Happy New Year!

Hi everyone,

Happy 2009!

I’ve taken a bit of a hiatus from the blog for past couple of weeks, as the real world has been very busy. As well as having Xmas and the New Year celebrations, I decided to decorate the second bedroom in our house, which functions as my office. The previous owners of our house had some interesting design ideas (which is why the hallway in our house is green and feels like you’re entering a tube of toothpaste!) and my office was red on the bottom half and yellow on the top half. However now, after three coats of paint, it is white with the alcoves painted a light coffee colour to break things up a bit. I’m really pleased with the way it’s turned out as the walls now act as a gallery space for all the contemporary embroidery I’m planning on collecting!
Here’s a hastily taken picture of my new desk arrangement – I like to think my office looks like it’s been designed by Apple. My beautiful wife says it’s been designed by a man with too many design blogs..!

Then, as if spending about eight days decorating and sorting all my stuff out wasn’t enough, I decided to overhaul my computer. So now I’m on Windows Vista (with a pinch of salt) and am quite pleased with the way the computer’s behaving itself.
I found a groovy couple of programs to put on that I thought I’d share:

MediaMonkey is a music player. I’ve had a range of players, from iTunes, to the very stylish Bang & Olufsen Beoplayer, but having read the positive reviews on Download.com I thought I’d give MediaMonkey a go. I like it! It’s still early days in our relationship, but one immediate thing I like is that it mixes your tunes when playing them, so instead of that annoying little gap between songs you sometimes get, MediaMonkey blends the two together. Sometimes it’s a bit clunky, but I still prefer it.
(I do think that the Beoplayer is the best looking music player out there, and it’s worth downloading it just to play with it.)

Smart Defrag has overtaken Auslogics Defrag as my defrag program of choice. I’m always downloading stuff and so a good defrag keeps the computer running well. Smart Defrag allows you to schedule sessions in so that you can keep your computer nice and tidy on a regular basis. It’s like a regular bit of colonic irrigation for your ‘puter.

And then after much stroking of beard in a thoughtful manner, I’ve decided to stick with Firefox as my web browser. I enjoyed Flock but Firefox has much more scope for modification and add-ons.

I’ve got lots of exciting plans for 2009 and I am going to do what I can to make Mr X Stitch the blog to turn to for contemporary embroidery information and inspiration. I’m hoping to bring some new talent on board at some point and I might even get back to making some cross stitch patterns as well. It’s going to be a groovy year, and I hope you’ll tag along for the ride!

So that’s what been going on with me lately. What’s been happening with you?

Tagged as: decorating, groovy office, mediamonkey, overhauling computer, smart defrag