ianbee: this is instead of getting a dog

A treat

Exciting, slightly nerdy news, I have a new computer! Holly has been superseded (hopefully she will find a good home with my parents, who are still running Windows 95). It was a nice day. I went for a picnic, then a walk. Then a coffee. Then went to catch the ferry home, and happened to walk past the Apple store ... actually it was all planned. And I had an encouraging friend with me just in case I lost my nerve. I spent the picnic rehearsing the pros and cons with her. Some people can only ever see the positive side of life; these are good people to take with you when buying expensive treats.

Anyway. I now have Holly2. We made sure she saw the sights on the way home.

 

 

 

My trip home reminded me of the story about the man who found a penguin in the street. He brought it to the police station but the sergeant was busy and suggested the man take the penguin to the zoo. The next day the same policeman passed the man in the street, who was walking alongside the penguin. Both the man and the penguin had sunglasses on and were holding ice-creams. "I thought you were taking him to the zoo!" the surprised policeman exclaimed. "I did, and he loved it," the man replied, "so today we're going to the beach."

Feature request

Today I submitted a feature request to Apple. I asked them to consider switching off the automatic screen rotation on the ipod touch and iphone. But only at night time. Normally if you rotate the device, the screen aspect changes from portrait and landscape - very cool. But if you are lying down in bed and want to read something, you end up chasing the screen orientation around because even though your head is horizontal, the ipod assumes that you're vertical ... do you see what I mean? It's very frustrating. It doesn't have to just be night time, maybe there could be a button that locks the screen. Or a little question that asks - "are you lying down?"

I'll let you know that they say. I hope I get a reply as long as the duck one.

Picasa for Mac and sharks and squid

Sorry, this is a bit geeky, but Google have finally released Picasa for Mac! I have been running an old Windows 98 version on my Mac for the last few years becuase I hate iPhoto with a passion. It hates me too. Now I can finally look at my photos as nature intended.

Bodyboarding, it's seems to be a fine line between just bobbing in the water with a safety-float and participating in an extreme sport. I am worried I am leaning towards the former. Does anyone have any tips? I saw a jellyfish in the water on Christmas Day, which has dented my confidence. And there have been sightings of sharks nearby eating a giant squid. Sharks vs squid, in my neighbourhood! Cool!

Other news ... I am days away from finishing the West Wing series 7 and Doctor Who series 4! Two strands of my life coming to an end ...

Legitimate business expense

This is my new toy - a 16Gb iPod Touch. It's not actually a toy, it's a legitimate work expense and I will be claiming a proportion of the tax back off it. "Rubbish!" I hear you say, no actually, it's very handy. It works as a WiFi hard-drive and I can store all the protocols from work on it, to save me flicking through a cumbersome folder.

It has got other tricks too. It plays videos. I have series four of Doctor Who loaded on at present. It even knows which way up it is, and orientates the video appropriately. I have spent many a happy moment spinning it round, trying to fool it, but it always catches up. I can also use it as a remote control for my computer and control iTunes from another room, which is handy for freaking out housemates. 

I wanted a rubber case for it, and funnily enough it was cheaper to get a case with gimmicky angel wings than one without. So I brought the Gabriel version and I plan to take some scissors to it once the novelty has worn off.

Communication and carrots

Yesterday was a day of communication: I managed to get my blog talking to facebook, I managed to get facebook talking to my blog, I managed to get my xbox talking to my mac and I managed to set up a joint wireless iTunes playlist with my neighbour! Amazingly all with relatively little stress.

Then I canceled my broadband because it hasn't worked for six weeks and Virgin cannot tell me when it will start working again ... ("It's all to do with the BAM settings in Guildford"). Their customer service is great. It's just a shame their product is rubbish.

And I found a huge carrot.

What a good day.

Narrowband

A transcript of my recent Virgin Broadband helpdesk online chat ...

17:30          Hi. the last few weeks the performance of my broadband has been dropping - cutting off every so often. the last few days it has become unbearable, i'm having to reset the router every few minutes. any thoughts?

17:31          Ok is your router connected into the main BT socket, or are you using any extention cables?

17:32          Main socket. i haven't changed anything in the set-up, it's just gradually deteriorated.

17:33          Ah ok i have just had a look at your connection. This seems to be a problem we are having at the moment. Your connections are dropping off at exactly 12 mins. This is something our fault teams are looking into, at the moment, we have no fix for the problem.

Bummer. And surprisingly unhelpful for a 'helpdesk'.

New compliments

I've added another twenty compliments to the random-compliment list. Each one is especially chosen for you, yes you. Now I just have to sit back and watch my stats go through the roof as you all hit refresh! If anything happens to me I will leave my compliments archive to the nation. It's the least I can do.

PS The badge competition is still ongoing. One entry currently stands out beyond all the others ...

Revised weather forecast

I've always been a bit suspicious of the weather widget on my computer desktop; it seemed to be a little optimistic. It turns out that ever since I brought the computer last year it's been set to Edinburgh, Indiana. Can you spot the difference?

Edinburgh, USA

Edinburgh, UK

I can't believe I've been giving it the benefit of the doubt for six months! Anyway, that's the least of my worries - it appears that there are meteor showers in store for Wednesday and Thursday.

I want one

Deconstruction

I've brought some more memory for my computer and I'm going to try and fit it tomorrow. So if I don't write for a while it's because I haven't managed to put all the bits back together again in quite the right way. My neighbour has brought some memory too so my plan is to practise on his computer first. Wish me luck ...

UPDATE: We sat opposite each other across the table, dismantling our computers in sync. When put back together, mine worked and his didn't! Brilliant!