Old enough to know better.
Feb 12 2010
Between reading the Omnivores Dilema and watching Jamie Oliver talking about obesity, makes me really depressed about food. Anyway I’ve been ‘mostly’ vegetarian for 16 years, so I’m ok right 
Less falvoured milk in the world = good!
Jan 14 2010
I had an email today giving me technology deals and one price caught my eye which you can see in the 
image to my right. I remember when these Palm devices were all the rage, I think I even had one for a period of time. It’s always a shock to see the prices of things you brought at possibly hundreds of pounds reduced to nothing more than proto junk.
In the past technological marvels like this would have been kept for years and functioning, but today last months technology is out of date and legacy. Whether the pace can be kept up for years to come, who knows, do I mind, well yes and no.
No because I like “shiney shiney”, yes because the relentless pace of change leads to more and more items like this being consigned to landfill. There lies the quandary, how to have all the new gadgets but to minimise the waste. With software you can remove the packaging all together but using digital distribution methods, with hardware hopefully people can come up with more modular devices, where you can reuse old components in new machines (which you can to a certain extent with PC’s).
At the current rate of land fill I hope someone makes a breakthrough soon before the planets full.
Jan 11 2010
Whilst it is probably a glitch, even in these recession fuelled times there are some jobs that should not be advertised. I’m sure that there might be a catch, maybe this job comes with a lifetime supply of free gold or something, but it better be good as it’s not even close to minimum wage.
From an advertisement at the side of this page!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/07/googlephone_3g_frequencies/
Anyway it was slightly funny, well a little bit anyway.
Jan 10 2010
It seems a while since I posted anything here, but I’m going to try and post at least once a month here about random stuff, if I’m good at anything it’s definitely random stuff! Anyway as I was a good boy last year I managed to get a bumper haul from Santa which is always nice, so I have lots of reviews to write up especially of the nice shiny digital Scalextric I purchased for my daughter, honest it’s for her I tell you.
Lots of fun has been had with this over the Christmas period, and don’t let anyone con you into buying a ‘kiddies’ version of the product for even a 4 year old as they are perfectly capable of racing on this track (although their ability to take being beaten is quiet limited!).
Anyway here are a few things I’ll put posts up about over the next few months:
Stay tuned…
Oct 26 2009
I often see headlines on the BBC News website that allows my mind to get ahead of my eyes. Take this one for example:
I realised the John Barnes was recently released from Tranmere and that he was a free agent, but really did England have that much of a problem on the right wing, had Fabio Capello gone mad. Alas once again clicking the link lead to disappointment:
Somewhere though, in an alternate reality, John Barnes is getting ready for a comeback in South Africa 2010.
Oct 04 2009
Visual Web Developer Express 2008 is a nice piece of software. It allows you to do free development of ASP.NET web applications in the same excellent environment as Visual Studio. I am confused though how it thinks my developments will progress when after install it adds the x64 bit Remote Debugger to my start menu, not a link to the IDE as you might think would be more useful. Maybe it thinks that I will spend most of my time there (I never have yet!). Odd, look here it is… waiting for me… lurking in my start bar… stalking my mouse!
Sep 09 2009
I use TweetDeck for a number of reasons.
1) It’s good and does what I want.
2) It looks cool.
3) It’s British, go us!
What I didn’t know that it was also 1337 to use it. I found a link to the list of clients that use twitter today. It lists the percentage of users of the that use that client, I noticed a strange thing about the % of users of TweetDeck.
Link to list here. (It might change… so this post might be so yesterday tomorrow.)
Edit: It changed whilst I was writing this… thus I was only 1337 for a moment… it figures.
Sep 07 2009
As part of any media setup the PS3 has always been one of the expensive toys that has dubious value especially in Europe with the lack of movie downloads. Whilst it has had DNLA playback from compatible devices (I have an excellent Buffalo Linkstation Mini) that alone has never quiet managed to push me into paying the £300+ pounds for the console and the added components.
This changed with the release of the latest console (PS3 Slim) and firmware upgrade (3.0). This dual release delivered a number of key elements that made me plonked down my hard earned cash:
1) Power and noise reduction.
2) iPlayer integration.
3) Movie downloads (not yet availible).
4) Price.
The reduction in the die size of processors has allowed Sony to reduce the size of the system, as an additional benefit the smaller processors are now cooler and the system is quieter than the previous model, which I’ve heard in all it’s ‘glory’, as well as consuming less power.
In the UK the BBC iPlayer is king of online programming and is becoming a must if you want to catch those missed programs. Whilst I’ve dabbled with kit from Shuttle (X200) the fact that the system actually was shoe-horned on top of windows and Microsoft has never done an official integration into media centre always left this solution lacking.
Now I know there will be many people saying that the PS3 iPlayer doesn’t really do HD or allow downloads 
and yes that is a limitation, but as the article in the latest Wired (September US) said, when something is good enough it only needs to provide the classic 80/20 rule and the you don’t need all the bells and whistles for it to be usable. In fact having the iPlayer available in under a minute on the TV downstairs and easily accessible with the controller (hopefully better remote support will come) was amazing. Hopefully the Movie downloads will be as easy to use and priced well, will have to see when they get rolled out in the UK as that will be the final element in my media empire .
Aug 22 2009
Saw an advert today saying that BT were rolling out up to 20mb broadband speeds around the country. Every hopeful I popped onto the BT site to see when my new superfast connection would be available. Much to my disappointment not only was I going to have to wait until November at least before any increase, but the increase I was going to get was not going to be quiet as impressive as I would hope. Oh well I better wait for fibre.
Remember you too can check to see if you’ll get a maximum increase of 0.5Mbps here.
Or not so fast even.
Aug 09 2009
Sometimes I’m amazed by the pairings they give me on Amazon. Take today, I’d been around Curry’s and Comet looking for the BT Verve 450 which I had actually just put into my parents house so I knew they worked quiet well. I can see whilst Curry’s and Comet are struggling, as they were £20 and £40 more expensive than the Amazon online price. Fortunately I take my phone (how I hate it still) to the store and checked the Amazon price before purchase. So after getting back home I decided to order the phone. Now I know there is magic in all online matching algorithms, but I’m sure the weirdo’s like me who want this phone don’t all want to pair it up as was offered to me in this pairing.
Obviously Mario Cart loving Wii owner’s all love this BT phone. Strange indeed now it might have know me too well though, with the release of Cricket on the Wii, I am tempted in buying one. See what do I know, maybe Amazon’s magic algorithm has already worked on me. Noooooo!