Tony Sutton

Hey you lot

2012-04-10T19:53:03Z

Hello everyone.

Some of you may not even remember who I am, but for you others who does, HELLO. :)

Obviously, as you may have noticed, I have given up with LJ - have not posted since Summer 2009! So that's a good 3 years or so.

I am mostly found on Twitter - @tony_sutton if you wish to follow me for my strange, tech, my car's dashcam videos and other geeky stuff related tweets.

And... erm, yeah that's it. :) Hope to see you on Twitter and if not, hope you all are very well.

Over and out.

Hello August

2009-08-01T21:07:41Z

Have we lost another month already?

Welcome August. The month of my birthday which is due in a few weeks time. Get saving to buy me some nice presents. :)

The past few days has been busy where we tidied up the house and removed wallpaper from the bathroom as we are having new bathroom being fitted by 3rd Aug for a week. Have taken a week off from work to stay in for them to do the work.

We are excited and looking forward to the new bathroom!

Our new cats are doing well, still mad and playful. And growing fast of course. We have taken loads of photos which we need to sort out someday.

Today, I have been busy with preparing my car for Ford Fair 2009 tomorrow as my car is going on the club stand. Hope to see you at Silverstone tomorrow? :)

Speaking about tomorrow, I need to head to bed as I have to get up early for the long drive to Silverstone!

Hope you all are well. :D

Brewery Trip

2009-07-25T09:47:54Z

On minibus for the brewery trip - Adnams in Southwold. Should be a good day, sun is blazing hot. Going to the beach and pier afterward.

Minibus journey is making my tummy uneasy. :(

Latest updates from the man himself. Yeah me.

2009-07-21T12:59:33Z

Hey all. How's things since my last update?

I'm good. Got new kittens 2 weeks ago and man they are sure very hard work! Male as Max (ginger & white) and female as Sam (black and white)

Already been to vet for check up and injections. Then last Friday, Max was limping. Already broken! Lol

Took to vet last sat for a checkup and it turned out that his leg was bitten, more likely by Sam which caused it to swell up. He had a injection and we took some antibodies for us to feed him.

Fast forward to yesterday, Max is much better, can now walk and run properly including jumping.

Went back to vet at their request for final checkup and got the all clear. Paid the fee and made our way home. Need to sort out pet insurance soon!

Who are you with for pet insurance? Tesco came out the cheapest but bad reviews about payout and customer services. Hmm...

Will post photos someday. But if you have me on Facebook, it's there. :)

Work is doing well but has slowed down obviously because of the summer term However we are busy with ding the upgrades so all is good.

Looking forward to 2nd August for Ford Fair and then the week of 3rd Aug, new bathroom being fitted! :D

Am still on the lookout for new camcorder. Did have the Panasonic HDC-SD20 but returned it after 2 weeks of usage. Why? Because it has very poor low light performance. :/

Currently have my eyes on the Canon Legria HF200 but need to read the reviews. Anyone own this camcorder? Thoughts?

Need to do some stuff now...

Swine flu

2009-07-08T16:53:39Z

Bah, Swine Flu confirmed at work. Only two people so far but they have decided to keep it open. Was hoping they'd close but hey.

Lets hope I don't catch it!

Terminator Salvation

2009-06-03T21:52:31Z

So has anyone watched the new film yet? I had a chance this evening at Leics Square but the thought of shelling out £15 wasn't worth it!

So will wait until I'm back home and with the subtitled version comes out too.

Today was a good day. And headed straight back to hotel to relax and watch DVD - Planet of the Apes (1968 version) and am planning to watch the 2001 version tomorrow. Thought it was a good movie. But a bit long winded story I think.

Need to start thinking of plans for this weekend.

Mini tour of London & getting lost

2009-06-02T21:52:08Z

After the training, I spent 2 hours being "lost" in the middle of London and walked around, enjoying the 26C weather.

Decided I had enough and went back to hotel for dinner and watched DVD - Jumper - good film.
I think the walking around yesterday and today has given me a bit of a tan! :D

Weather is saying colder and cloudy tomorrow - boo! Hopefully it will stay nice.

Think I will have an early night...

June already...

2009-06-01T19:58:55Z

So it's June already. 6 month gone of 2009. Pretty quick.

Last night, I watched 28 Days Later. Tonight, I watched 28 Weeks Later. Enjoyed both of them. Can't wait for 28 Months Later to come out in 2011!

Had dinner at the hotel I am staying in and the food was okay. Thinking to eat out tomorrow as the weather is still nice and warm. So I want to enjoy it :D

Am currently looking around for a new camcorder - what do you people use? I'm looking for HD type, maybe flash based and not tapes, DVD or HDD based as I don't want to carry around discs or tapes. Need to be able to hold up to 2 or more hours of footages. And easy to use/edit!

I have this Camcorder Buyer magazine so will be reading up on that tonight to see if anything catches my eyes.

TV time...

Another nudge?

2009-05-31T11:55:31Z

Someone nudged me. Yes, I've been lazy and hasn't posted very much. :D

How are you all ladies and gentlemen? Enjoying the rare hot weather we're currently having?

Over the past few weeks has been so chaos! Been busy sorting out the house in preparation for the new kittens that we will be getting in the next few weeks.

Sorting out each rooms and making it cat-proof, I.e. Hiding places where they could do a poo & shit in wrong places lol

Only things we need to do is to buy the litter box, some toys, cat bowls and we're sorted. We already have some cat food and biccy. Think we have covered most things, hopefully.

We saw the kittens yesterday, so cute and tiny! Eyes are open and fur already fully grown so not long to go. Can't wait! :D

For this week, I am currently being trained for some Microsoft product, so looking forward learning new things.

Anyone planning to go on holiday in June? We are thinking but not too sure where to go. Need cheap holiday package ;)

Oh, this morning, we had someone from B&Q round to give us quote for bathroom upgrade and fittings. Price is not too bad but much cheaper than the local bathroom company! So will give it some thoughts, maybe one more quote from another company before deciding who to go with. Joy.

Right, I better stop now and enjoy the lovely weather!

Car in garage...

2009-05-14T09:17:21Z

Just dropped off my car at Ford for major service this morning.

This leads to my thinking... Should I change my car? Or not yet?

It's a Ford Focus ST170 52 reg with 103,000 miles on it. Yes I do lots of driving. I had this car for over 3 years so far. No major problems, runs very well.

My only worry is if I do decide to sell it, i will not get very good value from it due to age and high mileage. Plus car dealers are tight during this time.

But then since I don't have any issue with this car, maybe I should keep it anyway... Just that it would be nice to have a new car, eh? :D

I do like VW Golf R32, very good price on the used cars market. But insurnce group 18. Hmmm... What else are out there?

Curious question...

2009-04-28T14:39:50Z

Was thinking in my head randomly and thought of this question.

If you received a freebie film DVD i.e. from newspaper, you know, Daily Mail. You then make a copy of it and share it, say, via P2P, would this be considered as piracy? Or not?

I don't know why I asked this question but I think this is a good question for discussions. :)

It's Friday...

2009-04-24T16:28:36Z

So it's friday at last. With the great weather forecast for the weekend coming up, it should be a relaxing weekend.

Also payday arrived today so will be looking forward to some shopping but not too much as I seriously need to save up as I went into red just a little bit! Whoops. :D

Going to meet up a mate at 6pm for dinner, drinks and catching up before heading out to Glasshouse pub for a meetup with other deafies.

The Budget

2009-04-23T19:25:56Z

So that was the budget yesterday. And short. But interesting changes/suggestions from them.

Not sure what to make of it. But I like the 2k for car exchange. Shall see how it goes. And the tax changes. 50% tax for 150k or more - ouch! Thats half of the salary.

Anyway.

Last weekend, we've been busy doing the garden work on the front garden, planting some hedges around. Need to do some work on the grass as they are pretty in bad state, so some seeding and lawn feed needed.

Work is ok so far, as usual, preparing for the summer works so busy all around.

Lovely weather so far, and have done two BBQs :D

Time to do some volunteer work... Laters all

It's gone... The tree stump, that's it.

2009-04-18T16:43:47Z

After our shopping earlier this afternoon, i made another attempt with removing the tree stump and at last, I got the big tree stump removed!

I dug deeper and found that the wood were much softer, so using the spade, I cut it down layer by layer of soft wood until the point where it got loose. I kicked it down and it's done! :D

Now the front garden looks much bigger. Tomorrow, if it stays sunny, will fill up the hole, smooth out the soil and put down some grass seed. And maybe plant hedge if we got time.

Now getting ready for the quiz night.

Great weather but damn tree stump!

2009-04-18T11:00:21Z

Hey peeps. The weather over the past few days including today is GREAT!

Makes you feel alive and do more stuff!

Like this morning, i've been busy with trying to remove a tree stump. And I failed. :( It's so deep and very rooted. But the good thing is most of them are dead and soft but not the middle.

Anyone got any suggestion to remove it easily without breaking my back?

Am looking forward to the Quiz Night with Fish & Chips tonight at the local Deaf club. I and other 4 people in the team won last time so hoping to repeat the success tonight.

Currently in Norwich for some shopping and then head back home this afternoon to tackle the tree stump again. Should be a good afternoon I think.

I am not looking forward going back to work this Monday as I have been on leave for the past 1 and a half week. Wonder if there's stuff piled up for me to do? Will find out soon, I guess.

Right, better finish this shopping. Have a great weekend! :D

Half Term

2009-04-07T12:30:43Z

The good thing about the Half Term is the lack of traffic. We are able to leave home a bit later and get to work on time, sometimes even earlier! :D

Has anyone heard the news about the Gov considering paying you money to scrap your old car (9 years and over) and buy new car using the money. Sounds good... We got a car that is 9 years old as of last month.

Will they go ahead with it? No idea... But I think they should as it proves popular in Germany. And at the same time, it helps us with going "green" to help the world & stuff.

Would be nice to get a new car tho :D

So anyone planning to go on holiday over Easter? We are working this week and I have a week off next week. Woo!

G20 Meeting

2009-04-02T18:38:39Z

So. G20. One trillion dollars.

That's a lot of money. But personally i don't think it's enough for the whole world.

But at least it's better than nothing!

MCE and WHS

2009-04-02T18:38:34Z

Updates on my MCE box...

Got the new Media case a few days ago. Much better and smaller. Just finished putting all of the hardware together and it's looking good! Need to figure out what the last cables going to whichever pins it needs connecting to as it's not labeled at all!

But apart from it, I'm pretty excited to have it up and running so we can get rid of the old dvd player and the Humax box!

And for my WHS box - I've moved the hardware out of the old, bigass full tower to a smaller and nicer case so it will take up much less space. Currently installing the operating system before setting it up for shared folders and backups.

Overall, been busy with a cut finger with these hardware builds and I can't wait for both of them to be done!

Not long to go...

2009-03-28T08:57:37Z

Only a few more days until April. 4 months gone since the start of 2009.
Yikes! Where did the time gone to?? Too fast, I think.

Work for the past few weeks has been progressing okay, keeping myself busy
to prepare for the Summer upgrade. New SAN server with zillions of GB, made
me drool. :D

My MCE build is still going on well, and last night, I've finally ordered a
new MCE case that is smaller in size, which can fit into my TV case while
keeping all hardware without spending more money on low profile card so
that's good news. The only biggest issue I can see so far is that the
default decoder is not good as it keeps coming up as "blocky" on TV shows.
I'm going to give the NVIDIA decoder a go based on good feedback. I am also
going to give Cyberlink PowerDVD a go too, assuming I can find one cheap.

Once I have this up & running, I need to make a start with selling other
hardware bits to get some of my money back to cover the costs of this. I got
far too many piling up! :D Just need to find/buy some anti-static bags, more
likely on the cheap on eBay.

This Sunday, the start of the clock change. We lose 1 hour of sleep. Bah.
But we also get more daytime. Yay! And the start of spring (as of last week)
is going to make me work more outside. The front garden is seriously in the
need of an "upgrade" - rip out the old grass, weed, potatoes, etc, clean it
up and smooth out the soil then put some grass seed on to get fresh grass. I
need to hire a machine that can turn over the soil, but the cost of hiring
one is almost equal to buying a machine for me to keep! But then I'd have
nowhere to store it if I were to buy it, so hiring one might be a good idea.
:D

I still need to sort out the fence in the front garden too, but it's too
costly. So I'll have to make do with nails, some TLC and maybe a lick of
paint and I should do fine for another year or so. And the bush need a trim.
I might do the bush now as it's sunny outside.

Is anyone finding the credit crunch affecting you? I am not sure but I think
I am a little bit. My savings is not being saved up enough compared with
last year. I still have not serviced my car yet (due last Jan) so I need to
save up for that. Gas & electricity bill on the rise, so need to switch to
someone else. We're with British Gas for both at the moment. What company do
you use for these utility?

Right, it's closely approaching 9am. I need breakfast and then trim some
bushes. :D

Windows Media Center

2009-03-25T10:04:04Z

Anyone use MCE (or similar like MythTV) in the living room?

What case do you use that fits normal sized card? Not low profile card.

Currently i have a Velocity Media case and while it's good, it's a bit too big to fit in my TV stand. It will need at least 15cm high.

Am interested to know your hardware setup :)

Food Court

2009-03-21T08:00:11Z

Yesterday the missus and I met up at a food court at a shopping centre for
lunch. We went to one where they had plenty of good sandwiches, drinks, etc
and sat down. Then it dawned on me - there was few people sitting around for
this area. It was 1pm and it should be busy as it's during the lunch rush.

I looked around and guess what I found?

McDonald
KFC
Pizza Hut

Packed & busy!

And the people wasn't your average young people - they were all ages. At
first, I thought it was because of the change of the culture of the people.
But then it could be because they costs far cheaper than where we were
eating. However, who knows? *shrugs*

In other news, I'm off this morning to pick up my friends before heading off
to Beccles for Go Karting. With the fab weather with sun, this should be a
good day!

Have a great weekend, everyone.

The Holiday last week

2009-03-17T08:11:00Z

Last Sunday, we arrived back home late in the afternoon and straightaway, we
washed our clothes because we'd have to go to work on the next day. So still
no rest for us. :D

Then we had to unpack stuff, sort it out and finally cooked roast dinner in
the evening and relaxed in front of the TV.

Overall, we enjoyed our week long drive around Scotland and took some
amazing pictures. We are currently sorting it out and hope to upload them
soon.

Went back to work yesterday and went through piles of work I had to do.
Can't believe a lot has piled up while I was away for a week!

Today, we both have another day off as we have to use up our leave before
the start of April, so more rest for us. :D

Time for breakfast...

The long drive to Glasgow

2009-03-13T22:07:16Z

Today, we went for the long drive up north & west and then down to Glasgow. We started with Edinburgh and headed toward Inverness, where we made the turn toward Loch Ness and its area including the castle.

After the tour, we had lunch before heading to Ben Nevis for a drive around Wow, what an area! Lots of mountains with snow capped on the top. Would love to climb up there someday :)

Then we went toward Loch Lomond with the amazing sights of the hills and valleys.

Finally, we got to Glasgow and had our well deserved dinner. The drive including stopping took us all day but was worth it!

Obviously plently of photos has been taken so will upload them someday :D

Tomorrow, our last trip before heading home on Sunday - we are off to Lincoln which is about 5 hours drive, depending on the traffic.

So need sleep as we are going to get up early!

Gallieries and Rosslyn Chapel

2009-03-12T22:23:11Z

The good thing about staying in this hotel is we are like right next door to two of Scotland's famous galleries - the Dean Gallery and also the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art.

Both of them was great. I'm kind of a fan of Hirst but was disappointed that it doesnt open until 14th March. Ah well! Mayne next time when it's in London...

After this visit, we walked back to our hotel and collected our car to make our way to the infamous Rosslyn Chapel, just 20 minutes away from Edinburgh.

Some of you may have seen this chapel on one of the biggest film with Tom Hanks in it - The Da Vinci Code - almost at the end of the film where he went into the chapel. That's the Rosslyn Chapel. I need to watch this film again someday.

What a great building but is in need of a lot of repair work. Currently trying to raise money to do it up and from what i can see, thbey are doing well so far.

In the evening, we had our dinner before heading back to our hotel for the last time of staying in Edinburgh.

Tomorrow, we will wake up early in the morning to drive up further north to visit Loch Ness, along the river to see Ben Nevis before heading down to Glasgow for a night of stay.

Should be a epic trip! :)

Shopping and Edinburgh Castle

2009-03-11T22:03:04Z

This morning, we went shoping in the city of Edinburgh and it was ok. In the afternoon, we spent most of the afternoon checking out the Edinburgh Castle.

What an amazing building and its history! At the end of the day, we were worn out so went to a local pub for drinks and relaxing before heading back to hotel for dinner and drinks.

Not sure whats our plans for tomorrow. Maybe relaxing before we head out for the long drive this Friday to Loch Ness, Ben Nevis and other area before heading to Glasgow for the night.

Can't wait! :D