Kingston Cons - the future of telecommunications: Obviously some people don't agree with my view on the price change. I really think though that the other ISP's will get clogged up and have constant engaged tones. I guess I will stay with Karoo for now and see how the other ISP's cope and what reports they get as more and more people hop on the wagon, I will NOT change to AOL though on a matter of principal ;)
Kingston Internet Ltd are my ISP and as I mentioned earlier in my blog are changing all their prices. I've just telephoned them to upgrade to the Karoo Anytime service, which is a whopping £30 a month, but gives me completley unlimited, unmetered access! Hopefully it should never be engaged or down, at that price, with a relativley small client base, unlike say RedHotAnt who have constant engaged tones. I personally would not put up with having to try dozens of times just to connect, I'd rather pay a bit more money and be sure of getting on... we will see how the service goes. If it is ok, I can feel a webcam of some sort coming on for the site!
Joseph Wu's Origami Page: the first link to an origami page on this blog! I said I'd try to bring you more than just magic links... this one is via usr/bin/girl one of my favourite blogs... I should really try to make some models I picked up Robert Harbings 'Magic of Paper Folding' whilst on holiday, not a bad find for about £3! And its illustrated by Rolf Harris! I might start off by learning Mike Close's frog prince trick, or even Carl Andrews 'You don't know Jack' which is his version. Or Jay Sankey has a nice idea on one of his videos called 'Instant Origami' where a piece of folded paper instantly changes into a shape. Off to seek out some more Origami pages...
MCPCentral.Com - Flash & ASP Part1: Learn how to integrate the nice frontend of flash with the power of ASP, I'm in the process of teaching myself Flash4 but I guess this will be a little outdated now Flash5 has been released. The second part of the tutorial covers a little bit of Flash5.
RANTMODE: BTCellnet Had an interesting conversation with BTCellnet this dinner time, basically I had a Cellnet PAYG phone which I gave to my Sister when I swapped my phone for a Nokia 3210 on 121... She was talking to her best friend, who incidentally rang her, and suddenly she got cut off, and her phone had lost all her credit, which was about 4.50ukp. So she rang BTCellnet, and explained, and they said they would have to get an engineer to look into it... cut to a few weeks later, one of her first days at University and she was in Safeways shopping, when they rang her mobile, she told them it was not a good time. I think she eventually got the 4.50ukp out of them. Then I got this call today, apparently they have looked into the problem, and at first couldn't find anything, and then suddenly they found that according to them she only lost about 2.40ukp... so they could issue her with a 2.50ukp voucher, so I got a bit angry with them asking if there was any compensation for the time she lost use of her mobile etc. But no we can't do that Sir! So much for customer care! In their words "We only issue 2.50ukp vouchers" for a company that is predicted to make a 300million profit upto March 2001 you think they would invest in a little Customer Care... in fact if they sorted their network so people couldn't chip their phones, and steal their profits or even use fake credit card numbers to get credit then they might be able to invest a little into making sure these problems don't happen, the guy on the phone said he still didn't know why it happened, glad to know that they have the experts working for them! Anyway she is thinking of changing her phone to One2One so thats some comfort. /RANTMODE
ProMagic @ www.ezboard.com: Received this link via e-mail, because they got my mailing address from a 'Magic Forum' and thought I might be interested! Anyway have a look at this forum its for Professional or Advanced level Magicians, not many messages there yet, and a bit of a struggle to register, but it might get going... you need a password which is the first initial and last name of the magician to which we attribute inventing the 'olram subtlety'!
CardMSG Magic: A site to keep your eyes on, still a little under construction but as the site says it contains an Online Guide to Quality Magic, Magicians and Magiclinks...
Blogger Comments: A very simple but elegant implementation of a comments attachment using PHP. I may wait for the Alpha of Blep but probably play about with this in the mean time, so watch out for a comments system to appear!
Thoughts about a possible Blogger Comments method. An open letter to Blogger from hit-or-miss.org about a possible way of adding a 'static' comments system into blogger. A good idea I guess but you might see an increase in ftp traffic. I'd rather use a non-blogger system.
My Atomz search is not working, I'll figure it later, I've changed the header logo and made the background stripey! Might be some more site updates tommorow.
I really love the cute Linux mascot who goes by the name of Tux so XPenguins is something I will be running on my desktop, as soon as I have cleared my e-mail from my Windows setup and switched over.
The Magic Pages: Contains some valuable lessons in various magic techniques and also a Library section which has an indepth look at various books, giving you a good description of the contents.
If your in the market for a new set of cups for the Cups and Balls then check out the Selecting a set of Cups page from James Riser, who is a performer and a Machinist. He compares all the different cups on the market and gives you a frank review with some great photos. Personally I have never done the Cups and Balls, and the only way I think I would do it, to fit my character is to use Coffee Mugs or Polystyrene Cups and probably rolled up banknotes or paper. I just think those nice shiny cups and crochet balls scream PROP! I like to try and use everyday objects where at all possible. I read that Paul Gertner has a nice way of making a Chop Cup from a Coffee Mug in his recently re-printed book 'Steel and Silver'. I think I might look at trying David Williamsons two cup routine with Coffee Mugs or Vending Machine Cups, or maybe even Bob Farmers Cyclops routine. The only drawback being that if using Mugs you need a routine where you don't have to stack the cups!
Started to update the site by adding a Guestbook using an excellent cgi script called Megabook please sign it after your visit by clicking the link on the right of the screen. Next on the agenda is a search box, and a bit of a cosmetic update I think.
Magic Reference Page: Contains book and video references for certain tricks, for example if you are looking for a good sponge ball or linking rings or egg bag trick.
Roger Crosthwaite: Roger is a top UK card guy, and this website designed by Paul Gordon promises to give you good deals on his books, and two new videos. Keep your eyes peeled!
Secrets Revealed!!!: Whilst we are exposing things, check this site out, the Masked Magician Reveals... I think it needs to be read with tongue in cheek, in case you don't realise ;)
Patent for Copperfield/Gaughan Flying Illusion: I lost this link ages ago, its just been reposted on alt.magic... quite interesting to read how Copperfield achieves this illusion, and just goes to show that if you want to protect a magic illusion, you have to expose the secret so that anyone can read it!
Card Corner: An excellent Card Trick site, with effects by Aldo Colombini, Jay Sankey, Bob King and Tom Craven to name but a few. Most of the effects have been contributed by visitors or members of the Rochester Magic Clubs.
Sodaplay is a creative Java based 'Executive Toy' where you can make, build and play with things made out of masses, springs and muscles. Build little creatures, and robots. Very addictive!
Multimap.com Home Page: A really good UK mapping page, gives you accurate street maps, and travel directions. Good for people like me who have no sense of direction whatsoever and get lost going out of the end of the street!
Magic and Illusion About.com Chat: This has been open a while, I don't know why I haven't visited sooner, meet some top name stars and chat magic, heaven!
I signed a petition today at our Church Service for people in Nigeria as the government are trying to get everyone to adopt Sharia Law. Basically this is the law that is fundemental to Islam. The Religion is the state, so any politics or law making that goes on is all tied in with their religion, which as Christian I can see that this is soooo wrong. Your faith, or even lack of it, should be your personal decision, the state should be a completly seperate body with no religious views. The women are the hardest hit, you can read about some of the ridiculous things that they have to abide by in the Fatawas Regarding Women. Basically Women are not allowed to go out unless they are fully covered from head to toe, and accompanied by a male. They cannot look at anybody that is not a member of their own family. I am religious, and I REALLY don't want to denigrate other peoples religions or beliefs, but hello.. 21st Century anybody? If thats what the Islamic Religion is about you can stick it! Trying to force your religion onto someone is well out of order if you ask me.
My ISP Karoo have decided to change their pricing plans. They have just changed over from being run by Kingston-Internet to being run by Kingston Communications. For those of you interested, I live in a City called Kingston-Upon-Hull (the only City in the UK to have the Kingston title apart from Kingston-Upon-Thames!) and we are lucky enough to have our own phone company Kingston Communications. With me so far! So I was with a service called Karoo Xtra which I paid 15 pounds a month for, and I could use our own 01482 local call number to dial the internet which costs 5p for unlimited time. Now they have put that service up to 25 pounds a month!! Also they have introduced Karoo Anytime which is 29.99 a month which gives the elusive un-metered access 24/7... or Karoo Freetime which for 9.99 a month gives you unmetered on an evening and weekends... ahhhhrghh the choices! I think in the end I'll go for Karoo Anytime for un-metered access, as I use it enough... and it means a distinct possibility of a web-cam for this site!! (don't all cheer at once!) But the thing is I can go for something like RedHotAnt which offers unmetered access for 20 pounds a year, but on sites like ISP Review it doesn't get a good rating, with constant engaged tones and 100+ tries to get through! So I think I'll stick with the local option.
Oops serious lack of posting, I don't know how people manage to blog on a daily basis, excuses... well we've been busy at work re-wiring our entire network to convert to CAT5 and as a consequence I haven't had an Internet connection in my office (not that I blog from work, honest guv!) so when you see a computer 9-5 you really just want to rest when you come home, well thats my excuse anyway! Today I have just bought a new External 56k Modem and a spanking new Yamaha CD Writer :) So now I am ready to convert to Linux as it didn't take kindly to my internal Winmodem :( So I will be posting some more about my linux escapades as a total Linux Newbie. Lastly I promise more posts in future, and some magic related ones as well I guess! Also look out for some additions to the site.
