House Buying Update

Received the contract for the house today! Yay!

On every document there is a typo in the names. Boo!

I’ll have to call the lawyers tomorrow to see how much of an issue this is.

Back to the Day Job

First day back in the office. Managed to survive and it could have been a lot worse! However by 3pm I was wiped out and ready to go home. It’ll take a couple of days to get back into my routine I guess.

4 days until the weekend!

Review: The Proposal

How the hell did I end up seeing this film? I think the blame will have to lay squarely with my friends.

The problem with seeing films as a group (there’s usually five or six of us) is that occasionally the guys will win the vote resulting in films with lots of explosions etc, and sometimes the girls will win the vote, resulting in us seeing films like The Proposal.

While I won’t say I hated it, it’s not going to end up on the list of DVD’s I want to buy. If you’ve seen one romantic comedy you’ve seen then all really. The story line is about as predictable as they come and it was obvious when we were leaving the theatre that there was a male/female split in what the group thought about it.

Luckily the films coming out this summer seem to be an improvement on this from the trailers I’ve seen.  Hopefully it’s uphill from here.

iPhone Push Notification & WiFi Bug

This post is slightly geeky and more for my own benefit just in case I come across this problem again and need to fix it.

There is a bug in iPhone OS 3.0 and 3.0.1 that stops push notifications from working when the phone is connected to the internet over wifi. I could only ever receive push notifications when outside my home connected to the cell network.  Despite having cell reception in my home the very fact the phone had a wifi connection seemed to kill push.

The solution (and I have no idea why this works) is to manually change the iPhone’s wifi DNS settings to use a public DNS server (like OpenDNS) and not allow it to receive it’s DNS settings from the wireless router.

I changed this setting and the notifications flooded in!

Review: G.I. Joe

Here’s an admission; I’m a big fan of films with plots that don’t make a whole lot of sense but involve a lot of car chases, fighting and things blowing up.

Therefore I’m going to go out on a limb and say that G.I. Joe is the best film I have seen this year since Star Trek. The characters are great, Sienna Miller is looking good (much better as a brunette) and there was more than enough action to keep me amused for a couple of hours.

Highly recommended.

Who Broke the Internet?

I can imagine everyone is being a lot more productive this afternoon since the internet seems to be hosed…. well Twitter and Facebook are borked for me and both are usually the sites that distract me when I should be doing something more productive with my days off.

The last few days have been very relaxed and I should be in a state ready to go back to work now.  The last few weeks I have found myself experiencing that Friday afternoon tiredness on a Monday morning and that’s never a good sign. I definitely needed some time out of the office. We’ve been more or less constant since the start of the year.

I’ve spent my time improving my non existent photography skills and… *shudder*… shopping. Damn those inconsiderate friends for having birthdays! Still, the resulting birthday meal was a lot of fun as normal.

Now I just need to enjoy the time I have left before heading back to the office.

Update: Twitter is experiencing a distributed denial of service attack.

Woburn Safari

Some pictures I recently took:

Woburn Safari – August 4th

Review: Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

Time for a confession….

I never got around to seeing the fourth and fifth Harry Potter films.  I can’t even recall what I was doing when my friends put themselves in the queue to see those films… washing my hair maybe? I’m just not hugely excited by the whole Harry Potter franchise that has sprung up and the craze that seems to follow it.  I haven’t even read the seventh book yet, something which I should really get around to, considering there is a copy not 12 inches away sat on a bookshelf next to where I’m typing.

However, I found myself watching this one, somewhat helped by the fact I now possess a Cineworld Unlimited card which should now see me watching no end of rubbish films.

The film itself wasn’t that bad.  I couldn’t remember any of it happening in the book but then again my friends did remind me that it had probably been years since I read the last book.  It didn’t feel too long which is what sometimes happens with the HP films and while there was a decent amount of action the ending feels somewhat anti-climatic…. which is possibly the worst crime you can commit when writing a film ending.

Review: G-Force 3D

In the battle of the summer’s big 3D movies G-Force is definitely the weaker when compared to Ice Age which I saw a few weeks ago.

The story (which involves a network of killer coffee machines…) didn’t keep me all that interested and I can’t say it was all that action packed either.

The film is definitely just one for people who have a thing for cute animals.

Review: Bruno

Disturbing. Just disturbing.

That’s all I can say about it really!

Jobless Graduate Sues her College (via BBC)

Apparently a graduate unable to find work in the US is suing her college

I thought I would post this in an attempt to come up with some words to describe how completely stupid I think this is, but I really can’t find any.

So all I will say is…. this is completely stupid!

No really, I worry about  the sanity of our planet when this is the type of thing people feel they should take legal action against.

Still Here

I’m getting slightly more successful at writing here although I still have a long way to go. It’s been a couple of weeks since I last wrote anything…. sorry about that!

Some downtime at work means I’ve taken a few days off.  Not many of the bigger projects move forward during August due to the number of people taking time off.  This means as the techy person I can also escape the office and the chains on my desk for a few days…. although I really hate to think how many emails I’ll end up going back to.  A guesstimate in the hundreds probably isn’t that far out… still I’m pretty good at shutting those kind of thoughts away and not considering them until I’m back in the office.

Although as soon as I get back into work we’re into a period of about six weeks where all leave is banned due to the volume at work. No rest for the wicked I guess?

The house moving thing hasn’t moved any further forward. The surveys etc are all done and it’s not just a case of waiting for the contracts to be drawn up. Is it me or do lawyers have no sense of urgency unless they’re waiting on you to do something? Really hoping though to hear something in the next couple of weeks. For now I’ll just be patient.