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Three Strikes

The Times this morning is leading with a story that the UK Government is to propose banning UK net users who download illegal material. It looks like under the scheme the ISP will be responsible for identifying and banning users using a three strikes and your out principal. Caught once and you get a warning. Caught a second time and your temporarily banned. Caught a third time and your banned by that service provider. What the article doesn’t discuss is whether the ban would apply to all service providers or whether your banning would be passed among other ISP’s.

This is a pretty tough stance and at the moment I don’t know what to think of it. How will the ISP’s identify users? What about falsely accusing a user? Will there be a way of appealing a ban? Will we create a large number of users who won’t be able to use broadband in the UK due to bans? How much information is currently being tracked and how much is readily available to government now? Will media companies make content available at more reasonable prices i.e. at least the same as US is paying? Will the hardcore pirates always be one step ahead of ISP’s so making the system redundant apart from stopping the casual downloaders?

If this does become law and the system is reliable (big if’s at the moment for me) then there’s at least one positive. Broadband speeds will be a lot more reliable and the high end speeds will be dropped by a high percentage of users. Still can’t see this becoming law, or at least one that’s reliably enforceable any time soon.

More Quickies

  • I prattled on the other day about backups and how SuperDuper is now out for Leopard. Since then Shaun Blanc has published a superb post on Bulletproof Backups. It’s a great read like most in his Mac Software Reviews (Coda is a great example).
  • Open source is good. Usually. This list of 50 Proprietary Programs and their Open source Alternatives has already delivered a couple of nice programs that I hadn’t heard of before. For Windows, Mac and Linux users.
  • Everyday Shooter is finally out this week for European PS3 owners. It’s only about 4 months after the USA release and while I appreciate it can take time to add languages the delay has been pretty sucky. Looking forward to it all the same. PS3 has got a great crop of arcade style titles now – just need to sort out their full price catalogue.
  • This week is my last week working for engineering at my current firm. From next Monday I’ll be working in IT, mixing analysis with a bit of hacking. For my sins I now have a laptop at work and boy do I miss my Macbook when I’m using it. I don’t think the hardware’s really to blame. It’s Windows. Well, maybe it’s both. Wireless on the PC is really flaky so much so it’s blue screened a few times, something I hadn’t seen in a long time. Sleeping/waking is also an issue for the PC compared to Mac. Even though the PC is newer and has a better spec than the Macbook it’s really slow in day to day use, probably down to the security software on the PC and stuff like Becrypt. It will be interesting to see how it pans out over the next few months but in 4 days it’s reinforced my Mac loving opinions. Still, looking forward to new job. In fact, I can’t wait!
  • New Leopard update out tonight. Lot’s of fixes (> 300 Mb download) and just when you think thats the last update there’s some new graphic drivers to grab as well. Nice to see them addressing stacks list view and transparent menu bar (some of the biggest grumbles on Leopards release) in that they are now user options. Should have been there for Leopards release but shows how tight it’s original release date probably was. Impressive how quick the update is to download when you think about how many Mac users are downloading it right now.
  • Any good backup software for Windows? Need something to back up work laptop.
  • New Sony Ericsson Xperia looks like a great phone. Loving that screen resolution.
  • FancyZoom – nice effect for images that’s easy to add.
  • Frustrated with the amount of sites blocked at work. A well as the pron, torrents, e-mail, IM and normal stuff you’d expect it now extends to social networking sites (Facebook etc) and also Twitter, every hosted WordPress blog, anything to do with games and the playing/buying/reviewing off and some real oddball sites including some on Oracle. Bizarre, frustrating but I guess I’m at work and should be…working?

Mac Quickies

Finally I can ditch Time Machine. SuperDuper 2.5 was released today and is at last compatible with Leopard. This is a superb backup tool and while Time Machine filled the gap it doesn’t really cut it for me as a proper backup tool. Especially when you look at how it backs up sparse files like Yojimbo and iDisk. What a waste of space! While it’s easy enough to disable certain folders in Time Machine I prefer to know I have a bootable backup disk that has everything I need to get back in action should my disk fail.

iPhone and iPod Touch upgrades. iPhone now comes in 8 & 16GB while the Touch comes in at 16 & 32GB. iPhone 16GB retails at £329 which doesn’t seem to bad. Certainly the extra room is needed as 8GB felt too small. Now that my current T-Mobile contract has ended I’m more tempted than ever to buy an iPhone, especially with developer app’s coming in the next month or so. Other expenses, lack of 3G plus some other missing features and a nagging ‘don’t do it’ means I’ll probably wait until later in the year. Probably. Nice to see the new iPhone’s available in the Uk from today as well – no six month delay this time!

XBMC. A lovely media player for the original (hacked) Xbox. Well today the 0.1 release for OSX XBMC has been made available. It’s an early release, quite buggy but it’s a start and shows what has been achieved in eight weeks of development time.

Final thought – Apple – please buy Flickr. Would make a great companion to iPhoto, especially compared to .Mac galleries. It’ll never happen but if you don’t ask…you might end up with Microsoft owning Flickr. Thinking about it, it might mean no difference to Flickr apart from some decent maps instead of the sucky Yahoo ones if MS bought Yahoo, but it just doesn’t feel right. I can’t believe MS won’t affect the Flickr service detrimentally if the buyout takes place. Maybe not immediately but over time the service and community would probably start to deteriorate. Let’s hope not.

It’s Been a While

Not posted much recently. A horrible man flu bug has got in the way of things recently but feeling better now. It got in the way so much that my new amp has been here a week now and it’s still not out the box. I picked up an Onkyo 705 to take advantage of the new audio formats now on offer. Looking forward to setting it up this weekend.

Thats assuming I’ve not been blown away – the wind has been pretty bad over the last few days. Just some snow to look forward to now. Joy!

Two weeks left before I start my new job. Can’t wait. Starting to pick up new work already and it’s looking sufficiently different, exciting, new and that’s before I start. Will be coding again when I move jobs and I’ve started to mess around with APEX in my own time – pretty powerful package and you can get a lot done with very little effort, or so it seems.

Weight loss continuing at an OK pace. Lost the Christmas gains and creeping towards 2.5 stones lost since last September. Back on to the badminton also although the calf is tightening every time I play. Not good.

Trying MarsEdit, loving CSSEdit, wondering why I didn’t use 1Passwd sooner, resisting the iPhone with it’s new tariff’s although now that I’m contract free I’m finding it more difficult than ever to resist.

Loving seeing Tory Derek Conway getting caught with his nose in the trough. I can’t understand why we can’t sack MP’s who are obviously abusing the system.

Anyway, another gale’s whipping up. Time for bed (not sleep – got the whistling wind to listen to).

Fixing Mac Batteries

My Macbook Pro is still going strong in it’s second year. Something I have noticed though is that while the battery life is still very good and hasn’t really deteriorated, the reporting of battery capacity has become a bit erratic. On start-up it will say there’s an hour left but after half an hour it will then say there is 2.5 hours remaining. There’s also been a couple of times when there’s been at least an hour left for it to conk out within five minutes. This wasn’t down to capacity but misreporting what charge was remaining. Help is at hand though.

I found a document on Apple’s site that explained how to calibrate your Mac’s battery. It turns out that each battery has a microprocessor that works out how much juice is remaining. However this needs calibrating from time to time to keep your on-screen battery indicator accurate. I ran through the steps a few days ago and I now have a happy battery icon again. Joy. Might be worth running through the steps if your having similar hiccups on your Mac.

New Look

New year, new blog skin. I made some small changes to the wonderful Grid Focus over the weekend, enough to actually roll it out to the blog tonight. There’s still a few changes to make and there’s some rough edges here and there but I’m pleased with how it looks and works at the moment.

One thing I can’t take to is widgets. I’m just never happy with how they work. Some do work well, others enforce there own styling which is difficult to undo. That’s what I love about Grid Focus. You need to edit a few php files to get what you want and it gives me a lot more control over what I want and where it is positioned.

I keep saying it but I’m hoping to spend some time crafting my own blog template for the next update but that’s months away. Anyway, if you spot anything a bit funky then please let me know.

Four Years

It’s been four years since we moved in to our current house. The time has flown by and it still seems very new, at least to me. In that time we’ve made a fair few changes to make it our own but there’s still a lot I want to do. Some are easy, others not so and will cost a fair bit of money but eventually we’ll get there. I think. Looking at some of the guys I work with there always seems to be jobs to do in your house. Most of this years improvements will be mostly decor rather than anything major. Will take time though. We also must do something about the front garden. I think it’s at the top of my ‘niggles me most’ list.

Macworld Thoughts

Leopard sales look to be very impressive but it’s a shame that the new update wasn’t announced or released. Hope that will be out soon.

The iPhone firmware update looks great and wets the appetite for the up coming SDK in Feb and the slew of app’s that will no doubt be released afterwards. While the update to Google Maps looks good the web clipping looked to be the best new feature. Favourite web clips from a custom home page – nice. Not so nice is charging existing iPod Touch users $20 to get 5 app’s that came with the iPhone but not the iPod Touch. New users will get these app’s built in with the Touch from now on but charging for this is just mean.

iTunes movie rentals look to be everything I would want except that it’s not in the UK (yet) and a 24 hour window for watching a movie once started is pretty tight. At least 48 hours would make more sense but I’ve no problem with the 30 day window to start watching a film. It’s great that HD films will be available for rental. Not so great is that they are only available on Apple TV (not syncable to other Macs) and that not all will have Dolby Digital 5.1. It also looks like the price drop for Apple TV is USA only which is poor. $229 for the base model in the USA, £199 for the same box in the UK. At today’s rates the UK price in dollars is $389.76. Robbery.

Finally, the Macbook Air. This looks to be an amazing piece of engineering. Incredibly thin it looks to curve at the edges probably giving the same effect as the latest iPod Nano’s which feel great in the hand. Might worry some but I think losing the optical drive is a good thing. Software delivery, backup’s, file management etc is moving increasingly to wireless and t’internet only. The device won’t suit everyone but the Remote Disk feature allowing you to use a PC or Mac drive in a local PC as a drive on the Air is a great work around and fall back should you need to restore your Mac. Couple of caveats. Can’t replace the battery (similar to iPod) and it is a tad pricey but this is really cutting edge. The SSD upgrade s also ridiculously expensive but again this is new tech and the price over the years will fall. Can’t wait to get my hands on one…but I won’t be buying. Happy with my current Macbook Pro. Just want to see just how light it feels.

I am tempted with an Apple TV though. With all cd’s ripped and so much media on the iMac and external drives, streaming to the TV via Apple TV is making more sense. I’ll hang off for the moment but the new Apple TV software looks pretty sweet and could be tempting once I get the new amp in place. Especially as Connect 360 works well but the 360 is noisy…and the PS3 is quiet but MediaLink is a bit…funky at the moment.

One more thing…who drugged Randy Newman?

Looking Forward

I’m not sure if it’s the new year, the new job at work that’s coming soon or just the fact that it was so grey at the weekend that I had to do something else but I’ve been thinking a lot about the tasks I’d like to do to the house over the next year or so. I didn’t do as much as I hoped last year so that means there’s a lot more to do than usual. I’m also looking at re-doing a couple of rooms as well. Getting a bit bored of the various beige colours used throughout the house.

So I’ve brain dumped into iGTD this weekend and I’ve got a massive list of tasks now – just need to sort them into some sort of order. At the same time I’m thinking of re-doing the blog theme again. Scribbling down some idea’s only at the moment but hope to get something together over the next couple of weeks.

Finally got all the cd’s ripped this weekend too so need to get them boxed and into the attic. That place needs a clear out also – so many boxes and old stuff that I no longer use. Hopefully by next weekend my new amp will have arrived and I can get the old one onto eBay. It’s been a while since I’ve eBay’d anything although there’s probably quite a few things in the attic that could be sold. Mmmmm.

So hopefully you didn’t get too wet this weekend. Our garden gets serious puddles in new places due to the path and grass we put in this year. I was going to try and sort it on Saturday but it was a bit cold. That’s another task for the year ahead. It’s going to be a busy one!