Tracked an IP address from Southampton Uni amongst my most frequent visitors, but haven’t heard from you in a donkey’s age. Have you lost the element of secrecy in the digital age?
Let me know – post a comment ;), & catch up soon…
Feels like bloatware
Just installed the public beta of Windows Live Messenger after reading about it on Pocket Lint.
It has been reskinned, and sure there are other cute features, but the install package is up to 16 meg. COME ON! People use it to send instant messages, it is an instant message client. Plain, simple, text messages.
The ‘collaboration’ machine it seems to be turning into resembles the kind of software bloating that killed ICQ (well, it was either that or the AOL acquisition, but I think the bloating came first). Who knows, though? Maybe this whole ‘Live’ strategy will pay off.
But it seems a step in the wrong direction: I’m enjoying thin client web-apps that leave my machine stable (well, within reason. I’m no (shudder) Mac User). Case in point: Google Talk is 900k and does nearly everything I want it to (if it did multi-way chat, that would be it). And it has a web interface that doesn’t require 10 minutes to load…
So, will Office 12 be bloated? Or slimmed up? If anyone at MS is reading and wants to give me a beta to try I’ll be happy to blog my opinion ;).
Return of the Hack
Damo’s back in La Paz, and has started writing about it. Skyped him tonight and sounds like the adventures have already started, including at least one run-in with the local law enforcement agencies (dramatic but inconsequential, from the sound of things). Recommend signing up to the relevant RSS feeds to keep tabs on the adventures of the BBC’s man on the ground… in Bolivia.
More on http://ourmaninbolivia.com.
Triumph
I had a game of Civ the other night, first one in ages – and absolutely trounced Turnip, which is always gratifying. I do need to switch games, though, if I’m going to progress on the novel (or even just on this blog).
That said, HOMMV is out, and I did quite like its predecessors. Crap.
NB: People who think that 8 meg broadband is ridiculous should try downloading the 700 meg HOMM V demo – its taken over an hour, even with my ridiculous DSL-link. FYI I’ve upgraded to DoubleSpeed from Bulldog (hoping for more than the advertised 16 meg), and will no doubt let you all know what kind of difference it makes when it kicks in next month.
Post-trilogy blues
I have finally finished all 3,600 pages of the Night’s Dawn Trilogy I mentioned a little while ago. It’s one of the reasons that blog posts have been so thin on the ground…
I want to be *so* superlative about it, but there was something unsatisfactory about the ending. Maybe it’s just that I wasn’t crazy about Mr Hamilton’s attempt to meld spirituality with ‘cosmology’ – or maybe its the fact that the ultimate resolution of the novels feels rushed, feels literally Deus Ex Machina, as Robert McKee would no doubt have commented.
On the whole though, I do have that sinking feeling when you’ve said goodbye to a universe that I properly fell in love with. I’m not one of those who can re-read fiction (with the exception of some of the punnier Isaac Asimov short stories, and graphic novels, of course) – so this is goodbye, for me, to the Confederation, the Adamists and the Edenists, to Captain Calvert, and to everyone’s favourite insane possessed bitek habitat – Valisk.
For those who haven’t read the series, I promise I haven’t gone mad…
You know your brother is a movie producer…
…when he delivers preview tickets to X3 after taunting me for a week and a half that he does, in fact, “know something you don’t know.”
I am so excited. I wish I could Tivo my way through Wednesday and Thursday and just land on Friday even more than usual, now.
Bye, bye Miss American Pie
Ok, slightly misleading headline: have spent most of my free time in the last week with Gem, who’s off the the US for a four month stint in the New York office. Will be v. exciting and is a great opportunity for her, but was impossible to avoid sadness seeing her off at Heathrow today.
In any case, I will catch up here… lots of exciting things to, erm, soliloquise about.
Damn, I was a tugboat again
Note that I think that Randy Hickey now deserves his own category.
Software Cluedo & Fruity Friday
So, I’m a big fan of interesting virals. The problem is, the vast majority that I see are rubbish, recycled content (ebaumstrash), or just no fun at all. Then two good ones came my way at once, and I spent rather too much time on them.
The first, Software Cluedo, is a Business Software Alliance (one of our agency’s clients) initiative designed to raise awareness of the likely causes and locations of software piracy. It is worryingly addictive, and actually not as easy as you might think to solve.
The second, more of a test of manual dexterity than detective skills, is courtesy of my friend James at World Cancer Research Fund, who is trying to raise awareness of the ‘five-a-day’ initiative, to get people to eat more fruit. Pip’s Fruit Shoot and Pip’s Target Practise are available here. Or, you could just beat the banana.
Anyway, a good way to waste some time – spread the Friday Fun!!
(Yes, I know its Thursday. Whoops…)
Ill
…but thinking about posting on various topics, including:
- [[Wikipedia]].
Smart tagging for WP in place of categories
Moblogging
More on zombies & hard sci-fi
Lots of anecdotal stuff from several great weekends/evenings out
The difference between wine bars in London and Tallin…
Bluetooth portable keyboards and PDAs
Xbox360s, PSPs, and the Nintendo WII
& more. But it will have to wait for the moment whilst I try to fend off a cold that seems to be making its best efforts to take me out after a very relaxing and entertaining bank holiday weekend.
Happy May-Day to all for now, more to follow soon.