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Well, as I mentioned in my previous post, my HTC Wildfire has now been connected up. I’ve now been online since Wednesday, and I’ve been using the phone quite a lot since then! One of the reasons I wanted the phone to be connected this week was because we were visiting Phil’s parents. Although they do have a computer there, it’s a pretty ancient one and takes quite a while to load! Checking emails or – God forbid – Twitter there is a bit more of a mission.

So, now I’m all connected up, I can check GMail and Twitter as often as I like without having to go through anyone else’s computer! (Although, as the phone does have WiFi I can use a wireless connection if there is one).

Anyway, after having used the phone for a few days, how does it stack up against my old Samsung S5600? Well, first things first – I should say that the Wildfire is a lot more expensive. Even though it’s a “budget” smartphone, it’s still a fully-fledged Smartphone, whereas the Samsung I had was only half-way to a Smartphone. So, it’s not a fair comparison. It won’t come as a surprise to say that the Wildfire is better in pretty much every respect.

Well, that comparison over, I’ll just review the phone in general. First things first, build quality: it feels comfortingly solid in my hands, it doesn’t feel at all plasticy like some other phones I’ve tried. The touch screen is a joy to use, unlike the old Samsung: I think it’s the same type of touchscreen as the iPhone, which is the more expensive and responsive kind. Also, in general the whole package felt professional and good quality. In short, I feel like it’s going to last a while!

The battery life is also not bad. I’ve been using the phone pretty heavily each day for the past three days, and I’ve had to charge the phone up every night. That said, if I didn’t use the phone as heavily I could probably get away with much better battery life. It does speak well of the phone, though, that using it has been such a pleasure! – it’s not like the old Samsung where I could spend ages just trying to do something like, say, looking at Matthew’s blog (seriously, the only reason I had to spend a long time on the phone was because the phone kept on crashing. I’m not painting a good portrait of the old phone here, which is unfair because it’s not really for browsing – but I’m just pointing out the new one is good for that…)

I won’t really review the software because it’s pretty standard Android, with some HTC customisation. There are some minor annoyances but nothing that can’t be overcome or worked around. A lot of it at the moment is to do with my setup of the phone – I’ve got mail coming in twice (once via the Mail application and once via the GMail application), I’ve also got Twitter twice (again via two separate applications) but everything has been easy to use and once I’ve figured out what I want it will be great ;)

I should give particular mention to the calendar app. One thing I really wanted the phone for was to be able to manage my calendar (Google Calendar) from the phone directly. Well, it seems to work fine: the phone synchronises with Google, and seems to cache the info so that even when I’m not in range I can still see the calendar. I’m pretty happy with that.

I could go on, but I won’t (you’ll be pleased to know!) My conclusion, really, is that I love the phone and I think it’s fantastic. Exactly what I want: not over-the-top, but nonetheless good quality and does everything I want it to do. Spot on.

I’ve written a review of ‘Rev’, the TV series, which you can find on Crossring.

I thought it was pretty good for the most part, but you’ll have to head over there to read the full thing!

Well, the general election results are in (which you will already know about if you’re in England and haven’t had your head buried under a rock). It’s going to be a Conservative / Lib Dem coalition government (a “ConDem” government, if you will, which will make this country a ConDemNation…)

I think this is a good thing. In fact, personally speaking it’s the best possible outcome for me – of the possibilities that we had, realistically speaking. I didn’t want Labour to win, I didn’t want the Conservatives to win (although not as much as I didn’t want labour to win), and realistically speaking the Lib Dems were never going to win. A coalition government between the tories and the Lib Dems will hopefully yield something positive – their pledge looks good, so we’ll see what happens.

Either way, though, the next few years aren’t going to be easy – apparently we have the highest unemployment rate since 1994, and the economy is still spiralling out of control. The words “poisoned chalice” were used, which I think is probably accurate. Still, on the bright side, maybe good things – such as electoral reform – will come out of it.

Anyway. Totally changing the subject… I forgot to mention: we watched “Up” the other night, on Blu-Ray. It was a really nice film, I can see why everyone I know who’s seen it has had nothing but positive things to say about it. A while back we watched “Revolutionary Road”, which was a pretty depressing kind of film. Well, “Up” started out with a similar plot line to that film – except that it was far more uplifting! It was, in fact, the polar opposite. Very moving story, beautifully told, directed, and generally well worth watching.

So, quick update as to what was going on this weekend. On Friday night we helped out at 21 (back after half-term), and then went to the pub with most of the 21 crew (AJ, Laura, Jen and her sister, and James and Tash). It’s nice to have so many friends from church at the moment – especially with so many Colchester people moving away … *sob*. Aaaaanyway!

On Saturday morning, Sam Norton (the Diocesan Warden of Ordinands, who I mentioned before) came round to chat to Phil and I about ministry. It went well, and what I need to do now is send off my form and he will forward it on to the Diocesan Director of Ordinands! I won’t go into the way the CofE ordination process works, but it basically means I’m sort of on the next rung of the ladder. So that’s exciting anyway :)

In the afternoon we did a bit of shopping and saw Alex for a cup of tea. Then we headed round to Tom’s for the “Great Essex Feast”. Basically the idea was a fund-raising exercise for the Essex Air Ambulance and Friends of Essex Churches charities. Someone (in this case, Tom) would donate the food, and people would then come round, eat the food, and donate money to the charity. It was a great evening and I think we raised a decent amount! I drank and ate an awful lot and felt a bit groggy on Sunday morning, but not too bad.

On Sunday we went to church in the morning, and then were invited out to the Carmels for lunch with some of the students. We had a good lunch there, and then stayed most of the afternoon chatting and playing on the Wii! Then we went out to Sunday@6, where I was leading the music for the first time. That seemed to go well although there weren’t so many people there, think we had a few regulars missing.

And then we came back and watched ‘Lark Rise to Candleford’, which is pretty much everything that happened this weekend!

I should also mention – last week we watched ’500 Days of Summer’ which is a good film and very cleverly written. However, I wasn’t sure about the conclusion… I wasn’t sure whether it was saying the normal Hollywood thing of “You just have to find the right person” or not. (And I can say that without giving anything away, because the ending is probably not what you’d expect). So, it’s worth watching, but I don’t think it’s one I’d watch again.

Just a quick post to let you know what happened on the second half of the weekend! Most of Saturday was taken up with sessions – two in the morning and one group session in the evening. In the afternoon we went on a walk in the nearby countryside, alongside a canal, which was a very pleasant way to spend a sunny afternoon.

On Sunday morning we had another two sessions, followed by a roast dinner, which was very nice. The food over the whole weekend was great, actually – I ate far too much but still! After that came the drive home, which passed by pretty uneventfully with very little traffic. I slowed down a little bit on the way home as well, and it certainly affected the petrol consumption – the needle moved noticeably more slowly!

After that we headed out to Sunday@6, then came back home and watched ‘Lark Rise’.

I just wanted to mention the teaching at the weekend: it was based on Old Testament narrative – how to preach it. I think I’d feel much more confident if I had to preach and Old Testament narrative passage than I would have done before. It hasn’t made it any easier but does give me a way of breaking into the passage, and a few ideas about how to present it. Very helpful. If you’re involved with preaching or teaching the Bible, it would definitely be worth going to! Many of the people who I met had been there before, which I think just illustrates how useful it is. I will try and get there next year as well!

Last night we watched through the final episode of “Glee”. We’ve now seen all of the first series. I’m not convinced by it to be honest – there are some aspects of the series which I think are odd, and one which I actually find quite uncomfortable.

Also note that this post will contain a few spoilers, so if you haven’t seen Glee but want to, you may want to leave this post until you have seen it.

First things first though, the positive aspects. I do like the music – although I didn’t know all the songs I felt like the ones that they did do were well done. I was quite impressed with the way they covered some of the pop songs such as Queen’s “Somebody to Love”: most of the time I think covers of iconic songs shouldn’t be done, because they rarely do the original justice. But in this instance they made the cover version different enough from the original to make it good in its own right – rather than just ripping off the genius of Queen.

I also liked their characterisation: I mentioned last time that all the characters were essentially pantomime characters. This wasn’t true for the whole series – all the characters (even Sue Sylvester) were made into more 3D characters, and were well portrayed on screen. I particularly liked the relationship between Will, Terri and Emma – I actually thought it was quite untypical for American TV, a lot of the scenes they had were quite simple, without any background music, just them with nothing else to heighten the drama.

That said… there were some aspects of Glee I didn’t like.

The main one was Sue Sylvester. Although the writers did make her character more sympathetic, she was just too pantomime for me. The show had some really nice moments, some good drama, some good humour – but Sue just was completely over the top for me. It seemed like the show was a little schizophrenic about whether to be a comedy or a drama, and it just didn’t quite work for me.

Part of the problem is, Sue was just such an unlikeable character I didn’t see how she couldn’t still have been working at the school without being fired. If I was Will Schuester, I wouldn’t have given her the time of day. If she’d started talking to me, I would have walked off!

I think part of the problem is, everyone was treating her as a ‘serious’ character. I compared Glee to Green Wing in my last post, and there are similarities: it has serious moments but it also has some very random, funny moments. (Yeah, that’s about where the similarities end, but still). Alan Statham and Sue White are two examples of characters in Green Wing who are completely bizarre, and yet somehow it seems quite normal in the world they created. It doesn’t seem out of place. Sue Sylvester, on the other hand, seems out of place. Anyway, I’ve rambled on about that for long enough.

The other thing which didn’t sit right with me is the ‘adultery’ storyline (apologies for slightly dramatic language, but that’s what it is): everyone was behaving pretty badly to each other in the show – what with Terri lying to Will, Quinn and Puck lying to Finn etc, but Will’s behaviour really seemed out of order. If you’re married, falling in love with someone else isn’t something which you should really do. It’s not just when you’ve got the feeling you can’t help but do anything about it! It’s just presenting, to my mind, another flawed version of love to the world.

Still, all in all, it was quite watchable and hopefully they’ll improve things a little next season. Who knows! That’s all from me anyway…

So, Phil and I have started watching “Glee”, which is a new American comedy. Apparently Alex and Sarah both really like it, and Alex gave us some episodes to watch through (it’s being shown on Channel 4 at the moment I think).

Anyway, as it started out I didn’t think I was going to like it, but it won me over by the end of the first episode (we’ve only watched the first two episodes, including the pilot). At the moment it seems feel-good comedy, but it seems well written and the musical numbers are very well done. I also like the fact that it is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, so when the supposedly amateur high schoolers (who’ve never got anything musically right before) perform a pretty much spot-on version of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing”, it tips a nod to the audience as if to say, “Yeah, we know, it’s just part of the show… enjoy it”.

That said, it does epitomise some of the things I don’t like about American comedy. Namely, characterisation. I don’t know, it just seems that British comedies tend to make it more subtle – you get a more realistic blend of character traits. For example, in Green Wing, even the unsympathetic characters (such as Joanna Clore, Guy Secretan, Alan Statham) you really feel for sometimes. They still have moments of genuine warmth for them.

American characters tend to be much more… well, I would say more pantomime characters. They just aren’t as complex as real life. I don’t know whether this is a difference in my perception or whether there is something objective going on. But I still have to say I prefer British comedies. Perhaps America is just a different place to Britian, and Glee really is reflecting what’s going on in America.

All I can say is, if Glee is an accurate (or at least, based on facts) depiction of what happens in American schools, I’m glad I didn’t go to school there!

On Thursday night last week it snowed pretty heavily. This meant that I wasn’t able to get into work on Friday, but I was able to do some work from home.

And we had another party on Friday night! Fortunately it didn’t involve driving so we were able to walk across town. We went round to Tom’s place for a Christmas ‘bash’, there were a whole bunch of people there and we had a whole lot of fun. This included drinking lots of mulled wine and eating lots of food (and I do mean, LOTS of food. There was enough to feed an army!)

So that was good. Then on Saturday we did a bit of shopping, present wrapping and the like. In the evening we watched “The Hangover”. I’d heard some good things about it from my colleagues. It was quite clever and well-written, but… I don’t think I really got the joke. I’m not sure whether it’s a difference between British and American humour, there just didn’t really seem to be any jokes in it! Kind of like “Wimbledon” (the film) – kind of amusing but it didn’t really make me laugh out loud.

Anyway. On Sunday we went to church twice – despite the snow! After our carol service in the evening – which was relatively well attended despite the poor weather – we went round to Jo’s for some tea.

Apart from all those things, I’ve been playing a fair amount of Red Alert 3: I ordered it last week, and it arrived on Friday. It’s got pretty poor reviews on Amazon, but I think there was a problem with DRM / Product Activation which made people give it bad reviews. Perhaps I went in with low expectations, but I’ve actually been really enjoying it. Someone said that it wasn’t as fast-paced as RA2, which I don’t quite see at the moment: it appears to be just as fast-paced in terms of the missions.

The graphics are decent, and I like with what they’ve done with the units. The only problem is, it is a bit complicated for my tiny brain. Each unit has an ‘alternate fire’ mode, for example, which I never use. (Although I probably should…) Oh, another minor problem: Apocalypse tanks can no longer defend themselves against air attack. I suppose the ability did make them a bit too powerful in RA2, but nonetheless it is annoying. You now have to remember to include Bullfrogs or MiGs into your attack force – not necessarily a bad thing I guess, just keeps catching me out! I do like, though, that there are more airborne and seabound units, and in fact several units are amphibious. The battle is much more ‘all across the map’, rather than just being fought purely on land like it was before. Even with Kirovs and Black Eagles / Harriers in RA2, air attack was pretty limited – and I don’t think anyone really used to battle on the sea, outside the missions.

Aaaanyway, the above is only my experience after playing through most of the Soviet campaign (there are three campaigns – Soviet, Allied, and Japanese). I’m really enjoying it so far, and look forward to completing the rest!

Now that I’ve been using Windows 7 for a couple of weeks, I thought it would be a good time to write up a couple of thoughts that I have.

The thoughts are overwhelming positive so far. In fact, to be honest I don’t have a single bad word to say about Windows 7! (Shock!! Horror!!) Actually there are one or two little things, but aren’t there always! Here are a few bullet points, because I like bullet points:

• The user interface is more refined than XP. Not just in a cosmetic way – lots of thought has gone into the design to make it easier to use. I like the fact that the taskbar doesn’t distinguish between quick launch applications and running applications – they’re all just icons, easily ‘docked’ to the taskbar if you so wish. The only thing wrong with this that I have found is, if you want to start a new instance of (say) Firefox while another instance is already running, Windows just thinks you want to minimise / maximise it. No biggie, just one little niggle.
• I like the way multiple windows of one application are handled – only one icon on the task bar, but little preview windows open up when you hover / click on it.
• My printer was installed and ready to use about ten seconds after plugging it in. As has been the case with every single other USB device I’ve plugged in. (It took a while to get the printer working in Linux because of driver issues.).
• Another thing about the taskbar. I find this incredibly cool: when you’re copying a large file and then minimise the window, the icon background then becomes a progress bar. It’s a little difficult to explain, but it’s a great way of showing you how far along your file copy is without you having to open up the window!
• I don’t know how good it is for compatibility with older apps, but everything I’ve tried so far has worked. Including Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2, which is almost ten years old!

All in all, I have been very pleasantly surprised by Windows 7. It does seem to be a real step-up from Windows XP in terms of usability, and the things I’ve highlighted are only a small number which have particularly struck me.

I’m still no fan of Microsoft as such, but Windows 7 has won me over … for now ;)

As per my usual habit of combining two completely unrelated topics in one blog post, I’ve decided to talk about two things today. Firstly, politeness.

I’ve noticed a couple of examples of things recently which seem polite but, on reflection, perhaps are not. The first thing is, holding doors open. The general idea being that someone walking behind you will not have a door slammed in their face! That seems quite polite. But the problem comes with how far someone has to be behind you in order for you to hold the door open: a couple of steps? A few yards? Half a mile?! Personally I don’t like it when someone holds a door open for me and I’m a fair distance away. Being English, I feel compelled to run in order to not keep them waiting. It’s just an embarrasment factor we could all do without.

My new rule is, “hold the door open only if it will slam in someone’s face”. If not, then – well, working doors is not exactly rocket science. If I hadn’t been there to hold it open the other person would have had to open the door anyway. Obviously there are always exceptions (i.e. someone disabled or elderly may have difficulty opening doors) but that’s the general idea.

The second thing is, pouring out hot water from the kettle. At my workplace, we don’t have a massive office but it’s big enough that there are often a few people waiting around for the kettle to boil. Some people will fill up your cup with hot water for you when it has boiled. This is a nice thing to do, obviously… but I don’t generally do it. The problem is, people all like cups filled to different levels, and it seems a bit redundant to ask people how full they want it when they could have filled it to their own preference in practically the same amount of time.

Anyone else have little random things which seem polite but are actually not very?

The other thing is, Top Gear. I didn’t mention this the other day, but I was a bit disappointed by this week’s show. I just found it incredibly formulaic, I could virtually have predicted what was going to happen from the start:

1. Top Gear team go off somewhere to test drive cars (in this case, drive along the best driving road in Europe, or whatever it was)
2. They don’t bother preparing
3. They do stupid things such as buying a Dacia Sandero (can’t be bothered to look up spelling :p) and park it right behind a lorry;
4. Hilarity ensues.

I don’t know whether it was just me but, although the show was entertaining, it didn’t strike me as being as good as previous series. Still, let’s see what next week’s episode has in store!