Year: 2010

2010 in review

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Like last year, I’m going to use a few minutes of your time to summarise my year, and what’s in store for 2011.

Bradford in the Snow

January

As I wrote last year, I had two interviews lined up in January. The first one I didn’t get, which I was rather gutted about as I fully expected to get it (and it was well-paid). The second interview was for a temporary job working abroad, which I decided not to follow up in the end.

The weekend after the unsuccessful interview Christine, myself and some other friends had a long weekend in Scotland, near Stirling. It was during some of the snowiest weather that I can remember, but thankfully the Scots are used to snow so it didn’t stop us from doing anything as the roads were clear. We toured the Glengoyne whiskey distillery, ate deep-fried haggis and posed for pictures in front of a highland cow called Morag, amongst other things.

February

In February I went into hospital for an operation to remove what I’ve affectionately called ‘the arselump’ – a pilonidal sinus on my natal cleft. This was also my first time under general anaesthetic. Whilst I was only in hospital for a few hours, I did have to take the next week and a half off work as I couldn’t sit down for long periods – and as I was being paid on a casual basis at the time, I had to take unpaid sick leave, which was a shame. I would like to say the operation was a success but the site of the operation has become infected twice since then and the sinus may be regrowing, so another operation may be necessary in 2011.

In better news, February was when I bought a new computer – a 2009-era Mac Mini. The near-£600 cost of it would have been more difficult to stomach had it not been for a 0% on purchases deal for 3 months on my credit card, allowing me to stagger the payments. I also moved hosts, to one that allows me greater freedom over the site; of course, with power comes responsibility and it’s been a bit of a learning curve, but the experience has been useful.

March

March was a good month job-wise. I was moved to a different department at the university where I work, to cover for two part-time posts which had been recently vacated. Later in the month, I was formally interviewed for the post, and this time, I was successful – so I’m now on a salaried contract (with sick pay and annual leave). Though it’s not a permanent role – the contract is until the end of October 2011 – it is the longest employment contract I’ve had. The pay is also a lot better and allowed me to finally clear my overdraft, and spend £56 on a computer mouse.

Fountain

April

In April, Christine spent Easter with me and my parents, which probably counts as some kind of relationship milestone. I also ran an April Fool’s Day joke about me running for parliament (the UK had a general election in May this year), which some people actually believed, at least for a short while. I’ll have to think of something to top that for April 2011…

Talking of the election, in April I publicly announced my support for the Liberal Democrats. Alas, I didn’t predict what would happen after the election and how the leaders of the LibDems completely sold themselves out; had I known this, I would have probably voted for the Green Party as in 2005.

Also in April we went to the first of two weddings – we’re now at the age when our friends are getting married – and Christine and I went on a day-trip to the Lake District.

May

May was my birthday month, and to celebrate, Christine took me to The Box Tree in Ilkley – a Michelin-starred restaurant. The food was absolutely amazing, but to someone not used to it, the experience was rather intimidating – at least until we’d drank most of a bottle of wine. Not something we’d do regularly but worth it for the food.

June

In June, we went on a day-trip to Morecambe, a seaside town that I’d only fleetingly visited some years ago. We also went to the Bradford Mela, an annual festival of Asian culture; despite having lived in Bradford since 2002 this was the first time I’d been. It was a good day out and we may well go again next year. Finally we spent an evening in Manchester watching the Amateur Transplants in concert – it was partly a combined interest in the comedy duo that brought us together.

July

July brought the first holiday Christine and I had together, which was a weekend in Liverpool followed by a week on the Isle of Man. We had a really good time, despite the crossing from Liverpool to Douglas being delayed a day. We also went to Whitby, which is one of my favourite places – Christine had never been before.

August

Work-wise August was very busy for me; as part of my new job in university admissions I had to oversee Clearing for several courses, which included working 12 days on the trot, sometimes until 7pm. When not at work, we had more days out: to Hull, to visit The Deep; and to The Trafford Centre in Manchester.

September

September was also a busy month, but thankfully not in terms of work. It was Christine’s birthday, and our first ever music festival – Bingley Music Live – which was good fun. Later in the month I finally got myself an iPhone – I’d been waiting until I could find an affordable deal and had the financial stability to see a long contract through. Three months on and it really is one of the best purchases I’ve made – it’s so useful. I’m also impressed at the network coverage I get from 3 – their record in the past was rather poor but it’s rare not to have a signal and most of the time I have 3G internet.

October

October was our first anniversary, which we celebrated with a meal out. Later in the month we went to stay with friends in London, although I ended up spending quite a bit of time ill in bed. Still, we managed to see half of London Zoo and bits of the British Museum, so it wasn’t a wasted trip.

Christine also found herself a new job in Yorkshire, so October was latterly spent making arrangements for moving in together; primarily by me as I was nearest.

November

We moved to a flat in Sowerby Bridge in November. Although we haven’t unpacked everything yet, we’re probably about 90% and the remainder is stuff that can remain in storage like ornaments. November saw the second of the year’s weddings, this time in a lovely country house in the Conwy Valley in Wales; and my grandfather reach the grand old age of 90 with the resultant birthday party. For a nonagenarian he’s not doing badly.

December

And finally to this month. We went back to London, for one night only, for a TV recording at BBC Television Centre. The programme wasn’t broadcast; it was a pilot for 10 O’Clock Live which starts in January on Channel 4, but it was a good opportunity to see Jimmy Carr, Charlie Brooker, David Mitchell and Lauren Laverne all in one go, and it was funny to watch. Plus, there aren’t many opportunities in life when you get to be in a TV audience – I’ve only managed it twice. And one of those times was on French TV.

We spent Christmas at my parents. It’s the first time I’ve spent Christmas with a significant other and thankfully it was a good experience.

All in all, 2010 has been a good year. Apart from moving house there hasn’t been any major upheavals like in 2009, and my job situation is much improved which has provided some stability.

So, 2011. Potentially I’ve got another operation coming up, but we’ll see. My first trip to Blackpool since November is coming in early January, to visit some of Christine’s former colleagues. In March, we’re going to see the musical Spamalot in Bradford, and hopefully in the summer we may be able to go on holiday abroad.
Hope 2010 has been good for you, and that 2011 is a good year for you too!

A bigger Dropbox, for free

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A big box...

I’ve mentioned Dropbox on here a few times – right now I’m mostly using it to keep my 1password keychain synchronised between machines, but it’s also handy for making documents available on my iPhone with minimal effort.

You get 2 gigabytes of storage as standard, but you can very quickly grow this, up to a maximum of 16 GB. Here’s how:

  1. Complete the sign-up tour – Dropbox walks you through several common tasks when you first sign up – complete these and you’ll be credited with an extra 256 MB of space.
  2. Referrals – the main way to get extra space is to get your friends to sign up for Dropbox through referral links – here’s mine, for example. This will only work if the person signing up hasn’t used Dropbox before, and it will also detect if the person signing up uses the same IP address, in which case you won’t get any credit. You get 256 MB of space for every successful referral.
  3. Twitter and Facebook – if you use Facebook and Twitter and don’t mind a little shameless plugging, you can get up to 640 MB of extra space by linking your Dropbox account and tweeting/posting to your wall about Dropbox – using this somewhat-hidden link. It includes your referral link so you may get more credit if your friends or followers sign up.
  4. Educational extras – if you’re a student and have a .edu email address (and for UK students .ac.uk also works here), go to dropbox.com/edu and put in your email address. Once it’s confirmed, every referral you receive will be worth 512 MB rather than 256 MB. Plus, it works retrospectively, so if you’ll get another 256 MB for every referral you’ve made before putting your .edu address in.

Right now I’ve boosted my storage to 3.88 GB, so that’s almost 2 GB of free space.

Moved

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Unpacking

Things have been a little quiet here due to my house move. Thankfully, Christine and I are now settled in our new place, and mostly unpacked. (the picture above was taken before we started any unpacking)

We’ve opted for a flat, which is in a converted mill just off the main street in Sowerby Bridge. It’s on the fourth floor, which has the benefit of some gorgeous views across the Calder Valley (especially on a sunny day like today with snow on the ground), but the disadvantage that there’s a lot of stairs, and sadly the building doesn’t have a lift. It’s a very recent conversion though, and all of the fixtures and fittings are to a high standard; plus, it’s not that expensive to rent.

Although the unpacking is mostly done, we still need some furniture (namely wardrobes and shelves) to put some stuff away. But the essentials are there.

We don’t have a landline yet, so we’re relying on using tethering through my iPhone for an internet connection. Thankfully, 3 not only allows you to tether your iPhone to the computer to use it as a modem, but includes your usage in your monthly data allowance (1 GB for me), so it doesn’t cost extra. That being said, I’m using it somewhat sparingly until we get the landline enabled sometime in the next couple of weeks. As an aside, Christine’s Android phone lets her use it as a Wireless Access Point but I’m not sure if Vodafone will charge her extra.

We’re also stuck with just three analogue TV channels; Freeview hasn’t made it to this area yet and won’t do until September next year, and there isn’t a strong signal for Channel 4 or Five. Looks like we’re getting a Freesat box for Christmas.

Commuting-wise, the location of the flat is great – we’re within walking distance of Sowerby Bridge station, from which it’s only 20 minutes by train to Bradford direct. The trains are hourly most of the day but some extra services stop at peak times; certainly getting to and from work hasn’t been a problem. For getting around, an £80/month MetroCard ticket gets me on any bus and almost any train within West Yorkshire; it works out at approximately £4/weekday but we’ll be using it at weekends.

As for the town, it’s really nice. Sowerby Bridge is about 40 minutes by train from both Leeds and Manchester; consequently it’s a major commuter town and the local amenities cater for this. There are lots of really nice bars and restaurants, covering a wide variety of tastes and cuisines (Mongolian BBQ, anyone?), as well as the basics like banks, post office and a reasonably-sized Tesco.

Compared to the hustle and bustle of the city, I’m glad we moved here.

Not dead yet

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Pagoda

I mentioned a few weeks back about several services that had been popular in the past but were now shutting down: Vox, BlogRolling, Xmarks and Bloglines.

Unfortunately, Vox and BlogRolling both bit the dust at the end of September and October respectively. But the future is much brighter for the other two.

Xmarks has a new owner and will be launching a premium service in addition to the current free service, so it’ll be around for some time. I don’t currently use it, but seeing as I can only run Safari on my iPhone (and the Firefox Home app is a little clunky) having my Firefox bookmarks available in all browsers could be beneficial, so I may sign up.

And Bloglines has had a stay of execution. Presently it’s run by Ask.com, part of the IAC group; IAC will still own it but it will be moved to another part of the business. Either way, it’s probably a big relief to those still using the service and who may have been apprehensive about moving to an alternative like Google Reader.

Finally, yes I know the picture at the top has nothing to do with this article but it’s a nice recent picture of Bradford, in the new and underutilised Urban Garden.

Moving out of the city

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Hillside above Todmorden

Next month will see Christine and I move in together. Furthermore, it’ll see me moving out of Bradford, which has been my adopted home city for over 8 years (bar a few gaps).

Right now, we’re looking at moving to Sowerby Bridge, a market town in Calderdale which is around 20 minutes away from Bradford by train. It’s quite a nice little town – it’s in the Calder Valley which is quite picturesque and almost all the buildings are stone-built. We haven’t yet settled on a specific house or apartment but we have some viewings over the next couple of weeks.

Compared with Bradford, Sowerby Bridge is very different. Bradford’s population is around 300,000 – Sowerby Bridge is home to around 10,000 people. I’ll also need to start commuting to work, unlike now where it’s within walking distance; that being said, I don’t expect to have to travel more than an hour each way in total, provided the trains behave themselves.

There’s also the issue of broadband internet. Generally the UK is good at providing fast broadband in cities, and I believe Virgin Media is due to roll out its 100 Mbps service in Bradford shortly, but out in more rural areas the speeds available drop quite a bit. The SamKnows Broadband Checker tells me that ADSL Max is available, and I can expect speeds of up to 6 Mbps, but that I’ll have to go with either TalkTalk, BT, or another ISP that has a package through OpenReach Wholesale. There’s no cable either, so no Virgin Media.

Yeah, I know. Trust me to focus on internet availability.

Still, I’m looking forward to a change of scenery. As much as I like Bradford, it would be nice to move somewhere a bit quieter, but still within easy reach of Leeds, Bradford and Manchester – in fact, Manchester and Leeds would be roughly the same distance away.

London’s public transport

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Bakerloo at Waterloo

As a non-Londoner who doesn’t drive, I am generally in awe of London’s public transport.

While any Londoner who’s had to make alternative arrangements during a tube strike will probably disagree, compared to the public transport available in most other British cities London is well ahead.

London Underground, or The Tube, is especially good. You get something like 20 trains every hour through central London, so you rarely have to wait more than 3 minutes for one. And it comes with at least 8 carriages, so you’re likely to be able to get on.

Its buses are cheap – £1.20 with an Oyster card for a single adult ticket (at the time of writing) – and pretty frequent too. And talking of Oyster, you have one card which lets you pay for basically any train, bus, tube or tram in greater London.

It’s not perfect; strikes, for one, happen more frequently than they probably should, and overcrowding is a problem. And the chaos which occurs when something breaks down during the peak periods.

Compare this to Bradford, where we have more expensive buses and no trams or tube to fall back on. The trains are thankfully cheaper but nowhere near as frequent, and not as pervasive – railway stations tend to be fewer and far between, so you’re left with the buses. Though we have some integrated ticketing, it’s only in the form of day rover tickets (which are only sold at travel interchanges) or weekly/monthly travel cards. There’s no pay-as-you-go scheme and it’s not a smartcard like Oyster.

London’s transport is on my mind as Christine and I are spending this weekend in London, and will hopefully be visiting London Zoo. It’s the first time I’ve been to London properly in almost three years, so naturally I’m a little excited.

Demise of Web 1.5

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Broken Glass

This month is turning out to be what Anil Dash calls the end of ‘Web 1.5′ – services which started before the ‘Web 2.0′ bandwagon started rolling, have not been popular for some time and are now closing.

I’ve already mentioned Bloglines, and to add to that there’s BlogRolling, which is “probably shutting […] down soon”. BlogRolling is another service that I used to use but haven’t for many years; it let you keep a list of blogs that you read (a ‘blogroll’) and allowed you to sort and categorise them easily. It made sense in the early days when people were using services like Blogger, but packages such as WordPress make this dead easy now. Its one stand-out feature was being able to show which blogs had recently updated, but this was before RSS/Atom feeds really took off and once I had switched to a feed reader I didn’t see the point of staying with the service.

Xmarks, which allows you to synchronise your bookmarks/favourites between multiple browsers on different machines, is also due to stop operating in around 9 months time. The blog post explains why in full, but essentially they were unable to build a viable business around a free service, and there’s increased competition now that Google Chrome has sync built-in, as will Firefox in its next major update (it’s already available as an add-on).

I’ve also already mentioned Vox, Six Apart’s community blogging service which also closes at the end of this month.

It’s perhaps a shame that these services are going under. Bloglines, BlogRolling and Vox have all stagnated for some time and it’s therefore no surprise that they’ll soon no longer be around. As for Xmarks, it’s a pity that they didn’t offer a ‘freemium’ service, or switch to a paid-for model; while the new sync services in Firefox and Chrome are good, Xmarks was one of the few ways of syncing bookmarks between different browsers.

I’m wondering who will close next.

Update: MSN/Windows Live Spaces is closing and its users are being moved to wordpress.com.

iBought an iPhone

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Wonder if I can buy an iPhone from here

On Wednesday I finally got myself an iPhone. (No, I didn’t buy it from the shop pictured above)

I’ve been holding out on buying one for a while, partly because I didn’t have enough job security to justify a long contract, and partly because I couldn’t afford it. Those two issues no longer apply, however over the past few weeks I’ve been waiting for my current network, Tesco Mobile, to have any in stock. As well as it being less faff changing networks, Tesco also had probably the best deal; a 12 month contract only costing £20/month, but with a £349 upfront charge for the handset. Anyhow, Tesco haven’t had any iPhone 4s in stock for weeks at my local store, so I gave up and went with Three.

Three’s deal isn’t quite so good – £30/month for 24 months, but the upfront fee for the handset was only £99. Over two years, it only works out a little more expensive (after 12 months on Tesco I’d have probably gone on a £15/month rolling monthly contract). But it’s still not bad and cheaper than other networks. Plus, my local Three Store in Bradford had them in stock.

I’ve had some chance to play with it, and installed a few apps, but I’m still waiting for my mobile number to be transferred to my new contract which won’t happen until later today, so I have to use my present handset (a Samsung ‘dumbphone’, i.e. not a smartphone) as well until that happens.

Bloglines closing down

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Bloglines is down!

Bloglines, a web site which allows you to subscribe to and read RSS/Atom feeds online, is closing on October 1st.

It’s a bit of a shame – I started using Bloglines almost exactly 6 years ago, and it was great to be able to read all of my feeds on one central web site. That being said, a couple of year later I moved to Google Reader and have stuck with it ever since, due to its better user experience. Bloglines never seemed to catch up and I only know a few people still using it now.

Even so, the number of people using feed readers is apparently falling, and according to paidContent Google Reader is also experiencing a fall in traffic. Whether this is because of feed features in desktop browsers like Firefox and later versions of Internet Explorer have become people’s preferred way of using feeds, or that people prefer Facebook or Twitter, I’m not sure, but it would seem that their popularity is waning.

Bingley Music Live 2010

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Reef

Yesterday Christine and I went to our first proper music festival: Bingley Music Live. It’s certainly not one of the biggest festivals, with only 15,000 tickets available, and it doesn’t draw many big names. The main acts this year were mostly bands that were at the peak of popularity some years ago, namely The Buzzcocks, Public Image Ltd., Reef and James.

Bingley Music Live is in its fourth year and is organised by Bradford Council with no corporate sponsorship. Despite this, tickets are only £30 for the full weekend, and the Friday event has free entry as well. The small size of the festival means there’s only one stage, and there’s no campsite, but then I think most people who go live locally.

I’ll be going back today for the Sunday bands, although this time I’ll be bringing more of my own drinks. £2 for a small bottle of cola is frankly scandalous.