July 2007

Song of the Day: Back Chat (Live) – Queen

| | General

The Song of the Day category is for listing any song or piece of music, that I’ve heard on a particular day, that has reached into my brain and lit up the pleasure centres! There won’t be a post every day I expect.

Today a song that I really enjoyed when it came up on random play on the iPod in the car, was Back Chat live from Queen on Fire – Live at the Bowl. Brilliant stuff. John Deacon’s bass playing is superb. I love this track from the Hot Space album. I was at the 1982 Milton Keynes Bowl concert. Right at the front at Brian May’s side of the stage. He does a sizzling lead break in Back Chat 🙂

Canicula? Say what?

| | General

Canicula. What does it mean?

Canicula is the Latin name of Sirius, The Dog Star.

Canicula
(||Ca*nic”u*la) n. [L.canicula, lit., a little dog, a dim. of canis dog;
cf. F. canicule.] (Astron.)The Dog Star; Sirius.

Sirius is in the constellation Canis Major and is the brightest star in the sky. More
info about Sirius can be found on Wikipedia.

Harry Potter and the pots of cash

| | Uncategorized

According to the BBC the 7th and last Harry Potter book sold 11 Million copies in 24 hours. Gosh! I have to admit that I’ve never read any of them. Not for any particular reason, I just never got round to it. Way to much other stuff to read over the last 10 years. Maybe I’ll have to read them all now the series is complete. Might actually be better to read them now as I won’t have to wait for the author to complete the series. That used to scroll my nerd big time when I was a lad 🙂 I can remember nearly going spare waiting for Julian May to complete the Pliocene Exile and Galactic Milieu series.

What happens if she gets hit by a bus!? 😉

Thankfully she didn’t (and not just so she could complete the books).

It seems that Bloomsbury and J.K. Rowling have not authorised electronic copies of the Potter books for eInk devices like the Sony Reader. This is a mistake in my opinion. Although given the sales of the series I’m not sure mistake is the term to use! In any event if I do decide to read the books then I’ll have to get cheap paperback copies so I’ve actually bought the books and maybe look for electronic copies for the Reader from alternative sources…

The question is. Are they worth reading?

UPDATE: The Loading Ready Run crew attend a Victoria HP7 launch event.

Tomtom sat navs are bloody brilliant

| | Technology

I wrote about buying a TomTom Go 700 last year. Since I started my new job, and have been doing more travelling to England, I’ve started to get hire cars at the airport and use the TomTom to get me to the various meetings I have to attend. it’s brilliant. Just type in the postcode and get directed right to the door of the venue. It’s definitely one of the best pieces of technology I’ve got. I don’t know why it still amazes me when I hear the phrase

You have reached your destination.

which it utters when I get to where I’m going. But it does. Much like the Sony Reader, I’d have to buy another TomTom Go straight away if I lost or broke my current one. The battery is dead on mine so I have to use it plugged in all the time. Not a major hassle. Just annoying. The recent map update has vastly improved the maps available for Northern Ireland as well. I see that TomTom are bidding to buy the company who supply the map data. For a tidy sum as well.

Here comes another one…

| | Science

Good grief. There is another big low pressure system sitting in the Atlantic ready to roll over, and dump on, the UK. See pressure chart below. The Met Office are not forecasting the amount of rain that the last one dumped on England. Gotta love the weather! Bloody Jet Stream has decided to go south for a holiday!

Apc24072007 Click picture for larger view
Atlantic Pressure Chart for
13:00 on Tues 24/07/2007

God is not Great – Christopher Hitchens

| | Uncategorized

I finished God is not Great by Christopher Hitchens last week. It’s the most recent of the string of popular anti-religion books that have been published over the last year (Sam Harris, Dan Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Victor Stenger and others have trampled the grass on this path recently). many people think that Richard Dawkins is a bit strident in his anti-religions views. I don’t, for the record. BTW, why does it seem that none of the people who have responded to Dawkins’ latest book, with arguments that he is too strident or hasn’t studied some obscure theological text, that they haven’t actually read his book for comprehension (or at all)?

Anyway. If you thought Dawkins was strident you’ll either love or blanch completely at Hitchens’ latest book. This is a real polemic. Wide ranging as well. Dawkins focused on Christianity to a large extent. Hitchens covers Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism and others. Hitchens has a writting style and background that will appeal to a more literary audience than Dawkins et al. As such it is a welcome new addition to the anti-religion canon. A good synopsis of the book is given in a lecture by Hitchens presented by the Seattle Town Hall Center for Civic Life and University Book Store.

BTW: This was the first book I read on an eInk device. A Sony Reader.

My 2nd home?

| | Technology

I’m off to San Francisco again in a few weeks. Maybe I should move there? Work is sending me to VMworld at the Moscone Centre. Same place as the last two Apple WWDC conferences. Should be interesting. They are expecting 10,000 attendees for the 3 day conference. There is also a partner day that I’ll be attending. VMware VI3 is really, really cool and very, very useful (as are the other VMware products). Looking forward to getting down and dirty in the deep technical sessions. I’ll also need to go to the sessions that are related to how educational organisations are using virtualisation technologies. And the green computing session will be a must as this is a hot topic in new school builds. All newly funded Building Schools for the Future projects in the future have to be carbon neutral.

Of course there are the VMware for Mac sessions as well. And drinks with the VMware engineers… 🙂

Sony Reader PRS-500

| | Technology

I’ve been using a Sony Reader PRS-500 eBook device for the last month. I’ve just finished the first book that I read completely, and solely, on the Reader. God is not Great by Christopher Hitchens. I’ll post about the book itself later. Reading a book on the Reader is a very nice experience. The eInk screen is very easy on the eyes and very easy to read. Several times when reading I went to manually turn a page just like i would with a real paper book. I actually forgot it was an electronic device. The video below gives a short demo of how the device operates.

It might be better to download the above movie and view it at double size in the quicktime player. You can download it by right clicking on this link, and saving it to disk.

Content for the Reader is available from the Sony Connect Store. You have to have a USA credit card to use this or you can buy gift tokens in USA books shops such as Borders that work on the store. There are tools, like Book Designer, that allow other formats such as PDF and HTML to be converted to Reader files. I’ve also bought a scanner so that I can convert some of my favourite books to PDF then to Reader format. Well the ones not available in electronic format from elsewhere.

I really like the Reader. It’ll be my first choice for reading all future novels and fiction. I’d really love an A4 version for reading journals such as Nature and Science, as well as A4 PDF’s such as Apple documentation. Colour would be really good as well for things like Scientific American. Both A4 and colour eInk screens are in development. Hopefully they’ll ship as products in the near future.

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