There’s not that much to see to be honest, how interesting can an office be? However, if you’d like to help celebrate this occasion it’d be great to see you.

Please drop by any time between 6:30pm and 7:30pm for a glass of something and a snack or two followed by a couple of ales in the pub over the road.

Location: 240A Fleet Road, Fleet, GU51 4BX
Google map (Above the ageuk charity shop)
Time & Date: 18:30 – 19:30 Tuesday, September 14th 2010
Followed by: More drinks in Propaganda if you’re up for it.
(If you can’t make it between 18:30 and 19:30 come
to the pub and I’ll give you a personal show-round.)

Really looking forward to Brett Welch talk about marketing for start-ups and Mark Boulton on design and frontend goodness.  I’ve seen Drew McLellan and Elliot Jay Stocks before at Oxford Geek Nights and thought that both talks were great, especially Drew’s ability to use old school childrens programs as a metaphore for current web topics.

I’m not too sure who I’ll know at the event, we will meet up with Ben and Brett from FHOKE at some point and I expect to bump into others that I’ve spent time with at recent barcamps.

It’s been a little while since we decided to go to FOWD and we’ve been chatting about it on and off for a while. Now that it’s tomorrow we’re almost ready.  Rob has managed to arrange accommodation for us in Canary Wharf with a friend, so that’s awesome! (Thanks Sheena)

Looking forward to the FOWD experience.!

Last year I attended BathCamp which was a superb event. I got a lot from it and hopefully gave a little to the other attendees too with our ‘double act’ talk on Stu’s sfImageTransformPlugin for Symfony.

As with most barcampers (the ones that don’t do public speaking), it’s a struggle to think of a topic for your own talk. At this point in time my main idea is to discuss with a group in an open forum style about freelancing, titled “How do YOU freelance?”.

Hopefully it will be popular enough as I’d like to have a few well established freelancers and a bunch of people thinking about taking the plunge and going freelance to ask questions and discuss answers.

The Wellington Inn

A great finish to the week mainly spend hauled up in the office taking product photographs for the new Bytemart website.

After a cup of tea and some Weetabix I was in a quandary, so I began by tweeting:-
http://twitter.com/andij/status/1008065628

The other night I installed the Ocarina iPhone instrument. It looked like a bit of fun after @ColinMacD sent over this YouTube vid.

This morning I decided to ‘have a go’. Seeing as I have little knowledge of playing an iPhone! I dug out of the back of my mind the easiest tune I can remember playing as a child on my first keyboard.

So, reading the ‘how to play’ and looking at the Ocarina forum I jotted down a rough score and had a practice.

After a little refinement I had a crack at writing the score on the Smule Ocarina Score website, once that was done a quick post to the forum was done so that I could share my simple work.

After that I undertook to record the aforementioned tune. I downloaded Audacity and the Lame MP3 Encoder to enable me to create the necessary recording and give me the ability to edit it too.

I set about using my Skype headset as a microphone and plugging the iPhone into my speakers and sighting the Skype headset nearby to achieve a decent recording level. A bit crude I’d agree but it gave me the desired result. I then began to practice the tune and record at the same time, after a few attempts I ‘nailed it’! Cleaned it up a little using Audacity, saved it as an MP3 entered data into the ID3 tags and WHPAM; a recording of Oh When the Saints go Marching in by Drew Jones.

After a spot of lunch (ham and cheese) I wanted to do something outside, but as I finished the washing up it decided to rain. So that scuppered those plans : (

Bella - Welsh Collie

We’ve been going for a stroll first thing in the morning along the canal and round the back of Pondtail, all in it’s about an hours stroll, so I try and get back home for 8:30 for breakfast so I can start the day at 9:00.

I’ve tried out Google Chrome, Jailbroken my iPhone, rectified the problems I’ve been having with www.nuevassync.com and sifted through my podcasts so I can listen to the ones I have not yet listened to.

I have also fitted the window stay in the little bedroom, hung the mirror in the hall and the hooks on the back of the kitchen door. Have put some ‘junk’ in the loft and had a think about how I’m going to turn the little bedroom into my office. This is going to require a bit of thinking and planning as I can’t afford to spend mega-bucks on furniture but I need some well fitting sturdy surface to work from including a work bench for hardware.

I was happy to see that it went just over £215! I received an instant payment through PayPal then a phone call from the winning bidder asking about the condition of it and ensuring that I’d package it safely. The following day I duly wrapped and posted it using Royal Mail Special Delivery.

A few days later to my supprise I received an email from PayPal informing me that the payment was under investigation! Then the following day I received another email stating that the case was closed and the payment has been returned to the account holder. I therefor have no iPhone and no money in my paypal account!

It feels like someone has stolen my iPhone.

I can’t believe this has happened I was under the impression that eBay and PayPal had processes in place to ensure that this sort of thing does not happen.

I now have to go through the pain of complaining to PayPal and eBay. It’s come at a totally inconvinient time as I’m far too busy trying to start my freelace venture and to top it off I could really do with the cash.