I wrote in an entry last month about my attempts to let Carys and me view and edit the same data files even if my laptop was switched off. I've gone ahead and bought Microsoft Money - which looks great to me, just what we were looking for. But I've had to find an independent solution for filesharing.
Quite a long web search eventually led me to Dino. Basically we can both log in to Dino, click on the copy of our Microsoft Money file held there, and that will launch the software on our laptops so that we can edit it. Having to log in twice (once to Dino, once to Microsoft Money) inevitably slows the process down. But I think we've got what I was looking for: records we can both access independent of each other.
I haven't yet discovered what happens if we both log in at the same time, or if for some reason the record on Dino and our own backup copies get out of synch. Ideally I guess what we would have is software which synchronised the various files. But I can't tell yet whether that the lack of that is a serious drawback.
In this part of London, advertising and publicity get put through our letterbox almost every few hours. And it almost all goes straight into the bin. Just occasionally, a new take-away chain will produce an attractively designed booklet to sell its wares. And I will think - rightly or wrongly - if it's taken that much effort over its publicity, then perhaps it is a well managed organisation that prides itself on quality. Rather like the way I used to choose wines by their labels.
This morning I was about to throw away a complementary pack of Wrigley's Orbit Complete chewing gum, when I had an attack of nostalgia. (As a result my jaws have just reached that stage, so familiar from my teens, when they're aching from overuse, and because of my inertia in not taking the gum out of my mouth and throwing it away.)
In my early teens, I used to spend vast proportions of my (admittedly modest) pocket money on chewing gum. If we were going as a family on a long car journey, I would stock up with large amounts of gum to keep me going.
I also seem to remember that as a primary school pupil, it was bubblegum I used to buy in large quantities, because of the collectible cards that came with them. It's all a blur to me now, though I wouldn't be surprised to find whole websites out there dedicated to 1960s bubblegum cards....
A quick web search shows that E-Bay has a whole section dedicated to collectable ‘gum cards’.
I've just hauled my old two-door metallic Ryman filing cabinet up two flights of stairs, out of my work study and into my own personal ‘cell’.
Earlier this year I persuaded my church to buy a couple of wood finish three door filing cabinets for me to use in my study. They turned up about a week ago; and so now I have a far more realistic amount of filing space and can free up my old filing cabinet for personal and domestic use.
Filing would appear, on the face of it, to be one of the least interesting topics on the planet. But I always have a good feeling when I start filing properly. In one sense, this website itself is little more than a huge electronic file: a way of ensuring I can find stuff again in the future.
I first bought space on a webserver back in 2002, I think, and hadn't changed my arrangements since then. I took out a Home Pro account with what was then Host Europe, now WebFusion. I think it was 2002 when I took out the account, which allocated me 3GB of webspace and 25GB of bandwidth.
I still haven't publicised this website, so I've never even touched the bandwidth: 216 MB so far this month. But although there are no graphics so far on the site, it does have an unusually large number of pages for a personal website: several thousand. I'm using just over half of my 3GB allowance, without even using images. The site will continue to grow and I plan to make graphics and audio files a big feature on the site. Obviously I was soon going to run out of space.
A few days ago I looked at the WebFusion website and discovered that if I were a new customer, paying what I pay every month - £19.95 plus VAT - I would receive not 3GB webspace but 12GB; not 25GB of bandwidth, but 100GB.
But when I phoned up to ask if I could change, I was told they could no longer accept what are called ‘third-level’ domain names. (My domain name - david.walsh.name - is called ‘third-level’ because it has two dots in it.)
So I decided to look for a web host in the States, since my name itself is registered in the States. And I now have - instead of my current 3GB webspace and in contrast to the 12GB offered for the same price, 500GB of webspace; and instead of my current 25GB of bandwidth and in contrast to the 100GB offered for the same price - 3,500GB of webspace. And the price? Instead of £23.44 a month, £4.02 a month.
What an extraordinary contrast! The only downside I could see with the American company was having to pay for a whole year upfront. But that's still only around two months' subscription over here.
The company's called IX Web Hosting.
I've been watching one of Alan Yentob's Imagine documentaries, on the life and music of Scott Walker. I love some of his music from the sixties - both his own compositions but also his covers of Jacques Brel songs. I recognised Jackie - which sounds such a quintessentially 1960s record, but had never realised it was him singing.
So I decided to track Jackie and other Scott Walker records down on the web. It's time I started downloading music seriously. Late last year I bought an I-Audio, and recorded several of my CDs onto it just ahead of my annual trip to Mondaye. And I sporadically download some podcasts. But I'm not at all confident with the technology.
So earlier this evening I visited Last Fm and found their Scott Walker page. They don't have a copy of Jackie to play, but forwarded me to a site where I can buy it. Which I've done: my very first time.
I was having lunch on Thursday with a graphic designer - the husband of someone at St Philip's - and saying there were a few pieces of software I'd love to buy one day: Adobe Acrobat, Dreamweaver and Photoshop. He pointed out they were all produced by the same company and that it was cheaper to buy them bundled. This page on the Adobe websites compares different versions of their Creative Suite package. I think the version which most interests me is Creative Suite 3 - Web Premium.
In Magda Szabó's novel The Door, the ceramic lid of a christening bowl is described as carrying ‘a flamboyantly executed Hungarian flag inscribed with the name and portrait of the great Kossuth.’.
I didn't know who Kossuth was and so did some research, creating a page for the Hungarian politician.
A link to a video of the relatively new Principal of Wycliffe College, Oxford, which has caused controversy recently. The controversy was on his comments that 95% of Britons are heading for hell. What struck me about the video is the way a certain section of evangelical Christians have the same way of speaking - the same hesitations, the same mannerisms.
Carys and I were talking just this morning about upgrading to Microsoft Vista when the time was right. But I've just discovered this "What's wrong with Vista?’ page. No time to look at the issues now, but I thought at least I'd bookmark it.
I'm watching TV coverage of Tony Blair's announcement of his resignation. It is very hard to believe that it's a decade - a whole ten years of our lives - since Labour won power in 1997. I have always been broadly sympathetic to Blair and to this Labour government, despite the disastrous mistake over Iraq.
I know there are people who instinctively can't bear Blair and I used to hate the faux grin he put on for the media when he was first seeking power. His greatest strength - being such a great communicator - is also his weakest point. Is he sincere? I've always suspected that at root he is sincere about core values, but that he takes short cuts in a bid to be popular.
Ten years. I had only just returned to Christian faith. I was a civil servant and still would be for another three years. Then two years at theological college, four years in a curacy and almost a year now here in Kensington.