Published on
June 26, 2003 12:00 AM -
My Tungsten cradle had been playing up for the last couple of days so I thought I would take it back and get it swapped or something. Turns out the the UK style plug in the Universal Adaptor thingy had broken some how. So I just have to use a different universal plug, I can live with that.
Whilst I was is Micro Anvika I remembered that my ickle mouse )that I use with my iBook) had died on me some two weeks ago, although I can survive using the trackpad I’m hardly proficient with it. So I had a look at what they had, I had settle on the cool black mouse from Kensington, I had seen a white Microsoft one but was dead set on getting a black mouse.
As I was paying for it a shop assistant was just unpacking a delivery of new Microsoft mice. The new mini-mouse has a fairly cool black with red bits design, so I went for that. Now there is nothing wrong with the mouse as such but for some reason Microsoft have decided to use only a 0.5m lead. So it just gets around to my right side whilst plugged in to my iBook, fools. Why not 1m like my old mouse, or 1m like the Kensington for a company that makes so much money why could they not use a slightly longer lead.
I also popped into HMV which is have a massive summer sale, in their games section I found Mario Sunshine and Starfox Adventures on the Gamecube for £30 for both titles, an offer I could not refuse.
Published on
June 25, 2003 1:36 PM -
On Monday Apple started their World Wide Developer Conference in San Francisco. Jobs in his usual keynote style unveiled a number of products including the much atticipated Power Mac G5 and new operating system Mac OS Panther.
The new G5’s look just amazing and if the can live up to the expectation Apple have set for them, I’m sure they will do fine. A few people on the web have already have critisced Apple on how they have performed some of the benchmarks, in fact there has been a couple of threads on slashdot, original post and Apple’s reply. Personally I think the whole thing of benchmarking non-similar architectures is pretty much pointless, real world usabilty and feel are far more important.
Another interesting move from Apple was to add Video Conferencing to iChat and releasing a very cool looking web cam device iSight. Now I think this is going to sell like hot cakes, simply because I think Apple are going to get the functionality and integration right. Web cams have been around for years however trying various video/net phone solutions over the years I have not been impressed by what is available to average home user. VoIP services are great for corporations but simply not feasible for the home. So you would have thougth some one whould have come up with a bundled service by now, but no. So Apple have decided to step forward with an application, a camera and a service for Mac users, which I think is going to be great.
No announcement of a new Powerbook 15 Inch, which is good news actually. Since it means when Apple do release an Ali Book it will be a G5, probably not till January 2004 I suspect , which is great since I should be able to justify the need for a new laptop by then.
Published on
June 24, 2003 7:21 PM -
Went to the UKUUG talk being given by Tim O’Reilly last night.
A very interesting talk on the Paradigm Shift that the software industry is in at the moment. Basically he centered on the fact that history tends to repeat itself. Using the anology of the computer market some 20 years ago, to show
where things are now and postulated where thing maybe in a few years time.
It definately got me thnking, and I made some realisations about some of things I have been working on recently and some of things I have tried in the past, but found very difficult to sell on to other people for some reason or the other. I’m begining to think that perhaps some the earlier work at APR was definitaly heading in the right direction. Mainly the work on building communities and sharing information between different communities.
Tim made same very interesting references to some CS/Tech books I have not heard of before so I will be checking them out in the next couple of days and possibly getting a few to read. Speaking of books another interesting thing he mentioned was Amazon Web Services and how many developers where actually using the REST interface rather than the SOAP inteface. Now I had not even heard of REST so I did a little investigating having seen Tim’s blog on the subject. I have been contemplating writing a full Amazon shop for the site for a while, I might actually get around to doing it now.
Got home quite late last night unfortunately I missed the whole Apple webcast, however I did manage to have a quick look at Apple’s new stuff and boy does it look good will probably post again something more detailed tomorrow once I have watched the recording.
Published on
June 14, 2003 12:28 AM -
Just watched the new John Cusack movie Identity. Which I thought was a slick and well thought out Horror/Suspense Thriller.
The story is about 10 people who incidentally run into each other at a motel in the Nevada desert during a rain storm. A bizarre chain of events ensue after a car accident resulting in a body count. The strange thing is they never actually met. Now I don’t want to give too much away so I’m going to stop there. Identity is not an out right horror flick, hence nothing over the top or too gruesome, so those freaked out by gore fests should be fine.
Identity comes highly recommended.
Other films out this week are Dumb and Dumber’er. Now I liked the first film with Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels the second film seems to be much of the same tho I think because they have two unknown playing the leads it’s not going to go down well. I think I’m going to wait for the rental release.
Planning on going to see the Designer of the Year exhibit at the Design Musuem tomorrow.
Published on
June 12, 2003 11:55 PM -
Since I got my T|T on Saturday I have been dead impressed with it. I have got all my old Palm apps on there, along with a few new ones. The T|T is every bit as good as the other reviews on the web claim it to be. I did not like the plastic protector that comes with the unit, so I spent a few days tracking down a decent case. Mainly looking at the reviews and bb comments on PalmInfo Center.
I would have ordered one online except I needed it straight away so I had to get one from a local store. So on Monday evening I went to Micro Anvika in Selfridges and had a look at the cases they had. Now the Leather case from Palm is good except that it covers the headphones port. The Aluminium Hard Case was good but a bit bulky. So I went for the Hard Slip Case, which at the time I thought was great, but I was a bit annoyed by the fact that when the T|T is slid open the combination felt very odd.
Now on Wednesday evening I discovered Graffiti Anywhere an OS extension that allows the screen to be used as the Graffiti area. This little app just rocks, means I don’t ever have to slide the T|T open ever. I was made aware of the by my good friend Kevin who is a Clie owner.
Published on
June 9, 2003 11:15 PM -
In all my excitement about getting a new PDA I never mentioned that on last Thursday I found out that my company will be relocating to Cambridge. Now I think this is great however not every one is happy, as more solidifies in the next couple of weeks I hope more people see this as good thing, and make the right choice by them, and don’t see it as having a decision made for them.
Back on the subject of my new toy I need to find a case for it, quite concerned about carrying it around with no protection. Had some excellent ideas for some Palm apps, been downloading developer docks and SDKs. Want to port a couple of my old Java games to Palm OS and in C++ shouldn’t take to much work just need to get to grips the with the graphics APIs, oh and find the time to actually do the work. Tried in the past but Java on old Palm/68K combinations was poor and could not be asked with all the grief of writting loads of C++ code.
The plan as far as work is concerned for the next couple of weeks has me down as XSL monkey so I should have enough brain juice left for some evening coding sessions, fingers crossed.
Published on
June 7, 2003 6:39 PM -
Bit the bullet today and purchased a Tungsten T. Just installing all the applications and tools I’m going to need at the moment. Had to also get the latest Palm Desktop and ISync so I can use the Bluetooth syncing feature from my IBook. First impression are that Palm OS still is the best palm top OS, having just stopped using my Visor before Christmas when it started playing up. and experiencing a few problems with the Zaurus I decided to go back to a PalmOS based handheld. The Pocket PC based handhelds that I have seen are either all to big or just suck because of the Windows badness that is inherent with anything from Microsoft.
Going to put the Zaurus up on e-bay sometime this evening once I have taken a couple of photos of the unit and the other stuff in the box.
