Archive for the 'Personal' Category

Black Holes and Revelations

Published
by
Chris Till
on July 6, 2006
in Music and Personal
. 0 Comments

Black Holes and Revelations is a great album. I pre-ordered it ages ago and it didn’t dissapoint when I got it from itunes.

“Assasin” is probably the best track on it. It’s probably the heaviest sounding on there. Supermassive Black Hole is good too and so is Starlight. Simply put, the whole thing is worth getting.

The thing I noticed about MUSE ablums is there is always the two or three standout tracks. From Showbiz it was Sunburn, Muscle Museum and Showbiz. From Origin of Symetry it was New Born, Hypermusic and Plug-in Baby. Then from Absolution it was Time is Running Out, Stockholm Syndrome and Hysteria. Same with this album.

Rating: 10/10

Why I think Blu-ray is destined to be short lived

Published
by
Chris Till
on July 4, 2006
in Personal and Tech News
. 0 Comments

I have always been a Sony fan and customer. However, they don’t seem to be able to do it where formats are concerned. Betamax, mini-disc and UMD. Blu-ray I doubt will be any different.

Why? Because its such a non-descriptive name and a lot of people won’t know what it even is or does. Not true with Toshiba’s HD DVD. It’s simple, its descriptive and it makes it obvious that it’s the follow on from DVD. HD is starting to get big now and although there aren’t that many programs broadcast in HD, there will be soon and the fact that HD DVD has HD in the name will make it simple for people when buying and thinking about compatability.

I have said that although I like blu-ray and it may hold more data than hd dvd, it’s pointless to fight over customers and deprive one format of content like movies from Sony pictures for example.

Sony and Toshiba should have come together to try to merge the two formats into one. Everyone would have been a winner. But now thats not possible and it’s bound to end in tears for one of these companies and their backers because people don’t want more complexity than there is right now with dvd r + and - discs that work differenty and can’t be read by all players.

Apple are great…. most of the time

Published
by
Chris Till
on June 15, 2006
in Apple and Personal
. 1 Comment

Yep, you heard me right, there is something about Apple I don’t like. I’ts their dot mac service. I just don’t see how it works.

When it was launched, yes it was good and it was hard to find anything around that offered the same stuff for the price. An email address, storage, bookmarks synching, groups and mac and apple mail integration. Now there’s also iWeb publishing.

Nowdays, why not do these things instead: Get a gmail account, use putfile.com or get cheap webspace, use del.icio.us with the firefox extension or flock, make a group on a social networking site, google etc, use thunderbird with your gmail account. You can also use gmail to store files on if you use a firefox extension. Finally, if you got some web hosting (for less than the cost of .mac for a good one, and way less than that for a basic one) you can set up a site or blog with ease. A lot of hosting providers have easy install options for wordpress and drupal which is useful.

The problem for me is .mac is too expensive for what it is. What Apple need to do to make it appeal more is either make it cheaper, or include a cut down version of .mac bundled with every new mac. They could probably increase the price of every mac by about $20 and they would probably make more money than they are from the current .mac subcription charges. You have to be reasonable and say they can’t offer it for free because the service costs a lot to run, but including it in the price of a mac would have to be a approved by a lot of people.

Another Mac related thought.

The PowerMac G5, what will it become when its replaced with a younger, better looking sibling with an intel brain. The thing is, will it take a new name to replace the power?

I would guess its going to be Mac Pro to match the MacBook line. My choice would be Macintosh Pro. It just sounds more pro than just mac. Also it helps to keep people aware that thats what Mac stands for, otherwise people may forget it.

83 minutes of stress, then a couple more, then relaxation.

Published
by
Chris Till
on June 15, 2006
in Personal
. 0 Comments

Thats how the England - Trinidad and Tobago match was for everyone in Englnd I’m guessing, or at least it was for me. When you have a team you know should be able to win like we do, its hard to sit there and watch them struggle to get the ball in the net.

When they did finally get the goals, it was impressive. The second one most notibly. It was a long range shot fro Steven Gerrard who is known for that sort of stuff. It was just a matter of him pulling it off.

So thats England qualified for the next round of the tournament and we can take the next game against Sweeden a little more lightly and just relax because although we want to finish top of the group we can’t go out at this stage so we have nothing to lose.

Trinidad and Tobago did play really well defensively and don’t really deserve to go out of the tournament. It depends now if they can stop sweeden from doing so.