For those that aren’t aware there is currently a scheme in the UK to get more people under the age of 26 to go to the theatre. They obviously had a sit down to think about this, and they came to the same conclusion any group trying to get young people to do anything would come to, the tickets would have to be free.

There are venues up and down the country, but if you’re in Manchester it’s the Royal Exchange Theatre where they are giving away 50 free tickets at midnight. So, at the girlfriends behest I tried to get us a pair of tickets. I rang 44 times between 12 and 12:20. When I finally got through – they’d all gone. Apparently, they all went to people who had actually queued outside the box office in person. I guess that means it’s a popular scheme… so if you fancy taking it up, make sure you line up early.

While shopping at the local ASDA the other day, we reached the checkout only to be told that there was a three carrier bag limit. As in, no matter how much you have bought (or, how much you have spent) you could only have three carrier bags.

Oh dear.

Not so bad for us, I grabbed the last reusable (fabric) bag from the adjacent checkout – and as we noticed on the way out, the last fabric bag in the store – and we just about made it work. However, there were people behind us with full trolleys who simply weren’t going to manage.

I think the phase-out of plastic bags has to happen eventually, and I can’t help but applaud ASDA for taking the initiative. But I have to criticize the way they’ve gone about it.

Me, and the girlfriend, spent some time near the entrance of the store as we had to go in to get change for a trolley and not once did we see a sign alerting us to the change in carrier bag policy. I noticed they’d also taken the carrier bags from the self-service machines, and everyone using the machines was simply piling their purchases on the scales and carrying them out sans-bag.

Oops!

So, is this just a one off pilot store – or is this nationwide? And if so, is it just Hulme where they didn’t feel like warning their customers?

[Update] It looks like they don’t do plastic bags at all anymore. Especially weird since the ASDA near work is still handing them out. Perhaps this is a pilot store?

Normally being second in the google ranking for something would make me happy. Not in this case. I had ordered a stand, until the company emailed me back and told me that it was £25 more expensive than listed on their site (their awful early 90s site) …

So I did a search for somewhere I could just walk into and then leave with a stand in my hand. I guess this means I’m not going to have much luck!

Does anyone know where I’m going wrong. I’ve tried alternative words to “anglepoise”, but they’re not having much luck either.

i guess this is the first official announcement, though it’s technically more of a “by the way”. i have finally started work on my latest, and i think most interesting (to others), project.

i’m not quite ready to reveal all the details yet, but i’m hoping that i will have the first alpha/prototype ready to put out there within the next two months.

giglr.co.uk work is only in my spare time, and it’s a not-for-profit idea, so i can’t quite devote every waking moment to it… but i am hoping to spend as much free time as possible.

my concentration should really be on finishing up this site too, so that i can port the style back over to robgough.net, but i don’t see why both projects can’t coexist.

i’ve also, finally, taken the plunge on an anglepoise mic stand… so maybe, just maybe, my long neglected podcast idea will finally come to fruition.

this blog will, of course, keep you up to date when there is some actual news (a private beta perhaps) – but until then, i just wanted to share my excitement that i’d bought my first domain in several years – mostly so that it finally had an official name… which is helping me focus on getting it done.

how could you track santa if he wasn’t real?

and if you’re worried it’s not from a reputable source, it looks to be a joint operation between NORAD and Google. How could it not be?

back in the day, when I got my first hotmail address I was actually syncing two accounts to outlook, via IMAP. for some reason microsoft got upset about this one day, and decided to disable this basic feature of mail accounts – crippling hotmail for me, and forcing me to move over. around this time gmail was launched, and thankfully i moved over there. now, you couldn’t access gmail via IMAP then – but they were in the process of adding new features, not taking them away like microsoft – hence it was worth the move.

I don’t know many people still actually using hotmail, however my girlfriend @b3xx0r still is. She has also just bought herself a nice fancy iPhone (congratulations on the new job! :D) and she wants the constantly updating mail app to check her hotmail account. this is, of course, now completely impossible.

There are apps that will check her mail, but they cost – and worse, they don’t constantly update like the built in mail app does (though that’s an apple limitation, not an MS one).

Still, you’d think that if you wanted to leave an old hotmail address behind – but didn’t want to miss any mail, that they would have the basic goodwill to allow you to forward all your email to your new account (as the only way of checking it is constantly checking the site!).

well no, you can’t. you can only forward to other microsoft owned addresses. now that’s not very good spirited is it – one could be forgiven for thinking that microsoft know that their mail product sucks, and the only way to keep users is to make sure they’re locked in. I’m so glad I moved!

While waiting for the latest Top Gear to be added to the BBC iPlayer I thought I’d trying sticking the URL from a previous episode into my RSS Reader (google.com/reader). I figured this might work, as I thought I’d read about this on some blog post somewhere-or-other.

I guess it’s something they’re working on.

Here’s the link mentioned in the image. Oh, and I think it’s just bizarre coincidence that the episode he mentions explicitly is exactly the episode I did this on. Freaky.

this week, after literally years of waiting. i have finally switched sides, and become a mac user.

and first impressions, after a week in. i love it, and i could not be happier.

i was, until they decided to “go intel”, an ardent apple hater. i have always been interested in operating systems though, so as soon as i had the chance, i tried out OS X on my IBM Thinkpad.

it only lasted a week, i couldn’t get wireless working (still can’t, for the record) but that was it. i was hooked. in the meantime i started paying more attention to apple, researched the OS, and decided that i would switch as soon as I could. it has taken until this week for me to be able to afford it, yes they’re expensive, but the amount of time i will spend sat at this machine. it was worth it. to me, anyway.

in the intervening time i managed to convince my brother to buy apple, he has been loving his MacBook for over a year now. i even convinced my fellow windows .net developer flatmate, tom, that he should have a go. he got a MacBook over a year ago, and a Mac Mini at the beginning of the year.

i’d convinced these people to switch, without having owned one myself. it was agony.

six months (-ish) ago, i adopted the philosophy “i’ll buy one as soon as the new MacBook Pros’ are available“. the rumours were already rife that they were soon to experience a bit of an image makeover, although with the paranoid secrecy of Apple no one could be really sure. not that i could afford it, i just figured whats the point in working if you can’t reward yourself every now and then, and it’s not like i had a summer holiday this year (- for the record, i’m taking two weeks off at the beginning of november – and plan on doing nothing more than relaxing with the girlfriend (and my new toy)).

so yeah, here it is. it truly is wonderful, there are so many little things i like about this that it would be futile to try and name them all. the huge, yet non-intrusive, trackpad has to be a particular favourite (four-finger-swipes are really natural to use, much more than you would imagine). the automatic backlit keys are very cool, gorgeous and useful. the screen is a lot less reflective in real life, than in the photos – the screen is so crisp and clear that you just don’t notice it. even vista (i need it for work, being a .net developer ‘n’ all) looks stunning.

and the best thing, now i have a usable computer you should expect my manchester gig guide podcast type thing to appear very soon.

but, being me, it won’t be that soon. i am rapidly running out of excuses though.

on a related note: so far there is one, and only one, application that i miss. google chrome. safari is so, painfully, slow to load pages. on that note, i’ve downloaded the firefox 3.1 beta – which is the first firefox to include a new javascript engine, which is apparently faster than google chrome. i don’t really care, as long as it’s nearly as fast as… i’ll be moving back to chrome just as soon as the mac version is available. until then, for anyone else switching and missing the speed, try this.

oh, and is it just me, or is it much (much much) harder to cmd-c, cmd-v than using the ctrl key?

Lib Dubbing is the art of miming along to your favourite artist, having it recorded, and putting it on the internet. the best get a little fancier – usually with the help of handily placed doorways.

the first one i remember seeing online was the one that is now widely regarded as the one that made them cool… (they also get bonus points for using the “peep show” theme song). it also happens to include the staff at the video site this is hosted at, vimeo.com

from here, i’ve spent quite some time on the video sharing site looking for more of these, just using the search terms “lip dub”

i can’t exactly explain why, but they just make me laugh. sweet, innocent fun. now how the hell do I talk my friends into filming one of these… (more…)

this site is currently in a state of hibernation while I play with a new layout, which when complete will be transferred to robgough net anyway.

still, peace and love