The government today announced that it is changing its emblem from a Union Jack to a CONDOM because it more accurately reflects the government’s political stance. A condom allows for inflation, halts production, destroys the next generation, protects a bunch of pricks, and gives you a sense of security while you’re actually being screwed.
Ok, the hype has passed, the keynote is done, Steve has spoken (enthusiastically) and we are suitably wowed (especially by the low entry level price point). But, also we are underwhelmed (it’s just a big iPhone dammit), and “best browsing experience ever”? – with no flash support? You must jest.
After some reflection here are my thoughts on the iPad.
It’s certainly a thing of beauty. Even without holding it in your hand, you can tell that from the dodgy streaming videos from the Yerba Buena Center, from the numerous photos swirling round the net, and from @stephenfry’s report on his blog. But that is what you expect from Apple and Jonathan Ive. You would be gutted if Apple ever released an ugly device. It’s taken as granted, a new Apple device will be an objet d’art.
It looks fast, and the interface is pure iPhone OS so looks and works great. But what can I do with it? And especially what can I do with it that I can’t currently do, or need to do better? It looks like a nice eBook reader. Colour, so certainly nicer looking the the monochrome eInk Kindle-a-like devices that are becoming commonplace. But I still don’t like the fact that it’s a locked in device. And do I want to read books and magazines on a electronic tablet? I don’t commute long train/plane journeys so am I going to eRead in my own home? What’s the benefit? I would still rather have a collection of physical books on a real shelf, than a virtual equivalent. Maybe it would be nice to have the facility when going on holiday but that is infrequent, and I could do it on my iPhone (albeit not quite as nice because of the smaller form factor) or, hey I could just BUY A PAPERBACK at the airport.
Am I going to take this device out and about with me? Well aside from the fact that I am an antisocial recluse who rarely ventures into the open, probably not. I don’t carry a big man bag and I don’t want to start, just to lug around the iPad. I would be worried about breaking it or getting mugged or stabbed for it. I don’t often find myself on a 3 hour train journey desparate to make a Keynote presentation.
So, if this device (assuming I bought one), is mainly staying in my house, what can I do on it better than on a traditional laptop or other device? Surf the web? Sure it looks great. You can swish pages around pinch and swipe and see all the specially formatted NYT pages. Great. It looks nice, and feels cool to do. But is it a leap ahead from my laptop with Firefox or Chrome? No. And, there’s still no flash support. Like it or not, Apple, a lot of cool web pages are still built on flash and by not supporting it you do not have the best overall web browsing experience.
Games? I’m not a massive gamer, but I have a Wii and a DS Lite, and I like playing a few games on my iPhone if I am caught somewhere with a little time to kill. But I can’t see the iPad being such a killer device that I need to have it to play some touch screen or tilt sensitive games. It’s not a must-do, not for me anyway.
Office productivity? You must be joking. That iWorks stuff looked nice and had a good intuitive interface but really I don’t often do that stuff, and if I want to make a presentation or work on some spreadsheets, I already have a laptop and MS Office which works fine, thanks. It’s cool for those who must have an iPad that it can also do that stuff, but it’s not going to make me buy one.
Showing your photos to friends and family. OK, this is one use which it does really nicely. I would concede that the iPad is a “best of breed” device for this application. But…. it’s not a killer enough app that will make me buy it. I don’t need to show my photos often enough that it matters crucially to me if it is beaufully done on an iPad or just reasonably done on the TV screen or on my laptop.
One place to keep all your calendars, email and contacts. I already have that. It works quite well and is called the iPhone.
So, you see the iPad is beautiful, desirable and undeniably cool. I would like one, it would be a great toy and nice to show off with. But I don’t really need one. I almost wish the price was higher, then I would have a real easy time rationalising why I don’t need one. The lower the price the more difficult that becomes. But I can still think of several other luxury items that I would probably buy with a spare £500-600 or so before an iPad.
An iPhone 3G S for starters. Or maybe an iPhone 4 whenever that might appear. Or even a Nexus?? Certainly a nice D-SLR camera (or similar like a Panasonic Lumix G1 Micro Four Thirds camera). I’d probably go for a PS3 or maybe even a swanky PVR of some sort like a Freesat PVR/Blu-Ray combo. Or just a nice big flat telly. Yes, I’d definitely like one of those…
(I reserve the right to eat my words at a later date)
I’ve been following Google’s press conference revealing more about their upcoming Chrome OS. Their focus seems to be on a lean stripped down web based OS which is basically a browser that runs everything inside it. It’s designed for netbooks with only solid state storage. All data is stored in and synced with “the cloud”.
Could I adapt my work patterns to this paradigm? I’ve thought about it a bit, and realised I am already beginning to go that way. Google state they expect Chrome OS to be used in “secondary” machines. I have recently ressurected my old nearly dead laptop by installing Ubuntu. I use it as a secondary machine, and I have hardly any local data or programs on it. Firefox, and a few web apps like Spotify for music (there is no stored tunes on the local machine) and some twitter clients.
I don’t do much document processing on this machine, but I dare say I could use Office live if I were running Windows, or Google docs for the few documents I do work on. I think to completely live in the cloud the online versions of MS Office would have to mature, but that will probably be sooner rather than later.
I think for what Google have stated there aims are for the Chrome OS it could easily work. I think I spend about 80% of my computer time use web apps of one sort or another and would welcome a fast booting web-focussed machine as a secondary (although probably primary in terms of hours used) machine. I would still need a fully featured off line machine for the other 20% or so (creating some more complex Office docs, photo storage and editing etc, but even these might easily transition to the cloud soon).
I will watch the Chrome news with interest.
I just finished watching the latest Doctor Who special and the last before the two part Christmas finale which marks the end of the Tennant reign. I loved the trailers for this special and have looked forward to it eagerly. Unfortunately I was a little disappointed. It was not bad, just not nearly as good as the trailer hype.
Overall I think I can only give it 6, maybe 7 at a stretch. I was hoping it was going to be a 8 or a 9 out of 10.
I was forced into a trial of Ubuntu on my old laptop. Why? Because when I upgraded my current laptop to Windows 7 the one thing I did lose was the use of my scanner. It is too old and simply incompatible with Win 7. My old laptop (Acer Aspire 1360, AMD Sempron processor 3000+ rating, NVIDIA GeForce FX Go 5200 graphics card, 60GB HDD, 0.5MB RAM!!!) running Windows XP could still use the scanner, but it was so old, and the hard drive was so full that it was virtually unuseable. Even after deleting and installing all unecessary files it still ran like treacle.
So, my grand plan was to restore it to a brand new Windows XP factory install and then just run the scanner software and nothing else. Unfortunately either I had some corruption on my HDD or I caused some during the restore process. I was only supllied with “recovery disks” not full Windows XP disks. I think it restores Windows from a small hidden partition. Somewhere along the line something got screwed up and even various utility boot disks, formats, repartitions and low level disk scans did not solve the problem. The PC would hang after a variable (short) time.
In desperation I installed Ubuntu. Amazingly it installed straight away no problems. Maybe because it uses a different filesystem? The install program included some repartitioning. This seemed to go OK.
So, with the latest version of Ubuntu installed, how is it for a Linux noob? Well a bit tricky. The GUI (Gnome) takes a little getting used to and the installation process is still a mystery to me. However, it works.
No wifi. First time round I connected to my router via an ethernet cable. This was immediately recognised and allowed me to update the system and apps, and install a few Firefox add-ons to make me feel more at home (hello Xmarks!). With wifi however it was a different matter. My wifi lan card is not natively supported by Linux but luckily there is a program to allow Windows drivers to be used. I installed this as instructed but it always seemed to get stuck at the stage where I was asked to input the WPA wifi security key. I therefore tried turning off the encryption all together and it connected first time.
So, I am currently trying to see if I can solve the WPA problem. There is a lot of information out there on the net but at this stage I am still such a noob that it is mostly gobbeldeegook to me.
UPDATE: I tried changing the encryption protocol to WEP instead of WPA-PSK. This seemed to work fine. It’s a bit annoying because now I need to change all my other wireless devices too, Wii, iPhone, other laptop etc. and I know that WEP is less secure than WPA, but I’ll go with it for now.
Seeing if the scanner and printer work. If the scanner doesn’t work I might try and see if will work under WINE the Windows emulator.
UPDATE: No luck with the scanner. It is not recognized natively. There is a project caller SANE (scanners are now easy) which aims to make a lot of scanners work with Linux. Unfortunately mine is not one of them. There might be some hope on the horizon though, as a company called JFL Peripheral Solutions have apparently announced that they will be releasing drivers for all Visioneer scanners for Linux.
UPDATE2: I contacted JFL and unfortunately their Linux drivers are only for current models, not legacy products, so I’m out of luck.
The printer (Epson Stylus Color 680) worked fine with no need for any additional steps.
USB keys worked OK too.
OK, I am upgrading to the full release version of Windows 7 Home Premium, after having used the Release Candidate trial version for a few months. I will be detailing my experiences here. It will be a rough and ready “type as I go along” blog, with no real fancy flourishes, but hopefully it might be of interest and help to the odd person.
So, where did I start from: I had Vista HP on my Dell inspiron 1525 laptop. When Win 7 RC became available a few months ago I tried it out by creating a 50GB partition and dual booting. The RC worked very well, but I still had to use the Vista install for some things as I didn’t at that stage want to transfer all my programs acorss (e.g. Office, iTunes etc.)
So now the full version is out (and shout out to Amazon for getting it to me on release day despite the postal strike). What I needed to do was:
So, first task, partitioning. I used a trial version of Paragon Partition Manager 9 which I got from an old magazine coverdisk. I used it to make the 50GB partition for the trial Windows 7 in the first place. It was still installed and it was pretty straight forward to delete the partition then increase the size of the remaining one. It had to be done in 2 steps and required several reboots during the process but it passed without incident.
OK, my first big hint. You need an external hard drive to do this properly. I have been reasonably good at backing up to ext. HDD using the free Microsoft SyncToy 2.0 to mirror my folders containing my documents and media files. There are a few other things you might want to consider backing up that probably aren’t in your “My Documents” folder.
You browser bookmarks/favourites. If you use Firefox, Internet Explorer or Safari I suggest you use Xmarks to maintain a cloud cache of your favourites. This not only helps moving between machines if you have more than one in the household, and also enables you to access your bookmarks via a web interface on any computer, but it comes in very handy when re-installing your OS! If you use Chrome , Opera or other weird browser you have to investigate other options to save and restore your bookmarks.
Emails, and contacts. I use Gmail as my primary email system, with a local copy downloaded to Outlook for “archive”. If you use Outlook make sure you have saved you Outlook.pst and archive.pst files which is where Outlook saves everything. For users of other systems YMMV but look into it. It is a real pain to loose all your email addresses.
iTunes. Many people use iTunes and you need to back up you library. There are instructions on how to do that on Apples site, and there are a number of ways to achieve it. It all depends on how you have your media organised. I actually rarely buy any song from iTunes, but i do download a lot of podcasts, and also all my iPhone apps are managed from iTunes so it was important to back it up. This simply meant copying the relevent folder to a backup external drive. All my tunes and videos (although in the iTunes library for syncing to the iPhone) are actually stored elsewhere in my directory structure. I know where everything is there, so I prefer to keep it that way.
Network settings. If you connect to the net through a wireless router, I would suggest you copy down all the settings somewhere. (You should do this anyway right?) In particular, note down the wifi encryption key. (What do you mean you don’t know it? You have turned on wifi encryption….) Either that or temporarily turn of the encryption. You could get by temporarily by connecting direct to your router with an ethernet cable but you will still need you wifi (WPA/WEP) keys eventually. If you don’t have them well tough, you are going to need to access your router and set up some new ones.
Microsoft OneNote. Probably not many of you use this but I have found it fairly useful. Make sure you backup the files specifically for this so you can import them back in later. Instructions are in the application’s help file.
OK, so you backed up everything important! The next thing I did was to fire up Windows Easy Transfer. This is installed as part of Vista (there is also an XP version – I think you have to download it from Microsoft.com) which allows you to back up various Windows settings, programs and files and transfer them to another computer (or a new OS installation on the same computer in this case). You have the option of what to include in the transfer. My tipn would be as little as possible. Don’t include lots of documents or the transfer may take hours. Back up your documents seperately as noted above. However it is useful to include the window settings. This saved me quite a bit of time. You have to save a loarge file to you external HDD (or flash drive or optical media) and then once Windows 7 is installed you can use this to get back your settings.
Make sure your PC is set to boot preferentially from CD/DVD!! If you are not sure, reboot and enter the BIOS setup screens (usually pressing F2 or F12 or some other function key early in the boot up process before the Windows screen comes up). So I then put the 32bit Win 7 DVD in the drive and re-booted. The instructions were minimal and easy to follow. The whole installation process took only about 40-50 minutes and little user interaction was required. The only important choice was right at the start. If you are installing over a previous Vista installation you are given the choice of “upgrade” or “clean install”. I always intended to do a clean install. Re-installing the OS has been a time honoured ritual for PC users since time immemorium, as a way to spring clean and speed up the PC, and this was another ideal opportunity. After reading this story on the BBC website I was even more convinced.
While you are installing a clean install you are told that if a previous version of Windows is discovered, the files will be stored in a folder called “Windows.old” This is incredibly useful as it provides a simple way of accessing your old documents. Yes, you should have backed them up to the external HDD in case something goes horribly wrong, but this makes it much easier to get back to where you were with your files. However it did give me a fright at first when I saw how little free space remained on the disk after installing Windows 7. Then I realised that the “Windows.old” folder was about 70GB in size. Most of it can be deleted.
Well everything seemed to go remarkably smoothly. The default screen resolution was a bit low, but a quick click on the display settings cured that. There was only a generic display driver present and the fancy “Aero” visual effects that are one of the nicest parts of the Win7 aesthetic were not working. I tried to detect new hardware but my graphics card was not redcognised. Some warning bells started to tinkle in my mind.
However first things first. Get on the net. Win7 automatically detected my router’s wifi signal but of course I needed the WPA encryption key. Never fear I thought, I have cleverly saved it in a document on my external hard disk. So i tried to open this Word file. D’oh. Word is not installed. So install Office. Takes about 20 mins. Then open the document with the WPA key and connect to wifi.
As soon as I was connected there were a number of important things to do:
So that’s about it. I still have quite a bit of work to do, mainly installing various applications that I like to use, and check that various hardware still works. I am working my way through this. It is a bit tedious, but a necessary evil. I will update here with any problems I come across with either software or hardware and any solutions I have found.
Software installs
Hardware
Am I imagining this, or are the insects of the world conspiring to disrupt our human sporting activities? Not so long ago a swarm of giant flying ants halted a cricket match in South Africa during the Champions Trophy semi-final.
Now, a soccer World Cup qualifier between Mexico and El Salvador had to be temporarily halted by a huge swarm of bees.
I’m waiting for a plague of locusts.
[FIRST SECTION HAS NO SPOILERS]
District 9 tells the tale of aliens among us. Among the citizens of South Africa to be precise, after a huge alien ship full of refugees becomes stranded above Johannesburg 20 years ago. The story is of the tensions between locals and the huge and growing refugee camp population as they are being forcibly evicted and moved on by the authorities to another camp further away from humans. Some humour, much gore and violence, and a little discomfort ensues as the treatment of the aliens show the humans in a pretty bad light.
The story is told in a docudrama style with excellent realistic effects despite the relatively limited budget. Despite being a bit uneven, particularly toward the end, it holds the attention well enough to be fun. Underneath however is a fairly conventional story of bad guys, Nigerian scammers, cat food, aliens, and redemption. There’s even a cute kid in there.
Rating: ☻☻☻1/2
[THIS PART HAS MINOR SPOILERS]
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The new movie produced by Peter Jackson and directed by South African newcomer Neill Blomkamp District 9 has been receiving quite a bit of hype recently ahead of is UK release this week.
It tells the story of a alien refugee camp set up in the outskirts of Johannesburg after the mysterious appearance of a huge alien space ship 20 years ago. It is shot in a documentary style, full of shaky cam, and faux news-reel footage. Interspersed are talking head vox pops from key players in the story reflecting back on events from some future point, hinting at the main events in the unfolding story.
Early on it is clear that there are many tensions between locals and aliens mirroring similar situations during the apartheid era and inevitably trouble ensues. In the middle of this is Wikus Van De Merwe, an employee of MNU – Multi National United, a private militarised organisation who are tasked with a mass eviction and removal of the settlers/refugees to a “safer” new camp located further away from J’burg.
At first Wikus’s actions and attitude as he goes about serving “eviction notices” is reprehensible, but a chance incident changes him and his course of life completely. Later on Wikus is no longer part of the establishment, but now an outsider and a fugitive, and has to turn for help to those he was formerly persecuting.
The effects, despite being a relatively low budget film (only $30M) are excellent, and prove that modernfilmmakers have truly nailed integrating photorealistic CGI into hand held live action (see also Cloverfield). There are a lot of obvious sources that are swiped, or alternatively paid homage to; Robocop, Starship Troopers, Transformers, Independence Day, Minority Report, and any number of console first person shooters with bald space marines and gravity guns.
The style slightly confused me. On the one hand the early scenes seemed somewhat over the top with humour that seemed to point to a Robocop style satire. But later things seem a bit more serious with some thought provoking scenes covering issues of detention, torture, vivisection and governmental and corporate greed.
However in the end it turns into an action-fest complete with a fun but unnecessary battle involving a heavily armoured troops and a giant manga-style exoskelton, and ultimately winds up as a heartwarming but conventional tale of redemption.
I’ll never eat prawns again.
Duncan Jones' "Moon".
[SPOILER FREE]
[Update: Moon has received 4 nominations for SpikeTV's Scream awards; Best SF Film, Best SF Director, Best SF actor (Sam Rockwell) and Best Screenplay. Vote HERE!) ]
So I finally managed to go and see the new movie Moon (warning there are spoilers on the official site!) directed by Duncan Jones. I had heard a bit about it from the internet (and inevitably the Twitterverse in particular, Peter Serafinowicz was vocal in his appreciation of the film) and it sounded right up my street. I am a science fiction fan, and while I enjoy they recent trend of CGI heavy explosion-fests as much as the next man, I have a soft spot for the more low fi gritty realism and thoughtfulness of films such as Silent Running, Outland, 2001 and Alien.
Trouble was this is a relatively low budget offering from a new director and it wasn’t on widespread release. So eventually I decided that this bank holiday I would track it down. I found that it was still playing at a number of cinemas near Leicester Square in London, and I decided on the small independent Prince Charles Cinema. It took just over an hour to get there, and the cost of travel was more than the entry ticket, but thankfully the film was well worth the effort.
Sam Rockwell gives an outstanding performance as Sam Bell, a solitary worker at a private corporation run mining facility on the far side of the moon. He single handedly runs operations with the aid of a HAL-like computer system, Gerty (voiced by Kevin Spacey). When not on the job, he spends his time watching video messages from his wife back on earth, growing plants (just a hint of Silent Running), and meticulously hand crafting a model of his hometown on earth.
The first act puts us in the boots of Sam, showing us the grind of his day to day work and his longing for his 3 year contract to be over so he can go home. There is just a hint of loopiness to his demeanour, but is it eccentricity borne of years in effective solitary confinement or the signs of something more?
The film deals with themes such as the loneliness of space, isolation, and how humans might deal with such situations. There are stylistic nods to 2001 in the white futuristic-retro octagonal corridors, and the soothing voiced computer who may or may not be completely on Sam’s side, but also shades of Alien in the future environment as a contemporary dirty work environment. Ridley Scott’s truckers in space behaviour is echoed by the miner in space of Sam (in a similar way to the drillers under the sea in The Abyss, or indeed the mining facility setting of Outland). The base seems lived in and real, not some space operatic construction.
Later as twists and turns unfold, we are asked to ponder the meaning of self and memory. The film despite being made on a small budget looks great, and a special mention must also go to the fantastically atmospheric and evocative score by Clint Mansell (formerly of Pop Will Eat Itself). The film is by turns laugh out loud funny, sad, thoughtful and tense. It doesn’t blast you out of your seat with effects but makes you think. It also is well paced (maybe a touch slow for some people, but I liked Solaris…☺) and hangs together well as a whole. I left the cinema feeling that I had seen a great movie. You know, when everything just feels…right. I can’t wait for more from Duncan Jones.
Rating: ♥♥♥♥♥
Dyson Airblade
You are all super-hygienic and always wash your hands after using a public toilet, right? Of course. And then you dry your hands before leaving? What? Are you one of those millions who stand patiently in the line and then twirl your hands about under the gentle puff of warm air willing your hands to dry quicker, before eventually giving up and walking out with the drips still falling from your fingers?
These days, that problem is becoming a thing of the past. In one further small step towards machine world domination, the era of the Next Generation Hand Dryer has arrived. These super powered jets virtually blast the water from your hands in about ten seconds flat, while making your skin ripple with pleasure at the same time.
The Dyson Airblade is perhaps the most celebrated of these new high speed dryers, closely followed by the XLerator. But there is a trend, with even the ubiquitous World Dryer Corp having to respond to keep up, with their World Dryer Airforce. These hand-drying behemoths are quickly gaining a fanbase throughout the world. Just search Twitter for “airblade” or “xlerator” to see the gushing comments. But how will you know where you can sample the delights for yourself?
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Next Generation Hand Dryer Locator:
The Next Generation Hand Dryer Locator
(Powered by Community Walk)
This is a community built and contributed interactive map, the aim of which is to display the location of Next Gen Hand Dryers throughout the world.
If you have come across one of these modern marvels of hand-drying, please consider taking a moment to visit the map and add the location of the dryer. You have to register to add it, but it only takes a minute. There are custom icons for the most common makes of dryer but if you find another one please let me know and I’ll make another icon for that too. You can add a comment about your dryer experience or even a picture!
If you like it please let your friends and colleagues know about it so they can also contribute.
Enjoy!
