a big guy in a big city

Posted by Bone at May 31st, 2006

It would seem that when I lost the power of blog I started looking at eBay, swapping one addiction for another more costly one.

In my defence there’s a few things that I’ve been meaning to pick up off eBay ever since I found out that Konica Minolta no longer sell or manufacture cameras and accessories. I needed to pick up what I wanted off eBay before people started gouging for products that weren’t available in the shops anymore.

So I ‘won’ a circular polariser which arrived this morning, which isn’t quite as amzing as I’d hoped, I think the CCD sensor is fighting the saturation. I won a flash unit as well, so that I can do bounce flash photography and not wash out whatever I’m taking pictures of, but that won;t be here for a while since its coming from Florida. I’m currently in the fight for a genuine KM wide-angle lens which was specifically designed for the A200 (my camera), I’m kind of at the top end of what I’m willing to spend, so the next 5 hours are going to be pretty anxious, let’s just hope no one else really wants it…

Posted by Bone at May 31st, 2006

After an unprecedented 5 days downtime, the BGBC blogging empire has been moved onto a new server by theIcy and will hopefully be running smoothly from now on.

Unfortunately this downtime came at the worst possible time, on Monday the good people at Spreadshirt (the people who run the store) named BGBC as the Blogger of the Month, which is quite the honour, though maybe it was just because we are alphabetically at the top of the list!

So whilst we may have lost out on some new European visitors, I don’t really mind, because BGBC isn’t about the stats, that’s what Hide Your Arms is for.

*EDIT* Ok, so you can’t view single posts on their own, and you can’t leave comments or look at any categories, but at least you can read the front page.

Posted by Bone at May 25th, 2006

I was awoken this morning by Richard shouting through the door that I had a package, “sweet!” I thought, “its a new tee!” But alas no, it was something slightly more boring, since I knew what would be in this particular package (I like all the tee companies to keep me guessing on samples/freebies) from Amazon. It was a 1gb compact flash card, so now I can take 85 RAW pics without having to change card (and then I guess I can take another 42 on the 512MB card) which is cool, because if I go out with the intention of taking lots of pics I do find myself rather constrained by a 512 card, since I’m obviously not going to take my laptop on a walk in the countryside to download the pixelly goodness.

Was this even worth a post? Bah, at least it stopped me from revising for a while!

*UPDATE* I just set my camera to its lowest settings (640×480, standard quality) and I can take 6969 pictures, haha, or one picture every 13 seconds for an entire day, I wonder if I can rig it up to do time-lapse photography?

Posted by Bone at May 24th, 2006

For no reason in particular I’d kept putting off buying tickets to go and see Billy Talent in July, I’d even received express permission to get the tickets from my parents, who seemed quite bemused that I was asking if I could spend money.

So I went to seetickets.com and searched for Billy Talent, and then almost had a heart attack. It was sold out. Well, it wasn’t I was just looking at the wrong line, but the fact that they’ve managed to sell out the Astoria is pretty impressive.

So I put all my details in for the Manchester leg of the tour, and clicked confirm.

Then nothing happened.

For ages.

Then I got a timeout error script. And no confirmation e-mail to my Gmail. Arrrghhh!!!!

So I rang customer services, and to be fair to them, they sorted it out immediately, I wasn’t put on hold, and their computer system seems to run very fast because the guy seemed to have all my information immediately available to him.

If you were wondering what the again part of the title is about, me and Rosie saw BT at the Leeds Cockpit on Halloween back in 2003, when I went to see them after only hearing one song of theirs.

Photo credits: billytalent:benkowalewicz (kingston.september2004.aj’shangar)

Originally uploaded by e_r_i_c_a.

Posted by Bone at May 23rd, 2006

According to this report by the BBC I am currently living in a city where I am more likely to be assaulted than in any other city in the country.

Woo!

Reminds me of the time that a guy threatened me and admitted to being very drunk as he was attempting to gain access into the car park I used last year. He was the one driving by the way…

And with regard to Nottingham, my housemate has always maintained that gun crime there isn’t too bad “because I’ve only ever heard one gunshot”.

Posted by Bone at May 22nd, 2006

I’m probably not the most environmentally friendly guy out there, but I don’t particularly like the idea of destroying the planet so I do subscribe to the Treehugger RSS feed.

Today they posted an article about a UK based mobile phone recycling company called envirofone who will give you money in return for your old mobile phone, and will then send it to a part of the world where they don’t need the latest technology (because, y’know, I use the videophone capabilities of my phone every day….) and will also donate some money to a charity on your behalf.

Seemed like a pretty good deal, and much better than just leaving a phone in a drawer for years, or worse, throwing it in the bin, so I thought I’d check it out. I’ve been at university for 3 years now, and I’m onto my 3rd phone, so I don’t really need my old t610 or k700i. I inputted both phones into the interface (very easy) and was given some options as to how I could be rewarded for saving the planet (as if that wasn’t enough). I should have probably mentioned that envirofone have teamed up with Argos, and you can get credit with them rather than cold hard cash. For comparison I’ve done some simple eBay economics so that you can see how the deal compares.

T610: Cash value = £11.98
Argos credit = £13.78
Sample eBay auction = £19.50 + £4.50 postage (with over an hour remaining, and with the phone locked to Orange, like me)

So it doesn’t seem like an astounding deal in terms of money, but it certainly is simple, and my t610 certainly wouldn’t reach the same value as my eBay sample, since mine is beaten up and envirofone don’t seem too concerned about the phones condition.

k700i
Cash value = £14.92
Argos credit = £17.92
Sample eBAy auction = Lots of phones with more than 30mins left on the auction that were well over £35, some reaching £60

This one seems like an even worse deal, considering that the cash value is around 25% of what is achievable with a well design eBay auction. Again, my k700i wouldn’t reach these prices as it had a year of student usage. My current phone, a k600i would get me £30, which isn’t bad, but I presume that by the time I finish with it in November it will be worth £15ish again.

So its a very promising system, and you can’t really expect it to compete with eBay, since they’re a company that are sending the recycled phones out all over the world to help others, and are giving part of your money to a charity. I guess it just comes down to how selfish you are… or lazy.

Posted by Bone at May 21st, 2006

The Lithuanian entry to Eurovision, which was so catchy that I found myself singing it (in my head) in the shower this morning).

Posted by Bone at May 21st, 2006

We had our 3rd annual Eurovision party last night, and we used a modified version of the original drinking game rules that me and Richard created back in the first year (simplified, if something awesome happens, you drink). We had a great time, and were happy to see that Finland won and Lithuania did well.

Also, in another rock/roll moment, our tumble dryer broke on Friday night, and after I spent a few hours on the kitchen floor getting dirty and sweaty trying to fix it, I eventually gave in and bought a new one from Curry’s yesterday (because it was 4p cheaper than in Comet! Bargain!). But it should be made clear, my DIY skills did not fail me, we just don’t have the ability to weld metal here at uni.

Posted by Bone at May 20th, 2006

Tom DeLonge’s new project Angels And Airwaves have the whole of their new album, We Don’t Need To Whisper, up for streaming on Myspace. And I know what you’re thinking, why did I not make the title a joke about the title of the album, because Mr. D is one crazy dancer, yo!

Check it out here, it’s not that bad. We are bigguybigcity (if you were at GIAN, which you probably weren’t, you’d get that reference).

Posted by Claire at May 19th, 2006

Feeder were… just amazing. As you can see from this picture that Debbie took (one of about a 100), we were so close to the stage, literally in front of the very gorgeous Grant’s mike stand. That’s Grant that is gorgeous, not the mike stand, you know?

It’s 26 hours worth of post-age, so there’s a jump…

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