It’s a medieval time, there’s a big castle, a king, knights; the whole nine yards. I work a job in or around the castle, nothing too high profile, nothing to do with the court or the knights & standing army.

There’s a strange mix of technology in this world, there are guns and bombs as well as all the comforts of modern living.

I, for some reason, am some sort of anti-hero. On my travels and throughout my work I gain experience and new abilities. Recently I’ve gained a skill where I can double jump (a frog-skill as it appeared to me in my dream), yet I’ve not had much of a chance to try it out. I can run, leap, then when in mid-air jump again and get even higher and further.

Now, it turns out that there’s dissent in the air and one of the captains of the palace guard and his son, who is also in the military, are planning a coup and intend to usurp and kill the king!

It’s probably worthwhile to note at this point, the captain is being played by the guy who was Q in Star Trek, not that it’s really relevant to the story.

I have the pleasure of being invited to court for a celebration of some sort. I’m in no way a guest of honour but I get to meet the big jobs such as a princess and also the king. This is when the craziness starts to go down.

I’m on a balcony with the royal court and there’s a massive explosion in the courtyard below. I push some of the folks, king included, out of the way. This is misconstrued by the loyal royal guards as an attempt on the king’s life, in their opinion putting me with the separatists.

A chase ensues and I’m hounded through the castle by the guards. They chase after me until I reach the end of a, now broken, balcony – at the unreachable end is a set of stairs leading up into a mountain pass and some caves high up.

Desperate to get away I back up, take a run at the massive gap and leap, I make use of my new frog air-jump skills to jump again and make it all the way across to the stairway – the guards are obviously left behind.

I make my way up the pass as quickly as I can, it’s a long climb. I notice that I’m not alone and there’s a ghostly woman following me – there’s no way she managed to get across the gap after me! She approaches and I recoil, wary of who or what she is.

There is some conversation, nothing specific I remember, but I’m bestowed with a new skill – I am granted a sniper skill, I will be amazingly accurate with the sniper rifle which she then gives me. It’s plastic, long with a strap to stow it over your shoulder. I’m also furnished with a box of bullets to use with the gun – they’re entirely white and apparently they are the only bullets that’ll work with the gun.

Time goes past, perhaps a musical montage would be appropriate, some lyre music perhaps since it’s medieval times. I gain some more skills, nothing too interesting; I also form a relationship with the ghostly woman before she moves on telling me that I’ve been trained and am now ready.

I get some information about the usurper guards and their plan. They have a sniper of their own and intend to have him kill the king from a distance. He’s just a boy, perhaps 8 or 10 years old, but I know what I have to do: I have to kill the sniper, the head guard and his son to stop the plot against the king.

I’m also still being pursued by the loyal guards, still thinking me a potential threat to the king; ironic that I could be their only chance to save his life!

I’m making my way into town to take down those threats to the king when the guards are suddenly on my tail. I’m moving between high buildings that’re closely packed together, modern day sized yet somewhat rickety and falling to bits as you’d expect of medieval buildings.

I’m in a high floor of a building and have to jump from one window into another building to escape; the guards aren’t far behind me and can easily, if somewhat timidly, follow me from building to building. I stay ahead of them by recklessly, and if I say so myself, quite heroically, leaping back and forward between buildings, making my way towards the final standoff.

I’m eventually getting close to where I’ll be able to take these guys down. I’m walking along a rickety wooden balcony, high up on the side of a sandstone building. The rooftop of the building across from me is an appropriate place to set up. I have my rifle across my back and I’m ready to leap across.

Just at that moment the guard leading the chase appears on the balcony, he’s a friend from the days before this all started. I know he’s torn between duty and friendship. He looks into my eyes and knows I don’t intend malice but to correct the problems, I give him a curt nod and sprint to the end of the wooden balcony, it starts to come away from the building as I do. I leap towards the building, again, frog air-jumping to make the final part of the leap across. I land behind a wall on the roof, shielded from the view of the rooftop I’m going to be shooting towards.

I get behind some crates for cover and I can see across to the roof I need to target, they’re all there. The leader of the palace guard, his son and my rival the young sniper. There are other guards loyal to their cause there and they have hostages, lots of young children running around on the rooftop, scared.

I set up my rifle but they’ve spotted me. The young sniper starts rattling off shots but I’m too well covered. Other guards are firing but there’s no chance they’re going to hit me from the other roof.

I line up a shot, I’m not overly confident of my sniper skills yet. I shoot once, hit one of the guards in the shoulder – he’s not my target. The other guards start picking up children and holding them up as shields.

I release a few more rounds, actually hitting one of the kids as a guard moves him into the way of my sights. I’m getting agitated so I calm myself, take a breath. I line up the shot, squeeze the trigger and a hole erupts in the middle of the captain’s son’s forehead, he drops to the floor.

His father looks on to his son aghast at what he’s seen. He doesn’t look long, I blow a matching hole into his head, right through. I train my gun onto the young sniper, he’s lining me in his sights, but he’s too slow; a third matching hole in his head is his prize.

At this point the guards who were chasing me break through the door to the roof of the building I’m on and spill out, cutting off my escape. The lead guard, my friend, realises what I’ve done and that I’ve saved the king again. Guards at the front of the pack demand that I finish the job and gun down the remaining guards on the opposite roof but I decline. It’s their mess, they can clean it up.

One guard moves to take me into custody, my friend waves him off and turns to his side. I take a run and a jump off the roof, then another mid-air jump sees me onto the next building and I’m off into the metropolis never to return to my old life.

The end

Every person in the world is given a clay pot, in my dream there was no notion of where they come from, just that everyone always has one. Inside this pot is a clay teapot. All of them, pots and teapots, are made of terracotta; some are ornate, some decorated, others are just plain clay; regardless of how they look, they all serve the same purpose.

The teapot is used to tell if you’re a compatible match with another person, it distills the feelings you have for each other and indicates if you could fall in love and be happy together.

There’s a museum exhibit showing old pots that’ve been dug up from centuries old graves. Fossilised remains lie with a pot amongst them, the clay shattered at one side but the teapot inside perfectly intact, preserved through the ages.

Children are given smaller, empty pots. This signifies purity and a child’s ability to love without question; they’re only given a larger pot containing a teapot when they’ve come of age.

Some strange poetry to the whole thing, god knows how it was supposed to work though!
- Chris

This got me to thinking about the types of people I connect to on each of these social media networking sites. In my eyes this blog serves a different purpose and has a separate target audience to my Linkedin or Facebook profiles.

In light of this I’m giving a rundown of the groups and categories of people I connect to via each of these sites and their envisioned usage in my eyes.

Blog

The hub of this particular Chris Miller on the web. It’s where you’ll be able to find out about who I am and what I’m up to. From here you can branch out onto each of the social media sites I’m to be found on where more information in each of their specific focuses can be found.

Although technically not a social site it does mark the start of a web of profiles on various other sites as well as providing a blogroll (which is terminally out of date) of other people and sites I follow on the web.

• My blog is for: me to post random nonsense and technical articles to.
• My blog connects me to: other sites I syndicate.

Delicious

I’m terrible at using Delicious for bookmarking as well as bookmarking things locally. I tend to read an article that’s relevant to the thoughts running around my head at a particular moment then move on, forever forgetting said article (much trolling of web history ensues at a later date).

Although this site allows connections to other people I’ve shunned away from doing so. Feeds from the likes of Reddit and the BBC combined with Twitter tends to keep me up to date with any relevant articles flying around.

• Delicious is for: posting links to interesting/relevant/funny articles and categorising/tagging them.
• Delicious connects me to: nobody at the moment.

Facebook

Facebook is the only site in this list that I’d truly describe as a social media site. By this I mean that it serves no other purpose than to be a platform to connect and keep-in-touch with people I know socially. All the other sites in this list are quite focused in their purpose.

In light of this, Facebook is where most of the connecting comes into play for me. I have friends on Facebook from various facets of my life: school, university, work and other social situations. The one thing that sets Facebook apart from most of these other sites is that anyone I am friends with I have actually met, interacted with and have subsequently added as a friend.

The site itself is easy to use, little or no expertise is required to set up an account and start connecting with friends. There are various ‘applications’ to be added, groups to be joined, photos to be looked at… essentially it’s a procrastinators wet dream. This of course means it has no real focus or goal for me other than being stayintouchwithpeople.com.

• Facebook is for: everyone! Staying in contact with people I know socially.
• Facebook connects me to: pretty much everyone I know personally.

Flickr

Flickr, certainly for me, started out as a tool for online photo storage and organisation. I jumped on Flickr not long after it started up, before those pesky Yahoo! logins, and a tool was certainly what I was using it solely for.

Over time as the site developed and the whole social media thing took off Flickr added some nice functionality for discovering other people and building a photography community.

Connections I have via Flickr tend to be people I know with a smattering of people who have some interesting photos up. For the most part I find Flickr a useful tool for distributing photos onto other social media sites and it serves as an online repository of all my photos. That said however, it does make it very easy to keep up-to-date with photos of peers and colleagues who have a ton more photography skill than I (particularly Chris Hannah, Jim Moore, Steve Strowes and Dean Wright being of note).

• Flickr is for: hosting, organising and sharing my photos online.
• Flickr connects me to: people I know and other Flickr users with interesting posts.

Last.fm

I think I initially signed up to Last.fm just to see what it was, what it offered and to see if it’d be useful. Since then I’ve been off and on using the service to capture the tracks I’ve been listening to with iTunes. That is until recently with the switch for most of my music listening to Spotify which offers integrated Last.fm scrobbling.

The stats over time from tracks you’ve listened to are interesting and the music recommendations can be good especially if, like me, you generally don’t listen to music that’s very recent. I tend to view this more like I did Flickr initially, as a tool to draw information into other social media sites. That being said, I do have friends added on the site. The friends I have added tend to be actual friends I know and have somewhat similar music tastes to.

• Last.fm is for: collecting information about my music listening trends and sharing them on other sites.
• Last.fm connects me to: friends I know with similar music tastes.

Linkedin

By far the most professionally oriented of any of the sites listed here and again on my part initially used as a tool rather than a networking site. Linkedin for me initially was a convenient way of creating an online, plain and simple CV which could be easily updated and seed any full written CVs I’d need to write.

The focus of this site has shifted quite dramatically for me over time, I view this site as more of a networking site than I did previously. Now it provides a forum for me to stay contacted with people I’ve worked and studied with, without as many social faux pas such like drunken photographs or questionable music tastes. Ok they’re not hard to find, but the site does provide a professional front for me.

As I’ve said above, the people I connect with on Linkedin are those I’ve previously worked and studied with, aside from a few recruitment agencies who try and cram job offers down your throat (can’t hurt can it?).

• Linkedin is for: providing a professional front.
• Linkedin connects me to: those people who have had the privilege of working or studying with me.

Twitter

Twitter in my eyes is by far the most loosely defined group of people I follow. I view Twitter as a pick-it-up put-it-down source of random pieces of information, friend status updates and broadcasts from various companies.

My follow list generally reflects this. I follow people I know as a means of staying up-to-date with them; companies whose services I use as well as updates on various pieces of software I utilise on a daily basis; and pretty much anyone who posts something interesting or funny. So the list of Twitter updates I see in my client varies between lunch orders, company/software bulletins, 160 character quips and interesting links.

Twitter is by far the social media service that I read and post to most often, though I tend to skim over a lot of tweets to find those that are relevant or interesting to me.

• Twitter is for: quickly posting interesting links, thoughts, lazy discussions, product updates… disseminating information.
• Twitter connects me to: absolutely anyone, friends are a given but other than that, anything that interests me.

So that’s my rundown of the social media sites you’ll see me on and my usage of and connectivity on them. I’d assume most people use each of these sites in a similar manner (barring Twitter which has various marketing and advertising uses that I’m not really clued up on). Any other uses or different perspectives are welcomed.
- Chris

Shopping++

I got over £100 worth of groceries delivered within the one hour slot I picked, not the 2-3 hour slots that Tesco use, and everything was there, good quality and undamaged.

Not only that but having purchased over £100 worth of shopping the delivery cost is waived. So I managed to get a month worth of food and drink without the hassle of going shopping and somehow carting everything back.

Spicy Fajitas

My cupboards, fridge and freezer and completely and utterly stocked to the brim, there’s no room for anything else, at all! Now I’ve just got to eat it all.

All in all, an easy and hassle free transaction. Qudos to Sainsbury’s, A+++++ GOOD SELLER, WOULD SHOP AGAIN.
- Chris

Things have been going well, as I my previous post says, I’ve gotten a job in Glasgow. I’ve now also moved into my new flat and have, finally*, got an internet connection again. (Photos to follow sometime in the near future)

Everything is going pretty well, the work is interesting and the people I’m working with are a good bunch**. For the first time in a long while I actually have money, the most of which is currently gone, and I’m getting back in touch with all the folks I know in Glasgow.

Anyway this is more of an I’m back post to say: “I’m Back!”.
- Chris

* After some very troubling times with BT Broadband
** One of whom recently had a haircut!

I’m sitting back at home after my first week on the job. I’m enjoying it so far, the work is interesting enough and the people are friendly – plus the promise of money at the end of the month is incentive enough.

I’m currently looking for a flat in Glasgow to stay in, going to look at a few on Dumbarton Road on Monday, hopefully one of those will turn up to be a good un.

A lot has happened in this time, I’ve finished my exams. Most of which went relatively well, barring of course the Grid Computing exam which was always going to be a wildcard. I’m now officially finished University as well after handing in my research dissertation last Monday. All-in-all it went well, however running out of time towards the end, my personal calling card, did mean that the report tends to tapper off in quality towards the final sections – but at least it’s finished.

Since finishing I’ve been looking after the pub at home as my parents were on holiday and returned yesterday. Other than that I’ve been sitting here at my computer playing World of Warcraft a hell of a lot, watching the majority of the Friends seasons on DVD and over the past two days watching Supernatural season one on DVD as well.

After only a week and a half of freedom from University I’m starting to feel lost as there’s no paticular direction to my life just now. I’m hoping to start a PhD next year but that all depends upon a funding grant from the EPSRC, so I’m currently caught in limbo between either finding a real job or a filler one until I hear for sure about the funding.

Procrastinating isn’t half as fun as it is when you’re meant to be doing something else. Sitting playing WoW doesn’t appeal as much now as it did when I had work which I was supposed to be doing at the time. Doing things you do to “take a break” from something doesn’t appeal when the thing you’re doing is actually the thing you’re taking a break from [some punctuation was harmed in the making of this sentance].

Other than playing world of warcraft and starting to keep a World of Warcraft blog to track your progress in the game (killer of a good few hours that could’ve been used for work), watching DVDs and playing cards I’ve not done anything. It sounds great but not doing anything when there’s nothing to do is pretty damn boring.

Other than doing nothing I’ve also managed to break my new XDA Exec which is currently en-route to O2 who will be replacing it with a new unit. Somehow whilst trying to flash the new WM5 version onto the device it seems to have deleted the original version, as expected, but not written the new version, not as expected. This means that when I did a hard reset on the device to update the OS there was nothing there to install and the device would just hang at an O2 splash screen. After some searching on the web and trying some wierd fixes nothing worked so it was on to O2 who asked me to send the device to them.

There’s nothing much left to add really, suppose I’d best start looking for a job to fill in the time between watching DVDs, playing World of Warcraft and sleeping; but I’ll get around to that later as it’s Friday night and I can hear a game of cards a-calling me from the pub…
- Chris

I realise it’s only been three days, but so far I’ve managed not to be tempted to have a fag, although mainly due to my lack of said fags.

Hopefully I’ll be able to stave off them for good, although it’s a bit boring not having anything to do all the time. I’ll keep up the posts if there are any changes.
- Chris

The weight I’ve lost on my diet.
- Chris

The show runs for 12 hours in total (made up of 24 half hour shows), consisting of an ace segment called Monkey News, if you haven’t heard of it give it a listen.

If you appreciate Gervais comedy then you’ll love this.
- Chris

Today is that day.

I’m sitting at home in Dumfries, although I’m meant to be sitting in a lecture in Glasgow, because my lift to the station this morning didn’t turn up. I’d usually catch a ride off my dad but he’s off on holiday in another country.

Naturally I was a little displeased about this state of affairs. Anyway, everything else today seems to be annoying the hell out of me, my dog’s being a pain in the ass and things just don’t seem to be going smoothly at all!

For instance my iPod wont connect to my PowerBook through the dock anymore, normally I’d just shrug my shoulders and connect it via the firewire connection which plugs into the dock (which it seems to work perfectly through). However today I’m in a perpetual state of anger, shouting at the dock and threatening to throw it out of the window. Perhaps it’s because of this film I watched last night, The Last Horror Movie, which looked as if it was going to be a decent enough film but turned out to be an utter pile of steaming, freshly lain shit (seriously, never see this movie, not even for the sake of curiosity as to how shit it is). Perhaps it’s because of this itch I have on my back but can’t quite reach.

The thing that seems to be pissing me off the most is the fact that I’m pissed off for no real reason at all.

If you don’t hear from me in a while it’s because I’ve murdered someone, been caught, and have been sent down for 20-to-life!
- Chris

So rather than having a party, I’ve created a new theme that will be shown from the 29th of October until the 1st of November each year.

In case it isn’t Halloween just now here’s a screenshot of the theme:

Have a good Halloween, I leave you with me, as a zombie!
- Chris

I finished my job at the University over two weeks ago now, spent a week looking after the pub at home for my folks when they were on holiday and am now back at University and into my second week.

The Job

Went well, everything was finished, more or less, and all wrapped up. Steve Brewster and David McGookin colaborated and wrote a paper based upon what I did over the Summer. They’ve submitted it to CHI 2006, whether it gets accepted or not, we’ll have to see.

The Pub

An eventful week was had by all, consisting of things blowing up, throwing people out of the bar and kicking in doors. I’ll say no more.

The University

Uni is going fine, although the research readings course is a bit hefty. I’ve decided to do Information Retrieval (M), Types and Programming Languages (M) and Network Communications Technology 4.

The courses seem interesting enough, with TPL and IR both grabbing the attention quickly (Simon actually seems pleased about the class size dwindling each session. As I’ve said the Research Readings is taking up a lot of time: reading 4 papers a week and summarising 2 of them (all four for the first few weeks). Then there’s two in-depth reviews to be done throughout this term!

There’s another few courses which I am privy to, Research Methods and Techniques (M) is one which starts this Thursday and Professional Skills (M) (a sort of masters level Professional Issues) is due to start in another 3 weeks. Anyway, everything’s going well and all this reading and discussion of papers can be exciting at times. Most of the time it’s pretty boring though.

That’s the lot folks, hope everyone is having as good a time as me at their respective jobs or courses (or mid-morning TV watchings),
- Chris

P.S. I’ve now also managed to break the 3 st barrier on my diet, now having lost 3 st 2 lb (or 0.019958064 metric tonnes).

After 17 years of friendship, my first dog Timmy has been put down today. He suffered a large fit late on last night and the vet had to be called to put him down.

Frisky as a puppy and as loyal as any dog you could wish for, Timmy was a beloved family pet and has passed on tonight. Known a lot as Timbo (no idea or reason why!), he’s at peace now and will not be forgotten.

Timmy

Timmy, died 12:30 AM Friday, 09th August 2005,
- Chris

I got weighed today for the second time (after the second week of my new found healthy life!), and I’ve managed to loose another 7.5lbs! Massively impressed, I thought that the weight loss would have leveled off to 2 – 4lbs per week.

I’ve now managed to loose 1st and 0.5lbs over two weeks. Kudos to me!
- Chris

Nothing much has been happening at all, I’ve been sleeping a lot, playing darts and dominos, learning to play a card came called crib, drinking and the odd once and a while, playing World of Warcraft.

Uni’s finished and the graduation ball was excellent, my photos of the event are available as are a copy of Lynsey’s photos. Thanks to all the people who organised the night and all those who were there and made it an enjoyable evening, the most notable memory possibly being Rory climbing over the Sherbrooke castle roof!

So the summer is starting to plod along, I have moved back to the pub in Dumfries and have just gotten everything into my new bedroom. I’m getting settled back in and have started living healthier (after my junk food filled revision), having joined the local gym and gone on a diet (one week down and 7lbs lost, but a fair few still to go!).

Other than this I am just waiting out the remaining 8 days until I start my summer scholarship on the 1st of July, looking forward to getting back into a routine but also dreading the 4-5 hour roundtrip commute I will have to make every day. I’ve been thinking about the scholarship and trying to gather my thoughts on how to approach the problem, but there is nothing substantial as of yet to mention, I will post more when I have started the job.

Anyway, life is going fine and I’m looking forward to seeing anyone who will be around in Glasgow when I’m finally back up regularly.
- Chris

I have been hoping to work in the department after doing so last year, and heard of a scholarship that was up for grabs to do with olfactory tagging of photos.

Anyway, I applied a while ago and managed to get an interview yesterday (after my last exam and before the pubbage). I heard back earlier today and I have been offered the job, it’s a ten week scholarship in the department which pays £240 a week. The main idea is to tag photos with smells, much in the same way that flickr.com uses words to tag photos. I’m not set to start until the 1st of July but thought I would post some early details I have on the project.

Below is an extract from the outline of the project, defining exactly what it is about:

In order to investigate the use of olfaction as part of HCI, the work undertaken during the studentship will centre on the construction of an application which will be intended to both exploit the advantages of olfaction (memory and learning), and apply these advantages to a current problem in human computer interaction – the browsing of large non-textual media collections such as digital photographs. The design and construction of this application will contribute to the general aims of the studentship to improve our understanding of olfaction in HCI and the expected outcomes which are described in detail in the following sections.

The problems of browsing large collections of non-textual digital media are well known, with ineffective tools currently available for browsing and searching such collections. Most of the proposed methods to overcome the problems of browsing and searching involve the tagging of individual, or groups of photographs, with keywords which can be later used for retrieval. However, other research has found that many people find such tagging of photographs inconvenient and many do not store digital photographs in any systematic way. In any event, such a system may still break down if inconsistent labels are given to different photographs.

The application to be constructed as part of this studentship will build on existing research with Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs), to allow users to build search queries over digital photograph collections via RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tags attached to “smell cubes” (small plastic cubes containing a fragrance impregnated in a cotton wool pad – www.daleair.com). This would allow users to associate smells easily and quickly with collections of photographs by moving the appropriate cube close to the RFID tag reader, and would help to make the process of recall easier by using the powerful memory effects of smell to remind users of the environment in which they took the photographs and thus aid their recall. For example, photographs of a holiday in India may be quickly associated with the smell of spices. In years to come the user may be looking for a particular photograph of a friend. The user can remember the friend was standing outside a building but cannot quite remember where or when the photograph was taken (such attributes being the current way in which images are tagged). To find the photograph the user would waft each smell cube under their nose. On using the spice smell cube, the user is transported back to their holiday in India and can remember where the photograph was taken. On passing the smell cube (with attached RFID tag) over the RFID sensor, the system filters the photographs on screen to show only a small subset, one of which is the photograph desired by the user – the user’s friend standing outside the building.

The work will be broken down in the 10 weeks as follows:

• Weeks 1 – 3
  The student will carry out a literature review into olfaction. Additionally the student will begin to elicit requirements for the photo browsing application. Participants will be recruited and categorisation of photographs will be undertaken.
• Weeks 4 – 7
  The student will construct the photo browsing application based on the literature review and derived requirements.
• Weeks 8 – 10
  The student will carry out an evaluation of the photo browsing application to determine the usefulness of the incorporation of olfaction. The student will produce a report on the design and evaluation of the photo browsing application that will form the basis of a paper submission to the ACM SIG CHI conference.

Anyway, I’m quite pleased with getting the scholarship and look forward to an interesting summer working on it. Sorry to the other guys who were in for it (Dave et al), I’m sure you’ll all find something soon enough.
- Chris

I was just getting to the end of this list when I came across an e-mail entitled “Re: your web site needs something like this…” from katief@mail2katie.com on 30th October 2004, which I had replied to.

When I wrote the reply I was midway through writing my DAS4 assessed exercise and therefore tired and very pissed off. Here is a copy of the reply I sent:

This is not spam!

The thing is, I’m sitting trying to write a distributed program which is perhaps beyond your comprehension (Ed: it certainly was beyond mine). I am pissed off as it is and getting shitty emails which are RE things which I haven’t mailed out is making my rage even more!

Bernadine Williamson (“katief” ???), you can suck my balls!

Please remove me from your mailing list as I no longer wish to be subject to your inane babbling, if you send me anymore spam I will be tempted to visit your house and shit on the driveway… have a nice day

I can’t remember writing it, but think it has all the qualities of a good e-mai. I realise that it probably didn’t reach anyone, but it probably made me feel better.
- Chris

You may have heard on the grapevine that we planned to
reward our dear Flickr members who bought a Pro Account in
the early days. Well, it’s true! And since you’re one of
those lovely people, here’s a little something to say YOU
ROCK!

1. Double what you paid for!
Your original 1 year pro account has been doubled to
2 years, and your new expiry date is Mar 4, 2007.

2. More capacity!
Now you can upload 2 GB per month.

3. 2 free Pro Accounts to give away to your friends!
This won’t be activated for a day or two, but when it
is, you’ll see a note on your home page telling you
what to do.

Thank you so much for putting your money where your mouth
is and supporting us, even while we’re in beta. Your
generosity and cold, hard cash helped us get where we are
today.

They’re right, I do ROCK!
- Chris

Edit: I have given away the first account to Derek.

A man apparently robbed the Sainsburry Local (which is about 100m away from my flat) with a gun, just 3 days ago – this was the first I had heard of it.

Around 2055 hours Thursday 11 March 2005, a man entered the service station in Woodlands Road, Glasgow and threatened a member of staff with what appeared to be a firearm. He then made off on foot with a three-figure sum.

No firearm was discharged and no persons were injured.

The suspect is described as white, 6’0” in height, unshaven and wearing a green hooded waterproof jacket, blue jeans and a light coloured woollen beanie hat.

That however, is not the worst of the news:

Detective Constable Scott Bruce of Anderson CID said:

“This is the second time in a few weeks that these premises have been the subject of an armed robbery and we believe that both incidents are linked.”

So, someone robbed it once and didn’t get caught. Then they thought that it would be a good idea to rob it again.

Maybe the police will get him next time, third time lucky they say!
- Chris