The O.C. Englishman's blog » Cool stuff

iPad. I love you.

The Englishman — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 21:40:13 +0000

For no reason other than love, Jennifer came home from a shopping trip bearing an unexpected yet very welcome gift: an iPad.

To say I was surprised would be an understatement. To say I was ecstatic would be about right. It’s been a few days now, and i still love it. In fact I’m writing this post on it to see how it goes. To be honest, although I’m getting better at typing, there’s still plenty of room for error with my fat fingers. I shall therefore keep it brief.

It is a great piece of kit, and although not exactly necessary, it certainly is great fun to use. I shall write more on it later, and probably using my MacBook. In the meantime, I’ll say to those who say it’s “just a big iPod touch” that yes it is. And you say it like that’s a bad thing?

Another lick of paint for the O.C. Englishman

The Englishman — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 22:03:48 +0000

After the slight refresh of this site, I was left feeling a tad disappointed because I couldn’t think of a “wow factor” header.

Subsequently, rather than try and design a fancy graphic, I decided using photographs that I had taken round and about the O.C. would be ideal. The question was how to display them. Now I am pleased to announce after seeing a friend’s site and snooping around in his code I tracked down A List Apart‘s article on rotating header images.

It seems to work a treat and it’ll be easy for me to add new images as and when. All I have to do is crop them, add a caption and them upload them to a folder on the site. The PHP script does the rest. Marvellous.

Killing in the Name: RATM for Christmas no. 1 from across the ocean

The Englishman — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 22:28:11 +0000

There are many problems in the world: climate change, poverty, poor health, the economy and terrorism to name a few.

However, there’s nothing like a good ol’ Christmas number 1 singles battle to stir the great British public. Right now as I type, a battle rages across the Atlantic for the Christmas number 1 single between some guy who’s won X Factor and Rage Against the Machine’s rock classic Killing in the Name (note, people, there’s no “of” at the end of the title!).

This is pure top comedy. I heard about this a week or two ago from a Facebook friend. Some people bored of X Factor and Simon Cowell’s domination of the Christmas top-spot had started a tongue-in-cheek attempt to alter the inevitable by promoting a mass-purchase of RATM during the week before the Xmas musical ‘winner’ is announced.

Now, don’t get me wrong – I haven’t cared about who-or-what-is-number-whatever in the singles chart since I was a lad taping the Top 40 off the radio. However, I do love a good Internet ‘campaign’. Yep, those Interwebs are great for bringing together strangers united in a common cause. Ok, we could be turning to stuff a little bit more important – like action on climate change or third world debt. Never mind, this is Christmas and you’re supposed to do daft stuff at Christmas, be it photocopying your arse at the office party or trying to get in the knickers/pants of someone you’ve had your eye on all year.

I will confess that I have never watched X Factor – and never will now that I live in the US of A. However, Killing in the Name has some meaning for me – it was part of the soundtrack to my Bangor college days. Also, because I don’t actually own a *ahem* legal copy of the track, this opportunity to laugh in Simon Cowell’s face and connect in some tenuous way with the thousands buying the track right now, can’t be overlooked.

I have therefore done my patriotic duty and purchased the track. It’s what baby Jesus would have wanted.

Now, if we can just turn the Web to more important challenges…

Sonic boom boy!

The Englishman — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 20:16:11 +0000

Yesterday we were getting ready for an evening’s entertainment. Jennifer, Rick and I were in the kitchen. I was sitting and they were standing.

Around 5.50pm, we all heard a double thump sound. Because I was sitting down at the same time as the thump I felt a vibration through my chair. Jennifer and Rick hadn’t felt anything because they were standing up, so just carried on talking. I interrupted them, but as they didn’t seem too bothered, the moment passed. I did try and think what it could have been, because it felt like something had hit the roof of the house. However, as everything seemed in order, we quickly forgot about it.

It was about 20 minutes later that Rick discovered from a friend’s Facebook comment that the boom and vibration had been from the space shuttle Discovery. Due to unstable weather in Florida, it was landing at Edwards AFB in California, and the sonic boom was heard all over Southern California as it came in to land.

How cool was that! Just wish I’d known it was coming beforehand, so I could have enjoyed the moment when it happened.