Various goings on. Week 1 to 4.

PART ONE: STUFF

Okay, almost to week 4.

And yes, this is a very abridged version. I'm in the NAAFI (armed forces recreational center) and I have other stuff to get done back in my room.

After a traditional and rather upsetting tearful goodbye at the train station, the train journey was uneventful enough and after a couple of short hours, I found myself at ATR Bassingbourn, meeting the first of a load of new friends.

Over the course of the week I grew to know these people vaguely well, and as you can imagine, as time went on, these relationships improved. Eight new friends. Cool.

Towards the end of us initially getting settled into our accomodation, in walks a young lad, looking a bit lost, and nervous. He's bunked up opposite me so since we're practically going to be bunkmates, may as well get to know each other.

Name of Paul, 18 years old, from Perth in Scotland, a lively sense of humour and a bit of a temper. Still, we were getting on at this point so that didn't seem much of an issue for me.

Week one was filled with little more than getting to know the camp, our instructors, each other, and having death by powerpoint inflicted on us by various people, for many hours.

At the end though, we were taken off for a little camping trip in the woods, army style. Having constructed our shelters and got to know each other a little better, we were gratified when the heavens opened and the Cambridgeshire Ocean tried to come back down to earth. Time to put our shelters to the test. Paul and I, as we shared one end of the room, were bashad (living in a basha - a type of tent) up together, and had become pretty good friends at this point.
Did our bashas keep us dry, warm, and keep the water out? Well, yes they did actually. Unfortunately, the pair in the basha next to us had staked one of their pegs under the edge of ours, and as a result, all the water running off our poncho - the sheet making up the roof of the basha - ran into their basha.
Still, shouldn't have pitched up that close to us. The idiots.

Week two was where the paperwork drifted off, and we started getting into the swing of things. Loads of incredibly interminable rifle lessons, and after two weeks, the "restaurant" breakfasts, (for me) a sausage, a hash brown, scrambled eggs, baked beans, and a bowl of bran flakes - EVERY BREAKFAST - started becoming incredibly boring. The dinner and tea menus have enough variety, but breakfasts were something to be tolerated, not enjoyed.

My relationship with my friends had improved and we were all getting on well as a team at this point. Kind of important given the work concerned.

PART TWO: "HAVING A BIT OF A WOBBLE"

Week three brought with it a strenuous run over very hilly terrain, over grassy fields and through woods, no less hilly, and thick with roots.
I ran myself ragged, partly not to let my mates down, and partly because I had some of the Army's finest yelling at me in both ears.
I fell down, I got up. I carried on running.

I don't remember much after that, apparently I fell down again, and did not get up.
Rather amusingly, as one instructor was arranging care/first aid for me, the other who seemed not to be needed, was apparently throwing grass at my recumbent form, repeating "man up".
I don't find that unprofessional or wrong, the way it was explained to me makes it simply sound funny.

I remember being brought back slumped over the seat in a land rover, while mates including one of the corporals (who is one of the coolest guys I've ever met, incidentally) tried to keep me awake, checking whether I knew what my name was (I got it right, eventually), and before long, I got carried bodily through the air by three of my mates, onto an examination table in the med center.

Hmm. Loony blood pressure (92-50), very high temperature, sweating profusely, and hyperventilating. Not a very pleasant way to do things.
Eventually and after a perceivably long time, I started "recovering", but just to be on the safe side, I was carted off in an ambulance to the local civilian hospital about 15 miles away.

A stay overnight in the hospital between the worst snorer in the world, and a dear old gentleman who "seem to have lost my products" on a regular basis. A few checks in the morning, and after a BK meal thoughtfully provided by the orderly officer, back to camp into the med center where I was to stay for two nights.
Compared to the lifestyle I had become accustomed to, the med center routine was so sedate as to be almost like my home routine. Late to rise, early to bed, and very little to do except play with my ipod and watch tv. And get better, apparently.

On the second day I was allowed to visit my mates back in our room, where I was very upset to learn that Paul, what passed for my best friend here, had finally had enough, thrown a wobbly, and had reached a mutual agreement with the army that he was going home, to be a soldier no longer. This really threw me, and my mood darkened considerably over the night. I'd been having doubts of my own and I approached a couple of the staff for guidance as to whether I should stay or leave. Their job, they reminded me in a kind but definite manner, was to advise, not to make the decision. Hmm, better luck next time.

Eventually I was discharged from the med center, with a reminder to return the following monday. The provisional prognosis is heat exhaustion coupled with/arising from dehydration. Characterised by low blood pressure, Tachycardia, hyperventilation/profuse sweating and collapse.

What fun. Still, at least I didn't have to run the whole thing, nor did I have to show myself "correctly dressed" at 8 that night, after being told my boots were not shiny enough (yes really).

PART THREE: GO KARTING

Today, however, has been absolutely awesome. A nice sedentary day, we marched to the drill square (during which I (having been declared sick) was told to "Keep five metres behind the men, or they will become infected by your weakness" - which made everyone including myself giggle. I didn't take this personally, exactly the same has been said to other sickies on other occasions, and is meant as much as a joke as an instruction) to get onto the coach.

Fifteen minutes later and we arrive at the Go Kart track.
Now I've never been into go karting, for some reason it has never really appealed to me. But having not only not had to pay to go, but also actually being paid to go (technically on duty 24/7 you see), was what swung it for me.

My first go in a go cart? Yes. Wearing the traditional overalls and helmet, I swung myself down into the low slung vehicle.

The ride started like a bumper car, slow and sedate, but as the motor picked up speed, so did the kart, until I was touching 30mph. Now 30, with your arse 6 inches off the floor, is thrillingly fast, and I'd not got halfway round the indoor circuit (which in addition to a nice long straight, featured both a chicane and a few demanding hairpins) before I was grinning like a kid on his favourite fairground ride. I wasn't alone in this, everyone went together, officers, sergeants, corporals and recruits alike. Later, I began throwing the cart around a little bit, slamming the steering from side to side, shifting my weight around in the seat (taking a sharp corner at 25, your body [weight] is surprisingly difficult to keep centered in the seat) gritting my teeth, stamping on the brakes and accelerator, the ride became a full body workout. I perfected most of the racing lines, managed to crash twice (one time, a guy also clipped my right-rear and spun me into the barrier) got overtaken a few times and (woo!) managed to keep a train of 4 or 5 karts firmly behind me for the whole time I was out there.

Lots of video was shot, lots of people were shouted at (2 sections comprised of 10 lads each disqualified in their entirity due to bad behaviour (dangerous driving etc)), including the captain (who got a 1 minute pit penalty for speeding in the pit lane (I think), a leiutenant who got a firm talking to (for some unidentified reason) and a corporal who got disqualified for crashing into one of the other drivers. The awesome thing was because we all had helmets on it was difficult to identify our troop members. One of the people I kept behind me might have been one of the corporals, my sergeant or even the captain himself. Going back into the real world was the great equaliser, and it was nice to be "human" again.

We left in joint 7th place, out of 9 which wasn't good, but this wasn't really the point as we'd all had an absolutely amazingly awesome time. Having spoken to some of my section members, we have agreed that after week 7 (the point at which we are permitted to leave camp unescorted), it might be an idea for a few of us to get a taxi down there on the weekend and spend a few hours razzing round the track.

So yeah. Weird week, it started very badly, and ended on an absolutely amazing high.

We've been given the best part of the weekend off too, which is a rare, and very cool occurance. Which I'm now off to enjoy.

So all the best folks, sorry I haven't been around much, marching to march, boots to polish, etc.

See ya for now!

Farewell! For now!

Yikes, I spent ages and ages working towards this day, now it's arrived it's not entirely as I'd expected.

Yes, folks, I'm finally off to basic training. I'm partly nervous, and quite excited. I'm looking forward to meeting new challenges, and making new friends. Going new places, and having new experiences.

Unfortunately and as I have found out to my cost, my sentimental side which has never failed to make its presence felt, means that I am much closer to my family than I had thought. Rather than the start of something new, moving away feels more like the end of the world. Today's been quite an emotional day.

But, as I've always said, life has a habit of finding equilibrium, and things will just return to a new state of "normal". I'll get used to it. Besides, I'm back up in seven weeks, and I should be able to see my parents in less than that. And I'm told I should almost certainly be here for christmas, possibly for the annual trip to Gainsborough too, and with my new-found wages, that's definitely something to look forward to, onwards and upwards as they say.

But still, I can't help feeling like today is something bad instead of something good.
Time will tell I guess, I'll remain hopeful. I've already promised everyone that I will be in cnotact as much as possible, and that includes this blog. I'll update as and when, but it won't have skipped my mind either way.

See you soon, I hope :-).

Whitby...

With my time living with my family on a permenant basis rapidly coming to a close, my mum and I have been taking advantageo f the excuse to spend quality time together. My dad for his part never really spends much time with anyone, but does seem to be being more civil with me with one or two exceptions.

So I woke up a couple of days ago, after only a short period of sleep, and off my mum and I go. She won't tell me where we're going initially, so it's a bit of a mystery. For old time's sake, we go past my old workplace, before going up past the crappy falling-down flat where I used to live.
It's still crappy and falling down, just so you know :-).

Eventually we pull into a Little Chef for some breakfast, where we have a lovely Full English breakfast (which I surprised my mum with, by eating it in its entirity - except the mushroom), which was really tasty.

Off we go and my mum reveals we're off to Whitby. Now I hadn't had much sleep so its at this point that I start feeling tired, so as we go further across Yorkshire, I try to resist the urge to fall asleep, with varying amounts of success. The weather's a little grim, changing from cloudy to raining and back again several times.

We disappear over hills, up and down various steep gradients over the North York moors, through the village where they film Heartbeat. As expected, the place was crawling with tourists and Heartbeat fans from countries all over the world, including dozens of Japanese tourists, who allegedly take photos of everything, including the roads, the sheep (many of which seem to be suicidal as they like to play chicken - aha ha aha etc with the cars) and even each other. Eventually though, my mum says she can sea the see (?) and before long, we're in Whitby.
Looking for a place to park. Which takes aaages.

Eventually we find somewhere to park and I have a look around.
The weather is grey but not cold, the place seems pretty busy, so off we go.

Now Whitby isn't a flat place. There's a lot of hills and cliffs, and we come to the top of some of the cliffs overlooking the city.

Now, a phobia is defined as an "irrational fear". I'm not certain that an instinctive terror of heights counts as irrational fear, or an inbuilt survival mechanism that stood the evolutionary test of time. Either way, I look beyond the waist high safety barrier, to three or four foot beyond where the scrub and plants end abruptly to see their leaves hanging out into empty air, masking what, from the top, looks like a terrifying sheer drop. I didn't want to touch the safety barrier - I didn't even want to go near it, so I just sort of hang around and watch a young Herring Gull squawking at me intently.

Eventually, we walk down what seems to be a huge flight of steps, going from the top of the cliffs to the bottom. The stairs are nice and wide, and not too steep, and there's a sturdy guardrail at the edge. But I still find it an uncomfortable task to have to walk down these very high stairs, looking - as walking down stairs requires you to - down to the bottom, which is a fair old distance away.

Eventually though we get to the bottom, where I look up and see that the cliff, while high, is neither as high as it looked from the top, or as sheer or vertical as I had expected. As I said to my mum at the time, from the top I didn't want to go to the edge. From the bottom, I felt I could happily climb it with equipment.

We wander round the town for a while, looking at various things, eating seafood (not me) and visiting various shops. We stop in the middle of the town for a drink (I had an "nicely layered" ice coffee with hazelnut syrup, which I immediately de-layered and drank happily) before moving on and continuing our tour.

We come to one of the two (four if you're picky, two if you're very picky (two are sea walls not piers)) piers, and as we walk along the sea wall, though the ground is level, the drop from where we were walking to the ground /water either side of the sea wall once again becomes quite disconcerting. Eventually though, we come to the pier itself, which is where I must admit, I had tremendous fun. In a sarcastic type way.

Well, here's a pic, which will save me a big long explanation. As you can see, that's a fair old drop. Yes, there's a sturdy wooden deck above the concrete, but what you can't see is that the deck was made of wooden beams, that had gaps between them of anything up to a couple of inches. The effect was that of walking above a large drop, on a semi-transparent uneven floor. To a dude like me who is averse to heights, it was pretty disconcerting. Eventually though, I make it to the end, passing others who have equally nervous expressions, whos efforts to avoid looking down are noticable. After ceremonially touching the railing at the farthest tip of the pier (to say "THERE I have reached the end!) I take a few photos while I'm at the end (conveniently forgetting to take any of the pier itself) to prove that I got there, and slowly, we head back.

I return to the end of the pier, and at the end see some steps leading downwards to the lower "deck". They're sheer and very steep, and not particularly inviting, but hey I bet I could get a few decent photos, so I very (!) carefully and slowly edge my way down the 19 scariest steps I've ever walked down. And lo and behold, I take a few photos, before almost equally slowly climbing up and returning to the more solid concrete walkway of the sea wall itself.

The weather's turned nice at this point, so we wander round having a great time, looking round more shops etc. The day was pretty much a nice day of enjoying the sun, taking photos, and generally enjoying each other's company, which is really what I think family is about. Weird words from me I suppose given how much I keep myself to myself, but hey.
I take plenty of photos many of which I'm pleased with.

Eventually, we head off back to the car, and on the way there I buy an obscenely priced ice cream (£1.90 for a normal ice cream cone!), and pop into a local shop to buy some stuff for my ickle nephew.
We leave with a toy Jellyfish (which he's taken home with him), a laser sword (which he broke into two bits a couple of days later) and three huge awesome glass gems which he seems to like, and which go well with his treasure chest.

We drive off, having had a very good day, down the coast to Bridlington. Bridlington is a place where I've been going since I was little and I still love to go there. Normally we make a big day of going, and we used to count down the days to our regular trips there as kids, so the somewhat off-the-cuff "Oh we'll go to Bridlington for our tea" takes me somewhat by surprise, but that surprise was very welcome.

Dusk has fallen and the lights are beginning to come on, and the place is pretty quiet. Still, doesn't stop me having the best battered-sausage and chips I've ever had (which is weird because various reviews of the restaurant indicate that other people found the food really bad) with batter that is both crispy, chewy, and full of flavour and the same time.

As the sky darkens and the streets go quiet, the lighthouse in the distance comes on, its light noiselessly flashing across the bay, making the place seem even quieter than before. I've always found the seaside a lonely place to be at dusk, not sure why.

Eventually though, enough is enough, and we head home as I try and play scrabble on my ipod. The weather worsens and the rain starts coming down. Eventually though we get to the Humber Bridge, (and its little toll booths with a light that to my delight, goes "Ding!" just like something out of a cartoon, as it changes from red to green) and cross it, before disappearing down other porly lit motorways, making our way back home.

After a long long drive, eventually and finally at long last, we arrive home, and despite our tiredness, manage to spend a good hour or two talking about how much we enjoyed the day.

And so there we are, an absolutely fantastic and very very enjoyable day out with my mum. One that I'l have fond memories of :).

Anyway, here are some shiny pickatures, including the "best" graffiti I've ever seen :-). Ciao.

Oaths, Towels and Barbecues...

...Well, the 27th finally rolled round, and getting my shiny shoes and nice suit on, I went to the AFCO to swear my oath. Thanks to heavy traffic, I managed to get there about 5 minutes late, but no one seemed to notice.
Again, from the waiting room I was led "backstage" through various corridors and down little microstairs deep into what must have been the opposite side of the building. There, we had a couple of sergeants takling to us, answering any questions we might have, sorting out paperwork and whatnot...

Eventually the parents come in, followed by the Major, the senior recruiting officer for the area.
He talks for a while, explaining how proud we (8 of us were there that day) should be, how well we've done, and how we should take the opportunity that we've been given to get an awesome carreer etc etc, and gave us a short video presentation.

Afterwards, we were instructed to stand, and as one, swore the oath, making us all ceremonially at least (not legally - that happens when you sign the contract on the first day of training), the latest additions to the Army. A proud moment for me and my mum, who had gone along to witness the moment :-). The Major congratulated us, and emphasised that we should keep in touch with our families during training. Something I took to heart as despite my advancing years (ok, well, 25 - lots of the lads there will be 18 and 19, so yeah, advancing years), I'm a bugger for getting homesick.

I was given a certificate to commemorate the occasion, which I put in my clever black file thing that has my rail tickets in it (this will mean something to me in 10 years time maybe).

Afterwards, with something of a spring in my step (I don't know whether my mum had a spring in my step, but I did have a spring in my step) we wandered around for a while, shopping for various items that I'll need, not the least of which was a rather shiny (and oddly shaped) steam iron, as well as loads of shoe polish, brushes, clothes brush etc etc. We also had a nice. meal in one of the local citybargastroresturantypubthingie whatever the heck they're called these days (A nice pub serving nice food by day, a rowdy nightclub at night), where I had something or other. Err, Baconburger with curly fries and Jack Daniels sauce, as well as some sponge thing with chocolate sauce on it, as well as ice cream. We wandered around a bit more, buying other items, I saw one thing that I thought was really cool - a microfibre bath towel - lightweight, thin, but very warm and absorbent. Why do I care? Because it folds up into a tiny pouch and dries super quick, meaning it would be very practical for training. Unfortunately it was very expensive, so we left without one, and after a leisurely walk around, eventually set off home. Not before my mum bought me some writing paper and envelopes, though.

A few days later, ostensibly to make sure it was working and "burnt-in" properly, I set about ironing a T-shirt which went quite well. I learned that even new irons, even new irons with "anti-drip", can drip bloody hot water on your feet if you're not careful.
I also learned that using copious amounts of steam while ironing is no substitute for washing the garment in the first place, as it was a crumpled and smelly t shirt when I started, and a perfectly flat and smelly t shirt when I finished.
Oh well, can't win 'em all.

WORK

Rather oddly, it absolutely threw it down during the start of my last weekend at work, and I got thoroughly soaked. Not to worry though, as it was a nice enough shift and the tips weren't bad. Especially since one very lovely customer tipped me £4.50! The soon-to-be-outgoing manager at the time, was nice enough to grant me a large pizza, which I took the opportunity to pile high with toppings, turning it into an artery-clogging monster of a pizza (Quadruple cheese, triple pork, beef and ham, and pepperoni and red onion, topped with sage and onion stuffing and more cheese, all on top of a special 1/1 mix of salsa and spicy pizza sauce).

I turned up, a day later, to what was to be my final shift, and it proceeded well enough. Tips weren't too bad, not helped by me losing £2 in the till (robbing sods always try to cheat you out of your tips (They don't but they rarely pay attention to what goes in)), and off I went on my last delivery ever. Assuming I take 15 deliveries a shift, that works out at... Hmm. 2,280 deliveries since december 2008.
I took the opportunity, after completing the delivery, to go back to work the long way, looking at the clouds, the trees etc, riding my teeny and annoying but ultimately faithful and reliable scooter, back to the shops for the last time. And that's it, that's all she wrote. I don't work there any more.

BARBECUE/BARBACUE/WHATEVERCUE

The day after, we all went along to my sister's house for a cool barbacue, a nice opportunity for a family occasion, to see me off. There was plenty of yummy food (not including the quiche I took which was crappy), Sausage rolls, dangerously cooked burgers, traditional frozen-in-the-middle-but-burned-on-the-outside sausages.
Another interesting contraption was a "Home Draught" thingie, a giant 10 pint (nearly 6 litre) bottle, with a CO2 cartridge and a little lever/tap thing, the pair of which turning it from a giant bottle of beer, to a cute little "pour-your-own-draught-beer-straight-from-the-bottle" affair. Not sure how this differs from the traditional "pour-your-own-beer-straight-from-the-can" arrangement that I'm used to, but it seems a significant enough change to do so. I liked its novelty value, but unfortunately, the first jolt sent the CO2 out of suspension, and turned the tap into a high pressure beer-foam blasting device, suitable for creating a drink consisting of an inch of flat beer, and 5 inches of foam no top.

All said and done though, the barbacue was great. The weather was nice, the dog was playful, the food was great, the company was nice etc etc. It was a nice family occasion :-).

TOWEL

For some reason, my mum and dad went out during today, and returned to announce that they had a gift for me. Expecting something like a customised pencil or an embossed ruler (I'm a natural pessimist), I was very happy and surprised to be presented with one large-size microfibre towel. And the little thing is amazing. It's thin, light, it feels insubstantial but the spiel on the box promises me it won't be. The remainder of the day I've spent building a lego UFO for/with my nephew (vaguely time consuming), playing Walking Legs with my him (enjoyable), as well as trying to teach him to fly helicopters on X-plane (futile). So later I'm probably going to grab some supper and maybe have a bath so I can test out my new towel. Either way, I'm busybusybusy. Lots of stuff to do.

Here are some pics, got to go or else I'll get nothing done! Have fun folks :-).
EDIT: I'd upload more pics, but my computer is telling me that (amazingly!) it's out of memory. It's got 3Gb, how can it possibly be out of memory? Oh well.

EDIT EDIT: Public Clarification. My dearest big brother would like me to point out that he was responsible for bringing us back home the other day after my dad threw a wobbly. I didn't actually say how we got back, but now you know :-).

The truth about Cats and Frogs...

So I've had a pretty cool day. Starting off with a lovely meal in the local pub with my rents, my sis and my ickle nephew, watching the F1 (Alonso won - apparently!), before going to see how my Grandad was doing. We stayed and chatted for a while before taking a tour of his now thriving herb/flower garden.
The tree he's always had growing there, is still growing. The flower beds are full, and the greenhouse is full of tomatoes. Bees buzzed about the place, and the lavender and rosemary were noticable by their fragrance.

Later on, I went off to work, nothing special whatsoever. The shift came, the shift went.

On the way home, I saw in the distance, a cat. A very attractive animal of indeterminate gender, completely white, except (I swear the world does this to mess with my) its tail, which was marked in bright bands of tan, brown and black.
I approached and the cat stared at me, before scooting off a few meters, miaowing reluctantly at me. As I beckoned the cat back to me (I like animals) I noticed that its attention was directed instead at a frog, almost at my feet without me realising it. Incredulously, I watched as the cat walked back to the frog, sniffed at it, and even pawed at it in that "what are you?" type way.
The frog remained stoic throughout and didn't move a millimeter. I bent down, as the cat darted off, to see that the frog was actually a real frog, and sure enough, yep, a real frog.

I then spent five or ten minutes trying to entice the cat away from the (dark green and black) frog who was evidently thinking "if I stay very still - (on the light grey tarmac - stupid amphibian) - the cat won't notice me", and the cat was having none of it. Eventually, I whipped a sheet of cardboard out of my bag and started literally bumping this frog in the butt with the cardboard to try to encourage it to hop away from this rather put out cat.

A guy walked past, walking his dogs. By way of explanation I offered something along the lines of "To my left is a cat, to my right is a frog, I want to stop the frog becoming catfood".

Or as they sing, "Kittehs to the left of me, froggehs to the right, here I am stuck in the middle with no fcuking help whatsoever actually". Eventually the dude turned back and came back this way, even as the cat tried to paw the silly amphibian again. As he approached, I managed to piss the frog off enough to make it jump up the 10 inch wall in front of it into the garden in front, onto a load of spikey flowers, where the cat followed it beyond my reach.

The bloke came over, and his dogs started growling at the cat, which instantly arched its back. I explained my valiant frog-saving efforts to the guy, before explaining "it's not my garden".
"Do what you have to, if the owners complain, I'll back you up". Heh, sounds so noble doesn't it.

Anyway, as the dogs growled at the cat and as the cat hissed at the dogs, I butted the frog on its butt till it gor thoroughly bored and hopped into some bushes in the middle of the garden, well out of the cat's reach.

Woo, go me!

Okay, so as my sister said "It's a frog!" Which apparently makes it not worth the effort, in her eyes anyway. But then we've got two goldfish who apparently don't qualify as "life" in her eyes either. So I'll take her morals with a bucket of salt, if it's all the same :-).

Frankly, I didn't want to see a living animal get turned into confetti, and in the event, the jumpy lil guy didn't. The cat left, pissed off, but not half as pissed off as the frog would have been in the cat's jaws. For all their fluffiness, they're evil little bastards, cats.

So hey, that's today's good deed. Summary: I saved a frog from a cat. Heh.

I spose you had to be there. Still, someone out there considers it effort well spent, even if he does have webbed fingers, green skin and big goggly eyes.

:-).

Shopping Trip!

With myself!

Yes, after a bit of waiting (or perhaps own waiting) I finally got some paperwork from the Army confirming their acceptance of me, and my start date and suchlike.
I was called in yesterday to go through some paperwork with them, so after an incredibly bad night's sleep (friday: 9am-3pm, then 11pm until 2:30am on saturday - and then completely unable to sleep before eventually getting out of bed at 8:30am) along I went, signed a couple of things (that's basically all it was), and had the rest of the afternoon to myself, with a big packing list of things to take.

See, in addition to all the shouting and running around and climbing up trees etc etc, There is actually a lot of classroom work involved in training. With this in mind, I wrote down some of my packing list, and went round a tour of the local shops to get various items on it.

First stop? Breakfast, actually. Turning up in Mcdonalds nearly half an hour after they stopped breakfast, I asked nicely if they had any McMuffins (my favourite) left, and they did.
So I sat downstairs for a while eating my breakfast and reading through various paperwork and whatnot, and eventually set off out round town. After a fashion. You see, (and I didn't know this), 3 or 4 times a year, apparently, Sheffield has a continental market (which continent exactly? There were chinese noodles, polish cuisine, flowers from holland, coffee from italy, curries from india etc etc), and as a result, the entire pedestrianised shopping area was full from one side to the other, with market stalls sellinf a huge variety of fantastic and interesting and (in some cases) very nice smelling goods. Everything from African handmade art items, wood carvings etc etc, to Chinese noodles, Italian Gelato, North Korean paranoia, and German beer.
And one of those cool things we saw in london, a huge barbecue pan thing suspended over a fire. All this under the huge circular span of the Wheel of Sheffield, which as usual was rotating in its circular type way.

For some reason, maybe it was the lack of sleep, the strange and wonderful smells from the market, the fact I had money to spend, or the lovely weather, I was in a really good mood, and for some reason, this mood persisted throughout the day. I actually found myself smiling a lot, laughing at jokes I'd normally consider crappy, and seeing a couple of toy stalls, smiling at the idea of my lovable ickle nephew playing with some of them. I was in a mood to be very nice to people, a state of genuinely wishing the world well, and to be honest, whatever the reason for it, it was wonderful :-). I dunno maybe I breathed someone's drugs in accidentally or something.

Remembering the toy stall, I resolved to buy something for the ickle guy in my travels.

So I wandered round here there and everywhere, buying "masculine hygeine" products (extortionately priced razors/blades, shower gel, etc etc) and stationary stationery (the stationery didn't move about) like marker pens, nice gel pens and other cool stuff, for all the classroom lessons.

I wandered to one of the hardware stores and bought some padlocks. For some reason, all three padlocks (they were a 3 pack) take the same key, and each padlock came with two keys.
So I have three identical padlocks with six identical keys. Bizarre!
Now maybe because of the lack sleep or whatever, I found myself blissfully drifting round most of the day, walking right past stuff I wanted to buy, several times, while trying to find it.

I also came out with the comedic concern that if those six keys fitted my padlocks, I didn't want to buy them because maybe everyone else who bought those three-packs "from any other Wickes in the country" would be able to open mine with their keys.

Fortunately I realised my incredible stupidity before I left empty handed (the hardware store was a bugger to find), blinked, turned on my heel and with a sweet smile, marched back to the counter, padlocks in hand.

Eventually, after buying some hungry hippos for my nephew (who didn't get one because he was an absolute little sod!!!) yesterday, I returned home, and resisted the urge to sleep until about 10pm when I fell asleep during a documentary on sniper rifles.

Today, I woke up, having slept well, and went out with my parents to enjoy some time in the sun at the chip shop.
Unfortunately my dad got a strop on at "being excluded" from conversations between my mum and myself (twice he's butted in and twice he's politely but firmly been told to mind his own business) and drove home, leaving my mum and I at the chip shop.

Not to worry though because the weather was lovely, and the chips were amazingly good.
Deciding we were going to walk home, my mum send me to the shop opposite to buy some bottled water, and I laughed inwardly when I saw what greeted me.

Just inside the shop, the owner had a shelf, neatly filled up with various kinds of cider, White Lightning, White Dragon, White Cobra, White Viper, White Reticulated-bloody-python, Diamond Ice, Diamond Jack, Diamond White, more diamonds than a bloody jewellers. Oh, and Frosty Jack's.
Below this he had two shelves of Lambrini. All straight at the front of the shop, opposite the door.

Now for people outside the UK (the citizens of which would immediately find this amusing) who are wondering what is funny, all the brands above, some of which may or may not exist, are firmly thought of as, Hmm. Budget drinks. That is, Cheap drinks. Inexpensive but strong drinks, usually entirely made with synthetic ingredients (In the same way that a fast-food fizzy orange isn't made from oranges, I doubt any of those ciders have ever seen an apple) that can (and usually are) be bought by underage teens with their pocket money, thus allowing even impoverished teenagers to get drunk and go round smashing windows with hammers and whatnot, and generally keep the police busy.

It's nice to see just how keenly this shopkeeper follows the needs of the local community.
Well it made me smile anyway.

Here are some pickatures. Only one of them is visible at the moment, the others I forgot to upload, but here they are anyway. I wanted to get some of my puppy, at special request, but I'm afraid I have one of my last shifts at work in 40 minutes and must go!

Bye for now :-).

PART TWO: PUB MEAL

Sunday 25th:
Had a nice sleep, and went off to the pub to have a nice pub meal with the family.
Was quite nice for us to get together and a nice day was had by all.
Popped in to see grandad afterwards, and then had a bit of a cycle ride round the park.

Also took some more photos for Lexi :-). Our puppeh continues to be a cute and awesome and affectionate little girl :-).

Yikes, the rain! (or, "A Dog and a DS")

Well summer didn't last long!
Isn't a year weird unit of time. Short enough that you can remember back over several (or tens of, depending on your ancientness) of them, but long enough that you can forget things. Things like, oh, whether it's sunny or whether it pours it down, in a particular type of year,

Yep apparently, July - the height of British summer, despite the fact that we've had 30+C days a few times already this year, is traditionally rainy. It rained yesterday, it rained this morning, in fact, it's rained all day. But since it's July, it's sort of a cool rain, not a nasty cold one. It's the yearly equivalent of a summer break, that is, a break from summer itself, with two or three weeks of wet weather.

Anyway, all that rubbish aside, yesterday, my sister turns up carrying an unknown puppy around. She's had experience in the past rehoming animals and this one was just the latest of her temporary wards. In she comes with the puppy, and it's an adorable lil creature, black and white, with a little nose, floppy ears and HUUUGE pleading eyes. Kinda like this.

Off I go to the shops with my nephew, to fetch some milk. When we get back, my mum says she has a surprise for me. When I ask what it is, she gestures to "our new dog". Yikes, didn't take long for my sister to find a new owner, but us? We've not had a dog for ages.
Still, my dad is retired and in another 10 years or so my mum will be the same, so I guess little-dog (as my nephew named her) will be good at keeping them company.

Also yesterday, my brother's wife/sister in law/whichever she prefers, gives my nephew her DS, which I thought was extraordinarily nice of her. My nephew had been DSless since some point in the indeterminate past where he left his own DS outside, on his garden trampoline, overnight as it rained heavily. Yeah, real good thinking, little fella. I'm amazed it didn't get nicked before it got wet, as the residents of my sister's old neighbourhood seemed to (in general) be a very light-fingered bunch. Still. He's delighted because now he can play on "his" DS with the games everyone's bought him, and better yet, he can play his favourite game boy advance games too. Though sadly, not his old game boy ones. Still, he's looking forward to playing "the indiana jones" game (Castlevania: Circle Of The Moon) on a backlit screen for once.

Not only do we have an awesome new doggy (who loves nothing more than chewing people's hands/feet, and weeing on the carpet), not only does the lil dude have a DS again, but, we've actually found his camera too!!

Okay, none of you guys knew anything about this - last time we went to twin lakes, he took his camera with him. It came back too, in fact I was even sure I'd seen it in the house afterwards, but it was nowhere to be seen, and we've turned his room upside down. However we found it earlier today, in his car, so now he has "his DS back" AND his camera back.
And we have a new doggy!

Finally, my nephew has already started going on about things he wants to put on his... ...list. That list, the list, you know? Where you ask for presents and stuff!!!
Yikes, it wasn't until October last year that he actually started thinking about what he wanted to put on his list.

We tidied his room together too earlier, and by that I mean I tidied it and he took toys I'd just put away out to play with them, while I put them back again.
Now, I have an odd habit when tidying, which I inherited off my mum. Don't ask her why or where it started but it's always been "the done way" in our family - or as my sister cruelly observes "just you and mum" - to listen to music traditionally listened to at the time of year where certain lists become quite important, while tidying. Which got me in a rather festive mood. In July. Which wasn't helped by me then becoming all festive and nostalgic and watching last year's home videos from that ol' festive time, which, you'll notice, I'm deliberately not naming, so no one can accuse me of talking about that while we're still in July.

So hey, in the meantime, the rain continues to come down, and the festive videos continue to get played. I'm gonna eat an angus burger later, and maybe have an early night.

Here are some sparkly pics in the meantime: (Well, one. I forgot what the second was and couldn't find the third!)

Yikes, the sun!

Would you know, we're actually having a genuine summer here, complete with nice weather, hayfever and everything.
I guess it's important for me to emphasise to myself that we do in fact have summers, because last winter seemed to go on for ever. But then I guess winters always do.

So what's been happening? More of the same I guess. My nephew continues to swerve unpredictably between being awesome and cute, and being infuriatingly badly behaved, work continues to be as sociable as it's ever been, and I'm trundling through life quite happily, I suppose.

I did decide to throw a little bit of cash at my iPod though. Having bought all sorts of weird and wonderful ayapps, as well as organising loads of videos and suchlike to view here there and everywhere, I was a little put out when my faithful earphones finally stopped working a few weeks ago.
I was much more put out when the seller I bought the replacements off, first sent me some fakes, and then told me he'd send me a second pair after the first pair fell to bits.
I am still waiting for the second pair. Not that I care anymore, as I've made alternative plans.

Yep, after saving moneys and whatnot, I finally decided to buy some nice and shiny Klipsch Image S4i earphones, with shiny integrated remote control type thing, and I have to say that they sound absolutely awesome. £90 well spent (They're available for less, but last time I spent "for less" I got "less" and had to buy a second time).

I also bought a Zagg Invisible Shield to protect the ipod, and while fitting it was an absolute sweary swearword, it seems to be doing its job quite well. The protector hasn't got so much as a scratch on it, which makes a nice change because the cheap plastic ones I used to use, used to last a couple of weeks before needing replacement.

So hey, that's it, that's all, there is nothing going on in my life at the minute, apart from...

Yeah my sis, nephew and I finally went swimming again a few days ago, and it was nice to get back in the water. Afterwards, we went to a local chinese buffet type place, where I had a very good meal of all sorts of things, washed down with ice cream, various unidentified but tasty foodstuffs, and lots of toffee cheesecake. Not a bad night out. Must have more of them.

Now, let's see if this heatwave arrives. Today's supposed to be very hot. We'll have to see, hehehe...

PS: Don't mind my half-assed photo, I was in a rush.

The third and fourth days of summer (and cadbury world)...

Yeah folks, they don't run consecutively. Until tuesday, the weather has been absolutely rubbish.

Well, with the changing weather, another trip to Twin Lakes was on the cards, and again and as usual, lots of fun was had. The dangly bungee rope trap thing is still roped off, but there were a few new attractions including a load of very loud lambs in the petting zoo, as well as a cute little simples (1 2) in the don't-pet-unless-you-want-to-lose-a-finger-zoo. As usual, lots of fun was had.

My nephew spent plenty of the journey there trying to guess what the various trucks on the motorway were carrying, as well as telling me that truck stops that you can use to get some sleep and to refill with diesel don't actually exist in real life, because "it's only a game" which was quite cute of him. He hasn't been on the truck game for a while, instead he's spent a lot of time zooming around in various cars that I made for him on Need For Speed: Most Wanted. Still, a fun day out for all. Again, plenty of time was spent running round, swinging, hiding, bouncing, siding, all sorts of interesting things. A quick meal and off we went again with the whole having fun thing.

A couple of days later, I got dragged along rather unwillingly (after having had no sleep whatsoever), to Cadbury World, what I originally took to be a dull and uninteresting visitors center at a grimy factory.

A fairly lengthy drive, and we drove in one side of Birmingham, and out the other. First impressions: Grimy, big, not very pleasant. But look closer and some bits of it are actually really nice, so I suppose it's like any major city in that it's got its nice bits and its crappy bits.

And as for Cadbury World itself, in reality, I'm pleased to say, it was a fantastic day out. The price of the ticket included plenty of chocolate which was handed out by nice staff, we got to see various bits of the factory with boxes of chocolate whizzing around on conveyor belts, and huge robots picking up the boxes and stacking them up and whatnot. Not only were there also little video presentations telling you about the history of the chocolate, but at one point there were practical demonstrations as well. As I said at the time, I'll certainly never look at a bar of chocolate the same way again, and Cadbury World seems to be a major PR winner for Cadbury's :-). There was a shop where you could buy souvenirs and stuff, including some of the biggest chocolate bars I'd ever seen, and some of the weirdest chocolate products I'd never seen.

Since we were in the area, we had a nice little drive to Stratford-on-Avon, a town which may be famous for being the birthplace and lifelong home (more or less, I think) of a certain Bill Shakespeare. We parked up, and like a pair of foreign tourists, got on one of those open-topped tour buses so we could take photos of various interesting parts of the town. Informative and amusing. Why amusing? Because the audio commentary kept skipping bits and replaying bits it had already played, so you had to listen carefully in order to not go home believing that William Shakespeare was in fact born in a local hotel.

At one point, through the beautiful and sunny Warwickshire countryside, wind (and tree pollen liberated by the numerous collisions with low-hanging branches - ouch my eyes!!!) blowing over us, and only the audio commentary and birdsong to listen to, I looked up to notice that there were not one but three gliders floating over the bus, which gave the whole thing a very surreal atmosphere. They glid (glide? glided? glidded? thanks eddie) silently over us for quite a while, before disappearing off behind the trees.

We got back and had a wander through the town itself, seeing street theater (some people in a small garden outside Shakespeare's house passionately performing the "Get thee to a nunnery" scene from Hamlet, some Living Statue people, and lots of very very old buildings, including one pub which had been "selling ale since 1594"(!).

Finally stopping off for something to eat, we went to a very pleasant pub (The Red Lion, Stratford (opposite a shop where they sell one of the biggest remote control planes I've ever seen)), where I had an awesome meal (chips and burger with bacon and BBQ sauce - very very good) and a nice beer.
At one point, my mum accidentally knocked what was left of the beer over, so the lovely staff kindly gave me a brand new one. Great result - 50% extra free :-).

A nice trip back, and getting home, I exchanged exhausted pleasantries with people before going to bed and having the first sleep I'd had in 28 hours.

In other news, I did eventually plump for a G19 keyboard, and to celebrate getting it, I also bought an awesome mousemat for £3.04 (RRP £18.99 apparently). The keyboard's awesome, changes colours (it's quite entertaining) and has a screen that I use (with some downloaded software) to display important system information, so while I'm sitting around on my computer, I can see what it's doing behind the scenes :-).

And that's about it. The weather's nice, I'm in a good mood, and now I'm off to have some more chocolate. Yay. I might go cycling tomorrow.

Here are some sparkly pictures (the first one is a composite).

The Second Day of Summer!

Ever notice when people talk of things like Summer or Winter, they speak about them as if they were abstract concepts, rather than actual times of the year? I suppose that (in the UK at least), it's difficult to imagine something like summer while sitting the other side of the window from a rainstorm or gentle snowfall. That certainly wasn't helped by last year's almost complete absence of seasons. We had spring, spring, a little more spring, and then an absolutely frozen cold winter, if I remember correctly.
If I don't remember correctly, then it was probably just foggy or overcast all year.

Why is this relevant? Because instead of gradually flapping about and eventually appearing, summer seems to have hit us with a very definite thud this month. We've had a few "really nice, but the breeze is a bit cool" days in the past few weeks, but today was a "incredibly nice, the breeze is made of hot air!".

Well.

Yeah, today the heat has been midway between "great!" and stifling. I went out for 45 minutes for a quick cycle round, and managed (i think) to get myself sunburned again.

Later came another shift at work, out on the scooter in this summery heat, jacket open, wind through the t-shirt sort of thing. Not a lucrative shift, but it was good to see everyone about.

Tonight was the real eye opener though. Walking back home at 10pm, notice that even in a t-shirt, the breeze was warm. The moon was (is) bright, and everyone was still up.

From any of a couple of dozen garden parties came music, the sound of people cheering (football or playing xbox or something), people laughing, and the smell of beer, or perhaps a late barbacue. Every now and again some guy on a CD would passionately sing "ohhhOhhOhhhhh" (that's all I could make out) presumably as part of some song or other.

Through the woods, towards my house, yet more garden parties, beer, happy chatting, and carribean music. Lights were strung between tree branches, giving the whole place a party atmosphere (appropriate really).

Yeah, it looks like after getting sick of being kept waiting (remember the hailstorm a week or two back?!) summer has appeared with a show of force. This can only be a good thing.

Part Two: Keyboards

Yep, after two years of faithful service, my shiny, immaculate and 100% working Logitech G-15 V2 has failed, after having a drink accidentally dumped in it.
If you remember back, I bought it to replace my original Logitech G-15 V1, which also failed after having a drink dumped in it.
I've got some tips in the tips jar so maybe a G-19 is on the cards. I haven't decided.

Part Three: Bike Lessons!

My sister was good enough to bring my ickle nephew's bike round with her, so I could fix it up after some two legged rat on the nearby sinkhole estate wandered off with it and broke it.
With a little patience and a new brake cable, I managed to get the thing working again, fully okay, and my nephew was very excited.
Off we went to the park and took him for some practice. I can't say he took to it straight away, but over time he seems to be taking a greater interest in it, so who knows, maybe we'll be having bike rides with him in the park before long.

The park has been getting a fair bit of use by us, recently. We went for a little trek and discovered not only a tree growing on the edge of the stream that has roots like ladder-rungs (you can just climb straight up), but I found that the hill near the river was mostly made of good quality clay, and as I demonstrated to my nephew, you can make things out of clay.

The next hour or so was spent by digging clay out of the side of the hill so my nephew could make clay balls, literally just balls of clay. I put mine in a hollow under a nearby tree, neatly piled up, but hidden from plain sight. I'll go and check one day to see if they're still there. My nephew for his part became incredibly attatched to the three he had made, and decided he was going to take them home and paint them gold, so he could put them in his treasure box. Fair enough I suppose, so we went and got him some paint specially for the purpose.

Finally I figured I'd show off an awesome lil picture my nephew did for me. He's become something of a star wars fan recently, probably due to it being on cartoon network a lot.
My nephew came home from school one day and gave me a picture he'd spent ages on, drawing for me. I love it to bits. I've annotated it so it will make more sense (Notice the remains of the shot battledroid, to the left of R2, that I completely failed to point out. Haha my ickle nephew has great attention to detail when he wants to :D).



Ciao!

iPods and ipsos

Well, this is a new experience.

Far from being slick and sleek, at first impression, blogging on here from an iPod seems to be a little fiddly. Not to worry though because it's certainly a new experience. It would be fantastic to be able to blog from anywhere where I can get a wifi signal.

iPod blogs will be a little different to my pc based ones. Less pictures, less hyperlinks, perhaps, because it seems a bit more fiddly than writing on my pc. I'm sure I'll get the hang of it.

So what's going on? Well I'm in for a long night (as are many other people) because over here in the UK, it's election night.

Yep, the long awaited General Election, allegedly where we have an opportunity to shake the house of commons around a bit and see what crap falls out. The expectation is that the current Labour government will suffer heavy losses as their primary opponents, the Conservatives, fill the a large proportion of the still-warm and by then, very recently vacated of seats.

As you'd expect, the news stations are going nuts, featuring "LIVE"/"ALL NIGHT" etc etc coverage, complete with fancy graphics and one organisation even projecting a huge bar graph up the side of St Stephen's Tower (the tower that houses Big Ben (the name is given to the bell, not the tower), at the houses of parliament.

For my part, I've been out to vote. Who did I vote for? None of your business I'm afraid, hehe, elections work like that I'm afraid.
So now I'm watching the live coverage, an. Enjoying a badly chilled lukewarm beer.

Ciao for now, will update later maybe.

Picnics, Pork Pies, and Precipitation...

It's been a boring couple of days. My early afternoon rises have been occuring later and later, creeping closer to evening every day, pushed by a lack of discipline preventing me from going to bed until I'd done absolutely everything I wanted to do in the day. Days of 12pm to 4am are not unusual for me, but hey, this is nothing new.

Today I got woken up after five hours or so of sleep. Do I want to go out for a picnic.
Of course, I don't want to go for a bloody picnic, I want to go back to bed. But, since my sis is coming over and bringing the dog, I thought I may as well get up and go along.

So we get on with the preperation for the picnic. Various containers are hunted for, and everything seems to go quite well. Eventually, it's time to go, so off we go.
Stopping for a while at one of the supermarkets, we eventually arrive at our picnic spot, a nice big stretch of moorland/cliffs, casually dotted with big sodding boulders, some the size of basketballs, others the size of trucks. The largest were the size of buildings - it's a nice enough place (53.319689,-1.622687) on google maps - I think that's our bunch of rocks right there.

Out come the blankets, out comes the food (including the yummy (for him I suppose!) dogfood so the dog can join in the picnic, and we sit down and have a nice old time eating yummy things.

Of course, we're eating happily for no more than five minutes, and my mum is the first to feel a raindrop, and slowly but steadily the rain increases, turns into hail, turns into a hailstorm.
In may, during a picnic.
Bloody hell.

Still, we cover the food up, hoping that the weather will blow over.
It doesn't, it gets much worse. The hail, fairly torrential now, and the lead-grey sky that surrounds us in all directions (well, generally up, rather than down, but still) convince me that it'd probably for the best if I pack some of the food away.

Eventually we beat a hasty retreat to the car, and have one of the few in-car picnics I've ever had. Oh well, we'll have to try again in the summer. The food was nice.

We get home and eventually I go back to sleep for a couple of hours, during which time I have an awesome dream about my awesome new car that I haven't bought yet, which is cruely curtailed by my evil, yet incredibly cute ickle nephew, who wants to show me a picture he's drawn specially for me :-).

Since then I've been finishing off the last of the picnic food and generally sitting about doing not-much.
So hey :-).

Brides, Bouquets, and Bikes...

It's traditional at this point for me to start with something along the lines of "hmm, where to start", but any regular readers will already know the established pattern these little forays into what my best mate Nick calls "Squid (my nickname) world" follow; that is, the lack of any pattern whatsoever. I'm organising it with grandiose titles simply to give myself a set of mental boxes that I can easily shove the events of the last few weeks into...

Part One: Bike Stuff

So, the weather. Seems a good place to start, it's big, up there, in the sky, and affects all of us. And we've actually been having a varied and not-unpleasant time of it. The overcast days are still here, there and everywhere, but when the sun does pop through the clouds, it's extremely warm, almost sunburny warm.

After years of disrepair (the roof, not my neighbour), my neighbour decided to hack his old garage roof to pieces. Given that it was constructed mostly of sodden plywood, this was easily accomplished with a crowbar and a hammer, and after a couple of hours and clouds of dust, the entire thing more or less fell in (covering the items still left in the garage in a layer of wood chippings). Finding a snow shovel in there, I nicely and helpfully (it was a nice day that I was determined not to waste by staying indoors) helped clean up all the mess. Music was listened to, water was drank, and sunshine was collided with, and a good time was had by all. Especially the friendly neighbourhood robin (that's a real robin, not an American robin :P) who occasionally fluttered down to almost within arm's length, stared at my neighbour, casually picked up a spider (who I suppose wasn't having such a good time) and flew off.

While we're cleaning stuff out of the garage, I casually express interest in (what was at the time) a knackered scruffy old bike, covered in rust, dirty chain oil that had since turned to sludge, spiderwebs, leaves, and the ever present wood chippings. My neighbour points out that he was going to throw the thing in a skip, but given my awesome expertise at fixing broken things (hee, where's the modesty?!) I saw potential in it. A fairly offhand "you can have it if you want" later, and my net worth had increased by approximately one rusty mountain bike.
Of course, I spent the next couple of days on the floor, surrounded by socket sets, spanners, screwdrivers, parrafin (excellent at dissolving oil, and consequently an extremely good (if hazardous!) cleaning fluid), and various spraycans of lubricant and whatnot, and would you know, the bike cleaned up pretty well. £15 later, and thanks to ebay I had a new set of pedals, and a new seat (both of which were missing off the bike). The original water bottle was binned (it probably had a new form of life developing in it - I didn't look) and replaced with a new one. So now (apart from the minor problem that shifting from second to third gear on the front sprocket causes the chain to jump off the sprockets altogether - it needs adjusting apparently...) I now have a shiny and working mountain bike. With a kickstand. Yay!

Part Two: Manchester Stuff

Around the same time I also went out with Nick again to Manchester Airport for another day's shooting, which was a pretty good day out. Plenty of good photos were had, and I came away from that feeling pretty cheerful. I gather that they (the aviation viewing park) have since put their admission prices up from £7 to £12! So while we will be going to manchester again, I don't know if we will be going to the viewing park.
This in itself isn't such a bad thing, because while you can get close to the planes at the viewing park, the light comes from directly behind the aircraft, so the lighting isn't that great. Whereas on the other side of the runway, facing towards the terminal, the light is behind you, and the aircraft land much closer to on-top-of-your-head, so you get a better view.
Which one do you prefer? This, or this? (Neither image is mine)

So we'll have to see how that works out.

Part Three: Domestic Stuff

One thing my nephew and I have been spending a lot of time with recently, is playing "the truck game", that is "UK Truck simulator". You know the type, drive a truck, get paid, use the money to upgrade your truck, and ultimately buy other trucks and hire people to work for you. Sounds repetitive and boring but I have to admit it's actually pretty sodding addictive and surprisingly relaxing, and the graphics are very good. I've been playing it far more than I expected to be. My nephew continues to be cuddly and hyper, and occasionally infuriatingly annoying, but it's nice to have him around.
We've also been joined, recently by a slightly scruffy terrier-type dog, that goes by the name of Ollie. He seems far less hyper than Tess did, and I think therefore he'll be less hard work for my sis to look after :-). Not being a fan of scruffy type dogs, I wasn't initially struck on him, but he's settled down and seems quite cute and endearing, so I'm getting to like him.

Part Four: Wedding

Not last, and certainly not least, I've had occasion to go and do photography for a wedding recently. My gadget-loving brother and my fantastic (now) sister in law, have tied the knot in a happy and well-attended ceremony (full of super death DSLR Turbo XL cameras) and have now officially made our family slightly larger, which is good.

The reception was quite nice, lots of alkyhol was drunk, squillions of photos were taken (the bit where they posed for the photographers to cut the cake was amusing, I've seen film premiers on TV with less camera flash, and for about 15 seconds straight, the entire room was lit by the brilliant staccatto flashes of 20 or 30 cameras all discharging their bright-type shinyness at the happily married couple. I'm surprised they were able to see after all that.

The food was good, the party was good, and hopefully my Big bro and (possibly?) Big sis (?) liked their wedding photos, which were presented towards the end of the night.

I haven't done a full in-depth review of the wedding because well, it's their business really, but it was a nice happy occasion and I think it went well, and everyone concerned put a huge amount of work into it, especially my bro and (new) sister in law. My brother says he now wants to institute "games nights" at his house. I'm trying to persuade him to start hosting Khet tournaments, or maybe Star Wars Monopoly games, either one would be quite cool. It's about time we got together more often :-).

Part five: Ipod Stuff

Finally, my ipod continues to be awesome and shiny. I've downloaded more software for it than I expected to, some of which is actually quite good. Not much to say on this front, but the whole thing seems to be working out quite well. I've got all my stuff on it and still have 30+ Gb to play with, so I might stick some more of my DVDs on there.

So yeah, I'm sorry I've left it such a long time. As the weather seems to be improving, I've been spending a lot of time with my nephew in the park, with my mountain bike in the park, with the sun and clouds everywhere, and with my pillows and suchlike in my bed. Everything seems to be ticking along nicely, and hopefully, we're watching the start of a good summer.

Ciao!

The clock goes forward

Stupid thing to say, really.

Clocks don't go "forward", they go "ring", others go "beep" , expensive ones go "tick-tock", and most go round in circles, but I've never seen one going "forward". However, as a result of arsing around with the clocks, I've lost an hour, not only in terms of lost drinking time, but in more literal terms, lost an hour sodding about reprogramming the... *counts*... 9 timepieces, or devices incorporating the above, in my room.

But we are apparently now in spring, which in England means that the wintery sunsets are slightly less wintery, the snow is now more sleet than anything else, and occasionally the sun is visible through the clouds. Elsewhere in the world, Formula One has started, which means it should be nicely in full swing when the weather improves.
When it improves here though is not really well known, as we leave winter and enter spring, the weather has of course become snowy again in places. The worst we've had so far is some hail and sleet, nothing serious, but the gorgeously warm sunny days, of which we've already had one so far, seem to be tantalisingly rare at the moment.

Not to worry though, as apart from my running, I seem to have spent most of my time indoors anyway. While indoors I've been doing lots of things, such as sleeping, resting, laying down, and surfing the internet, both on my pc and my iPod.

my iPod has seen heavy use. While I wasn't in the market for anything more than an mp3/video player, the iPod has not so much filled a gap, as filled it in, before expanding to fill new territories of awesomeness.

It became more awesome recently when I purchased two new bits for it. The first one is a tiny little thing that makes all the difference - I've got another plastic backing for it, this time in gorgeous deep lustrous metallic red. Okay so it's a piece of plastic, but that colour is just the sort of colour I'd want on my car. it's so metallic it's almost three dimensional.
Helps keep scratches/fingerprints off the back of the unit, too.

The second thing is even better, described by my nephew as "the Sound Egg", is a fantastic piece of kit. Having been put onto this by my brother, who I may have mentioned, loves his gadgets, I thought I'd have a look at one.
I've been skeptical about pocket speakers, because common sense dictates that the smaller a speaker, the tinnier and crappier its sound. And at less than 40mm wide (the speaker itself, not the housing), surely this speaker would sound like a dog whistle, right? Well, actually in the case of this little ball of win, that's far from the truth. Think about it, would I have asked a snotty rhetorical question if it wasn't?
There are quite a lot of places selling them at £30-£40 per unit, I was able to grab one for £13,99 plus £2.75 (superfast apparently) postage (£2.75 wasted because it still took four days to arrive), and it's safe to say that for £14 a pop I'd easily have another. I'm not going to do a full in depth review, but needless to say I think this thing is fantastic. It expands open like an accordion to give the speaker more space to do its stuff, resulting in much louder bass, and a much more powerful sound. The speaker's not tinny, it sounds absolutely fantastic.

So yeah.

Also, with easter upon us, my nephew seems happy to share his easter egg with me. I want to get one as well, there's a very nice one in the local shop, it's currently reduced from £12 (!!) and comes with some lovely looking chocolates. Yum, chocolate.
Also, my nephew made me a super cute easter basket, including a cute little fluffy chick and brightly coloured tissue paper. Cute of him.

Well, that's all for now I suppose, there's not been a lot happening. Still, at least the days are getting lighter now, helped in no small part by this whole moving clocks business.

I leave you with some pictures :-).

A little optional extra: iPod Touch 64Gb Review

NOTES: Before you get stuck in I'll point out two minor facts:

1. my iPod has a blue plastic backing plate on it to stop the rear getting scratched, which is visible in most of the photos - this is not included with the iPod and was bought seperately (though it only cost £3 with free postage so it may as well not be considered an extra cost. I recommend it, it's quite good...

2. Not all iPod Touch models have the same capabilities. While a lot of these features are present on all/most iPod Touches, I am reviewing the 3rd Generation 64Gb model - currently the top of the range of iPods.

Anyway...

As I mentioned in my last entry, for various reasons (not the least of which are that the hard drive is full, and the internal battery needs replacing), my beloved but venerable 30gb iPod Video has been "retired",or held in reserve for use in times/places when I wouldn't want to risk carrying its replacement. This replacement being a shiny (for now) iPod Touch 64gb.

I figured I'd do a little review of it. I'm going to try to avoid going into the more technical discussions about video formats and encoding bitrates and display refresh times for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that that's the first thing that most other reviewers got their teeth into as soon as the thing hit the market.
Instead, I'm going to try to look at the thing from the point of view of a user/owner, instead of the point of view of someone who's comparing it against its competitors/predecessors etc.

So let's see how it goes.

HISTORY AND BACKGROUNDY BIT: Big chunky plastic iPods from days of yore:

It seems that when Apple released the original iPhone, enough people went off and had orgasms about the interface to convince Apple that they really were onto a good thing. Whether this was their motivation behind the development of the iPod Touch - itself essentially an iPhone with the "Phone" bit ripped out - or simply a favourable public attitude to a project already in progress, I'm not sure and haven't bothered to find out.
Regardless of how apple felt at the time, eventually in late 2007, the iPod touch, hit the market.

Then, as now, flash memory storage compared to a hard drive of equivalent capacity, was prohibitively expensive (At current prices, 64gb of flash memory sells for anything up to £150, making up a huge chunk of the iPod Touch 64's £250-£300 price tag. So the first generation of iPod Touch devices had small capacities of only eight or 16 gb. Not a huge leap from, or in the case of the 8gb model, not even an improvement on, the then already available iPod Nano.

Despite this, because the iPod Touch offered the functionality of a "decent" mp3 player, and the incredibly popular and widely praised iPhone touchscreen interface, the sales hysteria from the original iPhone seemed to have rubbed off a little onto the new iPod Touch, and even though it was much (and later models still are) more expensive than other iPods in Apple's lineup, so many people were having orgasms about it that it didn't matter, and for the second time in the space of three short months, Apple were once again onto a major winner.

Time marches on, of course, and though despite upgrades in storage memory, the iPod Touch could never feasibly hope to match the capacity of its much more spacious (and much cheaper) hard drive based cousins, this was accepted as an acceptable tradeoff for what you actually get for your money. Later iterations of the iPod Touch came with more storage capacity and a longer features list, and while storage-wise they never really (to date) closed the gap with their more conventional siblings, they still had the same (if not more, thanks to the burgeoning market for downloadable software, referred to in an infuriatingly annoying way by almost everyone as "apps" (pronounced "ayapps", more often than not, apparently) appeal as they did when they were first released.

A LITTLE NOTE ABOUT BUILD QUALITY: How easy is it to break?:

Yeah, like I'd know that considering I've carried the thing around in at least one case since I bought it, sometimes even two (a sturdy one to protect it, and a softer one to prevent the sturdy one from scratching it (Look, it's damned expensive and looks easy to break (I'm doing that nested sentences thing again, see? (oh no not again))).

The device itself is beautifully crafted with only love and care and fairy dust, and as such isn't too shabby at all. The glass (not plastic, not tempered, and - if similar to the iPhone's - not unsmashable!) front of the device covers the screen, which itself appears further recessed slightly into the unit. I spose if you're lucky (though not lucky enough to have avoided dropping it, obviously) and you drop it, you might smash the front while avoiding damaging the screen itself, but frankly I don't ever want to put that to the test.

The back of the unit is made of beautifully curved and beautifully shiny and polished stainless steel. Something it shares with many of the other iPod models. (The square thing is a holographic sticker - I can only assume the previous owner stuck it on for some bizarre reason).
Unsurprisingly though, something else it shares as a result of this, is that the back will attract tiny scratches and fingerprints until it's practically matte in appearance. I strongly recommend at least a plastic case (like the one in most of the images) that clips onto the back of the unit to protect it from scratches and dints, as other metal-backed iPods I've owned have been susceptible to both.

As far as the glass front of the iPod is concerned, a smooth glass surface that doubles as a touchscreen, VERY quickly becomes quite disgustingly messy, covered in fingerprints, smudges, even food (if you eat with your hands/are a careless eater). It's a bugger to get polished and shiny again, and unless it is perfectly shiny it eventually becomes a tiny bit of a sod to use, as dragging your fingers across layers of fingerprints isn't the most pleasant way to use a music player or any other device for that matter.

For this reason, you can buy screen protectors that resist fingerprints. Apple sell two different types both designed to protect the display; one that is great at resisting fingerprints and reducing glare, while reducing the clarity of the display slightly, and one that preserves the colour and the clarity of the screen while being slightly less good at resisting fingerprints, and no good whatsoever at resisting glare.

Whichever of these you plump for, Apple will want to charge you the "expensive but it's worth it (apparently)" price of £9.99 for two. I bought a pack of six generic (very very slightly matte) screen protectors for £1.30, that are much less scratch resistant, but are resistant to glare, and make fingerprints a very minor problem, generally making the device much more pleasant to use.
Fact is, that if a screen protector isn't included with the iPod, it bloody well should be, and for Apple to charge people anything up to £300 (for a 64gb model) and NOT include a screen protector, is taking bloody liberties a bit. They may as well not include earphones, while they're at it.

Ah yes. The Earphones.
It seems to be a running joke within the Apple company, that the company invests loads of money into designing and developing new players, and next to nothing, it seems, on designing the headphones that these new players play music through.
Every set of apple headphones I've ever had have been uncomfortable, and more or less gutless, with little bass (and few high frequencies, actually) to speak of.
They're not the worst headphones I've ever used, not by any means, but what they're also not is good enough to be something you'd expect to be included with a player that cost you this amount of money.
Apple also seem to have reasoned that if the earphones can double as a thief magnet, attracting muggers robbers, and pickpockets of all hues, by virtue of being a very distinctive off-white, then they will gain extra sales from people returning to the stores to replace iPods that have been stolen from them.
If it wasn't for the microphone built into the earphones (which so far seem to be available in only the cheapest rip-off copies and NO decent aftermarket earphones), I'd have put them in my "crappy electronics" box in the loft. We'll come back to the microphone later.

THE INTERFACE: What is it like to use?:

Where "normal" iPods started with a combination of rotating wheels and buttons, and later migrated to simple centralised and minimalist touch-sensitive clickwheels, the iPod touch was a relative latecomer to the iPod family, and is not so much evolved from other iPods - that themselves each have a clearly visible and traceable design lineage - as distilled downwards from the iPhone, itself a completely different product designed for a different market.
For this reason, it might be better to consider the iPod Touch as less of a member of the iPod family, and more as the odd cousin that doesn't visit that often. A spiritual successor to the early iPods, the Touch might be. But an evolution of an existing iPod it was not. Controls wise, (until later upgrades that gave it a hold switch and an physical volume switch), the only button that the Touch featured was the "Home" button, itself taken from the iPhone rather than from any iPod.

As both devices use a touchscreen, the iPod uses an interpretation of the software originally designed for its iPhone counterpart, with the necessary tweaks made, some features added or changed, others removed. What this means in real terms is that instead of pressing buttons and seeing the results on screen, the buttons are on the screen. Objects on the screen could be physically "manipulated" using finger gestures, swiping from window to window with a side-to-side motion, scrolling up or down by flicking your finger up or down the screen, and of course the staple of any touchscreen device, tapping on a "button" to press it.

The GUI of the Touch (I'm calling it a Touch now, because iPod Touch is annoying after you type it 50 times in ten minutes) as with the phone, Apple's computer OSes and even Microsoft Windows, features antialiased icons, which when pressed open applications, lists of music, option menus etc etc. Icons can be moved around the screen, moved off the screen to a "second home screen" (reachable by swiping sideways from left to right), and some can be deleted altogether.

As with the iPhone, there's a "home button" below the screen that when pressed takes you back to the Touch's customisable equivalent of a main menu. Swiping from here in from right to left takes you from one screen of icons to (provided you have moved some of your icons around from screen to screen) to a second screen of icons. Swiping in the opposite direction brings you back to the first screen, and swipe from left to right a second time, to get to to the Touch's incredibly useful search window. Search videos, artists, songs, albums etc with ease and speed, using the on screen keyboard. Accessible and useful, I think you'll find.

MUSIC: Is it as good as they say it is?

The iPod's stated function of course, is to store and play music, and a quick tap of the "Music" icon brings you to the music selection screen. Scroll through the music by artist, individual song title, by album, or by other criteria like Genre and Composer. All in alphabetical order.
The cool thing about searching specifically by album is that provided you can find the album cover art (more on this later, too), a little icon representing the album cover is displayed next to the name of each album. It's helpful if you've memorised what the covers of your albums look like, and is still pretty cool if you haven't.

Playback? It plays music, it plays it pretty well.
I'm sorry to disappoint if you were looking forward to this bit, but I'm not going to bang on about technical audio quality, compression - lossless or otherwise - or bitrates. Audiophiles have the wonderful ability to enjoy every nuance of a good quality recording of good music, played on a good system.
Unfortunately for them, many also have the grumpy ability to disapprove of every technology, format or sound system that falls short of their high standards. I suppose this just goes hand in hand with the ability to really tell between "good" and "bad".

Fortunately for me, I am not an audiophile, I am just a music lover. I couldn't care less about bitrates or compression, as long as the music sounds good. And you know, the iPod Touch does sound good, even through my cheap (they turned out to be counterfeit in the end!) £15 "sennheiser" CX300s canalphones. Sound quality is generally pretty good, the bass is good and deep without swamping everything (I use the Rock EQ preset for a couple of tunes, and the R&B (even though I hate R&B) preset for everything else). The fact is that I think the iPod touch has very good sound quality, so I'm certainly not going to criticise it on that front.

The music interface is pretty damn good as well. Select an album from the list and it gives you the list of songs, allowing you to choose to play a specific song, or to "shuffle" (play in random order) the entire album. Let's say we choose a song.

What you've got now is the music playback screen (You can see how far the iPod Touch has come from the "old" iPods, in terms of the information displayed and the sheer ease of use that the new iPod gives you.

In the background you've got the album art, at the bottom you've got the usual play/pause/next/prev and volume controls. At the top you've got the tracker bar (with adjustable tracking speed, so you can track through the song at normal speed, or at much slower speed for greater precision for selecting a very specific point in the song, say), as well as the replay and shuffle icons.
Tap the replay icon once to replay the entire album once it reaches its end. Tap it again to replay only the song that is playing, once it has reached its end, tap it a third time to turn replay off.

The buttons in the top left and top right, return you to the music menu or give you the album song list, respectively. From the latter, you can also "rate" the song, telling the computer how much you like the song (this comes in useful for creating playlists in iTunes - we'll come to THAT later as well)...

Coverflow is an amazing feature new to the ipod range, and has been phased in over the past couple of models. It sure sets the newer ipods apart from the older ones.
Instead of scrolling down the list of albums in portrait orientation (holding the ipod vertically), flip it onto its side, and the list is replaced with representations of the covers of the albums themselves. These, you can flick through as if searching a shelf full of CDs. Tap on an album cover, and the artwork is replaced with a list of songs on the album. From there, either tap it again to return to the artwork, or tap a song name to play the album from that point.

Music is generally able to play in the background while you run other "ayapps". The same is not true of videos, which we come to now.

VIDEO: What about videos?

So you're on the train or whatever, you've got a long journey ahead. Is it as simple as just taking out the iPod and putting a movie on?
Well, actually, yes it is. Go to the "Videos" screen and you're given a little icon preview of each movie, as well as the length and the name of the movie (Stopping playback of a movie before reaching the end results in a helpful little "24m Left"/"48m Left"/however long/Left note by the side of the details, also).

The controls are pretty simple enough, pick a movie and it starts playing straight away. Play/pause, previous video, next video on the bottom along with the volume. At the top is the tracker or whatever it's called that you can use to select a specific time in the movie.

Another cool thing is that movies are generally played in their native aspect ratio (widescreen movies are wider than non-widescreen movies, as you'd expect), but if you want to use a little more of the screen, double-tap the movie while it's playing, and the iPod will expand the movie until it stretches to all four sides of the screen.

Video quality is great. Videos are nice and crisp, non-blurry, and very colourful. All in all, the Touch does a very good job.

PHOTOS: Images of various sorts of things...

With its lovely large screen, the Touch is also good for carrying around your photos to show your mates. While the iPod itself doesn't actually have a camera (I'm not going into that, there's enough moaning about it elsewhere on the interwebs, personally I don't care, I own a camera, I don't need to hope I get one thrown in for free on some other device) it does a good job of displaying photos divided neatly into seperate albums (which are apparently a bit fiddly to create).
Again, the usual finger gestures apply - slide from photo to photo, pinch the thumb and forefinger together on the screen to zoom out, move them apart on the screen to zoom in. The iPod can determine its orientation, so if you're viewing a landscape format image on the screen, turn the Touch onto its side, and the image expands to fill the screen. Turn it upright to view portrait format images.
The iPod also lets you play little slideshows of images, transitioning from one to the next.

In no particular order, we now come to another cool feature of the iPod.

VOICE CONTROL: Tell the thing what to do:

The earphones, as I mentioned earlier include a microphone and a few remote controls (volume, pause, play, next tune etc etc). Hold down the main switch on the remote, and the iPod goes into voice control mode. Like an answerphone, wait for the beep, then speak.

Remember, the iPod is just that, a music player. So commands like "make me a sandwich" probably won't accomplish anything. However, a helpful list of ideal commands scrolls by on the screen. "Play next song", "play previous song" etc are there, you can turn shuffle on or off, and there are a couple of other cool commands.

"What song is this?"/"Who sings this song" etc will result in a computerised female voice telling you the name of the song/artist. You can also select particular artists to listen to, i.e. "Play songs by Bonjovi".

The text to speech parser on "her" end isn't flawless, and neither is the speech recognition software, but I was surprised to find out just how accurate the voice recognition software actually is. By and large, it interprets my commands easily, the only tricky moments it's had so far is distinguishing between music from "Queen" and music from "Creed". In general, I ask it to play one of these two, and it plays the other. More than once, it responded to "play songs by Queen" with "Now playing songs by Wideboys" which made me giggle a bit, but as I say, these are really the only three artists that seem to trip the voice command thing up, and as I say, apart from these, the software is surprisingly accurate.

CHILDISH VOICE CONTROL GAME: Me sodding about and being juvenile with it:

In the interests of being childish though, I did fire up the iPod and select songs/artists with "unusually" spelled names/songs, and asked the iPod to identify them for me. Here are a few of the more amusing ones:

"Now playing 'Gym all your loving' by 'Zed Zed Top'" - Gimme All Your Lovin' by ZZ (pronounced Zee Zee) Top

"Now playing 'Cafe Del March, Dead-more-five rimmicks'" - Cafe Del Mar (Deadmau5) remix.
In retrospect this one might have been a little unfair on the iPod.

"Now playing 'Satch Buggy' by 'Joe Satch-ri-inny'" - Satch Boogie by Joe Satriani

"Eisbrecher" (pronounced "Ice-bresher" (It's German for "Icebreaker")) became "Eees-brit-cher"...

All that irreverent and juvenile stuff aside, I do actually feel slightly guilty for deliberately tripping the software up and then poking fun at it. In general, if the tune/artist is "in English" i.e. not given a foreign name like "Eisbrecher", "Rammstein", or "Tyskarna från Lund" (interestingly, the iPod did pronounce this correctly), then the text to speech parser is more or less guarunteed to get it right. It's certainly a cool feature.
Unfortunately, I don't use it for two reasons:

The first is that I'd need to use the headphones that come with the iPod, which as I've said, aren't bad, but they're not good enough for me to want to ditch my "Sennheisers". Aftermarket headphones featuring built in microphones seem to be more or less non-existent.
The second and more prosaic reason is that I simply don't want to be seen walking around, asking "myself" questions about who sings what, or sitting on public transport coming out with random utterances like "Next song". Enough people mutter crap to themselves on public transport as it is, that's why I bought noice cancelling headphones in the first place (see point one).

If you're in the gym or something, I'd imagine it's a cool feature and one you can get away with using, but as I say, the headphones would need to be a whole lot better for me to actually use them.

APPS: Pronounced "Ayapps"? AND ONLINE USE (what, the internets?):

The iPod Touch, being equipped with Wi-Fi, is able to use the Apple Apps store (formerly the exclusive domain of the iPhone) to browse and download new little bits of software to itself. Stuff like new games or other clever little bits of software can be browsed by the hundreds, and bought online.

So far, I've only downloaded a few games and things, and then, only free ones (I've just paid £220 for an ipod, I'm damned if I'm going to pay extra to use the fecking thing), but the premise is very simple. Search a category, read a review, if it sounds cool, pay for it (if there's a price), download it, and off you go, all over wi-fi.

I've downloaded as I say, a few games, as well as three incredibly good (and free!) bits of software:

eBuddy - allows you to chat with AIM friends, MSN contacts, people on Facebook and other communications networks, all from the same bit of software.

Facebook - Self explanatory - Browse facebook from your iPod

Sky News - Read the latest news on your iPod.

"Apps" as Apple have annoyingly (and proprietarily (is that a word?)) dubbed what everyone else would call "applications", "programs" or even "software", are the iPod's way of expanding and adding to itself, and since there are many hundreds (many thousands?) of apps out there, everyone's iPod is more than likely to be slightly different.

As default though, the iPod is given a few cool bits of software, not the least of which are Safari (Apple's web browser), a link to Google Maps (apparently the iPod has the ability to determine your location - I don't know how this works and I haven't tried it), and a link to Youtube.

Safari seems to run pretty well, and far from the dark days of "internet" phones that claimed to let you roam the "entire internet" (provided like most AOL users, you believe the entire internet describes the handful of sites suggested to you by the software already installed on the phone), the iPod truly is internet capable. If your PC/Mac can open an internet site, so can the iPod.
Two notable exceptions are that the OS of the iPod doesn't support Flash or Java - the former may be supported via a third-party application (ayapp). Not sure about the latter.
As I say though, fantastically cool feature. Who needs SMS on a cellphone when if you can find a wi-fi hotspot, you can just go online and have full conversations for free!

ITUNES AND ALBUM ART (the iPod is not a standalone device!)...

iTunes, iTunes, ahh lovely iTunes.
Well, lovely is debatable but as I'm on my fifth iPod (two first gen nanos, one second gen shuffle, one fifth gen video and one third gen touch) I'd be kinda screwed without it.

iTunes is the (free) supporting software designed to not only form a bridge between your computer and your iPod, but also a central command system for your iPod . iTunes is what sits on your computer and lets you organise your tunes into playlists (lists of songs you can play, surprisingly. For example, group all your christmas songs into one playlist called "Christmas playlist", turn Shuffle on, and you can while away the happy hours listening to christmas tunes).

iTunes lets you organise your videos, change your iPods preferences etc, and helps you sort your music into albums etc etc. Through it you can visit the iTunes store (a huge online market for albums and legal MP3 downloads, as well as videos, podcasts (like radio broadcasts, yet not) and the ever present "ayapps".

You will need iTunes if you're going to buy an iPod. It's free to download though, easy to set up and automatically updates.
I'd look on Wikipedia or the apple site to find out about iTunes, since this is only a quick review...

One cool feature iTunes has is to download album art from the internet, so you can have the associated album art for all your albums/artists etc on your Coverflow. Unfortunately, this function isn't infallible, and I personally have had to spend two days downloading and exporting hundreds of images of CD covers, to my iPod to complete Coverflow without leaving huge blank gaps in it.

VERDICT: I like this gadget:

I'm not going to summarise each point in detail, as I did it up there ^^ (All those letters and punctuation and wordy things)...

All said and done though, I reckon you absolutely get your money's worth out of the new iPod Touch. You can do everything from play music to watch movies, view photos to chat on MSN. You could be surfing the internet, reading the news, watching youtube, or just playing games, and the battery life is pretty good (30 hours audio OR 6 hours internet surfing OR 6 hours video playback).

It's lightweight, slim, and pretty damn gorgeous. The earphones are a bit of a letdown, and the lack of an included screen protector is a downright crime given that the thing smudges fingerprints like a great big smudgy thing until you get one on.

The price is a bit on the high side (£300 for a 64gb model (I paid £230 for mine - ex return - long story)) but once you've paid it, you've got it, and with a few free "Ayapps", you've got all you need to surf the net to your heart's content.

Overall?

Well that's for you to decide - I've already bought mine ;-).