Mobile Surfing

It's been a while since our last update, partly because we've not been out and about lately, partly because I was struck down with man-flu last week and partly because I've been surfing the world wide web on my mobile.

Last month I upgraded my mobile package with Three to include web surfing, up to a gigabyte of internet browsing for a an extra fiver a month seems like a pretty good deal. I've been browsing away on my little K800i and have hardly switched the computer on at all over the last few weeks.

The experience of navigating the web on a mobile has actually been better than I expected, I can now post to Blogger via Gmail, do quick updates in the sidebar using Twitter Mobile and of course check out my usual haunts - every weather page known to man!

It's not a breeze though and sometimes downright annoying! The handsets own browser is limited and to view non mobile pages you have to go through either Google's or Yahoo's mobile converter thingy which by the time it's stripped out non mobile compliant stuff, there ain't much left to look at. The built in rss reader wouldn't work with many feeds and now doesn't work at all.

I downloaded Opera Mini which is much better at rendering web pages and is a whole lot faster too. The included rss reader is great and I use that alot as using the mobile version of Google Reader is royal pain in the butt.

One thing that is missing from Opera Mini 3.1 is the ability to upload pictures, if you try to do that it just starts the camera which isn't any good if you want to load a picture you've already taken. For loading pictures I have to switch back to the built in browser and then switch back again to view them!

There is a new version of Opera Mini coming out soon, I've tried version 4 but it's still in Beta and there is no picture uploading or rss reader as yet so I'll hold off that one until the full version is released, which hopefully won't be too long.

I'm also finding that any applications I try to download now just report as invalid, I've tried the Opera Beta again and that now won't install. It's not for the feint hearted this mobile surfing lark but it does seem to be getting better and while I still have to use the PC for certain tasks, it won't be too long before the mobile will be able to handle pretty much everything.

I'm on holiday this week so I'll have plenty of opportunity to explore without Debbie's current favourite catch phrase, "will you put that bloody phone down", ringing in my ear...

Paul

Out With The Old

It's been 15 months since we last upgraded our mobile phones, that's the longest we've ever had to wait to upgrade having gone for an 18 month contract last time around. Another first is the fact that we weren't desperate to get a new phone, the outgoing Nokia 6680 has been a pleasure to use over the last year or so.

The main reason for changing this time was to get back on to a cheaper 12 month contract which we've managed to do, knocking a tenner off the old monthly bill. After perusing the mobile phone market for the last 6 months, I still wasn't sure what I wanted when I walked into the 3 shop on Sunday but in the end went for a Sony EricssonK800i in sexy black, the one with the Cybershot 3.2 megapixel camera.

Debbie hadn't looked at any phones previoulsy, her only critera was that her new phone should be small and be able to make phone calls. It took Debbie all of 10 seconds to decide on a Sony EricssonK610i which with only a 2 megapixel camera (I say only, that's still pretty darn good) and no radio, I hadn't really looked at. It's turned out to be a smashing little phone though, very small, very slim, extreemly light, and with great buttons, Debbie is delighted with it!

I love my K800i too, while heavier and bulkier than Debbie's K610i, it's still on the small side and should an impromptu photo opportunity arrise, I'll be ready, just like in the televison advert, not that I've seen anyone falling past our office window latley, but you never know...

Paul.

Here's our new toy!

On Saturday, having had enough of our unhelpful mobile phone operator, we decided to go shopping for a pair of new phones. Now, we've done this loads of times before and usually it takes hours of flitting between the shops trying to find something we like at the right price. Not so this time around, our first stop was Superdrug who have a pokey little 3 shop in the corner but it;s not the size of the shop that matters, it's the staff in it and the phones deals on offer. With us still locked into our old contract for 6 months we didn't want to be paying too much and we we're pleasantly surprised to find that the right phone was on offer with half price line rental for the first six months. In effect we're now paying the same price having two phones on the go as we would have done just upgrading to the anytime tariff with our old operator.

So we walked out of the shop with a bargain tariff, a shiny new Nokia 6680 each and we both got a handy back pack full of goodies!

We've had the phones for a few days now and we love them to bits, the only minor down sides are that they don't have a radio and they don't come with any chuffin games! The 3 network, Planet 3, is cool which is just as well as you can't browse the internet, but their own offerings are enough to keep us occupied and it's totally free to browse. There is only are charge, usually 25p ro 50p if you decide to watch a video clip of anything but it does give you a clear warning before doing anything which costs money, which is nice. The games available through 3 are bit pricey though at £7.50 each, I'm sure we could get some for half that price elsewhere although I'm not sure we'd have time to play any games much anyway.

Sending texts is a dream, the keys are so easy to use I've even been able to use predictive text without swearing! Debbie is sticking with the normal method but either way, texting is a lot easier than it was on the old phones.

The phone comes with two cameras, a little one on the front for making video calls and a 1.3 megapixel camera on the back which takes really good photos and even has a zoom. The phone pack includes a cable for connecting to a computer and the software to handle everything. I've tried it out and managed to see piccies I took on the old phone in all their glory for the first time by transferring them to the new one via bluetooth and then on to the computer.

We've been chasing the zoo round the house trying to get some good pictures, here's one we managed to get of Lollypop.



We've not tried putting any mp3 files on the phones yet, I'm not sure how many we'd get on there, I think the memory card that came with it is 64MB so there should be room for a few. All in all we're really happy with the new phones and we're glad the weird and wacky 3 TV adverts didn't put us off ..lol..

Paul.

PG Tips Mobile

It's still hot hot hot here but the forecast is for thunderstorms again later which will be great for cooling the air down a bit but not so good for anyone living in a flood prone area who will be at risk from flash floods again, including the poor folk that were hit on Sunday.

We were supposed to be upgrading our mobile phones this week but despite our service provider saying we could, when we actually tried, they said we couldn't even though the shop thought we could and their web site indicated we could. We had the same problem when trying to upgrade before, on that occasion our contract had expired but they still wanted to charge us more for an upgrade than the cost of buying a phone on it's own! Never again, they can go and stick their price plans where the sun don't shine!

We're going to try and refrain from using the mobiles except for when it's free then we're not giving them any more money than we have to. If this turns out not to be practical with all the phone calls we're having to make at the moment, we'll just go with someone else any way and switch the old phones off as paying for two price plans will be cheaper than what we've been paying recently with the extra charges for daytime phone calls.

It's crunchie time, it's Big Brother eviction day and there are rumours of three new housemates going in tonight....Top Banana!

Paul.

Big Prints

The new printer we got on Sunday has turned out to be fantastic! Up to now we've been using a little Epson Stylus and to be honest, it was easier to get prints done down the photo shop than attempting to get a half decent photo off our own printer. But now we've got this new HP beastie, which does up to A3 prints, it's so much easier with front paper loading and the end result, especially on A4 is out of this world. We've printed out more pictures this weekend than we have in the last two years and now have something to put in the frames we've been buying.

What we have found though is that most of our existing collection of photos, which is in the thousands, has been taken at lower resolution than is required for A4 printing but is still ok on the standard 6 x 4 size. We've now changed the settings on the cameras to biggest size and highest resolution and found that snaps from this weekend print perfectly as A4. With the number of available pictures on the memory card reduced to 200, the next purchase will be a couple of 1GB cards. How did we ever manage with a roll of 24 exp film!

Paul

Shush Shush

We had a lazy day on Easter Monday, the weather wasn't really fit for anything else, not only was it raining, it was also much colder to boot. We did venture out to the supermarket and found that everyone else in the area was there too, fighting for spaces in the car park.

Against our better judgement we tip-toed in to Carphone Warehouse to look for a new mobile phone, it wasn't long before we had someone hovering behind us, itching to tell us about Talk Talk. I told him, please do not mention Talk Talk, we don't want it.......twenty minutes later after waffling on about Talk Talk, he got round to sorting out a new phone.....none in stock!

We know which mobile we want and we know another branch that has them, we've just got to be strong when we go in, armed with a whole bag of 'shush' for the salesmen that just won't stop talk talking.

Paul.

Card Reader

It felt a bit on the chilly side leaving work yesterday so I wasn't surprised to find the thermometer showing only 6c when I got home. Debbie had already made tea so we could get straight off to the supermarket for some bits and pieces, including a couple of bottles of loopy juice to save for Christmas.

On the way out I spotted PC World, it only opened this year so I keep forgetting it's there, anyway we popped in because we were on the lookout for a card reader for the cameras. With it being 10 minutes before closing we had four assistants sorting out which one we needed and it turned out to be cheaper than we were expecting. Making our way back to the till, this big security bloke jumps out and says "the tills are closing, please go to the till". Cheeky bugger, there was still 5 minutes to go so we revolted and wandered up and down some isles just to annoy him lmao!

Back at the ranch, a bacardi and coke was in order while we watched the new trailers for Star Wars III and also Bridget Jones - Edge Of Reason which we're hoping to see this weekend.

This morning it's still cold but we've still not had to scrape frost off the cars so far this Autumn, I think that might change over the coming weekend.... Winter here we come!

Paul

New Mobiles

After work I rushed home and took the dogs out for a quick lap of the field while we waited for Debbie to get home. As soon as she arrived, we got changed and zoomed off to Meadowhell. It wasn't too busy for a change so we had a clear path to march on down to the mobile phone shop.

We've didn't want another flip phone because when it rings we're all fingers and thumbs and can't get it open quick enough after spending ages tying to get it out of Debbie's handbag. This time we've gone for a Sony Ericsson T610, it's been out a while but it's had good reviews and it does exactly what we want at a decent price. The customer before us shelled out £250 for a new phone which is something we would never do, in 18 months time when our contract is up, we could probably get the same phone for free.

Anyway, we've not had chance to look at the new phones much yet, they were on charge all last night but we have taken a few pictures and Debbie has now got a picture of Lucy as her screen saver and she looks as cute as ever.

With the new phones and everything we didn't take that much notice of Big Brother, all we managed to catch was the end to find out that Jason, Victor, Dan and Nadia are all up for eviction. You know who we want to leave on Friday but I can't say or it won't happen.

Now that we're a year old and we've got over 250 posts on here, we've added a Google search tool to the bottom of our blog.

Paul

Brum Brum!

Disaster struck me on Sunday afternoon, I managed to get the nitro fuel in using a washing up liquid bottle cut in half as a funnel but having left the battery pack for the start motor on charge over night, there was still not enough juice in it to get the buggy started. I tried charging it again for 15 minutes at a time and tried to start the buggy again time after time but it wouldn't have it so we took Lucy and Harvey for a walk over the road. It's a good job we had our coats, as soon as we got outside, the bright sunshine turned into a very heavy shower but thankfully didn't last for too long. After passing the bridge that I fell off the other week, we took a different route, taking us past a pond where we saw a rabbit next to some trees, Debbie tried taking a picture but I think it was too far away and we couldn't get any closer because of the dogs.

We got back and I set up the buggy and tried starting again and this time I finally managed to get it going. The little 2-stroke engine needs to be run in so I ad to leave it idling until the fuel tank was empty. Feeling hungry having not eaten since breakfast, we had a Chinese meal for tea and watched Second Hand Lions which is a fantastic film about a boy growing up with his two barmy uncles. After the film I filled the tank on the buggy again and we slowly drove it around the back yard as it was too late to be going back over the fields again. The running in period is almost over, I've got to drive the buggy now at medium speed for 4 tanks of fuel and after that, I can let rip and see what a buggy doing 40mph across the field looks like!

I've got to go and get a little squeezy bottle for fill the buggy tank today, I would have though that the shop where I bought would have sold me one or at least told me one was required but they didn't really offer much advice at all, a bit shabby really for a specialized shop like that. I'm just hoping we don't get much rain today so the fields dry out and we can get out on to the fields after work.

Paul

Propper pleased as punch....... 

Dance Dance Dance

Despite the rain yesterday and Lucy's refusal to go outside, when we got home, the kitchen was as we left it, which was a nice surprise. A few things were out of place with the cats re-enacting world war two during the day but that's normal.

We got our new dance mats yesterday with the game Dance:UK, which uses a different system to Dance Stage that we borrowed. Also, it's much, much faster! There we were, legs moving faster than the cast of Riverdance trying to keep up with all these arrows coming from all directions. I don't think we'll bother with the add on headset microphones for karaoke, it's bad enough that we're jumping around the living room to the tune of Ohh Ahh Just A Little Bit!

Paul

Into The Groove

We borrowed a dance mat for the playstation off my brother on Saturday and we got around to trying it out last night. I was a bit sceptical at first but bounding about on this mat to the tune of zipadeedoodah was great fun, certainly more entertaining than jogging or going to the gym. We enjoyed it so much, I'm going to get two dance mats of our own so we can dance the night away.

After a few days of glorious sunshine, we had thunder storms yesterday that knocked out the power at work for a while and this morning it's raining again. Lucy hates the rain or any kind of water, she must be the only dog in the world that will walk round mud and puddles rather than jumping in. This poses a problem, like this morning, we take her outside but if there is a single spot of rain she just stands next to the door looking at you. Hey ho, looks like the mop and bucket will be out tonight.

Paul

Small is beautiful

Not when it's a mobile phone it isn't. We both got new ones last year, going for the smallest ones we could find, balanced with them not being the same price as a weeks holiday for two in Australia. They looked good enough and easily fitted into my pocket, which is what I wanted rather than wearing leather pouch to hold it in. As far as I'm concerned, leather pouches should be seen on women's only nights at the local club, not waving about in the wind on the high street. There are three main problems with these phones, my thumb is twice as big as the keypad so I need to book a day off work to send a text message. The battery is so small, after one ten minute conversation, it's dead. But the most annoying thing is the bloody flip top that will never open up when it's ringing and I'm franticly trying to retrieve it from Debbie's handbag.

Paul

We've had a busy weekend for a change ...lol... Saturday we were out shopping in the morning and then had a chilled afternoon ..... our get up and go had gone again ...lol... Sunday morning we got to work on the kitchen again, we managed to get most of one wall done and it realy is looking good! Sunday afternoon we took the kite out again in very blustery winds... Paul ended up on his arse for the first time ...lol... The kite was realy pulling, it's good job we got the smaller one or we would have ended up being dragged into the lake ...lol...

Here are some photos we took.....


Close up of the kite whizzing by!


Paul just before he ended up on his back side ...lol...lmao

We've added more photos as usual on our website and new this week is a message board .... not sure what for but we've got one anyway ...lol...

Untill next time....

Paul & Debbie

Hello campers!

With the kitchen tiles off, we were off with our new kite to Cannon Hall in Barnsley. There wasn't much wind but it still flew like a dream :-) It's an Ozone Imp power kite and we just pulled it out of the bag straight into the air. It was a liitle bit quick even in the light wind and Debbie had a little trouble at first avoiding my head ..lol.. We can't wait to take it out again in stronger winds, not sure it's going to be this weekend though as I think snow/sleet/rain/hail has been forecast so we might have to stay in the nice warm kitchen . . . putting tongue and groove on the walls...

Here are some recent photos......


A whole 3 inches of snow the other week :-)


Zippy comes out of his cage... getting quite good at this now :-)


Here is the Imp at 10,000ft..... err.... maybe 20ft anyway ...lol...


This is Paul trying to look like he knows what he's doing ...lol...lmao

Untill next time.....

Paul & Debbie