Blog Standard Stuff

Looking forward to getting a Gameboy for Christmas? Well, you may have to wait a little longer, as a whole batch of them were sharing
storage space in a wharehouse with a stock of novelty lighters that were resting on a damaged/weakened/top-heavy palette (or so I’ve been told by my sister who took these pictures - apart from the aerial one, that is). When the palette fell, the lighters exploded and soon afterwards Hampshire got one of the biggest fires it’s seen:

The cost many millions of pounds - and probably a few days off in sickness for people working nearby (who complained of headaches - and possibly some fantastically creative bogies, if my experience is anything to go by).

So, the news is out - I’m going to be a contributor to Digital-Web (the daily news and also acting as an advisor regarding accessibility issues). All this at a time when I am cutting back on most things, because of impending travels. The thing is, it shouldn’t be too difficult to act as an advisor, even from remote locations using hit-and-miss Iinternet connections. And the news section - well, it there’s something I want to post, I can, if I don’t get a chance, you can be sure that one of the other contributors will anyway. The advisory stuff might not kick in until early part of next year anyway, by which time I’ll probably be in Sydney and easily within reach of Internet.

My latest Mirror Project submission (no. 19135) - a picture taken in the reflection of a fryer at Manda’s sister’s takeaway.

So, you probably know that Dave Shea (CSS Zen Garden, Mezzoblue) fame and Ethan Marcotte (Sidesh0w) have now joined our happy little crew over at WaSP. As I write this, there’s a third, as-yet-unannounced addition, but as he has accepted the invite I don’t think I’m sworn to secrecy - so it’s great to see that Simon Willison is also joining the group. Personally, I’m very excited to have this talented trio join now. Between them, they seem to be some of the most linked to or quoted people (Zeldman excluded, hah) on the web - or at least in the web logs and sites that I visit - and it’s for a very simple reason: they post regularly and they write with insight beyond the usual copy-paste style of some bloggers.

I’m looking forward to seeing what they post to Buzz in the coming weeks and months but I have to say that Ethan has submitted a blinder of a post today that everyone concerned about the Eolas and Microsoft ruling should read. It’s about a letter sent to the United States Patent and Trademark Office by a certain Tim Berners-Lee. It’s a long-ish read, but worth the effort.

Anyway, welcome guys - will enjoy working with you, or at least until I disappear to warmer climes and slower (or non-existent) internet connections.

I spotted this at Del’s site while checking some referrers this morning - apparantly people are in the habit of buying gadgets and discarding them after a certain amount of time. The article reckons that people are losing interest in digital cameras, CD burners and iPods. What the f**k?

Now, don’t get me wrong, I can understand how some gadgets lose their appeal, but I really don’t get how you can go off something like an iPod. Having spent a considerable sum of money, you get a product that is a thing of beauty. I mean, even the packaging it comes in is drop-dead sexy (am I the only one who misses that experience of opening the iPod packaging up for the first time? Experience it once more here, folks …). And then there’s the small matter of the fact that you have days if not weeks of music to listen to (assuming that your CD collection is up to the job) if you cram iTunes full to the brim (now available as a free download for Windows, folks - no longer do you need to suffer Music Match Jukebox’s quirks with the iPod).

So, you have hours and hours and hours of music to listen to - how can you get bored of this? Do you only listen to a piece of music once and think "I’m never going to listen to this again". No? OK, so in effect you can multiply that listening duration 4 or 5 times. That must be 5 solid weeks of listening - assuming you did nothing else, not even sleep. But if you spread that 5 weeks out, on the basis that maybe you’ll maybe squeeze in a couple of hours a day you’re looking at an interest span of about 420 days (5 weeks = 840 hours, 840/2 = 420 days). Admittedly this is all somewhat unscientific, but I just don’t get the mentality of people that discard things so quickly. Heck, I expect to be listening to my iPod beyond 420 days (although I may have upgraded to a larger model - so I’ll need to revise those calculations somewhat!).

Anyway, on the topic of iTunes and all things iPod, a reminder that Smartplaylists is worth a look at.

I didn’t think it appropriate or professional to post something on the home page of Accessify about this, so I decided to put something here instead - Accessify just clocked up a quarter of million page impressions.This is still a drop in the ocean compared to a lot of other sites out there, but it’s exceeded my expectations for visitors. Please allow a moment of pride to sweep over me.

I’ve only had the 12" Powerbook that I am currently tapping away at for
about three months, and would not say that I have configured it up the wazoo
(and consequently harmed the OS) like I might have done with a Windows machine
(actually, almost certainly would have), yet it seems to have slowed down -
this despite having increased the RAM to 640MB.

Now, I may have misunderstood how OS X works, but my belief is that it’s supposed
to pretty good at memory management. However, sometimes even paging up and down
in a Finder window seems to incur a delay between my pressing the key and the
system reacting. Come on! This is 2003 and this is supposed to a fast little
machine - what’s going on here? I’m fed up with seeing the damn multicoloured
‘wait’ spinwheel, no matter how nicely it’s been animated for me.

In an effort to find out more, I turned to the CPU Monitor and the Process
Viewer. And this is what I see:

Am I mistaken, or is this telling me that the CPU is fully used? The blue bar
is, I presume, not supposed to be right at the top. Likewise the green floating
display. If Apple had provided a legend it may have helped clarify this somewhat.
For all I know, the solid bar of green is good - maybe when the processor is
being used little red lights start climbing up at the bottom, but I can’t be
sure. Somebody enlighten me.

The weird thing is that if I am interpreting this correctly, it’s only one
application that’s causing this: iTunes. Yet if I quit from iTunes, the CPU
monitor doesn’t change dramatically.

So, is something misbehaving and swallowing up my Powerbook’s CPU processing
power? Or am I just not reading it correctly?

The usual office email marathon produced this today, and I thought I should share. See if you find yourself nodding at these:.

• Who was the first person to look at a cow and say,
  "I think I’ll squeeze these pink dangly things here, and drink
  whatever comes out?"
• Who was the first person to say, "See that chicken there…
  I’m gonna eat the next thing that comes outta its bum."
• Why do toasters always have a setting so high that could burn the
  toast to a horrible crisp, which no decent human being would eat?
• Why is there a light in the fridge and not in the freezer?
• Can blind people see their dreams?
• If Wile E. Coyote from the Road Runner had enough money to buy
  all that ACME crap, why didn’t he just buy dinner?
• If corn oil is made from corn, and vegetable oil is made from
  vegetables, then what is baby oil made from?
• Why do the Alphabet song and Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star have
  the same tune?

Stop singing and read on . . . . . .. . . . .

• Do illiterate people get the full effect of Alphabet Soup?
• Did you ever notice that when you blow in a dog’s face, he gets
  mad at you, but when you take him on a car ride,
  he sticks his head out the window?
• Does pushing the elevator button more than once make it arrive faster?

If you find yourself in the business of having to vet submissions for comments on your web site, you probably should give them more than just a cursory glance before putting them live. If you need an example of what can happen otherwise, check out this entry in london-eating.co.uk (find the one dated 10/10/03). It’s a review of the Oxo Tower Brasserie in Blackfriars. Or is it?

Laugh? Yep, laughed my ass off.

Never Upset Mr McEvoy

… else you’ll get a very old photo of yourself posted on the net which then gets sent around to all and sundry within your team prompting comments like the following:

• "You look like a delinquent who’s just taken a break from vandalising something"
• "Have you had your ears pinned back since then?"
• "That hair is ridiculous"
• "Check out that scowl"
• "There’s a bit of a Hugh Grant thing going on there."

Of course, whatever you might think, it surely can’t be as good as this photo (which I can now link to safely, given that I have posted the image above). It’s all fair now!