Archive for the 'Personal' Category

Spam Sucks

Published
by
Chris Till
on August 15, 2006
in Personal
. 4 Comments

I don’t know whether I managed to tap into a porn ring with my post entitled “flocktails for cardinal” but lets just assume I did.

For some reason I’m still getting porn or other spammy comments on that and other posts. Looking back now it probably wasn’t my best idea ever to allow anyone to post comments on my blog without being verified first.

Ok so I changed that setting so now you do have to be verified. I always appreciate comments on my stuff so feel free.

I also don’t know if this is a very common thing in wordpress or what. Maybe some poor guy sitting in a dark room on his windows 98 pc decided one day to post a comment about nothing much on my blog every day, who knows.

One thing I do know is it won’t be occuring again any time soon.

The new stuff in Leopard… Worth it?

Published
by
Chris Till
on August 7, 2006
in Apple, Personal and Tech News
. 0 Comments

From the sneak peak of Leopard on the Apple site, I really like the new features they’re adding.

Most notably spaces

Spaces looks to me like a kind of expose of virtual desktops, I’m guessing each of which can be expose’d for even easier access to apps. Nothing can ever get lost again. Ok maybe it is possible but thats not the only advantage.
Sometimes I have to minimise or hide windows when I’m working on something in the gimp because it’s easy for one of the gimp’s 3 (or more) windows to get hidden behind a browser or itunes or whatever else you have open.

Now you just use a seperate space for gimp, a seperate one for nvu and a seperate one for everything else.

Other stuff in Leopard

Other things talked about in the keynote were:

  • time machine
  • mail
  • ichat
  • dashboard
  • spotlight
  • new version of front row, boot camp included.

There were a couple of other things but these were the ones I have stuff to say about.

Time machine is a great addition and makes windows xp’s system restore look very old indeed. Not only can you reset the entire computer back to a date but you can search back for files deleted from apps you have open, contacts, photos, videos etc. The interface looks amazing too.

Mail has some new templates and stuff included, for me personally I don’t think any of this stuff will make any difference to me since I mainly use thunderbird but it looks good for the people who do use mail and like templates.

iChat now has things including drag and drop backgrounds and more importantly, photo sharing and remote computer viewing. The backgrounds are ok for some fun but its the other stuff that makes me want to make better use of ichat compared to the 0 time I use it now.
Dashboard and dashcode are great. I like the idea of being able to create widgets so easily but with the ability to be more creative and do more than just select a template and click create.

Spotlight will be interesting. They say it will make a good application launcher which makes me wonder if I will still have a use for quicksilver which is known as the mac platform’s favourite launcher at the moment. I have mine set to only seach for apps so if spotlight did the same thing I probably would switch.

Hopefully Front Row will have some cool new features, maybe some kind of tv thing similar to windows media centre edition.

Now that Boot Camp will be pre-installed and un-beta’d it will be interesting. I guess it means that if you use it in leopard and it messes up your Mac you can claim under applecare or the standard 1 year warranty.

Are PDA’s worth having these days?

Published
by
Chris Till
on August 6, 2006
in Personal
. 0 Comments

I was just wondering about this. I always thought pda’s were cool but are they necessary these days?

I mean Palm make pda’s and smartphones. You can use the pda’s with bluetooth phones or wifi for internet and the phone for that calling stuff but why not just combine the two and buy a smartphone which does everything in one (calling, internet and email by wifi or 3G, pda apps, camera, video, mac and windows compatablity etc). It makes sense when roughly estimating, the pda and phone combo will likely come to the same price as the smartphone.

Not sure if I would want or need two devices in my pocket though, especially if I’m in the mood for some mobile gaming and have my DS on hand. On the other hand the pda will have a bigger screen so maybe it’s better for internet etc.

Not to discount BlackBerry. They make some nice stuff but after seing palm I’m edging towards them for my next gadget / saviour from my o2 x3 (made by benq), which only has windows drivers. The fact that Blackberry devices don’t currently have cameras puts me off a bit.

Going completely over to the other side of the argument, even if I had just a normal phone (like I do), they have calendar apps and internet on them (gprs isn’t fun or cheap on pay as you go but even so), I can still do pretty much everything I can with a palm / phone combo or smartphone.

The option of wifi is what is really impressive to me. The freedom to use the net without being charged by your network is great although you’re limited in where you can use it.

finally, going back to the DS, when they bring out the opera browser addition for it, I will be temped by that, clearly because of the huge price difference and the convenience of having only one device on hand, combined with the dual screen nature of the machine and it’s touch screen feature to navigate round the page.

I have a feeling I’ll be back on this topic.

Cutting the cord

Published
by
Chris Till
on August 5, 2006
in Apple and Personal
. 0 Comments

Wireless Mighty Mouse

As one of the people who have had their mighty mouse scroll ball stop scrolling properly I’m doubtful that I’ll be buying a wireless version anytime soon.

For me the scrolling problem is bad enough but add to that the use of batteries for it and how quickly they’ll run down (especially with my abnormally high usage) it’s not looking good.

To be fair I like my mighty mouse apart from the above (and maybe the annoying side buttons). The single click design with twin button functionality is great and works without you even having to think about it like I thought I would have to before I started using it.

My Picks from the 100 Top Brands 2006

Published
by
Chris Till
on July 28, 2006
in Personal
. 0 Comments

My top 20 company’s out of the top 100.

My Ranking Official Ranking Company
1 39 Apple
2 24 Google
3 51 Nintendo
4 26 Sony
5 65 Amazon
6 66 Pizza Hut
7 20 Samsung
8 5 Intel
9 69 Motorola
10 31 Nike
11 18 Cisco
12 55 Yahoo
13 40 Kellogg’s
14 6 Nokia
15 50 MTV
16 63 Nestle
17 35 Canon
18 54 Heinz
19 23 Nescafe
20 13 Hewlet Packard

I’m not sure if I put one or two in the wrong order and there are some that aren’t in the list but this is my top 20 from what I can pick from.

Blended Thoughts

Published
by
Chris Till
on July 23, 2006
in Personal
. 0 Comments

I want Pandora to be available in the UK.

Ubuntu is the best desktop linux. After installing it on two pc’s the only problem was wireless on the second one needing drivers to work which I’m still to do.

Other than that I can see linux becoming a far bigger player in home computing soon. I have tried suse and mandriva but for usability and style ubuntu is the distro to beat.

Linksys should fully support linux with their wireless adapters.

New Yahoo is a dissapointment

Published
by
Chris Till
on July 20, 2006
in Personal
. 1 Comment

I keep trying to use the new Yahoo Messenger for mac. I feel happy with it for a while and then all of a sudden it crashes and removes my faith in it.

I end up switching back to adium because it’s just reliable and use skype for calling.

What does it achieve?

Published
by
Chris Till
on July 20, 2006
in Personal
. 0 Comments

An Israeli tank manoeuvres in the Israeli area of Avivim, on its border with Lebanon

I’m struggling to think of any reason why these things are needed. In the middle east they are destroying lives and less importantly the city and buildings that take years to build and seconds to demolish.

I just don’t understand how in this time where we should be focusing on saving resources and going forward with new technology to make life better, countries still get into these conflicts which do no good whatsoever.

HMS Bulwark coming into port at Beirut

Another thing that gets to me is that Brits are being evacuated by the navy (nothing wrong with that) while imagine what it’s like being stuck there from a country which isn’t sending any boats to take you to safety?

In other unrelated news, George Bush has in my opinion shown once again how moronic he is. This time he has veto’d a law which would have lead to possibly huge scientific advances in treating diseases like parkinsons which makes a huge number of people’s lives a misery.

I’m sorry to those who are siding with Bush but in my opinion scientific advances are far more important than stem cells that would likely be destroyed anyway.

I'm excited about gaming (again).

Published
by
Chris Till
on July 16, 2006
in Personal
. 0 Comments

But as you get a bit older and wiser from the time when it was fine to throw money at expensive games you probably won’t play that much without really thinking about what else the money could do. This is one thing I’m really excited about. The Nintendo DS, and one of the best things about it is the browser opera are building for it. I only heard about the browser after I looked at the DS for it’s gaming (I’m a mario kart addict) but even so, I would have liked it without.

The image “http://www.opera.com/img/products/devices/nintendo/box1.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

I’m just excited about Nintendo in general. I really appreciate how they are always innovating in gaming by doing things that no one else would dare try.

Sony and Microsoft are going to stick with the traditional control pad design trying to wow people with the wireless feature which was probably overdue. Not that it hasn’t been done before, I have a Gamecube wavebird wireless controller right now. Nintendo is once more one step ahead by completely reinventing how games are played with the wii-mote.

The image “http://wii.nintendo.com/images/controller_feature_wht.png” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

I do have a PS2 but I think now I realise I don’t play the kind of games that appear on non-nintendo consoles as much as on the snes, gamecube, gameboy, ds etc.

Aside from the games, it’s a lot about price. The prices of the other consoles seem to just keep going up as they progress from console to console. However, Nintendo seem to be able to invent and pioneer in gaming while still offering their products for consistently affordable (especially in comparison with the others) prices.

The PSP for example is double the price of a DS. I know it plays UMD movies and MP3 music, but who needs that? Plus we all know Sony’s history with their own formats. I like sony, but for gaming I think Nintendo have always been there while Sony and MS are the ones who have tried to come into their market.

The DS is for gaming, and the fact that I will be able to check my email and the latest news from anywhere with a wifi connection with much more portability than a laptop is great, especially for the price.

Blended Thoughts

Published
by
Chris Till
on July 10, 2006
in Personal and Tech News
. 0 Comments

The big climbdown:

After a month of constant interesting things happening it’s the big climb-down from the world cup and wimbledon to nothing. The people who say “it’s just sport, it’s nothing important” have a point, but still. I like tennis and I sort of like football, and when it all ends at once it’s like a depressing nothingness.

Microsoft’s “iPod beater” :

This pic from engadget is suppost to be what it’s going to look like. Personally I won’t be getting one. It’s suppost to have some kind of xbox tie-in feature and I don’t have an xbox so thats one reason why not. The next iPod will no doubt be better anyway so thats another reason.

Zidane’s Final Game:

I feel bad for the guy. I mean he didn’t bank on getting send off in his final game. He went into it thinking the worst thing that can happen is we lose on penalties and theres a chance I will hold up the world cup for a second time and bow out on a high. The latter failed to happen but it was made worse by headbutting matterazzi. Whatever he said, it’s clear if you lose it it’s going to end up causing you to get the press attention you don’t want.

It would have been ok if the game was memorable for other things or maybe if it wasn’t his last match or an earlier round or group stage. That way he could have redeemed himself. As it is, his career will be remembered for this above anything else.

Oh yeah, incase you missed it, Italy are the world champions.