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Not Too Shabby

Today, the 22nd of January is allegedly the most depressing day of the year. Considering that is a scientific fact today’s turned out not too bad.

Firstly Sky have fixed my dish – it had moved less than 1 cm during the New Year winds and it took them three weeks but I’m now back in the game. Woo hoo!

I took the day off to wait in for the Sky guys. Normally there is nothing on TV but I had the fortune of watching the Murray vs Nadal match which the BBC had cleared their schedules to broadcast. What a game. Great to watch and a shame that Murray ran out of steam towards the end.

I also got my new host sorted. After looking at a number of options (Dreamhost, Media Temple, Site 5 and a couple of other UK based hosts) I went with A Small Orange. Like 34sp they seem to be customer focussed rather than in the business of overselling. Great website support and busy forums were a good sign. Once the hosting was setup I got things up and running without any issue. Just waiting for the DNS propagation to take place. I logged a call to enable shell access this afternoon. It took 4 minutes for them to do the task and reply. Great service. We’ll see how performance and downtime go over the coming months but I have high hopes that I won’t see any issues.

Finally the fence is all fixed up now. Just need to paint the bugger in the Spring. Can’t wait 🙂
Fence Repaired

Moving Home

It’s three years since we moved to the new house (which I still call ‘the new house’) – things couldn’t have gone better and this weekend saw us move into year four. However the moving home of this post isn’t off the physical variety – I’m thinking of moving hosts.

I’ve been with 34sp for a long time now and while I can’t complain about support or uptime there are a few things I’m looking for that they can’t provide due to their size. In fact I commend them for being open and honest in their support forums about why they won’t grow too quickly or oversell.

So – the hunt is on for a new host. I have a number of options that I’ll investigate over the next few days. If there is some downtime soon it will be due to swapping hosts…or my new provider not being as good as I hoped!

NTL Trials

So NTL are trialling a new way of shaping. Well, I think it’s new as I haven’t heard of any broadband provider working like this. If you are a heavy downloader, even during the day or at other off peak times then your connection will be limited during peak times. According to Cable Forum the trial affects 10Meg users who are limited to 5Meg during peak times.

Issues so far seem to be users who are out all day are still being downgraded during peak times. There is also ambiguity with the terms and conditions. This trial will only affect users who break the user policy…yet the user policy now states there is unlimited downloading on NTL. When will we get companies to spell out in black and white what exactly a broadband user can and cannot do. I’m on 10 Meg but to be honest there is so much contention on the network at the moment that in peak times I see around 3-4Meg. If this trial does free up bandwidth I’m all for it. Will be interesting to see what happens if NTL do keep their promise of everyone on at least 10Meg by the end of Q1 07 with 10Meg moving to 20Meg. I’ll be downgrading soon methinks.

Big Brother Tuppenceworth

From the most dull UK Big Brother ever this years celeb version has now picked up a massive amount of news coverage, is the most complained about TV show ever and is now causing international tensions between India and the UK. How bizarre. I’ve not watched it all but I’ve seen and read enough to form some opinions.

I do think there is a hint of racism in some of the comments that are being made in the house but I do not believe that the three housemates (Jade Goody, Danielle Lloyd, Jo O’Meara) are racist. There is however a class divide between the three and their ‘victim’ Shilpa Shetty and that is now manifested in ongoing arguments between Shilpa and the three. The fact that the three seem to know each other outside the house hasn’t helped – there’s a bond there and due to their background and age they were always likely to stick together. Bullying…yes. Racism…no. The three also seem to be from very similar backgrounds – three hairies (great work John) was the best description I heard today. I couldn’t disagree.

Why the arguments – Gordon’s nailed it for me. Lack of education. As soon as Jade starts to talk back to Shilpa you know where it’s going. Two minutes later its rage, arguments, slagging and then her two mates chip in to form the gang. Game over.

Channel 4 could have easily nipped this in the bud, but no. Media hype followed by some good editing means ratings gold. Then a climb on to moral high ground with this statement – “it is unquestionably a good thing that the programme has raised these issues and provoked such a debate. These attitudes, however distasteful, do persist – we need to confront that truth.” Couple that with an eviction vote between Jade and Shipla so that the public can decide on who’s right. Makes me sick.

I hope this is the last Big Brother. Never thought I’d say that as I usually end up enjoying it for all the wrong reasons – trash TV at it’s best. It’s gone to far though and thats with a list of ‘celebs’ who are no more known than the ‘normal’ folk who entered last summer. Normal – who am I kidding!

At least there’s a bit of a backlash. Carphone Warehouse have withdrawn sponsership from this series but potentially not the next one. Shop’s have also withdrawn Jade’s perfume from shelves. Hopefully Channel 4 get hammered for this at some point too. As for me I’ll probably still catch tomorrows nights show. I want it to end but while it’s on…as I said…guilty pleasures.

Oh, one last thing. Jade Goody. Can you just fuck off now?

Weekend…stuff

Some bits and pieces from this weekend.

  • Microsoft support reckon it’s a paid for repair on the 360. While I argue my point (which will take a few days at least by the looks of it) my patience gave in after less than 24 hours and I picked up a new core 360. Gaming is getting more expensive! Roll on PS3.
  • Fence is now fixed.
  • The weather has been atrocious and anyone would be crazy to not think global warming is affecting us all and that new patterns are emerging. November and December last year were Glasgow’s wettest on record and January isn’t looking much better. Couple that with more frequent and stronger gales and a new winter is emerging that’s wetter and windier. Feb and March look more to be our traditional winter months now. I wonder if we’ll get late snow like last year.
  • Great article in today’s Herald highlighting Flickr and the amateur Scottish photographers that can be found there. Unfortunately the online version of the article doesn’t contain the photo’s or links to the Flickr site of those chosen for the piece. However you can find the photo’s at the Flickr Scotland group or the Flickr Scotland Blog where the best pictures from Flickr are published. Highly recommended.
  • Google Maps app for mobiles. This is a great java app for phones although it’s probably best to have a high speed net connection and also a good data plan before you start browsing around the maps.
  • The first four episodes of 24 are superb – looks like another cracking series. Usual caveat of switching off brain before watching does however still apply.

Hope everyone else had a good one.

Broke

That’s the 360 now dead. Bugger!

More annoyingly is that the warranty ran out just last month. I’ve never known a console to fail so often as the 360. Amongst my usual gaming friends it’s running around 25% failure rate, some replacing it twice. Mine was one of the first batch and it seems likely that if you use (at least the first batch 360’s) regularly then there’s a good chance of failure. Hopefully for you it will fail in the 12 month warranty period. Now it’s decision time – get it repaired (probably at my expense) and hope it lasts or buy a new Core pack and get another 12 month warranty.

I’m not having a good run at the moment…fence, car scratch, sky box and now this. I thought things came in three’s?

Macworld Thoughts

Despite all the rumours that an iPhone would be launched, despite knowing how good Apple industrial design is, despite loving how all my Apple products work…the iPhone launch tonight still surprised me. I expected a good looking device but not that good. I expected a small device but not that small. I didn’t expect so much in such a small device either.

Key factors are the screen resolution, the multi-touch interface, it runs OS X and it’s sync features. The rest (iPod, camera etc) are all just nice extra’s for me. I’m also pleased it won’t be here until the end of the year. Gives me time to save and also get my current mobile contract out the way. Should also get some firmware updates out of the way by the time I buy. Only snag – it will be covered in fingerprints within 5 minutes!

The other big announcement was Apple TV. Specs were as expected and included a 40 Gig hard disk. However it looks no more than an iTunes sharing device and I wanted a bit more. Also there are no video cables included and while an HDMI cable is only £17 it’s another little extra. I’ll be reserving judgement until it’s on the market and the first reviews come through. I’m really interested in how extendible, if at all, the Apple TV is.

Not announced at the keynote but of most immediate interest is the new Airport Extreme. Now supporting draft N standard it should give faster speeds over a wider range. It also allows a USB printer to be shared wirelessly or a USB drive to be plugged in and shared on your network. The site also states you can plug in a USB hub and share multiple drives or printers. Sounds a good buy for £119.

No leopard, no release dates, nothing else really but looking at the iPhone you be hard pushed to see a more exciting gadget from CES this year – it even made the top three stories on BBC news. Amazing.

Macworld Predictions

The first Macworld where I’m actually a Mac owner takes place on Tuesday. So like other geeks here are my predictions for the two hour keynote.

  • iPhone – maybe. But is it a phone with iPod type functionality or is the emphasis on the iPod which has additional phone capabilities.
  • iTV. With flash disk, support of external drives via USB2, HD playback, HD downloading from iTunes, playback of media from home pc’s Macs and NAS devices, a mini OSX – the community at large could then add so much functionality over time – some of the dashboard widgets would look great on the big screen, controlled from bluetooth keyboard or Macbook/Macbook pro. We’ll also get the proper name which if it has to include ‘Mac’ will make it the MacMedia or something corny like that.
  • Updated Airport to take advantage of the pre N hardware in Macbooks. Macbook Pro’s and iMacs. Maybe driver support won’t be available until leopard though.
  • Leopard – a new look. Maybe the reason why the Apple logo was black- a new dark look to Mac OSX? Will also get release date and some previews of new’ish functionality. Built in virtualisation or is Parallels to good to compete with?
  • iLife – updates but I don’t think there will be that much of a change
  • .Mac – never thought this was much value with so much web competition doing it better and for free. Maybe this is where some Google integration will come in.

A couple of days from now we’ll know how close the list is. if I was to pick one thing off the list it’s iTV – I really want something new that works with all my media to replace XBMC which is getting a bit long in the tooth.