Archive for November, 2006
Camera
A trip to New York wouldn’t be complete unless I took lots of photographs, but although my little Sony will easily slip into my pocket, it’ll be absolutely useless unless there’s a good light source. And in my head, New York will only really come alive at night. So I bought a new camera, a Fuji F30. I saw the reviews of the F31 which has a really cool facial recognition feature that allows it to focus in on people, but it really didn’t seem worth it when the F30 was still available for £50 less.
I’m pretty impressed so far, being able to take photographs indoors without a flash and still have them look good may not mean much to most people, but coming from a Sony compact with a tiny lense that didn’t let in enough light unless you were standing in bright sunlight - it’s a revelation.
Here’s hoping it results in some good shots.
Reserve
My projector didn’t sell! It came close to the reserve price (I even lowered it to make sure it sold) but it didn’t quite make it. There were about sixteen people watching it at one point too, so I’m not sure what happened, it’s a total bargain.
I’m not sure what I’m going to do now. I can relist it, or offer it to somebody as a second-chance offer, but a certain part of me is ready to give up and just place it back under the table next to my television again.
Niece
I saw my niece for the first time today, the newly born Anna Smith. She slept the entire time we were there, but otherwise seemed healthy and happy. Congratulations to Mark and Bettina.
Shabby
I ordered my second Nintendo Wii today, just in case. Amazon made a big thing about the fact their orders would start today, so I was there first thing this morning with a web browser and the F5 key. And despite the fact that it was their fastest selling pre-order item ever, selling out completely in a not too shabby seven minutes, I got one without incident.
The nice thing about this is that I’m probably going to end up with two of them now, assuming Argos make good, and it really didn’t seem that hard at all. I may take the opportunity to sell one on ebay when the time is right, or I may just cancel one of them once I’m sure the other is going to arrive.
Either way, I’m going to be in New York when it ultimately does arrive in the UK, so I won’t be playing it right away anyway.
Hearing
I have to highly recommend picking up a copy of The Beatles Love, a fine album which I just can’t stop listening to.
It’s easy to be worried when an album like this is announced; any kind of attempt to remix such recognisable tracks as you’d find in The Beatles back catalogue is fraught with danger. It either runs the risk of not being creative enough, and therefore not giving you enough of a reason to own it, or being so creative that it ruins the original recordings. Thankfully, put in the hand of original Beatles producer George Martin and his son Giles, Love is a stunning piece of work which will easily satisfy both older fans as well as those hearing it for the first time.
With only three items in the hour and twenty minute mix not coming from original recordings (and minor items at that), what’s immediately impressive is how well they’ve managed to mix totally separate elements from such different songs (sometimes recorded many years apart) into such a cohesive soundscape. What’s even more impressive is that you begin to realise some of this stuff was written and recorded almost 45 years ago, and it still sounds as fresh and imaginative as it did then.
My only slight disappointment is that it doesn’t form a complete soundscape, while some of the tracks creatively segue into each other, there are others that are separated and standalone and perhaps don’t sound that different from the originals. I really wish they’d gone a bit more crazy with it.
Projector
I’ve put my projector up for sale on ebay. It’s hardly had any use at all, but having already checked the final price of some recently completed identical items, I already know I’m going to be disappointed by the final price. Somebody is going to get a great bargain.
If you have the room for one, then I can totally recommend going down the projector route. For me the problem is the lack of space to set it up permanently, as well as the fact it gives me terrible motion sickness, but if you’re looking for a way to experience your Xbox 360 games like never before, there’s simply nothing like it.
Judged
So Michael Richards is a racist. I didn’t see that one coming, he always seemed like such a quiet, caring person in any interviews I’ve seen him in, certainly not the kind of person who would start spouting racial slurs at somebody who annoyed him.
Of course what he has to thank for all of this is YouTube, because it’s the power of viral video sharing that let this one get out so fast. It’s so easy now to take a video with your mobile or digital camera and stick it on the Internet for everyone to see, I doubt this is the last time we’re going to see a celebrity embarrassed to quite this extent.
I don’t think this is going to bother his career too much, it’s not like he’s had that much success since Seinfeld finished, and could probably just stay at home and count his money anyway. But assuming he still goes and buys his own milk, how is he going to be able to face his local shopkeeper in the morning? Or anybody else he passes on the street? Everywhere he goes and everything he does, he’s going to be judged.
Serves him right.
Coverage
It’s Wii launch day in the US, and I’m totally getting antsy now, it’s starting to become more tangible. Console launches have changed so much, when the PS2 and Xbox were released, I wasn’t sitting watching live coverage about them online. There were some photos and news reports of course, but there weren’t real-time streams of people in line being interviewed. I’ve been trying to think of how the next launch is going to go, I’m not sure you can coverage it any other way, they’re stretching to make it interesting now.
I did enjoy the coverage Gamespot did of them actually getting the console, opening the box, plugging it in for the first time and playing the games. It tells you more about what the experience is actually going to be like than reading an article would.
Dung
Me and Andrea went to Chatelherault today, which is a very large country park with lots of woods and a river passing through it. Nature right on the doorstep.
We started following the signs for one of the many walks that you can take there, and this always happens to me, you follow the signs for a particular route and all of a sudden they seem to disappear and you find yourself travelling a far further distance than you really wanted to. After walking about three miles we come to a section which was completely flooded, the whole path was under a foot or more of water. We met a couple who said the only way through was via the field to the right, which although covered in cow dung was passable. So off we go over the fence and marching up this marshy, filthy, shit covered field, looking for a way that leads us back over onto the path again. We’ve been having an incredible amount of rain over the past few weeks (just a constant stream) which is what caused the flooding in the first place, so you can imagine what the field was like. Finally we found the exit and trudged the three miles back to the car, the backs of our legs caked with mud.
Overall, it wasn’t a good advert for getting some exercise.
Resourceful
It’s PS3 launch day, so there’s plenty of online coverage at places like Gamespot. They’ve been interviewing people who have been standing in line, and my favourite one was the guy who had been waiting there for three days so he could be absolutely guaranteed to get one. Why? So he could sell it on ebay and use the money to buy an HDTV to play his Xbox 360 on.
Human beings can be ever resourceful.
Prestige
We hit the cinema today to see The Prestige, with Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale. You’ll see a full review on whatentertainment of course, but I wanted to say how much I enjoyed it here too. There’s just a wonderful intelligence in the film that I ever much enjoyed.
Seems like it’s been a long while since we were in a cinema, we were hitting that place almost constantly throughout the summer.
Prevalent
The way ABC did Lost last year was a complete pain, you never knew whether it was on or not, it’d be on one week, be gone for 4, be back again for 2 and before you knew it you’d forgotten what was even happening. If you hadn’t lost interest already (which wouldn’t have been hard, considering the poor quality of some of the episodes).
Their idea this year of splitting it into essentially two seasons, starting with six, then taking a break for a couple of months, and then having a clear run right until the end is far better and the last of the first part of the season aired today.
The six episodes have been OK, although it still hasn’t lived up to what they were able to do in year one. The end of season 2 proved that they’re still able to crank out the good stuff when they have to, but there’s been nothing of that quality yet. The impression that they have a paper thin plot they’re desperately trying to string out for as long as possible becomes ever more prevalent.
Red
The trolleys at Tesco have a warning sign on them that reads “warning: trolley may come to a sudden stop when it crosses the red line”. This is an anti-theft warning, the supermarket car park is surrounded by a wire that means when somebody tries to steal trolley, a braking mechanism is fired to make the wheel lock and stop you making off with it.
Why must we warn the thief that this is going to happen? If you’re stealing a trolley, then it serves you right if you go arse over tit as the item you’re running away with suddenly grinds to a screeching halt. Are there reports of injuries while this kind of theft has been taking place that forced them into the warning?
Moore
There’s a lot of effort going into creating the $100 laptop. But the question that occurs to me is why you can’t just take older technology and produce the laptops using that.
For the kind of applications that are going to be run on it, surely there’s no reason why something with a 1Ghz processor can’t be used. I remember my 1Ghz P2 (perhaps P3) laptop. I wrote a lot of Chatbear on it, I did a lot of web-browsing. It was the only computer I used for ages. With Moore’s Law, surely nowadays you could make it for less than $100?
And it wouldn’t be green and plasticky with a stupid operating system either.
Fireworks
We went to the fireworks last night at Strathclyde Park, something I’m sure I did when I was younger, but certainly nothing I have any recollection of. I really expected it to be a poor showing, I just had this feeling that it was going to be cheap and nasty and over in a few minutes, but it was actually a good half an hour long, with lots of really nicely down effects. The only thing I found was a bit strange was that it wasn’t done to any music, so it seemed to lack any kind of rhythm. Fireworks need to be synched up with classical music for them to truly work, but it was good fun nonetheless.
Often
I made another Chatbear deadline for myself, the end of October. But it appears as if I’ve missed that one as well. Originally this was going to be such a simple upgrade, a lick of paint for the website, a community search and a bit of a user interface update on the admin system. Instead I’ve written over 10,000 lines of code, and will have ultimately changed the whole Chatbear website, Bearkey website and re-written the administration systems of both.
This whole "release early, release often" is great, but in my head everything needs to be perfect before I’ll let loose anything.
Teach
I spent some time tonight trying to show Andrea some programming, specifically how to write in Perl. She has no previous experience of this kind of stuff, but she picked it up remarkably well.
I’ve always said that programming is not a black art, something that only those with some secret knowledge can understand, but instead a fun, almost puzzle solving challenge that can be enjoyed by anybody who enjoys crosswords, or sudoku or any other kind of logic challenge. And I’ve also said that I can teach anyone with enough will how to program within a week. I don’t consider myself to be particularly special because I can code, and I don’t think anybody else should either.
Fire
The building behind our office was the location for a significant fire today. It started early in the morning and even at the end of today it was still burning, with a number of fire trucks doing their best to put it out.
It’s an NHS supply building that was only just put up last year, and it was quite a size too, a massive warehouse at the front with a whole bunch of smaller buildings at the back. The whole thing has gone up, and the roof at the front has completely collapsed, which I have to admit looked pretty cool when we went around to take a look.
Here’s the BBC story on the event.
Manhattan
I’m going to New York in December. Yay!
Flights booked directly with Continental because they were the cheapest (I’ve never flown with them before either, so that’ll be new) and the hotel booked with Expedia.
Hotels.com are a bit of a cheat. Their rates were significantly lower than everyone else, and it wasn’t until I had actually entered my credit card details that I found out it was because they weren’t including the taxes in the price. It showed me them added on right at the end and it turned out they were just charging exactly the same price as Expedia. So I booked with Expedia, to punish them.
Except it’s the same company. Daaaaaaaamn.
