daveydave

That time of year again and after 12 months with a truly awful piece of junk (Samsung Z400) I couldn't wait to get back into the safe world of Nokia. My previous Nokia, a 6230i had been a great little phone, and I'd only chosen the Z400 because I'd had good Samsungs in the past, and it was 3G. The phone's operating system and syncronisation software are truly, truly dreadful. I could give you a long list of things I didn't like about the Samsung.... but I'll not bore you. So now I move on to a phone that's pretty much a PDA: the Nokia N95. A 5 megapixel camera, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, Symbian operating system all stuffed into a tidy little package. It's a lot of kit and so far it's working out fine. I'm having to relearn button combinations of course, but once I'm familiar I suspect this is going to be a gem. The only bad reports I've seen are to do with short battery life. Perhaps this is one reason why this phone comes with a free car cha...

By any measure, this summer has been a good one for me and the game of cricket. I made it to my first Test match, first trip to Lord's, saw my first Twenty20 game and went to my first international championship. So the cricket-watching year kicked off for me back in June, with a trip to the Riverside to watch England vs West Indies in the 4th Test. We were very fortunate to see anything as the Friday had been a washout and there was only half a day played on the Saturday. Sunday however, was a nice day for cricket. It's always quite something to see the big names in the flesh and certainly seeing the likes of Michael Vaughan, Shiv Chanderpaul and KP playing at Chester-le-Street was great. Our batting performances late in the day were rather less entertaining, but you can't have it all. Next was two domestic Twenty20 games against Leicestershire Foxes and Lancashire Lightening. I must say, this is a great form of the game and certainly when Durham captain Dale Benkenstein ho...