Ricky Martin’s Blog

Well it’s true I finally got an official Apple iPhone. I had been looking into these for a while, but couldn’t bear to dish out that much cash for one and have to sign up for a long term contract. Since we are living in the UK I was looking into them as we have been using pay as you go SIM cards since we have been here given that we don’t use the phones that much, and the fact I have a mobile phone (as they say on this side of the pond) or cell phone (as they say in most of North America) from work. So I really don’t use a personal phone all that much except for after hours and the weekends mostly.

With that being said I had picked up a couple of Blackberry pearls on e-bay for myself and the wife. they worked with the pay as you go SIMS, with one major exception, can’t do e-mail on them, and can’t use internet or data without paying for it up front or switching to a monthly plan. So there was the dilemma I wanted to use the full capabilities of the blackberry but would have to switch to a monthly plan in the area of 30GBP/Month. now I don’t really like that idea as we both don’t talk on the phone that much to warrant that kind of plan, even if we get the data included still high.

So I started to do some looking into the iPhone, that and the fact I wanted to explore further into developing something with the iPhone I started looking at them on e-bay and checking out how much they were going for. you could pick up an older generation iPhone for about 250 GBP. which is not bad considering what you get, but when you start looking into it you can get the new 8GB 3G version on pay as you go for about 340GBP all things considered. And the same ones on e-bay are going anywhere from 280-800+GBP. which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

So I actually got one for my birthday from my wife (she rocks!) and she loves gadgets just as much as I do. So we got them with O2 who is the only provider selling them here in the UK, the beauty of it is the plans they have are actually pretty good for pay as you go and the real selling factor I found is you get as a new customer with the iPhone 12 months of free internet access and Wi-Fi unlimited in the UK. So with that said you can get e-mail and everything on your iPhone no special plans, no extra monthly costs.

Now it has only been a couple of days but already I am loving the iPhone. I have to say it is very easy to use and set up. I got my e-mail working on it rather quickly. only problems I had was needed to put in the password on the phone as it imports all the info from my computer through iTunes when you sync it up. my only disappointment with it is that I use Thunderbird for my e-mail and it only seems to see outlook as an option for mail syncing. But that is not such a big issue as I use IMAP so there is nothing really in outlook for it to sync up with other than the settings.

One of the other things we realized is with the iPhone you can do so much it eliminates the need for several other devices. as we had recently purchased MP3 players for use at the gym mainly. but since the iPhone has that functionality we don’t need to carry around another device, also it has GPS functionality, hence we can now get rid of our GPS for the car. and don’t need to bring along a laptop really with us when we travel as most of what we do on the laptop can be done on the iPhone.

As such if your interested in any of these items you can check out my latest stuff for sale posted on E-bay by clicking the link.

As I learn more about the iPhone I will list updates. If you have any suggestions please share them with me?

Well it is no mistake that TV is a big staple in a lot of houses, one of the things I hate is commercials, and the other thing I hate is trying to schedule my life around TV shows I like.

Here is where Miro and tvRSS come in. Miro is a wonderful little application that can run in the background on your PC and with the addition of tvRSS you can arrange all the shows you like and keep up to date with the latest episodes.

Given that I am on this side of the pond I can’t use any of the streaming from Hulu or any of the network sites without a work around. that is the beauty of Miro, basically what you do is look up the shows you like on the tvRSS website and add them as channels on Miro. the nice thing is you can set it to automatically download the new episodes and they will pop up as new unwatched episodes. This is especially good for shows that we like that 1) they don’t show over here, or 2) shows that they show over here but are a season behind what they are in the US. For example my wife likes Gossip Girl, here in the UK they just started the second season, in the US it is almost over the second season. I downloaded the whole season up to now and we watched it over the weekend, as there is not much on the TV here. Same goes for a lot of other shows we have managed to catch up to the current schedule in the US, and we can now just check it out when are looking for something to watch there is usually something that has been downloaded.

The beauty is our TV has HDMI and so does our laptop so I just plug it in and away we go, the only issue I found with this set up is that for some reason no audio comes out of the HDMI, only from the laptop speakers. eventually I will figure it out but for now it is not a deal breaker….if you have any comments, suggestions or requests would love to hear them.

Here are a couple links to Miro and tvRSS so you can check it out for yourself

Today I would like to talk about relocation for work. I myself have done it twice, going from Canada to the USA, and then from the USA to the UK. At least those were my two successful moves so far. we also had one failed attempt to relocate from Montreal to Whistler.

Along the way we have learned some lessons on what to do and what NOT to do. One thing I would strongly suggest is to take a visit to any place that you are thinking about moving to, as it can be a rude awakening to find out after you get there that things aren’t what you expected. That was one of the mistakes we made with our first attempt to whistler. We were also a lot younger, I was in my early 20′s and thought it would be cool, I had received a job offer after interviewing completely over the phone, never having a face to face and actually seeing the company. that would be one thing I would suggest before you ever accept an offer, is get them to give you a trip out there before, most reputable companies will do this for you. I actually flew out on both occasions and met with the local staff and saw the office, at least on my most recent move, even though I already worked for them.

With that said the other thing would be to make sure you negotiate your offer properly to include a trip to secure housing, unless of course the company you are dealing with takes care of this for you as part of your move, some companies do provide temporary housing arrangements for you until you can secure housing of your own. All depends on the company and your negotiation skills and the position your going for. If your an entry level usually won’t apply, if your upper management or extremely senior position you would probably get this kind of treatment.

With that said you should probably put yourself in contact with local Realtors or estate agents, as depending on where you are moving to, different terms are used for the same service, the idea being to find yourself a place to live. I would suggest you try and secure several possibilities to look at for when you schedule a trip to your new location. depending on the markets in the area that may be difficult as demand may cause properties to be secured within days or hours, all depends on where your moving to.

Also be prepared to bring with you a deposit to secure something if you do find something you like, especially if your on tight time line this will be critical. Depending on where you are from and where you are going you may need to set up a bank account in the new location, or show proof of employment. Every location is different and I would suggest you ask those questions before you make a trip out so you don’t waste your time and money.

Lastly you need to look into Visa requirements if there are any for where you are going, usually most companies will take care of this, usually through an immigration lawyer or a company that specializes in this type of work. Here is where things can get tricky or get really simple. For example in my situation I already worked for the company, and as a result things were a little simpler as there is an L1 visa for the US that allows for intra-company transfers as long as you meet certain requirements. that was the route I went for going into the US. As for the UK, it was a bit simpler, I had to apply for a work permit which took about a week total as you have to complete a questionnaire online and then submit fingerprints, once that is done you send off the confirmation to the consulate, and then about 2 days later you get a confirmation if all goes well and you get your passport with a work permit in it good for 10 years if I am not mistaken.

I would love to hear if you have any suggestions or comments?

Well we tried to stick to the raw diet, which in all honesty was not that difficult, the hardest part was probably not eating the meat that is usually a staple in our evening meal. Well we were doing pretty well once we finished off everything we had left in the freezer. But since having to travel for work, and not really having access to fresh fruits and vegetables during that time we had to deviate a bit, as result we have now modified the diet a little bit, we are eating a lot of fruits and vegetables during the day, with the exception of having some kind of meat usually at dinner. we try to stick to something healthy usually lean turkey, chicken, fish, and we usually have some kind of vegetable with it, usually a salad or combination of raw vegetables. for example this weekend on Saturday we ate fruit for breakfast, and for lunch as well, for dinner, we had sea bass, that I filleted and cooked in the oven, with a little olive oil and some herbs and lemon, and a splash of wine. And on Sunday we had fruits for breakfast, for lunch we were craving some vegetable soup, so we picked up all the ingredients and made a wonderful soup from scratch, we added cappelletti to it, and I used pancetta when cooking the vegetables before adding the water to make the broth. And for dinner we had risotto with pancetta, nothing too fancy. but we were hungry this weekend as we finally managed to get back to the gym on Saturday after a long absence as a result of being sick and holidays and travel all combined together. But we’re getting back into the routine, and with the gym routine broken out it works out nicely with work, and keeps the evenings from getting too boring.

Well we took a trip over the holiday to Denmark, we managed to get the tickets using my airmiles, and British Airways was having a sale at the time if you used your air miles during the sale the price was half the amount of air miles needed for any location. So the beauty of that was it cost only the amount of air miles it would normally cost for one person for the two of us to travel. Since we were flying from Heathrow we got to go out of Terminal 5. The terminal itself is nice, we try to travel light as much as possible so we did not need to check any bags, we checked in online and printed off our boarding passes ahead of time. We also took the opportunity to sign up for the iris program, you can check out the info from the link IRIS System. This is an IRIS recognition system that when available allows you to use the system instead of waiting in line to be seen by a customs officer. Given the type of industry I work in, I have been traveling a lot since I have been in the UK, so this made sense to allow more options when arriving and be able to speed up the process in the airport. We Actually got lucky as when we got to the gate we found out we had been upgraded to business class, only problem was it was the first row bulkhead seats, so no storage room in front of us. The flight was smooth and for a short flight we were served a meal. we arrived in Copenhagen just around 2 hours later. We Met up with my aunt and uncle who were waiting for us. And quickly went into town to see Tivoli as it was the last day it was open when we arrived. it was nice to see, unfortunately on the way to the park, my aunt tripped on a pot hole and fell, we did not know it at the time but she broke her shoulder, we found that out the next day when she went to the hospital. During the rest of our visit we managed to see a few castles and walk around Copenhagen a bit, as well we went to see the little mermaid and the viking ship museum. but the highlight for me was really to get to see my family, I have not seen my cousins for about 12-14 years, one of my cousins already has 3 kids with another on the way, and my other cousin has been with his fiance for almost as long as since the last time I saw him. His fiance works in photography and her website is http://www.visioneye.dk/. Hopefully we get a chance to see more of them in the future given we are now in Europe, and it is a lot cheaper and easier to get together from here than from North America.

Well as I had mentioned I am looking at ways to expand my horizons, so I have signed up at Elance.com to try and start doing some Freelance work on the side of my day to day stuff. Also this will give me a chance to expand my skill set and use a lot of skills that I don’t get to use with my regular job. I am looking at doing some web development and Design and possibly some network monitoring projects, as I enjoy the work and it is still challenging enough to keep me entertained. What I would be looking at doing is anything with PHP and MySQL, as well as HTML and XHTML which is what most of the web 2.0 is running on at the moment, I am also looking into writing applications for facebook and the iphone as I had found that those are a couple of areas that are in demand and sound interesting.

Ok, well I had to take a trip up to Norwich for a couple of days to do some work at the airport. Have to say the airport itself is tiny, there are only about a dozen Check-In positions if that much. As for the city itself it is nothing spectacular, I spent a good part of the second day here driving around to see what might be interesting to see, not much, we ended up stopping in at the mall which is part of one of the castles here. I can say the hotel I am staying at is rather nice, it is a Marriott, and is set in an old manor is I guess what you would call it. it has a golf course and leisure club and several restaurants on site, the rooms are nicely decorated and the beds are comfortable.

Starting to get a little more serious about photography, it is something both my wife and I enjoy, and we have been lucky enough to get some great pictures at family events or outings we go on. as Such we have traded up from our point and shoot camera to a DSLR. We had the Kodak V610, which is an awesome camera for the size and give great quality shots, I loved the zoom on it given its size it had a 10X optical zoom which when you combine with the 6.1 megapixel gives you great options.

We have now upgraded just in time for the holidays to a Nikon D40X it has a massive 10.1 megapixels, and the kit came with a 15-55MM lens. I found it myself on e-bay but you can find it on Amazon.

or you can Also go for the D40 which is basically the same camera with a 6.0 megapixel.

We are still getting used to the DSLR, one thing I have noticed so far is that it is great in low light without the flash, the true colors really come out.

Looking back on 2008 this has been one hell of a ride, we had a bad 2007 overall with a lot of bad news happening within our Family, 2008 was not too much better, but it was getting there towards the middle of the year. We had a lot of big changes with life in General, we made a big move, across the ocean from sunny Arizona to rainy England.

Now After being here and managing to go around a bit in Europe, still getting used to the culture on this side of the ocean, it is quite a different mentality of the people and the work environment than in North America, even South America is different to both.

After all these experiences they have helped to instill the idea that we need to enjoy life and make the most of it as much as possible and seize all opportunities that come our way.

One of the Things we are trying right now is to eat Healthy,I ran across a lot of information from Steve Pavlina’s blog about eating raw. I found it interesting and after talking with my wife we have decided to try it out, right now we are just finishing off what we have left in the fridge as far as meat goes, we have stocked up on fruits and Vegetables, and have been eating mostly that during the day, it is still a little hard as we both got sick just on our way back from Denmark for New years, so we are fighting a cold as well, but one thing I have noticed is I am more focused during the day, and able to concentrate more on tasks that I am working on. for example I eat an orange, Banana, and Apple for Breakfast with a glass of juice and a cup of tea, at least for now while I have my cold that is helping to clear my throat and sinuses. The idea being we will eat a completely raw diet for a month and see how it goes, especially after the holiday season this seems like an ideal time to start this, and it coincides nicely with our plans to get back into shape. Although we have not done too much in that respect since getting back on Monday night being we both are still sick. We should be hitting the gym by next week is my goal, as I have been home sick most of the week, and just taking it easy, I figure more of the same over the weekend will do my body good, and be ready for next week.

in addition to starting to eat raw we are also in the process of doing a parasite cleanse, as was suggested in the reading on eating raw. We found a product here in the UK as shipping from the US can sometimes be extremely outrageous the product is called para-x, it is a combination of the three herbs required to perform a full cleanse in a tincture. if you follow the instructions according to the website you gradually build up to 2 and a half teaspoons of this by the 6th day mixed in a glass of water. I will be honest with you the stuff tastes terrible, we figured we would start off at the full dose, the first day, I won’t lie it was hard to finish the glass, so we decided to tone it down and start a little slower, we did 3 drops the second day and today I went up to 5, I prefer to drink it with juice but you still get the flavor of the cloves and the alcohol. Will keep you posted on how it tastes as it gets stronger.

one thing we have noticed while eating like this is that we are not that hungry, we are not craving anything, in the past we would usually have dinner around 6PM and then we would be looking for something to snack on by about 8PM. So far not the case, and if we are hungry we usually grab a fruit or some nuts.

One other thing I am looking at as well is starting to do some freelance work as well, looking to supplement my income and possibly generate a new revenue stream. I have been looking into this but have not really had a chance to dive in yet.

I really want to make the most of this year, and get things off to an excellent start and hopefully continue on to next year.