Some of my friends and family will no doubt have noticed a message in their e-mail with a link in it allowing them to click and make amendments to their contact details. This is a part of a large contact details database (see the faq) that I have added to my site which will allow me to look up individuals details and stay in touch with them.

If you’ve already got your e-mail or get one in the next few days or so, congratulations - you’re a part of a select group of my friends I’ve chosen to help test the system and make sure its good to hold and manage every single one of my contacts details. You don’t have to do anything special to test it out, just read the FAQ and click your link to make sure I have your details correct and that any omissions are completed. Every update gets back to me so I’ll be able to see if things are working as they should.

If you’ve not got an e-mail, don’t fret, within the next two weeks I will have all of my contacts in the database and you will be able to amend your details every time they change using your e-mail link. If you still don’t have your link after that feel free to contact me and if I know you I’ll add you. Be rest assured that providing your details this way is as secure as handing me a piece of paper or sending me an e-mail with them on and you will not be spammed as a result of being in my database. In case you didn’t already know, I absolutely hate spam and those that send it.

Well its been a restful Christmas holiday and its now time to get back to Leeds and the work that lives there in earnest. Theres much to be done and exams are what feels like just around the corner. You might say they’ve rather crept up on us all, but thats the way things go. I wouldn’t imagine I’ll be writing here or indeed sitting online as much as usual but I’ll try and get on in between revision blocks etc.

I have a lot to look forward to though what with seeing friends after the holidays and of course going to the Wardrobe for the new year celebrations with Heather which I’m really looking forward to

I was directed yesterday to a very interesting article on the subject of content protection in the new Windows Vista and how it is increasing the cost of hardware and increasing the likelyhood a user will have problems with audio and graphics output as a result of content protection measures inbuilt into Vista.

All sources are creditied and despite seeming to be biased in places the article is actually very fair given the information available. You can read it on the link above. Comments on this would be most welcome.

On Christmas day I went a little mad with the camera so there are a fair few photos from this years family Christmas knocking about on my computer. I’ve picked a few of them and popped them into the Family Christmas 2006 gallery for you all to look at. It was a very enjoyable day and nice to be with the nearest and dearest. There is another family gathering tomorrow so there will probably be some shots of the wider family going up into the gallery when I get home afterwards.

Ok this is a bit of a rant I guess, but on Christmas eve I did end up wondering if there was anywhere and any point in time where someone isn’t trying to take thier gadgets everywhere with them.

There we were at midnight mass on Christmas eve, in the church where I used to sing in the choir - St. Michaels, and every time there was a silent moment I could hear what I thought was a radio, very quiet, tinny but musical and it wasn’t going away or in any way linked to what was going on in the church. After a while I finally realised what it was. Yes, you’ve guessed it, some stupid little child a few rows back, most likely recieving insufficient discipline from thier parents in general day to day matters, had an MP3 player stuck in their ears.

I just couldn’t really believe it, one of the few places in todays loud and non-sleeping world where you expect silence to really mean silence some idiot was ruining it all by dragging a part of their modern world into a building a few centuries its senior. It was at that moment that I started to wonder if all this technological progress is really such a good thing.

I realised though that its not the technology its self that causes us the grief, its how and most importantly when we choose to use it. Get this wrong and we’re all going to end up suffering in the long term.