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My latest project is going to be a community website for the town and borough of Tunbridge Wells in Kent. I managed to recently acquire http://tunbridgewells.com (the domain being probably the most important thing for a geographical based website – It will allow for better listing in search engines.)

I was thrilled to be able to get hold of this domain (others I was looking at included eastbourne.co.uk & .com, rye.co.uk & .com and eastgrinstead.co.uk & .com) as the town has a population of over 60,000, and the borough, over 100,000, and a lot of people from the surrounding towns and villages visit Tunbridge Wells, so the website has huge potential.

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I just found this free theme from woothemes.com (bueno) and it’s great! At least, it’ll do until I get bored of it.. (no offence WooThemes!)

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I nearly finished making the theme for this site, but now I’m bored of it (it really doesn’t take long), so it’s either time to spend ages making a new one…or I could just find a readymade one.

So what have I been doing recently?

Well over the summer, I spent some time contacting a lot of people about the possibility of buying some domain names (geographical names, near to where I live), and I managed to acquire tunbridgewells.com, so I have started to develop this website with assistance from http://tom-lawrence.co.uk. The main website structure is in place, so now it is a case of building up some content and getting listed highly in Google. The aim is to be the number one ranked website for the search term ‘Tunbridge Wells’.

Apart from that, I’ve just been working (last week was exceptionally stressful). I’m not one to start celebrating Christmas at the end of October or anything silly like that, but I am looking forward to the break.

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They posted on their blog today that the beanies will be in stores globally from the 1st December, however, there will also be some on the aerial7 webite (aerial7.com) from the 15th November. They will cost $59.99, and when I saw this, I thought that the ‘living in the UK tax’ would put the price up to around £50, but no! They are only £36.24. Well, I say only..

There are 6 different designs, and for those who are interested, there is even a microphone for the iPhone so you can use it as a handsfree kit.

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All current adaptors are uni-directional…and would only allow for video signal out of the port.

This means that currently, only a few Macs will be able to use the giant screen as a monitor. Definitely not a games console or Blu-ray player. Fingers crossed that someone will develop something quickly. If not, Belkin have something planned for january.. :’-(

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I have just finished creating a search results page, and a 404 page. I’m particularly happy with the 404 page. Obviously, for the search results page to be of any use, I will have to put a search bar somewhere..

Things I still need to do include links for RSS feeds, a contact page/link, some form of social networking integration, clean up the code. I also need to make the sidebar a little more appealing..

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Coincidentally, last tuesday was also the day that Apple announced its new lineup of iMacs.

*sigh*

They replaced the 20″ and 24″ models with a 21.5″ (1920 x 1080 pixels = full 1080p HD) and a massive 27″ model (both are 16:9 as opposed to the usual 16:10. This means a better film viewing experience). The 21.5″ models come with a 3.06GHz Core 2 Duo processor (upgradeable to a 3.33GHz Core 2 Duo).

The cheaper 27″ model has the same 3.06GHz and 3.33GHz options (The spec seems to be the same as the 2nd 21.5″ model. Therefore, £150 for 78% more screen.. a no brainer), but the top 27″ model comes with a 2.66GHz Quad Core, Intel i5, and is upgradeable to a 2.8GHz Quad Core, Intel i7 “Nehalem” processor for £160.

Image from Apple website (Copyright to Apple, Inc.)

So now I begin the (what will soon be a regular) biennial event in which I work out how much money I can sell my current iMac for, work the how much extra I need, then start selling everything that isn’t bolted down.

I did have to stop and think ‘is it worth it?’ – I mean, I have a 24″ iMac (2.8GHz Core 2 Extreme, 3GB RAM, 500GB HDD) that is slightly less than 2 years old. That’s still pretty good. So why do I need to upgrade? Well that’s a stupid question. Obviously, I don’t need to upgrade. My problem is that I am quite materialistic, and can become quite obsessive. Not a great combination when it comes to such high end prices..

Currently, I use my iMac for video editing, image editing (Photoshop for stills, and After Effects for animations) and quite a lot of rendering. A 2.8GHz i7, or even, a 2.66GHz i5 would be quite a big step up in terms of the performance for Photoshop, After Effects, Final Cut Studio etc., (not to mention Grand Central Dispatch in Snow Leopard being able to utilise cores more efficiently). Also, the graphics card in the current iMac is an ATI Radeon HD2600 (256MB), so a jump to an ATI Radeon HD4850 (512MB) would offer greater performance. The 4GB of RAM and 1TB hard drive would also be a nice jump up from what I have now.

Up until this point, (although I would have liked one), I didn’t really think that getting one would be worthwhile, but then I found out about one brilliant new feature..

As with older models, there is a port on the back to connect an extra monitor, however, on the new 27″ (not on the 21.5″), there is a port that will enable you to connect another device to the iMac, and use the amazing 27″ screen as a monitor for something else. This could be a Bluray player, DVD player, games console or lots of other things, as long as there is a Mini DisplayPort adaptor, you can connect it. This is great news! I just happened to be looking to buy a new big monitor for a variety of devices. This will probably be less of a selling point for others, but for me, that’s what sold it.

( 26/10/09 – EDIT: Currently, it would seem that devices like DVD & Blu-ray players, games consoles etc. won’t work. Belkin are developing some form of box to deal with the problem.. I guess we’ll have to wait and see. )

So there we go. After more consideration, I came to the conclusion that the cost to upgrade (on top of what I can sell the current one for) is quite reasonable, and after a weekend in which I received an Adsense cheque from Google, my old Powermac was snapped up on eBay, and I discovered that an old Paypal account had a lot more left in it than I remembered, it looks like damage to the wallet will be minimal.

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A quick google later showed that it was the Aerial 7 Sound Disk Beanie. Headphones that are actually built into the beanie, and for those who have an iPhone, there is even a built in microphone for handsfree calls!

Personally, I can’t wait to get one, although they’re not available in the UK yet (should be soon).

Info below is from: http://bit.ly/4yMIc6

Sound Disk Beanie:
• Multi device
• Stereo headphone
• Works with iPhone™

Features:
• Engineered to deliver the highest quality listening experience from your mp3 player, cell phone or iPhone™
• Built-in microphone for use with iPhone
• Ultra-slim design for ultimate comfort without sacrificing your audio experience

Technical Specs:
• Driver Diameter: 35mm
• Impedance: 32?
• Frequency Response: 20~20KHz
• Sensitivity (S.P.L.): 100±3dB (at 1KHz)
• Input Plug Diameter: 3.5mm

Adapter:
• 3.5mm ~ 3.5mm iPhone™

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Ricky Gervais is very hit or miss, and unfortunately for him, it seems to be miss more often than hit. I never managed to get into The Office, but I did like Extras, although even that was grating by the end.

The Invention of Lying took a while to actually get into the story, but it was quite enjoyable (even if a few of the jokes were quite painful). For those who haven’t seen the trailer, here is the synopsis from IMDB:

Mark Bellison (Ricky Gervais) lives in a world just like our own, but no one lies there. Everyone is completely honest all the time. The first half of the movie shows Mark’s sad life a struggling loser, and how he is insulted by his completely honest coworkers, his Mom, and Anna (Jennifer Garner), his date.

His Mom gets sick, and he makes up a story about an afterlife to help comfort his Mom on her deathbed. Doctors and nurses overhear him, and soon Mark becomes an international authority on the afterlife. People camp on his lawn to learn more. Mark develops a story about the “Man in the Sky,” who functions like God, and he pastes his theology on two pizza boxes like Moses and the ten commandments. Mark learns to lie to help his friends, get money at the bank, cheat at the casino, and eventually to win the affection of Anna.

The idea behind the film is very interesting, and it did get me wondering what I would do in that situation. As the pace is fairly slow, there is nothing that threatening for the protagonist to contend with, instead, you’re just interested to see how else he can exploit the situation.

The comparisons to religion were quite funny, but possibly overdone by the end.

It was a lot better than I thought it’d be, I just wish that the stupid cinema hadn’t shown us the trailer for it right before the film started (it’s a very revealing trailer!)

(Oh, and this is in no way a review, it’s just my opinion. 5am is far too late for a ‘review’. Maybe I’ll update it later…)

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