Losfer - Web, Tech, Life

You can never go back

At least, this is what they tell you.

We arrived in Australia last week, for a three-week stay in the sun. So far, one and one-half week in, things are going swimmingly; we have a mini-jaunt booked for next week for Sydney, which we're very much looking forward to, and we've attended two Foo Fighters concerts over the last two nights which have been splendid.

The last time we came back to Brisbane, four years ago, I had the sense of it being something of a let down. I'd only been away for two years, and I had become used to the frenzy of living and working in London. Brisbane seemed... quiet to me; not boring per se, but certainly lacking in the vitality of London.

Four years later - fuck the vitality; London is a shit hole full of shit heads. Now, that's quite a strong statement, I grant you, but I will stick by it. Visiting Brisbane again after being gone for so long, there is one thing I notice here: people are friendly, people seem calm, and people - in the majority - are actually nice. In London, for the most part, people seem to me to be somewhat soulless and lacking any particular warmth towards their fellow man. As someone who wears his heart on his sleeve, this disturbs me.

Now, to be completely fair, there are some lovely people in London and I am lucky enough to know some of them. However, they are few and far between.

Anyway, I was concerned that I would come back and find that I didn't like Brisbane much at all, but I am now even more determined to move back here as soon as possible. At the moment, that still seems a few years away - in the interim, it looks like we'll be moving to the Isle of Wight (hopefully next year), which will at least mean escaping London. However, I think I can be pretty sure now that Brisbane is where my heart is.

So yeah, sometimes you can go back.

Offline/Online

Quickie: have been offline since moving; will be online from Monday.

Traveling abroad for 3 weeks in 2 weeks (make sense?), but will (hopefully) be posting regularly from Monday.

However, I make no promises.

Update: Apr 16 - it does help if one keeps ones domains registered... Urghh....

Off to Australia on Saturday; will be posting from next week from Paradise.

Google Currency Conversion

I just found out today that you can easily, using Google, convert currency amounts into other currencies, without having to go to a site like Xe.com/UCC.

Extremely handle for quickie conversions, and also useful to pass onto American friends who don't hold basic, current currency conversion math in their heads¹.

For example:  450 USD in GBP

---

1: I don't mean this to be offensive, but honestly: if I were to mention to my American friends that something cost such-and-such pounds, they would need to ask me what that is in USD. If they were to mention the same to me (but inversely, i.e.: they purchased something in USD), I would know what that is in GBP, Euros and Australian dollars. This isn't meant to sound arrogant (although I'm aware that it does), just factual.

On being a highly-curious dumb-ass

I’m currently listening to an Audible audio book recommended on a recent episode of Macbreak Weekly, by technology writer Andy Ihnatko, called “Surely You’re Joking, Mr Feynman”, by Richard Feynman, the reknowned physicist.

It’s interesting; what I have gathered so far, having only listened to an hour of it (it runs for over twelve), is that Feynman had an insatiable curiosity – as the truly great minds usually do, I suppose. It also brings home to me my own (limited) curiosity, and how I am often left wanting to expand my pool of knowledge, but have had to acknowledge my limitations, particularly my average intelligence.

However, it’s something I do want to pursue – the gathering of knowledge on a wide range of subjects. This is something that, when you’re young, is a given: you don’t know much, and yet the world is such a complex place, you just want to know how everything – everything – works! But, one grows old, and other things become more important: how to pay your bills, how to bed your prospective partner, how to just get on with life without being miserable. I digress.

I figure that to have a knowledge of a number of areas, it would help to have a knowledge of what is essentially a piece of most of them. Would this be Physics? I believe so – I believe that a lot of understanding could be helped by a knowledge of physics; but before that, a knowledge of mathematics may come in handy. Surely, understanding mathematic theory would help in then understanding Physics, and also assist in being able to solve logic problems?

I’ve never been very good at advanced math – which is a pity, considering a knowledge of advanced math would make me a better programmer, and I wouldn’t need to rely on simple scripting languages like PHP; I could get into Java, or C++, or something with more meat on it. This would in turn improve my prospects for finding better-paying jobs, naturally, or even improve my chances of finding the solution to a problem (and the knowledge to recognise that problem in the first place). All I need to do is to learn the basics.

But, I digress.

Limitations are what stand in the way; overcoming limitations is the initial challenge. I can’t do anything about my average intelligence, but I can at least work around it – by choosing quality sources of information to learn from, to do my best to cut out the crap.

I envy people who can easily immerse themselves into the subjects I have an interest in; and I also envy people who don’t have my level of curiosity—it’d be a lot easier if I was happy being dumb.

Mac is in the hizoos

So, a couple of weeks ago, I managed to enter the sacred world of the Macintosh owners. I am now the proud owner of a 2.2ghz Macbook (albeit a white one; alas I couldn't stretch to the black - the white one is very pretty though).

It took me about 3 days to get it set up with all the software I want (and I actually feel like paying for shareware now - amazing), another day or so to move over my documents, files, and many-gigabytes of MP3s, and then a week to settle myself down into what's essentially an entirely new environment.

Having used a Mac at work for the last 9 months, I'm familiar with the UI and everything else; but being now able to immerse myself completely into OS X is just completely joyful - I enjoy using my computer now; the only time I now need to dip into Windows is when I want to play World of Warcraft (since I wouldn't think of trying to play it on the Macbook, and I want to keep work'n'play separate).

2007 Album Sales Down 9.5%

So reports the NY Times.

I don't know why this surprises people.

We're no longer dealing with music fans who collect albums; they just want the songs they saw the video of on YouTube. They want 'Umbrella' by Rihanna, they don't necessarily want her entire album. And they want to buy it on iTunes -- and until the labels have their entire catalogues on iTunes (even if they have a good portion of them), then they'll suffer.

The industry isn't selling albums because the industry markets tracks - as singles, as videos, as ringtones. They haven't been in the album-marketing business for years.

One simple reason Apple are releasing new Macs at Macworld Expo

Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but on Apple's UK store, they're offering a 'buy now, pay later' scheme which ends on January 14, which happens to be the first day of Macworld Expo.

Could it be that they are releasing a new line of Macs (primarily notebooks I would imagine, since the iMac was relaunched only recently)? And because of this, they don't want to extend the offer beyond January 14, cos why would Apple want to wait 6 months for the all the cashola that'll be generated by the sales of new touch-screen, sub-notebook Macs?

They have a similar deal for the US, except it's 1. only interest free for 6 months, and 2. tied into a Visa credit card deal. It also doesn't expire, but I imagine it's not similar to the UK's deal at all. So I wonder why I mention it...

Scoble booted from Facebook for ’scraping’

Robert Scoble [ blog ], blogger, video-making blog, and someone who once worked from Microsoft and is apparently a Big Deal, has been booted from Facebook - had his account terminated - for violating Facebook's terms of service.

To wit:

Our systems indicate that you’ve been highly active on Facebook lately and viewing pages at a quick enough rate that we suspect you may be running an automated script. This kind of Activity would be a violation of our Terms of Use and potentially of federal and state laws.

He was using a script (since revealed to be a product called Plaxo Pulse, which Plaxo has had 'top bloggers' testing for them) which essentially grabbed contact details of all of his contacts (which numbered 5,000 or so) by scraping their profiles. Facebook didn't like it, warned him, and essentially deleted his account.

My first reaction was thus: Facebook are evil, really evil. They're so evil, that somewhere there's a demon cursing himself for not realising just how far the boundaries of evilness could be stretched, and he might be evil, but boy - he ain't nowhere near as evil as Facebook.

My second reaction followed: who does Scoble think he is? Just because he wanted to have all of his friends' contact info in his Outlook. The bastard had 5,000 friends. When I was on Facebook, I had 7! Screw him!

My third, and final, reaction, is: why is it, as a rule-abiding member of Facebook, I can't get my account deleted, but simply put on hold until I happen to sign back in? Why is it that all of my details are still there, and will be until I jump through a million hoops and then beg and plead for Facebook to remove my account? And yet Scoble, who broke the rules, gets his deleted without even having to ask?

Lucky bastard!

Update: Well, it appears he's been let back in. I guess he wasn't deleted after all, and simply had his account suspended; which is hardly something to piss and moan from on high about (and disappoints me as I thought I'd finally found a way to get my name off Facebook altogether).

Year of Going Mac

After a year where I began using an iMac at work and enjoying the... well, joys, of OS X, I've become determined to move towards the platform at home.

I've been using Windows since 3.11 (Workgroups), remember being genuinely excited at the prospect of running Windows 95 (oh yes, I bought into the hype; I even considered writing to Bill Gates to congratulate him on a stellar achievement. I was quite the dork), transitioned happily to 98, shuddered at the site of ME (released with a complete lack of fanfare, I didn't even know it existed until I went to buy a copy of 98 when I couldn't find my original disc), and dove headfirst into XP. I'm not a power user at all; I use my PC to get things done, not to do things to my PC.

However, I have been a user who has happily used Windows because it worked (most of the time), and was a better alternative to the other OS I could afford (ie, Linux, a platform I've only ever had bad one-night stands with).

Then in 2007, I became a fan of the idea of OS X, this mythical OS which gets out of your way and lets you use your machine how you want. Then I had a chance to use it, with the delivery of my work iMac in March, and have been happy ever since. However, my dear wife remains unconvinced about the attraction of Apple, having a history of dealing with moronic Apple users when she used to sell cameras to them. But I have made up my mind; it's just that I can't make up my mind about what I've decided on...

I see two options for myself. Since I am already running dual monitors on my home PC, I don't need anything with a big screen, so an iMac is out.

In the Test Tube

Via Derek