Musings of an aspiring techie

My new home...

2012-01-12T11:57:00.001Z

...is over at www.domuirgheasa.com. All the good stuff from here has been copied over there. All the other stuff... well, it's not very good. Save yourself the trouble and come visit me at the new place.

The future of journalism

2010-03-29T22:58:00.005+01:00

I got thinking recently about what the future holds for journalism and journalists. Partly, this was brought on by the fact that Rupert Murdoch's Times and Sunday Times are soon going behind pay-walls, partly by the fact that one of the sites I was working on, nosmag.com (content in Irish, but I'm sure Google translate would do a job on it for you if necessary) seems to have become rather more than just a bit quiet of late.

There are many reasons nós* has been struggling, and not all that many of them are down to "the way journalism's going", but the fact that nós* is struggling has made me wonder about stepping on my editor's toes, so to speak, and going out on my own with the concept of an Irish language lifestyle blog/magazine type thing. Now if you're reading this Tomaí, I'd rather keep writing for nós*, but the fact is that there hasn't been any real content there since Christmas, and you're pretty much ignoring my e-mails, so...

Anyway, this train of thought obviously led me to wonder what I'd need to do to make a site like nós* had succeed. A lot of stuff, I can more or less steal as is from Tomaí's work - the content is mostly pretty good, and there's a pretty good range of stuff. The tone is generally nicely pitched too - there are serious bits, but mostly it's a fun-loving, light hearted kinda production, and I always liked that. The design's good too, particularly the print edition (all available here, if you'd like to see what I mean). And there are other things too, which I might get to in a future post.

The problems, however, are pretty clear too, especially the big ones. The site was never effectively monetised, and this meant that even while (relatively) huge money was going into producing a very nice glossy magazine, nobody was getting paid. There were ads, but seemingly not enough, and the cover price of the magazine (a not-for-nothing €3-80, I think) went straight back into production costs. People who aren't being paid are generally not terribly reliable workers, at least not long-term, and even while I did my best to keep my submissions timely and of high quality I kinda knew that Tomaí was having difficulties getting enough good content to justify bothering to publish the thing. And content wasn't the only thing causing problems - the way the finances were structured meant that new subscribers were constantly needed to keep producing the magazines that the old subscribers had paid for. (For the record, even though I think this was never a particularly good business practice, I don't think there was ever anything really dishonest going on - it wasn't a case of money being siphoned off to pay for fancy offices or champagne receptions or anything. That's not going to be much consolation for those who are out of pocket after paying for magazines that may or may not be produced, but I think it's important to make the point that as far as I'm concerned there wasn't anything too shady happening).

So what's the biggest lesson to learn from nós*? Well there are quite a few big ones, but for me the biggest thing that the next nós* (if there ever is a successor) needs to do is monetise the site before even thinking about paper publishing. My theory for this is a pretty simple concept, but one I'm seriously considering taking a punt on. Essentially, if a pay wall is the most lucrative way of monetising a site then that's the road that needs to be gone down, but a pay wall will obviously put people off before they even start, so you need a pay wall which allows people to peep over and see what they're missing. One option would be to offer a free trial - maybe 7 days or a month, depending on how often content is posted. This is imperfect too though, in that you're going to lose readers who would have generated a little extra revenue from ads but who won't pay to read (not to mention that having more or readers is, in general terms, always a good thing). So you adopt the Radiohead model (it was Radiohead, wasn't it?). Pay what you like, but you have to renew annually, or maybe every six months or every quarter if you don't pay anything. I'm willing to bet that there are enough people out there who will like the model that you could generate pretty serious revenue this way (serious relative to ads, at any rate), and the recurrent nature of the subscription would mean that even people who don't pay the first time they subscribe might come around to the idea of paying for content if they've been regularly enjoying the site for some time. Now this isn't a perfect system, and I still haven't got the technical details worked out (how will RSS feeds work from behind a pay wall, for example? And how difficult is a pay wall to implement, anyway?), but I think that it could very well prove a workable model for a site which can produce good enough content to justify charging for it.

Content, of course, is king, and no matter what site you're talking about, if the content isn't right it simply won't be effectively monetised by even the Richard Bransons and Seth Godins of this world. If the content is right though - who knows? What everyone knows, however, is that the first person to figure out the whole "monetising a site" thing will be in some serious demand from the big guys (or at the very least the big guys will want to steal their ideas).

I've got some more flesh to add to this idea, but I think that offers a reasonable starting point for anyone who wants to steal my ideas. If you do make your fortune off them, I think that a pint or two might be in order?

Of Evolutions, Revolutions and Two Young Men Named Steve

2010-02-03T20:24:00.001Z

So, I leave for 9 months and the whole world goes crazy? Not that I want to make any suggestions about correlation equalling causation, but if the boot fits...

But stop a moment – the world's been crazy for just about ever, you say, what in particular are you talking about? Well, the two Steves of the title are one Steve Jobs, who recently released what just might be the most disappointing piece of technology in a very long time (or might not), and one Stephen Fry, who as far as I can make out is just about the only person on the planet who isn't horribly disappointed about the finally unveiled iPad. More of that anon.

First, what really exciting, crazy happenings have happened in the past nine months which I absolutely must comment on? Well, flicking through notes I've had for my news section in nós*, there's not a lot jumping out at me that needs my late-to-the-game dissecting. Android is the notable exception to this, finally stepping out of the shadows and in handsets like the Hero and Nexus One really giving Apple something to think about. While on the subject of HTC, their press person in charge of promotions on this small island has promised that I can have a Hero to play with at some point in the very near future, and this will (fingers crossed) be followed by a Nexus One when that makes its way across the pond. Stay touched for a blog post (or two) once I've had some time with either or both of them. Although I haven't really had the chance to play with it just yet, Android represents what everyone wished the iPhone to be – an open, powerful and flexible platform which all of geekdom can get behind. The other area which still holds some serious intrigue is the whole netbook/tablet/smart phone/laptop, will they, won't they, mish-mash of a mobile computing shootout which has being going on around us for really quite a while now. This iPad business ties right into that, so with the assumption that I'll get to phones in particular at some point in the near future, what of this newest "game changer" from Apple?

Well, like everyone else in the world, I dismissed it immediately upon seeing it. No e-ink, no flash, no USB port, still need a PC or proper MAC, no multi-tasking, no really sensible way of using it – what's the point? And then I thought some more, and I still thought that. I mean, what were they thinking? Steve Jobs may have been the genius behind the iPhone, which I admit to lusting after for quite some time now, but surely he'd lost his way really, really badly this time? And then I thought some more, and still couldn't figure out what I could say that wouldn't be exactly the same as what everyone was already thinking, and then finally I watched the video the other Steve posted about it for Newsnight, and I started to twig what was going on. Now don't get me wrong, I still think it is very much a missed opportunity, and I also still think that it isn't actually all that good. To ladle the conditions on a bit more, I very much recognise the fact that Stephen Fry has a serious amount of fanboy-ism to him, even if it is wrapped up in an almost unprecedentedly sophisticated package, and I still think that the fact that you need another computer to actually use the tablet means it misses out on an entire section of its potential market, albeit a relatively small section. But...

I think it is a game changer, or at least will be. There, I said it. And before you splutter and hit back a few times, I know it's not that good, really I do, and I honestly don't even own so much as an iPod, never mind anything else by Apple. Thing is though, that UI has always been key in the mobile sector (even more so than in other sectors, where it's also pretty important). Stephen Fry recognised this in the iPhone around the same time I did (although he had the good sense to commit his thoughts to print, whereas I didn't). I think it's somewhere in this article (which is worth reading anyway, even if I've grabbed the wrong link) that although the very first iPhone mightn't be perfect, come version 3 it'd be pretty bloody close. Somewhere in the same article (or maybe it was somewhere else, I'm just going off the top of my head here) he pointed out that the UI was key. I had my first play with the iPhone less than a month after its release, in an Apple store in central Chicago, and that UI was just... wow. They just know how to make a UI in a way that nobody else can approach (although I do quite like a lot of what Microsoft have done with Windows 7). So even back then, when the iPhone didn't have 3G, and it didn't have GPS, and the app store didn't exist, that UI was gonna find it a pretty big following pretty quickly (those who are being particularly pernickety will point out that by the time I made this pronouncement the iPhone had already shifted something in the order of 100,000 units (or was it 200,000?). I can only counter this by pointing out that I don't actually keep track of sales figures while on holidays, nor did I then, and the queue had just about disappeared by the time I made to the Apple store).

Anyway, the iPhone started out pretty mundane, in many ways, but the UI meant it found a huge following and could keep selling while Apple figured out what people wanted it to do. The iPad will follow a similar pattern – right now, it doesn't really do anything, and so will sell "only" a few hundred thousand units. People will use it, whether on the move or on the couch, for watching videos and reading newspapers, even though a netbook could probably do just as good a job for the former, and an e-reader very much has the edge in the latter. In time though, things will change. V2 will more than likely see the introduction of a camera for video conferencing (although I still amn't too sure if people actually do that outside a business setting – I've used my webcam all of about three times), and some other improvements under the hood. By version 3, I don't think an e-ink screen is out of the question (this all depends on there being colour e-ink screens available at a reasonable price point in that sort of time scale, but that could very definitely happen. Well, maybe). Certainly they'll have introduced multi-tasking of some sort by then (rumour has it that could happen this year), and wireless USB could well have rendered the lack of a USB port irrelevant, at least as long as there are drivers made available. We'll hopefully see haptic feedback too, and the pictures make it look as if a svelter bezel mightn't go amiss (although they haven't changed the iPhone form-factor since release, so this one might well not happen for some time). Whatever improvements are made though, it'll improve, and people will get used to the idea of computers in all sorts of places where people didn't use computers before, and suddenly I won't be the one guy on the bus using a laptop (or at least, I'll be using a laptop while drooling over the iPads that everyone else has). People will use them on the couch at home. People who need to carry around clipboards all day will come around to the idea of being able to check their e-mails while they're at it. People will use them in cars (hopefully not while driving), and people will have them as fashion accessories, pulling them out at Starbucks or wherever they might happen to be to check the weather, send a quick e-mail and just generally let people know that they're at the cutting edge of the ever-advancing torrent of Apple-chic. And this all ignoring the crowd who'll buy them because they look just like those really cool future computers from half the sci-fi movies/programmes ever released.

Now, I might be wrong. I've been wrong before. Apple have been wrong before too – Apple TV was only released 4 years ago, let's remember, and that utter failure of a device is still on sale, as far as I know. Still, Apple don't often get it wrong, and for my money the netbook is a very good concept, but far enough from being a great one that there's room for the tablet in there somewhere. What's more, content still isn't really optimised for the netbook, whereas with Apple doing the heavy-pushing there will be a whole torrent of people making content specifically for tablets, including Apple themselves pushing e-books and e-newspapers (or whatever we're calling digital papers these days). Content is king, after all. That's why in 3 years time, Stephen Fry and I will be sitting smugly reading articles by the same people who wrote off the iPad, talking about how it has revolutionised mobile computing, and laughing at how remarkable their turnaround was.

(I should probably admit that others have also gone against the tide of negative public opinion, most notably (to me at least) Anand Lal Shimpi from AnandTech, who has an excellent piece online here. But we're still very much in the minority).

Other projects

2009-03-28T11:23:00.001Z

Other projects have distracted my attention - I shall return in the near future...

Curses to scan!

2009-03-18T11:39:00.003Z

Well, the PC is almost all here. All except the motherboard, processor and blu-ray drive which, as you of course know, are quite important. As the title says, Curses to Scan! There is another problem which also has to be addressed, however, and that's the fact that the lack of a standard length for graphics cards means that I have a case (the Antec three hundred) which won't actually fit the graphics card I have (4850X2).

Now I know that there is a very good reason that the 4850X2 is so utterly massive, but who wouldn't benefit from a standard length for graphics cards being set down? Even a few standards, in the same way as there exists ATX, m-ATX, extended ATX etc. for motherboards. So we could have the BGF (Basic Graphics Form-factor), m-BGF, extended BGF and so on. Suddenly all the guess work is taken out of fitting a graphics card to a case - both will list sizes, all you have to do is match them up. It wouldn't even have to invlove any sort of major redesign for cases or graphics cards - just classify what currently exists and add them to the spec sheets. Hell, we don't even need to classify anything - just add the max length graphics card supported to a case's spec sheet. Graphics cards already have physical dimensions in their specs, so I guess what I'm saying is: Case manufacturers - sort this shit out.

That is all.

NEW PC!!

2009-03-11T09:23:00.002Z

Change of pace here, seeing as how Ubuntu has been a miserable experience and I'm utterly sick and tired of it. Subject for today: new computer!

Yes, I'm currently at that terribly exciting "waiting for the postman" stage, waiting for the following:

Phenom II 940
ASUS M3A79-T Deluxe Motherboard
2 x 2GB PC6400 Corsair Twinx
AMD 4850X2 2GB
Western Digital 640GB Black
Sony Bluray drive
Corsair 550W PSU
27" (!) Dell 2709W monitor

I'm particularly excited about the monitor, but also just the fact that it's been a few years since I assembled a PC. Bluray seems to be getting to the point that it's worthwhile, but burners are still outrageous at over €150.

The 4850X2 is an exciting prospect, in that it's two pretty fast cores for the price of one fast one, and accordingly offers great value except, of course, when driver support is shite. Which it seemingly often is. Anandtech were gushing about it though, and that's enough for me. I'll keep the updates coming on that one.

It's a relief to be able to buy an AMD CPU without feeling like a complete sucker (which, let's face it, you almost certainly were if you bought a Phenom). Anyway, the Phenom II is wonderfully price competitive, performance competitive, and generally pretty good across the board. Certainly up there with anything Intel offer at the price.

And then the monitor. Oh, the monitor... I take great pleasure in listing off the input/outputs on the monitor, so here goes - 2 x DVI-D (not entirely sure why), VGA, HDMI, Displayport, component, 5.1 audio out, 4xUSB, 9-in-2 card reader... Epic. There are some suggestions that there may be minor input lag issues, but all monitors seem to have some criticisims levelled at them, so we'll see what happens.

Stay tuned, I'll report back soon...

2009-03-07T10:43:00.002Z

Well I'm still using Ubuntu, for the moment, mainly because I haven't yet decided whether to go back to Vista or to have a go with Windows 7. I rather suspect that Windows 7 might be the way to go, but for the moment I've got 3 weeks out of College for Spring Break (woo!...) so I'll stick with Ubuntu for a little while longer.

I think the biggest disappointment so far has been the College network situation, so perhaps I can have a slightly nicer experience with it at home. Stay tuned.

Ugh...

2009-02-28T14:45:00.002Z

Things haven't improved. Further updates to come.

First off, yes it's my first late post

2009-02-25T14:07:00.002Z

Unfortunately, events this morning conspired against my posting of the midweek update. The update, as it is, isn't an awful lot though: I'm getting sick of Ubuntu. Yes, that's it, just getting sick of the way it can't connect to the college network, sick of the fact that it crashes even more regularly then windows ever did, sick of the way it handles multiple monitors, sick of the fact that my bluetooth mouse works even worse than it did on Windows, sick of my inability to solve all these issues. Sick of Ubuntu.

I know there are good things about Linux, and particularly Ubuntu, and I know there are people who get by fine with linux as their main OS all the time, but there are too many things that it simply can't do. I've done some limited research on the college network issue and it's gotten me nowhere. Similarly, I haven't been able to find any way around the horrible multi-monitor support.

So what is it, exactly, that's better about Linux than Windows? Why do people love their Linux boxes so much? I've no doubt that there are some important stuff that techie folk want to do that Linux allows easier access too, but isn't Microsoft still better? Right now the answer is a resounding yes, and if Windows Seven is anything like it promises to be that yes will just resonate all the more.

I fully intend to stick with Ubuntu for the promised month, but I find myself more and more wishing that I didn't agree to. I just want back to Windows...

Compiz fusion

2009-02-21T09:58:00.004Z

There haven't been a whole lot of things which Ubuntu has done better than Windows. One thing it does have in its favour, however, is compiz fusion.

Now I freely admit that I don't entirely get what exactly compiz fusion replaces, or where it fits into the whole OS. My understanding is that metacity is the default app which is in charge of certain effects, like the style of window and such like. Whatever the truth, compiz fusion is certainily a very cool piece of software, and ties in nicely with the whole OS. Its main use is in things like pressing windows+e to get all your workspaces onscreen at once - much, I believe, like exposé does. All very nifty, and while probably available in windows, certainly not as easily.

Efforts to connect to the college network continue to fail - if this isn't resolved within the month, it'll be the biggest reason for my returning to Windows, which is sad as it's more of a reflection on college IT than on Ubuntu as an OS.

By the next day I hope to have investigated WINE to some extent, and I'll report back my findings. Until then...

The learning curve

2009-02-18T09:14:00.004Z

Less than a week in. Am I enjoying it? Not a bit of it.

First of all, and perhaps most significantly, I can't connect to the wireless network in college and I've been told that with Ubuntu I categorically can't. No way, no how. Bloody brilliant that is, doesn't make me miss windows at all.

To move away from that (and let's face it, it says more about the Trinity College IT staff than anything else) I have had some little moments of joy. After fiddling about with NVidia drivers I did eventually get my monitor to native resolution, and on mature reflection it was actually not all that difficult a process. Unfortunately that success has been more or less completely cancelled out by the fact that dual-monitor support is hopeless, absolutely hopeless. It works fine if you want to span your display across two equally sized screens, but who wants that? I want two seperate, self-contained monitors, thank you very much, or at the very least I want that option. Even worse is the fact that not only does a window span both screens when you maximize it, but because of the difference in resolution between the two screens you actually don't even see the bottom or top of part of the window depending on how you have the monitors physically positioned. In effect there's a box drawn from the bottom-left to the top-right, and that's your display. Never mind that not all of that is actually displayable on the given monitor configuration. As I say, hopeless.

There are other good points though. I've been impressed by the add/remove programs feature, which allows you to more or less effortlessly find and install just about whatever free Linux compatible softeware you like. In fact, if I do return to Windows I'm rather going to miss that feature. I'll also miss the workspaces feature, which I'm sure is available in some form for Windows but which is integrated and just works nicley on Ubuntu. You press control-alt left, or whatever direction, and you can switch between whatever number of workspaces you like. I think OS X may already have this, I'll have to check that out. See screenshot for a semi-descriptive image. Also did I mention that I quite like the default desktop? That's what the image at the top is - I do want to draw attention to as many positives as possible...

I do still have a lot left to discover about Ubuntu, and I do think it has a lot to offer. I haven't tried WINE yet, which will be a big test, and I was handed the name of an appareantly very cool app of some description in College the other day. The name of the app escapes me, but I'll talk about it a little more the next day. Also, I haven't given up hope of getting connected to the college wireless network, so I'll post back on that, and there must be a better way of setting up dual-monitors, which I'll also get on. The journey has only just begun.

First impressions

2009-02-14T16:04:00.002Z

Well, I'm finally sitting pretty in my nice fresh Ubuntu install! And only a couple of weeks behind schedule too. So, what are the first impressions?

Well the first point of contact is the installation procedure, and if I'm honest it was a mixed bag. The previously mentioned problems with partitioning remain unresolved, which is certainly an issue if you want to dual-boot. There are other options available for creating the necessary partitions, so it isn't a deal-breaker, but certainly an annoyance. The rest of the process is utterly painless, however, and differentiates itself nicely from Windows by only requiring user input at the beginning. This meant that I could just leave the laptop in a corner while I got on with other things, but it also means that I have little or no idea how long the process actually took; at a guess it was no more than an hour.

Initially booting on to the desktop is a very satisfactory experience altogether. The startup certainly seems quicker than Vista, although I've yet to actually time it. I also quite like the sound on startup, for what little it's worth, although I'll undoubtedly disable that in the near future for stealthy library-startups.

One place where Ubuntu has a clear advantage over Windows is in the variety of programs available immediately after the install. Openoffice is in place, as is Firefox, GIMP, Evolution mail client, pidgin internet messenger, f-spot phot manager and a whole host of other bits and pieces. Whether or not you want these things installed from the off is obviously a personal preference, but I certainly appreciate not having to spend an hour or two installing software after a fresh install of windows.

I'll go into further details about the various features at a later date, but first some issues I've run into. Most significant is the fact that I can't set my resolution to anything but 640x480, 800x600 and 1280x720. I have got some ideas on how to get that sorted, but various things I've tried so far have absolutely failed to work. My wireless connection was a little dodgy initially as well, but has been fine ever since.

Playing MP3 files necessitated downloading some codecs which required me to accept that I was legally allowed to download them --- what? I claimed I was, but frankly I've no idea. So shhh...

Anyway, now that I've taken the plunge expect updates thick and fast. Right now I'm off to sort out my monitor. New year's resolution 1440x900 anyone?

Right this minute...

2009-02-14T10:39:00.002Z

Right this very minute I'm enjoying one last meander through the green fields of Windows Vista. After some hassle with partitioning I've decided to bite the bullet and go full, all out Ubuntu. I've still got plenty of access to Windows machines, of course, and am forced to use OS X for my C++ course in College, but going straight to a single install machine will still be something of a shock.

Got to go now, will post again once I have wireless working again. As of 10:50 or so, my resolve is strong...

Last update before install - and that's a promise!

2009-02-11T10:16:00.002Z

The 15litres of beer sitting in the corner of the kitchen have been distracting me somewhat for this past few days, but realistically that's no excuse, is it? Anyway, a proper update will be up on Saturday, in the meantime have a look at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WCTn4FljUQ for some serious perspective about how good we have it now. Think about it - back then it would've taken you hours to find out that I haven't bothered my arse to install Ubuntu since three days ago when you last checked in.

Also, I hope nobody's paying a tenner to download my blog. If they were I'd feel terribly guilty; I really don't think this bi-weekly excuse-making is worth $10 a pop.

Obscure excuses, little progress

2009-02-07T12:12:00.002Z

When the excuse is "I was brewing some beer", what criticism doesn't lose its bite? Well that's exactly what I was doing last night, when I had cancelled all arranged social engagements to bloody well get Linux on the hard drive.

I wasn't expecting the various vats, airlocks, tubes and raw materials until at least Monday, seeing as how I ordered them on Thursday, but there they were when I arrived home on Friday, waiting to be put into service and far more alluring than the by now rather trying switch to Linux. For what it's worth, my first brew is to be a weißbier, brewed in what is apparently a Belgian style. Also, brewing counts as studying Chemistry, so it's kind of like a double excuse, in a way. Isn't it? Oh hell, of course it isn't!

Anyway, the rest of the day is to be taken up by actual Chemistry study and watching grown men mud-wrestle (otherwise know as Six-nations Rugby), so it'll be tomorrow when I (hopefully) get around to formatting and installing Ubuntu. As always, my updates will be prompt, my progress less so.

Until Wednesday.

Start of the month with Ubuntu

2009-02-04T11:10:00.003Z

On Saturday evening I wrote this:

Saturday 31^st

Just back from another foray into Ubuntu. The re-partitioning part of the setup was most unfathonable, despite my having printed out instructions. On quitting the installer process I was dumped onto the desktop booted from the CD, which was very nice but wholly unresponsive. Even when it did wake up it was so sluggish as to be unusuable, and Firefox wouldn’t open at all. I retreated to the safety of Windows and wrote up my report.

And since then? Well, I've done some more reading and considered my options. Another foray into the scary world of partitioning? Certainly I'm not going to attempt to use Ubuntu's built-in partitioner again. I also amn't going to attempt to run it from the CD for the duration of the test, as that is frightfully slow and simply not worth the effort. If nothing else, what I'm after from an OS is a speedy UI and if I'm running Ubuntu from a CD that clearly isn't going to happen.

I'm not willing to abandon Windows entirely just yet either - the whole point of the test was to allow me to experience Linux without removing me too far from my comfort zone. Still, backing everything up and going Linux all the way might be easiest. At the very least I could start from scratch with two clean partitions and go from there.

Further progress will be reported on Saturday, I hope. If nothing else I feel I am at least providing a more realistic picture of the difficulty of switching OS than I might have had I written everything beforehand. These delays are, I can only imagine, typical of most people like myself toying with a new OS.

Until Saturday then.

A month with Ubuntu

2009-01-31T10:58:00.001Z

Well, it’s the 31^st, and that means it’s just about time to get started with the month with Linux. I’ve most of the day set aside for backing stuff up and getting Ubuntu up and running, and Wednesday should mark the first day of bi-weekly updates. As an aside, apparently bi-weekly can mean both twice a week and once every two weeks. Bizarre, no? Anyway, in this case it means twice a week.

I should also say that when I announced this idea a month or so ago I fully intended to have large swathes of it written, or at least researched, before February rolled around. Life being as it is, however, that didn’t happen, so about all I’ve done so far is faff around briefly with booting Uibuntu off a CD and, separately, discover that apparently I’m going to have some sort of trouble with disk formatting, although I’m not too sure yet what form that’ll take. The somewhat positive side-effect of this is that you’ll be getting everything hot off the press, and any new updates and whatnot should be in date when you read this.

That’s it from me today, brace for Wedneday.

Logitech V470

2009-01-28T11:33:00.000Z

As mentioned in a previous post, I’ve taken a bit of time about getting my workplace set-up just so. One of the key elements of any PC setup is obviously the mouse, and the only must-have feature on my list was that it had to be wireless, in order to avoid wire clutter, and it had to be bluetooth, so as I could make use of the E6400’s integrated bluetooth and avoid having a dongle hanging out the side.

Unfortunately, the market isn’t exactly saturated with bluetooth mice. Microsoft have a handful of bluetooth mice, none of which are exactly easy to get hold of, and Logitech are the same. In fact, one of the few bluetooth mice that I could actually find was the Logitech V470. I also considered one of the Microsoft laptop ones, but I don’t really like the idea of a mouse being smaller than usual purely for portability – how much room are you actually saving by having a slightly smaller mouse?

Anyway, the V470 was available and had some good reviews, so I took the plunge. So far it’s been by turns perfectly adequate and absolutely infuriating. Mostly it’s vey good, and if it could turn 95% of the time into 100% I’d recommend it without hesitation. Unfortunately (for it and me) it can’t, and so about 5% of the time it inexplicably refuses to connect until it’s been restarted 3 or 4 times. Why this is, I’ve no idea, and it’s one of those faults that’s so intermittent that I just know I’ll never get around to fixing it, and can’t possibly justify sending it back.

Asides from all that, it’s a vey good piece of kit; striking to look at, comfortable to use, nice and simple 3 button design and with a tilt-scrolling wheel to boot. It’s quite precise, perfectly adequate for any gaming bar the twitchiest of twitch shooters, and all-round very appealing. But for the niggle, highly recommended.

My gaming wish-list

2009-01-24T11:15:00.002Z

I play games a bit. I'm certainly not a hard-core gamer, but I do like the occasional bit of escapism. A week or so back I posted a list of my favourite games, and for the most part those are objectively very very good. That said, there's problems with all of them. DeusEx has poorly implemented stealth. Half-Life 2 doesn't have much by the way of stealth at all, and there's no real opportunity to influence events - either you finish the level or you play again. Call of Duty is great in the squad parts, but once you get into the corridor bits it's just like any other corridor shooter youo care to mention.

All that said, here's my wishlist for developers. Of course no game's perfect, but there are some that are a lot further from it than others...

1) Stick to you're strengths - Call of Duty is getting a withering stare right now, as is Assassins Creed and many others besides. When a game does one thing really really well, don't pad it out with stuff that isn't so good. Call of Duty had wholly unnecessary corridor bits that took away from the majesty of some of the set-pieces, and they just shouldn't have been there. End of.

2) If you're doing something right... - DeusEx 2. Need I say more? Well, I will anyway. The biggest crime ever perpetrated against any franchise, and that idiot-genius Spector had the gall to claim it made the gameplay more "streamlined". Running down an empty tunnel with no enemies, weapons or storyline would be streamlined too, but that doesn't mean we want to do it.

3) If the story's crap... - Assassin's Creed. I'll admit, I played it for all of an hour or so, but what the hell was the point of the modern-day bit? Why did that need to be there at all? It might turn out to be an incredibly interesting story, in the end, but when it seems like padding leave it out.

4) Settings - Some settings are genuinely cool, and I don't mind that, for example, World War 2 has been the setting for so many games. It was a momentous event in history, and that's fine. Post apocalyptic settings are another thing though. I'm thoroughly sick of them, because they just seem to be an excuse to not bother fitting civilisation into the story-line.

5) Weapons - Why are selections so limited? Surely you could put 50 different weapon types in a game, each with its own characteristics, and it would add loads without taking a significant amount of development time. Or am I missing something? Even in WW2 games, you could have some officers having different pistols or something, using the same ammo as normal pistols but better range or accuracy or something.

And there's some other stuff I'll get to, but that's basically it. I'll have my ultimate game wish-list up sometime soon too, that'll be one worth watching.

And as an entirely random bonus question, name a film which features no stairs whatsoever including no natural staircase-type features. There's a poser...

2009-01-21T11:52:00.003Z

Like many people, I have delusions of being able to accurately predict future tech trends. This condition can be rather unhealthy, and the whole situation has been horribly exacerbated by my accurately predicting a Blu-ray victory in the last format wars, a prediction which was published on a school magazine at the time and so is verifiable as a fact. My more impressive prediction by far to date, unfortunately, was never committed to publication: 5 years ago I commented that a small, cheap laptop, based on something like VIAs mini-itx series, would sell like hot-cakes. Imagine how I feel now...

Anyway, in order to feed my delusions of grandeur, I need more predictions, and accurate ones at that. Without further ado, then, my current list of predictions (probably incomplete, but at least I’ll get the most pressing ones down):

1) Wireless HD – If you’ve followed the coverage of CES this year you’ll have seen talk of wireless HD. Brilliant and all as the technology is, I don’t think it will be anything like commonplace for at least another 3-5 years. Even if it’s easy to use, most people will still go for the cheaper and simpler cabled components. The idea of having a TV wirelessly linked to an I/O box of sorts is being bandied around too, and again seems brilliant, but the associated cost means that it’ll remain a high-end only feature for the immediate future.

2) Blu-ray – As mentioned above, I’ve been right about blu-ray before. People do like to point out that that was a 50-50 call though, so here’s one that’s not – 2010 will be the year blu-ray finally get’s decent mainstream lift-off, but it still won’t emulate DVDs success because of on-demand streaming (youtube-esque) and the fact that most people simply don’t care about higher definition, unless they’ve loads of cash to throw around. In fact, the only reason I see blu-ray taking off at all is that it’ll be approaching price-parity with DVD by then.

3) The Internet – If you haven’t already heard, we’re due to run out of IP addresses in the next few years. My bold and wholly predictable response is that it’ll be sorted by then, for the simple reason that there are too many obscenely rich companies who need the internet to keep operating (Google being the prime one, but also Dell, Microsoft and just about anyone else you care to name, especially the big telecoms players). On a related side-note, I love the thought that the internet was designed to accommodate a few dozen devices (at most), but was built with probably the biggest margin of safety ever seen, which still wasn’t enough. No way I can look too badly wrong after that...

4) 3D – There are a whole load of competing 3D technologies, from the Nintendo Wii –based tracking system (here) to Nvidia's solution (here) with a whole host of others in between. It will take some time before this hits mainstream, however. Games will benefit first, for the simple reason that they’re already 3D, and name one decent 3D film you’ve seen (recently or ever). Oh, and a solution which involves glasses simply won’t win punters over, nor is the Wii head-tracking system likely to achieve more than a modicum of success because it won’t work with films. Could make it into to next Wii though...

5) 5) Smartphones/portable computing – The growth of portability in computing is as inevitable as Sony’s next proprietary format, I’m afraid (there may very well be a memory stick rant soon...). Good thing? Only sort of. Anyway, my bold prediction is that by the end of this year there still won’t be anything that can touch the iPhone interface-wise, for reasons I can’t fully get my head around. That’s as is though. Slightly more out there as a prediction, the ability to e-mail on the go (blackberry style, though not necessarily with the same ease of use) will be ubiquitous within 3 years (not much less than that, certainly, and it could take 4).

And there you have it, my first round of predictions. I know there are a couple more squirreled away back there somewhere, and once I remember them I’ll be sure to make them known. For now though, that’s it. Oh, and don’t forget, a Month With Linux starts Sunday week, so that means first major update by Wednesday. Stay tuned…

Programs you really should try

2009-01-17T10:24:00.001Z

It goes without saying that not everyone uses the same programs*. People use their PCs for different things, and that’s fine. Even still, there are a great many wonderful programs out there that people simply don’t hear about, for whatever reason. Seeing as how technological enlightenment is one aim of this blog, I will, from time to time, put together a short list of programs which at the very least deserve a quick look**. I’ll try to stay away from the obvious ones, but a quick mention of Firefox and VLC can’t go amiss, can it?

So yeah, if you haven’t already, you should really go and install Firefox and VLC on your computer. Firefox because (even though I’m using Chrome at the moment) it’s the best browser out there, and VLC because if VLC can’t play a video or audio file, whoever made it was being a pretentious git in their format selection. It is without a library, however, which leads me to my first recomendation:

1) Songbird (www.getsongbird.com) – Songbird shamelessly models itself on Firefox, from the URL (similarities to getfirefox.com, for anyone who’s just got out of bed...) to the walnut theme (see below). And you know what? I hope it can emulate Firefox’ success. As it stands it’s pretty good, which won’t cut it, but with sufficient support who knows how good it could be? And for die-hard winamp/foobar2000/whatever users, I will continue my hunt for the perfect media player, never you fear.

2) TrueCrypt (www.truecrypt.org) – Basically for file encryption, but also so much more. Using truecrypt allows you to create a virtual encrypted disk within a file, which you then mount using the truecrypt tool. There’s more though – you can have two virtual disks in one, accessed depending on which password you put in. Just like if you were a spy, truecrypt gives you the opportunity to have a special “under duress” password. Quite who’s going to put you under duress to get a look at your dirty pictures is your own business (the mother-in-law, perhaps?) but it is a cool tool whether you need it or not. And free, because who pays for software these days?

3) Openoffice.org – Is this too obvious for the list? Maybe, but seeing as how I’ve yet to profile my readers I really don’t know. Anyway, if you’re in need of Microsoft Office for free with only features you never use missing, this is it. If you already have Office, openoffice is better at opening corrupted files, for some very technical reason or other.

4) Cooliris (www.cooliris.com) – A very (very) cool piece of software which can, under certain conditions, be of some very limited practical use. Displays search results on a kind of interactive wall which you can zoom up and down and... you know, I can’t really explain it too well. Just check it out yourself, OK? OK.

And that’s it for this time. Please do share your own favourites, and any thoughts on these, when you get around to trying them. Oh, and if they make your PC implode I amn’t liable, so don’t even think about suing. I mean that.

*I know, I know, programme is how I really should be spelling this seeing as how I claim to speak Hiberno-English, but for the purposes of this blog I think some sort of hybrid internet speak will have to do. And I know nobody really cares how I spell program, but I do, so deal with it.

** All my recommended programs will be free, always. Unless I find something really really good, in which case I suppose I might make an exception. Maybe.

Cool things you can't do with an iPhone

2009-01-14T11:49:00.000Z

Sure there are loads of cool things you can do on your iPhone (or, if you’re like me, someone else’s iPhone...). There are also, however, many cool things you can’t do. Here’s my top 5:

5) Project – That’s right, you can’t use the iPhone as a projector. Why? God knows. I can only imagine how I’d feel if I spent however much on a phone plus 18 month contract and found that it didn’t have a projector. Think of the parties which just wouldn’t work without a projector. What do you mean only I want to play Halo at parties? Everyone wants to play Halo at parties.

4 ) Videos – slightly less flippantly than the above post, surely it should be capable of decent videos? I genuinely thought that shooting videos was now standard on just about any phone. Seems not. Apple, get your house in order.

3) Instant Messaging – Oh for the love of god, we’re all using IM these days. Fine, our phones might not seem ideal for it, but we text so why on earth not IM? There is, as far as I can see, no excuse for it not to be supported straight out of the box. What are they at up in Cupertino? Well?

2) Voice activated calling – I have to take it on trust that it doesn’t have this one, but appareantly it doesn’t. How the hell not? I remember lying sick in bed the better part of a decade ago with my Siemens s35i and trying to teach it how to call people by voice command (top tip: don’t try this while siffering from a bad cold. For reasons you can probably guess at, it isn’t the best idea in the world).

1) VOIP – How does it not support voice over IP? Surely there’s nothing cooler than free calls? Well in my mind there isn’t and once again Apple falls short.

So am I jealous of people who can actually afford an iPhone? You betcha. However I have made myself feel a little better with this list. So if you can’t afford an iPhone, don’t feel so bad. And if you have, stop feeling so smug. Even if I was struggling by number 5...

My Gaming Life

2009-01-10T11:43:00.001Z

Although gaming has been forced to take a back seat of late, what will all the other non-gaming thin like University and exams and such-like going around, I still very much consider the games I grew up with to be a big part of my identity. Not only that, but I think most people have a top-10 games that says a lot about them. Without further ado, my all-time top-10 games ever (not necessarily in order of objective quality, but rather subjective nostalgia and so on):

10. The Lion King (PC) – I know what you’re thinking. “What the hell??” probably sums it up fairly well. Thing is though, this game was one of the first I ever played, way back in the early nineties (I know it’s not way back for everyone, but for me that’s dawn of time type distance back). I may have been only four when I first played it, but I can tell you that even on easy this game was anything but; playing on easy you got 9 lives to last the entire game, including some fiendishly difficult platform jumping bits. Having played it (although I never finished it) allows me to rightfully claim to have been on the scene back when gameplay difficulty levels were hard, very hard and impossible. My biggest nostalgia trip of the list, don’t worry about it getting worse from here...

9. Goldeneye (N64) – Did I finish it? Absolutely not. Did I even play the single player? Once or twice, maybe. In fact, I never even owned an N64, let alone this particular game, but that didn’t stop me from loving it. The first multi-player FPS I ever played, and man was it fun. I would say that I made friends with people who had it just because they had it, but they might read this. And besides, it isn’t true.

8. Dune II (PC) – Fatally flawed by modern standards, Dune II nonetheless makes my list not only because it was the first proper modern RTS, but because it was possibly the first game I ever really fell in love with. Sure you could only select one unit at a time, and this made proper strategising difficult. And sure, there are any number of foibles which would render it absolutely unplayable nowadays. But it still makes the list, because even though I’ll probaby never again play it again I still tell people how great it is at the drop of a hat. Like right now. In fact, I’d almost go so far as to say that this whole blog post was just an escuse to bring up Dune II again...

7. Wolfenstein 3D (PC) – The original, and still just about playable after all these years. What else can you say about Wolf3D? Well, if you haven’t played the ghost level you’re missing out on one of the finest pieces of video-gaming in all of ever. Ever. And the sequel was very playable too (a sequel for which they released a free multiplayer component, which was nice of them. You didn’t even have to buy the original). Doom may be more remembered, but Wolf3D has a special place in my heart that Doom will never take.

6. Rise of Nations – Despite being a better game than AOE2, RON is pipped to 6^th for very sentimental and utterly silly reasons. The biggest problems it suffers from are that those last four library reasearches just make things silly during big multiplayer games, and that its campaign map pales in comparison to the total war series. Still a top-notch game though, and very much still one of the best strategy games around 5 years on.

5. Age of Empires 2 – The first one was very good, the third one not so much, but in AOE2 Ensemble Studios crafted a masterpiece. Technically inferior the RON, AOE2 was only knocked from its pedestal of LAN game of choice in this house because Vista PCs and XP PCs won’t play nice when it comes to AOE2. A crying shame, if you ask me.

4. Rome: Total War – Just about the finest strategy game ever conceived. If there was a multiplayer campaign it’d be up around #1. The strategy map in itself sould have been released and done quite well, but the tactically brilliant battles just... I can’t even describe it, to be honest. In fact, you dig out a copy of Rome and play it right now, I’m off to eat a dictionary. Maybe then I’ll be able to write a decent review of Empire: Total War, which is just a few short months away.

3.Call of Duty – Utterly gripping, beautifully atmospheric, brilliantly authentic. The gameplay is varied, the weapons are satisfying, the AI relatively believable. I could say more, but there’s non need – this is the perfect straight-forward shooter.

2. Deus-Ex – just pipped to the post, Deus-Ex is a work of genius. If the combat was a little smoother and the stealth a little more like Splinter-Cell, the you’d have the perfect game. Except even if Deus-Ex had done this, its memory would still be sullied by Deus-Ex 2, which was a fine game except good-god-almighty, how did they let it ship carrying the Deus-Ex brand? They could have shipped it as a straight-forward shooter by just changing a few character names and they would have avoided all the public hate. But no, they didn’t, and now Deus-Ex 3 is coming and we don’t know what to think. The original can still stnad proud though, but then that goes without saying, doesn’t it?

1. Half-Life 2 (including episodes) – Storyline. Characters. Gameplay. Weapons. Enemies. Set-pieces. Level-design. Graphics. Vehicle bits. Non-vehicle bits. Everything. That is all. Oh, and the fact that it was the only one of the big 3 of 2004 that exceeded expectations. Much more than just a shooter, this was absolutely epic. Oh, and for once there were worthwhile expansions made.

So there you have it, my top 10 (although I’m already getting a little worried about some of the ones I left out). See you all on Wednesday!

slotMusic

2009-01-07T11:38:00.003Z

First off, after something approaching a week of “update on a Wednesday” policy I’ve decided to push the boat out and start posting on Saturdays too. Also, the Month with Linux preperation continues apace, Ubuntu has emerged as the distro of choice and the Intrepid Ibex (otherwise known as Ubuntu 8.10) awaits deployment. Stay tuned for the February first start date. And on to your regular scheduled blog...

Sometimes, important stuff slips under my radar. In spite of generally priding myself on being up to date with tech news as it becomes available, I do sometimes miss things. One of those things happened in September, and by sheer dumb luck I stumbled upon it the other day.

Some of you may have heard about this, something called slotMusic (for those who missed it, the story is available at tinyurl.com/8k5uop). I wasn’t actually at the meeting where this new format was conceived, but I can only assume at what happened was that someone decided that if consumers could have CDs only smaller, without the artwork and worse quality, they’d bite. There are 44 comments on that article, and every one that isn’t moaning about piracy is pointing out the blindingly obvious stupidity inherent in this whole concept. This was never a format that was going to take off.

Now I sympathise with the music industry, I do. I appreciate that it must be hard to go from being a source of music everyone adores to being an industry so hated that even otherwise decent people are willing to pirate (not steal*) your products. It’s pretty clear why it’s happened though, and I’m not convinces it’s all really worth repeating here. Perhaps just a quick recap? Okay:

Conveyer belt talent, manufactured talent, unwillingness to take risks, unwillingness to try new things, unwillingness to accept new things, unwillingness to view their customers as anything but parasites, suing their customers, inability to realise why their business is failing, complete lack of perspective. And probably some other stuff.

So what I want to do is set down exactly what needs to be done, including things that anyone with half a brain can see to be self-evident. This is, if you like a cut-out and keep guide to the music industry. Unfortunately for them, the first thing that needs to go is them.

A semi-recent article in Rolling Stone Magazine (and by that I mean 2004 - tinyurl.com/3yzvky) shows that on a $15.99 CD the Label and Publisher take $5.43. The artist gets (and a drum roll wouldn’t be inappropriate here) $1.60. Now don’t get me wrong, I understand that making music costs money. There does need to be some level of reward for those who find and nurture talent but, and this is important, a) the internet now makes people who “find talent” a little redundant, and b) there’s something wrong when the label makes $1.70 profit per CD and the artist’s total royalties amount to $1.60.

So how better to do it? Well, for a start, let’s get a bit more for our money. I still like CDs, I do, but right now they simply don’t represent value for money much of the time. How about instead of a CD we get a CD and DVD – standard music CD, then a DVD with a higher quality version of the songs (for those who are into that sort of thing) and then various extras – interviews with the band, how long would they take to throw together? I could do it in a couple of hours, couldn’t add noticeably to the cost of the finished product, but they do add noticeably to the perceived value, as well as very strongly differentiating them from downloads.

Speaking of downloads, I must say I feel a little cheated here. Napster was released way back in 1999 (that’s almost a decade ago, remember). There still isn’t an equivalent legal service. You might say “iTunes!” to which I would reply “They charge extra for unprotected songs, and are an absolute nightmare to... actually hang on a sec, that first point is more than enough. I’ve paid for it, why should you get to say what I do with it?”. All the other stores around either suffer from a piss-poor interface, limited range, ridiculous restrictions or unrealistic pricing. I mean, for product with no unit- costs, 99c suddenly isn’t so cheap. And that’s not to mention the fact that there’s geographic restrictions on most of those services so (for example) I can’t purchase music online from amazon or play.

I could carry on further. I could go back to the start of this thing and point out all the reasons why slotMusic was doomed before it began. But I won’t. Instead, I’ll leave with heart-felt plea to all those horribly out-of-touch music executives out there: if you want your industry to survive, get your heads together now and say “we’re floundering, we need to have all the music in the world on one site (or preferably loads of sites) and we need to do it soon” . Or don’t. The world will hardly miss the middle-men of music, will we?

*Piracy is not stealing, because stealing implies that something is taken from someone and that that person no longer has that item. While it is certainly a crime, it is not now, nor ever will be, equivalent to theft. And I’ll take no arguments on that either.

Blogger... Oh, and Happy 2009!

2009-01-01T12:45:00.003Z

I did post yesterday (and before midday too, as promised), but for some reason it claims to have been posted on Sunday, which is a little bizarre. I started on it on Sunday, so that's probably the reason. I'm on it, don't panic, stay calm, it won't happen again...

Also, according to my good friend Google Analytics, there are now some dozen or so semi-regular visitors, which is excellent as far as I'm concerned - at that rate, assuming exponential growth, we'll have the whole world reading in... 40 days? It was a rough night last night so don't hold me to that, the maths may be a little off...

To clarify the state of play, Wednesday is very much still the official blogging day, although I will be posting intermittently (like this) on top of that. But if you're planning regular visits it's Wednesday at midday is the time to do it. I might look into getting really fancy and getting an rss feed going to help keep everyone in the loop, perhaps blogger already has that functionality? I'll look into it.

To everyone of those who've visited as couple of times, post a comment, say hello, let's get a bit of a community feeling going here. Oh, and happy new year to everyone, first-, second-, third-, fourth-, fifth-time visitor, whatever it may be. Let's all have a great 2009, shall we?

Update on the general state of play

2008-12-30T19:12:00.006Z

I've been thinking a little bit about how best to structure this blog so as to give me an opportunity to solicit some feedback, improve my writing and, with a bit of luck, provide some entertainment. With that in mind, and with thanks to Inferno_str1ke of Dearwandy.com forums for pointing pointing out what really should have been painfully obvious, Wednesday is now my official blog day. Bookmark it, write it in your diary, do whatever it takes, but be here of a Wednesday for the new post.

Also, I'm working up to a month with Linux series of posts, similar to what Anand Lap Shimpi wrote for his hardware site anandtech.com (part 1 and part 2 - the mobile experience, if you're interested) back in 2004. There were some noises over at anandtech about doing a similar experiment with Linux some time ago, and I was very much looking forward to it, but it unfortunately failed to materialise. The reasons behind this mysterious no-showing are a mystery to me (unless it slipped under my radar, which is possible) but their loss is my gain, so to speak, and I've decided to fill the gaping hole in cyberspace.

The basic structure, assuming no better suggestions are made, will be daily updates on how my trip down Linux lane is going, with the regular Wednesday blog being somewhat lengthier, and hopefully going a little bit more in-depth into what you can expect if you decide to follow me on my very first trek into the free OS wilderness.

The "A Month With Linux" series of blog posts will run the month of February, with several possible follow-ups already presenting themselves in my mind, pending feedback. I'll have some further details soon, but before then check back tomorrow for my next regular Wednesday posting tomorrow at midday tomorrow.

As always, constructive criticism greatly appreciated, or just thoughts on the blog in general. Or musings on life. Or just say hello. Whatever you fancy, really. Oh, and I've yet to settle on a Linux distro, so if you'd like to see how a first-time Linux user fairs with any one in particular let me know.

Apple and the war of words, hearts and minds

2008-12-28T11:15:00.006Z

xkcd have said it. Stephen Fry has said. I'm sure some other people have said it. And yet, for reasons I've yet to fully understand, most geeks continue not to say it - it being that, in all honesty, most tech rivalries are more than a little silly.

Now you might say "Ah, but Diarmuid, isn't that the case in all walks of life? Aren't all rivalries a little silly and petty?". Well, the answer is a multi-faceted and most un-satisfactory yes but no.

Manchester United and Liverpool supporters have been known to get a little boisterous, and in a way this is very understandable. Both teams compete in the same competition and both wish to succeed at the expense of the others. For the fans, there is the excitement of going to watch their team on matchday, and sharing a little in the victories and losses. Do Apple fans really get the same satisfaction when the line up outside an Apple store for the latest toy?

And what of Microsoft supporters? They don't even get the pleasure of congregating in a line with like-minded folk (at least, I've never seen a line form to get a hold of the latest version of Windows or MS Office). So what is it with Apple people who simply don't get why people choose windows? Or (possibly even worse) Microsoft supporters who don't get why Apple users are thus?

What I don't get is the bitter war of words. xkcd had an excellent cartoon in the same vain about the Firefox v IE struggle - "sometimes I wake up and realise 'hey, it's just a browser'", or words to that effect.

So here's what I want you to take from this - sure Apple may have run a million miles from their 1984 "no evil" image (much like Google, but that's a whole other can...) but they still do things that no other company can do. They still produce beautiful kit that makes you go "oooh..." in a way that most PC manufacturers just can't manage. They also, in case you hadn't noticed, make one of the most desirable phones on the planet, whether you can look past its deficiencies or not.

And then there's the PC, which has so much compatibility and so many programmes available for it that I'm willing to bet nobody has even the faintest idea what the total number is.

No matter which you like best, there's a reason to go with the other one. So why the war of words? Sometimes humanity worries me.

Google Analytics

2008-12-28T00:47:00.002Z

Don't get used to daily updates - I'd rather a worthwhile post every week than a daily update. This is a special case though - Google analytics has been implemented and the initial findings aren't promising. Despite having attracted 23 unique visitors, the average time spent on the page is only 13 seconds!

So what are you waiting for? Spread the word, tell your friends! Work to do, clearly, work to do...

The home of the good life

2008-12-26T19:07:00.002Z

The hunt for a good URL is a strange one. It has to be catchy - in spite of the ".blogspot" at the end. It has to be easy to spell. It has to say something about the blog. Most importantly of all, it has to make people go "ooohhh...".

Of course the URL I finally settled on ticks few, if any, of those boxes. Bearing that in mind, let's just move right along, shall we?

The subject of this inaugaral blog post is, fittingly, the place where I write my blog posts. I want to set the scene, allow you to learn a little (but only a little) about me before we set off on the wonderful adventure we'll undoubtedly take. So...

The whole workplace is much as you might imagine an aspiring techie's to be - all wires and books, some optical media, old thumb drives, discarded bits and bobs of all shapes and mostly fairly small size. Most importantly is what's at the centre of this menagerie of exotic technological relics - a Dell E6400 (specs to follow) and a 22" Acer screen whose model number, according the box in the corner, is P223W (we'll have a word some other time about the futility of remembering the model number of every piece of technology in your life).

The laptop is a Dell for two equally good reasons, both of which may well draw scorn in certain circles. Number one is that Dell make really nice laptops - the brother, who lives across the landing somewhere, has a Studio 15 which is also stylish, well made and well priced, and I've had several very satisfactory encounters with the XPS m1530 too. The second is that no other manufacturer makes it so easy to get exactly what you want. If you want to get a Toshiba specced exactly as you desire you have to trawl through all the different configurations on, say, komplett.ie. Similarly for just about any other name you care to throw out, with perhaps one or two exceptions (the original story of The Laptop Hunt will appear somewhere down the line, I feel). So anyway, it's a Dell, and you can just deal with that (as I too have had to - don't think I enjoy supprting the Empire).

On the whole, I can't really complain about it too much. True, every graphics driver I've tried has caused it to present a BSOD at startup four out of every five times, but that's a small price to pay for rock-solid reliability the rest of the time, and who shuts down their laptop anyway? Mine goes on standby but is rarely, if ever, actually switched off. A full review will probably follow, in the fullness of time, but for the Irish-speakers amongst you there should be a little something by yours truly about it in the next issue of nós* - the rest of you shouldn't panic, however, as I may very well have a little something about it right here before nós* hits the news stands in mid January.

To give you something to get your spatial relations going, the laptop sits just to my left on the desk, with a few impossibly thick and heavy college textbooks directly behind, and the left-side speaker to their left. There's a rather nice photo of myself and some friends in a frame just in front of all that waiting to find a nice home on a wall somewhere, while, appropriately enough, there's an old 24x CD-Rom unit doing duty as a book-end on the right of that particular section of reading material, and then to the right of that is the centre-piece of the setup - the brand-new-for-Christmas'08 and aforementioned Acer 22" monitor.

As the newest addition to the lineup, it has so far avoided being tested too exhaustively. Some promised Christmas LAN partying may call it into service, but thus far it has had a charmed existence. It is connected to the laptop, unfortunately, by old-school VGA. While I make a habit of encouraging the adoption of open technologies like DisplayPort, its inclusion in the E6400 has left me without a digital path between source and screen. Needless to say, sorting this is towards the top of my never-ending list of tech-jobs. The decision-making process behind the monitor's choosing was rather less scientific than that which weeded out the laptop, but nevertheless it might warrant inclusion in a posting at some later date. Stay tuned.

To the right of the centre-piece are some more books, this time (slightly) less unwieldy in both physical girth and in content. The other speaker is to their right, in a vain attempt at achieving real stereo sound, while the source, an aging Philips micro system, sits on top. This is usually connected back to the audio-out on the laptop via the auxilliary input, but the cable for this mysteriously vanished recently. The US-style power adapter and a DVI cable sit on top of the books, while the defunct AM aerial for the micro system sits just behind the books alongside a rarely used mag-lite (the two cell D version).

Out in front I have another newish addition, a Logitech V470 bluetoothe mouse upon which the jury is still out, while on my head sit a set Sennheiser HD202s headphones, upon which the jury has returned a very favourable verdict.

Above all this there are three uncomfortably-heavily laden shelves, which were recently reconstructed using slightly chunkier parts after their predeccesors collapsed. These are responsible for the safe holding an assortment of books, DVDs, folders, papers and general doodads. There's a box of those impossibly smooth Lindor balls up their too, awaiting my attention.

Finally, there are some shelves built into the desk, and they contain mountains of PC Zones, PC Formats, and a smattering of PC Pros, Personal Computer Worlds and other magazines like Stuff, T3, Hot Press, Digital Home and so on.

So their you have it. I've always been told that you can tell a lot about someone by where they call home, and this room and this desk are nothing if not home to me. If a man's home is his castle, after all, his desk is the keep, or perhaps even the top room in the keep. Certainly somewhere pretty important. And where to next for this little slice of heaven in a world gone mad? I'd love to add a third screen at some point. Maybe a desktop with obscene processing power, when the wallet allows. An external keyboard is sorely missed, and should soon be sourced.

And where next for this little corner of the net, in which we will endeavour to create a little bubble of sanity in a world gone totally loony? Well, I have some very important words to say about Apple - but not the ones you're expecting. Pencil in January 1st (just don't hate me if I'm a little tardy).