Year: 2004

I moved to Glasgow a year ago, and it’s amazing how long it takes to sort out all the little details. The National Trust, for example, appear to have no concept of people changing address – I suppose ancestral homes didn’t tend to move around much. Those of you who’ve been paying attention will also have realised that I spent six months of this year living back in Leeds, which didn’t help much in the ‘sorting stuff out’ stakes, particularly when it came to British Gas believing that I am, in fact, resident in Glasgow. No wonder they’ve lost a million customers this year, – it took me all year to persuade them that I really should be settling the bill, thanks. I’ll be moving to something sensible[1] just as soon as I can stomach the inevitable farce.

Anyway, since I didn’t have any utility bills until very recently, one of the things I’ve not yet got around to is signing up at the local video store. It appears to be a universal truth, of course, that whereas one’s passport will secure entry to pretty much any country on the planet, the local video shop requires a signed affidavit from the head of state, in addition to the current month’s bills from at least four different utility companies, references from your bank manager and current employer, and the rights to your first-born as collateral in the event of your failing to return, say, a VHS of Crocodile Dundee II.

I now may not bother signing up at all, since Amazon UK have started doing postal DVD hire, with no fixed rental period, for similar sorts of prices. It’s not quite video-on-demand-streaming-download, but given the relatively small latency of first class post it’s not that much different in practice.

[1] So far as I can tell, this is power generated by shoveling avocets into massive furnaces. I’m surprised that this is particularly eco-friendly, but apparently the European Avocet Mountain is vast, and avocets are low in heavy metals and sulphur emissions.

For the benefit of anyone Googling this in the months and years to come, and since The Court Service don’t appear to understand the situation themselves; the Scottish legal system is operated independently of that in England and Wales. Thus, if you’re called for Jury Service in the Crown Court in, say, Bradford, but you’re currently resident in – hypothetically – Glasgow, the Service is not able to transfer your duty to a nearer court. Because – durr – Scotland has Sheriff Courts, not Crown Courts, and juries here are called by the Scottish Court Service.

…which is to say, I got excused.

Strange how the connections drift by; from Slashdot to ComingSoon about Babylon 5, to Shrek 3 being moved to May 2007, to the first details I’ve seen about the forthcoming Wallace & Gromit feature, Tale of the Were Rabbit. Including this delicious brief:

It’s ‘vege-mania’ in Wallace and Gromit’s neighborhood, and our two enterprising chums are cashing in with their humane pest-control outfit, “Anti-Pesto.” With only days to go before the annual Giant Vegetable Competition, business is booming, but Wallace & Gromit are finding out that running a “humane” pest control outfit has its drawbacks as their West Wallaby Street home fills to the brim with captive rabbits.

Note, however, that the next paragraph rather gives the entire plot away, at least apparently. You have been warned.

Outliners have always left me feeling a bit so-so, frankly. They’re fantastic for conceptualising long documents or narrative structures, but most of the rest of the time I’d prefer something two-dimensional (or more…). Unfortunately, the only application that really fits the bill in the latter category, TinderBox, I’ve found clumsy enough that I’ve never quite got my head around it. It’s also a bit too costly for me to want to invest the time learning its ways.

So by and large I’ve stuck with outliners. The one I liked most, back in the System 7 days, was the late lamented InControl. I can’t honestly remember why I liked it so much, excpet it allowed one to attach documents to lines, and have them open with a click. I found this terrifically useful for a couple of projects, not least working on LaTeX documents, but since I haven’t run Classic for… um… about four years, I can’t have used InControl for about as long.

There are, of course, plenty of outliners for Mac OS X. And by ‘plenty,’ I think I mean ‘dozens.’ Some are hugely innovative, attempting to emulate research notebooks and scrapbooks stuffed with clippings and photos and so on. I’ve never got on with them; all I want is a simple outliner that looks nice, has decent search, and allows file linking. So for the last few years I’ve been using OmniOutliner, which was cheap, clean, and unfortunately didn’t do very much. But I like Omni’s approach to their apps – and to user support – so I was reasonably content to give up features. While I’ll usually adopt Vinays ‘If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing badly’ maxim, in some situations a feature badly implemented is simply an annoying feature, and I’d rather it wasn’t there at all.

I’ve recently been looking at Process, which seems rather dashing and is aimed less at taking research notes and more at ultralight project management. That has its appeal, but… well… it’s just not quite right, somehow. I think because it’s not really aimed at entries longer than one line of text, which isn’t how I usually use outliners. Though I could be wrong – the seven-day demo timeout is a tad onerous, and I can no longer find out.

All hail, therefore, OmniOutliner’s latest incarnation: OmniOutliner 3, and OmniOutliner 3 Pro. I’m hoping this plays out much like the OmniGraffle 3 Pro transition did; that is, I fall instantly head-over-heels for the thing, buy without a second thought, then delight as the subtle problems, lapses and oversights are gradually patched out. A year later I’m still loving the application but hoping against hope that a new version arrives before too long with just a few extra bells and whistles, specifically… you get the idea.

It’s hard to say just what’s so right about Omni’s stuff, but theirs really are the best applications I’ve used. OK, so Final Cut Pro and Photoshop are pretty darned good too, but Omni’s apps… I think it’s that they marry apparent simplicity and approachability with very subtly hidden power scratching along just beneath the surface. This is why they’re often regarded as the quintessential Mac OS X apps – they’re a perfect fit for the design philosophy of the Mac.

So, anyway, yes: OmniOutliner 3 public beta is out. Have a play.

Curious. One would expect the word ‘moustache’ to crop up slightly more frequently than once in four years, but apparently not: today I typed it in an email, and my Mac dutifully and sternly wiggled a red underline at me. Evidently the American spelling omits the ‘o,’ and I’d not previously had cause to correct Quern’s dictionary. But this does rather beg the question: how is it that I have not written the word for so long? Perhaps I should grow one, to provide ample excuse?

On second thoughts: bad idea.

My apologies for banging on about this all the time, but if the following opening line from The New Yorker’s review of Closer and House of Flying Daggers doesn’t make you at least giggle, then I rest my case:

“The new Mike Nichols film, “Closer,” starts with a man falling in love with Natalie Portman. From this we may assume that the movie is concerned with universal, a-priori truths, although there is a scene in a lap-dancing club when the a-posteriori version comes in handy”

Which do you think is funnier: this spoof about Hollywood movie studios suing Pixar for producing consistently good films, or the fact that in the middle of all this ‘being frantically unemployed,’ as I am, I’ve been called for Jury Service?

Update, ten minutes later: no, actually, this wins. They have to be kidding.

Not, I take it, the plan: picture sequence of lifting a car from a harbour. Via kottke.org.

“I’m working on being an illegible bachelor.”

Not, I regret to say, a line coined by myself. Thanks to Colin and Rosie for distracting me with peristaltic conversation, and to The Clockwork for extremely fine microbrew US-style red beer.

This morning I learned that The Big Bang will not be returning for a tenth series, on the mostly reasonable grounds that the ratings for the last series were poor. I’ve probably much more to say about this, but I’ll wait until I’ve stopped swearing before saying it, beyond this: to all the kids who watched and made things and laughed and loved it – I’m very sorry. I hope you’ll remember it fondly when you’re students.

Update: Does this count as evidence that Ω > 1 and the universe is therefore closed?