Welcome to my web headquarters. If you didn't come here intentionally, then you've found Andrew Shuttleworth, the one born and brought up
in Rishton, Blackburn,
Lancashire, North West
England, who spent four years of university life at the
beautiful University of Stirling and is currently
living in Yokohama,
Japan. If you are looking for a different Andrew Shuttleworth try here.
This web site is mainly static but is a launching points for any other sites I happen to be running at the time. These currently are:
- Shut Up! - My online brain dump or blog, for what is happening and what I'm thinking on a day to day basis.
- Pocket PC Japan - News and views related to Pocket PC PDAs and Japan/Japanese
- Tablet PC Experience - Views from a Tablet PC user with high expectations
Amazon.com Wish List
Now for some content and links (although you'll get much more up-to-date information if you check the blog above):
About my Pocket PC PDA
One of my interests and favorite tools is my Pocket PC PDA. I'm currently using a new Toshiba e550G - one of the most powerful PDAs on the market. The real advantage of a device like this is that it allows you to efficiently keep a large amount of up-to-date information in a pocketable device. The main applications I use are the calendar/diary, address book, note application and e-book reader. It's also very useful if I need to read my e-mail and don't have my laptop with me. How much you would use a PDA really depends on your lifestyle though including factors such as how much you use computers, how much access you have to computers and how much you need access to your computer data and the internet when you don't have access. As mobile phones continue to develop they will also be sufficient to fill this gap for some people. There are many more things you can do with a PDA such a surf the internet (albeit in a reduced format), watch streaming or saved video content, listen to music, record voice notes, play games, view maps, work with spreadsheets and databases, send instant messages, give business presentations and use most other types of applications that you would find on a normal desktop computer. There are innumerable accessories you can buy for PDAs to assist with all this including memory cards to increase the amount you can store, communication cards so that you can access the internet almost wherever you are and keyboards for when you really need to input data as fast as you would on a normal PC.If you are interested in Pocket PCs and their use in Japan or with Japanese visit another web site I maintain called Pocket PC Japan. There is also a discussion group linked from there.
Mobile and Wireless Internet Access
Wireless was a big buzzword in 2001 and both developments are extremely useful and have helped integrate the internet into the lives of many people. I use a P-in Comp@ct 64k modem for wireless internet access with my PDA and laptop. Also I make a lot of use of my P503i mobile phone which is always close by, is 'instant on', has batteries which will easily last out the whole day and can be operated with one hand. With i-mode internet access and i-appli Java capability I can do anything from checking train timetable and route information; get maps, read e-mail and the latest news, look up words in online dictionaries, play games, get restaurant discount coupons, find the nearest Starbucks, look up any online data from my PIM (MS Outlook) which is synched using FusionOne, find the best prices for computer related items at www.kakaku.com, go shopping (e.g. for books at Amazon Japan), do online banking and last but not least even karaoke. It's most useful when you are crammed into a packed train where it isn't even practical to use a PDA or perhaps when you are carrying a bag and only have one hand to control and hold a device.
More IT and Computing
Here some of the current IT products, services and technologies I'm using and feel are really worth mentioning. This web site is hosted at by www.pair.com. Recommended by a few people at the Tokyo PC Users Group (see below) I'm very happy with their good value service. They also allow IMAP access to their mail boxes which is a great bonus. IMAP means your mail is stored on their server so if you access your mail from multiple computers you are always accessing the same store and don't have to worry about something being saved on your 'other' computer when you really need access to it now and on this computer. You can also access the same mail using different email applications without having to import or export.
This page was maintained using a text editor, but since I got my hands on MS FrontPage I've been using that. Everyone recommends Macromedia Dreamweaver and whenever I have enough spare cash I hope to buy a copy.
Tokyo PC Users Group
The Tokyo PC User Group is really an online and offline community of people in Tokyo, Japan and worldwide connected in some way or other by, you've guessed it, Tokyo and PCs. It's a great example of how people can work together to share knowledge and help each other out.
The Localization Industry
For nearly four years I worked in the 'localization' industry. Localization refers to modifying a product for a different 'locale' or cultural area. It's a relatively immature industry, constantly changing especially with the effect of the internet. IThere are a lot of people really committed to the industry. While I was involved I helped add links to the globalization section of the Open Directory and this is now a useful starting reference point.
Photographs
If really have to see some photos, check out Guam and ski trip in Nagano. I've lots more but I've decided not to put them all online at the moment. I've also experimented with digital video but am not happy with the quality of the videos after they are reduced to a size suitable for the internet so they are not uploaded yet either. I'm sure in the not so distant future we'll be able to transfer gigabytes of data over the internet without a second thought.
That's all for the moment. This page is constantly being updated, so hope you get chance to check back again some time. In the meantime, all e-mail (except spam) is welcome and I try to reply to all I receive.
