minimania

Here it comes again...

nobody@vox.com(minim) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 22:04:23 +0000

So it's that time of year again. I suspect I may be a little earlier than usual, but if I am I lay it at the feet of the Royal Mail who have me in all of a tizz trying to work out how late I can send Christmas presents to Australia without strike action meaning they won't arrive till March or something.

So the usual applies - this is intended to guide those who want to give me a present but have no clue where to start - it's not intended to beg for gifts from anyone who didn't intend that thought when they came here! It's a long list for the simple reason that I like Christmas to be full of surprises and a long list gives more scope for surprise. I've also tried to include a variety of budget- and long-distance-post-friendly options so you should find something appropriate here - if not, feel free to deviate and invent - hopefully this should give you a few ideas.

If you do decide to send me something from this list, please email djelibeybi what you've chosen, to avoid possible doubling-up. If you don't have his email, let me know :-)

(Sorry it's a little half-baked - one of the problems of blogging a list like this on your iPod on the tube is you can't look anything up and I'm past my bedtime now)

So without further ado, here we go!

~~Vefa's Kitchen - Phaidon's big Greek cookbook~~ Thank you, Buffygirl!

Hummingbird Bakery cookbook

Le Creuset Poterie lasagne dish in red or red-orange
Le Creuset Poterie ramekins or mini casserole dishes w lids - 6 for pref in red or red-orange but 2 would make a perfectly acceptable start

Amazon vouchers *again* - I think this is the third year in a row that these have been in here and still no takers *sigh*

Book of David Hockney UK paintings from Tate shop (when I get a chance, I'll hunt out the actual name of it. Big book. It's got all his Yorkshire paintings in it, including the ones he's started doing which are a combination of photos and painting)

CD: Nico Muhly - Mothertongue

Camera - Canon G11 or Panasonic Lumix TZ-7 (I think - need to double-check the Lumix number. Will do that this weekend. I doubt there'll be a rush for this one in the next couple of days though...)

An original artwork by Simone O'Callaghan - I've always wanted one of her prints and her prices are ridiculously reasonable. Ask djeli if you need her email address.

Wooden knitting needles - interchangeable ends circular set (link will come when there's time...)

Row counter

Shoulder massage device - something designed to remove tension knots, not just feel nice. I would love you forever if you can really find something that will take out knots. Doubly so if it will fit tidily into a handbag.

Colinette chunky yarn - yah. yummy stuff. can't remember the name (see earlier note re: weekend)

Sock knitting books! There's a couple of them, but (again), I'll need to look them up

2 skeins Koigu sock yarn - so can actually make socks with it this time (one skein per foot, in case you're not a knitter and you're wondering - can't get a whole pair out of one skein!)

Artists' sketchbooks book

iTunes voucher (must be in ££s though - AuD can't be used in the UK store) - lots of little digital helpers I'd like to get - the full version of Karajan ear training for a start!

... and if all that's not enough, there was a lot left over from last year's list too - anything not formatted with strikeout is fair game :-)

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aargh accounting software!

nobody@vox.com(minim) — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 19:55:48 +0100

i've suspected awhile that i'm a very picky individual. today i think i have confirmed it. i've been looking at online accounting packages. my issue is that i have myob accounting plus for windows. i've had it for years, and it's been pretty good. i went for accounting plus because i wanted the ability to track stock of scores (which i've never had a need for) and for time tracking, but that came with a bunch of payroll rubbish, and i haven't upgraded since about 2003 because they've never implemented multi-currency support (or hadn't when i checked a couple of years back. i've stopped bothering to look) and i didn't need all the super-dooper payroll calculations that seemed to be the only true upgrades in the rather pricey package. the real issues with what i have are that:

it's windows-based, so i have to get at it via parallels, which is simple, but slow, so i avoid it
it offers way more features than i need and then i get confused
because i don't use it often, i go through a steep learning curve every time trying to remember where to put stuff, and - most heinous of all -
it draws its currency based on the system currency, so i can't even have one account for australian dollars and one account for pounds - it's all of one or all of the other. and it drives me nuts working with my uk finances with $$$ everywhere

so yes, i'm picky, but because it has so many issues and i'm avoiding using it, i'm really not in control of my finances (slim as they are, but that's all the more reason to understand them) and am always horrendously behind with working out stuff like, y'know, tax and invoices and things.

so today i went a-hunting for an online app that would help me out. something to manage my personal finances, at least in the uk, preferably in australia too (hey, i'm not unreasonable - i don't expect it to do everything!), although with the acknowledgement that separate accounts might be best for maintaining separation between the two (because i lodge tax returns there and here - must look into what i can do to stop that). ideally i'd like to be able to shift my own australian business finances into the australian part and generate invoices, pay bills and whatnot and produce the reports that my accountant needs. and i need it to preferably be free or at least cost seriously minor ducats - i don't earn that much in a year and the aim here is to at least get a grip over my finances, not work my way to a vast fiscal empire. so i've been ahunting and i've found it particularly interesting noting what is disqualifying all these services, none of which seems to be quite right. it's a learning experience - and especially from a web design perspective - that i think will be valuable for djeli's and my super-secret project which we're working on right now. so i thought i'd inflict what i found on you, dear reader. sorry about that. you can stop reading, you know.

free agent central: fantastic support for UK finances, import and easy categorisation of bank statements, at-a-glance charts, money owed/owing, etc., subscribable calendar of tax due dates (nice touch!) and on-the-fly calculation of tax due. even a nice little page for working out one's self-assessment tax return which looked like it would help do away with the accountant a little. but: minimum £15 a month - ouch! £150 a year gives a nice little discount, but is way, way way out of my budget. free 30-day trial is nice, but pointless if the monthly fee is beyond me. sad about that
freshbooks: i've heard quite a bit about this one, but it looks very US-centric, couldn't find any indication that it supported UK requirements at all
curdbee: great-looking service, nice site, seems easy to use, multi-currency support - set your base currency then you can set each customer's currency individually (nice!). free account does almost everything except estimates, pro account only $5 a month, so eminently affordable. but it doesn't do banking, only invoicing, so doesn't help with tracking the overall state of my finances.
mint.com: i had high hopes of this one - all about budgeting and so on, but seems to be US-only. i guess you might be able to use it if you entered everything manually, but that would just be stupidly painful. shame. they have an iphone app and everything :-(
workingpoint: looked quite good... until i found that it auto-generates a public profile for you (why??) which put me off a bit... and then i discovered that it's US-only which wiped it entirely
openair.com: i was interested in my initial reaction to this which went: 'eugh! ugly site. omg they've used the word "solutions"! this ain't for me'. so i gave it a moment and analysed. the ugliness of the site destroyed any hope i might have had that the user interface would be clean and easy to use - it was cluttered with banner ads and hard to read. 'solutions' is a word i associate with high-end corporate business - definitely not for me. even when i made myself stop and look closely at the site to try to find information about the product i wanted, i actually had trouble. the solutions page did list their various levels, but the pricing page just said to contact them. poa? no thanks!
saasu.com (formerly netaccounts): another messy site. hard-to-read navigation is never a good way to start. i got excited when i saw the 'use it free' button, but alas it was a red herring - the free account only allows 15 transactions a month - who thought that one up? the next level up is $AU25 per month - about £12, which is still a bit steep. multi-currency is supported but you have to pay an extra $10 a month for that... no chance. shame. i like supporting the australian option in software, but not for that kind of outlay.
easybill: well, that was kind of expected: invoicing only.
blinksale: likewise
iggsoftware.com: at first i was put off by this. it's not a web service, which was what i was hoping for - they do mac apps, plus the layout of the site has the app iBiz (invoicing and time-tracking) larger than iBank (finance management) so i didn't even register that the latter was there for a moment. then i didn't like the idea of separate apps, but on revisiting the site, iBank could well be an option for me. for $59.99 it's a modest-ish outlay, no ongoing fees. nice that it has an iphone app; annoying that you need mobileme to run it. it does multiple currencies, but doesn't seem to do invoicing at all... i guess that's why they do iBiz, but why not integrate them? feels messy... and from what i can see from their forums, some users are feeling this too. intrigued, but hesitant. i like the idea of being able to track my banking both here and in aus from the one place...
lessaccounting: this one looks pretty good, but the pricing and signup page is vague at best about what you get with the free account ("limited use of invoices & expenses, accounting reports") but it's made clear that bank accounts aren't available until you pay $20 a month. so cheaper than the others, but still more than i'm willing to pay for something that doesn't do everything (it can't support bank accounts in more than one currency, although it supports multi-currency invoicing) but it's probably on the consideration list.
liquidaccounts: another ugly, hard-to-read website. far too much information in all-caps, making it hard to read. oh, except for the bit about £15 a month plus vat. after that what it did was pretty much irrelevant.

so that's twelve options, no sale. but i've narrowed it down to a shortlist at least, consisting of free agent, ibiz/ibank and lessaccounting. if anyone knows any alternatives, i'm raring to keep testing!

update: an addition to the list, but not, i fear, the shortlist: jumsoft money for mac. it has all the functionality, but unfortunately lacks finesse, so you can't link transactions together (withdrawal from one acct to a deposit in another, or a withdrawal from a bank account to pay off a loan account) plus it doesn't export proper accountant reports, but it's a nice start on an accounting app - give it a few more years and it could be a real contender. so heigh ho. back to the drawing board.

another update: found another 4 options. quicken online is actually free(!) and while information about things like multiple currencies was limited, i figure i might as well sign up and see what they had... but their registration will only accept a US postcode and wouldn't let me leave the field blank, so that one's out of the running. geezeo hides all but the most high-level info about their service inside videos. i couldn't be bothered sifting through them and frankly it all sounded a little mickey mouse. perhaps this is lame and i should be pursuing these sorts of things further, but really - there are so many products out there, if they can't be bothered to differentiate themselves, then i can't be bothered to waste time on them. sorry. next! buxfer has the benefit of providing, nice and upfront, a demo version of the site - don't read about it, have a wander! it looks pretty nice, but there are no tooltips that i can see on the buttons (in firefox) which means the interface would take me too long to learn. and finally wesabe, which looks like it could be quite good but they seem focused on the community aspect of their service, which is something that doesn't interest me in the slightest. i'm testing ibank at the moment, and so far am pretty impressed with it! pretty straightforward, easy to import data, categorise it and do things like pay off loans that aren't using regular payments (e.g. family loans), and it seems their iphone offering has been updated so that mobileme is no longer a requirement for syncing. we could have a winner?

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abcs

nobody@vox.com(minim) — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 00:22:19 +0100

whoops. just trawling through the facebook backlog while i wait for very large, very slow files to upload and discovered that back in april i was tagged by not one of my friends, but two of them for this meme. guess that means i should do something about it :-) and now you should too, eh? consider yourself tagged!

alcohol: lyme bay blackcurrant wine
believe in god?: yup
chocolate: hotel chocolat. i don't think i need to be more specific than that, but if you insist, this season's must-have chocolate is their strawberry & mint cream, enrobed in vanilla-ey white chocolate. i don't think 'enrobed' is too strong a word for this one.
d&d character: pass. the closest i'd get to this is the cyberbunny
eggs: omelette with ham, cheese, chives and a few little mushroom slices
food: greek. or french. or italian. something simple, no cumin.
gemstone: peridot
hairdresser: vicky at vidal sassoon
icecream: pine-lime splice
jeans: m&s bootcut (cos they do a short leg-length so i never need to get them taken up!)
karaoke choice: last thing i sang at karaoke was mika's 'grace kelly'. whether that was something people would want to hear again, i don't actually know.
i want 100Mb Internet access to my home: no. i NEED 100mb internet access to my home. especially right now when i've been waiting about 4 hours for this wretched file to upload
left or right handed: right
music: oh do i have to answer this one? too bloody hard. today have been listening to delius and grechaninov. oh and lots and lots of rowley while i write this film score :-D
nationality: australian with aspirations to become british as well
operating system: os x. never thought i'd write that one.
perfume: ck one
my mp3 player is a: red ipod nano. well, they call it red; it's sort of pinkish really.
quest: fame and fortune
rant: lack of support for proper tagging of classical music
seafood: not really. prawns are ok. i prefer fish.
twitter: tweetdeck
uncontrollable urge to: not have a dayjob
vice: twitter
what i wear to work: pyjamas
x-men character: wolverine
yesterday i: worked on a film score, watched warren beatty and ben kingsley in bugsy, ran a sound test on digital sound file formats (we're sticking with mp3 because the sound improvement of lossless over max-quality mp3 isn't enough to justify the effort of converting our 700+-album soundfile collection) and ripped 15 cds
zodiac sign: aries

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calling out to web devs

nobody@vox.com(minim) — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 13:31:07 +0100

i'm sending out a question for anyone who does web dev work, or who closely follows trends in web interface development (not the behind-the-scenes stuff). i find myself in the position of quietly creeping up on a time when i will need to go forth and find a new dev contract... and the realisation suddenly dawned on me that i actually haven't worked *as* a web dev in over a year now, because my last contract, while having web-devvy elements, consisted of masquerading as an "e-learning technologist". (Edit: I should probably say that I have more than a decade's solid coding experience, so I don't need to learn the basics, just to update my skillset a bit)

of course, i keep an eye on the web standards' group's marvellous "links for light reading", i browse magazines and regularly peruse a truckload of webby blogs, but right now i need to give myself a little refresher course - and i'm being overwhelmed by the information on what's happened in the last year, so i ask you:

what new technologies/skills/approaches from about the past 18 months do you think are the most important?
what are you most commonly asked for (e.g. ajax, css3, mobile web, whatever)?
which dev blog could you not live without?
if you read any paper dev magazines, what are they?
what, if any, webby book or article changed the way you think or work in the past year?

any and all responses will be leapt upon with delight and a thirst for knowledge :-)

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decision

nobody@vox.com(minim) — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 13:12:38 +0100

finally, i have finished flim-flamming around and made a big decision. it involves technology purchases, and that is always an exciting sort of decision to make. recently i've been fretting about mobile phones. i want the iphone because it's gorgeous and does everything i want it to (and all my friends have them now too and spend their time comparing apps and i feel left out), but it's useless for the art project i'm working on because it doesn't support flash. so i have to buy another phone sometime for the art project and was looking at android, but that's still too immature and as the project won't really get off the ground for a few months, if i'm realistic (because my collaborator and i need to talk about what we're going to do again now because our last plan was crushed by her phd supervisor, so we need to plan and think before we even start to code and test), it's probably more sensible to look at phones for testing closer to the time we'll be doing the actual testing, to give android a chance to show what it can do. i had been going to buy a netbook for when i go back to work, in the hopes that then i could actually continue to compose through the period of servitude, but i'm concerned about weight, now that i've discovered that my neck is showing signs of greater-than-usual-for-my-age wear and tear and that one of the discs is bulging out of place a bit and getting close to a nerve. so last night i sat down and made up a big table in evernote discussing the pros and cons of all the various devices under consideration, which was a very interesting exercise and i am delighted to announce that the winner is...

ipod touch!

it has all the functionality of the iphone except the actual phone and the camera, for about the same initial outlay (but of course without the phone plan) and not having a plan attached leaves me free, if need be, to get a phone on a plan when the time comes to pick out a testing phone. it's significantly lighter than a netbook and more subtle for new contracts where one might not necessarily want to sit down in sight of one's co-workers at lunchtime with a computer when they could get concerned that you're trying to do two contracts at once or something. it has wifi access. and a truckload of apps - my productivity tools all have iphone/pod apps, plus i discovered some fabulous looking apps for music last night - a keyboard one which allows access to a full piano keyboard which you play with your fingers - should be useful for confirming intervals, working on melodic fragments and multi-touch allows you to play chords too, which would be very helpful. there's also an amazing-looking ear training app which would be incredibly helpful for me. and of course you can get metronome and tuner apps too, as well as a rudimentary notation tool (although it doesn't play back yet, which i think makes it a little limited for now). if i put on my prophet hat, i do feel that if the major notation packages, finale and sibelius, end up making versions for a mobile platform, it'll most likely be the iphone/pod, plus of course there's always the chance that apple will release a version of logic, and there's no way that would be available on anything else.

so i have made my decision. now i just have to try to hold myself back until i have a job. or at least the prospect of a job. or at least am looking for a job. um.

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discovery

nobody@vox.com(minim) — Sat, 09 May 2009 11:20:14 +0100

it's funny. ever since i started on trying to fix my brain a few years ago i have these random moments of revelation. while skiing i realised that my absolute terror of falling/slipping stemmed from the time i was bushwalking in the blue gum forest with my parents and slipped on casuarina needles and fell over a cliff. today's revelation relates to desks.

djeli and i have been discussing workspaces in the house because while i'd managed to achieve a setup that was working for me while he was away, the lack of space in our house means that it doesn't work when he's around. he has the whole of the spare room for his workspace while i have to take what i can find, something that isn't at all conducive to sustained work on creative things. so we've been talking about what can be done, given that the loungeroom is public space and so interruptions and laundry happen there, and the bedroom sort of likewise in that if i work on the bed i have to pack everything away entirely every night when he wants to go to bed. i can't work on till i'm ready to go to bed even, plus i find i sleep badly if i'm working on the bed all day because there's no separation of work and rest places and i feel like a slob. but the built-in desk in the bedroom is minute. it's barely wide enough for a laptop, with pretty much no elbow room. its one consolation is that it has a nice little bookshelf above it, where i keep all my music and art books, and it's a space where i can blu-tak up bits and pieces relating to what i'm working on on the wall.

i discovered when i first moved out of home that i don't like staring at a blank wall when i'm working. i like to have either a window or a large space in front of me. in lilyfield i had a room to myself that i hardly ever used for a variety of reasons. part of that was because the desk was too small and the window both too small and too high to see out of when i was at the desk.

now i'm staying with my friend in dundee and have been very taken by her tiny 1940s fold-up desk - you know, one of those ones that have storage space in them and divider-pots for pens and envelopes and things, but the desk part folds up to contain the whole thing so it takes very little room, and have been thinking about how that might be a solution, to have something like that beside the minute desk in the bedroom, so it would take up minimal space and give a little more surface space for when i need to spread out.

ANYWAY, to the point, which is the revelation. i've been wondering for years, without really thinking about it deeply, where this need for space and light in my work area comes from and this morning it just came to me in a flash and i suddenly realised that it's because i *used* to have that! when i was in high school, my mother had the clever idea of extending all the bedrooms in the house by adding bay windows to them. the bay windows in my father's study and my bedroom had desks built into them, so i had a desk that was very nearly the full width of the room, surrounded by large windows on four sides (in front, sides, plus it had a glass roof). the light in the daytime was fantastic and when thinking i could stare out into the beautiful pittosporum tree outside the window and see pictures in the leaves. when i worked there it never occurred to me that i might not want to sit at a desk, that i might want to move to the couch sometimes or otherwise shunt about the house, whereas i seem to have spent all my time since i left home doing (or wanting to do) just that in an effort to find some sort of work area where i could actually work.

the space i was using before djeli came home was the closest i've got to the ideal in the 10 years or so since i left home - we have a double-gateleg dining table that sits in a corner of a large bay-window-like niche in the loungeroom. it's a nice space but not really terribly useful so it tends to get used for drying the laundry because it's close to the kitchen/laundry, near self-contained so it doesn't seem to intrude into the living room, has plenty of light and a heater for the winter. i fold out one side only of the table, so there's still not a vast amount of desk space, but i just love being by the window. it makes concentrating so much easier and enjoyable. so i think there's a lesson learned here. let's just hope i can put it to good use and find a space i can set up properly and get some work done in!

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taking a plunge

nobody@vox.com(minim) — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 00:06:50 +0100

well, things have been terribly confused for weeks now, but they slowly seem to be getting back on an even keel - the tidal wave of bad news seems to have passed, the tax is coming along nicely, with the end in sight, and it seems we're not about to be evicted, so YAY!

djelibeybi and i are currently up in shropshire - with the end of his telford contract, he has the coalport flat until the end of april, so we figured we should make the most of it and do a little exploring and walking and seeing of castles and old blast furnaces and so on, so we're having a fine old time. i also have a probable contract (possibly in germany) coming up towards the end of may, which doesn't leave much time in between for contracts, so i am taking my courage in both hands, putting my trust in Providence and have started telling employment agents that i won't be available till august (when the parents leave). it feels a bit scary - that's a long time without either of us bringing in any income, and of course it includes traipsing about france with parents and a possible trip up to scotland and who knows what surprises, but it feels like the right thing to do. i was freaking a bit about having to try to find a job and the money situation, and i think it'll all be better if i just calm down and take this opportunity as a chance to keep doing what i want to do.

assuming our visas are renewed, djeli may find employment quicker than last time (heck, maybe revenue & customs will pull their finger out and finally do their budgets and he'll get his job back!), and if they're not, then at least we'll have made the most of our last weeks and not randomly wasted them on work. and while i owe djeli a truckload of ££s (he finally worked out the true state of the joint account which revealed £3000-worth of debt for me) he does have some savings so we won't starve or not be able to pay the rent or anything.

so it's scary, but it feels like the right thing to do.

that said, if you need an experienced web interface dev for a couple of days, don't hesitate to call!

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the writing bug

nobody@vox.com(minim) — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 21:12:14 +0000

the last few days, i've been writing like mad. everything i see, everything i read is just sparking off ideas left, right and centre. i've been working through a document explaining search engine optimisation for a couple of clients who don't have a web background, so they understand how to frame their content, and really enjoying it. and i keep starting big meaty blog posts... and then getting bogged down in my own verbosity and stopping, and starting again anew. i guess it's been a while since i've really written anything of consequence that required real live logical thought. so maybe i should keep this post to the one paragraph. just to prove i can :-)

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musing on march

nobody@vox.com(minim) — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 22:28:13 +0000

i do believe that this march is the craziest month i have experienced in a long time. it's a mixture of the very bad, the very good and the very stressful. i can't believe how many appalling and generally stressful things have happened just in a couple of short weeks - and not just to me, but to a lot of people i know too.

our car - our lovely alfa - was stolen (and to add insult to injury, when djeli went to pick up the vw golf hire car he found he'd been "upgraded" to a vauxhall astra. how that is an upgrade completely eludes me)
a very precious friend found out she is likely to have cancer
i am flat broke. i don't recall ever having been this strapped for cash in my life before (except that time i got stuck in belgium but at least that was just broke, not actual debt)
a friend of mine got back from skiing to find a client of hers had died suddenly. then the mother of a friend who was staying with her died. then the friend of another friend died.
djeli found out that, far from being in the fabulous position for contract renewal he thought he was, his project hasn't been allocated budget and so he'll probably be out of a job come the end of the month
we just found out that our landlord is no longer working in the job he had in australia, in spite of our being told last time we saw him that the deadline for his project had been extended. given that his wife has hated every minute of being in australia, the chances of his taking another job there are pretty much nil; chances of them coming back here and asking for their house back are pretty much 100%
if the previous point comes to fruition, this will happen mid-june. just after my parents arrive for a 2 month stay which is kind of dependent on our having somewhere to house them. with djeli's telford job come to an end, the semi-planned move to birmingham is also cancelled so we could all be living under newspapers in hyde park.
mid-june is also when our visas are due for renewal, something which is currently a bit up in the air due to our tax having got way out of hand, so we need to deal with the tax and make that all sweet before we can even think of putting in the visa renewal application, and of course, we can't even contemplate trying to find a new place to live without valid visas, and djeli is pretty much unemployable without same due to the time-scales of the sort of projects he works on.
i, of course, was working on a Grand Plan, with djeli's fabulous support, which would have seen me taking most of the year off work to sort out our finances and pull together a load of backlogged adminny stuff to really try to get my composition career off the ground at long last. this is looking increasingly cloud-cuckoo-land, even if djeli hadn't finally worked out everything from the joint account and discovered that i owe him £3,000 (i've been trying to get this figure out of him for 2 years now), and if he's out of a job, i'll be the only one who can still be employed in the space up till the end of the visas.

so... um... i've seen better months! but there's been flipsides too:

yes, the car was stolen, but it was stolen just after we'd come back from skiing and it's never been so empty - all djeli's luggage and coat were inside, his ipod was inside because it had been to france with us - even the lovely fluffy picnic rug was inside! so the only annoying things that were lost were the fm transmitter (which IS a nuisance because they don't make them with signals that strong any more) and the shovel (from the Big Snow the other month). so yes, it's bad, but it really could have been a lot worse.
i've achieved soooo much this month - finally managed to sort through all the junk that's been cluttering up the place for ages and am now getting through the big backlog of projects on my to-do list and generally getting things done (thanks, david allen!) - this includes sorting out my australian tax and heading into the final phases of the satie arrangement for america, which have been on my to-do list for 3 years and 2 years, respectively.
penury has given me a new-found interest in budgeting and it feels good to be getting back on track and being able to plan for my money a bit
the accounts ARE getting done! this feels like a huge step forward, and if we get through all the horror-things on the other list ok, then i'll be able to take them over and hopefully keep them running smoothly so we don't get into such a pickle again. at any rate, it feels good that there's forward momentum happening at last. and while the £3,000 is a bit of a horror, i'm glad to know what the number is - there were moments when i thought it might be much, much worse - 2 years' worth of christmases without knowing how much money you have can do a lot of damage...

so that's march as of now. bring on april, i say!

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embracing the mobile revolution

nobody@vox.com(minim) — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 20:15:52 +0000

W810i_product_quality_image_1

a little late, i know, given that half the people i know have iphones and most of the rest of them have some sort of blackberry/mobile windows hoo-ha-thingy while i'm still languishing with an almost-2-years-old sony ericsson w810i, but i felt that as i'm embarking on a collaborative project that requires me to programme for the mobile web, i should really be using it and finding out first-hand what works and what is seriously annoying.

so cue a little experimenting with my phone. most people, i believe go through this when they first get a phone. i did give it a go at one point, couldn't fathom it for some reason and figured it would be too expensive to use if i did get it working, so installed google maps and left it at that.

today i started by trying to work out how best to keep track of my expenditure (because i'm flat broke at the moment and i've decided i need to start budgeting properly so i don't end up like this again) and figured if i could find a little expense-tracking app for my phone, it would be better than writing these things down on little pieces of paper and hunting for pens and things and none of it ever getting put anywhere where it could be of any use at all. so i hunted one down and actually managed to install it which felt like a disproportionately great achievement. it's a long way from beautiful, but it actually seems to be quite well built - easy interface to use, minimal typing required and it keeps track of the basic stuff i need - what i spent, what i spent it on, and i can even put a note alongside it. and at the end of the month apparently i can export it all to xls so i can look at everything that happened in the month with ease. it was an interesting exercise in seeing how simple but how useful an app can be.

the next step was actually getting webby stuff to work. sony's interface leaves a certain amount to be desired, i feel. the email set up has HRs between sections, so you keep thinking you've got to the end of the page of options, when in fact there's a bunch more things to fill in underneath. so i managed to set it up to send, but didn't realise there were still outgoing-mail-servery things it wanted from me - it had looked like it was done with the questions, so i'd assumed it was going to use the o2 settings or something to send the mail, but it seems it needs a normal outgoing mail server just like normal email. once that was set up, sending and receiving was go. yay! i don't know that i'll use it for checking email very often (and the download seems a bit haphazard - rather than just downloading the new email since the last check, it seems to pull down a bunch of random other stuff too. and there doesn't seem to be any way to actually delete msgs out of the inbox, just to "mark them for deletion", whatever that means).

anyway, now that email's set up, i've been able to set up something a bit more useful - to be able to send tasks directly into my remember the milk account whenever i think of them. the only drawback with this is that to use the import-list function for rtm, you need to be able to separate items listed in the body of the email with line breaks, and i can't see that the sony ericsson mail client allows this, but will be checking the manual for that one and, if need be, attempting to find an alternative mail client. next step: set up email for evernote, so i can snap things i want to remember - posters for shows, or jot down random project ideas - and file them away before i forget. third step: set up emailing to flickr, which seems to work...

Testing sending to flickr from my phone

and which will hopefully help me avoid the situation i usually end up in, which is totally forgetting that i took a photo of something with my phone in the first place.

so i'm beginning to see the light, i think. but there's still a fair way to go before i can see this mobile web malarky becoming totally integrated into my life. at least it's a start and i hope it'll help me understand about the limitations of accessing a webpage through a mobile phone so that i can make pages which are a joy to use :-)

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