Click for full size
Happy New Year everyone! Hope 2006 is a good year for all of us.
The Apple January Expo is fast approaching and anticipation is high this year that there will be some major new products. Chiefly, people are anticipating at least one Intel Mac. My money is on the Mac Mini getting the Intel treatment first purely because it will immediately be a cheap way for developers to get an Intel test box.
However, the product I want isn't an Intel Mac (nice though that would be) but an iTunes remote control. Here's what I want: think of an iPod nano. Give it Airport and enough flash RAM to store network settings and WEP/WPA details. Then, it connects to any iTunes shares it can find on the Airport network and allows you to control the playing of tracks. The device itself won't have a hard drive or any way of storing tracks locally, it's just a way of remotely controlling iTunes. Ideally you'd have iTunes set to stream to an Airport Express, or at least have it connected to your sound system somehow. The remote would be rechargeable (in fact why not make it use an iPod dock?) and would spend most of its time in the dock, apart from when you pick it up to change tracks etc. Sell it for sub-100 quid (preferably sub-50 quid).
Personally I think this would absolutely rock. What do you think?
I'd like you to meet Hamish. I bought Hamish for Kato for Christmas. You may know him as the former OBJECT NOT DISCLOSABLE AT PRESENT TIME. He's a Highland Cattle toy (or Hairy Coo). I also bought her the first series of MacGyver on DVD, something I suspect I'm going to regret but there you go...
Kato bought me this:
It's a Sgian Dubh. This is the small, formal knife worn by Scotsmen in the top of the stocking (or sock if you prefer). I already have a plain one, but didn't have a formal evening-wear one. This one fits the bill beautifully - I love it.
Well, only a few hours until Doctor Who starts! Woohoo! I'm really looking forward to this. Just hope it's as good as the previews made it appear.
Merry Christmas everyone.
Well, it's Christmas Eve at last. Maybe it's a sign of getting older, but Christmas increasingly seems to arrive about 3 days after Bonfire Night. I'm one of those people who actually slightly prefer Christmas Eve to Christmas Day, and I'm not quite sure why that is - perhaps I just prefer the preparation more than the event. This year though we also have the Patrick Stewart version of 'A Christmas Carol' to look forward to, which absolutely rocks because it's our favorite version.
2006 is going to be an 'interesting' year - it looks like we'll need to replace the Elder Skoda somewhat sooner than anticipated (like within the next 6 weeks), as it's becoming financially unviable to keep repairing it's little foibles. Also, a good friend of mine is moving from Cambridge to Australia in the first few days of January, which means of course that he will be dead within 20 seconds of getting off the plane because Australia is full of giant poisonous spiders. And sheep. But mostly spiders. Farewell RPG - I only met you once, when [certain facts having been edited for comic effect] you turned up, threw an Apple II at me, stole my wireless bandwidth and then roared off down the road laughing maniacally (probably).
Seriously, I really hope that he and his family have a great time out there (spiders notwithstanding). I only hope he realises just how difficult getting good Scotch is going to be.
While we're on the subject of the Wizard Of Oz, Kato's just pointed something out that I'd never considered before - how the hell did the Munchkins summon Glinda so quickly? Text her?
wtch ded. ding dng. rofl. :-)
The other thing that strikes me is that, what with their propensity to start singing at every available opportunity they must have the survival characteristics of a salt and vinegar crisp in a supernova. Also, when Dorothy starts to follow the Yellow Sick Toad Yellow Brick Road, she actually starts to follow the spiral! She's not playing with a full deck if you ask me...
Traditions are funny things. Some of the best are the ones you make yourselves. For example, as I write this Kato and I are sitting down to watch "The Wizard Of Oz" and we're not even ashamed of the fact! Thing is, we watch it because it's sort of a Christmasy thing to do, but also because we have our own tradition when watching it - at the point that the witch (or 'successful single female' and hence evil) unleashes the monkeys, we turn to each other and say "continue the research!". Why? Simply because in the Simpsons episode "The Last Temptation Of Homer" (transcript here) Mr. Burns tries the same thing, but the monkeys plummet to the ground. He turns to Smithers and says "continue the research".
See? Traditions don't have to be old. They can, however, be utterly baffling to people who aren't in on the secret.
[Evil cackle] "Continue the research!"
Today is Saturday. It's the last Saturday before Christmas apart from the next one, but since that's Christmas Eve it doesn't count. Not in my book, anyway. And, this being the last Saturday before Christmas (apart from the next one) it means one thing: I have to wrap Kato's present.
Oh. Dear. Gods.
Some people can take a present, take some wrapping paper, some scissors, some tape, make a few passes in the air with their hands and fwooooosh! - a perfectly wrapped present that would make the combined Blue Peter teams weep in appreciation. Kato's a bit like this.
Other people can, by dint of the same ingredients (less the passes-in-the-air bit), time, effort and lots of sticking their tongue out in concentration, achieve much the same result.
Then there's me. It doesn't help that Kato's main present is an [OBJECT NOT DISCLOSABLE AT PRESENT TIME] and hence somewhat of an irregular shape (I mean, have you ever tried to wrap an [OBJECT NOT DISCLOSABLE AT PRESENT TIME] ? It's not easy, trust me). However, even if it wasn't an [OBJECT NOT DISCLOSABLE AT PRESENT TIME] and was (for example) a book, I would still require about four square miles of paper and enough sticky tape to go to the Moon and back in order to cover it completely. I'm not just inept at this, I'm what you get when you take an inept person and then artificially remove any faint lingering remnants of skill until all that remains is a skill-vacuum. And them shoot them in the head.
Twice.
In addition to that I'm slightly hungover. This didn't help, strangely. Halfway through wrapping the [OBJECT NOT DISCLOSABLE AT PRESENT TIME] I was on the floor cursing, there was wrapping paper everywhere and I had so many implements extended on my Leatherman that it resembled some fearsome Oriental martial arts weapon that's been banned in twelve countries. I'm still slightly concerned that even though I used enough tape to secure a battleship to a lighthouse it's still in danger of bursting out, in which case it will probably take three houses with it, such are the levels of stress involved. I swear I can hear it creaking, although that might just be the hangover.
On the plus side I ordered a couple of T-Shirts from Kevin Erskine's The Scotch Blog and they arrived today. Here's what they look like:
Is that cool or what? Hurry up if you want one though, because he has a feeling that a certain motion picture company (famous for having a six foot rat as its mascot) maaaaay just not quite see the funny side of things and might issue a 'Cease And Desist Right Fucking Now, Dammit!' order, in which case he's hoping they'll become collectors items on eBay.
I know some people think I'm paranoid. It's a fair comment and the only point where they fall down is that they think I'm unjustifiably paranoid. I think they're wrong, but what the hey.
As a for instance: yesterday morning a vitamin pill tried to kill me.
No, really.
I swallowed the damn thing and it got lodged in my windpipe. This was a decidedly sub-optimal development and went straight to the top of my "I don't need this right now" list (currently has 17 items on it). My first instinct was to panic, as it's always served me well in the past but common sense took over for once. Instead, I took a deep, slooooow breath (so as not to suck the thing in deeper), coughed, and it pinged off the far wall. I went over to it, picked it up, made various allegations to it about its parentage and sexual predelictions, and dumped it in the waste.
Now do you see why I'm paranoid?
Well, Christmas is coming once again. Without trying to sound like an old fart, it only feels like five minutes since it was last here.
The estate I live on (which is a fairly new one built in the last five years, not that that's important) seems to have gone bonkers on lights this year. It's looking like Blackpool Bloody Pleasure Beach at the moment. Now, I'm going to sound a bit like Scrooge here, but frankly it annoys me. Not, I hasten to add, because they're there at all, but because they've mistaken quantity for taste. There's every combination of flashing, winking, blinking combinations you can imagine. The power requirements for the estate must have doubled over the last week. And you know what? It doesn't look good at all, it just looks crass. The Gods know I've no objection to lights (I love them in fact) but you don't have to have all of them flashing for pities sake! Some of the houses look like a cargo plane dropped a load of lights on them by mistake and then someone plugged the buggers in.
If I lived opposite one of these cretins then There Would Be Words. And possibly garden shears.
I'm having one of those 'submarine warfare' days - long periods of tedium (watching progress bars on screen) interspaced with very short moments of "get this wrong and you're screwed".
I hate days like this.
Happy St. Andrew's day, folks.
Going to be away again for a few days from Friday and I may switch off Odin (the server that hosts this site), so don't be surprised if ~GreyArea~ is down for two or three days. Well, three. I'm away Friday morning and should be back Sunday evening.
Incidentally, if anyone can advise on a printer that's suitable for Windows 98, has separate ink packs and is less than, say, 250 quid then that info would be of use to me. I'm thinking an Epson of some sort but frankly I'm open to ideas. Thanks.
Well, feedback on the proposed whisky podcast has been slow so far. I've had a small number of replies (who were, it has to be said, very enthusiastic) but so far I haven't reached what I'd consider critical mass, but it's early days yet so we'll see. It's not like it has to happen tomorrow. On the plus side I was able to make a logo for it, and you can see it over on the right. It's a bit of a bugger photographing glass, I've now found - it tends to reflect all the wrong things, such as myself. I ended up having to place a black background behind the glass, spotlighting it from the side, and taking the picture from some range. Then I had to tweak all sorts of colour balance settings to try to fade the glass a bit while bringing out the colour of the whisky, because the glass ended up looking dirty (which it wasn't). The end result isn't perfect -it's a wee bit too red I think - but it will do for now.
Oh, and I've subscribed to Whisky magazine. Sad, isn't it?
A spirited venture.I'm mulling an idea over. I'm not sure whether to go ahead and do this or not so I'd appreciate some feedback.
Essentially I'm thinking of starting a whisky podcast - primarily about single malts but not exclusively so. It would consist of myself and others (mostly others, which is where you come in) doing a brief audio review of any whiskies we come across. So, say you buy a bottle of Ardbeg - record 5 minutes on your thoughts of it, where you got it, how much it cost, colour in the glass etc. That way we can build up an audio library of whisky reviews. There wouldn't be a release schedule as such, there would simply be a new review as-and-when they become available.
I'd like your thoughts on this matter, so if you have an opinion please email me at:
theDram@gmail.com
I'll let you know how it goes.
Nothing to see here, move along.One of the problems with having a blog is that you tend to feel obliged to post even when you don't actually have anything to say.
Which is the position I find myself in at the moment. We're still in the post-holiday work/sleep/work/sleep stage and frankly haven't had a lot of time to do..well, anything, to be honest. One thing I have noticed is that my post-holiday enui is lasting longer this year. Normally for the first week back I feel a bit down - I think most people do, it's just one of those things. This time however, post-Scotland, it's lasting longer and I think it's because I'm realising more and more just how much I love that windy, chilly, rainy, hilly country with its free-range sheep1, its less-than-single-lane roads, and its suicidal deer2.
What this means is that I've started to look at where we actually live (Stafford, England) in a different and somewhat less favourable way. Don't get me wrong, I love our house - we've put an awful lot of effort into making it somewhere we'd want to live for a long time, but love it though I do (and I do) I'm starting to see it more and more and a comfy rest point before we get to up sticks and move to Scotland - which is stupid really, because short of winning the lottery there's no way we could move to Scotland and survive for more than 6 months or so. Employment prospects there are no better than they are here so ideally we'd need to be independently wealthy, which in turn means that it's just a pipe-dream at the moment. Ho hum. Something to aspire to, eh?
1 - Free range sheep are sheep (typically just one or two) that are out of their field and wandering the verges on the wrong side of a fence, generally worryingly close to a road.
2 - We averaged one deer a week that tried to throw itself under the wheels of our car. I swear they wait and do it for a dare.
A glass at 50% capacityThere's good news and bad news regarding my 1st Gen iPod: The good news is that it seems to have got over it's little "you're only having an hour, pal" attitude and is back to giving me a decent play time. The bad news is that it seems to have got over it's little "you're only having an hour, pal" attitude and is back to giving me a decent play time, and I therefore can't really begin persuading my Chief Financial Officer (SWMBO) that we need a new one.
iFart at FranceWell, all good things come to an end and holidays are the prime example of this. We've had two great weeks in Scotland but they're over now.
Boo.
Apple were busy little fellows while I was away, huh? Video iPod (not actually called that, it's just the iPod) and a new iMac with something called Front Row, which is a sort of media center addon to MacOSX. In addition to that there's another Apple event tomorrow, at which they are expected to update the Pro line of equipment and software. So the real question here is:
What does Steve Jobs have against France?
They released the iPod Nano before the Paris Expo, then released the new iMacs and 5th Gen iPods after the Paris Expo. At the Expo itself they released...nothing. Seems a little odd to me, but there you go. I have a feeling that the Nano was actually due for release at the Expo, but the rather unspectacular nature of the Motorola ROKR meant they felt the need to pull the release forward a bit and they already had the new iPod/iTunes/iMac event planned, so the Expo was left high-and-dry.
I like the new iPod. I like it a lot. I have a 1st Gen iPod that's starting to fall below 'minimum required level of functionality' (I got just over an hour out of it yesterday from a full charge, which is a tad worrying) so the 5th Gen iPod is looking very attractive to me right now, lack of free cash notwithstanding. I always felt the iPod photo was a bit of a gimmick, a solution to a problem that didn't really exist - given a choice between a colour iPod photo and a normal B&W iPod, I'd have had the B&W one. The 5th Gen video enabled iPod is a different beast entirely though. There won't be a lot of commercial content at first (especially outside the US) but that's not going to matter one damn bit because the thing can play any mpeg4 or H.264 encoded video (provided it's at 320x240 resolution) so people can create their own content, legal or otherwise. This means that Apple now have a strong contender for the Christmas market again, because if people want a wee audio/video player and don't care about games then there's no contest - the Sony PSP, while a sleek unit in its own right, is a bit bulky for general purpose use. The iPod isn't. Factor in the 30GB or 60GB drive and the iPod becomes the perfect portable video device. Power will be the big issue here and currently the 30GB can play video for 2hrs on a full charge, with the 60GB (having a slightly larger battery) making 3hrs before dying. Given that the hard drive will be spinning continually and the screen backlight will be on the full time then this isn't too surprising. The only problem I have is that 2hrs is a wee bit tight, so I'd sort of have to price up the 60GB version (plus dock, plus new iTrip, plus USB2 card because these don't support Firewire anymore - bad Apple, bad!) which is going to be expensive. Too expensive, if we're going to be honest, although given that I can't afford anything at all at the moment it's neither here nor there.
Oh, and porn is going to be huge on this. Huuuuuuuge.
Nooooooooo!
Once upon a time there was a computer. It was called the BBC Micro and it was released in 1983 in the UK. It packed a whopping 16k or 32k of memory (yes folks, that's 'k') and it cost a wee bit more than other computers of the time. It was big in the education market and with people who wanted a computer for more than playing games, which is kind of ironic given where this is going.
And then Acornsoft (the software division of Acorn, the makers of the BBC Micro) released a game called Elite. It was one of those rare games that are so good that people would buy the computer simply to play the game. It's the first game I can remember having an advert that was played in cinemas (with a voiceover by Tom Baker - how cool was that?) It was also partly responsible for my 'O' level exam results being a bit below par but that's by-the-by. Elite (just in case you've living under a rock for the last 20 years) was a 3D space combat and trading game, without any fixed plot or ultimate aim other than gaining the Elite combat rating. In other words you were free to do what you wanted and to go where you wanted within the limits of the game engine. By modern standards it was simplistic but utterly absorbing. I once played it for 24hrs straight, muffling my BBC's speaker so I didn't wake people up in the early hours.
Elite sold incredibly well and was released on a few other machines, but the BBC Micro version remained the definitive version until the release of the Acorn Archimedes (Acorn's 32bit RISC-powered computer) version, which kicked serious ass. And after that...it faded into the background.
A few other games continued to come out that tried to capture the Elite style of gameplay and, in fairness, a few came close. But none of them really captured the feel of the original - until Egosoft released X - Beyond The Frontier. This was a PC game that came far closer to the ideals of Elite than (arguably) anything else that came before it. It managed to combine the trading and combat elements of Elite while adding an (optional) plot you could follow if you wished. X-BTF was then expanded slightly with the X-Tension addon, which addressed some of the flaws in the game and enhanced certain other aspects. Then came X2:The Threat which enhanced the graphics, added a new enemy, opened up some new areas to explore and added a new (and again, optional) story about an alien invasion and a search for your lost father. This game was like Elite on a combination of steroids, a high protein diet, and speed.
And they're about to release the next installment - X3:Reunion. I've only seen the two example films that Egosoft have released but it looks incredibly good, with extremely detailed graphics. The two films are not exactly 'in game' but they've been produced using the game's new engine so they should be pretty authentic to the actual gameplay. It's going to be released 3rd quarter, with Amazon putting an October 21st date on it. We'll see.
X3 will initially be PC only, although X2 is out on the Mac.
Egosoft can be found here.
As an aside, for Mac users (MacOSX) who are going through painfull Elite withdrawl and don't want to buy X2:The Threat, check out OOlite
I'm something of a science fiction / fantasy fiction reader. Our bookshelves are packed with book by Azimov, Eddings, Gemmell etc. In particular I love the science fiction stories written by Iain M. Banks, such as Consider Phlebas, Use Of Weapons and Excession. Banksie also writes contemporary novels under the name 'Iain Banks' (no 'M') and for some reason I've always assumed I wouldn't like them. Which is stupid, I know, (especially as I'd read The Wasp Factory ages ago and, guess what, loved it) but sometimes I just get an irrational idea in my head and there's no shifting the bugger. I'm not quite sure what changed but I decided to give them a try - so I started out with The Crow Road.
I loved it.
Since then I've also read Whit and Espedair Street, and have bought Dead Air as holiday reading fodder.
Thing is, I obtained The Crow Road by, er, downloading it. In a not-terribly-legal way. Now, I know I could simply have gone to the local library and borrowed it, but the advantage of getting a plain-text version is that I can stick it on my handheld. I would like to point out that even though I got The Crow Road (and Espedair Street if we're going to be honest)(ha!) through downloads, once I realised that these were really quite good I toddled down to my local bookshop and bought all of them - spent about 30 quid. That's 30quid I wouldn't have spent if I hadn't got hold of them illegally.
It's a funny old world.
In just under a week (next Saturday in fact) I'll be off to Scotland for two weeks. Since I host this on my own stuff, this means the site will be down until I get back. I could leave Odin (the server) running, but the chances of the ADSL connection not going stale during that time is effectively zero so I may as well just power it off for the duration. I could also upload this site to my ISP and host it there for two weeks, but frankly that's too much like work and I can't be bothered.
Well, the major hardware announcement from Apple at the Paris Expo was...
...nothing. At all. Not so much as a speed bumped iMac.
Well, it's Apple Expo Paris today. Apple were originally going to do a keynote, then suddenly they weren't.
Why?
I have a theory. I suspect that the iPod Nano was originally going to be released at Paris but it rapidly became apparent that the iTunes phone (the Motorola ROKR) was...rather unspectacular. Given that they were already commited to doing the ROKR release they felt they needed something to pad it out, and brought the Nano forward two weeks. I mean, have you seen the iTunes Phone event? The Nano just trounces it.
So, this means that Apple no longer have any Big News for Paris - perhaps some of the machines will be upgraded (PowerMacs are rumored to be going dual-core single cpu, rather than single-core dual cpu, and may go dual-code dual cpu, which would be neat) but by-and-large it's not going to be a landmark show in the way that the January show is.
Pity. I'd have liked to see some of the software updated.
Looks like I've been having mail problems since sometime yesterday - not quite sure when it started, to be honest. Anyway, if anyone has emailed my since, say, 4pm Friday (GMT) then there's a good chance it bounced. Problem seems to be fixed (corrupt spool at this end) so you should be ok to re-send.
Sorry about that.
Looks like Microsoft are trying to re-write history again. If you toddle on over to The Microsoft Gadgets Site you'll notice a 'new' feature for Longhorn WinOSX Vista. They're called 'gadgets' and you might think that they have a striking similarity to Konfabulator widgets, or Apple's Dashboard Widgets but no, apparently:
One of the questions we’re often asked here at PDC is, “What is the history of Windows Sidebar?” The concept of Gadgets for the Windows Desktop is one that has a long lineage, dating back to Microsoft research projects and prior
Let me get this straight - they have nothing at all to do with Konfabulator or Dashboard, they just look exactly the same and work in a very similar way?
Looks like the chocolate ration is up to 10 from 12, chaps. Double plus good.
So, a brief message to anyone from Microsoft who may (for whatever reason) be reading this: Are you guys capable of inventing anything yourselves? Anything? At all? Apart from the registry (which sucks) and restore points (which don't work) ?
Still not enough proof? Ok, I give to Exhibit B: the 'new' style window texture for Microsoft Office version 12:
(Image copied from Mac Daily News)
It's bloody brushed metal! Now, where have I seen that before, no, don't tell me, let me think a bit...ah! yes, I remember, it's one of the window textures available on the Mac. I'll be honest, I don't care that they've copied stuff, it's the implication that they've invented this stuff themselves that's sodding annoying.
Part of my job involves interacting with various flavours of Microsoft SQL Server. Now, by-and-large this isn't actually as bad as it sounds - their SQL packages have their problems, yes, but generally they're ok. However, MSDE (the free version) has a serious bug in its installer routine, which is: you can't install it on XP over Remote Desktop. The fu..bloody thing gets most of the way through, 'encounters a problem', then uninstalls itself. At no point does it say "oh, you're trying to install me over Remote Desktop? No can do, squire".
Which confirms my feelings that Microsoft spends far too much time [CENSORED] [CENSORED] [DELETED] with [CENSORED] in a bath. Wankers.
JediGeeks episode 3 will be delayed a bit. The way we record the shows is to record each end of the conversation separately, then mix them together. While this gives the best audio quality (no Skype dropouts to deal with) it also doubles the chances of something going wrong. The problem is, of course, that if the audio from one side is lost, the entire show is lost. This happened on Sunday when we had a guest on (hi Nige!). His copy of GarageBand crashed, wiping out his part of the audio and forcing us to re-record which, due to time contraints, will be Wednesday evening.
This is something that was bound to happen sooner or later, so it was only a matter of time. To that end I've decided to put into place a contigency plan. We'll still record the audio separately, but in addition to that I'm going to set up the PowerBook as an additional member of the Skype call, and get it to record the combined feed. That way, if one of us has another glitch we can still use the reduced quality version. It won't be great but it's going to be better than nothing and, in fairness, it's how other podcasters tend to do it.
I just wish that GarageBand would save its data as it goes, rather than waiting for you to hit the 'Save' button. This would have saved us so much grief, assuming the file wasn't corrupted beyond repair by the crash. So far in the four shows we've recorded, two of them have been killed by GarageBand. That's not a good average although, in fairness, the first time wasn't GBs fault.
As Nige says, sometimes audio tape is the best way to go...
Well, I was wrong about the iTunes phone - it does only store 100 songs (or 512MB, whichever is reached first). This struck me as odd at first - why limit it? - but then it made sense. Apple probably don't get a lot of money for each phone sold, and they barely make running costs on the iTMS, so most of their revenue comes from the music players that >they sell. Hence it's not really in their interests to have a third-party phone that's also an iPod. As it stands, the phone competes with the low-end iPod Shuffle only. Plus it's fugly. Really fugly.
Unlike the new iPod nano - that's a really neat little beast, with only a couple of downsides. The first downside is the name - "nano"? Don't like that. Given that it's replacing the iPod mini, I think they should just have kept the "mini" name, especially as it's the Mini Me of the biggger iPods. The other downside is that it only syncs over USB.
WTF? Apple seem to be quietly abandoning Firewire and I'm rather angry about that. Firewire is significantly better than USB2, plus it's standard on all Macs made for the last 4 years or so, unlike USB2 which isn't. In fact of all the Macs I have, only the Powerbook has a USB2 socket. Ok, I could buy a USB2 card for the tower, but that's not the point. Bastards. The new minis - sorry, nanos - are really nice looking devices, available in either all white (like normal, big iPods) or all black (like the U2 iPod, but without the red wheel). The black one looks rather sexy and I suspect that, were I to buy one, that's the one I'd get. They only store 4GB but, to be honest, that would be enough for me. My 1st gen iPod is only half full (mostly with podcasts), so a drop of 1GB (the nanos store 2GB or 4GB) wouldn't hurt me.
Speaking of rampant media whores (were we? we are now) check out Bob Cringely's Nerd TV. They're a series of downloadable vidcasts of interviews with tech people. The first one is with Andy Hertzfeld and it's quite interesting. You can download either the full vidcast, or just the audio in a variety of formats (including Ogg if that's your thang). There's only one up at the moment, but others are coming. And they're free. What more could you want?
Well, it's only a few short hours until the first iTunes phone is released. Probably. My prediction is that it will store 1,000 songs (like the first iPod) and will be only the first of many models. Essentially iTunes will be an option, like Bluetooth or a batttery life of greater than a day. Or at least that's what I think. We'll see.
Trouble is, it's going to be tomorrow before I get to find out because I've got to go to a golf dinner tonight. With lots of people. All of whom like golf. I hate golf, but more than that I hate people talking about golf and, even worse, trying to engage my interest. If I get to the end of this evening without a charge of aggravated assault, I'll be very surprised.
We took the plunge today and bought a Canon EOS 350D despite, it has to be said, some advice to the contrary. We also bought a bottle of Glenfiddich 18yr old, but the two events are fairly unrelated so it's safe to ignore that.
First impressions of the Canon are...pending, because I've not had chance to use it yet, as Kato grabbed it and ran off, shouting "Mine! Mine! Hahahahahaha!" and I haven't seen her since. She must have returned at some point because my iPhoto library is now somewhat larger, but she's vanished again. She'll return when she's hungry, probably.
More info if I ever get to play with it.
Observing report for Friday, 2nd September.
Equipment: Orion Optics Europa 250 ("Mini Hubble") on a HEQ5 mount
Eyepieces used: 32mm (x37.5) and 25mm (x48). UHC filter.
No moon, no wind, no cloud but sky not terribly transparent - 6/10 perhaps.
Limiting visual magnitude approx. 4.5 at zenith.
Objects: Eastern and Western Veil Nebula, M27, M57, Crescent nebula
Cygnus - probably my favourite constellation. I set up at around 10.00pm after leaving the main tube to cool down for an hour. My first target was the western section of the Veil Nebula, the part that is associated with 52 Cygni. I tend to star hop from Epsilon Cyg, then down to 52. 52 is a mag. 7 star, so not especially hard to find - it's easily centered even in a 6x30 finder. Under my skies I'm forced to use a UHC filter to see the Veil. Without the filter 52 Cygni seems to be a normal, mag. 7 star. With the filter you can see a pale ribbon of light streaming away from it. It shows well in the 32mm - no high magnification required for this object
Panning east slowly, the eastern section of the Veil comes into view. It's the brighter section but harder to find because it's not associated with a bright star. It appears as a curved cobweb, hanging in space. Unlike the western section, the eastern section shows more detail as you continue to look at it. Even using the 32mm I can't quite fit all of it in the FOV. It's a lovely object and one that I can't get enough of.
10 minutes later, I'd had enough of it. I'm flighty, what can I say? I decided to try and track down an object that I've tried (and failed) to find in the past - the Crescent Nebula (NGC6888). It's listed as magnitude 10, but that might apply to the cluster that the nebula is associated with. All I know for sure is that the Crescent is one of the more challenging objects I've gone after.
Did I find it? I think so. I knew from Jeff Barbour's observing notes that I should be looking for a 'W' or 'M' shaped asterism a short way up the neck of the Swan from Gamma Cygni, and I'm fairly sure I found it. I kept coming back to this FOV:
The stars 82 and 68 seemed to have rather more "fuzz" associated with them than is normal. The one problem with the UHC filter is that it adds a certain amount of fuzz to every star, but these two seemed to have more of it, especially in peripheral vision. I stayed on this object (and its immediate locale) for around 20 minutes before I quickly checked out M27 and M57 (yep, still there) and packed up.
However, I didn't stop there. Once Mini Hubble was safely stowed, I went back to Jeff's notes and found a sketch he had made:
As you can see, the stars match quite well and the nebulosity does, indeed, seem to be brightest around 68 and 82 Cygni. It was at the limit of my ability to detect, but I'm classing this one as 'observed'.
Well, the Sony PSP (oh, Google for it) is out today. Amazon UK are selling it for a shade under 180quid. Am I going to get one?
No.
"Why not?" I hear you ask. Well, in the past we've bought a number of handheld game units (...thinks about that statement...) ok, we've bought one handheld gaming unit (a Sega Megadrive portable whatsit) and, to be honest, I don't see the appeal. Yes they're very impressive units (well, the Sony certainly is) but I don't spend enough time on aircraft/trains/being chauffeured to warrant getting one. MP3s? Got an iPod. Video? Got a PowerBook. Games? Well...technically the PowerBook handles that, but I'll admit the PSP is probably a more capable game playing device.
In short, there's nothing too compelling about the PSP yet to make me want to rush out and get one. Give it a year and a larger software base and perhaps I'll change my mind, but for now I'd rather keep the cash.
As you may have gathered by now, we're both lovers. Of whisky, that is. I mean, we're married, so obviously we're also...never mind. Where was I? Oh, yes.
I finally got around to buying Michael Jackson's (no, not that one) Malt Whisky Companion, (or How To Kill Your Liver With Style) (ok, not really). I haven't had a great deal of chance to read it yet because it only arrived today, but first impressions are that it's exactly what I've been after for a while - a look at about 1,000 different whiskies (Scottish, Irish, American and Japanese) together with tasting notes and an overall score. The only problem with it is that it was last updated in 2003, and I know for a fact that there are half-a-dozen new Edradour finishes that aren't in here. A finish, incidentally, describes the type of barrel that the whisky spends the last year or so of its life in, and has a major effect on its final flavour. So (for example) you may see some whiskies described as Port Wood finish which simply means that they spent the last part of their life in barrels that previously contained port.
All in all, I suspect we'll be taking this one with us to Scotland.
JediGeeks episode 2 is in the can. This one felt a bit smoother and is a better episode, I feel. Oh, Nige? You get a mention matey.
As you know (if you've been reading this nonsense for a while)(and you have, haven't you? There may be a test) we're off on our hols soon to Scotland. One thing we've always lacked was a good camera, so we started to look at DSLRs about 12 months ago.
And then nearly passed out when we saw the prices.
Seems they've come down a bit since then, and they're now in the range where we could afford to get one. Just. We narrowed it down to the Nikon D50 (or similar) or the Canon 350D. A little further digging eliminated the Nikon, because it's slightly less suited to astrophotography than the Canon. It seems that even when it's in RAW mode, it still processes the images a bit, and a star just looks like a hot pixel and so is prone to being erased from the frame. Bummer.
A little trip into town to our local Jessops confirmed that the 350D was quite nice to hold and could shoot at an acceptably fast rate of knots. So, all being well (the Younger Skoda is in with the Lizard Men currently) we should be in a position to buy one before we go. Which would be nice.
We also looked at used Canon D10's (which are more robust cameras) but having hefted a D20 in the shop, I didn't feel that there was much point from our perspective, because the 350D didn't feel plasticy to us. If I was going to be using it every day then yes, I'd get a D10/20, but ours will spend much of its time in a bag, so it's not going to be used a huge amount.
I also found that although Jessops sell used condition 1 (ie, excellent condition) D10s for 400quid, they buy them for 220quid. You might want to try bargaining if you're after a D10.
I'm in a fu...a very bad mood right now, so no blog entry today.
Apart from this one.
Crap. I hate it when I do this...
We were watching a few episodes of Stargate SG1 last night (someone loaned me the first 6 series) when I had something of a revelation. Maybe an epiph eppifa...no, it was definitely a revelation.
It was this: I don't look like Richard Dean Anderson. At all. Not even a little bit. We share the same number of eyes and ears but that's about it.
It was a bit of a blow, actually. Especially as Kato has something of a mild crush on the guy. So do I, to be fair. I mean, in my case it's a manly guy crush, and doesn't involve showers, but even so.
So: I don't look like him. Guess I'll just have to accept it and console myself with the knowledge that I have a better knife than MacGyver did.
Ok, I've added an RSS feed to this site through popular request. Well, through a request, anyway.
You can subscribe to it here.
A little conversation I imagine happening at Microsoft between Bill "Oozle" Gates and Steve "Fremen" Balmer:
[Bill] Do we have Worm-sign Steve?
[Steve] We have Worm-sign the likes of which even God has never seen, Oozle.
[Bill] (whimper)
Zotob, eh? Tragic. A real tragedy.
Laughed my ass off. In some ways I have to feel for them - they release a patch for a flaw, then crackers reverse engineer the patch, find what it's patching, then write an exploit for it on the basis that most machines will be un-patched at this stage. It's hard to blame Microsoft in this case as they pretty much did all they could to prevent this from happening (apart from, you know, writing a really insecure OS in the first place. And the second place. And...) but, even so, I'm still laughing about it.
You can call me petty if you want.
Well, we've got the RSS working (whether it passes W3C validation is another matter) and we have the first show up on iTunes!
Yippee!
You can get it here
Ok, I've run into a small problem that I could use a little outside help on. If some kind person could take a look at the JediGeeks page and tell me what, if anything, is wrong with the RSS feed (I hate RSS) I'd be very grateful. I'm especially interested in the iTunes tags to do with author and artwork.
Thank you.
I'll keep this entry short. I've cobbled together an RSS feed for the Jedi Geeks podcast, and I've come to one conclusion:
I hate RSS.
I've updated the links section to list some of the podcasts I listen to. It's only a short list at the moment but due to the way in which I'm displaying them it's taking up a lot of room. Think I may have to redesign that bit, but that will have to wait for...
read past end of file: /dev/brain
Woah. That was weird. Ok, let's not panic now, it's probably nothi...
read past end of file: /dev/brain
Ok, that's it - I'm getting another coffee.
Why do my fingers smell of pineapple? That's not a trick question, I honestly would like to know the answer. The fingers of my right hand smell of pineapple and, to the best of my knowledge, the nearest I've come to a pineapple was two years ago when Domino's accidentally left some on my pizza.
Weird.
In about six weeks time we go away for two weeks to Scotland. Those of you who have read this drivel blog for a while now know I have Feelings with a capital 'F' for Scotland. I just love the place. Once again we will, optimistically, take two of the three telescopes with us (the smaller of the two) on the off-chance that we get at least one clear night. Then there's the second reason for going: we can re-stock the whisky collection. Last year we spent an obscene amount of cash on single malts of various types, and we fully intend to repeat the experience this time around as well. To make things even more fun, we're very close to the Edradour distillery - the smallest (legal) distillery in Scotland, possibly the world. There's only three people involved in the whisky production - there's at least double that in the shop. They don't make cheap whisky, but by Golly it's good stuff.
The other little tradition we have is that we tend to come back with a new sword. I think that may have to fall by the wayside this time, if for no other reason that we're running out of room to put the perishing things.
Well. Maybe a small one, eh?
Found this picture posted to the uk.sci.weather newsgroup.
Hope these guys had a UPS..!
Click for a full-size image. I believe this was taken in Australia. Quite impressive. The image was taken by Kane Quinnell.
Some small site redesigns. Some of the graphics have been tweaked down in size slightly, there's a webcam image (don't know how long I'll keep that though) and...this: 
I'm involved with a new UK based IT podcast. Karl and I take a look at current technology developments and news, and chat about them. Sometimes we swear, mostly when Microsoft becomes involved...
I'm the hairy one.
I've remembered where I heard the slinky-spring quote: it was mentioned on the Trash Talk podcast. Trash Talk is done by the same guys that do Your Mac Life, one of the best Apple-related podcasts. Shawn King and J. Curtis, two very funny guys. Worth a listen.
Addendum: Your Mac Life isn't a podcast in the usual sense, it's a stream-cast. Still worth a listen though.
My mouse has arrived. And....it's MIGHTY!
It's packaged in usual Apple style - really quite classy. It comes with a software driver disk that you need to install if you're going to use any of the more advanced features. I'm not sure which features it specifically enables, but I'd guess it's the button re-configurator and the horizontal scrolling.
In use it's really quite nice, but the right click will need a bit of getting used to because you have to take your left finger off the mouse entirely, or the right click registers as a left click. Time will tell if this is a PITA or just something you forget about and do naturally.
The scroll ball is strange. Before I plugged it in I was quite sure the ball wasn't moving, but it is. There just isn't a great deal of tactile feedback from it. The speaker inside the mouse makes a soft clicking sound when the scroll ball is used. It's very faint and could perhaps do with being a little louder.
I'm not happy with the side buttons. To me, they are too far forward and need too much pressure to activate. I suspect I won't be using them much.
The scroll ball worked fine in the apps I tested (MacSOUP, Safari and Preview). I thought I'd heard that in Safari the left/right and Preview). I thought I'd heard that in Safari the left/right action of the scroll ball caused Safari to back/forwards in its history, but this isn't the case it seems. I was very relieved to find this, as I was dreading it doing that. That alone would have had me boxing it up and not plugging it in again until a fix was found.
Weight-wise it's about the same as a Microsoft Starck Mouse, perhaps a tad heavier.
In all, I'm quite happy with it. It's not the best mouse in the world, but it's in the upper third I'd say. 35UKP is expensive for what it is, but this is Apple after all. The lack of Bluetooth is a bit odd, but I'd guess the various sensors and the speaker eat a bit too much power to make Bluetooth a viable option at this stage. I don't like Bluetooth mice and keyboards anyway, so this isn't a factor to me.
The space shuttle Discovery has made a successful re-entry and landing at Edwards Air Force base. The entire manoeuvre appeared to be textbook to me, but even so you could feel the tension in the control room.
When they were finally at rest on the runway there was a heartfelt "welcome home guys".
The shuttle fleet is still grounded, however, until the problems with the foam on the external fuel tank are solved.
I've ordered an Apple Mighty Mouse. Well, I actually ordered it yesterday morning but hey. The order status reads 'shipped' as of last night, so I'm now taking every chance I can to look out of the window to watch for circling delivery vans.
I'm getting some mixed vibes over this device - some people love it, some hate it, most like it. We'll see. What I love about it is that there is a tiny (and tinny, probably) speaker inside it, in order to give a 'clicking' sound. I'm just wondering how long it will be before someone works out how to play other audio through that speaker. It might be rather cool to have a mouse that every so often shouts "yippee!".
Ok, you have to hear this if you're into podcasting. Interestingly, the version I first heard (which used the word 'fuck' quite a lot) is no longer there, it seems. Still a damn good song though.
It's official - I'm married to a geek girl. If I was in any doubt before (which I wasn't) then it would have been erased with this little conversation:
[her] You ok?
[me] er...yes?
[her] Ok, I'm going dark then.
What she meant was that she was going to be plugged into her iPod Shuffle and further communication would be difficult for a while.
Muppet.
Just been to see Charlie And The Chocolate Factory. Not bad, but I think I preferred Gene Wilder in the role. If we could have had this version of the film but had Gene Wilder in Johnny Depp's role, I think it would have been a better film. It's not bad, and I have nothing but respect for JD, but he was playing it as though he were Michael Jackson, not Willy Wonka. Gene Wilder was better.
On another note, I'm now hosting this site on my own equipment. This means that I have essentially unlimited space but only a 256Kb pipe up to the Big Bad Interweb. What this means is that the site may load a little slowly. Given that I get about 10 hits a day, this shouldn't be a problem.
Something I heard during the week:
Some people are like slinky-springs: they serve no practical purpose, but they still bring a smile to your face when you push them down a flight of stairs.
One last hospital bit, then I'll leave it alone. The scariest bit is when they're doing all the pre-checks before they wheel you through to the Knock Out Room. As they wheeled me through I sat up on the bed and threw my arm forward, in a classic "ho!" gesture, which seemed to go down well. Then I was in the anaesthetic room, which goes down in my book as scariest room I've been in in the last 20 years. It's not very big and contains a heart monitor. I then sat there (ok, lay there) for about four minutes while one member of staff (who was late) turned up. They then wired me up to the heart monitor, at which point I said "Ok, the nerves are starting to kick in now."
"Yes," said the nice lady, "I can tell - your heart rate is dipping into the 90's."
At this point I probably scared them slightly, as I started to quietly sing the Brunnen-G Death Chant:
Couldn't help it, it just helps me to relax. Seemed to work as well as my heart rate came down slightly.
She then administered the anaesthetic ("You'll feel a slight scratch.", "Yeah, right...Veo-aye-oh..."), which feels very cold running up your arm. "When do I start counting?" I asked. "Oh, you'd probably reach a hundred with this stuff." she said.
She lied! She lied to me! Because I remember sod all after that, and I was furiously checking for the effects to start. Man that stuff must work fast. Then there was an instant of null time and I woke up although, it transpired, not without some small difficulties. Then they gave me a cheese sandwich. I'll get them for that.
Remember how I once said that "any day that starts with a trip to the dentist is going to have its own special flavour"? Well, that flavour is mellow vanilla compared to the days where you start off by going to the hospital.
Which is how yesterday started.
It wasn't anything unexpected (it's been arranged for a few months now) but that didn't stop me feeling very, very pensive about it. I had to go in, they'd knock me out, have a poke around to try and find out why I get haemoroids ("too much information!!"), then I wake up and go home the same day. Then you have to take 48 hours off work because you've had a general anaesthetic.
And that's pretty much how it went, except for two things. The first (well, chronologically it was the second) was that I was a wee bit reluctant to come back out of the anaesthetic. That's probably just because I'm a lazy bastard, but a bit worrying even so.
The second is that I apparently tried to stop breathing while I was under.
Fuck.
If we're going to be fully accurate about this, I required assisted breathing because my natural breathing started to fall below safe levels, so they had to get one of the ball-and-pipe thingies and essentially do my breathing for me. Now, it can't have been too serious or they wouldn't have let me home again afterward, at least not for a day or so, but even so. Shit.
So right now I'm feeling a bit knocked, a bit tired, and my throat is sore. Presumably from the ball-and-pipe thingie.
As I was being discharged the rather nice staff nurse-dude told me "You might want to mention the assisted-breathing thing if you ever have to go under again, although frankly it's more worrying for us than it is for you."
I beg to differ.
MacOSX 10.4.2 is out. I've installed it, and so far giant gerbils have failed to eat my socks. Which is a shame, 'cause that would have been cool. And scary, I admit, but cool nonetheless.
No, seriously, it's out and weighs in at about 21MB for the non-combo update. First impressions are that things feel a bit quicker. Safari feels quite a lot quicker in general browsing. All in all, so far so good. I'd check more but frankly I can't be bothered. If it's broken something then I'll find it sooner or later.
Well, that was a bit more like it! We had the first proper storm of the year two nights ago. Some lovely, lovely lightning, which I tried to take a picture of using my Kodak DX3700 camera. Now unless you have a digital with a fancier set of features than mine, this is quite hard. Essentially I'd have to either take shots every few seconds and hope I got lucky, or wait until I saw a flash, hit the button as fast as my reflexes would allow, and hope I got lucky. In my favour was the fact that a lot of the lightning was "slow" lightning, where it seems to crawl across the sky.
And I managed to get a frame of it.
So where is this picture, then? Gone, that's where. Because the bloody camera lost power immediately after showing me the preview and before it saved it to the memory card. I couldn't bloody believe it, I really couldn't. In fact I said so, using quite strong language and rather more volume than was, strictly speaking, required but I was feeling a bit emotional. On the plus side it did give me a golden opportunity to shake my fist at a stormy sky and cry "Why? WHYYYYY?!" which is something I've always wanted to do. I'm not sure what the neighbours thought of all this, but sod 'em.
Just lately I seem to be getting a lot of spam asking me if I want to be an F.B.I agent.
What the fuck is that all about then?
Oh, I forgot to mention yesterday that when we went to see 'Batman Begins' at Star City, Birmingham, they had the actual Batmobile/Tumbler vehicle there. It's smaller than it looks in the film but Karl stayed around a little longer after the film than we did and he saw them fire it up to put it back in the truck. Apparently, it's loud. The sounds in the film aren't special effects, it really sounds like that. Wonder what the fuel consumption is like...
Over the weekend I found myself in Birmingham. I mean, it was planned, it wasn't like there was a blinding flash of light and then I was in Birmingham, we actually intended to go.
Great. One line in and I've already lost the thread. Where was I? Oh, yeah. Anyway, there's a sort of tradition that we have when in Birmingham meeting my friend Karl, which is that he asks us if we want to go the the Apple store, we say 'Nah', and then we go anyway. Normally somewhere like the Apple store is a Bad Place for me to be because of all the things in it that I could conceivably want to buy (remember: I have a credit card and waaaaay too little fear about using it) but this time I felt fairly safe as there was genuinely nothing I especially wanted to buy.
You can probably guess what's coming.
While there we noticed that they had some cheap and refurbished stuff, end-of-line stock, that sort of thing. Stuff that was slightly cheaper than normal. In this gear were some external hard drives, and that reminded me that I still hadn't sorted out a proper way of backing up Tycho (the G4 tower). An external hard drive seemed ideal and the price was fairly good, so we checked out the prices on the new (as opposed to clearance) units and found they were only a wee bit more. Where harddrives are concerned I'd rather buy new, so we opted for a Maxtor Firewire 400 160GB model. I nearly went for the LaCie model as it looked rather more sleek, but just as I was reaching for it I swear I heard the ghostly voice of Adam Curry saying "...that fucking LaCie hard drive...that fucking LaCie hard drive...you're not my father...that fucking LaCie hard drive...". Apart from freaking me out slightly it reminded me that he's had...issues...with LaCie hard drives, so I opted for the Maxtor instead.
Kato also bought herself a Palm Tungsten E to replace her Sony Clie 625 (which has lost its stylus). It's pretty much the same unit (feature for feature) but made by Palm, so she hasn't gained a great deal but she's cool with that. Personally I'm still smitten by my Sony Clie TH55 and I'd have a very hard time replacing it in the event of something bad happening to it. I might almost be tempted to buy a used one as I don't think there's anything out there that's as good (with the possible exception of the Life Drive). But anyway, the Maxtor:
In use the Maxtor at first proved a little troublesome. Transfer rates were slower than I'd expected, but more worrying were the failed copies. You'd try to copy a file and get the 'some data could not be read or written' error. Not a great start. I perse persu stuck with it and eventually had my home area backed up, but something sure wasn't right. Then I half remembered something about Firewire devices sometimes behaving erraticallly if there's an iSight plugged in. Which there was. I unplugged it, and lo and behold the hard drive has behaved perfectly well ever since. Apple, this sucks. It always seems to be the case that Apple get stuff almost perfect, but let it down by introducing some hideous flaw.
On another note we also saw 'Batman Begins', which is boss. Michael Cane as Alfred was an inspired casting move and confirms my own private theory that no film with him in can be all bad. Be advised that this Batman film essentially requires you to forget all the previous ones, as it re-writes history a bit. Even so, it's worth a watch.
All this was on the Saturday, which was a bloody hot day. I was really looking forward to the Sunday, however, as thunderstorms were promised. I like thunderstorms. A lot. Which is why I feel a bit cheated, because Sunday started out promisingly hot and humid, became cloudy, became ominously cloudy by mid-afternoon, and then...fizzled. We got some rain, a few feeble flashes and rumbles, and sod all else.
Ho hum.
Had to share this with you: a week ago a friend of Kato lent her "The Goodies" on DVD, and a man I greatly admire was in it - Sir Patrick Moore.
But as I've never seen him before (click for larger version) :
It's been a while since I last updated the site, and once again it's mainly due to being busy in boring ways. There is a fair bit I need to catch up on though, so here we go.
First up, the MAME table project. Kinda stalled at the moment. It's still going ahead but my interest has waned slightly, so I need to let it wax again.
Second, Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger". I ordered this from Amazon, foolishly thinking that they would ship at least a day early in order to get it in people's hands for the day of release, but this turned out to be a case of sweet naivety on my part. I eventually caved in, canceled the order, and went to my local Purple Temple Of Sadness (PC World) to get it from there. Cost me ten quid more but at least I could play with it sooner.
Initial impressions are that it's a very nice release of the Mac OS. Spotlight is good, Dashboard is interesting, and there's lots of little tweaks and under-the-hood stuff. But the really good stuff is in QuickTime 7 (which isn't actually a 10.4 technology at all) because the H.264 video codec is bloody awesome. Last Saturday I had a three-way video chat with Dan in Hawaii (hi Dan) and a guy in London whose name I shamefully forget.
It was bloody brilliant. There was none of the half-expected 3 frames a second stuff here, this was smooth and clear. It's limited (as is anything) by the weakest link in the chain, which in this case was my upload bandwidth. Both the other guys had about a gig of upload bandwidth whereas I'm on 256k up. Even so, it was very impressive.
What interests me more is where Apple may go with this, because H.264 offers great quality at lower overall file sizes than 'standard' mpeg4. Which kind of lends itself to a potential iTunes Video Store, providing Apple can get the content and get the film companies on board. Time will tell.
But 10.4 isn't all sweetness and light - there's some nasty stuff in there as well. It's been fairly well reported about the 'feature' in Safari that automatically installs a Widget that you download, whether you want it to or not. This is a Bad Thing because Widgets can be embedded in web pages, and all you actually have to do to download one unwittingly is to go to the web page. You don't have to click anything, the Widget gets downloaded and installed as the page is loading. Now this is obviously bad, but what worries me more is that Apple didn't seem to know this. The alternative is that they've started on the slippery slope where features are more desirable than security and I don't like either scenario. 10.4.1 is due in the near future and will probably patch this hole, but the mere fact that it was there to begin with is worrying. As I've said before, the main governing factor in whether malware is developed for a platform is not market share but rather how easy the platform allows itself to be targetted. Give people an obvious way to exploit a platform and it's just a matter of time before it's exploited. The 'Inside Mac Radio' guys think that we're on the verge of the first, massive, Mac virus/trojan/worm outbreak and before 10.4 I'd have disagreed vehemently. Now I'm not so sure. I don't think it's imminent but I think it's at least possible now.
On to some lighter stuff: Podcasting. I have become addicted to podcasts - they've completely changed the way I use my iPod. The vast majority of the podcasts I listen to are tech related (actually Mac related) but there's a couple that are non-tech that are very good indeed. The first of these is Dave "don't call me Slasher" Slusher's "Evil Genius Chronicles". I'd describe it as an ecclectic mix of life, the universe and damn good music, except that people only use the word 'ecclectic' when they have no idea what they're talking about and think it sounds cool. Dave's show is very professional, very engaging and is first to be cued up on the 'Pod in the morning. Check it out at www.evilgeniuschronicles.org
And then buy his stuff. Please.
Then there's "The Dawn And Drew Show" (www.dawnanddrew.com) which is...not for the faint of heart. It's not child-safe, shall we say. If you don't like listening to two people talking about sex, farts and gummy bears then you probably want to give this show a miss. Trust me on this. I love it but other opinions are, as always, available.
The rest of the stuff I listen to is tech related, so I'll just give you some links:
In The Trenches (general sysadmin-related podcast)
Slacker Astronomy (rather good astronomy show)
And the best software around for actually getting these (on a Mac OS X machine): iPodderX, currently on version 2.2.9T, with version 3.0 due Real Soon Now.
I've finally reached a significant milestone with the MAME table!
Well, ok, that's not actually true. What is true is that the single most difficult hurdle has now been, er, hurdled, and the rest is just tweaking. After that the software setup will officially be at Minimum Required Functionality and work can start on the hardware.
Here's a little summary: a while ago (before Christmas) I decided to embark on making a MAME table. A MAME table is a computer running the MAME software (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) and it allows you to play the old, classic arcade games like Galaga and Asteroids. Not copies but the actual games themselves, assuming you can get your hands on the ROMs for them.
MAME runs on a variety of operating systems but I'd wanted to do this using FreeBSD because it's the OS I'm happiest with (not including MacOS X but that would be too expensive for this). If I couldn't use FreeBSD, I'd use Linux and if not Linux then I'd fall back on Windows. The table would have a wireless card in it so it could be admin'd from afar and it meant I could potentially have it doing other stuff, like displaying RSS news feeds when it's not MAMEing.
Things were going fairly well - the FreeBSD 5.2.1 install was happy, X-Windows was happy, xmame (MAME for Unix) was fairly happy. Then I changed something - I enabled WPA protection on my wireless network. I don't like WEP because the last time I used it I found a significant overhead in transfer speeds, and running a wireless network without protection is just silly, so WPA it was.
FreeBSD can't cope with WPA.
This was a bit of a showstopper. I reallly wanted wireless access to it. So I decided to look at Linux.
Hooooooo boy.
To cut a long story short, I tried Mandrake, I tried Ubuntu, I tried a couple of others - all had problems that I wasn't prepared to tackle and none of them supported WPA (at least not out of the box - I understand there's software for Linux that will allow it to connect to WPA networks but frankly it looked like hard work).
So I shelved the idea of wireless administration - I'll need an ethernet drop lead - and went back to FreeBSD. But I goofed again. The version I'd had working before was 5.2.1 but I decided to give 5.3 a go.
Mistake.
xmame is marked as 'broken' on 5.3 and even if you tweak it and force it to compile, the version of MAME is different. I was using 0.7x on 5.2.1 and 5.3 had 0.8x and guess what? You need different ROM images for the games. ROM images that I don't have.
I was starting to get the "if it's not one thing, it's another" feeling. So, not to put too fine a point on it, I shelved the whole idea for a while and started a new project (learning Objective-C).
Kato, however, was wanting to play with wood-working tools, so I got stuck in again. Since I'd had most luck with FreeBSD 5.2.1, that was the version I reinstalled. I got xmame compiled in, got X11 configured the way I wanted it, all was great.
Except for sound.
Sound was giving me gyp. The sound card I'd plugged in was an ESS-based PCI card and guess what? FreeBSD (5.2.x at least) has some issues with ESS sound cards. The effect I was hearing was as though the sound that was playing from the games was cutting in and out very rapidly, like it was only playing every other 1/10s. Anoying. I figured it was probably the ESS card and yanked it, deciding to try the onboard stuff instead.
No difference.
This pointed to it being software, not hardware. And last night I had the bright idea to try reading the documentation. Although it didn't adddress this particular problem, it did point out how to use the 'esound' module instead. With nothing to lose (except sleep) I decided to give it a whirl and compiled the esound stuff in, then recompiled xmame for esound support.
And it worked. Clear sound.
This prompted a certain degree of grooving and saying things like "Who's the daddy? I'm the daddy!" but I'm not proud of that and I'll feel ashamed when I get a minute.
The rest (basically getting the machine to bootup straight into MAME) is trivial, so I'm effectively at 'minimum required functionality' software-wise, which means Kato can now start looking at tables, saws, drills and other items of woodworkery. Plus I can now look at ordering the controls from Ultimarc, which I'm childishly excited about.
Watch this space.
Well, it's been a while since the last update, hasn't it? No good reason, to be honest, just not a lot of anything much happening.
Ho hum.
So, what's new? Well first off I've been given a mention over at KevinDevin.com. Kevin does the "In The Trenches" podcast and I've become an avid listener. It's a sort of rolling 'day in the life of a systems administrator' and is quite entertaining. He updates roughly twice a week from what I can tell, with each episode being around the 30minute mark. Check it out.
Kevin was interested in the old computer kit I have here, so for anyone else who's sad interested enough, here is a (fairly) complete list of what I have:
Acorn A4 Laptop
Acorn Archimedes 420/1
Acorn Atom (with disk drive - unusual)
Acorn BBC B
Acorn BBC Master
Acorn Archimedes 540
Acorn Archimedes 7000
ACT Sirius
Amstrad CPC 6128
Amstrad CPC 464 (and a 464 German 'Schneider' brand)
Amstrad PC1512 DD
Amstrad PC1640 HD20
Amstrad PCW8256
Amstrad PPC512
Apple 2 Europlus
Apple 2e
Apple Macintosh Plus
Apple newton message pad
Atari 520ST
Atari 400
Atari 800
Atari 800XL
Atari Video Computer System 2600
Cambridge Computers Z88
Camputers Lynx
Commodore 16
Commodore 64
Commodore 64c
Commodore CDTV
Commodore PET 4032
Commodore Plus/4
Commodore VIC20
Dragon 32
Dragon 64
Eaca Video Genie EG3003
Eaca Colour genie
Epson HX20
Epson PX8
Husky Hunter 144K
Husky Hunter 2
ICL One Per Desk
Mattel Aquarius
Memotech MTX512
NeXT Station (slab rather than Cube)
Onyx Systems C8000
Psion LZ
Psion P350
Research Machines Cambridge 480Z
Sanyo MSX MPC100
Radionic (TRS 80 clone)
Sharp MZ700
Sharp MZ80a
Sharp MZ80B
Sharp MZ80k
Sharp Pocket Computer PC1360
Sinclair QL
Sinclair Spectrum 48k
Sinclair Spectrum +2
Sinclair ZX-81
Sord M-5
Tandy Computers Colour Computer 1
Tandy Computers Colour Computer 2
Tandy Computers MC10
Tandy Computers Model 1
Tandy Computers TRS80 model 2
Tandy Computers TRS80 Model 3
Tandy Computers TRS80 Model 4P
Tandy Computers Model 16
Tandy TRS80 Model 100 laptop (2)
Tatung Einstein
Texas Instruments Ti99/4A
plus a few old bits of related equipment, like a Minor Miracles WS2000 modem.
Kevin wants to do a Skype link with me and that would be interesting. Given that he's in the States and I'm in the UK then finding a mutually convenient time might be, er, fun, but I'm game.
New purchase! Well, two actually. First up, Kato now has her iPod shuffle (I'm not linking - go to Apple's site, I'm sure you know where it is). We got the 1GB version and it's a neat little toy.
Another purchase: a Matius Tactile Keyboard (here. It's a wired, USB keyboard that has a lovely feel to it - a bit like the original IBM keyboards. Warning: it's loud. When you get up to a good typing speed, other people are going to know.
Possibly in the next street.
We have a Shiny New Toy(tm)!
As you may (or may not) know, we're a bit Apple-y here. The main machine is a dual-G4 1.25GHz tower ('Tycho'), but we also have a G3 600 12" iBook called 'Ymir' that we bought shop-soiled from Purple World two years ago.
For a while we've been thinking about suplementing Ymir, 'cause he's getting a bit sluggish when you try to do heavy stuff with him. For example, he's not that good at streaming video or decoding DiVX because a G3 600 is a bit old.
We caved in eventually and placed an order for a 15" PowerBook. And on Wednesday, he arrived.
Dear Gods he's shiny. 1.33GHz G4 with 768MB, Airport Extreme, Bluetooth, 80GB hard drive - he's a sweet, sweet machine.
And the keyboard glows when the light level in the room drops below a certain point. It absolutely rocks.
We're having some barking weather here today - clear and cold to start with, then it turned a bit snowy. That then became sleet, then rain, then hail - big hail.
Now it's thundering.
In January.
Weird.
One more quick rant about Macs and viruses and then I'll leave well enough alone. Last night I was listening to an internet radio computer show. I won't say who it was because generally it's a good show and the host, by and large, knows what he's talking about. However, he answered an email from someone who was asking 'are Macs immune to viruses' and the answer was 'No, because the virus writers only target the system with the largest instaled base'. Now, partly he's right - Windows has, what, 90%-97% of the market, depending on who you ask. The Mac has about 3% by units sold annually, perhaps about 7% by installed total units. On that basis, shouldn't the Mac have at least 5% or the viruses? Or 3%? Or even 1%?
Yes it should, if installed numbers were all that mattered. But they're not. What matters is the toughness of the OS itself. If the Mac were at all easy to write viruses for then someone would have done it by now just to shut us up. Just to be first. Just to prove it's possible.
Let me put it another way - if the installed user base is all that matters then how come there were viruses for the Acorn Archimedes, a computer that never achieved great fame and popularity globally? And yet there were, indeed, viruses for that system. Quite a few, in fact.
The Mac (or more specifically MacOSX) isn't immune and I'm not trying to suggest it is. It's just inherenty harder to crack and has far fewer attack vectors.
Wake up.
Warning: this blog entry is effectively an anti-Windows, pro-Macintosh rant.
This comes about because of a conversation I had with my boss a while ago, in which I mentioned that a good first course of action in beefing up security on our clients' machines would be to get Internet Explorer off the desktop and install Firefox. His reply?
"Humph. There's nothing wrong with IE."
Further questioning proved that (a) he was actually serious and (b) he felt that Windows 'is secure'.
He's suffering from the same thing that many, many Windows users suffer from, and it's the same thing that abused spouses suffer from: they think it's someone else's fault.
"It's not Microsoft's fault that virus writers target them" they say. Wrong - it is Microsoft's fault, because they've made a series of operating systems that are so insecure other people can install software on your computer without your permission and without your knowing.
Often from another country.
And you're telling me that's a good thing?!
"Oh, it's perfectly fine provided you run anti-virus software. And anti-popup software. Oh, and, er, anti-spyware as well."
I don't want to do that. I don't want half the software I'm running to be to protect me from other software.
That's just wrong.
"Ah,", they say, "but Microsoft are now supplying AntiSpyware software themselves. See? They're doing something about it". This is just poppycock. It's like Smith & Wesson saying they're helping combat urban shootings by buying a company that makes bandages.
Windows users: let me put this as bluntly as I can: you are swimming in a lake of shit, and so far your only answer to this has been to hold your breath and swim faster. You've completely missed the point that (a) this is wrong, and (b) you can get out of the lake. There's another lake just over there and it's clean. It's called Macintosh.
Come on in, the water's lovely.
