Please be aware that wokeupthismorning.co.uk is no longer the place to find any ramblings from me. I have moved over to smarterthanyouraverage.com.

The name change took place a while ago, and I’ve been using STYA and forwarding it to the old site. But now it’s time to get organised.

So, if you like any of the stuff I’ve written recently then www.smarterthanyouraverage.com is the new place to find it. There’s a new post going up there today, as it happens!

Apologies for any inconvenience, but it’s just time for a change.

Thanks for reading!

Christine 

Disclaimer: information from Wikipedia, not fact-checked, could be erroneous but why would anyone lie about this stuff?

Firstly, Friday the 13th is observed by many, many countries. But in a few, Greece and Romania, for example, it is Tuesday 13th. In Italy, it is Friday 17th. This totally blows the superstition out of the water, because it’s roots are in the fact that Friday is scary and the number 13 is scary. Given that differing countries believe in the 17th or a Tuesday, this is ruined.

The fear of Friday 13th is known as paraskavedekatriaphobia, which I think is actually physically impossible to say. Try it.

Notable Births on Friday 13th: Margaret Thatcher, Fidel Castro, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. That explains a lot.

Related superstitions:

• If 13 people sit down to dinner together, all will die within the year.
• If you have 13 letters in your name, you will have the devil’s luck.
• Never change your bed on Friday, it will bring bad dreams.
• Don’t start a trip on Friday or you will have misfortune.

Here is what I know – there is no number 13 car in Formula 1. And there was no 13th deck on the ship we went on in April.

Here is something else I know – it has been known for me to have a good Friday 13th, and therefore this superstition is bunkum.

However, I still wouldn’t want to sleep on the 13th deck of a boat.

1. Installing things is too easy.
2. Flickr Uploader is a thousand times better than on a PC.
3. The Mac has approved software lists.
4. I’m starting to get used to (and like) the fact that things are open without having an actual window open. It toko a long time, but now I’m adjusted, it’s a plus.
5. I can make enhanced podcasts.

Top Five Reasons It Isn’t

1. Office 2008 isn’t all it’s cracked up to be on the Mac.
2. The @ key is in a different place. I don’t care who is right or wrong, but some standards wouldn’t go amiss. Switching from Mac to PC is a real pain.
3. There’s no hash key (why the hell not?)
4. I have to reformat my iPod.
5. I can’t find any decent personal finance software. I’m sticking with what I’ve got on the PC.

Apparently Diet Coke is the beverage of choice for geeks, but it can’t be good to consume as much as I used to. How long before I stop thinking about it, though?

But, it is brilliant viewing. It’s like watching reality TV that is good. Leo sits at his desk, he talks, he podcasts, he records jingles, he unboxes things, he shows us around his studio, he has guests, he records the radio show, and we get to see it all. It’s really amazing, and I just wish I could stay up late enough to watch it all.

This clearly inspired us at Sidepodcast, and this past weekend, whilst we were recording the video previews, we streamed live to the world. It was a last minute thing, and set up quickly, but it worked really well. You can read about it and see the recorded stream here. And the finished video is here, if you’re interested.

I really enjoyed it. There’s something about talking and knowing people could be watching you right there and then that makes it feel a lot more worthwhile. Not that making the video isn’t fun normally, but it just adds a little extra something. I’m nowhere near the stage where I want to host a live show, or allow people to watch us record the podcast (way too much of a work in progress at the recording stage), but I think we’re going to do it again.

It’s just another way to interact with people, and it’s great. I think it will be a long time before we are as good as Leo though!

There are some questionable decisions on the part of Apple, when you look at the HD side of things. You can’t buy an HD film and you can only rent one if you have an Apple TV. At the moment, we don’t have an HD TV so it doesn’t really matter anyway, but that does seem an unusual tactic from Apple. I know they like to keep you using Apple products, but what harm would it do to allow users to download to their Macs?

The only other issue I can see is that some of the movies are only available to rent and not buy, for no apparent reason. In “real life” when you go to Blockbuster, you can rent the same DVDs that are in the shops, so I’m not sure what they are gaining from this.

As ever, the prices are high, but if you’re trying to turn away from clunky traditional methods of consuming media and embracing the digital experience, it’s not beyond reason.

The answer was not much, by the way, although there were a few surprises along the way. What the hell is Neil Diamond doing in the top 100 downloaded songs in iTunes?

Really, this is the way the chart should always have been. Displaying the top songs that people are actually buying, not whichever ones are being heavily promoted at that particular time.

I can see some problems with the iTunes format in the various versions of songs. If you’re buying from a shop, you buy the single or the album and that’s your choice.

In iTunes, you can head there to buy the one song, which is effectively the single in our shop analogy. But you could buy the album version instead, but still just the one song. So does that count towards the songs place in the Top 100, or does it not? I’m assuming it doesn’t as you often find more than one version of the same title in the list. So, this may not be entirely fair.

But still, I’d rather see that songs are popular because they’ve been on an advert and people are snapping them up, rather than it being the one that has been plugged to death on the radio.

The idea is pretty simple. Sign up for an account, get 100MB for free, and start dropping. If you open it up, anyone can put in links, files and notes. The files could be pictures, audio, video, it’s pretty limitless. You can put a password in to make it more protected, and if you run over your 100MB, you can pay very little for more.

It’s almost genius.

I have to be honest and say I was sceptical at first. What would we use it for? I couldn’t really imagine. But now the Sidepodcast drop has been running for a couple of weeks, I see the brilliance.

We’re using it during race weekends, and people can drop in screenshots of the live timing, or captures from the world feed, anything that catches their attention. We had a brief spate of looking at a helmet design competition, and we had loads of designs uploaded to the drop so we could all have a look.

It simply adds to the community.

Then I decided to make my own drop, and have it as a sort of F1 lifestream. We’ve already fallen out with Twitter (that’s another blogpost right there…) so I’m looking for an alternative. I know drop.io must be relatively new because I got the name drop.io/formula1. I’ve been adding my thoughts, some pictures, some of my smaller shows, and links, and it’s fun and easy to do. I have a password so only I can post stuff but anyone can see it. It’s good and it works.

The one drawback: No comments. There are comments on files, but they are ridiculously hard to get to and it’s almost impossible to tell whether you’ve had a comment or not. Plus, there’s no way of seeing recent comments, no feed or anything, so you’d have to keep trawling through all your own stuff. It’s a drawback, but it’s not enough to make me stop using - yet.

So, go and check out drop.io and see if you can incorporate it into your blogging world!

Here’s another.

I want to blog more on Smarter Than Your Average, I have things to say about the state of the web and I want to share them with you. But I find that I just don’t, and I don’t really know why that is.

I had a brainwave in that maybe I should set myself some targets. When I write for BellaOnline, I know I have to include at least one article a week, and it gets done. I mean, technically, I set my own target of two and I manage that more often than not.

So, I could say "Blog on STYA once a week."

But then what if there’s nothing to say? Does that go out the window? Do I just ignore it and hope no one notices? It’s got to be better to try than just to have pages and pages of links, hasn’t it?

I’m not sure, but what I do know is this: I promise to try and blog a bit more. What that actually means, we has yet to be seen.