Tell me what you recycle...

Tuesday was the first day of the year the recycling green boxes were collected where I live. My box was full of the usual stuff: paper, a few bottles and cans, nothing special really. The boxes of some of my neighbours were vastly more interesting. The first one down the road contained its usual pile of newspapers, as the guy there seems to be an avid consumer of Sunday papers. He never has any bottles or cans in his box so I wonder if he ever eats in between the Sunday Times and the News of the World. The next one down had a box full of a dozen wine bottles. Obviously, there was some serious partying there! The next one down had a couple of large empty Quality Street chocolates boxes. There was some partying there as well but of a different kind.

Urinal Theft

We've all done it: sneakily hiding a glass or other piece of crockery in a bag while having a drink in a pub and take it home to complete our collection of pub memorabilia. One guy in Southampton went further and stole a urinal. He even wiped his fingerprints from the door to make it the perfect theft. Why would you ever go to that much trouble for a urinal... and then get caught on CCTV? Or is it that he doesn't have a B&Q close to where he lives?

Not bothered about voting

According to The Register, Americans are more concerned with the integrity of casino betting machines than electronic voting system. Maybe they should organise a lottery to elect their next president rather than bother with voting?

Another One Bites The Dust!

One of the reasons why I keep a Windows laptop used to be that the HSBC online business banking site required Internet Explorer or an antiquated version of Netscape so I couldn't use it on my Mac. They recently changed their authentication mechanism and out of curiosity I tried it again with Firefox today. It works perfectly both on Windows and OS-X. So that's now one less reason to keep the Windows laptop. Thank you HSBC.

Zend Framework

For people who have been used to MVC frameworks such as Struts or Ruby on Rails, PHP can be very frustrating: a typical PHP page looks like tag soup that mixes business logic, presentation and database access. And there is no escaping PHP: this is the one technology that all ISP offer and a vast majority don't offer anything else. So up to know it was a case of setting up your own server to use your preferred technology or deal with tag soup.

So stumbling upon the Zend Framework today felt like a revelation! and what's even better, you can download an excellent tutorial from Rob Allen's weblog. The Zend Framework is still at an early stage of development but it looks extremely promising. If you use PHP, you have to try it out.

Amazing Innovation in Fish Bowls

That's what a targeted ad in Gmail said. Not knowing how on earth you could innovate in fish bowls, I had to click on the link. Also note that you get Tetra Easy Balance and Feng Shui pebbles for free! Amazing!

ID Card Petitions

Number 10 are trying an online petition system. It is currently a beta version. Of course, there are already petitions about the ID card scheme: one to scrap it and one to support it. Interestingly enough, the former currently has 4849 signatures, the latter... 4. Or if you don't care about ID cards, you can always sign the ice-cream juggling petition.

Compulsory Upgrade

I just opened Microsoft Messenger, something that I hadn't done for a few weeks and it came with a message saying that there was a new version available for Mac and that I must upgrade (emphasis mine). This is one of the things I hate most with Microsoft: there is no choice, we must do things their way if we want to use their software or services.

Low budget film with big stars

I got the following email from a friend last night:

As some of you may already know, I have had a small hand in funding a new feature film, opening this Friday across the country (including Manchester, Bristol, Reading as well as most of London ;), starring Ewan McGregor, Catherine Tate and a handful of established and upcoming British talent.

Set on a sunny afternoon in Hampstead Heath, it is a wry look on relationships from the vantage of several couples meeting up in very different circumstances.

It is entitled ‘Scenes of a Sexual Nature’ (although not particularly racy, and a 15 rating ;) – and if we have a good opening weekend then the Film Council will provide additional funding to open more cinemas. Apparently we have made waves in the film industry for our unique approach to financing the filming and distribution independently (and actually making in into the cinemas). Sony has just signed for the DVD rights, and if all goes well we hope to open across the pond in La La Land in April.

So if any of you or friends/family/pets fancy visiting the cinema this weekend, please consider our humble British, independent effort rather than those brash Hollywood pieces of fluff and fancy ;)

You can find out more at the website www.tinpanfilms.com or the bbc websites for Films2006 reviews (Jonathan was very positive ;)

I also read an interesting review in a newspaper last night. Apparently, they have been extremely innovative in the funding and distribution, while managing to get an impressive cast. As explained in the email, everybody is waiting to see what happens on the opening weekend (this weekend, 3-5 November) because a lot of people have said it was impossible to do. So I really want to go see it and contribute to making it a success.

See more progress on: go and see "Scenes of a Sexual Nature"

Sync your Nokia phone with your Mac

I have a Nokia 6234, a model that unfortunately is not supported by iSync on the Mac out of the box. I have been looking for a solution more or less since I got the phone and today I found it on .mactomster. They offer an iSync plugin for a large variety of Nokia mobile phones. The site is all in German so it took me a few minutes to work out that I had to register before I could download the plugin but I eventually got there. Luckily the installation instructions also come in English but they are so simple it would be difficult to get it wrong. Once I had downloaded the plugin, it took the whole of 5 minutes to have it installed and my data sync'ed. What more could I ask for? This is what software should be like!

So, if your Nokia phone is one of the unsupported models on the Mac, get this plugin and you'll be sync'ing in minutes. Then make sure you click the Paypal button as those guys definitely deserve your support.