MadMax⁸³

Well I have now been using my new phone for exactly 1 month, and what do I think of it? I Love It!

I have been a Windows Mobile user for many years now (Way before iPhone and Android entered the scene) I used to love the fact that there were tons of apps out there for it, and you could do anything you wanted with it, even though it wasn't made easy, it could all be done. Unfortunately, when the iPhone and Android systems were released, there were a lot better, and Microsoft just didn't keep up, something which they are now trying to rectify with Windows 7 for mobile.

So anyway, I had wanted to move to Andorid for some time, I had just been waiting for the right handset to come along. I had seen the Nexus One and really liked it, though as it was only available in the US I didn't want to have to pay £500 for it.

Then when I saw the HTC Desire was being released in the UK, I jumped at the opportunity to get it, ringing up to pre order my device as soon as I could (seen as I was due an upgrade anyway) . This was a bit of a leap of faith for me, as before I buy anything, I like to have read 101 reviews on it, though because the phone hadn't been released, there were no reviews, so I decided to just take the plunge and get one.

After a week of waiting my new phone arrived on the 29th of March, and from the moment I opened the box I knew I was going to get on well with this phone. It has an amazing looking screen (even when the device is off, as weird as that sounds), The feel of the phone as well, its very tactile with a smooth brown (well, they call it brown, I think it looks purple) rim around the screen, and a rubberised back with HTC stamped into it in silver letters. It just feels good when you pick it up, its heavy enough so it feels like a quality bit of kit, but not so heavy that it weighs your pocket down, and its also very thin!

From when I first turned it on, I knew I was going to enjoy using this phone, though you cant really judge a phone from what you use it for when you first get it, as your just messing about and seeing what it does, which is why I have waited a month before writing this little review on it.

So I now have my email setup, all my contacts synced from GMail, the phone is fully setup to how I use it, and what do I think of it in day to day use? Simply Amazing. It just works, my email arrives instantly, I can do a quick reply so simply thanks to the fact the touch screen works so well, helped by HTC's keyboard which gives suggestions on what it thinks you wanted to say, instead of what you did say, so you can pretty much mash the keypad, and it still works out the right work, its fantastic.

The calendar app is also brilliant, this is more thanks to Google though I think, on my phone I have my personal calendar, and shared calendars, so I can see as soon as someone adds something onto the calendar, which means I don't have to keep checking my computer, though as its all done though Google calendars, I can check it on my computer if I want to.

The phone (as in the software to make and receive calls using the device) also works brilliantly, your contacts are synced with Facebook, so when they call you can see there Facebook photo, its easy to find people you want to call, and the call quality is fantastic, even though its missing the second microphone the Nexus One has which is used for noise cancellation.

There is then the Firend Stream, which combines your Facebook, Twitter and Flickr friend updates into one place, so instead of checking 3 different apps to see what your friends are up to, everything is listed in one place, and you can then post your status updates directly from there as well, which is a great little feature.

So that's the main features of the device covered, the bread and butter of what you expect one of these to do, be able to communicate with other people and the outside world, but what about the other things we use all the time, Apps. This is one thing that lets Android devices down in general, first, the App store isnt as big as Apples, though it is growing all the time. Though my main issue is that you cant install apps to the SD card, only onto the phones internal memory, and as the phone doesn't have that much internal memory, it fills up pretty quick. Though on the plus side, if you root the device (the details on how to do this were released yesterday) you can then install to the SD card, which would resolve this issue.

I an going to try and do a blog soon about my Top Apps which I would recommend everybody get, though until then, if you want a game to play, get Cestos, its so simple yet so addictive, and its multi player over the internet, and the best part is, its Free!

That about comes to the end of my little review, I cant recommend this phone enough, it just does everything you want it to, and more, and it does it well, im so pleased with this phone, and anyone looking to upgrade or get a new handset at the moment, this is one you should seriously consider.

One more thing, the image on this Blog was taking on the Desire, then uploaded to Twitter using the built in client, which is so easy to use, its unbelievable.

We Lost!

When a TV show can show Jesus Christ browsing Internet Porn, While Buddha is snorting lines of coke off a mirror next to him, though when ever somebody says "Muhammad" its bleeped by the network, then The War on Terror is over, and they have won.

I know people will say that we have sent thousands of troops to fight the war on terror spending billions of pounds in the process, and we are closer to winning the war on terror than ever before, though Comedy Central showed us the brutal truth on the 21st of April 2010, when they showed us the proof that the terrorists have won, by doing what they say.

Some people may ask why I believe the terrorists have won, just because a TV Networked put a few beeps onto a show. Well in the UK Terrorism is defined as...

"In this Act 'terrorism' means the use or threat of action where the use or threat is designed to influence the government or to intimidate the public or a section of the public and the use or threat is made for the purpose of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause."

Which is exactly what Comedy Central bowed down to, the Terrorists said jump, and Comedy Central just asked "How High?", they have done what most governments usually refuse to do, give in to terrorist demands.

Because a terrorist made a threat against the creators of south park (Matt Stone and Tray Parker) that they would get murdered for there depiction of Muhammed, Comedy Central decided to censor the episode every time someone said "Muhammed", but not only that, they also censored Kyles traditional speech at the end, which according to Stone and Parker, didn't even mention Muhammed.

This has caused plenty of controversy on the internet even The Simpsons showed there support for South Park in the best way they could, have Bart write it on the blackboard at the start of an episode, his lines were "South Park - We'd Stand Beside You If We Weren't So Scared"

I would like to point out, Stone and Parker, the people the thread was against, sent the show to Comedy Central without the censorship, though they had censored the image of Muhammed, which was more for comedy value than to actually censor it because of threats, but you will probably need to watch the episode to understand that, yet Comedy Central felt they needed to go even further with there censorship.

So that's it, pack up the troops and get them home, once we have lost our freedom of speech to a small group of terrorists making threats on the internet. All the invading of other countries and hunting caves for blokes with beards isn't going to help us now.

The war is over.

We Lost.

Today I have added the Facebook "Like" button to my Blog's, so you can click this, and it will add the link to your Facebook wall, it works in the same way as when you click the "I like this" button on peoples status's on the main Facebook page.

This feature was launched by Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg at there f8 conference in San Francisco yesterday, who predicts they will be over 1 billion likes within the first 24 hours of the feature being launched.

So I thought I would help him out by adding this button to all my Blogs, Give it a wirl!

From today (8th April) until the 12th of April several pubs around Shrewsbury will be taking part in the "In The Loop" Beer Festival.

In The Loop was started last year when the Shrewsbury Real Ale Festival was cancelled due to them not being able to secure a venue, in response to this a few pubs around Shrewsbury created there own Ale Festival and called it "In The Loop" due to the fact that all the pubs are within the Shrewsbury loop of the River Severn. Due to its success last year they are holding it again, though it is being held in April this year so as not to interfere with the Shrewsbury Real Ale Festival which will be held in September at the Severn Cellars.

There should be about 70 beer available to try at seven pubs around Shrewsbury, the pubs taking part are...

The Coach & Horses
Loggerheads
The Salopian Bar
Three Fishes Inn
The Wheatsheaf
The Admiral Benbow
The Nag's Head

I will be trying to Tweet my thoughts on the different beers as I go around and giving my recommendations on any really good ones I find, so keep an eye on my Twitter this weekend if your thinking of attending.

Recently I have been looking into ways to create a free off site back up for my MySQL database. My site is running on my own box and is primarily Data Base driven, I have never been too bothered about backing up the site, as the main code for the site doesn't change too often, so it doesn’t need a constant backup. Even if I did loose the site files, it wouldn’t take me long to put up a new site which runs off the current database structure.

I have been concerned about is loosing my MySQL Database, as that’s where all the main data for the site is stored (Blogs, Pages, Comments etc…). My server does its own backups on the box, so if you delete something by mistake, you can restore it from the back up, this wont help me if the disc in the box dies. The company I get my server from do offer a backup, but its quite an expensive monthly extra, so I decided I needed a way of keeping an off site backup of my database for free.

When I started to look into this, I worked out I could actually do it really easily, all I needed was 4 lines of code and a free Google Mail account, I chose to use Google Mail as they give you quite a lot of space and there system can handle pretty big attachments. Here is how I did it.

1. To start with setup a Gmail account to send your backups to (or you can use an existing one if you want)

2. Create a file on the server called DataBaseBackup.sh (or what ever you want to call it), I would advise doing this on an area which isn’t web accessible.

3. In that file, add the following lines of code

DATE=`date +%Y-%m-%d`
mysqldump -u username -ppassword databasename > /backups/mySQL/DBBackup-${DATE}.db.out
gzip -v9 /backups/mySQL/DBBackup-${DATE}.db.out
echo "DataBase Backed Up" | mutt -s "Site DB Backup ${DATE}" -a /backups/mySQL/DBBackup-${DATE}.db.out.gz YourGmail@Gmail.com

4. Now modify the code and add in your database username, password and the database name, then add in your gmail address.

5. Set up a cron, on Unix box’s you can usually get to this by typing “vi /etc/crontab”, once you are in there, just add the following line to the bottom of the existing items in the cron. If you dont have access to the box, there may be a Cron option on your web control panel.

0 4 * * 1 root /backups/ DataBaseBackup.sh

That’s it, this will now do a dump of the database ever Monday morning at 4am, and email it to a Gmail account. I picked Gmail as they give you a ton of space for free, but you can use any email you like really, as long as they will accept attachments big enough for your database. If you have any questions, either leave me a comment or drop me an email.

I have been taking photos with my new Lumix TZ7 camera over the past couple of days and im very happy with it.

Im going to do a full review on the camera soon, though until then, here are some photos taken from it, TZ7 Test Photos.

I have put them on Flickr as you can then zoom in and see the quality in high resolution, rather than the lower quality images I put on my gallery on here.