Ben turned four today. This time next year he’ll be in school. Amazing!
He was really excited this morning and couldn’t wait to open his presents. I have some great “wow!” photos which Louise or I will upload at the weekend — we’ll probably wait until we’ve had the family get-together.
I don’t know exactly how it’s happened but Ben’s presents this year are archetypal “boy toys”: a remote controlled car, a crane, a Spiderman book… oh, and some Little Miss books!
So, to round off my triptych of pointers to cool websites this month I’m going to suggest you check out last.fm. It’s an internet based radio station that you can listen to through your web browser or through dedicated software. You start by entering the name of an artist you like and then it plays tracks by similar artists.
The real coolness starts when you create an account — everything you listen to is recorded in your profile. You can skip over or even permanently ban tracks you don’t like. In this way the system learns what you like. Over time it starts coming up with recommendations for you and finds other “neighbour” users on the site who share your tastes. Then you can tune in and listen to what they’re listening to. What a great way to discover new music!
I’m really only scratching the surface here, too. You can download plug-ins for your “normal” music player (e.g. iTunes, WinAmp, Songbird or even your iPod) so that what you listen to “normally” is recorded in your last.fm profile. You can create groups. You can see when your favourite artists are playing nearby. You can add your recently played tracks to your blog. You can make recommendations to your friends. You can clear out your profile and “start again”. You can even listen to my very own radio station.
Well, Ben turns four next week, and already he has a girlfriend. And with the best of family tradition, he has gone for a slightly older lady. She is already 4. Her name is Jasmine and she goes to pre-school with Ben. Today she gave Ben (via her mum), a note which she had asked her neighbour to help her write. It reads “Dear Ben, I have a poem for you. Roses are red, violets are blue, you love me and I love you. from Jasmine”.
They grow up so fast these days….
A quick pointer: If you read blogs and news sites, which is pretty much a tautology given that you’re reading this, you should take a look at Google Reader. It’s a website that lets you subscribe to your favourite blogs and news sites and puts all the posts in one place — like email for the web.
Google Reader has a few nice features. Firstly, it can order posts such that more “important” posts, i.e. those from less frequently updated sites, are shown before those from more prolific sites. You can also share posts, creating your own news stream, which other people can subscribe to and so on ad infinitum.
Tim, you’re absolutely right and you don’t need to live in a foreign country to feel “the drift”. Moving out of the area or having children seems sufficient to reduce contact with your friends tenfold. It’s this feeling that made me start blogging and I suspect it’s the same with you.
When we met up at the pub I felt exactly as you described. Half the people there I hadn’t seen in 2007 but the instant rapport left me feeling almost elated. Or perhaps that was all the beer I was drinking. Anyway… whatever… good times!
I can’t believe it’s been four years since your wedding! In a blog-worthy tribute (and to follow up my previous post about photo sharing) I bring you a dozen photos of the day in question. Congratulations!
Tim W was over from Dubai recently and he asked me the best way to upload photos to his blog. My answer was “don’t put the photos on the blog, use a photo sharing site instead”. In particular I would suggest Picasa Web Albums from Google. You could use another sharing site like Flickr but I’d recommend PWA on the basis that you might already have a Google account (so that’s one less login to remember) and it easy to edit and upload your photos in bulk with the free Picasa photo management application.
So, there you go Tim, let’s see what you’ve got! Louise and I will be joining you as soon as I’ve upgraded our PC to the latest version of Ubuntu.