The Poem of the Poppy

Back in October I posted one of my daughter's poems. Here's another one that she wrote for Remembrance Day. Once again it just blows me away. How she can evoke such emotion and capture such poignancy whilst still so young astounds me. Anyway, enjoy it.

The Poem of the Poppy

You sacrificed your life for me

for I am the blood red and black poppy.

I dance upon the graves of so many lost men.

My friends join me in this scarlet cemetery.

Day after day I see never ending landscape and the cities of grass

But always in front of my eyes are the memories,

memories of the war that come to haunt me.

I see so many men as they fall to their death, everywhere.

The terrible screaming, even as I cover my ears ~
all penetrate my leafy hands and I hear it louder and louder than ever.

The taste of bitter blood, falls to my mouth

but I can't run and hide from this nightmare.

Now it's just a memory, still vivid, but a memory

You sacrificed your life for me

for I am the blood red and black poppy.

I dance upon the graves of so many lost men,

my friends join me in this scarlet cemetery.

by Katy Jenkinson

(my daughter, Aged 10)

Am I proud of her? You bet I am. Incredible stuff!

ZooStorm Desktop PC - Problem Resolved

Folks, on June 22nd I posted a blog entry about this product that I'd just bought. http://www.ebuyer.com/product/161642. Well since then I have had an intermittent problem with the computer powering off randomly. I started running a tech support incident with ZooStorm to try and get to the bottom of it. They recommended running the "Memory Diagnostic Tool" in Extended mode to see if I had bad or failing memory. Each time I tried this the computer powered off after about 15% of the test. They then advised me to open up the unit and re-seat the memory DIMMs. I opened up the computer to do this and went ahead with the task. However I also noticed that the CPU cooling fan was not plugged in to the motherboard. Now this was surely not good. Had they simply forgotten to plug it in? Did it snag the first time the fan spun up and unplugged itself? or did I accidentally unplug it whilst re-seating the memory. I favour option 1. They forgot to plug it in. When I reviewed all of the evidence it certainly looked like a thermal shutdown problem. Anyway it's been a week since I plugged in the fan and I've not had a single problem since doing this. I had been getting 3 or 4 power off's every day before this so I'm sure it was always an overheating problem. If anyone else has strange power off problems open up your computer and check the power cable for the CPU fan. I really like this computer. It looks good and when working correctly performs really well. It's fast which considering it's running Vista is saying something. I have no real reason to upgrade to Windows 7 as apart from a few cosmetic improvements none of the other innovations seem to be of significant benefit to me (well not in my capacity as a home user anyway).

Parrot MKi9200 Car Kit

Hi there good people of the Internet. I have great news to share with you all. For some time now I have been getting along very nicely with a VW iPod kit in my VW Passat to use with my good old trusty 4th Gen iPod. However since Spotify came out for the iPhone and I signed up for Spotify Premium I have been wanting to play my Spotify music in the car. But how? What would be the best way? As soon as you plug a dock connector into your iPhone it only wants to use the native "iPod" app. I needed another way. A method that used no cables. And then I discovered the Parrot MKi9200. What a beauty!!  Let me tell you what it can do for me. First of all it's a wonderful bluetooth car kit that sync's my iPhone contacts list so that I can call people easily and receive calls. Nothing that clever there really but I've never had a car kit before so I find it exciting. Anyway I can also use voice tags to call, reject incoming calls or hang up. My iPhone 3G does not have this function. Then I can do bluetooth media streaming so I can choose to use the iPod app or the Spotify app from my iPhone. Both work great. Additionally I could put music on an SD card and insert that into the display screen. The device also has a cable in the glove box with 3 adapters on it. One is an iPhone connector so that when I'm using the iPod app I have full control over its features from the MKi9200. Album artwork, picking the music I want, track skipping, volume etc. Or I could use the standard headphone jack adapter to plug in any MP3 player that is not clever enough to have bluetooth or I could use the USB adapter and plug a USB memory stick in that happens to have a bunch of music on it. So any music listening option is possible really. The device also has themes and other customisations to personalise it. I'm well suited. It's perfect. I bought mine from Halfords which whilst far from the cheapest place to buy it was very convenient and they fitted the device for free. If, like me, you love to have your music in the car and want a device that makes that very simple whilst providing a great range of methods for listening you can't go wrong with the MKi9200. Buy one today!! Treat yourself for Christmas. That's what I did.

Google Wave

Well I've got me a Google Wave account courtesy of my old work colleague and friend,  Matt Fitchett. Thanks Matt if you're reading this. It looks like it could be a lot of fun and very powerful but not until you have a worthwhile set of contacts, which frankly I don't. Don't get me wrong, me and Matt have lots to talk about :o) but it'd be good to share the fun around with a wider set of people. Matt seems to get invites that he can send out from time to time, so if I get the same I shall surely pass them on to my friends and family. I've not worked out too much of the good stuff as yet but I like the idea of a single wave between friends rather than sending an email to loads of people and trying to keep track of all the "Reply to Alls" that clutter up your Inbox. The collaborative nature of a Wave seems really sensible. I'm interested to see what happens with this product as more and more people get connected to it. I feel that the power is in the ability to have a wide network of contacts to collaborate with. Anyone else got a Google Wave account?