Month: November 2003

Police Squad: the Zucker Brothers’ seminal early TV series that introduced Leslie Neilson’s comic masterpiece Lt. Frank Drebbin. Everyone remembers it, despite there only having been six episodes (yes, really), and despite it having bombed massively when first shown.

Strangely, pretty much nobody remembers Sledge Hammer, despite it having been a considerable success in its day. Essentially a Dirty Harry pastiche, the series presented a terrific counterbalance to Miami Vice and all the other tacky 80s cop shows, in a way that nothing else did until McG’s Fastlane. Which, ironically, appears to have failed because people thought it was trying to be serious.

If you’ve no idea what I’m talking about, try here and here for a refresher. But the chances are you simply don’t remember the series, because precious few people seem to. Curious.

Apple get the little things right so often, it’s rather a shock when they mess up. Like, for example, the occasion I recently had to have my .mac account password sent to my email address, and this happened:

Er….

The trouble with desktop video is this: one hour of DV footage is a little over 13Gb of data. Compounding this peril is that, in my experience, captured video sits around for a few weeks or months before one has the time and inclination to do something with it. Which adds up to a curious repeating computing experience: whereas, ten years ago, one could never find a floppy disk with a spare 50 Kb on it, today one can never find a hard drive with a spare 50Gb.

Last night I ripped apart my chum Mike’s stricken iMac and tore out the brand-new 80Gb drive I’d fitted in a last-ditch effort to make it believe it actually had a boot device. Said Seagate is now crammed into a cheap and cheerful (and surprisingly elegant) case from the local bucket PC shop, who seemed mildly offended that they had Mac-compatible FireWire peripherals on their shelves. It’s been on all night copying files from my PC (which seems to run more and more slowly each day), and astonishingly hasn’t burst into flames yet, which round these part constitutes ‘production-ready.’

So now my Mac has 140Gb storage internally, and up to about another 170Gb externally, if I turn everything on. So, of course, I’ve filled another 30Gb by capturing footage from Steve and Amanda’s wedding, and now all my drives are full again.

Drat.

Ms Bsag writes of a phenomenon that reflects not so much the poor standard of service in British shops, as the complete lack of service in, in particular, electrical retailers.

I have, on occasion, found myself standing in Comet/Currys/Dixons/PowerHouse/wherever, waving a product above my head in a vain attempt to attract attention. Only three weeks ago I found myself shouting down a store ‘Would anybody be interested in selling me a fridge?’ Because obviously, standing in the fridge section staring at the assistants wasn’t good enough: neither was standing on one of the fridges, apparently.

One tactic I’ve not yet tried, but to which I may resort, is to walk out slowly brandishing the display item, saying loudly and clearly ‘I’m going to walk out of the shop now, with this. If anybody would like to stop me I’d be delighted, because then I might be able to pay for it. Otherwise I’m just going to assume you can’t be bothered to take my money, and I’ll consider this a gift. No? I’m at the exit now, about to walk out with something I’d like to pay for, but apparently can’t. Good day to you then.’

If anybody tries this technique, please do keep us informed of the results.

Well that’s a relief. deletetheweb.com expires in four days, and I just remembered to renew it – which is just as well, since about seven or eight people are now using it as a blog & stuff hosting service. Which is fun. But they might not have liked me if I’d accidentally nuked all their sites.

While I’m on the subject of housekeeping – John Coombes has a new blog to chronicle his latest project: The Unstuck Diaries. A couple of other people have also joined the deletetheweb ‘community’ (sic), but they don’t yet seem quite ready to go public.

When the brave new future of intelligent machines and smart materials finally dawns, one of the things I’d like to see early on is this: a Swiss Army knife that works out what tool you’re most likely to be reaching for, and re-arranges its own internals so it’s that way around by the time you pick it up.

I mention this because of a curious situation with a Leatherman tool in my possession. It’s a pretty thing, with useful pliers, a moderately large blade, and – crucially – a corkscrew. But somehow, every time I pick it up to use one of these things, I instead proceed to open up the scissors.

I’ve had it two years. You’d have thought I’d have learned its various orientations by now, but apparently not. Scissors. Every time. If I throw it in the air so it tumbles, catch it, and open the thing to hand – scissors. Statistically, this doesn’t seem possible. Perhaps smart materials are already with us, only they’re a bit stroppy.

Speaking from recent but intense experience: supposing you, gentle reader, were to have a burglar alarm fitted. I would urge you not to place it on the same mains circuit as a mains/battery-backed smoke detector. Particularly if said detector is so massively over-sensitive as to mistake the merest whiff of the word ‘grill’ for a major incident requiring the attention of five appliances, thus rendering it imperative to disable said detector when preparing, say, a bowl of cornflakes. And especially if said burglar alarm is of a type that crashes and resets itself when in a low-power state, refusing all attempts to communicate with it via the keypad.

My neighbours must hate me. And the only phone number on the (dreadfully-written and incomplete) alarm manual is now ‘not recognised.’

1. Turn the toaster off.
2. Turn the kitchen fan on, and close the door behind you as you leave.
3. Move the boxes away from the hall cupboard door. This may take some time.
4. Enter the hall cupboard backwards, turning on the light, then reach above you and open the cover over the electricity breaker switch box.
5. Turn the ‘smoke alarm’ breaker off.
6. Return to the kitchen and butter the only very slightly-charred toast.
7. Notice the secondary alarm.
8. Attempt to locate secondary alarm.
9. Notice that the normally-flashing light on the alarm panel is no longer flashing. Become suspicious.
10. Open hall cupboard again. By tactile inspection, locate the specific box that’s making horrid noises.
11. Inspect that box for an ‘off’ switch. There is none, but check anyway.
12. Return to kitchen. Move around bottles etc on counter to allow access to the ‘I’ll never need this stuff’ drawer. Leaf through for alarm booklet.
13. Catch the little slip of paper bearing the alarm code, preferably before it falls on the buttered toast.
14. Enter code into alarm panel. This may require additional movement of boxes.
15. Complete toast/marmalade connection: begin to enjoy toast and tea.
16. Notice secondary alarm has restarted.
17. [optional: in the event of insufficient toast smoke clearance (impossible to judge, since this level of toast smoke is discernible only to the smoke detector), the only option is to decide which of the alarm ‘low battery’ and smoke detector ‘major conflagration’ alarms is least objectionable.]
18. [optional: in the even of sufficient toast smoke clearance, turn the smoke detector back on, then reset the alarm panel again.]
19. In the even that not all alarms are now silenced, we recommend immediate evacuation, since in all likelihood the building is either burning down or being burgled.

Have a nice day.