In efforts to kerb my online identity...

In efforts to kerb my online identity I have found quite a good search engine that appears to find me in all the relevant places.

 

It also found lots of other Roland Harvey people around the world which is interesting as I thought I would be unique. The website in question is www.pipl.com Try it. It seems to be better than most of the others I have tried 

In my quest to

In my quest to find an offline blog editor I thought I would try Google Docs' with the offline mode to see what would happen

Also I wanted to see if I could do the formatting

Ticket to Russell Brand

Ticket to Russell Brand
Originally uploaded by Roly Mo

Forgot to mention.
I was lucky enough to have a friend "Duckeggs" who bought me a ticket to the last Russell Brand - Scandalous show at the O2.

What a great crack that was. It really cheered me up as he is one of the very few comedians who can make me laugh. Eddie Izzard and Lee Evans being a few others.

What made the evening special was the fact that he was filming for the sequel to Sarah Marshall film where he was reprising his role as the rock band artist Aldous Snow. So lots a footage of the crowd in the O2 and then at the end of the stand up piece he came back onto stage in character with his band so that it could be filmed.

What made even more special was in between that was Jack Black & Jason Segel on stage performing a comedy song. Brilliant.

Then the video footage to explain the filming of the band by Sean Combs, Russell and Jonah Hill just really completed the whole special night.

A top night. Thanks Duckeggs.

A Weekend Wedding in Liverpool

Cake
Originally uploaded by Roly Mo

What a great weekend.
Up on Friday back on Sunday.
Sans Kids

The event was Ben & Helens wedding.

But firstly I have to point out that the hospitality from the locals was stunning. Everyone I met was very friendly and happy to help. Hotel staff were impeccable. We stayed in the Atlantic Hotel next to the Mersey.

The wedding Service was fantastic, great vicar, very funny

The wedding breakfast at The Racquet Club was a suitably messy affair, with great speeches from all of involved.

I stuck to white wine as I am a lightweight. It proved a good move as everyone else was mixing and suffered impressively the next morning.

It was great to see everyone there, all of Emma's friends were there and really letting their hair down.

Congrats to Ben & Helen Webb

Online BackUp

Hmmmm is it necessary?

I have got to that point in my life where I have a lot of photos, a lot of music and some doc's which if lost I would be very f'd off to loose it.

So how might it be lost? Well I dont trust computers to survive forever so in that regard I dont trust the HD's inside them or some rogue app to by mistake delete a few things.

I have 3 external drives of varying sizes which I have collected on my travels.
1 x WD 500gig drive which contains the music and is permanantly connected via Firewire to the main family PC
1 x Small 80gb portable drive. Like this. It came from an HP Universe show and all exhibitors got one, came with a little leather wallet to hold it. Very cool for pro works stuff the transfer or store on.

1 x 320gb which is blank and I am playing with backing up some stuff to it.

But what about storing it in the cloud? Why because I dont trust the HD media, and if the house was to burn down and we all survived, at some point I will want to get my stuff back. So after listening to some of CNET's The Real Deal podcasts I heard about Jungle Disk. Which looks like a very resiliant solution but just a tad expensive for what I was thinking. Although the lure of the data being stored on Amazon's S2 server stuff sounds great.

Have since found SquirrelSave as recommended by a friend, which is UK based and is cheap.
Also looking at Mozy to see how good the free account is.

One idea which I think is brilliant for the consumer and heard this suggestion on CNET BOL is that you get a cloud storage account with every HD you buy. Bloody brilliant. Why wouldn't you. I would pay more for the HD to have an equiv cloud backup. Bring it on Manufacturers.

Over and out

Status Update

Currently hanging out in the kitchen with the netbook after child #1 got bored of HSM3 (thank the lord) and decided to resort to the Playhouse Disney website to do some drawing.

Jobs
Well it is a slow process and I did not manage to get the job I was really after at the time. Very disappointing. It took a few days of grouchy behaviour to get over. But I am now firmly back into the game again and next week sees a new week of job hunting. Hopefully things will start to look up.

Chores
I spent the morning at the inlaws trying to find their install of MS Office (done) so they could write a letter. Install the completely brilliant and fit for purpose Spotify which worked and fix their DVD player (was not connected to the TV correctly after they had their SkyHD installed).

Online Life
Was impressed over the last week at the response of Monster as I proceeded to log in after 5 years and find my account suspended but the speed of the their online support was very good. I set my expectations low on websites until they earn my trust. Not that I trust Monster to find me a suitable job. But you never know.

I am still battling with the absolutely brilliant Remember the Milk ToDo website. Why am I battling? Well all I want is my actions to drop into my calendar on my iPhone via Google Calendar. Yes I have the RTM iPhone app but its the discipline of opening that every morning to check it. I would prefer to see separate events in the iPhone (and thus google calendar). What did suddenly make sense is that from Tweetdeck or indeed any twitter client including the web I can send ToDo's as tweets to RTM which then adds the ToDo's to the list. Very powerful especially if you spend time in the twitterverse.

Talking of which I still cannot work out which is better to use Tweetdeck or Twhirl. I like both. I think they are both very clever. Currently Tweetdeck is winning purely from a multi-column aspect. But I have a feeling Twhirl can do this as well and i have been playing with the Friendfeed login via Twhirl. Friendfeed is something I have yet not had time to play with properly to understand and how it can simplify my social media aspect of my life (if at all).

Well gotta go and play this afternoon in the park. Catch you soon.

L8rs.
R

Bolt

Up up and away
Originally uploaded by Roly Mo

Yep.
It was half term which is just coming to an end. We can all go back to work or in my case job hunting.

As a special treat as the cinema is quite expensive these days, we went to see Bolt. I am still not convienced that a 4 year old gets these CGI Disney films with the adulty type jokes. I'm sure they will like the toon itself but the subject matter is probably a little bit beyond them. None the less made the Journey to Portsmouth's Vue cinema in Gun Wharf.

After a few unsuitable trailers we got the film and it was basically all ok. Not fantastic as in Toy Story but it was ok. I spent most of the time trying to work out who voiced the hamster "Rhino". I subsequently found out it is Mark Walton http://uk.imdb.com/name/nm0910559/

I would give the film a 3.5/5. Animation brilliant. I did not see the 3D version. Rhino character just perfect mix of cutsy unhinged hero's side kick.

The Picture. O on a flying thing outside the cinema after the film.

Slideware

This dropped into my inbox http://blogs.msdn.com/atwork/archive/2009/02/11/death-by-powerpoint-giving-better-presentations.aspx

Now I am in 2 minds about slideware. I believe it should be simple, however most of the corp UK want detailed bullets over 20 slides. Great. What do you do?
R

Monday Morning

Its Monday and its half term here on the south coast.

Just thought I would jot down a few of my favourite iPhone apps. Its not many but to me they are worthy of appearing on my delightful Apple device (battery life grumble grumble)

1. Tweetie - Awesome Twitter Client. I just prefer this one to the others. They are all good but this one has the edge for me. It has a little bit more depth. It makes it very simple for me to write tweets on the go and see other peoples pofiles. I like the nearby feature too.
2. Weather Pro - Right lets get this straight, here in the UK the Met Office rule when it comes to weather. Although Weather Pro does not appear to take data from the Met office it appears to be most accurate out of all the weather apps. This was invaluable a couple of weeks ago when the UK had snow I was able to see the satellite and radar animations to determine what was going to happen. I checked the pressure and temp with a real weather station and they were pretty accurate.
   
3. Feeds - In the world of RSS readers on the iPhone there is a lot to choose from and it is extremely difficult. I have 4 currently and I watching them all carefully overtime to see which one is going leap in front. Feeds currently has some great functionality that provides full sync with Google Reader. Brilliant!!
4. Instapaper - Ahh man I am dead jealous of the developer for this very simple app who must have been following the KISS methodogy. What is even better is that both Tweetie and Feeds have functionality to clip to your Instapaper account for offline textual reading later on.Which is really handy when you are following 20 tech reporters who are all giving out URL's of articles to read, just simply hit the instapaper option and the pages is saved to your cloud account for reading later. This has been great when I am researching a company I have an interview with. If there is any last minute info I need I can use instapaper to give a nice iphone sized textual version of the the pages of their website. Couple that with the tilt scrolling which is soooooo cool.
   
5. Nuevasync - Although not an app it is allowing me to have my Google Calendar and Plaxo contacts sync'd wirelessly. Yes Google Sync is now out for the iPhone, in my opinion that still has some way to go before getting close to Nuevasync. Especially in the contact area where the fields are not replicating the Outlooks.

Look out for all of these in the iTunes app store
R

Signing On

Just created a new blog which is a little more professional rather than my personal stuff.

You will find links to my LinkedIn profile and Twitter accounts as well as some of my favourite websites.

I will add more stuff as and when.

Playing Catchup

Phew nearly a year since the last update. Oh my
So first of I am writing this on a Samsung NC10. Its a lovely beast bar the position of the right hand shift key. I keep typing "\" its so anoying but. As with the new iPhone I will get used to it and it will become part of my life.

So on this short post I thought I would list out some of the things I am liking from a consumeriste point of view.

Online
1. Gmail/google calendar - Never ceases to amaze me. The calendar is coming on in leaps and bounds and is extremely flexible. I have 2 other calendars plugged into the main one by ical feeds from Remember the Milk and Tripit
2. Google Calendar - Is just plain cool and flexible and very transportable. I use it natively, as an active backdrop on the home main PC and pushed to my iphone via nuevasync.com
3. Mindmeister.com - Online mindmapping app which has helped me in numerous areas of my life for jotting down and expanding ideas through to planning sales presentations
4. Rememberthemilk.com - Extremely flexible online todo app. I have a pro account and have it on my iphone as well so what ever i do there gets replicated to the online version seamlessly. Its the bollocks. Todo app is being polite, its more of a multidimensional hierachical todo app.


ahhhh wife is demanding the netbook. will post more later.

Back in SF

I am sitting here. Here being my room in the spanking new Intercontinental San Francisco hotel in........

I am sitting here in my luxury fluffy robe with my iPOD docked in the clock radio next to the bed belting out some Brit tunage. The Massive HD flat panel on the wall with zillions of channels currently tuned to MSNBC HD. Me chomping on a tube of large cashews slurping a Diet Coke looking at the Nortel IP phone wondering what to do this evening.

Yes its Kick Off time again in SF.

Flight was ok. The new Virgin check-in area in Terminal 3 Heathrow is all very nice, and easy with minimal queues. However the take off was delayed due to a technical issue and a spare part being ordered and fitted. Oh well another bottle of beer to consume. Nursed a headache on the way over and watched Juno. Cool. Like it, it was not what I thought it was going to be. Worth a watch. Its a amusing. Tried to watch The Seeker and The Golden Compass, but stopped half way through both.

Was hemed in on the plane as my preferences on my Virgin are set to window seat. Nice views but you do get hemmed in. I did my numerous under chair leg stretches and tried to get some kip. But ended up playing God of War on my PSP. A Dammed fine game.

The views of Canada on the way over are amazing. Just plain spectacular. Shame I did not have my camera on me.

Arrived at the airport just over an hour late. Passed through customs/immigration again a breeze and then caught the BART to town instead of a taxi. Then walked 2 blocks trying not to look like a tourist. I wondered why all the enterprising homeless people were pouncing on me, but then I realised I was dragging a suitcase. Dammmmmmned what a give away
Damm I am out of Cashews..... Roooooooomm Service!!!!!!!! Lobster please!!!!

Now I just need to work out how I can stay awake for the next 8 hours. uurrggghhh.

I feel a trip the Clift Hotel for cocktails is in order.
R

Work

Monday - Up at 4am do some emails and stuff and then hit the hotel restaurant for breakfast.

Now in the evening the whole hotel restaurant and bar (Asia De Cuba and the Redwood room) are one of the town's coolest locations to hang out in, but at breakfast time it is all quiet. Very weird. The food though is excellent. Eggs Benedict with smoked salmon is a top choice and very filling. I can see why there is a lot of over weight Americans.

Boss had rented a Nissan 4x4 thing to take us to the office which out of SF across the bay so like tourists we were snapping away at anything that resembled Americana.

At lunch the CEO took us all out to a brew pub (micro brewery) for some more deep fried crap to clog up the arteries with. I tried to be healthy and have a TBA (Chicken, Bacon, Avocado type sandwich) with fries. ;-)

Then at 4pm we all jumped back in the car and drove off to the Golden Gate Bridge for some more tourist action. It was at this point I was kicking myself that I did not have the big camera, but I managed to fire off some shots on a colleagues camera. It was an amazing view and thankfully amazing weather, very clear.

Driving around in SF seemed all too familiar and then I realised that I too had driven these streets in Grand Theft Auto - San Andreas and almost felt compelled to start doing driveby shootings and going to the club by the GGB to do some missions. It was so familiar that I was actually able to give directions and remember and see the real locations. Was very spooky.

Got back to the hotel and decided to have a quick teatime cocktail on the roof terrace of Macys in Union Square. Shame so did loads of other people. Shame that the bar is actually a chain of Cheese Cake Factory and shame they dont know how to make a Mojito and shame that they decide it decadent to put blobs of squirty cream on an already over sweet cheese cake (mine was White Chocolate and peanut butter). I managed to eat half before realising that this was not good.

The rest of the evening was spent at the hotel meeting other fellow colleagues as they flew in from various US locations.

Bed at midnight.
Up at 5:30am deal with some calls to the UK
Ready to go!!!
Perhaps I might just go downstairs for some breakfast.

Any Given Sunday

Burrrrp
Its not big nor clever.
So I woke up on Sunday at 4am and then at at 6/8am.
Did some stuff on the laptop and had breakfast in the hotel restaurant.
You will be surprised to know I order eggs benedict on a bagel. Nice.
The rest of the day was spent showing a colleague around SF.
First beer was at 11:30am. Lunch was a serious mexican at place which served over 250 types of teckila.
Sorry pissed atm.
Need sleep and its only 10:30pm.
Photos to follow and congrats to Andy and Hazel on their new arrival.
Sorry cutting short this blog as I have just found myself sleeping upright at the laptop in my bedroom. Time for bed
Blimey
L8r

Downtown SF

Taxi pulls up at the Hotel. The entrance is very minimalist, in fact you would not recognise it apart for the topiary outside the windows, get into the "dark" low lit lobby and are hit with the fact that this a cool, trendy hotel. Darkwood floors, funky art sculptures in the lobby a huge giants chair sits off centre.

Check in was a little slow, a bit of a queue. This is certainly a not a secret hotel and I certainly cannot work out the clientèle. It seemed to be a mix of the middle class young, the older couple, and the completely out of place holiday inn couple. I was basing this on how people were dressed, their luggage and their body language. But then again I had stumbled in pulling my own baggage wearing knee length shorts and a stripy tee, having traveled across the world sitting next to a nutter to get here. So nothing special in the check in. No Four Seasons personal service of taking you to your room by the person who checks you in, nor any funky present or recommendation for a refreshing cocktail or "do you want reservations to Aqua de cuba?"

The Room
Its ok. I walked in with no pre-conceived perceptions, and that helped. Its a small room don't get me wrong its larger than your standard UK Travelodge and larger than most other standard rooms, but just a little cramped in the main room and in the bathroom. What I did like was the huge mirrors behind and in front of the bed that create the optical illusion of a tunnel, plus I imagine it is good for bedroom antics.

Pro/Cons List
Pros:- Mirrors, the purple smarties the turndown maids provide, the cool orange perspex bedside tables, the designer tap in the bathroom, the bathroom goodies, the minibar, the decor on the whole.
Cons:- The fag burn in the carpet next to the bed in a non-smoking room, $10/day WiFi charge, not enough table space to spreadout all of my stuff (gadgets mainly), I forgot my USB cable to plugin a external HD for music.

The Bar (Redwood Room) http://www.clifthotel.com/clift_hotel_redwood_room.asp
Man it was like we had arrived. Again all low lit, full wood panelling bar down one side, funky furniture, maitre d service to tables. Huge selection of booze from floor to ceiling all with backlighting. Huge 6ft tall electronic picture frames with cool art range from art to slow moving portrait photos (like out of Harry Potter but less animated). Started on the Blackberry Margarittas and then moved to the Clift Bellini's. It was lively at 7pm. Come 10:30 when we arrived back it was a hive of beautiful people just having a great time people buying bottles of champagne and vodka and just chilling. There were no ego's on show, no Fareham Chav, no fights just happy people. By 11pm I was boxed and ready to hit the sack. Subtle issue, perhaps its the £/$ thing but the rounds were costing a lot. The last round a double Remy and a Belinni cost $48. Gulp

Dinner
We met up with my work colleagues 2 friends from Rome who were over on a 3 week holiday of doing the west coast. We had reservations at Aqua De Cuba but canceled and went to Little Italy and a fine traditional restaurant that immediately gave us the VIP treatment as 3/4 of the party were Italian and we ate some fine simple Italian food. I follow the lead and had this seafood soup which was killer. Big pile of shellfish in a lovely

24hr party people!!!!!

Flying into SF

Phew I made it!!!
Taxi picks me up @ 6:30. It arrives early, Great!!!
Arrive at Heathrow Terminal 3 - Not a nice terminal especially as they are rebuilding it, the car drop off area is a mess.

Check in to Virgin Atlantic was a breeze, it was as easy as BA used to be and a delight (I had checked in online the day before which changed which area I dropped my bags off) They even now have check in kiosks. Mate these small details are there to take the stress out of getting you to your location.

Security - Wierd it was not too busy, I was through in 10minutes, but they do now have a separate area for you to take your shoes off and have them x-rayed (Guess its necessary). And then get a full Irish breakfast!!! Then head for the private lounge that I had booked to relax in. (not really private its Servisair lounges which you book and pay for, worth it I think. It gets you away from all the families going to Benedorm etc) Of course I would hit the V-Club lounge if I was traveling Upperclass or had my Virgin Gold card (only a red card holder atm), but I was not so there!!!!!! You do what you gotta do to relax.....

Get on the plane - Tip and this is a gamble and depends if you have roll on. If there is a huge queue and you are not flying posh class then let everyone else get on board then you can stroll in and not get stressed with queues and people being idiots sitting in their seats. Virgin staff fab, great, amazing, love em to bits.

Sit next to my colleague and also a lady (approx 38) called Beanie (not short for Sabine I hasten to add) who seemed friendly and pleasant at first but at the end of the 12hrs I was throughly tired of. Watched a few films, Shooter (good liked that, Mark Walberg, excellent), 28 Weeks Later (nearly shit my pants in the first 10 mins of the film) wow this is a great gritty nasty editing take on zombie movies. Although strictly speaking the zombies are not zombies because they are not dead they are merely infected with "Rage".

Food onboard was so so. I was not impressed, but then it is rare that airlines on economy get it right.

So I took to my seat the following items:- Laptop, Book, iPod, earphones, phone, Blackberry. So what did I end up using? ipod and earphones. Could not open the laptop as the seats were terrible, never got the nerve to read the book, oh and I left the Blackberry on all through the flight with no crashing of the plane, and the juggling act that happens every time you need to put your table down or you need to get out of your seat. Note to self, cut it down and keep it simple.

Arrive at SF - Yessssssssssssssssssssssssss. Thank god for getting off the plane at the end of it I was feeling quite queezy, sick and had a headache on the Harvey headache scale of 5/10

Dunno what is going on but this is the 3rd time where clearing US customs has been fairly fast and easy!!! This time queued at the the "And all others" queue to then be told to shift to "US Citizens" as the queues were less. RESULT YESS big up for US Customs!!!!

Done!!!

My New Crackberry

So here is the skinny. Just arrived at my 12 months with O2 on my Blackberry 8700. It has given 12 months of pleasure using it. The device just works. Not only does it work, it does not crash. Not only does it not crash but it lasts approx 5 days if not longer!! So what do I do. Go get another.
Yep that's right. After reading rumours, release dates of other models and seeing a colleague's 8800 I decide to plum for the Blackberry 8800.
I talk to:-
Carphone Warehouse (My fave mobile retailer) - Well we will be doing that model soon but our shops are not trained yet.
O2 Shop - Sorry mate, can do you Pearl but not the 8800 you will have to call O2 to get that.
Orange - Great help upfront and honest. Had the model in stock and were keen for me to sign up.
T-Mobile - I could not find a contact number on their website to call them.

So I call Orange and see what they can offer, based on what the colleague did after I advised him to call Orange asking for his PAC number (they offered a lot to him to stay). Lady was helpful and I was on the verge of going for it.

Called O2 just to give em a chance. Asked to have my PAC number get transferred to the retentions dept and get asked why I want to leave. Tell the guy that I had seen a great offer on Orange and hey presto he betters the deal.
So I get my 8800 - Unlimited Data/email (cough is that BS or what 75meg fair usage) and a relatively small voice plan. All very easy.

So 8800 awesome. Lovely slimline device, glossy. I set up my emails very quickly. The sync app on my laptop had an easy 2 use transfer wizard to transfer my info from the 8700 to 8800. The web front end that does all the pushing of emails to your Blackberry had been upgraded so that it would reconcile my GMail & Yahoo & even my work email. Brilliant. I can even look at my Flickr account.

Blackberry Love it.

TV Catchup

Ooo Oooo
I am finally catching up with Prison Break Season 2. My fave hybrid quality American drama.
Worth watching!!!

The Weekend

So how was it for you. Sunny Southern England was fantastic with 24 degree Celsius temps, I spent Saturday chilling with the daughters and then onto a Bar-B-Que at some friends, where my first drink I downed like it was water.

Sunday morning was spent down the beach with toddlers galore which was good.

Have found a cool website which is making my blogging and nano blogging great. www.jaiku.com
I picked it up from a CNET blog which was highlighting that Jaiku was potentially a competitor to Twitter.com which I have tried. I like Jaiku as I can add my flickr, last.fm and other blogs into the one place which then shows the photos, blogs, nano blogs in a time line. Nice

Next Dilemma
my Blackberry 8700 is near its contract exit date. Now what shall I do? 8800 (GPRS, and GPS) or wait for the rumoured 9xxx (possibly 3G) apparently due in Q4 should you believe the rumour sites.

Easter Chocolate

Just completed devouring all of my Linte mini eggs.
Yum.

I think that coupled with 5 days of American living (food and excessive boozing) I need to be on salads for the next 5 weeks.

Well that went to pot as I went for breakfast in Giraffe (pancakes) and lunch in Slug by the river (duck salad).

Managed to get some shortbread instead of Easter eggs. They were from the Prince of Wales brand. Well recommended.