Steve's Rants 'n' Raves

Christmas 2011 Phones Show pub meet details

2011-11-22T06:30:00.000-08:00

I'm hosting a Phones Show pub meet-up for smartphone enthusiasts on Saturday 10th December 2011, from 6.30pm until whenever we call it a night. The venue is The Lands End Pub, Park Lane, Charvil , Twyford, RG10 0UE. See below for a map.

Use your sat nav to get to the general area. You can approach The Lands End from the East, but you have to go through the ford - not recommended if there's been a lot of rain. Usually about a foot or so deep, so 4x4's only! Approach via the arrowed directions if possible.

The idea is to swap phone tech stories, try out other people's favourite devices, down some decent beer and (maybe) do a few short pieces to camera for the show. If it turns out well, you might be a star(!)

If you want to come along, just confirm by emailing me at slitchfield@gmail.com with the subject line "Christmas Phones Show Meet". Thanks!

As long as even four or five people make it, the event's a goer. Hopefully we'll have quite a few more than that!

The Lands End

0118 934 0700

An old but broken classic!

2011-05-20T05:02:00.001-07:00

For the Fring folks!

Adsense fell off a cliff

2011-04-13T23:29:00.000-07:00

My move from the 3lib.ukonline.co.uk server to my own stevelitchfield.com one (forced by UKOnline's closure) has confused a lot of people - including Google, it seems.

If you've got any of my sub-sites bookmarked, make sure you re-bookmark them at the new addresses:

For example

Renault Scenic problems, troubleshooting, models - the most popular sub-site, dedicated to storing resource info on this terrific car, especially the Mark I and Mark II shapes.
All about Heelys skates - the craze has died down now, but they're still a great design and piece of mobility footwear!
Furreal bears and toys - our family still owns most of them!!
Legoland Tips and Travel - haven't been there for a year or two, but still recommended, with caveats....

Many thanks.

Google's link adjustments seem not to have caught up with my server move either, my ad income has fallen off a cliff 8-( Let's hope all the links and rankings gradually get adjusted etc.

Tech Mystery no. 2: Gmail

2011-03-06T08:53:00.000-08:00

OK, same friend, different problem. Same head-scratching (though it's possible I'm just being stupid)...

My friend, Brian, receives regular (joke) emails with inline images, posted as far as I can tell by the original sender by inserting a direct image URL into their email app.

In Brian's Gmail, i.e. viewed using the Gmail interface, these emails look fine, i.e. Google is displaying these images. But when Brian forwards these emails to his friends, the images all get lost and replaced by white boxes.

Here's what they see:

Is it because Gmail is blocking the re-transmission of images which are inserted by URL? I did try looking at the HTML element code for the received image (i.e. after forwarding) and see:

<img width="320" height="240" src="http:/?ui=2&ik=c4edab4db2&view=att&th=12da1cbef02d5ea6&attid=0.1.1&disp=emb&zw" />

But again, inline, they come out like:

Is this me being stupid? Is this supposed to work? Is this supposed not to work? Is it Gmail being ultra-cautious?

Has anyone else seen anything like this?

Tech mystery no. 1: iTunes

2011-02-22T02:42:00.000-08:00

Hi all,

I've got a friend (no, really) with an iTunes problem. It's on a Windows 7 PC and he has a 256GB iPod, more than sufficient for his 150GB music collection.

The problem is that chunks of his music don't make it across at sync time from iTunes. After investigating, it seems that the missing music is all on compilation albums and that the iTunes 'Artist' and 'Album artist' fields are possibly to blame. We've filled these fields in within iTunes for the missing albums but they just don't make it across to the iPod.

I've already tried consolidating the library and restarting the PC and doing multiple syncs.

Very strange. I wondered if anyone can think of something else to try?

Phones Show Chat - February meet-up

2011-01-24T23:11:00.001-08:00

I'm hosting another in our series of pub meet-ups for smartphone enthusiasts near Berskshire, UK, on Wednesday 9th February 2011, from 7.00pm until whenever we call it a night. The venue is again The Lands End Pub, Park Lane, Charvil , Twyford, RG10 0UE. See above for a map.

Use your sat nav to get to the general area. You can approach The Lands End from the East, but you have to go through the ford - not really recommended. Usually about a foot or two deep, so 4x4's only! Approach via the arrowed directions if possible.

The idea, as usual, is to swap phone tech stories, try out other people's favourite devices, down some decent beer and (maybe) do a few short pieces to camera for the show. If it turns out well, you might be a star(!)

If you want to come along, just confirm by emailing me at slitchfield@gmail.com with the subject line "Feb Phones Show Meet". Thanks!

As long as even four or five people make it, the event's a goer. Hopefully we'll have a few more than that!

URL changes for 3-Lib!!

2010-12-07T03:04:00.000-08:00

Hi all

As you may have seen, UKOnline, my web host for the last 15 years(!) is closing its doors at the end of December, which means I've had to find a new home on the web for my Psion/Smartphone site, as well as all my little sub-sites on various topics.

In short, everything's now on a different host/domain. If you've linked to any of my pages or if you have me on your blog roll then please, please take a few moments to amend the URLs so that we don't end up with '404' broken links!

The new address is stevelitchfield.com , i.e. http://stevelitchfield.com/ and this is a direct substitute for the old http://3lib.ukonline.co.uk/ , so you can hopefully just do a spot of copy and pasting!

Many thanks, everybody!

Steve

The Apple Mac is amazing...

2010-11-28T01:03:00.000-08:00

This has blown me away. You know when you switch from one Windows PC to another (i.e. upgrading), you have to spend about a week re-installing all your apps, setting up all your plug-ins and preferences all over again, hoping you haven't missed a setting?

I just switched from an old Mac mini to a new one (double the RAM and hard disk, faster graphics etc) and restored the user folder from my Time Machine hard disk backup. 98% of my entire working environment (files, folders, icon placement) got put back straight away on the new machine. I was stunned.

But there were a few "?" icons on the dock, where a few of my third party apps were missing (Handbrake, Seashore, Audio Hijack Pro, Cyberduck). So I installed them from the latest versions off the web. And you know what? ALL of their settings, preferences and plug-ins were just 'there', stored in my user folder. There was ZERO work to do on any of them.

Upgrading to a new computer used to be a nightmare for me, once every two years or so. This last Mac to Mac transition has been an utter revelation. Kudos to the OS X engineers.

Fixing the Orange San Francisco Wi-Fi problem?

2010-11-03T13:13:00.000-07:00

UPDATE: Gah. 24 hours later and the phone's started going back to its old tricks. Utterly weird how it can be perfect for a day or so and then go back to not re-connecting. Watch this space!

UPDATE 2: OK, I have a reliable workaround. With the setting below, Wi-Fi comes up sometimes. And, for the other times, I've installed "Blade wifi fix" from the Android market, which monitors Wi-fi status after each screen-power-on and restarts Wi-fi as needed, with a small visual notification.

Yes - for me, at any rate, and the fix is trivial and has proved rock solid all day today.

The Orange San Francisco is the best value smartphone in the world, at £99 all-in in the UK, i.e. no contract. Here's my review of it in Phones Show 124:

The sole issue, as mentioned in the review and also referenced here, is that Wi-fi didn't get re-established after a period of disconnection. So the phone goes 'off' or you move away from the house and when you're back in range or powered on again, the Wi-Fi just doesn't reconnect. The workaround was to toggle Wi-Fi off and then on again. A pain.

Thinking about what was happening, i.e. the device needs to go out and LOOK for Wi-fi on its own, I went into Settings/Wireless and networks/Wi-fi settings and turned 'Network notification' ON. This setting is supposed to tell you when an open hotspot is nearby, but I figured that if the device was doing this scanning then it might help it spot the elephant in the room, the home network I wanted it to connect to...

And blow me down if it didn't work. Full reconnections all day.

I'm guessing that Orange had this setting turned on through all their testing. So, ultimately, it's a San Francisco bug, but for me, at least, it's worked a treat and takes all of 5 seconds to do.

By the way, should it be relevant, my router is a Linksys Wireless-G. Though I'm hoping that this will fix Wi-Fi for many people....

Comments welcome if this does or doesn't fix the San Francisco for you!

MacFormat This Week podcast

2009-12-01T13:26:00.000-08:00

For anyone else struggling to find the RSS address of the Macformat This Week audio podcast (they hide it REALLY well.... 8-)

it's http://clickcastmedia.com/macformat/macformatthisweek.xml

I think the idea is that they want you to use iTunes, but the address above works fine in S60 Podcasting and other Podcatchers. Hopefully this will help someone else out there too!

Why I'd rather buy a CD than get free music downloads

2009-07-18T03:53:00.000-07:00

I grew up with LPs (1970s) You know, huge, fragile things that wore out quickly but did at least have big, colourful album art and (usually) sleeve notes.

Then I moved to cassettes (1980s) Small, fragile things that wore out quickly and had quite titchy (but still colourful) album art and (even titchier) sleeve notes.

Then along came the CD (1990s/2000s) Slim, rather robust discs that never wear out. And which sound AMAZING. And the album art is reasonably readable and just as colourful. Great for collecting and for ripping at any quality I like.

And so we come to the download generation. Music stores (e.g. iTunes). Almost faceless MP3 and AAC music files. If you're lucky you get a tiny thumbnail graphic. Sound quality is a lot worse than CD if you listen closely. Just as expensive as CD, but you can find popular albums for free in the shadier corners of the (cough) Internet.

But you know what? I'd rather buy the CD for music I like than a collection of computer files that I'll 'try and backup but know that one day they'll go missing or corrupt or the encoding format will go out of fashion'....

I bought a CD yesterday. A double CD, actually. £12, by the superb Snowy White:

Two CDs, a deluxe booklet with interview, bio, lyrics, credits and so on. Nice cover artwork that will look great on my shelf. And perfect, digitally remastered sound (I'm listening now). Not bad for £12.

I'm not defending all music labels and all CDs - there are plenty of rip-off outfits out there. But choose wisely and the CD option really is a deluxe experience compared to the soul-destroying, unsatisfying trawling of torrent sites for music tracks that may or may not be what you want and may or may not be decently encoded.

£12 better than free? In this case, yes.

Maybe there's a model here for artists? Give away 128kbps MP3s of all music for free, but with prominent 'Enjoy this? Buy it on remastered CD, with artwork, collectables etc.' links. I think that would work. For me at least!

Steve's Essential Mac OS X Software List

2009-05-26T11:07:00.000-07:00

Updated: Nov 2010

So I'm three months into (nearly) full-time Mac ownership. What applications have I found essential and worth downloading? For my own memory (should I ever need to re-grab everything after a re-install or on a new Mac, and to help others) here's a brief rundown:

Nokia Multimedia Transfer - essential for integrating a Nokia smartphone into a Mac
iSync for Nokia - lets your Nokia smartphone sync to Address Book and iCal
Seashore - somewhat basic but useful image cropper/manipulator
KompoZer - not supported anymore and 1% buggy, but a terrific visual HTML/WYSIWYG editor
Cyberduck - the best FTP client for the Mac
Copernicus - small screen video grabber, useful for odd extractions from web animations
Audacity - the famous audio editor
Open Office - the equally famous full Office suite
Burn - additional disc burning functions beyond the built-in bits of Mac OS - still not sure if I need this, but it's got a great reputation
JumpCut - multiple clipboard utility
Audio Hijack Pro - ditto
Disk Inventory X - super for finding where all my hard disk space has gone
OnyX - the Apple-recommended semi-official hard disk verification and clean-up utility - hasn't found a problem yet on my Mac, but you never know....
Smultron - a text editor that copes well with the huge text files used in my Trivopaedia
Handbrake - a video transcoder and DVD ripper
Wimpy FLV Player - as it sounds.... there's no native FLV playback in Mac OS X

A somewhat shockingly long list, I'd thought that Mac OS X would do most everything I needed (what with the superb iLife 09 suite etc), but it turns out that, just as under Windows, there were a whole raft of little addons I needed in order to get everything done!

I do hope this list helps someonem anyway.

Credit Crunch Ideas

2009-05-20T08:56:00.000-07:00

A.k.a. Things for you and your family to do that don't cost a lot of money!

A new idea for a mini-site, over at my 3-Lib server. I was fed up with the way weekends and school holidays were just turning into huge money-drains - hence the suggestions. I estimate that it costs roughly £1000 to get one child through the summer holidays in the UK, living by the world's 'rules'. Add 50% for two kids, double that for 3 children.

I aim to halve those numbers (at least). What do you think of the ideas and do you have any other suggestions?

The joy of evenings

2009-04-30T02:11:00.000-07:00

Maybe it's the nicer weather and longer days (light-wise). Or maybe it's the fact that I've cut down on my evening commitments recently (including leaving Shed Music - though I wish them well for the future). Or maybe it's that my daughter is now old enough not to need constant attention all the time.

Either way, I seem to have evenings back. You know, that time of day when your main work is done and you can genuinely potter around in the garden, watch a little TV and generally relax.

As someone who is self-employed, it's sooo tempting to fill some of this time with trying to work (or looking for work) - memo to self: must try to stay away where possible. As a wise cousin once said "I work to live, not live to work".

$500 for the Apple logo?

2009-04-16T04:44:00.001-07:00

Microsoft's crazy-as-can-be CEO Steve Ballmer has been dissing Macs again, this time saying: "Paying an extra $500 for a computer in this environment—same piece of hardware—paying $500 more to get a logo on it? I think that's a more challenging proposition for the average person than it used to be"

As a recent Mac owner and long term (8 of them) PC veteran, I feel quite well qualified to be objective here. Having first borrowed a Macbook and then bought a Mac Mini, I've been staggered at the difference in build quality between the PCs I've owned (cheap plastic or badly finished metal) and the Apple hardware (rounded corners, terrific material choices, a feeling of real permanence). Take a £400 Windows laptop and a £800 Macbook and they're patently not the "same piece of hardware".

Of course, the question is: is the better hardware worth a virtual doubling in price? Possibly not, but then there's another factor to consider here, besides the logo(!) Obviously, one device runs Windows Vista and one runs Mac OS Leopard. If it was just down to the bare operating systems then there wouldn't be that much in it, but Leopard comes with iLife 09, including the best video editor in the world, plus the also-staggeringly-easy iWeb, iPhoto and Garage Band, a semi-pro audio studio. Look for similar apps for Windows and you're looking at a few hundred pounds extra, potentially. (And they still wouldn't be as good)

I reckon that add the extra build quality to the extra media software and you get the price difference. Factor in a more robust OS that's not (anywhere near as) prey to viruses and exploits and the buying decision isn't as clear cut as Steve Ballmer say it is.

Online backup might be the way forward, but it's not there yet

2009-04-01T05:32:00.000-07:00

Whether, as part of my job, messing around with Files on Ovi, or using Syncplicity to backup parts of my Mac, or listening to TWiT and hearing of their new sponsor, Carbonite, I keep running into the notion that the best way to back up your computer is online. The concept's not that new and these are only three of over a dozen possibilities, but I'd like to sound a note of caution and sanity.

You see, most of us are on asynchronous broadband links. ASDL, to use the full acronym. What this means is that home broadband is great for downloading stuff and not brilliant and uploading it. Upload speeds from the average connected home are or the order of 128kbps. This is just about OK for uploading short video clips to YouTube and fine for syncing documents up a web server, but it's utterly inadequate for being the basis of an all-in online backup solution.

The likes of Carbonite (and I'm not just picking on them, I've heard the same idea from others and from several should-know-better bloggers) say that you can just select folders of favourite pics, music and videos and they'll be spirited seamlessly up into the cloud, fully backed up.

Oh no, they won't. What'll happen is that you'll tag the aforementioned folders and they'll start uploading. And, three days later, they'll still be uploading. And in the meantime the saturation of all your upstream bandwidth has meant that everyone in your family has been just about locked out of doing anything at all online.

Don't be taken in by the hype unless you really do have a lightning fast non-ASDL connection - by all means back up your document folders and anything really important online, but stay clear of your media - that 80GB of JPGs, MP3s and MP4s is far, far, better backed up locally - to another (plug-in, removeable?) hard disk or similar.

Trust me.

Air Traffic wonder

2009-03-22T09:35:00.000-07:00

Ever imagined what the human race looks like from space? This is in that vein, it's an animation based on real data, showing all the commercial air flights in the world over a 24 hour period. Wow. Had you ever realised how many people were up in the air at the same time?

Peering inside the mind of a million phone geeks like me

2009-03-11T00:19:00.000-07:00

Gulp.

Of nudists, prudes and an attitude that's a century old

2009-02-27T01:45:00.000-08:00

Coverage of the story that German nude hikers were being arrested in Switzerland got me thinking. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not all for widespread nudity across the world - for three reasons:

99.9% of people look far better with their clothes on
Many people would get too cold for most of the year
All sorts of socially embarrassing situations would routinely crop up (to say the least!)

However, what sort of society are we when we're so opposed to the sight (shock horror) of the standard, imperfect but biologically whole human body that we're ready to seek and arrest those who choose to occasionally disrobe away from towns and other centres of population? The argument is usually given that children should be protected from the 'sight' - in my experience (giggling apart), children are usually a lot less offended by the sight of others' bodies than prudish adults.

I've never been to a nudist beach or resort and don't really want to - maybe the UK's just too cold! But I can't see anything offensive whatsoever in the fact that some people rather like shedding their inhibitions and clothes and simply enjoying their bodies as God intended.

Now THIS is what I want to fly

2009-01-23T12:23:00.000-08:00

The best TV theme tune EVER. The best replica radio controlled aircraft EVER. And possibly flown by the best R/C pilot EVER.

Quite superb and lovingly done. I'm in awe....

Despairing of the current generation

2009-01-05T09:30:00.000-08:00

Despite having 'green' issues thrust at them from all angles at school and at home, I have observed over and over again that the current generation of children simply don't seem to be aware of putting what they're taught into practice.

My own daughter's not too bad at turning off lights when leaving a room, turning off the TV, keeping outside doors closed, etc - but some of her friends are appalling. But some of her contemporaries get all of the above 'wrong'. On a small scale, the energy savings are trivial, of course, and I'm certainly not picking on any specific individual.

But multiply this up by 100s of millions of children across the Western world and then multiply this again by a decade or two of energy neglect and it's clear that, however bad an energy hole we're currently in, things are going to get a whole lot worse unless the current generation of children and teenagers start acting more reponsibly towards finite resources.

Of course, once the power starts getting cut off to their Playstations and TVs and once they hit adulthood and have to start actually paying their own heating bills...

Christmas on a Thursday really hits hard

2009-01-05T06:22:00.000-08:00

I was going to put in a much longer blog post about this, but Ewan Spence has beaten me to it.... See his version.

With Christmas on a Thursday, you've then got Boxing Day and the weekend and - crucially - New Year's Day also on a Thursday. Chances are that very little work gets done on the 29th, 30th and 31st Dec in any offices, assuming they're still open at all. And then it's Jan 1st and people recovering from their celebrations on Jan 2nd still and then it's the weekend.....

As Ewan points out, the country just lost almost 3 weeks of potential up-time through these compulsory celebrations.... BAH HUMBUG! 8-)

Celebrating Christmas Early - Pros and Cons!

2008-12-22T23:53:00.000-08:00

For personal reasons, we've ended up having our Christmas Day today, the 23rd December. Just for a change. Interestingly, it turns out that there are some pros and cons with this arrangement:

Pros:
1) The supermarkets are all OPEN all day, should anything be needed!
2) No deciding 'do we open presents before, or AFTER church'!
3) If a present is wrong, it can be opened, taken back and exchanged before the actual official Christmas Day...
4) It's less time for impatient offspring to wait between end of term and present-giving day!

Cons:
1) Bit of a sense of anti-climax on the 25th.
2) Have to rewrite most of the carols: "On the 23rd, the 23rd, .... etc."
3) Others might expect me to work....

OK, I got X Factor wrong last year. But here's my pick for this year!

2008-11-10T12:48:00.000-08:00

I know, I know, I always go for the singers who can pull off the 'chill down your spine' big notes.... and they never win. But here goes...

I really hope Ruth Lorenzo wins X-Factor this year (2008), she is 'all woman' (as observed by Simon Cowel et al) and has a fabulously mature and powerful voice when she really lets rip.

Last year I was tipping Rhydian - who fell at the final hurdle. This time it's Ruth. See for yourself, here she is in action from last week's show:

Gaming - an alien and unappealing world

2008-11-03T23:20:00.001-08:00

Am I so unusual? I see the people of the world spending tens of hours each week and significant proportions of their income on console and desktop games, locking themselves into virtual worlds and out of the real world.

What, exactly, is the point of gaming? To become more unfit? To waste time that you could spend with family or work? To waste money that could be spent on reducing your household debt and avoiding the 'credit crunch'? To let your social skills wane? Compelling, it ain't.

Now, to be fair, I'm not talking about kids or even teenagers. They have time to spare. And probably pocket money as well. I'm talking here about grown-up adults who should know better. Life is short enough as it is without wasting it locked away in a darkened living room fighting virtual opponents.

Halo? World of Warcraft? From a grown-up's point of view, what a complete waste of time, energy, money and space.

Switch off those consoles and get out in the fresh air, get a job, talk to your family, get a hobby.... at the end of your life, will you really look back and think 'Gah, if only I'd spent more time on that game, I could have broken into the world top 1000!'....?

Nope, thought not.

Bus driving sadists

2008-10-20T07:34:00.000-07:00

So I get on a bus and sit down. At the next stop, a little old lady gets on, complete with doddery legs and zimme-style shopping trolley. She pays and starts to totter down the bus's aisle.

Does the driver stop and wait for her to find a seat before accelerating away? Of course not, he mashes the accelerator and the little old lady is literally thrown five feet horizontally, slamming her - fortunately - into a waiting seat.

We checked and she was OK, but I bet she was shaken. The company involved was Reading Buses and I've seen similar near-injuries almost every time I travel with them. RB, if you're reading this, please train your drivers better.

Or maybe next time, you'll be defending them in court...

The great HTML misconception

2008-10-19T09:57:00.000-07:00

As someone writing in a version of SGML back in 1988, I instantly recognised HTML when it appeared in the early 1990s and was able to be quite productive. The essential idea, that of separating content from formatting, was much the same. You wrote text, added structure in the form of headings, lists and tables and then it was up to whatever you sent it to, to render it in appropriate fonts, typefaces and so on. All very neat.

But bit by bit the language became corrupted, with Netscape starting the rot, as I recall. From the earliest 'font' tags to later table madness and then finally HTML being bastardised into a page layout tool by people who had spectacularly missed the point of a 'Mark up Language' in the first place.

The end result is HTML which is nigh on unreadable to the naked eye. And a job for a computer to render reliably, which is partly why web sites look different in different browsers, even now in 2008.

Thankfully, the common sense that is CSS came along to partially save the day, although most web pages are still uncomfortable hybrids of old HTML, new CSS and bodged DIV and table layout. In short, it's a royal mess.

Hopefully, CSS will win out in the end and pages will get purer again? Hopefully. In the meantime, I continue to hand-code my main web page (3-Lib) in raw HTML and the code loads like lightning on most desktop and mobile devices... Not that anyone appreciates it these days...

Why Linux was a consumer disaster ten years ago and why it's still a disaster

2008-10-17T04:24:00.000-07:00

OK, I'm bound to annoy a few Linux fans with this, but hey, I need to vent. After having numerous frustrations with Windows Vista (perhaps exacerbated by a failing hard disk, admittedly) and a frustrating lack of speed, I borrowed an Apple MacBook for a while. Very pretty, fabulous hardware and terrific for most ordinary people. Except that I'm not ordinary, wanting to manage lots of files in lots of projects, use FTP and advanced image editing and much more. I found ways to do everything on the MacBook but it wasn't all plain sailing. And Apple's hardware costs a fortune.

So I turned, out of curiosity, to the Asus Eee PC, picking a 701 up from eBay. Great little toy, I thought. Except that with Firefox, Skype and OpenOffice pre-installed, it was quite a bit more than a toy. Maybe Linux really can start to get more into people's homes, I thought....

The trouble is that as soon as something goes wrong, in my case a 'broken' pre-installed game and needing to install a FTP client, neither of which seemed too outrageous to need to get working, you're required to leave the cosy 'Easy desktop' and get down and dirty with the most obtuse and terse command lines I've ever used.

Bear in mind that I've used DOS, VAX/VMS, HP1000 and more computers that you've had hot dinners. So I don't mind the odd vaguely intuitive command line. But being told, on an obscure forum post that you need to type:

# dd if=all.img of=/dev/sdx
(modify sdx to suit)
# sudo apt-get -jvdg tel.deb

is just plain silly. At least DOS and VAX/VMS had proper English commands - you could abbreviate them if you wanted, but when explaining something you usually put in the full version, e.g. $print job1/exclude=contents/route_printer=LN04 - that sort of thing. You could see (and remember) what you were doing.

So Linux requiring users to occasionally dip into a command line interface (terminal) is not in itself a showstopper - but the sheer inaccessibility of the language/commands used certainly is.

I consider myself a bit of a geek and can muddle through on almost any computer. But the Eee game still doesn't run and I still haven't got FTP working on the Eee 701.

If I can't do it, the man in the High Street doesn't stand a chance. The Eee has sold well and my daughter loves it, for example. But there's no way in hell that a Linux-based device like this can replace a Windows PC or Mac for most households.

'Unknown error'?? But, but...

2008-10-03T02:11:00.000-07:00

Just got this in Apple's iTunes. How can the error be 'unknown' if the software knows to put the error dialog up and knows the error code? Can't it just look up what this code MEANS?

It's idiocies like this that make me despair of the computer world sometimes.....

Nope, McDonalds are actually shining lights....

2008-09-22T05:55:00.000-07:00

Well, it's all relative, anyway. Never mind corporate business practices, at least the big M deserve a bouquet for the way in which they treat children's food. Here's the current menu, snapped at my local restaurant:

Note the way grapes and cucumber sticks are now promoted as alternatives to chips (yuck) and note even more impressively the way the healthy fruit juices, smoothies and water are promoted far more heavily than the incredibly unhealthy 'small soft drinks'.

Good on you, McDonalds, you've deserved the custom of my family at least for the next year!

Hands of love

2008-09-02T07:00:00.001-07:00

Assuming you're following me, my family and my rants, if you have a spare minute this week, perhaps you could cast a vote for my video entry for Nokia's 'Hands' competition? Click on either link to go through, sign up to be able to vote (only takes a few seconds) and then vote for any videos you like hint, hint]...

Hands of love

Turning off security - utterly insane

2008-08-07T04:03:00.000-07:00

Here's a rant that should strike a few chords with regular geeks out there. The number of PC and Mac applications which state in their installation instructions: "Make sure you do the following before you install the software:
Turn off any virus-protection and security software that you may have installed on your computer." - This is from installing Final Cut Express on a MacBook by the way but I've seen plenty of other examples on a PC.

I can understand why the developers state this: it's because anti-virus and firewall software might possibly get in the way of the bludgeoning installer that the developer has bodged together. Look, let's get one thing straight: you should NEVER turn off your firewall or anti-virus, unless you REALLY know what you're doing. For example, my router has a built-in firewall and I know it's turned on, but most users wouldn't know this and it's a really bad idea telling them to 'make sure' to turn off their security just to install an application. An unprotected Windows desktop will be filled with malware worms within a minute or two of being online.

The right solution is for the developer to test their installers on systems with various security solutions installed and then work round any problems. Risking the safety of users is just lazy, lazy, lazy.

"We took the wrong step years ago"

2008-08-06T07:48:00.000-07:00

Or so sang Hawkwind in the 70s, along with plenty of others in the 'hippy' music business. And yes, I know it's wonderful to have hindsight and we're now almost 40 years down the line, but I do believe that it's not too late to save the environment, to (literally) save planet Earth.

There's no point in a long rant here, since you'll see appeals and reports from 'green' organisations almost every day in mainstream media. But I felt I wanted to comment on the latest little freebie from Nokia: we:offset, a Carbon footprint calculator, along with a facility to donate an appropriate amount to projects that aim to balance your footprint out. It's a worthy release, don't get me wrong, every little helps, and full credit to Nokia for good intentions.

But the trouble is that it is just that - little - and way too late in the grand scheme of things. We're talking here mainly about transport, i.e. the energy expended and Carbon footprint incurred by getting people from point A to point B. Am I alone in the world in reckoning that if we could just cut down on the amount people travel then the footprints would be smaller all round and we wouldn't need to feel guilty and then donate money to green projects.

I'm constantly appalled by how much time and energy is wasted by people travelling to work - yes, we can't all work from home [like I do], but imagine if home working was increased across the board by 10% or 20%? An awful lot of people sit in traffic jams for an hour to get to work, just to sit in front of a computer all day, or stand around chatting. Then back into the jams again to get home. Please, someone, anyone, tell me why these people couldn't do this from home on most days, armed with a PC or Mac and broadband?

And then when they finally get a holiday, do they stay at home? Nope. They sit in longer traffic jams to get to an airport and then they incur an even bigger Carbon footprint by flying - completely unnecessarily - to some Godforsaken part of the globe!

I'm all for the global village - but we can make it happen using modern communications. Let's cut down on use of planes and cars and feel good about ourselves and the planet at the same time.

iPhone/iPod Magic

2008-07-12T11:46:00.001-07:00

I have to confess that I'm not often amazed by something electronic - this is my line of work, after all. But I turned on my new Apple iPod Touch and idly started up Google Maps. The bottom left-icon looked like a 'My location' icon, but, knowing that this was an iPod Touch and thus had no telephony and no GPS, was actually quite surprised when it defaulted to a map of the UK. Heh. At least I didn't have to spin a globe to find my country.

I tapped the icon, expecting to be taken to the centre of London, or similar (it's our capital city etc). I was GOBSMACKED when I was zoomed in to the right spot on the right road, EXACTLY where I lived.

Magic. Had to be. How the ******** did the iPod Touch know where I lived? Had it somehow absorbed the information from iTunes, which in turn had somehow cribbed it from something else on my PC? I took the Touch outdoors and went for a walk. The My location crosshairs FOLLOWED ME. Arghh... HOW?

As far as I can tell, the Touch's (and the iPhone's) My location feature is not only tied to cell ID and (in the 3G version) GPS, but is ALSO (and, in the case of the Touch, the ONLY method) derived from a global database of home Wi-Fi networks, run by Skyhook - here's a 'How it works' page. Apparently it's self-healing, in that errors and additions are automatically handled by the system and the database updated.

So, by working out which Wi-Fi networks I was nearest and by triangulating from their signals, the Skyhook system was able to get me to within about 5 metres. Really impressive.

Of course, Skyhook's system falls down completely when out of suburbia, but still, it had me puzzled and bemused for half an hour and all credit to the creators and integrators.

You've just got to be wary once you see a '90 day' warranty...

2008-07-12T08:35:00.000-07:00

My daughter and I have been eyeing up a Pleo robotic dinosaur for ages - but our last purchase (the GUPI electronic guinea pig) went a bit wrong in that the 'pets' are quite unreliable and prone to sulking.

Now I read that the warranty on new Pleos is only 90 days! Given that most electronic equipment is warrantied for a year, a figure of 90 days (with a character reincarnation program!) surely points to the fact that the manufacturers themselves recognise that the device is so fragile and has so many moving parts that something's going to break and sooner rather than later.

I'd rather read of products where there's a 'lifetime warranty' (e.g. the stuff that Proporta produce/sell) - indicating a real confidence in the reliability of their product.

Yes, I know Pleo is incredibly intricate and complex - but still - 90 DAYS??

Why I hate... part 215: Anglian

2008-06-29T13:57:00.000-07:00

Oh yes. I made the mistake of ordering new roof fascias a few years ago from Anglian, a windows, doors and roofs company in the UK. The fascias were fine, and I didn't take any nonsense from the sales person, who turned out to also be a Christian and to have an ounce of integrity.

Unlike the current Anglian sales team. I've been getting call after call, sometimes 2 or 3 a week, trying to sell me things. On the last call I virtually screamed down the line "Stop calling me - if you call again, I'm going to complain to BT and report harrassment".

No doubt their installers are hard working people. But stay away, stay well away from Anglian's sales teams. Another Anglian anecdote from six months ago, before the current call spate - I'd been looking for companies to give me a quote for a front door. Anglian got someone to call me and he kept going on about he didn't want to come and visit when it was just me in the house - he insisted my wife was present. Obviously, because he didn't want me saying 'I'll see what my wife thinks and get back to you'. But I said that the decision to buy was 100% mine and that I had full confidence from my wife. Did it make any difference? Nope. He just kept on insisting that my wife had to be there and after several heated calls I'd had enough and cancelled the quote visit. And this was all before he'd even got to my house!

Bah. Anglian.

Getting rid of Microsoft Office - and Software Bloat

2008-06-25T13:02:00.000-07:00

I really had had it with Microsoft Office this time. Specifically the monster that it Outlook. Slow, over-complex and cumbersome. Into Windows Control panel I went and clicked on Programs | MS Office | Change. I unchecked Outlook and away went the routines. After two minutes of crunching, it popped up a message that I needed to insert my original Office CD. I guess I could have done, but I was utterly outraged by having to insert a CD in order to install some bit of middleware in order to uninstall an application. What kind of software madness is this?

In fact I was so annoyed that I felt compelled to remove the whole Office Suite in disgust. After all, Word, Excel and Powerpoint had gone years ago - I use Open Office very happily - but enough is enough and I wanted Office's bloat and inelegance out of my life and off my hard disk.

I went back into Control panel and this time opted for 'Uninstall'. And waited. And waited. 15 minutes later, the progress bar had reached 50%. WHAT? All I wanted to do was delete the application suite. Deleting files should not take this long. In addition to my regular 'I hate Adobe' posts, I'm sorely tempted to apply similar bloatware reasons for doing a 'I hate Microsoft' one. Office is a disgrace.

If it wasn't for Windows itself, which at least keeps me laptop going and running leaner, fitter apps, Microsoft would be out of my life completely. I installed Firefox 3 earlier. The download was 7MB and it installed in under a minute. That's what software should be like. Not 4GB of code on DVD or a 3GB download (Office and Adobe Premiere Elements 4 respectively).

Hey, I made the top 10!

2008-06-19T08:13:00.001-07:00

A shout out to the guys at the UK-based Automated Home for their well researched list of the top 10 tech podcasts in the world - and my Smartphones Show comes in at number 10, which is pretty cool.

I don't get a lot of time to listen to other podcasts, but I've certainly sampled over half the shows on their list. Check it out!

Skipping, Hopping? Summer must have arrived!

2008-06-12T02:12:00.000-07:00

You can tell that summer's here (at last) in the UK. The kids are coming home from school talking about fun things which involve fresh air rather than batteries and plug-in cartridges.

The latest craze in the playground seems to be the Lolo Ball, referred to by my daughter as a 'Space Hopper'. But it's not, the SH was a big ball with horns that you held onto. The Lolo Ball (also called Pogo Ball or even Moon Ball) is something you grip between your ankles. Sounds improbable, but it's great fun for youngsters.

Just be prepared to plaster up some chafed ankles....!

Skipping's also apparently 'in' this year, but hey, when was it not?

Instant flight sim - in your own part of the world

2008-06-05T08:07:00.001-07:00

You've got to love Google - and got to love mashups. In this case it's a clever use of Google Earth's interface, accessed via a web browser page, and with very basic (left/right) controls for a simulated fighter jet.

And you can't crash. Or go up or down. But hey, you can type in any location on earth (such as your home town) and fly around the area at (simulated) great speed.

Very cool. Don't worry about the meaty browser plug-in, by the way, I'm sure other mashups will be along shortly to make further use of it 8-)

Why I Hate Adobe - Part 2

2008-05-28T03:44:00.001-07:00

I've posted about this before, by the way...

Having been driven to distraction by other video editing software under Windows, I thought I'd try Adobe again, give them one last chance. After all, Premiere Elements was supposed to be a top video solution still, and there was a shiny new version 4 to play with.

I started the download going, via their 'Download Manager'. 2.7GB. That's GIGABYTES. For a single application! Nero Vision 5, another video editor is ten Megabytes or so, FIFTY times smaller.

I gritted my teeth as 2 gigabytes crawled down by ADSL connection, whiling away the time by browsing for reviews of Adobe Premiere Elements 4 - to be met by a barrage of 'buggy', 'slow', 'broken' and worse. So not much change then for an Adobe product. I cancelled the download.

How can any company issue a product (for download) that's 2.7GB in size? Where's the common sense? Where's the efficiency? Developers these days, especially in the 'big company' world seem to have lost all sense of proportion. There are still 'shareware'/'demoware' applications around that are only a few hundred kilobytes in size. OK, so a video suite might need to be 10MB or so of code and templates, but not much more.

Maybe the 2.7GB was mainly video examples - in which case, Adobe should offer these as separate downloads - but I suspect not - it was probably mainly bloated, slow and buggy code and development modules..... mutter, mutter....

Nokia Snakes on MEGA scale

2008-05-17T08:26:00.000-07:00

SNAKE Game in the Student House - video powered by Metacafe

You just knew that students were behind this escapade - programming a modern building's lighting circuits to play a game of Nokia's Snakes! Awesome and yet a complete waste of time. Wish I were young again!

Being charged to make a payment!

2008-05-17T03:20:00.000-07:00

The modern world is just ridiculous sometimes. Looking at my latest phone bill from BT, I see they're now charging an extra 'Payment fee' for the privilege of paying them!! Sure, businesses have admin costs, but aren't these suppose to be built into the price you agreed to pay for the service in the first place?

If it wasn't for the 12 month contract I signed with UK Online for Internet access, I'd ditch my BT line right now, out of protest. It's a LOT cheaper to go for a combined Internet/phone deal with any number of cable suppliers - and that's exactly what I'm going to do in 2009.

Too old to rock?

2008-05-07T05:32:00.000-07:00

Well, maybe not. But certainly too old for The Gadget Show.

You see, people keep saying that with my phone/smartphone expertise and style, I'd be a natural for The Gadget Show. And, content-wise they're absolutely right. But have you seen what they expect their presenters to do? Snow-boarding, hang-gliding, let's-see-how-dangerous-and-exciting we-can-make-this for each feature. Good example: they were testing multimedia smartphones. So was I. I did it in my home, in painstaking detail, every expense spared. They did it by shooting photos and video from aerobatic planes, no expense spared. Then there are the times when Jason and Suzi end up falling from bikes, rolling down hills or bungee-jumping off bridges.

I'm sorry, but The Gadget Show is not for me. I'm 46 now, I'm starting to feel frailer than when I was Jason and Suzi's age (mid thirties?) and I have a feeling that if I started on The Gadget Show I'd end up with a broken hip...

PlayStation 3 - stunning realism

2008-05-07T01:06:00.000-07:00

I have to admit, I'm a bit of a fan of the Nintendo Wii - I just love the sports sims and getting up and involved with my games. But the graphics are very obviously computer-generated and couldn't be mistaken for reality.

Yesterday, I chanced across a demo stand for the Sony PlayStation 3 - and I was blown away. They had the demo sequence running for Gran Turismo 5, with the touring cars screaming around the sun-kissed track and, for a few seconds at least, even on a 48" screen, I thought I was watching a TV picture. The lighting, the textures, the smoothness of the real-time 3D rendering of the cars was utterly spellbinding. Only when the pit scenes were shown, with simulated human beings, was it obvious that this was a virtual world.

Would I now buy a PS3? Before yesterday I'd have said no, but the lure of those shiny engines of steel, glinting in the sun......

Trying to get up to speed with Nokia Sports Tracker

2008-05-01T08:56:00.000-07:00

This might all go wrong, but below you should see the new 'urbanista' widget from Nokia, which will display where I've been and what I've been snapping. Well, for test purposes, anyway... 8-)

(By the way, if you see an empty white space, try right-clicking and choosing 'Play')

In order to view the Nseries Widget you need JavaScript and Flash Player 9+ support

The power of Google (again)

2008-04-29T15:37:00.000-07:00

It's pretty awesome what Google manage to get done sometimes. Even if in this case it's limited to a few dozen US cities, check out how they've integrated Google Maps and its direction finding with their Street View project. This sort of integration is truly eye-opening. And it's here now. If you live in the right parts of the US, anyway! Enjoy.

Handling petabytes at Google

2008-04-24T00:11:00.000-07:00

We all know and love Google. But how exactly do they handle so many billions of users, so much data, without ever losing anything? I was interested to come across this video talking about their infrastructure and philosophy, which explains how things hang together reliably. Worth 10 minutes of your time to watch!

Tribute Bands - don't they ever get fed up?

2008-04-21T03:51:00.000-07:00

I saw an excellent tribute band last night. Off The Wall, proclaiming themselves 'The Spirit of Pink Floyd'. And super they were too. Really accurate sounds and a great 2 hours of music and lights. I'd link to their web site but that seems to have gone AWOL....

Anyway, I've seen quite a few tribute acts in the last few years. Fun for the audience, who are transported on a trip down memory lane, but what about the performers? Playing the songs of their heroes is probably fun for the first few months, even the first year, but what about after that? Playing virtually the same songs in the same way, night after night? However tricky and complex they are, boredom must surely set in, and how they to conceal this from the audience?

The temptation is to start changing the songs, adding embellishments, experimenting - that's what all normal bands do. But if a tribute band starts altering the songs of their trademark, they get castigated and scorned. Everything has to be 100% authentic.

It's a tricky situation. Some bands (e.g. the Bootleg Beatles) seem to go on for years with few changes and seem very happy. I'm sure there are others which implode or stagnate, too. I guess a lot comes down to whether you can make a living from it. As the Bootlegs do, for example? In which case, it counts as 'work' and you simply grin and bear it, as most of us do our normal labours!!

Comments welcome!

Lasered by a Dalek

2008-04-20T10:25:00.000-07:00

Not every day you bump into a Dalek in the High Street and get shot down in your prime.... Gulp.

Kudos to Waterstones in Guildford for getting one in though!

Dust and fluff - you just wouldn't believe how much!

2008-04-19T03:02:00.000-07:00

One of the best things we ever did was get a Dyson clear-barrelled vacuum cleaner. Not just because of the way the sucking strength carries on even when the barrel is full - clever tech there - but because you actually get to see what it's picking up.

One look at your house after a few weeks without vacuuming and you wouldn't know anything was amiss. But run the Dyson round it and you'll have a barrel chock full of dust, fluff and hairs. It's amazing. And a bit disgusting. But thinking of all this 'stuff' sitting around on your carpets, waiting to be disturbed and to fly up and be breathed in or cause allergies (etc), or to be a safe haven for mites and other insect nasties....

Try it yourself. It's sooo satisying doing the vacuuming now. Ooh, I must be getting old.

Streaming BBC TV-on-demand is changing everything... and now on the Nintendo Wii too!

2008-04-10T09:35:00.000-07:00

I've had a (kind of) epiphany. Having used a PVR (Personal Video Recorder, a.k.a. a Hard Disk Recorder) for the last few years for my time shifting of TV, the PVR in question died a death and it was time to look for a replacement. Yet nothing of any reasonable price seemed to fit the bill and I was umming and ahhing for a while.

And then my wife said 'Have you tried the new BBC iPlayer?' I hadn't, but I was fairly blown away. Any decent BBC programme (and let's face it, well over half the decent original new programmes are from the BBC) from the last seven days, available on demand? And all for free. Stunning.

Was this the end of my search for a way to timeshift TV? Not quite, I didn't really want to sit in front of a computer to watch TV every time.

But then came the news today that the BBC had introduced a version of iPlayer optimised for the Nintendo Wii. You'll recall that it has a reasonably up to date version of Opera (almost) built-in. So I tried it. Not bad, not bad at all. The video is only about 15 frames per second at the moment, but we're told that the BBC tech bods are working on improving this and optimising streaming still further.

With a little judicious zooming in, in the Wii Opera browser, we're now able to have BBC TV on-demand, on our lounge TV set, for free, with no need to remember to record anything, no need to pay for expensive hardware that will fail, etc.

The big catch, of course, is that non-BBC content isn't covered, but hey, there's always YouTube on the Wii for everything else in the video world!

Fear of flying?

2008-03-31T02:45:00.000-07:00

I don't fly. Or at least not unless it's a dire emergency. I've tried to analyse my fear and can't really pin it down. Partly it's a fear of dying prematurely under circumstances not under my control - in a car or on a bike, even in a train, I can do a lot to reduce risk and escape harm. But in a metal tube 10,000 feet up there's really nothing that can be done to prevent the plane plummeting and crashing.

As one did yesterday. And as planes do each month throughout the world, with annual fatalities well into the thousands....

Having worked in the aerospace industry I know how many things can actually go wrong. And the thought of being in a fly-by-wire aircraft with computers in (more or less) complete control just scares me rigid. Remember the near fatal 777 crash at Heathrow a month or so back when the computers failed and the plane plummeted?

Add to that my gut feeling that man was not meant to fly. And just don't get me started on helicopters. And don't even breathe the name 'Chinook' or 'Osprey', technical novelties that put so much stress on the underlying engineering that it's a miracle the planes stay in the air for more than a few minutes at a time.....

Yay - solar gets serious

2008-03-27T05:56:00.001-07:00

It's about time that big power companies stopped messing around with green energy and took it seriously. Kudos to Southern California Edison for ramping up to 250 megawatts of solar power on the rooves of commercial premises (reports Green Wombat).

Solar power in itself won't supply the earth's energy needs by a huge margin (quite apart from the green impact of making the solar cells/kit in the first place), but it's a good start. Add in more and more wind turbines and wave power generators and I can see some countries getting a quarter or even a half of their power from green sources by about 2020.

Save the planet? Maybe we just will. But we need more initiatives like this one.

Vinyl better than CD? Absolute tripe!

2008-03-15T13:08:00.000-07:00

As someone who started with vinyl records (LPs) back in the 1970s and graduated through cassettes to CDs, I get fed up with so-called audiophiles who say that vinyl recordings sound better than the same pieces on CD. They're simply talking rubbish.

In favour of their argument, they suggest that the 44kHz sampling rate of digital music means that the 'full' analog waveforms of music aren't stored when on CD. They'd be right, but unless we're talking about piano music and the listener is a 20 year old afficianado with perfect hearing the difference is completely inaudible.

Certainly for 99.999% of people, and especially those who like listening to music a lot (and fairly loud), hearing won't be perfect. Even more so as we all get older.

In favour of CD 44kHz sampled music, there are many factors, including:

These days, most CDs are either recorded digitally in the first place, or digitally remastered, which means ZERO hiss, ZERO wobble/wow, PERFECT graphic equalisation, ZERO crackles, and so on
By existing, essentially, in the digital domain, it's trivial to store/backup/convert a CD of music, for safe keeping or for transfer to another device or medium with NO degradation whatsoever
CDs don't degrade the more you play them. Unlike vinyl records. When buying an old LP, I was very aware that I only really had 40 or 50 chances to listen to the music at its best, even with a new needle, as the grooves would be too worn to play properly after that. In contrast, CDs can be played an almost infinite numbers of times with the music sounding as great at the end as at the beginning
Obvious, but CDs are many times more robust and more portable, as are the bits of equipment that play them

Cool technology and cool music stuff!

2008-03-11T05:25:00.000-07:00

Here's a great marriage of old and new. Microsoft's new Silverlight multimedia plug-in has been used to good effect by Hard Rock Memorabilia, to show off a multitude of classic guitars, outfits, lyrics and other miscellany in super-zoomed detail. Worth a look and a read if you're into classic 1970s and 1980s rock music!

Modern Art - yeah right

2008-03-10T14:42:00.000-07:00

We made the mistake of wasting an hour in the Tate Modern gallery in London last week. Floor after floor of 'modern art'.

What a waste of time, space and electricity. The flagship work was a crack in the main floor of the gallery, apparently - I kid you not. There was another work on a wall which looked like a kid had thrown a can of paint on the canvas - I went closer and read the artist's description, which read "I threw a can of paint on the canvas"!

I'm no art heathen. I love music and I love paintings by the likes of Monet, Constable and so on. But what I saw last week was rubbish, quite simply.

Glad to have got that off my chest!

The YouTube Revenue Sharing Disaster

2008-02-29T12:52:00.000-08:00

So YouTube has set up revenue sharing for approved contributors. Great. And they've got a whole heap of understandable restrictions to do with copyright, to make absolutely sure that you're not profiting from someone else's work.

So you upload a video (such as my Smartphones Show) and apply for it to be approved for revenue sharing. So far so good. But then they find some tiny piece of your video that might, possibly, potentially be a copyright problem. Does YouTube:

a) Deny the request, email you to tell you what the problem was (in case you wanted to cut the offending word/section out) and invite you to reapply later on?
OR
b) Deny the request, delete the entire video from YouTube and put blocks in place to stop you re-uploading it for normal viewing?

Yep, you guessed it, b)

Which sucks, big time. I don't mind the powers that be getting picky over copyright and saying that I can't earn a few cents from it, but deleting the video so that people can't watch it at all is very, very heavy-handed.

Grr.........

What did kids do before electronics and broadband?

2008-02-20T04:55:00.000-08:00

Staggering to watch my daughter and her friend playing for a morning. With two laptops, broadband and mobile phones, they were all set and had enormous fun. But what on earth did the previous generation do? I'm guessing books and Barbie dolls and scooters. Hmm... must get all those out, especially over the summer, else my daughter will turn into a prize geek like me 8-)

Getting fit with Nokia

2008-02-15T06:50:00.000-08:00

So I'm mid-40s and in dire need of getting fitter, if I'm to be mobile into my 50s and 60s.... Enter Nokia Sports Tracker, which runs on any S60 smartphone. On my E90, with built-in GPS, I just activate it when leaving the house for a fast walk and leave it going.

When I get back to the house, I've got every stat imaginable (I'm walking at 9 minutes per km - is that good?) and a nice KML file to import directly into Google Earth. And Sports Tracker continues to log my progress over the weeks and months. Recommended.

As to whether I'll keep it up - ask me again in 2 months!

The Nintendo Wii - not just a games console!

2008-02-15T06:47:00.000-08:00

OK, so I gave in to my daughter and bought a Nintendo Wii. And then discovered that it's not a games console. Well, it is, but it's also a full web browser, including YouTube video (on your TV!), Internet radio, etc. Plus it's a good way of getting exercise - you just try the boxing game that comes with it! More on this theme over at my new Nintendo Power Tips page.

Saving the planet with a Carbon fast

2008-02-05T03:54:00.000-08:00

Carbon what? Yes, I know it sounds strange. But fear not, go and download Tear Fund's excellent leaflet: http://www.tearfund.org/webdocs/Website/Churches/Carbon%20Fast.pdf (aimed at families).

Judging from the careless attitude of my own daughter to energy, I can't emphasise teaching green principles to the upcoming generation enough. Make sure your kids read though the leaflet and implement as much as you can etc.

Legoland just got cheaper!

2008-02-04T12:28:00.000-08:00

A couple of years back we (our family) had annual passes for Legoland Windsor. A great time was had by all for the year, but then Legoland got taken over by Merlin and the prices got hijacked.

Thankfully sanity's been restored now and annual pass prices are back to 'visit twice and you break even' levels. Recommended!

Yet another reason why I hate Microsoft Outlook

2008-02-01T11:15:00.000-08:00

I was always terrified of Outlook - it seemed a monstrosity of a program to carry out the functions it did - far too many settings and functions and they often got in the way. I used it because it was the only thing to reliably sync to my phones. But then I started to sync to 'the cloud' (GooSync/Google) and I've been migrating my working environment online ever since.

As a result, I only fire up Outlook every once in a while, to check on some old data. But get this - even after 'File > Exit'ing Outlook, part of it still hangs around, auto-checking for new emails and grabbing them for itself! "I'VE CLOSED YOU DOWN, YOU STUPID PROGRAM" I shout, to no avail. I end up having to reboot in order to stop the auto-check behaviour.

Application? Seems more like a virus to me.... mutter, mutter....

Microsoft buys Yahoo!?

2008-02-01T05:32:00.000-08:00

Wow. A reported $44 BILLION ?? How on earth do companies a) come up with these valuations and b) afford the price in the first place. I knew Microsoft were rich, but this sort of price is insane. And for what? Surely they already have everything that Yahoo has got in their tech-bank, and more? Well, maybe not Flickr, surely the best purchase Yahoo! ever made.... But even so....

This won't get them level with Google, it will simply cheese off existing Yahoo! users, who will then defect to Google and make the situation even worse for Microsoft.

My advice: don't do it. Don't even think about it.

Mac intro videos - they should have done these years ago

2008-01-31T09:23:00.000-08:00

Ah, I just found out about Apple's new 'How to' videos. As a PC die-hard (by history, not necessarily by choice), I've often wondered just how one is supposed to 'use' a Mac. I've tried a few times in PC World and got into trouble. But credit to Apple for videos like this - I think a little light just went on in the back of my head....

Kudos

2008-01-27T00:17:00.000-08:00

Now this is taking a hobby to the extreme - though if I were a space agency then I'd be knocking on this kid's door to sign him up.

Click through to see details of the Halo 2 project, in which for a few hundred dollars a young man launches a balloon to outer space and back, taking pictures and videos along the way.

Rocking like a Hurricane

2008-01-26T11:44:00.000-08:00

Ah yes, if you hadn't already realised, I'm also in a 'mid life crisis' / 'forty-somethings' rock band. Shed Music's the name, here's a clip of us live, playing a Neil Young cover version this week, at Reading's 3Bs venue:

Mass upload to Google Docs!

2008-01-25T11:36:00.000-08:00

Aha! I'd been putting off putting many of my own documents online in Google Documents, not because the software wasn't up to the job of editing them, but because I couldn't bear the hassle of uploading them one by one. A Google developer has now put up a sample application demoing the Documents API - DocList Uploader, that does exactly what I needed. Just drag and drop all my bits into the window and bang, they're all on Google. Very, very cool, and hopefully just the start of more Documents functionality.

Legoland effectively sexist!

2008-01-22T10:55:00.000-08:00

Alright, a slightly sensationalist headline, but I thought I'd share my experience of the Legoland theme parks and my own family...

When my daughter was 4, we went for the first time and she absolutely loved it. So much so that we plumped up for an annual pass for all of us and we then went about 10 times in the year (hey, we live only 15 miles from a park!) in which she went from 5 to 6 years old. Again she loved it, but the novelty was starting to wear a little thin by the end.

Since then, we haven't been and she doesn't miss it very much. The thing is, Legoland suits all different age ranges but in specific striations, if I'm allowed to use that word. Or perhaps 'niches'. For the 4 to 6 year old girl, there's plenty to keep them amused that doesn't require huge queueing. For the 12 to 20 year old teenage girl, the more sensational rides will be more attractive and they'll have the patience to queue for them.

Yet for boys, Legoland works from 4 to 20 years old with no gaps. I guess that's part of the nature of the beast - Lego being a boys toy etc. But it also reflects the way girls tend to be scared of anything remotely dangerous, while boys will 'enjoy' being scared.

Just thought I'd get that off my chest!

Facebook is 10% genius and 90% utter rubbish

2008-01-14T08:47:00.000-08:00

Sorry to burst everyone's bubble (and Facebook's valuation) but despite the great idea of a social network with no glitzy graphics or annoying soundtracks or immense animated gifs (MySpace, Bebo, etc.) Facebook has itself succumbed to 'utter rubbish'. I've no interest whatsoever in knowing the minutae and trivia of 100s of my contacts who I normally only speak to once in a blue moon, let alone be poked, or invited to meaningless online gift exchanges or games.

If I were Facebook's founders, I'd have sold the site last summer at Facebook's peak. It's only going to plummet from here....

The Adsense bubble deflating at last?

2008-01-10T03:28:00.001-08:00

From 2005 to 2007, I've been a very happy bunny. Putting Google Adsense adverts in the margins in my various web sites has resulting in some significant pocket money that I've err.... put to good use. And declared to the tax man, by the way.

But all the time, I wondered. How long before people have seen the same adverts time and again on many different web sites and stop clicking on them out of curiosity? For specialist sites and adverts I guess there's still a place, but I'm pessimistic about the online advertising world generally, looking into 2008.

Certainly my own Adsense income has been falling by 10% a month for the best part of a year now - how do you view the archetypal Google ads on almost all web sites? Do you ignore them? Consciously, or unconsciously? Comments welcome!

An alien interface from Star Trek

2008-01-08T13:56:00.000-08:00

.... or simply THE best way to find space hogs on your hard disk. Rather than drill down folder by folder trying to spot large files, or do a complicated Windows query, just run Sequoia View and you can see at a glance where your space is going. Right click a culprit and open up the folder it's in with a click, then zap it with shift-delete in the usual way. Super.

Preposterous! I'm trying to give Ikea my business!

2008-01-05T13:23:00.001-08:00

What a farce. We were trying to buy an item from Ikea, the Swedish furniture empire. Turns out they have an online shop. Good-oh. Turns out they deliver to my area. Good-oh x2.

So I started filling in the login/delivery forms on the shopping basket/checkout system. I entered all my card details and hit 'Submit'. 10 seconds later I see the above error. Hmm.... Not good. I phone the number and the guy says 'Are you trying to use our online shop using a laptop?' What? Why on earth should that make a difference?

'Ah, he says, our system doesn't work with laptops'. But, I spluttered, that should make no difference whatsoever. Don't you mean that it doesn't work well with err.... Vista? I said, striking out in the dark?

'Ah yes, it also doesn't work with Vista or Firefox. Or laptops' he said. I asked if I could give the phone guy my order instead. 'Oh no, we don't take phone orders'. Quite staggering. I'm trying to give this company some business!!

Needless to say, I tried again later using Internet Explorer (rather than Firefox) and got exactly the same error. At which point I gave up and decided to go to a different furniture outlet....

Grr....

2008 and the year of Mac? Or Ubuntu?

2008-01-02T03:07:00.000-08:00

Argh, I hate computers. After battling a problem with my Vista laptop, wherein it wouldn't play some MP4 files but would others (all using Quicktime Player), it turned out that the problem was an obscure incompatibility between Quicktime and Vista's ReadyBoost system (adding USB stick memory to cache system files).

Go figure. Who on earth could have connected those two?? I've been eyeing up a Mac for ages..... but hang on, it was Apple who wrote Quicktime Player, so they're not exonerated here either.

So I tried installing Ubunto Linux on a spare laptop, to have a play. Five HOURS later and the thing still wasn't even installed. I gave up. 8-(

Why do computers have to be so complicated and erratic?

Never again

2007-12-23T00:07:00.000-08:00

If you wondered why this blog had gone quiet, it's because our family moved house. And, like everyone else who's not a habitual house mover, we underestimated the task. How two adults and one child can accumulate 120 cartons of 'stuff', in addition to furniture, bikes and the rest, is beyond me. We thought we had our belongings fairly well pruned down, but it seems not!

Anyway, we moved on Wednesday and are about 60% through the unpacking process. There goes Christmas!

Tip no. 1: Don't move house. Ever.
Tip no. 2: If you absolutely have to, throw out your junk before you move. And then go through your stuff again and give away all the charity shop items before, etc.
Repeat and rinse! You won't regret it come moving day...

Pleo, Pleo, Pleo!

2007-12-14T08:33:00.000-08:00

OK, so £250 (or $350 in the USA) is a huge amount to spend on a toy, but Pleo is halfway from toy to pet. And a pet that won't moult, poo or cost a fortune down the vets. Or eat you out of house and home.

Pleo is a robotic dinsoaur and I present my Pleo review here. Summary, cute, moderately cuddly and not that great a walker. 8-)

Seeing atoms

2007-12-11T07:09:00.001-08:00

Ever wanted to actually 'see' atoms? Well, now you can, thanks to the world's first "Transmission Electron Aberration-corrected Microscope". Below, you're looking at Germanium atoms. Wow. Just wow.

YouTube ads? Whatever next?

2007-12-11T06:16:00.000-08:00

Apparently, YouTube video ads are now linked in through Google AdSense. I'm really not sure if I can get my head round what will be served up, so consider this an experiment. Here we go....

Watch the latest videos on YouTube.com

Hmm... no videos found? Maybe it's still early days. I think the idea of video ads is OK, but I'm a little sceptical about how much page space the player is going to take up - web pages should be about their primary content, not the ads!

The Sequel Strikes Back!

2007-12-10T23:07:00.000-08:00

What have Star Wars, the Apple iPhone and Brain Training for the Nintendo DS got in common?

They all buck the rule that sequels suck. Star Wars 2 (or 5 if you're counting George Lucas style) - "The Empire Strikes Back" was arguably the best of the Star Wars movies, while the Apple iPhone v2 has yet to be formally announced but you can bet your last cotton-pickin' dollar that it's going to be vastly better featured than the original.

And now we have More Brain Training on the Nintendo DS and it's not just better than the original, it's light years better. To have gone from average to outstanding in one version jump is very impressive. Maybe they should have called it 'Much Much More Brain Training'?

Midwinter sunshine

2007-12-10T23:03:00.001-08:00

Now this is what I like to see - it's midwinter in the UK and, after weeks of rain and wind, we get this as the week's forecast:

Who cares about the cold, it's THE SUN, BABY!

THIS is why I like Google

2007-11-28T03:27:00.000-08:00

So many reasons why Google are so great. Superb web searching and general time saving. Great online tools that save you having to worry about local apps. Free spam-free email with unlimited storage, the list goes on and on.

But THIS is why Google are so great. Using their might to help save the earth. http://blogs.business2.com/greenwombat/2007/11/googles-green-p.html

Investing 100s of millions of dollars, etc. I know they're not the only green company out here, but this sure is one more reason why I love Google!

Rhydian a star and X Factor a foregone conclusion - again

2007-11-25T21:11:00.000-08:00

Maybe it's the fact that there's simply no competition, but TV's X Factor is again a one horse race, and it's been obvious since show 2 of the 10 live finals. Opera-trained Rhydian has been quite stunning, with stage craft, a perfect voice and (seemingly) a humble (yet confident) personality. Add it all up and you get something like this:

Quite mesmerising, considering that this was his second performance on a live TV stage ever.

Value Added Tax?

2007-11-22T12:56:00.000-08:00

Who does the UK government think it's kidding with the name VAT? Yes, I know it's been around for years, but the name VAT stands for 'Value Added Tax'. Err... adding value on things I buy by making them more expensive? Sounds like a lot worse value to me...

At least the Americans and many other countries have the honesty to call it what it is: a sales tax.

Now, why on earth did I think of this criticism of the UK government when there's the whole juicy missing 25 million personal Id records saga? Can't think.

Jaw droppingly cool - Earth rise, Earth set

2007-11-16T06:46:00.000-08:00

This is just so incredibly cool/awesome. The Japanese have stuck a satellite in orbit around the moon, and have released video showing Earth rise and Earth set. The mission arrived at the Moon on 18 October, when it was inserted into orbit at an altitude of roughly 100km.

You can watch the Earth rise here, and set here. And yes, the little blue dot in the centre of the screen is OUR ENTIRE PLANET!

Very humbling in every respect, physical and spiritual....

Review: The PURE Move portable DAB radio

2007-11-14T08:40:00.000-08:00

Now a really decent portable DAB radio has been something my wife and I have been after for ages. The existing hardware was either too big and heavy or had too small a battery life - but the PURE Move hits the sweet spot in many ways.

DAB radios are essentially portable computers and thus are real battery drainers. But PURE have solved the issue by including an internal rechargeable battery, phone style, so no more buying packs of AAA cells and no more lugging around huge mains DAB units. And life on a single charge is excellent, many hours, so this is the best of both worlds.

Build quality on the move is great, with a brushed aluminium faceplate and a rubberised back, with a fold out plastic stand to keep the unit at the right playing angle. There are no surprises in the main controls, which look tacky and plasticky but which work very well.

DAB reception's very good as well, better than on some mains radios and our biggest complaint by far was the audio quality over the built in loudspeaker. OK fro talk stations, switching to a music station reveals the cheap speaker, with no bass and plenty of middle and treble.

Still, a great DAB radio for anyone wanting talk and news stations!

Allow longer for sleep and avoid cancer?

2007-11-12T05:52:00.000-08:00

I'm fascinated by the process of cell replication gone wrong, that is cancer. And I'm convinced that the human body should be able to work better than it does in avoiding malignant growths of rogue cells. And one of my theories has to do with sleep, when I figure that much of the body's repair and reproductive work goes on.

So I was fascinated to read this article from 2003, including the following paras:

"The first involves a hormone called melatonin, which the brain churns out during sleep. Melatonin belongs to a class of compounds called anti-oxidants that mop up damaging free-radical compounds. With a disrupted circadian rhythm, the body produces less melatonin and the cell's DNA may be more prone to cancer-causing mutations.

The second link lies with a hormone called cortisol, which normally reaches peak levels at dawn then declines throughout the day. Cortisol is one of many hormones that help regulate immune system activity, including the activity of a group of immune cells called natural-killer cells that help the body battle cancer. "

So, don't short change your body by burning the candle at both ends. Allow enough time for sleep and make sure it's quality sleep. You'll do yourself a big favour!

My TV show chugs along!

2007-11-12T05:46:00.000-08:00

Wow. I can't believe I'm up to programme 47 of my Smartphones Show. Viewings per month peaked during the summer at around 90,000, which I'm over the moon about.

And, since I'm curious as to how well it'll embed in a blog post here:

The Matrix: Just how DID they do that?

2007-11-08T02:00:00.000-08:00

Prompted to go back and revisit the Matrix trilogy of films on DVD, I'm still in awe of the special effects in the final movie, Revolutions. Yes, the story could have done with a little pruning in places, but the sheer scale of the battle scenes is ENORMOUS. With hundreds of sentinels, a giant drill and thousands of humans (both real and CGI) all on screen at once and all mixed in with explosions and dirt and grit and dust and all looking incredibly real, I just can't conceive of how they managed to create it, even with the fastest computers in the world and the best programmers. Amazing. Ditto for some of the machine city scenes near the end of the film. If you've never watched the Matrix trilogy then where have you been? Go rent or buy it now!

Vista is growing on me...

2007-11-03T11:13:00.000-07:00

I'm not totally, totally sold on Microsoft's vista yet, but I have to say that, despite the eye candy and despite the wierd way in which some things happen (disappearing 'recently-used' app shortcuts, anyone?), some of its technology does make things easier. The file indexing got turned back on and, after its initial hammering of my disk, seems to have settled down and made things faster and better. The way I can plug in almost any device and the drivers get installed invisibly and automatically is wonderful. And innovations like ReadyBoost, using a USB flash drive as a fast 'disk cache' help on my laptop to keep the main RAM running smoothly.

The biggest surprise was that all my applications from my XP era have installed and worked well, with only a very few minor problems.

It's still early days, but the tipping point is upon me and I suspect it'll be Vista most of the way home from here.

Gah! Why do they keep changing the clocks?

2007-10-28T06:29:00.000-07:00

Twice a year, most countries in the world change all their clocks and confuse everybody. Why???? There are arguments about wanting to let people play cricket and tennis further into the summer evenings, but surely there are as many people with young families, cursing the lighter evenings because their little ones don't think it's night time and don't want to go to sleep?

So, we have this ridiculous situation where people turn up an hour early or an hour late for everything for up to a day, plus we have to change most of the clocks on most of our appliances, risk upsetting computer software and generally endure chaos. In the name of what, exactly? Sheer madness.

Vista = The Matrix?

2007-10-26T03:39:00.001-07:00

Watching The Matrix Reloaded yesterday in the same week as I acquired a Windows Vista laptop was slightly surreal. After 4 days battle against 'helper' services and programs whose main purpose was to swallow processor cycles and RAM and generally get in the way, it was amusing to hear the 'Oracle' talking about programs that are written to do this and that and generally not be noticed. I'm sure Microsoft intended most Vista services to not be noticed, but in the real world on less than cutting edge hardware the constant hard disk access and processor/RAM hit is very noticeable.

And now I've ended up with a Vista laptop that's configured like XP and runs only 20% or slow slower. Why didn't I get a XP-running laptop in the first place? Because you can't buy these for love nor money.... Sigh.

On the bright side, Vista's device discovery and driver installation has been great. No printer driver CDs or trying to find CDs for every other accessory acquired in the last few years - everything was recognised immediately and silently installed. Pretty cool and how computers are supposed to work....

The way music SHOULD be bought in 2007

2007-10-19T01:08:00.000-07:00

Like thousands of others, I've just paid a few pounds to download the new Radiohead album directly from the band at their In Rainbows site. Essentially they leave it up to you, the listener/fan to set the price for the music. Some people will opt to pay £2, some £5, some £10 perhaps. But the point is that it ALL goes to the band themselves. No record label, no PR agencies, no shops with pile carpets, no poster campaigns to fund, just music direct to the fans and with almost no overheads.

Isn't that the way bands SHOULD distribute their music in this Internet age?

iPhone hacks - why do the hackers bother?

2007-10-09T13:16:00.000-07:00

Re: the latest iPhone hack. It's a serious question. I know you're going to say "Because they can, and to show that they're really cool and clever".

But Apple can update all iPhones remotely and there's certainly no shortage of functionality that they err... haven't got round to implementing yet. So with every update they're going to close the loopholes and exploits used by the current generation of hacks. And so the cycle will continue.

In the meantime, all the hackers have got to show for their efforts are a few bricked iPhones and lots of geek kudos and glory - maybe that's enough for them?

If you're a regular iPhone user, of course, just stay well away. Why risk bricking your iPhone for the chance to play with a few marginal third party applications for a few weeks until Apple closes the loop again?

Amplify that iPhone! Or just buy an N95...

2007-10-08T03:50:00.000-07:00

Exemplary sound quality over its speakers is not an Apple iPhone trait, alas. But it seems that you can now build your own iPhone amplifier in 10 seconds and just for a few pence!

Or just buy a Nokia N95 of course, and have really loud stereo speakers. Oh, and games, extra apps, 5mp camera, DVD video recording, TV out, etc.

Don't strikes usually hurt the strikers more in the long run?

2007-10-08T00:02:00.000-07:00

OK, so I'm probably hopelessly naive, but taking an overview of strikes (thinking of the Royal Mail here), isn't it usually counter productive in the long run? OK, a one day strike is a useful tool to get management's attention over something, but going on strike for, say, 2 weeks, can only have the effect of hugely harming the company's business, making it less profitable and less trustworthy to customers, making it more likely that management will have to cut jobs and restrict pay raises?

No company has infinite resources, so strikes do seem to be to be 'cutting off your nose to spite your face'. And an anachronism in 2007. What do you think?

Pogue reviews the One Laptop Per Child

2007-10-04T03:36:00.000-07:00

Such a cool device, optimised for countries with blinding sunlight, plenty of dust and infrequent power. Here's David Pogue's review - he's as impressed as I am. If you're in the USA this November, get one for yourself and the company gives another one to a poor child in the Third World.

DRM? Exactly

2007-09-28T09:28:00.000-07:00

Interesting to see ex-Microsofter Johansson ditching a DRM-heavy Microsoft app in favour of a non-Windows DRM-free solution for playing back multimedia. Especially interesting since I'd been struggling to get anywhere with Microsoft Office 2007's stupid approach to first 'activation' of its own trial version and then unfriendly handling of legacy Office 2003 files. After my teacher wife and I had torn our hair out in frustration, I simply installed the free OpenOffice 2.3 and peace was restored, with files being opened and saved properly - and we also knew where to find most of the functions rather than playing the new Office 2007 guessing game.

Crazy, crazy music purchasing

2007-09-24T00:20:00.001-07:00

And so yet another music service is to close (Virgin Digital), with customers being locked out of re-downloading music they've already paid for. Why do consumers put up with this? Just say no to DRM. Buy CDs and then keep them on your shelf, ripping them in iTunes or Media Player when you want to any portable device and carry on doing so for free until the end of time....

Shorts

2007-09-23T14:30:00.000-07:00

Well, that just about sums up the summer we've had (or rather haven't) in the UK. Looking down at my shorts next to the bed, I realised that I'd only worn them twice in the whole season. Surely, surely, this has to be the coolest and wettest summer since records began?
Steve Litchfield
(sent from a mobile device)