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Last update:22nd October 2008
Out of Context Quotes
New photos from our stay in the Lake District are now available in the photos section.
Have you seen the Microsoft ads? If not, go away for a minute and YouTube them. I'll wait.
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Back now? If so, are you thinking the same thing that most people are? Name, WTF? Microsoft apparently decided to spend $300 Million on an advertising plan to hit back at Apple's surprisingly successful "I'm a Mac/I'm a PC" ads. So they gave Jerry Seinfeld $10 Million, and got him and BillG to 'star' in a couple of 'ads' that are, frankly, not advertising anything. Watching the first ad (I'll freely admit to not having watched the second one) I'm reminded of a line from the film of 'Fame'. The line in question is when Bruno Martelli (young, gifted music student) is trying to impress Mr. Shorofksy (old, gifted music teacher) with his electronic music skills, to which Mr. S replies "That's not music, Martelli. That's masturbation."
That's not advertising, Microsoft. That's masturbation.
SWMBO and I have a problem - the last series of Doctor Who has finished, and there won't be any more until Christmas.
What the Hells are we going to do?! We've got no new Doctor Who to watch! This is serious - I think we might be going cold Baker. We just need a wee bit of something - just a small bit of Pertwee. A hit of Davison. A pinch of Colin. Something. Anything.
Wibble.
SWMBO and I have a problem - the last series of Doctor Who has finished, and there won't be any more until Christmas.
What the Hells are we going to do?! We've got no new Doctor Who to watch! This is serious - I think we might be going cold Baker. We just need a wee bit of something - just a small bit of Pertwee. A hit of Davison. A pinch of Colin. Something. Anything.
Wibble.
Me: Oh Gods! Oh horrors! Oh dear Gods we've missed 'Blood Ties' !"
SWMBO: It's repeated.
Me. Oh fuck.
Last weekend, in the car, we pull up behind another car with a wee sticker on the back depicting clouds and a couple of angelic beings. Under this were the words "Protected by angels". To which SWMBO had to comment "Doesn't help with your no-claims though, does it?"
No arguments from me.
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Last night, while idly watching some utter drivel on TV:
SWMBO: There's a game that badly needs making.
Me: Go on?
SWMBO: Smurf Smackdown.
Me: And this entails..?
SWMBO: Lots of Smurfs. Getting hit. Hitting hitting hitting.
Me: Okaaaay.
SWMBO: Dead Smurfs. Dead dead little blue bastards hitting hitting dead.
Me: No more coffee for you.
Last night I saw an episode of a TV series that I've never seen before - Blood Ties.
Wow. And not in a good way.
It's a series that's sort of a cross between Buffy and the Anita Blake novels. It concerns a female ex-cop, now private detective, whose name escapes me for the moment. She has a goth-chick partner the name of whom I've forgotten who appears to be something of a computer geek
The third character is - wait for it - a vampire
The fourth character - I may have heard his name but I couldn't swear to it - is a cop. You can tell he's a cop because he's the only guy in the area wearing a tie. He's the officially designated Adult Supervision, despite being about 450 years younger than the vampire character, who acts like he's 14 and going through puberty.
Together this merry bunch fight assorted demons. Her weapons include some sort of collapsable stick (if it had a name I didn't hear it), and a set of breasts that...well she's not likely to drown, let's put it that way.
This show is bad. Granted I've only seen one episode, but really people, come on. This is Buffy with extra breasts, side order of Anita Blake attempted gratuitous sexual edginess, hold the storyline.
I may be hooked.
Update: downloading 10.5.2 worked, but it kernel panicked at 24% when installing it, and now it won't boot. So no suprises there.
Ho hum.
It's 5.00am in the morning. It's an hour before you normally rise and curse greet the day. You're not up willingly but because your other half is going into work very early. You're tired. You daren't go back to sleep because if you do then the alarm won't stand a chance of waking you. The coffee is at least five minutes away because it's, you know, two rooms and an entire floor away and you can't muster the strength to go there just yet. Actually starting to get ready for work seems like an act of insanity and obviously isn't a viable proposition for at least another 45 minutes. So what do you do?
You install MacOS X on your now-defunct Windows box.
Bet you didn't see that one coming.
I decided to give this a shot since my freestanding Windows box (a Fujitsu P4 2.6) is now somewhat surplus to requirements since we bought the Mac Pro. Which I may not have mentioned. [cough]. We bought a Mac Pro a few weeks ago. There.
Now, before Apple's legal team swing into action let me just point out that I'm doing this (a) for research (because if JediGeeks ever gets going again, I'm going to need something to talk about), (b) genuine curiosity, but mostly (c) I'm bored. I've got absolutely no intention of keeping it running because if nothing else we have several realMacs here that are going to do the job better. So I set about doing it.
A few days ago I located a, er, ahem, "suitably modified" disk image of MacOS X 10.5 and started the download process. This morning it was finished, so I burned it to DVD, stuck it in the Windows box and booted it.
It booted.
Ran the Disk Utility program and formatted the Windows boot drive into the Mac's favourite filing system and set it installing. 45 minutes-or-so later and we have...this:
I can't claim any special skills here - the image essentially just booted and worked. The OS is 10.5.0 (current version is 10.5.2 with 10.5.3 due any day) but somehow I suspect running Software Update may just kill it.
I'll try it and let you know.
"What," I can hear you say, "in the name of sanity is that? And what's more, where the heck have you been for the past three months?"
To answer those in reverse order: busy in boring ways (and turning 41), and that is a Research Machines 380Z computer. As I may have mentioned before, I collect old computers. It's about as exciting as it sounds if I'm going to be completely honest, but I like them so there. The 380Z was a computer that came out in about 1978, which means that in today's terms it's got about as much computing power as a burrito. The only reason I'm showing this to you is that I'm rather suprised that I got it at all. I say surprised - actually I was flabbergasted. You see, I've only ever seen two of them on UK eBay, and the first of those was only three weeks ago. This was the second one, and I won it for fifty UK pounds. So, what's so surprising about that (apart from the fact that I was willing to spend fifty quid on a rather large paperweight) ? And the answer is: the price that the first one went for.
The first one went for a bit more. Quite a bit more. Five hundred pounds more, to be exact.
Yep. Five hundred and fifty quid. Over half a grand. And it was in nearly identical condition to the one I won. Granted that one had boot disks and mine doesn't, but even so - five hundred pounds more?! Good grief.
What I don't understand - apart from the fact that someone was willing to spend that amount on, as I've said, a paperweight - is that there must have been at least two people bidding on it for it to have reached that bizarre value. Two people who were willing to spend a frankly daft amount of money.
One of whom lost.
Which begs the question - why didn't they (the loser) also bid on this one? Because trust me - they'd have won. I wasn't willing to go much above what I actually paid - with certain exceptions my rule on bidding on old computers is essentially "keep it below three figures". Obviously the actual computer in question dictates this - when I eventually start bidding for a ZX80 for instance I'll probably have to go three figures because that's what they go for. Ditto (but more so) for a Jupiter Ace. The final bid for that first 380Z just seems odd, and I'm annoyed that I've removed that one from my watch list because in hindsight I'd have liked to have seen the bid history. It might have been...interesting.
In other news the UK version of 'The Apprentice' is back on, and once again I'm hating myself for being hooked on it. However, thanks to last night's episode there's now no-one in either team that I'm actually rooting for any more (out of a grand total of one) - all of the remaining contestants seem to come under the heading of "egotistical dickheads", "useless but look good in a suit" or "if I shout loudly enough maybe no-one will realise I'm crap". What I'm really hoping for - albeit without thinking that it's at all likely - is that the 'winner' will be told "you're hired" and will reply "er...don't think so. I'm better than this. Bye!"
Not very likely as I say, but I can hope. Because I really can't see working for Alan "we make electronic crap" Sugar as being a fun and fulfilling job.
The best comment I've heard about the proposed Microsoft hostile takeover of Yahoo! was on this week's MacBreak Weekly, and it was this: "If you tie two turkeys together, you don't get an eagle". I forget who said it but, to me, it sums it up perfectly.
On the subject of mobile phones one of the first things I do (and most of us do, I suspect) is change the various ring tones and text message tones. One thing I've learned from my previous phone is that I simply don't hear text messages coming in if I'm outside where the ambient noise is, well, noisy. It's not so much the volume - although that counts, obviously - but the duration. If my text message sound is 'mip' then it doesn't matter how loud it is, I'm going to miss it.
Which is why I spent literally minutes on Saturday morning piecing together a new text message sound. I'd be the first to admit that it's a bit sad. Actually it's very sad, but it's also the better part of twelve seconds long so I stand a fairly good chance of hearing it.
It's here. Feel free to use it if you want. It's from Blake's 7. It's the Zen computer saying stuff. And I like it, so there.
Oh, and while we're on the subject of phone names (were we? we are now) I called mine Grudging Acceptance because I'm very fond of Iain M. Banks' Culture novels, and in them the spacecraft all have rather convoluted names, such as Killing Time, Size Isn't Everything and Frank Exchange Of Views. I wanted something similar, hence the name. SWMBO called hers Contract Avoidance, which I think is rather clever for a Pay As You Go phone.
I was recently forced to buy a new mobile phone, as my beloved tolerated V3 RAZR started acting up in the power department, lasting only about two and a half days from a full charge. It was the same even with a new battery, so something Beyond My Ken had happened. Anyway, it was time for a new phone.
In Star Trek Vulcans go through Pon'far every seven-or-so years. It's when they abandon their logic for a while and need to get laid, very very badly. I go through something similar with mobile phones: I use one for about three years without much caring about it, then feel an overpowering need to get a new one, even if it's only for the sake of it being a new one. I call it Phone'par.
Sadly I wasn't going though Phone'par so I found myself in the rather odd situation of going shopping for a technological gadget and not actually wanting to. I really only had a few requirements - it needed Bluetooth, it had to be Pay As You Go (I don't use a phone enough for a contract to make any financial sense), it ideally should connect to a Mac, but most importantly it shouldn't be a Motorola. Two years of using a V3 had taught me that while it's all very well and good having a phone that looks cool, the ability to work out how to actually phone someone in under ten minutes might be more beneficial. So SWMBO and I went phone shopping.
Dear Gods.
I learned one thing from this excercise: With the exception of the iPhone, no phone on the market has been designed to be used, at least not by normal human beings or people over the age of 14. They are all, and I mean all, more concerned with ticking off features lists. They all have cameras with more megapixels than my first digital. They have operating systems that require a degree in technology to use or, even worse, use Windows. They do not make sense! And what is worse is that when you talk to the sales drones they simply can't believe that all you want is a phone where you can look up someone's number in under a week, and then call them. When you try to explain this they look at you as though you've started talking fluent Martian and surreptitiously start looking for your carer.
SWMBO (who also needed a new phone) ended up buying a Motorola K1 from Carphone Warehouse. She got it because it was slim and it worked enough like her old L6 that she wouldn't have to learn it from scratch again. I guess she has slightly more realistic expectations than I do. While I claim that mobile phones are just spanners to me (ie a tool to be used, not something that you have a relationship with) I'm a bit of a fraud because if that were true I'd be buying 15quid disposable phones and not giving a hoot about what they look like or how they work. Instead I look for something that's at least a bit elegant, has a modicum of style and won't make me want to accidentally-on-purpose leave it on the drive and run over it a few times with the car. Not too suprisingly I get disappointed a lot.
To make this short, I ended up getting the same phone a week later. I know I had originally stated 'never again!' where Motorola are concerned, but all the other phones had that unknown 'will it work with a Mac?' quality, so I ended up having to apply the 'better the devil you know' principle. I got it from the same place, being served by the same guy that served SWMBO. He was an older guy which was a good thing because I have a nasty feeling that the younger ones wouldn't have accepted that I didn't want an 80 Megapixel camera, insurance, more memory cards than I could eat or a Paris Hilton case for it, and they get all sniffy when you ram a Bluetooth headset up their noses in protest. I still didn't make it easy for him, but my raging apathy did at least stop short of open hostility. Just.
In the Bluetooth settings I've named the phone 'Grudging Acceptance'. It just felt right.
I'm a fan of Blake's 7. There. I said it. And what's more, I'm not ashamed of it. Blake's 7 was Britain's answer to Star Trek (sort of) only with a much grittier storyline (and an ongoing one at that) and about 1/100th the budget. It had famously ropey special effect.
I'm not going to go into the back story of Blake's 7 - you can Google it if you really want to - but it had one of the most beautiful ship designs I've ever see - the Liberator. Liberator was the ship that Blake and his merry band of terrorists freedom fighters find abandoned, board, and make their own (and yes, I know this is glossing over large parts of Blake history but hey). It's a very good example of a Big Powerful Alien Artifact that can do things that the purely human tech in the universe can't, such as repair itself, recharge just from the free energy that's always in space (solar, cosmic background etc) and teleport. To a certain extent it's a Deus ex machina in the form of an overwhelming technological advantage that doesn't have to be explained, just utilised.
Due to reasons I won't go into my enthusiasm for Blake's 7 rose significantly recently, and that sent me off down Google Images looking for a good Liberator picture to use as wallpaper. They're rather thin on the ground due to the lack of hi-res source material but I managed to find one here (click the image for a bigger picture). I suspect that someone has spent some time with a good 3D modelling package or, given that the site is a model shop, maybe they've just taken a photo of one of their models. Stranger things have happened.
Now, that's a very good picture of the ship. However I personally don't like the background - I think it's too messy. So I thought I'd see what I could do using something like Celestia and a suitable graphics tool. The result is this:
As you can see I've reduced the size of the ship, rotated it, added Neptune in the background and tweaked the green engine colour up a bit. I'm aware that the lighting isn't quite right - technically Neptune should be full rather than gibbous - but I think it looks quite good. Feel free to use it.
I started the last day of 2007 by throwing up. Not, I think you will agree, the best way to start a day. SWMBO had cooked a duck the previous day and I love duck, especially when it's been cooked in hoisin sauce. Love it. Love it love it love it.
Trouble is, it doesn't love me. Duck is a greasy bird and I think too much of it just sat on my stomach during the night, and...well I'm sure I don't have to paint you a picture.
On the plus side the Sony RDR-HXD970 that I'd ordered from Amazon turned up. Oh - just one point - if you'll take my advice you'll not use Amazon's Express Delivery option. It's supposed to mean that you get the item next day, but it seems to be a way of signaling 'please cock this order up somehow'. I ordered it on a Thursday, selected Express Delivery, and got it on Monday.
Yeah. Amazon Express Delivery coupled with City Link: a fearsome combination.
On the plus side the Sony was worth waiting for. It's a replacement for my video recorder and DVD. Hard drive based (250GB) with a writable DVD drive, Freeview (UK free digital TV) and analogue tuners. You record stuff to the hard drive and then, if you want to keep it, burn it to DVD. It makes standard DVDs, not DivX disks, so they'll play in any player. Every so often it downloads an up-to-date TV guide and you just choose the programs you want to record. Neat.
I love a couple of things about it. First of all I love the styling. I opted for the black version (also available in silver) and it looks like a bit of late-80's tech, right down to the seven-segment LED display. The other thing I love about it - and this will sound odd - is that I'm not exactly sure how it works. Take the downloading of the program guide for instance - I've no idea when it does it, except that it might have to be in standby mode. Maybe. I'm not sure. And I love not being sure in this case - I've got a bit of whimsical tech here that I have to trust. It's great. It's currently set to record Doctor Who - Voyage of the Damned in (checks) 20 minutes, and I'm almost childishly eager to see if it does. 'Course, if it doesn't then I'm damned if I know what I did wrong, but hey.
2008 also didn't start well. At 12:18 - just eighteen minutes into the New Year - my Mother phoned from Germany to inform me that my Uncle Gordon had been rushed into hospital with what was first thought to be a heart attack or stroke, but turns out to have been food poisoning. So okay, not as bad as it could have been but not exactly a great start to the year. He's okay but I think it will be a while before he can look a pork pie in the eye again.
So. I hope that your New Year started better than mine, and I hope that the year improves for all of us.
[edit: it's recording! Or at least I think it is - there's a little red LED on the front that's lit up, and that either means it's recording or it's some sort of 'general device meltdown' error. I'm going to be optimistic and assume it's recording]