Welcome to Simon Philp's Blog

Wow, it’s been 4 months since I last marked the internet with a blog post.  How time flies by and how things change.  I really don’t know where to begin but right now life is on a huge high.  A couple of months ago I changed jobs, no longer do i work in the beautiful city of Edinburgh but instead work locally. Not only have i moved working location but i have also changed industries.  Working previously in a law firm brought many merits, being able to expose new technologies to help the firm succeed to new friendships.  Now I...

I've had my new sky hd box since around Christmas time last year. While the engineer was installing it he updated the software on it from:     = to:   = Now I've never had any problems with basic functions such as changing channels, rewinding etc up till now.  The new software is appauling. Don't get me wrong the functionality that the new software brings is a huge improvement over the previous version but usability is a nightmare. ...

Anyone who follows me on twitter will no doubt be fed up hearing about my daily gym chat. Yes, I am addicted, I do have a problem :P. One of my main classes I attend is Body Combat.  A couple of months ago I wrote a blog post about this latest addiction, Discovering Les Mills - Body Combat. Within this post I mentioned the program directors Dan and Rachael Cohen along with an instructor who posts his own videos on youtube Tommy Damani. Tommy is the reason I write this. For anyone who hasn’t heard of Tommy here is...

Well this morning was a bit of a shock when I looked out the window to find the below: This was the result of 3 hours of heavy snow. What a day, been out snowboarding, yes, in Dalgety Bay :) I’d like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a happy new year. Stay safe and to a fabulous 2010.

BODYCOMBAT™ is a non-combat, martial arts-based fitness program with moves drawn from Karate, Tae Kwan Do, Kung Fu, kickboxing, Muay Thai and Tai Chi. Each 55-minute BODYCOMBAT™ class is choreographed to 10 tracks of the latest music, providing an exhilarating exercise experience that delivers ultra-fast fitness results. * taken from official Les Mills body combat site For anyone that knows me or follows me on twitter will know that for the last 8 months I have been addicted to spin classes at my local gym. I do spin 4 – 5 times a week depending on who’s taking the class as...

In the past I have posted about holiday tunes: New additions to the snowboarding playlist Some holiday tunes for Majorca 2008 With me going on holiday to Tenerife soon I thought I would do another round up of what’s on my iPod along with other bits and bobs.  * Photo by Guido’s. Current holiday podcasts : Dj Cruze Dj Ted Eiel One Phat Dj Martin Lucas Trance Euphoria – Dj Discovery ...

For those who have never heard of "Whose line is it anyway" you're missing a great show.  I recently re-discovered it while at the gym on Five US and I am convinced that the US version is funnier?  The UK show has had such comedians as Stephen Fry, Caroline Quentin and Ardal O'Hanlon. The US version Whoopi Goldberg, Brad Sherwood and Jerry Springer. Not sure what it is but the US show has an edge I just can't grasp, maybe it's Drew Carey? One of my favourite clips from the show:  Lots more on youtube... An Idea! It would be a fantastic idea...

Not long now before Santa is visiting all of the people that have been good this year ;)  This year has been a difficult year, full of ups and downs.  I hope that you all have a safe and fantastic Christmas. *picture source Terry Bain

Having dual monitors is now really a common element for any developer or designer.    I thought I would share some of the links I have collected in relation to backgrounds and applications that can make the dual experience better. Backgrounds http://www.dualmonitorbackgrounds.com http://www.csbmb.princeton.edu/~smcclure/dualmonitor.html http://interfacelift.com/wallpaper_beta/downloads/date/any/ http://browse.deviantart.com/customization/wallpaper/multidisplay/#order=9 http://www.dualscreenwallpaper.com/ http://www.3datadesign.com/gallery/eng/ http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/70-beautiful-dual-monitors-desktop-wallpapers/ Applications UltraMon – Lots of useful features. Display Fusion - Free Multi-Monitor Desktop Wallpaper Software. ...

Update It's been over 2 weeks since I last posed on my blog and the reasons are simple, holiday and real life.  Holiday to Majorca was fantastic,  unfortunately the weather wasn't that great but with old and new friends much fun was had.  Yes, being British, chucking it down with rain and we're all the in the pool playing volleyball.  I am not sure if it was holiday spirit or the vodka slushes but everyone was having a laugh.  I will be uploading all the holiday pictures to Flickr over the next couple of days.  If you'd like to see...

It's that time of year again whereby Andy and I had the opportunity to attend Intechnologies golf day. This being our second time down we had an idea of what the day was to consist of. Like last year we signed up to the beginners section whereby a golf pro would show us how to hit the ball may it be with a driver, number 7 or a putter. This year there was certainly alot more people which meant that there were 3 beginner groups all rotating to the 3 various areas of the course. I'd...

The time is near.  My current hosting packages have been outgrown.  I have a couple of projects that require access to resources shared hosting can't offer. This ranges from asp.net trust issues to database performance issues. What am I looking for?  Well I am looking for a windows VPS solution.  A search here and there keeps bringing up the same results. Easyspace and webfusion.  Both have benefits over each another but I am really looking for a host that has outstanding support that I receive with my current host.   I thought about 1 and 1 but I really have no intentions...

I'm not one for normal Saturday tv but last night I caught "Britains got talent".  The 10 finalists I have to say were fantastic.  If the winner wasn't chosen by the public then making a call like that would certainly be a tough one. For anyone interested in seeing the 10 finalists act again then here they are: Signature * 2nd most popular Kate & Gin Andrew Johnston * 3rd most popular Cheeky Monkeys Strike George Sampson * Winner Faryl Smith ...

My previous rant do you donate?, Seemed to get some people thinking.  I received several emails speculating that it's not  always obvious just how much we do actually take for granted. This is until someone, or something opens our eyes. Rant 1 : After a productive day at work and listening to a variety of different tunes for my upcoming Summer Mini Mix series and my next  funky house podcast I come home to find that my boiler has decided to pack in.  Lucky enough for me I have home care 400 which is a maintenance contract from Scottish Gas.  Upon...

Ever downloaded a podcast, thought hey that's good, think I'll subscribe? Every couple of weeks or so a new podcast is released and you enjoy the listening. It might not even be a podcast, could be a good cause, a blog article or even an opensource application your using. The above could be classed as products. Products take time, effort and dedication.  Think of all the blogs out there running on wordpress.  Out of all these blogs at what percent do you think they have donated back to wordpress?  A guess would be that it's a very low percentage....

We all take our computer, laptop for granted.   We turn them on, we do what ever it is we want to do and then turn it off.  What would happen if it didn't turn back on?  What would happen if the hard drive decided to call it a day or a nasty virus wipes everything? Realisation sets in you remember that you have photo's/iTunes albums on there that you don't have another copy of. It's all happened to us at some point, just depends on the extent of the damage.  Unfortunately I learned the hard way many years ago,...

Up until about 2 months ago my "free" BT Vault was running fine to the point that I started to do a little spring clean.  I was deleting zip files that were out dated or duplicated and noticing the amount of space I was using didn't go down. How odd. I sent an email to support, the "bot" replied with please state username, windows version blah blah blah.  I replied and to this day still have had nothing back. I decided to empty my vault, which you would of thought "hey it'll reset". How I was wrong....  No Files in my...

Two weeks ago while experiencing power kiting for my 1st time in St Andrews I managed to take some photos.  After reviewing the photos I thought I would send 2 into the BBC. Over the weekend it was brought to my attention that 1 of my pictures was on the readers section.  I thought I would have received an email notifying me but there it was http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/7307358.stm. Am chuffed to bits, shame they didn't put my web address up there ;)  More of the pictures I took can be found on my flickr page.

Everyone has been talking about it, Microsoft trying to buy Yahoo, and by the looks of it won't happen unless Microsoft show them the money.  Yahoo has alot of services under its belt Flickr being one of them.  I have a pro flicker account which I am now beginning to use to its full potential. Over the last couple of days I was sent a link to a group created on flickr titled "MICROSOFT: KEEP YOUR EVlL GRUBBY HANDS OFF OF OUR FLICKR" now some of the photo's uploaded to the group are very good. Make sure you check...

Why is it our government likes to spend a shed load of money on something and then less that 2 years later they pull the plug? Today it was confirmed that the Forth road bridge will be scrapping it's tolls in less that two weeks. However, only two years ago 4 million pounds was spent in putting in a new toll system to help with traffic flow. A whole £1 is the cost of the toll, which, when the toll has be banished where will they get the money for ongoing repairs etc?  Yeap you've guessed it, us. SNP...

Last year when Hot Fuzz was released I posted an item regarding how much I enjoyed the film. For anyone who hasn't read the above post or hasn't heard of Hot Fuzz then you're surely needing to nip yourself.  Quick overview: Top London cop, PC Nicholas Angel is good. Too good. And to stop the rest of his team looking bad, he is reassigned to the quiet town of Sandford. He is paired with Danny Butterman, who countlessly questions him on the action lifestyle. Everything seems quiet for Angel, until two actors are found decapitated. It is address to as an accident,...

For the last 2 months my Norton Anti Virus has been shouting at me since my subscription has now expired.  Today I thought it's about time I done something about it as you can be as careful as you can but , some how chances are those nasties will work there way onto your machine.  Once a nasty is on your machine then who knows what it'll do? Maybe turn it into a zombie to do what's needed steal your personal information make it unusable?   I would like...

Yes well, in the early hours of this morning I posted an entry in relation to how the weather was and how they said it was going to snow.  At that time when looking out the window, not a cloud in sight, just the stars.  Today while up in Dunfermline getting my beer money for holiday it totally changed.  The pictures were taken on my mobile phone(Nokia N95 8gb, 5 mega pixel). * If you would like the full resolution versions of these pictures please get in touch.  

The next couple of days forecast heavy snow.  I don't mind snow infact snowboarding down to the local would be an accomplishment. Getting home with all the gear would certainly be a problem though especially after a couple of drinks.  1st couple of days in this new year have just been horrible. Not long now till we invade Austria for a well deserved snowboarding holiday. Just hope that they get some fresh powder for us to carve up.

Happy New Year.  First day of 2008 and well can't say much for the weather. 2 snowboarding holidays, one to Les Deux Alpes and the other to Bulgaria. Started my podcasts. Couple of trips up north. Friends Sean and Tracy became parents. Ryan and Katie tied the knot. Friend and colleague Andy started his own blog. Ported my blog to subtext A previous place of employment Equator Scotland(eqtr.com)based in...

Well it's not too far away now.  Things are going to get a little hectic so before I forget *picture source: http://www.psptubez.com/

Every year during the festive season a family in Dalgety Bay decorate their house to the MAX.  Now this isn't a light here and there, this is the full monty.  In fact Scottish Power dedicate a sub station just to that house :P There are donation boxes situated around the house and all proceeds go to Childrens hospice. If you're traveling through Dalgety Bay at any time then makes sure you do a quick pit stop and donate some cash.

It's December, it's cold, it's magnificent. Tonight I was astonished by this view.  It's hard to believe that the rail bridge is 118 years old on the 4th of March 2008. For more information on the Forth Rail Bridge check out Forth Bridges Visitors Trust Website.

I am going to start off with a link to Amazons rental dvd service as we all know TV can be rather tiresome at Christmas showing the same classics every year.  I have been using Amazons dvd service for about 8 months now and I haven't had one little problem with it.  From when the concept was launched the structure of the pricing plans has changed for the better, well I think anyway, going from limited amount of dvds sent out a month to unlimited, prices starting at £3.99. Why not sign up for the trial what have you got...

It's booked and paid for, we're off to Mayrhofen in January.  I managed to persuade Sammy to agree to another spontaneous snowboarding holiday and Austria was our chosen destination. Mayrhofen is located 43 miles from Innsbruck and has 146km of pistes split into 40km of blues runs, 86km of red runs and 20km of black runs, the longest run being 9km.  About 30 minutes away you'll find the Hintertux Glacier peaking at 3250 metres. From sources weather can be extreme here going down to a chilling -30 with unpredictable white outs.  However, on a good day the views are meant to be breathtaking. We're...

Today while I plugged my iPod in to be charged something strange happened that I haven't noticed before.  My ipod is a couple of years old (30gb photo) however, this morning it's name was "yoda" and it's Capacity was "176.77gb".    After running several variations of the above through Google I couldn't find anyone else experiencing this glitch.  I did uncover numerous forum topics such as "what do you name your ipod" of which some names were amusing.  It's a shame that the reported space can't be used however, an understanding to why this is happening would be good. 

Subtext I have a to-do list that's getting bigger by the day.  I have had several emails asking when Part 2 of "Creating your first subtext skin" will be going live.  It's coming, I promise. Hopefully next week I'll be happy with it and send it to a couple of reviewers before publishing it.  If you want to be one of these reviewers please feel free to contact me.  My websites skin is slowly being updated and I do have a list dedicated to it.  Once this list has been completed I will be putting the files on the subtext skin site for download.  More...

On Wednesday morning Andy and I travelled down to Harrogate to our Datacentre to drop off a couple of servers before heading to our hotel in preperation for the InTechnology Golf Day.  During our tour of the centre one of the private suites stuck out like a sore thumb.  On to the golf day.  Being complete novices to the game Andy and I were put into the beginner teams where we learned to putt and pitch along with driving.  It was then a matter of playing 3 holes where unfortunately Andy's team won. Andy also walked away with 2 bottles of...

Happy birthday Jimmy I would also like to wish you all the best in your new job.  Tomorrow will be a long day for you I bet.  Will catch up soon ;)        

Everyone has favourite sites which they check daily to see what's going on in the world.  I subscribe to a number of blogs mostly nothing to do with work and this week there have been some absolute classics and some very odd: German man programs "hello world" into wheat field Video games hidden in the grooves of LPs Police mediate over burst condom in brothel Rats! Look who's getting tipsy on illegal booze Missing: Large lake in southern Chile  

Well we watched hot fuzz again and it's so good.  If you haven't seen it I would well recommend it.  Don't want to give to much away but some of the scenes are just class. Part Amazon Review A major British hit, a lorryload of laughs and some sparkling action? We’ll have some of that. It’s fair to say that Hot Fuzz proves that Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright’s brilliant Shaun Of The Dead was no one-off, serving up a superbly crafted British homage to the Hollywood action movie. If you don't fancy buying it as your afraid it's just "not for...

For anyone who hasn't been watching this series of Celebrity MasterChef where twenty four contestants have been battling it out comes to an end tonight.  Tonight see's them cook their best three-course meal where John Torode, Top Chef and restuarateur along with ingredients expert Gregg Wallace will cast there final decision where one  will be crowed Celebrity MasterChef.  The three that are going head to head are: Midge Ure Nadia Sawalha Craig Revel    I say it's going to be a very hard call as all three contestants have there strengths and weaknesses. If...

Podcast(Wikipedia) A podcast is a digital media file, or a series of such files, that is distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds for playback on portable media players and personal computers. A podcast is a specific type of webcast which, like 'radio', can mean either the content itself or the method by which it is syndicated; the latter is also termed podcasting. There are thousands of podcasts out there.  We all have our favourites, most coming from recommendations. My current iTunes podcast subscriptions are: Dj Cruze - Website - > Podcast Feed - >Fav Mix so far ...

It's come to that time of the year where we have to chat about where our snowboarding adventures will take us next year.  There was a glimmer of heading back to Bulgaria or even going to Canada.  After thinking what a disaster this years Balkan holiday was we're not going back to Bulgaria nor using Balkan holidays. Decisions, decisions.... What are we looking for? Well.  The resort has to have some long runs which are suitable for snow boarders. A park to have some fun in. Some good off-piste...

I didn't realise just how many trails there are over at braefoot. We took a quick trip round there since it was a nice evening.  The picture below was taken from braefoot looking out to Inchcolm Island. Inchcolm Island - River Forth There are numerous jumps ranging in size and ability. People have obviously put alot of work into creating and maintaing the area.  If your one of these people then please get in touch as respect where respect is due. Just down from where I took the above picture we came across: There are alot more jumps but unfortunately we didn't have time to...

It's been a busy month so hence no posts lately.  We went camping on my birthday weekend to Thurston Manor which resulted in coming home early sunday morning due to strong winds. I also needed to rebuild my laptop due to it running to a hault with the amount of cr@p that was on it.  For £40 from Asda this tent took a serious battering but it was fine. Money well spent.  Think next time we go camping we check the weather before going. Overall was very impressed with the asda tent. Thurston Manor, well what can I say.  The people we met were friendly...

All it takes is an email, or a text from a friend you haven't heard from in years to make you think back to the past. With the thanks of Bebo it has been possible to find out how people are doing. After chatting to some people I decided to have a look for old pictures. After an hour or two I came across pictures from an outing to Aviemore back in 2001 (I think). Unfortunately John who is pictured in some of the pictures died several years back in a car accident, your gone mate but not forgotten, rest...

Happy new year all. Lets hope 2007 will be a good one. For me I am off on a snowboarding holiday to Les Deux Alpes in a couple of weeks and I can't wait. I am sorry for the lack of updates but I am in the process of changing hosting packages.

Well not far now when Santa comes and visits all the people that have been good this year :P. I don't think I will have time to post much up over the Christmas holidays so have a good one and stay safe. If anyone is going up north either Cairngorm or Nevis (should it be open) then please get in touch. Sam and I will be hopefully heading up on Boxing day and/or the 27th. Till next time Si

I know I haven't posted in a while. November has been very busy. Sill Game gets 2 Scottish Bafta awards. Borat movie is sooooo fecken funny. Little Britain live at Edinburgh playhouse. Cairngorm mountain opens its doors. Glencoe gets first tracks. Road trip up north is happening this weekend. Still Game won 2 awards at the Scottish Bafta awards. One for Best performance and the other for Most popular Television programme. I feel these awards were...