As a fully-fledged Apple fanboi (as the idiots would call me), I was waiting with great anticipation for the iPhone to arrive in my area. In mainland UK, the iPhone is locked to o2, but here in Guernsey, we have three mobile carriers (none of which are o2) so there was a long, long wait for them to arrive here. And when they did, they were by no means official - that is, the two carriers offering them are importing them certain European countries for sale unlocked, and I’m reasonably sure Apple has little to no idea about it. As I was on the waiting list, I was one of the first to get my hands on one.

I’d needed a new phone for ages, as the ghetto orange Sony Ericsson I had been using was both a) a girl’s phone and b) a lesbian one at that. Not to mention totally beaten to hell and displaying typical “old phone” behaviour in randomly turning off when it ballywell felt like it. Not a good look. When the iPhone arrived here, it was a no-brainer to get one. And, as it turns out, I really had disengaged my brain in getting one.

Ahh, the pressures of being a cricketing supergod. Perhaps not.

But still, it’s always nice to get written up in the paper. ESPECIALLY when they get your name right. (Third time lucky.)

Quick hint: if you’re having trouble getting wireless backups on Time Machine and an Airport Extreme working, then try this - I had the same problem and fixed it for me. Plug the USB drive in to your Mac and using disk utility, veryify and repair the disk not the actual partition. Alternatively, remove all existing partitions from your drive, and then recreate the necessary partitions for your backup scenario. It seems that if you only verify / repair the partitions then the Airport Extreme won’t necessarily mount the drive properly (meaning you can’t use it as an Airdisk, and you can’t use it with Time Machine.)

OK, so it’s nothing major, but I got a small mention on the sport section of the BBC website, as part of its coverage of the Channel Islands Cup, in which I am playing, for PKF Wanderers.

The standard of cricket we play in Guernsey is very good and it’s right that the BBC monitor the CI Cup. Wanderers this year have an excellent chance of winning it, and it would be a fantastic achievement to do so. The semi-final last week was washed out, so we’ll try again this weekend. We’re strong favourites to win, which will most likely set up a final with arch-rivals (and Guernsey-based) Cobo who are unbeaten in all forms of cricket this season.

You may find you get the following problem when trying to stream music to multiple speakers. Streaming to either local computer OR your airport express works, but when you try to stream both, you get an error message that looks like this:

“An error occurred while connecting to the remote speaker ‘speaker_name’. An unknown error occurred (-3256).”

This is most likely caused by a firewall issue. If you’re running Tiger, then there’s a fix here. If, however, you’re running Leopard, then it’s a little different:

If you already own a D-Link G604T wireless router, then you can upgrade it to the G624T model, simply by flashing the firmware. The 624 firmware has many more configurable options, including much improved support for ADSL2+. Here’s what to do.

Crossroads. The title of one of Eric Clapton’s (well, Cream*) greatest tracks and an awful chick-flick starring Britney “bury me in a Y-shaped coffin\*” Spears. But both (presumably**) discuss the same topic - being at a juncture in life with various paths ahead of you.

A little perspective: I have left Mexico and returned to the US for a brief repose from the whole travelling thing. It was reasonably easy to leave Mexico, 7 weeks in moreorless the same place (Puerto Escondido) was enough. The surf had dropped off and I had had my fill of beautiful beaches, perfect weather and an endless supply of cocktails. It was about 10 minutes in to the flight out, that I began to wonder if any of that was actually true. How, exactly, had I had my fill of the beautiful beaches, perfect weather and endless supply of cocktails? Why was I trading it all for cold weather, city life and American people?

I’ve extricated myself from Puerto Escondido for a few days, for a quick jaunt down the coast to Barra de la Cruz. This place knocks the socks off Puerto. There are really no words to describe just exactly how amazing it is here. So I’m going to let Phil do it for me:

´Nuff said.

-MT

(I know this a copout from a real post. I will be doing that shortly when I’m not sat in an expensive Internet cafe.)

Regular readers (or in fact, anyone who can deduce the time between two different dates) might be wondering why I haven’t updated the blog in a while. I would love to say that it’s because, in the last couple of weeks, I have been so busy doing varied and wonderful things that I simply haven’t had the time. Sadly, well it’s actually not sad at all, but it’s not the case. Puerto Escondido is an almost magical place that posseses an inate ability to simply suck away time. My principal reason for coming here was for the surf - and surfing I have been doing - but it’s impossible to escape, not that you’d especially want to, the chilled out beach atmosphere of the small town, and simply hang around, doing little other than sleeping, swimming, surfing, sitting on the beach, all mixed together with the odd cerveza or 17. The temperature is regularly in the 30’s, the sun is always shining, people are happy, and spending hours mulling over suitable words to describe the experience here is often far too much effort. Well, that’s my excuse anyway.