Category: Uncategorized

In January, this thing will appear on British TV. It’s a jet-powered skateboard. It sounds amazing, and is altogether hugely cool.

How, exactly, am I going to stop the series’ and makers’ websites from being Slashdotted?

You learn something new every day. The new international delivery requirements for How2 specified full effects tracks, which means sound effects without the overlapping dialogue. Which means that yours truly has today been sitting in a dubbing booth scraping coins down copper rods, blowing into glasses of water, dropping ping-pong balls, and generally doing some weird old stuff. I tell you, it’s hard!

Kinda fun, though somehow I suspect the novely will wear off after… er… about tomorrow morning.

…gone too far. The G man has been taking swipes at the old Apple Newton. Completely out of order, since (a.) Tablet PC is actually quite cool, but in a completely different way, and (b.) he can clearly not have used a Newton, if he thinks they’re comparable. Soup storage, for heaven’s sake!

Apologies for geeking out, but last night I managed to sync my Newt, over Ethernet, to my Mac OS X address book. Oh, and the Newton still serves its contents as web pages over my LAN. Newton is so much more than people think; I still use mine daily, and can’t see that changing in a hurry.

The Microsoft case. Hmm. So, let’s assume that Judge Jackson’s remedial measures were excessively harsh to the convicted felon (vis. Microsoft). Thus, his punishment was thrown out by a higher court (not, note, his verdict, which stands – Microsoft is still a convicted monopolist).

It now appears that Judge Kollar-Kotelly’s alternative measures are so woefully lenient that Microsoft might be considered, on balance, to have got away scot free. For heaven’s sake, they’re even policing their own sentence!

Presumably, one guesses, this verdict too will be overturned on appeal, and something more reasonably harsh might be substituted. In another couple of years’ time. But somehow, I suspect this is the end of it, and that Microsoft has won.

[sigh]

To the best of my knowledge, nobody else did a demo at the World Congress of Science Producers.

Yes, the Reichstag; last Saturday. Apparently the parliament had to take a vote to let us in (‘us’ being the World Congress of Science Producers). The whole experience was a tad surreal, but somehow very moving too. As a building it’s such a symbol of democratic rule that it’s hard not to be impressed by the German peoples for managing to put it to its intended use – albeit a century after it first came into use. That alone is impressive.

But somehow, it’s even more surprising to be there as an Englishman. Sixty years ago, our fathers’ generation was bombing the crap out of the place – that I can now stand in the rebuilt (by a British architect, even!) parliament building, with nary a hint of that being remarkable in itself, is a huge achievement. Europe has come a heck of a long way, and that progress honestly gives me hope for the future. Sure, it took some time, and we’ve not solved everything yet by a long stroke, but hey – we’re mostly not killing each other still.

Happily, I made it back to Glasgow a mere four hours late, surprising when Amsterdam and Heathrow were both closed for parts of the afternoon yesterday. Some people weren’t so lucky. If anyone’s seen Sgt Mgr Pratt’s tank, do be a good chap and give him a bell on the old blower.