Monday 24 December 2007

Seasons Greetings

Phew, that's my lot for now- I'm back on TV on the 29th with a quick show in the evening.

I decided to buy myself a new laptop for my very own xmas present - from the lovely people at Rizeon Laptop Computers who make gorgeous super-fast custom ones. Mine is the stunningly rapid Z37S with all the trimmings, including biometric fingerprint scanning, built-in webcam and obscenely fast components. I'll be taking it out to Vegas with me when I go to CES in January.


The Virgin chat went really well, we made sure to answer every single question we were sent, including a rather amusing "Can you recommend a good curry house", along with home entertainment, AV and computer queries. If you want to have a look, here it is!

Time is ticking away until the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas - as well as mooching round the exhibition open-mouthed at all the crazy stuff going on, I'll be filming a Visual Blog of all things interesting for Virgin Media. At CES, exhibitors have timeslots where press, buyers and distributors get their chance to see products in action, then chat to the people behind the innovations.

Our working title is "Virgin Does Vegas", and I'll be sending my video footage direct from my Rizeon over t'Internet through to Virgin HQ in the UK, where it will be edited and released. If there's any specific tech you'd like me to track down for you, please suggest them to me and I'll give it a good try.

It just remains for me to wish you a very happy festive season - enjoy !

'Tis the day before Xmas and everything's wrapped
I'm buying tech presents this year - how apt
I'm sent all my e-cards for everyone to see
thank goodness I've made sure they're on Bcc.

Lots of love,
LJ x

Wednesday 5 December 2007

Speaking Freely

"Hello, this is me actually talking to my blog, yes, Talking! I'm using SpinVox which will convert any ramble into my telephone into hopefully something intelligible that you might want to read about life, the universe, gadgets and everything else. Basically, they give you a phone number and then you can blog away to your heart's content - Spinvox will then send your blog a text transcript - either to Draft, or Real Live Publishing, depending on your demeanour and/or blog settings. So here goes:*

I've just finished answering all the questions for the virgin media xmas forum which was quite exciting, although it took me a lot longer than I thought to complete... it turns out that there are lots and lots of questions that don't just require desk research, but actually speaking to Real Humans, which I try and avoid as much as I can first thing in the morning.

Other news, on my website http://www.ljrich.com/ you will actually be able to get a £5 voucher from Firebox if you click on the Firebox Voucher link on the menu... just enter your email and then Firebox will kindly send you £5 with no minimum spend which I think is fabulous.

I'm also trying to get everything sorted for the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Vegas, where I'll be filming in January 2008. The more I'm told about this, the more bemused I am.

I've been constantly given warnings about how crazy Las Vegas is and how absolutely ram-packed it's going to be and how it's just going to blow my mind and that it's some kind of Gadget Heaven. I've come to the conclusion that I'll either be swallowed up by some gigantic technological black hole, never to return, or I might just get it over and done with and be assimilated at the show. Let's hope that Borg OS is compatible with most browser platforms. I bet it's incredibly efficient...

You know, I'm currently somewhere between really looking forward to this trip and really being quite worried about it. I'll definitely be updating you on how it all turns out. Thanks very much SpinVox, you rock! speak to you soon. Bye."

*note, I spoke this to Draft and tweaked it so you could click on nice links before publishing, but really I didn't need to adjust very much at all- most excellent! www.spinvox.com if you fancy having a look.

spoken through SpinVox tweaked by LJ

Monday 3 December 2007

Marathon Weekend

After an August that was incredibly quiet, bordering on hibernation, this week fills me both with dread and anticipation all at once.

Thursday is Virgin Media's webchat - I'm going in to Virgin HQ to answer xmas gadgety questions, so I have a laughably huge amount of preparation and research in advance involving much surfing, phoning and tea-drinking.

Before I get a chance to recover from that, I'll be on telly this Saturday at various times from 0100 (Friday night) to 2359 (Saturday night), which means I a) have to memorise specifications for approximately 200 electronic objects, b) need to work out what to wear, and, most annoyingly, c) do my nails, or in my case, just make sure that one "pointing" finger looks usable, as generally my nails look great for approximately 5.6 minutes after applying the last of the polish.

Incidentally, my sister on the other hand (did I mean that pun?!) has incredibly elegant nails and long graceful fingers - but as a piano player, I have short stumpy paws, although I can now stretch a tenth in my left hand, through years of practice and dedication - take that, Chopin...