REVIEW OF THE YEAR 2004

So it would appear that it’s December 31st, and I guess that means I should do some kind of “Review of the Year” type thing. I’ll go through some of the successes and failures of the year, tell you about the gadgets that I acquired (and subsequently got rid of) and generally remind you of how 2004 panned out.

JANUARY

So we started off this year with my declaration of my new year resolutions, but looking back I don’t know how well I stuck to them. They were:

Go to the gym regularly. Yeah, I did this one.
Get an "all in one" mortgage and pay off as much of it as possible. I did this one too, and it has proved to be an excellent decision. Highly recommended.
Learn to play the guitar properly. I’m not sure that I’ve learned to play it “properly” but I’m certainly a lot better than I was.
Buy expensive shoes. No, I didn’t really manage this one. The closest I got was buying two pairs of £60 Merrell trainers at the same time, rather than buying the pair of Loakes I’ve been coveting.
Weigh eleven stone. Again, no, didn’t manage this. I’ve put on three or four pounds, but I’m nowhere near eleven. This resolution will be carried over to 2005!
Eat better food. Not sure about this one. We’ve certainly eaten a lot of different food over the last year, and we’ve relied less on frozen packet food, so I guess we managed it.
Go scuba diving. No. Didn’t do it. Plain and simple. I rather fancy skiing instead now.
Buy a new mattress. No didn’t do this one either. But we did buy new pillows.
Keep in touch with friends more. Thanks to the sterling efforts of Mrs Lacey, we have managed to do this. Still not good enough, but certainly getting there.
Read books. I’ve read three whole books this year (Northern Lights, Angels and Demons, The DaVinci Code). Does that count?
Keep this website up to date. Well we’re still here aren’t we?

January was also the time of the “Great Attic/Cellar Swap Round”, when we changed over the study and the spare room. It was a great decision. The cellar makes a superb study, and the newly redecorated attic room is a great spare room for guests.

Gadgets this month:
I bought a Creative Labs Zen NX hard-disc MP3 player. It was a poor decision. I sold it later in the year because I didn’t like it.
I also got myself my lovely Takimine electo-acoustic guitar. My guitar playing has improved no end because of it.

FEBRUARY

February was the month when I first dipped my toe in the water of eBay. I sold my old iPaq and all the accessories and my old mobile phone. I remember thinking at the time that it was amazing that people would pay good money for my old unwanted junk. And it has just gone on from there. Who’d have thought that in less than a year I’d have a rating of 45 and have made nearly £1000 in eBay sales?

Gadgets this month:
I got my new Sony Ericcson T610 mobile phone this month.

MARCH:

Apart from a couple of new gadget purchases, not much occurred in the month of March.

Gadgets this month:
I finally got round to getting myself a new iPaq – the Hewlett Packard 2210. It had proved even more invaluable than my old one. Partnered with my T610 phone, it meant I could check email, surf the web and even post to this website remotely! It’s also quite a good MP3 player too. I think I’d be lost without it.

I also bought (from lovely eBay) a Belkin Tunecast FM transmitter for my Zen NX MP3 player. Whilst it was good in theory, the execution was poor. I never really used it. I sold it later in the year when I got rid of the Zen NX.

APRIL:

April was a month of rash impulse purchases that I later came to regret. More of those in a moment. It was also the month when Mrs Lacey and I went away to Bristol on holiday. What a fantastic place! We loved it. If we ever got the opportunity, I think we might go and live there.

April also was a time of CD collection upheaval. I sorted them all out, and redistributed them around the house. You’ll be pleased to know this was a futile exercise, because they’re all over the place again, and in no particular order.

Gadgets this month:
I bought myself a Line6 Guitar Port – a box of tricks that lets you plug your guitar into your PC. It was great to start with, but I quickly got bored of it. It went on eBay later in the year.

I also – and this was the most disappointing gadget of 2004 – bought a Netgear MP101 digital music player. This was supposed to stream my music files from my PC to the hi-fi in the lounge. I never got it working properly. It was flaky in the extreme, and it was a stressful experience from start to finish. I have a friend who bought one a couple of months ago and he experienced the same problems. It would seem they still haven’t got it sorted. If you’re thinking of getting one, don’t bother. This too went on eBay.

MAY:

I did something in May that I should have done months ago. I ran an Ethernet connection to my PC instead of relying on wireless. It made my whole computer-using experience immeasurably better.

May was also the month when I started my obsession with collecting Qees. I bought three from Firebox.com, and it just spiraled out of control! I, at the moment, have 18 of the little fellas sat here on my desk. I shall attempt to fight the Qee addiction in 2005.

I bought a Sega Dreamcast arcade stick from the bargain bin of WHSmith for £3 and sold it on eBay for £40. This is definitely my best eBay profit to date.

The final design for Sony’s PSP handheld was revealed in May. At the time I said I wanted one. Now, I really want one!

Gadgets this month:
I got Xbox Live in May, and it has proved very enjoyable. I’ve mostly played Rainbow Six 3 and Halo 2 this year. I’m hoping that a couple more of my friends will get online in 2005, and then things will get really fun.

JUNE:

I got myself a Gmail account in June, and made quite a bit of money by selling invites for it on eBay. If you’re thinking of doing the same thing, don’t bother – the market is now officially dead.

I sold the Line6 Guitar Port and the Netgear MP101 on eBay this month. They were bad purchases. At least I only lost about £15 on each one.

There were no new gadgets this month.

JULY:

Inspired by my eBay success, July saw me venture into the world of selling stuff on Amazon.co.uk’s secondhand marketplace. This has also proved very worthwhile – I’ve got rid of loads of unwanted CDs, DVDs and books on there over the last six months.

Gadgets this month:
July saw the arrival of my most extravagant gadget of the year – the Nikon D70 digital SLR camera. It’s beautiful. I love it. End of story.

AUGUST:

We went on holiday to Cornwall in August. The weather was fantastic. Two days after we returned home, the terrible floods hit North Cornwall – particularly Boscastle - which was where we were camping. I fear if we had still been there, we may have been a little damp.

On returning home from Cornwall, I realized that the Gameboy Advance SP and the Creative Labs Zen NX that I had taken with me on holiday had stayed in my bag unused for the whole two weeks. So they both went on eBay.

The new G5 iMac was revealed by Apple this month, and the world collectively went “Oooh!”. They then tried to decide if they were impressed or not. I too am still undecided.

Gadgets this month:
I finally got my hands on my new mountain bike – a Specialized Stumpjumper FSR Expert. Normally I’d never contemplate such an expensive bike, but I received it in payment for my work on the local bike shop’s website, so it cost me nothing apart from the trade-in on my old bike.

SEPTEMBER:

I nearly made an expensive mistake by ditching my hi-fi speakers in favour of a mini sub/sat 5.1 speaker system. Fortunately I decided against it. However, I did decide that maybe my ageing KEF Q35s were in need of an upgrade, and when I saw the lovely KEF Q4 speakers in a hi-fi shop in Leeds and decreed that they would be mine.

There were no new gadgets this month.

OCTOBER:

In October, I discovered the wonders of the Firefox web browser. If you’re sat there reading this blog with Internet Explorer, I implore you to switch. Firefox is so much better. Try it. You’ll like it.

Other than that, October was relatively quiet. Things were very busy at work.

Gadgets this month:
I got myself the KEF Q4 speakers and matching Q6C centre speaker to replace my ageing KEF 35s in the lounge. They’re lovely. They look almost as good as they sound!

NOVEMBER

My computer was suffering from the adverse effects of XP service pack 2 in November. The solution was to do a clean install from my ghost drive image. This solved the problems instantly. I refuse to install SP2 again. It is junk. As are most things that Microsoft churn out these days. I can tell that 2005 will be the year of the Apple Mac for me.

Halo 2 was released this month. If you have an Xbox, buy this game. In fact if you don’t have an Xbox, buy one just so you can play it. It’s that good.

Gadgets this month:
I went to the Mac Expo in London, and came home clutching a Roku Soundbridge. This gadget does almost exactly the same job as the Netgear MP101 that I bought back in April – streaming music files from my PC to the lounge hi-fi – but the difference is that this one actually works properly. I took it out of the box, plugged it in to the network and seconds later, music was playing through my hi-fi. This could be my gadget of the year.

DECEMBER:

You won’t have to cast your mind back too far to remember this month.

Perhaps most notably, I turned 30.

I bought Mrs Lacey an iPod Mini for Christmas (and now I want one too), and received multiple small, shiny, silver gizmos in return.

Gadgets this month:
I got myself a Sony RDR-HX900 Hard-disc/DVD recorder to replace my DVD player and VCR. They both went on eBay (along with all my VHS tapes) and now the RDR-HX900 has pride of place underneath the telly. This is another gadget that has really impressed me. It does everything I want it to, simply and effectively. I like it.

And that just about bring us to this point, right here. December 31st. What will 2005 bring? Who knows? But I’m sure it will involve gadgets.

Well, this appears to be an interesting turn up for the books - Sony have FINALLY given what everyone has been asking for and added MP3 support to its latest Network Walkman. Only two months after releasing the NW-HD1 player (and it getting universally slated by every magazine and website ever) they have release the NW-HD3.

Essentially, the problem with all their previous players is that they have forced the owner into using their woefully inadequate SonicStage software, and converting all your music to ATRAC3 files - which, quite honestly, no-one in their right mind was going to do whilst the Apple iPod was kicking around for the same kind of money. So now, finally, Sony have conceded and produced this new player which has native support for MP3 and WMA files. No AAC though, so it could still be better, but some magazines are already heralding this as an "iPod killer". I'll believe that when I see it.

It's either my age (I am in my thirties now after all) or I'm losing my edge, but I bought a magazine called "Custom PC" the other day which is all about building your own computer and overclocking it to make it faster. Now I consider myself to be pretty up on that kind of thing, and I've built my last four computers myself, so I reckoned that the magazine would be just the thing for me, bearing in mind that I'm considering a computer upgrade in the near future.

But here's the thing - and I'm quite appalled to admit this - but I don't understand half of the articles in the magazine, and even I find it unbelievably geeky. Actually, no, scrap that. It's not geeky, it's for dweebs. I consider myself to be a geek, and wholly embrace the term, but "Custom PC" magazine is aimed at a whole strata of uber-nerds that I (thankfully) will never be able to compete with. I get the impression that its core audience is sad, spotty teenage boys in Nu Metal band hoodies who spend their lives in their bedrooms, building ultra-fast PCs and going to LAN parties. There's even a section at the back of the magazine for people to send in photos of their own modded PCs. Guess what it's called? "Reader's Drives".

Oh, please....

So Friday was my 30th birthday, and last night we had a party to celebrate. And in the usual fashion, a great many digital photographs were taken of the proceedings. Fortunately for you, I've edited the original 200 pictures into just the highlights (althought there are still 117) and put them up here for your delight and delectation. Enjoy!

I decided to bite the bullet and get myself one of these Sony RDR-HX900 hard-disc DVD recorders to replace my ageing DVD player and VCR. So, as you can imagine, this took a great deal of thought about how to reconfigure my home cinema system to accomodate the new component. But eventually I sussed it all out - and I know you're itching to know the details, so here we go...

My NTL digital set-top box is sending an RGB signal via SCART to the RDR-HX900, which in turn is sending an RGB SCART signal to the widescreen TV. The analogue aerial is looped through the RDR-HX900 to the TV in order to provide a time signal to the clock and to let me watch analogue channels whilst I'm recording digital. A coaxial digital cable is providing Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS to my amplifier, which is hooked up to my nice new KEF speakers. The Xbox is connected directly to the second SCART input on the TV and connected via an optical digital cable into the amp in order to provide in-game 5.1 surround sound. The Gamecube is looped through the second SCART on the NTL set-top box. Finally, the shiny new Roku Soundbridge is sending an optical digital signal to the amplifier.

In addition to all that, my Wireless Netgear router is hidden away round the back of the telly and provides my NTL broadband connection via CAT5 to my computer, the Xbox (for Xbox Live), the Roku Soundbridge and via wireless to Mrs Lacey's computer and my laptop...

Blimey, it's like spaghetti junction round the back of the telly - good job no-one can see it round there!

The more times I experience the joys of GPS, the more I want my own - they're really good when travelling in the car (and for avoiding speed cameras). And now, as if by magic, several companies have released add-on units for the Pocket PC, which allows you to add GPS to your exisiting handheld, such as this one by Navman (which rather cleverly works via Bluetooth), or this one which slots into the CompactFlash slot on the back of the iPaq. Genius!

I'm writing this whilst sat on the train on my way home from an exceptionally dull work-related excursion, but my Pocket PC has more than proved its worth today. I've cumulatively spent nearly four hours on a variety of trains, but I've got six different albums stored on my Compactflash card, and with Media Player set to "shuffle" I've not heard the same track twice yet! Also, the Pocket PC has supplied me with reading material via AvantGo and I've been able to look up train times on the web. Not forgetting the fact that I can email and publish to my blog using it as well. This is a great gadget!

I've only managed to play about thirty minutes of Halo 2 so far, but I have to say that I'm impressed. I like it. The only thing I'm slightly curious about is Bungie's bizarre widescreen implementation. The game plays in widescreen quite nicely, but they haven't bothered to re-render the game's HUD graphics - so whilst all the in game action is formatted for 16:9 ratio, the radar, weapons info and targetting reticule are all bizarrely oval and squashed. Surely it wouldn't have been that big a job to redo it for those people playing in widescreen? Ah well, I'll forgive them. I can't wait to try it out on Xbox live!

Halo 2 day tomorrow! I'm very excited!

So I've had a couple of weeks of using my newly-configured computer with Firefox instead of IE, and I can happily report that all seems to be going well. Certainly a lot more smooth than it was previously anyway. Just goes to show that you shouldn't jump head-first into upgrading things straight away. There are always teething troubles. And the other lesson is that if it works okay, don't mess with it. I'm forever tinkering with things, and sometimes I just come unstuck. From now on - hopefully - I'm going to leave things alone. I've switched off automatic updates in Windows XP now, so maybe things will just tick along nicely for a while...

Now this is what I call a gadget!

I may have mentioned this already, but I'm really impressed with Firefox. It's a very, very good browser. It makes you realise how slow and clunky Internet Explorer is. And once you've tried tabbed browsing, you'll never go back to IE...

So in an attempt to rectify my slugglish internet problem, I have taken two steps. Firstly, I have rolled back my install of XP to a time prior to SP2 - good old Norton Ghost. Secondly, I have installed Mozilla Firefox instead of Internet Explorer, and veyr nice it is too. Very reminiscent of Safari on the Mac, which isn't surprising seeing as they're both based on the same underlying engine. I like it. And, for what it's worth, it seems like these two things have improved my surfing no end. So I shall say my thanks to the nice people at Firefox with a banner advert....

I can't say for certain, but I think that Service Pack 2 for XP has made my internet connection dodgy. For a couple of weeks now I've been wrestling with intermittent connection and slowdown and the like. The two things that could possibly be responsible are a) XP SP2 or b) NTL's broadband speed increase that they implemented about a month ago. But to be honest, I can't see a speed increase making my internet connection slow down! I'll have to research this SP2 problem a bit more - if I can make the damn internet work obviously!!

After giving it due consideration, I went along to the hi-fi shop in Leeds and purchased the aforementioned KEF Q4's, along with their matching centre speaker. The KEF Q35's are, for the time being, residing in the spare room until I decide what to do with them. I shall sell the old centre speaker on eBay, but I don't know whether to keep the Q35's and hook them up to my old amp and CD player up there, or stick with the little standmounters I already have and flog the Q35's. We shall see. I need to tidy that spare room up before I do anything else, and that could take a while!

Well I like the look of this! A Sony Playstation2 that's 75% of its original size, and only costs £99. Bargain! Maybe Father Christmas will bring me one...

I discovered that the Apple Store in Leeds were getting their first shipment of new G5 iMacs in today, so I went along to the shop first thing this morning to see one in the flesh. And do you know what? I was distinctly unimpressed. Compared to the G4 iMac, it's just a bit ordinary. I realise that it's damned clever to get all the computer gubbins in that tiny little enclosure, but it just hasn't quite got the same "wow!" factor that the previous two incarnations have had.

However, whilst I was in Leeds, I popped in to one of the multitudinous hi-fi shops and spotted some real things of beauty - KEF Q4 speakers. I already have some KEF speakers which I bought about seven years ago when we lived in Cambridge, but these are just beautiful by comparison. They're quite a bit smaller and slimmer than the ones I've got, and are finished in lovely real wood veneers. My current ones are rosewood, which is nice enough, but it doesn't really match our pale colour scheme in the lounge. These new ones come in a very fetching maple finish. Just the ticket. And there's a very nice matching centre speaker to go with them too. And all for half the price of a G5 iMac.

Maybe I'll get new speakers and an eMac instead....

Well what a tumultuous weekend I've had! I nearly made a costly error - let me explain...

For a while now, I've been debating getting some smaller speakers for my home cinema system in the lounge. My existing ones - which, amongst other things, comprise some rather nice KEF Q35s - are quite sizeable, and do, admittedly, take up quite a bit of space. Mrs Lacey has been "mentioning" the possibility of getting some smaller speakers in order to free up a bit of space.

So over the weekend, I went round to the new hi-fi shop that has just opened up round the corner (what a terrible place for them to put it!). I auditioned three different speaker systems costing £299, £449 and £799 respectively. Each was good for its price, but I still couldn't decide on the best course of action. I managed to convince the manager to let me borrow the £450 set overnight so that I could test them with my amp and DVD player, and see how they sounded in my lounge (which is obviously different from the shop's audition room).

So I brought them home, set them all up (including the rather fetching but very large cherry-finish subwoofer) and proceeded to give them a good hammering with a range of music and films. I had just about convinced myself to get them, when Katey asked for me to put the exisiting speakers back, "just for comparision purposes".

And guess what? There was no comparison. My KEFs blew the new speakers away. Loads more detail, tighter bass, and more refined sound all round. So, I've avoided spending £450 on something I don't need, and managed to convince the wife that although they're big, my speakers really are better. You see, size does matter.

Okay, I'm having having a huge internal conflict here. Let me set the scene...

I really want a new iMac. But my PC is perfectly functional, and it does just about everything I want it to, but it doesn't do it very elegantly. I realise that this is just me being a computer snob, but there we go. The other thing to consider is that if I get a Mac, we will have four computers in our house. Is that really necessary? Mind you, since when have I been bothered about "necessary"?

Help me out. Please?! Leave me your advice using the comments section below!

I've just taken receipt of a couple of very nice miniDV camcorders at work. They're Panasonic NVGS11Bs, they were only £300 each, and they're really rather good. Five years ago I bought some similarly-specced Panasonic camcorders for work and they were £800 and twice the size! It makes me think that maybe I need a camcorder. Maybe if I get a nice new G5 iMac, I'll get a miniDV camera to go with it...