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On Monday my shiny new Nexus One phone finally arrived!

The phone was ordered on 14th April but with all the recent disruptions to air traffic caused by the icelandic volcano, Eyjafjallajökull, delivery of my phone was delayed.

Overall I am really impressed with the phone. It's a lot more zippy than my older G1 and looks one hell of a lot nicer too. The UI is pretty similar to the G1's Android 1.6 but there are some significant differences. Most notably are the 2 extra home screens, giving the phone a total of 5 screens instead of 3. The AMOLED is sharp, bright and most importantly, larger which makes a nice change as it is a pleasure to look at. The phone is nicely weighted (not too heavy, not too light) and feels sturdy.

All this was expected though, given how long Android has been available on mobile devices and I think that Google and HTC have had ample time to perfect on the design. On the note of the design, one thing I (and probably many others) consider to be a flaw is the SDcard slot. You have to remove the battery to get at the card which is... not useful.

On the plus side however, I found the voice recognition very accurate with no training what so ever. I've spent a few hours crazily talking to my phone...

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me (when the contact form works) or simply ask Google to lend its wisdom.

Yesterday, I took my first official steps at attempting to learn Java. It has been on the back of my mind for a long time (since the days of Visual Basic 6) but I have just never settled into it; Yes, I've tinkered, but never anything serious.

Thanks to some of my long time friends I now have a place to develop my skills and a place to get assistance as and when I need it. Since early 2007 they have been on-off developing an alternate IRC client for Linux that happens to be cross platform with a wide selection of operating systems due to it being Java based. In my opinion their client has far surpassed any IRC client that I've ever come across. If you don't agree, keep watching, you soon will!

The client can be located at DMDirc.com

If you want to follow my progress, they use Gerrit code review, my Dashboard can be seen here

Happy new year.

This year has been full of interesting things for all of us and today is the start of yet another. I hope you're all not too stuffed on turkey as it all goes back to normal Monday, wouldn't want you falling down the stairs as you cant support yourself! There is lots to be done this year.

I have a pet Iguana called Iggy. Its a female Green Iguana and over the weekend she broke her leg, badly. (See image to the right)

I was in Milton Keynes over the bank holiday weekend with the #MDBot Group (Quakenet). We arrived on Saturday at about midday and we left the next day in the afternoon. Milton Keynes is, on average about 2.5 to 3 hours away from me so leaving at 15:15 meant I wouldn't get home till early evening.

When I eventually arrived home after having a relaxing 1.5 hour bus journey from Milton Keynes Central to Birmingham International, my pet Iguana did her usual routine of coming over to me to say hello which, in her world means she wants me to make a fuss of her and usually give her some food. After I had spent 5 or so minutes rubbing some dead skin off her back and prepairing some cress for her to munch on, I sat at my computer and proceeded to catch up on some of the TV shows I had missed over the weekend. After a short while I noticed Iggy was climbing down onto the floor (Which isnt unusual, she likes a good wander), as she walked around the side of the desk I saw her leg was the size of a rugby ball...

As this was a Sunday Evening, taking her to our local vet was out of the question. They charge £90 to look at anything out of hours, which doesn't include the cost of any extras involved such as X-rays. I was stuck as this would also apply for the Monday which was a bank holiday. Some of you may wonder why I didn't take her and spend the £90. Quite frankly, I cant afford it. My Iguana was moving around fine, she was keeping her weight off her leg so I decided I would do what I could to restrict her movement and to take her to the vet during normal working hours.

I managed to get an appointment for earlier today at a vet that deals with reptiles, Rose Cottage in Runcorn. After an examination and being advised what the issue was, I obtained the X-ray image above. As you can see the break is a relatively nasty one and is broken into three pieces. I am a bit disappointed that it wasn't something less serious, as god only knows what will happen if the break doesn't start to heal properly in the next 4 weeks.

Once I have taken her back to the vet to have it looked at again I will post another update, just in case anyone is interested!

Well, just in case you didn't realize, this is my website. For the most part it is about myself or things I enjoy. I will use this site to host facts/statistics about me and also things that will, in the future, help me with things I may have forgotten (for example, config files, command arguments for things like iptables etc).

If you find any of these pages useful please feel free to link to them. If you are sad and have no life like me feel free to subscribe to my RSS Feed.

If you have any suggestions please feel free to pop them over to me via the contact form (when it works) or alternately via IRC in #agari on Quakenet.

Thats about it for introductions, more to come (soon I hope!)