Tony Sutton’s Blog!

So has anyone watched the new film yet? I had a chance this evening at Leics Square but the thought of shelling out £15 wasn’t worth it!

So will wait until I’m back home and with the subtitled version comes out too.

Today was a good day. And headed straight back to hotel to relax and watch DVD - Planet of the Apes (1968 version) and am planning to watch the 2001 version tomorrow. Thought it was a good movie. But a bit long winded story I think.

Need to start thinking of plans for this weekend.

After the training, I spent 2 hours being "lost" in the middle of London and walked around, enjoying the 26C weather.

Decided I had enough and went back to hotel for dinner and watched DVD - Jumper - good film.
I think the walking around yesterday and today has given me a bit of a tan!

Weather is saying colder and cloudy tomorrow - boo! Hopefully it will stay nice.

Think I will have an early night…

So it’s June already. 6 month gone of 2009. Pretty quick.

Last night, I watched 28 Days Later. Tonight, I watched 28 Weeks Later. Enjoyed both of them. Can’t wait for 28 Months Later to come out in 2011!

Had dinner at the hotel I am staying in and the food was okay. Thinking to eat out tomorrow as the weather is still nice and warm. So I want to enjoy it

Am currently looking around for a new camcorder - what do you people use? I’m looking for HD type, maybe flash based and not tapes, DVD or HDD based as I don’t want to carry around discs or tapes. Need to be able to hold up to 2 or more hours of footages. And easy to use/edit!

I have this Camcorder Buyer magazine so will be reading up on that tonight to see if anything catches my eyes.

TV time…

Someone nudged me. Yes, I’ve been lazy and hasn’t posted very much.

How are you all ladies and gentlemen? Enjoying the rare hot weather we’re currently having?

Over the past few weeks has been so chaos! Been busy sorting out the house in preparation for the new kittens that we will be getting in the next few weeks.

Sorting out each rooms and making it cat-proof, I.e. Hiding places where they could do a poo & shit in wrong places lol

Only things we need to do is to buy the litter box, some toys, cat bowls and we’re sorted. We already have some cat food and biccy. Think we have covered most things, hopefully.

We saw the kittens yesterday, so cute and tiny! Eyes are open and fur already fully grown so not long to go. Can’t wait!

For this week, I am currently being trained for some Microsoft product, so looking forward learning new things.

Anyone planning to go on holiday in June? We are thinking but not too sure where to go. Need cheap holiday package

Oh, this morning, we had someone from B&Q round to give us quote for bathroom upgrade and fittings. Price is not too bad but much cheaper than the local bathroom company! So will give it some thoughts, maybe one more quote from another company before deciding who to go with. Joy.

Right, I better stop now and enjoy the lovely weather!

At FITP (Fiesta In The Park) near Cambridge.

A great day so far!

Just dropped off my car at Ford for major service this morning.

This leads to my thinking… Should I change my car? Or not yet?

It’s a Ford Focus ST170 52 reg with 103,000 miles on it. Yes I do lots of driving. I had this car for over 3 years so far. No major problems, runs very well.

My only worry is if I do decide to sell it, i will not get very good value from it due to age and high mileage. Plus car dealers are tight during this time.

But then since I don’t have any issue with this car, maybe I should keep it anyway… Just that it would be nice to have a new car, eh?

I do like VW Golf R32, very good price on the used cars market. But insurnce group 18. Hmmm… What else are out there?

Was thinking in my head randomly and thought of this question.

If you received a freebie film DVD i.e. from newspaper, you know, Daily Mail. You then make a copy of it and share it, say, via P2P, would this be considered as piracy? Or not?

I don’t know why I asked this question but I think this is a good question for discussions.

So it’s friday at last. With the great weather forecast for the weekend coming up, it should be a relaxing weekend.

Also payday arrived today so will be looking forward to some shopping but not too much as I seriously need to save up as I went into red just a little bit! Whoops.

Going to meet up a mate at 6pm for dinner, drinks and catching up before heading out to Glasshouse pub for a meetup with other deafies.

So that was the budget yesterday. And short. But interesting changes/suggestions from them.

Not sure what to make of it. But I like the 2k for car exchange. Shall see how it goes. And the tax changes. 50% tax for 150k or more - ouch! Thats half of the salary.

Anyway.

Last weekend, we’ve been busy doing the garden work on the front garden, planting some hedges around. Need to do some work on the grass as they are pretty in bad state, so some seeding and lawn feed needed.

Work is ok so far, as usual, preparing for the summer works so busy all around.

Lovely weather so far, and have done two BBQs

Time to do some volunteer work… Laters all

After our shopping earlier this afternoon, i made another attempt with removing the tree stump and at last, I got the big tree stump removed!

I dug deeper and found that the wood were much softer, so using the spade, I cut it down layer by layer of soft wood until the point where it got loose. I kicked it down and it’s done!

Now the front garden looks much bigger. Tomorrow, if it stays sunny, will fill up the hole, smooth out the soil and put down some grass seed. And maybe plant hedge if we got time.

Now getting ready for the quiz night.

Hey peeps. The weather over the past few days including today is GREAT!

Makes you feel alive and do more stuff!

Like this morning, i’ve been busy with trying to remove a tree stump. And I failed. It’s so deep and very rooted. But the good thing is most of them are dead and soft but not the middle.

Anyone got any suggestion to remove it easily without breaking my back?

Am looking forward to the Quiz Night with Fish & Chips tonight at the local Deaf club. I and other 4 people in the team won last time so hoping to repeat the success tonight.

Currently in Norwich for some shopping and then head back home this afternoon to tackle the tree stump again. Should be a good afternoon I think.

I am not looking forward going back to work this Monday as I have been on leave for the past 1 and a half week. Wonder if there’s stuff piled up for me to do? Will find out soon, I guess.

Right, better finish this shopping. Have a great weekend!

The good thing about the Half Term is the lack of traffic. We are able to leave home a bit later and get to work on time, sometimes even earlier!

Has anyone heard the news about the Gov considering paying you money to scrap your old car (9 years and over) and buy new car using the money. Sounds good… We got a car that is 9 years old as of last month.

Will they go ahead with it? No idea… But I think they should as it proves popular in Germany. And at the same time, it helps us with going "green" to help the world & stuff.

Would be nice to get a new car tho

So anyone planning to go on holiday over Easter? We are working this week and I have a week off next week. Woo!

Updates on my MCE box…

Got the new Media case a few days ago. Much better and smaller. Just finished putting all of the hardware together and it’s looking good! Need to figure out what the last cables going to whichever pins it needs connecting to as it’s not labeled at all!

But apart from it, I’m pretty excited to have it up and running so we can get rid of the old dvd player and the Humax box!

And for my WHS box - I’ve moved the hardware out of the old, bigass full tower to a smaller and nicer case so it will take up much less space. Currently installing the operating system before setting it up for shared folders and backups.

Overall, been busy with a cut finger with these hardware builds and I can’t wait for both of them to be done!

So. G20. One trillion dollars.

That’s a lot of money. But personally i don’t think it’s enough for the whole world.

But at least it’s better than nothing!

Only a few more days until April. 4 months gone since the start of 2009. Yikes! Where did the time gone to?? Too fast, I think.

Work for the past few weeks has been progressing okay, keeping myself busy to prepare for the Summer upgrade. New SAN server with zillions of GB, made me drool.

My MCE build is still going on well, and last night, I’ve finally ordered a new MCE case that is smaller in size, which can fit into my TV case while keeping all hardware without spending more money on low profile card so that’s good news. The only biggest issue I can see so far is that the default decoder is not good as it keeps coming up as “blocky” on TV shows. I’m going to give the NVIDIA decoder a go based on good feedback. I am also going to give Cyberlink PowerDVD a go too, assuming I can find one cheap.
Once I have this up & running, I need to make a start with selling other hardware bits to get some of my money back to cover the costs of this. I got far too many piling up! Just need to find/buy some anti-static bags, more likely on the cheap on eBay.

This Sunday, the start of the clock change. We lose 1 hour of sleep. Bah. But we also get more daytime. Yay! And the start of spring (as of last week) is going to make me work more outside. The front garden is seriously in the need of an “upgrade” - rip out the old grass, weed, potatoes, etc, clean it up and smooth out the soil then put some grass seed on to get fresh grass. I need to hire a machine that can turn over the soil, but the cost of hiring one is almost equal to buying a machine for me to keep! But then I’d have nowhere to store it if I were to buy it, so hiring one might be a good idea.

I still need to sort out the fence in the front garden too, but it’s too costly. So I’ll have to make do with nails, some TLC and maybe a lick of paint and I should do fine for another year or so. And the bush need a trim. I might do the bush now as it’s sunny outside.

Is anyone finding the credit crunch affecting you? I am not sure but I think I am a little bit. My savings is not being saved up enough compared with last year. I still have not serviced my car yet (due last Jan) so I need to save up for that. Gas & electricity bill on the rise, so need to switch to someone else. We’re with British Gas for both at the moment. What company do you use for these utility?

Right, it’s closely approaching 9am. I need breakfast and then trim some bushes.