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The opportunity came up through the awesome guys and girls at NZFM to put an entry into their annual exhibition. I hummed about this, I procrastinated about this, I said yes, I can do this, and then I was no, I can’t, I’m a fraud.

Fortunately I have awesome friends who ‘laid the smack down upon me’ and told me, that I can do it. So, I sucked it up, put aside my social life and entered.

As of 30 minutes ago, my entry, left my computer and went out into the world, to hang on the wall. Now that I have finally done, this, I want to scream from the mountain tops that, I’ve just got my first exhibition entry going on show from next weekend.

What was I so worried about? People cutting down my tall poppy. They can try and cut me down all they want now, but their photos aren’t hanging on a wall in Parnell.

Enough of the naval gazing. I went to a photoshop workshop today. I thought it would be a bit more than a basic photoshop but I was wrong. I spent the whole day bored. So I made this photo instead. Enjoy.

At some stage yesterday, I went from the old m.flickr.com, from which I could happily upload photos from to a new version, which is too wide for my phone’s display (see Nokia 6121) and I cannot find anywhere to upload my photos from. The good-ish news is that I can see the link to change back to the old m.flickr.com when I look at the site in Firefox on my PC, but its not there on my mobile. I am currently downloading Opera for Symbian, and will see if that fixes it, which it didn’t. But a quick trawl of the FAQ’s found the answer – Point your mobile phone browser to http://m.flickr.com/rp.gne and it will reset to the old m.flickr.com. Choice!

Ok. Its been a wee while since my last post, but I thought this would be something worth blogging about. I haven’t ceased in my quest of geekdom, instead, I have been more involved in it than ever. And I can blame certain people, but they won’t be named here.

1. Twitter

Fantastic time waster. Brilliant. But I found out how really handy it can be today. I was having some trouble signing up to Vodafone Broadband Lite (more on that further down) and getting no where with customer services. So I twittered a tweet to @vodafoneNZ and the lovely man there asked me for a DM (Direct Message) with my mobile number and within 5 minutes, I was sorted. This is verses the 20 minutes I had ripping my hair out with their customer services desk the old fashioned way.

2. Dandy Warhols

Dear Vodafone, please change your hold music. They were a one hit wonder and 10 minutes of the same song, Bohemian Like You, is too much and drove me near suicidal. Thank you.

3. Vodafone Broadband Lite

I have noticed an increase in my mobile broadband data useage. I am lucky enough to have a nice Nokia 6121, while not the coolest phone, and lacking QWERTY sophistication, it does the few things I want. Lately I have noticed more and more, I rely on Mobile Broadband. Be it accessing my facebook page while I’m at the racetrack, using IRC while travelling to Hamilton (NOT while driving… ), or uploading funny photos to Flickr. Yes. I have become so internet addicted that I can get it all on my mobile.

Now until Vodafone brought along this nifty new plan of 100mb of Data for $10 a month, I was using their casual useage plan of $1 / Day, limited to 10mb. This was all good, but I rarely use 10mb a day, but I use my mobile interwebs most days a month, resulting in bills of around $20/month for mobile data. At least now I have the added bonus of not having to pay for expensive hotel data when on the road as well. Doubly awesome!

So from now until eternity, or whenever I buy a laptop with bluetooth, I will have to ensure I travel with my Nokia Data Cable!

4. Firefox

How I lived so long without this browser, I have no idea. I have a fantastic add on called ‘Yoono‘ which sits on the left hand side of my browser window and updates me with new tweets and facebook happenings like pokes and status changes. I can also use MSN Messenger on it, check and read my gmail and it also gives me my RSS feeds – something I was looking at useing to keep up with the play. I haven’t had a look at any other Firefox addons, but I will soon.

5. Ubuntu on the Acer Laptop

I took the plunge and gave Ubuntu its own 10gb partition on my Vista “powered” laptop. I put powered in quotes as running vista, it is a complete dog. Its very slow and painful and whilst I disable most of the pretty vista features, it was not designed for Vista. But just for booting up for an internet surf, quick internet check, Ubuntu serves me just fine. I’m still attached to MS Office tho. Read No. 6

6. Kudos to Warehouse Stationery

I got a flier in my local paper last week from the Papakura Warehouse Stationery. $49.00 to buy a copy of Microsoft Office Home & Student Edition. Limited to 15 copies only. So I was there before the store opened. I got one of those 15 copies and am now very chuffed to finally own a legit copy of Office. I will save up now to buy a legit copy of Outlook.