mkjones

I love the guy singing the cheezy rock lines.

It took me about 2 months of research to reach the conclusion that the new Creative ZEN 32gb was the Mp3 player for me.

I’ve needed a small but high capacity player for a while now. For years I have used the media functions on my phone which coupled with a 4gb SD card did the job just fine. Recently however I have craved more space and a longer battery life.

Why I chose the ZEN

First of all I want to say it wasn’t easy. Initially I wanted the new Microsoft Zune 80gb.

The main problem with the Zune however is the lack of an official UK release.

Sure they are easy enough to find on eBay and other online stores but the fact that I would be missing out on all of the extra functionality which the Zune would give me because of my geographical location simply wouldn’t do.

Also, Zunes are cheaper and have more capacity. For £20 LESS than what I have paid for the 32gb ZEN I could have had a massive 80gb to play with.

And the Zune brand has MUCH better accessory support. Gym armbands, headphones, cases, docks, speaker sets are ALL better quality and in more abundance for the Zune.

As you can see it was such a close race with only one key feature steeling it…..

Windows Media Player 11

The Zune, although a Microsoft product, don’t work with WMP11. Shocking isn’t it.

One of the main reasons I refuse to buy an Apple product is there reliance on the unusable mess that is iTunes and the Zune software looks very smiler.

I am a WMP 11 junkie. I recently spent hours re-organising all of my artists and albums so that album art, release dates and genre all matched up.

My media library is perfectly organised within WMP 11 and all I really want is a player which can plug into this library and suck it over without changing anything.

I know the ZEN can do this and for this reason alone I purchased one. It was a steal at just £175 from Play.com and should arrive within the next few days.

There are other reasons I went for the ZEN. Its is smaller, has solid state memory so will load faster, it supports DivX/Xvid video and it has a handy SD card slot so upgrading the memory is simple.

It’s an excellent player which gets excellent reviews and has a good community and support base. But if the Zune supported WMP I can guarantee I would have ordered differently.

Its a real shame Microsoft messed this one up.

I love the new Reddit design. Its just perfect.

Not too many changes, just enough.

I really, really want one. But at almost $100k, I can’t see that ever happening. Even if I had the money the waiting list is years long.

I just hope Tesla Motors sell enough so they can move into standard car production and maybe release a more affordable model.

A few weeks ago my installation of AVG Free started to get whiny about an upgrade to the latest version 8.

At first I thought this was some seedy ploy to force ‘free’ users to upgrade to the ‘paid’ version of AVG. However, it seems you could still choose to download and install their wonderful ‘free’ version of AVG 8. So, this is what I did.

Sadly, I was duped.

It now seems that AVG, ever the staple of transparency and generosity, just got rather underhanded.

As soon as version 8 was installed I had a new ‘AVG Taskbar’ thrown into Firefox, something I did not agree to. Also, AVG now seems to be embedded into my web searches (see above screenshot).

The bottom line is that this is spyware. I didn’t expect it, I didn’t ask for it and it was pushed into my desktop using frankly out-of-character tactics.

This is really very sad as I have been a fan of AVG for a number of years after having many pains with Norton over the years. In fact, I have on a number of occasions helped friends and family install AVG’s free applications as their sole source of internet security.

It seems a shame that all of this now has to change.

Facebook really is a terrible site. A truly epic waste of time, energy and bandwidth. I signed up about a year ago in order to protect my online identity (I did the same thing with MySpace) and ever since then I have received annoying emails from past acquaintance’s, old college ‘friends’ and messages from other mutual friends who suddenly decide I would like to see some photos of them drunk in the Algarve.

Little did I know that recently the insects over at Facebook made it impressively simple to deactivate your account:

So its all over. No more emails, no more friend requests, no more creepy messages. Just peace and quiet.

Now I should really get back to improving this site to better nourish my online requirements.

Its my Wedding in 12 weeks and choosing an outfit has never really been a problem for me. Its normally a 20 minute job. My Wedding suit however has been a whole different story.

I started back in February. I had to find suitable outfits for me, my best man and my 2 ushers which fit in with our ‘Red’ colour scheme.

In typical womanly style I spent 2 months travelling around the area trying on every bit of hire-wear I could find only to eventually go back to the first shop I tried (Frank Bird) and chose this:

Hopefully on the day my best man (second left) won’t be pulling that Steptoe-style face and I will have remembered not to button up my jacket.

I love snooker. I love to watch the game and I love to play the game even though I am absolutely terrible at it.

This years World Championship title was a great event with Ronnie’s performance in the Semi-Final against Stephen Hendry going down as one of the best displays of the game ever witnessed.

Commiserations to Ali Carter who was trounced 18-8 in the final. He never really got the chance to get going. At least he has reached his first major final after years in ‘top-16′ wilderness.

Its all over now and the Snooker calender is now empty for another year. I hope Ronnie can go on and win more world titles. His form this season has been hit and miss but he came out when it really mattered.

Other than Ronnie, Liang Wenbo was a big highlight for me this year showing that there is more to China than Ding Junhui. And Joe Perry, an old favourite of mine, played the form of his life to reach his first Semi and thus finally proving that he can compete with the best.

Other new players showing promise this year were Mark Allen and Jamie Cope. Both were knocked out in the first round but their rough and unfinished style brought an exciting freshness to the event.

Lets hope these players can keep it up for next season and bring some new faces to the top-16.

using its portfolio of community sites, like Yahoo! Groups, Flickr, the photo-sharing website, and Digg, the social-bookmarking site.

I read this in todays Telegraph business section. The same article is available on their website and has the same quote.

Now of course. This is a simple mistake. Yahoo! owns del.icio.us which offers a very similar service to Digg but with a very different culture and style.

So is this bad reporting or a future prediction? I can’t tell.

It seems I missed some clear rules on WordPress Domain ownership when starting my new project:

WordPress Domains

If you already have a domain with “WordPress” in it, redirecting it to the “wp” equivilent is fine, just as long as the main one users see and you promote doesn’t contain “WordPress.”

After a messages from Lorelle and Matt a re-think was in order which forced me to update my plans.

‘WordPress 360′ will new simply be known as ‘WP 360′ (www.wp360.org):

Delays have occurred due to site re-designs and my unfortunate recent 3 week stint of illness (nothing too serious).

Into The Flame

My personal expectations for the site have also been vastly expanded after doing a lot more R&D into “the overcrowded niche of WordPress.“.

Frankly, I was terrified by the sheer breath and depth of the content out there and was left wondering “Does WordPress NEED another site/blog/resource clogging its arteries?”.

But after a lot of brainstorming, some alcohol and a little tinkering around my initial ideas I decided to go ahead with my plans.

I don’t as yet think I will ever be able to dedicate as much time as I like to the site. I’m pretty busy at my NHS development and this tends to burn away a lot of my creativity. I mean, I can only enjoy looking at code for 8-10 hours out of the day. After that, my eyes need a re-boot.

Also the fact that the World Snooker Championship tournament started last week has not helped at all (it has made for essential watching from day 1).

But, I can still at least hope for a May launch. So stay tuned!

Just as before if you are interested and would like more information, please get in touch:

email: info [at] wordpress360 . com