Byrnesys Blabberings

My Birthday! 

This week has gone quickly, thought I haven’t done quite as much work as I maybe could have Ill put that down to a pre-birthday celebration (which is on sunday!)

Much to Rachel’s annoyance I havent quite gotten into the birthday spirit, but we are having dinner at a nice southern mediteranean restaraunt in Aberdeen called Rustico’s tonight which should lighten things up!

If you are feeling especially generous (or are a member of family contractually obliged to give a present and are currently freaking out thinking you have forgotten my birthday) Id be VERY grateful for anything on my wishlist at Amazon(UK).

Book Buying Tips 

Which leads me onto another tip for the week which is DON’T BUY BOOKS ON AMAZON. I love amazon, its a one stop shop, great product info and reviews, great source for cover art and ISBN numbers but recently when I have been searching for books I have used abebooks.co.uk (same as the US site -abebooks.com except it lists results from UK based bookstores before the US bookstores) I have found that I can get books for at least half price to their amazon listings and in many cases can get the hardback for the same price as the paperback + shipping at amazon! (Everyone Loves a HardBack)

Digital Cameras

As I mentioned the other day, I broke my beloved Canon IXUS and have never entertained the possibility of replacing wth anything other than another Canon, until I saw this camera today the Samsung NV7 which I wouldnt consider if it was the same price as the IXUS70 but it is infact half the price at the moment on Amazon UK due to an electronic sale. The NV7  has a 7x optical zoom and image stabilisation which are two features the IXUS lacks. The limited 3x optical zoom on the IXUS was a definate draw back for me, but there are mixed reviews regarding the noise in the pictures taken on the samsung which is a gamble against the canon which has absolutely impeccable image quality even as the higher relative ISO’s. Does anyone have any opinions about either of these cameras they’d like to share in the comments?

Looking for things to read?

Well I have plenty of them this week, I have been "sharing other blogs" on the google reader page here, and posting a few things on interest in my delicious bookmarks here too. In relation to delicious bookmarks those who dont use it should, its a perfect way to keep track of web pages without locating the bookmarks on just one computer so when you want to show somebody a link and you’re not at home just go straight to your delicious page. Another tip for those who find it hard to keep bookmarking things in delicious, Ive found the delicious firefox extension to really help, it enables you to add a bookmark just as you would within a browser and also pre-empts and autocompletes the tags for you.

Do you use Outlook as your calendar?

I use it for work, but use Google Calendar for everything else in my quest to keep everything web-based, in the past I have been going through the laborious task of uploading the files from outlook to google to sync the calendars but good news!…Google have released a sync app which does it the easy way, just be careful you dont end up sinking your personal diary into your company-wide one.

Quick note for Blackberry users, Google also has an app for syncing you BB calendar with your GCal too.

Blog Stats 

I believe that I am well past the stage where I am findin any type of worth in blog stats but I have enjoyed using whos.amung.us which sits quietly down at the bottom of the left sidebar displaying how many people are reading the blog at that time (theres never more than 2) but enjoy the map function which shows where people are reading from if nothing else. Recently though, after having problems with the way the blog shows up in different browsers Ive wanted to do something more complicated along the lines of working out what percentage of readers are in which browser, or viewing at a specific screen resolution and have checked out picking up mint stats which seem to be "en vogue" with the cool kids of the blog world.

Along those lines, somehow an old blog post have over a 100 hits in a day reffered from a stumbleuponl in, I have no idea what stumble upon is, but needless to say its a bit defeating to have a link summary post about the Golden Compass surpass the more reflective ones, oh well kay sera.

Have a nice weekend all…