What a shambles! Surely the world cup final should have 50 overs per side? Even if it has to be played over 2 days! The end of the rain affected final over the weekend was a farce.
Having said that , Adam Gilchrist’s 149 from 102 balls was stunning. Put the fielders in the stands to save time when he is in that sort of mood.
Not long to go until Apple WWDC 2007. Just done my preliminary schedule based on the published session info so far. See the picture below. Will probably change a bit as there are some slots in the published schedules on the WWDC site that are listed as TBA. These are likely placeholders for new stuff in MacOS X 10.5 Leopard or iPhone. The picture also doesn’t show any of the evening activities such as the Apple Design Awards, The Scientific Poster Session, The Apple Campus Bash and others. There is also a session entitled Mac OS X Scientific Computing State of the Union that is in the full listings but not on the calendar view. It’ll maybe a lunchtime session. I want to go to that. Many of the sessions I’m going to are IT technology related rather than developer related. This reflects that WWDC is taking on a more technical conference feel rather than a pure developer conference. The IT related sessions are of interest for the education technology job I’m doing at present.
Click picture for larger view
Flight to San Francisco on 9th June. 6 weeks to go. Can’t wait 🙂
Most people know my view about life and the Universe. We’ll all be dead a long time and therefore we should do what we want during our lives to make ourselves happy (as long as it doesn’t adversely effect others). Steve Jobs articulated this view well in his Commencement Speech to Stanford University graduates in 2005. You can read the whole speech at the link above or watch it via YouTube (see below). I quote the following from it:
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
For the last while I’ve been using a similar process myself in relation to my job. At the start of the year I switched jobs. I think that my answer to the question posed in Jobs’ speech above has been No far too many times recently. I’ll need to rectify that…
It’s 4 years since my first post on the subject of testicular cancer. Like last year, I forgot about the anniversary. Which is still a good thing! The only legacy of the TC are the yearly check ups. Next one due in November 2007.
Peter Olofsson has written an excellent satirical review of the latest Anne Coulter book. Check it out at the Richard Dawkins’ site. Coulter is to be pitied rather than engaged with. Satire is a good way of doing it. 🙂
Finally stepped into the High Definition television age. I got a Sony Bravia KDL-40W2000 LCD television and a Sony Playstation 3. The TV has a 1080p HD display and the PS3 has a Blu-Ray HD drive in it. As a bonus I get a games console in the Blu-Ray player for free 🙂 Here is a picture of the beasts in situ. The image on the screen is from a Mac mini that I use as my music centre with iTunes.
The quality of Blu-Ray movies via the PS3 and the TV is stunning. Very, very happy. I had to take the first PS3 back as the fans would come on and once they got to a high speed, whilst playing a game for example, they would stay at the high speed until the unit was switched off. This was irrespective of what the PS3 was doing after the fans speeded up. So if I left it idling the fans would never slow down again. This was annoying when using it to watch movies when in a quiet part of a film. You could hear the fans over the film sound. The replacement PS3 seems to be quieter but I’ve still to test it fully.
The game MotorStorm is stunning on the PS3. Really, really good fun as well. It outputs at 720p resolution and looks excellent on the Bravia. Here is a picture of a bike from the game. It has a bit of motion blur.
So I’ve cast my die into the Blu-Ray camp in the great HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray face off. Hopefully Apple will go down the Blu-Ray route with their HD optical drives in Macintosh machines. A Mac mini with a Blu-Ray drive and a version of DVD Player that allowed playback of Blu-Ray movie discs would make a very nice media hub indeed. It’d need to output 1080p via HDMI cable though.
The BBC programme “The Sky at Night” has been on air for 50 years. The special anniversary programme is online and worth watching. Includes Dr. Brian May amongst others.