This is going to make things interesting:

BBC — Nokia in full buy-out of Symbian

It seemed high-time that I got around to joining the "What’s In Your Bag" bandwagon and contributing my own collection of curios to the mix.

Left-to-right, top-to-bottom:

1. Belkin NE-MS 12" Laptop Messenger Case (Website) - Recently purchased during a trip to Hong Kong.

2. Friendly Bunny - An as-yet nameless but exceedingly friendly bunny who recently found his way to Beijing from Taipei.

3. Shanghai Tang Writing Case (Website) - One of the few decent Chinese fashion brands out there, Shanghai Tang contribues one of the more garish things in the bag.

4. MacBook Air (Website) - A fairly frivolous purchase during my last trip back to Japan, the MacBook Air is now the prize jewel of the collection.

5. Sony Reader (Website) - Sony’s second attempt at an eBook reader makes a fairly good paperback replacement.

6. Ray-Ban Sunglasses - Slightly practical. Mostly for posing.

7. Victorinox - A seemingly more heavy-duty gunmetal equivalent of the Leatherman as made by Victorinox.

8. British Passport - A must when living abroad - "Her Britannic Majesty’s Secretary of State Requests and requires in the Name of Her Majesty all those whom it may concern to allow the bearer to pass freely without let or hindrance, and to afford the bearer such assistance and protection as may be necessary."

9. Shure SE310s - Using a pair of these is like hearing your music collection for the first time all over again.

10. Security Pass - Two RFID cards, an RSA keyfob and various other miscellanea.

11. Pen & Glass Marker - While it may be straight out of a scene in A Beautiful Mind, carrying a glass marker is perfect for anyone who finds themselves with an idea but without a whiteboard. Thankfully there is no shortage of windows!

12. Business Cards - No self-respecting business-man-in-asia should be without a set.

13. Wallet - A chinese knock-off bought in the Silk Market, Beijing. The wallet came with a choice of either Gucci or Armani branding. Less than 100 RMB and genuine leather to boot!

14. iPhone (Website) & Moshi iPouch (Website) - The battery life may be terrible and the telephony questionable, but I cannot cope without this one. The iPouch is the best I’ve found so far.

15. Seiko Watch - A 20th birthday present which has suffered more than its fair share of war wounds.

16. Mints - A box of ‘National Embarassmints’ sporting a picture of our good friend Mr. George W. Bush. Some things never get old.

17. Taiwanese Pebble - An exceedingly thoughtful gift from Junko, hand-picked from the shores of a Taiwanese beach.

Looking at the various offerings, it seems I’m not the only one with a bunny in the bag.

Ever since purchasing jbmorley.co.uk, I’ve been planning a redesign of the website. Something a little more modern. Anyone not reading via RSS or Facebook will have noticed that this redesign has now happened (quite some time ago in fact).

It would be hard, in this new design, to miss the mirroring effect on all images. What started as a small personal challenge of adding Apple-style image reflections to my WordPress image rendering plugin [seemingly, it is] has become a significant feature of the new design. People say copying is one of the highest forms of flattery. I hope it can be viewed this way.

Another significant aspect is the header. This has formed an increasingly important role in my last few designs and, with version 3.0, hosted almost entirely my own photos. While, the feature has been very popular, I have omitted it in this latest design, hopeful that this gives greater focus to the main content of the page and allows for better presentation of a wider variety of media.

Of course, as always, I continue to maintain all of my previous designs, any of which can be selected from the ‘Themes’ drop-down box. I am also slowly trying to add to the collection various designs produced for friends. While other projects keep this task from progressing at high speed, expect a trickle of different styles to be added in the coming months.

Since coming to China, I’ve been slowly learning the various systems out here. One particularly useful thing I’ve worked out is how to use China Unicom; specifically how to enable GPRS and how to switch their support number into English.

I’ve provided them here for public reference:

Enabling GPRS:

Text “KTGPRS” to 1065581234.

Accessing Account Balance in English:

+ + +

It should be noted that Unicom’s interpretation of GPRS does not support internet or email so it’s rather useless. I am planning to switch to China Mobile soon…

While this posting represents a slight digression from my usual comments, I feel the need to record this for future reference…

During work today I found myself needing to add my SVN server as a new Windows Service. Many a time have I hunted around for the method of doing this and, many a time, have I failed.

Today, we have the answer (for Windows XP at least):


sc create svn binpath= "\"C:\Program Files\svn\bin\svnserve.exe\" --service --root \"C:\Documents and Settings\Subversion Repository\""