Classic Expressions
Helping to bring old whisky literature back into print.
Last Friday night was our office party. This year, like last year, we went to a place called Tatton Park. They put on a show (Orient themed this year) and you get a meal, drinks etc. Really good night.
This year I went in the full formal Scottish gear and also took Kato with me. I learned two things: (1) If you're in a kilt, and everyone else is in a suit, everyone sees you. (2) Men in kilts are total, total babe magnets. It's unreal. I had to defend my honour from about nine different women - some of them in groups.
It was great!
Here's a rare picture of both myself and Kato at the party:
I was listening to the news on BBC 1 this morning and there are moves afoot to criminalise certain motoring acts, such as tailgating (driving too close to the car infront) and 'undertaking' (overtaking in the inside lane).
I'm fully in support of this, providing they also criminalise the cause of both of them: people who hog a lane they don't need and stay there.
This tends to manifest as someone who sticks rigidly to the middle lane, despite there not being any traffic in the inside lane for at least half a mile. These people also tend to be doing 60mph (the speed limit on UK motorways is 70mph) and are, frankly, a menace. So if they are going to treat undertaking as a crime they need to be really sure, because I've undertaken a fair few times as it appeared to be a safer option than swapping two lanes at speed.
I should make one thing clear here: while I obey the speed limits on the roads religeously, I speed a little bit on motorways. I keep it below 80mph, and I tend to only do it for overtaking, but it has to be said I speed a little bit. Even so I consider changing two lanes simply to get around some numpty doing 65 in the middle lane to be more risky than carefully overtaking on the inside, keeping a very careful eye on the numpty in question in case they suddenly realise that the inside lane is empty and they should perhaps be in it, because if they do then they almost certainly won't use their mirrors. Or indicate. They seem to assume that because they are in the middle lane, no-one else can be in the inside lane, especially not someone travelling a little bit faster than they are. These people are idiots, but more than that they are dangerous idiots. Hogging the middle lane (heck, hogging the outside lane as well) should be illegal and classed as dangerous driving.
Reasons you should be in any lane other than the inside lane: You're overtaking someone.
That's it.
There no such thing as a slow lane, or a fast lane. The middle and outside lanes are for overtaking. They're not there just because you drive a BMW, or you're in a hurry, or your lights are those stupidly bright ones that should be banned. If you're not overtaking someone then get the fuck out of that lane because you have no fucking need to be there.
Now, I will move into the middle lane at junctions simply because people joining the motorway tend to forget that they don't have right of way. They seem to think that you are obliged to move over and let them in, even if it's physically impossible due to the middle lane being occupied by a transit van. They will, in fact, hit you if you don't move over or brake. Heaven forbid that they could slow down or even...dare I say it?..stop and wait. Sometimes I get the opposite problem: when I'm joining the motorway I give way (as I'm supposed to) but sometimes the person in the inside lane will slow down to let me in. Trouble is, polite though this may be it's wrong, stupid and dangerous. At one point some bampot started to slow down but didn't flash or gesture to show their intentions. In addition, I'd just made a slightly-less-than-smooth gear change down and was caught slightly on the hop. The car slowed down more.
The truck behind didn't.
The truck was forced to change lanes rapidly in one of those lights-flashing-horn-blaring kind of ways, which probably scared the shit out of the car driver. It certainly harshed my mellow. I floored it and got into the inside lane ahead of the car, then had to let the truck in before overtaking it.
Madness.
I don't know if you've been watching Torchwood at all, but if you haven't you really might want to consider giving it a go - it's really rather good, in a classic BBC SciFi cheesy sort of way. It's shown after the watershed (9.00pm) and contains, shall we say, some adult content. I'm trying to picture how Russell T. Davies pitched this to the Beeb:
"So, Russell, this Torchwood thingy - what's it about then?"
"Well, it's a Dr Who spinoff series."
"And?"
"And it'll have monsters and aliens and be set in Cardiff."
"Cardiff?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"..."
"Well ok, but it needs more...more something."
"Cardiff isn't enough?"
"No."
"Ok, how about I throw in a good looking chap standing on top of high places looking moody from time-to-time?"
"Why's he doing this?"
"Dunno, it just seems like a good idea."
"Ok. Anything else?"
"How about we make him indestructable?"
"Won't Gerry Anderson lynch us?"
"Nah."
"Won't Gerry Anderson's fans lynch us?"
"I'm rather hoping not, no."
"Ok, but it still seems a little...boring?"
"How about I throw in a lesbian every third episode?"
"Here's a contract for three series Russell. Good seeing you again."
It must have gone something like that, I'm sure. Nothing else makes sense.
Happy St. Andrew's Day everyone!
In my day-to-day work I'm forced to use Windows. I generally use the 'Silver' theme as it's the least hideous (in my opinion). I could always install a new theme but that would generally involve installing 3rd party theme-manager software, which would be a no-no. This is a pity because I really wanted something that looked like a black version of silver.
Then I found Royale Noir. This seems to be an Official Microsoft Theme (ie doesn't need extra software to use). It looks like this:
I've installed it and it looks pretty damn good (well, so far as Windows can look good). The only caveat is that the theme was never finished, so although it works it's not 100% consistent but anyone who uses Microsoft software at all will be used to this.
The RAR file can be found here.
To install, unrar the files into your C;\Windows\Resources\Themes folder, then double-click the 'luna' (note the lower case 'l') file. When the display control panel pops up, drop the 'Color Scheme' down and choose 'Royale Noir' from the list.
DISCLAIMER - If you install this, you do so at your own risk. I've used it for a day now with no ill effects but in the event that it crashes your computer beyond recognition, steals your credit cards and mutates into a virus so terrible it takes down society, I WILL NOT CARE. I may even laugh.
Have fun.
Here's a little hint: just because you've actually decided to use your car's indicators to signal a lane change on the motorway doesn't automatically give you right of way!
The number of times I've had to back off quickly or be rammed by some bampot who decides to change lane without, crucially, checking the contents of the lane they're moving into...grrrr.
I've pruned out the 2005 entries in order to speed up the loading of the site. It's only taken me 10 months to do so which is quite good by my standards. I'll archive-and-link them over the weekend.
Purely for my own reasons I sampled the startup sound from 'Airwolf'. It's just the sound of the helicopter powering up, no music.
On the off-chance that it's of any use to anyone (might make a good computer switch-on noise) here it is:
Aren't I kind to you? And sad, granted. But mostly kind.
JediGeeks is returning! Hopefully we'll be recording the next show tonight. If you want to subscribe, click the logo and it will take you to the iTunes podcast directory. Er, hopefully.
We had the company support team photo re-done last week. This is something we do from time to time, generally when the support team has changed sufficiently to make it worth the effort. This picture then goes onto the cover of our next newsletter, possibly as a warning. Here's the picture:
Points will be given for (a) correctly identifying me, and (b) explaining why I appear to have been told something rather startling just before the picture was taken...
(For the purposes of this article I'm going to use the term "Linux" to mean "a Linux distribution" and not "the Linux kernel". Just thought I'd get that clear from the start.)
Unless you've been living under a rock for the last decade (or living in Peebles, which may count) you'll have heard of Linux. On the offchance you haven't it's an operating system written by, essentially, The People. The source code is available to look through and it's either very cheap or free. You can essentially think of it as a free Unix. You'd actually be wrong but only in the details - it's basically Unix in most of the ways that matter.
And it has a hugely vocal set of supporters. For an example of them, download any of the LUG Radio podcasts (although be warned - they swear a lot). They see Linux as a serious competitor to Windows and the Mac, and they're right - it should be. In the server-space it certainly is a serious rival - an impressive percentage of the world's web servers run on Linux (or FreeBSD, another free Unix-like system). Also, lots of devices like ADSL Routers use Linux as their onboard OS.
On the Desktop it's a different matter. Although recent distributions like Ubuntu have helped make Linux easy to use, the market share doesn't seem to be rising. Every time a new distribution comes out you'll find people over on Digg earnestly proclaiming that This Time It's Going To Happen, that people will rise up en mass, throw Windows away, install Linux, and live happily ever after in a free software world where standards are open, software is free, there's no DRM, and everyone gets a pony.
Not going to happen. Not anytime soon, anyway, because Linux has a problem. The problem it has is also, ironically, it's strength, but it's still a problem. The problem is this: there are too many Linux distributions out there and they all do things differently.
If you buy a Windows box, you get Windows. You know how it's going to work because no matter who you bought it from (Dell, HP, Fujitsu, Mr Computer) it's still Windows and it's going to work in a certain way. You might not like how it works, but at least it's consistent. If you buy a Mac it's even more cut and dried because no-one makes Macs apart from Apple. They all work the same because that's the whole point of a Mac - It Just Works.
However, if you buy Red Hat Linux and install it on one machine, then install Ubuntu on another they are (potentially) going to look, act and feel very different. Software packages for one won't install on the other. It is, quite frankly, a mess.
Here's what I think needs to happen to fix this.
Do you remember a concept from way back called MSX? If not, here's a quick recap. MSX (Machines with Software eXchangeability) was a standard for hardware manufacturers of home computers in the late 80's. What this boiled down do was that companies like Sony, Sanyo etc all made machines that were, in effect, the same machine. If you bought a Sanyo MSX machine then you knew you could buy software for MSX and it would work, and what's more you could take that software round to your friend and run it on his Toshiba MSX machine. It was a great idea (and ironically spearheaded by Microsoft) but it was too early - the hardware/software spec was too low to maintain public interest.
I think Linux needs to reinvent the MSX concept and it needs to do it soon. Let's call this new MSX'd Linux 'Standard Desktop Linux' (SDL). SDL would be a Linux that has a certain desktop manager, a certain package manager, a certain kernel version, works in a certain way and sticks to it. It's not - and this is important - a new distribution but rather a set of standards that other distributions can build to, so you could have a SuSE version, a Ubuntu version, a Red Hat version etc. It wouldn't matter which one you were using because they would all work the same way. The point of this is that you know if you've got SDL, you can install software for SDL. It doesn't matter if you're technically running SuSE, Ubuntu or Red Hat because the software will work.
This is, quite simply, the most important thing that needs to happen. There has to be a Standard Linux, and since the various distributions aren't going to agree on who that is then it needs to be all of them. I'm not saying that the distributions need to stop developing but when you install (for example) Red Hat 14 then 'Standard Desktop Linux' needs to be an install option. One of the reasons there are so few hardware drivers for Linux (written by the hardware vendors themselves) is that they don't know which distribution to write for. With SDL they'll have a standard to write to. It'll be slow, but they'll start to take it up, especially as Microsoft will be taking a rather draconian stance with Vista and 3rd party hardware drivers (drivers need to be 'signed' for Vista. Guess who signs them. Guess whether they're going to charge for this).
The second thing that then needs to happen is SDL needs to be pre-installed on hardware, possibly with a catchy name. Joe Nextdoor won't buy a Dell Standard Desktop Linux Machine because it sounds scary and it contains the word 'Linux' which most people equate with 'sad/scary/nerdy/techy', but he might buy a Dell lBox or a HP uMate. It also needs to be advertised to within an inch of its life but that's mainly going to be up to the hardware vendors.
That's my take on it. I'd love to get some feedback on this, so please email me.
Here's another quick 'Saltire-in-the-sky' picture I took on holiday.
Not as good as the other one I took earlier in the year, but not bad none-the-less. Plus it has the Moon in it. Nice.
Just a quickie: here's the complete list of whisky we came back with, much of it care of Kato's overtime payments:
Aberlour 16 years
Aberlour A'bunadh batch 17 cask strength
Ardbeg Airigh Nam Biest (vatted?)
Ardbeg very young 6 years
Balvenie PortWood 21 years
Balvenie Single Barrel 15 years
Benromach 22 year port wood finish
Benromach Organic
BlackAdder 12 years raw cask Glendullan
Bruichladdich Infinity (vatted cask)
Cragganmore 10 years cask strength
Cragganmore Double Matured Distillers Edition 13 years
Dailuaine 16 years Flora and Fauna
Edardour Burgundy Finish cask strength 12 years
Edradour Marsala finish Cask Strength 12 years
Edradour Port Wood finish Cask Strength 12 years
Edradour Sauternes Finish Cask strength 12 years
Glen Grant 10 years
Glen Moray 12 years
Glenfarclas 10 years
Glenfarclas 105 cask strength
Glenfarclas 21 years
Glenfarclas 8
Glenlivet Nadurra 16 years (2 bottles)
Highland Park 15 years
Johnnie Walker Gold Label 18 years (Blend)
Lagavulin 12 years cask strength
Lagavulin Double Matured Distillers Edition 16 years
Laphroaig 16 (The Whisky Shop Own Bottling ) cask strength (stunningly good stuff, this)
Mannochmore 12 years (Flora and Fauna)
Private Cellar Bottling 19 years Highland Park
Royal Lochnagar 12 years
Scapa Cask Strength 14 years
Serendipity 12 years (Vatted Malt)
Strathisla 12 years (2 bottles)
Strathisla 15 years cask strength
Tomintoul 16 years
Just a quick head's up: if you like Celtic music then you might want to try listening to Marc Gunn's The Irish And Celtic Music Podcast. I discovered it a few weeks ago and it's really rather good. Seems to come out about once every one-to-two weeks.
However, be warned: if the nearest you've come to Celtic music is Enya and bits of Enigma then you may be in for a shock. This is the real stuff. We're talking pipes. We're talking fiddles. We're talking banjos. We're talking about lyrics that contain expressions like "foll-dee-widdle-dee-roll me darlin'". We're talking about people who wear Arran sweaters because they like them.
Just so you can't say I didn't warn you.
...aaaaaaand we're back. The thing about holidays, the really key thing, is that they have to end. We had a marvelous time in Tomintoul, and the place we stayed at was ideally situated for both the Malt Whisky Trail and some pretty stunning scenery.
Here's a couple of pictures to get you started:
That's a hearth/chimney for a temporary bothy (a cottage/shack/small dwelling place). It would be used by men who worked the fields thereabouts. They'd tow a wooden structure up there to attach to it while they were working the fields, then dismantle it when they left. Pretty cool. I imagine the Saltire painted on it is a later addition.
This was taken when we were taking the mountain route through the Cairngorms on our way to Pitlochry. I saw the rain marching towards us through the mountains and had to snap it.
Ok, this entry is effectively an advert. Bite me.
If you (a) like whisky and (b) like reading about whisky then you may want to pop over to Classic Expressions because they're doing something rather neat. They're bringing back two lost classics of the whisky industry, "Reminiscences of a Gauger" by Joseph Pacy (1873), and "Smuggling in the Highlands" by Ian MacDonald (1914). Both books have been out of print for a long time and fetch non-trivial sums on eBay. What Classic Expressions are doing is scanning these two books, bringing the quality back and re-issuing them in a limited run. In addition, both books will contain a CD ROM containing a PDF of the book, so you can search the contents easily.
Here's the cool bit: if you are one of the first 100 people to pre-order then your name will be in the front of the book as a 'Founding Subscriber', which is nicely ego stroking. Also, if you are one of the first 100 then the books are 45 UK Pounds each, plus postage. After that they go up to 50 UK Pounds and your name won't be in them. They need pre-orders of 100 in order to cover the costs, so no 100 pre-orders = no books and we don't want that, do we? In the event that they don't get 100 pre-orders then you get your money back. I'm not sure what the time limit is so ordering sooner rather than later would seem to be a good idea.
Go on - you know you want to.
I've noticed that someone has directly linked to my Saltire-in-the-sky picture. I'm not concerned, I'm not bothered, I'm just saying...I've noticed. I know you're in Germany (or the hosting site is). I know who you are.
Ok, I don't actually. Who are you? "Hello", anyway. I tried to read your blog but it's in German and my German is slightly worse than my ability to speak fluent Canine, so I'm at a bit of a loss. No change there then, eh?
My trip to and from work mostly involves a motorway designated the 'M6'. My journey on it goes from junctions 14 to 18, a journey of about 30 miles. The M6 does not, and this is important, go anywhere near London. I'll get to why this is important in a minute.
Now, the M6 at least has a reputation for some spectacularly unhelpful overhead information signs. They tend to say things like 'Fog' when it's foggy or 'Queue Ahead' when you're stationary in a queue. You get used to it. They've recently started to experiment with alledgedly helpful messages such as 'Journey time to Cannock 22 Mins', which is great if you know which junction Cannock is but less helpful if, like me, you're not sure which one it is or how far away it is.
Twice now the signs have exceeded even my low expectations by displaying the following sign: "M25 J10-J7 Long Delays". The M25 (in case you didn't know) is the motorway that circles London. Given that this was being displayed at M6 Junction 15 which is, at a rough guess, about 140 miles and at least one other motorway away I was understandably confused. The M6 doesn't join the M25 at all. Not even a little bit. Giving me warnings about a potential delay on a motorway I'm not on and that's at least two-and-a-half hours away at full speed seems a little...daft.
So obviously it's a mistake. It's happened twice to my knowledge but it's still a mistake.
Or is it?
I was giving this some thought as I played 'dodge the lorry' (a popular full-contact sport played on motorways - it's a little bit like dodgems but with insurance claims and occasional ambulances) and I started to wonder if the signs were intentionally displaying this but the information wasn't for motorists. What if it was some sort of secret sign for the emergency services, something like 'escalated terror threat'? Something that (for whatever reason) they didn't want to broadcast over the radio network but still had to get the message out? Ok, probably not, but it's a thought. Let's face it, even if it is a secret message it's probably for the RAC Traffic Bikes and means "It's someone's birthday at the office and there are cream cakes available if you get back quickly enough". Kind of hard to fit that on a 22x2 matrix so they resort to code.
Ok, I'm bored. You can tell, can't you?
Well I picked up the kilt on Saturday, so now I'm going to bore you senseless with it:
2006 has not been a good year. In March we lost Kheldar, our beloved dog of 14 and a bit years. I nearly had a breakdown through stress around the same time (through lots of different causes). A few weeks ago my best friend's uncle (effectively his father in all but name) died. This weekend just gone Kato's grandmother died, and yesterday a good friend of hers died as well. In addition to this we still haven't won the Lottery and become multi-millionaires, and I still share my birthday with Alan Bloody Sugar.
If we look at the Suck-O-Meter then 2006 hasn't even broken through the mid-point.
The bagpipes: Scottish musical instrument (for dubious values of the word 'musical'). What's not generally known, however, is that they started out not as a musical instrument but as a weapon.
Bear with me on this.
They originally came in three different sizes. Most households had a set of light household pipes. These would be used to rid the house of mice, rats, excisemen and other vermin. They weren't terribly lethal but, at the same time, you wouldn't want to be in the same room as them for more than a few minutes. Small children were often trained in their use until they became adept at them. Then they were banned from using them ever again.
Next up were hunting pipes. These were used by gamekeepers and the braver species of poacher. The gamekeeper/poacher would stride into the middle of a glen, blow the hunting pipes for all he was worth for about 10 mins, then simply walk about collecting the corpses of the creatures that had suffered panic-induced heart attacks. A set of hunting pipes skillfully played could bring down a deer at a range of half a mile, the downside being that they brought down everything within half a mile. They were the ancient Scottish equivalent of a mid-scale carpet bombing. In fact the only creature not affected by hunting pipes are hairy coos, and that's only because nothing on the face of this planet can get their attention, much less get them to move. Hairy coos make your average apathetic art student look like a goal driven perfectionist on a deadline and 8 grammes of coke. Back when whisky was mostly produced by illegal stills the larger stills would have a lookout tower manned by a piper with a set of hunting pipes. If he saw anyone official-looking heading towards him he would blow the pipes until the official looking fellow dropped down dead, or the still exploded.
Last up are battle pipes. These are nasty wee buggers. They were used by the Scots against non-Scots enemies, primarily the English. The average Scottish clan army consisted of 500 of the clan's hairiest men and one piper. Many people assume the piper was there to lift the spirits of the other 500 men and give them some music to fight to, but in fact the 500 hairy warriors were there to protect the real menace: the piper. Armies facing the wailing of a set of battle pipes played fully and well have turned and run, quite often not stopping until they reached Malaga. Incidentally this explains quite a lot about Malaga.
The only problem is, as mentioned, that it only worked against non-Scottish enemies. There have been seven occasions where belligerent clans have attempted to use the pipes on other clans. This always resulted in a stalemate lasting anywhere up to three days, and generally was only broken up by the intervention of a third clan, who would come along and throw a bucket of water over the two pipers in a desperate attempt to finally get some sleep. In fact the only reason the English finally defeated the Scots was due not to superior tactics or superior numbers, but to superior ear plugs.
So there you have it - the true history of the bagpipes.
Here's a little suggestion to anyone who's making a film or TV series set in the 1800's: if you have to use oil lamps at some point, use oil lamps. Don't use electric lamps that just look like oil lamps. The light that's produced is completely different and it's one of the things I find a bit jarring (yes Deadwood, I'm looking at you). They get so much right - the dirt, the clothing, the people shouting 'yeehaw' in an authentic manner - then they drop the ball on the lamps. You get some sherriff wandering around town at night carrying, basically, a Maglite. I know that using actual oil lamps carries a small amount of risk but it looks so much better than someone carrying a 4000W Carbon Arc PortaFlood through Dodge City circa 1850.
[posted to ~GreyArea~ and JediGeeks]
Sadly, over the weekend Karl's uncle (who was effectively a father to him in all the ways that matter) passed away in hospital.
For obvious reasons we won't be doing any new podcasts for a while as Karl's got more important things on his mind right now. In addition to that I'll be on holiday in Scotland during the first two weeks of October, so I guess we'll try to do a show not long after that.
We just had a week off from work and it wasn't a moment too soon - we were both running on empty to a far great degree than was good for us. It's been far too long since we last had a week off that wasn't a complete stress-fest - October of last year in fact. Partly our own fault and partly circumstance, but whatever, it's been too long. You always know a holiday's been a good one when it feels longer than it actually was. This was the case with this holiday because we split it in two - the first few days we were visiting my parents, then we came back on Wednesday. Thursday was a car service day, then Friday we went to a place called Stockport. It's near to Manchester and it's a weird wee sprawling place. The reason we went there is that there's a shop there called Freedmans that supplies formal Scottish clothing. I've ordered a kilt in Ross Modern Red (I'm an Andrew and we're part of the Ross clan), shirt, Argyll jacket (the slightly more severe jackets, as opposed to the Bonnie Prince Charlie style which is a wee bit too 'biscuit tin lid' for my taste), black sporran, belt, belt buckle, socks and flashes (red). Cost me a cool 700 quid and should be ready in about four weeks. Brace yourself for pictures.
In a secret interview Apple CEO and head mojo meister Steve Jobs released some details concerning Mac OS 10.5.
"We feel that we can release this to you," Steve said, "as no-one reads your blog anyway."
Hmm.
"First off, we've taken a good look at both our and others' current operating systems. In doing so we came to one conclusion: they're all getting it wrong. All operating systems use pre-emptive multitasking. If you think about it, that's just wrong! The operating system is telling your apps how they should run, which ones get priority! I can't believe no-one has seen just how bad an idea this reallly is. So, starting with 10.5 we're going to implement a scheme called 'co-operative multitasking'. Each app will be able to dictate how much cpu time it gets. This is so superior to pre-emptive multitasking that it's almost impossible for me to describe, but trust me - you're going to love it.
Secondly we realised that they're all getting memory management wrong. Badly wrong. All the current systems use protected memory - it's even on the CPUs for pity's sake! What this means is that no app can access the memory of other apps, and that's just stupid. Just think - if apps can access each others' memory space, they can co-operate much more fully and completely. To this end we've commissioned Intel to produce a batch of the Core 2 chips without this ridiculous restriction and have recoded our OS likewise. They loved the idea so much they were laughing. A lot. In fact several of them had to be led away to a dark room, that's how good this idea is. With these new chips and OS, apps will be able to acccess each others' data directly. It will be a golden age of app co-operation and iLife '07 will make full use of this."
I asked if I could see a demonstration of this.
"They're...er..they're having some...stability...issues at the moment," Steve shifted slightly uneasily, "but trust me, it's going to be great once they've ironed out the kinks."
With that your reporter made his excuses and left, pausing only to steal a prototype 6th gen iPod.
Official proof that God is Scottish:
Snapped that while sitting in one of those total breaks from moving that the M6 is so good at granting you. It certainly looks like a Saltire to me...in fact it two sets of aircraft condensation plumes (or whatever the damn things are called) but hey, I was bored. Sorry it's so small (click the picture to see the real size) but all I had was my phone.
Woohoo! Just a quick entry because I'm pissed tired, but I've finally managed to photograph lightning:
Not much I admit, but it's mine.
Attempts to barbeque porridge have resulted in failure. And much hilarity.
Browsing Apple's Quicktime Movie Trailer Site I came across something bad. Something wrong. Very wrong.
They've remade The Wicker Man
Altogether now - 1, 2, 3, ... WHY?!
Of all the films ever made, The Wicker Man is one of the few that I'd say are as close to perfect as can be. The people who made it couldn't have done a whole hellava lot to improve any - any - aspect. It's a superb film in almost every way. It did NOT need remaking.
However, they've changed a few things. It's no longer set in Scotland for one, it's now somewhere in America. Also, Americans apparently have some problem with a guy being a virgin (which was, you know, sort of the whole point in the first version) so now he's a guy with a fear of bees.
Okaaaaaay.
Did no-one making this film at any point say "Hey! Hang on - what the hells are we doing? This is going to suck!"
I actually feel quite angry about this, which is a little bit sad I suppose but there you go. There seems to be an increasing trend to remake old films rather than making new ones. A quick run down Apple's site reveals The Wicker Man, Casino Royale, The Omen...they even remade The Poseidon Adventure for pity's sake!
And on a brief other note - don't watch Ultraviolet - it's really, really bad. Great trailer, very bad film.
Apparently there's some sort of footy (or 'soccer' for any non-Blighty readers) contest going on at the moment. You can tell this in two distinct ways: the first way is that there's bugger all else on the television at the moment. I don't actually mind that all that much as I don't watch a great deal, but even so.
The second way you can tell is because every car, every house and every other bloody flat surface has got a Cross of St George on it. Now I'm not actually annoyed about that - if people want to fly their flag then that's fine by me. What does annoy me is that if you asked any of the owners of these flags, they'd claim that they were there because they (the owners) are 'being patriotic'.
Well, if you're the owner of one of these flags then I have a wakeup call for you: you're not being patriotic. What you are, in fact, is supporting the England football team which, and I hate to break this to you, is not the same thing. Being patriotic isn't something you switch on and off. It has very little to do with your team being in some sporting event.Being patriotic is something you either are or aren't. Example: both myself and Kato have Saltires (the Scottish flag) in the rear window of our cars. They're there all the time, not just when some Scottish sporting team is competing in some event or other. They're there because we love Scotland, the country, not Scotland the [insert game here] team.
It will be interesting to see just how many of these flags are still there after the football is over. It would be even more interesting to see just how many of these flags were made in China.
Still feeling patriotic?
On Saturday morning we took the Elder Skoda to the local Skoda garage and left it there, for ever. Enough was enough - it's served us well but it was starting to become a little too expensive to keep running. When a car starts to blow oil into the engine, that's a Sign.
We now have a new Skoda Fabia 1.4TD. A silver one. And beyond that there's probably not much I can tell you, because it's a car and cars don't interest me in the slightest so I don't pay much attention to them. What I can say is that I'm glad that Kato was sorting out the finance stuff, because that stuff bores me waaay beyond distraction. I found it was actually impossible for me to pay attention to what was being discussed. I mean I tried, I really tried, but it never took more than a minute before my eyes started to glaze over again. Kato could have sold me into slavery to the garage for five years and I probably wouldn't have noticed. I sure she hasn't. Well, fairly sure.
Ish.
So anyway, the Younger Skoda is now the Elder Skoda, and there is a new Younger Skoda. Both are diesels and that's one thing I'm not going to miss - the tank on my old car was pitiful in size, to the extent that I had to fill up every other day (160 miles). Although I could probably squeeze one more trip out of it I was never happy trying it since the range on a full tank was 250 miles, so in theory I'd be on fumes by the time I pulled up to the petrol station. Which knowing my luck wuold be closed or out of petrol (which happens quite a lot recently).
Anyway, some guy with a whip has just arrived so I'll have to find out what he wants.
Windows Vista build 5384 is doing the rounds on MSDN, so I bugged the hell out of my boss and got him to download it for me.
To prove that I am unbiased, I will now say something nice about Vista:
...um....give me a minute...
...er...I like the Mah Jong game that comes with it.
Nope, that's about it.
Oh, it hasn't BSOD'd yet, unlike 5304 which had some serious issues with my Scenic and had a distressing habit of going into what I call a 'blue screen cascade', ie it would BSOD, reboot, BSOD, reboot, etc etc. So far 5384 hasn't done anything actually objectionable (apart from sitting there going "look, we're really ripping off MacOS X here, aren't we?) but equally there's bugger all there to get excited about. It's like the Aero theme has been designed by gamers - all flash and no style. Not that this will affect sales of it in the slightest, but it's disappointing that Microsoft couldn't do something better after all this time. There's simply no compelling reason to upgrade that I can see.
Still here. Not much happening. Rib healed. Raining.
Yay.
The rib seems to be on the mend, so I'm starting to think that I just bruised it rather than cracking it slightly. It still hurts like a mother fu a lot, but it seems to be mending.
Which will be more than can be said for the clematis, since tomorrow I'm going to stamp it flat. Ha! That's one plant that's going to learn who its daddy is. I've already bought its replacement which I paraded in front of it, taunting it. Got some strange looks from the neighbours, but hey.
Oh, just one other thing - my ADSL line is being upgraded to something (laughably) called MaxDSL. This is where they test your line for about 10 days to find out what the highest speed is that it can support (up to 8Mbps). During this testing period the line will drop randomly, so I apologise if you're having trouble getting to the site from time to time.
I think I've managed to slightly crack a rib. I wish I could say that I'd done it in some heroic feat of derring-do, but actually I was gardening. Vicious things, clematis - take your eyes off them for a second and you're in all sorts of trouble. We had a very pot-bound one that really needed planting and it wasn't coming out of the tub easily. So I got down to a bit of serious forking, got something slightly wrong, my hand slipped, I fell forward and the handle of the fork hit me square over my right nipple with rather more force than was required.
It completely knocked me speechless, which was probably a good thing as there was nothing polite I wanted to say at that point. I may have gasped something like 'fucleshwit' but I can't be sure.
I rather assumed I'd bruised it (and to be honest I don't know that that's not the case yet as I haven't been to the Docs) but there's no bruise showing and it still hurts as much now as it did on Monday. It mostly hurts when I move in a certain way (cue jokes of "don't move in that way then"), cough or sneeze. In fact it's quite possible that I will jam a toothbrush dipped in bleach up my nose rather than risk sneezing again, because that was the least amount of fun I've had in 0.3 seconds for quite some time (and that includes stepping barefoot on the seriously knobbly dog toy).
More info as soon as I get it.
My first post on Digg.com (scroll down and find 'Greyarea') and so far I've had 61 thumbs-up.
Is that good?
The place I work at is part of the Microsoft Developer Network. This means that every so often they send a bunch of disks to you containing the latest software. By and large these just get stuck in a drawer, but then we spotted a Vista build disk. Vista is Microsoft's next operating system and they've released a couple of betas for people to evaluate. The one we've got (build 5308) isn't the most up to date but it's not far behind, so I thought I'd give it a go.
The machine I installed it on is a P4 2.6 with a 40GB hard drive, an Nvidia 5700 Ultra graphics card with 256MB, and 512MB RAM. That made it a bit tight on RAM but otherwise usable.
Installation took between 2 and 3 hours. Towards the end the hourglass turns green, and how can I put this? There are goods greens and bad greens. This was a bad green. Gangrene green. It didn't make me feel good to look at it.
One odd thing of the install is that you have to choose a desktop picture or you can't continue.
Once it was installed I found myself face-to-face with the first of Vista's 'new' features - the Aero theme. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. Someone at Microsoft needs to be told that just because you have sixteen million colours to play with, you don't have to have them all on screen at the same time! Aero is horrible. I can only assume that either the average age of the GUI devlopment team is 17, or they're smoking way too much crack. In using it (when I could, see below) I found one feature that was useful. One. That's pretty poor if you ask me. The single feature I found that I liked was that if you mouse over a minimised application tab (in the task bar) it will popup a little preview window showing you what it is. That's it.
The rest of the interface is loaded with effects, none of which serve any useful purpose. Windows are translucent, so although you can see through them they distort what's underneath so you can't read it. When they appear or disappear windows now 'fade' in and out. It only takes about half a second, but when you've got a lot of windows appearing and disappearing (as with, say, a software install) then it becomes incredibly annoying.
And it's always asking your permission to do stuff. Always. You get so used to clicking 'Allow' that within an hour you're going to be doing it automatically, thus negating any benefit that the feature should provide, i.e. increased security. And if you think that XP is bad for balloons popping up and telling you things you don't care about, you're not going to like Vista one bit because guess what? It's worse, if anything.
The main problem I had with this beta is that it's buggy as Hell. I ended up re-installing it four or five times. I eventually figured that it didn't like having the network card configured. This seemed to trigger a BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death) and after that it would reboot, BSOD, reboot, BSOD etc. etc. until I reinstalled. Now, ok, it's beta software, I know this, but it's going to be shipping in six months! Not to end users, true, but OEMs require two or three months to bed it in and test it, so it's got to be finished by, say, September or October. Possible? Yes. Likely? It's Microsoft, what do you think?
So all-in-all I really don't like what I'm seeing in Vista. It's been joked that it's going to be nothing more than XP Service Pack 3 and I think I've secretly hoped that this wouldn't be true, but from what I've seen that's exactly what it's going to be - XP with some flashy (and useless) graphical tweaks, some really botched extra security and...nothing else.
And what really makes this suck is that it's been in development since 2003 at least.
April is drawing to a close and May is fast approaching. To me this means one thing:
Cream cakes.
(thinks) No, sorry, got distracted there. No, May to me means one thing (apart from cream cakes): Thunderstorms. For some reason the last few years (except, irritatingly, last year) have seen the first two weeks of May being a bit thundery. As you may have picked up from previous entries I'm a bit of a storm chaser. Well. Ish. Actually I'm a storm waiter - I let them come to me. The goal is, of course, to photograph lightning. It's something I've never actually achieved (except once with an old Kodak digital, and the bloody battery died before it wrote the image to the card) but I now have a Canon EOS 350D camera, so providing my reflexes are up to it I stand a better chance of success this time around. Of course, this being Blighty we don't actually get very many thunderstorms. Some people (and I'm looking at you RPG. Yes, you, you lucky Australia dwelling Bast...sorry, getting distracted again) get some really nice big ones (fnarrr) but that doesn't happen much here. Mind you, during the aforementioned Kodak incident we had no less than four distinct storms around us, and the entire show went on for about three hours. It was very impressive in a slightly-life-threatening kind of way.
I'm not expecting much this year but it's as well to be prepared. You can buy dedicated lightning detector equipment but, as I've said, I'm lazy so knowing that there's a storm 30 miles to the south doesn't do me much good unless it's heading north.
Mind you, some of this stuff is very impressive. If you look here you can see an example of what's possible. Ok, it'll probably be blank when you look but trust me, during a good thundery outbreak it's an impressive sight. There's a couple other of those types of site that are based closer to me, and are hence more accurate for my geographic location. Accuracy drops off with distance, so finding one within about 50 miles of you is a Good Thing.
So, we'll see what this year brings. Rest assured that if I succeed (or fail in amusing ways) I'll let you know.
Hmmm. Re-reading this entry it appears that my word for the day is impressive.
We've just had a couple of Bank Holidays (a public holiday) here in Blighty. This meant we had four days off and boy did we need it. Even though we actually had a week off at the end of March it wasn't a very good holiday due to the sad event right at the very start of it.
A lot of people in the UK go a bit mad on a Bank Holiday - they pile into their cars and grimly drive to the nearest beach, determined to enjoy themselves despite the fact that's April and raining. If they don't go to the beach then they go to DIY stores, convinced that the immediate future contains new shelves and that this is somehow a good thing.
Sod that.
So in our usual way we've spent most of the four days eating bad stuff, drinking a bit too much and playing computer games. Well, one computer game - Tomb Raider:Legend. Short review - Tomb Raider is back. They've got the puzzle/combat ratio about right (70/30ish), the levels aren't so large that you forget where you're going or what you're doing, and it just feels good to play. My only niggles with it are that there are too many end-of-level bosses (it feels like you're fighting one every five minutes), that the game overall is perhaps a little short, and that the puzzles are a little too easy. Other than that it's a damn good game. I'd give it a solid 8/10.
Put the mouse down and step away from the keyboard, ma'am.
Ok, it's sad. What can I say, it was a gift.
First of all, thanks to everyone who's signed the Frappr map.
Secondly, I've decided against doing 'The Dram' podcast. Essentially I don't feel I could devote enough time to it, and a project like that requires someone to be on the ball a bit more than I suspect I would be. I might look at it again later in the year and see how things feel.
Of all the things you can use with a computer printers come top of my 'fear and loathing' list. I simply don't like printers - they have far too many moving parts to be truly reliable and they tend to fail in expensive ways. I admit they're useful but I don't like having to use them. So it came as no surprise when our Epson C80 decided to go on the blink - literally. Up until now I've stuck by Epson as a fairly known quantity, but their Mac support has become less and less smooth (in my opinion - other opinions are available) so I decided it was time for a change.
And because I'm a geek it had to techie. Which is how I've now got a Canon PIXMA 5200R wireless printer. In theory it plays nicely with any 802.11b/g network, even supporting WEP and WPA. Got it for 115 UK Pounds from Amazon. If I'd bought it directly from Apple it would have been 169. Hmmm.
Haven't had time to play with it yet but I'll let you know if it's easy or like drowning in custard.
Mmmmmm. Custard.
Ok, out of curiosity I've decided to do a Frappr map.
I know, I know, they're a bit 'me too! me too!' but what can I say? I'm weak.
If you could add yourself I'd be obliged. Thank'ee.
Well, we're back. And a jolly good time we had, too. For all that I pretend to belittle the Lake District (as in, "it's like Scotland but not as good!") I'd have to admit that some of the scenery is stunningly good. It is, in fact, like Scotland but compressed down into a few dozen square miles.
We stayed at a place called The Kirkstile Inn and I'd recommend it wholeheartedly. We stayed in the little anexxy place as opposed to one of the internal rooms, and it was a good, simple room. The real kicker about the place is that the food is very good indeed and, best of all, they brew their own beer. Several of them in fact. And bloody good they are too. The 'Grasmere Darkest' was far, far too drinkable.
I also encountered one of the most bizarre stretches of dual carriageway I've ever been on. A dual carriageway (for those of you who may not know) is simply the normal single lane road that becomes a double lane road for a while, effectively giving you an overtaking lane. They also tend to be quite straight and flat.
Not this one. This one (near to Ambleside) twisted and turned and went up and down, so much so that you probably couldn't do more than 40mph, at least not before an exciting encounter with a rock wall. It had also been raining and, this being a hilly area, there were small rivers of runnoff crossing the road. This didn't help. I think the only thing you could have overtaken would have a tractor or a caravan, and even then the road was rather narrow so you'd have had to pick your place with care.
While we were driving up there on Thursday we'd got to the Shap Peak portion of the M6. "Oh," says Kato, "this is that flat boring bit you have to drive through to get to Scotland, isn't it?"
"Yes," I replied, smugly. "It's called 'England'".
The site will be down from Thursday morning until Sunday evening. We're going away for a few days and my ISP (Plusnet) has a poor track record of being able to keep my ADSL sessions from going stale, so there seems little point in keeping stuff switched on.
We're off the the Lake District for a couple of days. It was a present from my parents a wee while ago, and as it turned out the timing couldn't have been better. We'll get to give the Younger Spaniel (Mac) some good walks and quality time. We'll also get a chance to point at hilly bits and say things ilke "that's not as good as Scotland" a lot. Heh.
Well, it's done. At 6.30pm yesterday Kheldar was put to sleep. It was quick, painless and he didn't get distressed. I've no doubt that both of us will find ourselves crying at odd times over the next few days but that's to be expected.
There are some people who won't have dogs (or cats) simply because of the pain you feel when you eventually lose them. All I can say is that the loss may have been great, but the fun he gave us over the years was much, much greater. So yes, we'll miss him, but we have lots and lots of good memories.
This is Kheldar, the elder of our two English Cocker Spaniels. He's been a part of our life now for over fourteen years. And tonight, or tomorrow, we'll probably have to take him to the vets for the last time.
To say that I'm a little upset about this is a major understatement, but sometimes you have to do what's right even when it hurts. He's been a wonderful, wonderful dog - calm, gentle, friendly, quietly playful. He hasn't had any major problems (apart from an easily treatable heart condition) and he's had a damn good life. I have to remember that if we hadn't bought him, someone else would have and they may not have cared for him the way we did.
Kheldar grew old quickly, which was a blessing. Even three months ago he was basically fine, albeit starting to slow up a bit and not too keen on walking uphill. It was really only a month ago that he started to decline in a more serious way - sleeping more and more, getting a little unsteady on his legs and starting to go off his food. This last week has been...well it's not been good. He's eating about a tenth of what he should and he generally needs to be carried out of his basket. Around about Monday I think we knew that we had to make a hard decision, and tonight or tomorrow morning we'll take him to the vets to see what they have to say. I think we know what the answer will be.
I'm going to leave work early today so I can spend a bit more time with him. I know that what we're doing is a kindness, but even so it's so very hard to do. But we have to do it, because the alternative is worse and I won't make him endure that.
Not the best way to spend my birthday, eh?
And to cap it all it seems I share my birthday with Alan Sugar. Arse.
I have a small confession to make. I'm not proud of this, and I can't explain it, but I watch 'The Apprentice'.
And what's more, I like it.
It makes no sense at all. I mean, consider it - first off it's filled with yuppie, can-do idiots. In short, the kind of people I would cheerfully stab. A few of them are actually quite nice people (like last year's winner, Tim) but most of them are backstabbing two faced cretins.
Secondly there's Sir Alan Sugar. I don't like Alan Sugar. At all. Not even a little bit. He's a shrewd businessman, I'll give him that, but I just don't have the time of day for him. He produces third rate products under the guise of second rate products that aspire to mediocrity and fall short. My main problem with him is that he took an innovative, inventive company (Sinclair) and turned it into a box shifting excercise. The Sinclair Spectrum was one of the finest British computers ever built - a classic example of the right product at the right time for the right price. Alan Sugar killed it. Ok, Sir Clive was doing a pretty good job of killing it but that's not the point. Sir Clive was killing it by trying bizarre things that wouldn't work in the marketplace and hence losing money. Alan Sugar killed it by making it boring, and there's no greater crime in my book. He doesn't seem to care about innovation - he produces 'current tech' products that are dull, dull, dull. The nearest he got to innovation was that video-phone/emailer device, which people avoided in droves. Spam straight to my phone? Let me think about that...
So why do I watch it? No idea. Really, no idea at all, it's just oddly compelling viewing. Besides, it's better than the American version. My Gods that's bad. I don't know if you've ever seen Alan Sugar's counterpart Donald Trump (and over here in the UK 'trump' is slang for 'fart') but the man has one of the most obvious toupees I've ever seen. Honestly. It's like he's wearing it for a bet - your eyes get drawn to it and it fills your mind. Talking to him would be impossible.
"So, Mr. Andrew, you completed the first task..."
"RUG!"
"...and you made a good headway into.."
"RUUUUG!"
"...the second, but you..."
"RUG! RUG! RUUUG!"
You get the picture.
I really must apologise for the total lack of updates recently, and for the rather patchy uptime of this site. My ISP (PlusNet) had some problems earlier in the week that resulted in my ADSL line being down more than it was up. ADSL in this country is really not all that good, it has to be said. If you look at places like Japan where they have 100Mb connections as standard (and 1Gb being trialled), it puts our 1Mb (soon to be 4! or even 8!) in a rather bad light. In addition that I doubt I'll actually get much more than the 1Mb that I'm on as my phone line is on the threshold of where 1Mb itself is unlikely. Great.
Recently John C. "I get no spam" Dvorak (who, as I've said on JediGeeks, is a cretin of the highest order) recently read an article by someone else (I can't remember who and I'm not going to look) that said, basically, that Apple were going to switch to Windows. He sited a number of reasons for this, among them:
1 - the Switch advertising didn't work
2 - Apple have gone to Intel processors
3 - Apple have dumped Firewire on the iPods
4 - Microsoft have agreed a 5 year Office development deal
5 - Adobe aren't going to backport CS2 to the Intel version of OSX.
He agrees (as much as he ever does, anyway) that these things all add up to proof or, at least, compelling argument.
Hmmm.
Ok, let's see. Let's take item 1, the Switch adverts. Since I don't have access to the figures I have no way of knowing whether or not they worked. However, given that the Mac's market share didn't change much I think it's safe to say that the adverts were, at best, minimally effective. For sake of argument I'll agree they failed. So what? Apple wasn't pinning its future on one single advertising run. They didn't do much to the Mac's market share one way or the other. No score draw.
Item 2 - Apple switches to Intel. I actually think they did this for...wait for it...the very reasons they stated. The G5 wasn't going into a laptop anytime soon, and laptops are big business for Apple. They had to change CPU. IBM didn't have anything that was suitable. Intel did. Intel also, apparently, had a better roadmap for CPU development. Also, if Apple were going to switch to Windows then the time to do it would have been when the first Intel Macs shipped. If the first Intel Macs had shipped as dual boot systems, that might have meant something. They didn't. It doesn't.
Item 3 - no Firewire on iPods anymore. Well sorry folks but thats just sound economic sense. 100% of new PCs (and that includes Macs) ship with USB2 ports. I don't know what the figure is for Firewire, but let's say it's 40%. I suspect that's higher than reality, but hey. Which port make sense to support? USB. Now, I agree that if you've got an older Mac that only has USB1.1 and can't be upgraded then it's going to suck, but in fairness Apple have never promised to limit themselves to your hardware. I much prefer Firewire - for one thing, with Firewire you can still charge an iPod when the machine is asleep. However, they want to keep costs down (and profits up) so Firewire had to go. It's sad but it's not a conspiracy.
Item 4 - Microsoft agreeing to a 5 year Office for Mac deal. His question is - why 5 years? Presumably he thinks that in 5 years time the Windows switch will be complete and Microsoft won't have to develop especially for Apple. My question - why not 5 years? Microsoft are many things, but stupid (where marketing is concerned) isn't one of them. 5 years is one or two further Office versions, which is a nice commitment without being overly restrictive. Plus, from Microsoft's point of view, they don't want to tie themselves forever to a company (Apple) that might release a competing product. Apple have already released Keynote, which goes head-to-head with Powerpoint. They've released Pages which encroaches into Word territory a bit. There's nothing to stop them releasing a spreadsheet - indeed all the evidence points to them doing just this at some point. Microsoft are (reluctantly) moving towards open document formats, so import/export compatibility will be much easier to implement.
Item 5 - No Adobe CS2 for Intel OSX. Again, his argument is that by the time CS3 comes out they'll only have to develop for Windows. Again, it's just simple economics instead. CS2 is probably not a prime candidate for Universal Binary backporting. To get it running on Intel Macs would require a huge development effort, and the people who would be doing that would have to be taken off the CS3 project. It makes more sense to Adobe to get CS3 running on what will then be the standard Mac platform than it does to get CS2 running on what is currently a subset of the Mac platform.
Now, ask yourself one question: why would Apple ditch Mac OSX? Being blunt about this, the only reason to buy a Mac in the first place is Mac OSX. Without that they become just another PC manufacturer, going up against the Dells and Sonys of the world. Yes, Apple arguably make better hardware but most people simply won't care. The iPod business won't sustain them forever - I'm suprised they've maintained their lead for as long as they have. No, ditching Mac OSX makes no sense at all.
Now, I'm no Bob Cringely - I don't have contacts deep in the industry. No engineers phone me late at night and whisper trade secrets to me. So all I've written above is guesswork. But I think it's accurate more than it's inaccurate.
What do you think?
Oh - just found this Joy Of Tech comic..!
Every so often my dear beloved wife gets an urge. A primal urge, one that descends on her with all the unstoppable force of a velociraptor at a Womens' Guild knitting evening.
She gets the urge to bake.
There tends to be a 24hr warning to this urge, which goes along the lines of her saying "Hmmm, I think I'll do some baking over the weekend". This tends to happen on a Thursday or Friday evening and my first instinct is to go "Hmmm?" in a slightly non-commital way, in the vague (and, up to now, utterly misguided) hope that she may not go any further or otherwise involve me. It's not that she a bad baker - far from it. It's just that she approaches it in a 'take no prisoners' manner reminiscent of a cavalry charge.
Saturday arrives and we head off into town, in a non-baking manner. We clear up a few things that needed clearing up (such as getting me a new passport photo. Why do they always make you look like you're a drug runner?) and I ask the fatal question "So, home dear?"
"No," she replies, "we need to go to Asda. I'm going to be baking, remember?"
Remember? Of course I remember, I was just hoping she hadn't.
We go to Asda. I optimistically grap a basket instead of a trolley in the (once again sadly mistaken) belief that this will somehow limit her purchases. It doesn't of course. It just means I have to carry the bloody things instead of wheeling them around. I attempt to escape and spend some quality time in the whisky section but she's wise to this trick by now and my escape attempt fails. So she loads the basket up with the European Flour Mountain, the Brazilian Sugar Surplus, and some bananas. The combined weight of this is slightly greater than that of the Moon. And this is where I leave you, as I'm now going to try to kill my brain with what remains of our whisky supplies. Later today, tomorrow at the latest, she will bake with extreme prejudice. And I will have to clean up.
At least there'll be cake.
I dunno. I don't post anything here for ages and does anyone email me to say "Hey, Jim. You ok?"
No.
I'm hurt.
Well, I've finally shaken off that little sniffle I picked up, and I'll tell you this: I don't know what it was, but it wasn't a cold. No way, no how. I know colds, and that wasn't one.
We found ourselves in the Meadowhall Applestore again yesterday, as Kato's Shuffle had managed to deadlock itself. They took one look at it and said "We'll post one to you - we don't have any in stock currently, sorry". They didn't even look at proof of purchase, which struck me as odd until I remembered that Shuffles have only been out for a year, so they're pretty much all of them still within the 12 month period. Even so, I thought that was rather cool of them. We also came back with a 30GB 5th gen iPod (white) which I've named Tethys. The current iPod, Io, is doing sterling work but failing slowly, the recent hard drive sticking incident only drove home the fact that it was going to fail sooner or later, probably sooner. Given that our main Mac doesn't have a USB2 card it means I either have to put up with very slow transfers (not an option) or bung a USB2 card in it. I suspect a wee trip to PCWorld (purely for the "I want it now!" aspect) is on the cards.
Expanded the whisky collection slightly as well - bought a Highland Park 12, as I keep hearing good things about it but couldn't for the life of me remember what it tasted like. It's a light, floral dram. Quite pleasant. What I really want to do next is expand my knowledge of Glenfarclas expressions. I've only tried the standard 12 so far (which is a fairly, but not outstandingly, good dram) but I hear good things...very good things...about the 18 [edit: I meant the 21 year old. There isn't an 18]. I suspect that in a month's time (to let the pennies grow again) I'll invest in a bottle.
I've spent most of the day in bed. This is not because I've simply overslept to a truly outstanding degree but because I've picked up some nasty little cold virus. Colds take me in one of two ways - either I barely notice them, or they knock me off my feet for a couple of days. This has been one of the latter varieties, caused, I suspect, by the fact that I haven't actually had a cold in over a year and my body has forgotten how to deal with the little bastards. For a small but significant part of the day I've been watching the ceiling gently revolve. The thing I hate about colds is that your (well, my) body temperature management system goes completely bonkers. This generally manifests first by feeling very, very cold. So to counteract this you pile on a layer or three of clothing, which has no effect. You then (in my case) go to bed with a hot water bottle (possibly driving home 40 miles first). After about five minutes you relialise that you are now sweating like an Inuit in an Australian summer, so you peel off a few layers.
The cycle pretty much repeats at this point, although without the driving part.
Tonight is Burns' Night. Burns' Night is either something you understand or don't, and if you don't then there's really no point in my explaining it as you simply won't be interested. Suffice to say he was Scotland's most famous poet and is honoured on this day with haggis, neeps and tatties, and a wee dram or three. This we have duly done (minus the neeps, as I can't stand the wee buggers). I am currently listening to Tam O' Shanter. Slainte, Rabbie.
It's alive! It's alive!
My iPod, that is. Got it back home, plugged it into the mains, rebooted it a few times - five, six hundred say - and the little fella came back to life. Ran a disk check on it and all seems well.
Say what you like about the 1st gen iPods, they're tough little buggers. This also puts to rest any claims (scandalous, lying claims) that I may, in fact, have tried to do the little chap in intentionally in order to get a 5th gen iPod. Which isn't true. At all. Not even a little bit.
Honest.
Let the bells toll mournfully. Let the flags fly at half mast. Let us raise a glass in remembrance, for Lo! my iPod is awa' the crow road. It has ceased to be. It has Shuffled(ha!) off this mortal coil and joined the choir invisible. It's an ex-iPod. It's maximum bit rate for playback is now zero, although arguably it can now play 0 bit rate songs in any format you care to mention with equal effectiveness.
The poor wee thing's dead. Loaded it up with podcasts this morning, got in car, got out of car swearing, locked front door, got back in car, pressed play on first podcast...zilch. Checked screen and found the screen had frozen.
"Oh, bother." I thought (or words to that effect). Still, I've seen this before and a reboot always cures it. So, I held down the 'Menu' and 'Play/Pause' keys for a few seconds. iPod dutifully starts to reboot...then stops with a sad iPod icon.
This did not go down well.
Switched off car, got out, unlocked front foor, stormed up stairs, stormed down stairs, switched house alarm off, stormed back upstairs again, got Tycho (the main Mac) out of sleep, plugged in iPod and...nothing.
I may have sworn slightly at this point. Actually, I did. Quite a lot in fact. Simply put, I can't afford a new iPod 5th gen (the one I want) because once I've got all the kit I'll need (Dock, iTrip, USB2 card) it's broken through the 300 quid barrier. So, for a while at least I'm going to be without my daily dose of podcasts. It's going to be hellish...
Today is going to be an interesting day - the type of interesting day that the Chinese had in mind when they invented their famous curse 'May you live in interesting times'. Today we buy my father a new laptop, and it's going to be an Apple Powerbook.
There will be a brief pause while I scream.
A short recap. Five years ago my father retired from full time work and went self employed in the ceramics industry. He's still a very sought after man and spends non-trivial amounts of time abroad. He needed a computer and, being familiar (to some extent) with Windows and the fact that Apple were going through a transition phase (Mac OS 9 vs. Mac OS X) we decided that the best course of action was going to be to get him an IBM Thinkpad. This we duly did and I don't regret it at all - it's been a superb machine. However, it's getting on a bit and starting to show distressing signs of mortality, so the time has come to upgrade him.
Scary.
He could either go for another Windows machine (this time with Windows XP), or he could take the Apple route. My feelings on the matter are that if he goes the Windows route he needs to be prepared to spend a significant amount on anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-this, that and the other, and also he should accept that since XP is more prone to infection than '98 he may need to reinstall the OS every 12-18 months. Well, I say 'he' but obviously it would be me.
If, on the other hand, he takes the Apple route then he doesn't need to worry about malware at all, the hardware is good (if perhaps not quite as robust as the Thinkpad) and Office for Mac OS X is a damn good product. I've said it before and I'll say it again - I have no problem with (most) of Microsoft's applications software, it's their operating systems that are dismal. So yesterday I took the unprecedented step of installing AOL on our Powerbook to see how it performs. This was the dealbreaker - he relies on AOL because horrible though their software is he needs access from multiple countries. If the AOL software didn't perform well enough, he would have to go XP. Luckily it seems to work fine, although rather annoyingly you can't easily use Apple's Mail application. Success duly reported, we've arranged to meet at the Meadowhall shopping centre in Sheffield at 11.00am today, then come back here afterwards for some orientation training. He's going to have a fairly steep learning curve ahead of him but I'm convinced that it's the right choice - the current (non-Intel) Powerbooks are very nice machines providing you don't need raw speed (he doesn't) and I don't have to worry about his anti-virus expiring and not being renewed. It means I'm probably going to have two weeks of 'how do I..?' type calls but I'm (fairly) sure I can field them.
Wish me luck.
Yesterday when I was driving in to work (northbound M6) I passed a Transit van on the other carriageway, burning merrily away. If nothing else it explained why the traffic on my side was so slow, and also the rather urgent police car that passed me doing Mach 3 a few minutes earlier. I checked it out as I passed. Now normally I hate rubberneckers but even I would have to admit that a burning vehicle has a strong gawp factor. The driver was standing behind the van on the central reservation (the 3 feet of grass and scrub that surrounds the crash barrier) and didn't look especially bothered. He looked like the worst outcome of this was that he was going to be a couple of hours late to Glasgow. I'd have been slightly more agitated personally, especially as the M6 South doesn't go to Glasgow, but there you go.
A short while ago my father loaned me (or gave me - there's some confusion on this point) a book called A Walk In The Woods by Bill Bryson. It's about him and a friend walking part of the Appalachian Trail in America and it's very, very funny. Turns out he's done a few others as well, so I've bought Neither Here Nor There and The Lost Continent. The first is about him travelling around Europe, the second is about him revisiting America to see how it's changed in the years since he left. Neither Here Nor There is the only one I've read so far but, again, it's extremely funny. He and I share the same sense of humour (and a slight over propensity to use commas) so he was onto a winner with me to begin with, but they genuinely are very good books providing you can stomach travel stories, which is what they essentially are. The only problem with them is that I can't read them in the same room as Kato for more than about ten minutes before she starts to eye up knives and handy bludgeoning implements due to my uncontrolled guffawing. Last night I mistakenly tried to read in bed and managed two whole minutes before my life was in danger. So overall, providing you're prepared to risk death by stabbing and/or blunt objects, I'd check them out.
As you might have gathered by now, we're kinda-sorta whisky fans. This led directly to what I can only describe as a fit of madness, because on New Year's Eve I suggested we go to...to....grugh..to...Ikea.
Yeah. I know.
However, we went with purpose and because of that it was merely a horrible experience, rather than a barely averted mass murder spree caused by people stopping in isles and chatting. I hate that with a passion that I would find hard to explain were it not so blatently obvious. Why do people treat these places as socialising events? Why do they insist on bringing their sodding Baby Buggies? Whyyyy!? And if you growl "excuse me" at them they look at you like you're some sort of party pooping killjoy! What is wrong with these people?
Let's get this straight: Ikea is a place that sells furniture. It's not a pub. It's not a club. You're not actually meant to have fun there. You're supposed to be looking at stripped pine with a view to buying it, not talking about your Arthur's cabbages, little Tim's runny nose or Aunt Ethel's rickets.
And if you make bleating sheep-like noises (in protest at being effectively herded around the place) you get such strange looks.
I'm not a fan of the place you may have gathered. However, like I say, this time we went with a fairly specific aim in mind and therefore it wasn't too bad. We went to get at least one (in fact we got two) glass cabinets to keep the whisky in. Since we actually are collecting it slightly quicker than we're drinking it (especially now Christmas/Hogmanay is over) then simply stacking it on a table in a back room was a little...untidy...so a more elegent solution was desired.
I like the result. You can see it in the 'me in a kilt' picture.
Remember how I said I might regret buying Kato the MacGyver DVDs? Well, I take it back. Don't get me wrong, it's a typical 80's adventure series, but it's fun. Starring Richard Dean Anderson, it's about a guy called MacGyver (surprisingly) who does freelance work for the American government as a sort of finder/fixer. He hates guns and doesn't carry one, instead using his wits to get him out of trouble. Now, do you remember The 'A' Team'? Do you remember how they would get locked in some well equipped shed every single sodding episode? And how they would then proceed to build a heavily armed assault vehicle out of an old tractor, a bicycle, three rakes and a supply of cabbages? Well, MacGyver's like that, only better. Much better. It also has one of the most insideously catchy theme tunes I've ever heard. Don't hunt it out unless you're prepared to have it wedged in your head for the next week or so.
It's hard to define why I like MacGyver so much since if you look at it objectively it's a terrible series full of cliches and 80's hair. The bad guys are all lousy shots, the Russians are all Werry Wussian, and any girl/woman who helps him will be cute, despite the fact that half the time they're homeless. Well, ok, not half the time but the one that was homeless was cute. The fact that she had to fish to eat didn't stop her buying hairspray, or so it seemed.
So, ok, it's a flawed, typically 80's series. I don't care. It's fun, and that's all that matters. Oh, and makers of Swiss Army Penknives must have given thanks to all the Gods when this series aired, because he uses one in pretty much every episode and I'm sure sales of them would have skyrocketted as a result.
