If you remember a while back I mentioned that I was going to start making my own podcasts to go on another blog that I write for. Well, the first podcast went live this afternoon after being approved by the iTunes team. It was recorded on Thursday night , submitted on Friday and live today. Not a bad turn around really. I’m really impressed with the efficiency by which Apple work.

A lot of the readers to this blog won’t be able to understand what the podcast is about though as it is entierly in Welsh. This is because its a Welsh language blog about technology and the internet. I’ll give you a brief overview of what the Podcast discusses:

• Welsh Language Samsung Mobile Phone on the Orange Network
• The possibility of having to pay for BBC iPlayer in the future
• The broadband tax the government want to introduce
• The Welsh Assembly no longer broadcasting the meeting on S4C2
• A fellow members’ new iMac

Quite a variety of topics really.I’ve had a listen to it a couple of times and it sounds really good considering it was a first effort. Hopefully we’ll iron out the creases as we go along. The development of www.metastwnsh.com has been quite a bit more than I thought it would be really. It began life as just a small blog about technology, but we’ve now moved on to creating mashups for Welsh events ans creating a Welsh language URL shortening service. We’ve also got a campaign to get better 3G coverage over Wales.

We have a few other plans that we’d like to develop too, but I’ll write about that when things are at a stage that’s more than just a dream at the moment. It’s always good seeing things progress and develop. Soon the website will be a year old and I’m pretty sure we’ll have a lot to celebrate. Here’s hoping that it will continue to grow and mature at a steady rate.

Apologies for not posting much recently, but it’s been a hectic week here. This was the week that everything needed to get done at home before I made the move to Bolton. There was lots to do too. Accomodation had been sorted out, but I wasn’t getting any information from Student Services about anything. I’m a bit of a worrier so I have to make sure that I know exactly what’s going on. Then there was the problem of transport. I’d asked a cousin if they could take me, but I never got any response back from them and the date was fast approaching. Luckily, my brother in law came to the rescue.

So, that’s briefly what happened last week. Last night I spent my first night at Orlando Village. I’d arrived at Bolton at 2.30pm and by 3.40pm I was on a train to Blackpool to see my girlfriend. She has been there since Friday because she has a wedding to attend to today. It was the perfect opportunity to spend a few hours together. She’s staying at the Hilton Hotel and we had the most wonderful dinner together.

My first night in the Halls of Residence went well although at about 12.30am people started arriving back from their nights out and were a bit rowdy. I’m sure that this is something I’m going to have to get used to. There are quiet halls available, but they’re on the other end of town.

So today my University experience begins for real. I’ve been a University of Bolton student for a year already, but as some of you know, this will be my first year actually at Bolton. It’s induction week this week and I have absolutely no idea what that means. I’ll have to pop to the Uni to find out later on. Firstly though I need to go and buy some food (and maybe a coffee). I also need to buy an aerial for the Television.

A few weeks back I mentioned that I bought an AirPort Extreme so that I could connect to my Hard Disks and Printer wirelessly. Well, I’m in the halls and I’ve connected it up and guess what. It doesn’t work! Something to do with security and creating wireless networks. Darn it!! It works for sharing the HDD and Printer, but in order to access the internet the computer has to be physically connected via Ethernet cable. A bit of a pain to be honest.

So, that’s what I’ve been up to this last week. Any of you been up to anything exciting?

A few days ago I posted about getting an Apple Extreme Base Station in order to share my external hard disks over the internet. Well yesterday I went about setting up the Apple Extreme Base Station in the house. Everything was going great to begin with. The setup process was a walk in the park, or so I though…

Whilst I was at the house everything was working fine; I could access the disks and printer over the wireless network with no problems. But when I went to my girlfriends flat and tried to access the attached devices I wasn’t able to. I could connect to the Apple Extreme Base Station remotely, but not gain access to the disks (which was the main reason for getting it).

Now I’m not an expert on wireless networks so I’m a bit stumped as to what’s wrong. I did a lot of research on the Internet to see if I could find the cause of the problem but alas, no solution was forthcoming. I even signed up for a full MobileMe account after discovering that a trial account wouldn’t work. I’m going to try a few things out tomorrow when I go back home to see if I can get it to work. I think that turning off the BT Home Hub’s Wireless connection might solve some of the issues.

If that doesn’t solve it, I think I may have to do a factory reset of the Apple Extreme Base Station and do a fresh setup. As I said in my previous post I didn’t want to take the Apple Extreme Base Station with me to Bolton, but it looks likely that I’ll have to if I can’t get this sorted. It will be usefull at Bolton too though because I’ll be able to plug the University network into it and share it wirelessly with my MacBook.

Hopefully though I can get it sorted soon. Wish me luck.

Ok, yesterday I decided to hook up the Nintendo Wii to the Internet over the wireless connection. The first problem I had was that I didn’t remember what the parental control passcode was. Not a good start really, but a quick search on the Internet showed me how to reset that.

The next thing was setting up the Wireless connection, which was easy enough to do. The Nintendo Wii did mst of the hard work there with me only having to enter the WAP passcode. I had to download a new update for the Nintendo Wii which took an absolute age. Once this was done I was connected.

I wasn’t that impressed with it to be honest. Sure there were good things, but I didn’t have any games that I could play online. So the next step is to get hold of some games for the Nintendo Wii that I can play over the Internet.

It wasn’t a bad experience really and I can see that many people must get enjoyment from connecting the Nintendo Wii to the Internet (ones who have games to play online obviously), the set up process is simplicity in itself.

Suggestions for games to buy in order to make the most of the Nintendo Wii’s connection would be appreciated. Leave comments on this post for me. I can assure you that I do read all of them.

If you’re wondering where I’ve been for the past few days I’ll tell you. I’ve been in bed with a stinking cold that’s where.

I was feeling a bit rough last week to be honest, but didn’t think much of it. By the weekend I was bed ridden. I’m male, and I can hear all you women sighing and talking under your breath about “men, a little sniffle and they’re dying”. Well, it’s true, I was death’s door (not literally of course, and you’re right women it was just a sniffle in the end) and no amount of Tomato soup by a certain manufacturer was going to make me better.

By Monday, I was feeling much better, but decided to stay in bed for the day just to make sure it wasn’t bird flu or Swine flu (Can’t be too careful these days!). So I’m back to normal now and will be letting you all know of the cool things that I’ve been looking at whilst lying in my bed being tended on by my wonderful girlfriend.

The weather is still rubbish though, so no trips to the seaside for a while. To be honest I can’t believe how fast these summer holidays have gone by. It’s only a couple of weeks and the kids go back to school. Then I’m off to live to Bolton for a few years to finish off my degree course. I’m really looking forward to that.

Well it’s finally here. The broadband has been connected and we’re browsing (and working) on the internet at high speed. This probably isn’t a new thing to most of you, it isn’t new to me either but being able to connect at broadband speeds both at home and in the flat is great. It means that I can do my work here (in the flat) without having to constantly struggle with the Vodafone dongle that I was using to send files. It makes life so much easier too.

It was meant to be connected today officially, but we’ve been using it since about 1pm yesterday. The phone had been doing some funny clicking noises the night before and during the morning so I decided to plug the router in and hey presto, the green “internet” light lit up. This was doubly great for me because there was an event going on in the actual real world that was being Twittered and blogged about in “real-time” that I wanted to be a part of. Unfortunately, that event didn’t quite go as expected because of the denial of service attack that Twitter experienced.

The broadband supplier we chose was Plus.net and this was mainly because of the reviews and word of mouth praise for the company. Originally we had decided to go with O2 Home Broadband, but it wasn’t available in this area. From what I’ve seen and experienced of Plus.net already, they seem to be a great company. Their online tracking system is the best one I’ve seen so far with regards to keeping the customer informed in an easy to understand way. The Thompson router that they supplied (the day before the broadband went live) was easy to set up too. So, if you’re thinking of getting broadband then I’d definitely recommend Plus.net as a supplier.

Tomorrow I will have been writing for the Gottahave blog on PriceGrabber for a whole year. It’s certainly been an exciting year and one that has gone by really quickly. It’s hard to actually believe that a year has gone by to be honest.

We’ve seen a lot of new developments and I’m happy to have been a part of bringing you the latest news from the gadget and computing world. Things move at a rapid pace in the technology world and it’s sometimes difficult to keep on top of it all. It’s exciting seeing these new gadgets coming on the market. Things don’t look to be slowing down either, so you can be sure that you’ll read about them on the Gottahave blog.

It’s been an honour and a privilege to write for this blog over the past year and I’m glad to say that I’ll be continuing to do so. Writing is something I love doing, and gadgets are also something I love (hey, I’m a nerd at heart… what can I say…) so it makes sense to combine both pleasures.

Thank you to all the readers and followers of this blog, and thank you to the gues at PriceGrabber. Remember to follow us on Twitter !!!

Guys, just a quick reminder to you all that this blog, GottaHave, has got it’s own Twitter account. This was set up a couple of months back now and the response is a positive one.

You can use the twitter feed to find out about all the posts on this blog as soon as they’re published. This is great if you’re on Twitter a lot. And, let’s face it, it’s either Twitter or Facebook (I’m actually on both, but prefer Twitter). Using the Twitter feed also allows you to connect with other users and readers of GottaHave. It’s a great tool for social networking.

Hopefully I’ll get time soon to set up a page on Facebook, which will be another great way of promoting both PriceGrabber and the GottaHave blog. So, how do you get on this Twitter account of ours? Well it’s simple really. When you get on to our page, which you can find by clicking on this link (or any of the highlighted links on this page) and there will be a button there which will allow you to follow us.

Go on, you know you want to do it. There’s a whole host of reasons for following us. Not only will you get to find out about the great offers available to you, but you’ll be helping us out by letting us know how much you like us.

Well there are only two days to go until a BT Phone Line is installed in the flat. That doesn’t mean that broadband will be available on it on Thursday though. That’s a real shame because I’m really excited about it all happening now. Most of you probably don’t know what it’s like trying to do your work over a slower than dial-up connection. I have to admit that I had become accustomed to the high speed that was available to me.

The broadband will undoubtedly make things easier for me when I’m staying at my girlfriends house. My work has been slipping recently if I’m honest. Well, not slipping as such. I’ve just not been able to upload the files over the dongle. Trying to do web design work over dial-up is a real struggle on my patience. Recently I’ve been creating graphic intensive sites, so the need for speed (so to speak) is essential.

Anyway, I’m sure that you’re all wondering why I’m waffling on about this new phone line. Well, with every new phone line you need a telephone to connect to it. The one that’s going to be arriving here is the BT Freestyle 750 Cordless Phone. The BT Freestyle 750 Cordless Phone comes in a twin pack, which is ideal because we can have one in the living room and one in the bedroom. That means that we don’t have to run to the living room every time the phone goes. I know what you’re thinking. The BT Freestyle 750 Cordless Phone is cordless, so why do we need a twin pack? It’s quite a big flat, so having two makes more sense. Not rocket science really.

I can’t write a review about the BT Freestyle 750 Cordless Phone yet, because I haven’t got it, but I will when they arrive.

I know that I wrote the other day that my posts were going to have a summer holiday theme to them and they will. I just wanted to let you all know about the phone line (and eventually broadband).

Well, it’s definitely that time of year again because there are literally hundreds of kids playing and shouting around this area.

The schools closed last week so it is now officially the summer holidays. Six weeks off for the children and even more for the students. I remember when I was younger when we’d go away for day trips on the train to various parts of Wales. We never got to go abroad for our holidays as my parents were always working and couldn’t get the time off during the summer. We did go to London for a week once though. That was fun.

What I intend doing on this blog over the coming weeks is write about gadgets that will appeal to both adults and children alike. Obviously they will have a summer based theme. Although having said that and looking at the window, you’d think it was winter. There are heavy showers here at the moment.

I’m not actually going away anywhere this summer (or at least I don’t think I am) because of me relocating to another country. Don’t worry though, I’ll still be in the UK. I’m just moving from Wales to England to continue with my degree.

I hope you all enjoy what I have planned for this blog and that you find some inspiration for keeping the kids amused over the coming weeks be it sun or rain. There will always be a post here for you to look at, and hopefully be able to find something that catches your eye.