I can’t help myself from logging in from my mobile phone at least half a dozen times a day to see what people are up to, see what messages have been left and to change my ‘status message’. By being so quick and easy to use you really get a sense of what your friends are up to and already I feel as though I’m back in contact socially where I had been a bit of an email recluse before.

I’ve also just switched to using Gmail for my personal mail (with all its fantastic spam-filtering goodness) and the slick mobile Gmail application on my mobile so I’m really going to be back in contact now. Time to upgrade my mobile tariff!

“I’ve registered this book at BookCrossing.com so I can track its journey through this world. Please go to www.BookCrossing.com/123-456789 to let me know you found it, then read it and/or pass it on for someone else to enjoy. Thank you!”

You then leave your book somewhere in the wild for somebody else to pick up. They can then go onto the website and register that they picked it up. Once they’re done with it, they can pass it on to the next person or leave it somewhere.

If you don’t fancy writing the text by hand you can download some cool labels instead and even buy special plastic bags to put them in so books left outside won’t get wet.

I’ve no idea why I find things like this so interesting but I know that it plays completely to my geeky tendencies. I’ve just labelled up a couple of books that we found we had two copies of here at home and we plan to release them tomorrow. I’ll put a permanent link on the right-hand-side of the blog that will show all the books I’ve released. Brilliant.

It was fantastic. He’d just bought himself an external USB hard drive and some backup software and I was walking him through how to format the disk over the telephone. The problem I had was in trying to remember exactly where the correct menu items were and what boxes to check in order to do the format – I was imagining windows as he described them to me and at a couple of points I didn’t understand what options he was being presented with at all. By using Copilot it was problem solved – with his desktop in front of me it took me about five seconds to navigate to the appropriate place and get the format started, all the time while he watched and I talked him through what I was doing.

It’s not dirt cheap – I think the session cost me about £5.50 – but it’s not crazy money either and it does last for 24 hours. Instead of trying to walk through things verbally and not being sure if we’d got to where we needed to be, Copilot saved us a lot of time and him a lot of headache. Next time your friend or relative calls you for some computer assistance this may be worth a go.

(Erm, follow the link and you’ll see what I mean…)

Now you do!

As well as loads of great photos there is information on how to create your own, for example with specialist cameras, special lenses, or your regular camera and a lot of patience.

You’ll need to download Apple Quicktime if you haven’t already, but it’s worth it.

Latest set of photos is of a lovely relaxing holiday I took in France with some great friends back in 1999 just after finishing university. I love these photos as they bring back memories of late nights drinking beers in the back garden, playing Uno by candlelight until we couldn’t keep our eyes open.

I’ll post more up when I can.

Finchley Central bus stop,
originally uploaded by doranan.

Just a small post to test out sending a photo to my blog from Flickr.

I’ve always liked this photo, even though I took it with my somewhat pathetic T610 camera phone. This is standing at the bus stop in Finchley Central outside Tesco’s on a typically blustery autumn evening. I loved the way the heavy clouds were all lit up by the sun and thought I’d keep it.

I’ve no idea how this post will turn out so good luck reading it!