok.

After I put the SIM card back in tho, nada. The phone wouldn't turn on any more. I tried to do the "recommended" way of a soft boot by holding down the 'c' key and plugging it into the USB port, but nothing. Decided to leave the battery drain down for afew days and try it again, nothing. Looked on the web for the solution, and all anyone could come up with was "send it back to sony ericsson". So, thinking that seeing as it's half the name of the phone so they might have something to do with it, I went into the Sony shop. Nope, they don't do phones apparently (never mind the fact that as the sales guy was saying this I was looking over his shoulder at the w800i in the display cabinet. Muppet.).

Finally found a shop to do it, and the second I mentioned "sony ericsson" and "online firmware update" the guy winced. Apparenlty that thing rarely ever works, and he doens't know why they even have it up there. So, now my phone has ot go back to Ericsson (as sony apparenly don't want anything to do with it) and I'll get it back with all data wiped in about 2 weeks.

Then another problem arose. I had the IMEI number so they could check to see was the phone reported stolen, but the guy then said that I'd probably ned proof of purchase before tehy;d fix it for me. Problem is, I got it off ebay so I don't actually have a real proof of purchase for it! Sent it off anyway, said I might get away with it.

So, here's hoping I have my phone back in 2 weeks time!