Tag: review

Wet RoseI have been meaning to sort out a complete backup regime for a while now. Unfortunately every attempt I make finds something lacking in the program I trial…

This would force me to find another program to try out, which takes time. After a while I found it hard to find the time to find exactly what I needed as there was always something more important to do.

Then the other week the worst happened, my hard disk failed…

I had some of the stuff backed up, but how much? I really couldn’t tell. There are collections of different bits of my data scattered here and there, some on my iMac, some on my little HP server even some on DVD’s—from when I used to use them for my weekly backup. After a while my requirements spiralled out of control and the 4.7GB on a DVD wouldn’t even scratch the surface…

I know I haven’t done a complete backup in probably a year. My heart sank…

Total Money MakeoverI have recently finished reading The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey. I have been reading various financial blogs for a while now and this book is mentioned over and over again so I thought it was about time I picked it up.

The more of this book I read the more I realised how many of these financial based posts I have been reading have some basis from this book. There are also some great quotes and a lot of myth busting about peoples approaches to finances.

There are a fair few references to the bible but it’s not an overriding factor of the book so don’t let that put you off. The book is also American so there are some references that don’t apply over here in the UK but the basic ideas are sound.

I’m not going to go into great detail about the processes laid out in the book but here’s a few quotes and my overall thoughts.

KindlesAmazon recently announced three new Kindle devices, the new Kindle, the Kindle Touch and the Kindle Fire. Then immediately afterwards it was suggested that they were unlikely to be made available in the UK before the end of the year…

I still have a fair few paper books so I wasn’t too put out by this delay. Then when the new, cheaper, Kindle was displayed on the Amazon site for £89 I couldn’t resist and decided to pre-order one. And as it arrived today I decided to get to work and write a review…

Once I had placed my pre-order I wanted to get my hands on an old Kindle, which has now been renamed the Kindle Keyboard, to make sure I would be able to make a decent comparison between the two so I recently read a short book on Shirley’s Kindle.

I received my new Kindle through the post today. That’s why this post is a little late. I wanted to make sure I had plenty of time to play with my new gadget so I can give a honest opinion of it…

Epson Stylus Photo PX720WDMy old HP printer recently died a death and started making some horrible noises as it tried to feed through the sheets of paper. It wasn’t long before it completely failed to pull in the paper so it was time to hunt for a replacement. I had been pretty happy with my last two HP printers but there was one feature that was lacking that only seems to be available on Epson printers, CD & DVD printing…

Now that in itself is not a good enough reason to buy a printer so I had to look into the details of the different printers out there and try and come up with a suitable replacement pretty quickly.

As you can tell from the title of this post I settled on the Epson Stylus Photo PX720WD. I’ll go into how I made the choice and my view of the printer having been using it for a little while.

Camping PodAfter my first glimpse of glamping the other week I realised how nice it is to be away from the computer & TV!

I wasn’t sure of what a camping pod would be like. The basic idea is that you take everything you normally take camping except the tent. Instead you are provided with a wooden pod, or the shed as my wife’s colleagues keep referring to it.

This is a fairly simple construction but it has lights and a heater as well as being well insulated. There is also a patio table and some chairs for the small decking area out front.

Shirley & I were lucky enough to get one of those experience gifts for Christmas and decided to use it for the night in the camping pod experience. We added a second night to make the most out of the stay on Dartmoor.

Whenever I Visit Tigers, I Always Bring Along Some Good Reading MaterialI have recently finished the book The Art Of Non-Conformity by Chris Guillebeau so I thought I would write a review of it!

Overall I thought the book was pretty good, definitely worth a read. I would recommend it to everyone out there especially anyone who has the nagging feeling that there must be more to life than the normal life that seems to be forced upon you.

There is some common ground with The 4-Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss as this book also tackles the idea of living the life you want but instead on focusing on how to reduce your time spent working on stuff you may not enjoy the focus is on doing what you really love, working harder than before but on stuff that you really enjoy…

In other words the book helps you create, or at least helps you realise that it is possible to create, your ideal lifestyle based around something you are really passionate about.

Kindle with BooksI have been wanting to do a review of the Kindle for a while but haven’t really had a chance to get my hands on Shirley’s yet as I am still in the middle of a huge Stephen King book. An idea came to me and as the Kindle actually belongs to Shirley I decided to ask her to write a short review. So this is the first guest post on this site, written by my lovely wife.

Sell Your CrapI have at last started clearing out some of my clutter thanks to the e-book Sell Your Crap by Adam Baker. The content has a bit of an American bias but was very helpful in getting me off to a flying start…

This has been on my list of jobs to do for ages and I keep putting it off. There have been many little reasons holding me back over the years.

  • Not knowing how much something was actually worth.
  • Not enough experience using sites like eBay to make the amount I thought I should get for an item.
  • Where is the best place to sell different items.

The book helps get you into the right mentality to get rid of as much stuff as possible. I have only just started on this task but I have piles of stuff ready to sell already and I made over £120 in the first week with only a few hours work. And as I get more used to the sites the time taken to list something will only get shorter…

iPhone 4I recently got myself a nice new iPhone 4 with Orange. I have been with O2 for a few years now and one thing that really bugged me was the fact that you couldn’t get a proper PDF copy of your bill. Billing was all done online but the only way to view the bill was on their website. There was a download button but all that did was display a new trimmed down webpage with far too little information to be considered an actual bill…

So after many requests for them to change this I decided I had had enough and started looking for a new place to get my next phone from. In the end I decided to move to Orange as their package seemed to be pretty good value for money.

Anyway just before I actually made my move to Orange, O2 decided to implement a proper billing system and I was able to get my latest bill in PDF format. In fact I could download all my historical bills in PDF format as well… Looking back was this even a good reason to switch supplier anyway?

The 4-Hour Work WeekI have recently read The 4-Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss. The main concept of the book is pretty staggering when you think about it. Working for just 4 hours a week seems impossible so it must be a bit of a get rich quick style sales strategy. At least that was my initial thoughts when I first heard the name of the book branded about…

The basic premise is that you can set up a business and after a certain amount of time you can whittle the amount of your time required to maintain the business down to about 4 hours per week. Explained this way it already seems a bit more obtainable.

Anyway I thought I might as well give a quick review of the book that has inspired the use of the term Lifestyle Design all over the internet.