The SkyDrive interface isn’t as user friendly as some other free hosting alternatives, looking like just another page on Hotmail. You can upload photos, documents or regular files. Where the service really excels though is its generous amount of free storage. Whereas Dropbox only offers 2GB of storage and other solutions like Amazon CloudDrive and Box offer 5GB for free; SkyDrive gives you a whopping 25GB of storage for free.

With me travelling so much and connecting to the web in so many different ways, a good online file solution is something that is becoming more important to me. Dropbox is currently my favourite file hosting service however they only give you 2GB for free. To upgrade to the next package, which gives you 50GB of storage, is $99 per year. I must admit I have been tempted to purchase this due to how great Dropbox is and how easy it makes maintaining everything. Currently, I use it to store all of my important website files (backup files, themes, images etc).

Whilst I’m sure Dropbox is great for photos, I don’t feel comfortable paying $99 a year if there are so many free alternatives. I’ve been trying to some of my photos to Facebook recently however that’s far from a perfect solution. First of all, it’s very time consuming. Secondly, I don’t want to upload every photo I own to Facebook. Photos cannot be uploaded in their full size either.

With photo storing functionality and 25GB of storage, SkyDrive is a great place to store your photos. After reading about the release of the SkyDrive application for iPhone last week, I decided to give it a try and upload a few gig worth of photos.

The iPhone app works great. The main limitation that the desktop and mobile application have is that you can’t upload folders. This is a real pain and something which, for me, makes the service pretty much useless. I simply don’t have time to manually create a folder on SkyDrive for every folder I want to copy over. With Dropbox, I simply drag and drop a folder and it disappears into the background and backs everything up for me.

They did announce some major changes recently so hopefully it will be added soon

How To Manage Your SkyDrive Account From Windows Explorer

If you are using Windows, you can map your SkyDrive account and delete, modify and upload files and folders as you please. The process is very straight forward.

In order to connect to SkyDrive, you need to know your account CID code. The quickest way to do this is to hover over any link in your account (e.g. Documents, photos, shared etc). Within the link you should see a code such as &cid=86GBZF2F27576AY1. Copy this code (i.e. the XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX part).

Next you should open up My Computer and click on Tools at the top of the explorer window. Click on the Map Network Drive option.

Select the drive letter you want to use for SkyDrive and then enter \\docs.live.net@SSL\XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX as the folder address; where XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX is your CID account code.

Once you click on the finish button, Windows will attempt to connect to your SkyDrive Account.

You then need to enter your SkyDrive login details (i.e. your Hotmail/WindowsLive account details).

That’s it. You will now be able to manage SkyDrive through your Windows computer.

Unfortunately, my Mac is back home at the UK, therefore I haven’t tried this using an Apple computer. The process is very similar though. All you have to do is make sure you map your new network drive to \\docs.live.net@SSL\XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.

SkyDrive isn’t the ultimate file hosting service. In fact, when compared to most alternatives it’s poor user interface really shows it up. What it does offer is a crap load of free storage, which makes it a great option for storing a lot of your photos and other files online. This year the maximum file size was also doubled from 50mb to 100mb so it’s a great solution for pretty much everything except movies.

I would still recommend Google Docs for documents and Dropbox if you don’t need more than 2GB.

Good luck,
Kevin

I went to bed as normal (albeit with a sore back from training) and when I woke up I had a severe pain down my left shoulder, arm and hand. It felt like pins and needles, so I assumed that I had just slept in a funny position and it would get better.

It took me about an hour to get out of bed and another 20 minutes or so to get dressed. I really had no idea what was wrong with it so didn’t go to the hospital right away.

Thankfully I made the sensible decision the next day and went to the hospital in the afternoon. The two doctors who saw me took some x-rays and tried their best to figure out what was wrong but they really didn’t have a clue and asked me to come back on the Friday to see the orthopaedic surgeon.

6 days later I was back. The surgeon x-rayed my neck and didn’t find any problems. He then said that it is probably just nerve damage and I should be fine in 6 weeks. He started to walk out the room before I stopped him to ask some questions. When I asked if it was possible to do any exercise he said ‘yes just do what you can’, and then left the room.

As you can imagine, I was a little pissed off with having to wait 5 days to see a doctor who clearly didn’t care about how I was feeling. Around this time my own doctor prescribed pain killers. Unfortunately they were not strong enough so I was only getting 3 or 4 hours sleep a night.

After a few days I finally went to see a local chiropractor. They performed an EMG scan to determine where the pressure was on my spine. This illustrated the problem I had with the left side of my neck and shoulder and the lower back problem I had got from training. They gave me great advice as to what to do and what not to do. They also stressed that I should ice my neck and shoulder every hour because the inflamed tissue was causing most of the pain (something which 3 doctors at my local hospital failed to tell me).

My EMG levels can be seen in the image below. Mild pressure is shown in green, moderate in blue and severe in red. Black levels are beyond severe.

I have since got stronger painkillers from the hospital as the original ones I got were doing nothing and this week began seeing the chiropractor 3 times a week. I’ve also managed to do some work this week. Which was good as the pain was so severe that I was unable to type (and hence, not do any work) for about 2-3 weeks.

I’m certainly a long way from recovery. I can’t even think about when I can start training again, however I’m glad that I’m getting a good sleep now and I can do some work with all this free time I now have

If you are ever unfortunate enough to hurt your back or do some nerve damage, my advice to you is to go and see a chiropractor or an osteopath (and ice the problem area frequently). Your doctor is obviously your first port of call however I would encourage you to seek a second opinion from someone who specialises in the problem you have. It will cost you a lot of money but it will save you a lot of time, pain and energy in the long run

Kevin

Getting the 8am train down to London (yeah I know I’m up early!) shortly, which in itself should be a good laugh. I’m bringing my poker set and my mate Andy is bringing a cool box and more importantly, a slab of beer to go in it.

Staying in Kings Cross til Monday. This will be my 5th time to London yet I’ve still never been in or around the city centre (I’ve stayed in Shepherds Bush, Luton, Woolwich and Fulham). So it will good to see some more of London, at the very least I’ll get to see the new Wembley Stadium.

Will be meeting up with some friends who stay down London as well. All in all it should be a great trip.

Hope you all have a good weekend. I will be enjoying the last few days of my 20s and embracing the responsibility and maturity which gentlemen acquire when they reach their 30s….yeah right!

The first game was starting when we arrived at 7 o’clock so myself, Barry and Malky went down to the bar. 70 minutes later we got served. To say this was pissing everyone off would be an understatement. They had hardly any staff on and the queue must have been a few hundred people long at each bar. It was a joke. You would think that they would put more staff on at a Darts event where 95% of the people are there to drink!

To make matters worse, they ran out of pints at the bar we were at. So instead of paying £3.50 for a pint we had to pay £7 for 2 bottles and pour both into a cup. The time we got back to our seats the 2nd match was just finishing. So we effectively missed half of the matches by going for a beer.

The match between Jelle ‘The Matador’ Klaasen and Phil ‘The Power’ Taylor was fantastic though. Klaasen was a huge underdog at 14-1 but he arrived to loud cheers and proceeded to hand out roses to ladies in the crowd. He managed to pull ahead and it was tied at 6 each before Taylor steamed ahead and won 8-6.

It was still a good night out but the hour waiting at the bar did annoy the hell out of us. After drinking for a few hours the last thing you wanna do is stand in a queue sobering up!!

I’ve never been to see the Darts before but it looks amazing. Basically it’s just one big piss up. I’ve watched it on TV and it just looks like an amazing atmosphere. Everyone gets a table and gets drunk watching the darts whilst holding up banners saying ’180′ all the time. And then everyone sporadically bursting into random chants of the famous Darts tune (Chase the Sun by Planetfunk).

What more do you want from a day out?

From what I have been told, the matches tonight are :

• Raymond van Barneveld v John Part
• Terry Jenkins v Wayne Mardle
• Jelle Klaasen v Phil Taylor
• Mervyn King v James Wade

Phil “The Power” Taylor is definately the most well known Darts player in that line up though I’m sure they will all be great.

So here’s hoping my hangover isn’t too bad tomorrow!

At the end of August they recommended Bruce Lee’s Fighting Method: The Complete Edition, a compilation book of the 4 Bruce Lee fighting method books, which had a release date of 1st September 2008.

On 9th September 2008 I got an email saying that it was being delayed and that I could expect it between 02/10/08 – 22/10/08. On 15th October 2008 I got another email saying it had been delayed until between 19/11/08 – 04/12/08. Yesterday I got a final email saying they were still trying but this time there wasn’t a date. God only knows when I’ll get it!! (I also got an email yesterday about SOCOM: U.S. Navy Seals – Confrontation, a PS3 game which has been delayed 2 months).

This whole thing has reminded me how easily my brain can be manipulated into wanting something I didn’t even want in the first place. I ordered it at first because I thought the book looked ok but the more it gets delayed the more I want it. They’re playing mind games with me I tell you.

These are the same people who catch me out with the impulse buy section near the counter!