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29.08.2009 Mmmmmm food!
Giant Garlic King Prawns on a bed of Potato dauphinoise as cooked by two French guys on a giant skillet on Droitwich High Street! Yum!
28.08.2009 Tweaked!
God only knows why it’s taken me so long, but I’ve finally gotten round to tweaking the comment display on this theme. Comments are now nicely styled and the edit textarea box doesn’t extend beyond the width of the site anymore. Enjoy!
28.08.2009 Flash Back…
So… here’s something I haven’t done for a while – the Friday Five! This week… we’re talking about tolerance!
1. How’s your tolerance for alcohol?
It really depends on what I’m drinking and the mood I’m in – on an empty stomach, two pints of lager or two glasses of wine and I can be on my ass, however with a loaded stomach and drinking spirits I can drink most people under the table. For an example, just ask anyone that came to my stag do – they’ll back me up!
That said, these days I don’t drink as much as I used to, so my mad drinking skills are probably somewhat depleted compared to how they used to be. On the other hand, last weekend I was bored and drank the best part of a (large) bottle of Gin.
2. How’s your tolerance for noisy neighbours?
I’m incredibly passive and generally like to avoid confrontation if I can help it. Generally I’ll put up and shut up or respond by being noisier than tho. Living in a flat above a noisy twat helped me realise that people soon get the message when they can hear your music over their own.
3. How’s your tolerance for physical pain?
Pretty good actually. Rather than go to the doctor I prefer to deal with my own ingrowing toenails by ripping them out using nothing but a Stanley Knife and a pair of pliers. I’ve done that on several occasions just to get it over and done with rather than dealing with the bureaucracy of the NHS. I also spent a whole night in agony with appendicitis a few years back just to ensure that my wife could get a good nights sleep after her late shift.
4. How’s your tolerance for intolerant people?
I think tolerance is a great thing and I try to tolerate everything that comes up in my life. Everyone has a right to think what they want, have their own religion and their own lifestyle. It’s not my right to say what people can and can’t do. At the same time Intolerant people are just choosing their own path – I have no right to tell them what they can and can’t think or say or do and as such I tend to ignore them rather than kick off. So… I tolerate them.
5. How’s your tolerance for bad music?
I like what I like and I like a wide range of music, but I can’t stand listening to other peoples music if it doesn’t meet my own musical tastes. That said, I’ll usually shut up and put up rather than start a conflict, with the exception of my wife who listens to some truly shocking music. We have to make joint mix CD’s for the car so we both have a bit of our own style of music.
27.08.2009 Still Nuts!
So… I was flicking through some of my old blog posts (god… the memories!) and I came across this post, during which I took this test to ascertain my mentalness levels. Turns out, by some bizarre coincidence, I’m somewhat less mental than I was back in October 2002! I guess that’s better than nothing! 
| Disorder | Rating |
| Paranoid: | High |
| Schizoid: | Low |
| Schizotypal: | High |
| Antisocial: | Moderate |
| Borderline: | Moderate |
| Histrionic: | Low |
| Narcissistic: | Moderate |
| Avoidant: | High |
| Dependent: | Moderate |
| Obsessive-Compulsive: | Low |
25.08.2009 Slice n Dice
Well… after months of dicking about and shifting from one hosting provider to another, I have finally found one provider that I’m truly happy with.
At first, on the recommendation of other geeks, I signed up for a VPS with MediaTemple in the USA. I had heard loads of great things about them and they have an awesome website, but there VPS was just a big fat fail for me. I’m not sure why but in the couple of months I was with them, they performed several bouts of maintenance, suffered from extremely laggy performance, all that coupled with my pet peeve Plesk was enough to drive me straight out of their arms and into the arms of another.
That other turned out to be Slicehost. Slicehost aren’t like other hosting providers, there’s no ‘plan’ as such, just a choice of distro’s available in a choice of sizes. You pick what you want and then you are on your own to configure that distro however you like. To be honest, on your own is probably about as far from the truth as it could get – their support staff are on hand 24/7 and always extremely helpful no matter what the problem. I suppose ‘free’ would be a better way of phrasing it.
My Slicehost (virtual) server has always been amazingly fast, reliable and they’ve normally told me about downtime (and fixed it!) before I notice it’s happened. Literally, there is nothing I can fault Slicehost on at this time which makes me very, very happy! I think my only complaint is that they are based in the USA – if they could copy their infrastructure to a data center in the UK, I would be very keen to move just because of the geographic aspects and the benefit that has on SEO.
I think the only drawback of using Slicehost is the fact that you may need a bit of experience with Linux based operating systems and shell access to be able to get your server doing something of use. When I started I had a basic understanding of using Linux from the command line (basic move, delete, copy, rename type operations) and some experience of configuring Apache web servers, but beyond that very little. Luckily, Slicehost have some great tutorials that walk you through every stage of the process, from installing your web server of choice (Apache2 FTW!) to adding scripting and database support, even more complex things like securing the box and configuring firewall rules. By following their tutorials I was able to get a fully functional LAMP stack up and running in less than half a day. I’ve done it again a couple of times since (just for fun!) and now have the time down to under an hour!
If you are interested in giving Slicehost a try after reading my review, please use this link as I’ll receive a little bit of credit on my account for the referral
I’m still using Namesco for my domain name registration as they are located just around the corner from me in sunny Worcester and I find their services to be quick and efficient and their DNS administration panel is nice and easy to use. Everything I need really!
07.08.2009 Book Reviews
I’ve been reading quite a few books lately, not sure if it’s just because I’m getting old or what but I seem to prefer reading on paper to staring at my screen like I do for the rest of my life, so I’ve been putting RSS behind me and focusing on reading ‘real’ books instead. Here’s some short reviews of some of my recent reads:
The 4 hour work week – Timothy Ferriss
It’s an inspiring read if nothing else detailing how to manipulate your daily routine to maximise the free time you can spend on personal projects, travelling the world and generally dicking about. I’ve put a number of steps from this book into action and have already managed to make myself way more efficient than I have been in the past. Well worth reading.
How to make millions with your ideas – Dan S. Kennedy
I was a bit disappointed by this book – I was hoping for something radical and outstanding, but what I actually got was a book thats over ten years old featuring outdated marketing schemes and a minimal mention of the ‘information superhighway’ (as the author calls it). I’m sure it was radical for its time, but in 2009 it’s more like a ‘marketing for dummies’ book.
Get to the top on Google – David Viney
A great book with some really interesting tips for anyone with an interest in search engine optimisation, with lots of interesting resources and methods of performing well in search engines. To summarise the book, write lots of good content, optimise the markup then get lots of inbound links. Of course, the book goes into a lot more detail than that, but thats the long and short of it. One of the reasons I bought this book was a promise of access to the authors forum where you can actually discuss SEO with like-minded people and the author himself. Unfortunately, for some reason the author has gone awol and most of the most knowledgeable posters have jumped ship. A great book, let down by a lack of follow up advice on the promised forum.
The Paradox of Choice: Why more is less – Barry Schwartz
I haven’t finished reading this yet, but it’s a pretty in-depth psychology book explaining how your average person is swamped by the multitude of choices they have to make in the modern world and how actually giving people less choice improves their quality of life. I’m already applying principles from this book in my day job and it’s having great results! Highly recommended to anyone that has an interest in psychology or user interaction.
I’m also currently reading a lot of travel books including the ‘backpackers ultimate guides’ BUG Australia and BUG New Zealand, which are a bit crap as a straight read but will be quite interesting I think when I’m abroad. I also have the 80/20 Principle by Richard Koch in my to-read list.
I’m trying to decide what books to take travelling with me for general reading. I’m thinking about taking The Accidental Billionaires: Sex, Money, Betrayal and the Founding of Facebook by Ben Mezrich and Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel by Rolf Potts. I’m not sure how long they’ll last considering I have a twelve hour flight to China at the start of my journey plus two weeks on the beach in Thailand when we arrive but I’ll need something to keep my occupied.
Finally – this post has finally pushed that noisy skate video post off the front page – hooray, you’ll never be bothered again by that annoying video when visiting my homepage!
15.07.2009 I’ll Wear Your T-Shirt
I don’t think I’ve talked about it much here on this blog, but I’m off travelling around the world in October and I’ll be visiting China, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and the West coast of America for about 16 weeks in total. I’m very lucky in that my employers have agreed that I can have a period of unpaid leave and then return to work when I’m done.
So I can have the best possible experience, I’ve started a little project to try and raise some more money for the journey – quite simply, I’m auctioning off the advertising rights to my chest for a whole year. That’s right, I’ll wear a branded t-shirt as picked for me by the highest bidder every day for 365 days!
I’ve built a dedicated site for the project at www.iwearyourtshirt.com – go check it out!
On a side note, I have about 2 weeks until the auction begins and need all of the promotion I can get. I would really appreciate it if you would blog, tweet and link to the project from your own sites and let your followers know what I’m up too! It’s going to take a massive push to get this out to the public and I’m going to need all the help I can get!
29.06.2009 Why do we boil water for tea?
Why is it that a kettle boils water? Experts suggest that the perfect temperature for a cup of tea should be between 60 and 65 degrees Celsius, any hotter and the leaves become scalded and lose their flavour. Despite this, kettle manufacturers continue to create devices that boil the water to well over a hundred degrees.
If a kettle were to be produced that only heated the water to 65 degrees, we would get better tea, faster and with an energy reduction of around 40%. Surely that makes sense especially with tea consumption being as high as it is in the UK!
Naturally, a kettle of this type would need a dial to allow for hotter water on those rare occasions where the water is needed for something other than tea…
Time for some rough science… 
The average Brit drinks around 5 cups of tea per day (according to the UK Tea Council and the total population in the UK is around 61 million people. That means the UK consumes around 366 million cups of tea per day. A quick google indicates to that it costs around £0.02 to boil a kettle at current market rates. That works out at a national cost of £732,0000 per day or £2671,800,000 per year spent on boiling kettles in the UK.
If we reduce this figure by the 40% that would equate to a national saving per year of around £1068,720,000 and £14.60 for each person in the country. Naturally, this assumes that everyone makes their own cups of tea, doesn’t drink cold drinks and always consumes the national average number of cups per day (I did say it was rough science!).
That’s more money than I can imagine in my head, a massive saving and a huge improvement on national energy consumption levels.
Whoa… this could possibly be the most boring thing I’ve ever posted on my blog!
21.06.2009 World Tour
This has been a big month for Wifey and me – we have now cleared the last of our debt and are in a position to go and buy tickets for our big travelling adventure.
It’s been a real slog, but we’ve worked hard and made a lot of sacrifices to get into a position where we’re completely free of debt, but somehow we’ve made it and we’re ready to rock.
So, tickets are being booked this month, then we just have to save up our spending money. The plan is to leave late September to mid October so we can be somewhere cool for New Year.
My inner geek is in the process of setting up a travel blog where we hope to post pictures and whatnot from the tour as and when we get a chance. I’ll provide more details closer to the time as there’s not much point shouting about it at the moment.
Exciting times ahead!
21.06.2009 On me todd.
Warning, long and meandering post ahead – you have been warned!
I had a bit of a strange, but somewhat revealing night tonight. For as long as I can remember I’ve been a shy person who won’t ever go out in public unless I have someone to tag along with. Call it a lack of social confidence if you like, but whatever it is – I’ve never been one for being ‘out’ on my own.
Yet tonight something strange happened, Wifey went out on one of her Ghost hunts tonight and I found myself stuck in on my own again. Normally I would have spent the night in, watching DVD’s and playing on my Xbox 360, with the most sociable part of the night being me hurling abuse while handing out the pwnage in COD4. Yet tonight I didn’t do that – I went out, in public on my own.
I started the night at the local cinema – I’d been wanting to watch Transformers 2, since I heard it was being made, and knowing the wife hates sci-fi and action films, decided to make the most of my time alone and squeeze that one in. As the film ended, it occurred to me that the night was still relatively young and I hadn’t yet seen the new Star Trek movie, so I took a piss, grabbed some more munchies and rolled in to the next showing (obviously, not all at the same time!).
By time Star Trek had finished and I’d got home I didn’t feel like I was ready to call it a night, so I headed up to my local and had a couple of drinks. I got to the pub just as a the band Drunk Lovers, Sinners & Saints were finishing up a covers set. I only heard a couple of tracks but they were pretty damn good. Having now been on their Myspace page (link above) and listened to their original music, I have to say – I’m a fan! I really like Paramore and their music definitely reminds me of them.
Anyway this is the first time I know of that I’ve ever been to a pub on my own, without someone for support. I was expecting to feel really self concious but I didn’t feel like that at all. I’m trying to work out what has changed in me recently that would cause that sudden increase in confidence. The only thing I can think of is that I’m now older and wiser and don’t give quite such a rats ass what people think of me any more.
