Month: July 2004

If you’re not a Mac user – and likely if you are, and you’ve retained a sense of perspective – you won’t understand:

iTunes Music Store user buys songs, gets phone call from Steve Jobs twenty minutes later. “Kind of a weird night, but I’ll take it,” he comments, which is the sort of dryly glib statement I wish I could come up with in such circumstances.

‘RDF’ – ‘Reality Distortion Field,’ by the way. Jobs allegedly has some sort of personal aura that makes people love what he’s saying, even if he’s talking rubbish.

A blog written in Klingon, for heaven’s sake. I’m delighted to report that my Klingon is nowhere near good enough to tell if it makes any sense, but it looks like Klingon.

batlh Daqawlu’taH!

[For those wondering – or plain concerned – I once had to learn some Klingon for How2. Enough to write a sketch, basically. It’s surprising how it sticks with you, particularly “Hab Quchraj, Taghkek'” (“Your forehead is smooth” – a terrible insult).]

Link from Scott Knaster’s ‘This is not your practice blog‘.

Nah, just the one will do.

Martin – what’s the Scottish Green Party’s policy on pharming?

I could just check the website, but this approach is lower bandwidth. I could also ask you in email, but again, this approach… er… proves something or other. Not sure what. Doubtless it’s terribly insightful and pithy, delivered with a soupçon of wit and levity also. Once I’ve worked out just what the point might be, of course.

Just in case Dave Green is still reading this page, another ‘Today, my cat vomited’-style post, to bait him.

I’m counting the days to the end of this job in Leeds. Though I’ve had plenty of fun, I’ve been on the go since something like September last year, and it’s completely knackering to carry on like this. But hey, four days left. So, this weekend, I hired a large car and took (most of) my clobber back to Glasgow. Bicycle, DV kit, most of my clothes, books, etc. Actually, most of what I packed seemed to be cables, which likely says more about me than I’d wish.

Now back in Leeds, I find myself sitting in a somewhat starkly minimalist lounge. I can just about stretch to a lamp, but that’s it. I rather enjoy the uncluttered feel, to be honest.

And in between, I’ve had the pleasure of a Vauxhall Vectra, which was quite the most comfortable van I think I’ve ever driven. It’s a pleasure to be wafted along motorways with such little fuss, though as usual I’m left slightly confused by such cars. If one ‘presses on’, the whole edifice comes crashing down, as the over-assisted steering passes some bizarre point of no return and goes disconcertingly light, leaving one with the distinct impression that the front wheels are sliding all over the place. So, one cruises, which is absolutely fine. Except that the (‘sporty’?) 2.2 SRi I had is so genteelly refined there’s no discernible difference between, say, 30mph and, say, 50. The dials even seem specifically designed to blur the distinction, which annoyed the hell out of me. Oh, and then there’s the agonising cramp.

There’s some odd current fashio, for having a very long clutch pedal, and a brake positioned much closer to the driver than the loud pedal. I can’t quite work out the logic here. I’m about as gangly as they come; with my left leg locked straight on the clutch, my right knee, to hit the brake, was up by my chin. But of course then, the steering wheel wants to occupy the same space as the aforementioned right knee.

The only solution I could find was to crank the seat up high (plenty of headroom, not a problem), to pull the wheel very close and high, and to press down at the pedals rather than forward. In short, to rearrange the driving position to resemble a Transit van.

Which is fine, since modern Transits are actually very good on motorways. But still… I can’t help but feel I’m missing something. Or perhaps I’m just the wrong shape for normal cars.

But now I’m bored by this crap. Enough.

Orange have finally announced their 3G pricing. It’s not as severe as I’d feared, but neither is it as cheap as I’d hoped. For light users it’s really no cheaper than GPRS. So far as I can tell, it goes (monthly): £10-7Mb-£2/Mb over (not worth piddling around with); £20-65Mb-£1.50 (decent deal – cheaper than GPRS except for the over-bundle charge, which is a nasty sting); £45-400Mb-£1 (rather good if you need it); £75-1Gbish-nada (for the genuinely insane who should just get an office, already).

Back of the envelope, I’d have saved £50 or so going this route over these last six months. But my net access speed would have been dramatically better, which would have been worth a lot. The remaining hassle is that the Ericssony z1010 is, frankly, massive and ugly. What I really want is a small clamshell that does 3G data and standard voice, and pretty much nothing else – certainly, none of that video conference junk. I’ll be interested to see what deals are around when my O2 contract is up.

Reposted press release here; Orange PDF here.

An old friend quoted me this recently, in email:

(2) Where a notice under paragraph (1) specifies emission limit values, the emission limit values required by paragraph (2) of regulation 12 in relation to emissions into water from the installation or mobile plant concerned shall be those specified in that notice or such stricter emission limit values as may be determined by the local authority regulator in accordance with paragraph (6) of that regulation or required by paragraph (7) of that regulation.

Who, exactly, thinks this sort of dreck is a positive contribution to the advancement of mankind?

Sigh. D’you think it’s possible to refactor a legal system?

Give me another week or so, and I really will start blogging again. Much to catch up with. But in the meantime: today saw the first in the new series of The Big Bang go out on ITV. Huge cheers and hearty claps on backs all round, not to mention plenty of champagne and a few sighs of relief. Only nine more to go.

There are some extremely gratifying comments on the series website. Bless ’em, they seem to like it. 🙂

No, not TV: the other sort of shooting. With, like, guns, and everything.

A couple of weekends ago, I found myself with a group of gentlemen (perhaps ‘Gentlemen’), clay pigeon shooting. Now, I’ve never held a gun in my life, except possibly a wonky air rifle at Hull Fair when I was about nine. I’ve certainly never fired a twelve-bore before. So I wasn’t exactly expecting to be any good at hitting small, fast-moving targets.

I decimated the first seven clays. Overall, I hit with twenty-two out of twenty-six shots. This is, apparently, rather good going.

Now, I’m not entirely sure how I feel about this. I have something resembling a healthy loathing for what labours under the doubtless-undeserved blanket term ‘gun culture’. Further, I’ve no desire to be any good at shooting anything: It’s not a skill I think I can use on a regular basis. Nor even a sporadic basis. And the process of actually firing a twelve bore is, frankly, dangerous, scary, and painful. I didn’t even have the satisfaction of seeing my clays disintegrate, since I had my eyes shut at those moments. Well, the thing you’re holding goes “BANG!” right next to your head, it seems reasonable.

However, there must be some vestigial competitive aspect to my nature, since I did actually enjoy trouncing the other shooters. Particularly the cocky Aussie. And it’s always a delight to discover novel and unexpected aptitudes, something one assumes occurs less frequently as one ages.

So… clay pigeon shooting? I rock. Apparently.