Livin' the life...

"On November 30th 1966 the Barbados national flag was proudly raised signalling the birth of the independent nation of Barbados!" (Ref)

Ah, how sweet! Happy 41st birthday Barbados, may you live to see many, many more!

For full national information check the Official Barbados website or, if you just want to view a beautiful range of high quality photos  browse to this Flickr page.

(PS. I would have displayed the flag in this post but I think that would be illegal unless explicitly given consent.)

Last night I was buried in work and this morning I'm a bit of a rush to get to Uni! But.. I think this earthquake (or tremor depending on which island you're in) is worth just a really quick post.

Here's an excerpt from Barbados' CBC website:

"Several Caribbean islands were jolted Thursday when a powerful 7.3 per cent earthquake centred 25 miles south of Dominica hit the islands, sending thousands of people scampering from shaking buildings.

According to the University of the West Indies Seismic Centre, the earthquake, centred at 14.9 north, 61.2 west, affected Martinique, Dominica, St Lucia, Grenada, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, Antigua and Barbuda, St Kitts and Nevis, Guadeloupe and Anguilla. There were also reports of tremors as far south as Guyana and as far north as Puerto Rico."

You can read more about the quake on these following sites: CBC, Nationnews, Caribbean 360.com Yahoo! News and Google News.

Here are some very interesting technologies and applications I've heard about (and for some, been to workshops on) recently. I'm officially adding them my To Do list!

• Yahoo Pipes
• Silverlight
• Popfly
• Twitter (not really the workshop focus but it was mentioned with respect to Social Networking)

If you've played with any of these already, please don't hesitate to give me your review!

So..

I'm sitting having a chat with some friends and I get this text, "train fares going up 14%" (paraphrasing). Clearly, this was a joke I thought to myself.

Half an hour later, I decide to check this 'news' on BBC.. and guess what? It wasn't! (On the bright side though, I don't think that 14% will affect me!)

The BBC article covering this story reports, "Passengers are to be hit by above-inflation rate fare increases.

Season tickets and saver and standard day returns will rise by 4.8% on average, says the Association of Train Operating Companies (Atoc).

Others, such as cheap day returns and long-distance open and advance fares will go up by 5.4%. The increases will come into effect in the New Year. " (Yea, at least they give us a whole month's warning..)

What will affect me though is that 4.8% and possibly the 5.4%! Definitely not a good thing.. Guess I'll have to be doing less travelling, or at least be a bit more frugal considering travelling to the more distant places - currently I pay about £33.00 to go to York!

This is too funny!

  =    ?

Thanks for the link Ramal! (Here's the original photo site.)

"Online shopping in the UK is due to hit £40bn this year [2007], a study estimates.

The figure comes from price comparision website, Uswitch, which says the boom is being fuelled by cheaper broadband deals and faster connection speeds.

A separate study from Forrester Research predicts that online Christmas shopping will reach £13.8bn this year, a 42% increase on 2006.

Uswitch's 2007 figure is based on data pulled from official Office for National Statistics retail numbers.

It predicts that the UK's online spending will further rise to £162bn by 2020, when it will make up 40% of total retail sales.

More than three quarters of British homes now have broadband internet. " (BBC)

Surely we all have heard about Virgin after all they're into tons of things from travel (airlines), music (record label), mobile, broadband even to their OWN line of drinks (yea I couldn't believe that last one either)!

So what economy on their platter to conquer next? Banking! .. Considering all the problems that the once big gun Northern Rock (sponsor of Newcastle United FC), is having Virgin has recognised that this is a prime time to step in and make a bid. And, even though there is some reports that the bid may be blocked, there's an equal amount of evidence to show otherwise.

I'll be watching this one to see how it turns out because, banking is a funny thing and if reputation is worth anything, Northern Rock has a lot of rebuilding to do. Two things "The Rock" does have going for it however are: (a) the fact that the company has always seemed to contribute significantly to society and (b) "Virgin's offer .. includes an immediate repayment of £11bn out of the £25bn the bank owes the Bank of England." (Ref)..

More info should be available soon so I'll try to keep this post updated..

David Crowder Band - O Praise Him! Such a sweet, and powerful song. I hope you enjoy.

"The Hope Valley filled with mist as Mike captured this incredible image.

Photographer: Mike Barber
Date Taken: November 2007
Location: Peak District, England."

Ah! I love photos! Especially ones that are as beautiful as this. Hmm.. wait a second though, I'm getting a LOTR vibe.. I wonder if that red and yellow area is Mordor?!

NB. Photo and its details were sourced from the BBC Photo Gallery.

Final score at Wembley Stadium: England 2 - 3 Croatia. What does this mean? Firstly, the Three Lions crash out of Euro 2008 and secondly, Mr. McClaren, well, sir, you need to find a new job.

I watched it, and Croatia honestly played better and simply wanted the win more. Funny thing is, they've already qualified so one could only imagine that their sole purpose at Wembley was to shed blood! And.. that's exactly what they did!

I think soccernet aptly sums it up nicely, especially noting the UK data loss incident I blogged about yesterday. So I'll leave you with the following excerpt:

"And, stood on the sidelines, red and blue brolly protecting him from the elements, McClaren must have felt just like Chancellor Alistair Darling in the wake of the Child Benefit data crisis, blameless for the blunder but culpable all the same." (Soccernet)

Tsk. England next summer will be well quiet.

“The government’s “basic competence” has been questioned by the Tories after the loss in the post of computer discs with 25m people’s personal details on them. ... MISSING DATA INCLUDES… National insurance number, Name, address and birth date, Partner’s details, Names, sex and age of children, Bank/savings account details” (BBC). (Also, see video.)

Fraud? Identity theft anyone? Seriously though, this is horrible. In the video, I definitely admire Chancellor Darling for standing and giving that report to the House (then again that was probably a prerequisite for keeping his job!), but as one can see from the subsequent comments, he was not received well at all.

It'll be really interesting to see how this pans out even though "he [Chancellor Darling] reassured those affected that police had no reason to believe the discs had found their way into the wrong hands, nor did they have any evidence of it being used for "fraudulent purposes or criminal activity."" (BBC).. Let's hope so!

One thing that is of real concern is that really, it may just be the 'junior' member of staff who messed up HOWEVER this has produced a ripple effect of mammoth proportions, and has made the HMRC chairman resign, and now has the Chancellor in the hot seat. Got to love chain of command/responsibility eh?

On the bright side, "Mr Darling said that anyone who lost money as a result of any misuse of the data would be covered for losses under the banking code." (BBC)

[All quotes unless otherwise specified come from the Ministers under fire over records BBC article.]

Can you guess what movie? (Simpsons Movie is not an option!)

*GRrr!! That was just taLent! I found another one for Mr. and Mrs. Smith, but the end of that one was a bit.. shady so I chose not to include the URL (or clip) here.

I Keep Six Honest Serving Men

I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.
I send them over land and sea,
I send them east and west;
But after they have worked for me,
I give them all a rest.

I let them rest from nine till five,
For I am busy then,
As well as breakfast, lunch, and tea,
For they are hungry men.
But different folk have different views;
I know a person small-
She keeps ten million serving-men,
Who get no rest at all!

She sends'em abroad on her own affairs,
From the second she opens her eyes-
One million Hows, two million Wheres,
And seven million Whys!

by
Rudyard Kipling

Really nice poem eh? Believe it or not I came across it in an Enterprise Security text book!

It's snowing! And.. raining.. . It must be FREEZIng out there! It looks so nice when you're on the inside looking OUT though. . Hmm, I just remembered that I'm in uni early tomorrow, I hope it doesn't get horrible over night! Hopefully I get to snap a photo for you.

It's going to be Sunny (12 and 3) yet only 4 degrees.. hmm. What fun! I can't wait!

I received an email from a friend lately, and a line in it made me laugh so naturally, I'm posting it. Please note that you have to be from Barbados to get this.

"Heard ur doing the phd, never knew you were so into milk but hey...lol."

LOL!! Lol! Woo.. too funny! Nice one K!

OK! About two weeks ago I took a trip to Birmingham with a couple mates just to check out the shops and such. Now, because I'd been to Birmingham a couple times before, I had a basic idea of the city centre so I quickly got us from the train station to the closest mall (in the Bullring). When we walked in, something strange, that I had never seen before caught my eye... it was a big.. white.. apple (click to see picture of what I saw).

Well! To be honest (even though I'm a Windows fan), I was quite excited at this illuminating apple and what it meant so I immediately broke away from the group and walked into this .. apple.. store.

The first gadget to greet me was a small thing that looked somewhat like a laptop but, a "wee" bit cooler, probably it was the sleek white exterior or the playful looking interface and GUI on the screen! So, naturally, being the Computer Person I AM, I hopped over and browsed it for about 2 minutes BEFORE!! I heard the term.. something'-touch' mentioned behind me!!!

When I turned around to feast my eyes on this device, I heard slight singing in the distance, and bright, bright, lights coming from its direction.. then.. oh then... I saw.. thee iPod touch. ( <- If I were an emoticon that would be me! ) .. And guess what!? I could PLAY with it!!!! Oh it was fabulous! The first thing I did was try to check out some music and videos, but sadly there were none! so next up - the browser! (One thing I always wanted to know was if it really works as seamlessly as the portray in the adverts! With the zooming and typing etc. Also, it's worth noting here that the device uses Wi-Fi access.)

First, I started typing in a URL, and it even had a drop-down of options to choose from and I think a history! After getting the hang of that (I think typing aspect is the biggest -ve, unless you have tiny fingers!), reality set in and I surfed directly to www.jasonnurse.com ! The site loaded pretty quick and was easily viewable and navigable! Next, I tapped once to zoom, used my finger to drag around the page a bit then accessed the blog link with a touch of my finger. Interestingly the blog page loaded great as well! (I did not do a full test obviously though because as I'm sure you can imagine, there were other people were waiting to give Apple's newest device a go.) After accessing one of the posts, I wanted to zoom back out to access another link, so, what do I do? Just.. 'pinch' the screen! Ouuuu. (forgive me but this was just plain cool.)

Drawback? Probably the biggest thing to note is that there's only one button off the screen, so probably 92% of contact will be with the touch screen interface. A problem can arise here simply because the keys are a bit small or because your fingers are too big! Many times I had to retype URLS because I pressed the wrong key!

Otherwise though.. and probably in general, I was/am totally wowed by the iPod touch. If I had the £199 (lowest price - 8GB), that would probably be on the list of potential gifts to myself for Christmas! Alas, at that price.. woo.. I think I rather stick to something less extravagant.. Probably the Resident Evil trilogy on DVD??

By the way.. when viewing a web page, if you turn the iPod touch horizontally, the page turns as well and you can view it landscape.. To return to the normal view, simply return it to its vertical position, even though, for me this didn't work sometimes and I had to get help getting it to work!

Anyway! Nice apple, macBook, iMac, iPhone, iPod touch.. nice.

*brr* Not really sure how the Sun is forecasted to be out BUT it still be under 10 deg C.. ah well.

Sit back.. relax.. and enjoy.

I've watched it so many times and each time, it's more beautiful.. *sniff* !!

Anything you can do I can do better; I can anything better than you!

Videoo sooonn too comeee!!!!!

Wait, 8-0 ? That.. sounds .. like.. some type of Champions League football RECORD.. hmm.. I wonder..! *heh

Here's some rather interesting news!

Apparently, MDA, an industry group that promotes the use of mobile data, says that people in the Briton send over a billion text messages a week! In their report they also noted that persons in the UK sent 4,825 billion texts during September 2007, an increase of 25% on last year! Roughly this translates into 4,000 SMS messages every second, or 70 per person per month. The MDA now forecasts that 52 billion texts will be sent this year!

Amazing ain't it! Oh, and just for general knowledge, the UK is within the TOP 6 of the global league of countries sending SMS messages!
(Post Source)

Remember, remember the fifth of November,
The gunpowder, treason and plot,
I know of no reason
Why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot. (Source)

Most of you probably may know this rhyme from the movie V for Vendetta however if you don't know, note that there's actually a real life story behind it!

"Guy Fawkes (also known as Epic Fail Guy) is an annual celebration on the evening of the 5th of November. It celebrates the foiling of the Gunpowder Plot of the 5th of November 1605 in which a number of Roman Catholic conspirators, including Guy Fawkes, attempted to blow up the Palace of Westminster." (Source)

It is primarily marked in the UK, my Dad informed me that it also used to occur in Barbados in his lifetime! Festivities are centred around the use of fireworks (yea, I think just any person can buy fireworks - possibly only the less hazardous ones, if there's such a thing - and launch them into the sky.. ) and the lighting of, sometimes HUGE bonfires. To be honest, I've been hearing fireworks for the last two weeks now!

Anyway, tonight the sky will be very colourful; I just hope there's no fog like last night!!!

"God made the world round so we would never be able to see too far down the road." - Isak Dinesen

"Plain White T's - Hey There Delilah" is a reallyyy nice song.. ! As my pal Marlon says, you're guaranteed to hear it at least once a day here! So I think it's something that grows on you even if you don't like it the first couple times you hear it. Anyway, enjoy!

In general though, not sure I was falling for a girl called Delilah though... considering Sampson and all.

Today Friday 2nd November, culminates Switch it Off week, and we in Coventry, Warwickshire and Worcestershire are asked to switch off all our appliances normally left on standby, between the hours of 4:30pm and 6:30pm – the period when we use most electricity every day.

I found the following quote rather compelling so I'll do what I can to switch off my gadgets and the appliances in my flat as well. (Probably turn everything off just before I leave home and stay in the library a bit longer.)

If everyone in Warwickshire, Coventry and Worcestershire stopped leaving appliances on stand by in their homes, in one year it would save more than £20 million pounds.  It would also prevent over 86 thousand tonnes of carbon dioxide (one of the main causes of climate change) being emitted into the atmosphere through wasted electricity. (Source)

Serious business eh?

Looking pass the headlines, I think this article is surmised appropriately by "Google/OpenSocial vs. Microsoft/Facebook". See excerpt below..

Google trys to one-up Facebook as it provides programming tools for multiple social networking sites.

Google will officially join the club of social software development platform providers Nov. 1, when it unveils a set of application programming interfaces that will allow programmers to write social applications that will work on LinkedIn, Friendster and other social networking sites.

OpenSocial is designed to help programmers build applications that reach more of the 400 million users of social networks than they would under the original open developer model, Google product manager Joe Kraus told eWEEK Oct. 31.

The Mountain View, Calif., search vendor's initiative is an answer to the launch of Facebook's highly successful developer platform, on top of which 7,000 applications have been built since the social networking site launched it May 24. (Source)

To be honest, I can't wait to give it a go! I thoroughly enjoy the 'power' that Google gives to developers and users alike. A facilitator of great things, that's where their money is! (eg. igoogle, custom searches, greader, youtube, gmaps etc.)