Ric's Blog

Picasa and Flickr

2009-09-04T18:43:00.004+01:00

I've been contemplating a switch to Flickr from Picasa Web for some time because it tends to have better integration with many Web 2.0 apps - e.g. Facebook. The main reason stopping me migrating, though, is that I really like Google's Picasa application.

Today I came a cross a great little app called Picasa2Flickr which adds another button to Picasa which uses Flickr Uploadr to get the selected pictures onto the web. Not the prettiest solution but it does seem to carry across all the titles, tags, etc. (except for the geotag data).

A note about the installation though... it's not immediately obvious but you need to click the links in the instructions to get the button to install correctly.

Facebook Test Post

2009-08-16T12:32:00.002+01:00

This is a post to check whether adjusting my Blog feed (as per the instructions here) would allow full posts and piccies to automagically import to Facebook.

Anyway... here's a pic...

Blackpool Air Display

2009-08-16T10:37:00.003+01:00

Finally getting caught up on blog stuff since I came back from the EduGeek meetings down south...

Before the meetings, I popped along to Blackpool for their annual air display. It was glorious sunshine and it was really nice to relax on the prom at North Shore for a couple of hours.

The air show also gave me the opportunity to play with my 500mm camera lens :-) By adding my 1.4x extender I got a full 700mm too :-D

Here's a sample of the pics I took (the noise was awesome when the Vulcan flew over - full afterburners, the lot!)

Pocket Scrobbling!

2009-08-03T22:31:00.005+01:00

Last.fm is something I've been trying to use to find new music. It's a massive web application that analyses your listening tastes and connects you with bands you may not have heard of and with people with similar tastes to you.

A part of the Last.fm experience is the 'Scrobbler'. It basically sits there while you listen to music and sends information to your Last.fm profile - it only sends deatails of tracks that you listen to a certain percentage of though so that you can skip through the rubbish.

Anyway, I primarily listen to music on my phone (HTC Touch Pro2), so these haven't been getting 'scrobbled'. Today I stumbled across an app though... the 'Pocket Scrobbler'.

The Pocket Scrobbler will work offline too and only send data when you want it too. Brilliant!

Check it out at http://sourceforge.net/projects/pocketscrobbler/ - I decided to try the 1.8 beta... TinyURL is http://tinyurl.com/l3qrxw if you want to easily download it onto your device.

Web albums updated

2009-08-03T21:56:00.002+01:00

I just got around to updating my online pics. This post has a couple of my favourites :-)

Lazy cat

2009-07-24T17:00:00.000+01:00

Came home today to find the cat asleep in a rather unusual position.

Take a look at the pic!

Matt of the 'Mill

2009-07-03T21:48:00.001+01:00

Matt (the assistant manager of the Windmill Tavern) is going to kick himself for reminding me of the attached photo :-D

I think it looks rather fetching ;-)

HTC Touch Pro2

2009-07-02T18:07:00.003+01:00

So I got myself a second hand Touch Pro and it's been AMAZING. It does everything you want and more with ease. Plus the keyboard made SMS and email a pleasure.

I recently had the opportunity to swap it for a Touch Pro2. I knew it would be nicer but it's INCREDIBLE!

The phone is quicker, smoother and generally easier to use. The bigger screen is amazing and the battery life is far superior. Hell, even the audio from it is better.

I do have one criticism mind... the keyboard isn't as good. The keys are now spaced apart and are bigger - hence less of them. I really think that the old layout should have been kept... it was perfect after all ;-)

How full?

2009-06-28T00:29:00.001+01:00

So we all had a good feed at The Fusion Room for Caroline's birthday. I think some people are starting to feel the affects though ;-)

The Windmill does take-out

2009-06-06T21:08:00.003+01:00

2 pint cartons for taking your beer home! Genius!

The instructions are maybe a little much though... You don't deserve to drink if you think holding the carton upside down is a good idea!!!

Straight from the 80s

2009-05-30T15:29:00.003+01:00

It's like Gav knew that we were going to be going to the 80s bar and he dressed appropriately!

The EduGeek giant and his wine

2009-05-27T23:41:00.001+01:00

Shaun (the EduGeek giant) struggled to drink his red wine out of a normal large wine glass

More Success at The Windmill Quiz

2009-05-07T19:27:00.002+01:00

Whilst I'm waiting in the pub for Chris I thought I'd blog about Tuesday's quiz...

This week the team comprised four and the questions were a lot easier than last week - last week was particularly difficult!

Although we almost came joint first (a re-count was called) we ended up second by one point :-( All was not lost though as this achievment won us a round of drinks :-)

All in all not bad then, eh?!?

So Tom had chicken

2009-05-01T19:59:00.001+01:00

We eventually got seated and had some food. The food was rather nice... Tom expected a little more medat on his chicken though ;)

Eating out for Dad's birthday

2009-05-01T18:17:00.002+01:00

We decided to go out for a meal since it is Dad's birthday and Will suggested 'The Bobbin Mill' at Buckshaw.

After getting lost we're all here now but we aren' allowed to sit down and eat because there's no tables (see picture!)

Anyway... Only another 30 mins to wait.

Blogtastic Birthday Gift

2009-04-24T21:27:00.001+01:00

Caroline and Gary gave me a lovely birthday present that was crying out to be blogged! :-D

Picasa and Picasa Web Albums

2009-04-22T19:33:00.004+01:00

I decided last night (whilst we performed miserably in the pub quiz) that I would post a few of my photographs to the web for all to admire.

The easiest way to do this was to use Picasa (which I already use to organise my pictures) which allows easy upload to Picasa Web Albums. After a few clicks, the job was done.

I've even added a couple of albums on the right hand side for you to enjoy if you can't be bothered bowsing all the way to http://picasaweb.google.com/ric.charlton.

Blakey had an accident!

2009-04-12T18:44:00.001+01:00

Lol!

Quizzing

2009-03-25T19:50:00.000Z

Well the quiz team returned from their holidays last week and we resumed our greatness on Tuesday!

The picture round was easier than usual for us - all Disney characters ;-)

Anyways... we won! Not bad eh? 61 points! So a free round of drinks was ours.

Now we just need to win the higher and lower game... it's up to about £150 now :-)

Finally!

2009-03-17T18:06:00.002Z

Tom, my brother, has finally found himself a job.. It's taken ages!!!

He's going to be an environment officer working for the Environment Agency in Penrith on a decent salary too.

Playing with HDR

2009-03-13T17:21:00.004Z

I've seen a few examples of HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography lately and it looked pretty wicked... so I thought I'd have a bash.

I found a tutorial on Instructables that explained the process using the GIMP. This was the result using photos of some snowdrops in the dark.

Touching the music

2009-03-04T00:21:00.002Z

As some might be aware, my local recently closed - we're still not 100% sure why. For this reason, I've had to find another and I had a choice of two - The Windill Tavern near Clifton and The Hand and Dagger near Treales. I chose the Windmill because it's easier to get to while the weather is a bit rubbish.

The Windmill is about a mile from my house and it takes me roughly 15 minutes to walk there :-( This is about 14.5 minutes longer than it took to get to the club!

To make my walk slightly more bearable, I decided I would listen to some music. The obvious choice was to use my phone. I have a 1GB microSD card which I chuck a load of albums onto in MP3 and WMA format. The sound quality is OK. The only problem was that the earphones that come with the Touch Pro are pathetic to say the least. If you imagine a pair of headphones without the headband, you wouldn't be far off the earphones - they're huge and don't even fit in my ears!!!

The Toouch Pro only has a slightly mangled mini-USB connector or everything to plug in to so the first thing I needed was an adapter. Flea-bay to the rescue and £2.50 (inc. postage) later and I could now plug a 3.5mm jack into my phone. Bargain!

Then to choose the earphones. Only one choice really... the Sennheiser CX-range. Unbelievably I managed to find a set of CX-500 earphones for a meagre £17.50 delivered (another Flea-bay bargain - new and in the box!). Considering these earphones are £60 at Richer Sounds it's amazing!

I've been using the combination of the adapter and earphones for about a week now. It's brilliant. The earphones produce excellent sound... nice and basey and excellent top too. Background noise is irradicated too - possibly not a good thing when you're walking but as long as you're careful....

Falling into the mobile Internet trap

2009-02-23T20:03:00.003Z

Lately I have been increasingly using my phone for mobile Internet goodness.... it was just getting to be a pain using my LG Secret.

I spotted a bargain-priced HTC Touch Pro on flea-bay and decided to have a punt... £250 later I had a nearly new Touch Pro with car kit and a PAYT SIM (which I have no use for).

The first thing I did was use the new Google Mobile Sync Beta to get all my contact details on my phone. This was dead easy and my phone was soon set up to sync the contacts and calendar!

Next came email... very important! Again, this was super easy to setup and I was soon sending and receiving mail.

Next for mobile blogging. I use Blogger (another great Google App!) and decided to use the Mail2Blogger function rather than the 'other' way of working Blogger simply because it made the most sense to me. An example is the post of my tidy office below ;-)

The next thing I needed was an IM client but I needed it to be compatible with XMPP (for the EduGeek.net chat server) and MSN. Ideally I wanted Pidgin for Windows Mobile but this doesn't exist :'( After some Googling and seeing some rubbish apps, I stumbled across Palringo which seems to do the trick quite nicely. My only criticism is the random noise it makes when it receives a message - although this is probably configurable if I really looked into it!

Finally... a few important favourites for Opera Mobile... my work email uses Zimbra which has a mobile web interface and of course EduGeek.net has a mobile interface which can be easily accessed through http://edugeek.mobi.

My 'tidy' office

2009-02-20T20:35:00.000Z

A pic of my 'tidy' office (before the new shelving)... Sent from my mobile.

Wii Fun on New Year's Day

2009-01-04T20:08:00.004Z

Lots of fun was had with the Wii on New Year's Day... the Raki (ridiculuous Turkish vewrsion of Ouzo) definitely gave an incentive to do well (with the losers having the opportunity to down a shot!).

We had the Salwick Club Bouncer...

Some hoola-hoop fun...

And don't forget the ski jumping...