Justin kicked me in the ass..

Well, not physically, but he did remind me I need to start blogging a bit. I actually have a bunch to write about but I'll try not to go totally overboard.

Life, the universe and a veggie patch
In general, everyday life stuff I've been massively busy with our new house. I did post a couple of pics to Flickr when we moved in, and I have loads more I want to put up but that will have to wait until Telkom get their ass into gear and install our line. We've put up a palisade, tiled the kitchen and dining room and tidied up the front garden. My composter is coming along nicely and the veggie patch is turned and will be worked with compost soon. I have also dug a little herb garden for Natz next to the kitchen. This week we're having the carpets in the bedrooms pulled up so we can sand and polish the wood underneath, and then the major stuff is done for a good long while. I've got a seed feeder and fruit up for the birds, and just put up a temporary plastic bath, and so far we've been treated to visits by Robins, Myners, Muisvoels, Loeries, Bulbuls, Barbetts, Bishops and of course the obligatory Sparrows and Doves. We seem to have a couple of Bulbul nests in our trees, and it looks like the Loeries are scouting for a nesting spot too-not bad for our first month :)

Gamerrrr
Games wise, I've been playing Assasin's Creed, and it's a gorgeous game with an intriguing story. I can see where the criticism has come in with regards to it being monotonous though, the developers seemed to have a couple of really cool ideas, and then tried to stretch them too far. Surely it can't have been that difficult to think of more than a handful of things to do in ancient Jerusalem? The combat is also way to samey and gets old quickly. Despite these issues, I'm still enjoying it immensely. Hopefully I'll get my hands on Dancing Universe this week, I've been looking forward to this since the US DDR release last year, and it's about bloody time we get a PAL version.

Sneaky, sneaky Nokia
Nokia finally released a firmware update for the 'classic' N95 last week. This has tech heads (me included) excited to check out the new features, of which there are loads such as integrated search (so, sooo awesome), better camera software, better speed and memory use, to name a few. There have been zillions of posts about these features in the last week though, so I'm going to skip on these and focus on a particular 'upgrade' that left me with a VERY sour taste in my mouth this weekend.
One of my favorite features on the N95 is the integrated GPS. I would never have bought a standalone GPS, but now that I have one in my phone, I really can't believe how useful it is. I don't use it enough to justify shelling out for the voice prompted navigation service though, and instead always just used the option to plot a route between two points and then track my movement. This allowed me to see the route and keep a visual track on where I am on screen when I need to keep an eye out for a particularly tricky street. Nokia, in all their misplaced wisdom have removed this option from the new software, essentially rendering the GPS component as nothing more than a digital map archive unless you buy the voice prompts. I am very pissed about this and find it to be a really sneaky move on Nokia's part. Nice, another reason to get a Sony Ericsson instead next time I upgrade.