They say you don’t really know a person until you walk in their shoes but I think one way to get a feel for a person is to see what they keep in their wallet. I’m not exactly sure what it reveals about you but I thought I’d document the contents of my wallet so you can see what’s in there and what it says about me.

So taking them from the top, here’s what you can see:

1. £11.33 including a £10 note with ‘968′ written on it (no idea why).
2. $11 US, $20 Australian and one Scottish pound note. The first two from when I’ve visited those countries and the latter is to prove that Scottish pound notes (which have been phased out now) actually existed!
3. West Yorkshire metro card (expired) complete with dodgy photo of me looking like I’ve just escaped from a lunatic asylum (I’ve tried to recreate the crazed look but never managed it).
4. Picture of my good lady and me taken a few Christmases ago (can be seen in the clear view section of my wallet).
5. The wallet itself - container of all else in the photo. Made by Animal.
6. Various receipts. I keep them after I buy things until I get too many then just throw them out. I should probably have a system and keep the ones from larger cost items but I don’t. Bad John!
7. Some Moo cards. If only I had someone to give them to…
8. Some dodgy photo booth photos - everybody should have some!
9. An AA card, credit card, Morrisons miles card (even though I never shop there), nectar card, debit card and (essential) starbucks card.
10. Some first class stamps (only one left) and a note from my good lady reminding me that she loves me!
11. A security card to get into my office (which I’ve never used).
12. Airline tickets from my 2003 trip to New Zealand - the first time I ever flew business class - which was a wonderful holiday.
13. Tickets from a trip my good lady and I took to Warwick Castle in 2000. It was early days for us and we had a fantastic time!
14. Global Video card (everybody has one but I’ve not used it in years) and a membership from some sports bar in Leeds I’ve not been to in years.

I guess my first thought is that I’m quite sentimental considering how many things are in there that are there purely to evoke memories! So what do you think it says about me? And what’s in your wallet?!

So it was my 34th birthday on Tuesday and I’m a bit old to throw lavish parties and expect fabulous presents. These days I like to have a low-key day, not “celebrate” as such, but just do the sort of things I like doing normally. We went to see The Dark Knight on Saturday at the local cinema but foolishly underestimated how popular it still was - we couldn’t get in! Instead we saw Wall-E (which I actually wanted to see anyway) and it was fantastic (including a couple of noticeable references to the classic Silent Running in there which it owes a lot to). It’s amazing how Pixar manage to get you so emotionally attached to something that has no facial features at all! But that still left The Dark Knight to see…

So we looked at our diaries (well, metaphorically speaking as I’ve never been any good at keeping a diary up to date) and decided that we might as well go on Tuesday night, which also happened to be my birthday. Seemed like a nice way to “celebrate” and sounded good to me. Whenever friends asked me what I was doing on my birthday I’d say “it’s great, we’re going to see The Dark Knight and I can’t wait!”. Until my birthday comes along and my good lady returns home from work with a surprise…

We’re not going to see The Dark Knight at all! We’re going out for a special meal at our local Aagrah curry house with our friends Ben and Anna - it had been planned for weeks! Now normally if that was sprung on me I’d have been immediately thrilled and punching the air (well, probably not punching the air per se, but metaphorically punching the air). Except it was a double surprise. On the one hand I was going out for a delicious meal, but on the other I’d spent the day looking forward to seeing the film, made sure I’d eaten throughout the day as I knew we weren’t going to have a big meal (since we were off to the cinema) and now I wasn’t. Of course if you’d given me a choice of seeing the film or having a meal with my friends I’d have taken the meal every time!

But my first question to my good lady was: “why did you tell me we were going to the cinema? Why didn’t you just not say anything?”. If it was the other way round and I was planning the surprise I’d have made sure that she didn’t make plans (maybe hinting that we were doing something) or just not mentioned anything at all - perhaps said I was having my legs done on Tuesday night so not to go and book cinema tickets (well, that’s what she’d have said, I’d have probably said I was doing a power workout or something more manly).

It turns out that she’s a terrible liar, no doubt as a result of her being such a fair and honest person whereas I’m an excellent liar and, eh, also a fair and honest person (I wouldn’t lie to you!). So I’ve explained to her for future reference that the key to success in fabricating a lie or keeping something from someone is to not compound it by adding another lie on top. For one thing that just makes it more difficult to remember but for another it just makes things more complicated. Sometimes the best way to lie is to just say nothing at all.

And for the record it was a delicious meal and I enjoyed it far more than I would have done had I gone to the cinema. We’re going to see the film on Saturday and this time I’ll be booking the tickets, just to make sure. Oh yes, and I’m an ungrateful git. But you probably worked that out already!

I’ve spent the past couple of years putting a lot of work into John’s Background Switcher but neglecting another utility I wrote called John’s Image Converter. I originally created it to provide a quick way to scale down photos for emailing and using on my website. I had some cool ideas to make it a lot more useful but never seemed to sit down and implement them.

I finally had a few spare days and evenings, put a bit of work in and am now ready to launch John’s Image Converter 2. The sales pitch goes something like this…

“Have you ever needed to quickly shrink down a photo so that it’s small enough to email to a friend? Or wanted to take a folder full of holiday pictures and resize them all at once? Or maybe you’ve seen the snapshot scrapbooks that John’s Background Switcher creates and wanted to make one from photos of your children but don’t want to change your background? Well the unimaginatively named John’s Image Converter is the answer to all of the above and more!”

One of the things people have asked for time and again was a way to convert a whole folder full of images - maybe you’ve got a bunch of photos from your fancy 10 megapixel camera and want to send them scaled-down to your friends. That would mean sending an email with 200MB of attachments or tediously resizing them one at a time. Now you just fire up John’s Image Converter, pick the folder of photos, create a new folder where you want to scale them to and set the maximum size (or percentage to resize them), click ‘Convert’ and you’re done:

I also thought to myself that it would be quite cool to re-use the work I did in JBS to produce montage images (like snapshot scrapbooks and photo mosaics) so that you can create your own montages without having to use John’s Background Switcher (heck, maybe you just like having the same background all the time!). Now you can:

Anyway, John’s Image Converter is completely free so you’ve got nothing to lose by giving it a try. You can download it here!

I mentioned before that I have an all-or-nothing approach to reading books where if I read the first in a series I’ll become obsessed and read them all. So way back in September of 2007 I was on holiday and picked up the first Discworld book by Terry Pratchett - a series of (currently) 36 books. I’d heard for years that they were pretty good but was always daunted by the fact that he’d been writing two of them a year for over 15 years so it would be a lot of work reading them all. No sooner had I read the first book - The Colour Of Magic - than I started the second and knew I was hooked.

So here I am 10 months later and I’ve just finished the 22nd book in the series! As you can see from the picture that’s quite a lot of books. I’ve been buying them from Amazon Marketplace for a pound and have really enjoyed them.

I’ve not been much of a fan of fantasy novels but the thing that appeals to me about the Discworld books - apart from the humour which has made me laugh out loud many times - is the way Pratchett uses the fantasy world he’s created as a way of making you think about our world and the things we accept and consider normal. In a reality where the world sits on the back of four elephants standing on top of a giant space turtle, where magic, a Guild of Assassins, witches, flying carpets, a scythe carrying Death with a dark sense of humour and the Death of rats is normal, he manages to show how chaotic and senseless our world often is.

For instance any member of the Guild of Thieves who robs you makes sure to leave you a receipt (which you can present to another member to ensure you don’t get robbed too frequently) but anybody committing a robbery who’s not a guild member or breaks the guild rules can be assured of an early “retirement” at the hands of the guild. Where crime is organised and self-governing people know where they stand and don’t have to live in fear. It’s crazy, but not as crazy as the world in which we live.

Pratchett is very good at making observations about the belief system of us humans, how we make sense of the world and how our imagination is what brings things into existence. In Hogfather he talks about how as children we have to believe in little lies like the Toothfairy and the Hogfather (a somewhat rougher version of Father Christmas) so that when we grow up we can believe in the big lies like justice and mercy. If we don’t believe in them - despite not being able to show any evidence that they exist - then how do we make them come to be? Once you get past the magic, the trolls, the elves (who’re evil in his world), etc. you realise that Pratchett is a keen observer of the human condition.

The books centre on the city of Ankh Morpork and the people who live in and around it. While you don’t have to read the books in sequence you do feel some progression of the various characters as they come in and out of the story lines. Death - probably the most interesting character - starts off as the cold grim reaper but as he watches humans he starts to grow fond of them, tries to better understand them and changes through the series (I was going to say he ‘warms to them’ but that wouldn’t really fit the image of a tall skeleton in a black robe!).

How Pratchett manages to come up with fresh and interesting stories for each book I don’t know - it’s an incredible feat of writing. But I’m still enjoying them and looking forward to catching up to him in the next year. He may be able to write two books a year but I can read a lot more than that!

I always make a habit of fixing all known show-stopping bugs in JBS (especially crashes) before I release a new version as invariably the longer you leave these things the worse they get. So when I released version 3.4 I  patted myself on the back thinking “this is the most solid release yet”. No sooner did I think that than I found a bug in the newly implemented Facebook code that I decided to fix immediately and release (hoping nobody would notice).

I started work on version 4 and then a number of crashes came in (when JBS crashes it lets you send in a crash report that gets sent to me so I can see what went wrong - see right - it’s invaluable). There weren’t a great deal of crashes, but what was interesting was that mostly they were not for the version I’d released but from older versions people were still using - and they were crashes that hadn’t happened before. None of them happened more than 10 times so compared to the number of JBS users out there they’re pretty infrequent - but nevertheless they ticked me off.

So I decided before really getting into version 4 I’d do a bug fix release and call it 3.5 (in the meantime a few bugs did come in for 3.4 so it became well worth doing). One of the other things that’s become clear is that some first-time users can’t work out how to use JBS. Once I explain to them that you pick where your photos are stored, then define which ones to use, then a lightbulb goes off in the head and they understand. So I’ve written a short ‘Quick Start Guide‘ which appears in the knowledge base and in the JBS help file. Hopefully that’ll stop me repeating myself and explaining how to use JBS!

Anyway, I’d recommend any current JBS user upgrades to the latest version so go and download John’s Background Switcher and have a look at the release notes here.

I cobbled together the design for this site a few years ago and had been gradually tweaking it, changing the banner graphics, the colour scheme and such things ever since. When I switched to Wordpress last year I promised myself that when I had a bit of time I’d sit down and create a new design that was more personal to me. That time never materialised so I finally just sat down and did it anyway! If you’re reading this in an RSS reader you might want to visit my site and see it for yourself. Here’s the before and after picture:

I’m no graphic designer by any stretch of the imagination but I thought that rather than pay someone else to do it or use a standard template I’d give it a go myself to see what I could come up with.

One of the first things I wanted to do was widen the main content area of the pages so I could insert bigger photos (which is particularly useful as I’m retrospectively importing all my old photos into the site - more about that another time).

Taking the design of sites like Matt’s and the Web Designer Wall as my inspiration I decided to go down the image-heavy, non-minimalist, non-corporate route (it is the era of broadband after all). At one point I toyed with the idea of a minimalist design like Mark Pilgrim’s but in the end my ego got the better of me and I decided to try to put as many elements of my life in as possible. So here’s an explanation of what I came up with from top to bottom:

• The background picture is this photo of Goatfell which I took on holiday on the Isle Of Arran last year. It is of course in my home country of Scotland!
• The photos at the top are some of my favourites I’ve taken around Yorkshire - the place I’ve lived for the last 9 years (I can’t believe it’s that long) and a wedding photo is hidden in there too (you can just see my right shoe).
• My keyring goes everywhere I do and frankly I’ve never had a better one. 1GB of USB storage, scissors, knife, screwdriver, torch and pen built in? Swiss perfection! Or maybe I’m just a geek…
• Anybody who’s ever worked with me might notice that I never use a notepad - instead I just use bits of paper (invariably torn paper) to scribble on, which is why the design features plenty of torn paper.
• I have a thing about highlighter pens. Whenever I start a new job one of the first things I do is seek out a nice highlighter which I’ll use probably once the whole time I’m there! Hence the hover-over highlighting in the menu bar and the headings on the sidebar (yes, I really did draw a line with a highlighter pen and scan it in, I couldn’t think of a better way).
• Since my eyes aren’t what they used to be I get tired staring at black text on white all the time, so I’ve gone with textured paper for the main background - although I’ve stuck with white on my discussion forum for old time’s sake.
• I’m obsessed with coffee so that’s a picture of a cup of Jamaican Blue Mountain I was drinking yesterday at the bottom of the page - it was delicious!
• Finally, my good lady always complains that I never dust the house. She’s often written my name in dust and I swear I never see it (and conclude that dust is invisible to me). So for her I’ve gone with that grainy, grungy, dusty look, although it looks fine to me!

There are a few other tweaks throughout the site that I won’t go into but I must admit I’m really pleased with the result. Rather than having a plan I just fired up Photoshop and started working away, trying different things to see what worked with this being the eventual result. It took about 5 evenings from start to finish. Hopefully I’ve produced something original and unique that’s specifically tailored to me. And I did it all without resorting to putting a picture of me in it - yes!

Maybe I’ve been spoiled over the years by free software updates on the various iPods I’ve owned but when Apple charged £12.99 for their ‘January Software Update’ on my iPod Touch I was a bit ticked off. Since it included a few new applications I paid the money and subsequently haven’t used any of them at all - a stock ticker, note taker, email client, weather app and mapping application turned out to be completely useless to me as I use my iTouch for playing music 99.9% of the time. Don’t get me wrong though, I still love my iTouch as much as I did when I wrote this article saying how much I loved it.

There’s been a lot of furore over the new App Store where you can actually buy 3rd party applications for your iPhone and iTouch so I thought I’d go and have a look. I’m sure there are some fun games and other interesting things there, but when I plugged in my iTouch I was presented with the following message:

So if I want to even try out some of the free applications I actually have to purchase new software do I? And I’ll bet that if someone buys a brand new iTouch today they’ll get the 2.0 software included for free, just like those bought after the January software update I mentioned above did. No thanks Apple.

Out of curiosity I clicked the ‘Learn More’ button to see how much they were trying to squeeze out of us iTouch and iPhone owners but smiled when I was presented with the following:

Mwa ha ha - serves them right! I’m certain Apple will make a fortune from the myriad applications on the App Store that they’ll be getting a cut of the sale prices from, but it just seems a bit avaricious to me to charge for the software update to run them. So on general principle I won’t be upgrading my iTouch to the 2.0 software and as a result I won’t be trying out any of the no doubt wonderfully pointless applications. Sorry John, but sometimes I have to draw the line somewhere, even with Apple!

We decided to take some of Jamie Oliver’s advice and grow our own strawberries in hanging baskets this year.

We have (or rather my good lady has) been taking good care of them as they’ve grown from little shoots. We kept looking out for little green strawberries to appear and when they did we were counting the days until we could eat them! Unfortunately the local bird population had other ideas so we netted them up after one particularly juicy strawberry disappeared without a trace one day (and my good lady swears she didn’t eat it).

More and more red strawberries looked almost ready for eating and then last night we decided enough was enough - it was time to harvest! As the title suggests, they really do taste sweeter when you grow your own. We’ve bought a few boxes of strawberries lately but they didn’t taste half as nice as the ones we picked - they were delicious!

Of course my good lady’s creative talents with food presentation made them taste even better:

So if you’ve got hanging baskets filled with boring pansies or some other tedious flowers then why not throw them in the bin and plant something you can later eat? That’s my kind of gardening! And if you don’t like strawberries then not to worry, invite me round your house and I’ll eat them for you!

Way back in 1999 my friend Scott phoned me up and told me he’d managed to win a couple of free tickets to the full weekend of the Glastonbury Festival and would I like to go along with him. It took me all of 2 seconds to say yes and before I knew it I was driving from Yorkshire down to Bristol (where Scott lived at the time) and on towards the festival!

I’d never been before but often had Radio 1 on over the weekend listening to the great lineup of bands. The previous year had been memorable for the torrential rain and mud although at the time I agreed to go along the thought of spending the weekend knee-deep in mud hadn’t occurred to me…

When we got near the venue we found ourselves driving at walking speed and enormous queues of traffic heading into the distance. Everybody seemed to be in cars packed full of camping equipment, quilts, deck chairs, cans of cheap lager and people with happy smiling faces. We eventually managed to get in to park, grabbed our gear and headed into the venue itself. As we got nearer we could hear very loud music rumbling in the distance and the vastness of the area became clear. I’d been to outdoor raves before in my younger days (I should probably write about that some time) but the scale of Glastonbury was enormous. When we got through the gates we were presented with tents as far as the eye could see:

We pitched our tent and then headed over to the main stage to see REM - who were awesome! After that it was getting dark and we thought we’d have a wander around the place to get the feel of it. Having done that we decided to head back to the tent and get some sleep - and then we realised we couldn’t find it! After a couple of hours of aimlessly wandering around in the dark thinking we might have to give up on finding it we eventually did, rolled into our sleeping backs and fell asleep.

The next morning we were greeted with scorching sunshine! Looking at the line-up in the information booklet we got on arrival we realised just what an awesome list of bands were there. We knew we wouldn’t be able to see all we wanted as a lot of them clashed but we made a good go of it. The full line-up is handily reproduced here and if you’re about my age you’ll agree it was great. I’ll always remember sitting in the sunshine watching Beth Orton play, my only worries being not getting sun-burnt! Speaking of the weather the only time it rained was a short shower right at the time Travis played their classic song “Why does it always rain on me?” - which I swear happened!

So we watched the likes of Travis (great live and a lot of banter - oh, and they’re Scottish of course), The Cardigans (great songs but Nina, the lead singer, had absolutely no stage presence or charisma at all), Super Furry Animals (fantastic show), a bit of Cast (not bad) and then we shifted over to see the Manic Street Preachers who were absolutely brilliant. They gave one of the best performances I’ve ever seen (and I’ve seen many many bands since). I’d never been much of a fan before but from that set onwards I’ve loved them!

Following a day of superb entertainment we headed off to get some sleep for the final day (finding the tent first time). And what a day it was! We watched the likes of Dogstar (not an interesting band apart from the fact that Keanu Reeves played bass for them, quite well I believe), The Corrs (I fell in love with Andrea Corr on that day and would leave my good lady in a heartbeat if I had a chance with her - so nothing to worry about there then!), Lenny Kravitz (who was surrounded by some very talented musicians and gave a surprisingly good show) and The Fun Loving Criminals (who were rather entertaining).

It was all over in a flash and we saw a lot of great bands and met some interesting people. It was a fantastic experience, although if I’m honest it was nice to get away from it all, back to the real world and away from so many people in a confined space. I’d never seen so many people with dreadlocks, tattoos, clothes made from hemp and other “alternative lifestyle” indicators in one place!

I gather though that Glastonbury has changed quite a lot since I went. Tickets back then cost about £80 for the weekend and are now double that, which I’m sure has priced a lot of people out of it. It’s a lot more commercialised than it used to be and is targeted at a different type of person than 10 years ago - it was the student set and now it’s overrun by the prawn sandwich brigade. I suppose that’s the way of the world these days, which is a shame, but if people go along and have a great time then who am I to say it’s a bad thing? You won’t catch me going again (unless someone comes up with free tickets), but I’ll still be tuning in on the radio and TV to hear the bands and reminiscing about a weekend in the sunshine in a field in Somerset. Happy days.