The northlondonhippy

Archive for December, 2008

On Christ­mas Eve, I found out my mother passed away. She would have been 79 next month.

She died the night of the 22nd, the cause of death was pneu­mo­nia. I’m told she died peace­fully, what­ever that means.

Long time read­ers of my site will prob­a­bly remem­ber that my mother had a severe stroke nearly seven years ago and never recov­ered from it. She was pretty much bed-bound, unable to walk or speak clearly. She could just about feed her­self and she needed help get­ting to the toilet.

More detail than you prob­a­bly need to know.

She went into the hos­pi­tal the pre­vi­ous week, though I wasn’t aware of it at the time. Short of her dying, my state­side rel­a­tives had never got in touch before. This wasn’t the first time she’d gone into hos­pi­tal in the last few years and I wasn’t told.

The way I found out was less than ideal.

When I woke up at 8pm on Tues night, I had an email from a cousin I haven’t seen or spo­ken to in over 20 years, plus I’d had a cou­ple of inter­na­tional hang-ups on my landline.

I didn’t have to be a genius to work out the most likely rea­son behind this sud­den contact.

I also didn’t know what to do.

My cousin wanted me to phone him back because he had “some­thing impor­tant” to tell me. Instead, I spent the 45 min­utes before my depar­ture for work, doing what I always do, hav­ing a cof­fee, a cig­a­rette and a shower, before dress­ing and leaving.

I decided to email him back, let­ting him know I was work­ing and not in a posi­tion to phone him. Of course, I could have phoned if I wanted to, but I didn’t. I also told him to feel free to share the news via email and that I was braced for the worst.

Around seven hours later, I received his reply con­firm­ing my sus­pi­cions, that my mother was dead.

She’s not hav­ing a view­ing or a funeral, just a quick cre­ma­tion. It’s the same thing my father did. We’re not big on funer­als in my imme­di­ate fam­ily, but it means I don’t have to go rush­ing off to the states.

I don’t need to go at all.

I was sup­posed to work on xmas eve and xmas, but as you might expect I didn’t. I’m going back on Sun­day, though. What else would I do?

I loved my mother very much, but I let her down badly in the last few years of her life. When she had her stroke, I was in the states for a cou­ple of months, help­ing her and help­ing my father.

And then I came back to north Lon­don and broke apart into tiny lit­tle bits. For around 6 months, I cul­ti­vated a fairly impres­sive cocaine and cognac habit, with some E’s mixed in occa­sion­ally for good mea­sure. Not long after that, I fucked up my pre­vi­ous job.

It drove me nuts that I couldn’t do any­thing mean­ing­ful to help my par­ents in their old age.

And then my father got sick.

He spent the first year after my mother came home from the hos­pi­tal and rehab wor­ry­ing about what would hap­pen to my mother if he got sick. All the worry got him sick and less than a year after that, he passed away from cancer.

I didn’t go to visit.

I couldn’t risk it.

I’m a pussy.

I had planned to visit my mother after my father died, but she gave up her home and moved into a nurs­ing home, near one of her sis­ters. The one that was always the most evil aun­tie imaginable.

I warned my mother that it would all end in tears. It did, when my aunt decided it was all too much for her and she washed her hands of my mother and her finan­cial affairs about 6 months ago. A dis­tant rel­a­tive of my father’s stepped in to take care of things, but it left my mother in an area of the world where she had no one else.

Had my mother stayed put in her home, or chose a nurs­ing home near there, she would have had a con­stant stream of vis­i­tors as she had many friends who lived locally, but instead she gave all that up on my evil auntie’s insistence.

For the few years my mother lived in the nurs­ing home, she would com­plain about my aunt, even telling us that my aunt wouldn’t let her see cur­rent bank state­ments. I can’t prove any­thing, but my mother said she was nick­ing dosh.

Nice.

Just about every rel­a­tive I have, stole some­thing from my mother. One of my half-brother’s took money from her account and never returned it, other’s took keep­sakes and any­thing of value.

My younger brother went to see my mother, once, while she was in the nurs­ing home and my evil aun­tie made cer­tain his trip was mis­er­able. She treated him badly, but worse, treated my mother badly and dis­re­spect­fully in front of him.

Old evil aun­tie made a point of telling my mother, in front of my brother, that she threw away every pho­to­graph she found in my mother’s house when she was clear­ing it out in prepa­ra­tion for the move to the nurs­ing home. Every photo from my child­hood, plus 8mm home movies from the 60’s and 70’s was casu­ally tossed into a skip.

Imag­ine if some­one did that to your child­hood. What would you do?

What could I do?

This evil fuck­ing cunt took over my mother’s life and made her mis­er­able, though the last time my brother spoke to my mother, she said my aunt had vis­ited and tried to make peace. How nice for evil cunt auntie.

I know I’m not the only one with a trag­i­cally fucked up fam­ily, but now that my mother is gone, so is my very last con­nec­tion to them. Its just my brother and I, a cou­ple of middle-aged orphans from a deeply dys­func­tional family.

The other bless­ing to come out of all this is my mother is now no longer a pris­oner of her dam­aged and with­ered body. For nearly 7 years she’s been trapped inside a phys­i­cal form that wouldn’t and couldn’t bend to her will.

The night after my mother had her mas­sive stroke, the hos­pi­tal phoned my father and told him my mother was in a coma and couldn’t breathe on her own. They needed to put her on life-support or she would die.

My mother had an up-to-date liv­ing will, that clearly stated in such cir­cum­stances, no heroic efforts should be made to sus­tain her life, if her prospects for a full recov­ery were nil.

My father, des­per­ately afraid and ill-prepared to live life with­out my mother, took the chicken-shit option and told them to go ahead and put tubes down her throat, for breath­ing and feed­ing. He went com­pletely against her wishes.

My father was in denial; at the point, he wouldn’t and couldn’t accept that my mother wasn’t going to recover. Instead his fear and inabil­ity to deal with the truth of the sit­u­a­tion, con­demned my mother to an exis­tence I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.

He thought he was doing the right thing and for months, he con­tin­ued to insist that my mother walked into the hos­pi­tal on her own and dammit, she would walk back out.

She never took another unaided step in her life.

When I read my cousin’s first email, I’d been awake around 30 sec­onds. It was deliv­ered to my iPhone and I saw it just after I turned the alarm on it off. In my bleary-eyed first read­ing of it, an image imme­di­ately flashed into my head.

It was both of my par­ents, together. And they were smiling.

I don’t believe in the after­life, but I knew in that instant that my mother really had finally joined my father and if I could build a heaven for the two of them, I surely would.

Rest in sweet peace, Mom.

Hey fuck­ers!

Dig this shit! I now have the abil­ity to post to my blog directly from my iPhone.

At least I think I do. We will find out for sure when I attempt to post this bad boy on my site.

If you’re read­ing this shit, then it worked. And you can maybe expect more mobile blog­ging on the future.

Its only a few more days till xmas and you can feel things grad­u­ally wind­ing down. The schools are clos­ing, mil­lions of peo­ple are trav­el­ling and the shops are try­ing to shift their last bits of tat.

I’m wind­ing down too, though not quite in the same way. I’m work­ing all week, straight through until Box­ing Day morn­ing. Somebody’s got to!

There are loads of peo­ple who have to work over xmas, even in the west­ern, Chris­t­ian world. Spare a thought for us when your tuck­ing into your turkey and curs­ing your relatives.

No nos­tal­gic trips down mem­ory lane for me this year, I’m just going to grit my teeth and get through it as quickly and unevent­fully as pos­si­ble. I’m off for the New Year though, which is a good thing because I do like to party more than I like to eat turkey.

To say my hol­i­day will be low-key would be an under­state­ment. Aside from work­ing, I’m ready to hun­ker down. I’ve got all my sup­plies in or com­ing, thanks to an Ocado deliv­ery on Mon­day, my lim­ited amount of xmas shop­ping is com­plete and I am ready to draw the cur­tains, lock the door and not do any­thing for around a week.

I’m mak­ing it sound a lot bleaker than it really is. I chose to spend my hol­i­days this way.

I hope you’ve had the good for­tune to choose how you’re spend­ing your hol­i­days too. If you’re lucky, you will be sur­rounded by fam­ily that you don’t hate or maybe even like just a lit­tle bit.

Just because I’m not cel­e­brat­ing xmas, doesn’t mean I don’t remem­ber what they’re like!

Wher­ever you are and what­ever you find your­self doing, I want to bid you all the hap­pi­est of hol­i­days. I hope all your wishes and dreams come true!

With apolo­gies to the Marx Brothers.…

Check out this photo I took of a shop­ping mall Santa Clause:

Santa Clause has a giant rub­ber head!

Did you notice Santa is wear­ing a giant rub­ber head?

Why do you think that is?

When I was a kid, Santa was an old man, with a fake beard, smelling faintly of booze and piss. And when you sat on his lap, it some­times felt like he had a pep­per­oni in is pocket.

Gross.

Today’s mod­ern Santa is noth­ing like that, with his giant rub­ber head, clean cloth­ing and A WOMAN play­ing him!

That’s right, my money is on a per­son of the female per­sua­sion inside that par­tic­u­lar Santa suit.

It makes sense hir­ing a woman, no booze, no piss, no erec­tions and no expen­sive defence lawyers to defend against costly civil law suits.

And if Santa wants to take a break from the air­less rub­ber mask, no prob­lem, she can just switch cos­tumes with the Elf. Every­body wins.

Except your kids, who will for­ever think Santa has a giant rub­ber head. How will he ever fit down the chimney?

There’s only ten days left till xmas and if you haven’t fin­ished your shop­ping yet, I’m here to help.

Its a short list of poten­tial gifts, but ones that will be cer­tain to impress and daz­zle the recip­i­ent. Also, you can order them online and have them ready to dole out on xmas with­out hav­ing to leave the com­fort of your home. That’s the best way to xmas shop!

Kodak Zi6 HD Video­cam­era
Ama­zon UK: £ 89.99

The Kodak Zi6 HD Video­cam­era is an impres­sive lit­tle piece of kit. While pocket sized, this lit­tle mar­vel shoots in glo­ri­ously rich and detailed 720p High-Def, while record­ing onto cheap and read­ily avail­able SD cards.

The Zi6 also shoots in stan­dard, YouTube friendly VGA, has a built in USB con­nec­tor and works like a dream. On my Mac, it just appears as a hard drive on the desk­top, you drag the files onto your desk­top, then into iMovie, which can han­dle them in HD quality.

On a PC, the Zi6 includes built in edit­ing soft­ware, that you can run from the cam­era. Sweet.

It also shoots stills, has a 2x opti­cal zoom and works off stan­dard or rechar­gable AA bat­ter­ies. I am so impressed with this cam­era already.

I bought mine a few weeks ago and paid £119.99, which means at £89.99, its already a major bar­gain! If you’re look­ing for a sim­ple to use pocket video­cam­era that won’t break the bank, this is the cam­era for you.

iPod Touch
Ama­zon UK: £149-£254 depend­ing upon stor­age (8gb, 16gb or 32gb)

I know I go on and on about my iPhone, but what if you are already happy with your cur­rent mobile deal, but still want to play with the coolest hand held gad­get ever? The iPod Touch is for you!

The iPod Touch is basi­cally an iPhone with­out the phone. It does nearly every­thing an iPhone can do except make and receive tele­phone calls, send and receive SMS mes­sages, take pho­tos and have proper GPS. Other than that, it does every­thing else.

You can run most apps on an iPod Touch, you can surf the net, send and receive emails, it does have some loca­tion aware­ness based on wi-fi posi­tion­ing. Oh and it plays music and videos and dis­plays pho­tos too.

I bought one for Mrs. Hippy last xmas and she absolutely loves it. She used it for music until the Apple App Store opened and that’s when she really got hooked. She now uses it for surf­ing, for gam­ing and its rarely not in her hands.

The 2nd gen­er­a­tion iPod Touch is even slim­mer than the first and its added a small speaker and the abil­ity to input audio via an exter­nal micro­phone, mak­ing it even more flex­i­ble than the orig­i­nal model.

The only neg­a­tive Mrs. H has come up with on it is it makes her wish she had an iPhone. The lack of con­nec­tiv­ity when there is no wi-fi avail­able is a real stick­ing point. Other than that, its nearly a per­fect device, guar­an­teed to be used daily by who­ever you might give it to.

Vol­cano Vapor­iser
everyonedoesit.com — £279.75 for the stan­dard model

I bought one of these a few months ago, but it is some­thing I’ve cov­eted for ages. Near as I can tell, its the only vape that really works and con­sis­tently deliv­ers good results.

The Vol­cano Vapor­iser does one thing and does it very well, it takes your favourite herb (like weed) and turns the active bits into vapour, while leav­ing the nasty bits alone.

When you smoke weed, you burn every­thing, includ­ing the carbon-based bits which con­tain the known car­cino­gens and other nas­ties. You also burn a good chunk of the THC, before it reaches your lungs.

A vapor­iser only burns the THC. leav­ing the other com­po­nents alone. The weed doesn’t actu­ally burn, but it does get a bit toasted and turns brown.

The Vol­cano works by fill­ing a small cham­ber, which holds your weed between two screens. You place this cham­ber on top of the base unit, where it is heated to the proper tem­per­a­ture. You then engage a small fan, which blows air up through the cham­ber, fill­ing an attached bal­loon with very sweet, pure vapour.

When you inhale it, you can def­i­nitely taste the weed, but your throat and lungs don’t feel any­thing at all. The vapour is at room temp, so its not hot and dry like smoke, and it is very light, though you can see it when you exhale.

The head on vapour is also dif­fer­ent from smok­ing and is hard to describe. It is decep­tively strong, clean, clear and every enjoyable.

By far the most impres­sive thing about using a Vol­cano is how lit­tle weed you actu­ally need to get high. A week’s worth of what I would smoke, would prob­a­bly last 5–6 weeks in the vol­cano. A spliff’s worth in the cham­ber is enough to get 4 peo­ple pleas­antly stoned and then some.

And when you are done vap­ing the weed, don’t throw it away, there’s still some THC left in it, which you can extract by mak­ing cannabut­ter. You could even smoke it if you were des­per­ate, though that would kind of defeat the pur­pose of vaping.

I know the Vol­cano is expen­sive (and I bought the even pricier dig­i­tal ver­sion), but it will more than pay for itself with the money you will save on weed. Add the health ben­e­fits and you’ve got a really use­ful, ben­e­fi­cial device that will change your life.

I bought mine because I am plan­ning on giv­ing up cig­a­rettes in the new year. When I do, I’m going to want to cut down on my spliffs as well and I think this will help loads.

That’s it for this year, just three hi-tech toys which will amaze any­one you might decide to give them to. And if you’re shop­ping for your­self, even bet­ter, you’d love them all too!

There’s was an avalanche of media bull­shit this week over a doc­u­men­tary aired on SKY REAL LIVES which showed a man with motor neu­rone dis­ease tak­ing his own life at a Swiss clinic in 2006.

Switzer­land is cur­rently the only coun­try in the world which allows for­eign­ers to visit and par­take in a spot of assisted sui­cide. Go Switzerland!

I say the media was full of bull­shit because most out­lets con­cen­trated on the issue of whether or not you should show the “moment of death” on tele­vi­sion, for fear of “glam­ouris­ing death”.

WTF?

I haven’t seen the entire doc­u­men­tary, but I have seen some clips and how could show­ing a man with an absolutely hor­ri­ble dis­ease end­ing his life in any way glam­ourise death? There were no Hol­ly­wood films stars or strip­pers cheer­ing him on, the room he did it in wasn’t kit­ted out in fur rugs and leather sofas and they didn’t even have a live band.

There was no glam­our at all, but then there was absolutely noth­ing glam­ourous about it.

Tak­ing your own life is a seri­ous deci­sion, cer­tainly the most seri­ous deci­sion any indi­vid­ual can take and it was clear this poor man delib­er­ated for a very long time before mak­ing this final decision.

The debate should not have been about whether or not they should have shown this on tele­vi­sion, but why more coun­tries don’t have sys­tems like they do in Switzerland.

Why is it against the law to pro­vide the ulti­mate relief and end the suf­fer­ing of another human being? We do it for dogs and cats and horses — do they mat­ter more than people?

There are some rather hor­ri­ble mal­adies and afflic­tions out there which are hor­ren­dous and could cause immea­sur­able suf­fer­ing and pain to the per­son affected.

A slow, pro­tracted death is one of my big­ger fears, but that fear is expo­nen­tially exac­er­bated by the fact that I know if I wanted to choose to end the suf­fer­ing, it would not be pos­si­ble because of our archaic view of euthanasia.

The peo­ple most unsur­pris­ingly opposed to euthana­sia tend to be reli­gious nuts who believe only god’s will can decide when your life ends.

What a fuck­ing bunch of fuck­ing bull­shit. If that’s true, then any­one with a gun is god, because they can choose to end anyone’s life with rel­a­tive ease.

I have a real prob­lem tak­ing any­one seri­ously who is deeply reli­gious to the point of it cloud­ing their every thought and opin­ion, espe­cially when those mis­guided views increase the suf­fer­ing and pain of others.

That’s one of religion’s spe­cial­ity though, caus­ing oth­ers to need­lessly suffer.

I’ve recently been in touch with a dis­tant rela­tion of mine, who was in charge of dis­pens­ing a small stipend to myself and all my cousins fol­low­ing the pass­ing of a beloved aunt of mine.

When she wrote to me, her let­ter was pep­pered with all sorts of reli­gious ref­er­ences. I half expected her clos­ing salu­ta­tion to be “Yours in Christ” and was relieved that it wasn’t.

I had to really reign myself in when I replied to her, by keep­ing my sec­u­lar human­ist views at bay, though I couldn’t resist wish­ing her a “happy hol­i­days” in response to her “merry xmas”. Of course, she wrote out the entire word and cap­i­talised it.

I have noth­ing against my dis­tant rel­a­tive, the fact is I don’t really know her, hav­ing maybe met her twice before the age of 13, but its the way in which reli­gious peo­ple think every­one else should be equally reli­gious, and not just that but we should fol­low their reli­gion, because the other ones, even vari­a­tions on Chris­tian­ity, will send you straight to hell.

There is no hell. Hell is other people.

No, hell is being forced to live with a debil­i­tat­ing and ter­mi­nal con­di­tion, need­less suf­fer­ing a long, drawn out death because the law won’t let one be the archi­tect of one’s own fate.

The law is an ass. Or is that asshole?

The idea of my mind, my per­son­al­ity, the inter­nal bits of my brain con­tin­u­ing to func­tion as they do now, while being trapped in my body, wracked with pain, or worse paral­y­sis is a fate worse than death. Com­pared to any of that, death would be a trip to Disneyland.

And for all you reli­gious nuts out there, let me ask you this: If heaven is so god­damn great, why can’t we let the sick peo­ple arrive a lit­tle ear­lier than expected? Surely a just and lov­ing god would wel­come them with open arms.

If there were a god, he wouldn’t make us suffer.

If there were a god, he wouldn’t let us die.

If there were a god, there would be no need for heaven, because heaven would be here on earth and we would all already be angels.

If there were a god, he wouldn’t give a rat’s ass if some­one chose to end their life because of an intol­er­a­ble existence.

If there were a god, I wouldn’t get to post all of this on the inter­net and he’d have a stern word or two for me.

There is no god.

Why not be your own god? Why not deter­mine your own fate?

They say you make your own luck and I believe that’s true. I believe in self-actualisation and the power of an indi­vid­ual to over­come obsta­cles and suc­ceed in anything.

If the obsta­cle you’re encoun­ter­ing is insur­mount­able, then the only path to suc­cess is retreat.

If you’re dying a hor­ri­ble death, the only way to min­imise death’s vic­tory over you is to limit the amount of time you spend dying.

I thought about this a lot when I was ill last sum­mer, espe­cially when I could hardly walk and spent over a week try­ing to sleep sit­ting up on my sofa.

I imag­ined quite vividly that my con­di­tion could have been per­ma­nent and degen­er­a­tive, and what I would do in that situation.

I think you can work out the answer.

I read in the last week or so that there are now over 10,000 apps avail­able for the iPhone and that’s only in the last six months since the App Store opened.

Wow!

That’s a lot of appli­ca­tions for the world’s favourite, ultra-clever smart phone.

Some of them are com­pletely point­less and fun, oth­ers are very use­ful and some are just plain cool. I’ve gone a bit app mad and down­loaded loads of them, so many that I am going to run out space soon.

That’s ok, because at some point, I know I am going to have to cull my apps and lose the ones I hardly, if ever use. For now, though I’m all about the apps.

I’ve already reviewed some of my favourite apps, CLICK HERE to mag­i­cally travel back in time to those heady, crazy days, of August 2008.

Since then, I’ve found some even cooler apps to share with you. Some of them are free, some are paid for, but nearly all of them serve a use­ful pur­pose and most of them are used by yours truly on a daily basis.

Google Search
This app has been around since day one of the App Store, but the recent update added a fea­ture that will not only impress your mates, but actu­ally works.

The lat­est ver­sion of Google’s search app doesn’t require any but­tons, you put the phone to your ear, wait for the tone to cue you and then speak your search and it under­stands you and dis­plays your results light­en­ing quick!

Like if you say “ show me pic­tures of naked women”, it fills your screen with very pretty pic­tures. And if you have the “safe search” option switched off, you’ll get some hands free porn, which if you think about it, could have some appli­ca­tions of its own.

Seri­ously, its very cool and a quick demo will blow most peo­ple away.

Weather Bug
There are a lot of weather apps for your iPhone, but this one is my favourite.
You choose a weather cen­tre near­est to you from a list pro­vided and the app then dis­plays the tem­per­a­ture, wind speed, along with all the usual stuff like humid­ity and barom­e­ter pressure…in real time.

You can watch the wind change direc­tion and speed while the app is run­ning and it also tells you what the wind chill is, a use­ful tool when choos­ing what coat to wear. The app also pro­vides fore­casts for the next few days, but here’s the other killer fea­ture, it shows you the most recent satel­lite weather photo for your region.

This app is a must-have if you dig the weather, or like to know how cold it is out­side. Trust me, baby its chilly.

TV Plus
This one is really only of use to you if you live in the UK and sub­scribe to SKY TV and have a SKY+ box. For those of you who don’t know what I mean (my pals in Amer­ica!), its a com­bi­na­tion TiVO and satel­lite tv receiver and is my dig­i­tal plat­form of choice.

If you have a SKY+ and an iPhone, you will really love this one. TV Plus dis­plays the SKY pro­gramme guide for the next seven days, with descrip­tions for each pro­gramme, on every chan­nel. If you’ve signed up for a MySKY account, you can enter your details into the app, then, and here’s the killer bit, once you’re set up, you can enter record­ings into your SKY+ from any­where you have a con­nec­tion via wi-fi, EDGE or 3G.

I’m not sure if I am explain­ing this well. Say you’re at work and you’ve for­got to put a record­ing in for some tv show, it doesn’t mat­ter what. You can find the pro­gramme on the vir­tual pro­gramme guide on your iPhone and tap the record but­ton and through some magic voodoo jig­gery pok­ery, the record­ing just appears in your SKY+ plan­ner as if you entered it with the remote from the prox­im­ity of your sofa. Amazing.

Set up is slightly com­plex, but the step-by-step instruc­tions were very clear and easy to fol­low — I had it up and run­ning in no time. It prob­a­bly took longer to sign up for the MySKY account (free from SKY.com) than it did to set up the app and my SKY+ box.

Just be aware that the remote record­ings work best when you have more than 30 min­utes before the pro­gramme begins, oth­er­wise there don’t seem to be any lim­i­ta­tions. It’s well worth the price!

iTap
I wasn’t that impressed with iTap ini­tially, but since the most recent update, it really shines. Its a sim­ple app that turns your iPhone into a remote track pad for a Mac and just about any­thing you can do with a mouse, you can do with iTap, includ­ing right click­ing. iTap now also has a key­board, for remote text entry.

I have a Mac Mini con­nected to my tv and I can do most things with my Log­itech Har­mony Remote, includ­ing con­trol Front Row and iTunes, but the one thing I’ve never been able to do is put the Mini to sleep. With the lit­tle white Apple remote, no prob­lem, I press and hold the cen­tre but­ton and voila, my Mini is snor­ing. I can’t seem to come up with a way to repli­cate that com­mand with the Har­mony remote.

With iTap, I don’t have to, I can just start it and in two taps, my Mini is dream­ing of elec­tric sheep.

iTap requires a small piece of receiver soft­ware to be installed on your Mac, but it was very easy, just drag it into your apps folder, run it, then from the menu bar icon, select “open on start-up” to add it to your log in items. Then just for­get about it.

Mocha VNC Lite
iTap is great, if you can see your Mac’s screen, but what if you can’t?

There are many occa­sions where I need to do some­thing with the Mac Mini, while the tv is in use and I don’t want to switch over to the Mini to do some­thing quick and sim­ple. Instead I use Mocha VNC Lite.

VNC stands for vir­tual net­work con­trol and if you’re run­ning Leop­ard, its built into the oper­at­ing sys­tem and called screen shar­ing. Because it is built into the oper­at­ing sys­tem, its very easy to enable, just go into the pref­er­ence pane under shar­ing, click the screen shar­ing box and set a pass­word for remote login. Your Mac is now ready to be remotely controlled.

Mocha VNC Lite allows you to con­nect to your Mac and con­trol it, with the touch­screen act­ing as a track­pad with the remote Mac’s out­put dis­played on the iPhone’s screen.

With Mocha VNC Lite, I can start and stop down­loads, I can run apps, enter text through the inte­grated key­board, all from another room, or even in my back gar­den. I’ve only got it set up to work within my home net­work, but peo­ple who are bet­ter at the real tech stuff can prob­a­bly get it to work over the inter­net, from any­where in the world.

Its a free­bie, though there is a paid ver­sion, which I should buy myself.

iTalk Recorder
Griffin’s iTalk Recorder is another sim­ple, yet well designed and use­ful app that does what it says on the tin. It records sound, but it does it very well.

You can choose the qual­ity, from good enough to be broad­cast on FM radio to very low, but still listen-able and the length of the record­ing is only lim­ited by your avail­able flash memory.

Trans­fer­ring your audio to your Mac is a breeze, there is an appli­ca­tion that you need to install which wire­lessly con­nects your Mac to your iPhone and you just drag over the files you need.

This app is works so well that I bet I could use it to do vox­pops on the street that sounded good enough to be trans­mit­ted on the radio. Of course, I’d look like a dick, walk­ing up to peo­ple and mak­ing them talk into an upside-down iPhone, but you get the idea.

Air­Cam­Live­V­ideo
This app is extremely cool and I have absolutely no pur­pose for it, not even a nefar­i­ous one.

Air­Cam­Live­V­ideo turns your iPhone into a wire­less remote receiver for the built-in isight cam­era in your iMac or Mac­Book and it also works with the old exter­nal isights. It should work with other web­cams as well, though best to check before down­load­ing the app.

Again, you need to install a small piece of soft­ware on your Mac to trans­mit the images (and now audio too) from your Mac to your iPhone. Start the soft­ware on the Mac, run the app on your iPhone and away you go. It self-configures via Bon­jour and you can pass­word pro­tect the live stream to keep pry­ing eyes away.

Like I said, I have no prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tion for this one, its just very cool and futur­is­tic. I also think its the most expen­sive app I’ve bought so far. It was a fiver, but now that I’ve reviewed it, bang that’s com­ing off next year’s taxes as a web­site expense.

Now — Geo-networking
This is a weird one and I’ve yet to really work out its usefulness.

This app lets you post a tag on a loca­tion in real time, and they only remain there for a day or so. You can also search for other people’s tags.

Post­ing appears sim­ple, you allow the app to know your loca­tion, put in your line of copy and hit send. Be care­ful what you post and where you post it, though.

The rea­son to be care­ful is that when you do a search, you can see what all the other peo­ple have posted, com­plete with direc­tions to get there. You don’t want to be sit­ting at home post­ing “sex avail­able, no charge”.

Or maybe, you do.

And yes, I have seen labels such as my exam­ple above posted on a map of the world. The app is global and should work wher­ever you are on the planet.

When you do a search, the app hands off some data to the iPhone’s built in map app, and you can watch a col­lec­tion of red pins descend across the global. Tap a pin to read the attached descrip­tion text, zoom in and see where they are or switch to the satel­lite view.

For me, its an easy, fun way to gen­er­ate addresses for play­ing with the new “street view” func­tion added in the iPhone’s soft­ware update to ver­sion 2.2.

The UK hasn’t been blessed with street view just yet, but most of the con­ti­nen­tal US has and guess where most of the posters on this app are from? Although bizarrely, Google did have some street views avail­able for an Ital­ian sub­urb and it does look like Lon­don will be added soon, which means I’ll be able to vir­tu­ally stalk myself.

And speak­ing of stalk­ing, tell me this doesn’t sound fun. Next week, I’m going to be post­ing “www.northlondonhippy.com” via this app, at var­i­ous loca­tions through­out Lon­don. If you’re really quick, and you can get there in time, you might catch a glimpse of me and my iPhone in action.

If you don’t, at least you’ll know that you are stand­ing in the exact spot where I stood when I posted it. If that doesn’t make the lit­tle hairs on the back of your neck stand up, I don’t know what will!

And that my friends and iPhone fans is my lat­est col­lec­tion of super-neat-o-cool iPhone apps, but it by no means com­plete. There are plenty of oth­ers I like and prob­a­bly my absolute favourite is yet to come. Enjoy!

I want to take a moment to say a spe­cial thank you…to you…all of you!

Novem­ber 2008 was a record month here at the northlondonhippy.com, with more vis­i­tors than ever stop­ping by and hang­ing out with me here in my vir­tual realm.

Last month saw the num­ber of peo­ple com­ing here increase around 35%, which is the best sus­tained growth over a month I’ve ever had. Give your­selves a big fat round of applause for that!

I do get the occa­sional spike, when some­thing I’ve writ­ten is picked up by other sites, but in gen­eral the num­ber of peo­ple vis­it­ing remains fairly con­stant. In Novem­ber, I noticed steady gains start­ing on the US elec­tion day, when I live blogged my lit­tle heart out and the num­bers just kept con­tin­u­ing to rise after that.

I don’t know exactly why and to be hon­est, it doesn’t mat­ter. I just keep doing what­ever it is I do here, regardless.

A few vague sta­tis­tics for you:

40% of vis­i­tors in Novem­ber book­marked my site

28% of vis­i­tors in Novem­ber sub­scribe to my site via RSS feed readers

10% of vis­i­tors spent 1 hour or more surf­ing my site

Cool, eh?

My site is about as inde­pen­dent as a site can be. It’s just me, a word proces­sor, an inter­net con­nec­tion and a col­lec­tion of deep per­son­al­ity flaws keep­ing this place tick­ing over. My over­heads for pro­duc­ing con­tent are very low. So are the finan­cial gains, but I’ve never been inter­ested in doing this for the money. Good thing, really, though I do cover my exter­nal costs.

So what can my ever increas­ing audi­ence expect from me in the future?

I’m work­ing on my xmas gift buy­ing guide and I have a few very cool rec­om­men­da­tions for you of prod­ucts I’ve pur­chased recently includ­ing a pocket-sized hi-def video cam­era that won’t break the bank and a herbal vapor­iser that might, along with a few other seri­ously cool toys.

I’m plan­ning a day of hippy-online-availability, where for one day, I will be logged into every con­ceiv­able instant mes­sen­ger ser­vice and web­site known to man and avail­able for chat­ting. I’ll log into Yahoo, MSN, AOL, Face­book, MySpace, GoogleTalk and any­one who wants to com­mu­ni­cate with me, can. Think of it as an exper­i­ment in con­nect­ing with as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble, 21st century-style. I’ll talk to any­one about any­thing. Watch this space for the announcement.

This March will mark my 5th anniver­sary as a blog­ger and I am try­ing to think of a suit­able way to mark the occa­sion. Oral sex is always in good taste, if any of you hot women out there are feel­ing gen­er­ous. Don’t worry, Mrs. H will under­stand, since it is in the best inter­ests of fos­ter­ing bet­ter rela­tions with my core audi­ence. Plus, she can take the photos.

Beyond that, you’ve still got me and my weird and won­der­ful stream of con­scious­ness, nar­cis­sis­tic bull­shit to share with you on a semi-regular basis. What’s not to love?

I’m the hippy you all adore
because I am a com­plete media whore!

I’ll always try to make you laugh
and make you think
and make you wish you were a hippy too!

Thanks again for stop­ping by. This is one place where you will always be welcome!

I’d love to stay and blog all day, but I need to cel­e­brate this occa­sion in the appro­pri­ate fash­ion and this juicy, skunky spliff ain’t gonna smoke itself. Bye.