Thanks Zune. After getting rid of the annoying, distracting, attention-grabbing taskbar text animations in the 3.x series, Zune 4.x now brings it back in force, with no obvious way to disable it.

Every time the text changes, my attention is drawn to the taskbar. This isn’t remotely cool. This is distracting. That the option was there and is now gone tells me you don’t care about me.

Thanks for nothing.

Bahrain was a boring track at the best of times. Adding bumpy corners that extend a lap is not really that cool to watch.

But now, with no refuelling… there is no strategy. It’s a freakin’ train.

It had better get better soon. Otherwise, F1 will have squandered the most compelling driver lineup it’s seen in recent years.

On a fresh install of Tiger, with all updates, I get this crash every 30 mins or so. I have no non-Apple software installed.

I was at a friend’s house last weekend, and he has become quite the fanboi. He demonstrated his Mac to me, to prove that I should get one. It locked up and had to be rebooted 3 times during the half hour I was in front of it. Applications had to be Force Quit. This did not weaken his faith, if anything it strengthened it. He blamed the crashes on one of either 2 possible causes:

1. I had plugged in my USB hard disk, which had been formatted on a Windows computer. Micro$oft bugs caused the crash
2. He probably had a Safari tab open with Flash on it. Flash caused the whole computer to crash. Adobe are bad, Steve said so.

He also questioned why I would have a USB hard disk instead of the vastly superior Firewire.

One of the big problems with which I was immediately faced is this: due to being an idiot, I had made several of STARSCREAM’s hard disks Dynamic Disks. This means that I couldn’t just plug them into another computer and use them. I couldn’t access my data.

After a bit of forum reading and googling, I came across a life-saving post at My PKB entitled How to non-destructively convert dynamic disks to basic disks. Within 5 minutes I was happily copying my data to another server, a happy boy indeed. All standard warnings aside, it is a testament to the documented process that my Thank You comment was #294.

If, like me, you want to print this out and put it on the wall, I have created an A4 PDF that will have nicer fonts when scaled to print size. The boxes and pink lines are slightly blurry, so if you are a fancy graphics person please feel free to fix it and I will upload your better version here.

Download the PDF here.

Now I have to redesign Pinkjoint using 960.gs

One default that I have disliked is the logon wallpaper image. It is a bit, how do you say, ghey. I tried out a few methods of changing it involving manual resizing of images and registry editing and it all seemed a bit too hard for such a minor thing. Then I found Tweaks.com Logon Changer for Windows 7 and my life changed for the better. Within 2 minutes I had a beautiful background from my wallpaper folder and am already impressing everyone around me.

The process couldn’t be easier. You download the file, unzip it, and run the single executable file contained within. You press Change Logon Screen, choose your image, click Test, and voilà, you have a lovely new logon screen. If you ever change your mind, you can always run Logon Chnager and click the “Revert to Default Logon Screen” button and return to the factory setting.

Well done, Tweaks.com. 4½ stars.

Tweaks.com Logon Changer for Windows 7

Download here

His commentary just doesn’t work: it’s repetitive, he frequently gets things wrong, and he’s generally just not entertaining. Martin Brundle seems to put up with him, but if I hear his tone right, doesn’t think he’s doing a great job either.

For my money, James Allen did a fantastic job with Brundle back on ITV, and I’d love to see (well, hear) him back on the F1 commentary.

But really, just about anyone other than Legard would be good. Put DC and Eddie with Brundle in the commentary box, see what happens?

Please, Aunty Beeb, lose Legard.

Fuck you and your region. Typical “we are the world” US-centric bullshit.

Hulu seems to be a digital remnant of the old school network model. They’re trying to make themselves the default, easy option for US people to view US content, and thus retain their existing advertising models, by claiming to the advertisers that stuff seen on Hulu counts as much as it woulda on the networks.

I plead with content producers: disintermediate. Find another non-iTunes system that lets you collect payment directly from your patrons, and lets anyone in the world watch your shows.

Or failing that, let overseas users buy Hulu licenses – like Beeb licenses (fuck you too, BBC) – that let non-regional audiences tune in.

Geography ain’t what it used to be.

Dear FolderShare user,

We’re contacting you to let you know what’s next for FolderShare, and to make you aware of some important changes.

In December, we plan to announce a product called Windows Live Sync. You can think of it as FolderShare 2.0. It’s going to look familiar and offer the same great features, plus:

• More folders and files—sync up to 20 folders with 20,000 files each.
• Integration with Windows Live ID—no more extra sign-in stuff to remember.
• Integration with the Recycle Bin—no more separate Trash folder to fiddle with.
• Unicode support—sync files in other languages.

A huge part of Sync’s success story depends on FolderShare users like you. When Sync releases, FolderShare goes into retirement. That means your FolderShare software will stop working and will ask you to upgrade to Sync. Once you do, Sync will automatically rebuild your personal folders. We expect a lot of new users when Sync is released, so if you can’t sign in right away, please give it a little time.

Here’s the part you need to pay attention to: Sync will not be able to rebuild your shared libraries. If you have a lot of shared libraries, you should hop over to the FolderShare website while it’s still available and copy all that information. You’ll need it to rebuild your shared libraries in Sync.

Thanks for being a FolderShare user! We’re excited about delivering an even better file-synchronization experience to customers like you. We hope you’ll come along as we move forward with Windows Live Sync.

Sincerely,

The Windows Live Sync (formerly FolderShare) team

Don’t they have at least one spare developer who could have worked on the migration script? Imagine if, when they went from Hotmail to Live Mail, they had advised that everyone print out their emails because they won’t be migrated?

M$

It wasn’t a great movie. It was very nearly not even good.

Let’s see… what went wrong?

Well: Casino Royale set an impossibly high bar, is the short version.

Casino Royale delivered (for Bond) realism and authenticity in its action sequences, a compelling and mildly complex plot, interesting locations, and again, and above all, the return of some authenticity. If I had to sum up Bond 20, it would be “authentic”. A reboot in the truest sense of the word. Like Batman Begins, care was taken with the details, enough that I wasn’t immediately offended or pissed off while watching it (and having my suspension of disbelief shattered by an unrealistic stunt, or a sequence that was clearly CGI, etc, etc).

Whereas Nolan pulled off The Dark Knight with even more of what made the first movie good, reinvigorated Bond fans got the difficult second album.

Quantum of Solace relies on effects and an incomprehensible set of action-cut-sequences, in which the effects shots stand out. The moment in the boat where Olga strikes at the other man (impossible camera shot, so clearly an effect); the weird part where something got attached to another boat somehow; other impossible camera shots; implausible villain’s lair. It was damn near Roger Moore-era over-the-top-ness.

Put another way, I thought the ad for the Sony thingo at the start, where Daniel Craig was getting stoically blasted by explosions and debris, all the while trying to stare sadly at the camera, was the best action sequence in the movie. (Like the “Mad World” Gears of War ad made you wish the story in the game was actually worth a damn and had just a smidgen of poignance). But no. Yes, there was an action sequence montage to arguably inappropriate music, and while the girlie enjoyed that bit, I’ve seen it done better, and less perfunctorily.

And then, when you think things might be calming down… the MI6 computer system was one of those ridiculous Swordfish-class monstrosities. Surface multiplied with some Designers Republic offcuts. Everything seemed to beep and animate and twirl, but how much of it actually looked functional or useful to anyone? Frustration abounded. Does anyone, ever, really expect computers to be magical any more? Do they need to be?

And I felt tired. Bond being cut loose from MI6 (or was it 5?) again? Really? Is that even a plot twist any more, or did Judi Dench die ten years ago, and they’re just compositing her into the scenes with all the same lines? Maybe computers are magical.

Quantum just didn’t work as well on any level, and I’m going to argue that at the end of the day, it was largely due to the direction. The plot could have used work, but I think the disappointingly vague and overly brusque action sequences made the action less fun, and the movie as a whole felt cheap.

I’m hoping this is a momentary mis-step, and that we’ll see more of the smart, realistic Bond we got from Casino Royale, and less of a return to the special effects and plausibility nightmares of Die Another Day.

So, six out of ten. Charitably, 7, but that’s stretching the friendship. Must Do Better.