December « 2008 « Ians Ramblings

30Dec/080

When the news is not the news

This is one of my rants, just a thought really, just something I had noticed perhaps others have too. At present the news seems extremely thin on actual news stories, especially from within the UK. The news provided by AP for example covering stories abroad is still acceptable but the BBC coverage of any events within now appears to be awful.

It appears that alot of the time the news is no longer the news at all but an assumption of what is about to happen. The credit crunch related stories seem to have no bearing on what is really happening, reporters are turning up at shopping centres almost attempting to force the line that people are struggling in some way, and are instead encountering business as usual in terms of shoppers.

They then repeat the line that people are not shopping as much as before and the retail industry needs people to spend, we then see record numbers of people forcing their way into the shops, which I have never even seen before, and still they stick to the line we aren't shopping enough.

I am sure in some way I must be wrong but so far I know no one family or friend effected by the Credit Crunch, shopping appears to be normal all prices more or less unchanged, petrol slightly down, if anything things are rather pleasent at the moment.

Retail outlets such as Woolworths or Adams, marked as casualties of the credit crunch, weren't they dieing long before this, is there not a cycle of new companies starting and old companies closing is that not the nature of competition?

I wonder where the real news has gone, why dont I hear more facts, things that happened rather than the BBCs own opinion on what will happen..

Filed under: Uncategorized No Comments

30Dec/080

Christmas

Had a lovely Christmas visiting my parents over in good ole Shropshire. I will be popping on some nice photos soon, including pictures of the traditional boxing day hunt that passes through our little town.

Now watching my way through Spooks box sets that were presents hehe. Also been playing Tomb Raider Underworld and Lost Planet. So far Tomb Raider is really good, takes a little getting used to I still like the way the original played best, a touch more shooting than there were puzzles. The focus is certainly now more on the puzzles and moving down most corridors involves some sort of acrobatics.

Graphically it is supurb and quite free roaming certainly for a Tomb Raider title. I haven't yet had the chance to play Lost Planet but looks rather interesting.

Filed under: Uncategorized No Comments

13Dec/080

Sweet new Phone!

I feel the need to geek it up about a new gadget I got the other day, a Nokia E71. I have been after a phone with a qwerty keyboard for a while, but really needed it to be nice and slim. The beauty of this phone is it seems to combines everything I could need in a phone, small, slim, proper keyboard, symbian operating system which is soon to go open source, WiFi, proper email synchronisation and GPS.

The GPS on a phone is certainly useful when your a biker and you find yourself out on a long drive going no where in particular, just wanting to ride, and then,, needing to discover where you ended up! That is without paying £300 plus for a Garmin!

Just to be extra geeky I now have an SSH client installed on it with a roaming and local profile so I can log into my web server remotely or from here at home on my own network and it all works great.

The only thing I would mention to other E71 users is, that to install Putty you need to disable the check on the certificate of installer packages, it seems the Putty installer does not have a valid certificate, see this post for a work around.

Filed under: Uncategorized No Comments

13Dec/080

Bike Show 2008 – NEC

At last I have had the chance to pop my motorbike show pictures on the site. Had a great time as usual over at the NEC checking out all the latest bikes and concept bikes for future years.

In particular I find myself more drawn to the retro bikes these days, especially semi cafe racer style bikes, or bobber style Harley's.

We met Nick Sanders over there too he was promoting his new book Parallel, the images in it look great, interesting trip. See Youtube for details of his trip.

Well if anyone fancies a gander at the images they're under Ians Pictures or just click on the bike me on the motorbike hehe.

Filed under: Uncategorized No Comments

Photos

Ians Photos

Ians Ramblings Ian's ramblings, daily, ish

When the news is not the news

Christmas

Sweet new Phone!

Bike Show 2008 – NEC

Who's Online

Photos

Blogroll

Tags

Recent Posts

Archives

Meta