I’ve just done a complete fresh install of WordPress 2.3.1 here on the Soapbox. Gave it a good scrub and now it’s all shiny. I’ll update the theme over the Christmas holidays. In the interim I’ll just leave this default theme in place.
Update: New theme in place. I like it 🙂
Michael Bywater has a rant on The New Humanist website about atheists not calling Christmas by that name. I agree with him. It’s known as Christmas to everyone and their dog. It’s not a religious festival for very many people that I know. From what I can see it’s not a religious festival anymore in the UK at all. Christmas is a national holiday to eat too much, spend too much and have a good time. Religion has nothing to add.
But we can and should call it Christmas. Lets avoid the so called War on Christmas drivel that gets trotted out and just have a good time over the holidays. Don’t worry about offending anyone. Religious or non-religious.
BTW: this is what a real War of Christmas would look like:
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This is a bit of a blast from the past. First released in 1972 on the Argus album by Wishbone Ash. The whole album is stunningly good. I could have picked several of the tracks for the Song of the Day, but Sometime World was chosen as it is very, very good indeed. Wishbone Ash were one of the first bands to use 2 lead guitarists. The guitar parts are multi-layered, complex and, most importantly, sound wonderful. Sometime World has a guitar section that reminds me of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Free Bird . If you liked that you’ll love Sometime World.
My advice? Buy Argus 🙂
Well sort off. Retro in looks and sounds like a real old phone when it rings. The numbers on the rotary dial are push buttons. See picture below. Quite heavy. Which is good, you can walk away from the phone with the handset and the base stays put. The whole things feels solid. it also gives a nice satisfying clunk when you put the handset back in it’s cradle. This is the 2nd new phone I’ve got recently. The other being an iPhone, which I’ll write about soon.
Click picture for larger view
BTW: The phone above is available from John Lewis.
I’ve just moved into a new role in work. My new title is Technology Consultant. A major part of the job function will be finding, evaluating and introducing new technologies into the company I work for and into our ICT offerings. I’ll also have a team of people working for me. Should be fun. Getting paid to look at new stuff. Obviously there will be more to it than that, but still…
The Omni Group have announced pricing and a release date for OmniFocus. I’ve been using the beta versions for a while. It’s a very nice application for sorting out the things you need to get done. It can help you implement the Getting Things Done methodology. Well worth checking out if you need an application to help sort your life out and keep track of all the tasks you need to do in work and personal life. The also have a nice movie, that is the first of a series to be posted, to show how to use the application.
I haven’t heard this song for ages. Several years, until it came up on random play in iTunes today. I was working from home writing stuff for work with the music as background. I did something I very rarely do these days and just let iTunes play songs at random from the whole library of between 4 & 5 thousand tracks. That’s just under 20 days of music if I let it play through the whole library.
Anyway it threw up In a Broken Dream by Python Lee Jackson with Rod Stewart as guest vocalist. This is a truly wonderful piece of music. The vocals are fantastic. The guitar is blistering. The bass guitar is stunningly good, and the drumming is a perfect rhythmic complement to the whole thing. It’s tracks like this that remind me what a truly wonderful thing music is. Brilliant.
I can’t find it on iTMS to link to it. There is a YouTube video of about 3 minutes 30 seconds of the track. It’s a video of a vinyl copy being played 🙂
It’ll let you get a good feel for the song. I have it on the best Rock Album in the world…ever. Vol 1.
The SF Sketchfest comedy festival is on in SF from 10th to 27th January. Happy days. I’ll be in San Francisco for 10 of those days. Have to keep an eye on the Sketchfest schedule to see who is performing on the nights I’m there.
First heard on the current TV ad for the Saab 93. Grabbed from iTMS.
Taken from the album Let There Be Love.
I’ve used my Marriott points and BA AirMiles, as discussed here, to book 10 days in San Francisco in January for Macworld Conference and Expo 2008. Planning on going to a day long Office 2008 launch event on Monday 14th, Steve Jobs keynote and expo hall on Tuesday 15th and then the Mac IT conference for the rest of the week. I’ll be in San Francisco from Friday 11th so will have a weekend before the conference for exploring and getting used to the time difference. I’m going to hire a bike and ride over the Golden Gate bridge to Sausalito for lunch one day. I’ll have 1.5 days after the conference in San Francisco as well, 9 nights in total. Happily I have enough Marriott rewards points banked over the last 2 years to get the hotel for free (apart from local taxes). I’m also flying British Airways Club World both ways using BA Executive Club points to upgrade. Sweet 🙂