Random Faulty Thinking

Map of destinations from London Airports

2011-11-14T20:29:00.001Z

London has four very busy airports and one quieter inner city airport that means that the airspace around the South East of London is extraordinarily busy. It did make me wonder where you can actually fly from London to.

London Heathrow is supposed to be the busiest airport in the world for international traffic (although that seems a very flexible claim) and London Gatwick is supposed to be one of the busiest single runway airports in the world. London Stansted is no slouch (busier than most city's airports) and London Luton is the size of most city's only airports too. London City is small but perfectly placed for the money men at Canary Wharf and quite a nice little airport too.

Wikipedia is great for keeping a relatively up-to-date list of airlines and destinations from most world airports but I couldn't see any map on the general internet showing all the places you can get to from all the main London airports - there's quite a few showing from one airport or another and once showing UK destinations but I couldn't see any showing all the destinations so...

...in an extremely slow news day (yes, I was very bored), I used Wikipedia, Excel, and Google Maps to create this map showing around 400 destinations. Obviously not the definitive map and some of the flights are seasonal (summer and winter) but better than nothing. It's also a "line in the sand" type of map - probably getting obsolete by the second. I hope someone finds it handy or interesting though:

Destinations from London Airports

If you fancy seeing the actual Google Map, click here.

While not a plane-spotter myself, I am a bit of a transport nerd so I'm always curious about what's flying overhead, and where it's heading too/from and PinkFroot's Plane Finder iPhone app is superb for that.

Mac formatted PC drive not showing in Windows

2010-08-11T19:11:00.006+01:00

In the last couple of years I've managed to screw up 2 USB drives by reformatting them using my Mac. This didn't use to be the case.

Most recently, I was using a 4GB USB stick drive to copy files from a PC laptop when the laptop went into hibernation (ran out of batteries).

When it came back to life, the drive wouldn't read on the Mac I wanted to copy the files to.

I thought I'd reformat it on the Mac OS machine I have and used Disk Utility to format it as FAT32 format which should mount on a PC. It showed 4GB on my Mac but when I put it in a PC it said it needed to be formatted and would only offer to format it as 200MB. Needless to say, I was slightly"miffed".

I had a sneaking suspicion it was to do with the GUID partitioning scheme newer Macs use for disks. Some Googling later, I came upon this post by MacTalk Australia forums user Oceanic:

http://forums.mactalk.com.au/28/75333-formatting-usb-drive-mac-windows.html#post937734

which had the answer:

I have managed to do it using Disk Utility.

Select the drive, then go to the partition section.
Select the format as MS-DOS (FAT) (it will make this FAT32).
Select the number of partitions (I have always selected one) in the drop-down box.
Click on the Options button at the bottom of the partition diagram.
Select the Master Boot Record option.

If you now apply that, it should create the drive using MBR (master boot record) rather than GUID Partition Table (GPT). Windows is incapable of reading GPT when created on a Mac. If you don't select an option, it seems to use GPT as the default, thereby rendering the drive unreadable on a Windows machine.

This worked fine and I now have a perfectly functioning PC formatted drive (Apple don't make it easy!). I've reposted it here as I spent considerable time Googling the answer and hopefully if I type enough in it will help someone else.

I'm guessing this also would have fixed another USB drive I'd bought. It was one with 2 partitions - one for security - which I didn't want. I tried to do it as 1 and it all went wrong. This may have fixed that too.

Is homoeopathy rubbish...I don't think so

2010-02-01T16:40:00.004Z

There's been a campaign recently in the UK for getting homoeopathic drugs removed from pharmacies like Boots (a major high street chemist in the UK) and to generally write off homoeopathy as...well...bullshit.

I would disagree - despite being highly sceptical of just about everything (I still am a liberal, science loving geek). I don't speak as a scientist (I'm not) or from any huge research on my part - just from my experiences of the healthcare world (traditional or otherwise).

When I was a teenager, I had major sinus problems (multiple eye-watering headaches every day) and went to doctors numerous times. They gave me lots of drugs - which, if the placebo effect (and the above campaign claims homoeopathic successes are just placebo based) was to be considered, should have "cured" me. It didn't - zero effect.

I went to a homoeopath - and despite being sceptical, what he gave me worked. He thought something (weedkiller - common on roadsides in NZ where I'm from) had been effecting my sinuses and gave me homoeopathic amounts of it for my system to accept (initially that made me think that was bad but the same applies to normal inoculations and is just as scary as taking "good bacteria" for the stomach). This made the headaches go away ...until the next time someone sprayed their weeds.

However, another type of practitioner probably regarded as a hippie - a naturopath - said that my immune system was in a poor state (something the doctors nor the homoeopath saw - no, I have never been a big drinker) and put me on a course of simple off-the-shelf vitamins and minerals (some you'd recognise from detoxing - which is also regarded as "bad science") and some basic good advice. Again sceptical - result, not one headache in over a year (until I diverged from the advice). Yes, I went back to following the simple advice very quickly!

Compared:

doctors - result: no change, still had the headaches.
homoeopath: got rid of the headaches as they arose but was still liable to get them.
naturopath: got rid of headaches in a more permanent way.

That said, I would still go to doctors for other things (although now, I'm mostly healthy) and like in every "profession" (doctors, homoeopaths, naturopaths, or any other) there are good, bad, well meaning but useless, and dangerous practitioners. Like in all professions, being able to "dot the i's and cross the t's" also doesn't make you good at your job too but it would be good if there was some decently accepted certification for natural health practitioners.

As part of this campaign mentioned above there was a joke homoeopathic mass overdose yesterday.As for overdosing on homoeopathic pills - when something is watered down to 1/10000 strength, that is going to take eating a LOT of pills to "dose" let alone overdose and even then, a lot of commonly available homoeopathic pills are just "cleansers". Hardly scientific there. And when you see pharmaceutical companies looking into every second crackpot idea/old wive's tale for ideas so they can give doctors the next "scientific" cure - well, again, hardly a victory for modern science.

If a cure works, good, if it doesn't, bad - and for every dangerous crackpot there'll be plenty of failed pharmaceutical trials and many successful pharmaceutical drugs that have very dangerous side effects.

Will the NetNewsWire iPhone update show the need for emergency iPhone App updates?

2009-08-17T14:44:00.003+01:00

As noted and outspoken (in a good way) iPhone and Mac developer Craig Hockenberry noted in this comprehensive post, there are some times when a developer would REALLY like to update their Apps without having to jump through the hoops of the iPhone App approval process.

Well, at the end of July, Newsgator sent out an email to its registered users alerting them that their RSS reading website and syncing services were coming to an end (sad, as I'm a frequent user - not too unusual as I couldn't really see them making much money out of me). They informed us that some of the various RSS reading applications and Apps would continue to be in use - except you'd need to sync via Google Reader.

They were nice enough to tell us how to transfer to Google Reader and to say that some of the programs (including NetNewsWire for the Mac and NetNewsWire for the iPhone - probably my most used App) were going to be updated with Google Reader syncing.

NetNewsWire for the Mac is being heavily worked on right now - and betas are eliminating bugs by the second, but...what's up with the version for the iPhone? Even if it is in a respectable state to ship (there's not been much mention of it in the developer's blogs), what are the chances of it getting through the approval process before Newsgator kills their syncing functions - effectively rendering NetNewsWire on the iPhone a dead App?

I think that may be the case soon - unless there's something that they're not letting on about...and suddenly my iPhone becomes considerably less used :( Here's hoping NetNewsWire for iPhone 2.0 comes soon! I'd even be willing to pay for it (it is so worth it).

Does iPhone OS need the ability to "patch" itself?

2009-08-17T14:35:00.003+01:00

Having recently run the iPhone update to fix the "text message of doom" problem, I can't help wondering if the iPhone OS needs some kind of patching ability - after millions of people probably downloaded a full iPhone OS of nearly three hundred MB in size just to install a code update that may have only taken less than a MB (probably closer to a few KB) in size.

Simple patch updates (similar to iPhone App updates) seem much more logical.

iPhone OS 3.0 ....so far

2009-06-18T10:38:00.004+01:00

As an avid Apple bunny, and iPhone addict, I downloaded and installed the new iPhone OS 3.0 the moment it was available (actually, about 20 minutes later as it came out when I was on the bus home).

It has solved most of the problems evident in earlier versions of the OS - most notably the inability to copy and paste but more noticed by me (especially on an overseas trip with friends who'd never met each other) the inability to forward text messages and send contact details (whether this is as plain and simple as on a Nokia I'm still not sure about).

I have noticed a few things though:

My "Groups" application isn't going anywhere soon - as you still can't manage groups in your contact book on the iPhone.
You still can't change what calendar an appointment is in (after you've saved it) from the calendar on your iPhone (so make sure you put it in the right place when you do it) - they fixed the colours though.
Spotlight doesn't search bookmarks - quite notable for a person who has a lot of them - and who's used to this functionality in normal Spotlight and especially, Quicksilver.

That said, it's noticeably faster, the camera especially so, and I'm waiting expectedly to have embedded maps in many applications I use (I've already appreciated it in AroundMe but forlornly waiting for it in LocLy and Urbanspoon). As for notifications, I've just realised I don't actually have too much use for them now I finally have them - maybe as a incoming Skype call alert in future?

One future thing I would like is to be able to touch the WiFi indicator to change the data connection method (as I travel around London surfing data - often in NetNewsWire - I often find myself on a non-responsive open WiFi network (or one requiring human intervention to let work) when I have a perfectly healthy 3G network available to me, effectively killing my data connection).

Where the iPhone seems to be heading though, is to something that isn't subsidiary to the computer it syncs with - you might eventually buy the phone and maybe MobileMe (or use Yahoo or Gmail) and never need an actual PC or Mac - after all, with many of the functions and Apps of the iPhone, a number of people would never need an actual laptop or desktop computer.

What I'd like to see in iPhone OS 3.0

2009-03-15T23:18:00.004Z

I've been happily using my iPhone 3G for a while now and I'm on the whole, very, very happy with it. That said, it is far from perfect and you do bump into things that my old Nokia (or, in fact, my old, old, old Nokias) could do years back that the iPhone still can't do today - USEFUL things.

I'm also expecting that the new iPhone OS will probably bring in support for new devices - probably including ones with different screen sizes - but I'm talking purely the phone. Here's a list:

Be able to forward a text message. Yes, the need for this doesn't happen often but when you need it, you need it (and without the ability to cut and paste you really need it). Email does it, why not SMS - it's not as if they have to work out a new interface for it?
Be able to send vCards - either by Bluetooth or SMS. This is a standard way of exchanging contact information between phones, seems to be supported by all (other) manufacturers, and it works. I can't even exchange details easily between users of iPhones!

That's actually my main list - if I could forward texts or send contacts I wouldn't need copy and paste. I'd like it, but I wouldn't need it. Sending an MMS would be great too - but I realise that before I had an iPhone I rarely, if ever, sent any MMSs (and I only received a few). MMSs have always had the same problem - you never know if the receiver has a phone compatible with MMSs - the iPhone being a great example. I'd also like to be able to manage my SMSs better - maybe an "advanced mode" or "classic mode" - I don't think that's going to happen but I can hope (sometimes it would be nice to be able to keep just one part of a SMS conversation without having to keep the lot - pressing and holding on the message like in the home screen anyone?).

If I used a Bluetooth headset (which I don't) I'd probably also be waiting for stereo audio - it is a music device after all.

One thing I can definitely say no to is videocalling - I've had it on 2 Nokia's previously and again you need someone with a 3G phone to engage in a conversation with (should I really have to know the full specifications of all my friends' phones to be able to send them a picture or make a call to them?) and even then I only made about 3 calls ever - basically to show that I could do it. The iPhone is a great device to watch video or make video calls, but you're not going to be walking down the street or sitting on a train trying to look beautiful for the person at the other end of the phone. We've had video calling here in the UK for 3 or 4 years now - and I can only ever remember seeing one person actually using it "in the wild" - hardly a reason to ask for it.

I am looking forward to the announcement though - as any respectable Apple fan boy should be (and phone geek). We should get a good idea of what's coming in the OS but also get hints (or more) about hardware that might be on the way - and it's rapidly approaching upgrade time :) Back to Nokias?; try Ericsson's or Blackberrys?; I don't think so (I do appreciate how Blackberry have stood up to the challenge though). A WinMobile device - very funny. I am curious (but hardly likely to change given my investment in Apple technology) in the Palm Pre though - if they can do well it will be a great escape from disaster for them.

Things to do when you're rich - part 1

2009-02-12T13:01:00.003Z

I'm sure everyone's had a thought or two about this - what you'd do when (or in most cases, if) you became rich [actually, maybe there should be a suggestion website for what already rich people could do with their money - or is that Harrods.com?].

Given some thought (and excessive richness), one of my more crazy ideas is this:

I'd get a room - possibly the best place would be a work reception - and have a slightly tilted floor descending away from the door. Over the floor would be a custom made shag pile carpet where the shag pile gets thicker (higher) as you walk into it.

The net effect is what looks like a normal level carpeted floor that, as the person walks into it, it gets deeper so you end up wading through it. Most disconcerting but probably very cool ;)

Just a thought!

iPhone 3G performance - now surprisingly good

2008-09-22T19:23:00.004+01:00

After my initial problems with the iPhone's reception (very little 3G in my office and flat) I got the opportunity to give it a proper test ... a real man's test ;)

At the start of the month I moved flats and had the week off to see my visiting fiancée (that always sounds pretentious to me). This meant no broadband at work and none at home either until they'd connected the phone and another company had connected the broadband.

So, my entire online world was...the iPhone 3G.

As it turned out, my new flat has excellent 3G reception. Hooray you may say, but sadly despite of the good reception, this particular cell in O2's network seems to have very flakey data connections. I spent the week mostly on 2G and occasionally flitting over to 3G when that occasionally stopped and back again after the few minutes that the 3G data would want to work for (voice worked fine). A less geeky person would have just thought the data wasn't going and left it at that.

You could say that it is the iPhone (I even whipped off down to the local coffee shop to update to iPhone OS 2.1 in the middle of all this) but during this time I'd also travelled by bus all over London and had been to Luton Airport and back twice by coach and had almost constant data connections during that time. If it wasn't for the dud cell near my flat I'd say that my iPhone data access experience has been superb (even when it's had to flip - automatically - down to EDGE or GPRS). Surfing the net and reading the news for over 3 hours on the way to and from Luton is no mean feat.

Now I'm back on broadband at home (and can use the laptop again too) so I'm a happy camper but all in all, a very good experience.

NetNewsWire for iPhone tip-ish

2008-09-01T23:33:00.002+01:00

Since I've got my iPhone, one of my favourite applications is the RSS reader NetNewsWire (there's a Mac Desktop version of it and ones for other platforms from its owner Newsgator).

It basically means that I can put almost all the sites I regularly visit into my RSS reader and almost never need to actually go web browsing directly from Safari on my phone. I would probably rate it as my MOST liked application on the phone.

That said, the development for the phone is an exercise of less is more - the developer likes to strip features off the iPhone client (the Desktop version is extremely full featured). This makes sense for the iPhone - you don't want a million drop-down menus and preferences - but can lead to some irritation.

One specific one is that when you've viewed a story, that is classed as "read" and NetNewsWire for the iPhone will only show the unread stories once you've exited the listing for that specific site. If you've viewed something and gone to another program or other site listing in NetNewsWire, you're stuffed - it's not going to be there and you'll have to visit the site directly in Safari and hunt for the story.

I can't suggest a workaround for leaving the app, but I can suggest an "immediate undo" option for when you've just gone "ooops" in the app. If you have your sites in subfolders (which you do on the Newsgator web site or in the desktop clients) if you immediately view the subfolder itself (e.g. Computer Blogs) you'll get the unread too for the site you've just exited. Normally this is an irritation but in this particular case it can help a lot. I don't know how long it lasts in the system though.

Troubleshooting tips for iPhone apps

2008-08-05T11:50:00.002+01:00

While I've REALLY enjoyed my new iPhone (despite its flaws), one thing you bump into a lot is problematic applications on the phone.

Even the best of programs (like NetNewsWire and Bloomberg) get crashy and it is amazingly common for apps to either freeze up, crash or (to my surprise for an OS X running machine) take down the whole phone entirely.

Often just restarting the app works fine (after a crash) or force quitting it if it has frozen (force quit by pressing and holding - for around 5 or so seconds - the menu button on the bottom of the iPhone).

Sometimes however, this doesn't work and often in the case of a new download you can erroneously (mistakenly, in error?) think that the app is, for a better word, crap. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. A particularly handy to-do app called Zenbe seemed to crash on start-up, then I discovered lots of my apps were crashing. In this case, rebooting the phone often works (and in Zenbe's case it did when other things didn't). Reboot the phone by pressing and holding the power key (the one at the top) until you're prompted to turn it off.

Sometimes, if it's an app you've had on your iPhone for a while, it's best to make sure there are no updates available - most apps are updated regularly. This can be done either on the phone through the App Store or through iTunes by clicking in Applications in the library sidebar and going Check for Updates.

And, if the other reviews on the App Store indicate people are happily using things, the last thing I normally try is to delete the app off the iPhone (press and hold on the app in the menu window until it "jiggles" and click the cross) and off iTunes (select it in the Application list and hit backspace) then download it afresh from the App Store (it will be free if you've purchased it already).

So, to sum up, try:

restarting the app;
force quitting the app (if it has frozen);
rebooting your phone;
making sure the apps are up-to-date;
deleting the app from both the phone and iTunes and re-downloading.

Anyway, NetNewsWire went all problematic on me (which is a pain as it is perfect for the iPhone) and I ended up doing the last thing which got it all working happily again :)

Mobile Me? No thanks

2008-07-25T19:17:00.003+01:00

I was syncing my iPhone with my iTunes when a page came up instead of my iPhone status page offering me a trial of Apple's MobileMe i.e. Apple spam straight to my iTunes.

While I love Apple products, I certainly don't like spam and spam for a service which costs a lot - £59 ($100) a year instead of my current £0 I pay for Yahoo - and doesn't work properly yet is a bit rich.

How Apple can actually actively promote a service when the service is still suffering problems, I do not know. Given that MobileMe is a reincarnation of .Mac which also has a service history of unreliableness hardly makes me want to sign on the dotted line.

MobileMe has a number of good features but really needs to offer a) an advertising funded service (yes, I know - counter to my argument above) for a lesser price (pay more for no ads) and more importantly b) reliability. I've never seen Yahoo or Gmail go offline for more than seconds let alone days - I've seen Apple's email services keel over a number of times.

No thanks and hopefully this isn't a sign of things to come in Apple advertising.

And more iPhone

2008-07-19T20:53:00.003+01:00

One of my colleagues actually found a bug in the iPhone OS software - not sure if it's specific to over here in the UK or global but it seems to work with people I show it too (don't try this if you don't like 24 hour time!) - if you go to the Date and Time settings (in the General Settings) and change the time settings from 24-Hour Time to off - the selectable box seems to change to a non-selectable one - stuck in 24 hour time. Fortunately, I like 24 hour time!

I've also found that with company-wide wifi (like we have at work), if you get in a non-responsive cell (one where you have a signal but it doesn't want to let you surf), the phone will just not surf rather than use any available 3G/Edge signal - a bit of a pain when the network is as unreliable as ours.

o2's 3G network officially sucks. It may change, but if you can't get a good 3G signal in Kensington (central London - Orange and Vodafone seem to be able to provide one), where can you get one? I quite often have it dropping to 1 bar or less of reception where it will not make or receive a call - so I'm living in 2G world where I have a good signal (which probably means I can't data and call together).

o2 do seem to provide good customer service though - I've found their online billing site good, and called them today too and got all the answers I wanted. I've been calling Orange for the last 3 days to cancel my account and after negotiating a phone tree from hell, I've got through to a call center in India where I've been told the system is down - 3 days in a row. Very frustrating and hardly a recommendation to go back to Orange at a later date. The did use to have a good call center team when they were Geordies though so it's a bit of a disappointment.

More notes on the iPhone 3G

2008-07-15T14:51:00.003+01:00

I've noticed a few flaws in the iPhone 3G - some which have probably followed through from the original iPhone (and it's software).

Things I've seen mentioned before are not being able to forward text messages - a pain in the arse if you're passing something on to people (also not having the character counter in SMSs is bad too). Also the fact that your Notes aren't synced is pretty crazy too - especially as there's Notes functionality in the Mail app on your Mac.

One thing supposedly updated in the new software is that there's multiple calendars in iCal (which there already was in iCal on the Mac). Sadly, the colours (I'm English English!) don't match your Mac's colour and are arbitrarily set. This means, because of my calendar order on my Mac - holidays and work show the same colour on my iPhone. Either it's fixed in an update or I'll have to move my calendars around on my Mac.

iCal also shows a surprising lack of co-ordination with the rest of the phone - there's a location filed in iCal in appointments and clicking on it does nothing. Given the rest of the iPhone's integration this seems a big oversight.

From the App Store (and it's developers) I hope to see a much better currency convertor (it would need to have downloadable currency updates and a nice interface - possibly a swap currency function - you started going from USD to GBP but you meant the other way), hopefully a Skype client (so I don't need a Skype handset at home), and maybe some alternative SMS clients too.

I can't wait for the Google App to go international too - especially given the chap from Quicksilver had a part in its development.

I've certainly enjoyed the Bloomberg app - it looks superb, it packs in functionality, it's free, and it's international (often a failing with US centric apps) - wouldn't mind figuring out how to add the NZ Stock Exchange index to it (as a Kiwi). I don't own shares but I have a healthy interest in business and the economy so a great tool.

I think the iPhone 3G (especially because of the 3rd party apps) is going to be huge - and selling a million smartphones in 3 days is certainly a great start. It's the best phone I've owned by a long shot - but we always strive to make things better - especially as Mac users.

As for O2 - I haven't had much chance so far at using the actual phone (waiting for my number to port over from Orange) but the service is good so far. The 3G reception (given I live in central London) is poor though - 1 or 2 bars often in Kensington - so I've swapped over to 2G at the moment. I've still got to experiment with the wifi roaming that O2 offer for free too (via the Could and BT Openzone). We'll see :)

My new iPhone - what I think

2008-07-13T18:13:00.006+01:00

Well, after being an armchair pundit for a while - and putting off an iPhone purchase until the 3G model came out - I finally have a "Jesus phone".

Before I'd even had the phone activated on the actual mobile network I was happy with my purchase. As a heavy feature user of my previous Nokia phones, I'm amazed at the integration in the iPhone and how easy everything is (I'm a Mac user and even then it still surprised me).

I've also got most of my music library (1000+ songs) and all of my (6000+) images (admittedly, iTunes down-res's them a bit) on my phone already with room to spare.

An early download from the Apple App Store (where you can download 3rd party - non-Apple - software for the iPhone) was Exposure, a Flickr client. As a heavily user of Flickr I liked it a lot but when I clicked on the Near Me option and photos from other Flickr users across the road came up on screen, I was amazed. 3rd party (and Apple) apps have such built in integration with various Apple services (address book, maps, location, bookmarks) that you barely have to think to use it.

Another impressive app was Apple's own download - Remote - which turns your iPhone into a fancy Wifi remote for your Mac or Apple TV. We tried it at work and on my laptop and it works fine - the iPhone will show a complete library listing of any music library its paired with on screen cover art too and let you control what's playing, at what volume and where in the song - very cool.

If you like stocks and shares (or want to wallow in the doom and gloom!), Bloomberg's app is superbly engineered and pretty too.

I'm finding that the easiest way to look at new apps is to use iTunes on my Mac and view "All iPhone Applications" by date - then you get to see all the latest as they arrive and I expect a lot of new apps to arrive as time goes by. Another tip is to keep looking around - there maybe is a better app or cheaper app (or both) on the Store somewhere else (so don't pay for a "light" application!). The App store could do with more categories though - especially a "Book" category to get them out from under the rest of the apps.

I still struggle with the occasional (or sometimes non-that-occasional) mis-type but the phone is fundamentally the best phone I've had by some distance - it makes the rest look last century. Sometimes there is a lag in screen feedback and the apps quite often bomb out (but, like Firefox take you back where you were when you bombed). The camera, while still a mere 2 megapixel non-autofocus, still gives good results in well lit places.

Using 3G for data access really burns through the battery too - wifi seems to draw a lot less (I don't know if that's my imagination).

In more practical terms - I haven't had a chance to use the actual phone much yet and travelling around with it will be the ultimate test (of it and O2). Especially when I head overseas to see how it handles changing networks. It is a GSM phone though so I'm expecting few problems there and I'd guess the new back (now not metal) should improve call performance too (although my O2 signal has been not as full as I would have thought for central London).

A lot of users - especially in the States - will find it easy to berate the 3G iPhone for speed when it may be the network (or berate the network instead of the phone). While Europe has had superb 3G coverage on almost all networks for some time now, I won't be sure myself what the phone is like as I've changed networks as well as phones - we'll see.

It's 3 days in now though and (so far) I'm glad I've got it.

Buying the iPhone 3G

2008-07-13T17:42:00.004+01:00

Well, it took a while but I got an iPhone 3G on launch day here in the UK.

I'm not normally one of "those queuing people" but I was on late shift that day and have 2 Carphone Warehouses and 2 O2 stores (the UK partners of Apple) within 100 meters of my flat - did I have anything better to do? Probably not.

The stores opened at 08:02 (a play on the O2 network name) and I headed out just past 7am. The O2 store in Kensington's mall seemed to have the shortest queue so me and my book (Terry Pratchett's Making Money) joined at the end of a queue of about 15-20 (only one of which was a woman).

As the store was the main thoroughfare out of High Street Kensington Station and I worked nearby, I wholly expected to see people I knew walk by (and I did) and in any case I was joined by a colleague who'd decided to come to work early to queue too.

The store opened on time but o2's systems had collapsed under the load of credit checking, checking for existing customers' ability to upgrade, and a wholesale collapse of their activation abilities.

It took about 15 minutes to process 2 people (let in to the store bit by bit) so it took until just after 10 to get my new iPhone 3G 16GB - if you were much further down the queue you would have missed out - the 16GBs were in short supply and we were only lucky that a delivery of 4 more came while we were queuing.

Fortunately we had a good chat in the queue and all the people watching was superb - lots of people going by thrying their hardest not to look curious about why there was a big queue here :)

The customer service was orderly given the circumstances and the store manager did a great job of keeping the queue updated on the availability of the different models. As I neared the front of the queue, the queue went down a bit as people had to rush off to work or left because of the lack of available 16GB models. As I left, mainly women were in the queue - either not fussed with the 16GB version, or maybe just wise enough not to get up early!

Back home, I wasn't expecting the phone to be activated until at least the evening or the following day (as it turned out - after o2's systems were up and down all weekend - it didn't activate until 32 hours later) but fortunately no problems with Apple's servers at that time so I had a fully functioning wifi browsing machine - just no phone.

Supposedly the number transfer from my old network (Orange) will happen by the 16th - 5 days after I gave them the number transfer code. A long time but I have my old phone in the meantime and my iPhone with a temporary number too.

All-in-all, an alright experience - much better than in the US (where Apple's downed serves left quite a few "bricked" iPhones around) and here at Apple stores (where Apple staff weren't used to O2's systems being down).

Why Apple will remain a hardware company (abridged version)

2008-06-17T01:00:00.002+01:00

...because it's much harder to make a copy of a iPod, iPhone or Mac than it is to copy a DVD or CD with software on it.

British political idiocy

2008-06-13T14:29:00.004+01:00

I had thought David Davis was one of the vaguely capable Tory (Conservative Party) politicians in the UK. He waffled on a bit when he was trying to become the leader of the party a few years back but as a shadow minister he seemed a bit more realistic than many of the party's parliamentarians.

Yesterday however, he resigned from his parliamentary seat to force a by-election - and to fight the by-election on the one topic of his opposition to the 42-day detention law that has just been passed (only barely) through the UK parliament. Given that the seat is probably a safe seat (i.e. he is unlikely to lose) this is just a waste of tax-payers money (I am one and the Tories are suppose to be the ones reducing taxes) just to do a stunt that will not effect anything (if he was serious he'd put in a private member's bill to reverse the law).

I actually agree the law is bad (it increases the time a theoretically innocent person can be held without charge by the police - with the excuse that you may be a terrorist) but waiting until it has been voted in and then pulling a stunt that will have no effect is stupid to say the least.
To make matters worse, the former Sun editor Kelvin Mackenzie is going to contest the by-election against him (itself a bad idea as Davis losing it would be ironic) BUT he's contesting it on the idea that increasing the detention time is good:

"I have been associated with The Sun for 30 years. The Sun is very, very hostile to David Davis because of his 28 day stance and The Sun has always been very up for 42 days and perhaps even 420 days."

Someone should lock him up for 420 days on the suspicion that he is a terrorist (didn't I see him talking to "arabian looking people" and loitering suspiciously around an airport?!). You'd soon see that the original 28 days (which I think was only introduced - and increased to 28 - last year) is a very long time to be incarcerated especially when you're innocent.

We don't need Guantanamo in the United Kingdom, thank you!

The new iPhone - now with added 3G

2008-06-12T14:45:00.003+01:00

Apple recently announced their new iPhone at the WWDC (World Wide Developer's Conference) on Monday as expected. It's a definite improvement and when it actually comes out (in July) I'm sure to "bite the bullet" and change networks from Orange to O2 and brands from Nokia to Apple (well, in phone usage anyway - I was always a "Mac guy").

The full keynote was very interesting (it's streamed from Apple's site) but mainly for what could happen - the capabilities of the basic iPhone combined with the extremely rich programming environment just released (the iPhone SDK) gives a huge potential for innovative applications (especially games and location based ones). There are a number of good examples on show in the keynote speech.

The new phone itself is actually quite a conservative upgrade in terms of technology.

The headline upgrades are having 3G capabilities (meaning faster downloading and meaning it will work on the few 3G only networks around the world), built in GPS (which will augment the cellphone mast/wifi hotspot based location service already in the original iPhone - GPS alone would be pretty useless indoors and in the city), a new colour (white - hmmmm), and... a non-recessed headphone port (to the relief of many).

Minor upgrades are in software - contact search, bulk deletions in email, and text messaging multiple people. Possibly less significant is the plastic rear of the new iPhone which supposedly (and probably will) improve reception dramatically. Surprisingly no mention (for a developers conference) of any processor upgrade in the phone.

What's surprising is what the phone doesn't have:

Video capture through the camera (as any fan-boy know, you need that to catch a news story breaking right in front of you - like a rampaging Incredible Hulk). Third party apps can do that already in jailbroken iPhones - it's odd that Apple doesn't put it in.
It doesn't have an upgraded camera - still a 2 megapixel camera with no autofocus. After a whole year, you'd expect some minor upgrade, especially with Nokia having 5 megapixel cameras with autofocus for the last couple of years.
Increased capacity - it's still 8GB and 16 GB. Some have said they don't want to provide competition for the existing iPods though I think this is because of a bigger battery, a few extra chips and a different shaped enclosure - there might be no room (at the moment anyway).
Photo uploaders (other than MobileMe) - given the so called partnership with Yahoo (its boss was involved in the keynote last year), I'm surprised there isn't a Flickr uploader built in (Flickr is owned by Yahoo). Hopefully there is one through the App Store and it works better than Flickr's latest uploader for the Mac (I'd use the version 2 one if I was you!).
No landscape keyboard in all views - this would make things easier for users with big hands!

I'm not surprised about the lack of video chat (with a front facing camera) - we've had 3G networks in Europe for about 4 years now and phones capable of video chat. Usually a person with a videochat capable phone (lots of Nokia ones) tries it about once with someone else then never uses it again (I've used it twice in my life - just to show I can). If you can't get a geek to use videochat (think Star Trek communicators), you have no hope of wider interest.

The same might apply for MMS - it's not widely used in Europe (text message heaven) because you can never be sure if the recipient can receive what you send. Email will be better - especially with more iPhones around.

Apple's price drop is the big news though - mainly because Apple have dropped the revenue sharing deals with cellphone networks which lets the networks offer subsidies. I'd guess that Apple will sell a phenomenal amount of them - especially given that they're selling them in over 70 markets instead of just 6.

Bring on the new mobile phone masters of the universe!

The Incredible Hulk 8/10

2008-06-12T14:34:00.003+01:00

I saw the new Incredible Hulk at a press preview on Monday and liked it even more than I liked Iron Man.

It had good acting (Edward Norton as David Banner), a good story tightly edited, great special effects that don't look too fake (or I was just so carried along with the story that I didn't notice), and nice touches of humour (a great take on the "don't make me angry" line).

I liked it a lot - seemingly Marvel Studios is doing a good job of making these films now they've taken them in house.

Well worth a look.

We saw trailers for a few more Universal films when we were there and the style in the one for Wanted made me realise that it was by the same guy who did Night Watch and Day Watch so it has the potential to be very cool. Also very keen to see Hancock (with Will Smith) and Hell Boy 2. A lot of fun :)

Firefox's new image icon

2008-05-31T15:10:00.001+01:00

Firefox's new image icon
Originally uploaded by escottf.

Firefox (3.0 RC1) introduces a new image icon - the first change I've noticed since Netscape (then Mozilla then Firefox) had the capability to actually display images natively.

Here's a screenshot of the (now subtly greyscale) image icon on my Mac. The missing image (the document with a tear/rip in) has changed too.

Wow, progress!

Actually, the ancient icon has bothered me as Firefox's UI has improved a LOT.

Disasters, disasters

2008-05-14T19:02:00.005+01:00

It's interesting (and scary to say just "interesting" when thousands of people are dying) to see these very sad natural disasters in Burma and in China and how the respective (although not necessarily respectable) governments are dealing with the situations.

In Burma we see the authoritarian government (or government thugs depending on how you look at it) restricting access for aid supplies and aid workers. The aid is there, the people who know what to do with it are there. Sadly, next to nobody or nothing can get to the people obviously in need due to the actions of the government. Everyone wonders "why?".

In China however, a country in the news because of the Olympics and Tibet, we have another supposedly authoritarian government jumping into action, putting it's considerable military power to good use sending help immediately to a heavily populated region that needs help (is there ever an earthquake in China with a low death toll?). Even the Premier got straight into a plane and headed straight to the region either to do good or just as a PR stunt - but at least he went. Things seem to be happening.

You kind of expect a corrupt military junta to perform badly (awfully) in situations like this - hence the regional and international diplomatic upset.

You get pleasantly surprised when a firm communist government does a lot of good work and is open about the situation in their country (China used to have media lockdowns in these situations).

Then you get a similar situation to Burma with Hurricane Katrina, and a government who - like the Burmese - sat back and did little or nothing. Instead of a diplomatic outcry the world just looked on in horror and incredulity as a government you'd expect to do things well (they get aid to any country in the world faster than they got aid to New Orleans) failed to act.

Which is worse? A government that can get the resources to act; isn't actually expected to "do good"; and doesn't do what is right or a government that does have the resources to act; is expected to do good (and does for other countries); and sits on their hands?

One hopes that is a reckoning day somewhere for these, for want of a better word, evil governments. It's also nice to see some signs of positive change in other governments.

F-ing hard drive!

2008-05-06T23:26:00.006+01:00

I own a MacBook - the original series Core Duo based (therefore already obsolete as it is 32-bit not 64-bit) from June of 2006. Despite problems with it (the Ethernet's never worked but I don't need that and I had to get a new battery) I like it as a laptop although I do think my old laptop - the 12-inch PowerBook G4 - was possibly the best Apple laptop ever (I'm happy that it's gone to a good home - my Mum's).

However, in under 2 years that I've owned it I have suffered 3 hard drive failures - complete failures (head crashes). The deadly sound of a clicking hard drive (yes, I had an Iomega Zip Drive too!). The first just a few months after purchase (replaced on warranty), the second just as the warranty ran out (I did get a second replacement on warranty), and now the third yesterday.

Each failure occurred after a few hours of use on a reasonably flat surface while the computer was still. I've never been one for bumping my laptop around.

Apple must know about these faulty hard drives - there's even been a story or two about them. Despite this, every time I reported my hard drive failure to Apple they sent me a new model of exactly the same hard drive. As mentioned in the article - the techie says if you have one you may as well buy a replacement before you lose data.

Fortunately, I've had backups (thank you SuperDuper and now Time Machine too) - which became more and more important as I owned this MacBook. Apple's discussion boards mention bad luck - I work in Mac technical support and, while you may have platter problems on your hard disks, you rarely have whole drive failures so bad you can't actually access the disk. In an office of a couple of hundred (now aging) Macs, I've probably only seen a full hard drive failure once. Usually it's just having the platter going bad slowly.

This time I didn't try and get my hard drive replaced on warranty - I didn't want another doomed-to-fail duplicate of the ones I'd already received (3 failures in 2 years must be a record) and, it has to be said, I wanted a bigger hard drive. I picked up a Hitachi drive from the local PC World (after the local independent Mac shop tried to assure me that an external hard drive was an internal one), loaded it on, and restored from a 40 day old Time Machine backup. The only painful bit is I now have to load up Windows again as my attempts to back that drive up failed again.

Macs are promoted as places to store your music and your photos. Well, if you do - BACKUP! And if you own a first generation MacBook backup LOTS and preferably replace your hard drive while you can still do it at your leisure - do a Time Machine backup, swap drives, restore from Time Machine backup or do a SuperDuper clone, swap drives, restore from the clone (possibly easier).

Read that story now and check your System Profiler (Apple Menu>About This Mac>More Info then check under Serial ATA drives) to see if you've got the same model hard drive (I think later model MacBooks used different drives). If you do - change!

Curse of the Golden Flower

2008-05-01T01:47:00.004+01:00

As mentioned previously, after seeing The Forbidden Kingdom I had a hunger for more Chinese movies and I'd gone DVD shopping. I picked up Curse of the Golden Flower starring Chow Yun Fat and Gong Li.

It proved to be very enjoyable (if not a happy adventure). Oddly, at heart it was the story of a dysfunctional family. Great acting all around (how come Chinese pop singers make the jump to film so much better than English ones?) and lavish production.

The battle scenes reminded me of the comparison to leaders moving chess pieces although, as the battles progressed, you felt it was more like an imperial (and body count lethal) version of rock, paper, scissors. You thought one side was winning (the rock) then the other side would pull out the paper, then the first side would pull out a lethal pair of scissors.

It also made me think more positively of the royal palaces of China (like in the Forbidden City) - suddenly it looked like a killing field much like the entrances to classic castles like Carmarthen (which, when you know how their defences worked are very scary). So much for purely ceremonial.

The film also reminded me of European period dramas with (in a surprise for Chinese dramas) bodice popping (nice bodices).

But it was about a dysfunctional family that came to a rather gruesome finish after almost (oddly) Secrets and Lies style revelations. The only thing I wanted to know is what brought about the poisoning - a kind of chicken and egg situation, or 3rd wife on the way?

Anyway, the DVD came to an end and I was just about to enjoy the DVD extras when I had to sit through another f*&^ing FACT anti-piracy advert - screwing up my viewing pleasure. So, instead of downloading it from the internet, or buying a bootleg copy, I bought a legit version (from HMV - the newly branded Zavvi is such a lame sounding brand, pity they had to drop the Virgin Megastore name) and instead of getting cinematic joy (as I probably would have from the pirated versions) I got a rude, crude, crappily marketed interruption telling me I shouldn't pirate when I'm not. Almost an encouragement to get the illegal copies.

At least mute worked!

The DVD extras were OK though - seeing Chow Yun Fat kidding away (despite his very serious role in the film, you kept expecting him to crack a joke or a charming smile) and the interviews with the other actors and the director. They did awfully well not to mention Gong Li's relationship (for 10 years) with the director when they said they hadn't worked together for 10 years (they stopped working together when they split). Obviously they're real professionals to keep that working OK when they did this film.

I gave it a 8 out of 10.

The Matrix Reloaded - reloaded

2008-04-29T01:29:00.003+01:00

I watched the Matrix Reloaded on TV tonight since it was the best thing on (not saying much).

I hated it the first time - in comparison to The Matrix (which I rate highly) it was all style over substance, it looked as if the budget had gone to the directors' heads and it could have done with a bit of editing. I've always thought that the Matrix could have done without the sequels much as Star Wars could have done without the prequels (or at least Episode 1 which sucked in so many ways).

Well, on second viewing, coming from a totally different direction (expecting the worst instead of the best) it proved to be an enjoyable watch (certainly better than a lot of pretenders) although the Agent Smith(s) got on my nerves a bit ("come on, let's get on with the real story please!").

The acting was good (great support cast and give Keanu a break!), the effects have held up very well, the story actually was good...and it had Monica Bellucci (even if under utilised) ;)

I must have seen something in the first viewing though - I gave it a 7 out of 10 and I'd still stick with that (or even through in a half star if that was possible).