Song of the Day: Twilight of the Gods – Paul Roland
Thrown up on random play on a flight from San Francisco. It has an excellent guitar solo in the 2nd half of the song. Paul Roland’s stuff is very quirky but I love it. Snippet available on iTMS.
Brrr….
About 15 minutes out from landing in Belfast last night, on the way back from San Francisco via London Heathrow, the pilot comes on the intercom to say we’d be landing soon and that the weather was sunny but that the wind was from the north, As a result it would feel colder than it has been recently. Boy he was right. When I got out of the plane it was bloomin’ freezing. Spending a week in the nice San Francisco climate probably had a lot to do with it, but boy it felt cold. Got home and fired up the central heating. Then slept for 12 hours 🙂
Lobster boy
A few years ago I was in San Diego and got the head burnt off me by the Sun. I learnt my lesson then and don’t venture out in sunny climes now without a hat. I’ve now learnt the same lesson for my arms and neck! During a walk from the Bay Bridge to the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco yesterday, I got sunburnt on my arms and neck a lot. Lobster Boy rides again! Next time I’m walking along the sea front in San Francisco, it’ll be Factor 50 sun block for me (next time will either be MacWorld in January 2008 or the Apple WWDC in June 2008).
Posted from my iPod touch.
Update: Pictures from said stroll along the sea front are available here.
iPod touch post
So I read on TUAW that some iPod touch units were starting to hit the Apple stores in the USA. So I hightailed it round to the San Francisco store to see if I could get one. I did. A 16GB one. There are unboxing photos in the web gallery linked on the right. In addition to being an iPod, it’s also a WiFi enabled Internet device. If you are reading this post then it seems that I can post to this site using the built in Safari web browser. More details and thoughts on the device to follow.
Update: Post spell checked and categories set from my MacBook Pro a few hours after posting from the iPod touch.
More Sony Reader content…
Yeah. Fictionwise have added the Sony Reader as an option for the multiformat content they carry. So that means like Analog and Asimov’s Science Fiction are now available for the device. Excellent news.
New Web Gallery
I’ve just started using the new .Mac Web Gallery functionality. I’ll be using this for my extended picture hosting from now on. Also linked from the side bar in the right.
Batten down the hatches again…
Should be another interesting week for weather watchers. I like weather (just in case no-ones noticed!) Another storm coming in from the Atlantic. Should be be a bit windy from Tuesday to Thursday. See the Atlantic pressure charts below for Tuesday to Thursday for the reasons why.
Click pictures for larger views
Climate change is NOT the biggest threat to the planet
Just heard some twerp from the people who are setting up the camp near Heathrow Airport on BBC News 24. She said that climate change was the be biggest issue around and that it was a survivability on the planet issue. What tosh. even in the worst case scenarios humanity will be able to adapt to the changes that occur. It will not wipe us out. Does this mean that we shouldn’t try to mitigate the effects? Of course not. We should use cleaner energy technologies to reduce our emissions etc. Should we limit the flights people can take? No. Should we use better engines and fuels? Yes.
The twerp on BBC News 24 (who probably wouldn’t understand climate science if you slapped her round the head with it) also called BAA climate criminals. Hmm. Apparently we also need to go back to a more sustainable level of living. Bollocks. What we need to do is make better use of the resources on the planet for the betterment of the whole population. Not retreat backwards. And we need to start planning to use the resources on the other bodies in the Solar System.
Flying above the clouds
I was on a flight this week from East Midlands airport, near Nottingham in England, to Belfast. It was about 19:00 and it was sunny with broken cloud cover when the flight took off. Once we got above the clouds the view out the window was stunning. Really beautiful. The cloud cover was almost complete when looking down, but there were lots of gaps as well. The gaps in the clouds were filled with a sort of thin mist. The sun was low near the western horizon and the light shinning through the mist in the cloud gaps coloured them milky-blue. It made them look like lakes in ice covered land. The low sun was also casting long shadows so the relief and 3D appearance of the whole scene was quite striking. Also quite alien. Our brains didn’t evolve in an environment where we saw many scenes like that. I wish I had a camera with me. A quick Google turned up the picture below. This is similar to what could be seen from the plane, although there were more clouds in reality. Still it gives an impression of the scene.
Click picture for larger view
Song of the Day: Back Chat (Live) – Queen
The Song of the Day category is for listing any song or piece of music, that I’ve heard on a particular day, that has reached into my brain and lit up the pleasure centres! There won’t be a post every day I expect.
Today a song that I really enjoyed when it came up on random play on the iPod in the car, was Back Chat live from Queen on Fire – Live at the Bowl. Brilliant stuff. John Deacon’s bass playing is superb. I love this track from the Hot Space album. I was at the 1982 Milton Keynes Bowl concert. Right at the front at Brian May’s side of the stage. He does a sizzling lead break in Back Chat 🙂
Canicula? Say what?
Canicula. What does it mean?
Canicula is the Latin name of Sirius, The Dog Star.
Canicula
(||Ca*nic”u*la) n. [L.canicula, lit., a little dog, a dim. of canis dog;
cf. F. canicule.] (Astron.)The Dog Star; Sirius.
Sirius is in the constellation Canis Major and is the brightest star in the sky. More
info about Sirius can be found on Wikipedia.
Harry Potter and the pots of cash
According to the BBC the 7th and last Harry Potter book sold 11 Million copies in 24 hours. Gosh! I have to admit that I’ve never read any of them. Not for any particular reason, I just never got round to it. Way to much other stuff to read over the last 10 years. Maybe I’ll have to read them all now the series is complete. Might actually be better to read them now as I won’t have to wait for the author to complete the series. That used to scroll my nerd big time when I was a lad 🙂 I can remember nearly going spare waiting for Julian May to complete the Pliocene Exile and Galactic Milieu series.
What happens if she gets hit by a bus!? 😉
Thankfully she didn’t (and not just so she could complete the books).
It seems that Bloomsbury and J.K. Rowling have not authorised electronic copies of the Potter books for eInk devices like the Sony Reader. This is a mistake in my opinion. Although given the sales of the series I’m not sure mistake is the term to use! In any event if I do decide to read the books then I’ll have to get cheap paperback copies so I’ve actually bought the books and maybe look for electronic copies for the Reader from alternative sources…
The question is. Are they worth reading?
UPDATE: The Loading Ready Run crew attend a Victoria HP7 launch event.
Tomtom sat navs are bloody brilliant
I wrote about buying a TomTom Go 700 last year. Since I started my new job, and have been doing more travelling to England, I’ve started to get hire cars at the airport and use the TomTom to get me to the various meetings I have to attend. it’s brilliant. Just type in the postcode and get directed right to the door of the venue. It’s definitely one of the best pieces of technology I’ve got. I don’t know why it still amazes me when I hear the phrase
You have reached your destination.
which it utters when I get to where I’m going. But it does. Much like the Sony Reader, I’d have to buy another TomTom Go straight away if I lost or broke my current one. The battery is dead on mine so I have to use it plugged in all the time. Not a major hassle. Just annoying. The recent map update has vastly improved the maps available for Northern Ireland as well. I see that TomTom are bidding to buy the company who supply the map data. For a tidy sum as well.
Here comes another one…
Good grief. There is another big low pressure system sitting in the Atlantic ready to roll over, and dump on, the UK. See pressure chart below. The Met Office are not forecasting the amount of rain that the last one dumped on England. Gotta love the weather! Bloody Jet Stream has decided to go south for a holiday!
Click picture for larger view
Atlantic Pressure Chart for
13:00 on Tues 24/07/2007
God is not Great – Christopher Hitchens
I finished God is not Great by Christopher Hitchens last week. It’s the most recent of the string of popular anti-religion books that have been published over the last year (Sam Harris, Dan Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Victor Stenger and others have trampled the grass on this path recently). many people think that Richard Dawkins is a bit strident in his anti-religions views. I don’t, for the record. BTW, why does it seem that none of the people who have responded to Dawkins’ latest book, with arguments that he is too strident or hasn’t studied some obscure theological text, that they haven’t actually read his book for comprehension (or at all)?
Anyway. If you thought Dawkins was strident you’ll either love or blanch completely at Hitchens’ latest book. This is a real polemic. Wide ranging as well. Dawkins focused on Christianity to a large extent. Hitchens covers Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism and others. Hitchens has a writting style and background that will appeal to a more literary audience than Dawkins et al. As such it is a welcome new addition to the anti-religion canon. A good synopsis of the book is given in a lecture by Hitchens presented by the Seattle Town Hall Center for Civic Life and University Book Store.
BTW: This was the first book I read on an eInk device. A Sony Reader.
My 2nd home?
I’m off to San Francisco again in a few weeks. Maybe I should move there? Work is sending me to VMworld at the Moscone Centre. Same place as the last two Apple WWDC conferences. Should be interesting. They are expecting 10,000 attendees for the 3 day conference. There is also a partner day that I’ll be attending. VMware VI3 is really, really cool and very, very useful (as are the other VMware products). Looking forward to getting down and dirty in the deep technical sessions. I’ll also need to go to the sessions that are related to how educational organisations are using virtualisation technologies. And the green computing session will be a must as this is a hot topic in new school builds. All newly funded Building Schools for the Future projects in the future have to be carbon neutral.
Of course there are the VMware for Mac sessions as well. And drinks with the VMware engineers… 🙂
Sony Reader PRS-500
I’ve been using a Sony Reader PRS-500 eBook device for the last month. I’ve just finished the first book that I read completely, and solely, on the Reader. God is not Great by Christopher Hitchens. I’ll post about the book itself later. Reading a book on the Reader is a very nice experience. The eInk screen is very easy on the eyes and very easy to read. Several times when reading I went to manually turn a page just like i would with a real paper book. I actually forgot it was an electronic device. The video below gives a short demo of how the device operates.
It might be better to download the above movie and view it at double size in the quicktime player. You can download it by right clicking on this link, and saving it to disk.
Content for the Reader is available from the Sony Connect Store. You have to have a USA credit card to use this or you can buy gift tokens in USA books shops such as Borders that work on the store. There are tools, like Book Designer, that allow other formats such as PDF and HTML to be converted to Reader files. I’ve also bought a scanner so that I can convert some of my favourite books to PDF then to Reader format. Well the ones not available in electronic format from elsewhere.
I really like the Reader. It’ll be my first choice for reading all future novels and fiction. I’d really love an A4 version for reading journals such as Nature and Science, as well as A4 PDF’s such as Apple documentation. Colour would be really good as well for things like Scientific American. Both A4 and colour eInk screens are in development. Hopefully they’ll ship as products in the near future.
Do you want some cheese with that…?
Scivener may be a nice app. But it’s developer should dry his eyes. Jeez. The ADC Select membership includes pre-release versions of MacOS X. No promise is made about when versions will be made available. Attendance at WWDC is a separate issue. Many of the sessions at the conference discuss features that are in the latest Leopard beta so it makes sense for attendees to have access there and then. Apple have already said that they will post a Leopard beta for Select ADC subscribers in the near future.
UK Government to issue guidance on teaching of CS and ID in UK schools
This is good news. Responding to a petition on the Number 10 website the Government have said that creationism and Intelligent Design should not be included in science lessons in UK schools. Now, lets make sure it isn’t pushed on pupils in RE classes.