Now here's an interesting 'what if'.

Warning - nerdy computer content.

What if... Microsoft stopped thinking like, well, Microsoft, and started thinking like Apple?

There are a number of hints that's been happening for some time: the requirement coming that computers running windows will have to have similar hardware restrictions to those already present in Apple computers (UEFI) the restrictions of Windows on ARM based mobile devices and the desire to produce their own hardware like Surface and the ever closer linking of Microsoft to Nokia Phones.

It seems other people are thinking along similar lines although not exactly phrasing it quite so plainly.

To me, it looks like both Apple and Microsoft are losing their way a bit. Both are desperate to create and occupy the new mobile computing market, and Apple have done it very successfully so far. But they both seem to be forgetting that the real place of computing is still the desktop with a mouse/trackpad and keyboard (that includes all laptops) in their eagerness to cater for the touchscreen device. In some ways this has done some good, causing interfaces to be cleaned up a little, yet at the same time it has seemed a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul, actively hampering desktop functionality in order to bridge touchpad and desktop interfaces. Surely it would be such a stretch of the imagination to see that desktop and touchpad interfaces could share visual cues and references, yet actually run on different frameworks?

But this raises another question too, which the linked article touches on.

Time was the only non-nerd friendly OSs were from either Microsoft or Apple. I had a friend in IT who ran OS2 Warp for a while, but Wil was a little unusual. However in the last couple of years many very viable open source alternatives have sprung up, much thanks though not entirely to the Ubuntu initiative, and now it's possible to download gratis an OS that will work every bit as well as Windows or OSX, in some cases without even much of a learning curve. For many users though, the limitation was that games were hit & miss - mostly miss - even if they could work under emulation software. However if Valve were to start porting their games to run native in Linux (whichever flavour, probably Ubuntu) then the last compelling reason everyone HAD to have windows would be removed.

So what if other OSs became viable for home computers?

Well, for one thing it would not change corporate computing, at least not for a long time, since there was both a financial and personnel investment in what ever systems were presently in use. At the moment many firms don't even plan to move from Windows XP and IE 6, let alone change to some new-fangled open source, incmpatible software that does everything differently. But in homes I could very much imagine teenage boys asking their parents if they could have a new higher-spec. computer without Windows (because it would be cheaper) and then run the paid for games on a (free, downloaded) OS that they had installed. One could imagine OSs being optimised for game play too, since Linux is mostly a hobbyist-driven way of computing, running games faster under lighter weight environments or even (as Mechwarrior II used to be) from a command line.

What would this do for Microsoft and Apple? Well Apple buyers would be little affected, because the Apple market isn't driven by cost or particularly game playing, and the majority of households don't use Apple devices for desktop computing. But I could see that Microsoft might well lose significant market share, increasingly so as they tried to build walls around their garden like Apple has. Their devices have always been masterpieces of poor design, even when they have been functionally excellent.  It will be interesting to see whether the role they played with Apple were reversed, and the 'fruity firm' have to come in and 'assist' them the way Microsoft did Apple a couple of decades ago.

Well that was the the week, that was.

And how it flew past - 9 days since my last post.

One needs a sense of humour to be me, I suspect. My speaking last weekend was so well received, with favourable comments from lots of people. My speaking this weekend seemed to baffle most of those unfortunate enough to listen (talking about having been saved and will be saved, what salvation might look like with a new heaven and earth). Maybe it was just a little too ambitious. Maybe it was just a little too muddly.

Maybe I needed to get a bit smaller in my own eyes (said with a grin).

Lots of work on last week, lots of work also this week. I need to find a way of being paid for time I spend doing 'stuff' for other people, or at least a way to build it into their bills. I've started work with a new company, but there's a lot of communication needed as we develop a relationship and transfer knowledge and information, ethos etc between the various groups involved. Seems good so far though.

There are also some challenges coming up in the church to be negotiated through. We need to find a way of living in grace and freedom with each other and yet also providing reassurance and security that the fundamentals are being taken care of. There is some discussion to take place.

And once again I keep seeing the need for housegroups and places of direct connection and fellowship - I realised last night that even though we *don't do housegroups* as a church, housegroup-style meetings happen spontaneously when ever smaller groups of people gather, whether it's for prayer, bible study or whatever.

And finally some thoroughly boring tech-notes:

Hopefully in the next couple of weeks I'll upgrade the Macbook to SSD and probably also mountain Lion: it will likely be the last OS upgrade Apple will allow, since it's nearly 4 years old and past it's planned obsolescence date.

And I've finally got around to installing Microsoft Office under Wine on the Pear Linux PC - couldn't have been much easier, and I'm kicking myself for not having done it sooner. Just have to try installing the latest service packs now, to bring it up to date. IF this works OK then it could spell the end of OSX on the Macbook, except on a stored disc so that the machine can be sold later, or possibly dual boot. Experiments still to be done however, to see which OS is suitable as a replacement, particularly regarding wireless network adapter drivers, battery life and the 'superdrive' DVD drive Apple use.

And now - writing up and lab work.

Don't you just love emotions?

I've not been sleeping too much the last week or so: a combination of wanting to do stuff, thinking about things (waking up through the night) and the old body not really being happy about laying down flat.

This morning I finally got up at 6.30 after another uncomfy night, feeling bleary and a little headachy before heading off to men's group. Usually we do a study and discussion of some kind, but this morning we watched the film 'Courageous' - relatively low-cringe for a Christian film. However being what it is, it MUST show ups & downs, including the death of the key character's daughter in a car crash.

Coped well, right up to the point where he then starts thinking about his daughter growing up, using a dream sequence culminating with her in a wedding dress. That's great, lets twist the knife a bit too.

Managed to stay there, quietly, without thinking too many bad thoughts. Fortunately the film ran on for more than 2 hours, and I was able to escape before it quite completed; great because I didn't have to talk to anyone afterward. Chris sensed something was not OK when I got back in, and talking to her a little helped reduce the internal pressure. Now Mr. Ibuprofen and Mr. Paracetamol have reduced it a bit further and the headache is backing off.

Tomorrow I plan to talk about salvation, and how our choices now affect how we are being saved. The film was interesting, in that it showed characters who were quite distinctly 'being saved' and making good and bad choices. I am grateful to know and have walked with people who I can hold up in reality and say that they have made good choices and have demonstrated the evidence that they ARE being saved, despite not living in California, owning large homes and driving big shiny cars.

Headache backing off - I need to finish off the prep, including adding some 'family photos' to powerpoint for tomorrow.

Office 2013 preview

Available on El Reg for those who care.

I really like the new look - no mungy gradients, no pastel colours obscuring everything into a blur of grey. This looks like it's designed for work instead of trying to demonstrate how powerful ones graphics card is. For me, the epitome of a clean workspace is windows classic on XP, and the lack of messiness seems to be trying to recapture some of that. Not so keen on the way it wants to hook into everything in the cloud and social networks, nor the fact that it will probably create yet another proprietary document format, but that seems to be the price of using Microsoft stuff.

I wonder if there will be enough money in the corporate pot for a copy when it's released?

Wonder if it will run under WINE?

Jesus would have died for you

if you were the only person alive.

This is a concept I've heard on and off for a long time, but I can think of no basis in the bible to back it up. Both Chris and I see Jesus as going to the cross because of the glory set before Him (a complex set of ideas in a single phrase) rather than because He was 'thinking of me' to follow a recent idiom (I'm pretty sure He didn't think of me personally at all).

So friends out there in the blogosphere, do you agree with the idea of Jesus dying for you alone and specifically, or do you see Him doing it from obedience and because of what His death would do to creation? I'd love to hear why you believe what you do. Answers with too many long words may be mocked.

;-)

Ecclesiastes is a funny place to find God

If you could see how I read and where God speaks to me from, you might be surprised to see how much old testament I read and how little new, relatively. The NT is densely packed with information, guidance, instruction and prophesy, requiring detailed, careful investigation on an almost word-by-word basis. The OT however is like broad brush-strokes, painting a sky or a landscape, and giving room to breathe and read easily, even when the subject matter is not a light one.

So I read from chapter 8:
¹¹ When the sentence for a crime is not quickly carried out, the hearts of the people are filled with schemes to do wrong. ¹² Although a wicked man commits a hundred crimes and still lives a long time, I know that it will go better with God-fearing men, who are reverent before God. ¹³ Yet because the wicked do not fear God, it will not go well with them, and their days will not lengthen like a shadow.
¹⁴ There is something else meaningless that occurs on earth: righteous men who get what the wicked deserve, and wicked men who get what the righteous deserve. This too, I say, is meaningless. ¹⁵ So I commend the enjoyment of life , because nothing is better for a man under the sun than to eat and drink and be glad. Then joy will accompany him in his work all the days of the life God has given him under the sun. 


I've long looked at Ecclesiastes as a book written by a Solomon who had fallen from grace and righteousness; a book of advice to his sons not to wander and a book of mourning for the human condition and all the privations that go with life in a middle-eastern culture. But Solomon had God's wisdom, and the gift of God is not easily taken away, so this morning I saw these verses in a different light.


Why would it be meaningless for the wicked to live long happy lives and the righteous to have short, painful times filled with struggle? There is a sense in which so many things that happen are not according to God's way of doing things that they are truly without meaning and value, as in the example here, and God, it seems, has set boundaries on Himself to allow us humans to bring wisdom, pleasure, happiness, pain, distress and cruelty according to our hearts desires. 

But at the same time His heart is for us to live in peace and happiness, enjoying all the good things He has made. So He commends the enjoyment of the life He has given, because in one sense there is nothing better for man to do than to eat, drink and be glad, taking delight in being a part of creation and enjoying the obvious blessings of God and the fruit of his work. 

We so often miss out this aspect of the Father's heart in the way we present things, wanting all the right boxes ticked and rules followed. Yet God IS a father, who loves to see his children happy, growing up, loving and living well instead of being twisted into phobic this, sexual that and generally giving everyone a bad time. 


I hope that's come out right.


Now, off to church in a mo and the greatest challenge of all today - what song to use for the kids at the start of the meeting.

Ever do something foolish?

No, me neither.

Today I pledged some money to a project to build some guitars. These are special because this should make John Backlund's designs available at less than stratospheric prices. I'll have to sell the Heritage Les Paul to do it IF the project goes ahead, but it's worth it.

A little more wildlife from round the back

We had a visitor on Saturday morning.


And there have been the usual birds, including a juvenile woodpecker and a greenfinch or 2.





I notice all these picture are really mungy - excessive noise reduction (may not be obvious scaled down) badly bleached highlights, poor detail and iffy colours. And that's AFTER doing as much as I could to rescue them. They were taken with Chris's Panasonic TZ10 - it makes me wonder if somehow it's had the noise reduction, EV and other settings changed somehow, because these are anything but impressive. If not, then once again I'll be wishing for something with a decent size sensor and interchangeable lenses.

We were with our neighbours this weekend

Celebrating their wedding. Congrats Andy and Davina.

Struck by a comment

made by a reviewer of the new Google Chromebox on El reg.

Google isn’t unique in moving the goalposts with the tried and trusted models. I’m still grappling with Mac OS X Lion’s quirks and, rather than bend to Apple’s current vision of doing things, I’m constantly looking to find workarounds so I can do routine tasks as quickly as before. Having an OS that nags you because it woke up after an upgrade and now thinks you’re stupid, is a tedious affair, but I digress. linky


Nice to know I'm not the only one who sees things this way. I'm still debating whether to ditch OSX and move in a different direction, or whether I'll be able to bear returning to Windows. Microsoft seem to have made such a mess of Windows that I really don't know, and am seriously considering a Linux build with Office running under Wine for work. My biggest misgiving is that Linux frequently doesn't connect well to things, and that printer drivers are clumsy and limited compared to the windows equivalent (something OSX also suffers from, since it uses CUPS too).


In all honesty a MBA is looking more likely, since the basic hardware is OK and the pricing is more than competitive with non-apple stuff right now.


While I'm talking about this, it seems that Apple has been taking back the OS market.

In 2004 there microsoft had an installed base of 56 machines compared to every apple device. The ratio is now 19:1 for conventional computers alone, and 2:1 if you include mobile computers like iDevices. Working against apple is the fact that in *many* cases if a household has one iDevice then it will have many - partly due to the interoperability of the walled garden, partly down to the wealthy fanboi effect. Working against microsoft is that much of the installed base is gently obsolescing, and there is a danger that it will be replaced by something else.

Microsoft has taken steps to try to protect its market share with the UEFI boot code requirement for hardware manufacturers (where PC hardware will only allow signed software to boot) to lock out 'free' OSs like linux etc. Not a real problem on PCs where there already know solutions, but supposedly a problem with ARM devices like most non-apple smartphones and tablets. There are people gathering with pitchforks and torches over this, except it's likely to be a non-event, concerned that they will be locked out of rooting their phone (running a different version of their preferred operating system from the standard one).

So it seems that evil microsoft has returned, but whether they can become dominant again remains to be seen. In some ways having the M$ monopoly was useful, in that EVERYONE knows the only form for a document to be universally presented was in office format (.pdf is pants because it's not readily editable) and all the other 'open' formats look different in every word processor & spreadsheet program.

Back to the original point, I wonder if anyone has though of designing an OS that tries to work with the user to give them optimal efficiency, instead of the user having to learn workarounds in order to be able to work with the OS?  That might be novel - remember your read about it here first!

A cut above?

If anyone cares....

From memory, in 2006 I bought my present razor; a Braun CruZer (I know, it sounds like a gay bar) which has done excellent service ever since. A while before that I'd had a Remington with 3 cutting heads, that wore the original foils through in less than a year and the replacements in about the same time, plus repeatedly giving me razor burn marks all over my cheeks and throat AND the batteries were already failing. The Remington was replaced with a super-cheap Braun 4615, but that wasn't an efficient cutter and when the charger developed a fault I bought the CruZer.

Last week the foil on the CruZer failed, breaking away all along one side. Pretty good after 6 years, considering they have a design life of 18 months. A quick hunt found a number of shops had the replacements available, but I eventually chose Amazon, simply because postage was free and I already had an account (message there, web marketeers). The bits turned up today, prompting this post.

What to do in the intervening time?

Well, I'd not thrown that Braun 4615 away. The problem originally was that the charger would only trickle charge, taking several days to achieve enough power for a full shave. Now since the rest of the razor worked fine I just plugged it in and left it for a couple of weeks before putting it away - it's best to store rechargeable batteries full than empty and one never knows when something might be needed. So out it came. There was enough remaining in the cells to let the motor turn slowly, so back on charge it went, with the charger apparently now working fine. I got 5 days of shaving from that first recharge.

Will I revert to the Cruzer now? Certainly - it's a better shaver in many ways. Will I fully recharge the other and keep storing it? Definitely. It's NiCad powered, so full charging & discharging are required, but that can also mean long battery storage life, as demonstrated, it was so useful standing in that it would be foolish to just ditch it.

BTW the CruZer is still capable of 7 days of shaving on a single charge. Pretty good after 6 years of daily use.

It feels like I should apologise

For the grumpy, grumbling tone of the blog at the moment. Mostly I try not to vocalise grumbles, but maybe this is a 'safe' place of self expression.

It may not help that Mr. Grumpy is still 'enjoying' his 6 week sports embargo while healing, and slept badly last night.

Is there any relief from beige and pastels?

Saturday I went browsing laptops with a view to – hopefully shortly – replace the aging macbook with something a little snappier, and possibly that I feel can be trusted more and work better for me. PC world would not be my natural first choice, but it was convenient and there’s a branch close by other shops that Chris was interested to see in Banbury.

Regular readers will know of my disaffection for Apple products and particularly OSX as a desktop environment for working. Now while I have fairly reasonable experience of different Linux desktops and spent many years working happily with Windows XP, I have had almost no hands on Vista and very little with W7, so I was hoping to catch up a little.

Worth clarifying that with XP, when setting up immediately after installing I would automatically set appearance to windows classic and likewise menu and toolbars, while turning off all the auto-hide functions. This is simple THE best work environment that I ever found. Everything is crisply laid out and accessible rapidly, text is sharp, icons are clear, all open windows are listed in the toolbar at the bottom of the screen and navigation is a breeze. It’s not perfect, but it is very good, and workflow is managed easily.

Does W7 have a ‘classic windows’ setting?

So I went browsing among the various laptops available. When did everything turn to beige and pastel mush? I’d noticed this a little bit with a W7 computer controlling a piece of kit last year, but didn’t really touch the windows desktop much because most work was does using the instrument interface (also an aesthetic tram-smash, but with the saving grace of being bold and clear). But here I found myself squinting at screens trying to see what was going on with all the swirly pastels and soft, indistinct colours. Restful, maybe, but it looks like the target market is somewhere between the Daily Mail and My Little Pony magazine.

They had some Macs in the store.

I wandered over and looked at the iMac with it’s unevenly lit 27” screen & £1400 price tag and shuddered a bit.

On the end I found an 11” Macbook Air. Tiny thing, glued to the counter top to prevent theft, and of course it couldn’t be used because it was locked out, requiring a store password to open it. A trainee assistant eventually came over, I explained why I was there and she went off to ask the manager for the passcode. I could see her waiting to speak to him while all the sales guys stood in a huddle chatting, keeping her on the edge of the circle. Eventually there was enough of a gap and back she came.

I have very mixed feelings.

Morally speaking, I’m pretty much at the point where boycotting Apple as a company seems ‘right’ ethically. But it’s not just that. The machine was driving a small screen, it had an SSD hard drive with a modern processor, and yet it was distinctly sluggish in the store. GarageBand (one of the few bits of software on there) took about 15sec to open, and the whole system seemed lacklustre. On the upside – and I never thought I’d say this – compared to windows systems I’d been viewing, the desktop seemed clear and crisp, with neat grey borders and (astonishment!) clear text.

Familiarity? Surely not that alone.

One of the interesting aspects of using Pear Linux is that Lion felt pretty familiar. I’d be interested to know who copied who between Gnome and Apple, but nevermind about that.

On the one hand I’d like to know how it is that Microsoft can hope to keep pushing out their muddy-looking-as-standard OS except that it is always run (sometimes badly, though less so these days) on cheap hardware, and where people can get away with spending £200 for a functional computer then I understand.

And on the other, I don’t want to buy my hardware from Apple again, but all the ‘competing’ windows machines don’t seem especially great (poor screens1366 X 768 on a premium 13" laptop - really?) and are frequently more expensive, probably as part of the attempt to get profitability and reasonable margins back into hardware again.

Sony have a 11” laptop with decent spec (E11) and good screen (for the size) on the way for £400, due in about a month, and I’ll try to get a look at that. I’m also tempted by a refurb 13.3” macbook air because the screen is 1440 X 900, with a view to installing windows and finally escaping OSX’s clutches, but not really happy about that for reasons described.

Or maybe I’ll just wait, prevaricate some more.

Does anyone know if Windows 7 has a ‘classic windows’ mode?

We just watched The Artist

I understand that some people asked for a refund in the cinema. That is quite reasonable.

*edit*

I feel some kind of explanation is required.

For me, silent movies have inevitably been a frustrating experience, and it's likely I'm not at all alone. The 'classic' silent films that were shown on TV (what cinema would screen them?) were inevitable painful experiences for me: Laurel and Hardy, Charlie Chaplain's various films, The Keystone Cops and various other nameless films that motivated me to get off my butt and go somewhere else.

I'm sure at the time that the novelty of moving pictures was absolutely wonderful for many, even when they repeated cliche after visual cliche to get the message across. But just like the early curtain call scene in The Artist, every gag, every point would be hammered home, emphasised, repeated and dragged out to the point of unbearability. Laurel & Hardy would always have a grandfather clock scene, where they get stuck going back & forth in the road for a couple of minutes before the inevitable car comes along to run over the clock.

The other raw nerve it really presses is that of communication between people.

I know that films ALWAYS contrive situations, forcing their victims into inevitable positions to produce the planned outcome, and it's sometimes bearable, sometimes not. But the emphasis on a lack of communication in this film made that experience almost painful, whether it's a refusal to communicate with an increasingly unhappy wife or the repeated requirement that the artist himself may not actually produce any audible speech. Just deeply frustrating.

Now on one level I can appreciate the mastery that went into creating this film, and the clever way it makes you feel you're both watching a film and participating in the story, the great camera work, careful continuity and even the little bits of humorous punning (like the 'bang' script in the suicide scene). But it makes me think this was a film produced for jaded watchers - those who have seen too many films and need something different, with a lot of highly recognisable references that enabled them to connect historically with it.

It's a clever film, and I'm glad we borrowed the DVD instead of paying for it!

p.s. It was nice to see David Niven's picture getting shown a lot. ;-)

User interface and intuity

Is intuity a word? Can you guess what it means?

My mum, at almost 80, still uses a computer. However for her it's been a struggle at times because she doesn't find the interface natural, and if the icons for the things she wants to do aren't in the expected places or for some reason things appear different from usual then it can become unusable until it's reset.*

So anyway, she expressed an interest in an E-book reader recently, so last night I took her Chris's Kobo touch to try.

Now, it might have been because there was someone present to say 'do this, do that', but she seemed to find the interface quite natural, and the idea of swiping to turn pages obvious and comfortable. I wonder if, because of training and familiarity, more experienced computer users find it difficult to judge what an intuitive user interface really looks like, particularly to a user without previous experience.

I'd say that's pretty much sorted then, though we should go look at the Kindle too, just to see if it is more responsive. Lack of response is really the only significant flaw with the Kobo - it's just REALLY sluggish, especially when used directly in WiFi mode, to the point where that side of things is almost unusable except for updates. I have wondered about one of the Android tablets for her, since they are the same price, but it's back to that non-intuitive interface, and the LCD instead of e-paper screen which makes the Kobo & Kindle a much nicer reading experience. Better to do one thing very well than a dozen things tolerably.


* When I moved jobs in '97 I shared a PC with my boss for a while. Being completely comfy with W95 at the time I just naturally re-arranged the desktop to more efficiency, just like we all used to do on the shared machines in the previous company. I did not take into account the impact this might have had on her, and didn't understand at the time why she was not relaxed about it, but soon got the message it was not welcome. Live and learn, eh? It probably also accelerated the acquisition of my own PC, so at least it was not all bad.

Today is the first day

That I'm going to try to leave off the painkillers.

I've been taking paracetamol 4 times a day, every day, for almost 5 weeks, along with regular codeine at night and occasional ibuprofen when things have become too difficult during the day.  A few times recently I've not taken the paracetamol until a couple of hours too late, and really noticed the discomfort. But now there is much more mobility, the 'open wound' feelings in my back are greatly reduced and the bruising has almost disappeared from my arm, so I take that as a sign the deep tissue damage is pretty much sorted.

But I've been feeling so confused, lethargic, tired all the time since the accident, and I'm sure the meds haven't helped clarity of thought, even though they've stopped the pain from being so intense and distracting. Now I want to reclaim both my body and mind, even if it does hurt for a bit. I want the 'old Toni' back, who was motivated and able to focus, instead of just wanting to hide in a ball of self-gratification.

On that note, time to start working.

The scammers are still at work

Just received the following:


Dear  Mr/Mrs ,

Your account have received a new amount , details are shown below :

From : on3commerce@live.com
The Amount : $119.95 USD

Your payment is still on hold and waiting for your action.

To accept your $119.95 USD payment please follow this 3rd party single use link and complete the steps :

http://www.buty- sportowe.com/PP/index.php?websr?= _login-submit&dipatch= 563aee8d025ad32184r5d1az3d69f843rg21rg564az984

Once confirmed your payment will be reversed to your account and ready to be used/transfered to your banking account ect...

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Copyright © 1999-2012. All rights reserved.

S.à r.l. & Co., S.C.A.
Company Limited by Shares
Registered office: 5th Floor 22-24 Boulevard Royal L-2449, Luxembourg
RCS Luxembourg B 118 349

PPID PP449

No-one owes me $119 and I am not giving your phishing scheme my bank details. I hope Jesus saves you instead, so you'll stop doing this and become part of the answer instead of being part of the problem.

Just deleted my Diaspora account

I loved the sense of people thinking freely in the beginning, but increasingly the place was being filled with propaganda by minds that hated and wanted to distort reality. There was a sense of community, but it was aggressive, rather than encouraging, and almost all from a single point of view. And finally there was a sense of entitlement to acquisition that really grated - the idea that if something was digital then it MUST be free (both as in thought and beer) and that they had a right to copy and acquire it gratis.

I'm also back to wondering about shutting down Facebook (and would have done so already if I didn't find it so useful to connect with some people).

A hidden guest.

Just walked a couple of miles this lunchtime.

And now my back aches. Think it's going to take a while to build back up.

Oh! I have it on.

Name that advert.

Chris got the reference immediately.

After the rain comes.....

Photography.







More on photobucket and 500px.

Browsing phones.

There's been a lot of new phone designs appearing in the last few months, and I'm already thinking about moving on from the HTC desire that was acquired in Dec 2010, after the contract has expired.

The Desire has been a mixed bag. I like the availability of contact information on a real screen, but have been frustrated by the munged OSX compatibility (another nail in the coffin of OSX computing). Mostly it's been good, but sometimes has run slow and often complains about a lack of memory, even though most of my apps are on the SD card - I've had to be really ruthless with the few apps I have installed. In terms of usefulness, the screen is a decent size provided one does not need to view detail, thus simple text pages and images are OK, but web pages are too much faff to bother reading. Facebook have sensibly managed their data presentation, and the app is probably partly to thank for their present success. Finally, battery life has been *mostly* acceptable, with the phone often doing 3 to 4 days with occasional use compared to many similar phones that struggle to manage more than a day.

There will be a major temptation to just root & Cyanogen-mod the phone once the contract has expired, getting a SIM only deal from O2 or Tesco to save money, instead of just selling it on. Although it would be nice to try something else.

There's been a lot of talk about the new HTC one series, some good and some bad, and Samsung's new galaxy III sounds as though it's good (and Apple have tried to block it, which is a definite endorsement) so in abut 15 minutes on Saturday I had a quick hands on with the SIII and the new HTC range.

First impressions: I will probably not be getting a SIII or a One X or S: they are simply huge.

The smartphone upper echelon market is curious - I can't see how the different makers differentiate themselves. All the above 3 phones are basically similar to look at and hold, and to someone familiar with Android 2.2, the OS interfaces looked more or less similar. The Galaxy did some pretty things with transparency and backgrounds and all phones worked smoothly and quickly, but I could never have told you one felt better than the other. In terms of functions, again they were mostly similar except that the SIII camera is seemed very much better than the HTC cameras in terms of image quality, and, all other things being equal, that would clinch a deal for me.

But not all things are equal.

I tried HTC's newest One offering, the One V, and that made me wonder.

The One V had a smaller body, very similar in size to my Desire, but slimmer and with an angled lip at the bottom. Screen resolution is the same, but it felt really nice & solid in my hand, as though the body were metal instead of plastic.

But.

There's always a trade off. This is HTC's budget 'One' phone, and it has suffered in the execution. Worst of all is that they have crippled it with the same stupid 512Mb memory limitation that is present on my 3 year old design phone, meaning that storage space will always be inadequate and the phone will run badly when a 'reasonable' range of apps is installed. They also used a slower 1GHz processor, and while that might give good battery life, it was also laggy, and the phone lacked fluidity compared to the other higher spec models and even to my old Desire.

Disappointing.

It may be very tempting to return to a dumb phone with a decent screen, that will sit more comfortably in my pocket and last a couple of weeks between re-charges. However Nokia announced a new Symbian phone (the 808) recently with a 41Mp camera. I have no need to stick with Android, and subject to testing, that could be a real possibility. The bit they get consistently weak is screen quality, and this one seems to be no exception. Sadly the Nokia shop in Banbury is closed now.

As always, my desires for function and form, as with so many other areas, run counter to fashion. With prices now tumbling I'm even tempted to look at an iPhone 3GS, though the thought of being required to do all computer-phone interaction through iTunes makes me feel a little sick. That's assuming I could overcome my dislike enough to buy another Apple product.

How are you? I'm fine, and you?

To mis-quote a phrase: There's lies, damned lies and greetings.

I participated in the above this morning before stopping, correcting and explaining. I'm in a lot of pain right now. My back feels like it has a deep open wound below the left shoulder blade, caused, almost certainly, by a nerve being in the wrong place. I'm guessing that's the case because if I get in just the right position then it doesn't hurt. That position is one where I'm reclining back with my arms by my sides, passive and resting. Not much use at work then.

Outside of that I'd say the recovery is doing well, and I'm mostly sleeping OK, although still right (wrong) side and back only, rather than on my left side where I would prefer. But this pain just drives me nuts sometimes, and really messes with my concentration and ability to just do normal things.

Chris made the comment

I'm running out of things to put on your card apart from church. There's a message in that, although not all bad.

The NAS is up and running.

Bought a D-Link 2 bay (empty) 320 NAS unit from ebuyer. The first was DOA, but its replacement worked OK.

I had a couple of 'old' drives sat around: a 3 year old 1.5TB Samsung unit that had automatically 'set' itself down to 500Mb* and a reconditioned Seagate 1Tb drive that was sent as a replacement for another failed drive. Initially both drives were detected as 'faulty' because they had been partitioned and used with a mix of EXT4, NTFS and FAT32, but once they were reformatted (FAT32, no partition) they were recognised fine.

D-Link provide a wizard applet, and configuring the unit was relatively straight forward. I went for a 1TB RAID1 arrangement, mirroring data on both drives, and the spare 500Gb was allocated as JBOD. Ben can use that for music etc if he wants, while we keep the 1TB partition for work data and images. The other thing to remember was to establish sharing rights on the NAS. Not difficult, but it just required a bit of hunting around to find the appropriate controls to enable that. The NAS came with free incremental backup software that is now installed on Chris's computer, and I'll probably look into deja dup for the Linux box. Ben may also want to do something, since he's got 500Gb space.

User IDs were created and passwords assigned and it seems I can access the shared drive wirelessly through the modem router/powerline adaptor network from this Macbook. I'm not sure about wired network data rates, but a 1.9Gb .iso file took around 9-10 min to write from here, and multiple simultaneous transfers seemed to go almost as fast. assigned to him.

Time I learned a little more about network shares and linux too.
*Talking of drives re-setting themselves, this is the second seagate drive I've had do this. I bought 160Gb drive about 5 years ago, and that first shrank to around 50Gb, then 36Gb with a couple of subsequent install & partitioning sessions. In the end I bought a 250Gb drive and abandoned that one as faulty. Having read up recently about this, it seems some drives have their internal limit reduced randomly, and require it to be reset for full capacity to be recovered. The current version of Seatools does this fine, downloaded as a bootable CD/DVD although not as described on the seagate website (it's a simple menu option, rather than requiring you to enter R as an option in a dialogue box).

One more thing to finish off the geek-out. I keep looking at SSD replacements for this Macbook. Half of me thinks it's a great idea to keep it going for another 12-18 months, half would like to drop it off a cliff right now. So I prevaricate, not making it any better and not spending any money in the hope of justifying a replacement sooner. The one thing I've not looked at yet is running Office under Wine on Linux. If that would work then I'd very seriously consider trying to get some or other distro (preferably with KDE, although Mint/Cinnamon might be acceptable) running on it, and that would give it a  much longer life.

We did pretty well in the auction

Hopefully the kit we won is decent and works. The mean/prudent side of me came into play quite strongly as it often does at these times, and capped bidding on one particular item before it escalated out of control. Someone was very determined to have it, and since it's not *essential* (and I have one already) then prudence seemed the best course.

It must be very difficult pricing items of scientific equipment in a big pharma lab, and some of the pricing was clearly wrong: of 2500 lots, nearly 1000 didn't sell, either because the start price or reserve was too high. I can remember shaking my head at some of the starting prices - who would spend £300 on some rather manky looking pipettes. Some very high value kit didn't go even at trivial prices too.

Of the stuff that's left, I'd really like a microplate filler (there was a lot of competition for them yesterday) and an HPLC system (but they had really high starting prices, £3500-£4000) but it's unlikely to happen. We'll see.

Talking of spending money......

We've still not *quite* managed to book our holiday.

The bottom corner of France is STILL going to be the best place to relax, and we've not had a relaxing holiday for some time. But we also have too many friends scattered across the world now. Difficult.

Slightly on tenterhooks here

There's a large industrial auction site that is being used to clear laboratory kit from the Pfizer Sandwich labs that were closed last year, and not surprisingly, there's a bunch of stuff I'd find really useful.

So now we wait.

The most important things I've put real money bids on - less than I'd spend buying new, naturally, but still real money. Many items have gone for a relative song, but one in particular obviously had a bidding war over it, selling for >£900 instead of the £300 that it should have gone for.

Some prices were excessive for used kit. I'd have liked an HPLC system, but a start price of £4000 was too much, even if the new price was 3 times that. So I'm waiting to see what the outcome is. God knows what I need and what the right price is. And patience is a virtue (along with hard work - something I struggle to manage right now).

Been taking a few more pictures recently.

Including this immaculately restored Jaguar. I believe there is a garage on Heyford Park that restores cars, and this is the second one I've seen. It was parked outside while I walked past, and while no-one was looking I took some pictures.





There's a bunch of other semi-random stuff in the gallery as well.

Talking of photography, after the closure of lightbox I've been looking for a photographic home. Nowhere has seemed quite right, with everyone either wanting the user to compete, or placing other restrictions like being allowed to upload one single photo per day. Thus far I'm trying the following sites:

Openphoto - looks quite good as a host, though a little bland.
500px - all desperately professional and monetising. Also you have to detail each image while posting.
ePhotoZine - a 'serious' photographic community with a club feel. Limit to one image per day.
Streamzoo - all terribly competitive in a way that feels like facebook farmville. Silly.


Any other suggestions of friendly photographic sites welcome.