Life with the Internet

So we finally have internet in the flat, and it's glorious. It seems like such a luxury now to have internet on tap at any time of the day without a walk to town every time I want to do more than basic BlackBerry browsing.

It means a return to Xbox Live something I hadn't done since the big upgrade last year, and also that my downloaded content now works properly again. There has still been little information on the comic front, this is somewhat unbearable due to The Blackest Night starting soon in The Green Lantern and the new Batman series helmed by Grant Morrison having already got underway.

Also I'll be working at Dare Protoplay in Edinburgh during the Fringe (Aug 14th-16th) at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre which unfortunately this year is not in the same venue as the Edinburgh Interactive event. Anyway if you're near the EICC you should drop by and check out Dare it's always fun and interesting!

In This City...

So recently I went to T in the Park my annual attempt at seeing as much music as possible in the space of 72 hours. This year was less challenging than usual however as most of the bands I wanted to see were pretty clear-cut up until the evening when tough choices had to be made. The main event of the weekend, at least for me, was Nine Inch Nails with Trent having announced this was likely to be the last tour and it looking increasingly that there would be a UK gig on the tour we decided to grab the chance while we could. Thankfully they didn't disappoint and put on an absolutely spectacular show. Now most of my friends already know that I didn't get to see Blur on the Sunday through no fault of my own but I regret choosing to leave no matter how ill I was, especially when they announced it would be their last gig.

Over the course of the weekend I saw;

• Idlewild
• Franz Ferdinand
• The Specials
• James
• Jane's Addiction
• Nine Inch Nails
• (Some of) Elbow
• Seasick Steve
• (Some of) Squeeze
• Iglu & Hartly
• Bloc Party
• and numerous other bands I couldn't really name

In other news I've been continuing to argue with Sky especially now it turns out the won't be activating my broadband until the 28th meaning I'll have gone a month without a service I was promised I would have from day one. It also turned out during a discussion with one of the managers that I was also paying £50 not the £40 I was promised which is really making me wonder what good being with Sky actually is.

Off to argue some more!

How I Learned to hate Sky and love my BlackBerry more

Over the past 3 weeks I have been going through the process of moving into my new flat. for the most part this has been fun and fairly easy, that was until I chose to put Sky in as my service provider. Having been told I would have all my TV, Internet and Telephone services active on the second day of being in my flat you can imagine my dissappoinment when I learned it would be 2 weeks before the phone went in and then another 5 days on top before they could activate my broadband. So began the battle.

I've tried writing, which gained no response, emailing, which gained me a poxy £19.75 credit to my account, even calling head office. I had reached my wits end last night completely ready to give up on the service and go elsewhere, that is when I called head office who told me despite all the call centres claims that they could not put me through to the customer relations team, they in fact could. However since customer relations is only 9-5 I must wait until Monday to fire my next salvo.

This may seem like a rant but I feel other people must be made aware of a shoddy and misrepresented service and also that the complaints team are actually reachable.

In other news I've seen a load of bands in the past 3 weeks but they've gained their own blog at a later date.

Anyway off to Edinburgh so got to run
Ryan

A blog about Microblogs (and the internet)

I keep meaning to talk about Twitter and now I finally have good reason, over the past week or so it's true potential has really come out in regards to the Iranian elections and the iranelections hash-tag. The even greater story is actually the reaction from those outside Iran especially those who have been striving to try and reduce the damage done by the Iranian government in their attempts to cut of communications to the outside world.

What has also been interesting is the reaction of companies like Facebook and Twitter to this situation. For example Facebook breaking it's terms of service by translating the site to Farsi (against the rules because Iran is an embargoed nation in the US) and Twitter working with their service partners to delay maintenance to the Iranian protesters could continue to twitter away to each other.

In other news I may have received an interesting freelance programming job so keep tuned for more information as I receive it, but I'll hopefully be working with a friend and making some good money.

Anyway that's all for now
Ryan

The joys of being poor

So the past three weeks have been somewhat crap, mainly due to the lack of work that's been coming my way. I know it's a recession but I wasn't expecting to spend an entire three weeks with no income to go towards rent on the new flat.

However good news; Firstly I've been trying out a few good betas the most important ones being Su.pr and Youtube Realtime. They're both great ideas and Su.pr is certainly my favourite URL shortening service. Realtime however has a few shortcomings mainly the lack of beta invites mainly you rarely encounter someone who is viewing the same video as you. Also I've been using ubertwitter, if you own a BlackBerry I really recommend it to you especially with the third beta update coming the few small issues will be all gone.

More good news is that on top of AC/DC and T in The Park I'm also off to see Bruce Springsteen in July. Which means a month full of music to help relieve the stress of moving.

And finally my flatmate Gav is coming through to Edinburgh tomorrow to hang out.

Anyway all for now tata

Desertion

So I've not done one of these in a while, it's been awfully busy and stressful. I have Uni stuff coming out the yahzoo, I'm moving into a new flat in just over a month and I have a whole bagful of money concerns.

But anyway I'm not hear to moan...or maybe I am there isn't really a cohesive flow to these things. So I got a new phone last month, the much lamented BlackBerry (r) Storm and despite a few teething problems I've grown to love it. I can email, tweet, listen to music and lots more without me having to whore myself that little bit more to Apple.
Don't get me wrong I like the iPhone but when I buy a SmartPhone I'd like it to be "smart" and RIM are the people I'd look to for this.

As I said I use twitter a lot on my phone, due to bizarre compatibility issues I'm stuck using YATCA and while it isn't the best it's still pretty nifty. For example I was at an art exhibition at the Student Union this week and I decided to tweet it, I then noticed a little TwitPic link. So I clicked it, Yatca presents me with all the photos on my phone and the option to take a new one and I think might as well grab a snap and let some more people see this. Now doing this I expected some slow and clunky behaviour but no snap a photo twitpic link appears tweet is posted simple as that.

Another App I've been enjoying is Viigo. It combines popular RSS feeds (for the entire world) and the option to insert your own. This has been really handy for me as I usually struggle to follow the news while I'm at Uni but now I can check local news, check my hometown nes and then check the Cinema times. Simple yet really practical.

Anyway enough for now but I'll leave you with my Twitter just in case you'd like to see more frequent updates. www.twitter.com/RyanMacG

The end?

Well I finally have a chance to update this after a substantial time due to coursework related stress and flat related drinking.

Anyway... Batman R.I.P has come to an end and in just a matter of weeks the fate of Batman will be decided at least for the foreseeable future and I can;t think of anyone better equipped to handle it than Grant Morrison. Now I'm a massive fan of Batman and unlike many others I've talked to I'm eagerly awaiting this plot development. I feel that in recent years some of the spark has gone from Batman but when Grant took over it seemed to have some pace and urgency to it and I've loved the ride even if it is now coming to an end.

In other new I recommend the New Krypton storylines in all the Superman comics and the Ghostbusters limited run that we've been getting in the flat it's an amazing way to unwind after a hard day of coding zoos...

Also Kevin Smith's Cacophony...simply brilliance

buh-bye for now