Tom Blogs

I started blogging on 25 october 2006, with a stupid video of a hamster.

Since that day I have moved home 4 times, changed jobs 4 times,  got engaged, got married, brought a flat,  then a cat, then a house in Sussex

I’ve travelled to Switzerland,  Italy,  France,  Belgium, and Brazil.

I’ve seen friends and family marry in Siena, Mull, and Brasil. I’ve got a nephew and a niece and been made a godfather

I’ve seen  Orient get promoted, make £1,000,000 in in the FA Cup, and loose 0-5 on my birthday.

And barely blogged any of those things.

Instead these are the posts which have got the most attention over the years:

2006

1. 25 NOV Uber Party
2. 16 JUL Photos from RIAT
3. 06 AUG J and K Wedding

Seeing as there will be a blank space on many newsagents shelves next Sunday maybe this is the time to start you dream of creating your own newspaper? Of the designers I follow online, Ben Terret stands out and is one of the founders of Newspaper Club, a small company run by the Really Intersting Group which lets you design and print your own newspapers. Black and white or colour, 4 to 64 pages, one edition or thousands.

They have examples of festive newspapers,  conference programs and wedding favours.

Find out more on their site www.newspaperclub.com, have a look at the papers they’ve printed on Flickr and follow their blog / twitter – @newspaperclub

Oh, now this one I really like. I read about a lot of websites offering new services, new takes on an old theme, answers to problems which weren’t really there, and lots of “remember how you used to…”.

This time I have actually come across a really great site. I have been a big fan of Last.FM, I’ve had an account for a while now and use it at work often when I’ve got some code I need sort out and can plug myself into my headphones, shut out the world and get on with it.

But now there’s Grooveshark lite (though I can’t admit to knowing there was a grooveshark heavy). Grooveshark is great. Although the interface is all flash based, it adds something that always bothered me with Last.FM. In grooveshark you aren’t limited to tags and ‘artists like’ – you can search for specific tracks, albums and other peoples playlists. This means why my mate tells me how great the acoustic album “Skin and Bones is, I can search for it, pull up the full track listing and listen to the whole album one song after the other. And if I like it, I can save that as playlist for later so I don’t have to run a search again.

Where this has really come into it’s own is searching for song for the wedding next year. Me and the soon to be Mrs can search for those songs we haven’t heard for years, the dance floor classics and cheesy pop, and build the perfect wedding party playlist. Great

Thanks to the Mashable blog for bringing this one to my attention!

Name the film which the title of this post is from and I’ll owe you a beer. But more important than that is new that I have recently proposed to my girlfriend and we are to get married. This is the very best of news (to quote a sketch I once saw). I have drunk more champagne in the last 5 days than I have in a year, and in more locations than I normally visit in a month.

It started in London last wednesday and reached it’s peak in Brussels at the weekend. I’m enjoying being engaged a lot.

Now there’s the little matter of planning a wedding.