Kyle and O2 part company.

As part of my 'getting ready for going to Australia' plans, I phoned O2 today to ask to put my account on hold - as I did during my travels in 2000. The best O2 could offer me was to reduce my line rental to £16 a month, not a very good deal at all. So I asked for my PAC and bought a Virgin SIM! Much better deal. All I need to do now is to phone someone for a second or so every month or so while I'm away to keep it ticking.

What a shame for O2 - I've been with Cellnet / BT Cellnet / O2 for nine years now, and they made no effort to keep me! Customer loyalty highly regarded there.

I was thinking of switching to Virgin a while ago, as I saw very sad and made a spreadsheet working out the costs of about three statements comparing O2 and Virgin and found no difference in cost.

I want to keep my phone number though, which is why I have to do it now before I move. Grr, more hassle.

Golddiggas, Headnodders & Pholk Songs

Just bought the new Beautiful South album today, a great album of cover versions of some very eclectic songs. I particularly like You're The One That I Want, Don't Fear the Reaper and I'm Stone in Love with You.

The Pholk songs of the title is earned by using Danny Thompson on one track, provided it's the one I'm thinking of! The Beautiful South have a regular brass section featuring a Tony Robinson, so I could be mistaken!

John Peel

Today the world lost another irreplaceable person too soon, it seems
that recently too many public figures have gone and knocked me for 6.

Probably the best thing I liked about John Peel was his writing in the
Radio Times that I only ever got at Christmas. Of course his Radio 1
shows, which I did not listen to enough, were very important, but it
was through his writing that we got to know him and his family. He
seemed a thoroughly nice chap, and it is a sad and sudden loss to his
family and the British public, a sad day for music.

I (heart) Google

New! Flashy Google things! Woo hoo!
I bought these from the Google Store, along with a Blogger T-shirt all good stuff.

From the instructions:

Besides of flashing, the model can also be used as a light pen, it can be applicable to large convert, lighting in the car, camping, mountain climbing, etc.

please reset it to the core by holding the pen tube and turning it to the right. While turning it to the left it would be reset.

The core should be reset without use. When the switch is on, LED works

I Quit!

Today I handed in my notice at work, I have three weeks left and then I am off.

If you have been following me this past year you will have noticed that I asked for a pay rise in April, and that I was turned down. Well I have been planning on leaving before then, as I have friends in Australia and have long been planning on going over there for a bit. Finally I can make it!

I bought a Bucket of Water from FHM on eBay

Yes, I really did buy a Bucket of Water on eBay for £104. Not £300, £120, £142.32, £80 or any of the other random guesses from the 800+ results on Google!

Yes, I knew it was a stunt by FHM, I even had my own full page spread in the May 2003 issue.

It was me, OK? I own up to it, I am Kyle Thompson, an engineer, from Woking.

Happy now?

Magic Moments With Brendan Shine

At long last I have a copy of Brendan Shine's 1989 album
Magic Moments with...
Not heard of him, or his canon? Hardly surprising. Brendan Shine
is one of those Easy Listening artists, popular with old ladies
here and at home in Ireland, contemporary of Mulligan and O'Hare
and the like.
So why am I so pleased to have got hold of an album by a little-known
singing-by-numbers artist? Well this album has one thing going for it:
Bould O'Donoghue, a rocking Trad. Irish tune, which I heard on
Danny Baker's GLR show in 1996 and have been after ever since. I'm
listening to it now and it's every bit as good as I remembered it.

"Will you be my Best Man?"

"Yes"

Argh! What do I do now? Are there books? Support groups? What do I have to do? Speeches? Stag dos? Strippers?

It is very nice of m'friend Matt to ask me, I was not really expecting it. Now I just need to figure out what to do about it.

Top cartoon

Special Application

This really is a quite special application that cropped up this morning
on my work computer. I have no idea what it is, but felt the need to
share it with you.

Dunsfold

On the 10 October I took part in my 3rd St John Ambulance Dunsfold
training day. This time I was a casualty again, a referee suffering from
a fractured base of skull and fractured ankle too.

It was a bit of a nightmare situation - cramped doorways and twists.
Most crews longboarded me and stood me up, one used a KED.

The most successful crew got me out without standing me fully upright,
which felt much more secure, although I did end up sideways at one point
which was a little scary!

Using the KED I felt twisted me too much. However I was supposed to be
unconscious anyway, so I wouldn't have noticed!

There are photos of Dunsfold from April and October 2004 on my pictures
pages here

Zire 72 6 month review

On 14 May I took delivery of a palmOne Zire 72, which was a new product at the time.

I gave my first impressions here, and not much has changed since then, apart from one thing: The paint finish.

Apparently there is a lot of brouhaha on the interweb about the 'new' textured paint finish that was applied to these units. It is simply that the paint wears off, much like the very similar finish did on my Psion Series 5.

My PDA has just been returned to me just over 2 weeks after I sent it off for warranty replacement because of the paint finish. I now have, presumably, a reconditioned unit as a replacement.

All in this paint thing doesn't really bother me, which seems odd to myself as I'm usually very fussy about these things, but I bought the thing to use.

Otherwise the PDA functions superbly, iSync synchronisation with my Mac's PIM programs is simple (iCal, Address Book) although it would be nice if individual iCal calendars got sync'd to categories, and if Address Book pictures got sync'd to the Zire's address book.

Movies and Pictures get synchronised to my Movies and Pictures folders, and the 'Copy to Palm' droplet is a nice way of copying data to your PDA.

A Macintosh, Bluetooth and Salling Clicker is a match made in Computer Heaven.

Replacing my paint-worn Zire with a new, reconditioned, one was painless, I simply removed the device from iSync, and then re-inserted it choosing "erase data on device and restore" for first sync. All software and most settings were restored. only categories in the Palm calendar were not restored, and passwords in Versa Mail. I've just sent myself an email from the Palm via my T610 and it has worked fine.

Actually some software that I've previously uninstalled from the Palm were restored, but better that then the other option!

All in, a good device, I'm happy with it.

Hull

Who knew? Hull is nice.

On the 24/25 September I went up to Hull for a holiday, now I know this might seem like a bit of a odd choice for a holiday venue, but I wanted to visit the university and also Grafton Street, the place where The Housemartins and The Beautiful South all started! I had a pint in Paul Heaton's old local!

So Hull's quite nice, then? It's like most places, there are nice bits and there are rough bits. But the nice bits won. Friendly people, lots of varied pubs, some great architecture.

I took a few photos of my trip, that are here: http://kylet.co.uk/pictures/hull/

All in, I shall be returning.