Queen Rock Montreal on Blu-ray Disc is unbelievable! The quality of the visuals, and the audio, are brilliant. The concerts were recorded on film originally and not the more conventional video. As a result the transfer to Blu-ray retains the full resolution. This is a must buy if you have a Blu-ray player and a HD TV. It’s worth it for I’m in love with my car on its own. Brilliant camera angles of Roger Taylor singing the song whilst drumming.
Archive | Technology
Retro telephone
Well sort off. Retro in looks and sounds like a real old phone when it rings. The numbers on the rotary dial are push buttons. See picture below. Quite heavy. Which is good, you can walk away from the phone with the handset and the base stays put. The whole things feels solid. it also gives a nice satisfying clunk when you put the handset back in it’s cradle. This is the 2nd new phone I’ve got recently. The other being an iPhone, which I’ll write about soon.
Click picture for larger view
BTW: The phone above is available from John Lewis.
New job role
I’ve just moved into a new role in work. My new title is Technology Consultant. A major part of the job function will be finding, evaluating and introducing new technologies into the company I work for and into our ICT offerings. I’ll also have a team of people working for me. Should be fun. Getting paid to look at new stuff. Obviously there will be more to it than that, but still…
Back on the hoof
Finally started walking for exercise again today. Did 5.46 miles along some recently completed pathways for walkers and cyclists that are being laid along the old Belfast to Comber railway lines in Dundonald/Stormont area. As usual the distance was tracked with the Nike+ and iPod nano combination. Summary as shown on the Nike+ site below.
Click picture for larger view
Car choices redux…
I wrote previously about choices for a new car when my current leasing contract ends. I had a Honda Civic Hybrid on loan today for a test drive. I love it. It has a 1.4 litre petrol engine but it feels much more like 1.8 litre. It uses electric motors to assist the engine when required, and the batteries get charged when you brake or go downhill. The hybrid feels as responsive as my current 1.8 litre Renault Laguna, plus it’s really nice to drive. Weird getting used to the engine turning off when you stop moving! Going to call the leasing company and find out how much the 1.4 IMA EX version with built in Sat Nav costs.
iPod touch Notes
The iPod touch lacks the Notes application that is on the iPhone. As a work around for this (until Apple gets the message and adds it via a software update!) you can create a Contact called Notes and use the Note field of the contact to record snippets, to-dos, etc. on the go. The Contacts app on the iPod touch only shows fields with data in them. So Set the first name filed to Notes and put text in the Notes field and these are the only two fields that will be visible for that entry. When the iPod touch is synced with MacOS X the Notes entry and its associated text will be available in AddressBook. And vice versa, changed in AddressBook will sync to the touch.
New course: Natural and artificial intelligence
Just got electronic access to the first few books for a new Open University course that starts on 6th October. It’s a 3rd level computing course called Natural and Artificial Intelligence. It covers traditional AI research and how ideas from biological systems and evolution are shaping AI ideas. Finished the introductory book already. Good stuff. Looking forward to the rest of the course. Also start the recently introduced course on evolution next February.
The exam for the AI course is sometime around 14th June 2008. I’m hoping that means it’ll be in the week after Saturday 14th and that it doesn’t clash with WWDC 2008. It looks from the Moscone Center web page for June 2008 that there are non Apple events on in the Moscone West on the weeks beginning 16th and 23rd June. Looks like the event listed as Corporate Event from Sunday 8th June to Friday 13th June in Moscone West will be next years WWDC. I’ve got enough British Airways air miles for a free flight from Heathrow to San Francisco, and enough Marriott Rewards points for almost a week in a hotel. So should be able to do WWDC next year pretty cheaply.
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.
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.