I managed to read a few books, spend plenty of time under the camper and just generally relax. I’m now looking forward to my next trip!

You can see the “live” broadcasts on this post or the original here! I’ll be adding some more photos too when I get a chance to sort them out!

I’m currently on holiday. For a bit of an experiement, I have signed up to OnTheRoad and thought I’d give the service a shot. I’ll be using the Android application and H will be using the iPhone version. This page will update as we go along so keep checking back to see what’s new!

My Mum made me a birthday cake with a twist. She loves to go a bit overboard with her creativity. This year she made Delilah (the camper), me, and H! (I may have added the Peak District in the background!) It was so cool, I had to get a pic up! Nice one Mum!

If you have a Motorola Milestone (Maybe Droid too, but not sure) and have recently upgraded to the latest Android 2.1, you are probably quite pleased with the new features and performance. I was too except for a niggling problem with the Multimedia Station.

Every time I put the phone in the dock, the Multimedia Station app would be non responsive and Force Close. It was becoming quite annoying but there is a nice simple solution.

1. Go to Settings
2. Select Applications
3. Select Manage applications
4. Press the Menu button
5. Select Filter
6. Choose All
7. Select Multimedia station
8. Press the Clear data button
9. Done!

I had to restart my phone after this but now the dock is working as expected. I guess there was some old setting left in the cache after the upgrade and this clears it out.

Hope it helps!!

It’s one of those special moments again. Cory Doctorow has released his latest novel, For The Win. I’m a hug fan of his writing and have each of his books in hard cover, some even signed! One of the reasons I try and buy the hard covers, is that Cory gives the books away for free! Yes you read that right, the books are released under a Creative Commons licence and may be downloaded, re-mixed and generally shaken about as long as no profit is made from it. My personal preference is to read them but you never know, a movie could be on the horizon if I ever find the time! If you are interested in buying a copy, here it is on Amazon!

Back to the point here, I have downloaded a copy to load up on my eBook reader, if you are interested, go and find out more for yourself! Here is what it’s about;

In the virtual future, you must organize to survive

At any hour of the day or night, millions of people around the globe are engrossed in multiplayer online games, questing and battling to win virtual “gold,” jewels, and precious artifacts. Meanwhile, others seek to exploit this vast shadow economy, running electronic sweatshops in the world’s poorest countries, where countless “gold farmers,” bound to their work by abusive contracts and physical threats, harvest virtual treasure for their employers to sell to First World gamers who are willing to spend real money to skip straight to higher-level gameplay.

Mala is a brilliant 15-year-old from rural India whose leadership skills in virtual combat have earned her the title of “General Robotwalla.” In Shenzen, heart of China’s industrial boom, Matthew is defying his former bosses to build his own successful gold-farming team. Leonard, who calls himself Wei-Dong, lives in Southern California, but spends his nights fighting virtual battles alongside his buddies in Asia, a world away. All of these young people, and more, will become entangled with the mysterious young woman called Big Sister Nor, who will use her experience, her knowledge of history, and her connections with real-world organizers to build them into a movement that can challenge the status quo.

The ruthless forces arrayed against them are willing to use any means to protect their power—including blackmail, extortion, infiltration, violence, and even murder. To survive, Big Sister’s people must out-think the system. This will lead them to devise a plan to crash the economy of every virtual world at once—a Ponzi scheme combined with a brilliant hack that ends up being the biggest, funnest game of all.

You can create your own too using the Google Search Story Creator!

At the end of the day, I don’t know why the excitement has gone. But this site is supposed to be about living so I’m gonna find that excitement. I’m going to bring it back and get excited again!

Its been a long overdue project, but the builders have been in and given the place a thorough going over. The theme was built from scratch in order to provide OSL with a more flexible blogging environment. I liked the previous simplicity a lot but I found that it didn’t quite meet my slightly diverse blogging needs. I have built up a network of sites I contribute to and I wanted to focus on them without feeling that my primary blog was being left out of the fun. I have a lifestream setup on shanemarriott.com that absorbs nearly everything I do online so I didn’t want that here also. My old blog at phrixus.co.uk was still pulling in a lot of visitors probably due to its longevity. It has been around for years and needed a shake-up, with this in mind, I will be closing it’s doors when I get the chance to find a good way of redirecting visitors to new locations.

All of the thumbnail generation is done automatically. You can specify the main image in the post editor or the theme will use what it has to hand. This means that if you don’t select a key image in the editor, the template will look at any images in your post and use the first one to generate the thumbnails. These are cached in order to preserve the performance. If there are no images, it will use a default image.

I have some great ideas on how to incorporate jQuery to enhance a few aspects but I will limit those on the public version. A lot of the functionality such as “Related Posts” has been built into the theme so that the reliance on resource hogging plugins can be reduced which was a primary aim of the theme. Even the tweet on the homepage is fetched by the template functions.

Ultimately, this theme will be made available on one of the WordPress theme websites. I have a bit of work to do on the backend before that though. If you feel particularly helpful, have a look around and let me know if you have any ideas or, more importantly, find any problems. Both are important! Thanks!

This site was founded because of an idea I had whilst travelling around in a rented VW Camper van. Owning one has been an aim of mine for a few years and I have now achieved that goal (technically this was last year but I have only just published the post!) with a lot of help from my family! Meet Delilah. She’s a 1973, Type 2, air-cooled, bay window camper. She has an original Devon pop-top and, I believe, it is the original Devon interior also. Unfortunately, I have no idea of any resources I can use to verify this.

Her maiden voyage with us was a long trip from Manchester down to the south coast. This was a reasonable 6 hour drive and, I am pleased to report, she ran perfectly with no problems at all!

She does need a little attention here and there but all-in-all, she’s a fine specimen. I may be a little biased though!! The previous owner was very careful with anything he did as she is still in original form. Her interior is original as are most of the rubber seals and equipment. The exterior has had a number of repairs made so I know it is not the original paint. It looks like it might be as it has the retro faded look often associated with original after this much time. Certain panels have been welded in over the top of the original so I think there may be some work required over the next few years. With any luck, my welding skills will develop to a standard where I can tackle this myself.

The plan is to improve her and use her so I am sure there will be a few stories popping up over the years, especially as we have set up a new blog, just for her!! Details coming soon!

Wow!

My biggest concern when I bought this phone was how it would compare the iPhone. I didn’t want to be taking a step backward in terms of usability and features. I shouldn’t have worried though; this phone is superb.

The open nature is a breath of fresh air. I didn’t need iTunes to set it up or add music. I can install any apps I want. Nothing is locked down and its a genuine UK phone that costs half that of buying a new iPhone here! I wont even comment on the build quality as it is one of the most solid devices I have ever used. It was literally thrown across the kitchen tiles (by accident, not a test!) and there is not a single mark on it.

Other than killing the battery one morning after experimenting with email syncing on an account that didn’t exist, there have been no major problems. The slideout keyboard could be a little bigger, but that’s solved by the touchscreen! I’m not sure what the D-pad is for yet… perhaps the NES simulator? The usb socket is not the same as any of my cables so I am limited to the one supplied at the moment, I have the docks on order but they are currently out of stock. These are all minor gripes that could be equalled twice over with iPhone related annoyances. If this phone receives the Android 2.1 upgrade, as per the Nexus One, it will be hard to beat.

I’m so impressed up to this point that the next Apple phone would have to be something very special to entice me back… of course, that is what they do best!

Apps

As with any phone these days, it is only as useful as the apps you have installed. After setting up Google Checkout, purchases from the Market are super simple (Though I only have 1 paid-for app). In addition to some notable Apps such as Goggles, My Tracks and a barcode scanner, I have installed the following to date with no problems.

wpToGo

I use WordPress a lot, this app does exactly what it says on the tin! Mobile blogging!

Photoshop

With a 5MP camera, some editing is required. Photoshop Mobile fits the bill!

Seesmic

Being a devoted Twitter user, I have currently settled on Seesmic as the tweet tool of choice. This space is constantly changing so it will be interesting to see the developments.

Trip Journal

This is a trip tracking, photo linking note taking app for when you are out an about. This is the first app I purchased as I wanted the full version. It is also available on iPhone but with Multitasking, I can listen to music and use the phone without losing my track!

runstar

This is a slick app still under heavy development. I dont get out running much, but if I do, I’ll be running with this app… and music… and twitter (I am quite happy with this multitasking thing)!

Camera

I used the iPhone camera a lot, especially for Flickr/Twitter type shots. The Milestone has a 5MP camera that has had a lot of pixel-peepers stating why they wouldn’t trade in their SLR’s for one. Luckiliy, I use the camera for snap-shots and was not looking for a prosumer camera (would be cool though) and I have found that the camera delivers exactly what it needs to do. The image below was taken in contrasting light, click it to see the full version from Flickr!

Conclusion

I have so far concluded that I like the freedom provided by the Android platform. I have found the apps I needed to match what I did on the iPhone, sure there are only 16,000 to choose from not 100,000 but to be honest, I only need about 10! Essentially, after a few weeks, I don’t regret the decision to switch phones, if anything changes, I’ll note it here. Now I need to write my App!