It’s predominantly techy/geeky with a lean towards security, and a little snowboarding, TV, money and GTD.

You can see how my listening habits have changed and grown over the years as my commuting time has increased.

Feel free to share your listening faves in the comments.

We planned our trip ahead of time:

– “Off to Thorpe Park for the day. Have advanced booking, hope to be one of the first in the park, going straight to Saw!”

When we got there, we had to queue for our tickets (booked and paid for in advance), then had to join the regular queue to get in. No separate line, no VIP treatment:

– “Might not be first in… #thorpepark http://twitpic.com/397ub“

– “Having queued for advanced tickets, am now back out in the car park queueing for the entrance… http://twitpic.com/39834“

Once in we headed straight for Saw, and watched the engineers test Colossus:

– “First test ride of Colossus #thorpepark http://twitpic.com/398gg“

Saw didn’t open until 10am:

– “Saw now open. Have been in the queue about 20 mins, and just been told it’ll be 1h45m till we’re on! #thorpepark. http://twitpic.com/398o8“

1h15m later and:

– “Just off Saw. The beginning was better than the big drop, nice surprise. #thorpepark“

Things went downhill from there though, as we found out:

– “Argh! Stealth isn’t running, that was the ride I was looking forward to the most. Queueing for No Way Out now with fast track. #thorpepark“

A short while later:

– “X:\ No Way Out a bit disappointing, Tidal Wave next. Looks broken down though. #thorpepark http://twitpic.com/39aln

We dumped our bags and pockets into a locker (£1 non-refundable) ready for the Tidal Wave, and didn’t make it back until we’d done most of the other big rides:

– “Still loving Thorpe Park. Tidal Wave: done. Rush: done. Colossus: done. Nemesis: done. Fast Track ticket worth every penny. #thorpepark“

Yes, the £9 Fast Track ticket probably saved us 7 hours of queueing. By the time we’d done those rides it was time for some lunch, and when we were done the Accelerator Fast Track was sold out for the day. Not that it mattered so much:

– “Slammer out of order #thorpepark http://twitpic.com/39gjv“

Without the Fast Track to ‘queue jump’, things were a lot slower:

– “Vortex at Thorpe Park. #thorpepark Queues gone mad now, 4 hours for Saw, 2h30m for Nemesis, 2h for Colossus. http://twitpic.com/39hy1“

While we were queueing for Vortex we saw Stealth was back up and running. Maybe things were looking up again after all? We went over there at 5:15pm only to find:

– “Thorpe Park update: Stealth is running again after a motor issue. Queue time: 3 hours! (Park closes at 7pm) #thorpepark“

Some you win, some you lose.

– “Bailed on queueing for Stealth, gutted we missed it. #thorpepark Home now, time for dinner and some relaxing in front of the TV. #reddwarf?”

A few additional photos:

– “http://twitpic.com/3aasn – Saw at Thorpe Park”

– “http://twitpic.com/3aawi – Saw at Thorpe Park”

– “http://twitpic.com/3aawr – Stealth at Thorpe Park”

– “http://twitpic.com/3aay3 – Stealth at Thorpe Park”

Overall, a good time had by all, definitely recommended.

I went with the 8GB black version. I already have an iPod (60GB) and even 16GB doesn’t come close to meeting my needs. Oh, and I don’t want a flat battery after 8 hours of listening/day.

Let’s start with the good bits first:

• It looks damn cool.
• It’s so easy to use.
• I get that feeling of nostalgia when I look at it and think of my Apple Newton.
• I like the look of the text message system and how it’s like chat.
• I am amazed at how cool some of the apps are (iTunes Remote, Midomi) and how many good free ones there are.
• Proper mobile web browsing.
• Wifi and 3G. Surf wherever whenever.
• GPS geotags your photos, finds you on Google Maps, etc.
• Everything syncs up perfectly (so far). Just wish the calendar would link up with Google Calendar. But who needs an app when you have a fully featured (well, almost) web browser.

Unfortunately:

• O2 haven’t finished porting my number across yet, so I still can’t text.
• I haven’t got round to digging out my email passwords and setting that up, so no comment on email yet.
• What I’ve typed so far (mainly in apps) has been a bit error prone due to the lack of tactile feedback.
• The camera isn’t very impressive, I swear the 2MP looks as crappy as the 1.3MP on my Nokia phone. Don’t think I’ll get much use out of that.
• I wish there was an easy way of adding bookmarklets to Safari too (you can’t drag a link to the Favourites button to add).

Overall I’m pretty impressed. There are a few things that need improvement but on the whole, I’m not ready to send it back.

So far I’ve installed the following apps:

• Facebook
• Twitterific
• FriendFeed
• Google Mobile
• Google Earth
• Midomi
• Shazam
• Sudoku
• MMS
• WiFinder
• Remote
• Torch

Let me know what (preferably free) apps I’m missing that you can’t live without.

From a personal perspective, I have been working in remote teams since late 1999. Not only have I dealt with ‘work at home’ colleagues who may or may not appear in the office from day to day, I have the added challenge of working with other team members who are globally dispersed. From early morning meetings with Singapore to late evenings talking to those on the west coast of the United States, I spend my day interacting with colleagues I’ve never met.

Oh, and did I mention my manager sits 4800 miles away from me?

I have the ability to work from home whenever I want, though it is not encouraged in my current job and location. I do occasionally use it when I need to, but I prefer being in the office to have that separation of work and home life. When I work at home I typically do longer hours (no commute, start earlier, finish later), and even leave the PC connected while having dinner or watching TV in an evening. I am more productive at home, but also feel the need to ‘prove’ I’m working harder.

Building relationships is hard at first, but if you set some ground rules, use the available tools like email and Instant Messaging (and heaven forbid you pick up the phone once in a while), with a little effort and some trust in your colleagues, it’s very rewarding.

I don’t make resolutions but here are my plans for 2008 (in no particular order):

• Buy a house
• Get a cat (or two)
• Change my car
• Buy a new TV (or two)
• Buy a new sofa (or two)
• Start a family

Last year’s goals went as planned, hopefully this years lofty ambitions will be just as successful.

I decided a reboot was in order, but it took ages to go through the shutdown motions. I had to go out and when I returned the PC was off. When I hit the power button to turn it back on though, nothing happened. I tried a few things to no avail, and in the end popped open the case. The light was still on on the motherboard, but nothing flinched when I tried to power on.

In cases where I can’t get the hardware to react I have to fall back on the local PC repair shop, so in it went on Thursday morning. The guy there said the motherboard was fried and the power supply was dead. He also reminded me that when you replace the motherboard you have to reinstall the operating system. I mentioned to him that one of the fans was making a noise too, and could he look into it. Turns out it was the one the graphics card. I had a spare one from a friend so fitted that myself when I got the box back later that day.

I knew my hard drive was pretty full and I didn’t have current backups of the latest files (naughty me), so I took the plunge. I bought a new 250GB hard drive and a copy of Vista!

Back home, I fitted the new graphics card (which didn’t sit properly and had to be bent to connect with the motherboard, which took me ages to figure out), and set about installing Vista. It was almost immediately apparent that things weren’t good. I couldn’t nail it down to one single thing of course, because I’d committed the ultimate tech crime of changing more than one thing at once. I did notice they’d left the foam in under the motherboard, which is apparently a bad thing, and the power light on the front wasn’t connected. It was Easter weekend too so I couldn’t take the PC back to the shop until Tuesday, so I hobbled on through the long weekend putting up with random crashes every few hours.

So I head back to the shop on Tuesday morning only to find the place has shut down! There was a big sign on the door saying, “DON’T PANIC!”, with an explanation that they’d moved, and gave the new address and phone number. Off I went to the new shop, explained what was happening, left the PC there for the day, and returned that evening to be told they couldn’t find any problems and had just connected the power light.

Now I’m back online and the PC is running somewhat normally (about 24 hours without a full system crash, just applications hanging/disappearing). I’m still sorting out files and reinstalling applications but on the whole, I’m back up and running. I’ll blog about the pains of installing and running Vista soon so look out for that.

Rather than have me waffle on, read this excellent review from The Guardian and see if it’s something you’d like too.