Author: Richard

A Year Is A Long Time In Politics

| Richard

A year ago today, I moved my stuff out of my ex-girlfriend’s place knowing I would never be going back.

And I’ve not looked back since.

My life is great: work, family and relationships are all going from strength to strength and I’m doing stuff I enjoy doing without compromise and usually without fear. I have great plans for 2012 and beyond too, which is always good.

Of course I miss my Fireblade which was stolen from London a week later but every freedom has its price and I ploughed the insurance money back into my ZRX1200R so all’s well that ends well.

Apple iPhone 4S

| Richard

I decided that I wanted another phone to replace the aging Sony Ericsson W595 I use for my photography admininstration – to use as a mini iPad – and also to refresh my present iPhone 4 (and yes, I also have another iPhone 4 from my day job!).

More or less in line with the normal product evolution for the iPhone, Apple had recently released its iPhone 4S.

iPhone 4S

iPhone 4S

As you can see, the form factor’s not really changed too much: the volume controls have been shifted a little downwards but other than that, it’s more or less the same size (I’ve not got the micrometer out to check).

What has changed is the processor and it does feel much snappier, a feeling borne out by the benchmarking on CNET UK’s iPhone 4S Review.

The camera is supposed to be much improved with a few new gizmos: we’ll see.

The killer app or at least the headliner is Siri: a more intelligent voice recognition and command app. At first, it looked as though this was somehow missing and I initially thought that the way I’d set it up (see below) was to blame. It wasn’t: it just needed enabling in the phone’s settings. First impressions were good, but other than the novelty factor I won’t be using it at the office, for instance, though I see it really being of use to me when I’m in the car and a text message comes through: Siri can read it out and send a dictated reply. It’ll be interesting to see if that’s done through my Mazda RX-8′s Bluetooth sound system or the iPhone’s loudspeaker.

Setting it all up was something I thought would be a nightmare, but I followed Apple’s instructions, backing up my ‘old’ iPhone 4 and then when setting up the iPhone 4S, restored from that backup. I just needed to enter all my passwords again – good security touch that – and then sync the songs, films and photos, etc. One last step was to reorder all my Apps the way I like them and resync and I was there. A couple of hours tops.

What took longer was the download of the IOS 5.0.1 update, but that was a necessary evil. I left that downloading whilst I went out for the evening and when I got back I did a quick update and was there.

So was upgrading worth it? For me, yes: I now have the ‘old’ iPhone 4 working for my photography side and everything sync’d with the iCloud. I was running out of space on my iPhone 4 32GB and so the increased storage – I went for the 64GB version – is welcome, even though you only get around 58GB available for some reason. The feeling of a speedier interface is nice too. There’s not so much of the wow! factor I got from moving from IOS 4 to IOS 5, though, but it is a nicer phone overall.

What next? Well what can they do with the iPhone 5? It can’t get smaller or screen size will be reduced. If it’s thinner, it would surely be easier to break as it became a wafer in your pocket. Maybe they’ll just cram more features and storage and speed into it?

As for battery life, I discovered this little tip:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/oct/29/iphone-4s-battery-location-services-bug

Worth reading and acting on? We’ll see. I like the way the time zone is updated when you’re abroad, but I suspect that’s overridden anyway with your cellular provider – Vodafone seems particularly dodgy in this regard from my experience.

Apple iTunes Match and iCloud

| Richard

To be honest, I’m feeling a little let down: when IOS5 was released for the iPhone and iPad, Apple introduced iCloud and a new feature, called iTunes Match:

iTunes Match

If you want the benefits of iTunes in the Cloud for music you haven’t purchased from iTunes, iTunes Match is the perfect solution. It’s built right into the iTunes app on your Mac or PC and the Music app on your iOS devices. And it lets you store your entire collection, including music you’ve imported from CDs or purchased somewhere other than iTunes. For just $24.99 a year.2

Here’s how it works: iTunes determines which songs in your collection are available in the iTunes Store. Any music with a match is automatically added to your iCloud library. Since there are more than 20 million songs in the iTunes Store, most of your music is probably already in iCloud. All you have to upload is what iTunes can’t match. Which is much faster than starting from scratch. Once your music is in iCloud, you can stream and store it on any of your devices. Even better, all the music iTunes matches plays back from iCloud at 256-Kbps AAC DRM-free quality — even if your original copy was of lower quality.

This I decided was a ‘must-have’ feature, so when I installed IOS5 and was prompted to set-up iCloud, I religiously upgraded to 50GB of storage for an additional £70 a year, thinking this would include iTunes Match.

I was misled.

iTunes Match was due to be rolled out by the end of October 2011 but Apple has missed this deadline. Oh and compare and contrast the US iCloud features site and the UK version. See what’s missing? Yes, that’s right: no iTunes Match.

Apple. Epic. Fail.

Skydiving

| Richard

Well that’s another one off The List: skydiving…

I can’t recommend Skydive London enough!

Next? Well the Harley to Sturgis is already booked so I suppose it’s bungee jumping into one of those massive canyons…

Party Time!

| Richard

Well that was a busy weekend!

After my skydive at Skydive London on Friday – photos and videos to follow! – I got back to the apartment late, late on Friday night.

An early start on Saturday morning, as I was heading up to Norfolk to see my kids. Big pre-match lunch at Nando’s before going on to the Norwich v Blackburn match at Carrow Road. After the match – a real thriller and a well-deserved draw – I drove down to Epsom for GT’s 40th birthday party. She looked really gorgeous in the LBD from Ted Baker and French Connection killer heels that I’d picked out! Great food and a great atmosphere too at the Barley Mow where Phil and Cil took good care of all of us and in Cil’s case, slightly overdid the drinks…

Thank goodness the clocks went back, as it was a late night and I had an early start to head back up to Norfolk for Jack’s football and a family lunch before heading back down to London again!

When I got back, a text from a very good friend reminded me of this time last year: a Hallowe’en Party hosted – obviously to be the centre of attention as always! – by my ex-girlfriend in Grimsby. The exchange started something like this:

“This time last year…”

“…wearing masks and pretending to be someone else. And that was just [the ex]. The rest of us were having a Hallowe’en Party!”

Of course by this time, she was already cheating on me whilst professing undying love, etc. I wasn’t to know at this point that it was my wallet she actually loved and everything else was merely escorting… Still, Karma’s a bitch, as they say, and the ex’s new true love is apparently Jack Daniels. That, coupled with her inability to sleep these days – guilt maybe? Yeah right! – has really taken its toll on her looks, and of course her family have apparently all turned against her so she hasn’t even got them any more to use. She’s apparently clinging on to the poor sap who, like her, seems unable to maintain an er… I mean a relationship. I wonder if she told him about her claim last Christmas that she was pregnant by me as a ruse to get me back, even saying that she could ‘fix’ our relationship and lose the loser? Of course that pregnancy miraculously disappeared all by itself when she realised that I wasn’t having anything to do with her and wasn’t sure who the father might have been – one of many potentials – in the very unlikely event she was telling the truth!

All academic, really, and I honestly do thank her from the bottom of my heart: she saved me from throwing my life away with her and her duplicity before I’d wasted too much time (just far too much money) on her. I learned a valuable life lesson too: there will always be those who take advantage of good people like me. What goes around come around…

Oh wait – that’s a tattoo someone else has: the ex used to regularly take the piss out of her behind her back, despite this poor woman being a genuinely nice person. Of course now with the departure of her oldest and dearest friends – again used and lied to like the rest of us – it’s funny how this poor girl is now the ex’s supposed best friend! Still, given the poor lass was interested in the ex’s local hero before the ex ensured they didn’t get together, she’s clearly trying to keep any friends close and her enemies closer still. Trust is a wonderful thing and the levels of paranoia are high with her! It’s also interesting to note how she’s also trying to break up her friends’ relationships to feel better about her own inadequacies.

So the text exchange compared and contrasted my ex with GT: the differences couldn’t be more profound. It’s good to reflect on things sometimes and better to be thankful for where you are today. It’s funny how after I posted a photo of me in Madrid last week to Facebook, a number of friends commented on how much happier I look these days when compared to this time last year. How true!

Corralejo Midday Run

| Richard

So we took our running gear out to Fuerteventura but in the end only managed to do one run … at midday … in the heat and humidity. What do they say about mad dogs and Englishmen?

Goodbye Sofia!

| Richard

So that was an interesting last night out in Sofia: at the end of the Hearing, wine and snacks had been laid on for the Arbitrators, lawyers, experts and the stenographers, so we did our best, finishing the (decent) red wine and the chilled white as well.

We then asked the ‘opposition’ lawyers where we should go for dinner and ended up going eating and drinking with them. My suit got doused by a bottle of beer that decided to blow out the glass bottle base: dripping wet sleeve and more beer over my shirt… which was nice… Fortunately, it is going to be cleaned anyway as a week working with chain-smoking Greeks has left me with a filthy, smelly suit!

200 leva later and ‘our’ lawyers rang to tell us they’d moved to the more comfortable Sheraton – thanks for leaving us! – and to meet them there for drinks. Who were we to say no? So we walked to the Sheraton – going past a Fetish club that looked interesting – and went downstairs to the “Scandal” bar for drinks. The general low ambient light levels and red upholstery rang some alarm bells; the pole dancers more so! Funny how the hotel website doesn’t seem to list this ‘facility’.

Katy, the English stenographer, and I then spent the next hour or so being bitchy about the pole dancers and more particularly their poor choices in lingerie before being asked by our lawyers to mark them out of 10. Very few got over 5/10 though one did have a nice bum and another clearly used her pole for exercise! The Greeks seemed to rate them somewhat higher…

At this point, I did the News of the World reporter bit: made my excuses and left. Somewhat underwhelmed by my first visit to such an establishment – I clearly lead a sheltered life…

Wet and Windy

| Richard

Just before Autumn arrived in Wigan, I ran my route again, made more difficult by the 50mph crosswind and the threat of rain. Here’s the fly-through:

In other news, Garmin have accepted my Forerunner 410 is faulty and it’s been sent back for exchange. We’ll see how long it takes…

“A Nice Day For A White Wedding”

| Richard

Other people taking advantage of the good weather over the weekend included, I’m told, my ex-girlfriend’s ex-husband who was getting remarried in Derby. I represented her successfully in Court as her McKenzie Friend against him but who knows after all the lies she told me how much of her case was fabricated?

Anyway, I wish the happy couple well for their future together; I understand they may be trying to move away due to what they felt was ongoing harassment by the ex.

I was also told that my ex-girlfriend’s eldest daughter was a bridesmaid. It’s good that – having been thrown out of her home before she’d even turned sixteen, so I was told, because she didn’t get on with the new boyfriend – she’s building a relationship with the parent who may actually care about her.

Funny how things turn out…