I'll give you a clue...

Went to our friends babies Christening today, the iPhone proving to be invaluable as I had no idea where we were going but the iPhone map showed us the way. Great feature as it not only shows you the start and finish but also shows your position on the map. Also by switching to satellite you can see the roads as they are from above, Hybrid takes it a step further by adding in the road names. All that was missing was the annoying voice informing me where/when I should turn next!

The Christening went really well, we found ourselves starting off sitting with the wrong family but it was all good until I started singing. I was trying to feel the whole atmosphere and I felt that I was very angelic but the laughing was a real confidence blow! I had to occupy Baby up at the back of the Church in the children's area as she was getting restless and we read about David and the Lions. It wasn't long until imaginations were running wild and we were trying to figure out where the Lions were in the Church.

After the Christening we headed over to the party, a really nice spread was laid on and it was very enjoyable. I followed the Formula 1 on my phone and although it wasn't the same as watching the race it was great to see the events unfold and Lewis was unlucky in the end and it was a shame that the expected rain didn't hit as it had done so last week. We later played the game from Friend's where we throw a ball to each other without dropping. This worked until the children at the party got involved and then we ended up playing the weirdest game of charades ever. Believe me I am scarred!! After the party we headed home to relax and I have now come home to sort out my MOT as just found out I am a month late. There goes my record of being forward thinking and maintained...

Robinho and Nand'oh!

Image via Wikipedia My son kept up his scoring run today and looked very strong against the other children in his age group. I think scoring his first goal a few weeks ago made him a lot more confident and he seems to be using his head instead of running about in a dream world. Still we are yet to see him unveil his celebration, we have practised several but he is yet to let it out. My daughter went to Pony Club but was disappointed this week as the usual activities weren't that engaging and she found herself sitting and listening to the older riders speak about show jumping. She said she did enjoy just spending time with me as we drove about together

My afternoon consisted of watching the football after I had taken my daughter to home. Unfortunately every goal scored took place when I was out of the room, I was in the process of getting ready to go out but what are the chances? The game started with what I was dreading to see and that was Manchester City's new record breaking transfer finding the back of the net. The ball fired in from a deflected free kick taken by Robinho which spun into the goal after hitting Obi Mikel in the wall. Seeing him running around with his thumb in his mouth just made me angry.

Thankfully Carvalho, who must gear up for matches these days by ripping at his hair, found the back of the net within three minutes. Chelsea looked strong from here onwards but it took until the 53rd minute for Lampard to put is into the lead. This was followed by Anelka bringing the score to 3-1 and that was how the 'Middle' Eastlands clash finished. John Terry's sending off was a disappointment as he is set to miss out on our clash with the other half of Manchester who lost today against Liverpool. Should be an intriguing game as Ronaldo should be back, Drogba will have more minutes under his belt and our main defenders are out as Vidic for United also was sent off today.

All this excitement must have had an effect on my head tonight as it clearly wasn't screwed on properly. After going out I realised I had forgotten my wallet, I had also left my shoes in the car and finally we were too late to go to cinema. We eventually tried Nando's but fled the scene when nothing really appealed to our bellies. We finally ended up back home with sushi, tika chicken and chocolate eclairs FTW. Well she was happy and it ended up being a cheap night!

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Updates

Several updates to tell you about this evening, I will start with the iPhone and although I haven't experienced many problems I have seen posts on FriendFeed where people have complained. Mainly crashes requiring a reset and battery life, I have had occasional dropped calls but nothing that I would consider an issue.

Update includes:

• Decrease in call set-up failures and dropped calls
• Significantly better battery life for most users
• Dramatically reduced time to backup to iTunes
• Improved email reliability, notably fetching email from POP and Exchange accounts
• Faster installation of 3rd party applications
• Fixed bugs causing hangs and crashes for users with lots of third party applications

• Improved performance in text messaging
• Faster loading and searching of contacts
• Improved accuracy of the 3G signal strength display
• Repeat alert up to two additional times for incoming text messages
• Option to wipe data after ten failed passcode attempts
• Genius playlist creation

For further information on how to update see apple.com.

FriendFeed

The FriendFeed beta also received an update this evening, I found out from scanning through my feeds on Google Reader via the iPhone. Since the beta was made public I have rarely ventured back to the original site as I prefer the improvements made available. The FriendFeed developers have listened to the community and this latest version is even better.

Update includes:

• Improved posting interface
• Navigation on the left
• Improved Rooms navigation
• Friend Lists easier to use
• Simpler and cleaner

Furthe details are available on the FriendFeed blog.

Facebook

Finally it's not a good day for fans of Ye Olde Facebook design as everyone has now been upgraded to the new version. No doubt there will be multiple Groups created angry at this becoming mandatory but I am sure they will warm to the changes if they give it a chance!!

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Child of the new Century...

My daughter was born in the year 2000 enabling her to qualify to be a part of the Child of the new Century scheme. It follows the lives of children growing up in the UK in the 21st century and monitors their development. Usually it's just a routine visit which occurs occasionally and they just check up on how she is getting on .

Yesterday was my night to have the children and we played in the garden until the football started, it was then my daughter lifted up her shirt to reveal a device strapped around her waist. This is apparently to monitor her daily routine and movements, I queried the device with their mother and she said that recently they collected one of her teeth that had fallen out. I find it all on the extreme side and evasive as it's not really fair on her although she treats it as a novelty and doesn't seem to find it uncomfortable...

Here are some images I took from my iPhone >

Through collecting information on you and your children as they grow into adulthood, we can try and change things for the better. Britain is the world leader in this type of research – similar surveys have been carried out before, following children born in 1946, 1958 and 1970 into adulthood. From these studies we have found out, for example, that good health services for mothers and children, and good housing and proper food make a lasting difference to health and success as children grow up.
[Source]

Threeo!

Image via Wikipedia I haven't watched too many England games recently but I felt that the games against Croatia will ultimately be the group deciders. If we had beaten them in both games during the Euro 2008 qualifiers we would have gone to the finals. Instead we lost both matches and missed out on the tournament which was a huge disappointment.

It was great watching as a neutral and there was some good football played but it wasn't the same! In the build up to this match a lot has been about the quality of the England team. Bilic has been ruthless in his assessment in the current setup and that we have made no progress in the last couple of years. Definitely fighting talk from a manager confident in his teams ability. Don Fabio hasn't entered into the prematch mind games opting to let the players do the talking on the pitch.

Didn't England send out a message; a hat-trick from Arsenal's Theo Walcott and a strike from Wayne Rooney ended Croatia's impressive home record. Mario Mandzukic scored a late goal for the Croatian's but they were well out of the game and were in no way going to start a late comeback. The key moment in the match I felt was early in the second half Robert Kovac jumped for a header leading with a stray elbow that caught Joe Cole in the top of the head knocking the Chelsea man to the floor with blood pouring from his head. Nothing to serious as he was able to return to the bench after being assessed to view the final stages of the game.

A great night for Theo Walcott and a great start from England as this will send out a statement and hopefully set us up well for the next internationals. Theo's first goal came on 26 minutes as some poor defending allowed Walcott to latch onto a loose ball and strike the ball home. The second goal on 59 was identical to the first with Rooney providing the assist. Rooney was next on the score sheet before Frank Lampard fired in after some great footwork only to have his goal disallowed. Then came the Croatian effort although the referee should have pulled up play as John Terry was almost kicked in the head but Mandzukic's goal was allowed to stand before Walcott wrapped up the night. Great result and lets see this more often!!

At World's End

The Large Hadron Collider is expected to go into action this morning at precisely 9:30am [CET], the biggest experiment in the history of physics at a cost of £5 billion. Cern has two live streams, one in Windows Media format, the other in Flash. Composed of millions of individual pieces, the collider uses more than 9,000 magnets to accelerate two beams of protons to almost the speed of light.

When the beams collide, they shatter into their constituent parts, allowing scientists to glimpse particles that don't exist in standard environments [Source]. The aim of this experiment is to discover whether dark matter, extra dimensions and the Higgs boson known as 'God's particle' actually exist. This story is everywhere today, are we about to witness something incredible? Is this experiment going to trigger the end of the World? I am going to put the kettle on while I wait and see what happens...

Update

If you are reading this message then we have all survived, I was ready to take refuge underneath my desk but the Large Hadron Collider hasn't destroyed the World...

The Large Hadron Collider is the largest and most complex scientific instrument ever built and the highest energy particle accelerator in the world. The accelerator is located 100 m underground and runs through both French and Swiss territory. ( 27km circumference) Year 2008 marks the culmination of 20 years of work by over 8000 scientists thousands of engineers, technicians and support staff from over 80 different countries.

I followed the developments online through various sites and so far we are safe. Various sites were set up to monitor the historical events taking place. I followed twitter.com/cern and they provided updates to inform the followers of the activity as it happened. I have listed below in a timeline, all updates are [CET] ~

9:30. First beam injected and stopped at 1/8 of a circuit. Loud applause in the control room

10:00 The beam has now done half a lap. Still going well.

This is the big moment. Next injection should one full circuit.

10:25, 10 September 2008. Historic moment. The LHC first beam has just circulated. Amazing moment.

13:55, the LHC's second beam is now on its way.

15:02, that's it. Second beam all the way round and the LHC is up and running

Scientists have hailed the switching on of the Large Hadron Collider successful, although this is only the beginning of the experiment which will recreate the conditions a few moments after the Big Bang. They have now fired two beams of particles called protons around the 27km-long tunnel but are yet to go fully operational which will involve smashing the atoms together. You can follow the activity here via a live web stream direct from CERN.

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Apple Announcements

Image via CrunchBase, source unknown Really into my iPhone at the moment, I haven't even had it a week yet but already I have found that I am totally dependant on the device. The always connected Apps allow me to check my Social sites and keep up to date with everything at 3G speed as well. Today Apple hosted an event in San Francisco where they announced three new products. No not a new iPhone already thankfully but instead an update to iTunes [iTunes 8], a new iPod Nano and also an updated iPod Touch. They also announced that they are to be releasing a patch for the iPhone addressing dropped calls, reception issues, and app-related crashes.

iTunes 8 was released shortly after the even and can be downloaded here. Firstly a new album art grid layout is available, when clicking on an artist with multiple albums it provides them in a list view like in previous versions. The most significant new feature are the new Genius Playlists, a feature that promises to create great playlists for you based on the music in your library [Source]. The updates to the iPod Nano and iPod Touch look very impressive and with the Nano coming in a range of colours you know that they are going to be a popular present this year.

Finishing with the iPhone, already there have been 100,000,000 downloads (in 60 days) from the App store which is amazing. Jobs said that the App Store was available in 62 countries now. And that there are about 700 games in the App Store. After showing off Need for Speed Undercover on the iPhone and the new on-screen d-pad from Gameloft he stated "Now you can make a pretty good argument that it is the best portable device for playing games on - and a whole new class of games". Over to you Nintendo and Sony as I am sure they will have something to say about that statement!!

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