For those of you that have visited and taken note of the local wildlife that lives in the roof of the building next to my kitchen window. Those birds are still present and I finally managed to get a photo of a couple of them without them disappearing when I wonder off to fetch a camera…

At the time I was actually moving furniture, taking a couple of desks apart and doing a general spring clean so left my phone on the window seal. The idea was to make my living room more efficient you see, fixing the problem of where to leave drinks and snacks when I am watching films and also the height of my computer monitors.

Until now they had always been on a raised shelf on the desk so you look up at them which was never good for posture. As I had just submitted my order for a new computer over the weekend, I thought it best to start work on ensuring that the environment it will live in will be suitable. More on that another time.

In any case, below is the photo taken before I spooked the birds to fly off. Its funny because they won’t go into the hole when I am stood near the window, they pretend to be just sitting there randomly waiting for me to go away before jumping in.

I have just created a few new sections to the website to try and make myself some money so I can afford to replace the ageing Anubis (shown in the two images). They are in the menu above called “IT Services” and “For Sale” of which both are pretty self explanatory.

The issue I am finding is that some of the new games I wish to enjoy I always have to run on moderate graphics settings because of the bottlenecks present in the system. Not unexpected as my computer is now five years old, although it is annoying how a machine I spent nearly £2000 on is now worth just a few hundred… Damn computer industry, moving so fast!

“IT Services” section I added will probably remain up forever though, as in time I would like it to be a useful resource for what I can do for friends and family and also as a place for people to leave feedback perhaps to reassure others seeking help? Comments have been turns on for that purpose anyway.

Now I just need to some how find £1250 for a new computer… I have already made a number of cuts in my spending to increase my expendable income but its tough because Bath is so expensive to live in and prices for everything seem to increase all the time.

As my income remains static or increases at a slower rate than that of the cost of living I have to supplement my income. Its just a bit of a pain, as I have to work harder but not actually become better off as a result. Guess that’s life as usual then.

Guessing many people have been keeping up with Sherlock over the past few weeks on BBC as the series of 90 minute programmes have been quite entertaining. Hopefully they do more in the future.

I wanted to share the following websites the BBC crafted to help with immersion which I thought was pretty cool to be honest. They could have just made the series and be done with it, but they went the extra mile and made these mock sites that relate directly to the series progression giving you extra insight to the story.

Thought I would share the links for those who missed it anyway as its an interesting read.

Sherlock Holmes / Forum: http://www.thescienceofdeduction.co.uk/
John Watson / Blog: http://www.johnwatsonblog.co.uk/
Connie Prince / Forum: http://www.connieprince.co.uk/
Molly Hooper / Blog: http://www.mollyhooper.co.uk/

All four of the sites have characters cross posting comments in the forums. Watson’s blog is probably the most entertaining though.

So I have had my Nexus One for a few months now and I have to admit… I am even more impressed with Android now. Migrating from one Android phone to another was brilliant…

1. Turn off old T-Mobile G1 Handset
2. Turn on new Nexus One Handset
3. Provide Google Account details

That’s it, all my contacts are downloaded near instantly, email synced, calendar synced and what surprised me was that some phone settings were retained. Nexus One even knew what time I had set my alarms for example.

Furthermore, I could provide my Facebook credentials and my work Google Apps credentials and all three accounts are brought into the phones one contacts list, but names get merged just on the handset, consolidating things on the phone neatly but keeping things separate in the cloud still.

Wireless Tethering also works well. My main concern was that Vodafone would use proxys or port blocking that would prevent me from running many of the applications I would need. However I can share wireless internet to my laptop and run Citrix ICA Sessions and Eve Online over the mobile connection perfectly out of the box.

After a few weeks I had refined the battery usage so get 2-3 days worth of use although as long as it lasts one day its fine. I am rarely away from a power supply longer than a day. WaveSecure seems to have kept my lifetime account valid too which was nice and it does not seem to impact battery either.

Finally, I recently got hold of WireGoggles off the Android Market. Some photos are below, its quite interesting and kept my interest for a while so worth the £0.60. I may purchase Vignette camera application at some point though, perhaps before I go to Denmark in September.