The best and worst Christmas Presents

Monday, January 2nd, 2012

This year, because we are all grown ups and have got most of the toys we want already, we decided to have a white elephant. This meant we had presents to put under the ‘tree’ and open after Santa had passed our house. To be honest, we did wonder how he was going to get through the door of our wood burning stove.

Our tree this year was a work of art. After considering £60 too high for something we would use for less than a week, we made our own by weaving ivy around a conical plant support from the garden. With rosemary branches poking out to look and smell like the real thing, it was remarkably effective, especially after a large pile of Christmas presents surrounded it. (more…)

It’s got no blinking light

Tuesday, November 29th, 2011

Ever since we can remember, before going to bed or going out for a while, we always check around the house and office. In the day time it’s to shut the doors so that when burglars break in, opening a door will damage their eardrums as our alarms set up a cacophony of deafening bells. At night time, it’s to make sure the Macs are behaving themselves.

Looking into the office we see at least 25 neon lights glowing from all the little boxes of electronics. Some pulse slowly as if the devices they are attached to are snoring, others blink rapidly as an iPhone or Pad check for mail. We have always wondered what the cumulative effect of 25 or so consumers of milliamps will be to our carbon footprint but they all stay lit unless we go on holiday.

Recently we checked the office and both felt something wasn’t right. There was a subtle difference that eluded us but neither admitted it to the other until a chance remark in a conversation about a film we were watching. The movie concerned the mysterious going’s on at a school where a ‘malevolent presence’ roamed around, bumping off people one-by-one.

Of course, none of the victims ran away when they entered the room containing the ‘presence’. Instead they stood awaiting their fate as the camera focussed over their shoulder onto the slowly solidifying mist.

It was the same with our office. Something was wrong but we couldn’t tell what. We could stand looking round the room, checking under desks to where the snakes live or into the corners where they spiders hang out. But nothing showed up. Then realisation came us.

The new iMacs have no blinking light.

The best thing about the iPhone 4S and how to cope in clink

Thursday, November 10th, 2011

Another two weeks in clink, or hospital whichever way you look at things. All to dig a vein out of my arm to fix the twice repaired artery in my leg. Bloody stuff and still very painful. However, it does give the armoury of entertainment a good run out and here are some recommendations.

First up is the iPod which proved essential when stuffed to the diodes with radio shows and plays downloaded in advance. They even left enough space for a movie or two and some TV shows. All courtesy of BBC iPlayer and home recordings.

Next is the iPad. Its small form factor, with an STM cover for propping it upright, made all night viewing a breeze. Movies and TV shows recorded and compressed kept me going for days, meanwhile my lifeline, or more accurately wifeline, was busy preparing new ones for me.

We did try a MacBook but its weight and large size made it vulnerable in a situation where every surface is cleaned several times a day. A MacBook Air would have been a better choice but I don’t know how safe it would be on open wards with no secure locker. Get whisked off for a scan and return to find it had also been whisked off. Whereas the iPad is small enough to keep with you.

Finally the iPhone rounds off gadgets for the gammy. At first my old iPhone 3GS but the lure of a 4S waiting at home proved too great and what a good thing too. A quick switch of contracts was all that was needed to stream TV and radio to my hospital bed-bound misery.

Obviously the above are all Apple products but there is a good reason for this: they all take the same charger. One tiny white plug and lead powered them all up, rather than the large box of transformer-rectifiers used by other manufacturers.

The best thing about the new iPhone is the aerials. Apple spent extensive research time on them and it has really paid off. This is the first cellphone I can get a signal on in my own home, which being near the seafront, is surrounded by buildings rising higher as the land slopes gently away from the coast. A cellphone signal has been all but impossible to pick up from any supplier on any of the dozens of handsets we have tried.

With the iPhone 4S I get a solid three or four signal bars anywhere in my home. Brilliant!

Life can be so cruel

Friday, October 21st, 2011

iPhone Friday saw me at O2 checking out the new phones and very nice they are too. But where to get the best deals? (more…)

iDisk Lament

Saturday, September 17th, 2011

It’s amazing the havoc a dodgy oyster creates. After eating that one manky mollusc, if evacuation was an Olympic sport, I got the gold. Three weeks up and still going, so to speak.

Gold is a target Microsoft’s boss, Steve Ballmer, is avoiding as he aims at a lowly bronze instead. He reckons Microsoft has got what it takes to become a “very strong third ecosystem” in the world of smart phones. As he announced at his company’s recent Financial Analyst Meeting. It seems strange to hear him admit that Google and Apple have beaten Microsoft.

Beating Apple is something I’d love to do at the moment. Preferably around the head with a large and heavy stick. The new iCloud, Apple’s third attempt at on-line services, will not include their iDisk storage. This is the one facility I am happy to pay for at mac.com and the stupidly named MobileMe.

The iDisk is just about the easiest way to share large files. Access can be at desktop level with files dropped into a local mirror, or mounting the iDisk as an external hard drive, or by web browser or WebDAV application. The latter being the quickest way to send and receive files. iDisk is also a good way to exchange files between Macs and computers running *nix or Windows and more recently iPhones and iPads.

In full-colour illustrated publishing, where we can work with enormous amounts of data, an iDisk is almost de rigueur. Editors and authors, many of whom are not techo-savvy, use a variety of different computers, anything that will run Word. Giving them an easy way to send large files or to view PDF proofs is essential and the iDisk does exactly that.

There are many alternatives, such as Dropbox, but they are often more expensive and all have idiosyncratic ways to use them even if they have more facilities than an iDisk. Virgin Internet have even given me free and unlimited on-line storage space but without the ease of use that comes with an iDisk.

All is not lost yet because Apple has not finalised the services iCloud will offer and are open to ideas. Developers who have been given access to iCloud already, have been doing exactly that but there is no guarantee anything will change.

The other alternative is to run something in-house. This is fine if you have fast Internet and luckily we have. Our mini cloud runs via a Pogoplug connected to a cheap 2TB drive. All for the cost of a couple of years subscription to Dropbox. But I’d still have an iDisk if one is available.

Leave my laptop alone. I MEAN IT!!!

Thursday, September 8th, 2011

I did a bit of quick and dirty research with absolutely no statistical value and it revealed that headline writers love saying that the PC is dead, the laptop is dead, in fact anything other than the tablet and smartphone is dead. But is it true? I’m in the No Way Jose camp myself, and here’s why.

While the Office for National Statistics may have just issued a news release informing anyone who’s listening that 45 percent of all Internet users (well, all of those who they actually bothered to ask) have accessed the Internet by way of a mobile phone so far this year, and amongst 16-24 year olds that figure jumps to 71 percent, it doesn’t mean that they only go online that way. Nor does it imply that the laptop is dead, although I have already heard some media commentators extrapolating exactly that conclusion from this seemingly innocuous data. Some, who really should know better, have even seen the word ‘mobile phone’ and morphed it past a smartphone and into a tablet in order to support the laptop R.I.P argument.

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The death of the desktop?

Wednesday, May 4th, 2011

Most computer manufacturers now sell more laptops than desktops and it’s not hard to see why. Laptops are compact and portable which makes them more flexible in so many ways for both business and personal use. It’s therefore no surprise to see more and more laptops used in the place of desktops, so it’s easy to wonder if there’s any place left for the humble desktop computer. Why buy a big, power-hungry desktop when you can have a slender, electricity frugal laptop?

Even though Apple CEO Steve Jobs thinks we’re now in a ‘post-PC world’, his company is still making a pretty penny off desktops. Apple seems to have given some thought to the design of a desktop in this laptop/smartphone/tablet-drive world with its updated range of sleek all-in-one iMac desktops.

As well as the expected upgrade to Intel’s new Sandy Bridge processors, the 27in models now have two Thunderbolt ports (the cheaper 21.5in model has just one). We were greatly impressed by the potential of this new port technology when we first saw it in the new MacBook Pro laptops and its presence in Apple’s mainstream desktop computers says much about Apple’s hopes and aggressive rollout plans for the technology.

The fact that the 27in iMac has two Thunderbolt ports means that if the massive 2,560×1,440 pixel screen isn’t enough, you can connect another two displays using the appropriate adapters. Most laptops not only have substantially smaller, lower-resolution displays, but can only connect one more additional monitor. Although it’s possible to connect a third display using a USB adapter, you usually lose 3D and video playback acceleration.

I think Apple is sending a clear message with the 27in iMac and its Thunderbolt ports and high-res screen – a slender all-in-one desktop can do things a laptop can’t, but in less space than a traditional tower desktop. Not everyone needs a compact desktop with multiple monitor capability and an incredibly high-speed external bus, but for workplaces that do, there is clearly life left in the old desktop computer.

I’m damned if I’ll smash it up

Monday, April 25th, 2011

It’s no secret that I used to be a punk in the seventies and one of my favourite bands was The Damned. I mention this as they used to play a song called ‘Smash It Up’ which always went down well at gigs. Now it seems that one in four perfectly non-punky employees want to do the same. Smash it up, that is, if the it in question is a laptop or mobile phone and the end result is an upgrade.

New research suggests that 25 percent of workers will gladly break their work lappy or drop the mobile down the toilet if they think it means getting a new one. Of course, it’s doubtful if they would even consider wiping the data on the things first. After all, if it’s broken it doesn’t matter, right? Ding! Wrong, and then some.

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Who cares?

Sunday, April 24th, 2011

Our four cars were lined up in the car park at the nursing home. Over the last week we had all driven hundreds of miles going back and forth to the death bed of a close relative. The cars were caked in filth: road and brake dust, bird crap and honey dew. The windscreens had more squashed bugs than a Windows service pack.

Coincidentally the cars were all silver in colour – apparently the most favoured for UK cars – with two having rear wash/wipers and two cars without. Yet the two without any automatic means to was the rear view had dusty but relatively clean rear screens, while the others had thick layers of muck with only the area covered by their wipers swept clean.

Why so? the cars without wash/wiper were a BMW coupe and most saloon cars don’t have or need wash wipers, and my Civic hatchback. The other two hatchbacks were a Nissan Note and an Astra. It’s pretty obvious that the design of the Nissan and Vauxhall meant that they picked up road dirt as wind whipped over the car at speed. Probably some weird vortex builds up behind them, swirling muck back at the windows. Whereas the other Honda and BMW are more streamlined and channel wind away from the rear of the vehicle.

When I bought the Honda I was aware it had no rear washer wiper system and accepted the car on those terms. Just like when I got my iPhone and now iPad2 which arrived a couple of days ago. Apple told me they were tracking the location of my gadgets and that I could look in and see where they were for myself. I accepted them on these terms and even think of it as a big bonus in case they get nicked.

I never once thought it was suspicious that Apple were keeping tabs on me. It was only a year or so that I willing drove around with a GPS receiver which logged all my journeys and speeds. That little box even came on holiday a few times and I have been grateful it did so because it was working out real average journey times for all mapping systems and satnavs using Navteq maps.

When the ‘discovery’ was announced about Apple tracking iPhones, under lurid headlines written by rabid hacks who had nothing better to do that day. Some more forward thinking journalists recognised a non-story when they read one and said “So what?”.

The guys found the little log file holding the dodgy data, hidden in full view here: /Users//Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/ and even titled clearly in case you missed it . They even wrote an app for you to see what’s in it here: http://petewarden.github.com/iPhoneTracker/

They warn the data isn’t accurate and indeed, when I view my phone’s info I have apparently been places I have never heard of. Which rather blows out the water the ideas the rabid hacks have of the data being used by private investigators to snoop on people. Apparently the location is determined by triangulating the nearest cell-phone towers and as this isn’t as accurate as GPS it often gets confused readings several miles from your location. In the case of my phone I can rest assured that I have never been in the middle of the English Channel or made a phone call from Reims even if I have the data to prove I did.

I just wish Apple could make my iPhone remember what it is I am trying to remember.

HP Touch Pad – touch to share with webOS!

Thursday, April 21st, 2011

As I have blogged before HP are voicing a serious commitment to webOS. I say voicing because it is hard to see many actual devices yet, but it is a non-trivial task they are about so we shouldn’t expect instant products and it is easy to doubt just because the kit isn’t here yet.

Here is a link to a video the sort of thing that should be along soon but as yet no price or firm date.
Fierce Wireless – HP TouchPad demo

Looks good though! The Touch to Share looks cool (10:20 mins in). Plenty of other videos after this one has run.

As a developer, webOS is good with me, if you can write a web page (java script, css, HTML, …) you can write apps. You can also write in C/C++ if that’s your thing, just get hold of the PDK to do that.