I got engaged!

I proposed to Katie on her birthday after a lovely tapas dinner at Bar Estilo with her parents. I got down on one knee, and just asked her straight. She was shocked, surprised, felt faint and needed to lie down.

We celebrated the following day with a champagne lunch at Selfridges in Birmingham, then relaxed for a long weekend off, as we told our friends and family.

Needless to say, we’re both very happy and have begun the long process to plan our wedding.  We think it will be next year in late August or early September but need to find a venue before we can set a definite date.

I wanna say thanks to all those who wished us well on Twitter and sent us engagement cards.  I will try and do some progress blog posts as things go on, maybe share some wisdom with those reading this.

And this is the final piece

So how about some stats for the project?

Started on 2 January 2009
Finished on 10 February 2010
365 photos (obviously)
61 in black and white
26 outside
5 in New York, New York
Took over 1600 photos
7 with Katie
4 with mirrors

I had a lot of fun. Hope others did too.

I’ve read a lot about RSS Player as a replacement but unfortunately this either isn’t available right now, or is not available outside the USA. But, I did come across DriveCast [iTunes Link]. Its basically the same thing, but with some benefits.

After paying the minuscule sum of 59p for this app and installing it, when you first launch it, you’re asked to login with your existing details, or are redirected to Drivecast.eu to sign up. As a new user, I went and registered, and confirmed my account with the auto-sent email verification. All pretty standard stuff.

Now, the interesting features. If you login to DriveCast.eu in your web browser, you’re presented with a nice 3-pane view. The top is a menu bar, the left, is effectively a source list, leaving the main pane for what ever you’re viewing. To get going, just hover over Add, and click Add Podcast. You’re given the option to choose one of the 20 suggested podcasts, or clicking Other to add your own. Once you’ve done that, you choose the syncing settings, how many episodes to download, title, description, etc. Then you’re good to go.

Back on the iPhone, after logging in, your device syncs with your account, and gives you a list of all the new episodes available. Clicking one gives you show info, a Play button, and a download button. Hit that and it immediately comes down, whether it be on Wifi or 3G, which means it conveniently steps over that iTunes 10MB limit they impose on 3G.

I’ve just started downloading a few shows, and it happily downloads while you listen to other shows. Of course, if you quit the app, the downloads stop until you relaunch it.

Back on the website, you can create playlists of shows and edit and delete existing show information. You can also upload files from your home PC to sync across to your device.

As well as that, you can set up recordings from your favourite internet stream. Select a country, language and pick a station, in my case I get a list of all the BBC channels. Then proceed to set up the date, and time of the show, set repeating times and you’re done. That show can be recorded and downloaded to your device at any time.

The last feature I’ll mention is that DriveCast is not just for iPhone and iPod Touch’s. They also offer a small client you can download and copy to any USB drive, be it a flash drive or USB based MP3 player, allowing you to use any PC and internet connection to download new shows. They also offer Blackberry integration, syncing podcasts to your Blackberry via USB, a client for Nokia N800 and N810′s, a RSS feed to your DriveCast library to manage your podcasts in your other chosen podcatcher, as well as Mac OS X and Linux clients, so you can get your podcasts anyway you want

So far, I have only found one issue. When viewing episode details, it doesn’t parse HTML code correctly, so you see all the paragraph markers and break points, among other things.

Aside from that minute point, this is an excellent alternative to the iTunes app, and a real bargain at 59p. Worth checking out if you’re struggling with iTunes, or to run on any other device.

As I browse the website, I notice more features I like. Definately a site worth a look if internet streams and podcasts are your thing

DriveCast.eu

iTunes Download Link

Developers Website

I’m hoping that after that, or perhaps even during, I might get the opportunity to study for the Apple exams, aiming to become a Certified Professional at some point.

Hopefully I can be less slack about studying this time around, since it took me over a year to do my A+ and about a year to do my Network+. Suggestions welcome!

At some point during the course of development, there was an upgrade to this freeware application, which I dutifully installed looking forward to some random bug fixes I would never encounter.

What I did encounter was that the developer had suddenly decided that he wanted to charge for this application, and so pushed out an update to all versions to make it shareware. So the next time I fired it up, I was prompted for a serial number and asked to purchase a copy of the software.

I’ve got nothing against buying software. I’ve bought a Tiger, Leopard and will buy Snow Leopard, I bought VMWare Fusion cos I had a need for it, and I bought SuperDuper cos it was a great bit of software. But I knew going into that that I’d eventually have to pay for the software. It wasn’t sprung on me.
I do have something against being forced to pay for something which I was previously getting for free, just cos the dev had a change of heart. Especially to do it in such a sneaky way as a software update. If you want to charge for your product, then release a new paid only version, stop development and updating the old version, and do a clean cut over. Offer new features and support for the product, but don’t sneak in through the backdoor and demand money.

Travel Details

I booked my flights and hotels individually as I couldn’t find any decent package deals that suited our length of stay and travel dates. It seemed to be cheapest for us to travel on a Saturday evening, and we stayed for 5 nights.

Flights: I booked them online direct through American Airlines’ website. It was easy enough to do.  You are given a choice of seats in coach, and using SeatGuru.com, I chose the apparent best seats available. We sat near the back, in the first row of 4 seats in the middle. It means your screen and table are in the seat arm rest, which is kinda nice, although my iPhone headphones didn’t work with the headphone socket. Meals were average, expected for coach travel, so you may want to bring something yourself.

Hotels: I booked mine on Expedia.co.uk, getting Nectar points in the process. We stayed at the new Holiday Inn in Long Island, on 29th St. Its about a 10 minute subway trip into Manhattan, only a few minutes walk from 39th Avenue stop on the N/W lines.

Getting Around: We opted for the $25 week-long travel card when we arrived, and certainly got our use out of it. The subways are clean, and were surprisingly pleasant. Carriages seemed more spacious than the London Underground, and people were all kind. We only took a taxi ride once, mainly to avoid getting drenched by rain late at night. I think the cost was fairly reasonable considering we drove from the East Village, over to Queens/Long Island.
We also did a fair amount of walking around the city, rather than getting the subway a few blocks. It wasn’t too bad at all. Once you work out which direction the roads go, navigating gets easier. Best to remember avenues run north to south, and streets run east to west.

Airport Travel: We drive to Heathrow, parked at a nearby airport parking place, for £53 for the whole trip. They provided a coach to your terminal, and picked you up when you get back.  We flew to JFK, and from there, once through border control (having an photo and thumbprint taken) we rode the Airtrain ($5) to Jamaica Central where we caught the “E” to Queens Plaza. This dropped us on 35th Av/29th Street so it was a few blocks walk to the hotel from there. We did the same going back, although when we go again, we’ll probably get a taxi to the airport as we were supporting a few extra bags, and pretty worn out.

Attractions: We went to the Empire State Building (nice views, long queues, as in 5 before you even got upstairs), Museum of Modern Art (bit of a disappointment for us) , American Museum of Natural History (nothing like Night at the Museum but still very good), walked through Central Park, took the Staten Island Ferry to see the Statue of Liberty (free), walked down 5th Avenue and did some shopping, went to Times Square, Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s, 2 of the 3 Crumpler shops, went to the financial district and saw the site of the Two Towers, and probably some other stuff I forget. Overall, most stuff was good. The ESB was $20 per person, and offered audio tours. We didn’t bother as we just wanted to see the city. The MoMA was too modern and irreverant for my tastes, although the photography section was good. Central Park was gorgeous. It was totally safe, really nice, and we stopped for a drink and snack by one of the lakes.

Meals: We ate breakfast at the hotel about 4 times, which cost about $30 a day for the two of us. Not particularly cheap but it was good food. We had a lot of quick foods for lunch, ate at the Candle 79 vegan restaurant one night. They were really pleasent and very accomodating to us, and other patrons. Not a bad word to say about them.

Tips

1. Plan your journey from the airport to your hotel. Find the local subways stations, and if its more than a few blocks, get a taxi. We wasted 20 mins going in the wrong direction before finding the right road to get to our hotel
2. Buy a travel card. It will save you money.
3. Don’t believe all New Yorkers are rude and in a hurry. Everyone we met was kind and friendly, and really helpful to everyone. Someone stopped in the street to ask if we were lost. Lovely people.
4. Get a Travel Money Card from the Post Office. Its easier and quicker than Travellers Cheques. And take some cash with you. You’ll need it for the Airtrain/Subway.
5. Get a decent map.
6. Plan where the things you wanna see are, and plan days around particular areas. We spent a lot of time going from one part of the city to another.
7. Don’t forget the prices you see are EXCLUDING sales tax. This is about 8% so you need to take that into account.
8. Tips. Tipping is fairly generous so read online or in a proper guide to learn the right tipping etiquite.
9. Plan at least 5 nights. Since we arrived so late, we pretty much had 4 and a half days for a 5 night stay.
10. Have fun. Don’t try to carry too much. Drink plenty.

So thats about it.  Let me know if you have any other questions. But you will love it, and like us, probably want to go back really soon!

1. Follow the instructions here for creating a Windows PE boot disc. You will need a Windows system to create this with. Unfortunately the file resultant ISO file is 180MB, not really suitable to share here.
2. Get your WIM image on a USB drive.
3. Create you VM, selecting the appropriate OS, in my case, XP. Use the ISO image you created in step 1 as the install media.
4. Start up your VM and wait to be presented by a command prompt.
5. Type DISKPART to start the disk partition tool. Type the following commands

list disk
sel dis 0
clean
create part pri size=30000 (for 30GB, change as necessary)
ass letter=c
format fs=ntfs label=XP quick
act
exit

6. Next you need to insert the USB drive with your WIM image on. And we need to go back into DISKPART. You need to assign a letter to your partition on the drive. So do this

list disk
sel dis 1 (confirm disk number from list disk command)
list vol
sel vol 3 (in my case, my partition on the drive was 3)
ass letter=m
exit

7. Back at the command prompt, you can now begin applying the WIM to your VM. Type the following command, inserting your own wim file name where I put in filename.wim
imagex  /apply m:\filename.wim 1 c: /verify

The variables for this are of course your wim file name, the destination drive should usually be C:, and the “1″ is the index number on your wim. This is likely to be 1 but if you are unsure or have issues, refer to the Microsoft Support pages.

Then, give it about 10 minutes to apply your WIM and once done, type “exit” to reboot the system. You will probably need to shutdown the VM when it reboots, to allow you to remove the ISO image which will be attached to the VM as a physical disc. Once that is out, reboot and make sure you’re plugged into your company network if needed, and that the networking mode is Bridged. This will give your VM a physical IP address from the DHCP server, rather than using NAT routing to reuse the IP address of your Mac.

The history of this actually goes back to an iPod leaflet I picked up in John Lewis in Norwich one time while walking past their Apple selection. On their screenshot of iTunes, they had a “All Time Faves” playlist, which I stole and adjusted to create this.
iTunes links are provided where available

1. Alanis Morissette – Hands Clean [iTunes]
2. Avril Lavigne – Don’t Tell Me [iTunes]
3. Barenaked Ladies – Aluminum [iTunes]
4. Blink 182 – Here’s Your Letter [iTunes]
5.Box Car Racer – There Is [iTunes]
6. Busted – Meet You There [iTunes]
7. The Calling – Adrienne [iTunes]
8. Dashboard Confessional – Hands Down [iTunes]
9. Dashboard Prophets – All You Want
10. Death Cab For Cutie – Summer Skin [iTunes]
11. Dido – White Flag [iTunes]
12. Fastball – Fire Escape
13. Goo Goo Dolls – Slide [iTunes]
14. Guster – Amsterdam [iTunes]
15. Hoobastank – The Reason [iTunes]
16. Incubus – Talk Shows On Mute [iTunes]
17. Less Than Jake – Look What Happened [iTunes]
18. Lostprophets – Last Summer [iTunes]
19. Mark Owen – Four Minute Warning [iTunes]
20. Michelle Branch – All You Wanted [iTunes]
21. OutKast – Hey Ya [iTunes]
22. Robbie Williams – Feel [iTunes]
23. Ryan Adams – New York, New York [iTunes]
24. Semisonic – Secret Smile [iTunes]
25. Smashing Pumpkins – 1979 [iTunes]
26. Sponge – All This And Nothing
27. The Starting Line – Best Of Me [iTunes]
28. Steriogram – Walkie Talkie Man [iTunes]
29. Superfine – Betsy Went Flying [iTunes]
30. Tenacious D – Tribute [iTunes]
31. U2 – Beautiful Day [iTunes]
32. The Vines – Ride [iTunes]

You can now get the whole playlist (minus a few tracks) in an iMix on iTunes. Get It Here

A few months back, Boxee stepped forward and seemed to take the stage. It offered the same XBMC features, folder scanning, internet lookup on movies, TV shows, as well as a wide range of streaming sources including Hulu, iPlayer, ABC, MTV, Comedy Central amongst them. They also offered the ability to add friends, so you can see what they’ve watched recently. Boxee has a clean interface, with the main menu accessible at any time, on the left, and display and sorting options on the right. Possibly its key winner in the field was the AppleTV support. With the help of a patch stick, you could load Boxee on your AppleTV and watch streaming internet TV at any time. This was a big selling point for many.
Being in the UK, and unable to access most of the content, it was a real benefit when the BBC iPlayer was added to the streaming sites.


Last week Plex’s name came up a bit more on the internet, especially on Twitter, so I thought I’d give it a try. After downloading and running the new beta, I added my Movies folder and let it do its work. Unfortunately for me, it failed at the first hurdle. It picked up half of my TV shows, and presented all my films as “Film Showcase”. This was a step further than it managed last time I had tried it but still not working status. I gave it a chance, cleared the Application Support folder and reran it. After adding back the video source folder (I think here I may have messed up and configured this incorrectly). Checking the TV section revealed almost all my TV shows, as well as every episode I had for them. This was getting better. Enabling Fan Art lets Plex download some really good banners and posters to show you what program you’re looking at. Drilling down further into a TV show gives you full screen artwork for the show, and, as a very nice touch, plays the TV show intro in the background. It is these small features that sold me on Plex.


As I said above, Plex didn’t pick up on all my shows, but holding the Menu button button, or pressing I brings up a menu that allows you to do a forced rescan of folders and that seemed to sort my issue. All my shows were now up on screen for me to browse. Plex also tracks what shows you have and haven’t watched so you can be sure you’ve seen every episode of 24. Plex also has its own App store, allowing you to add more plugins as they are added. For me, I decided to add a TWiT Live plugin so I can watch Leo’s live stream.

While I do sometimes use Plex to watch TV on my Macbook Pro itself, I usually hook it up to my TV for a more pleasant and larger Media Centre experience. Even going through DVI to S-Video and into a standard def TV, Plex looks gorgeous (as does Boxee but the Plex UI wins here) I can only imagine how much nicer it would look on an HDTV. So rather than buying an AppleTV, why not pick up a Mac Mini, throw it under your TV and enjoy a richer media centre experience?

Plex Homepage
Boxee Homepage