Camera

A while back, I bought a digital SLR camera, and have added a few lenses and accesories as time has trickled past. I'm trying to get good at using it, without going all geek and dedicating my life to it.

I've read enough about how hard it is to make money from photography to tell me that this will not be more than a hobby unless I get very serious about it, and I seem to be congenitally incapable of getting serious about anything.

So far, very happy with the camera I have (though if I had waited three months, Nikon brought out a newer version for just a little bit more money that I would probably bought instead). It is easy enough to use that I am using it, but has enough features that I'm going to be learning for a long time.

Mice

Biker Mice From Mars.

WTF?

Bord'eaux

Following a very successful stay in a boutique hotel in Saint Hellier on Jersey, we're now in a boutique hotel in Bordeaux. it's a pleasant mixture of old world charm and very modern chic. Each room has its own personality, our is almost a new york loft, with concrete floors and brushed metal and glass tables, but it's with a european twist, deep pignments in the wall colours, Hermes bathroom stuff and italian linens. The other rooms are all different, and lovely in their own way.

The owner, Thierry, takes it all very personally, as if he's inviting you into his house. There's an open plan kitchen off the main communal area (but that seems to only be for the staff to use), and a CD collection is avaialble for anyone to play in the lounge areas.

This is wonderful, but can lead to service being very relaxed as well. It also means that the place works wonderfully as long as you behave "normally" there.

The car parking is in a private location, and only available through the hotel staff, so if you want to park at 2 in the morning, it's either park in a public space or wake someone up.

If they are going to run a hotel this way in a busy city, I think they need to go the extra step and make the kitchen available to guests, provide 24 hour parking and have a night staff. Otherwise, a wonderful place to be.

book-book-book-book-Aaaahhh-cow!

This (youtube link) was, and still is my favourite sketch from sesame street. It's entertaining, funny, totally off the wall, surreal and perfect for helping a growing ten year old mind understand that there's some wierd shit out there...Compulsive viewing, and sesame street never got any better after this.

Lovely, lovely apples

My aunt has previously had maybe 40 hours experience of computers, using Windows 95 and ME a couple of times in the past. Her level of technical knowledge is less than mine was at the age of 15, though she has forgotten more about the technicalities of pottery (kiln temperatures/glaze mixes/clays etc) than I will ever know, and has more creativity in her little finger than I seem to be able to manifest altogether.

Time passed since my aunt last ventured on the internets, but she was aware that it is there, and felt like bettering herself a little. The Open University beckoned from afar, and it seemed worthwhile to get broadband and a new computer to aid her distance learning.

Yay, thinks I, an opportunity to migrate another person over to a Mac (in this case a MacBook).
Boo, thinks I, this will not be easy - it will take a lot of patience and explanation...but I don't mind, I spent years doing that as a job, after all.

Well, I have to say, so far, it has turned out a lot easier than I thought it would. I always go on about how OSX is easier to use, but I'm so far removed from the learning process (or my brain is so used to "all this computer stuff") that I forget what that ease of use means to someone new to computing.

Teaching my aunt the basics took only a couple of hours (and most of that was spent discussing the finer points of DSL pricing structures in France). She now seems able to write, send and receive e-mail, browse the internets and use Front Row to play CDs and DVDs, and has only needed to learn a whole bunch of jargon, rather than re-wiring her brain to fit in with Windows.

The main thing I guess I'm saying here is that for me, everything that my aunt has learned is no longer jargon. It's part of my everyday language, and it's so easy to forget that it's not part of everyone elses. Macs make it easier to pass on that language by minimising the extra jargon needed. Still, it might be a good idea for my wife to sit down with my aunt at some point to go over use of the computer, so she definitely doesn't get overloaded by jargon from me, which I'm likely to do unless I exercise extreme self control.

True, my aunt's still on dial-up until they connect her ADLS line at the other end, but it's a start...and a very easy one at that. That is, she's on dial-up since I got hold of a dial-up account that works from somewhere other than my own phone line...what's that all about?

Hols

It's finally time for me to relax a bit...I am now officially on holiday, and we've go things to do.
1. enjoy ourselves
2. go to Jersey for the weekend - stay here and relax.
3. see some animals being conserved at The zoo
4. enjoy ourselves
5. go to Barcelona, or maybe just Bordeaux, or maybe as far as Toulouse, or we might just go to The Bridge.

Oh, and as far as work is concerned, we've reached a big milestone in the project I've been on for the past couple of years, and my annual review is due this month, and I've asked for more responsiblity, so hopefuly it's a time of change...which is always good fun :-)

Cute AND fun....?

This is cute AND funny.

Wii vs Ps3

Going round in my head this morning...

Sit on my face and tell me that you love me
I'll sit on your face and tell you I love you too
I love to hear you moralize
When I'm between your thighs
You blow me away.

Sit on my face and let my lips embrace you
I'll sit on your face and then I'll love you truly
Life can be fine if we both sixty nine
If we sit on our faces
In all sorts of places
And play till we're blown away.

Google tells me it's Monty Python and that I had the lyrics for line two a bit confused.
What dream land was I in last night? At least it wasn't foolishly brave rabbits. Phew!

Earth, Wind & Fire - and water.

There used to be an ugly barn-type thing in the field next to our garden. Then something happened in there, and it burned down. The wind blew a little, and it set light to our grass. The Pompiers came and put it all out...it was very exciting.

Seriously, that did happen over the weekend, the end of our garden is now a tourist spot, as the locals all drive past really slowly. To do that, they must drive downa farm track for quarter of a mile, off the main road through the village, that goes in a loop apst some fields. I stood there on Sunday, smiling and waving at them as they went past...they seem to think I'm nuts, but I did get some smiles in return.

As we're in the middle of an agricultural area, the fire crews were very quick to respond, with fields of corn, wheat and vines stretching out for miles around they did not want the fire to get to know them intimately. There hasn't been much rain recently.

I took a load of photos, and stuck some on flickr as a keepsake.

Disappointment

It's hard to tell what I was most disappointed by on Sunday, but there were quite a few things seemingly fighting for my attention.

Things I wanted to like about being at a Formula 1 Grand Prix. Everything.
Things I liked about being at a Formula 1 Grand Prix race. Not one thing.

The saddest part is, I wasn't expecting it to be a whole heap of entertainment unless something out of the ordinary happened, but even so I was totally underwhelmed by the whole experience.

Two of the things I was looking forward to
1. The sounds of the engines, full out as they reached the end of the pit straight, going down gears as they approached the first corner and accelerating up through the gears as they left the pits. I had heared the previous V10's and a V12 many years ago, and remembered the full, throaty roar building into something almost too painful to listen to, but still with a musicality to it. These days, they just sound like someone's firing a million bolts at a thick steel sheet and you have your ear pressed against it. The engines just made noise, and too much of it. This left me feeling sad and annoyed.

Then there was the moving through the gears. Imagine that sheet steel with bolts being fired at it, and every now and then, there is a pause for a tenth of a second. That's a gear change. That's just plain boring.

There is no glory to these engines, they're just technological marvels. It hurts my soul to listen to them.

2. Something more entertaining than a person being told continuously by the stewards that they could not poke their camera through the safety net. Even that was boring after about the fifth time, with no-one loosing their temper or waving any arms around or going to get a couple of bouncers. He just got sick of being told not to do it and went and sat down. That was the most exciting part of the whole day.

I probably wouldn't have minded if I had been able to just turn up, watch it all happen then leave again, but no...to be part of this whole experience involves queueing for 3 hours on the roads leading up to the circuit (Bernie, sorry, but whatever you say about access to Silverstone, Magny Cours beats it for silliness hands down). The dual carriage motorway ends about 5 miles north of the circuit, turning into a single lane road that wends its way through the country-side, until you turn off it into utter bedlam at the actual circuit itself. The signage is utter crap, with the way to places being pointed out sometimes, and forgotten about others, so you can end up going round a roundabout looking for the next sign to the reception area, but of course, there isn't one. It's pot luck time.

Then there's getting out, which makes the getting in part look thoroughly organised. From arriving 5 miles north of the circuit to being 5 miles away from the circuit took about ten hours, with three of those spent sat in the grandstand watching not very much happen. If I sat down on the floor and shuffled my arse along, I could have done those ten miles in less time and had much more fun doing it.

You may think that I'm bitter about the experience. No, not really. Just disappointed. They have been doing this for a long time now. If I had been doing something for this long, and was this bad at doing it, I would be disappointed with myself. I was slowly loosing my respect for the Formula 1 circus as their in-fighting and petty games leads them to be less interested in the race and more interested in saving face, fleecing the customers and treating their corporate sponsers well. Now, I've moved from "loosing respect" to "gaining contempt", which is a very dangerous positiion for a paying customer to be in. There are other things to do on Sunday afternoons, and I think a lot of people are starting to do them rather than watch F1.

It's disappointing.

Normality

Normality returned to my life for a week, but is going away again tomorrow. We spent from Sunday night to Saturday morning in the flat in London, with me commuting by bicycle (my tyres were a bit flat after a month of being ignored) to the office every day.

Off to Paris for the night tomorrow, then Magny Cours for the French GP (first time I've watched one) and then we re-enter our alternative reality, hopefuly until the end of August.

Things of note? I just bought my first SLR, with the vain hope of learning a few things that will mean I can take some photos that people instantly recognise as not just "snapshots". I'm sure I'll master some of the technical side of it, but must wait and see if the creativity in me finds a hole big enough to sneek out of into the world at large.

This thingy on the internets was supposed to be one such hole. I'm not sure if it's managed to be that yet.

Anyway, maybe I'll post a shot or two up here when the mood, courage level, stupidity and belief in one of them manage to synchronise. then again, maybe I'll just put a shot a day up and they'll all be crap. I had the idea of producing a total self portrait (no, not just a nude), showing every part of my body accesible to the outside world. May take some creativity just to be able to manage it. It would be a series of photos, rather than one.

And there was me talking about normality. Aren't you glad you don't have to put up with that every day? I certainly am.

Keep moving

There's something that some citizens of the usa (and many people who both live and work in cities - myself included, when I'm in London) just do not get. It's a shame they don't get this, because their lives would probably be richer for it. The reason they don't get it is that their lives are driven by a market for the sake of the market.

And the thing they don't get - enough time.

"We Americans are in an incredibly fucking hurry" - Rands In Repose

This was something highlighted by a trip to France and Italy. In France, there is a long lunch break every day when most shops close. Almost all shops are closed on Sundays. This changes a bit when you get to central Paris, but, for all but those ten or so square kilometres, the same thing happens every weekday at about 12:00. The shops close, and everyone either goes to a cafe or restaurant, or goes home for a relaxed lunch (rush hour starts at 12:00 as half the population drives home - it's repeated at 14:00 as they return). Places start to open again between 14:00 and 14:30. This applies to most supermarkets, bakers, butchers, hardware shops, car dealers...in fact almost everything other than cafes, bars & restaurants.

If any one of those market driven people I talked about earlier were to actually read this, I imagine I would be able to hear the thought process.

"They're supposed to be in business, why aren't they staying open for lunch, just hire someone cheap to stand in for a few hours, especially if your competitor is closed, it's an opportunity to make more money, isn't that why you opened the shop in the first place? Good for nothing, lazy bastards, they deserve to go out of business if that's their attitude, it's the time of day when most of your customers will have some spare time to spend money with you."

There are a few easy reasons why they don't do that. For example, most if not all of their customers don't actually want to spend any of their lunch time shopping. They want to spend their lunch time having lunch, a long, relaxed lunch, just like my ficticious shop keeper is doing. For proof of this, at 13:00 go to one of the supermarkets that is open all day. It's empty. All the potential shoppers are having lunch.

Secondly, the shop keepers want to spend their lunch time having lunch, relaxing, taking their time, talking to friends, savouring their delicious food. Isn't that why they are running a shop in the first place, so they can afford to have a lifestyle that includes that good lunch?

Coming from London, the utter frustration of this is immense, and surprising. The shops are closing just at the time my city brain is thinking of the shops I'd like to visit. After 3 weeks here in France, it's just starting to fit into place, and the frustration is being replaced by acceptance of the situation. When I get to the point of expecting it, and not being surprised when I see it, I'll know I have finally started to settle in here. Forget the language. It's the culture that makes the French the French.

I'm a Brit working for an American software company from my house in rural France. I'll have to make sure I choose the bast bits from each culture. Working to live is the most important part of the French culture to take.

Key words for this morning

"great tits" and "swallows".

At least I know what I'm talking about...you can think what you like.

Technofear

Thinking of buying a reflex digital camera, the obvious way forward is a couple of magazines on the subject, with the expectation that a quick flick through their recommendation pages, reviews and feature round-ups would give me some understanding of what I need to be looking for.

Instant techno-babble.

I have no idea what any of this means, beyond a vague knowledge of a relationship between the number following the acronym ISO and the amount of time that the shutter must be open to get a decent amount of light onto the film (except it's a sensor now, not a film). As soon as they started talking about mounting compatibilities, I decided to give up until I can cross reference with a decent glossary that includes helpful explanations - and doesn't just define one techno-babble word in terms of other techno-babble words.

I presume they are talking about compatibilities between different systems of attaching one thing to another, and not a spiralling increase in compatibility, but until I've studied it, I can't be sure. Google is my friend, let the searching begin...

Edit...

This is the kind of thing I was hoping not to find. The first definition is reasonably good, but waffles a bit. At least it tells me what an "f-number' is, how it's calculated and gives hints as to why and how it may be useful.

The definition of "f-stop" means nothing unless you know what an f-stop is. It does say when it may be useful, but not how or why. I'm kinda hoping these were written by different people.

Sod the joints, give me lots of screws any day...

Table 1.0 did not work out.

In fact, most of it ended up in large pieces, being hurled (as in thrown with violence) out of the window into the courtyard, bouncing a few times and finally coming to a defiant rest with a smugness that I did not know wood could display.

Table 2.0 quickly followed. I would call it 1.1, but it doesn't contain much from the original (think gouges torn out, impacts, tears and general breaking), and was of a completely different design, so it gets the old 2.0

I guess the original should have been version 0.5, but it was intended for GA, so I can't use that excuse.

Things I learned.
1. When making a table, unless you are working to very fine tolerances, it's best to make the frame that the table top will then rest on, rather than making a table that the legs will attach to.

2. I wasn't working to any tolerances, never mind fine ones.

We now have table. Actually, it's a kitchen work surface, no one will ever sit at this, just stand at it chopping, peeling and shucking oysters. Now who's feeling smug...eh?

Joints

No, not that kind of joint...and following my post about posture and backs, I guess you think this is about elbows and knees and knuckles and other such sub-cutaenous joints.

No.

This is about joints between bits of wood, and how much more complicated they are than you would think after a cursory glance at a table or two, or after having a few Ikea Moments (tm). Well, they are certainly more complicated than I thought after said cursory glances and Ikea Moments (tm).

My First Table (tm) seems to be coming out stable and strong and not wobbly or liable to fall apart...yet...But. There are gaps everywhere, mitred joints that are distinctly not joined up - or even aligned anywhere near each other - and bits that were meant to be perpendicular to other bits that will never know the meaning of the word.

Why this huge chasm between what Ikea manage to do thousands of times a day, and what I have struggled over the past week to achieve?

Bends. You see, the wood that Ikea have has been cut, planed, sanded and otherwise processed to fine tolerances by BIG machines. It's probably also been bred and grown specifically to make a certain type of piece that fits into their furniture.

The more predictable bits of the wood I used came from the local DIY centre, and were chosen by a person with no skill or experience in doing so (me) with criteria that had more to do with it being cheap and about the right size than anything I should have been considering.

The less predictable bits of wood came from the floor of the barn, and took 3 days worth of hard work with increasingly powerful power tools before they were in any kind of state to be called a set of four very nice, rustic oak table legs. Wood is a natural, once living thing. Unless you are Ikea (or a real carpenter), it is unpredictable, bent, mis-shapen and not the kind of thing that it's easy to throw together without planning, fore-thought and some of that skill and experience I am currently lacking.

As long as my table carries on doing what it is supposed to (keeping things the correct distance from the floor) without resorting to wobbling or falling apart, then I will remain proud of it.

posture

Good posture is not something that was ever hammered home to me in my younger years, so my body has a whole repertoir of slouches, and lounges with which to torture my poor spine and lower back. It was ony last year, during the five minute training session for my new ergonomically sound office chair that I was informed of the need to ensure that my elbows are supported, otherwise I will end up with tight shoulder and upper back muscles. And there was me thinking that this was what sitting in a chair all day was supposed to do to you.

After the delivery and setup and training, my shoulder and back pains disappeared within a week. Not bad for something that hd been happening to me for over ten years. That something as simple as a pair of adjustable arm rests could have sucha startling effect amazed me.

So that's why I just splashed out on an office chair with arm-rests for when I'm working from home.

I'm now a lot less tense by lunch-time.

Whine-y

I can see what all those other whine-y MacBook Pro owners are saying about their whine-y MacBook Pro's, but having used mine, a few others and a couple of Dell and Sony laptops (sorry, "portable computers") and a few desktops recently, I can't help thinking something along the lines of "get a life".

Yes, if the processor is throttled back there is a distinct buzzy/whiney noise out of (mostly) the left side of the case, and I can see that if you are in a quiet place it would be annoying, but it's nothing worse (and in some cases a lot better) than things I've heard from other laptops (sorry, "portable computers").

Apple should be on top of this, and should have better digital/analogue interfaces, and should have picked this up at the design or quality control stages, but it really is not the end of the world, and is certainly not something to send the thing back over.

End of obligatory post by new MBP owner about the whine.

So, I've tracked down all the paper tissues and thrown them all away

The mess is mostly cleared up, and I've had my first day riding the silver machine.

Of course, not everything is as scrummy as the scrummiest scrummy sweeties from Mr. Bonbon's Scrummy Sweetie Emporium, purveyor of the Scrummiest of Scrummy Sweeties to the Discerning Young Gentleman since 1823. Oooh, no sir.

One thing I'm not too keen on so far is the extremities of the keyboard. They seem to have been chopped off a bit. I guess it's so there's room for all the wizardry to do with dimming screens, and lighting keyboards, and those magic soundy things they call "speakers" being so good for their size...but I keep trying to hit a shift key that's only half there with my left hand, and the return key is a little bit too thin for anything other than my little finger.

I'm used to a 12" iBook, a dell laptop and various full-size keyboards, but for some reason, this one seems to be too small. It's exactly the same width as the iBook keyboard, but maybe it's a psychological thing, and I expect there to be more of it with there being more of the machine in general.

I've become an obsessive-compulsive. It's this glossy screen thing. If I approach the screen from the side and catch a finger mark in the reflection, it's straight out with the nearest spectacle lens cloth and that smudge is a bad memory. I'm hoping I'll stop doing this soon - if nothing else, it's pissing off anyone using the machine when I walk past.

Then there's this iSight thing - and it's unholy relationship with Delicious Library. That kind of thing should not be allowed.It has been a mammoth effort of will to restrain myself from deleting all of the things in my DL that I assiduously typed the ISBN or the barcode for, and to then sit there with a look of blissful, assanine rapture on my face scanning them in...beep.....beep.....beep all day long. Not to mention the fun that the "mirror" widget has given me. woo-hoo, I didn't realise how deep-set my eyes have become in this heat.

Oh, and I do feel a little dirty still, after putting Parallels on and installing a copy of XP. It had to be done, though, for the freak-show factor if nothing else. Eeeeeew, what's that yeuchy grey, angular window thing doing on my lovely new curvaceous smooth, glossy Mac?

"Ha-ha-ha, look daddy, it's got a silly window that pops up *all* the time telling you that it's not secure. Silly operating system, why doesn't it just be secure in the first place?"

"Shush, junior, you'll make the poor freak feel bad, you shouldn't talk like that about the inadequate. Especially not in front of them."

So that's what happened. I love my new MacBook Pro, other than trying to squeeze all those syllables that don't seem to go together too well out instead of just saying "Powerbook". Of course, I'm not In Love with it, you'll understand. The tissues were just a temporary thing before I got hold of myself again. No, that didn't come out right...neither did that.

Go away.

Please excuse the mess...

But I think I just exploded with excitement. The new MacBook Pro arrived today, and has astounded me from the moment I opened the box. I'm a many-year Mac user, and was prepared for how easy it was going to be to get things up and running...or so I thought.

Nope. 100% off the mark. Fifteen minutes after opening the box and unwrapping everything, I had my old 500MHz G3 iBook in front of me, except it was running a million times faster, had a glossy wide screen and was all silvery. Other than that, nothing had changed - everything else was the same, from the desktop picture rotations to the printer settings.

The migration wizard does whatever the opposite of "sucks" is, and it does it a lot.

I ran software update, and pulled down all of the latest versions of everything, restarted and away we went again.

The significant other pushed me off the seat, and within 20 seconds had fast user switched (with obligatory "oooooh" as my screen rotated out of the way and hers appeared), and was checking her mail, opening a podcast and pissing around in photoshop elements to her hearts content without really noticing any difference. It was all going soooooo smoothly...until...I pushed her off the seat to play with my new toy again, how dare she interrupt my fun in an attempt to do some actual productive stuff?

There were a few minor "application X has been updated, can it use your keychain still?" questions every now and then, but that's expected.

Woo!

and Yay!

Virgin

I think I finally understand the Apple hardware design ethic. It's there to remind us what grubby, filthy, hair-shedding, skin-shedding ape descendants we are, and a way for Mr Ive to show how perfect his life must be. I bet he doesn't shed skin - he must have evolved to the point where his dead skin and hair are re-absorbed into his body and formed into tiny angels that seranade him and his family to sleep and guarantee his entry into heaven.

I bet even his farts smell of lavender and his sweat never reaches that foul odour; instead the only bacteria that have adapted to living on his skin turn it into a subtle musk with a hint of refreshing lime leaves.

My two day old apple keyboard has already lost its virginity, with a few minor hairs (they look like eye-lashes) in places that only a feather duster would be able to go without dismantling the whole thing. God knows how much this is going to show me up over its lifetime. My dell keyboard at work, with its dull dark blue, never shows anything up, being designed for use by mere apes.

Jonathan Ive was sent to earth to make the rest of us feel dirty. Bastard.

Futility

Never, ever, ever, ever start to contemplate the utterness of the futility of what you are doing half way through a long, tedious, soul-destroying, futile task that you know you have to get to the end of in a finite time. It fucks you up.

podcasts - pronunciation and enunciation

Sometimes, it's weird listening to people on podcasts - there's stuff that I've only ever read about in magazines or on websites, but never actually spoken to a live human being about - I just don't know anyone interested in talking about them...I am geek.

This is fine, but it does mean that I've got my own internal pronunciation for a bunch of techy words and names, and it's very wierd (occasionally even annoying) to hear someone elses pronunciation. It's one of those fingernails on the blackboard, pulling wool through your teeth kind of moments. Eeeew.

Oh, yeah, and while I'm on it...this is a message to all podcasters. Enunciate. You put the fucking words up there for me to listen to. Fucking well make sure I can hear them. Doh.

Nothing to complain about...

Well, life's pretty good at the moment - endless small disappointments and several nagging doubts, but nothing that a grown-up person like myself can't get over without batting an eyelid. I even have a couple of whipping posts to lash in the event that it all gets too much for me - there's a couple of insurance companies who have pissed me off big time over the past few weeks, but who now want to try to do everything they can to make me happy. so I just have to keep phoning them up and being dissapointed, and they'll massage me into submission.

I've been on a big retail therapy kick since my car was broken into - an event I've taken as an opportunity to get rid of it and put a younger more racy model in its place. I mean, it had been good to me, loyal, always there when I needed it, good at what it does, but nothing so fancy that anyone would be jealous and want to take it away from me. There comes a time, however when a man is looking for something a little different, and just being there for me every morning, and looking after me every evening is just not enough.

So, it was straight onto Auto Trader, looking at all the sleek bodied Alfa Romeos and Seat hot hatches (though I'm not sick enough as to be interested in a VW golf - I never could stand posh totty, nor am I sad enough as to head over the tracks to look at anythig by Ford). Audi's held a facination for me for a while as I tried to convince myself that I was still looking for reliability over fun, but they were just too expensive for anything with any get up and go, and the ones I could afford had no immediate return. No, if I was to stray from the old dear, I wasn't about to do it with a matronly bavarian diesel - I wanted something that would give me a bit of a buzz when I woke up and caught a first glance every morning.

So I looked up a few Alfa 147's - 3 to 4 years old with 50,000 to 75,000 miles on the clock seemed to be in my price range, and looking thorugh all the online adverts, they sounded better and better as I listened to the cries of pain of the reluctant owners. Poor, unfortunate people who had to give up their bit of totty as they procreated too much, got married or were otherwise having to settle down in one way or another and buy a people carrier / Ford anything / Astra Zafira or whatever they are. This was the kind of car I wanted.

I was willing to scour the country, visiting out of the way parts of Scotland, Wales, Yorkshire and Lancashire to find the right one. It was with this fire in my belly that I made myself a little list, whittled them down to about five and started to make arrangements for time off work, hire cars and places to stay where needed.

Then the small doubts started to creep in - a report from an ex owner that the visits to the garage were often and that you were paying Gaultier prices for everything. A couple of web site reviews that said the same. The advice of an ex mechanic to make sure they hadn't been owned by a boy racer (or someone aged 45 who thought they were a boy racer). The video review that went on for 98% of its time about how good the handling is, but the engine could be a bit more responsive in the lower ranges, but then spent the last 2% warning about making sure you liked your mechanics as you'd have plenty of time to see them - and be prepared to had over a substantial part of your income to make sure they are well fed every month.

All of these dripped a little more fire retardant on the burning flame of my heart, but still couldn't quench the flames enough for me to change my mind. No, that can when I actually go t my hands on a couple of the examples on my list. They were good little cars, went well, went round corenrs well, seemed to be a good quality, but there was just something that wasn't quite right.

Then I HPI'd them. Ouch. They were both clean, and as expected with no recorded accidents, nothing nasty - but the mileage was always a little crazy. There would be at least one owner who did a massive amount of miles in a very short time, and at least one owner who looked like they just bought the car to admire it in the drive way. It didn't feel right. Each one seemed ot have had a little boy racer screaming around in it at some point...something I was trying to avoid.

I looked at the photos of those I hadn't seen with a fresh, more critical eye, and there were the little flaws I was hoping not to see - a wheel arch that was freshly painted (accident), a seller changing their mind about the number of miles (even though the odometer said 62,000) after I asked for the log book number and VIN so I could HPI his pride and joy - he admitted it had actually done over 140,000 miles so we said goodbye.

Maybe there was one out there for me, the perfect, not too unreliable, uncrashed, honest, unmodified Alfa 147 that I could hope to drive without breaking my patience and credit history, but for now I've given up the chase.

So what did I do? Well, I'm back with the old Peugeot 306, but I've gone for a younger one with a more sporting engine and gearbox (not good for those long cruises, but much more fun around town and out in the countryside). It should be almost as reliable as the last one, but will gie me a few thrills when I feel I need them.

There's a deep and meaningful insight in to humanity and society in there somewhere, but I can't be fucked finding it.

Apple UI inconsistencies...?

It's a small thing, but it's obvious that either

• someone missed this inconsistency - so why was no-one looking for it

Or even worse


• someone knew about this inconsistency and didn't do anything about it

Oh, and when did Apple start using OK / Cancel in response to a question they are asking their users? As a single ocurrance, this is not good. If it's part of a trend, this is a sad time for Mac uses.



Remove Deleted items uses a sheet that drops down from the menu bar...nice modern way of working, but what's with the use of OK?



Remove Junk items uses a standard dialog box...a different way of working

Just a quickie

There's a quote that's floating around that , if substantial, makes me sick.

"The implicaton that there was something wrong with the war plan is amusing"

How a human being can find anything about the unneeded deaths of thousands of any living creature amusing is beyond me. That it's one of the most powerful people on the planet makes be scared. That they are stupid enough to say this in pubilc is rather sad.

Oh, it was Donald Rumsfeld that is purported to have said this.

Just "Get it"

I started this a while ago, and saved it as a draft about 10 times, but it's turned into a bit of a rant, and I don't have the energy or inclination to continue at the moment, so you can have it for all it's worth. Maybe I'll proper it up later. Doubt it though.

A little background. I have a list of sites that I spend time wandering around on this here internet thingy, reading maybe 15-20 articles a day, skimming maybe another 15-20 and skipping over 30-40 without finding anything in their titles or summary in NetNewsWire, NewsGator or FeedDemon to make me want to follow their link. I have 31 regular feeds, of which only 4 are nothing to do with technology.

Another thing about me, I use a Mac at home, and Windows at work. I have an iPod, and use it to listen to music and podcasts. If my partner mentioned the idea of buying a portable digital music player, I would think less of them if they bought anything other than an iPod (until the prospect of sex came up, then they would, of course, have been right all along!).

I could be considered an advocate of Apple, having recommended their products to more people than I have recommended similar products by other companies. Some may even want to use the derogatory "Fanboi", though I think that's probably taking it a bit too far as I would recommend a rival product over an Apple one if it was more appropriate.

What am I on about all this for? Well, it just lets anyone who reads this know where I am coming from in the following rant.

Spattered around the comments of the sites I visit on a daily basis is what I call the Apple noise. This is, luckily, a small contingent of comment makers who post negative and/or derogatory remarks about either the original article or about another comment when Apple or one of their products is mentioned in a positive way. These usually consist of a choice of a long dispelled rumor, myth or fact that's no longer true, or just some plain, blatant lies, mixed in with a hint that the person they are responding to is an Apple Fanboy, sucking on the cock of Stephen P Jobs or unable to see the grit of the world outside the fabled Reality Distortion Field.

I wouldn't mind if these people actually understood what they are talking about, but most of them are like me, blinded by their techie view of computers and how they are used. To us, a "user" is someone way down there at the level where they are just about capable of reformatting the hard drive of thier home computer, installing Windows, connecting to the internet and downloading the latest set of drivers and troubleshooting them until they all work, all without help from an actual techie.

What they don't understand, and the reason they should be publicly dismissed in the most derisory manner possibe, is that Apple don't see a user in the same way.

There are many ways that people refer to the users that people think Apple is aimed at. "Ma & Pa", "Mom & Pop", "Granny & Grandad", "Artistic" as in "he's too artistic to understand these technical things".

The thing is, they are all right, but they don't have the whole picture. You see, Apple is aiming at everyone. Well, everyone except the big corporates with their integrated infrastructures...they will come later.

In among that "everyone" are people with every level of understanding of the technology, and Apple are trying to make it so that all of them have the same degree of productivity and as good an experience as all the others. Think about that for a few minutes. Think about all of the things you currently know about technology, then imagine what it would be like not knowing each of those things. Forget all of the confidence you have in using that technology. You are now one of these target users.

Now think about the person you know with the greatest technical knowledge. No, not that kind of technical knowledge - I mean writers, business analysts, architects, designers, graphic artists, pharmaceutical scientists, theoretical mathematicians, network designers, nurses, doctors, dentists, photographers, structural engineers. In a nutshell, people who have a massive amount of technical knowledge; people who make the Noise Makers look rather insignificant. These people are also target users.

Now, think about all those people who do know the technology, but mostly just need to use it to get their job or hobby done...you guessed it.


apple fanboi
linux & windows people just don't get what it is that apple users do get
the level to which an apple user shouldn't have to think about all that crap
windows & linux people can scoff and sneer all they want, but if you put them next to most apple users in a sphere the apple users are interested in, they start looking like the slime that first oozed from the primordial soup. The apple users really don't care.

Double vision.

I always like to find new ways to relegate my stereotypes to the landfill they belong in. Unfortunately, the world does not give me many opportunities.

I just spent a week in New York, NY and Jersey City, NJ. Almost every interaction I had managed to invoke a stereotype. Most were fairly innocuous

• The twenty-something hurrying out of a gym into a lunchtime crowd with mobile phone to his ear yelling into it something about something that was obviously very important, oblivious to everyone in his way and within ear-shot.


• The middle-ager in exercise clothing and bright white running shoes walking down the river path with arms swinging and a look of determination staring straight through anything in the way of loosing that trim, fit look or those extra ounces


• The obese mid-states tourist, a baggy t-shirt tucked into a high-belted pair of stonewashed denim jeans, with the ubiquitous pair of brand new, stunningly white sports shoes and at least four others with the exact same...maybe a different pastel colour stripe on the sports shoes, and two wearing oversized glasses.

So, what am I supposed to do with my stereotypes?

These are just a sample, there was a myriad of loud New Jersey-ites in sports clothing, a plethora of effeminate shop assistants and more dog-wielding loudmouthed New Yorkers than you could shake a stick at...where was a boy supposed to look to avoid leaping to conclusions and, of course, falling into being my own stuffy, stiff-upper-lipped Englishman stereotype?

Read more

Twelve books that changed the world. It looks like a book that's worth buying all about other books worth buying, though I doubt I can afford the Magna Carta. Not 'till my true identity as the king of all the world is revealed, anyway.

Brian Walden's own take on it is both touching and informative, and well worth a read in itself.

Now, what were the books that most influenced me? Where's that copy of Thomas the Tank Engine got to....?

What do you think the surprise will be?

There's going to be a surprise.

When it happens, it won't be a surprise that it has happened. If we get past October without it happening, that in itself will be the surprise. What will the surprise be?

That's in the hands of the White House staffers tasked with making sure it happens. Whatever it is, it will be something big - big enough to make the American people stand behind their President, regardless of what they think about him otherwise.

I shudder to think what will happen to make this surprise be everything the White House needs it to be. How many people will suffer to make sure that this surprise can happen; what human rights, which amendments and sections of the US constitution, which laws will need to be ignored?

I hope that the surprise is that there is no surprise.

DRM & the French

This was originally posted as a comment on The Mac Observer, as a response to some of the other comments there about an article on the proposed French legislation to open proprietary DRM to allow device independence.

"Bosco" wrote : I bet those communists at the RIAA...

Hmmm, and there was me thinking they were a bunch of capitalists representing another bunch of capitalists trying to protect their profits - or did the definition of "communist" change while I was in the bathroom?

"Bosco" wrote ...would sell their own mothers to keep me from sharing the music I love.

Music that is owned by someone else, and for which you have purchased a license to use under a specific set of conditions...even if you have bought the CD. You have the right to share that music with others in a private manner (invite them round to listen to it), but not the right to give that person a copy of the music - remember, you don't own it. You can give them your CD if you wish, but you are not allowed to keep a copy at that point.

The real problem is that DRM can force you to pay multiple times for different licenses for the same thing.

These would allow you to use it on different technology platforms. Currently, with non-DRM'd digital content, you can legally make a backup copy, rip it to your PC/Mac, copy it to a portable device, copy it to your PC/Mac at work, copy it to a memory stick to listen to it on your phone...etc...etc...

With DRM'd content, these rights may go away very quickly. Apple have allowed many of the above to be done using their DRM'd digital content, and have even given a get-out clause by allowing the content to be de-DRM'd (yes, I know, it's not "CD quality" when you burn it to a CD, but you didn't pay for that license - get over it), which is why so many people don't mind buying it (about a billion tracks at the last count).

Theoretically, using the middle-man of a CD, all iTMS audio content can be played on just about any audio player out there. In fact you have the same rights as you have if you buy the content on CD (yes, I know, it's not "CD quality" when you burn it to a CD, but you didn't pay for that license - get over it).

The fact that you have to copy it to a CD first is, for most people, a matter of inconvenience. Get over it. The exception are those who don't have access to a CD-RW and can't afford a Rewritable-CD. Hmm, that's probably not a large proportion of the population who are currently worried about DRM.

The evils of DRM are going to manifest themselves when the content you think you own is played on your nice new HD tv at a crappy quality and in low definition, because the license (what you actually paid for) specifies that it isn't allowed to play it in High Definition.

The content license you paid for is HD, but your TV doesn't have *that* security chip in, so unless you pay for one that does, you get low quality, or it doen't even play.

The reason for this? The license provider doesn't trust you. They think you are going to copy the content in a way that breaks your license agreement by using a device that pretends to be a HD TV with a digital decoder, but is really a hard-disk, then you could upload it to the internet and share it with a billion other people.

I haven't read the law being proposed, and so am going by what I have read on the internet, which is always 100% correct and factual. But from what I have seen so far, the French are basically saying that all providers of DRM'd content would need to be willing to license or open the DRM decoder.

Manufacturers of digital content players would then be able to license any DRM decoder that they are willing to pay to have. That way, their players can play any content that is compatible. This would mean that Creative would pay Apple so that their players are able to play Fairplay content, and Apple would have to be willing sell them a license if they want to be able to sell Fairplay content in France.

The compulsion comes from the proposal that a court can be petitioned to force the DRM content provider to open their DRM if they are unwilling to license it for a reasonable rate.

This does not force Apple to make the iTunes application compatible with any other player (and therefore break the wonderful ease of use combo of the ipod/itunes/itms trio), nor does it seem to force them to make the iPod compatible with anything else. It does mean that people who have bought Fairplay content, then buy a player from another manufacturer could continue to legally use their Fairplay content without going through the inconvenience of conversion to another format via a burned CD.

Of course, if the Fairplay license regards the player as not being an iPod, then it will have to count against the number of devices you're allowed to play the content on.