mike[space] dot net

I spent a bit of time over the weekend trying to work out how to import all my old blog posts (pre-New Zealand) into the website. Sadly it didn't all work out, as the version of mysql i have on my laptop doesn't match up with that of the my hosting provider. So now I have to work out a different way of dealing with the import. A little disappointing all in all ...

Today, I woke up in the mood to sort out my website. So that is what I have done. Much of the change will be completely invisible to you, as it has mainly been about updating the backend software to a more recent version - I am now running drupal 5.10, instead of the antiquated (and probably insecure) 4.7.2.

A slight change to the website, as I have decided to start leveraging all those wonderful social networking type tools that are out there a little more, rather than trying to do it myself. This mainly means that the gallery is not going to be being updated anymore, and I will be using flikr for my pics, and I decided that I would sign up for twitter as well, for those little updates in life which has become quite appealing to me after following raettig for a week or two.

This is all a part of preparation for updating the website soon as well, I simply couldn't face all the tedious faffing around that will inevitably arise from having to deal with gallery integration and the like.

recently I found that I was having a problem with my iPhone that meant that it would not play albums in order, and kept on shuffling it. Clearly I had inadvertently hit a setting without meaning to, but I couldn't find it for love nor money. A quick google though, and I've found out how to sort it ... when a track is playing, tap the artwork, and icons for repeat play and shuffle appear, so you can turn them on and off there.

As usual, it's easy once you know how ;-)

Edit: nice clear description of the interface (and a critique) can be found here

So lots of posts of linkage lately, but not so much about me ... so this will be one of those nice and self-indulgent updates, where I shall cover the gamut of exciting things that have been occuring in my life of late. The Saturday just gone marked the third Saturday night in a row with a serious sesssion of Rock Band going on. I've got seriously into the singing, really throwing myself into it. I'm not sure I am necessarily all that good, but I've been getting respectable scores on some songs, and frankly it's so much fun it's well worth it. Sarah is probably the best singer we've had on it overall I reckon, although Dan and Jo were the big surprise at my birthday party!

In common with a lot of the rest of the iPhone using world, I appear to have completely borked my phone, which is a bonus. The firmware came available for download when I got back from my run, and everything proceeded smoothly right up until the point when the phone needed to contact the iTunes store for (I presume) activation. So now the only thing it can be used for is emergency calls.

You can't help but think that a better approach would be for the upgrade process to retrieve any hardware information it needed from the phone and doing activation, before proceeding with wiping all the current settings. Y'know, so I didn't wind up without a phone entirely?

Am about to move flat, so as usual my internet connection is about to disappear for anything up to two weeks. BT want to charge a bastard fortune to get a phone line hooked up, and Virgin want to read my data and decide whether they want to keep me as a customer or not. In the meantime I will be stuck with my 2G connection on my iPhone. Which just became very old hat ;-)

I'm not quite sure how this happens, but apparently I am able to keep up my blog more regularly when I have a fulltime job, than when I have all the time in the world! So how about a quick catch up?

The biggest news is that Claire has got herself a teaching job for next year, which is bloody awesome. In fact Claire has very nearly finished the whole course as well, which is also awesome, if for no other reason than it will mean she can catch up on her sleep ;-)

The next biggest is that we have found ourselves a new flat. We initially plumped for a large 2 bed place with a big garden, but a second visit revealed just how big a problem the damp was likely to be, and we wound up with a large 1 bed place with a garden instead. It's smaller than we have now, which is going to mean we will need to be a bit neater than we are now, but it's a really nice place, the garden is in good condition and a nice size for BBQs, and it's literally a stone's throw from Brockwell Park, which I am very happy about.

Johnny Lee shows you how it's done

or something like that anyway ... their servers seem to be getting significantly overloaded. Not been able to connect properly the last couple of evenings for Mario Kart (error code 61070 fwiw), and when I got in last night, it was seriously laggy. Trying to hit karts with shells when the karts are disappearing and reappearing in different parts of the course is really frustrating!

It's pretty annoying, considering how long it's taken to get Mario Kart out, and it's not hard to figure out that one of the most popular multi player game series is going to lead to significant demand. I've not seen any official word that it's capacity problems, but I know it's not just me, so something's going on.