September 2007 – University & Unicorns

19 September 2007

Bloggin’ Ain’t Easy Gov…

I live with a partner who is a voracious blogger, which is slightly intimidating as I also like to do my blogging, but more often than not, as you can see by the content, I am by no means voracious myself. I would dearly love to be though, but I have several problems hindering me.

I don’t really leave the house much.
I don’t have a big social network of friends.
Due mostly to points 1 & 2 I don’t really have many “events” going on in my life, and of those that ARE going on I tend not to want to speak of them on this blog for fear it may offend or upset a member of my family.

So, what is there left to talk about? I could do as my partner does I suppose and pick topical things going on in the world, but more often than not I don’t really have an opinion on things and if I did, why would I think my opinion is so important that I should write about it in my blog? It may be narcissistic, but I think blogs are about yourself, right? Then again, if that were true, there would be MANY boring blogs out there…and let’s face it guys, there ARE plenty of boring blogs around, you’re reading one now (if you lasted this long).

One last factor is that I’ve got to blog when the mood takes me, but I need a quiet place, void of distractions in which I can think of what I want to write. My partner can write blog posts while there is a TV and radio on, while I’m talking and that cat’s meowing. I just can’t do it in all that distraction. I’m only being able to successfully complete this post because my partner’s out, and the cat’s asleep on the lounge and I have NO electronic equipment on to distract me. It’s the same when I read.

So, given the distractions and lack of topics, I’m surprised I blog at all. I dearly wish I could blog more though – even if it WAS just about birds!

6 September 2007

The New Love Of My Life – The Nokia 6300!

“Am I in love? aaaaahhhhhh I must be in love!”

It might still be the honeymoon period at this stage (as I’ve only had my phone just over 48 hours), but I *LOVE* this phone. I was hesitant because of reviews I’d seen. People seem to either love it or hate it.

It’s WAY more advanced than my old Siemens SF65 (which always has a starring role each week in The Bill) which makes me feel like I’ve joined the 21st century.

The phone is just PACKED with features:

2 mega pixel camera
video record and play
bluetooth
music player
radio
mp3 ringtones
organiser
fully integrated SMS, MMS, MMS+, video messaging, flash messaging – even Push To Talk
themes
wallpapers

Just everything I wanted to upgrade for. My Siemens had a camera, but it was only an SVGA quality, 1.3 mega pixel camera. Photos looked crap from my phone. I had no PC linking capabilities with my phone because I use a Mac. No probs now with my new phone as it has the LOVELY Bluetooth!

A lot of reviews say “2 mega pixel camera, not good enough”, but I am very happy with the photo quality. The highest resolution of this camera is 1600 x 1200 and it takes some great photos. It doesn’t have a flash, which makes it struggle in low light levels (not great for the UK market, really), but in day conditions, it’s fine. The digital zoom does start to make a meal of the image when you use it – you really don’t want to have to zoom in too much – but that’s the bane of digital zoom. At full resolution in good light conditions, the photos are good.

Video is great albeit small at 178×144 not the 320×240 as seemed to be promised in spec. Being my first video phone, I am happy with the quality, it makes a somewhat “blocky” but very watchable video clip. I’ve even finally opened a YouTube account and added videos from my phone to the account already. Bluetooth just makes everything SO easy!

I find the ease of use with bluetooth for file transfer really good and fast. Mp3’s, video clips and photos all transfer in seconds. I LOVE being able to finally make up my own mp3 ringtones and load them on the phone. The joys of being a Mac owner. No DRM to mess about with, bluetooth already in the Mac’s system – not having to use any PC suite (bblllleeeerrrrrkkkk WindoZe) – EASY!

I saw one person in a review complain that the phone only had one alarm!!! ONE ALARM?! HOW MANY DO YOU WANT? At first I was thinking there might have been a back-handed valid point to this seeing as my Siemens had 3 alarms. But upon quick reflection I could see that you could have limitless alarms with the Nokia because of the organiser. Either the person making that comment had no brain or…well, they just had no brain obviously!

The only downside I have seen with my phone so far is the common complaint – battery life – but as I’ve been playing with the phone quite a bit to familiarise myself with it – I doubt this will be a real problem for me in the near future. I’ll see how it goes.

The only other slight down point is the highly probable ease at which this phone would become disfigured. I have invested in a crystal hard case which goes around the phone but still allows all it’s functions to be available, so keypad is accessible at all times, as well as the input and output points (charger input, USB cable input, etc). The most important things are protected…screen, corners, back. Other cases I looked at either would make the phone look ugly or would be impractical as you would be having to take the phone in and out of the case all the time to access all the phones functions. The crystal cases are cheap as well, so once they start to get too marked and scuffed, you can just buy another.

I really, really love this phone! Rated out of 10, I would give it (minus points for fragility and battery life):

9/10

6 September 2007

Long-tailed tits!

Guess what we had yesterday morning in our garden? We had not just one…or two, or even three. We had approximately TEN long-tailed tits!! Up to five of them were on the feeder containing the fat balls. They stayed less than five minutes, and when they were ready to leave, they all left one by one from the tree. I’d NEVER had long-tailed tits in my garden before (either here or at Birchen Grove) and to see so many all at once was just brilliant. Cute little birds – I dearly hope they come back and it’s not a one-off!

3 September 2007

If it looks too good to be true…

Well, I got my D520 phone, but alas the thing were dog-done no good. The eBay seller said “100% working order”…erm, WRONG! The camera packed up after I took one picture, I couldn’t get into the music player, and the mp3’s that were on it were corrupted. Beside that, I expected it to be in used condition, but it looked like it had seen a few pavements in its life.

The seller said they were unaware of those faults as they had not used the features on the phone. It had been their sons phone and he had not mentioned that they didn’t work. I sent it back and they gave me a refund, so that was all and good. But then I was left without a phone, as I had sold my own phone to help fund the “upgrade”.

So my search continued. Initially I wanted to get a Nokia 5200 but was disappointed with the camera spec. Then I started to look around for a Nokia 5300 instead. I could get one on eBay at a reasonable price, but I was very “once bitten, twice shy” because of what happened. I looked into getting one new through a dealer, but they are sold out all over the place. Whilst looking for a Nokia 5300, I was also looking at another Nokia model – the 6111. Down sides to that was fixed memory of only 23mb, but it was a decent spec. Then I saw ratings people were giving this phone. Loads of people saying it was shit – a common fault being that it turns itself off and on all the time. Not good.

I relly wanted to go back to having a Nokia phone. I like the way the work. My old 3310 was such a good phone, and although equally my Siemens had been great, I didn’t think to look at their modern phones (of which there wouldn’t be many). So, after more an more searching I have decided to go for a Nokia 6300. It has all the stuff I want, 2 megapixel camera, video recording, play, streaming, mp3 player and ringtones, FM radio, MMS…and even pluses I might be able to use later down the line like Push To Talk. I can see there are down sides to the phone already. People say it doesn’t have adequate internal memory, which does sound low at only 7MB, but it can take a 2GB micro SD card, so it shouldn’t be a prob. The biggest thing people complain about is battery life. At best most people say a 3 day charge. I am use to several days with my Siemens, so I might get a little frustrated if the battery life is really piss poor, but others say battery life is no prob.

I’ll soon see. It arrives tomorrow and I’m reserved, but excited. I REALLY hope this phone will be *it* and I won’t have to worry about upgrades for a good 3-4 years now. Fingers firmly crossed.