Maybe. Mark Morford explains…
Archive | Technology
Quote of the day
From an article about the mobile phone market on The Register, in relation the the forthcoming iPhone:
Not everyone agrees the iPhone will be as successful as Jobs hopes, but Apple does seem to make the perfect bogeyman for the mobile phone industry. What could be more scary than an organisation capable of working in total secrecy, with a track record of creating highly desirable products, headed by a man who’s beaten cancer and an SEC investigation and comes equipped with a Reality Distortion Field that would make Darth Vader jealous.
Nice one!
Car choices
It’s getting towards the time when I need to start thinking about the next car I will get. Need to order it about September time to collect in February 2008. At present I drive a Renault Laguna that I rent from a leasing company on a 3 year contract. Basically a company car but rather than the company managing it I deal directly with the leasing company. I like this way to finance a car. There is no deposit, no final payment. Just 36 payments over 3 years and then the car goes back to the leasing company. Plus the contract is a full service agreement that covers all parts and labour plus tyres, wipers etc. In other words no risk. For the next car I’ve been looking at:
The Hyundai was ruled out when I sat in one. Even with the seat fully back it was still a bit to small for me (I’m about 183 cm tall). The Honda would be good for the environment etc. but I don’t like the body shape. So that leaves the Mazda and the Renault. I really like the current Laguna. I’ve been driving the current models for the last 5 years (I had the same model as a company car before the current leased one). When researching the options I found out that there is a new Laguna due to be announced on June 4th. There is a teaser web site available. Some artist impressions on the 4-door and new 2-door coupe versions have appeared as well:
Click pictures for larger views
Wow. Really nice. The Coupe especially, but even the 4-door model. Rumour has it the Coupe is not going to be available until August 2008. which means that it’ll be too late for me this time. I can live with the standard 4 door one. So, if the impressions above turn out to be accurate it’ll be another Laguna for me! The RX-8 is nice but it drinks petrol and oil like it’s going out of fashion apparently. I don’t want to have to nursemaid an engine by constantly having to check the oil. History tells me I won’t do it.
New watch…
I’ve been wearing a Casio G-Shock watch since last August. I bought it in the USA whilst at WWDC 2006 in San Francisco. Big mistake. Looks good (see picture below), but is crap as a watch. Way too hard to read the time with a quick glance. Well for me anyway.
Click picture for larger view
So I’ve been thinking of getting a new watch with a simpler face for a few months. Prompted by a thread on the uk.comp.sys.mac newsgroup about what gadget people would buy with £100, I decided it was time (ha ha) to look for a new watch. Some time with Google, and the sub £100 budget, quickly narrowed the search down to one of the Casio Wave Ceptor range. Several in that range met the criteria I had:
- Simple, uncluttered face with numbers from 1 to 12 around the face
- Modern styling
- A gadgety or geeky aspect that doesn’t trump the two lines above
I went for this one for £89.99. It receives time updates by radio during the night. These are sent from a transmitter near Rugby in England, or one in Germany. Each will update watches with the correct time taken from an atomic clock in an area up to 1500Km from the transmitter. Areas outside a radius of 500Km can be in shadows etc. Where I live is within the 500Km radius of Rugby. It seems to work. The second hand on the watch and the second hand on the analogue clock shown within the MacOS X System Preferences are in perfect sync. The Mac gets it’s time from an Apple time source on the Internet. So unless they are both wrong then the radio updating seems to be the business. The strap of the new watch is made from very flexible black plastic, and as a result it takes on the shape of the wrist very well. So the watch is very comfortable to wear. It also does World Time so it’ll show the time in the UK when out of the country. This model doesn’t take it’s time from the USA based transmitters (just the European ones). Be interesting to see how it reacts when in the USA. Will probably have to set it manually to the US time zone. When back in the UK it should update the time automatically. It also charges via Solar (quick) or via artificial light (slowly). I’m well pleased 🙂 Anyone want a cheap G-Shock?
Here is a picture of the new watch:
Click picture for larger view
Schedule Tweaked
Made a few minor changes to the WWDC schedule I posted previously. This is probably close to the final session list I’ll attend. Unless there are some late additions after the keynote for super secret stuff. Not long to go now 🙂
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WWDC “campus” bash not so campus anymore
At previous Apple WWDC conferences Apple bused the attendees out to the Cupertino campus on Thursday night for food, beer and music. The so called campus bash. I’m glad I went last year because the bash this year will be held in San Francisco. Probably be in the big ground floor hall of Moscone West. Should still be fun but going to the Apple campus was part of WWDC the long time attendees tell me. Still, I can say I was at the last one 🙂
WWDC schedule
Not long to go until Apple WWDC 2007. Just done my preliminary schedule based on the published session info so far. See the picture below. Will probably change a bit as there are some slots in the published schedules on the WWDC site that are listed as TBA. These are likely placeholders for new stuff in MacOS X 10.5 Leopard or iPhone. The picture also doesn’t show any of the evening activities such as the Apple Design Awards, The Scientific Poster Session, The Apple Campus Bash and others. There is also a session entitled Mac OS X Scientific Computing State of the Union that is in the full listings but not on the calendar view. It’ll maybe a lunchtime session. I want to go to that. Many of the sessions I’m going to are IT technology related rather than developer related. This reflects that WWDC is taking on a more technical conference feel rather than a pure developer conference. The IT related sessions are of interest for the education technology job I’m doing at present.
Click picture for larger view
Flight to San Francisco on 9th June. 6 weeks to go. Can’t wait 🙂
Toys for the boys
Finally stepped into the High Definition television age. I got a Sony Bravia KDL-40W2000 LCD television and a Sony Playstation 3. The TV has a 1080p HD display and the PS3 has a Blu-Ray HD drive in it. As a bonus I get a games console in the Blu-Ray player for free 🙂 Here is a picture of the beasts in situ. The image on the screen is from a Mac mini that I use as my music centre with iTunes.
The quality of Blu-Ray movies via the PS3 and the TV is stunning. Very, very happy. I had to take the first PS3 back as the fans would come on and once they got to a high speed, whilst playing a game for example, they would stay at the high speed until the unit was switched off. This was irrespective of what the PS3 was doing after the fans speeded up. So if I left it idling the fans would never slow down again. This was annoying when using it to watch movies when in a quiet part of a film. You could hear the fans over the film sound. The replacement PS3 seems to be quieter but I’ve still to test it fully.
The game MotorStorm is stunning on the PS3. Really, really good fun as well. It outputs at 720p resolution and looks excellent on the Bravia. Here is a picture of a bike from the game. It has a bit of motion blur.
So I’ve cast my die into the Blu-Ray camp in the great HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray face off. Hopefully Apple will go down the Blu-Ray route with their HD optical drives in Macintosh machines. A Mac mini with a Blu-Ray drive and a version of DVD Player that allowed playback of Blu-Ray movie discs would make a very nice media hub indeed. It’d need to output 1080p via HDMI cable though.
‘Twas the night before Macworld…
. . .when all through the house not a creature was stirring!
I’m really looking forward to the new toys and software that will be released over the next few days. I hope there is a iPod phone. I hope it works with the Nike+ shoe thingy. I really hope said iPod phone isn’t a lemon!
The ModBook should be interesting. If it can do screen rotation and doesn’t add too much to the price of a basic MacBook it might be a runner for me. The battery will need to be readily accessible to allow an easy sleep->battery change->wake from hibernation cycle.
Just a pity we’re not all in SF to see the stuff in the flesh. Still WWDC to come later in the year. Hopefully earlier this year than last. Anyone else planning to go? I’m making it my summer holiday like a sad git!
Private space flights
There are several private organisations working towards the development of non-governmental space vehicles. See this video of a TEDtalk by Burt Rutan on his efforts with SpaceShipOne. Rutan is now working with Virgin Galactic and Richard Branson to offer private sub-orbital flights. They are also going to build a space port called Spaceport America in New Mexico. Initial flights will go (maybe in 2008) from the Rutan site in the Mojave Desert in California.
Another private venture that had a test flight recently is the Blue Origin group that is funded by Jeff Bezos of Amazon. There are videos of the test flight of their Goddard VTOL craft at the Blue Origin site. This is a prototype of a design called New Shepard thay want to fly sub-orbitally. Whilst it only takes off and rises a few hundred feet then lands safely, it’s a good initial flight.
I’ve been quite sceptical in the past about private space ventures. I’ve argued that it takes the resources of organisations like NASA, RFSA, ESA, JAXA, CNSA or ISRO to fund space programmes. Indeed I’ve argued that it might be better if they joined up and pooled resources.
I think I’ve changed my mind. For the big projects like Mars missions the big agencies are best placed to do them at present. But the smaller private ventures into sub-orbital space could be the start of a bootstrap process that leads to a commercialisation of space flight. This could lead to orbital and extra-orbital flights in time. If there is profit to be made then it’ll get done. It’s only a matter of time. So I now think there is room for both governmental space flight and private space flight.
I find this very exciting. Maybe one day we’ll get to a situation like that depicted in Elite where people can buy their own space craft and make a living wheeling and dealing amongst the asteroids, planets and, ultimately, the stars. For a modern port of this game get Oolite.