stevegerrard.org

No Flash support. Come on!! the best browsing experience?????
No multi-tasking..
No camera, so what about video skype??
No OLED screen..
Screen resolution at 1024×768 so does not support HD video..
No video out interface..
No SD card slot..
No USB port..

All in all, still very much a slave device to a Mac (or PC)

It does look very nice through and I’ll problable end up buying one!!

My good friend Peter Costello commented on the fact that there have been precious few contributions made to all that is stevegerrard.org, so just for you Peter here’s the first entry for 2010 (but also I would suggest you search elsewhere for online reading material!)

It’s rare that I get too excited about an application, given the sheer amount of new desktop and mobile apps coming on to the market everyday. Having had an iphone for over half a year I’ve seen quite a few interesting new apps that make you think “ahh, that’s quite cool, but how much will I actually use it?” One common issue that bugs me is how to share files and photos with my family, especially since Ayfer and I have become de-facto official photographers of my niece Tzipi, I somehow need to get hundreds (actually, nearly thousands) of high quality photos to my family, which can be a real pain as its far to large to email, hence the only options are a USB stick or to burn DVD, both of which require physically meeting up. Other options would be to use space on my web-hosting account which requires using an FTP program, fairly un-user friendly for most people, or I could sign up for MobileMe which although is quite a neat and complete offering, I do feel is a little limited and rather over priced for what you get. So this marvellous application I speak of is Dropbox.

In simple and consise terms the Dropbox concept is a centralised folder that you have on all your computers or devices that allows you to automatically see what is in that folder be it on your work or home computer, and is available on Mac, PC, and Linux, and there’s even an iPhone app as well.

All you do is sign up for an account, install the software and you can then instantly share documents, photos -pretty much all files – as long as they are in the that Dropbox folder. Within the folder itself you are free to create further folders and better still you can give public or, more importantly, provide selected access to those folders to you family and friends.

What it means for example is that if you save all your documents to that folder whenever you make a change and then save it, it is automatically updated on all your computers rather than just the one you are working on. In turn this means the the previous hassle I had of putting on a USB stick or burning a DVD with hundred to photos of Tzipi and then physically having to take to my sisters house no longer exists. Instead she can also sign up with Dropbox and I share that folder with her. “Simples” as a Russian meerkat would say.

For the princely sum of diddly-squat you get 2 Gbytes of storage, and if you want more (50 or 100 Gb) you can pay a relatively small monthly fee.

What else, well, all yoru files are fully backed up online, you also get full web access to the files if you aren’t with one of you own computers, and you can see the complete revision history and previous versions of updated files, a bit like Time Machine. For files that you want you give open access to anyone there’s a “Public” folder that allows you to dump files in and then dish out a URL to anyone.

Clever huh?

For the few days that I’ve been using it I am really impressed. Its so simple, so logical, and so useful. Brilliant!

Yup, it snowed last night. It was quite surreal actually; after a lovely meal at the Lokanta Turkish restaurant in George Street, we head off to the Bee’s Mouth for a quick drink, only to emerge just 1 hour later, and a good 10cm of snow!

Of course, the obligatory, inevitable, and fairly lenghtly snowball fight followed. Here’s a couple of pics taken on my iphone when we were on Palmiera Square:

Ayfer, John M, Philippa, and Antonio

with the local snowman

In the morning,instead of going to work, Ayfer went for a wander and took some great pics that you can see on Flickr.

Here’s a few of the best ones:

In the a space of 48 hours it’s all gone Pete Tong. In pretty atrocious conditions successive semi-finals in the mens singls and mens doubles have not gone my way. In the singles I simply didn’t play well enough, and in the doubles last night, and excrusiatingly tight second set was lost 11-9 in the tie break… Merde!!! (as they say in France).

The slight consolation is that wer’e in the Mixed final on Saturday so at least there is some chance to salvage something from what has been a pretty dire week on the tennis front!! :((

The Grasshoppers quadruple is still on; having secured the Winter Mixed with Jenny, I’m still in the hunt for the singles, mens doubles, and mixed! Will my flat look like a large gleaming trophy cabinet, or will I grab defeat from the jaws of victory in spectacular fashion… only time will tell!

First up is the mens doubles semi against Giles and Matt; should be a close one.. will keep you posted…!

I recently started getting the message “could not activate cellular data network: You are not subscribed to a cellular service”. The way to solve this is to go to the “Cellular Data Network” stting under the General/Network option, and change the data APN from idata.o2.co.uk to mobile.o2.co.uk.

Also, for MMS you should change the APN from idata.o2.co.uk to wap.o2.co.uk.

I just need to vent my frustration that the supposed new iMac are still not out yet. I’m ready to go an replace my 4 year old iMac G4 with the latest and greatest from Apple, and there have been reports that it is iminent since the begining of january, but ziltch so far.

Current rumour suggest it will be based on the quad-core “Nehalem” Intel Core i7 processors which should make it a significant upgrade to the current dual core versions, but with Apple you never know so well have to wait and see. Also its not clear whether the appearance or form factor will change.

All I know is that i want it to happen soon!

At last, we woke up to a beautiful blue sky, and after a hearty breakfast we pack our stuff, which doesn’t take long at all since all we brought with us was literally toothbrushes and beachgear.

Today was a day for serious sunbathing as we’ve got to at least look as if we’ve been on holiday before we get back some and we’re running out of days.

This photo below on surface of it looks like a shot where I say to Ayfer “do that running thing in the sea and look playful and sexy” However I can reveal that this shot is the moment when Ayfer was attacked by a vicious sea creature and she came within an inch of her life.

Something truely horrible and scary bit her on the toe during her first attempt at swiming in the Pacific ocean. The next picture is not for the feint hearted, but it reveals the true extent of the horrendous injuries that Ayfer suffered at the hands of the monster; the cut is almost 2mm long. (it’s the middle toe if you need it pointing out)

Horrific injury

Fearing for her life Ayfer did not have another attempt at the ocean and spent the next hour complaining why the monster was not attacking all the other (hundreds) people. I however did not go in becuse it was too bloody cold.

We both got truely sunburnt (yes, even Ayfer) but its been a good day and long overdue. Tomorrow morning we get a flight from Santiago to Rio for our final stop before returning home. Lets hope the sun can last!

The proposed early start for our 2 day excursion up the chilean coast towards Zapallar has gone out the window due to the fact that a) we are knacked, and b) we have now fully understood the chances of it being sunny in the morning to be less than remote, so there’s little point of getting to any beach before lunchtime.

We finally mange to get ourselves on the right bus by 11ish and start heading up the coast. Now, the problem is that when you are on a bus going to somewhere you’ve never been to, the the issue is knowing when you are there. We ended up just sitting on the bus looking at each other saying “ is this it?” and, as we are pants at making decisions, we just stay on the bus. Once it became clear that we have seriously overshot Zapallar we decide to get off cos at this rate we’ll end up in Peru unless we do something! The place we end up in is called Papudo which it turns out is only a few minutes north of where we wanted to be. It seems quite nice though so stay for some lunch before heading back to Zapallar.

After some feverish arm waving and guesturing we manage to comunicate with the bus driver in order for him to lets us know where to get off. Zapallar seems to be quite a posh place where apparently all the rich people and politicians have holiday homes. It certainly seems a lot cleaner and nicer than naywhere else, so feeling at home, we head down the hill to the beach and find our spot. Note however that it is still cloudy but ignored such a small detail and proceed to start sunbathing (even though its quite chilly too (this coutry is really living up to its name).

There did however seem to be a distinct lack of holets or hostels, and even after asking some locals there does not appear to be any options. However, on the bus journey we remomber passing a town that was on a huge beach where there were a load of Casa’s so we decide our best bet is to head there, and send in the Negociator. True to form, we get there and Ayfer secures us a really nice place on the beach after talking to an Agentinian bunch who help us by calling the ownwe. It’s like a mini holiday cottage with all its own facilites; bit pricy but worth it. A quick trip to the supermarket and we’re sorted for the night.

One point I need to make here, and countries around the world take note here..: I wanted to have a nice cup of tea so merrily headed to the tea section of the supermarket where I was confronted by a ridiculaous array of tea varieties including Twinings and Lipton. I need to make 2 points here: Firstly, people in the England (the home of a proper cup of tea) do not drink Twinings or Lipton cos it truly tastes crap. The only place you find it are in hotels or abroad. I don’t care whether its got the “by appointment of her majesty..” mark on it, its not proper tea (and she’s German so what would she know), and we don’t drink it. So if you are foreign and want to have an English cup of tea, don’t not buy this. Either give up and have a coffee, or come to England. Secondly, there’s the stupid amount of varieties of tea on offer: Earl Gray, Lady Gray, Prince of Wales, English Breakfast Tea, English Afternoon Tea, English Just After Lunch Tea, etc..etc.. blah .. blah.. again, whilst all these varieties exist, we only drink bog standard normal tea, apart from a few poncy people. PG tips is all you need.

After a debate about what to do, our options are still to either head up the coast and chance it finding somewhere to say, or just do day trips from Vina. We actually got to a point of decideing and actually wrote a note for Gisela and Carlos say we would be off the next morning. We then of course changed our minds and removed the note to leave any difficult decision making to another time.

As the weather is still looking a little dodgy (I’m beginning to think the sun never shines in this damed country) so we have decided to head to Renaca and Concon for the day. These are supposedly smaller but still commercial town just a little bit up the coast.

So we get on the bus and head for Renaca. The bus is full of a load of other people looking attired for a day by the beach so we stay on the bus until they get off thinking they will know the best places. At Renaca they seem to stay on the bus, so we also stay on until Concon which seems like the place to be! We walk around a bit looking for a nice bit of beach and evently give up and head for the main beach which is pleasant enough although a little touristy/commercial, but at least the place is a lot smaller than Vina, AND the sun has at last come out!

In the evening we go to a rather nice little seafood restaurant that Gisela recommended called La Gagita (which means “kitten” for those that want to know, and proves that we do learn the odd word along the way). Whilst Ayfer is a little dissapointed that the Sea Bass is not available, she happily settles for a Sole, which is indeed a relief. We spend the meal still debating what we are going to do for the next couple of days and finally have reached the decision that we will head off for one night but keep the room in Vina. That way both options are covered.