bitful

Smalltown Boy is a song that always gets me, and I don't even particularly like it.
I don't even consider it as incredibly fitting to describe my past. Alright, I might have been 'always a lonely boy', and I had more than my fair share of being 'pushed around and kicked around', but who isn't?
And I [...]

Yesterday at work I had to illustrate new features of our main product to a team of about ten people.
It had been some time since the last time I treaded the board(room)s, but past professional experience and tips and tricks I picked up in my previous life as a (not very often) jobbing actor in [...]

Travbuddy is a website where you can check off a list of the countries that you have travelled to and automatically generate a world map colouring in the places that you have visited.
I had used some other map before, but this one is better because you can select which individual North American states you've been [...]

When somebody tags you with a meme, and it's the first time anyone does that to you, the least you can do is fall out to bed at 3am to oblige.
So, after a gentle nudge by Mike at Troubled Diva, here we go.
Seven successes in 2006.

Becoming a consultant for my current employer, a large media [...]

I missed the live fireworks this year but from YouTube videos they look like the very impressive London Eye-focused display they had last year, and which I had the privilege to admire from a rooftop in Vauxhall.
That's all very nice. But… one-point-three million pounds?
In other - possibly related - news, as of January 1st I [...]

I am definitely a lurker. I read and use and breathe the web, but before posting a comment anywhere or actively taking part in an online discussion, I absolutely need to make sure that I have something to say, and that my contribution adds value, and that nobody else has already made the same point.
Needless [...]

I noticed in the gay press how many venues for us gentlemen who can name (and surname) all five Girls Aloud are closed or running deprived of normal residencies during the first couple of weeks in January.
Some even venture into launching some sort of supermarket-style promotion like Crash next Saturday 13:

five pound entry before midnight [...]

I came back from my last trip to Italy with a few videotapes that I'd kept at the family house. They had been sent to me by some good friends when I was living in France, so that I would not lose touch with the political climate at the time.
They thought the best way was [...]

Today we removed the gingerbread cookies from the Christmas tree (and resisted the tempation to eat them, but only because they had been hanging for three weeks on a tree that had been sprayed with insect killer).
We then took down the cards we had hung on the walls, and the fairy lights around a friend's [...]

Saw Kylie at Wembley last night.
She is the most adorable pint-sized princess around.
I did not think she could hold notes so well. Digital trickery, skillful camouflage with the backing singers, or simply better vocals?
A little bit cheesy - not that we don't like cheesy - when she commented on some serious competition she had in [...]

Now, how can I put this without letting out any spoilers for anyone who has not yet seen the last two episodes of series one of Torchwood?
Let's just say there is a much-anticipated kiss, and the actor who is not one of the leads is a hottie.
His name is Matt Rippy. He used to be [...]

We spent Christmas with Dr B.'s family and came home with their unused toastie maker.
I did a dry run yesterday but got the thing working at full speed today, making parma ham and goat cheese toasties, then spinach, Boursin and mozzarella ones to eat watching the cartload of TV shows we recorded during the Christmas [...]

Disclaimer: for the purposes of this post I assume you are in good health, have checked with your doctor that there is no reason you should not exercise, and have no problems related to sodium intake. End of disclaimer.
Forget overpriced designer water with a hint of pomegranate and a faint aftertaste of con! Making your [...]

So I got a much-wished-for1GB second generation iPod shuffle for Christmas from Dr B.
I must say that I have not yet explored all the places it can be clipped on, but I already am very pleased with it.
Here are a few things I discovered during my four-day ownership:

I cannot sync it with Dr B.'s desktop [...]

Right now I am fixing a couple of things backstage at bitful. Last week I had installed a WordPress widget to automatically include twitters in the main template, and because of an extra unneeded backslash character at the beginning of the code, I could not access my admin page any longer.
Twitter is a way to [...]

I had put a nabaztag on my wishlist and Dr B. managed to get me the newly-out improved second-generation nabaztag/tag for Christmas - as well as an iPod shuffle 2Gen, a 2GB mini-SD card for my mobile phone… and a plastic finger that farts when you pull it. With, thank you very much, five different [...]

Today I went to have a key cut.
It was a very ordinary, common and widespread house key, so I did not shop around for the cheapest rates. I had noticed a little cobbler-locksmith unit inside Oxford Circus tube station where I change trains to and from work, so on the way home I handed the [...]

Last Christmas Dr B. gave me a Sony Ericsson K700i. I had been unlucky with my choice of mobile phones in the past (read: could not afford anything produced this century) and it was the perfect present.
Unfortunately, the joystick got stuck pretty soon, Dr B. demanded a replacement and got a refusal, I took out [...]

The other day when I wrote about getting a new job, I also mentioned that I spent a long time and a lot of effort to prepare for the interview.
I knew I had to compensate for a lack of experience in certain business techniques with very clear views and strong ideas on how to approach [...]

I went for an interview last week and I was offered the job yesterday afternoon: I am probably going to be working just a few desks away from where I sit now, but I will take on a different role, and this is something that I have been after for a couple of months now.
I [...]

After monitoring Yahoo! Mail's spam filter for months in case it wrongly flagged mail as unwanted items, and failing to receive only one genuine message (that I know of), this morning I took the plunge and ticked the box that says 'I don't want to receive any messages that SpamGuard thinks are spam'.
Up until now, [...]

Today I have received this text message from Dr B.:
'I'm proud to announce that as of 12.37 we became the Legal Guardians of our very own little black baby. At 12.47 the baby was formally handed over to us after the final bit of paperwork was completed. (They stamped "RECEIVED" on the receipt.) Father and [...]

I was listening to The Best of Depeche Mode, vol. 1 (not bad at all, now that I've cleansed myself for a few years after sharing a flat with a friend who was slightly obsessed with the St. Albans lot) when Dr B. sang along 'Reach out and touch me', to which I said 'No, [...]

My entire sympathy goes to all the people who every day take the decision do get fit(ter) and step into a gym for the first time. The machinery is daunting, some of the people are scary, you will ache like crazy but if you stick with it you will love it, and love yourself for [...]

A while back I signed up for some beta testing of Riya, is an application that tags your pictures automatically after you have taught it the names of people and landmarks who appear frequently in your snaps.
In the end I never did get round to do the testing because it implied some active participation on [...]

So, no update in twelve days now.
I wish I could say that I was terribly busy, both at work and running a household, and that I used every spare moment to keep fit.
Instead, I have not been able to locate my gym membership card since late August, and every now and then I find myself [...]

This is a picture of a dirty bowl. The worst kind of dirty bowl: day-old encrusted chocolate porridge made while waiting for the dishwasher service people to show up. You may click on the thumbnail to see the full size version of this picture of a very dirty bowl in all its mucky glory.
But the [...]

When I was little we had a dishwasher, but crockery had to be hand-rinsed before sticking it in, and then the machine made so much noise that as far as I can remember I only ever saw it used to hide a spare set of keys to my parents' shop.
When we moved into the new [...]

Today is the six month anniversary of my switch to contracting. I signed up with an umbrella company that takes care of the administrative and tax issues entirely, for a monthly fee. It is more expensive that setting up my own limited company, but it made sense to me as I was not sure I [...]

So my mother calls me today.
I find a missed call from her (I had gone down to pick up our new Window Wizard that had just being delivered: oh the excitement - yes, we are that sad, but how else are we going to clean our 2m50 x 2m50 windows inside and out?) and I [...]