I often see the phrase “I lost my phone” or “my phone was stolen” on Facebook, and I sigh a little when they then tag on “lost loads of photos of my xxx who died earlier this year”.

Precious moments eh?

So, essentially, you’re telling me that you keep all your precious family photos in the equivalent of a photo album you take everywhere with you? And you never think to take a copy of them? Or back them up?

Sorry if I sound intolerant, but there’s a hard lesson here for the person who loses such a device.

Here’s my top tips to have this NOT happen to you.

1. Lock it. Secure it. Encrypt it. A secure lock – fingerprints, with a good strong pin. You can set most new devices to require a pin on bootup. You can even get many to display a message on bootup such as “Stolen from…”. That’s the resale value immediately killed.

2. Make sure it’s registered with your carrier. If it’s a carrier locked device such as one provided by them it’s fairly easy, but if it’s a PAYG device you can still register it. If it’s stolen you can then get it activation blocked and added to a stolen device register which again kills the resale value.

3. Track it – turn on tracking services and find my device services. With most devices you can locate it within a few metres. You can also make it ring at full volume even if it’s locked and muted. Better still, some devices can now be forced to take photos from both cameras and send them to you. Handy if a thief happens to be staring into it at the time.

4. Sync it with a cloud backup service. Most manufacturers provide something of this nature. Google does it for Android. Don’t forget also to turn on sync in Google photos. That way you’ll always have a backup of your camera roll. If you have enough data then why not set it to back up immediately? Half way through a precious wedding and you drop your phone? You’ll probably find every single photo already backed up!

5. Remember it’s just a phone – the most important one – if it gets stolen at an event, it’s inconvenient; but if you can hard lock it within a few minutes using a friend’s phone then don’t risk trying to find it there and then. A thief can become violent if approached, after all, they’re dumb enough to go around stealing what in essence is a mobile tracking device with GPS and ID services built in, and provided you’ve done all the right steps it’ll have 24 bit encryption so they can’t be too bright.

After last night’s rather good gig in Thornaby, I’ve settled down to watch Gremlins 2.

One thing that always fascinates, though, is that at the very end of the film Billy & Kate both walk away from the building and look absolutely impeccable.

I own a couple of pairs of light coloured trousers/jeans and yet I can’t even walk near a wall without ending up with a dirty patch on the leg.

Billy Peltzer, on the other hand, fights dozens of gremlins and gets covered in exploding gremlin glop at multiple points in the film and yet he finishes the film perfectly pressed.

I cry shenanigans.

So why am I up so early?

I hate it when this happens. I’ve got a late night ahead (probably about 2am), and I’m up at before 8.

I’m out with Face the Music tonight. We’re discussing the future and new projects/sidelines (after all, I’ve got enough of my own). I think we might decide to call it a day as FTM, the project has pretty much run it’s course.

Jesus I need this weekend.

Oh fuck. I’m gigging tomorrow with the covers band.

Oh well.

Strangefish sold a CD today. Pub time!

Found this yesterday. It wasn’t immediately obvious where the problem was but after a bit of testing it revealed itself.