chris nixon : nixonbyname.com

I do enjoy the occasional night out, but it is always tempered by the recovery period that follows. It can be tempting to throw caution to the wind and let it all hang out, but you’ll regret it in the morning and probably forget most of the fun you didn’t really manage to have. For what it’s worth, here’s 10 tips to make the morning after the night before that bit more tolerable:

1. On the night, don’t just drink alcohol. Mix it in with water and fruit juice, and you’ll go longer, and also aid the recovery period.
2. Don’t mix all three of the major drink groups. Keep it to a maximum of two of wine, beer and spirits. Go for the trio, and it will in disaster. You’ll also be recovering for a week.
3. At bed time drink a glass of milk or a fruit juice smoothie. This will start the recovery period as you hit the pillow, rather than the next day. If it’s been a really rough night, take a couple of Alka-Seltzer too.
4. If you are able, sleep in for a bit, but no more than an hour. You don’t want to throw your sleep pattern out of whack. If you need it and if you can get it, take a short nap in the afternoon.
5. Get up, get going, and get outside. A walk will really blow the cobwebs away. Why not call some of the people you had fun with the night before and enjoy it together? Avoid walking past pubs.
6. Drink as much as you can. You need about 8 glasses of water for a normal day, so when you are re hydrating, you need to drink at least a couple more.
7. Avoid too much caffeine. You need to get to sleep the following night too, and caffeine will hinder a good night sleep.
8. If you have a headache, drink water and take a painkiller but it’s best to avoid ibuprofen, because it can dehydrate and this will only compound the problem.
9. Eat plenty of good stodgy food. Try and keep it fairly healthy. Home favorites like Macaroni Cheese, Mince and Potatoes, and Steak and Vegetable Pie are all good. Avoid greasy food, but also avoid eating like a rabbit. Neither is likely help.
10. Go to bed at a reasonable hour, but not more than an hour earlier than normal. You want to get back to your regular sleep pattern as quickly as possible.

There is another tip…avoid alcohol in the first place, but then I’m not going to preach am I? Are there any techniques you use for a quick recovery? Let me know in the comments.

Technorati Tags life,tips,food,alcohol,recovery,drinking,party,pub

With all the hype surrounding the launch of the BBC’s iPlayer, I thought I should sign up and give it a go. I’m going to go through the installation step-by-step, and let you know how I get on. At the moment it’s XP only, but the BBC say there should be a Mac and Vista version by Autumn.

After signing up at the BBC iPlayer site, I got an email a few hours later accepting me to the closed beta. This kind of surprised me. I thought that the beta was open. There has been a closed beta of the iPlayer for a couple of years now that was impossible to get on, and in all the promotion on the BBC over the last few days, there was nothing I saw that said it was still closed. Very strange, but not to worry. I’m in there now.

The email received contains a step-by-step guide to installing the software. I click through and put in my authentication details in a pop-up password box (eew), and I’m in to the iPlayer system. There are a few good shows on the front page, one of which is the Top Gear Polar Special, which I missed during the week. I click through, hit the bright pink download button…and hit the skids as it informs me that I need to use Internet Explorer for this system. Brilliant job BBC, way to get the geeks on board. This’ll probably be part of that deal the BBC did with Microsoft a few months back.

I reluctantly open up IE, and go through the same process again. At the same stage I was stopped before, it now tells me I have to install the iPlayer software. Now we’re getting somewhere. I click the link to download, and a pop-up asks for my authentication details again. I had saved this the previous time around, but apparently I’ve got to cut and paste them across again. Once this is done a file downloads very quickly to my desktop, and I double click.

The installation process is very quick, and at the end it asks me if I want to set up a pin for parental safety. I decline, and the software opens up saying my library is currently empty. I click back to IE, hit the download button again, and the IE pop-up warns me that something is trying to open. I click to allow this, and hit the download button again…and hit the skids again as it asks me to log-in.

This is getting stupid. Apparently I have to create a log-in for my account. The log-in details they sent me in the email don’t work because they are for getting on to the site, not using it. I’ve used many betas in my life, but never one as complicated to use as this. I think most people would have given up by this point, but I’ve come this far, and I’m going to get to the end of this marathon if it kills me.

I register for the service, which is pretty easy, doesn’t require any email authentication, and logs me in automatically at the end of the process.

So…I click the download button again. A little flash box says it’s checking my progress, and the the Top Gear show pops up in my iPlayer software. At last! It’s a 60 minute show at 387Mb, and at this time in the morning, the download speed seems pretty fast. I am at 5% after a couple of minutes. While it’s downloading I have a click around the site to see if I can find anything else cool to download.

I navigate to the news and weather section to get the latest news and weather forecast (they should download pretty quickly) but unfortunately, this section doesn’t have any news or weather in it. Once again, very strange. I can get World Business Report, but that sounds as dull as dishwater. I could also get Your News, a show based on user generated content which is not really what I want either. There are a few other shows available in other sections, but I already have all the ones I want saves on my Media Center. There’s no point in slowing down the show I want to watch.

After a cup of tea, I’m back at the PC with Top Gear fully downloaded. It took about 45 minutes, which is faster than a normal torrent download for me. I click play and a nice little player opens with a BBC2 ident playing. The show starts immediately after, and I click the full screen to watch the show in all it’s Top Gear top camerawork 16:9 glory. I’m a little disappointed by the picture quality. I have got a pretty high resolution wide-screen monitor, so that could be why the picture looks fuzzy. It may not be the same on the LCD TV in the living room.

I can’t see this replacing less legal methods of getting TV shows from the BBC any time soon, they are just more convenient. Once you hit play, you have 7 days to watch the show before it expires, otherwise you have 30 days. That’s just a bit silly, being that my license fee pays for these shows already. They didn’t put the same restrictions on video recorders, so why start now? There are rumors that the DRM can be stripped from shows, but that’s an inconvenience that would just make some just look for the torrent.

We are only one day into the launch and I know that there are many improvements planned. I understand that they released the XP version quickly, and that has pissed off the OSX and Vista users, but not allowing Firefox is absolutely ridiculous. That’s surely a matter of a tiny bit of code. The system seems a little bit unfinished. I’d prefer to search for shows within the software, rather than from a web site. If they did that it would also save me from opening the dreaded Internet Explorer.

I’ll keep coming back to this software. I’m excited about what it could become, but at the moment I’m disappointed.

[update: Ryan Stewart at ZDNet had a very similar experience]

I’ve been lacking a bit of inspiration in my photography over the last couple of weeks, so yesterday I spent a little bit of time going through my most “awesome” photographs on Zooomr. I think it’s time to organize a photowalk and steel some ideas from be influenced by other people.

View on Flickr :: View on SmugMug :: View on Zooomr

The very first impression you get about Pownce is how pretty it is. The guys over there have obviously thought very hard about the look of the interface. This is very important when you are trying to get the cool kids on board.

It’s extremely easy to use, and while the same could be said about it’s “rivals” Twitter and Jaiku, the simple interface seems to be more compelling at Pownce. I generally visit the site six or seven times a day even if I have nothing to say, because my contacts normally do have something interesting to say.

The desktop client, which is still in alpha, does not yet have the full functionality of the web site but is still nicely designed, and is a pleasure to use. I find it handy for a “quick check” of what is going on but I’ve uninstalled it at work because it can be a little distracting.

Pownce has a nice little feature to share links, events and even files. It’s built in mp3 player allows you to play music shared by your contacts…a very nice feature. Unlike Twitter, replies are contained within a post, meaning you don’t have to suffer half conversations. I was a regular user of Twitter before. I liked the social aspect, but it had become very much a case of sifting out the spam. I had given Jaiku a go, but while the interface was much better than Twitter, it was very quiet, and none of my contacts were using it. Pownce is now my micro-chatting client of choice.

I would like to be able to add updates by SMS or by chat client, but I understand that much of the functionality of Pownce has not yet been put into practice. I am seeing small new features added every week. I like to see a site like this developing fairly quickly. Twitter hasn’t added a cool feature for ages, and you generally get the feeling that they are chasing their arse keeping up with the growing user base.

If you get the chance, give Pownce a go. It really is fun. I’ve a couple of invites left over. If you’d like one, leave a message in the comments, and I’ll hook you up.

Technorati Tags: pownce, twitter, jaiku, chat, web2.0

View on Flickr :: View on SmugMug :: View on Zooomr

Welcome to Nixon by Name. I should explain why I’m here. I have been a very happy Vox user for just about a year now. I like the community spirit, I like the design, and I like the simplicity of use. These features are all brilliant for the new blogger. There are not many blogging systems where you have an immediate audience straight out the box.

Over the last few months, however I have begun to feel restricted by what Vox had to offer. Keen to avoid the fugly interface problems that have beset MySpace, they do not allow you to add in many extras. This is in many ways a good thing, but for those of us with half an ounce of taste, it has just meant that we cannot do what we want.

To my point. Last month, without warning, or even announcement Vox decided to restrict their RSS feeds to two lines of text, and a thumbnail of any photographs or videos. This means that any of my readers now have to click through to the web site to get more than the vaguest idea of what I’m writing about. As a result I have found there is much less interaction on my posts. Viewers just aren’t bothering to click through. Why should they…they don’t know if there is any point.

I understand that Vox want to drive traffic to the site, but that is not compatible with my needs, which is to make it as easy as possible for my readers to read and interact with my writing. I think Vox have made a big mistake. I think they’ll find that instead of pushing users to the site, many users will not bother. I know I didn’t.

As I have made the move to here, I have also got the feeling from Vox that I do not own my own content. There is no way to export my posts, and that is extremely annoying. They want to tie me in, so I must start fresh here.

So it’s goodbye Vox and my neighborhood over there, and hello WordPress. I wish you all the very best. Please pop by to say hello. I may pop past to say hello every now and again, many of you are very good writers, and I wouldn’t want to miss that. If any of you have blogs outside of Vox, let me know your address in the comments, and I’ll add you to my Google Reader feeds.

UPDATE: Nick O’Neil from Vox responded by saying: “Sorry to see you leaving - however, your full feeds are still available for your blog, they’re just located at atom-full.xml rather than atom.xml (the trimmed feed). They’re auto-discoverable, just like the trimmed feeds so any feedreader will detect them just the same. Do come back if you’re ever missing Vox!”

However I think it’s all very well the full feeds being available, but they are not obvious to most users…and especially those that have already subscribed to my feeds. It’s a cheap little trick by Vox, and I think it’ll backfire on them unless they do some back tracking.