Category: Uncategorized

  • Data Cards, WiFI and Roaming

    In 2004 I set up my first on-line store whilst on the 17th floor of a hotel in Chiang Mai, overlooking the night market, and the hills in the distance where nestles the monastery of Doi Suthep.

    My internet connection was made by stripping a dial up connection lead, popping on a connector and plugging into the telephone socket. I then used a local prepaid card that gave me lots of low bandwidth connection time, enough to get my site up on-line.

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  • Still Stranded

    I can feel the winter rolling on to the London streets because it wakes up something that should be left sleeping. I feel too awake in fact, which doesn’t scare me half so much as it used to.

    This is the time of year to be heading south with the beautiful birds, perhaps as a bit of a loping companion to them but all with the same goal in mind.

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  • Sunload Bags

    What a great idea, to build solar panels into a bag and power your goodies.

    With a mobile data card and a sunload bag you can be a right proper cyber-vagrant. It is a pity as they seem to look a bit naff..I would have gone for the total industrial rubber look and not have tried hard to pretty a solar panel up. It’s the deck of a bloody yacht for gods sakes.

    Wonder of they’ll send me a free one for saying these lovely things about them…

  • Buy to Let Why Don’t You

    I posted this in the guardian in one of the blogs….

    I remember a time when people KNEW it was immoral to make money off of the backs of other people, when we knew that making money off of the back of other peoples necessity was not good.

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  • Animism and Facebook

    I have a belief, probably born out of a friends hurried explanation of animism related to archaeology, that early humans took on attributes from things in their environments that were important to them. It seemed so obvious that a vulnerable human would want to be the strong Lion, the lofty eagle.

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  • Bad Gypsy

    Summer has meant too much roving and not enough writing so I’ll get busy over the next few weeks. I know the power of scribbling be it on a web journal or on a scrap of paper. So be it.

    I actually attempted a post from the Big Green Gathering, but it was soon evident that my database had become corrupted by my moving my hosting account so it was not to be. Shame, I was in a tent in the middle of a field tapping away whilst drinking a cappuccino, which to my mind is pretty much the pinnacle of human achievement.

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  • Online Photoshop

    The whole idea of hosted programs that you access through a web browser is not a new one, but with google spearheading the offering such large on-line storage, combined with the kind of bandwidth we can use to move large files around we have the tools for the job.

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  • Croke Malarkey

    Having recently been welcomed into the bosom of my long lost Irish relatives, both north and south of that most curious invisible fence, I feel I can comment on anything I want when it comes to things Irish. I’d also like to add that upon meeting the folks in the homeland, I have found out where that part of me that requires vocal freedom, comes from. Also that part of me that could quite happily swim in alcohol for the rest of my born days, oblivion warming me in milk soaked dreams of silk and velvet.

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  • Skype and mobile data cards

    T Mobile seem to be green lighting the use of SKYPE on mobile data cards (since October actually, but I am just catching up), but I am still a little unclear about why they were against it in the first place, although the fact that people might be bypassing those expensive daytime mobile calls in favour of cheap Skype calls might be a clue. All we need now is for the quality of those Skype calls to improve and away we go, just pop a computer in your pocket and roam.

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  • The more mobile gypsy

    The whole idea of super portability allowing us all to be cyber gypsies is maturing at a rapid rate. Completely by chance today I stumbled upon the OQO portable computer today and was amazed (I was originally chasing around rumours I had heard of Skype using bizarre amounts of bandwidth on mobile data cards, a rumour that I suspect is encouraged by mobile suppliers, but more of that later).

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