I’m currently on holiday. For a bit of an experiement, I have signed up to OnTheRoad and thought I’d give the service a shot. I’ll be using the Android application and H will be using the iPhone version. This page will update as we go along so keep checking back to see what’s new!

My Mum made me a birthday cake with a twist. She loves to go a bit overboard with her creativity. This year she made Delilah (the camper), me, and H! (I may have added the Peak District in the background!) It was so cool, I had to get a pic up! Nice one Mum!

It’s one of those special moments again. Cory Doctorow has released his latest novel, For The Win. I’m a hug fan of his writing and have each of his books in hard cover, some even signed! One of the reasons I try and buy the hard covers, is that Cory gives the books away for free! Yes you read that right, the books are released under a Creative Commons licence and may be downloaded, re-mixed and generally shaken about as long as no profit is made from it. My personal preference is to read them but you never know, a movie could be on the horizon if I ever find the time! If you are interested in buying a copy, here it is on Amazon!

Back to the point here, I have downloaded a copy to load up on my eBook reader, if you are interested, go and find out more for yourself! Here is what it’s about;

In the virtual future, you must organize to survive

At any hour of the day or night, millions of people around the globe are engrossed in multiplayer online games, questing and battling to win virtual “gold,” jewels, and precious artifacts. Meanwhile, others seek to exploit this vast shadow economy, running electronic sweatshops in the world’s poorest countries, where countless “gold farmers,” bound to their work by abusive contracts and physical threats, harvest virtual treasure for their employers to sell to First World gamers who are willing to spend real money to skip straight to higher-level gameplay.

Mala is a brilliant 15-year-old from rural India whose leadership skills in virtual combat have earned her the title of “General Robotwalla.” In Shenzen, heart of China’s industrial boom, Matthew is defying his former bosses to build his own successful gold-farming team. Leonard, who calls himself Wei-Dong, lives in Southern California, but spends his nights fighting virtual battles alongside his buddies in Asia, a world away. All of these young people, and more, will become entangled with the mysterious young woman called Big Sister Nor, who will use her experience, her knowledge of history, and her connections with real-world organizers to build them into a movement that can challenge the status quo.

The ruthless forces arrayed against them are willing to use any means to protect their power—including blackmail, extortion, infiltration, violence, and even murder. To survive, Big Sister’s people must out-think the system. This will lead them to devise a plan to crash the economy of every virtual world at once—a Ponzi scheme combined with a brilliant hack that ends up being the biggest, funnest game of all.

You can create your own too using the Google Search Story Creator!

At the end of the day, I don’t know why the excitement has gone. But this site is supposed to be about living so I’m gonna find that excitement. I’m going to bring it back and get excited again!

The iPhone is one of my all time favourite devices. It changed the way I could do things on the move that were previously unthinkable or; at the very least, difficult. I might even go as far as saying that I actually love the iPhone! It really is great and I would hate to be without it which is why it’s time to step back and try something new.

Before I get distracted, I should explain that I live in an area that Apple does not actively sell into. We do not have “official” versions of the iPhone and Apple, technically, doesn’t even want us to use the iTunes Store. Maybe this is because we don’t pay VAT or maybe because Apple does it’s own thing without any clear logic quite often. Either way, if I wanted to upgrade to an iPhone 3GS, I would need to buy a Czech Republic model for over £700. That sounds great, but I had an issue with Apple recently that left me a little dissapointed. My current iPhone is a Czech version and it started developing some performance issues. When I went into the Apple store and saw a Genius, they said that since it is not a UK phone, they can’t do anything with it. If it had been, they would have replaced it. Now don’t get me wrong, I fully understand that point of view, but from my personal perspective, it’s not particularly beneficial.

I have therefore decided that I will do as I always do in moments of crisis and panic – run to Google for help! I am now awaiting the arrival of the new Motorola Milestone. At half the price of the iPhone 3GS, it won’t break the bank and it gives me the opportunity to see how far others have progressed during the 2 years I have only used the iPhone.

Another reason, probably the biggest reason ultimately is that I have an idea for an App that I would like to have a go at developing. With the open nature of Android and availability of tools, it was the platform of choice and I really need the hardware to go with it!

Anyway, I am quite excited by this and will be sure to write up my experience whether it proves to be good or bad! Fingers crossed that I have not just bought an expensive alarm clock! And to think, I swore I would never buy a Motorola again!

I was quite pleased with the SimplePie mashup I had created for shanemarriott.com, unfortunately, I found a fatal flaw in the system. The flaw revolved around the reliance on RSS feeds for all the content. In principal, it worked well; however, in practice, there was a problem.

Twitter only displays the last 20 or so tweets in the RSS feed. My aim for shanemarriott.com was to maintain my own archive of content. I want to ensure that if Twitter should ever leave us (God forbid), I would still have a copy of my content safely stored on my own server! The current system would not do this so I looked into the possibility of passing all the SimplePie data into mySQL. This option looked like it would work and I started the process of designing the schema that would store my digital life. Luckily, before I had spent too much time working on this, I came across the SweetCron project. This open source project provided all the functionality I required righ out the box!

The system works really well and being updated every few hours by a scheduled task on our server. As it works on RSS feeds, nearly everything from the web can be fed in. The twitter @replies are being stored but not displayed which is a really nice touch. Everything can be configured when you know where to look.

The theme has been lightly altered but at some stage I will continue to develop it. For now though, it will tick along collecting all my ‘stuff’.

Go take a look if you are interested.

I can honestly say that the last few weeks have been the busiest in my life. Due to this, I have been making regular posts to Twitter but not writing on the blog. As such, the homepage is now full of Twitter updates. This looks messy, so I have decided to remove the weekly digest feature or this site will end up as a Twitter backup. If anyone want to see my Twitter history, just take a look at shanemarriott.com or Twitter!

The image above is a Wordle, a tweet cloud of my account. I think it’s easy to see who my original Twitter friend was! Here are few more variations on the theme!

This was quite interesting to play with but I then wondered about my Tweeting habits. When do I tweet? What time? etc etc. I used TweetStats to find out! This service gives you all the stats of your tweeting habit. It works right out the box and shows you what you need to see! This is my tweet density.

It looks like I mostly sleep between Midnight and 4AM… trying to remember those times when I wasn’t now!

I was also interested to see which days were most popular. I have no idea what would make Thursday the most popular day for me! Perhaps the thought of Friday?

There are clear times when I get the urge to tweet something! Morning, Lunch and Evening! I can’t imagine I am most creative in the morning, so I must load Twitter and then reply to any tweets directed at me the previous night. Nice consistent tweeting though! I guess it is becoming a part of my routine now!

Now, to cover the fact I have not posted anything, I am going to finish off some other posts. That way, the Twitter digests can be pushed down the page a bit! To see my full TweetStats in their full animated glory, look here!

That’s it – I have left NRG International! My Cotag has been scanned for the last time. Tuesday will be a whole new world!

I’ll miss NRGI because of the people I met there and the excellent time and new experiences I had. There were not many mornings when I woke up and thought, “damn; I have to go to work”. Fate has decided for me on this one which may turn out to be a good thing.

From this point on, I will be working as a Director for a new company called Enrapture Ltd. Enrapture is a marketing and media company that offers traditional marketing services, modern website design and photography services. Each of these things is a passion of mine and having a passion for what you do is one of the keys to success!

As previously mentioned[1,2], I have been studying for the “Professional Diploma in Marketing”. I have now passed the final paper! No more research to do (for a little while anyhow), no more assignments to write! It really is a case of new door, new challenges!