Comic: 5 Ways a printer can ruin your day —
See the full comic strip @ Stinkyink
Wordcamp UK 2011 —
I’m proud to announce that I’ve successfully managed to continue my annual tradition of convincing my employer to sponsor Wordcamp UK, this year at my new place of employment – Stinky Ink (a rather awesome place to buy Printer Ink Cartridges, if I do say so myself!).
Say goodbye to bomb.org.uk —
Well… I’ve been sitting on this domain for a while now. This blog started off on AndysPad.net, moved to the slightly more trendy GreenDezire.com and then to the current domain of bomb.org.uk however I think I’ve decided I’m getting a bit to old for fancy brands and will be making another domain change in the very near future.
Bomb.org.uk will be moving to the considerably longer AndyWarburton.co.uk in the next couple of weeks. Nothing will change here design wise, and I plan to maintain the domain for a significant time to come. Everything on the old domain will be 301 redirected to the new site so any old links will continue to work and your RSS reader should continue to pickup content from the new domain as well.
Naturally… I would have purchased the .com but it’s held by someone else who doesn’t actually seem to be using it at present. You can rest assured, I’ll be keeping my eye on it and trying to swipe it as soon as it becomes available.
I’ve decided to change the domain mostly because I’m getting a bit older and more confident and don’t feel the need to hide behind a “brand name”, but also because this blog has always been about me and I think it’s about time it actually used my name. I also use my real name on services like Twitter and Facebook, so it makes sense to also utilise it on my personal website.
Of course… this announcement is pretty pointless since pretty much nobody actually reads this site on a regular basis… or do you? Let me know in the comments if you’re still around!
All change again! —
I have a crazy month ahead of me – this weekend I’ll be moving out of our flat as we have tenants going in, then in a couple of weeks we should complete on our new house and be moving for the second time in under a month! Madness!
The other big change coming is that I’ll be starting a new job, working with StinkyInk who sell Cheap Printer Cartridges. They’re based not far from me in a sweet little village and a comprised of a small and friendly team. It’ll be a nice change from the corporate behemoth I work for at the moment – can’t wait!
For those of you that only follow me on my blog, you’ll also be glad to here everything is going well with the baby – Jack is growing fast and is now 4 months old and weighs nearly 18lbs! He’s a right little chubber, but he’s really well behaved and never seems to stop smiling! The shitty nappies are a bit of a nightmare, but I wouldn’t change him for the world!
Andy Warburton Uses This —
I’m a big fan of The Setup and have decided it’s about time I did one of my own so fellow geeks can gawk at the inner workings of my life nerd:
Who are you, and what do you do?
I’m Andy Warburton, I’m a 28 old Web Geek and new dad from Worcestershire in the UK. By day, I’m a UX Architect for a large European domain registrar, by night I’m building my own Stock Photography startup while trying to be a good husband and dad to my little family.
What hardware are you using?
I have two primary machines, one is my personal machine which is a 15″ 2010 Unibody Macbook PRo with 4GB Ram and a 500GB HD. It’s not exactly a beast of a machine, but since most of what I do is simple web design and development, I don’t need anything more powerful. I have a 1TB Western Digital Elements external hard drive. I have this partitioned into two chunks (about 60/40). The larger chunk is for Time Machine backups, and the smaller chunk is used for storing junk – mostly TV shows. This drive is awesome – it’s so small, yet has masses of storage and doesn’t require any extra power.
The machine I use for my day job, is a 17″ MBP from about 2007. These days it stays on my desk, raised up on a Griffin Elevator wired to a 24″ Dell external monitor. This machine has a 500GB Buffalo External drive connected purely for use with Time Machine Backups.
I use a standard wired Apple keyboard and Magic Mouse for my day to day needs.
For communications, I use an iPhone 3GS. It’s a great piece of kit and does more than everything I could ever need in a mobile device. The only problem I have with the 3GS is some cracking in the white plastic around the dock connector. It’s still in warranty though, so I’ll have Apple sort that out soon.
And what software?
I like to keep things simple software wise – I don’t like text editors that get in my way with autocomplete and tag matching etc, so I use Barebones TextWrangler for all my HTML/CSS and PHP creation. I use Panic’s Transmit 4 for FTP, which is absolutely awseome and Adobe Fireworks for design and creating UX mockups (I’ve been using it since before Adobe acquired Macromedia and still vastly prefer it to Photoshop). Sometimes I do the UX stuff in Balsamiq Mockups, but I find it to be a little bit too lo-fi for my needs. I usually have a Terminal window or two open for server admin tasks.
I use Tweetie for Twitter, and NetNewsWire for reading RSS feeds. I have a copy of Office for Mac but only open it once in a blue moon. I also have Windows 7 installed under bootcamp, which I just use for testing from time to time. I have a massive and eclectic music collection that I listen to pretty much at random using iTunes. I use Skype to chat with my international colleagues and make quick video calls. I use Google Apps for my email and pretty much exclusively use the web based (Gmail) client on the desktop and Mail on the iPhone. I use Dropbox to keep some essential files double-backed up in the cloud and for sharing photo links.
I have all the major browsers installed, but use Chrome for day to day browsing and Firefox when I’m doing web development, just because Firebug speeds up my work so much and I haven’t found anything quite as good for Chrome. Finally, I have Teleport installed on both laptops – it allows me to use a single keyboard and mouse across the two machines and copy and paste data with the greatest of ease.
What would be your dream setup?
The form factor of the 15″ MBP is perfect for me, but I’d love to replace the internal drive with a 1TB SSD (do they even exist yet?), crank up the memory to 16GB and change the screen for the hi-res matte version. I would have to pair it with an Apple 27″ screen just for kicks. I wish Apple made a full sized wireless keyboard as I like the convenience of the numeric keypad.
I’ve always dreamed of maxing out a MacPro desktop with Terabytes of storage, 3 massive screens and a massive hunk of memory, but the cost is prohibitive considering my minimal requirements and the fact I’m bootstrapping my startup.
A Family Plug —
I’ve recently launched a new website for my wifes uncle. They have a warehouse selling bed frames and mattresses in Cardiff and have recently decided to have a crack at selling online. They have a great variety of products and I’ve spent a lot of time ensuring that the site is easy to use and requires the minimum amount of hassle to place an order – compared to the big boys, buying a bed from Bobbys Beds is a breeze and can be completed in under five minutes!
Check them out at Bobbys Beds!
Dawning —
I think in the last couple of days the enormity of what is about to happen in my life has started to dawn on me. I’ve started looking around our flat and realising that there is going to be baby stuff where previously there was junk. My desk will be replaced by a changing unit and my futon will be replaced with a cot. My space is going to become his space.
But thats the least of my problems – going out on a whim, throwing money around (no iPad for me this year!) or just getting a good nights sleep is all going to go out of the window and be replaced with a screaming, shitting little pink blob.
You know, despite all that I will lose from my former life I have so much to gain. I mean, already I feel like I have bonded with the little guy – I lie with my ear against my wife’s stomach and listen to the noises he makes as he moves around, I talk to him and he responds with kicks and punches. This little thing is already a massive part of my life and changing the person I am, and the person I will become.
I wouldn’t change it for the world – I love this little pink blob and I absolutely can’t wait for him to come out. To see that little face for the first time and hold those little hands, to hear him laugh and cry – that is all I crave now. I am going to be a dad, my life is going to be different and you know what…
I can’t wait.
The funny thing about SGU’s blue aliens —
Is it just be or do the blue alien enemy from Stargate Universe look quite a bit like the blue aliens from the music video for Eifel 65′s “Blue”?
SGU Blue Alien:
Eifel 65 Blue Alien:
What do you think? Did the SGU designers get their inspiration from an early 2000′s dance music video or is it just really hard to design a bi-pedal blue alien that doesn’t look like this? 
For those that haven’t seen it… here’s the original music video for Eifel 65′s “Blue”
Surprise Book Shop —
Just wanted to take a quick moment out to tell you about my latest project (lots of these lately). Surprise Book Shop is a new idea in book purchasing – rather than go to Amazon and pick a book for yourself, let chaos rule your life and have a random book selected for you!
The project also helps support charities as rather than purchasing the books from an actual book shop, I purchase used books from local charity shops – this means the books get a second chance, and the charity gets a couple of quid per book to help support their cause!
BT Douchebaggery —
The wife and I are finally back in our little flat again so I have been through the mill of getting various services setup again. We decided to go with BT for our land line as we don’t use it much (with 600 free minutes on our iPhone plans we mostly use our mobiles to communicate), and it’s mostly just so we can have broadband.
Today I received a bill from BT which had a few extra charges for services I have NOT used!
These services were advertised as FREE during the signup process. However it appears you actually have to use them to be free – hidden away in BT’s terms of service is a charge for not using FREE services! That is a total dick move on BT’s part, but it actually gets worse! I really don’t think it’s appropriate any company, let alone a major service provider like BT to be hiding charges in their terms and conditions. It’s clearly an attempt to make a bit of extra money by deceiving customers – anything I have to pay for should be made obvious and shown up front, especially when it’s relating to something you don’t have to pay to add to your account. It’s like a car company giving you free insurance with your car purchase, but then charging you if you don’t have a crash!
They also added ‘Friends and Family International’ to my account at an extra £0.99 per month without asking me or giving me any kind of notification.
Luckily, I was able to remove these “services” with a relatively helpful agent on their new Live Chat service. BT, however, would not remove the charges from my bill or credit my account to make up for this.
While we’re on the subject of BT, their website is a total sham from a usability perspective here’s just one small example:
A pretty standard sign in form for customers to check their account online. However, with BT your username is your email address – so why not just label the form ‘email address’ rather than confusing customers by using unspecific terminology?
This whole episode with BT has left a pretty sour taste in my mouth. The only positive thing I have drawn from this is that their live chat service allowed me to speak to someone without having to pick up the phone, meaning I can deal with it while doing other things at the same time.
And no… before you ask, they didn’t offer me any ringdings to assist with my callings.