CeeJayCee

Merry Christmas everyone!

My mobile contract ran out a few days ago, so I’ve been looking around for a good deal for a while. My last contract was £45 a month, with 11 months line rental returned and gave me 800 minutes and 600 texts to use as I wanted. This year, I decided that I was fed up with the cashback-type contracts (they work, but they’re a really really big hassle) so I went for a normal contract that had a cheap monthly rate.

The cheapest I found was O2 Simplicity: for £20 / month I could get 600 minutes and 1000 texts plus an unlimited data allowance. This is a sim-only deal - but I already have an iPhone that would probably be better than any mobile they could give me anyway. It’s also only a 30-day contract, so I’m not tied down if I find a better deal later. The biggest feature to me was definately the unlimited data plan - email and facebook anywhere!

So, even though 02 managed to screw up the switch over date, I’m now on a nice new contract!

Let’s compare this with the standard iPhone contract: you can’t actually get the same number of texts on any of their tariffs, but for £35 you can get 600 minutes, 500 texts, and unlimited data. To boost your texts to unlimited (which is what 1000 effectively is), it costs an additional £7.50 / month. It’s also an 18 month contract.

So: O2 simplicity = £20 / month. iPhone 35 = £42.50 / month.

O2 simplicity wins.

I’ve just tagged off version 1.0.1 of Kahawa, the website management system I’ve been working on for a while (mainly for eucu.org.uk). Between version 1.0 and 1.0.1 there were 33 different revision sets to the code - not just for bug fixes, but lots of enhancements.

The actual code changes can be found with this diff or you can simply view the log of changes.

As always, Kahawa can be downloaded from it’s subversion repository as either version 1.0.1 or the head of trunk.

Another MacBook Pro update! This is the original problem. This is when I thought it was fixed. Basically, after getting the top case replaced, the technician managed to break the trackpad button and the keyboard backlight - the button didn’t work (felt the same, no response) and the backlight (and consequently, the screen) flashed on and off like a disco.

One more trip to the service centre and we seem to be up and running again - let’s see how long it lasts.

As I mentioned previously, I had a problem with my new MacBook Pro where there were black spots / specks appearing on the palm rest after only three weeks of use.

Yesterday, the repair centre called me to let me know the replacement part was in. One trip out of town and 30 minutes of waiting later, my MacBook Pro is all shiny again!

Just testing the Wordpress Gallery feature.

Adobe Lightroom is the best software around for organising and editing photographs - especially if you shoot in RAW. I’ve just started trying out the new web gallery feature which seems pretty snazzy. If you combine it with Lightroom Gallery Complete from lightroomgalleries.com it makes a very smart looking flash web gallery complete with index and static pages.

The version 3 beta has just been released, once it’s final I’m definately going to upgrade.

Let me know what you think of the gallery and the photos.

What did we do before iPlayer?

Spectacular way to spend a Friday lunch time.

I took some pictures on Sunday at the Edinburgh Cavalacade, which I sent to the BBC on the off chance they might show them somewhere on the website.

Turns out they liked them - I got a call on Monday morning asking to use the pictures.

You can see them (and my name) here and here.

Better quality originals are here:

For what seems like forever, I’ve been working on an open source website management system called Kahawa. Originally, Kahawa was meant to be a simply content management system for the EUCU - but it’s now turned into a generic tool that I could deploy onto any website, or be used by anyone who wants it.

Version 1.0 of Kahawa is sitting in subversion, ready for anyone to checkout and use.

As soon as a stable version was available, I started to work on the front end for EUCU’s new website. EUCU live is now available, check it out and leave a comment on what you think. More content will be coming in over the next month.

EUCU Live Preview