All posts by Armand

Technology

Macbait

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For various reasons, I didn’t get around to linking to this article from the Graun: why Charlie Booker hates Macs. I don’t know Charlie Booker, but I have a feeling he and I would get along.

I am now slightly nervous about being slammed by all the Mactards out there, especially having spent some time reading the Secret Diary of Steve Jobs. The parody blogger is funny, but some of the commenters… are just scary.

NB: I don’t hate Macs or Apple on principle, just in practice. I just really, really hated using them when I’ve had to (was given a PowerBook G3 by an old employer which I took to OS X.3, and had to use a variety of Macs to publish the various papers/magazines I worked on as a student). They are pretty, though.

Personal

Curse those trapped nerves

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Have injured something so need to keep typing to a minimum. Normal service will be resumed shortly.

Update: Apparently, whatever I have isn’t causing me damage, just pain. And medical advice is to work through it, so I’ll be typing just for the hell of it. Expect blog posts Seinfeld style over the weekend.

Personal

Bye bye, Orange…

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Disclaimer: T-Mobile is a Brands2Life client. Microsoft isn’t, I just seem to really like a lot of its tech.

This, I promise, will be the last tech post for a little while, and I’ll think of some non-techie things to write about.

So, I left Orange a few days ago, after using it as my mobile provider for 8 years. Why?

(1) I really have had enough of its marketing. It’s too weird. I like the “Orange Wednesday” guys, but honestly, that’s the only decent thing Orange has done in years.
(2) It doesn’t do an unlimited data tariff. Why not?
(3) Orange have stupid and patronising names for its voice/text tariffs, that bear no relation to what the tariffs offer.

On the flip side, I love the Orange Wednesday promotion and have always had good customer service experiences, so it was a non-trivial decision. But I rang up the disconnection people to present my case and see if they would make me an offer to stay with them… the conversation went a little something like this.

“So, I’m thinking of leaving Orange,” say I, to the customer retention helpline.
“Ok, sir. Can I ask why you’re thinking of leaving?”
“Sure – you guys don’t, as far as I know, have an unlimited data tariff, or HSDPA. Is that something you can do, or will be thinking of doing?”
“No, sir. We’ll get a PAC code out to you in 48 hours.”

And that was it. None of the polished negotiating I’d come to expect of the retention team (who hasn’t called to try to blag a better upgrade or a deal on their tariff?), and they seemed happy to let me go. So I left.

Choosing the new network wasn’t hard. The benefit of working in an office with a bunch of people who promote T-Mobile meant I had a wealth of information literally across the desk from me. There are two unlimited data tariffs out there, and there are WAY too many horror stories around the 3 network for me to head there just yet, so… A few conversations later, and I headed down to the T-Mobile Retail store in Victoria where I had a pretty good retail experience (after an online store requested 17 forms of ID to sell me a contract), and walked away with my new MDA Vario 2 on Web n’ Walk, T-Mo’s unlimited data package, and Flext – an affordable, flexible mobile tariff. The Vario 2 is an HTC device, my fifth – after the Orange SPV100, E200, C500 and C600 — it is, I have to say, a thing of awesome beauty and power. I have Google Maps and Windows Live Search installed and it works fast. I mean, HSDPA is really, really fast, and everything else just works seamlessly.

Of course, days after I bought the damn thing Microsoft announced Windows Mobile 6 and HTC (and others) announced a spate of new devices using the technology at 3GSM, and Orange announced HSDPA (still no unlimited data), but ah well… you can’t have everything!

Interestingly, I’m paying T-Mo more than I paid Orange monthly, but I’m ok with that. It’s all about delivering a certain level of service – and in a world where all the operators are wondering how to get their users to spend more time accessing data services, I’m fairly amazed that there are only two unlimited data packages out there. Good for T-Mo, though, and good for me!

Oh – and for anyone who thinks I should be waiting for the iPhone? (1) have you met me? (2) you’re wrong and (3) here’s why.

Software, Technology

Windows Vista: not for the tame of spirit

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My big personal tech project over the last couple of weeks has been migrating to Vista. Why, I hear you ask? The answer, I’m afraid, is essentially ‘for the hell or it’. A longer answer: my XP install had been clunkering along since I bought my current desktop PC in early 2005. As Windows is wont to do, it had begun to bloat to an unacceptable level and performance was, not to put too fine a point on it, crap. So; rather than reinstall the 5 year old Windows XP, or the 3 year old XP SP2, I opted to get that new hard drive I’d been needing (a 250GB WD drive with 16 meg cache), Windows Vista Home Premium OEM and some new RAM to manage the transition.

That’s already quite an involved process: I knew an upgrade to Vista wouldn’t be a good thing from a performance perspective so I opted for a fresh new install. When the parts arrived, I hit my first stumbling block – Dell only provided one SATA power cable. So I couldn’t get the new hard drive to work. Much fiddling and one cable purchase further, with everything plugged in, I installed Vista clean on my new hard drive. The Vista advisor had suggested that some of my hardware, including my network card, wouldn’t work, but (some fiddling later) I got it all up and running. Bizarrely, my Soundblaster Audigy 2 (from the most popular manufacturer of sound card hardware in the world?) required me to download beta drivers from the its website. Windows caught most other things.

Given the amount of hardware I have (I have things plugged into 22 USB sockets) it was quite impressive that it managed this. But still; non-trivial for a casual PC user.

Other things that went wrong / require(d) fiddling:

(1) My iPod required the Apple Ipod fix for Vista.
(2) My NAS drive isn’t supported as a NAS drive – will need to get a generic storage network adaptor rather than the proprietary Freecom one I used
(3) I’ll have to reinstall a stack of applications/freeware/etc., which I can’t quite bring myself to do with my PC working this well
(4) RAM demands are big
(5) The permissions thing (that spawned this Mac ad) is annoying as hell, although Lifehacker does have a workaround somewhere.

Things that work really well / much better than under XP:

(1) File system is improved
(2) Search is fantastic
(3) Aero is SO pretty / Flip3D is cute ;-)
(4) Task manager is much more useful
(4) Multimedia / pictures / music etc., are all improved, and Media Player/sharing integration is good

So; in essence, a lot of subtle polishing and some good performance tweaks, but its really not easy to migrate yourself over and probably not worth it for these changes. If you are buying a new PC, for most of your requirements, odds are that things will work and you will be better protected against spyware and potentially self-inflicted damage. Most people shouldn’t even try to upgrade, especially if you’re on a laptop and don’t have scope to upgrade your hardware as well.

Still, if you’re up for a challenge, Vista is damn pretty. And fun. For those curious, the current spec of my PC is a P4 3Ghz (single core), 3GB of RAM, an Nvidia 7950GT graphics card (sadly not DirectX10 compatible), and the aformentioned WD hard drive add up to a performance index of 4.2 (current max is 6, but I vaguely remember reading that its open ended). Simon, thanks for the encouragement – well worth the efforts.

Personal, Update

Damo doesn’t live here, any more

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The reason for relatively limited blog posts of late is multi-fold

(1) My personal life has been busy, in a good way
(2) I lost the habit of blogging relatively during the 6 week internet drought imposed by my service provider over Christmas
(3) I installed Windows Vista (more to follow)
(4) Damo’s been living with me for the last 6 weeks, and I’ve therefore been disproportionately social

Damo’s now moved back into his flat, which is cool, but kind of sad. I like having friends living with me, and Damo’s one of the best. No doubt it also had an impact on how healthily I eat, too (Damo’s the kind of guy who goes out to buy a snack and comes back with Parma ham and Parmesan and other things beginning Parma).

Still; expect normal service to resume. I’ll try to alternate regular posts with the techie ones you all know and love.

Comics, Film

THIS IS SPARTA

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Thanks to Hugh and Simon from Beatwax, I got to be one of about, erm, 300 ‘influential bloggers’ to go and see Frank Miller/Zack Snyder’s “300” yesterday, a film about how 300 Spartans held off the invading Persian army.

That is literally all you need to know about the plot. It is a thing of awesomeness: everything about it is well done. The shots are beautiful, the acting powerful, the comic book like physiques of the near super-heroic Spartans is appropriate, the battles fantastic, the voices great, the drama high, the tension good, the sound ear-blowingly awesome, and the beards… well, they have to be seen to be believed. There’s really not a lot of plot to unveil and not many weak points. James, who came to watch it with me, observed that the ‘political’ subplot was less interesting, and there’s no doubt that some of the dialogue is unnecessary, but it doesn’t diminish from the overall sense of wonder.

I guess the two things I’d say to people going to see it: if you can’t deal with scenes of violence and gore, you might have some trouble. And: deal with your problems with violence and gore and go see this movie. It’s great.

Whilst I’m under no obligation to write about it (as you’ll see if you click through to Hugh’s blog), who wouldn’t want to!? It’s a fantastic film and I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if there are another 299 positive blog reviews being written or published as we speak. I had to miss the Q&A with Zack Snyder, who came across as someone remarkably humble, nervous and inarticulate for the man responsible for the wonder of 300, but am sure he perked up during the questions – gather he’s had quite a busy couple of days flying around.

Armand’s now off to wonder whether Leonidus vs. Ninja would be an interesting deathmatch… and also why, despite the fact that they obviously care about bloggers, the makers of 300 didn’t give us access to any easy-post images on the (slow, poorly designed flash) website or via Flickr. Instead, be sated with this YouTube provided trailer:

Food

Steak

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Yes, after a bit of a hiatus, I’m back and blogging baby! Been a busy time in real life, but now that I’m back I’d like to get straight to the important issues that have been plaguing the blogosphere. No, not the iPhone, not the DRM conversation, not Anna Nicole-Smith, not the Shilpa Shetty race story, not the BBC dealing with the license fee increase, or their poll for feedback on the iPlayer…

Nope. None of that. I’m here today to talk about… steak (damn, gave it away in the title). So Hindus, vegetarians, and anyone else likely to take offense, now’s the time to look away from your screen.

So I had a steak last night, at Las Iguanas, a restaurant in the Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank. On the menu was Argentine steak. Now, if you’re like me (i.e. a REAL MAN) when you see steak on the menu you feel drawn by it. You may not order it quite every time but you will feel temptation. You will be lured in by the call of the succulent, tender, juicy meatiness of it all. And on this occasion, further tempted by the Argentinian pedigree of the meat in question, I succumbed to temptation.

“How would you like it sir? Medium well? Medium?” asked my waitress, clearly impressed with my choice, but woefully underestimating my manliness.
“Rare,” say I.
“Rare?” she checks.
“Rare,” I affirm.

There was no doubt that rare was the cooking level of choosing, and the cooking level of choosing was rare. And yet, much was my disappointment when I was presented with a steak that leaked absolutely no blood onto a plate! Am I alone in thinking that good, fresh steak when rare or even medium will ooze a little bloody goodness onto the plate, which adds to the overall flavourfullness of it all? In the end, it wasn’t bad. But it wasn’t quite what I was hoping for.

I’ll admit that in my squeamish youth I had a few well-done steaks. These days, I no longer take the risk of ordering medium rare steak because it too often comes up too heavy on the medium side of things. Do I need to start asking for blue steak? Quick poll below to see what my loyal blog readers prefer. For reference, my favourite steaks in London have come from the Gaucho grill (fantastic), Bodeans (very very tasty on good days, and their spicy butter is tasty), Chez Gerard (standard, tasty fayre) and a couple of very nice steaks lately from the Captain Kidd pub in Wapping (on separate occasions). The worst steak I ever had was a 24 oz whopper in a Fatty Arbuckles in Oxford, but that’s another story…

Where’d you have your best steak of late? Let me know in the comments.

{democracy:3}