Monthly Archives: February 2007

Computers/Technology, General, Web/Internet

Stormhoek Big Love

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Stormhoek Big Love

So tonight being Valentines, it seemed an appropriate night to polish off the second of a pair of bottles of rosé wine that we picked up as part of the Stormhoek Big Love promotion that has seen Stormhoek take Hugh MacLeod on a grand tour of major Tesco stores across the country drawing cartoons and looking for love, which I have been keeping an eye on through both Hugh’s blog, and also the main Stormhoek site.

Perhaps the only annoyance about the promotion is that for some reason the bottles are only being stocked at the bigger stores, so we couldn’t pick them up at our local store in Wokingham, and I had to head down to the big Tesco Extra in Camberley to check them out. However, the bottles were easily spottable thanks to Hugh’s cartoon – which really stands out compared to the somewhat conservative labels on all the other wine. Oddly enough when I went in, the bottles weren’t on the main valentines displays near the door, but were over with the rest of the wine at the other end of the store.

Anyway, it does seem that despite all his best efforts, Hugh has failed to find love, for himself at least. However, perhaps the most amusing of the videos from the trip though is this one, thanks to the very direct comments Hugh gets about his efforts in the final few seconds…

Computers/Technology, Symbian

Firmware Upgrade Annoyance

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So this afternoon I let the Nokia Update Service update the firmware on my N73 to 3.0638.0.0.1. The update process has all sorts of dire warnings, including telling you several times that you should back up the phone memory, as the update will clear out the contents. It then suggests using the ‘Backup to Memory Card’ option in the memory tool. So I dutifully went and made the backup, and then let the upgrade run through. The phone restarted, and I restored the backup – but although all the data in the core applications came back, a number of the additional applications I’d loaded onto the phone had gone. A quick look at what had survived, and it seems that anything Java based had been restored, but all the S60 native applications had vanished. It’s not too much of a problem to add them on again, just a bit tedious… 🙁

Life on Mars, Movies & TV

Life on Mars Spins Another Twist

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So tonight, the second and final series of Life on Mars kicked off, and in the closing scenes of the first episode spins a massive new twist, when one of the voices who Sam has been hearing, and who up to now have been taken for voices of his Doctors breaking in to his apparent coma, phones Sam up and has a conversation, where Sam is told that he can return home once he has completed his task. More than that, there is a phone number that in the second episode Sam phones back – gets the same person, and is told not to phone again. There are also hints that things Sam is doing in what we thought was a coma, might be having an effect. So is he in a coma, delusional, or is he really somehow back in 1973? It’s all up in the air now, with hints that there is some larger plan involved. Certainly it all seems to be up in the air again, but only a few more episodes before we find out!

Church

The BBC Gives Bishop Colin a Promotion

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Tonight, the BBC South news covered a new text message service being provided by Church during Lent. Participants text ‘Lent’ to 64343, and then during Lent, there will be daily texts sent by the diocese encouraging people to do something different each day for Lent. However, in the process of reporting the story, although the online service has got it right, the BBC South newsroom managed to give Bishop Colin, the Bishop of Dorchester a promotion.

Since Bishop Richard retired last year, Bishop Colin as the senior of the three suffragan Bishops in the Diocese has also been acting Bishop of Oxford – unfortunately BBC South forgot the ‘acting’ bit and introduced him as Bishop of Oxford… Anyway, unintentional promotions aside, it will be interesting to see how the text message service goes down. BBC South presented the story as the last item tonight, and in perhaps a rather light-hearted way, without some of the explanation that Ian has given in his interview in the Oxford Mail.

Having said that, both the BBC, and the Oxford Mail seem to be crediting the Oxford Diocese, when in fact the text message service is part of the countrywide Love Life Love Lent campaign being pushed by Church House Publishing. Still, after our local paper announced that our Church was being eaten by worms, I’m not overly surprised at the BBC and the Oxford Mail not getting things quite right!

Church

Taizé 2007 Plans

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After a slight bit of confusion (Beth has been deleting the e-mails on the basis that I was getting them as well – which I wasn’t) we’ve got hold of the details for the Oxford Diocese Pilgrimage to Taizé for 2007. Unfortunately the official trip won’t be there at the same time as us, as there was only one slot available at the cottage where we usually stay, but there is a couple of days overlap, so we might run in to some familiar faces during our visit! It looks like this years Diocesan Pilgrimage should be memorable though as alongside Sarah who has led the trips since Rev Sheila died a few years back, the new Bishop of Oxford, Rt Rev John Pritchard will be going along as well. Sarah has set up an Oxford Taizé site with further information.