Just a quick warning, soon http://summer-daze.co.uk might cease to point to this site. This morning I received a letter from Nominet informing me that the renewal payment is late. However I paid the renewal fee a few months in advance but it would seem that my registrar 123-reg.co.uk has not renewed this domain for me as they should. I'm not sure what's gone on till I receive a reply to the email I just sent them.

So just a heads up, http://blog.riddian.com might be activated soon

UPDATE: 123-Reg got back to me, all is good now apparently, the domain has been renewed. No explanation as to why I had to prompt them to do this but a positive ending none the less.

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I have read a lot of negative comments about Audible.co.uk customer support, however I was most impressed with the support. I joined Audible.co.uk only a few weeks ago, paying a free £7.99 a month with basically entitles me to the download of one audio book a month. At highest quality the audio books sound like 48-96Kbps mono MP3, I think this should be higher at least 160Kbps and stereo is a must but I can live with it for spoken word.

Yesterday I purchased a learning Japanese audio book (not the first) with an unconventional method of learning produced by earwormslearning.com. Basically the idea is to lay down some words and phrases to music. Being one who likes to try new things I thought I'd give it a go. I foolishly thought a music based audio book would be encoded in higher quality, nope, still mono even. I couldn't stand this, I managed to listen to some of the book but simply could not stand it. I sent an email to Audible.co.uk asking about the chance of a refund and explaining my reasoning. To be perfectly honest I didn't expect anything to come of this, just thought I make my opinion heard. Well to my surprise they did indeed refund me and contacted me only 20 minutes after I emailed them

Can't complain about that at all! I will now buy the CD from the earwormslearning.com site which is more expensive but has the added benefit of being DRM free and, one should hope, CD quality

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I have been thinking about this one for some time. Following on the recent success of the beer ban I'd like to try the ultimate challenge, the computer ban. This would be the hardest challenge indeed.

I'll explain the problem, I spend too much time on the computer, I waste too much time on the computer. I wake up and it's not long before the old box is powered up. Then unless I'm doing something better (which I'm often not) I will vegetate in front of the machine for the best part of the day. Why though? What am I doing? What do I archive? Well nothing, nothing at all most of the time and that's the problem. It wouldn't be so bad if I was doing something productive but I tend to just while my time away on Instant Messaging reading news sites and generally playing around (not gaming however).

I often wonder what I would be doing at this point in time had I not a computer. I guess I would read more, play my guitar more, play more games on the Wii/DS, take more pictures perhaps even attempt to draw things or dare I say indulge in exercise! Who knows? The point is that all of these things sound better than wasting time stuck in front of the computer doing nothing.

This is why I think the computer ban is needed, however. The computer ban in a sense is impossible, I need to use a computer for university work so therefore I must reach a compromise. I shall not have a total ban but I must not use the computer unless doing something productive (I think blogging counts?). This will be very hard as using the computer is perhaps the most habitual activity in my life - it's the cure for boredom.

Well I'm going to give this one a go starting from today, ending, hopefully never! Things have become out of control and it's time to get control back whilst saving on the electricity bill

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No I'm not going mad, I didn't really purchase an iPod Shuffle it was a "free" gift from audible.com when I joined for 12 months.

Now as you may or may not know, I'm not an apple fan. Why? Because I'm governed by sense and people with sense don't buy Apple products, people with more money than sense do . Although the hardware is very good and certainly well styled it's worth more than it's values at and I never pay for brands or a flashy design, I leave that to the folly. Not that I'm against anyone who has an Apple product! just those that have them for the Apple brand or because said product "looks nice" but each to his/her own eh?

Anyway here is a mini write-up of the iPod shuffle which I will call the iShuffle as it little resembles an iPod anyway.



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Would you believe I have just spent to days trying to set up a MythTV system? When I first set up MythTV and didn't know what I was doing having not done it before it took half a day. Now I know exactly what to do and yet I can't get it working, Why? TV-Out issues. Firstly I spent a day and a half messing around with an ATi card I decided to shove in because it was quieter. Eventually I found out the drivers for ATi have a bug which has not been fixed since the dawn of the millennia, I should have known better than to use ATi. Now I'm back with a noisy nVidia and to my surprise having problems with their drivers too, of the Xserver crashing kind. Having reinstalled Ubuntu Feisty Beta again and still having the same problem I'm beginning to think it's time to call it a day and move back to an older version of Ubuntu.

Oh how many more hours must I waste!

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