Archive for January, 2007
Laptop
So I’ve written before about how I’ve been able to use the iMac exclusively since around Christmas time thanks to the wonder of Parallels. At the time I mentioned how that put me in a position of having just a few too many computers. So having already sold off my PC laptop, I ordered a Macbook Pro today with the plan of selling off my iMac as soon as possible. This means that I’ll be going from a desktop PC, desktop Mac and PC laptop to just a desktop PC and Mac laptop, which is definitely a step in the right direction.
As for what I’m going to do with the PC, I’m just not sure. There’s certainly no harm in having an XP machine around the house for the situations that demand it (like some PC only game that I really want to play), but that’s got a lot to do with the fact that they’re not an easy thing to sell on eBay. While a Mac seems to keep a certain intrinsic value, PC’s are such a commodity that they completely lose their value in just a couple of months.
Credit
In what can only be described as a momentous event, I cut up one of my three credit cards today, having completely paid off the balance. The celebrations start here.
Cheap celebrations though. Obviously.
Folds
Ben Folds made another trip to Glasgow today and for the third time in a row, I was there. This time he was at the Carling Academy, a big old theatre where me and Andrea had seats at the front of the lower balcony. In what is fast becoming a running theme for each of his performances, he was completely awesome in almost every way. Clearly him and the band were enjoying themselves, there was a real sense of playfulness from Ben, especially on his little red synth which he actually broke the key off right at the start. Hopefully the kind of sounds he was able to get from that find themselves into the next album, because I’d really like to hear a good 70’s style synth song from him.
I put together a montage video of the footage I managed to take and put it up on YouTube, which turned out not bad. It’s just taken with my Fuji F30 camera, so it did a pretty good job dealing with the darkness and loud noise, when I tried using my Sony at the last gig the microphone was just completely overawed by the volume.
Juice
I’m a big podcast listener, and on the Mac I’ve always used iTunes, which does the job excellently. At work however, it just never seemed to play ball. Initially things seemed OK, but as time went on it just seemed to have a really negative effect on the speed of the machine. Every time it was running in the background everything else just seemed to run sluggishly. So I switched over to using Juice and Winamp instead. And I’m not happy.
Winamp is fine for playing MP3’s, but it’s no use at all when it comes to podcasts. This is mainly because it doesn’t remember where you left off. Shows can be almost a couple of hours long sometimes, so I can find it difficult to listen to one all in one go. In iTunes that doesn’t matter though, because it always remembers where you’re up to in an episode, even if you go listen to or watch some other things in the interim. Not so with Winamp, which if I close it I’m going to have to remember where I left off.
Juice isn’t much better, the interface feels clunky, with buttons that I don’t even understand the reason for. It doesn’t easily display my list of downloads organised by show and episode and also has a habit of downloading the same show multiple times. I’ve had particular problems with Major Nelson’s 360 podcast where I end up with 4 copies of the same episode or worse, 20 or 30 older episodes all of a sudden being downloaded out of nowhere.
Is there a good Windows podcasting solution? Democracy is equally bad, with a horrible UI which feels slow and unintuitive, and my Google searches haven’t really turned up anything that’s easy enough for your mum to use (which is really the kind of software I like). Am I missing something obvious?
Thornton
As I wrote yesterday, me and Andrea went down to Liverpool and booked into a nearby hotel for the night. It was very disappointing. I was sure I’d picked a nice small country hotel, but it turned out to be far larger than I expected. Firstly the woman at reception seemed to have difficulty with the fact that I’d pre-paid on lastminute and wanted to invoice me for it, and then when we were given a room it turned out to be in the middle of a corridor right beside an internal door which people kept going through all night long. Then there was the party/wedding reception/whatever that was going on during our stay. Not only did this mean that we couldn’t get a table in the hotel restaurant (instead having to settle for one in the fitness centre next door, which was actually better than it sounds) but then they played disco music until 2am. Before of course they all came streaming through that door some more. The breakfast the next morning wasn’t anything special either, and I felt pretty sick from the meal the night before anyway. All in all, I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.
For the record, it was the four star Thornton Hall Classic Hotel on The Wirral, in Thornton Hough, Chester.
Liverpool
I got home last night and on a whim, decided I wanted to goto Liverpool this weekend. I’ve never been, always fancied it, so why not I asked myself. I looked at the distance however and thought it seemed a bit far for me and Andrea to drive down there and back in one day, so I headed myself over to lastminute.com and booked a hotel nearby.
The drive down was easy enough, didn’t actually take as long as I thought it was going to. We parked next to the Mersey and went for a walk around the Albert Docks, braving the bracing cold wind to experience the UK’s largest collection of Grade 1 listed buildings. Eventually we got fed up being cold and decided to go visit the Tate Liverpool, one of the largest museums of modern and contemporary art in the UK. There was a lot of really nice stuff in there, some of which I’d mention by name if I had been on the ball enough to write down the artists. But there was a lot of items you looked at and couldn’t help but think “that’s art? I could do that”. I guess that’s the common reaction to a lot of modern art. It’s definitely worth a visit, and free to enter.
We then had a walk around the centre of Liverpool, in and out of some shops. It looks as though they’re in the middle of a pretty huge new shopping centre development, which is surprising considering the number of malls they already have. It looked like a nice enough place to do some shopping on a Saturday afternoon, and if you were looking to hook up with a bunch of goths to hang around with, you’ll find no shortage of them either.
Venue
How did I not know that Ben Folds was playing in Glasgow next Friday? How did I almost miss that? Thankfully I found out just in time to goto the venue website and book myself some tickets before it was too late.
Headphones
I bought myself a pair of Sennheiser wireless headphones, RS140’s to be exact. I tried out wireless headphones a few years ago without great success, they just never seemed to tune into the base-station correctly, as if I was always getting some sort of interference. But again I find myself in a position where I’m using headphones more regularly and don’t want to be tethered by wires. Nor do I want to continue using earbuds which end up hurting my ears with prolonged use, I wanted giant, over the head, noise reducing ones.
And that’s how I ended up with the Sennheiser’s. At first I had problems getting them to charge, they sat on the base station and never seemed to power up at all. When I put standard AAA batteries in there however, they sprung to life right away. So after replacing the rechargable set that came with them with a new pair I was good to go, the light was green and we were off to the races.
The sound quality is pretty good, although it still doesn’t compare with wired headphones, even in these which are hardly entry level. When listening to music it’s fine, but in podcasts, which is what I’m listening to most of the time, there’s always that underlying level of radio static as if they’re not quite tuned in as well as they should be, or the base-station isn’t as powerful as it should be. Still, on balance, they’re nice and comfy, easy to use and allow me to move freely around the flat without being cut off from my audio source. So on those terms, they fit the bill nicely.
Bulbs
After I went to see Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth I told myself that I’d replace all the bulbs in my house with energy efficient ones, but I never did get around to it. But after another large electricity bill I was compelled to do something about it and bought enough to replace them all. It turns out that I can’t replace the ones in my two table lamps however, due to the larger shape at the bottom of each of them. That’s a bit of a pain.
There’s a common misconception that these are expensive items, something that the current advertising campaign doesn’t do much to dissuade you off. While they do indeed cost more than a standard 40W or 60W bulb, it’s not like they’re unusually marked up. In fact I was surprised how cheap they were. And when you figure that they should last years longer and use a fraction of the power, it should be a no brainer to go out and get yourself some. But really, if you’re going to advertise the things, it’s time to start telling people that they’re not as high an initial investment as they might think.
Burning
I bought the World of Warcraft expansion pack today, Burning Crusade (thanks to Amazon it turned up on launch day) and fired it up tonight, creating myself a nice new Blood Elf. So far, it’s been a lot of fun.
As always, I’m never sure how long I’m going to keep playing because it always seems like something else comes along and takes my attention away. But even though I recognise all it’s flaws, the receptiveness, the underwhelming combat system, the lack of variety in the quests - I still can’t help but have fun when I play, especially when I get the chance to do it with other people. And really, even if you only end up playing it briefly, it’s still worth it to experience the world they’ve created. And Burning Crusade just takes that forward another notch.
Thickness
As well as the photo book I made a wall calendar that turned up today too. There’s been a stud in the wall for one ever since I moved in and every year I think that I should get one to put up there, but never get around to it. At last, three years in, something now hangs in that spot.
It turned out to be far better than I expected, it’s just the right size and the print quality and thickness of the pages is excellent. I was even able to go through and put in my own notes and pictures on some of the days, allowing me to highlight the birthday’s of everyone in the family and put a picture of Andrea and myself on our appropriate dates of birth. Apple tout themselves as being the creative computer in all their advertising, but it’s only when you get a chance to use the included software first hand that you actually get to appreciate how true that statement is.
Luxo
I have an old iMac, the one fondly remembered as the “lamp style one” where you could move the screen around on the metal arm and pretend it was a Luxo lamp. I love the design, it’s just so unique, so different, so stylish, so much so that I’ve always refused to sell it. I bought the newer iMac model last year and kept this one nonetheless. It’s not the highest spec machine, I think it’s just a 1Ghz G4, but my question is this - what the hell do I do with it?
It was in the cupboard but I took it out because it felt like it was a little damp in there, and now it’s sitting on my bedroom floor. That’s hardly a permanent position for it however, so I need to find something for it to do. Maybe it could be an MP3 server (since I have a nice set of Apple only speakers), maybe it could be a digital photo frame, maybe it could plug into my phone line and run a premium rate answer phone based sex line.
Ideas anyone?
Entirely
Thanks to Parallels I’ve managed to use the iMac full time for a month now. I think I’ve switched my PC on twice and both times it was simply because I need to pull a file off it. This is the first time that I’ve managed to go this long and it’s entirely down to the wonder that is Parallels.
My biggest problem with the Mac, as I’ve described on countless occasions, is the lack of a text editor to rival Editplus. It’s really a joke that nobody has been able to step up and produce something like it for a platform which is supposed to be great for developers. Anyhoo, with Parallels, that’s no longer an issue because I can just run it from within that, and with the Cohesion mode, where you get to mix Mac and Windows applications together on your screen it’s almost like it’s native.
Not sure where I’m going to go from here, it seems like I’ve got too many computers in here and I can do everything I want on just one of them. Something needs to be done.
Hardcover
I went through all the photos that we took in New York and thanks to the wonder of iPhoto, created a hardcover book of all the best ones that turned up today. And it turned out really, really well.
The problem with these books is that when you’re looking at a photo on a bright LCD it’s hard to imagine what it’s going to look like when it’s printed onto paper. Which means that a lot of the time you get a book printed they end up looking a lot darker than you expect them to be. Knowing this in advance you try and compensate for it, brightening up your photos or artificially increasing their exposure so that they’ll turn out OK. But by doing this, you make them look like crap on screen without ever knowing what effect it’s going to have at the end. It’s a sticky situation to be in.
Thankfully it looks like I made a reasonably good guess at what was going to work, as the majority of them turned out pretty well. There’s a couple that are still a bit dark, but only ones that were so dark to start off with I should be happy I managed to massage them into any kind of usable state.
Broadcast
As well as the iPhone, Apple also announced the Apple TV, another much rumoured item that allows you to broadcast the entire contents of your iTunes library wirelessly to your television. It’s basically a static iPod with some video outputs attached, since it’s got a 40GB hard disk inside and syncs with iTunes using a very similar process.
Most of us in the UK are completely out of luck though, not only is it an HDTV only device since it has no standard-def outputs (no SCART, no composite video) but there’s still no sign of the iTunes Store selling anything but music. So unlike the US where there’s already a wide selection of television for download and an ever increasing selection of movies, the best you’ll manage here is podcasts and your music collection. Most of which you can probably do with an Airport Express.
Requested
I’ve been disappointed with the uptake of the new Chatbear features. Despite all the people that requested it over the years it seems that very few people have taken advantage of now being able to correctly categorise your community so that it can be found on the search engine the main site now offers. Much like the Friends & Enemies feature it seems like this is another one of those things that look good on paper and seem like they’re going to make a difference, but end up being used by just the elite few.
I’m not sure I know anymore what it is to make a site successful, it seems like it doesn’t matter what I do, nothing ever seems to take off. Of course I’m willing to bet you right now that in the next couple of years somebody will launch a similar site which will turn into the internet’s next big thing.
Or does that only happen on the ideas I have but never execute on?
iPhone
So to the surprise of nobody, Apple announced today the iPhone. And oh how sweet a piece of technology it is.
It’s going to be the end of the year before we in the UK get a chance to get our hands on one, but it sure looks like something I want to play with. I’m not sure about the size, I like that my phone is small and durable, and I’m not sure how much I’d be willing to give that up however cool the iPhone looks. There’s definitely some really nice UI stuff on display here though, and the little pinch action you make on the screen to zoom in and out of photos is officially the sexiest interface trick we’re going to see all year. You mark my words.
Couple of other problems though. First is price, if that’s the cost with a 2 year contract then that’s bordering on excessive. Although when you compare it with the price of other smart phones and PDA’s it’s not too bad, it’s just not the price that a mass-market is going to adopt iPod style. Secondly, no keyboard. The biggest problem with all PDA’s or devices of this type is how hard it is to put data into them. Nothing beats a keyboard, it’s as simple as that. And I remain to be convinced that a touch screen keyboard can be of any use whatsoever.
Lenore
I like myself some Lenore, but I never got around to picking up all the issues. So I took a look on Amazon over the weekend and found that all of the issues are available in paperback collections and ordered all three of them. They are Noogies, Cooties and Wedgies.
The early quality is pretty low, not only in the art but in the stories themselves. It’s actually quite an interesting process to watch them develop as time goes on, and how much better he becomes. The highlights aren’t the Lenore stories though, they never were, it’s the gruesome poems and songs that litter the pages between.
Alley
It’s been a while since I’ve been bowling, a couple of years at least. So it was nice to head off to the local alley with Andrea yesterday afternoon. Although, and much to my surprise, it was going to be a 45 minute wait after we arrived before we’d be able to get a lane. 45 minutes! When did it become so popular? The place was absolutely jumping, a sign I’m sure that people played it on the Wii (like us) and wanted to try out the real thing again. I remember when I used to go at lunchtimes and it was absolutely dead, so maybe that’s just what I’m used to.
Instead we went to an alley in Glasgow, which doesn’t appear to have been decorated since 1973. It was a lot of fun, although since I couldn’t find a ball with holes that were big enough I ended up splitting the nail on my thumb in two, slowly removing it from my hand the more we played. I still won both times though, although granted a mix up in the first game had me taking Andrea’s last shot and it might have been closer than it ended up.
Still sore today, a feeling I’m reasonably sure is going to continue for the next couple of days at least.
Knife
I listed my projector on eBay again with a slightly lower reserve and this time I got an email from somebody who wanted to buy it, but wanted to do so in person so he could actually see what I was selling wasn’t just a hunk of junk. Despite my reservations over inviting somebody into the flat (I’m naturally suspicious) we arranged to meet this afternoon and complete the transaction. Which we did. So my projector has now been sold.
I don’t think I’ll be in a rush to do the “in person” thing again. It wasn’t a pleasant experience, even if it did end in me receiving a large pile of cash. I just don’t feel comfortable inviting a complete stranger into my home, you don’t know what they’re going to be like or what they’re going to do, whether or not you’re going to be finishing off the day with half your stuff stolen or not. He could have done anything to me and Andrea and nobody would have known.
No, next time I’ll stick to online. You can’t knife somebody via email.
