Roll on May...

It might take a while to download it, but it's definitely worth watching the new trailer for Star Wars: Episode 3...

I hate to admit it, but I'm excited...

Automotive Jiggery-Pokery

So it's all very well having a lovely 4th-gen iPod, but what if you never have an opportunity to listen to it? I hardly ever use public transport or walk anywhere (activities that are, traditionally, the preserve of the iPod owner) so I was beginning to think my purchase was a little rash...

I really wanted to be able to listen to it in the car, but there was a significant obstacle. There is no - standard at least - way of connecting an iPod to my car stereo. I had already experimented with using an FM transmitter a few months ago when I had my Creative Zen NX, but the quality was shocking, so that wasn't going to be an option.

Another possibility was to buy a whole new car stereo - Alpine have just brought out a head unit which has integrated iPod compatibility. There's a bit that stows away in the glove box which connects to the iPod itself, and then the head unit controls the Pod's functions. Excellent, except that it costs £275. A bit steep, even for me.

So I finally plumped for the option that required a bit of DIY, but was a good compromise of cost and functionality. I got myself one of these units that plugs into the CD-changer port on the back of the standard radio. I extracted the radio, connected up the new box of tricks, hid it away down the back of the centre console, and then routed a standard stereo RCA to 3.5mm jack cable through to the base of the dashboard. This way, I can pop the Pod in the cup holder, plug the cable into the headphone socket, and enjoy all my tunes in the car.

Job done. Lovely.

Pod

Just got myself a 20GB fourth-gen iPod.

Mmmm. Pretty shiny thing.

Hubba Hubba

An event this afternoon made me realise that I have truly embraced the Mac ownership experience. I realised that I had run out of USB ports on the back of the Mac Mini, so I went an unearthed a USB2.0 hub that I had previously used with my old PC. I hooked it up, and arranged it nicely on the desk, and it was then that I realised something was gravely wrong...

The hub was made of black plastic. Everything else on the desk (even the lamp and phone) was shiny and silver. IT DIDN'T MATCH!

So the hub has been relegated to a position underneath the desk where it is less aesthetically offensive. Still works just the same, but doesn't upset the gadget feng shui.

Here endeth the lesson.

Coming back to the fold...

Well here's a turn up for the books - I've been so preoccupied with my new gadgets, I've had no time to write about them!

Following on from the Mac Mini, I got myself a nice shiny silver LaCie external 250GB hard drive to back everything up on, and then - in order to use GarageBand, I got an M-Audio Fast Track, which is basically a breakout box which plugs into the Mac via USB and allows you to connect instruments and microphones so that you can record in real time.

It's been gadget overload (if there can be such a thing) over the past couple of weeks. I love it!

Out of the box

I finally got round to unpacking the Mac Mini earlier this evening (I've been giddy as a kipper about it all day, as I'm sure you can imagine). Having to wait over 24 hours before I could set it up has been killing me, but I didn't want to have to rush it. It's all about savouring the experience when you get a new gadget. Even taking it out of the packaging has to be done properly. Then you make sure everything is neat and tidy, and you work out where you going to put it all.

Then, finally, you can start hooking it all up.

Fortunately, it all worked seamlessly. I've been spending some time getting the software installed (Dreamweaver, Fireworks, iLife etc etc) and then it took me a while to get it syncing properly with my Pocket PC and phone over Bluetooth, but it's all sorted now. And it's lovely. I like it.

Early arrival

Much to my surprise, the Mac Mini has just been delivered! I was expecting it tomorrow, so this is a very pleasant surprise! The downside is that I won't have time to set it up this evening, so I'm going to have to be exceptionally strong-willed and leave it in its box until tomorrow.

I have taken it out of the packaging, just for a quick look. It's very pretty. And incredibly small!

It's on its way...

I had an email on Saturday from Apple saying that my Mac Mini had been dispatched. They're quoting a "2-3 working day" delivery time, so all being well it should be delivered to work on Wednesday.

In the meantime, I have ordered a new 17" TFT monitor for Mrs Lacey so that she can finally be rid of the monster CRT screen that currently resides on her desk. In addition, she's going to get my Microsoft wireless keyboard and mouse, which I currently use with my PC (because the Mac is coming with a bluetooth keyboard and mouse) so she'll be all set up with some nice new gadgets of her own.

I can feel a big "strip down and rebuild" of our desks coming on. The arrival of new gadgets is a perfect time for a spring-clean. I'll remove everything from both our desks, unwire all the components, dust and polish, and then refit everything. As I'm sure you're aware, cables get tangled up even if you never touch them, so it's always good to get everything back in some semblance of order. It's the only time I ever actively set out to do housework!

Firefox Rox

It's what I've been saying for months: Firefox is the business when it comes to web browsing, and it would seem that millions of others agree with me.

Even Wired News says so. So it must be true. Do yourself a favour. Switch. If you can't quite stretch to a new Apple Mac, at least change your browser. Trust me. It'll make your life better. And you can't say fairer than that.

k700i

Got myself a Sony Ericsson k700i mobile phone today, and it's really rather nice. I only have one gripe with it though (and it would appear that I'm not the only one) - Orange have installed their own "version" of the operating system on it, which replaces the standard Sony Ericsson one. For example, the right hand soft key on my old T610 brought up a menu that let you activate silent mode, switch bluetooth on and off, lock the phone etc etc. But on this new k700i, this button's functionality has been removed, and instead it activates the camera when you press it. This might seem like a good idea, but there's already a button on the side of the phone to switch the camera on! They've also installed their own "orange-themed" icons on the phone's main menu.

I've scoured the web, but try as I might I can't find a way to change it back again. Ah well, I guess I'll just have to put up with it. The phone itself is splendid, and there are a lot of good features on it. I'm looking forward to pairing it up with my new Mac Mini and exploring all the bluetooth features. I'll keep you posted.

It is done.

I ordered a Mac Mini today. Fully loaded - 512MB RAM, 80GB hard drive, DVD writer, bluetooth and wireless keyboard and mouse. Pushed the price up a bit, but still a bargain for such a lovely machine. Should be shipped at the end of the month, but I want it NOW!

I can't help it... it's soooo pretty...

My god, that's just beautiful.

The world is about to change... again

At 1600hrs GMT (40 minutes from now), Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, will give his annual keynote address at the San Francisco Mac Expo. There has been soooo much hype surrounding this year's event that it's really difficult to ascertain which of the rumours are true, but some of them keep cropping up again and again. I've been holding off buying an Apple Mac until today's keynote speech, just in case they unveil something really revolutionary, so this is quite a big deal!

As far as I can ascertain, the main new products that are rumoured to be announced are as follows:

1) A "headless" iMac - A fairly low-spec but very aggressively priced barebones Mac computer without a screen.
2) A flash-memory iPod - 1GB of solid state storage, no screen, but tiny in size and relatively cheap.
3) iLife 05 - a revision of all the iLife apps, including iMovie, iPhoto and Garageband.
4) "Asteroid" - supposedly a hardware breakout box for use with Garageband, allowing users to plug in multiple guitars and microphones simultaneously.

It'll be interesting to see if any of these rumours turn out to be true! It would seem that the flash iPod and iLife 05 are pretty much definite, but the other two could be complete fiction. If they do release the headless iMac, it'll have to be pretty special and/or cheap to convince me to buy one. I suspect that nothing announced today will steer me away from either a G5 iMac or PowerMac. But I could be wrong!

Geocaching!

Tried something completely new today - we went Geocaching! If you've never heard of it, the best place to find out is to check out the official website, but if I was to try and describe it succinctly, it would be "treasure hunting using GPS". The idea is that people all over the world have hidden "Geocaches" - which are essentially plastic boxes full of little goodies and a notebook - and then published their coordinates (latitude and longitude) on the Geocaching website. Anyone that wants to find the "treasure" simply inputs the coordinates into their GPS unit (you have to have one otherwise you won't get very far) and then trudges off into the wilderness to try and locate it. If you're successful, you sign and date the log book, take one of the items from the cache and leave something else in its place. There you go, simple really.

So Mrs Lacey and I went over to Skipton with our friends Oli and Donna (Oli owns a GPS - a rather fetching Garmin 60CS) and went in search of a couple of Geocaches that were allegedly hidden in the area. And, surprisingly, we found both of them! Even though you know the coordinates, it's still quite a challenge to find the caches themselves, because they're well hidden. And in the first one, we found a soft toy with a Travel Bug attached to it, so we've removed it and are going to take him to a new home in the next couple of weeks.

It was cold and very windy, and we all got wet feet, and by the end of it we were knackered - but it was superb fun. I can see us going and doing it again soon.

Have a look at the photos from our geocaching exploits here.

Happy New Year!

Well here we are then: 2005. Funnily enough, it seems just like 2004. At least so far it does.

So then, I suppose I had better start the year by declaring my resolutions, and then when it comes round to 31st December again, you can laugh at how many I failed to complete. I've carried some of the uncompleted ones from 2004 over to this year (just because they still seem valid and/or sensible) and I've got some brand new ones. I admit that none of them are particularly awe-inspiring or world-changing, but they are important to me. So there.

1) Buy an Apple Mac computer. I don't know what sort, but I will buy one in 2005.
2) Successfully pass all my assessments and become a Special Police Constable.
3) Buy that expensive pair of shoes that I keep harping on about. Loakes probably.
4) Weigh eleven stone. I shall do this with the help of resolutions five and six (see below).
5) Eat breakfast.
6) Go to the gym at least twice a week.
7) Go skiing. Not sure where or when, but I do rather fancy it.
8) Organise my CD collection.
9) Avoid buying gadgets that I later regret and sell on eBay.
10) Update this website regularly.

I'm hoping that they're all reasonably achievable. Some of them will be a challenge certainly, but none of them are impossible.

Anyway, happy new year to you all. Here's hoping that 2005 is a good one.

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!